Arc 3: Chapter 19: The Hidden Folk

Arc 3: Chapter 19: The Hidden Folk

I followed the changeling into the cities depths, into a section not dissimilar from where Lias had placed his secret refuge. Narrow walkways hugged high walls, precarious intersections of stairs circumnavigated ever-descending rows, and narrow trenches only sporadically protected by grating dominated the neighborhood.

The slum. May as well call it what it was. I could smell sewage leaking up from below, and the rain falling in a constant drizzle from above did little to clean the scum and mineral buildup clinging to everything like the grainy interior of a water-logged cavern. Eerie faces watched me from dens dug into the very foundations of the city, like hives in stone, or from rickety, half-rotten shacks of wood stacked wherever room could be found.

“Keep close,” Barca hissed. “This place is not friendly to your kind, Goldeye.”

“Because I’m Sidhe-blessed?” I asked him, knowing there wasn’t much love lost between the land’s misbegotten beings and their immortal forebears. I kept my hand close to my axe without actually touching it. I had my cloak wrapped around my gear and my cowl up, so no watching eyes could see how armed I was.

“Because you’re human,” Barca said, pausing and turning a too-large, too-yellow eye on me. From the glimpses I’d gotten of him beneath the rags, he seemed to resemble something part small man, part dog, and part amphibian. He hopped and crawled more than he walked.

“Most of the changelings in the city can hide themselves from human eyes,” Barca continued, leading me over a bridge running over a deep drainage canal. The bridge was little more than a narrow arch of stone, with no rails on the sides. “They are close enough to human, or have glamour, and can lead relatively normal lives. But some of us cannot. Some of us are too twisted, or we didn’t inherit enough faerie magic from our forefathers to create a masque.”

He paused a moment, then continued in a more sullen voice. “Some of us are not Fae at all. Pay them no mind,” he added, indicating the watching figures. “You are safe so long as I guide you. Many know old Barca.”

“Where are you taking me?” I asked him.

“To a… leader, among our kind. You could say he is our protector, our voice, and other things besides. Once you are there, you will be on your own.”

Fair enough.

He led me deeper, until I could no longer even catch glimpses of the sky high above, or see the rooftops of the higher districts. We took a winding route, eventually passing into a series of tunnels abundant with rusted metal grating and dripping ceilings. I heard scuttling things in the dark. Vermin, and larger predators.

“In here,” Barca said, his luminescent eyes flickering past me. “Night approaches, Goldeye. Best be swift. Hungry things walk these alleys after dark.”

I stepped past him, inspecting the tunnel. It went on a long ways, and I could hear water dripping like rain within.

“Tell me more about this leader,” I said, more to break the uncomfortable ambience of that dreary place. “Who is—”

I glanced back, and realized my guide had vanished. I stood alone in the tunnel.

Damn it. I glared into the tangled street, but it seemed abandoned.

I knew I should turn back. The whole situation stank of a trap. I placed a hand on the axe beneath my cloak, my instincts screaming that I should leave. I knew I was watched, but couldn’t tell from where.

Everywhere?

“I come in peace,” I called out, my voice echoing down the tunnel. “I’m a friend of Catrin’s. I seek information from the Hidden Folk.”

No response. Cursing, I stepped deeper into the tunnel and began to make my way forward. Soon, the overcast daylight receded far behind me. The world closed in, filling with the sound of pattering water and my own echoing boot steps, each step bringing me further into danger with a soft splash.

Save for wan daylight beaming through cracks in the stone above, it was very dark. Only the aura in my eyes kept me from being blind.

They also kept the thing which dropped down from the ceiling a ways ahead from escaping my notice. It fell quietly, a gangly shape in the distant tunnel, using the sound of the rain above and the water running below the grates to disguise the small splash of impact.

I stopped my slow walk. The shape in the distant tunnel crouched low, silent. At a distance, I couldn’t quite tell how large it was — big, at least. I couldn’t make out clear details, only the impression of long arms and bowed legs, broad shoulders. The shape squatted like a beast in the shallow water.

It watched, and waited. I could just make out a glint of too-pale eyes.

