Poor World

by Sherwood Smith

  The drawer below that held old quill pens and a few pencils. I grabbed one of these latter — then I froze when I heard a noise. Footsteps! On the wooden porch outside the building!

  My heart now tried to crowd up my throat. My fingers shook as I eased the drawer closed, and because there was nowhere else to go I dove under the desk just as the footsteps reached the doorway. I scrunched up, glad the desk had a solid front.

  My heartbeat was loud in my ears. I held the papers out in front of me, my arm balancing on my knee; I was terrified they would rustle. How could I ever explain being under here like this? Why didn’t I just stand up and make up some excuse about drawing maps or something?

  It was too late. A person who wants to make maps doesn’t do it in the dark.

  Kessler snapped his fingers and the light glowed on, shrinking my margin of safety. I crunched into a ball, one knee under my chin, the other knee down, making myself as flat as I could.

  Footsteps approached. The chair was yanked out. Shoes appeared, and trousered legs. Kessler’s right shoe pressed against the bony part of my knee, but he didn’t react; it must have felt like the desk front, which my knee was painfully jammed against.

  A drawer opened. I heard fingers on wood. Pens rattled. He must have pulled one out; the drawer slammed shut, and a moment later I heard the scratching of a pen on paper. All sounds were loud and distinct. Could he hear my breathing? I couldn’t believe the whole camp couldn’t hear my heart thumping.

  The sound of the pen went on for a long time, and then papers rustled. My heartbeat slowed perceptibly. I was terrified I’d have to sit there all night before he’d get up to do some other chore.

  But then the pen dropped on the desk with a clatter that almost made me jump. My nerves panged like Alsaes’s needle.

  Kessler’s shoe still pressed against my knee. He started to mumble. Magic! He was doing magic, and if it was a transfer spell, the contact meant I was going to go with him!

  I’m dead, I wailed — and then black smeared the world around me.

  Nine

  I blinked. Kessler’s desk was gone. So was the office.

  And the wooden floor.

  I sat on cool, dusty ground, still crouched in a ball, the papers and pencil clutched in one hand. Kessler was walking away; he hadn’t even seen me.

  I looked around slowly, drawing in a breath of flat, slightly stuffy, slightly stale air. Even the desert smelled better, somehow. The sky was black, the light dim and apparently sourceless. I could barely see the flat ground around me — and nothing at all was familiar, except for Kessler’s receding figure.

  I stood up and turned in a circle. The horizon was dark; there was no sign at all of the compound. And Kessler himself was rapidly vanishing from view, his dark trousers and hair blending with the inky horizon. Only a faint gleam on his white shirt marked him out.

  As my eyes adjusted, I realized the horizon (At what distance? Impossible to guess) pulsed with a subdued red light. It made my skin actually crawl on my arms and neck, scaring me more than anything else yet in this long string of disasters.

  I ran after Kessler. At least he was familiar, and thereby seemed the lesser danger. Brown, weird hardened mud formed the road — not quite dust or ordinary dirt. As I walked I seemed to be on top of a very slight ridge, no matter how fast or slow I moved.

  This wrenching of perspective, of the ordinary rules of ground, sky, and air terrified me, and I wondered if it would get worse, like —

  Flash! I stood in a hot, crowded jungle. Ugly, poisonous-looking plants with rubbery surfaces and serrated edges loomed. The air seemed more stifling than ever.

  Then I became aware of a rhythmic noise, the rise and fall of unmelodic voices in some kind of chant.

  I struggled forward, avoiding the plants as best I could as I peered ahead for Kessler. The chant grew in intensity. Now I could hear words, but they made no sense.

  Anya miroli

  Anya mar-EYE-in!

  Whimpering in horror, I braced myself, fearing that next I’d see —

  Flash! Now the plants were gone, and the road had become a boiling, surging soup of lava. As I squelched forward, my feet sinking in hot, thick, gritty gunk, bubbles mounded up, huge and threatening, emitting hot, smelly geysers of fire high into the air.

