by John Shirley
She arrived home, clutching the baby boy. She fed him, and when she went to sleep at night she did so with her arms wrapped around the little foundling.
Come morning the baby cried again, and this time it attracted not predators, but other githzerai, neighbors who knew that Charybole had lost her infant the week before.
“This is a dangerous idea,” said Baryomis, her closest friend, after examining the infant. “You cannot bring a githyanki to live with us.”
“I could not leave it to be torn apart as my own baby was torn apart,” responded Charybole.
“Why not?” shot back Baryomis. “When Zat finds out, she will kill it anyway, or order it killed.”
“He has harmed no one,” said Charybole, “and I will not allow harm to come to him.”
“It is githyanki!” snapped Baryomis in frustration.
“He is helpless, and he needs me,” replied Charybole, holding the baby even closer to her.
It didn’t take long for word of the foundling to reach Zat. It seemed so unlikely for a githzerai to have anything to do with a githyanki, let alone adopt it, that she decided to see what was transpiring with her own eyes, so she made the pilgrimage out to the Witchlight Fens.
“Where is the aberration I have heard about?” she demanded, and while Charybole inspired friendship among those who knew her, Zat inspired awe and even fear among them, and those were strong emotions, more than strong enough to overcome loyalty to the young githzerai. Finally Zat got her answer, sought out and confronted Charybole, and commanded her to bring forth the foundling.
“What will you do with him?” demanded Charybole.
“It is my sacred task to protect the well-being of the githzerai,” answered Zat. “If the babe is what I believe it to be, I will kill it, of course.”
“If you do,” replied Charybole with no show of fear, “I will kill you.”
“Githzerai do not speak thus to me,” said Zat.
“No one speaks thus to me about my child,” shot back Charybole.
“It is not your child,” insisted Zat.
“He is now.”
Zat frowned. “Do you not understand? We cannot allow a githyanki to live.”
“This is an infant,” protested Charybole. “If I raise him, he will grow up to be githzerai.”
“It will grow up to be githyanki, and this I cannot permit. The githyanki are the enemies of our blood.”
“All I know about his blood is that it is red,” said Charybole. “And if you spill it, then I will spill yours.”
Zat stared at her. “You will not let me see it?”
“I will not.”
“Nor slay it if it is indeed githyanki?”
“Nor slay it.”
“You have made your decision,” said Zat. “Now I must make mine.” And she turned and began walking back through the series of portals to the Elemental Chaos and the genasi-ruled city of Threshold, where Zat held court.
Charybole saw the way the others looked at her and the infant, and she moved farther into the Witchlight Fens. She carved a spear for herself, and was never without it. She didn’t know how Zat planned to strike at her adopted child, but there was never any doubt in her mind that sooner or later, probably when she least expected it, Zat or her agents would strike.
Two months passed peacefully, then three, then four. Each day she carried the infant out into the fresh air, each day she fed and cleaned him, and each day they bonded more and more closely. She named him Malargoten after a cousin who’d died fighting a mind flayer, and she lavished all the love and attention upon him that would have gone to her own child had she lived.
And when she had kept the foundling for six months, and she no longer saw horrors and potential death in every shadow, she was visited by just the kind of horror she had once anticipated.
She was sitting on the ground with Malargoten beside her, who was learning to crawl, when she heard the unholy high-pitched screech. She reached out, placed a restraining hand on Malargoten, picked up her spear with her other hand, and looked for the source of the sound—and found it not twenty feet away from her. The source of the cry was a bebilith, a huge, spiderlike creature straight from the Abyss, or perhaps some deranged fiend’s nightmare, staring at the foundling with hate-filled red eyes. She knew instantly that it had come to do Zat’s bidding, for there was no other reason for it to leave its demon-haunted domain.
She was frightened, for a bebilith, taller than the surrounding trees, is a terrifying thing to behold, but she got to her feet and stood between the spider and Malargoten, spear in hand, ready to defend the infant to the death.
And it will be to your death, a voice inside her head seemed to say.
“There are worse things than death,” she replied with more conviction than she felt, and she planted her feet, ready to meet the bebilith’s charge.
But it didn’t charge. It seemed to know that she held a formidable weapon in her hand … and it was not there for her, but for the infant.
It began slowly circling to her left. She pivoted, always facing it. It moved to the right. She responded.
It charged directly at her, hissing and shrieking, only to stop just beyond the reach of her spear point. She glanced down to make sure Malargoten hadn’t crawled in any direction, and kept her spear at the ready.
The bebilith feinted twice more with pincerlike appendages, and she knew it was studying her, analyzing her responses with more brainpower than any spider should possess. She, too, feinted an attack, then realized she’d made a mistake, for she’d shown the bebilith she was unwilling to move even a few feet away from the infant.
The bebilith approached once more, stopped when it was perhaps seven feet distant, took a quick step to the left, and when she turned to keep her weapon pointed at it, it spat out a jet of sizzling fluid, part fire, part web, that just missed hitting Malargoten.
“What was that?” muttered Charybole.
