Torrodil

by Luke Geraghty

  ‘It is not healthy, that is what I think,’ said Cesar passionately, so much so that the spicy chicken leg he was holding in his hand took flight and slapped against the leg of a standing daeva. The seven had wondered whether she could look more depressed. Apparently she could. ‘Men and women were made to live with one another – no offence, Lysander.’ None was taken. ‘It is a natural law and bad things happen when it’s broken, trust me.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Kara to the astonishment of the rest. ‘What? I think he’s making a valid point.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘It is impractical to discount an entire group of people in search of some pseudo-enlightenment. There is as much meaning to life as one affords it and no amount of prostrating or hermit-living is going to change that. I despair with the righteous. They are frightfully dreary. Almost as bad as tax collectors.’

  ‘Do you a-actually pay tax?’ asked Mateo.

  ‘Even I can’t escape that. Father insists on being above board regardless. Steal it back from the taxman’s office at night, of course. Lysander, I can feel your eyes. Don’t you dare carp at me.’

  ‘Kara,’ he said, ‘just because you do not understand something does not mean—’

  ‘That I should be afraid of it?’

  ‘No, that you should belittle it. Your life of crime hasn’t afforded you any more happiness than anyone else here and from what I can remember from a certain drunken episode you are not as morally bankrupt as you make out to be.’

  ‘I have morals but I do not let them influence every single decision I make. Life is too short to spend your days at a desk or an altar. Anna, you agree with me, don’t you?’

  Anna does. Sheepishly. Mind elsewhere. The women hadn’t stopped watching them, whether it was from windows, verandas or the street. Thrace was extravagantly oversized for forty women.

  ‘Well, I think your intolerance is only going to put up walls between you and others,’ announced Andres, who had listened to the girl harp on for long enough. ‘They have let us into their home, given us food and drink. You shouldn’t be so quick to judge.’

  Tommy sat munching away, adult-sized banter dampening his mood. The chicken had lost its taste but it was better than being asked to give his opinion on something he had no interest in. Daevan powers, though – now that’s interesting. ‘Did you see how they shot that ice stuff from their hands? And that flame disc. Whoooosh, straight through the worm’s side and then off into the sky. Where do you think it’ll land?’

  ‘There’s a few houses in Old Haven I wouldn’t mind see crippled. Few people too,’ said Kara.

  ‘I wish I was a daeva.’

  ‘Do you wish you were a woman as well?’ sneered Cesar.

  Tommy was off riding his tangent cloud. ‘I’d shoot off fireballs for fun. And get those pet thingies they have to do my bidding. I wonder if you can put your hand through one of them? Mercy, look, there’s one over there!’ Tommy was about as subtle as a jagged, twisting knife. ‘D’ya think it’d fall to pieces if you accidentally sat on it? Or would you just get soaked?’

  Kara said, ‘Perhaps you should ask. They might even let you play with it.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. But I don’t want to— Wait a minute, you’re doing it again.’

  ‘Me? Doing something?’

  ‘I don’t like it when you do that. Why can’t you mean what you say?’

  ‘Oh Tommy, don’t pout. Your eyes get all small and piggy.’

  He threw the chicken down. ‘I hate women.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re an advocate for a life of celibacy too?’

  ‘I don’t even understand what you’re saying!’

  When the evening’s festivities had declined, the seven found their eyelids drooping and were led to separate chambers along a winding corridor. In their rooms they found feather beds and pillows, not to mention the priceless luxury of privacy. Lysander meditated in silence; Tommy snored without interruption; and before long each was tucked up in their beds, dead to the world.

  It may have been the cold that woke Anna, leaching into her body from the stone floor. Flickering torches could also have been to blame. She rolled over and felt a draft skip over her nose. Wrinkling it, she opened her eyes a tad, still in a dreamlike state, and found herself staring down into a black pit.

  ‘You would be wise to not roll any further. The fall would be fine; the landing tricky.’

