The Chronicles of Trellah, Book One: The Perpetual Rain

by T. S. Graham

  “Follow me,” Talfore urged. “And step carefully, for the necrahs are also below the surface, waiting to take you if you slip through.”

  Mrs. Tanner took Sophina’s hand and led her onto the carpet of roots. Wings that had been placid flapped before Sophina’s eyes as she glanced ahead to find that the sparkling waters of the lake were a hundred or more yards away. She wanted to sprint for it, but knew that doing so would surely result in a fall.

  “You have such pretty hair . . . come closer so I can touch it.”

  Sophina saw the gaunt hand of the woman in the red bonnet reach to the very edge of the murk. Her voice was abrasive, as if speaking through a trachea that was clogged with parched earth.

  “I won’t hurt you . . . I promise.”

  Sophina fixed her eyes on the trail. A new shadow-line had begun to creep onto the pathway, making their already-constricted quarters feel like a tightrope of light. All the while a formless mass of entities floated through the branches beside her. They spoke in benevolent voices, imploring her to listen, to come just one step closer.

  “Poor child, you look so scared . . . I’ll protect you.”

  “You’ll be safe in here with me, forever.”

  “Take my hand and you’ll never feel pain again.”

  “Help me, Sophina.”

  The last voice jarred Sophina. The sound of it was familiar, so much so that it caused her to throw an involuntary glance into the thicket.

  There, gliding through the deadwood, was her science teacher, Mrs. Emerson. She looked like she always had except for the deep, bloodless gash on her forehead—the spot where the elm branch had struck.

  “It hurts,” Mrs. Emerson said, touching the wound. “But you can stop the pain if you take my hand . . . You can trust me. I’m nothing like these monsters.”

  Sophina’s head throbbed. Mrs. Emerson being here could mean only one thing: She hadn’t survived the accident.

  “Your mom got hurt while she was out looking for you,” gushed Mrs. Emerson with a swell of compassion. “Come with me—or you’ll never see her again.”

  “Sophina—don’t listen to her!”

  But it was too late. Sophina’s eyes locked onto Mrs. Emerson, and her foot slipped through a gap in the roots and sank into the water below.

  Mrs. Tanner locked her arms around Sophina’s waist and tugged, but other hands pulled back—hands that penetrated the flesh and bones of her leg like frozen knives. She kicked at the horrors hidden below, screaming in agony as the shadow-line—and Mrs. Emerson—crept ever closer.

  “Foolish girl,” hissed Mrs. Emerson as her skin began to blacken and peel from her face. “Soon you’ll understand . . .”

  Then, all at once, the unseen hands slipped through Sophina’s leg—and she flew upwards and landed on her feet.

  “Run!” Mrs. Tanner screamed.

  They hurdled toward the lake as countless fiends closed in on both sides, poised to attack if any part of them crossed the threshold of darkness. Somewhere in their midst, Mrs. Emerson screamed in a shrill voice: “I saved Erickson’s life—and you thank me by leaving me here alone to suffer?”

  Sophina felt their rancid breaths on her cheeks and heard the whoosh of their ethereal bodies as they passed straight through the undergrowth. She timed each stride to avoid the holes in the lattice of roots, knowing that there was no time for Mrs. Tanner to free her again. Just a few seconds more and they’d be safe on the sun-drenched shore of the—

  A branch shot out of the scrub and snagged Sophina’s foot, sending her face-first onto the rutted ground. She reached up for Mrs. Tanner, but a calloused hand sank into her shoulder and dragged her into the swamp. Sophina dug her fingers into the saturated ground, bringing herself to a stop amid a horde of festering corpses. They all jumped back as a triumphant shriek echoed through the trees, and Mrs. Emerson, now looking like she had died weeks ago, bore down on her from above.

  “You’re going to feel what it’s like to be dead, Sophina Murray,” she gurgled. “Just . . . like . . . me.”

  Mrs. Emerson’s skin fell off in noxious flakes as she reached for Sophina, who could only close her eyes and wait for death to come.

  “She’s mine!”

  Sophina opened her eyes as the skeletal remains of a man dressed in a suit jacket shoved Mrs. Emerson aside. But Mrs. Emerson counterattacked with a vengeance. She hissed through bared teeth as they thrashed about, each trying to keep the other from claiming the prize.

