Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Prophecy, page 3
Another determined tug on the rope from above jerked Cymric up from the stones. Again, the creature yanked him back down against the pull of the rope, the impact knocking some air out of Cymric’s lungs. He watched as bubbles of his life’s breath broke from the darkness, rising through the cool blue near the top of the well.
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Another sustained pull from the rope shot splinters of agony through Cymric’s body as he rose a few feet in the air. Pinwheels of painful light arced across his field of vision. He struggled against the desire to scream, a small comer of his mind fiercely reminding him that he was underwater. Water moved through his crooked fingers, flowed past his face. He was still, unmoving. Water pressed against his ears, and his hair streamed backward as he was lifted upward. Cymric felt stretched taut in the front, stretched somehow thin. Sparks ignited in his back as muscles clenched. His muscles were trying, and failing, to hold something in place.
The pull on the rope stopped. An air bubble escaped Cymric’s nose with a ticklish pop, rolling up his cheek on its way to the surface. His body floated slowly back down to the well bottom. The tautness in front released; simultaneously he felt the muscles in his back relax.
What was happening? Cymric’s awareness had split, as if there were two of him rather than one. One of him rose with the pull of the rope. The other stayed where he was at the bottom of the well. Cymric felt his body settle, legs first, onto the well bottom. He sensed that he was once again whole.
The creature has hold of my spirit. The villagers have hold of my body. Freeing the sprite had given the other entity an opportunity to capture another victim, and it had seized the closest available spirit. Cymric thought of what he had seen of the creature. The jagged hooks in the center of its astral body looked too big to be intended for human spirit—or the spirits of water sprites. Unfortunately, they worked quite well against smaller prey.
The villagers and the spiritcatcher are involved in a tug of war. Cymric easily imagined the villagers’ increasingly desperate efforts to pull him out of the well, lifting his body while his spirit remained in the maw of the creature.
Each renewal of the contest would strain the life threads that bound Cymric’s body to his spirit. The physical efforts of the villagers would have no effect on the astral spiritcatcher. They would never be able to pull him out, not until death separated his spirit from his body and the entity had Cymric’s spirit forever. Then the villagers would pop his corpse from the well like a cork from a bottle.
Cymric readied a spell. Disrupting the magic had freed the sprite; perhaps it could also free him. Another wave of pain interrupted his casting; the tug of war was on again. The spell unraveled in his mind, dissipating with no effect. pain made the work impossible. This time the contest was much shorter. The pulling stopped. Perhaps the villagers were giving up on the idea of saving the wizard.
Now Cymric tried a quick spell, pulling a pattern whole from his mind, one that did not need astral threads to complete it. A sliver of light formed in astral space, and Cymric flung it at the creature. The mind dagger struck the spiritcatcher.
The creature began to thrash wildly, tossing Cymric around the bottom of the well like a seal in the mouth of a shark. He managed to protect his head, but the rest of his body was less fortunate. Water churned violently. Reverberating sluicing noises punctuated by the thump of a knee hitting stone or the crack of a wrist flung against a wall.
Cymric convulsed once, expelling stale breath in a burst of bubbles. Concentration was becoming more difficult. His heartbeat became a thick, physical presence in his chest and ears. His desire to breathe weighted evenly with his common sense at the folly of inhaling underwater. Cymric knew the balance would soon tilt. He had time for one, maybe two, spells.
U;arn to turn your knowledge into power. What did he know about the entity? Not much. It existed soley on the astral plane. It relied on magic to affect the physical world. It had hold of his spirit. Cymric tried to relax, to conserve air. The arrangement of hooks in the entity’s maw were set into a complicated pattern. Perhaps the pattern in the maw matched the pattern of a specific spirit. If so, the spirit-catcher had captured a spirit it was not meant to capture. Unless the bakers of Tuakan had superior magics to those Cymric had seen.
Let me go, you’ve got the wrong spirit, he thought. This knowledge might be too frail to spin into a thread, but it was all Cymric had to work with.
The knowledge produced a thread so wispy and elusive that Cymric could barely distinguish it from the surrounding blackness. His skill allowed him to detect a bend here, a weakness there; the thread did not look strong. Cymric clamped down on his thoughts. Adding the weight of his doubts to the thread could snap it before thread ever touched pattern.
