"So I have heard," Ripcat said with a rueful smile. "You seek the truth."
"Yes, truth!" The beastman banged a frustrated fist atop the trunk. "No more hiding in shadows. No more deceiving and stealing. No more lies to defend us against security officers and other thieves. I want truth, which is, when all is said and done, nothing other than simplicity. I want truth for myself at last. I want the simple life of a man with his own home in a city with civilized amenities available for those who can afford them. The simple life of truth. And this treasure could have bought me that. Could have—the two most reproachful words a person can speak."
Ripcat met his partners scowl with a cool, slant green gaze. "All this Charm will get us across the Qaf."
"No, my friend." Dogbrick pulled the rat-star gem through the skull mouth of the other deadware lock. "Those hex-gems will make our life comfortable on the other side. But this other trunk here, this is our passport through the Qaf."
He opened the second trunk and revealed two blunt-nosed rifles with chrome barrels scaled green blue from heat as if wrapped in metallic snakeskin. The black metal housings and zebrawood shoulder stocks had been chiseled and sanded to remove military insignia. Gold-jacket charge cartridges packed the trunk, and they, too, had been filed to remove identification codes.
"Firelocks," Ripcat said with cold surprise. "Only the Peers can issue these. Where did you get them?"
“Where do we get anything?" Dogbrick responded with a wry smile.
"If we encounter regal troopers in the Qaf or beyond and they find us with these, we will face summary execution," Ripcat stated flatly. "Possession of firecharms by citizens is a capital offense."
"Citizens?" Dogbrick weighted his voice sarcastically. "For there to be citizens, my dear fellow, there must be a state. And the only state I see now is chaos. The Dark Lord reigns. Do you think her Ladyship Altha and her fawning gigolo, Lord Hazar, yet rule? I am sure that the cacodemons will serve them as they did Crabhat and 100 Wheels, eh?"
The big thief tossed one of the firelocks to Ripcat, who plucked it out of the air, hefted it, and turned it curiously in his hands.
"Do you know how to use that?" Dogbrick asked.
Ripcat shook his head.
"The trigger is useless," his partner explained, "unless there's a cartridge in the breech and the charge pin is set." He flung a cartridge to his partner. “The black end is out and the contacts go into the breech like this." He fit the cartridge to the gap in the black metal housing and slapped it into place. Then he gripped the slide behind the bore and pulled it back. "This is the charge pin. Where you position this slide determines how powerful a charge the firelock will shoot. Once it's set, just aim and shoot."
He sighted on a salt dome stained with cobalt leechings and fired a yellow bolt that flashed like a ray of daylight, almost invisible against the glare of the pan until it struck its target. Like exploding crockery, the salt dome shattered and sent chunks whirling in sparkling arcs across the blue afternoon. The rale of blasted rock echoed loudly among the alkali cones and brimstone gutterways of Sky Edge.
Ripcat peered apprehensively toward the cluttered cliffs of Saxar. "Let's go, Dogbrick, before the cacodemons find their way up here."
Dogbrick emptied his firecharm caisson and packed as many gold-jacket cartridges into the treasure trunk as would fit. Others he jammed into his amulet harness. Ripcat fit several in the pouches of his cord trousers, and the rest they abandoned.
At the bottom of the caisson, Dogbrick had collected an assortment of military supplies: a combat vest, raptor hood, camouflage cloak, and utility belts outfitted with assault knives, coils of filament rope, flagons, compasses, and lenses.
They each donned a utility belt, and, with a few skillful cuts of a knife, Dogbrick fashioned from the raptor hood a cowl-hat for his partner. "I have my mane, but you will need protection from the desert rays. Even the Charm of amulets has its limits in the Qaf."
With a forsaken and ripped pallet recovered from a junk lot below, they devised a travois and mounted the treasure trunk atop it. A length of burned-out cable cut off a gutted trolley served as a tow line. Dogbrick affixed it to his harness and hauled his treasure after him, lilac dust roiling behind.
Firelock slung over his shoulder and cowl hat shading his eyes, Ripcat led the way down goat paths, through quaking heat, into the Qaf.
