The Smoke Monster II.

            Ice and fire.  Something burned upon an infinite plain of ice, hoping to melt, yet fearing the dousing touch of the world which surrounded it.  The amnesiac felt this struggle as he touched the cold knot on the back of his skull and heard the distant polyphonic echo of the cry in the smoke.  The sound entered his ears and dove for his heart, and a fire sprang up.  This was a blaze of passionate understanding.  In response the knot felt even colder now, and this numbness spread in a drowsy wave through his being.

            Shaking this lethargy from his limbs he left his spacious apartments.  The castle was in full activity; he spotted at least a half dozen people, all fretting about the noises in the dark as they sealed the keep. 

            “Is that the smoke monster,” he asked a maid in somber garb entering each room.  She didn’t respond, only went about her duties mechanically, checking the shutters to see that they were secure against intrusion.  There was little glass in the castle and most windows whistled with the sound of cold wind blowing through empty stone sockets. 

            “If you’re not too busy then you might hack down some of these cobwebs as well,” he said, swiping at a tangled mass in a  corner.  Still she gave no response and the fire in his heart grew.

            She turned a corner and suddenly he was alone in the pale-lit fortress.  Darkened doorways gaped.  Around everything strands of spider silk twisted in a draft, like pennants in a strong breeze.

            Down he went through the arching passages and wide open stairways.  These were spaces meant for many but now were deserted by all save this one forgetful man and the strange cries which continued energetically.  Arriving in the main hall, he discovered a lone guard bracing the main door.

            “What kind of trouble will you make if I take my leave of your hospitality?” he shouted after the man, but there was no response.  The fellow, a young man, garbed in white enameled breastplate, greaves and sword, disappeared into a side passage. 

            With his blood boiling the amnesiac threw open the door and dove out into the night.  Beyond the walls a thick darkness obscured the stars and suffused the normally reflective ice.  This was the smoke’s doing and from within its unfelt embrace he could look up and see the moon as a disk of red.  Again and closer the creature cried out.

            Now he knew it, or at least recognized the nature of the noise.  It was from an instrument, a horn of some kind, a special one indeed if it could produce such an enchanting sound. 

            The first thing he did was look for tracks out on the glacier.  Though the smoke dimmed the moonlight, a diffused glow made it easy enough to watch for dark patches on the otherwise milky surface ice.  He started by following his own left earlier that day.

            Soon he met those of another man’s, taller, wearing clothes long enough to disturb the most recent dusting of snow.  This target didn’t move like a swordsman and this disturbed the amnesiac with its violent specificity. 

            Quickly he realized that the new tracks carefully stalked his own and together led back up into the thicker smoke on the ridge.  Facing the creature there, in the dark, was not something the man relished.  While the cry was unearthly the tracks were something tactile and concrete and for some reason he tied these markings with the sound and not the smoke monster. 

            A gambit entered his mind.   He moved laterally against the slope, keeping the castle wall to his back, creeping quietly, approaching the last spot from which he heard the horn’s call.  This strategy paid off.

            Fresher tracks rewarded his effort.  His quarry wore boots of well-used goat skin.  The image of a massive mountain goat, horns resplendent, eyes mad as it fell through the air, bubbled up in his mind.  This inexplicable vision was echoed by another blast from the horn.

            This one was closer and the man raced after the noisy mystery.  They led further up the slope, towards the low mountain.  Rocky teeth regularly broke the snow cover, patches of darkness tearing away at the white.  Then the tracks vanished.

            Furiously the forgetful man looked about.  His noisy pursuit must’ve given him away.  He could only guess that the musician now moved among the rocks, where his tracks would be less evident.  A triumphant blast sounded further up, confirming such suspicions. 

            Trying to follow proved difficult.  How the larger man had moved so quickly and quietly through the stones was a mystery.  It would take an experienced mountaineer, someone who had lived their whole life amongst the crags, to work such a feat.  In his mind the ice took on a colored quality, tints of blue shifting upwards, becoming darker.  And a cold ache arrived, driving the vision off as he struggled loudly to the top of a cliff. 

