by John Brown
He winced when she pricked the collar again.
Talen looked at his sister.
She held her hand up. “Give me a second,” she said.
They didn’t have a second. Talen was sure the monster was going to walk into the chamber at any moment.
The Creek Widow cried out in delight. “It’s quickened,” she said and held the crown aloft.
Da gritted his teeth. His face was red with strain. “Now,” he commanded, and Sugar withdrew the tooth.
Still kneeling, Da ripped the collar from his neck. His face was sweating with strain. Blood shone in a thin line around his neck.
“Quickly,” he said and motioned to the Creek Widow.
She, Uncle Argoth, and Ke encircled him.
“But it’s gold,” Talen said. Not the black of powerful magic. “Are you sure it’s going to work?”
“I told you,” the Creek Widow said. “It operates on different principles, and it’s very much alive. Long ago, perhaps in a different age, three years of life were poured into it. The power of three years of life-you can feel it pulsating. It requires three now to waken it.”
Da stood and struggled with his chains, but could not remove them from the wall as Ke had done.
“Put it on me,” said Da.
The Creek Widow strapped the crown to Da’s head.
“It looks so flimsy,” said Talen. “What if it comes off?”
“Once the crown and your father are joined,” said the Creek Widow, “no power can separate them.”
Ke, the Creek Widow, and Uncle Argoth formed their odd circle again, turning sideways to the center of the circle, placing their left hands on the neck of the person in front of them, stretching their right arms out to the center of the circle to rest on Da’s head and touch the medallion. This time, Da spoke the strange words, followed in unison by the other three.
Sugar, her tooth in hand, stood in the center of the chamber like a guard dog.
“We need to get this off me,” River said. “The three of them will be useless once the bond fully forms.”
Talen returned his attention to his sister. “Are you ready?”
She nodded. Her eyes shone with determination.
He held her chin still with one hand and pricked the collar again. It immediately twisted and writhed.
River’s face screwed up in pain. She breathed in measured pants.
Talen pulled the tooth back so that the sharp head was barely in the collar.
But tears still formed in the corners of River’s eyes.
“Do you want me to take it out?” he asked.
She panted, shook her head. But moments later she sagged to one side, and Talen had to quickly remove the tooth or risk stabbing her.
In spots the coloring of the collar had turned ash gray. Yet he could see other parts were still very much alive, undulating as if it were taking long, slow breaths.
Talen saw specks of light. He blinked and looked down at the hag’s tooth. Had it affected his vision? He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked again.
A handful of shining flecks were floating in the chamber. They looked like dust motes, except they shone with their own light. What’s more, they seemed to be floating lazily toward Da.
“My eyes,” he said.
“Not your eyes,” said River. “The crown.”
There were more sparks now. Talen couldn’t tell where they were coming from.
The Creek Widow, Uncle Argoth, and Ke stepped back.
“The crown bestows its wearer great strength,” said the Creek Widow, “but it also calls forth a mantle of incredible might. It is said that the Creators seeded the world with power to be given to those of their choosing. And to those who respond to their call, the powers distill upon them as freely as the dews of heaven. Until then, the powers remain locked up within the earth and sea. It is almost finished. A few minutes more.”
This didn’t make complete sense to Talen. Didn’t the Divines wield great powers as well? And this monster was not something to be ignored. Obviously, all the power wasn’t locked up.
The sparks floated in through both entrances, but more seemed to simply spring forth from the rock about them. Talen caught a twinkle in the dust at his feet, and then the fleck of light floated free to join the rest.
The sparks coalesced into thin, whirling streams that were drawn to Da like water is drawn to the center of a lazy whirlpool. Da knelt in his chains as the bits of light flowed and clung to him. The shining flecks began to accumulate thinly in his hair and eyebrows, upon his nose and arms, between the very fibers of his clothing. Specks of light tinged ever so faintly with blue and yellow.
River put her hand to the collar about her neck. “She’s coming,” she said. “I can feel it.”
Sugar couldn’t help but marvel at the tiny sparks that suddenly glimmered and glittered in the stone ceiling, walls, and floor. Each would build in intensity only to break free and float purposefully toward Zu Hogan.
He was drawing the very might of the earth to him. Zu Hogan still knelt on the floor. She wanted him to get up, to take the tooth from her. She wanted any one of them to take it.
But she looked at the others, stooped with weariness, and realized they would not be taking the tooth from her. She would have to defend them.
Now was the moment. Her heart pounded in her chest. She was the only thing standing between the others and their approaching doom.
Things to act, and things to be acted upon. She was not going to quail. She had the tooth. She had seen its power work on man and weave. She was going to face this enemy head-on, just as Mother had faced that mob only a few days ago. Whatever came out of those entrances was going to feel the bite of Purity’s daughter.
She glanced at the entrance to the chamber that she and Talen had used. Nothing was there. But then it was so black she wouldn’t see anything until it was in the chamber anyway.
There was a slight breeze running to that entrance from the other one. The breeze brought her a strong whiff of sulfur and pine. And then another even stronger.
She turned. The monster would come from that direction, from the second entrance. She wouldn’t have much time once it entered the chamber.
