The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1)

by A. A. Attanasio

  "I am a philosopher." He plucked another asparagus shoot and tossed it atop the trunk among the pile of others they had gathered.

  "How?" She sought out his gaze. "How'd you get to be a philospher?"

  "Like all philosophers." He glanced at the niello eye charm on his shoulder, searching for other presences in the forest. In this gloom, even with the eye charms, visibility lacked the precision he had enjoyed in the desert. "I had a teacher. Her name was Wise Fish. She rescued me from the warrens. And she taught me the truth."

  "The truth. You talk that up a lot. What is the truth?"

  Dogbrick scooped up more mushrooms. "The truth is what is. It is not always useful. Not always kind. Not always beautiful. Not always anything. It changes and yet it is always the same."

  "How can that be?"

  "What is changes. Always. Change is the truth that never changes."

  "You mean, nothing stays the same."

  "Nothing."

  "Not even the Abiding Star?"

  "Ah"—Dogbrick's large teeth shone in the dark with the breadth of his smile—"you have the makings a true philospher, Tywi. That is a perceptive question." He used the walking stick to part a veil of hanging moss as they tramped on. "Do you know what the Abiding Star is?"

  "The Beginning. That's what the street witches say. It's in their book, Origins."

  "Yes." He lifted his face toward the forest awning, where star vapors leaked, and he quoted, "'Above Irth blazes the Abiding Star. Its radiance dazzles the primal darkness like a door standing open on heaven. That is the Beginning.' Origins two, nineteen." He looked down at her, his bushy brows lifted inquisitively. "You've read Origins?"

  "No." She watched a night bird glide soundlessly across their path into a higher nave of the forest. "The witch mothers who run the orphans' house on Cold Niobe read from it before every meal. I used to stay there sometimes. But you can't stay long 'less you want to become a witch. Which I don't."

  Dogbrick heard a rustle, glanced at his eye charms, and kept talking. "That is a noble life, celebrating the seasons, crafting amulets for the poor and the sick. You know, every witch is an expert charmwright. If there were enough witches, there would be no poor on Irth."

  "But witches never marry," Tywi said. "They make ritual love to the sages. That's not for me, Dog. I—I feel there's just one for me."

  Dogbrick spotted a white hart in his eye charms and watched it bound away at their approach, explaining the rustling he had heard. Calm down, strong heart, he counseled himself. Fear is its own enemy. "And who is this one who is meant only for you?" he asked.

  "I don't know. I just feel there is. I always felt that."

  "Good." Dogbrick beamed at her. "Such feelings imply a future—and at this uncertain time in our journey, young Tywi, that is a welcome feeling indeed." He grunted to pull the travois over a root ledge and went on, "Now, about the Abiding Star—ah, but wait." He pointed with his staff to an alcove among the big trees where a brake of feathery canes shimmered in a shaft of star glow. “Those are sugar stalks. They will make a tasty addition to our meal. Cut a few for us, will you?"

  Dogbrick handed Tywi a knife from his utility belt, and she went over to the brake and began harvesting the stalks. As she knelt to cut closer to the sweet root, a large hand reached through the canes, grabbed her by the collar of her smock, and pulled her into darkness.

  The thief shouted, threw off the travois cables, and leaped toward the great trees, trampling the sugar stalks.

  Tywi had utterly vanished.

  "Dogbrick!" Her cry curled out of dark distances and stabbed him with her fearful anguish.

  “Tywi!" he called back.

  No reply followed. In the niello eye charms, he had to search hard before he found her, already almost a furlong distant! She jostled as a bundle thrown over the shoulder of an ogre. The huge anthropoid charged crashing through the undergrowth of a gully screened almost entirely from his eye charms with hanging moss and ivy.

  Dogbrick gave chase, flinging himself into the darkness, ignoring slashing thorn vines and nettle weeds. He oriented himself by his eye charms until he heard the ogre far ahead, devouring leaf-strewn distances with mighty strides.

  The thief activated all his power wands, risking heart rupture. His legs churned, and the sturdy walking stick beat aside intrusive vines and grassy obstacles. Her one cry to him had hooked him under the breastbone and pulled him after her with inexorable stamina. He leaped boulders, splashed unhindered across viper-haunted streams, and pulled to within sight of the fleeing ogre even as his heart boomed with mortal thunder.

