Men toiled in the shadows, turned into ghosts by
the pale, luminous moss which was their only light. They exited and reemerged from the same
darkness, their only constant were the sounds.
Inhuman
shrieks and mortal yells pierced the gloom.
Occasionally a clatter of spears told of battle or the marching of their
feet through the dark, in search of prey, in search of safety. In quiet moments they sang the soft hope
notes taught by their elders and breathed carefully lest even that small noise
bring horrors out of the abyss.
The
shadowed boughs held the dual perils of profit and death. The profit was death, it lured them with the
raw treasure for their civilization and made them pay with the blood of the
individual. Here were the silks and
lumber, the strange remedies and chemical jewels which made for warm hearths
and their choice of wives. And here were
the anawke, death with eight eyes.
Seyo’an
watched this theatre from the canopy, still with absolute fear. To his large, nocturnal eyes there was no
gloom. He could see the wooly arachnids
and terribly human beings tear into each other, the smell of fear and blood
rich to his sensitive nose. He didn’t
like the spider things and he didn’t like the walking men, nor the shadow
creatures in this dark corner of the jungle.
It was only his love for Eley which made him brave. He was a quiet creature and watchful.
The
hunting band moved on from their latest kill and Seyo’s little heart beat
faster as he followed. Each step might
arouse an anawke so the monkey was careful not to disturb leaf or twig. In this he was capable and scurried as a
whisper.
The
hunters made camp against a huge tree well illuminated by glowing moss scrawled
along its northern side. There they
spooled their silks, drenched in the foul ichor of the spiders to keep them
from sticking. The smell curled the
monkey’s nose. Men were the most
disgusting sort of predators.
In
time he grew bored and dozed. In his
dreams he ate fruit in the sunlit tops with his mistress. She moved like him so he wouldn’t have to
wait and nothing hunted them. A man
yelled and she grew concerned.
Awaking,
the man’s voice continued. In the camp
below an argument raged, soft by human standards, but clear as grubs burrowing
beneath tree bark to Seyo’an.
One
older man was against the group. He was
large with importance and his hunting cloak was little stained by hard work. The next important man thought the first
wrong, and though at first the hunters agreed the elder elder bent them with
his words. Having learned some human
noises Seyo knew his plan.
His
eyes grew large as yui blossoms as the man pointed into the depths beyond the
glowing moss. This was beyond the hunt,
beyond where the outside men were allowed at the whim of the mistress. There waited her power, her home. Even as the band readied to move Seyo’an
fled, his nose twitching, on a hunt of his own.
Eley would want to know that the Jomoth had changed their quarry.
The Fencer and the Trumpeter had already found
her. Eley stood before them in the
darkness, her face in shadow, the rest of her a silhouette garbed in bright,
interlocking blossoms of various size.
“Like
the tree?” asked the Trumpeter, a shadow amongst shadows, only his instrument
glinting slightly.
“What?”
she asked. She was prepared for them to
be angry, suspicious, maybe even violent.
This wasn’t a natural question.
“Your
name,” continued the Trumpeter, over the voice of his companion. “Eley, like the jungle tree.”
Her
silence was total. They shivered in the
cold.
“Like
the tree,” she replied, venom on her words.
“Damned
musician, we have no time,” seethed the Fencer, finally heard. “We stand with our goal and you ask her
this?”
“See,
that is a natural reaction.” Said Eley,
the smile in her voice unseen. “You are
always in danger, always hunted. A
predator is also prey to others. You
can’t think in such situations, can’t philosophize or consider, you can only
react. I like you, Fencer, you are
natural. Your friend is one I cannot
like.”
Under
this praise the Fencer withered. His
words stopped and he considered the barbs in such a complement.
“Who
named you?” The Trumpeter was set with
his questions, making the most of his time before the Fencer awoke and took
them all under his reason.
