Missing Piece

by Robert Priest

  The boy’s bottom lip was firmly tucked under his front teeth now and he was grimacing.

  The prince bent over with his one eye firmly focused on the bottom of the bowl. He began to take deep breaths of the red mist until a little of it formed rings about his nostrils.

  “I know Icrix must have his hate well honed for this creature,” Abiathel said as the prince searched the mist.

  “Not my hate,” the prince answered righteously. “My intellect, yes, but I am, alas, poor at hating. I can direct this pursuit because it is logical due to the affront against my family and my country, but such a base passion as hatred is not required. I can be cold-blooded, believe me. I can be ruthless if there is a compelling reason for it, but all this obsessive fury I fear I may never—” The prince stopped, suddenly excitedly. “There!”

  A ruby-tinged vision had appeared in the blood mist. It looked like someone walking. At first the prince saw mostly just the back of a black- or navy-blue-clad right shoulder. A captain’s jacket perhaps? It was dark, and he had to peer closely and squint to see it. He was beginning to believe that this actually might be his prey. Wherever she was, it must be night time. So she was at least in this hemisphere. He could hear the sound of children chattering in hushed voices as though they were following along behind her. He took a great inhalation of the mist, drawing back until he could see the back of a tri-cornered hat. And there, below it, at the back of the neck, was a knot of red hair. His pulse quickened. He was almost certain it was her!

  He calmed himself. He could see the dark outlines of some buildings now and there was a flag flowing in the distance, but it was too dark to tell what might be emblazoned on it.

  The rooster crowed again. The tubing trembled a little in the blood mage’s grip. “Stay still,” he warned the boy. There followed a murmur of assent. The boy now had both lips tucked in between his teeth and he was squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as possible. He was feeling light-headed.

  The prince strained and squinted to get a wider view of the vision. Now that he had found her, he had to find out where she was or it would all be for nothing. And that might take some time. He shook his head and cursed under his breath. One child wouldn’t be enough. He wished he’d asked for two or three. Prince Icrix took another deep breath and looked again.

  The figure in the vision had stopped at a place where a torch blazed from a sconce on a pole. A white-gloved hand slipped into the pocket of the jacket and withdrew a sheet of paper, which she then unfolded and held up to the light. He could almost discern the ornate, ordered lettering on it as she paused to read it. She turned the sheet over and there was more lettering on the other side, though this lettering was less ordered. Also, it was not arranged on the page in paragraphs. There were line breaks and a couple of places where words seem to have been crossed out. The prince blew into the blood mist, causing it to become agitated, and for a moment as he strained he could see the first few lines of text.

  These knees

  that never touched ground

  in worship or subservience,

  here they are

  like pilgrims

  bent beneath your frown,

  their journey’s end,

  their temple found.

  You slay the titan

  of my hunger

  for beauty.

  These hands

  that never pressed palms

  in prayer or to plead for love,

  here they are

  like beggars

  praising you for alms,

  their feasting done

  their bellies calm.

  You slay the Titan

  of my hunger

  for beauty.

  There were more verses, but suddenly, almost violently, with both hands the figure in the vision crushed the page into a round ball and tossed it into a nearby gutter with seeming contempt. She started to walk again.

  The prince blew hard into the mist, causing it to cloud up around him. He strained to see the landscape around her. She was in a half-ruined city. He could tell that by the many partially collapsed structures she kept passing. Finally, over her shoulder in the distance, he saw something that settled it for him: the Great Kone.

  Just then the blood mage felt the tubing tugged away from his grasp and the prince’s vision shattered. The blood mist sank quickly back to the bottom of the disc and the prince looked up, annoyed, his face still speckled with crimson. He was about to chastise the boy for his shivering, but the lad had collapsed. Abiathel knelt and felt the boy’s wrist. He turned him over and, seeing that his inner elbow was still bleeding where the tubing had come out, he took the cloth and bound it tighter, pressing his hand there to staunch the flow. Groaning, the boy’s eyes fluttered open.

