“Watch out!” she shouted at them, trying to catch their attention. “Cover yourselves!”
But the sounds of the wailing and screams were too loud, and her words were lost among them. The flames rushed up the street like water from a burst dam, nearly reaching Merrill as she scrambled up the vine a few more feet until they subsided. But those below had nowhere to climb.
Their bodies burned quickly, charring to a crisp faster than they could scream with pain. Flames continued to burn on a jellylike substance coating them and the ground, but lower now, no longer as intense. Merrill slid down the vines, hopping on bare feet over the hot cobblestones, rushing to where a woman’s body lay. Her chest was still, her face unrecognizable, her clothes incinerated or melted to her body.
“Heavens and hells,” Merrill whispered, adrenaline rushing through her as she backed away. Ten seconds more and she would have been in that street, burned just as they had been. And now, there were no survivors.
No survivors, echoed a voice in her head. No one to watch you run in the chaos. No one to watch you flee.
But if I escape, she countered, the Keepers will know, and they’ll come looking.
Will they? said the voice, and another thought entered Merrill’s mind as she looked back toward the woman. About her size. Her face unrecognizable.
“Heavens,” she whispered. “Hells, I’m sorry. But your death can now do good.”
She rushed forwards, seizing the woman from under her arms, the body still blisteringly hot. She climbed through a window to move the dresser and unlock the door, then dragged the body into the house up to Merrill’s own bed. Holding her nose she made the covers around her, retching as the burned skin rubbed off on her hands and the fabric, the smell threatening to make her scream. Then she closed the door of her room and fled to the storeroom, frantically searching for one of her gardening aprons, and throwing it on.
She stuffed the pockets with any seeds she could find, along with the few coins left in the house, as the remainder were in accounts or materials. Then she rushed to the cabinet containing hell’s barb. She wrapped it in cloth to protect it and settled it into the deepest pocket. When she departed to the garden, she felt more laden down than a merchant’s caravan, and she struggled to pull the cart filled with ember’s core inside the house. She whispered a word of thanks that no flames had yet touched it and wrestled it as close to her room as possible.
Fel’s house had been built to withstand fire, considering the plants he grew. However, the builders had anticipated flame proofing against sparks or errant fiery plants, not the inferno of the cart. She broke the bottle of kerosene over the top, the liquid soaking into the rags hanging over the base.
“I do this for you, Fel,” she whispered. “I escape so that I might find you retribution. I destroy your life’s work so that I may build you another. One greater, and fit for your name. One where Rhea may know your fury.”
She bowed her head toward where he was buried, paying her final respects. Then she seized a candle on the wall, lighting it, and leaning it up against the soaked rags. The flames were hungry, licking up the sides as she backed away, then fled.
Once outside, Merrill took a final look back. A final appreciation of all that Fel had built, knowing that while she left it behind and destroyed his garden, she created for him a legacy anew.
For now, the Keepers had won. But so long as she survived, there was a chance to strike back.
High above, in the direction of the Tower, there was a pop and whooshing of air. Merrill turned to see the ember in the Tower's side extinguished and steam rushing upward from the spot. Then she ran, leaving the body that resembled her own in the bed. Burnt to a crisp, so that the Keepers would find evidence of her death. She’d even slipped her own rings on the woman’s fingers.
Between breaths, she thanked her for her sacrifice, just as another explosion sounded from behind her. Her cart, the flames finally reaching the ember’s core and releasing their power, turning Fel’s home into an inferno.
Then she fled into the darkness, carrying nothing but the seeds of her future.
Chapter 40: Draysky
Draysky’s world degraded to darkness and dust, the gnashing dragging him down into his nightmares. At that moment, nothing existed but the grinding and the heat, both competing to wipe all traces of him but his memory from Earth. Had he fallen in a few weeks earlier, the stone would have succeeded in pulverizing him into dust, truly earning the Grinder its name. Many others had gone that way before him, and it was considered lucky to find a stone with a fleck of their blood to bring back for their funeral.