Was this the one Barca had led me to? Every hair on my body stood on end. I took another step forward—

And a voice spoke from directly behind me.

“I told you! Came right here, like a dashing hero braving the Underworld for some nymph tail.”

I whirled, and saw another figure standing in the tunnel the way I’d come. They must have slipped out from one of the pipes or cracks in the stonework. Standing closer, my aura-enhanced vision could see them more clearly.

She looked human, skinny, wearing a white shirt under a brown bodice and men’s leggings in a commoner style. She had short, wheat-yellow hair and flashed crooked teeth. Her eyes gleamed yellow in the dark.

“Hey, Red.” Her wolf’s eyes studied me with hungry attention. “Little lost, are we?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. She looked familiar, though I couldn’t place her face.

“Don’t recognize me, do you?” The blonde-haired woman paced from one side of the tunnel to the other, tilting her head as her crooked grin widened. The smile, more than anything else, looked familiar.

Cat smiled like that, when she was angry. Or hungry.

I realized then I did recognize her, though we’d never spoken. With the memory, I began to slide my axe from its iron ring beneath my cloak.

The woman’s yellow eyes flickered down, and her grin widened. Her teeth were ivory, such a pale yellow they were nearly white, and her mismatched canines were very sharp. “Oh, what you have there for me, big man? Something nice?”

“Only Catrin calls me that,” I said. “Does she know you’re here, Joy?”

Her eyes narrowed at the sound of her name. “I think by the end of the night, you’ll let me call you whatever I want.” Those wolf eyes slid from me, and the changeling’s grin thinned into something anticipatory.

I spun, drawing my axe in the same motion and throwing my cloak back to get it out of the way. The shape that’d crouched at the far end of the tunnel had closed incredibly fast, and with impossible stealth, loping forward with a half-sprinting, half bestial gate. It had pale gray-blue skin, back-bent legs, and short horns jutting from a cervid head.

It slammed into me full force, that charging beastman, its curling horns connecting with my hauberk hard enough to make even iron split. But the dark elf chainmail wasn’t made from mortal iron, and it held.

It still hurt like all the hells, and knocked me into the water hard enough to make the world spin. My vision went black a terrifying moment, and I lost all my air. I got brackish water in my nose, my mouth and ears. Every instinct in me screamed to move.

I did, rolling aside an instant before a cloven hoof would have split my skull like a melon. It came down in the water instead, splashing me.

Better damp than dead. I twisted, kicked, and my boot — reinforced with ordinary steel — slammed into something delicate and thin. The ankle, more that of a deer’s than a man’s, broke.

The beast let out a scream of pain and stumbled, thrashing. I cleared out of the way of its sharp horns and claws, managing to find my feet and get my back to the wall. My nostrils flared with each breath, the pounding of my own heart a storm in my ears. My hood had fallen off, and my cloak and hair were soaked.

Looking around, I saw more inhuman shapes in the tunnel. They slipped through cracks in the stone, scuttled from narrow side tunnels, or rose from the shallow water. Some wore rags like Barca had, while others were naked. Many looked like a hybrid of human and animal, while some were hardly recognizable as either.

Joy stood among them. She glanced at the thrashing man-beast whose ankle I’d broken, sniffed, then turned her yellow eyes back to me. “You going to make this hard? Not that I’m complaining, but there’s only one way this goes, honey. How many broken bones you have by the end of it is up to you.”

I stared around at the changelings. I recognized some as regulars at the Backroad.

“Wondering if Cat betrayed you?” Joy asked, a cruel smile peeling her lips back. “Worried all those sweet nothings she whispered into your ear while you were humping her might have been rosy little lies?”

I fixed the full weight of my golden eyes on Joy. She winced, as though a flash of bright light had struck her. “No,” I said, standing straight and spreading my legs slightly apart, hiding the motion with the long veil of my red cloak. “Did she even make it back to the inn?”

Joy recovered and adopted her lascivious smile again. “Let’s not talk about her right now. I’d rather focus on you and me, and what we can do for one another.”

