Spirk was the first of his companions to wake, but unlike Long, the young man was still rip-roaring drunk. He got up to relieve himself and toppled right back over, landing atop his fellows in a giggling lump. Even those crushed by his fall laughed as they struggled towards consciousness. At first, Long figured he’d sobered up before the younger men because of his extensive drinking experience. But that didn’t explain why Yendor was still drunk. Nobody had more drinking experience than Yendor. Could it be they’d imbibed more of the stuff than he? That hardly seemed possible. Long had downed so much that, even now, his stomach sloshed when he moved about.
So, his friends were still drunk. What difference did it make? They’d enjoyed precious little merriment in Long’s company; let ‘em have this.
As Spirk mounted another effort to stand, he hiccupped and blinked out of existence, only to appear on the other side of the room, where he bonked his head on the wall and guffawed like the injury was the most amusing jest he’d ever heard.
Long jumped to his own feet, amazed. “Spirk!” he called. “Can you do that again?”
Still laughing, the young man hiccupped again and disappeared altogether. Seconds later, there was a knock on the door. Long hurriedly cleared it away and found the Shaper standing in the outer passageway.
“That’s it, boy!” the captain exclaimed happily. “That’s the Shaper’s jump, the thing that took Rem away from us!”
Spirk and Ron were a touch slow to grasp the significance of it, but Yendor was practically hopping up and down with excitement, bad leg and all. “That’s how we get out of this hole!” he yelped in inebriated joy.
“Spirk,” Long said, clapping his hands on each of the Shaper’s shoulders, “can you go somewhere on purpose?”
“Across the room?”
Spirk shrugged and started walking across, until the captain reached out, snagged his arm and said, “Like you did a minute ago, with magic.”
This time, Spirk blipped across the room and crashed into a shelf of crockery. He turned and looked apologetically at his leader.
“That’s fine, Spirk. That’s fine. Now, can you take someone with you? Me, for instance?”
For the next half hour, they tried short jumps with each member of the group and then with everyone. Finally, Long was ready to get to the point.
“Let’s try to jump out of here,” he told Spirk. “Maybe you and me first, and then you can come back…”
“Sod that!” said Yendor. “We all go or none of us goes.”
Long looked at each of his companions and saw they were in agreement. “Very well,” he replied. “We all go.”
“But first, let’s gather a few o’ these pots o’ liquid bliss!” Yendor urged.
“Take all you can carry,” Long chuckled. “What do I care?”
When they were all ready, Long got very close to Spirk and said as carefully as possible, “I want you to picture the forest right before we fell down here. That’s where we want to go. Everyone link arms and…”
They were falling through the snow-laden boughs of an enormous fir tree. Grunts and gasps of surprise and pain rang out from everyone in the group, and then they plunged, one by one, into a vast snowdrift. Long scrambled to dig everyone out before they all died of exposure. Miraculously, everyone survived without anything more serious than bumps and bruises. Yendor’s pots were not so lucky, though the group still had four unbroken ones.
“If I weren’t s’ drunk,” the man mused, “I’d call this the greatest tragedy to befall mankind in an age.”
Long wasn’t bothered in the least. He and his friends were free of the hole and its all-encompassing darkness. Here, it was daytime, cold, but bright. The group was still lost and without either food or shelter, but everyone was alive! And the best news of all for Long’s soul: the hunt for Esmine could resume.
*****
Mureen, In Gandy
The giantess passed some homesteads that looked abandoned or were too small, just as she passed towns that seemed too large. She hadn’t found what she was looking for, but remained convinced she’d know it when she saw it. Many days she searched, and many nights, she slept in the most unlikely places, but her spirits remained high. She was free and alive, and though she possessed but a few tools and small items of comfort, her self-confidence grew with every sunrise.
A day came when she crested a hill and caught sight of a village that seemed the perfect size for her plans. Not wanting to startle the town’s citizens or provoke a violent response, the giantess walked to within bowshot of the nearest buildings and simply stood, waiting for someone to notice her.
