Lady Ruin

CHAPTER TEN

Lirra had no memory of the sun setting. It seemed that one moment it was day, the next it was night. She had no clear idea where she was either. She was walking across a grassy field that she took to be pastureland for cows, based on the occasional pile of dung she passed, though she’d seen no actual cattle so far. There were no farms of any sort in the vicinity of the lodge. The closest she knew about lay outside the town of Geirrid, but it wasn’t possible that she had traveled that far since leaving the lodge … was it?

She remembered leaving the lodge in search of Elidyr, remembered making her way through forestland, hiding when necessary to avoid Outguard patrols her father had sent out to search for her. While her symbiont granted her no special abilities when it came to concealment, it did possess a certain animal cunning that she was able to draw on, and combined with her battle experience, it allowed her to evade detection and capture. She’d been surprised and, though she was reluctant to admit it to herself, pleased to discover that her symbiont was proving to be an even more useful tool than she’d originally thought.

Too bad it hadn’t sharpened her sense of time. Hours had to have passed since she left the lodge, but though she searched her memory, she couldn’t account for them all. Her hours traveling through the forest were a blur of trees and fields seen through a white-hot rage that only seemed to intensify as the time passed. She was furious at Elidyr for having bungled the experiment so badly-and for having the idiocy to conceive of the symbiont project in the first place. She was furious at her father for not understanding why she needed to find and stop Elidyr and sending forth the Outguard to get in her way. She was furious at Rhedyn for standing stupidly by and watching as the tentacle whip attached itself to her and for not finding the stones to act against Elidyr until it was too late to make a difference. And to make matters worse, she was hungry, thirsty, and her feet ached from all the walking she’d done this day.

The night sky was overcast, as it often was this time of year, and the cloud cover blocked the moons. Though Karrns preferred straightforward battle-which normally meant fighting by daylight-Lirra was no stranger to making her way across country in the dark, and it seemed that her night vision had grown a bit sharper, no doubt another benefit granted by her symbiont. But even so, she was having trouble navigating through the shadows that surrounded her. Her mind felt sluggish, almost feverish, and she was having trouble making sense of the things she saw and heard. It was almost like the confusion that came with being drunk, except without the accompanying pleasant numbness. Most likely she was still adjusting to having joined with a symbiont. Hopefully her mind would clear eventually. In the meantime, she had to find Elidyr, and when she did …

She heard a sound off to her right, a snuffling as if something large was breathing close by. Without thinking she spun and flung her left arm in its direction. Her tentacle whip unfurled, and as the barbed tip flew through the air, wild elation filled her, and she couldn’t tell whether it originated from the symbiont or her. She saw the shape standing before her, a dark outline framed against the night, and for an instant she allowed herself to believe she had caught up with her uncle at last. But she quickly realized the shape was the wrong size-too long and low to the ground-and whatever it was, it possessed four legs instead of two. Elidyr might’ve fused with a trio of symbionts, but when he’d departed the lodge, he’d done so on a single pair of legs.

She felt more than saw the barbed tip sink into flesh, sensed poison being injected into whatever creature the whip had struck. Lirra yanked the whip away from its victim, but it was too late. The poison had been delivered, and the creature swayed and collapsed heavily on its side without making a sound. For all Lirra knew, the creature could’ve been some dangerous wild animal, and while the symbiont’s poison had brought it down, that didn’t mean the creature was dead yet. But she was too horrified at the ease with which she’d lost control of the whip, how she’d lashed out without thinking, and she walked over to the downed beast and kneeled beside it, the tentacle whip undulating in the air over the creature, almost quivering in its excitement to strike again. Lirra ignored it and placed her hand on the beast’s side. She felt short-haired hide over solid muscle, and she knew what she had brought down before she heard the animal’s soft, pained exhalation of breath. The whip had poisoned a cow.

The animal began to pant, sides bellowing in and out as she struggled to draw air into her rapidly failing body. It didn’t take long for the symbiont’s poison to do its work. Several moments later the cow’s breathing slowed, she shuddered once, and then lay still. But though the animal was dead, Lirra slowly stroked the cow’s side.

An accident, she thought. Nothing more. And it wasn’t as if she’d killed a human. She had nothing to feel guilty about. So why were trails of hot tears streaming down her face?

