by A. Attanasio
"They're gone." Jyoti fit the amulets back into their shoulder sleeves and looked to where the captive dwarf lay squirming in the grass. She nudged it with her boot tip. "You—where have they taken our partners?"
The red eyespots stared impassively at her.
Jyoti's hands reached for her amulet-vest, intending to use Charm to learn what she wanted from the dwarf, and Broydo spoke up, "That won't do any good." He pushed himself to his feet and swung the serpent sword. "Let me have a try."
The dwarf jolted upright.
"Tell us what we want to know," Broydo demanded, pointing the bone sword at the captive's pudgy body.
Its slit mouth opened, and the cry that had been dwelling inside since its capture napped out in raspy dwarvish sobs.
Jyoti waved an amber wand around the narrow head of the dwarf, and it calmed to silence. "Where have you come from?"
A small voice flickered, "World's End."
Jyoti touched the wand to the dwarf's brow for reward, and ease visibly passed through the tense creature, loosening the tightness in its sloped shoulders. "And where are you going?"
"Earth."
"You are on Irth." Jyoti passed the wand before its eyespots. "Where on Irth? Which dominion?"
"No dominion."
With a perplexed tug at her ear, Jyoti stepped back. "You are hiding underground?"
"No." The dwarf squirmed, agitating for more Charm. "We are bound for Earth—on the…"
"Maggot, this is Irthl" Broydo shouted. His pent-up anger at himself for failing to save the others earlier propelled him forward in a stomping stride. "You have arrived!" He swung the sword to alarm the dwarf, and the sword tip grazed the padded flesh of its forearm. Its piercing cry sizzled almost instantly to silence.
With an acid hiss, the dwarf deflated to a writhing dragon maggot large as an elf's thigh. It squirmed behind its fallen breastplate to hide from the light of day.
Broydo gasped and swung toward Jyoti, who blinked away her surprise, then shrugged resignedly. She fit her power wand back into her vest. "We have to work on your sword technique, elf."
"Lady Jyoti—margravine—I—I am sorry. Again, I am sorry!" Broydo bent helplessly over the armor plates and leathern straps of the transformed warrior. "It was an accident. Oh, here, take this sword away from me. I know that Smiddy Thea would herself have it no other way."
Jyoti shot him a disgusted look and waved him off. The elf had lost their one hope of locating Ripcat and Dogbrick. She had no time for remorse or pity. She began to talk aloud as she moved briskly into the woods, Broydo anxiously following. "They may yet be alive, but they're nowhere near here. They must have passed through another charmway, maybe into another dominion or maybe back to the Well of Spiders and on to another world. Even though this dwarf said they were bound for Irth, we don't know. He might have lied. Though I doubt it. The Charm had softened him easily. They could well be here on Irth. Still, we can't know until we find out. And the only way I can think to find out is to use Dogbrick's seeker, to track Ripcat as he did in the Qaf. But he has the seeker. We have nothing. We have the sword. It can track dwarves. Not good enough. There are too many of them."
The sword felt heavy in Broydo's grasp, and he let its blade trail on the ground after him. He followed silently through the dense woods, pondering if he were cursed. He had brought doom to those who had helped him—the beastmarked men, before them the eldern gnome Ric, and even his own clan. Perhaps Tivel or his demon had cursed him.
After they wandered far among the forest cloisters, he began to fear that Tivel's curse had begun its dread work on his present companion. Jyoti appeared pale with rage. The elf feared her. Surely, this warrior woman had not killed him yet because that would have been too swift a retribution for the pain he had inflicted on her and everyone else.
As the enclaves of the woods darkened and Jyoti continued advancing down small lanes and byways among mammoth trees and ivy draperies, he finally mustered the voice to ask, "Where are we going?"
"To find a sibyl," she muttered just loud enough to be heard. Her vigorous advance through the underbrush disturbed a barred owl, and it broke away through the gloom with a loud thrash of its wings.
Broydo cringed and gazed at the shadowy upper storeys of the forest. Eye glints twinkled in those dark galleries, and bat-winged vipers darted through vine-looped spaces. "Sibyls are prophecy creatures, aren't they?"
"If we can find one, we may yet learn if Reece and Dogbrick are alive." She pulled away a curtain of shawl moss obstructing an alley between rows of titanic trees puddled with mist. At the alley's far end, ferns tasseled a hidden cove. There, night itself had curled up and lay unburdened by light.
