Birth Rite

Birth Rite, Chapter 21: Across The Bridge

Chapter summary: Xelloss and Zelgadis take a brief tour of the mysterious ruins and discuss Mazoku feeding habits.

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They Levitated across rather than try their luck on the icy, narrow Bridge. Zelgadis glanced down at the place where Plover had been found; the tide had turned and already the higher waves were spilling across the narrow strip of land. He'd overheard the rescuers talking of how he'd been spotted by a young hawk-woman with a hunter's sharp eyes from far up the hillside south of the village. It was good luck for Plover she'd noticed him, or he'd be washing back out to sea by now.

From the far side of the Bridge, it was easier to see how this hook-shaped rock jutting out into the ocean must once have been wider and wedge- shaped much like all the others along the coast. From the lower land near the bridge, Zelgadis could even imagine there might well have been an older village in that corner of the bay, with a kinder harbor than the steep hillside which the present village clung to.

Further out on the southern side of the hook, ancient sea-worn cliffs tumbled in a steep slope to meet crashing waves, but on the north side toward the village, the cliff face was shear, as if it had been sliced clean off at one blow. Within the curl of the hook, it was very much like a crater made by the kind of explosion Lina might produce if she was as careless at throwing Dragon Slaves around as the legends about her claimed. Legends aside, though, Zelgadis wasn't sure even one of Lina's full powered Dragon Slaves would have carved a hole this big in a chunk of rock so solid that even the sea had not been able to wear it away through many centuries.

It certainly was a perfect day to visit a haunted cliff, with a freezing mist cutting the air and wind whistling strange notes through the black rocks of the ruins, but that wasn't the only reason Zelgadis huddled in his cloak. Even if there had been a bright sun sparkling off the bay and a warm breeze, he was sure the place would still have the dreadful aura of a tomb.

Xelloss set off at once to explore the ruins, the tumbled black stones at the far curve of the hook, as eager as a child set loose to play in the waves on his first trip to the beach. The mazoku had bounced along all the way here, his feet hardly touching the ground even when they weren't flying, humming to himself and grinning in anticipation. Now he bent low to search the ground or gazed up at the towering stones with that look Zelgadis had become familiar with by now, as if he was sniffing the air or listening for something unheard.

He shouldn't need to listen very hard, Zelgadis thought. The miasma of the place was plain enough to his chimera senses, the dark aura so pervasive that even someone as oblivious as Melly or Shuno would have to notice it. As for the ruins themselves, it was hard to tell exactly what shape they would have had. The black stones were massive, but not inhumanly large or unnaturally old, in fact Zelgadis guessed they might not even be as old or as strange as the stonework of Rezo's old tower.

"What do you think?" he asked after a while. "Can you tell anything about what happened here?"

Xelloss didn't answer at once. He had stopped prowling about and stood just inside what might have been an entrance to the largest building, if the tumbled, roofless walls were any indication of what once had stood there.

"I'm not psychic, Zel-san," he said mildly, staring ahead into the blackest shadows under the stones. "I can see just what you can see and what I'm sure you sense as well: there was great destruction here. People died, many people, and not at all peacefully. But it happened long ago, longer than I've existed I would guess, and how it happened, I have no idea. Whether it was a ship from Skye, an exploding mazoku, or only a magical experiment gone very much awry, all I can tell you is that it certainly was not a birthday party!"

"There isn't much to go by, is there?" Zelgadis agreed. He edged closer to where Xelloss stood, and an odd shiver ran through him when he stepped into deeper shadow between the stones. "Still, this must be pleasant for you!"

Xelloss didn't answer immediately; he stared at the black stones for a moment before he spoke.

"Actually it is not." He turned around, and to Zelgadis' surprise, his cheerful excitement was gone. His mouth was drawn down in a pout. "It is certainly very dark, but it is ... empty, you might say." He wrinkled his nose and went on thoughtfully. "Rather like the empty banquet hall after the feast is over. The dishes are empty, the revelers are gone; you can tell that it must have been a grand feast at the time, but there is nothing left to feed upon. Only the lingering scent of the marvelous dishes left to entice you! Quite... disappointing."