  The kidnapper’s gigantic, naked thews gleamed in the starlight with the sweat of its exertion. Glimmering through the forest's lacy shadows, it glanced back at its pursuer with a small, pugnacious face inset in a mammoth head of black fleece.

  Dogbrick unslung his firelock without breaking stride, but he dared not shoot for fear of striking Tywi inside the shoulder-thrown sack. Instead, he fired a rapid burst ahead of the big creature, hoping to slow it down. Green tracers illuminated cathedral depths of the forest and exploded on the banks of the gorge, toppling two trees in a crisscross barricade.

  The ogre spun about, crouched. Its tiny face bent with fury under hunched shoulders of sliding muscle, and for one frightful instant, the thief thought that the howling goliath intended to charge. Dogbrick leveled his firelock, and the ogre dropped the sack. It sprang upward, and leaped backward over the fallen trees. A crashing sounded from the far side as it continued on its way.

  Slapping off the power wands on his harness, Dogbrick collapsed beside the sack, heaving for breath. Blood whined loudly through its coils. His sharp fingers tore open the coarse cloth, and his wildly dancing heart cramped coldly in him at the sight of packed leaves. A bellow of despair emptied his burning lungs and dropped him sobbing for breath over the ripped decoy.

  By the time he got back to his travois, the ogre who had taken Tywi had ransacked his treasure trunk. Its colossal footprints had dented the ground around it, but it had not taken anything except the utility belts and the food. Ogres despised Charm. He had heard this all his life, though he had never met an ogre until this night. He also knew of their renown as supreme tacticians, and this incident had convinced him of that.

  He took the two bolts of trance wrap from the upturned trunk and bent to retrieve his spilled amulets. Only then did he apprehend with an intuitive flash that the hex-gems and talismans had not been carelessly strewn. The ogre had arranged them to look scattered when in fact they served as a cover for the firecharm cartridges below. The cartridges had been joined in twos by their contact ends. Rat-star gems wedged between each of the coupled cartridges glinted with live current. If he disturbed any of them even slightly, they would spark and the whole pile would explode.

  Those ogres hate Charm so much they've learned exactly how to destroy it, he thought, trying to calm his quaking body, astonished at the wicked intelligence of such brutish creatures.

  A leaf whisper made him glance upward, and he eyed a rock lob through the branches. The ogre had been watching from somewhere nearby, and when it saw him backing away, aware of the trap, it acted to finish him.

  Dogbrick flung himself backward, lifting the trance wrap to protect his face—already too late. The ogres have killed me, he realized as the thrown rock clattered amidst his treasure.

  The blast lifted him off his feet and flung him into absolute darkness.

  / |

  Green fire exploded upward through the trees and stained the night. Captives in chattel carts on the far side of the forest saw it swirl into the sky and spread in sticky emerald unfoldings, an eerie nebula crawling over Irth.

  Thunder twisted in the wind, and they knew the ogres had done more evil and taken more prisoners. They shared woeful knowing looks in their caged carts but dared say nothing, for the basilisks that towed the carts had been trained by the ogres to hate the human voice. If anyone spoke, the horned and slinky red creatures
slid their scaly black tails into the chattel carts and whipped everyone bloody.

  As dawn's orchids unfolded across the sky, the captives heard the ogres returning and sat up from where they slept on the straw-matted cage bottom.

  Gnawl, the dark-fleeced ogre who had raced Dogbrick into the night, arrived first carrying sacks of foraged foods—mint grass, honey berries, asparagus spears, eden nuts in clustered vines, and sugar stalks—and passed this fodder by thick handfuls into the caged carts.

  Gryn, rufous tufts of coarse hair furred in blotches on his capacious bald scalp, came in with a waif under his arm, a shred of her filthy smock stuffed in her mouth. He tossed her into the nearest chattel cart and went directly to the basilisks to reward them for guarding the captives.

  Out of the other cart, he hoisted the eldest, a silver-haired woman in a tattered and soiled witch's gown. She made no protest or struggle but kept her gaze upon the Abiding Star rising sparkling through the tree crowns.

