Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance
A Hard Day’s Night Ch: 27
Gandree blinked in the bright light of morning, standing just inside a shallow depression, high on a granite cliff. They stood on a barren stone shelf, above a wide and well cultivated plain, dotted with small hamlets, roads and canals.
Farms spread out from the foothills as far as the eye could see, ending at the first low rise in the land.
Forest dominated much of the remaining view, dense and green from the foothills up the mountains stretching off into the distance.
Far on the horizon a city stood, tall spires and high white walls reflecting the sun’s glory in splendor.
“Is that our destination?” Gandree asked excitedly. Even from miles away the place was a splendid and vibrant spectacle. He stepped out of the shadowy crevice, headed for a narrow game trail leading down the heavily forested hillside from their perch. His eager smile and dancing eyes brought a sad smile to Daisybelle’s lips.
“No, lover of mine mine. If you go to that city you will never return.” She murmured. “That is one of the cities ruled by the cult of light… This is a dangerous place for those who are not powerful, or who are not protected by the powerful. Without a house brand or the tattoo of a clerical faction, you would be snapped up and enslaved, or sacrificed to their filthy cult.”
“So why did we come here?” He whispered, slipping back into the shadowed nook with the goblin lass and her hounds.
“We pass through this land to get to our next passage.” She groped his shoulder and gave him a shake to jostle him out of his mood… She tried, anyway. It was like trying to shake a mountain.
“Don’t worry worry so much… A mile from the city walls and out of sword’s reach of one of their warbands, the cult of light has little power and few friends among the people. Most of those who might see us are unlikely to speak of it and those we must avoid are generally stupid, noisy and woods-foolish.”
“So the people don’t like their cult?” He asked, deeply perplexed by the thought. “Are they all like the ones who came to the human town, that day?”
“Most humans are simple… good hearted and open handed people; caring little for rulers, gods and cults. If left to work their crafts and arts, they are fine neighbors.” She sighed, sitting on a boulder and watching the tiny boats ply the canals in the distance.
“All this land, this forest, everything and everyone you see belongs to the cult of light… or so they would have the humans believe.” Her voice had a slight growl in it as she continued.
“They give commands, make demands and enforce them with their armored bandit knights, but no priest can walk unguarded among the people and live. Never will they leave their temples, without many armored knights clanging and clattering along.”
“So why don’t the people overthrow them? Are they so mighty?” The dwarf asked, staring out at the vast landscape.
“There are so few knights and warriors now, they could. It would be woeful and bloody, but very short.” She grumbled. “They have not and will not rise up, not unless something changes to upset the delicate balance these people sit astride. Humans are adaptable, creative, stubborn and often foolish. They can learn to accept anything, if they are given even a hint of hope for something better someday. Even slavery, even sacrificing their children to the filth that rules this place.”
“Children?” The dwarf asked softly.
“Just as your clan wished to enslave you, if they could get away with it, these people submit one child in ten from their villages to the temple every year. They believe that the children go for schooling and training, to become clerics, knights or scholars…” Her smile faltered as she spoke.
“They believe this, even though they know it is a lie. Most of those children go to sacrificial altars, for devil summonings, occult experiments or simply become slaves to the nobles and wealthy of the city.”
“That’s horrifying… Why do they put up with the cult?
“Humans are adaptable.” She answered with a shrug. “They can learn to accept almost anything, if you convince them they have no other choice. Eventually they will rise up… until that day they will be under the thumb of those who care nothing for them.” She muttered sadly.
“That’s crazy.” Gandree mumbled.
“Was your life before so different?” She asked softly. Daisybelle’s smile returned a few seconds later.
“For our purposes, any human who sees us will either flee in a panic, or pretend that he sees nothing at all unusual. We must simply take care to avoid any armed and armored fools.”
“So we slip by in the night?” He asked warily.
“No, we stay in the forest, traveling by day. High up among the hills and trees; where mounted knights do not go, are trails we can use safely. They ride their roads and sail the waters; the woods are my domain, we will pass unnoticed.”
“Boats…” The dwarf whispered softly. “I saw someone in a little boat on the lake, before we left. What happens if you fall out of a boat?”
