by Watson Davis
The camel stopped and pursed its lips, giving Sifa a disapproving roll of its eyes. Sifa pulled the canteen from the camel’s pack and she scurried back to the cart, her quivering hand pulling back a piece of fabric to reveal Ka-bes inside, lying on a cot, a hint of breeze flowing through the gaps between the struts of the ceiling and the fabric set across them.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” Sifa shook the canteen, the last remaining swallow rattling inside. “You need to drink.”
Ka-bes opened her left eye, and rolled to her elbow, trying to force herself into a seated position, but she fell back and pressed her palms against her temples. “My head.”
Sifa held the canteen out to her. “Some water.”
Ka-bes took the canteen and poured the water into her mouth, holding the canteen straight up and shaking it, trying to extract the last dribble. She sat up the rest of the way, shaking her head. “More?”
“We’re out,” Sifa said, her voice low, afraid she’d be chastised for being wasteful. “That was the last.”
Ka-bes blinked and peered out of the opening past Sifa, saying, “The last of the water? Where are we? What’s going on?”
“After the fight—”
Ka-bes scrambled to the flap Sifa held open. Sifa backed away, giving her room to scrabble out. The woman rose to her feet and then stumbled to her left. Sifa grabbed her elbow, steadying her.
Sifa said, “After the fight, you were really tired.”
“I’m out of practice,” Ka-bes said, rising to her feet and then stumbling to her left, pressing her palms into her eyes. “I over-extended.”
“You’ve been asleep. Really, really deep asleep and snoring really, really loud.”
“I do not snore.”
“Sounded like snoring to me.”
“Ladies do not snore.” Ka-bes, her hands on the cart steadying her, lurched to the front of the cart, looking to the west, to the mountain before them. A chasm ran along and around the mountain, with a river of lava flowing down below. An ancient monastery, protected by a crenelated wall and imposing towers, peeked out of the side of the mountain. Ka-bes gaped at Sifa. “You brought us to the deserted monastery?”
“Everyone’s scared of this place,” Sifa said, shrugging. “You said if I got lost and was in trouble, you’d meet me here.”
“Our tracks!” Ka-bes whirled, lost her balance, and fell to her knees. “They’re going to be after us.”
Sifa rushed to her side, helping her back to her feet. “I rigged the fans like you did that one time.”
“Good.” Ka-bes nodded as Sifa helped her back to her feet “Good work. Smart girl. When I’m a little stronger, I’ll bring up some wind just to be sure.”
Sifa pointed toward the chasm, saying, “Can we set up by the bridge?”
“Bridge?” Ka-bes’s brow furrowed, and she squinted her eyes. “What bridge?”
“That bridge,” Sifa said, pointing once more. “The sparkly one. I don’t think I ever saw it before.”
“You’re coming into your power.” Ka-bes mumbled words and moved her hand, making a gesture like the one she’d made the night before when she’d studied the fence, with swirls of light shifting and moving around her hand. Ka-bes gasped. “I’ve never looked at that with my magesight spell. I didn’t know there was a bridge there.”
“Did I do the right thing?” Sifa asked. “Or is something spooky going to come creeping out in the darkness while we sleep and eat the goats? Spot is very worried.”
“No reason to worry.” Ka-bes chuckled and hugged Sifa. “The Empress had this place abandoned so long ago no one remembers why. Places like this have legends and superstitions grow up around them, but there’s nothing here to be afraid of.”
“Oh? Really?” Sifa licked her lips and smiled, her eyes brightening. “Then after we get the camp set up, can I cross the bridge and explore the place?”
Ka-bes’s chin fell to her chest. “No.”
Sifa twisted out of Ka-bes’s grip and spread her hands. “But you said there’s nothing to be afraid of!”
“No,” Ka-bes said, shaking her head, and glaring down at Sifa. “I meant there was nothing going to come up out of the monastery and attack us out here, but that place is ancient and unsafe. It hasn’t been cared for and the magic used to build it could give way at any time. The roof could collapse, stones could roll down from the peak and crash. There could be all manner of creatures with lairs in that place: scorpions, sandtigers, wyrms, who knows?”
