by Jon Kiln
Chapter 28
Cold winds blasted Rothar and the huntsmen, and icicles formed on their beards and moustaches. The Andrelicas were, thankfully, a smaller mountain range, but the peaks boasted weather like no other place Rothar had ever traveled. Snow and hail blew parallel to the earth at all times, and the men had to walk their horses. Rothar was reminded of the reason he had packed for any contingency.
Only occasionally could the men glimpse the flying machine, far in the distance. Rothar marveled that it remained afloat in the air, and imagined that it must somehow be able to travel above the worst of the storm. Still, the orb could be seen twisting and rocking, buffeted by the punishing winds.
After a day of walking, they were finally beginning a descent and the winds from the peaks now blew at their backs. The horses’ hooves skidded and slipped as the descent became steeper. The men had to be careful to stay clear of the stumbling animals. At long last, the terrain began to level out and the going became easier. The men remounted the horses and rode out the last miles of the Andrelicas range. The temperature remained freezing, but Rothar knew from past conversations with travelers that at the foot of the mountains was a red desert.
The sun began to set early, blocked out by the icy peaks behind them. The streaks of evening light that shone around the jagged peaks illuminated a desolate expanse ahead of them, deep scarlet in the failing light.
It was decided that they would stop where the ice met the sand and set up camp for the night, with no man wishing to go into uncharted territory in utter darkness. The men built small fires and kept them low, but they could tell by the silence on the night air that the flying machine had gone on.
“So do we simply head east until we find where it goes?” asked Stone over a dinner of bread and figs.
“That does not seem wise,” replied Gamble. “We will be in wide open desert with no place to take cover if it, or anything else, comes back.”
All heads turned to Rothar, but his eyes were closed.
“Please allow me a little rest,” he said. “Shortly, I will go ahead and scout. Before you wake in the morning I will know what lies ahead.”
“I am going with you,” said Peregrin.
“No, you are not,” Rothar said firmly. “You need to rest as well, and I want you to stay with your men. I will travel faster alone at any rate.”
Peregrin began to protest but Rothar opened his eyes and silenced his friend with a look. All was quiet around the fires as everyone listened to the night and the steady, rhythmic sound of Rothar’s breathing as he slept for the first time in days.
***
Rothar awoke in the middle of the night. There was never any need to rouse him, but Peregrin had remained awake. The others were sleeping, wrapped in their bedrolls around the flickering flames.
“Sleep now,” Rothar said to Peregrin as he saddled up Stormbringer and prepared to leave.
“I have to talk to you first,” said Peregrin softly.
Rothar looked at the huntsman and waited.
“Your whole life has been this,” Peregrin gestured around at the night. “Going off on suicide missions and caring not at all. You always come back, you always win. But someday, Rothar, you may not return.”
Rothar shifted in the saddle. “That is true for all of us, Peregrin,” he said.
“Of course,” replied the huntsman. “What I think you need to consider is this: you are no longer alone, there is someone who depends on you. You have a responsibility, and it is not to King Heldar.”
Rothar scowled. “I hope you are not implying that I do not care enough for Taria to keep myself alive. If anything, I have more reason to stay alive now than I ever have before.”
Peregrin sighed. “I hope that is true, because if I come back from this place without you… I love Taria too much to do that.”
Nodding, Rothar said, “I believe you.”
With that Rothar rode quietly off into the night.
***
The night was moonless, but the desert felt as flat as a still pond beneath Stormbringer’s gait. Rothar dared not light a torch, not knowing what lie ahead. He was forced to rely fully on instinct - both Stormbringer’s and his own.
The ground was hard and the horse’s steps made a hollow sound in the silent night. The skittering sounds of scorpions dashing out from under hoof mixed with the occasional call of a night bird created a rather haunting effect.
Rothar rode for what he guessed to be around two hours time before he began to notice something different on the horizon ahead. A separation of darkness seemed to be looming ahead, a division of blackness and greater blackness. Soon, Rothar could differentiate between the night sky and the obstacle before him. The line of darkness extended as far as he could see in either direction.
Finally, Rothar and Stormbringer reacher a wall that was larger than any he had ever seen. It dwarfed the southern wall of the King’s City and looked as smooth as the desert that surrounded it. In the darkness, Rothar could not even make out arrow slits in the featureless facade.
Looking one way and then the other and seeing nothing, Rothar picked a direction at random, steering Stormbringer to the left, heading north along the wall. There is no wall without a gate, and Rothar estimated that he had a few hours to find one.
As he rode, strange and distant sounds began to reach him, seemingly from beyond the wall. High pitched squeals and deep concussions, a chanting like a deep incantation, all carried by the air on a windless night. At one point came a sound with which he had become very familiar, and he drew Stormbringer close to the wall as a massive flying orb drifted over the wall and headed back to the west. Rothar hoped that the huntsmen would hear it coming in time and douse their fires, otherwise, they would stand out like solitary stars on a dark night.
