Etherwalker

by Cameron Dayton

  North. Master Gershom said I should go north. To Tenocht.

  His legs moved in a slow rhythm through the undergrowth, only losing syncopation to jump over a fallen log or sidestep a game trail. The litania eteria spilled silently from his cracked lips over and over as he waded through the morning mist. After a few hours of walking, the forest began to thin, and Enoch found it exhausting to keep up the stealthy tree-to-tree path he had been following. With every snap of a twig he imagined a horde of clicking coldmen descending on him from behind, but in the end he decided that if they were still on his scent after all the rain, then he would be caught soon enough anyway.

  With a sigh of resolution, he stepped from the wet shade of the trees and onto the dirt road which he had been paralleling for hours. To the south, the road disappeared into the gloomy maw of the woods. Straining his eyes to the north, Enoch could see where the woods finally gave way. The land sloped steadily downwards from the green-laced feet of the snowcapped mountains to a broad plain. Large boulders were scattered across the flat expanse like grain tossed for enormous hens, and Enoch could barely make out what seemed to be a river transecting the plain from east to west.

  He stood in wonder, almost in confusion. Never in his life had he seen so much flat, treeless land. Fifty shepherds could lose themselves for years in such a place, flocks and all. Enoch experienced a tiny thrill of discovery at the sight, a welcome feeling after so much numbness.

  The pensa spada may have kept the grief at bay, but the resulting void had soaked through his entire being. Now Enoch experienced a detached hunger for feeling—any feeling that could make him less empty. That this tiny ray of sensation had been able to pierce the cloud which surrounded him gave Enoch hope. Holding tightly to that mote with whatever strength he had left, Enoch took a timid step. Then another. With growing confidence, he walked down the road, dark eyes quick and wary of this strange new world.

  As the midday sun burnt through the gray thatching of clouds, Enoch began to realize that the distant plain was much further away than it seemed. He walked for several hours, occasionally stopping to drink from the common flortasse blossoms. The drip, drip of rainwater from the surrounding trees grew fainter, eventually replaced by the singing of morning birds as they fluttered overhead looking for food.

  Stomach growling in response, Enoch pulled the sling from his vest and decided that if he wasn’t going to die any time soon, he might as well find something to eat. He was just stepping from the road when he heard voices coming around the bend behind him.

  Images of coldmen fresh in his mind, he dove into the nearest thicket just as the party came into view. He landed with the hilt of the short sword digging into his shoulder, but he held in the gasp of pain. Wet foliage dripped icy rivulets of water down his back, and Enoch shivered. Peering between the leaves, he could spy on the group without being seen. They were human, he noticed with a sigh of relief, but something about them stopped him short.

  Two of the men rode mangy muridons. Enoch remembered having seen a muridon years ago belonging to a dye merchant on his way through Rewn’s Fork. At first he had thought it a gigantic nerwolf, for indeed the creature shared the same black eyes, chisel teeth, and naked, scaly tail as its feral cousin. But the muridon was a taller, more muscular breed that had been tamed for riding. The two in this caravan were larger than the one Enoch remembered, and their coats were patchy and crusted with mud. Their riders were no cleaner. They clutched at notched swords and squinted dark eyes as they scanned the road ahead.

  Enoch pulled back into the deep shadow of the underbrush as they passed, cringing as another barrage of chill droplets wound down his back.

  Some of the other men in the party wore chains around their necks and wrists. They were pulling some sort of wagon. In contrast to the riders, these men held no savagery in their eyes. They smelled of filth and sweat, and the tattered clothes which stuck to their damp forms could not hide the myriad scars underneath. Enoch blinked at the chains. He had never seen slaves before.

  The wagon turned out to be a sturdy wheeled cage that dug trenches into the muddy trail as it rolled past. There was a canvas tarp tied over the top of it, but from his low vantage point, Enoch could see upwards into the shadowy recess. A large shape, gray among the shadows, was huddled in one corner. As Enoch watched, two fiery yellow eyes blazed out of the darkness, staring directly into his. Stifling a yell, he pulled farther back into the bush, praying that the mounted soldiers hadn’t heard him. After a few endless seconds, the party had moved on, leaving nothing but two wide slashes in the mud, stippled with footprints and a waning stink of unwashed men.