You have heard of the ties that bind? said the voice in her head, a voice she knew belonged to Zat, though it sounded nothing like her. This is the glue that binds. Once it touches the githyanki, once it binds its hands together, binds it to the rock-hard surface of the ground, nothing will ever unbind it—and it will burn.
Charybole knew she couldn’t wait any longer, couldn’t chance that noxious fluid touching the baby, and with a scream she raced toward the bebilith, prepared to trade her life for his. She didn’t bother to feint, didn’t attempt to protect herself, didn’t waste a single motion or a single second. The bebilith hissed in fury and turned its full attention to her, its razor-sharp pincers reaching out to her, its obscene mouth dripping with vile-smelling venom.
She awoke as Malargoten lay against her shoulder, sleeping contentedly. She gently moved him a few inches away, sat up gingerly, and tried to remember what had happened.
The bebilith was sprawled on the ground three feet away, her wooden spear protruding from its eye, its hairy limbs curled in death, its massive body covered by the horrible liquid that passed for its blood.
She examined her arms, legs, torso, and found no wounds. She was sore, as if she’d been hurled to the ground in the bebilith’s death throes, but beyond that she seemed very little the worse for wear.
Suddenly she remembered the webbing, and turned to examine Malargoten, but he was free of it.
Of course, she thought with a sense of relief. You couldn’t have crawled over to me if you’d been hit with it.
She stood up, tested her limbs, and picked the infant up in her arms, holding him protectively, and turned her head toward distant Threshold.
“You have done your worst, Zat. My child and I are still alive, and your creature is dead. Let it end here.”
And a silent voice was carried to her on the wind that came from Threshold, a voice that said, It will end when the githyanki ends.
If Charybole was sure of anything, it was that Zat did not make empty threats. She didn’t know when the next attempt to kill Malargote
n would take place, but she didn’t waste any time before preparing for it. She created a bow, a quiver, and a large supply of arrows. Some she dipped in poison, some in other solutions to use against creatures that were immune to poison. She crafted a dagger and a battle-axe, and was never without them.
And one day, almost a year from when she had found Malargoten, a man appeared on the horizon—tall, tanned, heavily muscled, with a thick mane of wild black hair.
Humans didn’t walk the Witchlight Fens alone, and she knew he must have been sent by Zat. As he began walking toward her, she nocked an arrow on her bow, waited until he was a hundred yards distant, and loosed it, aiming it to hit the ground a few yards ahead of him.
“That’s far enough,” she said.
“You are Charybole?” he asked.
“I am.”
“I mean you no harm,” he said calmly. “My race and the githzerai share no animosities. We make no war upon one another. Put your weapon away.”
“Tell me why you have come, first,” said Charybole.
“I think you know,” he replied. “I have come for the githyanki.”
“Whatever the reward is,” she said, “it is not enough. Turn away or prepare to die.”
“Before you fire your arrow, may I ask a question?”
“One question only,” said Charybole. “And whatever it is, it will not soothe me into lowering my guard.”
“My question is simple,” said the man. “The githyanki are your enemies. Why do you risk your life defending one of them?”
Charybole leaned over, picked Malargoten up and held him above her head, and answered: “Does this look like an enemy?”
The man stared at the infant for a long breath, and finally shook his shaggy head.
“I have been misinformed,” he said. “I am as formidable an assassin as my race has produced. I have defeated sixty-three men in mortal combat. There is no one that I fear, no nightmare creature that I will not slay if the price is right.” He paused. “But I do not kill children, not even for gold. Go in peace, githzerai.”
And it was as if the heavens were rent asunder. A single voice screamed “NO!” louder than the thunder, and suddenly the man was surrounded by not three, not four, but six enormous, lobsterlike chuuls, denizens of fetid waters and murky cesspools, their huge pincers clicking open and shut as they approached him. He fought bravely, never took a backward step, but they methodically began tearing him to ribbons. When he was blood-soaked, one eye gone, a gaping hole where an ear had been, the chuuls stood back, and Zat’s voice said, “Now will you do my bidding?”
The man glared up at the sky with his one remaining eye and bellowed, “No!”—and the chuuls were on him again, and this time they didn’t relent until there was nothing left of him but a few white bones and a damp spot on the ground.
Charybole stood her ground, an arrow in her bow, five more clutched in the fingers of her left hand, one for each of the creatures that smelled as foul and loathsome as their dwelling place, but one by one the chuuls vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.
She put her arrows in a quiver, slipped her bow over her shoulder, and picked Malargoten up in her arms.
“It is no longer safe here,” she said as if the infant could understand her. “We must move every day, never sleep in the same place twice. I am sorry to force such a life upon you, but it is better than what Zat envisions, which is no life at all.”
And so saying, she began walking farther and farther away from Threshold.
You can walk as far as you want, said the voice inside her head, you can go to the heart of the Elemental Chaos, you can even descend to the demon-infested Abyss. It makes no difference. Wherever you go, I will find you.
“Until he is bigger,” replied Charybole aloud. “Then perhaps we will find you.”
