The Wanderer 6

Exile is a strange word. I have applied it to this period of my life for so long that it has become a name, the meaning but a memory. Who had exiled me? What king? What faith? What nation? I was the author of my exile, my shame keeping me from my home. Zhahllaia's plans for me had taken root in my heart and borne fruit. I could no longer separate one for the other. I wanted to be the man Zhahllaia saw in the future, and what occurred meant I could no longer be.

Even now, countless years from that awful day after the shipwreck of

The Burning Knave

, I find it difficult to write about. The pain recedes, but when I probe it, the agony flares afresh. This event has never been chronicled before, and in fact my early life has receded into legend and most historians would never even know this was thing to be recorded. Thus, even as it goes beyond the stated purpose of this volume, I shall attempt to transcribe it as accurately as I am able. Indeed, without it, it would be impossible to understand my exile at all, and as this is the time that gave me my Kharsoomian bride and initial noble title, it is vital to make sense of the period that followed.

I awoke upon a beach, alone. And I wish to emphasize the word

alone

. It was not a solitude I had heretofore experienced. No, I was

alone

. Not merely the absence of company, but the persistent absence, a void that would never be filled. I was utterly abandoned in a lightless place inside my own mind.

I lay on my belly, the sun baking me. I pushed myself up, my limbs weak, my body enervated. The beach was not like one I had ever seen. The sand I lay upon was black, and the water was bright, completely unlike what I had seen in the Lapis Ocean. A short walk up the shore was the edge of a jungle, though the trees looked strange. I saw no wreckage of

The Burning Knave

, and perhaps I should have wondered why there was none. Yet I was in no position to think. Not when my eyes fell upon my only company on that lonely beach.

Oddrin, my familiar, my sweet night eft, lay not far from me on the black sands. His little body was still. I ran to him, but it was too late. He was already cold, his glow long since guttered. I took his limp form from the sand and crushed it to my chest, weeping bitterly. My constant companion since before I had memory, and he was dead.

And with him, my magic.

I was no longer a wizard. All that I had been was gone. All of my plans were undone. I had nothing. I

was

nothing.

I do not know how long I wept. I know that by the time I stopped, my throat was raw and my tears would no longer come. I carried Oddrin up the beach and buried him in the soft soil at the jungle's edge. I knelt beside that little grave, mourning him until the sun grew low. Hunger and thirst compelled me to move.

I was dressed only in the breeches Jerrika had given me, a short length of rope keeping them up. Diotenah's ring still sat on my finger, and though I could feel her whispers in the faint tickle at the nape of my neck, they were distant, muddy. My only other possession was the silver goblet at my belt. I wondered, foolishly, if perhaps the cause of my present misfortune could be blamed on the fact that my xilquinal sapling, a gift from my elven love Tarasynora, was in the possession of my concubines back in Castellandria. I dismissed this thought, but during this first period of my exile, I returned to it more often, as the madness took on a shocking amount of sense.

I went to the water and filled the sweetwater goblet, drinking deeply. And then again, and again, my thirst powerful after the shipwreck. Were it not for that gift, I would have died. Once again, I thanked Thalalei in my mind. Our dalliance was so short, and yet this would be the second time I survived thanks only to her. This would not be the last time I was grateful for my erstwhile nereid paramour. When I was finished, I tied it once again to my belt. Were it not for that, I would have lost it along with the rest of my possessions, at the bottom of the Lapis.

My stomach was a queasy stone, and it was too late in the day to truly forage. I huddled at the base of a tree as night fell. As warm as the beach had been in the day, at night, the wind sweeping in from the ocean was bone-chilling. Strange sounds crept from the beach and echoed through the jungle. I barely slept that night, shivering helplessly in a ball until dawn mercifully broke.

In the morning, I unfolded aching limbs and took the time to explore my environs.

The trees here were bizarre. Formed of a gray-green leathery substance, they had neither bark nor leaves, but rather thick arms that often gave the faint and unsettling silhouette of a man. What I initially took to be a canopy of leaves was a netlike creature, whether plant or animal I could not tell, but it would travel from tree to tree with a soft and disturbing rattling noise. In places, where the trees grew thick and the animate canopies plentiful, it was as dark as any jungle.

