The Smoke Monster VI.

            Memories tumbled back to the Fencer and he found himself again amongst the ruined world.  Scattered about were dead narwhals and dark icicles, green-haired witches and a Stranger of blue.  So much blood and death that he could smell it again, frozen solid upon the vast plains of Winter, permanent and forever like statues.  In this mind’s eye view he knew the buzzard future watched from up high, blue-white, the color of sky, waiting for the lone outcast to join the corpses.

            Spread out like the contents looted from some abandoned palace his past revealed itself in a confused mess.  Various rooms radiated from his current vantage point, places of memories, islands of being jumbled by the Riddle of Winter.  These rooms displayed hunters frozen with the blood of their kills, cold laboratories, violence and ice, all seen in the light of lost days. 

            Bright sky and dull clouds had framed their journey to this place, this moment, among the Altherines, old, tired mountains circling a dead glacier known to be inhabited by a sorceress in the days before the Uplifting.  Clea’s journal told of a mysterious client who paid in coin so ancient that they were just bald discs of metal, divorced from history.  This client tasked her to find a seed of crystal, like the one which the Fencer held in his hands as terrible screams played down into the dungeon, resonating with the bones of the earth.

            “I can’t decide if I’m safer in this cell than out of it,” shivered the Trumpeter through a mask of abject terror. 

            “No place to run in there,” reasoned the Fencer as he turned the cold bit of prism in his hands. 

            The thing had been the cause of his amnesia—more accurately described as a block.  It had done its job of transmuting his memory energies into cold and distracting him subtly when old companions and artifacts presented themselves.  It was almost certainly placed there by Bles, or maybe Eral, but any motive for this escaped his reason.  Maybe it was the scream, but he couldn’t make all the pieces fit, and for him that was an aggravating situation.

            “That was in your head?!” exclaimed the musician who had calmed enough from one hysteric that he could leap to the next.  “All this time the thing we were looking for was right there.  This is all your fault for making us climb that cliff near the southern castle.”

            “That was your idea, I remember now.”

            Both of them were avoiding the prospect of going up the stone steps leading to the source of the screams.  Hungry spirits evoked a cultural dread for the two men, and though they knew that the old beings of power had been banished or abjured by the red demon Sol in the Uplifting, they also knew that some things had fallen through the cracks and yet remained.

            “Let me out, there’s something I need,” said the Trumpeter.

            Freedom was easy to arrange.  With just a few swings Dhala cut the iron braces fixing the grate to the stone frame, causing the whole thing to fall outwards with a jarring clang. 

            “I’m going up,” said the Fencer.

            “But why?” asked the Trumpeter.  “We found what we came for and there are certainly tunnels down here which lead out to the glacier and freedom and away from our paired witches.”

            “It’s fine and well that we have the Prism Seed in hand but it was only an excuse.”

            “You can’t believe how thoroughly annoyed I am at being imprisoned over an ‘excuse.’”  The Trumpeter had that look in his eye which told of a less humorous kind of madness.  “Do you have any idea how much it galls me not to have my trumpet in hand and to be caged like a lunatic.”

            Drawing his sword punctuated the Fencer’s side of things.  Many times he had been on the verge of murdering the Trumpeter out on the wastes.  Once, when they had managed to slip through the various wandering bandits on the Gelsym plains, the musician had suddenly cried out with his instrument, just because he felt they were being unfair to the brigands.  This sort of thing happened quite often.  Yet this time it was he who was provoking trouble.

            They found the trumpet behind another vault, a thing of brass and old, almost melted iron.  Collected within were old swords with blades of bronze, rat-eaten hides which served as armor or warmth, bone needles, ivory combs, uncut gems, and old coins. 

            There was a difference to these spider web spoils.  Where Eral’s keepsakes were ornate, cultured, objects of fine make and precise quality, these trophies were coarser, primitive, rough, like the worn down mountains.  The trumpet’s sleek design stood out from the uncultured stuff.

            “Ah, there it is,” said the Trumpeter, reclaiming his namesake and giving it a good polish.  “We’re whole again.”

            They went up.  The Trumpeter decided that it was best to see what lay above, his instincts swinging wildly from cowardice to fanaticism.  It remained to be seen what mysteries the sisters had laid out for them.  Setting his face, making his eyes cold, the Fencer prepared to find out.

            Murder greeted them.

            They didn’t see a soul until they were in the grand hall, with its sweeping staircase and overlooking balconies.  From above various partygoers looked down.  Eral was there, Bles too.  Everyone’s eyes were on the body at the base of the stair.

            By the look of her clothes she had been another guest.  Decapitated, a splay of rich blood soaked the neck of a once-white dress and pooled on the rug.  In a cobweb nest in the corner her head waited.

