5 - The Moon People

 

An iron staircase wound up and then around the tower, hugging the wall like that of a lighthouse Byron had once visited on the coast in the world he’d come from. The stairs wrapped around twice fully and then halfway another time, some sixty or seventy feet up to the dark wood that made the floor of its apex. It could only be the glass enclosure he’d seen from the hill. 

Byron recognized the tower's bricks as having been expertly laid, and it gave the walls more than a passing illusion of a perfect curve. The coiled, wrought-iron stairs were fine-crafted with equal precision. It was not amazing, but it was on par if not better than Yarthan craftsmanship, and it told Byron something of the moon people’s advancement.

The hulking creature closed the door behind them, then turned and put his palm briefly on Byron’s shoulder in a gesture of companionship. At least that was the way Byron took it, though he normally associated such gestures with some kind of emotion, of which the moon person's face was permanently devoid. The beady, expressionless eyes could not be read, and there was no intent to be found in the permanent scowl of the wide mouth. 

Byron peered at his surroundings. In the center of the bricked floor was a wide pit- a circular, lipless well, fitted inside with iron rungs. Its design reminded Byron of Yartha’s sewer access holes, only larger, and it led to some depth from where there was no light. 

There were no windows in the tower, either. A torch by the door illuminated the tower’s base, and a dusty haze of sun fell from the opening high above them where the stairs met the floor of the tower's apex. There at the bottom, the smell was of damp earth and mold. 

The two of them stood there for a moment, the moon person looking blankly forward, and the scholar studying the creature’s pale and hairless body, each hard muscle defined, lean sinewy arms and large veiny hands. Byron made a note to sketch the beast before he left there. He could not tell if the thing was paying attention to him or not, but he began his planned speech anyway.  

"Greetings," he said. "My name is Byron Cecil Levant. I am a scholar of the great Academy of Yartha, blessed by the gods themselves, and therefore welcomed in their world as you can plainly see before you. First and foremost, however, I am a loyal servant to the almighty Hyne of Earth, so, no trouble in that regard,” he said. “Any regard, really. No trouble,” he added, then cleared his throat and continued. “I walked many unpleasant miles to find you, and am hoping that… " He stopped and flustered before he spoke again. "Can you understand me, or am  I just blabbering like a fool? I come seeking a remedy for a drought that has ravaged my homeland, in the form of a potion. A witch named Petrastyra had long ago required such services from your people." 

The moon person made no acknowledgement of him, and Byron shrugged and sighed, long and deliberate.

Hunched over, the creature’s long, muscled arms dangled, bone-white knuckles dusted across the brick floor. Suddenly it turned with its whole body toward the stairs, and then did so once again to turn back at Byron and assume its black-gazed sentry. He can’t rotate that lumpish head very far, Byron observed. That’s good. Blind spots to stick with my dagger, just in case the hideous beast suddenly decides that I am not its friend. 

The moon person’s mouth once again opened wide, revealing the rows of sharp teeth, and another rumbling noise sounded from deep within him as he gestured to the ascending stairs. As if to say you first, Byron thought.

The sight of the steep winding flight made Byron's legs turn to jelly. He groaned and shook his head. His mind was tired. His legs cramped. He could not remember the last time he had walked for so long, first across the city and then the Lowlands, unrested. If there had been any repose during his brief death, his body could not feel it. The moon person paid him no mind and made the gesture again.

“I don’t suppose you understand my language,” Byron said as he took off his pack, "but I am tired. I’m afraid that first I must rest before setting about the daunting task of conveying to you what it is that I want, much less climb that.” He leaned back against the brick wall and slid to the ground to a sitting position and began to massage his sore calves.

The creature began to dance around, then made a cradling motion with his arms, and then mimed going up the steps. The next thing Byron knew, he was being picked up- not cradled but hauled over the beast's immense shoulder. A firm hand on his back held him in place, and he knew immediately that there would be no resisting. Hyne, my life is in your hands. Please spare me from your wrath, he prayed. The creature’s free hand snatched up Byron’s traveling pack in a way that was both nimble and eerily human, and they began to ascend the stairs.