“Talen,” she said. “Bring me the other tooth!”
Something flickered in the corner of her eye. And then the monster burst from the blackness.
She should have been more used to the sight of it, but the creature was even more horrible to behold than it had been in the vale. Its enormous ragged mouth. Its dark pit eyes. Her knees quivered.
The monster gave her one look and, in an enormous stride, flashed past. It swatted the Creek Widow aside and grabbed Zu Hogan by the throat.
Ke and Zu Argoth did not attack, but stood aside, slumped, the crown obviously having its effects on them.
The monster grasped the crown and began to tug. Zu Hogan clutched at the creature’s rough arm. The thin streams of sparks in the room had grown thicker, but now slowed their movement. Zu Hogan was shining with the flecks of light, but the monster grabbed the crown and began to pull. It was going to rip it off. And then it would kill Zu Hogan just as it had the Skir Master.
She thought of Legs and Mother and the tooth in her hand.
The tooth in her hand!
Her courage returned even if the fear remained. She cried out and charged.
The monster turned and caught her by the waist in its enormous grip. It felt as if she’d run herself onto a post. Its fingers, hard as stone, wrapped round and squeezed so hard she could not breathe.
She gasped for breath, tightened her grip on the hag’s tooth, then brought it down, stabbing deep into the monster’s ragged forearm.
The monster looked down at the tooth.
The tooth bucked like a fish and disappered into the stoney flesh.
The monster released Sugar. It reeled back, let go of the crown, and clutched its forearm.
Sugar turned, looking for Talen and the second tooth.
Zu Hogan spoke a word under his breath, and the sparks around him grew thicker. A low thrumming began to reverberate through the room. It built in intensity.
The volume and pitch rose, vibrating through her and the very rock about them. The sparks in the room multiplied. The air was thick with them now. The thrumming turned into the rushing of waters or a mighty wind.
Zu Hogan stood, his chains still binding him to the wall, and stretched out his arms. His face shone with fierce knowledge.
The whirling streams of blue and yellow sparks picked up speed, converging on him. The volume built to a roar. Sugar covered her ears.
Then came a concussion, an enormous slap of air that forced Sugar to stagger back. It was followed by a blinding flash as all the remaining sparks in the room rushed to Zu Hogan.
The thrumming and roar cut off, vanished, and Sugar’s ears rang in the silence.
Zu Hogan stood. From head to toe, he shone with a thin skin of blue and yellow light. Joy suffused his face. And when he moved the very air about him seemed to bend and blur.
Zu Hogan took hold of his chains and pulled them apart like a child might break a thin braid of grass.
The monster had fallen on its back, frantically clutching at its arm.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sugar saw the passageway beyond the second entrance flicker and then illuminate.
A ribbon of blazing violet flame flew through the opening. It was followed by another and another. Each stretched a yard or more. Each undulated like an eel swimming through water. The three ribbons of light sped about the room, hissing like the wind through dry weeds. One circled her with blinding speed. It paused momentarily as if looking her in the face, the hot white of its core fading to tongues of violet flame. It seemed to be whispering something.
Fear gripped her. These weren’t ribbons of some strange fire-they were alive!
The light in the passageway grew brighter. And as it did a thick knot of the creatures, blazing their oddly tinged light, swam through the opening to the chamber. Some of these were shorter than the first three, but most were as long as a man’s leg. Some longer. They moved like a school of shining eels, hither and thither, wrapping themselves around something at their center.
The school of light shimmered to one side, parting ever so briefly, and Sugar saw a glimpse of what it contained-a woman wrapped in undulating, living segments of light.
The first three ribbons swirled about Zu Hogan. In his right hand he held a long length of the thick chain that had bound him.
“Whatever you are,” Zu Hogan said to the woman, “your time is at an end.” He stepped toward the knot of light. But as he did so an arm shot out of the knot of shining serpents and pointed at Zu Hogan.
The school of light, paused, shimmered, and then a mass of the creatures sped toward him. The undulating segments struck. She saw one open its mouth, full of thin sharp teeth, and bite him on the throat. Another attacked his cheek, and then the great mass swallowed him like a storm, the ribbons jerking and biting.
Zu Hogan stumbled back, the creatures covering him in a thick knot. He flailed his arms, tried to pull and swat them away, but the creatures attacked as if in a feeding frenzy.
Zu Hogan yelled a word in some tongue she didn’t understand. Immediately, there was a flash of light at the center of the seething mass.
A number of the creatures flew back. She could see much of Zu Hogan now. Yet many of the creatures still clung to him, biting in fury.
Zu Hogan reached up and grasped the one clinging to his eye.
Sugar fully expected to see some grotesque remnant of his eye pull away with the eel, but when he yanked it off and flung it to the ground, she saw that both of his eyes were exactly where they should be-perfect, whole, and gleaming with purpose.
The creature had not penetrated the mantle.
He pulled another knot of the creatures from his neck and took a step toward the shining woman.
She was beautiful. Far more beautiful than anything Sugar had ever imagined.
She was singing furiously, holding her arms out. Whatever she was doing, she didn’t have time to finish.
