“...At first.”
“Where are you?” I ignore her words, soft and feminine. Nothing she has to say right now concerns me as much as not being able to see who’s saying it.
A double tap on my shoulder. I spin with blade at the ready. Still nothing.
Squinting. I finally catch a hint. A mirage-like ripple so close but so transparent that my head swims a second. Once my eyes adjust in the dim light, I can almost make out the hint of eyes, lips. What is she? A ghost? A water sprite? “I’m Lir,” I offer, hoping that’ll open the door for information.
“An aspirant,” she says. Her breath is cool on my face, damp like a rainy breeze. “A new cycle has begun?”
“A new cycle is ending.”
“But you’re the first I’ve seen this solstice... There were so many last time.” Her sing-song pitch drops on the last two words.
This doesn’t match up with what Freya and Meridiana told me about the temple. “I completed two rooms before reaching you.”
“Oh. I was the first of the six, once.”
“Six? You mean eight…”
“Eight!” Her image ripples. “There were only six of us. Cocidius has been working on his collection.” She makes a small gurgling sound. “Is it horrible to be relieved I’m no longer the first?”
“No.” Remembering Meridiana’s bitterness over it, I can empathize. Checking the astratempus, I can’t believe how much time has passed. “I’m on kind of a tight schedule; any ideas about how to get through here?”
“Well...I can try to guide you.”
“Try?”
“I should be completely truthful. Not a single aspirant has ever bested my realm. I’m not even sure what the point of my challenge is. I mean, we’re supposed to reach the Shrine of Nechtan, but that’s never happened.”
Oh boy. “What does happen?”
“They die! Somewhere around the submerged statue. Center island.”
“You sound almost...happy about that.”
“Relieved. By the time we get that far they’ve usually been shouting, swearing, and trying to use me as bait for the maras. I don’t know why, but they go mad.”
I hear the splash under her last word, spin, and decapitate the creature stalking out of the swamp.
“Once I hid under the surface until an aspirant perished, because he’d lost the will to do anything but chase me making animal sounds.”
“You let him die?”
I swear her transparent silhouette shrugs. “That’s a fair way of putting it.”
Maybe the challenge is surviving her.
“Well, my time is short. I’m happy to follow you since I have no damn idea where I’m going. We’ll improvise from there.”
She makes what might be a happy slooshing sound. “Off we go, then.”
“What do I call you?” A mara lurches out just off her shoulder. My blade sings through its sodden flesh before she’s answered.
“Oh! Oh. You’re fast!” She sounds surprised, maybe frightened, flickering when she turns to watch the mara dissipate.
“Impressed?”
“No. Worried.”
“Uh…”
“Finna. In mortal tongues I’m called Finna.”
That wasn’t the question I wanted her to answer.
“Jump from stone to stone. Don’t walk through the mire.” She passes by on a rush of cool air and skims a silver vee atop the swamp like a dragonfly.
In the time it takes for me to bend my knees on what’s probably a hopelessly long lunge, she’s disappeared. “Finna? Finna!”
A soft splash. “Yes, Lir.”
“Where did you go?”
“Ugh.” She huffs a sigh. “Can you see me?”
“No.” I jump to the next stone, flail like a crazed chicken for a second, and impossibly, stick the landing.
“Now can you see me?”
I squint, trying to pierce the mire. Nothing but oozing filth and misty darkness. “No.”
“Now?” She’s lost the hopeful note to her questions.
“Yes. A little.” In the mist and haze, the dim light, she’s invisible until almost an arm’s length away.
“Well, this was going better.”
“Was?” I ask, dividing another mara in half.
“You seemed faster and a little more...tenacious? But none of the others could see me, either.”
“Could you just stay close?”
“The mara don’t take notice of me, but their essence in the water weakens me, like an illness.”
“Aren’t they in the water with you now?”
“No, when you slaughter them. It releases the bitterness of their soul.”
“Huh. So they don’t attack you?”
“They don’t even seem to notice me. But they’ll notice you. They’ll-” She makes a bubbly, growling sound. “Just eat your guts out.”
