Chapter Five
Even on a windless night lit by half a reluctant moon that hung in the sky like the tip of an invisible candle, a nervous Madrenga could see that the residence of Kakran-mul was much less than a castle and considerably more than a home. The high stone walls of the compound were topped with plate-sized shards of broken glass that threw back fragments of shattered moonlight. His ears conveyed only silence. At this hour of the night that was not surprising.
A few evergreen trees stood sentry before the walls, but they were shorter and sparser of branch than those that filled the mountain forests through which he had recently passed. Brush was more common here, rising in rounded goblin shapes on both sides of the approach road. Somewhere an unknown bird called querulously, and occasionally a bat or batringa would interpose its ghostly membranous shape between the world and the moon.
I am not afraid, he told himself. Alone for as long as he could remember, he had never feared the dark. Night was a comforting companion that had shielded him from marauding perverts, unscrupulous slavers, and corrupt officials. It had been his friend and companion. He hoped it would be so now.
The heavy double door that barred entry to the inner courtyard was wide enough to admit large wagons and strong enough to hold off a battering ram wielded by bandits. Set within the door on the left side was a smaller, man-sized pedestrian entry. In Harup-taw-shet, he would have had to rise on tiptoes to stand at eye level with it. The unexplained changes that had transformed his body in the course of his journey now required him to bend slightly at the knees. A weathered brass bell hung from an iron spike off to one side. Tugging on the attached cord produced a jangle that was unmissable without being too loud. When nothing responded, he yanked on the cord a second time.
This louder clang caused the wooden panel that blocked the barred eyeport to be drawn aside. All he could see of the man’s face on the other side consisted of blue eyes, bushy brows, and sun-crumpled skin. These were accompanied by a voice that was irritable and impatient.
“State your business, night-muck.”
Swallowing, Madrenga tried to sound older than he was. His voice had not changed as much as his body. “I represent, uh, the grain guild, of Hamuldar, and have a message from them for your master.”
The heavy brows drew together. “Do you think me daft, whoever you are?” As the man stepped back Madrenga could see his entire face while the guard addressed a companion. At least two to deal with, then. “He says he’s on business from the grain guild.” Both men shared a chuckle, then the eyes and brows once again filled the narrow opening. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re playing at, but we can settle your gonads tomorrow. Kakran-mul does not receive visitors at this hour. Not for all the oats in Opulchungu. Even if he did, I wouldn’t let you in.”
“Why not?” Madrenga asked automatically.
“I don’t like your looks, night-muck. Go sleep in a rathan sump somewhere and rethink your strategy.” With that the wooden shutter behind the bars was slammed shut.
Madrenga leaned near to the now closed opening and raised his voice slightly. “It will only take a minute of your master’s time.” He hesitated. “I will pay you to let me in.”
He could hear laughter behind the gate. A glance at the sky confirmed the time. While new at this sort of thing, he knew he did not want to wait for daylight. With the coming of the dawn the entire household would be awake, including far more armed men. He needed to get inside, and he needed to do it before the sun made his task all the more difficult. Turning, he beckoned to the patiently waiting Orania.
“Bit, get out of the way.” He waved at the now massive dog, which obediently backed up. The black head cocked sideways as he eyed his master curiously, the tip of that absurdly lengthened tongue barely clearing the ground. Using firm hands and soft commands, Madrenga turned his mount around and positioned her.
“Easy there, girl—that’s it. Just a little farther.” When he had backed her to within an arm’s length of the pedestrian entryway, he stepped to one side and raised his left hand. At the same time as he brought it down sharply on her rump, he yelled, “Kick!”
Orania’s startled snort was followed by an explosion of dust and splinters. His intention was to simply draw the attention of the gate guards. What he got was something more.
