The Bodies III.

            A week or so passed and Rel was a new person for it.  With his new hands, cunning devices of springs and pulleys integrated with his flesh by meticulous surgeries, the boy tapped fingers made from purest gold on the desk of his little Summer room.  The drugs given him by the Slavemaster resolved all pains of his former life, leaving him time to ponder his tiny window.

            Outside the glacier of Lamm spread out like a second sky battling for the horizon.  The world beyond was blue above and white below, two bars of paint across the canvas of the world.  For the first time since waking up that day when the travelers arrived the feeling returned.  The Trumpeter had labeled it beauty, and at the time Rel was unwilling to admit as much, having seen the horrible beauty of the Slavemaster’s Winter estate.  Now that he was part of the upper world, having been renewed by the Slavemaster’s art, this label gained a new and haunting life in his mind.

            The boy set out to lay this phantom to rest.  It wasn’t too far to the grand hall.  He followed passages made of pink marble, carefully cut by slaves deep below in the underground quarries and fitted together at odd angles.  The place offered up new worlds of discovery at every turn.

            Rel found the Slavemaster alone in his audience chamber, as was often his want.  Around him towered walls of rose quartz, decorated with lush silks, gold tiles and silver chains, necessities for the less grateful. 

            Often he would sit like this for hours.  It was how he considered future plans and designs, projects to be realized in the themed connubial quarters, or the laboratory, or the pits. 

            The man himself sat upon a backless throne, reclining against one side with a bored look on his long face.  He was in the process of entering middle age but still had a youthful, laconic quality.  Purgation had left him lean and he had a habit of smiling.  Like many aspects of his character this was an indulgence.  He wore long gowns which trailed behind him, made from scales meticulously shaped by his many adoring servants.  Today’s was jade and open in the front, revealing a chiseled physique covered only by a loincloth.

            “I am disturbed,” said the Slavemaster without turning to face Rel.

            “I don’t mean to displease but I have a worry,” said the boy.  He had come to realize the power this man had over hearts.  Effortlessly he could make one feel hate one moment, fear the next and love for the first two before a single breath was taken.

            “Come closer,” was the man’s only response.  Rel moved up to face his master’s green eyes.

            “Beauty bothers me,” said the boy who quickly qualified this statement.  “I mean that the idea of beauty haunts my mind.  I had no knowledge of it before, and considered such a state to impossible in this existence.”

            “But now you are unsure,” said the Slavemaster flatly but a smile arose soon after.  “I am well-versed in beauty.  It is my ultimate reason.  You are a part of it, Rel, a small part.  If only I could distill my notions on the subject into an elixir and pass them on, but that is for the gifted alchemists to do and for us icebound to merely ponder.  In short, I am at a loss as to how to help you.”

            “I was considering contrast as a cure,” said Rel, who felt fear at the edges of the conversation, as if terrible dangers lurked behind certain words.  “I would like to return to the Winter halls.”

            “I see the wisdom in this.  It is done.  Here is a token of my authority; it will grant you passage bellow.  First, see to it that the silken mistress knows my wishes concerning tonight’s entertainment.  The guests are to be denied psychotics, I have need of clear minds, and the entertainment to wear lilac, but not too much of it.”

            The Slavemaster handed a narrow lacquered wand to the boy who took each of these commands into accounting, as this was his duty.  Before leaving, realization took him.

            “Will this same token allow me to return?”

            “An astute child; here is the token of return.”  With this the man produced a small mirror of burnished platinum and drifted back to his thoughts.

            After informing the well-painted woman in charge of the Slavemaster’s vast stock of pleasant company Rel hurried down to the ascendant chamber.  How different he would look down below, with his gown and shoes, coat and cap.  A sly wish that he wouldn’t be recognized took hold of his heart.

            When he arrived at the contraption, a thing of the Slavemaster’s own design, the guard looked at his token of descent dubiously but threw the switch anyway.  All a whirl the boy returned below, into blue light and shadow and ceaseless alien tunnels.

            He wasn’t prepared for the cold.  A week ago his numb body would’ve hardly noticed the freezing temperatures.  Now he shuddered and gladly took the coal lantern offered by the lower guard, as much for the heat it provided as the light.

            After some searching he at last discovered the vault he sought.  Here the lowest slaves were kept; the unruly, the weak and the worthless.  Their prison was a giant metal sphere made of tightly wound bars.  Two familiar faces greeted him with the haggard stares of dead men.  The Fencer and the Trumpeter looked frail as eggshells.

            “Hello prisoner,” rasped the Trumpeter with a broad smile.  “We had wondered that you might be worse off than us and it would seem I have the right of that wager.”

            He looked at his companion when he said this, who gave a grim smile of his own.  The Fencer held his stomach in obvious pain.

            “Are you being starved?” asked Rel.  These two were far worse off than the other prisoners.

            “A self-imposed austerity,” explained the Trumpeter.

            “I’d rather die a man than live a cannibal,” said the Fencer with such force that the other slaves, who had been wheezing quietly in the dark, went silent.  “Tell me, what kind of magic does the Slavemaster practice?”

            “Magic?  He is a master surgeon, sculptor, critic and apothecary, but as for magic, well, this is Winter.  His powers are entirely icebound.” 

            “He has cured your hands!” exclaimed the Trumpeter.

            “Prosthetics, see?” and the boy showed the seam between flesh and artifice.  “I have you two to thank.  Your adventure brought me to the Slavemaster’s attentions.  He was sufficiently amused to repair my frostbitten limbs, supply me with lodgings and work as a page.”

            “Why are you here then?” asked the Fencer venomously.  “To mock us?  To prance about in your fancy coat and sing of this vile decadent?  Let me educate you on the matter of decadence; it always brings a fall.  I have dreams of such things.”

            This stream of vitriol almost drove the boy away.  Cold rage sulked behind the Fencer’s pale eyes.  Still, there was something earnest in his words.  He raged after a solution to all the hardship Winter offered.

