I awoke eventually and found a different dress, a clean one, hanging over the back of the chair. The dirty one was gone. I also found a plate of food on the table. My room had a couple of other amenities, like a toilet, to use the word loosely. It was a box with a hole cut in the top. I moved the box a little and saw that it emptied through a drain in the floor. Next to this setup was a low table holding a large stone bowl, a small block of soap, and a pitcher of water. I broke the film of ice on the water, poured it into the bowl and washed my hair and the rest of me as well as I could, shivering with cold. Finally, I put on the dress, wrapped myself in the wool blanket and ate the food. My chest hurt and my throat hurt so I lay back on the bed, still wrapped in the blanket, and dozed off. This cycle of waking, washing, eating and sleeping continued until I lost count. I was a long time recovering from whatever infection Id caught, probably because of the primitive conditions of my prison cell. And prison it was. Someone always left food and clean clothes but I never saw who it was. I slept through everything. And slowly, little by little, I healed.
I found a mirror hanging on the wall. This was new. I washed and dressed, combed my hair, and then studied myself closely in the mirror. The eyes were familiar. The shape of the nose and chin were familiar. But the skin? It was horrible. “Andy,” I said. “You look like a dead thing come back to life.” I backed away from the mirror and sat down to eat the bland, chopped vegetables that never varied, meal after meal. While I ate them, I forced myself to think through my situation. My entire life, all 30 years of it, was entirely too vivid and detailed to be fake. Hugo’s insistence that the sorceress Hadrea had planted phony memories to confuse me was ridiculous. There were easier ways to confuse a person. Total amnesia, for instance. So how did I get here? And how could I explain my grey skin, black blood and close resemblance to Hadrea? I really didn’t want to abandon my first theory, that I was in a coma, dreaming and recovering from injuries suffered during a crash landing. Sure, it was a depressing theory, but it satisfied my need for a logical, scientific explanation. It was, however, becoming more and more difficult to believe in it, and that’s because Hugo’s world was as vivid and detailed as the 30 years of my life that I refused to deny. So back up, Andy, and assume there was no crash landing, and that everything that happened up to and including Amathaon, the telepath, was true. What then? Telepath! Yes, of course, that must be it! I jumped to my feet and cheered at the ceiling. Amathaon was responsible for all of this. He had created it. He controlled it. He controlled us. Now, all I had to do was to figure out why. And how to escape, of course.
Somehow, I had to find Cory and tell him what I had figured out. I hoped that he was still with Cecil, and I remembered that he had talked about helping with the farm. So how big were farms around here? And should I turn left or right when I walked out of the temple? I was pacing back and forth in the room that had become a prison cell, trying to think of solutions to these problems, when Hugo turned the key in the lock and walked in. No knock on the door. So if I had been scraping at the mortar around the stone blocks, Id have been caught. Fortunately, I had decided that digging a hole in the wall was not a very good plan. You have recovered enough of your strength, he said, to be given tasks. Follow me. I thought you were going to send me to the mountains to find Hadrea. You will have to wait until the Rashida Wind has retreated further beyond the mountains. For now, the Wind fills the pass with snow and you would not be able to get through. I followed him along an extremely narrow walkway to another door. The passage was so narrow that the columns beyond the door, rising to the low ceiling, completely blocked the path. When I looked over my shoulder in the other direction, I saw that the walkway ended at a stone railing and a view of mountains. I had no chance to see how high we were, but it was high. The wind was strong and cold, whipping around my skirts and through the loosely woven fabric to my skin. It certainly explained why my room was an icebox, and why Id heard the wind wail and whistle through cracks in the stone and around the door. Is this Rashida? I said, turning my face into the wind. This? No, the Wind has already moved away from our valley and closer to the mountains. You slept in a fever throughout that storm. This is but a minor demon wind, a maker of mischief.