  Anna got up from the floor and waited for her eyes to adjust. The woman’s voice was echoing down under her. ‘Where am I? What have you done with my friends?’

  ‘Nothing much. Fancy that, six friends and five of them men. It’s a miracle you arrived at Thrace at all.’

  ‘If you’ve hurt them…’

  ‘You’ll what?’ said the unknown woman. ‘Strike me down?’ Through the Aether she called a ball of lightning that she bounced from hand to hand. ‘You are not the only girl with gifts, Anna, but the difference between you and me is that I know I control mine. Can you say the same?’ Anna averted her eyes, yielding. ‘I cannot kill you. I could not do so then and I cannot do so now.’

  ‘What do you mean “then”?’

  The woman with grey flecks in her hair stared towards a ceiling that wasn’t there. A mistake committed in youth had stood like a reproachful child, laying down its derision on the triumphs and its told-you-sos on the failures. Grappling with it had taken its toll. ‘Your mother didn’t tell you?’

  ‘She told me women came to our house when I was six; that the eldest sat her down and showed her, well, that.’ The ball of lightning in question was examined by the woman momentarily, then squashed with the closing of a hand, emitting a puff of smoke.

  ‘Far smaller actually. Hesa was not one for excess.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘We had come to take you away. Your mother resisted, not as rare as you might think, and I was trusted to deal with the problem.’

  ‘By murdering a child? You think that’s a solution?’

  ‘Better to take your life – one life – than let you grow up and murder hundreds, if not thousands, on a whim.’

  ‘I’m still alive,’ rasped Anna. ‘I think you may have failed.’

  ‘Insolence aside, you are correct. Your mother pleaded that I let you and the baby live. She didn’t care for her own life. The first time I had been tasked with the act and I couldn’t do it. Not with her pleading and that baby screaming its head off. I looked at you playing outside, so carefree, and I chose to let you live and hid your existence through a ritual. I have endangered countless lives by doing so, not to mention bring shame on our race.’

  ‘Humans have done far worse things than grant freedom to a child.’ Anna stepped forward as if to forge a connection with the daevan woman. A bolt of lightning hit the stone bridge they were standing on and ricocheted up towards the ceiling, illuminating the expanse till it faded into nothing.

  ‘We are not human. We may start life among them, inherit a hair colour or a bump in the nose, inhabit their manors and their hovels, but we are not one of them. They persecute our kind. They hate us for what we are. And you will never be accepted by them; you will have to hide how special you are to appease them. Does that sound like a good life to you?’

  Anna’s temperament broke through the surface. ‘I have known little persecution and great joy with them. And I am not the one living out in the desert. You are in hiding whether you accept it or not.’

  The woman’s voice dropped. ‘I can see that you have lived amongst humans too long. I should not have expected to find reason with you.’ She took a torch off the wall and forced the dying flames to crackle with life. ‘Seventeen. On the cusp of adulthood. This test is usually saved for those a year older and with years of training; however, I can think of no other solution than letting it decide your fate. The winds sing of you, Anna Gray, for those that choose to listen. They have told many stories about many girls and they do not know whether you will be a force for good or evil in this world. The
Gauntlet must decide as it has always done and grant me the peace I deserve. Here, you will need this.’ She threw the torch at Anna, who caught it and almost set her hair ablaze. Carrying herself soundlessly up a small set of steps, the woman departed.

  ‘Wait, where are you going? You can’t leave me here!’ By the time Anna got to the stone door it had reached the ground. Barefoot, in her nightdress, with the shadows and the biting chill, she was entombed.

  Staircases. Everywhere staircases.

  Running down one leads to a square platform with nothing on it; running down another leads to a precarious drop that Anna’s foot hovers over and decides against. She couldn’t make her way back to the bridge if she wanted to.

  Conniving woman that locked me in here to die, you’re going to get it some day. Murderous thoughts were not helping. Why was there no light? And what sort of sadistic people locked their own kind in a labyrinth with serious odour issues? Ah yes, the same sadistic people that butchered their own kind if human slavemasters refused to let them go off gallivanting with strange women. Get it real, real good.