“If there are scorpions in there, they could come out and get us while we sleep,” Sifa said, crossing her arms over her chest, a glare of feisty rebellion on her face. “Or the goats. We should go in there and kill them and take their poison. We could sell their poison.”
Ka-bes laughed and mussed Sifa’s hair. Sifa retreated, irked and annoyed.
“Maybe I’ve taught you too well,” Ka-bes said. “Let’s get the camp set up and some fresh water summoned. We could both use a bath.”
“But maybe we should set up camp inside where no one can see us,” Sifa said.
“No,” Ka-bes said. “We are not going into that monastery. Besides, we don’t know how to open the doors.”
“You could use your magic to lift us up over the walls,” Sifa said. “That would be fun!”
“No.”
THE HALF-MOON’S WAN light bathed the desert in silver. Sifa sat cross-legged on the top of a boulder with her shepherd’s staff in her lap. She counted her breaths with her eyes open but unfocused, concentrating on the tickle of the air passing through her nostrils, finishing up the cleansing ritual Ka-bes had taught her and forced her to perform every day.
Her mind wandered, expanded, growing more aware of Ka-bes sleeping on her cot in their yurt, of the goats dozing in their pen, of Kehseho tied to the yurt sleeping on his feet, and sensing that pain so far, far away.
She yanked her focus away from that, her heart pounding.
Ka-bes snored, a horrible ripping noise like a carpenter with a rusty saw hacking at a plank of ironwood. Sifa smiled, sure the racket would frighten off any predators and protect the herd better than she could.
Sifa slid off the boulder and Blackie’s head popped up, looking around, his ears up and alert. He hopped to his feet and trotted toward her until he reached the end of his rope and it yanked him back. Frazzle’s head popped up. They both bleated.
“Shh,” Sifa said, putting a finger to her lips and motioning with her staff for them to keep quiet.
Sifa crouched and tip-toed away from the yurt, taking several steps and listening to the ebb and flow of Ka-bes’s breathing before realizing how stupid she looked and how there was no need to tiptoe. Still crouching, she jogged across the sand, her heart hammering, a grin spreading on her face.
Near the bridge, the ground rose and then fell away into nothingness—a surprise even though she’d known it was coming—to reveal the gaping chasm. The lava far below glowed red and orange and clouds of steam rose from it.
The translucent bridge twinkled with fluttering lights, lights beckoning her forward. They had never camped on this side and Ka-bes had never allowed her to come this close to the chasm before. A spider’s web of the clearest crystal woven from solid air, the bridge stretched across to the monastery’s outer wall, ending there against stone blocks where the gate should have been.
Peering through the bridge at the bubbling lava below, she swallowed, knelt, and reached out with her staff, tapping the bridge, verifying it was there, that it was sturdy and hard. She leaned onto it to convince herself it would hold her weight. She stood and placed one hand on the half-wall along the side of the bridge, setting her foot on the bridge, shifting her weight to it. She sighed in relief when it held.
Her breathing ragged, her heart thundering in her ears, she crept across the bridge, tapping the road before her with her staff. Her left hand hovered over the railing, touching it from time to time. The bridge stopped at a solid wall—no gate, no doors, no entry. Mag
ic flowed through the wall, channels of glowing force in the stone and yet not part of it.
She looked up at this hulking stone edifice with towers and parapets rising into the night sky and she sighed, her shoulders sagging. She peeked back the way she’d come, across the glittering bridge to their yurt on the other side of the chasm. The edges of the yurt shone silver in the moonlight against the darkness of the desert night beyond with hints of bushes and clumps of grasses.
A cricket chirruped. Blackie, Frazzle, and Ashface sat at the end of their lines, staring at her. The horrid ratcheting noise thundered from the yurt—Ka-bes snoring away. Not the great adventure for which Sifa had hoped.
