A Road to Larkhen’s Hold (2)

The trees stretched towards the sky, branch fingers blooming with emerald leaves. Ol-Lozen stood in their shade, at peace under the canopy.

He had beheld them from the hovel, of course, stared up at them while picking vegetables, caught leafy edges in the corners of his eye, but had never ventured out into the untamed green wilds. Smothered in the bosom of nature’s majesty he might have lost his way, or the sprawling meadows with their pools and temperate atmosphere may have triggered instincts to frolic in open spaces, his people’s ancient desire for wanderlust, unmet for years.

At the path’s edge grew a flower wreathed brilliant red. He cupped it in two hands, enjoying the brush of small, delicate petals on callused fingers before Jackbee‘s trot took the party too far ahead.

“Will you stop and smell every rose, demon?” Mouse asked when he returned.

“Until I am commanded otherwise, every flower I find pleasing will endure my sniffs, girl. The air as well. Perhaps your nose is too weak to appreciate them.” He appraised her scowl with an eye. “Yours is small, mine is not. It is only natural one might feel a touch of jealously.”

“Size means little. With a single spell my nose could be stronger. I could smell Jackbee from down the road with magic.”

“Already I can smell your steed from a half kilometer away.”

“Then I’ll make mine stronger than that. Before you even take one step towards a flower I’ll lavish you with its scent in perfect detail.”

“Ask me to pick it and save yourself the trouble.”

“With hands as big as yours?” She held up her own.” Mine are smaller and better suited for not crushing. And I know how to find them. And where to look. And which ones hide thorns under their leaves, with poison that’ll swell your hands so large they’ll turn purple.”

“How odd,” he rumbled. “Suddenly size is important.”

“Children, do you plan on carrying this show the entire length of our journey?” Daigay turned her head and shot them with a withering gaze. “Travel comes with enough worries without being privy to contests of ego. If Ol-Lozen wishes to smell every stick, dewdrop, and mushroom he sees, then let him. No harm will come of it.”

“But he is strange, grandmama,” she whispered. Ol-Lozen, waggling an eyebrow, had stepped from the path to a bush brimming with berries. One hand waved, wafting their aroma closer to his nose. “Must demons smell everything?”

Daigay pursed her lips, considering how to answer. “That sounds like a question. Why not ask him?”

“Will you ask for me?”

“I already know the answer. I have no need.”

“Then will you tell me?”

“Jackbee demands my full attention.”

She pointed ahead to where the path sloped downward. From the distant gurgles of water there was a river fast approaching. “The soldiers may have weakened my bridge, and I’d prefer us remain dry and not swept away. Apologies, daffodil, but this burden’s on you.”

Her passenger’s arms slackened, and a pained moan vibrated through Daigay’s cloak. “But I will ask you consider this: to him, our world is new. If your every meal since birth were watery onion gruel, imagine the delight of seeing strawberry cake for the first time, then learning of the thousand possible sweet and savory ways to prepare cake. By week’s end our armies would find use for you as a battering ram. Or, in his hand, a nose full of pollen.”

The news made Mouse’s eyebrows raise. “But don’t flowers grow everywhere?”

“Do they?”

The shortness of the answer stung. It was a sure flick to the forehead, a reminder from Daigay to pay attention, that her assumptions would only impede understanding.

A world without flowers… Mouse found conjuring an image of such a place a challenge beyond her. Then, she considered all the other things that Ol-Lozen had taken interest in: the sky, the trees, the sun; paler and paler her image grew, until melancholy trickled its way in between the cracks of her heart.

They traveled the bridge in relative silence, wide enough for one pack animal and one cart forcing Ol-Lozen was forced to walk behind, Daigay probing for weakness made by weight of tramping hooves and men. Being made from compacted earth and stone, roots drawn upward acting as rebar, slick patches of moss above and algae below holding the shape together, nature had kept the construction strong. Cattails had woven into its legs lending their strength. Toads croaked from embrace of rushes, content with their proximity to shade and river.

“Demon –” Mouse started, wiping wetness from her eyes when the not-man drew close again.

