A Spell Takes Root

by Keith Hendricks

  “By nothing, you mean dirt, sticks, rocks, and other debris.”

  “You found what we threw.”

  “We’ve cleaned up your messes, yes.”

  “Sorry for the trouble,” said Inglefras with a tinkling laugh.

  “I can guess the plan” said Huiln. “You’ll lead us to the furrow that brought you here.”

  “Don’t use that untidy word. As nothing ever grew in them, despite the dryads’ idiot attentions, they’re obviously not furrows. Meanwhile, giants use them every day as doorways.”

  “Is that your plan—if we agree to call it a doorway?”

  “Yes, that’s my plan,” said Eurilda.

  “Where is it?” asked Khyte.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” said Eurilda.

  When this set off a commotion of shouting, so that Khyte couldn’t distinguish what anyone said, Inglefras whispered in Khyte’s ear and turned to the door. Eurilda and Kuilea stopped yelling, and allowed their glares to cut after the dryad on her way through the exit.

  “… and that’s why,” continued Huiln in a softer tone, “you must entrust the location to one other. We would be in a bad way if something happened to you—not that I suggest anything untoward should or will happen to you, you understand.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Eurilda, “but before you explain yourself, I want you to tell us what Inglefras said.” Though responding to the goblin, she looked straight at Khyte.

  “How should I know?” asked Huiln.

  “I was asking your brother,” the giantess said sweetly.

  “Sure, I’ll tell you,” said Khyte, “when you tell us where the furrow is.”

  “I’ll pretend you said doorway,” said Eurilda, “and return Inglefras myself.”

  “Inglefras doesn’t trust you,” he said. “She doesn’t even like you. Taking her from us by force would be in vain if she tells her mother an unflattering tale that paints you as an abductor, not a rescuer.”

  “What if I care not for her royal goodwill? I’m no obsequious human that must hope for reward; with a princess in hand, and the advantage of my giantish and sorcerous might, why not ransom her? Unless you concoct a richer stratagem, you are all unnecessary, as only I know the doorway’s location.”

  “Knowing it exists,” said Huiln, “we’ll deduce its location—”

  “—given luck and common sense, neither of which you inherited.”

  “By Inglefras’s estimation, you’re the weakest link, Eurilda,” said Khyte.

  Though not its usual target, he was familiar with Eurilda’s crushing glare, as it was bestowed on everyone the giantess regarded as unworthy—a category easily extended to pests of every variety. “Nothing personal,” he continued, swelling his voice with false bravado. “I know you’re strong. But the dryad picks those she prefers.” Through long practice he had learned the combination of flattery and reasonableness that could keep him off the menu of her contempt.

  “Very well,” she said. “Once I tell you, you will tell me what Inglefras whispered.”

  “It’s private business—but if that’s the price, I’ll pay it.”

  “Neighboring the Bankers’ Capital Building is a cultural district in which lies the Fair Well, an art gallery and winery; its bottom-most wine cellar conceals a secret crevice open to the catacombs. Not an eighth of a mile down those winding corridors is a room inscribed on every stone surface with ancient lettering, as well as the first doorway we discovered. To be fair, we must credit a guest of a gallery reception, a drunken lout who wandered into the wine cellars, lost himself in the catacombs, and fell through the doorway to Uenarak, where we mocked his unbelievable story and locked him up as a spy. When my master Otoka sent me to confirm his story, I found the doorway, and passed through to Nahure.”

  “When you said giants discovered them,” said Khyte, “you did not mention it was you. Is this why you ask us to call them not furrows, but doorways?”

  “Who better than I to name them?”

  “For one,” said Huiln, “that poor goblin.”

  “Why would we honor a spy?”

  “Because he’s not a spy!” snapped Huiln.

  “Perhaps not, but should we honor a drunken oaf with a discovery of this magnitude?”

  “You can’t lock up a drunk for that long!”

  “It’s only been four months. Inglefras enjoyed Merculo’s hospitality longer.” Eurilda turned to Khyte. “It’s your turn to give me an answer.”

