60. A hellhound’s blunder

Dakis growled. Something in the air gave off energy. A strange energy.

Frowning, Shokinori turned and saw a young human with blue hair appear in the courtyard. Strange, he thought. Very strange.

‘She looks human, and at the same time, she isn’t,’ he muttered through his brejic voice.

The mist hellhound stopped growling.

‘She’s looking at me. Companion, she is looking at me strangely. I don’t like it.’ Dakis flared his nostrils. ‘Yabir and his weird ideas… Arf. Let’s get out of here.’

Shokinori placed a soothing hand on Dakis’ furry head as Yabir walked over to the strange creature and bowed, smiling. One had to admit that, despite his young age, Yabir was gifted in diplomacy. Wherever he went, he acted like a gentleman, whether it was among the magicians of the Conservatory, the gwaks, or the people of high society. A Baïra with class. His masters had taught him well. In terms of public relations, of course. When it came to being careful and rational, he was a disaster.

“We are looking for a man named Kakzail Malaxalra,” the good hobbit was saying. “From what we have been told, he is the brother of a child we know, Draen Hilemplert, and…”

Shokinori didn’t really understand what his companion was saying to the human: he was speaking in Drionsan. Still, he understood the meaning, and anyway, he knew what the talking was about: they had been looking for the boy for two days already. And while Yabir said the main reason was that he wanted to make sure the boy was okay, Shokinori suspected that the boy’s interest in the treasure and his obvious boldness had given Yabir ideas… risky ideas. Shokinori sighed. He knew that Yabir was interested in the treasure out of sheer curiosity, but curiosity had led more than one Baïra to the grave… Though, indeed, Yabir was perhaps the first Baïra to come so close to the goal. But many had thought so before him. The White Opal was deceiving. Who knows if it really existed! If only the Great Baïra had been able to communicate with him from afar and tell him: my son, come back home immediately…! Yabir would have returned. But, being so far away, the legends went to his head, he was excited with all the novelties… he was a happy scholar. In any case, Shokinori liked it much better when he saw him sitting quietly in the library looking for secret passages that would lead to Yadibia… and not to the center of the Rock. He sighed. By a hundred thousand gargoyles…

‘His eyes make me nervous,’ Dakis snorted.

He sat down on his hind legs, as if trying to calm down. Yabir continued to speak, saying that he wished to know if the lady knew the man, that he hoped he was not being intrusive… And the blue-haired human remained impassive. When, at last, Yabir fell silent, uncomfortable, she said something. Her voice, soft and serene, made Shokinori shiver. The hobbit stretched his neck.

‘Did she say she knew him?’

‘Maybe,’ the hellhound agreed. ‘I don’t know. How do you expect me to know. The polyglot here is Yabir. Can we go now?’

Shokinori did not answer, but he did not move, and Dakis obediently sighed and waited. Finally, the hellhound sniffed the air and declared, triumphantly:

‘He’s coming.’

Shokinori stood up.

‘Who? The boy?’

‘No, the brother,’ Dakis replied. ‘And his friends.’

Indeed, seconds later, a bearded man appeared through the archway of the courtyard, accompanied by a tattooed giant and a red-haired caitian. As Yabir introduced himself and then him, Shokinori bowed deeply and forced a smile. He felt a little uncomfortable, for the last time they had seen each other Dakis had startled the attendees of a wedding, sent the bearded man’s little brother up a tree, and as for him… he had been unable to communicate as a thinking being. If only he could have the same facility for learning languages as Yabir!

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Now Yabir had taken out the famous newspaper and was showing it to Kakzail, explaining the misfortune: the boy he spoke of lived in that ruined house where two dead and, supposedly, many wounded had been found, given the traces of blood. None of the dead, thanks to Baïra, had been identified as the boy, they were not even part of the gang that lived within the dilapidated walls—there Yabir began to talk about his chronicle, and after a few moments, Kakzail interrupted him. He seemed like an honest man, Shokinori considered. Strange too, though not as strange as… her. He turned his head. And frowned. Where…?

He flinched when he saw the two young women on his left, the one with blue hair and the one with golden hair. They had the same face. And both of them were extremely strange.

‘They smell of energy more than flesh,’ Dakis commented.

Shokinori wouldn’t have been able to tell, but there was definitely something disturbing about these two young women. He immediately found himself in trouble when the blonde addressed him. Her words sounded friendly. Ouch, what to do? Shokinori bowed with great courtesy.

