The tide of unmaking, p.27
The Tide of Unmaking, page 27
part #3 of Berinfell Prophesies Series
Had the Drefids mastered some sort of electrical power? Was this a kind of buried cable system? None that Regis had ever heard of, that was certain. But she meant to find out. The pipe led toward one of the buildings she had intended to explore, the odd round structure with the castle-esque turret on top. It stood out among all the other edifices.
Regis traced the pipe to the building and, seeking a door, followed the exterior wall. She didn’t find a door. But what she did find made her curious. There were more pipes. In fact, they radiated out from the building like spokes from the hub of a wheel. Now, she wanted more than ever to get inside. But after encircling the building twice, she’d found no door at all. No ridges in the smooth stonework. No outline where a secret entrance might be hidden. No way in that she could see.
Then from overhead came a loud whump and a crackling. Something small bounced off of Regis’ head. She looked up just in time to see a Drefid walking across the roof of the building. He disappeared into a round window in the turret.
Of course, she thought. Drefids don’t need doors at ground level.
Regis wasted no time. She leaped, caught the edge of the roof, and lithely pulled herself up. And there she crouched and waited. If this Drefid came out soon, she’d go and look. If not, well…she couldn’t wait forever.
She heard a shriek and some raspy, muffled dialogue. And then not one but two Drefids clambered out of the turret. They spoke for a moment on the rooftop before one leaped up to the cocoon. The other leaped to the roof of another building.
Regis raced across the roof and stopped to listen at the turret. Other than a pronounced humming, there was no sound. If there were Drefids down there, they must have been sleeping. She scanned the cocoons that seemed to be within the Drefids’ jumping range. She wanted to be as sure as possible that no Drefid was on its way in the near future. Once she went down below, she’d be blind.
Convinced that no Drefid was an immediate danger, Regis leaped up to the edge of the round entryway and lowered herself inside. She let go, expecting to hit a floor. She did, but it was some twenty feet below. Regis hit hard but absorbed some of the impact by rolling. Dreadnaught and especially Nightform training had taught her how to spread out the force of a hard landing, but still, this one rattled her teeth.
She stood up gingerly and looked around. It was a spartan chamber except for a myriad of violent gashes along the walls, and the apparatus near the far wall. It was taller than she, and looked somewhat like a gigantic dremask lantern or maybe a multifaceted jewel, ribbed with dark iron. The pipes Regis had seen outside clearly attached to this thing. In fact, now she began to wonder if it might be some kind of pump or turbine, driving whatever it was to sources outside.
The humming she’d heard was coming from this device, and cautiously, Regis drew near. Whatever was inside it, it wasn’t a dremask flame. It swirled like wisps of smoke or cloud, and churned beneath the thick panes of glass that held it within. It had such peculiar properties that Regis couldn’t identify it. One moment, it seemed vaporous. The next, liquid. Once it crackled like a charged thing, but immediately afterward it crystallized like a sudden, hard frost.
At the base of the apparatus there was a small hand-turn above each pipe leading to the exterior. There were also hand-turns above ports that had no attached pipes. Regis wondered what would happen if she turned one of the pipes off. Probably nothing good, she decided.
Near the top of the device were three of these unused ports, and between them was a strange two-inch twist nozzle. Without thinking, she pinched it between her thumb and forefinger and gave it a twist. There was a brief hiss, and she flinched her hand back.
Something escaped the nozzle, a whirling, pulsing red mist. Regis gasped and again, without thinking, twisted the nozzle the opposite direction. It cut off the flow but not before the tiniest wisp of the red mist touched her finger. It felt like the brush of a feather and then…like a hammer blow.
Regis fell to the ground, spasmed, and kicked. She flailed in a writhing circle of agony. Her mind filled with terrifying, violent images. She saw herself taking an axe to people she knew and loved. She saw them dying and saw herself laughing. She saw blood everywhere…tearing, ripping and clawing. There were screams and guttural shouts. Some distant part of her mind registered all of this and realized she couldn’t be set free to do this evil that churned within her. She needed to die. That was it. The only way to stop the mayhem she would unleash.