  Enoch waited for a couple of minutes to be sure that they were gone, and then stepped out onto the road again.

  What was that thing in the cage?

  He shivered, then shook off the chill and began walking again. He had read tales of the great heroes before the Schism and knew the journeys of Medrano, Galicia, and Armstrong by heart. Their trials had always seemed so much . . . brighter.

  Is this what adventure is like? Fear and wet feet and unanswered questions?

  It wasn’t until the sun was fully overhead that his grumbling stomach reminded him that it still had to be attended to. After a few minutes of searching, Enoch discovered some straggly cress plants growing just off to the side of the road, and the hoarse calls of a red jay led him to a nest of speckled eggs which, while raw, seemed to taste better than anything he had ever eaten. He chewed on the cress as he walked, curious about what lay ahead.

  By evening, the trail had emerged completely from the woods and now followed a fairly straight course through the boulder-strewn steppe. A fiery sunset painted everything with molten hues, and long shadows stretched out from the gigantic rocks strewn across the landscape. Enoch shivered as he walked through the dark lee of one such monolith. Night would come soon, he realized, and he would have little protection here.

  He began to search for some sort of shelter as the shadows grew longer across the plain. Enoch knew how to make a shelter in the forest—every shepherd boy learned how to build a lean-to after being caught in a few rainstorms while herding the flock. But out here it was different. There were no trees. No branches. No . . . no shelter at all.

  But plenty of wind.

  Just as Enoch had decided to curl up under the dubious protection of one of the giant boulders, he saw a flicker of firelight in the darkness. Walking towards the distant mote of orange, he could just make out the silhouette of some large structures. A town! He hurried toward the light, visions of warm food and shelter filling his head. Towns were safe—at least safer than the open wild.

  The lookouts spotted him easily, for Enoch took no care for stealth as he scrambled up the crumbling stone ramparts. Too late, he saw that this was no town. It was a graveyard.

  A bearded man stepped from the shadows and seized him roughly by the arm. Before Enoch could speak, the rogue struck him across the face with the back of his hand. Staggering under the blow, he felt his swords torn savagely from their straps, and a sharp kick in the back of the knees brought him to the floor with a painful crack. Wordlessly, the man lifted Enoch under one arm and began walking toward the fire.

  Enoch’s head spun, and his entire body was numb from the blow he’d received. It was all he could do to keep from blacking out. Through tear-blurred eyes, he could see that the fire was closer, and he could just make out several forms seated around it. One of them called out.

  “By the Snake’s tail, looks like Grunty’s caught us dinner!”

  This was followed by laughter; the rough, dangerous tones made Enoch shiver. His captor ignored their words as he marched past the fire toward a building just beyond the light. It appeared to have once been a stone temple of some sort, but time and the ravages of nature had reduced it to an irregular stack of mold-skinned pillars.

  Through the worn cloth curtain which hung from the lintel, Enoch could just make out the sputtering light of an oil lamp. Voices came f
rom inside—two people were engaged in an argument. One of the voices was angry and stained with potential violence, while the other . . . the other raised the hair on Enoch’s neck.

  That other voice had the sound of ice, free of any warmth or natural human inflection. It rose and fell with a liquid sharpness; the sound of a razor sliding through silk, a venomous frost snake tracing lines over new-fallen snow. Enoch did not want to know where that voice came from.

  His captor pushed the veil aside and brought him into the temple. A man and a woman looked up from where they were seated. Their chairs were pushed up against a cracked alter which had been converted into a table, a gray hart skin spread over the top with a tarnished copper lamp as the centerpiece. The lamplight formed garish shadows among the pillars, and the features of the two thieves were sharply highlighted as Enoch’s eyes adjusted to the light.