Waving a hand to brush the settling dust away from his face he saw that the pedestrian gate was now open. No, he corrected himself as he stepped through the gap: it wasn’t open—it was gone. On his left a pair of heavy cast-iron metal hinges twice the diameter of his spread palm hung from the thick wood of the larger gate. On his right, a vee-shaped gap in the wood showed where the smaller gate had once bolted to the large one. Of the pedestrian gate itself, with its small barred opening for exchanging looks and conversation, there was no sign.
He located it clear across a courtyard paved with head-sized, rounded stones set in a circular pattern around a central fountain. The noise from the fast-flowing fountain, which splashed and bubbled energetically, had served to mask first the concussion from Orania’s vigorous kick and then the sound of the pedestrian gate hitting the wall on the opposite side of the courtyard. The only sign of the two guards was a hand sticking out from behind the violently displaced wooden barrier. That, and the blood that was seeping from beneath the bottom edge of the wood. The door itself and the two guards who had the misfortune to have been standing behind it when Orania had responded to her master’s slap and command were still behind the door, but now firmly embedded in the stone wall.
He looked around anxiously. Except for the excited burbling of the big fountain and the basso panting of the dog sitting at his feet, the lamp-lit courtyard remained empty and quiet. Some heavy sleepers dwelled here, he decided. It probably wasn’t unusual for loud sounds to occasionally reverberate through what was plainly a busy place. Or maybe he was just lucky. He’d had the benefit of a lot of luck, lately. Hopefully it would hold.
He found the watchman dozing at his post outside a central two-story structure that dominated the rest of the walled complex. In a lord’s compound such a structure would likely be a meeting hall, Madrenga knew. Here, in a rich man’s private surroundings, it was reasonable to assume it served as the dwelling place of the owner. He had to be certain. He could hardly go stalking about waking half the inhabitants in his attempt to locate Kakran-mul. It would be much better if he could find the man on the first try.
Bending over and reaching down, he firmly grasped the watchman’s shoulder and shook gently. “Pardon me, but you have to wake up.” He shook again. “Wake up, sir.”
Eyelids fluttered, focused, snapped wide open. As they did so the burly guard’s right hand reached for the double-bladed pike leaning against the nearby wall. With a soft growl, Bit closed his jaws around the man’s arm just below the elbow. The look of terror that spread across the watchman’s face was perfectly understandable.
“Keep your composure if you want to keep your arm,” Madrenga murmured to him.
Trembling slightly, the man nodded his understanding. “What manner of monstrous beast is that, sir?”
“I don’t know Bit’s breed, and in fact it seems to be changing by the day, but he’s my puppy and he’ll do as I say, so mind your voice.”
“That’s a puppy?”
Madrenga leaned closer and did his best to both sound and look intimidating. It appeared to work. “I did not come here to discuss dog breeding. Where is your master?” When the man didn’t answer, the youth nodded at Bit. The dog’s massive jaws tightened slightly and dragon teeth began to bite.
“Surrender, sir, I surrender! Call off your fiend!”
Madrenga nodded at Bit again and smiled. Visibly disappointed, the dog relaxed its jaws and eased the pressure.
“I won’t ask a third time.” As he drew his sword Madrenga was surprised at the increasing depth of his own voice. “Where is Kakran-mul?”
“The master loves his food and never goes to bed without a late meal.” Carefully, the watchman turned his head to his right and nodded once. “If he has not yet retired you should find him alone in the main dining hall. Entryway will be on your left.” He eyed the hopeful Bit and pleaded. “Please, may I have my arm back now?”
Madrenga nodded and stepped aside. “Bit, leave it.” Complying reluctantly the dog backed away, freeing the watchman from those crushing jaws. The guard’s relief was short-lived as Madrenga brought the butt end of his sword down against the side of the man’s head. Intending only to knock him out, he looked on in shock as the body went flying sideways and came to rest on the pavement in a twisted mass of arms and legs. A hurried check revealed that the cooperative watchman was not dead. Madrenga had only inadvertently broken his jaw.
He would have to watch his inexplicable new strength, the stunned youth told himself. Like everything else about and around him, that too seemed to be changing from day to day.
