by Danie Ware
But that was not what made him stare.
The thing’s eyes had no pupil, no iris, they were a chaos of writhing colour. And its stance was odd, wrong: beneath the cloak hem it had hooves, wide and cracked like those of a road-running chearl.
The sight made the axeman’s gorge rise; his flesh crawl. His cough rose again, and he controlled the urge to put a hand over his mouth.
The creature watched him, smiling, almost as though it could trace his reactions - as though it enjoyed them.
“I’m Varriera,” it said, “once of Amos, now denizen of Aeona. The Lord Nivrotar would be proud, don’t you think?”
Redlock controlled an urge to grab this thing by the neck of its cloak.
Instead, he replied, “What do you mean?”
Varriera - whatever the rhez it was - came closer, and that faint, ironic smile deepened into a chuckle.
“You’re familiar with the market tales that tell you, you shouldn’t leave the path? Aeona is the place you shouldn’t find.” Its face was still smiling. Its hands were decorated in old ink, leather wristbands. “We’re a quiet community here, axeman. Few reach us, fewer still manage to leave. Certainly, no one leaves” - its smile spread, showing teeth - “unchanged.”
Unchanged.
The word seemed to echo the twisted people, the overgrown ruins. As if the creature felt Redlock’s shiver, it came closer still, laid a muscled hand on the axeman’s shoulder - a gesture that seemed half-assessment, half-caress.
It said softly, “We should offer you our hospitality.”
Redlock fought down the urge to punch this thing in the face, again and again and again, until those crazed eyes were not looking at him any more, were not watching his mouth, the pulse beat in his throat.
He said, “Take your hand off me, or lose it.”
But Varriera met his gaze.
“Aeona is old, axeman, a place crafted to be forgotten.” The creature’s voice was rich and deep, almost Kartian. “Do you not know the darker edges of history? A scatter of these were built when Tusien fell, built to hold those who’d raised arms against the good of the Varchinde. Few now survive - and all have passed out of mortal ken.” Its smile curved. “Including this one.”
The word was a hard caress, like a hand about the throat. Redlock was pinned, unable to move.
“To the north,” Varriera continued, “Fhaveon simply imprisons her unwanted - most of them.” Its smile flickered. “To the west, there are those CityWardens who load them into caravans and send them to the fighting pits of the Kartiah. Here, we stand within the reach of Amos, of Annondor and Oraneith, of Padesh and Idrak. We have our manor and our Warden, axeman, and we, too, have our trade-cycle.”
Redlock said, words like crushed horror, “You tithe flesh.”
“Flesh is the tithe I take.” Varriera smiled. “My return trade is one of learning.”
Redlock tried to shake his head, clear his thoughts; tried to reach through the dark and the glitter and the clever words to piece all of this together.
“What is this place? What are you?”
“Ah, axeman. I’m as human as you are.” The creature held up its hands, the ink upon its fingers. “I came here to find healing, new life...”
“And them? What did they find?” The axeman lunged a hand for the front of Varriera’s cloak, said, “I don’t know what this game is, but I’ve had enough.”
In response, Varriera’s curving smile was as soft as a pillow over the face.
* * *
They came out of the darkness, the ruins of the people that had lived here.
Ecko was moving, his hands and feet a blur.
Amethea fell back, her hands to her mouth. The wreckage that came for them was beyond anything she could ever have dreamed.
Triqueta, too, moved back, towards their poor chearl. She was feeling that familiar rise of panic in her gut; feeling her throat surge with that distinctive, welcome mix of elation and alarm.
She swallowed the deeper, darker flicker of fear.
Come on then. I can still do this.
I can still -
She was on the back of the chearl in a moment, holding it fast between her knees.
I’ll take the lot of you, you see if I can’t!
All about them, the throng were silent. They closed in softly, like ash, like blankets, reaching with hands and wounds and creeper and a desperate, choking yearning. A need that seemed pleading, almost childlike. They made her flesh crawl, the stones in her cheeks itch. For just a moment, she was a tight ball of absolute novice-terror - she missed her youth and her confidence, she missed her little mare. The chearl under her was big, too placid, too unfamiliar, too stupid - I can’t do this any more, I can’t! And then she shook herself, held the panic at bay, the animal with her thighs. She flicked her blades in dazzling wheels through her fingers, terhnwood gleaming, though the show was as much for her as it was for them.
“Come on then!” Triqueta was upright in the stirrups. “Let’s see what you can do!”
They closed in tighter, a blur of horrors, one upon another in a way that made her stomach churn. Something about them steamed in the grey air.
* * *
Ecko had finally realised what had been frightening him.
As the misshapen throng closed in, a gentle pressure, the hand of a loved one over nose and mouth, stopping you breathing, watching you die - as the mangled things came inwards, he understood.
They were family.
Like the human-faced snake-tailed monster that had spoken his name - these things were like him: they were changed flesh, experimental, warp and twist and reach and gouge and open wound and mangled face. They were like Mom’s creations.
Like her failures.
Had Mom ever had failures? Chrissakes, he’d never thought about it like that.
