Wildmane

by Todd Fahnestock

  “Ah,” Kikirian said. “Has the great Wildmane grown an intellect since we last met? Pausing to consult your threadweaver before you leap into battle? So cowardly. The bards will weep.”

  Medophae kept an eye on Kikirian, but he asked Mirolah, “What do you sense?”

  She concentrated on the gauntlets. Around the shining metal was a dark, crimson aura. “It’s...dark. I don’t know, Medophae. I’ve never seen this before.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Kikirian said. “These gauntlets are your doom. Best you run away, little god. Leave these mortals to their fate and save yourself.”

  “They’re back,” Orem said, tense.

  Darklings slunk into the street behind them by twos and threes, emerging from the gaps between the buildings. They formed a horde, blocking escape in that direction. Mirolah’s heart beat fast.

  “Such choices,” Kikirian mocked him. “The great Wildmane will never flee, but you can’t protect them all. You lose, little god. Do you get it? You lose.”

  Mirolah could hear her own breathing. No one moved. Even the darklings breathed, tense, ready to spring.

  “An unsolvable stand-off. It’s just like a riddle, isn’t it, little god?” Kikirian said. “A riddle you just can’t solve...” He laughed.

  It was the right bait. Medophae tensed to jump at Kikirian. And for Mirolah, everything slowed down again. Her mind leapt from conclusion to conclusion, and she only saw disaster. Medophae couldn’t protect them all, but he would try. And, through trying, he would hand the victory to Kikirian. Orem was helpless against the darklings; they’d tear him apart. Stavark had just regained consciousness, and he could barely stand. He might be able to kill one, maybe two, but no more. Then they’d tear him apart.

  The bright bridge leapt from her to Stavark, to Orem, and to Medophae. She took hold of the threads.

  Medophae leapt.

  She yanked the threads. She, Orem, and Stavark flew up into the air, but Medophae’s golden aura flared and batted her efforts away. His threads slipped through her fingers.

  A darkling leapt and missed them as they floated out of reach. The darkling landed on the street, hissing and staring balefully upward.

  Medophae brought his sword down on Kikirian.

  “No,” she shouted.

  Kikirian threw his left hand in front of the blade. The sword hit the gauntlet and vanished. Medophae lurched forward, his balance lost, and Kikirian slammed the gauntlets into the side of his head. Red light flashed from Kikirian’s eyes. Medophae opened his mouth in pain, but no sound came out. The life went from his body, and he slumped to the stones, limp.

  “Medophae!” Mirolah and Orem yelled at the same moment.

  A hush fell over the street.

  Kikirian put the toe of his boot on Medophae’s shoulder and pushed. The golden-haired hero flopped onto his back. His eyes moved rapidly underneath closed eyelids. His arms twitched as if he was dreaming. Kikirian smiled wide and turned his gaze up at Mirolah.

  She couldn’t breathe. In an instant, it was over. One blow. She couldn’t believe it.

  “I told you I would be with you in a moment,” Kikirian said. “I always keep my promises.”

  She realized she was crying. “Let him go!”

  The monster’s laugh thundered in the night. “Do you know how many have paid their lives for a chance to bring Wildmane to his knees?” He shook his head. “If you would like to try your hand at freeing him...” Kikirian stepped back and gestured with a flourish. “Come down.” His sharp teeth gleamed.

  She tried to grab hold of Medophae’s threads again, but again, the protective golden fire around him flared and batted her away.

  “Confused?” Kikirian asked. “Are you wondering why he didn’t jump into the sky with your other friends? Oh, didn’t the godslayer tell you? The dullard Oedandus throws off almost any spell. It’s why the godslayer has defeated so many threadweavers. They have a disastrous time trying to strike him. Only the most powerful spells can even singe him.”

  “What did you do?” she murmured.

  “Perhaps my mistress will reveal that to you in time.” His smile faded. “Now, novice, you are the one who must make the choices.”