I drew in a deep breath, and let a small smile of my own cross my lips. I even let out a little laugh.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Joy’s own smile withered. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” I said in a quiet voice, letting the tunnel’s acoustics carry the word. “You know what I am, surely. I’ve had much better seductresses than you try to get into my head.”

I concentrated, and the prickling sense of will scuttling in my ears like tiny insects vanished as I burned my aura. The tunnel brightened as that power flickered in my eyes, and several of the changelings backed away a step at the sight. Joy only glared hatefully at me.

“Catrin almost succeeded the night we met,” I told her. Then, in a harder tone I said, “Where is she?”

One of the changelings started to advance. It had a relatively human body with an enlarged, toad-like head protruding from fine merchant’s clothes. I pointed my axe at it, letting the inlays on the blade burn amber. It froze, letting loose a nervous croak.

“She really has you whipped, huh?” Joy tilted her head to one side, all pretense of emotion fading from her freckled face.

“If you’ve hurt her—” I began.

“She’s still tucked away nice and safe under that cockwart Keeper’s protection,” Joy spat. “She’s the old vulture’s favorite cunt, didn’t you know? But there are new powers in the land, boyo, less decrepit than the master of the Backroad.”

“Throwing in with the new money, is it?” I cast my gaze across the assortment of misfits. There were nearly a dozen, all dangerous, all preternaturally swift and strong. Packed into that space, a normal human would be torn apart in moments.

Karog. Joy had been his point of contact with whoever had invited him to the city. Had he betrayed us? He hadn’t hidden his self-serving motives. Even still, considering how touchy he’d been about betrayal, I had hoped he’d honor our pact.

Joy might have simply been spying on us, and found out I was in the city on her own. Sort it out later, survive now. I controlled my breathing, having started reshaping my aura into an Alder Art from the moment I’d realized I’d walked into a trap.

“He’s casting!” One of the changelings called out, this one resembling a harpy with patchy brown feathers. She had lambent eyes, ones I suspected saw more than most.

“Take him!” Joy spat, backing away even as her comrades surged forward.

I’d promised Catrin I wouldn’t bring harm to the changelings of Garihelm. I sent a silent apology her way, then let all other concerns wash away.

Faen Orgis erupted with amber fire, and I parried the first attack sent my way — not from claw or fang, but from an ordinary dagger wielded by another of the Backroad’s working girls, this one a brown-haired wench in a tan dress. She let out a banshee scream as she struck, only to gasp as I knocked the blade from her hand and sent her stumbling back, her hand scalded by aureflame. Her masque came apart in the same moment, revealing pale scales and hedgehog hair.

They would have ignored ordinary steel and dogpiled me, but I swept my faerie axe like a brand, causing all the changelings to flinch back. I didn’t stay on the defensive, but lunged forward once the momentum of their charge had died.

I sunk a fist into Toad Head’s belly. He let out a wheezing gasp before sinking to his knees in the filthy water, ruining his fine clothes. I dodged the slashing talons of the harpy, then slammed the triangle of metal on the axe head’s back end into her short beak, cracking it. She went down with a screech.

Strong hands grasped my ankles. I glanced down, seeing something small and wrinkled emerging from the dark water. It hissed, revealing sharp teeth, and surged upward.

There is a visceral, primal terror all men feel when something sharp and angry goes anywhere near their pelvis. So, reacting entirely on reflex, I drove the butt end of my axe’s handle into the creature’s skull, sending it back down into the water.

I began to realize something, and clenched my jaw.

“Bastard!” The momentary distraction had drawn my attention away from the leader of this ambush. Joy lunged at me, and she didn’t look so fetching any more. She had long yellow teeth too big for her mouth, bloodshot eyes, and wicked claws.

She slammed into me, nearly knocking me back down into the water. I stumbled back, cursing, and managed to get my off hand up just before those long teeth tore off my nose. She gnawed on my vambrace, unable to dislodge her mutant fangs from the metal without pulling away, which she didn’t seem altogether willing to do. She scrabbled at my eyes with her overgrown nails, trying to claw them out.

I growled, spun, and slammed her against one of the half-rotten support pillars along the tunnel’s edge. She grunted, but held on, lodging her claws into my chainmail. I slammed her forward again, this time smacking the back of her head against the stone.

