by Gustavo Bondoni
in Issue 134, March 2023
As Sileon rode into the deserted village, a woman in a coarse grey dress seized one of her stirrups.
“You are an Unwinder,” the woman said. It wasn’t a question.
“I was once an Unwinder,” Sileon replied. “I am no longer welcome among them.”
“But you still have the magic.”
Sileon didn’t explain that it wasn’t exactly magic, but actually training to see through others’ magic. It would have meant nothing to this woman. Instead, she sighed and said: “I still know the ways.”
“Then you must help me,” the woman said, still clinging to the stirrup.
“What is your name?” Sileon asked.
“Miraya.”
“Very well, Miraya. Why must I help you?”
“Because no one else can.”
***
Sileon patted her horse to keep it from becoming skittish as they approached the entrance to the lair. “Dark and ugly,” she said.
The forest under the hill was typical of the tangles left over from the wars of magic. It had been designed to protect a sorcerer’s lair in their absence, necessary because the sorcerers had gathered up all the wealth and knowledge of the world after the collapse of technological civilization.
Miraya nodded. “Our greatest treasure is inside.”
“How long has the sorcerer been dead?” Sileon asked.
The village woman shrugged. “Since before my grandfather’s time. Before that, who can say?”
Sileon nodded. “And you say your village will die if I don’t go in there and liberate the treasure?”
“We will wither to nothing.”
The woman didn’t look like she was starving. She appeared well-fed and strong, albeit weighed down by some great sadness.
Sileon looked up. Beyond the mass of trees a mountain loomed. The sorcerers of old liked the high ground, and they always seemed to choose terrain which smoked ominously. She sighed. “Is it a dragon?”
“It’s a monster that flies by night. We’ve never seen it, but it stole everything from us.”
“And you want me to slay it,” Sileon said.
The woman shook her head. “We just want to recover what it took. My husband…” She glanced into the forest at the foot of the hill. Mist covered the low places in the woods.
“Is probably still wandering around in there. And will be until someone finds him.”
“He’s been gone for two days.”
“Men can survive two days in the forest,” Sileon said.
“Will you help us?”
Sileon ground her teeth. “I have to,” she replied.
That seemed to surprise Miraya. “Why? I thought you weren’t an Unwinder anymore.”
“I’m not. But that doesn’t change the oath I swore. Wait here with my horse.”
“I can’t. I’m coming with you.”
Sileon stopped in her tracks. “I’m not asking you to come.”
“That makes no difference.”
***
Save for a single gap, the woods were too dense to enter. Thorns grew between the tightly-packed boles. That gap led to a path which wound its way between the trees.
“We can’t follow the path,” Sileon said. “That’s where the traps will be.”
Miraya studied the underbrush. “I don’t think we’ll be able to go through this,” she said.
Sileon said nothing. Her eyes were closed, and she listened to the forest and extended senses honed by years of training. Finally, she smiled. “A little further ahead.”
They walked a few paces more and, when the feeling was right, Sileon stopped and faced the brambles. She glanced at Miraya and said: “You must follow exactly where I go, or you will die.”
Then she stepped through the snarled, sharp thorns.
“No, wait,” Miraya exclaimed behind her.
“Remember what I told you. Come through now, or die.”
Miraya appeared, arms stretched ahead of her, eyes closed. Sileon put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s far enough,” she said.
The village woman opened her eyes. “How… how did you do that? I thought it would tear me up, but I felt nothing.”
“That’s because there’s nothing there. It’s an illusion. Look around.”
Miraya looked. The trees were more normally spaced. Sunlight filtered in between the branches. Brown leaf mulch carpeted the floor. In the distance, a squirrel studied them, then disappeared up a tree.
“This is impossible,” Miraya said. “This is the Monster’s Wood. What have you done?”
“You wanted an Unwinder, didn’t you? Well, this is what Unwinders do. We see things even though they’re hidden.”
“I thought you went through mazes.”
“How do you think we do it?” Sileon held Miraya’s gaze. “So now, tell me. All this talk about the village losing its greatest treasure, and that you’ll disappear if we don’t recover it… have you told me the truth?”
“Every word, as I see it.”
Another of the things Sileon could do was to tell when someone else as lying. Miraya wasn’t lying.
But that meant very little. She could be concealing anything at all by the simple expedient of not talking about it. Sileon didn’t even know the right questions to ask.
All she could do was nod and say: “If you betray me, I will be certain to kill you. I might die of your actions, but so will you.”
