Alium, page 29
“It was eaten by a sea monster,” he began, pronouncing the word ‘monster’ very casually, as if it were perfectly quotidian. “I was saved by a Flosleao woman, and when I woke up on the beach she’d rooted this plant in my wound. It used to be a little patch, then a sprout, and now it’s grown so much.” The extremity seemed to drink even more vigorously as he spoke of its evolution.
Byron did not at all seem surprised by the mention of the Flosleao, tearing off another chunk of black meat, chewing like an animal. Videre appeared around the bend, the long shag of her lupine jowls boltered in the black blood of her dinner. Lapping delicately from the stream, she wound her body up to sleep on the opposite bank looking like a huge white boulder.
“It makes a fine shield,” said the mercenary swallowing, stowing the stringy meat in his pack. Leaning back against the mountain, crossing his arms, and shutting his eye, it seemed at first that he was finished speaking. “Learn to use it.”
Byron scowled as he delivered this sliver of advice, but Ogwold had come to believe this was merely a standard expression, and he took it even as a form of acknowledgement considering the man had not uttered so many words in his presence since the night they had met. Whatever the mercenary figured to scowl at must at least be concerning to him. And Ogwold knew—and took very seriously himself—the sort of work Byron suggested, for Nubes had advised him similarly, and so had the words of Autlos-lo spoke of some mental or spiritual union between his being and her gift. Learn indeed, he thought, suddenly quite upset with himself for all but ignoring the plant these past twelve days. As the mercenary brooded in silence against the rock, Ogwold opened his heart and thoughts to his arm drinking in the flow of the stream, feeling how the sinews of each root so finely attuned themselves to that medium.
“Love and light,” he recited, “it needs in teaching you to speak.” He breathed slowly, deeply, envisioning, now truly feeling the water as it spilled cold and vital into his vegetable pores, absorbing the sinking sun through its healing hues refracted in the sparkling surface. “Deep into the blood and bones,” he continued, “now reach its careful roots.” He imagined that the plant had sent its fibres all through his body now, that—like Nubes had said—they worked within his heart and brain.
No images came, nor words, but there was a slow feeling, a gradual, noble, long-reaching flow of energy that resonated with him. There was synthesis here. He felt it in his teeth and nails, in his hair, and in his veins and the striations of his muscles. With each thump of his great heart came as well the softest gesture towards water and life, but also back into his own being from that strange green arm, so subtly as the tree grows from shade into light and turns up its boughs in supplication. There were no words to describe it, because describing it would be to put words to the sensation of being alive, and that was what it was: life. He was the plant, and the plant was Ogwold, and so—together—they drank.
“Whose verse?” Byron spoke softly for the hardness of his countenance.
When Ogwold turned and opened his eyes, even in that statuesque grimace the mercenary’s gaze seemed open to him, as though some invisible wall had lowered, but only over that emerald irid. “My mother’s,” said Ogwold.
Byron nodded, leaned his head against the rock, closing his eye. “There is more?”
Ogwold smiled, thinking his exuberance would be missed, but that one eye shot open once more, scanned his naked appreciation of its interest, closed off.
“I’d like to hear the rest,” said Byron. “Another time.” Then he was silent.
Ogre and plant drifted off to sleep, their thoughts lacing together like networks of root and nerve down through his hand into the stream, below the bed of water, down into the rocks, deep into the mountainside and out into the bones of Altum as Incipi and Amorcem, the Moons of Creation and Love, opened their slight silver and small dun awarenesses, subtle yet profound to any who saw them, and the stars plucked up their points.
*
Ogwold woke much earlier than usual the next day, just as Caelare’s palace sent up its first sheets of dawn, as if the plant had soaked up a quality of sleep far more vital than was necessary for your typical Nogofod. He sat up and drew the green limb from the water, its vast root systems sliding up out of their tunnels and coalescing into fingers. The flesh was now so tight and strong like stone, yet flexible and quick as his will to move it. He clenched his fist and flexed the steely muscles welling with strength, and the day’s journey suddenly seemed deeply appealing to him.
