Pashera hugged the wall. She opened her eyes and looked at Tol’zen. “Is there another way?”
Tol’zen shook his head. “We have to move. The sky pirates will be right after us. And if they can get those helleckers inside this big space …” he indicated the cavernous room with his spear. He didn’t finish the thought.
He tugged her hand and led her through the big broken doors onto the bridge. Pashera dragged her feet at first, but it became obvious that Tol’zen’s need to move was urgent and he wasn’t going to wait.
Through the doors, she could see a straight road surrounded on both sides by metal structures. Other structures stretched away overhead. Matching towers lined the bridge, spaced evenly along the structure.
The road seemed straight enough. Pashera tried not to think about long drop to the rushing water below. Tol’zen tugged her along, pushing her quickly to one side, through a doorway into a meshed cage that ran along the side of the bridge alongside the towers.
There was a rush of wings outside. The giant birds, which Tol’zen called helleckers, flew around the bridge, their riders shouting to each other.
Tol’zen and Pashera passed one tower. Then another. Then he came to a sudden halt. The cage was torn away here … no, it was seemingly melted. Clouds in the sky, the ravine below and the big drop to the river were very clearly visible through the gap. Pashera tried hard not to look down.
“They’ve been using this piece of the bridge as practice for their acid bombs,” Tol’zen said. “We’ll have to go around … but that means going out onto the main bridge. And they can reach us on the main bridge.”
There was a rush of wings beside them; a rider called out.
“Damn the hells!” Tol’zen was frustrated. “Now they’ll anticipate our move. There’s only one thing to do – jump the gap.”
Pashera looked across the gap in the cage that ran along the side of the bridge. It was longer than she was tall. Below she could see struts for the bridge, and beyond them, the rushing river. Her head started swimming again.
“I can’t …” she tried to tell Tol’zen. “I just can’t …”
Another rush of wings – closer this time. “We’re out of time,” he said.
And then, putting his spear aside, he picked her up. He grunted with the effort. Terror engulfed her, and she tried to find the voice for an objection. But it was too late. With a great heave, he flung her into space.
Pashera didn’t have long to panic; she hit the floor on the other side and rolled painfully to a stop. Tol’zen tossed his spear beside her, and it clattered loudly to a halt. He jumped now – crying out in pain as he did so – and he barely made it across. Pashera grabbed his hand quickly to stop him from falling backward. He regained his balance, picked up the spear and grabbed her hand, leading her along.
They came to a large tower in the middle of the bridge. It had a simple door on hinges. Tol’zen wrenched it open, pushed Pashera inside and followed her, slamming the door shut. The door sealed with a suction sound.
It was dim inside. Light came from an open stairwell that led to the second floor. The air was stale and stifling and dry despite the proximity of the river. Cursing, Tol’zen led Pashera up the stairs. The second floor was brighter, but also enclosed. One thin window looked out over the river. It was closed, and layered in dust, but light from the cloudy day shone through, illuminating objects strewn around the large open room. Various odds and ends littered this floor, but Tol’zen led the way to the third floor, limping and gasping as he did so.
Finally, on the third floor, real light came from large windows on all sides.
One of the sky pirates flew by on his giant bird. Pashera shrank against the wall. She didn’t think the sky pirate had seen them. Tol’zen cursed softly and led the way back downstairs.
There, on the second floor, Tol’zen led her to a cabinet, which he opened; it folded out into a desk. In the cabinet were more of the crystal spheres Tol’zen had used in the tower. He pointed out some stools among the debris, and Pashera grabbed them and brought them over.
Tol’zen brought out various spheres. He spun them, and they emitted soft glows; that caused Tol’zen to mutter. Some spheres he put in a group, others he put back and chose again. He muttered some more.
“Do the spheres talk to you?” Pashera asked.
“They talk to anyone who can listen,” Tol’zen said. “They’d talk to you if you were capable of opening your mind. Most lower creatures can’t.” Pashera grimaced at his words. But if Tol’zen noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“What do the spheres tell you?”
