Khyte descended through the stale, silent air, and landed on a titanic wine tun, his boots drumming on its wooden staves before he leaped off to the dusty wine cellar floor.
Inglefras threw her arms around Khyte and embraced him with surprising strength. In the dim light from an ensconced torch, her face looked harder and less womanly. He despised himself for leaving Kuilea, not because he loved the goblin, but because loving the dryad made him love himself less. He was giving up friendships he had cultivated for two years, and for what? A few moments of excitation had made him disloyal, and he hated himself for it.
"What is it, Khyte?" Her thicker voice was no less sweet—not sugar, but dark brown honey. While his affection for Kuilea or Eurilda looked into the image of longing reflected on the sweet surface of love, Inglefras was a fierce pull into a dragging, churning undertow. Khyte hated himself for the self-inflicted wound called lust, the piercing two-edged sword of yearning.
"They're coming after us. Snap out of it," said Eurilda. "She's not even flesh and blood." When the sorceress seized the dryad's hand and half-dragged her past the barrels, Khyte—only then realizing he held a drawn sword, in answer to Kuilea's bared steel—sheathed it and followed.
Would he have killed the goblin woman? It made him feel better to think that he didn't abandon Kuilea, but saved her from the throes of his conscienceless passion, which might have cut her down. What had made his career as a killer and a thief pleasant was the constant reassurance of his arbitrary but limited moral compass, and when the dryad magnetized his wavering needle, he felt increasingly lost as his formerly fixed points of friendship and loyalty blurred.
"You know less of dryads than he does," said Inglefras. Behind the last wine barrel, there was a crevice, which due to a trick of the dim light, looked much too narrow until you were right next to the five foot fissure.
"I'm sick of your preaching," said the giantess. "Save your breath. Do you even breathe?"
"You said I'm not flesh and blood. What am I then, planks and nails?" When they stooped to crawl through the crevice, the dryad panted the stale air, which lent credence to the plant woman's claim to flesh and blood.
"Don't know, don't care, don't try me. I'm tempted to build an outhouse out of you and give a whore an honest vocation."
"Princess isn't honest enough for you?" They stepped into corridors so uniformly gray as to seem white, as there were no other colors for context, only a dour glimmer that emanated from the catacomb walls. The monotone gray was bedazzling, not unlike snow blindness, as Khyte sought vainly for directions in the gray.
"You said it, not me." said Eurilda. "Whore is more honest than princess. At least a whore knows she's an outhouse."
"Have a care. You're speaking to royalty."
"At this moment, your life is in my hands," said Eurilda airily. "And on Ielnarona, it will be my word against yours. Our word against yours, as Khyte isn't so besotted to say anything causing my harm."
"Eurilda, stop," said Khyte.
"Why should I?"
"You can't trust me. I'm love-drunk, Eurilda, and these may be my last honest words in the lie my life is becoming, so heed my words. However,"— here he gestured at the bewildering grayness—"you are right that our lives are at your mercy in this baffling gray. If you hate her, and believe me a fool, all the more reason to be free from us. Take Inglefras home."
"Khyte, though I bear you no ill will, morals are not for vermin, but for giant-kind. To hate her or despise you for your enthrallment would be to think you either good or bad, and only giants can rise so high. A tree is a tree, a rat is a rat, a human is a human, and a dryad is a dryad, and none of these things are giants. If all things were equal, good and evil would be one, and I could be neither; if I was not myself, and myself alone, it would be all too easy to see through your eyes, to excuse your weakness, to sympathize. Though sympathy slides into vice and vermin holes, that I can own a wild dog without becoming one bodes well for your future, Khyte."
"Khyte is not a dog," said Inglefras. "You can't use A=A logic only when it suits you. Calling anything property, rather than seeing it for what it is, corrupts the logic of identity."
"Did you call me a dog?" asked Khyte. Though he believed himself enlightened by the dryad's influence, he had a long way to go to discourse at the level of either the princess or the sorceress.
"Could I call you a weed without it being too much of a stretch, Inglefras?" Eurilda laughed. "You're right, though—I'm too much of a poet for my own good. And you're too smart for your own good."
