by Marin Landis
“I’m unconcerned with deviants and perverts, Havimelle. Direct me to Galtian and I will be eternally grateful.”
“Of course, Lord, please do not reveal where you heard his name. There is a sort of professional ‘rivalry’ between us and I would hate him to think I am sending people his way. Besides, I loathe the little insect, but each to their own as I’m fond of saying.”
Fond of hearing your own voice, I’d say, thought Melvekior, but smiled and neatly produced a gold piece from his dwindling supply. “For you, please just give me the address. And promise you will look after Janesca.” For all this annoying mannerisms, Melvekior found himself liking this obsequious little chap. He also sounded like he would be a good ally, though an expensive one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Galtian
“A worm. A toad. Galtian Morevem.” - Song sung by a little girl in a recurring dream of Melvekior’s.
Galtian Morevem was raised by his mother, in a squatter’s camp outside of Amaranth. She did what she could for him but growing up was difficult. Many of the inhabitants of the Marsh, as the camp was known, were criminals, destitutes, the sick and the mad.
Amaranth presented huge opportunity for anyone with the drive to take advantage of it. For everyone else it was either kill or be killed, sometimes literally. Every city needed whores and women without any other skills and without the looks to find a place in a city bordello plied their wares in the Marsh. As did criminals for hire of all kinds. Most of them highly incompetent.
Galtian’s mother was a military nurse, his father a Gnomish slave. Like many refugees in Amaranth they had escaped harsh conditions in Malann only to find that conditions were equally harsh in the Immortal City. In fact, the infrastructure of Amaranth was based on the big cities in the North. Politics, economics, social engineering; all mirrored the Malannite way. A government of the strong, a meritocracy that morphed into a plutocracy with the foresight to encourage social mobility so that corruption wouldn’t take hold. Discrimination on grounds of opinion, social status, lifestyle or circumstance of birth was unacceptable and while those born wealthy had a distinct advantage, pure nepotism was rare.
He himself had inherited his mother’s ill health and none of her kindness, his father’s intellect but lacked entirely his people’s desire for the greater good. Instead, losing his father at a very young age, he had spiraled on a downward path to crime and ultimately matricide.
As a teenager he had been involved with the local gangs, mostly as a sidekick type due to his small size and multiple deformities, but when his mother met her maker he was finally liberated and put his not inconsiderable brainpower to good use. Realizing that moral implications were nothing he stopped letting thoughts and what-ifs stand in his way. When he murdered his mother and got away with it he realized that there was no retribution that would strike him down, divine or man-made.
The morning after he had bludgeoned her brains out and dragged her all the way to the field of quicksand he knew was the final resting place of so many victims of unnatural death, nothing was any different. The universe did not care about him or what he did. He vowed then not to care about it or anyone that didn’t further his own ends.
Later that very morning, when Pest and Dagger came to visit, he took them to the field as well. Initially he’d wanted to show them that he was a man to be reckoned with. A man who could kill his own mother was the kind of man you didn’t fuck with. They didn’t seem that impressed. In fact Pest, his gang name of course; Galtian’s was ‘Insect’, laughed and said something about wasting a perfectly good whore and then they started making crude remarks about how they’d both used her in the past. Galtian realized that his new life may as well start without these two knuckleheads and stabbed Pest through the groin, kicking him into the bog. Dagger was a different proposition, quiet and deadly; his dagger was in his hand instantly. Galtian was unconcerned, he felt invincible.
“What you do that for, Insect?” he snarled advancing on the smaller boy.
“For the same reason I’m doing this,” he responded calmly and threw a handful of snuff into Dagger’s face.
Dagger screamed and stuck his blade straight through Galtian’s hand. It didn’t save him. The thirteen year old half-gnome stuck his own blade straight into the neck of his victim and pulled down with all his might, slicing Dagger from neck to belly. The throat wound was enough to drive all fight from the young man and he fell to his knees, made a gurgling sound, coughed up some blood and expired.
