Tales of the Emerald Serpent (Ghosts of Taux)

by Scott Taylor

  “Correct. It is at the far west end of the Gold Jaguar District, near the old temples.”

  Kryranen let her breath out in a hiss of dismay. Jelith clapped a hand to his eyes. He said, “I think I see where this is going, madam.” And he didn’t wish to. Only the very poorest of Taux’s residents could be found within the walls of the old temples because of the haunting.

  Mother Vatel nodded. “When our family claimed this house, we were one of the least important traders in the port. Securing this house, at the edge of what was to become the Gold Jaguar District, allowed us access to more important trading contracts. We ignored its unsavory antecedents, and the disturbances were no worse than what is common is much of Taux. But while the façade of the house is impressive, the interior was small for the area, with no impressive assembly rooms. We could not hold the entertainments important to gather attention and favor with the other wealthy families. A few months ago it came to my son’s attention that there was a closed-off room behind this house, a large, elegant chamber. He said he had heard stories that the former owners had had it walled off. So he had workmen break through the wall at the back of this house to open it again.” Her jaw hardened. “That was when the spirit began to attack us in earnest.”

  Grim, Kryranen said, “This chamber extends across the border. You think that was why it was walled off in the first place.”

  The old woman sat back. “You understand.”

  “Only too well,” Jelith said. He controlled the urge to say something more sarcastic. Only a spoiled fool could think this large comfortable house somehow inadequate, and look what the Vatel’s’ greed had led to. “But I have a question for the young master.”

  Vatel turned, reluctantly, sulky guilt writ clearly on his features.

  Jelith said, “How did you know the chamber was there, behind your house?”

  Vatel demanded. “What do you mean?”

  “Did someone speak to you of it?” Jelith asked. Mother Vatel was frowning, but he suspected she was entirely on his and Kryranen’s side in this matter. “You have no affinity of Earth. I would say you were low Fire, as is the rest of your family. Did a Kin, or some Jai-Ruk with a greater degree of Earth tell you of it?” The young man’s expression showed increasing confusion, and Jelith felt the pit of his stomach turn hollow. He had suspected this, but the confirmation was more frightening than he had supposed. “How did you know it was there?”

  “I don’t... I don’t know.”

  Mother Vatel obviously followed his reasoning, for her expression betrayed consternation now more than annoyance. She said, “You believe something...influenced him, from behind the wall.”

  Kryranen answered her, “It – whatever it is – may have used the Human spirit remaining here with the body as a conduit. It may have been working for years towards this.”

  Jelith added, “That chamber may have never been part of this house at all. It may be part of a temple, buried among the other buildings of the quarter, walled-off for some ritual purpose by the original inhabitants of Taux.”

  Everyone stared at them in horror. Mother Vatel said, “What is your advice?”

  Jelith said, “Leave this house for the night, and summon the stonemasons immediately.”

  Vatel protested, dragged his heels, and otherwise resisted, but his mother carried the day. She was old enough to have heard firsthand the tales of the newcomers who had tried to take Taux’s temples for their own homes, and what had happened to them. The idea that her son’s mind had been compromised by a spirit’s influence firmed her resolve to iron.

  As the family members and servants scrambled to decamp for the night, Jelith wrote down a direction for her. “Send a servant to these stonemasons. Tell them Jelith said it is an emergency and they will understand, and come.”

  While they were speaking, the lamps in the room fluctuated all at once, the flames shrinking away nearly to nothing, then blossoming again as one. It sped everyone on their way.

  Before leaving, Vatel rallied long enough to order the older servant who had let them in and three much younger, sturdier men to arm themselves and stay to guard the house, in case Jelith and Kryranen decided to loot the place in the family’s absence. “I wouldn’t touch a thing from this demon-ridden place,” Kryranen muttered to Jelith.

  “I hope they keep their coins elsewhere,” he told her.

  Once the family was gone and the wary servants posted in the front entrance, Jelith and Kryranen held a brief consultation.

  Kryranen said, “So we have to find the corpse that started it all, wherever it is, or sealing off the temple chamber won’t work.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So where is it?”