  “He’ll be all right,” the blood mage said.

  “I’ve got her,” the prince said gleefully. “I know exactly where she is right now. And it is perfect.”

  “Where?” asked the blood mage from within his hood.

  “On the Phaer Isle. Right back in the city of Ulde, where she did her wrong.” Icrix rubbed his hands together eagerly. “This will save me so much time. I have been preparing an expeditionary force to punish those barbarians for their treachery against my brothers, and now she will be there as well.”

  “But it will take several days at least to reach the Phaer Isle from here. Will she stay?”

  The prince thought about it. “You must keep her there while we gather the fleet.”

  “But the blood magic has little dominion in the Phaer Isle, you know that.”

  “But the blood magic may send a message. Is that correct?”

  “It is possible, yes, but the distance is great and it wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow.” The boy by now was sitting up, drinking a glass of water. “That would take another boy though.”

  The prince thought some more. Even tomorrow might be too late. He had tried this blood gazing five times before and had not until now located her. If she left the isle, who was to say he would ever find her again.

  “We can’t wait for another boy,” he said to the blood mage. “We have to get a message off now.”

  “I can have two boys here in an hour,” the blood mage countered with some alarm.

  “What about this boy and a rooster?”

  The blood mage shrugged and made an unpleasant face. “I would lose the boy.”

  “I have a rooster. It’s for an experiment, but this is far more important.”

  “I would still lose the boy.”

  “I’m very weak, sir,” the boy added.

  “And what if the murderer leaves the island in the meantime? What then of this vengeance your prince is charged with? I’m sorry, but we need to send a message now. I insist on it.”

  9

  Extra Arms

  For reasons of security, the Phaer Council had passed a law forbidding entry to the Great Kone. The jagged opening in the wall through which Xemion had long ago entered and exited the ancient structure was now covered by a locked wooden gate. The Phaer Council had done its best to keep the whole area off-limits to the ever-increasing population, but they had been unable to prevent poor, desperate, and diseased people from gathering at the perimeter of the parklands that surrounded the Great Kone. Many of them came because they believed the Great Kone had emanating powers that could cure disease. Others believed that one day a great mage would arrive here and rescue them and bring about a new age. Some of them had slipped over the wall from the much more spell-crossed east side of the city of Ulde, bringing the meat of spell-crossed animals, herbs, and fungi, or trinkets recovered from fallen houses. They had begun to light their torches, which were blazing among the crowd, their flames almost horizontal with the steady, quiet force of the wind.

  Looking splendid in their red regimental uniforms, Torgee and the members o
f his home guard watched the crowd. They carried extra arms today. Chief among them were the canisters of Pathan fire upon their hips lest they encounter any of the cadaver limbs that had recently begun to emerge at night from the bog. They had spent much longer than usual patrolling here today. They had carefully examined the row of wagons and carts that formed a little market, but had detected no trade in forbidden items. Still, Torgee felt extra suspicious. Even though the wind had been blowing steadily all day, a sharp scent still lingered in the air — a boggy aroma that slightly turned Torgee’s stomach. It smelled like death. It smelled like malice and deception.

  Torgee had heard that his sister, Tharfen, had returned to the Phaer Isle. It had hurt when she left without him, but her father had not asked him to come along. Even if he had, he would not have gone. He owed it to Tiri Lighthammer, who had trained him in the mountains, to stay. He owed it to his dreams and to the future of his people. And he owed it to the memory of Saheli.

  He wondered if it would be up to him to seek Tharfen out or if she’d come looking for him. They had parted on such bad terms and there had been no opportunity to remedy it. In truth, most of those harsh words had come from her mouth, not his. Still, she was his sister and he loved her.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Serd, a burly Thrall and long-time lieutenant in the guard. “Do you think we should move on now, sir?” he asked with clear impatience. Torgee made no answer. He continued to stand there, grimly perusing passersby, his nostrils sniffing at that undeniable underscent.

