by Aaron Crash
That big tree was one of the sanctum trees. They were important in the Theran myth stories, and they even had some importance to the tundra clans.
Someone moved out of the shadows.
Jennybelle Josen stood against the wall next to the doors he’d come through. This time, she was alone. A big cottony white blouse poofed out around her arms but was tight against her breasts. A little V-collar gave him a view of her skin. Brown leather pants were tucked into big leather boots with an overly large cuff dropping. Had she been waiting for him?
She gave him a big smile that made her bright blue eyes shine. “Well, look at who we have here. Ymir, son of Ymok, of the Black Wolf Clan.”
She said his name like it was a joke.
Chapter Nine
GAZING AT JENNYBELLE’S smirk, Ymir had two choices: he could be honest, and tell her he was in a bad mood and she shouldn’t try her games with him. Or he could play the game, and beat her at it.
He wasn’t sure who had won in his tense conversation with the Princept, but he sure didn’t feel victorious. When a man needed a kill, the only thing to do was to hunt. The same was true when a man needed a win. You either played and cast your lots to chance, or you didn’t.
He decided to play.
“Jennybelle Josen, of the Swamp Coast and Josentown, isn’t that right? On the Blue Sea.” He set his brooms and bucket down and leaned up against the wall next to her. “I think you’ve been avoiding me.”
“Me? Avoid you?” She laughed a bit too much. She twirled a finger through her hair, then dropped her hand. “Why would I do that?”
“Because you think I’m very handsome.” He didn’t laugh at all. Her sweet perfume cut through the pungent incense. He sniffed. “How much an ounce is your perfume?”
“A platinum sheck at least.” She huffed out a breath. “And I don’t find you handsome. You are too tall, and too rough, and your eyes would confuse me. Brown, blue, green. All that magic must be hard to bear.”
She was fishing for a reaction. He didn’t give her one. “The magic is very hard to bear. You wouldn’t happen to know how I could get rid of it, would you? It would save me from cleaning up after rich people today.” That was a bit of a risk, and his pride complained a bit. This woman would surely tease him for his toil.
She didn’t latch onto the bait, at least not right away. She wasn’t looking at him but staring at the chapel’s holy tree. He turned to face her because, damn, looking at her was so much fun. He wondered how she would answer his three questions about sex.
By the Axman’s beard, he hoped to find out, though he’d have to keep his guard up. Jennybelle Josen was dangerous.
She wrinkled her nose “You shouldn’t get rid of your dusza. That’s stupid. You can use it to do all sorts of things.”
“Like what?” he asked.
She looked up, pondered, and blinked her very blue eyes, the bluest he’d ever seen.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
She laughed. “There’s so many. See into the future. Craft magic items. Defend families from bandits or rogue bands of orcs, or the dark things in the earth that only the dwarves know about. The dragons might come back, and we’d need help. And the merfolk aren’t exactly friendly. We have our own version on the Swamp Coast, and they raid towns and carry off women. Then there’s the Wingkin from Reytah to consider. They might come swooping in, and we’d have to burn their wings off with fireballs. See?”
“I like the idea of fighting winged men, but I would want to use my ax.” He shook his head. “In truth, I don’t see myself doing any of the things you suggested.”
“Then, barbarian, what do you see yourself doing?” She turned and leaned in a little closer. Her eyes bore into his.
His eyes went down to her blouse and that bit of cleavage. They returned to her face. “I see myself kissing you. Is there a spell for that?”
“I don’t know. Why do you think I’m here?” She licked her lips and eased herself back a bit. Just a bit.
It was enough of a signal. He relaxed, leaning against the wall. “How many men are there in Josentown?”
She shrugged. “I ain’t got any idea. Excuse me—I don’t have any idea. Don’t you correct my grammar.”
“I bet there’s not many. Because of the Withering,” he said.
“The big war, the Withering, and all that. So you’re right, not so many boys, a lot of girls, but even getting pregnant has become harder. Why, my mother, she had to drink sanctum sap tea for a month before she had my sister. Then two months for my other sister. A year for me.” Her eyes dropped and her voice turned feathery. “Maybe I didn’t want to be born.”
