by Unknown
With an exultant howl, Otondo charged the cavern.
“No, hold!” I called.
He surged past me, his rippling muscles a fury of forward motion.
“Otondo!”
He did not stop, so I gripped the hilt of Siren Call, centering my mind on its power of command. The geas crystal attuned to the ogre captain glowed. Its heat suffused my palm. Otondo slid to a halt, spraying shards of broken coral before him. The sudden stop overbalanced him, sending him to his knees. When I walked past him, his face knotted with humiliated rage.
I had to keep the hand on the hilt of my sword to maintain magical discipline over Otondo. To show that I did not mean to draw it, I wrapped my hand over the pommel. It was not the clearest gesture of peace but I hoped it would make the statement I needed. The other hand I held extended, with open palm. “See? You needn’t fear me. If I meant you harm, I’d not have prevented my man from coming at you.” I kept moving, at what was meant to read as a calm and deliberate pace. “A cook pot is not such a terrible weapon. I do not think you are a warrior. Please, step into the sunlight so we can talk.”
I could now see the outline of the figure in the cave. If I was seeing her right, she was nearly nine feet tall. A glimpse of a wrinkled, nut-colored hand f lashed into a beam of light. It held a sword, which in her grip looked more like a knife.
“I know that one.” The voice crackled like a fire. “He is a bad one.”
With a twist of my shoulder, I indicated the ogre. A backward glance told me that he’d returned to his feet.
“Otondo?”
“No, the fat one.” A pointing finger emerged from the dark. Evidently, she meant Seagrave. “He is a pirate captain. When I lived on Undersquare Isle, he attacked us, killing for gold we did not have.”
“I have no doubt that he did. But he is under my command now, by the might of a legendary sword. You have perhaps heard of Siren Call?”
“I have not,” the cyclops croaked.
“You saw me use it to stop Otondo. He is also a bad one, but you saw me bring him to heel.” As I said this, I felt the ogre’s loathing as a hot prickle on the back of my neck. “Your fear is understandable, but you need not worry.”
“Until you decide to unleash your dogs.”
“Which I will not do. If you wish to be left in peace, I will leave you. But I have coin for you, if you have use of it here.”
She stepped an inch or so beyond the threshold of her cave. “There is nowhere so distant in this world that a bit of gold won’t help.” The cyclops was nearly bald, with only odd wisps of bent and wiry white hair encircling her head. Each was anchored by a raised mole the size of a human thumb. Her skull ended in a bumpy point. Drooping lobes swung from the bottom of her sharp-tipped ears, and a collection of rags covered her torso, leaving her arms and legs bare.
I tossed a purse at her feet. The coral gravel muff led the pleasing clanking sound I’d aimed for. She reached down to pick it up, and thick fingers teased open the neck of the purse. Her single eye slowly blinked. She touched the coin and trembled. “I see your future,” she said.
“I am Challys Argent. Tell me your name.”
“Come closer, so they will not hear.”
I did as she asked. Up close, she smelled of dried fish, coconut milk, and curdling sweat.
The croak left her voice when she whispered. “I have not used a name in years, but when I did, I was Xanae.”
“Xanae, we are here to find someone named Megeus. I guess from the sound of the name that he is a cyclops, too.”
She closed her eye to me. “That’s not what I will tell you.”
“And we seek Megeus to find a human, a man who unpuzzles locks: Twill Ninefingers. We believe that he came here to be sheltered by Megeus. We bring
no danger to either. In truth, hazard surely comes their way—and perhaps to all on this island. We’re here to warn them, and fight against their enemy if needed.”
With a surprisingly gentle touch, Xanae reached out to pull me into her
cave. Puddles of brackish water seeped up through its natural flooring. “I am an oracle,” she said.
“As are many of your people.”
Her tongue swept out to wet her rubbery lips. “A doom is upon you.”
“I am thankful for your—”
“I see your death, Challys Argent. I see it in threads and possibilities. Unlike most, you have many possible deaths. But none are good.”
“Are any deaths good?”
