Bab 1: Chapter One
He awoke to the scent of smolder. The tall, wet grasses susurrused in the warm, light breeze
slipping over a horizon so near as to be claustrophobic, a cliff's edge veering abruptly to jagged ridges, thorny vines, and trees bristling every which way, like sea urchins, wispy, reedy trees nearly flattened by the wind-roar following the flock of flitting Baugn in advance of the throbbing abyss light, the bale dawn that burned white, searing Azuri's eyes to a bleary squint, as he flopped over on the grass chilled and blued by the lengthening shadows.
He daubed his fingers in the wound; it was wide, but shallow, bleeding in wanton rivulets drifting in tiny swirls of droplets bobbing in the soft, light air, and thirsty for the ground, where it oozed and osmosed in, as if the abyssal oasis soil was an eddying liquid, leaping in puffs and mushrooming in tiny growths that hung pendant, anemone-like, in the low gravity of the planetoid.
As the Baugn alighted around him, he sat up, unthinking, and at the jagged thrust of pain ripping the wicked grimace of his wound still wider, he flopped back down; rolled, gingerly, to his knees; then wobbled up, hunched over his quivering ribs, as he staggered to his feet, and promptly vomited on the grass.
As he shuffled between the grazing world-beasts, their eight blind eyes leaned in, their squiggly stalks lingering, as if they had recognized him, having heard of his illustrious career, or the misery he had sloughed off since then.
When he looked back over the lush, wind-blown meadowland, there was no depression, no crushed grass, to mark the fall of his body, only the subtle blur of the greensward. As he walked, he seemed to sink in the grass like water, for, in stepping down the slope of the elliptical planetoid,
the grasses lengthened, until he sank to his neck in a patch of taller, reedier grasses, clumping to his hands foraging through the green, like treading water, a luxuriant, green water.
When he lost his footing, stepping off a cliff concealed in the meadow, it was only that far, far below, in a rift cleaving the small, green world, a tree had rooted and slinked upwards, until its leafy top mingled with the fringe of grasses surrounding the pit, its leaves even with the grass, and as he drifted down in a dreamlike descent through the sweet-smelling leaves snaking through this shaded, stony chasm, he seized the branches, and began to climb.
"If you miss the rendezvous," Frellyx had said, "you will likely be stranded, and this goes for any of you." As Azuri recalled Frellyx gesturing toward his gathered troop, at their center was an angry red smear, as if his anger had half-melted this memory. While it was hard to look at Ialuna, it was harder to retain her in memory except as this bloody streak. Aside from his daughter's murderer,
Frellyx's hit squad consisted of killers recruited from penal construction; Elani, Frellyx's half-human daughter; and Kuilea, a goblin Azuri felt he should know. Something about her voice sounded familiar,
as if he had heard her once before, but through a bunched-up curtain. It was hard to recall any of them now, with the glass of his memory scratched to illegibility by Ialuna. If Frellyx had not ensured Azuri's obedience by those eerie, slippery words, that he had not heard so much as swallowed by ear--oozing, gelatinous syllables that encased his every thought, immobilizing his free will in an icy cube—he would have hacked the murderess into as many bits as he had scattered instants of rage throughout his new, desolate life. But now, after Frellyx's spell, every murderous glare blacked out, every violent breath dissolved to a passionless sigh, and every bloody impulse cramped his grip, burned his lungs, and rang in his ears; even the rush of blood to his cheeks slowed to hourglass speed, and the flare of his nostrils tamped back, as if they pushed futilely against a forty-foot thick wall. He felt like he had plummeted from a feverish, sweaty nightmare into immobility, his consciousness railing against his imprisoned will, his hands so steered with aplomb and nonchalance by the infuriating Frellyx that he began to nurture a sullen hatred for the wizard. Not that he could harbor violent thoughts under Frellyx's geas, but as a diplomat, he had learned how to distill a clear, bloodless vitriol that only seemed peaceful. Moreover, while there was no ill will more malignant than murder, bitterer winds blew in his deep, ancient elven interior, molded by airy passions over half a millennium. Elves well knew you could work great evils without spilling a drop of blood, when you had centuries to plot and scheme, building malevolences like dark castles, taking treasures by the sliver, and raking your enemies to weeping rivulets by the careful application of time, the law, or worse, tacit custom. And so, as Frellyx worked his dark will on his recruits, while most were helplessly restrained by the geas, Azuri begin to connive against the controlling wizard. There was always wiggle room, Azuri had found over the centuries; in reasoning, wiggle room was called rationalization; in belief, wiggle room was called interpretation; and in feelings, wiggle room was called sensibility. As an ancient elf, Azuri had long mastered these three forms of hypocrisy, so that even Frellyx's enchantment was putty to his mind. While he could neither do as he willed or as he liked, there was always room for spite, Azuri had found, and he kept these bitter strains close to his chest as he waited for his inevitable opportunity.
