Ruby Ruins

by J M D Reid

  Hundreds of bodies. They were piled on each other, mounds of decaying flesh. She clamped her hand over her mouth tighter, bile rising up her throat as she realized what they walked through. The dead had liquefied. The walls were covered in rivulets of black slime oozing downward, the deposits of an endless cycle of evaporation and condensation, the contents in this room never escaping.

  “Elohm, bless us with the brightness of your Colours,” Bran whimpered. “Maybe we shouldn’t be here.”

  “You can find your way back,” Dualayn said, his tone queasy. “Colours bless me, the putrefaction is . . . astonishing.”

  Ōbhin nodded. He stared down at one corpse. “This one has scales.”

  Avena’s stomach clenched. The body he stood over was larger than any human. Its skin had rotted black but held an impression of snake-like scales. A pebbled hide. One long arm reached across the foul puddle, fingers ending in flesh-rending claws.

  “Elohm, shine bright Your Colours and fill this world of Black with Your radiance,” Avena muttered. “Is that a darkling? I thought they were more . . . human.”

  “There’s another door,” Fingers growled. “Ōbhin, cut us out of here.”

  Ōbhin sloshed across the room to where Fingers pointed. Emerald light flared. The sword hummed. Avena stared down at the monstrous corpse before her with a sick fascination. She felt a greater warmth on her face, like the thing shed heat.

  “Utterly fascinating,” Dualayn said, stepping up beside her. “A true monster. Proof they are no mere legend.”

  “I already had proof monsters existed,” Avena whispered.

  Emerald light danced. Metal clattered. A breeze howled through the room and gusted about her. The air smelled fresh compared to the death around them. A promise of escape, but she couldn’t look away from the darkling.

  Dualayn nudged it with his foot. The skin sloughed off, exposing bones of ruby red beneath. Not made of ruby, but possessing the same scarlet hue. They seemed to have a faint glow. The heat increased. A shiver ran through her.

  “That should not be possible,” Dualayn said. “Where is it getting the energy to produce heat? This thing has been dead for three thousand years.”

  “Don’t care,” growled Ōbhin. He was already out of the room. “Come, there are stairs leading down. The air’s rushing up from it. Smells a whole lot better than this putrid rot.”

  Avena nodded and skirted around the darkling and its hot bones. She stepped through the corpses of humans melded into blobs, their flesh mixed together in death. Had that thing killed everyone in this room? Had they been trapped in here with it?

  She exited into the fresh air and leaned against a metal railing pitted with black patina. The wind up the stairs felt refreshing. Many runners were crumbled, broken. Above them, roots poked through the cracks in the stone, frilly and thick and red. Small things crawled on the roots, little specks of scarlet.

  “Ants,” Fingers muttered, studying the roots. “I’ve seen this type before. Should be black.”

  “Whatever stained the trees would have affected them,” Dualayn said. “It must be in the soil. Though there is surprisingly little red down here. I thought Koilon was the Ruby City.”

  “Maybe it’s the pillar that stained the soil,” said Avena. She took another deep breath of the dry, dusty air flowing from below. She felt soiled. Her boots had a rind of decayed muck around them. Her hair felt damp and stiff, like the very putrid rot had filled the atmosphere with minute particles of liquefied flesh. “Let’s just keep going.”

  “I hope we are making progress,” Dualayn said. “I do not know which way we travel.”

  “North,” said Ōbhin. He led the way down the stairs.

  Avena followed, the soles of her boots sticking to the floor with a tacky sensation. Her toes wiggled in her dry socks, glad none had seeped through. She ached for a bath. To dunk her head in the deepest, hottest pool of water she could find and then scrub herself with the harshest brush ever made.

  She would scour her skin clean of the filth they’d just plunged through.

  The stairs had a landing and another flight that descended in a zigzag. At the bottom, they found a hallway. Rusting pipes, dripping with water, hugged the ceiling. Puddles formed in the dust, a layer of mud around the little lakes. Footprints disturbed the detritus, small, clawed. They looked almost canine. In cracks in the wall, insects scurried, vanishing into reddish dirt.

