by Ben Galley
Farden hopped to his feet and with a grimace he quickly manhandled his boot onto his foot. Just before he was overwhelmed by the slipping sand, he managed to scramble his way towards the top of the dune. Bewildered, he wondered what in the name of the gods was happening.
He did not have to wait long for an answer.
There was a bang, and a rumble, and then a crack so loud it made his teeth jiggle. The dune swayed. Below him the brown boulders clawed their way out of the sand. They clambered and climbed over one another, clacking and banging, fighting for space, and slowly the rocks began to clump together. A leg formed, and then another, a torso, then a chest, and then a set of broad stone shoulders appeared, rumbling and grinding like an earthquake. The monstrous shape hoisted itself out the hollow with two bulging arms of sandstone. A head quickly followed, a head forged from pebbles and crushed sand. Clusters of dusty gems formed its eyes. One by one they blinked into life as though forges were being quickly lit behind them. The stone face clenched like a fist. Brows of rock and sand crunched, and with a hungry whine it stuck out a forked sandstone tongue, and tasted the tiny drop of crimson blood running down the end of its fingertip. Farden watched horrified as the creature savoured it, licked its rasping, scabrous lips, and then smiled with teeth that sparkled with diamond flecks. Trails of white smoke began to pour from its rock joints, curling in the breeze like folded wings.
To tell the truth, Farden still thought he was hallucinating. It took him several moments of eye-rubbing and squinting before he realised that the rock troll towering over him was very, very real. Farden took a few steps backward, then a few more, and then frantically sprinted to the top of the nearest dune. The mage wasn’t about to waste time finding out how sharp its glimmering teeth were. Gods damn this desert magick, he cursed for the hundredth time.
But the troll’s reach was long. With a rumbling whine, it stretched out a mighty fist after the mage. Farden glanced over his shoulder just in time. Somehow, by a sliver of an inch, it missed him, but the shockwave of the falling fist sent Farden sprawling. Hungry fingers groped for Farden’s leg and he swiftly rolled to his feet to avoid them. Defiantly, the mage stood unflinching as a fingernail as hard and as sharp as rubies flew past his face and dug into the dune in front of him. Farden rubbed his hands together. Magick swirled under his skin. With a growl and a rumble, the rock troll narrowed its eyes, and then after a moment of indecision it raised an enormous leg, and stepped forward. Farden was ready for it.
Or at least he thought he was. Had he known the true nature of the beast he was facing, for it was indeed a rock troll and a very ancient one at that, he would have probably kept running. Instead, in a foolish yet quite admirable move, the mage hurled two fireballs into the troll’s face and confidently waited for the creature to fall to the ground.
But the troll did not fall. Quite the opposite. The fireballs might as well have been pillows. The troll wiped the fire from its blackened features with the back of its hand, and as it grinned a thin trail of smoke escaped from its rocky jaws.
‘Oh…’ was all Farden could really manage at this juncture. His face fell. Just as he was considering which spell he could use next, the troll took another thunderous step forward and swung its fist like a blacksmith’s hammer. Farden dove sideways as the dune burst apart under his feet. It was as if a mountain had exploded beneath him. The mage’s ears popped with the sudden pressure change. He rolled and tumbled as the dune crumbled like a dusty carpet, until somehow his feet found solid ground, and then he ran as fast as he could. The troll was disturbingly close behind, and wrenching a spare rock from his shoulder, it flung it at the fleeing man with a blood-curdling growl. Farden luckily saw the rock coming and side-stepped just in time. Sand filled his eyes. He coughed and he spluttered and he choked, urging his legs to go faster and faster.
Propelled by its enormous legs, the troll easily caught up with him. Each step it took equalled twenty of his and Farden was quickly realising how futile his escape was. The sweat was pouring down his forehead. There was nothing else for it. If he could fight dragons then surely he could fight this stony abomination.