  Sophina yelped as a new hand plunged into her back, but yet another animated carcass attacked the brute that had just grabbed her. In an instant she was encircled by a macabre pack of undead, all tearing at each other, vying to be the one to sink their emaciated hands into the spoils.

  Then, through the clamor, she heard Mrs. Tanner scream: “Jump!”

  Sophina looked up to find a small opening in the branches overhead. Her legs fired like pistons and she exploded out of the hostile mob. She landed upright on a branch halfway up the canopy, where she saw the brilliant world that lay beyond the nearby tree line.

  Her assailants were closing in fast, flying straight up in a wall of outstretched hands, trailing ribbons of clothing behind them.

  Sophina leapt toward the light as untold fingers sliced through her boots, spinning her out of control. Her senses reeled as she twirled through the air, catching flashes of her determined enemies as they drew near.

  With a painless jolt she hit the ground and tumbled down a slope of warm gravel. When the world stopped spinning, she found herself sprawled out on the shore of the lake. She felt the sun on her face and knew that she was safe.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” said Mrs. Tanner as she pulled Sophina into her arms.

  “It was Mrs. Emerson!” Sophina blurted. “She died after the tree branch hit her. I thought she had but my mom wouldn’t tell me!”

  “Sophina, I’m so sorry.”

  “She told me that my mom was hurt!”

  “That doesn’t mean she is,” assured Mrs. Tanner, stepping back to look Sophina in the eye. “I told you, a necrah will say anything to get your attention.”

  Sophina faced the dark coppice where Mrs. Emerson and the rest of the wretched souls prowled back and forth like hungry predators—predators that got to nibble on a slab of meat before it was ripped from their jaws.

  “That’s not the Mrs. Emerson you knew,” said Mrs. Tanner sadly. “When she died she forgot who she was—and everything that she stood for.”

  “But why? Why did she become a necrah?” Sophina cried. “She was a good person!”

  “She was a good person,” agreed Mrs. Tanner. “But that’s not always enough. Sometimes the circumstances of one’s death can cause their soul to become confused and angry. Once that happens, it’s very difficult for them to find their way.”

  “I have to talk to her!” Sophina muttered, stumbling back toward the deadwood bog. She marched up to the shadow-line and stood tall before Mrs. Emerson, their faces not a foot apart.

  “Why do you want to hurt me?” she asked indignantly.

  Mrs. Emerson’s flesh continued to degrade as her lips formed a venomous smile.

  “Why?” Sophina demanded again.

  “Stupid child,” said Mrs. Emerson in a voice that now bore little resemblance to her own. “You still don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  Mrs. Emerson’s smile stretched wider. “You’ll suffer for what you’ve done,” she growled as she sank back through the branches. “You will suffer.”

  “What did I do?” Sophina yelled after her. “Tell me!”

  But Mrs. Emerson was gone. The rest of the mindless horde melted back into the murk as Sophina turned to Mrs. Tanner.

  “What did I do?” she asked in frustration.

  “Nothing,” replied Mrs. Tanner. “A necrah can’t be reasoned with. They’re blinded by forces even they don’t understand.”

  Mrs. Tanner led Sophina to the water’s edge where Talfore and Jant
u had dug their hands into the pebble substrate below the surface. Given what had happened on the river, she was surprised to see them doing this with their backs turned to open water.

  “Is the water safe?” she asked.

  “There is nothing here to eat us,” replied Jantu, as Tahra slid down his leg and lapped at the water. “It is too shallow for the great predators to swim in.”

  “That’s refreshing,” Sophina muttered as Talfore pulled two elliptical stones out of the gravel.

  “What are those?” she asked, trying to put what had just happened behind her.

  Talfore handed the stones to Sophina. They were smooth and light as a feather, with sparkling green veins dispersed throughout.

  “They are firestones. You strike them together, like this,” explained Talfore, pretending to chafe two stones together with his hands. “But only if you turn your back on those you consider friends.”

  Sophina recognized the name. Mrs. Tanner had mentioned firestones when telling the Elders how the water within Mount Vahkar could be freed. But could something so small blast through solid rock? She supposed there was only one way to find out, so she turned her back to the others and struck one stone across the other.

