Child of a Mad God--A Tale of the Coven

by R. A. Salvatore

  Aoleyn pondered the possibilities for a long while. She even glanced back at the distant illusory wall and thought to go out and ask Seonagh, Mairen, and the other witches if her revelation was indeed the secret of the Coven. But no, she decided, there lay before her something more pressing, more important, more exciting to do instead.

  She turned toward the yawning passageway, leading deeper into the tunnels under the mountain. She took a few deliberate strides, her thoughts reaching out as she did for the flecks of diamond farther down the passage, bringing her magical light with her.

  Aoleyn smiled. It was time to explore.

  * * *

  It should have stopped by now, but the discordant twangs had only gotten worse, plucking at the fossa’s core with every note!

  It was behind the wall—it had to be, right there!—and so the fossa threw itself headlong into the wall, scrabbling, clawing, and biting, digging, determined to get through the stone. Dust and flecks flew all about.

  But the music, that damnable music, moved, and the fossa scurried along desperately.

  But no, it was on the other side of the pit then! The creature sprang away, colliding with its open maw, tearing away, shaving the stone with its swordlike tail—anything, anything, to get at the incessant noise!

  Eventually, the demon fossa fell back to its pile of bones, defeated. It thrashed, sending shards flying, and bit some of those into pieces as they spun in the air.

  No. This could not stand.

  Up leaped the creature, to the slanting rocky crawl space atop the pit, and out it crawled, belly rubbing the stone. The pain increased when it crossed that narrow crawl space, coming into the wider tunnel. Out of the shelter of its pit, the magic of Fireach Speuer burned brighter, and more painfully.

  The fossa pushed on anyway. It had to get to the source, to destroy the source—a human, of course, playing with the crystals.

  Around the last bend, the fossa came in view of the cave exit, and beyond that, the mountain was not dark. For the moon was full, the sky clear. But it was not a red moon, no. The light of the Blood Moon muted the magic of the mountain and allowed the tormented creature to walk free. But this was a pale silver orb. One whose light magnified the agonizing song of the mountain.

  The fossa growled and tried to press on, but was driven back, slowly pedaling backward, step by step, at first, fighting the pain and the pressure so that it barely inched along the narrow crawl space.

  The moonlight won, the song won, and the fossa spun and leaped back into its death-filled pit, burrowing down to the bottom of a bone pile, then scrabbling at the stone, wanting to get through, wanting to find the source, to kill and devour the source.

  Anything to end the ringing pain.

  Somewhere in the midst of that futile, frenzied assault, the fossa paused to identify the voice of the song, the signature of the source.

  Someday, it promised itself, playing the thought over and over as a litany against the twanging notes.

  Someday it would eat the source, slowly, painfully, bit by tiny bit.

  * * *

  The magical light followed Aoleyn as she made her way deeper into the cave, the area behind her going dark, while the area in front brightened. It wasn’t that the magical light was upon her form, but rather that the call she made to the diamond-flecked crystals continued along with her, and so thick were these particular crystals about the walls and floor and ceiling that to an unknowing outside observer, it would seem as if she was carrying some sort of magical lantern.

  The hallway forked, and, in looking down each passageway, she saw that both of those forked, as well. The floor was no longer smooth and easy under her feet, so she had to clamber over giant crystals, or duck, even crawl, under others, and in going over the first one, the bare skin of her leg settling against it, she let out a little yelp of surprise from the sting and understood why it was so hot in this place. The crystals were alive with energy.

  Too much so, she realized, for her lungs were beginning to burn with each breath.

  Fearing she would need to turn back, Aoleyn reached once more into the magic around her and found a soothing crystal striated with lines of green and milky white off to the side wall of the chamber. She made her way to it, a small and curling crystal, and put her hand about it, calling upon its power.

  She was bathed in a soft white glow. The heat diminished. She thought of Mairen climbing under a bonfire, creating a fireball around herself to rekindle the blaze, then stepping out unharmed.

