No monster beneath the bed who wants you dead.
Only come morning will you realize upon whom the Monster Fed.
–Tomes of the Touched
Glimdrem awoke with a serene yawn, eyes shut to remain in a blissful sleep. It didn’t work.
“You are healed.”
His eyes fluttered open to stare at Inslok and the pair of humans. “Where are we?”
Solineus said, “In a tomb. The tomb.”
Glimdrem rose to a knee, stood. His muscles were limber and without a single ache. An energy vibrated through his being, residual from healing? I never heard of such a thing. “So long as it isn’t my tomb. Who healed me?”
“One of the Touched’s people.” Glimdrem turned to look as Solineus pointed to a skeleton clad in a long dress; she curtsied. “Aneelu.”
The notion struck an illogical chord. “A skeleton healed me?”
“She wasn’t a skeleton at the time.”
“The more questions you answer, the more questions I have.”
“It’s fortunate the Touched waits for us, because I don’t know much more.”
Glimdrem spun to Inslok. “How long have you been here?”
“I just arrived; four candles to cover a thousand strides. A peculiar experience.”
Which meant the Edan knew nothing more than he did. He snorted, but decorum forced him to face his healer and bow. “Thank you for the benefit of your abilities.” Her skull remained as blank as a skull should, but she curtsied again.
Solineus took several strides. “I’m sure the Touched is expecting us.”
They traipsed down a stair carved with flowering vines, the lines as if never touched by feet or water. So dry, astounding considering swamp surrounded the place. They swung north and down an even longer stair, then passed through a room with a marble bowl in its center.
Every fabric, every wood, everything which might be worn by use or time remained perfect. What forces were at play to keep a place so pristine? Time was the obvious answer, just as Lelishen had mentioned, but there must be something more.
They passed through a crypt with chambers carved in its walls to hold bodies, all empty, before stepping into what must be the Tomb of the Touched. Glimdrem’s eyes skipped over the dais and its monstrous sarcophagus to the wall of books, then fell on the one thing in the room which appeared affected by time: A giant pile of bones sitting slouched in a high-back chair.
The skeleton sprawled on the throne righted himself, standing straight. Glimdrem had only the vaguest memory of the being’s arrival the night before, and only now as he spotted him again. In life, the Touched would’ve been a huge man, and even as a skeleton he intimidated.
“Ahhh! Little Silone men and their pet snake!”
Glimdrem caught Solineus’ grin as he leaned to say, “You’re the pet snake.”
Inslok said, “I come seeking wisdom.”
The Touched leaned to look Glimdrem in the eye. A long stare. His bony mouth opened and a tongue appeared; he stuck it out with a hiss.
Perplexing, to say the least. “Snake. Should I take offense?”
The Touched guffawed. “Insult! Insulted! Snake! Prefer, perhaps, being the withered vine, leaves brittle and dry, fallen from growing so high, the breezes rustling your once vibrant growth to sound so similar to a snake? To slake the thirst, to fill in burst, terse, worse… A Holy Curse!” He laughed and turned, strutting with the backs of his bony hands on his hips in theatrical fashion.
Inslok stepped forward. “I came to speak with you.”
“Shhh!” The Touched stared at an empty chair sitting behind a small desk. An open book sat with bare pages. He spoke to no one. “Did you hear something? A something? Bumbling, tumbling, stumbling? A whisper from a once remembered wind? Perhaps, perhaps… a lapse, perhaps, in judgement, in sparking filament, of mind and wit.”
Glimdrem watched as the man called the Squirrel shook his head and wandered away to sit on a stone bench. He might be the wisest of us here. “Inslok wishes words with you.”
“A name, a name, a proper name for an improper man, an Edan.” He held a hand above his eyes as if shading the sun and peered around the room. “No, I know Inslok, he is not here, not all of him at least, the least, released, resting at unpeace within the whisper unspoken and broken, a token of the woken, a man lost who forever is found.”
Inslok stepped between them. “How do you claim to know me?”
The Touched cocked his head and stared at Glimdrem. “Whisper, spitter, sputter.” Bony fingers clattered tip to tip.