"While e are all bound by the chords and strains of the gods," Frellyx had cooed like a lover, when inlaying his spell work like molten gold in Azuri's ear, "you are now doubly snug. If I have secured you in her will, you were already ensnared in your web. And this was your fate."
"If you are so certain of my will," Azuri had seethed, "then you waste your time, and your spell is only a good luck charm."
"Even the gods hedge their bets," Frellyx had said. While his eye was wet, his cheek was as immobile as stone. Seeing this tear of joy, Azuri detested the elven wizard.
"Why me?" Azuri had asked.
"You certainly qualify," Frellyx had answered. "Are you not a criminal?"
"I was bereaved."
"True. But also a bit of a reaver." When Frellyx had leered, and added, "and from what I heard, you prefer reaving to grieving," Azuri knew then that he was owned, body and soul, by the wizard, for in willing his hands toward the wizard's throat, he had doubled over from the pain flashing through.
Even when he wished himself back at his penal assignment, the future site for the Gracorn Assembly, the capricious geas squeezed him until his eyes reddened and his fingers whitened, splayed in excruciating, spidery contortions, for it scoured thoughts of self-harm, and most of his memories of that construction site were of picking a suitable precipice from which to hurl himself into the void
when he had finished hauling his overlarge carcass through life,
Every time he strayed in thought, word, or deed, his face and limbs were wracked, and even when he blackened his mind to complete opacity, the geas assumed evil intent, and his organs convulsed like a bag of vermin, as if any moment they might pull him to pieces.
It turned out that the geas was blind to some disobedience, mainly pure spite, such as when Frellyx had paired him with Ialuna, then dispatched them to the longbow oasis. While it had started as fuming and avoidance, he gradually picked up the pace, quickening to a jog, then to a run. She had cried out, then shouted, then screeched, and he had only flattened the grasses faster.
While even thinking of blood and Ialuna side by side had gelled his breath until the loose air of the oasis became viscous, then vitreous, then so glassy it could not be breathed; while the mere thought of violence outside of Frellyx's geased parameters had wracked him in intense pain, the animal thrill of running, that primal synesthesia that forges all the elves' nine senses into one animal rhythm, whited out his mind and blotted out his anger, save for the frustrated tear sliding down the side of his nose. If it was unjust that his daughter's murderer ought to be dogging his heels, the thought of turning the tables and running her down had made his head spin. When this drop of grief could not be quelled, and swelled into a wave of rancorous nausea, he poured on more mind-emptying speed, sprinting with such a long, loping gait in the light gravity of the longbow oasis that he soon felt more locust than elf.
When he reached for the reasonable thought that he could not complete their task alone, he scattered that idea by accelerating his pounding tread and the rushing roar of his lungs, and in such a manner had circled the oasis in a wide spiral, arriving at the longitude of his departure but several miles away in latitude, near the ridges that made the handle of the longbow world. When he collapsed in the sparse grass, his body skipped like a stone, and burst through a bush tangled in its own coarse, ranging root network, where one loop of distended root caught his foot, and thwacked his chin on the ground hard, sending puffs of loose dirt into the air, dusting his face, hands, and the shrub.
When the neighboring bush shifted, then disentangled, he first thought his flung force had uprooted the willowy shard, but when its foliage settled into a kind of halter dress, fluffing into a violet and blue skirt the bright but repressed colors of jungle flowers under shadowy forest canopies, she then regarded him with emerald eyes swept and chased by billowing green tresses tinged cherry-red. These old eyes seemed more ancient than any Tree-Woman. As she gingerly sashayed back into the wind-blown, waving fringe of tall grasses, she seemed a flower receding not only into nature, but a forgotten time.
"Stop." While it was his own voice, it brought him up short to hear it, his meaning stuck and his body frozen mid-lunge. While his blood was hot, and his muscles warm, and she seemed to creep like a vine, it was as if the plants conspired in her flight, as they receded from her cringing form, and even the longbow oasis slid here and there before her, as if she was this green, growing planetoid's queen.