“You
aren’t safe here,” she said at last and plucked a flower from her garment. Immediately it began to glow, the blossom
unfolding into a rosy torch. “Come close
and I’ll bring you to the jungle’s edge.”
“But
we’re being hunted,” replied the Trumpeter, casting his eyes about. “We brought a cannibal with us and he’s gone
rogue, if that’s possible. He’s mad with
very particular hunger. Worst of all he
intends on eating me. Did you hear that
Fencer? Me, I get some special attention
this time.”
Eley
laughed off the man’s foolishness and turned to lead the way. Nothing followed.
“Stop,”
said the Fencer, his composure regained.
“Won’t
you come with me?” she asked without turning around. Consider the poisons she wore, the chemical
inducements.
“Not
until we have what we came for.”
“Riches
are all around, you only have to pluck them from the trees,” she said.
“There
is a thing which is said to reside in these lands, a concept, a plot,” the
Fencer said, struggling to describe.
“It’s a process, this system, the results of which I cannot fathom, but
I believe it to be a conspiracy of seeds.
All I do know is a name.”
“What
name?” she demanded.
“Monath’s
Method,” he said.
Eley’s
mind raced. They were sorcerers after
all, come to steal her secret. They had
caused Paos to be born, to steal her love, and then to kill it. A wicked plan meant to weaken her, and she
the fool who didn’t realize it.
Her
fingers parsed her gown’s many weapons.
She’d dreamt of magical war many times but wondered if her spells were
ripe enough. The swordsman she could
predict but not the musician.
“By
that reaction you know what we seek,” continued the man with the stars at his
side.
His
hand hovered near the sword while the musician polished his instrument with a
spare handkerchief. Wind creaked through
the trees. They were only outlines,
barely seen in the dark.
Then
a fourth figure darted in. Racing past,
the men drew their weapons by instinct but the thing’s target was the
girl. It crawled up and perched upon her
shoulder. When it turned, two discs of
pale green flickered in the dark.
Seyo’an
chittered in her ear. The creature had a
simple language of fear and need.
“Something
the matter?” asked the Fencer.
Eley
wondered if they caught her smile in the dark.
“Nothing,”
she explained. “I know the Method and
Monath but this is no place for conversation.”
“As
I’ve said,” grumbled the swordsman.
“Follow
me,” she said and without much choice they did, into the far jungle.
They
went north under the claustrophobic arms of impossible trees. Without seeing the procession of stars night
was eternal. Instead, they had only the
wayward fireflies to break the monotony of leaf and branch. In time they grew sensitive to the jungle’s
texture, a sea of white bark, smooth trunks, serrated leaves, cutting creepers,
sticky blossoms, bulbous fruit, the smell of living green and deadfall rot. Burrs and seeds caught in their clothes, some
moving, not seeds at all. In time their
skin became a feast for insects, bumps welling where the little tongue lances
drank upon their skin. Their Jomoth cloaks
warded off the majority of such attention but what remained was maddening.
At
times the stars did peek from short-lived breaks in the canopy, revealing
another world. Increasingly it was
difficult to believe that Winter existed.
This clammy prison, cold insects, haze vision, darkling path, that was
all there was. They burrowed through the
jungle, following the witch’s scent.
Every
noise made them start and the Fencer refused to put down his blade. They were hunted still and it meant keeping
his edge about him.
“Aren’t
you worried about that cannibal we spoke of?” asked the Trumpeter in the
general direction of the girl.
“No,”
said the darkness.
“Why
not?”
“What
have I to fear from the icebound?”
“I
guess every mage has a weakness,” he pondered.
“What
do you mean by that?”
“Oh,
we’ve seen magicians before, blue hair, mad spells, leveled a mountain at a
whim, and burned our past to fading silver.
I’ve watched one rise from the dead, like she’d just been asleep and
decided it was time to get up. Another
enslaved a mountain since the warm days, and, well, there you go, big things,
legends come true, all true.”
The
girl drank up the stories quietly, lest they notice her gluttony.
