by Adam Golden
Rhiannon looked back over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the waiter and his tray, but they were both lost in the swirling press of revellers. The lion man pressed at the small of her back, gently guiding her into the next steps as the music changed, and Rhiannon found her feet working despite the fatigue which pulsed in her muscles and head. The gossamer construction of wire and feathers over her nose and eyes felt stifling, and the heavy gown of chestnut silk with its plumage of matching black-spotted feathers weighed at her like an anchor, but the Pyski maiden’s feet kept moving, kept picking out the more complex patterns of changes and promenades as the music surged and ebbed. Her partner led her effortlessly and seemed inexhaustible, but surely the music would be ending shortly. And then she could find another servant, get something cool to drink, and rest for just a moment. At last the final strains of the waltz bled out from the assembled pipes and strings gathered on the balcony above the floor. Rhiannon curtsied to her partner on wobbling legs and turned to spy out a servant.
Above, a drum began to beat out a reel and the melody was picked up by a fiddler and a chorus of pipes. The press of dancers surged into lines and began to step out the reel. A strong grip seized Rhiannon by the wrist and spun her about. The dead onyx eyes of the Lion mask glinted. Rhiannon curtsied again and shook her Kestrel-masked head. The grip on her wrist tightened painfully and the muscular form behind the feline costume yanked her toward him. The mouth of the lion mask, which had seemed to her to be smirking playfully through their waltz, now seemed to be snarling, showing more of the sharp, yellowed ivory teeth set into its construction. Rhiannon pulled back, but the grip on her arm tightened and the claws sewn into the gauntlets bit at her skin. Rhiannon’s fist landed just under the aggressive dancer’s chin, square in the center of his throat. The lion-man’s grip broke as he staggered backward, going to a knee and clutching at his punished throat.
The moment she was free Rhiannon turned and fled into the crowd. What had she done? He shouldn’t have grabbed at her like that, but to strike him? She hadn’t wanted to, she just needed to rest. He would be all right, after all he was so big. He’d be fine, and he’d have no trouble finding another partner. He was a fine dancer. A deep rumbling cough tore through the cacophony of noise, and everything froze. The shrill squeal of a fiddle cut off mid-note shivered through the air, and the legion of gaily coloured dancers looked about them for the disturbance. A knot of dancers were bowled over as a monster bounded through them.
The elegant finery of her former partner’s costume was in tatters, his fine coat and trouser were shredded, and rippling muscles and gold-red fur burst through the rents in the fabric; the lion mask was a mask no longer, its artfully crafted jaws snapped and snarled and dreuled with all the menace of an enraged apex predator. The beast man raced toward her on all fours, bowling over, screaming revellers as it came.
Rhiannon slid into the midst of a cloud of panicked party-goers, hitched up her heavy gown and fled on legs that felt as though they wouldn’t carry her far. Someone reached out for her and she lashed out blindly, throwing a hard right hand.
The blow struck a stocky owl-masked male square in his nose, and a piercing undulating scream tore from its throat as it lunged at her with a beak sharp as chipped obsidian. The razor-sharp edge of the bird thing’s snout sliced through the heavy layers of silk and linen Rhiannon wore as though they weren’t there, and the Pyski woman screamed as the owl-man’s beak tore into the flesh of her midsection.
‘What is this madness?’
The lion-thing roared again as the owl-man surged toward her for another strike. Rhiannon’s left foot crushed the bird monster’s instep in its mirror-polished boot, and another warbling screech exploded out of it. Before it could recover, the rigid index and middle fingers of the Pyski’s right hand lanced out and jabbed into the wide black pit of the owl’s right eye.
Rhiannon fled, the thick mucus of jellied eyeball and brain blood still running from her hand, and pushed her way through the crowd. Hands grasped and pulled. Teeth and fangs and snouts rooted and snapped and tried to snag at her, but wherever a limb reached toward her, the Pyski Guardian met it with a swift efficient violence.
A slight, slim-bodied woman with an ape’s face and a high tower of manicured curls atop her head wrapped a tail like an iron chain around one of Rhiannon’s legs. The Pyski took hold of the tail in two hands and heaved, pulling the ape woman forward and slamming her in the face with her own forehead. Rhiannon swung the ape-lady’s limp body a flail, smashing it into any monster that stepped within reach, at least until the monkey-woman’s corpse was torn from her grip.