            From this vantage he was clear of the smoke.  Down below he could see the valley and glacier swathed in the misty stuff.  Pale moonlight glowed off the blanketing cloud, broken only by the crescent range of mountains and the uppermost towers of the sister castles.  There was no sign of the horn player, but his call went out again.  Now much below, it seemed to mock him.

            Inner fire burned.  He boiled.  He couldn’t outrun his quarry in this terrain and he couldn’t see because of the smoke.  With a grunt of dissatisfaction he descended once more, with the notion of giving up galling him every step of the way.  Several more times the horn played again, jibing him, growing petulantly closer only to retreat cravenly at any sign of discovery.  Near the fortress once more the amnesiac waited for an encore.

            Complex notes sounded out clear and close.  How one simple instrument could play such a wide spectrum of sound was beyond the man.  When it was over he began to clap.  Somehow funneling his hunter’s heart into honest praise he encouraged the mystery player, who began an immediate encore.

            With the noise as cover the man stalked towards the sound on feet fast and eager. 

            He took the figure in mid note, almost earning another bump on the head as the instrument flailed at him.  Down they went in a tumble of expletives, shouts, clangs, bangs, fists and feet.  The taller fellow smelled heavily of soap and screamed like all the lost devils were after him.

            Devils, spirits, witches and demons, these things were gone.  One stood out amongst the others with blue hair streaming, red eyes mad with a secret torment.  This youth had a too-wide smile.  A magician.

            With this sudden realization he hesitated long enough that the musician was able to brain him with a flash of silver.  Yet a finishing blow never came and when the forgetting man came back to his senses he found a tattered fellow regarding him with a wide smile.

            “You still live Fencer!” exclaimed the man who attempted a violent hug.  The bewildered amnesiac shoved him away.

            With a clear head he took full stock of the person before him.  The man was tall and gangly, though it was difficult to notice this through the many layered wool coats and the obscenely long scarf.  His face was scruffy and yet he had a sort of manic geniality which shone through the gloom.  The silver trumpet, one long tapering piece of sterling, shone as well.

            “I thought you lost down that crevasse, and then the witches and their hospitality,” he continued, not the least bit put off.  If there was an end to his sentences then the amnesiac was unable to find them.

            “You aren’t a monster are you?” he said at last, making the smile fall from the tall man’s face.

            “Fencer, it’s me, the Trumpeter,” he explained hopefully, but soon was lost in worry.  “This is great, just crazy great.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “Amnesia?  You?  Really?”  The musician seemed incensed that he hadn’t been properly notified.  While he was distracted the forgetting man quietly pulled out his silver knife.  It was the first thing the musician saw after his little fit.

            “Oh, you’re angry, aren’t you?”

            “Yes, but for some reason not at you, as if there’s not much more to be felt in that regard.  Now get up and we’ll make for the castle.  It’s cold and I’m tired and my head feels like a rock tumbling downhill.”

            “Alright,” whined the Trumpeter who took out a handkerchief, blew his nose, and then went into a higher state of alarm.  “Dhala.  Where is it?”

            “Who is Dhala?”

            “Oh no, oh no.  Your sword, Fencer, your namesake.  Where is it?  What if someone finds it?  That thing is trouble, big trouble.” 

            The musician kept up this litany all the way to the castle while the other man plumbed his mind for some recollection, but could only feel a cold pressure at the back of his skull, diminishing the fire of understanding.

            The castle was alive when they returned.  Where the many ivoried guards came from he couldn’t say.  At the mistress’s behest they took the Trumpeter down to the dungeons.  He went into hysterics when they separated him from his trumpet and even the uncertain amnesiac was glad to place several layers of stone between him and that voice.

            Wearily he took the stairs leading to Bles.  She was enamored of the silver instrument, turning it over and over while a satisfied look of pleasure dominated her countenance.

            “Thank you,” she said, as he topped the stairs.

            “For going out and finding trouble?” he asked cautiously.

