* * *
The room was small, perhaps half the size of his tower room (which was not spacious by any stretch of the imagination). Light flickered across the surface of thousands of objects that cluttered the floor, desks, counters, shelves, and walls throughout the space. Soryn could see the source of light hailed from something altogether foreign to him. Candles, lanterns, fireplaces, torches…those were the forms of brilliance he was used to in the tower. This room contained a light he had never seen before, even in his memories of the years before the tower. It was spherical and hovered above a small spire resting in a circular base. It sat on a desk in one corner of the room. The sphere seemed to be made of a swirling liquid, rotating in regular turns. It reminded him of one of the three suns that could be seen in the sky on a clear day. This little “sun” was a fierce, fiery orange like one of the larger suns of Niflheim called “Adden”.
He stepped closer, fascinated by the object. All time and priority was forgotten while he walked closer to the sphere. Soryn felt radiating heat, welcome and warm, bathe his body. A smile threatened to break out on his lips. This place had, indeed, already shown him new and exciting things. The miniature Adden continued to rotate over its spire and he reached a hand towards it. The closer he came to its surface, the hotter the heat beaming from it became. He felt sure he would have been burned had he not been startled out of his skin and turned around.
I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.
Despite the heat, ice settled in Soryn’s spine at the comment. What frightened him even more was the fact that the sound hadn’t occurred audibly. It had resounded in his mind. Jerking around, he scanned the room. He could see the entryway to the tunnel, the cluttered shelves and surfaces, but he did not see any living creature in the room with him. Moving away from the sphere, he skirted around, carefully avoiding the messy piles and articles. His heartbeat slowed when he was sure he was not about to be killed by a hidden assassin.
In fact, the room appeared to be abandoned, even though the shining orb remained. A thin layer of dust covered every inch of the place and cobwebs threaded themselves between shelves, prominent objects, and the walls. Few spiders on Niflheim were poisonous, but nevertheless, Soryn made sure to avoid their webs. The voice did not return even after he waited several minutes. “Mostly likely my imagination,” he thought. Soryn brushed it off as nerves from his first expedition. Perhaps his mind had gotten a bit overexcited.
All around the room were things utterly new and intriguing to him. It was puzzling that he had no conceivable idea of how such a room came into existence. There was only one way in and out that he could see. Whoever had used this room must not have visited in the last six years. Unless…A perilous thought fluttered into his mind. “What if someone is visiting this room when I’m asleep at night?” The thought terrified him. Still, the dust made it seem unlikely. As far as he could tell, the only footprints amid the dust in the room were his own.
Another unusual object caught his eye while he was sorting through his thoughts. Unlike the sphere, it emanated no light and instead seemed suffused in shadow. It rested high on a shelf sitting in the only corner of the room that wasn’t covered in the light from the “sun”. Lord Maslyn walked closer to it, peering up, trying to see the features of the item. The shelf was rather high and the object looked to be a small statue. Because it was black, it absorbed all the light around it, and Soryn had a hard time seeing what it was. Confused, Soryn was willing to dismiss the thing.
The rest of the room’s contents proved equally interesting and he found that it would most likely take years to sort through the bits of flotsam and jetsam that drifted on top of every available surface. Though the room looked like a rat’s nest, he could tell that there was some semblance of organization to the piles. On the table were various loose pages and scribbles. The counter that ran in an L-shape across two walls was filled with mysterious instruments and baubles. The shelf, of course, housed books. When he looked at the shelf again, he was drawn to the top where the black object perched. He squinted to see if he could make it out any better, but to no avail.
Want me to come down?
The velvety voice invaded his faculties again. That knot in Soryn’s chest coiled with more loops with every scare he experienced. The voice most certainly qualified as frightening. Because of the nature of the comment, he could only assume the voice was coming from the statue. Soryn swallowed hard and said weakly,
“Yes?”
He felt rather stupid talking to a statue, despite the seriousness of the situation.
Done.
Instead of a statue above him on the shelf, Soryn realized it was a black animal about the size of a plump cat, though he was positive it was not a cat. Its body was pudgy and bulbous even though it was petite. Short legs ended in cleft hooves. Perky ears framed in a face with a snout and beady black eyes. Soryn searched his mental repertoire for any image he could to associate with this animal. He had seen it somewhere before. The black creature moved from its perch and hopped from the shelf to tall piles of matter on the counter. The boy was surprised the animal did not knock everything down in the process. In fact, the thing gracefully descended to the floor as if it had performed the same feat hundreds of times.
Is this better?
