Worldwielder, page 20
Watching the fortress, a discouraging suspicion had begun to solidify in her mind. This wasn't the world Kyle had intended to reference in his message. She hadn’t seen a sign of a locutor or any other advanced technology all day. The people here had a level of intelligence only marginally above that of the common ground squirrel. She couldn't imagine them conceiving of, let alone carrying out, a scheme as complicated and dreadful as the one Kyle's captors had afoot. They were liable to abandon it in favor of cutting each other up within minutes.
No, coming here had been a mistake, and the next few minutes would decide whether or not it was a disastrous one.
“Okay, Fink, he's alone,” she whispered, withdrawing her locutor. As she'd hoped, the guards had deposited Ringo somewhere removed from other minds, then they'd left.
She thrust her hand into the locutor, returning to the Gallery. There she took a deep breath and touched Crumholtz's painting. Ringo's mind told her precisely where to alight.
When the blue swirl cleared, she found herself in a grotto-like dungeon cell, a place as dark and dismal as the cellar of a nightmare. Torches of dim white flame hung upon the walls of the corridor outside, illuminating stones long ago blackened from filth. Aside from a stray otter or two, Ringo's was the only mind nearby. But she didn't see him at first. Eventually, she thought to look down, and there he was, stuffed in the furthest corner of the cell.
She knew something was wrong the moment she set eyes on him. His knees were pulled tight against his chest, his face was buried in them, his mind was a faint blue, and he was shaking. Stripped of his ever-present gray coat, which Melissa carried with her, he looked almost nothing like the companion she'd spent the last six months with. Ringo was strong, self-assured, resilient. This person was a mess. He'd given no sign he'd seen her.
“Ringo!” she said, extending a hand towards him. “We're getting you out of here.”
He flinched back at her touch. Then his eyes found her, widening. His mind turned green. He sprang to his feet, pressing his body flat against the cell wall. His shaking grew worse.
Melissa swallowed back a wave of panic. What had the Crumholtzians done to him? She'd kept vigilant watch on his mind all day, but perhaps something had escaped her notice. “Ringo,” she tried again. “What's wrong?”
He said nothing, but with each passing moment, his wide eyes grew wider, his mind grew greener. Ringo, who'd stepped in front of Luud's blade to protect her, who hadn't batted an eye when he'd been assaulted by a pack of Crumholtzians, was terrified. Of her.
She staggered back a step, feeling sick. She'd never be able to get him out of here if he recoiled at the slightest touch from her. And the Crumholtzians could return at any minute. “Fink,” she said. “Check his aegis.”
The stoat complied, returning to inform her everything was as it should be. She racked her brains for another explanation for her friend's odd behavior, but her efforts turned up nothing. She gave Fink a pleading face.
He studied Ringo. “Something's… different about him.”
“You don't say.”
“No, I mean there's something missing. But I'm not sure what.”
Melissa could think of a number of things missing from Ringo. His confidence. His composure. His strength. But she knew that wasn't what Fink meant, and staring at Ringo longer, she began to understand. Something was missing…
Then it came to her, billowing into her mind like a cloud of smoke.
Blue smoke.
At the same instant, she heard the distant clang of a dungeon door and sensed its cause—a pack of Crumholtzians heading straight for Ringo's cell.
Frantic, she tossed Ringo's coat upon the floor and began rummaging through its endless reserve of pockets. With her luck, she expected the search to take hours, but by some miracle, she found what she sought in seconds.
“Fink!” she exclaimed, thrusting a cigarette into his paws. “The cigarettes! Ringo needs to smoke one!”
The stoat frowned in confusion, first at the object given to him, then at Melissa. “But they're just… cigarettes.”
“No, they're medicine! His mind is messed up! That’s why he attacked his family and killed the Gs! That's why he's scared of me! Now get him to smoke one!”
