CH 7
“No, no. Gentlemen, please carry on. I’d hate for the public to get a glimpse of this tragedy.” Detective Blueshanks preened at the waxed tip of his mustache as he looked at the chip shop next door and took account of a young onlooker. “I think you’ve attracted enough attention. Hurry on.”
As Errol and john soundlessly bundled Pillywizzet’s corpse through the front door of the shop both detectives followed them in as the copper canary trilled four times to announce their entry to nobody at all. It took the detective a minute or two before he matched the scars on the back of each man’s neck with his clockwork memory. One of Blueshanks’ qualities that had earned him the grade of Lieutenant Detective were his remarkable powers of recall.
“Ah, yes!” The detective turned to his trainee. “I know you two. You’re Errol and John Emolere, the Fangspire twins. Those scars of yours, they were left behind from the spot where they welded the collars around your necks, correct.”
The two men grunted in affirmation as Assistant Detective Rustle handed his repeating crossbow to his boss and manacled each huge man’s hands behind his back.
“We’re legitimate business men.” Errol pointed out. “What all this is was an accident.” He thrust his chin at the body.
“Of course, how crude of me. I’m sure your time in prison reformed you.” Blueshank’s smiled. “It makes sense to me now, this ancient, ancient man slipped and fell on all, let me see... one, two, three... twelve of your throwing knives. Next you’ll tell me it was self defense.”
“No it wasn’t like that, detective.” John continued as he looked over his shoulder at Blueshanks. “It was... a turn of events, an unfortunate turn of events had while we were pursuing our sworn duty to protect Mr. Billingsgate and his interests.”
“Humble bodyguards, got our guild cards and all.” Errol finished.
“I do like that last bit, ‘a turn of events’ write that down Rustle.” Blueshanks sat behind the shop table and set his feet up. “Rustle, when you’re done with that note please be so kind as to relieve our innocent men of whatever they have on them.”
***
None of the women had lowered their bows. The three men stood in the knee deep water anxiously as the droplets that had vibrated off the surface of the water settled back.
“Gelet hosef ca’ gaar.” The woman who stood in the center of the formation waved a hand from the men to the coach.
“Sek’mek?” Nigel asked.
“Ca’gaar!” She howled at him. Lari’neso had been the acting matron of the Catarin tribes for twenty years. She had little patience for men of any kind, and trying to communicate with one who could barely get out a few words was somehow more frustrating than if all three of them had been entirely ignorant. If that had been the case they would have simply tortured them into complicity.
“Nigel...” Max sighed, he was nearly as frustrated with his friend as Lari’neso had become. The difference was that Max understood that neither Nigel nor Bill had ever seen a man killed before. He had some small compassion for that.
“Um yeah, one moment... I need to be sick for -” Nigel threw up into the water and coughed in a short series of spasms. The elves lowered their bows as they realized that they had absolute control of the situation. Nigel recovered himself and continued. “Yeah... huhhhh, they want one of us to fetch.. what’s the word... um the ‘abomination’?”
“Ah...” Max rose slowly and walked over to the carriage and took the lute. He opened the case and held it so that the lead elf could see the demonic jade instrument. “Is this what you ladies are after?”
“Let saar... pilak tons.” She gestured for Max to close the case. Her features betrayed a moment of fear that seemed to relay through her sisters. Lari’ neso thought a moment about what her next move should be. They could get by in Catarian, and they seemed eager not to die, perhaps they could take the Abomination out of their waters.
“Yeah, that’s it.” Nigel felt some small relief.
“Zwiff’ uho nek do Inapai?” The younger woman Max had seen when he first woke up looked from him to her matron.
They both smiled thinking of their decision. Lari’ neso lifted her eyebrows to Salet’ Har as a gesture of her confidence in her young aspirant. Already the girl was keen enough to lead.
“Kelig’ ah’ ah’ noor.” Salet told the men.
“And now we follow them to some darker more secluded place.” Nigel translated the bad news for his comrades.