You’re overtired and dehydrated, she told herself. That’s all.

Thoughts whispered in her mind, then-but though she heard them spoken in her own voice, she knew they weren’t hers.

It was just a stupid animal. Scrawny too, from the feel of it. You did it a favor by killing it quickly. It was obviously sickly and would’ve succumbed to illness before long-or perhaps fallen to the jaws of a predator. Either way, it would’ve done its owner no good if it had lived. Too skinny to give good milk, too slight of frame to provide much beef. This way, at least it won’t eat any more grass that could go to feed stronger animals.

The tentacle whip swayed lazily in the air before her eyes, almost as if mocking her.

Lirra had struggled to maintain control ever since leaving the lodge, but all at once her fragile hold on her emotions slipped. She released a cry of rage and leaped to her feet. She struck out with the tentacle whip, slashing the cow’s body with the symbiont, the barbed tip scoring the animal’s flesh and spraying the air with blood. How long she stood there ravaging the cow’s dead body, she didn’t know, but eventually her rage began to drain away, replaced by a bone-deep weariness. She stopped lashing the cow and with a tired thought commanded the tentacle whip to wrap around her left forearm. The whip obeyed, moving almost sleepily, as if sated. Lirra felt the slick warmth coating the symbiont as it coiled around her flesh, but she thought nothing of it. She was too tired to think. All she wanted to do was find someplace where she could lie down, close her eyes, and escape into the emptiness of sleep for a time.

“Here now, what do you think you’re doing?”

At first Lirra didn’t react to the voice, for she assumed it was merely another thought planted in her mind by the symbiont. But after a moment she realized that someone else was speaking, and that he’d done so aloud. Barely able to stay on her feet, she turned toward the man, and just then the cloud cover broke. Silver moonlight filtered down from the heavens, illuminating the pasture and giving Lirra a good look at who she was facing. The man was middle-aged, big and broad-shouldered, and though his belly was rather sizeable, he had the look of a man who’d been in good shape once. He was mostly bald, with thick, fleshy features, and a prominent scar that bisected his left cheek. He wore a leather vest over a simple homespun tunic, leggings, well-worn boots, and a large hooded black cloak. He carried a crossbow, bolt loaded and ready to release, and from the way the man held it, it was obvious that he knew how to use it. He wore a pair of crystal-lensed glasses over his eyes, and from their design, Lirra recognized them as a magical device that granted the wearer the ability to see in darkness almost as clearly as if it were full daylight.

Probably a veteran, Lirra thought. Which would explain the scar on his face, not to mention the crossbow and glasses. The man had likely been a scout who specialized in night reconnaissance or perhaps served as an assassin. Either way, she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to loose the bolt if he thought she was a threat. Her sword was sheathed at her side, and she made certain to keep her hand well away from the pommel as she raised her arms.

She opened her mouth to explain, but no words came out. How could she possibily explain what she was doing in this man’s field at night, standing over the bloodied corpse of one of his cattle? Lirra imagined what she must look like to the farmer: haggard, wild-eyed, and spattered with blood. She must seem like some manner of fiend, or at the very least a lunatic.

The farmer took one look at her and immediately raised his crossbow and prepared to loose the bolt, ready to shoot first and ask questions later. She flicked her left wrist and the tentacle whip uncoiled and shot toward the farmer just as he squeezed the crossbow’s trigger. The bolt released, but the symbiont snatched it out of the air before it could travel more than a couple inches. It then swung the bolt around and stabbed it point-first toward the farmer’s eye.

No! Lirra thought.

The tentacle whip moved slightly to the right, and the bolt missed the farmer’s eye.

Render him unconscious, but do not harm him, she thought.

The whip hesitated, which gave the farmer enough time to grip his crossbow as if it were a club and swing it at the symbiont. The whip took the blow, and Lirra winced as the aberration’s pain was transferred through their link to her. The symbiont swiftly recovered, dropping the bolt and coiling around the farmer’s neck. His eyes bulged as the tentacle whip squeezed, cutting off his air. He dropped the crossbow and clawed at the symbiont’s coils in a futile attempt to try and loosen them. But the whip was too strong, and it took only a few moments for the farmer’s eyes to close and his body to go limp.