“That the bridge is damaged, but still passable, that’s good. That there is a storm coming – that’s better, that means the sky pirates will leave soon to avoid it.”
Tol’zen looked at her. His face was a drawn mask of pain and exhaustion. “I need you to make more of that tea,” he said.
“I’d need heat,” Pashera said. “There’s no fire here.”
Tol’zen indicated that she should open another cabinet, and he briefly explained the controls on it. New words for “heating element” and “cooking surface” sprang into her head once she knew what she was looking at. She found a sink and a wall spigot for water, and after she let it run for a while, it was clear. In a few minutes, she had tea brewing.
Tol’zen lurched to his feet and staggered to a bench against the wall. He collapsed on it. But he insisted on giving her more directions. She had to remember to turn the heat off, he said. Creatures would come at night that hunt by heat.
“And no light,” he said. “Light would be a beacon for them.”
“What creatures?” she asked, worried. “Night Apes?”
Tol’zen only groaned. “I need the tea,” he said finally.
Pashera soon brought him tea.
“This tastes different,” he said. “Better.”
“I added some sweetflower,” she said. “Since you hated the taste last time.”
Thunder rippled in the distance. Both of them looked up and Tol’zen nodded with satisfaction. “The storm is right on time,” he said. “It will send the sky pirates scurrying to roost. And nightfall can’t be more than an hour away.”
Tol’zen sipped at his tea. His face relaxed a bit. He nodded. “You’re very smart.” He finished his cup in one gulp.
“Smart even for an ape?” she asked, teasing.
“Smarter than many … saurians,” he said. He sipped some more tea. And then he slumped over.
Pashera removed the cup from his hand before he dropped it. She hadn’t brewed him the pain-killing kalmeren at all. Instead, she’d brewed sleep-inducing dromen.
She laid him down on the floor. Pashera expected that he’d be out for at least two hours. Probably three or four. He’d seemed exhausted, and sleep was the best cure for him.
Also, Pashera knew that if she ever was going to escape, now was the time. The bridge over the gorge was a dividing line. Instinctively she knew that escape would be much, much harder once they were over the bridge.
Her escapade with Hrothrawl hadn’t soured her on escape. Far from it. She just had to be more careful.
More thunder ripped the air. Pashera brewed genezing weed, and when it was ready, she smashed it into paste, then smeared it on Tol’zen’s shoulder. He stirred and moaned, but didn’t wake.
Pashera didn’t hate Tol’zen, not even after the coarse, even harsh way he treated her. The men of her tribe were at least as brutal to women. In her culture, it was expected that men would take what they wanted of women. That is, unless other, stronger men stopped them.
Indeed, raised in this culture, Pashera liked the forceful attention of a man. It was how women of her tribe expected a man to show serious interest. And for all his alienness, she found Tol’zen handsome, strong and brave. Even admirable.
Her own tribe held slaves – pitiful wretches indeed. And this is where Pashera came into conflict with Tol’zen. She was no one’s slave. By her tri
be’s definition of what a slave was, Pashera was absolutely sure she never wanted to be one. For her, the only choice was to regain her freedom, or die trying.
One she finished applying the healing paste to Tol’zen’s shoulder, Pashera looked around for what to take on her journey. She considered Tol’zen’s spear, but figured recovering his spear was half the reason Tol’zen had pursued her after she brained him last time. She decided to look around the bridge tower before she left.
She looked at the desk where the glowing spheres still spun in their cradles. They pulsed with energy; it was almost hypnotic. She sat down on a stool in front of the spheres. Tol’zen said the spheres would talk to anyone “capable of opening their mind.” But he also said the spheres wouldn’t talk to an ape like her.
Pashera knew how the old people of her tribe took visions from the smoke of the altar fires. She took a deep breath, exhaled, then let her mind blank. She looked at one sphere, then another.
