Sword of the Scarred

by Jeffrey Hall

“Shit,” he muttered before slipping out the grate.

  “Need to hurry now,” said Grey. “Call the other beasts.”

  “Call em?” said Garp.

  “Out of the way.” Grey pushed to the grate, leaving Requiem to watch the encroaching gas. It was approaching the mother’s body. In a minute it would be fully upon them.

  Grey cupped his hands over his mouth and made a noise that sounded like the wind whistling.

  The screeching mewls of belly-grups sounded on the other side. Grey reached his hand through the grate and brought forward one of the giant lizards.

  “Get on,” he said to Garp.

  Garp shook his head. “Get the others!”

  “Damn you!” shouted Grey, but Garp was already ushering the soldiers onto the next belly-grup.

  All the while, the grey vapors kept coming. Requiem and the others huddled near the grate, threatening to push it out should they need to escape.

  The soldiers carefully grabbed onto the belly-grup’s back, one nearly falling and taking all of Grey’s and Garp’s strength to right him on the creature.

  When the three were settled, Grey took the lead soldier’s hand and put it to the great lizard’s neck. He helped the soldier guide it away, and reached out for the next one.

  “Hurry,” pleaded Garp.

  The potent stench of the grey cloud rose to Requiem’s nose. Visions of monsters made of blood came to his head, and he had to turn toward the grate in order to avoid being consumed by it altogether.

  Grey brought forth another belly-grup, yet this one seemed agitated, aggravated even with the man’s hand squarely on its beard.

  “Calm it down!” shouted Garp.

  “I’m trying! It must smell the damn cloud.”

  The belly-grup mewled and bucked. Grey’s grip slipped away as he slammed into the grate.

  The belly-grup went to scurry away, but Garp lunged, dropping his sword, and grabbed hold of the thing’s neck before it could escape.

  “Damn beast!” shouted Grey.

  The stench moved closer. It was unavoidable now. Requiem felt things crawling into his reality from every direction of his peripheral.

  “Get on it!” said Garp.

  “You first,” snarled Grey.

  “I let this thing go and it’ll be gone.”

  Requiem sputtered and coughed. He buried his nose beneath his collar, suppressing the smell. The horrific sights abated. “Someone just get on!” he yelled.

  Garp pushed Grey towards the lizard with his bad hand, biting his lip to fight against screaming from the pain.

  Grey cursed, looked back, met eyes with Requiem, and then did as told. Slowly, the injured man crept out of the grate, taking the aggravated belly-grup in his arms and swinging his legs onto its back.

  To either side of Requiem the grey cloud swirled, like arms trying to embrace him in a hug. He plugged his nose and shut his eyes, but still things crawled into his consciousness, coming from some unknown hell, threatening to take residence in his head and overtake him for good.

  Only when he felt Garp’s arm upon his shoulder did he lurch forward into the grate.

  “You next!”

  Requiem didn’t argue, knowing that doing so would only cause both of them to be engulfed by the cloud. He sheathed his sword, ducked into the silvery grate, and wriggled through the hole, thankful for the cool wind that swept up from the Abyss below and saved him from the stench, from the nightmares that crowded his thoughts. He found Grey’s hand dangling there, took it, and climbed out onto the rigid back of the belly-grup.

  The creature mewled as it took his weight. He settled onto its back, putting his backside into the crevices of its spine, clasping onto Grey, who in turn clutched the creature’s head. Requiem had only ever ridden a saddled belly-grup before. A naked mount like this was new and terrifying.

  He glanced down at the Abyss below and told it, Not yet.

  “Come on! Give me your hand.”

  Garp still huddled in the grate. By now the entire tunnel was filled with the grey cloud. He stuck his head through one of the holes, but the cloud followed him out.

  His eyes bulged. He gasped for air. “No!” he yelled into the open air. “No!” he yelled, as if he was experiencing some terrible tragedy that he alone was privy to.