But Draysky’s sister had built him armor on his back, and his front was pressed into the empty bucket for crystal, the metal dragged down with him into the storm vortex. He was like a turtle pulled tightly into its shell while predators tried to claw their way inside, scratching and pounding against the exterior. The armor behind him cracked, each plate reaching its maximum load and sending waves of pressure through his muscles. In front, the bucket buckled and bent as he gasped, the final traces of sunlight winking away. The protection held, but the pressure crunched him into a tighter and tighter ball, his arms and legs folding inward, his cheek pressed tight against the hot metal. With every exhalation the armor closed in tighter, and every inhalation was more difficult than the last, the shale refusing to give any ground, squeezing him tight like a coiled snake.
To be buried before my parents have even finished sinking, he thought, his mind turning to the stones from their grave. Three of his stones, promises left behind. As he sank, with no way to claw himself back to the surface, nothing would change. No longer could he continue his father’s dream. Now he could only pray his sister would take the money in the well and escape to become a doctor. If anything befell her, she would be alone.
Just as the Keepers took from the shale, they took from him until there was nothing left. Now they sought a new ridger for a vein, the old one forgotten.
As he sank his feet cried out, the toe of his boots turning blisteringly hot as they were immersed in crystal and the runes within activated. He kicked them off and the Grinder claimed them, dragging the leather away by the laces. In moments it was impossible to breath, his lungs refusing to budge even an inch. Just when I was starting to learn the Keepers' game, he thought, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Not that it mattered—here, it was so dark that he couldn’t tell the difference.
Then he was falling, the shale releasing its grasp on him in an instant, dropping him a full ten feet through air to clatter on stone. His arms and legs flailed out like a spring unfolding as the pressure released, his armor clattering across the rock like spilled silverware, the broken pieces of it scattering in every direction while the bucket clanged. When he opened his eyes they were overcome by red light, a monochromatic pressure as intense as the shale itself. He drew his first breath from his back, gasping as if he had just broken the surface of a lake, and stared upward into a sea of chaos.
Shale shifted above him, moving in waves and swirls, the pieces scrabbling over each other as it tried to move upward. A lake of it, as if he were looking down upon the Grinder, a mirror image that defied gravity and seemed ready to collapse upon him at any moment. He tried to wriggle out of the way, his twisted armor keeping his arms and legs restricted, coughing up blood. Two more kicks and he was against a wall. This too was made of shale, but plastered in place and smooth to the touch. He maneuvered himself into a sitting position, then started removing his armor, wincing in places where the metal had pinched into the skin or was still hot from abuse. The heat also came from the room itself, the ambient temperature similar to sitting next to the woodfire stove at his home. As he completed removing the twisted straps holding his armor in place, he took in his surroundings
The enclosure was a cylinder, perhaps fifty paces across, the wall running in a circle of the same plastered shale that he now rested against. Above, the clamoring shale extended in all directions, forming a sort
of moving roof, the outer edges turning slowly and increasing in fervor as they neared the center. There, a dark column twisted about a revolution per minute, moving the opposite direction of the shale, its tip chipped and fragmented from where the shale bit into it like teeth.
Crystal, more of it than he had ever seen. If the piece that he had brought up had been called a falling star, then this was a sun, absolutely enormous and pure in form, no shale tainting the surface. It passed through a floor of plastered rock, the source of its slow twisting originating below. Before the crystal cylinder, there was a dais of stone, carved from a single smooth piece, with a glowing shard of red glass at its center. That was what cast off the light, and as he looked at it the heat washed over the room to make his breathing labored.
Most strange about the room wasn’t the column, nor was it the floating shale, nor the red rock. Rather, it was that it seemed inhabited. A table with a lone chair stood off to the right, a book cracked open on its surface, and several open containers around it. A bookshelf accompanied it at the far end of the room, and a sleeping mat was stashed at the side, the covers messily cast off—though why anyone would need covers in this heat was beyond Draysky.
