by Regina Watts
“I know you’ve never left El’ryh before. I’m proud of you for wanting to—if you can hear me say such a thing and not feel patronized for it to come from a man so much younger than you.”
Laughing, the Materna glanced up at me and kissed the patch of hair on my chest. “You mean it purely, Rorke. Kindly. I know your intent, and it’s sweet to me. You’re right…I’ve never left El’ryh before.”
Her lips pursed as her cheek lowered upon my chest again. “I ought not to say this,” she whispered, “since I only recently chided you for wishing to know too much of my visions of the future…but I am not sure I will find myself back in El’ryh. At least—not for quite some time.”
My heart leapt. I wished to ask her more, but she shut her eyes and nuzzled her face against my heart. “Sleep well, Burningsoul, my hero.”
The kiss I pressed to her brow was as passionate as anything I had delivered her during our wild romp with Indra and Odile. I dared not ask her too much, lest I distress her by making her contemplate her own thoughts too readily. Instead, I lay my head back and shut my eyes.
I should venture a guess that each one of us slept so well it was a miracle we awoke at all upon the arrival of the misshapen.
IN THE EYE OF THE
THE MALE DURROW had spider legs.
Nothing about the sentence made sense, but it was the first my brain constructed when I stirred from the depths of sleep at the scuttle of something across the cavern of our camp. From the waist up, the creature upon which I gazed was obviously the male counterpart of the durrow beside me: svelte, leanly muscled and long-limbed; befit, like all elves, with an almost feminine beauty. But his lower half, the sight of which chilled my blood, was in the form of a tremendous spider, as though he were some hideous arachnoid centaur of the Nightlands.
Alert at once, I pushed sleeping Valeria down in my place while springing up with my hand outstretched for Strife. On my sharp motion, Indra and Odile also leapt from deep sleep to the defense, their bodies trained by years of traveling to posses muscle memory that was downright dangerous. While they readied themselves for action, nude though we all were, the misshapen threw up its hands and begged, “Please, spare me! I’m no threat to you, I swear it by Hamsunt’s sacred name.”
Somewhat surprised to hear this creature invoke the god of poetry, crossroads and signs—and mischief—I asked, “Then what cause have you to lurk around our campsite?”
“I saw the glow of the lantern and thought it was my duty to come and warn whoever owned it—there’s been a spirit-thief about, the constant dangers of my feral kin aside.”
Relaxing somewhat, I nodded at the lantern and observed, “You can come into its light.”
While the misshapen looked at me in confusion, not understanding the meaning of this observation, I glanced at Indra and Odile while slowly easing Strife back down. “Excuse our reactions,” I said while they, too, lowered their arms, not completely relinquishing them but neither poised to attack at a second’s notice. I added then, glancing at myself, “And our state of undress.”
Just slightly, the misshapen laughed and looked down at its black spider abdomen. “Only if you will excuse mine, travelers. I am very sorry to have frightened you—I wasn’t sure if it was right to wake you, being what I am, but it was unjust for me to let you go about your business when I know what lurks out there in the caverns this dark.”
“You said there was a spirit-thief about?”
The misshapen nodded, glancing up the very same route we had intended to take to the spirit-thief den. “I saw it limp past, missing an arm.”
“We’re on the hunt for that one,” I told the misshapen, earning a lifting of its eyebrows as though to indicate surprise. “I was with the party that slew the den of spirit-thieves, but evidently I missed at least one.”
“Oh! You?” Hand upon his heart, the misshapen’s eight legs scuttled forward a few steps. I tried not to let my skin crawl—tried instead to respect the dignity of all life. In the name of Weltyr, I focused on this stranger’s compassionate heart while he went on, “If that was really you, we owe you much. My kin would not acknowledge it to you were they under threat of death, but I know more gratitude than they. Thank you. Our lives have already improved immensely in the past two weeks.”
