Madrenga, page 8
“Collection?” Madrenga echoed before he could catch himself.
“Yes.” Bone and greasy sinew-strewn bird flesh gestured toward the hallway from which the young intruder had emerged. “You saw some of my artwork, some of my fine furniture?”
“I did. Very nice things. All the more reason why you don’t need to hold one girl against her will.”
“But my boy, where is the pleasure in not holding them against their will? Surely you are not so young and naïve to speak of something like love? The collection I speak of is far more valuable to me precisely because it does not consist of such common objects as pictures and sculptures, gold and silver. Any dullard with money or inheritance can accumulate such things. Whereas I have applied myself to the mastery of certain arts known only to a few.”
Madrenga tensed. “I was not told you were a necromancer.”
“Because I am not. I am merely a practitioner of a single simple art which I have studied long and hard so that I might accumulate my collection.” Kakran-mul smiled, and it reminded Madrenga of some of the groping hands he had avoided as a child. “Gold, silver—these are not the measure of a man. That must be valued in terms of what he has learned.” With a sigh he rose from his seat a second time. On this occasion he chose to forgo the remnants of his meal. Instead of reaching for food, he raised a knife. Though the blade was intended for dissecting a roast and not a visitor, Madrenga was immediately on guard.
But the merchant was not looking in his direction, far less threatening him with the comparatively insignificant blade. Having turned to face the far wall, he began to chant. This would have been more intimidating, Madrenga decided, had Kakran-mul been a larger man, with a deeper voice.
His eyes widened as the carved wooden panels that lined the far side of the dining hall swung open. They grew wider still as what lay behind them began to emerge. Still holding the knife high like the wand it was not, the merchant looked back at his youthful visitor and offered up a twisted grin.
“Behold, transgressor of a quiet meal, my cabinet of curiosities!”
Collection of horrors was more like it, a shocked Madrenga thought. Where the merchant had gathered, or purchased, or stolen the fantastical mélange of monstrosities the youth could not imagine. Each was different from its neighbor, each plucked whole and original from a separate nightmare.
As they came shambling around the dining table and toward the tall intruder Madrenga found himself unable to move. Dread had rooted him to the spot. At carnival time in Harup-taw-shet he and his fellow street urchins had seen one or two such abominations: poor misshapen beings consigned to a life of being gawked at with revulsion and disgust by those who paid to gape at such sights. While his friends had laughed and pointed and made rude noises in tandem with the rest of the crowd, Madrenga had found them more deserving of pity than contempt.
Unlike them, however, the atrocities that had begun to file around the table and lurch toward him were heavily armed. The merchant’s “curiosities” carried war-axes and swords, clubs and maces. They made sounds that were not words but nonetheless conveyed their intent. Sitting back down in his seat, a contemptuous Kakran-mul resumed his interrupted meal as though nothing untoward was amiss. This was not the first time he had unleashed his collection on someone who displeased him, and he knew well the preordained outcome.
Fight! a voice shouted in Madrenga’s head. Draw your sword—fight! Though he heard the voice and recognized its import and urgency, Madrenga remained paralyzed. Taller, stronger, better equipped than had been the adolescent who had left Harup-taw-shet, inside his head he was still the slender inexperienced youth whom Counselor Natoum had plucked from the streets of the city. When threatened in Hamuldar he had reflexively defended himself, but he still did not know how he had managed the feat. Besides, it had consisted of little more than an instinctive reaction to a single opponent. Now he found himself confronted by more than a dozen foes armed and inhuman.
A stout dark green figure with a single vertical eye where its nose should have been raised a club that ended in an iron square large enough to crush a man’s skull. As it advanced toward Madrenga with the intention of doing exactly that, something big, black, and snarling shot past the youth’s shoulder as if flung from a catapult. More leonine than canine, Bit’s roar echoed through the room as he slammed both jaws shut on the green assailant’s arm, twisted with the weight of his whole body, and wrenched the limb free. Puzzled by the sudden loss of a major appendage, its owner eyed the vacant socket in confusion. Madrenga’s shock was compounded as he stared: there was no blood.