/ |
What a curious return, Dogbrick thought to himself as he resignedly followed Ripcat into the wasteland. Only five hundred days ago, he had found Ripcat wandering blind with heatstroke in this infernal landscape. Too often called muttwit, the blond-maned thief had entered the Qaf to explore himself and determine if he was truly a man.
He laughed silently to himself at that memory, recalling how he had railed at the gypsum reefs, demanding that the heat djinns reveal his true nature to him. How you die decides that! the sybil in the Wise Fish had recently told him, and he knew that was the truth.
Ah, but back then I was not clever enough to accept myself as I am. Man or mutt, his destiny depended entirely on how he behaved. A mere five hundred days ago he had not yet realized this. He had wanted some existential evidence of his intrinsic self, of his core identity. He never found it. Instead, he had stumbled upon Ripcat.
As though reading his partner's thoughts, Ripcat said, "Ease your mind, Brick. If you hadn't doubted yourself all those days ago, you wouldn't have been out here babbling to yourself—and I would have died then."
"Are you thanking me, or regretting I interfered?" Dogbrick asked pointedly.
"I'm not the philosopher—that’s your skill." Ripcat spoke without taking his eyes from the blighted terrain. He watched the land for sand-adders, sinkholes, and troll spoor. "I don't have the depth to regret life. You know that. You told me that. Remember? I prefer to live on the surface with my instincts."
Dogbrick laughed aloud, and his guffaw drifted slowly out into the ashen plain, vanishing with lonely diminutions among the cinder cones. "Why, Cat, those were the most words you have ever spoken to me at one time in the five hundred days we've been together." He barked a laugh again, and again the jocular sound curdled among balesome hills into echoes of wistful distance. "The circle of our union is complete. And returning to where we began inspires dread thoughts, does it not?"
Ripcat did not answer. He gauged the time to nightfall, the time when he would have to sleep again—and dream. His partner, he knew, had never slept in his life and knew of dreams only from trance inducers, such as blue beer and the wrap in the treasure trunk.
Dogbrick would watch over Ripcat's body as he slept, and the amulets in the red leather pouch would help, too. But they would need water, and he determined to find that salvation before dark.
He extracted from his pouch a seeker whose star shape encased a bauble that held pure water. Almost daily he had used this seeker to find water at Sky Edge or on the desert fringe of Everyland Park, coverts where he liked to sleep because few people visited those barren places.
The seeker guided him to a monolith of nude sandstone stratified in pastel bands. Where the seeker's cool wind entered the slab, he struck with his assault knife, chipping away the soft rock until water seeped under his blade, oozing down the contours so perfectly transparent that only the spinning grains of sand where the flow milled in the cupped stone at his knees revealed the pool.
As they topped off their flagons, Dogbrick stiffened and whispered, "Wait. Someone approaches." Peering into his niello eye charms, he identified a slim shadow adrift in the quaking heat haze of standing rocks. He had to squint to make out who it was: "Bane! It's Whipcrow. He's tracking us with a seeker."
Dogbrick climbed onto a ledge from where the factory manager could easily see him. The man, garbed as ever in ebon cloak and cowl, shouldered a formidable backpack and leaned heavily on a walking staff of amber glass tall as himself—a giant power wand.
"I cut a small lock of your hair"—Whipcrow greeted the large thief—"when we met
on the Devil's Wynd to feed my seeker in the event you dared cheat me and tried to escape."
"Is that why you shadow us?" Dogbrick asked accusingly. "You think we cheated you?"
"Oh no," the slender man acknowledged at once. "The agile Cat spoke the truth at Mirage Climb. I learned that the shriekers indeed very nearly seized him. He was most lucky to get away with two bolts of trance wrap—and his life."
"Then why are you here?"
"The Qaf is formidable," the informer admitted. "Wouldn't it be better if we travel together?"
"Nothing doing. The more there are, the easier the target for roving cacodemons," Dogbrick said, and Ripcat stepped onto the ledge beside him. "It is best for all that you go your own way, Whipcrow."
"Perhaps." His sharp chin pointed up at them. "But hear me out: I see you carry firecharms. I should not want to be in your company if you come upon a regal squad. The penalty for bearing such weapons is death, you know. Perhaps then it is best I go my own way. In fact, I am aware that Lord Hazar has defied her Ladyship the sorceress Altha, who wishes to capitulate to the Dark Lord. He leads a large company of troopers from Zul into the Qaf. I shall then seek to join up with them—and if we should perchance cross again here in the wilds, I will speak well for you. Though, as I say, the penalty for bearing firecharms is swift death."