Zelgadis stared at him with his mouth hanging open for a moment, then almost laughed out loud. Almost, but not quite, because Xelloss' soft voice was not making a joke of it, and also because he was more relieved than amused. The whole place radiated misery and dread, made his heart pound and made his stone skin try to crawl with a sense of unknown horror. But if Xelloss didn't find anything to be excited about out here, that growing sense of evil lurking just behind every fallen stone must be nothing more than his mortal imagination.

Knowing that made it far easier ignore the shadows--and the images from Myona's story still vivid in his mind--so he could concentrate on his surroundings. That probably made it even more disappointing for Xelloss, he supposed, but for once he wasn't concerned about providing the mazoku with a convenient snack. He turned his attention to a serious study of the ruins.

He half expected to see inscriptions in the ancient language chiseled into the stones, but there were no marks on them at all, not even lichen or the polishing striations of wind and sand. That was the only visibly strange thing about them, except the wonder of how they were brought here and assembled, way out on a high, narrow point of land far from any quarry. There were parts of walls remaining that didn't seem to connect in any obvious way, no roof at all but some leaning stones that might once have been lintel stones - or gigantic altar stones, perhaps.

He followed Xelloss through the ruins until eventually they stood at the very edge of the cliff in the inner curve of the hook, and looked down at the strangely calm sea directly below. In spite of the churning cauldron the storm had stirred up in the bay, only mild, lazy waves lapped at the fallen stones. Plover's little boat was gone, probably nudged free of the rocks by last night's high tide.

"Whatever all this was, most of it is down there," Zelgadis observed, and Xelloss hummed in agreement. Zelgadis gazed around the inner circle of the hook, and the sheer drop in front of their feet. "I suppose there could have been a sorcery laboratory deep in the rock," he said, without much conviction. Again, Xelloss made a noncommittal sound. Zelgadis sighed. "It could have been a sorcerer's mansion. Or some kind of shrine or temple. Or..."

"A landing place for the great golden ships from Skye!" Xelloss sang out, flinging his arm wide.

"Sure," Zelgadis huffed, looking up at the lowering clouds, "If they'd flown across the ocean and literally descended from the sky!"

"Great flying ships crossing the sea! That would be marvelous magic, indeed, if it could be rediscovered!"

It would indeed be just the kind of great lost magic he'd love to find, but nothing here gave him much hope of that.

"Now you're just teasing again," Zelgadis grumbled.

But the truth was, even if there was evidence of the lost city under the waves of Wyndcliff bay, that alone didn't really interest him as much as the knowledge from Skye that might yet be hidden in the library of the Asmalaths, or even at the Temple of the Golden Lord. Perhaps Professor Plover would like to explore the underwater ruins, and Zelgadis made a half joking mental promise to take the man down there inside an air barrier sometime and let him explore to his heart's content, if he would just manage to recover his wits someday. That was the real purpose of this visit, he reminded himself, besides curiosity: Kemara's hope that they might find something that would help Plover.

That seemed not much more likely than finding evidence of ships from Skye, now. They started back toward the mainland along the edge of the cliff, finding the faint path that Zelgadis thought he'd spotted on their first glimpse of the point several days ago. They also found the place where Plover must have climbed up after they spotted him, the tiny path along a ledge not much wider than a footprint which he must have found. But there were no tracks left on the bare stone and sparse, dry grass at the top of the cliff, nothing to show that either Plover or Myona had been there last night. Any sign there might have been of them, or of anyone else, had all been swept clean by the wind.

"And of course, no sign of Dream Master," Xelloss said cheerfully.

Zelgadis grunted. "As if there would be," he said.

"I suppose it wouldn't speak to us even if there were such a being," Xelloss pointed out.

Zelgadis raised an eyebrow at him. "You don't really think there is, do you?"

