Chapter 7. Under the Geis.
Zelgadis and Amelia followed Sangoma down into the cellar as the door creaked shut behind them. Amelia looked around in a panic at the closing door. It had probably been shut by Sangoma's husband but… it was hard to shake the creepy aura she felt as they descended the steps.
When they reached the chamber beyond the stairs it wasn't exactly what she'd expected. First of all, the room was large – far larger than the house above it. She had a sneaking suspicion that the room they were in was nestled happily in one of the more spatially permissive dimensions.
It was filled with shelves as far as the eye could see and probably farther. The shelves, in turn, were filled with books, loose papers, and a few rather complicated and sinister looking instruments. The damp scent in the air was the only overture to the catacomb library structure. It was a warm, well-lit space with a definite absence of dust and cobwebs. Comfortable chairs with desk attachments were scattered throughout the room, many of which had books left open to certain pages and a series of carefully taken notes beside them. "The vaults" were clearly a place in which Sangoma spent much of her time.
"Are all these books about humans?" Amelia asked.
"Yes," Sangoma said, casting Amelia a mildly impressed look before saying, "Of course, Xellos must have told you it's my area of expertise. Indeed, folklore, art, history, civics, philosophy, religion, magic, language, culture, and both the ancient art of alchemy and its burgeoning revival," she said, as she gestured to the upright domino shelves. "And that's just scratching the surface. It's a rather broad subject." She smiled. "You're a rather broad subject, I should say."
"And all this somehow helps the monster race?"
Sangoma's smile turned bitterly ironic. "Of course. Monsters know how other monsters think, and dragons are depressingly easy to understand, but humans are a little tricky sometimes. Just when you think you've got them pegged, they go the other way, sometimes just to spite you. Humans don't even understand themselves, seeing as they spend their whole lives asking themselves who they are and what their purpose is." She snorted. "Monsters and dragons don't have to ask, they know. And they know that you can only plan for things that you understand."
"You said there was something you wanted to show me?" Zelgadis prompted, ever impatient to get to the point.
"Alright, have it your way," Sangoma said, waving a hand at him and leading the two along the aisles. It seemed like they had walked a long way before they were out of the thatch of shelving and into an open space that contained…
"Wha-?" Zelgadis began, unable to get the full word out.
"Oh!" Amelia said in surprise.
And then the smell hit them.
It was an unpleasantly chemical smell. It stank like a combination of a cotton ball that had been inside a smoker's mouth and an especially vile preservative. They covered their noses.
"Sorry about the smell," Sangoma said, clearly not bothered by it herself. What she should've apologized for was the sight.
Jars of various sizes were stacked, one on top of another. Some contained hands or feet suspended in a watery, brownish liquid, some were big enough to hold entire bodies. A cheerful looking skeleton was posed in a giddy wave, as though to welcome them to the tea party of the dismembered.
The skeleton had two heads.
A closer look at the jars, and a closer look was not necessarily desired, revealed that the jars occupants contained similar quirks. A floating foot was covered in sharp black hooks, like the hairs of a giant spider. A hand featured a large spike protruding from the palm, transforming it into a deadly weapon and no doubt adding a whole new layer of horror to patty-cake. The other jars told the same story: animalistic, distorted, and deformed creatures that must have once been men.
The jars were each marked with labels that said things like, "John Doe", "The Beast of Balcove", "Rodney" and similar.
"So," Zelgadis said in a deceptively calm voice as he gulped down a lungful of the noxious fumes and tried to decide whether to run or not. "You collect chimeras, do you?"
Sangoma gave a smile as though to indicate that their discomfort was delicious and let that question hang for just a little longer than was necessary. Then she said, "Oh, they're not first-hand collections. At least not most of them. I just gave them a home."
"You see," she went on. "Back in the day it used to be extremely fashionable for royalty to collect…" The word freaks was carefully omitted from the conversation. "Well, chimeras and those malformed at birth. Because when you're rich, powerful, and completely insane, you can't just go around collecting bottle caps like the rest of us."
Amelia gave a thin laugh, but it was mostly out of nervousness.
"Now, this being the age of enlightenment and all," Sangoma continued. "There's a general feeling that it might be wrong to gut someone and suspend their body in formaldehyde just because they're interesting looking. So such collections have generally fallen out of favor. But I thought, well, maybe they still have something left to teach us," she rapped gently on a jar containing a torso with an externally exposed heart bearing the name "Davy" and a gentle ding issued from it. "So I picked up the pieces."