The empty corridor was longer than he had guessed. Paintings, sculptures, and sideboard furniture of fine quality ornamented both walls. Elenna’s talk of her nemesis’s wealth had not been an exaggeration. Madrenga’s mouth tightened. He knew of many people like this, who not only thought but expected that their money could and would buy them anything. Including protection from the vested authorities should they choose to step outside the boundaries of law and decency by engaging in everything from fraud to murder. Or in the case of this Kakran-mul, kidnapping.
The dining hall itself was splendid; high-vaulted, with enough decorative pennants and banners and hanging crystal to suggest that the master of this manse desired to at least imitate the trappings of a nobility he did not possess through natural descent. Oil-lamps of filigree and gold illuminated the great room while the profusion of precious objects far exceeded what he had encountered in the hallway. It was an ostentatious display of wealth that bordered on the obscene. Seated amid such vulgar surroundings, their owner proved something of a disappointment.
The grilled envo fowl leg he was holding was bigger than his own forearm. Very much shorter and slimmer than Madrenga had expected, Kakran-mul needed a chair with an unusually high seat in order to be able to sit at the head of the long and otherwise empty dining table. A matched pewter flagon and goblet stood close by his left hand while the pewter plate before him was piled high with roasted pink potatoes and steamed vegetables. Madrenga could smell the garlic. Grease ran down the man’s left cheek. An unruly thicket of brown hair was bound up in a single gold band at the back of his head. The white silk shirt was heavily food-stained but otherwise unadorned. No embroidery emboldened collar or cuffs, nor the plain cotton pants or suede boots.
It was not often, Madrenga reflected as he advanced into the high-ceilinged room, that one encountered evil with such simple personal tastes. A money-hoarder, he told himself. Probably there was a storeroom behind a secret door or hidden in a cellar where coins and jewels and other valuable objects were kept so that when he so desired their owner could gaze upon them in safety and silence. As someone who had more than once gone long without food, Madrenga harbored a deep-seated dislike for hoarders. Stockpiled money made a poor tombstone for a man.
Big as Madrenga had become, even one as preoccupied with his food as Kakran-mul could hardly fail to acknowledge the youth’s entrance. Turning to face the entryway, the merchant’s greeting was as straightforward as his meal.
“Who are you and what in the name of Wortrun’s anus do you want?”
“I am here to …” Madrenga began as firmly as he could.
Having put forth his questions, the master merchant gave the intruder no time to respond. Rising to his feet, he shoved the high-backed wooden chair away from the table.
“How did you get in here? Who allowed you to pass?” The furious Kakran-mul leaned forward over table and food as he strained to see past the youth and into the hall beyond. “I am going to make drinking cups of some skulls tonight!”
Since the merchant was manifestly a man who favored directness, Madrenga decided to respond in kind.
“I came for the girl Elenacol.”
“Oh. For the girl Elenacol. Did you now? Her misbegotten parents sent you, I suppose.” Seeing no harm in admitting to the obvious, Madrenga nodded tersely. “I stand before you amazed. Amazed that they could find someone as big, gullible, and stupid as yourself to sacrifice himself on behalf of such a futile endeavor.” With that he sat back down and resumed his predatory gnawing of the chunky avian leg bone. “I am tired and find myself in an atypically generous mood. Possibly it is your youth that softens me. Get out, and I will account this intrusion an entertainment rather than an affront.”
Madrenga took several steps into the dining hall. “I came for the girl. I intend to leave with the girl.”
“I see. Impertinence is the reward, then, for my generosity and compassion.” Leaning back, Kakran-mul put both booted feet up on the intricately carved wooden table and crossed his legs. His speech he continued to conduct with the leg bone. “You will make an interesting addition to my collection.”
“Collection?” Madrenga echoed before he could catch himself.
“Yes.” Bone and greasy sinew-strewn bird flesh gestured toward the hallway from which the young intruder had emerged. “You saw some of my artwork, some of my fine furniture?”