            The crowd acted as if they had just now seen the thing.  A general gasp, hands over mouths, averted eyes, the drama all done its fullest.  These were rituals the Fencer couldn’t understand from his world where terrible death was common.

            “Who did this,” he asked calmly as the servants came in, laid a sheet over the body and fetched the head. 

            “You should know,” said Eral from her vantage at the top of the stair.  She didn’t seem frightened as the others did.  She bit her lip with obvious excitement.

            “Eral!”  The look Bles gave her sister silenced nothing.

            The Fencer wanted an answer which didn’t play this game of theirs.  Blood was a serious thing.

            “Fencer, you know more than you wish.”

            The Trumpeter had shooed away the servant and now displayed the head.  Green hair spilled from between his fingers like liquid silk, bloodied, spattered.  The Fencer remembered the face.

            “Clea,” he murmured, hand going to Dhala’s cold surety.

            “So you know her?” asked Bles with interest.

            “Perhaps you are from her lands?” added Eral, searching.

            The Fencer didn’t respond.  He had witnessed her death once before and thought, with that barest of reliefs, that he’d never have to see it again.  But here it was: the headless body, the pooling blood, plots and conspiracies.  A repetition of the world’s madness, of Winter’s Riddling hand writing in red.

            “No,” he said.  Much to their disappointment, he didn’t elaborate.

            “I don’t think he ever knew her, really,” said the Trumpeter with a shrug as he passed off the grizzly memory to the waiting servant. 

            Now the guests murmured general disapproval.  The fun was over and violence had found them even here, within the symbolic security of a castle.  Like a slowly moving wave of cool colors the guests made for the exit, giving wide berth to the tragedy on the floor.  With a single gesture Bles had the palace sealed.

            “I can’t let anyone leave,” she said, some small amusement in her voice.  “We have a murderer amongst us and I intend to find out who.”

            This excited the crowd.  It felt like a party again. 

            “I have my suspicions,” grinned Eral, eyeing the Fencer’s sword.  There seemed to be no doubt who killed the woman, who remained nameless.  Much was left unsaid.

            “Bles, I want some truth out of you,” said the Fencer, finally freeing his mind from those green eyes, that green hair. 

            The woman above drifted back from the balcony, off into the sprawling quarters of the upper levels.  Obviously she wished him to follow.  Soon most did, the crowd returning to clucking and hemming over the night’s excitement.  Under a sheet of white a red stain bloomed like a flower. 

            The Fencer took a step after her, a need to know, to demand knowledge, burned up within, but an arm caught him.  He had forgotten how strong the Trumpeter actually was.

            “No, no, no, no,” said the musician.  “It’s exactly what they want.  An old trick my mother used to play on my father; get mad and storm off, make him follow.”

            “Now that does make me angry,” said the Fencer, glaring down his friend who let go of his arm.  “For once you’re being sensible.”

            “No need to be mean,” said the Trumpeter, seriously offended. 

            Growing thoughtful, the swordsman knew he hadn’t long to deliberate.  Those sisters above would be back if he didn’t follow soon, their reasons unimaginable, their methods too.  They could conjure up the past, perhaps in relation to the Prism Seed, that mnemonic glass which could sublimate certain mental energies.  And then it was so much more clear; he was halfway up the stairs by the time the Trumpeter noticed.

            The musician followed in a protest.  They went by floors of smoke and gatherings of venal guests humming with civility.  Only once they passed the door which Bles had entered did the Trumpeter realize that other plans were being enacted.  At least, he hoped it was a plan.    

            The door below, that one strange, single door leading to the outside, was guarded by six white-liveried men with a look of the blade about them.  Up here, however, there were only guests and a few pale servants.  They were too busy socializing to care about the two coarse men walking into a wall.

            They stopped and the Fencer brought out his weapon.

            “What are you doing?” asked the musician.

            “There’s a jutting band of stone about five meters off the ground, right on the other side of this wall,” he replied, and then hesitated.  “It’s strange.  All the things we do, the destruction we cause, it doesn’t seem to matter to them, the sisters.  I have my sword, you your trumpet, you’re freed, a guard is dead, yet none of it leaves much of an impression in this place.”

            “I’m probably not the one to ask to put things together for you,” laughed the musician.

            Nodding, the Fencer swung Dhala in an arc and the stones tore like paper.  Four swings and they had a hole big enough for both to squeeze out onto the ledge and then leap down into the soft snow. 

            Shouts of excitement followed them into the night.  Murderer!  Barbarian!  The mystery was solved, for the crowd.  The Fencer paid no attention to the drama behind them as he chased the light.