"Huh." Zelgadis said cautiously.
"You have nothing to worry about, Zelgadis," Sangoma said with a laugh. "I have no intention of adding you to my collection."
"Well, good."
"At least not at the moment."
Zelgadis let out a choked sound.
"Anyway," Sangoma said, jumping off from that uncomfortable beat. "Seeing you reminded me a lot of one of these guys, so I thought I'd show you him. Let's see," she began shifting through the wall of specimen jars. "I think he's somewhere in the back."
Amelia seemed to have, at that point, fought through her initial feelings of fear and revulsion and now was just curious. She looked at a few of the larger containers that Sangoma had heaved out of the way.
"This one looks normal," she commented.
"Which one is it?" Sangoma huffed as she moved a human-sized tube out of her path.
Amelia checked the label. "It says, 'Sulky Richard'."
"Ah, well that's just because you're not looking at his gentiles." Sangoma said simply.
"Oh." Amelia said in a slightly strangled voice as she deliberately backed away from the jars.
"Here he is," Sangoma said triumphantly, pulling another one of the human-sized tubes into clear view. "Rembros Banksher."
Rembros Banksher appeared fairly normal for an elderly corpse in a chemical stew. The major thing, of course, that Amelia and Zelgadis noted as they looked at the pale, only slightly decayed form, was his nose. Actually, it was the area to the left and right of his nose. Poking out of each sinus was a bright red crab's claw. The pinchers swayed peacefully in the briny sea of the jar.
They all stared at the figure for a moment. Amelia could've sworn she saw it wink, but told no one of this.
"Umm," Zelgadis began. "Why…?" There were just a whole lot of questions there.
"I know," Sangoma said, apparently choosing his question for him. "Why the nose claws? It's not exactly useful, unless you want to pinch someone who gets real close to your face. Most chimeras are designed to give them the edge in battle, but I think this one was a case of a couple of bored sorcerers who were drunk with power and just wanted to graft things onto other things." She shrugged.
"Why did I remind you of him?" Zelgadis asked.
"Well, see," Sangoma started. "I actually met Rembros, y'know, while he was alive and all. I was doing a little chimera research so I was interviewing him. Apparently, he'd been kidnapped and changed into a Chimera when he was twelve years old. He lived in an alley-way begging for two years before embarking on a journey to change himself back to his proper form."
Zelgadis looked up at the man. "I'm guessing that didn't work out so well."
"No," Sangoma said, shaking her head. "He tried all kinds of magical rituals. In the end, when he was truly desperate he tried cutting them off." Amelia winced. "But that didn't work either, they just grew back."
"What happened to him?" Amelia asked.
"Eventually, he told me, he gave in. He decided that all he really wanted was to live a normal life as best he could. So he traveled to this small town called Dayton, which is where he lived for the rest of his life. He started off as a day laborer on one of the ranches in the area. Folks were initially somewhat suspicious of him, but he worked hard and generally impressed the townspeople with his good character and was consistently promoted."
"He married the daughter of the ranch owner and became quite a wealthy man, and very important in the community. After a time, people more or less forgot that they'd considered him strange at any time. Visitors would come into town and ask about him, and the townsfolk would scratch their heads and say, 'Oh yeah. That's Rembros. Don't mind the claws, he's alright.' He was eventually elected the mayor of the town and was the most well-liked and respected citizen the town had ever known. He died in his bed of old age surrounded by his four full-grown children and twelve grandchildren. Dayton still has a statue of him up in the town square, crab claws and all."
Zelgadis's initially anxiety had melted away into annoyance as he noted the didactic bend of Sangoma's story. "Am I supposed to learn some kind of lesson from this?"
Sangoma shrugged. "You don't have to if you don't want to."
Zelgadis scowled. "If that's all you wanted to show me then we'd better be leaving." He made like he was going to leave.
"Hold up there, young man," Sangoma said, leaning against Rembros Banksher's preserved remains. "Now, I personally have my doubts about your little quest, but I'm sure this collection has something that can help you out. After all, it's never let me down before. So, before you leave all offended like, ask yourself: Do you really think Xellos knows someone else with this much viable information at their disposal. Does he seem that popular to you?"
Zelgadis ceased his retreat. She had him there. He turned around, questioningly. "What've you got?"
She gave him another calculating look and said, "I think I've got something in mind from the little I know about you. Just let me drag a few things off the shelf and we'll see."
"So," Xellos began, aware that some polite conversation might be preferable to waiting in silence for Sangoma to come back. "How are things at the front?"