Fink's face was already white, since that was the color of his fur, but it went a shade whiter. “The halok world,” he stammered. “I should have—”
“We can talk about this later, okay?” She was kicking herself as much as Fink was. Given the way Ringo smoked the things religiously, it should have been immediately obvious. But at least she had realized. It wasn't too late.
“Uh, right,” Fink said, springing into action. He scampered up Ringo's side and offered the cigarette to the big man's lips. “Ringo old fellow, I think you'd feel much better if you smoked one of these.”
Ringo gave no reply, nor did he acknowledge Fink at all. His gaze remained fixed on Melissa, and his shaking was nearing the point of a seizure.
“Really, my man,” Fink went on. “It'll be good for—”
Without warning, Ringo's hand shot up and struck Fink with such force that his fuzzy white form was hurled all the way across the cell. He hit the wall with a thwack and dropped to the floor. Melissa gasped and ran to him.
“I don’t think that's going to work, Melissa,” the stoat said, standing shakily.
She looked back to Ringo, desperate. The Crumholtzians were close, seconds away perhaps. She could hear their pounding footfalls, sense their excitement at the coming execution. She needed to get Ringo out of here now.
Snatching up the fallen cigarette, she stepped towards him slowly, palms out, like she was approaching a scared animal. “Ringo, please. It's Melissa. I'm your friend. I'm here to help you. I just need you to—”
His fist came out of nowhere, catching her in the stomach, throwing her to her back on the floor. She gasped for breath, eyes watering from pain as much as from hopelessness. Fink jumped to her shoulder. Her fingers crawled into her locutor as the Crumholtzians rounded a corner just outside the cell, and she cast one last glance up at the hollow simulacrum that had taken the place of her friend. His eyes were wild and empty and sick.
The cell vanished.
TWENTY-FOUR
When the Gallery materialized around Melissa, she turned around immediately and lifted her locutor to the painting. Fink's gasp stopped her. “Melissa, you aren't seriously thinking of—”
She shot him a death glare. “Shut it, Fink. I haven't changed my mind. We're getting him out of there.”
“If I may ask… how?”
“We'll figure it out.”
They locked eyes for an agonizing half-breath, agonizing because of the pleading look on Fink's face. There was no hostility there, only a desperate appeal for a moment of unbiased reflection. But Melissa was in no mood for unbiased reflection right now. She knew going back was insane, but not going back was also insane. So she chose the lesser of the two insanities.
She touched the painting.
By the time she alighted, Ringo had been led into another section of the fortress, one even deeper and darker. This was the place housing the blazing red minds she'd seen earlier from outside. The place of torture.
Darting between pockets of shadow, she trailed the clump of guards holding her friend. They passed torture chamber after torture chamber, each sporting terrors fit to leave third-degree burns on the eyeballs of any passerby. Melissa made the mistake of looking into one of them. After that, she could only read the metal plaques posted outside: the Tub, the Stretcher, the Paws of the Lutris, the Bone Crusher, and last of all, the Brazen Lutris.
It was here the guards brought Ringo. In its center was the titular instrument of agony: a human-sized otter, carved from bronze, hollow, hinged in the middle, and set above a pit of raging flames.
Melissa lurched to a halt in the nearest pocket of darkness outside. The room was well-lit by torches, sprinkled with guards, and had no other doors. Going in now was a death sentence unless she could locute out, an option rendered useless by Ringo's condition. She bit her tongue and tried to think of another way.
Meanwhile, the guards stopped Ringo near the bronze otter, whereupon another Crumholtzian produced a scroll and began to read. Melissa couldn't hear the words. Not that they mattered. He was going to die. She was going to stand here trembling. And that would be the end of everything.
Then she heard Fink's voice. “Melissa, look!”
It took a second for her to find him. Unbeknownst to her, he'd left her shoulder and was posted a short distance down the corridor, staring into the Bone Crusher.
She gulped. Look was the last thing she wanted to do. “Fink, I don't—”
“No, really! Look!”
