“And to you guys, everything’s a ten-year-old station wagon,” I surmised.
“Not everything, but…” He trailed off, shrugging.
“So why all this?” I asked, gesturing toward our opulent surroundings. “Why outfit this place as the lap of luxury if you don’t care about appearances?”
Rune’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “You don’t like it?”
“I think it’s great,” I replied. “It’s actually…”
My words came to a halt and I frowned as a new thought occurred to me, based on the discussion we’d just had.
“Wait a minute,” I muttered, glancing around at our lavish accommodations. “Is all of this for my benefit?”
Rune gave a somewhat hesitant nod. “Since I asked for your help, I thought it only fitting that I put you up in style.”
“I appreciate it, but it wasn’t necessary.”
“Consider it a small token of my esteem,” Rune said. “Anyway, moving on to more important issues.” He pointed toward a wooden door set in a wall on one side of the room and declared, “My quarters.” He pointed to the opposite wall that was home to a similar door. “Your quarters. Everything else can be considered a common area.”
“Works for me,” I said, flopping down onto a plush couch. “Now, can you give me a little more detail about what’s going on here?”
Rune took a seat in an easy chair across from me. “It’s just as I said. An Incarnate was murdered.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
A look of concern settled on my companion’s face. “We’re not sure.”
I blinked in surprise. “What do you mean you’re not sure?”
“Exactly what I said. We’re not sure what happened to her.”
“Meaning you’re not sure how she died.”
“Correct.”
“Well, what kind of condition was the body in?”
Rune pursed his lips, seeming to concentrate for a moment before responding. “There’s no real way to answer that.”
“Sure there is,” I insisted. “If a body was shot, it has bullet holes. If it was stabbed, it has knife wounds. Basically, the condition of the body can tell you what happened to it. You can pick that up from any detective show.”
“Agreed,” Rune murmured. “The problem is, there wasn’t a body.”
I frowned. “No body?”
“Nope,” Rune said.
“So how do you know she’s dead?” I asked.
“Well, aside from being Incarnates and having the ability to innately sense it, there’s also the fact that her effigy crumbled.”
“Her effigy?” I repeated with a frown — and then remembered. “Oh — the giant statues.”
“Yeah,” Rune said. “It basically disintegrated.”
“So you’re connected,” I concluded. “You and your effigy.”
Rune nodded. “As I mentioned before, it’s a manifestation of the bulk of my power. The part of me that you’re seeing right now represents my core — the essence of my being.”
“So this part of you that I’m talking to is like the life spark of Rune the Incarnate.”
He laughed. “Something like that, although it’s probably easier to think of the ‘me’ in here as the brain and the effigy as the body.”
“But while you’re in here, you’re vulnerable,” I noted, remembering what Rune had said earlier. “And if you kill the brain…”
I didn’t finish, but Rune, sobering instantly, knew exactly where my thoughts had been headed.
“If you kill the brain,” he echoed, “the body will die.”
“Okay, so what’s my role in all this?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Rune asked in surprise. “You’re here to find the murderer.”
Chapter 4
“Hold on,” I almost shouted, sitting up. “I’m not a detective. Solving murders isn’t what I do.”
“Sure it is,” Rune countered. “How many times have you had to figure out what villain was killing people and find a way to stop him?”
I frowned. “That’s not quite the same thing.”
“I don’t see a distinction. Murder is murder, whether it’s done by a normal person, a supervillain, or an Incarnate.”
“Well, that sort of begs the question: how do you kill one of you guys?”
“Not easily, that’s for sure,” Rune stated, clearly concentrating on the question. “Even without most of our sivrrut.”
“Sivrrut?” I repeated, unsure what he was talking about.
“It’s a term used to describe the power of an Incarnate,” he explained. “Now, with respect to how we can be killed, the only thing absolutely certain is that only another Incarnate could do it.”
“So one of you is a killer.”
“So it would seem.”
“I guess now’s a time to ask a question I hadn’t focused on before,” I said. “Exactly how many of you guys are there?”
Rune appeared to reflect for a moment. “I’m not sure how to answer that.”
I gave him a skeptical look. “Is there something tricky about the question?”
“Our numbers aren’t set. That said, there’s never more than a score of us, and at the moment we number about a dozen. But a new Incarnate can arise at any time.”
“Well, how does someone become an Incarnate?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Rune declared, almost apologetically.
“Oh, come on,” I moaned in exasperation. “You’ve got to know the answer to that one. You’re an Incarnate yourself.”
“It’s not that I don’t know,” Rune explained. “It’s that I’m forbidden to tell you.”
I gave him a look of incomprehension, which led him to expound.
“It’s a bit like the California gold rush,” he said, “when people went completely bananas trying to strike it rich. Likewise, if you show them the path to almost limitless power, they’ll do unthinkable things and take insane risks to obtain it.”
