Chapter 10: Archetypes

Longway was a large man with two lazy eyes whose apparent wits seemed well matched to his gift for carrying heavy things. He was kind to all, easily frightened, frequently baffled yet rarely confused. Most of all, he was never lost. He never forgot a path he once tread, and had an uncanny ability to find his way through unfamiliar terrain on the darkest of days. Now and then a child would stray past the torchlight wall and it would be Longway who found them and brought them back. His main purpose was aiding me and the lesser service porters at the fungus vats. There the Dolomites would guide us in the boiling of various compounds that would simulate flavor, so that the Ossarians would be even more than already bound to the adepts. The food would then be poured into vast pans where they would congeal, have a thin crust baked over them, and then be doled out to each family according to its size or behavior. Longway was the strongest man in Ossary (though I suspect his strength came more from leverage than from muscle), and would be my greatest help in carting the barrels of rations to the distribution house.

He was screaming, and as he screamed I dozed, half in dream, half fixated on the prickling feet of a centipede crawling along my skin. It had found its way under my clothes, and so I felt every piece of its body as it crawled serpentine from toe to calf to knee to thigh to testicle to abdomen to nipple to shoulder to neck to face, and then bunched up in my hood and squirmed there against my bald scalp for what felt like a terrifying eternity. The most gruesome feeling came when its face hovered over mine. I felt its feelers dancing over my lips and eyelids as its head swayed from side to side, its sharp jaws grazing my chin with each tremulous pass. All the while Longway cried out in hideous agony and fear, while I lay there entranced by the centipede. Its hooked back legs were dragging lazily along my chest as its forefeet tapped along my face, then it spiraled into a profane ouroboros within the hood of my robe, which I thought would protect me from such things were I to sleep with it over my head.

What I regret most, and surely this will shock you, is that Longway's screams did not motivate me to rise in the slightest. It was not until his screams died down that I became concerned. The centipede may as well have been the hand of a lover, so enraptured with it was I. Eris's trembling kisses never held me so still. But while the man howled he was alive. While the man cried out he had spirit. While the man wailed he was well. Then his voice began to die, and I began to care, so I slipped out of my clothing with a rare agility that I once used to escape Rouge Adept when he went mad in a previous reckoning, and just as then I wormed my way out of my garments and kept out of reach of the pursuing pincers. Then I peered into the dark and gripped the glistening red serpent just under its head and held it aloft. It twisted vigorously as a rope with a climber at its bottom, then coiled around my wrist while its legs struggled to scratch and puncture me. Its back legs dug into my elbow and raked at me until I mustered the courage to face my disgust over crushing it in my hand. Stomach quivering, I re-robed and ran towards the sound of Longway's urgent panting.

Kendra saw my hand and rubbed it clean with that granular mash the Vandals bathed with. We had a perimeter of torches set up, but the burrowing leech had come from a hole beneath Longway's bedroll where none could see. Torreg, a Vandal, had cut Longway's shirt and peeled it back. The leech's tail had almost disappeared into his naval, and some of it could still be seen bulging under the skin of his bulbous belly. Without thinking, I asked for a surgical knife, which Dolores was quick to hand me. I then made my incision and retrieved the leech so deftly that Longway barely even winced while I was pulling it out. Dolores then drizzled a clear gel onto the cut I made and gave the poor man some tea made of strong sleeping herbs.

"It will have befouled his innards," said an old Ossarian woman.

I shook my head, then held up the leech, which I had killed the same way as the centipede. I pointed to what was left of its face, a horrid mess of curved teeth and its two burrowing horns. I showed that its mouth dripped no blood.

"Their bodies are made of filth," the woman insisted. Again I shook my head.

"Only their sting causes infection. The mucous over their skin acts as a disinfectant, preserving their hosts alive while they feed and nest."

Now we see why I felt compelled to come back to write these moments, as I have accomplished my task and have the luxury of reflection. At the time, I assumed the frightened looks from the Ossarians were directed at the burrowing leech. That thought was ridiculous, for such horrors are commonplace in Tarthas. I was a myopic youth, unaware of the dark world around me and though I knew not to speak openly of the work I did for the Dolomites, my discreteness came from pride, and I lacked perspective. From the perspective I have since gained, I can now imagine the same look on my face if I were to see a boy of ten and four expertly slicing into a grown man and extracting a parasite with no signs of squeamishness. I would wonder how the boy learned to do this thing, and what else he had learned in secret service to the beings I had once foolishly thought of as benevolent providers.

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