Lies of Descent

by Troy Carrol Bucher

  Around the remainder of the timber yard, logs lay spread out and stacked. Hundreds filled the wide clearing. Brightly colored timberwains lined up with their sides to a loading dock. The dock rose higher as they went, so that the timberwains could be loaded with a row of logs and then be pulled forward for the next row to be loaded without much lifting. The far end of the dock was nearly twice the height of a man. A line of mastons with harnesses dangling from their horns in front of them carried logs to the dock.

  Teamsters supervised the loading. One squatted to check the heavy axles while another examined spokes as thick as Riam’s leg. The heavy springs on the wains made the beds sit unnaturally high, like they might tip over sideways on the slightest incline. One of the men, wearing a floppy brown hat and leading a maston, waved at them. Riam waved back. While the men weren’t farmers and wore different clothes, they were just as friendly as the people back home.

  Strangely, the wains were a mix of colors, like they’d each been one solid color and then all were taken apart and put back together with the pieces mixed up. Some of the wagons were red with yellow spokes, others were green and white, and there was one that was the worst mix of orange, blue, and green Riam had ever seen.

  “Why all the colors?” Riam asked.

  “They paint the axles and spokes with bright colors to make it easier to see cracks in the wood,” Gairen said. “They use what’s cheapest, and they don’t always have the same colors available when they make repairs.”

  Already loaded, the lead wain stood alone on the paved stone road. There was a single teamster standing on the driver’s bench hammering at something. He was partially hidden by the logs on the back of the wain, but he kept pausing in his work to lean out and watch them as they approached and then duck back quickly and continue pounding. Riam couldn’t get a good look at what he was doing—fixing the seat, maybe, or trying to adjust a log.

  A faint buzzing noise filled the air as they drew closer, almost like being tested with Gairen’s sword. Only this time, it wasn’t coming from inside his head. By the puzzled expression on Gairen’s face, he heard it, too. The noise made Riam shiver. It was not a friendly sound.

  The teamster pounded faster, almost frantically, the closer they came. The sound of the hammer striking the wood made a deep thud with each swing, the tempo rising like a heartbeat from heavy work.

  He and Gairen were no more than a couple of rod lengths from the teamster when the man paused with the hammer above his head and stared at them. A sheen of sweat covered his face, and his skin was flushed. His eyes were wide with panic, but his mouth was set in a determined line. He turned back to the large pine logs on the back of the wain. The ends of two of the logs were capped with an odd, muddy beige material.

  Riam tilted his head, trying to figure out what was on the logs and what the teamster was doing.

  Crack . . . Crack. The man struck quickly and precisely two times, once on each of the caps. They shattered into pieces and fell away. Riam stared in horror. The answer to the buzzing noise became apparent—wasps.

  Yellow bodies as big as two fists put together, legs as long as fingers, and stingers the size of cherry stems, they came out of the log in a writhing flood of yellow and black.

  The first wasps out went straight for the teamster. Clamping onto clothing and exposed skin, they drove their massive stingers into his flesh over and over. The man screamed and crumpled down onto the driver’s bench, twitching. In a flash, he disappeared beneath a mound of swarming yellow.

  More wasps poured out, taking to the air and flying straight for Riam. He stood, transfixed by the sight. He had nowhere to run, no way to escape the swarm. The safety of the water flashed through Riam’s thoughts, but it was too far away, the wasps too close. He could see his death reflected back at him in the black mirrored surfaces of a hundred bulbous eyes. Still, he didn’t move.

  It wasn’t fear that held him in place. It was the overwhelming sense of the futility of doing anything else. In a moment, he would be dead, with those sharp, vertical jaws tearing at his skin and those stingers plunging into his flesh, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  The wasps were nearly upon him when Gairen stepped forward with his blades swinging and turning so fast Riam couldn’t follow them. The first of the wasps dropped to the ground, cut in two. Riam was so mesmerized by the wasps that he hadn’t seen Gairen draw his swords.

  “Get down and don’t move!” Gairen yelled over his shoulder.

