Laanimere closed the door behind her and sat beside Tristan. Tristan ignored her and instead concentrated on his bowl but was well aware of her sharp gaze on him. The soup was stale and cold but all they had. He had lost his appet.i.te for food long ago, and guessed it was same for most of them."Why do you do it?" She asked softly, he paused but didn"t turn, trying to guess what she meant. "Taking care of him, who is he to you?"
She meant his master. No one but him knew what the old man sleeping beside them was and by his own order. Tristan was to keep it like that, unknown.
"He is old and he has no one." He answered and hoped it would be enough.
"Yes, but why does it have to be YOU? You don"t do it for anyone else. Three days ago when Old Niben croaked you didn"t even look at him. What makes him so special? Does he have b.a.l.l.s of gold that he promised to give you?" She was almost forceful now but still soft, and Tristan had to make sure if he was hearing right. It was one thing to hear about it and another to experience it himself – her mouth.
"…Yes…but Niben had you all… Mahm…Nowsen has no one."
"Is that his name? It"s so funny!" She said with a twisted pout. "Who is he, do you know? No one knows anything about him. …I sure have asked."
It surprised him that she had actually cared enough to ask. Before everything happened, Tristan had only known Laanimere by her name because of how loud she was at everything. Or how everyone would be calling her name whenever she was around. Before, their paths had never crossed.
"What did they say?" This time he asked.
"That they knew s.h.i.t. That he had been here for as long as they remembered…" She said, exasperated.
"I…don"t know either. But one day I got lost below and he found me." Tristan waited in a thought and then clarified, "…I found him, I guess. I was young, he had books. He read stories to me and then started teaching me how to read them." It was not a lie, not completely anyway but it was as much as he could tell her.
She listened silently but didn"t reply. He wondered if it was enough to satisfy her or if she had some more uncomfortable questions.
She did have more but thankfully no more uncomfortable ones.
"Will you do the watch today too?"
"Yes?"
"Why? Aren"t you afraid?" She asked and then looking slightly embarra.s.sed she shrugged, "I"d be wetting my knickers in p.i.s.s the entire time."
What could he say to that?
"Temple is safe. I don"t think I was ever seen by "it". After the first week I stopped feeling afraid."
This time he turned to her but she wasn"t looking at him.
"Tristan," she said as if not sure if it was his name, "The girl that brought you, what did she say?"
"Who?"
"Olean, you know, the one from Sharak. With green hair that says she found you in the forest… why were you in the forest, anyway? Were you looking to die?"
"I don"t know." He answered honestly. "I…I don"t think so. I remember morning, I was checking up on …Nowsen and then… I don"t even remember the forest or meeting her. Why? Who is she?"
"She says she is from Sharak. You know???" Laanimere was suddenly excited, eyes bright and a wide smile painted on her face and completely ignoring Tristan"s answer. "She may know Pearl, maybe she can tell me."
Tristan had heard about Pearl, and also Sharak but it never really interested him, but it seemed this girl cared about that a lot.
"Maybe." He said but not really feeling it. It seemed that she heard his thought as her shoulders slumped and she looked down looking dejected. Did he say something wrong? He didn"t know much about Sharak or Pearl enough to answer her honestly or to erase her doubts. "But, maybe you should talk to her. She saved me; brought me here without me asking… she couldn"t be a bad person."
Laanimere didn"t respond and sat silently after that. Tristan slowly sc.r.a.pped the bowl with spoon, feeling uneasy at the unfamiliar situation.
"I think, she is here to kill "It"…Do you think she can do it?" Breaking the quiet she asked in a small voice full of fear and doubt but also hope.
Was that why that girl had come to their village?
He remembered what his master had told him once, "hold on and help will come." Was that what he had meant? He desperately wanted to ask but the feeble man lay behind him so peacefully… Tristan hadn"t the will to wake him.
He had been deep in his thought when Laanimere stood with a jump, and startled him.
"Okay. I will go talk with her. You need anything else?" She asked, taking the empty bowl in her hand.
Tristan shook his head.
"Then you better sleep, dead ones look better than you." She smiled and winked and ran out of his chamber.
***
Tristan woke hours later and now it was already time for his watch. Following Laanimere"s advice he had slept. So tired he was from the day… a day he didn"t even remember most of.
He did one last check up on his master"s sleeping figure, and headed out to the bell-tower. The hallway of the temple- his way to the ladder- lay empty like always. Everyone had already settled in for the night.