  Grey reached down and took his hand from the belly-grup’s neck and pulled him out of the grate. The man’s grip nearly failed and it took Requiem’s added strength to pull Garp to the safety of the belly-grup.

  The added weight caused the lizard to moan, and its grip on the rock side to slip, but it dug its long digits further into the crevice and kept them from falling.

  Requiem put Garp between them, squishing his body against the man’s to keep him from sliding off and falling to his death.

  “No. No. No,” Garp kept muttering.

  “Is he alright?” Grey looked over his shoulder, his eyes wide with fear.

  “Get us off this lizard—”

  Suddenly the lizard turned. Requiem squeezed his knees into the creature’s side and tightened his grip on both Grey and Garp, one of his legs nearly slipping from the creature’s back. The belly-grup shifted on the wall and faced the Abyss. Requiem’s gut lurched. He fought to stay upright, cursing. He wasn’t going to meet the Abyss like this.

  Down below he could see the other two belly-grups scurrying along the side of the wall. In the madness of their descent, despite the Abyss waving to them like a taunting enemy, his eyes fell to Sasha further away.

  Relief filled him amongst the calamity, and he was surprised to feel it still.

  The belly-grup hurried down the side of Bothane Rock, mewling, huffing and growling as it fought to move the extensive load of the three bodies. Overhead the grey cloud of decomposing vapor fled the makeshift grate like nothing more than a whiff of smoke, an inconsequential thing compared to the terrible mist that had chased them through the burrow.

  Below, the nearest spoke came nearer and nearer. He did not know which one it was or where they were, only that it would lead them away from the things at his back and hopefully one step closer to answers.

  One step closer to finishing what he had set out to do.

  Chapter 21

  Dash sputtered and coughed, spitting blood as she stumbled out of the wagon filled with baron leaves. Her side felt numb, as if during her fall she had destroyed some nerve ending there, but the tingling sensation told her it would return. The rest of her was in pain, but at least it was something she could still feel. At least she was alive.

  “What are you doing!” The owner of the cart was dancing around it, throwing her hands up in the air as if she were performing some sort of ritual to raise Dash from the dead.

  Dash gingerly climbed out, amazed that she was alive, ignoring the frantic woman’s confusion and the other nearby onlookers who pointed up to the sky and then back down to her. She followed their fingers.

  The rope bridge she had jumped from was invisible from where she stood. It looked like nothing but a small crack against the bottom of the spoke, a minor formation in the rock if she didn’t know what it was.

  She had fallen from so high, yet she still lived.

  “Do you see now?” said the shadows.

  “I... I do.” Dash peered into a curl of the Abyss rising just above the edge of the spoke. It seemed to form an eye that looked at her, blinked, and then dissipated, a wily spy whose true mission could never be revealed. The voice she had thought was trying to kill her, trying to distract her, trying to keep her suppressed in the darkness of Bothane, had just saved her life.

  “Do what? Do you know what you’re doing?” The cart’s owner was in her face now, berating her. “If you wanted to kill yourself there are a dozen different ways to do so without disturbing my load.”

  But Dash simply limped by her, running her hand through her hair.

  “Goddam seer.” The woman spat on her hair, but Dash didn’t even look back. The voice in her head was too loud.
<
br />   “Now you know, Dashinora. Our intention was never to hurt you, only to help you.”

  “Help me how?” said Dash. Her hands were trembling. She was so exhausted. Her body still throbbed from her fall.

  “Help you rise from your current lot in life. Help you become the thing you were always meant to become. Help you become what he always saw in you.”

  “He?”

  “Your father.”

  “And what did he see in me?”

  “More. He saw more, and we see it too. You are not meant to skim the bottom of the rock like a belly-grup, scavenging for the morsels of this world. You are meant to sit atop of it, hands raised high for all to see and follow.”