“By the All-Father, my heart overflows with joy to hear such a thing.” Memories of the battle with the spirit-thieves flooded my mind—moreover, memories of my near-death and the subsequent resurrection. In so doing I pictured the hateful temple where the demons dwelled and asked this misshapen spider-durrow, “Say, friend—I’d wager you know the Nightlands even better than the durrow who pass through these tunnels from town to town.”
While Odile muffled a little snort of jealous derision, the flattered misshapen smiled. “Yes, friend, I know it well indeed!”
“Then perhaps you might be able to tell us—are there alternative means of entry to the den of the spirit-thieves? Odile and Indra and I know of only one. Ah, and what is your name, might I ask?”
“Adonisius,” answered the creature with a bow, its spindly front legs bending at the joints to permit the motion. “And there is, I think, a rear entrance to the spirit-thieves’ den, but it is rather treacherous for even something like myself.”
“I fear no danger,” I told him, the brashness of my youth still hot in those days and stoked by my escape from bondage and the city of El’ryh. “Only tell us what it is, and we’ll see it accomplished by one means or another.”
Stroking his jaw, the clean-shaven misshapen looked over his shoulder and suggested, “I’m not entirely sure this is a danger even the bravest mortal adventurers could conquer without magical assistance.”
“And what’s that?”
When Adonisius did not look back at me and remained staring over his shoulder, I realized this was not an affectation of habit, but a directed gaze.
He stared into the water by which we had encamped.
“By Weltyr’s beard,” I said, stroking the stubble of my own from the night before. “Of course.”
“The rear of the temple has long-since flooded,” explained the misshapen. “You’re very clever to wonder about a way to sneak in, rather than walk straight through the main entry…but the truth is that I most often see the spirit-thieves come in and out by way of the water system. At least, I see them by these areas often.”
“Then we’re lucky the rest were exterminated,” I found myself saying, faltering only when I recognized the word I had used. I absorbed it for a few seconds before going on, wondering about the power and meaning of my language. “We could have been killed in the night, otherwise…might I ask, brother”—the misshapen looked pleased to hear himself addressed this way and looked at me expectantly—“how is it that you’ve come to be so friendly?”
“I was just going to ask,” interjected Odile, her expression hard even as she and Indra took the opportunity of this conversational lull to throw on their clothes. “How is it that you’re so knowledgeable, so forthcoming with this information? Perhaps you’re just that spirit-thief we’re hunting in disguise.”
“No,” insisted Valeria, still undressed beneath the beddings but propped upon her elbows to watch the scene unfold. “Were that the case, he would still be missing a hand.”
The friendly misshapen glanced down at his hands and waved them together.
“Perhaps it’s illusory magic of some kind,” suggested Indra.
Onee more, Valeria shook her head. “Roserpine has long-since taught me feel the magic that lurks about a being—the feeling of an electrical storm contained in a room. I need but say a prayer in my heart, not even out loud, and the houses of enchantment upon an entity reveal themselves. There is nothing here.”
“I really am sorry to have startled you,” the misshapen said earnestly. “My way of making money is by helping return the lost to where they meant to be. For a little fee or even promises of future favors I act as guide—and it would not be good for business were I as hardened a
s my kinfolk.”
“I suppose that’s true,” grumbled Odile uncertainly, taking up her dagger and re-sheathing it with a significant look at Adonisius.
I studied the waterway beside our camp more carefully, wondering about that point around the bend at which the water flowed into the rocks. “Do you suppose there’s a way to drain the temple’s flooded areas enough for us to safely swim there?”
“I think it must be quite a long ways,” advised the misshapen, studying the water again. “I have no real way of knowing, of course, but these waterways run all through the Nightlands. Stopping up but one would be quite a project.”
“I see.”
Indra, who I was beginning to suspect had something of a sorceress’s interest, inquired of Valeria and myself, “Do either of you know a spell or a prayer that might let us breathe underwater?”
“No,” said Valeria with a shake of her head. “Such things are not my lady’s purview.”
