by Daniel Kozuh
“Well, I have to perfect the landing, but everything seems to be in working order again,” he laughed, rolling his right arm around in the socket.
“That is fantastic!” Tahra cheered.
“You did it. You protected me,” he said, walking up to her and sliding his arms into her blanket – they were ice cold. A shiver ran up Tahra’s spine.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “Protected you from all the dangerous insects and bunny rabbits of Highpoint.”
“I could probably make it back to the cliffs tonight, if I left now,” Hite said. There was no coyness or reverse psychology in his voice. In fact, it was said in such stoic monotone that Tahra thought she misheard him.
“What?”
“I’ll sure be sore tomorrow but it will be good to see my family again.” Hite smiled.
“But what about … what about us?” she stuttered.
“You’re done! You did it. You are free to go, now.”
“What about our l-l-love?” Tahra had used the word so little in her life that she had trouble forming her mouth around it.
Hite laughed in her face, his icy hands actually pulling her closer. He eventually noticed that she wasn’t laughing. “Tahra, we aren’t in love! You are of man and I am Alkar. Our species can’t even breed together.”
“I don’t care about breeding, I care about you.” Tahra was turning into the blubbering romantic at which she always sneered.
“We had fun while I healed, but my class is on the verge of extinction and I have to migrate home. I liked you because I thought you were one of the few of your kind who didn’t let love muck everything up.”
His hands retreated and, within the hour, she watched him bound into the sky and disappear into the clouds. Whatever spark of humanity may have remained in Tahra was snuffed out that morning.
SEVEN
Kroü’s armor shone brilliantly, as if his chaste soul were bursting forth from beneath. The hoard of lizard warriors did not stir, however, ignorantly unafraid of Kroü. They stood fast in their line, just below the entrance to their underground kingdom.
“Good lizard people of D’arang’ulad, we wish not to quarrel.” Kroü attempted diplomacy. “For centuries our peoples have lived in peace, with you reigning over the subterranean and us, the overworld. Return to your dark realm or risk annihilation.”
F’Fa’Partar, the general of the D’arang’ulad army, answered with a single step forward.Kroü abandoned negotiations and adopted his sword. He wished not to kill but he knew he must.
- Tales of Lingeria: Secreted Echelon, Chapter 20
Norman awoke to a broken nose and a high-pitched tone chiming through his head. He couldn’t breathe and his eyes wanted nothing more than to remain shut. It was night now and it seemed that Norman hadn’t been moved from the spot where he fell, although someone did do him the courtesy of putting his bag under his head.
A fire roared and, on the other side of that fire, a fierce female warrior calmly sharpened her sword, while glaring at Norman.
“She was going to kill you,” chimed in Roe, while tugging at the barbequed remains of a squirrel, “but I convinced her not to.”
Norman looked a Janey. “And, where were you?” Calamity laid at Tahra’s feet, resting comfortably by the fire. “Some protector.”
Norman managed to get himself to a seated position, “Is there any water?”
Tahra whipped a canteen at him and it landed somewhere in the darkness. She went back to sharpening, the edge of the blade gliding up the water stone with a shrill ring. She narrowed her eyes at Norman, filling every wrinkle of her face with hate.
“I’m sorry, have we met?” Norman asked. He was used to women hating him but that usually took a few years of marriage.
Her only answer was the Shhhkkkt! of her sword against the whetstone. The flames made the shadows on her face dance with anger and exaggerated the long patch of scar tissue along her leg.
Norman could feel that his sinuses were swollen and clotted with blood. He attempted to clear them with a heavy, porcine snorts, but the pain was astonishing. “Roe, can I borrow your canteen?” Norman requested. Roe handed it to him, and Norman was finally able to wash the taste of blood from his mouth.
“I used to think,” Tahra said, suddenly and pointedly, “that I was in charge of my own destiny. That this miserable existence that I was born into was not fated but that I had some control over it. And then the books… the whadoyacallems…”
“Tomes,” Roe helped.