  “Go, Mirolah,” Orem interrupted. “Fly us away.”

  “I can’t just leave him!”

  Kikirian laughed.

  “He’ll survive,” Orem said. “He gave us a chance to get away. We have to take it.”

  “You don’t know he’ll survive,” she said. “We don’t know what they did—”

  “She’s right,” Kikirian said. “I’ll gut him the first chance I get.”

  “He’s baiting you,” Orem urged. “You’re more important. More important even than Medophae, and this monster knows it. Don’t listen to him.”

  “Descend from your perch, and I will not hurt your friends,” Kikirian said. “My mistress doesn’t want them. She just wants you and the little god. But if you make this difficult, your friends will die screaming.”

  “Mirolah, don’t,” Orem said. “He lies. That’s what Dervon’s creatures do.”

  Kikirian’s laughter filled the street again. His voice became warm, intimate. “You know I’m not lying, don’t you, novice? You feel it in your belly.”

  She swallowed. “You promise not to hurt them?” she asked.

  “No!” Orem grabbed her arm. “Mirolah, don’t.”

  “I don’t want them,” Kikirian said.

  Tears blurred her vision. “Orem, there is so much power in his aura. Look at what he did to Medophae!”

  “Listen to me,” he spoke calmly. “There is only one thing he wants: you on the ground. If you give it to him, then you have nothing to bargain with—”

  Kikirian’s eyes flashed red. Orem clutched his head, and every muscle in his body tensed as if he were in the grip of a huge hand. His shout stretched into a strangled cry of pain.

  “No,” she screamed. “Let him go!”

  “Test me, and they suffer, novice,” Kikirian said.

  “I’ll come down. Please!” She concentrated and pulled the threads. The three of them floated to the ground. Orem writhed. His boots scrabbled on the cobblestones; his hands pushed on either side of his head as if it was about to explode.

  As soon as her toes touched the street, she said, “Now let him go!”

  Kikirian smiled. “Of course.”

  Orem sucked in a sharp breath and went limp. His eyes were open, but he looked at nothing. His arms and legs twitched.

  She fell to her knees at his side, touched his face, but he didn’t respond. Stavark joined her, looking exhausted, but his legs were not shaking anymore.

  She turned to Kikirian. “What did you do?”

  “I kept my promise,” Kikirian said. “Now keep yours. My mistress waits, and the darklings need to feed.”

  His casual statement swiped her heart from her body. Slowly, she turned, rising, feeling hollow.

  “You promised...” she said in a tiny voice.

  “Dramaths always keep their word,” Kikirian said. “I promised I would not hurt your friends unless you didn’t come down. I’m not. But the darklings, well, they’ve had a hard night. They’re hungry.” Kikirian’s thin lips pulled back, revealing his many teeth. The pack of darklings moving closer. Stavark drew his sword and stood over Orem’s twitching body.

  She reached out for the threads, but Kikirian flicked her head with his huge finger like he was flicking a fly. She screamed and slid across the stones.

  With a groan, she raised herself up on one hand. Blood trickled down the side of her cheek. Her vision was blurry, and Kikirian loomed over her. Behind him, a silver flash erupted against a sea of dark shapes.

  “No,” she cried.

  Kikirian picked her up by the neck. She tore at his hand and kicked at him, but it was like kicking stone. She thrust her head to the left to capture the tiniest gasp. Kikirian’s blurry face wobbled in her vision.

  “Poor novice. You think me crue
l, but I am not half so cruel as your companions. They threw you into the sea. But they didn’t tell you that the sea is full of monsters.”

  Her struggles weakened as her arms lost their strength. The moonlight faded to black.

  40

  Zilok Morth

  “Sef.”

  “Yes, my master.”

  “The Red Weaver orchestrated that beautifully. That is twice she has surprised me. She has put the Wildmane into a prison of the mind. Terribly clever.”

  “Yes, my master.”

  “Such talent. But no foresight. She is a fine pawn. She need not understand the whole board.”

