The Far Side of Creation (The Legend of Vanx Malic Book 7) Read online

  The dog looked at Vanx guiltily, until Vanx showed that he’d caught his own mouse. Vanx eventually spat a wad of bloody fur and bones to the floor and fought the urge to vomit away what little sustenance he may have gained from the small creature he’d just sucked the meat and fluids from.

  In one room, the most opulently furnished they’d come across yet, they found a small keg of wine.

  Vanx and the dog both ended up inebriated, and they went stumbling through the upper halls, as drunk as sailors. Vanx sang ballad after melodious ballad, just like he used to do in the taverns back on the other side of the world, until finally, he and Poops fell into an exhausted slumber behind the locked door of the room with the candle and the books.

  When they woke, they were weak from exhaustion. Vanx had no idea what they could do. The two things residing downstairs were not starving, that was certain. He decided that maybe they could see something moving from the balcony, since it was daylight now, and the view was elevated.

  Once they made it back up the stairs, and recovered from the climb, they saw that it was pretty much just rocks and mountains and seawater, but there was a road.

  Poops sensed something. Vanx sensed it, too. It was faint, but coming from not so far away. Then Vanx saw it: a large fish floundering in the surf. A wave must have bashed it against the rocks. It was big enough to feed him and the dog for a day or two, but it was quite a way from the shelter of the tower complex.

  Vanx remembered a spell that would give them some energy, and he cast it. It wasn’t much of a boost, but it was enough to get them hurrying down the stairs, right past the big, tusk-toothed pair, that were grunting in conversation, and might not have noticed them at all when they ran by, for they didn’t give chase or even turn their heads.

  Vanx and Poops went a good way down the wagon road that wound its way out of the place, until they were directly above the floundering fish. If he wasn’t so weak, he’d have teleported them again, but that was part of the reason he was so exhausted already.

  They saw that the fish’s floundering movement was really just the smaller fish feeding on the larger fish’s already half-eaten carcass. It didn’t stink, though, and Vanx knew that a chunk of fish fat would go far toward making them feel better.

  He decided to negotiate the rocks down to the water’s edge. The sun had sunk behind the mountains, and though the sky was still blue, it was darkening quickly. Poops came with him, even though Vanx warned him not to.

  After seeing the teeth of the fish savaging the larger, dead one, Vanx decided he wasn’t getting in the water. Then an idea struck him, and he shook his head at his own lack of imagination.

  With a flourish of his hand, he said a few words, and all of a sudden one of the feeding fish was flopping a few yards up the hill near Poops.

  In only a matter of seconds, the fish beat itself on the rocks until it was still. Vanx formed a fire with a spell and used his sword to split the fish’s underbelly. Poops didn’t wait. He snatched the bloody heart and gnawed it from the rest of the guts with one tug, then guarded over his morsel as he ate it.

  Vanx cut a piece from the fish with his sword and ate it raw, but used the rocks and the proximity of the fire to cook the rest of the meat. It was enough for the night and maybe the morning, but no more.

  After they ate their fill, they both fell asleep, just above where the high tide line stained the rocks.

  Vanx woke in the semi-dark of morning to the sound of Poops barking out an alarm. He rolled to his feet, and looked up just in time to see a pair of eyes disappear up on the road.

  Poops yipped at him to follow, so Vanx extinguished his fire spell and did, letting the dog’s keen senses meld with his own. He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, though. He’d never do anything like this again, not without a bow and a few dozen arrows strapped tightly to his back.

  As it was, he had three unbroken shafts, and no bow to loose them with.

  What had been one set of eyes peeking down was now several sets, and the aggravation Poops was feeling over them helped fire up Vanx’s own re-nourished blood.

  He looked back, seeing the rising waters of the bay behind them, and the tower again. He noticed that the top portion of the spike, up by where the hidden entry should be, was covered in the same lightly glowing blue crud that he’d been doused with. Even if he could get back up there, he couldn’t survive that foul stuff. The tower would be useless until it all dried and flaked away, which could take months, unless he could cast the spell the fae used to turn it all into sandy dust. He’d never attempted that one either, but had seen it cast a half dozen times or more, and wasn’t afraid to try. That concern was for another time, though.