  Jelith had thought about this, while everyone was coming and going. “If one wishes to hide a murdered body, presumably one doesn’t put it in a wall where one can stare at the spot for years afterward.”

  “So not in one of the family rooms.” Kryranen tapped her chin. “It must be in one of the service areas. Not the kitchen; kitchens are seldom empty long, and one presumes the guilty party didn’t want an audience while hiding the woman’s body.”

  “A chamber used for storage.” Jelith looked around thoughtfully. “We need to find the service rooms.”

  There were several chambers below street level, reached by a stairway down from the kitchens, situated in the court in back of the house. They took lamps from the kitchen to light the cool darkness, and as they went down the stairs the light shone on a simple stone-walled room, with an archway leading into another, and another. The slight separation from the stone and walls of the main house explained why Jelith had felt no taint of organic rot there. But apparently the spirit could jump the gap with ease.

  In the second room, Jelith found a lighter patch in the smooth gray-brown stone. It looked as if a section of the wall had been knocked away and replaced. The patch was clumsily, and perhaps hastily, wrought. “This is not Tolimic masonry.” He placed his hand on it.

  He sensed it immediately, a faint echo of rot in the stones and the mortar between them. He pushed a little deeper and found the narrow vault just on the other side of the layer of stones. It was a very small vault, barely big enough for even a small Human body. Jelith just hoped the woman been dead when shoved into the space. “Here,” he said, his voice low with concentration. “We dig here.”

  He began to withdraw his senses. And something caught hold of him, like a hand wrapping around his wrist. “Kryranen,” he said, only that, but the change in tone was enough.

  She grabbed his free arm to yank him away from the wall, but a pressure pushed him forward into the stone. He felt his Element drawn out of him and his body followed. “Jelith!” the Jai-Ruk shouted, an echo down through the ages like the voices of the long-dead Tolem. She wrenched at him with all her considerable strength, but he still sank into the wall.

  Jelith tasted stone, mortar, dust, old death, horror, and then the blood-drenched bedrock of the underground. He staggered free, gasped for air, and found himself in a wide corridor of polished onyx, inlaid with bands of blood red quartz. There were no lamps, but light seeped from the stone. An instant later, something slammed into him from behind. He turned and found himself staring up at Kryranen.

  She staggered, caught him by the shoulder to steady herself. “That was unexpected,” she gasped. “Are we on the other side of the wall?”

  Jelith turned, eyeing the strange corridor, the stranger light. “I fear not.” He hadn’t sensed this space from the other side. This was something of the otherworld, something the spirits had created.

  “I suppose that was to be expected. I…“ Her grip on his shoulder tightened, and she said, “We could ask them.”

  Jelith looked behind him, and his heart seized.

  Figures moved down the corridor toward them. They seemed Human, though their faces and forms were too shadowy to discern. Their motion forward was measured and as inevitable as the tide. “This...is not good,” Jelith said unde
r his breath.

  “Astute observation,” Kryranen muttered. She raised her voice to say, “We mean no harm. We’ve told the householder to seal off the wall of your temple and leave it undisturbed—”

  The figures morphed out of human form and into looming, terrible shapes that Jelith’s eyes couldn’t define. In a mass, the shadow creatures rushed forward.

  They didn’t care for that, Jelith thought as he fell back with Kryranen, drawing his sword. Then the darkness swarmed them and there was no time to think.

  The creatures were just solid enough to land blows, but not much affected by Jelith and Kryranen’s swords. Jelith ducked, blocked, and swung, dodged attempts to seize his throat, his limbs, to claw at his eyes, all while trying to keep Kryranen in sight. If they were separated... well, he didn’t want to contemplate it.

  Then the diminutive Kin spotted living color and movement among the shadow-shapes. He caught two glimpses before he managed to duck another a blow aimed at his head and get a better look. Jelith boggled at the strange sight. It was a Human woman, dancing wildly among the shadows. She was light-skinned and light-haired, dressed in torn silk draped around her like a... Shroud, Jelith realized. It’s her.