Hearing the threat, Khyte drew his sword, and in his other hand, the enchanted dagger taken from Sarin Gelf. Though its metal couldn't hold an image of the merchant's dim storefront, in the catacombs its sterling reflection absorbed the unnatural gray.
"Though you're much better with a sword, Khyte, you're no match for me."
"I know. As a giant, you could crush me, and as a sorceress, you could destroy me. But I can stab faster than you can spell, and if you undo your diminishment a hair faster than I slash, these catacombs will be a tight fit."
When Eurilda scowled, and was silent, Khyte worried, for he shouldn't allow time to think to one so much better at thinking. Though her misconceptions were also fueled by this thinking, these haughty prejudices were so well-reasoned that they seemed stamped with the seal of logic. It was frustrating to contest one so self-assured, but even more vexing to force an alliance with this distorted, uneven mind. But if they didn't want to go back and take their punishment from King Merculo, they needed the Furrow, and to find it, they needed Eurilda's guidance.
"You're right, Khyte."
Khyte couldn't believe his ears. "Forgive my asking, when I'm partially to blame for it escalating so quickly, but is that a surrender or an apology?"
"It's an apology—for sharing Uenarakian views, when they are abstract and difficult to understand."
"Only for us smaller beings, you mean," said Khyte.
"Though I wasn't apprenticed to a wizard, I had many tutors," said Inglefras. "It sounds easy to me, like most lies: giant morality only applies to giants, and through the logic of identity, you rationalize denying those privileges to those that are not giants. You've made morality into a potted plant, grown only by giants, and cultivated only for the good of giants. It's an unreasonable axiom, like praying to an idol in a closet, and just as the gods do not inhabit your wardrobe alone, so common sense and goodness are not the exclusive domain of the giants."
Eurilda composed her face into a serene mask before continuing: "While I would expect Khyte to reduce sublime mysteries to the merely sensible, I speculated you might know better. This is a dream of the king of gods, The Lord of Disbelievers, who is in a state of perpetual abnegation, denial and illusion. The Divine Atheist tears down and devours, and we oppose him in all things. Though we drown in the dream, we die when he opens his eyes," Eurilda's faraway look made it seem that she quoted or paraphrased from memory. "As The Divine Atheist eats the heart of all things, our gods command us to consider and have compassion. And as only the gods of giants are wide-awake, and we are made in their image, only the giants hear the truth."
"Don't respond, Inglefras," said Khyte. "Her mind is not only made up, but laying traps, so you can't debate these things." He hadn't moved his eyes from the giantess, who would only want a moment to enspell him.
"This is a poor place to stall us, if that was my goal."
Khyte said, "I don't care what your goals are. Take us to The Furrow."
Instead of answering, the giantess did as Khyte asked. Inglefras tailed a few steps behind Khyte, who followed Eurilda through the catacombs' blinding gray. Short of making Eurilda walk backward, he couldn't be sure the sorceress wasn't mouthing spell syllables, so he shadowed her closely, his sword point nearly pricking her shoulder blades. As there were no visible markers, it seemed she led them by memory alone.
Gray tunnels gave way to gray corridors so blurred that they seemed natural formations, though these faint lines were uniformly linear. These passageways emptied into a monotonous gray cavern so enormous that Khyte couldn't tell where the walls ended and the roof began.
Khyte was taking in the immense, lusterless hollow when he realized he had forgotten about Eurilda, and turned to see her approaching the opposing rock wall.
"You don't need to keep me under guard," she said. "I would never kill you, Khyte. In fact, you've given me a few things to think about. The most important of which is in your hands."
"What? Your fate?" Khyte hoped that sounded convincing.
"No, you dolt. I'm being literal. That dagger! Where did you get it?"
Khyte hadn't examined the dagger since he unsheathed it. As he looked at it now, it seemed an all new marvel. Its formerly pristine reflection, uncannily unable to hold an image, now retained the catacomb gray, and scudding shadows dimmed the illuminated metal. He had never been cowed by the magical arts, but the dagger's twofold nature set the steel in his resolve shivering, as if the blade's soul looked back.
"It's beautiful," said Inglefras, "but our reflections are very distorted."
