Chapter Seventeen: Rigors and Riddles
Tyruc meets Thochag, a heroic orc youth who has protected the settlers through the night but not without injury. When the harpy strikes at the windmill once again, Tyruc resolves to finish the fight himself, but he will need the assistance of the riddling Herald to do so.
“This is not the time for jokes!” Tyruc shouted, summoning a sheet of water to slap away the hatchet aimed for his face. As Zifa teetered away to prepare for another strike, the harpy left Tyruc no quarter and swooped down with its talons reared. Tyruc swiped his sword against the creature’s feet and thrust another watery blast into its chest to dampen its ear-splitting scream.
It is not a joke; it is a riddle. By the way, you should duck.
Tyruc ducked down, narrowly avoiding Zifa’s renewed attempt at removing his head from his shoulders. “I need your help!”
I am helping, but for you to command an avatar of me will require a deeper bond. This is who I am, Tyruc. Focus. And duck again.
Tyruc ducked down to his knees and stabbed his sword into the ground, using his command of water to burst mud and rain out from around him. Both of his attackers screeched and temporarily fled, leaving Tyruc a moment to run for cover between the cabins on the settlement’s northern side.
“Fine, tell it to me again,” he huffed, examining the slice in his left arm where Zifa had managed a glancing blow.
My beginning is not far, my end is not high. Between them, I show where hidden truths lie.
“I want it known that I think this is ridiculous.”
Noted, the voice said with a guttural chuckle. Now can you solve it or are you going to finish this fight without my avatar?
Tyruc ground his teeth together. “I’m thinking.” He sprinted to a new hiding place behind a storage shed, praying the harpy and its crazed victim would keep looking for him. His aim was to keep their attention away from the windmill while also not pinning him down again if he could help it. Riddles are wordplay. So think about the words, right?
“What do you mean by ‘your beginning’ and ‘your end’?”
If you want a hint, it will cost you.
“Forget it.” The sound of feet slapping against muddy ground warned him of Zifa’s approach. She’s getting close, he thought. And like a wave breaking against the shore, it came to him. Not close— near! She’s not far, so she’s near! “Your beginning is near!”
With that revelation, an image flashed in his mind of a snout, fur the shade of seafoam, and glistening eyes deep as the fathomless ocean. A susurration echoed with it, similar to the word “near” but accented, as though spoken in another tongue.
A sense of satisfaction welled within Tyruc, and suddenly this game of riddles and hunters did not seem quite so frustrating. In fact, he felt a sense of excitement that almost resembled… fun.
Well done! But you have only solved my beginning. What of my end?
Tyruc opened his mouth to reply but stopped short at the sight of Zifa rounding the corner of the building. She charged at him, and Tyruc resisted the urge to bring his sword up to strike her down, determined not to hurt the woman if it was still possible to save her. Instead, he dove to the side and flicked his hand, pelting her with rain to push her hard into the shed’s wall.
“Stop that!” she snapped, and she was Zifa again, albeit irritated at being repeatedly thwarted in her attempts to chop into him like so much firewood. For that moment, she had enough clarity to be a human freed from the madness of her loneliness, resentment, and envy. She looked at the weapon in her hand and then at Tyruc lying in the mud, horror descending over her weary features.
“Zifa, you can stop this,” he said to her, one hand held out in placation. “I know how that thing drove you to this.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the heel of her empty hand against her forehead. “Her songs are in here,” she sobbed. “She keeps singing those horrible things over and over. Those awful things I thought. She won’t stop singing.”
And just as suddenly, Zifa dropped her hand from her face. The clarity dissipated, the madness clouding her once more. She lunged at him, landing on his chest and bearing her full weight behind the hatchet to press it toward his throat.
With one arm braced against the handle and the other holding his sword, Tyruc felt his options slipping away.
Please, please don’t make me hurt her.
Not everyone will be saved, Tyruc, the voice said without any of its humor. A wave of water crashed over Tyruc and Zifa unbidden by Tyruc’s command. The wave rolled Zifa and swept her away, and Tyruc took his opening to run.
“Thanks for that.” He slid to a stop near another house, slinging water out of his eyes and focusing on the next line of the riddle. “Your end is not high, right? So if it follows the same pattern, then it has to be ‘low.’”
Another vision, this time of a long, thick tail and an oddly elegant combination of both fur and fins. He heard the echo again, this time of “near”, a pause, then “low.” Is it some kind of phrase? Or maybe a single word made up of the riddle’s answers?
