Seventh Discourse (part 4 of 12)

Wand Smoke: Kashim's Discourses

From Seventh Discourse (part 3 of 12):

I should have let this bitch drown, I think, but say, “Careful. Remember who you’re talking to, ’cause I told you already: I am the Spirit of Vengeance, the consequence and punishment for those who are Demon possessed. I am—”

“You’re right,” she interjects, standing and staring into the flames. Her gown is now nothing but cinders. “We should get some rest. We’ve got a long road ahead of us… Goodnight, Kashim,” says Morgan, timidly—then suddenly giggling, “See you in the morning, oh great and terrible Spirit of Vengeance!”

The night is warm by the fire, yet still, dawn can’t come quickly enough. I want to get us north of the river as far and fast as we can manage—onto the foothills and off of the floodplain. Here’s the first place our pursuers will search once they realize our stolen horse was a big, bloody herring. That is, if they’re the first to find us. Out in the open wilderness like this, there are greater dangers lurking under the gibbous light. Lucky me, I’m too hungry to sleep as heavily as I might.

I awaken in the dark. The bonfire’s burned to ashes, and Morgan’s curled up nearby, her white, silk shift illumed in starlight. Everything else, though, is shades of black. Clouds cover the moon overhead and bear down on us with a humid chill that I swear feels unnatural. Like storm clouds, but without the scent of rain. Something stinks instead, like death wafting off the riverbank. It brings water to my eyes and stings my sinuses. Miasma? I worry, but it’s missing the signature acrid burn in the lungs and irritation of the skin.

Then I hear a rattle, like seashells stung on a chime in the wind—only there is no wind. Like I said, the air is dead, damp, cold, and heavy—heavier than it would be had we been cast out at sea in the southeastern Uminoken.

Only one possibility, I concede, drawing my iron Dà Kòu saber from its lacquered scabbard. I let the wooden sheath fall to the grass as I stand, hilt in both hands, eyes searching the darkness for a woman’s silhouette. I figure it’s a hone-onna—what they call an undine or nixie in the west. Whatever the name, they are seducers, drowners, and devourers of men; flayers of young women. And this one is probably after Morgan.

I position myself between her and the river. Stealing maidens’ skin keeps a hone-onna young from generation to generation, nubile and beautiful, and therefore difficult for a man to will to kill—especially a Skræling like myself. Better I cut the witch down without ever seeing. So I close my eyes and listen for the seashells. They’re damn loud enough. With every creeping step, they chime and rattle like a thousand tied together in a shawl or a coat. But when did a hone-onna ever wear clothes? I question my assumption a moment too late, when the stench of death covers everything like a thick, wet blanket. The rattling becomes so loud, it seems to emanate from every direction.

This is no nixie, I realize and open my eyes to find a hunchbacked shadow lurching out of the night. Soon as I see it, I swing, slicing darkness in twain in a heinous arc. But the saber only crunches against my shell-coated assailant. Bastard. That probably chipped the blade. He staggers, crying out with a voice like the grinding of seashells. It’s loud enough to rouse Morgan. She calls out, confused and afraid, suddenly awakened blind in some strange place.

“Daddy?” she cries, then, remembering the previous day, begins to rise, calling out my name. “What’s going on? Kashim?”

A weakling’s mistake, the girl’s standing and shouting—I don’t dare a second swing with her wandering around. And this Shellycoat creature must notice as well, because fast as he finds his feet, he’s creeping toward her, silent but for his rattling. It’s a maddening sound. Like an echo, it comes only after the hunchbacked shadow lurches past with a quickness unnatural for his ungainly girth. I try catching him with a thrust, but it’s as if the very soil underfoot flings him forward, safely away from the point of my sword. Stabbing open air, I curse and turn, drawing my Sinnic Enforcer.

I line up the shot a second too slowly. He’s already got Morgan locked tight in his knotted, black arms, smothering her screams with a broad palm and fingers short and fat as sausages. Wielding the girl as a human shield, he must figure I won’t fire so long as he’s got a hostage. Fool! I cock the hammer regardless and wait for him to turn his back. But he doesn’t. The bastard sinks into the earth instead then springs up at the north end of camp, already sprinting as I level my rod again. It’s my last chance. I take the shot and listen as the wasted wand blast thunders over the plain, echoes off the Hell Gates mountains, then thins out into distant nothingness till silence and darkness are all that remain.

