Parasite Soul (2 page)

“You were very brave, standing up to father,” she ventured.

“Father is a buffoon,” her brother returned moodily.

Tiera’s mittens flew to her mouth. “Don’t say that!”

“If he won’t let you hunt,” Merequio continued, “I’ll teach you in
secret.”

Tiera shook her head, awed by her brother’s recklessness, but she
did not speak.

Merequio was bowing his head to enter the lodge when all hell broke
loose. Tiera heard a strange, low whistle shivering through the
air. One of the hunters cried out a warning. Aphridion sprang to
his feet, upsetting a barrel of wine which sloshed across the campfire,
extinguishing it. King Minus spun on his heel as though in slow
motion. Merequio threw out his arm, frantically signaling Tiera to get
inside the lodge, but Tiera simply froze in place.

An enormous feline creature burst into the camp. She gaped at
the sheer size of it. At the shoulder, it stood taller than her father,
making it the most horrifyingly huge animal she’d ever laid eyes upon.
White as the snow that it churned with claws twice as long as Tiera’s fingers,
the monster’s lean torso bore a series of thick vertical stripes:
camouflage for the winter forest. A flattened, lizardlike head
twitched this way and that as it surveyed the human smorgasbord. Its
lashing tail, the width of a grown man’s torso, tapered to a savage bone spike.
Tiera had never laid eyes on such a creature before – not even on her father’s
private game preserve - but she’d heard enough stories to know what it
was: a jaggermund, the most dangerous beast in Cannevish.

“Protect the king! Protect his family!” Aphridion yelled,
scooping up his bow. “Some hunters you lot are, allowing this horror to
sneak up on us! Bring it down!”

Tiera thought he sounded so impressive that it failed to register
how little culpability the huntsmaster ascribed to himself. She couldn’t
have criticized him though, or any of them, really. For all their power
and bulk, jaggermunds were notoriously swift and silent, expert stalkers.
This one, however, had thrown subtlety to the winds. Possibly it was
starving. It slashed and snapped at the hunters, spitting like a
wildcat. Its claws opened throats and stomachs, tearing through tough
hide jackets as though they were parchment, and the men fell back before its
rampage.

“Dogs! Stand your ground! It mustn’t reach the royal
lodge!” Aphridion yelled, loosing three arrows in quick succession. Two
of them found their mark, the first burying itself in the beast’s left flank,
the second in its haunch as it swung toward the huntsmaster. The third,
regrettably, struck down one of Aphridion’s own men. As far as Tiera was
concerned, this unfortunate instance of friendly fire would never find its way
into The Histories.

The projectiles only incensed the jaggermund, which howled like
nothing Tiera had ever heard and barreled straight at Aphridion. Tiera’s
tiny cry of “No!” was lost in the chaos as the huntsmaster was borne down by
the charging behemoth, dragged beneath it, and emerged as a limp bundle of
bleeding limbs which slipped into the stream and disappeared.

“Kill it!” roared King Minus, wrenching a spear from a makeshift
rack. Other men had the same idea, snatching up polearms and warily
circling the creature. They jabbed at it so that it danced and roared and
whirled in tight circles, uncertain where to launch its next attack. Less
bold hunters launched arrows from afar, though furtively, afraid of striking
their fellows, or worse, the king.

Blood began to stream down the jaggermund’s flanks from a dozen
wounds, matting its fur. Again, that horrible, shivering howl filled the
air, tinged this time with anxiety. The creature clearly hadn’t
anticipated that its soft-looking prey would mount much of a resistance.
It began to snap wildly at the nearest hunters with its crocodile jaws; the men
leapt back, stabbing at it repeatedly like a swarm of fleshy wasps. With
grim determination, they harried the beast to the brink of collapse. The
snow turned to pink slush beneath its trampling feet. Tiera could tell
that only raw animal fury kept the jaggermund upright; disbelief that it had
been bested. She released a pent-up breath and dared to relax a little.

The next few moments imprinted themselves on Tiera’s memory with the
force of a battering ram. She later recalled them as though she were some
unearthly spectator, surveying the scene from far above. Impossible
though it was, she could even recall her own expression of disbelief and
desolation. It was as if Vanyon Afterlord himself had provided her a view
from a god’s own vantage. Years of relentless nightmares kept the
sequence crisp and clear in her mind’s eye.

Shouting like a berserker, Merequio charged the jaggermund, waving
his sword. His golden locks flying in a cloud about his face, he shoved
his way past the ring of astonished hunters and plunged his blade between two
of the great beast’s ribs.

Anyone should have known not to risk attacking such a formidable
creature at close quarters. Grievously wounded as it was, the jaggermund
was desperate and dangerous. Merequio, however, had always been reckless;
no doubt his anger at his father informed his actions. Or perhaps he just
wanted the glory of the kill. Whatever the case, the attack proved
catastrophic.

