Extraordinary Zoology Part 10

Edrea's jaw dropped. There was an Iosan practice involving such magic, a powerful scrying that allowed one to find people or things. It required one to be familiar with who or what they sought, and in possession of something that had been close to them. Edrea had left Ios with only the barest knowledge of the sigils. Her instructors were unwilling to let young students like herself reach deeply enough to tap this power.

That it could be wielded by a farrow hermit shaman, and over such a great distance, came as a shock.

"That's some of your apprentice's hair?" Lynus asked.

Groth nodded sadly.

"That's brilliant!" Lynus continued. "You cut it before he left, and then your magic could tell you how he fared!"

Tears welled in Groth's eyes. He turned to the ruined farrow village, reached into a pouch at his waist, and withdrew a fuzzy, beaded cord. Dozens of tiny clumps of hair, each with a different colored or shaped bead affixed, were strung along this cord, at least two paces' worth of tiny tokens.

"My children. Litters I tended. Sucklers I fed." He drew a pattern in the air in front of him, paused to wipe his snout with a hairy knuckle, and continued. Runes appeared before him. Edrea did not recognize the shapes, but she felt finely honed power pulse outward from Groth.

"All dead," Groth said after a moment. "Some here, some out there. All dead."

Such power. Not just a single seeking, but dozens. Not just living forms, but the freshly dead. Edrea had once thought the farrow barely sapient, but this one had just displayed tremendous strength, control, and artistry with the weave. She expected it might take her decades to develop similar skills, if she ever managed them at all.

Edrea shook her head with amazement at this. Then the gravity of the situation reached her, and she felt heavy sorrow for Groth's loss. She had lost Aeshnyrr, but Groth had lost everything. Perhaps his great reach was powered by his grief.

Great reach . . .

"Groth, you said *some out there.' You can tell where the bodies are?" she asked.

Groth wrinkled his snout and scowled, then nodded. "They are swallowed whole."

"Oh no," said Kinik, looking around at the village. "Page eighty-four?"

But how? Edrea thought, even as Lynus turned to Pendrake, his brow furrowed.

"It does seem like the only conclusion, if it weren't for the creature's size. I've seen the tooth you recovered; nothing that large could fit in the burrows we've seen." He rubbed one temple. "I can't help but think there's something I'm missing."

Pendrake looked somewhat chagrined, for the first time Edrea could remember. "I've been thinking about that. All this time I've been going on what the legends say, which is that they are no natural beasts, immortal and unkillable, only four in number. But what if they are just animals after all, only with a life cycle stretching untold centuries rather than decades? What if one finally sp.a.w.ned? What we witnessed could indeed be the work of a wurma"one not fully grown."

Edrea and Lynus shared a grim look. It was bad enough that a monster from legend was making itself known. But if the thing could sp.a.w.n . . . Edrea shook the thought from her head. Time enough for speculation once they had dealt with the problem at hand.

Kinik nodded and said, "Just a grub, then."

Lynus exclaimed, "Some grub! It eats entire villages!"

"Professor," Edrea said, "the beast travels underground, so it is likely slow. If its masters have decided where they want it to attack again, I should expect them to send it along the most direct course, while they meander to lose trackers like us. But if the beast travels straight, and we know the direction . . ." She trailed off.

"Map and compa.s.s!" Pendrake said. He thrust a hand into his field kit and withdrew both. He flipped the map open and pointed. "We're here." He indicated the small stick-farrow he'd drawn on this map years ago. "Groth, which way *out there' are the bodies of your children?"

Groth snorted heavily and again traced a sigil in the air while thumbing over the string of tokens. He closed his eyes and groaned, as if in pain. Illegible farrow-scrawl spun glowing around him, and Edrea felt the weave pulse and thrum, as if Groth had struck it with a hammer. The farrow walked into the clearing and turned a slow circle before returning to the group. He stopped and pointed to the north and east.