  “My worry,” Serd continued after a while, “is that this whole focus on the Great Kone might be some kind of decoy.”

  “You’ve said that,” Torgee retorted angrily.

  “But we have quite a long stretch of the wall to—”

  “Be quiet!”

  He did as he was commanded while the moon slowly rose over the heap of houses on the other side of the wall. Over the years these houses had floated or crashed down regularly and were now piled up four and five high, many of them upside down and covered with the thorny black vines that were everywhere in eastern Ulde.

  Torgee took out a brown bottle. It was the same brown bottle that had once contained the memory-draining waters consumed by Saheli. He had retrieved it from her quarters after her death. He uncorked it now and took a swallow. Sweet mead honey. He didn’t offer the others any. This was medicine for him. As it had been for her. It calmed, if only for a moment, that piece of her inside him that never stopped hurting. He re-corked the bottle and put it back in the pocket of his tunic and beckoned the other guards to follow him. The group proceeded north along the wall, Serd shaking his head disdainfully, as if to say “Isn’t this just what I advised him to do?”

  As soon as they were gone, the spellbinder Drathis One-Eye emerged from the crowd and proceeded at a good pace toward the Great Kone. Every eye in the gathering at the perimeter of the park was on him. When he got to the gate in the wall that surrounded the Great Kone, he reached for something in his cloak — a key — and quickly fitted it into the lock, swinging the gate open. He turned his face, with the black patch over his missing eye, toward the crowd and smiled rapturously. A cheer arose on the wind and the two other one-eyed spellbinders stepped from the crowd.

  Six years ago when Veneetha Azucena had secured their release from a lifetime of captivity in the underearth, the flesh of these spellbinders had been sickly and white, a pallor that stayed with them for years. Recently, as their speaking abilities had returned, their skin had regained most of its original brown tone. But the hand that Drathis now held up toward the crowd was bright red. The other two spellbinders, also with patches over their missing eyes — removed their gloves. They, too, had painted their hands — the left an unnatural bright red and the right an almost luminous shade of white. This set off a lot of murmuring amongst the observers.

  The three held out their hands toward the members of the crowd, drawing out others who had also painted their hands. Soon there were fourteen people joined hand-to-hand, with Drathis at one end and Zandra One-Eye at the other.

  Drathis now had his minimum. A chain spell was possible. Tugging the line gently forward, he proceeded through the entrance to the Great Kone until he was as close as he could get to the reed paper — the very stuff of the Great Kone. With the rising of the moon, the Kone’s luminous qualities were active and you could see the lettering on it.

  Drathis leaned forward over the downward spiralling banister and stretched his hand toward a letter whose look he loved — the L. As soon as he touched it and flattened his palm against it, he let out an exalted cry. A green fire ran from the surface of the Great Kone up his arm, into his body, and out the other arm, where it proceeded to travel slowly from hand-to-hand along the line. “Keep the grip! Keep the grip,” someone yelled over the sound of the wind. Finally it reached Zandra at the end. Joining in on the ecstatic cries, which had made their way up the line with the green fire, she held up her free hand. It was glowing a dull, unnatural red, like metal just before it melts. Then, with a spark so bright it could hardly be looked at, the strange green fire crackled up into the atmosphere.

  Most of the onlookers who were brave enough to remain had become quiet with awe. Several of them were crying and whimpering as the green charge zigzagged out of Zandra One-Eye’s palm and rolled itself up into a translucent sphere of fire in the air. Within this globe the extremities of a face started to appear.

  Grain by grain it struggled to come together, but even as one part of it seemed almost solid another part disappeared speck by speck. It was as though sand were being dropped on a glass pane in the wind. Never did the full face appear, but at its fullest, when all but the eyes were visible, the mouth gaped, full of darkness.

  All who beheld this felt a surge of terror, but they did not flee. This was surely what they had been waiting so long for. They stared horrified as sandy veins and taut tendons lifted up in the apparition’s neck with great effort. A dark, guttural moan emerged like thunder, reverberating along the ground and echoing up into the sky.