Pissed, I pitch my exhausted Enforcer onto the sward, retrieve the scabbard, shoulder my sword, then sprint after them, heading north.

Even ahorse, there’s no way I’d catch up with whatever faerie or hob it was that stole Morgan, but it shouldn’t be too hard to track. With each step, it practically plowed the soil. All I’ll need to do is follow the grassless scars—those, and the lingering stench of death like flotsam corpses washed up during high tide onto the Hēung Góng wharves. If only I wasn’t so damn fatigued. I’m running at half pace, hunger pangs reminding me that I haven’t eaten in a couple of days. Pretty soon, I’m tracking more than chasing, less running than jogging, walking, stopping to catch my breath just as dawn breaks on the eastern horizon.

Gazing south, I can now make out the rolling hills and the flatlands between them, pied by sparse patches of leaf-barren trees and a few farmhouses miniature in the distance. To the north, the River Deep reaches like a twisted, demon arm, running betwixt the Hell Gates’ gorges and peaks. For a moment, I wonder if a djinn like Zmeu or Scholomance resides in those mountains; and if such a salamander does, would not also there be a leanan sídhe—an eternal maiden fay like legendary Titania; or Queen Maeve of the Neverlands; or Goddess Donann, dark heart of the Deep Wood? The thought sparks a flame inside my belly. I stand up straighter, reinvigorated, thinking that maybe I should forget about the Wizard’s weird weapons and the kidnapped girl, Morgan. Perhaps there’s a higher prize hiding inside those vaulting caverns.

But then I think again, remembering what it was to stand against the djinn Scholomance and how the salamander used my desires against me. I would have died if it weren’t for Donann’s mercy. It was fucking embarrassing, after coming so far to be made to face my ambition’s failings, and then to be saved by a woman who said I wasn’t man enough. “Thou hast yet to atone with thine opposition,” she said but never mentioned what the fuck “thine opposition” was! If only I could rid myself of the memory, but it persists like a Demon Spirit haunting me, like a conscience—the consequence of an awakened consciousness.

“Fine.” I decide to keep after the girl, if only to get the Demon off my back. Besides that, Big Man Morgan will probably pay a decent ransom for her, especially once I leverage whatever weapons I pilfer from the Wizard. But before I can return to the trail, a distant rumble rolls over the plains. Riders. I can just make them out, half a dozen mounted men galloping hard in my direction, less than a mile out and closing fast. I guess Big Man Morgan’s posse is more competent than a gang of Wō Kòu bandits. No chance I’ll outpace them, and there are too many to fight. But if my saber won’t cut it, my silver tongue might. So I find a boulder on which to rest, taking stock of my advantages while I wait for them.

It’s hounds that get here first, a whole pack of piebald hunting dogs yipping and slavering like a cog of Wū Wū Kòu pirates—though, unlike those jackal-headed half-man marauders, these beasts don’t pose much trouble. By the time Morgan’s posse arrives in full, deathwand staff models shouldered and shining, I’ve already gutted one of the hounds and staked it off the ground. To the first rider in earshot, I shout, “Anybody got a flint and some kindling? There’s plenty of meat here to go around!”

One man curses a prayer to the Wise Patriarch. Maybe they don’t eat dogs on this island.

“Finally caught you, you son-of-a-bitch!” blurts Young Jim from his saddle, squinting down his wand barrel, probably blinded by its glinting in the sun.

His father reins up next to him, the only one of the men yet to draw his weapon from its leather saddle-scabbard. Pushing his son’s wand away, he scrutinizes the plain in disgust. “Where is she?” he asks.

I answer, “Stolen.”

A third man cocks his wand hammer and glares at me from beneath his broad brimmed hat. “You know who I am?” he asks, and I look him over. His white, native face and graying, black hair could belong to anyone on this mongrel island, but he’s better dressed than the others. Much better, in fact. His hat, boots, chaps, and coat are all troll leather—fireproof, flexible, yet hard as stone. And underneath, his collared shirt and pants are inked sylph silk. Over that, he wears a vest of the stuff thick enough to stop a bayonet thrust. I’m not sure what amazes me more, the amount of money invested in this man’s wardrobe or the fact that he actually came after me himself.

“The Big Man in the flesh,” I call him out. “You’re Morgan’s father.”

