Chapter 3
Tristan checked the formula again. He didn’t see where he could have gone wrong: two rabbit heads; a pint of lion’s blood; two mountain lion claws; eight leaves from the Calina plant, which grew at the bottom of the deepest lakes; and two Sepher berries from the mountainside, all stirred for three days in five gallons of water at a temperature just below boiling. A few drops of this, if lit on fire, should make him invisible for a few hours, but it wasn’t working.
“What in TARNATION am I doing wrong?!!” he thundered. He had been practicing Glisphin for about a thousand years. As he prepared to reread page 3,645 of the 17,015-page book titled Glishpin: Theory and Applications, he heard wings flapping. It was a bird, and he could tell by the sound of the wings beating the air that it was a konulan and was about two miles away still but approaching quickly.
He carefully reread the ancient formula: “kiksin fakra ipz tung hala”—then, he realized his mistake; he had forgotten that on the third day, the bubbling brew’s temperature must not be allowed to decrease slowly and steadily, but rather must be decreased suddenly and drastically by pouring fifteen pounds of ice into the mixture.
“Ah ha,” he said to himself, pleased. “And now, I have to start over from the damn beginning!”
The konulan arrived.
“I bring you news, master,” it said. It lowered its head towards the ground. There were books all around the room, which was located in a cave carved out of the side of a tall cliff so far above ground the massive trees below looked like shrub bushes. Most of the books were thick. They had titles such as Glisphin: Poisons, Glisphin: Mind Reading, Glisphin: Counters to Feiglushen. There were numerous glass vessels of differing sizes filled with powders and labeled to denote how much time it took for the sand to go through the aperture from one compartment to the next. There were also some adjustable glass vessels on which a lever could be pushed to adjust the size of the aperture through which the powder fell—to make it take longer or shorter—and corresponding numerical units to let the user know how long it would take for the vessel to run out of sand. Koksun, a long, thin black cat lurked about, its yellow eyes gleaming at the konulan bird that had entered the evil abode. There were swords and daggers along the wall, as well as many metallic, mechanical devices, most of which an intruder would have found hopelessly perplexing but whose use Tristan knew to the last detail.
“What news have you brought me?” asked Tristan. Tristan was a tall, slightly old-looking man. He stood over six feet tall. He had a pair of pince-nez perched on top of his long, crooked nose. His hair was long, silver, and curly towards the ends. He was slightly hunched, more the result of too many late nights spent poring over the hundreds of books in his lair than the unseemly number of years he had spent amongst the living.
“It has happened, sire,” the konulan bird said in a scratchy, high-pitched voice; “the prophecy is beginning to unfold.”
“Of what prophecy do you speak?” asked Tristan. The magic formula he had been working on ceased to matter.
“Sire, I refer to the prophecy. It’s all beginning to unfold.”
“Kasani!” shouted Tristan, his face going pale. “Kasani, Kasani, Kasani!” he shouted over and over, nearly tripping over Koksun, who had come closer, curious about the visitor . . . thinking it looked tasty.
“Thank you very much, my precious eyes in the sky,” he said attempting to compose himself; “you have done your job well; to show my gratitude I will not feed you to my cat; now fly away, and speak to no one about this or you will be Koksun’s next meal after I skin you and slowly cook you to a crisp!”
The konulan let out a sigh of relief and flew off as quickly as it could. Koksun looked downcast. Konulans that came by and did not please Master became meals.
Koksun was in reality the feline prison of the soul of a once-feared and whispered-about Metinvurian assassin and spy of the same name. The Metinvurs, renowned more for their use of spies and assassins than for their skill in open warfare, were of the few who knew about and had sought out Tristan's services. Thinking to force him to become his puppet under pain of death, centuries ago, the king of the Metinvurs had sent Koksun to carry out the task. In spite of thirty years of successfully carrying out such clandestine missions for a king who rewarded success with life and failure with death, upon scaling Tristan's perilous walls, Koksun had been so unnerved by Tristan's convincingly warm greeting and invitation to sit down and discuss the purpose of his visit that he had unwittingly drunk the glass of tea Tristan offered him, and in a matter of minutes had been confined to a hairy, limber, twenty-pound feline prison.
At first Koksun had resisted stoically the most savage of tortures, refusing to tell Tristan the secrets of the Metinvurian spy and assassin network, but where the rack and scalpel had failed, Tristan discovered to his surprise that the threat of a bath or the withholding of a day's worth of milk never did. He had since become Tristan's ever-faithful companion, a situation for which Tristan was so grateful he had sent a warm thank-you letter to the Metinvurian king himself.
