Ch: 77 Cold As Ice
The Bathers woke to a bath full of furry friends, with more passed out under conjured bedding in the common room. Outside, ice and icicles covered the world in a thin crystal sheath.
“It’s beautiful…” Gary whispered as though his breath might shatter the world.
“T’was killing cold last night, unseasonable here at any time.” Shai murmured. “Sumatt should go check on Brennan’s lot.”
“Already done lodgemistress Shai, Nara departed before first light and will return shortly. The river is frozen enough for her to cross as she will.” Uggoth set a cup of coffee down in front of each of them with a big toothy smile. He and Grol were up and about early, busily preparing breakfast for the whole gang.
The poor dears found meat eating barbaric and horrifying, so the options were limited but excellent… they even cleaned up after.
“Industrious rascals!” Gary murmured, he didn’t have the heart to tell them about his vanishing cookware.
Bowls of honeyed porridge with fruit were passed around, along with hot biscuits, coffee and tea. In the middle of breakfast, in the light of a clear, cold dawn, Nara came dragging back.
Bloodied and exhausted, she hauled the corpse of one of the colossal swans behind her. “Really, Nara… why do you always feel the need to murder innocent woodland creatures… spirits, are you well?” Grol went from disapproving matron to concerned and skilled medic in an instant.
That triggered some inner sense in Tawny and Liam bringing them to full alert. Within moments, the young catwoman was surrounded by healers, poking and peeling her out of her slightly damaged armor.
“Not my fault, Grol. The warparty is fine, they holed up in an abandoned beaver lodge. Their lordling, is an absolute shit.” She grunted in pain as she was skinned out of her suit.
“That fails to explain why you got mauled by a swan… never mind why you attacked one.” Grol complained, once she was certain her patient was in no danger. “Is this house not stuffed with enough meat? I swear half of the food storage is some kind of dead monster…”
“Don’t look in the freezer sweetie.” Uggoth somehow managed to look pale under his thick, glossy, brown fur.
“Oh! Do we still have some abyssal squid and devil crab left? I had a seafood noodle soup in Point Bleak once…” Luna began making plans for lunch, while finishing breakfast.
“I was not hunting… I was skating down the surface of a frozen river…” Nara gasped, short of breath. “She tried to land, thought it was water… Spun out and wiped me out into a boulder. Broke her neck.”
“Into the bath with you, the private grotto mind you, keep still until those ribs heal. By lunchtime I think.” Tawny hauled the young warrior off to the grotto and tucked her in, just in time to haul Otho out.
“Goddess preserve me, what was that I drank?” He demanded. “Poisons should be labeled!”
“It was…” Gary replied stiffly. “with a big skull. It’s not poison, just monster bug wax, haunted tree amber and raw liquor. That was musical instrument polish, Otho. Consider that next time you ignore my labels.”
“Lady Joy is curious about this lost art of distilling, she remembers only faintly of it. She asked me to taste it for her, I am afraid that in this place, she was more forceful and insistent than either of us expected.” Otho still looked a little rough.
He staggered to the kettle of porridge and began ladeling, like a shipwrecked sailor bailing out his lifeboat.
“So hungry, I haven't felt like this since…” He peered around blearily, looking out the hazy windows. “Everything is frozen.”
“A surprise ice storm, sly and dangerous. There has been a major upset in the magical and environmental balance to the north. We should perhaps expect the weather to be unsettled for a season or two.” Solange said dryly, while looking at Gary.
“Oh, so this is my fault?” Gary sulked while tuning up his banjo “Axio didn’t even remember how long he had been waiting to do his thing. Whatever is going down, it’s past due.”
#
Brennan woke with a warm body pressed against him. “Malus, if you don’t stop hugging me right now, you will face a court martial.”
“That’s a fine way to thank us for keeping you alive… you spent most of the night pressed between Jeng and Bran, they both sleep nude.” The man’s grin was disgusting.
The young lord struggled his face free of the massive pile of blankets, looking around with red, puffy eyes. “Are we in that damn burrow? With the horses? Gods man, are you mad?”
The entrance to the lodge had been chopped wider and higher, sealed with a horse blanket. The down slope side of the domed structure of woven boughs and branches had been cut away, opening one side.