I nodded in understanding. During the California gold rush — actually, just about every gold rush in history — people seemed to lose their minds at the thought of attaining a little wealth. They abandoned logic and reason (as well as their jobs and families) in hopes of getting rich, and did everything from claim jumping to murder in order to get what they wanted. What would they do if the nigh-limitless power of an Incarnate was dangled in front of them?
“Okay,” I said. “I get it. People will do almost anything for wealth and power, and if they knew how to become an Incarnate, you’d have billions clawing each other’s eyes out for the chance.”
“Pretty much,” Rune admitted, “which is why we don’t tell people how to become one.”
“But you also said that an Incarnate can ‘arise.’ That implies that it’s something that can happen” — I spent a moment searching for the right word — “what, naturally?”
“Something like that. Occasionally a new force or power comes into being, and some person becomes the physical manifestation of it — an Incarnate.”
I spent a moment letting his words roll around in my brain. Rune, watching me ponder and clearly wanting me to fully grasp the concept, took the opportunity to help me out with an example.
“Think about when mankind first split the atom,” he said. “All of a sudden you had nuclear power — this new force that hadn’t existed before. And then, in very short order, you had to appoint a department or person to be in charge of it, control it, oversee it, etcetera. Likewise, some new puissance might herald the advent of a new Incarnate.”
I nodded. “All right, that puts it in terms I can grasp a little easier.”
“Great,” Rune said. “But I think all this talk of how someone becomes an Incarnate is getting us sidetracked.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “You don’t think that how a person becomes an Incarnate might have a bearing on how he can be killed?”
He seemed to dwell on the question for a moment, and then stated, “Fair
enough. More importantly, your observation highlights why we need your help.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? How so?”
“Frankly speaking, we have terrible detective skills.”
I laughed. “I would think that, with the power Incarnates wield, you people would be the best detectives in the universe.” I put my forefingers and thumbs together, then spread them out like a banner unfurling as I pretended to read a headline, stating, “Rune the Incarnate, Private Eye. No Crime Unsolved.”
“Hilarious,” Rune deadpanned. “In truth, however, you’re not that far off-base. Under most circumstances, if an Incarnate wanted to know what had happened in a particular instance, we could just read the minds of those involved, go back in time and look at the incident, or something else along those lines. We’ve basically never needed to be good at being gumshoes, because determining the truth in any particular scenario has never been problematic.”
“So, what’s the problem with doing any of that stuff now?” I asked. “Reading minds, for instance.”
“For one thing, it’s impossible to read the mind of an Incarnate unless they allow it,” Rune replied. “And even if they do, you can’t be sure that what they’re allowing you to observe is what really happened.”
I nodded as this information sank in. From past experience with Rune, I knew that Incarnates could warp reality. That being the case, they could create fake memories without breaking a sweat.
“So, in essence, you read each other’s minds and everyone had an alibi.”
“Uh…” Rune droned. “Not exactly.”
I gave him a look that I was sure conveyed my bewilderment, but before I could ask him to explain himself, Rune sat up and cocked his head to the side.
“Let’s finish this later,” he said, getting to his feet. “We have company.”
Following my companion’s lead, I stood up and turned to the doors, which were just starting to open, and in walked a man who — much to my surprise — was as much a spectacle as Rune.
Chapter 5
The man who entered our suite appeared to be young — maybe in his mid-twenties — with long brown hair that was braided and hung down his back. Maybe an inch shorter than my six-foot height, he had comely features and an easygoing smile. However, that was where anything close to “normal” in terms of appearance ended.
For starters, the newcomer — from head to foot — seemed to be covered in water. That’s not to say that he was soaked, like someone who’d gotten caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella (although to a certain extent that appeared to be the case). It was more the fact that water seemed to run all over his body, starting at the crown of his head and cascading down, with small undulations flowing across his skin, like ripples on a fountain wall.
In addition, even his clothes appeared to be made of water. Or rather, to be more exact, I garnered the impression that he was clothed with water. From his shoulders to his ankles, he was seemingly “dressed” in liquid that approximated the shape of a full-length overcoat (and which was also, thankfully, murky and therefore visually impenetrable to the naked eye). The surface of his attire appeared to roil with small breakers and swells that would surge and crest frothily on a continual basis. Taken altogether, it was if he had somehow managed to drape himself in a miniature ocean.
Finally, as one might expect, water naturally pooled beneath him as he walked. (And I noticed that, like his clothes, he wore sandals that appeared to be made of water as well.) However, rather than leave a trail like someone traipsing through a house after coming inside from a downpour, the liquid followed him around, almost like it were his shadow, leaving the floor dry in its wake.
Without being told, I inherently sensed that our visitor was an Incarnate. Smiling, he walked toward my companion.
“Rune,” the man said in greeting.
At the same time, something like a deluge came out of nowhere, soaking Rune to the skin. It was as if someone had held an invisible bucket of water over his head and then dumped it on him. (Oddly enough, nothing besides Rune got wet.)
“Really, Mariner?” Rune muttered as the new arrival — Mariner — laughed heartily.