            “I have seen much in the Summer rooms,” began Rel after some thought.  “But still there is more I don’t understand.  Perhaps it’s my brain which is frozen, and only thaws slowly.  So many words escape me, though the concepts they represent are part of my experience.  At one time the Trumpeter intuited the far visage of the glacier of Lamm as ‘beautiful.’  I thought him mad, as I had only witnessed that word in relation to the Slavemaster’s work.  In my heart it did not feel the same as when I beheld that far, icy horizon on a clear day.  But now I have seen Summer, another of his creations, and am not so sure.  In that place there are rooms of color, rooms of sound, so compelling I’m willing to allow them to be beautiful.  There are figures too, those who have been collected or sculpted according to the Slavemaster’s eye and hand, such as Iyali who you met once before.”

            “What has any of that to do with us?” stated the Fencer, coldly cutting to the heart of matter.

            “You two provide contrast, without which I’m lost on a sea of experience.”

            He had grown close to the spherical cage as he revealed his heart, perhaps a bit too fully and therefore incomprehensibly.  Rel didn’t realize how close he was until the Fencer’s sly arm lashed out and pulled the boy close to the bars.

            “You bring me back my sword and I’ll provide all the contrast you’ll ever need.”

            “Temol,” stated a voice from the dark passage leading into the room.  “Go remove that offending arm from the gentleman in the cage.”

            A guard trotted in and the Fencer let Rel go.  Next came the Keeper with a host of armored misanthropes. 

            “I bring good news,” smiled the leather garbed lieutenant.  “The Slavemaster wishes for your company this evening.  There will be a feast and with luck you won’t be the main course.”

            “An excellent proposal,” cheered the Trumpeter.  “And if I am to provide my own bounty to the fete I must have my instrument returned to me.  I’m a musician, which is something I’ve told nearly every living body which has entered this room.”

            “It is customary for the Slavemaster to play his own,” said the man in enigmatic reply as the thugs undid the complex locking mechanism and wrestled the Fencer from the cage.  The Trumpeter came willingly and behind them all Rel followed, wondering why he hadn’t been sent with the news, suspicious and a bit afraid.

           

            Dreams of flesh lounged about in the great warm hall of the Slavemaster while outside a Winter storm howled at the unknown form of his keep.  None were allowed outside the walls to view the edifice, which the creator deemed unfinished and forbidden.  All who entered the realm of the Slavemaster did so through the numerous tunnels.  The slaves which carved those blocks and set the great sheets of metal were put to the sword so as to not give away the splendor which their tired eyes witnessed and their broken hands built.  They then were fed to new generations as part of a cycle which the tyrant found poetic.

            The prisoners were led into the grand hall, its pink and gold walls decorated with lush silks and concubines color coded in accordance with the Slavemaster’s whim.  There were guests too, rich and auspicious petty despots who ruled Winter in place of the magi and creatures of legend.  There were brigand kings and bandit princess and one lone woman in silver armor who listed at the edge of things.  Those willful slaves too beautiful to cast down into the cold halls were on chained display and fitted with gilded collars.  Amongst them Iyali sulked, so recently brought low by the actions of the two travelers.

            “Please and welcome,” gestured the Slavemaster from his seat atop the court.  The guards went to chain the adventurers but were waved away.  “They have no fight left.  Leave them at the center of things.”

            The Trumpeter performed his best flourish, but remained seated, huffing with the effort of simply sitting upright after the journey from below.  The Fencer glowered from where he lay, part curled up with starvation’s pangs.  Rel went to tend the various guests and stock, serving pale wine made from glacier grapes.

            The first order of business was a bit of what the Slavemaster termed “light entertainment.”  Creatures he had wrought from human stock were produced, small things of pink flesh and large, vivid eyes, whose sculpted breathing apertures made fair noises as they sang about the guests.  These were a great and unique delight for later that evening they were to be roast and candied as the meal itself.

            Then special drinks were served.  These, the host informed all, were cordials brewed in organs he had grown specifically in promising subjects.  He assured all present that these were flavors which existed nowhere else but in his dreams and that none were poison.  Rel hurriedly went about filling tall flutes with amber, magenta and sepia concoctions.

            The promised meal was served, heavily spiced and steaming hot.  All were offered but the Trumpeter and the Fencer refused, much to the delight of those watching.  Even the slaves chortled at such misery as there is nothing so balming to those in pain than to see others in a worse state.    

            The Fencer said something rough and quiet.

            “What was that?” asked the Slavemaster.

            “If it’s entertainment you’re after I know a few tricks,” said the Fencer with what temerity he could muster.  “All I need is that icicle you found on my person and I’ll make a carving of you.”

            His offer was met with general laughter.  Rel thought the man had gone mad, or perhaps enthralled, by the way he kept his eyes locked onto the Slavemaster.  Yet, there was that wildness to him which refused definition.  He wondered if the tyrant’s will affected the man.

            “It’s a rare, rare thing to be in conflict,” mused the Slavemaster.  “Here you come, invade my home, murder my charges, and rile my stock, and yet my heart cannot condemn these actions.  There is a beauty in what you do and in those things you carried, that trumpet and sword.  And beauty is what I live for.”

            “There is no beauty to cannibalism,” reasoned the Trumpeter.

            “Incorrect,” smile the Slavemaster, growing bored.  “There is the beauty of economy.  Look out over the ice; what do you see?  Do you see the green fields of legend?  Do you see orchards and rice paddies or crops of any kind?  No.  It is true that a few anemic species of ice-adapted flora have carved out a niche on our frozen world, but it is also true that these are rare sprigs of life and far too scarce to provide more than a few casks of wine or loaves of bread.  Besides, why torture ourselves scrabbling after a few weeds when the greatest delicacies arrive on their own two legs.”

            There was a strange spell hovering over the crowd, an enchantment growing in spite of the grisly words coming from the Slavemaster’s honeyed lips.  When he spoke it seemed the most natural thing in the world, reasonable, even attractive.  His words were gauzy, soft, a maze of silken sheets where the mind lost itself. 

Rel caught himself before falling too far into the enigma and refocused his attention on the two travelers who, it seemed, were immune.  There the Trumpeter sat, confused, inoculated to this madness through the bulwark of his own.  It looked as if he was trying to imagine the taste of such a feast and found the results unpleasant.  The Fencer just seemed to get angrier and angrier until he was a man possessed.

