Chapter 12: Kreatha of the Vurhk

 

Kreátha of the Vurhk: Chapter 12

“You are Skinner?” The thin voice brought Skinner’s head up from the parchment on which he was writing.

“I am Erasmus of Voutan,” Skinner replied. He studied his visitor, one eyebrow cocked as though to help him focus. He pushed the sheaves of parchment aside and couched his quill in its inkwell. Sitting back into better posture, he waved his visitor to an ornate wooden chair.

“You are Skinner,” his guest nodded, slanted eyes telling of dhari blood. A thin wool headband braced the points of his ears against thin silver hair, the rest of which was bound in intricate plats that fell to the middle of his back.

“If you wish.” Skinner shrugged noncommittally.

“I am Kreátha of the Vurhk,” he nodded. “Until recently an initiate of the Order.”

“Until recently?” Skinner studied the dhari’s violet eyes, sensing great strength and power there.

“As you precedented,” Kreátha nodded. “At the testing, I found myself unwilling to bring a dark one across the Ether.”

“What did you bring?” Skinner leaned forward, sensing the mark of otherness left on those who had brought another across, specifically another being not of the Vale or the summoner’s native place.

“You sense it?” His guest smiled as though learning that he was not alone in his perceptions, having long doubted the veracity of his own senses.

“Yes,” Skinner replied casually. “It is obvious in those who have summoned.”

“Apparently.” Kreátha leaned forward now as well. “Apparently not to all who have senses.”

“Really?” Skinner mused on this several minutes. Recalling his own sense of hospitality in a cursory, habitual part of his mind, he rose and poured two glasses of Voutan brandy, offering one to his guest.

“Yes,” Kreátha nodded, taking the glass with a grateful gesture. “Those of the Order not experienced in sorcery seem completely blind to it. And of those practicing both arts, it seems uncommon enough to be reserved for only myself . . . and now you.”

“Fascinating,” Skinner nodded, seating himself and swirling his brandy. He stared into the fire for a moment, considering the warmth of the room’s lighting. Luminorbs, being a mark of sorcery, had no place here, where he disguised himself as Erasmus of Voutan.

“Yes,” Skinner nodded. “I believe it is a rare talent. But, as with so many things, I think perhaps it is merely ignored by most. Like the smell of tallow burning in a library.”

“Do you feel the wind as well?” Kreátha asked this in a manner so cryptic that Skinner immediately suspected that Kreátha had long been under the impression that he, Kreátha, was insane.

“Why do you come to me asking such things?” Skinner sighed deeply, enjoying fully the warmth and flavor of his brandy almost to the point of seeming to ignore his surroundings.

“My dreams . . .” Kreátha seemed self-conscious now to the point of shyness.

“What did they do to you?” Skinner asked suddenly, pinning Kreátha with his sapphire gaze, driving his percipience as far as he could into his guest’s mind as though jabbing a pin through an insect to transfix it in a shadowbox.

“Do?” Kreátha flinched, but his mind reacted instantly, rejecting Skinner’s psychic invasion. “My dreams?”

“The druids,” Skinner said calmly, his eyes hooded again in heavy lids and long lashes. “What did the Order do to you?”

“What did they do?” Kreátha shuddered violently. “I am uncertain as to the nature of your question.”

“The demon stench is undeniable,” Skinner looked at him now with a sympathetic gaze, the blue of his eyes no longer a burning sapphire but the lazier hue of summer sky. “And yet, you say you did not bring any of the dark ones over. Did it pull you back home with it?”

“No!” Darkness roiled in the wiry dhari’s eyes, several frowns made the circuit of his features more expressively than Skinner had ever witnessed among dhari people.

“I tried subversion . . .” Kreátha shuddered violently again.

“Let us go then,” Skinner rose from his seat. Striding past his guest, he pulled a travel cloak from a peg on the back of his door. Putting it on, he grabbed several straps to packs and pulled them from shelves, handing some to Kreátha.

“Where?”

“The cliffs of sunset,” Skinner said coolly, leading the outcast druid through a series of halls. They were outside in the mild autumn before Skinner had even finished adjusting his load. He led Kreátha on in long, deliberate strides as though in a rush to get somewhere.

Moving swiftly north and west, the two were breathing raggedly and struggling to keep their pace when the moon rose from its lair among the Northern Skyteeth. Skinner frowned and cursed as he noted how full the moon was. As so often happened, he had lost track of the passing days in his singular concentration on the project he was writing.

“We’re only about nine hours from full,” he told Kréatha. “That gives us six to walk about thirty miles, one to make our way down, and one to prepare for the . . . ceremony.”

“Ceremony?” Kreátha shuddered so violently he tripped and thrashed in the knee-high grass.

“Stay with me here, Kreátha,” Skinner gave him the intense stare again, his eyes like a lance cutting flesh away to expose spirit. “Stay with me!”