“Oh f**king hooray.” Bill smiled dreamily. He was frightened, but not so much as he thought he should have been. The effects of the radiant pool seemed to be lasting. He felt as though nothing bad could really befall him, so deep was his contentment.
They were bound with their hands in front of them, which Bill was grateful for as it allowed him some small amount of modesty. The silken thread that was wrapped around their wrists bit deeply into their flesh. Each cord was thinner than a scribe’s pen, yet as strong as any steel cuff.
As they walked deeper into the groves and hillocks of the swamp, the trees grew thicker with moonworm nests until the branches appeared to be entirely closed in together like great teacups stood on trunks. The light of the late morning gave way to plashing spots of leaves and sun on the water. High up in the larger trees the silk was spun into an interconnected series of suspended dwellings. There were women shuffling about quite hurriedly up in the canopy. Those that saw the men looked down and stopped their activities in surprise.
“Gents, have you noticed that we are the only men here? I haven’t even seen a single male child.” Bill was self conscious about his nakedness, and the notion that he and his companions were the only fellows about did not help his elevated mood.
“Yes I have, Bill.” Max answered under his breath. “I don’t think that bodes well for us.”
“A lot of the tribes are matriarchies.” Nigel offered. “So many men were killed when the church went on their crusade to rid everything east of the Wyrmspine that many of the surviving tribes were reestablished with women at the helm.”
“That doesn’t explain the total absence of men.” Max let his mind wander as thy marched into the darkness of the marsh. He was letting himself savor the opportunity to be the first in line behind the girl he saw that morning. It was the best part of his last three days. “I wonder how they breed?”
“You lecherous bastard!” Nigel hissed. “We are very likely about to die gruesomely and your mind is bent on sex.”
“Better than imagining what method they’re going to choose to kill us.” Bill shrugged.
They continued on in silence until the group stopped at a crossroads of sorts set in a stand of stony hillocks and dense foliage. The stone outcrops that rose from the water turned sharply upward to form an unexpected cliff wall in front of them. A cataract of small streams bounced down its face into the water. There were a handful of boats waiting, the women who were waiting in the short, wide canoes looked similar to those that had brought them in, but not so serious or athletic. This is to say that every one of them was beautiful, but not as frightening as their sisters who carried bows that could pierce a man’s skull cleanly without slowing.
The war party that had surrounded the men broke off into the boats and paddled off down the many intersecting canals, taking the bows and quivers of the matron and her apprentice with them. The shrine was a place of meditation and respect, no weapons were allowed there. Without a word to one another, Lari’ neso divided the leading cords of the three men so that Salet had Max and she had both Nigel and Bill. They turned and smiled cruelly at the men before drawing in all of their breath and diving into the deeper water in front of them without making more than a few ripples.
“Oh hell...” Bill managed as he gulped as much air as he could while being dragged underwater.
***
John and Errol were completely relaxed as they stood in front of the detectives. Both of them were stripped down to their breechclouts as they had been many times before during processing and inspections in prison. The shop table in front of them had been cleared to make room for the wide assortment of arms they had been carrying. Throwing knives, small grenades made of firestones and toad venom cast in glass beads, a pair of longer, wicked looking picks with what were most probably handles made of human bones among other weapons were laid out neatly by the assistant detective. The most outrageous pieces in the arsenal were a pair of cleavers so large that the detectives assumed correctly that men of normal stature could never have carried such things discreetly.
“This is quite a collection you two have managed to hide on your persons, but what I’m most curious about is this.” Blueshanks slid a flat circular device made of copper and magnetite from the center of the table. It was a series of dials and gears that perfectly balanced a needle that pointed in one direction. Neither John nor Errol reacted at all to Blueshanks interest.
“You see Rustle, that when I turn the device, the needle stays fixed in the same direction?” Blueshanks pulled at his mustache as he quizzed his assistant.
“Yes sir.”
“What do you suppose it is?” Blueshanks looked from the device at the two men.
“Looks like some kind of compass.” Rustle knew his answer was wrong. “Except that it is definitely not pointing north.”
