The Forgotten Tale

by J. M. Frey

  I look down at Alis to assess her reaction, and my daughter is staring up at me with parted lips and a rapt expression. Does she Hear me? Or do the Words sound, to her, the way ink bleeds across paper, as Pip once described it?

  Words do not work in the Writer’s realm, just as any of the spells I have memorized never did. I tried to make them function, but it was like something essential was missing from the air in Pip’s world. As if the vital breath of life needed to activate the magic was completely absent, and the spells could not take their first, necessary inhalations after being birthed from my mouth. They strangled, stillborn on my lips.

  Here, they breathe again, and so do Words. And I wonder—oh, how I wonder—if Alis could make them work. Pip remains stubbornly unmagical, like lead that refuses to transmute despite the number of alchemical potions splashed over it. But Alis is a mix of my gold and Pip’s lead, and I do not know what that makes her. No such alloy exists, to my knowledge.

  Pip and I have just begun to read through the titles, saying them out loud and deciding whether this book or that might hold the information we might need, when a man’s scream rings out.

  Startled, I nearly crush Alis. She wails unhappily, and pulls at my hair as I pass her off to Pip. My wife, who had been wearing the scarf we use to wrap Alis against our bodies, does so now, and quickly. Pip then draws her dagger. I draw my sword, straining to hear.

  The scream comes again.

  “Saetesh!” Pip breathes, and then we are rushing toward the outer door.

  Wyndam and Lanaea have beaten us to it. They are standing in the threshold, attention directed upward. Wyndam has his clever curved sword drawn, and Lanaea clutches a tarnished flagpole in her hand. The tattered remains of an old naval flag hangs off it, flapping in the wind of whatever it is before them, blowing dust and cloth fragments back into the room toward us.

  I am determined to be the one between my family and danger, and Lanaea allows me to push her behind me. I step out into the daylight and notice, as she steps back, that her hands are shaking around the pole. But her grip is firm.

  Several lengths above the courtyard, just high enough that if he were to fall he would certainly come to harm, Saetesh dangles in the air. However, broken limbs will likely be the least of his concerns. For wrapped around his head is a creature of nearly indescribable horror.

  Saetesh is flailing, legs and arms wheeling, tucking, and kicking. He pulls at the thing on him. It is purple, and squirming, and many-limbed. Gelatinous and partially translucent, it squishes and sinks whereever Saetesh strikes it. But it does not seem to feel the blows, and re-inflates as soon as his fists are gone. It looks like nothing so much as an octopus, or one of those tentacle-monsters Pip showed me in an animated pornographic film.

  I have seen sketches of such monsters, but I do not know their name, nor their origin. They are certainly not native to Hain.

  Saetesh screams again, but his voice is weaker, muffled. His jerking blows are growing less energetic. I fear that the creature is obstructing his airway, or has its dripping, leaking limbs curled around his throat.

  “Oh my god,” Pip says from over my shoulder. “I think that’s one of those D&D brain-sucker monsters. I didn’t even know you had those here.”

  I wish, suddenly, that I had Bevel’s bow and arrow. In the absence of such, I push Lanaea toward a side entrance of the astronomy building, hoping that there is only one of these horrifying blob creatures outside, and say, urgently: “Quickly, fetch Kintyre!”

  Pip cannot go, not with Alis encumbering her ability to run and Alis’s safety to worry over. Wyndam and I have the weapons, so we must stay. That leaves only Lanaea. The lass nods once, her lips white and her eyes wide, but clearly willing to do what is necessary despite her fear. It is jerky, but her resolve is firm. I believe she too worries that there are more of the things outside, but understands, as I do, that someone must tell my brother and his partner. She clings to the pole and runs. I applaud her sense in remaining armed—without actually applauding, of course.

  And then I turn back to the sky. I debate rushing out and jumping up and snatching at Saetesh’s ankle, but I fear I cannot jump that high. Perhaps Wyndam can, but he is also wounded. Otherwise, there does not seem to be anything keeping Saetesh aloft, unless it’s by the power of the creature, and without the ability to reach him, we are helpless to render any kind of aid.

