Ingrid looked down and away from the other two. She was Boreal by birth, even if her family now counted only the Sojourners as true kin. Her family was originally well-to-do and from Skysend, a skyship port far to the west. But still, she felt a sort of shared guilt with the treacherous Boreal villagers.
“I’m sorry, but this is just how it works in the Northlands. Ever since we didn’t send anyone back the first time, none of the village girls would talk to me anymore. Even my best friend of them, Mara. Then, after that first attack, they started giving mother and me evil looks whenever we went to market days. They all think you just give the Exiles what they want so they’ll leave you alone to live your life. That’s the way it is from Skysend to Lungnacht.” Ingrid let out a little sigh of mingled sorrow, hurt, and frustration.
Gwyndolyn instinctively understood, and reached out a hand to pat her friend on the arm. Litharus did not notice. Instead, he turned quickly to the tactical considerations.
“Their betrayal means our people will be wanting to get on the move as quickly as possible. We’ll need to get as far away from whatever attackers are still in the area. And, we’ll need to consider Boreals as enemies.” Litharus was already packing up and didn’t even notice Ingrid sniffling back her tears, as she shoved a few bits of leftover food into her pack.
“What’s that?” hissed Ingrid as she ducked behind a tree.
Litharus dove into hiding too, and shook his head. From behind the bush he had found, he whispered, “Don’t know, but the Standing Rock should be just over that next rise if I remember right.”
Gwyndolyn was pulling out a sling bullet and getting it ready. “I don’t like whatever that thing is. It looks like a person or a Wildman or something taking a rest against that tree.”
The children were hiding at the top of one side of a wide, shallow draw between two ridges. They had been hiking for the whole morning and were almost at their destination. Much like the rest of their hike, the thick forest canopy here only let a dim green illumination through. Across the draw, midway up the other ridge, they could barely make out the man-shaped thing at the foot of an ancient maple.
“What do we do? Go around?” asked Ingrid timidly.
“Now, we’re too close now for any detours,” responded Litharus in a low whisper. “We need to find out who or what it is. Gwynny, come with me, but stay back about ten yards. Be ready to put a sling bullet through its skull if it isn’t a Sojourner.”
Litharus drew his hunting knife and began creeping along through the undergrowth. He thought to himself, At least it’s facing away from us, I think...
Gwyndolyn dutifully followed him. Ingrid could not stand the idea of being left behind, and so she too set off through the undergrowth.
As they crept along, they all kept a careful watch on the form. It remained motionless the entire time.
When he was only twenty yards away, Litharus motioned for Gwyndolyn to come up to him. He pointed to her sling bullet and then pointed out beyond the man shaped thing to the trees.
The little aetherial got the idea quickly and hurled the bullet. She guided it as best as she could while watching it fly through the dim light. With a last second nudge, Gwyndolyn managed to make the bullet noisily shatter some old, dead branches in an oak that was in the general direction the man shape seemed to be looking.
The reclining form did not stir.
“I think…” started Ingrid.
“...they’re dead,” finished Litharus in agreement.
The children somberly climbed the rest of the way up the side of the little draw. While keeping watch on the still form, they also cast their gaze around at the trees and hillside.
Litharus was trying to be ready for anything, but he had very little experience to draw on. Tired as he was, his imagination was not much help either. So, he attempted to be prepared for what he neither knew nor could imagine.
“What is that… stuff that’s all over him?” asked Gwyndolyn in a hushed voice as they got close.
Litharus took another couple steps before hissing back, “Spider webs!”
Ingrid and Gwyndolyn both began looking around in the trees and branches now, remembering the capering spideress that Vänlig had killed in the library the night before.
Litharus crept closer and closer to what could know clearly tell was a dead body. The man beneath the webs looked old and wrinkled. Litharus was sure that he recognized him as a fellow Sojourner, but couldn’t place him. He reached out gingerly and pulled some of the cobwebs off the man’s face.
“Ingrid, do you know him? I’m sure he’s one of us,” asked Litharus.
Ingrid looked down and puzzled over the man’s features for a moment. “I think it is Bergen. But, he looks much older. Maybe it was the spider poison or something they did to him. He was one of the watchmen. He had shared a few dinners with my family. I think he’d actually been here longer than we had.”
“What should we do?” asked Gwyndolyn as she looked down at the dead man with compassion. “Can we bury him without shovels? Could we even find a spot between all the tree roots?”
Litharus reminded her, “The Standing Rock is just over the next rise. Let’s get there and maybe bring someone back here to help us bury him. Or, maybe take his body someplace else. My mom or your dad will know what to do, right Gwynny?”
Gwyndolyn looked up at Litharus with a suddenly look of dread. “What if…”
They approached the Standing Rock with fear and trepidation, uncertain what they would find. But, the little clearing around the base of the stone was empty.
“Mom?” called Litharus, risking a full voiced question.
“Dad?” squeaked Gwyndolyn quietly.
A voice did answer them, but it was not any of the ones they had expected.