            “He was my sister’s guest, though I think he’ll find my hospitality more to his liking,” she mused.

            “So, he was the monster she spoke of?” he said, suspiciously.  Bles sensed this and turned her attentions fully towards her guest.

            “My sister has a broad imagination and a way with words.  There’s not much to do here but play these sorts of games.”

            “But there is a thing which lives in the smoke?”

            “It is the smoke,” she corrected coldly.

            They both went silent for a bit, gauging the other. 

            “He called me ‘the Fencer,’” he said, moving towards his room.

            “That’s not a name it’s a, a sort of occupation,” she said, following.  “A kind of sword fighter, one who fights with skill and finesse according some sort of style.  Must say it doesn’t really fit you, now does it?”

            The man stopped at the door to his quarters and turned.

            “I wouldn’t know,” he said soberly.

            “How about we visit my sister tomorrow?”  Bles seemed desperate to change the subject.

            A heavy pall of words separated the two of them.  The man couldn’t grasp her character.  She seemed both innocent and conniving.  Uncertainly he saw her through a haze of smoke, only flickers of her true being expressing a personality.  It could be attributed to her aloof noble bearing, but he guessed at more complex motives.

            By the time he agreed the castle was once again quiet, abandoned.  There was no sign of the guards or maids or other staff.  Only cobwebs populated the halls now, seemingly undisturbed by the bustle.  He never saw any spiders but dreamed of their machinations in his sleep.

            The next day dawned late and bleary, weak light filtering in from soap scum clouds illuminated the smoking glacier.  Upon waking he found he had kicked off his covers and slipped to the floor.  He couldn’t remember why though he had dreams of sinking into an ocean of soft snow. 

            At breakfast he watched as Bles’s footmen and guards chased off a band of spotted lemur-men.  They arrived with crude implements, large mauls of chiseled stone.  They weren’t after the castle but instead menaced the grove of crystalline trees to the south.  Fearfully they scampered down the slopes and as soon as the first warning arrows were launched they fled back into the hidden caves and recesses high up and out of sight.

            Bles watched the goings on with the countenance of a volcano waiting to erupt.  When the last of the hooting things was gone this fire cooled to a smile.

            “Worried?” he asked as she seated herself again.

            “Those trees are fragile things.”

            “What are they exactly?”

            “They’re a bit of light to pierce the veils of smoke,” she murmured through her wine.  “A gift from a passing acquaintance.  The only reason I remain in this place, really.”

            “And your sister?” he asked strategically.

            “And my sister too.”  He couldn’t see it but she smiled into her goblet.

            “Those creatures have convinced me,” began the forgetful man as he pushed his plate away from him and stood up.  “I should be armed for our journey.”

            “My footmen are quite able to defend us in the unlikely event of violence.”

            At this he produced the silver knife he had pilfered the night before and dropped it noisily on the table.

            “Consider it a trade for this bit of cutlery.”

            “Very well,” she sighed.  “There’s an armory in the dungeon.  Mind the cobwebs and be quick.  I’d like to leave shortly.”

            With this small victory tucked into his heart the man bounded down to the main floor and followed the stairs underground. 

            It was a terrible place of cold stone choked with cobwebs.  The only light was a lantern he found at the entrance.  Floor after floor opened up below but he kept to the first layer after the wine cellar as this was where the moaning was coming from.

            “Who’s there?” demanded the prisoner as the visitor pried open the armory door.  He gave no response.

            Strange, he thought, all these weapons in an unlocked room.  What if a prisoner should escape?

            The wares were old but well kept.  There were notched daggers, curved sabers, heavy falchions, tapering shamshirs, narrow rapiers and on and on.  Other weapons adorned the walls but he seemed drawn to the blades.   His mind didn’t know where to begin but his hands seemed to know the way.

            “Whoever that is I should probably let you know something,” argued the man in the far off cell.  “I’m a very important functionary of this world.  I keep the sacred instrument of the lost seasons and should I fail in my stewardship we shall lose even Winter!”