“Nor Weltyr’s,” I agreed, frowning in the direction of the waters we needed traverse.
After thinking on it, Adonisius said reluctantly, “I do know of a certain mushroom—a strange and misshapen sort of orange blossom once pointed out to me by a knowledgeable traveler. He explained they granted one the power to breathe underwater…this must have been so, for they were all picked ages ago. The only patch I know of is guarded by…a thing.”
“‘A thing?’” I laughed at his obscurity, inquiring further, “What sort of thing, man? A dragon? A manticore?”
“Nothing of the sort. It is—a creature covered in eyes.” The half-spider being shuddered, folding his arms over his chest against the thought. “It does remind me in some ways of the spirit-thieves, in that some of these eyes are mounted upon stalks like hideous tentacles and it may assume forms other than its own. But rather than taking the forms of those it has seen, all this unnameable beholder of mortal minds need do is look into the heart of the man who stands before it. At once, without any sort of transformation, the thing is replaced by a person with a special place in the love or hatred of its visitor. Many who have seen it claim they never saw its real form at all. I saw it once. I was curious, so I brought a mirror with me one bloom when I went to ask its wisdom. I regret ever looking.”
Fending off a chill while the women exchanged a silent glance, I asked, “This is the only patch of these fungi that you know of?”
“Yes,” he said, “and I know the whole of the Nightlands, but especially this region.”
While Odile rolled her eyes, I began to dress. “Please, bring us to it.”
“Are you sure this is really wise?” Odile set her hands on her hips and arched a brow, going on to insist, “Perhaps the best way in really is through the front door. It’d be faster, anyway.”
“And one of us would end up killed for certain. Let’s try our luck with this ‘thing’ of Adonisius’s. I will address it, and you three remain behind to listen. Come to my aid only if necessary.”
Indra frowned. “What do we have to pay the guide with, though?”
Glancing down at her wrists, my lady found her cache of jewelry gone. Then, however, Valeria’s eyes drifted toward the suit of armor. It had brought us this far, but was far too heavy a burden for the priestess. “Would you be interested in determining if any of this armor fits you, sir?”
The spindled legs of the misshapen scuttled toward the borrowed suit of armor Valeria had arranged on the ground before bed. “Oh, why—some of it might, yes. Let’s see—”
How convenient the similarity between male and female elves proved to be in that moment! The breastplate was too shapely, but the helmet fit Adonisius perhaps better than it had Valeria. Looking quite overjoyed, he enthused about it most of the way to the creature he had so ominously described. Valeria turned down putting on the rest of the armor and so Indra and Odile split it between the two of them, with Indra taking the grieves and Odile accepting the breastplate. Throughout this march, my lady fared much better—though I certainly noticed a fearful rigidity to her posture as we approached the thing’s cavern by midbloom.
“Here we are,” said Adonoisius, his voice a murmur. “If it’s all the same, I’ll stay out here. When two or more enter at once, its powers are confused, and you risk seeing its true shape. I have no interest in experiencing such a thing again.”
“All the more reason for me to enter alone,” I said, nodding. Valeria looked at me with profound concern; I swept up her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Worry not, my lady. We’ll have the fungus that will bear us to the death of your nemesis in no time.”
Looking no more relaxed for that, Valeria gently caressed my face and then stepped away. I nodded at Indra and Odile, who knew their parts and watched me stride into the creature’s cave with one hand upon the pommel of Strife.
Even by the standards of the Nightlands, this cave seemed very dark. I gradually realized as I moved deeper into its moist environment that this was because there were no blooming fungi to give the place a hint of light. Perhaps I ought to have brought Odile’s light, but after meeting the misshapen called Adonisius I suspected the magic in it functioned based not on species but on a certain threshold of intelligence. To bring such a thing would only insult the creature, and I did not want to do that. From what the misshapen said, this thing was very intelligent, and I intended to reason with it for only four of the orange mushrooms.
