The Mermaid's Tale

by D. G. Valdron

  He looked around.

  The other shamans were listening. He didn’t dare say anything they would know to be untrue. He drew a knife and tried to be casual about playing with it. His fighters shifted uneasily. The knife spun on his fingertip.

  I laid my hands on the table, just to show I had no blades in them. His pipe rested between us.

  “I hear of bodies around here. Some of them pretty bad. Can’t say if they are like the others or how many. Probably none. Heard of bodies, other places in the City. Vampire children, Half-Vampire, Goblin. Hard to say. You know how it goes.”

  He looked at me levelly. The knife abruptly stopped spinning on his fingertip.

  “As for disappearing. People vanish all the time. Sometimes they show up again. Sometimes they don’t. Even keeping their soul for them doesn’t stop them going.”

  He made a move. Lightning with his knife. I grabbed the

  nose-pipe to block it.

  The source of a street shaman’s power is his pipe.

  The knife hovered inches from my face, it’s blade scarring the fine ivory carvings of the heavy pipe.

  We stared at each other, grinning. Empty violent madness, Arukh rage, burned from his human eyes. I showed him my own. Slowly he put the knife back in its sheath. He buckled it.

  I let go of the pipe, laying it down gently.

  The room was silent. A huge hand grabbed me by the head and yanked me to my feet.

  “Don’t struggle,” a deep voice ordered. “Or I crush your skull.”

  It jerked me towards the door, frog marching me away.

  “You should go now,” Copper Thoughts called after me. “Go spend on a boy.”

  I twisted and tried to wrench my head from the terrible grip to stare at him.

  His eyes darted to the blond that lead me here. She cringed.

  “Or a girl.” Copper Thoughts voice rang out behind me in laughter.

  He took another snort of his pipe.

  “Hey Unborn,” he called after me, as my captor regained its grip and I was marched out, “I got magic for you. Smoke it. I make you brave. I make you strong. Fast. Smart. Take away pain. Whatever. But you’ll be brave. I don’t even take your soul for it. Unborn don’t have one.”

  The burning sun stung my eyes outside. I twisted around trying to get a better look at what was holding me. It was a young Giant, barely mature, perhaps ten feet tall and not wedded.

  “Easy,” she said, “just relax and I’ll let you go.”

  “Let me go now,” I snarled.

  I didn’t like being around Giants. Trolls are big, some almost as tall as Giants. But Giants are massive, their proportions are all wrong. They look too close and too far away at the same time. You look at one part of a Giant, and then you follow that, and your mind just won’t accept it. I’ve seen people around Giants overcome by the sheer vertigo that their presence carries.

  “Wait,” she said soothingly. “I won’t hurt you, and you can’t hurt me. Be patient.”

  A woman came out. Naked, I could see that she was a Selk: she had that smooth, shiny skinned look to her. She did not even have the little hair that Selk bore. It was all shaved. She wore jewelry and paints.

  “I am Many Faces,” she said.

  I stared at her left breast. It winked at me. Each breast had a face in it, cunningly made from scars and tattoos and paints. There was a face on her belly, and another below. There were faces on her knees and buttocks, shoulders and elbows. Each face held a different expression, of cunning, insolence, wisdom, anger, boredom. As she moved, she posed, emphasising the turn or presentation of one face or another.

  She was a powerful shaman. Each face represented magic. She could dance spells and miracles.

  “I’ve heard of you,” I grunted, trying to slip out from under the Giant.

  “Easy,” warned the Giant.

  “Good,” she said. “It is always good to know the names of the ones you come to insult. You’ve done well today, Copper Thoughts and Many Faces.”

  She waited for a reply, and turned a scornful shoulder to me. I let myself go limp. I could struggle against a giant, but not against a magician so powerful.

  “I meant you no insult,” I grunted, “mighty one. My business is with Copper Thoughts.”

  She shifted her weight. A face, carved into her belly, arched. Amusement.

