The wizard did not have the Charm to review all the possible vehicles that stopped and where they led. He had strength to choose one. And he honored the blind god Chance by directing his Charm randomly into one of the vehicles driving down the road—a van with a cracked windshield and wings of dried mud sprayed along its sides.
He breathed ease, confidence, and goodwill into the driver, an older man, a mechanic who had been seized with an irrational but urgent desire to return to town and complete the paint job on the backyard fence that he had put off too long.
As the van eased to a stop before Dogbrick and Mary Felix, the wizard thinned to a thread, a hair-thin wire stretching with vibrant tension. He hummed with the resonance of the void, astral violet quaking in waves from him. The waves shredded the mirage of the physical world.
And yet, he did not die. Tenuous as a thread of starlight thrumming tautly in space, the wizard Caval persisted. He clung to consciousness despite his exhaustion. From deep within the darkest blue of nothing, he watched Dogbrick carry Mary into the back of the van.
*
Dogbrick felt a cold whisk broom brush his shoulders as the door slammed and the van spewed gravel and rocked into motion. He heard a voice addressing him: "I say, what's wrong with the lady?"
"Something I ate," Mary Felix groaned and forced herself to sit up. Now that they drove south, the claws of the spell relented, and she took a deep sustaining breath. "I'm feeling better already."
The older man's flinty eyes scrutinized them in the rearview mirror. Compassion creased his sunburned brow. "Who are you people, this deep in backcountry?"
"Campers," Mary replied, staring gratefully at Dogbrick. "We lost everything in a boating accident. Even his clothes!" She attempted a laugh and was surprised how strong she felt. "You are a godsend. I guess we look pretty bad. No one wanted to stop for us."
The driver launched into a monologue on civility, and Mary engaged him happily. Dogbrick listened only distantly. His alertness had dulled to stubborn astonishment, and he kept examining his hands, torso, limbs, and feet. Like a sand sculpture slowly sifting in a gentle wind, the shape of his body seemed to change, whittling gradually to human dimensions.
"I say, mister—what's your name?"
"Uhm ... Brick."
"Well, Brick, you must feel pretty damn lucky to survive rapids strong enough to tear off your clothes."
"Damn lucky." His voice sounded odd to him.
Mary asked the driver about his family and freed Brick to touch his nails and poke at his wrist, studying the fate lines in his yellow palm.
He sensed that somehow the wizard Caval had helped them get this ride. Had he helped them or hindered them? The gravel road climbed a rise, and out the mud-smeared windows he peered across hilltops of forest to straight lines of other roads that cut through the woods. He moved in the bloodstream of a human world, a reality that the first people who had tended him, the Sasquatch, feared more than anything.
They had sensed evil in these creatures. He had seen it, too, when he first touched Mary Felix. He had entered a hive of evil. And the evil had entered him. He turned his naked hands in his lap, cold in his heart to see how weak they looked. If the Sasquatch saw him, they would flee.
He reached for the strength in him. Still there, in the interior dark, it continued very small. With barely enough to hold in one hand, even these small hands, he left his strength inside, in his mortal darkness, small as a pearl. And he remembered the wizard's warning: Your Charm is squandered.
"You okay, Brick?" the driver called. "You look like you're about to be sick."
Monstrous Immortal
For the lost and the hunted,
time weighs a little more.
—Gibbet Scrolls: 26
Eternity and Space
The nearest charmway in Sharna-Bambara occupied a sinkhole. Standing among switching grasses and staring down into unplumbed depths, Esre and Ripcat hesitated. They perceived bulky shadows shifting in the darkness.
"The sisters warned of spiders," the witch said, stepping away from the tufty brink. "They said we should avoid charmways and continue south on foot."
"It will take us days to reach the goblins in Nhat." Ripcat squatted. His night vision penetrated the gloomy hole, and he noted crevices where predators waited. "The longer we spend traveling, the more people the goblins will kill. And the longer my friend Dogbrick must linger on the Dark Shore."
“The Sisterhood was firm." The veiled woman turned away. "We are not to enter the charmways if they can be avoided."
