by Lionel Fenn
Shashhag.
He wanted to shudder at the very sound of the name, but he couldn't bring himself to speak it aloud. Neither could he bring himself to forgive Glorian for telling him about it; there are some things that man is meant to find out on his own, or he'll think about them too much and decide not to go.
Shashhag.
He shuddered anyway.
Beyond the eastern rim of the Scarred Mountains, he'd been told, there was a desolate plain unlike any other on any level of this world, and it was there that he could expect to meet either Agnes or Lu Wamchu. It was likely, Glorian said, to be Agnes because she had a particular fondness for desolation, whereas Lu had a yen for opulence and creature comforts. And Glorian's spies had told her that many of the creatures now in mortal combat with the forces of the ordinary people of this world made their original home in Shashhag. Which meant that either Agnes or Lu had control of them. Which meant that Gideon would have to be alert for leathery flying things and other disgusting beings that would not look kindly on him trespassing since no one, ever, visited Shashhag unless there was a war on.
"And how often is that?" he had asked.
"This is the first one," she had said.
Shashhag.
The desolation was evidently enhanced by the fact that no living thing ever grew there, except maybe the leathery flying things, which were, after all, pretty big when you thought about it. But there were no plants of any size, and the one river that flowed through it did so at an extremely rapid pace so not to have to touch its banks any more than it had to.
"Slow down!"
Good idea, he thought.
"Hey, idiot, wait up!"
He looked over his shoulder, but he didn't slow down. Tuesday, burdened with a lumpy pack on her back, was flying not more than four or five inches above the road, panting heavily as she worked on her speed, her altitude, and keeping her orange feet from scraping over the rocks. Only when he nearly tripped himself, so fascinated was he that he'd forgotten to look forward again, did he shorten his stride until she landed beside him and begged him with a look to relieve her of her burden.
"Nice of you to join me," he said.
"That bitch wouldn't tell me the direction," she complained bitterly. "I've been flying all morning and my wings are ready to fall off."
"I thought ducks could fly all day."
"I am not a duck," she said, her beak cracking shut with each word. "I am a woman in a duck's body."
"You look like a duck to me, Sis, and what the hell's in here anyway? It weighs a ton." He shook the pack. It wobbled.
Tuesday bobbed her head. "Mead," she said. "I got it to keep us going when the sun gets too warm."
She was right; it was heavy, and he only barely managed to get the makeshift straps over his shoulders. Wonderful, he thought; here is the great hero of Chey, sloshing along the road with his faithful companion, duck, at his side.
"I heard what she told you," Tuesday said, walking as fast as she could to keep up with him. "You're really going there?"
"Yes. It's probably the place Tag knew about, and that's where Ivy probably is."
Tuesday snorted, flew to his shoulder, and perched without asking permission. "You really believe that kid knew where she was taken?"
He explained what Tag had told him about the planned raid on Agnes's headquarters, and as he spoke speculated on the boy's odd absence from the meadow. Not to mention the fact that Glorian had not mentioned him at all, and he was her brother.
"Damn," he said. "Do you suppose the dope has gone off to rescue her himself?"
"I wouldn't know."
It would be just like him, Gideon thought; the bloodlust ran deep in his veins, and it would be no surprise at all to come across him once they reached... that place.
"He probably thinks he's going to surround them," he muttered, without an ounce of admiration for the boy's stupidity and courage. "He'll probably get to Ivy before I do."
Tuesday, as only ducks can, groaned. "Good god, you really have it bad, don't you?"
"I don't know. Do I?"
"You're asking me? I'm only a duck."
"But you just told me you're not a duck, just a woman in a duck's body."
"Jesus, Giddy, are you going to believe everything a duck tells you?"
He did not give her an answer. On the one hand, what answers he had were decidedly ungentlemanly, and on the other, he had spotted a pile of bones at the side of the road. They were very large bones, and there wasn't a speck of meat left on them. As he passed them, swerving away in case it was a trap, he thought he recognized the general shape and size—a pacch, which meant that whatever had killed and eaten it was either a damned lucky fool or had damned big teeth.
