by Jake Halpern
In the center of the hall stood a gigantic wooden stump, at least thirty feet in diameter. The stump was bleached pale white, almost like driftwood, and gave off a soft but distinct smell of juniper.
"What's everybody starin' at?" asked Bilblox. "Don't get all silent on me, you know that gives me the willies."
"We're in a massive hall with a tree stump in the middle," explained Alfonso.
"It's much more than just a tree stump," said Hill in a whisper. "I think it's the remains of the original Founding Tree of Dormia. They brought it here from Jasber. It must be tens of thousands of years old."
Resuza walked toward the stump to get a better look.
"Be careful!" cautioned Hill. "Even though it has been dead for ages, its core still possesses great power. They say that the stump draws you to it in your sleep. I think it has been pulling at Alfonso and me ever since we entered the Fault Roads."
"Like a big magnet," observed Bilblox.
"That's the idea," said Hill. "Back when the Fault Roads were still used, it enabled Dormians to sleepwalk all the way to the Hub without having to wake up or consult a map. I have no idea what effect it would have on non-Dormians."
Resuza continued to walk around the base of the stump and she stopped short and gasped in shock.
"What's the matter?" asked Hill.
"C-come see," whispered Resuza.
They rushed over to where she was standing.
"Oh no," whispered Hill.
On the far side of the stump lay a pile of weapons, helmets, and body armor. Much of the equipment was battered, scratched, and badly dented. After a few seconds, Resuza realized what was strange about the scene. While there had obviously been a great battle here, there were no victims and no blood. The air was pungent with the smell of human sweat, and strands of torn human hair lay scattered across the floor.
"A battle was fought here very recently," explained Hill somberly.
"Something doesn't make sense," said Resuza. "Why is there no blood? Where are the bodies?"
"I don't know," said Hill. "Perhaps—"
Hill was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of footsteps. They all spun around with their weapons drawn.
"Who goes there?" demanded Bilblox.
The footsteps, which had been coming from their left, abruptly stopped. The light of their torches extended for perhaps as far as thirty feet. Just beyond this, on the periphery of the shadows, it was apparent that something or someone was lurking. Alfonso peered into the darkness but saw nothing. Soon the figure in the shadows took one tentative step into the light. It was a ghastly sight. At first glance, the figure resembled a boy about four feet tall. Yet his bones were horribly deformed and his skin was so translucent that they could see his throbbing heart. It was a lone zwodszay.
The creature's face was the color of ash and lined with purple veins that bulged just underneath his skin. He had no hair anywhere, and his eyes were tiny, approximately the size and shape of raisins. His nose, however, was perhaps twice as big as a human's, and both nostrils flared in and out, as if the cartilage had disappeared and only the translucent skin remained. The creature took a step forward but lifted its arms to shield itself from the light, which obviously was making it uncomfortable. Alfonso felt sick just looking at the creature but for some reason he focused most on its fingers. The tips were long and delicate and tapered off like the partially melted ends of candles.
The creature opened its mouth and began to speak in a soft, kindly voice that sounded like a kitten purring. His liver-red tongue darted out of his mouth and constantly coated his lips with viscous saliva.
"T' šuži b idmi śåd ver šere," said the creature.
"What?" demanded Hill.
"T' šuži b idmi śåd ver šere," repeated the creature.
"What's that noise?" asked Bilblox nervously. "Is someone speakin'?"
"Yes," said Hill grimly. "It's a zwodszay and I'm about to kill it."
"Wait!" said Resuza. "He's saying, 'I was born in this black forest.'"
Hill looked at her incredulously. "You can understand him?"
"More or less," replied Resuza. "He is speaking some strange dialect of Komi. It's a Uralic language spoken by herdsmen in some parts of the Urals. There was a Komi village not too far from the town where I was born."
"So what's he trying to tell us?" asked Alfonso.
"I think he's trying to say that he was born in this room," said Resuza, "Look around. This room is probably what he calls the 'black forest.'"
