by Russ Linton
"Praise Vasheru!" Sidge's wings rattled.
Kaaliya touched his face. "Calm down."
Her touch sobered him. Sidge used the moment of clarity and tried to think backwards through the vision. It was too confusing. All nonsense, but he still needed to tell the tale. If by chance Izhar had shared any of this experience with him, then perhaps it had been real. They'd maybe be able to find a way to confront Gohala with proof Vasheru had smiled upon his master.
Izhar stumbled back to the table with a pot of tea. He filled each cup, ignoring the not-insubstantial amount of liquor remaining in his own. "What's this you were saying about visions?"
Sidge lurched forward and Kaaliya swiped the cup before he steeped his robe in it. "Thank you," he slurred and turned his attention to Izhar. "Vasheru, oh glorious His … really long tail … He spoke to me. While you were Him and drinking tea with Him."
He paused to review the last thing he'd said. Izhar wasn't fazed by it. "And?"
Sidge brought four hands to his face and created a tunnel around his mouth pointed at Izhar. But his voice failed him. Looking into his master's eyes, Izhar's eyes, he couldn't force himself to say more. Sidge had submitted to Vasheru's will, and Vasheru had become a hideous beast and offered a cup of gore. Like he too was a monster.
Master Izhar's red-rimmed eyes narrowed over the top of his cup. He sipped, leaving a scatter of droplets on his beard. Cradling the cup, he breathed in the steam and Sidge felt squeamish again.
Kaaliya tapped the bowl in his lap and Sidge huddled over it. "What about Chuman? Would he have seen anything?" she asked.
Sidge wanted to argue, but his stomach lurched.
"Why not," grumbled Izhar. "You too, Mistress Kaaliya, while we're at it. Who else has seen Vasheru's Wisdom? Apparently Gohala. My acolyte. Who else? Anyone?" His voice rose until he too was calling out to the entire hall.
"Cloud Born, if you please," said Kaaliya patiently, eyeing the room. "I asked because Chuman stood atop the vardo. Directly in the bolt from the sky."
"He did?" Izhar nearly dropped his tea.
Straight to the point. All this talk, and Sidge realized he'd neglected to mention Chuman's feat. He'd secretly hoped it wouldn't have come up at all.
Only Kaaliya had seen it happen. Sidge could never accuse her of lying, and any doubt he had regarding her account was erased by the man's wrestling of the vardo as they entered the valley. This was something else Sidge didn't want to offer. He couldn't exactly avoid Izhar's searching gaze, so he pulled close enough to the bowl that his mandibles clinked against the bottom.
"What of this, Chuman?" Izhar was staring intently at the giant, differently than he had before.
Kaaliya watched their silent companion as well and her face had an expression that didn't fit her knowing eyes. As part of their drinking game she'd brought up the day Sidge had altered his robes and how she'd known he was staring. She could read him, unlike most humans. Even those he'd lived with his entire life, with the exception of Izhar or maybe Farsal, had difficulty. Sidge was getting to understand how to read her, too.
She seemed puzzled. Intrigued. Chuman was her mystery.
Sidge pulled his face out of the bowl and his wings drooped.
"I saw light." The giant's stiff brow knotted, a dense motion like spreading mud, and his eyes fixed elsewhere. For a long time, he didn't move or speak.
Sidge found his antennae snaking toward the man. They left Kaaliya's aura and passed Izhar's own chaotic assortment of smells, as varied as the contents of the vardo. In Chuman's direction, the air grew crisp and empty with a steady hum. Home.
Chuman shifted the flat gaze toward him, and Sidge reeled in his antennae. "The song called. I was broken. By Vasheru's will, I pursue the song."
Even as Sidge saw a strange light in the man's eyes, he watched Izhar and Kaaliya, rapt by the man's words. Their unquestioning fixation formed a knot in his chest that displaced the sour need to vomit.
"Song?" Sidge swiped his hand dismissively. "Who's the drunken one, hmm?"
Kaaliya and Izhar exchanged a glance.
"Remind me, no more spirits for you," said Izhar.