Byron’s soiled body, thin and limp, was carried up the steps like an unruly child being taken to bed. From his vantage on the beast's back he watched the spiral of the steps and the pit shrink as they gained in elevation. He could feel the strength coursing throughout the creature, could hear the even breath and soft grunting, low and guttural. 

The moon man carried him with ease. His skin was tough like leather, but Byron felt that the flesh of what passed for his neck was soft, and his mind once again turned to ways to kill it, feeling only slightly guilty. Just in case, he thought. 

Afraid of heights, Byron shut his eyes when he thought they were perhaps halfway up. “Can you understand me?” he asked blindly as he felt himself jostled up the stairs. His voice wavered with each step the creature took. “I have many questions.”

There was no answer, they never slowed, and when the moon man leapt up the last few steps to the top, Byron screamed out in fear and scrambled for purchase before he was put down shaking, not ungently, and felt sunlight hit his neck. 

He opened his eyes to a floor of reddish-brown polished wood. It was the glass “observatory” he had seen from the hills, the jewel of the tower’s scepter. The enclosure was made completely of glass, multifaceted, incredibly thin and clear, flawless, unlike the cloudy and thick products that craftspeople in Yartha produced. The panes were seamless and connected with discreet, thin metallic beams. The weird red sun cast prisms of color about the room. There was nothing in it but a low, empty table and two chairs, lower and wider than those he was used to, but of simple wood and familiar design. The moon person stood there at the top of the stairs, seemingly unphased from the climb.

A breeze and with it a light spray of rain was carried through open glass doors that led to dual balconies on either side. They faced toward both the great mountain, and the way he’d come- the Lowlands, the moss-covered hills and beyond them the flat gray swampland that stretched out, snaked through with strands of the yellow-green moss, and somewhere back there was the root hut that housed the altar, and his way home. 

Closest to him on the other side of the enclosure, the door led out to the balcony which overlooked the tremendous mountains ahead- so large that they blotted out the sky and cast deep shadow across the entire landscape. The setting sun, now appearing even larger than before, was crimson orange, and it outlined ridges upon ridges, peaks upon peaks. The Highlands, Byron reasoned, or recalled from some unknown place of his mind as he took in the supernatural beauty of it all. 

He was drawn to the balcony, but stopped just short of the threshold and turned, remembering that he was a guest. “May I?” he rhetorically asked the moon person, still in the same spot. “Oh, what am I asking you for?” Byron grumbled. “You obviously don’t speak my language. If you understand it, you are being stubbornly vague about it. My purpose here is going to be difficult to convey, I fear.”

He gave a final look to the mute creature, then stepped out. The columns and banister of the railing were both of crystalline glass, delicate-looking. Small, infrequent drops of rain disappeared to the ubiquitous hills below him and tapped at the glass of the tower, carried by a steady breeze, the air clean, fresh and invigorating. 

Byron extended his arms, the sleeves of his dirty robe blowing in the wind, and laughed the laugh that he knew everyone hated. The idea of the moon person behind him attempting to interpret his laughter made him laugh harder. “I have died today!” he yelled out to the weird setting sun. “I have died today, and I woke up in a different world! I will die again soon when I make my way home! I have met… I have met the moon man!” 

The absurdity of it made him laugh harder, reduced to chuckling as his hands worked behind his back and began to loosen the chain mail. The straps had eaten through his weathered robes to painfully chafe the skin of his ribs during the journey. He spoke to himself, little musings. “There is nothing. Absolutely nothing my colleagues can achieve that will ever top this. Father? He had his day, and he refused to believe. Oh, how wonderful it will be for him to eat his words.”

He sighed in relief of the loosened armor and looked out at the horizon- nothing but the colossal mountain, a red-gray sky at its margins. Beneath him the rolling hills of moss continued on for a while, hills topped with the towers of black and white, each with their unique, jewel-like crown that blazed with the reflection of the red sun despite standing in the shadow of the mountain. The hills steepened until the moss ended somewhere in an unseen valley, where the earth suddenly jutted upward, or seemed so to Byron’s eyes. He judged that there was at least a full day's hike, maybe two, between the tower and the base of the mountainside which disappeared into the clouds. 

