“Kassakan?” he managed weakly, though doubtfully.
“Ah, Kassakan,” answered an unfamiliar voice, its tone an unnerving harmony of bass and tenor. “Blessed wind, if my hosskanae is still accurate. But no, I am not.”
There was a pause, and Two-Moons strained to discern the figure standing behind the light. The features were impossible to make out through the glare, but the overall size was apparent enough. The stranger stood at close to fifteen feet in height. Two-Moons felt an uneasy tremble in his gut as the voice continued.
“A human, I see,” it stated, moving still closer, “and old by your standards. You fought quite bravely. Most of your ilk freezes stiff at the mere touch of those pesky brutes, but you…. Ah, you impressed me.”
Two-Moons began to reply, but the other voice continued as if not noticing the attempt at all.
“I am not easily impressed, you see. But then, with humans, anything more than utter failure is somewhat impressive. Still, you are an amusing bunch, and I am short on amusements of late. What are you called, brave little Ebuouki man?”
“I am Two-Moons,” he answered. “And you? You are andu’ai?”
“Yes!” A small hint of surprise laced the bi-tonal voice, followed by an eerie, musical laugh. “I’m half surprised you remember us so quickly. Your kind finds it so easy to forget. But you, little Ebuouki man, you might be worth the trouble after all.”
Two-Moons was still in the process of deciding if he liked the sound of that when the andu’ai bent down toward him, and as its face came into view he found it difficult to restrain an instinctual flinch. He had never seen a living andu’ai this close before, but he had happened upon a tapestry once at the Citadel of Swords in Ishtin. It was more accurate than he had feared to believe at the time. Aside from its imposing height, the andu’ai had girth to match, though hidden in part by flowing silks of indigo and silver; and its face – gods, but that was enough to stop the beating of any heart. The smooth, hairless skin, a frosty blue-green in complexion, was broken by two prominent features: the eyes, cat-like saucers of amber centered on a black slivers of pupil, glowing like lanterns; and a hideous smile of needle-thin teeth spreading back across the sides of his face. Less than a foot from that jaw, Two-Moons had no doubt it could open to swallow him whole with the ease of a swamp python. He hardly noticed the thin, shallow nose and the tiny points of his ears.
“Have I startled you?” asked the giant with another snicker. Then his dark blue lips drew down over his predatory smile in a frown, and he said, “You must forgive me, little Two-Moons man, for my behavior. You are in no state for jests. I have been most uncivil. I must bring you back here and see to your health.”
“Back?”
The cat eyes narrowed as the grin returned, though somewhat subdued this time, “You interest me, human. This, I will admit. But I don’t venture to this side of the river myself without better reason than that.”
As if by way of explanation, the figure rippled, and droplets of water dripped from its surface, increasing into rivulets as the face, body, and robes melted into a pool of water at Two-Moons’ feet. Then the process reversed itself, and the pool reformed into the smiling andu’ai once more.
“A parlor trick, really, but useful. Water makes such an excellent conductive medium for simulacra, and it’s so abundant here. But I forget myself again. It’s high time we were leaving.”
The explosion of light and sound shook Osrith to his knees. Kassakan helped him to his feet, staring out past the toppled columns and crumbling buildings around their camp toward the Dolset’s far shore. The ruins about them obscured their view, but the glow from the miniature blue-white sun that hovered there reached out to pry away the shadows even here.
The full wonder of the city, for a few startling moments, was plain to see. It possessed all the things which made up any great city: domes sheathed in gold and silver, towers and mansions, a great plaza lined with statues and intricately fluted columns not a hundred yards away. And all of it on a scale near double the size of the same made by human hands. The destruction was on a grander scale as well, for this city had not simply been eaten at by time, it had been struck down, and its pieces were thrown and scattered on the floor and walls of the cavern where it had come to rest. Cooled streams of ancient lava ran like twisting, flowing causeways between buildings; towers lay like sheaves of discarded arrows; steam rose from the cracked golden dome of what looked like a cathedral; great fissures cracked the pavement for hundreds of feet in length, some more than twenty feet wide.