Cymric again called up the pattern for dispelling magic. The pattern was blurry, particularly around the edges. But, no, the pattern never changed, only his perception of the pattern. He must better focus his mind. Ah, now the pattern looked a little clearer. Cymric placed the thread where he could, using fewer knots than would normally be prudent, but he was in a hurry.
His fingers objected to being spread in the right way to release the spell, and it felt as if he had to lock each digit into place individually. There. He had it. Cymric poured every scrap of mental energy he had into the spell.
The spiritcatcher reacted as if shocked. There was a brief stab of pain, then Cymric felt the creature release him, then back away. The wizard’s muddled mind enjoyed the sense of relief, while another firm corner of his thoughts tried to remind him there was still something very important to do.
Get to the surface. Cymric kicked off the bottom of the well. He rose several feet, then his legs cramped violently. Fighting panic, he remembered the rope. Two tugs and they would pull him up. He tugged once, pulling three or four feet of loose rope down to him. Another frantic grab produced more rope.
This isn’t happening. The villagers can’t have given up. Desperately, unable to think clearly, Cymric panic-climbed the rope, going nowhere, pulling yard after yard of rope down to him. His right arm cramping as his legs had, Cymric tried to swim with just his left arm, but he didn’t have the strength to move. He began to settle back down to the bottom.
Something lashed his face. Dimly he thought the spiritcatcher had returned to reclaim him. Then a hard jerk pulled him upward, and Cymric realized the lash had been the slack rope being hauled up with considerable speed. But he couldn’t hold his breath any longer. Involuntary reactions won. As the last of the air exploded from his lungs, Cymric inhaled a choking gasp of water.
He broke the surface at good speed, his right shoulder catching against the crossbeam, which sent him twisting around. As momentum swung him, his feet rose above the crossbeam. The twisting motion spun his legs out, over the rim of the well. The villagers stopped pulling. His legs hit against the wall, and his head and torso began to fall back into the well.
“Pull! Don’t lose him now!” shouted a woman. The villagers pulled. Cymric slapped up against the crossbeam, pinned by the force of the pull.
“Easy. Don’t crack his skull after all this,” said the woman. “Hold him there. I’ll lift him out.” As Cymric coughed up water, he heard the sound of approaching boots. A strong arm encircled his the waist.
“I’ve got you,” said the woman in crystal chain. “Let go of the rope,” she commanded the villagers, and they did. Then she lifted him up with a smooth motion, trying to land Cymric on his feet. The lift was good, but Cymric’s legs refused to work and he slumped to the ground. The woman made sure the fall was slow enough to do no further damage.
Cymric gasped, his lungs working like the bellows of a dwarven weaponsmith. Legs sprawled, he leaned his head against the well, his eyes lifting wearily toward the woman. The rings of her armor caught and bent the fiery red of the light of late day. He couldn’t read her shadowed face, but those arms and the runes on her sword spoke plainly enough. An adept. Definitely a swordmaster. Probably a very good one.
“Is he going to live?” bubbled a voice. Cymric turned his head in the other direction. He looked at the face of the sprite, set into the statue. Its face moved with the sound of thick syrup pouring from a narrow container, reforming at a different angle, the better to look at Cymric.
“I am no physik, but I think our wizard’s going to make it,” the swordmaster said.
“I asked the water not to drown you. I did my best, but water is water,” the sprite said. There was that syrupy sound again, and the sprite was studying Cymric closely. “I think the creature is gone. I know what you had to do to free me. My thanks.” The sprite continued to stare at him.
Cymric guessed that the sprite knew he knew her name. Cymric wanted to say that her secret was safe with him, that he had no desire to bind a water sprite to his service. He also wanted to thank her for her help, to talk to the sprite, to ask her about the spiritcatcher. But he didn’t have enough energy. Instead, he said, “I’m leaving soon. You may stay.”
The answer seemed to satisfy the sprite. The sprite smiled at Cymric, her expression turning itself inside out with a slurp as she went back down into the well.