You nearly have it! the voice cheered. But you need to move.
Tyruc did not need to ask why. He heard the crashing of wood followed by the screams of the harpy—and its prey.
Tyruc bolted into the central clearing. The harpy flapped back from the windmill with Thochag’s legs in its talons, slinging him through the air like a ragdoll. Its multitude of voices gibbered foul obscenities until they combined into a fiendish congregation shouting in unison:
No more shall they have while we have not!
They smile while we weep, love while we ache, grow while we rot!
Our envy shall be sated when all are as wretched as we!
All will be bound and beaten and torn by our jealousy!
The song pounded the air throughout the settlement to pervade every pore of its hearers. Tyruc’s knees buckled and his hands gripped the sides of his head. Screams of fear and agony erupted from within the windmill. The harpy’s words clawed through Tyruc’s ears into his brain, cascading wave after wave of a nauseating bitterness that clung to every envious inclination.
It spat Sareit’s intelligence at him. He was ignorant, stupid, and she was smart and witty and beautiful. He hated her, and he would wring her neck the next time she smirked at him with her mocking, weaselly face.
It twisted Dallor and Oliette into him like a knife. They loved each other. They had a business and neighbors and a home, and Tyruc was alone and confused and it was not fair! It mocked their intimacy, perverted their love in ways that made him want to wretch.
The bitterness then clung to Thochag, the handsome young hero. So selfless, so brave, and yet beneath it all he was a coward. Even now, hanging upside down from the harpy’s claws and being battered against the buildings, the orc mewled and cried like a useless child.
Finally, the bitterness turned on himself. The horror that those thoughts had wormed out from his own mind descended on him like a ravenous beast. How could he think such foul things? What was wrong with him? How could anyone be more unworthy, more useless than him? Even if a being as supreme as Som could love, how could Som possibly love him?
But Som does, Tyruc. He loves you beyond all worldly reason. He loves you beyond your mistakes, past and future. He loves you beyond hurt, beyond anger, beyond bitterness.
The obscene thoughts swelled, roaring to drown out the Herald’s voice. What if these thoughts are the real me? What if I haven’t changed at all? What if this is who I really am?
Som has made you new, Tyruc. These thoughts are not yours, and you will not succumb to the discord this monster sows. That is the truth.
The word “truth” rang like a clarion bell. What was true?
Did Tyruc truly hate Sareit? No. Her knowledge and intelligence were assets that she used to help those around her. That was a gift, and Tyruc had no desire to see that extinguished in her.
A portion of the fog the harpy’s song had wrapped around Tyruc’s mind thinned.
Did he believe any of the horrible thoughts it conjured about Dallor and Oliette? Of course not. He was thankful for them and their generosity, and he prayed their lives together would continue to be fruitful.
Thochag was young, it was true, but he chose to protect the people of the settlement at the risk of his own life. Tyruc could not hold bitterness against him for that; he admired him.
And what about you? the voice pressed. What is the truth about you?
The last of the haziness lifted with the truth that the Herald had told him. Som loved him. Tyruc belonged to Som, and he would never again be alone. That was a promise made to him. That was a truth more solid than the earth beneath him, than the breath within him.
All at once, the deafening din of the harpy’s song no longer clogged Tyruc’s ears. It continued to sing, but Tyruc was no more affected by it than by the patter of the rain or the gushing of the engorged river. It was just noise now. Noise was all it ever was.
However, the people hiding in the windmill continued to wail, and Zifa had staggered into the clearing, collapsing into the mud and tearing at her own ears.
Tyruc then realized that Thochag, whom he had accused of sobbing and whining, had not been pleading for himself nor was he under the harpy’s influence. Instead, he repeatedly shouted, “Tyruc! My axe! Get me my axe!”
On the ground, two stories below where the harpy held Thochag aloft, lay his dual-bladed battleaxe, the silvered blade glinting when a flash of lightning illuminated the sky.
Tyruc concentrated and pulled puddled water from all around the clearing to gather beneath the weapon. With an uppercut of his fist, he commanded the water to rise in a geyser which carried the axe into the air.
Tyruc’s concentration was too weak, though; he could not power the geyser to climb high enough on his own.
I need your help!
Not me, Tyruc. Call to the source. He is who gives you power.
“Som!” he bellowed. There was suddenly so much he wanted to say, but in that moment, only one simple plea could be uttered. “Som, grant us strength!”
