by Marc Secchia
Asturbar turned slowly, scanning the idyllic spot. She had the most glorious view to the south, a perfect tunnel through the vegetation and teeming Islands all the way to the mountain-tipped horizon, which today seemed clearer than ever before, lacking the hazy, crystalline dust-like properties of the other directions that painted the most luminous suns-sets he had ever had the pleasure to observe, evening after Doldrums evening. How was it that barrenness created beauty? Perhaps it was just that the variegated blues of the foliage framed the view, that the white and purple and mauve mountain-scape seemed especially vivid. But … the crack. Of course. His fellow castaway would have a second bolt-hole which could perhaps be barred against mean mercenaries with – well, best be honest – less than praiseworthy agendas swilling about their minds.
The crack wound eighty feet back into the rock face; Asturbar was able to pass along its sandy floor only shifting through some parts in a sidelong shuffle, before he arrived at the cave entrance proper. Here was a space in which he could turn around, and a clear prickle of magic, like needles teasing the nerves of his questing hand.
Hmm. Advanced criminality?
The mystery, as the proverb claimed, grew teeth and fangs.
Chapter 6: What is Hidden
TWO MINUTES OF examination exhausted the bounds of Asturbar’s limited knowledge of ward lore. It left him convinced, however, that any attempt at forced entry would likely trigger lethal consequences. To his untutored perception, the wards were seamless and potent, feeling very much like House wards in their completeness and efficacy. Stalemate.
He cleared his throat. “Hello? Anyone at home?”
Silence.
“Well, I was just dropping by to give greeting, since we happen to be neighbours – indeed, the only neighbours within seven hundred leagues in any direction, give or take, ma’am. I thought we might … uh, get to know each other … a little?”
Stony silence.
Asturbar winced. Perfect use of the dull-as-slug-slime cliché there. What a winner.
“You don’t need to hide from me. I mean you no harm.” Ha. Was that a sceptical huff of breath? “I mean that sincerely. No ill intent here. I was just searching the Island because I thought I heard something large moving inside it, the other day, and so I thought, ma’am, when I stumbled across your dwelling – very pretty place you have, very pretty indeed – that I might offer my protection, or at least warning of the creature’s presence.”
The silence persisted like an unsociable granite boulder.
Now here was a sticky piece. By all Herimor custom, Asturbar could not introduce himself to an unmarried woman. It was unthinkable; social suicide. If she were married, she must make the first move to introduce herself. An unmarried status meant stricter rules still. Let the dance begin.
“Ma’am, will you –”
A volley of giggles split the slightly dank odour emanating from the cave. Her mirth quite stole his ability to speak. The timbre of her voice was husky, like the sound of file gently rasping over soft wood whilst smothered in the sweetest of honey, and undeniably youthful.
She said, “Don’t ma’am me, soldier.”
“I –”
“I am neither enfeebled, nor doddering about on my last legs. Not this week, anyways.”
Part of his brain was trying to place her accent, which was at once oddly familiar yet unlike any he had ever heard. The rest of him summarily turned into a pile of overheated, vigorously steaming mush. If ever it were possible to fall rainbows over the Isles at the first syllable of conversation … her voice was exotic, wondrous, and his difficulty in understanding her only multiplied the fascination. Her consonants seemed elongated and blurred in ways that played havoc with his senses, and the cadence of her speech like the burbling of an unfamiliar brook, plashing here and rushing there. He felt dizzy, all whirled about …
Get a grip, soldier!
Asturbar temporised by propping himself up against the gulley’s rock wall. He had to, or succumb to the embarrassing misbehaviour of his knees. Eventually, he responded, “Please, will you not receive a stranger at your door –”
“I will not.”
“Will you –”
“Go away.”
“Do you feel unsafe behind your wards?” he wheedled.
“You feel wards?” Asturbar cleared his throat uncomfortably. Was that uncommon? She probed, “You sense my magic?”
He countered, “You have magic? Is that why you’re here?”
“Aye. In a way. You?”