  Aoleyn let go of the crystal and stepped away, trying to maintain the protection. She felt herself tiring almost immediately, so she went back, grabbed it again, and simply on a guess, broke the small crystal off the wall. On she went, carrying the crystal, using its magic to minimize the growing heat.

  She didn’t spend a lot of time in trying to decide which passageways to take, but just plowed ahead, unafraid, and enchanted by the magic all around her, by the song of Usgar.

  “A labyrinth,” she whispered at one point, and she thought it curious that she had whispered the words instead of just speaking them, for there was no one around. Yet, she didn’t want to speak loudly in here, she realized, out of respect, out of a sense of reverence the young woman had never before known in her life.

  The sheer beauty and power of this place humbled her.

  But it didn’t deter her, and she pressed on, recalling one of Seonagh’s—no, not Seonagh’s, one of the old crone’s fables about a child lost in a labyrinth within the mountain. To avoid becoming lost, he, thinking himself clever, always went left at every fork or intersection. As fine a way as any to navigate such a maze, she thought, and so she took a step down the left passage.

  But then Aoleyn remembered the ending of that story. Perhaps it was some sound or smell or something just beneath the level of conscious recognition, but the wandering child got a bad feeling about one particular fork. So proud was he about his plan, though, that he stuck to it. In his blind pride he stumbled into the lair of the monster that had made the labyrinth its home, and was eaten. The moral of the story, the old crone had told Aoleyn, was that she should never fear simply becoming lost, because even if she thought she knew where she was going, she could still be vulnerable up on the wild ways of Fireach Speuer. Indeed, in the fable, the confidence the boy had gained from “solving” the labyrinth had tricked him into a false sense of security.

  The moral Aoleyn had taken from the story was simpler: avoid monsters.

  Aoleyn shrugged and took another step down the left-hand fork. It was a bit dimmer in here, as this passage had fewer diamonds. Something about the vibration of this passage was unsettling to her, somehow discordant.

  The young woman stopped in her tracks. She had her answer. She would follow her instincts, like the boy in the story had not done. She would reach out with her affinity to the crystals, listen to their song, and follow whichever path resonated better within her center.

  She wandered for a long time, through a myriad of turns and forks and intersections with more than two choices. She listened to the crystals at each turn, following the vibrations, confident that she could backtrack in the same manner—so confident, in fact, that she wasn’t even noting her choices or marking the walls.

  Aoleyn was strangely unafraid. This place felt safe to her, as if she had come home at long last, a place calling to her heart and her mind, inviting her to secrets beyond anything she could imagine.

  She felt calm, protected by the magic, and she felt …

  A breeze!

  The young woman paused and spent a long time sorting that out. She licked her finger and held it aloft. Yes, a breeze. A slight one, to be sure, but a current of air, down one of the passages. Perhaps an exit? She followed the breeze, down a long, winding corridor, and when she rounded a bend she saw ahead a faint light that was not coming from the diamond crystals. To be sure, Aoleyn ended her call to the magic, letting the crystals grow completely dark.

  But the light a
head remained … silvery?

  Moonlight.

  Figuring she had won the night, Aoleyn increased her pace, rolling over one crystal, then nearly falling and impaling herself on another as she tripped on a small crystal root low to the floor. As a precaution, she called the magical light, just a bit, once more, and proceeded. Her curiosity about the caverns was far from sated, but knowing that she had found the way out and could leave if necessary would be grand. She decided to locate the exit, then go exploring. Both the ways of the labyrinth and, more importantly, the properties of the many pretty-colored flecks she had seen within the multitude of crystals. She wanted to know everything about this place before she fell under the withering gaze of Seonagh. She wanted to know more about this place than Seonagh did, more than even the Usgar-righinn!

  Aoleyn gasped at her prideful determination. This was a place of Usgar, clearly, and it occurred to her that she should not be competing with the greatest witch of the tribe in such a manner! Still, she wanted to impress Seonagh, impress them all, and pass their test. “I will even tell them of the old crone’s fable,” she decided, and smiled widely.

