by A. Attanasio
The elf bowed deeply and squatted beside the gnome."I am Broydo, elf-counselor of Smiddy Thea's clan in the Forest of Wraiths."
"You nearly forsook your lives back there," the woman said, turning her cowl toward the ridges beyond the pan where black tethers of night bound the jumbled land to the most obscure reaches of the starry horizon. "I know you are not ghosts, for the beast does not stalk ghosts. Why are a living elf and gnome trespassing the Labyrinth of the Undead?"
Old Ric and Broydo assessed each other and found no reason between them to keep their quest secret from the woman who had saved their lives. "We seek the Necklace of Souls," Broydo answered simply. "That alone shall lift the curse that a demon has set upon my clan."
"Duppy Hob's Necklace is well guarded," the stranger cautioned. "It is what enables wraiths to wander the Labyrinth as well as the Forest of Wraiths. They will defend their anchor to World's End. And then there are the dwarves. They are the ones who crafted the Necklace of Souls. It is their property now that Duppy Hob is fallen into the Gulf. Even if you retrieve it from the wraiths, the dwarves will stalk you across World's End to take it from you."
"I mean not to steal the Necklace," Broydo added, his brow furrowed contritely. "I mean to borrow it only long enough to heal my clan. Then I will return it personally."
"Dwarves are not as reasonable as elves," the cowled woman said. "After all, they are but maggots of a world serpent granted simian shape by Duppy Hob."
Old Ric cleared his throat. "Forgive my impertinence, kind and knowledgeable lady—but may I inquire who you are?"
The voice that came from the dark hood spoke softly, barely audible above the thrashing fire. "I am a witch."
"A witch?" Broydo echoed with fright. "A human?"
"Yes."
"And this fire that burns without kindling—" Old Ric inquired, "this is your magic?"
The witch gestured, and gusts of flame jetted from the naked ground behind them. She motioned again, and the fires vanished, leaving no scorch at all upon the blanched ground.
"Why have you saved us from the beast, mistress witch?" the gnome asked.
"Then you admit that I have saved you?" She leaned closer, and two eye glints sparked under her cowl. "You acknowledge that you owe me a life-debt, the two of you?"
Broydo and Ric exchanged fearful glances, and the gnome nodded. "We cannot deny it, gentle witch."
"I am not gentle," the dulcet voice said. "But I am needy. Will you help me with my need?"
"If it is within our power," Broydo agreed.
"It shall be," the witch breathed hotly, "when we retrieve the Necklace of Souls."
"We?" Broydo noted, bold eyebrows lifted. "You will help us?"
"I can take you directly to the Necklace of Souls," the witch promised. "I can lead you safely past all horrors and obstacles. Except the demon."
"But the demon is the worst of our foes," Broydo interrupted. "It occupies the body of my clansman, Tivel, and will know all the secret ways into my soul. I will have no defense against it but the Necklace itself."
"You will have the Necklace," the vague voice from within the hood assured him. "I cannot lead you past the demon, but I can distract this terrible thing. If you are intrepid, you will have a chance to seize the Necklace of Souls and exorcise the demon from your clansman Tivel."
"What do you want from us?" the gnome asked anxiously.
The witch held up one pale finger freckled with blood. "One crystal prism from the Necklace shall be mine."
The gnome and the elf retracted at the sight of the gory finger. "Who are you?" Old Ric cried out in horror. "Whose blood is this we see upon you?"
"It is my own," the witch answered without emotion. "I bear wounds that will never heal. And only a crystal prism from the Necklace of Souls can sustain me long in this world. I have been kept alive thus far by the proximity of the Abiding Star that allows wraiths to wander this wilderness. But I am trapped here unless I obtain a crystal prism to grant me the strength to wander farther from the Abiding Star. I have not the stamina to go on from here without it." She drew back her hood and exposed a human visage welded with rays of blood, a cut face disfigured with puncture wounds and ripped gashes that had flayed open her cheeks and exposed jawbone and teeth. "Witness my suffering!" Bruised eyes gazed forlornly from behind rags of torn lids.
Broydo stifled a cry, and Ric upheld a hand to block the horrid sight. "Who did this to you?" the gnome asked.