"They cannot be avoided." He tossed a pebble into the maw of darkness, and it plummeted soundlessly. "Did they give you directions? Can we find our way to Nhat from here if we go in?"
"No directions."
Ripcat approached Esre where she stood in grass taller than their heads. "Give me the aviso. I will speak with them."
"And betray your presence to the goblins?" Esre shook her head. "We must continue on foot. It will take longer, but it is more certain."
“Then why did the sisters tell you the location of this charmway when you asked?" Ripcat stepped in front and blocked her way. "They are leaving the decision to us."
"I spoke only briefly with them, to keep our profile as low as possible in the event the goblins or their minions somehow are monitoring our communications." She looked apprehensively over her shoulder. "I told them we've traced the goblins to Nhat. Witches and wizards have gone ahead of us to destroy those creatures, and we may not even be needed. The Sisterhood gave us the site of this charmway as a refuge in the event we must elude an immediate threat—such as a troll swarm."
"We are eluding a troll swarm—one that has overrun Irth." He searched the gray layers of her shrouded face for some response and, seeing none, stepped past her. "I will go alone. It's better that way. I can move faster without you and elude whatever spiders come for me."
Esre's face veil fluttered with a sigh of exasperation. "I can't send you down there alone. There are composite spiders."
"I know about the spiders—"
"Do you?" she asked doubtfully. “They're not like spiders where you're from. These are made of thousands of smaller arachnids joined by Charm to a ferocious size. They will overcome anyone, even you, without the protection of firecharms."
"I've been in charmways before." Ripcat strode to the sinkhole and paced the perimeter. "It's dark, and unless we know where we're going, we'll get lost. I say, I go in alone. I have the strength of my beastmarks to guide me. You continue on foot, and we'll meet up at the Cloths of Heaven in Nhat."
From under her raiment, Esre produced a headband of lux-diamonds. "We'll see well enough with this—though I doubt we'll like what we see."
"You don't trust me," Ripcat said, showing a fanged grin as he lowered himself into the hole. "You think I'll abandon you for the Dark Shore."
"Would you?" she asked, drawing aside the veils from her scar-patched face and strapping the lux-diamond headband across her brow. "I doubt it. You could have eluded me anytime in the rainbow forests. You gave your word, and you are true."
Ripcat's long green eyes shone from below in the lightless pit. "Yes."
"This is a frightful way to go, Ripcat. I do not like it." The lux-diamonds illuminated slick walls that descended in knobby steps toward numerous shafts and boreholes. "How will we find our way?"
"You have amulets." He moved adroitly down the natural steps and offered her a helping hand to guide her along the notched face of the precipice. "I thought goblins track Charm."
"They do," Esre admitted. She consulted her eye charms, searching for the nearest spiders. "I've sensed goblins watching me since we left the shrine of skulls. But they haven't seen you yet."
Spiders lurked not far distant, appearing in the niello of her amulets as silhouettes still as boulders. Moving slowly down skewed ledges of the sinkhole wall, she pointed out niches that harbored the largest arachnids.
"Who built these charmways?" Ripcat in
quired when the lux-diamonds had finally led them past the most perilous shelves. "The Sisterhood must have some notion of the history of these passageways among worlds."
“They are natural formations," she said—and he was gone.
Ripcat's night vision had sensed the grotto floor, and he disappeared ahead of her, plummeting into darkness and landing spryly at the dusty bottom of the hole.
She jumped after him, and his strong arms caught her and softened her landing. Even lit by the tiara of lux-diamonds, the gargantuan cavern ranged too far to see. Silently, they crossed an ashen grotto toward a titanic wall. The glistening rock folded around numerous apertures, some cavernous, others narrow slots and asp holes.
The witch monitored her eye charms and glimpsed bouldery shadows stir. A moment later, their motions echoed from the wall of holes. "Spiders!" She clutched Ripcat's arm. "And they're coming!"
Clicking, rasping, chitinous noise mounted louder from the perforated wall. Overlapping echoes frenzied to a din.