            The smoke was up now, languid piles of the stuff drifting aimlessly.  Through this the ghostly copse of crystalline trees stood out like the moon in a rich fog.  It was a short run but the guards proved faster.  The pair found blades waiting for them.

            The first man lunged out of the smoke and at the Fencer’s heart.  With an upward parry the Fencer sheered the blade near the hilt and carried through the neck.  A second figure howled with his attack, heedless of Dhala he impaled himself on the weapon just so he could pin the swordsman with his saber.  He was dead before he hit the ground, but his work lasted, blood seeping from where he’s pricked the Fencer’s shoulder. 

            More attackers loomed into existence, entities unreal and expedient.  The Trumpeter vanished in the haze and so alone the Fencer would soon be overwhelmed.  The smoke grew anxious and trembled.

            Keeping the lighted trees in sight he continued the uphill struggle as he fought off strings of attackers, wary of the smoke, which at any time might strike.  The guards never wavered, never gave a hint of humanity.  They died only to bring the Fencer down, but seeing this tactic he changed his, avoiding as many as he could and slaying only those who insisted. 

            There was a terrible whine in the air by the time he reached the grove, owing to the Prism Seed in his boot sounding against the trees.  This resonance confirmed his guess; the lemur-men were had the right of things.  He brought up his icicle blade and then something moved behind him.

            He struck, turning with one fluid motion to face the Trumpeter’s shock-wide eyes.  The weapon passed neatly through the man, separating upper and lower, the trumpet clattered onto the ground and out of sight. 

            It was almost enough to stop him but his demon rose up hot and angry.  The first tree didn’t so much shatter as fracture and slide apart, panes of glass biting into the hard-packed snow.  In a fugue, the Fencer methodically destroyed each tree, each resounding tower of crystal, and he didn’t stop until all were broken.  Along the ground the jagged stuff hummed, cutting into the soles of his boots, but he showed no signs of care. 

            Instead, he let out a yell with all his frustration.  It cut through the fog.  A terrible scream joined him, as well as a chorus of hoots from the upper mountains.  Then, inexplicably, the sound of the trumpet sounded too, bouncing off the mountains in growing, burnished wonder. 

            The castle vanished, the dead men joined the smoke, and where the Trumpeter’s split body lay there was no blood, no body, only the illusion of knowledge. 

The Smoke Monster V.

            A low red moon watched the man’s movements across the rocky slopes, below tired mountains.  Beneath lay a glacier, somewhere under the roiling smoke.  Behind, a dead cobweb castle kept its precious dead all to itself, and ahead, alive in the night, Bles’s castle awaited, warm with light.  It was becoming increasingly clear that his senses couldn’t be trusted.

            He wasn’t alone at the edge of the great, obscured basin.  A massive body reclined besides him, just out of reach, which was for the best.  Regained in strength, the smoke monster roiled about in the lowlands framed by the mountain crescent.  Its blind tendrils searched hundreds of meters up the mountainsides after the man, blasphemous tons of choking pitch and ash frothing with an insane intelligence. 

            Growing frustrated, it turned its attentions on the southern castle.  Boiling up the supporting cliff, it spilled over the ancient stones.  Soon there was nothing left to see but a violently convulsing cloud.  Obviously this was designed to disturb the man’s already aching mind, he could think of no other reason to invade those abandoned, cobwebbed halls.  Terrible cold filled his head, but still he went on.

            Company arrived in the form of yellow, ring-like eyes watching from the higher slopes.  Memories of the evil spirit in the cave haunted flickered back, but his more reasonable faculties knew the truth.  These were Lemur-men.  An occasional hoot came down through the still air in confirmation. 

            Now surrounded on all sides by adversity he had no other path but through whatever bright future awaited in the castle to the north.  Closer still stood the crystalline grove, self-illuminated, the light from one tree bouncing to the next in prismatic synergy.  Behind him the hoots grew closer and he realized significance to the smoke thing’s assault on Eral’s castle; it meant it could also invade Bles’s.

            Quickening his pace, he placed his worries behind him.  Gusts of Winter drove him on, past the rocks broken by the glacier’s eons old decline.  Then, giving up the advantage of the high ground, he moved down to where more recent snows had accumulated over the numb centuries.  Curiosity made him pass through the grove.

            The second he entered amongst the bright glass there was a sound.  It filled him, a resonance absolute and bright, like staring into the sun.  If he opened his mouth to scream there would be only radiance.  If he breathed then glory would fill his lungs.  Somehow he knew there was a noise to this; he could hear the light.  A complex tune, it held that strange quality called magic, which overwhelmed.

            Awakening amongst the trees he knew that little time had passed.  An echo lingered along the far mountains, unsettling the night air.  In response the lemur-men hooted excitedly.  Then the smoke shrieked, that same terrible cry heard down in the cave.