Farden skidded to a halt and dropped to his knees. The troll was right behind him now. Farden felt his magick surging down his arm as he punched the sand, making it surge and ripple under his fist. The shockwave met the troll’s shins with an almighty bang and for a moment it looked like the mage had stopped it in its tracks. But sadly no. The troll was merely pausing. Farden sighed, and helplessly watched as a stone foot collided with his ribs and sent him flying into the pure blue sky. Stars and colours danced behind his eyes as the world flipped upside down, and then before he knew it he was lying face down on the side of a dune, watching blood trickle from his nostril and stain the sand. Grit filled his mouth. This was madness, Farden decided. The desert hated him, and now it was trying to rid itself of him.
Farden felt the ground throbbing beneath him and turned his head to see the huge rock troll casually walking to where he lay, shaking the ground with every step. Farden watched it raise another fist and smile with its diamond teeth. The mage groaned and rolled over, pushing himself to his feet just as the fist descended. Farden threw up his hands, palms flat, and a wall of air stopped the sandstone fist in its tracks. The troll growled and squinted at the little man standing underneath him, unable to understand why he was not a bloody smear on the underside of his fist. Ruby fingernails scraped against the mage’s invisible shield, pawing at him. White smoke puffed from its joints.
The stone creature tried again, clobbering Farden with another hammer-like blow, yet still the mage managed to keep up his spell. Farden gritted his teeth as the weight pushed him into the sand. One of his boots was swallowed by the shifting dune.
But both of them, troll and man, knew that Farden could not keep it up forever. The heat and the strain were getting to him and the rock troll was now too hungry to give up. Half a century with an empty stomach can make one very persistent indeed. It pressed down with all its colossal strength. Farden fell to his knees. Stone fingers hovered half an inch from his face. The shield spell groaned and creaked like an elderly tree, on the verge of shattering.
Just as the troll raised a foot to stamp on the beleaguered mage and finish him off, the wind howled a discordant chord and the sand stirred around them. Something behind the dune caught the rock troll’s emerald eyes, and it growled and rasped. It lurched and took a hesitant step backward, and Farden quickly seized the opportunity to scramble away. But the troll had already forgotten him. Above them the sky was beginning to darken. The troll looked up with fear chiselled into his stony features. Farden suddenly understood why.
Just like the rocks they were made from, rock trolls feared nothing but time. Fire couldn’t harm them, neither could earthquakes, nor light. Time was their only enemy. Erosion their only weakness, and nothing eroded a rock like a sandstorm.
As the wind whipped the sand into a frenzy, the mage covered his eyes with his sleeve and pinched his nostrils so as not to choke on the swirling grit. In a matter of moments the wind had become a howling storm. Sand was ripped from the dunes. In a last effort to save its rocky hide, the troll frantically tried to bury itself. Its wailing and growling pleas were stolen by the gale. Farden managed to sneak a look at the flailing creature as it was devoured by a swirling vortex of sand. He watched as the stone was stripped from the creature’s body, as its bones and rocky limbs where whittled away to almost nothing, as its eyes were plucked out one by one by the abrasive maelstrom, a thousand years compressed into just a few minutes. Its puckered face warped and shrank. It uttered one last cry, and then like charred matchsticks the rock troll fell to dust and was scattered by the wind.
Farden coughed and spluttered as he got to his feet, a dark yellow, and slightly confused, version of himself. Sand whipped his face. The mage cast around, blearily blinking the grit from his eyes. He looked up, to the lip of the dune above him where a dark shadow stood alone, obscured by the s
wirling storm. It seemed to look at him, and then it turned away, vanishing behind the lip of sand.
‘Stop!’ yelled Farden, but the shadow had gone. The mage half-sprinted half-scrabbled his way to the top of the dune, heaving and puffing through the fabric of his sleeve. The shadow had all but disappeared into the storm. It was getting away.
‘Show yourself!’ he shouted, and surprisingly, it stopped. ‘Show yourself!’ bellowed Farden again, swallowing half a dune in the process. The faint figure hovered for a moment, indecisive, wavering in the swirling haze. ‘Don’t make me chase you!’ Farden added, waving clenched fists. The wind sighed in Farden’s ears, and slowly the shadow turned to face him. As it walked towards him through the sandstorm, realisation struck him like a cold hand to the face.
