The night before the sideshow caravan entered the mountain pass leading into northern Sorbold, the Ringmaster opened the gate to a contingent of Sorbold’s mountain guard, soldiers in the elite unit that patrolled the border between that nation, Roland, and the Firbolg realm of Ylorc.
The soldiers, long away from home and without anything much to do except train and watch for invasions that never came, welcomed the Monstrosity enthusiastically. While the whoring tents saw the longest lines, the tents that housed the most deformed and grotesque exhibits were patronized eagerly as well.
Faron had been displayed between the dead specimens of preserved freakdom with which it shared a traveling wagon, the two-headed baby, the winged man, and a score or so of other malformations that floated, pickled, in salt solution. The creature by that time had grown so despondent that the crowds of soldiers didn’t even notice that it alone in the tent was a living specimen; they walked through, talking among each other, much as they would at a museum, then hurried on to the more exciting tents where danger, however staged, lurked.
Afterward, when the keepers were loading the wagons up for the night, the Ringmaster stormed angrily through the curtains at the door of Faron’s wagon and strode over to the tank, slamming his hand against the glass.
“Wake up, you damned fish!” he snarled, shoving a horrified Duckfoot Sally, who had been sewing on a stool next to the tank, out of the way. “I paid dearly for you, lad, one hundred gold crowns, plus two! Rescued you from those imbecile fishermen. And why?” He slammed his hand against the tank again, causing it to rock crazily, water leaking from the seam at the side. “Because you were a hissing, spitting nightmare, that’s why! And how do you repay me? By floating lifelessly in your tank, no different from the dead ones, who the audiences think are fake!”
“Leave my Fair ’un alone!” Duckfoot Sally shouted indignantly.
The Ringmaster wheeled and belted the odd woman to the floor with the back of his hand.
Faron, who had shrunk to the far side of the tank, cowering, while the Ringmaster ranted, screeched in rage and slammed against the front glass pane, scratched futilely with its soft, curled hands.
“Ah!” the Ringmaster exclaimed, his dark eyes glinting with understanding, “that’s it. You need to be angry, do you?” He turned and kicked Sally squarely in the forehead as she tried to rise, knocking her unconscious, then smiled as the creature screeched again, yellow teeth clenched, its eyes bloodshot with hate. It pressed itself against the glass, clamoring to get out, scratching at the canvas covering above its head.
The Ringmaster’s eyes widened in amazement.
Jutting from the folds of the creature’s belly was something he had never noticed before. A series of multicolored fins, or something like them, were hidden in the freak’s sagging skin, one of which dangled at the edge of the skinfold, ready to fall. A moment later it did, as the fish-boy continued to pound on the canvas covering, its arms elevated. An irregular oval, the size of the Ringmaster’s hand or so, with tattered edges, blue in color, drifted down into the offal at the bottom of the tank, sparkling as it fell.
Faron stopped rampaging at the look of amazement on the Ringmaster’s face and followed his eyes down to the tank floor. Fury fled in the face of panic; the creature darted quickly to the bottom and snatched the blue scale, returning it rapidly to its belly folds, glaring at the Ringmaster.
Shouting for his henchmen, the Ringmaster began to roll up his sleeves.
“Give it to me,” he said in a low, menacing voice.
The creature shook its head, retreating to the far side of the tank.
The Ringmaster grasped the edge of the glass and rocked the container violently.
“I said give it to me, freak. Before I pull you from the water and toss you into the sand of the Sorbold desert to wither.”
Faron hissed and spat in return.
Amid loud tromping the keepers came into the wagon. With an efficiency born of years of experience dealing with unwilling monstrosities and beasts of violent capabilities, they wrestled Faron to the back of the tank and pinned the creature, amid sloshing water and shrieks of inhuman noise. Then, once the freak was secured, the Ringmaster, his clothes drenched in fetid water, plucked the blue scale from Faron’s belly, ignoring the creature’s howls of distress, and stared at it in the lanternlight.
