Asman didn’t like where this was going. Why were they keeping track of who knew about their stock? What was it that made the blackweed so special to the humans? Why did they want so much of it? Why were they willing to go to such lengths to hide what they were doing?
“We’ve managed to keep our activities quiet, raiding the smaller bugbear settlements. You know what they say, ‘Corpses don’t talk.’”
A twisted smile stretched across his face.
Fear crept up Asman’s spine. There was something wrong with this human, something beyond the cruelty that Asman had come to expect. He could feel something unsettling rolling off the Vicar like waves crashing against the bow of a ship during a storm.
“Now, we know we’ve been neglecting our duties to you as host, but our schedule has opened up recently and we can now minister to you as we should have since you entered our care.
And, like any good host, we’d like to hear your story,” he continued. “Please, tell us everything about yourself.”
Asman frowned. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”
The Vicar laughed. “Oh, bugbear, but you do. You just don’t know what words you’ll be using, that’s all. But soon, you will be saying things you never knew would come out of your mouth!”
Still chuckling, the Vicar motioned for the jailer to bring in a smoldering brazier. Sticking out from the glowing metal basin was a simple iron rod, its end sunk deep in the red-hot coals.
“So, please dear guest, tell us your story,” he said, reaching for the glowing poker.
21
Gansel stood alone in the center of the Slave Market. Why had she come here? Mama always told her to stay away, but now she was here and she couldn’t remember why she had come. Where was everyone? The streets were empty. Was she really alone here?
She felt someone out there watching her and she knew she wasn’t.
Turning in a slow circle, she expected to see slaves led down the streets to the auction blocks. Elves, fair-haired sailors of Saagardell, and goblins were the usual commodity. But at the end of her revolution, she now faced platforms all full of humans dressed in the muted tones of Eldervost garb. She looked at their faces and recognized people she knew from the city. But their eyes were wrong, vacant and glowing with lavender light.
These were the same people who had mocked and shamed her and her mother for years. The same humans that threw dirty laundry out the window for her to catch and humiliated her if she let a pair of their soiled knickers slip through her grasp. She scowled at them without pity. Then the crowd on the platform opened up and he stepped out, Warden Wulfgust.
He looked down on her and sneered. To no one in particular, he said, “Does anyone actually believe her? That humans are so flawed and weak that we need to rely on these creatures?” he waved his hand in disgust towards a figure standing in the center of the platform. Tymuld, alone, afraid.
Leering at her, he snarled, “You taint us with your heresy! You have abandoned your mother and your friends to our whims!”
She shook her head no and tried to speak, but she was mute. It wasn’t her fault! She wanted to scream. But in her heart thumped its agreement with the old man.
She felt a chill creep along her skin. The inside of the temple was colder even than outside in the Slave Market. Polished flagstones beneath her bare feet sent the chill up her spine.
She looked down at her feet, wondering where her boots were. Mortified, she crossed her arms over her nakedness. For some reason, she had been stripped bare and stood before the Primus and his camarilla of advisors. They sat upon the Temple dias with Warden Wulfgust at the Primus’ right hand, looking at Gansel and whispering in his master’s ear. Sharpe held the end of two leads that fastened around the necks of Warden Wulfgust and her mother.
Gansel tried to cry out, but her voice was still missing. Her mother only stood there, eyes vacant, searching, and glowing like every other human she saw in the Temple, pale violet orbs.
Everyone was staring at Gansel. Leering eyes burned into her. She felt ashamed at her nudity.
The Assembly began to laugh at her. Mocking her body.
There was a howl behind her. A crowd had gathered among the pews. Slowly, they shambled towards the Assembly, chanting and hissing a word. No, it was a name!
‘Saorsa! Saorsa! Saorsa!’
A lurching mass of bodies swelled up, towering up from behind the crowd. Thousands of dead elves, their limbs tumbling and tangling until they stretched and tore. Their skin turning black. Appendages elongating. Eyes erupting out of their skin. The monstrosity reached out and pulled down anyone they could reach, crawling over the crowd, swallowing them up with wet sounds of tearing flesh and the shuddering of bones breaking between ravening jaws. Muffled screams beneath the mass of bodies echoed through the hollow temple.
Gansel turned away, unable to watch the sight. Humiliation smothered her. She felt like she was drowning. Unable to breathe.
She looked up, away from the terror around her, gulping panicked breaths and saw the thing the mass hovering overhead where the temple’s roof had once been. It loomed over all, a writhing corpus of black tentacles filling the sky. She felt its pupilless glowing eyes find her and flash with orange hatred.
The temple shook and she fell to her knees. Tentacles, the width of a man’s body, stretching along the walls of the temple rose up and plunged into the flagstones before her.
She watched in amazement as they flung them aside with ease. They rocketed across the hall, knocking over the pews and votive tables.
Dirt and stone exposed beneath, the tentacle roots dug deeper, tearing the ground apart, ripping through the foundations. The stone walls began to collapse around her.
The roots congregated around the hole, digging faster, tearing away everything they could grasp. Then as one, they pulled the mouth of the hole wide as if they were simply opening a sack.