Byron came walking around the bend. It was strange to find him moved from his usual seated and impatient position of dark waiting. The mercenary was covered in sweat and breathing heavily, but nodded stoically as ever to Ogwold. Videre had already left, but they saw her immense paw prints in the dusty trail. The road led them down across the stream and along a bleeding meander of switchbacks into a valley full of broken rock and massive boulders. All around them unknown mountains rose, hunching together their broad shoulders, scaled with crags and outfitted in pockets of forest. Byron stopped to scan the wooden, interlocking sign post that waited for them at the foot of the slope.
Feeling so inspired not only by the seemingly boundless energy that coursed from his arm into every extremest nerve, but also by the conversation of the evening, Ogwold spoke up. “How do you know we can reach Zenidow?”
“Because others have,” was the toneless reply.
“I’ve heard so too, but they must have been quite savvy.”
Byron swung his eye back and over the ogre, turned and began walking. “It will be a perilous journey.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I told you—I am looking for a sorcerer. He seeks the highest mountain.” As he spoke, Byron’s hand reached as if by nature for the hilt of his sword. But even as it seemed he would draw the weapon, his hand fell to his side and those bladed strides continued. “And you?”
“I really don’t know. But it has something to do with this…” As if summoned, the sphere—which had been gliding along contentedly—came round Ogwold’s side and rose to float between them. It orbited his head once, and then Byron’s, resting near his shoulder. “Oh, it likes you too!”
Byron scowling flicked the sphere away like an annoying insect. It buzzed dizzily off and fell into orbit around Ogwold again. “What is it?”
“I’ve no idea, but it wants to go to Zenidow and I’m supposed to go with it. An old wizard gave it to me.”
Byron had no reply, continuing on up the road as if his question had been purely perfunctory. Ogwold followed sheepishly, though he did not feel so denied as he’d expected to find himself in continuing to speak with the man. Closed off and prickly as he was, there seemed nothing malevolent in the manner of Byron, and so Ogwold began to feel slowly more comfortable with his companion, though it was difficult as ever to think that the man had slain two nameless knights without hesitation.
By dusk they had crossed the valley by a well made road. The rocky terrain fell away, and now they entered upon a moist, grassy forest full of life. Birds chattered everywhere. Here they camped among the sloping roots of their next ascent. In the morning Ogwold woke snuggled into a downy mass of grass and loam. His arm had planted itself and grown perceptibly brighter, more hale and sturdy like a green tree. The adventure of its roots was vast, and in some places about the ogre’s nest great humps and nodules knotted together. He knew that freeing himself would not be a matter of uprooting the plant physically, but willing it naturally to return to the air, and so it did, slinking smoothly back into the likeness of limbhood. He flexed the green fingers. There were ten of them! But like streams of water covering one to the other each paired off, twining together, and there were five normal enough digits once more.
With this business of extricating himself from the ground finished, he realized that again it was quite early, and that he had again slept wonderfully well. He wandered towards the place where Byron had sat the night through in typical upright fashion, against an old tree. As expected, Ogwold was alone among the whispering dark trees. A man like that simply does not sleep, he thought, wandering through the tall spiny trees looking for the mercenary, eager to see what was his business before sunrise. It was some time before he came upon the man at last in a small clearing lit faintly in the dark dawn.
There he stood in a wide stance, one leg pointed back almost directly opposite his countenance of utmost focus, the other bent before him low and square over the ball of his foot. Sweat poured from his grim brow, and he heaved with breath. He held his sword out before him level with the grass, both hands gripping the hilt, one elbow cocked to his low ear. Slowly the weapon rose high above his head like a metal steeple. Then he swung the length of it powerfully down, the grass rippling as it instantly paused, suddenly and perfectly parallel with the ground once more. A rush of wind blew through the clearing. The man exhaled as in great exhaustion, tore air back into his nostrils grunting.
