by Martha Carr
“It most certainly can, if you don’t have the right ingredients. Or the right teacher to show you what not to confuse during the complicated gestures. Spells are a whole different level. You think you’re ready for that?”
Cheyenne gave her professor a deadpan stare. “Think you’re ready to teach me?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. All this stuff is more of a ‘practice on your own time’ kinda thing. Assuming you don’t blow yourself up in the process. But sure. I’ll get you started.”
“Thanks.” The halfling stood there while her professor nodded and settled back into the chair behind her desk. “So is there a better time to go knock on this Gúrdu guy’s door, or do I have to make an appointment?”
“Ha. The minute you decide to head on over there, kid, he’ll know you’re coming. Trust me.”
“That’s not creepy.”
“That’s Oracles for ya.” Mattie winked.
“I can’t wait,” Cheyenne added dully, then nodded at her professor before turning toward the office door. “If you could email me those healing recipes or whatever, sooner might be better than later.”
“Come on. It can’t be that bad.”
The halfling shrugged. “I hope not.”
“Sure thing, Cheyenne. I’ll send you an email before your shoulder falls off.”
With a snort, the half-drow stepped out of the office, shaking her head. At least she had something she could act on immediately. Even stopping by for an unpredictable visit with a Raug Oracle was better than sitting around doing nothing.
Chapter Eleven
The armband helped her get off campus again without anyone seeing anything except a Goth chick in all black one second, and nothing the next. Cheyenne wasn’t about to repeat the mistake of leaving her car on the frontage road where anyone could find it. And use it. I just got the cigarette stench aired out.
Gúrdu’s address took her to the industrial side of Richmond, right by the canal walk and Triple Crossing. There were old warehouses, boarded-up factories, and a run-down theater. She pulled onto a narrow side street and stopped at a four-story brick apartment building that looked like it should have been as abandoned as everything else. She stared up at the stained brick and the ironwork around the windows, doors, and the fire escape, then got out of her car with her backpack over her shoulder and locked up.
A cat screamed somewhere on the other side of the alley beside the building, followed by a quick series of hisses and a metal trashcan falling over. Cheyenne ignored it all and headed for the front door to the apartment building. It was propped open by a broken cinderblock, the entry filled with scattered clumps of dirt and dry leaves.
Taking the sticky note out of her pocket again, she double-checked the apartment number and shrugged.
A rising series of muted clucking came from down the hall, where faded light from outside poured through another open door at the other end.
“Out! Get out, you obnoxious little scavengers.”
Three chickens burst from an open apartment door all the way down on the left, squawking and fluttering and running wildly in every direction. A woman with her hair wrapped up in a bandana and wearing patched, flowing skirts chased two more chickens out of her apartment with the end of a broom.
“Ma! Come on. They don’t have anywhere else to go.”
The woman whirled around and pointed her broom into the apartment. “And you won’t have anywhere else to go if you keep bringing vermin into my house—”
“They’re chickens. Not vermin.”
“I don’t care if you brought in the Cu’ón himself. He’d get a good whack from me just the same. I didn’t spend all my hard-earned coin for that damn trip to see my own flesh and blood hand it all away to every—” The door slammed shut behind the woman as she disappeared inside again, her shout instantly muted.
Cheyenne tried not to listen, although she couldn’t help it that her hearing picked up almost everything anyway. Maybe this is just an apartment building for magicals.
She made it down to apartment 14 on the right and stopped to take in the old worn metal door with seriously weird designs scratched into the surface with a nail or a rock or something. Up top was a crude eye with rays shooting out of the bottom. Below that was either a snake or a river—it was impossible to tell—and images that looked like a tree, a slightly offset moon traced over itself five or six times , and a 3D cylinder at the bottom beside a tall, thin rectangle ending in a point. The first thing it made Cheyenne think of was the huge black tower in the center of Rez 38—the one structure that had stayed where it was across all four Quarters.
