by D. P. Prior
“You all right?” Nils said, taking a step toward him.
Silas held up a hand as he vomited. “Fine,” he croaked. “I’m… Oh no.” Black vitriol was dripping from his mouth and pooling on the ground. It burned his throat and left the stench of sulfur in his nostrils.
“What the shog you been eating?” Nils said, face wrinkling up like a dried prune.
“I think you might be right about the food. Guess I’ve been overdoing it.” Silas lowered himself to the waterlogged ground.
“You’ll get piles,” Nils said, standing over him.
“Least of my worries.” Silas was sure he could manage a cantrip or two—a canopy to keep the rain off, a magical blaze, and a cauldron of steaming broth. An hour or two, and he’d be fit to go on. It wasn’t as if the Ebon Staff was going anywhere.
He snapped his fingers, and a wispy canopy appeared overhead. The rain passed right through it, and he could still see the clouds through its gossamer covering.
Nils looked at him with concern.
“Sod the canopy,” Silas said. “It’s only a bit of rain, after all.”
Nils groaned and tugged his jacket up to cover his head. “Bit? It’s bleeding torren… torrenty… It’s pissing down.”
Silas clapped his hands and elicited a puff of smoke.
“What’s that mean?” Nils asked. “No fire, too?”
Silas sighed. He just wanted to curl up and die. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn his lungs were being devoured by an army of termites. He coughed again, and this time a thick glob of blood came up and stuck to his fist.
“We must press on,” he said. “While I still can.”
“I ain’t shifting till you magic us up some grub,” Nils said.
Silas closed his eyes. Perhaps if he focused all his reserves, he could produce an apple. Anything to shut the annoying little twerp up.
He felt a yank on his umbilicus, the flutter of nausea in his guts.
“It’s working,” Nils said. “Something’s coming through.”
There was a plop on the sodden ground.
Silas rocked forward to take a look. Nils dropped to his haunches, lifted the apport to his nose and sniffed.
“Shog that’s rank,” he said, passing it to Silas. “And it looks like a thingy.”
It was squidgy to the touch, lank, and vaguely carrot-shaped.
“Best I can manage,” Silas said, nibbling on an end and immediately gagging. He spat it out and slung the rest over his shoulder. His mouth was on fire, his eyes watering, but worst of all was the taste—rotten eggs crossed with overcooked sprouts, and it had the consistency of a loose stool.
The hand rapped the ground impatiently then set to work unfastening Silas’s satchel.
Nameless was little more than a bulky shadow, partially obscured by the pelting rain. He stood as motionless as a statue, and would have remained so until the rain eroded him away, if that had been Silas’s will.
The hand pulled out Blightey’s grimoire and flicked through the pages until it found a list of simple spells. It pointed to one with its index finger, and Silas read the barbarous words out loud. The script flashed and sizzled then vanished from the page, leaving a smudge of charcoal in its wake. Silas jolted upright, heat flooding his limbs and scorching the fatigue from his brain. He stood and put the book back in its bag.
“Shoulder your burden,” he said to Nils. “And let’s get back on the trail.”
“You’re joking,” Nils said. “I’m knackered and half-starved. Anyhow, what’s got into you? You was plain ready for the grave a second ago.”
“Second wind,” Silas said. “Now come on.”
Nils snatched up the casket. “What about him?” He nodded to Nameless. “Ain’t it time you let him go?”
“Oh, he’ll be set free once we get to the forest.”
“Forest? We just left a forest. I’m sick of forests.”
Silas shot him his most sickly grin. “This one’s quite special. Quite special, indeed.” He commanded the dwarf into motion with the merest of thoughts. “Go on, boy,” he said to the hand. “Show us the way.”
The cloud-formed face of the son of the Demiurgos was torn apart by the driving winds, which immediately dropped to a gentle breeze. The dissipating whorls of gray settled into cottony tufts on silky sheets of blue.
“Weather’s clearing,” Nils said.