She forced her eyes to the chamber. What she saw within made her gag. Then gasp. Then gape.
“Is that Luud?” Fink asked, voicing the very question that was on the tip of her tongue.
Inside the chamber was a device consisting of a pair of rotating metal cylinders, their surfaces dappled in spikes the length of eyelashes. Into these cylinders, an arm was being fed. It was at the owner of this arm that Melissa's gape was directed, and of whom Fink's question was asked. The reason for this was quite simple: he looked exactly like Luud.
But as similar as he looked, there was a quality that individualized him, a facet of his movements or screams. Melissa knew, as surely as she knew her own name, that this wasn't the bald man with whom she'd had so many unpleasant run-ins.
“No,” she said. “It's his brother Vili. It's got to be.” Though Pugh had only mentioned the name once, it had left a distinct impression on her. She'd imagined him as identical to Luud, but looking at him now in the flesh, she wasn't scared at all. He didn't have Luud's sadistic bent, and she couldn't imagine him doing much with a knife given his ruined arm.
Fink frowned and peered closer. “What would he be doing here?”
“I don't know, but we have to get him out! He knows where Kyle is!”
The realization of this simple truth filled her with a purpose she hadn't known she'd lost. If Crumholtz was a dead end, as she feared, the search for Kyle was over. But Vili's appearance changed everything. It was precisely what she needed right now—a miracle.
“And Ringo?” Fink asked, giving her a look that was both pitying and curious. He obviously thought she'd lost her mind.
“We'll rescue them both!”
“And… how might we do that?”
For a moment, Melissa feared she'd have to give him another uncertain answer. But as he asked the question, or perhaps because he asked the question, the solution to their crises came to her in a flash.
“The otter,” she stammered. Then, without another word, she turned and dashed back the way they'd come. Fink bounded in pursuit, making several unsuccessful attempts to extract an explanation from her.
She didn't give him one until she'd stopped at an intersecting corridor and squinted around the corner. “Fink,” she said. “We're going to kidnap a god.”
He gagged. “Uh, Melissa, to put it mildly, they're not going to like that.”
“That's the point.”
“Oh. Wonderful.”
Melissa patted him on the head and smiled. “It's gonna work. I know it.” Before he could offer any rational and, frankly, much-needed objections, she darted around the corner. She stopped a short distance from the otter in question, a dirty brown thing currently in the process of upending a loose shard of stone in search of food. The fortress was crawling with the beasts, and if this one was any indication, they weren't well fed.
She extended a tentative hand in its direction. “Come here, otter. Nice otter.”
It paused its questing long enough to hiss at her.
Fink sniffed in derision. “You think that's going to work, Melissa?”
She sighed. “You grab him, then.”
“Me? I may be a bionic, but I'm not designed to engage in… violent altercations. My fur isn't even reinforced!”
“I saw what you did to Dulce yesterday.”
He began to sputter. “That was— And she didn't—”
“Will you do it or not?!”
“Oh, fine,” he moaned, and with the expression of one marching to his death, he crept towards the otter.
A particularly loud howl from Vili sounded, leaving Melissa's ears ringing. “Just jump it,” she hissed.
“Let me do this my way, won't you!”
“Your way is doing it next year, is that it?”
Emitting a despondent grouse, he doubled his speed, which would now put him neck and neck with any self-respecting snail. Melissa clenched her fists, trying not to listen to the screams emanating from every direction. Ringo, she noted, had not yet been thrown into the bronze otter. But that could change at any second.
When she was about to scold Fink again for his inaction, he acted, pouncing on the otter from a full three feet away. It was rather impressive. A blur of brown and white, accompanied by high-pitched shrieks and hisses, followed. The stoat at last emerged on top, holding his snarling captive down with quivering paws.
“I suggest you take it from here, Melissa!”
“Nice one, Fink!”