It was a concave oval, tattered slightly at the edges, gray when held flat, its blue coloration only noticeable when it was turned in the light, which then refracted into a shimmering spectrum that danced across the scored surface. On one side of the scale the image of an eye was engraved, surrounded by what appeared to be clouds. The Ringmaster turned it over carefully in his hand, noting that the other side, the convex one, bore a similar etching, but the eye on this surface had clouds obscuring it.
He looked back at the trembling creature, bound in the arms of the keepers, still squealing in fury, black blood trickling from the skin folds of its abdomen, clouding the water.
“Well, isn’t this a pretty thing?” he mused, holding up the scale, taunting Faron with it. “At least now I know how to make you perform the way you should, Fish-boy.” He nodded to the keepers. “Let him go.”
The henchmen released the creature, allowing it to slide back into the now half-full tank, and trooped out of the wagon, followed a moment later by the sodden Ringmaster.
Faron continued to howl, sometimes angrily, sometimes piteously, until Duckfoot Sally finally came around. She pressed her hand to her bruised forehead and made her way amid her wet, rustling tatters to Faron’s side, whispering words of comfort and solace, until the creature finally gave in to racking sobs.
“There, there, my Fair ’un, don’t fret, luv. It’s all part of the life, I’m ’fraid.” She stroked the soft head gently with her knuckles. “All part of the circus life.”
14
THE CAULDRON, YLORC
Achmed had been poring over his dusty volume for more than an hour when the messenger bird arrived.
Grunthor had become accustomed to standing or sitting in silence of late, contemplating the field maps and reports that came from the Eyes in the farther outposts, the more distant guard towers in Ylorc, past the Blasted Heath and the blue forests of the central kingdom, deep into the crags of the Teeth. The Sickness had spread throughout the Claw and Guts clans, but the Eyes had seemed to remain unscathed, so most of the information now being delivered to him was from their leaders, as they maneuvered to consolidate his favor in the absence of competition. The news they were sending his way was increasingly disturbing.
The stone walls hewn from the mountain that formed the Cauldron’s main meeting room were flecked with shadows from the large hearth fire that burned steadily in the corner, the occasional crack and pop of the wet wood the only sound in the room. When the messenger from the aviary opened the door, therefore, the hum of the hinges and the whine of the wood reverberated through the silence. Grunthor looked up to see the hairs on the Bolg king’s sinewy arms standing at irritated attention.
The soldier coughed politely, a sound that a human would have thought to be a grunt. Achmed waved him in impatiently.
He stared at the scrap of oilcloth that the messenger handed him for a long time, then sat back in his heavy wooden chair, his hand resting on his thin lips in the position he frequently assumed when contemplating. Finally he looked up and leveled a sharp glance at the Sergeant-Major.
“I’m going to need to leave again in a few weeks,” he said to Grunthor.
“Ya just got back,” the Sergeant said grumpily. “What is it now?”
“I have to go to a carnival,” Achmed said.
“Oh. Well, if that’s it, certainly, by all means, ’ave a wonderful time, sir,” Grunthor said sarcastically. “Bring me back some of those pretty lit’le sugared almonds if they ’ave any.”
Achmed tossed the oilcloth scrap into the fire and watched it burn before he spoke, appreciating the hiss of cured paper in smoke.
br /> “Rhapsody and her ne’er-do-well husband have decided to confer the title of duke of Navarne on Stephen’s son Gwydion,” he said finally. “Hard as it is for me to imagine the words coming from my lips when pertaining to someone or something Cymrian, I have to admit I have taken a liking to young Gwydion, as I took one to his father.”
“Yeah, ol’ Lord Steve was a dandy fellow,” Grunthor said, the earlier gruffness in his voice dissipating a little. “But, if Oi might be so bold to suggest it, sir, you ’ave a few other things to attend to, if ya know what Oi mean. The Sickness is spreading—or at least those who survived coming in contact wi’ the glass of the Lightcatcher all seem to be in fairly great agony. Strange rumblin’s in the breastworks, word from the Eyes that Sorbold seems unusually quiet—Oi don’t like the feel o’ the wind these days. Might be a good time to stay close ta home.”
