"Before", Chapter 2: New Friends

[Scott of Hyperborea]

"Before" or "Romance of the Three Duchies"
Chapter Two: New Friends
Chapter Two Soundtrack: Conquest of Paradise

I wanted to talk to my captors, to learn their secrets, to hear what they could tell me of Sxiro beyond, and most importantly, to plan how I might escape. Luckily for me, in the endless wilderness of chalky hills and scrubs called the Crestfall Downs that made up the terrain west of the Eluin, there was little to do but talk.

Red, the leader of the group, said little, and when he did he measured his words precisely to the task at hand. He might tell us we were going to higher ground because a storm was coming; he would never make small talk. I got the feeling he didn't much like people. Nights he would spend practicing his swordsmanship in the moonlight. He was always awake later than I, and by the time I awoke in the morning he had already finished scouting the surrounding area.

Red was tall and broadly built, his eponymous red hair reaching down to his shoulders. His features, I was to learn, were characteristic of the northern reaches of the kingdom called Riverrun in which we now found ourselves. In contrast, his second-in-command, who called himself Pupil, was thin and dark-haired, though with fair skin. His name was biting irony, because one of his eyes - his left - had no pupil in it. He was not taciturn like Red, but I soon grew exhausted under his half-dead gaze, and his words were invariably unsettling in some hard to define way. In one of my few conversations with him, I learned he hailed from Goldenmoon.

Once was by far the largest and strongest member of the company, and honestly the one I was most afraid of. My first attempt to talk to him was a disaster. I introduced myself as Loritis from across the sea. He looked at me, sadly, and said:

"I was from across the sea, once."

I was torn between excitement and confusion: excitement that he might be a fellow countryman, and confusion because everything about his appearance was foreign to me. But he would tell me no more, and it was the others who filled me in. Once was quite mad, and responded to almost any point of conversation with a lie about himself. In point of fact, his golden-white hair and fair skin marked him as one of the Elw, the barbarians who lived far, far to the north, beyond the cursed kingdom of Cerce, beyond even the point where the river split in two.

The two with whom I was able to have real conversation, the two who were the professors of the education I received there in the Downs, were the old man, and the young boy who rarely left his side. They called themselves Cloud and Rain. When I expressed exasperation that we addressed each other only by these silly nicknames, it was the old man Cloud who was the first and only to reveal his true name to me. He was Keloudi Ly'Tecnomaezj, and the latter appelation identified him as one of the wise men of Sxiro, a sort of combination wizard, priest, and scholar.

"Not a wizard!" he objected, when I said something of the sort. "We have no magic, we tecnomaezji."

"I'd heard," I told him "that there was magic in Sxiro."

"Well, of course," said Cloud. "There's magic aplenty in this corner of the world. Mosquitos aplenty too, but that doesn't mean we have to like it."

Cloud, it seemed, had sworn an oath to destroy all forms of magic, and he took his oath very seriously. He had sworn another oath, too, one to protect the boy Rain and never leave his side. Rain's family had been nobles who had fallen on hard times, and although the boy was now little more than a bandit, Cloud felt his oath to the boy's relatives to educate him and bring him up properly was still in force. So, while most of his kindred tecnomaezji were in libraries or laboratories in the great cities of the coast, Cloud grudgingly traipsed through the Crestfall Downs, keeping Rain as far out of trouble as a murderous bandit could plausibly be.

Rain himself seemed like the only even slightly normal one of the whole group. He started off a bit shy, but was talkative enough once I got him going. Unfortunately, he didn't know much more about the group than I did. He and Cloud had joined with Red only a few years ago. Since then, Cloud had been the group's designated healer, translator, and chaplain, and Rain had gotten pretty good with the sword. He also confided in me that Cloud had another power, one he rarely used but which had proven decisive several times.

"Come here," he said one night after Cloud was asleep. "I'll show you."

He began rooting through the old tecnomaezj's stuff, until he found a locked ivory box. He procured a key from his trousers, and opened it to reveal a rusty iron cylinder.

"Some sort of magic?" I asked him.

Rain was taken aback; he took his mentor's oath never to use the black arts very seriously, and seemed unable to even consider the possibility that he could break it.

"Oh no," he told me. "Technology. You put a bit of white powder in this end here, and a stone or metal ball into this end here, and then it shoots it out like an arrow, only much harder. Makes an unholy racket, too."