"Fine," Rhevas answered.
"Only I heard that things weren't going so well in Dils."
"I think you'll find," Rhevas answered in a level tone. "That things are turning around."
"I see."
Filia glowered into her third and, barring any unforeseen fits of fury, last cup of tea. Monsters. She was in a monster house, sitting at a monster table, sipping monster tea and eating monster crackers while being forced to listen to monster small-talk.
"So," Rhevas began, taking up the reigns of the conversation. "How is…" he glanced at Filia and seemed to decide to change his word choice, "Work?"
"Fine."
Rhevas stared ahead for a moment and seemed to decide that coded small-talk with Xellos just wasn't worth the effort. He refocused onto Filia.
"I've actually been meaning to put a large order in at your shop," He said. "Any chance of a discount?" Insert hopeful, winning smile here.
"No," Filia said in icy tones. "In fact, now that I know you're a monster I don't think I can accept any more orders from you knowing you might be putting people to harm."
Rhevas stared blankly at her. "You sell maces."
"Well, yes," Filia allowed. "But, you know, just for self-defense."
"So you ask all your customers if they'll be using them for self-defense or not?"
"Well… no."
"Sounds like a discriminatory selling policy," Xellos tutted. "At least the monster race treats people with equality."
Equal rights to get vaporized in a black haze of pain and misery, of course.
"It's fine," Rhevas said. "I know the shop owner down in Mons. I can get my maces there."
"Mertie's Maces?" Filia snorted. "You do realize they'll be falling apart within a few months, don't you?"
"Oh, I don't know," Rhevas said vaguely. "Mertie has some very competitive prices."
"That's because she sells inferior merchandise!"
"Well," Rhevas said helplessly, "I guess I'll have to find out for myself, won't I? Anyway, I know Mertie, and she says she'll give me a 5% discount. After all, not a lot of shop owners would turn down an order of 10,000 maces."
Filia's ears went pink as an inner demon of greed stirred and sniffed the air. Wasn't it, when you got right down to it, wrong to not sell something to a customer based entirely on what species they were? And hey, couldn't she do a lot with that kind of money? A person that made that kind of sale could really… y'know, improve the community. Yeah, that's it. She'd improve the community.
"I can give you a 10% discount."
Rhevas nodded. "We have a deal."
At that almost historic moment in monster-dragon relations the cellar trap-door creaked open and Rhevas made a mental note to oil the hinges. A mildly confused looking Zelgadis and Amelia ascended into the light, and held the door open for Sangoma whose hands were full of various books, maps, and loose sets of notes.
"Did you find what you needed?" Rhevas asked.
"Possibly," Sangoma answered, setting the pile of papers down onto the table. "You see," she said, now addressing Zelgadis, "The chimera deal is a bit tricky. It's not exactly a curse, so curse-breakers won't work. I know of a lot of legendary magical places, but none for this kind of thing. If you came to me asking for immortality for example, I could probably find you a lot of legends, but there doesn't seem to be a quick and easy answer for this one."
"So, what did you find?" Zelgadis asked.
"I remembered a series of old legends that have been told in many different forms across the continent," she said, rifling through her notes. "I've been studying them for awhile, and I believe that they are all based on one original true story. The common denominators come down to this: there is a swamp with a girl in it and she… knows."
"Knows what?" Amelia asked.
"Theoretically everything," Sangoma said. "It depends on the tale. She appears to be some kind of oracle."
"An oracle, huh?" Zelgadis said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he sat down.
"You can see where I'm going with this, can't you?"
"If there really is an oracle, then if there was a way to transform me back to my human form, she'd know what it was."
"Precisely," Sangoma said.
"So, do you know where this oracle is?"
"I have a few ideas," Sangoma replied, ever aloof.
"Well, what are they?"
Sangoma sighed. "This is the part that you're probably not going to understand," she said, flipping through an ancient book that looked like it was a stray breath away from disintegrating, "But see, I can't just hand you the location. Various tales describe the oracle as being anything from a goddess to a ghost. It'll be a very dangerous mission."
Zelgadis stood up and drew himself up to full height. "I don't think it's any of your business if I put myself in danger."
"Just sit down and hear her out," Rhevas said, without even looking up from his tea.
Zelgadis hesitated for a minute, and then sat back down.
"There is a right way and a wrong way to do this," Sangoma continued, as if there had been no interruption. "And from what I've seen of you, you'd almost definitely do it the wrong way."
Zelgadis took offense, but decided not to interrupt again.