  “I’m not satisfied yet,” said Khyte. “Though as misdirection, your story was diverting. You told us how this furrow joins Uenarak to Kreona, not how to return Inglefras to Ielnarona.”

  “While some doorways are unidirectional,” said Eurilda, her teeth gritted, “others have controls.”

  “Levers, pulleys, wheels, or buttons?” asked Huiln.

  “None of the above. The controllers resemble knives, though their unearthly metal shines only with the gray radiation of the doorway, and seem to be a phenomenon so indissolubly paired that they are irremovable from the doorway chamber. When the first would-be thief lost fingers in the attempt, my fellow giants, priding themselves on their cleverness, tried many times thereafter, with the cleverest suffering loss of limb or life, and the strongest exhausted from wrestling the ancient metal. No matter the stratagem or force employed, the dagger stops at the entrance as if pinned to the spot, resists all might and wit until let go, then clatters to the stone. The knife cleaves through any imaginable container in its efforts to remain in the room, splitting backpacks, chests, and even a clam shell contrived from two joined breast plates that occasioned the first death, as its confident inventor was both dumb- and death-struck when the insistent weapon wrenched through its cage of armor. Once we accepted we must study it in the doorway chamber, Otoka the Wise determined that the knife steered the doorway’s eye from one world to the next, and that each scribble on the walls corresponds to a different city of the Five Worlds.”

  “This likely means,” said Khyte, “that the furrow under Kreona once had its own knife, as you mentioned writing on the walls.”

  “While I’m impressed by your attention to my story,” said Eurilda, “and it is very likely, we can’t assume that from the facts.”

  “You’ve already assumed it,” said Khyte. “You expect to take Inglefras through this furrow to Uenerak, where we’ll use the controller to travel to Ielnarona.”

  “I assumed nothing. I’m so skeptical of our chances that I would happily pick another way that did not risk all our lives,” said Eurilda.

  “While getting through Kreona’s outside wall, scaling Mount Irutak, and finding enough Baugn for all of us is riskier than traveling a few blocks to the Fair Well, trusting you is even riskier.”

  “What have I done to deserve you, Khyte?”

  “Why does it matter? We make this decision as a group. I’ll ask Inglefras for her opinion on the matter.” He pushed back his chair and stood up from the table.

  “You’re forgetting something.”

  “No, I promised to tell you. But there’s no reason for everyone to know.” And he stooped to whisper in Eurilda’s ear. The giantess’s face became red, and as Khyte couldn’t guess whether this signified embarrassment, shame, or rage, he realized he may never have known her very well. As any of those three were likely, Khyte felt some trepidation and waited for Eurilda’s reaction.

  “I should have expected,” she said. “You’ve always been an expert climber.”

  Khyte might have blushed, had sword-master Iulf not drilled that out of him. “Never show your mind,” said Iulf. “Your face is your second shield.” Ten years later, Khyte couldn’t take off the mask. Though her words were no doubt calculated with as much deadly aim as any spell in her arsenal, pity echoed in his unloving heart when he caught the intent skulking behind the insult—she wasn’t
here to satisfy Otoka’s directive, but to reclaim ownership of Khyte. Though he felt some sympathy, it was tinged with skittishness, for she had once told him that though they were lovers, he was neither friend nor peer, but a pet, her comfort creature.

  Here was an excellent opportunity to keep up his image as “the idiot” in his circle of acquaintances with some off-the-cuff non sequitur, but he refrained from speaking when he noticed tears on not only Eurilda’s cheeks, but Kuilea’s. Though the goblin woman could not have overheard Khyte’s whisper, she had surely inferred it.

  “Can I talk to you, Khyte?” asked Huiln in a conciliatory tone.

  “Of course, brother.” They walked out of the dining room into the main hall, toward the library, sitting room, and game room. “What did you want to say?”

  “Nothing, You needed a pretext for an exit.” The goblin had a warm smile and a rust red sparkle to his eye that reminded Khyte of Inglefras.

  “You don’t care?” asked Khyte.

  “I don’t own her, and you’re both family now. I hope you enjoy each other.”