Abruptly, two tiny sharp-eyes opened far back in that darkness and burned like serene flames.
"Come, Broydo," Jyoti commanded, and moved forward. "From her we may learn, too, if we can expect to stay alive."
Ripcat in Gabagalus
Above the chittering joy of the dwarves and the stomping and scuffling of their brisk march, Dogbrick's howls curled. By those howls, Ripcat knew his friend lived, and his fear of being immediately hacked to pieces dimmed enough for him to stop thrashing. He hung limply, suspended above the dwarves' squabby white bodies, one boot and two corners of his pants hooked on the tines of their hatchets.
His mind focused beyond wondering if a butchering floor lay ahead, and he noticed by the bioluminescent glow of the swarm that crawl holes riddled the slick rock walls. A honeycomb of vents had perforated this chamber.
The opportunity these vents presented whipped his blood faster, yet he did not tense his body. He dangled slackly, using the jouncing rhythms of the march to work his ankle free of the hooked boot. Then, with an abrupt full-body twist, he tore loose one pant leg, slit the other, and dropped to the cavern floor. His legs scissored among the frenzied dwarves, and he toppled two and snatched their hatchets.
Swatting and spinning, Ripcat sprang upright and cut a path to the perforated wall. His blades clanged off helmets and sliced cleanly through the small albino bodies. At the wall, he hurled the hatchets behind and somersaulted into a tunnel just large enough to admit him.
Darkness clapped around him. Dogbrick's howls and the clangor of the wounded and enraged dwarves wobbled louder and softer as if shunted by a stiff wind. When he rolled around to face the way he had entered, the shine of the throng had shrunk to a point of green fire. He scrambled back in that direction, intent on finding a way to free Dogbrick before the dwarves inflicted their anger on him.
With each step, the light at the far end of the tunnel fluttered like a wind-struck flame. Ripcat paused. He knew by how sounds and vision drifted that he stood at the juncture of a charmway. Whatever direction he moved would hurtle him thousands of leagues into another dominion. He remained perfectly still, knowing that, to get back to Dogbrick, he would have to advance with the precision of a high-wire walker.
He dared a step, and the spark-point whirled out of sight. A maritime gust brushed his pelt and filled his sinuses with the salty tang of tide pools. Webs of aqueous shadows billowed on the cave walls. Water lapped loudly and gulls cried wild with greed.
Ripcat followed the marine reflections and sounds around a curtain of rock and winced in the glare of the Abiding Star rising over a churning sea. Ocean froth streamed from pinnacles of rock thrusting through the waves. Cascades of kelp gleamed under the dawn sky.
Wearing one boot and shredded pants, he leaned in the mouth of the cavern, peering through streaming sheets of seawater. Below him, an immense land rose from under the night sea to bask another day beneath the Abiding Star. Coraline crags of ancient iron mountains ranged as far as he could see from his own high perch atop such a peak. Brine coursed in immense rivers over broad continental shelves slick with sea plants.
Even in far Saxar, Ripcat had heard tales of Gabagalus, an amphibious domain on the far side of Irth that sank each night beneath the waves after gathering Charm from the Abiding Star through
out the day. He recalled hearing next to nothing of the ocean kingdom's denizens other than that they populated a colony of an interplanetary Utopia wholly indifferent to the other dominions of Irth.
As the curtain of water thinned before the cave mouth, Ripcat stared with fascination at the blotched hues of Gabagalus. Slime covered everything, from mountain peaks to coastal cliffs steaming with cataracts.
The heat of the Abiding Star dried the motley of brown slime to buff and beige leathers. Fields of drying sea mold blistered and cracked, giving way to wort farms crisscrossed with roads, quilted terraces of lichen, and emerald cress paddies. Among the mountain ranges, glass towers and golden spires of cities flashed with morning light.
Ripcat stepped out of the charmway cave, and drying slime slicked underfoot. He stood on the ledge of a mountain summit that commanded a vista of highways and farms. A rocket pad occupied a bluff in the middle distance surrounded by green spines of eroded mountains. Derrick towers caged the silver body of a cargo rocket. Tiny with distance, winches loaded bales of wort and lichen onto the ship.