Then the darkness returned.
Kassakan made a series of clicks and hoots in her native speech, and dimmed her ball of light with a gesture. The moss globe still glowed next to Symmlrey, who slept oblivious if not peaceful, her shoulder re-set and bound, the shadows dancing playfully at the edge of its light. Silence returned as well, broken only by the rushing of the river.
Osrith whistled softly between his teeth.
“We may be in grave danger,” whispered Kassakan.
“Really?” shot back Osrith.
“I mean beyond what we feared.”
“When you’re in a hole this deep, lizard, another few feet hardly makes a difference, now does it?” Despite his casual tone, Osrith began checking over his surviving arsenal of weaponry. “There’s dead and there’s dead, and when it happens it don’t matter much what put you there.”
“I’ll remind you of that when the time comes,” Kassakan said.
Osrith released the exasperated sigh he reserved for Kassakan alone. “What time, lizard?’
“When the andu’ai who cast that spell comes looking for us.”
Osrith laughed. There was a point at which a situation became so hopeless or terrible or frightening, it passed from the realm of the real to the ridiculous. In Osrith’s estimation, that point had come. He remembered in vivid detail his conversation with Two-Moons when they planned their expedition from within the walls of Castle Vae.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “the main road to Dwynleigsh would be far too dangerous.” He paused and nodded to himself, then continued with even more emphatic sarcasm. “Yes, let’s take the secret route through the mountains, instead!”
“I suppose it’s healthy to see humor in the situation.”
“The long route under the mountain?” continued Osrith without pause. “No time for that! Take us through the ancient cursed city. That’ll save us a ten-day, after all!”
“Osrith.” Kassakan put her claw out to rest on his shoulder. “Enough. We need to leave this place as soon as possible. I would suggest now.”
“And Two-Moons?” asked Osrith, collecting himself.
“I don’t think there is anything we can do for him now. Just before that spell, there was a battle cry: Waeuu ne N’Iuk. It means Song of Morning in Ebuouki; it was the name of Two-Moons’ wife.” Osrith began to interrupt, but Kassakan shook her head to silence him, and continued softly, “It is their custom to shout the name of a loved one at the time of death, so that they may prepare a welcome in the greylands. He would not yell out her name unless he knew his death was certain. From the power of that spell, I fear he was right. He would not want us to join him.”
“Damn.” Osrith looked at Symmlrey, then back at Kassakan. “Let’s get her back to the boat, then. You’ll have to tow us. We don’t have any paddles left in one piece.”
The lizard nodded her head and patted Osrith’s shoulder before removing her hand. “The worst of the river should be behind us. I don’t think it will be a problem.”
Despite their haste, it took longer than they hoped to break camp. Both were too tired, drained, and sore to move quickly, and Two-Moons’ death had sapped any vestige of enthusiasm they had left. Fear motivated them, but it was a poor substitute, and ineffective at pushing them beyond their limit. There was no fire to douse, no tracks to hide, only Symmlrey and their packs to carry, but still time dragged on.
Osrith had seen many men die, and many friends
, but he had always moved on. For someone he had hardly known, the weight of Two-Moons’ death was oddly heavy on his heart. The old man was the type that invited death. An idealist. They always went first, drawn by their convictions and their honor into situations less driven people would avoid. Greed killed a lot of men, and generally they deserved it, but the biggest killer of all was faith. That was sad, he supposed, for he knew the world could afford to lose mercenaries like him in any number, and ill afford the loss of even one such as Two-Moons. He had tried faith himself, once, and it hadn’t worked out too well. At least he’d found with greed his expectations were low enough to avoid disappointment.
“Osrith.” Kassakan’s tone was one of warning, and Osrith snapped his full attention to her immediately. Her nostrils were sniffing the sulfurous breeze. “The cave-manti are close – and in great numbers.”
“How close and how many?”
