Undermind Book 5, Chapter 6: Undeadcover (Rough) (Patreon)

“Och how the chairs are turned,” said Ruhildi. “Methinks ’tis the right Earth expression.”

“Tables,” said Saskia with a scowl—one that went sadly unnoticed, given her present location. “The tables have turned.”

“Aye, that’s it! Though I don’t ken what turning a table has to do with reversal of fortune.”

“Believe it or not, the expression came from board games, which were once called tables. If the game wasn’t going your way, you’d have to—look, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is if I don’t get out of this dogram sack, I’m going to go stir crazy!”

Saskia poked at the inside of her dark, stuffy enclosure for good measure. Well okay, it wasn’t actually dark, thanks to her oracle darksight, and the fact that she could see out of Ruhildi’s eyes, or those of anyone else who came near. What really got to her was the loss of control. Here she was, stuck as a helpless passenger, unable to interact with the world—pretty much exactly what Ruhildi had experienced since they arrived on this world. There had also been that time Saskia had stuffed Ruhildi into a sack while she explored some undead-infested ruins back on Arbor Mundi. Long story. Anyhow, Ruhildi had been all too eager to propose this action as they approached one of the more densely populated towns in the human kingdom of Ostavia.

“Show your pretty little face here and they’ll have you in a net afore you can open your mouth to bargain with them,” said Ruhildi. “Best you stay snug and out of sight.”

“Oh yeah? And I’m sure they’ll welcome the undead fugitive with open arms?” muttered Saskia.

“Aye,” said Ruhildi. “They will welcome me with open arms. This far from Elyendra’s village, no-one will have seen her afore. And you well ken how easy ’tis for me to pass as a living human. Far as they ken, I’m just a young merchant plying my trade.”

Having taken over poor Elyendra’s corpse, Ruhildi had inherited some of the girl’s problems. After the demise of the hunters who had come after her, everyone and their dog from that neck of the woods would be on the lookout for someone of her description. Which was why they’d spent the better part of two weeks getting out of dodge, and another week scouting and spying from afar with Saskia’s oracle senses. This town, they’d decided, would be at least somewhat safe to enter in person.

“Riiight. And this plan of yours doesn’t have anything to do with payback over a certain incident back on Arbor Mundi…”

“Now Sashki, I’m wounded that you think me so petty.”

Ruhildi was, in fact, so petty.

“Haven’t seen you around these parts,” said one of the guards at the town gate. “What you got in that sack?”

Saskia tensed. She hadn’t seen these guys inspect the bags of many strangers who passed through these gates. Had something tipped them off? She steeled herself to make a break for it the moment they pulled open her sack.

If worst came to worst, Ruhildi might be able to abandon Elyendra’s body and find a new corpse to occupy. Probably wouldn’t come to that, though. She was, after all, extremely hard to kill.

“Och, nothing improper,” said Ruhildi. “This is but a bag of produce imported from Araduun. Please don’t impound it, I implore you!”

The guard stared at her blankly for a few moments, then waved her through. The terrible puns were completely lost on him, because they weren’t even puns in the local language. Only Saskia, thanks to the oracle translator magic she shared with her friend, could understand the intent behind the words.

“You know, I’m actually impressed,” said Saskia after they were out of earshot. “Have a cookie. Now get out.”

Ruhildi halted in her tracks. “But we only just got here.”

“No, I don’t mean… That’s just something we say someone unleashes a goodbad pun. It’s the equivalent of booing someone off the stage—oh god, you’re getting way too good at this.”

Ruhildi’s shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. “I larnt from the worst.”

“Stop it,” hissed Saskia. “The guards will think you’re laughing at them.”

Fortunately, the guards were too busy interrogating several other new arrivals to pay attention to her, so she made it to the local inn without further incident.

Saskia burst out of the sack the moment they were behind closed doors. “Free at last! Though I’ll have to hide under the bed if a cleaner comes in.”

“Methinks this room is not oft visited by cleaners,” said Ruhildi, eyeing the little bugs swarming over the carcass of a much larger bug in the corner.

Wrinkling her nose, Saskia collected as many of the intruders as she could with a rag and shook it out the window.

“’Tweren’t long ago that you’d have scooped them into your mouth and swallowed without a second thought.”

“That was troll-me,” said Saskia. “Imp-me has a more refined palate.”

“Aye, only the best souls for you,” said Ruhildi.

