The Adventures of Rustle and Eddy Page 20

  “Then go. No sense wasting everyone’s time arguing,” Cul said.

  He thrust his tail and headed shoreward with Mira. Cora lingered long enough to glare at Sitz and Bult.

  “You’re why shore-lovers look at us like we’re nothing but flotsam, Sitz.”

  “Call me names if you want. No one else can watch ol’ Sitz’s back better than Sitz. I owe it to me keep my best interests in mind. Bult knows, right, Bult?”

  Bult glanced between Sitz and Cora.

  “I think I’ll head back down and see if I can’t find someone pinned under something,” Bult said.

  Bult drifted downward, leaving Cora to offer one last judgmental glance at Sitz.

  “Fine. You can all waste your time! More for me when we meet with Casta’s Drift!”

  He darted off to the south. Cora shook her head.

  “The things you learn about your friends when things get tough…”

  Chapter 16

  Rustle, once again enclosed in a bubble thanks to his lack of the proper enchantment to breathe water, navigated a wide tunnel that had branched from the main one. His slowly improving skills at navigating by the currents the same way he navigated by the breeze had led forward quite reliably. What was failing him, as was so often the case, was his nerve.

  “I’ve got to do it for Eddy. And I’ve got to do it for Merantia. I’ve got to do it for Eddy. And I’ve got to do it for Merantia…”

  He muttered the phrases over and over again, hoping to drown out the darker thoughts flitting through his brain. Of course he would rather die than fail the magnificent and wise Merantia, but that didn’t change the fact that if he did die he would still fail Merantia. And right now, death was becoming more and more likely, if his intuition had anything to say about it.

  Nothing in particular stood out to suggest he was walking into the jaws of danger, but there was something in the air—or rather, in the water—that didn’t feel right. It was… dead here. He couldn’t quite put the feeling to words, but if the lifelessness that seemed so out of place to Eddy back in the main cavern were to be treated as just another current, then it felt like this tunnel was its source. The farther he traveled, the more thoroughly he became convinced that the vibrant, vital nature of the sea was somehow draining in this direction. His magic, which by sheer duration of usage was beginning to make him weary again, seemed to require incrementally more effort to keep in place the farther he went.

  Then came the first physical evidence that what he was feeling was not all in his mind. It was a gate, the same sort that blocked off the chambers of Stuartia and Merantia, but large enough to span the whole of a tunnel easily five times the size of theirs. He squeezed himself and the bubble thorough the grating and, shortly thereafter, he found another, and another.

  “Three gates…” he muttered. “The wizards who almost destroyed the sea got one gate each. Whatever is in the chamber has three… What am I getting myself into?” he murmured.

  His wavering glow barely cut into the blackness ahead. New sensations filled his mind. For a moment, he thought back to how Eddy didn’t seem to be sensitive to such things. He envied that sort of spiritual blindness now. Stuartia’s chamber had felt like a will without a mind. Merantia’s chamber felt like a mind without a will. This was… something else. It felt like a hole into which both mind and will fell. Rustle believed, at the very least, he’d known what ‘nothing’ was. Now he realized he had been wrong. This, what he was feeling here, was so much less than what he would have called nothingness before. This was a gnawing hunger, something that drew at even the darkness in search of some sort of nourishment. It made him feel cold and hollow inside, and it was only getting worse.

  Light finally glimmered upon something below. He swallowed hard and flitted downward. Gradually, an array of what could only be described as crypts spread out beneath him. They stretched endlessly in all directions, ancient stone boxes etched with symbols. The stone had flaked and pitted. If such a thing were possible, he would have believed the rock itself had somehow rotted away. So great was the damage to each crypt that he had difficulty finding one with all of its symbols fully intact. When he found one, the shapes sluggishly brought thoughts to mind. Elsewhere, simply seeing the symbols the merfolk called a language had been enough for him to understand their meaning ever since the wondrous Merantia had provided him with the proper knowledge. He wondered if the slow, incomplete understanding he felt now was because these symbols were beyond even Merantia’s understanding, or because the spell itself was being weakened by the withering influence of the chamber.

