Greyborn Rising

by Derry Sandy

  Lisa however never found herself spellbound. The Grey’s fauna was simply too lethal. The omnipresent potential of sudden death completely negated any appreciation of the unspoilt landscape.

  Earlier they had had to outrun a pack of large beasts that looked like some unholy cross between overgrown hyenas and greyhounds. The creatures had spotted coats and were sleek with heavy shoulders and mouths filled with stout teeth. D’mara and Clarence could run forever. Lisa, on the other hand, quickly came to terms with the realization that she was not a gazelle. To escape the pack Clarence had slung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and had continued running at the same pace without even breaking stride, how embarrassing.

  Later that same day they were crossing a sunlit, grassy clearing when Lisa suddenly found herself twenty feet off the ground and rapidly rising. Daring to glance upward she realized that she had been plucked away by some sort of colossal raptor, a bird so large that it carried her easily in the taloned grip of one claw.

  From far below either D’mara or Clarence hurled a wooden stave that speared the thunderbird through its neck. The wounded monstrosity kept a death grip on her but fell from the sky in a dizzying, crippled spiral. A stand of giant pines broke her fall and broke the birds grip on her body. She crashed through the branches and Clarence caught her before she hit the ground. The pretty man was proving very useful. D’mara butchered the bird and they feasted on its flesh. It tasted a lot like turkey.

  The episode earned her a dislocated shoulder and enough bumps and scrapes to last a lifetime. She surmised that any of the injuries she sustained was infinitely better than being torn apart by a giant bird or falling onto a rocky outcrop and shattering every bone and so she was thankful even as Clarence set her shoulder back in place with a painful pop.

  Clarence and D’mara knew where they were heading. Clarence led, tracking the smell. Whatever spoor he was following was beyond her discernment and so she followed, trying hard not to look like a moving meal.

  “It’s not far now. We should get there by sundown,” Clarence said. Lisa regarded the sun’s position and concluded that sunset was an hour or so away. It was shocking the skills you develop when living in the wilderness, she thought.

  “You guys never said where we were heading,” Lisa said, breaking the self-imposed vow of silence she had adopted since Clarence had put her shoulder back into its socket.

  “A safe place, well, at least safer than this nature walk we’ve been doing. We can wait there until the time is right to go back to the Absolute.”

  They walked on in single file, the two maboya keeping vigilant watch. The sun was sinking ever lower in the emerald sky, slowly painting it violet. Through the trees Lisa saw several plumes of smoke rising above the forest canopy. Cooking fires? she wondered.

  “We’re almost there now. Couple more miles.”

  “Is that a village? People live here?”

  “The souls of people who have been killed by greyborn sometimes end up here. A long time ago my mother and I were helped by a village of Amerindians, they hid us from Lucien. When Lucien’s man found us he slaughtered the villagers, they are here now and we are going to them.”

  “They will shelter you again? Doesn’t seem like it worked out so well for them the last time.”

  Clarence shushed them, “Do you hear that, do you smell it?”

  Lisa strained her ears but could hear nothing. “Is it the pack again?”

  “Yes, it is a pack, but of a different sort, lagahoo. We cannot outrun them.” Clarence said, even as he picked up Lisa and began sprinting towards the plumes of smoke. She had never felt so thoroughly useless. D’mara matched strides with Clarence as they plunged onward at an inhuman pace.”

  A hungry, blood chilling howl pierced the air. The first howl was answered by several others. Lisa glanced over Clarence’s shoulder. Behind them, about a dozen lagahoo flowed around the trees like a torrent of sinew and teeth. They would be overtaken before they reached the village.

  One of the red-eyed beasts broke off from the pack and flanked right. On its path and at its pace it would cut them off within five hundred meters. The fastest of the lagahoo had closed the gap to twenty feet. Clarence and D’mara were running so swiftly that they barely seemed to be touching the ground. Their legs moved with cartoon-like speed but the dog-men gained on them anyway.