Sidge's wings buzzed angrily, and he felt himself rise off the ground. "Maybe I did have a vision. Why is my vision drunken ramblings, and his utter nonsense so intriguing?"
Kaaliya's eyes flicked toward the other patrons of the dining hall and she leapt to her feet. She grabbed his arm. "Wonderful idea. I could use a bit of fresh air myself."
"Fine," Sidge said. "Master, if I may be excused?" He crouched in midair, though he wasn't sure all his limbs made it to the right place.
"By all means." Izhar peered into his tea, sullen.
Sidge tried to float away, holding the position of surrender an acolyte was meant to present to his master. He careened into a nearby wall and stumbled as he dropped to his feet. Kaaliya guided him toward the door and into the cool night air.
He shrugged away from her. Tangled in his robe, he started to fall but fought it with his wings. Up, down, it was all the same. He smashed face-first into the wooden boulevard.
He groaned and rolled to his back. Kaaliya knelt over him, her hair blending with the night sky. The impact had displaced all of his feelings, except the shame.
"I should be drinking."
"Trust me, you're done."
"But I'm staring." He ran his fingers through her dangling hair. "You need stars. A crown, made with all these stars. Like in the troll place." At least he hoped that was what he said. Saying anything was getting harder with the way his tongue rolled limply in his mouth.
"We'll get you to the vardo." She hauled him to his feet. "I guess it would be better if you could sleep this off."
"Sleep. I like the sound of that," Sidge replied. If everything went black, if he could float in the pool, and if the world would stop spinning, he'd be fine.
Before long, they were at the vardo, with Kaaliya doing her best to help him through the curtain. He felt flying might help the process, but after ricocheting off the door frame several times, he gave up. Wings frozen, he dropped to the ground, bouncing his face off the steps with a sharp crack.
"You're going to feel that one tomorrow." Kaaliya grabbed him under his upper arms and dragged him up the steps.
"Don't bruise. My skin's an armor I can't peel off."
Darkness. He couldn't see and wondered when his hood had fallen across his eyes. They became a web of limbs and sweat as Kaaliya struggled to drag him to the makeshift bed. Her smell was more powerful than the tarry substance addling his brain. He might have gnawed on a clump of her hair at one point. He hoped he hadn't.
As the lightness of his head started to radiate across his limbs, the incessant hum of the city became more substantial. He heard the boards of the vardo creak.
"Wait!" He sat up and flung his hood back. "You promised! The Moonstrider."
She laughed and shook her head. She walked toward him and retrieved the figurine from her pocket. It was once again a small silver egg.
He scooted to the side of the chest with extreme care as the floor beneath him continued to spin and shift. He sat up, rigid, and patted next to him with clumsy slaps. She sat and handed him the egg.
"What does it do? What sort of magic?" He turned it over in his hands.
Kaaliya touched the surface, and the Moonstrider's limbs and head crept out.
"Sorcery!" Sidge clacked his mandibles and quirked his head, wondering if he could find a sober lens to show him what was really going on.
She took the Moonstrider and placed her finger on a spot along the figurine's breast and pressed. The extremities collapsed and she left her finger in place as they withdrew. She repeated this and the transformation took place anew.
"A trick, nothing more." She handed Sidge the egg and guided his own finger to the same spot. He felt the surface give under his touch, followed by a slight vibration against his hand as the egg became a Moonstrider. "It's priceless. An artifact of the Jadugar, or
so Lord Chakor tells me. Members of the royal house keep such things on their persons as status symbols."
He watched her face as he performed the transformation several more times. He wanted to talk to her. Words weren't coming to his muddled mind.
"Stay."
"I can't." Kaaliya stood outlined by the restless light of lanterns in the street. "These past few weeks … it's been good to relax. You've been a charitable host. A friend."
"Then come with us!" Sidge wanted to stand but didn't trust the ground.
"What? And be a wandering pilgrim? Spread the light of Vasheru?" She laughed, devoid of humor. "Not sure I'd help your cause."
"I'm not sure Master Izhar helps our cause," Sidge groaned. He cradled his head with all four hands as pain pulsed through it. With each surge, his sight dimmed. Unable to resist, he collapsed on the travel chests. "I'm not sure what this will be like without you."
