by David Cook
It was while he was probing the door that Teldin heard faint voices from the other side. He pressed his ear to the metal and strained to make out what was being said.
“… human I found and brought. My property he is. Tattoo him I will!” snarled the first voice. Teldin could only guess that the speaker was his neogi captor. While he magically understood their speech, the nuances were still beyond him. The words were distinctive enough, though.
“Overmaster you defy, M’phei. Human meat overmaster claims until found is the cloak.” Although not raised, the second voice spoke with clear menace. “Here cloak is, overmaster believes. A giff with gnomes, reports say. A giff went with human, groundlings said.”
“If my meat overmaster wants, in pit overmaster I will meet,” M’phei promised. “Human meat and cloak who will get we will see. If cloak I have, benefit greatly my friends do. This world with cloak the overmaster could enslave.”
There was a long pause. The second voice started speaking, softer than before, as if the speaker were walking around. “… loudly you speak not. Nearby overmaster is.”
The first voice spoke again, louder and stronger than before. “Growing old overmaster is. Another yrthni ma’adi in fleet may be soon.” Teldin barely understood the meaning of the word yrthni ma’adi. The literal translation – which the cloak imparted? – was “great old master.”
“… cloak find?” The words were drawn out, tempting.
“Ah, cloak. Key human meat is and give it up meat will.” Even without understanding nuances, there was no mistaking the triumphant gloat in the neogi’s voice.
Teldin unconsciously touched his hand to his throat. The silver chain and clasp were still there. Feeling the back of his neck, the cloak still was little more than a strip of cloth, and the whole thing felt like no more than a necklace or amulet. The farmer wondered what would happen if he just gave up the cloak – if he could get it off. Could he convince the neogi to let him go? Teldin refocused his thoughts on listening for more.
“Discuss I will not until …” Teldin had no idea what the two voices were now debating, but it did not matter, since the voices trailed off. The captive kept his ear pressed to the door, but there was no more.
Slowly the farmer let his body slide to the floor, his long limbs slowly folding underneath him. Part of his spirit sank into despair. The neogi’s meanings seemed clear; Teldin could not imagine any other “human meat” on board the black ship. Apparently the creatures knew about the cloak. Indeed, it seemed they knew more about its purpose than he ever imagined. The neogi wanted it desperately, enough to trail him halfway across a continent and slaughter untold numbers of innocents. Now that the creatures had him, Teldin had few doubts about the extremes to which they would go to attain their goal. The farmer thought of the Penumbra, Liam, Vandoorm, and the-gods-knew-how-many gnomes. How many more had the neogi killed searching for the cloak? Teldin tried not to consider the bloody responsibility that rested on his shoulders, but he failed to drive the thought from his conscience. For a moment, the human’s thoughts sank to resignation, surrender, and sacrifice to prevent more death.
Still, there was a small spark of promise that kept Teldin from utter despair. Apparently, while they had him, the neogi did not know their human prisoner wore the cloak. That, the farmer guessed was all that kept him alive. Teldin squatted against the door and tried once more at the clasp, hoping to get it unfastened. With it off, his numbed mind rationalized, he would be free from its burden and the neogi might even let him go.
As he fumbled with the chain, the face of the dying alien came into his mind. The spelljammer captain had perished rather than surrender to the neogi. She had taken an entire ship and her crew to their deaths, taken them by choice. How many more had died to keep it from the neogi’s grasping little hands? Teldin wondered. Could he give up, or would surrendering now be a betrayal of the captain and perhaps others, even his father? Worse still, the neogi had hinted that the cloak could enslave whole planets. How many untold innocents would be killed then? Almost sadly, he realized the cloak could not be given away, at least not to them. It felt as if Amdar and hundreds of others all had spectral eyes trained on him, a lone human captive in a shipful of the enemy.