Tarps and collapsed tents were lashed and tied into the trees and shrubs to expand the dome into the thicket surrounding the lodge. The horses stamped and snuffled in their enclosure, warming the rest of the lodge with their breath and bodies.
“If we left them out in the weather, we would be walking back to Port Fallon in disgrace… If we survived the night… my lord.” Nazar said calmly. “Your stores of wine have been located and secured, the bottles will be rationed out to you.”
The lordling continued fussing and throwing a tantrum, so Nazar simply ignored his antics. He manhandled and dressed the young knight in multiple warm layers and rolled him into a blanket despite his feeble struggles.
“Now that you are no longer in danger of dying, we will press on.” He said with calm authority. “The river has frozen enough for us to cross here, we will head for the island and link up with those kids and Khan until the weather improves, in the interest of not watching you slowly weaken and pass from this world.”
As he spoke the rest of the party began rapidly and silently disassembling their makeshift camp. Before long, a sullen Brennan was loaded on top of a small wagon, under a mountain of bedding. Shortly, the cart slowly rumbled across the frozen river, on a road of cut boughs and branches accompanied by the lordling’s constant, though weak complaints.
“...jostling me about like a sack of grain!”
“The indignity of this treatment…”
No one paid any attention to his bellyaching. They had their hands full, working their way to the river road down tangled game trails and overgrown paths.
Bran and Stillbend had axes out, clearing the disused track of saplings and brush for the carts. The baggage wagons swayed and thumped, hurling him against sacks of provisions and rolled up tents and tarps.
#
Maer, the bear, Uggoth and Grol the beaver architects, Glenn and the badger couple got an early start. They clustered together, on the edge of the causeway’s crumbling downstream side, working their arts.
The bear man was sitting on a cushion, at the center of an elaborate mandala. Drawn in colored sand, the artwork sprawled across the roadbed in swirling and abstract arabesque forms.
He muttered a soft chant in his rumbling voice, repetitive and smoothly rhythmic. His droning sound seemed to keep the others working in concert at their various arcane tasks.
Gary sat nearby, well… not too near. His magical emanations interfered when he got too close, sending rainbow sparks skittering across the sand construct and making Maer grumble.
“This is nothing like what I do…” He whispered to Otho and Amicus, who were taking notes, of course.
“Indeed, your ability coaxes your friends and opponents into a pattern of your creation. A power of subtle distraction and manipulation, tricky and sly.” Amicus whispered. “Maer is directing their magic with his aura while feeding their activities from his talents.”
“If you look deeper you will find this is exactly what you do my boy, but in a less chaotic manner. Your gift was created whole cloth by a very confused and untrained disembodied spirit.” Otho admonished them, while smiling happily.
“This is a very advanced ability, combined with years of discipline and training. Their teamwork is also a big part of the success they enjoy, while you are asinine and ridiculous.” Otho pulled his instrument and began tapping and plucking a gentle accompaniment to Maer’s drone.
“Join in boy, with your gifts involved you might learn something, let Maer remain in the lead.”
Over on a clay bank nearby, the badger man, Deen, had a similar array of glyphs and abstracts carved into the earthen bank.
A nest of scurrying gigantic ants, glowing and sparkling like jewels in the sun, swarmed from his symbol in the earth. As though he had cracked open a massive nest, the creatures boiled out of the clay bank, falling into orderly marching lines.
They were busy rolling balls of clay and carrying them about, building clay culverts two yards in diameter. Slowly they rose, spiraling higher as the ants built and smoothed the clay.
Deen directed them with his aura, while swaying to the music, lost in his work.
Ulla and Grol were at another clay bank downstream, carving three huge humanoid figures, at double scale into the soil. Their runes and symbols tracked more with the rituals Gary understood, to an extent.
The complexity and scope was far greater than any ritual he had ever attempted. Glyphs of life, movement, restraint and control meshed with a highly intricate network of spells, cut into the figure’s bodies in tiny incisions.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Golems?” The musician asked quietly, while his guitar gently wept a little something he stole from a well known beatle or four.
“Very good. Mind Uggoth and Glenn, they will be doing something far more dramatic shortly.” Otho replied, while slowing his tempo in response to the chanting bear man.
As Gary’s gifts meshed with and found a balance with the other’s, he could feel a bit of what they were each doing.
