Chapter 4 #2
With the ascent came rising pain as my shoulders took the full weight of my hanging body. “Please,” I cried. “This actually hurts a lot! Don’t you want me alive, isn’t that the point of this?”
If the constructs understood, they showed no sign of it.
I dangled like prey between them, my shoulder sockets crunching, while their leaf-and-mud wings buffeted my hair into disarray.
I couldn’t do much but kick my feet and take in the view.
Miniaturized in this way, the forest looked like a bed of moss, all puffy greens with the occasional shadowy gap.
Somewhere down there lay Glenda. I’d seen the aftermath of blows to the head; if she woke at all, she’d be aching and nauseous.
Assuming she overcame her infirmity, she would follow my frantic, sloppy trail to arrive at its gory termination all alone, with her emotions already a ruin. Ah, poor Glenda.
“Poor me,” I corrected, then frowned. The ground was rising beneath us.
We’d reached the sorcerer’s cliffs.
The infamous fog rose in a white wall before us, which the constructs flew into without hesitation.
It closed about me, cold, wet, and blinding.
Without warning, both sets of talons released my arms, and I fell shrieking .
. . only to land a second later, the ground a mere foot below. Even so, it jarred my knee.
Favouring my good leg, I stood carefully and rolled my shoulders. The constructs circled once, before vanishing upward, leaving me alone in the fog.
“Hello?” I called to nobody, rubbing my arms. Red punctures ringed them where the claws had gripped too tight.
I stayed there, rubbing away, for longer than strictly necessary; anything to avoid my thoughts.
I’d never been this far into his territory before.
Coming within sight of the fog—let alone entering it—was suicide.
Nobody knew what spawned it. Nobody knew what effects it caused when inhaled; nobody had ever come back alive. And here I was, filling my lungs over and over!
A sound broke through my hyperventilation.
Distant hoofbeats, growing closer and louder, until a head broke through the fog.
Another construct, equine this time, with a body of interlocking driftwood and glowing eyes that cast the fog in green.
It clattered to a halt, a steed from a nightmare, and I swayed on my feet in acceptance of my doom.
Nothing happened.
Nothing continued to happen, until I broke. “Did you want me to, uh, ride you?” I asked, evaluating the construct. While I stood a good six feet, it was the height of a war-unicorn. “You’re too big. Could you bend down or something. Please?”
It didn’t move. With some reservation, I approached, pressing my palm flat against its shoulder. It was smooth wood, without any of the warmth or reactivity that would signal life.
“How do I . . .” Usually I had a block, or a convenient stable boy with cupped hands.
Tentatively, I dug my fingers into the crevices between its woven branches, then with more confidence at its continued tolerance, I hoisted myself up, up, only to overshoot and half fall down its other side.
I’d effectively beached myself across its back. “Shit, hang on, WAIT!”
The construct creaked into motion. I groped at its driftwood ribcage, hooking a foot around its gut so as not to slide off the trotting creature in either direction.
Blood rushed to my head, the wood rubbing against my bare chest. “Come on, if I die it’s bad for Merulo.
This has far too much potential for bodily harm. Please!”
I bounced, griped, and chafed as the mulch of hooves on grass became the clatter of wood against stone. After an eternity (which felt more and more like divine punishment), the construct slowed to a halt.
I unclenched my fingers from the wood, allowing myself to groan at their stiffness, then pushed backward, sliding down the construct to fall ass-first onto the cobblestones. The blow drove a sick blossom of pain up my tailbone. “Ahhhhhhhh!” I exclaimed, and it helped a little.
Stepping over me with surprising delicacy, the construct clopped away, disappearing into the fog.
“Merulo?” I called, sitting huddled in the featureless space.
Slowly, as though sucked in by a giant breath, the fog pulled back to reveal my location.
From the escarpment before me rose a castle.
Instinctively, I gasped—though my reaction came too early, as the sight was far less awe-inspiring than I’d hoped.
The mad sorcerer’s castle was scarcely larger than a lord’s manor house. Moss blotched its ugly stonework, gashed through by thin windows. If placed beside the castle I’d served in as a squire, it would’ve collapsed from embarrassment.
Occupied with my criticism, I nearly missed the constructs. Pinpricks of green light betrayed their presence first. As my eyes adjusted, I saw dozens of unnatural bodies clinging to the walls and battlements, crawling over one another like maggots on a carcass.
I reached for a sword I didn’t have.
“And who might you be?” came a haughty voice.
My knee nearly gave as I leaped to my feet. Cursing, I limped around to face the man. “Ah, Cameron! I’m Cameron Vaillancourt. Sir Cameron actually, being a knight and all, except I’ve probably been excommunicated on account of not dying.”
This unspectacular man couldn’t possibly be Merulo.
He stood about my height, but thin and bent, greasy black hair falling in curtains around scooped cheekbones and white flesh.
From the frown lines carved into his brow, he was clearly my superior in age, but inferior in most other respects.
A thorough victim of famine and poor hygiene.
“Your robe looks nice. Is that tailored?” I asked, complimenting what I could. It did fit well, a richly dyed black that provided a suitable backdrop for his threatening leer. One of the man’s eyes gleamed oddly. I realized, squinting, that it was stone.
When he didn’t answer, I continued, “Is Merulo around? Do you reckon you could call him?”
“I am Merulo.” With a scowl, he looked me up and down, pointedly evaluating.
Perhaps taking in my physique, toned from years of swinging a sword.
Or possibly my erect nipples, brought to attention by the recent cold and friction.
“I suppose you think very highly of yourself.” His voice held nothing but contempt.
“Absolutely not, I am a worm!” I protested, attempting a military posture. Somehow, he looked even angrier. Should I be addressing the sorcerer by a certain title? “Er, do you prefer ‘sir’ or ‘my lord’?”
“Shut up.” Merulo looked distracted, his inhuman eye flashing.
“Okay,” I said. Then, after a pause, “My lord.”
The thin man muttered, his eye flickering, and his attention diverted from me completely. Occasionally, one of his constructs would swing to glare at me—and the sorcerer would twitch his head in an echo of the movement, his stone eye flaring to mirror the construct’s sickly green.
We’d all wondered at how his constructs took instruction, even shouting in argument over it on many a drunken night.
Now, I watched as the mystery became unmysterious, and felt nothing but annoyed.
This was top-shelf intelligence! He had a magic rock eye!
And the people who’d most like to know would congratulate me for the discovery, pat me on the back, then push a sword through my throat.
Waiting for the sorcerer’s scrutiny to return to me, I stood at straight-backed attention for as long as I could manage. Which, as it turned out, was about four minutes, after which I gave up and sat on the cobblestones.
Merulo glanced at me sharply, though he didn’t cease his muttering or flashing.
“I’m injured,” I explained, pointing to my leg. “But take your time.”
With the sorcerer attending to his business, I held an internal strategy meeting.
The man obviously lived a lonely, ill-cared-for life.
Certainly, he couldn’t have had his body touched in God knows how long—could I work that angle?
He’d taken a nice long look at me, and I wouldn’t mind, if it meant a stay to my execution.
And though the Church enforced a certain traditionalism, I couldn’t imagine a mad sorcerer would feel himself constrained.
While I scratched my head, considering, the sorcerer turned his hateful eyes on me, flicked his fingers, uttered something foul, and everything turned to black.