by D. P. Prior
Snaith took a lurching step toward it, craning his head to look up. At first he thought it was a bad fruit, rotten and about ready to drop to the ground. But yews had no fruits he could think of.
Theurig gave it a light tap with the end of his staff, and it spun round.
A shriveled, wrinkled face glared down at them, eyes stitched shut, lips slits of black. It was suspended by a knot of grey hair, and its underside was dark with dried blood, where presumably its neck had once been. But the thing about it that sent a shudder along Snaith’s spine and made the breath catch in his throat, was that it was no bigger than his fist.
“It’s a hobby,” Theurig said, apparently relishing Snaith’s repulsion. “To each clan their own. One of the benefits of being a sorcerer: you get to decide which direction to lead your clan in, and believe me, once you get into the histories and the myths, there’s a world of ideas for you to draw upon. Kepalon Drowse was the first sorcerer of the Skaltoop. Some said he was deranged, and I’ve half a mind to believe it. Things haven’t gotten any better over the centuries since his death. Evil begets evil, don’t they say? Each apprentice worse than the man who trained him. I’ve never quite understood why the Archmage doesn’t put a stop to it, all this savagery. But I guess it serves a purpose. Anyone approaching the Wakeful Isle from the east has to cross Skaltoop lands.”
“But we’ll be all right, won’t we?” Snaith asked. If both his arms were working, he wouldn’t have worried, but with only one he couldn’t be sure how well he’d fare in a fight, especially against savages who shrunk heads and hung them from trees.
“Oh, we’ll be fine,” Theurig said. “Even the Skaltoop wouldn’t go so far as to cross a sorcerer. Well, not most of the time. And speaking of time, isn’t it about time we stopped for lunch? I’m famished.”
“You’re famished?” Snaith said, letting go of the pack and leaning back against the yew’s trunk. He was too tired to care if a barrage of shrunken heads fell out of the branches on top of him. “What about me?”
“You?”
“Yes, me,” Snaith said. “You’ve been drinking and eating while we walked, but I’ve had nothing.”
“Nothing? But you’re the pack mule. You have most of our supplies. All I have in my bag are a few extra scraps for the road.”
“Supplies?”
“In the pack. Meldred stuffed it full of provisions. There’s a costrel in there for you, too.”
Snaith glared at the sorcerer in disbelief. When were you planning to tell me? “Meldred?”
“One of the ladies that… uh… assist me: Velyg, Graef, and Meldred. You really ought to learn their names. People like that. It makes them feel… valued.”
Snaith slowly sank to his haunches, till he was staring straight at the marker stick planted amid the roots. He could make no sense of its patterns, but then he was too dizzy with hunger to make much sense of anything else, either. He needed to eat, and he needed to rest. For a very long time.
“You open it,” he said to Theurig, indicating the pack, not caring if his tone was disrespectful.
“As you wish.”
While Theurig set about preparing them a meal of salted meats, fruit, and nuts, he talked incessantly, but Snaith didn’t miss the odd nervous glance into the trees.
“The current incumbent of the Skaltoop Clan is Shageye the Sly. The Weyd only knows where they come up with these names, but it’s all part of the effect. The nomenclature goes perfectly with the shrunken heads, the piercings, the fearsome cries of the warriors, who hunt solely at night. Branikdür really is a wondrous isle, don’t you think? Brimming with such diversity.”
“But why?” Snaith asked, hungrily eying the food Theurig seemed to be taking forever with. “Why aren’t the clans the same?” Or even the least bit similar?
“It’s how Hélum left us,” Theurig said. “With an Archmage and a cabal of sorcerers to govern the isle on their behalf.”
“And the High King,” Snaith said. He still smarted at the humiliation Theurig had caused him in front of Drulk Skanfok.
“Oh, that was something invented by the Archmages of old,” Theurig said, “when they started to enjoy their growing independence from the Empire. They retained the Hélumite plan of keeping the clans divided, as they were easier to manage that way, less inclined toward self-governance, but they needed some way to unite them, in case of invasion. You remember that business with the Vanndyr? Course you do. Your father would have told you about…”
Snaith dipped his head, not wanting Theurig to see the pain in his eyes. The anger.
