35. Questions

“Isolated and alone, Magar has led us to a large chamber where a rough start to a vast spawning pool had been begun. Like the small poll from which the young shaman was birthed, it is not circular but seven sided.

But a frail old shaman and a skinny youngling would struggle to finish the work. The surviving twin, Tuku, remains silent and seemed set on killing Magar when he suggested that we consume the body of his dead brother.

Despite the obvious risk, Magar proceeded to eat the goblin’s flesh.

There then seemed to me to be little reason to act as a captive. My immortality might not avail me much against the likes of Tuku, but ending the young shaman’s life was well within ability.

‘We will set Agrak free now,’ I told Magar.

He sat cross-legged eating scraps of flesh that he had carved from the dead twin, and did not bother to look up at me. The masterfully wrought box of dwarven steel rested beside him, the once gleaming metal now dulled by dust and debris. ‘Will we…?

‘I will. You can help, or you cannot help.’

‘It would be unwise, Izzig. He has been in the box for a long time.’

‘Then the sooner we help him, the better.’

‘There is no helping him.’

My bony fists had clenched, and I felt terrible rage. Whatever attachment I once felt to the hatchling was swiftly fading. ‘Then why did we bring him all this way?’

‘For the Pool,’ said Magar, glancing back with a flat expression. ‘What we mean to birth requires a vast amount of magical energy. Agrak is not a shaman, but his being is permeated with magics both divine and alchemical. He will serve as a reagent.’

‘I won’t allow that. I will set him free.’

‘Go ahead,’ Magar readily suggested.

When I finally arranged the correct code glyph and the chest opened, I was relieved to see that The Small King did indeed still live. But Agrak was unspeaking and unmoving. And though he breathed, he was as lost and uncommunicative as the dead.”

Astrid sat amid the long grass, her cold legs slick with mud and her dress soaked with sleeting rain. Beside her, the sounds of dozens of teeth ripping into flesh and grinding into bone were horrific yet muted.

She had been returned to the Midderlands Pass as promised, and soon stumbled upon Fragor, who sat happily gorging himself on a pile of charred goblin corpses.

The robed man, The Alchemist, had not required much in exchange for his help. He had asked Astrid to pen a letter to herself, in which she divulged a childhood secret which would apparently be needed many years from now when she was much older and had forgotten all of these events to convince herself that the robed man could be trusted.

Though Astrid was sure that he could not be relied upon at all. While a man like Hjorvarth spoke and acted with a childlike clarity that was as reliable as stone, the robed man spoke with a swift sweetness that mirrored the deceptive trickery of Lucius Chance.

One a prideful man playing at a god, the other a prideful god playing at a man.

But all this did not bother her. She was trapped, faraway, and would have had to agree to any reasonable deal brought to her by The Alchemist.

It was her gift of light to the dead goddess which truly troubled her. She had thought at first that giving her a kobold stone would be a kindness, for it would shine unending and provide illumination if not distraction for a trapped and tragic creature. She had believed that her own words had reached through to some deeper humanity that resided within the undying corpse. And that answering that with a small gift was not only right, but required. Now though she could picture that purple kobold stone in waking dreams, radiating with malevolent energy. And Astrid knew that she had not convinced anyone of anything. She had been tricked. And what she thought would be a pretty bauble for a lonely goddess would somehow be used and imbued to create an object of terrible evil.

Astrid could picture the buxom woman who would pluck it up from a stony beach. And she could faintly hear the screams of her husband after the stone’s corruption took hold.

“What doing, Acid…?”

Fragor was standing over her now, his dark green figure of wax looming, the black blood of goblins tricking from his featureless head, diluted by the slowing rainfall.

She viciously shivered. “Nothing.”

“No thing…?” Fragor ponderously hummed. “But we are finding… yes?”

“No, Fragor,” she quietly answered, plucking at blades of long marsh grass. Her entire quest had been stupid, she realized. She should have waited for her sister. Or gone with Hjorvarth. Or done anything at all other than accompany a troll into a dangerous place which she had no business being in to undertake a vain quest for a mysterious box that she truly knew nothing about. That had likely been buried for a very good reason. That had been hidden away and secured just like that dead goddess had been. And Astrid was not about to go and undo some other ancient deeds to let loose more evil into the world.

Fragor stood staring down at her for a long while. “You is cold, Acid,” he remarked as if both surprised and concerned. “We need to… not finding, then. Moving. Shelter,” he happily decided. “I am finished eating. I am very big now. Not as big as before,” he added, somewhat regretfully. “But who knows… maybe we are finding—more food!”

“I’m fine,” Astrid answered, her caustic tone undercut by trembling delivery.

“Not fine!” Fragor countered, his words shill and painful to hear.

Astrid scowled up at the huge troll. “Why don’t you just leave me alone, Fragor?”

“Leave?” he asked. “Why? We are friends, Acid! We—”

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“No!” Astrid struggled up from the slippery mud, nearly falling back down. “There is no ‘we.’ You are some ancient carrion, gobbling up corpses like a thing out of a child’s nightmare. And if I were to die, you would gobble up me as well. I only ever brought you with me on a whim. A child’s whim, to show Hjorvarth what a brave and capable young woman I am. But I am not brave, nor capable. And you are not my friend. You were never friend my friend. Nor will we ever be friends. So… please… leave me alone.”

Fragor emitted a long whining hum like a wounded animal. His fists balled together, creases forming and cracking to seep out acidic wax, but then he leaned forward as if he were studying her. “Oh…” he murmured, almost thoughtfully. “Your brain is freezing, Acid. I need to find you a fire. And then… friends. Yes, yes.”