“Bodies are the greatest resource down here on icy Winter,” continued the Slavemaster as he wetted his throat with bloody wine sipped from a crystalline goblet.  “They are raw materials, clay to be sculpted into more pleasing forms, canvases to paint, laboratories full of valuable humors, cattle to be slaughtered for sustenance, and eyes to look on all I do and enjoy.”

The Fencer let out a snorting laugh from his internment on the cold marble.

            “I’m glad I could provide entertainment,” smirked the Slavemaster, though his face held nothing but contempt for the dying man.

            “What of the mind?” chuckled the Fencer.

            “A minor appendage of the body,” replied the Slavemaster.  “An overgrown monitoring system bloated on reflection and understanding.  From this cursed place comes the entitled notions.  I try not to think about it too much as it is a waste of time to stare into one’s navel.”

            “And the soul?” laughed the bitter swordsman from his hellish spot of floor.

            “An invention of the untrustworthy mind.  Show me a soul as lovely as my creations in chains over there and you will make a believer.”

            “Maybe you could perform a bit more,” contended the Trumpeter, fearing where the conversation was going.  “I enjoy watching the effects of your sorceries on others”

            The smile fell from the Slavemaster’s face. 

            “I have no magic,” he said gloomily and his gloom became the audience’s.  “Once I was apprenticed to Eogy the Thaumaturge, a man as old as the sky and wealthy beyond our dreams both in terms of gold and magic.  I was a nobleman’s son, of the same kingdom as my guests from the Grey Dunes over there.”

            He gestured to where a band of robed cutthroats lay amongst cushions and slaves, each according to their tastes.  Indeed they seemed brothers to the decadent on his backless throne.  They, in turn, lifted their glasses to the host.

            “I would have had power, yes, then I would believe in the soul.  I was born into wealth and power, but here was a chance at the most unassailable of beauties.  Yet, on the day I arrived at Eogy’s pyramid another one, a stranger, came.  He challenged my master to come with him or face ruin.  Their duel left nothing but smoke, the matter of his ancient demesne transformed into wisps of light, leaving me alone on the blasted tundra of the southern dunes.  I remember seeing that stranger, now known as Sol, across the ice, red hair trailing like tentacles in the breeze.  He had nothing to say to me.”

            Silence dominated the hall, with every eye downcast, reflecting on this sorrowful tale from the time of the Uplifting.  The Slavemaster was a natural performer, his magic that of the tongue and the ear.  Only the Trumpeter and the Fencer were resistant to his spells, and maybe Rel too, as he watched the goings on with increased interest. 

            “I grow tired of myself.”  The Slavemaster drained his goblet and let the stunning thing tilt loosely in his hands as he slouched against the side of his throne.  All eyes were on him but the man took no pride in such attention.  His heart rested on things external to his great banquet.  He focused on his glass, slowly watching it slip from his fingers.  Its beauty held no interest for him.  Now it slipped a little more and more still, barely held in his long fingers.  With a jingling crash the delicate crystal hit the marble floor.  Green eyes soaked in the beauty given up at the moment of destruction.

            “Now I have shown you myself, as history has sculpted it,” began the Slavemaster, brightening, “only fitting that you describe yourselves to me, or least inform me as to why you slew my guards, invaded my home and so forth.”

            His eyes were not on the Fencer and the Trumpeter; those green lenses rested intensely on Iyali.

            “I seek a cure to diseases such as yourself,” said the Fencer, who had managed to sit himself upright.  “An Answer.”

            “Winter’s Riddle, you see,” added the Trumpeter nervously.  “A reason to the ice and brutality; a way to thaw the mind and soul.”

            “Oh?” commented the Slavemaster.  “You seem a bit unsettled, musician.”

            “It probably has to do with the company,” lied the Trumpeter.

            “I know the Answer to Winter’s Riddle,” said the Slavemaster as he arose from his seat and approached the two men.

            “Oh?” said the Trumpeter with increasing fear.

            “Yes.  In delving into flesh, so to speak, I happened across the truth of it all, some of which I have already intimated.  Specifically, there is no mind, no soul, just cold cause.  The Riddle is its own reason; a bright mystery lying in contrast with the truth of the matter.  Life is brutish, short, and ugly.  When we are willing to give up the search for the Answer, to even entertain such a notion, to forget that such a concept ever existed, then we will be ready to live on Winter.”

            “How do you propose to achieve proof of this?”  The Trumpeter was hopeful now.

            “I’ve learned that what others call torture is most efficacious for my purposes.  Not only does it impress upon the subject the harsh pain of Winter, but it denigrates the practitioner; both are reduced by the relationship into forms more primitive and honest.  Right now I have a drug which can freeze a man’s blood yet leave them alive, conscious that jagged crystals have formed in their veins.  Also there is a certain visage I need to express; that of two men sewn together.  It being a work of efficiency I would necessarily have to remove the brain and replace it with a protein slurry capable of keeping the flesh functional, yet accommodating.”

            The Trumpeter’s face went pale. 

            “Minds, as I said before, are such inhospitable things.  They stand in the way of truth, and truth, my two new friends, is beauty.  I would hope we could all agree upon that.”

            The Fencer realized what was about to happen but was too feeble to restrain his friend.  The Trumpeter nodded and opened his mouth.

            “We come for the Fairxi,” he said starkly.  “The other bit about the Riddle is honest and true, but is a more nebulous goal.”

            There was general confusion, the Slavemaster included.  The audience looked about and muttered.  Fairxi?  What could that be?  Who could it be?  Was it an object or a subject?  None could puzzle out the name’s meaning or origin.  Yet, it was the shock on the slaver king’s face which showed the brightest and then quickly turned black.

            “Everyone out!” he commanded with a shudder.

            A polychrome chaos erupted.  Painted slaves were unshackled and dragged their minders out with them from fear of the enraged madman.  Guests who were kings and princes back in their own stinking courts scrambled for their compartments and hid with their purchases.  Servants began their cleaning duties, but were shooed out by the guards at sword point, who in turn were ordered not to return.  The Slavemaster seethed with unbearable anger, cut with another emotion, one which eluded Rel’s limited vocabulary.  Then the master’s gaze fell on the boy, the last remaining servant in the room.