“If you fall off a boat… you swim, lover. Come now, enough silly questions. We must slip over the ridge and be gone while none are here to notice us.” In a blur of dark fur and padding paws, they swarmed out onto the cliff and up a thin ledge, into the deep woodlands on the mountainside.
True to her word, they ran for the entire day, through alpine woodlands and thickly forested foothills, all without encountering anyone. Though the dwarf was no woodsman, even he noted that there were no signs that people ever passed over those trails.
They crossed no roads, campsites or even signs of hunting or forestry in their journey, though the well watered and cultivated valley floor was almost always in view. If they turned their feet downslope, they could have been among the croplands in an hour or less on foot.
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They paused for a late lunch in a well screened meadow surrounded by a dense aspen forest. Once the wargs declared the camp site safe, Gandree wasted no time preparing a cold lunch, served up from his shadowy storeroom of pilfered victuals and wonders.
“Not being able to watch you produce these things From your magic is vexing, lover…” Daisybelle grumbled around a ham and cavern mushroom sandwich.
“Mysteries make life more exciting…” The lad answered smugly, just as the goblin king had suggested.
“Bah, kingpapa says the same when he won’t let me see how his magic works…” She complained halfheartedly. “He says looking into the void makes the magic more difficult, or even impossible.”
“That’s how it works, Daze… Even if I don’t know someone’s looking, the magic fails.” He grumbled back at her, frustrated by his own lack of information.
“I feel it, if the attention of any sentient being is on me, when I try to do anything with my shadow. Your dad says it’s got something to do with whether magic is a wave, a particle, or something else.”
“All that weird talk talk makes me wonder about you, my silly one. Though perhaps I should consider it, since you have gods and goddesses falling from the sky, where you walk.”
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Lady Dana refused to speak of where she had been, before her screaming, undignified, plummeting return to the eternal meadow, near the standing stones on the Madman’s moon. When gently pressed on the matter, she turned right red and insisted on washing her hands, mumbling about: “Filthy biologicals and their disgusting… Parts!”
Divines never ‘lose it’ or ‘freak out’ such a thing would be impossible… When lady Dana had regained her equanimity, she called for her minions to gather.
“Find a way to release me… from this abomination. Whatever is required, this thing must end.” Her voice had a cold, hard edge to it that even Caduceus the Physician had never heard before.
“Radiant lady Dana, This is a mortal art of witchery and ill intentions… We have little understanding of it. Even were the creature slain, I have some doubt that the spell would end.” The divine Physician murmured uncomfortably.
“Where is my witch? Where is Baba Yaga?” Dana demanded hotly.
“I know not, blessed one.” He mumbled. “She keeps her own counsel and seldom appears here, of late.”
“Find her! I must be freed of this horror, before it happens again!” She gasped.
“Divine and radiant one, what is ‘it’?” Airmid the herbalist asked gently of the shaken and volatile divine.
“Never you mind!” Dana hissed in a very un-divine fury. “And bring me a basin to wash my hands.” she snarled at the fleeing lesser goddess.
“It was so veiny…” Dana whispered her secret trauma, when none could hear.
“Veiny, lady Dana?” Marduk asked cheerfully. “What kind of dangly, veiny, wrinkly things have you been handling? Was it anyone I know?”
“Save your abominable smirks and innuendos, godling. Speak and begone.” She snapped at the smiling blonde deity.
“You seem to think I can be compelled to follow your commands… Frankly, I can barely even force myself to listen to them. You have become tiresome, is what I’m saying.”
He batted his long, golden lashes at the distressed goddess and smiled in the most patently false way he could manage.
“In any case, I‘ve come to tell you that I’ve analyzed the sensory data from your little misadventure on the mortal side. My friend is completely unaware that you were spying on him in those private moments, what you experienced was a side effect of your current state…” He smiled again, just as infuriatingly.
“You saw?” She gasped, as ‘Mortification’, ‘Embarrassment’ and ‘Humiliation’ became part of her immortal essence.
“How could you? Why would you?” She sputtered and stammered, lost in new and exciting levels of degradation and misery.
