INTERLUDE 6A: I LEFT YOU
“I say: we have forgotten the symbol, and what it means for the one who wears it. Forget the word. Forget the individual, just for a moment. The mage is elevated to the symbol. Through the masked mage our society is able to do more than merely project; we act as receivers, recipients of a form of higher Truth that can only be depicted, never explicated. Whether we do so willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, we all actively play out those roles (protector, monster) for ourselves. The cult of personality is not some concrete phenomenon. It is the tip of a silent iceberg, the visible protuberance of a vast entity beneath the surface, reaching out for something more.”
– from ‘The Modern Mage’
18th Mortifost, 990 NE
“Do it again! Go on, lass!”
Imrye smiled. She knew she’d indulge them – she loved the attention. Any attention, really.
She held herself poised, heels together and back straight. “Might I ask for thy glasses, gentlemen?”
The laughter was only slightly less-uproarious than last time; she curtsied with the corners of her grease-stained, gut-smeared apron and leaned across the table to grab an empty tankard.
“Yah do a grand impersonation, lass,” the Northman, her number one fan, rumbled from behind her. “More ale!” he cried, as if she wasn’t standing twelve inches from him.
Then Imrye felt the sting as the big blond sailor swatted her on her backside.
She whirled back to face him and, with excruciating slowness, placed her foot on the seat of the chair in which he was sprawled.
He felt the pressure of her boot between his legs, and the table silenced, all eyes captivated.
The Northman glanced down at the foot, back to Imrye’s face, his gaze pleading –
She lifted her leg and stamped her foot on the floor so fast he must’ve thought she’d gone and done it – he reflexively doubled over in anticipation of pain, and the whole table erupted into laughter.
“Touch my ass again, it’ll be the last thing you touch,” she warned him, still smiling.
“Oooh – might be worth it, I’ll tell you, lads,” the Northman confided to his mates. “Such a firm –“
Imrye reached out and squeezed the man’s beard-obscured cheek, tugging on the whiskers such that he winced and sealed his trap shut.
“Better,” she said.
Before he could pluck up his courage enough to give her another excuse to stop working, she gathered up the mugs and hopped off behind the bar to fetch more ale. She was serving on her own this afternoon, and although the main room of the Battered Hog was next to empty she had to keep on top of things – the day was starting to wane, and if Tephel came downstairs from his room early and found empty cups or an unstoked hearth she would be in for it.
She liked this job and she wanted to keep it. Not many people were willing to hire women like her; here in Salnifast-by-the-Sea her gender and complexion meant nothing, but her elven heritage marked her as noble-born in this country – a fact people were constantly reminding her of, be it consciously or unconsciously, from the very first day she arrived here, two and a bit years back. (She’d first perfected her much-praised highborn accent by making sarcastic comments at the expense of those who stared at her slanted eyes, pointed ears, unusual hair.) On top of that, her tallness seemed to make lots of men agitated – at least the non-drunk ones – and coupled together these were enough to make most potential employers incapable of being anything but intimidated by her.
Tephel wasn’t intimidated by her in the slightest, and seemed to realise she needed him more than he needed her, especially now winter was here and the ice-wind blew in across the bay. His harshness was reassuring, in a way. He was someone who didn’t misunderstand her.
If there was one trade off to her unnatural physique, she barely looked sixteen despite the fact she was about to pass what she guessed to be her thirtieth Yearsend. She liked this not because she was vain (well, of course she loved the fact she could still eat whatever she liked and stay in shape) but because no one knew she wasn’t sixteen. She didn’t have to pretend to grow up, didn’t have to pretend to have the answers to life’s hard questions, or even be on the path to finding them. She could revel in her identity or lack thereof. The silver lining to a cloud that consisted of being abandoned in a human village as a toddler, raised by the kindness of strangers.
But she’d always lived by the water – the lakeside fishing village where she’d grown up was her first real home, of course, but when she’d spread her wings for distant shores she’d always hugged the water’s edge. And that was why she needed to keep this job at the Hog: she couldn’t leave Salnifast-by-the-Sea. The world’s greatest port was the place for her. She’d taken trips upriver to see the wonder that was Mund, but even that awesome monument to the Realm didn’t do anything for her. The ocean held her heart; this she’d known from the moment she’d first beheld it.
Wyrda had a reputation for treachery and being the cause of calamity, as befitting the Maker of the Tides, She Who Slumbers Submerged – but she wasn’t a dark goddess. She was revered, along with all the other Gods of the Light, during the important ceremonies and festivals of every culture in every province Imrye had ever visited. And Imrye had always felt an affinity, a strange link with the Fish-Queen that went far deeper than liking a bit of cod. She’d spend evenings with her elbows on the marble rails, standing under the lanterns that swung in the salt breeze, just looking out into the darkness. Hearing the voice of the sea, drowning out the dock-workers and sailors. Listening to her wordless, rhythmic cries and adding her tears to its endless song. Wondering if the goddess was alone down there too, as alone as she was up here.
That would come in a couple of hours, once the punters started showing up and the others arrived to take over her shift, Mairdae and Fjarni and Phreme. For now she put on her less-frowny face and returned to the Northman’s table, furnished them with a silver’s-worth of beer, endured a few more jibes and gave a few more back…
Maybe a visit to the Northman’s boat would be in order, on her night-time ramblings, once she’d seen enough of the sea. The fellow been a very naughty boy today, and she wanted to have a stern word with him in private.
She was musing on this while she stood with her poker, prodding the fire farthest from the door – when she heard it bang open and the swift rushing of feet.
“’Ere ‘e is!” snarled the first through the doorway, only increasing his speed as he spoke.
None of the usual insult-trading, dark looks that could extend across the length of a whole afternoon – no. There were eight of them, against the five in the Northman’s gang. They’d brought no real weapons that Imrye could see – except the metal half-gloves a few of the attackers were wearing across their knuckles. But they didn’t need the advantage of numbers, the advantage of weaponry. They came prepared for a fight, and their targets were pretty far gone in drink, without the fire-in-the-blood of combat. In the time it’d take for the drunks to get ready for a fight, they were already defeated.
