Within

by Aaron Bunce

  The gnarl stepped back and pulled Julian between it and the creature. He desperately wanted to turn and run, to be anywhere but between the two creatures at that moment. But the white-skinned monster backed away, hissing threateningly before disappearing back into the shadows.

  The gnarl disappeared up the line as they passed over a wide bridge, the dark expanse of an impressive underground river flowing beneath them. The bubble and gurgle of water beneath him became the only discernable noise as the city grew quiet. The silence made his heart flutter.

  Julian stepped off the far side of the bridge and watched as several of the white creatures came forward in a rush. They broke off their charge at the last moment, skidding to a halt in the dust-covered ground. A massive form emerged behind them, moving like a smudge of shadow amongst the paltry glow.

  Julian wanted to look away, to jump back out of the way and hide. The creature bounded up, moving directly at him, stirring up the heavy dust and debris with its thundering steps. He felt his gaze pulled towards the beast’s bulbous eyes as it slid to a standstill, towering over him just a few sparse paces away.

  The beast reared up, towering easily twice his height. It opened its toothy maw and issued a monstrous growl. It's smaller arms reached forward, its small hands grabbing at his face. Julian’s ears filled with the sound of his pounding heart. In the next moment, the creature brought both of its larger fists down, cracking and splintering the stone.

  Julian waited for the creature to drive its fists into him and crush the life from his body. Part of him begged for it, for the end of the fear and pain. But it didn’t strike. It took a step back and dropped back down onto all fours, growling low before disappearing into the shadows.

  Julian couldn’t pull his eyes away from the shadows as they made their steady climb through the subterranean city. He feared closing his eyes even to blink, for, in that moment of blessed darkness, he feared the white beast would re-emerge.

  They passed a series of long forgotten pools and fountains, several of which were fashioned in the likeness of dwarf maidens, or enormous birds. Several of the pools held water, the dark contents bubbling and broiling nasty smelling vapors that burned his eyes and throats.

  A mass of cloaked figures emerged from the shadows as they approached the towering castle at the town’s center. Julian counted at least a score, all adorned in the same strange masks that Spider wore.

  The men encircled the long procession, pacing around them like silent sentinels. Spider and his group corralled them through a gated entrance, set within a massive stone wall. Once clear of the gate, they passed beneath a second wall, almost as large.

  The massive metal gates descended once they were clear of the wall, the screech of the metal mechanisms grating to an ear-piercing crescendo before it crashed closed. Julian felt the collar’s bite a moment later, and he toppled to the ground.

  He wriggled his body around, looking from the massive stone wall at his back to the titanic metal gates barring them in. He wasn’t sure if he felt trapped or protected from the gruesome creatures gathering just outside the gate. He looked around but stopped when he spotted someone familiar crawling his way.

  “Sky!” Julian whispered, relief welling up inside.

  Sky looked horrible. His face was pale and drawn, and his eyes looked hollow and lifeless. He crawled over several people lying between them, a pained smile on his face. Julian threw his arm over his best friend, embracing him the only way he could, but it was enough.

  “I feared you dead,” Julian said in a harsh whisper.

  “I feared the same of you. Where are we, Ama’lik? Where did they bring us?” Sky asked, shaking his head slowly.

  “Someplace very old,” Julian said, unconsciously picking at his collar.

  “Ama’lik, I don’t see a way out of this.”

  Julian nodded.

  “What do you think they are going to do with us?” a woman asked nearby, her voice shaky and weak. “I want to go home, I have two sons and a husband, they will be looking for me…they will miss me. Why don’t you do something, help us?”

  He wanted to tell her that it was going to be okay, that she would see her family again, but he knew that it would be a lie.

  “We have to get out of here, Ama’lik, fight our way out if we have to,” Sky said, lowering his voice.

  Julian scanned the massive wall and the gate again but couldn’t find the heart to respond. His friend's determination should have bolstered him, but he understood the truth of it all. They were too weak and hungry. He doubted that he could lift a sword if he could find one.

  The walls looked impossible to scale, and the gates were solid beyond compare. And if that wasn’t enough, Spider was no longer alone. They were surrounded by a host of masked men. If they couldn’t best Spider on his own, he knew they held no chance against a score of them.

  They fell silent, hoping for sudden inspiration to strike as chaos took over. Men and women, fighting with the only weapon left to them, their voices, cursed and shouted as the masked men started to drag them from the courtyard.

  The ruckus disturbed the white creatures beyond the gate. They hung from the metal bars and stuck their heads through the gaps. They answered the frightened cries of the prisoners with noisy chatter of their own, until the whole of the city was alive with noise.

  Julian looked to Sky, who wore his helplessness openly. The masked men reemerged a short while later and pulled more of them through the dark door of the tower. There was nothing more they could do now but wait for their turn.

  Chapter 38

  Dedpit Barrows

  Days passed before Henri felt himself again. The venom of the death fisher didn’t kill him, although it had a lasting and noxious effect on his body.

  Once he could stand, he resumed his search for his children. Dedpit Barrows was a strange city. The people held no allegiances, paid no gold in taxes, and were a horribly reclusive lot. Worst of all, anyone looking for it on a map would have been sorely disappointed.

