Looking down at the now excavated naked body, she saw for the first time the remarkable differences of an elf's form. The grassy green hair faded yellow in parts from the snow. The smooth, neuter chest and crotch. There wasn't even a navel!
She sniffed the corpse and was taken aback.
"It smells more like old vegetables in a root cellar than something dead."
Sharpe cleared his throat, startling Gansel. She was so lost in thought, she hadn't even realized where she was walking and had stepped right in front of him!
She spun around and looked up. "Excuse me, Primus!" Had she been speaking aloud as she pondered?!
The smirk returned to his face. "What were you saying about this dead thing?"
She swallowed, her throat dry. "This elf has to have been here for months, why doesn't it at least smell the slightest bit rotten?"
She knelt by the body and touched the skin of its spindly legs. It felt loose and rubbery. She pinched it and it remained in place. It had no elasticity. She worried that it might even come off if she pulled too hard.
"Why is its skin so loose? It's like a soggy mud onion," she said.
Warden Wulfgust sputtered out an objection, "Please Primus! This is unacceptable! No human, especially a child, should expose their self to a dead subhuman! Surely she will taint herself!"
Sharpe smiled at the warden, cold as the snow on which he stood. "You shall speak no further of this or your body will join the dead you've collected so far."
The warden's skin grew even paler, something that Gansel hadn't thought possible, and Sharpe returned his attention to her. "Tell me, girl, where do you think this," he motioned at the corpse, "creature came from?"
Where did it come from? How would she know? It wasn't likely an escaped slave. They weren't allowed to stay within the city walls because the pious Assembly members thought that their spirit would be tainted by the subhuman presence. No, slaves only worked in the fields to tend to the rice and wheat.
‘Come on,’ she puzzled, ‘why is it here, in Myskatol, dead in the streets?’
Then she saw them. Four small puncture wounds in its belly arranged like the corners of a rectangle. They were closed up, but she could tell they were once as big around as her little finger. She put her hand on its abdomen and pressed firmly. A trickle of thin white fluid seeped out and filled the air with the scent of fresh cut hay.
Her thoughts shrank to a whisper in her mind as she wondered aloud, "Did someone stab it?"
Suddenly, her skin burned cold. It started at her fingertips and soon enveloped her whole body. She felt as if it were the middle of Winterdark. She could feel herself sink into the snow. To hopefully find the comfort of sleep in this dark alley. She could feel her mind go blank and her very person disappear under the falling snowflakes.
She was walking down a hallway.
She saw a father and his three daughters walking down the hall together hand in hand.
The father had an injury and the only way he could speak to his children was through an Intermediary Construct the father created.
She could see that the father’s wound caused him to ignore his daughters and neglect his household.
She knew for some reason that he stayed locked in his chambers for days at a time.
From the state of the household, she could see that the servants had all left long ago, saying that the man was dead because he no longer showed his face.
She felt herself become one of the daughters and see through her eyes.
She gripped too tightly to her father’s hand, safe, familiar.
Her father's household was the only place she’d ever known.
For as far back as she could remember this place was the only world there was.
And for the longest time the only people there were herself, her sisters, her father, and the household servants.
Father would go away sometimes leaving them alone with the servants.
He’d be absent for weeks.
When he came back he was always very quiet, but happy to see his girls.
She asked her father where he went all the time, but instead of sharing his life, the man would distract her with stories of their life before.
Before they came to this house, eons ago.
It had been a life in a universe that existed before the house.
She did not understand her father’s stories, but she listened because she loved him and loved to hear about the things that they had done in that other world.
In the stories, it wasn’t the first time her father had created a world, there had been many others.
She was curious, so she asked him, “How do you make a world? What goes into the world? And what do you do with the world once it is made?”
Her father had no answer.
No matter how many times she questioned him, the old man remained silent.
Then, her father went away once more.
The girl didn’t know how long he had been gone.
Time seemed to stop when he was away.
The servants were no help either.
Whenever she inquired of them where her father had gone, they ignored her.
Then one day as the sisters were exploring the house, they found a large, painted door.
Her sisters dared her to open it.
She reached out a shaking hand to touch the peeling blue paint.
She looked back at her sisters, but they had disappeared, no doubt run off to watch from a distance or had forgotten her.
She looked down at the tarnished brass knob and she instinctively knew it wasn’t locked.
She knew she had to open this door, even though she was afraid.
She grasped the cold brass of the knob.
Gansel could feel an electric spark leap from its surface and enter her body. She felt her own skin burn cold once more and her vision returned to her eyes. Around her fingertips pooled the milky fluid that had trickled to where she still pressed against the flaccid skin.
She snatched her hands back and wiped her fingertips on her skirt, shocked. Her heart pounded in her chest, what was that? What happened to her? Who was that other girl?
Tiny purple lights floated around the corpse. Were those real? She stood up to shake the blood back into her cold fingers and rubbed her eyes.
When she looked back where the body lay, her mind kept telling her that there was only snow at her feet. But she could see the elf at the same time. It was as if she was forgetting what she... What was she looking at?