"So I'm afraid I can't give you the information you need unless you agree to be put under a geis."
Xellos said, "Ah," and nodded approvingly.
"What's a geis?" Zelgadis asked.
Sangoma's brow furrowed as she tried to find the words to describe it. "It's like… well, it's like rules. It's a kind of ancient magic. Heroes get put under geasa when they start off on a quest. If they follow the geis, they will be rewarded. If not, they will be punished."
"So it's like a curse?"
"In some ways," Sangoma allowed, "But it doesn't necessarily have to be."
"What would these rules be anyway?" Zelgadis asked, figuring that he might as well hear them before denying them straight off.
Sangoma held up four fingers. "First off, you must find the oracle." Zelgadis nodded, he had to agree that that did seem somewhat essential to the success of the quest. "Second, you must not go to the oracle alone," Zelgadis grimaced, but let her continue. "Third, you must bring a gift to the oracle." That seemed reasonable. "And Fourth, you must do everything that the oracle tells you to."
And that's basically what it came down to… absolute uncertainty. The first three rules were alright, but the last one was not anywhere close to alright. It looked like a trap, but oddly enough it didn't feel like one.
Zelgadis looked around. There was no help to be found. Filia might have normally objected, but she seemed engrossed in wondering whether or not she'd have enough money to expand her shop if her sale with Rhevas went through to pay too close attention to the conversation. Amelia looked concerned, but the thing was, she was looking to him for an answer. She'd go along no matter what he chose.
"You don't have to say yes," Sangoma said kindly. "You could take my dear friend Rembros's example and try to make the best of a bad situation. Of course," she said in a gentle, thoughtful voice that nevertheless seemed designed to leave scratch marks across the souls of men, "That might ultimately leave you in my basement suspended in formaldehyde."
Zelgadis stared at her and weighed his options before finally breaking eye contact. "I'll take the geis," he said in a quiet voice.
Sangoma looked pleased. "Now we're getting somewhere." She bent over a map and began writing on it with a large, black marker.
"So, what kind of spell do you need to cast for this geis?" Zelgadis asked.
"Oh?" Sangoma said, looking up in surprise. "The geis is already done."
"Really?"
"Yep. You're under the geis just by agreeing to the rules."
"That's all there is to it?" Zelgadis asked, feeling in some strange way that he'd been ripped off.
"Would you feel more comfortable if I lit some candles and drew some magic symbols?" Sangoma asked, ever the facilitator.
"I guess not," Zelgadis said.
"Okay then," Sangoma said cheerily. "Then here's my side of the bargain." She presented him with the annotated map and a sheaf of papers.
"That's all of my notes on the swamp oracle," she explained. "From what I've found, there are basically four main tales. The first one involves a swamp goddess. I've traced that story back to Sairaag," she pointed to the city circled on the map. "The second one involves a girl who was drowned in a marsh in Fletcher's Green. The third involves a woman who calls herself the Marsh King's daughter, which I think comes from somewhere in Putter country. And the fourth mentions a swamp witch whose home is said to be way up in the flats of Vye." She indicated a circled region in the far north of the map.
"Now, I don't know which one of these is the honest to goodness swamp oracle," she cautioned. "These four are the ones I consider to be the best leads."
Zelgadis nodded. His life was once again at stake and he should've been feeling worried, but with a task in front of him he just felt… relieved.
"I wish you the best of luck," Sangoma said, patting his shoulder. She seemed sincere, but then again, monsters have a great deal of free time in which to learn to fake these things.
There wasn't much more to say. They packed up their things, snapped Filia out of her expansion based musings, and, after Rhevas had assured Filia that his people would call her people, they left.
"So," Rhevas said, as the front door closed and their visitors re-entered the desert. "What's going to happen to them?"
Sangoma fished around in her pockets withdrawing two items. One was a stone with a hole in the center of it and one was the hair she'd plucked off Zelgadis's head upon their introduction. She tied the hair around the stone and gave it a reflective look before she placed it back in her pocket.
"We'll just have to wait and see."
A/N: Just a few notes...
1. Sangoma is quite right about the collections of certain kingdoms (Wouldn't know about chimeras, but there are plenty examples of birth defects). Many of the remnants still survive to this day.
2. The concept of the geis is found primarily in Irish and Welsh folklore.
3. "The Marsh King's Daughter" is a story by Hans Christian Anderson.
For more information, check out your local library (or wikipedia).
Because I'm here to educate as well as entertain. *shot*