"Sounds like magic to me," I said.

"No," insisted Rain, "it's different. Because it's separate from him. There's nothing of his own mind in it, so he trusts it. I know that doesn't make sense, but it gives the tecnomaezji their power."

I believed him, because he sounded like he was confiding in me a great secret. Despite their closeness, Cloud and Rain seemed willing to tell me many of each other's secrets.

"He has a crush on you, you know," said Cloud. It was our fifth or sixth day walking through the Downs, and the two of us were lagging behind - him because of his age, me because I was unaccustomed to the harsh Sxirothe terrain.

"He must be, like, ten years younger than I am," I said. "Almost a boy." Then I had a thought. "Should I be worried?"

Cloud laughed a little to himself. "No, I do think you've found the only bandit company in all Sxiro in which a good-looking young woman can travel unmolested. Red's incapable of human pleasure, so he'd get nothing from sleeping with you. Pupil sees too much of people to be able to take anyone by force and enjoy it. Once is too crazy. I'm too old. And Rain is, well, he's a good kid. I've done that for him, at least."

"What did you mean about Red and Pupil?" I asked him.

"Well," he said, "Red's literally cursed. I don't know the whole story, but he must have pissed someone off, and the payoff is that he literally can't enjoy things. If it were me, I'd have slit an artery by now, but he prefers continuing to go through the motions. Really, it makes him twice as deadly, because he's so...businesslike about everything. And he collects other cursed people, around him. We're all cursed here. Pupil with his eye. Once with his madness. Sent with his visions, who you killed. Me with my oath. Rain having fallen from the life of a gentleman down to, well, this. You're cursed too, if you're with us. Maybe you just don't know it yet."

What else did I learn from Cloud and Rain? I learned that a few hundred leagues north of here, in lands where few Sxirothe had ever been, the Eluin split in two. The eastern fork passed through the chiefdoms of the savage Elw, and at its source was their holy gathering place, where no southerner had ever set foot. The western fork rushed through the tiny and impenetrable kingdom of Woodshire, and from there into lands unknown and unknowable.

I learned that we were really more mercenaries than bandits, though we dabbled in both, and we took jobs from whoever paid the most. I learned that in Sxiro, "whoever paid the most" almost always meant Ju'Uliave Mercaja, Duke of Goldenmoon, whose name had become synonymous with riches. The company widely assumed Mercaja was behind the order to assassinate the Duke of Musica, though the man who had paid them for it had been a nondescript Musican who himself didn't know who'd provided the coin. Despite our tendency to work for Goldenmoon, most of us were Riverrun men by birth and held a completely symbolic and inactive esteem for the southern kingdom.

Even Pupil, a Goldenmoonman, had few good things to say about the Duke of his homeland.

"He's smart, he's rich, and he's ruthless," he told me when I brought the matter up. "His brother, Baron Na'ami Mercaja, is only half as rich, but he's twice as ruthless to make up for it. Between the two of them, I'd be surprised if it weren't a Mercaja wearing the God-Emperor's crown when all this prophecy stuff is said and done."

I learned that Sent, the man I had killed, was the one who found contacts and arranged business for the group, guided by visions sent to him in his dreams. I learned that the last business deal Sent had arranged before he died involved us meeting two of his contacts in the city of Crestfallen, the northernmost outpost of Riverrun and of friendly civilization in these parts. There, he had told Red, we would meet men who would offer us our next job.

When the prattle of Cloud and Rain began to bore me, I picked up my pace until I walked with the others. Once hummed ditties to himself, but Red and Pupil were quiet, and respected my privacy if I respected theirs. The first time I heard Red string more than a dozen words together, we'd just come to the ridge of a small mountain and were looking down on the valley below.

"That," he told us, "is Blackhelm's Gouge. It's a pass that runs straight from here to Cerce. The demon fish come through here on their raids. Until we reach the other side, everyone stays quiet, and we keep double watch at night. It's a long week's journey from here to Crestfallen. We rest when we get there. We've got a lot of gold from the Musica job. But it's not going to do you any good if you encounter a demon and get yourselves flayed alive. Any questions?"

"I got flayed alive once," volunteered Once. The others ignored him.