Zu Hogan ran at her, weapon in hand. The light that covered Zu Hogan had extended down most of the chain. He brought the shining chain around in a side stroke like a massive whip and struck her full force in the head.
The woman stumbled back.
Sugar expected the woman to fall dead. The blow would have killed a bull. But the woman steadied herself.
She was dazed, it seemed. That was all.
Zu Hogan swung the chain again, but the woman dodged back. With a roar, he dropped the chain and charged. Midstride he reached down and picked up a stone and then he had her by the throat. Zu Hogan reared back with the stone. He was going to brain her.
“The monster!” Talen yelled.
Sugar glanced at the creature. It held the arm she’d stabbed high in the air. With its other hand, it appeared to have caught something deep in the flesh of its shoulder.
She turned to Talen. He was standing with his back up against the rock wall, tooth in his good hand. His injured arm hung useless at his side. Two of the shining creatures undulated before him. One coiled and struck, but Talen jabbed and slashed with the tooth, sending it back.
“Ready yourself,” he said. “I’m going to toss it.”
She glanced at the monster. It was tugging the tooth out. “Quickly!” she said.
Talen feinted left, leaned right, and tossed the tooth to her. She caught it in her gauntleted hand, immediately flipped it to get a better grip, then turned.
The monster it stood with all the concentration of a surgeon, its fingers deep in its arm.
Perhaps it can contend with one tooth, she thought. Let it try a second.
Sugar hurled the second tooth like a knife. It spiraled, end over end, its sharp point flashing in the unearthly light of the chamber, and buried itself deep in the monster’s belly.
The tooth gleamed once, then wriggled and disappeared into the monster’s gut.
The creature looked down, gasped horribly, and stumbled back.
47
MASTER OF THE HARVEST
Hunger felt the second worm burrow in. His panic rose. His arm was breaking apart like dried-out dirt. At one time he’d wanted dissolution. But not now. He saw his daughter, wife, and remaining son before him, caught in a stomach. The Mother would not spare them if he failed.
He was their only chance.
The second worm burrowed deeper, burning, burning, burning as it went.
He resisted the urge to clutch at it. If he released the one in his arm, he knew he’d never get it back again. They were as slippery as a fish, these worms. And strong.
The Mother ordered him to attack the shining Koramite. But he dared not move, dared not let go.
How do I stop the worms? he cried to her.
There was no answer.
His mind raced. Why could he not pry the worm open? It was intricate and oddly familiar, but he couldn’t place it. It was like no beast he’d encountered before.
The worm in his arm curled and another piece of him tattered. A clump of soil fell to the cave floor.
No! He had to stop it. He could not bear to think of his little girl being eaten.
The worm in his belly quickly slithered up toward one of his stomachs.
Creators, he prayed in his mind, if you have any mercy at all-
And then he realized where he’d seen the weave before: it was him. It was woven with some of the same patterns as he was.
Yes, he listened to the song of the worm in his arm, its trilling and thrum. He knew this weave. And with that knowledge came the knowledge of how to break it.
And break it he did. With a great tug he yanked the first worm out of his arm.
He punched a hole into his gut with the tips of his free fingers. The second worm was not hard to find. It had paused by one of his stomachs.
Hunger pushed his fingers in
deeper and grabbed the second worm. It fought him, wriggling with violence, but he knew its secrets now and withdrew it from his body. In moments he held both teeth in front of him.
The weaves were beautiful, curling in the light. Beautiful and deadly. He grasped them tightly, found their weak points, and attacked. It was only a moment and they were unraveling like a spool of thread. Their curling slowed, their song wavered. And then they stopped altogether.
The Mother commanded him to her.
I’m coming, he said. But he was talking to his wife and daughter, deep in the Mother’s cave, still caught in his stomach. I’m coming!
Argoth watched the woman catch Hogan’s arm midstrike, preventing his blow.
Hogan pushed her back against the wall, throttling her. The lines of his body blurred at the edges, blurred even her form. She was choking. Her ribbon familiars seemed to shudder with a sympathetic pain.
For a brief moment her visage flickered. One moment she was a woman whose face shone with such beauty it almost took Argoth’s breath. The next, the woman was gone, and in her place was something horrible with a round sucker mouth full of teeth that looked like it belonged on a leech or lamprey. Her undulating creatures seemed to swim with less vigor for a moment. And then the goddess was back.
She held a pointed weapon in her hand. With a quick jab she thrust it at Hogan’s gut. There was a flash, but it didn’t look as if it had penetrated the mantle.
Argoth began to believe they might win this fight.
But then the monster flickered in the corner of his eye and Argoth turned. It held up the two hag’s teeth in its rough hands.
Argoth watched in dismay as the teeth stilled their movements. Then the monster crushed the teeth and threw the lifeless twists of metal to the dust.
“Hogan!” Argoth yelled in warning.
But it did no good. Hogan was too focused on the woman.
The monster charged. With three enormous strides it covered the distance between it and Hogan. Then it dropped its shoulder and crashed into Hogan, its large bulk hurling him away from the woman.
Argoth wanted desperately to join in the battle. But the crown yet drew from him. He would be surprised if he had enough energy to walk.