Under a Bridge

Rugner knelt and pinned both of Ash’s arms to his side. The werewolf locked his yellow irises onto Ash’s eyes, muzzle nearly pressed to his narrow menog nose.

Ash’s first thought was that he’d been tricked. Even with all his strength, Rugner was no match for the raw magic power at Ash’s disposal. But without his magic and in the form of a menog, he was defenseless. The werewolf had distracted and lulled him with fragments of truth, and now he would rip Ash apart.

“I had thought to find a place in this changing world, but I was wrong,” Rugner said. His words were rushed but clear, any semblance of a growl gone. “My place was never with those Gailinn recruited. I belong here with you.”

A dozen curses died on Ash’s lips. The crafty old werewolf had been building to this moment with discussion of his past and statues, waiting for the moment when they could be truly alone without Krachnis eavesdropping.

“I joined you, because by your side, I can fight against Gailinn. With an army, I can control her influence on the world,” Rugner said. After a pause, he continued in a soft, earnest voice. “I believe you have ideals Krachnis has yet to fully eradicate. If you’ll hear my council, then I can also battle his presence in the world. And if it takes his power to bring change, his power working through you, then I will trust you.”

There was an unspoken promise in those final words. Whether he realized it or not, Rugner was offering Ash something he desperately needed. An ally he could trust. A source of guidance and information apart from Krachnis.

“How did you control the gravelings?” Ash asked. As if an understanding had been reached by that question, Rugner released his grip and sat back on his haunches, giving Ash some much needed room to breathe.

“How do you?” Rugner asked with a shrug.

“I can speak into their minds,” Ash said to which the wolf nodded.

“You’re nearly a druí Balancer,” Rugner said. “Like a Speaker or the occasional lycanthrope such as myself, you can communicate with and control simple-minded creatures. I’d guess the only skill you’re lacking is the Mender’s arts.”

Ash outlined how he had healed Moss.

“Your natural talent with magic is one of the reasons Krachnis chose you. If we could find someone to train you and somehow convince Krachnis to allow it…” Rugner’s long tongue rolled across one side of his predator’s teeth and then the other as he thought. “There’s no time. We can’t stay beneath this bridge all day.”

With that, Rugner rose, but before he could take more than a single step away, Ash blurted out one final question.

“Did you trust Sineck?”

“One day we might speak of her,” Rugner said, not turning around. “Not today.”

Ash wanted to call out, to plead for more information, but he held his tongue. The Untamed told stories of Battlemother Sineck, but none had ever spoken about Shrivemount Bridge or what had happened to her after that staggering defeat. Those same stories claimed Rugner had been at her side throughout her war against the Radiance, and the werewolf had all but confirmed it.

Betrayal seemed to lurk at the edge’s of Sineck’s downfall. Had the clans turned against her after the golem fell and the Radiance drove back their army? Perhaps Krachnis had abandoned her, or more likely, punished her for such an extreme failure. Or Rugner had killed her, hoping to take control of the army. Whatever the truth, only Krachnis and Rugner knew it.

Preparing himself for Krachnis’ return, Ash tensely jogged out from beneath the bridge. He rejoined Rugner while curses rebounded in his head, all of them aimed at the hobs and their game boards.

They soon entered the district’s more populous streets.

Priestesses spooned stew into bowls then passed them to dirt-streaked beggars, the formers’ kind words and soft smiles called liars by the distrust in their darting eyes. A large woman built like a castle gate bent a switch in her meaty hands, always to the point of almost breaking. Whenever it looked as if a beggar might wander away with a spoon or bowl, she blocked their path. No kindness touched her face. Her smile was a threat equal to the switch, promising a solid bit of sin-cleansing pain if anyone dared to give her reason.

Destitution seemed to be a human condition. No other race waited for handouts or called for spare coins from shaded corners. Despite its aim of including all races, Core was essentially a human city. Wodenlang had their groves, burrowers their underground warrens, kilkinteth their hives--every race had its own version of community. Cities belonged to humans who only felt safe locked behind walls.

As in all the other cities he had visited, the temple district served as part center of religion and part park. It being the center of the Radiance’s great empire, Ash had expected Core to be near perfect--the utopia whispered of in small towns and lauded in bard’s tales. Instead, he found it as crime-ridden, beggar-crowded, and corrupt as any other city.

