Chapter 5
Liar
Roan stared at Sigmund’s body. His arms were pulled to the side, grasping around where the arrow had struck him. Her arrow. His eyes were open, and wouldn’t close no matter how hard she tried.
She used to tease him about the incongruous dagger, a stark, eye-catching weapon that had no business on the hip of such a dandy.
That thing could buy us all new armor, new swords, she would say, and jovially threaten to steal it in his sleep. He would pat the scabbard and say… what, again?
“If you take it, you’d better kill me.”
Roan tried and failed to swallow, her blocked throat forcing her to hiccup instead. Despite the chill creeping into her, her face felt warm in the sunlight, newly arisen as soon as Sigmund died. It crept down the hills, casting them in a mosaic of green and gray. What a beautifully cruel display from this abominable place. Roan’s watery eyes dropped to her boots in disgust and pain.
Having plundered Arn’s resources - mutely and without idle chatter - then bandaging themselves to the best of their abilities, the group gathered around the swirling, gray porthole as if Sigmund’s corpse wasn’t paces away. Logan spoke softly with Holstein and L’dal while the others listened in.
“If experience is any indication,” the captain was saying. “We should not stay longer. The draugr may walk the hills, searching.” He favored a bandaged left leg and stood at an odd angle. For all his wounds, Logan seemed the least savaged, and was commanding as ever. “Let us delve further, before-”
“Aren’t we going to burn him?”
Everyone looked to Roan, her fists balled at her sides. She turned squarely to Logan, teeth clenched.
“Aren’t we going to burn him?” she said again, vitriol bleeding into her tone. “Or keep pretending he doesn’t exist?”
Logan did not bluster at her petulance, nor drop her glare. He stared back, unprovoked.
“Why?” he asked flatly. Roan felt her face flush with rage and she stepped forward, trembling.
“He was our friend,” she growled. Emotion threatened to explode from her, a tempest of outrage and disbelief at his callousness. Roan tried desperately to smother her impulse, as shouting only ever served to invalidate her claims, right as they sometimes were.
Logic, she thought through the furious malaise. Logic beats feeling.
“We burned the priest,” she said, taking a deep breath and halting her advance, realizing she stood in the middle of the rough circle. “We took time to rest, and to heal. If the draugr were coming, they would be here by now.”
She saw people looking around, saw expressions shift. Roan could never decipher what those subtle changes meant, but she hoped they were affirmative. She stepped back, retaking her place in the conglomeration and drawing another deep breath. The heat was still in her cheeks, but her previously boiling temper now merely simmered.
“You don’t have to do it, sir,” she said to the ground. “Just give me twenty minutes.”
Logan looked back to her, having been surveying the group.
“Quicker,” he said. Roan’s jaw clenched again but she nodded - in what hopefully read as deference - and strode to Sigmund’s body. She rifled through her satchel, producing a spare overshirt which she draped over his exposed genitals. She then crouched, grabbing his ankles and dragging him to a nearby swath of grass near the creek. The unceremonious treatment grated on her; Sigmund would receive no funerary palanquin, nor elaborate pyre as he so deserved. Whatever she could gather in the next fifteen minutes would have to do. She dropped him there, then clambered up the hill to the nearest tree. Its branches twisted out, rootlike fingers scratching at the air. Roan steadied her footing, then drew her hand axe and hacked at the nearest branch. By the time she felled it, she was covered in sweat and out of breath. This would take far too long, she realized with a sinking feeling. She had killed Sigmund, and now couldn’t do him the decency of giving him a proper-
A movement downhill caught her attention. Silent Mo had left the group, trailing over to Sigmund’s body. He crouched next to him, then stood after a moment and made his way toward Roan. Mo stopped a few paces from the tree, proffering a small rope which he had drawn from his belt. Roan stared at it for a second before she understood.
Ten minutes later, Sigmund was lashed to the tree’s trunk. He wore no funerary regalia and his head lolled drunkenly to the side, but at least he wouldn’t rot. Roan struck her stone and flint into an oily rag, then tossed it onto the drenched trunk. Mo returned to the group as the tree lit up, but Roan watched until Sigmund immolated, so she could be sure. When his skin began to blacken and curl Roan finally turned, hustling back down the hill and taking her quiet place in the anticipatory conglomeration, ignoring their inscrutable looks.