But in that last gasp of hopelessness, it was over.
She couldn’t see herself, of course, but she felt herself heaving, gasping and sweating. Her mind was back. She was her own again.
“Dear Ellos,” she whispered. “What was that?”
Suddenly, she heard a screech from above. There were scraping footsteps overhead.
Drefids!
Regis spun on her heel, looking for the door. Then, it dawned on her like a swift dagger between the ribs. There was no door. The way out was twenty feet above. A Drefid door. There was no way to get up there. And even if she could, a Drefid was coming in.
She was trapped.
Charlie clambered down the hillside into the hollow, into the heart of Drefid-kind.
Walking into the midst of them, Charlie felt strangely conspicuous. I know they can’t see me, he thought. But it feels like a spotlight’s shinin’ down on me.
He felt especially exposed near the gnarled roots of the massive, ashen gray trees. He looked up into the boughs and spotted a Drefid cocoon. It swayed slightly and bulged here and there as if something was in it and squirming around. It reminded Charlie of some kind of egg sac. Just then, a Drefid poked its head out of the entrance to the cocoon. It hissed, snuffled at the air for a moment, and then disappeared back inside. Charlie moved on quickly.
A short march later, he walked by a cauldron boiling-full of some putrid green liquid. He leaned over to look and almost fell in as a Drefid brushed by him, actually making contact briefly. Charlie froze and readied his blade. But the Drefid went straight for the cauldron and tossed in a few hunks of some kind of meat. It sizzled a moment and then sank. The liquid seemed to thicken, and when the Drefid stirred it with a long slotted pole, something bruise-colored bubbled to the top.
The smell of the cauldron had been disgusting enough before, but when that gunk bubbled to the surface, it was all Charlie could do to get away without losing the contents of his stomach. He rushed over to a rather square building. He checked the border and looked inside. No Drefids on the way there that he could see, and none inside.
Perfect! he thought, as he ducked into the building. A lone dremask brazier hung high on the inner wall, but it cast only a weak, greenish glow. It was barely enough to see, even in such a small room. But there was plenty to see.
On one side, filling every inch of a series of shelves that went up ten feet, were lidded jars and stoppered flasks of every size and shape. As Charlie drew near to them he hit a wall of scents…most of them unpleasant and the combination of them all, nearly unbearable. Charlie backed away and almost fell into a pile of scrolls. Not a pile. An entire side of the room. Charlie silently exulted. There had to be something of value among these parchments. Hundreds of them, all for the taking. But which ones?
The Drefid dropped to the floor not five feet away from Regis.
Her hand drifted to the hilt of the dagger sheathed at her hip. Killing it, she realized, wouldn’t help her situation. If another Drefid came and found a dead comrade, the Coven could get extremely uncomfortable…especially for Elves trapped in door-less buildings.
Regis had the inklings of an idea, but it was so absolutely insane that she shoved it from her mind and kept still and silent. The Drefid was bigger than most Regis had seen. Its shoulders were bony but very wide. Its arms and legs were roped with sinewy cables of muscle, and it towered over Regis.
The thing turned her way suddenly. Regis froze. Its greasy white hair fell across its eyes, but enough of that black hole gaze was visible to send shivers down her spine. It took a step closer. Its head lolled on its neck, tilted this way and that as it sniffed the air.
Regis stopped watching its eyes and focused on its fists. Its talons already protruded several inches from its knuckles and they slowly inched out more and more. The creature raised its fists. Regis drew her dagger. The talons swished…
And the Drefid sneezed.
Something flew past Regis’ ear. She thanked Ellos it hadn’t splattered on her forehead.
