Eyes of the Frozen North

© 2012, ANDREW WARWICK

Eldritch viridian magefire wreathed across the surface of the much abraded stone statue, flickering and dancing and crackling over it as if it possessed a life of its own, yet devouring no discernible fuel in so doing.  Within the flames, amethyst sparks flared into brief, bright existence before just as abruptly they were gone again.

Thrice the height of a fully grown man, the statue stood askance in a forest clearing, the long aeons having worn its features almost unrecognisable through wind and rain, snow and storm, so much so that the best that could be said of it was that it appeared humanoid in shape.

The lingering scent of coming snows suffused the air of the cold forest clearing, settling upon the two people who stood before the statue, studying it, and the flames that danced upon it, with cautious contemplation.

One, a man tall and slender, his movements languid and his face somnolent, wore a finely woven shirt of pale blues, across which were embroidered dark green highlights.  Across his shoulder hung a baldric of black leather stitched with silver thread that supported a slender rapier with a gilded hilt.  A cloak of dark blue, fur lined for warmth, completed his outfit.  Sleepy, pale eyes set in a long face beneath dark hair, swept the length of the statue, thoughts subsumed in that heavy-eyed expression.

The other, a woman, with auburn hair bound back in a tail by a leather band, shorter and heavier set than her companion, wore a shirt of iron scales.  She moved with a wary step, coiled ready to pounce, like a wolf on the hunt.  With a broadsword in her hand, one marked by much use, she never remained still, and her amber eyes roamed the forest glade, and beyond, ever alert for the slightest hint of danger, though ever drawn back to the statue and its flames.  Compared to the man, there was something primal about her, a dangerous edge seldom seen except in the predators of the wild.

“Take a care, Blade,” she said, her voice low, as the man stepped in closer to the statue, and the emerald flames that wreathed it.

Blade licked one long finger delicately before pressing it against the surface of the statue with a great deal of care.  The flames coiled around his hand, yet no ill effect came of it for they burned cold and illusionary, mere vestiges of the real thing.

“My dear Peregrine,” Blae responded, removing his hand from the flames and the statue, “If there is one thing I know, one of many things I know, it is the working of the Mysteries.  This, it is not dangerous, instead being merely a display of coloured lights meant to amuse, and to distract.”

“That it does well,” Peregrine replied, peering intently around the clearing, her attention no longer upon the statue now that she felt that it no longer posed a threat.  In her blood and in her bones, something felt wrong though, an innate sense of danger that had come awake the moment that they had arrived in the glade.  It had not lessened even though Blade had declared the statue safe, and of this sense of danger she sought out the source.

Beyond the trees, a wild tangle of ancient firs and pines, the ground beneath them heavy with their fallen needles, precipitous mountains rose away in the distance to the north, clawing at the sky with rugged grandeur. Craggy peaks, their shoulders heavy with crisp, fresh fallen snows, were lost in the dark rolling clouds that spilt down them like roaring waves crashing onto the shore. The pair of them, Peregrine and Blade, had come to the depths of the far north, where even the longest of summer days still bore a chill to the air, and few but the hardy dwelt, fur trappers and gold miners who plied the forests, rivers and hills beneath the mountains for a living.

“The question does remain,” she went on, “As to what exactly it is meant to attract the attention of, or for.”

“That I can not say,” Blade responded.

“I do not like it,” Peregrine growled. “It smells to me of a trap.”

Blade laughed easily, the sound an odd interruption to the ancient, unchanging aura that hung around the glade. “It always does for you.”

A grim smile crossed Peregrine’s face, her eyes growing tight. “With good reason too.”

Even as she finished speaking, from among the trees came the whispering of the faintest of sounds, barely a murmur that would have for most have passed unheard, little more than a rustling of fallen leaves and needles. Peregrine spun though, her hackles raised, broadsword leaping to the ready as keen ears became alert to the noise.

Her eyes met with the sight of a creature emerging out into the glade from under the trees, one that defied belief. Serpentine, yet vast beyond that of a mere snake, its girth rivalled that of a grown man’s height. It flowed across the ground with eyes, keenly cold, fixated upon them, eyes utterly alien and incomprehensible in their depths and yet at the same time possessing a cunning awareness that no other beast could match. There was an intelligence there in them, incalculable and uncaring.

Instead of the slithering sales of a serpent, the beast bore a coat of feathers in a multitude of bright hues, of the entire spectrum of the rainbow in all its glory. Immense feathered wings were tucked up against the length of its body, allowing it to weave between the trees unhindered.

