Strange
Broo -- Part I
The Lunar pursuit from Elkoi was far stiffer than I expected. They followed me for days. Since being alone on the plains of Balazar was not to my liking, because the Lunars could see me from afar or from the air, and because I knew neither the tribes nor the predators of the area, I made for the foothills of the Rockwoods. I was tired, hungry, and could not free myself from a hacking cough.
It might not have been the right decision. On the fifth day, as I climbed the foothills near Ormsfang, I came unexpected upon a great troll. He was stronger and quicker than I, but I felled him with a lucky shot, unfortunately not before he had hurt me. I fell to the ground weary from my battle, weary and sore wounded, for my leg had been crushed by his mace, along with my shield arm and my side. I fell unconscious, lacking the magic points to heal myself fully, and hoping that nothing would come on me unaware.
I awoke to nightmare. The creature standing over me was large, larger than a normal broo, with four horns and tentacles around its mouth. In fact, it looked rather like the representations of Thed herself that I have seen.
I waved my sword at it from my half-sitting position, but it kept well beyond my reach.
My magic crystal was well nigh spent, but I essayed to cast the frighten spell that had failed against the troll. It seemed that I cast the spell successfully, but I might as usefully cast it into the void, for the broo did not react nor did the spell hit it.
The broo muttered to itself in some uncouth fashion, then cast at me, and depleted as I was both of physical and magical power, I lost consciousness again, with a stray thought running through my head: "why was the creature dressed in white?"
I awoke to find myself stripped of weapons and armor, and tied down. It took me a moment further to notice that I was no longer suffering the severe pain of my wounds. Then I noted that the troll was in a similar position, tied down beyond my reach, but apparently recovered equally from its wounds. I could see no sign of our captor.
I feared the worst, wondering whether the broo was going to eat me, infect me with some foul disease, sacrifice me in some vile rite, or, worst of all, rape me. I had had only a few dealings with the beasts, none of them profitable, and all dismal, and had heard many more tales of their awful habits.
When the troll awoke, it began to growl in a most fearsome manner, and did not respond to anything I said to it. Rather it spent its energies unsuccessfully trying to break its bonds.
Then the broo returned. Upon closer inspection, it looked as bad as I had feared. Even worse, it continued chanting in some sort of sing-song voice in a tongue which I had never heard. Strangely, however, it had no weapons, although it bore heavy armor, blackened except for an occasional gleam, but covered with a white garment of some kind. More remarkably, the garment was less dirty than I expected. Strangest of all, its horns were covered with some sort of wire basket, which would have looked silly had not the monster seemed so fearsome. Fearing disease, I shied away from it.
But it ignored me, and went straight to the troll. It cast another spell at it, and the troll fell into a stupor. Then, I was amazed to see that the broo lifted the troll easily, and walked away around the corner with it.
A few minutes later I heard deep troll growls and screams, and then silence fell.
Now I was convinced of my doom, and essayed to call upon Orlanth to free me. Unfortunately, the God ignored my desperate appeal, as he had done the only other time I had tried to ask his aid.
I rubbed myself raw and bleeding trying to escape my own bonds, but with no success. I was hungry and thirsty, and fell to coughing again, and then to unconsciousness.
I woke when I heard a horrid scream above me; the broo stood near, and suddenly bashed its head against the rock next to my body. I choked in fear, and then suddenly found the broo's hairy arm lifting up my head. I screamed and tried to writhe away, but the broo held me firm.
Then, to my amaze, it spoke clearly in trade talk, but in a totally different voice, sounding strangely high-pitched, like that of a human female "Lie still, and drink." I did not want to drink whatever foul substance the broo was giving me, but it grasped me in such a fashion that I had no choice. To my surprise, the drink seemed to be nothing more than mountain water, cool and delicious on my parched throat.
The creature suddenly spoke intelligibly once again: "You are possessed by a spirit of disease, I must rid you of it."
"YOU?" I yelped in astonishment in the same tongue. "But you are a broo."
"I had noticed that," replied the creature with an unexpected turn of wit, in
yet a third voice. But it said nothing more intelligible, falling once more into
some sort of sing-song chant.
At this point I was totally bewildered, for the creature's fearsome appearance and crazed manner did not comport either with its activities or what it said.
I tried to talk to it once more in trade talk, but it simply said in its contralto voice, "Be quiet or I will sleep you once more, I must not be disturbed now."
The broo began to draw diagrams in the dust around me, chanting all the while.
When it had finished, it uttered another great cry, and fell silent for a few
minutes. Then it began an even stranger activity, speaking rapidly to itself in
a medly of languages and voices. As I listened, I caught a few phrases in
tongues that I understood interspersed with phrases I did not understand, and
streams of what sounded like gibberish. I cannot say that the few words I could
make out gave me much comprehension of the subject of this strange debate:
"Kill it, where is the gift? yes! the power of chaos within; the horn of
attar, the white hand of the goddess, Do not attack with a weapon; ha! ; eat
each victim's flesh; never hurt another! no!" and other such nonsense.
With no place better to rest my weary eyes, I studied my captor more closely. As broos went, it was not particularly disgusting in appearance, though it certainly appeared powerful. It stood slightly below my size, and as far as I could see, was indeed male. Its muscles bulged amazingly, explaining the strength that had enabled it to lift a great troll over its head. The tentacles around its mouth, as far as I could determine, served no particular function other than to render its appearance strange and alarming.
The wicker-wire arrangement on its head appeared to be a cage that prevented its horns from doing any damage. The blackening upon its armor, upon inspection, seemed to be tarnish upon some sort of gleaming metal. Now that I studied the garment that covered the armor, it could indeed be interpreted as the garb of a healer, and the lack of a weapon and even the strange head gear it was wearing might be considered a sign of the same profession.
I had no idea of the nature of the creature which now controlled my fate, or, rather, given its behavior, of its natures. Then, once more for no apparent reason, it fell into conversation in my own tongue, which I had not even known it could speak! Its words were clear and well-spoken, if seeming of a slightly different form of my tongue. After a while I realized that it sounded as if my grandfather had been speaking.
"We must wait for a while now for the spirit to appear. The worst of this life
is that rarely is there one to talk to; it is lonely here, if beautiful."
"Who are you?" I asked, almost more puzzled by his invocation of beauty in
these lonely and savage wastes than by anything else he had said or done.
"My name is Legion," he replied. It uttered grunts and growls in several other
voices and tongues.
"How came you to this occupation?"
"Would you believe it, we have served three different masters in our life, but
we must say that the White Goddess is more strait than either of Her horned
predecessors."
"The White Goddess, is it true then, that you follow Chalana Arroy?"
"Yes, we do that."
"But how can that be?" I asked in some bewilderment.
"There is nothing in Her creed that forbids us to follow Her, is there?" it said
with some asperity.
I forbore to point out that this was a chaos monster, and that as Lightbringers we were sworn to fight chaos. But I assumed that sensible conversation was better than insulting the creature or letting it gibber to itself. Instead I said "You are on a strange road, how came you to travel it?"
Then the creature began to tell me, in a disjointed fashion, the story of its life. Here is the tale, as best as I can recall . . .
Powered by hypermail