Livid Steel, Page 3

  Chapter 3

 

  Back in the inn, Zanther falls onto the bed, promptly passing out from a fifty-fifty mix of exhaustion and overindulgence. He isn’t sure whether he’s been sleeping for a few ticks or a few bellchimes before he finds himself wide awake and staring at a woman in white pajamas standing at the foot of his bed.

  “Oh..I must still be dreaming,” he says to himself, squinting at the woman. “I know you...”

  “Of course you do,” she says softly, “I wouldn’t travel all this way just to visit a stranger.”

  Her skin glows in the moonlight coming in through the windows. She climbs onto the bed and positions herself directly on top of Zanther. He can feel her sweet breath on his face as she lowers her lips to his.

  The kiss is brief, but Zanther regains his bearings and flails his arms violently, only to find them empty. He sits upright, creaking the old bed’s rusty springs, looking around to discover there is nobody else in the room. He laughs to himself.

  “Novanostrum would be bonked if he knew I had a dirty dream about his girlfriend.”

  He lies beneath the threadbare sheets, thinking back to the last time he saw Risma, to their misadventure in Darrinia when she pushed Novanostrum, Madra, and himself through that portal and out of the reach of a horde of agitated Darrinian soldiers. He tries to imagine what happens to her after the portal closes and she finds herself surrounded by vicious, well-armed thugs.

  He pictures her begging them for mercy, but for some reason the image doesn’t make sense.

  Zanther shudders, still trying to shake the dream of Risma from his mind. He rubs his lips, touching what feels like the waxy, slimy residue of lipstick. He blinks a few times in disbelief.

  “You’ve got to pull it together, man. You’ve been through too much to start cracking up now.”

 

  “I won’t be staying long,” Varello says in between bites of yafbeest.

  Madra nods, taking a sip of purpleberry wine.

  “I just need a small, quiet room for a day or two so I can decipher this,” he says, pulling the clothpaper from his pocket and spreading it out on the table. Madra looks it over.

  “Is that one of the Lost Prophecies?” she asks.

  “Indeed it is. Very astute observation. How did you come to know about them?”

  “As a queen, it’s my business to know things. For example, I could tell you that Zanther has returned to Upper Kleighton and is currently making his way here from Dahlworth in order to deliver me a message, though he’s certainly taking his sweet time for some unfathomable reason. I could also tell you that Novanostrum was last spotted a few weeks ago outside Zweissergrund, searching for some magickal trinket or another.”

  “Amazing,” Varello agrees, “what color undershorts am I wearing?”

  “Trick question,” Madra responds, “you’re not wearing any.”

  “Impressive,” he says, nodding.

  Morning comes, and Zanther finishes his morning rituals, preparing to return to his journey. He reaches for his longknife, and the hilt burns his hand. It falls to the floor, bouncing off the wood with a clang. Zanther, his hand throbbing, bends over to inspect the weapon.

  “What in the High Hell is going on, I wonder?” he wonders.

  The longknife does not, in fact, appear to be burning. He removes the pillowcase from one of the pillows on the bed and wraps it around his hand, and makes another attempt to pick up the weapon. The heat is transmitted directly through the fabric and this time, it burns his entire forearm, and again he drops the weapon.

  “This simply won’t do,” he says to himself.

  Through an awkward series of contortions, he manages to get his sheathed longknife onto his back, only to feel the intense heat penetrating through to his skin. He immediately unbuckles the strap holding the sheath in place, burning his fingers on the buckle in the process.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on here!” he protests, frustrated.

  Feeling a throbbing in his hip, he reaches for his coinpouch to discover that the dodeckas inside are also scalding him.

  “It’s the metal!” he says, again, to nobody. He walks over to the door and nervously touches the doorknob, singeing his fingertip.

  “This could be a problem.”

  Novanostrum, through much exertion, finds himself standing on the lip of the volcano. The red-hot magma forms a small lake inside the indentation at the top of the snow-covered mountain. The hot liquid bubbles and bursts and steams, and in the middle of the molten mire he spies a small wooden shack sitting atop a tiny island.

  “Aha!” he says to himself, “The magma must be an illusion, or the wooden shack would have burst into flame long ago.”

  But the sweat on his brow is real enough, so he decides to test his theory. He picks up a chunk of snow and hurls it into the magma. It disappears in a puff.

  “Okay, so the magma is real enough. But I’m a world-class wizard, so this shouldn’t be a big deal for me.”

  Novanostrum spots a large, smooth boulder perched on the lip of the lava, and he raises his staff and uproots it from the ground, levitating it in front of him to function as a raft. He steps onto it and rides it toward the island. He only gets a few man-lengths away from the shore before another obstacle impedes his progress: a dragon with millipede-like segments rises from the magma, towering above Novanostrum.

  “I probably don’t need to tell you this,” it bellows, “but it’s my job to ensure you don’t make it to the shack.”

  “Kinda figured that. So do I have to slay you, or what?”

  “As if you could. No, you must answer me these riddles three.”

  “Three riddles?”

  “Actually, just one riddle. But it doesn’t sound as imposing if I ask you to ‘answer me this riddle one,’ so I said ‘three’ just now.”