Glimdrem asked, “Why do you claim to know him?”
“I don’t. I claim fame, what a shame, to die with so many forgetting your name. Or maybe best, for your rest, lest people come seeking your bones, your tones, to dance upon a dead reputation undeserved, so faithfully served.” He pointed back near the throne where no one stood, and laughed. “An excellent rejoinder! So sad they aren’t so wise to so chastise.”
“Speak to me.”
The Touched sighed, moped across the floor. “Yes, I remember Inslok. I remember him as he no longer remembers himself. A tool like so many tools, a fool like so many fools, a bloodied hand not quite capable of eating his enemy’s heart. But oh! How many hearts he presented to his lord king, kissed the ring, all along suffering the sting, the ringing sting stinging, of almost. Almost. Almost. Almost. A most painful affliction upon the fools who become tools of he who rules. Almost. Inslok was always and forever, almost. Now, he is almost Inslok. Poetic, inevitable, inescapable.”
“Then speak to what remains of Inslok.”
The skeleton flailed his arms, exasperated. “I already have. Outside yesterday, a thousand years before, a thousand years after. What is the point of more words… the birds! I will point to the birds, have you seen the birds?” He raised a bony finger, jabbing it at the ceiling and its carved dragons soaring through a cloudy sky.
Glimdrem wondered now why the hell he had come so close to dying to get here. Sutan was a waste of a decade; at least this journey wouldn’t take so long. “Those are dragons.”
“Are they? Color me baffled. No, dragons flitter from bush to tree singing merry tunes, eaten sometimes by… snakes.” The Touched stared hard at Glimdrem, then laughed.
Inslok spoke to Glimdrem: “This thing doesn’t know me, it knows nothing.”
“Nothing it says! Nothing, something, somebody, nobody, dead body. I who spoke to the First Birds knows nothing?”
Glimdrem’s thoughts scrambled. The First Dragons? Impossible. There was that word again. Possible?
But it was Inslok who said, “This thing never spoke to a second or third bird, let alone a first bird.”
“Chirp chirp and whistle my song. Bang a gong. What went wrong? Why almost? Why always almost? A name earned at last! Your whispering friend I shall call Almost.” He clapped bony hands and his feet clattered in a jig.
Inslok stood unflustered. “If he is Almost, why remember him at all?”
“Remember, forget, stand to sit, it’s all the same on a different day in the same old way. I say. You say. Is that a chill? I felt a chill, running up that hill. He must remember, but he can’t remember, the price is in the sky, too high, a lie, a truth, a sloppy kiss from the uncouth, a father’s embrace without a face.”
“What must he remember?”
The Touched stalked away. “Almost, you fool, don’t you know? You tool, sat upon as a stool, he must remember that remembering is to no longer be, you see.”
Inslok spun to face the Touched, his voice raised an octave. “Then we need to speak.”
The Touched spun, facing Inslok for the first time. “We will speak again, you and I. When, where, sin and dare, a laugh and a toast, who will miss whom the most? Next time bring whiskey. Or rum! Yes, rum. So much wine over so much time, I need a kick to rot my belly.”
Solineus’ vision of the world vibrated into a blur, and his eyes fluttered, unable to stay open. His gut spun with an instant of
nausea before everything stabilized.
Solineus stared at the skeleton speaking to Glimdrem and Inslok, but the words were a foggy blur. He stared at himself, standing frozen. Rinold shook his head and wandered to a bench for a rest. Solineus turned to the flesh and blood man known as the Touched. “What the hells have you done?”
“Wither and dither, smoke and flash.” He bowed with a flourish. “Magic.”
Solineus’ eyes rolled and he smirked as he walked between the skeleton and the woodkin, passing fingers before their faces. “Word games weren’t enough this time around?”
“Words and birds, and snakes. Some fly, some crawl, some lie and some tell all, but some are best from one tongue to two ears, where sinister cannot hear.”
“Sinister? Who?”
“Worry and bury? Of which do I speak? Who do you fear?”
