CHAPTER 1.26 - RETURN TO HIGHBARROW: ANUK
Anuk can feel her skin prickling as they’re again stumbling through the forest. She supposes she trusts Rian’s guidance enough that the sensation isn’t concern. And while she might feel out of her element the man has proven his ability. The discomfort, her certainty that her foot will snag on every root or clump of brush, isn’t substantially different from the hypercaution she exercises moving through towns and cities. She learned young to keep her awareness sharp, vigilance always. Unbidden, her fist clenches as the sharp smell of blood filling her nostrils in a shockingly clear sense-memory.
It could be the underlying injustice of Filthstink, of Graasht’s petty tyranny snuffing goblins whose only crime was finding favour under the last regime. Or her distaste at those clan members who turned against their kin for status with the new guy. But Anuk’s no naif. The world turns and it’s hard not to see the whole thing as an undignified scrabble for whatever you can grab. She dodges the afterthought of that little insight. Or at least reshapes it ironically. Given that you can’t take anything with you, you’re free to barter any piece of you that you can bear to lose, she thinks. She hopes, with a shiver.
And there it is.
She wants to stop, close her eyes, find herself, feel her feelings. But that would beg questions for which she has no answers. Nor, of course, would she want to share them with an observer. She risks letting her eyelids drop for a few paces, fully expecting to trip.
Instead, she feels elation and nausea, her body stepping as accurately as if her eyes were open. And there, in the back? Behind her thoughts? The thing she was terrified she would find. That she was certain she would find. That she kindof loves.
Watching her.
Her eyes fly open, the prickling on her neck now making sense. She wonders what this means, suspects that she knows.
The last six months drop away. It isn’t the first time she’s taken stock, but the feeling of being observed, being scrutinised, transports her completely. She can feel the old emotions, fresh and clear, and a part of her marvels at how far she’s come. Nearly sneer-chuckles at the thought. She was a hundred miles away, more. But the new shape of her life, as uncertainly defined as that remains, is dizzying.
For years she had known one thing. To survive in this world, she needed power. She can’t help but look down at herself, contrast the 6’6” woodsman with whom she travels. Chokes her snort into a cough. She needed magical power. But it had to be on her terms.
Wizardry didn’t count as ‘on her terms’, not remotely. Bunch of book nerds, learning a language the universe has to obey? Lawyering the rules on which reality itself’s built? On some levels, that could be her dream scenario. To be valued for the contents of her head? To be granted time to just build herself, her power? Dreamy.
But they always want you to join their fucking club. In fact, if what she hears is true, they insist upon it. And then that same language of power’s poised against you. Some fucking secret island, and something as close to their own state as makes no difference. She has been told, and believes, that each building in every city owned by the Tower, the Guild of Magicians, is something like an embassy. Sounds to Anuk like much too much control. What’s the sense of such power if you are under so many eyes, so many thumbs? What’s the point of power when your supervisor can split the sky to teach you your place in things?
And Gods are worse. Divine power invites the policeman into your own head. Anuk looks across at Thae, their dedicated rearguard. For a moment she feels bad, guilty at her judgement. The closest she has seen Thae to complaining was distress that Rian might have died had the priest taken any longer to arrive.
She shakes her head. It’s not intended as an insult to Thae. But religion? Not for Anuk. She’s far too capable a researcher, a realist, to think that every godly person is some goody-two-shoes. Even fucking thieves have their gods, and there are more corrupt deities than those. She’s heard stories of Nemesis. But it seems to her like the opposite of power. All of this “from thy hands; for thy glory” bullshit. And if wizards have too many rules and constraints on their power, how about dealing with some divine personality who can shut it off like a spigot?
Thinking of spigots, her eyes turn to Hugo. The little man’s focus is seemingly consumed by the goblin shaman’s ring. She rolls her eyes. Unsurprisingly, the bard’s path was never a consideration for her. She spent too much time as a serving wench to ever again trust a charismatic musician. Besides, she could easily carry a tray heaped with crockery, a tune not so much. Besides, she happens to know that the Guild barely considers bards as wielding magic. She scowls at the source of this certainty. She would like to think that she came by the information from her friend Sam; sadly, the actual source was one of Sam’s crew, the heinous Alfons.
Her scowl twists into a sneer. Part of her mistrust of the Mages’ Tower, she’ll freely admit, rests with Alfons Death. A man who couldn’t bear the thought he might not be identified as a wizard. And whose personality revolved around this perceived elite education. She would accuse him of mansplaining; however Alfons felt anyone, of any gender, was bereft if he was silent. She fully believes the patronising bastard’s surname was ‘D’Ath’ or something, but of course he tried to make it sound sinister.
She had to give his report some credit, though. She’s heard a million spooky stories attributed to the Tower. Never one about a Bard vanishing while a wizard was in town, never to be seen again. That’s in dramatic contrast to dabblers in hedge magic. Or worse, those fortunate or cursed enough to be born into magic.
Obviously beyond her reach, the Tower’s name for these gifted minorities is ‘Sorcerer’. The populace would call them “the touched”: feytouched, blessedborn, dragontouched… Those people disappear all the time, and Alfons’s need to impress everyone with his knowledge had spilled that the Tower was behind this. No details, probably him laundering a rumour he had heard from his ‘betters’, but still believable enough to be of concern to Anuk.