Taking a deep breath, the halfling lifted her fist to knock on the door. The handle turned and the thick sheet of metal jerked open before her knuckles made contact, and she found herself staring at the center of someone’s chest. Slowly, she lifted her head to meet the orange-brown gaze of the Raug standing before her, one clawed hand gripping the edge of the door.
“Go ahead, then,” the Raug grumbled. “What do you want?”
If he already knew I was coming, why would he even have to ask? Cheyenne cleared her throat. “I’m looking for Gúrdu.”
“Huh. Course you are.” The Raug’s thin lips drew back from his sharpened teeth, his nose scrunching like a snarling dog’s muzzle.
“Is that you?”
He looked her up and down again, having to dip his chin all the way to his chest to get the whole view. The guy had to be at least seven feet tall. “Depends on who’s asking.”
“Well,” Cheyenne cocked her head, “I just did.”
The Raug sucked on his pointed teeth, then ducked his head below the frame of the door to glance quickly up and down the hallway. “And you’re here because…what? You wanna know your future? Trying to put a hex on some jerkoff who stole the rest of your clothes?”
“What?”
“What do you want?” He barked the last question, the words echoing down the hall before disappearing altogether.
“A friend sent me your way. Mattie Berg—”
“I don’t know anyone with a stupid fell-damn name like that.” The Raug started to shut the door, and Cheyenne couldn’t hold onto her patience any longer.
Her palm cracked against the thick metal door as the heat flared at the base of her spine and washed over her. If she hadn’t had her drow strength to fall back on, the door would have slammed shut in her face, but it didn’t.
The Raug’s eyebrows flicked up as he took in the transformation from pale-skinned Goth human to the purple-gray flesh and bone-white hair of a drow. Then he grunted. “She didn’t tell me what you were.”
It sounded almost like a question, but Cheyenne didn’t feel like giving him extra information just for fun. “What you see is what you get. Can you help me or not?”
“Sure, I can. Question is, will I? Do you deserve it? Who knows, right?” The Raug’s clawed hand dropped from the edge of the door, and he turned slowly away. The walls seemed to creak around him when he stepped back into his apartment, stooping below the exposed beams. A crooked hand waved for her to follow. “Hurry up and ask your questions, then. I’m busy.”
Cheyenne stared into the semi-darkness in front of her, then quickly slipped inside after him. The door shut with a loud, metallic bang behind her. At least I’m in. Pretty sure we both wanna make this quick.
Dozens of long, beaded strands hung across the entryway in front of her, clacking together after the Raug passed through them. The halfling lifted them aside so she could follow and found herself in what looked like an old smoking lounge. Round pillows were tossed all over the place, set around low tables with small, flickering lanterns. Two of the tables had tall glass pipes in the center, each with a long hose sticking out of the middle. Hot coals burned at the top of one of these, and the halfling smelled tobacco and something else that made her nostrils flare. Sweet. Sour. Not even remotely worth trying to find out more.
The Raug stopped at the far end of the room at a raised pla
tform against the wall. It wasn’t so much a chair as it was some kind of giant throne, stacked with pillows. Silk drapes were tacked to the ceiling and floated down on either side of the largest pile of cushions. Her host stepped onto the platform, spun gracefully around, and tucked the loose end of some kind of long tunic beneath him as he sat. With one clawed hand, he gestured toward the cushions on the floor in front of him. The other hand twirled in a complicated pattern of gestures, and a tarnished silver tray lifted from the floor beside the platform before settling beside the Raug’s knee.
Cheyenne eyed the cushions in front of her, some of which were stained. One had a series of round burns dotted across the surface, tufts of stuffing poking through. The lanterns flared to life with a burst of intense flame before settling back down, and she thought she saw a cockroach scuttling across what little of the floor was visible beneath all the pillows. Maybe it was just the shadows.
“I wasn’t just being polite when I said I was busy,” the Raug grumbled, dipping his hand into a wooden bowl of water on the tray beside him.
I like this guy. We have the same definition of being polite. “Are you Gúrdu?”