            Despite the spread of weapons the amnesiac couldn’t find one to his liking.  At last he settled for an exotic longsword with an ivory handle, more out of novelty than any other reason.  Then he went to see the Trumpeter.

            “Is all that true?” he asked through the ironwork separating them.

            “I’d guess you’d have to see for yourself,” smiled the musician.

            “What do you mean by that?”

            “You’re not the sort of fellow who mistakes words for truth.”

            This felt right to the forgetful man but he was loath to express such. 

            “I haven’t the time now to test all my curiosities with you but when we return I’ll try to get you better accommodations.  Then I’ll see about the veracity of your claims.”  He turned but the prisoner grew excited.

            “You’re off to the other castle, aren’t you?”

            “What of it?”

            "I hope you are met with the same entertainment as was I."

            "There's something beyond those words," frowned the man with the sword.

            "I want you to thank the guard who smuggled out my person and effects, see that he isn't strung up for his troubles," smirked the Trumpeter.

            "What's his name?"

            "Oh, I don't know that.  All these guards look the same to me."

            The musician seemed on the edge of adding to this thought but uncharacteristically kept his mouth shut.

            "Out with it," said the amnesiac, turning his attentions down the hall where he thought he saw something move.

            “Nothing, nothing.  I expect that your host might dissuade you from exploring the various fissures at the base of the cliff which supports Eral’s fortress is all.”

            Now he really did seem mad, but when the forgetful man turned he faced a sobered creature, thoughtful, as he sat down on his dusty mattress. 

            Fearing the lady’s wrath he made no more of this and returned topside.  There he hopped into the waiting black-and-silver coach.  Inside was Bles, also with a thoughtful look on her face.  He tried to focus on that visage but found his eyes drawn out over the countryside, desperately seeking truth in the phantasms lurking in the smoke.

The Smoke Monster I.

            There were lines on his face he couldn’t account for.  These scars described a map of sorts, the violent contours of a forgotten journey.  Cold wind blew in from the open window but he barely felt it as he tried to remember.

            The sun was far up by the time he awoke in the massive dusty bed.  His room was grand, yet spare, as if it had been stripped at some point.  There was an attached bath, a big extravagance with a marble basin and a sink which spat out cold, clean water.  Above the sink there was a mirror, and it was before this mirror that he stood, probing a face he could only barely recall.

            In reflection he proved to be on the small side, gnarled and cut from past trials, skin worn and weathered.  As he shaved his stubble the razor traced the sharp turns of his jaw line.  The eyes which stared back at him were a cold grey.  Absently he began trimming his coarse cobalt hair with some bit of automatic memory, keeping its length at an ideal now lost to consciousness.

            This ritual done he went out on the balcony.  Late morning seeped through a thin film of clouds, yet darker plumes drifted over the ridgeline.  Up, past the easy slope of an old, snow covered mountain, smoke tumbled down over the landscape.  Where there was no smoke ice and snow covered everything, occasionally broken by a dark bit of rock or frozen earth. 

            Immediately below stretched a courtyard, an outer wall, baileys, a few towers.  He was in some sort of castle.

            “Aren’t you cold out there?”

            He hadn’t heard her come in.  She leaned in the doorway, pale, clothed in grey.  Instinctively he went for something at his side, which wasn’t there.

            “Should I be?”  He wore only a pair of loose trousers.  This was the truth; the air felt merely crisp.

            “I don’t know,” she smiled.  “You’ve only just arrived.  Took a nasty fall too, out on the ice.  Bumped the sense out of you.”

            He smirked bitterly and went to explore more of the balcony which wrapped around the castle.

            “What was that for?” she asked, following.

            “Oh, I don’t know,” he said as he rounded the turn and beheld a glittering grove out past the wall.  Even in this light their leaves cast prismatic shadows.  “It all seems so perfectly wrapped up, contrived as a mystery.”

            “But it’s true,” she said emphatically and approached.  He was busy gauging those strange trees.  Cold hands touched something tender on the back of his head.  “There, she said.”

            “Do you know much about riddles?” 