“Forgive me,” Theurig said. “That was careless. Insensitive.”
With a deep breath and one of his mental affirmations, Snaith pushed his feelings to one side. He was the one who’d been careless. He couldn’t afford to give anything away. He needed to be calm. Unflappable. The same as he was during a fight. He looked up and nodded that no harm was done.
“But the High King,” he said, recalling what Theurig had taught them at the schoolhouse. “Why does he reign for only ten years?”
The sorcerer paused in his food preparation and gave Snaith a look of mock wonderment. “Why, so his ashes can fertilize the isle, encourage new crops.”
“The Corn King,” Snaith said. “That’s why they call him the Corn King.”
Theurig chuckled. “You are moving beyond the world of myths and superstition now, Snaith. When you were a boy, I fed you milk, but now you are a sorcerer in the making, you require the much stronger brew of cynicism. What do you suppose would happen were a High King to rule for a lifetime?”
“The clans would grow familiar with him?” Snaith guessed.
“Maybe even trust him,” Theurig said. “Over longer periods, favors can be sought, alliances hatched, secrets unmasked. Imagine how much a man in that position, so close to the Archmage and the workings of the Wakeful Isle, could learn. Imagine how dangerous that could make him, should he decide it was the right of kings to rule.”
Snaith looked down at the roots he was sitting among, struggling in his mind to bring order to a world that had grown mysterious, secretive, chaotic in the space of a few short days. How much more was there for him to learn? How deep did the deception go?
“Now, eat.”
He looked up to see Theurig standing over him with a wooden platter of food. The darting of the sorcerer’s eyes betrayed his continued unease.
As Theurig returned to the pack and began to wolf down his own food, Snaith found himself doing the same, mostly from ravenous hunger, but in part because Theurig’s nervousness was contagious. He’d devoured less than half of what was on his platter when an owl hooted, followed by the howl of a wolf.
With a start, Theurig emptied his platter onto the ground and stowed it back in the pack, motioning for Snaith to do the same.
“I thought you said they were night hunters,” Snaith said, handing Theurig his platter and waiting for him to fasten the pack.
“Must have gotten an early start,” Theurig said. “We’re probably all right. I’ve only ever known them to eat a sorcerer once, and I suspect it was a mistake.”
“Eat?”
Theurig coughed into his fist, grabbed his staff, and set off through the trees. Snaith hurried along behind, wincing at the pain in his feet and knees, cursing at the weight of the pack he dragged behind, which seemed hardly diminished by what they had eaten.
“Take your tunic off,” Theurig said. “They’ll know the Wyvern of Necras for a sorcerer’s mark. There are remnants of its cult all over this neck of the woods.”
When Snaith made hard work of trying to get out of his tunic, Theurig tsked and pulled a knife from his bag. He slit the tunic down the front and ripped it away. For an instant, he studied the tattoo he’d inked on Snaith’s chest with a cross between approval at his own handiwork and something Snaith couldn’t quite decipher. A hint of trepidation, perhaps. Or maybe an inkling of some dark calculation.
Then there came a fierce succe
ssion of howls that merged into a chilling, ululating cry, and Theurig was off through the trees faster than a man his age should have been able to run.
All Snaith’s pains were forgotten, along with the pack, as he sprinted to keep up, casting looks over his shoulder and half-expecting a horde of demons from the Nethers to come bearing down on him.
A GRISLY REMINDER
Tey sat naked on the throne of torture, staring at the equally naked corpse of Slyndon Grun now on the floor at her feet, scornful of his soft, womanish body, derisive of the flaccid maggot shriveled up beneath his gut. Blood from his eye spattered his cheek, and already it had started to congeal. His fat face had grown sallow, waxy, and in his beard she started to notice crumbs of food. He was a shell now, empty, devoid of the essence that gave him life. No more than decomposing flesh, soon to be feasted upon by worms, until nothing but crumbling bones remained.