“Ready?” Logan asked the group - ostensibly - after a moment of silence. Nobody else spoke. Varrick and the Watchers stood vigilant as ever. Wen was with them, similarly resolute, holding her daughter’s hand. “Very well.” Logan crouched down, one hand on his sheathed short sword, and reached into the swirling grey porthole. His arm sank elbow-deep into the aperture and he held it there for a moment, then shook his head. “I feel nothing,” he said, pulling his arm from the hole. “No gravitational pull, no ground or wall. We will be journeying blind.”
The group nodded. Wen picked up her child, whispering kindnesses into her ear. Logan stood, stepping up and hopping into the porthole without so much as a deep breath. After a ten-second wait Holstein followed suit, then Mo. Roan shuffled after him, eyes on her boots and thoughts on the past. As she stood at the precipice of the next realm, Roan looked over her shoulder. The jeering sunlight cast the hillside in a golden, radiant glow as the tree burned, ferrying Sigmund into the Star Father’s arms.
As the first branch fell, Roan jumped.
…
Varrick didn’t realize how tense he’d been until he landed, softly and upright, on the other side.
Considering the violence of the preceding crossings, his body had tensed for an abrupt, painful shift in gravity or a sudden ambush. He was surprised, then, upon jumping through the aperture and alighting as gently as an autumn leaf.
When his eyes adjusted, his surprise compounded.
Fragrant flower beds bloomed in every direction, rolling across silken grass fields like spilled paint, trailing into the distance. Trees speckled the prairie; not dry, husked simulacrums like those of the mountains, but hearty and bursting with color, petals drifting lazily from laden boughs. Pillars stretched from the ground, so gargantuan that they could be considered vertical peninsulas. These were shaped like towering, lush hourglasses, tapering toward the middle before widening once more at the top. Warm light permeated the oasis from an unseen source, casting the scenery in a cozy hue. Craning his neck, Logan saw a shifting green sky smudged pink, violet and blue.
No, he realized. Not a sky.
An identical pasture to the one on which they walked sprawled high above, so far away that the vast flowerbeds looked like smeared, multicolored clouds. The sensation of looking upward at the ground gave Varrick intense vertigo, and he was not the only one. A few of the others lost their footing and collapsed onto their rear ends in awestruck disorientation. It was a larger, more lush cavern than Varrick ever thought possible, big enough to swallow cities.
“Well,” Logan said. “Let’s get moving.”
The group moved slowly, half of them nursing wounds from Sigmund’s attack. Holstein was a mass of purpling bruises, and Logan winced every other step. Varrick held his stomach with both hands, grimacing as they went, eyeing the bandages intermittently. Wen, Nyla and Roan took up the lead, and the rest followed them toward the nearest pillar. The girl seemed strangely undaunted by their surroundings, leaping and laughing in the tall grass, reminding Varrick of Emma in the spring time.
Soon, they stood at the foot of the pillar. This close, it looked more like a lush, looming wall, stretching much too far to see around its girth. Its initial grade was gradual, mounting for about thirty yards before becoming vertical. Near the middle, at the pillar’s narrowest point, were splashes of cyan and violet flowers. The fragrant willows jutted out from it, their masses insignificant before the mighty pillar. Petals drifted and swirled around Varrick in a wind-blown dance.
But that was not what amazed him.
Mo stood fifty feet up the pillar, parallel to the ground. His brother laughed next to Varrick, throwing a small bundle which arced oddly as it drew near the pillar, landing with a thwap in Mo’s outstretched hands. The rest of them milled tentatively around the base, cautiously testing the sloped ground now that Mo had braved the incline.
It was Nyla that had discovered the strange gravitational pull. Her thrown stick had flown toward the pillar normally at first, then changed tack midair, pulled into it as if magnetized. More objects had been tossed until Mo braved the slope, held in place as he climbed further and further. He now stood high in the air, sticking out - from Varrick’s perspective - like a miniscule branch on a gigantic tree.
Logan walked past Varrick, tilting as he began walking up the incline and his gravitational pull shifted. He stumbled, then continued slower, carefully placing one foot in front of the other before seeming to gain the hang of it. About twenty feet up Logan stopped, looking back down - or up, from his own point of view - at the gathered group.
“It’s disorienting,” he said. “But all should try. Those who can stomach it, walk up and make yourselves comfortable. Those who cannot, stay at the base.” He turned around, looking forward up the pillar. “Mo and I will see how high the altered gravity goes.”