But when I at last came to the cave’s termination and found a man sitting in the dark, I was somehow too taken aback to ask what I had intended. Yes, I knew what Adonisius had told me: but it was still quite a shock somehow, and I fell back upon my heel.
The man, whose features I could not quite distinguish even with my darkness-adjusted eyes, asked me with a stroke of his beard, “You look surprised, boy.”
“Well—preparation is one thing, but—”
“Seeing is believing,” said this creature in a man’s flesh. Some manner of rattling occurred in the darkness and, just as my mind placed the unexpected voice to its name, this being that had stolen Hildolfr’s form from my mind lit a pipe with the old man’s misappropriated hands. The adventurer, whose eyepatched face was briefly illuminated by the silver lighting device of old dwarvish design, puffed idly on his pipe.
“How are you, Rorke?”
I shook off the illusion as best I could, though it was so well-conceived that I still struggled to believe it was not Hildolfr—the most painful of my betrayers—seated on a boulder before me. I cleared my throat.
“If you would excuse me, sir, I have no interest in playing such games. Nor in fighting. I have only come for four of your mushrooms, to permit myself and my companions to breathe underwater for a time.”
“All business!” Hildolfr’s laugh was so familiar that my heart ached to hear it emulated. The entity puffed on his pipe, continuing, “I like that…but what I don’t like is people coming to raid my garden. You know why there are so few of these mushrooms out there in the wild now, don’t you?”
“Yes, sire,” I assured him, bowing. “But it is an emergency. My lady’s life has been threatened by a—”
“I know all that,” answered the thing coolly. “You think I can reach into your mind and pull out old Hildolfr here, but I can’t see what you’ve been through?”
“I apologize. I did not mean to be presumptuous.”
“Ah, that’s all right. I know you want to respect me. I appreciate that. Wise of you, too. Everybody who comes to kill me ends up dead…and those who want to see my true form are making a mistake.”
“So I’ve heard. I would not dare attempt either one of those ill-advised actions. My only desire is to ask what I might trade or do in order to earn a few mushrooms from your garden, about which I would never tell anyone. If you see into me so well, then surely you see that.”
“I do,” said the stolen old man, cryptically adding after a second, “sort of.”
Before I could ask him what he meant, he cleared his throat and shifted around on
the rock to face me properly.
“I’ll tell you what,” said the creature, lowering the pipe. “Let’s make a deal. I love to see the process of a human at thought. It thrills me…especially an intelligent human. Answer three of my questions to let me see you think. If you answer them correctly and reason through them well, I’ll give you what you came here for.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I’ll take your lady’s ring,” said the beast in Hildolfr’s skin. “So?”
“You must see I am confident that you would be unable to do that. Certainly not with my consent.”
“Then you’d better answer my questions correctly, huh.”
Curiously, the thing seemed to become more like the individuals whose personas it adopted, unlike the spirit-thieves for whom a stolen form was but a puppet. That, or the creature before me already had a personality resembling Hildolfr’s. “Very well,” I said, folding my hands. “Go on with your questions.”
Lifting the pipe again, the being asked, “What are you?”
My mind leapt to work at once and I swore I saw the creature’s smile even in the dark.
What was I? My instinct was to call myself a paladin, or a servant of Weltyr. Yet neither of these seemed right, or even fully true. The life of the paladin was a pursuit—and ‘pursuit’ was a word to be taken with special significance, as many points to it as there were to the sun on my neck. We were meant to be humble and understand that our faith was a matter of practice; that our highest and best self was always somewhere off in the distance. That we were, next to Weltyr, at once mighty and nothing at all.
“I am an animal,” I said after thinking at last of the magic lantern used by Indra and Odile, and of our conversation when first I learned the function of its light.
Its smile remained in place, even and somehow knowing. “Interesting answer. Who are you?”
That, I did not know, and faltered on the asking. Rorke Burningsoul was what I was named at the Temple—but who I truly was had always been the foremost mystery of my existence. I had only one Father I could name, and answered, “I am a son of Weltyr.”