            Before he fled from the terrible presence of the Slavemaster he saw the Fencer, sitting there, smiling, lips at the edge of a laugh.  It was beautiful, in contrast.

The Bodies II.

            "There is a bother in my brain," said the boy suddenly after they had been in the tunnels for some minutes. 

            "Do go on.  I'm an avid ponderer of such things," replied the Trumpeter glibly.  The tall musician was all tangled shadows in the dim light swinging from the Fencer's lantern.

            "I've had dreams," began Rel, mustering all his words, "and I see things.  Something, a power, enters through my eyes and I feel it in my chest.  What is this?"

            The Trumpeter let out a low sigh of effort.  The Fencer crept ahead of them, tensed and ready for trouble.  The Keeper had gotten away, to one of the other guard outposts ringing the Slavemaster's lands.  Soon the slavers would be alerted and it was best if they were prepared to face full measure of the hospitalities for which the degenerate flesh trader had become infamous.

            "Describe to me some of these bothers," the tall man said at last.

            "I feel it most in dreams, though it often carries over into waking life where it clashes irresolutely with my normal experience.  Yet, sometimes even the waking world evokes a similar sensation, like when a blue sky stretches over the Glacier of Lamm, sun sparking off the ice.  And sometimes it's just the sound the world makes when the wind dies down, the Gurfulging is quiet, and nothing at all moves.  Up, above, I can hear faint traces of music, as if the points of light up there are singing."

            "Ah," responded the Trumpeter thoughtfully.  "That is beauty."

            Rel considered this a moment but shook his head.  "I know of beauty; it is the Slavemaster's great obsession.  The reason he takes knives to his chattel, carving them into more pleasing shapes through his arts.  It is the reason for the separation of Winter and Summer, and the entirety of his role as a trader of human beings.  At the very least his notion of beauty, and mine, are two very different things."

            The Trumpeter was about to reply, walking almost backwards to face the youth, when he bumped into the Fencer.  The swordsman hushed his companion.

            "Tell me," began the Fencer, leveling his piercing eyes directly on the boy, "of the Slavemaster's trophies have you ever seen something called the Fairxi?"

            "No, but there are many things I've witnessed in the Winter estate which defy my words.  Can you describe this thing?"

            "Clea's book notes that the Fairxi has the image of a person, can move of its own accord and is formed of an elegant twisting of metal cords or fibers."   

            A bit of eagerness came into the swordsman’s eyes.

            "Not to offend the dead but your lady's script is byzantine and in cipher.  Clues we puzzle out may be more formed from our own interpretation, or wishful thinking, rather than textual facts.  We know Clea found the Fairxi frozen in a lake, beneath a ruined city, behind three sealed blocks of granite, trapped in a cage, and worshipped by a band of lemur-men.  She sold the thing to the Slavemaster, who had hired her in the first place.  Presumably she intended to keep the treasure for herself but was forced to leave it here for reasons of which we have no knowledge."

            "Clea?" asked Rel, confused.

            "A deceased acquaintance," explained the Trumpeter while looking at the silent Fencer.  "She was an avid collector of things from before the Uplifting and in her memory we strive to recover the treasures she's hidden away on the face of Winter.  In doing so we may discover the great secret."

            "We had better get to it," said the Fencer tersely before turning and once again leading the way into the frigid dark.

            Smooth and triangular, the tunnels they crept through had been cut through the rock by the work of slaves.  As they approached what Rel termed the estate of Winter these workings took on increasingly extravagant tones.  At the same time the stink of thousands of bodies, and their products, grew and grew.  Their noses watered partly from this stench and partially from the cold, which seeped in from the stone walls. 

            As they went Rel explained to them the design of the Slavemaster's holdings.  In hushed tones he told of how the guard outposts outside were not meant to dissuade all visitors, but to corral them towards the large, northern opening, away from the crags.  It was imperative that all travelers enter through the underground rather than overland.  All who wished to ascend to the Slavemaster's Summer phase had to first pass through his Winter, and few managed that feat uninvited.

            When they at last exited the tunnels and entered the estate proper the passage had grown.  Countless fastidious hands had etched strange wonder into the walls.  Tessellated depictions spread across the surface like the hieroglyphs of some lost language, hinting at what lay beyond.

            The lower halls of the estate of Winter were no place for the human mind.  Countless tunnels, all carved to perfection, shaped into various geometric schema, clustered up the walls and ceilings of the great vaulted rooms as tubes and shafts.  There were empty halls entered only by sheer drops, existing for the sake of expression or whim.  The place was honeycombed with such workings, most of which were unlit, looming voids, dark gateways into the master’s psyche.  This was all by the Slavemaster's design and created by the endless hands of slaves.

            The Fencer pulled the shutter down on their lamp.  Here there was light, of a cold, chemical blue sort.  It burned from various censors hung in peculiar places.  The Slavemaster's aesthetic was dubious but it provided numerous shadows in which they could hide from the sudden bustle of humanity they found.

            There were numerous guards; strangely armored beings of either gender, clothed in molded steel and bearing serrated weapons.  They each wore helmets with conical face plates, giving them the impression of cruel and predatory birds. 

            Yet, dwarfing the guards in terms of numbers were the slaves themselves.  These were the lowest and most desperate of the icebound.  Men and women and children in various states of ragged undress huddled together in pits or worked the endless stones.  The guards watched them with only passing interest; these were worn down people with no fire left.  The estate of Winter went on like this for vault after vault, a treasure house of life being worn away like diamonds to dust.

            Even the shadows were populated.  Here the dead lay stacked and sprawled in a frozen orgy.  Some were obviously escapees who went off into the dark cold to find ultimate freedom from their captors.

            The Fencer and the Trumpeter were increasingly unnerved by the estate.  With a quiet hiss the swordsman confronted the boy.

            "You mentioned the Art before," he began feverishly, "is this Slavemaster a mage?"

            "No, but he has a way with flesh.  Through his drugs and his knife, his acids, chemicals and regimens he can sculpt bodies into shapes more fitting to his desires."

            The Fencer let the boy go but it was clear he didn't entirely accept this explanation.  This was a man who needed to see things for himself.

