Solitudes and Silence
Chapter 11
Wound and Balm
Gelvid said he tried to arrange passage with a trade caravan and was told the merchants did not allow Surface-dwellers among them, due to a reputation for thievery and murder. When Gelvid said the name Mortiss Waimbrill, however, one of the merchants intervened. “I trade closely with a woman of the Surface, one Lady Ballardrine. Her household hath sent out a general order to assist Mortiss Waimbrill. She voucheth for him, and will pay any costs.”
On the way to meet with the merchants, Terredor asked Waimbrill, “What’s going on with Lady Ballardrine?”
“She has great respect for words that bear truth,” Waimbrill said.
“What does that mean?” Terredor asked, “Every time we went to her estate to soulcleave, you were treated as though everyone there knew you and thought highly of you, but elves never respect humans. Did you two have an affair?”
“What? Terredor, no!” Waimbrill said, “It is none of your business. I once helped her make a good decision. That is all.”
“What-”
“That is all, Terredor,” Waimbrill said firmly.
Olmians, the lithe pink salamander-creatures who constituted most of the Deepdark’s merchant corps, led the caravan. They traveled in pods propelled by very small fish trapped in the layers of fabric and controlled using thin strings attached to the sides. This was a safe way to travel, as few beasts would attack a large group, and each person spent several hours a day on watch or acting as a scout. Terredor and Waimbrill were exempt from this, because the olmians didn’t trust them to sense their surroundings sufficiently.
On the first evening, Waimbrill was quietly meditating while the restless Terredor wandered through the maze of pods lashed together with thin lines.
A short olmian with a protruding belly sidled up to Terredor and whispered, “Thou seemest like the kind of man who enjoys a good fight, love.”
Terredor said, “I’m not sure I understand, sir...”
“I know thou comest from the Surface. I been there, love, once when I was a lad. We have fights down here just like thee. Thou art a betting man, I can tell,” the olmian said, “Now come on, I’ll cut thee a deal.”
“What kind of fighting?” Terredor asked.
“Olloan fish,” said the olmian, “Their fights are like violent, bloody, exciting ballets. They circle and create little spirals of rushing water that dance across thy skin like the caress of a woman, and I know that’s something you value on the Surface as much as we do here. Come on, love,” he said, “What have thee to bet with?”
“Nothing,” Terredor said.
The olmian pointed to the opalescent ring on his finger, whose light illuminated the soft pink, almost translucent flesh of the olmian.
“That’s Argon’s grace,” the olmian said, “A rather valuable kind of pearl. Is it magical?”
“I can’t bet that,” Terredor said.
The olmian shrugged, “I’ll take it for thy bet. Ten to one odds on the crugarric fish.”
They floated around a large sphere enclosed by a translucent net. A crowd of olmians hollered encouragement and derision at a pair of large fish with three foot horns protruding from their head, which they rammed into each other as they circled swiftly, leaving spiral trails of blood.
“I’m not betting!” Terredor shouted over the chanting of the crowd, but the olmian didn’t seem to hear.
One of the bloody fish twitched and went limp, floating against the side of the netting.
“Oh love,” said the olmian, “Thou hast lost. So sorry indeed.”
The olmian extended a hand, palm out.
Terredor said, “I never agreed to a bet.” His blood ran cold as olmians surrounded him.
“Oh, but love,” said the olmian, “I say thou didst. Up on the Surface, I’d listen to thee about thy ways, but down here in the Deepdark, thou knowest not our ways. And our ways, young hue-man, our ways say thou didst place that bet.”
Terredor’s heart pounded as the olmians moved closer, trapping him in their sphere. He thought then, as he often did around unscrupulous characters, of his father. Those years when he had wandered Crikburg with his beloved parents had been the best of his life. They were carefree. Jaxoll could always find food and shelter, and he was a successful hunter, trader and thief. But when Terredor’s mother died of a fever that raged for a full week before she succumbed, Jaxoll stopped trying. He slouched and ignored his obligations. Terredor was forced to find his own way, begging or stealing food while his father drank. The one skill Jaxoll kept honed was confidence tricks. He had long ago given up on Terredor as a student of the art, but Terredor knew he retained more than a little bit of his father in him.
“Wait,” Terredor said, “The fight was exhilarating. We don’t have anything so vibrant and alive on the Surface… I’ve always been a gambling man - some would say too much, eh? - but let me keep going. I’ll go double or nothing, I’ve got to see another one of those fights.”