“I must know more about this place,” he said, mostly to himself, and again he wondered how the witch had possibly kept herself from filling volumes with observations from this other world. Instead, she’d tallied humdrum crops along the Slybos, he thought. Had the translator kept her secrets for some other purpose? he wondered. Then why leave the directions to the altar, or name Lytum-Sytul, the summoning words for the white flame?

He surveyed the landscape, and thought about unpacking his notes and making a quick sketch. His thoughts were scrambled, mind exhausted. Right now, it matters little, he thought. I must finish my task here and return to Yartha, though the thought of dying again is not a pleasant one. Regardless, I imagine I shall be staying here for the night, at least.

He was thinking of how to express himself to his host when he heard someone else climbing the iron stairs, and turned to see another moon person appear at the top- a woman, judging from her large and pale, gray-nippled breasts. The lump of a head, baldness, fixed black eyes and wide, downturned mouth were the same, though she was slightly more diminutive, still larger than human. In her large hands she held a ledger of some sort, and what seemed to be a quill. She made her way to the table and placed the things there- Byron saw an inkwell, too- then she immediately lumbered back to the stairs and descended as she had come. If the two moon people had acknowledged one another in any way, Byron had missed it.

The male finally moved. He made another rumbling noise and motioned for him to return from the balcony. Byron picked up his things and did as he was beckoned. The moon man went to his place and extended an upturned palm at the chair opposite him. Have a seat, the gesture said. 

Byron laid the pack and armor beside the chair as his host began to scour through the pages of the book, which he saw was scrawled with small writing. He watched as the creature dipped the quill into his reservoir of ink, finding a blank page with the other hand. Then, like some strange banker or council member, he began to write.

Byron watched as he scribbled away- quickly and in a small script. He wasn’t entirely sure, as the onslaught of unreality that day had been unforgiving, but he thought that he recognized his own language as it was being put to the paper in front of him. When the moon person finished, he set the quill down and turned the ledger so that Byron could see it, and there was no doubt. He grabbed the book by its sides. In a neat script the page read- We understand your language, but are unable to speak it. Hello, Byron. My name is Cossack.

A grin lit up Byron’s child-like face, and he stood and held out a trembling hand for a handshake. Cossack accepted with his large, calloused one, though he didn’t stand, and Byron had to reach out over the table.

“Cossack,” Byron stammered.  “How, how do you… what are you?”

Cossack took the notebook back gently and again began to scribble. He saw the creature blink, and was fairly certain it had been for the first time he’d seen it happen. He waited in anticipation, happy with the turn of events, and when the words were handed back to him he read them eagerly.

We are the moon people. The hands of the Earth God. Rulers of the Lowlands and the Highlands. Now my questions- Are you a warlock? Are you alone? How do you know of Petrastyra?

Byron read it quickly, nodding as he did so, and opened the backpack at his side to produce a wooden box. Inside was the old manuscript, her transcribed journal. "These are her words" he said, "I found them in one of our libraries, if you know what that is. A place of knowledge." He tittered quietly and unsure.

He was about to produce his notes as well when Cossack slammed a heavy fist down onto the table, and Byron not only jumped from his seat but hid behind it, knocking over the backpack and stumbling over his unworn chain mail. His shaky hand went to the hilt of his dagger, but Cossack had only pushed away the box. He dipped the quill and began to scribble away in the ledger. Where Byron expected to see rage on his face was only the blank gaze, though he thought he saw a further downward pull of the mouth- a grimace on top of a grimace. After a while, as he continued to write, Byron slowly tiptoed over to his side of the table, to peer greedily over his shoulder at what was being put to paper.

Of course she continues to expose us, even beyond death, he’d written, to share with all the barbarians and despoilers who conveniently followed her. We will never be rid of you, I see now. That is disappointing, but it confirms our suspicions. She broke a vow to our people, and we paid dearly. We were peaceful before your kind came to our realm. Our teeth were soft and flat, made for chewing plants, not tearing flesh. You changed that.

You are the first human to set foot here in fifteen years. We thought we made ourselves clear the last time when we tore your skin off and wore your flesh and danced over your beaten bodies until your minds cracked. We’d thought the knowledge of the altars to be lost on your side. As chaotic and stupid as your kind are, it would not have surprised us if you’d all killed one another and settled into your inevitable extinction early. Your kind will bring about the death of all worlds you set foot on. I have seen visions of your futures. You will destroy your world and if we allow it you will destroy this one. The only things you understand are gold and fear, but the Silverfolk see all lives before they are lived, and if it is so, it is so. You must have some sort of purpose, as unfortunate as that has been for our species.