"No, not really," Xelloss admitted. "No more than there is a real Demon Lord Zoamelgustar."

He glanced around again, peering into the shadows of the black stones. Ragged tendrils of sea mist slithered through the ruins like lazy ghosts. Half opened amethyst eyes gazed for a moment into unseen distance.

"I don't sense any other presence here but ours at the moment, at any rate," he said, turning back to Zelgadis.

There was that note of disappointment in his voice again. Zelgadis chuckled this time. He couldn't feel much sympathy for the mazoku's thwarted expectations of a juicy feast of horror.

"Now you know how I feel when I blast my way into a magical library only to find it's full of nothing but cookbooks!"

Xelloss pouted at him, which did not make him one bit more sympathetic.

There was nothing else to see here, Zelgadis decided. They hadn't really discovered anything except the one thing that was obvious, even from a distance: something had once come to a very bad end here.

With a final shrug, he turned away from the black stones and led the way back to the Bridge. Xelloss sighed faintly one final time and followed.

"So it's really only appetizing to you if there are humans to experience the horror, even in an atmosphere like that?" Zelgadis said as they started back up the road from the Bridge.

"Well, yes," Xelloss admitted, "an aura like that is appealing on its own, but not really satisfying! Of course, that's just the problem with a place like those ruins. People do tend to stay away from something that carries such a dark aura. It all goes to waste!"

He grinned, watching Zelgadis out of the corner of his eye as they trudged back up the winding village streets. Zelgadis wasn't sure if he was joking or not.

"Then is it also true, as it is for humans, that the more powerful the mazoku is and the greater magical capacity he has, the fiercer the appetite? In the same way that high-powered sorcerers like Lina are nearly insatiable?"

"What a thing to say, Zel-san! You're comparing my appetite to Lina's gluttony? I should be quite insulted! But, I suppose it's true in the sense that I can't get enough of your lovely dark emotions!" The mazoku's lip curled upward even more suggestively. "But I have very discerning tastes, you know!"

"Huh. Only the best of my rage and misery is good enough for you, hm?" Zelgadis smirked. "But we already tested that theory; it's clear that you prefer anger over anxiety, just as Myona said. Do all mazoku have such definite preferences?"

"Well, I hadn't really thought about it like that, but I guess we do have our favorites, now that you mention it."

He put his finger to his chin and pondered this for a moment while they slogged along the muddy streets.

"Perhaps our tastes develop along with our purpose," he said thoughtfully. "For example, the puppetmaster that you met at Almay Tower."

Zelgadis cringed. "Please don't remind me of that!"

"Ah, but that's my point exactly!" Xelloss said, wagging a finger at him. "The Puppetmaster had that distinctive delight in humiliating humans! Practical, really, for putting them at a disadvantage, getting them off their guard until she was ready to kill them. But also, now that you mention it, she very likely did it for the flavor of emotion that she enjoyed the most!"

"Which you did not mind contributing to, as I remember," Zelgadis pointed out.

"Hm, well, perhaps that emotion is something of a treat for me as well - and so easy to inspire in some cases! Not one I need to cook up on my own, though; Lina is perfectly useful for that!"

Zelgadis glared at him, but he couldn't really argue on that point. "I'd say it's one of your favorite flavors," he grumbled.

He was still thinking about this when they rounded a bend in the street and came in sight of Kemara's house.

"Gaav and his followers seemed to love the rage and pain of humans in battle," he said. He remembered other encounters with mazoku; some seemed more intent on dragging out a fight and torturing their enemies rather than using more expedient methods of killing them. Practical as well as pleasant for them, he supposed.

"Sadistic by necessity," he muttered.

"You could say that!" Xelloss agreed cheerily. It looked like he was still thinking this over as well. "With the lower ranks, their only real purpose is fighting and destroying, so they don't much care what they feed on. Basic rage and pain will do for them."

"Ah, so you're saying that as a higher ranking mazoku, you are more of a connoisseur in human emotions?" Zelgadis teased.

