The Auburn Prince

by Adam Zmarzlinski

  “They linger,” Auden said. “But it is not my role to speak of them further. The Soundsmith is who you seek, and I shall take you to him. The valley ahead is more cursed than you can imagine and you four would not make it out alive before ever reaching the Tower.”

  “Why did you decide to help us now?” Clementine asked.

  “A Custos Canis’ main duty is to cleanse the curse of the land. You are the cure or so I’ve been told.”

  “Told? By whom?” Clementine asked.

  “A mutual acquaintance,” Auden said. “I’ve come to introduce myself and my disposition. Now that I’ve done so, once the rains pass, I shall return. Do not leave here until I get back. If you enter that valley alone, you will die. I assume you do not want to die. However, if that is your fancy, be my guest. Sleep well.” And just as he arrived, Auden returned to the rain.

  They returned to their huddle and it did not take long for them to fall asleep. The melody of falling rain accompanied by the kindly embrace of warmth was enough to make them feel comfortable and snug. The gecko, who lay atop Mika’s shoulder, reveled in the rain’s tunefulness. Lower in tone and further away, several more shrieks echoed. Night came and it continued to rain, to grow colder. Nir struggled to stay awake and eventually, fell victim to the hypnosis of the raindrops.

  Clementine awoke to the sound of sniffing. She opened her eyes to the fox’s nose in her face, his whiskers gently gliding against her cheek.

  “What is it?” she asked. As if surprised, the fox leapt back, startling Clementine. He lowered his head and growled, showing his teeth.

  “What’s wrong?” Clementine asked, standing up, putting her hand out in front of her, inviting him to hold it, smell it, but he would not have it, snapping at it like a wild beast. “Come on, Mr. Fox. It’s me, its Clementine.” He growled and when she took a step toward him, barked at her, waking the gecko and the hound.

  “What’s going on?” Mika asked. Feeling threatened, the fox barked at her.

  “Something’s wrong with him,” Clementine said. The fox lowered his head, his eyes filled with fear and angst. He grew red in the fur and slightly in size. Mika realized that he was preparing to attack Clementine, so she sprang up, landing firmly between the two of them.

  “Fox!” she said and the vulpine became bewildered and muddled. He gave off a low whine, regained his animalistic focus and readied for a lunge. Mika had enough and gave off a beagle howl. The fox squinted and shook his head, as if to shake away a fly and his confusion.

  “Why are you all staring at me?” he asked.

  “Because you wanted to bite Clementine,” Mika said. “You acted feral.”

  The fox knew not what to say and looked at the ground in shame.

  “The curse,” Nir said. “It’s trickled into your depths. We need to get to the Soundsmith.”

  “I didn’t hurt anyone, did I?” the fox asked Mika.

  “No,” she said, walking up to him. “You just frightened us.” She slid her nose against his. “Don’t do that again.” The fox looked past Mika at Clementine and Nir. “We need to get to the Tower,” he said. “No more stops.”

  “Are you finished with your sentimentalities?” Auden said. Surprised by his silent arrival, they stared at him. “Good, let’s go.”

  They nodded and followed the Custos Canis across the wet stone pasture. The narrow entrance into the valley resembled a massive gate with stone slabs twisting upwards like worms. Clementine marveled at them, at the clean-cut stone and detailed carvings of various insects and animals.

  “The valley ahead once cradled the great mining city of Olland,” Auden said. “What remains is madness, blindness and thirst. Keep close and all will be well.”

  As they entered, a cold breeze blew forth from within. A branching corridor, carved into the stone, led through the mountain. Clementine noticed the walls were detailed with tiny carvings of animals and texts in long forgotten languages. She stopped for a moment and ran her fingers along the delicate bumps in the smooth stone.

  “Don’t stop,” Auden said. Clementine nodded and walked on. “The carvings are a form of a cage to keep the anathema from escaping; they also keep weak creatures like you out by consuming them, akin to this fellow.”