Inslok was the most dangerous, but when a fight involved words, swordplay wasn’t always the most deadly. Glimdrem answered to the Lord Chancellor of Knowledge, and any of the other Trelelunin… Who the hells knew? “All of them.”
The Touched rocked on his heels, hands locked behind his back, gazing down his nose at him. “Wise words paranoid; paranoia, the tool for the fool, the fear unfounded for the confounded, trouncing and bouncing the strong man into quivering ball. You are a pillar to such fears, not pilloried by such fears.”
“None of these people are my friends.”
The Touched clapped his hands, eyes aglow with mirth. “Truth. An Edan will never break their vow.”
There was an edge to his tone on “break” and “vow”. A peculiar emphasis. “You consider them an enemy.”
“Words are strong. Enemy is such a word. Words are weak. Never an enemy, no. Ever a friend, true? No. But not enemies and not friends often meet the bend and meet the twist to ally when stakes are high. Fly to the high, but then. Maybe. Perhaps. Is it a friend who helps you with a knife to his throat?” His face scrunched. “Did they help me then, even when the knife wasn’t mine own? The tone. The ring. The ding. Steel on steel, rage on rage, stand against to kneel; a man may die in armor impenetrable as certain as nude.”
The Touched had lost him. “They killed you?”
Blue eye and brown gave him a stare worthy of an Edan. “Dead am I?” Then he laughed, as if to point out how different from the Edan he was “No, they didn’t kill me, nor can I blame them for my being so damned alive.” He wiggled a finger at him as you might tease a child while moving in to tickle. “You’ve a question you want to ask every time you arrive, since the first.”
“What?”
“Blink and think, unwind that kink.” He moseyed to the throne and slumped into the cushion.
Solineus smiled; the question came in less than a blink. “A kiss from pellucid blue.”
“I know naught of what you speak.” He shook his head, mock solemnity, but the smirk concealed nothing.
“You know of the lady in my dreams.”
“You’ve mentioned her before.”
“Didn’t.”
“Will.”
“You’re a son of a bitch.”
“I am! My mother mine would’ve had you killed long afore now.”
“Did I tell you who she is?” They stared at each other in silence. That damned smirk again. “Will I tell you who she is?”
“Ah! Hee hee hee ha!” He glanced to the desk, voice flipping to a snarl. “Note my girlish laughter, you heathen.” His smile was downright fiendish. “No, I tell you.”
“Then tell me now.”
“But you haven’t told me yet.” The Touched turned to no one and spoke in Edan: “Who do you fear more, this man or his mistress? So, so, so sore, such a bore. Pluck your feathers, you unspeakable rooster to crow, crow, and crow, to raven the maven in her haven, the child laughing unborn, the harbinger of Latcu in ice.”
The Touched turned back to Solineus. “I do not tell you this time we meet, nor do you tell me so that I may tell you… we have company black of beak.”
Solineus glanced to the empty air, then to the woodkin and the Skeleton… his frozen self. “A name unearned.”
“So many, like so many.”
“Something different then. Eliles? She is well?”
The Touched smiled. “Ah! The Dame of Fire, she and I have spoken, or will speak, soon, if not yet. A certainty maybe. She doesn’t stand outside worry, there are forces, but she is capable, the hand, the wink, the smile, the flame to burn a soul to the Forges.”
“In life you worshipped the Pantheon of Sol.” A surge of cocky straightened his spine, and he smiled.
“Clever man caught me. In the days when the gods could walk these lands, indeed I kneeled, and looked into the living eyes of Sol. And I feared mine own god more than any I’d met before.”
The cocky grew strong. “You don’t have to talk in riddles, do you?”
“I speak whenever and however I need, I am after all the Touched, the insane, the inane, the addled of brain. Being maybe dead has its perks. Nothing is so simple. Think hard to answer this question, you will find the answer sometimes correct.”
“Who am I?” If Time was fluid here, it was worth a shot.
“You haven’t told me yet.” He grinned. “Nor would you, could you, appreciate any other answer, even or especially the truth. Can any mortal truly appreciate who they are? I never appreciated dying until I couldn’t.”
