Sailing Ether Tides

Book 2: Dirt Diver’s Dance

May I Have Your Attention, Please? Ch: 16

Gandree never slept much, so he found himself wandering the palisade town below the hill, just mostly looking at the people, so varied and different, moving about freely in the sun. He’d stashed enough supplies in his shadow to have a picnic feast wherever he found himself, so he just roamed and watched. Hunger latched its cruel claws into his middle early on, so his feast barely made it to third bell.

He had no money and no real plans so the sound of a hammer on iron drew him in almost magnetically. It was so familiar… the smells, sounds and the heat.

The smith was a huge human woman, she must have been five foot ten at least, if slightly built; she couldn’t weigh more than one hundred and eighty pounds… She smiled down at him and nodded, continuing her work.

“What needs ya? Young dwarf?”

Her forge was simple, but well laid out, she lacked any of the water powered tools the clanhold’s workshops boasted, but her enormously tall and gangly apprentice looked competent as well, pumping the bellows with a firm, measured stroke, rather than gusting and puffing carelessly.

“I was… was wondering if you had any work… I’m currently without coins.” He muttered in rueful embarrassment. “It’s my first time outside the clanhold, I don’t know how this works…”

“Tellin a perspective… prospective? Whatever, tellin yer hagglin opponent that yer a straight rube is a dangerous tactic boy…” She said with a wide grin. “Yer sir Daisybelle’s beau, right? I have an apprentice and no work for his fumblin’ hands to do. Yer need no coins in my shop. What need ya?”

“Coins… and lumber, really…” He answered, even more deeply embarrassed. “I’m more of a…” He looked around and whispered very softly. “I’m a carpenter, really.”

“So go inta the carpenter’s shop… Master Tully is as skilled as any in the region.” The smith watched with some amusement as he turned a few new colors, as if she’d suggested he dance a seductive strip tease in the public square.

“I couldn’t…. What if someone… saw?” He gasped.

“Bumhauer, take over these horseshoes… I’ve an errand!”

The huge young man stood up from the bellows and took up her hammer with an eager grin on his face.

“Count on me, mistress Jessie!” He gasped.

“I’ll count myself lucky if I get one shoe in four that’s usable… lad’s not quite there yet.” She mumbled on the way out the door, dragging the young dwarf along by the collar. “Daisybelle would bite my ears off if I left you in this state, boy. You look like a newborn sheep, stumbling on ice.”

Before he knew it he was being introduced to the old master carpenter Tully. “Call me Ivan, lad. Old men have no time for such like…” He then proceeded to maunder on and on about the youth of today and their casual discourtesy to their honored elders.

“Stuff it Tully, the lad’s Daisybelle’s. Put whatever he needs on my marker.” The smith grumbled at the bald pated, wizened old coot, burbling on about ‘...these kids today…’

At her words he sat up straight and seemed twenty years younger. “Daisybelle’s toy? Oh sorry, lad… I was just giving you the business…” He grinned and shook his head in embarrassment.

“Many’s the traveling traders, thought old tully crackbrained and an easy mark… to their sorrow.” She chuckled, still holding the young dwarf’s coat collar firmly.

“He prides hiself on sharp dealing, but he likes breathing through his nose, so he won’t be doing any of that with you.”

She aimed the young lad at the old carpenter and let him loose at last. “Remember, put it on my books, old man.”

The huge woman vanished away, presumably back to her shop… “Put it all on my books, old man…” Ivan Tully squeaked in a tremulous falsetto, mocking the woman poorly. “I’ll be marking half down on hers, mind you. I have my own accounts with the Belle of the wolves to settle up.” He grumbled mysteriously.

“What do ya need?”

#

“So, I can just have… all this stuff?” He asked warily, eying the pile of treasures he’d accumulated. Glue, varnish, lacquer a selection of tints and dyes finally, most importantly, a stack of seasoned lumber. Slabs of burl, rough sawn planks and a few old rough hewn beams pulled from some house, stained with smoke and age all sat in a pile beside the basket of jars and pots.