Alw’ys let ‘em think they be connin’ you, boy. Greed doth bl’nd fool’. As Father Delver doth adv’se, a man ken ‘nly be tricked from a f’rtune he hath not earned, and by trickin’ him, ye do earn it more justly than he. Convince him he ken con his allies, so he shall no’ seek their adv’ce or tell them when he disco’er your b’trayal. A man wilt do the dumbest of things if he b’lieveth he can expl’t his f’llow man, and wilt do anyth’ng if ‘nly he believe he gettin’ something for nothing.
“What hast thou besides that ring?” said the sneering olmian.
“I can’t tell you in front of everyone. It’s very valuable, at least on the Surface. I don’t know how valuable it is down here,” Terredor whispered.
“We have trade with the Surface,” the olmian said. He turned from his fellow thugs and swam away with Terredor, his lithe, rosy white-skinned body, lanky limbs akimbo, vibrant and brilliant when illuminated in the uncolored depths of the Deepdark.
Huddling with the olmian, Terredor opened the small pouch around his hip. Inside, he pulled out an iggther, a salted turtle leg, a very large one that Waimbrill had been given and then passed on to Terredor. Despite having been submerged for days, it was still hard and, Terredor supposed, probably still edible.
“This is called iggther. It’s very valuable on the Surface. Wizards use it for some of their most powerful spells, and they would pay a king’s ransom for this piece. I’ll give you a chunk now instead of the ring. I’ll bet the other half, and you can split that with your friends if I lose. Plus you will have the piece to keep for yourself either way.”
The olmian nodded, licking his lips as he cocked his head toward the other thugs, who twitched and swam in circles nervously.
“Fine,” said the olmian.
Terredor scraped off a large piece of meat with his knife and gave it to him. They returned to the fighting area, and the olmians congratulated him on rejoining the game. A few others, both olmian and cave rainid, joined in, betting on the fish, which were kept in small pods held shut by muscular uniformed derrador handlers.
The fish were released, and their delicate dance began again. The water swirled and counterswirled in mesmerizing eddies and jets, in rhythms that were comforting and relaxing to his Deepdark senses, despite the viciousness with which the fish snapped and bit at each other. Terredor lost track of how long the bout took before one of the fish tore the other to pieces, bitter blood filling the water around them.
Terredor quickly turned over the iggtherr to the olmian as the other winners and losers cheered and groaned. Then he swam away before anybody could react. He darted down a narrow tunnel and made a few other turns to make sure he was not being followed.
As he swam, he grinned. His father would have been proud, he thought, but he knew that Jaxoll would have not only escaped with his life, he would have found a way to cheat the olmians out of something valuable.
The narrow cave was overgrown with white plants and algae, swaying in the current. He saw fish and cr
abs scurrying amongst the plant life. He was going in a direction he thought would bring him back to the caravan’s resting spot, but the corridor came to a dead end. Terredor turned around and stopped, eyes open wide.
A pair of tentacles, pale white with a faint rosy tint, throbbing, each of them as thick as his arm, were waving in the water, passing in and out of the light. His gill slits slipped shut tightly, and his stomach twisted into knots as he wondered what manner of beast was on the other end of those tentacles. He knew he needed to turn the light off so he could use his Deepdark senses, but the thought of being here, alone with some manner of beast and under all this water, in utter dark, was too much to bear.
He visualized his fear as a handful of pebbles in his palm, one giant pebble, a round rosy quartz, in particular gleaming, and Terredor forced his calm upon his mind, recalling Waimbrill’s words. Thy Paradigm is thy core beliefs about thyself, about the world, about thy life and truths. It is from this Paradigm that thy thoughts are born, interpreting thy perception through the lens of thy beliefs. So if a core belief be that thou canst not transform thyself, thou shalt think it impossible, and this thought shall lead thee to hopelessness and despair. To change thy Paradigm, thou must attack at the weak point: the thoughts. Force thyself to think of success to neutralize thy core belief of failure. Thy mind is a muscle, and can be trained to think the thoughts thou wishest was true, which is the first step in making them so.
Terredor tried to pick up the rosy quartz in his mind and see himself destroying the tentacled monster beyond the light, but he could only imagine being eaten, strangled, drowned or decapitated. When he realized Waimbrill’s techniques weren’t working, dense despair emanated from his spleen, or the part of his belly where Waimbrill had always said was the spleen. His brain filled with a thick, encompassing dread until he could think of nothing else. He shouted and jabbed with his trident, mind flashing images of strong tentacles, growling snouts and sharp teeth.
Its skin was thick and rubbery, and the points of his trident didn’t penetrate. Terredor felt its powerful muscles grab onto his leg and squeeze so hard his toes tingled. He grabbed onto a sturdy plant, ignoring the stinging pinpricks of the small crabs that inhabited the stalk, who pinched his arm and fingers with their little white claws. The tentacle pulled, and the plant stretched, a few pebbles coming loose from the rock and dispersing into the water.
