The House of Yeel (12 page)

“The air here is different, somehow.”

“Yes, the atmosphere’s
composition is not like that of your world. It holds very
interesting properties which I have studied for quite some time.
You’ll find it hinders your movements yet provides more energy. It
also creates the potential for…unique acoustical experiences.
Perhaps its most remarkable feature is simply that you can breathe
it at all. Given how different it really is from the air you’re
used to inhaling, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if it had been
deadly to humans.”

“But of course it would not have affected
you?”

“Oh. Well, my exchange rate
is such that, I mean, well, it might well have affected me
adversely as well. But it does not. Are we approaching that castle
you spotted? We must find shelter here before the morning. It’s
dangerous to be outside here, at certain times of the
day.”

Jymoor looked at their
destination again. She began to get a feel for how huge the
fortress really was. The place grew larger with each step, until
she began to think of the place as a city. They headed toward a
massive stone bridge, apparently the only entrance to the island
fortress.

Jymoor saw a lone person, or
some kind of humanoid, awaiting them on the bridge. A male, she
decided. He held a long spear in one graceful hand. The man wore a
multifaceted outfit of copper-colored cloth. His skin looked
slightly green in the distance, but she couldn’t tell if it was
from the light.

They walked closer. The man
before them looked human enough to Jymoor. She expected Yeel would
introduce them at any moment. She wondered what their greeting
would be. Would they raise their hands to each other? Would they
clasp hands? Did the man even speak their language? Was it even a
man?

Yeel stopped and turned to her.

“I know one here named Vot.
I must go speak with him,” Yeel said. “Please speak with that man.
Tell him you’re with me, and he’ll treat you kindly. Don’t worry.
We’ll make progress on our goal while we’re here. These are kind
folk, and no harm will come to you.”

Yeel moved away to one side, to the edge of
the bridge. Jymoor wanted to ask Yeel more questions, but she let
him leave. She could take care of herself, she decided. An instant
later she wondered if the armor had decided for her.

The wizard descended a side ramp in an eerily
smooth motion. His head did not bob in the manner of one taking
steps. Jymoor blinked. Magic?

She turned to regard the
harpoon-bearing man who waited patiently at the end of the bridge.
He met her gaze calmly. She decided his skin was slightly green,
but it suited his smooth, narrow face and curly hair. His weapon
looked as if its sharp tip had been created from a plant spine or
perhaps a water creature. The tip was translucent, perhaps hollow.
She felt certain it wasn’t made of copper or iron.

Jymoor removed her helm to let him see her
own face. Did his visage soften slightly when he saw she was a
woman? She could not be sure. She strode across the bridge to meet
him. Behind the eerie stranger, the giant fortress rose up,
dwarfing both of them.

“I’m Jymoor. I serve as the
Crescent Knight, friend of the mighty Yeel,” Jymoor said, bowing
slightly to the stranger. “Can you understand?”

“Hello, Jymoor. Welcome to Ascara-home,” the
man said. He held up a three-fingered hand in greeting. “I am
Legrach.”

“You speak my language…you
have only…you have fewer fingers than I,” Jymoor
stammered.

“Artaxiad took the smallest
finger from our hands, in punishment for some perceived failure on
our part,” Legrach explained. “Despite her powers, even Vot cannot
restore us.”

“Vot. Yeel spoke of him, said he was going to
see him.”

Legrach laughed. “Vot is a
she-goddess. She brings us life. It’s funny to hear her spoken of
as a man.”

“Well, Yeel did so.”

“A mistake, I assure you. Vot lives here with
us, beneath the city. She takes care of us.”

“What is this place? How did you come to live
here?”

“It is a long story…our
scribes read of events long past. An evil man of great power, named
Artaxiad, ruled our ancestors with an iron hand. He committed
terrible atrocities against us but we could not fight
him.”

“So this Vot must have saved you?”