Her gaze went back to him. “Either way, what does that have to do with me and this kiss you’re talking about?”
“My kiss?” He smiled innocently. “It would’ve been our kiss, but you missed your chance. I wouldn’t bet on another one. You see, I think you’re here to find a husband, since there aren’t many boys in Josentown.”
She laughed. “You have a lot to learn. I’m the third...” She caught herself. Was that a wince? He had her on the run. “I’m the secondborn daughter, but that doesn’t mean a thing to you. The Swamp Coast queendoms are about as far from the Frozen Land as you can get, unless you consider the Scatter Islands or Reytah.”
“Reytah, where the Wingkin are,” he finished.
She popped a finger on his nose. “Look at you. Your geography is improving every day. Why, I’m just so proud of you.”
He could’ve caught her hand, but touching her might have been too much for him, and he might have had to steal that kiss. That would’ve been the wrong play. It would’ve given her the advantage.
“Proud of me?” he said with a chuckle. “I am honored, surely, but you haven’t said I’m wrong about you finding a husband. Am I wrong?”
“Yes, no husband for me. Wrong about you being handsome? Yes. Wrong about our kiss? Yes, no kisses for you.” Jenny wasn’t about to be done. She was only getting started. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Ymir, that I’m not here for love. I’m here to study. Then I’ll return home and serve my queen. You wouldn’t know this, being an uneducated barbarian, but the queendoms are always fighting over land, or Undergem Guild contracts. Then you have your basic feuds between bitches who hate each other but have forgotten why. Maybe because their mothers, and grandmothers, and great-grandmothers hated each other, and it’s just easier to hate out of habit.”
He leaned back and sighed, staring up at the ceiling. A long branch from the tree had reached all the way to the door, following the line of the roof. That was an old tree, and pretty. Its leaves were strange to him, yet oddly familiar. From where, he didn’t know.
“Am I boring you?” Jenny asked, exasperated.
“Yes, I’m very bored.” Then he felt the magic. Icy fingers flicked up his spine. The hairs lifted on the back of his neck. Suddenly, he wasn’t seeing the inside of the Chapel of the Tree. He saw a funeral, in a hot place, where moss-covered trees hung over black water and where long serpentine monsters, a dozen feet long, wiggled in the mud. Watertooth terrors, that was what those beasts were called.
The Swamp Coast. He was there, and it was raining, even as a procession of women in black carried a small wooden box in the rain. That was a coffin, the first he’d ever seen, though he knew the word. The funeral parade walked down a street lit with flickering yellow light that couldn’t fight the rain or the darkness. A bigger coffin sat on the shoulders of bearded men. In the crowd, there were ten women to every man. All wore black, and some held things above them, circles of waterproof fabric on short sticks. A word in Pidgin came to him: umbrellas.
A woman in a black veil and black dress walked in the rain, her black hair stuck to her face. She held the hands of two girls. One had midnight-black hair and eyes so blue they’d make the summer sky jealous. That was Jenny, as a young girl. And she was with her mother and sister, the one that lived, not the dead one in the coffin.
The re
cognition shocked him back to the Chapel of the Tree. He let out a breath, swallowed hard, and fought to keep standing. He would not go to his knees in front of this woman.
“Are you all right?” Jenny asked.
“Just fine.” He hoped she didn’t see the sweat on his forehead.
“You don’t look good,” she said, a bit worried.
“We’ve established that.” He had to shake away the vision, gather his strength, and return to the game he was determined to win. He eased a smile onto his lips. “You might not think I’m handsome, but I did meet a nice little woman in the feasting hall. Red hair, green eyes, and freckles, so many freckles.”
“Big bosom?” Jenny asked.
“Bigger than yours.” He grinned.
She slapped his arm. “That will not do. Me and the girls have had many compliments from men and women alike. So I know that’s unlikely. You mean Toriah Welldeep. She’s a dwarf, you know.”
“Would that be a problem?” he asked, generally curious.
Jenny couldn’t hold back the laughter, eyes squeezed shut, hand on her belly. “A problem? That depends on who you ask.”