“Yes, my ears are superior to yours as well. Ask your questions. Much of my world requires points of reference without which comparing becomes impossible. I will try despite that, though a historian I am not.”

“Your world, what was it like?”

“Where to begin?” He scratched at his chin, grimacing at stubble beginning to take root. “Dark. Dreary. Cramped. So cramped we began to build cities above and below instead of outward. There are places where you can’t move a muscle without bumping another Orkan, and no matter where you turn you see only concrete. Can’t see the sky, nor feel a breeze.” He gestured to the surrounding forest. “All this we conquered, remade in accordance with Orkan needs. You won’t find trees in our cities, nor forests for a hundred kilometers.”

“You conquered the forests as if enemies? Where have the trees gone?”

“Chewed up for lumber, most of them, now planted where conditions suit growth. Places where people are less densely packed. Outskirts with fewer industries clogging their skies. Instead of trees, cities have massive tanks,” he said, looking to the girl only to find a furrowed brow. “Jars. Massive jars of green fluid serve their purpose, performing their work, cleaning our air, and providing light to travel by. Supposedly more effective, but they are not the same. Do not look so surprised, girl. It was you who called us despoilers.”

It was a moment before Mouse found her voice again. The gentle sway of Jackbee felt the tossing of a ship, Ol-Lozen’s words the storm upsetting once mild seas. “From where does this power come?”

“Power? Science is our means, not power.”

“You’ll need forgive Mouse,” Daigay interjected. “Bereft of finer years a child’s worldview lacks perspective. Limited by what scraps of wisdom she’s acquired, any conclusions other than your science being weird, inscrutable magic reside far beyond her comprehension, but she will understand in time.” She reached a hand behind to tousle the girl’s hair. “Admittedly, several heights your people have reached exceed even my own understanding.” To Ol-Lozen she gave a sharp look. There was hunger in the emerald depths of her eyes, and for a moment slipped to the sword he carried before they returned, glinting with a crow’s interest.

“You have knowledge of my people? How?” He asked.

She’s got an entire book filled with demons just like you. Mouse’s words rattled for notice.

Daigay grinned, gloved left hand held high for him to see, Jackbee’s reins held between her knees. In a moment she had it off, and he was greeted with the sight of runes in black script on her brown flesh.

“An extra hand of evidence to keep suspicions off my granddaughter.” She cackled lightly at her own joke.

The fact of the runes was not lost on Ol-Lozen: Daigay had stolen one from his world, and was making light of the idea. He blinked, struck by the revelation with the force of a thrown puzzle piece, said piece bouncing off his chest and landing square where it needed to slot on the table where the picture sat a quarter completed. Now it made sense. She’d spoken his language. “You’ve summoned before?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“A linguist and historian. The Riversworn believed I was owed a favor that day.” She replaced the glove and took up Jackbee’s reins again. “Lucky, should I be accosted for proof of summoning you, not that I expect disbelief. One benefit of age is hesitancy by the young to question my wisdom. If I say fish scales will remedy lost hair, everyone will try so twice over before thinking to confront me.”

Daigay loosened a short laugh, but her expression quickly turned downcast. Soon she was stroking the donkey’s scalp leaving Ol-Lozen to muse. And muse he did, thinking how to pose the question brewed behind his mind while it was still hot, deciding to keep it warm in clutched embers of his hosts’ descriptors towards his people until the time was right.

He did not wait long. Accustomed to the sights of her world and given no book to study from, Mouse was eventually lulled into sleep by the donkey’s trot at the first touch of orange upon the skies. As the girl’s arms slackened, the magus plucked a woven cord from the pocket of her cloak and threaded it around her fingers, holding the cord there for a moment before tossing it up with a casual flick of her wrist. Willed by Daigay, the cord lashed out serpentine around Mouse’s back and Daigay’s stomach, tying the two magi together so the girl would not slip. When a thin glisten of drool ran down her chin, he knew the time had arrived.

“For what reason am I called demon by your people?”

“Ah, so we come finally to that.” Daigay pulled her cloak tighter. The passing of the day brought with it a change in temperature. “What reason would you prefer to hear?”