  “Perhaps we should wait for Forty Friends to come along, and you may insult him too.”

  A dog howled. We all glanced in that direction.

  “Easy,” the Giant whispered to me as I struggled.

  “Well, beast?” Many Faces said, shoulders back, her faces radiated sternness. “What have you to say for yourself? You come into my place of power, insulting me with your presence and your conduct. You touch Copper Thoughts’ pipe. He will kill you for that, you must know.”

  “He can try,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I do not fear pipe magicians.”

  “You are a fool,” she told me. “Copper Thoughts is a mighty shaman. Many fear him, few challenge, none succeed.”

  “An Arukh confronts you,” a gravelly voice whispered. “You should not play with the foul things. Best kill it and be done.”

  Many Faces turned. An elbow flew out. The expression carved within was wide eyed. Startled.

  It seemed to me that she did not so much move, as shift from pose to pose, carefully arranging the array of expressions carved in her body.

  The Giant looked, her grip shifted and tightened. I could feel her unease. I tried to squeeze out of her hand. No luck, she held me harder, but I could see the visitor from the corner of my eye.

  It was an Arukh, but such an Arukh. She stood a good three inches taller than I, who was already tall for an Arukh, and weighed three times as much. Her body was massive, her breasts hung to her huge greasy belly, her arms and thighs thick as trees. She wore fragments of mismatched armour, her body covered by livid scars.

  One side of her face was caved in, the flesh smooth and unnatural. She wore a girdle of skulls, leather straps weaving in and out of eye sockets, and from each skull, a small leather bag dangled. She carried a staff that smoldered at one end.

  Zerika the mighty. Zerika the fierce. Zerika the Arukh Shaman. Zerika, from whom the very earth trembles at her touch. Zerika who was named.

  “Mighty Zerika,” Many Faces bowed, presenting an obsequious shoulder. “You grace us with your presence.”

  The Giant shuffled nervously, still holding me. She too knew of Zerika.

  “That’s an Arukh,” Zerika observed.

  “Yes,” Many Faces replied. “It has brought dishonour and insults to myself and to Copper Thoughts.”

  “Ah, you should kill it then. If you can. Best thing, with Arukh, kill them wherever you find them. If you can do it.”

  Many Faces just stared.

  “Trouble with Arukh,” Zerika said, “they take a lot of killing. Can’t hurt an Arukh, can only kill it. But while you’re busy killing it... who knows what might happen?”

  “What might happen?”

  “Lot of death in an Arukh. Sometimes it spreads around. Who knows where?”

  Many Faces glanced at me.

  “Who are you, and why are you here?” she addressed me bluntly. No more threats now. None of the courtliness of a magician. Left shoulder turned its frowning face to me, body bent forward. Stance of interrogation.

  I grinned.

  “Arukh have no names.”

  Zerika grunted. “Arukh are not worth naming,” she said. “No matter how you kill them, there’s always another.”

  “Someone killed a Mermaid,” I told her, ignoring Zerika.

  She stared at me. Slowly, awareness dawned, and with it, a new pose. Comprehension.

  “You’re the beast the Elders set on its trail?”
/>   I said nothing.

  “I have heard of this thing,” she said.

  I would have shrugged if I could.

  “And you came here?” she asked. “You’re a fool.”

  I grunted. Her head bowed, a face appeared, etched into the top of her skull. Thoughtful contemplation.

  “Copper Thoughts will kill you,” she said, “let him soil his hands.”

  The Giant tightened its grip, shoving down as it moved. I fell to my knees as the Giant stepped over to be closer to Many Faces, both protecting her from me, and moving away from Zerika.

  Many Faces turned. A bored visage poked at me from an elbow, pointedly ignoring me.

  “Mighty Zerika,” Many Faces asked, her hips arched, her body clicking into a new pose, “will you do me the honour of sharing my house?”