She became dimly aware of the murmur of voices, the muffled thud of doors opening and closing throughout the sorcerer’s house: the victims from the cellar slowly returning to life. Temporary life. Meaningless. Pointless. A blink of some eternal eye.
“It’s not there.”—Hirsiga, standing in the doorway, flustered, as if she expected to be punished for her failure.
“Where have you looked?” Tey broke out of her reverie and switched her attention to the woman, studying her head to toe: the twin braids of her reddish-brown hair, the vacant stare, her unblemished flesh, shamelessly exposed save for the metal cups covering her breasts and the cloth hanging between her legs. Perfect. The best that meat and blood could muster. Before decay set in.
“The jars in his work room,” Hirsiga replied. “They are all labeled, but none of them mentions the rot.”
Not unblemished… Tey continued her assessment of Hirsiga’s flesh, only half listening to what was being said. Not her back, at any rate. “Turn around.”
“I’m sorry,” Hirsiga said in a dull, flat voice. “It’s my fault. I only have myself to blame.”
“What?” Tey pushed herself out of the throne and crossed to the doorway, bad leg scuffing the floor behind her.
“That I couldn’t find it,” Hirsiga said. “The cure.”
“Have you tried his books?”
“There are so many.”
Tey raised an eyebrow. Hirsiga dropped her chin to her chest and said, “As you wish.”
“Now, turn around,” Tey repeated.
Slowly, flinchingly, Hirsiga presented her back to Tey. The only sign of imperfection: the angry scars that made a chaotic mess out of her skin. There was no rhyme or reason to them. They were just the footprint of unbridled anger and cruelty.
“He did this?”
“I deserved it.”
“Face me again.”
Hirsiga turned around, this time meeting Tey’s eyes.
“You were apprenticed?” Tey asked.
Hirsiga nodded slowly.
“Then where is your deformity? You can handle a blade, work the fields.”
Hirsiga’s hand went to her tight, perfect belly.
“You were with child?”
Another nod.
“And you were not married?”
Moisture glistened in Hirsiga’s vacant eyes. “He took it out of me.”
“Slyndon Grun?”
“The elders asked him to. They said the Weyd was angry. That I had to atone.”
“By becoming his apprentice?” Though clearly the sorcerer had his own understanding of what that actually entailed.
“He did not tell them,” Hirsiga whispered, as if she were afraid of being overheard. “They stoned my brother for the deed. But it was him. He put it in me, and he took it out.”
“Slyndon Grun raped you?”
“It was my fault.”
Tey ripped herself away from Hirsiga and limped toward the corpse on the floor. Acid burned through her scars, and as she knelt on her good leg, letting the maimed one trail behind her, fire exploded in her womb. The vambrace on her forearm grew molten. Just seeing the pattern of its lines gave her an idea.
“He took something from you,” Tey said. “So I will take something from him. What do you think it should be? You choose.”
“A finger?” Hirsiga suggested, bemused.
“You surprise me.” It didn’t matter to Tey, so long as she could carve it. It was time she learned more about sorcery, without waiting for the Shedim to feed her scraps of knowledge. Her anger at what Slyndon Grun represented, at what he had done to her, the others from the cellar, and to Hirsiga would make a powerful trigger for the unleashing of her stored essence. And what better conduit than a design of scars etched into the sorcerer’s very own flesh? “Pass me some pincers.”
Hirsiga took down a rusted iron pair and handed them over, then stood back, watching, expressionless.
***
In the sorcerer’s work room there were floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with assorted vials and jars, boxes and packages, all labeled, all perfectly ordered and categorized. In among them, there were furs and skins, bundles of animal gut, dried like the bowstrings of the Malogoi; rodent skulls, triangular teeth with serrated edges, pinned insects in glass boxes, and furry molds growing in open dishes.
While Hirsiga was going through the books in the library—not just for a cure for the rot, but also for methods of preserving meat, or embalming, or some other way of ensuring that the finger Tey had taken from Slyndon Grun—his pinkie—remained immune to the forces of decay. It lay in a bowl of vinegar on the room’s lone workbench, which was dominated by an apparatus of glass tubes and beakers, stained green with some congealed residue.
