Worldwielder, page 19
Seeing her anemic face, Ringo placed a firm hand on her shoulder. “Don't worry, kid. I won't let anything happen to you.”
She nodded, hoping he was as good as his word. When it came right down to it, she rather fancied her fingers. And her toes. And everything else about her body, for that matter. She pulled on the robe Ringo had given her, and together, they stepped from the bushes.
They climbed the hill leading to the castle in silence. The open gate of the fortress was flanked by guards, but they encountered no trouble entering. Within, they were greeted with a city about as clean as the darkest corner of a septic tank. Its streets, their surfaces a mixture of dirt and other unmentionable substances of an identical shade, bore the same scent as Luud, but a hundred times worse. Its buildings, dilapidated wooden structures that made the dwellings on Kagu look like mansions by comparison, were as soiled inside as out. Its inhabitants, all anorexic and hairless, wandered about like zombies in the midst of mid-life crises, dead-eyed and sullen. Some of them had to be women based on the contour of their bodies, but there was little else to distinguish the genders. All bore knives. All spoke in algid hisses. All were missing fingers, limbs, large chunks of flesh, or some combination thereof. Luud must have been a child prodigy to avoid such obvious mutilations.
Melissa gulped. Insane didn't begin to describe this place. How were they supposed to look for Kyle when an idle comment, to say nothing of the other ten billion or so rules in the codex, could land them at knifepoint? She shuddered to think what maniacs like these intended to do with a wielder.
From a pocket of Ringo's coat came Fink's dejected voice. “Oh dear. We won't be able to show them Kyle's picture here. They'll think he's trapped inside it, which naturally calls for execution by beheading. And asking questions of any sort is frowned upon. A whipping may result, at the discretion of the respondent.”
If the codex had said being left-handed was cause for death by crocodiles, Melissa wouldn’t have been surprised. This place was a menagerie of horrifying nonsense.
As they meandered through the city, they observed a man lose a piece of skin on his arm for thinking a disparaging thought about one of his fellows (as if his mind could be read) and two more cut on the cheek for improper facial gestures. There didn't seem to be any rules against punishing people for no reason.
But the strangest event was yet to come. Only a short distance ahead, the zombies—err, Crumholtzians—dove face-first to the ground, arms outstretched, and remained there. Ringo was quick to pull Melissa into a similar position.
“What's going on?!” she demanded in a whisper, trying to angle her face such that her mouth was kept free of toxic waste.
“It's a Lutris!” Fink replied from the coat pocket.
“Quiet,” growled Ringo.
“What's a Lutris?!”
“Quiet.”
She remained stranded in confusion until the source of the disturbance revealed itself: an otter, scurrying down the street, screeching like a dying cat. Melissa couldn't believe what she was watching.
“An otter?!” she hissed.
“Not an otter. A Lutris,” Fink said.
“Quiet.”
“Who cares!”
“I'd recommend you start caring, because the Crumholtzians worship them. They think they're gods.”
“Quiet!”
Melissa heeded Ringo's directive this time, if only because she was too bewildered to do more than roll her eyes and shake her head. A part of her wanted to jump to her feet and show these silly fools just how mortal and ungodly their so-called god was, but she suspected the codex had a few things to say about that sort of behavior.
The otter screeched and scurried on for several minutes as its audience remaining prostrate in the mud. Just when Melissa was becoming certain she'd have the noxious scent of Crumholtz burned in her nostrils for life, something happened to put an unexpected end to this scene.
The sensation hit her like a battering ram. She let out a cry and clutched the sides of her head, writhing in agony. When the sudden pain dulled and thought returned to her, she realized the obvious. The horrifying, unexpected, excruciating obvious.
Every mind in the vicinity had turned gray in an instant.
TWENTY-THREE
Despite having experienced this twice before, Melissa was no less overwhelmed by its sheer, staggering wrongness. The graying was the sound of a machine boring through an untouched jungle paradise, the sight of acid eating through flesh. It was unnatural, ruinous, aberrant.