“No,” Astrid shouted. “You need to listen—”

Fragor lurched forward, scooping her up into his arms, and began bounding down the sodden marshland. “I am helping, I am helping, I am helping.”

She tried to struggle, to wrest free, but the more she squirmed the tighter the giant troll’s arms wrapped around her. And her chest began to become compressed while errant cracks in wax began to burn her skin.

Strangely, the dangerous heat felt almost pleasant amid her freezing flesh. And she had the thought, mind tired and eyes drifting, that maybe it would be good to find a fire.

***

Sybille sighed in frustration, her chest pressed by rising dread. She stood in the library, staring down at the red-leather tome that was the Improvised History of Everything.

She had opened the pages, and closed it, and now moved to open it once more. The cover thudded with the same force and swept up another gust of dust. She coughed to clear the tickle of her lungs.

Sybille swallowed, and scrutinised the golden pages. The candle beside it flickered and made her own shadow dance across the dusty rows of dark bookshelves. “Will I die?”

“Of course,” bled into the pages.

“Soon?”

“Is a vague approximation.”

“Will our plan work?”

“We have not formed a plan.”

Sybille scowled. “Is my father going to die tomorrow?”

“No.”

Sybille’s hopeful smile faltered when realised she was entrusting her future to a book. “Is Jarl Thrand going to die tomorrow?”

“Eluna has woven it so. Muradoon take his soul.”

Sybille nodded with a certainty. She waited in the cold silence. “Will Engli survive?”

“For longer than you.”

“Is Hjorvarth alive?”

“More or less.”

“Do I love Engli?” Sybille regretted the words as she spoke them.

“That is an odd question, Sybille. And not one I would make a habit of asking… books.”

Those words, echoing in her head in Grettir’s harsh voice, chilled her and smothered her in sorrow. “Is Grettir in the Lady’s Shadow?” she whispered. “Does he suffer in death?”

“He is not. No more than in life. He waits for his oldest friend.”

“And my brothers…?”

“One is far away, in a place of darkness. The other watches this library from the cold streets of the stone city, and wonders who has left a candle burning at such a late hour. He knows that he looks upon his father and sister. He is mourning. He is waiting. He is the one-eyed servant of a one-eyed god. Do not rush to the window.”

“Why?”

“A snake approaches.”

A clacking cane announced the staggered arrival of Jarl Thrand.

He wore all black and seemed as old as ever. “Oh,” he muttered. “I didn’t think it would be you. What are you doing up so late at night?” He noticed the ink shift. “‘Reading,’” he read aloud from the page. “What a droll volume.”

Sybille had not moved or spoken. She appeared as an animal readied for flight.

“I take it that Luta showed you this?” the old Jarl asked. “She should not have.” He smiled in manner almost apologetic. “I did not mean it any sense of violation. Rather that the book is dangerous. My second wife would often look upon it, asking two questions which proved to undo her: would I come to love another woman, and would I ever bear her children. It answered yes and no… and proved those truths when she leapt from the window. Do you understand my meaning?”

Sybille carefully nodded. “It tricked your wife into taking her own life?”

“It did,” Thrand agreed soberly. “And since it cannot be destroyed, I hide it in that wall. Yet no matter where I hide it, someone always seems to find it.” He let out a shaky sigh. “I once buried it under the earth and a man arrived, having stolen it from a kobold, to return it in hopes of gaining favour.” He stared down at the book. “It was a fisherman when I hurled it into the ocean. And when I had it brought out to distant mountains, it simply fell back into the estate from a sky. Perhaps returned by a great bird.”

“That is very worrying.”

“I suppose it is.” Jarl Thrand scowled down. “And why do you so plague me book?”

“The Improvised History of Everything was given as a gift by The Guide to one of the first descendants of the ancestors that arrived in the Landing,” emerged onto the page in red ink. “It was given to the true ruler of the stone city. You are not of his blood. Thus it is you that plagues history, Thrand son of Thrand. Improvised or otherwise.”

Jarl Thrand shook his head. “I was told by Dragmarr that it is bound in the skin of a man. A servant of Muradoon. And as such his spirit lives on in the pages.” He looked up at the pale maiden. “What do you think of that?”

“It could be true,” said Sybille.

“So the same could be said for all things.” Thrand raised his thin brows. “Tell me… what questions did you ask?”

“I asked of my father and brothers,” she answered. “I asked if they would be safe. I asked of those from Horvorr, as well.”

Jarl Thrand nodded. “And did the answers please you?”

“They were more or less as I hoped.”

“Truly?” the old Jarl’s dark eyes narrowed. “It answers me with only vague words or half truths.” He paused. “Safety, was it? Dear book, will I be safe on our journey tomorrow? Will I live out the winter?”

“Safety…” the ink began then disappeared. “These questions would be better asked to the Low King.”

Thrand’s teeth ground together. “Is the Low King near to Timilir?”

“Closer than some enemies, further away than others.”

“I will leave you to your reading,” Sybille gently suggested, her gaze lowered. “I do wish not to intrude.”

Jarl Thrand assented with a nod and a forced smile. He watched and waited until she departed. “Is Gudmund my enemy…? Is his daughter? Should I kill them in their beds tonight?” he demanded of the book.

“Gudmund’s death will be the death of you. He has no daughter that is a threat to anyone.”

“Am I going to die?” Thrand asked.

“Of course.”

“Soon?”

“Sooner than you’d like.”

“Can I prevent it?”

“As easily as a man can stop himself drowning by drinking water.” The words were replaced by a black depiction of Ouro, of an enormous scaled worm choking on his own tail. “In salvation, death. In victory, defeat.”