“Yes, but not those that await you. Through pride you have sealed your fate.” Her gentle fingers became a clamping vice around my wrist. “You hold a dragon by its tail. When you let go, the dragon will devour you. You cannot outlast it. The conclusion is foregone. Only the circumstances remain in doubt. And the number of waves that will wash against the shore until it happens.”
“You are concerned for me.”
“Yes.”
“Could I not then convince you to tell me what I need to know?”
“One of those four outside—one of them is the one who will kill you. Sometimes they kill by inaction. More often, by piercing you with blade, dosing you with poison, or scourging you with magic. You have done a terrible and foolish thing, and have left yourself without means of escape.”
I have never been the sort to justify myself. Had this lumbering oracle provoked an urge to unburden, I might have shared the mathematics of my choice. By enthralling the four, I had saved countless innocents from their depredations. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, would survive because my adjutants were occupied obeying me, and no longer plied the seas as free-willed captains of their own vessels. Would I prefer to have killed them? Perhaps. But had I not used the magic of Siren Call, each would have killed me. If one day my time runs out, and I pay the price for all those lives with my own, there will be no disputing the value of the trade.
So instead I asked: “If my die is already cast, why are you telling me this?”
“So you might best spend your remaining time.”
Aspodell’s continental accent reverberated down the tunnel. “Is all well down there?”
“Leave us be, Adalbert.”
Silhouetted by the sky behind him, he cocked an insouciant hip. Whether at me, or the cyclops, I could not venture to guess. “I’ve been listening.”
Xanae whispered into my ear, her breath as hot as a Rahadoumi sirocco. “He might be the one to do it.”
“That he might,” I said.
She shrank back as Aspodell swaggered in. “Tell me, oracle: when you see a person’s doom, as you see my captain’s, is it your usual impulse to share it?”
The oracle hid behind me, the difference in height rendering the action sadly
absurd. “Go away,” she said.
“That we shall, as soon as we learn where Megeus is. You may simply nod, which is not the same as telling. Deeper in the caves? Up in one of the tents?”
“You might be the one,” she said.
“The one who kills her?” Aspodell smiled at me. “I harbor no more fervent
hope. But to the business at hand, my dear. Megeus.”
Xanae clutched my shoulders and said nothing.
“Let me explain why you needed to spill your poisonous omens. You are a
pathetic and frightened creature, on an island where all are mightier than you.”
“I said go away.”
“Your only power is the power to frighten. Your only weapon, your dim peerings into the future. Yet none of your one-eyed brethren fear you, do they? I am no oracle, but these truths I see plainer than the blue sky above.”
“I don’t like you.”
“Then send us on our way, never to bother you again. Or I’ll tell you more about yourself.”
She turned her back on us. Scars, some old, others fresh, crisscrossed the patches of f lesh visible through the rags. Xanae clearly bore the worst of Butcher’s Rock. “He dwells on the island’s highest shelf, shadowed by the top of the blo
ck. Purple protea f lowers ring his camp.”
We took a wordless leave of her and rejoined the others on the graveled slope. Seagrave used the spyglass to find the spot Xanae described. I could not assume she’d spoken truthfully, but it was a place to start. If we combed the caves first, we’d surely have to fight our way through. Here we enjoyed at least
the possibility of stealth.
Seagrave and Otondo unfurled climbing gear from the boat and carried the heavy ropes as we made our way to a spot below.
We saw movement in the caves and hunkered behind a low wall haphazardly
reconstructed from Ghol-Gan stones.
A trio of cyclopes ventured out into the sun. They wore motley hide armor, into which jagged pieces of metal plate were sewn. Leather visors shaded their eyes. Each dragged behind him a double-bladed axe too large for a human to heft. Sniffing the air, they jumped down a tumble of boulders.
Rira sorted through a leather pouch, withdrawing a section of f leece no larger than the tip of her thumb. She muttered arcane words and made f luttering motions with her free hand. Motes of cosmic force surrounded the
other, consuming the wool.
Cyclopean heads turned as an albatross—or rather, the consummate image of one—alighted down the shore. It preened the feathers of its fat and inviting breast. The cyclops trio pushed and shoved one another to be the first to give chase. As they bounded jostling toward it, it took f light, rounding the isle on a low trajectory suggesting that it would land again, just out of sight.
