Deomans of Faerel Page 5

  Just outside the hut an almost identical symbol appeared in a crude painting on the wall. In the center stood the figure of a man holding a sword—a man with a fishtail.

  “You see, your coming was foretold,” the chief said matter of fact. He gestured up into the night sky. “Written in the stars. The others know nothing of this, know nothing of your great purpose.”

  “My great purpose? And what do you know of me?”

  The chief’s head bobbed as he struggled to maintain his balance. “What I know may save our people and allow our tribe to live on in distant lands. And it may also get you to your destination.”

  They returned to the hut where the tiny man plopped down with a sigh of accomplishment. “You are the one,” the chief said. “Of that I am most certain. You are the one who will release our world from the grip of the Tarturawa, the Black Underworld.”

  Jack’s mind reeled. So he knew. Somehow this little guy knew everything. But one thing was still out of whack.

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here on this island. There are others. Two women and another man. They could be in danger. I need to find them.”

  The chief shook his head. “You are mistaken. It is a rare and wondrous miracle that you are here. The path before you is long, Jack Rowan, long and arduous. But here is where your journey must begin.”

  He placed his wrinkled hand against Jack’s chest. “Fear not. None who are of this world will be able to see what is missing inside. Use this to your advantage.”

  The little red man was clearly tiring. “The time has come. When the suns rise we will begin the process of clearing the ship from the jungle’s grasp. And then you must speak with her.”

  “Speak with her? With the ship?” Jack chuckled. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  The chief gestured with his crooked finger. “The ship on the other side of the island. The one in which Marlin arrived. The ship is alive. And only she can choose her captain.”

  This was too much. A ship that was alive? Surely the chief hadn’t meant that literally. For the moment, Jack pushed the ridiculous thought from his mind.

  “And what makes you think she will choose me?”

  The chief let out a dry laugh. “Young man, can you not feel it? She has already done so.”

  4

  Friends in Low Places

  The darkness surrounding him was absolute, and wherever he was the place stank terribly.

  Som spit out a mouthful of soil and pushed up onto his elbows. He couldn’t see a thing and could hear only a soft crinkling sound like the rustling of dead leaves. Mercifully, his ears popped and the sound faded away, replaced now by the drone of empty air.

  He reached out with trembling hands and sensed the hollow vastness of a great space.

  An irrefutable muck tugged at his nakedness as he struggled to his feet, churning soil the consistency of oatmeal into two unstable puddles into which he steadily began to sink. Determined not to do so, he gritted his teeth and trudged forward in search of solid ground.

  At last, he located a somewhat more stable patch of earth and stood on wobbly legs. He wiped at his face and his vision gradually returned. Slowly, the world around him came into focus, and he saw that he was at the bottom of a great earthen shaft.

  Where am I?

  Who am I?

  The last thought came as quite a shock, and then a burst of panic shot through when he realized he could recall only a single name.

  Som.

  It rang in his ears, taunting, reverberating. But, try as he might, he could remember nothing more.

  Som collapsed to his knees, conceding to the fact that he was quite weak. Whoever he was—wherever he was—he was certainly very thin and small, almost delicate.

  It was cold. He shivered. Strange sounds echoed in the darkness.

  A blue light swept out over the muddy expanse. It flashed once, steadied, and then bobbed determinedly toward him. With no chance of escape, Som simply waited for the inevitable.

  A man dressed in a thick leather jacket fitted with horizontal rows of metal shanks stepped into view, a shielded lantern clenched in his outstretched hand. He spotted Som and immediately produced a dangerous looking sword of polished black metal that shimmered with a life of its own. Som could have sworn he heard the man whispering to someone, but he was alone.

  “Do not move,” the man instructed in a deep but innocuous tone as he drew near. His hair was long and dirty, and he had a face that sported several day’s growth. In the pale blue light, Som could have sworn the man’s skin was gray in color, like ash from a fire.

