Saebrya

“Are you…sure he’ll help me?” Ryan panted, staring up at the imposing stone wall that surrounded Siorus. They were standing in line, waiting for the guards to clear them for entering the city. The body of the creature that was eating him passed through several of the haggard-faced travelers behind them, a gigantic, segmented length that seemed to stretch on forever.

“Yes,” Saebrya said. “He’ll help.” She shifted her feet. “How long is this gonna take?”

“Sometimes…all day,” Ryan told her with pained breaths. It was even worse than usual because, to Saebrya’s horror, the roads were all overgrown with aspens.

…aspens that carried the same bright silver veoh as her friend.

The line was actually having to move around the trees to get to the gates of Siorus.

Saebrya glanced back up toward the head of the line and willed it to move faster. Anything to get past the Auldhunds before they realized that Ryan was responsible for the overgrowth threatening their city.

They’d been waiting in line three hours when a man on a tall brown mare cantered past them, directly to the gatesman. With him, four hounds trotted at the mare’s heels, their tongues lolling from their mouths. They were covered with smears of silver ether.

Saebrya looked up with a start.

Above his hounds, the man was sloshing silver with every bounce of his horse. He had a grim, focused look of concentration on his face.

Immediately, she recognized the dual faces of the one they sought and she stepped out of line.

“Auld Vethyle!” Saebrya cried, reflexively. “Please help us!”

The Auld glanced at her, but there was no recognition in his eyes. His eyes shifted to at Ryan, saw his sweaty, feverish visage, and he quickly spurred his horse deeper into the city, the dogs padding at his horse’s heels.

Dismay took a tight hold on her chest, making it hurt to breathe.

Well, what did you expect? A part of her demanded. It was eleven years ago. You and Ryan were just kids.

“Get back in line!” one of their fellow travelers snapped at them. Crestfallen, watching the Auld’s back as it disappeared into the shadows of the city, she slid back into place in front of Ryan—and the enormous sipper.

I hate you, she thought, glaring into its faceted black eyes.

The sipper watched her.

“Was that…him?” Ryan asked, wincing as he struggled to breathe.

“No,” Saebrya lied. “But he was an Auld, so I thought I’d try.”

“How’d…you know he was…an Auld?” Ryan asked. “He looked like a woodcutter with a horse.”

“Do I ask you how you win at chits?” Saebrya demanded, though coldness traced delicate fingers along her spine. This was becoming too delicate a game. Sooner or later, Ryan was going to figure it out. Sooner or later, he’d discover that she had known he was an auldling all along. Then he’d hate her.

“No,” Ryan admitted. “But I’ll tell you if you want.”

Saebrya almost asked him, so tempted was she to learn his secret. Then she shrugged and turned her attention to the guards working at the head of the line. They were issuing every newcomer a stamped paper pass, which they would have to return at the end of their stay in order to get out of the city.

Ryan had done it multiple times before, on errands for the inn, but the thought of losing the pass and not being allowed to leave left Saebrya disquieted. After many of his adventures, in fact, Ryan had blithely told her stories of men who had had their passes stolen, leaving them penniless and struggling to find a job that would pay enough for them to buy their way back out of the city.

“Still got the sparks?” Saebrya asked, as the line shuffled them closer to the guards.

Ryan patted the bag slung from his hip, which clunked together with the sound of the lumpy green stones within. “Calm down Saeby,” he assured her. “We’ll be fine.”

Watching the huge walls loom closer with every step towards the guard booth, however, Saeby didn’t feel fine. She felt nauseous. And scared.

Worse, the trees were moving exactly in tune with Ryan’s breathing, and she just knew someone was going to notice it.

Gods, hurry, she willed the line ahead of her, glancing up at the swaying trees above them.

They shuffled closer and the guards came into view amongst the influx of visitors. Seeing them up close, she quailed, pushing back against the head of the sipper in her terror. Ryan took her hand in his sweaty palm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It’s just…the Unmade,” he whispered. “You’ll be okay.”

“So what’s up with the damned trees?” the man in front of her demanded of an Unmade with a gigantic rodent’s head. He gestured at the aspens overhead, dangerously close to Ryan’s red and sweaty face. “Why are they blocking all the roads?”

“Your guess is as good as ours,” the Auldhund muttered, looking disquieted. “They say it came from up the Idorion, near Ariod. The Aulds are out trying to figure it out right now.” He shoved a paper into the man’s hand and shouted, “Next!”

Saebrya gasped as the creature with a gigantic rodent’s head turned on her. “Carrying any weapons?” it barked.

She could only stare at the thing stupidly, seeing the way it felt utterly opaque, without a single drop of ether in its veins. Like looking into total, complete darkness. On the ground below, its feet shuffled through Ryan’s discharge and the silver fluid seemed to shatter and disintegrate into nothing wherever it touched the ugly, lumpy skin.

They kill people like Ryan and me… her panicked mind cried.

The creature reached out a pink rodent’s hand for her and Saebrya shied away, abruptly hitting the sipper’s segmented body. Behind her, Ryan gasped, wincing at the nudge.

The monster seemed unfazed by her horror. It boredly dragged her forth and, as her stomach tumbled in revulsion, its sticky, ratlike fingers started patting her up and down. “Ryan,” she whimpered, trying to pull away. The monster roughly dragged her back into place and turned her around, patting down her other side.

“No weapons in the city,” it grunted at her, then shoved her toward its companion and began his attentions on Ryan.