  Far ahead was Kessler. Farther was that reddish horizon. The black sky overhead only was unchanged. There were no stars.

  What would be next? Something even more horrible?

  Flash!

  Now the road was a roiling, splorching, squeaking mass of squirming snakes, slugs, nasty formless creatures, and disembodied viscera — eyeballs and intestines and weird little things that squished beneath my feet. I stopped, crying in earnest now.

  On either side the road dropped away into the blackness of nothing. Unable to bear it any longer, I shut my eyes and screamed.

  Flash! Next was a windblown field of blade grass. My hair and skirt ruffled in the stale, warm air.

  Flash! White tiles now stretched away in an endless curving road. Each one I trod on sank, and discordant, anguished noise smote my ears. All around the tiles was blackness. Kessler was gone, his purpose here unimaginable, but somehow the insane horror of the place underscored his power — the impossibility of anyone standing against him.

  Step, step, the skull-smashing din intensified. I looked ahead at that road reaching forever ahead, and all the cumulative misery I had been suffering overwhelmed me at last. I couldn’t bear it anymore, and I threw myself off the tiles into the nothingness.

  I fell.

  And fell.

  And fell, over and over, in darkness, until my terror began to numb.

  Still I fell. Where was Kessler? Did he command this terrible place? If so, how could anyone ever defeat Kessler’s purpose —

  And I landed before a cave in a looming mountain of dark stone.

  Inside, stalagmites and stalactites glowed in smeary colors. The sound of my breathing echoed in the silent cave, like a wind soughing.

  And then I saw the Diamond.

  It was pure black, and even in that false light it glittered with promise. Without thinking of anything but escape I reached up and took it from atop the stalagmite it crowned.

  “Will you help me?” I whispered, turning it over and over on my hand, looking at its facets glitter. It was the first thing of beauty I had seen since I was taken from my home; that, and only that, had drawn me to take it.

  Flash! Another cave.

  I stood on a cliff. Cold, sour wind soughed below me.

  I turned around and retreated into the cave. Ten steps in, I heard the “poof” of a magic transfer behind me, and I whirled around to confront a two-headed person of wrenching ugliness. One head had no mouth, the other had no eyes, just grayish wrinkles where the sockets would be. Sparse gray hair, long, straggled from the heads, and so I began to think of this person as a ‘she’.

  “Hello, my dear,” cackled the head with the mouth. One or two teeth gleamed, greenish and broken, in that mouth.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “You may ask us two questions. We have to answer.” She pointed a clawed hand toward the diamond.

  “Will you give me a true answer?”

  “Do you think we would lie?”

  “Yes.”

  “We won’t. That’s one!” Her voice was high and thick. “Your second?”

  Lie or not, here I was, and still alive. And a job to do! “How can I save the world from Kessler’s Plan?”

  “I answer that only with a riddle,” she snarled. “Figure it out or not. When there is darkness outside and within, to dispel it there seems no way to begin. All appears lost but you must fight, then place your writer in the broken light.”

  I bent over, scribbling it on the paper, using my leg as a surface. My scrawl went wild, for I almost lost my balance, but I knew I’d be able to read most of it later — because I didn’t think I’d forget this nightmare, or those words.

  T
he witch cackled. “We have fulfilled our obligation. Now you can pay with your life, and stay with us as our servant forever!”

  She shrieked maniacal laughter, but made no move toward me. I backed up a step, and shoved the diamond into my skirt pocket.

  Quicker than thought I grabbed the one light magic object I had — forgotten until now — from my shirt. My medallion, made by Clair to protect me from various kinds of enchantments, gleamed with silvery light.

  I tipped the medallion, shone the light into the hag’s eyes —

  And at the cave entrance Kessler appeared. He looked surprised and angry. “Cherene! How did you get here?” He turned to the hag. “Have you spoken with her?”

  “You know we cannot tell you that.” The witch cackled just as maliciously as before.

  Again I heard that chant in the background, monotonous and sinister, as Kessler stared across the cave at me. In silence he crossed the distance, and the hag only watched, without moving or speaking.

