by E M Kaplan
Whatever the case, she shook her head to clear her thoughts. “When will you move the settlement?” she asked Malga.
The older woman didn’t answer for some time, a pause which tested Mel’s still at best, inchoate patience. In the space of the silence, Mel grew wary. Surely the Masks intended to leave the area. They were defenseless against a second attack. Even the ground itself was unstable due to the pockets underneath them in which the beasts had tunneled to get here. They traveled underground at preternatural speed and stole the very foundations from underneath their unsuspecting victims. The same thing had happened at Cillary Keep while Mel had been staying there, clad in a pristine white dress and vellum-thin sandals along with a host of other young women. Sacrifices upon the altar, more or less.
And the same thing had happened at the big house in the northern town from which Ott came. Trogs had poured up through the mines and on through the shantytown of the terrified fleeing miners and their families. Slaughtering innocents.
“We have had some spirited discussion about whether to remain and rebuild in our current location or to go up farther north among the hills wherein the stones underground may protect us from a subterranean offensive.”
Mel thumped her hand on the desktop, causing the other Masks to stand and make their way out of the room. She sighed, dropping her head. “There’s more to this than you or I know at the moment. We can’t retreat and hide our eyes from the conflict. The root of the problem lies…somewhere. I don’t know where. But if you stay here, you will not find it. Why don’t you come south with us?”
Malga blinked at her, face blank, retreating behind her Mask-trained behaviors. Whatever influence the presence of trogs had seemed to have over her—her earlier show of emotions—seemed to have run its course. At last she sighed and pushed back from the desk. “You know we cannot leave. The type of conflict we’re trained for has nothing to do with swords or weapons. We are not made for battle. Whatever you leave to face, we cannot help you.”
Mel shook her head. “But you are strong. Masks have strength way beyond humans. And the ability to learn quickly. You could be trained to fight, to defend people.”
The older woman shook her head without speaking. Then she folded her hands, and Mel knew the discussion was over. She’d failed. And because of it, people would die—people who could have used assistance from Masks. And the Masks themselves, if they stayed in the settlement. Without a doubt, Mel knew if they remained, they would be attacked by trogs again. And they would be killed. Without Treyna’s help, this attack—a possible warning of some kind—if repeated, would be fatal to many of them.
“Please,” she tried one more time. She was tired all the way through to her bones, but even she knew that they didn’t have much time.
But Malga was unbending.
Chapter 53
“Bloody sinkholes. Blasted smelly monsters. Best adventure of my life,” Jaine was saying. Her enthusiasm bloomed early in the day and made Ott want to throw a clump of dirt at her head, just to see if it would shut her up. Purely in the name of experimentation. And self-preservation, because he would lose his mind if she continued with her inexhaustible narrative much longer.
He had led the group out of the Mask settlement in the morning before sunrise. By mid-morning they had made it as far as Navio. Harro’s chair was a difficult burden to deal with. At one treacherous pass, Ott had offered to carry the man, but the look he received in return was enough to made him tuck his tail—the big man could probably still beat his behind even while seated in his wheeled chair. So, they had persevered. While they tried to keep to flat, even ground, doing so wasn’t possible as they made their way through the forest. Treyna appeared frustrated by her inability to help more. The strain of her effort now showed on her face. When she could, she lifted the ground before his chair, smoothing it and making it passable, which was unnerving. To have the ground rise up to meet the wheels of Harro’s chair? Ott shook his head. He never thought he’d live to see the day when the ground rolled like a lump of bread dough under his sister Jenny’s knuckles.
For Harro’s part, whenever they paused to rest, he spoke on and on of strengthening his legs further, of attempting to use the arm crutches that he’d been measured for, and that were strapped to the back of his chair now. His discomfort was plain to see by his sudden resemblance to a knitting nanny. The unfortunate consequence of which was Ott’s fervent wish that the former stableman would remain silent. His constant anxious nattering—in combination with Jaine’s buoyant lust for risk—was wearing on everyone’s nerves.