Darkness. Sidge felt a hand brush his foot. Heard her speak. "You'll be fine, Sidge. You're a better man than, well, most men."
He wanted to delay her as he heard the curtain part. By the time the pain subsided, she was gone. He lay there. Unable to move. Letting the strange cry of the city envelop him along with the blackness.
Sidge slept.
CHAPTER XVI
Sidge raised his antennae as high as he could above the odor of horse manure and sawdust in the alley. Fortunately, Master Izhar refused to entertain his groveling any longer.
"For the last time, get up," said Izhar.
Grateful, Sidge rose and brushed the filth off his robes with his free hands. "I am truly sorry for my behavior last night, Master."
Izhar grinned and his eyes sparkled. "Hard to understand moderation without knowing your limits, eh? We may've found your poison."
"Poison?"
"Your drink. The thornsap."
Sidge suppressed a violent turn in his abdomen. "Please, let's not discuss it."
"As you wish." Izhar waved a hand. "You, too. Come on, up."
Behind them, Chuman was prostrate on the ground, clogging the narrow alley with his bulk.
The dim-eyed man was an idiot. Literally, a simpleton, Sidge reminded himself. He needed to show more patience toward their … follower? Ward? Whatever Chuman was, Izhar had insisted the giant accompany them. That being the case, they needed to find clothes for him other than the ill-fitting robes. The shrunken vestments looked foolish and it would do them no favors for this bizarre stranger to be mistaken for an acolyte.
Izhar continued toward the street ahead, and Sidge pulled Chuman after him.
The open boulevard of the city gate had been exchanged for a maze of bridges, canals, and catwalks. Tightly-packed buildings rose in great spires, their shapes offering little cohesive architecture save the carved colonnades decorating the rooftop patios.
Sidge had spent so much time dropping to the ground in supplication, hood over his head, that he hadn't kept track of where they were. He recalled the sights and smells of their walk through the city in broken shards. Most of the details were lost to the molten ball the thornsap had formed in his stomach, and to his fixation on the shame of the previous night.
They'd found an inn, he recalled that much. It was in a rundown part of the city that reeked of stagnant water, offal from the butchers' shops, and urine. The proprietor seemed unenthusiastic about Sidge's presence. A heated conversation had ensued, and Izhar had haggled for several minutes while the innkeeper maintained a disapproving glare.
Sidge knew it was his fault. The whole evening. No doubt the innkeeper had been worried the drunken Ek'kiru, smothered in the pungent blanket of smells, was on the verge of varnishing the floor with the contents of his stomach.
"He sleeps outside," was all the innkeeper said.
He'd bowed, palms to the sky, and walked out the door, leaving Izhar to fume and Chuman to stare after him.
It wasn't like he slept anyway.
But then again, he had.
At least he didn't remember anything between when Kaaliya had left and being woken at the inn. Even the background buzz of the city's song had quieted during the stretch of lost time. And once Sidge had gotten out to the inn's stables and climbed unsteadily into the vardo, the blackness had descended again.
Terrifying. Yet, he longed for it. Especially when faced with the scene they were approaching at the end of the alley.
People streamed by the intersection. More than Sidge had ever seen in the courtyard of the Stormblade Temple, or the quiet streets of Cerudell. Their clothing lacked any uniformity, and their momentum was an unpredictable surge of swinging limbs and colliding paths. The chaos rooted him to his spot while Izhar dove into a fray of bows and acknowledgments.
"Good day to you, Cloud Born!"
"Vasheru smile upon you, Cloud Born!"
He watched as the master never slowed his pace and the bubble of bowing citizens that formed at Izhar's passing, collapsed. No open pathway left behind, no clear space; only a squirming wall of cloth, skin, and hair.
Sidge forced down a second wave of nausea.
When he and Chuman stepped from the alley, another bubble formed, this one different from the fluid space that had greeted Izhar; an empty cavity trapped in amber, where the lesser insects met their doom. He started to bow in acknowledgment as Izhar had, but received no reception, only stares and open mouths.
"Pardon me." He forged ahead, offering apologies.