Beast-men and bird-women kept coming—snapping, crawling, tearing at each other to reach her. She should have been torn to shreds in seconds, but the confusion and press in the huge room was such that the animal monsters couldn’t get around each other to reach her, and they didn’t seem inclined to work together to achieve their goal.
Rhiannon leapt over a mink-faced creature in a fine black frock coat, and delivered a snapping roundhouse kick to a gilded trout woman who smacked at her with a tail made of sharp, metallic-looking scales.
‘How do I get out of this nightmare?’ Rhiannon wondered as she scooped up a chair and heaved it at a fox-faced man who leapt, snapping toward her face.
Her missile exploded into kindling as it struck him, and the fox-faced thing hit the floor a second before the Pyski landed on him. The movements of punch and counter punch, of parry and riposte, came fluidly and naturally to her, and seemed to be clearing her head. She knew this dance, she was at home with it.
‘Not a nightmare,’ she realized as she spun in a pirouette to avoid the lancing fangs of a woman whose dress was made of a nest of writhing vipers. ‘An illusion.’ She’d been in the Marbh, which meant she still was, which meant . . .
She cast her eyes around the room, scanning through the twisted snarling animal faces, looking for one face among the thousands. Where was he?
There!
Rhiannon leapt, launching herself over the host of enemies closing around her. Her feet moved at lightning speed, using every bit of the agility and grace which so many had given so much to bestow upon her. She skittered over the press of monsters, stepping on a hideous face here or a muscled shoulder there, leaping from monster to monster as though skipping from stone to stone across a pond.
Another rumbling roar tore through the chaos of snapping, snarling noise in the room, and Rhiannon stumbled. Hands and claws and pincers reached for her from a hundred different creatures, snagging at the ruins of her costume and biting into her flesh, dragging her down. The lion roar rang again, closer, and the hands pulled back. Rhiannon lay on the ballroom’s marble floor, an island of stillness in a sea of churning monstrosity. She was heaving, quivering and bloody, but intact, and the legion of animal things watched but didn’t press.
“Dewi.” The word came out in a gasped whisper and was drowned out by the high shrieks of terror that rippled as the lion-thing burst through the rings of lesser monsters. Rhiannon could see the ripple in the packed ring of creatures. They were tossed aside and trampled as the cat creature neared. They’d forgotten her as they jostled and fought to get out of the way of the rampaging beast that was killing them to get to her. Rhiannon pulled herself to her feet and turned toward the chaos. Setting her feet and waiting.
“Dewi,” she said again, her voice stronger this time.
The lion-thing burst through the ring of animal monsters and stopped. Thick, bloody foam stained its golden-furred muzzle. Massive chest heaving, corded muscles of its limbs taut as springs, the beast stood poised to leap. The long low snarl that leaked from the bloody maw had the ring of a satisfied chuckle to it.
Rhiannon slid her left foot back and braced herself. The lion-thing crouched, moving around the outside edge of the circle made by its fellows on all fours. The Pyski Guardian swivelled to keep the lion in front of her, but otherwise simply stood, ready and waiting. It was huge, easily two
hundred pounds heavier than she, more than two feet taller, and with a reach she couldn’t hope to match. It was raw muscle and ferocity.
The cat-thing pounced and let out another long rippling roar. Hundreds of pounds of muscle, teeth and claws streaked toward her almost faster than she could see. Time slowed for the Pyski Guardian. Everything slowed. Her would-be murderer moved toward her as though falling through thick tar. She saw individual droplets of pink saliva from its snarl hanging in the air and could even have counted them. Rhiannon formed her power, condensing it carefully—there would only be one chance. It would have to be perfect or that hulking monstrosity would tear her in half before she got another.
The lion-thing barreled down on the Pyski Guardian like a boulder thrown from a catapult—all muscle and teeth and savage fury set to crush the delicate Pyski like an avalanche. The slight elfin female moved faster than thought, a single whip-quick movement. In one moment she was standing braced, waiting as hundreds of pounds of muscle and teeth bore down on her, and in the next she was standing behind the monster, watching it topple to the marble in a boneless heap.