Pendrake stepped alongside the farrow, adjusted the compa.s.s, and sighted along Groth's arm. He oriented the map beneath the compa.s.s and stared for a moment.

"Horgash," he said, "the line I'm drawing misses the Mirkar kriel by less than two miles."

"These Tharn and their monster preyed upon defenseless humans and farrow," Edrea said. "A trollkin village doesn't seem like their sort of target."

"That village," said Horgash, "has sent its warriors to fight alongside Madrak Ironhide in the east." He shook his head. "It's nearly as defenseless as Bednar was."

They stood in silence, staring at the map.

Pendrake reached out with both arms, grasping Lynus and Edrea each by a shoulder. "Then we need to get there first, and warn them."

And we'd better do so with time to spare, Edrea thought to herself, or we'll merely add our own ma.s.s to the size of the monster's meal.

The beast on page eighty-four of the Monsternomicon, the gorgandur, was not something you fought. It was something you fled.

PART III: THE MIRKAR KRIEL.

Cmija stood on a wooded knoll overlooking a broad, cultivated clearing. Deeper in the forest behind him, his Tharn allies were well-hidden from the distant eyes of the trollkin whose walled village he surveyed.

He drew in a deep breath of midday autumn air and savored its mild crispness. The weather was kinder here than in his homeland among the foothills of the Gla.s.s Peaks, a kindness that made even the hardiest of these southern people soft, at least by Cmija's standards. They would feed the Wurm.

The stones of this village would offer the inhabitants cover, but when the Avatar surfaced they would be forced to flee that haven, straight out the gate and into harvested fields. Tharn spears and arrows would rain death upon them, and those fields would be harvested for a second time this season.

This was Cmija's third autumn away from his homeland, and it would be his last in hiding. The Devourer's Avatar grew quickly, and more quickly still when encouraged to feed upon the living, rather than swallowing and excreting peat like a common worm.

He touched the rune-inscribed sh.e.l.l shard hanging at his neck, a sliver of the Avatar's sacred egg. Closing his eyes, he sought a sense of the Avatar, a connection through which he could see, feel, and draw power.

The connection came to him at oncea"warmth, darkness, the familiar press of rock and soil. Movement. The Avatar was coming, and Cmija was still its chosen voice. The Avatar would feed again, and soon the Circle Orboros would have no choice but to acknowledge Cmija as voice of the Devourer Wurm, chief among the children of Orboros. Then Cmija and the Avatar would roll forth across all of Immoren.

Cmija had felt the wilding when particularly young and been taken in by a reclusive blackclad of his own people, who heeded well the voice of the Wurm. Cmija had learned at his side, become versed in the lore of the Devourer, but then later discovered the distrust the other blackclads had for his master. They claimed he had not truly learned their ways, and that Cmija's teachings were corrupt, incomplete. They had denied him welcome among their inner circle. He had vowed to prove them wrong.

There was movement in the trees nearer the trollkin village. Cmija watched as five people emerged from the forest and into the broad clearing. A trollkin rode in front, atop one of the woolly bison common to the northern kriels. Four walked, leading a heavily laden packhorse.

Cmija counted two firearms among the small band of travelers, along with a single bow and several swords. The ogrun carried one of their traditional polearms. She alone looked to be formidable in a fight, though the mounted trollkin and the older man did carry themselves confidently. The two skinny ones, a man and a cursed Iosan, they were just more prey.

"Run them down, spill them," came a woman's voice just behind him. It was uncanny how these Tharn could sneak, even when one knew they were about. "Bloodtrackers ready, Cmija."

"Hold, Iskaa. It is not yet time for bloodshed."

"Spill by ones, spill by twos," she growled. "Deny strength to the trollkin."

"And deny the Devourer further prey?"

"Spilla""

"The Great Wurm will rise soon enough." He placed his hand on the mule-deer skull Iskaa wore as a mask. "You, your sisters, and your brethren, you have my word that b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.ps shall fall from the table of his feast. He shall slake your thirst."

