Chy

by Greg Curtis

  “Chilling the swamp,” he told the man without looking around. “Just let me work please and stay back. It's going to get cold.”

  “Whatchya mean?!”

  Chy raised his arm and let a clump of ice form on it, then let it fall to the floor. The man had to know there were casters about. Everybody did. It was almost the only story in the newspapers these days and the only thing the criers shouted about. And Stonely had become their home.

  “Piss!”

  “Just let me work please, and keep everyone clear.” The man should understand that he thought. He was wrong.

  “Hands in the air!” The man suddenly yelled at him, and followed it up with the sound of a metal bolt sliding home.

  Chy turned around to see the town guard pointing a rifle at him. Straight at his head! “What?! Are you drunk?!” he snapped at the man, shocked by the huge weapon aimed at his face.

  “You're a witch!” The guard yelled back. And then he squeezed the trigger thinking to shoot Chy in the head.

  Chy panicked as he saw the man's finger squeeze, thinking for a moment that he was dead. But somehow he wasn't, dodging just far enough that the bullet missed him. But not by much. He felt a rush of air on his cheek and then jumped as he heard the ear shattering sound of an explosion. Meanwhile a burst of fire and smoke streaked from the barrel at him.

  For one terrified moment he was blind, lost in the cloud of smoke, and deaf. His ears were ringing so loudly that he couldn't hear anything, and he was worried that he hadn't actually dodged quickly enough. Because he was sure he could feel blood on his cheek.

  But instincts honed from weeks of facing down all manner of threats, told him what to do. To grab his gift to him, the simplest one, a wave of force, and send everything nearby including the guard flying before he could fire again.

  It worked, and the man went flying away from him to smash into a wall. And as the smoke cleared he could make out the guard lying on the floor in a tangle of debris that shortly before had been the contents of a house.

  Chy breathed a sigh of relief. And when he slapped his hand to his cheek and pulled it away, there wasn't any blood on it. He breathed another sigh of relief at that. The bullet had missed him at least. But the sound of the shot had woken something behind him. Even over the ringing in his ears he could hear the terrifying sound of something growing angry. He could feel it in his feet. And without even turning around he knew it was bad.

  But even while he was worrying about that the guard dropped his rifle and leapt to his feet, then grabbed a knife and came at him, screaming like a madman.

  Chy sent him flying away with another wave of his hand then turned desperately around to the swamp to see what was coming. He was only just in time.

  “Balls!” He leapt aside with all the speed he could manage and still was barely fast enough. There was a snake made of some sort of whitish slime, streaking at him like a bullet and for the second time he could feel the wind on his cheek as it missed him by inches. Then he jumped as it smashed into the remains of the ruined house like a sledgehammer and everything shook.

  “Piss!”

  Unlike the bullet the snake didn't vanish after it had passed him. Instead it straightened up, like a rope being pulled taught, and then started pulling while the whole house started shaking violently.

  Chy couldn't believe what he was seeing. But as he got up off the floor and watched the back wall of the house suddenly being torn apart before most of it got pulled back towards the swamp at impossible speed, he understood. It wasn't a snake at all. It wasn't a tentacle either. It was a giant frog tongue, hundreds of paces long, striking out in the direction of whatever made a sound. And if its tongue could shoot out that far with that sort of power, the beast itself must be enormous.

  Heart beating far too fast he scurried away from the ruined house, grabbing the fallen guard on his way out of what remained of the house, while a section of the building took to the air behind him. Then he headed back to the street, where he dropped the now helpless guard on the ground.

  The man looked terrified as he lay there, while the back of the house Chy had just dragged him out of, became a hole. And the other town guards who were racing towards them with their rifles at the ready, didn't look much less frightened. But at least they weren't pointing their weapons at him.

  Chy stood over the fallen man and then waited there for the others to arrive. And all he could think was that this was crazy! The fallen guard meanwhile, just screeched angrily at him and waved his hands wildly around in the air as if swatting away flies. Perhaps he was really more frightened than anything else. Thankfully he was unarmed by then.

  “I don't have time to deal with you,” Chy bluntly told the other guards as they approached. “I have the gift, and I'm here to protect you and get rid of whatever is in the swamp, killing people.”

  “And I was doing just that when this poxy witling tried to kill me!”

  They didn't seem to have any problems with that he thought when they finally stopped running. Or at least they didn't start pointing weapons at him. Mostly they just stood there panting and staring at their fellow guard on the ground and the ruined house with the missing wall. Maybe they'd even heard what he'd said.

  “I'm going to do that by freezing the swamp and everything in it,” he continued barely able to even hear himself over the ringing in his ears. “That will take a few hours. And I don't want to be shot in the back by this dotard!” And if they didn't understand what he was telling them, they did a moment later when he raised a wall of fire between them.

