A passphrase comes to mind.
The memory strikes you: the first scalding breath of air to revive a drowning man.
“Men grip a snake’s tail,” you say, still feeling the words stamp over and over your tongue.
“A changer has none,” comes the reply, the past echoing through it in harmony with its own singing. Strange, and welcome. You had thought you might wander through the deserts of your memory all the rest of your days. Take the water where it’s given. “My dear, dear companion, we thought you were lost! Weeks ago… When the usurper, curse her, seized the throne. I have only been searching for your corpse, impaled on another black fauchard along the traitor’s mile to give its sweet breath to the flies. But none of that! You are here; there is yet hope for us.”
“You say you thought me lost: I could not be more lost. I do not know my name, or yours. They have branded me with silver.”
He comes closer, his eyes widening pupils near as black as your dark, peeling back the layers of murk to see your crucified naked body, and a forehead glinting silver. Kaum, changer beast. You are marked. With the silver in you, you will never again melt your bones like taffy and fold skin into paper cranes, tigers, hares. You are left in this soft, crumpled shape, unborn for the rest of your days. And who, who are you?
The man’s mouth is working as he searches about your eyes- eyes of unknown colour, face of unknown shape.
“You are Sphinx,” he says. “Sphinx, leader of the Royal Cabal. My leader- I am Lammergeier, the vulture of the high rock.” You see the effort working away at the corners of his mouth as he tells you what you ought to know- realising no authority will guide him to the havens of the past- and you are not quite too lost in the sounds of your own name to remark on it. But Sphinx- you remember her. The monster-woman. So sure in her might.
“How long can you stay?” you ask. “Do you have the key?” It is unbearable that he might leave you here with no light- in the forgetting dark, where the silver might rob you even of ‘Sphinx’.
“I was… Not well known,” he says. “A spy, an informant in the enemy camp. You have seen me before, but briefly. I had thought I was the only one to survive, when Jormaga took her brother’s crown. I stayed where I was, deep in the Black Duchess’s personal guard. But I took a post in the dungeons when they took the palace, searching for any remnant of the Cabal, my siblings in blood. I have the key. I can get us both out.”
“Then quickly,” you say, not letting hope infect you, not yet. “Use the belt knife. Take the accursed seal out of me.”
He pulls the short blade from its sheath, hesitating over your forehead.
“That was an order, man!” you bark. The tone of command is familiar- like swallowing a ribbed worm, letting it distort your throat to its own patterns, hearing it speak with your voice.
He does it. It is a sweet pain, as he works the knife under the silver-alloy bone pins and pries out the pure silver plating, skimming the skin first to let him see the metal. He is careful never to touch it with his bare hand. You think he is surprised, perhaps, that the silver does not char away your skin- that all you get is the blisters, white and soft and corrupt, and the agony. The memory does not return with the silver gone- let it be too early to tell.
“How long do you have?” you ask again.
“Until the shift change,” he says. “Soon.”
You order him to release your manacles and he finds a key. It is blessed relief as you fall to the bare rock floor, all the strength out of you, silent only to spare your lieutenant your groans.
What will you do?
Written by ouroboros666 on 23 July 2016
