A Poisoned Land (Book 1: Faith, Lies and Blue Eyes)

by Craig P Roberts

  “No please! I beg of you, please!” he pleaded, grabbing her fat leg. It was as if he didn’t exist as Grietum moved onto the next thankful rat, who collapsed in ecstasy after receiving his sniff. As the rest convulsed on the floor of the throne room, Hugo scrambled up onto the dais and begged before the Bloated One, who returned to sit on her throne.

  After the others left, he still remained. An hour passed and he was now on the ground, retching, as if he had eaten a bad piece of meat. The skin around his eyes was purple and his face was pale. The throne room felt cold that night—as the desert sun went down outside—but still, Hugo sweated.

  From that moment, Baskie hated Grietum even more than he had before. At first he saw the ‘black pinch of powder’ as a reward, but now he saw it for what it really was. It was her way of controlling them. The men were addicted to it. They craved it and the only way to get the substance was to serve Grietum in anything she asked. Why doesn’t she just use it on Owin if she wants him so badly, he wondered, but was very glad she hadn’t done this to his friend.

  He became agitated; forced to stick to the same routine over and over again. Baskie craved adventure. I am the only truly free person in the Known World and I’m stuck having to sit next to this cruel beast day in and day out. On what was perhaps the tenth or eleventh night in Grietum’s Hive, he decided to try to move.

  Grietum slept on her throne, which was also the place he had to sleep. Baskie stood up when the beast was well and truly snoring. Standing in the middle of the deserted throne room, he felt a tiny bit of freedom return to his body. Looking down through the grid in the floor, he could faintly see Owin sleeping in the cell below next to the tall boy from Arland. Baskie held nine fingers up at Grietum, cursing her with all of his strength. Although there’s no such thing as curses, it does feel satisfying, you disgusting bitch. Her round belly repulsed him. He had seen women that were with child before, but there must have been a litter of them inside Grietum. A shiver would run through him every time he saw movement under her light blue skin. He lay back down as her pet and went to sleep.

  The following night he felt braver. Once the Bloated One was well and truly in slumber, he snuck out of the throne room. From when he first arrived, he remembered the hive was made up of narrow tunnels. They were all made of the same dark, sweating metal that surrounded the throne room. And they were bathed in strange, constant, dim lights that didn’t seem to use fire of any kind, and produced little heat.

  Baskie went exploring on the next two nights while the rest of the hive slept—only daring to leave Grietum’s side for half of one hour at most. He didn’t dare risk any longer in case he was caught by one of the rats, or worse, one of her deceptively strong daughters. They would slink around her throne room like common whores but had a grip as powerful as a white bear. He was sure they would be capable of breaking a man in half.

  It was like walking through the bowels of a massive monster. The whole place rumbled softly with a low hum. When he placed his ears to the rusted metal, the hum got louder and had a rhythm. As he passed close to some of the strange lights, he heard them buzzing quietly like an annoying insect. All of the heavy metal doors were locked. Behind some, there was silence. Behind others, he heard louder humming.

  On his second night exploring, he found himself standing in front of a door, which was larger than the others. It was split down the middle. He approached it.

  Clunk!

  The door began to part. His heart jumped into his throat as the metal door was pulled open from either side, accompanied by a grinding noise. But there was nobody around to have opened it. I don’t believe in magic, he told himself, as he felt his mind make up things to explain something that should not be possible.

  Tentatively, he walked through into the room, where he found a cold-looking bed and a glowing panel on the far wall. His body felt so tense that a slight sound would likely have made him jump and hit the low roof. The space glowed red. He walked towards the panel, which showed a map. The shapes looked similar to the land he had seen drawn in maps of the Known World, but there were no place names to be seen—just strange markings and a red ring drawn around the entire world. That must show the line of the Barrier…or Beverine’s Shield as Father would have called it.

  Clunk!

  His body jumped before he even knew why. The door began to close. He spun and ran, hurtling towards the door. I’m going to get chopped in half, he panicked, as the two sides ground closer together. He jumped and landed in the tunnel.