Somewhere near the district center, temples and statues gave way to well-maintained gardens. A patrol of werecats gave them a wide berth. Their noses wriggled like fish in a net. Ash had become accustomed to the lycanthropes’ reaction but asked Rugner for an explanation.

“They smell Unmaker and think it’s madness. Only, I know better.” Rugner showed no emotion, neither revulsion nor derision. If anything, he spoke of Krachnis with the respect a lesser wolf would have for its alpha. Voice tinged, perhaps, with a touch of fear.

Unlike everyone else Ash had met, the aged werewolf had no qualms about speaking Krachnis’ name aloud. It was the first restriction the entity had ever placed upon Ash and one he had never considered breaking.

Rugner continued, “Krachnis is not insane, though he wouldn’t mind you thinking that. No, he’s something far more dangerous.”

“Such as?” Ash asked. He could sense Krachnis listening with rapt attention.

“Intelligent,” he said, allowing the word to hang in the air like an ill omen before continuing. “The hobs almost always win their game because they’ve already seen how the entire battle will play out. Like the bears, they also have a detective’s natural instincts, taking the full measure of their opponent from the moment they approach the game board. But if they can envision an entire battle before it has begun, then Krachnis has done the same with every battle since time began.”

It was a harrowing thought. Based on Ash’s experience hosting Krachnis, he couldn’t refute it. Times Ash had run into trouble were always because he had ignored Krachnis’ advice. If the entity was fallible, Ash had yet to see any evidence.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Before they fell into the crowded main thoroughfare, they passed a young andruí stationed behind a thick table. A small line of beggars waited while the andruí Tender interviewed a frail woman whose age was blurred by streaks of dirt accumulated from months living rough. A menog, as fresh-faced as the andruí, stood to the side. When the woman’s interview finished, he sorted through a stack of card-sized papers before he handed her one and pointed somewhere far across the city, his finger mimicking a winding path through city streets.

Some of them try so hard to make a difference, he thought.

Poultices on the same festering wounds which will never heal, Krachnis rebuked. When you fail to make significant changes, you’ll see the only course is to sever the limb.

“It’s as you told me,” Ash said. “They emulate Gailinn. She baffles me. According to the hob in Westerbrook, she knows of my plans, knows my army is coming, but there’s been no call to arms. Nothing. For now she entertains herself with integrating all the races into their jobs throughout the Radiance, but we will unmake all her work with our war.”

Once that statement would have been true. Why did it now feel like a lie? When had Ash started appreciating the work being done by the lycanthropes and kilkinteth?

Moss. He had told her as much during their conversation in the cave. At the time, he had hoped to win her to his side and hadn’t realized how much truth he had spoken.

They entered the excited buzz of the market district. So near to the spire of faith and the druí Tenders’ domain, vendors sold religious artifacts, incense, dreambreakers, and so much more. A few stalls displayed potions of every color stoppered in containers ranging from vials to beakers. Grocklin repellent was a top seller stacked high in ampules to one side of a table. Love potions held a surprisingly low position because only the truly desperate dared to put any hope in what should have been labeled as take-a-mild-interest-in potions.

A hundred kinds of currency changed hands with each breath. Menog paid and accepted only coins, inspecting each with an expert’s eye. Though it was said a menog could tell the weight of a payment merely by holding it in hand, several of them had out the collapsable scales they seemed to be born with. Wodenlang had little need for currency, so they bartered with fruits, seeds, and occasionally the more exotic. A young female exchanged a rare turquoise-colored wisp crystal for something shielded by her hands and the seller’s as the latter passed it over with furtive glances.

Ash wondered if he would have time to visit any of the wood shaper shops. He hadn’t tried his hand at shaping since his transformation into a menog. Back in Breeze Tower, he had found the experience of working with the wood to be calming. His hands worked on their own, naturally finding the best places to chip with one side of Quertir’s Hand or slice away thin slivers with another side. Meanwhile, his mind had been free to worry over problems, but more often, he simply relaxed, not really thinking about anything.

Which reminded him of something Rugner had said.

Is there any truth to his words? Ash thought, controlling his distrust. Did you take my memories or do you merely withhold them?

Where does this doubt come from, lost one? Has my guidance not been satisfactory? Have my gifts not been empowering?

Only a few portal stones remain, Ash thought. Our course is set, but I ask one last time. Tell me of my past. Restore the memories I’ve lost.

Your memories lie outside my power.