The spheres expanded as she looked at them. As she stared at one long enough, her eyes suddenly filled with an aerial view of the bridge and the gorge next to old Tartessos. Large storm clouds loomed ominously to the East. The view continued to zoom higher, higher. Lightning flashed in storm clouds below her, while in the “real” world, she heard thunder echo in the distance. Looking at the world from a perch higher than any bird had ever flown, she gripped the sides of the desk, and finally wrenched her eyes from the grasp of the sphere.
She was back in the darkening room. More thunder rattled in the distance as twilight draped over the bridge.
Pashera gazed at another orb. The view that exploded in her mind made her gasp for breath.
She saw herself and Tol’zen as two hot bodies in the bridge tower. The tower itself was cold, but veins of heat traveled up the walls to the cabinet she was sitting at now, the other cabinet she’d made tea at, and other outlets around the tower. The view expanded and now she saw the bridge. It was cold metal infused with thin threads of heat, a lattice of inorganic material, except – EXCEPT for large heat signatures moving cautiously over the bridge.
Pashera wanted to look at those large heat-bodies more closely, but there wasn’t time. Her view expanded out to include the entire bridge. At one end, the end that came out of the huge building she and Tol’zen had run through earlier, many heat signatures whirled in their own orbits. They seemed to boil up out of a passage leading underground. Some – a few – followed the trail of the others out onto the bridge.
Her stomach gave a horrific lurch. Pashera remembered what Tol’zen said about the Night Apes using underground tunnels. She guessed that the Night Apes had found her and Tol’zen.
Her view expanded again. Now she saw the huge building itself. Inside were many small heat signatures. But there was something else – a body that could only be described as the opposite of hot. It was almost a void. This void in her overview moved slowly, resolutely, toward the carnival of heat signatures that Pashera took for the Night Apes.
Pashera concentrated. She found by focusing her thoughts, she could zoom in and out in her vision. At first, she only made herself nauseous, but with a few minutes’ work, she learned to move around in this strange world.
She zoomed back to look at the exterior of the bridge tower again. One of the heat signatures had made its way to the bridge tower, and was climbing it. A chill went up Pashera’s neck as she realized it was climbing on the other side of the wall of the room she was in.
Pashera wrenched her eyes away from the spheres again. The room was very dark now; the sun was down and the moon was not yet up. Thunder boomed again, and shook the bridge. Maybe the moon would never rise; not with this storm overhead.
A pattering sound came to her ears. The rain started, lightly at first. But within minutes, a deluge. There was another sound … a greasy, smearing sound. Her gaze jumped to the window. Was there a shape on the other side? There was!
Her heart pounded in her chest like a kettle drum. Pashera willed her terrified legs to move, and crept over to the wall right under the window. She slithered up the wall to peer at an angle through the window.
Lightning suddenly exploded in the sky. The creature at the window was a silhouette against the blinding light. But that light flash-illuminated the room, and Pashera knew that the night ape could see Tol’zen’s slumped form on the floor. The creature jerked and agitated. Maybe it shouted something as well, but all sound was lost in a blaring, cacophonous blast of thunder that shook the tower ominously and rolled on for long seconds.
Pashera knew she had no time to lose. Her hand closed over a steel rod that she could use as a club. She stood up and grabbed onto the wall, planning to use it for leverage to attack the creature through the window.
But the “wall” gave at her grasp. Her hand had landed on a lever. The window swung outward, and the night ape fell away as the glass pushed against it. The ape, surprised, clawed at the air. Then it fell away with a shriek.
Pashera looked out into the rain. The creature faded into a dot in the darkness, and was swallowed by the river below.
She quickly closed the window. Had any of the other beasts seen her knock their comrade off the wall? She rushed to the table, cleared her mind, and spun up the globe that showed the heat and life signatures around the bridge.
As her mind communed with the sphere, a dazzling bolt of lightning burst in her brain. She nearly fell on the floor, but fear drove her to recover quickly.
Obviously, the apparatus was sensitive to lightning as well. She couldn’t do this for long. As the white shock faded from her mind, she re-focused on the small heat signatures on the bridge. They were scurrying back to the building. Her consciousness skipped ahead to there, just in time to see a heat signature wink out. Then another.