The bear was directing and fueling the operations, while each member worked independently, in concert. When the guitar snuck into the mix, a small jolt went through the gathered mages, while their powers entwined.
“Sorry guys. I’m new, let me slip in on the back beat.” He found a subtle groove in four four time and lingered there, mirroring the bear’s notes an octave higher and softly.
Otho nodded happily as Shai slipped in, dancing and shimmying in time, stepping heel and toe in a small space, while undulating those magical, musical hips. Her violin swelled and wailed sweetly, tying the whole group together.
Low down, under the fallen roadway, something stirred. Mounds of silt and tumbled masonry began to surge and shift, as slabs of stone slipped from the depths, rumbling softly.
Uggoth and Glen had their butts planted on the bare earth of the island, with their hands buried in the soil, manipulating their gifts. They both looked up to Maer, and then to Gary with matching scowls.
“Ease up boy, too much magic. Gently.” Otho coaxed and crooned as Gary wrestled with fine control of his gift.
Squelching and sucking sounds announced the golems becoming active. They struggled free of their embankments and lurched over to where blazing ruby red ants were crawling all over the clay culverts, baking them dry with magical heat.
“A few more minutes to cure the clay, dig out some rubble while I work.” Deen said, distracted and focused at the same time.
Slabs of stone continued to push up from the bedrock, forming a rough basalt foundation. The golems waded into the marsh, sinking to their chests in the water. They began stacking boulders, slabs of broken pavement and rubble into the foundation walls. slowly filling in the structure.
After a few minutes, one golem detached and began lurching up onto the bank, to collect the first culvert pipe. With terrible strength, it slowly lifted the thick, baked clay pipe and hoisted it onto a soft clay shoulder. It strode back into the marsh, setting its burden into place gently.
“It didn’t leave footprints… or sink into the silt, is that because it’s native soil?” Gary asked, while slipping into something meditative and new age.
“Exactly my boy, resonance and compatibility are the foundation of potent workings. You will make a fine mage someday, I’m sure.” Amicus said with only a little condescension. “Assuming you don’t turn yourself inside out, or summon something from beyond.”
#
The activity level dropped off rapidly when the culverts were all in place, making the giant humanoid constructs obsolete. The Golems were the biggest draw on the tempest in the bear’s control. They finished their work just before mid day. Without fanfare, the constructs slowly eased themselves back into their places in their clay banks and tucked themselves in, erasing their own forms in passing. In just a few minutes, all that remained of the powerful mud dolls were three lumpy banks of clay.
Each mage, as their workings finished came over to the bright colored sand array and settled onto a spiraling arm of the bear man’s mandala. They assumed a pose of meditation, adding their mana to the potent vortex around the bear.
The Bathers retired from the work as things wound down, their energetic contributions to the mana storm lost value as things became mellow.
An otter person slipped from the water and whispered something to Streeka at lunch, just as the ants were rolling a clay road surface out with amazing speed.
The clattering legion of emerald green and dark brown insects marched along in ranks, passing balls of clay forward, slapping them down and spreading them smooth. Another troop of ants, the ruby red gleaming variety stomped a few yards behind, baking the clay with their blazing abdomens, as they slowly marched in time.
Their tracks left a stippled clay surface with amazing traction and low rolling resistance. Dannyl, Becky and Shai had skateboards out, riding on the finished sections and whooping with glee. Sadly, otter, beaver and badger anatomy were not skateboard compatible. Their short legs, long torsos and flexible bodies made for great swimmers and burrowers, skating remained elusive.
Gary was discussing the tragedy of anatomical reality with an otter woman named Freesk, when Shai kicked her board over to him, letting it thump against his boot.
“Yer legs be long enough boy, an yer spine be straight now. Get yer arse over these wheels of yours. Ye dinnae hae any excuses.”
He opened his mouth to say something dumb, so she cut him off with a snap of her fingers. “Nae, this mythical ‘Bike’ ye do blather on hae not appeared yet. Get yer arse on a board.”
#
“Tallum, project Tour De Gary comes off the back burner. I’ll have the frame done by the week end.” Gary said, from the road surface, while rubbing his bottom. “When can you have the bearings and gears ready?”
He and the big machinist drifted into the workshop, lost in their own world.