  Sophina recoiled as a streak of white-hot flames shot from the stones and impacted the lake’s surface in an eruption of spray and steam.

  Talfore chuckled as he retrieved the stones, which Sophina didn’t realize she had dropped. They looked no different than they had before combining to become a miniature flamethrower, save for a shallow gouge in each stone where the contact had been made.

  “Firestones are thousands of times more combustible than flint,” said Mrs. Tanner with palpable excitement. “It’ll be more than enough to blast through the ledge.”

  Talfore removed a plain gray rock from his cloak and struck it upon a firestone. The impact generated no spark at all.

  “Only a fire-on-fire strike generates an explosion,” Mrs. Tanner explained as Talfore chipped away at the firestone, which he quickly fashioned into an arrowhead. “Firestones are forbidden in the city for obvious reasons,” she continued. “Protectors can use them, but only when they’ve ventured beyond the Forest of the Dead.”

  Sophina understood why firestones were banned from the city. If a child got hold of them, the whole place would burn for sure. But couldn’t Talfore have bent the rules just a little and had some on hand when they’d entered the swamp? She was certain flames of that magnitude would’ve sent the necrahs scurrying for cover.

  “Talfore, why don’t the people of Trellah burn the forest?” Sophina asked. “Wouldn’t that force the necrahs to leave?”

  Talfore looked at her with intelligent eyes. “Our forefathers set fire to this forest and exposed the swamps to the sun,” he replied. “A swarm of tey-teys then rose up from the waters, bringing sickness and death to Trellah. These trees are here for a reason. We will not interfere again.”

  He smoothed the edges of the arrowhead, then took a spool of twine from his cloak and lashed it to the tip of the arrow that Sophina had noticed, along with the bow, back in the spiral corridor.

  “We’ll find a crack in the ledge and pack it with firestones,” Mrs. Tanner explained as each man dropped several wet stones into separate pockets within their cloaks. “Then, Talfore will shoot the arrow into them.”

  Sophina was admiring Talfore’s creation when a loud roar echoed across the lake, drawing their attention toward the western ridge of Mount Vahkar.

  “A grahdor!” barked Talfore. “Quickly, we cannot be seen!”

  They followed Talfore to a nearby outcropping of weed-encrusted driftwood. They crouched behind it as Sophina peeked through the tiny breaks in the vegetation, searching for the source of the cry.

  Across the water, halfway down the monstrous cliff, a pure white flying creature spiraled down through the mist of the waterfall. It tucked into a nosedive, plummeting down what remained of the vertical before it spread its scalloped wings and skimmed across the surface of the lake. Strapped to its massive back was a basket saddle the size of a small car, at the front of which stood a cloaked figure with clawed, reptilian hands. Sophina knew what the rider was, for she had seen a vrahkole before.

  “Did it see us?” she asked.

  “Vrahkoles do not see well,” Talfore whispered, “but their hearing is powerful. We must be silent.”

  Talfore gripped his weapon as the grahdor beat its expansive wings, sending forth a blast of air that tousled the driftwood reeds as it landed. It folded its wings tight to its woolly body as the vrahkole scanned the shoreline from the shadow of its cloak hood. In one violent motion the vrahkole cast its cloak aside and leapt to the ground, landing on all fours like a giant cat poised to strike. The sunlight revealed every horrific detail of its body.

  A tuft of black hair hung from the back of its elongated head, but that was its only mammalian feature; the rest was pure reptile. A row of bony spikes ran from the top of its back to the tip of its tail, which was just long enough to touch the ground. Its broad belly scales overlapped like those of an armadillo’s flexible shell, allowing them to shrink and expand as it breathed, and spines that resembled daggers jutted from its elbows and knees, making each appendage a weapon in its own right.

  But this vrahkole’s most pronounced feature was a deep, partially healed wound that ran from just below its left eye back to its flap-protected ear hole. Whoever—or, more likely, whatever—had inflicted that injury must have been formidable indeed.

  Just when Sophina was sure the vrahkole would charge, it turned and dove into the lake. It surfaced seconds later, gripping two eel-fish in its claws. The peculiar fishes had two stick legs protruding from their upper abdomens, and bluish gills that branched out like clumps of moss behind their bulging red eyes. She imagined that those legs, combined with their ultra-long tails, would form a tripod that held their gills above the muck at the bottom of the lake.