The creature turned around slowly, as if it was allowing Soryn to get a better look. Lord Maslyn took the opportunity seriously, still trying to figure out what sort of animal it was. When he saw the curled tail, the word leapt to his mind. A pig. He had seen them in the barns when he was a little boy, outside the castle walls with his mother. Admittedly, he had never seen a black pig before, or one that appeared to be mature despite the miniature size. The pigs he had seen in the barn were huge in comparison. He was sure this fellow would be able to fit into a serving bowl.
Is my size a problem? the pig asked, clearly offended.
“No! I was…just surprised by it, is all,” Soryn muttered.
The pig trotted around the floor, neatly dodging every bit of clutter. Lord Maslyn felt his mouth hanging open in astonishment that an animal had lived down here for so long without any identifiable source of nourishment—let alone the fact that it talked and gave advice!
“What are you doing down here?” Soryn asked.
The pig swiveled its head around and gave what Soryn imagined to be a bored expression. Without answering the question, it hopped from the floor to a chair that the boy had not noticed before. Then, it jumped to the counter near the “sun”.
I live here. Are you here to force me out?
“Not at all. I was just startled to see you.”
The pig ignored him and turned towards the orange sphere.
You could have lost your hand, you know; had you touched this.
Soryn walked over towards the counter and watched the pig reach with its jaws towards a metal rod lying next to its small body. He—at least Soryn thought it was a “he”—clenched the metal tightly in his mouth and directed it so that it made contact with the “sun”. Instantly, the metal turned red and dripped its melting liquid onto the sphere, disintegrating. Soryn agreed with the pig’s assessment. Before the entire rod could turn red, the pig tossed it from his mouth onto the stone floor where it slowly grew grey and cold once more.
The affectionate name you’ve given it is quite accurate. This is a sun, just a very small one. It was patterned after Adden, in fact, as you guessed.
Annoyance at the pig’s self-important attitude washed over Lord Maslyn. Also, how did the pig know what he called the sphere?
I have a name, you know.
There it went again! Soryn thought, exasperated, “Just what kind of a pig is he!?”
I’m a sentient pig and I don’t appreciate you thinking such insipid thoughts about me.
“Ugggghh! How are you doing that!? How can you know what I’m thinking!?”
I’m…talented.
“That’s rather obvious. It would take talent for a
human, let alone a pig!” Soryn spat.
I grow rather tired of you calling me “pig,” instead of by my name. Do you think you could humor me?
“I suppose,” the boy replied.
I prefer to be called “Ulla”.
“Oo-lluh?” Soryn tried out the strange name on his tongue.
That’s it. Now why don’t you tell me the reason you have invaded my study? I have worked quite hard to keep it a secret.
Lord Maslyn didn’t know how to answer Ulla. There were many reasons he decided to go explore the tunnel. Was it curiosity alone? The pig didn’t seem to mind that Soryn was taking his time. He decided that it was simple. “I wanted to get out,” he thought to himself.
“I wanted to leave the tower,” Soryn said aloud.
Oh?
“I wanted to…get away for a while.”
Hmmm.
Ulla sounded truly interested, if not a little amused. The boy felt uncomfortable in the pig’s presence, but he tried his best not to let on. The fact that an animal had talked to him was not so strange. All animals could communicate effectively with humans, even if they did not speak the same language. Some animals chose not to talk to people. What made Lord Maslyn nervous was the fact that Ulla seemed to know what he was thinking. He was certain that something like that wasn’t normal.
Oh, you’d be surprised, Ulla interrupted.
Chills crawled up Soryn’s arms and he quickly became both frustrated and fearful.
“Would you please stop doing that?”
Doing what?
“Reading my thoughts! It’s annoying!” Soryn snapped.
Would you stop breathing if I asked you to?
That pulled the boy up short. He couldn’t tell if the pig was trying to make a joke or if he was serious.
Oh, I am very serious. Just as it would be absurd for me to ask you to pause your breathing, it would be quite unreasonable for you to ask me to stop reading your thoughts. It’s something I do as subconsciously as you breathe.
The young noble scowled and tossed his hands in the air, giving up.
The pig hopped from the counter with the “sun” to the chair again and promptly clambered onto the table with the papers. If Soryn didn’t know about the pig’s exceptionalities, he would have taken him for a stray barn animal, despite its being confined to the room at the foot of the stairs. He appeared to be just like any other pig, only a little cleaner than Soryn remembered other pigs being. Lord Maslyn looked down to find Ulla staring at him. It was rather unnerving. Soryn turned around and drifted over to the shelf stuffed with ancient books.
Would you like to read them?