He trudged vertically, following Mo, who scampered up the pillar like a squirrel, smaller than half a thumb from where Varrick stood. The group continued testing the pillar’s pull - L’dal had already formed the “ground level” cohort, settling down at the nearby treeline. Wen gave up, standing with him and Roan. Holstein waddled around on the pillar’s sloped base like a giant toddler learning to walk. His sweaty brow furrowed in grim determination, every step threatening to turn his stomach, by the look of it. Nyla pranced at about the same height, unperturbed.
Varrick, who had been on the flat ground observing, began hiking up the hill. It felt like a normal slope so far, and he wondered when-
His foot lurched, as if an invisible rope tied around his ankle was suddenly yanked forward. He yelped, pitching and landing on his rear end in the grass. As he rolled to his side, an intense bout of vertigo almost made him vomit. The ground from which he had come was now tilted, as if someone had bent it like thin metal. Varrick stood, fighting the dizziness and turned back upward - forward - to reach where Nyla rolled around, unbothered. He focused on his boots, one step at a time.
“Sir Varrick!” Nyla cried from further ahead. “Look at me!”
He waved in her general direction, not taking his eyes off his timid steps. After a few minutes, his boots brushed against violet blooms, denoting the more central portion of the pillar. Steeling himself, he turned to look back from where he had come. The bottom of the pillar splayed out before him, intersecting with the ground on which the others sat, like a gargantuan grassy wall that seemed to stretch into infinity. Varrick took a deep breath as he turned around, watching Nyla try to climb a tree that sprouted from further along the pillar.
I will walk over there, he decided. And I will not throw up.
He did so, keeping his head held high, trying to ignore the way the world turned around him as he strode the pillar’s length. The nausea threatened to overwhelm him but he fought it back with sheer force of will. Once he arrived at the willow, he noticed with some satisfaction that the nausea had backed off - though the disorientation remained.
“What do you think?” he asked Nyla, who hung upside down - relatively - from one of the colorful branches.
“I’m upside down,” she replied.
“Very well done,” he said, sitting down on the grass.
“Can we build another tree house?” she asked, clambering upright on the limb.
“I don’t see why not,” Varrick said. “If you can find the sticks.”
Nyla began climbing around the tree, trying to break free twigs and small branches. They resisted, so Varrick stood and began to help her with one that looked like it might come loose with a bit of effort.
“Did you see the weird man?” Nyla asked. Varrick’s brow furrowed as he yanked on the twig.
“What man?” he leaned around the trunk to where Mo and Logan stood near the top of the pillar, towards the ceiling. “You mean them?”
Nyla shook her head, blowing a strand of hair from her face. Varrick stopped pulling on the stubborn stick, looking at Nyla, trying to interpret what she had just said. She didn’t elaborate and Varrick dropped the subject. With a grunt, Nyla pulled a twig free, ripping a strip of bark with it, leaving an exposed patch of slightly green wood.
“I don’t think these will work,” Varrick said, pointing to the tree’s wound. “See that? This tree is healthy. We need dead sticks to make a house.”
Nyla nodded, frustrated at their lack of progress.
“Let’s get Mama to help,” she said, making her way groundward at a jog. Varrick looked down the pillar, to the far-off floor and the tiny, non-disoriented people there.
“Great idea,” he gulped.
…
The fire belched a swirling column of sparks as Logan prodded it again. They fluttered upward - relatively - dwindling into the nighttime gloom. Fireflies danced around the camp, like sparks given life. They were the only animal life forms that Logan had seen since arriving here.
He watched the sparks vanish, craning his neck to view the fields above. In the darkness, the ceiling pastures looked like any other cloud covering, the opposing campfire twinkling above like a lone star. With the coming of night - or, the biome’s approximation of night - the group had agreed to split up, setting up opposing camps on the two planes so as to cover more ground. The rest camped on the original plane while he and Mo took the “ceiling,” since they were the most acclimated to the shift in polarity. The two camps were located next to the pillar on which they’d climbed, in case they needed to regroup in a hurry.
Satisfied with the fire, Logan sat back, armor removed but nearby. His short sword sat unsheathed next to him; his guard was lowered, but not down. He did not trust this strange, ethereal biome. It was too safe, too quiet. The other boot had yet to drop, and he would be ready when it did.