Kakran-mul had looked up and was grinning. “Nice dog you have there, but he can’t kill any of my collection. Neither can you. You see, they’re already dead, and become animated only when I demand it of them. Why not surrender sensibly to the inevitable? It will go easier on you.” He gestured with his knife. “And on your dog.”
Responding to Bit’s intervention, a trio of lumbering, rotting simian shapes had formed a semi-circle in front of the dog and were backing him into a corner. The snarling canine still had the green monster’s dismembered arm clamped tight in his jaws. Two of the advancing ape-like creatures were raising clubs not unlike the one wielded by the now one-armed monstrosity confronting Madrenga. One chunk of cold iron was lined with short, thick spikes.
“Bit!” His four-legged friend was in trouble: that broke the spell, or paralysis, or whatever emotional lock had been holding Madrenga back. Drawing his sword, he rushed toward his dog. As he did so, the one-armed green thing brought its battleaxe around in a sweeping arc, the blade aimed at the intruder’s neck. Without thinking, Madrenga struck out blindly in defense with his sword. The blade cut clean through the axe’s thick ironwood handle, sending the axe-head flying wildly. It was stopped by the chest of a slavering frog-thing that had chosen an inopportune moment to charge the tall youth. As the flying axe-head struck it in the upper portion of its body, the frog-beast was knocked backward. The head of the mace it was swinging went wild and struck a bat-eared lump of half-formed yellowish protoplasm on the side of its head. Green-thing, frog-beast, and lump all went down more or less simultaneously.
The remainder of his meal now forgotten, a suddenly troubled Kakran-mul rose from where he had been sitting.
True to the merchant’s description of his collection, none of the heavily armed things shed blood when they were cut, cleaved, lopped, or otherwise battered by Madrenga’s whirling sword. As long as they remained on their feet or pseudopods they continued to come at him. The dining chamber was filled with flying limbs and other body parts as an anxious Madrenga, hardly aware of the carnage he was wreaking, hacked his way toward his cornered pet. Dead they might already be, or undead while functioning under the merchant’s inimical influence, but they were not invulnerable, and hardly immune to the youth’s raging blade.
Bit did not relax while his master worked. Leaping to and fro, bouncing off walls and ceiling to avoid the thrusts of swords and swings of clubs, the dog busied himself ripping off hands, arms, and heads. When such prominent targets grew in short supply, he switched to eviscerating one attacker after another. One barrel-shaped multi-tentacled gray amphibian found itself wrapped and bound in the intestines of another creature as Bit ran circles around the water-dweller with one end of the second monstrosity’s digestive system held firmly in his mouth.
Early in the clash, a party of armed men had appeared at the rear entrance to the dining hall. When a three-eyed decapitated head came flying at them they retreated as fast as they could back through the same doorway.
When finally the last grotesque skull had bounced off the dining table or one of the enclosing walls and the final body had been hewed beyond the capacity to deliver harm, Madrenga sheathed his sword and resumed his advance on the now distressed merchant. Stepping over severed limbs that still twitched and quivered in a horrible parody of life, he had to pause to kick the occasional grasping hand or tentacle out of the way. Disembodied heads snapped at his feet. Legs that had been divorced from their torsos tried to kick or trip him. He avoided all such attempts easily.
Kakran-mul did not wait for Madrenga to reach the table. Turning, he bolted for the rear door but only got a couple of steps. Abruptly reversing course, he began backing toward the table.
“Easy there now—nice dog. Nice doggy.”
The furious clash having energized yet another mysterious boost to Bit’s anatomy, the black dog’s muzzle was now at chest level with the merchant. Bit’s teeth had become scimitars and the embers that burned deep behind his eyes resembled the lakes of lava that surge and boil in the throats of volcanoes. Like steel petals, the spikes on his collar had grown until they were each longer than a man’s index finger. Formerly blunted at the ends, they were now sharp as cactus spines. The growl that emerged from deep within the broad black chest and muscular throat would have chilled the blood of the bravest man.