  Clunk!

  The door clamped shut behind him. Steadying his breath, he stood and listened for any rats or any of Grietum’s daughters or visitors who might have been disturbed by his leap and landing. Nothing…just the gentle humming of the hive that never seemed to stop.

  Further along the corridor, there was another door like the one that had nearly chopped him in half moments ago. He stared at it, urging himself to start heading back to the throne room before he was discovered missing. At the same time, part of him tried to persuade his legs to walk towards the mystery behind the second set of doors. In for nine, in for ten, he remembered his father always used to say. Those words pushed him on to approach the door, slowly.

  He found himself thinking more of his father’s words ever since he had learned of his death. Things he would have ignored before or dismissed, or even made fun of, meant something to him now.

  Two footfalls from the door, the two sides slid open. Baskie walked inside. There were lots of glass containers the size of wine barrels, like ones he had seen in Narscape getting loaded onto the traders’ ships. This room had the same red glow as the other one, but the glowing panels looked as if they were simply windows into other rooms. A mound of red flowers with black centers was heaped waist high in the corner. On a table in the middle of the small metal room, he saw a round white disk, almost like a plate he would use to eat supper from. Piled in a neat little hill was some of the black dust.

  Baskie looked about the room, wondering what it all meant. She must make the dust here, he thought, as he remembered stories about Green Islanders drying and grinding leaves to make puff. He had seen people puffing different things in dens in Narscape too and they looked as if they were enjoying it, but he’d seen nothing with such powerful effects as those that he had witnessed in the throne room.

  Clunk!

  The door began to close. He sprang into action, sidestepping through the gap without having to leap this time.

  The Bloated One’s sleep seemed more interrupted on the nights that followed, which meant exploring was too risky.

  The throne room was warming up as it did in early afternoon and the breeze from the main door could be felt, even though it lay down a maze of corridors and tunnels. Baskie was so used to the pattern of breeze and arrival of a guest that he could count down almost to the second when they would set foot in the throne room.

  Baskie could have jumped in the air when he saw the Skip, Wallace Ryder, swagger around the corner into the throne room. He had left weeks ago to return with King Romarus. Since that day, every guest that came to the throne room was a big disappointment when it wasn’t the Skip.

  He strutted in with boots shining and a shirt as white as the broken moon, under his smart black jacket. He came to a swaying halt in the middle of the floor.

  Grietum clapped her hands together rapidly and her voice seemed to be higher pitched than usual when she addressed him. “Ahhh have you returned with my prize?”

  Prize? Why is King Romarus her prize?

  “Not even a hello?” Wallace Ryder flung his arms up. “How was your journey through the desert, Wallace? What was the weather like? Were the dunes busy?” he spouted in a mocking voice.

  Grietum sighed, feigning a smile, and humored him, saying, “Was it a pleasant journey?”

  “No, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said dismissively, creeping towards the throne. “Now, back to business. I have King Romarus waiting outside of your…delightful h
ive.” His eyes scanned the room. “You’ve still not taken my advice and added some paintings, no?” he asked.

  Grietum tutted and rolled her eyes.

  The Skip continued, “Anyway, he is outside, so we should first release Prince Baskerville into my care while His Grace, Romarus, performs his duties, then we will be on our way. Oh, and I’ll need my four-hundred-and-fifty soms too…” He smiled.

  Baskie got up from his place at the bottom of the bed-throne, stood next to the Skip and looked back to the Bloated One. “What duties? I thought you were keeping me safe until he could come to help me.”

  The Skip slid to the side gracefully, put an arm around Baskie and jumped in before Grietum could, telling him, “Oh, she is. Our Grietum here is quite the hero. She has kept you safe and King Romarus is here to help you. He made a promise to your father.” He beamed a smile at the blue beast on her throne. “Buuuuut she wants him to fuck her…and her troop here, for three days in return!” He maintained the smile and flashed his hands as if he had just performed some kind of sorcery and expected applause.