  Acting on impulse, he darted forward and snatched her around the waist. She was as solid as the shadows, and struggled and pounded at him. He had lost his bearings in the melee and shouted desperately, “Kryranen, wall!” hoping she would understand.

  A large warm body struck him like a runaway cart. It caught hold of his shoulders and slammed him into the onyx stone. Jelith drew on every ounce of his Element and pushed forward into the wall.

  For an instant he thought it wouldn’t work. The stone felt as impenetrable as wood. Then it melted around him. He felt the drag of Kryranen’s body and of the fighting revenant, then Kryranen started to slip away. In panic, he gripped her hand where it rested on his shoulder and shoved forward.

  A moment later he slammed into a floor. Kryranen landed on top of him with a loud “oof!” and rolled away. Dazed, Jelith sat up.

  They were back in the underground storage chamber. On the wall before them was a roughly Jelith-sized scar, chunks of mortar and rock scattered around it. There was nothing on the other side of the wall except bedrock. Jelith looked for the revenant, then realized he sat in the middle of a pile of scattered bones and rotted cloth, all that was left of her. He looked at Kryranen, who was covered with rock dust, her clothes stained with sweat, but otherwise seemed none the worse for wear. Breathing hard, she said, “I think our work here is done.”

  “I concur. Let us wait for our employers outside.”

  They took a table cover from the pantry and used it to carefully and quickly collect every scrap of bone, then went outside to sit on a bench in the courtyard and wait for the stonemasons. Jelith chose a wooden bench, just for safety’s sake, and they rested their feet on the sparse grass.

  “I suppose the Taux spirits took advantage of her,” Kryranen said. “I still would have liked to speak to her.”

  “I don’t know. She looked as if she was enjoying herself. She might not have been forthcoming.” It was disappointing, but Jelith was not willing to trade their lives for answers.

  Kryranen hesitated. “So...that temple corridor. It was not behind the wall, was it?”

  “No.”

  “If we went into that temple – Saints help us – and searched, we would find nothing like that.”

  “Yes.”

  “So where were we?” She frowned. “Did we imagine it, and actually only fought shadows in the cellar until you pulled the girl’s bones from the wall?”

  “If it makes you feel better.”

  “It does not,” she said frankly.

  He shook his head. “We search a dangerous place, for dangerous things. I think our future holds much worse, if we continue on our course.” It was his turn to hesitate. “Was it perhaps... Do you wish to stop our work?”

  She sighed. “No. Sometimes I wish I could, but...perhaps we are possessed, or influenced, like Vatel.”

  It was not a comforting thought, there in the dark. “Perhaps we are just mad,” Jelith said hopefully.

  Kryranen smiled at him. “At least we are good company.”

  Illustration by Jeff Laubenstein

  WATER REMEMBERS

  Julie E. Czerneda

  Life returned to Taux the way it had first come, from the sea. Those who’d cautiously, then eagerly, resettled the vacant city found themselves welcomed by a port of such cunning construction that fifty years without tending had done no appreciable damage. The great seawalls and the hand-forged islands they protected remained intact despite the waves and the wicked storms that raged down this coast at season’s turn.

  The bay so sheltered was kept fresh, not by the twice-daily rise and fall of the tides beyond its mouth, but by the Wizards at its heart. Their Star Tower thrust from the depths, its structure impossibly tall and narrow, with windows like slanted eyes that glowed with an uncanny blue light. The top was shrouded in mist not even the summer sun could disperse, the base circled by an implacable current that made it impossible for ship or swimmer to approach, preserving the isolation of those who’d withdrawn from the world.

  Which suited everyone else.

  The elegant stone quay ringing the city’s edge was intact, but Taux’s wharves were another matter. The outthrust piers swayed against one another like cheerful drunks, their barnacled bases rotten to the core, while unguarded planks were ripped up and whisked away to build shelters. Taux’s captains took what timber remained to build sturdy berths for their ships, extorting any fees they chose from those who came after.

  For in Taux, there was no new wood to be had, or stone.

  But there was always... opportunity.

