Lyrec Read online

  With his mind so bound up in the fundamentals of song, the minstrel was slow to react when the brightest of lights he had ever seen suddenly flared before his face and the air in front of him seemed to solidify. It struck him, and he stumbled back, clutching at the polished hilt of his sword.

  The sounds of the forest grew to a roar, and then vanished in a thunderclap. A gust of wind like winter’s breath poured over him. The light grew larger, took shape, became a huge silvery globe floating above the ground. The globe contained some dark shape that moved but was obscured from identification by the metallic sheen of the globe. The globe itself did not mirror its surroundings; it reflected ripples of sheer white folded against black, the way a deeply shadowed drape might appear.

  All of this—the light, the globe, and his awareness of it—took place in seconds. The minstrel turned to flee and came up against a second sphere. With a shriek he backed away. The second sphere was smaller than the first and was deformed by holes and lumps on one side as though hot wax had been poured over it. The minstrel looked back and forth at the globes, then cried out, “Gods! I’m in the presence of gods!” He fell to his knees and averted his eyes so as not to be struck blind.

  The larger globe shot out a white tendril that coated the minstrel from head to foot with a glossy clear sap. It trapped him, bowed down, paralyzed, between thoughts, between breaths, between moments in time.

  The second globe, too, attached a tendril to him.

  The first globe began to alter. It compressed, its perfect roundness disappeared. The living form within it stretched out, filling in the changing portions of the globe like molten metal in a mold. There came a sound—a crackling, hissing, white-hot sound. The globe thinned and elongated further. Its sides began to ripple, and a roughly humanoid form appeared within it. The silver mold redefined itself, first expanding, then contracting; and with each set of “breaths” a new feature emerged beneath the silver: first arms and legs, then feet and hands. A torso was carved out, then clothing upon it. The very top of the figure stretched out to each side and became the brim of a hat.

  When all else had been defined, the area beneath the hat was still blank. Images, impressions drawn from the minstrel’s mind, flickered across the silver surface, each face lasting for a split-second, instantly replaced with another and then another face until, at last, a set of eyes remained, and then a mouth, a nose, a beard. When the face had been sculpted, a silver human statue stood beside the minstrel. Reflected on its features still was a place that was not the forest. The sculpted being did not exist here yet.

  The silver began to shrink away and everywhere that it retracted, colors—material and flesh—appeared. Brown leather for the hat, and the darker brown fur of a jerkin; a maroon shirt with loose sleeves; black leggings, shiny black boots, and a heavy black cape that was chained to the jerkin. The face was square-jawed, the dark beard trimmed close. Had the minstrel been able to look up, he would not have known the face, but he would have recognized in it some familiar aspect. The body, too, would have called to mind someone whose companionship he had often enjoyed—the gray-haired blacksmith of Dolm.

  The last few threads of silver pulled away from the man beneath. All of the sphere’s outer shell was now collected over his left hand, a silver ball at the end of his arm, which hung from his wrist like an enormous tear.

  The air swirled and a great roaring echoed through the copse. The man trembled as he passed into the reality of the place called Secamelan.

  The man sighed, his head hung forward, then tilted back as he drew his first deep breath. His eyes opened. The irises were black; around them the whites were so shiny as to seem almost porcelain. He looked about himself and smiled. He had come through the doorway another time and survived. How many more passages could he withstand? And happily, this world appeared to be intact, not scorched and dying. “You may have finally arrived in time, Lyrec,” he said to himself; then he cocked his head and repeated, “Lyrec.” How strange his name sounded on these lips, in this manner of speech. He glanced down at the minstrel and reflected upon what knowledge he had acquired from the hapless creature. The fellow had either not been very bright, or the society here was not much to speak of—the rudiments of language, a sense of the world that could only be called dim, and a handful of concepts that as yet made little sense. Beyond that, the minstrel’s mind had been closed to him, if there were anything more inside.