It was cold void. When it touched the heat of the night apes, the heat disappeared. The hot dots swarmed around the void and out of the building, going back the way they’d come.
Another bolt of lightning burst through her brain. The bridge shook beneath her feet. Pashera ripped her mind away from the sphere. Her skull ringing, she slumped down on the floor next to Tol’zen. They were safe. The lightning had saved them.
A rough hand woke her up. Her head was groggy, as if it was stuffed with dry leaves. Her mouth felt parched. She opened her eyes in a panic to the light of a gray morning through the window, and Tol’zen, looking mystified, staring down at her.
Pashera found the water flask and quenched her thirst. Then she turned to Tol’zen, and the words tumbled out of her.
She explained what had happened the previous night. Tol’zen was angry that she’d drugged him, but she told him that he needed the rest. That part was true. She left out that she’d planned to run away. When she told him about the spheres, he seemed thunderstruck.
“What you describe requires training,” he said. “And talent! To think a mere human … no, no, no!” He shook his head in disbelief.
But she pressed on with her explanation, and he stopped objecting. When she told him how she’d opened the window and sent the night ape hurtling to his death, Tol’zen hobbled to the window – for his wounds still hurt him – and peered out.
“I can’t see any of them,” he said.
Then she explained about the void – how it had seemed to attack or at least “put out” the heated dots indicating the night apes.
Tol’zen’s face grew grim. “There’s worse than the night apes down in the tunnels,” he said. “Something followed them up to the surface. We could be next.”
He moved slowly to get his things to go.
“Wait,” Pashera told him. She insisted on brewing up some more kalmeren and genezing weed, and getting it down his throat before they set off.
It was still early morning when Tol’zen cracked open the door and peered outside. He stepped out cautiously, then indicated for Pashera to follow him. Stealthily, they padded across the bridge.
The giant birds and their riders were nowhere to be seen. The
biggest danger was huge, gaping holes in the bridge, obscured in the early morning light. Tol’zen led her in a zig-zagging path. They moved from one shadow to another, sometimes stopping in the shelter of large, half-melted shapes that dotted the bridge irregularly.
“What are these things,” Pashera asked, running her hands over the misshapen, weathered lumps.
“Old war-machines,” Tol’zen whispered. “They are no danger anymore, nor do they do anyone any good. Now, keep quiet!”
The furtive duo made their way to the other side of the bridge. Then it was a sprint to the tree line. Tol’zen grunted with the effort. He looked back at the bridge and the decrepit city of Tartessos. “That was far too dangerous,” he said. “It’s time to do something about that.”
Only much later would Pashera know what he meant.
There was a clear path through the trees. As they walked along, sometimes the ground cover was sparse enough that Pashera could see they were following a road. Tol’zen led her relentlessly up-slope. They entered a pine forest, which gave way to birch trees. Then the trees gave way to tall bushes, then to scrub.
At midday, Pashera insisted they stop. Her stomach was growling, and grove of feral fruit trees caught her eye. The fruit was yellow, incredibly juicy and sticky, the taste unlike anything she’d had in the lowland. After they ate, she took the opportunity to brew more healing tea for Tol’zen. He sipped it and sighed.
“You shouldn’t have put me to sleep last night,” he said finally. “I could have done … something. You shouldn’t have had to go through that alone.”
“You’re a terrible patient,” she said, patting his uninjured shoulder.
The rest was too brief; Tol’zen soon had them back on their feet. They climbed higher up the mountain trail. The old road became more clear and less covered by scrub. It was in fairly good shape. Finally, as the heat of the afternoon sun started to ease, they rounded a corner, coming to the high ridge that delineated the edge of the valley. Pashera gasped.
There, set in the stone of the ridge towering above them, was a face at least five stories high. Worn by the winds of time, scarred and crumbled, it was unmistakably the face of some kind of monstrous leatherback. Its mouth was yawed wide open in an eternal roar. And set back in the throat, nearly two-thirds as high as the monstrous head, was a door.
Slave in the City of Dragons (Dinosaurs and Gladiators Book 1) Page 8