“I think we should run,” she answered with untoward calm, shifting Symmlrey on her shoulders.
Without another word, the pair broke into a dead sprint, running dangerously close to the edge of their light as they scrambled toward the river. Osrith had no wish to meet with a group of cave-manti. The kin held them in a category of healthy respect and avoided the creatures wherever possible, due mostly to their ravenous and unselective appetites. Generally reclusive, every so often the manti would come out of their holes and feed on anything in their path, much like locusts on the surface world. The primary difference being that locusts weren’t ten feet tall, carnivorous, and capable of ripping a human in half with their mandibles. The kin told stories of livestock stripped of their flesh in moments by a horde in the midst of feeding, and common belief held that kin children, in particular, were a favorite treat. Aside perhaps for the Great Traitor Isulraad, the manti were thus the most feared of kin bogeymen.
It wasn’t long before they were clambering down the remains of an oversized dwelling toward the stretch of sloped marble where they had moored the boat. With the river so close, Osrith almost felt they might make it. Then he saw that the boat was gone. They were trapped. There were no tracks visible on the smooth stone, but Osrith imagined it didn’t take many of the manti to throw it back into the river. He cursed himself for his laziness. His mind had argued that they should take the boat with them to camp, but his weary body had refused to listen.
“Either we jump in or we make a stand,” said Osrith, setting down his packs and taking his axe from his belt. He put his back to the river and looked sidelong at his friend. “I don’t think I’d survive either, but you just might. Take the stone and go to Dwynleigsh, old friend. If anybody’s going to paw my gold dragons, I want it to be you. And you’re the only one of us in any shape to swim for it.”
“I don’t want the stone.” Kassakan put Symmlrey down. “And I don’t want your gold. Maybe there’s a third option. They might listen to reason.”
“Yeah, they might. But do you speak overgrown insect?”
“No,” she admitted with a strange intensity in her gemstone eyes, “but they might recognize the universal language.”
Kassakan’s hands wove through the air with dancer’s grace, and the lips on her snout moved in a silent recital. Osrith didn’t bother to inquire further. Though not a great lover of magic, he recognized it quickly enough, and he wasn’t about to protest in this case. Whether the soft clicking sounds and faint movement in the shadows were real or his imagination, he could feel their eyes on him, and they weren’t far away. Then, like water bursting through a dam, light erupted from Kassakan’s globe fivefold, and he could see the sounds and movement were not his imagination after all.
There were at least fifty of them, closing ranks in a semicircle, cordoning them off from all escape except the river behind them. The cave-manti were, in fact, quite similar to their surface cousins, not accounting for size. They stood erect, but centaur-like, using their lower four extremities for locomotion while their ‘arms’ were free to wield tools or, in this instance, weapons. And these were not the crude stone implements Osrith had expected. They carried spears, halberds, and glaives of exquisite craftsmanship, long and graceful, with metal hammered out to gleam and swirl like water at their ends. He didn’t recall any stories regarding their skill in weapon-smithing, and then he remembered where they were.
This place must be littered with old andu’ai weapons, he realized.
One of the manti broke ranks. It advanced slowly with glaive raised, its mandibles clicking and scraping together rapidly, accompanied by a series of chirps from its throat. The sound reminded him of Kassakan’s language somewhat, but it lacked the flute-like tones that made hosskanae so beautiful. Still, he reasoned, they hadn’t killed them outright. They were trying to communicate. This was a good sign. At least, he was pretty sure it was a good sign.
The creature came closer, and Osrith steeled himself as it drew within striking distance. It towered over him, looking down with its eerie multifaceted eyes, and he tried not to grimace too noticeably at its pungent odor. Its carapace was a shiny black, almost reflective, and adorned with what appeared to be the scalps of its unfortunate prey. Some system of counting coup, he guessed. Osrith assumed this must be their leader because it had many more of the desiccated souvenirs than the rest.
“Can you understand anything it’s saying?” Osrith asked Kassakan from the corner of his mouth.