She could see the Assembly torture chamber below. Asman stood in it, looking up at her. She wanted to help but didn’t know how to reach him. Then, one of the roots pushed her from behind. She screamed and fell. She wanted to grab one of the roots. Anything to stop the fall, but her arms were frozen. The ground rushed up to meet her.
She woke in the darkness, her heart racing and cold. She tried to sit up but found that she was tangled in the bed sheets. As she unwound her limbs, she had to remind herself that it had only been a dream. Everything was fine.
Only a dream? She hoped. She could feel the shame and hatred cling to her mind like the sheen of sweat that coated her skin.
She got up and pulled aside the thick curtains to let in the wan light of dawn. She opened the windows to let fresher air inside. A wet breeze drifted into the room. Clouds hung over the city like gray cotton. It would rain soon. She hoped the weather would cool off the house.
Summer nights in the city were always horrible. The houses were so hot and stuffy that you wanted to keep your windows open, but biting insects and bad air from the marshes prevented that relief. On the worst nights, it felt like the very air was as exhausted from the day. That it couldn’t bother to move any further until it cooled off.
She went downstairs, her night shift clung to her clammy skin. It made her skin crawl and she shuddered. The memory of the dream haunted her. She needed to wake up.
Entering her kitchen, the memory of glowing eyes lingered in the back of her mind. Shame still draped her like cobwebs and she thought about the bugbear she’d been treating down in the temple catacombs.
She knew she’d never be free from this shame as long as he was captive. But what could she do about it? No one in the city would help her and those who might have no recollection of who she was.
She drifted back to the dream, had the Moira been trying to tell her something? The memory of Tymuld standing in the Slave Market stood out in her mind. She knew what she needed to do, but she hated the idea of barging into her friend’s life after being told to stay away. She didn’t want to face her or p
ut her at risk again. She had nowhere else to turn though.
She dressed in haste. Should she report to the warehouse today? Eyeing the stained apron she wore during the extractions, she realized that she couldn’t go back there again if she helped Asman. She felt conflicted, she’d be abandoning the only way she knew of to help restore her mother’s memory. But she couldn’t leave the bugbear to die at the Assembly’s hands.
She was about to head out but hesitated. She took the large seed from her apron pocket. It felt warm in her hand as if it were pleased with her decision.
✽✽✽
Sheets of warm rain poured into the empty streets of Port Myskatol as Earlok Keningston shuffled through the public room of Weitfam Tavern.
The tavern sat in an open yard down a narrow alley of Frogtown. Save for the tavern, most of the houses throughout the slum were narrow, two-story-high buildings fashioned from mud-brick and wood. But the Weitfam was one of the city's original structures and predated most of the slums by five hundred years.
Originally a human structure, the tavern had sat abandoned after a plague struck both the seafaring nations of Eldervost and Saagardell.
The plague decimated most of the world’s already meager human population and left many of the smaller human villages and towns barren. The surviving humans and their progeny were afraid of any building associated with the plague.
So, when Earlok Keningston and his daughter Tymuld arrived in Port Myskatol, he bought up the empty building at a very reasonable price. Fortunately, dwarves were immune to most human illness.
Earlok rolled the last keg in from the storage shed and into the larder. Once the barrel was in, he ran back to the door and kicked it shut before more rain sluiced in. The hinges screamed as the door slammed.
He kicked off his wet boots, thankful to have that chore out of the way. Now, he would quietly get back into bed before anyone woke.
“Watcha up to dad?” Tymuld asked groggily, coming downstairs, rubbing her eyes. “It’s raining again? I wish these windows opened, it would be nice to air out this place.”
She looked at Earlok’s muddy footprints going to and from the back door and scowled at him. “What are you doing going outside in this weather! Everything is filthy now and I’m the only one around here that cares enough to clean these floors!”
Her father waved her off. “It’s fine, girl. Stop your worrying! The customers won’t mind a bit of grit.” He smiled, but his daughter’s fiery stare melted the mirth from his face.
“It’s too early for this,” she sighed and went to the kitchen to start breakfast. Out of the pantry she carried smoked meats, cheese, and a handful of eggs. Placing the rough fixings on the kitchen’s prep table, she went to the coal box and scooped a bucket for the stove.
Once the coals were exposed and fresh fuel added to the firebox, she closed it back up, leaving a crack for the air to drift through.
Wiping her hands off on a wet rag, Tymuld peered out the back window across the courtyard that made up their small neighborhood. Her eyes scanned the yard, looking at the lights shining from various homes in the dark of the early morning rain.
She could see shadows milling about behind every lighted window. The Weslatts, Earsteks, Twaddles, and Treddles were all up, making breakfast and trying to keep the rains out.
She went back to the breakfast on the stove, plating up the eggs and buttering the toast. Putting the plates on a tray, she backed out through the swinging kitchen door announcing that the meal was ready.
She paused mid-sentence at the sight of her dad standing in the middle of the great room, looking nervously at the tavern's front doors. “You’ve got a visitor.”
Turning around, she scowled at the unexpected guest. Gansel, selfish as always stood a few muddy steps inside the open door, soaked to the bone and dripping all over the wood floors.
