by Kate Novak
“But what does this have to do with me?” Alias repeated. She stood only an arm’s length from the woman. Alias realized she could easily reach out and yank back the woman’s hood to reveal her face. Perhaps, Alias hoped, if I can recognize the face, it will help to explain my lost memory or the tattoo on my arm. Yet, why do my instincts hold me back, tell me to flee fast and far? Is she a lich or a medusa?
“Why, the kalmari is another of my creatures,” the woman laughed. “I was going to station it here to watch for you. The Iron Crown’s fee only sweetened the pot.”
“Another one of your creatures,” Alias repeated, certain she had gained a new insight. “Like the crystal elemental?”
The woman snorted derisively. “Please. You insult me, my dear. Such a heavy-handed, clumsy thing. My creations have always been elegant.”
“Then what other creature did you mean?” Alias asked.
“Why, I meant you, my child. You’re one of my creatures. Of course, I must share you with the others, but I will always think of you as my own.” The woman held out her good arm in a beckoning gesture, as a mother would welcome a prodigal daughter. Very slowly and sweetly she said, “Come back to Westgate, Puppet. We’re your masters. You need us, and we want you back.”
Alias’s breathing came fast and heavy. “I’m my own master,” she shouted angrily, “not anyone’s puppet.” With a sudden movement she jerked the hood from the woman’s face.
She looked into her own face.
Alias screamed in her dream and woke with a start. The camp was back to normal. She sat near a dying fire in a roofless hostel. It was only a dream, she told herself over and over. She wondered how long she’d been asleep.
Only a dream, she thought again. Though a very bad dream. When was the last time I dreamed like that?
Never, the answer came from the back of her mind. You never dream like that. Ever.
The dream had to be magically influenced, Alias decided, and the woman in the dream had to be Cassana, the Westgate sorceress who branded me with one of these sigils. Why did she look like me?
Alias closed her eyes and concentrated on the woman in the dream. She didn’t look exactly like me, Alias realized. The woman looked older. Perhaps she is a long-lost relative no one ever told me about. Who’s Nameless, then?
Alias stood and stretched by the fire’s dying embers. Her thoughts remained fuzzy, and she had a difficult time concentrating on details. Am I still sleepy, she wondered, or is it possible I’m drunk on dream wine?
Then she heard a noise that set her hackles rising, a noise from her dream—the sound of a thousand hissing snakes in a stone room. The sound of a kalmari.
She whirled about, scanning the boundaries of the campsite, but the darkness defeated her eyes. She glanced over the campsite. Dragonbait lay curled like a cat. Olive snuggled in a nest of blankets. Akabar—there was only darkness where Akabar should have been.
Something in the darkness glittered, and Alias recognized the rows of needle-sharp teeth. Only then was she able to make out the silhouette of the beast. From the tear-drop shape extended a dark, prehensile tail. The creature’s shadow shifted just enough for Alias to make out Akabar’s sleeping figure. The kalmari wrapped its tail about him and began lifting the mage to its gaping maw. Muttering in his sleep, the Turmishman struggled feebly, trying to kick off the blanket entangling his legs, but he did not awaken.
With a shout, Alias leaped forward. Her movement was sloppy and awkward. Damn dream wine! I’m not sober, she realized as she accidentally kicked the sleeping Olive. The kalmari, still hovering with its tail firmly wrapped about the mage, fixed its unblinking, yellow eyes on the warrior.
Alias drew her sword but she hesitated, remembering that the barbarian’s two-handed weapon hadn’t even bloodied the monster. If the dream was true, her weapon was useless. But if the dream was true and the kalmari was indeed one of Cassana’s creatures, then according to Nameless, it could be warded off with the sorceress’s sigil on Alias’s arm. If Nameless had been telling the truth.…
Frustrated with all the uncertainties, the swordswoman stopped analyzing the situation. Still holding her sword, she raised her branded arm over her head, wrist forward. Her arm felt heavy and sluggish, as though a solid gold shield were strapped to it. Damn wine! she thought. She gritted her teeth and kept the arm up. A brilliant, blue light shot from the sigils, illuminating the campsite and making the black, smoky form of the kalmari easier to discern.