Above in the tower, he didn"t do a look out, hadn"t for days. And why would he? It was not needed, the temple was safe. His master"s ward was impenetrable. No one knew that but his master and him, and they kept it that way. Let the villagers spend the night in fear, which at least kept them somewhat grateful to him. Instead, he practiced. Burning magic, summoning spells and reciting the chants that he only knew by their sounds and not by what they meant. They were his master"s… Nowsen"s teachings over the years. Its fee was only to keep his mouth shut among his friends and family, Tristan could do that. He liked none of them enough to talk to them, anyway.
His lessons had somewhat ended by now. With his master"s sickness and his own limitations, all he could do was practice of what he knew and indeed "practice" it was what he did. Every night alone in the tower, making tiny b.a.l.l.s of light in between his palms that could barely light up his face. Useless. But that was more than anyone else around him could do.
***
Sometime around midnight "It" came, their monster. That filthy lump of decaying corpses that nearly wiped off his village. Ma.s.sive in the dark of the night like a moving mountain, its skin was oily slick that sloshed along the ground like hundreds of wet sheets dragging. It moved slowly through the dark fog like a floating island in a sea of clouds. Tristan didn"t pay attention, he hardly ever did. The temple protected them and the monster always stayed away from it, waiting for the occasional fools that would run out after they got tired of life.
Like every night, he heard laughter, gleeful but lacking a mind behind it. Just a sound and nothing else. Tristan had heard stories of a faraway animal that could imitate the sound of a baby"s cry, so the monster having laughter wasn"t far-fetched. But when it would laugh with the voices of the ones it consumed, the people would go mad. Searching for their families, their wives, their children; folks jumped into the dark night and never returned, their laughter becoming the part of the monster forever.
Nearly half the village was lost like that.
Because of the temple"s barrier, Tristan had never seen it up close, only from far, a dark silhouette of something wet and slimy. It did not seem to have a fixed shape. One night it was tall, the next, round. Only its head remained somewhat constant. If they didn"t see "It" change its shape right in front of them, they would have thought a new one came every night.
It was huge, towering over anything in the village except for the temple itself. The base of its body hid in the dark mist and spread far, blanketing the ground and grabbing anyone or anything it could with clawed fingers and slimy tentacles. So many were weighed under him, Tristan"s own family… his mother and sisters. They had screamed, all of them that were caught together, in horror and in pain of being ripped apart and melting into the monster. And all those times "It" had just laughed and laughed, even tonight. Tristan sometimes could hear his mother, Dew and Sanah"s screams behind those unfunny howls. His father was driven mad by the voices and had joined the chorus soon after.
But last night, the laughter was cut off abruptly. Then a loud crack of something breaking and rumbles of something huge falling over the rocks came hurriedly from the North-East. The temple shook and with it the tower too. Ancient rocks groaned and grinded against each other. Dust fell around him and the bell swayed. Tristan held still while tugging on his rope. The ball of light disappeared as his concentration broke. He was more annoyed than afraid at that sudden disturbance.
Tristan got up not thinking of what was going on and then froze staring into the darkness. The twin moons were dim and their light was reflected from the surface of the sea of fog that had swallowed everything and "It" was nowhere to be seen. The dark shape that stalked the temple, slowly crawling around it, a giant ma.s.s of rotten skin and bones, wiry tentacles and a cruel laughter... was not here. Something had happened to "It".
He searched frantically with his wide eyes, his heart almost jumped to his throat and he had felt his stomach turning inside.
Something or someone stood at the roof of the temple. Small and dark… the silhouette of the girl he vaguely remembered. Her green hair bright under the moons looked like they were burning. For a fleeting moment she had turned toward him and their eyes met, green orbs of fire in the dullness of her shaded face.
The laughter suddenly rose from the fog, everywhere at once. Petrified, Tristan felt warm wetness down his legs and the saw girl jump down into the dark mist below.
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Tristan wasn"t sure what he just saw.
Was the girl really there or was he just seeing things?
The night after was a blur, scared he waited but nothing happened. It was not difficult to dismiss it as a dream or a vision with how unreliable his memory had been the day before. He also only had interacted with the girl once when he was completely out of his mind. He should have asked someone before he came to the watch, but whom? One by one he was listing people in his head that he could tolerate and found that there was none he would want to approach, save for his master. He hadn"t had time to talk to the old man since yesterday.