            Rel led them on, towards the ascent of Summer.  Curious thoughts plagued his mind.  For so long he had been in the accepting absolute of cold death that now, with his freedom won, his mind wandered, his feet too.  A savage hand dragged him back.

            It was just in time too, as a sleek thing of radiant flesh strolled past with a train of guards.  In his musings Rel had carelessly left the shadows.

            The others were taken in by the creature's uncanny beauty, another testament to the Slavemaster's work.  It was ostensibly female, ethereal, with long hair of white gold and fair features gilt with precious metals.  She wore a gauzy drape which evoked the imagination.  Surely this was a Summer being.

            "As the streets of many cities have taught me, I'd wager that is a man," whispered the Trumpeter appraisingly.  "Fifty bits of silver says so."

            "I'll have your money then," smirked the Fencer.  "Though she has a bit of the androgyne's grace I say it is a woman."  Then he turned to Rel, "who is that?"

            "She's a Summer thing, but I can't say why she is down here."

            "A Summer thing…," mused the Fencer, though the place he thought of was considerably different than the boy’s.

            Resolved to this mystery they followed the gilded woman through the vaults.  For a time they passed along endless tunnels, all worked in that same alienist fashion.  The full breadth of the Slavemaster's holdings staggered the mind, even more so considering he was but a man, or at least lacked those powers which differentiated those of the floating world from the icebound.

            The air took on a savor, and despite the cold light a bit of warmth drifted in.  The luminous creature they stalked entered a misty hall and when they followed they knew the source of the smell.

            Here the kitchens of the Slavemaster bubbled and burbled.  There was but one meal for those in the forlorn depths of the estate; a heady stew which the travelers had tasted earlier that morning.  In the fog bodies moved with the frenetic effort of stirring.  Great vats opened in the floor, heated from below by massive furnaces.  Hypnotized by the atmosphere and the dangerous cauldrons the travelers almost stumbled into the train of guards who had stopped at the center of all the activity. 

            Despite the danger the Fencer crept forward and hid under a table used in the butchering of whatever meat went into the broth.  Here he could spy the woman, who glowed as an eerie specter in the mist.

            "Alright dame Iyali, have you seen enough?" sniggered a strangely muscled guard from behind his face cone.  The woman swept her sapphire eyes about, coldly appraising the grisly workspace.

            "I see liter after liter of stew here," she began but was cut off by the guard's loud sigh.

            "You see, my lady, our stocks vary so.  At times we are rich in cattle, at others poor.  This is not a matter of feeding all to top off their bellies; we need to meter our output in regards to input."

            "I want you to double the rations for the slaves," she said imperiously.

            "A fine joke, if ever there was one."

            "I could always bring it up in passing with the Slavemaster himself," she said, conspicuously busying herself with the various baubles and charms woven into her hair.  This instantly quieted the guard, who nodded at one of the dull-eyed kitchen slaves who receded out of sight.

            "We had best return to Summer," he said, "they have need of the killing floor if we are to follow your wishes."

            The kitchen slave returned with a wiry man in tow.  He wore remnants of traveler's clothes and had a desperate look on his face.  His shackled feet shuffled along obediently.  When he saw the blood stained table before him, under which the Fencer hid, he began to feebly fight.  It was no use.  He was long exhausted by his imprisonment.

            At the edge of the scene the woman hesitated.  She had no great love of vile spectacle, but some responsibility made her watch.  Cold, filthy hands slammed the man's head against the butcher block and a cleaver rose to strike.  

            With two legs gone the table suddenly collapsed and the knife hit only filthy wood.  The man slid to safety and in the gloom the Fencer stood up from where he had rolled.  The guards cried out and went after him, the swordsman was glad to meet their charge.  He had seen enough of Winter for one day and knowledge of his breakfast had given him a sour stomach.

            Rel had never seen anyone fight the slavers before.  None ever escaped the Gurfulging's clutches.  Everything in his mind said it was impossible to face so many and live, but his mind proved a liar.

            The strength and grace of the attackers confounded the Fencer at first.  These bodies were tailored for violence; muscles lean and dense, lightning quick and resilient.  The first guard leaped across a good ten meters of frothing stew.  Another lifted up a mighty circular cutting blade and threw it like a discus.  Still more drew their weapons, tasting the air with lewd tongues and battle-eager eyes.  These acts unnerved the Fencer, but not the memories of another he kept in his mind.

            His wicked blade split the flying guard in half, both parts continuing on their inertial journey.  With a delicate grace the Fencer then caught the flying blade and sent it back, cleanly splitting the offending mutant's head from his body.  But there were more, still more. 

            The Fencer fell back under the mass of strangely sculpted flesh.  At first he had trouble gauging their inhuman, frenetic movements, which lashed out with wickedly curved steel.  He took a few nasty cuts to go along with the gash he received from the Gurfulging earlier that morning, but in doing so he managed to gain some measure of their skills.

            With a sudden shift he went on the offensive.  He spit the first surprised guard while another was pushed into one of the great bubbling vats of stew, screaming as he cooked in his armor.  He darted past the remaining opponents, who gladly reeled from the black crystal in his hand. 

            Rel was entranced by the battle.  The swinging steel, the misty forms leaping about in a sort of play, this contest of moments driving against the absolute future of a life of slavery.  The Fencer carved his own path and it meant that every moment was a conflict, the future being split into as many possibilities as there were facets to the jeweled sword.  The boy turned to ask the Trumpeter concerning these strange new thoughts but found the shadows empty.

            Instead, the musician was out in the open, with some sort of weapon at the gilded woman's throat, standing atop an unconscious guard.  The boy caught up about the same time as the Fencer.

            "Always a step ahead Trumpeter," said the swordsman dryly.  He pushed their little group ahead, away from the quickly gaining guards.

            "Who are you?" said the woman creature, eyes casting about for some means of escape.

            "I am the Trumpeter," said the musician, "and my companion is the Fencer, and my other companion is newly freed Rel, former keeper of the Gurfulging.  We come for a thing of beauty and since like attracts like I believe you can lead us to it.  I would ask of the 'Fairxi,' but first there is a little matter of some wagered silver to which you can lend some aid."