A thumping vibration came through the floor. Alerted, Teldin pressed close to the door and listened. Without light, there was no distraction from his sense of hearing, and the human discovered this sense was more acute than he suspected. Through the wall, the thumps ended in clicks, and Teldin guessed they were the footfalls of the huge lordservants, the beetle-headed umber hulks. “Door open,” a voice hissed. Futilely trying to hide, Teldin scrambled backward in the dark, until he cracked his head against the edge of a table. The prison door swung open and light from a lantern streamed through the doorway, blinding the dazed farmer, who could only sit blinking at the glare. Silhouetted in the door was a pair of umber hulks, while behind and between them was a small neogi, holding a lantern high. Farther back were more of its kind, twisting to catch sight of their prey. Lantern light glinted off the lordservants’ mandibles and the neogi’s yellow eyes.
“Lordservants meat grab, kill not,” ordered the neogi. The two umber hulks leisurely rumbled forward, confident in their own might. Teldin avoided the gaze of their multifaceted outer eyes, focusing instead on the small, beady pair at the center of each of their broad faces. Nonetheless, the farmer could not help but glance at the strange orbs, and the minute he did his mind felt fogged and confused, like the time he’d gotten sunstroke working in the fields. It was a struggle to think, to act, but his mind would not obey, and the lordservants were on him before he could even formulate a thought. Seizing the human roughly, clawed hands gouged skin and the beasts slammed their victim onto a table, then ruthlessly pinioned his arms and legs. Shoulder joints strained as one of the lordservants pressed Teldin’s arms backwards over the edge of the table.
“Me lift up,” rasped a sinister voice. From out of Teldin’s sight, a third lordservant mutely hoisted a neogi to where the human could see the creature, a ball of flesh and legs gently cradled in the monster’s arms. The little body was tattooed with brilliant designs of red and gold, marking it clearly as different from the creature who had captured Teldin. The neogi twisted its neck about and looked over its prisoner’s scraped, cut, and bleeding body. The creature’s eyes gleamed with feral hunger.
“Cloak you know where is,” the neogi intoned with leisurely sibilance, its fanged maw barely inches from the farmer’s face. The words were a statement, not a question. The neogi tipped its serpentine head toward one of the lordservants. Already crushing Teldin’s wrists, the umber hulk pressed down on the human’s spread-eagled arms. The yeoman heard his shoulder joints creak while his vision dimmed, tunneling down until he could see only his tormentor’s black-gummed, gleaming teeth. The pain roared in his head – for seconds or minutes, Teldin did not know. Then, gradually, the pressure subsided. “Cloak you tell where is,” the leering eel face promised. “But not yet. First play I must.” It smiled, or at least showed its teeth, in a gruesome mockery of friendship, and then signaled the lordservant once again.
The pain rushed back in on Teldin, distorting his senses. He was keenly aware of sweat running down his temples, soaking his hair, and the roaring noise that returned to fill his mind with grinding and hammering. Shoulders popped and cracked, biceps burned. All he could see was a single point on the ceiling. Time became meaningless. At last, the tearing pressure eased again and faded to a steady burn of his tortured muscles.
“Again,” instructed the neogi in a whisper just loud enough for Teldin to hear.
The torment flooded back, swallowing the farmer in it. Once more it faded, then returned again at a word. The cycle continued endlessly – peace, pressure, suffering, then peace again. The torture pulled a scream from the victim’s lips, one he could not stop even when his throat was raw.
“Enough,” commanded the neogi again. Teldin, his arms wrenched and twisted, h
ardly noticed the difference when the umber hulk let go. He didn’t feel himself lying on the table, panting in choked spasms. Slowly the neogi’s face, floating overhead, swam before his eyes. The beast reached down with spidery legs and dragged the tips across his chest. They were surprisingly sharp, slicing the remains of Teldin’s shirt and pulling the sweat-and blood-soaked rags from the human’s bare skin. In his current state, the farmer could only eye the neogi with mute terror and rage.
“You perhaps now talk,” the neogi murmured, its face pressed close to Teldin’s ear, “but I want to listen not yet.” The razor-like limb tips etched Teldin’s shuddering chest, slowly creating a web of thin cuts across the skin.