“Quite right.” Blueshanksset the item down. “It’s a Kytherian Follower. Very rare, very expensive. One uses it by tuning it to the aetheric frequency of a thing, or a person for that matter, and then the device will point to them no matter how far what it’s been tuned to happens to go.”
“Now, something like this is quite spendy.” Blueshanks rubbed his hands together. “And I imagine that, if what you two are saying is true, that some fool ran off with that fabulous lute, Billingsgate and his carriage, then a device like this might just point you to him.”
“It might, don’t you reckon John?” Errol quipped.
“I agree, Errol, it might just do that.”
“Now, suppose an enterprising officer in the Constables Guild were to lock the two of you inside this... place, keep the key and follow this little beauty to your employer.” Blueshanks let a superior grin find itself under his mustache. “Why he could claim all the accolades for himself and return to Walesport a hero.”
“That he could.” John eyed the assistant detective maliciously. The young man averted his eyes and looked back at his boss.
“Which leads me to ask you, gentlemen, precisely why shouldn’t I do just that?” He leaned over the table and continued smiling. He had all of the cards. They would make him a captain for this. “Can either of you think of an... inducement to keep me from deviating from my sworn duty?”
“Well, my brother and I understand that the Constables Fund is a noble and commendable charity that does its best to-” John stopped short in mid sentence as he and Errol kicked the heavy table back onto the two men behind it, sending Blueshanks to the floor. John took a knee and Errol sprung off of it into the air. While sailing over the table, he slipped his feet over his wrists so that he had his hands in front of him. As he landed he ducked low and took Rustle by his masculinity and heaved him over the table. While in flight, Assistant Detective Rustle only thought of how poor the Walesport Wooltossers had done last season. He’d lost quite a bit of money on them. It was the last thing to enter his mind as John planted his feet and met him in the air with a head butt that crushed the young fellow’s skull.
Errol threw himself backward and kicked out Blueshank’s knee just as the bolt from the detective’s crossbow sailed over his bare chest. Without losing momentum, Errol kicked his legs up and bounced back up onto his feet by popping off of his shoulder blades in a single motion. Bueshanks was on the floor trying to cock his repeater as Errol straddled him and snapped his neck in a fluid motion. When he stood up and looked over the table at John, he saw that Rustle was sprawled on the floor, twitching with John’s bare foot crushing his neck. John had the manacle keys in his teeth, he spit them to Errol who caught them in the air.
***
The darkness of the water gave way to a growing blue radiance as all three men felt their lungs about to burst. Bill was entering a state of calm that he’d always heard accompanied drowning, yet he found it quite easy to frog kick through the water behind the matron. He had no problem was nearly oblivious to the burning in his chest as he watched small schools of large squid-like creatures swim past them in the glowing water. Max was doing his best to keep collected, and even though he’d made it through a number of nasty scrapes (a couple of which had happened in the last two days) it was the thought that executing the three of them by a prolonged and difficult drowning seemed unlikely. It would be easier to just bind them entirely and tie rocks to them if drowning was their usual method. And the elves towing them never looked back, which the sadistic types who liked making their victims suffer usually would. Nigel was squirming at the end of his cord, whatever people had said about the drowning being the most pleasant way to die was not the case for him. He fought his asphyxia as long as he could, finally blacking out just as Bill and Max found their way onto a shoal made of oddly shaped shells. Salet helped Lari’ neso pull Nigel’s unconscious body out of the water, they watched him with curiously as he lay for a moment and before joining his companions in a fit of hacking coughs alternating with gulping breaths of air.
After a few painful minutes, all three men regained their breathing, their hearts still pounding against their ribs as the struggled to their feet. The two women looked at them and said nothing as the men looked around at the enormous cave. The ceiling rose above them in a great arching cathedral of stalactites and shimmering light. A lake filled the underground expanse back into a series of falling cliffs and ledges a few hundred yards or more from the small island of shells they stood on. All of the chamber was aglow and flashing with the blue light emitted by the softly rippling water.