  “Indeed,” Zerika said, and walked up the steps. They creaked under her weight.

  Many Faces turned her back to me. In the shaven smoothness of her skull, a stern face had been etched. Dismissal. But as she moved, a buttock lifted and held in pose for a second. Amusement.

  “Be careful, beast,” she called, “serve the Elders well and perhaps Copper Thoughts will forget about you.”

  I doubted it.

  The Giant released me. I lurched forward, shifting about to face her.

  She squatted down on her haunches so that we were at eye level with each other.

  “You walked in,” she said, “and I knew there would be trouble. The moment I saw you, I knew there would be trouble. Why is that? Is it because you are Arukh?”

  She folded her arms in front of her, at once defensive, but not threatening. I stared at her. I was right, she was young, perhaps not quite full grown as Giants go.

  I grunted.

  “I offered no trouble. He tried to kill me.”

  “You touched the pipe.”

  “After.”

  She sighed.

  “It wouldn’t be wise to come back here.”

  The Giant pulled herself to her feet and in a few long steps, was back in the Shaman’s house.

  As I stepped away, I realized that my hands were shaking. Shamans. Crazier than Arukh, I thought.

  The blond girl had followed us out and watched the whole confrontation. I growled at her. She belonged to Copper Thoughts. I didn’t want to speak to her.

  I walked until I could not see the Pipe House, and then sat down.

  The girl came within a dozen paces and stopped, watching me.

  I stared at her.

  “When did they get the Dwarf?” I asked again.

  Her brows knit in concentration.

  “About ten, eleven days ago. After the second kill.”

  So that meant probably both bodies in the mud grass couldn’t be laid to the Dwarf. And anyway, Copper Thoughts had said he’d used a different knife.

  Two killers with different knives, making the same kinds of kills.

  Unlikely.

  They had killed a dwarf. I didn’t doubt that. Maybe they even thought he was the killer. Lots of trouble, Copper Thoughts had said. That meant lots of hunting, lots of hunters.

  The Dwarf had satisfied the hunters.

  But why a Dwarf?

  The Dwarf had been Worm Totem. Kobolds were Worm Totem, as the Dwarves saw them.

  A thought came to me. Dwarves and Kobolds hated each other.

  Whatever had impelled her to follow me had faded. She began to drift away. I got up and followed her.

  “Were there a lot of Kobolds around the time the Dwarf got killed?” I asked her as we walked.

  “Lots,” she said. “For a whole week before the Dwarf got done they were all over the place. Didn’t spend much. Didn’t spend any on me.”

  Kobolds would blame a Dwarf quite naturally. But why would they be interested in a couple of dead human prostitutes?

  Unless they’d done the killing, or sheltered the killer. The Kobold sheltered Arukh from time to time.

  Or unless the killer had begun among them. Were there dead Kobolds, horribly mutilated?

  Either way, the trail seemed to lead to the Secret Kingdom.

  I flipped her another copper and wandered off.

  Copper Thoughts had lied to me, I could smell it in his words. His story didn’t hold together. But about what? And why? Find the lies, I thought, and much might come clear.

  Whoever it had been that killed the Mermaid, I didn’t think she, or even the other woman in the reeds, had been the first victim. Perhaps the women on the Street of Joy were not the first. If they were indeed from the same knife.

  But I wasn’t much closer to knowing the killer. The sun was low in the sky. It would take time before I could ask questions of the Secret Kingdom.

  I considered my next moves.

  The Mermaid’s body had been upriver near the Vampire Kingdom. And the killer had used a horse, which also suggested Vampire Kingdom.

  It was time, I decided, to rest, and then try the Vampires and their Arukh Lodges.

  The drums were silent, back at the Troll’s lodge. No eating then. I entered swiftly, brandishing my knife, snarling.

  The young female I had kicked was sitting outside the lodge gate. She leaped to her feet as I came close, and approached, cringing.