Her vision swimming, she steadied herself with a hand and tried to stand. But her legs had plans of their own, and she was sent sprawling in the mud. The pain and dizziness hadn't been this bad back in Willowfork, she realized.
Fink, alerted by her cry, poked his head out from Ringo's pocket. “Melissa, are you all right?” he whispered. “If they see you up and about while—”
“It's the graying! It's happening right now!”
That shut him up. Then sent him running from the pocket. Perched on Ringo's head, he surveyed the street. To his eyes, the scene would look no different than it had a moment ago. The Crumholtzians remained splayed in the mud. The otter continued to scurry about. Only Melissa could observe the senseless mental carnage at work, nowhere more painfully than in her own head, which throbbed with pressure.
“Are you quite sure?” Fink asked.
“Yes!” she sputtered between waves of pain. Unlike during the grayings on Prota, her discomfort wasn't letting up as time passed.
“Oh dear. Ringo, are you hearing this?” The stoat scrambled off Ringo's head and around to his face. “Ringo? Ringo?!”
Ringo gave no reaction, because, like everyone else, his mind was trapped in a prison of its own imagination. He too had gone gray.
“He can't hear you, Fink.”
Ringo was wearing an aegis, yet it hadn't protected him. On Prota six months ago, Luud's aegis had been defense enough against the onslaught. But no longer. Kyle was stronger.
Melissa was reminded of Psu-Tem's words—he wouldn't have a choice what he did to you—and the writing scrawled all over the room in Pugh's basement. Kyle would never do this, not for anything, not for everything, not ever. Yet he had.
“Come on, Fink,” Melissa said.
He scrambled up her arm. “Where are we—?”
“Out of here.” She plunged a hand into the locutor beneath her robe. Crumholtz vanished, as did the head-splitting pain of the graying. It was replaced by the body-crushing torture of the gap, but soon enough that too was gone, and her feet were finding their balance—or not finding their balance, more accurately—on the Gallery ledge. She collapsed sideways, catching herself with a hand, gasping on her stomach as she stared down into the hungry abyss of fog she'd nearly plummeted into.
Fink gulped. “That was close.”
Melissa shut her eyes and took several long breaths, appreciating the fact that her head was no longer about to explode. When she'd gathered her wits, she forged a shaky path to her feet, back pressed tight against the Gallery wall.
Consumed by pain, she hadn't even thought to bring Ringo with her, and was about to return for him when a terrifying idea came to her. She turned instead to the painting left of Crumholtz, a world called Volika. Its canvas showed a woman weeping before a wilted flower. She touched her locutor to it. Her mental sense told her what she'd find before the gap ended. But the sight still stole the breath from her lungs. Alighting in a crowded park beside a fountain, she was witness to spilled drinks, fallen bodies, and jumbled non-conversations as peopled talked over each other.
Their minds were gray.
Without pausing to think, she locuted back to the Gallery, alighting with ease this time, and dashed to the next painting—Jautrus. A bruised fruit on a table decorated its canvas.
An ocean full of bodies met her eyes upon alighting. She staggered to her knees, brushing windswept hair from her face. She was dead center on a beach swarming with people, many of whom had been swimming until a few minutes ago. Now, unable to react to the true movement of the waves, they'd drowned. Even as she watched, the last gray minds in the water shattered and winked out, their souls carried off in the swell.
Unable to bear the sight of it, she reached into her locutor and let the gap take her. Back in the Gallery, she sank to the ledge. There was no making sense of what she'd just seen. The graying had just resulted in the deaths of thousands of people. On a single beach. On a single world. If it was happening on three worlds simultaneously, it could just as well be happening on three thousand or three million. How many deaths did that tally?
I never want to know. The number didn't matter, anyway. Any number was too high. Worst of all, it was Kyle who was responsible. Kyle, the boy who wouldn't even hit back when attacked, was a murderer countless times over. Melissa trembled at the thought. She felt betrayed. She tried to remind herself that he wasn't in control of his actions, that he was a slave to the commands of the woman, but a memory popped into her head then, unbidden. A memory from lunch on a Tuesday in sixth grade.