“I annoyed a Marshal. And – ahem – a powerful Dragon. Our House was recently taken over by Azhukazi the –”
“The Iolite Blue. I know him.” Self-consciously, the woman corrected, “I know of the Iolite Dragon. He destroyed your House?”
“He accepted our surrender. You may have heard of the Mistral Fires?”
“Yes.” One cold syllable, and Asturbar’s heart lurched. Curse it! “I see. You’re a mercenary?”
Clearly, she loathed mercenaries with a poorly disguised passion. Nonetheless, Asturbar pressed on. “I was the Infantry Commander of the Mistral Fires, ma’am.”
Not an ordinary, rapacious soldier. Just the leader of a crew her tone clearly dismissed as amoral.
“Is that why you’re roughly the size of a boulder?”
He gritted his teeth. So she had been spying on him! When? How? Or heard him coming, and hid to watch … “Aye. I’m Azingloriax by birth. Full blood.”
“ ‘Born in my boots, die in my boots,’ ” she quoted in a teasing lilt.
“The Ballad of the Forgotten Soldier. Yes, ma … uh …”
“Warrior from birth?”
“Aye, so I am, ma’am – urgh! I can’t call you – what can I call you? Look, I’m an honourable man with honourable intentions. Won’t you please come out?”
“An honourable deportee? Must have been a very honourable act that landed you here.”
Her half- mocking, half-judgmental tone had him reeling. Asturbar snapped, “Oh, I suppose you did something terribly honourable too! I’ve been here seven weeks and –”
“Seven years, for me.”
“What?” This time, he really did need the rock wall. A piece tore away in his fingers, Asturbar swore beneath his breath as he considered her fate. “You’ve been alone for seven years?”
“Just … talking to dragonets.”
The silence pooled between them like a deep, mysterious pond. He whispered, “I stole something from the Marshal.”
The person hidden in the darkness sighed. Where was her accent from? Why did he feel this itching of familiarity with it? “I was barely fifteen summers old when I earned my exile. Look, I’m sure you’re a very nice soldier. You’ve an honest, gravelly sort of voice and I’m sure you’ve been kind enough not to steal anything from my hut. But you need to go away now. You can’t be here.”
Plaintively, he said, “Why? I was hoping you might help me splint this broken finger.”
“I heard your shouts. Cleft-dragonets like vine sap, for future reference,” returned the girl, but her voice thickened as she spoke. “I’m sorry, soldier. This just won’t work. As big and tough and nasty a mercenary as you are, the wards are more for your protection than for mine. You can’t stay because I’m … because I …”
She began to weep piteously, little burbling sobs that tore his heart. Then, something shifted within that cavern. Something huge.
The girl shrieked, “Go away! It’s too dangerous for you here! Pleeeeeeaassssee …”
* * * *
Inglorious retreat. Next he knew, Asturbar found himself three hundred yards back down that trail with no clear memory of how he had turned up there. Some quality in her voice had just pulled the rush flooring right out from beneath his outsized boots. Magic? Quell the panting. Swallow back the churning of his gorge. Focus. He could not remember when last he had panicked like that. His entire body felt flushed and sweaty, his hands conversely clammy. Icy cold.
&n
bsp; What had he felt? Or heard? She was stuck inside that cave with some beast – maybe it had trapped her – or bound her by some vile enchantment! His mind served up a series of increasingly foul, lurid images in the guise of being helpful. Asturbar batted them away. No. There had been none of that in her voice. In her fleeting teasing. He clenched his fists, groaning at the pain in his broken finger. She might not like it, but he could not climb back up there right now. Two working hands were needed. And a new rope.
He had no clue what to make of their encounter. Snap calculation. She was six years younger than he and sounded adorable, but was apparently as accessible as the Mystic Moon.
“Nice?” he spluttered at last. “I’m nice?”
Freaking four-letter words! Nice was his new least-favourite word in the Island-World. Bar none.
She had been exiled because of her magic. What kind of Human magic was powerful enough to earn her this exile? And, he strongly suspected she had lied about the Iolite Blue. Azhukazi was part of her story, of that he was convinced.