  A few grumblings from above sounded, and then a rock exploded into pieces as it crashed into the hard ground near him and Poops. There was a sudden sense of urgency.

  Find us a hole, Vanx thought to Poops. He eyed the ridge formed by the road’s edge above them and followed the dog. A few more rocks came down, then one hit Poops. Vanx was so in tune with his familiar’s senses that he felt the pain, and it made him angry.

  “Get under something right now!” he yelled, as the rocks started hitting the ground like hail.

  Chapter Four

  To count the ships out in the bay,

  or hear the seagulls cry.

  It is right beside the open sea,

  I’ll stay until I die.

  Poops, limping from the damage the rock had done to his haunch, finally found a place they could huddle under to avoid the poorly thrown chunks of dirt. Vanx had spent most of a year in Saint Elm’s Deep studying Aserica Rime’s spellbooks, and learning all sorts of magic from the elven and Zythian masters. But he sometimes had no idea which spell to use in the moment. This time, he didn’t hesitate to cast a quick release of comfort and healing on the dog’s bruised rump. He was rewarded with a lick on the face and a nervous, cocked-head look that strangely calmed him.

  We wait it out, Vanx shrugged. It’ll be full morning soon.

  As he expected, the rocks soon stopped coming down. He hoped they were dealing with unintelligent creatures of some sort, not something terrible with poor eyesight. As they sat there, he wondered if Gallarael could have possibly survived. He doubted it; hers had been a death scream. The Paragon pulped her body, and the child inside her, in his fist, and tossed it to the ground. And the howl Moonsy made when she’d gained Gal’s side was a grim conformation.

  He wanted to be mad at himself for getting he and Poops stuck in this fargin’ place, but he’d long since passed the time in life where one dwells on their own mistakes. He only looked like a thirty-year-old human. The truth was, he was almost fifty-six, and he would probably live three or four hundred years, if he didn’t get himself killed. He was Zythian, half-so anyway, and he’d been on a quest of exploration when this whole mess had started. If they could find a port and buy passage, they could be home in a season. As curious as he was about this place, and the rest of the world, all he wanted was to get back to the deep, and so did Poops.

  Vanx let that worry slip away, and decided that when the sun came up, he would just pull his blade and charge up the hill. He would use the Zythian part of his physical agility to avoid the rocks, and find out just what was trying to stone them.

  For a time Vanx just sat there, trying to ease Poops’s angst with soft strokes down his furry back. Whatever was above them must have been afraid to come down. Then, Vanx was startled by a loud, screeching sound, and the yelling of what might have been men. He had to grab Poops by the scruff, and the mind, to stay a burst of instinctual barking, but he managed it.

  It sounded like something was attacking whatever had been badgering them. The sun had pinkened the sky, so Vanx chanced a look.

  It was a huge, predatory seabird similar to the frostwings of the tundra outside Orendyn, and it had…what? A dwarf? No, it was a bit less man-like than a dwarf. The only real mannish things about the poor guy losing his battle with the avian pre
dator were his shape, and the fact that he was wearing clothes. He was more like the Zwarvy Vanx had met underneath Dragon Isle. It—he—had sharp teeth like the Zwarvy did, too, for he was gnawing at the claw that had hold of him.

  The huge bird looked more like a gull now that the sky was brightening. It wasn’t going to let loose of its prize, either. The stones and shafts the other Zwarvy-like creatures threw as it slashed and snapped them apart did little damage. Soon the bird was lifting away, a few spears dangling from its side, as it hauled the now limp little guy and one of his bloody chums away to feast on elsewhere.

  As soon as the winged feeder was clear, Vanx let Poops charge up the escarpment. He was right behind the dog, sword drawn, and ready for anything. But there was nothing left to fear.

  The fresh, coppery smell of the massacre he found caused him to heave again, and he was overcome with a shivery cold feeling. There had been seven or eight of the Zwarvy-like little men; it was hard to even match the parts left by the bird’s apparently razor-sharp beak.