“I understand,” Miraya said.
“Good.”
They walked through the woods in silence for some moments. Something huge flew overhead, impossible to see clearly, but casting a shadow over the canopies of the trees. Miraya clutched Sileon’s arm.
“It can’t reach us here,” Sileon whispered.
The forest floor began to rise as they approached the base of the mountain and the trees thinned out.
Miraya pushed Sileon to the floor as something passed overhead.
Sileon turned onto her back and saw a shadow fly away, dark and menacing, even in full daylight. She wasn’t quite able to define its shape.
Strange. Normally, her eyes could see truth through illusion.
They stood and kept walking for the mountain. There had to be a path. There was always a path. And it was always hidden.
Miraya pointed to a flagstone ramp that wound around the mountain, gaining altitude with each loop. “We need to get to the top. That’s where the monster’s lair is.”
“If you go up that road,” Sileon said, “you’ll most likely end up in a pit full of spikes, or fall off a cliff.”
“We need to hurry. I can see all the way up.” Miraya stepped onto the wide lane and began to climb.
Sileon ran after her, carefully studying the stones beneath her feet before every single footstep. Finally, she caught up with the village woman and took her arm.
“Are you trying to get us killed?” Sileon asked.
“No. I’m trying to get to the top before nightfall.”
Sileon saw that the sun had passed the point of being directly overhead and that the afternoon was already a couple of hours old.
“And why is that important?”
“Because that’s when the…”
Miraya suddenly disappeared into the flagstones.
“No!” Sileon shouted.
Carefully, so as not to fall after her companion, Sileon lowered herself to the floor. Then she found the spot where the solid area ended and poked her head through the illusion.
Miraya sat, bruised and bloodied, on the floor a couple of meters below. She stood with a grimace and reached up, but couldn’t quite reach Sileon’s hand. She desperately tried to climb the wall, but it was polished to a mirror finish.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Sileon said.
She rushed back down the hill and found a solid branch on the forest floor. Then she returned, running with no fear of falling because once she’d identified an illusion, she could see it perfectly clearly.
“Grab this,” she told Miraya.
The village woman was strong, and between Sileon pulling her up and the purchase—though small—that she managed to get on the wall, Miraya inched up.
“I told you to be careful,” Sileon said. “We need to find another path.”
“You can do what you want,” Miraya replied. “I’m going up this one. It leads straight to the lair.”
Reminded of the monster’s presence, Sileon glanced up, but there was no sign of anything stalking them. She turned back to Miraya. “You’re going to die,” she said.
“If I’m not up before the sun goes down, I don’t want to live.”
And she set off, walking around the illusory flagstones.
Sileon concentrated on the floor in front of her. “Let me go ahead,” she said, pulling Miraya behind her. “I can spot the difference between the real and the false… as long as we don’t run.”
“I might not be able to do that,” Miraya replied.
Sileon wanted to ask her what the hurry was. Treasure would keep.
Miraya stumbled on her injured foot. She barely managed to catch herself with her hands before slamming face-first into the stones.
One look in her eyes, however, convinced Sileon that it would be unwise to suggest a rest. Miraya got back to her feet and limped on.
Four more pits dotted the ramp, and even one place where an illusory path extended out into empty air, from which the drop would do more than just bruise anyone who experienced it.
Finally, they came to the moat of fire. A smoking drawbridge appeared to be the only way across.
“That’s just silly,” Sileon said. “Anyone who made it this far will be trained in spotting illusion. Even you can see it. Look carefully at the way the fire interacts with the bottom of the bridge.”
“It turns darker there. Like I can see the bridge through the fire,” Miraya said, grimacing in pain as she did so. Her dress was blackened on the side from a deep cut. “Does that mean we can cross?”
“Not over that bridge,” Sileon replied. “I think… here.”
She stepped into the flames and down into the moat—which really existed, but had probably been dry for centuries. “I suspect this was a powerful sorcerer,” Sileon said. “For an illusion this large and colorful to survive so long means that a lot of power was funneled into it. Normally, with things this fancy you can see the edges without any training, they start to get ragged, and even the locals begin to ignore them.”
“I think it was a sorceress,” Miraya said. “A woman named Omarosa.”
“Did your grandfather tell you that?”
She shrugged. “It’s the story in the village. She appeared one day in a forest clearing during the Wars of Magic. The people of our village tried to help her, but she attacked them and ran up the mountain, where she built the keep out of stone.” Miraya pointed up at the organic forms of the rock. “They say it was more like an animal’s lair than a magician’s palace like she used the forces of nature to keep us away and to attack other magicians.”