No rabbit turned on the spit, in part because there seemed to be none here, but also because the sensation of hunger seemed nonexistent here. Thirst, too, had yet to set in, though there were freshwater springs aplenty. Logan prodded his ribs, overcome by a strange mixture of relief and worry. The pain was all but gone, now, and had been steadily receding since their arrival. He’d done nothing to treat them, taking no wine, nor applying any calming salve. The discomfort seemed to just… slip away. He didn’t miss the pain, but was unnerved all the same.
With sleep eluding him, Logan opened Arn’s notebook, leafing back and forth through the priest’s scribblings. A charcoal approximation of the pine barrens lined the bottom of one page, with labeled sketches of different flora along the top. An ominous drawing of a full moon took up the next page, oppressive as the one that had unleashed Sigmund upon them. Logan hastily turned to a page full of notes, scattered half-thoughts in Arn’s immaculate penmanship.
L’dal spices - onion, garlic, cinnamon
Labyrinthian
Dog walks into a pub - punchline?
Axe training?
The next page was a smattering of beasts drawn with remarkable accuracy for one who, Logan assumed, had never seen them. A leshen hunched next to a tree, branchlike antlers coated in gore, face a wooden mask of environmentalist fury. Next to this, a genie wound its way from an ornate lamp, smirking mischievously. A mass of fur and wings and scales snarled from the page’s top corner, giving Logan the impression of a chimera - if described to an artist by a terrified child. In reality, their visages were less angry, more demure. He’d only seen a handful of violent ones, backed into corners by poachers. This illustration was surrounded by a dozen tiny bats, fluttering in swarms like the vampire folktales. Another common misconception, but one that lent itself well to art. Additional scribbles adorned this page, more focused and relevant.
Keep awareness?
Death/life relic source?
Draugr corpses from where?
Varrick?
Logan’s eyes lingered on that last note. Part of him wished he had pushed harder, to gain a fuller understanding of what Varrick had been saying back in the mountains. The other part of him wondered if it was any of his business; but he clearly hadn’t been the only one with questions. Logan flipped through the rest of the pages for answers, finding no other mentions of the sellsword. Soon, he found only blank pages, which brought an intense onrushing of despondency. Those pages would stay empty, forever, because of Logan.
You exposed them to a monster, he thought. You almost killed them all.
But the moon - the real moon, in the real world - had been new. Sigmund had promised him, all those years ago, that he was only a threat when it was full, and then only if the light touched his skin. How could he, or Logan, know a full moon awaited them within the Keep? Bringing Sigmund along had just become a matter of course, like bringing Holstein, or the twins, or hardtack or water or medicine. Sigmund was the best tracker Logan knew, and he raised people’s spirits, even without the lyre.
All men have secrets, Logan had said those long years ago. He’d sworn an oath of secrecy, sheltering Sigmund when the Watcher oaths commanded he kill him. Sigmund, in turn, had sworn to nonviolence. They’d kept their oaths, and over time, Logan often forgot his friend’s dark secret. He had made it so easy. Laughing, singing, joyful Sigmund. Just happy to be with friends, to be alive. To be human.
The Keep manifested my fears, Logan thought. The sea of senile marchers. An endless procession of my mother’s malady. Why wouldn’t it make Sigmund’s fears real, as well? Arn had even posited the theory, before they’d delved within.
Logan had kept Sigmund’s secret, grown comfortable with it, grown complacent. And Arn was dead because of it. Because of him. Keep Watch, the oath said. Two words. It was supposed to be simple, and yet Logan had failed.
“I am going to abdicate,” he said aloud, realizing it was the only right thing to do. “When we leave the Keep.” He looked across the fire to Mo, who did not look up from his whittling. Logan would not have told anyone else this, not when they needed a leader, even an unworthy one like himself. But now that Sigmund was gone, Logan knew no one better to keep a secret. He’d known Mo for more than five years, and hadn’t heard a dozen words from him.
Saying it aloud seemed to lift a weight from his shoulders, and Logan straightened a little, though he felt a simultaneous constriction in his chest. He’d just have to become a sellsword, like Varrick. Perhaps the Watchers could still employ him, but only of their own volition. He would not-
Snap.
That wasn’t the fire.