"That can't be us," said Khyte, "as it only reflects light, and doesn't hold images from the world around it. But I do see faces."
"Horrible, twisted faces."
"You're both deluded," said Eurilda. "Keep going. The Doorway is around the corner."
Once their eyes accustomed to the catacombs, the monotonous gray became a nuanced spectrum of gray. When Eurilda turned the corner, a shifting ray momentarily translated her figure into those mottled gray tones as she stepped into the room from where the arc of gray light streamed.
When Khyte saw the inverted cone of gray light gyrating in the wall, emanating tendrils of charcoal gray smoke and vapors of slate gray steam, the inconceivable tear in reality tore a hole in his thoughts. A profound emptiness welled up in him, as if his soul had already escaped through the gap to another world. His first seamless thought thereafter was that It was too inorganic to be a Furrow, too active to be a Doorway, and there was no honest name for the thing. It was like a wound, or the crack in his sword; it offended not only the wall, but his mind, and he strongly desired it not to be there. Then he saw the gleaming inscriptions, scrawled every square inch from floor to ceiling. Though he could only read hundreds of words in his native Drydanan, and a smattering of Nahurian and Alfyrian, all of these unusual letters spoke to him.
When Eurilda called out "Behind you!", Khyte turned in the flickering light to see only that the shadows now roiled in the dagger's surface. Though he seemed alone, the flickering portal mobbed him with dozens of shadows; not only were there too many for one person to cast, but they seemed taller, wider, and clawed.
"Khyte!" Inglefras was pulled toward the gyrating light and vanished within ten feet of the Furrow. The barbarian's piercing, ugly man-scream might have brought tears of sympathy from Eurilda's atheist god king. When Khyte staggered forward and fell to his knees, this brought him closer to the Furrow's otherworldly light, which played along the enchanted blade until its shadows fused into grotesque faces fringed with white manes, eyebrows, and beards; their noses were cruel, their mouths were fanged, and their ears were like white-furred bat's wings. And if the dagger was true, they were all around him.
From his knees, Khyte rocked into a crouch, then lunged toward the Furrow. Once immersed in the unearthly light, the creatures rippled into view. They were a head taller, with blue veins that popped through bulging muscles and thin white fur; their webbed vests and leggings bristled with knives, short swords, and javelins, and they gripped staves studded with iron rivets.
As he took in the albino creatures and the illuminated glyphs, he nearly tripped over Inglefras, who shrieked as Eurilda dragged her toward the Furrow. When the dryad went limp and clawed at the floor, the stubborn giantess yelled "There he is! Get up!" Inglefras obeyed, but grabbed Khyte's sword arm.
Though his first instinct was to shake her off before they were overrun, her body pressed to his its intoxicating aroma of gardenia and jasmine, and in that moment he lusted more than he lived. Though the giantess thought to pass to Ielnarona without him, the dryad had fought her; moreover, when both women could see the creatures, Inglefras risked her life not to be separated from him. When the young barbarian's heart melted, its molten metal stiffened the steel in his spine.
How long had they been in danger, he wondered; had the creatures been able to act upon them before the reverse was true?
"Trespassers shall suffer, then die," said one of the creatures. As an iron circlet rested on its brow, and dull iron breastplate, vambraces, gauntlets, and greaves creased its white fur, this one was the creatures' speaker or master.
"This is our world," Khyte lied.
"Stop it, Khyte," said Inglefras. "You're scaring me."
"Yes, don't growl when the monster snarls," agreed Eurilda.
"We are the Ebotu, the eldest of the Noble Races. This is not your world, nor your city-grave." The armored chieftain turned to the other Ebotu. "What is the fate of liars that do not speak the One True Tongue?"
"They shall die." Though Khyte understood, their response was such a bestial chorus of gnashing, snarling fangs that he shuddered along with Eurilda and Inglefras.
Khyte turned to Inglefras and Eurilda and put one finger on his lips, not daring to be heard speaking a "liar's tongue." He didn't know why only he could speak their language, but if he wasn't a total idiot, this gift might save their lives.
