Jon Wilson - The Obsidian Man

by Jon Wilson

  And then Holt heard it. The flag was being unfurled again, only now it sounded like sheets being shaken in the wind—huge, burlap sheets. He twisted his neck, angling his head to peer up over the ranger’s shoulder, to see what was making the tremendous sound.

  The smoke overhead was roiling more agitatedly than ever, billowing downward as if blown from above. Slowly the darkness parted, and six steel daggers penetrated the clouds. The wickedly sharpened blades lowered and became talons, nothing but tips to impossibly huge, scaly claws. All at once the haze cleared and Holt was staggered by the sight of an enormous black beast, wings stretched wide, descending gracefully to the ground ten feet from them.

  “Ah, I’ve found you at last.” The words carried a heavy accent, but were far less alien sounding than the words spoken by the troll. That was not surprising as the head of the creature was very nearly human. Indeed, studying the monster, Holt thought at one time it might have been human. He recognized a torso, blacker than any flesh, but appointed like a man. Also, the shoulders were nearly ordinary except for their corded muscles and the great scaly wings which they commanded. Only from the waist down was the monster utterly alien. Its long, incredibly thin legs were twisted backwards, and adorned at the ends with the deadly talons. It folded its wings and lowered its head. Its eyes, black on black, within the shadowy folds of its dark head, penetrated the gloom as easily as any beams of light. “I told you I would. How foolish to run.”

  The monster paused, but Kawika did not speak. Holt cowered behind the shelter of the ranger’s back, torn between staring at the creature and remaining concealed.

  “And what fine morsel are you hiding? Something to warm those long winter nights, no doubt.” It seemed to make some sound akin to clicking its tongue. It shook its head. “One hears so often of the nobility of the Danann rangers. How gratifying to discover it is untrue. Let’s have a look.” The creature stepped forward, or rather hopped, lifting both feet simultaneously and then dropping them again somewhat nearer. Kawika pulled back, crushing Holt between himself and the wall. “Don’t be shy,” the monster crooned, angling its awful head in toward them.

  Suddenly Kawika was gone. Feeling himself left bare, Holt looked up and saw the ranger had caught hold of the monster’s extended wing, riding it upward as the creature reared back. Kawika kicked out his right leg, striking the side of the monstrous head with his foot. The monster stumbled back but managed to toss its attacker aside. The ranger slammed into the wall opposite Holt and crumpled to the ground.

  Spreading its wings, the monster hissed, rolling its shoulders forward and hunching its back. It sprang toward the downed man, talons extended, but tore only at the frozen ground as Kawika rolled clear. With incredible agility, the ranger reversed direction, came at the monster’s legs from behind and attacked them with both feet. The monster sprawled against the wall, wings flapping uselessly. Kawika kicked again, drove his right foot higher, into the small of the creature’s back. The thing shrieked, completely inhuman, but managed to spin, slapping the ranger with an outstretched wing. Kawika fell back to the ground, helpless as the monster turned, lifting a single leg this time with evil deliberation. The claw fell suddenly on the ranger’s belly; Holt watched the talons penetrate the flesh. Kawika moaned through his teeth, folding around the rending claw. The creature stooped over him, hissing again and slashed with a wing. A jagged pinion caught Kawika’s left shoulder, slicing down across his chest. The skin seemed to erupt. Dark fluid gushed up and out over the parted flesh. Holt felt himself lurch toward them. “Die bravely, ranger,” the monster was saying as Holt dove into it.

  A tumultuous swimming darkness enveloped Holt as he attacked the creature, striking wildly with fists and feet when he felt himself hoisted into the air. Pathetically fast, he was surrounded by an impenetrable layer of icy flesh. The creature had rolled him in its left wing and held him tightly against its body.

  The monster could not have been alive. Holt had never felt anything so cold. It was as if he were buried again in the snow. But it was not simply an absence of warmth. The creature seemed to steal the warmth from everything around it.

  The pinion that had slashed the ranger rose to the side of Holt’s face. “Such a foolhardy child. Shall we kill it first?” The razor-sharp pinion moved slowly down Holt’s cheek. The skin tore, and Holt felt the first drops of blood well along the incision as the creature began to chuckle again. The ugly head twisted inhumanly on its neck, the face angling to gaze down at the ranger still pinned beneath its massive talon. “Shall we kill it first?”