“An elemental,” Sileon said. “That’s what magicians who control natural forces are called.”
“We called her the Witch of Monsters, because she turned the creatures of the forest into an army. They were deformed and black and angry. Our town shrank to the village you saw earlier. And now… now it will likely just disappear.”
Miraya forged ahead and, when she reached the far bank of the moat, reached out with her hand and, finding no resistance, disappeared through the illusion.
Sileon followed more carefully. Though this felt right—the hidden path was usually the one the sorcerers and their minions traveled by—one never knew. Sorcerers were a paranoid lot, and elementals were always just one step away from going feral and showing the nature spirit within. They could be unpredictable.
The gap in the wall of the dry moat opened into a long, musty corridor.
“Stay where you are,” Sileon told Miraya, who was attempting to feel her way forward in the dark. She reached inside her pack and removed a small alchemist’s globe, a glass sphere in which one could see a metal filament. By twisting the bottom of the globe, she made a soft yellow light emerge.
Miraya leaned away and made a warding gesture.
“It’s not magic,” Sileon said. “It’s the learnings of the old ones.”
“The old ones were magicians. And slaves. But the slaves didn’t know those things.”
“This is knowledge from a time before the magicians. This is what the Keepers of Mysteries send Unwinders out to find.”
“I thought an Unwinder was some sort of warrior.”
Sileon shook her head sadly. “Only when things go very wrong.” Then she chuckled. “Which is most of the time.”
“You promise that isn’t some kind of evil magic?”
“I promise.”
“Can I hold it?” Miraya said.
“Don’t drop it. It’s valuable.”
Once her fascination with the light passed, Miraya’s single-mindedness returned and she rushed down the corridor.
The door at the end of the hall was rotted and they slipped between collapsed planks to find a staircase heading up. Sileon let Miraya lead. If the woman was intent on tripping any magical surprises up ahead, Sileon wouldn’t get in her way.
After several winding stories, the stairs ended at another door, barely more solid than the one below, and Miraya didn’t even bother slowing as she burst through.
Light, the grey illumination at the end of the day, burst onto the stairs. Sileon emerged to see that they were up among the clouds, in a room with wide unglazed openings surrounded by irregular rounded stone columns. It looked like the place had been congealed as opposed to built.
As Sileon watched, an enormous dragon, black with red markings on its stomach, flew through one of the openings and landed on a pile of glittering treasure. It sprayed a stream of fire from its mouth.
Miraya and Sileon dived out of the way, behind a kind of stalagmite that emerged from the stone floor.
Sileon looked up. The column they’d hidden behind tapered as it rose. The very top, some five meters above her head, was a statue of a woman with flowing hair, carved from wood. Or at least the top half of the woman was visible. She was a stunning, slim woman in pre-collapse dress to the waist, but below that, the pillar grew wider, as if the person carving the statue had decided to carve a tree instead. Tangled roots spread out until they merged with the stone floor, fashioned to resemble roots that disappeared into the ground. At some point, the wood at the top of the statue became stone. Sileon couldn’t quite see where: it almost appeared as if the transition was too gradual to notice.
Dark stains covered the skin of the statue in several places.
“I know where you are,” a voice that made the room rumble said. “You might as well come out.”
This time, it was Sileon who had to drag Miraya forward. The village woman was pale, shaking. Sileon took the light globe from nerveless fingers to keep the woman from dropping it, and put it back in her pack.
She understood: Miraya had lived in fear of this creature that existed in the darkest nights forever. To see it in the flesh, in all its magnificent enormity touched her deepest terrors.
“Here we are,” Sileon said.
“Thank you,” the enormous voice replied. “And to show you that I’m not a monster since you obeyed my request, I will allow you to leave in peace. Go. Live your puny lives out.”
Sileon smiled and stepped forward again. The dragon was a truly beautiful sight. Sleek, healthy, the size of a village longhouse. It was black as night, with only red markings here and there to break the inky monotony. I was perched on a colossal pile of treasure. Gold coins creaked and tinkled as the dragon shifted its weight.
“I promised to fight you,” she said. She pulled a short spear from the scabbard nestled on her back between her pack and her shirt, then tested the footing with her soft leather boots. The rough stone, worn with age, would give her good purchase. “So come and fight me.”
The dragon’s laugh shook the cavern. More coins fell from the pile.
“Do you wish to die?”