“Overmaster,” hissed a familiar voice, “mine to tattoo meat is!” The enraged neogi stopped its bloody tracings and drove the claw tips into Teldin’s chest. Though not deep, the punctures ignited pain. The farmer writhed under the touch, only to have the immense lordservants wrench him back down onto the table.
“Bold my quastoth, kin slave M’phei, grows. Will overmaster challenge?” said the torturer to the hidden speaker. “This meat I take, then remove unnecessary parts I will – first a tongue.” The neogi glared at its opponent.
There was a scrabbling noise near Teldin’s head, the clicking walk of a neogi. “Confused overmaster is. Without tongue, meat will talk never about cloak,” the voice, M’phei’s, shot back. “Perhaps ready to join yrthni ma’adi overmaster is.”
The golden-skinned neogi, the captain, the overmaster, from what Teldin understood, jerked its head up with a rasping hiss. Struggling in the arms of its lordservant, the neogi lunged outward, making a biting snap at the air in M’phei’s direction. “Overmaster I am. Quastoth, slave kin you are. You threaten me not!”
Moving slowly, Teldin painfully managed to turn his head enough to see the other neogi. He judged by its tattooed colors and the hissing voice that it was the creature that had captured him. “Tattoo meat I will, not overmaster,” M’phei coolly answered. The overmaster bristled in rage. “Unless,” the challenger continued, “overmaster’s errors all quastorh to know overmaster wants.”
Teldin was not quite sure why, but the other neogi abruptly paused, then slowly returned to his upright position. “Human meat you will have, quastoth M’phei, but cloak I claim.” The words came out in icy, venomous tones, clear even to the cloakmaster’s untutored ears.
“Quickly do it then, overmaster,” M’phei said with equal vehemence, “or remember your errors again I will.”
The gold-hued overmaster clicked his teeth in a fierce snap, then turned once more to Teldin. The eelly creature lowered its head until its razorlike teeth brushed the farmer’s ear. It whispered, “The Reigar’s cloak is where?”
Teeth clenched tightly to suppress the rivers of torment inside him, Teldin fought to keep from shivering. The farmer could feel the neogi’s fetid breath on his neck, making the muscles tighten and cramp, as if parts of his own body were trying to crawl away from the creature. “I don’t know,” the human slowly said, articulating each word with excessive care to prevent all his other feelings from rushing out. Greatest of these was the urge to manifest the cloak in hopes that it could protect him. Frantically Teldin drove back that thought before the magic took effect.
There was a snap and a sudden burning pain in his ear. Teldin’s back arched with a jerk, only to have the umber hulks slam him down again. The neogi rose back up, its mouth bloodied and a piece of Teldin’s ear dangling between its jaws. “Cloak is where?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Teldin screamed, his face contorted in pain. The lordservants yanked at his arms, reviving the shearing agony. The dimly lit room started to go gray, swirling into oblivion.
“Overmaster, my meat maim not!” shrilled M’phei’s voice. “Meat must be whole or your errors I report. Work meat must do. No broken bones, no torn limbs.”
“No broken bones,” the overmaster sullenly agreed, “yet.”
For Teldin, the speakers were growing distant and faint and the pain grew less and less. He only vaguely heard the overmaster’s voice, filled with disgust. “It talks not yet. Lordservants, fill meat with pain, but mutilate body not.”
There was a strange clicking and buzzing voice as one of the umber hulks replied. “Yes, little master. Your slaves do as little master commands.” With the words came a searing pain, then darkness and nothing.
Chapter Twenty-two
It was later. How much later, Teldin did not know, for time had been replaced by a wheel of pain and numbness. There were centuries where the lordservants towered over him, clicking their mandibles as they pulled and twisted Teldin’s inert body. The centuries were broken by hours when the overmaster appeared to ask Teldin a single question in its stilted tongue: “Cloak is where?” Sometimes Teldin thought of answering, just to end the pain, but each time something else in him stopped the answer from coming.
The farmer struggled to hold the cloak at bay, keep it from doing anything. Teldin knew that if he slipped and let the cape make the slightest sign, everything was lost, his life and possibly even his world. So far the human had managed to deny the overmaster his prize, but each refusal brought another century of pain, followed by the oblivion of unconsciousness.