Ogwold had not seen much of Byron’s sword, apart from its use in Occultash; but then it had been dark and the rain had made all things bleary to the eyes. Now in the sun unsheathed he realized how huge the thing was. It was far more proportional to Nogofod hands than Novare. The blade of the weapon was certainly no masterpiece, and appeared incredibly thick and heavy. It looked, in fact, much like the blade of his father, though smaller. But crude as the weapon was, in Byron’s hand it seemed a light and deadly force.
The ogre stood watching for some time, unsure if he was noticed. The mercenary must have completed fifty such maximum effort swings before Ogwold spoke up. “What are you doing?”
The man turned, and seamlessly sheathed the blade along his back. “Training.”
“To fight the wind?”
Byron’s complexion did not change. “Let’s continue. I have waited for you.”
“Are you sure you can hike as long today? You slew those guards with far less effort than you’ve put in this morning.” Now the ogre was hardly trying to hold back his enthusiasm, but it did not seem to repel the mercenary any more than normal conversation.
Byron shut his eye disdainfully. “This is my practice.”
“Then you are terribly strong,” said Ogwold. “I can hardly keep up with you, yet you expend more energy in one morning than I do in a day!”
“Doubtful.”
Wind rushed through the trees, and a black hawk winged from a high branch. The first pale rays of sun slipped along its glossy feathers as it transcended the canopy.
“I can’t stop thinking about that night,” said Ogwold, watching it go. “I would have surely perished if you had not come. And, I am forever grateful, will do whatever I can to repay you, but I see it all in the worst way. Those Novare—what lives had they? The blood. The speed of death. The cruel ugliness of finality. I could never participate in something like that. You kill as though it is second nature. And here you are practising to kill! You must enjoy it.”
Byron crossed his arms, green orb reopening in his scarred visage. “You are a fool to seek Zenidow without a means of defence. Our path can only be more fell, especially if you go with me.” Ogwold was silent, staring at the grass. The mercenary sighed, looked down, then up into the grey sky latticed with dark branches. “You wish to repay me?”
“Yes, sir,” said Ogwold, stunned.
“Call me by name,” Byron spat into the grass. “I concede that it is well to have companions on this road. But as much as I love a fight, it would be far easier if I didn’t need to worry about you.”
“You worry about me?”
The mercenary stared back, a muscle in his face twitching. “I never worry. But I agreed to your company. A good soldier gives a good word.” Byron looked away as though the sincerity of the listening ogre was far too much to bear. “If you can rise so early, then you can train without hindering our progress. Let it be your payment. Already you are a formidable force to men. I’ll teach you to use that force. Here is my first advice. Beautiful as it is, leave your sword where it lies, and use that arm of yours in battle.”
Ogwold held up his green hand awkwardly, so moved by the unprecedented stream of words as it came from the mercenary’s narrow mouth. “I doubt this plant has the power to harm,” he said. “It protected me from their spears, but it is a kindly thing. I feel what it feels, you know. It wants soil and drinks light and water. It hasn’t violence in it; and neither do I, come to think of it.”
“Come, raise it against me!” Byron drew his sword with a ring of metal, and its dull length was dark in the sun. “Prove yourself, ogre!” The mercenary spoke loudly and with a fire that seemed to roar from nowhere.
Ogwold’s heart stirred with respect for the man. Had that sense of veneration come, he wondered, from the rain-wet night in Occultash, or was it something else? Gathering the honour he felt under the man’s rough attention, he held out his arm and drew his fingers together into a tight fist. Feelings of toughness and of strength and sharp edges grew in his chest and bloomed through his bones as he pictured his father’s blade unsheathed.
“Ha!” Byron shouted, and with a loud thunk he sank his bare blade into the ogre’s arm.
“Caelare! What did you… but…” The blade had barely embedded in the strange plant-flesh. Only an edgeless throb followed the impact. Even as the metal withdrew, the green matter knitted quickly together and was whole. Fastened and hard the substance of the thing seemed healthier and more vigorous than ever before.
“See. It is tougher than you know. Now sharpen it!”
“What if you had cut it off!”
“Maybe I will if you don’t ready yourself.”
