NOVEL FROG Chapter 19 – A Kelta Cries
At some point during the night, the howling died to a faint whistle. The winds no longer threatened to strip the trees. Instead, they showered them with a light drizzle. The weather yawned with exhaustion before giving way to a clear sky. Insects climbed the blades of grass and began to sing their song now that the danger had passed them by. The sun pierced the veil of morning, nudging birds out of their slumber.
When Vincent opened his eyes, he saw several moths clinging to the wall, as well as a star-shaped creature with sprouts growing from its back. When he stirred, the moths scattered and the creature retracted its sprouts. A thick blanket fell off his body, a gift somebody had given him during the night. Wincing with pain from the uncomfortable sleeping posture, he twisted his back until it popped. He checked himself, saw that though he still had the vest on, he still had not been tied up again. Shrugging, he closed his eyes and tried to shake off the morning daze.
"Braaap!!!"
A loud noise startled him. Swearing, he looked toward a nearby window and saw two pink landrider feelers were sticking through it, probing the brick and stone. Stumbling, Vincent got up, then walked up to the window. He saw Holan's maw pressed up against it. Sensing Vincent's presence or perhaps taking a liking to his smell, she slathered the window with her big tongue and tried to press her impossibly large maw into the opening. He hesitated, then gave her a quick stroke above the mouth and headed towards the entrance. He stopped when he heard a hushed conversation. He could not hear their words, but he knew who the subject of the conversation was.
Shame and rage began to pierce his stupor and he resisted a sudden compulsion to walk back to his mat and go back to sleep. He wasn’t ready to go out and face the creatures who witnessed him shout down a storm. It was humiliating. The events of the previous night were still fresh in his mind. He reeled at the visceral power of the dream. It slammed into him with the velocity of a monsoon and struck him like an accusation.
What the hell had that been? It was as if he had been loaded into a recreation, a simulation of his past. The streets of Chicago had been emulated with flawless detail and he was able to walk around the memory as a passive, unseen observer and watch events replay themselves.
More importantly, Vincent realized he had forgotten everything about Deonte: his name, his voice, his age, and the very fact he even existed. He had forgotten all of it until he had that dream. How was this possible? How could somebody so integral to his childhood be lost to him?
But as he asked himself this question, he could not even remember why Deonte meant so much to him. The memory of the man appeared in his head like an untuned signal. His image was obscured by white noise and static. He remembered that Deonte existed, and he had been one of the first role models Vincent ever had. But he could not recall much of anything beyond that encounter on the streets of Chicago. He could not even remember what had led up to it other than being afraid of his father's wrath.
The advice Deonte had given had been terrible, schizophrenia could not be controlled by will alone, but he had been a positive force in Vincent's life nonetheless. So why couldn't he remember him? Scattered images were all he could recall of the man who he had once considered to be like an older brother: Deonte holding a guitar, his friends hanging out on the stoop, a split screen competition on a 16-bit system, ash trays, screaming in an alleyway, spatters of red liquid on broken asphalt...fire.
An unknowable sorrow choked Vincent’s chest as he tried to grab at the fragments of Deonte’s legacy. It was a lamentation, and yet he had no idea what he was lamenting because he could not remember. All he was left with was a rueful sense of profound regret. Deonte was lost in one of the gaps that proliferated his memory. But how did he get this one back?
His train of thought was interrupted when he felt the touch of Slade’s trace upon him. So, he walked out into the morning sunlight with feigned nonchalance. She and Tuls had been standing several yards away from the entrance while Ro’ken and Clayde sat in front of a small fire. All of them, with the exception of Slade seemed to avoid his gaze. He noticed that she held the other end of the cut tether in her hand.
Their silence seemed to communicate more than any spoken word. The energy between the creatures carried with it an air of tension and tightened nerves. Slade’s gaze seemed to pierce him, but instead of quelling under her silent scrutiny, he ignored her and was about to walk past her when the carnage left behind by the storm brought him to a halt.
“Whoa...”