The Drefid wiped its nostrils with its sleeve and turned toward the glowing apparatus at the far side of the chamber. Just as Regis had done moments before, the Drefid went to the device. Its claws retracted, and it reached for the nozzle. Regis heard a hissing. The Drefid bent forward, and to Regis’ horror, it inhaled deeply…once, twice, a third time. The red mist seemed to swirl around the creature’s misshapen head. Regis heard the hiss of the nozzle closing.
Then, the Drefid released such a shriek that Regis swayed where she stood. The creature unleashed its talons, spun around and growled. Its face was twisted into a maniacal expression, and reddish drool drained from the corner of its slack-grinning mouth. Regis dove out of the way and rolled as the Drefid attacked.
The thing didn’t seem to be attacking her, but was rather in some kind of rage state. It smashed into walls and clawed at the stone, snapped at the air with its jagged, half-rotted teeth, leaped and raced back and forth. It was all Regis could do to keep out of the way. Round and round they went: the Drefid, a cyclonic force of talons and teeth; Regis, a ghost trying desperately to avoid the storm.
Then the Drefid came to an abrupt stop. It stood in the chamber’s center, panting like a predator after the chase. The breathing slowed, and it retracted its talons.
Regis felt exhausted, but the Drefid did not seem so. So that explains all the gashes along the walls, she concluded. It stood there flexing its ropey muscles and grinning. A cold fire burned in its eyes, but much brighter and more potent than dremask. The Drefid held out its gnarled hands and alternately flexed and straightened its fingers. It smacked its hands together suddenly. And when it pulled them apart, a shimmering field of electric blue stretched between them. The Drefid threw its head back and laughed.
The red mist, Regis thought. It strengthens them. Then she caught a chill. This was the Dark Arts…it had to be.
The Drefid crouched, ready to leap up to the door.
Regis’ insane plan sprang back into her mind. If the Drefid didn’t kill her, she thought, Jimmy would…if he found out.
Regis dove, rolled and then leaped onto the Drefid’s back just as it vaulted from the ground. Even with invisible Regis in tow, the Drefid easily reached the second story door. It clambered out and shrugged hard, throwing Regis into a painful roll down the roof. She careened over the edge and slammed into the ground, expelling the breath from her lungs and leaving her gasping.
She rolled over with a groan and expected to see the Drefid drop to the ground directly in front of her. She rocked backward, pushed her shoulders against the wall and attempted to stand. A crouch was the best she could manage. She drew her rychesword and her dagger. The Drefid shrieked. She heard its scraping footsteps above. Then it leaped.
…up into the cocoon high above.
In her time in Scotland, Regis had learned many colorful phrases. One of those came to mind now: Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. She thanked Ellos, propelled herself away from the wall and sprinted toward the rendezvous with Mr. Charlie.
“Regis?” Charlie asked the night.
“I’m here.” A little to his left.
“Miss Finney?”
“Here too.”
“Good,” Charlie said. “Ya’ll took awhile. Was gettin’ worried.”
They stood among the muffling gray pines down slope from the Coven’s western rim, not far from the entrance to the massive cave Charlie had spied before.
“You aren’t going to believe what I found,” Miss Finney said. She patted the book in her arms. “I know you can’t see it, but what I’ve got right here is the Drefids’ religion…their whole belief system. I’ve only read a little, but it explains a lot. We’ve got to get this back to Berinfell.”
“Now that there’s a real find,” Charlie said. “Knowing their belief system will help us predict their actions, help us to know just how far they’ll go, and maybe what their big plan be.”
“You made the right choice, Charlie, coming to this Coven,” Regis said. “I found something remarkable as well. I’m not certain, but I believe I discovered the source of the Dark Arts.”
“But I thought…I thought it was something they were born with,” Charlie said. “Like our Lords and their gifts and such.”
Regis shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It comes from the red mist.”
“Red mist?” Fin asked.
“Right,” Regis said. “Let me back up. They have some kind of machine, a pump maybe. There were pipes leading from it to places all over the Coven. Inside the pump is red mist. Hard to describe. It’s like red smoke with crystals in it. All I know is that I touched it and…for a moment, I lost my mind. I’ve never felt such despair, hatred, malice and misery. I wanted to die…and worse, I wanted to kill.”
