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

by R. A. Salvatore

  This intended victim, this singer of the hated song, had twisted the mountain’s notes to her own ends to use against the fossa.

  It took a long while and a long ascent up the mountain before the fossa heard the music again, but there it was as it had been, stinging now unbearably, for the red moon was no more, the harmony of music and magic blowing on mountain winds. The song of the living that the fossa could not stand.

  The demon fossa let out a long, low growl.

  It stalked off again, retreating from the music, though now a part of the creature had reawakened and did not want to run from the song.

  But the darkness held and the fossa slinked away for the safety of its pit of death, desperate to get out from under the stars and away from the musical wind of Fireach Speuer.

  The Blood Moon had set. The night of the fossa had ended.

  * * *

  Aoleyn never took her eyes off the upward slopes of Fireach Speuer as she threw another wave of magical healing into poor Talmadge.

  She had to go, and quickly, for every passing moment made it less likely that she could track the fossa. She had it hurt and knew its weakness and had to strike now.

  For winter was fast coming, and she’d never find its lair, and another Blood Moon could be years away.

  The outrage, the violation, within Aoleyn couldn’t wait years.

  Talmadge sat up beside her, praising her magical prowess. “Are you a monk?” he asked, a word she did not even begin to understand.

  She ignored him anyway.

  “You are free, go away,” she said, not even looking at him. Any other time, and curious Aoleyn would have had a million questions for this man, this stranger who looked more like Usgar but was not Usgar than any of the lakemen from below.

  But not now. She had seen her parents.

  And she had met their murderer.

  She was sure of it.

  She pulled herself back up to her feet and started away, staggering under the weight of incredible exhaustion.

  “Where are you going?” she heard the man Talmadge ask from behind. “You can’no!” he cried, and before Aoleyn had even crossed the clearing, he was beside her, holding her up.

  “I am,” she declared.

  “You need rest.”

  The claim sounded obvious to Aoleyn, but she shook her head determinedly. “I can’no let it get away.”

  “It already did!”

  “Its trail is clear.”

  Talmadge wanted to stop her, whoever she was. She had intervened and chased away his tormentors. She had come to him, so full of fire, so thick with blessed healing and divine lightning. He had some experience with the Abellican monks back in the Wilderlands west of Honce-the-Bear, and had seen magic—even used magic with his clairvoyance glass.

  But looking at Aoleyn, the frontiersman didn’t see Abellican monks. No, he saw Khotai, that same indomitable spirit, that same fearlessness that had sent Khotai spinning on her back into the midst of his three captors that long-ago day by the mountain river.

  He winced at the memory, at how he had been thrown from Khotai by the monster of Loch Beag, how he couldn’t get back to her.

  How he hadn’t even tried.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if he had tried, he knew, rationally. The one assault on the canoe by the overpowering lake monster had defeated any possible fight or rescue. Talmadge hadn’t even been aware of his flight until he felt the ground beneath his feet in shallow waters. He hadn’t meant to abandon Khotai.

  But he had.

  There it was, hanging before him, undeniable.

  He knew then what he had to do.

  “I am a tracker,” he said, grabbing Aoleyn securely and turning her about to face him. “And I am strong now, from the gift of your magic.”

  He smiled wryly, then moved quickly, dropping and hoisting the woman up and over his shoulder.

  “You rest,” he told her and he started out of the clearing, following the obvious trail left by the maddened monster.

  Before he had gone two steps, though, Aoleyn wriggled and rolled from his grasp, landing beside him. “Are you mad?” she demanded, slapping his hand away.

  “You helped me, now I must help you.”

  “You’re not going to carry me up the mountain!”

  “You need rest … you can’no deny.”

  Aoleyn paused and took a deep and steadying breath. She couldn’t deny her exhaustion, but it was different than she might have felt if she had spent a day hoisting heavy stones. This weariness was less physical and more profound, and she felt, more than anything else, as if she had to quiet her mind and not call upon the song of Usgar at all.