  The armor-clad man was larger than even Master Gershom had been, his thick arms crossed over a broad chest. As imposing a sight as he was, however, it was the woman that held Enoch’s attention, for at a glance it was obvious that she was the owner of the frozen voice. Long white hair hung straight, framing a pale and beautiful face. The red cloak which draped her body could not hide the stately form beneath, and her pose alternated from graceful to predatory.

  But the eyes were what startled Enoch out of his reverie. They had no iris, no color; just a single black pinpoint in the middle of glaring whiteness.

  The angry man would not be interrupted. He waved Enoch’s captor off with a hiss and turned back to the woman.

  “Milady, few enough caravans come by this way anymore, and those that do are usually Kingsmen. We can’t live off that! I don’t care what you say; I’m taking my men and going up north to raid. We’ll draft some new boys and get strong. Get fat. Then we’ll come back here to wait for your prey!”

  The woman slowly turned toward him and smiled.

  “My men, Nibat. My men will stay here. How can you expect to raid a northern village if you cannot even stop a caravan of slaves?”

  The question curled in the air. Nibat boiled over, sputtering.

  “I already told Milady that they was royal-trained, and on murback. A normal caravan we could’ve stopped, but they was royal-trained, I tell you!”

  “Two men against six, Nibat. Six!”

  That did it. With a roar, Nibat lunged at the woman, grabbing for her throat. Enoch shut his eyes, expecting at any time to hear the snapping of slender bones. He felt his captor’s arm grow tight around his middle, and he opened his eyes.

  The woman still lived. She held two slim, silver daggers—pointed down, pinning Nibat’s hands to the table. The large man had been forced to his knees, his eyes staring widely at the blades sprouting from the skin between his fingers. A serpentine smile curled the woman’s lips.

  “Sweet idiots, you plainsmen. I was drinking men’s blood when your mother’s mother first drank milk.”

  Nibat’s eyes slowly lifted from his hands to the woman’s face, and he spat.

  “Bruja!”

  The woman sighed and leaned back, bored.

  “Now, Nibat, I will tell you what to do and you will listen, or I will find something softer to bury my knives in. Are you listening?”

  Nibat growled and looked down at his bleeding hands. He nodded.

  “Good. You and your band of brigands will remain here. You will not question my authority again. I came here following rumors of a specter, but . . . something else is afoot.”

  Enoch wondered at her strange speech, for the woman’s face was smooth, and she could not have been much more than a decade older than he was. She leaned over and pulled the blades from Nibat’s hands. He fell to the floor groaning.

  “The Serpent has returned to this face of the world, and he works his sweet venom in the southlands. Do you know what that means, Nibat?” From the floor, Nibat’s moan quieted, and Enoch saw him pull a short knife from his boot.

  “It means that the roads will soon be filled with refugees fleeing the storm. Easy prey for you and your vultures. Easy murder, easy money, and young farm girls for your entertainment. And when my sisters return for me, I can make you all captains and generals; no longer cutpurses and rogues, but minions of the Forked Tongue.”

  As the woman spoke, Nibat’s face had switched from a mien of anger into sweaty greed and lust. But those last words gave him pause. Staggering to his feet, at what he presumed a safe distance from those silver daggers, Nibat lifted his knife in a bloody hand and growled.

  “We may be cutpurses as you say, Milady, but a servant of the Snake I’ll never be.”

  The smile on her face broadened almost imperceptibly.

  “So you would die?”

  He roared and leapt, knife raised high. She caught him mid-lunge, daggers flying from her hands to bury themselves in his eyes. His leap carried him over the top of the altar to crash lifelessly at the woman’s feet.

  Nibat’s neck bent at an impossible angle, his face turned toward Enoch. The daggers reflected lamplight from his red-weeping sockets. Enoch shuddered.

  The woman walked around to the side of the altar, retrieved her daggers, and, to Enoch’s horror, licked them clean before hiding them somewhere in her sleeves. The flickering light cast part of her perfect face into shadow, and for a moment Enoch thought he saw a cold blue light shine from her eye.

