by Logan Jacobs
I had also brought a pile of items that I was less sure about needing. I had never been on a journey before, not even to Nillibet’s temple, although I had heard all about it from older novices who had been there. But besides some bread, cheese, dried meat, and waterskins, I thought it was probably a good idea to bring along a full set of silverware and cloth napkins, since the vestals always told me it was barbaric to eat without them. I also brought a big sack of flour and a dozen eggs, since followers of Nillibet liked baking so much, and I thought they might appreciate them as gifts. I also brought a compass, a grappling hook, a shovel, and a chamber pot, since I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to find one of those when I needed to relieve myself on the road.
After dividing everything up into equal loads and securing them in packs or baskets or otherwise fastening them to my bodies, I paused at the front gate of the temple to ask Qaar’endoth’s blessing, and set off down the road.
I had never been to Nillibet’s temple, but I knew that it lay to the north, across the flat plain, so I went that way. The road stretched between the two temples, so it would not be hard to find.
I walked for a long time, and the scenery did not change very much. Nothing much grew upon the plain during the winter. It was just barren gray grass, with ice-covered mountains in the very far distance. The road had cart tracks in some softer patches, and sometimes footprints too.
The objects heaped together on my back made quite a lot of thumping and clanking noises with every single step I took. I think that must have scared away most critters, because I did not see any, except for some birds.
To occupy my mind, one of me thought through all the temples I had heard tales about, all the other gods that people deemed worth serving, and tried to evaluate which ones might be friendly to Qaar’endoth’s cause and which ones would pose threats. The other tried to recall every detail about Qaar’endoth’s teachings that I had ever learnt, so that I could retain as much information as possible for as long as possible, until it could be transmitted to future novices. I tried to remember both rites of invocation and rites of worship, but then I sighed when I came up with almost nothing. I wished I had studied more, but I had always thought Simon would be the one to pass on knowledge of Qaar’endoth to future generations.
Gradually the ground became hillier. Trees with dark, spindly, and frostbitten branches filled the sides of the road.
I walked for two hours before I encountered another traveler who turned out to be an apple farmer. I considered trying to convince him to trade me an apple for one of my rubies, but then on closer inspection, I saw that his produce looked overripe and bruised, so I simply waved him good day.
Next was a pig farmer who didn’t look too many degrees removed, evolutionarily, from his herd. He squinted back and forth from me to me with great suspicion and prodded his charges onward. One of the sows jostled me in passing and I gave her flank a friendly pat, thinking of how many sausages she’d be sure to make.
Then some time later, I heard the whinny of a panicked horse in the distance ahead. I stopped and listened. There was another whinny, and what sounded like human shouts as well.
It sounded to me like someone needed my help. It also sounded like he or she might have at least one horse that could potentially speed up my journey. I broke into a sprint, or at least the closest I could manage with everything that I was carrying on my backs.
After a quarter mile the source of the sounds of distress came into view. There was an upended carriage surrounded by a band of feral-looking vagrants, and a fat little gnome thrashing wildly in the arms of the biggest and strongest of the vagrants. His mouth was gagged with a piece of brocade that seemed to have been torn from one of the curtains of his carriage. A bearded vagrant stood in front of the gnome, saying something in a sneering tone and poking at the gnome’s belly with a butcher knife.
“Hey,” I shouted. The vagrants turned toward me as I approached them.
I saw that three of the vagrants were curled up on the ground moaning. They were covered in some kind of blue slime, so one of me went over to examine their predicament more closely.
The other one of me asked the bearded vagrant, “Care to pick on someone your own size?”
He started toward me with the butcher knife in his hand and ill intentions in his eyes, but then the lone female among the vagrants’ number patted him on the shoulder and sidled past him to approach me.
“What bonny twins,” she cackled. She wore striped skirts and a blouse and ribbons in her hair, all reduced to indecent tatters, yet clearly of such good quality originally that I very much doubted she had come by them honestly.
She moved with a skip in her step, not seeming to mind the dust or gravel of the road even though she was shoeless. Bangles jangled on her ankles, which drew my attention to the fact that her feet were, in fact, paws of a tawny color. The fur receded as it stretched up her calves, so I supposed the rest of her was human. Then I looked back up to her face and realized she had two large, wolfish ears sprouting from the top of her head and no human ones at all to speak of. This detail was surprisingly easy to miss, due to her tangled nest of fluffy hair, of the same tawny color as her ears and hind paws. Her tanned skin was faintly freckled, and her eyes were a bright green. I thought she might be pretty underneath all the dirt but it was hard to tell.
“Bonny twins,” she said again as she circled me. I stood still and let her, unsure whether she was inspecting only my worldly goods or also my physical assets. “My mother had a pair of bonny twins, but not enough milk to feed them both, so both died in the cradle,” she announced as she rattled my frying pan.
Once I had seen all I needed to see of the blue slime slowly corroding the flesh from the bones of the three vagrants, I stood up. The she-wolf looked over at that self too.
“Hmm. Where are you off to, my lads, mayhap to set up a homestead somewheres? Have you maidens fair waiting for the both of you, hmm?” She licked her lips with a tongue that seemed a bit too long for a human’s.
