A Different Kind of Deadly (13 page)

The water woman reached under my
shirt, feeling every muscle and joint she could reach. I did my
best not to shudder as her cold hands roamed my torso. She finally
nodded to herself.

"Your friend Leo was c-correct in his
assessment."

"What would that be?"

"You're a weakling."

I felt as though she dropped an anvil on my
head.

Damn you, Leo.

Seriously, just damn you.

"But your definition is good."

"Duck said the same thing,"
I said, thinking of the zombie keeper of
The Dead Man's Tale
.

"Duck has a discerning eye when it comes to
men, s-still..." she mused, giving me the once-over. "It's
uncanny."

"What is?"

Jiki froze, her arms dropping to
her sides. "You mean, Diana never told you?" She looked away, the
water droplets curiously resembling beads of sweat. "No, I guess
s-she wouldn't."

"Could you elaborate? What isn't Diana telling
me?"

"You're his s-spitting image," Jiki sighed.
"Inval, I mean. But forget I s-said anything. It's all in the past
now."

Inval?

I didn't hear a word after that, obediently
moving as Jiki needed to get me into the armor.

I thought of Diana and her lovelorn
expression, and her reasons for entering a Doll Contract with
me.

I licked my lips nervously.

"Jiki?"

"Hmm?"

"I take it that you met Inval?"

"Oh yes," she replied heartily. "Many
times."

"What was he like?"

What was wrong with me? Why was I so desperate
to find something wrong with this guy?

"C-Charismatic, witty, c-clever," she listed,
and with every word of praise I felt a stinging lash against my
pride. "But also a bit s-strange for a necromancer."

My ears perked up. "Strange?"

"Yes... you s-see, he s-said s-something once.
Oh, what was it?" she fumed, scrambling to recall the exact words.
"Ah yes, I think I have it now. He c-cringed during a trip to the
butcher, and I joked that he was a necromancer who was afraid of
the dead. And he told me, 'Jiki, I'm not afraid of dead things,
only things that look dead.' S-see? S-strange."

I felt my heart drop in my chest.

The words Diana had used to comfort me back in
Nethermountain... they were his words.

Is this why you're so cold to me, Diana? Is
that why you act like you care when it pleases you?

Reality sunk in like a knife to the
ribs.

To Diana I was never 'Marvin'.

I was just a sad echo of the man she wished I
could be.

18: Razitar The
Blind

Jiki had me wait
in an antechamber, a loft high above her work
space, while she brought Diana in for her fitting. I found Leo
cheerfully rapping on a number of glass columns on the far end of
the balcony.

Tully was the one to alert Leo of my arrival
by tugging sharply on his high collar. My friend snorted as his
eyes fell on my armor-clad frame, telling me that I looked at least
as ridiculous as I felt.

"You look like someone stuffed you into a
metal box."

"No thanks to someone who told Jiki how weak I
was," I shot back, glaring.

"Woah now, was I lying?" Leo's chest plate
doubled his stature; the benign question took an intimidating
quality as a result. "I think your pride is a small price to pay
for your life, Marv."

The logic was solid enough to serve as a
metaphysical slap to my senses. I looked down at myself, at a suit
of leather and scale I had no business wearing, at a quest I had
little chance of succeeding, and the people I had unwittingly
dragged into my issues due to my incompetence.

Leo didn't deserve my attitude, especially not
for a problem that had already died centuries ago. I had a beef
with Inval, and like a proper necromancer, he had an incredible
knack for haunting others long after his demise.

"I'm sorry, Leo. You're right."

"Naturally, naturally," he repeated with
vigorous nodding. Leo craned an arm around my shoulder, swiveling
me towards one of the columns that had caught his attention
earlier. "Now lookie here, Marv. We've gotta thank these beasties
for saving our hides! Or is it, them saving their hides? For our
hides to save later..." He began mumbling, one of the few people I
knew who could land himself in a stupor in this fashion.

Me? I was too disgusted as usual to care much
more than that.

It would seem that Leo's "beasties" were a
number of menacing creatures from the Moor of Souls. They had been
skinned by the hands of a skilled hunter, causing me to wonder
whether there was more to Jiki than her talents as a
smith.

I studied the muscle tendons,
which had been left largely intact. Most of the creatures floating
in the glass columns looked to have the rough composition of dogs
and wildcats. But there were two who reminded me of the Fleshy
Uglies we'd encountered near the Ivory Arch at the start of our
misadventures in the Moor.

These specimens had no real shape, a
conglomerate of limbs which made no evolutionary sense as far as I
could see. While partially decomposed in some places, the flesh was
human, and yet...

"Marvin!" Leo shouted. "Look at
this!"

I steeled my queasy gut with a silent plea,
expecting to find some oozing mass of putrid waste, but as per
habit, I was mistaken.

This body was unmistakably male, and
(mercifully) had his hide in place. Golden skin and sylvan ears
marked him as an Dune Elf, likely from the High City of
Isoviel.

He wore dark robes from the waist down, a deep
indigo that had somehow resisted fading inside the liquid vat its
wearer called his final resting place.

Shimmering embroidery caught my eye like a
fishing line, practically distorting the fluid around it. I shoved
my face against the glass, straining to read the word it
spelled.