Roaring, the jaggermund lashed out. Raking claws caught
Merequio across the forehead. Skin split as he reeled backward.
Tiera yelled his name, as did their father. Blood flowed freely into his
eyes as he clutched his face, dazed and blinded. Purest luck allowed him
to duck the beast’s next blow; unable to judge his position with accuracy, he
dodged out of its line of sight but not away. The world seemed to
freeze. Tiera could have counted every flying chunk of snow as the beast
whipped about, its powerful bone-tipped tail catching her brother in the side
of the head. A sharp and horrible crack seemed to split the sky, freezing
the world. Merequio spun off limply with his head dangling at a crazy angle.
Tiera stuffed both her mittens into her mouth and screamed.

Memory, she would reflect in later years, was a funny thing.
She could recall with utmost clarity her brother’s expression as he died – his
eyes, crimson-filmed and wide with shock, brushing her own one last time but
unable to see her. His hair a blood-spattered halo. How he landed
with his left leg twisted beneath him; it broke, but that no longer
mattered. She remembered all this but she couldn’t even recall how the
jaggermund had eventually been slain or whom had killed it. Perhaps her
brother’s final blow had been fatal; she’d never asked. She had only the
vaguest recollection of the camp being packed up or the journey back to
Seveston. At the moment of her brother’s death, the world simply seemed
to stop turning.

Merequio’s funeral had been a blur. Tiera recalled a sea of
interchangeable noble faces commiserating with her on her loss, but few of them
had been sincere. The nobles were never sincere. They’d simply
deemed it politically sound to make an appearance at such an important
event. Merequio had always held the nobility in the utmost of
contempt. Following the funeral, so did Tiera.

The jaggermund’s head, she’d been told later by her old maid
Grentha, had afterward been paraded around the streets of Vingate on the tip of
a spear. When Grentha had grown too old to serve, save in the most basic
of tasks, Tiera had been left with no one to talk to. Her father, never
an affectionate man, left her to her devices. She became a ghost in the
palace, hating everyone and everything.

Then one day she was no longer a child. On that day, she came
to the decision that she was no longer a ghost, either. She went to bed a
lost, confused, angry girl. When she emerged from the cocoon of her
bedchamber the following morning, it was as a fully-fledged princess.

One day, Simon promised himself, he would pen a memoir. Sure,
he didn’t know how to write, but he’d seen scribes scribbling away with their
quills, and he couldn’t imagine it was a difficult art to learn; at least not
in comparison with what he currently hoped to accomplish. If worst came
to worst, and he was missing a hand or two by the time it came to splotch paper
with ink, he could hire some learned fellow to do the job for him and take the
credit afterward.

Ultimately, it didn’t really matter to Simon how his biography came
about. All he knew for certain was what the first sentence would
say:
You can’t possibly imagine how deafening a dragon’s roar is until
you’ve had one of the fat bastards howling in your face
.

The fat bastard in question, a colossal gold-armored beast with
unthinkably foul breath, was stomping in mad circles trying to maneuver itself
behind him. His torch caused it greater alarm than his sword, which was
odd for a fire-breather, but a fact Simon took full advantage of as he swept
the burning brand back and forth. Dozens of beady black spider eyes
glinted in the flickering light. Disquieting as they were, Simon would
have stared into them all day to avoid contemplating the terrifying ivory
blades lining the monster’s cavernous mouth.

This may,
he admitted to himself as he
stumbled back to avoid a slashing talon,
have been a bad idea
.
But
the reward! Focus on the reward
.

Simon was having difficulty concentrating the life of wealth and
privilege which awaited if he successfully completed his task when every breath
he took might be his last. He was hardly the first fool to tackle this
dragon, and far from the best armed or most competent. The beast’s great
bulk and ferocity was a sobering reminder that he was no knight, just a peasant
with more guts than brains.

Even his sword – which he’d found abandoned in the ditch of the road
which snaked past his father’s farm - was second rate, blunt and
tarnished. Smothered by weeds, it had lain rusting in muddy water for who
knew how long. Simon would surely never even have spotted it had he not
been chasing a coin which had escaped the pockets of his threadbare pants and
rolled into the same ditch. The coin was lost forever, but the sword
stamped the loss clean from his mind.

A knight would have scoffed at the blade. It was battered and
dull, the runes inscribed into the metal nearly indistinguishable. In the
eyes of a peasant youth, however, it was a windfall. Simon had spent
countless evenings waving the sword at enemy fence posts, trying to get a feel
for it. As he’d thrust and hacked in the general vicinity of his
imperturbable foes, he’d imagined the exploits of the great warrior it might
once have belonged to; the great warrior
he
might become if he could
learn to wield it with similar proficiency.