  “Your job is to stay out of my way, keep everyone clear of the swamp – and arrest this village idiot for trying to kill me!” Chy shouted the last at them, shock and surprise finally giving way to anger. The bastard had tried to kill him!

  “Oh, and you can call me a wizard or a witch or whatever. It doesn't matter. The only thing that does matter is that without me, whatever is in that swamp will come for you and the rest of the town.”

  Did they understand that? He wasn't sure. They didn't look bright. But they understood that there was a huge wall of fire in front of them, and they didn't want to go anywhere near it. So when he asked them a second time and they finally seemed to hear him, he got a round of nods and grunts.

  “Good. Stay away from me.” He emphasised every syllable of that. “And don't whatever you do shoot. The beasts in the swamp hunt by sound. You shoot, you get eaten!”

  He left them then, having made his point. Though he made sure to keep a wall of flames between him and them as he walked away. Something to protect his back. After all people had been shooting at him recently. It was becoming worrying. And then he returned to his place inside what remained of the broken house and renewed his casting.

  No one objected. And more importantly, no one tried to shoot him. But then with a wall of flame in front of them, and him concealed inside the remains of a house, they probably couldn't find much to aim at. But maybe there was hope that some of them, the more reasonable ones among them, had heard him.

  Things in the town returned to the peaceful way they had been after that, and he was able to put nearly everything else out of his thoughts, as he worked. That helped. It helped even more when he began to see the surface of the swamp water starting to ice over. It took time, but little by the ice started to spread. The trees began to turn white. The slime covering them began to thin and crackle.

  It was good. But it wasn't enough. And so he stood there and kept concentrating on his cast.

  After another hour the only thing he could hear was silence, and the only thing he could feel was the bitterly cold air dancing off the swamp. The cold was radiating like the heat from a fire. But it still wasn't enough. There was still life in the swamp, buried under the water, and he didn't like it. So he kept going. Draining ever more heat from it.

  Eventually though the beast in the swamp finally decided it had had enough of slowly freezing to death under the water and tried to break free. It
was like cannons going off in the swamp each time it hit the ice above it and he had to wonder once more just how big this thing was.

  But it didn't matter. The ice held and the beast grew weaker. The impacts as it smashed against the frozen lake slowly became less frequent and grew softer.

  Chy continued his work even when the beast had stopped trying to break free of its icy prison, and slowly he froze the entire swamp. After another hour and a half he knew there was nothing breaking free of it ever again. There was nothing still alive in it.

  It was then that he finally stopped his casting. His work was done. At least here anyway. But no doubt there would be more problems in more towns in due course. Why would that change? But as long as that damned Inquisitor hadn't shown up. He hadn't heard anything more about the man – save of course for the songs that were being sung of his naked cowardice. They were very popular. His siblings so he understood, were making good coin off them.

  But when he stepped out from the remains of the house it was to see that there were more than just the town guards standing there on the other side of his fire wall. It looked like half the town had turned out to see him. And he couldn't be sure whether they were there to thank him or shoot him. Both emotions were present.

  He raised a curtain of force around himself before he went any closer. Just in case. No more bullets would be heading his way!

  “Alright people, the swamp is frozen solid. It will be days or weeks before it thaws, and when it does, the creatures in it should all be dead. But just in case you'll need to keep watch. Some of the eggs might have survived.”

  “Eventually the water will dry out in the sun and the swamp will turn to dirt and hopefully whatever sort of beast calls that swamp home will have nowhere to live assuming it survives. But that may take a year or more.”

  “In the meantime I need all of you to remember one thing. We didn't do this. Those of us with gifts, didn't bring these disasters to your doors. We're the ones trying to save you. And there's not many of us around. So when we're gone, you have nothing between you and them. Make sure this pus ridden dotard understands that before you start calling for another of us to help you!”

  He waved his hand and let the fire wall fade away. And then he turned and left them, heading for the portal and his home.

  No one tried to stop him. No one followed him. No one called to him either. And thankfully no one shot at him. So he supposed that was something. Still it was relief when he finally found the portal, stepped on it and a heartbeat later was home again.

  It was even better when he discovered that there weren't a lot of people around. Just a few dryad children playing with the goats and throwing sticks in the river. But then he hadn't expected there to be. People had started building a new base of operations in Stonely. It was a good place for them since the town was empty. Or rather it had been empty. Now there were hundreds of casters of every race, running madly around the town, dealing with each new crisis that arose across thirty odd worlds and bringing lost people back home.