It was a description for which Kakran-mul was ill-suited. He was no coward, but confronted by the eyes and jaws of a creature that was pure fiend in canine form, the merchant’s legs grew weak. Momentarily distracted, Bit looked down and picked something off the floor. Still wrapped in rotting material, it was recognizable as the upper leg bone of one of his undead simian attackers. Jaws came together and the sound of thigh splintering filled the room.
“Bit loves bones.” Madrenga found he was not even breathing hard. Once again he marveled at the transformation that had come over him. Lowering his gaze, he looked meaningfully at the merchant’s nether extremities, comparing them to the bagatelle on which Bit was presently munching. Kakran-mul’s response was not what the youth expected.
“Come work for me.”
Madrenga blinked. The merchant might be a thug and a kidnapper and a bit of a coward, but he had presence of mind. “What?”
“Come work for me. Whatever those foggy old fools who hired you are paying, I will double it. Triple it! Never have I seen such a warrior who was at first so underestimated and who subsequently turned out to be so powerful!” He made a sweeping gesture. “You have destroyed my collection. I forgive you that.”
“You forgive …?” A gaping Madrenga marveled at the man’s audacity. “I am not a warrior,” he protested. “I am a courier.”
Kakran-mul did not hear him, so immersed was he in his anticipated glory to be. “I will take the cost of restoration and repair out of your salary, which I assure you will be commensurate with your skills. You and your dog will become my personal bodyguard. I can already see the faces of the guild chairmen when I walk into a meeting with the both of you at my side! They will grant any concessions I ask, lest in the course of the usual negotiations I lose my temper. Oh, it will be a marvelous thing to see!”
“No, it won’t.” Madrenga had had just about enough of this self-important, self-delusional popinjay. “Because in order to see, one must have eyes.”
As he moved nearer a newly nervous Kakran-mul tried to retreat. Once again, a warning growl stopped him in his tracks. Reaching out and down, for he was now considerably taller than the merchant, Madrenga put the thumbs of each hand over the man’s eyes while his fingers wrapped around the sides of the head.
“Tell me where the girl Elenacol is and I won’t crush your skull.”
Madrenga would never have dispatched even as vicious a creature as the merchant in so brutal a manner. Inside, he was still the boy from the warrens and alleys of Harup-taw-shet. But Kakran-mul didn’t know that. Just as the youth’s thumbs began to press inward, the merchant jerked violently away and fell back in his chair, gazing up in fear at the young intruder while doing his best to shrink back into the carved wood.
“All right, all right, enough! You can have the bitch!”
Relieved he had not been forced to carry out even a portion of his threat, Madrenga stepped back. “Where is she?”
“After all,” the merchant mumbled to himself, “what’s one girl more or less? Not worth this trouble, not worth it at all.” His attention having come to rest on the slaughter that now paved the floor of the dining hall, he seemed to have forgotten the young man who towered over him. “My beautiful curiosities! Look what you’ve done to them. Restoring them will cost …”
“Will cost you your head if you don’t shut up.” Madrenga’s patience was wearing thin. He was also concerned that the merchant’s mercenaries, who had fled earlier, might be regrouping their forces and stiffening their backbones for a fresh assault on the dining hall. “The girl. Where?”
“Hmm? Oh yes, the girl.” A distracted Kakran-mul raised a hand and pointed. “There.”
Frowning, the youth turned to look in the indicated direction. There was no one to be seen in the space the merchant had singled out. Only some furniture: a sideboard of hand-milled nortenwood flanked by a pair of matching chairs and a five-shelf bookcase filled with leather-bound tomes, small sculptures and other bric-a-brac. On the top shelf a pair of tall candlesticks in silver holders flanked half a dozen bottles of colored glass, each a different size and shape.
“Bit,” he said tightly.
Advancing on the seated merchant, the dog clamped his jaws around the man’s lower left leg. Bit did so gently, but with an understated implication that was almost as terrifying as an actual bite. Terror underscored Kakran-mul’s frantic response.