A long arc of fire flew from the creature’s mouth, and it laughed again. Miraya yelped.
Sileon sighed. “No. And I don’t want to kill you, either.”
The dragon spread its magnificent wings and flew up into the air. It circled once inside the gigantic space and then dove towards the two women.
“Get down!” Sileon shouted. She pulled Miraya to the ground and dove beside her. Sharp talons grazed her back.
As the dragon circled, she studied the wound: painful, but not deep. The claws were less powerful than they looked.
Once again, the flying beast attacked. As it gained speed, Sileon studied it closely, remaining motionless in its path for a better look. Then, once sure of her target, she threw the javelin at the dragon’s armored, scaly chest before diving aside.
The black, winged body swooped by with a rush of air before tumbling once and crashing to the stone.
It was no longer a dragon.
A misshapen form, a little like a winged centaur with claws at the end of its legs instead of hooves, and a face that seemed to be mostly human, but with the beak of an owl lay panting raggedly on the stones in a pool of its own blood. The javelin had entered the chest and protruded from between the shoulder blades.
Sileon walked across the room and knelt beside it.
“I failed,” the creature said.
“You failed Omarosa?”
The monster nodded. “She… she made me. I wanted to…”
What it wanted to do was destined to remain a mystery. Blood gushed from the monster’s mouth as its head dropped to the floor.
Sileon stood. “What a waste,” she said as she studied the chamber. “It didn’t need to be this way.” The pile of gold had disappeared, leaving nothing but a few horse droppings. Behind the place where the pile had been stood a door, the only rectangular object in the entire cavern.
Miraya knelt on the stones, sobbing.
Sileon put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “The children are behind that door,” she said. “And they’re still alive. You were right to make me hurry.”
Miraya looked up. “How did you know about…” then hope filled her features. “Are you sure about them? About my little Alia? And Hina’s little Beno?”
Sileon nodded. “In order to function correctly a spell of sacrifice needs to happen at a time of power. Midnight. Or sunrise. Or sunset. If you do it at another time, the magic loses its potency and the blood loses its power.”
If Miraya heard Sileon’s words, she gave no indication of it. She was already running as best she could on a swollen ankle, limping towards the doorway. Then pulling back the bolts and disappearing into the room beyond.
Sileon considered following her, then decided against it. Instead, she walked back to the statue and put a pensive hand on one of the dark stains. She wondered how long they had been accumulating.
“Hello, Omarosa,” she said. “I don’t know if you can hear me in there. I’m pretty sure you can’t, but just in case, I wanted to let you know that you won’t be getting any more blood from the village children. I don’t even know if you ordered for that to happen or if your creation over there did it of his own initiative. Either way, it’s over. And I know you didn’t want to lose your humanity and return to nature… but honestly, this is much better than the fate of most elementals. You look beautiful.”
Then she stepped away and nearly got knocked down by a violent rush.
Miraya was sobbing into her shoulder, hugging her tightly enough to hurt.
Two small figures trailed behind her, a girl of perhaps five years of age, and a little boy of six. Both of them had eyes red from crying, but they weren’t crying now. They were looking up at Sileon like she was some kind of goddess.
Sileon knelt to stroke their hair. They flinched, so she stood up again.
“Anything,” Miraya said. “I don’t have much, but I will give you anything. But how did you know?”
Sileon smiled sadly. “I’m an Unwinder. I was trained from earliest to see the truth when it isn’t evident.” She shrugged. “I suppose I have also learned to know the truth when I hear something else.”
“Ask me for anything,” Miraya said again.
“Very well.” Night was falling outside. “Tomorrow, when you descend, I want you to take care of my horse until I come for him.”
“You won’t come with us?”
“Not immediately. My place is here. There may be remnants of old knowledge in this keep, and I need to look into it as deeply as I can. It may take a week or more.”
“Very well. What else?”
“Take care of the little ones. They’ll remember this, but they will also be the first generation of your village to live without the fear of being taken in the night. Treasure them.”
“That, I can do.”
Sileon held the woman’s gaze. “Yes. I think you can.”
© March 2023, Gustavo Bondoni
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer who writes primarily in English. He has published several novels and two short story collections. He has over two hundred short stories published in fourteen countries. They have been translated into seven languages. His writing has appeared in Pearson’s Texas STAAR English Test cycle, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Perihelion SF, The Best of Every Day Fiction and many others. He placed second in the 2019 Been Memorial Contest and received a Judges Commendation in The James White Award. His work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery. His website is www.gustavobondoni.com.