Their group numbered nine in addition to the baby, Salva. And as they reached Navio, Ott was grateful that the destroyed town was deserted. The racket they made with the wheelchair and the endless chatter would have alerted anyone—beast, trog, man, woman, or deaf granny—to their presence.
But the town itself…Ott slowed his steps through the debris as he looked around, tight-lipped in grim dismay. The trogs had decimated a hundred years of civilization in the space of a few days. Not a single structure had escaped damage, whether superficial or total. Perhaps one in ten buildings lay in ruins. The rest were charred, missing parts of roofs—or worse, entire walls, which had left the ceilings to cave in. No fires burned now, but the stench of ash lay heavy like a pall over the entire port city. Never mind the trogs’ taint that still lingered—the town stank enough to make his eyes water.
He’d thought the ground would be easier to traverse here…and it was, marginally. But as he kicked aside charred timbers to make way for Harro’s wheels, he was unable to identify any of his usual landmarks. Thinking he’d spied a popular clothier’s shop, he headed south only to find half of the sign for that same shop hanging from its post from the roof of a different building. Had he been mistaken or had the sign been flung across the street?
Mel caught up to him where they had enough breadth of street to walk side by side. “Can you smell it?” She looked pale to him—and the unhealed wounds on her face made his throat tight every time he looked at her. In the sunlight, her hair had a dusty look, as if some of the ash had settled on it. But when he stopped to take a strand in his fingers, the soot didn’t come off. The streaks of gray were true gray. Something had taken hold inside of her when she’d been buried beneath the dirt. As she coughed, he fought the urge to draw her close and hold her. And never let go.
“I smell trogs if that’s what you mean. But I don’t think there are any left.”
She frowned and inhaled. “I think they are still here. But I don’t…know.” The center of his chest ached for her, as he realized she no longer trusted her senses. Whatever Mask abilities she’d been relying on—sight, smell, strength—seemed to have been taken away by her injuries. Even her step wasn’t as sure. Was she sickening more? He shoved the thought from his mind. Her condition still could be a temporary ailment. Like his own seasonal congestion or the shivers that used to send him to bed for an afternoon. Speaking of which…he realized he hadn’t been sick the whole winter, not since his berserker rages had begun. He didn’t appreciate the irony that she was ill and he was hale and hearty.
She coughed again, that dry hollow cough that had been plaguing her since the cave-in. If she said she detected trogs, he would believe her. He nodded, feeling grim, and left her side to take the push-handles of Harro’s chair from Bookman. “If trogs remain, then we had better hurry out of here.”
“If only we had the velowagon,” Jaine pitched in, unhelpfully.
Ott had heard all about the wagons from Mel. She’d said the velowagons could seat at least a dozen people and ran on compressed agamite and…something. He had no idea how a machine like that would work. The big house up north had agamite in the boiler room under the house that allowed them to have piped hot water at any time during the year, even the coldest and bitterest of months. Other than his appreciation for a soak in a hot tub, he’d never thought about what a miracle of science and ingenuity heated water was. But riding in velowag
ons…the idea made him shiver and wish for a horse, something flesh and blood, something mortal.
The chair hit a bump, and Harro gave a gasp of pain and was silenced from the narration of his expected recovery. Lutra on a spit, who knew the man had so many words within him—as if he’d been bottling it up for decades. Treyna threw Ott a look that would have killed him had it been made of blades. Not that Ott could blame Harro. The gods only knew what kind of fear was in the man’s mind. Whether he would walk again. Or bed a woman. Or…Ott swallowed. The rate at which trogs were plowing the ground under their feet meant that every one of them had less and less chance for a happy future.
Kits, little Mels and Otts running around. He glanced at her now and saw that she was out of breath and trying to suppress a cough. Had his girl ever been sick before? Gods above, he needed to get her out of Navio and away from the trogs. Their evil presence was draining the life out of her. So many times she rescued him…now it was his turn.