“That’s three in two days,” Galtian said aloud and giggled, wondering briefly if he had suddenly gone insane. He put it down to stress and pulled Dagger’s knife from his hand, ignoring the pain. He tumbled the twitching corpse into the quicksand where it sank from view quickly. For once thankful of being largely ignored, he managed to make it home without anyone questioning his bloodstained clothing or noticing the makeshift bandages around his hand.
His ruthlessness had served him well thereafter. Rising to lead the gang known as the Nabbers he remained a hands-on thief and killer. Until the day he met Finulia.
Finding it easy to sneak into the city due to his small size, he spent a lot of time around the area known as the Tryptych. This was his goal. This was where crime grew up. No petty thievery here, but mansions owned by master criminals, high class Inns and shops and a lack of city constabulary. Of course the Deniers still patrolled and no amount of bribery would sway a single one of them. So, not totally safe for the career criminal but certainly better than the rest of the city. Besides, anyone wealthy enough to own property in the Tryptych wouldn’t be doing their own dirty work. Alas for Galtian, he perceived the old prejudices extant in the Tryptych and he was often chased whether for his obvious gnomish heritage or his extreme ugliness. Or so he thought. Mostly it was the fact that he looked like a beggar. His clothes were unwashed and of poor quality, his remaining hair a mess and his manners non-existent.Were he, like his father, polite and immaculately dressed, he wouldn’t have attracted a second glance.
There was an abandoned factory at the top of Nocturne Close that served as a hideout for him during the day. A cul-de-sac that he had never seen anyone enter or leave, Nocturne Close was a mystery he was determined to solve. The three houses at the bottom were huge, old mansions that were inhabited, but he never saw any ingress or signs of life bar the lights that let him know that there were indeed people living in them. He had no business here, but he wanted to be part of this place, not specifically Nocturne Close, but the Tryptych. He wanted to belong somewhere respectable where his lowly background and poor start to life mattered not. He wouldn’t gain all of that through normal means, but that made no difference to Galtian.
With enough money and enough force, he could make them accept him. First though he needed to know what they did in this part of the three dark boroughs of the Tryptych.
After three days of watching and waiting he was about ready to give up. He knew that giving up was a mistake so he pushed through and continued to do nothing. Shortly after making that decision, he saw Finulia. She was a gaily dressed, red-headed woman walking uncomfortably up the cul-de-sac, from one of the houses, presumably. Her gait was odd and then he noticed how incredibly thin she was. Almost emaciated. Her clothes were of extremely fine quality so plainly she was not starving. The extreme thinness must be from choice.
He sat behind the grimy window and watched her approach. That was a woman that he could happily spend time with. Angular and shapeless turned him on and he didn’t know why. All the whores he knew were either rounded or simply obese. Was this an expensive whore? For someone with peculiar tastes. As peculiar as him?
How startled he was when she knocked on the window. He could see her lips move but couldn’t hear what she was saying. He froze and held his breath. She knocked again and this time he could hear her as clearly as if she was in the room next to him.
“I know you’re in there and now I know you can hear me, make yourself visible this i
nstant.”
He dithered for a few seconds, unsure whether to stay in the warehouse where he was safe or to obey her. Plainly she was using some kind of trickery to project her voice in here, so of what else was she capable? He knocked on the window himself to signal his obedience and walked the ten feet to the door, the lock of which he had picked almost four days ago. He opened it and stepped out into the sunshine. It was a warm day and the sky was cloudless and he honestly had no interest in the weather.
The woman was standing there looking at him and for a brief moment her head seemed enormous and her mouth yawning wide like a horrific vision, but then she was normal again. Or as normal as an incredibly pale, stick-thinwoman in a yellow dress could appear. When he got closer he noticed how severely her hair was cut, straight at the neck and the forehead, accentuating her bone structure. She looked almost inhuman, like one of those Elves that sometimes you’d see in the city, though they didn’t have this woman’s casual coldness.