"That is a threat, Whipcrow," Dogbrick growled.
"Is it?" The informer cocked a wispy eyebrow. "I do not intend to threaten, merely to warn. Of course, should you allow me to travel with you, I could help you to avoid encounters with regal troops."
"We have our own niello eye charms," Dogbrick said. "We can see what's around us well enough."
"Yes, but one who sees is also seen," Whipcrow countered. "Lord Hazar and his company also have niello eye charms, to be sure. But now, if you had an aviso, you could monitor their movements from a far greater distance than eye charms can see."
"You have an aviso?" Dogbrick asked, impressed.
"Of course." Whipcrow removed from a pocket of his cloak a smoke-gray crystal, which he rubbed with his thumb until a blue tongue of flame wagged at its interior.
Static resolved to small, distant voices: "...oh seven hundred. Visibility unlimited. Keep to the shadow side. We want a low-profile crossing. At the basin far side, squads oh four hundred and oh six hundred deploy north, bearing two eight one. Squads oh seven hundred and oh nine hundred, fall back to leeside of the dune massifs—"
Whipcrow silenced the aviso. "You may have unlimited use of this tool. All I ask is to travel in your company, under the protection of your firecharms. I can procure my own food and water, and I have ample Charm in this power wand for my needs as well as yours. I will keep fully charged all of your amulets. Do we have an agreement?"
Dogbrick looked to Ripcat. "Whipcrow is the answer to your concern about bearing firelocks. I would feel easier myself with his aviso handy."
Ripcat nodded. "I have no objection. But you would travel faster without us, Whipcrow. At night, I sleep."
"Sleep?" Whipcrow's swarthy face flinched. "You've plenty of Charm. Why do you sleep?"
"To dream."
Whipcrow squinted at the beastman. "Are you mad? Dreaming is a luxury ill suited for the Qaf."
"To remember, then."
The informer turned his head suspiciously, thinking, He must be mad. Who else would face shriekers for no gain? He asked, "Remember what, Cat?"
Dogbrick spoke up first, "He tells you, curious Crow, only because it seems we will be spending time together. He dreams to remember."
"Who I was before."
"Before?" Whipcrow looked inquiringly at Dogbrick, then back to Ripcat. "You mean to say, you were not always thus?"
"I don't know."
"I found him in the Qaf five hundred days ago," Dogbrick revealed. "He doesn't remember how he got here—or who he was before."
Whipcrow clasped the jut of his chin ruminatively. "If you want to remember, spry Cat, then why have you not sought out a worker of sorcery? Such a one could spell you back to what you were before this."
"Better to dream."
The dark face frowned in query.
"Don't you understand, Whipcrow?" Dogbrick squatted on the ledge to face the factory manager. "If my partner was but a whole beast that some mad magician transformed into Ripcat, then sorcery would revert him to an animal. The spell would be broken. And he would lose his humanity forever."
"Ah—so it is better for you to dream, fearing and yearning simultaneously, to snatch rags of memory out of sleep and so to piece together your former life." Whipcrow's jagged features relaxed with understanding. "And what have you seen these past five hundred nights, dreamy Cat?"
"Not enough."
Dogbrick stood impatiently. "All right, men. We must get going, especially if we're traveling only by day."
"But why must we stop at night?" Whipcrow asked. "I have plenty of Charm, Ripcat. I can power sharp-eye amulets to keep you wakeful and strong without sleep until we finish this damnable crossing. Once on the other side, you can continue your dream quest."
Dogbrick passed a hopeful look to his partner. "It is dangerous sleeping out here, you must admit."
Ripcat swung his gaze across the nitre plains to the jawbone horizon and, reading there accurately the devouring journey ahead, acceded with a reluctant nod.
"Good." Whipcrow thumped his walking staff on the desert floor. "I will bond a sharp-eye brace for you at our next water stop. Now let us be on our way."