  The woman motioned for his captor to approach, and with a grunt he carried Enoch into the room. At her signal, he was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor right next to the corpse’s feet. The man then placed Enoch’s swords on the altar and stepped back. She motioned him out without a word.

  Now she was inspecting his master’s swords, a delicate furrow creasing her brow. Enoch dared not move. A woman who killed like this, who could predict what she would do next?

  “You are young to travel the road at night. Why did you come here?”

  Her voice froze Enoch to the ground. This bruja, or whatever she was, would not hesitate to sell him to the monsters who hunted him. Steeling his face into the Ferrocara, he prepared to lie.

  He dropped his shoulders and looked down, hoping he looked the picture of frightened villager. He had seen the expression plenty of times in his visits to Rewn’s Fork. Voice trembling with what he hoped conveyed the proper amount of fear and misery: Enoch spoke of black beasts, a midnight attack, and his family farm burnt to ashes. Afraid to veer too far from the truth and get caught in his inventions, Enoch spoke of hiding in the trees as the creatures swept through Rewn’s Fork.

  It sounded convincing to him.

  Is all emotion just mimicking patterns witnessed from others?

  The woman smirked.

  “Do you think me a fool, manling? Telling me this nursemaid’s tale as though I were a frightened girl? You claim to be from the land of shepherds, and yet you carry the derech and the iskeyar.”

  A dagger was suddenly in her hand.

  “You will tell me how and why the Rift Queen sends a scrawny Nahuat apprentice to find me. What message do you bear? Speak, or die.”

  Far from intimidating him, her words and his tale reminded him that he was far from helpless. His master had been preparing him. His master had been forging a weapon.

  I killed blackspawn. I slew their beasts and burst their weapons.

  The litania eteria slipped from his bruised lips, and he felt the familiar peace as his subconscious mind took over. The room came into sharp clarity. Somehow the woman sensed this change, and she stumbled backwards with a snarl. Her dagger gleamed in the fire light. In a heartbeat, Enoch was on his feet, and he noted her stance.

  She moves quickly, and there is another dagger in the left sleeve.

  Enoch’s mind measured distances and options as he stepped into the bent-kneed, loose stance of unarmed combat.

  Distract. Delay. Disarm.

  The woman’s smirk broadened into a grin.

  “If you wish to die, then . . .”

  She was cut off mid-se
ntence as Enoch’s stiff-fingered jab caught her square in the throat. As she staggered back, he slipped into the semprelisto stance. What should have been a crippling blow only stunned her, however, and a second later the dagger was slicing through the air toward his head. Enoch had already dropped to the ground and rolled away, coming up to his feet out of her reach.

  She is not human.

  The thought almost shook him from his trance, but he held on fiercely. The finger jab was a blow his master had taught him to use as a surprise advance. It was painful enough to down even the largest man and end a fight before it began. If done with enough force, it could crush the windpipe.

  But Enoch had not felt the hollow crunch of a broken larynx like his master had described—his fingers had instead encountered solid cords of muscle. Muscle, and . . . something else. Something much more solid.

  She chuckled at his hesitancy.

  “I’m not the picture of feminine frailty you took me for, am I? Have you Northerners so soon forgotten the platabrujas? You no longer tell tales of the Serpent Wives? If you knew half our lore your heart would freeze and crack.”

  Somewhere in the back of Enoch’s mind a memory surfaced of the Rewn’s Fork Patriarch, old Noach Kohn, telling ghost stories around the fire on Midwinter’s Eve. Yes, he remembered the tales—except according to Noach, the Serpent Wives were giant, iron-scaled women with fangs. They spat lightning and gorged on the flesh of disobedient children.

  The real thing may have been less gaudy but was much more terrifying.

  Hold on to the pensa spada.

  After being hunted through the woods by coldmen and their spider-hounds, Enoch had hoped that he would not be so easily frightened. But now he confronted the subject of dimly-lit childhood horrors. Concentration slipped.