A Haven in Ash

by Robert J. Crane

  I will kill you, Baraghosa.

  I will kill you.

  29

  Farther from the mountain, the air began to clear. Dense fumes still clung closely to the ground, but the wind blew and forced it to yield. It thinned, and the temperature dropped to that of a warm spring day. Jasen could see well enough to take in Alixa’s stunned expression. She had a far-away look, as though her brain had shut down. Another self-preservation mechanism, perhaps?

  Did any of them even have any left worth preserving?

  Another distant rumble shuddered the ground beneath them.

  “Is it erupting again?” Jasen asked. His voice sounded alien to his ears; croaky, as though he’d been shouting. He had, of course—but not long enough to have exhausted his vocal cords like this, surely?

  You screamed back there, he thought.

  Oh. Well, that explained it.

  Shilara pivoted. She was tense, face etched with deep, dark lines. Ash clung to her; clung to all of them. Shilara had tried to swipe it off, but had only ended up smearing it worse.

  “Blast,” she said.

  Jasen turned, expecting to see another billow pouring forth from the erupting mountain receding behind—

  What he saw was, somehow, even worse.

  The scourge streamed through the ashen mist.

  As if summoned by the terrifying, tumultuous roar of the mountain’s explosion, they’d come, a seething mass. It must be every single beast that had lingered around Terreas, waiting for the day they somehow realized they could cross the boundary by merely stepping over it. Dozens and dozens of them, all running as one, all teeth, all clawed limbs, all fury and thirst and hunger for death wrought upon their faces and in whatever wicked souls the beasts possessed.

  They ran through the woods, their black eyes seeking one thing, one target—

  The cart.

  “What do we do?” Jasen asked. “Where are we even going?”

  “To the sea,” said Shilara.

  “But it’s days away!”

  “Not the eastern coast,” Shilara answered. She whipped the reins, urging Milo to go faster—and the poor horse fought on, whinnying in pain. Scourgey, approximating a gallop alongside the cart, quickened her pace too. “We can get there by nightfall, so long as we keep our speed.”

  “And what do we do when we get there?”

  “I’ve a boat,” said Shilara.

  Jasen rounded wide eyes, switching them from the scourge pursuing them down the mountainside, to Shilara’s back. “A boat? You have a boat?”

  “Call it insurance,” said Shilara. “It’s my escape plan, should I ever need it.”

  “For how long have you been planning this?” Jasen asked.

  “Long enough. Does it matter? The scourge can’t swim, so we just sail away.” With a haunted backward look, Shilara added, “Nothing left here for us anyway.”

  Jasen followed her glance. The scourge were much too many in number for Scourgey to fight off.

  Worse—

  “I think they’re catching up.”

  Shilara cursed. “I thought they might. Bloody barrels are slowing us down.”

  “What should we do?”

  Shilara paused to think

  “Chuck them overboard.”

  Jasen began an automatic protest: “But—”

  “‘But’ nothing. The seed is worthless to us now. It might as well come in useful in buying us time and speeding our journey.”

  Jasen considered the barrels sadly. They’d come so far, endured so much, for them. He and Alixa had smeared themselves with animal guts to slip past the scourge without detection. They’d fought rivers, dodged scourge, and—

  All of it was for nothing.

  His stomach felt hollow.

  Damn it all.

  “All right,” he said wearily, rising onto unsteady feet. “How should I do this?”

  “Can she help?” Shilara asked, nodding backward to Alixa.

  Jasen knelt beside her. “Alixa?” He gently touched her shoulder.

  She didn’t move; just carried on that blank stare into the earth. Nor did she flinch when Jasen lifted a hand in front of her face, wiggling fingers just a couple of inches from her eyes.

  “She’s not going to be able to help,” said Jasen.

  “Thought not,” Shilara said tensely.

  “Will she be okay?” Jasen asked nervously. His cousin couldn’t have broken entirely, could she? She was the only family he had left in this world. If she were gone …

  “Seen it before,” Shilara answered. “Shock. People shut down.”

  “But they’re okay afterward, aren’t they?”

  “Some of them, yes.”

  Shilara tied the reins into place. “Ride on, Milo,” she instructed—and then she clambered up alongside Jasen, weaving through the barrels.

  The scourge were closer now, maybe a hundred feet back. They’d cut the separating distance dramatically.

  Well, time to address that.

  “This one,” Shilara said. She and Jasen lay atop the barrels for now, as there was barely any room to stand side by side at the rear of the cart. “This’ll clear some space.”

  “What do we …?”

  “Push the top,” said Shilara. “Won’t be easy, but between us …”

  Jasen nodded nervously. “Okay.”

  “On three. One … two … three.”

  They heaved. At first the barrel did not want to yield … but slowly, gradually, it tilted.

  When it had tilted far enough, gravity did the rest. Jasen and Shilara released their hands—and down it went, flying from the end of the cart. It slammed into the earth, rebounded, splitting from a fracture—and then collided head on with one of the scourge. A cracking sound punctuated its fall—the barrel, the scourge’s skull, perhaps both—and the beast fell away, taking another with it in the tumble.