The most common ground cover was a kind of bush, though it too had no leaves. It was formed of a tangle of soft vines, each one coated in a powdery substance that winds would fling into the air in great clouds. The colors were breathtaking. These bushes could be a bright blue or yellow, and even occasionally pink.

Things like flowers grew in haphazard beds. They were green tubes, with uncomfortably meaty tendrils that poked from the end to taste the air. Beds of soft moss grew by the plentiful pools and streams that honeycombed the land.

Flying things whirred through the air, their skin looking like that of the trees, their wings iridescent, a collection of tentacles hanging from their heads. Creatures something like scorpions scuttled over the trees, hunting gracile reptiles who glided from branch to branch.

My former companion, Velena Grimm, had grown up in the deep forests of Esmia. She had taught the Mythseekers some forestcraft, but this place was no forest. Still, I kept in mind the principles she taught us.

Oddrin's absence was an ache I could not truly comprehend. There were moments that I thought of joining him, of simply succumbing to despair. Yet something drove me. Perhaps it was mere instinct. I would keep moving because this was what I did. Or perhaps it was that confidence Zhahllaia put in my heart, this sense that would overcome because of the greatness she saw in me.

I found a shallow cave at the base of a cliff, the opening pointing parallel to the beach. This would form the base of my shelter and shield me from the frigid night winds. I went to the largest of the ponds, where the moss grew thick, and I gathered an armload. This would be my bedding.

That was quite nearly the end of me. With a great surge, a beast lunged from the water. Its head was huge and its glabrous body never fully emerged from the pond. It snapped jaws overflowing with hideous teeth. I threw myself backward out of terrified instinct, and I could feel the wind from the closing of its jaws. I scrambled backward as the beast hauled itself onto land, its agility sapped after its initial charge.

It was enormous, bigger than an auroch, with squat legs tipped with curved claws, slimy blue-green skin, and a fin running down its spine to its flat, paddle-like tail. Its beady eyes and nostrils were on the top of its wide head. The creature must sit just below the water, its eyes and nose above the line, waiting for prey. Prey that had been me.

I fled, and the thing charged after me, but only a short distance. It did not seem to like being away from the water for long. Soon it gave up, turning about and sliding back into the pond with disturbing grace, and it was like it was not in there at all. I was amazed that could hide, for the water appeared quite clear. The beast's blue-green flesh was the perfect camouflage, rendering it nearly invisible, only the telltale spots of its eyes and nostrils betraying its presence.

I returned to the pond cautiously and what I saw chilled me to the very bone. Eyes and nostrils barely poked from the still water. Everywhere. I could not find a single body of water, and that included the ocean itself, where these beasts did not lurk. I would soon find that every few days at dusk, they would haul themselves from their ponds and waddle down to the beach to spend their night in the ocean, and the following morning, they would return. I never understood the pattern of this, of which went to and fro or why. It was merely a fact of this strange place.

After the creature's attack, I returned to gather moss. I did it with more caution this time, always keeping an eye on the floating creatures. Whenever one started to drift my way, I would retreat from the edge of the pond.

When I had enough moss for a bed, I turned to fire. I had a momentary stab of shame when I could not simply call down lightning to catch a branch. I did not waste too much time pining for what could be. I was fortunate that I was able to find the proper stones, and after more time that I care to admit, got a blaze going. I started it with dried moss and fed it pieces of the bushes. The fire blazed green, and the scent was heady.

Hunger compelled me, but the sun was going down and the plodding crash of the frog-lions as they made their way out to sea kept me hidden behind my fire. I saw them as shadows, lumbering out in the dark beyond the flickering green of flame. I lay on a bed of moss, warmed by the fire. With my body's needs somewhat met, my mind wandered to loss. Oddrin, my hetairoi, the Mythseekers. Even my Zhahllaia and Sarakiel, far away beyond uncounted horizons. Loss was my true companion.

I slept only fitfully, my dreams vast and cruel. I awoke with the dawn, my fire burned down to embers. I set about finding food. The pond where my predator lived looked to be filled with fish, but every time I closed, the beast's attention turned to me, and it started a slow drift to my location.