  That smile was so easy to come by in this place of Usgar’s song. She pressed on, hardly thinking, hardly looking past her next step, basking in the song.

  But that song lessened soon after she had turned down this breezy passage, she soon realized. At first, she thought it her own focus dissipating, but no, that wasn’t it. The energy here in this passage was different than the others. A chill coursed her bones and she shivered.

  She told herself to stop and go back, but she found that she couldn’t. Something tugged at her subconscious, pulling her ahead. A few strides later, the light diminished even more, so much so that it took Aoleyn a few moments to understand that the passage had emptied into a wide, yawning cavern.

  Her trepidation grew. She sensed few diamond-flecked crystals in here, and they responded to her call with less vigor than the ones in previous passages, giving off an eerie light. Almost like there was a glowing darkness, tingeing the edges of the silvery moonlight.

  Aoleyn looked up to see the moon high in the sky above—the ceiling of this deep cavern was the sky itself. The mountain wind moaned as it rushed about those high walls, and sounded to Aoleyn like a giant inhale.

  “Craos’a’diad,” she whispered. She couldn’t be sure, but …

  The cavern spread out wide all about her, but she moved to the center, drawn there inexorably. It wasn’t just the moon, or the breadth of the cavern, but the shadowy darkness that drew her, and she quickly realized that the floor fell away before her; a huge, deep pit, with no visible bottom, filled most of the place. The eerie darkness emanated from it, fighting the edges of the moonlight. Not a physical darkness, Aoleyn thought, but something different, something more profound, something that made this place so different from the rest of the labyrinth, made it cold instead of warm, frightening instead of inviting.

  If the rest of the place emanated life itself to Aoleyn, this place seemed quite the opposite.

  Consciously, Aoleyn told herself to be away from that pit. She even found herself whispering “go back” repeatedly as she slid her foot forward.

  Had she found the monster of this labyrinth?

  Her freedom shone above her, high above, tantalizingly and unattainably. She wanted to be out of this place, but there was no place to climb; there were no walls near enough to the maw above for her to hope to get there, for the opening was right above this pit. The cavern’s walls were far away in every direction, all ending at the high ceiling, none near that lone crack that was letting in the moonlight.

  At last, she managed to pull away from the pit, if only just a few steps. The spell broken, Aoleyn considered her options. She didn’t want to wander the hallways any longer, not even to get back to where she had started, and certainly not to explore anymore. There was a chill in her bones and she had seen enough.

  “This is my test,” she whispered, and the epiphany shined as brilliantly as the moment she had turned on the diamond-flecked crystals.

  She thought of the night of the ritual with the tattooed man who would be her husband, and of how she and Seonagh had climbed the ledge to the fire.

  The green-flecked crystals, the malachite.

  Aoleyn closed her eyes and tried to sort out the songs of Usgar. She ended her call to the diamond and listened for the subtle vibrations of other notes.

  She moved to the wall and felt the crystals, but it was difficult for her to sense their magic through the mind-numbing chill that had crept into her bones.

  “Focus,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes tighter. She imagined herself climbing the wall, using the crystals growing near the ceiling to pull herself along to the opening.

  At last she felt the same magic as she had felt in Seonagh’s tent, the same magic they had used to get up the cliff.

  Sensing more than seeing, she reached for a slender crystal rod protruding from the wall. Gripping it tightly, she shoved down with all her strength, breaking it off. She yelped as she cut her hand in the process.

  A deep wound. Aoleyn felt her blood pouring out, feeling light-headed and close to fainting. As she caught hold of another crystal to steady herself, she recognized its magic as that of a wedstone.

  Hardly thinking, Aoleyn reached out to it and brought forth its power, its warmth driving back the chill of the cave and washing into her hand, sealing her wound.

  Her relief lasted only until she heard the whispering hiss behind her.

  A profound coldness pierced through her, shocking her with pain. She stumbled backward, away from the wall. Her eyes popped open wide, but she could still see very little.