"I'll prove this is my world, and you are the interlopers," said Khyte, taking a step nearer the inscriptions, and, settling on the most ornate—silver filled the etched letters—he read aloud, doing his best to intone with solemnity:
In Eternity, the One gazed on the All-Thing's infinite beauty, and the unending moment between Creator and Creation was seamless being. Until the schism, when the shards fell, each glittering with the image of the One in their fragmented nature, so that five divine motes attracted the desire of the Spider-God, Lyspera, and she bound them into the Web of the Abyss. And the constant hunger, thirst, and desire of mortal men and beasts is the ongoing cry of The Five Worlds to the One they never knew, and the desolation and unease heard between seconds, minutes, and hours echoes in The Five Worlds ripped from the stars.
When most of the Ebotu knelt, their chieftain, seeing his followers submit to a higher power than him, grew angry. Though their faces were naturally twisted into a hideously angry mask, rage cracked and contorted his visage even further, and Inglefras fainted away at the sight of it.
"You lie!"
"That is what it says," said Khyte.
"You read without understanding!"
"No. My tribe sings about this." Though Kuilea's nursery rhyme had been an earworm for days, Khyte was glad he hadn't been able to get rid of it, and recited the sing-song verse with as much dignity as he could bring to bear:
The spider saw unending string,
and stole five children, singing.
She took them in her web, a ring
of dark gems, a crown for a king.
In seeing the worlds on her string,
she awakened the All-Thing,
and the anger of the string.
"What does it mean?" asked an Ebotu.
"Do not speak to it," shouted the leader. "It lies!"
Though the glowing script named hundreds of destinations in The Five Worlds, and the Furrow was surely not as unidirectional as Eurilda claimed, with the captain drying up Khyte's influence on the Ebotu, there was only one course left. He pushed Inglefras aside with a piercing pang that set his heart stammering.
"Though you call me liar," he said, "it is your word against mine." The clamor of the bloodthirsty and jubilant Ebotu drowned him out, for Khyte had, by accident, uttered the phrase most likely to incite a duel.
When one cried,"It challenges Kwraz by word, law, and sword!" Khyte then heard, in tandem with the intelligible words, the untranslated growling, yapping and snarling which had frightened Inglefras and Eurilda, for whatever enchantment elucidated the warrior's understanding, it was not comprehensive of the roaring echoes that shook the chamber.
"Do you accept my challenge," asked Khyte.
Though the captain could trust to claws, fangs, and larger muscles to fight the much smaller Khyte, he also bristled with weaponry and armor; by comparison, Khyte bore only Azuri's weighty cleaver, and his only concession to armor, other than his red woolen cloak to turn away the cold, were demi-gauntlets, to ward blood-wet blades that skipped down a parry to his knuckles. Seeing the huge discrepancy in their attributes, and seeing that one was barely armed and the other an armory, an outsider might guess the outcome, much as you could guess whether a coconut would smash a ripe peach, despite the toughness of its pit.
"You are an outsider..." Kwraz's speech was drowned out by his warriors begging his assent. When their dissenting din died down, the leader added, "but I will knock our words from your head, so you can't tell them from your teeth." Armor plates swayed and clanked when Kwraz sprang, swinging his riveted staff at Khyte's head.
While Khyte didn't trust the crude Alfyrian blade to do the tricks he coaxed from his old sword, let alone cut or stab, he had hoped it might serve as a cruelly dull bludgeon that rent limbs by tearing flesh and crushing bone, or as an awkward shield. As it turned out, it would serve first as a more primitive tool, for any length of sturdy steel made an admirable lever.
When the staff met the sword, Khyte pushed through the parry, twisting his legs so that the torque of his whole body moved through Kwraz, slamming him flat on his back.
Khyte ran up on the dazed chieftain, hoping to push his advantage and lop off its head, and the Ebotu crushed inward as one, circling the combatants in a white-furred arena. When they howled, waving javelins and staves, Kwraz lurched to his feet and shouted "Mine is the honor."