  He took hold of my arm, gripping so hard I was afraid I’d get bruises. Then he raised his arm, made a sign with his fingers, and gray fog blitzed through my brain.

  When it cleared, I fell forward — face down onto my cot.

  I rejoiced; the smells of dry desert air were more welcome than that place. I closed my eyes in relief.

  Light flared, red-gold and threatening, through my eyelids. I knew who it was, and now I knew why.

  Instinct made me keep my eyes closed, and my body still.

  The orange light flickered for a long breath, two, three, then vanished.

  Eventually I slept.

  Of course when I woke up I was convinced that that weird magic journey had been a nightmare.

  But then I glanced at the floor. There were the papers and a pencil, lying where I had dropped them. I grabbed them — and saw nothing but blanks.

  I slid off the cot and crouched down, lifting each paper and scanning both sides. Had I caught Kessler’s insanity? Except I distinctly remembered a piece with words written then crossed out. Had I used that one to write the riddle? Had I written the riddle? Had I dreamed it all?

  I looked down at the blank papers, sighed, and flopped back onto the cot — and something dug into my hip.

  My pocket!

  I wrestled my fingers into my skirt pocket and pulled the diamond out. Here was the evidence that that journey had been real — that is, I had been transferred somewhere, though ‘real’ and ‘not real’ didn’t make much sense here. But there were two things I was pretty sure of as real: the diamond, and the fact that I had really heard that riddle and had written it down.

  So now I knew why the bed checks. Kessler didn’t want me doing exactly what I’d done, which was get mixed up in wherever he’d went. So he must have waited until I fell asleep for real, snuck back in, and took away the riddle.

  That had to mean he was counting on me thinking I’d dreamed it all.

  This was my single chance to save my chitlins. I was going to have to lie and pretend I had forgotten, or thought it all a dream — I mean, who would believe it anyway? — but hey, what was one more lie?

  I was in a sour, scared mood as I stared down at the diamond in my fingers. This thing had to be important, and I had to figure out how.

  Footsteps in the hallway beyond my door heralded someone’s appearance. I lifted the cot mattress and tucked the diamond into the folded bed sheet. Leaving the papers and pencil on the floor, I yanked open my door and marched out. The cleanup spell restored me to neatness, if not well-being.

  I kept marching right to Kessler’s office, my heart klunking just as it had in that terrible place.

  He was at his desk writing. I walked in. No one was there. That meant I’d heard someone leaving, not arriving. He slammed his pen down and gave me a long, narrow-eyed look that rammed my heartbeat up to a fast gallop.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked.

  Here it was, then.

  “No,” I said, knowing I couldn’t hide my terror. Sure enough, my voice sounded high and thin. “I came in here to get paper — I wanted to make a map. To practice. Then ... I don’t remember ... I must have fallen asleep, or something, because I had the worst nightmare I’ve ever had in my life.” I felt my knees buckle, and I plopped into a chair. “Uh, may I have breakfast? I’m so thirsty. It’s so hot — makes me sleep badly.”

  I looked away and poured out water. Then I drank it all down.

  “Yes,” Kessler said.

  When I dared to look up, he looked puzzled. “Have you any questions for me?”

  I swallowed. Was I going to get away with it? Live through another day?

  The question I wanted to ask was, What’s the quickest way out of here? Except I knew the answer to that. The execution courtyard was ready and waiting for the next show.

  “I guess I need more practice with borders before I can draw maps from memory. Do you want me to go practice?” I bleated.

  “Certainly. There’s much to be done.”

  Breakfast appeared then, thank goodness, giving me something to look at. Kessler got back to work. I ate — fast — and left as soon as I could.

  Outside his office I hesitated. He was still busy with his reports, so I slipped back down the hall to my room, got out the pencil and paper, ripped off a tiny piece on which I wrote a hasty note for the girls: I think we have help. Gotta get more info. CJ

  I tucked the note into my waistband, and slipped past Kessler’s office, peeking fearfully as I trod silently by. He was busy blabbing into his communicator thingie as he read from a piece of paper.