Tristan, long a committed loner, had been of the school of thought that friendships were overrated. He had once calculated precisely that an hour of quiet study benefitted the soul more than a hundred hours of social mingling. Koksun, who had first hated Tristan for having bested him but soon came to adore him as his liberator from a lifetime of thankless missions that risked life and limb, little by little began to open up Tristan’s mind.
Koksun had noticed Tristan’s countless late-night flights from his lair, which were intended, Tristan later confided, to discover whether a certain “prophecy” had begun to unfold. Being prudent enough not to ask for additional details, Koksun did have the audacity to point out to Tristan that what one could do well a hundred or a thousand could do better. Koksun then pointed out that, if Tristan could turn a human into an animal while retaining the ever-valuable gift of speech, surely he could impart the gift of speech to a natural born animal.
Tristan had at first scoffed at the idea, but possessing as much curiosity as the feline race itself, Tristan had been unable to resist first an hour, then a day, and then a month of some of the most intensive Glisphin research he had carried out in his centuries-long life. Having become adequately convinced that it was at least theoretically possible, he then confided to Koksun that he was afraid the deed could backfire.
“After all,” he had said to Koksun, “if I arm a group of animals with the power of speech, it will only be a matter of when, not if, it is discovered, and these tools of surveillance could quickly become the tools of my enemies, who would then surely destroy me.”
Sufficiently impressed, nonetheless, by Koksun’s difficult-to-refute logic on the benefits of having more eyes, and then by his having been right about the possibility of arming avian creatures with the gift of speech, Tristan could not help but think out loud and reveal to Koksun detail by detail what the prophecy entailed. Koksun argued to Tristan irrefutably that he stood little chance of discovering the commencement of the prophecy by himself, at least not in a timely fashion.
“Of what use though would that be,” he had queried Koksun, “if these creatures rise against me or are hijacked by my enemies?” It was then that Koksun had pointed out to Tristan his appalling lack of trust in his ability to instill fear and to detect deceit, given that he was a demonstrated master of the former and was equally accomplished in the art of carrying out and implementing deceit.
At that point, Koksun began to reveal many secrets—far more than what he had revealed previously under duress—about the Metinvurs’ ability to utilize spies while avoiding or sniffing out the presence of double agents. Tristan took copious notes while Koksun spoke and later discovered to his delight that he had a few books on the subject, dust-covered and never-opened, most likely due to their titles, such as Interpersonal Skills, Social Behavior, and Inspirational Management. He almost chan
ged each title but soon fell in love with the euphemistic descriptors for intimidating, interrogating, and inspiring subordinate spies.
Still a bit unsure of his ability to ensure the positive outcome of imparting speech to birds, he had peppered Koksun with questions, who never lacked a convincing response. He revealed that he himself was probably the first Metinvurian agent to ever turn on his sovereign, and the uniqueness of his situation was self-explanatory.
Koksun convinced Tristan, and one by one an avian spy became two, and then ten, and then one hundred. Over the following centuries Tristan had amassed an army of one thousand konulans—his tiny eyes, he liked to call them—and around forty of the majestic avian pholung species. The konulans were his bird of choice because their treachery could only come in the form of counterintelligence. Their small, two-inch frames would permit little more. The pholung was a different animal. Fifty pounds, a sixteen-foot wing span, and two talons equipped with five fourteen-inch-long, razor-sharp claws could clearly pose a nasty physical threat to even the most accomplished of wizards.
Tristan had at first been reluctant to impart speech to such a formidable creature, but Koksun had laughed at Tristan’s alarm before explaining the many solutions to this. Most importantly, all pholungs to be given speech must be taken from their nests while still chicks. From there, Tristan would raise them and instill subordination and loyalty to the very marrow of each pholung’s soul. Secondly, these pholungs were to be taught that every pholung could talk and was Tristan’s spy but that communication with another pholung without Tristan’s explicit permission would bring a death sentence. The pholung’s natural solitary preference made this latter tactic particularly effective. Furthermore, in the rare circumstances a pholung attempted to betray Tristan by talking to another pholung, almost always the pholung would have the misfortune of choosing a pholung able only to utter the beautiful, but limited, “caw” characteristic of pholungs and would find the pholung looking at him skeptically as if he were insane. The rebellious pholung usually panicked when this occurred, interpreting the bird as having explicitly refused the offer to engage in treason.
However, for particularly important missions, missions that required collaboration, he would allow a temporary relaxing of the prohibition on contact between pholungs. These pholungs would be shown who their partners were going to be and told that they could talk to each other and to each other only and only with regards to their mission. Any deviation from this was a death sentence, as was any failure to report a deviation.