This suited Khyte, as in that one pass he knew he was a better fighter. He only needed to keep it a game of tag, because if Kwraz lost his mind and jumped on Khyte, the creature's raw mass and muscle might make Khyte lose his grip on this bloody contest. By hiding from his first battle, Khyte had lived to look on the corpse-ridden aftermath; learning that all battle made meat, since then he had not only honed his body and swordsmanship, but rubbed off the tricky corners of his moral compass, so that he might forever after conspire to be on the right side of the bloody grinder. To this end, in his left hand, Khyte held the dagger close to his chest to discourage Kwraz from closing. When Kwraz instead trusted armor and his greater reach, swinging a flurry of blows to deny Khyte a single opportunity to close, Khyte nimbly timed his steps to the booming sweep of the staff and stepped in and out, scoring welts and lesions sometimes in the top of a second, and sometimes the bottom of a moment, for he had studied not only how to section an opponent, but to carve the space between them, to strike not on his foe's time, but in his own felt rhythm of breaths and blood.
As Kwraz swung again, Khyte sidestepped, then rocked back to his starting foot and slashed the creature's flank. When this knocked it headfirst into the wall, blood obscured the inscribed white sigils. But when Khyte stepped forward to deliver the killing blow, three Ebotu stood between him and their leader.
Khyte waited. As their perimeter stood between him and the Furrow, it was up to them whether he lived or died. Defeating one ungainly, over-muscled monster was one thing, but defeating the pack was beyond Eurilda at full size. "Is this not a duel to the death?"
"The unclean may not deliver the death blow," one said.
"He's not getting up," said Khyte. "Stand aside."
"You were not supposed to win."
"Are you losing money on this fight?"
"His soul must find its way."
"Can a proxy deliver the death blow?"
"Yes, but none will take on this honor, as he was a good chief."
"You mean you made some bad bets," sneered Khyte, believing his only hope was to shame these honorbound monsters into acknowledging his victory.
"We would permit the Tree-Mother, if she has not taken her vows." Inglefras flinched when the creature pointed.
Khyte knew that even if Inglefras wished Kwraz dead, she would prefer someone else swing the flyswatter, so he stepped back to whisper into Eurilda's ear.
When the sorceress pulled a cringing, shrieking doll from her pouch, set it on the floor, and spoke a quiet word, Azuri the Alfyrian sprouted to his full self, shielding his eyes from the Doorway's pale light. Though Azuri was a whole elf again, his spirit was broken by the sorcerous pouch. Sweat plastered his hair to his head, his thin breard was bedraggled, and he stank of sweat, piss, and worse. Given his accompanying stench was so foul even the Ebotu gagged and complained, the proud elf had no doubt kept his bowels in check for most of the past day, and only recently given in to nature. Still, as the Alfyrian was both taller and broader than the rangy, hunchbacked Ebotu, they were sufficiently impressed by the appearance of what seemed a formidable warrior—whether or not his armor was soiled—from the inside of a pouch.
Azuri stammered, but stopped short of uttering anything coherent, as after so long in a knotted pouch, he seemed dumbstruck by the bright Doorway, the magical inscriptions, and the gray spectrum of the catacombs.
"What of him?" asked Khyte.
"Though we hate Alfyrians the most, they are one of the Noble Races. If you cannot persuade the Tree-Woman, he will do as your proxy."
Coming as close to Azuri as he dared, Khyte whispered, "though we have done you ill, you must cut off that creature's head, or we will all die."
"Give me water. And food," said the elf. In their dash from the gallery, none had thought to take Huiln's pack, which had most of the food. Khyte only had odds and ends from his trip through the Oases.
"The Alfyrian agrees, but we need a moment. Feel free to refresh yourselves as well," said Khyte. Though the Ebotu groaned, hissed, and glowered, and some set to pacing, others to sparring with their brutal staves, and the rest to muttering, they did not deny this respite. <
Khyte handed the backpack to the elf, who rummaged around and pulled out a lone pondira seed, a stale butt of bread, a wedge of rubbery cheese that had lost most of its piquancy, and two unpalatably stiff slices of jerky; moreover, these foodstuffs had bits of lint on them from rolling around in the barbarian's backpack. The elf chewed the tasteless food with gusto. "You're much luckier than I am," murmured Khyte. "I would never have found that pondira seed, and that's my own pack."