CHAPTER 12 – THE LADY AND THE SPIDER
1st of Kalora, 25th Year, 30th Aion
“‘And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door,—the lady, or the spider?”
-The last line of a short story by Francisco Ricardo Villa-Ganadero included in many literary collections because it is considered ‘clever’ by academics, such as the Wordkeepers of Thoth.
The last light glinted off the dark eyes and wet backs inside the basket. The old lady hobbled around the corner of the sandstone passageway as best she could. Getting to her age was an impressive accomplishment. Getting anything done at her age was a no less impressive accomplishment. She thanked the Creator and His Son every morning she woke up and constantly throughout her long days of work when she did something she knew she could not have done without His help.
It was dark past the corner of the passageway, but she did not mind. The old lady had walked this tunnel every day for decades. Until recently, she had always carried the basket as well. But her grandson had finally gotten old enough to start helping some of the time a year ago. She had said many prayers of thanks for that development. But today, he was off with his grandfather working on a catch basin for the rainwater up one of the little canyons behind their hut. The rocks were much heavier than the basket, and they needed to move a lot more of them to get the basin built.
The old lady hummed a tune to herself as she lugged her load through the dark. Soon she broke into song. The words were a comfort to her in the familiar but lonely darkness. “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee,” rose her wavering voice, with the universal old lady warble, “Let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed.”
At that moment, some of the water from the basket splashed out onto her hip, where she had the load situated. The wriggling passengers perhaps sensed their fates. Though if they’d had a clear picture, they almost certainly would have tossed themselves out onto the rocky ground to suffocate slowly there.
The old lady continued with her song undeterred, “Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.” She knew by the number of steps that she was at the door now. It was an old wooden door with rusty nails h
olding it together. The sturdiest part was the beam that they used to bar it. She knew that if she wasn’t being frugal with her candles, the metal knob on the beam would be glinting in the light, polished by all the times she grabbed it to slide the beam up and open the door.
Setting her load down, she grabbed the iron knob and pulled the beam up out of the way. She started on the second verse as she bent to pick up her load again. “Could my tears forever flow, Could my zeal no languor know, These for sin could not atone.”
The old lady was entering a rather complicated room that was the heart of their most profitable venture on their little homestead. Though the room was pitch black, the old lady knew every part by heart. There was a horizontal, flap-like door near the top of each wall that was latched shut. There was a chute sticking out to the right and down from each flapdoor. About halfway between the two was a vertical slot with a handle sticking out of it. All of the handles were raised to the tops of their vertical slots at the moment. The old lady could see none of this, but she knew it to be true nonetheless.
She made her blind way over to the chute on the right hand wall. Once there, she pulled one of the wriggling catfish out of her pitch-coated water basket, singing the whole time, “Thou must save, and Thou alone: in my hand no price I bring, simply to Thy tree I cling.” Arthritic hands made this part of her task especially difficult for the old lady, but she had discovered ways to compensate. The catfish went down the little chute and landed with a splash somewhere inside the wall.
After a moment, there was a soft chittering sound from the wall, and then after a moment or two there was a second splash. The old lady quickly slammed down the handle in the vertical slot and then went over to the next wall. She repeated this process a second time. At the third wall, something slightly different happened, but she thought nothing of it. After the fish splashed there was chittering, but there was no pause or delay. Instead, almost immediately the second splash followed. The old lady quickly slammed the vertical handle down. A moment later, there was a strange thump inside the wall, but she just chalked it up to thrashing of the hunters or the prey. She had heard such on occasion.
Done with the careful listening, she took up her song again, “While I draw this fleeting breath.” She took her basket and dumped out the water down one of the chutes, shaking it as dry as she could. “When my eyes shall close in death,” she sang, as she opened the flap door toward the top of the wall. She stuck her hand into the space and pulled out a soft, sticky mass of spider silk that had a slightly fishy smell to it. “When I rise to worlds unknown,” she sang, as she went to the next door in the next wall. “And behold Thee on Thy throne,” and she pulled out another fishy mass of spider silk. As she got to the last flap door, she finished her song, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee.”
She lifted the door and didn’t notice anything was wrong, until she felt the burning stings pierce her forearm. The old lady cried out in pain, as she dropped her basket of spider silk. The spider in the third enclosure had not made it down to the feeding pit before the old lady had closed it. The second splash she had heard there was actually a stone that had broken away from the wall and fallen into the water. She guessed as much in her panicked and pained mind, as she drew her hand back out of the enclosure. Even though the spider inside had grown too large to come out through the flap door, since it had replaced the previous resident two years ago, the old lady didn’t know that. So, she struggled to lock the flap door’s latch before she stumbled back toward the door out of the spider pen.
Grasping for the leather strap that would let her lift the beam on the other side of the door, she noticed that her bitten arm was already cold and numb. That was not good. Depending on the bite and who was bitten, this could be survived. But as a slight old lady bitten by a full grown spider, she knew she was already on the worst side of the odds. The panic that had flooded her mind earlier was slackening as she managed to tug the beam up and swing the door open. After she had slipped out through the gap, she paused again to pull the door shut and make certain that her good hand grabbed the polished iron knob and brought the beam down correctly. The chill had spread around her extremities, and if she hadn’t heard the beam clang to, she wouldn’t have been sure she’d gotten it shut.