  The weight on his left hand drew his attention. His crex, reduced in size, shining silvery, still encased his hand. That would not do. It would have to be disguised. He looked the minstrel over again. There, near the man’s waist, was a thin leather scabbard ending in a short shaft with a semi-circle of woven metal around it. Lyrec was not sure what this device was—the concept of weapons had not been one that he’d elicited from the minstrel. Nevertheless, it was perfect for his needs. He closed his eyes.

  The silvery crex fluctuated for a moment. Then it sent out two shining strands that slowly colored and altered to become leather, ending in a sheath. The remaining silver dropped down and fit itself into position, assembling above the sheath into a grip with full-basket hilt.

  Lyrec flexed his freed left hand. He looked down. The thing strapped around his waist was not quite the same as the one on the minstrel. The sheath was scarcely more than the length of his hand.

  There had not been enough material left for the crex to extend further down his leg. He hoped it would be sufficient.

  Quite suddenly, Lyrec realized that he was alone. He searched the copse, but saw no one else. “Borregad?” he called out. “Borregad, where are you? Are you intact?”

  A terrible caterwaul answered him.

  Lyrec envisioned his poor friend lying in the weeds in dreadful pain, even near death. Borregad’s crex had been so damaged that he could never assume a form on the same level as Lyrec’s, and Lyrec was forever fearful that his friend would accidentally incarnate into an object—transform into a table or a boulder or something worse. They did not know, either of them, what Borregad’s limits of transformation were.

  He called out again, but received no answer.

  The grass was very high in the copse, and it was impossible to tell where Borregad might be. Lyrec got down onto his knees and began prying through the grass, expecting at any moment to find the twisted, dying form of his friend. As he crawled about, he scuffed up clouds of dust from the side of the path.

  “Borregad. I can’t find you.” Was he too late, had his companion succumbed at last? They never should have undertaken these journeys. What did they know of this kind of travel? “You’ll have to make some kind of sound, direct me. Can you hear me?”

  Just to his left a voice called out: “For pity’s sake, leave me alone, will you?”

  Lyrec sat back on his haunches. “What?” he asked. “What did you—you’re not hurt at all!” He got to his feet.

  “Hurt!” cried out the voice. It had an odd, nasal twang to it. “What does hurt have to do with it? You should see me. It’s horrible.”

  The high grass shook. Lyrec crouched down again. He saw a dark shape move behind the wall of grass, and dove forward. “Bo—ah! What’s this?” He withdrew a feather the size of a writing quill from the bushes. The feather was brown and blue and green, and opalesced into gold when the light lay directly upon it. Lyrec twirled it, and a memory not his own passed through his mind. “Good luck charm,” he murmured. The exact meaning of this escaped him. He removed his hat and placed the feather in its band. He held the hat out to admire it, but his eyes focused on some movement in the bushes beyond and a look of exasperation set over his black-bearded face. He brushed a hand through his silver hair and scrunched the hat back down on his head. With a final tug on the brim, he stood and began slapping at his clothes, raising dust like a plague of gnats.

  “Now, look here,” he called out. “There’s nothing wrong with you at all, is there? You’re just annoyed at your appearance again, like the time before last, aren�
�t you? I’m sorry for you—you know I am. You know I want to do what I can to help you. But that doesn’t include sitting here by the roadside until you see fit to reveal yourself. So, I’m going without you. Right now. If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll take you with me. If I pass this way.”

  “Wait a minute!” the nasal voice whined. “You can’t leave me here! Where is this place? What kinds of things live in these woods?” A large freminiad shook momentarily, as if itself terrified of the prospect. “I could be killed!”

  “So could I. There really isn’t anything else to say. You can stay in the forest and meet some ignominious end at the mercy of a—a rabid squirrel. Or you can come with me. We may be too late, you know. He had a good lead on us and I’ll be damned if I’ll waste any more time on your conniptions. Good-bye, Borregad.”

  The yellow bush was jostled again. Then the voice cried, “Drat! This thing’s covered in some kind of sap. It’s all over my pal—paw. Paw! Lyrec! Don’t you leave, you hear me. Wait a minute, I’m coming with you.”