Around fourth bell, the sound of a beaver tail slapping the water sent the non humans slipping out of sight. The work crew vanished into the river, while the Stonesmiths quickly cleared away their tools and vanished into the inn.
“Your warband approaches, they crossed the frozen river. One of their party is reported to be ill or injured,It is Unknown how severely or who is injured. Our scout reports they complain and gripe from a wagon bed like a petulant child.”
“Brennan.” Luna, Khan and Tawny all said in chorus. “How long until they arrive?” Tawny asked calmly.
“Soon, we did not expect the ice storm either. They must have been highly motivated to cross the river.” Streeka said. “Their leader is distasteful but the band he leads are all veterans of your cult of War. We will finish our work after they depart. Will you remain or flee? You seem reluctant to host this party.”
“I haven’t enjoyed my interactions with Brennon Fallon, nor do I relish the opportunity to try again. Sadly, duty demands we aid War’s legion on the road.” Tawny sighed and shook her golden maned head slowly. “Duty, as heavy as a mountain at times.”
“I’d better warn Gary, he hasn’t even met him yet and he can’t stand Brennan. I have met him, the experience is unlikely to leave a positive impression.”
“Dear gods, where is that moontouched loon? Can we get him out of the house for a while at least?” Tawny’s agitation summoned Liam to her side like a magic spell.
“Leave it to me, we will go investigate the campsite and the dam, that should keep him busy.” Liam bustled down into the workshop, returning with Gary in a few minutes.
“Think of it like a horse you don’t have to feed or shovel up after, but you have to do all the work yourself…” He was saying, while pantomiming some strange act of balancing.
“I give up, show me when it’s finished, let’s go look around for some hint of where our villains went off to, or came from.” The small man in the leonine armor and tricolor sash, pushed and pulled at the much larger musician, pressing him to move faster. “Get ready, we are in the field, get kitted out.”
The big musician winked, ducked behind a bush and came out the other side in his silly lobster armor. “Gods you are a strange one.” Liam muttered.
They met up with the Sparrowhawks, Khan and Luna, before marching across the nearly complete causeway and turning up the cart track upstream.
#
A solid hour’s march nearly two miles up the slick, muddy track, the party turned down a narrow game trail that led to a small meadow. Trampled greenery, a poorly buried privy, a firepit and some scattered trash showed that this was the camp in question.
“That’s just shitty camping etiquette, these guys really suck on a lot of levels.” Gary’s complaint almost made sense, giving Liam pause.
“Gary… help me search this place… but please stop talking.” He shook his head slowly, as if the mad musician was causing him pain.
“You can talk to me that way, but only ‘cause Tawny would kick my ass if I swatted you.” The bigger man snarled.
“I will worry about that when you can carry your weight outside camp. Your highest calling so far has been as fishbait.” Liam said offhandedly.
The Sparrowhawks and Uggoth started looking nervous as the two men squared off and began hurling jibes at each other.
“Don’t be concerned, they are idiots.” Otho not so subtly whispered, to the group spreading through the meadow. “I have been trying to teach them manners, you know how orphans are. Unruly louts, did I tell you the story of how the bigger one tricked me into soiling myself in public for cheap laughs?”
“That was just good, clean fun. He got a flock of geese to befoul the whole troop of us with their… He’s got a lot of issues.” He tapped his skull with his index finger significantly, while rolling his eyes at the mystified veterans.
“That’s why he gets to dig through their privy trench.” The man in the lion armor laughed cruelly at his comrade.
The big man settled onto a rock and placed a cloth covered bundle on the ground at his feet. He produced a strange guitar from nowhere and drew an elaborate sulking expression across his face with effort. He started to play a frisky, simple shuffle beat.
“Liam knows I’m the obvious choice to dig in the shit pit, for reasons best left unexamined. What Liam doesn’t know… I’m crazy, not stupid. I also have a lot of friends, and a penchant for enchanting.”
He reached down and removed the cloth drape, revealing a human skull and a small pile of bones in a wooden bowl of dark earth.
“Anybody with a sensitive constitution should probably find something else to do for a while. This could upset sensitive witnesses.”
Amicus and Otho moved closer to peer at the odd arrangement of grisly objects. The skull was incised with a mind bogglingly complex arrangement of runes and glyphs, inlaid in silver, copper, amber and less identifiable substances.