“Not a click,” she responded. “But those scalps are mostly dringli, perhaps they’ve heard of the axiom about the enemy of my enemy?”
“Mostly dringli,” Osrith said. “What are the rest?”
“Kin, human – one smells vaguely of the aulden.”
“That’s not very encouraging,” he muttered, “but if they wanted us dead, it looks like they had the opportunity.”
The insectoid bent its head down toward Osrith, jabbed at his axe with its shining glaive, and issued another burst of staccato clicks. Osrith responded with a frown and tightened his grip. The next swipe of the glaive made contact with the axe, pushing it down and away. Osrith ground his teeth. He knew what it wanted, but the thought wasn’t appealing.
“Kassakan?” he hissed, hoping she had another option.
“I don’t think we have much choice,” she said.
Osrith didn’t break eye contact with the mantis leader as he crouched slowly to the ancient pavement. He laid his axe gingerly on the marble, and stood. One of the manti’s four legs stepped over the weapon protectively even as it waved its glaive in the direction of Kassakan’s light. There was a pause, and then darkness absolute as she extinguished her colorless fire.
Not long after that, sticky insect fingers were grabbing at him, pulling him along through the blackness as they chittered back and forth. Osrith could think of a lot of reasons they were still alive, and he hoped most of them were wrong.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HUNTING GAMES
CALVRAIGN leaned against the polished ivory rail at the edge of his balcony. The suns had climbed past their summit at midday, beginning their slow, steady fall toward dusk. The clouds had thinned, allowing him an unobstructed view of the city from his vantage point on the face of the north tower. The immensity of the capital was just a flickering of soft orange lights and slender fingers of stone that pierced scattered clouds, reaching boldly from the earth to scratch at the underbelly of heaven. The glint of their alabaster finish was visible even from this distance, reflected like a phantom city in the viewing crystal of the Ciel Maer. Even in his most vivid daydream, Calvraign had not guessed at the beauty of this ancient city. It was remarkable to him that this place was the pride of the Seven Tribes when his own kind were yet clad in furs and hiding in caves, dancing on the edge of civilization.
Now things were different. It was the upstart humans in the gleaming city, their crude architectural additions like blemishes on the face of a masterpiece, and the aulden lurked in the shadows of their forests in contempt of their unwelcome usurpers. Not that Calvraign had so much as
glimpsed any fae creature in his short years, nor heard such hatred directly from their lips. As most humans, he had only heard tales of their doings, some amusing, some frightening, most simply unnerving. Brohan always spoke of them as aloof but not necessarily unkind, though most folk did not share his light opinion of the ancient race. Magicians and meddlers, changelings, thieves of babes in the night: this was the common lore, and even Brohan agreed there was some truth to such rumors. But as terrified as Calvraign was of the fae, he was fascinated by their wisdom and power, intrigued by their mysteries, and now, upon seeing their ancient citadel, awed by their grace.
And here was he, a peasant barbarian from the hills, standing on the little island that served as home to Guillaume’s fortress retreat. Not simply a guest, an honored guest, with servants to feed and clothe him and a wardrobe of fine warm garments that in themselves represented more money than he had ever hoped to call his own. He ran his fingers over the soft silk lining of his overshirt and chuckled to himself in barely restrained excitement. He only wished his mother could see him now.
The festivities at his arrival caught him off guard, but in the past few days, with Brohan’s help, he’d learned the ways of court and how to interact with the nobles. In truth, he found it little different from playing with a spoiled child: avoid saying or doing anything that could provoke a tantrum, and treat individuals with a deference and courtesy that they believe is due them alone. Brohan had been pleased with his quick progress, if not a little chagrined. The bard feared he had created some sort of politicking monster, apparently.
Calvraign took another deep breath of the fresh, cold air. He closed his eyes, afraid to open them again and discover himself asleep on the slopes with his flock nowhere to be seen, victim of a daydream. But when his eyes opened, he was still here, on his balcony, in his room, at King’s Keep.
In Siege of Daylight Page 25