“I did. Very nice things. All the more reason why you don’t need to hold one girl against her will.”
“But my boy, where is the pleasure in not holding them against their will? Surely you are not so young and naïve to speak of something like love? The collection I speak of is far more valuable to me precisely because it does not consist of such common objects as pictures and sculptures, gold and silver. Any dullard with money or inheritance can accumulate such things. Whereas I have applied myself to the mastery of certain arts known only to a few.”
Madrenga tensed. “I was not told you were a necromancer.”
“Because I am not. I am merely a practitioner of a single simple art which I have studied long and hard so that I might accumulate my collection.” Kakran-mul smiled, and it reminded Madrenga of some of the groping hands he had avoided as a child. “Gold, silver—these are not the measure of a man. That must be valued in terms of what he has learned.” With a sigh he rose from his seat a second time. On this occasion he chose to forgo the remnants of his meal. Instead of reaching for food, he raised a knife. Though the blade was intended for dissecting a roast and not a visitor, Madrenga was immediately on guard.
But the merchant was not looking in his direction, far less threatening him with the comparatively insignificant blade. Having turned to face the far wall, he began to chant. This would have been more intimidating, Madrenga decided, had Kakran-mul been a larger man, with a deeper voice.
His eyes widened as the carved wooden panels that lined the far side of the dining hall swung open. They grew wider still as what lay behind them began to emerge. Still holding the knife high like the wand it was not, the merchant looked back at his youthful visitor and offered up a twisted grin.
“Behold, transgressor of a quiet meal, my cabinet of curiosities!”
Collection of horrors was more like it, a shocked Madrenga thought. Where the merchant had gathered, or purchased, or stolen the fantastical mélange of monstrosities the youth could not imagine. Each was different from its neighbor, each plucked whole and original from a separate nightmare.
As they came shambling around the dining table and toward the tall intruder Madrenga found himself unable to move. Dread had rooted him to the spot. At carnival time in Harup-taw-shet he and his fellow street urchins had seen one or two such abominations: poor misshapen beings consigned to a life of being gawked at with revulsion and disgust by those who paid to gape at such sights. While his friends had laughed and pointed and made rude noises in tandem with the rest of the crowd, Madrenga had found them more deserving of pity than contempt.
Unlike them, however, the atrocities that had begun to file around the table and lurch toward him were heavily armed. The merchant’s “curiosities” carried war-axes and swords, clubs and maces. They made sounds that were not words but nonetheless conveyed their intent. Sitting back down in his seat, a contemptuous Kakran-mul resumed his interrupted meal as though nothing untoward was amiss. This was not the first time he had unleashed his collection on someone who displeased him, and he knew well the preordained outcome.
Fight! a voice shouted in Madrenga’s head. Draw your sword—fight! Though he heard the voice and recognized its import and urgency, Madrenga remained paralyzed. Taller, stronger, better equipped than had been the adolescent who had left Harup-taw-shet, inside his head he was still the slender inexperienced youth whom Counselor Natoum had plucked from the streets of the city. When threatened in Hamuldar he had reflexively defended himself, but he still did not know how he had managed the feat. Besides, it had consisted of little more than an instinctive reaction to a single opponent. Now he found himself confronted by more than a dozen foes armed and inhuman.
A stout dark green figure with a single vertical eye where its nose should have been raised a club that ended in an iron square large enough to crush a man’s skull. As it advanced toward Madrenga with the intention of doing exactly that, something big, black, and snarling shot past the youth’s shoulder as if flung from a catapult. More leonine than canine, Bit’s roar echoed through the room as he slammed both jaws shut on the green assailant’s arm, twisted with the weight of his whole body, and wrenched the limb free. Puzzled by the sudden loss of a major appendage, its owner eyed the vacant socket in confusion. Madrenga’s shock was compounded as he stared: there was no blood.
Kakran-mul had looked up and was grinning. “Nice dog you have there, but he can’t kill any of my collection. Neither can you. You see, they’re already dead, and become animated only when I demand it of them. Why not surrender sensibly to the inevitable? It will go easier on you.” He gestured with his knife. “And on your dog.”