"
Rûnalde'qar
?" I scratched my
head.

"Don't ya mean Rûnaldes'sin?"
asked Leo beside me. Tully hopped on the ground as he lowered
himself to inspect the wording. "It's Runic for
Sorceress."

I raised an eyebrow at the body's broad
shoulders and nonexistent breasts.

"Either she's butch or the spelling is off.
That's not a rank Isovelites give lightly."

Isoviel is famous for a number of reasons:
it's the oldest of the High Cities, it's the only one openly
accepting and encouraging of magic, and it's fiercely
matriarchal.

The all-encompassing title for a mage in Runic
was Alouthar for men, Alouthess for women, and Alouthrin for groups
of either or both genders. While I'm not an expert in Isovelite
culture, I did know that it was next to impossible to get into the
highest echelons of society without being born into them. If a
woman tried hard enough in her craft, and successfully managed to
Awaken her power, she was automatically in the highest caste by
grace of her strength of will and determination.

While men weren't exactly discriminated
against (again, I can't say as I haven't been there), I've never
heard of one going through an Awakening by his own merit. Magic
wasn't so different from other pursuits. Women were more likely to
take to subtle branches, as they could detect minor nuances better.
Men frequently dealt with flashier or material manipulations since
it made more practical sense. Naturally, there were exceptions to
the rule no matter where one came from, but there was an undeniable
trend to these things.

Rûnaldes'sin was a title of honor and status,
belonging solely to the females who successfully Awaken their
magic. Between Alouthess and Rûnaldes'sin, the difference was like
calling someone a street-peddler versus a Grand Vizier. Penalties
for using the title incorrectly, whether an honest mistake or
genuine mocking, ranged from the loss of a limb to capital
punishment.

If this man was really a Rûnalde'qar, a
Sorcerer, than he was as good as royalty anywhere else.

"Who is he?" I wondered.

Uhh clambered up the stairs to the loft; Jiki
must've let him come back. He fixed his lime-green gaze on the
column coffin.

"
Razitar
,
forty-first sssson of the Orchid Namufet
," he intoned.

Leo and I looked at one another. Again, Uhh
was a font of information in the most curious way. I really want to
know whose bones he was comprised of that he could summon this kind
of knowledge on a whim.

"Do you know why he's here, Uhh?"

"
Razitar issss dead, and cannnnot ssssurvive outssside of
presservative compound.
"

"I meant more along the lines of how he came
to be in the Moor of Souls in the first place."

Uhh raised his arm, pointing at Razitar's
wrists. What I originally took for black bangles were lines of fine
script.

"What does it say?" I asked.

"
Nature's blesssssings are never owned, onnnly loaned. In the
ennnnd all that we puuull, in mortal greeeed, is paid in
fuuull.
" Seeing that I was about to ask
more, Uhh started on another explanation. "
Razitar waaas born blind. It was saaaaid he spoke to spirits.
One becaaaaame his eeeeyes, that he might seeeee as they
do.
"

"A spirit?" Leo took a step forward. I could
see where he was going with this. "A nature spirit?"

Uhh looked to me on whether or not he should
reply. I nodded.

"
You caaaall them byyy a different name. A naturrrally
occurring autooomaton.
Razitar
dissappeared in the desert saaands; the spirits took baaaack his
eyes. But they, too, feeeell. Down, dooooown, down, to the
Salamander Nesssst.
"

"Marvin," said Leo. "Didn't Duck say something
about that? The Eyes are found in the Salamander Nest?"

The gears spun wildly in my head. I gaped at
Razitar's body.

"His eyes? His eyes are the Eyes of the
Leviathan?"

"And if they were made by a naturally
occurring automaton..." His eyes turned into perfectly round
saucers. "SAND WHALES! THERE ARE SAND WHALES, MARVIN!"

I was terrified that the cavern would collapse
at the sound of his yelling. I bunched my shoulders, waving him
down.

"There's no guarantee that they're Sand
Whales, Leo. We have evidence that the automatons are real, but we
don't know what they look like."

"I don't care!" He picked me
up (it didn't even faze me at this point). "Don't you see, Marvin?
It's proof, proof that great-great-great-great-great grandpa Leeroy
wasn't crazy!" Leo's face twisted into a knot. "Well there was that
one time with the donkey and the three-legged race, but never mind.
He wasn't
totally
off his rocker."

"Donkey and the three-legged race?"

"He was on stilts, and the donkey was a
paraplegic... then again there was that other time when he
excavated into a haunted dwarven mineshaft."

"Leo, I get it."

"But Marvi-"

"No, seriously, I
get it
."

I'd be ecstatic as well if I could redeem a
family line like that. Gods, Leo was practically normal by
comparison. The thought was scarier than half the things I'd seen
since leaving Nethermount.

"But something isn't right," I muttered. "Uhh,
you said something a while ago. Something about a universal
soul?"

"
Ssspirits arrre unique. Borrrn to siiiingular purrrpose. Eyes
arre, Eyes arrrrre...
" His head lolled,
snapping back to attention as though he were losing energy.
"
Not bound to sssource material. Can
brrrring life to any medium.
"