  The face twisted with agony and became still and flat, its features pressed against this world as though painted on an outwardly curved window pane. Slowly, obviously struggling, a red hand emerged from the green sphere and pressed its open palm forward to meet the palm of Zandra One-Eye.

  This was when Tharfen arrived.

  Immediately she recognized the summoned figure as that of Vallaine, the man with the red hand who had enticed Xemion and Saheli to the rebellion in Ulde five years ago when they had first met him in Ilde.The instant the conjured hand touched the hand of Zandra One-Eye, the charge turned from green to yellow to orange to red and began to travel slowly back down the line toward Drathis. Vallaine’s mouth widened until the only thing left of his face was the red perimeter of a dark, yawning oval. When this, too, disappeared, he was gone. Zandra began to vibrate in the wind; her eyes rolled back, the last vestiges of the red fire still making their way through her body and into the arm of the person behind her in the line.

  “Release your hands,” Tharfen yelled, as she pushed through the crowd toward the chain of people. “Release your hands, now!” she yelled again, but no one obeyed her. The red glow from Vallaine’s hand struggled down the line, increasing in intensity as it made its way back to Drathis One-Eye. There were agonized groans now coming from the others in the line as the red charge intensified.

  “Separate your hands now, or my sword will separate them!” Tharfen screamed, her voice cutting through the horrified exclamations rising from the crowd behind her. She withdrew her weapon and held it poised above the joined hands of Zandra and the person in line behind her. But it was obvious from the rolling of their eyes that they were no longer in control of themselves. And still the intense glow of the red hand shape increased. Without thinking, Tharfen grabbed Zandra’s arm and jerked it away. For a second before the two hands were parted, a static r
ed charge shot back and into Tharfen’s arm. She experienced a painful red flash and a sharp pang ran up her arm and into the interior of her body. There was overwhelming pain, as though something had been wrenched from every part of her and crushed and compressed into one place. She felt it in her heart and gasped.

  It took a moment for Tharfen’s vision to return, but when it did she saw that Zandra’s body lay motionless, red steam arising from it. Something was rattling around inside Tharfen’s chest like a stone in a porcelain vase, and for a second she felt as though it might crack her and that she, too, would fall.

  But at that moment, from the edge of the park, a desperate shout arose. “My boy! My boy!?” It was a woman’s voice. “Beren? Beren!”

  A small voice responded from a distance. It was cut off quickly, but it was clearly the cry of a child. The bravest of the onlookers ran toward the sound, but when a grotesque figure arose they stopped.

  “It’s a glomerant!” someone yelled. “Biggest I ever seen!”

  Someone else yelled “Glommy’s got a boy! Glommy’s got a boy!”

  The glomerant had been hiding in the rubble that still littered the area. Its limbs and legs were mismatched, its body a conglomeration of body parts — multiple legs, an assortment of different-sized arms. It turned its one head quickly to look back and all could see the mishmash of features that made up its gruesome, patchwork face. The child let out another scream as the ghastly creature turned and ran. The mother, screaming her son’s name, darted after it.

  The glomerant in its uneven gait shambled at incredible speed toward the breach in the wall, the little boy clutched in one of its cold grey arms. The sling was already out of Tharfen’s pocket and a solid, smooth stone — one of the many she always carried with her — was in her hand. If she could just knock the head off….

  But just as she raised the sling, out the corner of her eye she saw a pair of eyes approaching from the west: Xemion? For an instant she was back in that last moment before she collided with Xemion back in Shissillil. Everything in her suddenly felt ungrounded and out of control. The feeling was over so quickly she wasn’t even really sure if it was really him. But as she let the stone go, it soared over the glomerant’s head. For the first time in a very long time, she had missed her target. Quickly she fitted another stone into the sling. This one went off to the left. The creature spidered its way over the wall with the screaming child in its arms.