The geyser did not just rise to Thochag’s level. It fired into the sky beyond him, startling the harpy to swing Thochag into the column of water. The vertical stream pulled the orc into itself, and Thochag was lost from sight in it.
The harpy’s song became uncertain. The voices no longer screeched in unison but echoed each other in questioning tones, a choir which had lost its conductor.
Then Thochag emerged from high above, his gleaming axe held in both hands above his head.
The harpy turned with wings and talons reared to embrace him.
But Thochag swung mightily and struck first. His blade bit deep into the monster’s chest, and its song abruptly ended. It made no noise as it fell until it crashed through the roof of Zifa’s cabin with Thochag atop it.
Tyruc moved quickly, ignoring the lingering pain in his head and the stitch in his side. He passed Zifa, who groaned and squirmed weakly in the mud, and the screams from the windmill wound down as well. He approached the cabin and yanked open the door.
Rain spilled in from the open ceiling to douse the ruined interior. The dimness made the wreckage difficult to distinguish. Broken rafters and beams jutted in dangerous angles to bar Tyruc’s entry, but something shifted within.
“Thochag? I’m coming to help!”
A grunt to Tyruc’s right answered him, and he had to balance between moving urgently and carefully. He removed the broken wood lacing his path as he went until he slid a sheet from the roof away to find one of the harpy’s feathered wings draped across Thochag’s body.
The youthful orc’s eyes were squeezed shut and his one hand that was not pinned beneath the harpy spasmed violently.
“Can you move?” Tyruc whispered hoarsely. What he could see of the harpy lay still, but an unease gnawed at his stomach.
Thochag grunted again with effort then puffed air rapidly from his lips. He could then only give a faint shake of his head.
Tyruc bent down and grasped the harpy’s wing, grimacing at the stench of rot and the spongy hide hidden beneath the feathers. It was heavier than he expected and did not bend easily, and while he grappled with it, he felt something that renewed his sense of urgency: a pulse.
Tyruc half carried, half dragged Thochag out of the cabin and pulled him toward the windmill. The wide-eyed face of the boy Talfen peeked out at them.
No sooner had Tyruc moved the orc to the door than a great crashing came from what was left of Zifa’s home.
Tyruc laid the orc on the ground and directed Talfen, “Get him inside and close the door ‘til I get back.”
“Where are you going?” Talfen asked tremulously.
Tyruc saw new horrors etched onto the boy’s face. No doubt it was the effect of the harpy’s song, but Tyruc did not have time to comfort him.
“I’m going to go finish this.”
Another clamor alerted them to turn and see the harpy emerge from the cabin’s roof. One of its wings was twisted and bent, but the other two flapped madly to compensate. A wheezing keen seeped from its chest. The gash it bore from Thochag’s cleaving strike rendered its song impotent, and Tyruc was determined to keep it that way permanently.
Talfen shook his head violently. “You can’t go out there alone again!”
“I’m never alone, kid. And this time I’ll have a friend with me in person.”
“Who?” the boy asked, his fear momentarily traded with childlike curiosity.
Tyruc did not answer him but pointed at Thochag meaningfully before taking off at a trot toward the harpy.
The creature flew toward the river and was soon crossing over its embankment.
Quickly, Tyruc, the voice said. It nests in the hills beyond the river, and it will wait there in recovery until it can seek out more chaos to sow.
It won’t get that far. Tyruc concentrated on the two thirds of the Herald he held in his mind; focusing on the snout, the eyes, the tail, the fur, the fins. He needed to fill in the body between, and thanks to the voice’s aid during the harpy’s song, Tyruc had figured out what was missing.
Your beginning is ‘near,’ your end is ‘low,’ and between them, you show where hidden truths lie. You ‘reveal.’ Put in the right order, and the answer is ‘near,’ ‘reveal,’ ‘low.’
Say it, Tyruc. Call to me and seal our pact!
Tyruc smiled grimly, now knowing with supernatural revelation the Herald’s name.
The harpy was nearly halfway across the wide river. The rushing waters downstream of it churned as Tyruc concentrated on the full image now flaring brightly in his mind. A dorsal fin crested from the surface, moving upstream at a steady speed before dipping back below.
“Nirivilo, the River of Secrets and Revelations!”
At Tyruc’s command, the avatar of Nirivilo sprang from the river to engage the harpy in battle.
Coming up in Chapter Eighteen:
Tyruc and Nirivilo go on the offensive, but victory comes at a cost.