  “Yeah, I can see how that would sound awkward,” Novanostrum says, nodding in agreement. “Well, let’s have it. What’s the riddle?”

  The millipede-dragon clears his throat, and continues, “There’s a river. And there are seven wolves, six maidens, and two boats which will each carry two riders across the rivers. Also, there’s an elephant who counts as two riders and will crush the wolves if he is left with an even number of wolves. If the wolves outnumber the maidens on either side of the river, they will eat them. But that’s not all, one of the maidens is also a wolf in disguise. How can all of the real maidens get across safely in three trips without allowing any wolves to be crushed?”

  Novanostrum strokes his chin. “I think I’ve heard a variation of this once. Give me a tick to think it over.”

  The wizard pauses, deep in thought. “Ah, I’ve got it!”

  He raises his staff and a mighty thunderbolt instantly shoots from the clouds, vaporizing the dragon.

  Novanostrum smiles. “I’ve always loved riddles.”

  He rides the boulder to the island and disembarks. He opens the door to the tiny shack to find a wooden bench with a hole in it and a foul smell emanating from inside.

  “An outhouse,” he observes.

  He rolls up his sleeve and reaches inside the hole and feels around. His fingers close around a smooth object, which he pulls out and inspects. In his hand he holds a small golden sphere covered in what he hopes is mud. Novanostrum produces a handkerchief from his other sleeve and wipes the object clean. It’s a miniature globe representing the planet in perfect detail. He places the magickal orb inside his sleeve and mounts the boulder for his return trip.

  Zanther dangles his money pouch from its pull-string and drops it on the counter. The carpenter turns his head at an angle, trying to wrap his head around his customer’s strange mannerisms.

  “I need you to craft me a longknife,” Zanther says.

  “You must have come here in error,” the carpenter says, “the blacksmith’s shop is on the next street.”

  “It’s no error,” Zanther continues, “I need a wooden longknife. I drew up a schema
tic of how I want it to look.”

  Zanther produces a drawing, showing twenty thumbwidths of hilt and a blade six handspans long and one handspan wide curving up to a point at the top.

  “I realize this is an unusual request that will require some effort, but I’d really like to have this project finished by the end of the day.”

  The carpenter grimaces. “The end of the day, I don’t know if it’s...”

  Zanther flicks the money pouch with his finger, and winces. “If you can make this happen, you can have the whole thing.”

  The woodsmith empties the contents of the pouch onto the counter, counting the dodeckas. “You’re serious? While I’m certainly out to make a profit, this is probably twice as much as I could charge you in good conscience.”

  “Well, I know it’s a rush-job and, uh, one more thing--” Zanther says, lowering his voice.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d appreciate if you could forget you’ve ever seen my face, once our business is complete.”

  The carpenter smiles. “Certainly.”

 

  Though he had hoped to make his way back to Zweissergrund before nightfall, Novanostrum finds himself exhausted and behind schedule, with slivers of the moons already rising. He looks around the mountain path for a suitable place to spend the night and spots a cave in the distance.

  He pops his head inside, an orb of light manifesting at the top of his staff. He looks around the cave and finds it empty. There are no tracks by the mouth of the cave, nor are there any inside, so Novanostrum deems the place deserted and begins the process of setting up camp for the night.

  After starting a fire and polishing off a pair of snow rabbits he’d managed to hunt earlier, Novanostrum curls up in a corner and prepares to rest. The shadows dance on the walls of the cave, animated by the constantly shifting light of the fire, and Novanostrum soon drifts off.

  He awakens to the sound of footsteps and finds the mood of the cave has changed. The fire is green, and the edges of his reality have a certain fuzzy quality. The source of the footsteps is a woman; she is not a stranger.

  “Risma!” Novanostrum shouts.

  She approaches him, grinning. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I searched far and wide for you,” Novanostrum says, groggily.

  “I know,” she says, crouching down next to him and putting her hand on his face.

  They kiss, and the fire is warm. Rather than question the nature of his dream, Novanostrum succumbs to the music of her body and tries to learn how to manipulate her strings. He manages to strike the chord they are both seeking, and before long the song is over and they fall into a contented slumber.

 

  Varello sits at a stout table in a reference room connected to the castle library. Empty plates and glasses are piled at one end of the table, while the other end of the table contains a variety of books, some open, some with bookmarks tucked inside. All over the table are notes, scribbles on scraps; the frantic effluvium of feverish study.

  Finally, Varello looks at the product of his efforts, checking the glyphs on the clothpaper against those in his notes and against his finished translation, which reads as follows:

  When the goddess Prismarissa shall be loosed upon mankind

  She shall seek a worthy partner and the two shall be aligned

  Death, disaster, plague, and panic shall prevail across the lands

  Should a child of their union dare to clap its tiny hands

  He reads it aloud to himself a few times, pleased with the fruits of his efforts. He looks up and notices that Madra has silently entered the room and is waiting patiently for him to take notice of her.

  “It doesn’t actually seem to be a prophecy at all,” he says, “perhaps it is just part of an ancient poem.”

  “It’s nice,” she says.