“What
more?” she demanded eagerly when it seemed he’d trailed off into whatever place
the madman went with his thoughts.
“Well,”
he began, as if trying to choose his words carefully. “Well, we’ve seen them be small too, smaller
than their magic, like a child with a great sword they can barely lift. The Fencer’s slain one himself, that
obsessive who murdered his…friend.”
The
last word changed in the fellow’s mouth.
“It’s
true,” said the grim fellow with the stars.
“They die strange, but they die, just not always. Terribly inconsistent.”
“I
won’t die,” whispered Eley as she led them on, now even more aware of the cold
death in the Fencer’s hands. She spoke
up then. “All things die. I see it every day.”
She
didn’t notice how strange the statement was, but then again witches were
supposed to be strange, strange and terrible, strange and beautiful, a sort of feminine,
near-human other occupying a niche in the greater scheme which at least allowed
for eccentricity, as well as violence and unwholesome tastes. The notion that the Fencer man had killed a
magician troubled her despite how much she distrusted the words and their
teller and they traveled on in a new and anxious sort of silence.
The
way grew strange like her heart. Light
issued from the fluted bells of certain plants, allowing the moths to dance
their way to a meal, while mimicking jar plants swallowed them up, their
shadows struggling uselessly to escape the digestive seas within. Eleys still towered overhead, but they were
joined with a whole new community below the leaves. There were moving fronds and green ants with
blossoms for heads, the canopy flickered with moss-winged bat things which fed
off bleeding bushes. Animal and plant
life merged in a hungry dance.
“What
is this place?” asked the Fencer.
“The
Creaverd Garden,” she said, turning around to display the place with proud
arms.
“Your
handiwork?” he said, shooing away a foot-long praying mantis which had alighted
on his shoulder.
“Yes.” The girl strode with power here, her magic
writhing and feasting.
“What
dangers should we know?”
“Only
that you must follow me exactly,” came the cryptic reply. It was the classic mystic challenge and not
being mystics the two men had to improvise.
“What’s
that?” hushed the Trumpeter.
Turning
the girl saw nothing and was about to continue, ignoring this ruse, if not for
the strong arm which took hers. Armored
blossoms compressed against her skin.
The
Fencer had taken hold of her. Her face
grew hot but she then noticed he was pointing past her, down to the underbrush.
“See
the cord?” he asked and then walked past.
A
nearly invisible line of sinew, recently plucked from some beast, ran taught
between the ground and a coiled sapling above.
Taking his sword he cut the line, whipping the tree back up with a
whistle. Upon the ground the remaining
portion of sinew lay in a loop, carefully set so that anyone stepping within
would be pulled up and hung by their leg.
“What
is it?” asked the Trumpeter.
“A
trap,” she replied, remembering. “The
hunters of generations past used them to catch game and settle scores. The jungle was once full of the things. I’ve convinced the Jomoth that such aren’t
necessary.”
The
two outlanders weren’t used to these traps.
There was no context for these devices in the world of Winter, where the
trees were petrified, the forests deathly quiet with attending evergreens, and the
prey within too sparse to warrant the effort.
Surely there were traps—ice falls, frozen lakes, poisoned snow—but they
operated according to a different kind of reason. Both men looked on, calculating the danger as
a new experience. It was their
particular edge to never take nature for granted.
“So
it’s old then?” asked the Fencer, closely examining the craftsmanship.
“No,”
she said at last. “The sinew is too new
and the tree would have died long ago.”
“How
long since the Jomoth played with traps in your jungle?” wondered the
Trumpeter.
“I’ve
given them no reason to rely on such,” she said, standing up and observing the
shadows ahead for sign of more. “Such
works have been discouraged.”