  Wyndam makes a gasping noise of surprise and points. From behind the dome of the main library, a cloud begins to coalesce. It quickly grows steel-gray and thunderous.

  And upon the thunderhead stands a woman, her hand extended as if to shake. Wyndam tugs my arm once, hard, and points with his sword.

  “It’s her,” I say, and it isn’t a question. My nephew just nods.

  “Will you trade me for him?” she shouts over the growing din of her thunderhead, and there is a malicious humor in it.

  The Deal-Maker Spirit has black hair, which blows and dances in the wind above her head like an inky hurricane. She wears an expression of grim glee. Saetesh has stopped struggling, and I fear he may be dead. Fury at my own impotence chokes me, and for a moment, I am as wordless as Wyndam.

  “No Deal?” The Spirit laughs, and her voice is the wind in the sails of a ship tossed at sea. “Well, then, as I’m not therefore permitted to kill you . . .”

  I see what she intends to do a fraction of a moment before it happens, and I sprint out into the courtyard in time to catch Saetesh’s limp body around the chest before it hits the flagstones. A loud crack rings out, and I realize that, being shorter than Saetesh, I was not able to keep his legs from hitting the ground. His left leg is hanging at a painful angle, and I am thankful for the tall boots that are stabilizing it and keeping it from flopping in a way that might make it worse.

  The purple thing remains midair, writhing and rippling.

  I crumple under Saetesh’s weight, and the jolt of us both hitting the ground shocks him hard enough that his eyes fly open and he sucks in a great lungful of air. Oh, thank goodness, he is alive. He turns his head weakly, struggling to sit up, clutching at his broken leg. I shush him and lay him out on the stone, bid him be still and catch his breath. He cannot, of course; the pain is too great to allow him to be still, and his injury is too severe for him to be able to run or crawl away. Yet I cannot abandon him. I stand over him, all my attention and all my ire aimed upward.

  On her thunderhead, the Deal-Maker Spirit is watching us intently. “You are not Kintyre Turn,” she says to me, as if this disappoints her. “You must be the stuttering, useless younger brother.”

  “No,” I say, for while I still stutter on occasion, I am not useless, nor have I ever been. “But you may come down and test your assumption if you like.”

  “Oh, what a delightfully silver tongue,” the Deal-Maker hisses. “So sharp.”

  I raise my sword point in her direction. “My steel is sharp, as well. Do you care to taste it?”

  The Deal-Maker Spirit laughs. “And if I decline? Are you offering to allow me to taste something—augh!”

  The arrow that Bevel loosed slides right by the Spirit’s head, parting her hair and grazing her ear. On the ground, Bevel cusses and nocks another. “Should have kept her more distracted, Forssy,” he says, drawing back the string.

  “I am afraid I am not very experienced with witty banter,” I apologize. “I did my best.” For I had seen them coming, and had been trading barbs with the Deal-Maker to keep her attention on me.

  Kintyre snorts, Foesmiter unsheathed and a grin playing around his mouth. “I’ve missed this,” he says softly.

  “What, the danger?” Bevel teases.

  “Yes,” Kintyre says, and the bedroom eyes he levels at his trothed are deep enough to drown in. Which is what I wish they would do, because, uhg, my brother’s seduction face will never cease to repel me.

  On her cloud, the Deal-Maker shrieks, “Kintyre Turn!” and raises her hands, clawing at the sky. A frigid wind blows down into
the courtyard, shivering the leaves of the vines around the outer wall and filling the temperate air with the bite of deep winter. “I will claw out your heart!”

  “And how do you propose to do that?” I shout over the gusting gale, my breath hanging in front of my face for a brief second before it is whipped away.

  “How?” the Deal-Maker roars.

  “You have no Deal. You can kill none of us!”

  Behind me, Wyndam hunches over, shivering. I can see that Kintyre and Bevel are also cold, though they dare not move from their defensive positions, and below me, Saetesh huddles up into a shaking ball, protecting his leg and chattering in the arctic gale.