Once the craft had passed, Rothar continued along the way. He was considering starting back to the foot of the mountains to make sure his companions were safe, when he saw a faint column of light far up ahead. He rode a short ways and then dismounted Stormbringer, commanding the horse to stay put, and continued on foot. A wide gate was cut into the impervious stone wall, and a faint firelight spilled out through the cracks in the heavy wooden door.
The gateway itself was unguarded, and hugging close to the wall, Rothar moved into the portal and put his eye to one of the cracks. Inside, he could see several fires atop long poles, horse carts were bustling about in all directions, as if on a busy market street at midday, but there were no peddlers visible, only the cart drivers.
Rothar needed to find a way in. None of the cart drivers seemed to be paying much attention to the gate, so he set to work on the locking mechanism with his dagger. The lock was complex, and unlike anything Rothar had ever seen before. He began to wonder who these people were, who invented flying machines and lived in a near invisible city in the middle of a red desert.
Suddenly, a light exploded behind Rothar’s eyes and his head throbbed with a terrible concussion. He spun and lashed out with the blade but caught only air. From the darkness beyond, he saw a terrible, skeletal face leaning down towards him, sneering with a fleshless grin. He thrust out again with the dagger, and again he missed, before his world faded to black.
Chapter 29
Rothar felt as though he were struggling to wake from a deep sleep, consciousness coming and going in turns. The things he saw in front of his eyes did not make sense and the words in his head were jumbled and nonsensical, though he understood the language. Then a rush of cold took his breath away and snapped his eyes open.
He stood, dripping wet, before three men, one holding a water bucket. Rothar’s arms were tied behind his back tightly and his ankles were lashed to the chair on which he sat. Looking around, he saw that he was in a large room made of earth and wood. Somewhere behind him a fire was burning brightly. He could feel it’s warmth dancing on the back of his neck. The three men in front of him scowled darkly, all of them possessed the same black hair and piercing dark eyes as Mortez.
Rothar struggled to regain his wits. He could tell that the knots that bound him had been expertly tied. He would not be able to free himself before these men could do what they wanted with him.
“I suggest you untie me, and save yourself feeling the wrath of the King of the northern kingdom,” he tried.
The dark men snickered. “We pay no allegiance to your King,” said the one in the middle. “And who are you? Why are you prowling about our gate?” The man’s voice was sharp with hatred.
“I am merely a messenger,” said Rothar.
“Yes? And what is the message?”
“Stop sending your poison into the Kingdom of Heldar, or every last one of you shall die,” Rothar said, giving up on diplomacy. He determined that his only timely option was to force his captors to make a mistake, and anything short of killing an adversary like Rothar was a mistake.
The three men looked at one another and laughed aloud.
“Poison, you say?” asked the leader. “If it is poison we peddle, then how come your people want it so badly? Can you not see that we are helping them? We help them deal with their pain, their sadness.”
“You destroy lives,” Rothar spat back.
The leader mocked offense. “Have you even tried it? I think it might do a man like yourself a world of good.”
The men laughed again as Rothar made no reply. One of the men began pulling the shutters over the windows in the room and the other walked to the fireplace behind Rothar. He heard him shut the flue.
“Have a wonderful journey,” one of them said, and then Rothar heard a door shut.
The room was silent save for the crackling of the fire, which had increased since the men had left. The space began to fill with an acrid smoke, the scent of which Rothar recognized immediately. He had no way of knowing how much of the Obscura the men had thrown onto the flames before sealing him in there, but he was certain it was no small amount.
Rothar tried to hold his breath as he focused on loosening the knots that held his wrists. He knew there was no hope in struggle or panic, so he sat very still and concentrated strictly on wriggling his wrists and controlling his breathing. Shallow breaths, only shallow breaths and only when absolutely necessary. If he held his breath outright he would end up taking in huge gulps of air once his lungs gave out. The knots gave way just a small amount and allowed him to press his fingers together, giving him more leverage against the twisted ropes.
Rothar took another tiny sip of air and closed his eyes. Lights danced in front of his vision. He shook his head to clear the illusion but the lights only splashed against the edges of his consciousness and flowed back to the middle of his line of sight, dashing together in spectacular waves. He opened his eyes to escape the brilliance.
On the floor in front of him lay a coiled snake of gold. Rothar felt no reason to be afraid of the snake, and the snake seemed to feel no fear of Rothar. The animal simply slithered up his leg and onto his lap, where it immediately began to lay ruby red eggs that glimmered and sparkled in the light of the fire.
Rothar realized that he was no longer fighting the ropes and he shook his head hard to try to regain focus. The snake disappeared and the room went back to it’s smoke filled dreariness. Rothar worked hard against the knots and was finally able to get one hand free. With his free hand he reached down and began working to untie the knot at one of his ankles. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something polished in the smokey chamber. It was his dagger.
With small hops, he skidded the chair over to the table where the dagger lay. Reaching it, he immediately severed the ropes that held his ankles. When he turned to cut the rope that bound his other wrist, he saw that his arm was tied not to a chair, but to the neck of a hulking black bull.