  From behind the bush a huge black cat appeared, waddling on its hind legs. It was a punchinello of a cat, its coarse fur standing up as if in anger. Its blue eyes were twice the size of a normal cat’s eyes.

  The cat frantically rubbed one forepaw against the other as it waddled up to the man named Lyrec. Its tail dragged in the dirt. “Here,” it said and thrust out its afflicted paw. “Do you have a cloth or something? I can’t get this stuff off.” The cat stumbled and caught its balance. “How do these creatures manage to walk?”

  Lyrec shook his head. “Borregad, you’re a waste, do you know that? In the first place, you don’t need a cloth, you just lick it off. If you weren’t so damned busy flapping that tongue, you’d realize that it has certain properties. In the second—”

  “Lick it off? Do you have any idea what it tastes like?”

  “I won’t until you taste it.”

  The cat gave him an up-from-under look of smoldering doubt, then tentatively brought its paw to its mouth and licked the rough pads. Its thin lips smacked and its eyes narrowed. “Nuh, fuine. Nuw is snuck nu my nungue.” Its whiskers twitched angrily.

  “Oh. Well, maybe I got that part wrong. But I do know that you’re what they call a f-f-feline. Your family group walks on all fours. You’re not meant to walk on two legs alone.”

  The cat spat. “I refuse to walk on four legs. It’s demeaning.”

  “Fine. Maybe we can find a little wagon to put your front feet in and you can just trundle along behind me.”

  Borregad’s cleft upper lip curled back, revealing very long, sharp teeth. His lips smacked again. “I don’t like this incarnation. And why do I always end up some second-rate brute while you’re always a paragon? Hmm?”

  Ignoring the question that they both knew the answer to, Lyrec bent down and lifted the minstrel. The body relaxed as he touched it. He carried it into the high grass.

  “The minstrel sleeps very deeply,” observed the cat. “Are you sure he’s alive?”

  “Are you questioning my capabilities? Of course I’m sure.”

  The cat clicked his tongue, secretly pleased with himself for having rankled his friend. He tried waddling a few more steps, then finally gave up and dropped onto all fours. “I hate this incarnation. Why couldn’t that minstrel have thought of some less restrictive life form?”

  “What a distempered little monster you are. Get up on my shoulders.”

  Borregad crouched, then leapt up to Lyrec’s right shoulder. “Well, at least this body’s good for something. How far do we have to go?”

  “I don’t know. There was something about ‘steys’ —some measure of distance, but I didn’t get anything definite. There seemed to be a point where his mind was blocked off. Some sort of interference.”

  “Probably atmospheric.”

  “Probably you.”

  “That’s a rotten thing to say, ’pon my soul. Cob.”

  Lyrec kept his comment to himself. He started down the road to the south, and hoped that they had come to the right place.

  Borregad muttered, “Rabid squirrel,” and then fell silent.

  Chapter 2.

  Grohd the tavern-keeper manufactured his own grynne, aged it in casks that he built himself, and probably drank as much of it as any two of his regular customers, which may have accounted for his resemblance to a keg of his brew, and certainly accounted for the veined flush of his cheeks and nose. The resemblance was not lost on his patrons, who jokingly asked after the private stock in his special keg, to which Grohd replied with a warm smile and a hand on his belly.

  By rights he should have been a happy man. He’d built his tavern at a critical crossroads—the one leading from the kingdom of Miria in the south to Dolgellum and other points north, and the other through Sivst to Atlarma in the west. And because the crossroads occurred just at the northernmost tip of Kerbecula Forest where it bordered on Mormey Marsh, there wasn’t enough arable land to support more than a handful of farms in whatever direction one looked; thus no town had grown up here, and Grohd’s was the sole tavern for thirty steys in any direction. He had a stable large enough to accommodate two coaches and the accompanying teams of horses, and enough beds in the outbuildings for a full company of travelers. He made ample money, saved a good portion of it; owned a piece of a neighboring farm someone else worked and that kept him in food the year round; and although he would never be a land baron, he would certainly never starve.