  Upon turning the corner, they came upon a man whose left side merged with the wall. Thick sheets of gray slime covered that which remained of him while tiny black worms with spiraling mouths and hooked spiny bodies burrowed through him. The man noticed movement, and his half-digested eyelids opened up. “Segíts kérlek. Könyörgöm,” he said. Clementine jumped away from him, Mika watched him wide eyed.

  “He’s Hungarian,” Auden said, “and he’s begging for help. He came here by accident while crossing the Carpathians. How? I do not know. Unfortunately, he entered this maze alone, without me. It seized him and now feeds on his being.”

  “So this labyrinth keeps the Other in?” Nir asked.

  “No,” Auden said. “The Other can leave whenever it wants, it’s not chained to this place. The Other is only a part of Mundialis’ curse but not the cause of it. It’s a myth, a fable that the Other is feeding on this land’s color. Whatever or whoever the parasite is is viler, much more dangerous; it’s something that I’ve been tracking for over four hundred years and still can’t pin down.”

  The ground shook and out of the wall emerged the same black worm that they saw consuming the man, but this one was large: as thick as a tire and as long as a semi-truck. The worm looked at them, then at Auden, and like an apologetic puppy, it returned into the stone, which grew back returning to its former, undamaged facade.

  “These damn conqueror worms are growing larger and larger,” Auden said.

  “Conqueror worms?” Clementine asked.

  “It’s what I call them,” Auden said. “I stole the name from—

  “Edgar Allan Poe,” Clementine said.

  “Do you know him?” Auden asked.

  “I’ve read his work,” Clementine said.

  “So, he became a writer, did he?” Auden asked. “He was a quirky fellow. He stumbled in here by accident much like our Hungarian friend and blamed the booze. I led him to the Soundsmith and he returned Edgar back to Earth, but not before that drunkard spewed out a poem about the worms. I remember a part of it that went,

  But see, amid the mimic rout,

  A crawling shape intrude!

  A blood-red thing that withers from out

  The scenic solitude!

  It withers!—it withers!—with mortal pangs

  The mimes become its food,

  And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

  In human gore imbued.

  “I don’t recall most the following stanza besides the ending which went,

  That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”

  And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

  “It’s a frightening conclusion,” Mika said.

  “It was inspired by a frightening view,” Auden said and they emerged from the labyrinth to the sight of a hundred blood red conqueror worms burrowing through the remnants of a sprawling industrial city. Rusted smokestacks littered the sky; thick smoke bellowing from their innards. Cracked roads sprawled out like carpets for a parade of hope that never came. Garbed in metal and crumbling stone, the former city of Olland lay as a corpse lathered in its own entrails. Shapes of tiny men, the city’s sycophants, skittered through piles of trash, rubble and conqueror worm cadavers.

  Black polished mountains, their peaks lost in the clouds above, encircled the city. Standing upon a ridge, just across the cityscape, shimmered an imposing luminous tower overrun with windmills. A faint, soothing sound of music rang in the distance.

  “That’s the Soundsmith’s Tower,” Auden said. “After we cross this nightmare, I shall leave you be at the meadow before its gates.”

  They descended into the city to come upon a horrid sight of animalistic men and women running around on all fours. Some of them snapped their jaws at the Custos Canis, others shouted
“Pig,” but all of them cowered before him. Several of these Wild Men reached for Clementine and her friends, only to be swatted away by a potent wind created by Auden. “I’m not allowed to hurt anyone here, which is a shame,” he said. The Wild Men watched the group ravenously, taking in their color, wishing to bite into them as if it were a delicious meal.

  “The Other destroyed this place?” the fox asked.

  “This is not the Other’s work,” Auden said. “Olland was a mining city. It excavated cobalt, a basic mineral used for alloy production, but they dug too deep. Now, you might be expecting the fantasy trope of unearthing something that wasn’t meant to be disturbed but that was not the case. Olland found the Infinity Satchel. It’s not what you think. It cannot hold things such as keys, or money—it can, however, hold an infinite number of thoughts, concepts, ideas. In other words, it’s a portable fountain of knowledge. Anyone can take from or add to the satchel. Many wise men came here to add to it and Olland began mining knowledge alongside cobalt.”