“Undoubtedly it is,” Achmed agreed. “But I have my reasons for going other than court ceremony and the appeal of spending a frivolous day in the company of a bunch of self-important Cymrian nobles.”
“Oi never would o’ guessed that, sir,” said the Sergeant dryly. “We all know ’ow much ya love those sorts o’ parties. Oi assume that givin’ the Duchess what she wants is at least a part of it?”
The Bolg king rose and crouched near the fireplace, allowing the pulsing heat to ripple over the sensitive exposed nerves of his skin. “Not at all, actually. I have something I need her to do for me. And she owes me.” He rose and returned to his dusty reading. “In addition, I have something I want to give to Gwydion Navarne—a spoil of fortune in the rescue of Rhapsody. I claimed it, though Ashe had already determined Gwydion was the one to have it. I want to be the one to confer it to him, so that it is used properly. I need to make that clear to all involved. Finally, I want to test the Archons in my absence. They’ve been commissioned at last, brought into the light. They understand what I expect of them, what their purpose is now. I will only be gone for less than a fortnight. Surely you can hold things together without incident that long, Grunthor.”
The giant Sergeant did not answer, but stared into the twisting flames, wondering what new horror would come to pass this time.
High at the topmost frozen peak, the wyrm clung to the snowy rocks, trembling in the wind. She had slithered out through the gate of the frozen palace and up into the mountaintops, battling the screaming wind all the way to the dark peak.
Wrapped around the summit, the spines of her serpentine tail anchored into the frost, she set her teeth against the wind and struggled to open her eyes. The gale that whipped around the mountaintop slapped her again, digging icy fingers into her eyelids.
Damnation, the beast thought.
She did not feel the cold as much as she had, for within her a fire of a sort had been lighted. With the remembrance of her name had come a burning power, smoldering deep in her viscera, a source of strength and energy that had been sapped from her by her near-death and entombment. Not knowing her name, her past, how she had come to be in the state she now was in had left her weak, disoriented, impotent. But now that she had remembered at least part of her past, she was hell-bent to seek the rest of it.
And return whatever power resided there to herself.
She steeled her will against the icy blast and shouted with all the power of her mind into the screaming wind.
Anwyn! Anwyn!
From the beast’s draconic throat, absent a traditional larynx, no sound emerged. But the will to speak was enough; from all around her the air thickened, then vibrated, bent to her will as all the elements bend to the command of a dragon.
Anwyn!
The updrafts caught the elemental sound, stretching it on the gusts of air until it hovered, dancing around the mountaintop, in long, moaning circles.
Annnnnnnwyyyyyyyyynnnnnnnnn!
The sound molded, swelled, and filled the thin air of the summit. It grew in volume and intensity, the vibrations of it shaking the snow from the peaks, causing avalanches to slide, shimmering, down the mountains and into the foothills below.
The noise of it grew and ebbed, catching currents of wind and stretching across them, whispering off into the wide world on the breeze, multiplying the noise of her shout over and over again, until it had expanded to the edge of the sea.
The beast clutched the icy stones of the peak, the fog in her mind lifting as much as it had since the time of her Awakening. She braced herself in the wind, her reptilian blood coursing in a sort of ecstasy, feeling the echoes of her name’s reverberations in the world, sensing its vibrations as it danced on the wind, thundering off the hillsides, wailing down through the chasms.
And then, in the distance, a thousand leagues or more away, a noise rose up to greet it, to echo its sound. It was a vibration from a history long past, centuries old, rumbled in a voice that was unlike that of the wyrm, though it had silt in its timbre, as if it, too, had in some way been tied to earth. Though the word was the same, the elongated melody of its syllables almost identical, the power of it was vastly different. Where the dragon’s shout had been victorious, the call that answered it was from a voice in torment. Even centuries later, thousands of miles away in time and space, the fury in the word, the hatred that swelled to an agonized lament was unmistakable.
Annnnnnnwyyyyyyyyynnnnnnnnn!