Drop him, Lirra ordered.

The whip continued to squeeze, and Lirra repeated the command in her mind, more forcefully this time. Reluctantly, the whip obeyed, releasing the unconscious farmer and allowing him to drop to the ground. Lirra ordered the tentacle whip to wrap around her forearm, and then she kneeled to check the farmer’s pulse. His heartbeat was steady. The man would probably wake up with a severe headache, but at least he’d be alive.

Lirra stood and regarded the farmer’s unconscious body for several moments. She could no longer pretend that her mind was adjusting to the tentacle whip’s influence. The aberration was just as strong as it had ever been while she was weakened from lack of food and water, not to mention all the traveling she’d done that day. With her resistance lowered, the whip had been able to keep her confused, goad her into killing the cow and savaging its corpse, and it almost had managed to get her to kill the farmer as well. If she planned to use the symbiont as a weapon to help her against Elidyr, she was going to have to keep herself strong, physically as well as mentally, in order to resist its corrupting influence. So, as much as she wanted to continue her pursuit of Elidyr, she needed to attend to her basic needs first: food, drink, and rest.

The farmer likely had a home close by, and she was tempted to seek it out so that she could “borrow” some food and drink, but she resisted the urge. It was possible the farmer had a family, wife and children, and the last thing she wished to do was expose them to the tentacle whip. If she were to lose control of the symbiont around them … No, she’d just have to continue on her way and see what she could forage on her own. If this was cattle country, though, that meant she was probably near Geirrid. Given the location of the lodge, Geirrid was most likely north, northeast of her current position, and probably not too many miles away either. If nothing else, she would be able to find food and drink at an inn. But not, she reflected, covered with cattle blood and wearing a symbiont coiled around her forearm.

Her gaze fell upon the large black cloak the farmer was wearing.

She hated to steal it, especially considering that she had killed one of the man’s cattle. If she could find a stream, she could do her best to wash the worst of the blood from her clothes, but even so, she still needed a way to conceal the symbiont from curious eyes if she were to go about unnoticed in Geirrid-and that meant she needed the cloak.

As she bent down to remove it from the unconscious farmer, she spoke. She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t help it. “My apologies. If I had any extra silver on me, I’d leave you some in payment. But I can’t afford to part with any of my coin. I’ll need all the resources I have to draw on to complete my mission.”

She stood and put on the cloak and fastened the clasp. It was military issue-in fact, she had one like it back at the lodge-and while it was a bit large on her, that was good. The extra cloth would help conceal the symbiont. As an afterthought, she also took the man’s night-seeing glasses. They’d likely come in handy as well. She donned the glasses, drew the cloak’s hood up over her head, and with a last apologetic look at the unconscious farmer, she headed off in the direction of Geirrid.

As she walked, Lirra felt the tentacle whip’s sullen anger over leaving the farmer alive. Go ahead and pout, she thought. Just as long as you don’t slow me down.

Lirra continued on into the night.

Averone’s throat felt sore and he swallowed painfully several times as he struggled to sit up. His head pounded and he thought something must’ve happened to his eyes because everything was so dark.

She took your glasses, fool, he thought, and that’s when he remembered the blood-covered woman, the one with the trained serpent or whatever it had been. The memory cut through the fog enshrouding Averone’s mind and he groped around on the ground, searching for his crossbow. He found it and quickly saw that it was unloaded. He remembered loosing the bolt at the woman, but then her serpent had somehow managed to pluck the bolt out of the air, and then it had tried to jam it into his eye.… Things got hazy after that, but Averone decided not to worry about the details. Though he’d traded in the life of a soldier for that of a cattle farmer, his military training told him that he was alive and that was all that mattered. But if he wished to stay that way, he needed to make sure the area was secure. He hadn’t brought an entire quarrel of bolts with him as he owned only a handful left over from his soldiering days. He carried the extras with him in one of his cloak pockets. He started to reach for a bolt, and that’s when he realized that the woman had taken his cloak as well.

“At least she didn’t take your head,” he muttered resignedly. In retrospect, he decided coming out to investigate the noises he’d heard-noises he now knew had been made by the woman when she slaughtered his cow-hadn’t been the wisest choice he’d ever made.