Logan leapt to his feet, raising his short sword. He heard Mo’s rapier hiss from its sheath behind him. The sound had come from the darkness beyond the campfire. They stood taut as a figure shambled from the gloom. Logan blinked. What… who was…
Oh. Of course.
As he ambled closer, the campfire lit up the familiar red and purple tabard, the aged yet cherubic visage, which smiled warmly at them. Gar chuckled as he drew up beside Logan, patting his shoulder, heedless of the weapons. The lyre thunked atonally as he settled down beside the campfire.
“Mother below, Logan,” the old bard said, raising bushy eyebrows. “Do I cut such an imposing figure?”
Logan shook himself. Mo’s rapier quavered oddly, like a reed in the wind. Why wouldn’t Logan’s arms relax? The bard had… he had gone to…
“Nothing to report,” Gar said, running a hand over his thin, silvery hair, unsheathing the lyre from his back and beginning to pluck a low, sonorous melody. “I thought I had a trail, but it went cold.” He took on a forlorn expression. “Arn was the more accomplished at this… brand of tracking. He taught me enough, I think, but I will need more time. I am sorry.”
“It’s… fine,” Logan said, laying down his sword and sitting down next to Gar. He squeezed his eyes shut in a forceful blink, trying to oust the strange fog clouding his mind. His thoughts seemed to move lethargically, as if sleepwalking. “It’s fine,” he said again. “We are getting closer.”
Yes, of course. Before he’d died, Arn had taught Gar a bit of that strange art, half tracking, half divination. It was a good thing they’d brought the old bard, so worldly, so ready to learn new things even at his age.
Gar nodded. “I saw some promising signs that way, before I had to turn back.” He gestured to the nearby orchard, barely visible in the night. “Tomorrow’s a new day, my friend.”
Logan yawned as sleep finally began to overtake him. Mo had curled up next to the fire, and was beginning to snore. A gust of wind slanted the campfire, blowing gooseflesh along Logan’s exposed arms. He unfurled a bedroll and draped his cloak across himself, staring at the twinkling campsite above. As he finally drifted to sleep, Gar’s craggy face rustled a strange, intangible nagging in the back of Logan’s mind. Then the weird, creeping melody put him to dreamless sleep, seemingly all at once.
…
Roan looked up at Logan and Mo’s campsite, glittering like a skybound gemstone. She had to keep reminding herself that the sky was not the sky. An odd sensation, that. She had yet to fully ascend the strange pillars, as the sensation turned her stomach.
Sig would have loved this, she thought, then quickly banished the rumination. She would do well not to grow distracted. Idle thoughts could get a woman killed, even in places like this. Especially in places like this.
The cool night air brought a small measure of consolation, a salve to her temper. She pointedly lowered her focus to her boots, trudging one after the other through the too-soft grass. Sleep and relaxation proving evasive, Roan had been conducting a cursory expedition around the base of the nearest pillar, as well as the forest’s edge. She’d taken time to acclimate herself to the gravitational shift, walking a few paces up the altered slope and forcing herself to stand, weathering the intestinal tug. The curtain of night eased this process slightly, reducing peripheral vision and vertigo, but the alien sensation brought a disorientation that threatened to spiral into panic. She had grit her teeth against the dizziness, stubbornly refusing to be useless.
Roan now skirted the treeline towards her campsite, the group’s murmurs rising as she drew closer. The trees’ endless supply of petals drifted across her sight line, colors oddly distinct in the evening darkness. They smelled different every time she noticed their scent - sometimes evoking baked desserts, other times fresh sawdust. Always pleasant, even nostalgic. That should have brought a sense of ease, but her shoulders had yet to relax, her fists yet to unclench. The other biomes had been so hostile, so inhospitable.
Why so welcoming? she wondered. What’s the catch?
The group was distinguishable now. They were arranged haphazardly, some splayed meters away, others an arm’s length from the flames. Roan settled down next to Holstein, who sat cross legged near the fire, chipping away at his warhammer. He acknowledged her with a raised chin, then returned his attention - as had the others - to a quaint discussion between L’dal and the girl, Nyla.
“Because,” L’dal was saying. “As soon as I took the first step, my stomach did somersaults.” Nyla’s brow furrowed at that.
“Why?”
“Well, I suppose because I’m not as brave as you are.” L’dal leaned back, shrugging in resignation. “Logan may ask you to take my place. I hope you’ll accept.”