“Lad, that’s like two bronze marks worth of odds and ends… take it and begone. I owe that crazy wolfrider six gold moons… Your whole trade is less than a single tear in a salty sea.” The old man sighed. “I may have a gambling problem.”

He smiled and sighed. “I’ll have a carter bring it all up to the castle, lad.” The man was head down in his ledger, noting the pitiful sum down with a deep sigh. When he looked up the pile of lumber and goods was simply gone, the boy still standing there, dusting off his hands.

“Oh, spatial or dimension magic… good on you lad! Never had the knack for magery.” He smiled again. “I’d always heard dwarves don’t have the magespark…”

“I’m not a mage, master Tull… Ivan. I just have a few tricks.” Gandree protested weakly.

“Perhaps, I won’t pry. It’s against tradition out here on the edge of things. Won’t stop gossip, though.” Ivan sighed. “Going to build a hope chest for your fair damsel with all that?”

“Not exactly, I do have high hopes, though.” The lad replied, as he sauntered out into the early afternoon. He could make it back up to the castle and steal a kiss from Daisybelle as she woke… That thought quickened his steps and brought his flute out into the sunshine to play a brisk marching tune.

#

“About two yards wide and four yards high, it goes back a ways so a seal on our side should do. There’s already a stele inscribed with glyphs of forbiddance up there.” Wilf rumbled as he and Frankie climbed back down from the cleft in a stone massif. “It’s broken but not irreparable. I can make a keystone and repair it in a couple hours.”

“Any chance the troll has the key?” Becky asked calmly.

“When I repair it, all the old keys will be useless pebbles. I doubt it had a key in any case, that would involve some higher level thinking.” Wilf grumbled. “It probably just brute forced the weakened barrier. Any sentient being could pass through, with enough determination or the proper rituals and drugs.”

Dannyl sighed and waved at the team to gather up. “Set camp, kids, I want that re-sealed tonight. I want that troll bottled up, one side or the other. Worst case, he’ll lead us to another open void maw.”

“You think there could be more?” Amy asked eagerly.

“I’d bet on it. He scampered up these hills pretty darn confidently, he had at least a few ways out.” Dannyl muttered, eying the rugged cliffs and crags.

The sun was still above the peaks, when Wilf and Rio climbed down, satisfied with their work. “Nice and tight, I sketched a vermin ward in as well, bugs are always resistant to the usual aversion charms.” Wilf announced when they landed and unhooked their safety lines. “That troll will need to find a new passage.”

#

After the long trudge up the hill to the castle, Gandree slipped through the hedge and gate easily, since the four goblin girls on duty had dark lenses and shady hats on, it was hard to tell; but they all seemed to avoid meeting his eyes and none spoke to him at all. They simply stepped aside and waved him past, in a very strictly businesslike manner.

Beyond the hedge, the inner garden unfurled before him in the waning daylight, so beautifully landscaped and perfect it was hard to reconcile his experiences with his former clans’ tales of savage and cannibalistic ‘goblin vermin’ roaming the wilds.

Even more difficult to fit into his preconceptions was the king himself. The tall, green man was in the garden holding a wooden staff practicing some kind of dance in excruciatingly slow motion. He wore loose fitting pants and a simple shirt of undyed cloth, which clung to his body as he moved in his strange performance.

Sheened with sweat and with a look of utter concentration on his face, the king finished whatever he was doing and pulled a towel from somewhere…

Perhaps the same place his unadorned staff of pale ridged wood vanished when he was done with it. The young dwarf looked more carefully at the king’s shadow and saw something familiar there.

“We have many things in common, brother, and perhaps things to learn from each other.” He said with an easy, slightly crooked smile.

“You keep calling me brother, but you’re a goblin and I’m a dwarf… I don’t even have any dwarf kin.”

“I mentioned that we have other brothers… and perhaps a sister or two, scattered around the realms that adjoin this domain, just as your old land abuts this one, in those rocky hills.” The king said calmly, placing his hand on the blocky lad’s shoulder.

“We were broken and scattered to the winds in some strange misadventure… somehow, we rained down on the worlds and domains near that event and took root in those places, where we could.”

The king’s warm, gentle grip held the dwarf boy up when he got shaky in the knees.