  Outside the air was hot — and muggy. My first breath was like a hammer to my chest. Overhead the sky was the usual scoured blue, but it was extra glary, as though more light reflected off distant clouds. Rain coming — lots of it. Dhana, at least, would be happy, I thought as I toiled down the dusty streets toward the practice courts.

  The plain, low wooden buildings, all exactly alike, made that dream-place of the night before seem more unreal than ever, just by contrast. Where was it? What was it?

  If it was somewhere on Sartorias-deles I wanted to know where so I would never accidentally land there again.

  Ten

  When I reached the practice court, a tiny, moisture-laden breeze briefly fingered my cheeks. It seemed wonderfully cool after the eternal blasting heat. Buoyed by this evidence that the world, and other weather besides dry heat, really did exist, that the compound did not comprise the universe, I started at the obstacle course and ran it twice.

  For once I was alone. That brought to mind the nearness of the Plan date, and fear, my old companion, settled nastily in the pit of my stomach. I tried to ignore it, and worked my way down the practice areas, as groups came and went. None of the girls were in the groups that went by.

  Fiercely, using all my strength, I threw knives at the people-shaped targets, pretending they were Shnit and Alsaes. Better than thinking. Worrying. So far, my brain hadn’t produced anything worthwhile but more terrible what-ifs.

  I’d just chopped Shnit’s beard into layers when a tutor arrived with a group. My heart gave me one fire-zap of joy when I saw Faline among them.

  “You’ll be expected to help in occupation duties,” the tutor explained. He was a yellow-haired guy with big ears and a bobbing Adam’s apple. I figured he was about sixteen.

  The group listened, most looking strangely blank-faced. Faline did not smile, which was so weird I almost wondered if she was someone else. But her eyes were alive, looking right at me. The others all seemed to be watching something in the air that I couldn’t see.

  “... and possibly guarding prisoners.” He went on to outline how to throw a knife as a kind of warm-up.

  I kept at my target, which was at the far end, while he divided them up and got them started on the adjacent targets. The tutor kept sidling me looks, one of his hands fiddling nervously with a practice knife. I kept my gaze forward, my face as much like a good little kiddie as I could manage,
so that the tutor would forget me.

  Finally it was Faline’s turn. She threw badly, of course. All her knives clattered against the targets and fell on the ground. Her face was almost as crimson as her hair as she tried to keep from laughing.

  I timed my throws to coincide so we walked up together to retrieve our hardware. As I walked, I palmed my note.

  When we reached the targets she gave me a look, her bright green eyes crinkled in mirth, but questioning, too. I saw the corner of a tightly folded paper in her fingers, and again my heart panged with joy. We bent, picked up each other’s knives, our hands met in trading them back — and two folded papers traded places along with the knives.

  Without speaking we both retreated to our places and went on with the sweaty business of knife-throwing. Faline’s tutor had been watching her, a slight frown on his skinny face. When she walked away from me, still without speaking, his brows went back to where they belonged. He motioned his group over and started some new instructions.

  I threw a couple more sets, peeking at them from the sides of my eyes. Faline looked bored. The rest were unnervingly attentive. The tutor seemed tense, wiping absently at his high forehead as he talked in a low, quick voice, always about the Plan.

  Tension, that was what I sensed — and it wasn’t just mine. The weather? Or the imminent Plan?

  The Plan. I groaned inwardly. Stupid as it was, that Imaran man’s idea was the only one going. Two things needed: Magic, and weapons, so he could accomplish breaking out our potential allies in the jail. But the only person who had the “freedom” to get the magic and weapons was me.

  Faline’s group was taken on to the next court, which was the staves. I threw a last set of knives, and then left the practice area, hearing the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the practice staves behind me. I walked purposefully until I found a square of shade in the lee of a supply building. No one was around, so I unfolded Faline’s note, which was already damp and limp from both our hands. Again, Gwen’s handwriting inside.