Setting her staff against the wall, Sifa crossed her arms over her chest, pursing her lips, and returned her attention to the blank wall, glaring at the threads and clusters of magical energy flowing through and along the stone like the text of a language she couldn’t read. She raised her hand and paused, remembering the explosion at Thyu’fest’s fence when Meany-Head had butted the fencepost. Flicking her fingertips out, she tapped the stone and jerked back, recoiling and squeezing her eyes shut, bracing herself, preparing for an explosion that never came.
She exhaled and relaxed, relieved to be unhurt. With her left hand clutching the warm jewel on her necklace, she stretched her right hand out once more, resting her fingers on the stone, then pushed. It refused to budge, but the magic flowed across her fingertips with a light touch, an almost imperceptible tickle that grew stronger the more she concentrated.
She moved her hand, brushing through the magic, the strands bending and re-orienting around her, at places pleasant like rivulets of rain, and at others painful, pricking at her like thorns. Several filaments intersected at one point.
She concentrated on that point, tapping on it, then another and another as they popped up. She squeezed her fist over one node that wanted to be squeezed. The flows stopped, swelling up around her hand but not flowing through. Pressure built against her hand, growing more and more insistent.
The stone moved beneath her hand, sliding to the side, seeming to contract, to blend with the stones already there as a crack appeared between two blocks where not even a seam had shown before.
Sifa yanked her hand away and backed up onto the bridge. The flow reappeared, the magical thread winding across the face of the stone. The crack disappeared, the blocks grinding back together. Sifa looked down at her hand, flexing her fingers, clenching her fist, and she giggled.
She darted back and re-set her hand, tapping out the same pattern and then closing her hand into a fist, shutting off the flow of the magic. The crack widened once more, the blocks sliding apart. The pressure grew greater, the pain getting worse, until her hand felt as though it were burning like the lava below her. Sweat beaded up on her forehead and trickled down her face. Hoping the crack was wide enough, she removed her hand and sprinted into the corridor leading through the thick wall of the monastery.
SIFA CLASPED HER HANDS on her chest, wrapping her fingers around the warm gemstone like a protective talisman, and tiptoed into the ruins of the ancient village, stepping over bones—most of them human, but some large like orcs, and even the serpentine head and spine of a wyrm. Old trees, long untended, lined the edge of the plaza, their roots cracking the walls of the buildings, lifting the paver stones of the street and revealing rich black dirt below. Clumps of vines stretched across from tree to tree in the air and along the pavement.
Obsidian arrowheads and rusted steel axe blades with naked tangs where the wood and leather handles had once been lay among those vines, near the hands of the skeletons or embedded into the bone.
Sifa skirted this, choosing each placement of her foot, picking her way through the debris. She stepped around a charred spot with a blackened skeleton at its heart.
Five worn faces, cut into the mountain itself, glared over the roofs of the nearest buildings. She crept toward those faces, choosing a path between the trees and long-abandoned buildings, pulling an orange from a branch as she passed. A cool breeze swirled through the leaves of the trees, rustling them, and she tossed the orange up and caught it as she walked.
On the ground, a bit of gold flashed in the moonlight. Sifa bent and picked at the gold with her fingers, unearthing a golden bangle with a slight twinkle of magic. She held it up, studying it in the dim light. She brushed the dirt from it, picking off strips of what could once have been flesh, and she slid the bangle onto her wrist, holding her arm out to admire it.
Now happy, she picked up her pace, hurrying through a cramped alley that opened onto a long street. Columns topped with arches held up tiled roofs and lined each side of the street. Here and there a column had toppled. One had been sliced through cleanly, spilling the arches and sections of roofs into the street.
Before her at the end of the street, those stone faces waited. Beneath them, row after row of fat columns reinforced by magic supported the weight of the mountain, the underside a coffered ceiling, the columns painted with mystical symbols and portraits of gods and kings she didn’t recognize, the ceiling carved with faces of demons and devils looking down and snarling.
Alcoves filled with statues covered the wall along the far side, but at one point the wall gaped open with light shining out. Sifa approached the light, stepping around the bones of a mighty dragon, staring at its cracked skull as she passed. Her foot hit a piece of plate mail armor and the metal clattered away from her foot, glittering with traces of magic.