The blacksmith came over carrying Cymric’s staff, which was still wet. The woman hauled Cymric to his feet. Dizziness laced with pain moved in a wave down his body, but he managed to remain upright.
“This came up a little before you did,” said the blacksmith, handing Cymric his staff.
Taking it gingerly, Cymric said, “Sometime’s a wizard’s staff knows when to quit before the wizard does.” He sagged against the staff for support.
“Thought we’d lost you, wizard,” said the blacksmith, inspecting Cymric as closely as the swordmaster was doing.
“Before you paid me? Never,” said Cymric. His smile wouldn’t bend quite right, but he was determined to tough ii out. At least until the villagers no longer provided an audience.
The swordmaster looked doubtful. “Wizard, I’ve pulled boys from bear-baiting pits who looked better than you do,” she said.
Cymric dismissed the comment with a wave of his hand, saying, “We wizards are a resourceful lot.” He gave the swordmaster a firmer smile. In return she cricked the ught comer of her mouth and raised her left eyebrow. Cymric decided not to waste any more energy trying to convince her. He had a show to close. He gathered his thoughts, tailoring old words to new circumstances.
“Gentlefolk of Twin Chin, hear me! A fell creature indeed inhabited your well, holding your sprite prisoner. Cymric the wizard descended into the well to. battle the creature. Down there Cymric learned wisdom from your own elementalist, Phraetun! Cymric forged Phraetun’s wisdom of years past into a mighty enchantment. Cymric and the creature smote each other, but in the end, Cymric’s enchantment won out. Cymric the wizard has returned, triumphant!”
“Only ’cause we hauled you out like a pig stuck in quickmud,” said a farm hand. Cymric’s vision wavered, but of those whose expressions he could see, most looked decidedly unimpressed by Cymric’s rhetoric.
Perhaps this is not an event upon which to build the legend of Cymric. Smiling ruefully, he nodded to the farm hand.
“I’ll tell Luwen to get your supper ready,” said the blacksmith. He turned away, took a stride, but then turned back again. “I’ll go see Mayor Drofm and the others too. I’ll have your money for you by morning.”
Cymric nodded, and the blacksmith went on his way. The wizard closed his eyes for a moment. He hurt. He couldn’t face a tavern full of people yet. He needed a few moments by himself.
He saw a boy laboring to carry a pair of full buckets across the center of town. Then the boy paused, lowering the buckets for a rest. He glanced at the well, did a double take. Then slowly took in the soaked wizard leaning on a wet staff.
“You got the sprite back?” asked the boy.
Cymric nodded. The boy grinned. “Mama told me to go down to the river to fetch some water quick. I told her the wizard was fixing our well, but she sent me anyway. Mama was wrong.”
“Apparently,” said the weary wizard.
The boy kicked up some dust with the first four steps of a sprint, then reconsidered, going back to the buckets. The wizard blinked.
“Where were you off to?” Cymric asked. The boy grunted, lifting the two buckets before replying.
“Davil and some others are still down by the river, filling barrels in a cart. I was just going to tell them they could stop,” the boy said.
Cymric saw his chance. “You go on home with your water. I’ll go down to the river and tell the others,” he said.
“Just wait until I tell Mama you did it,” the boy said in high-pitched excitement. Then his expression clouded. “If I do, she’ll cuff me for talking smart to her.”
“She probably already knows about the well,” Cymric said. Then he lowered his head and gave the boy his best conspiratorial smile, “In case she doesn’t know, you might want to fill up your buckets with the fresh, clean well water. Don’t say anything to her. Just give her the water. She’ll know the difference.”
The boy took a moment to puzzle this out, then his face brightened again. He kicked over his two buckets, then began drawing water from the well. Cymric began to walk out of town in the direction of the river.
His slow pace changed to a hobble when he reached the gentle incline at the edge of town. His right knee was flaming with pain, and his right wrist couldn’t take much weight. His calves continued to cramp. His back refused to bend. Neither hip seemed inclined to move. Cymric paused for breath. The rest was welcome, but breathing still produced a raw burning in his lungs. He set his eyes on the top of the hill, gauging the number of steps it would lake to reach the crest. He began to count.