  The rest closed ranks.

  “You’d do better to just stop chasing,” Shilara called to them. “Plenty more where that came from.”

  Over the next one went … and Jasen watched as it spun, then a second later crashed into the pursuing pack, knocking two scourge hard. It exploded in a shower of grain—pretty, almost, if bittersweet now the seed, and all their work, was entirely useless.

  With floor space open to them, Jasen and Shilara clambered down and one by one unloaded the rest. The scourge did not learn, for though their numbers dwindled they did not relent. They pulled into a tighter pattern directly behind the cart, making it all the easier to bombard them with barrels of grain.

  “Last one,” Shilara grunted. Closest to the front of the cart, it was an undertaking by itself to maneuver it into position. Between her and Jasen they just about managed though—damn, but this took it out of him; he was covered in sweat again, and heaving great, unsatisfying breaths—and, after lining it up with the remaining scourge following behind them, they let it fall.

  Jasen watched sadly as it bounced. It survived the impact though, no splitting open like the others had—

  Like the mountainside, he thought—

  And then it smashed the final pairing, sending them to the ground in a cloud of shattered wood and a hail of grain.

  It was all gone.

  His father.

  Terreas.

  And the seed they had sought to save them.

  Just three people, a horse, cart, and their faithful scourge.

  All of it had been for nothing.

  Shilara must have detected what he was thinking, because she reached up and squeezed one shoulder.

  He turned sad eyes to her. “We failed.”

  “Didn’t fail.” Her eyes were inscrutable as Jasen stared at her. This must have been the Shilara that fought in the war; grim, unyielding, no hint of drink on her breath. To the front of the cart she went, untying Milo’s reins and settling herself into place again.

  Jasen stood, one hand around the cart’s edge, holding him in place. Milo’s pace had picked up, but he wa
s flagging, and Jasen could not pretend otherwise. The fact they were plummeting down a miles-long hillside toward the eastern coast was keeping them going more than Milo was.

  Behind them, and mostly shielded by the mountain, Jasen could just make out a hint of Terreas. It was hard to pick out under all the smog, and the hellish tower of smoke filling the sky … but the glow of magma and pillar of black cloud was all too clear.

  Home was gone.

  His father was gone.

  Damn it all.

  “They’d have wanted you to survive, you know,” said Shilara from up front.

  Jasen glanced to her. She hadn’t looked about; he got a glimpse only of her back.

  She said no more. Neither did Alixa, who still stared unblinkingly into the distance.

  Jasen had no words of his own to add, no argument to give.

  And so he did the only thing he could: he returned to his usual spot at the side of the cart, leaning his back against it … and he waited.

  Though whether he was waiting to be saved, or to die, he did not know.

  30

  “What do we do once we get to the sea?”

  That question came from Alixa. It was the first she had asked—the first thing anyone at all had really said—in hours. And it was good that she was speaking again, had come to life when she had been practically shut down since the mountain exploded … but her voice was sad, and weary, and desolate.

  For a long time, they’d traveled in stunned silence. No one had found the words to say much of anything—and how would they? What exactly could any of them say at all? Terreas was gone, as were every man, woman, and child in it.

  Adem was gone.

  Jasen had gone over and over it for hours, that stark thought. His father was gone, dead, buried under ash and the magma flowing out from the mountain.

  He’d wondered what his last moments would have been like. The rumbling had been terrifying in its power from where the cart approached Terreas. The village itself lay closer to the cratered mountain, so there was no question that it would’ve been felt. Even the deepest sleeper would have been awakened by that vibration, shaking the whole world madly like a dog shook a weasel. So Adem would have known. He’d have known, for at least a few minutes, that something was happening, that his world had just changed irreparably—

  Jasen had seen fear on his father’s face just once: when his wife, Jasen’s mother, finally succumbed to the illness that had eaten away at her for so long, turning her into a ghostly replica of herself. When Adem had been told she was gone, he had looked scared, the way a little boy might, not at all like the man Jasen had always known.

  Would he have worn that expression when he woke to the world shaking so violently beneath him? Or when he realized that the mountain had exploded, side ripped in twain, as superheated rock poured out in a great explosion?

  Would he have had time to panic, to fear, as it rolled over him?

  Would he have had time to contemplate escape?

  Would he have had time to think of the son who had slipped away into the night without so much as a goodbye?

  Round and round in circles Jasen went. And he would continue to go round and round. As long as he lived, he would wonder, would think.

  He cried silently, face turned down. Alixa, opposite, sobbed too, more loudly, even though Shilara told her, as kindly as she could, to keep quiet. They had outrun the scourge, after all; it would be madness to call their attention to the little cart once more.

  But then, what did it even matter if they did? Everyone they had ever known and loved was gone, buried under molten rock, turned to ash. What was the point in living a second longer?

  Jasen clutched his mother’s pendant, tight.

  He would never let it go.

  And he would lament, always, that he had nothing of his father’s.

  That set off a fresh wave of tears. And so he cradled himself, crying, chest heaving with every wretched breath he sucked in.