Continuing
on they found more hidden dangers. Not
just snares but also deadfalls and spring traps, using the lush foliage against
them. There was no end to the resources available
for nasty schemes. For blades and spikes
their hunter used the grisly remains of his feasts: quills, spines, broken
bones still red with wasted marrow, fangs, claws. The beasts of the jungle were repurposed for
this hunt and they knew the hunter, hearing the cannibal just out of sight at
times. Amongst the distracting blossoms
and creatures it was difficult to stay on guard.
The
Trumpeter was the first to succumb.
While parsing a copse of tall, straight spear trees he sprung a falling
creeper lined with piercing spines. It
took half an hour to disentangle them from his coat and he was left with a line
of puckered wounds running from his neck down his chest to his left thigh. Another time the Fencer simply broke a cunningly
set twig which agitated a tree laden with bulbous fruit and from above a rain
of dark, pods fell like stones, turning his face and shoulder blue with
bruises.
In
all the traps wore them down without aiming for the kill. Their lacked an interest in the kill, merely
pricking them for blood and letting the clogging insects continue the misery.
“He’s
not willing to share,” said the Fencer as he pulled a bony spike out from his
foot. Above him Seyo’an squawked at
every sign of trouble he managed to spot from the canopy above. “He won’t kill us with these toys.”
“He’s
afraid of you, Fencer,” noted the Trumpeter who couldn’t help but itch every
bug bite red and raw.
“It
is because you are sorcerers,” sighed Eley.
Though not the kind she had hoped for, she thought to herself.
“You
take those words,” began the Fencer, cold death in his words. “And you bury them with the other liars I’ve
slain.”
“If
we were magicians,” reasoned the Trumpeter, “why then we’d be in Summer.”
“Like
I am?” she grinned. “Fables aside, there
is plenty of magic here. The whole world
might freeze and let me work my spells in comfort. You’ve got your star blade and your bright
noise, and I have this.”
“We
aren’t simply our devices,” replied the Fencer.
“But,
your names?”
“Titles
for new lives,” he explained, without clarity.
“Are the Jomoth trappers if they use traps?”
“But
you chose your names.”
“I
don’t deny the word but the interpretation.”
“For
instance,” began the Trumpeter, hobbling along, “We don’t call ourselves ‘the
magician’ and ‘the sorcerer.’”
“I
remain unconvinced.”
“Tell
me,” he continued, “would you prefer the Witch or Eley.”
“The
Witch,” she said without caution.
The
strike landed in her mind and even the Fencer was jealous of this rhetoric. What remained was the conviction that they
were magicians, no matter what they said, and that she was more than just a
term. She knew the break of things and
magic came in many forms, like the endless variation of the jungle. These men were part of the Lattice and they
had their spells, whether they chose to admit it or not.
Persevering
on their course became automatic. All
around hung the pregnant night, accented occasionally by a luminous guest, a
firefly, vivid moss structure run up against an angle of tree shade. There were eyes in the night, many of them, some
following, others still. Then the noises
of hidden things suddenly silenced by their hungry pursuer who seemed to live
in the future, always at the next step, waiting with his barbs and teeth.
Then
Eley was alone in her movements.
Seyo’an, feeling a change, ceased scouting and alighted upon her
shoulder so they could backtrack together.
It wasn’t long before she found the men holed up in a patch of
starlight, their faces wan and pale in the light from distance spaces.
“See,
we aren’t magicians,” complained the Trumpeter.
“Been
a day without rest and the violence has caught up with me,” explained the
exhausted Fencer. “You may continue,
Witch, but if you do so you do so alone.”
The
pain of waiting. Eley was impatient and
full of young energy. Perhaps this was
another aspect of her magic, another true component of her spellcraft, and she
smiled at their frowns.
There
were cures for mortal concerns, they grew from her magic. From her wondrous gown she produced a pair of
strange seeds. Seyo’an grew excited and
his eyes glowed like twin ghosts in the weak light.
“I
can grant you strength,” she told the men at the edge of the sleeping
abyss. “Here, take them. If you’d know the Method you might as well
taste a portion of it.”
Both
men looked at the things with distrust, but also hunger.