Peering down her nose at Galtian, almost as though she knew his old gang name that nobody had used for years and still lived, she spoke. “Well?”
He felt like a naughty child, looking up at her. She was at least a foot taller than he, due to both his lack of stature and her weird tallness.
“I meant no harm, mistress. Simply put, I was looking.” Creepy though she might be and possessed of some parlor tricks, but he wasn’t to be trifled with.
“Should you have meant harm, you would at this moment, be feeding the worms in my tomato garden. What is it you require in this place, gnome? And speak truthfully, I know when you lie.” Her voice was elegant and devoid of any emotion. She was his type of woman, though he wouldn’t want her to know that.
There was little point in lying. This woman plainly belonged here but she wasn't sneering haughtily at him like every other resident he'd encountered. Quite the contrary, she was regarding him with a mixture of curiosity and kindness.
"Madam," he started, affecting manners as well as he could, "my purpose here is to gather information on the neighborhood. I have some business interests in this area and I need a base. This warehouse seems abandoned." He motioned within where there was nothing but broken furniture and dust. "It fits my requirement for location and it's been a handy place for me to scout out the local area."
"Half truths. So much better than lies, I always find." She didn't look angry, nor did she look pleased. "What have you determined then?
"That nothing much happens here. This road is deserted, yet there is money in evidence and activity within the homes at the bottom of the road. The graveyard opposite is busier than the street. It's ideal," he grinned conspiratorially.
"This warehouse belongs to me, as do the homes and the graveyard," she stated in such a matter of fact manner that he was a little shocked.
"Ahh," he felt like apologizing but he was damned if he was actually going to.
"However, you seem like an industrious little fellow. You can earn the warehouse."
"Earn the warehouse?" He was confused, he worked for little, taking or paying for what he wanted. Normally he would pull out a knife and threaten anyone expecting him to work, but he had the strong feeling that doing so would have been hazardous to his health.
"Yes, do you think I have need of your ill-gotten money? How else do you think you can appropriate this building? You could try to just annex it, I suppose, but then would awaken in a box, six feet beneath the sod." Again her facial expression did not change, she went from threatening to bargaining to pleasantries all with the same look about her.
"What must I do to earn it, Lady." He was shaken, his heart racing and all he wanted was to please her so she didn't carry out her threats. A voice inside him asked him what the hell he thought he was playing at, just stab the bitch up, but he couldn't bring himself to listen to it.
She nodded as though she too had heard that voice. "Those urchins that run for you, bring me one a month."
"What? How did you..." he stopped himself. Of course she knew. She knew he was in the building, she knew everything he thought, she was vicious and evil and he loved her. "Yes, Lady, I will do so."
"Yes, you will." She smiled at him then and it was as though he was seeing his first sunrise. "And for every one you bring me, I will tell you a secret."
He was very interested in learning secrets, he was very interested in acquiring the warehouse, but he was most interested in pleasing Finulia.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Finulia
“No man had ever bested me and I still don’t understand how he did. Mark my words, Accus, I’ll have him yet!” - Finulia complaining.
He took Scratch to her. The most annoying of children. Permanently snot-nosed, infested with fleas no matter how many chemical baths he took and how many times he was scrubbed. He also had spent the majority of the last three months in cells, being an incautious footpad.
The little bastard had caused him more than one sleepless night so he was glad to see the back of him. He pretended he had a special job for him and took him to the warehouse. One look at Finulia and he was entranced and went with her gladly.
When next Galtian saw her, he asked about the boy's fate and was ignored.
"Do you wish to learn the secret I have to tell you?" She said instead.
"Yes, Lady, I do," he'd been waiting for her to remember his payment. How long until he owned the building he did not know but it would be more than just the time it took to deliver a single boy.