  “Rule number one of this new place, Poops,” Vanx said after he took a canteen from one of the dead and sipped deeply. “Don’t fuck with the birds.”

  The dog’s yip of response caused Vanx to smile, despite the carnage before him. Poops was growling now, and nudging at the shoulder bag one of the them had been carrying.

  Food. Vanx understood the dog’s thought. Unlike Vanx, who had been just getting hungry again before seeing all of this, the dog was only hungrier because of it. The smell of fresh blood had Poops slavering, and Vanx knew he was hungry enough to share whatever it was in the satchel that his familiar was after. He helped his pup out, moved the entrails to the side, then scooped the satchel’s strap with the flat of his sword. He carried the bloody bag a good way down the road. From here he could see that it wound away from the tower to a point where it turned right and went out of view for good. Maybe it led to a city. It had to lead somewhere, for this place had to have been built, and supplies had to come and go.

  There was nothing else back there but sharp, jutting peaks and the shore of a rocky bay that would destroy any ship not captained by a master. And, of course, the tower and its under structure. For a moment, Vanx wondered if the base of the Sea Spire had the same sort of rooms and halls submerged beneath the waves.

  Who had lived here? When, and why?

  In the bag they found some peppery cheese, similar to what they’d had in the tower, only much fresher. There was most of a loaf of bread and a bottle of fruity, watered liquor, which Vanx sipped as he ate. It had bite, and it helped soothe away the exhaustion and illness he’d been feeling. Poops had eaten some of the cheese, but he sneezed at the peppery spice several times and ended up eating mostly bread instead.

  Vanx let the dog sip canteen water from his cupped palm until he had his fill. They both ate more than they needed. Vanx, his stomach muscles still aching from all the heaving, drifted off to sleep, his body demanding more rest.

  Later, when Poops’s sudden explosion of barking, and a sharp spike of alarm shot up Vanx’s spine, he opened his eyes to find it was night again. The sky was cloudless, and the green tint of a nearly full moon gave the pack of waist-tall, Zwarvy-like things surrounding them a ferocious, even predatory look. It was no wonder Poops continued to growl, but from a place very near, and almost behind Vanx, who’d slowly gotten to his feet.

  One of them was looking at the blood on Vanx’s sword, which he’d left lying on the ground.

  The look that came over the creature told Vanx that he and Poops were in trouble. These things had seen their dead chums up the road, and now the blood on his sword, and the belongings of one of their kind strewn across the ground around them. Vanx hoped this wasn’t about to get ugly.

  As if to drain all the optimism out of that thought, several bows were trained on them, then a stick with a noose on the end of it reached out of the night and cinched down around Poops’s neck. Vanx started for the creature that was holding his sword, but found a similar cord suddenly squeezing his throat closed.

  He was then roughly pulled to the ground and surrounded.

  Chapter Five

  How far will you go to survive,

  what will you do to win.

  I’ll fight until the day I die,

  you can bet on that my friend.

  It wasn’t easy, but Vanx could almost make out what the leader of these little hairy, needle-toothed bastards was asking him.

  It wanted an explanation of what had happened to its kindred up on the road.

  Vanx tried to convey, with gestures, and a crude attempt at the odd inflection of their language, that a huge bird had killed them. The bard in him had him making wide-armed bird gestures, and he even found himself slashing his head around, as the bird had, but holding his hand out from his chin, as if it were a beak. Then he pointed at the tower and his dog and rubbed his belly. He wanted to say that he and his dog were just passing through and hungry, not murdering food thieves, but that was too complex for him to get across, and he knew it.

  The mannish little creature leading the group didn’t seem to like, or understand, what Vanx was conveying, but it stayed another of its kind, when it started to jab Vanx tauntingly with a spear. Then Vanx and Poops were marched, with their necks still in nooses, back to the gruesome scene.

  Vanx immediately spied a feather the size of a palm frond and pointed it out to them. It was clear they’d encountered the vicious birds before, because the nervousness they began radiating, when they saw it, was palpable. They grew so agitated that some of them started gathering the gear and belongings of the dead, while the others urged Vanx and Poops along the road, away from the tower at a quickened pace.