Saskia shuddered at the reminder. The Serpent King’s soul had left her sated in a way no physical food could match. In fact, the offering of fruit from Elyendra was all she’d eaten in weeks, yet she felt no hunger. “Speaking of souls, I’d better check up on our demon passengers. They’ve been getting even more antsy lately.”

Ruhildi nodded. “I’ll away to see the local drinkery. Mayhap I’ll larn a thing or two about the Blightguards and brightsouls and why those shites were after Elyendra.”

Saskia frowned. “I hope so. Elyendra’s killers may be dead, but whoever sent them is still out there. I’m not sure we should be kicking in ant hills so soon after our arrival on this world, but dogramit, we owe it to her to make them answer for that.”

“I’m with you on that, Sashki,” said Ruhildi gravely.

Sadly, the demons hadn’t been able to tell her much more than she already knew about the Blightguards. Their knowledge of the world had become kinda obsolete over the untold years they’d been sealed away in the Blightland.

Delving into her soul-space, Saskia found the two dread knight brothers engaged in yet another ridiculous duel for dominance. Drugal seemed to be gaining the upper hand on Torv for once. It wouldn’t be easy for either of them to harm the other in here, where she had absolute control. If anything got out of hand, she could intervene. Maybe she should…

“Let the boys play,” said Lilene, as if reading her thoughts. She couldn’t do that, of course—could she? “I like when they get all physical.”

“I bet you do,” said Saskia. “But you know there’s nothing physical about this. They’re just bundles of soul energy—as are you.”

The succubus’s spectral tail swished in agitation. “How cruel of you to remind me. If not for you, I could claim new body out in true world. And not just corpse, like your dumpy little girlfriend.”

“She’s not dumpy. And she’s not my girlfriend! Not in the way you’re implying…”

Lilene tittered. She clearly didn’t believe a word of it.

“Anyhow, if it weren’t for me, you’d still be rotting in the Blightland,” said Saskia. “Would you rather be there?”

Lilene gave a slight shudder. “No. But that is past. Now we are here. And we will not be caged forever.” She looked around at the green tranquillity of Saskia’s soul-tree, marred only by the grunts and thumps of the two dueling demons. “Not even in cage as pretty as this.”

Saskia let out a sigh. “I know. I’m sorry I’ve taken this long to free you. I just…aren’t comfortable letting you loose on an unsuspecting human population. You can’t say you’ll just leave them alone.”

“Humans are our enemy. You would do well to remember.”

“I was human once,” said Saskia. “Part of me still is.”

“You were never human,” said Lilene. “You were demon in human skin.”

Saskia didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe in some ways Lilene was right. But human or not, Saskia wasn’t going to just stand by and let the demons slaughter their way through this kingdom.

Shifting her focus to what Ruhildi was doing back in the physical world, Saskia found her friend talking up a storm at the tavern—which appeared to double as some kind of underground fighting pit, by the looks of it.

“Don’t make me laugh, girl,” a burly older man was saying. “This ain’t your mama’s watered-down wine. That fellow…” He pointed at a man snoring in the corner. “…had just half a pint, and he’s twice your weight. Scrawny girl like you would wilt like a speckle flower in autumn.”

He didn’t actually use the word pint, but that tub of grey liquid in his hands was close enough to a pint in Saskia’s estimation.

“Uh, Ruhildi, you know you don’t actually have a functioning liver…” she pointed out over their oracle comm-link.

“Och don’t you start,” muttered Ruhildi.

The guy harrumphed. “Run home to your mama, girl. We men have drinking to—augh!”

The girl in question snatched the pint out of his hand, tipped him backwards off his seat, and proceeded to down the drink in seconds. Raucous laughter accompanied his fall, turning to cheers as she swallowed her last gulp. He rose, spluttering, onto shaky feet, bellowing, “You thieving little…” He bunched up his fists.

“Not here, Parbrand,” said the tavernkeeper, laying a meaty hand on his shoulder. “You want to fight, take it to the pit so we can wager on it.”

For a moment, Parbrand looked as if he was going to punch the other man. Then he blinked and slowly shook his head. “There’s no glory in that. If I win, I beat a girl. If I lose, I get beaten by a girl. Either way, I lose.”

“That’s the most sense I’ve heard out of you all day,” said the tavernkeeper. He handed Ruhildi another pint. “On the house.” Eyeing her up and down, he added, “You have the look of an Ostavian, but you don’t talk like one. What brings you to Vintonjorg?”