  “This is my task,” she said stubbornly, and she knew it was a stupid thing to say, but couldn’t help herself.

  “You are certain that you must pursue this creature?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then this is the price of my debt. If you go, I go.”

  Aoleyn wanted to tell him that he had repaid his debt in full. He had leaped from the tree onto the fossa, breaking its spiritual hold on her soul, giving her the moment of freedom to fight back.

  She wanted to tell him to go away, in any case, because, despite her determination, she believed she would die in this fight, and didn’t want him to die beside her.

  That’s what she wanted to do, but she could not. She knew that she needed him for support, and not just physical support, and not just his tracking. She was terribly angry, but she was terribly afraid, and she realized that those fears were only going to grow stronger with every step up the mountain.

  “I can walk,” she said, and started off, Talmadge moving up beside her.

  Soon after, she was leaning on him heavily with every step.

  Long after that, she awakened with the first hints of dawn, to find herself across Talmadge’s shoulders, the man still moving.

  “Good morning,” he said, easing her to the ground, and huffing with every twist, clearly weary.

  Aoleyn faced him squarely, staring him in the eye.

  He pointed a finger into his own chest, and introduced himself again, after the craziness of the previous night. “I am Talmadge.”

  She nodded. “Talmadge. From which village?”

  He laughed. “From a village long ago and far away,” he said. “I have no tribe.”

  She nodded. “No tribe is good.”

  “But you have a tribe. Aoleyn, yes? You are Usgar.”

  She nodded again. “I am called Aoleyn, yes, and yes.”

  “Well, Aoleyn of the Usgar, if you are so determined to face this monster, I will not stop you.”

  “You could not, if you tried.”

  “The trail is thinner, but we are near to its lair, I am sure,” he said.

  Aoleyn nodded. “Show me, then leave.”

  The man looked about and seemed to be wrestling with something, but at last he nodded.

  “You are certain?”

  “How many times will you ask?”

  “Until you say no?” he answered with a grin, but Aoleyn didn’t return the smile. She had rested, but the anger in her had not abated. The demon fossa had killed her father and eaten her mother’s soul, and she had watched it, had felt it intimately.

  Talmadge nodded at her. “Good enough, then,” he agreed, and he started along with Aoleyn right behind, soon, the northwestern side of the mountain still dark with the morning shadow. Soon after, the two crept to a ridgetop and stared down a small hollow to see an enormous chunk of stone, the massive roof of a black cave at the bottom, hidden behind a small stand of quaking aspens.

  Aoleyn toed at the rocky ground before the cave. It had a vaguely crystalline appearance, with edges too sharp and too clean for the mountainside. Talmadge had noticed the strangeness of the cave entrance’s appearance, too, Aoleyn noted, and had perked up upon seeing it.

  “Your debt is paid,” Aoleyn whispered.

  “Not yet,” he replied. “Not until I talk you out of this madness. Yo
u can’no go in there.”

  Aoleyn surely understood his sentiment, for the stench of death flowed out of that black opening, assaulting her senses and her courage.

  “Be gone, Talmadge of no tribe, who will not even tell me of his village.”

  “I have no village.”

  “You were born in the forest?”

  Talmadge chuckled despite the grim mood and wretched scent. He pointed out to the east, beyond the plateau, beyond the Surgruag Monadh, beyond even the Desert of Black Stones.

  “Far away,” he said wistfully. “In a land called the Wilderlands—though surely a land tame compared with this place—near a great kingdom called Honce-the-Bear.”

  “Honce-the-Bear?”

  He nodded and smiled.

  “There are villages there, in Honce-the-Bear?” Aoleyn asked.

  “Many! Great villages and cities.”

  Aoleyn shook her head, not understanding what “cities” might be.

  “Huge villages,” Talmadge explained. “Full of houses and towers, and with a hundred people for every single lakeman, woman, or child all about Loch Beag—all of them! And the Usgar, too! All of them combined!”