Closer to Ripcat, a hermit's shelter occupied an adjacent ledge of the pinnacle, and before this ramshackle lean-to a salamandrine man stood. Mists whispered out of the deep gorge that separated them. Even so, Ripcat could clearly distinguish the hairless, purple-skinned man's tinsel windings.
Caval had worn such devotional apparel in his attempt to lift his soul to the Abiding Star, and Ripcat had seen several such holy pilgrims wander into the Qaf, never to return. This man had glistening skin shining through the bindings of blue tinsel, and the hand that waved looked webbed.
"Stranger!" the hermit called. "Can you hear me over there? Who are you?"
"Is this Gabagalus?" Ripcat removed his one boot and stood with clawed toes curled on the rocky brink of the cave lip. Small lightnings twinkled in the dense morning haze far away, where the burn-off and spindrift augmented horizons of clouds.
The hermit nodded, bobbing his whole body up and down. "Who are you, stranger?"
"I am Ripcat of Saxar." In two quick strides, he lunged from the cave ledge to the hermit's terrace. "I came through that charmway."
The round speckled head of the hermit retracted in amazement at Ripcat's leap. "You are the first to come through that cave in all the time I have practiced here—more than eighteen thousand days."
"And you are?" Ripcat noted the gill slits behind the hermit's earholes.
"I am nobody. An eremite come to surrender my soul to the eternal glory of the Abiding Star." He spoke to the blistered ground. "I eat humble krill by night and spend my days entranced in Charm."
"Perhaps you can help me." Ripcat began tying off the shredded lengths of his pants to a thong. "I'm lost. This is my first time in Gabagalus, and I'm wondering if I should stay or return to the charmway. What do you suggest?"
Interest sparkled in the hermit's rectangular pupils. "Gabagalus is a good place to make a fortune. Do you want a fortune?"
"I've had fortunes." Ripcat finished securing the waistcloth and laid his problem open to the holy man. "I seek knowledge. I want to know about dwarves, the Shadow Eater, and Duppy Hob."
"Gabagalus is a good place for knowledge, Ripcat of Saxar. We are a society of science. Not like the crude dominions of Irth. Ha!" He gasped a laugh. "They try to tame a wilderness with Charm. While we have built an empire of science!"
"Can your science teach me about dwarves?" The beastmarked man faced the umber expanse of Gabagalus and watched the world waking: windmills unfurled, kites and chrome balloons soared aloft along thermal currents on their way to harvest Charm directly from the rays of the Abiding Star. Solar carriages crawled over highways, some trailing wagons of farm goods bound for the cities. "Tell me about dwarves and their creator, Duppy Hob."
"When I was somebody, I had a fortune." The hermit's round, chinless face smiled thinly and heavy lids lowered, remembering the pleasures of a former existence. "I can tell you how to make a fortune. But I don't know anything about dwarves." He slouched away dejectedly, returning to his crude stone hut.
"Well, if short ugly slugs in helmets come out of that cave, you stay hidden." Ripcat thought to ask for directions down the mountain, but the hermit had disappeared quickly, perhaps not wanting to expose himself long to the desiccating rays of day—or perhaps unhappy with mention of the infamous devil worshipper.
The way down proved treacherous. Misty winds buffeted him and obscured his footing. Twice he clung to overhangs with no toeholds at all, vapors clawing at him in the brisk sea wind. He had wished then he had stayed in the charmways. Clawholds inching slowly, he gradually made his way down the rock face to the upland meadows.
Salamandrine shepherds herding flocks of blue-wooled beasts paused in their labors to watch the beastmarked stranger. He saluted them as he descended the dewy slopes, and a cur pranced barking at his heels.
A gruesome yodeling cry lifted faces to the heights. At the peak where Ripcat had emerged from the charmway, dwarves packed tiny as motes. Yet distant as they were, Ripcat's keen sight identified the hermit's body impaled and convulsing on their hatchets' sharpened pikes.
In a dash, Ripcat bounded across the upland meadows. A meander of oyster-shell roadway wriggled across an expansive range of red wort. Behind him, the dwarves came tumbling like snowballs over the cliffsides and down the meadow slopes, hundreds strong.