It didn’t take long.
A number of heads poked around the edges of buildings and shutters creaked open just the tiniest bit. Eventually, a lone man emerged from a growing crowd of spectators and started walking in the giantess’ direction. He, too, stopped when he’d reached what he judged to be a safe distance.
His bristly hair was cut short, though the crown of his head had gone completely bald, but he boasted a neatly trimmed mustache and beard the color of ashes. He wore a long woolen robe underneath a wolf skin that he’d wrapped around his shoulders. On his feet, he wore boots that looked older than memory.
“Greetings!” he called out. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit, friend giant?”
“I’m afraid I’m down on my luck and looking for work,” the giantess answered.
“What of your own people?”
“Well, that’s the problem. I’ve taken a nasty fall, hit my head, and can’t remember much of anything.” And it wasn’t entirely untrue, the giantess mused. How could she tell him the truth when she didn’t know what it was?
The stranger appraised her with the shrewd look of a man buying a second-hand milk cow. “Taken a fall, have you?” He stepped closer, saw the giant’s many scars, and said, “That must’ve been some fall.”
“I did say it was nasty.”
“So you did, so you did. But tell me, what help can you offer? What tasks can you perform?”
“I’m a giant. I figured there might be things to lift, move, carry about. That sort of thing.”
The man came closer still. “Oh, we’ve plenty of that needs doing. But can you be trusted?”
No need to lie now. “I’m desperate, friend. I’m cold, hungry, lost and confused. In Alheria’s name, I ask for succor.”
The stranger was clearly impressed. “Alheria’s name, is it? That’s a plea of mickle might. Very well, giant, you may come into our village. Fair warning, though: first sign of trouble, and I’ll blind you.”
Ah. He was a magician of some sort. That explained why he’d come to greet her on his own.
“Your name, giant?”
“My name? My name is…Mardine.”
The little village was named Gandy, and Gandy, it turned out, had quite a lot of work for Mardine to do. The villagers had heard all kinds of rumors of trouble – more trouble – up north, and had decided once and for all to fortify their town against raiders or anyone else unwelcome. They couldn’t afford to pay Mardine in coin, but they gave her the entire ground floor of a two story home, shared the best of their food and drink with her, and made sure she was warm enough both day and night. No one in Gandy had ever encountered a giant before, and Mardine quickly became the town’s most popular inhabitant. After sundown each evening, one family or another invited Mardine to dinner, or sometimes they brought dinner to her, and from then ‘til bedtime, everyone shared stories and songs and peppered the giantess with a million questions, few of which she could answer. The town’s oldest woman gave Mardine a quilt so large, it was even too big for a giant, but Mardine didn’t complain. She was glad to have it. One of the men carved a prodigious cudgel for the giantess out of a good piece of ash. It was all he could do to lug the thing to her door, but she picked it up with no difficulty, much to the fellow’s amusement.
During the days, Mardine worked hard, indeed. The townsfolk had tasked her with d
ragging felled trees back from the local woods. The snowy ground made the job somewhat easier than it might have been, but it was grueling work, nonetheless. The townsfolk set upon the trees and stripped them of their branches, while other folk dug great holes into which Mardine would place the cleaned logs. Finally, one or two of the stronger men climbed ladders and hacked the logs’ tops into deadly points. In this manner, Mardine helped Gandy build a stockade around the village. It was exhausting labor, but with ample food, rest and exercise, Mardine found herself getting stronger and more confident by the day.
One afternoon, it was snowing so hard no one could see to get any work done, so a number of Mardine’s new friends gathered at her place for a meal. Without really understanding why, she asked those assembled, “What kind of people steal children from their parents?”
It was a shocking question, to be sure, but one older fellow answered straight out. “Slavers, most likely.”
“Slavers?” Mardine asked. “What good’s a child slave?”
“I s’pose the whoremasters’d find a use for ‘em. Or, might be they get sent into the mines, where bigger folks can’t git.”