  Khyte silently cursed, then thanked, the insane traditions of goblin hospitality; while it meant he wouldn’t fight Huiln over Inglefras, it took some of the fire from his loins to know that one of the dryad’s lovers cheered him on. Moreover, Huiln played the part of the procurer, going so far as to expedite their tryst. “Thank you,” said Khyte. His voice raised at the end, unsure whether to add a question mark, an exclamation point, or a sober period. “Huiln, before you go …”

  “Yes, brother?”

  “If we’re magicked, don’t hold today against me.”

  “So you think we’re enchanted? I doubt it, Khyte. We’re both still acting according to nature. When I talk backwards, breathe water, or eat metal tacks, I’ll worry about being enchanted.”

  “While that should sound sensible, my senses and the perimeter of my thoughts are a blur of excess. Nothing seems sane and everything seems reasonable.”

  “As I barely know who you are today, Khyte, I’d believe you to be enchanted, as to hear you expound so on sense and thought is like seeing fish climb a wall. That said, to ease your doubts, I’ll only ask that if you were the Khyte of two days ago, that had just alighted and descended Mt. Irutak—would you bed Inglefras?”

  “In a heartbeat, but not one heartbeat after the fact of it happening, and that’s the problem. This indescribably binding attraction wraps my feelings in unending orbit around the most otherworldly being I’ve found on the Five Worlds.”

  When the door opened, Inglefras leaned on it like a sensual vine. “Why do you dally, Khyte?” It was as if Merculo’s demure captive had escaped her rescuers as well, and left a sultry double. She continued, “My other suitors are respectful and prompt. ‘Handsomeness and grace without kindness are like a running deer.’”

  Khyte was surprised to hear the Drydanan proverb on her lips.

  “What does that mean?” asked Huiln.

  “Goodbye, Huiln,” she said, clasped Khyte’s hand, pulled him in, and closed the door.

  Chapter 7

  The Fair Well

  Huiln had given Inglefras Khyte’s old room. It was bedecked not only with Lord Hwarn’s furs and linens, but with tapestry and gold plated lamps Huiln took from the reading room in his zeal to decorate it. Khyte recognized it from his memories of creature comforts he once shared with Kuilea.

  She pulled Khyte down on a quilted divan. On a small coffee table was a decanter of brandy, but only one snifter. When he supposed that dryads do not drink, he laughed, remembering Sarin Gelf’s outre joke about dryad absinthe. While only a few days ago, that epochal moment started this adventure, and Khyte felt immensely grateful to the fat merchant, who, whether in on it or not, had been instrumental in introducing Khyte to Inglefras.

  “How do you know that idiom?” asked Khyte.

  “Is it so strange? The Drydanan tongue is a young language, but it has more poetry than that of dryads. At times I envy humans their strength of expression. Deer don’t run for the sake of it, but when in rut or pursued by hunter or predator. And a handsome and graceful man without kindness is begging to be shot.”

  “That’s the gist. Have you visited Drydana?”

  “Not me, but this one has stories nonetheless. As we dryads adore the hunt, I would have much in common with your tribe. Would they like me?”

  “No man would object to your presence,” said Khyte, “unless they object to joy or beauty. Can you adore the hunt, when nature is sacred to dryads?”

  “And you know so much of dryads, Khyte. While nature is sacred, so is the hunt, as Nature and the hunt are one. The basest animals eat plants, superior animals eat the basest animals, and plants, feeding on all bodies through the soil, are at the top of nature’s pecking order. It is very exciting, though, to watch humans shed the blood of animals or, when a hunt goes awry, to watch the animal gore a human. Wars between humans or goblins or Alfyrians are even more exciting, I imagine, although I’ve only seen wars among dryads. But unless you have a war to share with me in our trip to Drydana, I will be happy with watching you hunt a boar or a bear.”

  “Were you acting timid when I killed Merculo’s courtiers?”

  “That’s an impudent question.”

  “I thought we were being honest with each other. Impudent is something you call your valet, not someone you’ve invited to help you get undressed.”