Gradually the familiar goat legs bent and cracked back into place, replaced instead by a normal human gait. Dark skin shivered and turned a paler shade. Horns twisted and unfurled, retreating to their rightful place under the mop of thick black hair. Teeth shrank and assumed their ranks behind thin lips, and the snout, once so long and goatish, dwindled into a human nose. Only the dark beard remained, as did the clothes, though now they hung from an altogether different, yet familiar, figure, a skinnier, shorter, shape-shifting, tired-looking man.
Farden had rehearsed this moment many times in his life, but now that it was standing in front of him, the words had slunk away and hidden themselves, too nervous to speak. Farden let his mouth hang ajar as his uncle emerged from the sandy haze and tried to avoid the mage’s bewildered stare.
Tyrfing shrugged, and because there was nothing else to do, put his hands in his pockets. The two shared a silence, one staring, the other sheepishly looking everywhere else, until Farden finally unclenched his fists, turned, and walked away.
It is said that prayers give the stars their light. Prayer is a natural thing for a human, like hope. Some say that prayers are fuelled by hope. Others say they are fuelled by greed, fear, or even evil, but ask any god, and they will tell you that hope is what fuels prayer.
Prayer may be natural for humans, but hope is as foreign to the ghostly void above as sunlight or grass or birdsong. But despite this, the gods collect their prayers, sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted, sometimes wept, from the thick darkness, and in turn those prayers give them something that one might have dared to call hope. It gives them skin and bone.
Hope had been lost millennia ago, but the prayers kept on coming.
Something moved in the darkness.
Weak starlight caught a shape sneaking across the plain of nothing, disturbing a dust cloud. It would take a century for the particles of dust to settle, but what was another century on top of hundreds? The bold shape shifted through the nothing like a ghost, breathing as heavily as she dared in the stifling silence, eyes darting back and forth, panicking, careful, frightened.
The figure flapped her wings, once, twice, and bit her lip. Her hand found the sword at her hip and patted it gently. It was dangerous on the open plain, where the daemons walked freely, but her message was of the utmost importance…
…and was to be delivered at all costs…
Chapter 4
“The origins of the art of shapeshifting come from before human history. From what we can gather, shapeshifting began with the gods as a way of mingling with their mortals. Going from campfire to campfire dressed as a sage, or a widow, afforded them equality previously unavailable to such glowing creatures as they. There are many songs about Evernia, goddess of wisdom and magick, begging for food, or asking for a song, and therefore testing the kindness of her beloved race in the quiet years between the wars. And of course, in their own malevolent way, the daemons and their dark elves perverted this art, and turned it to shadow, so it could be used for deceit, murder, and illusion.
“Even now, such arts can be learnt, though it is at the practitioner’s risk, for it is a difficult and treacherous task to change one’s bones and skin. However, it is a largely long-lost art, and the masters of true shapeshifting are now but ash and dust, long dead. Even the spellsmiths did not dare to circulate such spells. Mages like myself can only practise, and dream.”
From ‘Treatises on Shapeshifting’ by Master Jark
Farden was toying with a shard of pellucid ruby. It was a long sliver of a thing, a rock troll’s fingernail, and a deep, blood red. As he twirled it in front of the candle, whirls of red and burgundy swam under its surface like dark wine trapped in a vial.
The mage tossed it from hand to rough hand, maybe because he was bored, perhaps he didn’t know what to say, but mostly because he didn’t trust himself to speak. Farden dropped the ruby on the tabletop with a bang and it broke the pensive silence. He took a breath, held it, and quietly asked for patience.
The whistling cave was starting to become annoying. It grated on his ears. He knew it wasn’t his uncle; Tyrfing was busying himself manhandling pots and dropping cutlery in the adjoining room; it wasn’t the wind either, that was a low moan that raced through the crags of the cliffs and rattled the shutters and the flowers of the window, no, this was musical, a tune of sorts, though it was like no song Farden had ever heard. It was infuriating.