But there was no response.
They remained in hiding for four years. Which is not to say that they found one secure place and remained there. Sooner or later Zat sniffed them out and sent her minions. Once it was a githzerai assassin, once another human assassin. Once it was a trio of half-fey, half-insect banshraes, once it was a bear, the most recent time it was a devil-spawned cambion, human in appearance but not in blood or powers, brandishing his hellsword.
Each time it seemed certain that this was the end for young Malargoten—and for Charybole, if she had the temerity to stand between the predators and their chosen prey, and of course she always did—but somehow, when the battle was done and the dust had cleared, it was the githzerai and the foundling who emerged alive, and their truly awesome foes who lay dead upon the ground.
“I do not understand it!” said Zat in tones of cold fury. “She is just a githzerai female.”
None of her servants or sycophants had the courage to point out that Zat herself was “just a githzerai female.”
“I have been trying to slay the githyanki foundling for almost five years,” she continued. “Every single assassin and every single creature I have sent should have been able to accomplish its task. What is it about this Charybole? There is nothing in her childhood, nothing in her past, to imply that she should be able to withstand such assaults. Nothing! So how does she do it? Who has trained her to slay our greatest assassins, our most frightening creatures, with nothing but the primitive weapons she has created herself? Not only that, but she defeats them even when I send them in teams, even as she is protecting the githyanki child! How is it possible?”
There were no answers, of course, because no one knew how it was possible.
Zat sat perfectly still, staring into space, for five minutes, then ten more, then another twenty, until her retainers thought she had gone into some kind of trance, or perhaps even turned comatose. Just before they considered calling the wizards to see if they could bring her back to the here and now, Zat stood up.
“I had not wanted to take this measure,” she said coldly, “but I will not be thwarted again!”
Charybole sensed it before she could hear it, and she could hear it before she could see it.
They had found a cave that was free of all other life forms; even bats seemed uninterested in it. It had been a hard trek and a long day, and the exhausted Malargoten lay asleep deep in the cave, free from prying eyes, and safe from whatever was approaching.
Charybole sat on the ground, her weapons laid out before her: a dagger, a sword, an axe, a spear, a bow, and twenty-seven arrows, half of them dipped in poison, half in things that were worse than poison. She was every bit as mystified as Zat that she had emerged victorious from her various conflicts. Still, whatever was approaching, she would not flinch, would not give an inch. She was ready for it, ready to once again defend the foundling who had captured her sympathy and her heart.
She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it had to be big, bigger than anything else she had yet faced, because its approach actually made the ground shake. The wind changed, and suddenly she could smell it. It smelled like nothing she had ever encountered before.
The ground trembled even more, the acrid odor became stronger still, and suddenly it was standing there in front of her, its single angry eye glaring balefully at her. It was an astral dreadnought, Zat’s ultimate weapon, a gargantuan creature whose gaping mouth was filled top and bottom with razor-sharp teeth. Its single eye was black, its tongue a dark blue, its armored scales reddish brown. Its strong arms ended in pincered claws that looked as though they had evolved for the sole purpose of holding githzerai helpless in them. Its lower body was serpentine, but it moved with speed and grace, and even the lack of legs did not stop the ground from vibrating as it undulated across it. Charybole stared at the dreadnought’s body, trying to see how huge it truly was, but there was no end to it; its tail seemed to extend to infinity.
“And you are from the Astral Plane,” whispered Charybole. “How did my race ever survive there next to creatures like you?”
She shot six, seven, eight arrows into it. It paid them no mind. She hurled her spear
at it. It buried itself three feet into the dreadnought’s chest. The dreadnought ignored it. She fired two more arrows. They had no effect.
Somehow she knew this wouldn’t be like the other encounters. There was no way she could live through this. She wanted to check the cave, to see if Malargoten was awake yet, and if so to convince him to stay hidden, but she knew if she paid any attention at all to the cave’s entrance the dreadnought would know where the foundling was, and it was for the foundling that it had come.
She picked up her sword and her axe and edged to the right, hoping that the creature would follow her. Once she had moved away from the cave’s entrance, it paid her no further attention, and she quickly positioned herself between the dreadnought and the cave once again.
When it was within arm’s reach she buried the sword in its side. She knew from the arrows and the spear that she couldn’t kill it; her only hope was that she might somehow be able to cripple it. But though the sword plunged deep into the creature’s scales, it had no more effect than her other weapons. She swung her axe, but the dreadnought reached out its pincered claw, caught her head in it, and squeezed. It was over in a fraction of a second.
The dreadnought uttered a scream of triumph and cast her lifeless body aside. It couldn’t know it, of course, but that scream spelled its own doom, for it woke the sleeping foundling.
Malargoten walked to the cave’s entrance, briefly rubbing sleep from his eyes. He saw the lifeless body of his adoptive mother, then turned to face her slayer.
The dreadnought saw its prey and roared. The foundling showed no fear, and stepped out of the cave. The creature reached out a pincered claw to grab him.