The bull stared at Rothar with beady black eyes, filled with hatred. Rothar stood frozen, evaluating how quickly he could slit the beast’s throat and cut the rope. The bull snorted and stomped at the wooden floor, shaking the boards beneath Rothar’s feet. In one motion, Rothar lashed out to cut the rope and kill the beast. His dagger struck only wood, clattering against the rungs of the wooden chair that was still tied to his left wrist.
Rothar was confounded, and he felt his will slipping away from him. He had to fight the effects of the… ladder. A ladder had appeared in the center of the room. The ladder itself seemed to be made out of light and reached so high that it disappeared into the night sky. Rothar asked himself why he could see the night sky when he was inside a small room, but he quickly forgot the question as the daunting ladder leaned hard in one direction and became a staircase with gleaming handrails reaching into eternity.
Curious, Rothar took a couple of steps towards the spectral stairway. As soon as his foot touched the bottom step, however, the entire thing inverted and crashed into the ground with a thunderous roar. The earth itself opened up to accommodate the staircase and Rothar smelled sulfur and fire from deep in the bottomless passage. Moaning and screaming reached his ears, and Rothar tried to will the staircase to reach heavenward again. The moaning and screaming grew louder until Rothar realized the loudest voice was his own, bellowing over the tortured sounds of those below.
When Rothar screamed, the ground closed up in front of him and the stairway disappeared. The screaming and moaning ceased, and all was silent again. Not only was everything silent, but everything was pitch black.
The room around him was gone. He could see neither ceiling nor floor. He was suspended in such darkness that he could not tell what was up and what was gone, the sensation had a dizzying effect. Slowly, he began to feel as though he was being pulled in two directions, like a man being drawn and quartered. The feeling was slight at first, a gentle tug one way and the other, but it grew steadily until he felt that his shoulders were about to be pulled out of joint and his legs may be simply torn from his body. The pain was excruciating, and then it was gone.
Rothar tumbled to the ground, his head striking rough stone. He scrambled to his feet and found that there was light again, and he was standing atop an impossibly high stone wall. Something bumped at his side and he spun defensively, only to find that what had nudged him was only the chair that was still tied to his arm.
He looked about, and saw he was on top of the wall that ringed the red city. On one side, he could see the vast darkness of the clay desert, endless and unforgiving. He vaguely realized that his companions were somewhere on the other side of that darkness, and he wondered if they were waiting, if they were sleeping, or if they had been found.
Turning around, Rothar looked down into the center of the city. Fires burned everywhere and the horse carts he had seen before were moving about like ants. In the center of the fortified city was what appeared to be a massive garden. Low, shrubby plants of the same variety grew in close rows. Men and women in black dress were moving about the plants, inspecting and picking certain leaves and putting them into round baskets.
Suddenly, a horn sounded and the harvesters hurried out of the garden. On the far side Rothar could see a group of men fighting to secure a live horse to a set of stout ropes that were strung up above the garden in taut lines. Once the horse was secured, the men slashed the animal with long swords and pushed the poor beast out to be suspended above the plants, it’s blood pouring down on the soil.
Rothar could scarcely believe what he was seeing and tried to convince himself that it was all just an effect of the drug.
Once the horse bled out and died, it was retrieved, and an even more horrific scene began to take shape. In the place where the horse had been prepared, Rothar saw the executioners tying a man to the apparatus. The man was barely conscious and his head kept falling down upon his chest. Once he was tied in, he too was slashed deeply with the razor sharp swords and pushed out to dangle above the plants.
The man twisted and flopped loosely on the ropes, turning onto his back and staring up blankly at the moonless sky. Even at such a distance, Rothar recognized Canus, son of Briar.
Rothar turned away and sank down on the stones, trying to get a grasp of reality. When he turned he found that he was not alone on the wall. The leader of the men who had captured him was standing there, only a few feet away, watching Rothar take in all of this horror and brutality.
Now the man stood smiling down upon Rothar, a horrid glint in his dark eyes.
“So, you have seen our irrigation system,” he said, and Rothar was certain that he saw a forked tongue flick out of the man’s mouth as his eyes turned yellow and glowing. “It is unpleasant, I admit, but it is also entirely necessary. You see, the plants will not have any potency if they do not grow in blood. Do not ask me why, it is just the way things are.”
Rothar tried to rise but found he was too weak to move.
“No no, do not get up,” the man said. “You have no need to fight me anymore, I am not going to kill you.”
Rothar must have looked surprised, because the man gave a cruel little laugh and reached out to take him by the arm. Once Rothar was on his feet, another man came up from behind and slipped a rope around his waist.
“You have tasted it now, so you understand,” the man hissed in Rothar’s face. “You, the champion, can go back to your people and show them that you are as in love with the ladder as they are, that is, if you can make it back across the mountains.”
With that, the man took Rothar by the shoulders and shoved him over the outside edge of the wall. Rothar fell freely for a second before someone above took up the slack in the rope and he jerked to an agonizing stop. From there, he was lowered slowly down the towering wall, only to be dropped the last ten feet.
Summoning all of his energy, Rothar rose to his feet and whistled for Stormbringer. The horse arrived in moments and sank to the ground so that Rothar could collapse across his back.