by M. M. Perry
Kali pulled the amber stone from her pocket. As soon as the first shaft of sunlight struck it she felt warmth emanate from the stone, traveling through her hand and arm out into her body. It gleamed in the light, somehow doing more than just reflecting the light that struck it. The amplified rays of sunshine shot out of the stone as if they had a mind of their own, ricocheting off in random angles that danced through the trees around them more like wind than light.
“You may draw unwanted attention doing that,” Patch said nervously as a shaft of light shifted to bounce off his forehead and into the forest.
“Why does it make you nervous?” Kali asked putting the stone back into her pocket, “we seem to be pretty alone out here.”
“It is an object of power. Surely you can sense that, too. Until you know what it is and, more importantly, what it does… well, it doesn’t seem wise to be waving it around.”
Kali pondered for a moment and decided Patch was probably right.
“Makes sense. And to answer your original question, I don’t know the significance of this stone. I’m not even sure that it belongs to me. Shortly after I… woke up? Well, you know what I mean. Around the time I can first remember anything, I dropped it. I thought I lost it. I don’t know why but the thought of losing it really bothered me, even more than being naked, cold, and hungry. But when I woke up the next day, it was sitting next to me on the ground, out in the open, plain as day. I know it hadn’t been there, or anywhere nearby the night before. I’d travelled quite a distance from the place I last remembered having it. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think it followed me. That it wanted to be with me, if that’s possible for an inanimate object.”
“Maybe you just thought you had dropped it, but it was actually in your pocket the entire time, and simply rolled out while you were sleeping? From what you’ve told me, you were not exactly in a completely rational state for a few days,” Patch suggested helpfully, “isn’t it possible you just overlooked it and didn’t notice it until you woke, refreshed and calm?”
Kali shook her head.
“No. I had no clothes at that time. There was nowhere about my person that I might have had it secreted away and just not noticed. As preposterous as it sounds, that rock came to me.”
“Well,” Patch said, “it is not so preposterous as to be completely unbelievable. I have heard stories of powerful objects that do seem to have a will of their own, and some limited ability to act on their will. I’ve never actually seen one, but I’ve read and overheard enough accounts that lead me to believe they do exist. And there is a common thread in those stories. If you are unable to discard or otherwise leave one of these objects behind, then it certainly belongs to you. At least until you meet whatever magical requirements are necessary to untether it from yourself or, more often than not if the stories are true, to bind it to another. Usually such objects are bound up in a curse of some kind. And almost always horribly gruesome, deadly curses. The objects cannot be thrown away, since that would circumvent the entire point of the curse. They can only be given to someone who freely accepts them.”
Patch’s eyes widened with sudden inspiration.
“Wait! Maybe that’s why you can’t remember anything! What if the stone is a curse? You might even have accepted it unwittingly from some unscrupulous individual hoping to lift that same curse from themselves. The next thing you know, or in this case, don’t know, your memory is gone,” Patch said excitedly.
Kali looked down at her feet. Like Patch, she was barefoot. She hadn’t wanted to steal shoes from any of the villagers as, unlike clothes, most folk only had a single pair of shoes, so losing them would be a real loss. Her feet still hadn’t adjusted to their rough treatment, and she regretted being barefoot every time she stepped down on an irregularly shaped stone or patch of thorny vegetation. Patch, on the other hand, seemed quite at home in his bare feet. She had noticed no matter the terrain, he never winced in pain, as if his feet were made of something tougher than flesh.
“That could be,” she said as she thought, “but I wouldn’t want to put that theory to the test. I can tell you from experience that it is a terribly frightening thing to forget who you are. I would not pass that burden onto another simply to free myself. If I am indeed caught in some malevolent magic, there must be some other way to counter it.”
Patch tilted his head, considering the possibility, but didn’t offer his thoughts on the matter. Instead, he turned down the hill toward the city again. Its buildings lay just beyond the base of the hill, fringed with a narrow strip of woodland.
“Shall we head down then?” he asked.
“I guess so. You say it isn’t dangerous?”
“No,” Patch said shaking his head as he began to jog down the hill, “not so long as we don’t stay longer than three nights.”
Had Kali been less preoccupied with the thought that someone had possibly laid a powerful curse on her, she might have asked about Patch’s ominous and oblique answer. Instead, she followed after him, hurrying to catch up, wondering who in the world might be able to help her lift as powerful a spell as she seemed to be under.
Though the city lacked the sprawl and bustle of a metropolis, it was just large and established enough that no one would call it a village. Several multi-storied buildings glittered in the late afternoon sunlight below them, but Kali could not make out many details from so far off.
Kali found herself needing to up her pace from a jog to a flat out run to catch up with Patch. She allowed gravity to pull her down the hill as quickly as she dared while desperately trying to step gingerly around any obviously painful obstacles on the ground. Unfortunately she was not observant enough and cried out as a sharp stabbing pain shot through the sole of her right foot. She instinctively tried to pull it away from the injury, but her forward and downward momentum was too much for her to check completely and she began to stumble. Pain momentarily forgotten, she wheeled her arms about wildly to catch her balance while hopping between her feet in a mad dance to slow her descent. In the process she managed to jam whatever was lodged in her foot more deeply before she finally brought herself to a complete stop.