  “Yes, my master.”

  “I have an intuition, Sef, about this ‘Reader’ Orem. I want to keep him.”

  “As you say, my master.”

  “I wonder if he will wake before the quicksilver dies.”

  “I do not know, my master.”

  “I do not miss the quicksilvers. They are a stubborn race, ungrateful and difficult to tame. I’m rather glad they are nearly extinct.”

  “Yes, my master.”

  “See how stubbornly he fights? There is no chance that he can save the human, but he will continue to fight until he dies, and then ‘Reader’ Orem will die and what will it have served him?”

  “Yes, my master.”

  “Ah! See there. They have caught him. He has fallen. Feast well, dear darklings. And feast quickly, for I have made my decision. We shall save this ‘Reader’ Orem. I believe he may serve us. Come, Sef. Let us shake the leashes of these darklings and send them back to their mistress. Greedy children of Dervon, away with you! Away from my prize.”

  “As you say, my master.”

  “Yes, Sef. As I say.”

  41

  Medophae

  Medophae opened his eyes. The waves crashed gently, smoothing the red sand and gurgling around his toes. He’d tossed his boots aside; they lay a short distance up the beach. The day was warm and wonderful. The red beach stretched out to his left, where the hillocks rose, swathed in the long, green seagrass of Calsinac and to the right as far as the eye could see. White clouds billowed on the horizon, and he smelled the vibrant sea—salt and wind and water.

  He looked behind himself. The beach rose slowly at first, then sharply up to the seagrass, creating a sand and grass cliff as high as Medophae was tall. He loved to vault over those little cliffs. Beyond was his city, Calsinac. He’d built the first structure with his own hands, a small two-bedroom cottage for himself and Bands. His followers had soon arrived and built their own, and that was how Calsinac started. Bands teased him about that first dilapidated little house. Medophae was a fine swordsman, but he was no builder.

  He shook his head. But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it? They lived in a palace now. How many years had it been? A decade? Sometimes he had a hard time keeping track of the years. There were so many changes. Never had a city grown as fast as Calsinac. Never had so many brilliant craftsmen and builders gathered so quickly in one place.

  He glanced back at his boots. One stood straight and tall, the stiffened leather holding its shape even though it was almost as tall as Medophae’s knee. The other had given at the ankle and flopped over. He felt like he was forgetting something. It wasn’t odd that he should be at the beach. He came here often to think about tough problems, but...

  But he didn’t remember how he got here. The last thing he remembered was the discussion he’d had with Corelius, his chief steward, about the immigrants from Wayland.

  “Medin?”

  He turned. Bands strode down the beach. Her blond hair swished in the light breeze, practically translucent in the sunlight. She wore a loose shift that rippled across her strong body, and he paused a moment to appreciate every curve and every flash of golden skin. He remembered when she had bought the fabric. It came from a kingdom beyond the lands of the Sunriders to the south, or so the merchant had said. Silk, he called it. She had paid handsomely for it, which amused Medophae. She could have flown across all of the dangerous lands of the Sunriders and purchased the bolts of cloth for a reasonable price. Instead, she’d paid Saraphazia’s own treasure for it, and cherished it with the same fervor.

  “I think my brains are addled,” he said.

  “Are you just now coming to that conclusion?” The sand shifted under each step she took, giving a pleasant sway to her hips that distracted him.

  “I don’t know how I got here, and...” He thought about when he had looked both ways up the coast. He hadn’t seen Bands anywhere. “And I thought I was alone on the beach,” he finished.

  She put her arms around his neck. “You are. I’m just a trick of the light.”

  “Oh?” He squeezed her. “And where are you, then?”

  “I’m back at the palace, tending to affairs of state.”

  “Good. One of us should.”

  She turned in his embrace, snuggling her back against his chest and wrapping his arms around her like a shawl. They looked out over the ocean. The sun dropped a little more, beginning to light the thin clouds with yellows and oranges.