  Dugan told Henri that Dedpit Barrows was given its name by its first settlers, all escaped prisoners fleeing Lord Kingsbreath’s justice.

  They named it for the deep fissure marring the ground in the center of the ancient city. The fissure, which they called the Dedpit, was easily a hundred paces long and twenty paces wide. When the first men and women shouted into the large crevice, even their voices seemed to get lost. The stones they tossed in afterward never struck bottom, leaving them to believe that the tunnel led directly to the pit of the dead.

  Henri feared the people at first, thinking them to be cutthroat criminals or killers, but he couldn’t have misjudged them more. It turned out they were wary of him too.

  Henri felt like an outcast every time he left his room. Everyone he encountered shied away, and those that couldn’t avoid him refused to acknowledge him. Henri’s frustration grew. Dugan was confident that someone in the city might know his children’s whereabouts.

  How will I ever find out if they all refuse to talk to me? Henri thought, torturing himself by the possibility.

  The thought that information about his children could be so close angered him, and it caused him to lash out. He punched the air and stomped his feet. Surely, anyone watching him thought he was mad.

  Henri calmed and walked into a stone courtyard, mumbling under his breath and dragging his feet through the ankle-high leaves. He pushed through the door and stepped into the apothecary.

  The herbalist that ran the small shop provided Henri with the tonic and salves he needed to recover from his brush with the death fisher. But she, like everyone else in town, would barely speak.

  Henri closed the door hard behind him, its thick latch rattling angrily against its catch. The woman behind the counter looked up, startled by the sudden commotion.

  “Sorry,” Henri apologized, instantly regretting his impulsiveness.

  The young woman bobbed her head, but turned and busied herself grinding herbs with a large
stone mortar and pestle.

  “Hello. Remember me?” Henri asked clumsily.

  Of course she remembers me, I was just here this morning, he thought angrily.

  “I just wondered if I might ask you a few questions. You see, I’m looking for my children…they’re lost, you see,” Henri started, but it was nothing he had not already said to her. But like before she didn’t turn or speak.

  “Please, I’m begging you…my little boy. He’s just this high,” Henri motioned with his hand down at his side, approximating Luca’s height. The woman turned sheepishly to look.

  Henri held his hand still, tears welling up in his eyes until his emotions broke free. He cradled his face in his hands and let the tears flow. So much time had passed, and for so long he had allowed his head to argue against his heart.

  He wanted to crawl back into a tavern and fall into a mug of ale, to not feel anymore. Henri wide his face on his sleeve and turned to leave, but a hand grabbed his arm and stopped him.

  “Please stop, I’ll help you if I can,” she said softly.

  Henri looked up bleary-eyed into her face, and he could see that she too was on the verge of tears.

  “My name is Clara. Here, please sit,” she said and guided Henri over to a stool.

  Henri and Clara talked for some time. Despite being half his age, Clara turned out to be quite knowledgeable, and she was just as curious about Henri and the world outside Dedpit Barrows as Henri was of her and their strange home.

  “Why won’t anyone talk to me?” Henri asked after they had talked a short time, finally working up the bravery to ask. “Is it possible that someone here has seen or knows where my children are?”

  Clara thought for a moment before answering. “The people here are solitary, suspicious, and paranoid. They don’t trust who they don’t know, don’t travel beyond the harrows, and don’t go out after dark,” Clara said.

  “But you are safe here. Your wall is high and the buildings strong. Why fear the night?” Henri asked.

  “Because they…we are afraid of the strangers.”

  Clara changed almost instantly. She became nervous, and continuously peered out the window. She also started to shiver, despite the warmth of the nearby fire.

  Henri feared that she would stop helping him, so he changed the subject. He got her talking about her family. She told him that her mother was an original settler. She was the housemaid to a lesser-known knight in Pinehall. But when she became pregnant with the man’s child he pushed her away. Unwilling to accept a bastard or support her, the knight claimed that he caught her stealing.

  Alone, scared, and with child, they threw her into the local jail. The knight, eager to see her gone from the city, bribed the magistrate, who in return sent her south with vagrants to work in the mines of Darimar. On the road south, when their guards took liberally with the wine, they slipped away. After weeks of sneaking through the hills, moving only by night, they found their new home.

  “They’re not men, the strangers…they’re something else,” Clara said, after their conversation fell into a lull.

  “We thought they were soldiers of the Council, or perhaps men seeking bounties from Lord Kingsbreath. People started to go missing. They were carried away in the night. But why would the Lord’s men sneak in and take us away, one by one? It didn’t make any sense. Then we saw one. It looked like a man from afar, but under torch light it appeared more like a beast. They only come at night, during the black, and never under a full moon. They can see in the dark, and make no noise when they move. They only take one person when they come, always one,” Clara said, wrapping Henri in her story.

  “Are they a beast, made to look like a man?” Henri asked, the hair on his arms standing on end.

  “We don’t know…our best men have never been able to kill one. They have gone out after them too, tracking them with dogs all through the night. They never find any trace of them beyond the city. It is always the same,” Clara said shaking her head.