She sat down heavily and gingerly twisted her foot around so she could see the sole. What felt to her like a small branch, but in reality was actually just an unusually tough, gnarled twig covered in inch long, thick thorns, clung like a leech to the bottom of her foot. She pulled at it tentatively to see if she could dislodge it, and winced as pain shot out from several punctures. The thorns were shaped like fisherman’s barbs, and several of them were wedged full depth in Kali’s foot. Patch doubled back and looked down at Kali’s feet. When he saw the bloody mess she was tending too, he winced.
“I can’t walk on this,” she said testily. She was more than a bit upset at him. If Patch hadn’t been so eager to get down the hill she could have taken her time and wouldn’t be sitting on the ground, muttering curses under her breath.
“It will heal itself once we reach the city. I am sorry. I don’t often travel with people anymore. I forget that many are not as hardy as I am,” Patch said earnestly. “Lean on me. I am stronger than I look,” he said, offering her a hand.
Kali took Patch’s outstretched hand and pulled herself upright on her good foot, holding the injured one aloft. She put her arm around Patch’s shoulders. He was slightly shorter than her, so it was easier than she expected to use him as a living, breathing crutch. She took a tentative hop forward and found Patch quite steady under her weight.
She took another step, and Patch kept perfect pace with her. Kali, her focus now riveted to the ground, diligently scanning for anything that might threaten her uninjured foot, didn’t notice how quickly they were covering ground, nor the copse they’d entered until the first root came into view, nearly tripping her up. As she stumbled, her injured foot came down reflexively to steady her. She sucked a sharp breath in between her clenched teeth as she just managed to pull up short of putting her weight down on it.
“Wait,” Kali asked, “what do you mean it will heal itself in the city?”
She was finding that Patch could be frustratingly vague at times, and that not everything he said could be taken at face value. She’d assumed he meant it would heal in the city eventually, but now she remembered his admonition that they not remain in the city for longer than three days.
Before Patch could answer, they pushed through the last set of low-hanging branches that separated them from the city. The city wall stood before them, twenty feet tall at least, with the trees so close that many of their branches pressed up against the wall and, in some places, jutted over it onto the other side. The stretch of wall in front of her was painted in an abstract pattern of bright yellows and blues, making the city’s boundary stand out all the more against the greens and browns of the forest surrounding it.
Kali and Patch hobbled a short distance, weaving among the trees as they circled the city until they came to an entrance. The gate they came upon was as tall as the walls themselves, allowing entry for a wide gravel path that meandered off into the forest to the south. Kali would have expected a city this size with such a well maintained thoroughfare to be bustling with people coming and going but at the moment, it was completely deserted.
Kali felt her skin crawl with the prickling sensation of something being dangerously out of place. It took her conscious mind a moment to pinpoint what her animal instincts were already telling her—not only were there no citizens or visitors on the road, there was no one standing guard at the gate. Kali pulled Patch to a stop just outside the entrance.
“Why are there no guards?” Kali asked. “Bandits, wildlife, assorted undesirables … anyone could just walk right in. Why even have the walls at all, if the entrance is let unguarded? Something isn’t right here.”
“The god worshiped here protects the city and its people from such… undesirables,” Patch said. “Don’t worry. You’ve nothing to fear here. As long as we don’t stay too long, we’ll be fine.”
“You keep saying that,” Kali said as she finally acquiesced to the gentle pressure Patch was applying to her back to urge her forward. “Could you please just give me a straight answer for…”
Kali stopped talking abruptly. Just as they passed over the threshold of the city, she felt an overpowering tingling in her injured foot. The sensation was not completely unfamiliar, the same as if she’d been sitting on it wrong for too long and it was prickling with the sudden return of blood and feeling, only this sensation was far more intense. As quickly as it had begun, the sensation disappeared, the same moment the bramble that had been embedded deeply in her heel suddenly came free and fell to the ground. She leaned more heavily on Patch for support so she could reach down and twist her foot around. It had healed so completely that there wasn’t even a scab or scar to mark the injury.
She was still inspecting her now uninjured foot when she felt the same tingling sensation again, only this time at her throat. Before she could raise a hand to inspect it, a heaviness suddenly settled around her neck and the sensation subsided, leaving a cool weight behind. She lifted her fingers to her throat to find it snugly encircled with a thick ring of metal. She could not see what had her by the throat, but as she looked up to Patch questioningly, she saw that he had a golden necklace circling his neck, and guessed that hers was no different.
“Great,” she spat, “just what I need in my life. More magic.”
Patch’s collar was golden, and judging from the weight of her own choker, Kali reasoned it was solid gold through and through. The necklace deviated from being a perfect circle at her clavicles, dipping to accommodate three large, red gems. The small gap this created between the band and her throat was the only thing keeping the necklace from being too snug for her liking. She looked to Patch, expecting an explanation. Instead of offering one, he simply bobbed his head in gesture towards the woman approaching them from within the city. Kali, busy inspecting her unasked for jewelry until now, had failed to notice her.