Tristan only permitted talking pholungs the right to mate under the rarest of circumstances, which occurred when he was particularly convinced of the loyalty of a male and female pholung. The chicks of these lovebirds would be brought to Tristan even before hatching so that Tristan could impart speech to them. Even though Koksun’s strategy of only selectively imparting speech had worked excellently, Tristan knew there was no choice but to impart speech to all offspring of talking pholungs, as even the most intimidated, credulous of all would be apt to wonder why their chicks would not speak to them if all pholungs could talk. Tristan didn’t want the population of talking pholungs to soar out of control, and so he only permitted talking pholungs to mate when the population had dipped below forty.
Konulans proved to be more of a challenge because of their greater numbers, but he needed large numbers if he were to keep Sodorf under effective surveillance. Disloyalty amongst konulans was a bit more common, due to their overly sociable nature. Getting them to refrain from talking to one another was like getting water to refrain from going downhill. These birds had proven so unruly at first that he was about to kill all talking konulans, but Koksun convinced him to first try a different stratagem. After killing off the ringleaders of the rebellious ones (which happened to be the plumpest, and given that the executions were carried out by Koksun, Tristan did wonder if some of them had been innocent), the rest were indoctrinated with the teaching that not all konulans could talk and that they were a superior race and that, while they could talk to other talking konulans, under no circumstances could they ever talk to anyone or anything else besides Tristan and Koksun.
He found that by giving them a way to release their social energy amongst each other it was easier for them to restrain their chatty ways in prohibited situations. Furthermore, he found the konulans’ gossipy nature a particularly effective way to discover any acts of rebellion or insubordination, as they readily informed on violators of protocol, often gleefully. The konulans themselves were thus their own worst enemy, and within a short time so many of their number had been fed alive to Koksun that they found the inner strength to restrict their chatty nature to talking konulans only. Where konulans occasionally failed to report prohibited activity to Tristan, Koksun often filled the gap, noticing slight tremors in the beak or smelling certain odors that indicated deception. Over time, treachery had become such a rarity that Tristan had to hunt and catch non-talking konulans in order to keep Koksun happy.
Lastly, Koksun had encouraged Tristan to reestablish contact with the Moscorians, whom he had been furious with after their ignominious defeat at the hands of the Sodorfians centuries earlier, and whom he had vowed at one point never to rely on again due to his great displeasure. Koksun had pointed out that, while they may have failed him badly, this would only make them all the more determined to atone for their defeat by mercilessly attacking the Sodorfians when the time was right. Yet again unable to refute the logic of his feline companion, he set aside his mountain of resentment and made contact with those he had once thought he would incinerate if he ever had the misfortune of seeing them again.
Feiklen and his opponent bowed to each other. Feiklen held out his sword and watched his opponent carefully, calm as a rattlesnake waiting for a mouse to make a move. Sikon lunged forward with his sword; Feiklen stepped to the side, turned his body ninety degrees and parried Sikon’s sword hard, knocking it off course. Feiklen immediately turned to his right, lifting his sword and bringing it across Sikon’s throat, which was covered in armor.
THWACKK!! The dulled blade whacked Sikon’s armor-covered throat. Feiklen stepped past Sikon with his left leg and spun around, using the spinning motion to deliver a powerful thrust to Sikon’s ribs, covered with chain mail.
WHOOSH!! Air rushed out of Sikon’s lungs as if out of a bag. Feiklen backed away from Sikon but then quickly came forward. He faked a thrust to get Sikon to parry, then immediately stepped forward past Sikon and turned to his right, spinning all the way around, back towards Sikon, who now had his sword pointed downwards, and he brought his sword around in a powerful, spinning slash to Sikon’s throat.
WHACKK!! The sword slashed across Sikon’s throat with such force that it nearly cut through the protective armor, dull blade notwithstanding. Sikon scowled.
Feiklen stepped back again. They faced each other, two animals looking for an exploitable weakness, a misstep. They circled each other slowly. Heavy, chain-linked armor adorned their large frames. A large helmet rested comfortably on Feiklen’s head, a long, curved horn protruding from each side. A steel mask covered his entire face, except his eyes. His large, steel-tipped boots scraped the floor as he slowly circled Sikon. Thirty warriors surrounded them in a square formation.
Suddenly Feiklen charged forward with an overhead slash; Sikon raised his sword at a forty-five degree angle and simultaneously stepped forward and to the right slashing Feiklen’s sword downward, slowing its momentum and redirecting it to the right. Feiklen brought his sword up to protect his upper torso, raised his right arm above his head, with the sword pointing straight downwards at a ninety-degree angle to the ground, stepped to the right, shifted his weight back, and braced himself for the slash he knew was coming.