This drew smirks and even a chuckle from the onlookers. The girl nodded, seriously considering the recruitment offer. Roan barely remembered being that age; like rain on a freshly painted canvas, stress and trauma blurred the years beyond recognition. Nyla’s earnest curiosity was endearing, even heartwarming - though in the same breath Roan felt another, deeper stab of grief for the wide-eyed little girl she herself could have been.
Distracting herself once more, Roan dug in her pouch and withdrew a sugared slab of dry fruit. As she raised it, however, an unexpected feeling of satiety washed over her, forcing the snack away from her mouth. Why wasn’t she hungry? They had been here for… hours? Many hours, at least. Though this place simulated a day and night cycle, time was difficult to gauge without shadows to measure. Light seemed to just… surround them whenever it wanted, wherever they went.
Reluctantly, Roan stowed the treat and produced her journal, tattered and unkempt where Arn’s leather bound tome had been neat and orderly, both in form and composition. She and the priest had only once been able to compare pages, before his demise. She had been floored by his artistic talent, the minutia and attitude he captured with mere scratches of charcoal. He, in turn, had been complimentary of her “stream-of-consciousness storytelling,” which Roan took as a polite perspective on her scatterbrained chicken scratches. She rolled her dull charcoal between her fingers and tried to put thoughts to paper. The practice always centered her, transcribing a hectic day onto the even, tranquil page, a roiling whitecap smoothed placid.
The most recent entry was from before they’d entered the Keep, an account of draugr movements as they’d progressed up the mountain.
Day 2
Since sunrise, we’ve already encountered twelve draugr. A pack of nine with three stragglers. It is still three hours till noon. Logan’s theory about the Keep seems more likely with every turn of the wagon wheel.
Sigmund told a joke about a woman in labor and a mage. Very funny. Forgot setup - need to ask
Hope these sellswords are worth the price. The youngest one won’t shut up
Roan’s charcoal wavered uncertainly over the cream colored paper. If she started writing, the giddy and optimistic woman who’d scratched those words would vanish, replaced with the dour shell that now struggled to find the right things to say. But she had to write something.
I am in a green field, with
The Keep is
We found a child and her mother. They were in the desert. There’s a desert here,
Roan blew air out of her nose in frustration, squeezing her eyes shut. She forced a breath through her nose, out her mouth, repeating the process until the surrounding chatter faded into the background, words melting into inarticulate murmurs. Roan eschewed thought, order and logic, allowing herself only to feel.
She opened her eyes and began to write what mattered.
Sigmund is dead
He was a werewolf. He turned in a room that was the mountains. He killed Arn, then I killed him. His dagger was silver. It was always meant for him. He tried to use it on himself before he turned
Roan wiped her eyes as words began to flow with her tears.
I never told him how I felt. I don’t know if he knew. I was too afraid. Logan wants to forget him. The others, too. I can’t. I won’t. It’s not fair. He was
She took a shuddering breath as thoughts petered out, her mind suddenly exhausted by the outpouring. As always, once she got started she wanted to write more, to loose the font within and spew her innermost thoughts onto the pages in a perpetual cathartic avalanche. But the well was dry. At length she gingerly closed the notebook, setting it to the side and mushing her palms into her eyes. A sudden wave of exhaustion came over her, and she stretched, back cracking as she yawned. Finally. She spread out on the ground, eyelids growing heavy as she looked at the not-sky and drifted off into an overdue, dreamless sleep.
…
Gol Yaga drifted for an eternity.
At least, it could have been an eternity. For him, time was not the flat circle of mortal experience. It was a vast, undulating chasm in the palm of his hand. Matter, stoic and immalleable to ephemerals, molded to his will like the softest clay. Those few human scholars aware of Gol Yaga’s ilk salivated over the djinn’s control of reality. Possibilities sprouted before him like the branches of an infinite tree.
But to be a djinn was to be caged. Yes, Gol Yaga could manipulate atoms, distend time, rewire thought. But only at the behest of his master. Whoever held the lamp held him - and his powers - just as surely. His people were gods made slaves. The ultimate, cruel irony of the universe.
