by L. S. Kyles
Chapter 13
Kowin clung to the rim of the Devil’s Dome and stared down in wonder at the perilously magnificent clue trying to suck his pink eyes from their sockets. Unfortunately for him, he had discovered this clue on the last shed-sized boulder separating him from the lair.
A part of him knew that he needed to finish the climb, have a look around, then scurry down the other side, but another part of him, the larger part of him, was melting like butter beneath the beautiful clue.
The clue radiated from the stone and he stopped hunting for hollows and fissures and just hung there like a tattered sackcloth rag, his eyes staring longingly at the semi-invisible find, his body going slack everywhere else.
He felt the muscles in his fingers and toes growing weary and he knew he needed to keep moving before they gave out completely. The clue refused to let him, sucking him in like a wicked moth to a wicked flame.
“…just…little…longer…,” he muttered, ignoring the fatigue.
His limbs grew weaker still and he slowly became aware of sensation at the place where his skull and backbone came together. It felt like the world’s longest needle—a rusty and unclean device, from the feel of it—being slipped inside his flesh.
Something prickling me, he half-thought, now only half-focused on the alluring mystery directly before his nose. He reached back with one drooped sleeve and scratched distractedly at the irritation on his neck.
As the delicious new clue continued to hold his gaze (and most of his working mind), he rubbed feebly at the itch and thought vaguely about allergic reactions from the grass and bits of animal dander in his hood and poison sumac infiltrating his robes and a colony of fire ants feeding on his spine.
This a bad itch, he thought, digging his long and dirty nails through the sackcloth.
He did this absently for a few more moments, thinking about what he should do with this dangerously wonderful clue resting at his chin…and then froze in place on the Dome, his sleeve slung over his shoulder, his fingers touching the enflamed skin.
Even if he had an outbreak of flesh-eating bacteria, his groping fingernails should have at least distracted him from the discomfort. As it were, they weren’t doing anything at all, regardless of frequency or pressure.
He leaned back from the Dome, careful not to pinwheel from the side, and lifted his cowl to the endless blue of the sky. Whatever had deceived him to the presence of the dru’gore and the insanity of the golden one, it was up there now. It was up there seeing without being seen.
“I knows you up there,” Kowin said, peering into the emptiness and wondering suddenly if the deceiver’s abilities ranged beyond the scope of watching and if maybe the fiend could descend upon him.
He looked over his shoulder at a new quadrant of sprawling blue and said, “What you wants?”
From every point in the eternal sky, the deceiver said nothing.
Kowin searched a new area of the sky, waited a moment more, then decided the deceiver, for the time being at least, was not a threat. It was aware of his presence at the Devil’s Dome, but nothing more.
He lowered his cowl to the terribly fascinating clue pulling at his eyes and quickly forgot the deceiver. It was easy to do with the frothing rapture growing in his chest.
I in big trouble, he thought, licking his lips with a pale-pink tongue. I in big, big trouble.
He wanted to touch the clue, wanted nothing more, in all the world, than to spread his fingers wide and lay them to the boulder. If he did that, however, he would be stuck there like a fly in maple syrup and the deceiver would have its way with him.
So goes around, he told himself, eyeing a few handholds on his left that would lead him around the clue and onto the lair. It not over there. It here—not there—so you goes over there and then you not haves to touch it.
He told his left hand to lift from the cleft where it was attached and slide to the pockmarks on his left—a simple command, a routine command, and one he’d been making all afternoon as he traversed the Dome—but this time his hand didn’t move. He lowered his cowl to the hand and stared at it, willing it to move, demanding that it move, but the fabric held its ground.
Go round, he said again. Slide over on other side of rock and go round. There room. You sees the room there. You sees it. Now, goes over there and use it. Goes over there—away from this parts here, this parts with the pretty lights—and crawls over.
He slid one foot to the right and eased his weight along behind and the stubborn hand almost did as it was asked. At the last moment, however, he remembered how splendid it had felt the last time he’d happened upon a pocket of this dazzling bliss, and on the heels of that thought he remembered how uncommon the experience was. It might be ages before he happened upon another pocket like this, and that was if he happened upon one at all.
For the typical person (or non-user of the magical arts), these thaumaturgical remnants would have passed by completely unnoticed. In some instances, the person might have remembered something long since forgotten, in other instances they might have felt chronic pain leaving their joints, and on rare occasions they might have experienced an oppressive gloom lifting from their shoulders.
Kowin, on the other hand, reacted to these remnants in the same way that methane reacts to an open flame. He could see them, too. He could see the sparkling blue flecks swirling about like no-see-ums and he could see the buttery trailers of vapor reaching up from the rim and caressing at his robes.