Lacking the eyelids to blink in the strong light, the kalmari’s elongated pupils narrowed to slits, and the creature floated backward the length of a sword. Its grip on Akabar was still firm, however, and it held its tail forward, using the mage as a shield.
I can keep the creature back, Alias thought grimly, but how do I get it to drop Akabar?
In her dream she had asked Nameless how to defeat the kalmari. He had told her, but the details of the dream were already drifting from her memory. Alias struggled to remember his words.
He hadn’t told me what to do exactly. He’d said something about what the kalmari couldn’t do. It couldn’t eat something. It couldn’t eat something twice. What nonsense! Alias thought. If you’ve eaten something, you can’t eat it again, can you? Unless you’re the kind of creature that regurgitates the bones of your victims.
Behind her came a high-pitched curse from Olive. “What in the burning lake is that?”
Ignoring the halfling, Alias lunged at the monster, slicing her blade through the extremity that entrapped the still unconscious Turmishman. The monster’s hissing increased in pitch and volume. It was not Alias’s sword that troubled it, though.
The closer she got to Cassana’s creature, the brighter her brands blazed. Annoyed by the intense light or perhaps, as Nameless had said, afraid of its mistress’s sigil, the kalmari retreated farther, though it did not appear ready to flee.
Alias’s eyes roamed across the floor, looking for remains of the northern warrior or other travelers already consumed by the kalmari. Finding nothing to feed the creature, she lunged again, plunging her sword into one of the monster’s eyes. Again, the beast moved away from the light of her arm, but showed no damage from her sword.
Sword. The barbarian’s sword! The kalmari had spit out the barbarian’s sword. A sword with a lion-headed hilt, just like the one Olive had plucked from the ruins.
The adventuress shot quick glances over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the rubble-strewn floor. Nothing. Alias cursed silently. It had been there before. What could have happened to it? Or who—
“Olive!” she shouted. “You found a sword with a lion’s head grip in the ruins earlier.”
“I vaguely recall something of that nature” the halfling answered.
“You must have it, damn it! Give it to me!”
“Really” the halfling huffed. “I was going to give it to you later as a surprise.”
“I don’t want to hear any excuses, just go get it!” Alias screamed.
“But it’s on the other side of the wall—on the other side of the monster!” Olive squeaked. “Why can’t you get it?”
“If I move away, it’s liable to eat Akabar. It can’t touch me, but if it asked for dessert I’d be inclined to serve you to it. Understand?”
Ruskettle muttered something that sounded like cursing in an unknown language, but she nevertheless moved to Alias’s left, swinging wide around the edges of the destroyed hostel and the kalmari.
Alias moved to her left, too, keeping the arc of her circle smaller so that she remained between the monster and the halfling. Then Dragonbait was at her left shoulder, fully awake, his sword at the ready. The sigils bathed them both in an eerie blue radiance. With Dragonbait clearing a path for her through the rubble, the swordswoman managed to back the kalmari into the corner of the hostel that still stood. Alias suspected the wall would prove no impediment to the monster’s retreat, but perhaps it couldn’t pass through the wooden beams without letting go of the mage.
Alias’s throat constricted in fear. Olive seemed to take forever pulling out the massive blade. The weapon stood taller than the halfling, and she could barely lift it. To Alias’s horror, the kalmari turned both eyes on Olive. At that moment the halfling looked up and froze.
“Olive! Use the sword!” Alias shouted. “Use it to defend yourself!”
Alias moved to her right, hoping to force the monster to turn its eyes from the bard, but the leaden feeling in her arm seemed to spread over her entire body, and she tripped over a fallen roof beam and sprawled across the floor.
Her body’s heaviness persisted; her attempts to rise were met with failure. She felt not just drunk, but as though she’d been drugged. It was an effort just to raise her head to watch the kalmari close in on the bard. “Set the sword like a spear!” she cried.