Couatl.

The name came to them in but a glance at the creature, a name passed down in myth and legend only, for none alive for generations uncounted had laid eyes upon one of the mighty beasts alive, yet all knew of them and the form they took. The ancient Zoacana, creatures steeped in evil and the black arts, had feared them greatly, and were said to have hunted them down to the last, though, perversely, had admired them at the same time and raised statues of them throughout their empire. Those statues dotted their ruins still and the pair had come across many in their travels.

Yet here one of those creatures did exist, in the flesh when none should have, and shocked as they were that it did, they could spare no time to consider the whys of the matter.

“Ware the eyes,” came Blade’s warning, yet already it had been too late and his words slurred to an end before he could finish them, all vigour ebbing from his body. The eyes of the dread beast locked onto those of Peregrine’s and Blade’s, drawing them into its. As it did so, it bored into their minds with a terrible, hypnotic power. Upon their minds a stupor descended, a fog through which their thoughts became elusive, tantalisingly just out of grasp, slipping away as they tried to form them. Their limbs felt the full weight of the couatl’s might, for they became heavy with fatigue, as if weighed down under the burden of a great many clinking chains.

The couatl slithered in closer still, content that its prey had been subdued, whispering across the ground towards the paralysed victims of its gaze. Its lidless eyes of ancient ice stared fully into theirs, and in them reflected back, among the whirling dark hues, a cruel curiosity about those before it.

For all his knowledge of the nature of magic, or perhaps because of it, his keen mind and cunning intellect, Blade was one city born, where man was accustomed to the master of one over another, and he swooned beneath the withering assault of an intellect far superior, and far older, than his, one colder than that of any man. He found himself lost in that gaze, unable to break from it or even move, as rigid as the statue in the forest clearing.

Born upon the windswept hills, beneath the open skies, where survival came as a daily struggle against the elements and no man bowed to another, Peregrine’s mind was not one so easily mazed beneath the reptilian eye. Freedom she valued above all else, and she considered those that bowed and scraped to others as being weak willed. Despite the weight upon her limbs and the fog clouding her mind, she fought to free herself of the mental bonds, straining against the psychic snares that entangled her.

Her wild Aedring blood sung in her veins at the effort, lending her strength in her struggles. A groan was torn from her lips as nigh on unbearable pain racked at her body as her will met that of the one ensnaring her. The clash of minds ancient and young met, teetering backwards and forward, and in those moments Peregrine received flashes of images, of steaming jungles and lands beneath a brighter sun, of long darkness, and the emergence into the cold light, of events that she had never seen before, nor could fashion any sense out of. And then her will imposed itself upon her body, shunting aside the dominance of the couatl.

As the grip of the reptilian mind began to loosen, the bonds that held her paralysed started to part and the thought numbing stupor lifted, her faculties restoring.

Not a moment too late did she regain control, for the couatl’s mouth had opened and a flickering tongue darted towards them, from between venom tipped fangs, ones the size of curved scimitars. With a purpose of will, and the striking speed that would have done a mongoose proud, she lunged for the couatl. The sword in her hand struck a fell and telling blow, plunging deep into one of the dark, whirling eyes.

A shrieking hiss reverberated around the clearing at the strike, and echoed through the trees. The assault upon their minds shattered in an instant, like glass through which a stone had been hurled. The couatl reared back, its tail whipping across the ground to smash asunder a tree in its path. Such was the force with which it moved that it tore the sword free from Peregrine’s path, a brutal wrenching that sent shockwaves through her arm. The feathered wings of the beast snapped outwards as it beat at the air with them, picking up a swirling mass of dirt and leaves to blast into their faces.

With but a glance to each other, and not a word spoken, Peregrine and Blade turned and fled from the glade, plunging back into the trees, ducking beneath lashing branches and hurdling fallen logs. They ran until they could go on no more, their sides aching from the effort, their breaths ragged as they sucked in air, and only when they were confident that no pursuit followed them did they at last slow down.

“Tis a shame about your sword,” Blade stated as they jogged along, after taking the time to catch some semblance of breath.

“The beast can keep it,” Peregrine responded. “I am in no hurry to reclaim it. If any are brave enough to defeat the creature then they are most welcome to it. Hraega’s Blood, but the world is a dangerous enough place without a coutal on the loose as well.”

“Then we had best hope that there is just the one of them, and that it is not the prelude to more of them making their presence known.”

The End