As soon as their view of us was obstructed, we ran toward a section of the cliff face adorned with promising footholds. Seagrave swung a grappling hook, wrapping it around the trunk of a thorny tree. We were already well up the rock wall—Seagrave in the lead, Otondo bringing up the rear—when the sound of a fight arose from down on the shore. We were exposed to the three, if they’d thought to look up. Instead they gave their attention to an axeswinging brawl: they’d failed to catch the nonexistent bird and blamed it on each other.
We hauled ourselves up, nearing the first of several rock shelves we would have to traverse to reach Megeus’s supposed dwelling place. As Seagrave neared the trunk bearing his grapple, the line swung wildly, dashing me against the cliff. My elbow struck rock, sending shivers of pain through the bone and into my shoulder. I looked below: Aspodell had lost his grip on the rope and slid down.
Below him hung Otondo. The ogre had never learned to mask his expressions. Each of his thoughts played clearly across his great ball of a face, and remained readable even from my precarious angle above. I could see him deciding
whether to catch Aspodell if he landed on him, or to do nothing and allow the nobleman to fall to his death. My adjutants extended little more affection to each other than they had for me. I’d given them a blanket command against actively lashing out at their fellows. But acts of omission, especially those requiring instantaneous decision, introduced unfortunate ambiguities into the operation of their binding geases.
Before I could cry out or attempt to communicate a command through Siren Call’s hilt, Aspodell’s boots gained purchase on the cliff, slowing his descent. He brought himself to a halt mere feet above Otondo. The ogre twitched, as if he’d decided what to do and just as quickly forgotten it.
With the rope steady again, Seagrave hauled himself onto the rock shelf. He pulled us up: me, then Rira, then Aspodell. Otondo required no help; he raised himself onto the ledge in a f lourish of bulging muscle.
Foliage now hid us from the view of onlookers from the shore below. We had four ledges to cross in all. The same leaves that concealed us veiled what might or might not lurk on the other shelves.
Seagrave beckoned me close for muttered advice. “Time to make noise.”
“Why?”
“These ledges are easier to defend than attack. Soon as we try to enter one with an enemy on it, we’re in a scrap. If they come at us while we’re still crossing, they can push us off. Make them charge us, and we can take solid positions and hit at them while they’re crossing. They’ll be jumping down, so
their disadvantage won’t be so great as we’d face, defending against repelling action while climbing up. But so it goes.”
I conferred with the others, assigning Otondo to the forward edge of the shelf, where he could grab attackers and hurl them down the cliff. Rira found a vantage behind the bushes. Seagrave and I took spots in the middle of the ledge, with Aspodell lurking to one side, ready to score opportunistic blows.
“Megeus!” I called. “Ho, Megeus! We would speak with you!”
The brush of the ledges ahead stirred instantly into lashing motion. We braced ourselves, as we would for a boarding.
One-eyed heads emerged from the foliage. There were at least three cyclopes. Otondo anticipated their angle of arrival and crouched down. The first cyclops leapt across the gap between ledges with distressing ease. He landed on Otondo’s back. The ogre thrust himself up like a lever, sending the cyclops tumbling over the edge and out of sight. In the meantime, his mates made it onto the ledge. One seemed young and hale, his f lesh unmarred, his fangs gleaming and sharp. His companion looked old and worn, the tufts hair surrounding his ears as white as sea-foam. Something about his bearing, perhaps the way the younger one looked to him for cues, told me that he was Megeus.
I shouted that we hadn’t come to fight—words soon swallowed by the clash of combat. Lightning arced from Rira’s hiding spot to course around the younger cyclops’s body. Aspodell took advantage of the creature’s convulsions to leap behind him and stab him in the back. The cyclops dropped down into a crouch of surrender, scuttling from the fray.