“In case you forgot, I owed you from last time,” Mariner said with a grin. “Now we’re even.”
Mariner made a gesture with his hand, and Rune was immediately dry again, all traces of water gone as if they’d never existed.
“Better?” Mariner asked.
“I suppose,” Rune answered. “Although I would have been just as happy never to have been wet at all.”
Ignoring him, Mariner glanced at me, then back at my companion. “Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?”
“Sure,” Rune replied. “Jim, this is Mariner. Mariner, Jim.”
Mariner extended a hand in my direction and I instinctively reached for it, momentarily forgetting that he was literally covered with water. As a result, I expected a cold and clammy handshake. Much to my surprise, the hand I shook was dry, with the liquid covering him having apparently receded just before we made contact.
I looked him in the eye as we shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, and noticed something that took me almost completely by surprise. The water flowing down from his crown didn’t just cascade across his skin, like his forehead, brow, and eyelids. It actually ran over his eyeballs, as well — something that I initially found unsettling.
However, if I reacted out of the ordinary in any way, Mariner didn’t seem to notice. He released my hand and took a seat at the end of the couch, which immediately became soaked. I took a seat at the opposite end, thankful that the water clinging to our guest didn’t spread far enough across to reach me. Rune, following suit, sat back down in the chair he’d previously occupied.
“Well, they told me you had a laamuffal,” Mariner began, glancing at me, “so I just had to see for myself.”
I frowned upon hearing that weird term obviously applied to me again, but didn’t say anything.
“And your task?” Mariner continued.
Rune simply gestured toward me, causing our visitor to look in my direction again, although this time his gaze lingered a little longer.
“Seems young,” Mariner noted after a few seconds, “although I do sense aptitude.”
“It was short notice,” Rune declared. “I had to work with what was available.”
“Perhaps he could speak with Sayo while we converse?” Mariner suggested. As he spoke, he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, and for the first time I realized that there was a fourth person in the room. (Apparently I had been so preoccupied with Mariner’s unique appearance that I hadn’t even noticed.)
It was a young woman whom I judged to be just a few years older than me — maybe nineteen or twenty — and dressed in what seemed to be a cheongsam coat with a pair of leggings underneath. Like Mariner, she had her hair braided (although hers was done in triplicate, with three braids hanging down on each side of her head).
The young woman, Sayo (who was standing a few feet behind Mariner), turned to me and gave a slight bow of her head. I glanced at Rune, who gave me a subtle nod. Taking that as my cue, I stood up and walked toward her.
“Hi,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Jim.”
She reached out and took my hand, firmly shaking it once while at the same time executing a slight bow. “A pleasure to meet you, Jim. I’m Sayo. Shall we retire to your quarters?”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “My quarters?”
“Yes,” she replied. “The Incarnates wish to speak privately, and the Inscrutable’s chambers” — she gestured toward the door leading to Rune’s quarters — “are clearly off-limits. That leaves your room.”
I frowned at her use of the term “inscrutable,” not quite knowing what to make of it. However, before I could question her about it, she turned and began walking toward the door Rune had identified as being the entrance to my quarters.
Chapter 6
The space Rune had designated for my personal use turn
ed out to be on par with a large, one-bedroom apartment. Upon entering with Sayo, I closed the door behind us, and then took a quick look around.
The place opened up into a cozy sitting room that was seemingly the center of the apartment. From there, I could make out a kitchen and dining area, and through an open door set off to the side I could see the foot of a bed, marking that area as the bedroom.
Without waiting for an invitation, Sayo took a seat in a nearby lounge chair. I sat down at the end of a love seat diagonal to her.
“So, you are Rune’s laamuffal,” she said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure what that word even means.”
“Then allow me to explain,” Sayo stated, beaming. “A laamuffal assists an Incarnate in any way possible, whether that be obtaining items for his use, carrying out his orders, or simply making sure the Incarnate is at all times comfortable.”
“Kind of like a servant,” I surmised with a frown.
She nodded. “Serving a Chomarsus is a privilege, and I feel honored to be a laamuffal, just as you should be honored to serve Rune in that same capacity.”
At that moment, I had my own thoughts about being Rune’s servant, but it was nothing that could be said in polite society. Deciding to table the laamuffal topic for the moment, I instead changed the subject.
“What do you know about the Incarnate who was killed?” I asked.
She gave me an inquisitive look. “You mean Gamma?”
“Uh…I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think anyone’s told me her name. I just know she was murdered.”
“Then yes, you’re referring to Gamma,” Sayo confirmed. “As to your question, I knew her by virtue of my role as Mariner’s laamuffal, but we didn’t socialize.”
“What was she like?”
Sayo gave me a blank stare. “She was an Incarnate,” she said flatly after a moment, as if that explained everything.
“But what was she like?” I asked again. “Mean? Nice? Friendly? Aloof? What?”
Sayo looked down. “It’s not for me to comment on the disposition of a Chomarsus.”
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