She’d witnessed violence like this between rival sailor-crews before, but she’d always been there for whatever precipitated it, always been able to prepare herself mentally for the distressing sights and sounds. This happened in less than ten seconds, from start to finish…
Bones were broken. One man’s ear was almost torn-off by a particularly unfortunate, half-missed blow from a metal-clad fist. The guy to the Northman’s left was thrown backwards, taking the chair with him, and when the rear of his head connected with the floorboards it was with a sickening crunch. The man didn’t move again, and no one seemed to notice or care as he lay there in the wreckage of the chair – someone even kicked his face just to be sure.
There was the poker in Imrye’s hand, and its presence there was a weight that exceeded any calculation of the object’s properties. It was a weapon – could she use it to end this, crack one of the attackers in the head, make them all turn and run? It was a liability – could she throw it down to make it clear she wasn’t a threat without drawing any attention to herself?
The heat of the fire was suddenly a living thing and she wanted to back away, but she was trapped in the moment, the indecision.
Who am I?
It was almost like she could see two paths, two future-selves branching off into the distance, and which of them was the right path to follow – which of them left her alive, never mind anyone else – was impossible to tell. She wasn’t a diviner.
The one who’d led them into the Hog was crouching over the handsome Northman.
“This is for the nailbiter job,” he hissed, “just so as yer unnerstans on the shadow side why yer dead. The man sends ‘is regards.”
He produced a long dirk from inside his leather jerkin and casually flipped it in the air, then punched it straight down into the Northman’s chest.
Imrye dropped the poker and it clattered on the hearthstones. One of the thugs looked at her, but it was only a glance.
The leader yanked the blade free, then drew its edge across the Northman’s throat before standing straight again, spitting on the dying man, and turning to leave.
Once all eight of them were across the threshold and the door slammed shut on the grey daylight, the paralysis departed and Imrye ran to the patrons – three of them were nursing broken noses, wrists, fingers – but the guy who’d fallen backwards was so dead he’d even stopped twitching – and the Northman, the Northman…
She slipped in the blood pouring from his torn throat, his punctured heart. She manoeuvred his head into her lap, lying it upon her apron – his blond hair was wet, already matted black with the life-fluid running from him –
His lips moved but only red bubbles formed.
She pressed her hand against his throat, reached down to put a firm hold on his muscular, heaving chest. She had no idea where the wounds really were – the injury-sites were already clogged messes. She could only hold him, give him what comfort she might in his last moments…
She felt the pity well up within her, move through her, and in its wake her mind frantically seized on a course of action.
“Get help!” she barked at the groaning sailors strewn around on the floor, then raised her voice: “Tephel! Tephel!”
“Th-the poker?” one of his mates muttered, wincing in obvious pain.
“You can’t just burn wounds like these!” she cried. “We – we need a druid –“
“N-nah, lass,” the Northman said, coughing. “Dr-druids… cost… too tootin’ much.”
She laughed, and the tears in her eyes fell loose as her head shook.
“Damn you, don’t make me laugh while you’re dying –“
“Who said owt about dyin’? Lass, be me ever s’ bold – yer know I’d do – anythin’ – to get this close to yer…”
Even his friends were taken aback by the calm with which he was taking his end.
Almost reverently, she lowered her face, kissed him on the forehead.
Mortiforn free your soul, Northman, she prayed.
His face stilled.
Imrye reached out with a trembling hand to close his open eyes –
The eyes moved to regard her – he sat up and crowed in exultation.
“Gotcha! Just ’ow must a man play dead to get one on ‘is lips, eh? Look! Look at me!”
He spun around and, still crouching, wiped away a handful of wine-red blood from his throat to reveal no cut, nothing, there was nothing; he tore open his vest to expose his drenched, hairy, unwounded chest.
Imrye froze. His mates froze, but they weren’t looking at him. All their eyes were on her.
“But – how…”
She looked down at her own hands.
“I…”
Who am I now?
She had felt something. Something that had flowed through her.
“Oi! Witch-girl, put yer ‘ands on Dervim!” one of them grunted, a grimy, thin-bearded fellow with blood still leaking from his busted nose.
She didn’t look up.
“Dervim’s gone, Saz,” the Northman said. “Leave it be.”
“You gotta be kiddin’ me, right?” Saz cried, lunging closer –
The grimy man was too fast for her number one fan to get in the way, and he seized Imrye by the shoulder in an attempt to drag her forwards, attend to the no-longer-twitching Dervim.
It felt as though he hadn’t gotten quite as good of a hold on her flesh as he should’ve. She went with the motion, hoping to avoid most of the pain that would come with resisting, but she couldn’t feel anything.
Once she was on her feet she planted them, and from Saz’s wide-eyed expression it seemed he had very quickly realised he could no longer drag her. To prove her point she reached out, took the grimy man’s upper arm, and pushed him away.
“I know you’re upset, but don’t – touch – me,” she said.
He backed away even more quickly than he’d approached.
She walked of her own accord to Dervim’s side, knelt, placed her hands on him, but before she even knew what she was looking for, she knew she wasn’t going to find it here. The body – it wasn’t like the Northman’s. Wasn’t like her own. Something was missing.
“I’m very sorry, Saz, but Dervim really is gone.”
Saz didn’t want to hear it, and neither did the other two. They fled, nursing their wounds, cursing the Northman – and with a grateful, regretful backwards glance at Imrye he chased after them.
Tephel was on the stairs, leaning on the bannister in the corner, and he yelled down at her:
“Don’t think I’m gonna pay you any more to be a bodyguard! I saw you push that fella off.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Her mouth moved of its own accord – her eyes and her hands were still on Dervim’s body.
“Ah, another corpse I see. Well, they’re worth a few bob. Not much obvious damage… Head over to Fynster’s and tell him I need a favour.”
“Will do.”
She stood up, wiped her hands unconsciously on her apron before untying it, throwing it on the counter and heading for the door herself.
She heard Tephel shout something about needing a coat before the door closed behind her, but she ignored him. She moved automatically down the street towards the apothecary’s on the corner, still wringing her hands in her pockets, clenching them over and over, sensing the waves of life coursing their way through her body.
The wind should’ve cut her, but she raised her face into it, let it sweep aside her turquoise hair. Tears filled her eyes, but this was joy – pure, unadulterated joy.
Wyrda be praised!
She had her answer. She knew who she was.
I said we needed a druid… and a druid is what we got!
* * *
27th Yunara, 992 NE
The night Tephel died was her last on the land for a long, long time.