"Exactly! And," he added. "I'm always interested in trying out new recipes to cook up my favorite meals, as you know!"

He leaned toward Zelgadis, eyes glittering under his bangs, and Zelgadis sensed a flutter of astral energy, like a cool fingertip trailing shivers across bare skin. That was all the suggestion it took to trigger the familiar flushed mix of desire, shame, and irritation. Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to hold back his emotions entirely and deprive Xelloss of the pleasure, but that would mean depriving himself of certain pleasures that Xelloss provided in return. He let Xelloss have a taste of it, and then, with a smirk, turned away.

"Now who's teasing," Xelloss murmured. "You're getting far too clever at that kind of thing, Zel-san!"

Zelgadis smiled to himself and chose not to point out that it was only because Xelloss was getting so predictable.

"The problem is that I'm learning more about mazoku than I ever wanted to," he complained instead. "Perhaps I really should write a book," he added. He raised an eyebrow at Xelloss. "Wouldn't the Followers of Shimer enjoy that! I'm sure the Sorcerer's Guild would ban it, if I told all I've learned, or simply discredit it as fantasy."

"They probably would," Xelloss agreed. "Which would be all for the better. Especially for you, my dear, inquisitive chimera!"

"Ah yes." Zelgadis nodded. "Of course, you would get new orders to burn all copies of it if I did, wouldn't you - because it's a secret?"

"Ex-Zact-Ly!" Xelloss singsonged with a waving finger and his most ridiculous grin.

Zelgadis huffed, as much amused as irritated, but he decided he might take the warning to heart just the same. He certainly wasn't about to do a survey of the dining preferences of other mazoku, anyway.

Xelloss tipped his head back to look up at something up past Zelgadis' head, and Zelgadis turned to follow his gaze. A shadow moved behind the curtain in the high tower window of Kemara's house.

"Do you suppose Dream Master will mind that we visited the ruins?" he mused.

"I hope not," Xelloss said. "But I suppose we'll find out tomorrow by whether Myona-chan decides to return to the library with us or not."

"In the meantime," Zelgadis said, starting up the path to the house, "we might as well tell Kemara what we discovered. Which is nothing useful."

Kemara must have been watching for their return; she opened the door to them before Zelgadis had a chance to knock. They only spoke briefly in the front hallway; Kemara quickly told them that Delora was resting in a room just inside, next to Plover's room. Besides that, Zelgadis noted with a little surprise that Kemara already had company. The dark haired loremaster, Nigel, nodded to them solemnly from the parlor doorway.

He and Xelloss quietly told her what little they'd seen at the ruins. She was not surprised that they'd found little to report, no reason for Plover's terror and no clue about his strange injuries. And no idea why Myona should love going out there so much, Zelgadis thought as she thanked them for looking anyway. Then he remembered what Xelloss had said about most people avoiding such a place. That made it one place a boy could go and be sure of being left alone, he guessed.

Plover was sleeping deeply and, for the moment, peacefully, as far as Kemara could tell.

"That's probably the best we can hope for, for a while," she admitted. She smiled, but her usually sparkling eyes were as sad as Myona's and their mother's dark eyes.

A cloudy, early dusk was falling when they left Kemara's house. The wind had died down but the air had grown colder. Off to the southwest, over the dark ocean, there were a few breaks in the clouds. Shafts of pale gold streamed through, sharp as sword blades against the darkening clouds.

They paused when they reached the Gate and looked out over the village. Across the bay, dark curtains of rain slanted from the clouds to shadowy ocean. The scent of wood smoke and dead leaves and the cold ocean filled the air. The hooked point and the jagged outline of the ruins stood out as a darker shadow against the dark horizon.

"Sun, rain, light and shadow all at once," Xelloss said musingly. "Shining like gold on a sea of darkness!"

He stood framed by the gateway in Zelgadis' view, the carved and painted riot of creatures seeming to circle around the mazoku as he gazed out at the weather. The disappointment he'd displayed out among the ruins was gone, and he smiled serenely at the bleak view.