The group behind her passively observed the proceedings without much more than a few muttered gibes and chuckles, the captive and gagged gnome ignored for the moment. I guessed that this was their typical mode of operating: their shameless she-wolf selected their prey, the others followed her lead.
“Might I have the pleasure of learning your names and your lineage, honorable gentlemen?” she asked with mock formality, dropping a curtsy. “We’ve a place in our band for handsome, strapping boys like you, oh yes we do.” She pointed back at the group. “You can have Lil and Betty if you like. They’re good girls. A bit thick in the skull, but good girls.”
My eyes followed her clawed finger, but there were no other females in the group, just nine men, some so gaunt as to count for fewer than that in a fight. All gripped miscellaneous scavenged-looking weapons such as iron bars and pickaxes.
“You ate Lil and Betty last week!” One of the men reminded her. He added something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “You bitch.” His manner was one of such genuine resentment, mixed with fear that I did not think the two of them were simply putting on a prearranged performance for my benefit.
“Oh,” the she-wolf said with slight disappointment. She turned back to me and patted me on the head as if to console me as she said, “Well, never you mind, we’ll get you some new ones. Nice ones. Nicer than the posh spoiled little brats you must have waiting for you with their dowries from daddy. A well-bred lady is terrified by the prospect of a tumble, you know. Even once you’re wed, she’ll always recoil from your appetites. Not the kind we can get you, oh no they won’t.” She grinned wide.
“I need you all to unhand the gnome and walk away now,” I said.
“Is that so?” She trailed her hand down one of my chests all the way to my belt buckle and I hated myself for being inexplicably aroused, considering as I was quite sure I didn’t want to know all the places that hand had been since its last washing. But I also didn’t doub
t that the wild-maned she-wolf had a long catalogue of tricks up her sleeve that fresh, fair Meryn had never even dreamt of.
Then she grabbed the blade of Saint Polliver’s sword through its scabbard. I gasped but nothing happened. I guessed mortals must only get in trouble for touching the hilt, or only if they did so with the intention of wielding it. Unless Saint Polliver had lifted the curse altogether, and the sword wrapped in his own skin was now just a sword.
“Nice big sword you have here,” she said with a giggle and gave it a suggestive tug. “Well, now, we’d love for you both to keep us company, we surely would. But if you really have someplace important to get to, we’ll forgive you this once. Why don’t you just leave this sword as a gift for me to remember you by?”
“Just the sword, Lizzy?” The bearded vagrant finally spoke up. “But they’ve got a whole household’s worth of goods tied to their backs. Far too much for just two men to carry, don’t you think?”
Dumb and dumber, I thought.
“Shut up, Abraham,” the she-wolf snarled.
I sighed. “Your lives seem hard enough as it is. I don’t want to hurt you. Just give the gnome his ponies back and keep walking, all right?”
Half the uninjured vagrants came up to surround each of me, including the big one who first dumped the gagged gnome unceremoniously on the ground.
Abraham jabbed the butcher’s knife at my stomach. “Better worry about yourselves, boys. Lizzy seems to like you so just maybe I’ll be letting you keep your lives. But sure as the sun rises we’ll be having all those goods you’re lugging on your backs, one way or the other.”
“How about just the sword, since she did ask so nice?” I suggested, holding it out to him hilt-first. I did not know whether Saint Polliver’s curse was still in effect, since touching the scabbard had not affected Lizzy, but it seemed like a good idea to find out.
Abraham stared at me suspiciously. But he glanced around at his followers and saw that they were all watching him and expected him to take the sword. He reached out and seized the hilt.
His face twisted in a smirk. “You fool--” he started to say.
Then his entire body burst into flame.
For a split second his beard was the most spectacular-looking thing I had ever seen. Every single one of the vagrants screamed at the top of his lungs, but Abraham screamed loudest of all as he thrashed around in agony, wreathed in flames. He reached out to his companions for help, but they all darted away, and he collapsed.
The band of vagrants, minus their two leaders and the three who had been slimed, dropped the ponies’ reins and fled as fast as their legs could carry them. The green-eyed she-wolf remained behind to stare at Abraham’s charred body in apparent shock, and I wondered if he had been her mate. Her expression was hard to read.
I gingerly retrieved my sword from where it lay quite close to the burning corpse. I did not know whether the curse-fire would burn me on contact, but it did not really seem like a matter of urgent necessity to find out.
Then I knelt to give thanks to Saint Polliver.
The other me ungagged the gnome. His mouth, and the part of the cloth that had been stuffed inside his mouth, were smeared with blue slime. He had a chubby-cheeked face with a huge knobby nose, faintly grayish skin, and a luxurious curling beard of a lavender hue that matched the hair sprouting from his large ears. He wore a slouchy red velvet cap with an ostrich plume in it that added another foot to his natural height of approximately four feet.
He threw himself face-down on the ground before me, arms outstretched above his head as if he were prostrating himself to some god.
“That’s not necessary,” I started to say.