The witch covered her living wounds. "Those who feared me."
"Show us the way to the Necklace, hapless witch," the gnome said. "If we succeed, you shall have your crystal prism."
The cowl faced Broydo, and the elf said, "You are a witch. You have magic. Why do you need us to get the Necklace?"
"The dwarves have taken precautions against witches and my ilk. Only those without magic can hope to get close enough to the Necklace to take it from the dwarves."
Broydo nodded. "Then I am agreed. You shall have your prism from the Necklace if we succeed. Lead us directly to where it is, witch, and let us be away from this frightful place."
The witch rose to her feet, straight upward, as though her cloak held no more than hot air, and the blazing fire vanished.
Gnome and elf squinted in the abrupt dark and found the witch's starlit shadow drifting across the alkali pan. Ahead, against clotted starlight, the cinder cones loomed. Ric and Broydo hurried after their guide, their feet falling mutely on the ashen surface.
The terrain dipped, and they traipsed among tall, alien stones, menhirs and dolmens that had been knocked askew. Fireflicker eyes peered at them from the seamless dark of the alcoves, yet no creatures came forth.
Soon, the threesome had so utterly immersed themselves in the meander of leaning rocks that even the cinder cones had dropped from sight. Above jagged slates set edgewise in the ground, the stars in their fluorescent webs glinted, barely visible.
Only the wispy shadow of the witch offered direction in this confounding land. Broydo and Ric shuffled quickly to keep her in sight, for she floated effortlessly over the pebbly paths. The harder they strove to keep up, the faster she moved. Before long, they began jogging and then running to hold her in view. Yet, strangely, they experienced no weariness from their exertion.
All night, they ran. Occasionally they threw feverish glances to one another and saw little in the dark but the glimmer of reflected star shine in each other's startled eyes. The dread of losing the witch held their attentions firmly forward until dawn. Pink clouds erased the stars, and a brisk wind sprang from ahead and swept away the darkness among twisting weeds and heeling fumes of dust.
In the gray light, they became aware that they were not running alone. A third figure loped between gnome and the elf. Grinning maniacally at them in the empurpled haze, another elf followed: bison-shouldered with a block of a brow, and a cuff of mossy hair under a bald pate.
"Tivel!" Broydo recognized his comrade instantly and screamed with alarm. He waved fervidly at Old Ric. "It is the demon!"
They ran harder to catch up with the witch, but she had disappeared.
Effortlessly, the demon Tivel kept pace with them, grinning insanely. "Greetings, Brother Broydo!" a harsh voice rasped from the leering elf, and his eyes lit up in the gloaming like rays from a gourd lantern. "Have you come to the Labyrinth of the Undead to join the others?"
The ground bulged in front of them, and the runners skidded to a stop. Before them, the crust cracked, and many necrotic hands sprouted from below. Broydo and Ric crouched with horror as skeleton figures draped in rags of flesh lifted themselves from their graves. Arms of wet-looking bones reached out, and torn faces, empty sockets lit with votive flames, swayed above tottering carcasses.
Broydo sobbed, "They are the eighteen!" He fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. "They are my clan! The ones who came to this terrible place before me."
Old Ric pulled Broydo upright and away from the morbid assembly.
&n
bsp; "Where are you two going?" Tivel asked through a molar-wide grin. He sidled closer. "This is where you belong. This is where you shall reside for all time to come."
The elf and the gnome turned to flee and stopped, blocked by a slab of slate. From either side, the Undead slouched closer, tattered fingers reaching out, the chamfers of their eye sockets inflamed with burning filaments. The demon came forward clothed in caustic green smoke and putrid stench. His chalk face sweated ruby points of blood. Out of his open mouth, the genital head of a viper emerged, unmeshing treacherous fangs.
"Tivel—sleep—" a sultry voice called from the darkness beyond.
A shower of stars folded around the shambling Undead, and they collapsed to a fuming stack of bones and peelings of hide.
"Sleep, Tivel, sleep," the soothing voice spoke, and the cowled witch stepped from out of the dark of the leaning stones. "Your flesh awakes a fog. Your bones awake rain. The lightning in your eyes begins to thunder in your brain."