            Knowing that the liquid thing could be upon him at any moment he sprinted for the castle.  The crunch of ice and snow mingled with the pounding of his heart.  He didn’t hear the party until he was at the gates.

            Bles’s castle was alive with people and light.  Through the open doors he stepped into some sort ball.  Outside, the courtyard was full of lacquered carriages and powerful draft horses steaming their breath, stable boys leading them to the vast pens which just that morning housed only drifts of snow.

            Inside, pale people in finery muttered like a bleak dawn.  The men wore uniforms of charcoal and jet, with a few white coats thrown in for contrast.  Reserved accents of gold and silver adorned them, and they bore signs of achievement and rank like smug plumage.  At their sides hung ornamental swords, blades polished and unused.

            The women were more elaborate creatures.  Garbed in dresses of periwinkle, ivory and rose, they’d blend in well with the icy wastes, like animals adapted to the ancient ice.  Yet these were copious garments, unsuited to anything but social pomp.  Theirs was a beauty which seemed wholly unreal, a powdered daydream. 

            The guests didn’t pay much mind to the bloodied swordsman who stumbled gasping into the front door.  They might look his way or remark to their escorts, but on the whole they treated him like an invisible man, like a servant about some necessary, yet unenviable, task.  In seconds the entry hall was clear of everyone but Bles as she descended the stairs.

            “I thought something might’ve happened to you,” she smiled a knowing smile.

            “Is this your cabal?” asked the forgetful man, craning his neck to catch glimpses of the frilled nobles in the social rooms above. 

            “Social engagement.  Eral and I planned this months ago.”

            “She’s really been letting her house go,” he said, leaping up the stairs to make sure the revelers were still there.  He had a suspicion that they were demons.

            “I know,” crooned Bles happily.  “That petrified wood makes me think of a tomb every time I sit in those couches.”

            “I mean, it is a place haunted by spiders and drowning in cobwebs.” 

            The nobles were at their play in the upper rooms.   Funny, he hadn’t noticed the ballroom or the reflecting pool before.  A great laugh came out in response to some unseen joy.

            “You could always clear the place out with that sword of yours.”  Bles gestured to the forgetful man’s weapon hanging at his side.  “May I see it?”

            The man slowly made his way back down the grand stair.  Upstairs, one of the rooms went black for a moment.

            “You’re having fun with me.”

            “Of course,” smiled Bles.  “There’s not much else to do around here.”

            “Other than invite a horde of brightly painted birds over for a warble,” he said, watching the rooms above suspiciously.  “I thought you said this was an isolated place.”

            “Oh, I’ll have visitors for a game, or to introduce the new company.”  Her eyes chased after him.  “Did you find your wreck?  Is your curiosity satisfied?”

            “No, I mean, yes I found the wreck, but of satisfaction, well, I have none.”

            “I know the feeling,” said Bles darkly, but soon brightened.  “Everyone, this is a most special guest.  Now, his head is bothering him so try not to be too tiring.  He is a noble, like yourselves, as is evidenced by his bearing, and until he comes to find his own path may be part of the peerage.”

            The others were suddenly behind him, looking down from the balconies.  He hadn’t heard them move out. 

            These men and women cooed and muttered with genteel tones concerning Bles’s guest.  Eral was there too, making some joke at his expense.  A woman dropped a handkerchief down.  It floated like a snowflake and came to rest near the amnesiac’s feet.

            “My, your clothes are a mess,” chided his host.  “You’ll find new garments in your apartments.  Then you can feast with us.”

            “I like these, they fit,” he said defensively, yet weakened by the troubles of the day. 

            “Not here they don’t.  Now go change.”

            He picked up the handkerchief slowly, just like the woman above wanted him to, eyes glimmering.  Slowly, he made his way up, past the cool-toned revelers and their words which hung just below the horizon, hinting at stories and conspiracies and plots in a strange language.  Once he fit these words would be his as well and the damned cold pain in the back of his head would stop.

            Turning around, he looked across the perfect people, down to dark Bles, where she stood, hunting in the light. 

            “Just once,” he began, letting those first words draw out to their fullest invitation, “I’d like to have a good conversation with you.”

            He left them at that.  Their mutters subdued.  He’d like to keep that look of slight shock Bles wore with him forever.  It seemed to appease an inner demon.

            Up here the rooms were often in darkness.  Some were full of smoke, full boxes and cubes of the stuff.  Party voices chuckled and clucked. 

            Sure enough, on the bed, laid out for a prince or dignitary, was a grander, sharper outfit for him to wear.  There was even a cord of woven gold from which to hang his weapon.  He felt the white fabric, and wondered what it would be like to belong to the group down there, to be part of their games and laughter.