“Hello,” she said cheerfully. “My name is Lauren. I can see that you are new to our beautiful city. You look as if you could use a freshening up and a nice meal. We’d be more than happy to accommodate you. If you would like to come with me?”
Kali scrutinized Lauren. She also bore a gold necklace, but hers lacked jewels and fit her much more like a collar than a necklace. Her clothes looked expensive and custom tailored to Kali, both form fitting and soft, and were festooned with intricate loops of gold. Her every finger was adorned with rings that blossomed with large jewels of every color. Even the sandals at her feet seemed to be lacquered with gold. Her skin was unbelievably smooth, her face unlined by the sun, her hands unmarred by even a single day’s labor. Lauren’s carefully curated beauty made Kali slightly self-conscious about her haggard appearance. She looked down at her hands expecting to see the crisscrossed scars that hinted at her less than gentle past only to find they had all disappeared. Her skin was every bit as unblemished as Lauren’s.
“By the gods!” Kali breathed.
As she stared at her hands, hands she once again could not recognize as her own, the terror she thought she had managed to overcome days before crept back in. It started as a sensation in the pit of her stomach, and then spread from there. The loss of this defining characteristic was too much for her. Her breathing started to come in short gasps. All the days in the woods not knowing anything about herself, Kali had looked to the scars as a kind of totem. They helped her ground herself when the terror threatened to teeter over the precipice into madness. They were a clear indication she had a past—that she hadn’t been born into the world fully formed and adult. Now that they were gone she felt as if she had lost the lone fragment of identity that she had been able reclaim.
As her breath came in too-short gasps and stars began to dot her vision, Kali felt a warm hand on her shoulder.
“They will come back when we leave,” Patch leaned in close and whispered reassuringly into her ear.
Kali could tell that the softly spoken words were delivered with honest concern. The panic began to fade as she saw the kindness in her traveling companion’s face. Before she could turn back to Lauren, the woman began cheerfully talking again, apparently oblivious to the distress that had nearly claimed Kali.
“Isn’t it wonderful? Wait until you discover all the blessings of Midassa,” Lauren said enthusiastically. “He will keep you young and beautiful for as long as you live. He will garb you in splendor and cover you in riches. You will want for nothing.”
“And in return,” Kali said, fingering the necklace that seemed much heavier now than it had when it had first materialized.
The only reply Lauren offered was a strange twinkle in her eye. She turned suddenly and called over her shoulder.
“This way. You can stay as long as you like. Whatever you need will be provided for you.”
They followed Lauren as she led them through the city streets, which Kali saw were actually made from gold bricks. She wondered how she’d failed to notice that before. She looked over at Patch and repeated the question that Lauren so blatantly ignored.
“In return for what?”
“You get seven years,” Patch said. “Fairly generous trade I suppose, for what you get. Seven years of carefree youthful splendor. And then, at the end of your span of seven, no matter how young or old, how fit or sickly you actually were when you entered, you die.”
“What, they take you to a sacrificial pit or something?” Kali asked. “Wouldn’t people just leave before their time is up?”
“You misunderstand. No one kills you. You just die. No matter where you are on Tanavia, you die. You are free to leave the city, though few choose to, because it won’t help. Once you’ve entered into the contract, your days are numbered,” Patch said.
Kali followed Lauren in silence for a while, taking in
the city. It was eerily quiet. There were no vendors hawking wares, no beggars pleading for alms, no children playing in the streets. There was no one about doing anything so far as Kali could tell, other than the three of them. As they passed the center of the city, she finally spied the first citizen: a lone figure standing unmoving before the ornate fountain that occupied most of the town square. How Lauren had seen them enter was a mystery to Kali, because it didn’t look as if anyone made a habit of walking about.
The houses that lined the streets were all monstrously large. Each one was covered in jeweled mosaics that broke only to allow room for high, arching windows. If they were occupied, Kali couldn’t tell. She saw no movement inside them.
“Is it nap time or something?” Kali asked Patch.
“No,” he said, “they just have few interests outside of their own pleasures. They have everything they need or want in their homes. They might have desired the company of others at one time, but living here changes people.”
Lauren turned from the street and approached a house that Kali found indiscernible from the rest. She opened the doors with a flourish and gestured for Kali and Patch to precede her inside. She smiled widely as they approached, but Kali noticed the smile did not reach her eyes. Lauren was simply going through the motions of hospitality.
Kali walked past her into an empty, open room that must serve as a foyer. She immediately felt the soft cushiony flooring underneath her tired bare feet. She looked down to see thick rugs covering much of the floor and was unsurprised to find that even here, inside the home, gold tiles peeked out from those few places not covered by rugs. The walls were covered in expensive tapestries and the ceilings were covered with jeweled mosaics that echoed those on the walls outside. It all struck Kali as entirely too lavish for a guest house.