"Khyte," whispered Inglefras. "What comes after?"
"After what?"
"What do you think?" When Khyte still showed no recognition, she rolled her eyes, and said, "what happens after their chieftain is dead? These people 'do what is written,' like amateur cooks following recipes, and while they're waiting for this rite to be executed with the right kind of eggbeater, we have no idea what the next ingredient is. What if 'what is written' demands vengeance?"
"That's a thought," said Khyte, taking back his backpack from Azuri. It was now much lighter. How much food had he been carrying in there?
"We need to go," she hissed. "Now."
"Dryads eat eggs?' asked Khyte.
"That's your best question?" she said.
"They're resting," he said, "as I bade them." The Ebotu were anything but content with their respite, in the main bickering or sharpening their teeth with stones from their pouches.
"Why do you try my patience? I have half a mind to make you worm food and tree fertilizer." When her voice moved downscale, Khyte thought it might be a trick of the catacombs' acoustics.
"You'd never lift a finger against me," he said. But the combination of Inglefras's vocal transition from soprano to alto, and the Ebotu, who were as intimidating at rest as they were when looming overhead, made him feel that his victory over their chieftain may only have forestalled the inevitable.
"You think of me as if I was a human woman, a princess of your kind," she said. "If I was a tiger princess, you'd respect me. Trees are just as wild as tigers, you know."
"I'll take your word for it," he said. "What's your plan?"
Eurilda, who had listened closely, finally said, "the Doorway is undoubtedly anchored to their world. My people were wrong to think it unidirectional."
Khyte declined to confirm Eurilda's suspicions, as he didn't want her more interested in the dagger than she already was. "So by using the Doorway, we could end up where they live. Probably an uncharted region of Nymerea."
"You assume wrong; giants never encountered these creatures in their explorations of the Giant World. Which isn't to say they don't have a familiar cast—no doubt if Kuilea gave you children, they would look like these mongrels," she snickered, whatever commiseration she had once shared with the goblin woman forgotten.
"Kuilea?" said Inglefras. "Eurilda I understand, but Kuilea?"
"She is my most loyal friend," said Khyte, realizing it to be true as he said it, and regretting how he left things. "Was," he amended. Though he felt that he should be disgusted at Inglefras's superficiality and backbiting, he found her just as lovely. If she seemed less curvy, that might be a trick of the dancing light and shadows emanating from the Furrow.
Inglefras persisted: "But I don't find her desirable at all. What did you see in her, Khyte?"
"You're not a man, and as you said, now isn't the time. Eurilda, what are your thoughts?"
"Kuilea couldn't get any uglier, but at least she has a homely smile. The kindness of dryads is counterfeit, and the Tree Mothers are only good for shade."
"No," Khyte said, raising his voice, "on getting us to Ielnarona."
"You already have the key, Khyte. Or am I wrong that you've somehow brought an ancient controller, and can read the script?"
After a pause, Khyte said, "I don't know what ancient controller you mean, and I'm not the fastest reader, but yes, I can read it.
"The secret to skimming even this wall of words is to look for key words. So rather than plodding word by word, scan for 'dryad.'"
"I'll look for Ssyrnas, or Wywynanoir,"," he said, and directed his attention to the walls.
"You're not finding either, are you?"
"No, nor dryad," he said. "But that line refers to The Worlds of Tree Mothers."
"Which cities?" asked Inglefras.
"Julingart, Zentoqa, Huytrama..."
The dryad interrupted, "those ancient cities changed their names. Zentoqa, our first hospitality city, was the old name for Wywynanoir."
"Touch that line with the controller," Eurilda said.
"What controller?"
"It's your dagger, Khyte. I don't know how it was stolen without maiming the would-be thief, as we found those ancient blades irremovable."
"I got it from Sarin Gelf, so someone removed one."
"And it restored this Doorway's full functions when you returned it to the room."
"How does it work?"
"Touch the point to your destination. Though we should assume they know how to operate the Doorways."
"They won't stop me," he said. "We have a detente." At the touch of the blade to the ancient script for Zentoqa, the Furrow's colors shifted from the warmer, red, orange, and yellow arc to the cooler violet, blue and green side of the spectrum.