  “Within this box…” he uttered, drifting as close as he dared, “there lies entombed a Thief of Stuartia’s creation. Its mind is empty. Its heart is stone. The being knows only hunger and the will of its creator. A single thief is a foe fit for the greatest of warriors. Here rests an army. Destroy them utterly, as we have sought to do, or leave them undisturbed. Do not risk the release of a single thief, or the others will soon rise, and only the edge of the sea shall contain their wrath.”

  Rustle blinked and tried to come to terms with the words. Like all matters of ancient history and magic, there was a riddle-like quality to them, though far less so than many such warnings. Destroy them all or leave them be. That was simple enough to understand. He should continue along, to find what corner of this massive cavern took him nearest to the glimmering glow of Eddy’s spirit… But these were the creations of Stuartia.

  He felt anger and hate smolder inside him. It was an anger fueled by an ancient rivalry, a hatred spurred on by events that happened ages before Rustle or anyone he’d ever known was even born. The tiny part of him that had not fallen wholly under Merantia’s influence bucked and struggled under the weight of it. Little sparks of logic and wisdom flickered feebly under Merantia’s thrall. This was not his fight. What did he care about these ‘thieves,’ whatever they were? He should heed the warnings. He should search for Eddy and leave this terrible place behind.

  It wasn’t enough. His desire to make the stunning and majestic Merantia proud, and the smoldering hate that she had thrust upon him for all things with Stuartia’s influence, were too great. He raised his digging claw and brought it down. It bit easily into the stone, like he was chipping away at stale bread. Whatever had weakened the stone had done so thorough a job that large chunks of the dusty stuff sloughed away at the pecking of his tiny weapon. He hammered and slammed the point of the claw against the stone with the intensity of a woodpecker, chiseling a line across the center and tracing back across it. The pulverized stone, already barely strong enough to hold up its own weight, slumped down and crumbled atop whatever the crypt held. He darted down to rummage through the rubble in search of something his claw could slice into. The moment his tiny feet touched the dark, scale-like hide of what lie within, he felt an icy shock of pain. It was like even touching the thing had practically torn his soul from his body. In spite of Merantia’s influence, in spite of the externally imposed hatred, his body decided of its own accord that he would not remain anywhere near something that could injure him so. He darted up and away, until his glow barely traced out the edge of the still crumbling crypt, then watched wide-eyed as the thing he’d been determined to destroy emerged.

  It was large, easily the size of a bear—which was the largest beast he’d ever had the poor fortune of encountering back in the woods. But it didn’t look like any bear he’d ever seen. The thing was angular, sharp. And it was familiar. It didn’t take long for him to realize this was one of the strange interlocking beasts that served as the backdrop for the carving in Merantia’s cavern. Six legs, scythe-like pincers. He would have compared it to an insect, but at this size it was difficult to even imagine such a thing. It was more like one of a dozen creatures he’d seen skittering along the sea floor while Eddy had been bringing him to the farm. And there was more. The chitinous hide had regular grooves coiling into complex whorls. They seemed far too consistent to be anything devised by nature,
but they had no meaning that he could determine.

  Though the thing had drifted up, shedding the remnants of the shattered stone slab, its tangle of limbs remained limp, motionless. It was floating, not swimming.

  “I… I can see why the divine and infallible Merantia wishes these things to be destroyed…” he muttered, the tiniest feeling of relief settling over him as he realized it was not poised to attack. “They are horrible. But perhaps I am lucky. Perhaps time has done the job for us. I do not know of anything that can live for so long locked in a box.”

  A brittle smile crossed his lips and he flitted closer.

  “Yes… yes, that must be it. The people who locked them up engraved them with a message that claimed they’d intended to kill them all. Locking them up must have been how they were going to do it. And it worked! Merantia will be very pleased with me for discovering this.”

  He paused.