“Now, just a moment,” Byron said as he read, sweat forming on his brow. “I haven’t a clue as to what you speak of. My people? This world is a fable to them, a fairy-tale.”

Cossack continued to write. They didn’t inform the beggars, of course. Why would they? Your people hoarded the resources they took from Mt. Omni after they did unspeakable things to us and made us change. They know. You are simply not important enough to be made aware, it appears. The ones who hide behind their thrones, and their killers and rapists with their scimitars and little red shields- they know. We are no fairy tale to them or their grandchildren, I promise you. We made sure that the ones we let live would remember. 

Mt. Omni is littered with gold- your strange obsession. And diamonds, rubies, on and on. Still not familiar? Your lords have been keeping a secret from you. How do you think your marvelous city- the stepping stone of your path to extinction- came to be? We were glad to teach you how to kill yourselves. You are nothing but a glorified herd animal that thinks itself a god.

“I am not a beggar,” Byron said. “The Levants are a respected family, integral pillars of Yarthan society. We would know,” but as he spoke a doubt had crept into his mind. “What of the ruined village I came upon in my travels? I found many human bones. I don’t appreciate being threatened.”

There are still human settlements here. Lineages of Petrastyra and other witches and wizards. Those born in Magaia. Ease your mind. We will not harm you on this occasion. You are chosen by the Silverfolk, who know all lives before they are led. Who am I to question that? Their intentions baffle me. I would ask you to keep the path to Magaia a secret among your people, but in truth it matters not. Know that if humans come to the Lowlands again, that we are not as docile as we once were, and we do not forget. Tell that to your lord, or whoever your kind bow to these days. Know this well.

“It appears I was ill-informed.” Byron replied, then sat silent in the chair for a long time, staring off into the distance. “I will ruminate on this later,” he said, “but I did not travel all the way here to be insulted, or to apologize for something I didn’t even know ever happened. It is my destiny to save my people, and I require your help.”

What a hero, Cassock wrote. We have learned our lesson: if you want something from us, we want something from you. He finished with a long line and jagged splatter of ink to punctuate.

Byron read the passage, and fresh sweat broke out on his brow where a lock of his filthy hair clung to his forehead, and suddenly he could smell the foul stench of himself. “A trade? I was unaware, and unprepared.” His face scrunched up in thought, he finally said, “My lamp is one-of-a-kind, this dagger fetches a hefty… price? Of course I have gold, but…”

Cossack took back the ledger and turned the page, ink still damp, and began to write on the blank one.

You have nothing we want. You will take two of my people back with you to Yartha, he wrote, and I will prepare your potion. If you prove useful I may request more, but for now that is all. That is the exchange.

Byron spun the ledger back to his direction, and confirmed what it said. He stared at it, mouth agape. "What? To Yartha? Is that even possible?" He laughed, high-pitched, uncertain. "May I ask why? What reason?"

Cossack grabbed the ledger again, dipped his quill and began to write.

Of course it is possible. Perhaps it is true that you simply stumbled upon this. The white flame will listen only to a mage, but on utterance of the words all matter on the pedestal is consumed and put back together on its twin. That is the white flame. There is a short period of sickness, and sometimes madness for those not blessed for travel by the gods, but it will pass, and my people are unaffected. As for our intentions in your world- this you don’t need to know. We will force you to do our bidding if we have to. You taught us how to do this.  You made our teeth sharp and taught us joy in slaughter and torture, in pushing life to its most unspeakable cruelties. We don’t follow you or anyone else but the Silverfolk now. You are lucky every second that passes that I do not implement on you the torture that the gray-eyed boy applied to mine. There is joy in it, yes. You taught us that. The boy with gray eyes taught us. He showed us how to kill love. We will enslave you and force you to take us to your world until your mind is in fragments from death upon death if you disobey us. It is a hell we can make for you. That is what happens if you resist or impede us in any way.