She turned her head to look at her mother who was rocking back and forth and staring into empty air, murmuring, “...the washing... water’s boiling… got to clean em… make em pure...”
"Mama? What's the matter?" she cried. Her mother’s eyes didn’t track to her, and suddenly she was frightened.
Gansel took a step towards her, but she a large hand dropped onto her shoulder. She turned her head to see Sharpe blinking and looking over at the warden. The old man crouched, scratching at the snow and muttering, the digger standing next to him was leaning heavily on his shovel, swaying.
"What's wrong with them?" she shrieked.
Sharpe jolted at her voice and shook himself. Panic crossed his face and he shoved Gansel towards the entrance of the alleyway shouting, "Get your mother out of the alley!"
She went to her mother and hurried her towards the corpse cart and the whispering onlookers, a buzzing beginning to fill her head. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the tall Assemblyman dragging the warden behind him and carrying the digger on his shoulder. She could tell that he was holding his breath because of his wide eyes and red face. He released his strained expression and began gasping for air as he approached the cart.
The crowd backed away hastily like sheep from a wolf, giving them space to get out of the alley. The air must have been different out there because Gansel coughed heavily and the tiny purple lights cleared from her vision as if she had been drifting asleep the whole time, on the edge of a dream. Her m
other and the two men the Primus has rescued blinked groggily in the sunlight.
Gansel held her mother and asked again, “What happened to them?”
Primus Sharpe stood back at the alleyway entrance now, staring at the dead body. He said, “Elven scent, it allows them to pass unseen. Looks like it continues to be effective even after death.”
Gansel didn’t understand what he was saying. His lip raised in disdain and he didn’t bother looking at her as he said, “A living elf can exude an odor that clouds the human mind, tricks it into not seeing them, but this is the first time I’ve seen it affect humans posthumously.”
As they waited for the others to recover, Primus Sharpe sent a man from the lingering crowd for the Underkeepers. When they arrived, one of them wore a metal tank strapped to his back and a strange leather mask that encased his whole head. The metal tank bore a pump on one side and a hose on the other with a long nozzle that the Underkeeper held like a crossbow. The Primus directed him to enter the alley.
The Underkeeper struck a brimstick upon his pants and lit the end of the nozzle. What looked like liquid fire dripped out the end. He marched towards the dead elf until he was twenty feet away from it. Aiming the nozzle at the corpse, he pumped the tank. The liquid fire shot out and covered the body. Once it was fully engulfed, he walked out and the diggers ran in to monitor the fire and keep it from spreading.
The Primus looked up as the soot and ashes of the burning elf rose up among the overlapping gables above the alley, “But what I find curious, is the fact that you were unaffected.”
4
Kneeling in the wet spring soil, Charbach made a small mound of dirt and stuck a claw in the top, leaving a hole big enough for a pinch of blackweed seed. He reached over to the leather pouch beside him and took a few out, dropping them into their new resting place. Closing the hole, he pushed the bag forward an arm’s length and edged up.
Before making the next hole, he stretched his back and his shoulders. It was light work, but slow going and repetitive. He had woken earlier than usual that morning with the cool air rolling in from the sea. It was the first day of planting and he wanted to make certain that everything was ready for the village laborers and their families. They had worked late into the evening the night before, getting wagons and water set up in the field for the feast that would follow their day’s work.
He looked over to where his wife, Nargol, and his children, Sunaloo and Bermol, were pit roasting a huge boar. Sunaloo and the other girls were stretching the fine wool felt over the grow tent’s thin wooden frames. When the adults were done planting, she would lead the children to cover the seed mounds, protecting them from any morning frost until the weather warmed.
Bermol was tending the fire while his mate organized the rest of the lunch. She moved from table to table, showing how the knives and platters were to be placed, encouraging the obedient and flicking the ears of the more rambunctious youngsters as needed.
Charbach felt a wave of pride as he looked around, once his father’s and now his thriving farm. It was his by rights, ever since he stepped into the trial arena as a boy and left as an adult, the blood of cobolds soaked into his fur. And it was his by the sweat of his brow because he worked every day as his father and grandfather had taught him, planting the sacred herb that brought peace and prosperity to all his people.
He looked down at his large hands. So long had he worked these fields, the skin around his claws was stained dark from the blackweed. In fact, he didn’t even need to imbibe anymore in order to receive its calming benefits; although he did chew it from time to time on the sacred days.
He didn’t consider himself a religious person and he didn’t believe the stories that the village shaman, Korbek, taught about his people. The stories of how bugbears received blackweed as a blessing from the First Born were just that, stories, as far as he was concerned. There was no denying that the herb was strong medicine. It had allowed his people to leave their violent ways behind them.
Thanks to the weed’s properties, his people now lived in harmony amongst themselves and with the rest of the races. But a mystic gift? He laughed to himself at the thought and smiled, showing his fangs.
Looking around him at everyone doing their part, he knew that when this harvest came in, it would be the biggest in village history and would keep them well stocked into the winter while also providing a tribute to bailuk warriors that protected their lands. Perhaps they might sell the surplus in Chainek or even Kazan-on-the-Water?