She had tried her hand at healing, and passed the tests set by senior members of the Shining Circle, even if she didn’t quite make the grade for fixing head injuries. All spring and summer she’d been at it – the Magisterium took about eighty percent of what she made, but trade was brisk, and she had plenty aside for rent and disposable income. Her little shop on the wharf was a popular attraction for the townspeople with minor hurts and injuries – a trip down to the harbour, take the kids to see the boats and get the mother-in-law’s broken hip taken care of…
Imrye, for her part, got to sit with her feet up by her window, watching the surf as it went from pink to white to pink again, whiling away the hours from sunrise to sunset listening to the incomprehensible cries of foreign crewmen as they offloaded their shipments. Sometimes she visited the Battered Hog, saw her friends, had a cup of wine. It was, without a doubt, the most-perfect time of her life. She was supposed to charge more for worse maladies, for the energies expended in the healing – but she flouted the rules, assessing her clients on the basis of their wealth. A farmhand needing a full reworking of his inner organs might pay less than a gentleman wanting a tooth regrown. Her newfound freedom was everything she’d ever wanted, or so she’d thought.
She could fly, now – something which she knew should’ve enraptured her, thrilled her to the core – but once she’d gotten over the initial excitement, she went back to the docks, even sitting below them late at night, fearful of no robber-pirate or corrupt watchman, dangling her feet into the water. Biting her lip against the torturous ecstasy of indecision. Looking down into the darkness of the depths, wondering when she would do it, when she would try an aquatic shape. Most weren’t so different from snakes, she supposed, and she knew it wouldn’t take the blink of an eye for her to transform into a salmon, a hake, even an eel…
The trick to shape-shifting was relatively straightforward: study. For some creatures it took her minutes, even over an hour for her first insects – for others, less than five seconds. Once she knew the creature well-enough to imagine being it, inhabiting its skin (be it scaly, hairy, feathery or whatever) was as natural as inhabiting her own. Even if she could imagine being it, she had to be looking at it the first time, it seemed. Her initial foray into this strange new world was accidental; she’d changed into a sheepdog, and it took her by as much surprise as it did the poor animal. All she’d done was crouch down to pet it, feeling sorry for it tied up outside in the bitter evening air, and poof! there she was – gender aside, she’d transformed into an almost-identical sheepdog, as far as she could tell.
“Well I never!” the dog had woofed at her.
“You’re not alone, pal,” she’d growled back. She’d been doing her best not to wince and sneeze at the several million extra sounds and scents that assaulted her, overwhelming the part of her mind designed to process new information.
After the first time, it was simple. Even the strangest, tiniest critters made much more sense to her once she was a tiny critter herself; as a fly (such strange eyes!) she could observe a bee (so many strange senses!), and so on. She almost got gobbled-up at least a dozen times, which, as an invulnerable and almost certainly inedible animal, would probably result in the devourer’s death even if she didn’t change into something bigger. She certainly wasn’t opposed to eating things when she got hungry, especially annoying or immoral creatures, but killing things without cause she wished to avoid at all costs. She respected the weirdest, most-alien of the world’s inhabitants – except wasps. She could never get her head around them, how every single one of them was an evil git. They didn’t taste very nice, either.
But it was impossible to think of things as soulless, unworthy of personhood, when you could speak with them. And she so longed to enter that hidden realm beneath the surface, enter the smothering abyss of the Fish-Queen – converse with the entities she found there, understand their minds, their silent, instinctual impulses.
Yet there was a part of Imrye that was afraid. She’d never feared the water until now.
There was so much to see, so many places to go – she could swim to the ice-lands, and the fire-lands, head to the east and west, explore the unexplored edges of the world… and that wasn’t even to mention the idea of simply going down – finding the hidden cracks and crevasses in the foundations of the earth, and investigating the caverns in which no mere mortal could ever set their foot… places left untouched, unperceived except by the gods who made them, from the dawn of time until her visit…
As Kailost rolled into Lynara and Lynara rolled into Orovost, Imrye felt the change from summer into autumn much more vividly than she’d felt winter to spring, spring to summer. There was something different to it – the decay, the death that had to precede the world’s rebirth. On the first day of autumn when the priests of Illodin went on their procession down the streets chanting the Lay of Memory, swinging their censers pouring incense-smoke of sandalwood and cinnamon – on that day she could sense the grief in her heart, like a wound had been reopened there she couldn’t recall sustaining in the first place. Leaves fell, and her spirits fell with them. Suddenly her little shop, her visitors coming to gawp at the unusual archmage… it felt like a chore. A leftover of her humanity, or elvenness, or whatever. She felt she was in denial of what she was, what she’d become.
As the nights lengthened and the days drew in, she spent more and more of the dark hours sitting by the water’s edge. And on one of those short, pointless days, the magisters visited her.
The reprimand was delivered by a sour-faced, tiny little woman, the ten spokes of the Magisterium wheel gilded gold upon her white-robed breast. The penalties were straightforward. The loss of the lease on her shop. The loss of her license to practise healing in the Realm. The opportunity to attend a six-week Magisterium-sponsored course which would permit her to earn a new license, provided she could demonstrate she’d learned her lesson, that she would no longer offer a cheap source of life to the poor.
She’d almost decided to fight them, but then she heard the cries of the gulls and she knew she had lost the battle anyway. Her heart was in it no longer. What did it matter? What did any of this petty human nonsense matter? Reality wasn’t money and shiny badges and shops and prestige.
She followed the path under the pier, put her feet in the freezing water, and all her worries melted away.
She whittled down her savings over the following months. Yearsend came again as it always did, her thirty-first-ish, and she went to Mund to purchase lavish gifts for those she knew. Hawk-shaped in the upper city, the district they called Hightown, she stared in wonder as a titanic raven flew overhead. She saw the citizens pointing and crying in Splinterwing’s wake, no less filled with awe than she.
But she didn’t feel the longing, the envy. Not yet.
She purchased her presents, and went home to the cove just east of Salnifast, where she’d been living since her lease was terminated.
The pull of the sea had never been stronger than it was after the Yearsend parties were over. Everyone had thanked her for the gifts, a little wildness in their eyes, and that was it. Done. There was no sensation of closeness. No special bonds were forged. She was still the strange stranger, the unchanging outsider, inscrutable to them, and the archmagery had only cemented-over the walls she’d spent years chipping away at. She didn’t even wear a mage-robe, did her best to pretend to be the same old Imrye. But the truth was that even the same old Imrye had never fit in, and now it came like a pulse, never-ending, a heartbeat originating in the heart of the world, thundering through her veins, clamouring in her ears:
Reject the land-dwellers. Become one with the water.