“More mess to clean up!” She put the tray on the bartop and her hands went to her hips. “What do you want anyway? I told you to leave us alone!”
The human girl looked like she was about to run away, which would be fine by Tymuld. After what had happened before to Tar’dur and the Underkeepers harassing people in Frogtown for weeks after, she never wanted to see Gansel again.
She crossed her arms and glared at her. Who did she think she was? Typical human, always going where they weren’t wanted.
Gansel squeezed her hands together. Tymuld saw that she was gripping something dark and round in one fist. A rock? She then took a shuddering breath and to Tymuld’s surprise, addressed her father, “Do you know of a bugbear that came to town recently?”
The dwarves stared at her in mute shock. Tymuld looked at her father, wondering how Gansel knew.
“Does this have something to do with the Underkeepers again?” she demanded. “By the Darkness, Ganny, what are you bringing down on our heads this time?”
“Quiet child!” her father cut her off. He looked down, brought peaked fingers to his lips, lost in thought for a moment. Squinting back up at the human, he said quietly, “Now, Miss Alterblum, I need you to tell me what’s going on.”
Gansel’s eyes lit up, not with relief, but with worry. There was a heaviness in her voice as she responded, “So you do know Asman? I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been alone and on my own for months now. I can’t trust anyone in town. I’m too afraid that if I say anything that it will get back to Warden Wulfgust and then…”
Her voice cracked and tears flowed down her round cheeks. She continued to grip the dark round object in her right hand and covered her face, sobbing, “And then they’d do something even worse to Mama!”
Earlok stepped towards Gansel and put a calloused hand on her shoulder. “Calm down girl, please tell me what’s happening. One thing at a time, tell me what you know of Asman.”
Tymuld resented the care that her father was showing, he should know better than that. The humans in Port Myskatol had never been kind to anyone in Frogtown, despite whatever overtures of trust and trade that their Duke had offered over the years. They never accepted either dwarves or goblins living near their city, always making it clear that she and “her kind” were barely tolerated.
“The Assembly, they’re doing horrible things to him, they think he knows something and they’ve got him down under the Temple!” Gansel explained.
“Why? How do you know what they are doing there? I thought you were at some academy?” Tymuld interrupted. What was she getting at here?
“I was! At least, for a while, at first. But it all went wrong, they took me away, the Assembly wanted me because I’m immune to the effects of,” she hesitated, “something they’re making.”
The puzzled look on Tymuld’s face made Gansel continue, “I’m not sure what it's for, they call it ‘The Treatment.’ They’re making it from dead elves. From their blood. It makes people forget because supposedly, it makes elves invisible or something.”
Comprehension dawned on Earlok’s face. Tymuld walked over to where they stood. “What is it pa? Do you know what she’s talking about?”
He scratched the back of his head, then ran his hand over his face. “Maybe. It sounds like something I’d heard about back during the last Niraana war. Back before I met your ma. There were rumors that there was something strange about the elves. That they could disappear at will. The chaplains said it was because of something in their blood.”
He shook himself to clear his head of the memory, then looked at his daughter. “I’m not sure if that has anything to do with this, but it rings familiar.”
Looking back at Gansel, he asked, “What does all this have to do with your mother, child?”
“I don’t know!” she cried, her breath growing erratic, “All I know is somehow they’ve made everyone who ever knew me or my family forget that I even existed! Even Mama doesn’t know who I am! I’ve tried to talk to her and she threw things at me, chased me out the house, I’m a total stranger to her!”
She turned and leaned against t
he wall burying her face into her arm. Tymuld watched as her back convulsed with sobs. But her heart was hard. All she could think of was what the Underkeepers had done to Tar’dur just for talking to the human girl. His face was black and brown from the beating. How he had to have his jaw bound for a month while his hollow bones knitted back together. How he wasted away, unable to eat proper food, unable to open his mouth to even talk.
No, the girl’s tears meant nothing compared to that. All she had was venom in her heart for Gansel, “Why should we help you? You’re just another selfish human that craves chaos and destruction. All you’ve ever done is bring pain to the people around here! Your mother is in danger? You're on your own? Fine! You deserve it! You’re reaping what you’ve sown as far as I’m concerned!”
“Tymuld!” her father hissed, attempting to scold her. But she was too incensed to hold back.
“But what about the bugbear?” Gansel implored. “What can be done?”
“His name is Asman, human! Why don’t you go back to wherever you’ve been hiding and leave him be! You’ll only make it worse for him!” Tymuld snapped at her.
Gansel looked as if her heart were pierced. Tymuld felt embarrassed that she had lost control like this. She was about to apologize for her outburst, but Gansel turned and ran out the door.
Tymuld huffed to herself, wretched humans! She looked over at her father. The cloud of disappointment on his face immediately cooled her temper. “What?”
“Daughter, I’ve never wanted to be one what told you who you should or shouldn’t befriend and there’s no love lost between me or any human, but don’t you think you were a bit harsh?” he reprimanded. “Friends are hard to come by in life, dwarf or otherwise.”
The Necrosopher’s Apprentice Page 24