While no one blocked Khyte from switching the destination, once he had done so, they were circled by the Ebotu, and in that tense moment he suspected they weren't observing a peace but saving the gruesome part of their negotiations for later, after the honorable dispatch of their chief according to their inviolable precepts. These civilized cannibals satisfied honor before appetite.
"This place is not for you."
"I'm open to recommendations," Khyte said
"Traveling presumes a future."
"The wretch chooses a destination while we choose from the menu," said another, snickering.
"Will you have elf, human, or dryad?" There were many giggles. "I'd like all three for a balanced meal, but only the elf's dark meat, and only if it's still kicking."
The realization that the Ebotu intended to eat them alive was chilling, but Khyte had a little hope—actually, a giant hope. No longer caring if he was overheard speaking an 'unclean language,' he turned to Eurilda. "The bad news is they hunger to eat us. The good news is they think you're human."
"They've marked me for a sorceress, and there's not much room."
"Unless we find an exit, it's fight or die."
"There's a fourth option. Remember, we couldn't see them until we saw the Doorway. What if we left the light of the Doorway?"
"I wondered that myself. If they are simply invisible outside of its light, remaining where we can see them would be an advantage."
"Could we have brushed by the brutish cannibals that are so eager now to stand in our way, or did invisibility inspire them to play the part of dainty, sidestepping fairies?
"You think they only exist in the Doorway's light. What of the shadows in the dagger?"
"Maybe premonitions from the blade, or perhaps the blade collected the stray radiation as we approached the Doorway's chamber."
"Maybe we should leave the Doorway," he said. "Or maybe removing ourselves may render them invisible and more dangerous."
"It's our best gamble."
Khyte turned to the Ebotu. "If you're betraying our agreement, I see no need to hold up our end of the bargain."
"You must!" it shouted. "You would judge us for mere intentions, but become a liar and oath-breaker before our eyes. You are a hypocrite and an advocate for unreality!"
"While you're throwing names around, this one might stick: wizard. With a knife." Khyte threw the dagger through the Doorway. When the strange blade passed the otherworldly barrier, the gyrating light dimmed, and the Ebotu and the writing on the wall vanished.
When Khyte ran in circles swinging Azuri's sword, he did not connect with any invisible Ebotu, but he did produce laughter from Inglefras, Eurilda, and Azuri. Not that Khyte's caution wasn't understandable, but it was ludicrous to behold, and moreover, though the lethal tension was dissolved, the friction of hatred, fear, and uneasy attraction remained, and found an outlet in the gales of laughter. When the awkward chords of laughter died, so did their ephemeral ties, and new lines of hostility were traced, though Khyte was yet tethered to Inglefras by desire, and by some subtler entanglement to Eurilda.
Inglefras said, "Khyte, take me home."
"Not me," said Azuri. "I won't travel through that pit in the air."
"It's faster than Alfyrian Ladder," said Eurilda.
"So you say," said the Alfyrian.
After directing Azuri to The Fair Well's wine cellar, Eurilda added, "Though Merculo and your ambassadors will have questions, fear not telling them the truth, because I will not return to Kreona."
"I do not fear you," said the Alfyrian stiffly, but nonetheless backed from the room before turning to run.
When it was just the three of them, Khyte, Inglefras, and Eurilda stepped through the Doorway...
...and found themselves in a room like the one they left, except this one still had gleaming inscriptions. Khyte's dagger was a half-inch deep in the opposite wall, where another ancient blade was sheathed in a sconce.
When Eurilda grabbed the second dagger and touched a word on the wall, the Doorway's dancing lights widened, and the glimmers cast larger shadows. Khyte wrenched his dagger free, and read the new destination—Uenarak—but didn't select another city. If he had chosen correctly, they were already in Wywynanoir. There was only one more abyss to leap, and she barred the entrance to the chamber. He guessed his dagger's next destination might be Eurilda.
"Aren't you staying, Eurilda?" asked Khyte.
"You forget the plan. How can we drive up the reward if we're already here?"
"That was never your plan."