“I’m asking you,” he said. “And I’m wondering about dwarf women. Do they have beards normally?”
Jenny coughed out the last bit of her laughter. “The dwarves keep to themselves for the most part, and while Toriah is friendly, getting close to her would take some work. As for beards, some of the girls do, some don’t, but that’s a long story.” The swamp witch nodded. “Really, Ymir, since Tori is the only dwarf woman around, you should try her. That would be rich.”
“Rich like you.” He didn’t ask it as a question and didn’t wait for an answer. “Because you bought your way in, you and your gaggle of silly witches. You’ve been here for months, to see the Open Exam and get all your schemes in place. What those schemes are, I don’t know, but listen, how about I kiss you? You’ve been thinking about it, and so have I. Then I can get to work.”
For a moment, she seemed like she might protest, or complain, or maybe tease him about his magic, since that worked last time, and she knew it. So did he.
Instead, she got in front of him, pushed him back against the wall, and put her hand against his chest. He instinctively flexed a pectoral muscle.
She seemed to like that. Her blue eyes brightened.
She had to stand on her tippy-toes to even come close to his lips. She brushed hers against his. “You caught me in a bunch of lies. I’ve been thinking about kissing you. I do have some schemes.” She went back on her heels. He followed her down, keeping their lips close together, not kissing but coming so close to it. She was gasping, trembling. He settled a hand on her flaring hip. His other hand found her hair. It was softer than an eagle chick’s fluff.
“And you are handsome. In Josentown, men are rare. Men like you might be even more rare. However, when it comes to love, I prefer a woman’s touch.”
Her hand went from his chest, down his belly, and then cupped the bulge straining his pants.
She laughed and stepped back. “I thought it would be bigger. I really did.” She hooted, and he knew it was to shame him. She had such little power over him, and everything she said was a lie anyway. He found her act laughable.
He lashed out. “I’m sorry about your sister. And your father.” It was the cruelest thing he could say, but, in a way, he meant the words. He truly did feel for her.
The shaming laughter died on her lips. She went white. “How...how could you know?”
“Dusza,” he said simply. “I see things I don’t want to see. I lost a sister as well, and my mother was never herself again.”
Jenny blinked. That did nothing to stop the tears. “Your mother. A sister. My...I...this isn’t funny. This isn’t flirty. This is cruel. You’re cruel!” She hurried away, one hand covering her mouth.
Ymir backed up against the wall and smacked it with his palms. He let himself feel bad for a single second, and then he shook away the emotions. He exhaled.
“Stay away from me, Jenny,” he said to the empty chapel. “I’m not here for you. And maybe it’s better you prefer women in the end.”
That had been a lie. He had felt her desire. Maybe she did like a woman’s touch—
growing up with so few men, it would make sense. And yet, her eyes, her breathing, and her trembling had betrayed her lust for him.
That was over now. He didn’t think she would ever talk to him again.
He got on with the work in the Moon suites, shutting off his mind. Tomorrow, school would begin. Tomorrow, everything would change.
He’d enjoy the empty university while he still could.
Chapter Ten
YMIR CARRIED HIS BROOMS and bucket up the circular stone steps of the Moons Tower. Gurla, the Janistra Dux, had sent a messenger to let him know he had to clean the Moons classrooms before the end of the day. By the Axman’s beard, he’d get out of his work study program even if he had to split a dozen skulls to do it.
The soap in his bucket gave off a fruity smell, though he had no idea what kind of fruit that might be. On the south side of the Bearspine Mountains on the Ax Tundra, apple trees took over from the pines at lower levels. Apples had a crisp, juicy bite to them, and a nice odor, but not like the soap he cleaned with.
He entered a classroom in the middle of the tower. Two dozen chairs, with a writing space attached, faced a wooden stand, where the professor stood to talk, no doubt. The scholars were supposed to listen he assumed.
This wasn’t so different from his people. Old women and men loved to pass down knowledge from the Sacred Mysteries of the Ax. Every so often, they’d gather up the children to quiz them. Generally, they’d set up an elk-hide tent for the occasion, to get out of the sun in the summer or the snows in the winter.