  But I have weathered two winters in Pip’s realm, and while cold compared to Hain, this chill is nothing on the frigid air that numbs all sensation in your face. All the same, my hair whips against my cheeks and forehead, stinging, and the icicle fingers reach down under my collar to scratch down my spine. My fingers go immediately stiff around the grip of my sword; I fear one strong blow will knock it from my grip.

  “I may not,” the Spirit concedes. “But he can!” She gestures to the gelatinous blob, and it shivers and shakes with squealing pleasure.

  I have half a moment to wonder what Deal the blob made that this is what she asked of it in return. Then I have time to ponder no more as it curls all its limbs in tight and rockets straight at my brother.

  Foesmiter is swift, however, and Kintyre cleaves the creature in twain midair. Bevel looses his second arrow, but a bolt of unexpected lightning bats it from the sky.

  “Is that all?” Kintyre challenges, and from behind me, Pip groans.

  “God, don’t say that!” she yells. “It’s just inviting something to . . . there, see what I mean?”

  And we all do, for the two segments of the blob have begun to shudder and sprout limbs, and before any of us have the opportunity to do more than shift our stances, the two smaller creatures are launching themselves at Bevel and Kintyre. The Deal-Maker cackles, and behind me, Wyndam makes a choking noise.

  “Have you fought these before?” I ask the lad, and he shakes his head. “Pip?”

  “If they’re like hydras, then cutting them up will only make more of them!”

  “And how does one kill a hydra?”

  “Fire!” Saetesh chokes from below me.

  “Fire,” I repeat, scanning the courtyard. My flint is in our travel packs, and I know no Words to make flame. There are spells, of course, but the wind is too strong to allow me to sketch out the runes in the dirt.

  While I dither, it is Wyndam who rushes back into the Library and emerges with a wooden staff. He is wrapping a tattered flag around the top, creating a makeshift torch. But where would he . . . ?

  Lightning flashes again as the Deal-Maker shrieks in delight, her focus on the battle below.

  Ah! Clever boy.

  With all of the Deal-Maker’s attention on Kintyre and Bevel’s attempts to bat the creatures away without chopping them up into smaller foes capable of overwhelming them, Wyndam darts underneath the cloud, staff upraised. Lightning always touches down against the tallest—yes! A crack and a shower of sparks, and Wyndam is sailing forward with all the grace of his life at sea and jamming the crackling torch against the side of the blob trying to latch onto Kintyre’s face.

  The fire splutters and hisses, the blob boiling instantly. It squeals like a tea kettle, heaving and bubbling, its many limbs bloating and popping. Bevel jams one of his arrows against the torch, the wooden shaft catching fire before the evaporating blob can extinguish it, and pierces his own blob. This creature too writhes and distends and steams. Before it is fully evaporated though, the creature manages a defense. It coalesces all of its limbs into a single, powerful trunk and strikes Bevel directly in the cheek.

  He drops like a sack of rocks.

  “Bev!” Kintyre shouts, diving for his trothed, but the remains of the blob wiggle free of the flaming arrow and jam themselves immediately into Kintyre’s nose and mouth. He jolts back, arms flailing wildly. Wyndam’s blob has disappeared, but so too has his fire, and I don’t dare try to cut the thing throttling Kintyre away for fear of doubling our problem or hitting my brother.

  Something long and metallic sails over my head, catching my attention, and the Deal-Maker Spirit ducks and snarls. “You have grown bothersome, Wyndam Turn!”

  As the thing he threw at her clatters onto the flagstones, I realize that it is Lanaea’s flagpole. But if it is here, then she is . . .

  Lanaea gets her hand around the guard of Bevel’s dropped bow, rises, and spins to face the Deal-Maker. She grimaces, obviously disturbed by the Spirit’s fury, but does not hesitate. Her draw is artless, but her aim is true.

  The Deal-Maker Spirit screams.

  An arrow sprouts from the top of her arm, and the thunderhead booms and lights up with her pain. Wyndam darts forward, reigniting his torch, and then swings around and slams it against his father’s head. Kintyre goes down, and Wyndam keeps the torch on the blob as it rides him. Both blob and man howl, but Wyndam does not relent.

  The scent of burning hair is brief, and then whipped away by the wind.