At the edge of a large sinkhole, Ott stopped, trying to determine which was the fast way around it. The length of about five men across, the hole spanned the entire width of the lane down which they had been walking. Staring up at the crumbling rooftops on either side of the street, he tried to assess which of them were least likely to fall on their heads.
He did a flip of an imaginary coin and chose the left, to the north. Maybe it was an acknowledgment of his secret wish that they had never departed home and that they were still safe in the snug rooms of the big house in the north. Maybe he had Lady Lutra to thank for the luck, but just as they began lifting Harro’s chair past the worst of the fallen beams and charred timbers, the roof opposite them slid off the wall and crashed down into the pit.
They had almost reached the other side of the pit when the narrow strip of ground beneath them began to tremble. Marget gave a yelp and ran ahead of them. Jaine was also suddenly and blessedly silent. One of Harro’s chair wheels lost its purchase, throwing his chair into wobble. With a stricken look, the big man grasped his seat while Ott braced his feet against the slide of the chair. But Ott felt the ground crumble. He and Harro slipped down into the pit in a shower of dirt and debris.
Chapter 54
No. It was not happening again.
Mel saw the chair begin to fall. Then Ott and Harro were gone.
In her injury-laden stupor, she’d neither warned them nor reacted in time to save them. In fact, she’d watched the entire event unfold standing there, mouth open and aghast.
What was the matter with her? Where was her strength, her quickness, her better vision and hearing? Gone. She rasped a hollow cough and blinked the dust from her eyes. Only then did the odor of trogs reach her stuffed nose.
Next to her, Rav moved in small, tight steps, hugging the wall. With the baby clutched to her chest and wrapped in the sling, she had less of a sense of balance than normal. Bookman was just ahead, holding his arm back to steady them. Mel, coming behind them, reached ahead to add her support.
But Mel lost her footing on the edge of the sinkhole. With nothing to grab onto, she had a moment of weightlessness as first her right foot went loose, then her left foot. Into the darkness she slid.
Chapter 55
“I’ve got you. It’s all right.” Ott’s voice soothed Mel as her questing hands sought to discover her surroundings. She couldn’t see anything, but the sound of him was like a balm. She registered his arms around her and spread her fingers out over his shoulders.
“Are we all here? Where is everyone?” she said.
“Yeah. Well, most of us made it.” His voice was rueful, but his words attempted to be light with a forced humor that didn’t fool either of them. “Rav and the baby. Bookman. Harro and Treyna came down, too. The bloody wheeled chair survived with fewer scratches than I did. No one hurt, just a bit scratched up. So the ones missing and still up there are Marget, Charl, and Jaine. Nothing we can do about that, really. Don’t think they want to jump down here just to keep us company.” A strange silence followed his words, and the vague heat of what had to be his hand passed in front of her face.
“I’m right here,” she reminded him, thinking he was trying to find her face in the dark though his other arm was around her waist.
“Yes, you are. But you can’t see the others?”
Even in the darkness, she felt her eyes widen. She took in his meaning as if she were fighting through a fog, coming awake after a blow to the head. Had she hit her head on the way down?
“It’s too dark,” she said. Hoping. But in her heart, she knew the truth, the answer to her unspoken question. After all the years of enhanced vision, of better-than-human sight, she was blind.
“No, Mel. It’s not,” he said.
She took in his words without speaking—so now she had lost her sight. Even her normal, average ability to see. Then she nodded once, sinking into thought. “This makes things even more of a challenge.”
A growl came from deep within his throat. “Don’t even suggest it.”
Despite the horrible circumstances, she gave a bitter smile—because he knew her well enough to guess what she was going to propose next. Namely, that they leave her behind and continue on their journey. She’d die most likely, but perhaps increase their chances of survival if she stayed behind.
“All right. I won’t. But you’re going to have to put me down to see if I can walk using just my hearing and feeling ahead. Is there a tunnel out of this pit?”