At one point, the farmer dimly feared all his resistance was for nothing. The umber hulks, searching for some new torment, noticed the thin cord and silver clasps, all that showed of the cloak the neogi sought, around Teldin’s neck. Fearful that the lordservants would try to remove it and discover his secret, he feebly tried to raise an arm to push them off, but the best he could manage was a weak wave of one hand. Arrogantly, one of the creatures batted his hand with a wave of its own claw, ending the attempt. The farmer’s hand burned from the savage blow.
For all his pain, luck had not abandoned Teldin. The clasp was small compared to the umber hulks’ grotesque claws, and they were unable to work the silver buckle. Neither could they slip their talons between the chain and his neck, except perhaps by gouging Teldin’s throat. Under orders not to mutilate or kill, the umber hulks gave it up and returned to the better understood agonies of their trade. It was then that finally, blissfully, Teldin passed out and remained unconscious.
From this moment of non time Teldin slowly awoke and recovered. He still lay on the table, stained with his own blood. A lantern in one corner cast a dim light over the slaughterhouse. To the captive’s numb surprise, his torturers were gone; indeed the room, or as much as the farmer could see of it, was deserted. They had left him alone and unbound, but it mattered little, since Teldin barely had the strength to roll his head from side to side.
Finally tiring of staring at the tongue-and-grooved ceiling planks’ knots and whorls, Teldin began to take inventory of himself. His chest was crossed with thin lines of dried blood and raw patches caused during the flood. More blood caked his hair and clotted around his bitten ear, muffling his hearing on the left side. The lordservants had done their work well, mangling, twisting, and pulling every joint in his body. Still, he had all his limbs and, in accordance with the neogi’s orders, none seemed broken or even dislocated. Every inch felt bruised, and his face, especially, was puffy from beatings.
“I must be a handsome fellow,” Teldin croaked, his throat parched. “It’s time to go,” he told Gomja’s image, standing over him. Astonished, he blinked, and the giff was gone, replaced by Amdar, as unsmiling as ever. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing tight,” the old man’s ghost preached. As quickly as it had appeared, Amdar’s face disappeared into the planking above.
With excruciating effort, enough to force tears to his eyes, the farmer swung off the edge of the table and stood unsteadily on his feet. He clutching the table for support, then ventured with jerky steps across the room. Slowly and painstakingly, the human tottered toward the door.
Incomprehensibly, the portal swung open as he neared it, and there, blocking his path, was a party of umber hulks and neogi. Teldin’s
mind was too numb to be surprised, and he could not read the malevolent expressions on the neogi’s faces. In the forefront, though safely behind the lordservants, were the golden-tattooed overmaster and M’phei. The overmaster’s small claws snapped in triumph.
“There,” the neogi gloatingly hissed. “You see, unharmed human meat is. Warned you were, quastoth M’phei, my patience test not too far.”
“True, meat lives,” the other neogi sourly conceded, “but tell you nothing it has. Useless meat will be with more persuasion.”
“No longer important that is.” The overmaster signaled an umber hulk to seize Teldin. The beast ducked through the small door and easily caught the exhausted farmer in its grasp. “To yrthni-ma’adi meat will be given.”
M’phei’s eight clawed feet rattled on the metallic floor in anger. “No! This you do not. My capture human meat was. My slave it is!” The neogi made a snapping lunge for the overmaster. One of the lordservants seized the enraged M’Phei and restrained it.
The golden neogi ignored the outburst. “Overmaster I am and feeding yrthni-ma’adi my responsibility is. This meat I claim for feeding. That my right is.”
“Expose you I will, overmaster!” the other hissed.
Hoisted up by its lordservant, the overmaster smiled evilly. “You will not. Against your overmaster witnesses have heard you speak. Revolt of my quastoth I tolerate not. This you risk or human meat for feeding I take.”
M’phei paled, its tattoos gaining an ashy gray color. Futilely, the neogi tried another tack. “Cloak —”