  The hallway led not far, twenty cubits before opening into a much larger room. Their light fell away, unable to reach the far end. Support columns of grime-coated concrete rose twice as thick as Avena’s waist to the ceiling over her head.

  More pipes and slots for diamond lights crowding the busy ceiling.

  “Listen to that sound echo,” said Dualayn. “This room is vast.”

  They stepped out into it and their footsteps echoed back at them, sounding loud. Avena winced at it. She raised her lantern up. The air stirred in here. A fuzziness rippled over her body. She swayed, a momentary loss of control. She staggered into Ōbhin, barely holding onto her lantern.

  “Avena,” he said, steadying her. “Is it . . .?”

  “Sorry,” she muttered, the feeling retreating. “Just momentary dizziness. It’s going away.”

  He opened his mouth when something rumbled beneath them. Avena felt the quivering in her boots. It vibrated up her bones to her back molars. She stared down, a chill racing across her skin. She tensed, waiting to see what would happen.

  A loud boom rose up beneath them.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Wot’s that?” Miguil asked, trickles of dust falling from the ceiling above them. “Cave-in?”

  Ōbhin stood tense, ready to dart away from falling debris. Pressure squeezed around his heart, a mighty fist of fear seeking to crush it. A liquid fear melted through his bowels. Flashes of the earthquake and the terrifying plunge into the mines beneath Gunya filled him. The flowing sand gripping him, dragging him deeper and deeper into the earth.

  “I think we’re fine,” Dajouth said after a long period of silence. “If it was going to collapse, it would’ve by now.”

  “Elohm’s damned Colours, I hope you’re right,” Fingers said, his voice a low whisper.

  “There are main support columns here,” Dualayn said, padding up to a thick column of pitted stone. “The ceiling looks strong. I don’t think we need to worry about collapses here.”

  “Yeah,” panted Ōbhin, the fear slowly trickling from his guts. He edged forward, gripping his lantern. Sweat soaked his gloves.

  The light fell on what looked like a carriage of some sort. It had metal wheels wrapped in rotten, black leather. It had glass windows on all four sides, its body painted a deep red that had weathered the ravages of time better than the exposed metal. Where the paint peeled, rust ravaged the steel beneath. It was sleek and lean and like no carriage he’d ever seen.

  “How’d you hook the horses to it?” Miguil asked. The groom moved to the front, his effeminate face streaked with dust. “There’s no tongue. Not even a single hitch.”

  “There’s more,” Fingers said. “This one’s blue and shaped differently.”

  His lantern light fell on another carriage, taller. More rotten leather surrounded its rusted wheels. The glass had shattered. A skeleton lay inside of it, a hand gripping a wheel sheathed in more rotten leather. Fabric covered the seats, mostly gnawed and devoured by insects. Something scurried out of sight, fleeing the light.

  “We’re in a carriage house,” Miguil said as he drifted to the right, staring at the other carriages.

  They were green and yellow and blue. One looked silver. Some had intact glass, others had bodies inside of them. One had its door ripped off. It lay nearby, the metal half-melted. The interior of it looked burned, the frame warped in places from a great heat.

  “Hundreds of them,” Avena said. “So many in one place. Who would need so many carriages?”

  “The people who lived in the tenement above,�
�� Dualayn said. “They must each have had their own.”

  “But they’re so poor,” Dajouth said. “Those apartments weren’t that big. Who could afford their own carriage if they lived in such a small space?”

  “Leather wheels?” Miguil asked. He kicked at rotten black that burst apart. “They wrapped the metal rims in them.”

  “Metal wheels are impractical as it is,” said Fingers. “But put leather on them? Why not wooden wheels banded in iron?”

  “Bugger me Black,” Bran hissed and leaped back.

  A shadow burst out from beneath a car and lunged at him. Fingers kicked it. The small shape, the size of a cat, rolled across the dust before gaining its paws. Fur bristled. It barked like a small dog before darting beneath another carriage.

  “Like a lapdog,” Fingers muttered. “Noblewomen in Ondere have them. Mebudese Lapdogs or some such nonsense.”

  “Must be living off rats,” Ōbhin muttered.