She knew it was inevitable, drawing her in as the whirlpool inexorably draws in the flotsam, and before the pull is felt for what it is, it is already too late…
She neared the Hog at two in the morning, a little later than usual, and far too late to secure a good seat. This was the time of day the place would be heaving, barely a square-foot of floor-space to stand in while actual heaving, mini-riots, insect-races and scenes from brothels would be going on in every corner.
She didn’t mind. She had her strength. She’d be at the bar before the guys in front of her knew what hit them, and Mairdae would serve her next as usual – whether such preference was borne out of fear of her, or out of a continuing friendliness, Imrye could not now ever be totally certain.
On the street she passed a stream of people leaving the Hog and hurried inside. She pushed through the punters flooding out into the roadway, and was amazed to find the room in near-silence.
Mairdae’s tear-streaked face raised from her hands as she knelt there, beside Tephel’s body.
“Where – were – you?” The young girl’s voice was deep and loud and cold, the words a hammer to set Imrye’s skull ringing.
Then came the shriek. “Where were you?”
Mairdae got to her feet, stumbled towards Imrye as though to attack her. The archmage took her in a brief, fierce embrace until the aggression faded out of her muscles and she was reduced to sobbing; then Imrye darted over to Tephel’s side and grasped his hand.
No. She’d known it already, from the moment she’d seen him, realised what was happening.
He was gone, gone by minutes at least.
If I had just arrived sooner… a little sooner…
“How?” she asked through her own tears.
“He – he just… He collapsed. Sh-shaking. Then… then this.”
The druid’s head was spinning. The remembrance of being here before, in this situation, a dead man under her hands – Dervim, that’s what his name had been… The guilt, arriving at the Hog when she did – it would’ve been better to have never come at all, never put Mairdae through the agony of knowing it’d been so close… The nameless Northman, whose messing-up of some guy’s drug trade had resulted in this, this change, this awful metamorphosis which she could no more forget or undo than she could cease breathing…
Cease breathing.
She gently lowered Tephel’s head to the floor, then reached into her pocket for her money.
She emptied it, everything she had, on the boards next to the dead man’s head.
“This… is for you. You, and Fjarni and the others. I’m going.”
Imrye stood up, moved to the door.
She heard the sharp inhalation, as Mairdae prepared some spiteful epithet, so she increased her pace and slammed the door behind her, cutting off whatever retort the girl wanted to make. Imrye didn’t want to hear it.
Didn’t have time to hear it.
There was somewhere she needed to be, somewhere she’d needed to be for so long that the aching, the longing was more than she could express to herself in words and pictures – it was an experience she sought, a thing that had to be lived to be understood. The urgency, that was the only thing that was real.
Leave it all behind.
And so she went to the water’s edge and embraced her fear. She left behind the storm-clouds of stinging hail and the blades of wind that chewed at her feathers. She became scaled, a cold thing, a creature whose blood the ocean’s wintry deeps would only warm.
There was no backward glance. There was no goodbye.
In that moment and all the moments down the years to follow, there was never any quaver, any instant of hesitation, any jarring of purpose.
Imrye meant never to return.
* * *
Someday, Somemonth, 997(?) NE
She didn’t entirely forget her past, those snarls of memories from when she breathed the poison air that seethed and sliced above the world. She knew that she was dreaming: dreams of coral wreathed as cathedrals, dreams of tactile darkness and bitterness and crunching bone, of hot geysers like mountains about which the cities gathered, a million shells carpeting the ground, a million shadows schooling across the sky.
She knew it would have to end. She encountered naga and mermen and sea-spirits and she avoided them, everything that was like her. The ruins of forgotten civilisations lost in unremembered ages held no interest for her; she never sought out Assilqarith or Ghendundre. Wyrda’s sense of architecture and skill at crafting far outstripped those of any mere man in scope and glory.
No, she was a dreamer, and she wanted no reminder of what it was to be awake. The pain of waking after years of the dream would be unendurable.
Yet awaken she would.
She had taken the form of a monstrous orca, a whale-killer, which was unusual for her, it being a poison-breathing shape. It was an awkward thing, really, closer to person than fish in many ways, and the very act of breathing was difficult, swiftly emptying and refilling the massive lungs more a chore than a relief. Nonetheless she enjoyed the speeds she could achieve, riding the line between ocean and void like a beautiful, dreadful avatar of the Fish-Queen; her magic had allowed her to subtly adjust the inhalation process, leveraging her strength to move even faster, breathe more easily.
She had no land-dweller tongue in her mind any longer; she thought and spoke in fish. But if her thoughts were to be translated, the word for her mindset would’ve been satisfied. The satisfaction was complete – there was nothing above her save Wyrda. She owned the sea in which she swam; she had no competitor, feared no predator. She was alone, but that was okay. There was no other way.
Soon the mood would come upon her again, and she would descend into the eternal night once more, but for now she almost enjoyed the grey skies – blue skies – green skies… The water here was warm, too warm for her kind, but she wasn’t a normal one. She knew these seas. These seas were close to a place she’d once lived. In the before-times. A place of marble floors extending out over the water’s surface, a place of lanterns swinging in the night.
Blood in the water.
Informed by her druidic insight, she knew it to be of humanoid origin, even here in the open water, days from land.
Avoid. Avoid!
She crested a wave, preparing to leverage her tremendous weight and make a turn, gulping in air through her blow-hole –
Then she heard it.
Screaming. High-pitched warbling roars that bespoke true terror. The terror that bares its teeth when something is making incisions, when the blood wasn’t just pumping but flowing.
Humans…
For a moment, just a moment, she imagined joining in, crushing those wailing bodies with her own immense teeth, feeling ribcages and organs pop alike…
She decided to go. Just to see.
Her speed was prodigious; in under a minute she’d espied her target. But she couldn’t have expected what she’d found, couldn’t wrap her mind, her animal instincts around it – she took several long looks, from both sides of the water’s surface.
The longship, adrift, shattered. The passengers and crew, freezing, flailing. And the thing that had turned the vessel into a scum of torn-apart timbers, still thrashing, still rending.