After a final stretch, he was returning to his work when he saw someone running up the road. Something was wrong, he could smell it in the air. In fact, everyone in the field could. Workers stood from their labor and began sniffing the breeze in unison.
Charbach looked over the tree-line towards his village and saw several thin columns of smoke drifting up into the early, turquoise-green morning sky. Fire! Now he could see the runner clearly, Korbek was bleeding! Charbach got up and ran to meet him by the fire pit. The old bugbear, not used to the exertion, stood panting with his hands on his knees.
Charbach brought him water as he asked, “What’s happening Korbek? What’s happening to the village?”
“Humans!” he gasped. “They are burning the village. Stealing the blackweed!”
Charbach was confused. Why would humans want their blackweed?
Then, from the edge of the fields, he heard screaming. Coming from the wood line were around thirty humans dressed in black and riding horseback.
As one, they rushed out, riding across the fields and chasing down the laborers, crushing skulls with maces, flails, and clubs as they charged past.
Time seemed to slow as Charbach stared at the horde. He didn’t understand, why where they here? In shock, he looked around him and saw his tribe being slaughtered. Parents were searching for their children. Men were trying, in vain, to wield any sort of weapon they could get their hands on; hoes, rakes, anything. His son called out his name, running towards where he stood.
Charbach watched in shock as a human rode out from behind one of the water carts.
A spiked ball hanging from a short chain dropped from the human’s hand.
He swung the weapon in a tight circle and spurred his horse forward.
Charbach, frozen in his confusion, watched in horror as his family saw the human too late. Bermol’s head exploded from the blow.
He charged with a roar and jumped on the horse’s back. He drove his claws into the rider’s side, knocking him off and causing the horse to fall.
Time snapped back and Charbach grabbed the rider by his hair, “Why are you doing this? Who sent you?”
The bugbear never heard his answer. As he leaned in to hear the crippled human’s reply, five more riders charged towards them. Before he could do anything, a horse charged by and there was a sharp blow to the side of his head.
5
The day was late and the patrol was heading into the dark, arboreal depths of the Pahale Van forest just west of Kazan. Across the pine boughs, monkeys followed the bugbear troop leaping and swinging in the upper stories of the pine canopy. Ear piercing shrieks rose up into the morning sky.
Pausing in the humid air, the bugbear patrol waited in the shadows for the monkeys to pass and the forest to grow silent before moving on.
Asman took out his water pouch and swallowed a long drink while watching a honey-fly circle his head. The heat of the day hung close to the forest floor and held the air still. It was a welcome respite from the chill of the mountain camp.
Watching the insect's arcing course, Asman snapped his hand out. The buzzing came from within his closed fist. Before it could bite his palm, Asman tossed the insect into his mouth. Sweet nectar flowed out as he crunched the insect’s abdomen between his teeth.
The bugbears were honoring the long-standing agreement with the forest elves to patrol their shared borders. Asman wondered if the elves actually held up their own end of the deal. This was his sixth patrol since being se
nt here to work off his honor debt and he had yet to see a single elf. Fine by him though. He needed to make nine more of his mandatory fine of twenty kills and then he could return home to his village and he didn’t want any elves to get in the way or claim his quarry.
He was hoping that the old saying his gramps used to tell him was true, ‘A debt paid is a debt forgotten.’
He hated in being an uyatluk, a shamed warrior. Ever since his uncle’s interference in the initiation arena a year ago, Asman had to live with the shame of not being a fully blooded bugbear. But, with any luck, today would be the day that they flushed out a skulk of cobold scroungers that their scouts had located.
Arriving at their rally point, their patrol leader, Sergeant Aijahna, signaled for everyone to halt.
Asman breathed in the forest's redolence. His sensitive bat-like nose drew in a stratum of smells. The nearest and most pungent wafted on top: sweat, worn leather, blade oil, and the musk of his comrades.
Mixed in the middle were strata of mud, loam, leaf rot, small animals, and hundreds of thousands of insects. Undermost was the smell they were hunting, the distinct pong of cobolds scavenging the area. But, there was something else. Blended with their stench was something Asman hadn't smelled before, a wet herbaceous scent, somewhat like fresh cut hay, yet altogether unfamiliar.
Asman thought for a moment and moved the blackweed wad around in his mouth. After a few chews, he spat out some of the dark brown juice.
The sergeant had caught the cobold scent as well and motioned for the squad to split up into four groups. The more experienced warriors paired off and disappeared into the woods.
Asman's patrol partner Kybek shared the same shame as Asman. Both failed their initiations and were here in the Pahale Van Forest to win back their honor, regain their status, and rejoin their tribes. To do so, they had to prove themselves in combat which, fortunately, was in no short supply. Cobold aggression kept them on the hunt.
The sun set while Asman and Kybek walked silently through the darkening foliage. Deep blue twilight crept through the tree canopy.
The Necrosopher’s Apprentice Page 4