They should not have survived the virulence of the black monsoon. Only the strange metal spikes they drove into the ground seem to have sheltered them from the brunt of the devastation. Trees and bushes had been yanked from their spots and tossed around the meadows. Raging rivers that used to be streams coursed through the ravines carrying splintered lumber, mud, and rocks. Huge, ugly gashes marred the sides of hills as if some large beast had clawed at the earth. As he gazed upon this ruination, a shiver crawled up his spine.
“It takes a special kind of tool, made of a special kind of material to cut through drake gut,” Slade said, “you had nothing on you that could do this.”
“Mysterious. Maybe I did that while I was asleep too.”
She did not answer, though he could feel her scrutiny.
“I don't know how it happened,” he said, “if that was me, I would have done it a long time ago. So, are you going to chain me up again?”
“No. The situation has changed.”
“Wait...what? What do you mean?”
“Go. By the fire, eat.”
“Okay...”
Confused, he walked over to the fire and took a seat, allowing the warmth of the flames to soak into his dampened clothes. He heard a long, exasperated sigh from Ro’ken and could see the creature glaring at him.
“What?” Vincent demanded from the lithe white creature, “come on, don’t go ‘ughhhh’. If you got something to say, spit it out.”
The brows on the lacertine figure seemed to strain with his glare. “Kiolai,” he said without taking his eyes off Vincent, “are you going to tie your mark up?”
“Good morning to you too.” Vincent had the sudden urge to grab a burning log and shove it down the creature’s throat. “Just what in the hell is your problem?”
“Ease yourself,” Clayde said, “when you work with this one long enough, you learn not to take his slights to heart. He has a short temper. And I’m afraid what he witnessed last night gave him nightmares.” There was a hint of humor to Clayde’s otherwise serious tone.
“And what was that?”
“The Bane. I recognized the signs when I restrained you. You are lucky you were healed before it began to take its toll.”
“No,” Slade interrupted. She clutched the drake gut in her hands. “He started showing the signs of the Bane long before that. I noticed the dilations in his eyes from the moment we arrived.”
“Dilations?” Vincent repeated, “what?”
“First the eyes dilate and contract,” she said, “then the ears begin to twitch. After that, blood gathers at the bottom of the eyes until small droplets spill over and run down the cheeks. These four stages happen in a matter of hours. After that, the Bane-afflicted only has a couple of days at most to live, during which they will claim to hear spirits, see spirits, and utter incoherent conspiracies as their minds begin to leave.”
“Damn,” Vincent said, “schizophrenia on Earth definitely doesn’t do that.”
“Your eyes dilated,” she said, “your ears twitched. I stood, waiting for the next signs to show. But you never went beyond the second stage when all others who suffered the Bane would have.”
“You cured him before he had chance to manifest those.” Ro’ken said. But Slade cut him off.
“No,” she said, “I have seen it enough to know its progression.”
“As have I,” Clayde said, his voice dire with memories. “She’s right. The first four stages of the Bane happen more swiftly than you can possibly imagine.”
“Are both of you bending my wing?” Ro’ken demanded, “is this a joke?”
“Not sure what the big deal is.” Vincent said.
“You...survived the Bane...” Tuls repeated, as if that fact alone were obvious evidence of its significance. “How...?”
The four of them seemed truly stunned.
“Clayde,” Slade said, reaching into her pocket. She withdrew a purple medallion and tossed it to him, he caught it. “In light of what I have witnessed last night, I am using the authority given to me to order you and your relos back to Meldohv.”
“What authority?!” Ro'ken spat, “first you take our mark, now you’re ordering us around? What is your problem, Reashos?”
“Hmmm...Look.” Clayde passed the medallion to him. “It's authentic.”
“Why?!” Ro'ken asked, “Reashos, what is going on?”
“They will want to question you. I cannot tell you any more than that,” she said. Vincent quelled at the hidden urgency of her inflection. It seemed to speak of hidden warnings and dire premonitions. “But we must wait until the currents have slowed. Tuls is still agitated by the remnants of that storm. He does not think it would be wise to cross its waters until they have calmed.”
“That'll be Tuls,” Clayde groaned as he got to his feet, flipping the medallion over in his fingers. “Always so sensitive with his ‘sight’. Well...we have no choice. This coin carries a lot of weight, never expected to see it carried by one as young as yourself. Won't ask why it was given to you. As for you...you're a strange one.”