He interrupted, “I, Willobee of Clan Benniwumporgan, do hereby pledge my utmost earnest efforts to assist in all your endeavors, my cunning counsel, my charming company, and the usage of my extremely acidic projectile vomit for the duration of the next decade or until an untimely end should befall me, whichever of the two should occur first, O Mightiest of Strangers.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, you don’t even know who I am,” I protested.
He hopped back up on his feet and shrugged. “Well, I know you have a sword that can instantly burn up anyone you don’t like. I know you have a twin who is probably just as powerful as you are. And I know that you saved my life, and that the law of my people therefore dictates I owe you the next decade of it. After that--” he shrugged. “We’ll see. My last savior was a pompous asshole. So after the decade was up I barfed in his face.”
“I’m not my twin,” I said.
“Uh…what?” Willobee asked, looking back and forth from me to me.
“Who the fuck are you guys?” Lizzy asked me as she finally pulled herself away from the crispy corpse.
“Why is she still here?” Willobee asked me with a grimace out of the side of his mouth.
I stood side by side with myself, put my hands on my chests, and said in unison, “I believe I may be Qaar’endoth the Unvanquished, fourth son of the Fairlands, defender of the righteous and destroyer of the malevolent, twenty-three times incarnated, sire to untold thousands, first earth-walker since the age of Luma. But you can call me Vander.”
The gnome and the wolf-woman both had a lot of questions for me, so I ended up explaining where I came from, what it meant to be a novice of the temple of Qaar’endoth, and everything that had happened since I first laid eyes on the horde of Thorvinians below our walls last night. How every member of the Order of Qaar’endoth could project two bodies temporarily, but how my unique ability to maintain mine for as long as I wanted had enabled me to survive the attack that destroyed every other person in the world that I knew and held dear.
“Hell, I can’t hardly reckon what a misery that would be to have all those people that loved you, and have it all torn away like that. It sounds like your life was real nice, before,” Lizzy said. Her long, hairy ear twitched in sympathy.
“Where, ah, where exactly are these fellows that attacked you all now?” Willobee asked nervously.
“That raiding party?” I replied. “Dead or fled. The rest of Thorvinius’ army? Couldn’t tell you.”
Willobee pondered this. Then another question occurred to him. “This all just happened this morning? You mean the whole temple, with all those gems and whatnot, is standing empty right now, and ain’t even been raided none yet? And it’s only a few hours back that way in the mountains?” His gnomish green eyes were lit up like lanterns.
“Well, I certainly hope it hasn’t been raided,” I said.
“We should go back there immediately, Master,” the purple haired gnome said. “To…pay our respects to the dead, like.”
“I have already done that,” I said sternly. “And the most respectful thing that I can do for the dead now is make sure our order lives on… and that the order of Thorvinius does not.”
“Ah, but I have not yet had the chance to pay my respects,” Willobee pointed out.
“You didn’t even know them!” I said.
“But they were beloved by my master, and that makes them important to me,” Willobee wheedled. He gave me an innocent grin, and I wondered if I would be better off sending the greedy little creature away immediately. But it wasn’t every day that a random stranger, especially one equipped with a lovely carriage, two ponies, and who could spit toxic bile, showed up and placed his services fully at my disposal for the next ten years, after all. I decided I should give him a chance and see how I felt about the arrangement after a few days.
“It has been hours. I am sure there have been raiders,” Lizzy said flatly. “I am sure the temple is occupied by bandits by now. And wild beasts will have come for all the bodies.” I don’t think she meant for me to see, but she definitely licked her lips.
“Well, I guess you’d better catch up with your companions,” I said. “I hope you don’t run into any dangers like that if you’re heading that way.”
She looked at me in surprise. “Why would I go back with them?”
She pointed at Abraham’s burnt corpse and said as casually as if she were remarking on the weather, “It really isn’t saying much at all, but he was the best of them.” She smiled brightly. “I’m going with you guys!”
“What? You can’t do that,” I exclaimed.
“No sirree,” Willobee echoed.
“Why not? There’s plenty of room in the carriage for three.”
“Because my mission is to make more of me, then hunt down and destroy every last member of a militant order. It’s going to involve a lot of fighting. It’s going to be extremely dangerous. Almost certainly fatal,” I said, in case I still hadn’t gotten the point across. But Lizzy did not look any more fazed by my words than she had by her former partner’s barbecued corpse.
“All right,” she said with a shrug. I thought that meant she had given up on her crazy idea of joining me. Then she continued, “I’ll just ditch you as soon as it gets too dangerous for my liking, then.”
“We could come under attack at any time. I won’t know in advance. And I might be too busy to protect you,” I said through gritted teeth.
“And she could stab you in the back and try to rob you at any time,” Willobee added. “While you’re busy doing more important things.”
Lizzy glared at him and pointed at both of me. “How stupid do I look to you, gnome?”
“You don’t look stupid,” Willobee admitted, “but you look greedy… and selfish… and mean.”
“Look here, Willobee,” Lizzy said coaxingly while I wondered just when exactly the gnome had been appointed in charge of screening candidates to join my mission. “Do you remember how Abraham--”