  “How can I require help getting dressed or undressed, when I’m already naked? What you think is my nightgown is simply myself—an efflorescence I can expand or contract or change color to create different fashions.”

  Though Khyte took a hard look, he saw only hems and lines of a dress. Could it be true? His curiosity and desire were inflamed. He leaned forward and ran his hand over the shoulder of her gown, only to find no difference from the feathery soft texture of her upper arm, all of it as soft as a chick’s down. “You’re warm.”

  “You were expecting me to be cool, like a tree?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “This body you see walks, runs, laughs, and does all things humans do,”—here, her hand cupped his manhood—”so how could it not be warm-blooded?”

  Though Khyte wished to plunge into the dryad’s warm-blooded heat more than anything, his curiosity bridled this desire with uncharacteristic restraint. He must have more answers.

  “Dryads are warm-blooded?”

  “It isn’t that simple, Khyte, but you will learn more on Ielnarona.”

  “I don’t like mysteries and secrets,” said Khyte. “I like knowing the battlefield and winning the prize.”

  “You have a dryad mind. We also prize knowledge above all else.”

  “I didn’t say that. I love a payday above all else.”

  “Aren’t my charms enough for you?” When she pouted, then leaned in to Khyte, her exhalation was a transfixing, narcotic aroma of cherries, oranges, and cinnamon. When the kiss began, he ended, as if their pressed lips devolved into an intertwined impulse, a simple organism with a briefer life than a mayfly. This loss of consciousness that most call love was delicious to Khyte, who had never surrendered his soul like this, whether in a first kiss, or the lovemaking that followed.

  His excitation was incensed as his hands wandered the silky garment to disclose only nakedness and floral fantasy. As his penetrating hands denuded the dryad’s illusion, she grabbed his wrists, but after a minute, released them, then covered his insinuating fingers with her own; when his hands roamed to where she wanted, she rooted her hands in his hair. When his desire built to its peak, he carried her to the bed.

  “Why are you still dressed?”

  “My clothes aren’t an illusion.”

  “But I don’t want to see them.”

  “I’ll make them invisible,” he said, then stripped off his hauberk and dropped his pants.

 
“That was quick,” she laughed. “Are you a wizard?”

  “Here’s a magic trick for you.” He crawled into bed. “And there’s nothing in my sleeves, which are on the floor.”

  In Khyte’s prior lovemaking, he worked himself into an enervating frenzy, after which he felt spent and traveled, but never contented or having arrived. Eurilda—his first—intimidated him with her eagerness and frankness, which he knew now stemmed from the contempt of a certain knowledge that she was greater, as the witch and giant dwarfed him in many ways. With Kuilea, love was a transaction that made her greater and him lesser, and he prolonged her affectionate feast until there was nothing left to give. In loving Inglefras, their limbs commingled in a gliding, sensuous coupling, and hers was the softest, most delicious flesh his manhood ever tasted, reminding him of a perfect peach that split effortlessly from the pit to melt in one’s mouth, and leave you far from slaked, but tantalized and wanting another. And if that day and night of lovemaking was a bag of ripe peaches, Khyte helped himself to all of them, which left him wondering, as he lay in bed aglow while Inglefras slept, if he had ever truly lusted.

  “Inglefras,” he whispered, lying next to her, the glow of lovemaking still stinging his eyes.

  The dryad princess seemed a different creature as she slept. While candle light had gilded her skin, setting the green aglow, her cheekbones were now silvered by the pale blue goblin moon. Not long after her eye-blossoms closed, they shriveled, as if she passed into a dream so dark that her consciousness had folded, like a flower waiting on the rising Abyss-light.

  When she turned, her eye-blossoms shivered, and her arm slunk under his neck like a vine; less a loving caress than the grip of ivy, like creepers growing alongside an old mansion. The unconscious kiss she planted was no longer playful but needful, as if she sought to harvest some seed of vitality or identity she had sown in Khyte.

  Again he whispered. “Inglefras.”

  “No.” Moisture clung to her eye-blossoms like dew. “Say not Inglefras. Even if I plant this moment in my distant grove, it only flowers now.”