            Once again the mirror showed his face, already gone coarse and unkempt with the adventures of the day.  The map of scars, trails of journeys lost, stood out like hieroglyphs.  His side still hurt from the carriage wreck and the descent into the crevasse.  He went to shave, but thought better about it.  Instead he sought some music.

            Outside, the smoke thing lay in perfect stillness.  If a traveler was transplanted to that place, at that moment, he might remark on the pane of ashen glass laid out between the two castles.  From the balcony a bit of the high mountain wind trickled down. 

            He tried the door at first, thinking he could just bluster his way past, but there was smoke in the hall and obviously he wasn’t dressed for the occasion.  The only other way was down the wall.

            Heaving over the balcony, he walked along its outside lip to where it met the course stones of the main structure.  These were all of moody grey, some kind of granite with a bit of glimmer in its quartz structures.  Thankfully they were set roughly, providing lots of hand holds.

            Howls followed him through the dark.  The hungry cries of yellow-eyed things, lemur-man and hungry spirit, urged him onwards.  Something rattled loose stones down on him from the roof above.

            Reaching the bottom, he thought better of entering from the main way and stalked about for another entrance.  There were no others.  Strange, he thought, considering the size of the place.  It was like a castle out of story, lacking any parts unnecessary to the ideal. 

            When he was convinced that he had found the wall housing the passage leading to the dungeon the forgetful man drew his sword and made his own door.  A few clean cuts opened a jagged portal, the stones falling back to reveal warm halls smelling of a certain perfume.

            Quickly dashing down the stairs before any curious servants could arrive he was lucky enough to find the wine cellar empty.  So he took a cask and continued, past the grated, metal doors, down to the cold stones where Bles kept the mad musician.  In this strange mirror place he hoped he wouldn’t find as many skeletons.  

            Stepping quietly he made for the Trumpeter’s cell.  Maybe there was a noise, a gust of breath, or the rustle of clothing just outside conscious realization.  I in any event he knew that there was a guard just around the corner.  Frustrated by a long day of troubles, the swordsman charged around the bend in hopes of gaining surprise, only to find a saber waiting for him.

            He didn’t look worried or startled in the least, this pale, white-armored man.  There was a familiar calm look to him, like a bland statue. 

            The attacker managed to twist around the waiting blade, bring his own up and under the man’s reach.  In response the man stepped up against the amnesiac, too close for the swing and with a dancer’s grace sent both black blade and attacker into a tumble down the hall. 

            Butterfly flicker and a sudden urgency of movement and a blink.  Something possessed the amnesiac, something in the muscles.  In the end the guard’s weapon jutted from the guest’s shoulder, and in reply found a good foot of inky icicle sunk deep into his breastplate.  Both men seemed surprised. 

            Letting his blade drop with a harsh clang, the servant retreated like a somnambulist.  No pain or rage, not even surprise or fear played across his eyes.  He staggered free from the dark blade, blood already freezing on its icy surface.  Finding a shadow he vanished, his eyes still on his attacker.

            The amnesiac moved in a hurry, brandishing a torch he took off the wall in an effort to find the wounded man, yet he discovered only cobwebs in dead end.  He half expected to see yellow eyes or hear the wail of a dead soul.  Somehow the silence was worse.

            “Guard.  Guard!  I think I heard something.” 

            The voice was that of the Trumpeter.  It was gratifying to know that he was as unhelpful to his captors as he was to the friend he claimed.  When the forgetful man presented himself the musician showed a shocking lack of appreciation.

            “Oh,” he said, his smile flattening into an even line, “it’s you.  I heard there was a feast tonight and wanted to know when my finery would arrive for fitting.”

            “I could just leave you in there,” reasoned the amnesiac.

            “But you won’t.”

            “How do you know?”

            “Because I know you.  In fact, I know you better, now, than you do yourself.”  This overweening response set the swordsman on edge.

            “Then tell me,” was the best reply the man could muster as he unstopped the wine cask and took a drink.

            “I did, and look at that thing at your side.  Make you feel any different?”

            “Cold, terribly cold.” 

            “But you still don’t remember.” With this the Trumpeter’s mood fell.  “What have those witches done to you, I wonder.  I mean, this could be it, the end of our journey across this dumb iceball.  Who cares about the Riddle at this point, right?  This is all Clea’s fault, you know, for dying.”

            The cold grew worse as the man talked.  It swarmed like a blizzard, yet was secondary to the persistent nagging of a better world, a possible place, clear and bright, beyond the smoke, beyond forgetting. 

            The amnesiac’s face went hard as he looked for some reflecting response from the glassy blade.  It had promised memory, but now it just stared back, seeming to redouble the terrible icy pain in his skull, the same pain which followed him from the moment he had woken up from oblivion yesterday. 