Plain words, even his tone turned sonorous and deep, instead of sing-song. Why? But like most questions, he figured it pointless to ask. “The Sliver didn’t close the Celestial Gate. Is there another way?”
“Always, but only in one way but a hundred ways, depending on the time which is now, because once closed once, it can never be closed again. Some questions aren’t about names, nor legendary claims, some questions with answers simply cannot be answered until after the question no longer needs asked.”
Solineus rubbed his face with both hands, but what he wanted to do was jump up and slap the bastard. “Can the Edan destroy it?”
“It is a way, one, two, or three, but for the Father Wood from the Mother Wood, is the only direction they will flee.”
Solineus pondered those words a moment. “Inslok left the Eleris.”
The Touched licked a finger and held it up as if testing the wind. “If that leaf should ever blow to Kaludor again, it will be for me, not the Gate, no, no. So says fate, the Lie Seeker and Doom Breaker, spare your sleepless nights this fancy.”
“Another has left the Eleris.”
“Has she? I wonder. Has she in truth left the Mother, or has she not in truth even left the Father? Are the Mother and Father still in her, or is she still in them? Simple questions with complicated answers if answerable at all, before the fall… the rickety walk, the swaying planks, and the gibberish talk.”
“What the hells…”
“Tsk! Follow me.” The Touched jumped to his feet, and he strode to the silent conversation. “My entertainment here so soon shall end. It’d be unseemly for you not to be where you’re supposed to be.”
Inslok spun to face the skeletal Touched. “Then we need to speak.”
Solineus glanced back, the flesh and blood giant faded with a smile.
The Touched spun, facing Inslok for the first time. “We will speak again, you and I. When, where, sin and dare, a laugh and a toast, who will miss whom the most? Next time bring whiskey. Or rum! Yes, rum. So much wine over so much time, I need a kick to rot my belly.”
The world wavered and shook, and Solineus’ legs moved, taking him back to himself though he never asked them to move. In a fluttered blink he stood within himself again, and the skeletal Touched laughed.
Glimdrem said, “This, whatever he is, is a sliver of moon from a full eclipse.”
Solineus chuckled. “No. He’s toying with you.”
Inslok damned near looked angry, or at least peevish. “The Eleris Edan doesn’t look well upon pointless games.”
“You are not the Eleris Edan, you are sim
ply an Edan.”
The Edan’s head turned, slow as a contemplative owl. “You dare to play games?”
Solineus grinned, hands in the air. Underneath the Edan veneer there may be no laughter, but there was an anger. “Not me. But hells, I reckon you’re welcome to try and beat some information from him.”
The Touched leaned over Solineus, looking him in the eye with empty holes. “To whom do you speak?” He leaned into Glimdrem. “Who is he talking to? Your imaginary friend, in the dim of your lazy mind’s eye, the growing green lie? Almost? The Edan you say, behave and belie, a tricksy trick conning this man into your fiction, your unspoken diction, the lady’s unspoken prediction. I can tolerate your lies no further, be gone, move along, unless you wish to sing a song.” The skeleton meandered to his throne and sat, rested his chin in his bony palm and waited.
Solineus asked, “Either of you know a good tune? Elsewise, I think we’re done here.”
Inslok relaxed. “This chamber is unworthy of any song I know. But I’ve learned enough from this visit.”
Glimdrem turned, eyes in a squint. “Did we?”
“Indeed.” Inslok turned to Solineus, face as stern and cold as ever. “The Edan will fulfill our agreement, then your people will need to find a new home, if the Volvrolan heeds my advice.” Inslok turned and strode from the tomb.
Solineus stood stone still. “What? What the hells is he talking about?”
Glimdrem stared in silence. “I don’t know. Welcome to dealing with the Edan.”
Solineus watched the woodkin leave, but he turned to the Touched. “What happened?”
“The inevitable. But the Edan never break a vow.”
34
Sinister Suspicions
Dried, drowning, frowning and clowning,
a deviant smirk or a devious smile,
snake lips, lion tongue, saber fangs,
words as poisonous as a bite,
yet words hold no power you don’t bequeath,
they distract when you should be wary the teeth.
Trail of Pyres Page 31