  A pair of conquer worms battled over a body of a wild woman in the distance.

  “For centuries the city thrived,” Auden continued. “However, one day an ill man came along. He carried übel, a now extinct disease, in his veins. It’s a complicated infection to explain because it’s one of the mind. Imagine an ant. Smash it. What remains is a blotch, a thing without form or shape. Imagine now two ants crawling out of that blotch. Smash them. And now you have four ants. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. One hundred twenty-eight and so on.”

  A group of wild children scurried up a mound of trash.

  “You alone are given the news that a loved one has died. You become depressed. You feel sorrow and agony and pain. And from each of those emotions crawls out other one: fear, anger, frustration, etc. And from those emerge others until they are blurred, until that sorrow becomes a blotch without form or shape. Your mind becomes burdened and you fall into a delusion of self-pity and inaction. And you’ve yet to tell anyone else of your loved one’s death. You’ve yet to see their variety of sorrow and agony and pain. You’ve yet to multiply your own shattered mind with another, and another and another still, until what you feel is nothing at all, except unimaginable yearning to feel. And that man who came here long ago, he yearned.”

  The smokestacks hurled vast palls into the air.

  “The man thought he could add his yearning to the satchel. He tried. In the end, he died, but what he carried did not. A part of it seeped into the satchel and when it came out, it was that much wiser, that much stronger. The man was buried. His flesh rotted before he even died. The earth began to fester, first around his grave then all around. Overnight, all color vanished. The city became a mad house and in mere days the Windcallers descended and caged this curse with me in it. Olland became myth. This whole valley vanished from the Orbheim’s consciousness.”

  “Pig!” a wild man spat at Auden. The Custos Canis slapped him away with wind.

  “But the curse spread soon after the Other came. No one knows why it so suddenly appeared, but I theorize that it was called here. The vile thing which came out of that man spent time in the satchel, it spent time in infinite wisdom, it must have figured out how to get out, how to call the Other, how to move beyond Mundialis. The Other knows this but it will not speak to me. I hope that it will speak to you, Clementine.”

  The girl nodded uncertainly.

  It took another hour before they reached the outskirts of the city and another hour to climb up toward the ridge with the Tower. Auden stopped before a small decaying archway in the mountain, turned to them and said, “I leave you here. Beyond is the Soundsmith. I wish I could accompany you further, however your presence in these lands has taken up too much of my attention and now I must return to my work. There lie no more threats to you beyond this gate besides the ones you carry in your head. Good day.” The Custos Canis bowed his head and before they had a chance to say anything, the creature leapt off the ridge, vanishing in the distance below.

  Pleased at making it this far, the foursome went through the gate. Their joy was short lived when they saw that between them and the Tower stood a rocky field peppered with stalagmites and a dozen bühos sniffing around, overturning stones.

  “They’re looking for us,” Mika suggested, unbeknownst to her that the creatures were only searching for food. They simply represented vultures circling a dying mare, or seagulls surrounding a whale carcass. The Other acted as a shark, the büho its pilot fish.

  The foursome ducked behind the nearest boulder. “There’s only a few of them. I say we take the safest route, meaning the longest one that circles around,” Nir suggested. Everyone agreed.

  “We need not rush with the prize so near,” the fox reiterated. Carefully, they snuck down, meandered between the stalagmites and for the most part stayed out of the bühos way. That is until Clementine, in her hurry, kicked a flat nugget, which slid across the ground, stopping beside a büho. The creature looked over at the stalagmite behind which the foursome hid, took a few steps and sniffed the air. Its eyes flared, its wings rose and the beast pounced, landing right in front of the rising stone, gripping its top. Expecting the büho to rear its head, Clementine looked up at its long black claws.

  A loud screech boomed near: two bühos began fighting over a snake they found. Their violent exchange made the others turn towards them, including the one by Clementine. Seizing the opportunity, they ran from behind the stalagmite and carefully made their way to the Tower. The entrance was ordinary: the door plain white with a round black knob. Clementine pulled it open and they walked inside, leaving the screeching bühos behind.