“Uh…” We’re coming to these awkward intersections more and more.
“They can fashion their mouths into a straw and suck your entrails through their teeth. Ugh. It’s awful!”
“Finna!”
“Sorry!” Her ripple darts close and away again. “Anyway, you’ll be doing a lot of slaying, which means I can’t stay close. And you need to move quickly, so ideally I’d guide you from up ahead but…” She sighs. “No one ever moves quickly enough. I’m probably the worst of all the artifacts.”
“I think that’s not true. One of the artifacts is a bird that pecks aspirants’ eyes out.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Lir. I’m tempted to leave you to your fate.”
“No good?” My brother Tagan used to tease me like that all the time. It worked. On second thought, it made Esmanth cry so...bad move.
“Well,” I jump two more stones, rock, and catch myself. Not all the platforms are anchored in the bog. “Tell me about this place and maybe I can figure out what we’re supposed to do.”
“On the far side is the Shrine of Nechtan.”
Four more mara rise, halting her words. They surge upward, breaching the water with wet belches of muck. But they’re so slow, and four quick cuts of my blade end them.
“You were saying…?” I pant, chasing Finna.
“It sits in sunlight on a rise above the bauernmoor, up a long stone staircase.” When she’s more than a few feet away her voice comes from everywhere. I can see why it’d be impossible to follow by sound alone.
“So, not affected by the swamp.”
“Not that I can tell. I can’t go inside. It’s sealed until the aspirant reaches it. But the air is clear and the mara don’t go onto the rise.”
“Where do they come from?” Mara and alps aren’t natural creatures. They’re created. I didn’t read much about them when preparing for the temple, but I remember that much.
“Nechtan was a cambion.”
“Whoa! Those were terror stories we told at bedtime when I was a child.” Succubi and incubi having children was about as horrifying as it got in my child’s mind.
“Very real, here in Tiste. His mother was the succubus Gilea and his father the incubus sorcerer Hagge. They created him, and Hagge impregnated him into the human queen Falith. Falith knew what Nechtan was but chose to raise him with her husband Dormun.”
“Great! Cambion offspring. What could go wrong?”
The sound she makes is almost a giggle. “Seems like a blatantly poor move, doesn’t it?”
Six mara claw from the muck, shrieking like storm wind beneath an old door until cold steel sends them to the afterlife. Their smell...I breathe through my mouth a moment, and it’s not as bad, but the oily, thick taste of rotting meat and poison mushroom still hangs high in my throat.
Finna moves beyond their contamination and I lose sight of her entirely. I squint. My head pounds a little, and my blood pounds, feels thick in my flesh. The low light and haze kill me; I stop trying to see her.
“When Nechtan reached his sixteenth year, his true nature overwhelmed the
efforts of the priests and court magisters. Legend says some believed Gilea, with or without the assistance of Hagge, provoked the demon soul inside Nechtan. He murdered his father and had his mother burned in the temple courtyard.”
Cold sonofabitch.
“Then Nechtan learned that Gilea and Hagge created him for their own devious purposes, and that, because he’d been born of a woman, he would die a mortal death. Gilea deceived him by telling him he could avert this by lying with a mortal woman and devouring the child she bore.”
“But a cambion can’t bear children.”
“No. Even if he weren’t the product of two undead, most creatures of the demi-pantheon cannot conceive by or with mortals.”
“So he was doubly damned.”
“Yes, but he didn’t know. Nechtan took an older bride. A beauty of eighteen, a daughter of his most powerful lord. It was...grotesque. Nechtan inflicted himself on her day and night for-”
Finna catches herself and makes a disgusted sound. “When she failed to conceive, Gilea whispered that the girl was barren. Nechtan ought to dispose of her and choose a more fertile wife. Nechtan murdered his queen and dumped her here in the swamp. Along with a thousand others he took from his lords, his neighboring kingdoms, and even his commoners. And finally, from corners of the world where no one knew his horrors.”
“And discarded them all here.” I stop and take in the swamp, seeing it through different eyes. It dizzies me. My stomach convulses and the pounding in my head grows.