Forget the memories then. You must have some knowledge of events, of how I came to be in the Ashen Lands, of the family I once belonged to.

Krachnis did not answer.

Ash would not beg, though the urge was there. He had done so once, a weak and desperate child placing one foot ahead of another in a broken land, his only memories of the dark days in that hateful place. For all intents and purposes, he had been born in the Ashen Lands, a fully formed adolescent, and though he could not yet know the full cost of accepting Krachnis’ help, he knew he’d have died there. Caught in that limbo between a nonexistent past and a future where he fell exhausted, starving, and dehydrated into death, he had made up his mind.

But minds could be changed.

I need to be more than a tool, Ash thought. More than a weapon aimed at the Radiance.

Krachnis answered his demand but not with words, at least not any Ash could understand. He spoke another forgotten tongue, the syllables like lightning striking apart a thick tree or an earthquake swallowing half a city.

The message was clear. If Ash continued to seek his lost memories, there would be repercussions.

His blood up, Ash pushed the still-fuming voice into the background noise of his head. He opened his mouth to ask Rugner, “How did you give up the power?” but lost his nerve after the first three words, unwilling to risk invoking further ire or losing the power he had been granted.

Ash stopped at an intersection as a family of hobs walked past. Carefully. They walked in a line, daughter in the middle, leaving a few paces between themselves and the pedestrians ahead. No one moved to fill that space despite the bustling crowd, which shifted around the hobs without a second glance. The hobs weren’t dressed as sharply as their kin from the bridge. Matching in deep reds, mother and daughter wore airy dresses, and the father had a smart shirt, vest, and trouser combination similar to what Ash had seen other residents of Core wearing.

“The princess is about to start,” a young boy yelled, barreling his way through the crowd behind the hobs. He offered half-hearted apologies to those he jostled, and a throng of children, similar in size to the first, followed in his wake. A few pedestrians grumbled or shouted reprimands, most went about their day’s activities, but a fair number startled at the boy’s words and hurried after him. Soon a steady stream of people headed directly for Spire.

On a sudden impulse, Ash followed.

V.

He couldn't have said what drew him to Spire. Was it a desire to see more of the city? An instinct to surround himself with the bustling, almost suffocating life of the place? Was it a stubborn escape from forces which sought to control him? Or was it simple curiosity?

The White River whispered through the middle of the city, its current a million tongues carrying stories of its journey from other lands. It diverted around Spire to create three concentric rings with sweeping bridges. In the center lived the grandest being in the world, a marriage of stone and wood, teaming with as much activity as any of the city’s streets.

A tree unlike any other, Spire had grown more complex across the ages as each new generation of hobs and wodenlang added new branches and decorations. Ash marveled at the gardens and groves which grew on platforms built atop the branches, tended by wodenlang who refused to yield their duties to the recently arrived kilkinteth farmers. A small army of hobs maintained bridges which swept across the sky from one platform to another.

Birds nested among the aerial gardens in explosions of color. Wisps flitted about, never continuing in one direction too long and always arcing away at an obtuse angle. Occasionally they would vanish, only to reappear paces away. The Radiance had learned to use their power to cover short distances. Spire had several rooms attended by druí whose sole job was activating wisp stones, teleporting people to the upper floors or across the city. But no further.

Whatever magic allowed Ash’s wisp stones to teleport him anywhere in the world, it was his alone, connected to the master stone in ways he might never understand.

Only hobs could have melted stone into the softly curved battlements covering Spire’s thickest branches. They were a maze of stairs, long twisted hallways, and open-air walkways connecting the government's most important offices. Dozens of mounted looking glasses aimed their long barrels at the city, its farmland, and every approaching highway. They were always catching the sunlight, winking with the secrets they spied.

The Spire was a confluence of the great races, and new constructions surrounded the structure as once minor races were welcomed to the nation’s government. Kilkinteth were building a hive that bubbled across the stone. Wodenlang were planting cuttings of their trees in a vast expanse around the Spire’s base, reaching all the way to the river. With their gifts for nourishing plants, a grove would grow to cover half of the space around the Spire like a thick beard. In another year or two, lycanthropes would live and hunt in their own forest within the city.

Though it had long been a staple of the outermost ring known as the circle of arts, the city’s amphitheater had recently been restored and expanded to accommodate a sudden surge in crowd size. Once a week they came, more each time, and for a while, a single part of the ever bustling city silenced, even breaths muffled and held as the princess spoke.