Skinner ground his teeth together and increased their pace, half dragging the dhari. It surprised him that he could so easily push Kreátha around. Study and writing had consumed his time so much lately that Skinner knew himself to be softer and heavier than usual. Kreátha was slim, though, emaciated even, and Skinner guessed his own estimation of the dhari’s size to be a function of presence—he had long ago realized that he thought of people’s size in relation to his esteem for them, often thinking of people as taller or weightier based on their psychic presence. Now he guessed the dhari at five-five, around ninety pounds in comparison to his own height of five-ten, one-eighty or one-ninety.

Several shadows rose from the grass to surround them. Skinner cursed vociferously, calling his staff and summoning his luminorbs reflexively. He and Kréatha slowed their pace to keep from running into the small, manoid beasts. They looked around at the smaller bipeds, wary of the short javelins held in long-fingered hands.

“Go on!” Skinner snapped, as though his own dog were blocking his path.

The circle began to close on them. Skinner looked around, estimating their hierarchy.

“You,” he pointed his staff at one that wore a blue and black feather in its bristly hair. “Tell your folk here to back off. I’m in no mood to mess around with a bunch of apes.”

“Give us the dhari,” it replied in a voice scratchy, sepulchral, and alien. Skinner stopped.

“Sentient?” His gaze narrowed, his sight piercing beyond the creature’s surface. “Good. Here’s the thing: get out of our way or die. That simple.”

“You haven’t the means,” it said. Skinner winced at its haglike screech, feeling it like pain in his forehead.

“Die then!” Skinner sent a bolt of green energy from his staff into the creature’s face. It opened its mouth wide, and swallowed the bolt of green in its unearthly yawn. Skinner adjusted, dropping his hand from Kreátha’s arm to ready himself for a duel.

“Leave me,” Kreátha said, his face seeming to age as his voice fell in tones of resignation.

“No!” Skinner turned on him, slapped him hard across the face. “STAY with me, Kreátha of the Vurhk!”

“Why?” His voice declared despair, but Skinner saw a dim flicker deep within the violet eyes.

“Life is precious,” Skinner said softly. “Remember beauty, Kreátha. Remember love and the laughter of children, the tales of old men—”

One of the creatures streaked in, trying to bite Kreátha. Skinner twitched his wrist and his staff struck it in the side, driving it to miss its target. Skinner shoved Kréatha to the ground, calling an iridescent orb to encase Kreátha in a bubble of shimmering light. He struck out again and again as the strange little bipeds raced in to snap and claw at him. He swept them aside with powerful blows, tripped others with subtle jabs, and kicked others to keep them away from himself and his orb.

The one with the feather grabbed his wrist in a searing, viselike grip. Skinner howled and dropped his staff, whipping around to face the little creature. About the size of a ten-year-old child, it gazed up into his face with more intense malice than Skinner could recall from anything present in the Vale. He had only seen such malevolence . . .

“Demon!” he spat into its upturned face.

“Peasant ahashma!” it spat back.

Skinner grabbed its wrist and wrenched his own wrist free, digging his fingernails into the thing’s thick skin. Sparks shot from both directions, black from the demon and white from Skinner. Suddenly he was in a contest of roman knuckles with the demon. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Skinner heard his own mad laughter making light of the situation. For all appearances, he was a grown man contesting a hairy sixth-grader. But the sting from the constant arc of energies kept his humor at bay.

He clenched his fists and lifted the creature from the ground. His bright energies flared, overwhelming the dark sparks of the demon. He tossed it away from him with such force that it flew several feet into two of its accomplices and knocked them all into a writhing heap. Skinner felt something rise up inside him in answer to the malice in their glares. He turned his percipience inside, wondering at the strange presence.

“Gelding shashmaril!” He heard his own voice say. “We are beyond you. Go play in the Xadrathian Springs!”

Skinner could make no sense of his own words. They had sprung to his lips, but not of his accord. He puzzled over it, troubled deeply, as the strange demons recoiled in shock and then ran away as though suddenly fearful of him. He felt their loathing trail behind them like a cloud of stench from a procession of death.

“Shashmaril?” Kreátha shrieked himself into hysterical laughter, raving incomprehensibly as Skinner grabbed his arm and led him on with the urgency of one hunted.

“They came to feed on what is left of your soul, ahashma,” Skinner rasped, the voice again coming from the otherness within him. He clamped his jaw down on it, willing the presence to leave him to his own devices.

He pushed on, heading now into the brisk wind, brine-scented and moist as it blew in off Lake Anandamere. The moon appeared full, its luminescence a shade of yellow short of white, bright enough to make their pace only slightly less than reckless. They were both breathing raggedly again and beginning to stumble when Skinner slacked their pace—just within sight of the edge that marked the falling away of the land into basalt cliffs that dropped near-vertically to the waterline.

“We’re pushing it,” Skinner rasped. “Maybe only a step from—”

Kréatha stumbled, convulsing again. Skinner dropped to his rump, taking a hard seat in the sparse grass and pulling the dhari down with him. He pulled him around and peered into his eyes again, pushing his will into those eyes and the being behind them.

“Hold firm, Kreátha,” he admonished. “Hold firm, my friend. Morning is near.”