“The truth.”

‘Wouldn’t we all prefer that, but the truth of truth is how many truths there are. It comes stained in many colors. Though I suppose if Mouse’s answer wasn’t sufficient I could toss you another.”

“Her reason of my demonic nature is simply that I am,” growled Ol-Lozen. “Was it not you who claimed her perspective childish and lacking? I would have your answer, Daigay.”

“Such honor you pay me,” she said. “My answer is thus: you are a demon because you are a demon.”

His head whipped down to meet her, and at his expression she was mildly surprised. Greater than anger in the lines of his face was shock, like she had slapped the not-man with a wet fish. While his guard was in tatters, she took the offensive.

“Conflict. One of the first differences I noted in discourse with my summoned was your people’s propensity towards conflict, and a long, intimate history with war united them. How what saved the Orkan from burning itself to extinction was not victory, but when there were no enemies left alive to war with besides themselves. If that’s not demonic then what is?” A black look overtook the shock then, and Ol-Lozen turned away, brooding in silence, and she heard creaks that might have been the sound of sharp teeth grinding together.

“I did not come to this world to be insulted.”

“From what I’ve gleaned, very few of you had. The majority of Orkan summoned can be divided into two camps: criminal and warrior. That demon has become an Orkan epithet should surprise you not; our world has primarily known your glory seekers and recipients of capital punishment.”

“We changed. From war we turned to progress.”

“Not a soul in this land will believe you. But, aye, you changed. Towers scraping the sky; flameless lamps never needing fuel; walls lined in panacea; tomes from across time, a library’s worth, all written in one volume I could fit in my pocket; bones for those in need, limbs to replace lost flesh. Conflagrations, erupting with holy splendor, blinding and magnificent, entire civilizations without regard for color or belief consumed by flame, and the land eaten.” Once more the hunger from before flared in her eyes. “My summoned filled my dreams with marvels worth debasing myself over. Rumors of scientists here and there who might have taught me reached my ears, given me a drop of wisdom, but seemingly with goals of forging passage home, I never chanced upon one.”

“Wishful thinking. Nothing was promised except save a one-way trip,” he grumbled.

“Of our world you still knew naught?”

“No Orkan had ever returned. There was no certainty of the land even being hospitable. Our destination might have been the center of the planet, or the crushing depths of the ocean. Some beast’s stomach might have been filled with us, never again knowing hunger, for what we knew.”

“Mouse’s summoning must have given cause for terrible fright.”

“I chose to come here.”

“I see,” Daigay replied, her voice low with thought. A chill separated from the cold evening kissed her throat, and she shivered.

After what felt an eternity, they broke from forest grip, and Ol-Lozen was greeted by his first glimpse of the world, for he had never ventured further than the markets tucked into the glades Mouse had ordered him visit. The field they stood in blew in surging waves, rolling with hillocks made gold by the sinking sun, drawing the orange sky past the horizon with it. Purple hue gathered as moon rose to take its place. In the far-off distance grew the spines of wintry mountains with names beyond count, burgeoning rich with abundant metals little understood.

Daigay rooted around in one of their bags of food, drawing out three green apples. One she stored in her cloak, the others she tossed to a stunned Ol-Lozen. The sight of natural majesty had stilled his heart. He picked the apples from the dirt path and stared. A curve was approaching, and he would needs walk sideways if he wished to adore the sight further, like a green crab. Daigay halted Jackbee, letting the Orkan bask for a few moments longer.

“While there’s time, I have my own question.” At his wordless nod, she continued. “You’re not a criminal. I’ll sleep soundly tonight – but – not a scholar, either, which is a shame. And despite appearances, not a warrior. Where does that leave you?”

Ol-Lozen averted his eyes from nature, jumping as though having been shouted awake from deep dreams. His shoulders sagged with weight unseen, shrinking into the broad green mass of the Orkan body. Recognizing she’d overstepped, Daigay returned to the trail, silently hoping the girl tied to her was not faking sleep.

“Apologies for intruding.”