I made my way up the cliff, where the drier terrain meant I would not be hunted by those things. Once again, I looked to Velena's training and constructed several deadfalls. It was far from easy, as this place lacked many of the raw materials she taught me to use. The fibrous tissue of the trees worked well enough, though it required much more work than a simple branch.

Proper stones, though, were plentiful. While I waited for the deadfalls to do their work, I crafted a primitive knife. At the time, I was in awe of my skill. Looking back, it was a rude thing, barely useful. I would grow far better at this toolmaking over my time in this strange place. My deadfalls would improve as well, as soon I learned that the creatures in this place had generally poor eyesight but preternaturally keen smell. Thus disguising the deadfall was less a matter of hiding it from eyes, but of masking it from scent. Dust from the bushes I found worked well.

That day I caught one of the small creatures that slunk through the undergrowth. I cooked it over a fire, and it was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. Starvation will do strange things to the appetite. Even now, these numberless centuries later, I sometimes find myself craving this simple taste.

I learned to live in this place. I discovered which plants I could eat and which made me violently ill. One attempt at eating the flowers resulted in me immobile, feeling as though my guts were being torn out of my body by rusty hooks. It nearly finished me, and only my foresight of gathering water and storing it in hollow branches of the trees saved my life.

The frustrating thing was that though I could craft blades in plenty, there was nothing that could serve as a haft of a spear. I was forced to make do with my stone knives and my deadfalls.

In the slow time of this solitude, I grew obsessed with the beast who lurked in the great pond. Though there were others of the frog-lions about, and many took their chance to attack, I thought only of the one who had attacked me on that first day, identifiable by its sheer size. I named him Old Heacharus, and often thought of how sweet the fish in that pond would taste were it not for their saturnine guardian.

Their preferred prey were squat, rugose creatures with thick foreclaws and heavy teeth that lumbered in from the jungle to drink from the ponds and streams. Many times I watched Old Heacharus and the other frog-lions ambush one of these beasts and drag them into the water, drowning them before swallowing the corpses in great, nauseating gulps.

Deep in the jungle, I could hear the sounds of something truly huge moving about, though I never saw it. This was enough to keep me in the wetlands.

Time was difficult to reckon out in this place. There was only the endless pass of days. My hair and beard grew long. My breeches turned to rags and fell from me, and I was nude, save for the fraying length of rope that wrapped around my middle and kept my precious sweetwater goblet safe. My body, already lean and hard, grew stronger, my reflexes sharpened by an existence as both predator and prey. As civilization fell away from my heart, I grew more potent.

I explored, never straying too deeply into the jungle. There were days I thought I could simply find a path home, and Zhahllaia and Sarakiel would learn to accept me as I was, crude and diminished. Far more often I thought it best to stay in this forgotten place and live out the rest of my now finite existence. I never went more than a half-day's travel up either beach or inland through the jungle. I suspected this was an island, but such a short sojourn did not show me a far border. Every night, I returned to my cave and coaxed another fire from my embers.

I named this point of land Storm's Rest, and perhaps I would have stayed were it not for the day Old Heacharus almost got his fondest wish. I circled his pond, gathering fresh moss as the stuff I'd been using had grown dry and would soon finish its lifespan as kindling.

The old bastard watched me, drifting ever closer to the shore in the hopes I would let my guard down for the single moment he would need to make a meal of me. He got his wish, in the most foolish way imaginable. I stepped without looking, as my attention was on him, and my foot slipped into a concealed hole. I fell, my ankle crying out in agony.

Old Heacharus took his chance when it was offered. He was out of the water in an instant, lumbering over the turf, his great, table-sized jaws open, the fleshy parts of his throat pulsating with the joy of prey.

I tried to rise, but my ankle gave out with a white-hot stab of pain. I collapsed as Old Heacharus lumbered over the broken turf. Frog-lions were disconcertingly fast over short distances, but rapidly slowed the farther they strayed from water. Normally, as long as he missed his initial lunge, I could easy evade him. Now, I couldn't run. I was reduced to frantic scrambling as the beast rushed me.