The creature was talking rapidly now in his strange tongue.
"Well, with all these stone trees, it is a forest of sorts," said Alfonso. "What else is he saying?"
"I'm not exactly sure," said Resuza. "But he keeps repeating two words, one is nebeg and the other is mort."
"What do they mean?" asked Bilblox.
"Well," said Resuza, "I think nebeg means 'book' and mort means "human.'"
"That doesn't make a licka sense..." began Bilblox.
"What was that?" asked Alfonso.
They all heard at the same time a terrifying sound. Alfonso felt his skin crawl. It was the sound of many footsteps, so many that as it grew nearer, it was like the roar of water over rocks. As this sound grew, the creature began jumping up and down nervously. "Sjurs!" exclaimed the creature nervously. "Sjurs!"
"What does sjurs mean?" asked Hill.
"It means 'thousands,'" explained Resuza.
"Thousands of what?" asked Bilblox.
"Zwodszay," said Hill. "I think they're coming for us."
The creature was now waving his hands wildly and begging them to follow him. He obviously hated the light from their torches, since he kept shielding his eyes, but still he moved a little closer.
"I think he wants to take us somewhere," said Resuza.
"Bad idea," declared Bilblox. "Isn't this guy a zwodszay like the others? This could be a huntin' trick. Send one first as a scout and then lead 'em into a trap."
The sound of the footsteps grew louder. Kõrgu let out a mournful howl.
"You may be right!" shouted Resuza. "But what choice do we have? We know nothing about the Hub, and if we stay here, we'll be slaughtered! Without the skelter sap they'll find us in no time."
Hill nodded. "She's right. Let's go!"
An instant later, Hill, Resuza, Alfonso, and Kõrgu and Bilblox were following the creature across the floor of the massive hall and up a narrow, recessed staircase.
They continued up the staircase for some time and then turned off down a nondescript passageway for several minutes. At the end stood a wooden door reinforced with a spider web of iron latticework. The creature pushed the door open and gestured for the rest of them to enter. Hill, who was in the lead, hesitated for a moment and then walked through the doorway with his weapon at the ready. The rest of the group followed. The creature entered last, then closed the door behind him and locked it by sliding a large bolt into place.
Alfonso glanced around the room. In the glow of their torches, he was able to see fairly well. They were in a perfectly circular room, with an opening opposite them that led into a larger area filled with floor-to-ceiling shelves of rotting books. The circular room they stood in was empty, but the walls were painted with elaborate, intricately drawn murals depicting what appeared to be the Hub during its heyday, when throngs of men, women, and children traveled here en route to the other cities of Dormia.
The most elaborate of the murals depicted a river of lava at the bottom of a narrow fault. Just above the lava flew strange birds with wide, swept-back wings and vaguely rectangular faces. Another wing that looked like the dorsal fin on a shark jutted out of the birds' backs. Although the mural was probably not to scale, the birds appeared massive. Their skin was made not of feathers but of interlocking scales.
Hill immediately crossed the circular room and stopped just inside the entrance to the larger room. "Must be some sort of ancient library," Hill declared. "I guess these are the books that the z
wodszay was talking about."
The zwodszay slid his pointed fingertips lovingly over the mural. He purred deeply, as if the images gave him great pleasure. He then looked at Hill and walked into the other room. "Mort," it purred. "Mort."
They followed the creature to the far corner of the larger room, where a pungent, faintly glowing moss covered the floor. Here they came upon a most unexpected sight. Lying on the moss was a soldier wearing a tunic emblazoned with the symbol of Somnos. The soldier looked up weakly and regarded Hill. His face was streaked with dirt and tears. His eyes were red and wide open, although he blinked slowly.
"F-Foreign Minister Persplexy," gasped the man. "It's you, isn't it?"
The man breathed slowly and with great effort.
"Indeed it is," replied Hill. His face had gone white. "How did you get down here? What happened?"