“You okay now, darlin’?” Charlie asked.
“Aye,” she replied. “It wore off. But I watched a Drefid breathe the stuff in. The thing went berserk.”
“Did you kill it?” Miss Finney asked.
“No,” Regis said. “I…uh, well…it leaped away, and I escaped.”
“This be news for Grimwarden,” Charlie said. “Goldarrow and the Lords, as well.”
“What about you?” Miss Finney asked. “What did you find?”
“Who, me?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah, Charlie,” Regis said. “In the section of the Coven you searched. What’d you find?”
In this moment, Mr. Charlie was glad to be invisible, but he wished he could disappear altogether. “Uh,” he said. “I came up empty.”
“No way, Charlie,” Miss Finney said. “I know you found something.”
“Come on, Dreadnaught,” Regis said. “Out with it.”
“A recipe,” muttered Charlie.
“A what?”
“A recipe,” he repeated. “For rat pie.”
Charlie heard muffled laughter. “Quiet,” he urged. “You want to bring this whole Coven down a’top us?”
“So,” Regis said, “let me make sure I understand. I may have discovered the key to the Drefids’ Dark Arts, Fin brought back the book on the Drefids’ beliefs…and all you got was a recipe?”
“Look,” Charlie said, “we’re not finished here. That cave up there’s still a’waitin’. I ‘spect it’ll have something good in it.”
“With all due respect, Charlie,” Miss Finney said. “What else do we need?”
“We’ve got to get back,” Regis said. “This information can’t wait, and we certainly can’t risk getting caught.”
Charlie was silent a moment. “We came to scout this place out,” he said at last. “But ya’ both be right. We shouldn’t delay much longer. Regis, can you skirt the Coven and bring the raptors back here? Tether ‘em to the trees and keep ‘em quiet. That will save us time.”
Regis said, “Will do.”
“Miss Finney,” Charlie said, “let’s go see about that cave. Just a short look around.”
The Drefids stood guard at the cave entrance, three on either side. They weren’t the problem. It was the portcullis. Charlie figured he and Fin might be able to get in if they were the size of an Allyran pog lizard. But aside from turning into one of those little orange reptiles, there wasn’t much chance of fitting through the sturdy iron that barred the way.
They stood, backs to the stone wall to one side of the cave. Charlie leaned around the corner and checked the horizon. The sun would be along soon. He wanted to be long gone by then. As far as he could tell, the Gnomic paste was still keeping them completely invisible, but he didn’t want to wait any longer than he had to.
Drefids came and went, but none of them entered the cave. Finally a small group of Drefids came to the portcullis, but from the inside. They hissed something to the guards, and all six guards responded by manning capstans on either side, turning hard until the portcullis had receded into the roof of the cave. As the Drefids departed the cave, Charlie noticed they were in very different garb. They wore the black trench coats that they favored on Earth. And beneath that, some kind of black armor Charlie hadn’t seen before.
Charlie gave Fin a tap. They gave the Drefids a wide berth and ducked into the cave. The portcullis slowly descended behind them.
“You have that part figured out, don’t you, Charlie?” Fin whispered.
“What part?”
“The part where the portcullis opens for us on the way back out?”
“I still have my tools,” he whispered.
The cave was indeed vast, wide enough for fifty Gwar to walk side-by-side. It was lit only by slightly luminous orbs placed haphazardly along the cave’s ceiling high above. Charlie and Fin traveled steadily downhill. They found pods of Drefid guards spaced every sixty paces. These too wore the coats and the armor.
“You saw the coats?” Fin asked.
“Not standard Allyran gear,” Charlie whispered back. “Let’s keep going.”
The wide path continued to slope down. It was as if they were treading upon a huge stone wheel. When the path leveled out at last, three arched corridors loomed ahead. Some kind of unnatural light emanated from them.