Two of its arms were wrapped about the two main pieces of the boat, the tendril-like appendages coiling ever-tighter, bursting cured lumber like kindling sticks. Two more arms were holding aloft several howling humanoids, subjecting them to the same pressures, simultaneously skinning and constricting them. And what seemed to be the final two arms extended rigidly beneath the surface, going down, down into darkness, as if planted in the sea-bed to hold the monster’s body firmly twenty feet above the waves – even though the sea-floor was surely thousands of feet away.
As for its body – she’d never seen nor heard of its like, not even in all her years beneath the waves.
A greenish blob of amorphous substance, she would’ve mistaken it for a dire jellyfish or something were it not for the two, very human-looking eyes buried in its centre-mass, and the huge maw, showing two rows of gigantic human teeth.
Its eyes were true-blue, she could see, even from this distance – each had to be the size of a giant turtle’s shell. And its too-human mouth was smiling, its lips parted in a smirk that could only bespeak the presence of a cruel, if crude, intellect.
She drew closer. She could discern the renewed screams and high-pitched prayers as some of the crewmen spotted her. She could still pick out and comprehend the name of Wyrda as spoken in the Mundic tongue, it appeared. The first human speech to intelligibly reach her ears in… she had no idea how long. She would have been able to track the passage of years with her powers, even when she’d been in the deeps – but she’d simply stopped caring, long ago.
But there was one, just one sailor, whose voice was different. He was bobbing up and down, clinging to a chunk of hull, and when he cried out to the others it was not in alarm. Or even acceptance, resignation. No, this was hope that she could hear.
The blue eyes of the abomination had focussed on her, and she felt liberated in the moment of confrontation.
She continued to pick up speed as she advanced, diving first, heading at her enemy’s legs and screaming her dolphin-call. At almost twenty yards in length, she weighed perhaps a hundred tons, and she displaced a lot of water. When she leapt, she would hit the survivors with a wave. She hoped none of them would die from her actions, but all of them would be in mortal peril until she acted. She had to act.
No paralysis this time.
Just hope.
That was the essential part of humanity she’d missed. The thing she’d forgotten, even when she’d been a poison-breather, a land-dweller full-time. The nature of risk. What really made life worth living. What made it precious. Why she had to protect it.
Yune.
The thought made its way through the orca-brain she inhabited – such a tremor of emotion quaked the strange ocean-going flesh that she felt like she’d been touched by lightning.
She was growing, still moving faster, as she stopped diving and thrust herself at the surface.
What she felt, what she’d always wanted to feel – the sense of belonging, the ocean – it was an escape to nowhere, to nothing. The fish treated her no better than the land-dwellers, because she was the same thing here she was there. She hadn’t changed. What had she learned in the deeps? What great insight had the caverns of crystal offered? Nothing. The beauty was wasted on her, because she was satisfied. There was nothing to feel, nowhere to grow except on the most mundane level, the physical – the change of shape, nothing but a futile attempt to escape herself.
The floor of the drinking-house where two bodies had lain. Two failures. And this, her third. Her desperate, idiotic, childish tantrum.
She had the power, the gift, to bring life. To meet that cry of hope with a smile and a nod. To bring answers and peace where before there was only petition and anguish. And she’d done it, only she’d – what? – gotten bored? A lonely romantic with no outlet for her bitterness but to drown it in a billion gallons of saltwater and pretend it was just the way of things.
N-n-o l-l-l-o-n-g-e-r-r-r!
She had wasted so much time.
Feeling almost herself again, she wondered just what the thing was. A magical sea-creature she’d never heard of? Not likely. A demon? Possibly.
The result of an archmage like her, who sank deeper into the despair and mated?
Whatever it was, she felt no compunction to let it live.
She launched herself out of the water, jaws wide apart – the abomination only smiled and let her come, its four arms spread.
The moment her teeth closed on the jelly-flesh, mid-leap, she understood. A sense of imbalance, dizziness, struck her for the first time in a very long time.
Its green, fluorescent ichor was poison, and it went pouring by the pint into her mouth, and spraying high into the air. She’d only come into contact with poisons a few times amongst those she’d healed, or at least that was what her recently-defunct, still-hazy memories were telling her. This was a special kind – the magical, kill-you-in-a-heartbeat-even-though-you’re-a-hundred-ton-orca kind.
Yune!
As she lost the momentum of her leap and she tipped towards the surface once more, she spoke the goddess’s name to herself, clenching the jaws even tighter on the monster’s blubber, letting it happen, letting go of her destiny. If she gave her life here, so be it.
It might’ve been a weird, powerful creature, but it had nowhere near the physical strength or leverage to support itself with her attached to its face. She bore it down under the waves, covering them in vivid green oil as she pirouetted, diving and rising and chewing and butting.
She heard more than one of the watching onlookers screaming now in gratitude to Wyrda, spotted their fists raised up to the sky.
But her foe released its grip on its victims, seeming to still be smiling as it allowed her to toss it around. Bit by bit, it wrapped her in all six arms, its suckers affixing themselves to almost every inch of her smooth skin.
Now it was her with no leverage, no way to improve on her angle. She was stuck chewing at the same bit of jelly-flesh, stuck ingesting poison.
It might’ve been a dangerous monster, but it was clear to her by now that she had a magic of her own that far outstripped whatever this entity possessed. The poison in her bloodstream would almost certainly kill her in an instant if she changed shape back – unless she purged it first. But that would take time. She could perceive it there within her, like nausea, a nausea that burned, that rose up into her chest – but it was already lessening. The dizziness that had infected her mind began to pass.
However, the six thin arms tightened yet further, squeezing her incessantly. It seemed that the appendages were extendable and retractable, and the thing reeled them in now that they were locked down, rooted to her, drawing her in and tightening its hold.
The tendrils went rending right through her skin, tearing into her blubber – it sloughed away by the ton as though she were being put through a grater, and she couldn’t replace the lost mass – the creature only got closer and closer, coiling itself tighter and tighter, wriggling, burying itself inside her.
Agony. Agony such as she’d never before experienced, every inch of her exposed inner surfaces like a nerve left naked to a surgeon’s drill.
She drew in every iota of awareness, studying the poison in her. She could visualise the spread of the foul substance, the webs of blood inside her changing colour as it stretched out its venomous roots for her heart. She could visualise it changing back again – changing back –
She gave forth the dolphin-cry once more, sensing death nearing – and this time she felt the response, detecting the other life out there in the water, the creatures heeding her call. Swordfish and sunfish, hake and bass, tuna and turtles, sharks and seals, even starfish –
No, she thought, and the denial reached out to them, halting them in their tracks.