Olive snapped out of her shock and raised the sword. Perhaps she’d only caught the last few words of Alias’s command, or maybe she had some halfling-berserker blood in her, but Olive did not remain standing still, waiting for the monster to impale itself on the weapon. Instead, she charged the creature, holding the sword like a spear. Astonishingly, it looked to Alias as if Olive might succeed in skewering the monster—until the halfling slipped on a pile of broken roof shingles. The sword flew from her hands, and the bard crashed to the floor beneath the kalmari.
The kalmari smiled so broadly that Alias could see its grin from behind. The creature made the same rattling laugh as in her dream. Alias had a clear view of Olive’s terrified face as the halfling looked into the throat of the kalmari—about to become an hors d’oeuvre before Akabar’s main entree.
A blur of dark green shot across Alias’s vision as, with one continuous motion, Dragonbait dashed toward the barbarian’s sword, lifted it, leaped toward the kalmari, and plunged the weapon in the monster’s back. The sword dug into the kalmari’s form with a satisfying thuck. Dragonbait had to jerk the weapon out before he could strike again.
The kalmari made a high-pitched whine Alias hoped was a scream. Turning away from the halfing, the creature dropped the mage. Dragonbait swung again, this time striking the monster above its eyes, and the kalmari whined again, lashing out with its tail. With lightning reflexes, the lizard-warrior met the strike with the sword, severing the appendage. The monster whined again, now at an unbearable pitch, and came at Dragonbait, mouth first, obviously intent on swallowing the scaly warrior. Dragonbait threw the sword, point first, into the monster’s maw.
The kalmari’s smoky body disintegrated into a dozen tiny motes of darkness, which in turn ruptured into smaller fractions, like a drop of oil shaken in water. The bits of darkness were blown away on the night breeze. The barbarian’s sword clattered to the floor of the devastated inn.
Shards of light pricked at Alias’s vision and then faded. Her head dropped to the floor, and she allowed the darkness of unconsciousness to take her.
Through it all Akabar had remained asleep, snoring softly.
* * * * *
Alias awoke to the sound of Olive and Akabar arguing. By the sun’s position, she could tell it was late morning. She felt a little hungover, and it took her a moment to remember the wine Nameless had helped her guzzle.
“Your story is most amusing, little one,” the Turmishman was saying to Olive, “but just not probable. My dreams were pleasant and my sleep uninterrupted. I would have been awake in an instant if the events you described had truly occurred.”
“I tell you, this thing was huge and black and had more fangs than you have hairs in your beard. Its mouth opened so wide—” Olive flung her arms out as far as they would stretch “—that it could have swallowed itself.
Akabar laughed. “It sounds to me as though perhaps my cooking was mer a lammer for you,” the mage commented, using an expression in his native tongue. “Much and too much,” he translated for the halfling.
Alias shook the last bits of sleep from her head. “Olive’s telling you the truth, Akabar. Hard to credit, I’ll admit, but she wasn’t the only witness to the attack.”
The grin disappeared from Akabar’s face. “Why did it strike at me first, I wonder.”
“Maybe you looked the tastiest,” Olive suggested.
“The creature was a kalmari, impervious to normal attacks,” Alias said. “It probably recognized you as a mage, and hence the greatest threat.”
Then Alias remembered what Cassana had said in her dream. “I have reason to believe that it was waiting here for me,” she added, “and that it belonged to one of the wizards who branded me. When I got close to it, the sigils began to glow again, something that also happened in the presence of the crystal elemental. Perhaps my foes have judged you too useful to me and have decided to have you removed. A demonstration to prove the futility of defiance.”
“A kalmari,” Akabar mused, no longer puzzled. “Yes, such things can hold a man in slumber. How did you defeat it?”
“Chopped it with a sword it had already swallowed.”
“Ah, yes,” the southerner nodded. “They cannot digest steel, so they spit it out. They can be poisoned by the very secretions that they’ve left on the blade.
“You’ve fought one before?” Alias asked.
“No,” Akabar admitted. “I have read of them. They are a horror attributed to the Red Wizards of Thay, I believe.”
Alias nodded.
“Even with a regorged weapon, it could not have been an easy battle. However did you manage?” he asked Olive.