  Yet eventually his tears gave out. They should have continued forever, but his body could not keep up. He was exhausted, thirsty, hungry; he had little left to give, and certainly nothing to be funneled into crying. So he fell gradually into a dull silence, staring deep into the recesses of the world, face red and eyes puffy, and heart broken.

  Shilara had pushed Milo on. What reserves he drew on, Jasen did not know, and maybe there were none; maybe he was carried forward simply by gravity as the cart rolled down the slope that led to the nearer shore, around the side of the mountain, the one Shilara where promised a boat, and salvation.

  Salvation. What point was that? Let the damned scourge get them. Let them get him. This whole thing had been his idea, going to get the seed. Now he was alone in the world, when he might have at least died with his father.

  He hadn’t said goodbye.

  Damn it. Damn it all.

  He thumbed a tear away.

  The morning transitioned to afternoon. Not once did they pause.

  They rode downhill, and there was no sign of scourge.

  Once, Jasen would have taken in this world with wide, excited eyes. They rode through rolling meadows lined unevenly with hedgerows that must have, once upon a time, been a neatly groomed line. Trees sprouted in close formations, somehow nothing like the ones in Terreas: their bark was white, mottled with dark spots, the leaves light and small. A stream cut through the landscape, and they trundled beside it for at least an hour. Willows grew along its edge, trees Jasen had seen in the lone storybook he possessed and which his mother read aloud before kissing his forehead and bidding him a goodnight, telling him that she would see him in the morning …

  Now she was gone, as was his father, and he had not one person in the world to tell about the willows, the way their boughs hung down to kiss the water’s surface. It was just the three of them in a green, patchwork blanket world that would never excite or interest Jasen again.

  And now, as afternoon turned into evening, Alixa asked her question again: “What do we do once we get to the sea?”

  “I have a boat,” said Shilara quietly.

  “And where do we take it?”

  “The land to the west. Arkaria.”

  “How do you know it’s even still there?” Alixa’s eyes were red and dry. “What if it’s overrun by scourge?”

  “It’s there,” said Shilara, steady and certain. Jasen wondered how she managed that after watching their whole world end.

  “How far?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have provisions?”

  “No.”

  “Then how will we survive on the sea?”

  Shilara pursed her lips. “We’ll fish.”

  “And water?” Alixa was dogged, not letting go. “You can’t drink saltwater. That’s what the ocean is, isn’t it? It’ll make us sick. We’ll die.”

  “Saltwater makes you thirstier,” Shilara responded wearily, but said little more.

  Quiet again.

  The cart rumbled on.

  Scourgey followed. She was nervous, Jasen could tell. Her mouth hung open, greyish tongue licking at the air. Now and again a low whine would come from her throat, like a sad dog. Alixa looked at her morosely. In better spirits, she might have comforted the scourge, or at least tried her best to. Now …

  The other scourge would be back. There was no question of it. The land was overrun, and the last bastion holding out against the creatures had been buried under a layer of glowing magma. Even now, if Jasen twisted to look back, he could still see the glow, the huge billow of smoke still pouring from the mountain’s wrecked side.

  He would not turn. Would not look. Would not see the tiny smudge where Terreas had once lain.

  He looked anyway, and his heart splintered even more. A single tear burned the corner of his eye, dribbling down his face.

  He sniffled.

  What point was there in going on?

  Scourge. They were coming.

  So?

  Around an
d around he went.

  The seconds compounded far too slowly. One minute was an age. That hours yet remained until they reached the sea was madness. How would they ever get there without the scourge happening on them again? How would they not get overrun? How would they endure a flood of the beasts? Like Terreas under the flow of magma, there was no hope. The scourge had mobilized en masse. They would bury Jasen and Alixa and Shilara, and extinguish the last living people on Luukessia.

  The land of Luukessia would be theirs.

  Let them have it, Jasen thought. There’s nothing left here for us now.

  So why didn’t he just leap off? Why did he not just run into the trees, looking for a scourge to set upon him and take the pain away?

  For this, he had no answer. All he knew was that he could not do it … and that the thought of scourge was both inviting, and frightening.

  They were coming, though. Soon, they would be back. And the cart would need to quicken, Milo dragging it faster than he ought to be able to, so they might stave off death another day.

  Jasen felt sick. So damned sick.

  The shadows lengthened.

  The sun lowered.

  Ahead, the sea beckoned.

  Just days ago, that stretch of water had been inviting.

  Was it now? Now it repulsed Jasen as well as drawing him toward it, for it offered survival, it offered escape, which he both longed to take and abhorred. There would be no sense of adventure in touching those sands, in stepping out into the water, as he had imagined a whole lifetime ago when he set out on this journey—or multiple lifetimes ago, before Baraghosa had visited, before Jasen had crossed the boundary to save Tery Malori.

  He should die here, and finish things. Not live another day.

  “Milo is slowing,” Alixa said.

  “He’s tired,” Shilara answered. “I’ve run him half to death.”

  “Will he make it to the shore?”

  Shilara’s answer was clipped: “I don’t know.”

  “But the scourge …”

  Quiet, but for the rumble of the cart down the hill.