  To their surprise, the interior sat full of vibrant colors: greens, reds, yellows, blues, purples and oranges of all shades and hues. Bookshelves littered every wall. Instruments, large and small, covered every table and great comfortable looking chairs—their frames made from books—stood full of parchment rolls. Music of all styles sounded from deep within and yet none of it blended into auditory chaos. Waltzes, sambas, rumbas, mazureks, reggae and everything else floated about. Literarily, the music that they heard flowed, like a stream, suspended in the air just above the ceiling where small notes danced the tunes they were hearing.

  “Is that the blues?” asked Clementine.

  “I hear opera and deep violins,” said Nir.

  “No, no that’s jazz, I’m sure of it,” said Mika.

  “You’re all wrong. I hear folk,” said the fox and none of them could agree on what type of music played for each of them heard a different tune.

  “This is incredible,” Clementine said as Holt’s Mars spiraled around her neck, the notes dancing and giggling as they did. Noticing a door made of violins sitting slightly ajar on the other side of the room, Clementine said, “Hello, is anyone there?”

  The fox examined the numerous texts on the bookshelves and a large harp that stood in the corner. After concluding that no one was around, he was the first to venture forth into the next room. The others followed, entering a large chamber, in which a dozen instruments hung in midair playing themselves. It was as if invisible hands played the trumpets, trombones and cornets while invisible mouths supplied the breath. The music, just as before, continued to literarily flow out from them. A winding staircase stood at the far end of the space. They climbed up and entered another fascinating room in which an enormous anthropomorphic drum taught small instruments—triangles, oboes, flutes and percussion drums—pitch.

  “Do re mi fa so la si do,” the drum said then the pupils sounded out the notes.

  “Hello,” Clementine said and the drum looked at her with surprise. The pupils acted like little children, giddy and awestruck, pointing at the fox and whispering amongst themselves.

  “Sorry for interrupting,” Clementine continued. “We’re looking for the Soundsmith.”

  The drum smiled and said, “Keep on going, dears. The master is in his workshop.”

  “Thank you,” Clementine said and the foursome
went on, passing through several more marvelous rooms which included a grand piano playing Frederic Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9. No. 2, a chamber with a hundred tubas blowing into one another, a room with a lone Spanish guitar playing and singing beautiful love ballads such as Tito Rodriguez’s Llanto de Luna or Los Dandy’s Gema, among many others.

  Eventually, they passed a silent room that seemed strangely out of place. It was small and gray and in its corner, sitting on a rocking chair, a skeletal man in a four-eared full-bodied rabbit costume swayed gently to and fro. Clementine tried to say “I know you,” but the sound fell flat as soon as it left her lips. The man grinned and without saying a word, motioned for them to climb yet another winding staircase. Reluctantly, they did, entering a beautifully decorated hallway with music dancing below the chandelier lit ceiling. The walls stood decorated with paintings of the greatest masters of music from Beethoven to Vivaldi. At the end of the hall sat a great ivory door with every instrument carved into its façade. Seeing no handle, Clementine pushed at it but the door stood firm.

  “What now?” the fox asked.

  “Let me see,” Nir said. Clementine placed him in her palm and moved closer toward the door. The gecko examined its detail and smiled. “I know these types of gates,” he said and gave off a cheery whistle. Music burst forth from the door and it opened on its own.

  “It’s a chime door,” the gecko said.

  They went inside to find themselves in a long, dark room filled with a dozen tables lined with a plethora of fragmented notes, musical sheets, broken and new instruments, and a few shattered music boxes. At the back stood a large furnace shaped like a church organ and next to it stood a giant man. A great bushy beard ran down his bare chest and tattoos of constantly swirling music notes danced all around his body. He sat on a stool and using the hammer Mesielica—made of music notes and tears—he was smelting a symphony.

  “Welcome, friends,” he spoke, hammering away at still burning notes. Cautiously, they came out of the dark and into the music furnace’s light.