Alias smiled. No doubt the bard had exaggerated her role in the destruction of the monster.
Olive looked down at her furry hands. “I got some help from Dragonbait.”
“Where is Dragonbait, anyway?” Alias asked.
“I noticed him climbing that hill,” Akabar said, pointing to the western slope looming over the top of the pass. “He was carrying a monstrous sword.”
“Hmmm. You two start breaking camp,” the adventureress ordered. “I’ll fetch him, and we’ll be off. I’m not inclined to hang around here.”
Climbing toward the western slope, Alias heard Akabar chiding Olive. “Why didn’t you tell me it was a kalmari instead of babbling on about a big, black, fang-toothed thing?”
Catching the sound of soft, whistling tones, Alias followed them to a spring-fed pool, where she found Dragonbait. The lizard had made a set of bird pipes, and the tune he twisted out of them, while sad and plaintive, was also exultant, a cry of loss and pain spun into beautiful music. Somehow Alias knew it was made to honor a fallen hero.
She sat beside the lizard and waited for him to finish. A long, low mound of dirt stretched before him. When he was finished, he lay the pipes, very gently, on top of the newly turned earth and bowed his head silently.
A bird twittered in some distant glade. The air smelled of roses. Dragonbait finally looked up at her and smiled. Not really a happy smile, but a bittersweet one, though Alias doubted anyone but she could tell the difference.
“That the sword?” she asked, pointing at the thin grave.
Dragonbait nodded.
Alias sighed. “It could be magical. We could use a weapon like that.”
Dragonbait shook his head, though Alias could not tell if he was denying the sword’s possible enchantment or their need for such a thing.
“Someone else will only dig it up,” she argued, though her own heart wasn’t really in it.
Dragonbait shook his head again.
Alias sighed. “Okay. We’ll leave it as a memorial. Come on now. We’ve already lost half a day, and we’re tempting untrustworthy gods by staying here any longer.” She patted the lizard’s arm as she rose. His tightly knit scales reminded her of warm jewels, dry and smooth.
As she tur
ned to make her way down the slope, it occurred to her that Dragonbait couldn’t have known about the sword’s owner. Unless he had the ability to sense an object’s past or he had read her mind or … Alias halted in mid-step and turned around. “Did you dream the same dream?”
The lizard cocked his head as if he didn’t understand.
“Never mind,” she said, realizing that, though they did communicate with one another in a fashion, some questions were just too complicated for her to convey. “Just finish up here. We’ll be waiting at the camp.”
Dragonbait remained at the grave for a few moments, then rose and followed his lady out of the glade. The birds picked up his pipe-song and carried it throughout Shadow Gap, south into the Stonelands and north into the Dales.
Shadowdale
After inspecting his maps Akabar had assumed that Alias had overestimated the time it would take to reach Yulash. Her experience of the roads north, however, proved more accurate than the parchment image of the land he had purchased in Suzail. On his map, the road from Shadow Gap to Shadowdale passed through clear terrain, but in reality the land was quite different.
The route twisted out of Shadow Gap, and approaching the dalelands it climbed and descended numerous hillocks. Akabar found the land pleasing to the eye. Sheltered from the Great Desert by mountains, the Dales were nothing at all like the barren Stonelands to the south of Shadow Gap. The hills were lush with greenery and wildflowers.
On the third afternoon outside of Shadow Gap, a storm lost them half a day’s travel. As they cowered in a vale beneath their waxed tarps, the sheet of black water falling from the sky was broken only by flashes of lightning.
The next day the rain continued, but with only half the ferocity. Horses, supplies, and clothing drenched, they took a quick vote. They decided to push on to Shadowdale rather than sleeping on wet ground again, even if it meant riding all through the day and night. Dragonbait abstained.
With the coming of night, the rain let up, but the moon and stars remained hidden behind dark clouds. They all shivered with damp and fatigue, but they pressed on. Just as the dawn light began to highlight ominous purple clouds with red streaks, they crossed the ancient bridge spanning the Ashaba River and looked out over Shadowdale.