  Suddenly the creature roared in agony. Its wings unfurled and Holt fell helplessly to the ground. He pushed himself up on his hands as the monstrous shrieks continued. Kawika had lifted both legs, twisted them around the monster’s own limb and snapped the middle joint. The ranger did not release the leg, even as the anguished and panicked monstrosity began flapping its wings, trying desperately to rise in the air.

  Holt watched in amazement as slowly the creature started to ascend, taking the ranger with it. He scrambled to his feet, rushing forward, reaching out for Kawika even as he realized the creature would surely have surrendered its hold if it could. The ranger was twisting the thing’s leg furiously between his own—had hold of it now with his left hand just above the talon. He was pounding the area of the break repeatedly with his other fist. Holt heard himself scream something, he thought it was the ranger’s name. He caught hold of the man’s shoulders as they rose higher into the air, and then with a wicked snap the monster’s leg severed and ranger and talon crashed to the ground as the great black horror flew screaming off into the night.

  “Kawika, Kawika.” The name played like a litany on Holt’s lips as he knelt beside the ranger. The man was staring blindly upward, his mouth ajar and bubbling purple fluid. His hands were groping at the talon, the sharp tips of its three digits as yet stabbing his belly. Crying uncontrollably, Holt grasped each scaly finger in turn, prying them free. The ranger shuddered and then seemed to relax. Holt shoved the monstrous claw aside, turning back to crouch over the ranger and pull him up. He tugged Kawika’s shoulders, but it was as if the man’s weight had doubled. He grew frantic, more determined as he felt Kawika grow less responsive. And then finally his sobs became so earnest he could no longer do anything but convulse, and he settled to his knees, the ranger’s head in his lap, covered with his arms.

  How long he cried before he felt the gentle tug on his wrist, he could not guess. He knew he was in danger—out in the lane with the village overrun by imps and trolls. He heard, somewhere, the continued shrieks of whatever the ranger had fought and maimed, echoing across the sky. He knew he had to find shelter if he wanted to survive. But he also knew he could not leave Kawika lying in the road. He told that part of himself that was still sane enough to panic that he needed only a moment to gather his strength and then he would get them to safety.

  He blinked his eyes, trying to clear them of the tears that blinded him, turning every faint sparkle into a star. His arm was being pulled down, weighted by Kawika’s hold on his wrist. He looked numbly down into the ranger’s face. Kawika’s eyes were still wide, staring sightlessly at the smoke, but his lips were working again. Words were being pushed up through the boiling blood.

  “A man…”

  Holt’s arm was pulled down across the bleeding abdomen. Kawika’s right fist rose to burrow into his palm.

  “A man will come,” the ranger said. Holt could see he was straining, trying to do something he no longer had the strength for. The fist squirmed in Holt’s palm. Kawika grunted, his lips twitching as if to smile. “Can’t open my fingers.”

  Holt turned his head, staring down at the fist pressing his hand. The knuckles were bruised and bleeding—the middle one obviously displaced. Holt reached up his own free hand and gently pried the ranger’s clenched fingers open. A slight hissing sound issued from Kawika’s lips, making Holt wish he might have somehow been gentler. He felt the man’s middle finge
r twist at an askew angle in his grasp. And then a small black stone fell into his other palm.

  Kawika sighed and his right hand collapsed back to the ground. He continued to hold Holt’s wrist tightly. “For him.Da’an…My farysha. His…his…he will…” He took a deep breath. “He will take you to VaSaad-Ka.”

  “You said you would take me!”

  Kawika nearly smiled again. “Too late… Too much poison. Even…Even if you were here.” The ranger’s eyes refocused; they churned as if leaving some distant point for something at hand. His head tilted; his eyes found Holt’s face. He closed his hand over Holt’s, and forced him to embrace the black stone. The ranger held the smaller fist tightly in his own. “I’m sorry…Always sorry. You were right, of course. All…Always going… Always, always.”