Melissa couldn't remember how the argument had started. Not that it was much of an argument, really. She and Kyle didn't argue the way other people did. They didn't need to. But every once in a while, they had a bit of a difference in opinion.
On this occasion, it concerned Kyle's nasty habit of being friendly towards other people. Melissa found any interaction with humans other than him an annoyance, at best, and a torturous calamity, at worst. She didn't understand how he found it so easy, or why he had to go out of his way to be social sometimes. She said as much to him, with her mind as well as her words.
“They're just people,” he'd said, shrugging.
“But they're not like us.”
“So?”
“So… it just doesn't feel right.”
He'd given her a sad look and a faint blue mind, the sort of look she knew meant he was about to tell her he was sorry he'd upset her. For some reason, it annoyed her then. She didn't want him to say he was sorry. She wanted him to say he was wrong.
“I wish you wouldn't do it,” she'd said.
And that was when it had happened. Having spent six years with Kyle, Melissa thought nothing he did could surprise her. She was wrong.
Like a solar flare charging across dark space, his mind had lit up in a burst of vivid crimson. He didn't move. His face didn't change. The whole thing was over almost as soon as it began. But it wasn't like Kyle. He never got angry, least of all at her.
A moment later, he'd leaned forward and put a hand on hers. “Okay, Melissa.”
She remembered nothing more of the conversation. And as shocking and out of character as his red mind had been, it soon took on the feel of a fantasy in her thoughts. She gave it little thought. It was filed away in her head, somewhere between that awful American history paper I failed and boring chess games from sixth grade.
Until now. She wondered if that moment had given her a glimpse of a side of Kyle he'd hidden from her, perhaps even from himself. What if the woman wasn't controlling him so much as bringing out a darker part of him that already existed?
It didn't take more than two seconds for Melissa to feel ashamed to have even thought this. She'd felt betrayed by Kyle, but it was she who'd betrayed him. No, there was no darker part of Kyle. There was no hidden side. There was only her desperate mind, grasping at straws to make sense of the senseless. And further thought would get her nowhere. The only thing to do was what she was already doing—searching for him. So she stood, dried her eyes, and touched Crumholtz’s painting with her locutor.
The graying had ended by now, but she could sense Ringo and the other Crumholtzians still prostrate in the street. She alighted in a nearby alley, out of sight to any nearby minds. A glance around the corner told her the otter was presently climbing atop Ringo's coat. She waited. Within a few minutes, it had disappeared down the street. The Crumholtzians began to stand, then Ringo. He gave the premises a confused inspection upon finding that Melissa was no longer next to him.
She was about to step from the alley and come to him when something odd diverted her gaze. Several of the nearby Crumholtzians had stripped themselves of their gray robes, revealing emaciated bodies and tattered undergarments. Then they'd tossed the robes into the mud, leaving them. Then they'd turned and stared. At Ringo.
Melissa tensed involuntarily, sensing what was about to happen. She'd seen this scene once already. But it was no less shocking this time.
Before Ringo could take more than a single step in retreat, five Crumholtzians had taken firm hold of him and thrown him to the ground, one wresting his coat from him in the process and tossing it aside. Ringo reacted with undue calm, putting up little visible struggle. He could have fought them off, Melissa thought, but a crowd of other Crumholtzians was already beginning to gather in observation.
She heard Fink gulp from her shoulder. “Oh no. He didn't leave his coat!”
“What?!”
“It was touched by the Lutris. It's a sacred object.”
Melissa clutched at the side of the building, her eyes locked on Ringo. “Wha… what's the punishment?”
She needn't have asked. Even as she spoke, one of the Crumholtzians unsheathed his knife and another pressed Ringo's right wrist into the mud, revealing his naked hand. They were about to cut it off. Because an otter had touched his coat.
“Fink, we've gotta do something…” Her voice trailed off, strangled by horror. There was nothing to do but watch.
Then, a moment before the knife fell, Ringo moved. In a single savage burst, he threw aside all five Crumholtzians holding him and sprang to his feet. His next step launched him into a dive for his coat—for his locutor.