Terredor shut his eyes and, for a second, he perceived nothing, and wondered, if, in that moment of total blindness, he had let go of the plant and was being devoured, and just didn’t know it because none of his senses were working. All he could do was focus on squeezing the muscles in his hands, which he hoped were still clinging to the plant and his trident.
But then his Deepdark senses kicked in, as another pair of tentacles latched onto his other leg, and one around his torso. They squeezed and his gill slits gasped. He could sense it now. It had a bulbous body the size of a bull, and eight tentacles coming out of one end, where its thick, sharp beak protruded. He had seen squid in pictures and sculptures, so he recognized its shape.
The squid squeezed so hard he couldn’t breathe, and he wondered if his ribs were breaking. He heard them crack, and another tentacle grabbed his leg. He saw spots of color, gills fluttering wildly. He said a quick prayer to Modroben, imagining again that rosy quartz in the palm of his hand, but his fear was so overwhelming all he could think of was his rapidly approaching death.
Panic is a Paradigm in itself, an unreasoning invasion of thy mind. To escape its grasp, thou must recall thy own truth. Force thyself to look upon it as thou wilt, and only as thou wilt. Answers abound within, but words bearing falsity shout their truth.
He pictured Waimbrill’s practiced calm when meditating in his grove, and it reminded him of the awesome majesty of his vision of Modroben. Taking to heart Waimbrill’s advice, he tried to think like he would, to emulate that incredible peace and stillness. Meditative silence filled his skin, and he imagined his mind-hand picking up the rosy quartz and throwing it to the ground. A solution came to him: as Soulclaine are renowned for doing, he decided to go with the flow.
Letting go of the plant, Terredor clenched the trident, positioning his body so that he flew through the water face first. He saw thick tendrils of tentacle coiling and curling in his field of vision.
The tentacles dragged him towards the bulbous squid body he could no longer sense, because his eyes were open in shock and fear. But when it entered his radius of light, he could see it. The squid was white with the same faint rosy hue of its tentacles. Its main body was a distending orb, contorting in the rapidly swirling water. Its beak was a jagged, red snout, sharp tipped, snapping. Soft pink mucus lined the interior of its maw. The squid let out an echoing bark, and Terredor shouted back, diving downward toward it.
He landed right on the creature’s snout, trident first, shattering the beak and sending jets of blood into the air. The tentacles grasping Terredor released suddenly as the squid pushed away, squealed and shrieked, writhing.
A thick tentacle whacked Terredor in the belly, knocking him against the cave wall. The water filled with blood, and his eyes burned from the sudden heat and acidity around him. He swam away quickly, despite a few more thumps from a tentacle as the creature completed its death throes.
His gills contorted as he swam, and his heart raced. He couldn’t calm his nerves, and he crept along, cautiously peering behind him and around every corner. He had to hack through a thick jungle of white plants and vines that stretched across the cave, tearing a path for himself with his hands. Some of the plants had small biting mouths filled with tiny gnashing thorns, which bit through his skin and stung like nettles. As he swam, he refused to think about the little bite marks, to not let their pain hinder him. He focused instead on replaying both of the encounters in his head. He felt an emotion that was alien to him, like his heart was about to burst out of his chest, not out of fear or desperation, but out of pride. He had gotten away from the olmians losing only a scrap of meat and bone, had slaughtered a squid ten times his size, and he was proud.
Terredor perceived the caravan in the cave before him, and he skirted the edges, careful to avoid any gambling olmians this time.
He imagined himself telling Waimbrill what had happened, imagined Waimbrill’s wry smile and patronizing gaze. He wouldn’t really understand, Terredor thought. He’d think Terredor was exaggerating, telling tales. Even if he did believe him, Terredor could almost hear him say, “You are a brave warrior, obviously, Terredor. That’s why you don’t need me. I can return to my home, and you to yours, and we can each live our lives, so long as we are apart.”
The thought put Terredor in a bad mood, and by the time he returned to his companions, he no longer wanted to tell Waimbrill what had happened. But only Gelvid was awake, a flat, pained grimace on his face.
“Terredor,” Gelvid said when he saw the young man approach, “We were worried about thee.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“That is not what I meant. And in any case, no, thou canst not. Thy kind is not suited to the Deepdark. It is dangerous for thee here. Thou shouldst not go off alone.”
“You should not tell me what to do,” Terredor said, swimming into a pod, where Waimbrill slept, floating.
Gelvid said, “I’m sorry, Terredor. A pair of olmians killed each other in a brawl earlier tonight. Their cleaving weighs heavily on me.”
Terredor called out from inside the pod, “Ah, I see that your kind has the same excuses underground as above it.”