“Right. The tomes showed up in the land and every moment of my life was written down in them. I discovered that everything that ever happened to me was forced upon me by some higher power. I thought every time I was poisoned, stabbed, burnt, bloodied, and cursed, it was my doing. But you did this to me – you gave me this miserable life. You let me know love only to take it away. You made me unwanted, you made me an orphan, and you made me a killer!”
A pocket of moisture popped within one of the logs in the fire, erupting a shower of sparks and ash. Norman couldn’t be certain that Tahra didn’t do that with her mind. He could tell that she was trying to maintain the anger in her face but sadness was contorting her brow.
“This wasn’t supposed to be real,” he told her. “None of this was supposed to exist. You, Roe, Lingeria … any of it. I write fiction – falsehoods, fantasies, escapism. I didn’t expect what happened to you to actually happen to a conscious being! People in my world read my books to escape the banality of their own existence.”
“And they take joy in reading of murder and bloodshed?” Tahra cried. “Of reading about how I have been bloodied by the men of this world?”
“Well... not joy, per se, but a certain psychosomatic pleasure, perhaps,” Norman explained. “I’ll have you know I have been lauded by several international women’s organizations for the feminist lilt in my writings. I was given the Betty Friedan Award for Prose on account of your character … A strong-willed woman who doesn’t need a man’s help. I am, what some call in my world, an ally.”
“None of those words have any meaning to me.”
“In my world little girls look up to you, women dress up as you, the men … well don’t worry about what the men want of you,” Norman cleared his throat nervously. “I mean, well, I created your tribe as a hyper-realistic example of the misogyny of my world. You were a shining example of overcoming adversities and shattering stereotypes.”
“Like a fable?” Tahra asked.
“Exactly!” Norman thought the conversation would end there.
Tahra eyed him, curiously. “So, my life of suffering was nothing but an allegory?”
“Without darkness there is no conflict,” Norman tried, “and conflict is the root of storytelling. The people of Lingeria tell stories – I know that.”
“Yes, but ours are fables of explanation and enlightenment,” Roe decided to chime in. “The Tomes, if they are just work of make-believe are … soulless. They have no lesson – they prove no philosophical point.”
Critics often called Norman’s work nihilistic; a critique he would often volley back with the word ‘Truth.’ People don’t always die at the opportune moment, bad guys sometimes win, pain is a part of life. Although looking across the fire at this moment he wondered if that was all an empty gesture.
“So what if my readers enjoy the brutality? You wouldn’t be a bounty hunter if you didn’t enjoy it.”
“A trait which you … our creator,” she gagged on the word, “assigned to me!”
“Yeah … well … it doesn’t matter anyway,” Norman said, “because ever since this wizard showed up, everything has diverted wildly from my books. From what I can tell, you have been in control of your destiny for some time. Or … someone else has.”
“So, you did not pen The Black Cloud?” Tahra asked.
“No, sweetheart, I did not.” Sleepiness was beginning to creep up on Norman. He leaned back to his bag-pillow and closed his eyes. Promptly, he felt a sharp pain
in his side and opened his eyes.
Tahra had slid her sword through the fire and was now threatening a liver dissection. “Never, ever, call me sweetheart,” she growled.
“Sorry. Tahra.” It felt weird speaking her name, as if he just gave flesh to a ghost.
She withdrew her weapon.
“Let’s sleep in a little tomorrow, Roe. This has been a rough first day on the road.”
****
Norman awoke to an earthquake. The ground below was having a panic attack. He sat up hastily and instantly regretted it – he wasn’t sure if the ground was really shaking or if it was just his pounding headache.
Roe and Tahra were already standing and eyeing the horizon. Norman staggered to his feet and joined them. “What’s up?” he managed, sleepily.
“Centaurs,” Roe said flatly, pointing.