No mind. He would complete his exploration.
Asturbar cast about for a long while before he found a flat stone that he popped between his teeth. One last check of the hut – utterly still. The girl had not emerged from her bolt-hole.
Alright, then. Hear this.
Clamping his teeth upon the stone and the broken finger in his right hand, Asturbar slowly pulled the bones apart and then bent the digit back to its correct orientation – bellowing all the while like a mortally wounded Dragon. How the hells was it possible that one digit could cause so much pain? Spitting out the rock, he checked his handiwork. Good. Now, if he could find a few long, lean astkurti leaves down here, he could bind the finger to its neighbour and call his doctoring good.
Asturbar wrinkled his nose. Was that his odour; the stench of terror or pain? Poor girl. He hoped she had not been downwind. Niffy soldier bungles first approach to girl. That story must be older than the Isles.
He did not appreciate being a living cliché.
Turning his back firmly on that pretty little hut, Asturbar walked the Island.
It was only that evening, struggling along beneath the northern peninsula or the point of the ‘V’, that Asturbar remembered he had forgotten his weapons beside her front door. Foolish … or excellent planning on his part? He grinned. What a convenient excuse to return!
Pure genius. As transparent as the skies above.
The rim path had been anything but straightforward. In two places he had been forced to leap across gaps that yawned perilously above the unbroken puffy carpet of ochre Cloudlands, perhaps three miles below, and in one location the trail stopped at a blank rock wall, but turned and led into a cave complex that took him four hours to negotiate. A whole new ecosystem inhabited the gloomy halls and galleries he felt his way along, lit in some places by luminescent dracoflora. A few grottos he skirted charily, seeing silhouettes like toothy platters that strongly suggested man traps. Perhaps there were secrets buried beneath this Island. He tangled with a small but ferocious Dragonish thing that left many cuts on his arms and chest, but emerged the victor.
Born in his boots. His thick infantry boots saved him from the bite of a viper near a stream he discovered near that northern point; he spitted the snake with an expert dagger strike and debated its merits. Small, but snake meat was tasty. Dinner seemed promising.
The stream issued from a crack too narrow for him to enter, and poured in a shallow pool that covered the path to a low rim, where it spilled over and trickled down into the Cloudlands. Asturbar checked it carefully before undressing and taking a much longed-for swim. Lovely. And a breathtaking view to the West. Seen from a swimmer’s height, the tranquil, pale blue surface seemed to flow directly into the horizon, where the Yellow Moon rose behind the mountains, its scarred ochre bulk providing a backdrop like an artist’s canvas for the sharply delineated peaks. Great craters pockmarked the broad face of the moon, linked in some cases by distinct umber streaks that made him consider if Yellow had somehow in aeons past been burned or attacked by scarring Dragon fire, or been cut by lashing talons of almighty dimensions.
Ha. Next, he’d be imagining Dragonkind tossing stars at each other in place of fireballs, out there.
After cutting rushes and ferns for a bed, he hunted for the leaves that he needed and found a good spray of astkurti with its characteristic lime-streaked leaves and delicate, bell-shaped pink flowers. Fumble-fingers. He could have done with her deft digits to tie the knots. His one-handed efforts took over an hour of clucking and chuntering to complete, by which time the suns had sunk behind Yellow and an early eclipse turned the atmosphere thick and lush and golden.
Asturbar slept, and dreamed of a Dragon roaring beneath the Island.
* * * *
Two days later, he completed his circumnavigation of the Island’s lower rim. Asturbar clumped up to the girl’s hut with a swagger and a booming greeting intended to give her time to dash into hiding, should she wish.
He was rewarded by an explosive flurry of movement that rocked the hut upon its foundations, followed by the sound of running footsteps. Silence.