  The commands broke Riam free. He jumped backward. His foot caught on a stone and he found himself complying with Gairen’s order unintentionally, crashing to the ground on his backside. There was no way Gairen could fight them all off.

  Gairen’s blades twisted through the air. More wasps fell. He moved backward step-by-step, keeping the deadly creatures at bay, until he stood directly over Riam, his legs straddling him. Wasps swarmed all around, buzzing angrily as they darted in to plunge those deadly stingers into them. Screams and yells broke the silence of the timber yard. The wasps had reached the other workers.

  Riam wanted to curl into a ball, but instead he lay flat, unmoving like he’d been told in fear of tangling Gairen’s feet. Above him, Gairen wove a shield with his blades. There were dozens of the wasps circling them now, and each time one came within Gairen’s reach, he would lash out, taking the creature down. The man never missed. Broken and severed pieces of the wasps lay scattered around them, their yellow bodies rapidly fading to a dull brown, drying and puckering as if they’d been dead for weeks. His grandfather’s body had done the same thing, and just as happened back then, he felt the pulling sensation.

  Riam’s despair fell away. Gairen was invincible with his swords. The wasps would not reach them.

  A faint, glowing mist floated above the dead and dying wasps. The mist concentrated and turned as it rose, funneling into tendrils that stretched into the air. The ends of the tendrils latched on to the pommels of the blades, and the crystals in the hilts glowed as the mist fed into them. The tendrils grew stronger and thicker, and the crystals grew brighter as more wasps piled up around them.

  One of the wasps made it past Gairen’s defenses and landed on his leg. With death no longer certain, Riam didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the massive wasp by the wings and pulled, ignoring the pain in his injured hand. One wing snapped off, and his hand slid free. The wasp plunged its stinger into Gairen’s leg.

  “Aghh . . .” Gairen grunted. He stumbled but continued fighting.

  Riam snatched at the wasp again, this time taking a firmer grip. Its body was cool beneath his hand and covered in fuzz, like a peach. He shivered and yanked it free. It wiggled like a baby marcat in his hand, trying to turn on him. It was stronger than he expected, but he didn’t let it escape. The wasp’s tail curled inward, but it was unable to bring its stinger close enough to stab into Riam’s hand. Against its mandibles, however, Riam had no such luck. It clamped down on his finger with an agonizing pinch that wouldn’t let go. He smashed the wasp headfirst onto a paving stone. There was a loud crunch and he felt the wetness of the wasp’s guts splatter his arm. He smashed it down one more time for good measure and hurled it away. Another landed on Gairen’s back.

  Riam sat up, reaching for it. “Gair—”

  A blur of yellow and black smacked him in the face, cutting off his warning. Riam jerked away and slammed the back of his head down onto the stone by accident. All he saw was yellow. Then his vision cleared, and he couldn’t even scream. One of the wasps was on him, its stinger right in front of his eye. The creature’s squirming limbs clicked, and its hooked feet tangled in his hair and scratched at his cheeks. A musty earth smell filled Riam’s nostrils. The insect’s bulging abdomen reared back, the stinger glistening in the morning sun.

  Gairen’s blade tore across the bridge of Riam’s nose and cut the wasp in two. Green ichor and blood burned his eyes, blinding him. He
swatted at the dying creature and shook his head to dislodge it. Warm blood from the cut on his nose ran down his cheeks. Another wasp landed on his shoulder. This time Gairen wasn’t fast enough to save him. He felt the stinger slide into the meat of his shoulder, all the way to the bone.

  Riam screamed as poison seared its way into his body and down his arm. Rage took over. He grabbed the wasp by the back of its head and twisted until the head came free with a pop. He flung it away.

  Three more wasps made it past Gairen’s swords. Riam couldn’t see them, but he felt them land—one on his chest, another on his thigh, and the third near his waist. They struck in quick succession. His body filled with molten iron. The world went white. His jaw locked shut and his back arched while his heels scratched at the road. His chest constricted. He couldn’t breathe. Nothing existed except blinding whiteness and agony. Then, even those faded, and his vision darkened.