  Anna and her frozen feet walked cautiously down a set of stairs, torch out in front, lighting what little of the expanse it could. No breaks in this set of stairs fortunately. Down and down, pleased not to have her head bitten off by a patient ogre with an understandably large case of the munchies, realising that there was something worse than bumps in the night – no bumps. The deathly quiet was circulating above and below and she knew she was on her own.

  When the steps ended and she found herself on a bridge, she was thankful. At the end was a rusted gate that whined when she pushed it open. What lay in front, tiled on the ground, appeared to be a chess board with the pieces missing. Another gate, presumably the exit, was just beyond.

  ‘What is this?’

  Anna stepped closer and examined the floor. There were tiled squares but it couldn’t be a chess board because each was as black as the next. Strange circular markings, too. I’ll get a little closer and examine them. She scuffed the ground with her foot and sent a loose rock shooting forward, landing on a tile. Sharp spikes sprang up and stuck the deathly quiet like a pig.

  Booby-trapped defective chess board. Huh.

  Picking up two other rocks from the floor, Anna questioned whether the whole board was trapped. Tossing the first unearthed another set of spikes, but the second nothing. There was a safe route through if she could find it. A slight snafu in the plan – she’d run out of rocks.

  Anna sat dangling her legs off the edge awhile. Her old life may have been boring but at least it was normal. Being trapped in a freezing catacomb by a psycho witch was distinctly weird.

  She considered a plan that involved cartwheeling over the board. Decided against it. Thought about throwing herself off the edge to trigger the instinct that had saved her in the past. Remembering everything she’d seen – lightning from the sky, mud and ice jets from her hands, a massive beast from under the earth – she reckoned falling infinitely through space may be one possibility she mightn’t want to prove. The quiet returned and despite the expanse a feeling of claustrophobia came with it. Darkness as far as the eye can see and the eye can not see very far. The girl got up from the ground, took a breath, tried to remember that concentration and the temperament it had brought, placid and composed.

  The ice bridge. It had come with the ice bridge. What if she covered the tiles in ice? Even if the spikes came up she’d be able to see which ones were trapped and which were not. Embracing the plan of action, she lifted her hands as then, shutting off from the world and requesting that celestial understanding. She concentrated and imagined the jets covering the floor in frost. Thinking about the ice jets, wanting the ice jets, slipping for a moment, thinking If only I had another rock, and she felt the same surge she always did, so opened her eyes…

  To no ice. Fear shot up her back as something tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Hello there!’

  Oh my goodness.

  ‘You don’t seem pleased to see me.’

  Wha– wha– wha– what is that?

  ‘You’re floating,’ said Anna, hearing the words go out in front of her, not sure how long it’s been since she’s said something.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the air.’

  Giving her a puzzled look, ‘I am indeed.’

  ‘I’m going to need a moment.’

  It had an aquiline nose, a pointy chin and a minute, sculpted body. What’s more it was brown, fussy (as one could tell from the way it flicked a speck of dust off its tiny shoulders), and very much levitating in the thin air it’d been conjured out of. Or into. Or out of. Never mind.

  ‘I don’t mean to interrupt but you’ve not said anything for a few minutes,’ said the creature in a huffy manner that Anna did not anticipate.

  ‘What are you?’ she asked.

  Starting to become as baffled as the girl in front of him, the creature answered, ‘I’m an earth sprite.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do not say what, say pardon.’

  ‘Par-don?’ corrected Anna, annoyed that an alien being was educating her on politeness.

  ‘How do you not know what a sprite is? It’s unfathomable.’ It flapped from side to side and spotted the tattoo on Anna’s neck. ‘A birth brand. I see…’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing nothing. Been told you’re a teeny bit slow. Have the daeva had their hands full with you? Is this your first time?’ Inspecting her face. ‘So old. Oh well, better late than never,’ he said, employing that register that older beings use sometimes, hoping to console with a piece of wisdom they’ve accumulated from their time in the universe while in reality displaying their condescension for those deemed as lesser life-forces, namely the young.