In its forehead a strange sigil in bright turquoise glowed with a disturbing, cold light. The music picked up in tempo as the man began to sing.
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I think I'll go eat worms!
Big fat juicy ones
Eensie weensy squeensy ones
See how they wiggle and squirm!
Down goes the first one, down goes the second one
Oh how they wiggle and squirm!
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one
Oh how they wiggle and squirm!
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I think I'll go eat worms!
Big fat juicy ones
Eensie weensy squeensy ones
See how they wiggle and squirm!
His oddly chipper song carried on, as the glow from the glyph of inlaid turquoise began to glow more prominently and other symbols began to shimmer with life.
A pale blue glow sparked in the eye sockets as the bones became crawling insectile fingerlings, in a very distressing way. It rose from its bowl of soil and climbed down, fingerbones gently tapping as it walked in the worst possible way to the covered waste pit.
I bite off the heads, and suck out the juice
And throw the skins away!
Nobody knows how fat I grow
On worms three times a day!
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I think I'll go eat worms!
Big fat juicy ones
Eensie weensy squeensy ones
See how they wiggle and squirm!
The hideous skull construct stood still for a moment, before scurrying to the refuse pit and burrowing in, like a crab at the beach.
“Was that necromancy? That really felt like some kind of necromancy…” Amicus seemed less his scholarly self, fidgeting nervously and tugging at the cuffs of his robes. “Tampering with the forces of death is taboo…”
“Yeah, I have some stuff to work through there, on the whole living dead boy issue.” He mused with a sad smile, before his face hardened in calmly controlled anger.
“Since your duke plans on selling me into slavery in a few months, I’m not really gonna worry over whose ethical concerns are valid.”
The music stopped for a moment as he rose, dipped three fingers and his thumb into the bowl and took a big pinch of the substance. He slowly sprinkled it over the low, muddy mound of disturbed soil.
The guitar reappeared, with a startling, melancholy chord. His music shifted to something slower, darker and in disturbing minor keys and leaping chord shifts. The unsettling music spread through the meadow, raising the hairs on forearms and necks.
“My buddy Axio, he says I’m almost at the point where I can be considered a fully living being. Almost. That puts a different spin on what is and isn’t taboo.”
Don’t you ever laugh as the hearse goes by,
For you might be the next to die…
They’ll wrap you up in a nice clean sheet,
All you relatives start to weep…
They’ll nail you up in a tight pine box,
Cover you over with dirt and rocks…
All goes well for a few short weeks,
Then your coffin begins to leaaaaak!
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle on your snout…
As the mad macabre song continued the soil began to churn subtly, turning over and over. Worms crawled and wriggled from all around, disappearing into the turbid earth.
Up and down their… heads, or something, poked in the unpleasant muck. Gray fibrous masses began to tangle and entwine, spreading through the stuff, webbing it together.
“You say necromancy… I say it’s the cycle of life and death, we come from the soil, the sea and air, why worry how or where we return to them?” He looked pensive, though the music continued, along with the threads of slow, cold magic he was winding in among his notes.
“Though… I already have a grave somewhere… and somewhen far from now. I thought life was complicated, death is another whole thing.”
His musings ended as a round, pale ovoid sprouted, growing to the size of an ostrich egg, before bursting into a blue capped mushroom. On its thick, woody stem, the skull leered out, glowing eerily in the afternoon shadows. Vaguely human arms and legs emerged from the thing as it stood, tearing free of its mycelial roots.
“I see you Gary Ward, have you found my quarry?” The creature’s voice was a soft rustling sound, distant and unpleasant.
“This patch of earth may hold some clues…” He turned to the horrified watchers, most of whom had withdrawn to the edge of the meadow while he worked the cold and implacable magic of life’s endings. “We have some work to do, you guys should check the dam before it gets dark.”
“Gary… we should talk… later.” Otho muttered through thin pressed lips. “Some things are best left undisturbed.”
“Buddy, I’m here to kick over apple carts and disturb the status quo. We are all going to have to wrestle with some difficult truths if we wanna be free. Get aboard or get out of the way.” He turned back to his mushroom abomination and smiled. “Let’s get to work.”