  In the emptiness there was no more pain, no more wasps, no more anything except for two points of light that wove above him. He floated, detached from the world, watching them. At first, the movements seemed chaotic and disjointed, but then he saw a pattern to them, like a dance. He felt pulled toward the rhythmic movement of the lights.

  The mists he’d seen forming above the dead wasps glowed ethereally around him. Suddenly, he understood. The lights were the crystals from Gairen’s blades moving with his strikes and turns. Like his grandfather, the essence or energy, Riam wasn’t sure which, that remained when the wasps died was being drawn into the crystals. He could feel himself being drained the same way. The mist materialized around his body. It was thicker, heavier, and it coalesced into a single strand that sought the leftmost crystal—the one in the blade that had cut him across the bridge of his nose. He was cold and alone with his strength fading. He didn’t want to die.

  Chapter 8

  Riam drifted, surrounded by the soft glow of energy while the crystals continued to weave their pattern above him. The back of his mind tingled with the distant awareness of the poison working through his body, but the pain no longer reached him. The borders that defined him thinned and broke down, clouding his thoughts and leaking away his spirit into the strand that threaded out toward Gairen’s sword. The strand snaked its way up, turning this way and that as it followed the crystal’s movements. It drew closer and closer, until it met the crystal in the pommel, and a surge of energy flooded out from Riam. The gem flared brighter, and the lights increased their pace. His essence fed through the crystal to Gairen, allowing the Draegoran to move and fight faster.

  The test in his home was a minor tug in comparison—a summer breeze compared to the buffeting winds of a thunderstorm. It wrenched at his soul, while at the same time suffocating him as if holding him underwater with his lungs empty and his strength fading. The crystal pulsed with his heart, and with each beat, more of him leaked away. He would soon be a dried husk, like his grandfather or the dead insects around him. In desperation, he reached out to tear away the tendril that linked him to the crystal. He was shocked when he felt it—solid, like grasping iron.

  How is this possible? His body lay unmoving on the ground, paralyzed and constricted by the venom. He was two beings, the one unmoving in the physical world and the one of energy here. He needed to think, but it was so hard to concentrate with his strength pouring away. There had to be something he could do to save himself.

  He pulled at the tendril again. It didn’t budge. He tried tightening the boundary of himself, willing his body to keep his essence from leaving. He might as well have tried holding water in his hands. It didn’t work. He gave in to the panic and thrashed and flailed at the tendril that drained him. Nothing he did made a difference. The crystal continued to pulse with his heartbeat, sucking away his life with each beat.

  The crystal! He forced himself to calm down, to stop thrashing. The crystal captured the essence of those who were cut by the blade and fed it to Gairen. If he couldn’t stop himself from being pulled into the crystal, maybe he could prevent his energy from reaching Gairen, maybe even take it back. Instead of fighting against the pull, he needed to be closer, to understand how it worked. Above him, the gem blazed, the tendril of mist spiraling into it ominously.

  Riam was running out of time and didn’t see much choice. He gathered together what little awareness he still possessed and shoved it down the tendril. His thoughts became part of the current of energy, rushing toward the crystal.

  Before Riam, the gem burned like a small sun, and its pull grew stronger the closer he came. He barely stopped himself from being sucked into its fiery depths. This close, the tendrils were lines of solid energy. Unexpectedly, there were two lines leading out. The larger was white and led to Gairen. Riam saw the hazy shimmer of the man. The other was faint and tinted red, arrowing out into the darkness beyond his awareness. Why were there two?

  It didn’t matter. He had to stop the energy from reaching Gairen. He would either take control or die. Tentatively, he touched the line leading to Gairen, willing it to give him strength. He felt a trickle of power, but it wasn’t enough. He needed all the power the crystal had, and he needed it now.

  He pulled harder at the line of energy. It strained and fought against him. He tore at it with everything he had, willing it to break. With a deafening pop, the strand broke free and dissolved. The crystal swelled with energy that had nowhere to go. Riam eagerly gave it an outlet, channeling it back down into his dying body.