The casual reference to The Lord of Nightmares should have been more horrifying and chilling than anything else he'd seen or heard today, Zelgadis thought, because no matter what the people of the temple said of it - of Her - that terrible Being was still the embodiment of utter chaos, the obliteration of all things which the mazoku strove for, and Xelloss' own ultimate goal. Right at that moment, though, this glimpse of Chaos itself seemed strangely beautiful.

Xelloss turned to him. "Does the offer of a hot bath still stand?" he asked with a suggestively raised eyebrow.

Chaos could wait; if Xelloss had a different agenda at the moment, Zelgadis was certainly not going to argue.

"You have to ask?" he answered, and followed the smiling mazoku through the Gate.

 

They made their way back to the cottages by way of the dining hall. A few students were just beginning to trickle in from whatever classes or recitations they'd had today, but thankfully, Shuno wasn't among them and the inquisitive Loremasters had not yet arrived. Zelgadis was also relieved to find that he and Xelloss were much less watched and whispered about than they had been, already familiar faces to the Temple residents, and less interesting than the weather or the news of another victim of the bridge and the black stones. He opted for take out again, just the same.

They were not the only ones getting dinner to go. Halfway back to the cottages, they met Kervan and Marcus, each carrying an empty hamper like the one the cooks had filled for Zelgadis. From the conversation they were having when they came into view, it was clear that they hadn't heard about Plover's accidental arrival yet, and it was also clear why: they'd been too busy reading The Princess of Fate all afternoon.

"But she can't have it right, can she?" Marcus was saying insistently to Kervan when they came in view. "That whole idea of Hellmaster actually luring the Sorcerer to the confrontation? Why would he do that? I mean, if he just wanted to get rid of her, why go to all that extra trouble?"

"Because," Kervan began, but he was looking right at Zelgadis and Xelloss with a raised eyebrow as they walked toward each other on the walkway. "There was something else Hellmaster wanted - wasn't there?"

"What? What do you mean?" Marcus asked. "What else? What's he talking about?"

The last question was also directed at the two of them who had lived the story. They slowed to a halt, and Zelgadis looked to Xelloss uncertainly. Since he had hadn't yet read the book himself (and hoped he'd never have to), he realized he didn't know how to answer that question. He had no idea how Martina would have described the confrontation that was to follow in the story. He still wasn't sure he understood all of it himself.

Xelloss returned Kervan's gaze but didn't answer his question. Zelgadis had a feeling Kervan didn't really expected him to.

"Does she get the rest of it right?" Kervan asked instead. "The real reason?"

Xelloss tipped his head, hiding his eyes but not his smile. "Martina-san? She did, actually, more or less," he replied. "That is, more than she probably realized, but less than she probably thinks she did!"

"I see," Kervan said. He nodded, with an odd, grim smile at both of them. "Truth is only recognized by those who know the truth, as they say around here," he adds.

"How appropriately enigmatic!" Xelloss said.

"What does that mean?" Marcus demanded. His gaze twitched between the two of them as if they were passing a morsel of something back and forth between them, something that might be either delicious or explosive.

"It means you wouldn't understand, but that's nothing unusual," Kervan said dismissively. He started walking toward the dining hall again.

The dig at Marcus didn't seem to be anything unusual either, Zelgadis noticed, or at least, nothing that bothered Marcus. He just kept on badgering Kervan as they walked away.

"Oh, well that's fine, so I suppose you think you understand it all, do you?"

"I suppose I might, yes. At least, to a point."

"Then you don't need to read the rest, right?" Marcus hopped around in front of Kervan, blocking the narrow walkway. "Give it to me, then! I'd like to finish it tonight. You left us on a cliffhanger, you know!"

"It's not a cliff, it's a nearly bottomless pit."

"Pit, cliff, whatever! There's a Hellmaster at the bottom of it. I just need to know what happens next!"

"I wouldn't advise reading the rest tonight," Kervan said, brushing past him and walking on.