And the bones reminded him of Jeko Junffer.
And Jeko reminded him of how much he had gone through just to get to this point in his travels, his travails, and his uncertain lust for a certain young woman.
And the certain young woman reminded him of Shashhag.
And Shashhag made him shudder.
At which point Tuesday fell off his shoulder, flew back, and told him to be more careful with the only sister he had left in the world and would he like to hear a few songs she'd learned from Lain's band of merry men.
"No."
"It's going to be a long trip," she muttered.
They passed another pile of bones, this one not picked quite as clean as the first, and a cloud of bingelas hummed over the feast, ignoring the two travelers completely, though Tuesday's fowl genes soon had her mouth watering in a most unseemly manner.
The third and fourth piles, within two hundred yards of each other, were more meat than bones.
"Oh boy," Gideon said, and put the bat on his shoulder. "I sure do wish Red was here."
"Well, he's not."
"Why not?" he said.
"How should I know," she said testily.
"That was a rhetorical question, Sis. I only asked, as if praying to the gods for Red to come springing out of the trees over there and save my feet from wearing down to the bone."
"Well," she said, suddenly lifting into the air, "that isn't Red over there, that's for damned sure."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tuesday's talent for spotting the enemy in the open served them in good stead. The thing she had mentioned, and was now flying rapidly away from with a prudence she had not normally shown in her human form, bounded out of the burning trees with a garbled roar and landed four-square in the center of the road. It was shoulder-tall, muddy brown, and canine, though it had no tail, no ears, and no fur to speak of except for a dangling brown beard under its elongated jaw, which was, Gideon noted dispassionately, a good eighty to ninety percent of its face, having as it did more teeth than he had ever seen in his life.
It slavered, spat, and salivated, and the disgusting strands and coils and strings of its saliva instantly burned hideous holes in the earth.
Gideon swallowed to keep his gorge from rising, swallowed again to keep his bile from roiling, and swallowed a third time when gorge and bile paid him no heed. Nevertheless, he stiffened his chin, sniffed once, and kicked a stone out of the way, the movement shifting the creature's attention away from its salivating and slavering and back to him.
It took one look and threw back its head to howl at the sun. There was no mistaking the sound—it was bellowing its triumph, and its thanks for finding a snack so early in the day.
Gideon also noted, as he ran his hand along the bat to be sure it was indeed still in his hand and indeed the weapon it was supposed to be, that the creature had an odor about it akin to a pile of rotting meat that not even a hyena would touch on a particularly bad day. And when the gentle wind changed direction and he dropped to his knees at the power of the stench, he knew how it was that the massive pacchs had been trapped long enough to be buzz-sawed by those teeth.
He turned his head, took a deep breath through his mouth, held it, and rose. Faced the creature, and waited for the cha
rge.
Tuesday called hysterically to him.
Gideon shook his head, felt his lungs already protesting their inactivity, and turned his head away, exhaled, inhaled, held his breath, and looked back.
The creature ambled toward him, snorting and growling and tossing its head side to side, its acid saliva scorching the grass on the verge and drilling smoky holes in the boles.
This would have to be a head-on confrontation, he decided; to attempt to sneak around its side would only result in an agonizing shower that would immobilize him just long enough for the thing to grab him—if he didn't have to take a breath again and wasn't immobilized by the stench of its bodily and oral emanations.
It was less than ten feet from him when it stopped, puzzled why its snack was still on its feet. The head lowered, and two small eyes examined him carefully.
Gideon smiled at it, showing his own teeth, and lunged forward, the bat swinging through the dental minefield like a cold knife through solid butter. But though he might not have broken anything, he certainly made an impression—when the bat rebounded off a fang, he spun and ran back a few steps, gasped another breath and turned, watching as the tooth-thing fell back on its haunches in astonishment, shook its head in pain and scattered bilious chunks of plaque and untasted food morsels into the burning trees, which flared at the contact.