"We're trapped." Ripcat spun, searching for escape. "Which of the holes in that wall is empty? Which way do we go?"
"They're all filled with spiders!" Esre drew her firecharm. "Stay behind me."
Ripcat shielded his eyes with his hand when Esre aimed at the ground-floor caves. A blue flash stabbed like lightning, and an anguished screech resounded from within the cavern. Simultaneously, hooked legs appeared in many of the openings, and a horde of spiders emerged.
The witch fired as she ran, striking at the largest of the beasts. Spiders big as cows exploded to burnt ash. Hoping to clear a way out of the grotto and dissuade pursuit, she fired rapidly into the caves. A stench of burning exoskeletons flared from the holes, the shrieks and chatterings of the spiders clamorous.
A deafening explosion shook the very rock beneath their feet!
Esre toppled, and Ripcat snatched her by the arm and pulled her upright. Green flames gushed out of several chutes, and Esre yelled, "Charmfire!"
Ripcat swept the witch into his arms and lunged into the passage before them even as the grotto flooded with swirling conflagrations of green flame.
Speak of Hell
“What happened back there?” Ripcat’s voice shook as he ran with Esre in his arms. The glare of the burning grotto threw their shadows before them, long, thin, and battered by fiery radiance.
"I hit it!" she shouted jubilantly. "I didn't think I would! One eye—no depth of vision. Didn't think I would!"
"Hit what?"
"Something—something with a lot of Charm." She clung to Ripcat, staring over his shoulder at the green cloud of fire billowing after them. "Faster!"
Ripcat dived into a side corridor, and a gust of virid plasma filled the tunnel they had just left. The heat from the blast tightened their flesh, inspiring them to move deeper into the side vent. When the noise dimmed and the air cooled, he asked, "What holds that much Charm?"
"A lode of hex-gems and conjure-ore." She glowered at the firecharm in her hand when Ripcat lowered her to her feet. "Drake's blood! I did it! I hit the trigger of the mother lode for sure!"
"What are you talking about?" He peered back the way they had come at glimmering shades of green energy pulsing along the rock walls. "You planned this?"
"Not the stampede of spiders." Esre's one eye wrinkled with merriment. "That surprised me. There are more in that wall than I expected. But they didn't stop me. Look!" She held out an eye charm whose interior shone like green coral, like the vascular system of a luminous plant. "You're looking at a schematic of the local charmways. The lode of hex-gems that I struck has ignited. The charmfire is spreading!"
Ripcat's velvet brow wrinkled. “That does not sound good."
"It's very bad for anyone caught in the charmways," Esre confirmed and pointed to the rapidly widening web work of green radiance. "There are veins of charmrock and conjure-ore strewn throughout the planet. When the charmfire I ignited hits them, they—"
The walls shook violently, drizzling gravel and sand and spinning them on the balls of their feet. Ripcat braced himself against the shuddering wall and snatched Esre as she nearly collapsed. The tremor died down, and other explosions boomed from farther away.
"Why?" he asked, though he already knew. The Sisterhood was burning bridges.
"Charmwrights contributed the gems and ore, and wizards and witches planted the trove at a critical juncture in the charmways—a juncture closest to where the goblins are hidden." Esre took back her eye charm. "If we came this way, I was instructed to ignite the trove once I got you past. Now it's a wall of fire. The goblins won't be using the charmways to escape to the Dark Shore or anywhere else."
"What about us?" Ripcat sensed tremors through his feet. "Can we get out?"
"If you mean, can you get to the Dark Shore and back with your friend Dogbrick before this storm destroys the charmways across the Gulf?" She waved him after her and hurried into a dark corridor. "Only if we hurry."
Ripcat followed, grousing, "You betrayed me and Dogbrick!"
"Don't blame me, irascible Cat. I didn't want to come this way. I'm not that good a shot. But you insisted. And I had to obey my vow to the sisters that if we entered the charmways I would at least try to hit—"
Another explosion rocked the floor so vehemently they had to sit down to keep from falling.