Responding to Bit’s intervention, a trio of lumbering, rotting simian shapes had formed a semi-circle in front of the dog and were backing him into a corner. The snarling canine still had the green monster’s dismembered arm clamped tight in his jaws. Two of the advancing ape-like creatures were raising clubs not unlike the one wielded by the now one-armed monstrosity confronting Madrenga. One chunk of cold iron was lined with short, thick spikes.
“Bit!” His four-legged friend was in trouble: that broke the spell, or paralysis, or whatever emotional lock had been holding Madrenga back. Drawing his sword, he rushed toward his dog. As he did so, the one-armed green thing brought its battleaxe around in a sweeping arc, the blade aimed at the intruder’s neck. Without thinking, Madrenga struck out blindly in defense with his sword. The blade cut clean through the axe’s thick ironwood handle, sending the axe-head flying wildly. It was stopped by the chest of a slavering frog-thing that had chosen an inopportune moment to charge the tall youth. As the flying axe-head struck it in the upper portion of its body, the frog-beast was knocked backward. The head of the mace it was swinging went wild and struck a bat-eared lump of half-formed yellowish protoplasm on the side of its head. Green-thing, frog-beast, and lump all went down more or less simultaneously.
The remainder of his meal now forgotten, a suddenly troubled Kakran-mul rose from where he had been sitting.
True to the merchant’s description of his collection, none of the heavily armed things shed blood when they were cut, cleaved, lopped, or otherwise battered by Madrenga’s whirling sword. As long as they remained on their feet or pseudopods they continued to come at him. The dining chamber was filled with flying limbs and other body parts as an anxious Madrenga, hardly aware of the carnage he was wreaking, hacked his way toward his cornered pet. Dead they might already be, or undead while functioning under the merchant’s inimical influence, but they were not invulnerable, and hardly immune to the youth’s raging blade.
Bit did not relax while his master worked. Leaping to and fro, bouncing off walls and ceiling to avoid the thrusts of swords and swings of clubs, the dog busied himself ripping off hands, arms, and heads. When such prominent targets grew in short supply, he switched to eviscerating one attacker after another. One barrel-shaped multi-tentacled gray amphibian found itself wrapped and bound in the intestines of another creature as Bit ran circles around the water-dweller with one end of the second monstrosity’s digestive system held firmly in his mouth.
Early in the clash, a party of armed men had appeared at the rear entrance to the dining hall. When a three-eyed decapitated head came flying at them they retreated as fast as they could back through the same doorway.
When finally the last grotesque skull had bounced off the dining table or one of the enclosing walls and the final body had been hewed beyond the capacity to deliver harm, Madrenga sheathed his sword and resumed his advance on the now distressed merchant. Stepping over severed limbs that still twitched and quivered in a horrible parody of life, he had to pause to kick the occasional grasping hand or tentacle out of the way. Disembodied heads snapped at his feet. Legs that had been divorced from their torsos tried to kick or trip him. He avoided all such attempts easily.
Kakran-mul did not wait for Madrenga to reach the table. Turning, he bolted for the rear door but only got a couple of steps. Abruptly reversing course, he began backing toward the table.
“Easy there now—nice dog. Nice doggy.”
The furious clash having energized yet another mysterious boost to Bit’s anatomy, the black dog’s muzzle was now at chest level with the merchant. Bit’s teeth had become scimitars and the embers that burned deep behind his eyes resembled the lakes of lava that surge and boil in the throats of volcanoes. Like steel petals, the spikes on his collar had grown until they were each longer than a man’s index finger. Formerly blunted at the ends, they were now sharp as cactus spines. The growl that emerged from deep within the broad black chest and muscular throat would have chilled the blood of the bravest man.