Without his night-seeing glasses or additional bolts for his crossbow, Averone decided that the smartest thing to do would be to head back to his cabin. He could put up a better fight there, if need be. He could barricade himself in and he had a sword he kept mounted on the wall above his fireplace. And come morning he could patrol his fields and see if any more of his cattle had been killed. His wife had left him before last winter for, of all things, a weaver who lived in Geirrid, and they’d had no children; therefore, he had no one to worry about protecting except himself. He felt a twinge of disappointment in himself for being so ready to retreat. After all, he was a Karrn, and his people were tougher than that. But his military career had lasted long enough for him to learn the value of pragmatism on the battlefield. It was night, he was unarmed, and he knew next to nothing about his enemy-or enemies. One of the first things he’d been taught during his training was that a dead soldier was a useless soldier. So it was back home for him, and he would resume playing soldier once the sun had risen.

Averone was just about to start walking in the direction of his cabin, when he heard the sound of someone approaching. He fought an urge to run, knowing that it would do him no good without his night-seeing glasses, especially if it was the woman returning and she was wearing them.

“Good evening, gentle farmer.”

The voice was male and friendly enough. There was enough moonlight for Averone to make out the silhouette of a man approaching, though something struck him as odd about it. It appeared as if the man had something riding on his shoulder, such as an animal. A familiar, perhaps? Was the man a wizard of some sort? Averone didn’t trust wizards. He’d never met one yet that was entirely right in the head.

Just in case the man’s night vision wasn’t any better than Averone’s, the farmer raised the crossbow as if he was making ready to attack. A soldier used whatever weapons were ready to hand, even if all he had to fight with was a bluff.

“Get off my land.” Averone tried to speak in a strong, confident tone, but he couldn’t keep his voice from quavering.

The man continued approaching. He glanced at the dead cow as he passed it and shook his head.

“You really should take better care of your animals. This poor thing looks as if it was slaughtered by a blind butcher with a dull cleaver and a bad case of arthritis.”

The man let out a high-pitched giggle at his joke, and the sound sent a chill racing down the length of Averone’s spine. It was not the sort of sound a sane person would make.

The man stepped closer, and Averone was able to make out his basic features, enough to see that he was a thin, middle-aged man. At first, Averone relaxed a bit. The farmer was young and strong, and if it came down to a physical contest, he had no doubt he’d be able to take the older man. But there was that thing on his shoulder, and Averone noticed that one of the man’s hands was significantly larger than the other. He remembered the serpent the woman had commanded, and for the first time he wondered if it had been a serpent at all. Whatever the woman had been, he had a feeling that this new arrival was something similar, and that scared him. He’d been lucky to survive his encounter with the woman, and now he was being confronted by a second lunatic. Even more, there was something about the man’s manner that told Averone he was far more dangerous than the woman.

Despite his training, Averone found himself backing up several steps as the man approached.

“I don’t want any trouble, so why don’t you just be on your way?”

The man smiled, his teeth gleaming blue-white in the moonlight. “I’m not here to cause you any trouble. I’d just like to you stand still for a bit.”

Before Averone could react, the man opened his mouth and a thin tendril not unlike the serpent thing possessed by the woman shot forth. A barbed tip struck Averone at the base of the throat, and a sensation of coolness swiftly spread throughout his body. His muscles spasmed and locked tight, and within seconds he could no longer move, though he could still breathe, if only shallowly.

The tendril withdrew into the man’s mouth. “That’s better,” he said.

Averone calmly wondered how the man could speak with such a strange tongue, and a distant part of his mind realized that his body wasn’t the only thing that had been paralyzed. His emotions had been too. He felt no fear, no concern over what might happen to him while he was unable to move. Only a mild curiosity.

The man walked around Averone, looking him up and down as if the farmer was a steer he was considering purchasing. Averone was still able to blink, although he couldn’t move his eyes or turn his neck to follow the man with his gaze. But the man was now close enough that when he moved in front of Averone’s eyes, he could see that the shape he had taken for a familiar was some manner of snakelike creature with a single large eye. If Averone hadn’t been in the grip of the strange paralysis, he would’ve recoiled at the sight of the thing. As it was, he still found it somewhat disturbing.