He didn't reach it.
The Crumholtzians had lost none of their speed, and this time, no fewer than ten of them converged upon him and pressed him flat against the mud. He continued to put up a struggle, but it was plainly hopeless at this point. His enemies had learned their lesson.
The knife was again raised.
Ringo hadn't given up yet, however. Before the blade dropped, he spoke. “I demand a hearing before the Lutris.”
The Crumholtzian on amputation duty paused, frowning. “Zoo demand a… zoo cannot have this.”
“Why?” Ringo asked.
Fink gasped. Melissa looked to him, then back to the street. Nothing and no one moved. She entertained the brief hope that Ringo's inquiry had somehow been successful.
Not so.
After another second, the street exploded into motion. The Crumholtzians hopped up and down all along the street. They made maniacal sounds unfit for human ears, spit upon the dirt, shook their heads in fury. And their minds, the most expressive of all their faculties, erupted in reds so bright as to make the world around them colorless. Then, before the echo of their rage was yet spent, they picked Ringo up and dragged him off down the street, handling him with as much care as would befit a bag of rocks. His mind had gone green, but he didn't struggle against them anymore.
Melissa sprang from the alley and took several half-hearted steps into the street, staring after the disappearing mob. For the barest moment, she caught Ringo's eye as he was turned around in his captors' grip. He shook his head violently. Then he was gone around a corner. The sounds of madness receded.
Melissa stood shock-still for a long time, trying to process everything she'd just witnessed. It had all happened so fast. And made so little sense. And turned out so wrong. The day had gone from bad to worse, and it was only mid-morning.
When she did move, she was startled to discover Fink a mess upon the ground nearby, biting at his fur and running in circles. She snatched him up with both hands and held him inches from her face. “Fink! What's going on?!”
He twitched a moment, at length finding her eyes. “Uh… bad things.”
“What bad things?!”
“The unforgiveable question.”
“Huh?”
“He said… he said why. It's the unforgiveable question.” At her frown, he added, “It's in the codex. The punishment, well… it's unforgiveable.”
She gripped him tighter. “What's the punishment, Fink?”
“Err… it's… just… broiling alive.”
She almost choked on her next breath. “Then we've got to rescue him!”
She hadn't forgotten Ringo's head shake. She knew very well what it meant, and what he would have said to her if he'd been able to speak then. But she didn't care. Even if she'd been under the influence of Crumholtz's pull, she couldn't have been more closed-minded. She knew what the right thing to do was. She knew what Kyle would do. She knew which choices she could live with and which she couldn't. And rescuing Ringo wasn't a choice. It was an imperative.
“Melissa,” Fink began hesitantly. “I know this isn't what you want to hear—nor do I, for that matter—but I suspect Ringo wouldn't want us to—”
“No. Ringo saved my life at least three times. I'm not abandoning him.”
“But he's… and you're…”
“You don't think we can do it, is that it?”
“All I'm saying is there are certain… shortcomings in our abilities as compared to his, especially in the realm of conflict resolution… err, fighting.”
Melissa leaned close to Fink, narrowing her eyes to slits. “We're not leaving here without Ringo. If he doesn't leave, we don't.”
He nibbled at a paw and quaked. “Oh dear.”
***
The last rays of twilight doused the moat in indigo, setting the water aflame with color. Melissa crouched behind a bush at its edge, Fink on her shoulder, staring at the stone fortress dead ahead. The building was an imposing presence, as large as a mall and swarming with minds. In the lower levels, most of these were blazing red with pain, and from time to time, one would blink out. The place was a torture chamber.
All day she'd been watching it. Following his capture, Ringo had been taken to the Crumholtzian equivalent of a trial, where he'd remained until a few minutes ago, surrounded by guards. Melissa could have locuted in to rescue him, but the risk of being grabbed by one of the otter-worshipers was too great. She needed Ringo alone to get him out of here. He was now being led somewhere, hopefully a cell. Though as Fink had informed her, Crumholtzian executions usually took place the same day as the trial, so she didn't have much time.