  “No, no!” the Deal-Maker screams, and Lanaea lets another arrow fly. The Spirit tries to bat it away with her good arm, palm splattered with her own blue blood, but the second impacts next to the first, tumbling the Deal-Maker sideways.

  Blind with rage and pain, she flings her arm outward and a dozen bolts of lightning collide with the flagstones at once, throwing up a shower of sparks so thick that I must squint. Dirt and shattered stone fragments explode outward in stinging projectiles, and I raise my arm to cover my face. The force of it knocks me onto my back, and I roll over and crawl to Saetesh, coughing and blinking to clear away the grit. I cover his body with my own and shield him from a second volley of lightning strikes. None hit us, but the flagstones closest to us heave and superheat, bursting and flying all around us. All I can do is press my face against his shoulder and cover the vulnerable back of my neck with my free hand.

  Thus far, I have proven to be entirely useless in this fight. The least I can do is protect those who cannot escape it.

  Wyndam lurches back suddenly, the torch in his hand spewing greasy black smoke, and flings the thing away, drawing his sword again. Kintyre sits up, swaying, one side of his head covered in soot, and I am terrified that his son has melted his flesh away. But Kintyre scrubs his sleeve over his face, and beneath the soot, his skin is unmarred.

  Of course, it would not do to have a disfigured main character. It is almost unfair how the things that would kill another man, or see him maimed, barely affect Kintyre at all. But those are the rules of our world.

  I am struck by a sudden inspiration.

  Rules of our world! Yes!

  Raising my sword, I shout to Lanaea: “A third arrow! Fire again!”

  “I cannot—”

  “It always works in threes! Trust me! It will work!”

  I can see her fear, her trepidation. What if she misses, she is thinking, and she draws the Spirit’s ire? What if the arrow is blown off course by the gusting arctic winds and injures one of us instead?

  “Trust me!” I repeat.

  The wind is so strong now that Lanaea’s hair is like a veil across her eyes. All the same, she nocks, kisses the fletching, and releases. And, as I knew it would, the arrow strikes true.

  The bolt shivers in the junction between the Spirit’s shoulder and chest, a mere handspan away from the other arrows. Lanaea must have been aiming for her heart, though the wind pushed the arrow off course.

  The Deal-Maker Spirit screams again, jolted so hard she tips over onto her back. Beneath her, the cloud suddenly shreds and turns into pale, tattered flags of fog. There is barely enough for her to stand on when she struggles back to her feet, and she clings to it, blue blood weeping down like rain.

  Pip, more attentive than I, bursts out of the building behind me holding a barnacle-encrusted glass bottle, Alis still strap
ped across her chest. Directly beneath the Spirit’s cloud is the last place I wish my wife and daughter to be, but there is no power left, no lightning crackling and hiding in its billowy depths. Pip catches a precious few drops of blue blood, and scoops still more off her own face with the lip of the bottle mouth when she misses her mark.

  “I shall not let you!” the Deal-Maker snarls when she realizes what Pip has done. But she is listing sideways, unable to raise even one clawed hand to call her punishment down.

  All the same, I put myself between them.

  “Begone!” I throw at her, sword brandished.

  “I will have your death!” she replies. “I will have all of you!” She wrenches one of the arrows out of her own arm and flings it at my head. I step to the side, out of its path, letting it whiz harmlessly by.

  “Not likely,” Kintyre says, staggering to his feet.

  And then, suddenly, from under him, a single remaining scrap of blob monster springs to life, crawling up his legs, scuttling up his back like an oozing spider, and launches itself at the Deal-Maker Spirit. It slaps into the side of her head, and her eyes grow round.

  “What’s it doing?” Pip asks, the bottle of blood clutched in her arms, cradled close to Alis, who has her hands over her ears and is crying at the noise.

  “I don’t know!” I shout back.

  The Deal-Maker gestures wildly with her good arm, and in a heartbeat, she is making her retreat, the remains of her cloud whisking her south and west.

  “Impossible!” the Deal-Maker screams, just before the cloud carries her out of sight. Her voice rings out in the suddenly windless courtyard: “Impossible! Impossible!”