The cloaked figure glanced at the two only an instant before snatching up the bottle and sprinting into the night.
Dysan stared into Lone’s face, trying to hide his terror. The grim black eyes revealed nothing, and he had the predatory features of one accustomed to murder. Dysan knew he was going to die and horribly. He had seen that expression on the faces of the other Dyareelan pit-slaves, before they tore a man to pieces, laughing and howling with glee. His mouth went painfully dry, and he could feel his heart pounding like a hammer against his ribs. The situation, the rabid features, jogged a memory. Dysan abruptly realized he knew this man, and not only from the rumors writhing through the underground. Ten years ago and longer, this young man had shared the Pits of Dyareela with him. The Hand had called him Flea-Shit, one of many charming names they gave the children they trained to bloody service and also used as sacrifice. Lone had never claimed another name, so the orphans called him Nil, because where he clearly stood, they might find nothing an instant later.
“Nil,” Dysan managed hoarsely. “Is that … you?”
Lone’s expression hardened, and he examined Dysan in the failing light.
Dysan tried to look brave, uncaring. Fear often inspired carnivores to blood frenzy, driving them to attack. Courage where fear should be made them cautious.
Finally Lone spoke, “Dysan?” When he did, his grip and expression relaxed slightly. Though not a happy reunion, at least Lone no longer seemed intent on tearing out Dysan’s throat or slicing up his vitals. Neither wanted any reminder of their time in the Pits. Lone added coldly, “Don’t call me that. Not ever again.” He released his hold so suddenly, Dysan fell to the muddy ground.
Scrambling to his feet, Dysan clutched his own throat and nodded.
With a silent swirl of black cloth, Lone turned his back, the ultimate gesture of disdain. When a man so wary makes himself vulnerable, it is only because he knows the other is too weak or incompetent to harm him. “You have no idea what you just did.”
Dysan believed he might, if he only had a couple of answers. “That paper you had translated. You stole that from still-living Hand?”
“Yes.” Lone glanced over his shoulder, giving Dysan a hint of credit. “But they already had the potion mostly done. Once I knew what they needed, I realized they would send someone for that last ingredient, the one that required a healer to make.”
Suddenly, it all came together. Dysan felt like the worst of fools for believing Lone himself worked for the cult. “The cloaked man.”
Now, Lone turned back to face Dysan. He held a stance of supreme confidence, as if the entire world would bend to his whim, if he only asked. “I relieved him of that necessary ingredient. Then you, you …” He bit back whatever insult had nearly left his lips. Calling another pitchild sheep-shite stupid would only make him sound like the despicable masters they had escaped. “ … you gave it back!”
“No.” Dysan displayed the other cloth-wrapped bottle, the one he had stolen from Lone. “It’s safe. It’s here.”
Lone took the parcel from Dysan’s hand, pulled out the bottle, and studied it. He returned his attention to Dysan, his assurance only a trifle wilted. “This is …”
“The potion.” Dysan smiled. “I switched it when I thought you carried …”
Lone opened the bottle and took a cautious sniff before dumping the contents into the sodden murk of Sanctuary’s alley. Only after the entire potion lay splattered in the mud, Lone asked, “So … what was in the other bottle? The one the Hand will pour into their brew and inhale?”
“Nothing special.” Dysan shrugged. “I just wanted the ritual to fail. It’s only water from a bleaching vat.”
“A bleaching vat?” For an instant, Dysan thought he saw a sparkle pass through those flat-black killer’s eyes. “A bleaching vat?” Lone huffed out an unexpected laugh, a sound clearly unfamiliar to his usually deadly and serious repertoire. When a confused Dysan did not join his mirth, Lone explained, “The other main ingredient in that … mix of theirs is a vat of soured wine.”
Dysan knew that. He had made the translation. “Yes.”
“Do you know what happens when you mix bleach and vinegar?” Lone laughed again, this time with clear pleasure. “Deadly poison. One whiff, Dysan. That’s all it takes.”
Dysan imagined the priests calling upon their hideous, twisted Mother, their hands mottled and sticky with tattoos, red ink, and blood. As the last ingredient entered the pot, they all sucked in a deep breath, seeking strength and finding only the death they had inflicted on so many others. He only hoped it was a painful way to die. He looked to Lone to ask him, but the other man had already melted into the growing shadows. Where he had once stood, Dysan saw nil, nothing.
A smile on his face, Dysan ignored the pain still throbbing through his neck. His mothers would wonder about the tear in his tunic, the scratch on his belly, the bruises in the shape of fingers across his throat, but they would accept whatever explanation he gave them.
Then, they would feed him.
Pricks and Afflictions
Dennis L. McKiernan
Two words of many meanings …
Glog!
The wave shoved Rogi down again, and a great bubble exploded from his mouth as he spat the oath underwater: “Thshite!”
Rogi fought his way upward, yet even as he broke through the surface—thnk!—the box slammed into the back of his head.
Down went Rogi once more, the little hunchback now caught in the undertow and dragged along the mud and silt and sand.
In spite of his panic, in spite of clawing for purchase even as the powerful riptide slammed him repeatedly into the bottom and rolled him and tossed him somersaulting, Ith thith the end of Rogi? he wondered.
Just moments before, as he’d stumped along the western shore of the White Foal and swatted mosquitoes and shooed away gnats and picked off leeches while he hunted the rats who frequented the fringes of the Swamp of Night Secrets, rats that occasionally came out from the reeds to the shoreline to hunt small crustaceans and perhaps lick salt from the rocks, as the sinking sun hung low in the sky, Rogi had “thspotted a chetht” tossing to and fro in the whitecaps and tricky currents ’round the Hag’s Teeth, there where the furious rush of the White Foal met the cold surge of the sea. He saw the curious markings—runes mayhap—carven into the sides, and he guessed that it was something “thpethial.” Perhaps the rumors were true about the strange wreck out on the Seaweal Reefs; maybe this chest had come from there. Quickly, Rogi had stripped off his clothes, pausing momentarily to admire his dragon, and then he had plunged headlong into the heavy waves yet cresting from a blow somewhere far out to sea. The shock of the cold water shrank his dragon down to minuscule proportions, but Rogi persevered, swimming an ungainly sidestroke against the white-crested billows rolling in from the south, and the swirling, gurgling river current rushing down from the north. With water cascading over him and the long red hair growing only on the right side of his head whipping about in the currents, gasping between crests, he made his way outward to fetch this curious artifact … or so he hoped it might be. After all, if it were “thomthing thpethial” his “mathter” would reward him handsomely … perhaps even enough to visit the ladies above the Yellow Lantern and make his dragon happy.
But then a breaker had smashed him under and a swell had lifted him up and he had been hit in the back of the head by the box, and another roller had hammered him under again, where the undertow had grabbed him and hurled him along the bottom. And he had no air, yet needed to breathe, but could not, deep down as he was. And as he tumbled, the swift-running undercurrent crashed him against the skeletal ribs of the rotted remains of a longdrowned hulk, its keel deeply buried in the muck.