Iskaa growled again. Or perhaps she purred. Even after a year among these primitive Tharn, bending their blood-wors.h.i.+p to the Wurm's own turnings, Cmija remained unsure of the nuances of their communication.

The distant group made their way across the clearing, advancing upon the rough stone buildings of the village. Cmija smiled. Whether they planned to stay a night or a fortnight, that weary little band would be spending the rest of their lives here.

Lynus looked up at the stone huts and pondered the logic of trollkin construction. When humans built with stone, they built biga"hundreds of men with dozens of steamjacks, teams of mules, and tens of thousands of blocks of quarried stone. Castles, cathedrals, and colleges were built with stone.

Trollkin, however, almost casually hauled rock and pounded it into huts and hovels. Where humans would build a house of frame and thatch, trollkin worked in stone. Maybe there was some threshold of efficiency their stronger backs and larger hands allowed them to cross. These st.u.r.dy homes would last for centuries, just like the palace in Caspia, Cygnar's border fortresses, and Corvis University. For all Lynus knew, these homes and this low wall surrounding them had already stood for centuries. Weather had long since obscured any quarrying scars.

Horgash dismounted at the gate and bowed deeply to the matronly trollkin who had strode out to meet them. She was barefoot and bare-armed, wearing the colorful quitari-patterned cloth wrapped as a sash, a belt, and a tabard in one long, complex knot. Symbolic, perhaps, of the kriel she guided.

Lynus listened carefully, taking care to miss none of the Molgur-Trul she and Horgash spoke.

"Jata of Mirkar kriel," Horgash began, "I have no trade goods on this trip for your village. I carry nothing but fresh wounds and grave news."

"You may enter upon the stones of your own honor, Horgash Bloodthroat." Jata inclined her head toward the rest of the group. "But your companions are far removed from the kin."

"They are kith to me," said Horgash. "I travel with Viktor Pendrake, warrior-scholar and high mentor in Corvis. He is a keystone, the topmost in one of the many arches of Cygnar's bastion of learning. With him are three apprenticesa"Lynus Wesselbaum, Edrea Lloryrr, and Kinik Helegroth."

Lynus felt a chill as Horgash said his name, as if a portion of his soul were being etched into an epic tale somewhere.

"All are true stone. They have fought at my side and on my behalf," Horgash continued. "I trust my life's breath and kin's blood to them. And with both honor and great need, I beg you to place that same trust."

Jata squinted lopsidedly, and with that furrowed, frozen wink, eyed Lynus and each of his companions in turn. After a moment she spoke, this time in slightly accented Caspian.

"High praise from our fallen caller. He says you've got stones." She smiled, and Lynus realized she was punning across languages. "Your travels have left all of you worse-curried than his bison, but I still see in you at least a small measure of what Bloodthroat claims."

She turned back to Horgash and said, in Molgur-Trul, "Kithkar Stershan's lodge is empty while he and his warriors fight to the east. Clean your friends up, wrap them as guests, and we'll talk."

Lynus was discomfited to learn that, for this deep-woods kriel, at least, "wrap them as guests" meant that they were expected to dress trollkin-style. A young trollkin brought a stack of patterned cloth to them in Stershan's lodge, and Horgash helped them wrap and tie themselves appropriately.

The pattern on these sashes was very simple, with the same colors as the quitari Jata wore but with none of the finer lines.

"Guest colors of the Mirkar kriel," said Horgash.

"It's an honor?" Lynus asked hopefully.

"Hah! The real honor is to be allowed to address the kriel wearing your own colors. But this is several steps above not being let within the gates at all."

"Further evidence that despite the breadth of my travels, I haven't been everywhere, nor made nearly enough friends," Pendrake said. "I miss the more boisterous welcomes I experienced with the Klagg kriel at Scarleforth Lake."

"I miss my trousers," said Lynus.

"And they miss you," said Edrea. "They're filthy enough that they can stand up on their own. I half expect them to follow you out into the street."