  “Poor things,” said Avena. She crouched down, shining her lantern beneath one of the sagging, rotten carriages. A piercing yelp echoed. Claws scratched across the stone floor as one of the dogs fled. Its yipping barks echoed through the vast space.

  More answered. Snarling growls and screeching challenges. They echoed around Ōbhin and his companions like flurries of snow driven through a narrow mountain canyon. Eddying and swirling, whipping around and assaulting them from every direction. But the barks held fear.

  “How big is this place?” Dajouth asked. “I’ve never found a cave this big. How far does it go?”

  “This wasn’t a cave originally,” Dualayn said. “These thick support columns have held up the roof remarkably well. The engineering here is fantastic.”

  “Big space to search,” Finger said. “Maybe we should split up. Find the way out faster.”

  Ōbhin studied Fingers. Are you the shapeshifter? Did you murder Fingers and slither into his skin?

  “Okay,” Ōbhin said, the tension squeezing about his heart. He had to be careful here. He casually rested his hand on the pommel of his sword like he often did. He set the lantern down on the roof of one of the carriages and gazed around.

  Avena studied him, the diamond light picking out the gold highlights in her eyes. Dust streaked her face and darkened her loose hair. Emeralds glowed around her hands, giving her enhanced strength. Her hand drifted towards her binder.

  “Dualayn and Dajouth with me,” Ōbhin said. “Avena, lead Fingers, Bran, and Miguil.”

  He studied Fingers, searching for any sign that the man objected to the decision. Or showed disappointment.

  Fingers glanced at Avena. “Well, girl, which way you want to go?”

  Bran grinned, nodding while Dajouth shrugged and shifted over to join Ōbhin. Dualayn let out a wounded sigh, understanding why Ōbhin chose him. The hurt expression on his face stirred not an ounce of pity in Ōbhin’s heart.

  Avena caught his gaze then flicked her eyes to Dajouth. He gave the slightest nod. Had he inadvertently selected the impostor? Bran bounced eagerly beside Avena, boasting about how he’d find the exit while Fingers held this paternal air. Miguil, above suspicion, only looked on with unease. He’d come here to help Avena. Their relationship had gone from betrothed to friends with surprising ease.

  Love and lust can easily be mistaken for the other, Ōbhin thought, Foonauri lurking in the back of his mind. He’d obsessed over her from the beginning. Too much love destroyed as easily as too little. A balance had to be struck. If he clutched too tight, he would strangle Avena. Not strong enough, and she’d slip out of his grasp.

  He cupped her cheek with his black-gloved hand. “Be safe. We’ll be within shouting distance.”

  She grinned. “You’re the one who needs to watch out. Dualayn might decide to carve out your kidney and stick it into a bucket so you can piss better.”

  “Piss?” Ōbhin asked in amusement.

  “I’ve been spending too much time with coarse and vulgar men.” She raised up on her toes and brushed his lips with hers. Heat sparked in him.

  Bran sniggered.

  Avena broke away and marched to the left. “Remind me to laugh hard the next time you flirt with a tavern maid. I remember a host of stories from when you were younger. I’m sure they would love to hear about them. Like the time with the ducks.”

  Bran’s chortles cut off. “You wouldn’t.”

  Avena shrugged as she passed between two carriages, one of the dogs snarling from beneath it.

  “Dualayn, lead on,” Ōbhin said. “Dajouth and I will make sure none of the dogs bite your ankles.”

  Dajouth snorted with quiet laughter. He wiped a hand through his blond hair, dust spilling off the fine strands. “Yep, we’ll keep those intact at least.”

  “You two are droll,” Dualayn said and headed in the opposite direction.

  Ōbhin glanced a final time at Avena. Every instinct told him to go with her, but she had Miguil, and if Ōbhin were wrong about Dajouth being the impostor, then she’d have either Fingers or Bran to protect her. But none of the three objected.

  Dajouth must be the one who’d been killed and replaced.

  Maybe I’ll have an opportunity to do something about you, Ōbhin thought, his insides hardening like an aardvark’s plates. Dajouth had been one of his men no matter how annoying his flirtation was. A reckoning was fast approaching with the changeling.