Sifa stopped, held her breath, and listened, afraid she had alerted something, everything, to her presence. But nothing stirred. A dagger by a column glittered with magic, a beautiful knife unlike anything Sifa had ever seen, so she took her own knife out and replaced it with this new blade. Careful to bypass the rest of the pieces of armor, she approached the door and peered inside, her eyes narrowing in the brightness of the light.
Small metal cages hung from the ceiling with magelights twinkling within them. Leaves littered the stone floor, twirling in the wind, swirling through the door and tugging at her hair. A once-beautiful mosaic on the floor had faded, ravaged by the elements and smudged with ancient blood and the excrement of wild animals. Her nose wrinkled from the musky stench.
Sifa slipped her new knife into her hand. The jewel around her neck brightened and faded, and her wrist tingled where the bangle touched her.
Of the three doors leading out of the entry, one had no blood or other smut before it, but also had no lighting. Sifa tiptoed through that door. She sidled down a darkened hall, unable to make out the shapes painted on the walls in the darkness, and entered a grand chamber. A few magelights floating free around along the ceiling sputtered to life.
Red velvet fabric hung from the walls, now tattered, hanging in strips, shredded in places by the slashes of claws that had ripped it and pulled the top of the fabric loose from its attachment to the walls, revealing the black stone behind it and moisture beading up on that black rock. Black streaks darkened the velvet which must have been luxurious at one time.
Two delicate tables each with two fragile chairs sat in the room, the chairs positioned as though someone had just left, but a fine black dust covered the cushions of the chairs and the top of the table. Sifa brushed the dust off the cushions, finding a vibrant red fabric with golden stitching. She smiled and nodded, tallying how much they could sell these for in one of the border towns.
Pleased with this discovery, sure it would thrill Ka-bes, Sifa strutted through a door into the next room, a large room with fading, flickering magelights trapped in golden cages hanging from a golden domed ceiling. Sifa’s mouth fell open, her hands dropping limp to her sides, her new knife dropping to the carpeted floor. Her mind tried to calculate how much gold adorned the walls and the ceiling, but her brain froze, unable to calculate that high.
Her gaze dropped and she stood there staring for several heartbeats until her befuddled mind realized she was in a library, with rows and rows of books, more books than she coul
d count.
I can replace the books that Thyu’fest stole!
She skipped up to the closest shelf, but pulled her hand back. The books shimmered with magic, magic still strong and potent. Sifa squinted, studying the script on the spine of a book, and then the next, contemplating the front and back covers of books lying on their sides. The spidery script made no sense, the fluid symbols unknown to her and unlike any she’d ever seen.
Maybe Ka-bes can read this. Her fingertips brushed the spine of one book. The magic prickled against her skin like a bush of nettles, like the thorns of a rose. She jerked her hand back and studied both sides of it, verifying she wasn’t cut. She moved down the aisle, looking at book after book, until she saw one that looked friendly. When she touched the book’s spine, it felt warm to the touch, pleasant. Maybe this one is about heroes and great glorious deeds!
Sifa slid the book out and opened it. The pages fluttered as though flicked by an unseen hand until coming to the right page, the page the unseen hand had searched for.
“Oh.” Sifa frowned, studying the spidery script on that page, twisting her head around, trying different angles. “I can’t read this.”
The stone in her necklace flared to life, lighting up and blinding her, the heat of it burning her chest but quickly cooling. The lines on the page shifted around into words she could read, the words flowing across the page saying, “Who is there? Gal-nya?”
Sifa blinked and held her breath.
“I don’t know you but I know you’re reading my book,” the writing said, shifting into new words as soon as she read the last sentence. “I want to be your friend. Ask me a question, and I will tell you truth.”
“WHO ARE YOU?” SIFA whispered, one trembling hand on the jewel around her neck, the other holding the book.
The ink shifted on the page. “I am your new best friend.”
Sifa touched the page, brushing the strange paper and the black ink. The ink moved, swirling around her fingertips, displaced by their movement. She yanked her hand back. “How does the ink do that?”