Michael Stackpole: Chartomancy

Once they’d crossed into Dolosan, Keles had been able to orient himself. They bypassed Opaslynoti and turned southeast. Instead of riding straight east through Solaeth, which would have taken a very long time, they would head to the port of Sylumak and ship east. While the journey would be longer, ships made progress from dawn to dawn, as they did not have to stop for sleep.

The horses trotted onto a level, arid plain. Dalen, the leader, held up a hand. The horses, well lathered, welcomed the respite. Keles did as well. Slowly the throbbing in his shoulder grew quiet. Quiet enough that now I can feel how saddle-sore I am.

Dalen stopped his horse and waved one of his men forward. Cort-short, squat, and swarthy-rode up beside him. Dalen pointed further ahead, to where the trail narrowed and carried past a little crest into what Keles assumed was a valley. The feature was hardly unique in Dolosan, but nothing here could be taken for granted because the land had labored beneath centuries of wild magic.

When warriors, or anyone else, became sufficiently skilled in their vocation, it was possible they would become Mystics. Then they would become supernaturally better than lesser-trained men. Moraven Tolo, a swordsman who had been traveling on Keles’ expedition, had been a Mystic. In one fight he’d torn through a half dozen or more foes with less effort than Keles would use to sketch a street map of a one-road town.

When any two Mystics clashed, the display of skill would be staggering-at once beautiful and terrible. It would also leave a residue of wild magic. Circles could contain it-hence the circles often worn as charms against magic, or the stone circles outside town and villages where challenges could be fought. There the wild magic would be trapped. But, left to its own devices, it could be used for good or ill.

Over seven centuries before, Turasynd nomads from the desert wastes had gathered legions of Mystic warriors and invaded the Empire. Empress Cyrsa gathered to her the greatest soldiers and Mystic warriors in the Empire. To forestall political chicanery in her absence, she split the Empire into the Nine Principalities, then took the Imperial treasury and headed west. The nomads and her armies fought several skirmishes in Solaeth and Dolosan, but their grand battle took place in Ixyll.

By all reports, the armies annihilated each other-and the wild magic they released nearly annihilated the world. The magic changed things in wonderful and horrible ways, and its mark could most easily be seen in Dolosan or Ixyll, where it still raged. On his survey, Keles had recorded living pools, valleys that breathed, trees bearing glass foliage, and so many other oddities that it hurt his head to think of them.

His mind shifted to the journals he’d kept, now back in Ixyll with the rest of his companions. And Tyressa, poor Tyressa. Just thinking of her made him feel even more alone. With her gone, some of the color had flowed out of the world.

Cort, the man riding forward to the hillcrest, had been the one who shot her. And it wasn’t just that act that made Keles hate him, but the eager leer on his face when he’d done it. And the way he chuckled about it afterward.

I hope you die.

The man crested the hill and started to ride down into the valley. Then he reined back hard and his horse reared, but not before something had wrapped itself around the horse’s front legs. The horse came back down, squealing, eyes wide with terror, then it and Cort disappeared.

“Cort, damnit!” Dalen reined back on his horse. Asbor, the third man, drew his sword and started galloping forward, but Dalen called him back. “Don’t be foolish.”

Asbor gave him a puzzled look. “But we have to help him.”

“There’s no helping him. He never even had time to scream.” Dalen turned to Keles. “Have you seen anything like this before?”

“Tough to answer since I don’t know what it is.” Keles dismounted and would have fallen save for a quick grab at his stirrup. He got his legs under him, then started forward.

“You should ride.” Asbor glanced nervously at the valley. “You can escape.”

“Cort didn’t.” Keles kept his voice even, betraying neither his satisfaction at Cort’s death nor his fear. He began the trudge up the rise.

“Asbor, get his horse; take my reins.” Dalen dismounted behind him and quickly caught up. His eyes narrowed as he looked over at Keles. “I would not have thought you to be so adventurous.”

“Adventurous is my brother. I’m just curious.” Keles pointed toward the plant tendrils Cort had ridden over. “I think I saw something green binding the horse’s hooves. I intend to avoid anything green.”

Dalen nodded, then the two of them cut off the trail and up through some rocks. The Desei agent helped him negotiate the steeper parts, then they both rounded a large boulder and looked down into the valley.

Dalen shivered. “Who could have imagined?”

Keles shook his head and squatted. The valley had widened into a basin that he believed might once have been the home to a fair-sized pond nearly a hundred feet deep. The red rocks around it and the grey-red sediment in it contrasted sharply with the green of the plant. Tendrils-hundreds of them, perhaps even thousands-lay like webbing throughout the basin. Where they lapped over its edges they were little thicker than a finger. Deeper down, closer to the heart, they were fully as round as a man and stiff with rough bark festooned with sharp thorns.

Centermost sat a grotesque blossom, corpse white with scarlet veining. It pulsed and quivered in time with the pain throbbing in Keles’ shoulder-a fact he found rather unsettling. At its heart lay a darker patch the color of liver, which opened and closed slowly, producing a faint sound reminiscent of snoring.

They spotted most of Cort, but his horse had almost ceased to exist. Small tendrils reached out to pull the carcass forward. The sharp thorns sliced through flesh and sinew, taking the animal apart as it slowly slid toward the plant’s heart. Hunks of dripping tissue and steaming organs moved more quickly, dropping into the maw between snores.

Cort soon joined his mount in a sharp slide to feed the plant.

Keles narrowed his eyes. “No, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Not this size. My brother said there are flesh-eating plants in Ummummorar, but the samples he tried to bring back died. Even so, those were only big enough to eat insects.”

Dalen frowned as he watched the plant. “I would have been ready for monsters. You know, the things we hear about in stories-bears with six legs and mandibles, steel serpents, giant spiders. Not this.”

“This isn’t something bards would sing of. Its only prey is that which blunders into it.” Keles frowned. “That doesn’t make it any less horrible, though.”

“In some ways it makes it more so.”

Keles considered for a moment, then glanced up at his captor. “What are you going to do? I’m not sure you can kill it.”

“Kill it? No.” The man smiled slowly. “My job is to get you to Deseirion. We’ll just go around it. I can recruit more men later, so you’ll be safe.”

“You mean so I won’t escape.”

Dalen snorted. “Even if you were whole, you couldn’t escape. You could kill me and Asbor in the night, or kill our horses and take off with as many supplies as you wanted, and you’d still not escape.”

“Give me a horse and provisions and I’ll prove you wrong.”

Dalen snorted again and started leading the way back. “You may know where you are and even where you want to go, but you know the world as a map. But a map is like the world in the same way sheet music is like a song. It merely describes it. You don’t know enough about this world to survive it.”