  His expression grew sly. “Turn from this place, Aoleyn of Usgar,” he said. “Come with me to Fasach Crann, on the lake, and then beyond. Come with me to the east, beyond the black stones of Fasail Dubh’clach, and I will show you.”

  Aoleyn could not deny the curiosity he had aroused in her.

  “Beyond the lake, beyond the mountains?” she asked.

  “Aye.”

  “Farther than we can see from the top of Fireach Speuer?”

  “Aye, much farther.”

  She shook her head. “There is nothing beyond the horizon.”

  He laughed again. “You’re smarter than that,” he said.

  She nodded and this time smiled back at him, but they both knew that the distracting conversation, for all its delightful possibilities, was at its end.

  “Go away, Talmadge.”

  “Aoleyn…”

  “You can’no help me in there. You’d get me killed trying to save you.”

  Talmadge stuttered about for some recourse, but there was none to be found.

  “Well, I’m heading down,” he said in obvious surrender. “Sun’s up, and I’ve a long walk ahead. Best to be off the mountain before night, or I might get hunted again. Even before night, if it’s your Usgar friends come calling.”

  They are not my friends, Aoleyn thought but did not say.

  Talmadge turned and walked away, leaving Aoleyn crouched at the top of the ridge, staring down at the cave that so fittingly looked like the gaping maw of a hungry demon.

  37

  THE FACE OF EVIL

  An exhausted Tay Aillig, Egard, and Aghmor limped into the Usgar encampment just as the looming mountain before them began to limn with the light of dawn behind it. Their legs were scratched and bleeding, Egard had turned an ankle and leaned heavily on Aghmor for support. Aghmor’s nose was certainly broken from running into a low limb in the dark. He had crashed to the ground and remained so still for so long that Tay Aillig was sure he had lost another warrior that terrible night.

  But no, the trio had made it to safety, at least, which was more than could be said for Ralid.

  Tay Aillig cared little for that, other than the consequences he might face for getting a man killed on a hunt of his calling, and without the sanction of the Coven or the blessing of Usgar-forfach Raibert. No raid or hunt was supposed to happen without two of the three—Usgar-forfach, Usgar-righinn, and Usgar-laoch—in agreement.

  He’d just go to Raibert soon, he decided, before the tribe moved to the winter plateau, and remind the doddering old man that he had been given his agreement for the hunt.

  Or maybe he’d go to Mairen.

  The mere thought of confronting the Usgar-righinn had the man gnashing his teeth.

  Behind him, Aghmor and Egard veered off, heading for their tents and some needed sleep, Tay Aillig knew. He didn’t stop them, for both seemed near to collapse, and he certainly understood that feeling.

  Standing on the edge of camp, most of the Usgar still asleep, Tay Aillig again tried to unwind the surprising events of the previous night.

  His two surviving minions were despondent, of course, but he was too full of anger to feel that way. Anger at fate for putting a bear in that place at that time, a bear that came to his fossa lure, and in the last Blood Moon expected for a long while!

  It had been the worst possible coincidence, a terrible turn of chance that had cost him his planned ascension to Usgar-triath. He should have the fossa’s bloody head in his hands then, to walk into the camp in triumph.

  The camp began to stir before him, women appearing to go out and begin the morning meal, men wandering out of their tents to go piss in the woods. None paid particular heed to Tay Aillig, and why should they?

  Yes, that would be his greatest hope: that no one even knew that he and the three had gone out the previous night. Not much of a hope, though, for it did nothing to alleviate the ambitious man’s disappointment.

  His glory had been stolen away. Ancient Raibert wouldn’t live much longer, probably not even until the next Blood Moon, the next chance for Tay Aillig to put his plan into motion. When Raibert died, Ahn’Namay would be named as Usgar-forfach, and that one likely had many years of life ahead of him.

  Unless an unfortunate accident fell upon him.

  Tay Aillig didn’t like the idea of killing yet another Usgar, and particularly one so venerated, but he liked less the idea that he would be caught there, simply as Usgar-laoch—and even that formidable position would not hold for long as the younger men sought to take his place.