  She had me fooled! Baskie clenched his fists and avoided looking at Grietum’s face. His eyes locked onto the Skip. “When do we leave?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  With the smile still held on his face, the Skip turned to look down at Baskie. “We can go right now…unless you want to give her a hug goodbye—”

  Baskie barged past the Skip.

  “That’s a no then.”

  Baskie spun back around, remembering about his friend who was chained up down below. “Release him too!” He pointed at the grid in the floor.

  The Skip cut in again before Grietum could even breathe. “Oh, don’t worry about him,” the Skip reassured. Baskie saw the tall man drop a tiny capsule through the grid, which slid through one of the small metal gaps. “Your friend will learn from King Romarus and then he’ll do the deed.” He whistled and pushed a finger in and out of the fist of his other hand. “And then we can all go on our merry way.” Crouching in his tight black trousers, he whispered in Baskie’s ear, “Trust me.”

  Wallace Ryder seemed clever, and clever was something Baskie trusted. It also seemed like the Skip had some kind of plan, they always do apparently. It was something his father used to say, among other things, when he tried to inspire him with wisdom. Things like, “There are some certainties in life: Death. Taxes to the Beast’s Eye. When a woman says she is fine—she is not fine. And a skip always has a plan.”

  Baskie and Wallace Ryder were escorted by five of Grietum’s rats to the main door of the hive. The massive bulks of metal, twenty footfalls high, ground and shuddered open, sliding apart like a giant version of the doors that Baskie had seen during his exploration of the hive’s interior. For the first time in what must have been weeks, Baskie felt the fresh air of the desert. What would normally seem like dry, harsh, sandy winds, almost felt like the cool, moist breezes of the Wetlands. He saw a hooded, cloaked figure standing next to one of those strange duneback creatures (that mortals in the desert use as mounts) and a tent a hundred footfalls away from the hive. They walked towards each other with the Skip leading the way. Grietum’s rats followed close behind with spears at the ready.

  “King Romarus, I have the pleasure to introduce, Prince Baskerville.” Wallace the Skip had his hands outstretched, flailing around. He always seemed to speak in an over-exaggerated manner.

  Grietum’s rats walked behind King Romarus and pointed their spears at him. He didn’t seem to be disturbed by their actions, only giving them a sideways glance as they rounded on him.

  Aren’t kings normally taller? Baskie turned on his royal etiquette that he had learned growing up, saying, “King Romarus, it is an honor to finally meet you and I—”

  Baskie was interrupted as the king threw his arms around him. Grietum’s rats shuffled in closer, startled by the sudden movement from the boy king. They didn’t act, clearly frightened in case they damaged their master’s treasured prize.

  “Thank fuck I’ve actually found you! I’ve been looking fucking everywhere,” the un-kingly king exclaimed, slapping Baskie’s back as they embraced.

  “Bit of an exaggeration,” the Skip jumped in. “But to be fair, he has come a long way.” He pulled them apart and, for a rare occasion, there was no smile on his face as he spoke to the short king. “You know what you have to do.”

  King Romarus nodded, then told Baskie, “Stay with him, he’ll look after you.” He made his way to the main entrance of the hive, ushered by the five spear-wielding men. Stopping in his tracks, the king turned and asked, “So wait, how fat is she?”

  The Skip replied by puffing out his cheeks and rubbing a pretend belly.

  The king shrugged and kept walking. He shouted, “See you tomorrow.” One of the rats prodded him with a spear which King Romarus casually swatted away, looking the man up and down as if he was a piece of shit.

  Tomorrow? I thought it was three days.

  They both watched as the great metal doors started to close. The cloaked king, flanked by guards, walked through the narrowing gap, into the dark hive. The doors clanged shut. The sound echoed over the sand and the rocky hills beyond. Then, silence.

  “So what’s the plan?” Baskie asked.

  “Why would I have a plan? A plan for what?” Wallace Ryder looked totally out of place in his formal dress wear, standing in the middle of the desert.

  “Skips always have a plan.”

  “A plan for what though?”