It was a description for which Kakran-mul was ill-suited. He was no coward, but confronted by the eyes and jaws of a creature that was pure fiend in canine form, the merchant’s legs grew weak. Momentarily distracted, Bit looked down and picked something off the floor. Still wrapped in rotting material, it was recognizable as the upper leg bone of one of his undead simian attackers. Jaws came together and the sound of thigh splintering filled the room.
“Bit loves bones.” Madrenga found he was not even breathing hard. Once again he marveled at the transformation that had come over him. Lowering his gaze, he looked meaningfully at the merchant’s nether extremities, comparing them to the bagatelle on which Bit was presently munching. Kakran-mul’s response was not what the youth expected.
“Come work for me.”
Madrenga blinked. The merchant might be a thug and a kidnapper and a bit of a coward, but he had presence of mind. “What?”
“Come work for me. Whatever those foggy old fools who hired you are paying, I will double it. Triple it! Never have I seen such a warrior who was at first so underestimated and who subsequently turned out to be so powerful!” He made a sweeping gesture. “You have destroyed my collection. I forgive you that.”
“You forgive …?” A gaping Madrenga marveled at the man’s audacity. “I am not a warrior,” he protested. “I am a courier.”
Kakran-mul did not hear him, so immersed was he in his anticipated glory to be. “I will take the cost of restoration and repair out of your salary, which I assure you will be commensurate with your skills. You and your dog will become my personal bodyguard. I can already see the faces of the guild chairmen when I walk into a meeting with the both of you at my side! They will grant any concessions I ask, lest in the course of the usual negotiations I lose my temper. Oh, it will be a marvelous thing to see!”
“No, it won’t.” Madrenga had had just about enough of this self-important, self-delusional popinjay. “Because in order to see, one must have eyes.”
As he moved nearer a newly nervous Kakran-mul tried to retreat. Once again, a warning growl stopped him in his tracks. Reaching out and down, for he was now considerably taller than the merchant, Madrenga put the thumbs of each hand over the man’s eyes while his fingers wrapped around the sides of the head.
“Tell me where the girl Elenacol is and I won’t crush your skull.”
Madrenga would never have dispatched even as vicious a creature as the merchant in so brutal a manner. Inside, he was still the boy from the warrens and alleys of Harup-taw-shet. But Kakran-mul didn’t know that. Just as the youth’s thumbs began to press inward, the merchant jerked violently away and fell back in his chair, gazing up in fear at the young intruder while doing his best to shrink back into the carved wood.
“All right, all right, enough! You can have the bitch!”
Relieved he had not been forced to carry out even a portion of his threat, Madrenga stepped back. “Where is she?”
“After all,” the merchant mumbled to himself, “what’s one girl more or less? Not worth this trouble, not worth it at all.” His attention having come to rest on the slaughter that now paved the floor of the dining hall, he seemed to have forgotten the young man who towered over him. “My beautiful curiosities! Look what you’ve done to them. Restoring them will cost …”
“Will cost you your head if you don’t shut up.” Madrenga’s patience was wearing thin. He was also concerned that the merchant’s mercenaries, who had fled earlier, might be regrouping their forces and stiffening their backbones for a fresh assault on the dining hall. “The girl. Where?”
“Hmm? Oh yes, the girl.” A distracted Kakran-mul raised a hand and pointed. “There.”
Frowning, the youth turned to look in the indicated direction. There was no one to be seen in the space the merchant had singled out. Only some furniture: a sideboard of hand-milled nortenwood flanked by a pair of matching chairs and a five-shelf bookcase filled with leather-bound tomes, small sculptures and other bric-a-brac. On the top shelf a pair of tall candlesticks in silver holders flanked half a dozen bottles of colored glass, each a different size and shape.
“Bit,” he said tightly.
Advancing on the seated merchant, the dog clamped his jaws around the man’s lower left leg. Bit did so gently, but with an understated implication that was almost as terrifying as an actual bite. Terror underscored Kakran-mul’s frantic response.