The witch clapped her hands, and a bolt of electric fire hissed vibrantly in the space between Tivel and the shuddering gnome and elf. The demon staggered, then stood unmoving in deeper darkness when the lightning sizzled away.
"Be quick!" the witch called. "The demon and its Undead will wake in moments. Be quick!"
The gnome leaped over the smoldering bones and ducked under the demon's grasping arms.
Broydo could not budge. He squatted terrified before the evil countenance of Tivel, dizzy with the rotted stink of his dead clansmen. The bald white eyes of the demon gazed sightlessly; yet, the viper remained writhing in the jarred mouth, twisting with lethal intent.
"Broydo!" Old Ric shouted. "Come along! Jump the bones!"
The elf would not move. He sat mesmerized by his frightened reflections in Tivel's white eyes.
Ric turned to retrieve his companion, and the witch sang with alarm, "No! You will break the spell."
Too late the warning came, for the eldern gnome had already flung himself back over the steaming slag of melted flesh and bones. No sooner did he grasp the elf and yank him upright than a bestial cry descended on them.
"Broydo would not abandon his brethren," a sibilant voice spoke from all directions, "and so you both shall remain faithful as the dead!"
Tivel lurched over them. His chalky, asp-tongued face grinned, hideous with fearsome glee. Drops of blood sweat flew like sparks. He seized Broydo and Old Ric, one in each supernally powerful hand, and lifted them off their feet.
They bawled and searched frenziedly for the witch. Already, she had fled, and the two knew then an ignominious death had claimed them.
The viper stabbed forth from the demon's gaping jaws and struck first Broydo, biting into his naked chest and burrowing, gnawing for his heart. The elf yodeled his agony, writhing futilely in Tivel's unrelenting grip. Blood jetted, and the crunch of cracking ribs resounded above the demon's screeching laughter and the elf's anguished shrieks.
"Asofel!" the gnome cried in desperation. "Asofel!"
The demon shook Old Ric to a blur. "What are you calling for, fool? Your gnomish gods cannot save you. You are mine! Your bones will melt in the blaze of your suffering. You will know..."
His exultation broke off. Out of nowhere, a shaft of blue radiance fell upon them, and the viper unclasped from Broydo's chest and curled into the demon's maw.
Tivel staggered backward blindly, with his prey yet in his hands. A rank, steamy smell of rain wafted from the ground where the brilliant beam of light illuminated the heaped bones of the Undead.
The corpses rose up whole—eighteen elves intact, unmarred by lesions or wounds. Though their eyes shone dimly, but paling stars, their faces glowed with ardent wonder, joyfully surprised. And in the next instant, they bleared away on the wind, vanishing within the dazzling light like a heat mirage of wrinkled air.
"Nay!" the demon bellowed, squinting. Tivel held the elf and gnome to shield its blood-smeared countenance from the blinding light. "Nay!"
The pillar of blue luminosity gradually condensed to a human figure with a head like the naked core of a star. At the sight of this, Tivel released the creatures in his grasp and backed away so swiftly he seemed blown by gale-force winds. An inchoate cry spooled from him, and as he whirled away, his leather wings spontaneously shredded to rags upon his back.
The being of star fire pointed its left arm. There was no ray, nothing visible that projected from its hand. Yet, the brown wings of the demon burst into flames at once as if naphtha-doused and torched.
Tivel howled and thudded to the ground under a hot crackle of burning membranes. Limned in blue flame, the demon wrenched upright. He gazed with abject terror at the entity of light that had granted annihilation with one gesture. Then, he pitched forward, wailed horrendously, and shriveled into a blackened husk and a twist of acrid smoke.
Broydo sat up startled, slapping his body, feeling for wounds. He found no injury. And he squinted hard at the radiant being who had saved them yet could discern no features save a dazzling outline. "Ric?" He groped for his companion.
Old Ric did not reply. He knelt abjectly before the Radiant One. "All blessings on you, Asofel!"
"Get up, Old Ric. It's over now." The shape of stellar radiance stepped closer, and the enclosing slate monuments revealed every pith and spall, lucid as under a microscope. "You found the dark thing swiftly and now our work is done. Let's get out of this dream."