  That was a good thing, he thought. If they did survive this slow moving disaster he suspected that the world – or the worlds – would be very different to how they had been. There would be a lot more trade between them. More people choosing to make their homes elsewhere. And for Althern in particular that would be an improvement. At least as far as a caster like him was concerned. Not only would magic start to be accepted, in time there might even be academies to teach it. It would be nice not to have to sit on a throne and suffer every six months. And he could start visiting other worlds too.

  But the emptiness was greater than he'd expected as he discovered after he petted the goats and finally made his way indoors. Elodie was gone. She'd left him a note thanking him for his kindness in looking after her but telling him that she'd decided to go home for a while.

  He understood that. And maybe it was a good thing for her to do. After all she no longer had a Temple to look after. She wasn't really a guardian any longer. And there was a good chance that the worlds were ending. It would be good to be with family at a time like this. But it was also sad. The house seemed empty without her. Maybe he should take a trip into Charlton shortly – when he had the time – and spend some time with his family.

  “So I don't suppose you want to go and boil me up a pot of tea?” he asked the cat as he collapsed into an easy chair.

  The cat glared at him from the headrest of the other easy chair where she was enjoying her nap, and obviously thought about hissing at him. But in the end she apparently decided that simply baring her teeth at him and growling a little would be sufficient. He gathered that that was a “no” on the tea.

  “You know your little rotundness, I could stop feeding you!”

  That earned him a threatening growl.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  It was good to be home. Good to walk the streets of Gwillith Fey again. To see the sails of the various mills turning slowly in the gentle breeze. Hear the sounds of the silver bells as they shook on the branches of the bushes and the songs of the yellow hammers nesting in them. Good too to breathe in the scent of the wilderberry trees that grew everywhere.

  One thing that struck her over and over again was how good it was to see a proper house. The humans of Althern had houses and stores and other buildings. And she supposed they were solid and well constructed. But they were square, straight sided boxes usually built of stones and brick and occasionally solid slabs of wood. They weren't what homes should be. And the Temple was nothing more than passages and tunnels carved into a volcano. But here she could see houses built of lovely thin timbers, grown and shaped into graceful arches and curves, windows of coloured glass, and gardens. These were what houses should be. Not just functional and sturdy, but beautiful. Places where you wanted to live.

  She had missed her home. More than she'd realised until just then.

  Of course she wasn't so happy at the way people stared at her. It was because she was dressed as an outsider even if she wasn't. The dress she'd bought in the human town of Charlton, was pleasing. She liked the sunshine yellow colour and the way the dress glided around her legs when she turned. It was almost like a sail. And it was of good quality and fitted her well. But it simply wasn't the sort of clothing her people wore. And her hair wasn't properly plaited. She'd given up on doing that a dozen years before when she'd taken up her place in the Heartfire Temple. Just let it hang long and free. But that wasn't normal here for grown women. Only for girls. Women braided and plaited their hair. It was simply the way.

  But Elodie put that to one side as she walked through her home town once again, and did her best to let the rest of what had befallen her, slip away. She was home. That was what mattered.

  Some of the people in the streets she recognised. But though she nodded to them and they nodded back politely, they didn't know her. How could they? They hadn't seen her since she was seventeen. She had grown a lot in the years since then.

  Elodie continued on down the main street, keeping out of the way of the children as they played and the people who were working, rushing around looking busy. And then she walked on further, heading past the town along what was called Helsa or the Mill Road. The shape of the hills in the distance guided the wind so that it blew constantly across this road in the one direction, and because of that more than a score of mills had been built there. Their great sails turned the wheels below that crushed the grains from the fields.

  The humans had windmills too. She'd seen one of them. But again it had been a great stone and lumber structure with sails that were straight and ugly. Undoubtedly it worked, perhaps even as well as the ones of her people, but they just didn't seem to understand that sails should be shaped to catch the wind like birds wings. Humans were a simple, direct people. They just didn't have the eyes of artists.

  They also tended to concentrate in towns. She had never been quite sure why. But for some reason it was important to them to live in a town. Those who lived out in the more
rural regions were looked down upon. Farmers, foresters and even stone polishers like Chy were somehow considered lesser people simply because of where they lived. They were a strange people. They didn't seem to understand that people should live where there was land available for them to tend. People needed gardens.

  Elodie thought that where Chy lived was one of the finer things about him. And she liked his wheel. She liked the rumbling sound it made as it turned. It reminded her of her childhood. Lying in bed at night, her sister in the bed beside her, listening to the continual rumble. It had always made her feel safe.

  She spotted her family's mill soon enough – the bright yellow of the sails stood out proudly against the rest – and her heart beat a little faster. She hurried to reach it. And when she did she saw her father sitting out on the front stoop, smoking a wooden pipe and called to him excitedly.