  Power poured into him, filling him with life. It was the most wonderful thing he’d ever experienced, like every small moment of joy and satisfaction in his life crammed into a single instant—every piece of candy from Ferrick, every word of praise from Gairen or his brother, every moment of freedom from his grandfather—all happening at once. He smelled it. He felt it. He tasted it. He screamed. He wept. He laughed. Power continued to fill him. It burned away the poison. It mended the cut across his nose. It even healed the damage to his side and hand. He pulled in so much he thought he would explode into a blaze like the crystal. He never wanted it to stop, never wanted anything else. With a gasp, his lungs filled with air, and the world came crashing back.

  Gairen stood above him holding a single sword at the ready. The white clouds and blue sky were crisp and clear above. In fact, everything was more lucid and focused than it had ever been. He’d never even known he had poor vision, but the energy had improved his eyesight when it healed him. He could see the smallest details in the clouds. He could taste the air and the scents of the timber yard. There was the musty earth smell of the wasps, the sweet, damp smell of the mastons, and the overpowering tang of wet timber. They smelled magnificent. Even the ground beneath him smelled rich and comforting. Gairen’s other blade lay on the ground nearby. Riam didn’t see it. He didn’t need to. He felt it. The blade was a part of him now.

  Only one wasp remained, circling slowly around them. The others were gone, either dead or off attacking the workers. Riam looked down at his body and shuddered. Dead wasps covered his chest and legs, but no blade had touched them. Shriveled and drained, they crumpled like paper when he brushed them away. The last wasp flew in close and Gairen sliced it neatly in half. Where Gairen had moved so quickly before, now the swing seemed slow and unhurried.

  Gairen turned on Riam. “What did you do to the sword?” He bent down to pick it up and jerked his hand away as soon as his fingers touched it. “By the Fallen,” he cursed. “What have you done?”

  Riam sat up and stared helplessly at Gairen.

  “Get them off! Help me!” The yells came from the direction of the river.

  Gairen spun toward the sound. “Pick up the sword and stay close.”

  Riam scooped up the weapon and dashed after Gairen. The hilt was warm in his hand. He dodged a team of mastons that stood oblivious to the terror around them, their thick hides protecting them from the wasps.

  At the riverbank, two men with hatchets stood back-to
-back and a third writhed on the ground, screaming for help. Wasps clung to his clothing. Gairen kicked at the creatures, and those that took flight he cut from the air before they could climb out of reach. Riam stomped on one, and it made a satisfying crunch when he killed it. By the time all the insects were dispatched, the man on the ground no longer moved. Gairen felt his neck, but the man wasn’t breathing. Gairen shook his head, confirming he no longer lived.

  A single wasp circled them once, out of reach, and decided to ignore the remaining humans. It darted out over the water and into the trees on the far side of the river.

  * * *

  —

  “Fourteen dead, not counting the man who did it,” the foreman told Gairen, his gaze sweeping around the timber yard. “Never seen wasps that big.” The man held an ax handle in his hand, and his fingers were white where they gripped the narrow end. The remaining workers had lined up the dead on a loading dock. Looking down the row of bodies, the foreman shook his head. “Teamsters were the closest, so they lost the most. Only five of them still living, and one of them’s been stung pretty bad on the leg.” He pointed with the handle to a group on the bed of the last wain. “We put a tourniquet on the leg to keep the poison from his heart, so maybe he’ll live.”

  “Tell them to untie and retie the tourniquet every quarter of a glass. It’ll let his body sort out the poison a little at a time. They can remove it after they do it eight times if he’s still alive,” Gairen said.

  “I’ll tell them,” the foreman said. “We’re still missing three. One was working the boat, so he may have let the current carry him downstream to escape. Hopefully, the other two ran away and will make their way back to the yard.” He didn’t sound optimistic. “We’ll search for them after we get the bodies loaded and headed back to their kin. The ones that have kin, anyway.”