“That I am,” he says proudly. “And now that you know, you know I won’t ask again: where is my baby girl?”

“I already told you. Stolen. Some faerie or hob snatched her last night. I’m sure you noticed the tracks.”

Young Jim interjects. “Don’t believe a word that loony says, boss! He’s work’n for the Wizard, by the Patriarch, I’m sure of it! We best oughta deliver him in a box on that Domhnall’s doorstep! We oughta—”

“That’s enough, Jim,” his father chides him then apologizes to Morgan who, the entire time, never moves his eyes from me nor his finger from the trigger, not even as he asks,

“What do you think, Jim? Are they really fay prints or are they tracks from one of the Wizard’s machinations?”

The older man sighs and admits, “They’re pretty damned fay if I ever seen ’em, Mister Morgan.” He hesitates then finishes, “I’m sorry to say it, boss, but it looks from here like they went into the gorges. We’re go’n need to put in a ’pothecaries’ order from South for some masks if we want to go after ’em. It’ll take a couple days, at least. They been have’n shortages.”

The top half of Morgan’s face vanishes in the shadow cast by the brim of his hat. His lips curl in a snarl, like any second he might snap and blast me just to vent his resentment. But all he says is, “That’s how it is.” Then, to his men, “Bind the foreigner and have him dragged back to the manor. I want him chained to the fences where everyone can see. Let him rot out there as an example for the next man who gets any ‘bright ideas.’”

As ordered, the other five riders dismount and start digging out rolls of rope from the depths of their saddlebags. If I wanted to make a run for the river and try disappearing downstream, now’s my chance. But I have a better idea and say to the fay hunter’s son, Young Jim, “Funny, you were such a braggart back in the tavern, yet now you’re too scared to chase a faerie into the mountains?”

He takes the bait and shouts, “We ain’t afeared o’ noth’n! It’s that damned miasma won’t clear out from the gorges! Just hangs around like fog on a swamp—probably more o’ the Wizard’s do’n—but listen here: courage ain’t have noth’n to do with it! That stuff’ll kill a brave man same as a man afeared.”

“Nay, slave. It slayeth in common only thee whom art weak.”

“What on Hell did you just say to me?”

“That a man in possession of the proper power could purge the gorges of such poison, and that perhaps such a person is me.”

That grabs the men’s attention, including Morgan’s, at whom everyone stares, paused and waiting to see how he received the unlikely information.

But it’s Young Jim who responds, “Then I’d say you’s a liar. Ain’t nobody know how to deal with the miasma but them loonies in the Township. Ain’t that right, Pa?”

His father doesn’t answer right away, but looks to his boss.

The Big Man asks him, “What do you reckon, Jim?”

“It’s possible,” the old man grumbles. “They say the constable an’ some of the ’pothecaries in South can do such kinda things. Never seen it myself, but the townies swear they seen occult magic happen. They do have them skeletons wander’n about. An’ there’s the missus-ists who they say can make fire like the Warden when he was still ’round—though on that account, I hear there’s some doubts.”

“Miasma and fire…like the zealots who murdered Gaston,” Morgan murmurs.

I seize upon the Big Man’s stray thought.

“I can prove it if you like, though I’ll need one of your powder horns to demonstrate.”

“Mayhap when we get there.” he answers, cautious despite it his daughter’s fate at stake. He knows full well they don’t have time to buy the miasma masks. As it is now, it may already be too late, but he sends one of his men back for them anyway. To the rest he gives indirect orders through commanding me. “Put away your sword and hand it over, then we’re tying you up. Don’t try to resist. If you do—” To Jim he says, “Be ready to blast him.” Then to me again, “You understand, outlander? ’Cause you won’t be getting a second chance.”

“Aye,” I say and sheathe the saber. Young Jim takes it from me, grinning, gleeful and arrogant— in my estimation, an expression worthy of punishment. Another time. For now, I settle on protesting my wrists being bound. “I’ll need my hands free to complete the transmutation.”

“When we get there,” Morgan repeats himself in a tone that suggests I’ll be shot for asking again.

I shrug my shoulders and accept my bindings, allowing them to help me double up on Old Jim’s horse. Then a hunger pang hits me, and I can’t stop myself from pointing out, “By the way, you never answered me about that flint. I’d hate for all this meat to go to waste.”

To be continued…