Orcas were social creatures, but she swam alone even when she met others of her kind, drawing any number of comments. Now, at last, she would accept her responsibility.
I a-am n-not one of y-you.
She wouldn’t let them die in their droves to save her; they wouldn’t be able to kill this abhorrent amalgam of man and jellyfish for her anyway. But if she didn’t kill it – if she died – it would likely return to its pleasure… to the longship and its sea-stranded complement of screamers…
It didn’t matter. Even with her dying thought, she would not call the sea-dwellers back to fight this fight for her.
Because that was not going to happen. She would not fail. Not while Yune watched over the world.
She’d lost her fins, and it was starting to slice the layers protecting her spine, crunching at her bones all over her body –
She’d visualised her system flushed, fully cleansed of the putrid ichor –
She held to the thought, and shifted shape.
It was convenient, the way the abomination’s tightly-coiled arms knotted themselves about her, increasing the tightness of their hold in the sudden disappearance of her gigantic form – she became a pufferfish, smaller but still huge, with a few thousand extra-tough, extra-long spines as a coat, her own inherently magical toxins.
She skewered the suckers with her barbs, and expanded, a balloon of blades.
Ribbons of tendrils floated through fluorescent water. She caught a glimpse of the abomination’s eyeless, pale face, drifting down on the current like a tattered and torn sail.
When she climbed from the surface of the sea in her birth-form, she was still wearing the vest and pants she’d been wearing out of self-spite all those years ago, when Tephel had died and she’d thrown herself into the sea in grief.
Grief. That was what’d tipped her over the edge, wasn’t it?
She felt it now. She sat on a piece of flotsam, bobbing up and down on the gentle afternoon waves, and cried. It felt good, now, to cry, shut her eyes against the colours of this world.
Even the sweetness of the air she drew in with each breath was itself an echo, a reverberation of her mistake: thinking of it as ‘poison’, forcing herself, cramming herself inside that thing, pretending she was nothing, no one…
She no longer had a choice. She’d made it already.
Once she’d taken a minute to get her breath back, she could put up with the silent stares no longer. She dove back into the water, then came up near the most-hurt of the survivors. It wasn’t until she’d healed three of the maimed and one of those who’d ingested some of the fluorescent water that they even started speaking to her.
“What are you?” one of the passengers, an extremely put-out-looking woman, cried out incredulously.
She looked at the lady and smiled.
I’m u-u-used to it n-now.
“No,” called the sailor who’d looked at her with hope in his eyes, when she’d been a hundred-ton monster. He’d drifted away from the others following her tremendous leap from the water, but swiftly paddled back after she surfaced in her humanoid form. “Not what – who. You’re an archmage, aren’t you? Who are you?” He regarded her plainly, seemingly mostly unperturbed by this turn of events. “Listen lady, if you help us get home to Mund, or even to Karamar, the guild can –”
She stopped listening.
Mund.
“G-Glimmermere,” she said, cutting him off, speaking the first word that came to her mind. The first proper, difficult word she’d ever learned to pronounce.
The name of the lake beside which the fishing village stood, her first home.
“I am… Glimmermere.”
She turned her face to the south-east, staring unblinking into the breeze.
Mund. Of course.
She could smell it. Not the city itself, of course. No – it was her destiny she could scent on the wind.
“And y-yes. Yes. Of course I can help you get there. It’s – it’s time.
“Time to go home.”
* * *
1st Ismethara, 998 NE
Everyone was evacuated – no one hung around long once she set the bugs on them. A fact she was thankful for; the sorcerer’s barriers broke when she toppled a third house on him, and within seconds she had rats all over him, chewing through the ligaments and tendons in his hands, his wrists.
No more shields, sucker, she thought, mending the surface damage he’d caused to her stupendous condor-form and moving in to take advantage of his sudden vulnerability. She spun in the air, casting off the last of the imps that had still clung to her pinions, and changed back into her mostly-elf form as she ducked beneath the broken beams.
He groaned – a few tons of rubble had hit him in the head and chest, and one of his limbs was snapped clean in two, yet he was merely groaning.
Then she placed her hand on his shoulder.
Gotcha.
“My, this was unpleasant, Tombclaw. Whyever did you insist on continuing to fight? I told you, there’s nothing shameful in surrender. Well…” She glanced about at the vermin trailing all over his dusty, half-buried body. “It’s certainly more dignified than this…”
He tried to raise his head, the generically-undead mask scraping on a stone.
“Aururueurgh…”
“Oh I know, but at least this way you won’t be forgotten, I suppose. Once they lock you away, they’ll use your bank balance to fix up this neighbourhood, unless I’m much mistaken. Three families get new houses, thanks to you. They’ll be singing your praises for years to come.”
She sensed as one of his unkillable demons, a ten-foot black-metal bull-man, finally tore through the net of shoots she’d grown around it.
“Maureurergh…”
The demon levelled its horns and charged at her.
“Fine,” she relented.
She didn’t have to do anything, really; certainly not something an observer could notice. She just adjusted her attitude, and her hand on the darkmage’s shoulder suddenly delivered a massive dose of soporifics into his bloodstream.
He slumped back in merciful slumber, and his demon – all his demons – vanished in bursts of scarlet flame.
The very instant she verified he was out cold, there was a terrible flash of light, and a thunderclap exploded right in the centre of the ruined neighbourhood, driving her hair back, stealing the air from her lungs. She almost wet herself, instincts screaming at her that she must’ve done something wrong, some god descending to punish her for her misdeeds – or one of the darkmage’s allies had arrived –
Then she saw who it was, floating in the middle of the rubble once the incandescence cleared.
Not him again.
“You?” Shadowcloud growled. “I heard there was a darkmage attack – someone got stung by a scorpion then there was, like, a thousand of ’em –”
“Barely. That was me, clearing the area, just as a crotchety old wizard once told me I must,” she explained. “And I categorically refuse to believe a scorpion in my entourage did anything to anyone.”
It was his turn to sigh. “What’re you up to, Glimmer?”
She hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Would you like to see? One really must see it to believe it – dear Tombclaw looks so peaceful when he’s taking his afternoon nap.”
The arch-wizard’s tone changed instantly and he drifted closer. “Tombclaw? You got him?”