C'mon, Gideon thought; c'mon, c'mon, let's get this over with.
But the tooth-thing was in no hurry. It scratched behind its head with a blunted hind paw, trembled as if dissipating the last of its hurt, and rose again, leg by trunk-like leg. Then it exposed its eyes once more, judged the distance between itself and Gideon, and without so much as a single pawing of the ground or threatening roar, it charged.
Gideon waited, swung the bat and flung himself to his right and as far backward as he could. It wasn't very far. Droplets of acid landed around him, and one caught him on the forearm, tearing open the sleeve of his shirt and raising a blister on the skin so painful that he considered himself lucky getting away with just a scream.
The tooth-thing, however, was down as well. Writhing on the grass, setting itself afire here and there, and generally making a hell of a noise as it scrambled with its clumsy forepaws for the three teeth that had been slammed out by the roots.
Gideon staggered to his feet, staggered over as close as he could get, and used a particularly effective backhand, one-handed blow to loosen four more canines before he was forced away by the blast furnace of its mouth. Again he approached, more cautiously now since the creature was writhing even more spastically, its roars of anger and pain subsiding every few seconds to whimpers of defeat and what the hell happened? And a second time the backhand, one-handed blow sheared through the dental forest, and once again he was breath-bludgeoned until he could stand the torture no longer and stumbled away, up the road now and not looking back.
He was, for the time being, safe. There was no doubt that the tooth-thing would be out of action for quite a while, and with luck he would be far enough down the road for it not to want to bother to follow.
He breathed deeply, wiped a hand over his face, and breathed again until a vague swell of dizziness vanished in the fresh air. He examined the blistering skin on his arm and saw that there were no signs of deeper infection, rampaging poisons, or spreading in the manner of some monstrous disease. He checked the bat before holstering it, and was amazed again that its properties were such that not even the acid had marred its smooth and sensuous surface.
Tuesday rejoined him a few minutes later, apologized for her desertion, and wanted to know if he was going to smell like that all the way to wherever they were going.
"Smell like what?"
"Like a mouth that hasn't been washed in six or seven years."
"It was that thing," he explained, while surreptitiously sniffing at whatever parts of him he could reach without actually squashing his nose against them.
"Oh," she said, fluttered up over his head and looked back. "You did a number on it, I see."
"It'll think twice about coming back," he agreed, at the same time quickening his pace when he saw the sun now at its zenith. A sense of newborn urgency sparked the muscles of his legs, and he cursed the creature for stalling him. Even if they weren't waylaid by anything or anyone else now, he would have to develop an arduous and boring routine of run-and-walk if he wanted to get to Ivy before it was too late. Which, when he thought about it, was probably not the smartest way to get where he was going since, when he got there, wherever the hell that was, he would be too exhausted to do anything about why he had gotten there in the first place.
Jesus, he thought, what I wouldn't give for a bicycle right now, or a car, even if it had only three wheels.
The duck landed lightly on his shoulder. "Maybe it's about time to break out a little liquid refreshment."
"No," he said. "I need a clear head for this, Sis."
"Well, maybe you ought to think about it, okay?"
"What's to think about? Mead plus I'm tired equals drunk, and there's no way I can do anything to help anyone if I'm drunk."
She was silent for several yards.
"Funny, that's not what Whale said."
After a dozen yards, he stopped and tried to look her in the eye, even though she was on his shoulder. "What are you talking about?"
"Whale. What he said to me. When he gave me the mead."
He reached up, took her gently in his hand, and gently swung her down until she was pressed gently against his chest. His smile was gentle as well, and Tuesday looked a little nervous.
"You didn't tell me he talked to you. You just said you had mead for the trip. Why didn't you tell me he talked to you? I thought you'd just taken the stuff, for god's sake; I didn't know he'd given it to you."