She did spend some time trying to be a hedge mage, to learn magic outwith the control of the Tower. But that required good fortune on top of good fortune. And probably a literal fortune to bribe a tutor or buy oneself out of trouble. Her resources (pawn shops and second-hand bookstores) could never realistically keep her progress ahead of the pursuers she would garner. If she had ever been so fortunate as to find a spellbook.
Not that she found nothing.
The last and the least of her options, the first considered and easiest discarded, was the thundering fuckwit’s path to power. The devil’s bargain, usually literally.
So: yeah, effectively any creature with enough magical power could grant you some. Good luck finding a dragon who wants to hand out treats, though. She thinks of Thaesurala, the disconnect between the dryad’s kindness and the raw, brutal immorality of nature. How could you keep a fae happy? Creatures renowned for their mercurial mood swings? At least with gods, the relationship you have to nourish is more impersonal. Which means the reciprocation is more general too. She shivers at the thought of imbeciles trying to barter with a fiend, thinking they’ll somehow prosper. Not to mention that the wizards hate these idiots worse than sorcerers.
She sighs.
-x-
…remembers waking that morning, six months ago. Jerking awake, recoiling at the smell, dowsed in her own filth. Thirst raging, tears blurring from eyes assaulted by the dawn light. From her vantage, from the floor, she recognises the inn room she had rented for the night. The bed, her aching neck and shoulders protest, is still made, unused. On the table next to it, the apple she had begun to eat. She’s confused to see brown colouring on the edges of her bite marks, but this is spun from her mind as context rushes in. She was perched on the bed, reading…
…her head spins as she flails, but relief floods her as she feels the book on the floor under her. Anuk exhales slowly, shakily, scoops up the journal like it’s her baby. She isn’t shocked by the reverence of the gesture and, unbidden, automatically begins to weave her fingers. Mutters words whose meaning she doesn’t know under her breath to accompany the intricate movements. She feels an ecstatic surge of electricity across her fingers as her mouth freshens and her eyes ungum. She knew it would work but didn’t know how. Still, she grins and immediately repeats the motions as her outfit is rid of her excrement. She pauses only when she spots the jug and bowl provided by the inn for ablutions. The water’s stale and slightly rank, but she gulps it down gratefully.
The degree of thirst, the browning of the apple – the sheer amount of mess in which she woke – begins to crystallise as she hears footsteps approaching her door. She stops drinking, stifles a gasp as she refills her lungs. A man hammers on the door angrily, bellowing about her not having paid for two nights. She paid in advance for an overnight – the length of her intended stay – and it almost wiped out the last of her coin. She scans the chaos of the room, the stained boards where she was lying, eyes gratefully falling on her pack. She can’t afford the cleanup, but the upside of losing time turns out to be the lack of unpacking. As the voice outside becomes angrier, the innkeep threatening to burst in, Anuk carefully places the journal into the knapsack. Another puzzle: the book now looks thicker, stiffer of cover than previously. But no time for that.
Seconds later, she’s out of the window and down to the alley below. She focuses on walking with a carefree pace away from the centre of town. A thought crosses her mind, another thing she couldn’t do before that she KNOWS she now can. She doesn’t even break pace, turning her head back towards the room she abandoned. She mutters more nonsense words, hears the door the innkeeper just flung open slamming shut behind him. Hears the man’s yelp of surprise, the wicked smile on her face spreading to a grin. She mutters more nonsense and hears the man, voice dripping terror, shouting “What? WHAT?” as the room, bright with morning sun, fills with ominous whispers.
The thought of how much fun she’s going have is diminished only slightly by a panic inside her. She didn’t sign anything; there was no discussion of terms. And no lunch is free. Even if a room might turn out to be…
-x-
She drops from her reverie, marvelling again at the clarity her memories have taken on since then. Like the moment a waking mind carries on a question or concern from a dream, slowly realising the nonsense at its base. Her mind balks slightly at the straining of that logic – even some memories from before that day have now taken on a startling sensory reality. She smells the blood, feels the knife pushing through the tendons of the man’s hand… Although…that hand wasn’t rotting, before…
Then she wonders if she is dreaming as a burst of flame illuminates the air between Hugo and…the pile of goblin corpses, of course. She’s annoyed by the halfling shocking her but spots the look of horror between Rian and Thae as the bodies nearest Hugo buck and wave. Rian takes off with the rescued kids as a huge centipede flashes out of the pile. The thing rears up taller than Hugo and entangles his still pointing hand inside a foot-long tentacle. Instinctively, she flings an explosive bolt that detonates on the thing’s carapace. It shrieks and pulls back towards the pile in which it had been nestling, but she can see more movements from deeper inside. Thae flashes her a look of thanks at a sprint interrupted only to grab the stiffening, toppling Hugo and to urgently whisper “Run! Run! Go!”
She breaks into a sprint behind the holy warrior, fuming at Hugo’s stupidity. She’s further aggravated by the fucking idiot’s frozen look of horror. Thae scooped him up underarm, Hugo still locked in place pointing. She’s only slightly mollified that the creatures don’t seem to be following.