“When Nechtan discovered his parents’ deception, he de-souled Hagge by tricking him into lying with a Sluagh disguised as a woman. He brought Gilea to the edge of the Tiste - it was a clear lake then- and captivated her with her reflection, then drowned her. In revenge, she reanimated all the wives Nechtan had murdered, and they devoured his body, trapping his demon soul in the shrine.”
“How do you know the legend?”
“Nechtan’s temple sits on the edge of his city. There was a great library once, before the buildings crumbled and the pages blew away. No one cared for the books, when the people were gone.”
“Where did they go?”
She puffs, a sharp burst of air. “Gone. There were a few, at the beginning of my memory. And then, a single man was all that remained. His hair and beard were white, like his tunica. His body seemed old but his soul...I thought he was one of the ancients, or immortals.
“I would hide and watch him; the others were not so kind to strange creatures, thanks to Nechtan’s legacy. The man swept the streets, tended the books. He kept a rosebush outside the city temple, with beautiful pale purple blossoms. One day, he wasn’t there. I don’t think he left. I never saw his corpse. If the mara got him…” She hmm’s. “He never came down from the city. I have no idea.”
I don’t hear this last part. Something Finna said is stuck between my thoughts. “What color was the rose?”
“Purple,” she sighs softly. “A pale shade, like a precious stone. I would slip up after sunset when the air was still warm and inhale it. Absorb a little of its essence and keep it inside to savor all night.”
“Here…” I creep to the next stone, trying not to draw attention. “Come to me quick, before we make more friends.”
Her trail zips over the water in a line that somehow radiates curiosity.
This is madness. Sliding off my pack, I thrust in a hand. Rose extract.
A small cool glass shape strikes my palm.
I raise the bottle for her. “Does this look familiar?”
Her gasp sounds like rain drops on a breeze. “Where? How?”
“Could you drink it? Absorb it?” I have a hunch.
“I...have no idea! I can’t absorb anything in the swamp beyond moisture from the air. Nothing else has any benefit. But something from beyond the Tiste?” She ripples, uncertain.
“I could be totally wrong but-” I pull the small glass cork and pour it over her silhouette. It drips like water over glass and most of it pools on the stone.
Worth a shot. “Well, I guess I’ll never-”
A sweet oily musk of roses barely overlays the stench. And suddenly, feet. A small-toed pair of amethyst feet. Slender calves. Full hips and a tiny waist that blossoms to full tits and slender arms. I watch the ink stain her, stamp her into reality, marveling. Her face fits her voice perfectly, pert nose and full lips, big eyes that make her look innocent and a quirk to her brow that is anything but.
“Oh! Oh my-”
Finna looks down at herself, shaking her head. She palms her hips. “Look at these!” Her soft stomach. “And this!” Cups her breasts. “And these and- oh!” Finna’s tits are buoyant like Meridiana’s, but more pert. Not just well made but...made differently. Her nipples are little buds that quiver in the cool air, and I swallow, dry mouthed, at the realization she’s completely naked. And...still mostly transparent.
She sees me staring, laughs. “Oh, that’s…” She pokes a finger into each nipple. They disappear, melt into her body, and her breasts are smooth globes. She’s still naked but...it’s less lewd. Barely. Just barely.
She looks like a goddess carved from a jewel. But a jewel that flows, reforms, thick like slime. “You’re...like this? What are you?”
“What did you think I was?”
Like my brother’s silk-sheet ghost but less substantial. I know better than to say this. “Um, just less…” I hover a finger over her heart. Where her heart would be. She doesn’t have any organs – I’d be able to see them. My fingertip touches the damp surface of her skin. Her flesh? She doesn’t have skin. She quivers beneath my touch. Her flesh parts and my finger gloves inside her without warning. “Oh! Oh godsdammit. I’m sorry. Does that hurt?”
Finna laughs, and her body trembles in way that’s...tempting?
“You can stick it anywhere. It won’t bother me.”