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Not in a tongue you could pronounce.’

  ‘So I’m supposed to call you “earth sprite”?’

  He folded one arm over the other. ‘What about “Jeremy”? I’ve always liked that name.’

  ‘“Jeremy the earth sprite.” Menacing.’

  ‘Well you pick one then.’

  ‘How about Kaspathian?’

  ‘Am I supposed to laugh or cry?’

  ‘Heglemon?’

  ‘Pass.’

  ‘Yonigus?’

  ‘Definitely pass.’

  ‘Fine, your name will be decided upon at another date.’ Maybe Andres will have some ideas, assuming he’s breathing air and not dirt.

  ‘You know I do not appreciate being summoned into being by a girl who has no idea what I am. This is not what the Aether said it would be like.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell me you know of the Aether.’

  ‘Yes, that it’s the source of my powers. A fifth element of…spirity stuff.’

  ‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me. No, I won’t put up with a deadhead. I can’t. I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life and you’ve spoiled it. I want to leave. Send me back this instant.’

  Anna shrugged.

  ‘You mean you don’t know how? But you brought me here. You have to.’

  ‘I wanted help with this puzzle.’

  ‘Puzzle?’ he queried, eyes brightening. ‘I love puzzles.’ The earth sprite flew off and flitted about the tiled board, inspecting it with his red eyes and quickly establishing everything there was to know. There was a remarkably irritating expression on his face as he said, ‘Spike trap. Anyone could figure it out.’

  ‘I don’t know which tiles are safe. I need some rocks.’

  ‘Let me see if I have this right: you have little to no control over your ability; you’ve got a smart mouth and an empty skull; and you’ve summoned me not for an epic battle or a mind-boggling exploit but to throw rocks down on a stone floor?’

  ‘A booby-trapped stone floor,’ corrected Anna with a smirk.

  The creature huffed and puffed and one was glad there wasn’t a house for him to
blow down. After an outburst of tutting he remembered his duty, flapped his translucent wings over to the puzzle, and released a succession of rocks from his hands. A multitude of spikes broke from the floor, clamouring and clattering and sinking back down afterward. Anna made out a safe route forward and, to ensure she was not skewered like a Mezbollah kebab, requested that the earth sprite perform his rockthrows again, much to his audible displeasure. Satisfied, she made her way across the tiles with reckless abandon – saved twice by her elemental – and headed out of the gate and onto to the next test.

  Twenty One – Life and Death

  ‘Upon my word, you’re taking this leisurely, aren’t you?’

  Is it murder if the creature isn’t human?

  ‘Keep coming. Few more. Oh, well done. That wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  The sprite turned around to scan the area and Anna went to wring his neck. ‘What a pleasant surprise to find you speak Carric,’ she noted, the sarcasm more obvious than she would’ve liked. ‘The elementals I’ve seen—’

  ‘I speak every language that exists. How on earth would I communicate with a potential master otherwise? Frankly, spoken tongues are too crude for my taste. The Ildari Sign Language on the other hand…’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And if you’ve seen my kind before,’ he said, interrupting her again, ‘why were you surprised to see me?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly have time to get acquainted with them. It was after I’d been chased by a sandworm—’

  ‘Ghastly beasts,’ he butted in. If their conversations were going to be like this, Anna would simply stop talking to the thing. ‘My uncle’s friend’s cousin’s dog was eaten by one, you know. That beady eye. Horrible. What? Why are you giving me that constipated grimace?’

  ‘Witches, sandworms, and now elemental beings? I’m finding it difficult to take in.’ Anna tried to remember her life prior to the madness, when an outbreak of pig plague was considered a stimulating event. The earth sprite’s wings carried him over and he hovered alongside her. Finally, a chance to put Stress Management 101: Dealing with Emotional Torrolings to good use.