Asturbar bit his lip. Unholy bearded dracomaggots! Maybe the girl was dangerous after all. Still, she had dragged his battle-axe over to the doorway and set it to one side where it could easily be found – and mother of all stomach earthquakes, what was that amazing smell? His eyebrows twitched as his nose lifted automatically to scent the air. Wow. Anise bread baking in an oven? Sensation … oh, great. He wiped drool off his lower lip. Most charming man alive. Every element of romance, honed to perfection – especially the blatant drooling. Just what every girl desired.
Drying his hand with a few disgusted slaps about his right thigh, Asturbar called out again. Gone. She was faster than smoke, and about as substantial. He had never heard or read of any magic that could allow a person to do that. Shapeshifter Dragons could shift between Dragon and Human forms, but the hut would have been ripped apart by her transformation were she a Dragoness. Alright. Judging by the smell, he had better sally forth to rescue her baking. And, sample it?
Enough thievery for one lifetime.
Entering the hut, Asturbar immediately observed signs of chaos – chaos triggered by a mercenary’s advent. Her sweet chair had been tossed across the room; the upright back and one of the legs were badly cracked. A fine fired clay bowl, decorated with inlays of semiprecious umber and turquoise stones, lay overturned on the floor. Her flowers had spilled out of the vase, which thankfully appeared to be unharmed, but it teetered on the table’s edge. He set it upright. The shutters in the bedroom – no crysglass left in the window here – had been ripped open by some considerable force. He fingered the broken latch pensively and eyed the shattered glass. The signs were not reassuring. Not in the slightest.
Moving on. He tidied conscientiously, before finding her oven – right in the back left corner of the hut was a hatch that opened upon the important parts of a clay oven built hard up against the back wall. Using a handy cloth pad, he retrieved her braided bread rolls from beside a heap of glowing coals. Hmm. Artistic. Where had she found flour? He had not spotted a shred of any type of grain growing about the Island, apart from what had pushed up encouraging sprouts in his little garden. Nor any of the yamuska wood from which these aromatic coals undoubtedly originated. Curious. Perhaps she had a secret store? He had passed numerous caverns on his way around the Island. Half an army could have been hiding inside, and he would not have known it.
The chair needed proper repair. He should bring tools and wood. Maybe some manly, practical assistance about the place would unthaw her inexplicable attitude. Protecting him? Ha! Ah, bravado. Very much the Isle of soldiers who preferred an exciting, swiftly truncated life. Propping the damaged chair outside her front door, Asturbar prowled off in search of danger.
“A warm afternoon’s greeting to you, o cave dweller,” he shouted from the entrance.
The usual silence.
Thick, brooding silence. He was not sure how he knew, but something was listening in there, and it was not an encouraging sort of presence.
Now was not the hour. Pitching his voice into the opening, eight feet tall by two wide, he said soothingly, “I took your bread out of the oven and left it, regrettably unsampled, upon your table – and only by a miracle succeeded in keeping a puddle of drool from collecting upon your floorboards. I saw that your chair will require repair, so I shall take it with me when I depart, and return it to you in a few days. The shutters, similarly, appear to have been damaged and so I shall fashion boards for those and make them good again.”
How was it that a silence could wax so pregnant with meaning? He did not understand; she seemed neither willing nor able to speak.
Trying to sound candid without brusqueness, Asturbar added more onfidently, “Whilst I apologise for frightening you, I make no apology for my return. Any good soldier is inured to risk-taking. Every battle, every engagement, even our training routines are fraught with degrees of risk. Therefore, I will gently but firmly insist that you allow me to calculate the risks I choose to take with my own life – and yes, I know you would likely respond, ‘But you have no idea of the dangers!’ I sense the power of these wards. I have scouted your tracks. As a soldier I am trained to face the unknown, and therefore, I am wary but undeterred. If something happened it would not be your fault. This is my choice.”
He was almost certain he heard a sound like a monstrous, muted purr. Asturbar wet his bone-dry lips. What by all that was holy was he actually talking to? Not who, but definitely a what? He strongly considered walking away and never coming back. That would be the way of Isles wisdom, as his every survival sense screamed within his mind. Mortal danger dwelled in that cave – and he would flirt with it?