  I growled deep in my throat at her, hunching forward. My head bobbed threateningly. She stopped, crouching in a submissive posture.

  I spat, and took a wide detour around her, wary of traps. Sometimes one would divert attention while others pounced.

  She followed after me. Twice I spun back to confront her, but she always retreated a safe distance, cowering as if I was driving her away. I didn’t believe it for a second. The minute my back was turned, I knew she’d start edging closer.

  Two Trolls watched, Iron Pants and the younger one.

  Trolls watch. They watch us all the time. They watch us kill each other. Sometimes they move, they act, but you could never tell when, or what they would do. Sometimes they spoke to us.

  I grunted at them a few times, and then retreated to my hole, barring my door. It was almost pitch dark. I felt my way to my nest blankets.

  I sat back against the wall, awash in my own scents, staring at the faint light that made it’s way through gaps in the heavy planking.

  Did I hear scratching at the door?

  It went away.

  I nodded off to a series of fitful catnaps.

  After I had slept and rested for the balance of the day, I crawled out. I looked up. Outside the Lodge, I could see a hazy purple sky, the last rays of the setting sun, filtering through the roof shutters. The air inside the lodge was particularly heavy, moist and thick with the odours of Arukh and food.

  I made my way to the Troll’s pots.

  “Looks like rain,” Iron Pants commented.

  “Close the shutters?”

  “Probably won’t last long enough for that,” he grunted.

  The young Troll strolled close, to listen to our conversation.

  “Drums don’t start until sundown,” Iron Pants told me. “No food til then.”

  I grunted irritably.

  “Wait for the drums,” he said, and then turned back to his pots.

  I glared at his back.

  Nothing. He ignored me, continuing on with his business.

  Finally, I turned back to the lodge, challenging staring eyes, snarling angrily.

  There she was, crouching not a dozen feet away from me. I stared at her. She cringed but returned my gaze, refusing to drop her eyes.

  “Go away,” I growled.

  I made low rumbling noises in the back of my throat.

  She started to whine, lifting her left arm and waving it towards me. She scuttled a few paces closer to me.

  I hunched forward, growling fiercely,
and took two steps off to the left.

  “Arrah,” she whimpered softly, moving forward another couple of feet, crouching and cringing.

  I had to shift my body to face her as she approached. I moved to the left again, and she followed, approaching more closely.

  “Arrah!” I snarled, making warning motions and barring my teeth.

  “Arrah,” she grunted, and approached again.

  I leaped.

  She crouched down into a defensive posture, but instead of coming straight at her, I swept along to her side, glancing quickly around to see if anyone else was attacking.

  I kicked her in the ribs, knocking her onto her side. Snarling, I pulled at her hair, trying to lift her face out. Screeching, she pushed at me, trying to crawl away as I punched and kicked her.

  “No slaves,” I snarled. “Go away. Don’t want slave.”

  She managed to bolt a few feet away from me, rolling across the gravel, and coming up in a posture that was both defensive and subservient. Blood was leaking from a cut just above her eye. She threw her head a little to clear it.

  She mewled pitifully.

  “Don’t want you,” I spat. “Get away. Stay away. Don’t want a slave. Don’t want you.”

  I rushed her. She fell over herself retreating.

  She whimpered and held out her left arm again.

  I rocked from side to side.

  She uttered a low moan.

  I rushed again. Again, she retreated.

  We stared at each other. Finally, she dropped her eyes and backed away and sat heavily near the Troll pots, crying.

  “The little one offered itself as a servant to the big one,” Iron Pants said. I turned around, angry that they’d witnessed that, angry that they had watched. It felt wrong. No one should watch. He was speaking to the young one. “She refused.”

  “But why the violence?”

  Iron Pants shrugged.

  “It’s all they know.”

  “The little one was the same she’d beaten the other day?”

  “Yes.”

  The female was listening, wide eyed, all her attention on them.

  “Why would she want to serve one who’d beaten her?”