  The vrahkole tossed the tripod fish into the saddle and dove back into the water.

  “This is a good sign,” Talfore whispered. “The vrahkoles do not eat kotnavs, but they are known to be the closest thing we have to the food of your world.”

  Sophina’s heart lightened as the vrahkole emerged with more kotnavs skewered on its claws. What seemed like an ominous turn of events had provided the first tangible evidence that Eliot and the other children were indeed still alive. After all, why would the vrahkoles gather food for captives that they planned to kill or let die anytime soon?

  The vrahkole tossed its catch into the basket and threw the Protector’s cloak back over its bulging shoulders. As it crouched to leap onto the grahdor’s back, Sophina heard something snap beneath her foot. She had shifted her weight ever so slightly to improve her view, but it was enough to splinter a twig buried in the sand.

  The vrahkole spun to face the driftwood with nostrils flaring. It then charged on all fours, trailing strings of glistening saliva from its razor-sharp teeth.

  Sophina stumbled back as Talfore and Jantu planted the blunt ends of their staffs into the sand. They raised the sharpened tips just as the vrahkole tore through the jetsam with the force of a raging bull.

  A ghastly bellow rang out as the vrahkole slammed belly-first into the spears. The force of the impact catapulted the loathsome beast over Sophina’s head and onto a sand dune at the edge of the bog forest.

  To Sophina’s astonishment the vrahkole rose in an instant, fully erect on two legs, and gave a malicious snarl. Two shallow dents in its abdomen were the only evidence that it had taken a direct hit.

  Talfore and Jantu twirled their weapons overhead as they charged their towering enemy. The vrahkole evaded their jabs with shocking agility and swiped at Talfore with sickle-shaped claws, missing him by a hair. The father-and-son team counterattacked with the precision of master martial artists, stabbing in unison at the beast’s legs and eyes.

  They were quick, but the vrahkole was quicker. It dodged each strike and lashed ba
ck with brute force. It snagged Talfore’s cloak and cast him aside as Sophina felt herself being pulled back against what remained of the driftwood.

  “Stay here,” Mrs. Tanner said in a tone that glued Sophina’s feet in place. The older woman then walked toward the vrahkole as it circled Jantu. The beast didn’t notice her coming; it was too busy gauging the optimal moment to rush in for the kill while snarling little Tahra repeatedly sank his useless teeth into its ankles.

  “Jantu, lower your weapon!” Mrs. Tanner called out, garnering the monster’s full attention.

  “This is not your fight!” Jantu shouted back. “Our enemies cannot be killed by an outsider!”

  “Then I won’t kill it,” Mrs. Tanner asserted. “I’ll just give it a reason to leave.”

  “If it lives it will warn the others,” Talfore interjected as he rushed past Mrs. Tanner to rejoin the fight, “and they’ll return in numbers even you cannot defeat!”

  “If it dies, they’ll know something is wrong and send more scouts,” Mrs. Tanner reasoned. “Either way we’ve been discovered. Let me deal with it, so that you and Jantu can live to help us. Please, Talfore, there’s no honor to be lost here.”

  Talfore brandished his weapon as he agonized over his decision. He then nodded to Jantu, and both men stepped back from their adversary.

  The vrahkole crawled back and forth on all fours, its belly scraping the ground as Mrs. Tanner approached with her hands open and at her sides. She stopped at the cusp of its considerable striking radius and stared into its primitive eyes with a strange calm.

  The vrahkole cocked its head as if puzzled by its new foe’s behavior, even as it readied for an assault.

  Mrs. Tanner took another step—and the brute struck, slashing its claws across her face before Sophina could flinch. The impact jolted Mrs. Tanner’s head, but her body hardly moved. Somehow, she had absorbed the blow as if it were a mere slap from a child.

  Mrs. Tanner turned and looked back into the vrahkole’s wide eyes. Four welts formed on her cheek, but not a drop of blood had surfaced. Despite what Sophina knew about drahtuah, it was impossible for her to comprehend how a creature of that size and strength wasn’t able to lay Mrs. Tanner open like a salmon on a fishmonger’s cutting table.