“Deep sleep,” Silas said, scrutinizing the sky and wondering what would happen to Aethir if the Cynocephalus never woke up. Would it all simply pass from existence?
The respite was only momentary, though, as the heavens darkened, and a churning thunderhead rolled in from the north. It didn’t bode well, for they were heading straight into it. The thought had barely registered before the storm was already upon them.
Impossible, Silas thought. They should have had an hour, or at the very least a few minutes.
Forked lighting streaked from the clouds, blasting the earth mere yards from where Nameless was walking. The dwarf showed no reaction, but Silas quickened his pace, lengthening his strides to keep up with the hand. Nils grumbled and groaned, stumbling in pursuit under the weight of the casket.
The hand never slowed, and Silas would have given up and thrown himself to the ground, if it hadn’t been for supernatural aid. It felt as though the hand were dragging him along on a leash, while a hot poker goaded him from behind. Within, he felt listless, limp as a rag doll, but an unquenchable frenzy drove him on. It would all be over soon, he kept telling himself—once he held the staff. The hardship, the exhaustion, would be more than worth it. He just had to keep thinking about all that illimitable power waiting to be plucked from the forest of tar.
Nils, on the other hand, didn’t appear to be faring so well. He was stooped over and squelching his way through the mud like one of the damned in the Abyss, perpetually forced to walk a road to nowhere.
Nameless fitted the image even more so, though there was no effort to his strides. No effort, and no purpose. He was nothing more than a mindless automaton following his master. If the grimoire alone could bestow such power, what would it be like when Silas had the Ebon Staff as well?
The rain slowed to a spit, and the clouds hung overhead, puffed and bloated. There was no break in the dismal gray. It was like being beneath the ceiling of a vast cavern—a ceiling that threatened to fall at any moment.
Nils huffed and puffed his way up from behind. “I don’t like this one little bit,” he said. “Listen.”
Silas strained his ears but heard nothing save for the drip, plop, drip of raindrops hitting the puddles. “To what?”
“Nothing. It’s gone quiet.”
The lad was right. There was no more thunder, no pelting downpour. No birds circled in the sky, and nothing moved for as far as the eye could see.
They continued on without speaking. The slushy waste gave way to cracked earth and then russet sand. The temperature picked up, but the sky remained sullen and gave no quarter to the suns.
A distant rumble broke the silence. To the northwest, red flickers lit up the sky, and thick smoke billowed from a dark peak.
“What’s that, then?” Nils asked. “Volcano?”
Silas nodded. “I feel we are getting close.”
“Great,” Nils said. “I can hardly wait.”
The heat continued to rise until it dogged their every step. Nils set down the casket, so he could loosen his shirt and roll up his sleeves.
Silas fumed at the delay. He was drenched with sweat and felt feverish, but he lacked the volition to do anything about it. There was no need. He’d get where they were going, no matter what. The hand and the book would see to it, of that he was certain.
Nameless’s beard was drenched, and his eyes had grown bloodshot. Other than that, there was no sign he was aware of the hardships of the journey.
The hand was more impatient than Silas, if that were possible. It ran over his boot, tapping out its irritation with pallid fingers.
> “Come on,” Silas said to Nils. “No time for hanging about.”
“No time?” Nils grumbled. “Thought you said… Wait, what’s that?”
A bank of fog had crept in unnoticed, making it hard to see what he was pointing at.
“Told you I had good eyes. Shog, Silas, there’re bodies. Three of them.”
Silas stood his ground while Nils went to investigate. They didn’t have time for this. Once he had the staff, all would be—
“They’re starkers, and they’ve got these big swellings all over. Can’t have been too long ago, neither, because they ain’t gone blue yet.”
“Come on,” Silas said. “It’s none of our business.”
“Yeah, but what if—”
“I said come on.”
Nils sighed and came back for the casket. “Still say we should be careful. I mean, whatever did that to them might still be around.”