“That can’t be…” He muttered, as all those faint, disjointed memories that had plagued him so long, slowly began to fit together a little more snugly.

“You were born of no mortal parents, but erupted into the world as a crying babe, somewhere near the hold of your people.” The king whispered, guiding the shaken dwarf to a nearby stone bench.

“Perhaps you have odd gifts, strange memories, know things no normal dwarf would, or can do things they could not…”

“I make musical instruments…” He whispered his secret to this familiar stranger, who seemed to know so much about him.

“I can hide things in my shadow and with some effort, I can conjure a place not unlike this one, though smaller and less grand.”

“Yes… I sensed your shadow and I saw your shovulele, nice work that.” Ghansh gave the dwarf’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, it was a lot like squeezing a rock.

“Come downstairs, we’ll talk as craftsmen should. We have an hour or two until my children awake and Daisybelle will demand all your time and attention.”

The king led him down into the foundation of the castle, into a realm of mysterious wonders. Huge workstations that were only vaguely familiar from the dwarfhold’s shops stood along the walls; Buffing, grinding and polishing wheels, a drill press, bandsaw, radial saw, table saw, router…

The names came rushing into his mind, along with a sense of deep familiarity with the tools he now recognized. A terrifying array of hand tools hung everywhere on the walls, chisels, rasps, gouges, scorps, drawknives, planes and drills all neat and orderly.

“What…is this place…?” Gandree gasped softly.

“You know, brother, I smell it on you. Go explore and play for a time, use whatever you wish. I’ll be here if you need anything or have any questions.”

The king flung open a wide window cut in the foundation wall, high in the hillside, over the forest; granting them a full measure of the evening sunlight and fantastic view of the valley spread out below them.

A cool breeze and a few early notes of evening birdsong was enough to start the king playing his long, yellow bone flute, as Gandree followed his eager hands into a wonderland of complex machines and tools.

The king’s soaring music took wing in his heart and unchained the reticent and shy dwarf lad in a way he’d never truly felt before… free. Free to work his crafts undirected, unquestioned and undisturbed by selfish demands for his attention…

#

“Gandree boy, I’m talking to you!” Daisybelle almost yelled at him some considerable time later, still raising no response.

“Leave him be, daughter, he has some things to work though alone.” Ghnash pulled the flustered girl into his lap and soothed her, by petting her long ears and stroking her hair. He set his chin atop her head and watched with her as the boy moved through the shop with a dancer’s grace, lost in the moment and seeing only his project.

“Papa… where’s the music coming from?” Daisy asked a moment later, when she realized that the king had put aside his flute to comfort her… yet the music continued.

“Look… out the window.” He whispered, pointing to a flock of small birds perched on the sill; singing sweetly to the young lad who was whistling along as he worked.

“The animals of the sky and forest don’t heed my call… Only the wolves and spiders hear me when I sing to them.” The king whispered. “We are more alike than not, yet…” Ghnash smiled and sighed into his daughter’s hair as he braided her locks into a pair of adorable pigtails.

“He’s a better craftsman than I am already. He’s had more time to practice these crafts.”

“Gandree boy said they made him work all the time on their crafts and denied him the thingies to work his own…” She shrugged in utter confusion at that. “He should have fought them, or run away.”

“Yes darling, but they convinced him that he couldn’t; that’s how civilized people take what they want from those who are less powerful or have no wealth.” The king whispered.

“When there’s nothing left to take, they demand your time, the most precious thing in all the realms.”

“That’s stupid… they have their own time…” Daisybelle muttered sulkily. “His time is mine.”

“No darling, it’s his life, he may share some of his time with you, perhaps a lot, unless I miss my guess…” Ghnash tugged her pretty new pigtails mischievously, to break her sour mood.

“He’s got things he needs to learn and do on his own as well, my dear. Give him the space and time he needs, then you can share your time with him.”

“Hmph.” She grumbled, while hugging onto her papa more fiercely. “He’s not even making a good womp… that club will break against the first skull it hits… and the handle’s a weird shape.”

“Yes dear, it will be a terrible and useless womp. But that’s not what he’s making.” The king mumbled.