  Below the leather jacket jangled the rusted metal of more armor. His shins were protected by metal strips, as were his knees, wrists and forearms. The entire ensemble looked pieced together. A belt with many pouches ran snug around his waist. On his back he bore a small but crowded pack.

  “Keep still,” the man instructed, pointing the tip of the dark sword out in front of him. Somehow sensing the instability of the floor ahead, the man settled down onto his haunches and placed the lantern on the ground. With the blade still in his hand, he undid the straps that held his pack in place and swung it around so that he could root inside. After a moment he pulled something out and tossed it over.

  A floppy leather jacket fell with a smack into the mud.

  “Put it on,” he insisted. “Cover them up. Cover them all up.”

  Cover what up? But then Som sensed them fluttering at his back.

  Wings. I have wings. There were four of them, in fact.

  He glanced over his shoulder to admire them, shocked and astounded by their very existence, though not fully understanding why. Each wing looked as delicate as a dragonfly’s, glimmering with all the colors of a soap bubble.

  A pair of short pants fell into the muck as well.

  “I’m no fool,” the man added. “Just a whiff of dust from a fairy’s wings is enough to cause hallucinations in men. And I’ll not be having any more of those today.”

  A fairy? I am… a fairy? Something snapped in his mind. Som looked up pleadingly.

  “Please, I think I was supposed to meet someone. Are you… here for me?”

  The man remained unaffected. He kept the tip of the sword trained on him until Som at last put on the jacket. Som was glad to do so. It offered only a moderate amount of protection from the cold, but it was something. Only then did the man reach out to grab his narrow wrist and jerk him from the muck. When he had him free he stood back and sheathed the blade. Som wordlessly pulled the pants up over his muddy legs.

  The man offered his hand. “I am Andin.”

  Som could see very clearly now that the man’s skin was indeed gray. It had not been a trick of the light. He shook his hand, drawing in a quick breath when he realized the man’s eyes were a bright lavender.

  “S… Som. My name is Som.”

  Andin donned his pack and jerked his head in the direction from which he’d come. “I’m making my way toward the surface. If you like, you can tag along.” He adjusted straps on the pack and then almost as an afterthought added, “If you can keep up.”

  He turned and began moving away into the darkness.

  Som let out a sigh. He followed the man out of the chamber and down a ruddy tunnel clotted with wet stones and sticky clay, to a space where the passageway widened considerably. He gasped when he realized he now stood looking over the edge of a tiered system of rock shelves that dropped down into a vast and glowing void.

  An unpleasant odor emanated from the space, like burnt matchsticks. The nimble, quickly moving man had already dropped down onto the first shelf. Not sure if he should trust him, but also not wanting to be left behind, Som quickly followed.

  Without conversation, they followed the shelves down, dropping lower and lower until they finally rounded a bend that quite unexpectedly widened into a colossal subterranean vault.

  Som stopped short at the sight of it all, marveling at the deep pockets of glowing purple crystals that
transformed what surely would have remained a dangerous, inky void into an exotic world of flowing stone. He risked a look down and caught a glimpse of a glowing, blue river far below.

  “Where are you taking me?” Som asked. “I thought we were heading toward the surface?”

  Andin kept up his brisk pace, stepping over broad toadstools, leaping from stone to stone.

  “I’m not taking you anywhere,” he said, not bothering to look back. “It is you who are following me. Besides, we first have to travel down before we can go up.” He dropped from sight again.

  Som hurried to keep up.

  They continued down, deeper and deeper, until finally emerging onto a somewhat level half-moon ledge of slick stone overlooking the glorious river. It was the brightest of blue, nearly indigo, and it glowed with a strange kind of energy. Here the man seemed a bit more at ease and settled down into a crouch to peel off the pack.

  “Here,” he said. “We’ll rest here.”

  While Andin rifled through the pack, Som stepped down from the rock and into the shallows to rinse off, clothes and all. He bent to splash water into his face and gasped when he caught sight of his own reflection. At first he thought it was the water, but then he realized his skin was blue as well, like a pale blue sky.