“She’s there, right there!” he stammered as he stared wide-eyed down at the pair of massive jaws that were attached to the canine at his feet. “The bottles contain spirits. Gantone whiskey, parmalla wine, essence of collay, essence of girl.…”
Striving to convey a sophistication he did not possess, a bemused Madrenga walked over to the shelves. “Fourth bottle?” he asked hesitantly.
Without taking his eyes off the dog-thing locked on his leg, Kakran-mul nodded violently. “Fourth bottle. You may get a small shock when you pick it up. The candlesticks are linked by a spell of force that restrains anything within the bottles. I take as much care to protect my liquor as I do my women.”
“Not your woman.” Madrenga reached for the bottle. He did indeed feel a tremor run through his hand as it interrupted the force that invisibly linked the two candlesticks, but it was little more than a tingle. The glass of which the bottle was blown was thick, red, and opaque. He stared at it, still not quite believing in what he might be holding. “She’s in this?”
“Yes, yes.” Kakran-mul swallowed hard. “Now call off your dog.”
“Bit—off.”
Misinterpreting the young man’s words, the merchant closed his eyes and went stiff, expecting the worst. But the dog released his leg, the slashing teeth tearing only the fabric of the pants as they withdrew. Turning away from the relieved trader, Bit rummaged through the piles of undead body parts until he found one that was suitable, or tasty, or both, and set to chewing. With each crack of bone a still uneasy Kakran-mul winced visibly.
“How do I get her out?”
“Just remove the stopper. It’s not spelled,” the merchant added as he saw Madrenga continue to hesitate. “None of my people would dare to touch any of the bottles. Thirsty though they might be they would fear opening the wrong one.”
What did the remaining two bottles contain, then? Madrenga wondered. The implication was unnerving. No matter. Reaching down, he twisted and tugged on the stopper of the red bottle until it came loose. Immediately a dark vapor began to emerge from the interior. Startled, he dropped the bottle and stepped back as the thick haze coiled upward in front of him.
“You lied to me! It is an evil apparition!”
With Bit having removed himself from his leg the merchant had regained some of his former bravado. “Kakran-mul of Mulereer does not lie. Deceive, trick, dupe or occasionally swindle perhaps, but he does not lie.” He shook his head regretfully. “To be bested by one so young and ignorant is shaming. My soul is flogged.”
Even Bit looked up from his chunk of half-gnawed shoulder as the swirling mist in front of his master continued to rise and condense. Emerging from the depths of the tepid fog, smaller extensions of itself began to twist and coil on their own. A rush of glitter flashed through the churning darkness as if it had been suddenly strewn with mica; a sparkling tornado seen in slow-motion.
Vaporish gloom gave way to a pale red that shifted and surged until it became the color and consistency of dark flesh. Out of the haze, hollows and protrusions slowly took shape and became familiar. Too familiar. Madrenga knew he should avert his eyes, but he could not. No man could.
A thousand tiny vapor trails hardened into waist-length strands of black hair. Profuse though they were, they were insufficient in density and location to appropriately cover the female form that now stood upright before the wonderstruck young man. He was not so stunned, however, that he failed to remember certain words that had been spoken to him by this woman’s mother.
“She’s just a wisp of a thing,” Elenna had told him. More true than he could have imagined, he now realized. He finally found his voice.
“You’re a smoke sprite!”
“I see that I have been drawn forth by a man of brilliance and penetrating insight.” Elenacol’s gaze narrowed as she appraised her rescuer. “Or a very large boy.”
Madrenga straightened to the maximum degree his unaccountably enhanced stature would allow. “I am a man!” In the presence of the remaining vapor he then sneezed, an action which somehow mitigated his declaration.
“We’ll see.” Looking down at herself, she spread her arms wide. “You are correct that I am a smoke sprite. I am also a naked smoke sprite.”
“What? Oh—I hadn’t noticed.”
“A liar as well.”
Hastily removing his outer shirt, he draped it carefully around the young woman’s shoulders. As she pulled it around her he reflected that he would now be cold when they ventured outside, but no matter the pre-dawn temperature he resolved not to admit to any discomfort.