"W-We were attacked by the zwodszay," said the soldier, lifting his head off the mat. "Th-They slaughtered us ... We were a hundred knights strong, but there were thousands of them. They attacked from all directions and destroyed—" His head fell back and a deep, painful sigh rattled through his body.
"What unit are you from?" asked Hill.
"Somnos Expeditionary Force, Sergeant Ryszard Yelexovf," said the soldier. "I j-just need to sleep. I've always been much happier while asleep, truth be told. I-I've been trying, sir, but..."
"Give him some water," commanded Hill.
Resuza walked over to the sergeant and unscrewed her flask of water. Tenderly she supported his head and poured the water directly into his mouth.
"I was wounded and this zwodszay carried me to safety," continued the sergeant. "This creature ... If it weren't for him, I'd be dead ... like the others."
"Who exactly are the others?" asked Hill. "And what were you up to?"
"Colonel Treeknot said we were supposed to open the Jasber Gate and take the prisoner back," whispered the soldier. "But we were attacked..."
"Colonel Treeknot!" exclaimed Hill.
"What about the prisoner?" asked Alfonso. "Do you mean Kiril?"
The soldier nodded.
"Was Josephus there as well? Is he alive? How about Kiril?" asked Hill.
Sergeant Yelexovf's eyes fluttered and he groaned in pain. "I don't know..." he said. "I think they all must be dead."
CHAPTER 27
KYN
"WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW?" asked Resuza. "Eventually, we'll have to leave this room and find the Jasber Gate."
Hill was busy tending to the soldier's wounds with bandages and ointment. He looked up at Resuza and regarded her wearily. "I know, but first let's regroup here for a while," said Hill. "It'll give us a chance to think. I'm trying to make sense of this. I can't imagine Colonel Treeknot doing this..."
At that moment, the zwodszay began chattering away again and, on cue, everyone looked to Resuza for an explanation. The creature stood just beyond the range of their torch's light. Alfonso was glad for this; the creature was terrifying to look at.
"I can't understand what he's saying," said Resuza. "He's talking too quickly."
The creature, perhaps sensing that he was not being understood, squatted down on his haunches and used a knobby index finger to draw several letters on the dust of the floor, just inside the light. This is what he wrote:
Kacb
"What does that mean?" asked Alfonso.
"The writing is Cyrillic. I think it's the Komi word for 'home,'" explained Resuza. "Maybe he's telling us this is his home."
Resuza then asked the creature a question in what sounded like his own strange tongue. The creature replied and this time he spoke more slowly, drawing out all of the syllables, making every effort to ensure that he was understood.
"He says that we will be safe here," explained Resuza.
The creature drew another word in the dust.
KbIHb
"I think it's his name," said Resuza. "It's pronounced Kyn. It means 'polar fox' in Komi."
"Polar fox," said Bilblox. "I kind of like that."
"Trust me, old boy," said Hill with a shake of his head. "You wouldn't like it quite as much if you could see this fellow. He's about as far from a polar fox as you can imagine."
"Don't be unkind," scolded Resuza. "Kyn has just saved our skins, unless you have forgotten."
"True enough," Hill replied. "See what else you can learn from Kyn, especially the location of the Jasber Gate."
"All right," said Resuza. "But what are we going to do about the soldier?"
"I've treated his wounds," replied Hill. "Now he needs to rest."
"He sounds like he's in rough shape," said Bilblox.
"Wait a minute," interrupted Hill. "Where's Alfonso?"
They looked around.
"ALFONSO?" yelled Hill. There was no answer. Hill looked concerned. "That's not like him. I'll go look."
"Let me go," said Resuza. "I'll be quieter on my feet and, besides, I'm a better shot with my rifle."
Hill hesitated. "Very well," he said. "But be quick about it."
***
At that very moment, Alfonso was tiptoeing down the staircase and out into the vast emptiness of the eleven-sided hall. He walked slowly but with great purpose, heading directly for the massive stump at the center. The area was entirely dark, but this made little difference, because Alfonso was fast asleep and he was being guided by a force that did not require him to think or watch where he was stepping.