They hiked onward together in silence, Dogbrick dragging his travois of treasure. Later that day, they crossed through a sandstone metropolis fashioned by the wind, replete with buttressed towers and majestic boulevards. At the far end, where the sandstone hardened to terra-cotta, a rill trickled, and they replenished their water. Whipcrow kept his promise and fashioned for Ripcat a neck brace of sharp-eye amulets linked with conjure-wire and clasps of hex-metal.
The thief wore the brace, and sleep did not burden him with fatigue after the calamitous fires of twilight dimmed to freezing darkness. The amulets all three wore protected them from the rigors of cold and their exertion during their steady march through the star-festered night.
Throughout the next day, Ripcat experienced no weariness whatsoever during the crossing of black glass lava beds. Neither heat nor effort overcame the Charm of the amulets. Again in the frigid night, the power wand gave him indefatigable strength.
Cold and exhaustion seemed like dimly recalled symptoms of some past illness he had endured and surpassed, and he concentrated flawlessly on finding the best footing across the chimeric nightscape under slurred starlight.
By the crackling counsel of the aviso, the three nomads avoided encounters with Lord Hazar's company. But there were other refugees of Saxar that they did meet, outfitted less ably for the Qaf. A party of factory workers lay wedged and lodged among the broken scree of a bluff. Their flesh had shrunk to leather and worn through to bone in places, eroded to rags by the sandblasting wind. They had died of exposure and thirst, having fled in a panic from Saxar with inadequate provisions. Crammed among crevices, their corpses had eluded the nocturnal tide. One of the corpses still clutched the cheap, witch-glass seeker she had attempted to use to find water. The tiny wallow they had clawed from the rock with their last strength stank of sulfur acid.
Farther on, they came upon the grisly remains of a charmwrights' party. Their bones and skulls had been scattered, caught in crannies of the arid benchland. All had been snap-broken and sucked clean of marrow by trolls. Smashed, discarded amulets and shredded backpacks alone offered evidence of their identity, for all physical individuality had been devoured save trapped remnants of their gnawed and dispersed skeletons.
The tracks of the trolls led toward slag cones and windy plateaus. The three travelers would not have chosen to go that way except that the static-chewed reports on the aviso warned them that all other directions conjoined with Lord Hazar's army. So, through the roasting day and an
other frosty night, they aimed toward the ragged horizon.
After midnight, the aviso blared with terrifying noises: "Cacodemons! ... Scatter! ... Seek cover! ... Squads disperse!" The heavy thud of calivers firing their massive charges of Charm broke up the broadcast with pulses of static. In the background, a din of rapid fire, shouts, and screams raged against the bellowing roar of cacodemons—and then, silence, abrupt and final.
Among dawn smoke, grimly climbing down the scrabbled trails of the granite tableland with the treasure trunk hauled between them, they spotted the hives of trolls under chimney rocks and ashen hills. Lord Hazar's company had followed the shorter route around the plateaus and reached this gray place of lava dust and flint fields at midnight, and it was here that the cacodemons found and slaughtered them.
Frozen in gruesome postures, hundreds of bodies left behind by the nocturnal tide lay spraddled where death had wedged them among dusty outcroppings: all were gutted, many headless, most without limbs. The stink fouled the air and rose with the day's heat.
Trolls by the score scurried about slathered in gore, cracking bones against rocks for the marrow. Dozens rolled in spilled viscera, gibbering maniacally, too stuffed to eat more yet too jubilant to depart the bounteous feast of the cacodemons' killing ground.
Whipcrow and Dogbrick turned away, horrified. Ripcat did not avert his eyes. In a lava rock coulee, he spotted a living figure among the corpses: a woman soaked with reeking blood and powdered with ash. She had been hidden beneath the dismembered and disemboweled sprawl of the newly slain. In moments, the creeping dawn light would expose her to the trolls. He could tell that she sensed this and searched wildly for another refuge, only to see in the brightening day no escape among the carnage.
To his companions' chilled amazement, Ripcat bounded down the trail, shouting to call attention to himself. Puzzled, the trolls looked up from their frenzied feeding and flared toward him. Without breaking his stride, he unshouldered his firelock and brandished it threateningly. Hooting and hissing, the trolls pulled back. The black bolts of their depthless eyes fixed hard upon him as he came pounding down the stony spill.
The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1) Page 17