It took a moment before Vincent realized Clayde was addressing him.
“So I've heard,” he said.
He was in no mood for cordiality, nor was he interested in learning about whatever sixth sense Tuls supposedly had. When the relos began to pack things up, he turned to Slade.
“When you have a moment, we need to talk.” He expected her to utter a warning. She considered him for a few moments and made a slight gesture with her wing.
“Okay,” irritation filled his voice, “I’m not familiar with your body language. I don’t know what that little gesture you did with your wing means.”
“Wait for me on the other side of the waypoint,” she said.
Vincent hesitated for a few moments, then he made his way around the structure. The absence of the fire made him cool again, yet the sun just began to crest the horizon. The clear sky showed no remnants of the violent force that tore its way through the plains and meadows. A small vibration began to shake his jaws and he realized he was shivering. Wincing, he grabbed one of the wings and pulled it around himself. It was a strange sensation, being warmed by his own oversized “hands”. It was another reminder of the mockery he had been transformed into. He heard Tuls walk toward the edge of the roof and leap off. He hit the softened ground with a grunt.
“Scram.” Vincent said before the creature could address him. Bitterness made him short-tempered, though he immediately felt a slight pang of regret. Tuls shrugged and walked away, carrying the spike from the roof in his hands. Vincent allowed the fury to gather in his chest. By the time Slade finally came around, he was itching to unleash it.
“What is it?” she inquired.
“I don’t normally go mistaking storms for Deonte all the time.” Vincent began to pace back and forth. “But what you saw last night, that’s my fucking life! You saw me experiencing an epic schizophrenic meltdown. What’d you think? Did you find it amusing?”
“I derived no amusement from your raving,” Slade said.
“Well then, are you satisfied?” he spat, “you saw that it doesn’t kill me.”
“Yes, I saw,” she said, “you should be dead.”
“And that changes things...how?”
Her ear twitched. “Do you jest?”
“'Jest'? What the hell are you talking about?!”
“The Bane kills. You should not exist.”
“Oh yeah? I shouldn’t exist, huh?” he scoffed, “well, I do. And that’s what I’ve had to live with since I was a fucking kid.”
At that moment, he didn’t know if his trembling was from the cold or whether it was from the moiling fury that burned through his veins. His jaws were clenched so tight that his cheeks ached. He spoke through closed teeth.
“You know what they do with schizophrenics on Earth?” he continued, “they throw them into institutions, inject them with drugs and force them into straitjackets! We are wild animals! We’ve been burnt at the stake because people think we talk to demons! We’re the villains of every fucking movie, the criminals in every detective story, and the lunatic behind every murder mystery. I have to hide...have to hide ‘that!’” He gestured toward the waypoint. “I have to hide it because people are afraid of me!”
Slade watched with a muted expression as he paced back and forth. “They’re afraid the voices in my head will tell me to kill them,” he continued, “then if something actually does happen, they'll blame me! The statistics show that most schizos aren't violent! But nobody gives a shit about that. Everybody wants to paint people like me as the villain! I have to hide it because I am an easy scapegoat for anything that goes wrong! I'm constantly condemned for the act of being born.”
His rage became like nausea as he glared at her, his lips curled back in disgust. “You chain me up like I’m some fucking animal. And then you have the nerve...the gall to tell me that I killed a woman, that I killed her in my sleep. And now...this?” He paused for a few moments, constricted by his own venom. Then he finished it with “Fuck. You.”
Slade did not flinch at his profanity, nor did she quell under the corrosiveness of his rage. She was like a statue, unreadable and unmovable, ebony in both flesh and garment against the mounting daylight. Her arms were folded confidently, her hands poised naturally above the knives on her belt. When she spoke, she did so with deliberate precision.
“How do you want me to answer your virulence, Vincent Cordell?” she asked like a demand. “Your immunity to the Bane confounds us. Never in our history has anybody been an exception to the fatality of madness. Yet you defy this. Do you still fail to understand the significance?”
“I...you know what? No...I don't. I’m a fucking alien! I don't know why it should be significant...and I don't really give a shit. So...what now?”