  “What is always the same?”

  “They find the people…the ones the strangers take, eventually. They are always in the same place. Or, the parts of them they didn’t want that is,” Clara said darkly.

  “How often…how often do the strangers come?” Henri asked. He suddenly didn’t feeling so safe in Dedpit Barrow anymore.

  “Once a moon cycle, always when the moon wanes. That’s why it is best to bar your door and windows and keep your fire hot. I don’t think they like the fire,” Clara said. Henri decided then and there that he would be keeping very close to Dugan and his lot.

  “It will take time for the others to accept you. Perhaps a lot of time,” Clara said, emerging from a deep thought. “I will ask around for you and see what I can find out about your children.”

  “Graces to you,” Henri said, thanking her for her gracious offer.

  He walked back out into the cold mountain air and looked to the sky, which was already starting to darken as dusk rapidly approached. He set out through Dedpit Barrows to find Dugan, eager to ask the wily old hunter what he knew about the strangers, but also why he was just now hearing about them.

  He decided he wouldn’t give Dugan too hard a time about it, though. It wouldn’t do him any good to anger the old hunter before nighttime came. He didn’t feel like being alone once the sun went down.

  * * * *

  Henri found Dugan carrying a stringer of rabbits and one particularly large hedge rat. The strange animal looked like a cross between a beaver and a goat.

  “Good eating…especially with this winter air, this one’s already got his winter fat about him,” Dugan proclaimed proudly, hefting the strange animal aloft. “Henri, how do you feel today?”

  “Better, thank you,” Henri said, but paused as the old hunter eyed him. “And I finally found someone who would talk to me. The apothecary, she said that she would ask around for information about the kids.”

  “Ah, excellent…I spoke to some people myself, earlier, before the sun rose. I went out hunting for a death fisher, but all I found were these,” Dugan said, shaking the stringer at his side.

  “Why would you go looking for one of those things?” Henri asked, clutching to the wounds still healing on his belly.

  “It’s Dylan’s eyes. You see, there are herbal remedies to pull the death fisher’s poison from the body, but the eyes, it turns out, are a might more difficult to mend. The apothecary believes that the answer lies in the creature’s blood. But they aren’t easy to trap…” Henri drifted off.

  “And…my little ones?” Henri said, prodding the aged hunter along.

  “Uh, well not much. Someone found a couple of travelers down south. Not far from the river,” Dugan said and quickly busied himself with the stringer of animals.

  “What…why didn’t you get me? You let me sit here while you went out hunting. Are they my kids? Could they be my kids?” Henri pressed angrily.

  Dugan’s usual stoic composure seemed to waiver. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up. They didn’t sound like your young ones and, well, they’re both dead. One was dead when they found them, and the other died shortly after they brought them back. They arrived shortly before we did.”

  Henri’s skin went cold, and his stomach bunched up, “they’re dead you say? H-h-how, how did they say it happened? How d-d-did they die?”

  “Listen, Henri, I didn’t tell you because I don’t think they are your young ones. They sound too old!” Dugan replied defensively.

  “I want to see them. I need to know,” Henri said firmly.

  Dugan nodded simply and walked away. After a short stop off to drop off his kills, Dugan led Henri to a large structure in the heart of the city.

  It was one of the tallest structures despite the fact that its steeple roof had fallen away. The city’s inhabitants had lovingly restored the lower portions of the building, hanging new wooden doors and repairing the stone where it had crumbled away.

  They pushed through the doors to the large tem
ple and were immediately greeted by a towering statue of an ancient looking man. His beard reached down to the ground while his six arms stretched out invitingly.

  “J’ohaven…the eldest,” Dugan said reverently as he walked up to the pristine statue, and as he did, an equally ancient-looking man appeared from a side door.

  “Yes, yes, yes, J’ohaven the eldest, the true God,” the man said.

  “Henri this is Father Jeremiah. He keeps the temple and sees to the dead here in Dedpit Barrows,” Dugan said, introducing the stooped old man.

  “Father,” Henri nodded respectfully, “I have never seen a statue of J’ohaven. Was this here when the settlers arrived?”

  “Oh yes…I dare say the dalan were devout in faith. J’ohaven the eldest, the god of justice, wisdom, the flame of life, and creation, was the start of it all, they believed. Only after the trials of Denoril did some direct worship his way,” Father Jeremiah said smiling.

  “Father, Henri would like to see the bodies you told me about. He needs to see for himself if they are his missing children,” Dugan said diplomatically, cutting in before Father Jeremiah went any further into his dialogue.

  “I understand your pain, my son,” Father Jeremiah said, placing a reassuring hand on Henri’s arm. “If your children have left this world, I will pray that Mani guides them, and J’ohaven accepts them into his hall. The children are the honored dead after all. But I must ask. Are you sure that you want to look upon them? The body of the young man, already passed, was in a very poor condition when Rupert and Elijah found him. I only ask to save you unneeded discomfort.”

  “I appreciate your concern father, but I have to know. I hope you understand.”

  “Very well…the hall of the dead is a sacred place, please keep your voices low and do not call on the dead,” Father Jeremiah said and turned to shuffle away.