SKWEENNNN!!! Sikon’s sword crashed into Feiklen’s, sparks flying. Sikon’s sword was now just slightly to Feiklen’s left. Feiklen brought his blade up and struck Sikon’s
throat hard; he continued the motion, twisting his wrists as he whirled the sword above his head and then, holding the sword sideways above his head, stabbed hard at Sikon’s helmet—intentionally missing the eye holes—and then, twisting his body around the other way, smashed the sword into the back of Sikon’s helmet—just as his head was being rocked back from the first blow; then he swung it around again, twisting his whole body around and switching his stance accordingly, and brought the sword smashing into the front of Sikon’s helmet again. With Sikon’s weight leaning backwards once more, Feiklen brought his sword up high above his head and then brought it down with crushing force on the back of Sikon’s legs, taking them out from under him as if he were reaping stalks of corn. He then stuck his sword through the small gap in the armor between Sikon’s collarbone and throat and held it there. Sikon tapped the canvas mat.
Kihlgun looked at Feiklen somewhat balefully. Had the battle hammer, rather than the long sword, been the weapon of choice of the Moscorians, Kihlgun would have been first in command without any doubt. He was a grotesque, six-foot-eight mountain of muscle and meanness, which his three hundred-plus-pound frame seemed to have been specially designed to carry with craftsman-like efficiency. The two hundred-pound battle hammer that he wielded with the ease of an orchestra conductor waving a baton but with the maniacal pleasure of a sadistic slavemaster striking with his whip was a challenge to most of the Moscorians to hold at waist height for more than thirty seconds, and moving it through the air without it crashing down upon their heads was a challenge few of them had attempted more than once.
However, tradition was a stubborn thing amongst the Moscorians, and the long sword had always been their sacred weapon and always would be, and they would be damned if they would change that on account of one freak of nature whose strength seemed to defy the laws of physics. They were quick to point out, on the rare occasions where Kihlgun seemed to be in a sufficiently non-homicidal state of mind to listen to constructive criticism, that while his battle hammer was unstoppable by armor or by traditional blocking techniques, if he missed his opponent the head of his battle hammer tended to end up buried three feet in the ground upon impact. Although Kihlgun could extricate his hammer from this predicament with all the speed and grace of a tornado ripping a tree out of the ground, the two or three seconds that it delayed him could at least theoretically give his opponent time to inflict a mortal wound.
They knew that, while in theory they were right, they had yet to see an opponent who was not already psychologically vanquished at the moment he saw this oddity of nature swinging around an object that no bipedal creature should be able to easily move. The gust of wind from a missed stroke could sometimes knock a man over, and when that did not happen the two or three seconds afforded by Kihlgun’s momentary vulnerability after a missed chop were normally spent in an unhelpful trance that Kihlgun abruptly ended by shattering the man’s bones to dust.
He had never confronted armor that could withstand a single direct stroke of his instrument of death. The strongest armor crumpled beneath the merciless power of the hammer head and turned on its owner, puncturing lungs and organs, followed closely behind by the hammer head itself whose mere shock waves could fracture bones a good distance from the point of impact.
Another matter too for Feiklen’s superior ranking (although they never dared tell Kihlgun this) was that even these bloodthirsty killers were a bit unhinged by his werewolf-like transformation during battle from his ordinary, sullen self to a giggling, wide-eyed killer that they tried to maintain a safe twenty feet from during battle. Many of them secretly feared the day would come where Kihlgun would wake up covered in the blood of every last one of them unable to even remember what had happened.
Yet, unable to even calmly contemplate the calamitous consequences of Kihlgun feeling snubbed, they all agreed that keeping him second in command was the best tightrope they could walk with this creature they could neither trust nor bring themselves to get rid of.
“Impressive,” a guttural voice uttered.
Silence descended on the room like rain at a picnic. No one had seen Tristan enter the room. Everyone stood to attention, then bowed. Even Feiklen bowed. Koksun lay in Tristan’s arms as he stroked him slowly.
“Feiklen and I have important things to discuss,” he said. The men looked relieved and headed towards the door.
“Master, what news do you bring me? Shall we finally be allowed to once again restore the Moscorians to their former glory and lay waste to the subhumans of Sodorf?” Feiklen asked in a deep voice.
“All will come in good time.”
“You’ve been saying that for many years . . . .”
“I have; I know, but the time is now sooner than you think.”
“What has happened?”
Tristan looked intently at Feiklen. “Sodorf has knighted a man who is not of noble birth.”
Feiklen’s face turned ghostly pale.
“Then we must act quickly,” said Feiklen.
“Quickly, indeed,” said Tristan, in his low throaty voice. “Quickly indeed.”