  In desperation Lisa began searching within herself for the metaphysical key to the power that she stole. She had told Rohan and the Guild that she had lost it, but in truth she had not. She was not entirely sure why she had withheld that information, it just seemed like she should wait until everyone had proven themselves to be trustworthy. The key gave access to a lake of raw power left after the Amerindian gods had died from a lack of veneration. She understood this by merely having possession of it. She took hold of the key. That part was easy. If she closed her eyes she could see it floating in her mind’s eye like a golden hoop. Drawing power through the hoop was another matter. She reached out through the hoop but found nothing, no repository of magic. She pulled harder, straining toward some unseen psychic goal.

  After what seemed like an eternity she saw a spark beyond the hoop. She stretched her metaphysical hands towards it willing the power to come, stretching even as the spark danced just beyond reach like an elusive firefly. Pulling power through the hoop was like drinking a thick milkshake through a small straw. She had to overcome some sort of psychic inertia that prevented the initial contact. Behind them the lead lagahoo leapt, fangs agape. Lisa squeezed her eyes shut and reached one more time.

  Her mind’s eye was assaulted by visions of blood and smoke. Shrieks and screams and the stench of burning flesh overwhelmed her metaphysical senses. Some distant voice was shouting for her to stop. She opened her eyes. All around her for a twenty-foot radius the forest had been leveled as if an asteroid had struck. Clarence lay in a heap just outside the blasted area. Most of his clothing had been burned off and the exposed parts of his body smoldered. Charred red flesh was visible along his chest and his arms had been burned black to the elbow. D’mara, was clutching her shoulders in an iron grip and shaking her violently while shouting for her to stop. The girl was not as badly burned as Clarence but she had lost all her hair, even her eyebrows. As for the lagahoo, there remained not a trace, save for a few errant tufts of fur floating in the breeze.

  The world slowly came back to her, starting with the pain of the recently dislocated shoulder that D’mara was treating with such an utter lack of tenderness.

  “You’ll kill us all woman.” Were the first words she truly heard, “Stop now, or the villagers will never let us in.”

  She released the psychic connection to the lake of power. The power retreated through the hoop and she released the hoop to float in her psyche once again.

  Lisa looked towards where Clarence lay. “Oh God, Clarence, he’s…”

  “Resilient.” The man finished as he rolled into a sitting position, hacking and coughing up ash and soot. “God, I hurt so bad right now,” he groaned.

  “You’ll heal,” D’mara said without mercy. “Let’s get to the village before more come.”

  “Hey, we got the power,” Clarence retorted, turkeying his neck in a parody of a saucy school girl. “Do you think more will dare to come?”

  “Lucien’s power is unpredictable and seductive. She should not call on it again.” D’mara eyed Lisa, making it clear that her words were not a mere suggestion.

  The village was visible about two hilltops away. Clarence rose to his feet. His arms were already beginning to look burnt-meat-red rather than charcoal black. He led the small party towards the village. After about twenty more minutes of walking, they broke through the forest again and into a large circular clearing in which not even a single blade of grass had been allowed to grow.

  The village itself sat in the center of the clearing ringed by a twenty-foot tall boma of wickedly thorny branches. Every branch was as thick as a man’s arm and the th
orns, each about three inches in length, covered the branches densely. The branches were woven in such a manner that a wren could not safely fly between any space in the wall without becoming impaled.

  There was a gap in the thorn-wall wide enough for two or perhaps three men to enter shoulder to shoulder. The gap was guarded by one large man and a woman who was just as tall as the man but more slender. Both leveled their long spears as the trio approached.

  “Follow my lead. Do not look anyone in the eye, do not speak and if I say run just run.” D’mara spoke in a breathy whisper. As soon as her feet hit the red, hard-packed dirt of the clearing she dropped to one knee, lowered her head and held her hands out parallel to the earth palms facing upward. Lisa and Clarence adopted the same posture.

  “We would speak to the First,” D’mara said loudly.

  A moment passed. Lisa did not dare look up for fear that a spear would take her in the eye. She kept her gaze downcast as the first drops of a light drizzle hit the nape of her neck. Like a child seeking comfort in an old blanket, she looked inward for the key. There is was, twinkling just beyond metaphysical reach but she instinctively knew that she could take hold of it and draw power through it more easily a second time, perhaps she could draw enough to burn the village to cinders if they were attacked.