“What now? Our plans haven't changed.” Slade acted as if the question was stupid. “You are still coming with me to Meldohv to be questioned.”
“So, I'm still your prisoner.”
“Yes. Though I no longer believe you are a criminal. And because of this, I will leave you unbound.”
“All this...because I survived the Bane?”
She considered him and appeared to choose her next words carefully. “Things are happening, things I am not allowed to talk about. The presence of a man who survives the Bane would be significant in any time, but more-so now.”
He gawked at her and shook his head. Then, because he was tired, hungry, and because he didn’t have anything more to say, he left her. For the rest of the morning there was an unspoken silence between him and his winged companions. The few times he was addressed, he simply nodded without paying attention to what was being said, or he simply ignored them. He didn’t want to hear their conversations or partake in their gossip, or dwell in whatever significance Slade's words held. Instead, he clung to his memory of Deonte as if it were a lifeline for his identity. And the more he clung to it, the more he became aware of something that profoundly disturbed him: amnesia.
Until now, he had been given hints that there were voids in his memory. The dream he had last night confirmed it. Many of the memories, like the memory of Deonte, were gone. Large portions of his life were locked behind a field of static as if they had been hidden away in obfuscation. What happened to Deonte? When did Vincent’s family move out of Chicago? He was in college before the deer crashed through his window, but what was he doing before then? He tried to grasp at hints, at suggestions of what lay in those vacant gaps. He came up with nothing.
Schizophrenia made him forgetful. It made him perceive events differently because of its very nature. But never before had he experienced such profound memory loss. He knew large portions of his very existence were missing by their absence alone. Confusion and contradictions began to settle like ice in his stomach. In a way, this could be worse than him being robbed of his physical humanity. Where had all his memories gone? His rational mind told him that his accident caused brain damage, which in turn damaged his long-term memory. The other part of him, the part that wanted to believe in fantasy, told him it was the Stalker's doing. Why? To leave him defenseless against this fucking world?
Then it hit him: That storm, whatever it was, had unlocked this memory.
No, that’s silly, he thought. He silently chastised himself for even thinking about such a thing.
And yet he recalled nothing of that encounter in Chicago until the storm arrived. Tuls accused it of being unnatural, of being dangerous. Maybe it was dangerous, Vincent didn’t have a clue. Yet his past was his best defense against this world. If he failed to recall those important moments from his life, instances that defined him, he could be manipulated. Falius could try to weave itself into those voids and create a false identity for him to fall into. If he encountered another storm like that, would it unlock another memory?
What the hell am I even thinking?
After they packed their landriders, Slade, accompanied by the relos, headed across the slab of land known as Goraiah, the one Clayde had claimed originally belonged to another continent. As Vincent looked around, he could almost believe it. Instead of being fractured with fissures like the meadows below Lorix's Observatory, Goraiah had rolling hills that echoed each other like ripples. He was coursing across a colossal puzzle of fractured conspiracies and broken identities.
Torrents of water from the previous night’s storm poured across the rivers and kicked up mud within the ponds scattered throughout the land. Trees had been stripped bare, their branches scattered haphazardly all about the grass. Twigs lay like the splintered bones of carcasses until they were washed away. Logs floated along the streams as though part of a funeral procession. The red planet hovered in Admoran’s sky, adding its crimson hue along with the sun's light, staining the land in an undercurrent of blood.
He was alone here, alone with his vacant memories. That void called to him like a siren, leaving him with a truncated identity, ready to be shaped by this vibrant world. Whatever Falius was, he had to find a way to use its own rules against it. If there were more storms like the one that assailed them last night, then perhaps he should seek them out, in hopes they would do what had been done for him last night. But for now, he had no choice but to be strung along. He would remain vigilant, however.
Eventually, Vincent began to see another range of mountains. They were not as tall as the ones that lined The Fractured Meadows, so it was easier to see the interstice threads that sailed into the sky. Slade gestured to the others and they brought their mounts to a stop. She reached into her belt and withdrew a glass hemisphere. It looked no more significant than a paperweight. Yet she held it up to her eye as though it were a telescope and looked in the direction of the threads. As she did this the relos pulled out their own and did the same.