He maintained the eye contact until both breathed evenly. Clenching his teeth, he rose and pulled Kreátha to his feet again, pushing him toward the cliff. They found a small path and began a hard descent, Skinner pushing for as much speed as they dared. He had to leave his staff after only a few yards to free his hands. The path was very narrow, and Kreátha seemed to fight himself at every step. Skinner pushed and pulled, straining himself at times to keep either from falling. Several times he grabbed the dhari’s robes just in time to keep him from falling. His own vertigo and nausea kept him from looking down to estimate their height. He focused tightly on the next few yards of their path, ignoring all else.

His legs twitched and ached with strain as the two sorcerers made their way onto an hospitable ledge. The cliff wall was recessed here, creating a sort of landing where scrub grass and a few sturdy bushes clung to the rock in stubborn clumps. To his delight, Skinner found a cluster of small button mushrooms in the same family as his favored marlbuttons. He ate the buttontops from several, taking great care to avoid the stems. When Kreátha shook his head, refusing them, Skinner threw him down and forced several past the dhari’s resistant mouth.

“Eat it you fecund badger!” Skinner sounded and looked maniacal. His normally unkempt hair, shoulder-length at the moment, had been shocked by the encounter with the demons and blown by the sea air to the point that it stuck out at odd angles like so much straw. Strain pulled the crows feet taut at the corners of his eyes, which blazed with turbulent emotion. His short beard bristled with the twitching of the muscles around his mouth, which worked itself as though in a vain attempt to dislodge particles from between teeth.

“What . . .” Something like fear showed in Kréatha’s eyes. Skinner punched him and shoved the mushrooms in, then rubbed his throat to coax them down. Still, Kreátha struggled as though to save himself. Skinner ignored him, unstopping a waterskin and pouring water into his mouth as though medicating a recalcitrant child.

“Stay with me, Kreátha!” Skinner growled, punching the dhari in the temple a second time and pouring more water down his throat.

Fire exploded from Kreátha’s eyes, nearly dislodging Skinner from their perch. He threw himself onto the scrub and rolled to put the flames out, willing the fire to quench itself. Rolling, he came back to kneeling and faced Kreátha. The violet had turned onyx in Kreátha’s eyes. He was sheathed now in a nimbus of red-edged black flame.

“Leave him be,” Skinner growled. “By the gods, I’ll rip you from the elements—”

“Peasant ahashma!” Kreátha’s mouth spat, its voice changed to one Skinner recognized without having heard it before.

“Leave,” Skinner squared his stance, poised for attack or evasion.

“Fool,” it spat. “He is mine. I consume him even now.”

Kandor! Skinner struck out with his staff, pulling it back at the moment of contact. Its headpiece brushed Kreátha’s cheek, just within the nimbus of dark flame. A charged rainbow exploded within the nimbus of dark flame, consuming the darkness and sealing itself around the dhari druid like a glove of light. Skinner held the staff against his cheek and willed the bright spectrum to trap the dark flame within and without.

“Not so much a fool,” Skinner grinned grimly into the onyx presence now inhabiting Kreátha’s eyes. “Sometimes we assume we know less than we do.”

“Release me,” Kreátha’s mouth snarled, twitching with malice and reeking of decomposed flesh.

“Go back whence you come,” Skinner offered casually, squeezing the rainbow in on the dark presence.

“Whence gained you such lore?” Skinner felt the malice shift from a personal loathing to something like righteous fury.

“Day and night, fell friend,” Skinner laughed sarcastically, deliberately obtuse. “Now go on home and leave my friend alone. He wants no commerce with your kind.”

“You know nothing, ahashma,” it spat. Skinner’s anger flared, setting the rainbow to blaze and constrict further.

“I know you, Zhit-Zhou-Loong,” Skinner stared the demon down. “And the next time I encounter you in the eyes of a friend or loved one—I will end you.”

“You shall one day beg my help, ahashma,” Loong leered wickedly with Kréatha’s mouth. “It will cost you dearly.”

The presence vanished.

Ratashakti! Skinner called into the ether.

Skinner? What have I to do with you? A strange shadow to her rainbow voice hinted affront.

Not myself, Skinner told the bright being. Kreátha of the Vurhk is here with me.

Yes, Ratashakti’s hooves flashed in the ether and suddenly Skinner stood before the pure white unicorn within the quilted, argent clouds cascading through a roiling miasma of colors. I am aware of your situation. What is it you wish of me?

Healing. Skinner stood before her as though he were a child asking his mother to fix a favorite toy. He is . . . damaged in ways I can perceive but not comprehend.

The dark one has attempted to devour him. Ratashakti spoke in shades that deny sympathy, and yet Skinner sensed that she was compassionate and benevolent despite aloofness.

He found himself suddenly alone on the stone shelf midway down the face of the Sunset Cliff.

“I guess I’ll understand this all by and by,” he muttered, laying his head on his arm and closing his eyes.

Reviews

[TLK]

He is both Erasmus AND Skinner?