  Yet he was unhappy. His perfect life contained one flaw, one insurmountable problem.

  The problem traveled the road from the east: That road, leading as it did out of Secamelan and over the Mormey Tors, arrived eventually in the small country of Ladoman. And Ladoman was the domain of a fat and oily cutthroat by the name of Ladomirus.

  Although Grohd had never actually seen Ladomirus, he had experienced enough trouble on the villain’s account to loathe the very mention of that name. People in flight from the harsh laws and crippling taxation in Ladoman stopped at Grohd’s tavern. He didn’t ask them; but there was no other outpost of humanity around where they could stop. Following on their heels as invariably as thunder follows lightning, the soldiers Ladomirus came. Time and again they ransacked Grohd’s buildings in search of fugitives. The soldiers in keeping with the kingdom were filthy, foul, and vicious. They threatened him, baited him; once even beat him. Two years earlier, one of his outbuildings had mysteriously burned. He had learned to expect nothing better from the privileged spoilers of Ladoman. Half their kingdom was mire, and the rest was barely tillable land. The people there were treated like slaves, watched over with care so they did not escape to more enviable lands—to Miria and Secamelan—and thus deprive Ladoman of its labor force. Fugitives were punished with death, and anyone found harboring them was press-ganged into service in their place. Grohd had been cautious enough never to be found harboring fugitives, but his main advantage was his occupation. Should they lead him away in chains, the Ladomantine soldiers would find no more grynne and hot food at the end of a cold pursuit through the marshes.

  Lately, though, the soldiers’ behavior intimated a change in the murky kingdom, leaving Grohd with the distinct impression that they were merely biding their time until they could break him and everyone else.

  Something was happening in foul Ladoman—something frightening and insidious.

  Grohd smelled war in the air and grew more frightened because that ought to have been impossible: Ladomirus lacked the manpower or the brains to conquer his enemies. His warriors comprised the dregs who’d been driven out of more civilized domains. They were disorderly drunken louts, mean and stupid—not the kind of soldiers who could be organized into a fighting force. He’d survived this long only because no one wanted his flyspeck of a kingdom.

  Grohd’s anxiety over the undertone of the Ladomantines’ behavior fed on itself: He grew wary of anything out of the ordinary. Anything at all.

  When the door of his tavern creaked
back to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered silhouette filling the doorway, and when Grohd squinted into the afternoon light to see that four eyes stared back at him from beneath the figure’s hat, he gave a little yelp and considered quickly the distance from his hand to the double-bladed axe he kept beneath the bar.

  He decided it was too far to reach. He cleared his throat, swallowed, and said, “Hello?”

  The tall figure entered and closed the door. With the sunlight blocked off, Grohd saw the man clearly. To his enormous relief, saw the huge sullen cat perched on the stranger’s shoulders.

  The stranger himself seemed pleasant enough, although he was a massive figure, nearly a giant by Grohd’s standards. His forearms were bare and roped with muscle, but he wore no weapon, unless you considered a silver sword hilt in a truncated scabbard a weapon—not terrifically imposing. The man’s hair beneath his feathered hat was shaggy and silvery, although his trim beard was jet black like his cape.

  The stranger was smiling. The cat, then, also seemed to smile at Grohd; an unnatural expression, to be sure. Its teeth were extraordinarily long.

  The man walked to the nearest table and set the cat down on it, then came languidly toward Grohd while dusting himself off. “Good day,” he said. “Warm afternoon, isn’t it?”

  Grohd sighed with relief as he recognized the stranger for what he was—a pilgrim, and not a fugitive. The voice gave it away: Its silky accent was not from around here. It was vaguely familiar and, after a moment’s deliberation, Grohd recalled where he’d heard such a voice. He wondered if this fellow, too, was a Mirian minstrel. But, seeing no cymrallin, he decided probably not. The man certainly wasn’t going to play any songs with an abbreviated sword.

  He might have thought more about it, but he found the stranger’s smile to be infectious, and realized an answer was expected from him.