            “Where are you going?” said the musician frantically as the other man got up.  “Let me out.  We have trouble to cause and trouble to find.  There’s a whole book back at Eral’s which will give us far more grief.  You can come with; who cares if you can’t remember?”

            But the man did and he brought up his sword with one final effort.  The Trumpeter cringed.

            He held the point carefully, but still blood seeped where he grazed the atom-edge.  Then he lifted it over his head, bringing the flat of the sword, those indigos and murky crimson eyes, to touch the back of his skull, where the cold was greatest. 

            Shrieking pain came with the touch and a chill, so far beyond any he had experienced, flooded his consciousness.  The pain was greatest at first, dousing all the fiery elements of his soul, but this was merely the road to clarity.  As he pulled the blade away he was allowed to remember once more.

            On Dhala’s faceted side a small prismatic seed lay frozen, pulled from his brain, the barest surface breeching his skull and scalp.  The old struggle was renewed and the Riddle rose up like a sun on the vast Wintery plain of his consciousness. 

            The past came, not all at once, but like frost vanishing from a sunrise.  He remembered why the Trumpeter and he had made the journey to this forlorn place, but so much remained a mystery.  There were the ladies in white, the smoke, and the spirits. 

            “Hey, where are you going Fencer?” shouted the Trumpeter, who was surprised when the man turned to free his friend from the cell.  “You remember now, I guess that’s something.”

            In his rush to find Bles and Eral and all their mysteries he had almost left the Trumpeter behind.

            “It’s more like someone else, something standing in the way between myself and my mind, is gone.  I never forgot; I just had company.”

            He handed the musician the wine and they would’ve talked more but a shriek cascaded through the dungeon from up above.  She screamed.  Lots of things screamed. 

A Kindle Edition Unthaws from the January Ice

Winter’s Riddle, a novella comprised of the first eight blog entries, is now for sale on the Kindle store.  This will be followed by Chambers of the Heart and The Ice Mummies of Haga Ephos, each appearing a month apart.  Beyond that each installment of A Gathering Beauty will find its way there too, as well as compilations and so on.  I have releases planned for at least the next six months.  This is my first experience with web publishing so feedback is, as always, welcome.

Enjoy~ 

The Smoke Monster IV.

            Some eyes look on without intelligence, simply expressing a mood or a hazy daydream.  These apertures take nothing in, no light, no memory, impressing instead upon other eyes an inner world, a strange magic. 

            The eyes of magicians were classically held to be of fantastic colors, both real and dreamed up, of hues not found in nature, idealized as glass, crystallized wonder.  This was as if to say that flesh and blood were passing, imperfect things, but stone and gems could be cut to last the far mountain of years.  Immortality was a rumored benefit of the magic gift and those bright and never tarnished souls were made of grander stuff than the Icebound, their rotting flesh and their melting snow.

            Grand cold bored into the back of the amnesiac’s head as he remembered eyes of green and emerald, smolder ruby and sapphire, and their stares.  These settled past him like the last rays of day, leaving him just as forgetful and alone in the cave’s near total darkness.  Before him the dreaming crimson orbs looked on with balmy countenance and an even greater chill.

            Absolute cold seemed to exude from the eyes in the dark.  It was a certain frozen quality, a name just at the edge of his forgotten vocabulary.  Unnatural and terrible, it had a strange effect on the man; he began walking towards it.

            Though its aura was the first chill to make him shiver since awakening, this merely provoked his curiosity.  He discovered he had an oppositional heart. 

            The constellation of eyes described a space about a meter and a half long with wildly varying width.  He reached down to examine this swatch of gems but reared back with a fine gash in his hand.  Again and more carefully he felt around the matter of the object and after several more small cuts found his way around a handle or grip of some sort.

            It seemed to be a sword or an icicle.  Like a sword it had a flat plane which described a jagged, sweeping blade.  Yet it was cold as ice, so cold that he could feel the skin of his calloused hands sticking to the handle.  Holding it, he felt himself alone in a vast darkness, a slowly dwindling mote of heat.  He shook the thought from his mind and brought his reason to bear on the situation.     

            So this was the thing the Trumpeter intended him to find, he realized.  The cause was beyond him and he doubted there was any, considering the mode of the fellow who had sent him this way.  Yet, now that he had the object in his hand, he contemplated disappointment.  No great revelation cut through his walled off past, no memory sparked, just an uptick in the painful cold at the back of his head.  Dhala.  Suddenly, there was no more time for contemplation.

            The smell of burnt perfume made him turn his head.  Two silent yellow eyes descended down from the fissure above like a nightmare.  Just as it arrived he ran. 