“Tsk. I have never seen that before.” Ro’ken’s mount paced back and forth as he gaped toward the threads. “How can any storm leave so much water?”
“What?” Vincent asked.
“The interstice threads are flooded,” Slade said as Vincent gazed toward the shimmering arches in the distance.
“Indeed,” Tuls laughed in disbelief. “They are unusable.I told you there was something wrong with that storm. Though much of its...uh...‘malice’ vanished when Vincent...” He paused for a moment. “But...there's something wrong. I can still detect something in the air. It's...different. Not good. Not good at all.”
“What do you mean ‘unusable?” Clayde asked, frowning at the stone in his hand. “My seeing-eye is broken.”
“If you wished to swim across,” Slade said, “you would be able to do so. It is as if an entire lake has been dumped on each thread,” She scanned the distant threads and frowned. “There is a dry thread, but...” She scoffed and went silent.
Tuls looked at her, waited, and then he aimed his seeing-eye toward the thread she was looking at. “That's the Devourer's thread. You want us to go over that?”
“No,” she said, “you and the others will travel Admoran's North until you find one that has not been flooded. My need for haste does not grant me the privilege of accompanying you. Vince and I will go over the Devourer’s domain.”
“You will court the night carrier, Reashos,” Ro’ken said, “I would not recommend it. The Devourer has ‘learned’ the thread and it has been very aggressive lately. A hive of crawlers has infested its thread, so now it has competition for food. This has left it agitated.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Slade said, “but there are matters that require haste. Even with a passenger to slow me down, I am more than a match for the Devourer. Surely you should know this?” Ro’ken simply shrugged and stowed his seeing-eye in his pocket.
“Hey, hold on...” Vincent said, “if we're going to travel over something you guys are calling 'The Devourer's domain', may I see what you're talking about and have a say in this?”
Slade handed back her seeing-eye. “It is the last one you can see on the right, before the threads disappear into the mountains. But you will not be able to see the Devourer until we are up close. And no, you do not get a say in this.”
Vincent held the round stone to his eye. The optics somehow magnified the image even though the threads were miles away. They shimmered with brown water and splashing waves, the surface squirming as if it were the flesh of some giant worm. Some of the waves splashed high enough to break free from the threads’ gravity and fell into the canyon like shed skin. All the arches he could see had been flooded by the storm's fury, with the exception of one final thread. As Slade described, it appeared to be the last visible arch in the stitching. It was flanked on one side by a large mountain.
“Are you sure we should not accompany you?” Tuls asked.
“You will die if you do,” Slade said with a disturbing casualness, “if it tries to eat us, I will subdue it. I cannot assure myself that any of you would be able to do the same.”
Tuls blinked, looking unsure of how to respond. “Well, before we leave,” he said, “I was wondering if I could speak to Vincent alone.”
Oh great, Vincent thought. What now?
After Slade gave the “okay”, he slid off the landrider and walked with Tuls until they were out of the range of hearing. He picked up a rock in his hands and chucked it as far as he could. It bounced off the grass and disappeared in the brush. Tuls considered him with furrowed brows as if choosing his words.
“I’m assuming you won’t attack me,” he said, half-joking. “Kiolai Reashos is letting you walk around, so I assume this means you aren’t dangerous.”
“What do you want?” Vincent demanded, perhaps a little too harshly.
“Can’t you feel it? I don’t know who you are or what your act is, but we both share the same eyes.”
“Once again, no.” Vincent couldn’t feel anything. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. It’s not an act. I don’t know what you’re expecting me to feel.”
Tuls sighed and turned toward the threads. “Nothing. Forget I said anything, Brother.”
“What, are you in pain?”
At this, Tuls seemed to chew on his words before answering.
“No,” he said, shifting his feet. His tail swept across the grass as if batting away some pestilence. “I am agitated. I have the percipience of a channeler.” He said this as if it were a curse. “I wish I were numb to this.” He gestured to the devastation left behind by the storm. “But I feel it. My father used to tell me that it is a gift, that I am able to see beauty and grotesqueness in places where others only see mundanity. But I am alone in that perception. I am alone...unless there is another channeler around. But there are few of us.”