A rocket pad hovered above misty gorges, too far away to reach. He needed a weapon. Or a shield. The flat land offered no sanctuary, and he jumped off the road, skidded down an embankment, and along the chute of a fuming spillway into tossing waters crashing among boulders.
Dwarves gathered along the titanic rocks of the embankment, nearly invisible in the roaring mists. They watched for Ripcat’s body to resurface bludgeoned by streambed boulders. But no body darkened the white foam.
Ripcat spun with the pouring water, and the heaving currents swept him along a rushing cascade and into the sea. His body buffeted, slapped by giant hands, he shot through thrashing foam.
A blaze of morning burst over him, and he sucked air and flopped to his back in the bobbing sea. The cliffs of Gabagalus carried balconies of farmland high above angry tusks of rock-spray.
As Ripcat backstroked away from the inbound current, drifting alone under the morning clouds, he thought back on all the events that had maneuvered him into this cold green water. His effort kept his mind off the possibility of sharks and razormouth eels.
Frustrated to touch the emptiness in his memory where Reece belonged, he tried to piece together the confusing tumult of events that had happened to him over the past few days.
His mind reeled. To center himself, he attempted to focus his attention on figuring out what manner of magic Reece possessed that some nameless and pregnant giantess at World's End would accuse him of poisoning her unborn child.
Afloat in the sea off the sea-smashed cliffs of Gabagalus, he had never heard Lara say anything about the Shadow Eater. She spoke only in his dreams and then of the trees she danced among and the power they gave so freely.
"What has become of Lara?" he asked the soaring clouds. He ruminated about his dreams and her place in them—the feral woman with her dance of feathery turnings, her wing of black hair. Grief and longing tainted him when he thought of her, and he wondered what Reece understood about her that he did not.
A tug at his foot snapped his forlorn reverie. He rolled over and observed in the clear water a smiling nymph of tilted eyebrows and silver eyes. Her blue fingers tangled with his blue fur and pulled him toward her.
He moved to swim away, and she grasped his arms firmly and tethered him to a strength his beating limbs could not defeat.
The nymph's fishtail torso rippled powerfully and thrust them through the water under the sparkling surface. Her violet lips sealed his and breathed cold air into his lungs.
His body brightened like a blown trumpet, and his vision sharpened. He saw several blue-tinted merm
aids floating beneath him and heard their singing. Darkness sparkled inside his head.
The mermaids slowly carried him deeper, to where light drowned in the murky shadows of a kelp forest. Among the maroon fronds, she breathed her chill breath into him again.
Time thickened. He peeked through the flickering keyways of the weeds to diamond glints of a glass city—blister domes, bubble canopies, transparent pods clustered on the submarine slopes of Gabagalus.
Curtains of kelp parted before a transparent airlock sealed with valves of baked red enamel. Blue hands spun the wheel hatch, and incandescent sprays of laughter veiled the smiling faces in tiny bubbles. A thump of a fishtail flipped him into the open hatchway, and the round portal swung shut behind.
Ripcat's breath exhausted itself as the water drained from the airlock in a frothy whirl, and he pushed gasping through the inner hatch. Dripping brine, he staggered into a spacious seaview chamber. The glass enclosure displayed the mermaids who had kidnapped him, swerving among themselves more supple than fish.
A small old man sat in a wire chair. Time dripped out of his eyes. His open mouth hung darker yet.
Sodden with seawater, Ripcat stepped toward the bald and shriveled man, who sat dressed in black tunic and green felt slippers, his square knee bones pressed together.
"Don't wet the carpet, beast!" an emaciated voice ordered from the shrunken body, and Ripcat stepped back onto the red tiles before the airlock. "Use the towels behind you. And do a good job of it. I don't like the stink of wet fur."
Ripcat found green towels stacked on wire shelves beside the airlock. He took one in each hand and began drying himself. "Who are you, old man?"
"I?" His eyes shone brilliant as porcelain in a face of sad crumpled skin. "Don't you know?" The old man stiffened with surprise, and a feeble hand trembled against his sunken chest. "I am Duppy Hob."
Prisoners of Zul
In a cavern damp with sea mist, Dogbrick sat shackled at wrists and ankles to the salt-bleached wall. He had pulled the length of his chains to their limit, and now he squatted in the mouth of the cave. From there, he could gaze out over the sea at the gray end of day. The pulsebeat of two green stars marked the first station of night.