  Stop playing with me. “A plan to get my friend, Owin, out of there. And I don’t trust that bitch. Do you actually think she’ll let King Romarus leave after three days? And His Grace said ‘see you tomorrow’.”

  “Oh that plan!” The usual smile came across the man’s face. “You should have just said! Well, that plan is coming together piece by piece. And it’s not just your friend I plan to release. It’s every one of those blues she’s holding there. In fact, I plan to make sure this strange little arrangement she has set up, comes to an end.”

  Baskie waited for him to explain what the actual plan was, but was met with silence.

  “Come on, you’re supposed to ask, ‘so why would you do such an act of kindness, Wallace?’” He used a strange voice that was probably supposed to resemble the way Baskie spoke, but in fact sounded like a halfwit speaking.

  Baskie humored him, saying, “So why would you do—”

  The Skip interrupted, gliding forward, performing with his arms as he spoke. “Well you see, our lovely Grietum has a tendency to steal innocent blue-sighted people, so that’s one reason but the main thing is this substance that she—at one point in time—only used to control her rats. Now she seems to be making a lot of coin selling it into the kingdoms. It looks like nothing more than dust but when—”

  “—When it’s sniffed it makes people go…weird and then they begin to need it,” Baskie interrupted. “Without it, their bodies turn against them.”

  “Oh, you’re good. I like you. You’re clever. Has anybody ever told you that you’re clever?” Wallace the Skip studied him with a smile as he spoke. “Now if you’ve seen what it can do,” he went on as his smile faded, “you will know it could ruin the kingdoms. I have seen what substances like this have done to Narscape and parts of the Land of the Old Ways, as you people call it. If there is to be any kind of stability returned to the land, then we must stop this all now. And,” he continued, his smile returning, “we can feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing that we’ve freed a few innocents as well.” With a pat on Baskie’s head, he strutted to the duneback and tent. “This is Barry by the way. Say ‘Hi’, Barry.”

  The duneback didn’t give Baskie any kind of greeting…

  The Skip began building a fire and Baskie didn’t offer to help him. He lay back in the sand once the sun began to drop and the ground cooled. They didn’t speak for some time. Thoughts flew through Baskie’s mind. This was the first chance he had to process everything since their capture off the coas
t of Narscape, followed by seeing the brainwashing in Grietum’s Hive and being told about the death of his father.

  “I’m fine for help by the way, it’s no problem at all,” the Skip said sarcastically as he unloaded some firewood off the back of the foul-smelling duneback.

  “My father’s dead,” was all Baskie could reply.

  “So is mine but I’m still building a fire.”

  Was he murdered though? “What do you want me to do?” Baskie asked, while sitting up with no expression on his face.

  “Nothing, I’m finished anyway. Just needs to be lit.” From inside his black suit jacket, the Skip pulled out a shiny, metallic wand.

  “I can help. I’m good with lighting—” Baskie stopped mid-sentence as he saw a flame flick from the end of the metal stick, which Wallace held to the wood. Within a minute the fire caught and was crackling away as the sun faded below the horizon. “What is that thing?”

  “This?” He held his metal wand up to eye level as both of them sat around the fire. “I made it using oil and two pieces of flint loaded inside the shaft. It lights fires with a flick. I call it a flick activated fire lighter. Because it—”

  “—Lights fires with a flick?”

  “Clever boy.” He pointed the flick activated fire lighter at Baskie.

  “So you never actually told me the plan,” Baskie said, still feeling uneasy with Grietum’s rusted metal hive only a few hundred footfalls away from where they were camped.

  “No, that’s because I’m still putting the finishing touches to it,” the Skip told him. “But have no fear, when part of it arrives tomorrow, I will have it all worked out. I already planted part of it with your good friend, Annoying-Curly-Hair-Praising-Mother-Face.”

  “Owin! His name is Owin.”

  As the sun rose the next morning, Baskie wondered what was happening to Owin and King Romarus over in that rusted hole. The desert was getting warmer as the sun began to stretch away from the rocky hills.