  He was very thin and bald, and not very tall. His ears were long and somewhat spade-shaped. His fingernails were black but not painted. He examined himself with sparkling green eyes that were large and almond-shaped. They sparkled a bit, too, and he realized he was able to see very well in the dark. His black lips were thin and his nose tiny, the nostrils almost slits.

  He reached up to touch his face. Something about all of this just didn’t feel quite right.

  Andin produced a small loaf of bread and a wheel of white cheese wrapped in brown fabric. He took a bite from the wheel and then offered both. Suddenly finding he was very hungry, Som accepted and ate voraciously.

  Andin pulled a wineskin from the pack as well and then settled down. He undid the stopper and took a long pull. He tossed it over to Som who smelled it. Water. He nodded his thanks and drank heartily.

  “So, my little friend,” Andin said. “The most obvious of questions looms.” He grinned as he chomped at the cheese. “What would a fairy be doing at the bottom of the Deep Mines?”

  Som had no idea what to say. He shrugged.

  The man leaned forward on one knee and raised a brow. “I expect an answer.”

  “I… I don’t know where to begin,” Som said, choosing to dodge the question altogether until he could find the right words.

  “I see.” Andin pushed the last bit of cheese past his lips, sucking the remains from his finger. He reached for the wineskin, which Som realized he still clung to. When Som didn’t react fast enough Andin snatched it up. He glared and then took one last swig before stuffing it back down into his pack.

  “So, are you saying you’ve no memory of how you got down here?”

  “None,” Som said truthfully. “I came to just before you found me.”

  Andin furrowed his brows. “What exactly are you doing down here?”

  Again Som could only shrug.

  The man’s face softened. He shook his head as he rose to his feet. Apparently their break was over. He secured the pack on his back once more.

  “You really don’t know where you are, do you?”

  Where they were was at the bottom of a mining operation known as the Deep Mines, Andin explained as the pair skirted the sparkling blue river. After mumbling some strange words and touching both his ankles—as well as Som’s—he moved silently up a steep jut of rock where the river turned. Halfway up he turned around and urged Som to follow.

  Although he stepped over many loose stones along the way, Som realized he was now moving just as silently as Andin. When he reached the summit, Andin held up his hand for him to stop and then pointed down.

  Not far below, a wall of rock damned the river, a natural part of the subterranean network known as the Underlands, Andin quietly explained. But the gurgling waters passed through the wall, channeled through an artificial passageway.

  Andin pointed up a little higher on the wall. On a mezzanine above the hole stood strange beings who reached down with hooked rods to wrangle dozens of copper balls that bobbed in the water.

  “That passage leads to an enormous conduit filled with water,” Andin explained, “which in turn leads straight up to an underground lake near Kriegen Hold, a way station for miners. Those copper balls you see are transport bells. The miners use them to travel from cavern to cavern and to get back out.”

  “Up? But how can a column of water travel up?”

  “Shhh, get down.”

  They ducked back over the top of the ridge. The shimmering black sword was out again. Som realized that the surface of it almost looked like the night sky speckled with stars. Andin had his lips near the blade. He seemed to be whispering something.

  Som quietly gasped when he thought he heard it vibrate in response. Andin returned the dark blade to its sheath and then pointed again. Som peered over the ridge.

  In the waters below he spotted a small watercraft that had several of the copper transport bells netted at its sides. Deckhands struggled with the nets to keep the bells from floating away.

  He felt a chill pass through his body. These were no ordinary deckhands. They looked like very tall men in dark overcoats, but where a head should have been sprouted an enormous eye that rose up from the shoulder area on a stout stalk. Instead of hands, their arms ended in a wriggling mass of oily, gray tendrils.