“My mam and pap were from Ostavia, but I were raised…far from here,” said Ruhildi, drawing from the vague backstory they’d concocted for her. “A land called…Idnum Robra. You’ve surely not heard the name. After my parents died, I wanted to larn about my ancestral homeland, so here I came.”

“You travelled alone?” asked the tavernkeeper, looking somewhat aghast.

She nodded.

He hissed out a breath. “They must make ’em tough where you’re from. For one so young to cross this vicious world on her lonesome…”

“I’m older than I look,” said Ruhildi.

He nodded sceptically. “Sure you are, girl. Sure you are. You got relatives in Ostavia?”

She tilted her head. “I don’t ken. Mam and Pap never spoke much of their past, or family. If there’s anything you can tell me about the fine people of this land, I’m eager to larn.”

His eyes narrowed. “You ain’t a Kothian spy, are you?”

Ruhildi spread her arms innocently. “Do I look like a spy?”

“If spies looked like spies, they wouldn’t be spies for long.”

“He’s got a point there,” said Saskia.

Ruhildi snorted. “No, I amn’t a spy. But that’s what I’d say if I were a spy, so you’ll just have to take me at my word.”

He nodded again. “True enough. Sure, I’ll try to answer your questions—for a price. You already got your free drink.”

Ruhildi slapped some copper coins down on the table.

The tavernkeeper looked down and laughed. “You’ll have to do better than that.” A silver coin joined the coppers. A slight widening of his eyes betrayed his surprise, but he covered it up well as he scooped up the pile with a grin. “Ostavian currency. You get these coins from your papa?”

Elyendra had been carrying a silver coin and a few coppers when she died. With the help of their stoneshaping magic, Saskia and Ruhildi had been able to refine copper and silver straight from the ground, and mould the metals into near-perfect replicas of the original coins. Money would not be a problem for the foreseeable future. Of course, Ruhildi didn’t say any of this. She simply nodded.

“Pleasure doing business,” he said. “Now what would you like to know?”

Saskia and Ruhildi had already learned a fair bit by spying remotely over the past few weeks. They’d learned that the Blightguard had a firm grip over the western province, where few people dared speak up against them. But here in the east, where the Blightguard had less of a presence, tongues were looser. The name was spoken as a curse as often as not. What they hadn’t been able to deduce yet was why the Blightguard had wanted Elyendra—and her mother, for that matter.

Ruhildi didn’t start by asking about the Blightguard, though. That would have been too obvious. She asked about the local cuisine, the most prominent tradespeople she should get to know while she was in town, any rules she needed to be aware of, dangerous wildlife or bandits she should avoid, and so on. Only then did she turn to broader affairs such as the relationship between provinces, who ruled them, and what the heck was the Blightguards’ role in all of this?

“Oh they’re a blight, to be sure,” said the tavernkeeper, whose name was Dill. “Not so much with the guarding. There was a time when the Blightguards looked out for the common folk—protected us from the demonic scourge. That time has long passed, yet here they remain, still acting like the world needs them.”

“You’re not their biggest admirer, I take it,” said Ruhildi.

Dill grunted. “Around these parts, not many of us are, though we’re not fool enough to say it to their faces. All they do is come here and take our children away from us.”

“They take your children? Why?”

He nodded. “Our best and brightest. Rare skill with a woodcutter’s axe or blacksmith’s hammer or hunting bow; a gift of tongues; a perfect memory. The talents they seek are varied. You never quite know if or when they’ll come for your child, but if and when they do, there’s no stopping them. Those who try…well we never hear from them again. Fed to the demons of the Blightland, no doubt.”

“That must be what they did to Elyendra’s mother,” said Saskia quietly in Ruhildi’s ear. “She refused to give up her daughter, so they shoved her through the gate as punishment. But Elyendra got away, hid from everyone, until…”

“The hunters came for her,” said Ruhildi.

Elyendra had been old enough to be considered a young woman, not a child, but everything else fit. They hadn’t intended to kill her. They’d wanted to take her—until she fought back.

“Eh?” said Dill.

“Och, don’t mind me,” said Ruhildi. “Just something I saw on my way here.”

“You saw them take someone?”

“Aye, methinks. Though I didn’t ken what it were at the time. The young folk they take—they raise them to be Blightguards?”

“Some,” he said. “Others…well this is more of a rumour…”

“Tell me,” said Ruhildi.

He leaned closer. “It has been said that the Archduke of Starlift has a peculiar appetite…for souls.”

“He’s a soulbinder?” said Ruhildi.