Saebrya’s eyes went wide as the snakelike head of the second creature bore its fangs at her. It looked much like the one that they had seen floating down the Idorion. Had some battle come and gone? Why hadn’t these gone to help their brethren? “What’s your name, girl?”

“Saeby,” she whispered, eyes fixed on the way its fangs folded down as it spoke, seemingly moving on hinges.

“You know how to spell that?” the monster demanded, recording something onto the sheaf of papers he carried with him, then motioning to the paper with the wet black tip of his feather pen.

When Saeby stared at him blankly, he grunted and scratched something across the surface. He held the result out to her.

Tentatively, Saebrya took it, then glanced behind her.

Ryan was undergoing a similar pat-down, with the ratlike creature’s hands easily passing through the sipper’s body as he relentlessly felt every crook of Ryan’s body for weapons. The sipper ignored the rat-thing’s encroach on its host completely, its black eyes still fastened on Saebrya.

As if it doesn’t exist, Saebrya thought, confused.

The search took much longer than it had for her. Apparently, even pale, sweating, and barely able to stand, they found Ryan’s big frame to be more of a threat than Saebrya’s. When the rat-creature finally released him to its companion, Ryan was weaving with the exhaustion of holding himself upright under the rough assault.

Saebrya let him steady himself on her shoulder.

“How do you spell that?” the monster asked, once Ryan gave his name.

“R-Y-E-A-N,” he said confidently. Then, at Saebrya’s awed stare, he winked. “Can’t spell much else, but I can spell that.”

The snakelike monster paused, shifted its hoofed feet in the waves of silver ether below, and sniffed the air between him and Ryan. A long silence ensued as its yellow-green eyes scanned Ryan’s face, its scaly nostrils twitching. Finally, it said, “You an Auld, boy?”

Saebrya stopped breathing.

Ryan laughed weakly. “Not that I’ve been told.”

The snakelike monster looked like it wanted to say more, then grunted and handed Ryan his slip of paper. “Senses have been all messed up since the damn trees started sprouting. Hope Rhydderch gets it figured out soon. Whatever’s going on, it’s been making my nose itch for days.” He held out a scaly hand. “That’ll be twenty sparks for the two of you.”

Ryan dug into the pouch on his belt and removed most of their savings. The twenty green stones shone a verdant green in the light, refracting the light from a glittery crust of crystals.

Saebrya breathed again, the danger past.

She watched as the stones passed hands, dribbling a turquoise ether onto the ground and then overflowing the ratlike monster’s hands as he loosened a drawstring and stuffed them into a purse at his side. Like Ryan, sparks tended to smear everything they touched with a vivid glowing ether, and they often had small sippers perched on them, feeding from the drippings like mice on stale bread.

…Mice that were happy to attack her fingers, when she got close.

For that reason, Saebrya always let Ryan handle the sparks.

“Move along,” the snake-monster said, gesturing with a scaly wrist. “Next!”

Saebrya let Ryan lead her into the city, overwhelmed. All around her, new sights and smells assailed her senses. Colors she’d never expected to see on cloth flashed by in floral waves, and even the houses themselves seemed foreign, stacked three stories atop one another and looming out over the roads, blocking out the sun.

The streets were even stranger. Running with sippers and vermin alike, she could only stop and gawk at the packed-down sewage sludge, some of it deep enough to half-bury doorways. Pigs wandered freely, fighting with scraggly, unkempt dogs for even the slightest scrap of discarded wastes.

Ryan laughed at her open-mouthed expression, then trembled as the sipper’s hold tightened with the sudden movement. His grip on her hand weakened, and for a horrible moment, it looked like he would slump to the ground.

“Come on,” Ryan said, through his teeth. “We need to get to the inn. You can explore without me.”

The very thought left Saebrya in a state of panic. “No, Ryan, I can’t…”

He gave her a weak grin. “Then we came an awful long way for nothing, since I’m not sure if I can even make it to the inn.”

Looking at the dark rings under his eyes and the way his hair clung damply to his pallid skin, Saebrya realized he was serious. She grabbed his arm, delicately avoiding the huge sipper. “Come on,” she said, hefting it over her shoulder. “Which way?”

Ryan guided them down the bewildering streets, turning so many times that Saebrya was lost within minutes. She dreaded having to find her way back to the main street on her own.

“Here,” Ryan said, nodding to a building casting a deep glow from its front door in the rapidly dwindling daylight. The street outside seemed ill-used, and held a sense of ominous foreboding to it that made Saebrya’s back itch. “The affordable part of town.” Ryan laughed into the eerie silence. “Help me up the stairs.”

She did her best, but found she could not squeeze inside with the sipper attached to him, so scurried in ahead of him and pulled him forward with a hand.

Several patrons looked up at their entrance, their curiosity growing as they saw Ryan stumble forward, leaning heavily on Saebrya’s support.

Looking at the men and women seated at the tables, Saebrya felt a tickling sensation along her skin, like she was crawling with larval sippers.

“I don’t want to stay here,” she whispered to Ryan.

Ryan laughed and jingled his purse, sloshing green and silver ether everywhere. “Don’t have much choice, Saeby. It’s one night at a nice place or five nights here. Unless you wanna sleep in the street?”

Biting her lip, she tore her eyes away from the other patrons and shook her head.

Ryan patted her shoulder, his arm passing harmlessly through the eye of the gigantic sipper. “It’s gonna be okay, Saeby. You’ll find him.”

As he lowered his hand, Saebrya saw that the sipper was still watching her and she swallowed hard. “I hope so,” she whispered.