"Why should I stop for you? Are you not Azuri, not only a known tool for The High Tzhurarkh of Alfyria, but in the pockets of Eurilda the Wild and Frellyx the adventurer?"
"A Queen ought not travel alone." While Azuri thought threats indecorous, he knew that at his size, a harmless truism might sound ominous enough to give pause.
"Be not confused by my attire, old elf. No one coronated me."
"Dryad Queens are grown, yes?"
"I did not know you had been to our world."
"Where I might have been deluded by your hospitality cities? No, I read, and piece together what I know."
"Then you're a good guesser."
"Everything alive anticipates, either stalking prey or dreading the blow from above. While dryads, along with the humans you imitate, might guess, we elves fill in the blanks of future days with a more certain knowledge."
"I did not know elves see the future."
Azuri sighed. "Then why make me repeat myself? If the universe is a continuum of will, everything is anticipation. Not only is there no past, there is neither a now nor a future."
"You're saying everything is desire."
"I'm not surprised a dryad wishes it so. When has desire ever accomplished a needful thing? Desires are only the noise, not the song."
"This is highly amusing," she said, "but your knowledge is far from perfect. Not only am I no Queen, but as an offshoot of an iconoclast, I would not even be recognized as a Tree-Woman on the Dryad World."
Azuri nodded. "Then you are Sarin Gelf."
The Tree-Woman took another step into the foliage. "No."
"You mince words like him."
"We have not met. Have we?" Her voice lilted in her hesitation.
"Admit it. You are Sarin Gelf."
"Perhaps his offshoot," said the Tree-Woman.
"Then, for all your acts of sedition, you are Inglefras, and a Queen"
"Knowing little of dryads, you do not know how wide is the rift caused by iconoclysm, the fundamental disruption that makes the iconoclast flower in the mind of her Tree-Mother, bear fruit to its difference, take root in unknowing, and give rise to a new being. I am everything Inglefras is not,
having taken root in my own grove and flowered a new identity."
"You are her cast-off shadow."
"No--her seed taken wing, until I put down roots and spread my own shadow."
"Whoever you are, you have much to answer for. Why are you here? Why now?"
"And if I choose not to answer?"
"Contrary to appearances, it is not I who question you, but the will of Frellyx which now works in me. You must come with me."
"I think I trust you more than Frellyx."
"I'm flattered, but not persuaded to let you go."
"You're a pretty old thing. I don't mind going away with you, if we fly away now."
"What do you fear?"
"You mean, other than your plans for this oasis?" she chortled. "Iulirien eteru felura tok tol." Dryads have long ears. "You've been very lucky to avoid their march."
"Whose march? Ialuna and Kuilea?"
"Kuilea of Hwarn is here? That I did not know." She peered through the grasses, as if fearing the goblin woman's head might pop into view that very moment. "No, Azuri. The Ebotu."
Azuri swayed.
"I didn't think it possible for an elf to be any paler." she laughed. "I had always thought Khyte's story about what happened in the catacombs to be more or less hyperbole."
"You're the one who's lying."
"While I won't say that I never lie, it has little utility here, on an abyssal oasis far from any worlds. What would I have to gain by lying to you, Azuri?"
"How do you see those vicious creatures?"
"What do you mean?"
"The Ebotu are not only invisible outside of a Doorway's light, they can't even be touched until so illuminated."
"Very interesting."
"I don't see why, liar." When Azuri exhaled at last, it was like his lungs had stopped moving, and only now were given permission to breathe. While he knew his fear of the Ebotu was mindless and irrational, not unlike phobias of spiders, there were many good reasons to fear spiders in the Abyss, where the ruling god was a spider. While he was physically much larger than the Ebotu, the way they defied his elven senses made him feel as blind and squirmy as a worm, and it was only in directing his aggression towards the Tree-Woman that he was able to come up for air.
"There's something you should see, Azuri."
"I don't think so. I think you're coming with me."
"Wouldn't Frellyx like to know of any other malefactors here?"
"Why waste his time with your lies?" But as Azuri felt his spine stiffen, and the angle of his body change, to fall in toward the Tree-Woman, he cursed Sarin Gelf. The clever dryad, in speaking to the geas, had seized control of Azuri, who dangled from the spell's strings.
"It will only take a few moments." As the Tree-Woman held out her hand, Azuri's fingers closed around hers unwilled, as if his arm was a tripped spiderweb. As the aroma of cinnamon and cherries furled in his nose and swirled to the top of his skull, the Tree-Woman's scent laced in tandem with the geas, mostly strengthening their mutual bonds, but at some parts snarling.