            Even he couldn’t say where this question came from.  Puzzled, the woman didn’t answer, only searched him, as if his words were a trap.

            At last she convinced him to come downstairs and take a late breakfast in the dining room, a large, glass-shrouded hall.  It jutted beyond the southwest corner of the castle, forming a space from which both the roiling smoke and the crystalline trees could be seen.  The man shifted uneasily in the fine coat and breeches his host had convinced him to wear.

            “You don’t remember.  Do you?” she said, as he looked warily over a spread of chilled soups, cold meats, and pale fruits.  A formless servant served a dry wine. 

            “I was thinking you could do the talking,” he said strategically, picking out some lamb and setting it on his plate with his hands.

            “Well,” she began, savoring not the meal but the company, “I am Bles, and you arrived on my estate with a caravan of chaos.  A train of lemur-men chased you and your entourage down the old road.  There was an accident; the glacier is treacherous.  Only you survived.  You haven’t had a chance to give me a name yet.”

            Possessed by a sudden hunger he had begun to eat with relish.  It was as if he was used to an empty stomach and would take any opportunity to fill his belly.  When he at last looked up he realized she had stopped speaking.

            From the end of a long table, angled to point into the corner of the room, she faced him with chill grey eyes, glass opening up on either side of her, displaying her domain.  On the western play of windows the long sinews of smoke continued to spill from further up, the ridgeline he had seen before descending down past the castle to disappear into the great white flats he took to be the glacier.  The southern façade displayed more light, as this was where the grove of glass trees stood.   Another, gentler rise began past them, leading northward to the same mountain.  The castle lay cradled amongst foothill roots of ancient stone.

            “It may be my addled ignorance speaking but I’ve never seen trees like those before,” he said, gesturing to the strange grove.

            “Those,” began Bles but was cut off by an echo as a voice cried out from the lower halls.  In burst a similar woman, pale, grey-clad. 

            “Bles!  The creature is loose in the smoke again!”

            “And this is my sister, Eral,” said the host, evenly.

            The woman was in a beautiful panic.  She didn’t pay much heed to the man, focusing her attentions on her sister. 

            “I have my servants combing the glacier but I thought it best that you know the cause of any possible disruptions.  It has stolen a treasure from my stores and might make grand trouble for both of us.”

            It was obvious that Bles wanted to ask something of her sibling but restrained herself for some reason, buckling with dissatisfaction.

            “I think I’ll have a look,” said the man as he stood up.

            “Do you think it wise?” said the sister, at last addressing him.  There was a kind of contempt in her words.

            “Better than sitting here trying to remember.” 

            He didn’t stay to watch the two, he was already finding his way down through the castle.  The place was full of cobwebs and empty rooms.  It felt abandoned, cleaned out, sterilized by the bright daylight entering in through numerous windows and apertures.  No servants greeted him on his descent and he found no weapons other than the silver knife he had slipped into his coat at dinner.

            He made his way past the gloriously bridled horse in the otherwise abandoned courtyard and out onto the icy plains, away from the safety of the walls.  Part of him wished to inspect the glittering trees more closely but the smoke proved more seductive.

            No tracks of recent activity, or life of any sort, could be found.  The snow was ancient, frozen into a kind of concrete from the action of many days and nights. 

            Where the slope met the same plane as the castle, tipping down into the shrouded glacier below, he at last dived into the smoke, upwards against the grade.

            It was heavy stuff, like ink dropped in water, yet it only smelled faintly, like burnt perfume.  In this haze he wandered according to a need in his soul.

            The outside world flickered in as dark and light patches, growing clear whenever a gust of wind boiled off some of the cover to reveal the afternoon sky, only to be obscured again by more incessant clouds.  When he stood still he heard nothing but the wind falling down from the mountain, pressing the smoke onward, across the glacier. 

            Being lost in the stuff held no fear for him; he seemed used to wandering.  Maybe his mind was out here, some truth of his being, if there was any.  He felt incomplete, blank, and at that moment he heard something move in the smoke.