“Whoremasters? The mines?” Mardine’s mind was reeling at the possibilities.
“Why d’you ask, Mardine? You know someone who’s lost a child?” one of the women asked.
Mardine grew somber. “I…I think I did.”
There was never such a flock of concerned hens as rushed to Mardine’s side that night. She was coddled and consoled, comforted and caressed. How could they help her? They all asked. What could they do?
Mardine had no idea, but was profoundly reassured by her new friends’ concern. Now, at least, she had some allies. The evening passed in a lambent haze of sympathy and good intentions, and when Mardine went to bed that night, she felt more hopeful than she had in ages.
The next morning, Mardine was just getting ready for the day’s work when there was a knock on her door. Answering it, she discovered the town’s magician on her doorstep.
“Ambie!” she said, “How can I help you?”
“I believe,” said the man, “that it is I who can help you.”
“Oh?”
“There are a series of minor spells whereby a person can become calm enough to remember almost anything, up to and including birth, in some cases.” Ambie said nothing more for the moment, but contented himself with watching the impact of this statement upon the giantess.
“I see,” she said dubiously.
“T'isn’t painful, if that’s what worries you.”
Mardine let loose with a nervous giggle. “I don’t know what’s worrying me, truth to tell.”
“Well,” Ambie replied, patting Mardine on her forearm, “you think about it today. I’ll come back by this evening with a few friends, and, if you’re interested, we’ll give it a go.”
Mardine bobbed her head in the affirmative, not trusting herself to say the right thing…and not at all sure what the right thing was. She desperately wanted to remember whatever it was she’d forgotten, but she feared, too, that she might learn things best left in the darkness and the fog.
She worked at a feverish pace, not because she was in any hurry to finish the job, but because the activity kept anxiety at bay. When she finally thought to ask someone the time of day, the sun was already slipping towards the horizon, and, yes, more snow began to fall.
Best get it over with.
When Mardine reached her cottage, she saw that Ambie and three or four others were already awaiting her arrival.
“Let’s find out what I’m missing,” Mardine said by way of greetings.
It was a decision that would change everything.
*****
The False Reaper & The End, In Camp
The False Reaper stalked through camp, his visage in a fixed grimace, completely oblivious to the tears of agony that rolled down his cheeks. His battle with the End-of-All-Things consumed so much of his energy, his life-force, that the constant effort to maintain control was literally burning him alive. In the relatively short time since the End had begun his assault on the Pretender’s mind, the boy had lost half his body weight. His fat and much of his muscle was gone. So, too, were his hair and many of his teeth. Now, he looked like nothing so much as a walking corpse, but a corpse with a disturbingly penetrating glare.
If only he could find that imbecile, Omeyo. The False Reaper knew he’d sent the man somewhere, on some errand, but couldn’t recall the details no matter how hard he tried. Worse, he couldn’t remember what he wanted of the fellow, either.
The End’s laughter echoed out of the darkness, startling him.
“Fuck off!” the boy snarled.
More laughter. “Is that the best you can do with the language we gave you?”
The boy ignored him. Or tried.
“You didn’t think you’d learned to talk with only Omeyo for company, did you? How naïve.”
The False Reaper stuck his head into one of the Svarren’s crude shelters, hoping to find his general. No luck.
“You’re burning up, aren’t you, boy?”
“Huh!” the boy scoffed.
“Burn, boy, burn!” the End cackled. “Sooner or later, you will fall, and I will rise.”
The boy tried another hut: still no sign of Omeyo.
“I can feel you whimpering inside, you know.”
“That’s yourself you’re feeling,” the False Reaper retorted.
“It will be, when I’ve taken over.”
“Where are the others?”
“I’ve consumed them!” the End exulted. “As I will consume you!”
“Unless…” the boy taunted.
The End was clearly amused. “Unless?”
“I throw myself in a bonfire.”
“You haven’t the courage!” the End snapped.