“She’s there, right there!” he stammered as he stared wide-eyed down at the pair of massive jaws that were attached to the canine at his feet. “The bottles contain spirits. Gantone whiskey, parmalla wine, essence of collay, essence of girl.…”
Striving to convey a sophistication he did not possess, a bemused Madrenga walked over to the shelves. “Fourth bottle?” he asked hesitantly.
Without taking his eyes off the dog-thing locked on his leg, Kakran-mul nodded violently. “Fourth bottle. You may get a small shock when you pick it up. The candlesticks are linked by a spell of force that restrains anything within the bottles. I take as much care to protect my liquor as I do my women.”
“Not your woman.” Madrenga reached for the bottle. He did indeed feel a tremor run through his hand as it interrupted the force that invisibly linked the two candlesticks, but it was little more than a tingle. The glass of which the bottle was blown was thick, red, and opaque. He stared at it, still not quite believing in what he might be holding. “She’s in this?”
“Yes, yes.” Kakran-mul swallowed hard. “Now call off your dog.”
“Bit—off.”
Misinterpreting the young man’s words, the merchant closed his eyes and went stiff, expecting the worst. But the dog released his leg, the slashing teeth tearing only the fabric of the pants as they withdrew. Turning away from the relieved trader, Bit rummaged through the piles of undead body parts until he found one that was suitable, or tasty, or both, and set to chewing. With each crack of bone a still uneasy Kakran-mul winced visibly.
“How do I get her out?”
“Just remove the stopper. It’s not spelled,” the merchant added as he saw Madrenga continue to hesitate. “None of my people would dare to touch any of the bottles. Thirsty though they might be they would fear opening the wrong one.”
What did the remaining two bottles contain, then? Madrenga wondered. The implication was unnerving. No matter. Reaching down, he twisted and tugged on the stopper of the red bottle until it came loose. Immediately a dark vapor began to emerge from the interior. Startled, he dropped the bottle and stepped back as the thick haze coiled upward in front of him.
“You lied to me! It is an evil apparition!”
With Bit having removed himself from his leg the merchant had regained some of his former bravado. “Kakran-mul of Mulereer does not lie. Deceive, trick, dupe or occasionally swindle perhaps, but he does not lie.” He shook his head regretfully. “To be bested by one so young and ignorant is shaming. My soul is flogged.”
Even Bit looked up from his chunk of half-gnawed shoulder as the swirling mist in front of his master continued to rise and condense. Emerging from the depths of the tepid fog, smaller extensions of itself began to twist and coil on their own. A rush of glitter flashed through the churning darkness as if it had been suddenly strewn with mica; a sparkling tornado seen in slow-motion.
Vaporish gloom gave way to a pale red that shifted and surged until it became the color and consistency of dark flesh. Out of the haze, hollows and protrusions slowly took shape and became familiar. Too familiar. Madrenga knew he should avert his eyes, but he could not. No man could.
A thousand tiny vapor trails hardened into waist-length strands of black hair. Profuse though they were, they were insufficient in density and location to appropriately cover the female form that now stood upright before the wonderstruck young man. He was not so stunned, however, that he failed to remember certain words that had been spoken to him by this woman’s mother.
“She’s just a wisp of a thing,” Elenna had told him. More true than he could have imagined, he now realized. He finally found his voice.
“You’re a smoke sprite!”
“I see that I have been drawn forth by a man of brilliance and penetrating insight.” Elenacol’s gaze narrowed as she appraised her rescuer. “Or a very large boy.”
Madrenga straightened to the maximum degree his unaccountably enhanced stature would allow. “I am a man!” In the presence of the remaining vapor he then sneezed, an action which somehow mitigated his declaration.
“We’ll see.” Looking down at herself, she spread her arms wide. “You are correct that I am a smoke sprite. I am also a naked smoke sprite.”
“What? Oh—I hadn’t noticed.”
“A liar as well.”
Hastily removing his outer shirt, he draped it carefully around the young woman’s shoulders. As she pulled it around her he reflected that he would now be cold when they ventured outside, but no matter the pre-dawn temperature he resolved not to admit to any discomfort.
“I’ve come to take you back to your parents. They’re worried about you.”