Rhiannon’s whole body vibrated with adrenaline and raw force. Her head was down, her face hidden in the curtain of her long dark hair, and her entire frame rigid. Slowly her right hand came up, holding something high over her head. Her entire right hand and forearm was painted in thick dark gore and, in her hand, she clutched a mass of bloody meat. She opened her hand and the remains of the lion monster’s pulped heart fell free and landed with a sickening wet plop on the marble.
“End it now, Dewi, or I swear I’ll take another heart today,” the Guardian spat.
The ballroom melted away, the legion of monsters in their fine evening wear wasted to nothing before her eyes. Rhiannon found herself standing in a large dim room paneled with wood and packed with tall shelves—a rustic library thick with dust and smelling of old velum and leather. Dewi’s Repository, and there, cringing behind his huge monolith of a desk in the dimmest corner of the poorly lit room, was the creature himself. “Come out here ya Light blasted little . . .” Rhiannon barked angrily. Nothing. “Dewi,” she warned.
The figure that shuffled out from behind the huge edifice of polished oak was no taller than Rhiannon’s waist, and portly enough to be nearly completely round. Slitted luminescent lizard eyes looked out from below a shelf of a brow thick with gnarled boney protrusions. A mouth too wide for his jowly face boasted a pair of stubby rounded yellowed fangs. His skin was a patchwork of overlapping blood-red scales and his short, stubby arms and legs ended in great hooked talons.
“Behold, Dewi, the great Red Drake of The Marbh Bog,” Rhiannon said, sketching a bow.
“Oh, sod off, ya Pyski bint,” the drake scholar whined as it trundled toward her.
“You tried to kill me, Dewi,” the Guardian said, her voice dropping dangerously as she stepped toward the little creature.
“An’ what of it?” the dragon replied testily. “Ya burst into me domicile uninvited, kicked in me door ya did. A fellow’s got the right to defend hisself.”
The Dragon made a sound like a startled cat as Rhiannon’s arm darted out, her hand closing about his thick neck and hoisting him into the air. Those strange shining dragon eyes grew sharp and a small vent of smoke puffed from the little drake’s nostrils.
“Careful Dewi, I wouldn’t want your books to get singed,” Rhiannon said, more lightly than she felt.
Dewi wasn’t much of a drake, but even weak dragon fire was nothing to mess around with. The tubby wyvern let out a sigh that reeked of brimstone and seemed to deflate in Rhiannon’s grip. “Whadaya want then?” he griped.
Rhiannon opened her hand and let the fat little dragon bounce onto the scarred wooden floor at her feet. “You’re going to tell me how a Fae could walk a road no mortal can walk, and then you’re going to show me how.”
Chapter 13
“It’s impossible!” the little drake roared, smoke pouring from the gaps his fangs made in his scaly red lips.
“Don’t you lie to me Dewi,” Rhiannon warned as she thumbed through a book she’d pulled at random from one of the shelves lining the walls. “I have a source that claims the Bwgan is traveling the Slyphid Pass. When I heard that I thought ‘who do I know who might know about this hidden road through existence?’ and I came up with you.” Rhiannon reached the last page of the book, snapped it shut and tossed the hand-bound leather codex carelessly over her shoulder.
A strangled cry of alarm sounded, followed by a thud as Dewi threw himself to the ground to cradle the precious text before it struck the floor.
Rhiannon, without so much as looking back, selected another and began to leaf through its contents. “You drakes are great hoarders they say. Name anything, anything at all and there’s probably a drake hoarding it. Why, I’ve heard tales of a drake who hoarded the skeletons of white mice; he had thousands of them they say.”
Dewi snorted as he placed his text carefully back in its spot on the shelf. “Gryffid, he was a thousand years old if he were a day an’ dotty with it.”
“Most of your kin are more practical than that though, aren’t they? They collect gold, jewels, sometimes even virgins . . .” Rhiannon snapped the book closed and pitched it backward, a small smile creasing her lips as she heard the pugnacious little lizard squawk and leap again. “Not you though, not studious, lonely little Dewi,” she said, spinning to face the drake as he trundled to his feet. “You hoard information. Information on a million million subjects; the more closely guarded or obscure the better. Why, they say you’ve got the secrets of the universe collated and catalogued on these shelves. If anyone in this plane knows about the hidden road, it’s you.”