Chuman followed. A head taller than the tallest man, he would invite the gawking stares from a block away. But Sidge knew he couldn't ignore his own contribution—his wings. He tried to draw them closer. Free from his robes, however, they had a mind of their own and they sought the breeze to tease them further out.
Why had he ever altered his robes? The decision plagued him as he threaded through the crowd. He cringed at each crunch of a wing against passersby, like dry grass. Dry, yet the air was humid with the sweat of so many people. Too many.
By the time Sidge got to the railing on the far side, he was jogging. He stumbled against the rail and leaned out over a bustling canal, unsure if his vomit would worsen the odor. With deep, regular breaths, he staved off the sickness.
Hundreds of boats of all shapes and sizes clogged the canal. More buildings lined each side. Salted, sweat-laden air and the odor of gutted fish left to bake in the sun wrapped Sidge's antennae in an oily film. Behind him, Chuman lumbered through the still gawking crowd, and the boards of the street maintained a constant tremor underfoot.
The motion, the smell and thornsap rose in Sidge's throat yet again, a constant surge. He spotted Izhar waiting on a dock at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. He shrank into his hood and desperately waved Chuman in that direction. Chuman scanned the horizon, peering at a point in the distance, then took the steps to the canal level.
Sidge felt the stares of the crowd piercing the back of his robes. He wanted to shout. Maybe tell them, too, that he ate children. His head ached and throbbed.
He grabbed the top of his hood, yanked it completely over his eyes, and exhaled into the darkness.
He'd become weak-willed along the way. Let this new, noisy, color-soaked, cloying world weigh too heavily on him. He should've left things as they were and been an island of calm among the chaos. Instead, he'd chased delusions and fanciful desires. The Temple. His life's work. This was why he was here.
Sidge tore back the hood and faced the crowd with his mandibles. The gawking had spread several people deep, causing traffic on his side to grind to a standstill. He placed his four hands together and bowed.
"May Vasheru protect you," he said, before descending to join Izhar and Chuman.
"I was wondering what happened to you," said Izhar.
"Getting my bearings, Master. What are we doing?"
"Trying to cross the canal and give my legs a much needed rest. There are bridges, but they're crowded this time of day and a boat ride should prove much faster." Master Izhar called out to a passing boat covered in nea
tly stacked bolts of cloth, "A ride, good sir?"
The pilot pretended to not see them over his load.
"Light of Vasheru guide you!" Izhar called, adding a muttered, "Into the eternal tempest."
"To be fair, Master, that boat was too full."
Izhar said nothing and shouted again to a passing barge. And again. Sidge wasn't sure how this could be faster, but avoiding crowds seemed like a good plan.
"Many of the decks are full." Sidge eyed a battered junk, its sails collapsed and driven by long poles manned by half a dozen Ek'kiru standing on deck. They were small but without wings and they gripped the oars with their four hands. Piles of freshly caught fish twitched on the deck among crates and urns. "Perhaps festival preparations are the only things on their minds?"
Izhar grunted and continued his persistent hails. As the wait grew, Sidge moved into the shade provided by the street above. Out of the sun, his stomach began to calm, and he turned to examine the space underneath the city streets.
Massive pilings formed the foundation of Stronghold, some many spans wider than the vardo was long. He'd consider it a marvel of engineering, like the Storm Temple, but the placement of the supports was anything but symmetrical. It appeared a maddened builder had scattered stones and erected the pilings wherever one happened to land.
By their appearance they were the same type of trees that composed the city wall. In the daylight, a variety of colors were visible in the bark. Rust to ocher and even turquoise spotted the surface. He touched the bark and found it was hard as stone.
He remembered the tall tree with the open wound. Those monstrous talons clicking on the surface of the table. He started to ask Izhar about the trees when he noticed a boat approaching.
Low and flat, the skiff left gentle ripples in its wake. A bench was mounted at the stern and brightly colored garlands decorated the railing. Unlike the others, this boat had no cargo and appeared to be made specifically for passengers. The driver balanced at the rear on a narrow perch.
"Hello there!" Izhar shouted.
The boatman waved and swung toward the dock using the pole, his wiry arms and legs flexing with the motion. "Greetings! A ride, Cloud Born?"