  Shorter still might his reign be if the truth of Ralid’s death became known.

  He thought of the bear happening upon the lure, then fighting the four men so determinedly. Food was plentiful this season, and that behavior seemed so unusual, even for an aggressive brown bear. Aghmor and Egard had claimed it was maddened, surely crazed, and driven into them by the fossa, like so many sidhe had been driven across the mountainside under the Blood Moon previous. But Tay Aillig considered, too, the lightning he had seen behind him—a witch’s lightning, to be sure. The fossa might drive even a bear before it, of course, but Tay Aillig suspected that such was not the case, not this time.

  Standing there, the camp awakening around him, Tay Aillig became convinced that his plans had been foiled, not by fate, not by a mere bear, not even by the fossa.

  “Mairen?” he whispered to himself. Would he find her sleeping in her tent?

  He growled and he scowled and he stalked off to find out.

  * * *

  The stench and the overwhelming sensation of dread nearly stopped Aoleyn as she approached the dark entryway, a black opening of about waist height beneath the gigantic stone wall. She bent low and called upon her diamond, relieved to see that the floor beyond was a bit lower, so she wouldn’t have to crawl through, at least.

  She wanted to go in, but her legs would not answer her call.

  She found herself breathing hard, in gasps, and then felt as if she had to remember to breathe or she would not.

  The gasps came faster. Aoleyn’s eyes darted about, left and right. She looked behind her, expecting to see the monster leaping upon her. She looked into the cave again and imagined the ghosts of her mother and father flitting about the shadows just outside the perimeter of her magical light.

  Were they waiting for her here? To welcome her to death?

  When she sat down on the ground and slung her legs into the cave, she truly suspected that she was climbing into the realm of death and not the Jeweled Shore of Corsaleug—to the smoky underplane of Ifrinn, where the fiends roamed and tormented deserving souls for eternity.

  Aoleyn closed her eyes and steadied herself. She thought of the crystal caverns, where the song of Usgar rang supreme—those were not far from this place, she knew. This place, Fireach Sp
euer, her home.

  This was not Ifrinn before her, she told herself. It only felt that way because of the creature within, because of the demon fossa. Magic was life, and life was magic, and around the fossa she had felt neither.

  She hopped down to the cave floor, ducking so that she didn’t crack her head on the low stone of the entryway. She called upon her diamond to shed brighter light, but held back. She feared to walk in the darkness, of course, but was she making herself an easier target?

  She let the diamond magic expire, to see how bright the cave would be without it.

  She ignited it immediately once more, having found herself in a blackness that was not natural! She glanced back at the entry, the exit, and saw the world beyond, waking with the morning light.

  But it was muted and seemed so far removed, so far away.

  Was this Ifrinn?

  * * *

  He had wanted to stay and ask the girl many, many questions, surely, but he had realized that he would not dissuade her, would not turn her from her course. Nor could Talmadge argue with her reasoning that he would be no help to her, indeed might prove a detriment, in the lair of that monstrous creature. He had leaped from the tree upon it, crashing with crushing weight. Had the beast even noticed? It had shrugged him aside and absently whacked him with that terrible swordlike tail, and the only reason Talmadge even had legs left was because he was falling before the blow, and so the tail didn’t cut through.

  Talmadge stopped in his tracks and glanced back up the mountainside. He worried that he was leaving this young woman, this child, to die. The thought of his severed legs had thrown his thoughts back to that awful moment on the banks of Loch Beag when he had found the leg of Khotai, his dear Khotai.

  Perhaps he had left Khotai to die.

  The breeze picked up, and Talmadge felt the invigorating, unseasonably cold wind on his face, and was reminded of that magical leap, nay that flight, up into the tree while holding Aoleyn’s hand. He had never seen such a display of magical power! And the fireball! If the fossa hadn’t—hadn’t what? absorbed it? eaten it?—that expanding blast would have surely lit half the mountain on fire!