"But it was yours, and I like money just as much. Besides, if you get the dryad, and she gets you, why should I return empty handed?"
"You'll have my friendship, our goodwill, and some reward." Khyte suddenly remembered Merculo's ostentatious crown; as jewelry, it was wrecked, but as gold and silver, or as a historical artifact, the giantess might accept it as her stake in the ransom...he tossed his backpack down, knelt beside it, and began to rummage.
"How much is that worth?" Eurilda answered. "Neither Huiln nor Kuilea would rate your friendship more than a krupek." Khyte growled not by way of response, but due to discovering the silver spider abdomen was gone, as if it regrew its golden legs and skittered away. When he remembered the ravenous Alfyrian returning a much lighter pack, he knew the truth was simpler. Never trust an Alfyrian, he told Inglefras, but did not follow his own advice.
As Khyte's growling mellowed into groaning, Inglefras spoke up. "You're too hard on him, as Khyte had my will to satisfy, not his own mind."
"You admit your manipulation?" said Eurilda, raising her voice. Khyte recognized that tone—recently, it preceded kicked elves and hurled goblins—and moved to shield Inglefras.
"I admit influence," said the dryad. "Nothing more. If it would make you happy, what is done can be undone, and he may accompany you to Uenarak."
Khyte had never felt dizzier, like the floor yawned under his feet. "I would never leave you." Inglefras did not turn her gaze from the giantess.
Eurilda also ignored him. "Not only do you offer nothing I cannot take, I might forego reward for the pleasure of seeing you dead."
Khyte said, louder, "you will not kill her." Turning to Inglefras, he said, "you will not trade me away."
"Dear Khyte, it isn't up to you, is it? I'm surprised you still want me," said Inglefras. "Can't you see I've changed?"
Khyte grabbed her shoulders, and looked at Inglefras's lovely face—thinner, but still flush and vibrant—and her figure, every inch of which he had loved. When he suddenly desired those curves close against him, he pulled her close for an embrace, and at the sheer touch of her flowering garment, he knew; though her proportions had changed ever so slightly, hour by hour, so that he had been blind to it, the embrace was a more certain knowledge than the surest sight. Though she—he, Khyte whispered to himself through the roar of denial—was still a soft, pliant, dryad, her—his—shape had changed. The vegetal being in front of him was a new terrain; where once had been hills and valley, the slopes had plunged and the depression had blossomed.
"How..." Khyte's anguished noise was untranslatable. "Who are you?"
"I have told you several times. Though I bear her name, I've never been all of Inglefras. If I'm Inglefras, one of your thoughts is Khyte."
Eurilda walked around them with a look of bemusement, then laughed. "I see the problem. Your lover is more changeable than you are, Khyte. Did she think becoming a man would bring you closer, just as you cut off your manhood to draw her in?" She leaned in to Inglefras. "You've cheated two hearts, because what I once held in mine for Khyte is gone. And there's now only one coin I will accept."
The giantess stabbed at the dryad's heart, but Khyte, whose feet still danced to the dryad's will, found his own ribs hanging on the ancient dagger. He coughed, feeling the piercing pluck at his breath, and blood bubbled from his mouth. When he slumped into the darkening world, it rippled with running footsteps and Inglefras calling, answering, and echoing.
Khyte opened his eyes. The dryad's face was everywhere, like a kaleidoscope of green shades superimposed on the background gray; under each angry face spears were clutched, and this repeated image of Inglefras circled Eurilda.
Having no choice but to fight at her natural scale, Eurilda fell to one knee as she boomed into enormity, but her head still scraped a shower of gray silt from the ceiling.
When the wind from Eurilda's gigantic sword slash fanned his prone body, and the images of Inglefras leaped all directions, including over him, to dodge its sweep, he knew this was no dream. His Inglefras led a legion of Inglefras. I've never been all of Inglefras. They stabbed and stabbed, scoring Eurilda's arm and thigh with spear bites, until she rushed on all fours, like an enraged bear, through the Doorway. Though most stepped out of her way, she crushed two dryads in her passage to Uenarak. Khyte wept weakly to see his love's bloodied body laid out double, then he once again faded to black.