“Lord, please let me see Kordayo and Hayduk before,” whispered the old lady through lips that were quickly going numb. She stumbled down the passageway toward the corner.
“Or perhaps just the sun, Lord, maybe just the sun once more.”
She stumbled and fell. Struggling, she pushed herself back up to her feet. Fleeting through her mind went the thought that perhaps she was closer to the corner than she realized.
Even with her cataracts, she could see some light there in the passage. As she stumbled a few more steps, she began wondering if the poison was acting on her mind. She was sure that it was getting lighter in the passageway, but not golden sunlight.
It was a silvery white light.
The light was coming from behind her.
It was not a lack of light that made her trip and fall again. It was the fact that her legs were completely numb. The legs that had carried her through so many years were betraying her at the end. No matter how much she told them to move, they sat there, still as the stones all around her.
“Thank you, Lord. It is enough for me that I will not die in the darkness,” whispered the old lady, accepting that her body could not carry her any farther in this world.
The silver light behind her was growing brighter.
But, her eyes were growing dim.
Her words slurred in her numbing mouth.
She whispered with her last breath, “When I rise to worlds unknown...”
CHAPTER 13 - SURVIVORS
24th of Sorun, 2nd Year, 31st Aion
“There are many different views upon the disposition of a being upon death. It is certain that Exiles return as falling stars approximately a century after their bodies are destroyed or damaged too greatly to remain intact. This fact has been observed by many, many credible sources. Some claim that these Exiles have had to spend the intervening time on the edge of some celestial paradise where a creator of all the universe lives. No far-seeing techniques have ever revealed any glimpse of this ‘Heaven’ as it is called. So the claim by many that some portion of a human being who has served this seemingly mythical creator would go to this place while their physical form remains behind is truly laughable. Even more laughable is the claim that if one is not obedient to the creator, then some portion of their person goes into some sort of inferno to be punished forever. No, the evidence indicates that of all the beings in the universe, only the Exiles are eternal.”
-The Royal Academy of the Golden Spire, Our Official Positions on the Ten Questions
A thickly accented voice called out from behind the Standing Rock, “Little ones?”
Dargar stumbled out from behind the huge white rock and towards the children. One arm and one leg were each encased in supportive shells of stonework. Numerous pairs of red dots were scattered all over his bare chest and shoulders. Gruesome webs of inflamed red veins spread out from each pair of dots.
“Dargar?” gasped Litharus.
“Where is…” but Dargar could not finish before he collapsed into a heap on the wet ground beside the Standing Rock.
Just a few moments after Wyddol had left the Standing Rock in the predawn darkness to go back and look for the children, Dargar had arrived there. He had stumbled up, limping on a broken leg and holding a broken arm tight to his stomach. Otherwise, he had been doing pretty well.
“Dargar!” cried Lythia happily when she saw him emerge from the trees. “Is Litharus behind you?”
Her voice began to rise in pitch. “Where is Gwyndolyn? And Haliel? Are you injured? What happened?”
“We slay two Exiles, but Haliel was slain.” Dargar was grunting out the words through gritted teeth. Little ones should be here already. They go through tunnel before.
Then I fight spider demons. Kill many. Must lead others away. I didn’t follow children. Not want to bring spider demons to them.”
“Wait,” gasped Lythia. “The children went through the secret tunnel behind the crypt in the sanctuary?”
“Yes,” answered Dargar, confused by her reaction. “Why you sound like that bad thing? That safest way. Get far away and no one can see or get them.” He stumbled up to the Standing Rock and leaned against it.
Lythia answer anxiously, “Wyddol just went back to look for them, and he surely doesn’t know about it. There were only a few of us that did, the elders, the guard, my family. We never thought we’d actually have to use it.”
“I’ll catch up to him,” came a sure voice from the trees. Bergen, the watchman, was volunteering to chase down Wyddol. “I’ll tell him. It’s the tunnel from the sanctuary out to the defile with the stream?”
“Yes, the one we stocked that storeroom at the end of,” nodded Lythia gratefully.
Bergen answered her nod as he headed off, “He couldn’t have gotten very far, he just left.”
“Thank you Bergen, and Godspeed!” replied Lythia.
The young watchman pulled his cloak around himself and set off into the dark, drizzling forest.
“Sit down, Dargar, and I’ll try to help that arm and leg out.” Lythia was feeling better already.
Ingrid wicked the water out of some firewood. It took little effort on her part, and it would make getting a fire started much easier. Gwyndolyn held her rainshadow up over the stack of wood to keep it dry. Litharus pulled out a sheet of rock from the edge of the Standing Rock to cover Dargar and make a shelter for them.
Blessings and Trials (Exiles and Sojourners Book 1) Page 22