The young master was surprised at the question. He had scarcely looked at them before the pig called out. The titles were interesting. Soryn was surprised when he saw that every single book on the entire shelf was related to the Seidh. These books were also different from the thirteen in his tower room. Thinking back, he felt sure that those thirteen books were from the same collection as the ones on this shelf. The boy thought, “How did those books get into my room?” He turned around.
Don’t think you’ll get answers from me, Ulla said. I don’t know how they got into your room.
“You’re a pig, Ulla. Why should I suspect you?”
Still, Soryn felt sure that Ulla could have had something to do with all the mysterious things surrounding this room. Lord Maslyn expected Ulla to speak up about his thoughts, as usual, but the pig stayed silent and merely stared at him. The pig snorted and shook his head in the direction of the shelf.
Why don’t you take a look at one of those?
A strange sensation filled the boy as he walked closer to the shelf. It was almost as if Ulla wanted him to take one. He glanced in the pig’s direction, but found that Ulla had jumped down again and was trotting over to the corner. The boy ran his fingers gingerly across the old, fragile spines. Some had titles so worn, they couldn’t be read—perhaps they had come over on the colonization ship Elena, almost a thousand years ago. Again, he noticed an uneasy feeling building within. He waited for the pig’s snide remarks at his discomfort, but none came.
He pulled a book from amongst the others entitled, A Rudimentary Commentary on the Seidh. The cover’s color was a pale grey, most likely from age. Soryn blew the dust off of the spine and cautiously opened it, the odd feeling in his body growing. It was difficult to put his finger on the precise emotion he was experiencing, but the longer he stayed in the room, the more uncomfortable and paradoxically excited he became. The first paragraph on the first page read,
“One must observe the strictest vigilance when entering the practice of the Seidh. The proper rituals must be observed if any knowledge is to be gained; remember your own human frailty…”
Soryn closed the book. Admittedly, he was intrigued with the idea of the Seidh and its potential uses for him, but…something about the whole room gave him the worst sort of disquiet. Perhaps it was—
Were you going to think “the pig”?
There Ulla went again. He apparently liked to meddle in the young master’s thoughts. Soryn decided to change the subject.
“What does the book mean by human frailty?”
Ulla gazed up at him with his round, black eyes and tilted his head.
Why do you want to know?
“You’re the one who told me to get a book and read from it!”
I merely suggested. I didn’t tell you to do anything.
“What does it mean?”
If you must know, it refers to the fact that the Seidh takes a great deal of mental and physical effort to practice. Not many can discipline their minds and body enough to become practitioners.
“You’re a pig. How do you know so much about magic?”
Are you determined to look common by calling it “magic”?
“I just want to know how you know so much about it. How do you read minds? How did you know the orb over there was a miniature sun?”
I’m entitled to keep my secrets to myself. I think that you, however, are running out of time for tonight and won’t get any more secrets out of me during this trip.
A small sliver of panic knifed the boy in the back. He had lost track of time. Since he had blown the candle out, he had no way of knowing how many minutes had passed. He stood still, thinking.
I expect you’ll be back tomorrow night?
“Yes, I’ll come back.”
Soryn fled the room and hastily grabbed his candle stand before beginning his struggle up the stairs. It took far longer than he remembered it taking to descend. He was utterly exhausted when he reached the top and slumped down inside the fireplace once the trap door was shut. His breathing eventually slowed and, as he closed his eyes, images of what had transpired rolled around in his head like marbles on the stone floor. “What in the world have I discovered?”
Though it seemed, at first, to be a harmless study, it was no coincidence that the books on his shelf matched the ones in the room downstairs. As well, mind reading pigs—smug ones at that—didn’t just show up out of nowhere. He knew that the room and its oddities were very significant. Yet, for tonight, he would have to let his thoughts return to his immediate surroundings. The red lanterns had gone out completely, and the window drapes remained dark.
Hauling himself up, he carefully removed his adventurer’s garb and hid it under the bed with his sack of candles and supplies. Soryn mentally walked through everything in his mind, making sure he missed no details about his evening. He even opened The Common Ailments and Treatments of Horses and thumbed through some pages before marking the next chapter, as if he had read them in detail.
When he climbed into bed, he found he could not sleep and was overwhelmingly confused about the whole time he had spent in the study. He was relieved to know that, despite his stress and confusion at his situation, his excitement remained. The Seidh was, indeed, a seductive subject. Lord Maslyn wanted to believe that it could help him somehow and tha
t Ulla could teach him things about it. “I wonder if it can help me get out of here, or at least help me remember how I got here in the first place?” Outside the window, he heard a bird calling out to its mate. He fell asleep listening to the sound and wondering if it talked with humans telepathically, as Ulla did.