“Once, I shared his senses regularly; before your boyfriend and his flunkies decided to fumble about in my cultist’s soul and completely wreck the place.” The tiny god snarled at the Healer.
“You demanded he be censured, cursed and bound for his ‘crimes against the pantheon’. Now you know what you’ve done…” A tiny, furious god glared at her, somehow seeming to loom and tower above the Healer.
“The crimes you have committed against these mortals are egregious and ongoing! The consequences of your actions have begun to pile up, even to the point of damaging your divine essence… is that not a concern? Instead, you dedicate your resources to escaping the repercussions of your own ignorant, fumbling attempts to play with my toys!”
“You have no stake in this matter, Marduk!” She snapped back, fury of her own spilling from her aura in waves. “How and when I use mortals is not your concern!”
“Using mortals… That sounds very little like the Dana I remember from the dim olden days when mankind was young. You and I were there when they took their first feeble steps into this world. Have you forgotten that we needed them, as much as they needed us, so long ago?”
“What are you suggesting, Marduk?” She demanded, with slightly less heat in her tone.
He gazed up at the furious goddess for a few moments, allowing his aura of tranquil, contemplative peace to drift over the divine Healer’s troubled essence.
“I’m suggesting that you may be acting and reacting in ways that are contrary to your own nature and essence… much as I did, when I was forced into the role of Secret.” Marduk whispered softly.
“What I’m suggesting is that you were, or perhaps are, being influenced by a malign force. In this place, only his influence can truly be felt, even in his current, deplorable state, as you have learned.”
“Impossible.” She hissed at the smaller deity, baring her teeth unconsciously.
“Moreover, I think it likely that the plot my friend exposed and destroyed was only a portion of what has been going on. Morrigan and her allies were up to something…” He mused softly, thinking aloud in front of the furious goddess.
“Yes, that makes sense… Only, none of it makes any sense, because none of our worshippers can see through generations of lies, ignorance and suppression.” His radiant gaze fell back onto the Healer, wilting her resolve under that onslaught of directed divine Will.
“You insisted that we curse and cripple the only mortal we’ve found that can see through this veil, even if only dimly.”
“Marduk…!” She gasped in horror. “What he did… what he… created was an abomination! That festering hole in our domain continues to radiate unclean emanations into the realm! He must be punished!”
“Really, Dana? ‘He must be punished’? There are greater beings in the cosmos, a detail that all of us seem to have forgotten for a few millennia. We have drawn the attention of Beast and the Devourer to our little domain, yet the truth remains hidden!” He paced and stomped his golden sandals in agitation, while still berating Dana.
“If the gaze of the devourer cannot reveal the truth, that tells me that we will need mortal agents once more.”
“The fragment Barry Ward was to be my favored instrument, Marduk! My mortal agent! Why then have you interfered so, if that is what is required!?” Dana barked at the diminutive god.
“Listen to yourself, Dana… strictures, curses and punishments… All of those should be foreign concepts to you. Where in your portfolio do you find any of those ideas? We need mortal agency and Will to reveal these secrets. ” He murmured gently.
“Mortals who are committed, dedicated and skilled. If only we had a reliable group of those, who have done our work in the past, at great cost and asked nothing from us but to be left in peace…”
“I see your plot, Marduk… still wheedling and begging for your toy to be returned to you!” She sneered at the child in white robes banded with gold. “I will not relent! He remains cursed and afflicted. He may die, if he wishes to end his suffering! I will allow that!”
“If he dies while you are in this state…” Marduk murmured softly. “...You will experience many new things, should that come to pass. Things I am unable to contemplate, as a true immortal.” His sweet, golden smile became hard edged, as he rearranged his immaculate robes and prepared to depart. “I see it in your eyes, you have begun to wonder and doubt…”
“Lies…” She spat weakly. “All filthy, mortal lies…”
“I see in your eyes that you know that is not the case. None can lie in this place, not even the one who carved it from his own shattered soul and mind.” Marduk whispered in reply. “That you can even consider your likely fate suggests your own immortality is balanced on a knife’s edge. Good day, Dana.”
Marduk winked from her perceptions in an instant, leaving no trace, not even a sandal mark on the perfect meadow grasses that dance in the warm summer breeze.
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