  Holt tried to speak, to edge the ranger’s name around the choking sobs. But it was useless, and he could see the focus again fading from the man’s eyes. He could feel the ranger’s weight fall ever heavier across his knees. When he finally managed sound, it was powerless, devoid of meaning on the roadway with its carnage: empty repetitious utterances of the word no.

  Chapter 8 The noise meant danger. Holt, attempting to make his way back to the white room, fumbled in the icy darkness. Such terrible screaming—which, life or death? Or were the two so very different? He only knew he didn’t care any more, that he wanted to be dead, or alive, or numb and cold and emotionless. That was it. Cold. He wanted to be cold. He wanted to roll himself in heavy black sheets of snow. No, sheets of something darker. Sheets of death. Shrouds. A wing. A great black wing with a poison pinion that had spilt his flesh and ripped open the ranger and left them both steaming on the frozen ground. A wing? A pinion? That scream?

  That scream! It was the creature, shrieking angrily, calling down its hatred from somewhere in the darkness over his head. It was returning. It was returning to roll Holt once more in the frigid embrace of its heavy black wings. Only there was no longer pitiful sweetness in the memory. Only cold. Only deadly cold that would not numb him, but burn him, and leave him charred and screaming and full of pain.

  He had to flee. The cry was nearer now, somewhere to the north and clearly high in the sky. But closer than it had been. He gripped Kawika’s shoulders, pulled his knees out from under the ranger, forcing his feet back to the ground. All of this was excruciatingly painful, as if he had knelt there in the snow for hours, cradling Kawika’s head, anointing it with his tears.

  He was up, and Kawika was sitting propped against his legs. He reached down and slipped his hands under the ranger’s arms. The man sagged heavily as Holt tried to get him up. He seemed almost to resist. Why?Holt demanded of himself.Why doesn’t he help me? No time. No time. An angry shriek almost directly overhead. He began to drag Kawika down the lane, back toward Fitts’ cellar.

  At the corner of the building he stopped, out of breath. The shrieks, too, had stopped, but he could sense the monster somewhere nearby. He imagined he could feel the thing’s icy cold, inhuman breath against the side of his face. He peered around the corner. The cellar entrance was just a few feet further. But he would need to relieve himself of his burden to open the doors. Propping Kawika gently against the wall, he dashed to the double wooden doors, pulled both open, and then hurried back to collect the ranger.

  The man’s flesh was so cold now. Can’t think about it,Holt told himself, reasserting his grip under the ranger’s arms. He dragged Kawika the last short distance, stepped over the threshold and down onto the first dark stair.

  A momentary hesitation. Danger, something was wrong. Holt raised his head, scanned the immediate vicinity but spied no one. Nothing. Barren. Lifeless. In the distance an occasional shout. Human. A few barks. Trolls? The shrieks had stopped. Had the dark monster returned to the spot up the road, found its prey gone and departed? No. Perhaps it was there still, whimpering over its own severed foot. Or, more likely, hunting them.

  And then he saw the problem. A trail in the snow, plowed by the ranger’s dragging legs. It would lead the creature right to them!

  Hurriedly, Holt descended the remaining stairs into the darkness. The cellar was large, but made up of several long, shelf-lined rows, each only wide enough for two men to walk abreast. The light seeping down through the doorway—a diffuse mixture of moonlight and reflected fire—illuminated but a few feet down each isle. Temporarily, Holt settled Kawika at the mouth of the nearest. He scurried up the stairs and searched frantically for something with which to rake the snow.

  Nothing. Nothing. Tools. A hoe. The shed! His own shed, the one in which he had first spoken with the ranger. It was nearby. He could see it. Just across the yard. The impossibly huge yard he had known all his life but which seemed to grow larger every time he confronted it. Obstacles lay in his path now, dark mounds that had once been his brother and his mother and his aunt.Can’t think of that. Concentrate on the shed or let your mind go and allow your feet to guide you there swift and sure.

  He was there, grabbing a hoe, letting his body work while he kept his mind on the task. Need to make the snow look smooth.Smooth and undisturbed as it had when he had first gone to the cellar door. When he had known the ranger and the others weren’t there because the door had swung open so easily. When in his panic he had released the door, letting it fall open, leaving it lying open, and dashed off in search of the ranger elsewhere.