  “I... I don’t understand.” Dash limped off the spoke, out of earshot of the woman’s curses, beneath a carved archway that led into the darkness of another one of the avenues running into the stone of Bothane Rock. The archway had been carved with replicas of birds in flight, at least two dozen of them at play, frozen in the art of the stone. An ironic testament of a freedom before walking into the dark cage of the lightless corridor that ran out before her. “If you always meant to help me, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Because you wouldn’t have listened.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “In time, you will,” said the shadows. “For now, no more of that silly black stone. We have come to an understanding, have we not? You listen and I will point you in the right direction.”

  “I don’t even know what you are.”

  “Yes, you do,” said the voices. “I am everything. I am everywhere. I am what you call the Abyss.”

  “And what is that?” she said helplessly. Her head felt so heavy and muddled, like someone had poured molasses through her ear and into her brain.

  “Something I will show you if you follow my lead. Now, check your bag. Do you have what you need to wake the girl?”

  Dash did just that. During her escape the stones had become mixed and muddled in the pouch, but there, at the bottom, was a nugget of dadaline.

  “Good. Now go to her. Do what you have promised the Scarred.”

  “Why? Why is she so important?”

  “She’s not as important as what you just left in the hands of your sister.” The shadow’s voice sounded disappointed, as if she had purposefully let it down.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You will make it up to us. We will get it back, but that is later.”

  “What is it?”

  “Later. For now, we are seeing the world together, and we are in agreement. Let us move forward in the same direction. Back to the Alley of Fangs.”

  It took longer to reach the Alley of Fangs than she’d hoped. She’d hobbled along the various underworld avenues, staying to the shadows, using the hood upon her now rancid robe to hide her face. It seemed that everywhere she went there were troops of Bothane soldiers patrolling the streets. From their mouths she heard whispers of a great catastrophe that took place above ground. A single figure had decimated buildings with a swipe of its sword, which explained the quakes and noises that interrupted her and her sister’s confrontation.

  The first time she heard their whispers she thought of Requiem, but didn’t know if he had the power to commit such devastation. The man she’d met seemed worn. Tired. Like every time he picked up his weapon it took all of his being to bear it. Could that person really be capable of decimating an entire swath of the city?

  She doubted it. But if not him, then who? Was there another member of the Scarred in Bothane? With the strange happenings and what she had discovered, it wouldn’t have surprised her if that was the case.

  Yet the shadows helped her navigate such treacherous encounters, ordering her to stand by a stone or to take to the darkness in order to avoid an encroaching patrol or would-be eyes that would mark her as the fugitive that many sought. She found herself thanking the voice as she progressed safely.

  “You thank us with your movement, with your ears. Listening to us and keeping yourself alive is all we can ask.”

  Dash felt strangely relieved the further they went. She finally felt at peace. The hatred she felt for herself and her constant need for the black lens had lessened. She no longer felt alone or purposeless. Finally, there was someone—or was it something—that watched over her. It was like having her father back in a way, where he would check in on her and point her in the right direction when she felt lost—like she often had as a child.

  And though fear found her in those streets, she found her confidence growing the further she went and the more the shadows guided her along the avenues, until at last she crept through the narrow subterranean corridor that led her to the Alley of Fangs.

  She crested the narrow rise in the pathway that was tunneled beneath the stone and found the Alley quieter than she had left it. There were only a handful of climbers upon the wall, gathering the moss. Only a few fires graced the alley’s floor, their smoke rising like wisps of grey hair upon the blue head of an old, ancient thing. She didn’t remember seeing it so bare and quiet when she called it home, yet she had not called it home for many years, not had she visited it since she’d left. Perhaps this was just the new normal.

  “Do I have anything to worry about?” she asked the shadows.

  The shadows laughed. “Not at all.”

  It put her at ease again, and slowly she walked towards Mum Casara’s hut.

  When she entered she found Mum Casara by herself—an odd sighting as she was usually never without her mouth—stitching together a pair of hides from dead scoots, rodents that often dwelled at the bottom of Bothane Rock, feeding on the microbes between stones.

  She pitched her head as she heard her enter.

  “Mum Casara,” said Dash. “It’s me.”