"You could have told me..." His voice shuddered with the ground. When the trembling abated, he blew a sigh. "No, I guess you couldn't have told me. I wouldn't have agreed. It leaves too little hope for Dogbrick."
“Then don't speak of hope," Esre called above rumbling vibrations as the quake subsided. "Speak of hell. If we fail to get out quickly, the charmfire will consume us."
The assassin-witch examined the eye charm closely, comparing it with another on her charmbelt and then concluded, "From here we can jump to a nest of goblins at the Cloths of Heaven. The static from the charmfire will hide the movement of my amulets, and we may actually surprise them. But we must hurry. If our timing is off, we will leap directly into the holocaust."
“Then, go!" Ripcat shoved the witch ahead and followed through the wending passage toward a chute of salt-crusted rim rock. They leaped into the chute together and tumbled onto the sandy field of a subterranean arena.
On all sides, bench rocks rose in widening tiers toward a gargantuan ceiling of fanged minerals. At one end of the arena, many passageways glowed hotly with green light. A seething bellow from the conflagration quivered the grains of sand on the rock floor itself.
"A mother lode of conjure-ore is behind us, if I'm reading my eye charms right." Esre pointed to the darker end of the arena. “That's the way toward the Cloths of Heaven and the goblin nest.”
"We're not going to make it." Ripcat stared in fright at clouds of green fire gusting from the honeycombed wall across the chamber.
Esre unholstered her firecharm. "I'm going to jam my weapon. When it explodes, the blast will collapse this whole cavern. That will block the charmfire."
Ripcat scowled. "Do you know what you're doing?"
"We'll find out." She set the lock on her firecharm. "Once I pull the trigger, we'll have a very short time to get out of here."
"Do it already!" He glared at the far wall, buckling into a web of green fire.
Esre set the pin and yanked the trigger, then tossed the firecharm to the ground as Ripcat scooped her into his arms.
He charged toward the dark hallways at the far end of the arena, running hard over the dimpled sand. He did not dare look back at charmfire blowing in gaseous streamers from the rock sieve of the far wall.
Esre's patched face appeared healed, smeared whole in the glare from the fire rushing behind them. The back of his legs and his shoulders seared hotter, and the roar churned so loud he felt the sound would consume him.
Esre clutched Ripcat tighter when the blast wave lifted them off the ground and propelled them forward with blurring speed. A hole in the riddled wall tilted toward them, and, helpless as flung rags, t
hey hurtled into darkness and another room of the world.
Secret Honor
Poch groused as he stood in the corridor outside Overy Scarn's suite with his hands above his head while a Dig Dog Ltd. security agent waved a defender rod over him. "I'm the margrave!"
The double-paneled doors swung open, and the hefty figure of Overy Scarn emerged in ruffled robes of ocean blue. Small red blossoms peeked from among the tight curls of her brown hair. "Poch! You're so sweet to indulge me like this."
She accepted the security agent's curt nod and dismissed her with a shift of her small eyes. "In a moment, you will understand why I must be so careful with anyone who approaches this suite."
"You're in my manor!" Poch watched angrily as the svelte security agent in silver tunic turned her back on him and returned to her station at the head of the winding staircase. "You've taken the best chambers for yourself. You've brought in your own guards, these—these seductive glamour devils. And you have the audacity to summon me, the margrave, to you as if I were your abject servant. Scarn, you go too far."
"Wait, margrave." Overy Scarn smiled benignly at him. "Make no stern judgment of me until you see the necessity for all that I have done. None of this is meant to diminish your person—but rather to protect your station and offer you secret honor. Come."
Poch straightened his amulet-vest and entered the large suite with its array of tall windows. He squinted against morning light pouring from the bay casements. Chandelier prisms in long loops dangled from the center of the raftered ceiling to the sea-nymph moldings of the corners, catching daylight in radiant shards of rainbow. He reached to his vest for his cowl, to shroud his wincing eyes from the glare, and Overy Scarn stopped him with a gentle touch.
Octoberland (The Dominions of Irth Book 3) Page 12