  The whispers grew around her, sinister and cold.

  She saw a light, tiny and far. The moon, she thought, and she stumbled toward it.

  She tried to call out to the diamond-flecked crystals again, but she couldn’t find her focus at that moment.

  A cold hand grabbed her and she screamed.

  But no, not a hand, she realized.

  Something icy brushed against her back.

  Aoleyn spun about, to see a deeper blackness before her, a human shape, but unnaturally stretched and swirling, constantly in flux, blowing apart and coalescing at random. Aoleyn could just make out a face, her face?! As though she was looking into some dark mirror.

  Or her face in death?

  In desperation, she punched out at it, but her fist and the crystal she held passed through the non-thing. She felt coldness, that terrifying shiver, grasping at her chest.

  And the shadow specter leered at her, and wanted to steal her warmth, to devour her with its cold. Or it was her own being, her shadow self, calling her to her grave.

  Aoleyn cried out again and fell back. Her lungs burned with cold and she could not see. And the floor was gone and she was falling, into the pit, into the darkness, and she was dying, and there was no hope.

  20

  VIRGIN VISTA

  Khotai slipped her hand into Talmadge’s as he stood out by the lakeshore, staring up to the southeast, where the full, silvery moon hung over Fireach Speuer as if put there just to limn the mountain in brilliant silver light.

  Talmadge glanced over at the woman and started to look back to the heavenly orb.

  But he didn’t, instead catching the reflection of the moon in Khotai’s dark eyes, and suddenly she became to him more than a bystander, but an integral part of the beauty of this windy night beside the loch, with the village of Car Seileach behind them.

  This was their third visit to Loch Beag together, though Talmadge hadn’t yet dared take her beyond the village of Car Seileach. The tribe had welcomed Khotai more openly than Talmadge had thought possible. Talmadge assumed it was because her To-gai-ru upbringing had given her a greater affinity to their ways, a greater appreciation of the rhythms of the land, than any travelers from Honce-the-Bear the tribal folk may have encountered.

  In a way, Khotai spoke their lan
guage even better than he.

  Talmadge shook his head, admiring her beauty, almost lost in the sheer attraction he felt for her.

  “What is it?” she asked, turning to return his stare.

  “I feel foolish,” he said.

  Khotai arched her eyebrow, her expression doubting.

  “The moon is beautiful,” he said, looking back to the southeastern sky in a clear move to change the subject.

  “Yes.” Talmadge could feel her gaze still upon him.

  “It is so bright you can even see the fish swimming in the lake,” he exclaimed, pointing. “Look!”

  But he knew that she wasn’t about to be distracted, and he finally sighed.

  “Why?” she prompted.

  “I didn’t want to bring you. Ever. Now that seems a foolish choice indeed.”

  “I told you that two years ago.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re just now sorting that out?”

  “It is more than that. Much more.”

  “I have kept your bed warm, and you mine,” she said and squeezed his hand.

  “It is more than that as well,” he answered without hesitation.

  “Truly?” she replied, a sudden flash of indignation filling her voice and face, and causing Talmadge’s eyes to widen as he realized that his statement could be construed as quite an insult to the woman’s lovemaking techniques!

  “No, I mean…” he stuttered and stammered.

  Khotai laughed at him, warmly.

  “Truly,” Talmadge went on, trying to realign the conversation once more, suddenly realizing that it was important to him to express these feelings.

  “I did save your life with those fools back on the river,” she said. “It took that to get you to let me come along.”

  “Not even that,” Talmadge answered somberly, “though I’ll never forget your heroics, fear not. It’s more. I have carried around the ghost of Badger for so many years, and now … now it is like the sun, or this beautiful moon, has chased the shadow away. And it is more than even that.” He paused and sighed, amazed at all of the emotions suddenly flowing through him, demanding release—emotions and feelings he had never before recognized, but that now seemed as clear as the moon hanging over the mountain.