The chore that Hugo assigned to me was weaving. He had arranged for a loom and piles of yarn to be set up in this larger room. I was also glad to see a fireplace with a fire already snapping around the logs. I had never done any weaving before and studied the loom carefully. What a marvelous invention, I thought. When he had first mentioned tasks I had imagined scrubbing floors or washing dishes. Weaving, however, would be interesting. As it turns out, it was interesting for only a very short time. I soon discovered that standing in front of a loom and throwing its shuttle back and forth, is dull and backbreaking labor. I took many breaks from the work to poke at the fire and stare out the window at the mountains. A pale young acolyte brought me a meal, the usual vegetables, chopped and bland. I said, You must have had a magnificent crop of vegetables this year. The pilgrims bring food for us. Its usually vegetables. He watched me sit down and stir the food around with my fork. I had found a bug or two on previous occasions, so I always played with the food for a while before eating it. I said, When do the pilgrims come? As soon as the snows melt. Then they continue to come until the snows return. He didnt leave. I chewed slowly on my food while he shifted on his feet, sniffed, rubbed at his nose, looked around the room, and finally said, You were in the tunnels under the temple? Yes, I was. Then you escaped from the Ulfmere. No one else ever has. Whats the Ulfmere? The young man smiled broadly and told me about the monster.
It lives in the tunnels. Maybe theres only one. There might be more. It eats its victims alive, swallowing them whole. Thats why we never find any remains. It moves low to the ground, dragging its enormous tail. Except when it runs, of course. Then it raises its tail and runs in silence. You wont know its there, behind you, until its great tongue lashes out and draws you into its jaws. I have seen the pictures of the Ulfmere in the scrolls, and have read the writings about it that were left behind by the sorcerers. Master Hugo tells us it is a myth, but weve heard it move on the other side of the walls beyond the sanctuary, dragging its tail. Sometimes it screams a strange and hollow sound. We dont know why. I set my fork down and pushed my plate away. Im not hungry anymore. Did you see it? Of course not! I wouldnt be sitting here if I had. Did you hear it? I hesitated, and he knew what that meant. I tried to stop his raging imagination, saying firmly, But only for a minute. Yes, it sounded like something was being dragged on the stone, but the sound could have carried from anywhere, through the walls from the sanctuary, or even It was running for you. I stood up from the table and went back to the loom where I immediately tangled the shuttle in the warp threads again. Niichaad has chosen you, the young man said. The rule of the Sorcerers is almost at an end. He picked up my plate and left the room, smiling to himself. I picked at the knotted yarn and thought a great many horrible things about Amathaon. I hoped he was listening in on every single one of them.
A few days later, Hugo came into my room carrying a bundle. He set it on the floor. Tonight, you will go, he said. He pointed to the sack on the floor, This contains a cloak and some food. It also contains the knife that you will use to destroy the sorceress. The knife must be kept hidden and protected from everyone you will meet on the road. Do not even remove the cloth to look at it yourself before you are ready to strike her, because it will burn the eyes from your head. Hugo, if you are my brother and she is my sister then you are asking me to kill our sister. How could you want such a terrible thing? She can only be destroyed by someone who shares her black blood. That includes you. He shook his head, and then pulled a pouch out of the folds of his robes. From inside the pouch he took a small knife and drew it quickly across his palm. I winced but I was fascinated, and expected the blood that oozed from this slight wound to be black. It was red. He curled his fingers in on his bleeding hand and carefully put the knife away. Then he looked up at me. He said, You will go to her, your sister. Niichaad has banished the Rashida Wind from the land. And without the Wind and the power it gives to her crystal, Hadrea will lie in a deep sleep in the Temple of Makhist and will not awaken until the Wind returns. You have enough time to get there and put the knife into her heart before it does. I decided that it was time to get out of here. I bent down to the sack and removed the cape from it. He watched me as I tied it around my shoulders, then he led the way down to the huge front doors of the temple where he reminded me, once more, that I must find my way to Hadrea before she awakened. I nodded my understanding and walked away from the temple, but I had no intention of hunting for Hadrea. I needed to find Cory.
hmmm. Very interesting. So if she kills her sister and she is a "sorceress" too... who is going to kill her?
I am quite excited. What if Hugo is lying and just sending her to her death? Hadrea could be conscious.
I love the loom! I've considered making a midieval neighborhood just so I can use some of the costumes and such that people have made. This story is so interesting on so many levels. It's hard to know just who is telling the truth, and what "reality" is real, or maybe they all are. And what's Cory's part in this? So many questions ... And what about Arkin? He's pretty handsome, for a robot, and sounds like a noble guy as well. I wonder if we'll get to meet him. In the meantime, I'd watch my back, if I were Andy. Seems like there is more than one plot afoot.
*sigh* It's definitely gotten more complicated than the original little story I wrote. That's primarily because, in my original plot, Andy and Cory were native to the planet, not lost visitors from outer space. And there was no robot named Arkin, either. But I like Andy and Cory better this way. I welcome everyone's thoughts on it. If I'm happy with it, at the end, I may try to write it up as a book and sell it. All I need is another 50,000 words or so.