Tey checked for herself that there really was no cure for the rot among the things on the shelves, but all she found were potions and powders, balms for healing, tinctures to ward off the vile; jars marked, “Persuasion”, “Arousal,” “Sleep,” “Truth Telling”, “Visionary,” and the like. Others were labeled “Desiccant,” “Preservative,” “Sulfur,” “Reagent,” and “Solvent.” There was “Water of Life,” “Royal Water,” “Strong Water,” “Balsam of Soot,” “Butter of Antimony,”—all manner of meaningless terms that may as well have been written in a different language.
If this was the work of a sorcerer, if this was what was needed in order to know the Weyd, she was out of her depth. How could she learn so much without a mentor? Had she made a terrible mistake?
“I shouldn’t have killed him,” she muttered. And then, as if she’d awoken from a nightmare, she realized exactly what it was she had done, and she began to shake.
[All this is quackery,] the Shedim said. [Years of learning, and for what? Tricks, petty influences, minor healings. Not real power, such as I have taught you. I have taken you from nothing to the heights of sorcery, and left out all the stages in between. Slyndon Grun, judging by the things he told you, was on the cusp of true knowledge only after years of study and experimentation, whereas you have it now. All else is a parody of the truth, a dim reflection.]
Before Tey could respond, Hirsiga entered the room, clutching a heavy book to her chest.
“Forgive me. Still nothing on the rot, but there are many books yet to go. I did find this, though. I hope it pleases you.”
She opened the book on the workbench, and Tey moved to her side to see.
“It’s his writing,” Hirsiga said, glancing pointedly at Slyndon Grun’s pickled finger.
Courtesy of Shageye the Sly, the header read. Cost: bodies. Two. Living. Nothing left to pay.
Below were handwritten instructions for the shrinking and preservation of human heads.
“Will it work?” Tey asked.
Hirsiga shrugged.
[You are wasting time,] the Shedim complained. It couldn’t disguise the revulsion in its voice, but that only made Tey want to proceed all the more.
It had taught her a secret, that was true, but it hadn’t taught her all secrets. And she needed to do this; needed something more than the sorcerer’s impermanent essence w
ithin her, waiting to be used up as fuel. She needed a lasting reminder of what he stood for, him and Khunt Moonshine and all their kind. She needed a symbol to focus her hatred, a totem to add to the trap that was her scars. And anything that had the Shedim writhing with distaste had to be a good thing, as far as she was concerned. Any small advantage. Anything that might give her the edge when the time came. Because the time would come when she’d be rid of it, either when she gave it the freedom it wanted, or some other way.
For an instant, her guts cramped with dread at the thought the Shedim might stay inside her for good, that it was part of her now, or worse, a parasite, feeding on her as much as she had fed on Slyndon Grun to fill her well. She tried to make saliva, so she could speak. One step at a time, she reminded herself. First things first.
“Keep searching,” Tey said to Hirsiga, with a nod toward the door. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt she owed it to Snaith not only to find a cure for his parents, but to prove it was Theurig who had afflicted them.
As the door closed behind Hirsiga, Tey skimmed through the instructions on the page. A finger was a far cry from a head, but the principles were the same. And in among the sorcerer’s stored ingredients, she was certain she would find all she needed.
***
It was a complex process, but Tey was patient, and she was precise, just as she had been when cutting her flesh each time Khunt Moonshine had drained her. She opted for both the desiccant and the heat of a spiced brazier that Hirsiga fetched for her in between trips to the library. How long she worked was a mystery. Someone else might have measured the time by their hunger, but that had ceased to be a reliable gauge for Tey as far back as she could remember. Her stomach’s grumbling had long since receded into vain pleas in the form of ever-diminishing prickles of discomfort, and sporadic stabs and twists that increasingly lost their conviction. But she guessed it must have been hours, since the brazier’s coals had turned to grey ash, which she rubbed into Slyndon Grun’s shrunken and dried finger. She’d replaced the fat and blood with sawdust. Here and there, the skin was charred from where it had hung above the flames on a thread of animal gut.