  Why did that snag in his thoughts so? He hurried back, steering clear of the dark mounds. He had the hoe. But it was the cellar doors that signaled the danger, not the trail. That made no sense. What about the doors? He could see them just ahead, lying open as he had left them. The one on the left lying open as he had left it both times.As he had left it both times!

  He skidded to a halt at the foot of the open doors, staring down into the darkness. The angle and the moonlight showed him nothing but one of the ranger’s feet, lying motionless, pale, just inches from the bottom of the stair. He began to tremble.

  Maybe it was more villagers. Maybe they had come in the interval between his two visits. Maybe they were down there cowering in the darkness, too afraid even to greet a fellow human when he stumbled onto them. Or maybe it was a troll. After fighting the great black creature, even a troll did not seem unconquerable.

  How ridiculously arrogant he found himself. How could he, Holt, a thirteen-yearold boy, fight a troll? Trolls had killed Varley and Roef and Baton. A troll had killed his mother. And even staring at Kawika’s foot, he knew all of that didn’t even begin to matter because there were no other footprints around but his own.

  He heard a dull slosh that he realized was the hoe falling to the snow. He was stepping into the cellar, descending the stairs, continuing to gaze only at the foot. He had to get Kawika out. He could not leave him there, sitting helplessly in the dark with that awful thing. Crouching on the lowest step, he reached gently toward Kawika’s ankle. He realized the ranger must have fallen because he could no longer make out the man’s shape against the shelving. He grasped the ankle, felt another cold wallop against his diaphragm —so cold.So cold and something else. He tugged the ankle and immediately knew. Even before he saw the tattered flesh and the jagged, splintered bone—the tattered flesh and the jagged, splintered bone—white as white in the moonlight—and nothing more.

  The darkness seemed to swell between the shelves. A great rustling sound and the horrible, black face was stretching toward him. “Looking for this?”

  Screaming, Holt fell back against the stairs. He was not even seeing the evil face, but rather Kawika, rolled in the wing. The ranger’s flesh was as wan and smooth as the monster’s was dark, scaly. The man’s head swung limply from side to side. His eyes were dull, gray and half-lidded and full of nothing, neither contempt nor praise nor surprise nor disappointment.

  Holt scrambled instinctively to climb the stairs. The razor pinion of the monster’s other wing was slashing the air in a sharp arc to snare him, but the wing caught on the shelves bordering the narrow aisles. Holt reache
d the top of the stairs and spilled frantically out onto the snow, still screaming, still seeing nothing but Kawika’s lifeless face. He heard the monster’s terrific struggling, and then the dark head thrust upward through the open doorway. It was hissing, but clearly exhilarated by the hunt. A wicked, delighted gleam shone in its ebony eyes.

  Holt’s hands fumbled onto something. He wielded it without a thought, stabbing the blade of the hoe toward the monster’s face. He felt himself climb onto his knees, relentlessly gouging at the thing’s awful head. He reached his feet, as the monster’s hisses became roars of frustration. It was trying to defend itself but could not raise its right wing in the small space of the doors and as yet stubbornly refused to surrender the ranger’s body. Finally it retreated back down the stairs, and Holt deftly caught the right door with his foot and swung it closed. He did the same to the left door.

  Throwing his body down onto the wood, his screams at last gave way to still more terrific sobs. Kawika was gone now, lost to him forever, and not just gone, but in the clutches of that horrible monster. And it was Holt’s own fault. He had dragged the ranger over and taken his body down into the cellar like an offering; he had left it there to be claimed by his evil god. He had failed and failed and failed. Why hadn’t he stayed in the storehouse? Then Kawika would still be alive, would still be hiding from the monster—would be waiting for dawn when all the attackers would be gone and he could come to the storehouse and find Holt and take him back to VaSaad-Ka.

  “You did well,” Kawika would have told him again. “Are you ready to go to the City of the Sun?” And too joyous for words, Holt would have merely nodded, noting with some corner of his awareness the mystified and envious expressions of the other villagers. No, the villagers were gone, he and the ranger were alone, standing by the gate in the glorious morning sun. “Will you take nothing from this place?” Holt felt his head shaking. Nothing, this village is like a poison seeping through my veins. I must purify myself if I am to be worthy to enter the VaSaad.