“Let go,” I snarled.

She just growled, unable to form words with those big teeth. Her skin was starting to darken to gray and sprout more hair, the yellow in her hair fade to ashen brown.

Lycanthrope. Probably some mongrel breed, made when a wolfwere had taken human guise and gone in for a night on a town, or perhaps she’d been an innocent infant caught under the light of a bad moon before her aura had built any immunity.

Whatever the case, her bite could leave me a raving madman whenever the moons were full or give me a taste for rotten meat. Neither sounded appealing.

I cursed, and tightened my grip on the axe. One chop to the skull would be all it’d take.

Silently cursing myself as a fool, I settled for slamming my forehead against hers. One of her fangs broke off my vambrace, and she dropped off my arm with a yelp of pain.

I turned, letting the amber gleam of my sight fall on the rest of the changelings. Many of them had balked early, rather than taking advantage of my distractions and their greater numbers. Along with Joy and the wyldeman whose leg I’d broken, I’d incapacitated nearly half of them.

And I felt certain of my hunch, looking at their frightened faces. These weren’t assassins — they were a mob. These weren’t monsters, but angry commoners. People.

The harpy woman sobbed quietly, holding her shattered beak. I tore my eyes away from that unsettling sight, keeping the rest in my field of vision.

“Who put you up to this?” I growled, my heart still beating fast from the violence. “Speak.”

The aura in my command made them all flinch. But it wasn’t any of the ambushers who answered my question. Instead an unnaturally deep voice bearing lifetimes of sullen wrath filled the tunnel.

“No one put them up to it, elf friend. They are only defending their own.”

I suppressed an instinctive shudder of fear and turned to look down the tunnel. A hulking shape with candle-flame eyes hunched there, glowering at me. He had his cleavers drawn, and a deep, nearly sub-audible rumble boiled in his chest.

“Karog.” I jerked my axe to one side, pointing it at the changelings. “Care to explain?”

He stepped closer, passing into a beam of rainy daylight which illuminated his form more clearly. Still huge and terrifying, he’d returned to the garments he’d worn when I’d first met him, clad in the furs and leathers of a barbarian warrior, his belt lined in trophy skulls. His lips peeled back into something halfway between a threatening display and a sneer.

“What explanation is needed? You are an axeman for the order which oppresses them, drives them down into these depths where those above pour their neglect and their shit.”

I glanced at Joy. She’d lifted herself using the damp wall as support. She had one hand pressed to the split skin where I’d head-butted her, which poured blood down over her face. I bled as well, a slow trail falling between my eyebrows and tracing the contour of my nose.

“The ones who invited you here,” I said, realizing. “It wasn’t the Council, was it? It was the Hidden Folk.”

Karog snorted bullishly, his breath steaming in the air like a gust of hot wind. “They have no protection. The Priorguard see them all as manifestations of sin and persecute them. More than once, these slums have been targeted for purges. They sought help where they could.”

“I thought the Keeper protected Urn’s changelings,” I said.

Joy let out an ugly, hateful little laugh. “He rules us, you neckless idiot. When we break his rules or risk his wrinkled hide, he leaves us for the crows, just like he did for the Peregrines here in this city. He’s no different to the Houses or the Church — just an old edifice of power none of us can break free of.”

I remembered Catrin’s story about a vampire clan who’d run afoul of the Keeper when she’d been young.

Karog’s eyes swept the injured, frightened changelings. His jaw tensed. Speaking to Joy without taking his eyes off me he said, “Will you be alright?”

She spat out a bit of broken tooth. “I’m fine. I warned you about him, Kar. I tried to warn Catrin, but the bloodsucker’s fully cockstruck, she wouldn’t listen.”

I frowned. “What is she talking about?”

Karog took another step forward. “The vampire believes you are outcast like her, like the rest of us. But that isn’t true, is it? We’ve been watching you. We know you’re working with the wizard.”

Joy bared her sharp fangs at me. “That spider’s been lording over the slums for years, forcing the changelings to act as his spies and holding the threat of exposure over our heads. We either keep his good will or he lets the Priorguard have the run of the place. Nice friend you’ve got, eh?”