Dill shook his head. “Soulbinders borrow the energy of willing souls. That’s not what he does, if the stories are true. He takes the brightest of souls—and consumes them.”

“Like a demon,” said Ruhildi.

“Exactly like a demon! Humans ain’t supposed to be able to do that, but maybe he found a way. Or maybe…”

“Mayhap he is a demon in human skin,” she finished for him.

“Now don’t be scaring the girl with your tall tales, Dilly,” said Parbrand, who had sat quietly throughout their conversation.

Ruhildi snorted. “I don’t scare easily. Like as not, ’tis I who does the scaring.”

Dill laughed. “You’re an odd one, ain’t you?”

“More than you ken,” said Ruhildi, rising to her feet. “You’ve been fair helpful, but ’tis time for me to call it a night. Mayhap I’ll be back tomorrow to hear more of your stories.”

“You got coin, I got stories by the armload,” said Dill.

“You got horse shit by the armload,” muttered Parbrand. He looked at Ruhildi and laughed. “Guess she can’t handle her drink, after all.”

“Ruhildi, have you noticed you’re…uh, leaking?” said Saskia as delicately as she could.

It wasn’t as bad as it looked. Ruhildi’s digestive system wasn’t…well, digesting, so anything leaking out was exactly what went in. But it looked pretty bad.

“Och, pissed myself, did I?” said Ruhildi, speaking loudly enough to turn heads across the tavern. “Would you be a gentleman for a change and point me to the privy?”

“Out back,” said Parbrand with a wave of his hand. “Watch the last step. It’s a killer.”

“No, really it is,” added Dill. “Old Yabbick dashed his brains out on the cobblestones last spring. That mess was a right bugger to clean up.”

Ruhildi burst into their room at the inn a short time later, looking surprisingly cheerful. “Told you ’twere worth the risk coming here. We larnt some valuable tidbits.”

“It wasn’t a completewaste of time,” admitted Saskia. “You believe what he said about the…what was it, the Archprick of Starship or something?”

“The Archduke of Starlift,” said Ruhildi. “Starlift is the city at the heart of Westgate, the province we just left. Weren’t you paying attention?”

“Apparently not,” said Saskia. “Guess I lose something by not being there in person. It’s…like watching videos on the Internet. In one eyeball, out the other.”

Ruhildi looked at her blankly. “I still have things to larn about those odd expressions of yours.”

“Saskisms,” said Saskia. “Not to be confused with Saskiasms.”

“I like those better,” said Ruhildi.

Saskia let out an awkward cough. Sometimes being mind-linked with her friend meant sharing a little too much with her. “Right then. Do you believe Dill’s story or not?”

“There were a…an amulet of truth to what he said, weren’t there?”

Now it was Saskia’s turn to stare blankly. A good ten seconds passed before she figured it out. “Oh, you mean ring of truth. Good one!”

“Good what?”

Saskia let out a sigh. “Never mind. Yeah, his words felt…right. And he certainly believed what he was telling us, not that that necessarily means much. Crazy people believe a lot of crazy things. Hell, sanepeople believe a lot of crazy things.”

Ruhildi opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment, they got an alert from Torv and Lilene. She’d given both demons (though not the other two, who were…less than trustworthy) the ability to ping her or Ruhildi—along with a stern warning that she’d revoke the privilege if they abused it. So far, they’d never pinged her—until now.

Peering into her soul-space, she found all the demons clustered around a chrysalis. A chrysalis that was squirming.

Ruhildi had crawled out of one such chrysalis shortly after Saskia’s arrival. So who or what would emerge from this one?

It wasn’t Nine, the combined souls of nine imps she’d accidentally bound in the Blightland. That cocoon was further down the tree, and looked as withered as ever. Those unfortunate souls may have gone the same way as the Serpent King—absorbed into her core, losing their identity in the process, leaving just a husk behind.

Nor was it the chrysalis that had appeared after Elyendra’s death; still shining like a star in the crown of her tree. Elyendra herself, or something else drawn by her passing? She wouldn’t be finding out tonight.

Who did that leave? A shiver of dread ran through her branches. Gothgorad himself, returning to exact revenge? Or could someone or something else besides Ruhildi have hitched a ride with her from another world?

A tear began to form down the length of the cocoon. A mucous-covered arm slipped out, followed by a leg, and finally the flailing form tumbled out, shivering and blinking up at the startled demons.

Choking back the tears that threatened to flood her cheeks back in the physical world, Saskia whispered the name of a long-lost friend—now miraculously returned to her.

“Padhra.”