  The old woman put down her sewing and beckoned her forward.

  “Go to her,” said the shadows, Dash’s hesitation a proclamation of her need for the voice’s command.

  Dash crossed the small hut to stand before Mum Casara, careful to avoid the baskets of stone and farmed moss that littered the ground.. When she was close enough, the old woman snatched her wrist and thrust one of her boney digits into Dash’s palm.

  Immediately she was taken back years. Immediately she was reminded of the pain she felt in her hand at first from the woman’s sharp scrawl constantly being written into the fabric of her hand, a pain that eventually left when a callus took over her skin.

  “You’ve returned. We thought we lost you for good.”

  “Where are the others? The man I came back with and the wounded Scarred? The girl?”

  “The man and the Scarred left too, off to rescue those you said you would.”

  Dash stepped uneasily in the clutches of the woman’s hand. Could she feel her pulse racing from her guilt?

  “The girl is safe. She is behind my hut as we speak, being attended by Joran.”

  “I will see her.”

  “Come, I will show you.”

  Mum Casara offered Dash her other hand. Dash took it and helped the old woman to her feet, where she slouched and was bent like a piece of straw in the wind. The old woman sketched into Dash’s hand. “Just like old times.”

  “Indeed,” said Dash.

  Mum Casara led her around the hut, still signing into her hand. “I’ve missed your crudeness. I’ve had a few mouths since you left. But none of them provided the frustration that you did. Do you remember the first time I slapped your knuckles for misspeaking?”

  “I slapped your face.”

  Mum Casara laughed. “A sting I hadn’t felt since my own mother. You were a hard one to break.”

  “But I broke, didn’t I? Eventually I learned.”

  “Only thanks to the help of the knocker,” she said. Dashinora could still remember the jeweled club Mum Casara had wielded, one that drew blood instantly when she hit her hand. Dash had run after that, but soon came back when she had nowhere to run to, no one to help her.

  They rounded
the hut and came to an indentation in the stone wall, a place Mum Casara called Bothane’s Arse. Moss and other plants dangled along the narrow entryway, making it look like they were stepping into a forest rather than a secondary, rocky chamber.

  Mum Casara kept signing into her hand. “Sometimes I wonder if you still need such lessons.”

  The letters settled into her skin just as she pushed aside the vegetation to reveal Carry and a dozen other members of Proth’s Prodigy holding Mum Casara’s mouth at the point of a dagger, all of them standing around the girl like she was a sacrifice that needed be committed in order to appease their convoluted religion.

  “Dashinora! We’ve been waiting for you!” shouted Carry.

  Dash threw aside Mum Casara’s hand and turned to run, but another six of Carry’s crew filled in behind her.

  Her hand went to her pouch, ready to pull out a stone and deliver destruction to those who opposed her, but she felt a tough hand grab her wrist. It was Mum Casara again.

  “No,” she signed. “Resist and there will be more lives lost today.”

  Dash looked back to Carry. The man held a dagger so close to Mum Casara’s mouth’s neck that it drew a red trickle of blood, a sanguine tear leaving an eye-shaped wound. Beside him, another thug put an axe to the girl’s head.

  “Pull your hand away, Dashinora,” said the shadows.

  “You! You told me you would protect me!”

  Carry and his thugs looked to each other, but it was Mum Casara who answered her.

  “I protect my family. You chose to leave my family as soon as you left the alley.”

  But Mum Casara’s words fell over her like a soft wind, barely felt. Barely heard.

  “This is how it must be,” said the shadows.

  She looked into the darkness where she felt the voices coming from. “Damn you!”

  And the shadows, the thing she had just given her life to, laughed like it had done thousands of times before in her head, during a thousand poor times in her life, a constant nag droning in her mind, an incessant commentary without end.

  She shrugged Mum Casara aside and pushed the old woman to the ground, this time reaching for the bag on her hip in order to pull up a stone and cast a vicious spell in the direction of the darkness.