“Yes, but the stench is bad,” he said, releasing her in a slow slide from his arms until her feet touched the ground. That gave her further pause—was her nose not working either? He moved away to ready the group to continue their journey, albeit now in the subterranean gloom.
Steps approached from the right, and Mel listened hard to try to determine who made them. A swish of a skirt, so it had to be one of them women in their party, either Treyna or Rav. Mel inhaled, trying to detect Rav’s scent, something like heat and sand, a dusty mix of dry cleanliness…but nothing. When a firm hand gripped her shoulder, Mel knew that it was her friend from the desert. At least she could still feel her friend when they made contact. Preternaturally steady heartbeat—though Mel’s felt as though it were racing like a rarebit—even inhalations, and cool dry skin. How was Rav so calm all the time?
The whole world was falling to pieces around them. The ground on which they walked crumbled. Trogs spewed out of these holes everywhere like military units. Fires. Whirlpools. And Masks who would not intervene even when they themselves had been attacked. It was enough to make her want to give up, to surrender to the elements…
She stifled a sob as emotion welled up in her throat.
Tired. So utterly tired. She rubbed the side of her head where an ache had formed. When she brought her hand away, a clump of brittle hair came with it, tangled in her fingers. She lowered her hand and wriggled her fingers to throw the hairs away. Just another symptom that proved what she had been fearing since they’d brought her out of the ground—that she was ill far beyond the bodily injuries she’d suffered from the cave in…and that she might in fact be dying.
“I promised you I would take you home to your sister,” she told Rav. Even above ground, they would have had at least a two-week journey on foot, on the smoothest terrain in the best weather conditions. Now they were underground in the dark—at least, she was—trapped with monsters. She could see no way, absolutely no way they could make it out alive.
“And you will,” Rav insisted.
“That may be the first lie you’ve ever told me.” Mel’s voice broke and she was unable to disguise it. Her friend’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “I never knew you for a teller of untruths.”
Rav dropped her hand, but then took Mel’s and placed it on her own shoulder. The other woman took the lead now, moving ahead of Mel, who followed behind, feeling the lift of a shrug in her shoulder. Then the shudder of a silent laugh. “I’m not a liar, Mel. Perhaps a mild exaggerator, but not a liar.”
; Mel laughed, but wetness leaked from her eyes. That made two times she’d cried in the last handful of days, more times than the last ten years of her life combined. She hadn’t felt this much a victim of her emotions since…she blinked. Not since the trogs had attacked Cillary Keep.
After coming to this realization, she relaxed somewhat. Her emotional turmoil was as much a symptom of her poisoning as the hair falling out of her head in clumps. Her blindness. Her lack of strength. Her…she felt moisture on her upper lip and reached to touch it. But of course she couldn’t see it, so she tasted her finger with the tip of her tongue. Salty and metallic. Now her nose bled—she almost rolled her eyes in disgust. Yet, she feared if she outright laughed and asked the gods what could possibly happen next, she would feel the consequence of her sarcasm in the form of an invisible thumb reaching out of the sky to squash her as if she were a bug.
Which was utterly ridiculous. If she rated personal attention from any deity whatsoever…now she did chuckle at herself, which caused a pause in Rav’s step ahead of her. Most likely her friend thought Mel was losing her mind now, in addition to all of her other new shortcomings.
Her nose cleared for a moment and she smelled it—the burning, nauseating odor of trogs. Through the tunnel floor beneath her feet, she felt the tremors, but before she could shout to warn Ott, the trogs were upon them.
A woman screamed. It must have been Treyna, because in front of Mel, Rav still hadn’t made a sound. And the scream wasn’t one of terror but one of fury. Anger. Frustration. All of it balled into one ear-shattering sound. Mel shook her head to clear it. The scream had been so loud, it had stunned her were she’d stood. Even now, the end of it still rang in her ears.