  The ogre threw her to the ground between the beasts, and the basilisks set upon her with avid ferocity. Their turtle-beaked jaws vanished into the dark caves of their eyes. She gave out one agonized cry and went silent as the twisting jaws tore her apart.

  The new prisoner stared with bulging eyes until a female captive in the leather vest of a charmwright turned her head. "Don't look." She removed the cloth from the waif's mouth and untied her wrists. "What is your name?"

  "Tywi."

  "Listen to me now," the charmwright said. "When the basilisks feed is the only time we can speak. Otherwise they beat us terribly. We are all prisoners of the ogres. They roam this forest snatching travelers. They feed only the old and the sick to the basilisks. We think we must be bound for some labor camp, probably the coast, to scavenge the tidal flats at night for our new masters."

  Tywi stared hard at the brown-eyed woman with the smudged face and gray-streaked hair tied up by a cord of vine. She stared hard not to hear the crunching bone meal in the chewing jaws.

  "Were you traveling with anyone?" the charmwright asked.

  "Yes." Tywi nodded vigorously. "Dogbrick. My friend."

  "Did the ogres kill him?"

  "I don't know. There was an explosion..."

  "Green fire," the charmwright whispered. "Charm blowout. We saw it. Dogbrick must have had firecharms."

  "Yeah. And amulets. Lots of them."

  "That's it. The ogres destroy amulets wherever they find them. Maybe your friend Dogbrick escaped. He may alert others to our plight. We need something to keep our hope alive."

  The feeding sounds diminished, and the charmwright peeked over her shoulder. Tywi glimpsed between the two scarlet reptiles a froth of blood and brain pulp, and nausea whirled up in her.

  "Hush now," the charmwright warned. "They are nearly done, and they will tolerate not a word from any of us. We will talk again later."

  Between immense pylons of trees, Gryn and Gnawl conferred. Their voices rolled low and rumbly as a distant storm. Then they whistled and strode into the woods. The basilisks followed, pulling the two chattel carts behind. Tywi clasped the wooden bars and stared into the morning sky above treetops where a slur of green fire still hung in the air.

  Whipcrow saw it, too. Rousing from Dogbrick's blow, he clutched his aching head in both hands. The far-off explosion of the Charm cartridges could have been the throb of his own pain. But the bloom of green fire deep in the forest lifted his attention beyond himself.

  He staggered upright and wheeled drunkenly through the grass, looking for his walking staff and his pack. When he realized that they were gone, taken by the thief and the waif, he cawed angrily and the thick black hackles of his hair stood up.

  "Muttwit!" he screamed. "I will find you! And break you!"

  Whipcrow's rage chilled quickly to angry muttering before the brutal truth of his predicament. Without Charm, he had no protection from the forest's beasts, no enhancement of his body's strength or his mind's aptitude, and, worst of all, no way to ward off sleep. When exhaustion eventually claimed him, he would be vulnerable to predators and, at night, to the tide that wafted the Charmless into the void. The residual Charm in his garments had alone prevented him from drifting off into the Gulf this past night—and that residue was now gone.

  Striding purposefully along the matted track left by Dogbrick's travois, he wracked his brain for all that he knew of Charm, trying to figure a way to survive without it. Humans suffered from an unfortunate mutation. That was what he had learned as a charmwright before becoming a factory manager. The first people, the aborigines of Irth, had lived for ages without Charm. He would survive as they had. At night he would stay awake. Consciousness itself seemed to be an aspect of Charm and proved sufficient to keep one grounded. By day, when the tides abated, he would sleep. Though that, he bitterly acceded, would be difficult. Predacious creatures abounded everywhere. And by day, he would be most visible.

  Dogbrick's revenge seemed truly terrible the more he pondered it. Only Whipcrow's fury kept him from paralyzing despair. Muttwit, I will break you! he repeated to himself as he hurried after the thief.

  Shortly past noon, he reached the site of the explosion. A crater had excavated the ground deeper than the burned ends of root cables. The blast had penetrating to a granite depth where gasps of green mist still lingered. The trees on all sides leaned away as if repelled by the acrid stench.

  No trace of any of the amulets remained, yet Whipcrow knew what had happened here. Charm blowout, he thought, The muttwit did this on purpose, to spite me. He shattered the charmbreech on the second firelock and destroyed all the amulets so I could never get them back!