He wasn’t sure why, but they’d always reminded him of a yellow dust devil in an alkali basin. Only this dust devil had chips of blue swirling in its midst, sparkling bits of ice and blinding shards of glass.
Licking his lips, he extended his sleeve towards the rim. His fingers weren’t spread wide, as he had imagined they would be, but that wasn’t for lack of trying. As he reached forward with his hand, an unseen tension had taken hold of his arm and curled his fingers into a ball—a pulsing ball—and the pulse was advancing up his arm…tightening and relaxing…tightening and relaxing…
He moved the fist a little closer to the fourth clue and the rate of clenching increased, as did the intensity, advancing passed his biceps and up into the shoulder.
Also in the shoulder, and completely ignored by the healer, a swell of black cloth rippled faintly as it drifted towards the tailbone.
Kowin lowered his fist a little more, a guttural moan escaping his lips, and his forebrain nearly collapsed with ecstasy. The specks of blue were accelerating within the saffron, and the saffron was spinning ever faster.
“I wants to touch it,” he groaned aloud, his words little more than airy gasps.
Airy gasps or not, the bulging fabric at the small of his back had no trouble understanding what he’d said and demonstrated this by moving hastily towards the legs.
Paying the movement no mind, Kowin said, “Just small touch, yes. I thinks, maybe, small touch with, maybe, tip of small finger.”
He moved his sleeve to within a hand’s width of the cloud, the vibrations hammering him like a horse cart on a bumpy road and the pressure seizing him like a coat of drying concrete on a warm and sunny day.
“I pulls off,” he whispered, his fist lowering until only the fabric of his sackcloth separated him from the stone. “I makes small touch, then pulls off, just small touch with small finger, yes.”
Somewhere in the back on his mind, he knew the sun was setting in the west, a faint sliver of yellow where the flat of the sky met the hills of the prairie. He knew that crawling off this mound of rock would be infinitely more difficult with the sun gone and the darkness upon him, and he knew as well that getting caught up here after dark (with or without a deceiver in the land) was the granddaddy of all bad ideas.
After that, his thoughts grew fuzzy and his worries grew weak. The buttercup mist was lifting from the granite and the sapphire chips were rising to his sleeve. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the next thing he was going to do was lay himself o
n the stone and let the mist massage him forever, just let the blueness dazzle and the saffron soothe and whole of his—
The back of his thigh exploded with pain and he tensed with the shock, his whole body jerking away from the boulder as a crow-like screech escaped his lips. Teetering on his toes, he swung his arms at the air and clawed madly for the stones or for balance or for any kind of purchase. He found only air and went slipping off the Dome, the edge scraping down his front, then empty space, then his feet struck stone, his knees struck his gut, and he went spinning.
One or two stones down, his right arm snagged between two pieces of slag and he came to a quick and jarring halt, dangling there until his senses returned and he was able to pry his arm loose of the crack. He crawled to a stone where he could dig in his claws and lay in a nearly-vertical state of contemplation, the fragmented images of his tumble coming back to him…specifically the cause.
“You bited me!” he screamed, scowling at the air. “You bited on me and you a bad, bad, stupid GAR!”
He panted for a time, waited for Gar to make a response or appearance, then muttered a bitter, “I hates you,” and began to climb.
After his initial climb and subsequent fall, his legs felt shaky and his arms felt weak, but he had his anger to fuel him and that proved sufficient. It drove his tiny frame until he had reached the rim of the lair once more and he could collapse upon the stones.
Not far to the left, the pocket of magic still dazzled and spun, the yellow still swirling, the blue still flashing.
Kowin watched until he felt his previous desire begin to take hold, then he turned away and faced the interior of the lair. As his desire faded, so did his anger.
“I sorry I yell, Gar,” the healer said. “I thinks, maybe, magic like honey pot for flies…and I the flies.” He said this with a hint of regret, then added, in equal tones of remorse, “I glad you bited on me…It was a good bite.”
It had been, too. The splinter-like lines were still burning in the back of his thigh and, as an added bonus, they had not only torn him from the call of the tiny yellow storm, but had sharpened his wits as well.
The fog of magic mist had not only beckoned to his mind, but had clouded it as well. He’d been so enthralled by its allure that he’d failed to deduce the magic’s source, which was obviously the slain dru’gore lying below him in the reeds.
The real question, however, was not whose magic it had been—the dru’gore were, after all, the only magic users among old ones—but why it had been lowered. A dru’gore with it mystical talents employed was a dru’gore impervious to all attack, even those of the golden one.
Kowin puzzled over this for a while, wondering why the ugly little thing had come to a place like this, a place of almost certain death for a creature its size, and then lower the one magical charm keeping it alive.
As if in answer, he glanced up at the cerulean eternity above, then scrambled into the nest.