Sadly, no one in the village was qualified to teach him. A
tiny rural community, Brand was exclusively home to farmers and
craftsmen. Even the local blacksmith had never forged anything more
martial than a horseshoe. Simon had been left with no choice but to
develop his own feel for the weapon.

“There is probably a flaw in the metal,” Simon’s father Veter had
suggested, frowning down at the illused weapon as he turned it over and over
in his lap. “Why else would it be discarded so unceremoniously? A
knight would retire it with honor, pass it on to his heirs, or at the very least
sell it.”

“It’s not flawed,” Simon had countered defensively. While he
lacked the technical knowledge to make this assertion, gut instinct had told
him that the sword was still potent. The haft seemed to crackle with
power. Wielding it made him feel as though no force in Cannevish could
stand before him.

“Then it’s a murder weapon, incriminating its owner and cast away in
flight,” the older man had returned, earning himself a patronizing sigh.
Sometimes the man’s cynicism was stifling.

“Well, it’s mine now.” That he was the blade’s new owner had been of
the only importance to Simon at the time. No matter its current
condition, how many peasants could lay claim to ownership of a sword which had
almost certainly once belonged to a great man? Of course, had he stopped
to consider the reality of the sword’s decrepitude rather than allowing himself
to get swept away in flights of fantasy, he wouldn’t now be facing a colossal,
ferocious beast upon the scales of which this beat-up old artifact would almost
certainly break – if he ever even landed a blow.

Let’s face it, Simon,
he told himself as
he scrambled under the dragon’s snapping, slavering jaws,
you aren’t going
home tonight. I suppose you thought you were clever, coming at night and
hoping the monster would be asleep. As if no knight had thought of that
before you! Looks like you won’t be winning the hand of a princess after
all. You, my friend, are going to end up as dragon dung
.

No one knew where this monstrosity had come from, but it had
certainly made itself at home in Cannevish. Upon its arrival, it had
immediately taken to scarfing back flocks of sheep. Swiftly graduating to
herds of cattle, which it seemed to enjoy stampeding, it inevitably began
sampling men and found them to its liking. Consequently, several small
villages had disappeared in fiery infernos, the dragon picking through the
burning rubble for well-cooked morsels. Discovering little resistance, it
grew bolder, gorging itself on ever larger communities. Soon, it had
become the terror of the entire nation.

As he reflected upon its murderous capabilities, Simon began to
realize the enormity of his miscalculation. No single human could
possibly hope to topple this embarrassingly rotund but terrifyingly titanic
juggernaut. When there was room to stand nearly upright in a monster’s
gaping maw, no princess in the world was worth the hassle of trying to topple
it.

The bull drake’s temper was fraying. It clearly found Simon,
who’d been dashing about the cave like a madman, deeply exasperating.
There was little room to maneuver its great bulk; its lashing tail chipped and
scored the cave walls. Every time it attempted to unfurl its vast
bat-like wings, a rain of stalactites provided it a painful reminder of just
how cramped its quarters were.

For his part, Simon was having difficulty keeping an eye on his
surroundings as he desperately attempted to keep the dragon at bay. The
den was littered with human remains. Simon had stumbled over half a
knight earlier, which had nearly cost him his life. Shortly afterward,
he’d slipped on a slick patch which he’d determined, with horror, to be the
liquid remnants of a freshly dismembered peasant. The poor fellow had
undoubtedly entertained Simon’s own dreams of elevating himself above his station.
All in all, the cave was as treacherous, revolting, and depressing, and the
stench was incredible.

Upon losing two crack troops of soldiers to the beast, King Minus
had formulated a strategy destined to earn him the distinction of Most Reviled Monarch
in Cannevish history. His plan began innocently enough: occupy the dragon
by bringing it food. In the interest of restricting the range of its
activities, cows, sheep, goats, and jackalopes were shepherded to it in great
quantities. Unfortunately, having developed a specialized taste for
humankind, the dragon snubbed its nose at this menu, and its one-lizard
onslaught continued unabated.

Desperate now, King Minus ensured that minstrels would sing of his
villainy for centuries to come by ordering his troops to round up hundreds of
hapless young peasant maidens. At first, no one knew what he intended, some
suggesting that he was protecting Cannevish’s future by secreting the young and
fertile away. When the girls did not return and dragon attacks abruptly
ceased, however, even village idiots were able to put two and two
together: the king was no less a monster than the dragon.