“I’ve come to take you back to your parents. They’re worried about you.”
“Obviously, or you wouldn’t be here.” She sighed. “I suppose saving excuses staring.” Her gaze wandered past him to the seated figure of Kakran-mul. “Sir, my wish would be for one day to be your personal chef, so that I might make a fine ragout of your own testicles and watch you eat them.”
Kakran-mul stiffened slightly. “And I had fine plans for you that also involved some grilling. Is it possible for one to put a brand on smoke? Now I will never know.” He nodded at Madrenga. “I insulted this youthful intruder and it cost me. I underestimated him and it cost me. You would be wise to do neither.”
Uncertain how to respond to compliments from such an unexpected source, Madrenga made no comment. Unbeknownst to him, it was the mature thing to do.
“Let’s be away from this place.” The young man put an arm around the sprite’s now covered shoulders. As he led her from the dining hall, she finally noticed that portions of it had been recarpeted with body parts. Her gaze rose to his face.
“You did this?”
He nodded. “And my dog.” Bit had trotted up to accompany them. Pacing alongside his master, the dog proudly carried an entire severed arm in his jaws. Madrenga eyed it distastefully.
“Bit, drop it! That’s disgusting!”
“He’s a dog,” she said matter-of-factly. “In my experience the only time ‘disgusting’ can be used in an affectionate manner is when referring to a dog.”
“You have a dog?” They were outside now, heading for the courtyard.
“No. I have dust bunnies.”
At her first sight of his mount she stopped and stared. “Is that—your horse?”
He nodded. “Orania’s gotten a little bigger since we left home. So has Bit. So have I. It is something I do not understand, and do not have time to ponder more than occasionally.” As they drew closer the mare looked back and snorted softly.
There plainly being no way the perfectly formed but modestly statured Elenacol was going to be able to get a foot up to the high stirrup, Madrenga gave her a boost into the saddle. Being unacquainted with such gallant maneuvers, his hand slipped from her foot to more curvaceous regions north. Expecting a curse or other reprimand, he was surprised when she smiled down at him.
“You have saved me. Be not so diffident. How old are you, anyway? And what is your name?”
“I am called Madrenga.” He mounted up behind her, there being ample room in the great saddle to accommodate both of them. Without having to be told, Bit leaped to his now familiar perch on the backpack that straddled the horse’s hindquarters.
The same mica sparkle he had seen earlier now turned her black eyes to ornaments. “Ah. That explains much.”
Not to him it didn’t. But there was no time to press the matter. Shouts and cries were rising from deeper within the merchant’s compound. Whether they represented the humiliated Kakran-mul attempting to rally his household fighters, the screams of servants summoned to clean up the corpse-laden dining hall, or something else, Madrenga had no inclination to linger and learn the explanation. Nudging Orania, he sent the now partially armored horse bolting forward. Neither the guards at the gate nor the gate itself having yet been replaced, there was still a welcoming opening where the pedestrian entrance had been.
“Lower yourself!” Madrenga told the girl. She bent as far forward as she could, bringing her head below the level of Orania’s mane. He did likewise. This pressed his upper body into her back which, despite the two shirts that separated them, felt like anything but smoke.
Excited shouts and a couple of arrows followed them as they raced clear of the compound, indications that Kakran-mul’s fighters were recovering their courage. This did not extend to their mounting a formal pursuit. In any event Madrenga doubted there was a horse alive that could catch what Orania had become. The yelling quickly faded behind them.
Elenacol straightened in the saddle, his heavy outer shirt tenting around her. While there was room for the two of them, it was a tight fit when she sat back, one made all the tighter by the unavoidable bumping and jouncing of Orania’s swift gait. Whereas this increasing proximity did not seem to trouble her at all, it unsettled him more than a little. But not in a manner that troubled him.
As they rode on through the night, the promise of an approaching dawn was not the only wish that found itself fulfilled.