The mage dropped his ruby again and impatiently tapped it on the tabletop. His head felt fit to burst with questions. The mage tried to put a mental finger on the specific emotion he was feeling but realised there were too many to pin down. What does one say to a ghost? Farden leant backwards and shook his head, and what seemed like half a dune fell on the floor. Tap tap went the ruby on the wood, the fingernail of a dead troll.
Soon enough, Tyrfing emerged from the little hollow of a kitchen bearing another pair of plates. Farden didn’t say a word. He barely even looked up. A plate was placed in front of him and he eyed it mistrustfully. There was the same orange bread again, more leaves, and a lumpy green sauce which was actually more of a stew of vegetables and roots.
‘No sandworm, don’t worry,’ mumbled Tyrfing. His previous faun-bolstered bravado had faded with its body. He looked nervous, and Farden didn’t blame him. He should be. Tyrfing bowed his head and muttered his thanks to the gods before he started.
The mage shrugged to himself. He nudged a leaf with his finger and then bit it in half. He chewed introspectively. His uncle looked up once, met his eyes, and then turned back to the plate again. His eye twitched. Wind mauled the shutters. The plants quivered.
‘The sandstorm should stop soon enough,’ said his uncle, to his food. ‘Don’t know my own strength sometimes.’
Tap tap. No reply. Tyrfing looked at the ruby and pointed with his fork. ‘I’ve never seen a rock troll grow that big before. Boulderfiends, some tribes call them,’ he said.
Tap. Farden shook his head and tried some of the green stew. It was bitter but strangely refreshing, so he kept eating. The awkwardness was the only thing he could taste.
The two men filled the silence with the sound of their own chewing. At long last, they finished their food and pushed their plates away. Farden toyed with his ruby and watched his uncle. Eyes down, Tyrfing coughed and wiped a cloth across his face and for the first time he noticed the scars Lafik had mentioned. Some were long and silvery like the path of snail, others were ridged and thick, seams and whorls of rumpled red skin that would never heal. They criss-crossed his hands like a patchwork, covering every inch of his wrists and forearms and hands. Farden couldn’t see the symbols on his wrists but he knew they were there, and he knew they would be scarred and tortured just like the rest of his skin. The faun was long gone, yet the man sitting in front of him still shared many of its features.
Tyrfing’s face was gaunt, hollow, and hinted at his long years. Like a history tome yellowing at the edges, Tyrfing’s face told a long story, a topography of memories written in skin and scar. Wrinkles ganged up at the corners of his eyes. His brow was furrowed and ploughed from a lifetime of deep thought or worry. A scar curled around his left temple. The skin of his cheeks was dark from the constant sun, an
d there was a notch cut in the top of his left ear as if a ring had once been ripped out. Cut short and trimmed against his cheek was a dark beard, verging on black, with tell-tale patches of grey beginning to show through at the seams. The long brown faun’s coat had been replaced with a white shirt with little burn marks and holes across the chest. He was of the same build as Farden, and roughly the same height. Tyrfing’s mop of sand-infested hair was long, matted, and jet black, the exact same colour as Farden’s, but his eyes were different, a deep ocean blue that Farden could only remember seeing once before, in his mother. Cheska’s were paler, he thought.
It was as though he were staring into an ageing mirror.
And it made Farden’s blood boil.
The mage felt cheated; his only family had abandoned him like a coward and had refused to speak to him, hiding behind dreams and fake fauns. Many, many questions, all craving answers. Tap tap tap tap went the ruby. The mage broke his narrowed gaze and looked to the rattling shutter on his left and looked at the dusty yellow sky outside. He took a breath. ‘I want to know everything,’ he began.
‘Everything?’ replied his uncle.
‘Everything,’ nodded Farden.
Tyrfing looked at him questioningly, unsure to be glad of conversation or afraid of it. He smiled briefly, as if he had tried the smile on and then realised it didn’t suit him, and then chewed his lip. ‘Well, there’s a lot to tell you, I don’t know where to start.’
‘How about when you left?’ Farden clenched a fist around the ruby. Tap tap tap.