Dragon Quest - I - Chapter 3, Part 3

3 - Staff of Rain (pp110-118)

The rain was like a waterfall. It pelted Aleph without mercy; it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. He couldn’t see more than a few paces ahead of him. Mud flowed down and swirled around his ankles. Aleph took one step at a time, slowly, carefully.

After he cleared the final peak, however, the rain increased to an unbelievable torrent, and a sharp wind began to blow sideways within the fog.

Reprieve came not from the rain subsiding, but from escaping the rain. After three days, Aleph had finally made his way through the Field of Rain, where, rumor has it, rain falls on all days of the year.

Fierce rain continued to fall behind him all along the cape. Ten days had passed since his departure from Maira.

First, Aleph headed south until reaching the Old Alefgaard Highway and then turned west. He passed through several mountains and valleys before, just when he thought he would reach the ocean, he came to the Field of Rain.

After following along the fog-encroached rocks for a short while, the smell of salt finally reached his nose. Aleph had reached at the coast.

He continued on for about half an hour. An outcropping forced him to turn further east, where a sinister-looking mass of boulders rose up in front of him, just across the cape.

“That’s it!” Aleph was suddenly nervous. He shrunk his body down and started to clamber towards the rocks, and before long found an opening.

Deep darkness stretched out before him. It seemed to lead deeper into the rocks. The plop, plop, plop of accumulated water dropping from the ceiling echoed back to Aleph. Relying on the small bit of light coming in through the opening behind him, he held his breath and pressed forward.

111

After about fifty paces, Aleph suddenly stopped. He saw the glinting of red eyes from within the darkness ahead of him. Peering into the dark, he drew his sword.

A number of poisonous spiders were waiting there, in the middle of the web they constructed to block the cave passage. Without hesitation, the spiders spit out multiple thick strands of webbing. Aleph dodged to the right, but one of the strands grabbed hold of his sword arm.

Swearing, he pulled, struggling to get it free to no avail. The webbing was coated with a smelly adhesive substance. The spiders took advantage of his broken concentration and spat more webbing.

Aleph cried out as he was covered with strand after strand. He tried with all of his might to tear free of the web, but the spiders continued to spin and spin until he was covered. Five of the giant grotesque things raised their legs to prepare for attack, screeching.

Aleph’s cries for help reverberated throughout the cave.

“Enough!” came a woman’s voice, echoing from out of nowhere.

112

The spiders’ legs stopped just short of piercing Aleph’s neck.

“It seems I have a guest.”

As if obeying the voice, the spiders slowly withdrew and called off their attack. The sticky webbing wrapped around Aleph’s body loosened and fell away, eventually melting into the dirt.

“Come in, then,” came the echoing voice as a doorway opened in the wall behind the spiders.

Aleph did as he was told, and his nose was suddenly assaulted by overpowering smells of perfume and incense. The wide cave opened up into a vast cavern, filled with finely crafted wooden furniture and decorated with silver instruments, candlesticks, and other expensive-looking trinkets. Outside was a sheer cliff face, below which surged the rock-breaking current of the ocean.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” came a sultry voice as the witch suddenly showed herself. She stepped out from behind a pillar, shaped to resemble a tree trunk.

Her face was a ghostly white. Her eyes were sharp, and stared out from behind blood-red eye shadow.  Her smile stretched to her ears, with lips the same blood red as around her eyes. She wore a heavy necklace studded with jewels and rings glittered on all of her fingers. Her fingernails were quite long, and also red. She picked up the curtain of her dress with one hand, the other holding a faintly-painted woven fan.

“What’s this, you’re still a child!” said the witch, seemingly taken aback by Aleph’s appearance.

113

Aleph glared back at the woman. “I’m looking for the three artefacts Loto entrusted to his sages,” he stated matter-of-factly.

The witch let out a nasally laugh and covered her mouth with her fan. Her eyes flashed angrily. “You refer to the Staff of Rain, I presume?”

“You presume correctly.”

“I won’t deny I have it. But I also won’t be giving it to you.”

“But I’m a descendant of Loto!”

“Loto…?” repeated the witch, disbelievingly. “You most certainly are not! I won’t hear of such foolishness,” she retorted angrily.

“It’s true!” Aleph began to tell her all about what happened with the Sun Stone and the cave where he met Garai. “In order to defeat the Dragonlord, I have to find those artefacts!”

“Get lost.”

“Please!”

114

“Not a chance,” she teased. Laughing her nasal laugh, she reached behind her fan with her free hand and pulled out a longstaff with a silver crown, handle glittering with jewels, in an impressive act of prestidigitation. It was the Staff of Rain. Aleph was taken with its beauty.

“I’ve only just acquired the Staff of Rain. It’s my only memento, of the only man I’ve ever loved… The hero, Loto.”

“L-Loved!?” asked Aleph. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t seem to close his mouth, agape.

“Loto cured me of a sickness during his journey, while on his quest to defeat the Dark Lord.”

“Are you sure it was really him?”

“Are you doubting me?” she asked venomously, staring Aleph down. “I was still young and beautiful in those days,” she started, suddenly staring off behind him nostalgically. “I fell in love after seeing him only once. And I have never loved since.”

Aleph couldn’t believe it. How could a hero, and a witch like this…?

“Did Loto love you back?”

116

“Who could know?” the witch replied with a sad smile and bowed her head. “He returned to his quest as soon as my affliction was cured.”

“So it’s unrequited!?” Aleph sputtered out a laugh.

“Silence!” she screeched at the top of her lungs, voice shrill enough to cut glass. “Silence! Silence! Silence!” the witch yelled, spit flying from her lips. Aleph covered his ears.

“However,” the witch began after her anger abated, pulling her hands to her chest. “I couldn’t forget Loto. He was so pure...  Unfortunately, in the world of witchcraft, loving a human is forbidden. I was shunned and exiled because of my feelings. I’ve been living here all this time, just me and my memories of him,” she finished with a deep sigh.

“Do you understand now why I won’t give the staff to you?”

“Er, but-”

117

“No buts!!”

“I know the staff is important to you! But it’s important to me, too! That’s one of the artefacts of the hero! Loto needs me to return peace to Alefgaard!”

The witch stared into Aleph’s eyes. “Are you trying to say that I’m getting in the way of what my beloved would have wanted?”

“If you won’t give it to me no matter what, then I’ll just have to take it by force!”

She sneered and let out another derisive laugh while covering her face with her fan. She lowered the fan to her nose, revealing an intense stare.

“You are surely joking. There’s absolutely no way you’d be able to defeat me as you are.” The witch took a step over and slid her hips into a nearby chair. “But I don’t wish to fight you either. Not if you really are Loto’s descendant. I couldn’t bear to kill someone of my beloved’s bloodline. Very well, I will let you borrow the Staff of Rain,” she seceded, and held the staff out in front of her.

“You mean it!?”

“However!” she suddenly cried out, slipping the staff behind her back.

118

“That’s only if you are truly Loto’s descendant! Prove it, by bringing me Garai’s silver harp from his grave.”

“Are you kidding me!?”

“I don’t kid. Bring me the fabled silver harp, said never to have left Garai’s side, and I’ll accept you as Loto’s descendant and trade you for the Staff of Rain. Deal?”

Aleph recalled the grave on the outskirts of the town and subconsciously gripped the pendant around his neck.  

Garai had told him it was the Pendant of Ritual, and only Loto’s descendant could use it, when Aleph received it in the Cave of Loto. And in Garai, the fortune teller had asked him if he had known the special ritual - the ritual only known to one with Loto’s blood, which would open the seal on the gravesite.

“You’ve got a deal!” Aleph agreed readily.