“Yes, she helped us
overthrow him. We can speak of this more once inside. I’ve been
tasked with looking after your needs. Would you like to see where
you’ll be staying?”

“Yes, thank you.”

***

Yeel moved serenely through
the undertunnels of smooth polished coral. Bits of Jymoor’s
conversation chased after him, carried far in the unique air of
Ascara-home. It was said on some days you could catch words spoken
the day before, although Yeel suspected that was an exaggeration.
He had himself only perceived sounds emitted hours before at the
most.

As he made his way lower,
the water rose, at first splashing only against his foot, then
rising farther up his trunk. There was no salt; the water of this
world contained few impurities. The Ascarans drank directly from
their ocean’s waters and enjoyed the mild currents which swept away
their waste and kept them warm year around.

Vot had chosen their home well.

Yeel came to the fountain room. Like his own
such room, the ceiling rose high overhead, allowing the fountain to
rise in tiers, forming pools of decreasing size as they ascended.
The walls held a beautiful polish, reflecting the whirls of the
water in their shining surfaces.

He searched the pool for children. He spotted
them one by one, counting a total of three of the transparent
beings swimming gently through the clear water.

Yeel turned and saw another
watching him. Vot’s rubbery cone of veined green flesh slid up to
the fountain, making gentle waves in the water that covered the
floor.

“You aren’t fooling anyone,
Yeel,” said Vot, in Yeel’s own tongue. “I can see it is you who
have come to my water. There in the flow you will see that I have
three beautiful children growing. Two more than the last time you
came to Ascara-home. Which was long ago, I might add with no small
degree of hurt.”

Yeel realized that he had been projecting the
image of a human by force of habit. He let down his guard, allowing
all eyes to see him as he really appeared.

“It’s with tremendous
pleasure that I again experience your company. It has been a great
deal of time since my last memory of you. I had not intended to
hide my true nature, but merely had become accustomed to projecting
a human image, and I continued to do so on momentum alone. As for
my long absence, it was the doing of Faverhind of the Meridalae.
The group succeeded in imprisoning me in my home. But finally I’ve
been freed by a human knight and enlisted in a cause I couldn’t
refuse.”

“It’s only a matter of time
until the Meridalae realize you have escaped their trap and send
forces to deal with you. This time they may decide to terminate
your existence rather than limit it. Your human friend may end up
defunct as well. Perhaps you should both stay here with me, and
together we can plan a way to defeat them. Surely given a century
of careful study we can find a solution.”

“Unfortunately, the matter
must be addressed in a hurried fashion,” Yeel said. “The libraries
of my companion’s people are in danger. A large number of invaders
whose ideology does not highly value caches of knowledge have
entered their lands. Large repositories of books, scrolls, and
miscellaneous cultural treasures are threatened on a short
timescale.”

“I’m afraid my army is
busy here,” Vot said. “We’re no strangers to violence. Each year
the Meridalae send a menace to threaten me. We can teach your
companion what we know of the Lore of
B
attle, and I can spare an honor
guard of perhaps ten warriors.”

Yeel waved a tentacle wildly
in the air, indicating his appreciation. “Thank you so much for
your hospitality. Shall we share an eye for the eve, and speak of
times long past? I’m sure by now we each have three or four new
memories to share.”

“Of course,” Vot replied, plucking an eye
from her ridge. Yeel copied the maneuver and removed one of his
fresh eyes with a tentacle.

“I must have a pot of preservative glue
somewhere nearby,” Vot said. “I believe I would put it into a green
vase, since it is green itself and functions to keep our eyes new
and green.”

“Perhaps this one?” Yeel
asked, moving toward a large green container on a delicately carved
side table of bone or ivory.

“Ah yes, that would work. Or else it is a
trap, meant to slice off the tentacle of an unwanted visitor who
investigated it.”

Yeel paused, dangling his detached eye
carefully over the opening.