“I saw you talking with my niece,” the man said. “Lovely girl, isn’t she? A bit on the serious side, but she gets that from her father. We’ve been playing hide and seek all day, but of course I have an unfair advantage. I always carry a few toys around with me-including a device called a concealer that allows me to roam about undetected if I wish. For the last few hours I’ve been within shouting distance of Lirra and she didn’t know it. It’s been amusing watching her adjust to the presence of her new friend, and I was especially intrigued by her encounter with you. After she took the life of your cow, I thought for certain that she wouldn’t be able to resist taking yours. The lust to spill blood runs strong in symbionts, you see, and once they start killing it becomes almost impossible to stop them. But Lirra was able to resist the symbiont’s influence and spare your life. I always knew my niece was strong, but I’m beginning to see that she’s far stronger than I ever imagined. I’m going to have so much fun plumbing the depths of her strength and learning what it takes to finally break her.”

The man stopped in front of Averone and grinned.

“But in the meantime, there’s something else I’d like to try. You might have noticed that I’ve recently acquired several new friends of my own.” The man raised his misshapen clawed hand, and the sinuous creature draped across his shoulders trained its single milky white eye on Averone. “But my symbionts aren’t the only gifts I’ve received. A powerful benefactor graced me with his touch, and not only did he open my eyes to the true nature of reality, but he granted me certain abilities as well-abilities that I’ve been dying to try out.”

The man reached toward Averone’s face with his left hand-this one perfectly normal-and brushed the tips of his fingers across the farmer’s cheek. Averone felt his flesh grow warm beneath the artificer’s touch, and when the man pulled his fingers away, the skin stuck to them, stretching like warm tree sap.

“I can now shape flesh and bone the way a potter shapes clay, and you, my dear farmer, are going to be my first work of art.”

Averone could see the light of madness shining in the artificer’s gaze as the man shook loose the strands of cheek flesh from his fingers and reached toward his forehead. He paused for an instant and then plunged his hand into Averone’s skull, fingers passing through flesh and bone as easily as if they were made of water. Still paralyzed, Averone stood completely still as the artificer went to work molding, shaping, and rearranging his mind, but inside he screamed in agony.

Ranja crouched on a hilltop a quarter of a mile from where the two men stood. She kept low to the ground, her mottled green clothing helping to conceal her from them. She’d been following Lirra at a distance and watched as the woman savagely killed a cow for no apparent reason. She’d seen the farmer confront Lirra, and she’d fully expected the woman to slay him as well, and she’d been surprised when Lirra had turned away and departed, leaving the man alive. Fusing with a symbiont had clearly taken a toll on Lirra’s mind, but she’d been able to resist the urge to kill the farmer. It seemed the woman hadn’t completely succumbed to madness yet, and that intrigued Ranja. She respected strength and courage, and it appeared Lirra had an abundant supply of both.

When Lirra rendered the farmer unconscious and departed, Ranja had fully intended to follow her, though she’d planned to wait before doing so to allow the woman to put some distance between them. But as she waited, she was shocked by the sudden appearance of Elidyr. And “appear” was precisely what the man had done. One moment he wasn’t there, the next he was. Ranja didn’t know what sort of magic the man had used, but she was familiar with any number of spells or devices that could accomplish the task, and the specifics didn’t really matter to her. As this was the first time she’d seen Elidyr since he’d walked away from the lodge, she decided to stick around and see what he’d do. She could always catch up to Lirra later.

But Ranja regretted her choice when she saw a symbiont burst forth from Elidyr’s mouth to paralyze the farmer, and she really regretted it when he touched the farmer’s face, stretching the man’s flesh as if it were bread dough. And when he actually stuck his hand inside the farmer’s head …

The hackles rose on the back of Ranja’s neck, and a low growl sounded deep in her throat. Instinctively, she changed form, teeth and claws lengthening, hair thickening and becoming furlike, her face assuming a more bestial aspect.

Perhaps it was her growling, soft though it was, or perhaps it was due to some preternatural sense that Elidyr possessed, but the man looked away from the farmer and turned his gaze toward the shifter. He grinned, as if delighted to see her, raised his oversized claw of a hand and waved.

That was too much for Ranja. She bolted and fled as swiftly as her bestial form would allow.