She lifted the hem of her mage-robe and curtseyed deeply. “Of course. When one gives one’s word, one simply must keep it.”
He chuckled, then put on a highborn accent, presumably in an attempt to mock her: “Well, fiiii-nally. It only took one a month – if one had taken up another’s offer of assistance, one might have had it done in two weeks –“
“One being two, so to speak…?” She only barely made it a question.
He nodded.
“And what of the platinum?”
He spread his hands in a gesture of supplication. “I’d be open to negotiation, in any future dealings.”
She grinned. “You really are getting on, aren’t you, old chum? Want a sidekick to do all the hard work while you hog all the glory?”
He shrugged, a gesture with more denial in it than a thousand shakes of his head. “I’m one of the longest-serving champions, now, I guess. I just…”
“You just what?” Her voice sounded brittle even to her own ears. “You wanna be my friend?”
She bit her lip behind the mask. She’d slipped there, with the ‘wanna’.
Too much emotion.
“Would that be such a bad thing?” he asked quietly.
Her breath caught in her throat. She couldn’t voice a real answer. Not even close to the truth.
“Aha!” she managed to laugh. “You and I differ in more ways than we are alike.”
“I don’t think so,” he replied, and she heard the calm shrewdness there in his voice, the discerning quality that so aggravated her. “You’re trying too hard, Glimmermere.”
Tears started – for the first time since she came out of the sea. She couldn’t explain it, but the keenness of his perception cut right through her and everything blurred. She had ocean in her eyes again.
She shapeshifted to hide her face, changing into the great blue condor-form in the span of a heartbeat, then thrust a huge talon through the wreckage and hefted the comatose sorcerer between her toes.
With three beats of her wings she was gone, farther and faster than he could chase her without it looking like he was harassing her.
He didn’t chase her.
She looked back, then, and saw the arch-wizard, lingering in the destruction, ringed by the dissipating clouds of insects.
This time, she looked back.
* * *
29th Illost, 998 NE
The shark-like mask didn’t allow her smile to carry, which was just as well, as she wasn’t smiling. She managed to nod her head politely in parting, though, which seemed to be enough for the woman, who nodded back. She wasn’t smiling, either, and Glimmermere couldn’t blame her. Living alone, with a kid with brickblood, no future on the cards for either of them? Listening day and night to Elaset’s mewls of agony that only stopped when the arch-druid visited, and then only for a brief time? She remembered hearing the moans through the walls the first time she came here – now, as the door was locked behind her, Glimmermere stood outside in the frigid morning air and shuddered. It was something of a ritual for her by this, her eighth visit; the wave of thankfulness that it was over washed through her body, tempered by the lash of guilt, knowing that it wasn’t over for Wenya, wasn’t over for Elaset… Wouldn’t be over – not until the end came.
She sighed, shifted to raven-form, and made her way towards her next patient.
Where are you, Nighteye? she wondered, and not for the eighth or eightieth time, either. According to Timesnatcher, this had been his job. Why don’t you come have it back?
She felt angry, and she was trying to redirect it at him now.
Stupid, she berated herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She didn’t even want to think it, because she knew why she was angry about the whole thing and she didn’t want to look that anger in the eye. Didn’t want to think the thought –
– he was killed and I wasn’t there, none of us were there to stop it –
She cawed, a series of shrill, warbling bleats that rang out across the city.
She tried not to think, not to feel, as she reached Blackbrook in Sticktown, doing her best to compose herself. He would see right through her, even in his weakened condition. But there was nothing she could fix her eye on to distract herself. Whichever way she looked there was the ever-present morning smog, and where she could see through it there was nothing but filth, destitution – hardly a spectacle to raise her spirits.
When she reached Laithor’s apartment she noticed some kids were lounging against the wooden walkway’s railing, not six feet from his door. Typically she would just shift back and use her key to open the door, but that wouldn’t work in this situation – not if she didn’t want to draw attention to the ramshackle dwelling that belonged to the arch-wizard.
She became a beetle before anyone noticed the bird lingering on the wooden span above the teenagers, then made her way down to the apartment door, dipping her fat little body into the breeze and curling around behind the kids to land on the floor.
“Yer gonna ‘af to step up next time, Dolber. Yer new to the gang, ya see? Next knifin’s yours. Ya doan wanna do it, yer’ll be found lyin’ necks to ‘em – s’ the way it is, laddie.”
She was ant-shaped and halfway through the crack under the door when she halted. The Lowtowner’s voice sent chills up her antennae.
Turning back, she regarded them as much with her senses as her eyes.
Children. Still children. Twelve, thirteen – even fourteen was pushing it. The differences were greater at this age than they would soon become.
What are children doing talking like this?
The reply came:
“I… I get it, Ti, I really do. I’ll step up. I’ll do whatever it takes. You won’t regret taking me on.”
The youngster’s reedy voice was steeped in equal measures of enthusiasm and nausea.
She tapped her foot, thinking. There weren’t many nasty insects around, but there were lots of rats. Big, well-fed rats, festooned with lice.
Bringing a hundred or more of them up out of the broken places in the boards and over the edge of the walkway to surge around the kids’ feet was simple enough.
Changing into one of the rodents and shrieking at the gang of wannabes in Mundic was even simpler.
“If a single one of you knifes someone, you will have me to answer to! I’ll eat your eyes, Ti!”
The kids scattered, wailing, and she had the other rats follow them to be sure they were properly terrified. She doubted her threat would work, really, but at least it’d give this ‘Dolber’ punk a chance to get out of whatever crew he was being initiated into, an excuse not to show up the next time he was called on. She could only hope her intrusion into the conversation brought about a better future than if she’d done nothing, or cost her patient her attentions by taking even greater preventative steps. To have a diviner’s gift…
Yune be with him, she prayed.
She shifted back into her natural shape once she was in Laithor’s apartment, and paused a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gloom before moving to the bedroom. She turned the handle as quietly as she could manage, and peered within.
The candles had gone out and the curtains were still drawn, but as she pushed on the door a new source of illumination, gentle white-silver radiance, started to fill the room.
It was without surprise that she noticed he was awake, staring at her. His long dark hair was unkempt, his pale, gentle face sunken with illness. He sat up, letting the bed-covers fall down, exposing the slenderness of his hairy chest and arms.
All that not-yet-decaying flesh.
And Yune be with him too.