The steady supply of involuntary meals might have satisfied the
beast, but the parents of said meals were understandably disenchanted with this
policy. As their daughters dwindled in number, the citizens grew
restless. Rumblings of a peasant uprising mounted. With bereft families
demanding that Minus practice what he preached and donated his own damn
daughter
-
or better yet himself
-
to the dragon’s larder, even
the unscrupulous monarch came to the conclusion that it was time to end the
beast’s reign of terror before Cannevish became exclusively a kingdom of men.

Soldiers, promised glory, set out to end the beast’s reign. A
few eviscerated warriors later, volunteers slowed to a trickle. The
trickle soon dried up, with fighting men mysteriously finding employment
opportunities in neighboring kingdoms. This exodus of muscle left King
Minus with little choice but to offer a reward for the beast’s head. Gold
alone proved to be little incentive for warriors to march themselves to certain
death, so Minus tossed in noble titles and the deeds to generous estates.

The result was a lot of dead knights.

Cannevish, weakened by the dragon’s depredations, was fast becoming
an easy target for opportunistic invaders. None of the surrounding
kingdoms currently wanted it, on account of the dragon, but King Minus found
himself in a very unfortunate situation. The beast was a blight on his
nation, yet should he lose too many fighting men in his efforts to destroy it,
his lands would be severely weakened and easy pickings for outsiders. He
refused to ask his neighbors for help, lest the political cost was too high;
besides which, several monarchs had already publicly denounced him as the
real
wyrm in Cannevish. Incredibly, it turned out that sacrificing your
kingdom’s young womenfolk to feed a monster wasn’t the best way to invoke
sympathy or unsolicited assistance from rival kingdoms.

Finally, in an effort to spare his fighting forces, King Minus
offered the hand of his daughter Tiera, a maiden now in her eighteenth summer,
to any citizen who could best the beast. If nothing else, this policy
managed to thin the peasant herd. As it turned out, scores of men were
willing to hurl themselves into the dragon’s slavering jaws for the faint
possibility of rising above their lot. If King Minus’ plans involved
subduing the creature by overfeeding it, he was succeeding admirably. It
was anyone’s guess how much longer it would be able to support its expanding
girth with its increasingly inadequate wings.

Some would-be suitors attacked it in groups; how they planned to
divide the princess up should they succeed was not immediately clear. Others
dueled one another for the right to ascend to the cave, as though the order in
which they served themselves to the dragon was of any issue. The
rudimentary camp at the base of Mount Corrigan swarmed with idiots, each
possessed of the single-minded certainty that
he
was the man destined to
inherit the kingdom, while Princess Tiera kept his bed warm. That the
princess was as legendarily difficult as she was beautiful, that her ego
couldn’t have been flattened by the payload of a ballista, didn’t seem to
trouble them. Gold coins and royal tail obscured their vision. All
the while, the confused dragon barely had to leave its cave, as an entire
kingdom had banded together to keep it fat and content.

Simon, of course, was no warrior. Nor was he crafty or scholarly,
like those who sought to trick or trap the dragon. His competition mocked
him relentlessly, but Simon wasn’t intimidated. The way he saw it, his
chances were as good as any of the other men. If he was devoured, as was
looking increasingly likely, then so be it; he would never have to plow a field
or shear a sheep again. If, however, luck was with him, luxury awaited
for the rest of his days. Having the kingdom’s most desirable woman at
his side was just gravy.

Pay attention
, he reprimanded himself
sharply as the dragon, moving quickly for its bulk, swung its hindquarters
about and whipped at him with its massive spiked tail. He managed to roll
to the side as the huge organic club thundered to the floor, sending bone
shrapnel flying. The beast roared again, infuriated by its nimble
prey. Simon was sure that his ears would never stop ringing, but he was,
at least, grateful for not have been overburdened with armor. He might be
no closer to defeating the dragon than any of his predecessors, but he’d lasted
longer than many. Down in the base camp, Simon fantasized, they would
hear the beast’s continuing howls of frustration and grudgingly recognize that
they’d underestimated him.

Still, he was tiring. Sooner or later that thrashing tail or one
of the creature’s great feet would make a stew of him, and he hadn’t seen the
slightest opening in the dragon’s defense. Occasionally he threw a
longing glance toward the cave mouth, but there was an awful lot of beast in
between him and the opening. Could he roll beneath it? He didn’t
think so, but he doubted he had it in him to dodge more than a couple more
blows, either. It was worth a shot.

Feigning a dash to the left, he instead sprinted right, tossing the
guttering torch at the dragon’s face. Multiple glittering eyes blinked in
unison as the great slavering head flinched away. Bones crunching
underfoot, Simon took advantage of his opening and rolled under an arching
wing, leaping over the spiked battering ram tail. The toe of his left
boot got temporarily caught in a ribcage and he had to bounce on one foot,
kicking manically, to remove it. Then he was out of the stifling,
stinking cavern, breathing cool night air.