“Yeah...well, sorry,” Vincent said, “I’m not feeling what you’re feeling. Even if I did, I would probably ignore it.”
“Again...you say these things that are not right.” Tuls said, half amused. The sunlight cast his lacertine features into stark contrast. Shadows outlined hints of scales, bumps, and the ridges on his brows, making his already ashen face even darker. The lambent coronas which blazed orange in his irises seemed alight with the flame of ether. “We are creatures of flesh and spirit. Yet only people with our eyes can feel...” He drifted off for a moment as he tried to find the words. “we can feel when something is...tainted. If you smell a corpse, that is all you need to know that there is death nearby. That is akin to what I am feeling. There is something wrong out there.”
“Why do you expect me to care about what you’re feeling?” Vincent asked. Tuls seemed taken aback by his irritation. But before he could respond, Vincent felt Slade’s trace.
“Well, it seems like my ‘escort’ is getting suspicious,” he said.
“Aye then!” Tuls’ demeanor changed completely, and he became his ebullient self again. “Then we must be going, yes?”
They both crested the hill and met up with the rest. Vincent climbed back up onto Holan and took his place behind Slade. Tuls climbed up onto his mount and then the three Relos departed, pounding off into the distance in search of a dry thread. Slade reached down to her waist and unbuckled a sheath. Turning around, she placed it into Vincent’s hands. Surprised, he looked up at her.
“If you try to trap me in it,” she warned, “there will be consequences.”
He unbuttoned it and pulled out the handle. The blade looked like mercury suspended in stasis. It was the shryken he had modified. At its touch, his ethereal form reappeared like a memory. “Why?” he asked suspiciously, “You have no way of knowing if trapping you is the only thing I can do with it. Why are you giving this to me?”
“You need protection,” she said, “the carapace can serve as armor as well as a prison.”
What the hell? Why was she suddenly trying to protect him? What was going on? “Yeah...but then I’ll be trapped,” he said.
She didn’t see how he made it elastic before he escaped, so it's possible she didn't know the full extent of his manipulation. He hoped it would remain that way. He carefully slid the dagger back into its sheath, curious as to why the action did not trigger its encasement. Perhaps the sheath itself was imbued with magic?
“You escaped once,” she spoke as a challenge.
And with that they were off. Several herds of red kelta scattered at the sound of Holan's cadence, moving like trout of the land before disappearing into a nearby lake. When the beast found a flat spot in the terrain, she lurched forward with frenzy, as if releasing all of her pent-up vigor. Now that the Triasat had whisked away the previous day's pains, the acceleration trilled in Vincent’s stomach as the beast thrummed across the rolling land. The wind blew tears from his eyes so that he was forced to lean down and hide behind the wake that Slade carved with her wings.
Even though the strap held his wings down, the wind tore at their webbing, creating an ache his mind was never meant to process. Yet it held within it hints of exhilaration. He felt the sudden urge to release the strap and let the air rush between the folds of his elongated digits. He wanted to see if he could sail as Ro’ken did when he slayed the kelta.
One by one, they passed the threads traversing the seam that held lands together like patchwork. Falius was a world created by a madman, a reality in which everything, even the land itself, teetered on instability. Eventually, Slade began to turn toward the dry thread, slowing before reaching the mountains that housed it. She brought her mount to a stop next to a small stream and dismounted, allowing Holan some time to quench her thirst. Vincent took the opportunity to stretch his legs and relieve himself. It was also an opportunity to practice with the shryken Slade had given to him. She watched curiously as he delved into the dagger's code and modified it. The blade undulated with new shapes.
“How are you doing that?” she demanded, transfixed by the twisting metal.
He looked up at her briefly and shook his head, “I have no idea. I didn’t even know I could do it until you drugged me. I see a ‘hierarchy’, if that’s even the right term for it, and I’m able to change it. I don’t know how. I don’t even know how this thing is supposed to work. There is nothing on Earth like this.”
“You know nothing of false conduits?” Slade leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree and began to juggle her knife.