Imagine, the Dreadstorm, the hero of the Wooden Bay, the man who went into the city of Gurghann Urad and slew the necromancer Diotenah the Shadow's Daughter, he who cast the fell city of Vexacion into the abyss, would end his days as food for an overgrown newt. It was a near thing, nearer than I care to mention. I crawled over a fallen tree, and as Old Heacharus followed, I gave him a taste of my stone knife.

He tossed his great head, and my knife went clattering into the jungle. I had scored a hit, and that was all I needed. His jaw wept a strange, mucousy ichor. His momentary distraction allowed me to put some distance between us, but not enough. My body was perpetually on the verge of starvation and my muscles burned with the exertion. I did not have the reserves to force myself into such desperate action. My only defense, my knife, was gone.

My flailing hand found the trunk of a tree. I looked up at it. Madness. I could not run but I would try to climb? I could travel on three limbs, but not one. I hauled myself up the fibrous trunk as Old Heacharus readied another charge. The beast was farther from his pond than he liked, but he smelled food in the offing.

I climbed with a skill I didn't know I had. The tree, disturbingly soft, bowed beneath my weight, but it held. I hauled myself up to a crotch in the branches. Below, Old Heacharus made it to the trunk. He went up on his hind legs, the claws of his forelegs gripping the trunk. His jaw snapped, but I was out of his reach. Barely. I could feel his queerly cold breath on my feet. The odor wafted to me, like old pond water.

Above, the net of the canopy skittered from one tree to the next. Below, Old Heacharus stared up at me, his mouth open as though he would catch me upon my inevitable fall. I had no intention of coming down, but with me cornered, I believe the beast had gained confidence. He continued to watch me with the patience of death.

Over the next several hours, his skin dried. First the shine left it, then, as it tightened, it started to look like the map of this spit of land. The mottled blue-green camouflage darkened. Still, his throat pulled, the meaty pink of it trilling with avarice.

Finally, Old Heacharus pushed off from the tree, his bulk crashing to the jungle floor. He waddled a short distance to a pond. Not his old pond, but one so small that it could scarcely hold him. Scarcely was enough, and there he waited, the water revitalizing his tissues while he continued his carnivorous vigil from relative comfort.

As I watched Old Heacharus, despair began its seductive whisper. My hetairoi were dead, Oddrin was dead, I was no longer the man that could be what Zhahllaia wanted. Perhaps it was only right to end up as a meal for this beast. I could simply climb down and let him do what he wanted. Let him pull me into that pond and drown me. Not so bad as deaths went. Certainly better than tortured to death by Heacharids or sacrificed to a ghoulish god.

Something kept me in that tree. The spongy texture of the trunk dimpled under my clutch, grit from its fibrous skin sticking to my wet palms. I continued to wait, even as the sun went down. I hoped that Old Heacharus would choose tonight to waddle out into the ocean, but he didn't. He continued to watch me, patiently waiting for me to fall like an autumn leaf.

Night fell. I clung to that tree, shivering in the frigid air. Darkness swallowed Old Heacharus, but I knew he was there. I could feel the beast's attention on me like a weight. I spent that miserable night, exhausted, shivering, clutching that tree, knowing that the instant I tried to get down, Old Heacharus would make his final, fatal charge.

When the sky began to lighten, sure enough, there was the frog-lion waiting in the shallow water. Nearly invisible, I could see him by those inhuman eyes that ever blinked. It was the nostrils, though, that tracked me. He had my scent there, and it had destroyed whatever thought existed in his head. He would not be satisfied until he felt the end of my struggles.

I could not spend another night in the tree. Already, my throat was dry, and my body a mass of exhausted shivers. I tested my ankle. It would move, but only a bit, the flesh swollen. Running was still out of the question, and dropping from the tree would do little more than aggravate the injury.

Inland, the streams multiplied but thinned, disappearing into this strange jungle. If I could get deeper into the trees, Old Heacharus would run out of his water and have to turn back. I just needed a way to put enough distance between us to convince him I was not worth the effort.

The wind rose, and a cluster of the dustshrubs shed their coating of blue, pink, and yellow spores into the air in swirling clouds of color. I'd seen it many times, it was part of the strange beauty of this place. The scent was like spiced seawater. I watched a gust of blue run over the pond, and Old Heacharus huffed, tossing his head, then even following the gust for a moment. When it was past, he turned back to me.