He stood, shaking out his arms and legs and feeling his ribs to confirm nothing was broken. Some blood, some bruises, but nothing that would last after a few stiff mornings and uncomfortable nights.
“What is this place?” He wondered aloud as he started to walk the circumference. “I must be inside the Grinder—deep inside the Grinder.” His thoughts trailed away as he looked back toward where the signs of someone living here were. “And if someone lived here, that must mean there is a way out.”
He missed the door on his first full pass, the wall seeming flush, with no gaps in the stone. The next pass he kept his hand trailing along the stone, searching for any irregularities. Then again, this time walking slower, and looking upward in case it was raised.
Nothing.
Then he scanned over the floor, inspecting it for trapdoors, but that too was solid. Checking under the bed mat revealed nothing, and the blankets fell apart in his hands, the fabric long decayed. At the table, he searched for any sort of hint; a key, perhaps. But all that was left was dust inside the containers, the stains from the remnants of food or drink long gone. He squinted at the book, looking at the letters that were beyond him. As a ridger, there was little use for reading, and they taunted him as he sought to puzzle them out. Nothing decipherable there, except for images of a single flame that the text wrapped around, and that decorated every page.
“Useless,” he muttered, then he sat against the wall to think once more. Whoever had inhabited this room looked to be long gone, and they had to have gone somewhere. Restless, he stood and circled, like a trapped beast, staring at the ceiling this time. Searching for any ropes or tunnels among the grinding. But there was nothing but the dust that flowed up away from him, to escape out the top of the Grinder.
Then his attention turned to the middle of the room, approaching where the rotating column grated, keeping it between him and the intense heat of the glass ember. Dropping to all fours, he looked around the edge where the crystal disappeared into the floor, but the crack was thin as a hair, and covered with oily grease that prevented him from looking within. If there was a way out, it certainly was not down through there. He knocked on the cylinder, and while he could have fit inside, the cylinder was solid. A king’s ransom here in front of him, but far too heavy for him to cart off even if he could escape.
Finally, his attention turned toward the dais where the ember burned, and he edged around the cylinder to stare upon it.
Red light formed a sheath around the coal, bright enough that he had to squint to see it properly. It was no larger than a pebble—a sliver, even, of intensity. So small that if he dropped it among the shale he could have lost it forever. Around that coal, runes glowed dim on the dais, encircling it with strands forking off to touch the circle in which it was set. Draysky’s mind turned toward the table, to the book with the flame on the pages, and back to the table. Whatever this room was, someone had built it, buried it here for some purpose. That column was too smooth to be natural, the walls obviously mortared in place. If someone stayed here, it would be similar to how the Keepers stayed in the outpost, making sure everything was working correctly and as planned.
Which meant the coal, whatever it was, was significant to them.
Draysky edged forward, the heat growing as he walked, and hesitated as it almost became too much to handle. In his hand he held a shattered strip of his armor, enough to move the coal from its circle without actually touching it.
“It’s either this or die down here of thirst,” he muttered, andhe leapt forward, jabbing with the armor shard. He missed, his strike too high as the metal skipped off the stone table top and bounced over it, and instead his knuckles touched the glowing ember.
Draysky expected pain, his fingers to be blistered upon contact. Instead, there was a cool warmth, almost like the lighters with coolfire. Reaching out, he touched it again, this time with his fingertip, and the heat of the room melted before him. Instead of being inside a furnace, it was the pleasantness of the first day of spring, the breath of life that coaxes flowers from the bud. His aches no longer seemed as prominent, but rather were replaced by a running energy, like scratches in a fight that remained unnoticed until afterward. He blinked, seeing more runes appear on the dais, but of a dull color, somehow more red than red, something new that he had never experienced before in his life. He exhaled, and as he did so, his breath nearly burnt the tip of his tongue.