            The ice groaned under some tremendous weight.  He couldn’t tell if it was something which stood on two legs, or four, or many more, or any at all.  Unnerved, he fought his way towards a break in the cloying billows.  He was accompanied by a heavy breathing presence. 

            Suddenly he realized how lost he was.  All directions seemed equally haunted.  He tried to gauge the slope but each rise broke away into a decline and each way down twisted upwards.  Around him shapes reached up like the skeleton of some enormous beast.  Through the smoke, which had grown thicker and more oppressive, he noted that the ground was now blasted stone, free of ice and mostly level. 

            The thing didn’t follow him; it was everywhere.  He drew his knife and prepared to sell his life dearly.  Whirling, lost in a cloud, he saw the smoke bunch together, gaining substance.  It was a massive thing, towering, arching, like a twisted tree or a cancerous anemone.  Something uncanny took hold of his soul and without a thought he dove at it.  The phantom gave only slight resistance as the blade sunk through its form and the man went tumbling down the hidden slope.

            When he came to rest he was out in the light once more.  There was confusion.  Either the incline on which he now stood was on the far side of the ridge from the castle or he was mad. 

            Smoke pervaded the whole valley in a layer.  Across the glacier more low mountains rose up, massive, sleepy, and far off, on top of a cliff overlooking the ice another castle stood.  Though he had lost his way in the smoke it was impossible that he could end up so far away from Bles’s keep. 

            Slowly, he made his way down, only turning east when he was sure to not be lost in the black clouds once more.  Shortly his assumption proved correct as first the grove of crystalline trees emerged, followed by the stark visage of Bles’s castle.  His own tracks lead back to that empty place once more.

            “Is your curiosity satisfied?”  She waited on the crumbling balcony in the entry hall. 

            “It never will be,” he said with the grim happy countenance of one enmeshed in mystery.  “There is something in the smoke, a presence, if not a life.”

            Without a word she receded form the balcony and disappeared amongst the upper apartments.  He followed as fast as he could, finding her reclining on a white couch in a room full of bleak afternoon.

            “What’s wrong?” he asked.

            “I feel a poor host,” she said, absently playing with her dark hair.  “I can offer only a cold house and a land full of troubles.  We are far out on Winter here and have little contact with the larger cities.  Nock lies months away, as does Ruin and Plis.  No society or culture but the snow and mountains.”

            “Winter,” he said, feeling his mind around the word, so familiar and yet far off.  His head ached a bit and he sat down on a plush, alabaster seat.

            “She’s jealous, you know,” said Bles, stoking a bit of conspiracy.  He wouldn’t have it.

            “What is the source of the smoke?” he asked, leveling his icy eyes at his host.

            “We think a star fell there.”  She began to twist her rings with the effort of recall.  “It was before our time, before anyone.  The heart of the star rests in a cradle of rock, forever burning away, filling the whole valley with its smoke at times.”

            “And there is something in the star’s emanations?” he said, not entirely trusting any word she spoke but also sensing a vulnerability and a sadness from the wispy creature sitting opposite him.  “Something alive?”

            “We think.  At least my sister and I do.  I mean, we’ve seen it, as have our servants.  We can claim as much knowledge as anyone.  Its body is the smoke, you see, or more precisely the physical expression of its presence.  You must be careful out there; it can kill.”

            “How does smoke kill?” he responded incredulously.

            “We find empty skins.  The flesh is intact but the bones and organs are gone.  They say these it turns to smoke, to join with it in unholy marriage.”

            Silence filled the room.  The man turned the facts over and over.  A drive to understand, to reason out the various elements presented to him since his awakening overtook his mind.  He became lost in those crystalline trees and wandered the ancients stones of twin castles.  Outside there was nothing but stark ice and obscuring smoke. 

            “Let’s speak about other things,” said Bles finally.

            “About your sister, I take it?” he said, jolted from the path his brain was taking.

            “Eral, what a thing she did today,” mused Bles.  “What do you think of her?”

            In an unguarded moment he replied with, “I think you both are much alike.”