Ogwold had not seen Byron so agitated before, even when he was battling the knights of Occultash. Inspired to earn the man’s trust, he focused all his thoughts upon the green flesh and the roots within his body and mind, willing a vision of the plant morphing and changing, the way it had when it grew suddenly in the presence of the sphere, the way he sensed its reaching into the water and rock of the world to drink, the way his fingers had so smoothly paired from ten into five. As naturally as gooseflesh forms on the chilled skin, a sharp edge rippled from elbow to wrist, now reared up from the skin extending parallel to the forearm in a long, lean, slender shoot, sharply pointed. When Ogwold opened his eyes he saw that all of his arm from elbow beyond had transformed into a curved, rich green blade near the size of Byron’s own greatsword.
“Now attack,” said Byron, and he smiled. It was the first that he had made an expression involving any features other than his green eye, and Ogwold took to it with vigour. He swung the plant-blade out and down with a shout, though he quite held back for fear of hurting the man. Scoffing, Byron parried easily, and at such an angle that his attacker was flung by his own momentum face-first into the grass while the mercenary stepped casually aside. The ogre sprawled there wheezing, looking quite ridiculous for all his massive size.
“That was pathetic,” said Byron.
Ogwold grinned and slowly staggered onto his feet. He was covered in sod and dirt but his big flat teeth seemed all the whiter. Then he really swung, throwing his new weapon up, down, side to side, and each time as Byron effortlessly turned the blow away he returned with even greater force, thinking that it might as well be impossible to strike the man. Soon he was swinging nearly as hard as he was able, which for even a feeble Nogofod was enough to kill a man on impact. The clanging noises which rang from the subtle economy of Byron’s parries shook the wood and sent the birds from their trees to fly about restlessly. He guided each strike away with ease, smiling only when the ferocity behind them had at least reached a degree of mortal danger. Battle was his place, and now between the ogre and the man a kind of silent communion took form.
Ogwold was forced to stop from exhaustion, and he sat heavily in the grass panting. “You are incredibly skilled!” he said. “I could never hit you.”
“Your blows are mighty. If you were to strike me I would surely die. But you overextend yourself. Stay your ground and let your opponent come to you. I don’t doubt you will be a tough match for even a knight. Though, we may encounter stranger folk in these mountains. The best way to learn is from fighting.” Byron sheathed his sword, complexion already beginning to stiffen as if to compensate for having spoken so many words in one breath.
A silence fell between them, and in that peace Videre appeared softly from the shade. She rubbed against Ogwold’s head; he flopped back supine, looking into the sky, then her face as she glowered over him, mewing and dragging her rough tongue along his cheek. Reaching up to scratch her great neck, he realized that his arm had returned to a more presentable shape as naturally as he’d willed it to move.
*
Before noon they pushed out from the rocky forest and up onto a slow grade exposed to the chill wind. The pale sun spun high, and cast the long shadows of mountains as it carried on. It was a grey day, the grass mud-thick and spongy as they tramped. They reached the apex of a great, bald wold, and began their descent along its stone-pocked back as purpling night fell around them. At the dusky foot of the slope, old feathery glaucous trees rose up and took them in with sweeping arms. Densely leaved, long-reaching branches enshrined a dry nook, the crepitating of whose carpet only ceased when all had settled into their positions of slumber. Delicate clusterings of light blue snakes coiled about the roots of this tree, and though they slithered away when first the big people arrived, later, when Ogwold awoke, they were snuggled up against his warm body.
Only the most rare shreds of dawn light shimmered on the dewy grass or flared on the fine edges of the utmost boughs. His green arm had snuck deep into the soil unfolding as an invisible brain beneath the imbricating layers of leaves, but the business of withdrawing those far-reaching tendrils one to the other, now up to the world of light and air was even easier than before; as easy, really, as raising either arm. Looking down at the limb formed anew, its rough yet tender palm so touched with the Nogofod form, Ogwold breathed in the dreams and discoveries of the night which came to him from below the ground. Not only had it become easier to speak with his new companion, but as well they began at last to share their feelings, if only as in a pre-linguistic phantasmagoria of impressions.