  “The last time I gave you refuge a demon slaughtered our entire village. Now we are here in the Grey.” The voice was speaking about two feet away from them.

  Lisa strained her eyes upward as far as she dared, but all she could see were a set of toes, tattooed black.

  “Stand and let me get a look at you three.”

  Lisa looked up slowly. A very short, very old man stood before them. The skin of his face was lined like the hide of an elephant, but when he smiled he displayed a mouthful of white teeth and his eyes twinkled with vitality. His hands and feet were tattooed in black but unlike the sentries who now flanked him, his face was not tattooed and his head was unshaven.

  He inspected each of them in turn then stopped before Lisa and took both her hands in his leathery ones. He closed his eyes. For a moment she thought this was some manner of greeting, but then she could sense that he was looking within her the same way she had delved within herself for the power. When she felt him reach for the key she slammed a metaphysical shield between his search and the source then slapped him across the face.

  The guards were shocked that she had struck the elder, but that shock only lasted a second before they leveled their spears again. The old man chuckled. “That is the prescribed response,” he said. Then, more to himself than to any audience, he continued, “A lot of potential in this one.”

  The guards relaxed as the old man continued to speak. “Sicarii,” he said addressing D’mara with the Amerindian name for an assassin. “The last time I saw you, I was alive in the Absolute. You and your mother came to us for shelter and we were all killed. Here you are again begging safe harbor. Why should I allow you into my village?”

  “Because we can deliver the one responsible for sending you to the Grey. We can deliver him, bound and powerless for you to treat as you wish, but we can’t do that if we die out there.” D’mara inclined her head in the direction of the forest from which they had come.

  “Sicarii…Sicarii,” the old man said clucking his tongue and shaking his head. “You could not kill him before. What makes you think you can capture him now?”

  “I was younger then, besides I never said I would deliver him, I said we, specifically her. She has something he needs and the strength to stop him.” D’mara cocked her head toward Lisa.

  “Me? No, nooo. Aren’t we supposed to just wait here until they kill Lucien? Then I can go back to doing what I was doing before all this mess.”

  The old man smiled, his bright eyes almost vanishing into the wrinkled tissue of his weathered face. “Life can never be the same. Now that you have touched the power you are linked to it forever. That link will change you in ways you do not yet know. Even if Lucien dies, there will always be some other evil, power-hungry devil who will seek you out. You are the keeper of one of the keys now.” He turned his attention back to D’mara. “Sicarii let me think about your offer. You and your companions may enjoy the hospitality of my hut tonight. Let us get indoors before the rain comes.”

  No sooner had the elder spoken than peals of thunder heralded a torrent the likes of which Lisa had never seen. She was almost instantly soaked. The sun set as they crossed the perimeter of the wall of thorns. Lisa glanced over her shoulder and saw the gap in the fence shrink as the living thorn-wall grew to leave a seamless palisade of sharp organic pikes.

  ***

  Kat and Voss sat across from Crayfish under a cocoa tree in an abandoned cocoa grove in Anglaise Road, Cumana. Cassan had characterized him as a thief, a pirate, and sometimes a murderer, who had offended so many people he could not spend significant time in any one place but sailed up and down the Caribbean, hiding in the country where the memory of his crimes had gathered the most dust.

  Kat did not think he looked like a notorious criminal. He was lean and sinewy like someone who had always had only just enough to eat. His hair was an unkempt afro of grey and black knots and spikes, the tips of which were bleached brown by the sun. His skin was sun-darkened and weathered by the salt. His eyes twinkled, and he spoke like a man who regretted nothing.

  Crayfish had not been all that hard to find, considering he was a fugitive, but then again, the people of Cumana village were notoriously attuned to the goings and comings of strangers. They had found Crayfish asleep in the derelict cocoa house. Kat and Voss had introduced themselves, spent some time convincing him that they were not there to capture him, and now they sat outside.

  “We were told that you may be able to help us find Lucien Sardis. But I am also interested in learning how you came to have the information we hope you will share with us.” As she spoke Kat noticed Voss frowning.