“Tek helling.” Lari’ neso told the men as she and Salet knelt at the edge of the water and bowed their heads. The lake began to divide in a shallow wake as something huge passed below the surface towards them. “Tek helling!” She commanded as she nimbly kicked Bill in the back of his knees and sent him onto his hands and knees.
“She wants us to kneel.” Nigel sputtered to Max as he bent down.
“Yeah, I picked up on that.” Max was still annoyed by his friend. He knelt and bent his head as did the elves. He kept his eyes on the approaching waves in the lake.
There was no sound as the wake parted and the slick, aubergine head of a dragon rose from the water followed by the streamlined mass of its body. It was well over one hundred feet long from teeth to tail and as it came to rest in front of the five of them, it revealed all of its two hundred and sixty four teeth in a smile as wide as a church door. Max was struck by the simple fact that every step of his plan had taken he and his classmates into worse and worse situations. He had been the captain of the Cloudiver’s in school, but his capacity for leadership off the playing field was seriously lacking. Bill had trusted him enough to risk his life and leave his job, and now Max’s poor decisions had them facing death yet again.
Ann’akurra looked over the three men amusedly, she loved novel destinies. The way the fat of a few random men might bring them to her was quite interesting. She knew immediately that the arrival of these men during mating time was not a coincidence. It was delightful when the ancient paths of the world brought her such turns in the wheel of circumstance. However, the wicked thing strapped to the back of the weakest one would have to be removed from her waters as son as possible. It could not be allowed to infect her brood.
“Lari’ neso, salva doon mek’kek nor?” The dragon’s voice filled the chamber completely in a whisper that reminded Max of distant thunder.
“Se’ phen Ann’akurra, Salet tok maret aalig tonn’set.” Lari’ neso answered.
“Ca’aam tolluv met haa’am.” Salet added. Ann’akurra reguarded her aspirant matron with a sly grin. Salet was going to be different, and quite likely not destined to stay in the Catarian wetlands.
“Interesting.” Ann’akurra looked at the men bowed in front of her. “Do you boys know what you’ve brought into my family’s home?”
“Ahh, not really.” Nigel tried for an answer. He was as surprised by the dragon’s mastery of the Failish language as his buddies. “Do you mean the lute?” He turned the case around so that he could offer it up to the serpent.
“Ca’gaar nun torre’te?” The dragon asked her matron.
“Palek det ca’gaar.” The elf answered.
“Nigel, can you throw us a little something?” Max whispered. He was trying to understand precisely why the diabolical lute was so important to the dragon. He was also trying not to submit to the desire to pee that dragons create in those finding themselves in front of one for the first time.
“I’m not sure... I guess the younger one suggested that we be brought here... she might have saved us.. I can’t tell.” Nigel tried to whisper to Max. He was still holding the lute in front of him like he was offering a gift to some threatening deity.
“You speak Catarian fairly well, minstrel.” Ann’akurra reached over to Nigel and gently lifted his chin to face her. His urge to urinate overwhelmed him, mercifully soaked to the bone, nobody noticed. “But you already know I speak Failish, which is purely for your benefit as your thoughts are just as easy for me to find.”
She leaned up on an elbow. Ann’ akurra had found that by taking casual poses often helped men to get past her appearance. Long and sleek like her children, Ann’ akurra’s musculature bulged and slid lithely with as she moved. Her head was quite long, the spines of her crest swept back and were quite a bit longer than any of her kind that lived out of the water. Her eyes were luminous and slitted with reptilian pupils that focused on each man, subtly piercing his thoughts. Max could feel her looking right through his mind, the effect was uncomfortable, similar to the ache one feels when they have the flu. Neither Bill nor Nigel really noticed the sensation under the weight of the terror they felt being tlked to by a dragon.
“Lari’ neso, Salet, jensa’ri set. Preeb’ tal, ind foren.” The dragon nodded slightly to her children. They bowed deeply in return and slid into the water, swimming back under the cave’s siphon the way they had come.