“Ah, but I would have to
leave some marker of its danger for myself. The table appears to be
an innocent carving of entwined tangelars, which I remember are
graceful, harmless beasts. So it must be safe. Besides, I might
have remembered any potentially lethal trap.”

“I find your reasoning
sound,” Yeel replied, and dropped his eye into the vase. “Hmm. Yes,
it looks like ordinary eye glue. Of course, I cannot smell it, but
I think we found it.”

“Unless the Tangelars were
there to lure a victim into believing it to be harmless,” Vot
added. “Ah, but you have it now!”

Yeel plucked his glued eye
out of the vase with the slender end of a tentacle and gently
attached it to Vot’s ridge. Ascara-mother Vot followed suit,
dipping her own eye and gluing it to Yeel’s ridge in the same
careful manner.

***

“When it rains, doesn’t the
water come in through these holes?”

Jymoor walked behind Legrach through the
stone walls of the fortress. She pointed out one of the openings in
the walls that brought in light. As far as she could tell, the
light came from the sun outside.

Legrach gave her a puzzled look. Then he
seemed to resolve his confusion.

“Ah. I think you mean when
the air is heavy with water? We cannot seal the whole fortress off.
You must go into your room, and wait until the morning’s water has
come out of the air. Out here in the halls, you’d be washed away,
suffocated.”

“Wow. I had no idea. Yeel said something
about the air being different here. I guess your rainstorms are
harsh.”

Jymoor studied the walls.
The stone looked clean, but the surface was rough and held a
greenish tint like everything else on this world. She hadn’t seen a
single decoration or piece of furniture since they came into the
gate.

Legrach came to a bluish
curtain and brought his hand to it. The fabric folded back as if by
magic, moving aside at his touch. Jymoor stared at the curtain as
it bunched up against the walls around a wooden door it had
concealed. She couldn’t see any runner or rod that held the curtain
up.

“What is this? Is it alive?”

“No, it’s only a water net.
It keeps the morning’s water out of your room.”

Legrach pushed the wooden
door forward and stepped through, beckoning for Jymoor to follow.
At first it was dark, then a light grew. Jymoor couldn’t understand
what the source was. She saw that Legrach held some kind of lantern
or torch, except that its entire surface glowed even though he held
it directly in his hand.

When she saw the interior, she gasped. The
room was crammed with colorful items. Every square inch of the wall
held a tapestry, cabinets, or pegs for hanging containers. Only a
small path that led to the center of the room was clear for
walking.

“Oh! Well…you keep your
possessions in here safe from the water?”

“Yes,” Legrach said. He
looked somewhat amused by her ignorance of this place. “Is it not
so where you’re from?”

“We keep many things
indoors. But a roof is the most important part since
we
don’t have any water
nets.”

“The air doesn’t weep in the
morning?”

“Sometimes water falls from the air. But our
roofs keep it out. It falls straight to the ground. And it can
happen at any time, not just in the morning.”

Legrach looked interested and skeptical at
the same time.

“Yeel and Vot know of
strange worlds. You’re from one of those, I suppose,” he said.
“We’ll try to make you feel welcome, Jymoor. You should know that
in the final time before morning, you must be in here behind your
water net, or you’ll drown.”

“Thanks for the warning. Anything else I
should know about? Do you have lethal predators here? I assume that
any wild animals are kept out of the fortress?”

Once again Legrach looked
troubled. “Animals? There are only lizards and insects above the
sea. If you don’t go near the ocean without a native, you’ll be
safe from wild creatures.” For a moment he looked like he was going
to ask about the creatures on her world, but he didn’t.

“Hmm. Your world has its own
dangers, it seems,” Jymoor said. “Back on my world, I was almost
eaten by monsters several times trying to find the Far Coast. But I
stood in the rain several times and never came near to drowning
once.”

Legrach shook his head. “Strange.”

They stood close in the
cluttered room. Jymoor’s eyes fell upon a spiral shell full of
small white spheres supported above the height of the single table
by a slender rod of metal.