“No?” But as the False Reaper attempted to steer himself towards the camp’s biggest fire, his legs locked up and he found himself rooted to the spot. “You!” he called to one of his Svarren. “Carry me to…”
The End had stolen his power of speech – a trick he’d used once before on an equally annoying fool.
“You see?” the End crooned. “You’ve nothing left. Only minutes remain before I claim this body as my own.”
I will never…the boy thought at his nemesis. And then his reserves ran out, and his resistance collapsed. He had nothing left, was nothing.
His body juddered in place for a moment as if experiencing a seizure, and then blazing light exploded from him in all directions, accompanied by a clamorous boom that terrified the nearby Svarren.
“Bring me food!” the End screamed lustily. “I have not eaten in too long!”
In the shadows of the Svarren witch’s hovel, Omeyo saw the lights, heard the boom, and recognized the voice. The End-of-All-Things had returned. Omeyo supposed he ought to care, but he had endured too much and wanted only to sink back into the comforting blackness of sleep.
The witch held him close to her bosom as a child holds a plaything, a poppet. The creature’s odor was unspeakable, and yet…there was something in it, something entrancing, enthralling, that offered solace in spite of the circumstances.
She suckled Omeyo at her dugs. He drew strength from her, and his many hurts abated. Impossibly, he grew aroused, and found the witch more than willing to accommodate his desires.
Omeyo forgot all about the End for a while.
*****
Turley, In Lunessfor
Turley felt as if he were in the bottom of a well with no possibility of escape. He’d believed the Reaper was his friend, but as the man’s entourage had grown, Turley – Igraine – became little more than an afterthought. And afterthoughts could not fare well in such company. The goblin’s spirits sank, and although he no longer wept at his misfortune, his mood was every bit as black as it had been when the body switch occurred.
For one thing, there was too much light, too much space in the world of men. The sky, even on cl
oudy days, seemed to go on forever and ever, and Turley was often seized with the odd fear that he might fall upwards into eternity. Then, there was the issue of distance. The goblin’s entire world had existed within the walls of Her Majesty’s castle. He’d never travelled a straight mile in his life, and yet now he rode mile upon mile, so far from his home that he doubted he could find his way back had he the Queen’s Shaper as a guide. And it wasn’t just the big things that unsettled him. The food was alien to him. The sounds of nature were utterly unfamiliar. He’d heard of horses before, but to be spending so much time astride one was terrifying. What if the beast came to resent him, threw him to the ground and ate him? Could there be a more terrible death?
And there were Vykers’ men. They seemed congenial enough, but every so often he caught them ogling him, as if he were the main course at a Midwinter’s Feast. They didn’t know he was actually male, and a goblin to boot! Turley hoped the Reaper could keep his men in line – that certainly was part of his reputation – but the little goblin didn’t see how Vykers could be everywhere at once and always awake. Inevitably, he’d wander out of earshot, and then…Turley shook his head violently, trying to dislodge the thoughts that plagued him. It didn’t work.
He pondered his chances of successfully running away. They didn’t appear favorable. Had anyone ever escaped the Reaper? And even should he prove the first to do so, where would he go? Amongst whom would he ever find comfort? It seemed his only viable option was to remain where he was and trust Vykers’ word that Turley would someday return to his own body…if the Shaper currently using it wasn’t killed first.
Yes, he was wrapped in another’s skin, but his misery was all his own.
*****
Vykers & Company, On the Road
Once outside of Lunessfor – a feat accomplished with such ease that Vykers couldn’t help thinking the Queen had arranged it somehow – the Reaper wasted no time in heading north. He commanded his crew to push the horses until they dropped, assuring his men that he’d buy more at the next opportunity. That strategy would work in the populated areas, he knew, but as soon as they arrived in the more-rural north, they’d have to take greater care of their mounts. He might have hired a Shaper to transport everyone, if he’d trusted the toad-sucking bastards. But Arune and Her Majesty had permanently soured Vykers on magic and those who practiced it.
Corpse Cold (Immortal Treachery Book 3) Page 30