But the realisation was enough - with a snarl and a surge that raged denial of his own choices, his own life, he took the first one down with a circling foot, stepped over it, kicked the second - an older woman with a face like his mom, his real mom - and dropped her into the filth. The third was barely more than a kid, he fell back with his arm and shoulder broken, wounds gushing yellow fluid that shone unholy in the moonlight.
Ecko’s targeters flashed - here and here! - showed him the weak points and the easy targets, and they were all moving so fucking slow it was like taking candy from...
In the midst of his own screaming horror, there were children, half his height, bowed under the weight of broken backs and extra limbs. There were half-creatures, things that were halfman; things that he recognised from his childhood, from the stories he’d heard as a kid.
And they closed like a noose, uncaring of how many of their number they lost, wanting only to reach out their hands and touch him as if he were some kind of saviour, some kind of hope.
He could hear them saying to him...
Eck... Oh...
* * *
And then there was something like the snapping of the Count of Time - everything was suddenly in motion.
Varriera, still smiling, cuffed the axeman across the face. The gesture was slow, elegant, yet absurdly painful; the strike detonated in his jaw. With a curse, Redlock fell back, his vision sparking stars.
What the rhez? He was Redlock, love of the Gods, he wasn’t having this...!
His axes were out and in his hands, hard and familiar, metal glittering in the white light, but the creature’s arm came out and sideways in a blow that seemed slow, an arc of fluid motion across the glittering dark. Redlock tried to move, but there was an inevitability to the strike that made him feel like he was drifting, somehow, or moving through mud.
Varriera’s hand connected with the side of the axeman’s neck. The hit was soft, but it sent him reeling, red pain exploding through his head and shoulders.
“Please,” Varriera said. “Aeona has much to show you. If you will only let us.”
But Redlock spat blood and got up, the red rage rising in
his heart.
* * *
Astride the pack chearl right in the centre of the madness, Triqueta was surrounded by creatures - the huge throng of them now layering with nightmare, climbing one upon another. She had no idea how many there were. Her fear cried from her throat like defiance. Come on then! Damn you! Come on!
They closed about her, warm and helpless, pleading.
Triq shuddered.
Then one of them, sudden and swift, broke from the rest of the throng and came towards her. Its motion was hideous, wrong. Its head was cocked to one side and its expression eager, its body cracked as it moved. For a moment, she tried to see who - what - it had been, but the thought that it might have been human once made her swallow bile, and her fear was still yammering at her.
I can still...
It reached up to assail her on chearl-back. It had no hands: its arms ended in running sores, in weeping wounds that were open to the night sky. She hesitated - she couldn’t help it - and then, furious at herself, she was turning the chearl’s head to meet it, cursing the fact that the damned lumpish thing under her wouldn’t move, wouldn’t dance and fight like her little mare, cursing her own body for not moving as fast as she needed...
...but, by the rhez, she was fast enough.
She sat down hard on the pack-animal’s back. With her heels tight at the chearl’s sides, she found her grin. Pinned it to her face.
You bet I can.
The thing was within blade-reach, arms coming up for her, still oddly blurred in the sweating air. For the oddest moment, she had the feeling that the thing was something else entirely, that it wasn’t really there, that the whole thing was only in her head, some figment, some nightmare...
Then it spat pieces of curse between its teeth, as if it were trying to speak.
And it was the release she needed. With the high, ululating war cry of the Banned, Triqueta sent the heavy chearl to slam it to the ground.
* * *
Apparently, this twisted creature was about to hand Redlock his arse.
And that really wasn’t funny.
In another instant, he heard the movement of the chearl, heard Triq’s high, insolent howl.
He heard his own blood-soaked cough.
Then another softly dancing blow connected with the side of his head, sent a slam of heat through his skull, and set him spinning, mind and body, as if he’d been struck by a cursed hammer. Sparks danced in his vision, his ears rang and his thoughts clanged back and forth.
Varriera was wavering now, its form unsteady.
It said, “Redlock. Please. Don’t do this.”
How did he know...?
But the axeman’s head clamoured too much for him to fully formulate the thought. He was seeing double, the ruins, the steps, the sky, everything was swimming in his vision.
As Redlock struggled to focus, Varriera moved like steam, flowed forwards. The creature was compelling; the light seemed to focus in its eyes. It had no weapon, made no attempt at bravado. As he shook his head to clear the clangour, another absurdly gentle blow connected the heel of Varriera’s palm to the centre of the axeman’s chest and he just caved beneath the force of it, reeling and coughing and burning and hurting.
The axeman caught his heel on a root and sprawled on his back, wondering what the rhez was going on.
* * *
Eck... Oh...
Ecko was ablaze with fury and fear, an adrenaline like he’d never known. As the morass closed in about him, stretching hands to stroke his skin, he broke them in ones and twos and fives, his muscles screaming with the speed that was blazing through them. He wasn’t even looking where the blows were going; the flash of target and the movement of limb were like the greatest fucking dance he’d ever done.
Daaaaaance...
Was this the dance you meant, huh, was it?