  Believing that the thief and the waif were traveling lighter, he searched the surrounding woods for signs of their passing. Then, in a scrim of leaf litter and lichen, he found prodigious footprints, each impression clearly displaying nimble prehensile toes.

  "Ogres!" He gasped. He crouched and stared all around with startled eyes. Leaf light glinted like teeth, and shadows lumbered nearby. He pulled his cloak tighter about himself and did not rise until he ascertained that he was alone.

  The giant footprints, easy to spot in the loam, turned him to flee in the opposite direction. Two paces later, he turned again. Without Charm, the forest would devour him. Dangerous as ogres were, Whipcrow recognized that his best chance of survival was to follow them. They lived, like the first people, without Charm and would know the safest routes through these woods. And though fabled for their cruelty to people, they might work to his advantage if they eventually led him out of the forest to some human settlement in their quest for people to enslave.

  He pursued the tracks across small creeks, alert for vipers. Twice he spotted shaggy green bears. They ignored him as he crept past with footfalls muted by moss and duff. By late afternoon, he found where the ogre tracks joined with the rutted impressions of cartwheels and the long, quartzlike droppings of basilisks.

  Exhaustion dogged him, a weird wooziness after a lifetime of Charm, and he decided to sleep until dark. He swung up into a tree and lashed the hem of his cloak to a bough to hold him in place and nestled against the groin of the trunk. A dream of big-headed ogres with their black-toothed grins startled him awake.

  He thought only moments had lapsed, yet folds of sunset creased the western sky. And there below him, a figure moved. He blinked twice to focus his eyes in the murky gloaming and beheld Dogbrick leaning on the amber walking staff and reading the rut tracks in the forest floor.

  The thief had been blown into a treetop by the exploding Charm. His harness of power wands and the amulets fitted to it had protected him from the force of the blast, though the impact had rendered him unconscious. After he woke, he found his firelock, the walking staff, and the bolts of trance wrap lodged with him in the attic of the forest.

  Seeing his foe, Whipcrow grasped at once what had happened. The ogres have kidnapped Tywi—and the muttwit is off to rescue her!

  Whipcrow waited until the thief had vanishe
d among the trees before hopping down from his perch. He had to be wary. Dogbrick had eye charms. But the factory manager knew how to elude their searching gaze by keeping his distance. The thief would follow the tracks, and Whipcrow would be not far behind, hidden by the trees' beards of moss and the creeks' shawls of ivy.

  / |

  After twilight, clouds masked the stars, and the forest seeped darkness. Bioluminescent tendrils dangling from the black canopy illuminated vague pathways through the night. Though this slowed down Whipcrow and left him more anxious than ever about the creaturely howls and shamblings he heard around him, he felt fortunate that the rains did not come and wash out the ogres' tracks.

  Lightning quaked soundlessly and stenciled the forest corridors in fitful glimpses. Whipcrow crawled slowly onward, fighting weariness and the doomful sleep that night proffered.

  Dawn rose with brimstone radiance, underlighting storm clouds trundling eastward. Wind-tossed leaves scutted over the forest floor. He pulled a blanket of slick ivy over himself and plummeted immediately into dark sleep. Again, the black-toothed grin of ogres thrashed him awake.

  Streams of afternoon radiance angled through the treetops and rendered the world in fiery green incandescence. Briefly he spied elves in their silk robes and sparkling auras jog across the loom work of vines and grass, merry of aspect and swift.

  Remembering his vengeful mission, he shoved himself upright and stumbled with weakness. He had to eat. He had never known hunger pangs before and had mistaken them for fatigue sleep could mend. Reeling out of the creek bed, he wobbled among trees until he located pendant vines of eden nuts. He tore down several loops, dragged them to the creek bed, and shucked the nuts with a rock.

  After sating himself, he continued his pursuit. Along the way, he tore up canes of sugar stalk and gnawed the sweet roots, drawing into himself the vitality he needed to go on. Daylight faded hours before nightfall, and gray mist swirled up from creek beds and shrouded root ledges and rotted logs. Cold penetrated him, and he shivered so hard his teeth ached in their roots.