Ymir had liked those afternoons, listening to some elder talk. Other boys would wriggle and shove each other, but if anyone dared interrupt Ymir’s concentration, he’d punch them. Ymir, for whatever reason, took his learning seriously. His mind was both a tool and a weapon. He didn’t shirk his warrior training, and he wouldn’t shrug off his wisdom training, either.
That was all a long time ago.
He swept out the room quickly and mopped just as fast. As long as he removed most of the dust Gurla didn’t nag at him. The work was easy and quick; he could list a dozen worse chores he’d done growing up.
After cleaning the room he sank his mop in the bucket and leaned his broom up against the wall.
He then drifted through the chairs. Lillee referred to them as desks. He went to the window. The Moons Field lay down there, the green grass muted by the failing light and the fog rolling off the ocean. Lights from StormCry glittered like fireflies in the gloom, creating a crescent of light that followed the coastline. The waves were white lines on the dark sea. The AngelTeeth Islands were lost in the mist, except for the lighthouse’s unfailing glow.
There was an entire continent for him, a new world full of strange people—the Fallen Fruit people, a vast variety. He thought back to his conversation with the Princept.
“What are hedge mages?” he asked himself. Could they help him with his problem? Would he find answers in the stone halls of the dwarves under the mountains? Toriah Welldeep had come from the Sunset Mountains. They were separated from the Sunrise Mountains by the Blood Steppes. That was where the orcs lived.
“They ride horses,” he said out loud.
Horses, as far as he could tell, where like otelkir, only they were smaller, thicker, and didn’t have antlers. In the past two weeks, he’d discovered maps in the classrooms he cleaned, and a few books in Pidgin, leather-bound, not ironbound, lying on shelves. They were hastily translated texts. The writing was hard to read, but he learned many new words. The elves called themselves the Ohlyrra. For orcs, the Gruul. The dwarves also had a name for themselves, a tongue-bending word: the Morbuskor.
He continued to talk out loud. “Perhaps if I can’t find the solution to my curse at the Maje
strial, I can search somewhere else.” The Majestrial was a fine name for the university, better than Old Ironbound. “You are spending too much time alone,” he murmured. “You are talking to yourself. Beware that a demon doesn’t answer.”
That was what the stories said might happen. Some said it was the Lonely Man who would answer, stepping out of the thin air to drive you insane.
His eyes went to the Moons housing, flanking the fields. He was jealous of those scholars. They didn’t need to walk the thousand steps up to the Librarium. It was a straight shot. Even if you lived in the cells on the south cliff edges, it would take only minutes to walk past the feasting hall to get to the Librarium. Only a little farther to any of the college towers.
“Enjoying the view?” a woman’s voice asked.
He turned to see the salt-and-pepper woman standing in the doorway. Her coral monster towered behind her, near where his buckets and mop lay. The Moons magic in the thing must be powerful to move the creature without any real sound. Its many milky eyes were closed for now.
“Professor Siteev Ckins. Hello.” He turned to face her. “I was regretting where I live, down in the Flow, not necessarily enjoying the view.”
“Ymir, son of Ymok. Hello.” She smiled. “I put you down there, you know. The Princept and I did.”
“Damn the Ax, but why, woman?” he asked.
“Yes, the great Ax that the Axman used to chop down the Tree of Life. That ax needed to be sharp to do that.” She walked through the desks to stand with him by the window. “The humans found the tree, but not before the elves, dwarves, orcs, and other Fallen Fruit tumbled down to ruin the world.”
“That’s one story,” Ymir said. “Another said the world was always here, and the Axman needed the Ax to fight away the demons that wanted to destroy it.”
“And the sun glimmered off the holy Ax on the first day of creation,” Siteev finished. “I’m surprised you know my name.”
“I’ll have many names to learn. Five hundred scholars will arrive tomorrow. What is fifty compared to that?” He smelled her scent, the sweat of her day, and a little perfume. Theran women liked their perfume. “So you put me in the Flow to sharpen me.”