  Wizard’s Fog, they called it, when those in the Star Tower loosed their spite to bother honest folk. The thick, cloying mist writhed through streets and alleyways, dampening sound and encouraging the Nightmen’s cutpurses. It coiled like a great, eyeless snake in the bay, trapping ships and hiding all but the tip of one’s nose.

  Raising his mask, Hunhau sniffed reluctantly. The reek of flowers to the left. A lingering stench of cold ash to the right. The bite of the open sea like a beacon ahead. He wasn’t lost. Not yet, anyway.

  Before the smells overwhelmed him, making his eyes fill with tears, he replaced the mask, its plugs snug in his nostrils. He shuffled along, feet bare to feel the stone, and squinted through the eye holes, for what good it could do. Lamplight couldn’t penetrate a wizardly mist and the sun had yet to rise above the horizon. Without his nose, he’d walk off the quay into the bay or, more likely, into a wall.

  Of course, without his nose, he’d be in the Black Gate District, home in bed like everyone else. Everyone honest, he amended.

  Hunhau took firm hold of the straps that held the deep woven basket to his shoulders. He wasn’t, he reminded himself, going to miss this chance. Yesterday’s breeze had found him in his shop and trickled through the wads he habitually shoved up his nose while working. His weak affinity for air was usually a nuisance, bringing what he didn’t want to his too-large and overly sensitive nose, but such a breeze, redolent of a distant shore, meant something worth the effort on today’s tide ... if he got to it first.

  His toe struck an unexpected edge and Hunhau stopped to pull up his mask again. No need to inhale. The fetid odour of damp wool climbed up his nose, coupled with bat urine. He’d reached the stone bridge from the mainland portion of Taux to the Moon’s Arm, the east-most island that sheltered the bay. This was the Waynside Bridge, twin to the Baymourn on the far side of the bay. He hurriedly replaced the mask and went on as quickly as he dared. The Jai-Ruk dockworkers who chose to sleep in hammocks under the bridge were not the pleasant sort. Not at all.

  Not far now. Hunhau’s outstretched fingers found the rail, cold and slick with dew. Moving with renewed confidence, he followed its downward curve until another stubbed toe painfully marked the end of
the bridge. He was on the island, meaning the gap in the rail should be … here.

  He made his way down the tilted rubble of what had once been steps, following the familiar path. Before he reached the bottom, the mist began to thin, pierced by the faintest light. Sunrise.

  He was late. The tide would come in soon, to steal back what it had brought. Worse, with the failing of the mist, others would come. He jumped from stone to damp sand and caught his balance.

  Hunhau had discovered where to look years ago. Clean breezes from the open sea pushed all manner of flotsam and jetsam shorewards, to be stranded by the receding tide along this stretch of sand.

  The others, wasteful wretches, sought the driftwood to burn. He sought the smooth wood, those pieces with shapes and whorls carved deep and wild to become masks.

  Masks were always in demand, though only the elite of Taux could afford those of glorious imported jadeite, with obsidian eyes and rare plumes. Fewer still had the price -- or were willing to pay it -- for a mask of magical potency, bespelled to lure or deflect a gaze, to make the wearer appear otherwise, or to call luck to one’s side like a dog.

  Hunhau chuckled to himself. He’d yet to see a mask do more than hide a face. Yum Caax, his old master, had taught him masks were works of art, not magic, insisting what mattered was the craft, not the tricks. The craft was hard enough. Truth be told, Hunhau wasn’t a very good maskmaker. Upon the old man’s passing, he’d dutifully made Yum Caax’s death mask then set up his own, more modest, shop. His masks were of wood, and he served a clientele of servants, itinerants, and the like, those happy to afford any mask at all. Their needs were straightforward: masks for celebration, masks to honour their dead. So long as the sea gave him wood, he made a fair profit.

  So long as he refused those seeking something more than a mask, he stayed out of trouble. For Yum Caax had been right. The only magic a Taux maskmaker possessed was the ability to convince a customer to believe what a mask could do. When results inevitably failed that belief, it was that foolish maskmaker who’d pay, unless he or she ran far and fast enough.