Chapter 7: The Hellira

The first difficulty that came with traveling alongside Ámnistr was the need to remain alongside him. Though his long strides made him a good deal faster than a human, he was still frustratingly slow compared to Lindír’s wings. He often found himself in the air, keeping one eye on the giant as he circled like a carrion bird around a dying animal. Ámnistr approved; after all, there were always bandits, fallen trees, and other such impediments of the road to keep an eye out for.

Ámnistr himself spoke little. He had been alone for even longer than Lindír had, and had developed the same economy of speech which allowed him to go days on end without expressing a single thought. He would indicate proposals for places to make camp, point out objects of interest, and respond to Lindír’s words, all with the same grunt and shrug. What he would do, though, was sing, whistle, and hum.

Ámnistr had been a troubadour for half a century, he explained, and in that time had picked up more songs than he could name, sung in at least a score of languages. He knew songs of beauty and love, songs of solemnity and grief, songs of dance and merrymaking, songs of ribaldry and wordplay. A wandering troubadour would never know for what occasion he might need to sing a song, be it a wake or a wedding, a religious festival or a drunken feast, and he could not afford to find himself without a song to sing. After all, songs were how he paid for resin for his hurdy-gurdy, patches for his tunic, combs for his beard.

Lindír tried to sing, but soon found it nigh-impossible. A giant’s tongue and lips are, in the end, merely enlarged versions of those of a human. A dragon’s muzzle, being of a totally different shape, could not help but stumble when confronted with lyricism.

“You’re meant for dragon-songs,” Ámnistr once said.

“Dragon-songs?” Lindír had said. “Do dragons sing?”

“Ah, they do, and beautifully well. Like great horns and mighty pipe-organs, songs to make a heart burst open. But I can no more sing dragon-songs than you can sing mine.”

“I’ll have to ask them to teach me, if we ever meet dragons.”

Though Lindír could not help with Ámnistr’s primary profession, he was able to help in many other ways. Scouting, of course, became easy. But Lindír’s hunting also proved of great benefit. Though his meals were large, a stag or wild boar was still more than enough meat to split evenly between the two companions, and have a few morsels left over. Ámnistr also found himself no longer in need of a lighting-flint, or indeed any tinder at all, for Lindír’s flame could effortlessly ignite even the largest logs. And when they were finally done traveling through wild country and farmland, it soon became clear that the intimidation factor of having a pet dragon could not be underestimated.

Ámnistr’s first visit to a settled place came a month or so after Lindír joined him. He begged and pleaded with Ámnistr not to be taken inside, pointing out that the giant was suffering from no shortage of food or drink. But Ámnistr shook his head and ran his fingers through his forest of a beard and said that he had a longing for good beer and a need for soap, and that Lindír was going to have to get used to it at some point besides. And that was the end of that argument.

It was a small town, or perhaps a very large village, where Ámnistr stopped. It was clear that the folk there had heard of him, though they may not have seen him before. The sight of a giant troubadour was nearly mythological, and almost as many folk seemed merely to want to lay eyes upon a man thrice normal height as cared to listen to his music. There was some negotiation as to prices and payments, but eventually it was agreed that Ámnistr would stay for a few days, providing musical accompaniment to a few important events which were taking place during that time.

Lindír was terrified. The constant crowds of people seemed to swarm him, close around him, as though at any moment they might form a human chain and drag him back to the pit. A few people tried to touch him and behave as they did around Ámnistr, gawking at the giant’s pet. Lindír discouraged them. Any human who came too near would be met with bared teeth, a snarl so deep as to cause the very earth to vibrate, a quick puff of flame. There was a time or two when a particularly daring human would attempt to touch Lindír regardless; those folk survived with life and limb intact only by Ámnistr’s grace, as he gave Lindír a stern look and told the humans to lay off.

Lindír slowly came to realize, over the course of days, that these humans did not see him the same way as did his family in the Red Citadel. To them, he was a curiosity, a strange animal from a faraway land. They had heard of dragons, of course, and the devastation that dragons could bring about, but such stories were not commonplace, and besides: wolves could cause damage, and did not people keep dogs as pets?

    As Lindír came to understand this, and the humans came to understand his own temperament, they settled into an accord. Humans would not attempt to badger him, approaching only with a gift of meat or pastry, and even then only attempting to run their hands along his scaly flank when he was at his most relaxed. In return, Lindír affected the air of a scarred old stallion, standing apart from the festivities, napping in the dark while Ámnistr sang songs and told stories around roaring firelight.

He always accepted the gifts, though, particularly the pastry. Lindír had never eaten anything but meat before, and though fresh game and livestock still made up the far greatest part of his diet, he found that he did in fact possess a taste for the finer things. Cakes, in particular, were the only foodstuff which he could be brought to savor, letting the saccharine dough dissolve away on his tongue.

Eventually, of course, it came time to leave that first village. Ámnistr’s bag was weighed down with bricks of soap and huge glass bottles of beer, and he whistled for Lindír to rise just before dawn. He hummed a merry tune as he took great strides down the road leading onward.

Lindír had little need for soap, or for beer. Ámnistr gave him a bottle of the latter to drink, but he found it much too bitter for his tastes, and it weighed down his stomach as though there were lead in it, although it should not have been any heavier than the slabs of meat he consumed on a regular basis. Soap would have perhaps been more useful were he not a dragon. Lindír always kept as clean as possible, rubbing his scales in clay-rich riverbank soil before sinking into the rivers themselves. The scales around the edge of his heart-gap, in particular, would become painfully sensitive if allowed to accumulate even the slightest amount of grit. Soap, though appealing as a concept, soon proved impossible to put into practice. The one time he tried, Lindír had nearly tied himself into knots before admitting that there was no way to apply an even lather to scaled skin.

The second village which Ámnistr stopped at was somewhat akin to the first, in the way that all humans are both akin and different. Similar as well were the third, the fourth, the fifth. By then, Lindír and Ámnistr had settled upon a routine, in which both of them had a part to play. Ámnistr was the showman, his booming voice audible for all to hear as he joked (always with the humans, never at) and negotiated his prices. Lindír, meanwhile, was the show.

He would stalk around the edge of the town square, or in places which had buildings sturdy enough to hold his three-ton body, perch with wings folded and eyes keenly glaring at the inevitable crowd. If he noticed that a good portion of the eyes had turned to him, then he would let them watch, coiling around himself and flaring his wings wide in a gaudy display of crimson scales and flashing teeth. Ámnistr would be sure to speak of his terrible power and strength, while also noting a dragon’s lust for silver and meat, implying that Lindír might be encouraged with gifts, which he would usually be given, and respond to with a great burst of flame or a mighty roar.

Lindír would rarely speak to any but Ámnistr, and then only in private. Partially, this was because he had little to say to humans, and speaking to them would open up the terrifying possibility of conversation. Primarily, though, this habit arose from the first time he did speak, silencing a heckler with a growl of “Be silent, peacock!” The expressions of sudden awe and revelation that rippled across the crowd were worth Lindír’s weight in gold.

 

…

 

There was one meeting that would remain with Lindír for all of the rest of his life, one that was not merely another stopping point on the journey. He had been traveling with Ámnistr for some time, by then, perhaps a bit longer than a year. They had left behind the huge fields of Witland, swimming across the narrow Venden Straits, and found themselves in the wet marshes of Garganland.

There came a winter day when the morning fog refused to be parted by the rising sun, and all of the world faded into dim and grey. Light rain tapped upon Lindír’s scales and scattered against the forest canopy, dulling sound much as the fog dulled light. Lindír was reminded of when he had once tried to test his lungs by swimming as deep as he could, until the cold and dark of the ocean surrounded him in a crushing embrace.

For two days they walked through that fog, blind and deaf, hoping that they had not been turned about. On the evening of the third day, though, Lindír heard the sound of approaching troops. They could have only been armed men; for alongside the sound of a score of feet trodding over the soft earth, Lindír also heard the clanking of metal against itself. He immediately prepared for conflict, as he had done when they had encountered brigands in the past, half-spreading his wings and letting the flames rise up in his mouth.

Ámnistr followed his lead, Lindír’s acute senses having proven vital in the past. The two companions stood like waymarkers in the fog, every sense straining to discern the intent of the mystery travelers. The sounds of footsteps and clanking metal came ever closer.

Just when Lindír’s anxiety had reached its peak, when he was prepared to charge forward and smite with flame whatever he saw, a voice broke through the cloud. It sounded like a human voice, in volume and timbre, though Lindír could not discern whether it came from a man or a woman, and it spoke no tongue he knew, not even any of the ones which Ámnistr had been teaching him. The voice spoke only briefly before, to Lindír’s shock, Ámnistr responded in the very same tongue.

They conversed but briefly before silence fell and Ámnistr relaxed his guard. Then, while Lindír still stood with his back as tense as a bowstring, the footsteps resumed. A moment later, the strangers began to emerge from the fog and into Lindír’s view. He was instantly and profoundly awestruck.

    The travelers were indeed warriors, or at least most of them were, and they did seem to number between twenty and thirty. But in all of his wanderings, Lindír had never seen warriors like them. Their armor, for one thing, was not of mail, nor even the scale armor which he had seen on Namarene mercenaries and other folk of Akun, but appeared more as if some craftsman had been able to recreate the shell of a crab out of metal and in humanoid form. How the huge silver plates fitted together so smoothly, while still allowing for near-total freedom of movement, he could not understand. They even had individual fingers on their gauntlets, and yet could still hold the hafts of their long halberds with ease.

    But the armor-clad ones were not alone. About a quarter of the total group, standing around the edges of the company, were what Lindír could only parse as witches. These ones wore no armor at all, but instead elaborate gowns of ash-grey cloth, finely embroidered with abstract patterns that astounded the mind with their nearly-infinite complexity. Each one also carried a long staff, nearly half as long again as they were tall, made entirely of silvery metal and topped with a burning censer.

    Each of the witches, their faces being uncovered, had very plainly been blinded. Some merely wore a blindfold of similarly elaborate cloth as that which made up their dresses. Others had gone to more extreme ends, the places where their eye sockets would have been instead being covered in a layer of hardened wax.

Lindír sat down on his haunches, barely aware of the actions of his body. “It’s beautiful,” he said in a half-whisper. “Who are they?”

Ámnistr raised an eyebrow. “Have you never laid eyes upon a hellira before?”

“I would remember if I had.”

    “I am surprised that you do not know of them,” Ámnistr said. “The hellira are a strange and mystical folk. They are an exclusively female people, said to dwell underground in great kingdoms carved from the stone.”

The witches were plainly female; though their dresses covered them from wrist to collar and dragged on the ground as they walked, no effort had been made to conceal the feminine features of face or body. The warriors were more difficult to gender. All of them wore helms, and many of those helms were of a single piece of metal, bearing no more than tiny holes for breathing, lacking even an eye-slit for vision. A few, though, ended just below the nose, allowing their wearers more easy access to speech and breath. Though he could not be certain, the pale skin he did see was without exception beardless.

“They’re very tall, for women,” Lindír said dumbly.

“Tall for human women, perhaps. I imagine two arms and a touch is quite normal for hellira.”

“But if they’re all female, how do they—”

“I don’t know,” Ámnistr interrupted. “On account of, well, they become rather cross if you ask.”

One of the hellira warriors stepped forward and removed her helmet. Her skin was pale, incredibly pale, and her flame-red hair would have been gloriously long had it not been tied back. She looked up at Ámnistr with closed eyes and began to speak, which was when Lindír realized that this was the same hellira which had originally called out from the fog.

This conversation went on slightly longer than the first, and Lindír recognized Ámnistr’s name being spoken, first by the one it belonged to, and then repeated by the hellira. After a minute, the leader turned to the others and barked a set of orders, at which point they immediately hurried into action.

“What were you talking about?” Lindír asked.

Ámnistr knelt down and began retrieving items from his bag. “Hellira do not often go above ground, as these ones have, so it is a rare opportunity indeed to be able to break bread and share a tale with such as they. I suggested that we make camp together, at least for one night.”

 

…

 

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As the sun sank in the sky, the hellira made camp, an orderly half-dozen tents in a semicircle around a roaring main fire, which one of the knights ignited without aid from flint or spark. There were several such displays of minor magic as they went about their work. Some of the tents seemed to help set themselves up, and one hellira carried the enormous iron cooking-pot with one arm and no sign of needing to exert herself. The cook-pot they filled with water and dried meat, carrots and turnips, salt and herbs. One pot would not have been enough to feed all of them, of course; but it was but a supplement to the actual staple of every soldier’s diet, hard bread.

Lindír was able to watch all of this in relative peace, his claws crossed in front of him and his wings half-splayed on the ground, for he and Ámnistr did not have half as elaborate a camp to make. Normally all they ever did was start a fire (easy with Lindír around). Ámnistr kept a blanket the size of a ship’s sail for himself, and Lindír’s scales were more than warm enough to survive the night. Instead, Lindír watched them work. They truly were like no creature he had ever looked upon before, each movement possessing such graceful economy as to appear dance-like even in heavy armor. If only it weren’t for the matter of the language barrier, Lindír could have made conversation, but having to speak through Ámnistr meant that he could only watch.

As the hellira sat down around the fire, they removed their helmets and the most uncomfortable portions of armor and began to loosen their tight wrapping of stoicism. Every single one of them, without exception, had found some way of occluding her eyes. Only a few had done so with wax. More common were blindfolds of some variation, ranging from makeshift things to elaborate metallic eye-pieces. A few had had the bright idea to simply wear a helmet with no eye-slits.

At first, the hellira seemed almost languid, more content to sit about and occasionally mutter to themselves or sit in silent repose while they waited for the soup to warm. But as night fell, that slowly changed. The talk grew livelier and more friendly, jokes and comments flying back and forth in the unfamiliar, melodic tongue of the underground. Some of the hellira began to remove their blindfolds and eyeless helmets, revealing eyes bereft of iris, merely a black orb in the middle of white. Lindír supposed that it made sense that beings used to the lightless underground would shy from the light of the sun.

As the soup warmed and the energy of the camp with it, one of the hellira—one of the witches who had been carrying the great staves—stood up and raised her voice to say something to Ámnistr directly. “You speak our tongue, giant,” Ámnistr helpfully translated. “And I see you have an instrument, there. Does that violin sing hellira songs?”

The hellira were apparently unfamiliar with a hurdy-gurdy. “It does,” Ámnistr responded. “Though only a few. What would you say the occasion is? Joyous, somber?”

“Sore, I would say,” came the reply from one of the hellira knights. “Our march has been long and so far fruitless, with little chance to rest.”

Ámnistr nodded and, after he had explained the exchange to Lindír, spent some time stroking his beard in thought. Then, without preamble, he took up his instrument and began to play. It sounded like a sad song, long notes and melancholy ones. Ámnistr’s booming voice soon accompanied it with verses in the hellira’s language, which was already halfway to being music and thus sounded incredibly beautiful. Lindír had no way of understanding the song, but he felt it. It wasn’t quite sad, he realized. There was sadness in it, yes, but other things as well, hope and longing and other feelings he couldn’t fully understand. A few of the hellira apparently knew the song and raised their voices, the thin, sharp sound twining around the overpowering bass of Ámnistr’s voice.

When the song ended, the whole camp took a few moments of silence. Lindír was the first one to break that silence. “What was that song?”

“Ah, you don’t know the words. One might term a paean to the halls which the hellira call their home. If the song bears any resemblance to the truth, then they must be a beautiful sight indeed. A perfect melody for a group of homesick soldiers.”

“Have you never been to those halls?” Lindír said.

Ámnistr shook his head. “As likely as anything, I’d have to crawl on my hands and knees just to fit. No, that tongue I was taught many a season ago, when I spent a year in the court of some king whose name escapes me. His queen was a hellira, and she taught me her tongue, and a few songs besides.”

Before Lindír could ask any more about the human king with the hellira wife, a chant began to rise up from the hellira soldiers. It was one word, or perhaps a short phrase, and from the tone Lindír could tell without translation that it meant something along the lines of “Another!”

Ámnistr obliged with another song, this one rousing and gallant, which he later explained told the story of a great battle between the hellira and the Under-Queens, and of how only the great bravery of Calarel the Strong carried the day in the end. He even went directly from that explanation into the third song, which was similar to the first, but if anything even more tender and delicate in its emotions.

Lindír noticed that the third song, in particular, elicited some strange reactions. Though most of the hellira were content merely to listen, a few pairs of them here and there seemed to feel a sudden need for attention. A witch laid her head down in a knightess’s lap, where she slowly stroked her silvery hair. Two knightesses threw their arms around each other and began whispering, occasionally pausing to nip at each other’s ears and throats. Another knightess blushed furiously as the woman next to her began to sit very close and fix her with an intense look.

When the third song was done (the blushing knightess and her challenger having vanished into one of the tents), Ámnistr admitted that he had no more, at least none that were appropriate for the occasion. The moment he was done, Lindír blurted out the question that had occupied his mind.

“What was that third song?”

“A love song,” Ámnistr replied. “The singer describes the beauty of her love, and the longing she feels when she cannot be around her. Very touching indeed, though I imagine most humans would find it objectionable.”

“A love song,” Lindír murmured to himself. “I suppose that explains some of their behavior. I hadn’t realized that love caused one to act so… foolishly.”

“Foolishly?” Ámnistr said with a chuckle. “You are not the one to criticize others for acting foolishly because of amorous feelings.”

He knew immediately and exactly where this conversation was leading them, and he didn’t like it. Lindír averted his eyes from Ámnistr, in the hopes that not having to look would somehow assuage the white-hot shame that seared at his face. “That’s not the same, and you very well know it.”

“That is more true than you know, nephew,” Ámnistr said. “Nevertheless. You have to admit that it is rather foolish to knock over a full-grown beech tree and—”

“I only did that once!” Lindír protested, his voice rising almost to a screech. That was a lie. He had only been caught once. “And besides. What business have you sticking your fat nose into mine and that beech tree’s private matters?”

The sheer audacity of the statement nearly knocked Ámnistr over entirely. As it was, he chortled loudly enough to draw comment from the hellira, and slapped his thigh with an open palm to signal that that was the end of the conversation. 

Dinner was soon served, the hellira dipping their war-biscuits into the watery soup to make both foodstuffs more edible. Though Ámnistr’s song had faded, the friendly mood hung in the air still, and the hellira talked amongst themselves. Lindír even asked to try some of their food; he found the war-biscuit to be similar to eating bones in both texture and taste, and the soup to be akin to spring-water emerging from an unusually flavorful source rock. Nonetheless, with nudging from Ámnistr, Lindír did allow a few of the hellira to take a few cuts of smoked meat from his dinner.

The night continued to set in more deeply, and as dinner ended the conversation cooled. In ones and twos, the knights and witches alike retired to their tents, to sleep through to the morning. Of those who remained, many fell into silent contemplation, staring up at the countless stars or down at their own laps, murmuring fragments of the hellira language to themselves as some sort of trancelike state of thought. Lindír found himself naturally falling into such a state as well, perhaps inspired by the aura of ancient wisdom which surrounded the hellira and their witches. He imagined what it must look like in their lightless halls, and could only imagine that the stone was carved with the utmost of delicacy and artistry, as befitting such a race as the hellira.

One witch approached Lindír, outstretching her hand in a wordless request. For once, there was no sense of tension, no fear that the touch would prove hostile. If anything, he felt indebted, for the honor of having seen even this small example of the masters of the underworld. When he nodded consent, she ran her fingers across his wing-skin, the softness of her touch making his tail shiver.

Then, one hellira, the captain who had spoken to Ámnistr earlier, raised her voice. This discussion, apparently, was important enough that Ámnistr translated. “Say, Giant, whither do you go?” the Captain said. “We chose the path across the moors for knowledge that it held few travelers. That is why we had our fog so thick; we thought there were none about for it to inconvenience.”

“Aye, few go this way,” Ámnistr replied. “Aside from brigands and beasts, and with the boy at my side—” he gestured to Lindír “—I fear neither. But I sought to cross into Garganland, and found this the most direct route. Men might go further north, through the valleys, but I know of a lord there who despises giants, and so avoid them.”

Lindír spoke up. “The fog was their doing?”

Ámnistr repeated the question to the Captain, who nodded and said to Lindír, “It mitigates, if only somewhat, the discomfort of the sun. Even blindfolded or masked, the light troubles us greatly. There is a reason why our witches use wax.”

“Why not travel during the night?” Lindír asked.

“And sleep during the day?” the Captain asked unseriously. “Sleep with a bonfire’s light being thrust before your eyes, then ask me again why we do not travel during the night.”

Ámnistr nodded at the wisdom. “So, Captain of the hellira. You have asked me for my bearing; might I not ask yours? What brings you to the surface?”

All at once, the camp fell silent. Every beautiful hellira face gained a dark cast, as thoughts turned to fear and uncertainty. Even the Captain took several seconds to force her lips to form the hated words, spitting them out to taint the air. “Homunculi.”

Lindír had never known until that moment whether homunculi were but a story. It had seemed to horrible to be real. Extensions of the wills of the Under-Queens, deformed bogeymen who appeared to steal children and wise men alike and drag them down to the courts of their depraved masters, homunculi had been more of a moral lesson, a warning for naughty children, than a real threat. There was almost a logic to it, that beings as impossibly beautiful as the hellira would hunt creatures as impossibly awful as homunculi.

Ámnistr’s face blanched. “Homunculi? Are you certain?”

“Completely. A large band, tenscore, overran one of our positions and broke into the surface. Many companies such as ours have been sent forth to hunt them down. Tell me, giant, have you seen any sign of homunculi?”

“No, and how could I? They can appear however the Under-Queens wish. If they’re at all wise, they will be indistinguishable from a human.”

“Physically, yes,” said the Captain. “But remember that they have no minds of their own; only the mind of the creating Under-Queen inhabits those empty shells. Look into their eyes and you will see no common kindness, but only a bottomless, eternal hate.”

Ámnistr frowned grimly. “Haven’t seen such a thing of late. But I have made no attempt to look either. I’ll keep a wary eye.”

“I could ask of you nothing more. Your purpose is not to hunt homunculi any more than our purpose is to sing songs. I did not mean to upset you.” The Captain looked away from the campfire, toward one of the other tents in the camp. “I should retire. A quiet night to you, giant.”

“And a dark day to you,” Ámnistr said.

When Lindír awoke the next morning, some time after dawn, the hellira had already packed up their camp and left, leaving only the cold ashes as proof of their passing. He would often wish to meet hellira again, perhaps with greater knowledge of their tongue, for their ethereal beauty called to him. But he would not have that wish granted for many, many years.

 

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