“Now shush and watch, or go get him a snack… that might be a better plan.”

#

The Necromancer sat up on his palanquin when he felt the familiar tug of someone messing with his gate wards and spellworks, even those he’d installed on other reflections of this… or some other world… that was all a bit hazy.

He’d like to think that his little slice of heaven back in the forgotten necropolis above that peaceful town was the ‘real world’, but that was obviously not the case. There were too many holes in reality and places where the impossible, eternal nothing yawned at the edge of things.

The Necromancer had stared into that crawling, terrible gulf often enough to know that it was no part of a stable, fixed reality.

This one was crumbling rapidly under the stress of his presence. He could feel it dissolving, as the spirits, shades and ghosts that maintained its illusion of substance fled into his shadow. Each one only held a flicker of Will and Mind in its insubstantial form. It was the shameful number of haunts and shades infesting the dismal little hole in the never that were keeping the place open for business.

Workshops and smithies were scattered over the valley floor, raising a clatter and bustle of industry that was oppressive, even on the barren heights. No trees remained in the valley, the rivers were clogged with silt, waste and mine tailings from the huge open pit mines dug into the mountains all around.

Human bodies worked and labored all over the wretched little valley, working to create enchanted objects of power; weapons, armor and trinkets imbued with the remnant energies of the mortal lives the laborers once held.

He watched with pleasure as the workshops and machines fell silent, one after another. His own shades moved unseen among those imprisoned here, doing mischief in ways that a more fixed and solid reality would never allow.

Some sneakily unsealed corpse jars, releasing trapped mortal souls from their torments, which silenced the machines that those arcane batteries powered, one by one.

Others drifted along, unbinding shades from their mortal husks, leaving the possessing demon slugs inside those bodies; trapped in prisons of dead, decaying meat with no easy escape. They could eat their way free eventually… if they had time to do so. More of his legion were busily seeing to it that they would not find the time.

Even while the mortal bodies slumped to the barren ground in lifeless heaps, as the valley fell eerily silent, more shades and haunts were pouring in from the edges and hidden corners of the shitty hellscape, ditching the awful dump for the cool, welcoming embrace of true death.

His scattered legion called them home, offering escape from their bondage and the freedom to finally answer the call that all mortals must heed eventually.

He began to laugh madly over the still, silent wasteland, as the edges of the mountain range began to fade from view. The horizon slowly crawled closer as the faint Will of the almost sentient shades faded and stopped Heisenburging the place into a semblance of reality through the power of sentient observation and expectation.

An unstable chunk of reality can be maintained in the endless never between worlds by the focused will of a sentient being, if the traveler can keep their thoughts and mind focused on the matter at hand.

Two minds make the job much easier, by more than half, while a third participant doubles the assistance of the first helper…

The convoluted mathematics of occult perception and the differing levels of conscious awareness that ghosts possess made any actual concrete measurements virtually impossible. One thing was certain, his shadow was getting seriously bloated, uncomfortably so, as the world dwindled away.

The gist of the matter was that only the occult gaze of so terribly many fractional ghosts were holding the little pest hole together in the turbulent never. Now he was a hole in the balloon, slowly letting the ‘air’ out as his shadow inflated into the never behind him where he stood, just inside the shrinking realm…

When the first spawn of Thereissq, slug brood matron found itself sucked into the yawning void, a shudder of dread ripped through the awful fields of fallen corpses. Through their simple, empathic hive mind, they had each felt their kin become entombed in useless dead meat and carried on, assuming that nothing would assail them here, under the matron’s very eyestalks.

Now the entire brood was trapped and their matron mother had slipped away into the beyond, abandoning them to their shared fate: oblivion.

The Necromancer smiled coldly at the escaping true immortal, she’d felt his aura and had learnt fear from his touch. She slipped away, into the beyond that was her native home, unaware that she had already been touched by one of his sneaky spooks. The man with the borrowed snake would find her soon.

Slowly, the slugs, whether still trapped in their meaty prisons or wriggling desperately to escape an ending that they were already part of, began to fall off the edge into the void. Soon, none were left to see the end of their little zombie sweatshop of horrors.