"Do not..."
"You will find me a more willing collaborator. I want nothing from you, Azuri. I want only to help."
"Frellyx..." Fury rose in Azuri. He could not finish a sentence no matter what he intended, so furiously did the second nature of the geas contest with the new nature of the dryad scent, which sought to overwrite both wills.
"He knows nothing of me, but he will. For now, suffice to say that I am privy to your plans, and I approve. After you assist me here, you will come where I will, and assist me everywhere."
"Dryad queen..." seethed Azuri.
"You know a little about dryads after all. Except that I am no queen, but grew from a transplanted graft of one. Still, having my own agenda, I care nothing for dryad interests, Azuri." She extended a willowy arm toward the wind-blown, whispering fronds. "Your other friend is coming."
"Not..." While it hurt him to hear it, it was excruciating to think it, for the geas sought to enforce the camaraderie Frellyx had commanded from his troop. Were it not for the encouraging allure of the dryad secretions, he might sputter and seethe, but never speak his mind. As it was, he only squeezed it out with an immense shudder. "Not my friend…."
"Then, since it pains you to heed any scheming where she is concerned, trust me to keep you in the dark. That said, you may come to be pleased by my designs."
As the swirling tickle of the geas fluttered from brain to spine, Azuri's shoulder blades flexed painfully toward each other, as if the wrestling compulsions peeled back invisible wings. While he was feathery light on the Abyssal oasis, his will and muscles felt hardened in lead, and as he was moreover still winded from fleeing Ialuna, Azuri moseyed as they hiked along the arc of the longbow world's handle, a grassy shelf thickened by a titanic, bristling copse of trees.
While the Tree-Woman strode with grace no matter how the ground dipped or swelled, as if the oasis was her vast ballroom, when the steep downhill climb tightened Azuri's calves and brought him up on his tiptoes, he stumbled on a pebble, pitched forward in a pell-mell run, and windmilled his arms to keep his balance as he stumbled into the thicket, where waist high grass brushed his forearms and tickled his elbows, and the crowding branches began to mesh. While the more loosely woven snapped back as he barreled through, those tightly joined burst asunder from his firm press towards the handle.
From the grassy foliage bobbed roly-poly creatures scarcely larger than rats, whose feet bulged like roses, the toes radiating around each paw like petals. Like dryads, their eyes blossomed from their upturned, furred faces, only they were borne aloft by these whirring eye flowers. When they bobbed ahead lazily, Azuri reached for one, but it flurried along the arc of the crescent with a rapid buzz.
Were these peculiar creatures plant, vermin, or some unknown intelligence? As they flew whereever their blossoms faced, none could accuse these eerie vegetal avians of navel-gazing, and he already admired them more than elfkind. Not that it wasn't the purpose of intelligence to blight its domain. The giants farmed until the breeze uprooted their crops, the goblin world shriveled to a shrunken head, the humans chased their own tails into civil wars, the dryads cruelly harvested their own seed, and the elves' pursuit of expanded sight had devoured their very souls, so that their names and selves seenmed a performance to a hall of mirrors.
Where these animal flowers fluttered across the handle, a Doorway's blue gyre flickered. Sarin Gelf led him toward the glinting portal.
"Azuri!"
Although he turned his head left and right, he glimpsed nothing, and guessed the wheezy Abyssal wind had scraped through meshed branches.
"Azuri!" Coupled with this louder hiss, something struck his cheek. His eyes lowered to the projectile, a hexagon cluster of tiny pinecones, like some weird fusion of the imagined with the real. As he marveled at it, he recognized the voice, until it was blasted out of mind by the furred glare of a hulking creature hunkering on a branch. He knew its snarling face too, not by name, but by fear, a lingering terror that had never left him after his waking nightnmare in the Kreonan catacombs.
When the Tree-Woman's upturned face met its white-furred eyes, she burst through the fringe of tall grasses and low-flung branches. As her tread was noiseless, it was like she had dissolved into the wooded greensward.
"Azuri! Get down!" When the hand fell on his wrist, he caught it by reflex, then dragged Elani through the branches into his embrace. "Azuri!" With one broad palm, he muffled her and crushed her toward him, then backed into the brush. Although quieted, she was far from speechless, and her smothered scream raged in his cupped hand.
While Elani had glimpsed them before he did, it was a useless foreknowledge, for if she knew anything of what she saw, she would have run screaming and left Azuri to the Ebotu.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone