Letter Twenty-three

Dear Sneffles,
The celebration has been nonstop since we returned to Korvosa but my heart isn’t in it. So I might as well finish my account of the events that saved thousands from death and the city from becoming the plaything of hellspawn.

We left by ship for a second time as Findis’s teleport only works places she’s been and PJ’s windwalk is too puny to use over such distances. We went in style this time, though, in a navy schooner. The trip took us a week of boredom, mixed with a growing sense of dread that built steadily the closer we came to our goal.

I spent some of my time with the crew, teaching them a few card tricks and how to play knivesies. I also cornered a couple of lads I knew to be in the Thieves’ Guild back home. They are both fuck-ups but one shows promise. I pointed out flaws in their fighting technique and clever recipes for wine out of just about anything except fish guts. The fourth day out I pulled the bright one aside and talked with him about the importance of working within the navy, doing what his officers wanted, anticipating their needs, and gaining their trust. “Patience,” I cautioned him. “The higher you climb the more you can steal—and they’ll thank you for it.” He had a thoughtful look as we parted. With any luck he’ll become a captain of industry someday.

I saw Findis staring out over the bay waters one evening and sat down beside her. I’d been trying to speak with her ever since the “change” happened but she always hustles away as soon as she sees me coming. I guess I shouldn’t have joked about turning her into my “ho.” Like I’d ever kiss anyone who tastes like a zong butt. No, I just wanted to be pals again, like we were in the old days when I’d call him my little buddy and he’d offer to give me one up the ass.

“What’s happening, sis?” I said, looking out over the water where the sun was setting, red and orange, like the royal flag of Korvosa burning.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“If I could I wouldn’t need you,” I laughed in rejoinder. I guess I said the wrong thing again, but she’s just such an easy target, I can’t resist. Still, I should watch it, it could get me killed. “Kidding, kidding,” I temporized.

“Phah,” she puffed out a lungful. “I don’t know what to tell you, man.”

“Tell me we’re going to live through this.”

She gave that exasperated look, which has somehow become fetching on little Findis, even though she doesn’t know how to use makeup, or even take care of her face. I mean, fair or not, a man can get away without shaving, a woman can’t. She’s got what it takes, though, like a new girl in from the country. I just hope Shelley can teach her how to use it.

“Now that Szechuan has Serithtial I don’t think anything can oppose us, even that bitch Queen,” she grunted.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Also, PJ got himself engorged . . .”

“Enlarged, nimrod.”

“Whatever. Look, Findis—Finarfin—I know you’re still in there. We’ve had our differences, but really, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather go into battle with . . .”

“Don’t patronize me, honky!” She leapt up and would have kicked me right into the water with one of those big-ass feet of hers except I was quicker and got out of the way.

“You didn’t let me finish,” I taunted. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather go to battle with than Szechuan, Bardar, and PJ! I said nothin’ about you!”

Cruel, I know, and absurd, but suddenly, astonishingly, tears welled up in her eyes.

“Oh, no, no,” I admonished, rushing over and taking her into my arms. “I didn’t mean it.” I cosseted her for a time as the tears gushed forth. She was obviously having problems adjusting to the change in her body’s female humors.

“I feel hot all over,” she wailed, “and then cold, and sometimes like I want to bite someone and sometimes . . . !”

“That’s all right, hush, hush, darling little Findis.” I held her for a time, comforting her, nuzzling the top of her head comfortingly. Then I heard her gasp.

“You, you bastard!” she howled, pushing me away. “That’s the kind of shit I used to pull on women! You almost had me there . . .” By this time sparks were flying out of her pretty little ears and I was running for my life. I managed to lose her long enough to disguise myself as a midshipman and spent the night sharing a bunk below deck with a halitosis enhanced helmsman by the name of Frak.

We arrived the next morning off the coast near the aptly-named Greenrust Reef, waiting solemnly until PJ was ready to take us inland, ship rocking with every step of his freakishly huge form. “If he can’t get girls now he never will,” I thought peevishly as we waited to begin. Finally, after a long while spent silently meditating, PJ said the words and we turned into a wispy cloud and rose into the sky.

Passed over empty marshland with patches of wild, dense jungle we felt no qualm about making rain as the need arose. It was far less messy than pissing out of a moving cart because its driver can't be bothered to stop, I'll tell you that. Following the river we were soon far inland. On one side we passed huge mounds that Bardar said were the graves of Runegiants buried a long time ago. One the other we occasionally glimpsed a rough trail, its milemarkers shaped like frogs, and crude mounds that were home to something I didn't care to ask about.

By evening we were standing before a tall isosceles pyramid—the Sunken Queen—listing in the fetid, swampy water. The were no obvious entrances but with the holy power of Serithtial acting as a guide, we were brought us to a place where the wall let us pass, like stepping through warm suet pudding.

We were met by giant frog-things—boggards according to Bardar, who shouldered me aside in his haste to get at them. Szechuan wasn’t so lucky, catching a load of puke right in the kisser. I expected him to rage but he smiled instead, as if he enjoyed the awful smell, cracking wise as a second boggard took a hunk out of him. Then PJ, giant fists whirling, punched the second beast out. Stunned, it stepped right into Szechuan’s killing blow, which cleaved it neatly in half. As Findis’s scorching ray wilted a couple, I nicked one, but not seriously, and Bardar finished him off.

With the Queen so close we didn’t have much stomach for looting so we moved down a hall, stopping when reaching water. Findis sent her arcane eye to reconnoiter and found its flooded rooms blooming with red algae. She saw ominous crystal tubes leading upward through the ceiling in another place, and endured the sight if not the smell, of the roach-infested quarters of the late boggards. There was also a shaft leading upward. Findis carried us up one at a time although she insisted that I face away from her before she would wrap her arms around me. “You ain’t getting a poke at me,” she griped unnecessarily.

There were four rooms on this level, all empty. One was the Queen’s bedroom, illuminated by three globes of fire. It was expensively furnished, Rahadoum carpets covering the floor. A porcelain third dynasty vase with fresh violets and lotus flowers stood on the bureau—I remembered how you love lotus flowers. And song, next to the bed was a golden harp. Amongst the Queen's baubles I found a ring that I recognized—something I’d exchanged years ago with someone—and quickly put it into my pocket.

The next room smelled of blood. A large basin dominated one end where crystalline tubes emerged crimson from a pool of rich red blood. A woman’s body floated face down in the kroovy. For a moment I feared it was Ileosa but when we fished it out it was a simulacrum of her like the one in Korvosa. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The third room held torture and interrogation devices (ho-hum) and the final room contained an iron stand cradling a large dark blue sapphire. Always game, PJ picked it up and found that it had Szechuan’s name on the bottom. It was a soul trap that reached out violently for the Shoanti barbarian. His face contorted with rage, agony, fear as it tried to pull him inside. Tthe rest of us stood by, helpless spectators of his trial. We all knew that the success of our enterprise could well rest on this moment, this toss of the dice as it were.

Then PJ remembered the harrow card he was keeping, the one that allowed Szechuan respite as he fell to his knees gasping, sweat pouring rivulets from his brow. “Fuck me!” he croaked and I knew that he had beaten it.

With some relief we gathered at the bottom of the upslope tube. “This is it, boys,” Bardar said. I looked around at my comrades of the last few months: Szechuan the strong (in more ways than one), PJ the impetuous, Findis/Finarfin the damaged soul, Bardar the imperturbable, Cordobles the unfortunate. “Let’s do it,” PJ cried eagerly.

We followed the shaft up another level. On one wall was an ancient map, “Thassalon,” Bardar muttered.  In the middle of the room floated an immense bubble of blood at the apex of the crystalline tubes—the fabled Everdawn Pool, legendary place of power and bloody miracles. Ileosa was here, I knew it. Faces, parts of bodies, buildings emerged briefly from the gore, only to quickly submerge.

As the agitation of pool increased, from peaceful ripples to angry waves, we saw the skyline of Korvosa emerge and fall, reminding us of what was at stake. Then it birthed three mordant blobs—dread wraiths. Then her eyrinyes made their entrance, apparently waiting for the most melodramatic moment. Finally, Ileosa herself emerged, all violent fury, and then a second, and a third until there were seven beautiful, angry women challenging us. My heart sank into my boots.

Using his giant size to full effect, PJ quickly destroyed the wraiths, then helped Szechuan with the Illeosas until only one of them remained. Findis looked cross-eyed as she endured a drubbing, shrieked, then attacked her big buddy Szechuan, who held her off with the flat of his sword. Wanting to stay as far away from the remaining Ileosa as possible, I killed one of the erinyes, lethal beauty that she was, and immediately turned on another.

That’s when PJ called in a planer ally and for the first time I saw the Queen sag. I tried calling my new formians to the battle but something prevented their arrival. Suddenly, like Findis, I realized that my will was not my own. Ileosa shook me like an old rag doll, tearing my mind apart, controlling me. Our thoughts become one as she sucked away all my memories of you, sweet Sneffles.

When we first met I was nine, you seven. The drunks and drug addled louts who inhabited that place cruelly made you dance for their amusement as, one after another, they fucked our mothers in the stale back room. You smiled for them and danced anyway, while a slim young boy emptied their pockets of everything they owned. You won my heart that night, although I didn’t know it at the time.

No, I knew that I truly loved you years later, the first time we kissed. We were still virgins (although not for much longer). It was one of those rare evenings in Old Korvosa when the breeze brought in sea air instead of the smell of rotting garbage and it was cool instead of hot.

We were hiding away together with a pie I’d found on somebody’s window sill. There was a smudge of raspberry filling at one corner of your mouth and I wiped it away absent mindedly with my thumb, brushing your hair, red as the dawning sun, from your eyes—laughing eyes that were the coolest shade of green. I could not look away. From that moment on you were all I will ever care about. Our kiss seemed to last forever, and maybe it has, because I never did get over it. When we finally made love, after so many false starts, I knew that you were with the person who completed me. How many people can say that about another? Even for a moment.

And this is where it’s brought us Queen Ileosa—my Sneffles. My heart cries out to you, but the man is done crying over what you’ve become. These letters I’ve written were meant for the girl I remember, the one I loved and who loved me. The one I protected, and who protected me. When you first seduced the old king we thought it a lark, a game where we could both profit. We cooked up that ridiculous story about you being some runaway upper-crust Cheliax party girl and Korvosa’s royal court swallowed it whole because you are so beautiful and, like all men, they wanted you.

I waited for you, thinking that you would one day tire of the game and we would take our loot and run but instead something else happened—you found the Fangs of Kazavon and they took you. I hoped, and prayed that deep inside, you were not corrupted by the forces you’d unleashed. I thought that when the end came I could save you. But when I see you there beside the bloody Everdawn Pool, and look into your dead eyes, seeing no recognition there, no love left for a little boy lost, I know that the woman I love is gone forever and only a sad fraud remains. I pray for death to take both of us so I can follow you to hell.

Then you hesitated, recognizing something in the thoughts you were ravaging from me, some spark of love lost forever. Our eyes met briefly, a single tear slid down your cheek as Szechuan brutally forced Serithtial through your quarrelling body, bringing an end to your ambition and to my hope.

"No," I whispered helplessly. "Oh no."

“That strike was for my people!” Szechuan gloried. “This . . . is for me!”

But before he could violate you further Serithtial interrupted him, leading him to the crown of fangs, which had fallen from your head onto the floor, and he battered it to pieces.

Oh, there was more. The Everdawn Pool tried to puke up some form of Kazavon but the boys handled it—they always do. I could only stare down upon your poor shattered body as the others celebrated, too exuberant to notice my distress. Wrapping you in my mantle, I used my ring of invisibility to spirit you away, rappelling down the shafts and into the dark, cold morning, tears blinding me as I stumbled and fell and rose to stumble again.

Finding a quiet spot amongst a small copse of trees near a brook, I set you down carefully onto the wet grass. As dawn brought the new day, I washed your body of the blood that had so obsessed you. I did not think, but did what had to be done, as you taught me back when it was just the two of us. In my mind I saw you smile, felt your soft touch on my arm, your warm, gentle sigh, heard the laughter we shared as I told you about my latest misadventure.

Then I covered you with the simple white gown I’d found in your chamber, using my kit of disguise to repair your ravaged face. I combed your hair, drawing it back into the ponytail you favored when we were young, placing my amulet of armor about your throat and my silver holy symbol of Desna into your hands, which I then crossed above your heart. On your feet I put the dragonhide boots I’d had made for you. Then I slipped my ring of friend shield onto your wedding finger before kissing you one last time. Wrapping you protectively in my mantle of spell resistance, I lowered you into the unforgiving earth. Kneeling, I prayed to Desna that someday I can join you in whatever dark corner of hell you inhabit.

“Yo, ’Dobles!”

I looked up and saw your killer, Szechuan, resplendent in his gear, Serithtial glowing in his hand.

“The party’s breaking up, dude. I’m heading home to kick ass and take names. What are you doing out here?”

I sighed, looking away. “I felt bad for Ileosa,” I told him. “She was like me, she came from the streets. I thought someone should bury her.”

“Good idea, just make sure to hide her well, you don’t want anyone to dig her back up, you know what I mean?”

“So where do you think she’s buried?” I asked him.

He looked around, then grinned, clapping me on the shoulder hard enough to knock the wind from my sails. “See you around, hoss. Better get back there pronto because Findis is about to teleport them away and she says she ‘ain’t waiting for no skinny-assed pimps!’

“To tell you the truth,” he winked, “the wee lass is on the rag again.”

“What else is new?” I wanly smiled.

I watched him go, whistling as he strode away, unknowingly passing over your grave. Even Serithtial didn’t cop to it. Saying goodbye to you at last, I returned to my friends and the hurly-burly of the city.

Love forever,
Cordobles