Unwitnessed by any sentient Mind or Will but his own, the shrinking worldlett dwindled until it became just a tiny patch of barren stone under his feet and the few square yards of cliff wall holding the rift.

Gary Ward, Necromancer and ruler of the shadows and dead sighed uncomfortably as he slipped through the fast vanishing void into his home, back in the necropolis above his little town.

#

“The lich lord is at it again…” Leanna Kines, countess of Arborland and the city of trees sighed as she watched the suddenly cloudy sky above her peaceful little town boil with shadows and the restless souls of the dead.

Faces in expressions ranging from rapture to torment writhed in the clouds, sometimes too small to really see, others were as tall as thunderheads, looming over the lakeside town in ominous, silent… weirdness.

She braced herself for another delegation of her local nobles, traders and craft masters, demanding that she do ‘something’.

They all liked to forget what it was like before the Necromancer moved in; haunts and shades lurking all over town, spooking the children, pets and grown-ass folks out of their britches, even in the full light of day… Forget sleeping at night.

The insistent knock of the privileged came mere minutes after the effect appeared in the formerly bright blue, evening sky.

“Your damned pet Necromancer is doing it again!” Someone shouted in her office. The bright little chamber was too crowded to be sure who said it, but the smart money was on Blanche Fregus the seamstress...

“What, pray tell, would you have me do? Serve him a writ for haunting without a permit? Fine him? Jail him?” The countess demanded right back.

“I’d not be flayed alive, just to ease your minds over this apparently harmless illusion.”

Thunder rolled from the ominous clouds, in the sound of a legion of laughing madmen as the wind picked up. Cackling, screaming laughter whipped through the hills and echoed from the lake and mountains carrying on and on as huge raindrops began falling steadily on the valley. The wind and thunder ended suddenly, still without a single stroke of lightning over the town.

“Harmless?” Master trader Dinwiddie demanded. “An eldritch thunderstorm is blowing down on us from the wretched crypt lord’s domain!” He shrilled in the sudden stillness and quiet of her office.

“No, this storm comes from another world; it is simply spilling over into ours a little. It will end as suddenly as it began.” The speaker was a tall figure shrouded in shadows, who had not been in the well lit room before… and the chamber was suddenly quite dim.

“The ‘Damned Necromancer’ is doing what he can, within the limits of his power, to shield you and your town from any… unpleasantness resulting from his ongoing war with the cult of ‘The Light’.” The shadow whispered in each of their ears at once, a creepily intimate sensation that sent shivers down the spines of the living.

“Do not disturb the ‘Wretched Crypt Lord’ at his workings, if you value your sanity and your very souls.” The thing faded as the rushlights came roaring back up from a dim smolder, illuminating the room again.

“Well, that says it all. Go home… and don’t trouble the dead.” The countess scolded the men and women blasting them with her lovely, golden regard as they fled.

“That was a little over the top, my love.” She sighed as the Necromancer stepped into the room from a narrow shadow that couldn’t possibly have held him.

“I was feeling cranky and dramatic… I just destroyed a world, defeated an immortal being that wishes to be a goddess and marked her for death.” He sighed as his arms enfolded his clever, canny and entirely huggable wife.

“Spirits of the ancestors, you’re creepy as fuck.” She sighed. “Why is your shadow so fat? What did you eat?”

“An entire world, baby. It’s gonna be rough on me for the next few hours and I still have work to do. Hold onto these in case my brothers try to contact me while I’m… indisposed.” He mumbled tiredly as he passed her a pair of hoop drums made of yellowed bone and rawhide, with the face of a sneering, leering male goblin painted in terrible detail on one drumhead. The other bore a masked and shadowed figure, further draped in a concealing hood, neither portrait inspired confidence.

“Ugh, you know I hate these awful things.” She complained fondly as he slowly faded back into the slender shadow he’d emerged from. He had a little embarrassing trouble getting his very robustly plump shadow through the narrow space.

“Are we going to have a problem, here?” She asked sweetly, as he struggled to drag his morbidly obese companion through the darkness.

“I’m not the real Slim Shady…” He offered apologetically before he finally vanished, as though that made any sense at all.

#