            The slavers were upon them again, though the Fencer had them stopped at a narrow tunnel where only a few could face him at a time.  Rel knew it was only a short matter before the guards wormed their way through side passages in order to cut them off.  Growing frustrated, the Fencer disarmed one attacker with the flick of the wrist and caught the man's dropped sword in his off hand.

            "Here," he said, as he pressed the blade into Rel's only good hand.  "Keep those fellows busy in there for a moment.  Just fight the air."

            Stunned, Rel could offer no protest.  His mind narrowed, a focus came over his whole being.  He leaned against one stone wall, using it to block off his open left side and as the guards attempted to round a corner he plucked at their flesh with the scimitar he held in jittering hands. 

            Distantly, behind him, negotiations were being made.  He heard loud voices and histrionics.  This seemed to last a thousand years.

            The Fencer returned, alone, and together they broke off combat and ran.  There was no sign of the Trumpeter or the gilded woman, just the tenebrous halls of the Slavemaster's Winter estate stretching off into shadow and pale blue light.  The swordsman led the way.

            The air tumbled with guards and stranger forms.  Things like the Gurfulging, expressions of the Slavemaster's art, danced towards them on numerous legs and watched with eyes upon eyes.  The Fencer's strong legs were up to the task of running from this assorted madness, but Rel's weren't.

            The boy tripped on one of the many stepped inclines embossing the floor.  The rush of strange bodies grew closer, louder, a tide of leaping death.  But the crash never came. 

            Suddenly the Fencer was over him, blade up to the hands in the body of the first flesh beast.  A tearing swing brought the weapon clear and in the same motion cleaved through a guard from shoulder to hip. 

            "Get up you sorry thing!" huffed the Fencer.  Rel scrambled up and went off limping towards the direction indicated, his way covered by the looming arcs of an indigo blade. 

            Together they made their way as best they could.  Enemies vomited forth from every vent and portal, the alien apertures disgorging their shadowy contents into the pale blue chemical glow.  Bodies piled up around the Fencer as he fought to keep the way clear before them.  As their numbers grew so did their fervent assaults; the Slavemaster had a command of the mind almost as great as he did of the body.

            Warm light signaled the end of their journey.  Sunlight showered from above, not the weak stuff of Winter, but the balmy rays of true Summer.  This they knew by some sort of instinct or memory lost but not forgotten by the icebound.  They were in the greatest of vaults, one which stretched a hundred meters or so upwards.  Above a portal loomed; the way to the higher of the Slavemaster's worlds.  In the disc of light directly below the Trumpeter and Iyali waited with a look set to douse this brilliance.  Just seeing this made Rel's heart sink.

            "The way is closed!" shouted the Trumpeter over the din of the bodies.

            "Damn," said the Fencer.  "I guess our little ruse didn't work so well."

            Rel gawked in wonder at the ceiling.  The whole thing was made from discs of precious metals encircling the portal to Summer above.  Each of these spread out like a halo, ring upon ring layered and placed around the solar aperture in such a fashion as to catch a bit of the glorious light radiating out.

            "Can't you get us up there?"  The Fencer grabbed the gilded woman by her arm for emphasis.

            "One must earn their way into Summer," she said tersely.  "The Slavemaster treats it as a game.  A glib tongue or a delicate curve can open the way where hard work and dedication are given a leper’s welcome.  Though, they should be more than willing to let me return."

            The edges of the room were lost to the swarming guards and beasts now.  Eyes, some catching motes of the Summer light above, glinted evilly.  They had the trespassers circled and took their time.  Rel watched the Fencer do a certain math in his head, as if he was gauging piling bodies up high enough to assault heaven above.  At last he put down his arithmetic.

            "Summer things and Slavemaster toadies," he shouted upwards, "we've bested your defenses, captured your idols, and soaked your halls with the blood of your defenders.  We are vagabonds with enchanted swords, players of ensorcelled instruments, captives built of gold and silver, and slaves in current rebellion.  By your own logic we have earned our way upwards."

            The brash words clanged against the metal ceiling, giving it a tinny quality.  Just as there seemed to be no response and just as the gathered horde prepared to swarm in, a terrible commotion sounded from above.  A machine descended.  It was an array of cycling gears and harnessed platforms.  These reached down from the light as a skeletal hand.

            When it landed, its upper workings lost beyond the portal above, Iyali stepped up to one of the cycling platforms and was quickly pulled to the top.  Not wasting any time considering this dubious transport the others likewise joined the device's madness.

            Above, warm light awaited.  Chiming motes of music drifted down to them, and the air took on a perfumed nature.  When they entered the light they were blinded and when they regained their sight they were in the upper realm, another world.

            Before they were fully recovered they had a dozen gleaming swords at their throats.  The Keeper they had ousted from the outpost earlier smiled beside a man in an open gown made from green scales.  His smile was greatest and by this welcome knew they were now guests of the Slavemaster.

A Gathering Beauty: The Bodies I.

            Rel stood out under the rarely seen sun and realized how big and wide the world was, if this was a world.  It could be just a long glacier which fell away to black chaos at the edges.  He wouldn't know, or care, and only even thought of it since he was dreaming.  In realizing this, the great wide open world of blue sky, yellow sun, and peerless ice turned cold and he awoke.

            Dead light drifted in through the metal walls of his guard hut, along with snow and the rattling sound which told him that the wind was up.  He crawled out from his smelly rags, worked the warmth back into his legs and discovered that the toothless girl, Xy, had frozen to death in the night.  He nudged her several times hoping she would sputter back to life.  Soon he too would perish in similar fashion and all he could do was blink stupidly at this realization; he had no language to describe the emotions he felt.

            The boy went about his rounds.  He took Xy’s half-frozen body and dragged it down the slope outside, down to where the Gurfulging waited in its metal shed.  Rel banged on the loose sheeting to wake the creature and when he was sure that the cantankerous thing was roused he slipped open its feeding door with a long metal pole. 

            Instantly a meaty arm clawed for him, reaching a few meters in each direction, which happened to be the length of the pole.  When the Gurfulging couldn't get the boy it groped about until it found the corpse, which it dragged inside the hatch rimmed in frozen blood. 