“Now, I’m sure you fellows have a few questions, please, relax, I’m not about to eat you.” She let her eyes slide over Bill for a half second. “Not yet anyway. Try and calm yourselves, I’d like to be able to get on with our conversation without you being overwhelmed by fear.”
“We have a great deal to discuss.”
***
Both guards stepped from their small posts at the base of the southern gate of Walesport. The day shift was by design less competent than the men who worked at night. Most criminals and marauders worked under the cover of darkness. They approached the two men on horses and raised their palms toward the riders as the large men slowed their mounts.
“So, what brings you two to the edge of the city?” The sergeant was quite young, thin and pop eyed. He had a habit of adjusting his belt repeatedly when nervous.
“We’re on our way to Darrenfeld.” John told the slight man.
“We’ve got a cousin there.” Errol stared at the sergeant. “She’s taken ill with the damp lung.”
“Yeah, poor thing might not last another week.” John added.
“Well, you know there’s a bill about in our ranks, Tyro Billingsgate’s gone missing.” The guard hiked up his belt. “We have to ask everybody traveling out of town if they’ve heard anything.”
“Yeah, we’re on that case, actually.” John and Errol lifted the drape of their greatcoats away from their chests revealing the Detective and Assistant Detective’s badges.
“The cousin thing is just our cover.” John told the man. He leaned down in his saddle to lock eyes with the nervous sentry. “You wouldn’t want any bad men to catch wind of our investigation, would you sergeant?”
“No sir!” The young man signaled for the gate to be lowered and began to salute when the twins glared at him. He dropped his hand before it cleared his belt. “Right...”
They passed through the gate and considered their Follower as they passed under the arches. It pointed roughly east.
***
Nigel looked down to see that the water that was dripping from the lute’s case was blackish, as though it drank the light around it. It pooled in a small seeping puddle among the shells of the beach in a greasy slick.
“Do you understand why I need you to get that thing out of here?” Ann’ akurra raised an eyebrow and rolled over onto her other elbow, flexing her wrist in slow circles, at eleven hundred and nine years of age she was not young anymore. “It will poison the whole marsh if stays here. And I can’t have any of my girls handling it for fear of it infecting them with its blight.”
“So you need us to get it rid of it for you.” Nigel grinned nervously. “Done and done!”
“It isn’t that simple, Nigel.” Max offered an explanation before Ann’ akurra needed to. “These ladies could just as well torture any or all of us into carrying that thing out of range of their wetlands and then finish us off like they did Billingsgate... our driver.”
“Very good Max.” Ann’ akurra smiled again as she regarded Max. He was something... she was sure of that. “Now, why shouldn’t you meet your ends that way?”
“I’d guess that you have better plans for us...” Max clenched his jaw. “Hopefully those plans include our continued existence.”
Bill was unwell. He was quite certain that during all of the very engrossing chat his friends were having with a dragon something was not right with him. He was getting shorter, and he was having trouble breathing. There seemed to be a distant drumbeat that followed an intricate tattoo somewhere in the distance where there hadn’t been one before.
“Good. You’re keeping up.” Ann’ akurra smirked. “I would like your help with something.”
Bill was definitely getting very pink in the face, Nigel decided as he looked at his silent friend. Max could do the talking, that would be fine.
“You brought that abomination here, and I believe that even you weren’t aware of just how sinister it is. But there is also the matter of the gigantic pile of street drugs stowed in bags on the top of your carriage.”
“Oh yeah, those...” Max scratched at his head. “We aren’t... well we need them for something...”
“Yes dear, I know you aren’t smugglers. You havent any real weapons and you got lost on the way to Gynneth Mawr.” She smiled soothingly. “Smugglers don’t get lost, they have deadlines.”
“Well I suppose I can assume that you’ve felt around in my brain enough to know what we need them for.” Max looked the dragon in her bottomless, feline eyes. It was disconcerting, he could feel centuries surround him as he met her gaze.