“Even then, we are not kept safe.” This came from the wyldeman, who had a surprisingly soft, ordinary voice. He’d managed to lift himself using one of the walls, his broken leg held tentatively off the ground. “The Inquisition was here only a fortnight ago. They took our elder.”

I closed my eyes, suppressing the well of frustration that rose up in me. Damn it, Lias. Fixing my attention on Karog I said, “I’m only trying to track down the Council, our mutual enemy. I have good reason to believe they’re here, in the city.”

Karog glared at me a long moment, no hint of surprise on his simian features, or anything to tell me if my words had an effect.

“Karog?” Joy’s voice held a note of uncertainty.

The ogre’s impassive mask broke, and he threw a look toward the changeling that was almost apologetic. “I have sworn to protect these,” he said to me. “You have already done them harm. They attacked first, so I will not disembowel you for it.”

He lowered his heavy head, crouching and tightening his grip on his blades. “But you will leave now.”

I took a step forward. “Karog, are you listening? The Council is here, and they have a—”

“ENOUGH!” Karog bellowed, and the volume of that shout was a physical thing in the confines of the tunnel. I winced, almost dropping my axe to clasp my hands over my ears as the sound echoed.

When the last reverb of the shout had faded, the ogre continued in a deadly calm voice. “I am willing to die for vengeance, but I am a sellsword, Hewer. The changelings of Garihelm have paid me to protect them. They have given fair compensation. I will not drag them into my vendetta, and I do not care about your priests or your lords. Play the cat’s paw for your wizard ally all you wish, but I shall not bring the attentions of the Church down on these people, much less the Council.”

His voice turned bitter. “I know well enough what they’re capable of.”

“If you know that,” I said, matching his tone, “then you know that letting them do what they want could bring even more danger. You remember Caelfall? What they did there?”

Karog’s yellow-red eyes narrowed, but Joy cut in before he could reply.

“You’ve been told to piss off, cutter.” She sneered. “So get pissing. You’re not welcome.”

Karog straightened, the threat in his posture vanishing, but none of the resolve. “My promises mean more to me than satisfying my rage. Whatever bonds hold you to your crusades, they are not mine.” He met my eyes. “It is time to leave.”

We matched glares a while. I felt the array of eyes in that tunnel fixed on me, every one of them full of anger and fear.

I inhaled, then let out my anger in the exhale, along with a plume of amber-tinted mist. “You said the Priorguard took one of you?”

No response. The tension in the air was palpable. I clenched my jaw in frustration and turned to leave.

“The elder,” one of the other changelings said. The harpy, whose beak I’d broken. She looked mostly human, save for the feathers and too-large eyes. Her beak emerged where a human nose would have been, curving down over bow-shaped lips to meet a similar protrusion curving up from her chin. She had a singer’s voice, clear and pretty, presently somewhat nasal from her injury.

“He has been our leader for many decades,” the harpy continued. The toad-headed changeling in the merchant garb had helped her stand. “He was a healer… an apothecary.”

“Where did they take him?” I asked her.

“Where do you think?” Joy said. “Into that fucking cathedral in the upper city, or more likely some dungeon under it.”

There were many cathedrals in Garihelm, but I suspected I knew which one she meant. Myrr Arthor, the seat of the Clericon College.

“He’s probably already dead,” Joy added sullenly, glaring at me as though I were personally to blame. “Questioned to death by that damn Presider.”

The feathered woman flinched.

“Why did they take him?” I asked.

Karog was staring at me oddly. Joy, however, growled and stepped forward, her fangs bared. “Told you to fucking leave!” She spat.

I turned, and this time I didn’t stop walking.

“Where will you go?” Karog called out.

“If the Inquisition took this elder,” I said, glancing back without stopping, “then it’s probably because they think he knows something about the murders in the city — they’re hunting the Carmine Killer too.”

Who I now knew was connected to the Council of Cael. I turned my eyes forward, steeling myself for what was to come.

“I’ll get your elder back, if he’s still alive.”