            Rich, smacking sounds emanated from within, in response to which the boy stood in a fugue.  In the warped hollow of his mind he felt around the matter before him, unable to describe this act of feeding a companion to a hideous monster.  There seemed to be no bottom to the world, only a starless void, hungry and perhaps mindless.

            He turned.  Something in him could only stand so much of it.  His eyes blanked out the sounds with the sight of the morning glacier, drowned in a pale blue which was almost white, and a sky so high and fair that he swore he saw the bend of the world.  Just like in his dream.  If there was nothing but emptiness beyond the demense of the Slavemaster then it seemed the despot ruled infinity.  This vision also stirred a nameless spirit in the boy but a disruption at the edges distracted his heart.

            Specks dirtied the horizon.  It hurt to take in the glacier's blinding white but soon two figures made their presence clear as they moved across the ice.  Slowly they grew larger.  This was why Rel was here.

            The boy scrambled up the slope so that he stood next to the roof of the dwelling and with the long, hooked pole carefully unlatched the door to the Gurfulging's lair.  The gnashing, snapping sounds continued; it hadn't noticed its freedom. 

            Glancing up, Rel noted that the strangers grew close.  They made good time across the ice and bits of them tangled about in the wind.  They must've seen the boy at his work, or the tumbled crags which marked the borders of the Slavemaster's flesh pits.  In any event they made for him now and he began wildly banging on the metal structure.

            Claws exploded from the door.  What came forth seemed almost comical in comparison to its home.  The little hut could barely contain this creature of patchy scales, twisted muscle and hulking form.  It was a good thing it saw the two travelers before Rel; the Gurfulging was single-minded in its hungers.

            The boy had watched the thing at its sport on many occasions.  It seemed the whole of Winter existed merely to send poor souls, desperate for food and shelter, into those craggy teeth.  The creature's chain sent up a terrible clanging as it unrolled.  It could range far on its tether, but just as all the other slaves it had no chance of escape.

            The Gurfulging charged out across the frozen wastes.  Already Xy's blood froze into glassy frost on the thing's eager lips.  It was then that Rel witnessed something absolutely surprising.

            Unlike the score of wretches he had delivered to the beast on previous occasions the pair hesitated only a moment.  Then the foremost one flourished something which caught the light.  A spray of deep blues and rich purples scatted over the snow in momentary refraction.  These polygons stretched across the cold canvas as rhombuses and pentagons, all flashing out from a dark prism.  And then the figure charged headlong into the Gurfulging.

            They met out on the icy plain.  From Rel's vantage it seemed that the larger form balled up and consumed the smaller one.  A glint of silver showed from the second traveler who continued ahead at a leisurely pace.  Then a note came across the glacier, something indescribable, like a dream, like the wide open blue sky.  Just as strangely the bulky Gurfulging, the monster the boy had been forced to mind at the edge of the Slavemaster's lands, recoiled and loped away, as if in fear.  Dark stains followed on the ice with the first traveler as the cause.

            At this point Rel knew not what to do.  The two travelers, bound in heavy cloaks and scarves, regrouped and continued towards him.  The monster heaved on the ice, wounded or dying.  This was the end of his mind, like the end of the glacier, the world.  He waited with eyes wide, unknowing.

            The two reached the base of his little craggy hill.  The one ahead held something icy and black in his hands.  The one behind was taller and carried a silvery cone.  This one mumbled loudly at the boy, but there were no words to be made out.

            The shorter one, the one with the icicle, ascended the cliff.  He had a nasty, triple-clawed gash on his shoulder but showed no sign of pain as he heaved great gouts of steam from his muffled face and stared through Rel with eyes made of Winter sky. 

            "I asked your name," said the taller figure as he unwound a terrifically long scarf from around his face. 

            "To the Keeper I'm Rel," was his response, "but I don't care for it much."

            "Why's that?"

            "It makes me feel funny."  He didn't know why he bothered responding, it was something inclusive in the taller fellow's bright blue eyes.

            The other one moved about.  He eyed the boy chain and followed it back to the metal shack.  His were appraising eyes, quickly discerning the lay of the glacier behind, the barrier of low, craggy hills heading off in either direction, and the realm beyond, the notorious estate of the Slavemaster.  Some silent decision was made and he moved briskly to Rel's home.

            The boy kept pace even as the taller fellow continued talking.

            "What was that thing out there?"

            "The Gurfulging."  The boy watched the swordsman approach his little hut.  The man was always on his toes, ready for anything.  He pulled back the loose sheet of metal which served as a door.

            "An evocative name to be sure," continued the tall fellow breathlessly, "but what of the particulars?  Was it a thing of magic?  An alchemical monstrosity?  Or simply some fleshy avatar of Winter's rage?"

            "It's a slave," said the man inside the shack.  There he found Rel's home to be nothing but a few square feet of filthy, hard-packed ice covered in dirty rags with an ash pit in the middle.  Vermin flourished amongst the smell of short lives.  Another sheet of metal separated the room from some sort of tunnel leading underground.  "You knew that, so why did you ask?"

            "I'm not going to presume that those rumors which lead us to this place held much in the way of truth," laughed the tall fellow.  "Besides, I'm interested in what he knows of it."

            "There's obviously space enough for a second in here," reasoned the swordsman, turning to face the boy and pulling down his scarf to reveal a sharp, hard face full of angles.  "Where is the other person?"

            "I fed her to the Gurfulging just before you arrived," said the boy without hint of guile.  "She had enough of Winter."

            The two travelers took to the boy's meaning immediately.  The grisly facts of existence on the icebound world were plain enough.  Life was a tenuous thing, easily snuffed by the relentless cold.  Still, there were limits.

            "Was death prior or incidental to her being fed to the Gurfulging?" asked the Trumpeter, who had shut his eyes for some reason.

            "Obviously it was due to cold," stated the swordsman.  "Also, the beast still lives."

            Rel saw that this was true.  The Gurfulging crawled weakly back along its chain, blood steaming off the ice.  The strange thing which bloomed up in his heart when he found Xy again spoke up.