"Why not? Wait - already read it all, didn't you? That's cheating!"

"I did not. I simply made an... educated guess as to what happens next. If I'm not mistaken, reading it will likely keep you awake all night. Possibly for the next several nights, in fact."

"There's not that much of it left, I don't read that slowly!" Marcus said indignantly.

"That's not what I meant."

"Then why would it keep me up all night? I mean, there's a happy ending, right? Bad guy goes boom, Beautiful Sorcery genius wins, princess gets the guy - right?"

Kervan didn't answer.

"Now you're just trying to make me nervous!" Marcus said. "We know Hellmaster is gone, so how bad could it be?"

Kervan paused and glanced around, and seemed to judge that no one was near enough to overhear, or that it didn't matter if they did. Zelgadis and Xelloss had reached the hedge boundary of the cottages, but Zelgadis was just curious enough to strain his ears to hear what Kervan had to say. Had he really guessed Hellmaster's goal in baiting Lina, or the real result of it? How much did he understand of it all? Zelgadis couldn't help wondering.

But what he heard indicated something else entirely than what he was expecting.

"I think," Kervan said, his voice so low that Zelgadis could barely hear it, "that there might be something much more interesting than this book that can keep you up all night. How's that for an answer?"

"That's not an answer, that doesn't even... oh wait. Well. " Marcus' voice dropped to a much lower tone as well. "Well then. If you put it that way, they can just stay in that old pit as long as you like. I don't mind!"

"I thought you wouldn't."

It took Zelgadis a moment longer than it had taken Marcus to realize what Kervan must be suggesting, and why his voice was not merely quieter but distinctly... seductive. And then he sincerely regretted listening in on them. Especially since it involved Marcus. The former Deputy Shrine Keeper being seduced was something he really did not care to imagine.

Feeling his face grow red, he hurried on toward the cottage.

Xelloss was already at the door. He stopped just inside; Zelgadis slipped past him with his basket of dinner, hoping Xelloss hadn't overheard as well.

"Hm," Xelloss said thoughtfully, fingertip tapping his chin as he closed the door behind them. "What could be a more interesting reason to stay up all night than reading a marvelous story, hm?"

Zelgadis winced. He set the basket on the table and flicked a quick spell to renew the fire in the hearth, and firmly shoved all thoughts of what Kervan and Marcus might do in the privacy of their own cottage out of his mind. Then he turned to the mazoku and shook his head.

"It's not nice to eavesdrop, Xelloss!" he scolded. Then he raised an eyebrow. "But if you really don't know, I'm sure that after supper, between the two of us we can come up with ... something more interesting than reading!"

Xelloss didn't bother to pretend he had no idea what Zelgadis meant.

"Ah, well, I don't mind having a late dinner, in that case," he said, and licked his lips in a way that made a shiver crackle up Zelgadis' stony spine.

But first, Zelgadis decided firmly, he wanted supper and a moment to collect his thoughts about everything he'd seen and heard that day, about the ruins and the various stories about them, and the mysterious accidents. There had to be a connection, and there must be some clue to the truth of the ruins, but he couldn't see any of it yet.

Xelloss settled back on his chair by the fire while Zelgadis set out his own dinner and pulled out paper and pen. Seeing that Zelgadis was serious about supper first, not to mention a bit of study, Xelloss pouted. But he didn't interfere.

Zelgadis was definitely still looking forward to that hot bath he'd promised to indulge Xelloss in - with his view of Xelloss silhouetted by the firelight, he certainly wasn't likely to forget it - and he let the mazoku know it with a brief flicker of anticipation. Xelloss' mouth twitched, the curl of his lip more suggestive than any soft-spoken words could be. But he was also determined to capture the thoughts chasing themselves around in his head before he let the seductive mazoku start doing things that would drive all intelligence out of his mind for the rest of the night.

He turned his attention to his notebook, and Xelloss sighed as the feeling slipped away.

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tbc. Coming up: Zelgadis has a bad dream and Xelloss makes it so very much worse.