  “At times like this, I rather like being king,” he said.

  “Tell me that again when we reach the palace and its burdens.”

  “I’m actually beginning to enjoy them.”

  “You’re a liar,” she said.

  “I thought that’s what makes a good king.”

  “You’re a good king because you care. Because you try so hard.”

  “That sounds like one of those compliments that isn’t a compliment.”

  She bumped him with her hip. “You make mistakes all the time. But you recover well. And you choose good advisors, and you listen to them.”

  Again, he glanced at his boots. He still could not remember taking them off. It bothered him.

  “Bands, did I forget to do something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I feel as if I’ve forgotten something. I just had the strangest sensation a minute ago, right before you came. I couldn’t remember how I came here. I don’t remember removing my boots. I actually couldn’t remember when I was. I thought for a second that this was ten years ago, when we first built our little house.”

  “You came to the beach with me.”

  “I don’t remember it.”

  She turned in his embrace, looking up at him, her expression concerned. She reached up and put a hand on his cheek. Her fingers were gentle and cool. She could wield a double-bladed war axe with one of those hands, but they were always as soft as a baby’s cheek. But then, he supposed a shapeshifter could make her hands feel like whatever she wanted. “Maybe you should rest, then,” she said.

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Maybe you need more rest than you think.”

  “I feel fine. I just don’t remember how I got to the beach.”

  “Do you want to walk back? We can retrace our steps. Maybe it will help you remember.”

  He let out slow breath. “No. It doesn’t matter. It simply seems as if...” he paused. “...as if I haven’t only forgotten how I came here, but that I’ve forgotten something important.”

  Her hand slipped into his. “You’ll think of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you always remember the important things, my love. You always do.”

  42

  Mirolah

  When the cell door slammed, Mirolah fell to her knees with a gasp. The stones were cold against her bare legs, and the sleeveless shift she wore was no armor against the cell’s chill, but though she felt those things, they were inconsequential compared to the cold gutting she had just suffered. She had heard horror stories about the women who had been violently raped at the hands of the Sunriders, and she wondered if it could have been any worse than having your mind overthrown and your body become a plaything of someone else’s will.

  No one had escorted her to this dark cell. She had walked here on her own, one torturous step at a time as a husky femal
e voice smothered her will.

  Mirolah had fought every step of the way. She’d screamed in the recesses of her mind, but nothing had worked. Her arms felt like they had been half-pulled from their sockets from her struggles. Her knees hurt as though they had been bent backward. Every strand of muscle in her forearms felt like jelly, a testament to her resistance.

  She had control of her body now, and she hugged her knees to her chest and sobbed. She felt like a discarded sock used by a giant’s foot, soiled and stretched and ripped. She could taste the woman in her mouth like blood. She could smell the woman in her hair. And the terrifying specter loomed over her: the woman could return at any moment and dominate her again, because what could Mirolah do to stop her?

  She leaned over and vomited, then crawled to the other side of the cell and laid her head against the cold stones. Her stomach heaved again and she tried to stop it, but she couldn’t.

  She vomited on the floor again, then scooted to another corner, away from both stinking messes, pressing herself against the wall and trying to think of something else, anything else. She began to cry again.

  “Don’t cry... Don’t cry...”

  She sucked in a quick breath and looked around. But there was no one else in the cell.

  “I cannot bear it, all the crying... All the crying. All the dying.” The male voice dropped so low she could not hear it.

  Her teeth began chattering. Had the woman’s domination driven her insane? “Please, no...” she said.

  “I shall not hurt you, rest assured. If that’s your prayer, it has been heard.”

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “Ahhh....” The voice was so soft she had to strain to hear it. “I’m a lovely song and hideous screech. I killed the land I lay beneath. The Red Weaver looks for me, and she will cage this escapee. In the cracks she grew, and now is large. Just a mote she was, but now in charge.”

  “Shut up,” she screamed. “I don’t want to hear you! You’re not real!” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’re not real...”