  “But it did hurt my foot in a very strange way when I landed on it. Perhaps, like the wretched and profane Stuartia, it remains dangerous even in death?”

  He buzzed closer and gazed at it.

  “Dead things rot, don’t they? This did not rot. And it is not a machine like the thing Eddy found. … Eddy… I need to find Eddy, and I can’t until I know that I can destroy one of these creatures. If I can destroy one, then I can destroy the rest.”

  Rustle rubbed his hands together.

  “It is the only strong spell I know, and it was very dangerous to Eddy. I owe it to the glorious and resplendent Merantia to give it a try.”

  He shut his eyes and forced away as much of the buzzing doubt, fear, and concern as he could manage. With each casting, the spell was becoming easier to remember. He held his hands out past the edge of his bubble and spoke the words quickly and clearly. Curling lances of mystic light sprung from his hands, but they slowed as they sliced toward the creature. Filaments of ice formed behind them. When the spell struck the inert being it splashed against the thing and caused a thick layer of ice to encase it. The ice froze tight around its head, or at least the part of the creature that held its mandibles.

  Rustle heaved a breath of relief and flitted back to the center of the bubble. He shook frost from his fingers.

  “There,” he said. “Right in the face. If the thing has to breathe, that will end it.”

  He allowed a feeling of pride and self-satisfaction roll over him. The feeling, alas, was brief. A tiny crack in the ice shattered his confidence in the efficacy of his attack. The thin crack formed at the base of one of the pincers. Then another wove toward it. Though the ice was not visibly melting, somehow Rustle could feel it weakening, as though the supernatural freezing of the water was being undone somehow.

  The water split with the sound of cracking ice as the pincers spread. Fragments of ice crystal burst toward him, peppering the surface of the bubble. One of the creature’s legs twitched.

  “No! No, no, no, no, no!” Rustle cried.

  He darted in panicked circles. Not even Merantia’s powerful enchantment was strong enough to overcome the instinct that had served Rustle’s people so faithfully over the generations. If something was scary, flee.

  Rustle squealed in a decidedly unheroic manner and buzzed in a random direction. He didn’t care where he was going, just that he was getting away from whatever that thing was before it realized where he was.

  #

  “You were not lying, Mab. This statue is far,” Eddy remarked.

  It was telling that his endless enthusiasm for all things was far less prevalent in his voice than usual.

  “I told you,” Mab said, holding tight to Borgle as the thing tirelessly thumped along.

  Eddy stopped and flexed his clawed fingers. Borgle, quickly determining that his merman companion had chosen to take a break, stopped and turned to him.

  “Something wrong?” Mab asked. “Getting tired, or hungry?”

  “I am not very much tired, and I am not very much hungry. But I am very much… dry. And my hands hurt.”

  “Dry? I’d wondered about that. I don’t remember any stories of mermen crawling along on the land. Seems like you folk would spend most of your time in the water for a reason.”

  “No, no. That is not what I mean.” Eddy looked over his hand and rubbed at the skin somewhat. “Perhaps that is part of what I mean. I do very much want to be swimming again. But I mean… I am having trouble with the word. When you need to have water inside you.”

  “Thirsty?”

  “Yes! That is the word. The air-for-water spell does very much to make it so I do not have to be in water to live, but it is not perfect. Or maybe I did not cast it perfect. And I get most of my water from my food, and that lobster thing was not very wet.”

  “So drink something.”

  “What is there to drink?” Eddy shut his eyes and shook his head. “Except booze. No booze.”

  “I have a canteen of water, but I don’t want your fishy lips all over it.”

  “Where did you get water?”

  “You can wring some sticky, sweet stuff out of these stalks. Refreshing the first few dozen times I drank it, but after that I had to gather the parts to build my still so I could render it down to fresh water.”

  “I will try some!”