“I don’t speak Drionsan, thank you,” he articulated awkwardly. “I mean,” he croaked in Caeldric. And he corrected in Drionsan: “Sorry.”

The two young women, who looked so much alike except for their hair, looked at each other, surprised. Was it so strange that a foreigner couldn’t speak Drionsan? Well…

“Say… is that Caeldric what I just heard?” the blonde pronounced, bewildered.

Shokinori was stunned when he realized that he had understood. Dakis was as stunned as he was.

‘Just a minute,’ the hellhound barked mentally. ‘She spoke to you in Caeldric? I thought around here that language was deader than a païsko in a troll’s mouth?’

‘That’s what I thought, too,’ Shokinori said with a clearing of his throat.

‘The thing is, we’re not from Prospaterra,’ a voice in Shokinori’s head suddenly admitted.

It was the blue-haired girl who had just spoken. But she hadn’t opened her mouth. Shokinori and Dakis recoiled suddenly, as if an army of crabs had bitten them.

‘You’re talking to me using brejic arts?’ the hobbit exclaimed, mouth agape. Well, he hadn’t taken the precaution of speaking very low, but… even the wizards at the Conservatory couldn’t hear them! Who the hell were these two humans?

The blue-haired girl smiled, nodded, and spoke aloud:

“Where we come from, Caeldric is also a dead language. But my sister and I studied at a celmist academy in the Communities of Eshingra. And we used to communicate in Caeldric with a good alchemist friend before we learned Drionsan.”

Yabir had turned to her, fascinated.

“Great Baïra!” he marveled in Caeldric. “I cannot express my happiness. Foreigners like us. And coming from much further afield! The Communities of Eshingra. I know of that land. Well, I’ve never traveled there, of course, but we have books written by explorers, and the chronicles of Marevor Helith are a wealth of information for getting to know the Bayland. A beautiful land, isn’t it?”

The two young women exchanged half-amused, half-astonished smiles. The blue-haired one then looked at Shokinori. Devils, how those eyes made him uncomfortable… He heard her mentally ask:

‘Marevor Helith?’

‘Oh. He’s a famous repentant nakrus,’ the hobbit explained with a clearing of his throat.

‘I know who he is,’ she assured. ‘I knew him years ago. He was a professor in our academy.’

Shokinori blinked. Professor? Marevor Helith? And to think that, to him, Marevor Helith was more of a legendary figure than a real nakrus! Under Shokinori’s stunned gaze, the blue-haired young woman turned her head towards her blonde sister as she confirmed, answering Yabir’s question:

“Without a doubt. The Bayland is a beautiful land. Unfortunately, we had to leave it.”

“What happened?” Yabir asked worriedly.

The blonde shrugged.

“We took a mutation potion by mistake. And it turned us into pure energy sources. It was hell,” she said. “We had to leave, or they would have put us in a lab of curious beasts for the rest of our lives.”

Suddenly, an exclamation was heard, and Shokinori looked up to see the smiling face of a gnome appear through an open window.

“The past is the past, my dear daughters!” he said. “Everyone has misfortunes from time to time, but hey, life goes on!” His smile widened, “Welcome, strangers. It’s a pleasure to get to know people from elsewhere. Arkoldians are duller than a bottle with no solution! They have no idea how to live an adventure, or overcome a danger, or feel the excitement of it. Come in, come in! I’ll show you my laboratory.”

He closed the window. As Kakzail opened the door to the house, Yabir smiled wide.

“Who is this gentleman so jocular?” he inquired.

The blonde introduced him, beaming:

“Our godfather. The alchemist.”

And she gestured for them to pass. Dakis crossed the threshold behind the hobbits, and when, with childish enthusiasm, the blonde reached out a hand to pet him, he wagged his tail and said mentally:

‘As the necromancer puppy would say: ayo, ayo!’

Shokinori winced. Dakis had just let slip a pretty pearl. Had the twins noticed the word “necromancer”? Did they know already? He looked at them… and sighed. No, they didn’t know. And yes, they had noticed. But, since these twins knew Marevor Helith and had accepted him as a teacher, hopefully they would be more tolerant and understanding than others. Without bothering to speak low through brejic arts, he muttered in Caeldric:

‘Bigmouth.’

Dakis admitted in almost excellent Drionsan:

‘An isturbag, dead round. I can’t deny it.’

The hellhound smiled as he uncovered all his sharp teeth.