“Tuls had one,” he said, “it shot a bunch of projectiles. But other than that, I’m clueless. I assume a conduit is a magical artifact?”
“Magic?” she said, “it is not magic, it is a false conduit.”
“That means nothing to me,” he said, “It sounds like magic.”
“The aluntai who craft false conduits–” she was interrupted by a distant yelp. Her ears twitched and they both waited.
“What the hell was that?” Vincent asked.
“It was a kelta,” she said, turning back to her knife. “The aluntai who craft false conduits utilize the properties of liacyte in order to emulate abnormal reality.”
“Again, you just spouted a bunch of nonsense,” Vincent said, “let’s pretend I’m an alien from another world. I have never heard of false conduits, or aluntai, or liacyte.” Though my reality right now is definitely abnormal, he thought.
There was another yelp, a kelta crying out. But Slade appeared to ignore it.
“Biddings and forbiddings,” she said.
“What?”
“I will not bother you with the intricacies of false conduits. But they are called ‘false’ because they emulate the properties of true conduits. Every false conduit is endowed with its commands: biddings and forbiddings, paradigms and gambits, sequences and sequencers. Each is written with a set of conditions to be met in order to fulfill its role. For example, a ward that repels water may be crafted to provide the following dictation: I FORBID water to come within the creator's arm's length of the wearer.”
“And then the wearer dies,” Vincent said, after thinking about it for a bit. “Because all the water is forced out of his or her body.”
“Which is why fools are not often approved as aluntai.” Slade didn’t bother to hide the irritation in her voice. “A competent aluntai would forge a set of biddings to render the conduit safe. For example: I FORBID water to come within the creator's arm's length of the wearer but I BID water touching the wearer to remain. This is a gross oversimplification of a bidding's structure.”
Vincent thought of the hierarchy he sensed in the handle of the shryken. Though he did not know what liacyte was or how it guided the liquid metal in the blade, he could see the commands Slade talked about.
“So you program these,” he said, “your 'aluntai' write a program for these...things. Your biddings and forbiddings are like IF-THEN statements. And I’m the guy that learned how to hack them.”
Another kelta cry pierced the air. This time it was accompanied by a pained warbling. Holan raised her head and probed the air with the two stalks alongside her mouth. She emitted a low grumble and dug at the ground with her massive feet before lowering her head back down to the creek. Slade put her knife pack in her sheath and stood alongside her mount, stroking her neck affectionately.
“Your vernacular is strange to me as are the clothes you were found with,” she said, “Your ability intrigues me, but we must leave soon. Behind me lies the pass to the Devourer’s Domain. The Teramin Devourer is a maloger which has grown and merged with other malogers. It spans the width of the interstice. While it is the pride of Teramin, it is also incredibly dangerous. There are only two types of people who dare cross its thread: fools and prodigies such as myself.”
“Why didn’t we go with the relos again?” Vincent asked, “I–”
There was a cry so great and so horrible, Vincent found himself covering his ears. He could feel the ground under his feet vibrate. The kelta's cry screeched into the sky until it abruptly broke into a grotesque moan, a roar that sounded almost human, as if one voice burst from the body of the other. It was a man howling into the sky, then it continued to drop in pitch. It became a cow bellowing as if it were being led into an abattoir. It was so loud, he could feel it in his chest. When it stopped, everything was silent. The crickets made no sound, the birds did not sing, but a gust of wind carried with it the scent of carrion.
He exchanged a glance with Slade, who, behind her passive mien, seemed to be just as puzzled as he was. Then they heard another noise. It was quieter than the awful cry that assaulted the air just moments ago. It sounded like a wet rag being slapped against concrete again and again: Thwack, thwack, thwack. Holan began to stomp her feet in agitation, so Slade tied her to a tree with drake gut and comforted her. As she did this, the kelta called out again with its shrill, pitiful keening, its voice devoid of the deep moaning they just heard moments before. When it stopped, the wet sound continued: Thwack, thwack, thwack.
“Okay, I have to see whatever the heck is doing that,” Vincent got up. He suddenly felt her clawed hand on his shoulder and reacted by jerking away. “Would you cut that out? I’m just going to check it out.”
“Stay by my side.” she said.