They entered a heavy blanket of mist. Brooding monoliths loomed through the haze, forming a rough circle, some of them tall and slim, others squat. Immediately before them stood a trilithon, like an immense stony portal, its lintel set twice the height of a man. Another faced it on the opposite side. A snaking plume of smoke wafted up from the center of the stone circle, and as they drew nearer, Silas could see three figures seated around a green-tinted fire. That was enough to send a warning jolt through his nerves. Magical fire wasn’t exactly alien to him, but it did tell him there was more to these figures than met the eye.
They each wore long leather coats and broad-brimmed hats pulled low over their faces. One stirred a pot that hung above the flames, while the other two smoked clay pipes and passed a canteen back and forth.
“Thank shog,” Nils said. “A camp.”
“Wait.” Silas placed a hand on his shoulder. “Ask yourself what kind of people would be all the way out here. Don’t forget what this place is.”
“We’re here, ain’t we?” Nils said. “And so are the dwarves. No reason others can’t come to Qlippoth. It can’t all be dreams.”
He had a point there.
“They could be explorers,” Nils continued. “Maybe they know what happened to them bodies back there. Shog, maybe they lost half their group.”
Silas stared through the mist, trying to get a better view of the three figures. So far, they had shown no signs of noticing they were being observed. They just went on stirring and smoking and passing the flask. Funny thing was, they weren’t talking. You would have expected at least some conversation. Even the legionaries guarding the great gates of New Londdyr grunted at one another to pass the time.
“You stay here, if you like,” Nils said, shifting the casket for a better hold, “but if there’s a chance of sharing some hot salty broth, I’m game. Feels like my shogging guts have been ripped out, I’m so hungry.”
“We could just go around,” Silas said. “We don’t have time for socializing, and in any case, what do you want hot food for? It’s sweltering.”
“Food’s food, ain’t it. I wouldn’t be so famished, if you could get it up.”
“Get it up?”
“Yeah, you know, conjure some out of the air. Ain’t my fault you’re impo… impo… Out of magic.”
The hand ran an agitated circle around Silas’s feet then flipped onto its back and tickled the air.
Nils was looking at him expectantly, but Nameless may as well have been carved from granite, for all the interest he showed.
Silas worried his bottom lip until he became aware he was doing it. His own hunger was starting to clamor for attention above the relentless pull of the staff. He only hoped he had enough unnatural energy to deal with any problems, should it come to it. He still felt as empty as a tankard in the hands of a dwarf, but he was quite certain the hand and the book would make sure he survived long enough to reach the forest of tar. The thought was faintly amusing: it was about the closest he’d ever come to having faith in anything.
An idea wormed its way up from some hitherto unrevealed part of his mind, utterly alien and discomforting. It was like an infection.
“Why don’t we kill them, take what we need, and move on?” At least that way, they wouldn’t have to waste time with introductions and polite conversation.
“Kill them?” Nils said. “What the shog’s gotten into you?”
“Logic, boy. Logic. We are on a quest of some urgency. You are starving, and I’m growing peckish. We have no idea who they are. There’s a fifty-fifty chance they’re going to be hostile, so why take the risk?” He already had the grimoire out and was riffling through its pages in search of a spell that could dispatch them with the least amount of fuss. “Skulking Doom… The Perilous Finger… Ray of Decomposition.” Why hadn’t he seen these spells before? It was as if the book hid things from him and revealed only as much as he needed to know.
“That for real?” Nils asked, peering over his shoulder.
“No idea, but I mean to give it a try.”
“No,” Nils said, his face as serious as one of those pious Wayists who roamed the markets of New Londdyr preaching against pleasure.
“No?”
Nils shook his head. “Ain’t right.”
“Says who?”
The lad looked away, a hint of red creeping into his cheeks. “You learned me to read it, remember. That bit about only doing to others what you’d want them to do to you.”
Silas’s eyes strayed to Nils’s pack. “Oh no, not the Liber Via. It’s supposed to be for reading practice. You’re not meant to take it seriously. Why’d you think Nameless gave it to you? It’s not like he finished it himself. Load of religious hogwash, is what it is.”