The beast’s head rose above the wind, her senses immediately heightened to crystalline clarity.
Her inner dragon sense, honed and eager, caught the answering vibration like a beacon from the Past. She turned slowly, ignoring the icy buffeting of the insistent gale, and concentrated, shutting out all other thought, all other interference, and locked her mind onto the sound of her name, fragile and windblown now as the breeze on which it was carried began to dissipate.
Her name, spoken in hate, rang like the deepest note sounded from a iron bell, like the roar of the sea, the music of the stars in the cold lifelessness of the night sky.
And her mind had caught it. Now it rang, over and over again, ceaselessly behind her eyes, calling to her from the darkest depths of history.
She did not know who had invoked her thus, or why it had been with such animus, but that didn’t matter. Somewhere south of the frozen peaks, somewhere beyond the viewable horizon, somewhere in the past someone had known her. Someone possessed of a power similar to her own. Someone whom she had enraged; there was a grim joy in her heart at that aspect of it.
She had a tie now to whatever place that scream had occurred.
She could find it now, and in so doing, perhaps find more of herself, her power.
And the woman she hated.
The wyrm slithered down from the peak, following the sound of her own true name, mindlessly through the jagged wind, heedlessly over the barren wasteland, southward until the never-ending winter gave way to late summer again. Once the ground was warm enough, she burrowed into it, following the harsh song of her name below the surface of the earth.
Hunting for echoes.
Her joyful excitement in the anticipation of bloodletting building with each mile she traveled.
15
TERREAN FOR, THE BASILICA OF
LIVING STONE, SORBOLD
Talquist waited impatiently in the gray light of foredawn.
Whenever he came to Night Mountain now, rather than approaching through the ravine that twisted and wound its way through the dry rocks that served as a natural fortification, as all the other visitors to the temple did, he instead scaled a small hidden trail that he had found many years ago, when he was an acolyte in the basilica. In his younger days it was a climb that left him winded; now, though an older man, he had learned enough, had strengthened himself enough, to make the journey without breathing hard.
While he waited for the secret door to open, he glanced around at the dry, stony rock formations that ringed Night Mountain. Their colors were glorious—streaks of pale pink and burnt rust, hints of green and darker purple that had all baked in the hot and merciless sun of Sorbol
d, drying them to a pale wash of their former splendor in the sandy brown stone of the desert. Deeper within the holy mountain, in the cool realm of Living Stone where the light never touched, those colors were true, deep and rich with life.
A hint of deeper glory hiding within the mountain, he thought. How appropriate.
The stone slab before him rustled; Talquist turned back to see a dark doorway appear in the shadows. He hurried inside.
Lasarys, the sexton of Terreanfor, stood just past the doorway, holding a dim lantern. Talquist noted, as the stone doorway swung shut again, blotting out the light, that the Earth priest’s pale face was more sallow than usual.
“Good morrow, Lasarys,” Talquist said solicitously. “How does this new day find you?”
“Very well, m’lord,” the chief priest whispered. “And yourself?”
“Well, that depends, Lasarys. How has your project been coming?”
Lasarys swallowed visibly. “I—I have found a few more places to harvest, my lord.”
“Excellent!” Talquist said, trying to contain his glee. He knew that shearing the flesh of the living earth was a task beyond onerous to Lasarys; as a cleric consecrated to the element, it was much like being asked to cut off one’s own mother’s breast. “Show me.”
Lasarys bowed slightly and held up the cold light, illuminating the pathway down into the cathedral.
Terreanfor was the most ancient of the five basilicas dedicated to the elements, and the only one housed in Sorbold. It was old as the earth, one of the last repositories of Living Stone on the continent, and the most well known. The magic of the place was extant in the air; from the moment he came from the hot, dry wind of the outside world into the cool, moist depths of the hallways leading into Night Mountain, Talquist could feel its power.
He followed the shadow of the sexton through the winding tunnels he remembered from his days of servitude here, the dark walls gleaming in shades of green and rose, purple and blue as the light flickered over them. Living earth, unlike its dark counterpart, was alive with color.