“You sure it isn’t more Amazonian’s coming to beat me up?” Norman asked while his eyes adjusted to the sun. Lo-and-behold, on the ridge of one of the hills a harras of man-stallions was charging across the landscape.
“Should we hide?” Norman asked, worried.
“They aren’t running towards us. They are fleeing something,” Tahra said, watching the herd.
It only occurred to Norman now, seeing them in the flesh, what a natural disaster the Centaur form was. The only horse part missing from the centaur was the head, but mythology decided to give them a human torso and arms, too, which – zoologically-speaking – seemed unnecessary and a little unwieldly. Picturing a horse with only the head of a man, however, was even more terrifying.
Like a desperate family, out of gas on the highway, Tahra stepped into the path of the Centaurs and waved one of the figures down.
“If the Centaurs are scared of it, I don’t know if I want to meet it either,” Roe said, making a very good point.
One of the Centaurs slowed but refused to actually yield for Tahra. “Hail, Tahra, friend of the Centaurs.”
“Thank God for that subplot,” Norman thought.
“Hail, Jarthon,” Tahra returned. “What is this disturbance?”
Norman couldn’t help but stare at the weird blending of man and horse, as though a delinquent adolescent had melted two action figures together, using nothing but a magnifying glass and the hot sun. A thick, noticeable scar wrapped around the toned waist of the beast, making it look as if a man’s torso had been slammed onto a beheaded equestrian body. However, he also desperately wanted to brush the sleek brown hide of this murderous creature. He then pictured himself feeding it a carrot and let out a rude chuckle. The Centaur took an unpleasant notice of the man.
“Does this purple-nosed stranger travel with you?” The Centaur bristled at Norman.
“Barely,” she answered.
“The Black Cloud has appeared, not a few tosses from here.”
Norman really needed an Imperial/Lingeria conversion chart. He was pretty sure a toss was about a kilometer. Nothing in Lingeria was to scale.
“We have made a truce with the men of the East so that we may use their land until the cloud disperses.” With a nod of his head, the horse-man was gone.
“Yeah, we should probably get walking, too, Roe,” Norman said, watching the herd gallop away. Tahra was already moving up the hill, in the direction the centaurs had come from. “Come on, Roe, let’s hit the road,” Norman turned to leave but Roe thrust forward, following Tahra’s route.
“Roe!” Norman pleaded. “Oh, Goddammit,” he huffed and followed. “Come on, Calamity,” Norman called, but she refused to walk in that direction, digging her back paw into the dirt when he tried to tug on her collar.
Norman could see the cloud before he reached the ridge of the hill – a disgusting black mass, folding ever into itself. It reminded him of when he was eight and an oil tanker derailed near his home. The spill took the form of a demonic balloon, colored more shades of black than Norman knew possible. It seemed to gleam in the sunlight and refused to be extinguished. This rippling smoke cloud did not have a fire as its source. It seemed to contain power from within, something stoking its anger. It covered about a toss of land and did not move.
The group could clearly see the outline of The Black Cloud on the ground, where it blotted out the sun on this otherwise bright morning. The cloud hung only a hundred-or-so feet in the air and peering through the gap between cloud and grass was like peering through someone else’s reading glasses. You could make out general shapes but everything seemed fuzzy and out of focus. It looked like how an anxiety attack feels.
The Centaurs, while not living in dwellings of their own, did maintain a rather active agricultural lifestyle. They built fences and pens, to house pigs, chickens, and an unidentifiable animal that looked like a duck-billed-sheep. The Centaurs had abandoned their livestock, when they fled, and Norman watched as The Black Cloud aged them.
That was the only way Norman could make sense of what he witnessed. In real time, he watched a pig rapidly grow old and fall dead. Whatever the cloud sucked from the beasts, it didn’t seem to hurt them. The wanderers watched as the pigs’ skin became inked with age spots and they grew feral tusks in a matter of seconds, their rib cages pressed against their skin like long fingers trying to escape. Their bellies retreated into their abdomen. The chickens also rapidly molted and fell dead, mere flesh-covered skeletons. The duck-billed-sheep grew thick hair that almost touched the ground. Horns curled from their skulls like ribbon before they keeled over with their mouths stretching open in a horrific death snarl. The grass grew rapidly and then wilted. Even the wooden posts of the fences – which had long since left their rooted lives – dried out and splintered, as if left in the desert sun.