            Crashing through a narrow fissure he happened down, cutting himself on unseen protrusions of stone, fear fueled his movements.  It was a strange sensation, as if poured directly into him.  It could be that the thing was most certainly not of flesh and blood, despite the eyes.  An evil spirit haunted his mind and his steps, bringing a certain superstitious fervor to his actions. 

            A more immediate danger was that it could see him, presumably, while he was blind in the dark.  Those two eyes were the only illumination he had, and if he saw them then he too was seen.  He continued the dangerous flight through narrow corridors burned through the rock by the action of long dead volcanism.  Each glassy passage he slid through and every unseen drop down a ravine to lower courts took him further from the thing.  Only when he thought he was safe did he remember the weapon in his hands.

            The crimson eyes looked on, perhaps commenting on his cowardice, or maybe that was just his own judgment.  Another moan, like the one he heard during the initial descent, drifted through the halls.  With neither source nor direction this sound spurred him into action again, feeling his way through darkness.

            Cold infused his mind.  It had been creeping in slowly during the mad flight but now he could feel it congregating around the back of his skull like a yawn which never came.  It doused his fear and brought back his thoughts; certain plans began to form in his mind.  If he kept running he would only find his way to the dead hells.  So he decided on a more violent course of action.

            He squeezed his way through a few more narrow fissures until a room of some sort opened up.  His first step kicked a stone which sent up a shattering racket.  The floor was littered with some sort of brittle crystal.  Feeling the glassy surface an idea arrived.

            First he stowed the black sword away around a corner from the entrance.  There were other ways into the room, he had felt them by hand, but it seemed reasonable that the yellow-eyed creature was after him specifically and would follow his path.  After making sure the covering of broken crystals was sufficient he cleared a narrow path towards the center of the room, and waited.

            It felt like a tomb down here, the whole glacier valley did.  The women above lived interred in their cobweb castles with no company but each other and their silent servants.  Like a coffin lid the smoke lay over everything, sucking the life from whatever dared reside in this stately valley.  Eral and Bles were so proper, so caught up in their social games and dramas, that they didn’t understand their cold tomb.  Perhaps that was why both were so interested in the Trumpeter and the forgetful man. 

            These loose thoughts went quiet as another moan, powerful, aching, sounded close.  Otherworldly echoes of shrill treble cascaded through the broken glass, making the pieces resonate.  He stopped breathing.

            It was so tempting to peak around the corner, to see if the thing had entered or approached, but to do so would be death.  From where he hid against a jagged wall he could only see the center of the room where his path led.  At last a glimmer rewarded his patience.

            Licks of faint yellow emerged and grew across the scattered glassy screen.  He watched and waited, gauging the position of the thing by this reflection.  It moved silently despite the bits he had placed at the threshold.  Then a rough silhouette broke across the gleaming crystals and he moved quickly and quietly across the path he had carefully laid out.  At last he took a breath.

            Two quick steps and a leap brought him crashing down on the thing, strange sword first.  It mewled out a hungry cry and that smell of burnt perfume assaulted his nose again.  Those terrible eyes spun to watch.

            He seemed to strike, dreamlike and slow.  The eyes bobbed away and with a hiss unseen claws batted aside the sword and leaped for his throat.  Without thinking he was already in retreat, scattered more chiming stones. 

            It followed with another attack and this time met the blade.  There!  He felt the resistance of some sort of flesh.  It made a scream like that of a quickly cooling gas.  The perfumed stench grew unbearably and the swordsman recoiled.  That was its chance.

            Like an animal it swam along the ground and clawed its way up his body with many scythe-tipped appendages.  Perched upon him, its eyes stared deeply into his and drank. 

            The rage and fire of combat drained from him, these psychic energies being greedily gobbled up by the horrid thing.  His weapon arm sagged and by chance it nicked the creature.  It spat an unheard shriek into his mind, providing a momentary respite from its hunger.  That moment was all he needed.

            Possessed by a perfect grace the swordsman dropped the weapon into a reverse grip and pulled the blade across the clutching thing.  There was a fluid pop and a warm billow of burnt whalebone perfume.  He pulled the weapon back, severing whatever claws still gripped into his chest. 

            The creature didn’t so much die as dissolve, judging by the fast liquefaction of those yellow eyes.  The man desperately tried to keep a hold of this enemy of flesh and blood, scrabbling over jagged bits of crystal and trying to pin it with his sword.  Yet it turned to mist in his grasp and the blade only pinned his hopes. 

            The fading eyes twisted off as yellow smoke through an opening on the far side of the room.  Frantically the man followed the only light he might have down here.  He cursed himself for listening to the mad Trumpeter’s recommendation; for his pains he had gained only cuts and a foul weapon, useful though it seemed. 