In that blaze, his anger at Eliza was finally venting, smashing into the faces and the mouths and mangled bodies of the things that were all about him, rising in a fury like he’d never known - like his very skin would catch fire as he would blaze like the Sical, blaze like Pareus, blaze like the dream of Tarvi...
Oh no you fucking don’t..!
But there were too many. For every one he put down, there were another two, another three. There were no gaps, no exits. They were all around him, pulling him down to the mud, pulling at his cloak and his skin and his arms and his shoulders. Hard as he tried they were all upon him, layers of them, and their pressure was increasing until it was suffocating - until his vision was blackening and his targets were firing more slowly, until the blaze of adrenaline in his system was running down.
Until he had no more remaining and he was falling, falling under the weight of their need for him.
* * *
Triqueta’s chearl was having none of it.
Ignoring the commands of thighs and heels, the beast planted its bulk solidly and refused to move.
What?
The twisted thing’s arm reached closer. Triq slashed at it, shuddered, leaned back. She was swearing, horrified, terrified. They were all around her now, their eyes gleaming, their faces an odd blur of darkness and heat and shimmering steam. Closer, closer. The smell of the wounds on the arms of the one closest to her was making her gag; she wanted nothing more than to punch her way out through the side, through the top, and tear screaming down towards the water.
But she couldn’t leave Amethea. She could hear the teacher behind her, the horror in her voice an echo of Triqueta’s own. Triq fought the obstinate chearl, thighs tight, trying to make it into the horse it... into the horse it had once been? Behind her, she could hear the thrub of hooves, a cry. Amethea was shouting something.
“Creature created. Creature created! Triq, it won’t fight! You won’t make it fight!”
Oh, by the rhez...
At the Monument, Amethea’s chearl had recognised the centaur - Triq knew the story. The chearl had known the stallion for what he was, and they’d refused to face him. And now her mount recognised these - whatever the rhez they were.
Creature created.
The horse it had once been.
Understanding hit her like a cursed terhnwood shaft - her chearl and this accursed twisted thing, they were brothers, estavah, created by the same craft... Somewhere along the line, the chearl too were alchemically made and they wouldn’t fight their own.
Horseshit! Now’s not a time to find this out!
The things closed down upon her and her two little knives; they were freaks and horrors, flesh tithed to nightmare. Amethea was no warrior and Triqueta had no idea what had happened to Redlock.
I can still...
She saw Ecko fall, heard herself howl.
And the dark tide closed in upon her.
* * *
Redlock’s head was spinning, his vision was blurred and his chest tight. The air around him was close, suffocating, and he found himself reeling, straining to breathe and trying to make sense of what he saw.
Before him, Varriera was height and hunger and flawless combat - as the creature moved, so repeated afterimages seemed to burn in the air. Its strikes were slow, impossibly slow, but they were still too fast for Redlock to react, and yet another blow caught his face and sent him sideways, pain exploding in sparks and lightning.
Somewhere in his head, the practical part of him said, This can’t be happening.
The sky was bright and the ground was ruined and nothing here made any cursed sense.
Why had they come? How had they...?
But there was only that smile. Only the graceful movement of Varriera’s impossible hands as another strike sent the grass and sky tumbling one over another.
* * *
Amethea pulled her belt-knife free, waved it in the face of the nearest thing that came at her. It stuck - or she thought it did - but it seemed to go straight through the flesh of the creature and emerge unscathed, seemed to strike only smoke and air. In front of her Triqueta sat astride the chearl, kicking and
spitting and slashing, but the things were too many, and as fast as she repelled them, they came back at her, a silent wave.
Maugrim had shown Amethea the darkest corners of her soul and she was determined that she was going to learn from that vision.
Then there was a scream, furious and outraged, and Triqueta was pulled from the saddle, fighting savagely all the way down. The blur of creatures seemed to close over her, even as she spat fury.
By the Goddess...
Something in Amethea didn’t quite believe this; didn’t believe that they could come so far only to fail, only to fall here at the edge of the world in a fight that made no sense. She didn’t even know what these things were...
Creature created.
As the things closed in about Triqueta, Amethea was remembering. Remembering the Monument, the stallion, the death of her friend. She wouldn’t let this happen - not again.
Then the boil of heat and motion around Triqueta ceased abruptly and the things turned their thin, skeletal faces, their outstretched arms, the open mouths, towards her.
The tide was poised, about to close over them all, and there was nothing they could do about it.
* * *
Redlock’s world was askew, a blur of confusion and pain.
Everything was sluing sideways, sliding like liquid and light, nothing made sense any more, and he could not even see the sea. Had there been a building here, had there been a town that he had been fighting in and for?
Varriera’s last touch was as soft as a kiss, a hand across his eyes that closed them completely.
They did not open again.
* * *
Amethea heard a shriek - it took her a moment to realise that the noise had come from her own throat. She threw herself at the things around her, slashing and screaming as Triqueta had done - but it did her no more good.
They were all around her, hands upon her, soft and warm as a lover’s embrace, pulling her down with a wave of twisted flesh, a wave that she struggled to reach the crest of... And then she failed, falling beneath them as if they could somehow fold round her and made her secure.