She swooped in and snatched up the otter. It was strong for its size, putting up all manner of struggle. However, a few whacks to the back of its head subdued these impulses. Eventually, it did nothing but emit a low-grade whine, rather like the frightened mew of a cat. How anyone can think this is a god, I can't fathom.
Holding it with steely fingers, she strode towards the Bone Crusher. At the door, she paused, wondering for the first time if this hadn't been the best idea. The Crumholtzians certainly wouldn’t appreciate what she’d done, but to what degree? Suppose they attacked her without even listening to what she had to say? Her stomach clenched. She looked to Fink for support, but he was fidgeting in the shadows, every bit as apprehensive as she.
She stepped forward, keeping one hand poised over her locutor. She made it several paces into the chamber before its inhabitants noticed her presence. But there was no mistaking the moment they did.
A charge ran through the room. For a handful of seconds, it was silent enough that the feather-light whoosh of a mote dancing on air currents could have been heard. The Crumholtzians were so still they could have been carved of stone. Only the flicker of the torches signaled the passage of time. Even Vili, despite his pain, fell into a petrified trance. But there was one change, something only Melissa could see. The color of the Crumholtzian minds bloomed red like freshly detonated atom bombs.
The silence swelled longer and longer, cracks appearing in its surface, its shape distorting beyond recognition. Then it burst.
Screams. Crashes. Shrieks. Smashes. The sounds of barbarity, a mindless people losing their minds. Robes were torn. Strange hopping dances were performed. Skin was clawed at. Heads were pummeled against any solid object within reach. Eyes were bulged red and raw. Veins were detonated beneath skin as rigid as taut wire.
The room was transformed into a different sort of torture chamber, one inflicting its torments on the torturers themselves. Through it all, Melissa held the otter firm, planted her feet to the ground, and kept her mouth shut. Only when the insanity had calmed to little more than convulsing limbs and bared-fang stares did she speak.
“Let him go.”
No one moved. She repeated the command, this time in a tone more becoming its importance. Still nothing. Every eye balanced on the creature in her hands, unblinking. In the next room, Melissa sensed Ringo being led towards the bronze otter.
The time for half measures was over.
She squeezed the otter's neck. “Let him go or I'll kill your god, you feckless tits!”
Some part of this gesture worked, for the Crumholtzians came unstuck from their daze in a furious burst. Most drew their knives, as though preparing to eviscerate Melissa if she followed through on her threat. One of them, every muscle in his body twitching, moved to the spike-filled cylinders holding Vili's arm and pulled them apart. Vili came free with a howl, stumbling to his knees before regaining his balance. Droplets of crimson seeped through a thousand cuts in his ruined arm, which hung from his side like a wet noodle.
“You're Vili?” she asked him, knowing she'd never forgive herself if she didn't make sure.
He managed a weak nod.
“Come with me. The rest of you, don't move!”
Vili obeyed, albeit with much moaning and wailing. Keeping the otter held aloft, Melissa backed out of the Bone Crusher. The other Crumholtzians tracked her motions like puppets on a string, waves of fury smashing about within them. She half expected the lot of them to drop dead from brain aneurysms at any moment.
Back in the dungeon corridor, she spotted Fink, who gave her an awed nod. She managed a weak smile, then hurried through the doorway of the Brazen Lutris.
She wasn't a moment too soon.
The bronze otter was hinged open, its surface glowing with heat from the raging flames below it. Ringo, stripped of his clothing, was struggling against every last guard in the room as they attempted to throw him into the otter. He was putting up quite a fight, and had thus far succeeded in breaking at least two arms. But there were a dozen guards, and they were more capable fighters than the gang of miscreants he'd laid waste to on Kagu. This was a battle he'd lose.
“Stop!” Melissa screamed at the top of her lungs.
The group before the otter turned in unison, catching sight of what she carried. Their reaction was every bit as traumatized as their fellows in the Bone Crusher, though care was spared not to release Ringo as they hopped and howled and made every other attempt to spontaneously combust. Seeing this silly display a second time, Melissa almost laughed.