When Byron read it, the blood drained from his face, but still he said, “I don’t know who you speak of, nor does it have any bearing on my quest. I must ask- you dance easily around our language. How? Who taught you? You aren’t so different from my smart-aleck colleagues.” 

Byron didn’t get a response, and he flustered and looked about nervously, then nodded, unable to look at the thing’s eyes. “All right,” Byron said, hoping to change the subject from torture. He was beginning to think that Cossack was not entirely sane. “May I at least request to know what the process of transforming into a… rain wyrm is like?”

  Cossack immediately took back the ledger, turned to a new page, and wrote-

The steps are as follows: I will give you the bottle. Inside will be the rain wyrm youngling and its water. Consume this potion. It will grow within you. You will become servile, easily manipulated as you undergo a burdensome transformation that will culminate with the hunger for the dead flesh of your species. It is imperative that you follow your hunger after the first transformation. Your senses will be dulled, but you will still retain a sense of logic and primal reasoning, and will attempt to kill to get what you want.

Cossack looked up for a moment, and saw the human struck by apprehension and disappointment, lowered his pale head again and began to write again.

This will likely cause a problem with your authorities, of course. You still have laws, do you not? There is a non-violent option, because your people have not yet completely blackened our hearts. Long ago, when another witch had undergone her own transformation, she found that hair was able to satiate the hunger for flesh. 

With the quill positioned in his stubby fingers, Cossack underlined the word ‘hair.’ 

Byron read the words, growing unease darkening his face. “This seems all rather complicated,” he said. 

There was no response, and the quill was dipped again by the huge pale hand and its scrawling commenced.

Hair. The strings that grow from your bobbing heads and privates. A large amount will quell the yearnings, and will keep you from being jailed or apprehended for your actions. It would be wise to procure the hair (or fingernails, severed legs, plucked eyeballs, dead children- whatever you wish. I truly care not) before the hunger begins- before you swallow the potion. Once swallowed, over three days your mouth, throat, stomach, and digestive tract will mutate to allow the consumption of these things. You will know when it is time. Your body will tell you.

He switched to a smaller script to fit the rest onto the page. 

You will change in appearance, and eventually your husk of a body will die, but the rain wyrm will mature. 

Upon maturation, it will give birth to you

and you will be reborn- just as you were before your bonding, but having now glimpsed a complexity of life that few on your world will ever experience. 

Following the re-birth will be the first of a healthy cycle of rainstorms that will befall the surrounding land. This will last far beyond your lifetime. 

The only sound was the patter of rain on glass, Byron finally spoke up from his perch over Cossack’s shoulder, “Does… does it have to be me?”  and there was a moment before Cassock lifted his quill once more.

A coward, too? he wrote. Typical Yarthan. Typical human. No, it does not have to be you, but you will be missing out on a wonderful experience. You will know when it is time to consume your dead matter, whatever you have aquired. The body will tell. Once you’ve consumed the potion, I implore that you stay in your own world. Come back to Magaia before you have been re-born and we will kill you on sight. The rainwyrms of our world are highly regulated.

There is some unpleasantness early on, of course, but you will come out stronger for it, even as a human. I myself have been through the process many times. You become rain. Words cannot describe it. Each re-birth is a fresh life. 

 and you needn’t even shed a drop of blood. But I ask you- what fun is that, warlock? 

Cossack ripped out the page, fanned at it with his other hand to dry the ink, and handed it across the table to Byron.

The rain had picked up again, and it reminded Byron of his room at the top of Levant Castle’s northeast tower. During a thunderstorm he’d loved to read and listen to the rain in that room. When he was young his mother had read to him the histories on rainy days. 

Fat drops of rain pelted against the glass and ran down in rivets. Lightning flashed. Byron stared at the page, pale-faced, sullen. “I suppose that’s it, then,” he said. His voice was low. He read it again. “It’s a parasite,” he remarked, and shivered.

Cossack started a new page in the ledger. Good. I will prepare the potion. I will send for someone to take you to a place to rest and bathe in our chambers below if you wish. Hyne does not care about how soiled you are. What you are practicing is a foolish human superstition. When you wake, I will have an escort take you and the others back to the altar. Once my people are safely over, your debt is paid. You are not to meddle in their affairs, and they will not meddle in yours. Follow my instructions and you will have your rain.