“That’s about right, I’d say,” the round little dragon said, puffing himself up proudly. “So, when I tells ya there ain’t no way, I mean there ain’t no way. Look. Look ‘ere.” The squat little reptile lumbered past her, waddling toward his shelves. His short legs and odd rolling gait notwithstanding, Rhiannon had to quicken her pace to keep up as Dewi moved around the room, single long claw touching leather spines delicately as he went. “’Ere, Garland’s treatise on the Path of Birds. Two hundred years old.” He laid the book carefully in Rhiannon’s hands and moved on, scanning the shelves with his glowing golden eyes. “Ah, Akkad’s ‘Legends of Tiamat’s Tail’, eight hundred years old,” he said, pulling down a wooden document box wrapped in leather and putting it atop the first in Rhiannon’s grip. They went around the room, the little crimson drake muttering to himself and adding titles to the collection growing in the Pyski woman’s arms.
When Dewi finally stopped and turned, Rhiannon held more than a dozen thick tomes, a collection of scrolls and a series of star charts scribbled at the end of the Egyptian New Kingdom. “What yer holdin’ there is the most extensive collection o’ lore on what you call the Slyphid Pass in this plane, or in any other, thank ya very much. What it says, in two dozen languages, spread over more ‘an a thousand years, is that the barriers between worlds is closed to material creatures. All of ‘em. Period. That’s all there is to it. The flesh, it anchors.”
“But material creatures can pass through planes, Pyski and other Fae have been doing it forever. It’s how we reach the human realm.”
“Ach,” the dragon spat, slapping its scaly brow with a taloned hand. Rhiannon’s eyes narrowed as she heard the tiny reptile mutter something uncomplimentary. “You lot use the Thinnin’s. Them’s weak spots, chinks in the fence, if ya like. Not the same thing.” The portly dragon bustled away importantly, leaving Rhiannon to follow. “What yer gang does is like hopping from one open window through another into a neighbor’s house. It happens so quick ya take no notice o’ the pull, but the path yer on about ain’t nothin’ like reality, at least not one you’d recognize. There ain’t no window. There’s nothin’ to breathe, nothin’ to hold yer gangly pale carcass together . . .”
The drake took several of the star charts and laid them out on his massive des
k with a flourish. “Findin’ the road ain’t the tricky bit,” he declared. “People have been bangin’ on about it for centuries.” He nodded toward the books that Rhiannon still held. “It presents in every world an’ on every plane, a band of brilliant stars in the night sky. Hadak Útja, Akasaganga, the Bifrost road, Claí Mór na Réaltaí, and hundreds o’ names besides . . .”
“And none of the stories or legends or myths that deal with it ever discuss a material being traveling the path and surviving? There’s no charm or spell or legendary amulet?” Rhiannon prompted, tiring of the lecture.
“’Course there are stories, if there’s anythin’ at all that every race o’ creation shares it’s an affinity for bullshite,” Dewi said tiredly. “Everyone o’ those is filled to brimmin’ with heroes that connived with some witch or god, who shed their body and walked as a spirit, who turned themselves into a great bird and soared the heavens. Rubbish! Any two-shilling hedge witch can astral project, but no’ for any length o’ time nor distance, and changin’ form would do ya no good, it’s form itself that’s the problem. As for Gods . . .” Dewi turned his head and spat, but Rhiannon saw something change in the little drake’s face.
“What is it? Tell me Dewi, something occurred to you when you said Gods.”
“Nah, it’s nothin’,” the drake said quickly.
Rhiannon set her load of books on the desk and moved toward the dragon threateningly.
Dewi jumped back and threw up his hands to ward off the Guardian. “It’s just an old legend . . . drake lore. Doesn’t even make sense.”
“But?” Rhiannon prompted.
“Aye, but,” the dragon groused, “the Elder Drake, Kur, the Ancient One. The Drake god, ya could be sayin’. Anyway, the oldest o’ the stories say Kur came from a place without form, a realm at the center o’ creation. The legends say that no barrier could hold ‘im, all o’ existence was his to hunt. Back when we drakes had wings, Kur’s children could fly anywhere they liked.” The crimson reptile finished with a wistful sigh and then shook his round little body all over, like a dog shaking off wet. “Rubbish, the lot o’ it. Drakes with wings, Kur, the whole lot, fancies an’ lies. Short o’ killin’ yerself and walking the ghost road the way it was intended . . . Rhiannon?”