“What the hell does it look like, drow?” The magical traced a dripping claw down his face from forehead to chin and sucked in a long breath.
He doesn’t know I’m a halfling.
“Okay, then. I’m Chey—”
“I don’t need your name. Just your question. And then I’ll decide on payment.”
“Payment?”
Gúrdu’s orange-brown eyes flickered open, and he glowered at her. “We’re not some O’gúl bazaar, Dark Elf. You might have had the merchants and sellswords and half-cracked fortunetellers falling all over you at no charge, but the rules are different Earthside. Because I make them. You should know that by now.”
“Right.” Cheyenne glanced around the dark room, not sure whether the Oracle would change his attitude toward her if she revealed she was a halfling who hadn’t stepped foot across the Border once in her life. “Here’s what I need to know.”
She slipped the backpack off her shoulder and hefted it into her arms to unzip the thing.
“Sit, hínya.” Gúrdu’s voice filled the room like a smoking fire, the sound rattling around in Cheyenne’s head until her ears were ringing.
The halfling gritted her teeth and lowered herself onto the pile of cushions in front of the Oracle’s self-important platform-throne. When she finished unzipping her backpack, she reached inside and pulled out the drow puzzle box. The copper glinted in the lanternlight, retaining its normal metallic coldness, without a hint of the quickening heat it had been giving off lately. The runes stayed where they were, too.
Gúrdu grunted when he saw what was in her hand, and Cheyenne looked up to meet his orange-brown gaze. “I need to know what this is.”
“You expect me to believe you have no idea what you’re holding?”
“No, I have an idea.” She fought back the double-dose of sarcasm and settled her voice into something a little less blatantly fed up. “I’m trying to figure out what it does. What it’s for, specifically, or how to make it work.”
“Huh. That depends on the drow who gave it to you. It was given, wasn’t it? That’s not a war trophy or a piece of blackmail for someone else?”
Who does this guy think I am? Cheyenne blinked. “No, it was given to me. More like left to me. Isn’t an Oracle supposed to know all about—”
“It’s not the knowing that gets you answers, hínya,” Gúrdu spat. His sharpened teeth flashed between his brown-gray lips. “The way such a question is asked carries just as much importance. Which you should know by now too. What kind of game are you playing?”
“What?” She frowned at him and glanced down at the puzzle box. “I’m not playing any kind of game. I just want to know what the hell I’m supposed to do with this thing, ‘cause it won’t leave me alone.”
“It’s a drow legacy artifact.” Gúrdu grabbed a bundle of what looked like dry twigs from the silver tray beside him, dipped them in the water, and took a huge, crunching bite off the top of the bundle. Splintered wood spewed from his mouth as he chewed, and for a moment, Cheyenne hoped he’d eventually spit it all out and use it in the same way he’d anointed himself with a claw in that water. He didn’t. Listening to him swallow a bunch of dry, chewed-up twigs made her throat hurt. Then Gúrdu sighed, laid the bundle gently back down beside the bowl of water, and sucked a splinter out from between his teeth. “Can’t tell you any more about it than that. Not my place.”
“Can’t you make it your place? One time. For me.”
Gúrdu eyed the puzzle box in her hands, and a light flashed behind his eyes. He sat a little straighter on his throne of pillows and turned his head away from her. “No. You came to the wrong Oracle, and I’d be surprised if any other on this side of the Border would be any more willing to cross the line into what you want to know.”
“That’s ridiculous.” The halfling palmed the box in one hand and shook it at him. “This thing’s been freaking out all over the place. I don’t know what it means, and it’s really starting to piss me off because it won’t leave me alone.”
“That’s its job. Maybe you should leave me alone and turn to your legacy instead.”
Scowling, Cheyenne stood from the pillows and took a step toward the Oracle on his cushioned platform. Gúrdu leaned away from her again, his orange gaze dropping from her face to the puzzle box. “You said you’d decide on payment. Name a price, Gúrdu. Whatever it is, I’m good for it.”