At thirty-one steps, the slope reversed. Cymric hobbled, then stumbled downhill. Once out of sight of the village, he stopped. Sliding his hands down his staff for support, Cymric dropped to the ground cross-legged. He had to wait a few moments for the ragged gasping of his breath to calm down. Then, still holding his staff with Ins left hand, he reached for a side pouch with his right, lie winced; his wrist wouldn’t bend enough for him to put his hand in the pouch.
Cymric laid his staff across his knees, then fumbled I It rough the pouch with his left hand. When he found what he was looking for, the herbs had become a sopping wet wad. The silver-green leaves had been tied off into the proper dosages, but were now hopelessly matted together. Cymric pulled off what he thought was a single dose, reconsidered and pulled off half-again as much. Taking a mouthful, he wondered if the soaking might have diluted the power of the herbs, whose bitter-burnt taste was less offensive than usual. The wizard closed his eyes and waited for the pain to ease.
Stupidity rarely has to be invited twice. The villagers had said the well was inhabited by a sprite. He’d known the well would still have contained water if the sprite had simply left. Which meant something had to be holding the sprite. Cymric hadn’t been prepared for it, and it had nearly killed him. He grimaced.
The beating the spiritcatcher gave me was plenty, thank you. No need to add to it myself. Cymric lay back against the ground. It could also have been a curse on the well— the spirit holding a petty grudge perhaps. It really shouldn’t have been an enormous astral spiritcatcher. Astral entities didn’t make a habit of lurking in the wells of small villages, Cymric’s knee now signaled a persistent, but distant, ache. He tried his wrist and flinched; better wait a little longer. He thought more about the spiritcatcher. He’d have thought an astral creature of that size would have to be magically summoned or could only exist in areas of high enchantment. Phraetun’s pact with the sprite couldn’t possibly have been a sufficient point of entry for a spiritcatcher. Unless Phraetun was more of an elementalist than Cymric imagined, but he still didn’t think so.
He sat up. Pain no longer dominated his senses, but was reduced now to an occasional, throbbing reminder of injury. He stood up, powering his rise primarily with his left arm and leg. After gingerly tested his right leg, which seemed solid enough, Cymric continued his walk to the river.
I freed the sprite. I freed myself. I’m getting paid ... not a fortune, hut I’m getting paid. The smile started on the right side of Cymric’s face. By the time he reached the river, the smile had evened out. About forty yards from the river he saw seven adolescent boys and girls hauling water to a large two-wheeled cart, which already held four huge barrels. A series of deep ruts closer to the river told Cymric that they’d parked the cart on soft ground during a previous trip. Dozens of footprints and churned-up mud surrounded the ruts. It must have been some task to free the cart.
On the way to the river, Cymric had refined his speech to make it sound more impressive. He opened his mouth. Seven pairs of muddy feet stopped moving. Seven tired, dirty faces regarded him with varying expressions. A girl pushed an errant strand of brown hair behind one ear, but the strand only flopped forward again. She let it go.
Cymric realized just how tired he was and exhaled loudly. “I am a wizard,” he said. “I freed your sprite. Your well works. Go on home.”
The cheer caught Cymric by surprise; then the group tipped and emptied one barrel and sent a couple of buckets flying into the air. One of the boys turned to Cymric, giving him a stiff-armed salute with his fist from the chest into the air. It was one of the worst imitations of the Throal honor salute Cymric had ever seen, but he enjoyed it anyway. The youngsters grabbed the cart, urging him to join them in a chorus of voice. The girl with the brown hair was pushing on the back of the cart. She patted the hack of it and waved to Cymric to take a seat. Cymric logged to the cart. He jumped in with a half-twist, landing with a thump. The youngsters whooped their approval, but Cymric’s body was pointedly reminding him of his injuries. The cart lurched forward.
Cymric blinked. Out on the river, the current eddied to form a pool that continued to expand. As the young people joked with one another, working up the courage to question the wizard, Cymric cast a spell. They heard the casting. Quieting suddenly, they became very attentive about pushing the cart. Cymric again enhanced his astral sense. He ignored the cart’s jostling to see a blot of black beneath the water. As the cart’s wheels creaked toward Twin Chin, Cymric watched the spiritcatcher travel south along the river.