Lynus sighed.

"We must sally forth without them nonetheless," said Pendrake. He looked quite comfortable wrapped in the long patterned cloth. "Let your trousers guard the lodge."

Barefoot and clothed in naught but broad lengths of colorful wool, they walked through the village. Lynus felt small. Only the children here were shorter than he was, and a few of the older trollkin loomed even over Horgash.

"None of fighting age," Edrea said quietly. "I see a few wizened old warriors, but that's it."

Horgash grunted in a.s.sent.

"Do you want to do the talking?" asked Pendrake. "Your command of the formal Molgur-Trul is far superior to mine."

"There is no formal version of that tongue," said Horgash. "We just wrap our words around pieces of old stories. Be polite, and you'll do fine."

The audience chamber was circular, with a fire pit in the center ringed by concentric stone benches. No fire burned this afternoon, but the room still smelled like smoke. Jata sat with four other trollkin, chins of the males covered with the craggy growths of age.

"Sit where you will," Jata said in Molgur-Trul. "We are prepared to hear what you have to say."

Lynus sat, again feeling child-sized. The benches were just a little too large.

Pendrake remained standing and began to speak, also in the trollkin tongue.

"A Tharn war party is making its way here, Elder. We have not seen them, but by the signs they have left, we estimate there are at least twenty, bent on slaughter." He gestured toward the door. "Were that the extent of their force, your walls would lend you significant advantage, but the Tharn have a great burrowing beast of war with them."

"What kind of beast?" Jata asked.

Pendrake paused. He, Lynus, and Edrea were already sure of what was coming. It was not something to speak of lightly. It was something to speak of after running far, far away.

The most recent accounts of the great serpents, the gorgandur, were forty years old, but even the oldest tales were consistent enough that the existence of these monsters could not be denied. Even Lynus' little book of trollkin poetry included a tragic tale whose details aligned perfectly with ancient Menite accounts, though the two cultures had different names for this legendary horror. Adding to the proof of its reality was the giant tooth on display at Corvis University, recovered by the professor from an excavation of the site of that most recent attack.

Pendrake continued. "It is a gorgandur, likely a sp.a.w.n of those legendary beasts from deep below Caen. It has flattened two small villages and devoured the inhabitants already. I fear that the st.u.r.diest stones of the Mirkar will tumble beneath it."

Jata sat silently. Pendrake looked over to Horgash, who nodded encouragement. He continued.

"You must evacuate. The Tharn and their monster approach from the southwest. If you travel northeast, you can rendezvous with the forces of the combined kriels defending the borders."

"Have you seen the gorgandur, Viktor Pendrake?" Jata asked.

"Only its tracks."

"Have you seen those we are fighting to the east, the bloodthirsty skorne warriors and their beasts?"

"Yes. They invaded Corvis three years ago and were repulsed."

"That was a skirmish compared to the war now being waged. Flattening villages is nothing. The skorne you repulsed have returned with the strength to grind stone to powder. You would have us flee a gra.s.s fire by running headlong into a burning forest." She looked at Pendrake, then at each of the others, her eyes finally stopping on Lynus.

"You." She pointed. "You follow this man. Tell us why we should trust him."

"I, um . . ." Lynus began. He quickly decided he was out of his depth, even if his Molgur-Trul was pa.s.sable. "Horgash speaks better than I do, Elder."

"Horgash can talk to old bones until they rise up and lead an army," said Jata. "Your Iosan companion carries herself like a sorceress and is certainly wily with words. The ogrun behind you is flush with the zealotry of a bokur, and I don't want to be preached to. You, however, I will hear."

Lynus swallowed silently and gathered his thoughts. It was a very short process.

"You can do this," Edrea whispered. "You read trollkin poetry for fun, remember."

And then he did remember. What was it Horgash had said earlier, about wrapping words around pieces of old stories? That book of trollkin poetry had some old stories in it.