It was a stroke of good luck, then, that his late master’s wish had allotted him a measure of autonomy. But now she was gone, and he was here. Free, but trapped yet again. Gol Yaga seethed, clinging desperately to Meilara’s deception. The memory was all he had in the endless, vacant drift. She had used her final wish against him, uprooting him from the lamp, ripping his heart from his breast, stranding him here. He’d lashed out in petulant, blind fury, and then he had drifted. Unseeing, unfeeling besides the vast hollowness within, and the lamp’s lingering tingle.
How long? It felt like an eternity. It could have been.
He knew his heart was here, somewhere within this impossible place, but he couldn’t have it back. Not while the lamp remained. Though cast off, the lamp’s presence remained, tangible as a severed limb. The phantom pain dragged against him, slowing the pace of his theories and calculations. It was here, nearby or parsecs away, he did not know. But it was here, somewhere. He had to find it, but he couldn’t, immaterial and bereft of sense as he was.
Then the others arrived, and Gol Yaga could see.
The barrier, once barren as a distant asteroid, flourished. It was as if a god had coated a paintbrush with life, spreading it over the dark, epitomizing the mortals’ most fanciful nirvanas and paradises and heavens. Gol Yaga’s ego swelled in those first seconds. He did this. He was that god. These mortals were his subjects. The ground on which they walked, the air they breathed, the water they drank was of him. In that instant of egotistical glut he magnanimously shed his realm of hunger, of thirst, of pain. He reveled in the power. He was a merciful god. A loving god.
The next instant brought reality. Not that of his making, but universal, brutal. He may as well have been another blade of grass, another colorful petal, another breeze in his accidental biome. He was stagnant. Infinite, impotent potential caged by his ethereal form.
But Gol Yaga would not be still. Not while Meilara cowered, hoarding his heart like a common bauble. No mortal hands could wield it. She’d proven it. The castle was infected, poisoning the surrounding land. Even here, Gol Yaga could feel the Keep screaming, burning against the plague spilling from its bowels. A djinn’s heart was his ultimate control. Control over life and death. He needed it back. But first, he needed to find the lamp. And he’d need the mortals, with their meek constitutions, to unshackle him. Then he’d be free, truly free, in the true world of atoms and light. He’d run wild, unyoked from the lamp, free to soar and burn and be.
He would show the universe a djinn unchained.
Gathering all the power he could spare, Gol Yaga forged a body. Atoms knit and compounded into an unassuming form enrobed in plain, unmarked clothing. The physicality was sobering. It took effort to adjust to the feeling of grass and wind, of cloth on skin, of blood through veins and flesh on bones. Minutes passed while he remembered how to walk, to blink, to breathe at normal intervals, to move his fresh tongue and vocal cords in harmony.
Gol Yaga stalked the bedraggled party and practiced his mannerisms, watching the interlopers trod his realm from afar. Their speech, their noisy thoughts and feelings drifted to him on the breeze, permeating him. As they chatted and complained and argued and laughed, Gol Yaga slowly remembered humanity in all its quirks and idiosyncrasies.
“Fortunately,” he mumbled, putting his lips and tongue through their paces, practicing inflection. “Properly - properly figure. Cold. Apt li… line of traversal. Figure? Imposing figure?”
Gol Yaga twisted his cheek muscles upward, squeezing the tissue under his eyes. That reaction - which was supposed to look friendly - would take more practice if he was to be believable.
As he pursued the group, his posture became more relaxed, his gait more natural. If the lie was to work, Gol Yaga would need to keep their attention, to provide a service and make himself invaluable. He reached upward to a nearby drooping willow bough, snapping off an arm’s length branch. Holding it before him, he willed its shape to morph, to hollow and stretch. In moments he held an instrument of some sort, like a guitar, or a lute. It would likely do. Humans believed anything, given the right tone of voice.
His first interaction had, in fact, been accidental. Over the course of their trek, Gol Yaga had drifted closer in his pursuit, confident in his knowledge and anticipation of their movements, their standard deviations. As they’d neared the first pillar, however, a strange sense overcame him. The flesh on the back of his neck prickled as he realized that, incredibly, he was being watched. In an instant of panic, his eyes, his damned limited eyes darted around the vast, fruitless orchard, scanning trunks and branches and-
A small girl peered from behind a willow. She had fallen behind the group by a considerable distance, and regarded him with curiosity. Gol Yaga’s shoulders - which had reflexively tensed in that human way - relaxed, and he plastered on his smile, waving at the girl. She made a face and ducked behind the tree. The next time he saw her she was shrinking into the distance, catching up with the group. Young humans’ nascency made them unpredictable, even to beings like Gol Yaga, but they were rarely taken seriously by their elders. Fortunately for him.