So the next time I was alone with Cloud, I asked him about Cerce. He knew little besides what I had already gathered. That one of the demons the Sxirothe so fear, who are always for some reason imagined in the form of fishes, rose from the bowels of the earth one day in that area and destroyed in a single instant what had once been a prosperous outpost of Goldenmoon. Now the place called Cerce was a hell where unimaginable suffering on the parts of the few human slaves allowed to remain alive mingled with unimaginable evil on the parts of the demon fish and its spawn. Twice the demons had attempted to overrun Sxiro. Once, back in the days of long ago, the So Saran Empire had contained them successfully. A second time, the ancestors of the Goldenmoonmen had erected standing stones imbued with mystical energy to mark their path. Both Riverrun and Goldenmoon lived in fear of the day the demons tried a third time, but for now they seemed content to make unambitious raids on some of the closer border towns. Like the ones we would be passing through.

But our passage through Blackhelm's Gouge was uneventful as we crossed the main road between Cerce and Riverrun. Indeed, we saw nothing until we came to a small hill that began the ascent to the Downs on the other side.

Atop the hill was an ebony crucifix, and upon it was a naked woman. She was screaming, but no sound came out. A plaque beneath her proclaimed a message in strange runes I did not know. When she saw us, her writhing redoubled. Putting forward a great effort, she managed to croak two words: "Help...me...".

At the sight, Red began running toward her. Cloud placed a hand on his shoulder, restraining him.

"Leave her be," said the old man.

Red stared at him as if he were crazy. For that matter, so did I.

"The runes," said Cloud. "A language of Balgurd, true, but the message is unmistakable. They say: 'Thus always to users.'"

And so it was that after travelling five thousand miles into deepest Sxiro, I finally met the first of the continent's legendary magic users, the accursed race whom Cloud and his kind were so zealous to stamp out. She looked broadly normal, as normal as any half-dead woman hanging on a crucifix can. She was about twenty, maybe a little older, and must have been quite beautiful before her torture, with fiery red hair and piercing blue eyes. Of her scars, many were new, but a few were old, speaking of the hard life she must have known. Again, she tried to speak. "Help...me. Water."

Before Cloud could object, Red took out his waterskin and offered the woman a drink. She sipped it dry, and then began a coughing fit which lasted a few minutes. When she spoke again, it was with new volume, as if something of her humanity had returned to her.

"Help me, please," she said. "I can give you whatever you want. Money. Power. My hand in marriage. Whole kingdoms. But for the love of merciful Anandja, please, take me down. End the pain."

I looked closer, and saw that each of her fingers had been individually nailed to the wood. The ground beneath her was covered in blood, and mingled with it was a strange and entirely unpleasant odor of raw fish, as if some very large sea beast had recently departed.

"Don't listen to her flatteries and temptations!" said Cloud. "She may wear a beautiful form, but she practices arts as black as Balgurd and twice as dangerous. This is a test of faith, Red. Don't give in to what seems like compassion, or you'll doom us all."

Red faltered. The rest of us just watched him, knowing somehow that this was his decision and not ours.

"My name is Quercia Ly'Maezjuser," said the crucified woman. "I was born in So Sara, the serving-girl of one of the last surviving users. She had no children, and taught me her art. I never did anyone any harm with it. I was travelling to Goldenmoon and the demons set upon me and stuck me here. Please. I know you're good people. Have a heart and set me free."

Red took a step forward. "Stand back, Cloud," he said to the other, whose hand was still on his shoulder.

Cloud stood up to his full height and the age seemed to drop away from him. At the same time, the wind caught his cloak and made it billow in the tense spring air.

"Think you I am no more than the old man Cloud, who dodders behind you on your journeys? I am Keloudi Ly'Tecnomaezj, sworn to the destruction of users, and in the name of Gaelen, I command you to stand back and allow me to slay this witch."

"I will not," said Red, who made his decision.

Cloud drew his sword and rushed at Red. He took the younger man somewhat by surprise, and for a second Red lost his footing. But our leader was still the foremost swordsman in Sxiro, and he quickly regained balance and began slashing at Cloud.

"Stop!" I shouted. "You'll kill him!" For whatever reason, be it his previous work in saving my life or the information he had imparted to me on our journey, I had a fondness for Cloud, and besides, if the old man died it would break Rain's heart.