  *

  The dogs growled and snarled around Avena’s group. They scurried through the dark, desiring to protect their territory. But the humans were bigger and had lights. She shuddered, realizing generations upon generations of these dogs had existed in the dark. Breeding, living, dying in oppressive black. Their eyes must have atrophied to the point that the lanterns were as blinding as the sun. Their world had been turned upside down with the invasion of light and the intrusion of strange creatures their ancestors had once loved.

  She worked her shoulders. Humans do not belong here. We fled this place during the Shattering. We left it to the bugs and rats and these dogs, abandoning them to their own affairs. We’ve only returned because now it matters to us.

  It reminded her of the same arrogance of King Anglon and his taxes. How he’d exploited his people suffering in the drought to finance his ambitions to control the Border Fangs. How many wars had Roidan and Lothon fought over those mountains? Some of the bloodiest battles in her nation’s history had been in those passes. Thousands dead, choking the mountains to serve the vain ambitions of men.

  These dogs suffered from their light. She wanted to apologize to them as they moved deeper.

  The light from Ōbhin’s group dwindled to a faint glow, like the sun about to peek over the horizon. The darkness of the vast carriage house pressed around them, wanting to swallow them. They followed the wall, the stone buckled and cracked in places. Broken pipes ran along the ceiling, some burst open, others dripping water from seams. Corroded masses of wires snaked above. Some went to lights, but others led to hybrid gems of topaz and amethyst. They were nodules twisted around each other.

  Healing and protection? She couldn’t understand why the wires would run to them from the lights. How would a network of jewelchines like those work?

  After perhaps a quarter-hour of moving through the rotting carriages and occasional blocks of rubble, the wall glittered ahead. Something made of scarlet glass flashed, reflecting their lanterns’ lights. She gasped to see a vein of red passing through the wall. It continued along the floor and ceiling. It crossed one of the carriages, transforming the metal and interior upholstery into ruby. The rest of the vehicle had rotted, but the ruby sections had remained perfectly shaped, untouched by the ravages of age beyond a coating of dust.

  “Elohm’s Colours,” Bran muttered, studying it. “Wot caused that?”

  “Reality warped,” Avena said, remembering her dream of the experiment and the tears of Black rending and melting the room around her. Had something happened here like that, only with rubies? What had she witnessed in her dream
? The moment of hubris when mankind had unleashed the Black? Then why is it ruby here?

  “Is this wot’s stained the trees above?” asked Miguil. He prodded the vein of ruby running across the floor, scuffing away the dust coating it.

  “I don’t know,” Avena said. “Maybe.” She struggled to get her bearings, to follow the twisting path that they’d journeyed to reach here, but she was hopelessly turned around. She had no idea how far they were from the library. Did this garage run back underneath it? Away from it? This room was larger than the building that they had passed through to find it. This underground structure, this carriage house, must support multiple buildings.

  “Don’t matter,” Fingers growled and stepped over it. He didn’t touch it, his longer stride clearing the cubit-and-a-half-wide strip. “Let’s keep movin’.”

  Avena nodded while her curiosity itched at her. She glanced to her right and spotted the distant glow of Ōbhin. For the first time in days, she wished to hear Dualayn speak. Would he know what had caused this . . . rubyification? How did it happen? He’d taught her so much, how to heal, how to build jewelchines, how to think through problems. He’d understood her need to learn after Chames’s death.

  Her heart softened towards Dualayn for a moment. She recoiled at that. She hardened her emotions against him, reminding herself why she was here. She had obsidian in her head. Foul and dark. Who knew what effect it would have on her in the future? He had mutilated her for his own knowledge.

  She marched ahead at a brisk pace, ignoring the dogs.

  Her footsteps stomped along, dust bursting around her boots. She licked dry lips, wanting to stop and drink from the aquifer she had stored in her bag, but refused to stop now. She wanted to find the Hall of Communication and get as far from Dualayn as she could.

  I was like your daughter!

  Below, a large crash boomed.

  She froze. Miguil groaned. She peered down at the floor as a loud thudding sound echoed again. The skin down her back crawled, like a thousand baby spiders scurried up and down her flesh. Her heart tightened as she listened.

  “Wot was that?” Bran asked.