            Soon he lost sight of the smoke.  Yet the smell, that reek of burnt perfume, remained and he followed his nose wherever that was strongest. 

            The caverns transformed.  Through a loose metal grate he found some sort of dungeon complex.  There was still no light but the walls and floor were flat, cut stones and he didn’t have to worry about bumping his head on some low overhang or stalactite.  Searching around he found an unlit torch and with his belt buckle managed to produce a spark which finally brought light back into his world.

            Cobwebs greeted him, choking the passages and glowing like bone in the yellow flame.  He was covered in the stuff and spent some minutes tearing off thick strands of dusty silk.  White spiders with grey banded legs fled from the light.  His skin itched at the sight them.

            These were surely Eral’s lower dungeons.  Here the Trumpeter must’ve been kept captive, though part of him wondered that the musician might’ve first been given fairer lodgings and smiled at the imagined antics which probably sent the fellow down to a holding cell.  He wouldn’t have been the first.

            Revealed through the flickering torchlight, many cells still held remnants of guests past.  Exotic armors and strange silks clung to the bones, embalmed with cobwebs, entombing them like saints in an abandoned monastery.  Enameled warriors resided next to script-laden poets.  There were tribesmen of the distant tundra bearing the fangs of the wolves they slew and piecemeal adventurers whose luck ran out. 

            A half dozen men were interred here, in the land of the smoke sisters.  The varied nature of these guests made it clear that these were travelers, vagabonds, explorers and the like, men given to searching out the forlorn corners of the world for whatever madness or virtue drove them.  Here they lay at the end of all endeavor.  The back of the amnesiac’s head began to ache intolerably with this realization.

            For a bit he wandered the halls without much energy to proceed upwards into the castle, where two clucking hosts smiled deadly smiles.  Behind lay the dark underworld where light gave up.  There he might lose himself physically, just as his amnesia had lost him mentally.  This consideration brought the weapon to mind.

            It spoke in dark shades from where he had laid against the wall outside the first cell.  It was a long strip of a nearly crystalline metal, black at first glance but with shades of indigo and midnight when seen at the proper angles.  It had an accidental quality to it, like an icicle or a smear of molten material suddenly cooled.  This left the blade somewhat uneven, protrusions reminiscent of ink dropped in water.  Its eyes smoldered in the torchlight.

            All his senses told him to abandon the thing and its terrible cold but that same whim which sent him out to face the smoke monster and which propelled him down the fissure had him take the blade up once more.  Its cold fought with that aching at the back of his head and his vision gained clarity.

            After a careful search he found a sealed vault door.  It had the same alabaster motif common to both castles.  Locked and a good half-foot thick, he frowned at the secrets it might hold.  Out of rage he brought the black blade down on the thing. 

            The sword slid through the metal with a terrible screech.  After a few minutes work he had carved the thing open and found Eral’s treasures.

            A scattering of gold and jewels framed the real prizes; keepsakes from past visitors.  Here there were notched blades forged from poor-quality iron and insignia rings belonging to noble houses from far off lands.  More intimate were the locks of hair and the letters written in several different scripts.  The forgetful man could make no sense of the words.  For all the splendor, only one prize which stood out.

            Heaped over an ebony chair was a set of sealskin leathers with a matching pair of boots.  While worn and repaired many times with sinew they looked serviceable.  Seeing that his fine garments given to him by Bles were tattered and bloody at this point he changed to the skins, which fit like old memories.  The cold at the back of his head ached but he didn’t care.

            Ascending the stairs he thought he might meet a score of alabaster guards or the lady of the castle herself, but instead found only darkness and cobwebs.  The fortress he entered was the same he had been in just hours before, but now it was dust-choked and abandoned, as if for many years.

            The cobwebs, persistent before, clogged the halls.  He had to burn them out with his torch, sending the eight-legged makers into temporary retreat.  They’d win in the end.

            He found no other life in the dead castle.  The rooms lay in a state of stark abandonment, with no furniture and no bodies, only dust, cobwebs and the starlight streaming in from outside.

            A bit of fear rose with each floor he checked.  It was obvious now that there was some sort of ruse at work between the sisters, that they were more than they seemed.  But without memory he had little to contrast with this experience.  That didn’t stop him from worrying.  Looking out across the misty glacier he saw lights blazing in Bles’s far castle. 

            A chance presented itself.  Escape beaconed to the south, away from the glacier and the spirits and the mad women or whatever they were.  Something made him stay.  Something made him head northward, following the lower slopes of the mountains towards the other keep.  The pain in the back of his head grew by the second, towering over his thoughts, still he kept on.  He wanted to do what he could for the captured musician and more than that he was driven by a molten force.  He’d call it a demon, boiling up from within, raging at the web in which Bles had snared him.