  He flopped from his cart and tugged one of the stalks from a nearby tuft. A sniff or two convinced him it probably wasn’t poisonous, so he stuffed one end in his mouth and sliced through it with his serrated teeth. A rush of thin, slightly syrupy liquid filled his mouth. It wasn’t the cool, quenching sensation he would have liked, but it was certainly better than nothing. After sucking and chewing upon the mouthful of stalk for a moment he was left with nothing but fibrous remnants. He spat them free and took another bite.

  “I usually wring it out into my mouth,” Mab said.

  “It is good to chew,” Eddy said, the faintly glowing nectar slopping out juicily. “All the best things need to be chewed. It is why we have teeth.”

  He finished chewing up and spitting out one whole stalk and grabbed another to dangle from his mouth as they continued on. Borgle happily clanked its way up a smooth slope.

  “It isn’t much farther now,” Mab said, sipping from her canteen.

  “How did you find this place?”

  “When I first got here, I was looking for anyone else. Anything else, even. I like a bit of solitude, but when days and months go by without another voice besides the ones in your head, you start to worry you won’t be able to tell what’s real from what isn’t.”

  Mab paused and glanced down.

  “You… are really here, aren’t you?”

  “I am as here as you are,” Eddy said with a smile.

  “But how do I know? Not so long ago, I found myself arguing with my sister-in-law for the better part of a day before I realized I was just shouting at my own echo.”

  Eddy paused long enough to spit out his current mouthful and take another bite.

  “That is a very interesting thing to ask me, Mab. How do I prove I am not imaginary? How do I prove you are not imaginary? … How about this?”

  He picked up a stone and threw it at Mab. It bounced harmlessly off her makeshift armor.

  “What was that for?”

  “Imagined things do not throw stones,” Eddy suggested.

  “But I could have just imagined you threw a stone.”

  “Mmm… Yes. This is very tricky… Maybe this is the question you should ask. What does it matter?”

  “What do you mean what does it matter? There is a difference between reality and fantasy. It is an important difference!”

  “Not for you and me right now it is not. Maybe there is a place where you are not real. Maybe there is a place where I am not real. Many people do not know about mermen, and I did not know about dwarfmaids. So until we did know about each other, it didn’t matter if we were real. So we weren’t real. Not to each other. But at the same time, we were always real. Something can be real and not real at the same time. If it helps
you, and it does not hurt someone else, then what does it matter if it is real or not?”

  “… Are you certain you aren’t a booze drinker, because right now it sounds as though you’ve had a bit too much.”

  “One taste of booze was too much. And I have not had pannet since the Neap Tide Festival.” He rubbed his head. “I had too much, then. Pannet is very strong.”

  Mab looked at her canteen. “Well if you’re real, and we do get out of here, I’ll have to try it. I could use some. What does it taste—”

  “I see the statue!” Eddy blurted, pointing excitedly as they crested the slope.

  A much, much thicker field of stalks covered the gentle slope on the far side of the peak they’d just reached. Their glow was brighter as well. Unlike in the rest of this strange cavern, the stalks were entirely undisturbed. No sweeping paths where the skitter-clamps may have mowed them down. At the bottom of the slope there was a small pool. Its surface was glassy smooth, utterly motionless. Beneath the surface, clearly illuminated by the surrounding glow, was a gray form grasping a round-headed hammer.

  Eddy heaved the wheels of his cart over the peak and scrambled with his hands to pull himself toward the mysterious statue. Stalks split and tore free as he plowed through them, spilling their sticky contents all over him. Soon the momentum was such that the cart wanted to move more quickly than his hands could oblige. Very shortly after that, he hit a stone that overturned the cart. He flopped and rolled through the remaining stalks until he splashed into the deep, clear pool.

  It took him a second or two to recover from the tumble. He likely should have taken a few more seconds, because his first action upon landing in the pool was to take a deep, refreshing breath of water. Having not yet banished the effects of the air-for-water spell, this did not produce the desired effect.

  He burst to the surface, hacked up the breath of water, and blinked at Mab and Borgle, who had taken a more leisurely pace to the edge of the pool.

  “You’re about as graceful on land as I’d expect a fish to be,” Mab said.