“You are sharp. And yes, I do know about your plan to dope those pesky giants and finish them off while they’re unconscious.” A squid swam by as she was about to explain further. However, she was in the mood for a snack. She plucked the six foot creature out of the water, tilted her head back and dropped it in her mouth. Before she continued she pulled the stringy bits of viscera and the beak from between her teeth and threw it onto the pile the men were standing on.
“Ohhh... wow.” Nigel exhaled as his stomach flipped.
“As I was saying, I like you three, I’ve got a good feeling about you.” She smiled and rinsed her talons in the water. “You have fate pushing you along. Which is why I’ll wager that you’ll best those dumb animals in the north and do me a favor in return for my clemency.”
Another squid pulsed by in the water around the dragon, she snatched it up just like the last and devoured it with a smile. Ann’ akurra loved the mating time, she looked forward to its return every seven years.
“Name your favor.” Max said, still filled with the feeling of eternity he met in Ann’ akurra’s eyes.
“The dragon your former classmate Longbridge murdered was a friend of mine.” She snarled for the first time since the three of them had been in her presence. Nigel managed to keep the water in his stomach don, barely. Max stood motionless, somehow the sense of terror he felt at her anger meshed with the bottomless centuries he was still touching. Bill was starting to wonder if he was dying, he was gurgling on the air in the cave as though he were drowning.
“Akiki‘Okip’Aa would never have fallen to a buffoon like Longbridge had he not sent seventy men to die in front of him. By the time he showed up my friend knew he was going to die, it was only a matter of time.” Fire rippled at the edges of her nostrils and the back of her throat. It took a few seconds for Ann’ akurra to wind herself down. “Are any of you humans aware that Akiki and the Dwedari elves were the ones keeping those f**king giants on the far side of the mountains?”
“We are now...” Nigel looked down and spoke sheepishly. He was beginning to really worry about Bill.
“I had a guess...” Max looked aside. His moment of contact with the dragon’s soul had allowed some of her thought to enter his mind much the way she looked through his. “You need us to find your friend’s remains, right?”
“Yes.” She was certain at that point, that what Salet had seen in this man would come to pass. He was some kind of champion, and that is not always a good thing. Champions, heroes and geniuses are all chosen by fate to be tested. Those tested are always surrounded by tragedy. Ann’ akurra did not like the thought of her child Salet being near this man. “I require you to take the Noostone from his eye.”
“It’s right here, right?” Max pointed between and slightly above his own eyes.
“Yes. It holds all of Akiki‘Okip’Aa’s memories. Bring it to me and find someplace safe to hide that blasted thing.” She tipped an armored knuckle toward Bill, who had fallen forward. His limbs were losing strength, the felt rubbery and loose. “He will stay here for the time being.”
“No we need him to finish our job...” Max looked at Bill and stepped to his friends side. What he saw made him inhale with disgust. “Oh, ye gods!”
“I’m afraid you don’t understand.” Ann’ akurra smiled as she found another squid in the water. She held it up, squirming in the air. “He can’t go with you.”
Nigel lost his fight with his gag reflex when he got a good look at Bill in the quivering light of the cave. Max pushed Bill into the edge of the water, his instinct was tuned to the shift in Bill’s auric pulse, and he realized that what was happening was beyond any magick he’d seen at the university.
“He’s half elf, correct?” The dragon asked as she tossed the squid she was holding into her mouth.
“A quarter, actually.” Nigel responded as Max waded out into the shallows where Max held Bill, suspending him in the water while twisting his face with disgust and concern.
“Well, it looks like he took a dip in the breeding pool.” She left another beak on the shoal. “I guess one quarter is adequate to bring a man into breeding form during the mating time.”
Bill looked up at Max through a few inches of water and felt his heart slow. His breathing returned to normal and he felt the panic of asphyxiation pass. The he realized that his hands were missing and his skin had become almost translucent.
“I think I owe you boys, especially little Bill here, an explanation...” Ann’ akurra put her chin in both hands and swished her tail in the water behind her. She loved to tell stories about the mating time, it was her singular joy to see her maidens bear little ones. That, and she loved calamari.
No comments:
Post a Comment