"There's a difference?"
Gently, he placed her on the ground, unslung the pack and hunkered down beside it. A close examination of the cool leather soon showed him a stiff bone spout tucked into a depression on its bulging side. With a steady finger, and one eye on his sister, he worked it out, making sure the opening pointed upward so not to spill one precious drop.
"What did he say?" he asked as he ran a finger over the spout, caught a precious drop and touched his tongue to it. It didn't taste any different than what he'd had the night before.
Tuesday didn't answer.
He looked at her. "Sis, stop pouting."
"You think I'm a thief," she said with a catch in her voice.
"You said you took it."
"I said I got it. That's not the same." She waddled to the verge and looked up at the trees. "It's a pretty mess we've come to, Gideon Sunday, a pretty mess indeed. You, of all people, think your own sister is a thief, and one who would steal from dear and loving friends! What the hell kind of a duck do you think I am, anyway?"
"It's pass," he said. "A pretty pass."
"Something," she snarled, "you wouldn't know anything about, since all yours were ugly."
He didn't answer. Instead, he cupped a hand and lowered the spout slowly, letting his palm fill with the golden liquid before stopping it. Then he sniffed it, could find nothing out of the ordinary about its aroma, licked it gingerly and could find nothing unusual about its taste. So he drank it, refilled his palm and drank again. It was warm, but not unpleasantly so, and a third palmful, he decided, should be his limit, lest he be tempted to partake from the spout itself and thus lessen the weight on his spine when he started off again.
Tuesday, hearing his tentative slurping, came over and waited her turn, took her ration from his hand and tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and sighed. "He was right, I feel better already."
"He was right?" Gideon said, reslinging the pack.
"Sure. He said he knew that time was vital and strength was limited, and this would take care of the strength part so we can get where we're going as if we had wings." She giggled. "I forgave him the slip."
Gideon looked down at his feet, flexed and stretched his
arms, massaged his neck and shoulders, and was almost convinced that the mead did indeed have some of Whale's erratic magical properties. He was absolutely convinced when he glanced at his forearm and saw that the acid blister had healed.
"Damn," he said. "If he can do this, why the hell can't he turn you back into a woman?"
"An unknowable mystery," she said.
He frowned. "Isn't that something like a double negative."
"You mean like, no, no, here it comes again?"
He didn't ask.
He whirled, pushed Tuesday out of the way, and whipped out the bat just in time to catch the tooth-thing across its grinning, slavering, salivating, foetid mouth. It screamed, dropped a pair of really wretched molars, and charged into the trees without breaking stride.
"Nice," she said. "Want to try it again?"
He whirled to face front, just in time to bring the rounded end of the bat raking across the gleaming fangs of another tooth-thing whose breath was not nearly as lethal, though it too could have used a floss now and then. It screamed at the touch of the mystical wood, spat out a fang and bicuspid, turned in midair and tried a backslash that Gideon, with a forehand, interrupted behind its ear. Another scream, and it leapt into the trees.
"You're on a roll," his sister said from above him.
He jumped to one side and brought the bat down on the ribs of a third creature, which had been slinking up on him, belly to the ground and teeth clenched until the last moment; the clenching, however, undid it as the bat slid off the ribs, up the side of the head, and down on its muzzle. The teeth cracked and shattered, and the beast crawled into the trees, howling.
"Yo, Giddy!" The duck beckoned from several yards away, and he broke into a slow trot, eyeing the pastel flames for signs of another attack, scanning the rough bark of the trees beneath for hints that something else was lying in wait to prevent him from reaching his destination.
For that was what all this was, and he knew it.
The tooth-things, like the leathery flying things, were too ugly and too vile and too foul on the face of it to appear naturally, not without some sort of diabolical assistance from equally diabolical creators who needed either to prove their power to themselves and thus bolster their evil self-esteem, or perhaps to build allies of their own nightmares because no one else in his right mind would have anything to do with them.