  “I’ve sailed around the Caribbean for years and years, you hear things.” Crayfish replied as he blew a thick cloud of bluish smoke from the large blunt he was smoking, towards them. The smoke did not smell like any marijuana she had ever smelled, it was warm and rich, lacking the semi sharp occasionally unpleasant punch that one would expect. A twinge of discomfort stirred in her chest, but she forced herself to focus on Crayfish as he launched into his story.

  “This is the story of Lucien Sardis as I heard it along the way. The tale is of fairly recent vintage, less than three or four decades old, from back when Lucien Sardis was a young man. He left Syria and came to Trinidad looking for a better life. He had no money, but he had willpower, he had discipline, he had a work ethic. One day he was walking through San Fernando looking for work when he saw an Indian girl, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.”

  “I don’t trust this guy an his ‘nancy stories,” Voss growled, his voice low as if struggling to reach Kat’s ears through the smoke from Crayfish’s blunt. Crayfish’s voice was clear.

  “One thing led to another and they fell in love and married. Lucien worked three jobs and his wife worked just as hard to set aside money to start a business. But within a year Lucien’s wife fell suddenly and terribly ill.

  “Lucien spent all of their savings on medicine and doctors but to no avail. The love of his life grew more and more ill. When the money ran out Lucien prayed to every god he knew, and one night when she was very low, barely breathing, Lucien whispered a prayer to the devil.

  “Some time after, I’m not sure how long, there was a knock at the door. Lucien ignored it but the person knocked again. He went to the door and in the apartment hallway stood two men, one short and as ugly as sin, the other tall and handsome. They told him they would save his wife with one caveat. ‘Your wife is pregnant. The child is a girl, she will be called Ghita and when she is twelve years old, I will come for her,’ the tall man is reported to have said.

  “Lucien rejected the man’s offer but as the man turned to leave, Lucien’s wife began cou
ghing and hacking up blood, and even that she did weakly. As Lucien looked on, his wife stopped coughing, a rattling wheeze escaped her lips and her chest stopped rising and falling.

  “Lucien turned and ran after the man who had just begun descending the steps of the building that led to the street with his ugly assistant in tow.

  “‘I accept the terms,’ Lucien shouted. The tall man looked at him and nodded. When Lucien returned to the room his wife was sitting up in the cot. Her eyes were bright and she had no memory of her illness.

  “Months went by, Lucien’s daughter was born. He let his wife choose a name and she chose Ghita, after her grandmother, she said. Lucien tried to veto the choice but his wife was adamant, bursting into uncharacteristic tears when Lucien pressed the issue.

  “The months became years. Lucien and his wife built a textile business that bloomed to prosperity beyond their wildest dreams. Their family also grew with the addition of two more children.

  “Then Ghita’s twelfth birthday came. Her mother dressed her in a red and gold Sari. They say that a niggling discomfort must have arisen in the back of Lucien’s mind, but he suppressed it and as the day wore on, felt more and more at ease. He went to his office before the guests began to arrive and behind his desk sat the tall handsome man from so many years ago. He had not aged a single day.

  “‘Lucien Sardis, the years have treated you well,’ the man said, smiling.

  “Lucien closed the door. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  “‘What do you mean?’ the visitor said. ‘I am here for Ghita, you have had her for twelve years as we agreed and now she is to come with me. Honor your promise or suffer.’

  “Lucien’s hands shook. He believed the man’s threat, but there was no way he could give Ghita to this stranger. She was made of all the best parts of him and his wife, sweet, beautiful, and wise beyond her years.

  “When Lucien refused, the man sighed deeply and left closing the door behind him. Lucien knew his family was in grave danger. The man who had healed his wife had abilities beyond anything he understood. He picked up the desk phone to place a call to a travel agent, but, according to the people who told me this story, instead of a dial tone, there was a strange sibilant static. At first Lucien thought it was just white noise but then something about the sound made him listen closer. The harder he listened the more he could pick individual words out of the noise, dozens of whispering voices and the things they were saying were hellishly obscene. Lucien slammed the receiver into the cradle.