“How’d you know?” Nils said, indignation burning from his eyes. “You read it?”
“Of course I’ve not read it. What do you take me for?”
“So, how’d you know?”
Silas racked his brains for an answer, but he was getting too stressed to concentrate. He needed to keep moving, keep getting nearer to the staff. Perhaps he should see if he could draw more strength from the book, sprout some wings, and carry Nameless the rest of the way. The little shit could stay by himself and have his tea party with the three weirdoes.
He started to look for a spell that might grant him more energy, but nausea threatened to overcome him. It felt like steel wires were tugging at the base of his skull, and razors were scraping away the coating of his lungs.
When Nils harrumphed and headed toward the camp, Silas followed. The hand righted itself and ran up his coat tails into his pocket. Nameless brought up the rear, nothing more than one of the zombies they’d run into when they first crossed the Farfalls.
“There’s a code among wayfarers,” Nils said in a low voice. “My dad told me about it when we was traveling with the Night Hawks.”
“And that is?”
“Just let me do the talking,” Nils said. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
He set down the casket and approached the fire with a swagger.
“All right, boys? How’s it hanging?”
No response. More stirring. More smoking. A pass of the flask and a swig.
“Say, me and my partners are plain worn out and hungry. Mind if we share your fire?”
He made to sit down but drew back when there was still no reaction. He glanced over his shoulder at Silas and frowned.
“Just a drop of that there broth, lads, and we’ll be on our way.” Nils’s fingers curled around the handle of his sword.
That was a good sign, as far as Silas was concerned. The lad hadn’t been entirely contaminated by sanctity, then.
The man stirring the pot held out a ladle but didn’t look up. One of the others pushed back his coat, revealing a sheath. Instead of a knife hilt, though, there was what looked like a gently curved tool handle crafted from ivory and silver.
“Cheers,” Nils said, taking the ladle and slurping from it. “Shog that’s sweet,” he said, smacking his lips. “What you boys eating? Molasses?”
<
br /> He handed the ladle back, and the man resumed his stirring. One of the others gestured with his pipe to a spot by the fire.
“Thanks,” Nils said, seating himself cross-legged.
Silas left Nameless to guard the casket and hovered over the pot until he was offered the ladle. The sweetness rousted his hunger from a vague yearning to a desperate cry. He went to take another slurp, but fingers curled around his wrist. Well, not fingers exactly, but a black hook ridged with hairs. He dropped the ladle and gasped. The man lifted his head to glare through saucer-sized eyes. Black and yellow antennae drooped down from beneath the hat, and mandibles clacked together as if in speech.
Nils leapt to his feet and half-drew his sword.
A resonant buzzing started up from the other two creatures. One of them screwed the lid back on the flask and pocketed it, then slowly tapped out his pipe on a rock. The other just tilted his hat back and watched, blowing out smoke rings that drifted up to be absorbed by the clouds.
“Release Nameless,” Nils said. “Do it now.”
“Not yet.” Silas tried to summon magic from the well but brought up bile instead. The last thing he needed was an angry dwarf on his hands. He still hadn’t worked out how he was going to explain the charm spell when he lifted it.
As Nils strode around the fire, the smoking creature threw off its coat.
Gossamer wings fanned out behind it. Its torso was a carapace of yellow and black stripes, below which it wore leather britches and knee-length boots. The back of its britches ripped open, and a barbed stinger burst free.
Nils whipped his sword out and backed toward Nameless, but the wasp-man took hold of the tool handle sheathed at its hip and drew it out, taking aim at his head. The handle was attached to a slender metal barrel, and the creature’s hooked hand was curled around something like a crossbow trigger.
“Don’t move,” Silas said, intuiting the danger.
The buzzing had reached fever pitch now, drowning out his voice and making it hard to think. “Don’t—” he started to say again, but Nils swung his sword. There was a crack like thunder, a puff of smoke, and the wasp-man’s weapon clattered to the ground.