  “Gazers.” Andin spit into the dark. “Colodians, scoundrels of the Underlands.” He looked quite perturbed. “Those greasy devils occupy much of the Deep Mines now. And with each day that passes more and more wealth is pilfered from the coffers of the Reyks.” Andin seemed to realize his unfamiliarity with the word. “Dwarves,” he clarified. “My, this is turning out to be something of an education for you. The Reyks are dwarves. They’ve been mining brynstan from these caverns for ages.”

  Not bothering to explain what brynstan was, he added, “One day they dug too deep, too close to the heart of the Colodian city of Neskarfar. Old tunnels were opened that should have never been. The gazers moved in and took control of Kriegen Hold. They’ve occupied the mines ever since.”

  Som shrugged. “I’m sorry,” he offered. “I… I think there is something wrong with my memory. I’m afraid I don’t remember much of anything at all.”

  Something in the man’s face changed. When he spoke next it was almost comforting.

  “It’s alright, my friend. You are ill. I can see that clearly now.” He placed a comforting hand on Som’s shoulder. “I will see to it you reach the surface in one piece. And maybe then we can get you some help.”

  Som had many questions. But one burned in his throat.

  “That… sword of yours,” he tenderly inquired. “Why is it you seem to be… speaking with it?”

  The man grew suddenly cold. His lavender eyes seemed to glow with a fierce inner fire.

  “Her name is Shiver,” he grumbled. “She is mine and you must never touch her. Do you understand? And with whom I choose to speak is no concern of yours!”

  They stayed to the shadows and followed the riverbank, passing at last over a small jut of rock that dropped down in a secluded cove filled with black sand. Then, for some reason, Andin came apart altogether.

  “The gods be damned!” he spat into the gloom. “It was right here! I left the damn thing right here!”

  What he was referring to, Som soon discovered, was his own copper transport bell, one he himself had chartered. But it was nowhere to be seen. Only a short length of chain and the stake he’d used to secure it remained.

  Som struggled for something to say, anything that would distract the man from his stewing anger.

  “So, these… gazers. Are they dangerous?”

  Andin dropped down into the sand. “Yes. Quite. They can mystify men with their gaz
e, and they speak only with their minds. Some can even read the thoughts of others.” He picked up a handful of sand and tossed it aside. He kept staring expectantly down the river. “And they’re rather tough bastards to take down.”

  Som sat. “So, how are we going to get past them?” He was almost afraid of the answer.

  “With this, of course,” Andin said, holding up his wrist. Around it hung a bracelet with a rounded-corner rectangle attached. Some sort of identification tag. Andin pointed. “I see you don’t have one. That’s going to be a problem.”

  They backtracked a few hundred yards to a bend where the waters were gentler. Near a natural depression in the rocky surface, a place close to the river but still out of sight, they hid.

  Andin drew Shiver. The dark metal of the weapon seemed to audibly hum, to almost sing to itself in the darkness. Andin tested the sharpness of the blade against his thumb, or perhaps he was just caressing the twinkling metal.

  “We’ll wait here,” he said absently. “If we ever want to get to the surface, we’re going to have to commandeer one of those bells.”

  5

  Halls of the Zenavestra

  It wasn’t that she had suddenly become so monumentally vain, it was just that the person staring back from the mirror could not possibly have been her, although the features were strikingly similar.

  But it just couldn’t have been her. Could it?

  Of course, it was her. But it was just so… so…

  “Amazing.”

  For the most part, Hanna’s new body still looked somewhat human but now seemed to be in top-notch athletic condition. Most importantly, however, she felt vigorously healthy. No longer did she feel even the slightest bit ill. In fact, she felt quite the opposite, as though she could climb the highest mountain or run an Olympic marathon.

  She decided not to dwell too much on the aesthetics of her strange transformation. Her illness had miraculously reversed. This she simply knew to be true. And for that fact alone she felt immeasurably indebted. Her new body would take some getting used to, of course. But what was she worried about anyway? Certainly this had to be one of the most high-ranking forms on this… Faerel, was it?