They stood in the warehouse. Galtian had dragged in a chair and a couple of intimidating weapons for show. He had taken to entertaining unwilling informants here or putting the shits up lazy gang members. The club with nails hammered into it hung on the wall like a trophy, but Galtian made sure that he always positioned his chair beneath it. The size of it, along with the dried blood smeared up its length, lent an uneasy atmosphere to the large room.
She declined to sit, but motioned for him to do so, which he did.
"You should open the windows, it's disgusting in here. Ever since you started inviting your cronies in, the odor has become oppressive and revolting."
"I will, sorry, Lady," he acquiesced immediately and felt pathetic for it.
"The secret I am about to tell will make you complicit in its illegality. It will also bind you to me for all time."
He nodded eagerly. He wanted to get away from her but couldn't bring himself to say it. Part of him loved her, part hated her.
"As you know, my name is Finulia, but that is merely the first part of my name." She raised her arms grandly and histrionically. "My full title is Finulia Den-Ordra, Priestess of the Dark Mother of All."
"Wait! What?" He was horrified. Even he, petty crook and killer wanted nothing to do with that sect of horror. It all fit, how could he have been so blind. The graveyard, the lack of people, her awful loveliness. Necrolatry was an anathema to his people, his father's people. Funny how he never felt any kinship with the Gnomish people until that very second, but so ingrained was it into the racial mind that the very thought of working with such a person made him feel physically sick. Even so, he was smitten, of course unnaturally, he was self-aware enough to understand that even if he could do nothing about it. He stood and tried to run, but his legs felt like lead. He tried to move them and could not.
She smiled then. The sort of smile you only see on children who set fire to cats and who pinch babies just to make them cry. A malevolence so pure it appears almost beatific. A cold chill ran down his back and his bile rose.
"Once upon a time, Galtian, your people served the Mother well." She reached out and lightly touched his temples with her forefingers, her long cool hands brushing his cheek. An image of horror struck him. An underground chamber, a strange sigil painted in black upon the floor, the sound of chanting. A group of black robed figures entered, four of them, one of them carrying a bundle. This group was not chanting, in fact one of them was sobbing uncontrollably. The bundle was laid down and the sobbi
ng figure produced a blade from within its robes. Again and again the blade flashed as it plunged into the bundle; three four times and then a howl from the figure. A scream of such unearthly agony that Galtian felt himself seizing up with a reaction to flee and being unable to move."
She stepped back. His vision returned to normal and he slumped forward, breathing heavily and sweating.
"Do you want to see what happened next?" She asked, almost eagerly.
"No! I've seen enough. What do you want from me?" His voice was hoarse and his cheeks wet.
"I want you to embrace your history, your heritage, your legacy!" She was growing increasingly louder and fervent.
"What do you mean? I'm an orphan, I have no idea who those people are. I just want to go home." He sobbed and again when he realized he had wet himself.
"You are an orphan. You are the only one of your kind in Amaranth. Before you, your father, and we almost had him, but the coward took his own life. You though, Galtian, are not even brave enough for that. How ironic that the magic your mother used to hide you expired on her death. And you killed her yourself, how delicious." She laughed, actually laughed, and it was the faint tinkle of a wind chime caressed by the gentlest of breezes. "Rediscover yourself, Galtian. Remember Pest and Dagger. Remember how you disposed of them? They were dead weight, as is this irrational fear of the Dark Mother. Return to us, Galtian, come to our embrace and be made whole."
He blacked out then and awoke after dark, panicking at first but realizing he was alone. He couldn't be quite sure that the events of earlier weren't a dream, but the smell of urine on his breeches reminded him that it was quite real. He stood up, expecting the twinge of pain on his hip where one leg grew twisted, but it didn't come. He stood up. Something was different. There was no pain. He went to the door to find the lamp that he had placed just inside. He felt around for it, bumping his head more than once against the wall. Just woken up, be more careful, he thought to himself.