Upon reaching the stump, Alfonso paused for a moment, then climbed onto it, still in the grip of his sleeping trance. Alfonso's eyes blinked softly. He saw a flash of light, and then a series of images flickered across the ceiling of the eleven-sided room like a movie, only the images were three-dimensional.
The first images were those of a hunchbacked woman dressed in rags, stumbling across a field of snow with a Dormian bloom in her hands. She eventually knelt down, dug a small hole, and planted the bloom into the frozen soil. Immediately, the snow began to melt. Somehow, Alfonso knew that he was staring at the very first Great Sleeper. The woman disappeared and, seconds later, a young man appeared walking along a frozen river. He too had a Dormian bloom. The man eventually planted his bloom along the riverbank and instantly the ice on the river began melting.
Similar scenes involving Great Sleepers danced and glimmered overhead at an increasingly rapid pace. And then came a scene that was unlike the others. It featured a teenage boy with a delicate face, ash-gray hair, and entirely white eyes. It was the same boy, the leader of the Dragoonya, from Alfonso's nightmare in the Delirium Quarter. The boy stood in a small clearing surrounded by a vast Boreal pine forest. The boy had a Dormian bloom in his hands, only it didn't look right. Its leaves were thin, shriveled, and an ugly charcoal gray. The boy bent down and gently placed the strange bloom into a shallow depression in the earth.
As soon as the boy finished planting the bloom, hideous slimy roots emerged and began to churn their way through the soil like snakes. Soon all the surrounding trees in the pine forest began to wither and die. They died by the millions. A fierce wind blew, loosening countless dead pine needles, which fluttered down from the treetops and swirled in the sky, creating a cloud that eclipsed the sun. When the pine needles finally settled, all that was left were the skeletal remains of a dead forest, which stretched as far as the eye could see.
"Alfonso! ALFONSO!"
Alfonso was brought back to reality by a voice calling for him. It was Resuza yelling at him to get down from the stump. She held a torch in one hand and a rifle in the other.
"What are you doing up there?" she called.
"I-I-I've had some kind of terrible vision," replied Alfonso.
"Come quickly," beckoned Resuza. "It's not safe for us to linger here."
Alfonso climbed down from the stump as quickly as he could. His entire body was quivering. He was so happy and relieved to see Resuza that he hugged her tightly. She hugged him back. Alfonso smelled her warm skin and hair and his cheeks flushed in the darkness. They sta
red at each other, both suddenly aware of a tension between them. Alfonso looked at the curve of her lips. Resuza's eyes sparkled and Alfonso was suddenly aware of just how beautiful she was.
"I'm glad you're okay," she finally whispered. "You should be more careful."
***
They ran back to the library where the others were waiting. Kõrgu yelped, ran to Alfonso, and licked his hand affectionately.
"What happened to you?" asked Hill.
"Nothing," said Alfonso. "Just a bit of sleepwalking." He glanced at Resuza but said nothing more.
"We're going to have to keep a closer eye on you," said Hill wearily. "Your sleeping-self is getting restless."
The only one who didn't react to Alfonso's return was Kyn. The creature stood in the half-darkness, chewing greedily on a biscuit. Alfonso looked on with repulsed amazement while Kyn's throat contracted and expanded as he swallowed.
Resuza began talking with him, and after a few minutes she summarized her conversation. "It's pretty hard to understand him, but I've learned a few things. The zwodszay primarily live on rezofi, which are bats. Apparently, when they get tired of eating bats, they hunt their own. It's a sport for them. Kyn was one of those who was thrown out to be hunted, but he's managed to avoid being caught."
"Can he take us to the Jasber Gate?" asked Bilblox impatiently.
"I think so," said Resuza. "He said he could take us down a passageway to a big locked door. I'm assuming that's the Jasber Gate. He said a few of the Dormians escaped down that passage, but he's not sure if they made it through the big locked door."
"Ask him if he knows of any vents to the surface," said Hill.