Loosing a string of imprecations in the ancient Ghol-Gan tongue, Megeus swung his fist wide. I reared, avoiding the blow’s full force, yet was thrown to the ground nonetheless. Butcher’s Rock spun around my addled head. I saw Seagrave thrown through the air. He landed in the bushes that concealed Rira, ruining the casting of her next spell. Aspodell subjected Megeus to a blur of rapierstickings, to no visible benefit. A backhanded blow sent him staggering.
Otondo roared at him, f lailing his great cutlass. Megeus deftly ducked into the blow, grabbing and twisting the ogre’s arm. The cutlass dropped. Ogre and cyclops wrestled, each trying to lock the other in a chokehold. Their grappling took them to the shelf ’s crumbling edge. As I tried to muster a warning cry, Otondo let Megeus place him in a bear hug from behind. Then he pushed off, the two disappearing over the side.
Chapter 3
League of Drowned Ghosts
Still groggy from a blow to the head, I rushed to the edge of the rocky shelf, from which Otondo had pulled the cyclops Megeus. He’d plummeted with him more than a hundred feet to the coral shore of Butcher’s Rock. My first thought was of suicide: Otondo had freed himself from his magical indenture by taking his life. Not to mention that of Megeus, whom we had come merely to speak with. Another addendum, I saw, would have to be added to the lengthening terms of the geas.
Although it was a sound idea, I realized as soon as I looked down that Otondo had maneuvered toward a less permanent conclusion. He lay sprawled in the gravel below, dazed and groaning. He’d let Megeus wrap him in his arms, then pushed off, so that he landed on the cyclops. It was only his opponent his rash move had killed.
Then I saw Megeus brief ly stir, before slumping again. He might breathe, even now.
I remembered Megeus’s ally, a younger cyclops. As I wheeled on him, he held up his arms in supplication. “What’s your name?” I demanded.
“Phagon.” Singed welts, marks of the wizardly lightning bolt he’d taken during the scrap, were rising across his body.
“Is Twill Ninefingers here, Phagon?”
“The human?” He shook his one-eyed head.
“You didn’t eat him, did you?” Aspodell asked.
“Some of us argued for it.”
“Then what happened to him?”
“Ask Megeus. If you haven’t murdered him.” He s
lumped sulkily against the limestone cliff face.
“Aspodell,” I managed. “Take Seagrave with you and search these ledges. Make sure he’s telling the truth.”
Phagon produced an affronted grunt. Though he took imputations of cannibalism in stride, it was apparently a more serious matter to suggest he might tell a lie.
Aspodell pointed his rapier tip at Phagon. “You lead us to Megeus’s tent. Wouldn’t want to step in any traps, would we?”
“You’ve no cause to trouble us,” Phagon complained.
“We fly the black f lag. You have no cause to deny us your loot.”
Rira led the way as we climbed down. By the time we reached the shore, a group of twenty or so cyclopes had gathered around Megeus and Otondo. I braced, ready for them to rush us; they stepped away as we approached. Why they gave us this freedom, I could not tell. I guessed that Megeus had been their strongest champion, and that they feared us because we’d bested him. Other explanations stood as equally likely: that they deemed him unpopular and not worth fighting for, or that they would wait until they knew more about us before staging a true assault. I kept on guard against abrupt alterations in the crowd’s demeanor.
Otondo pulled himself to a sitting position. Kneeling beside Megeus, I saw that the cyclops’s chest still rose and fell. Aware of the risk of leaving myself alone with the cyclopes, I instructed Rira to take the boat to the ship and come back with healers. Equally aware that I might get myself killed, Rira complied, her equanimity swift.
That both ogre and cyclops had survived a drop that would have ended any man was a wonder, but scarcely inexplicable. The old saw tells us that the bigger they are, the harder they fall; however, in my previous life as a cloistered scholar, I learned that the larger and denser the skeletal structure, the more evenly the impact of a fall is dispersed through the body.
Megeus recovered consciousness before the healers even arrived. Our expenditure of salves and prayers on him seemed to sway the crowd in our favor. I still could not divine their full attitude toward Megeus. Perhaps, after dispatching a thousand and one higher priorities, I will one day dispatch a junior Pathfinder to research a treatise on cyclops politics.