Oh, great. I have to fight a lot of terrifying creatures and now I can’t focus on a damn thing. “What are you?”
“The mortals, when there were some, used to spit and chase me and call me slegge. Slime girl. But I’m a nymph. This was my lake before Nechtan; it created me with water and primordial essence and an ethereal soul.”
“That’s amaz-”
The swamp churns like it heaved a massive sigh. Detritus-strewn water raises and floods out in a rush that partly covers my stone.
“Oh no…” Finna shakes her head, spinning weightless on one toe to take in the change. “Not this again!” She darts out ahead, beyond a gnarled embankment of mangrove.
“What!”
“They’re coming! We should have kept moving!” I can see her now that she has pigment, her shape against the drab sunken wood. She points behind me.
“Stay away. I’ve got this!”
“No, I don’t think you do…”
The mara sprout like eager, evil seedlings, splashing from the water in every direction and dragging through the swamp.
“I’ve cut them down no problem.” Both blades are already in my hands.
“They just keep coming. It’s not strength; it’s numbers.”
It’s impossible to imagine these things, hideous as they are, ever overpowering me.
“You can cut them down, fight forever, but they keep coming,” warns Finna, rippling beyond the unholy congregation of creatures. “Just one; if just one gets you down, she’ll crush you as they pile onto you, suck you into the swamp.”
This is the horror of the mara, the scary story told over low fires to frighten children; the mara or alp came in the night and sat on your chest, growing heavier by the second until it had crushed the air from hungry lungs.
And then, they’re on me. My blades sing as I back away, trying to watch my feet and them all at once. They move slowly, lurch toward me, nightmare faces split by knife cut mouths. Every time my swords swing, I cut down more, sometimes two or three at once, but they’re relentless. More are rising as I cut down those in the first rank, and I know in that moment Finna is right; I can cut down n
ineteen, but the mara will make a sacrifice and swamp me to the ground for the twentieth to climb over me.
It’s getting hard to see them. The pain in my temples has become a drumbeat in the center of my skull that underscores each swing. My arms are already tired. I’m slowing, and my head feels wrong, foggy. For a flash I see blonde hair and red; ebony skin and gold. For a flash I feel like a murderer.
Shaking my head, I dance upon the stone.
And that’s when they almost take me. There’s one behind me, low, arms spread. I trip over it, fall heavily into the murk, and it’s on top of me. Pushing me down. Oh Gods, it’s so heavy.
I swing blindly, taking it through the head. It melts over me, dissipating into the swamp, and I lurch upward, spinning wildly.
The others are almost on me. If they’d been closer when I’d fallen, I’d be dead. I cut, my blades rending them. Their screams aren’t chilling; they’re soul-crushing.
“Finna, help! Help me!” My will thins, and my reason for fighting grows threadbare.
“I can’t! You know I can’t!” Her voice is distant; she’s been driven further by the green-gold ripple of essence in the water. But I can hear the tones, helplessness and a strong note of disappointment.
Arms slack, my blades fall to my sides. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
A figure hovers out in the open pool of the swamp, smoke-black and tall enough to blot out the sad, faint sunlight. Eroded wings, cold beautiful face like a mask.
Gilea. Deceiver. I reach back, thrust my hand into my pack as she glides forward, nightmare made real.
Flint and steel.
Nothing.
Dammit, Cocidius.
Matches.
Nothing.
Cimmerian tonic, then! Fuck.
Fragile glass jumps to my hand, crisp paper wrapping a tactile alarm bell that snaps me to.
I cut one last swath, charge forward and land on the mangrove, head-high and ivory, piled like a mountain of discarded bones. It bows, bounces. The gnarled lengths shift and cave into hollows made by slow decay. It’s not till after I throw the tonic and hear it shatter that I discover my foot is tangled. The mound goes up in an instant, hungry tongues of flame licking wet, dry, and moss covered indiscriminately. My boot tears a branch and my leg pulls free. I tumble, spring from the tensile roots and land on a small island, the first real land I’ve seen in the Tiste.
Temple of Cocidius - Book 2 Page 2
