by T. S. Graham
“It seems I wasn’t the first one to think of using darts,” said Mrs. Tanner.
Sophina scanned the guards’ faces and realized that every feature above their lips was a prosthetic. Those disturbing eyes weren’t real; they were just a very convincing part of a seamless mask. As she absorbed the details of the disguises she was reminded of the ornate masks worn by the witch doctors she had learned about in social studies, revered in some primitive societies for their magical healing powers.
The sharp-toothed leader led the riotous masses toward the thunderous pinnacle of their chant. Then, with a barbaric scream, he turned and pointed straight at Sophina.
“Hasha drahar!”
The boisterous legion rose to their feet as the witch doctor strode toward Sophina. She had never been to Rome’s famed Colosseum, but imagined her current view was not unlike that which the imprisoned gladiators took in centuries ago before being forced into battle for the emperor’s amusement.
“Drahar noy!” bellowed the witch doctor as he thrust his finger toward a towering stone wall. A guard cracked a whip into the hindquarters of two shaggy-haired beasts, prodding them to move forward and tighten the chains that were harnessed to their shoulders. The chains rattled through a series of pulleys, engaging a mechanism that moved the wall sideways on huge metal wheels.
A new chant of Um-by-ya! built in the crowd as the wall slid aside, revealing a slice of the valley below. As the gap widened, two familiar voices began to mumble behind Sophina. She turned to find that Talfore and Jantu dangled from a second wooden arm nearby, their heads hung in prayer.
“They’re praying for the attack to fail,” Mrs. Tanner informed her.
Sophina understood what was happening, and it didn’t take long for her to locate the weapon that was about to be engaged. It was a massive catapult, fashioned from the bowed trunk of a giant tree. It arched high over their heads, starting at its fortified base near the moving wall and ending atop a stone column that rose high over the pit, beyond Talfore and Jantu. Resting in its concave tip was a gigantic ball of twisted silver metal.
The crowd jeered as the city of Trellah was exposed by the sliding wall. Now Sophina understood why the projectiles slung by that weapon often missed their mark. The city looked miniature, far from the easy target it appeared to be from the ground.
Back at the business end of the catapult, several guards tilted a sturdy metal cauldron over the ball of gnarled metal, saturating it with a viscous liquid. Then, a guard draped head to toe in metal armor stepped forward with a burning torch in hand.
“Cree hasha!” roared the witch doctor.
“Cree hasha!” repeated the crowd—and the guard set the torch to the orb, igniting a white-hot inferno.
The intensity of the blaze was astonishing. Sophina struggled to face the platform, where the armored guard now brandished a sledgehammer-like tool. A metal lever jutted from the base of the apparatus that secured the catapult to the column—clearly the trigger that would release the immense tension stored within the tree.
But the guard didn’t bring the hammer down. Instead he looked to the pinnacle of the portable wall, where another prosthetic-enhanced Umbyan braved a vicious gale to signal commands to a guard camped at the base of the catapult. The guard cracked his whip at a second pair of shaggy beasts, sending them forward to adjust the catapult’s angle for the conditions outside the walls.
The guard who stood on top of the wall then pointed toward Trellah—and belted a guttural war cry. The hammer fell and the catapult snapped skyward with a terrible whoosh, hurling its hissing payload deep into the atmosphere. The fireball quickly reached the peak of its trajectory and plummeted straight for Trellah.
“Please . . . no!” Mrs. Tanner uttered in the anticipatory hush that had fallen over the arena. The cause for her worry was clear: The blazing orb looked to be on target.
For a moment, Sophina hoped the fireball’s path would mirror that of last night’s attempt, but that hope was dashed when it tore through the city’s highest tower in a silent explosion of timber and blood-red flames.
Sophina had thought the Umbyans’ cheers couldn’t get any louder, but she was wrong. The sight of the destruction incited a ruckus so ferocious she was sure it would reach the lower valley. Her insides burned with revulsion as the tower teetered back and forth before collapsing in a cloud of dust and billowing black smoke. It felt like a rock had been dropped into the pit of her stomach.