  Vanx didn’t like his situation, but he liked the handling of Poops even less. He went so far as to kick the one leading Poops when he yanked the dog.

  He got jabbed in the side, but still kicked the one handling Poops again. Then he tried to cast a spell that would change the odds of the situation a little bit. He quickly went through the spells he’d learned, then settled on one and cast a wall of fire in the road before them.

  To his surprise, it didn’t work. Instead, he felt the cord at his neck absorbing the magic as it tried to leave his person and form his command. Still, he glared at the little Zwarvy-like thing until it loosened Poops’s noose a little and stopped jerking the dog around.

  As they went, he listened and learned that they weren’t worried about the savage birds so much. Their concern was over some large and dangerous creatures called the bzacha being drawn to all the fresh blood.

  The lovely couple residing in the academy’s lobby were bzacha, Vanx surmised, after listening to the Zwarvy-like creatures.

  Bzacha, Vanx remembered from his lessons in the Harthgarian dialect, meant “the breed”, or “the breed beasts”. There was a ballad called The Blood of Coldfrost, which mentioned the breed’s mark in the mighty kingdom of Westland’s history. That was long before some world-changing event that his mind couldn’t pinpoint sent them into the Giant Mountains, despite the giants, who hated them.

  It irked Vanx, from his bardish point of view, that he couldn’t remember the words. Then he decided he’d know them if he had his xuitar in his hands. It was an old ballad, though, as old as any song he knew. Oddly, those thoughts drifted away, and he found himself thinking about Gallarael’s mother’s amazing breasts, only to be reminded by them that he loved Gallarael, and that poor Gal was dead, and he was once again bound and being marched like a slave.

  It wasn’t long before they were led off of the road, going down the slope; but just a few dozen strides later, they turned right back under the flat wagon lane, into an open doorway bridged over by ancient timbers. Vanx had to admit, he was nervous, for it didn’t look all that sturdy. But he could also tell their captors were no longer feeling like prey, which was some comfort.

  Inside, there was a room shored with intricately carved support pillars and beams, off to one side, with
stacks of tools, heavy-duty backpack baskets, shelves, and cobweb-covered four-wheeled carts. There was enough dust to show that it hadn’t been bothered for a few decades, at least. It was probably the stuff that had been used to make the road, or the structure itself.

  There were a few ensconced torches along the walls, some burning, some not, and they showed that the timbers holding the rocky earth at bay in here had been regularly oiled, and were in far better condition.

  Poops didn’t like the pungent smell of the little creatures and neither did Vanx. Luckily for Vanx, he could lessen the strength of his familiar’s senses that he felt. Poor Poops couldn’t turn his nose off, even if he wanted to, so he was forced to suffer the unclean scent.

  They were led deeper into the shaft, beyond the part that was hewn into the rock, into an area that was formed by nature alone. These were Zwarvy, Vanx decided, or at least a not-so-distant cousin of the race. Their underground populace moved about roofless huts and rock-stack dwellings, just as the Zwarvy beneath Dragon Isle had. There was no glowing moss lighting the cavern, but it was illuminated. Vanx sensed magic, and so did Poops. It was a familiar magic, clean, and right, like Zythian magic, or that used by the humans’ Royal Order of Wizards.

  Vanx was hoping he was being led to some intelligent leader or something of the sort, but it turned out that he and Poops were going to be killed. They were tied to a tree-trunk-like pillar that was jutting out of a dais. Vanx’s hands were bound around the pole in front of him. It was big enough around to make moving his arms more than a foot up or down impossible.

  Poops was collared with the same sort of rope they’d been noosed with before, and then put on a very short leash near Vanx’s feet.

  Vanx saw that the pillar was stone, carved to look like wood. It was quality work, too, for he could feel the texture of the bark biting into his chest when he leaned too heavily against it. There were more fist- and head-sized rocks, sticky dark pools of gore, and ashes and char all around them. It dawned on Vanx then that they were about to be tenderized by way of stoning, then cooked where they fell.