"No, no! Asofel, you are mistaken." The gnome raised both hands to guard his sight from the burning presence. "This is not the dark thing we seek. This is but a demon. A wicked spirit of the ethers. A dream thing such as myself."
"What?" The intensity of the Radiant One dimmed, and his bodily characteristics became recognizable. Asofel wore a gold cuirass atop a white tunic fretted purple, and the thongs of his sandals crisscrossed his strong shins. A luminous mane of hair billowed from a lion's face. "You summoned me for that mere thing?"
"Forgive me, Asofel." Ric spoke with his arm over his eyes as much to protect his gaze as to avoid facing the radiant being's wrath. "It would have slain me. Our mission would have been lost. I needed your help."
Asofel's aura flared, erasing his features. "I am not your servant, gnome."
Old Ric pressed his face to the ground. "What of your promise to hold close to me?”
“I am at hand. But I am not your hand.”
“What was I to do, Radiant One?"
"Find the dark thing," Asofel said, stepping backward. "Go at once."
The gnome reared upright, face averted. "But—you see, it's not my fault, Radiant One. You dropped me into the Forest of Wraiths—and Broydo"—he motioned to where Broydo squatted with his hands on his head peeking through the cleft between his arms—"this elf you see here before you—he saved my life from the squid monkeys and then—"
"Silence, gnome!" Asofel had brightened to a blue shaft of hot light, then faded and blurred into the orange glow of dawn.
Old Ric rose and walked unsteadily to where Asofel had stood. No trace of the Radiant One remained.
Broydo gaped at the scorched remains of Tivel. The ashen shape of the dead elf trickled away in the bright morning wind. "You spoke the truth," the elf-counselor whispered. "You serve the Nameless Ones."
Ric said nothing. He turned around in the space where Asofel had walked and felt nothing special.
"Gnome, you should get on with your mission at once," Broydo remarked.
"How?" Old Ric asked, palms up, feeling the air for some lingering sense of the overwhelming power that had occupied this space only moments before. "We owe our lives to the witch."
Broydo put his finger over his heart, where the demon-asp had bored for his heart. "Behold, gnome! I am whole. We owe our lives to Asofel." The elf put his hands on the gnome's bony shoulders. "You were right all along, Old Ric. I did not believe you. I surely do now. We must obey the greater being."
"Yes." The eldern gnome shook his head in agreement. "I will obey the lady who sent m
e to find the dark thing. She is the author of these worlds. She is the greater being. I do not have to obey Asofel. What does he know of our Bright Shore? You heard him. This is but a flimsy dream to him. That is why the lady sent me. I alone must find the way, best I can. And so, I declare by my best reckoning that we must fulfill our vow to the witch." He reached out and put his hands on Broydo's thick shoulders. “And we will heal your clan."
The elf's warty face composed itself to a sage smile. "Ah, Ric, you have the clarity of a counselor. I am sorry I ever doubted you."
"Reserve your praise for when the deed is done," Ric advised soberly, and gazed about among the tall slates of shale. "First we must find our way."
The Neck lace of Souls
By the dawning light of the Abiding Star, the wanderers oriented themselves in the direction they had been running when Tivel first appeared and continued on their way. They adhered to the bearing that the witch had set for them.
Their stamina wore thin without the witch's magic to bolster them. Soon Old Ric wheezed for breath, and his stride faltered. They slowed to a brisk walk. Around them, fireflies jittered.
"Where is Tivel?" a tiny voice called out.
Old Ric, through his labored breathing, thought that Broydo had addressed him. "What did you say?"
Broydo swatted at the thickening haze of fireflies. "I said naught."
"Tivel—Tivel" came the chant out of the sparkling air.
The gnome peered anxiously at the sparks flickering about their heads like shattered halos. Each tiny light revealed a faerie. These hot glints did not appear as ordinary faeries. Each possessed a spidery shape.
"Demons!" Broydo yelped. "The demon host that Tivel convoked from the ethers! Run, Old Ric, before they enter the small holes of our heads! Run!"
Lungs churning, the gnome fled after Broydo, alarm feeding the strength he needed to sprint. Still, the sparkling legion of demons streamed behind, chanting in their eerily thin voices, "Tivel—Tivel—where are you? Tivel—Tivel—where are you?"