“Well, I am glad we stuck around to witness that,” Norman said, gagging. “Can we please go now?”
He looked to his left and saw that Roe and Tahra were still watching the minor-scale apocalypse. The way they watched, almost with a revered respect, he could tell this wasn’t the first time either of them had witnessed the power of The Black Cloud. Tahra’s horse kicked frantically and gnawed at its bit.
“Guys, seriously,” Norman tried, politely. “It’s almost done eating and I don’t want to be here when it moves again.”
His companions agreed, silently, and turned away.
****
“I appreciate the fact that you didn’t kill me,” Norman told Tahra at a fork in the road. His eyes were blackened and his nose was still quite swollen. He waited for a, “Sorry I broke your nose,” that never came.
“So where are you off too now?” asked Roe.
“Yeah,” Norman added. “You are free now. No more maniacal God scribbling down your predetermined destiny. You can do anything you want: get married, settle down, have a few giant children.”
“East. I heard they are looking for someone to clear out a nest of Larches,” Tahra said, in such an uninterested tone that didn’t sound like someone about to fight a hundred fist-sized hornets.
“You should come with us. We forgot swords!” Roe exclaimed.
“Roe,” Norman chided Roe like a child before changing his tone. “I am sure Tahra doesn’t want to play bodyguard. Besides, mercenaries never work for free and we don’t have any -”
“Yeah, okay,” answered Tahra. She immediately steered her horse west and started off.
Norman’s nose began to throb again.
****
The warm morning sun and brisk walk helped Norman feel better. His face pain reduced to a dull ache and he took time to enjoy the scenery. Roe discovered an apple tree not far off the road and Tahra shared some cured meat, which made for a delightful breakfast.
The conversation was stagnant with Roe attempting to bridge the gap between Norman and Tahra, who punctuated most of her sentences with the slapping of a mosquito against her neck.
As they ate, Roe tried to start conversations. “Norman, did you know what Tahra once tamed a Griffin? Yeah, I guess you did, you wrote it. Norman, you should tell Tahra about your coffee maker!”
Neither of his companions seemed keen to join in, and he soon gave up.
Norman stopped wondering how far they had come or how much further they had to go, distance became relative and was measured in units of “to that hill” and “when the sun reaches those trees”. His smart-watch issued a low-battery alert. Norman simply removed the device and tossed it into a bush.
Around dusk, a small team of three riders approached from the south. Tahra took out her sword and planted her stance, assuming there was going to be a fight. Norman and Roe ducked impotently behind her.
The lead rider unfurled a purple flag, decorated with an ornate stencil of a Barshte (basically a snake with the head of a bull). Tahra didn’t relax. The knights stopped their horses before the walkers and removed their helmets. The lead knight was as gorgeous as the sunset behind him, with long, dirty blond hair, closely-cropped beard, astute eyebrows, beefy build, and chiseled Germanic features.
“Hail, Tahra, friend to Kroü,” the rider said, with a smile.
Tahra gave him a faint salute and lowered her sword.
“And you must be Halliday The Author.” The brilliant example of masculinity bowed humbly. Norman literally blushed. “Word of your arrival has reached our kingdom.”
“I am. And I know you – you are Kroü The Valiant! Now we’re talking.” Kroü was one of Norman’s favorite characters to write – an amalgam of King Arthur, Hercules, William Wallace, and Ash from the Evil Dead movies.
“Nay. I am Gorthon, Sergeant of Kroü’s forces. I have been dispatched to offer you food and lodging for the night and to be guests of honor at Kroü’s table.”