Yep. That's exactly right. My first novel is 85,000 words. My current one is stuck at 55,000. Gotta get working on that ...
The night was not completely dark, because of the moon and because of the brightness of the snow that still covered the mountains. The torches at the entrance to the temple also added a very feeble yellow glow, stronger at first than the moonlight and enough to throw my shadow ahead of me on the dark earth. Down here, in the valleys between the mountains, the snow was gone. The air was cold but not freezing and no wind stirred in the trees. As I walked further away from the temple doors, leaving behind the grim Hugo, the shadow cast by the torches slowly faded and eventually disappeared. But I had another shadow, a short one that followed me, cast by the moon. I came to the end of the avenue of columns and faced three choices. A dirt road, looking muddy and rutted, and smelling of manure, ran to my left and right. In both directions it led into open, moonlit fields and low hills. Ahead of me another dirt road, perpendicular to the first, ran straight away from the temple and into dark stands of trees, most of them pine. I thought back to that night Id been brought here and remembered that we had come out of the woods and directly toward the front entrance to the temple. Straight ahead, then, should be the farm where I had last seen Cory, unless the carriage had circled in the air between the farm and the temple. There was no way that I could know if it had. I looked again at the fields and hills, trying to persuade myself that Cecils farm lay in one of those two directions. It didnt work. Taking a deep breath of air I started forward, heading toward the trees, afraid that the road to Cory was also the road to the sleeping Sorceress. As I entered the pine woods I thought about Amathaon. Was this a game for him? An entertainment? Were Cory and I really stumbling around in this world with only our minds confused? Or were we cocooned like those skeletons wed seen in the cellars below the abandoned city? These thoughts led me to wondering who those skeletons belonged to. I hated to think that Cory and I were the latest in a long line of Amathaon's victims.
*No, I'm not back in Baltimore, yet. I've just been thinking about the story while everyone else here sleeps late. I fly out early tomorrow morning.*
The pine trees creaked and rustled quietly but their noise did not worry me. Nor was I bothered by the hiss of the wind moving high in the leafy trees that slowly crowded out the pines along the edge of the muddy road. The accumulating clouds, however, did worry me. The moon had lit my way for a little while, but the clouds soon blocked its light, massing higher and heavier as the hours passed. They were so thick, in fact, that I did not know exactly when night became day. A new noise beating on the leaves overhead told me that the rain had started and I stepped off the road and into their shelter. That's when I saw the small shed in the weeds. Its door screeched on rusted hinges as I pulled it open and looked inside. There was one grimy window, a water barrel, and a couple of filthy furs in the corner. The little room smelled bad, like rotten wood and wet fur, but it was shelter from the rain that already pounded hard on the flat roof. I watched the water dripping along cracks in the stone walls, then went to the barrel, hoping for a drink. No luck. There wasn't much inside it besides a green scum. A thin stream of rain had started coming through the old pipe into the barrel and something stirred in the scum, a small snake. I left him there. Wrapping my cloak around me I sat down on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chin and Hugo's sack at my feet. I was not yet hungry enough to see what food he'd given me. I was more curious about the knife he'd talked about, but I was too tired to examine it now. Occasionally, over the clatter of the rain, I heard small things move in the dark corners, bugs or rodents seeking shelter as I had. Then I must have dozed for a few minutes because I awoke suddenly to the sound of something bigger panting in the shadows. I saw sharp teeth glistening in an evil face as it whispered, "Your are mine." Scrambling to my feet, I jumped for the door but the creature was faster. It grabbed me in its slimy arms, pinning mine to my sides. Its glowing eyes were only an inch or two from mine, and its foul breath choked me. One claw traced a line along my cheekbone, toward my mouth. I kicked and screamed, and in some lucky way my kicking broke the string on the sack. Hugo's knife slid across the floor, flashing brightly from its own magic light. The monster wailed at the sight of it, and let me loose. For one split second, peering at me between the clawed fingers of its paws, it hissed once more, "You are mine." Then it was gone, leaving the door to the shed wide open to the rain. I threw the sack over the blinding glow of the knife on the floor and picked it up, feeling its weight, and its heat. And although it burned in my palm, even through the cloth, I gripped it tightly, staring out at the grey rain in the trees.