            "If only there was something larger we could feed the Gurfulging to," he muttered.  It was the only way he could contextualize the event before him. That such a creature had been brought low by a man was incomprehensible.  "Make it stop moving, please."

            The two travelers exchanged a glance and then the swordsman strode out to the wounded creature.  He knew to stay just out of reach; the thing feebly swiped at him until he stilled it with a precise jab from his crystalline sword.

            "Would you have your freedom?"  asked the somber warrior when he returned. 

            Framed by the endless sky, the alabaster snow, and the bloody corpse cooling out on the glacier, Rel said nothing.  The swordsman cut the boy free of his chain.

            "Why wasn't your companion chained as well?"

            "They only chain those who ask," said the boy, still mulling over the alien question presented to him before.  "I thought to use the steel to keep the beast at bay in case it escaped."

            "What of yourself?  Did you ever dream of escape?"

            "There are no such dreams out on the perimeter."  At this the boy swept his hand over the horizon.  "There's nowhere to go."

            "What do you do for food, or warmth?" asked the man with the silver cone.  The swordsman was lost in thought.  Something the boy said troubled him deeply.  This scrutiny was so harsh that Rel ducked into his hut with the other, more amiable man.

            "The Keeper brings us stew and flame twice a day, sees to our chains, and checks on the Gurfulging."

            "Who is this Keeper?" asked the Fencer, who started at the sound of someone throwing open the metal door.

            There stood a powerfully built man of indeterminate age.  He wore all leathers and carried on his person numerous implements of pain and death.  A heavily made lantern composed of coal compartments hung from his left hand.  In his right he held a chipped enamel tureen which he dropped almost immediately upon seeing the two strangers.

            In these close quarters neither the swordsman nor the Keeper could draw their longer weapons.  The slaver went for a dagger but the outland warrior jumped him first and pulled him out of the door.

            The Keeper proved surprisingly heavy and the two fell against the far wall with a dull clang.  The Trumpeter hid in a corner as the boy scrambled to salvage what he could of his breakfast.

            With his weight advantage the Keeper rained his fists down on his attacker.  Eye's blackened, nose bloody, the outsider defended as best he could, at last using his legs to shove the man away.  In a flash there was a dagger in the Keeper's hand and an evil glint in his eye.

            "More chattels for the master's stocks I see," said the slaver.  "Come a bit more quietly and I'll give you a kiss."

            The swordsman's answer was to draw his weapon.  Huddled in the corner next to the Keeper Rel saw the blade clearly now.  It was some sort of black ice.  No, it was stranger, with varied colors, indigo, midnight blue, and eyes of crimson staring out from the metallic whorls and boles of the weapon's form.  Just seeing the thing made him go cold.

            The weapon lunged for the Keeper's heart, but he sidestepped and grinned.  Effortlessly the crystal plunged through metal wall and the rock beyond with ease.  The slaver's smile fell as the sword swung towards him, cleaving through whatever matter stood between it and his flesh.

            He escaped out onto the crags and the swordsman followed.  Now the Keeper drew his own sword, a curved thing full of notches. 

            "Better put those away," recommended the outsider.  "There are things I would know from you."

            The Keeper knew he was bested.  His gnarled mind knew the limits of his terms of service and the master he served.  He threw his dagger just long enough to make his opponent flinch and then took off over the broken rocks and ice, following the ridgeline.  The swordsman raced after but soon lost the fellow, who knew the place better.

            "Do you know of a Fairxi?" as the taller man when he was through hiding. 

            The sudden and incongruous question clashed with Rel's thoughts.  He was shocked to see anyone confront the Keeper, let along best him.  The boy hugged the tureen for warmth.

            "So many words I've never heard before," was his only response.

            "Where has he gone?" huffed the swordsman when he tromped back indignantly. 

            "There are guard outposts all along the outer ring," said Rel.  "Much like this one here."

            "Then we had best eat a little stew, stoke those coals he dropped and see whence he came," said the swordsman as he hung the weapon back on the series of cords which bound its erratic edge.  He then went for the hut again but the boy stopped him.

            "Who are you two and what are those things you carry?"

            The man with the sword stopped to consider this, as if a thousand choices presented themselves.

            "I am the Fencer and this is the Trumpeter; a maker of loud noises with his eponymous instrument.  And this," he said, tapping the weapon at his side, "is a bad dream."

            "Are you sure you don’t know of a Fairxi?" asked the Trumpeter again. 

            The boy still didn't.  All he did know was that these two had freed him, for all that was worth.  Together they downed the stew from the Slavemaster's kitchens.  It was heady stuff and the two strangers wondered out loud if it was poisoned or drugged.  When at last they were warm, and had the coal lantern glowing brightly, they descended into the earth.  A human reek greeted them.  Below the Slavemaster kept his treasures.

A Rare Interlude

With the completion of "The Ice Mummies of Haga Ephos" the first Winter's Riddle novel comes to a close.  I'd like to thank everyone reading this for following the story through it's various expressions, I hope that it's been worth your time.  An adventure is always more fun when you can share it.  The story isn't over, though, and perhaps it never will be.


Starting this Thursday I'll begin posting the next story, "The Bodies," which is part of a collection I'm calling "A Gathering Beauty."  These tales will describe various adventures the Fencer and the Trumpeter have in the southern lands, taking place after "Chambers of the Heart" and before "The Ice Mummies of Haga Ephos." 

When I originally conceived of Winter's Riddle I always imagined it being a series of vignettes, loosely organized chronologically around the quest for the Answer.  As the stories progressed I developed larger, more expansive plots.  These were great to work on, some even reach novel length on their own, but I wanted to see if I could produce shorter, more concise works.  "A Gathering Beauty" is such an attempt.

In the coming days and weeks there will be other changes to the blog as well.  Another redesign is in the works, as I do for each serial, new art as well, but there will also be versions of the first three Winter's Riddle books available for download, both separately and collected, with introductions and perhaps some new, bonus material.  Perhaps even a print version too, if I can manage it. 

So there it is; a year after the first, tentative post and it's become a full novel.  I never thought I'd get this far.  I don't like to post much personal exposition on the blog, it muddies the medium, so I'll leave things at that.  

-Joshua Sterns