Pupil, whom I had lost sight of, appeared behind me and tapped me on the shoulder. "Hush," he said. "Cloud will not die, nor will Red kill him. But appearances must be fulfilled. It is Cloud's oath to pursue all users, and he cannot be seen to break it. Red will knock him out and free the witch, and a few minutes later he will awake with no ill feeling. Look at Rain. He understands."

I looked. Rain seemed apprehensive, but he was in no rush to save his mentor. And sure enough, Red hit Cloud on the head with the flat of his sword, and the older man dropped to the ground, unconscious but clearly still breathing.

"Now, witch," said Red, "if I free you, will you swear an oath to serve me?"

The user thought for a second. "No," she reported, hoarsely. "Probably not."

Red was taken by surprise. "No?"

"I hardly know you," said the user. The water seemed to have had a salutary effect on her. She was more human now, but also more calculating. "You seem nice enough, though."

"Maybe I won't said you free until you swear," said Red. He looked annoyed, and I didn't blame him; for her to defy him after what he had been through with Cloud seemed impolite bordering on stupid.

"I think you will," said the user, "because of that horde of demons coming this way. I doubt you can fight them all off without my help."

"What hor...oh." said Red. He had looked down the hill. About thirty dark figures who had been hiding in the forests in the Gouge had assembled into a company and were very quickly coming this way. I wondered if they had been guarding the user this whole time, if she had been a trap, if she was working with them, any of a hundred possibilities.

"Pupil," called Red to our second-in-command. "The woman. Is she trustworthy?"

The Goldenmoonman stared at her, first with his good eye, then with the empty stare of his open iris. "As much as anyone," was his verdict.

Red took his sword and wrenched out one of the nails that held her fingers. Before he could move on to the second, she waved her finger just a fraction, and the other nine shot out of their own volition. The cross burst into flames and within a fraction of a second burnt down to ashes. A sword appeared out of nowhere and was in her hands as she lunged forward to impale the unconscious Cloud.

Red blocked her thrust. "I really don't think you want to do that," said Red.

She stared at him, very intently, and her eyes which had been piercing green were now orange.

"A life for a life," said Red. "I saved you from him, and now I save him from you. May Lacrymosa god of balance curse you if you deny the justice."

"So be it," said Quercia Ly'Maezjuser, and took a breath. "But for what they have done to me, they will die. And painfully" She pointed to the rapidly approaching horde of demons.

"That," said Red, "is a plan I can get behind."

I now have the unenviable task of relating to you of the Deamons of Balgurd, for which my Audente reader will no doubt think me mad. For these creatures are like nothing else, human or animal, that walks the natural earth. It is true that they are like fishes, all scaly and gilled and staring through pearly yellow-white eyes, and it is true that they swim through the air like a fish through water, but there is also something wolf-like about them, and something that is terribly terribly human, or a mockery of the human form. There were thirty of them, and in their gills and tails and claws and other appendages they had rusted and broken swords and shields of all shapes and sizes. The Sxirothes claim that such creatures await the wicked in Hell, and I for one am tempted to abjure sin forever on the off chance they are right.

Despite our fear, we stood our ground. Red hacked the first fish to arrive, and Pupil and I, working together, took care of a second. Rain stayed locked in mortal combat with a third, until I ran over to help him.

Then Once joined the fight. With his giant Elw battle-axe, he was nigh-on-unstoppable, and I understood why Red and the others kept him around despite his insanity. Three fish fell to his blade, but for each one who fell, three others took its place. Red faced the multitude, sword outsretched. "Sxiro!" he shouted, for such was invariably the battle cry of Sxirothe men. "Sxiro!" shouted all the others, blood boiling.

"Die," said Quercia Ly'Maezjuser quietly. And they did.

Some of them burst like overstretched balloons, a wet popping sound the only mark of their passing. Others were consumed by fire from within. Still others began flopping on their bellies in an awful parody of a fish out of water. The rest of us, even Red, put down our swords and stared in horror at Quercia and the massacre pulsing forward from her dancing fingers. We were all thinking the same thing: not even demons deserved this kind of shabby treatment.

When they were all dead, Quercia smiled a grim smile. "My revenge...is...finished," she said, and then collapsed onto the ground next to Cloud. The rest of us just stood there, wordlessly.

"I finished a revenge once," said Once, and then even he went silent.