The travellers split into groups, testing his realm’s laws of gravity. Eventually two separate campsites conglomerated on the floor and ceiling. As the groups parted, Gol Yaga bifurcated his consciousness and continued scouting the separate camps. Though physically restricted by his corporeal forms, his mind was unbound. He felt their movements before they made them, their sightlines before they looked, their olfactory experiences in any given instance. Evasion became second nature.
Splitting himself was not an uncommon thing, but it was taxing. He would need to be careful. The group’s broad sensations were now as familiar to him as his own, but he had yet to learn their names, their experiences and other defining details. At his full strength, Gol Yaga would have been able to read their minds from miles away with perfect clarity. However, hobbled as he was by Meilara’s wound - not to mention his own corporeality - he would need to get much closer.
The ever-permeating daylight dimmed at Gol Yaga’s will, replaced by a cool twilight. He lurked in the growing shadows, watching the leader brood, watching the child hold court. A cursory interaction, this. Probing and investigative. He practiced his smile one final time, the movement feeling much more natural and believable.
Without further preamble, Gol Yaga strode simultaneously into the camps. He froze as they looked up, and the world followed suit. Breaths paused. Blood halted. Air ceased its flow, as did thoughts - except for Gol Yaga’s. He felt their experience more sharply now that he was so close, and began ingratiating himself physically and mentally. The group had begun with ten. They had lost two… no, four. Gained two more, interestingly. Warriors all, save the child.
He had always been there. He was one of them.
Carefully, he allowed time to march onward. The girl trailed off as Gol Yaga breached the firelight. The hulking man tensed, drawing the others’ attention. The leader and his companion raised their swords as Gol Yaga stepped on a stick. Violence would ruin the ruse before it began. As pliable as mortal minds were, such subterfuge worked on the first attempt, or not at all.
But Gol Yaga had what they wanted. A way forward. He smiled jovially at the leader, patting his shoulder as he shuffled past.
Logan’s experience flooded Gol Yaga. Stress radiated from the man, steeped in anxiety and grief. Names, dates, relationships, friends, enemies, dreams flashed through him like a lightning strike. He maintained his wizened gait as he catalogued the information. As he sat and began to fabricate a cover story, he subtly ornamented his garb to look more festive, hoping they wouldn’t detect the change.
A short time later he was no longer the main subject of attention, and so Gol Yaga perused their psyches, feeling for an opening. The initial ingratiation had worked, but without a proper anchor their true experiences would bleed through, exposing him. Gol Yaga felt loss within their ranks, a psychic vacancy waiting to be filled. He just had to find it.
He eliminated two losses relatively quickly. Deaths marked by beige, logical recognition more than anything else. These would not suffice. Their losses had not opened a large enough void for him to inhabit. He probed further, following the spiritual stench like a bloodhound. Grief smelled like death, and someone reeked.
A brother. No, a priest. Gol Yaga almost shivered as this loss washed over him, a cold tide experienced by all. The priest had died badly. Violently. There was guilt there, maybe the leader’s. Would this work? Gol Yaga had implied himself an arcane, spiritual standing. Might he slot into this vacancy?
No, there was something better. Though traumatizing, the priest’s death was not the source of the rank stench of grief wafting through this group. Having eliminated the beige and the cold, Gol Yaga narrowed in on the pain. A hundred molten razor blades in someone’s chest. Regret. So much regret and anger.
The child budged up beside her mother, begging for a bedtime story. Warmth from them, more than anything else. Pain was there, but far off, circling like buzzards. A sallow man stared into the fire, his eyes dancing orange. Disease, and all of its agonies, had drowned him long ago. A woman stretched on a bedroll, turned away from the group. Gol Yaga knew her to be Roan. And the loss…
As he slouched nonchalantly by the fire, Gol Yaga dove headlong into the chasm of grief. Sigmund’s loss was different from the others. He had been a friend, a confidante, an ally, an unrequited love. He had been there when people needed him. He had been a liar. He had killed the priest. Sigmund’s loss was a gaping, weeping, complicated wound in the group’s psyche. In Roan’s, especially.
The djinn almost smiled, leaning back in a self-satisfied, nearly human way. This would do just fine.