It was a wonderful feeling, the burning. A release, a reduction of the complex back down to the simple, the excitement the same as man’s first fire. He looked toward the books and his stomach nearly rumbled—not with hunger, exactly, but with a similar sensation, a desire to devour them, to watch them burst into flames at his fingertips.
He pulled his hand away from the ember, and immediately the room turned hot again, his position next to the dais almost too much to handle, and this time he dropped his entire palm on the ember, soaking it up through his skin like sunshine. The books called to him once more, each of their delightful pages wonderful fuel, each to go up in a burst of light. He licked his lips, hand closing around the ember to carry it with him, just as the voice sounded behind him.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”
Draysky leapt backward, the ember still clutched in his hand. Blurred lines of red light still connected it to the dais, lines that buzzed and pulled with the slightest of attractions, and passed in between his fingers. Watching him, leaning against the wall while smoking, was a man several years older than he. Not old, but not young either, the grey just starting to touch the roots of his hair. He was muscular, in a different way than Draysky. More wiry, with a leaner build, and taller as well. His eyes were dark, matching his hair, and he dropped his smoke from his mouth as he continued. “You see, some of those books are quite expensive. I haven’t quite finished them yet, and it would be a shame to see them reduced to ash before I had a chance to.”
“I wasn’t–” Draysky started, then he stopped, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “How did you get in here?”
“Me? How did I get in here? How did you get in here? I sure as hell didn’t leave the door open!” the man said, stomping out his smoke.
“Then where did you come from? Show me the door so I can get out of here.”
“This is my house, so I’ll be conducting the interview. More than my house, this is my production yard, my Grinder! Secondly, that’s the door.” He pointed upward, then pointed to Draysky’s hand. “And what you hold there is the key.”
“The key?” Draysky opened his hand to reveal the still glowing shard. “This thing? Do I have to throw it up there?” He cocked his hand back, and the man rushed forward, arms outstretched.
“Woah, woah! Don’t do that. It’s not a key, exactly, more of a strut. Consider it the only thin
g that keeps this roof from crashing down on us. You throw that, you remove a load bearing wall. The load bearing wall. And since the ceiling is the door...” His eyes wandered over to where Draysky had fallen, bits of armor scraps littering the ground interspersed with splotches of blood. “By the seven hells, did you come down through that?! Times have changed indeed if a knotted can jump through the jaws of a demon such as this.”
“Why the hell would jump in here? I fell.”
“Hells, boy.”
“What’s that?”
“Hells. There are seven of them, and you sound downright uneducated if you use the singular. Unless, of course, you are speaking of a particular one, but in my opinion they are all downright nasty if you turn over the right stones.”
Draysky’s expression remained blank, and he narrowed his eyes again. The man released a long sigh and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
“Damn. Stuck here for years, and saved by a backcountry dimwit. And I thought education was poor in my time. A right waste of the funds if you ask me, considering what they teach. But it’ll have to do, you’ll have to do if we’re to escape.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” balked Draysky, his eyes on his pickaxe that had fallen through after him, resting on the wall behind the man. “Sounds like you’re just as stuck here as me.”
“Yes, and no. Yes, we're both stuck here individually, but no, we’re not stuck here now that we are together. We might be able to use each other, see? Again, not my first pick, but who am I to be choosy. Now, let’s see. For a knotted, what exactly are you? Come on, don’t be shy, open yourself up. Give me a little peek.”
“A what?”
“A peek. Look I know it’s rude, but desperate times, you understand.”
“No, I don’t. What the hell are you talking about.”
“Hells. Hells. And your aurel, boy! That little sliver of the world itself inside you. Now let’s go, we haven’t got all day, do we?”
“I’m in no rush to help you, especially if you made the Grinder. Do you know how many people have died from it? But that’s ridiculous, the Grinder has been around longer than my grandmother. You’re too young, and I think you’re stringing me along. In fact, you look more like a Keeper than anything else, and they’ve killed more than the Grinder. Maybe I shouldn’t help you at all.”
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