“Piss off.” The Raug said it in a low, level voice, but the halfling didn’t miss the way his eye twitched with her next step toward him.
“Screw you. I just want somebody to tell me what I’m supposed to do with it. I don’t know the drow who left it to me, so just take the damn thing and be an Oracle.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because every pair of hands to touch that artifact belonged to a nameless face,” Gúrdu spat. “And they’re all dead!”
“What?” Cheyenne frowned down at the puzzle box. “You’re saying it’s gonna kill me?”
“I’m saying it has killed at least a dozen before you. I can smell it, and there’s nothing you can do to change my mind,” the giant Raug hissed at her, his nostrils flaring. “I won’t touch it.”
“Nothing I can do to change your mind, huh?” A sphere of crackling black energy erupted in the drow halfling’s other hand, spitting purple sparks and sending a new layer of shadows dancing around the dimly lit room.
A low, rumbling chuckle rose in Gúrdu’s throat, then he threw his massive head back and roared with laughter. Spit and soaked splinters flew from his mouth, sticking to his chin and his lips. When he settled those orange eyes on Cheyenne again, he looked completely insane. “You’re committed, drow. Make sure you’re willing to follow those commitments all the way to the end.”
“You don’t think I will?” The purple sparks flared even brighter from the center of the drow magic churning in her hands.
“I’m sure you will if you think it will get you what you seek. But you’ll be bloodying your hands for a lost cause, hínya.” Gúrdu squinted at the puzzle box and slowly lifted a hooked claw to point at Cheyenne’s legacy. “You will never scare me more than that ancient trinket scares me. Not in a thousand years.”
“This?” She lifted the box toward him one more time, and the Oracle hissed. “This scares you?”
“If you cannot see the woven threads, you will not understand the cycle.” Gúrdu finally licked all the spit and splinters off his lips, and his orange-brown eyes flashed again. “Only the scion never pursued will rise to their destiny.”
Cheyenne’s gut went instantly cold. “What did you say?”
“It’s written in the very lifeblood of your legacy, drow. It is not my place to get involved. I may be only slightly less miserable on this side of the Border, but I still value my life.”
Ho
w the hell did he just pull out the same line from my crazy-ass dream last night?
The drow halfling and the Raug stared at each other. Then Cheyenne snuffed out the black sphere of her magic and dropped the puzzle box into her backpack. She jerked up the zipper and slung the thing over her good shoulder. “Fine. Then I’ve wasted my time here.”
“Mine too, don’t forget.” Gúrdu ran a thick dark-gray tongue over his sharpened teeth and pointed at her with a gnarled claw. “Come back with a question truly meant to be answered, and we’ll settle on a price then.”
“Probably not.” She eyed him on his throne of pillows, then turned away and tossed her arm up. “I’ll show myself out.”
“I’d get rid of that cursed thing before it wipes your face from living memory too,” Gúrdu called after her. “The others had no warning. Don’t be an idiot by ignoring this one.”
Without a word, the halfling stormed across the wobbly piles of pillows, ripping aside the curtain of beaded strands on her way to the front door. She thought she heard some of them scatter across the floor, but she didn’t give a crap at this point. If this box was supposed to kill me, twenty-one years is a long time to wait. And I’m swearing off Oracles.
The front door jerked open with a squeak, and she stepped quickly out into the hallway of the apartment building’s ground floor. A harsh squawk erupted in front of her, and she tripped in an attempt not to crush a panicking chicken’s head beneath her foot. Feathers flew up everywhere as the other fowl caught onto the chaos and scrambled around in idiotic circles, flapping and clucking and pecking at each other.
“Oh, what the—” Cheyenne accidentally kicked one that ran right into her foot as she tried to avoid the others. “Who the hell keeps chickens inside?”
Finally, she picked her way carefully and quickly away from the idiot birds, glancing over her shoulder once to see two of the chickens had cornered a third and were now trying to smash it against the wall with buffeting wings. Shaking her head, she stepped back through the open door of the apartment building and froze.