“You’re up,” she said brightly, reaching up to remove her mask. “How bothersome. I suppose I shall have to fetch you something now, shan’t I?”
“Leafcloak was better at this than you,” he complained, an only-slightly-sad smile on his face.
“That’s hardly the proper way to address me!” she flared, tossing the mask on the foot of the bed. “I come here, of my own free will and out of my own free time, to –“
“To interrupt the youngest gang-members in Blackbrook when they’re giving me all their secrets for free, yeah.” He was still smiling.
“Now now,” she chided, “those in my care aren’t to expend their energies trying to work. Please, do permit me to handle your little gang problem…“
“You expect me to believe you understand what’s going on here?” he asked sceptically. “We’re basically bein’ invaded by North Lowtown in this neighbourhood – they’ve taken the wane trade, and there’s this new inkatra stuff –“
“Laithor!” She put her hands on her hips.
His smile faded. “I just don’t get it, Glimmer. What’re you doing here all the time? I know, I’m dying – I know, it sucks. Believe me, I know.” He shook his head, and she saw the wetness in his own eyes reflecting the pale light he’d conjured into the air. “But you’re a champion. You’ve got better things to be doing with your time than sitting by an ‘old man’s’ bedside…”
“You know I don’t really think you’re that old,” she said off-handedly.
He chuckled. “Older than you.”
She just cocked her head at him, thinking about it. She didn’t know her own age, precisely.
“Well, you’ve healed me – you should know, right?”
“Yeah – ish. But how old are you exactly?”
“You want to know my age, you know my name –“
The pained expression that crossed her face was only half-feigned. “I told you –“
“You can’t remember your own name, yeah – I remember. How perfect.”
“I…“
She swallowed the meaningless sounds. The same question, the eternal question ringing through her mind like the Mourning Bells:
Who am I? Who am I, really?
He stopped himself from pushing; she could see it in his eyes. His expression became marginally more serious: his brows raised slightly, the crooked smile on his lips that’d returned while he teased her fading once more.
“I’m thirty-four,” he said at last, as though by way of a peace offering.
“I… I’m… older,” she managed to finish her sentence.
“Really?”
“Only by a bit.”
“Who are you, Glimmermere?” His voice was suddenly soft, husky, and she jolted to hear his words. “I don’t mean your name. I’ll call you whatever you want. I know you’re not highborn – I just know it –”
She realised she’d dropped the accent any number of times in the last minute.
“But – you can speak to me, can’t you? To a…” he swallowed audibly “… a dying man?”
She stood there, staring down at him, feeling the pulse of the attraction she felt, knowing it couldn’t lead anywhere, couldn’t be a foundation-stone for her personality.
She’d worn so many identities, but none of them were really her. Her ability to change shape was a dark mirror for her soul, always in motion. She’d always tried to be what others wanted her to be, needed her to be. When she hadn’t done that, she’d gone into the sea and left everything behind. Upon her return to the world of air and sky she’d donned the robe of a champion, portraying the foppish youngster, channelling the part of her that just never wanted to grow up. It was a defence mechanism and she knew it – hurting people wasn’t something she could do, the nameless self that was the core of her being – but it was something Glimmermere could do, the creature born out of the sea and a fight to the death with a murderous entity.
She couldn’t enter into a relationship with this stricken man lying here in the bed. If she did, his death would only weaken her further, fracture the mirror. She needed to be strong.
And yet the truth bubbled up inside her and could no longer be kept down. Like the drowned fire-mountains, it would escape, crack her from within if she didn’t open, release it.
She couldn’t stop the quivering that started in her forearms, her knees – she knew it was coming –
“Tell you what,” he said thickly, “just get the fortify set out, eh? I’ll give you another ass-whooping, and you can –“
“I left you!” she burst out. “You want to know why I’m here?” She fell forwards onto the bed, wringing her hands and looking up at him pleadingly through her tears. “I left you, there, and I – I left myself there, I left Glimmermere… I was so, so scared, after Va- after the statue came alive – and you were gone, and I didn’t know what to do! But Fangmoon, oh, she carried on, didn’t she? How? How does she do it? And n-now, now Nighteye’s just gone off and it’s been two weeks, and I spoke to Killstop and she said she doesn’t think we’re ever going to find him except as a headless corpse, and Feychilde didn’t believe her but everyone else seemed to agree – and this whole Dreamlaughter mess, and the brickblood girl – the heretics are gonna attack in the next few days –“
“Stop,” he said, and she halted. “You’re taking on too many burdens, old friend. Come on. Come here.”
She’d had her head down; he shuffled forwards, and embraced her awkwardly.
It still felt nice. She could sense the weakness, the trembling in his limbs that was only partially due to his horrible affliction. He wasn’t wearing much, if anything, under the quilt.
“I told them not to say anything to you,” she breathed, “and here I am, telling you everything…”
“It’s okay.” He touched her hair lightly with his fingers. “I know that you’re missing Nighteye – I know you regret what happened in Zadhal – but you have to let me tell you this. You’re not to blame. You were right to return home. If you want my forgiveness you have it but you have to understand that I don’t even think it’s warranted. And who except me is the injured party here, exactly?”
“I could’ve found you faster –“
“No, you couldn’t. Truth is, if Feychilde didn’t get his backside captured I might never have returned. Fang couldn’t sense me, Spirit couldn’t sense me. You wouldn’t have found me –“
“I could’ve healed you better –“
“I got the best care within seconds. From what I’ve been told, I was basically cleansed by Nentheleme. Even she couldn’t get rid of it. I’m heading for the sh-shadowland, Glimmer. I –“
“Hush.”
She kissed him, then, their mouths meeting just for a few seconds, and it was everything she didn’t know she needed.
His death would weaken her, fracture her further, and she would let it because it was what she wanted, what she needed, in the very depths of her soul.
And damn what followed.
He met her eyes and she gazed back into his, deep into their hazel mysteries under the starlight his waning wizardry had brought into the little room.
“Don’t leave Glimmermere behind,” he murmured. “I love Glimmermere. I – I love you. Whoever you are.”
The moment of letting go of the future was the moment of finding the past. The realisation rocked her.
“Imrye,” she whispered. “Glimmermere can die, with – with Shadowcloud… and that’s okay. My name was – is – Imrye.”
Then she took hold of her future, forgot her past, held him in her arms, and was at peace at last.
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