Her sorrow was driven by more than just the sight of the devastation. It was also fueled by what she couldn’t see: the huddled masses of men, women, and children who had been kneeling in prayer in and around the tower—those innocents whose lives were cut short by an act so depraved that she was nearly overcome by an urge to snap the ropes and attack the first animal that dared get in her way.
“—Sar Umbya!—”
Sophina’s eyes were again filled with the witch doctor’s maniacal visage. He mashed his teeth together, inches from her face. This time, she wasn’t intimidated.
“You’re not so scary,” she said so only he could hear, “even with that ridiculous mask on your face.”
The witch doctor cocked his head to the side, a moment of indecision that emboldened Sophina to show him a subtle smile.
“Sar Umbya!” roared the witch doctor, enraged by her show of defiance.
“Sar Umbya!” answered the crowd.
The witch doctor bowed before Sophina, but she knew that the show of respect wasn’t intended for her. She looked past the guards on the catwalks to a balcony that extended out above the common seating. Upon it dozens of dark-skinned Umbyans in ornate dress sat in chairs fit for royalty. Their eye fins were half the size of those of her friends and the other Umbyans. Behind them, suspended in a wall of crystal-clear ice, was an old black man with a silver crown on his head and no eye fins at all.
Sophina knew that the man in the ice was Mosi, whose thoughtful rule had kept peace between the Umbyans and Trellians for two hundred years.
A hush spread through the arena as the dark-skinned Umbyans rose up and joined the witch doctor in bowing before Mosi.
“Fathee!” shrieked the witch doctor.
“Fathee!” returned the incensed throng.
“They are going to sacrifice us,” Talfore said as the witch doctor began to rant at the enraptured audience in his harsh tongue. “They believe that we stole Mosi from them. His soul can return, but only if our blood is spilled by the wumkak.”
“Let me guess,” Sophina muttered. “The wumkak is a horrible monster that lives at the bottom of this hole.”
As if on cue, a beastly roar reverberated through the tunnels at the base of the pit. It was a sound unlike any Sophina had ever heard—high and piercing like an elephant’s trumpet, but far more sinister.
“The strength of twenty men will not save you,” said Talfore. “We will be cast down one by one. The Umbyans enjoy watching their enemies die alone.”
“Do you have your strength back?” Mrs. Tanner asked the men.
“Much poison is in my blood,” admitted Talfore. Jantu was in even worse shape, managing just a weak shake of his head.
“Escape,” urged Talfore. “The Umbyans know nothing of your strength. Avoid their darts and they will be powerless against you. It is an honor for us to die this way.”
Mrs. Tanner looked at Sophina. “I want you to break the rope and run faster than you’ve ever run to that opening.”
“I’m not leaving you—any of you.”
“You have no choice,” Mrs. Tanner insisted. “We don’t have the strength yet to come with you. Use the stones from the lake to build a bonfire for the night, and go to the back gate of Trellah in the morning. The Keeper will see that you get home safely.”
But Sophina ignored Mrs. Tanner. She was busy mulling over an idea, one that called for a far different course of action.
“Talfore,” she called, “Mrs. Tanner and I don’t have eye fins, just like Mosi. Why don’t the
Umbyans see us as gods?”
“The Umbyans are an isolated people,” Talfore replied. “Mosi told them that many mortals in other parts of our world look like him, so if more of your kind came they would not be seen as gods. . . . He thought this would give him time to speak with the intruders, convincing them to leave before the Umbyans learned of his deceit.”
“Do you speak the Umbyans’ language?” Sophina asked.
“I know the languages of all my enemies,” he said.
“Good. Then I have a plan that could get us all out of here.”
“A plan?” repeated Mrs. Tanner. “All you have to do is run.”
“They think that they can bring Mosi back by killing us—so I’ll give them what they want.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Tanner with growing unease.
“You have to trust me,” said Sophina. She flexed her hands, snapping the rope fibers just enough to slip free when the time was right.
“Whatever you’re considering—don’t do it,” Mrs. Tanner implored. “The wall is open. The guards are distracted. You won’t get another chance like this.”
But Sophina’s mind was made up, and she was ready to put the wheels of her plan in motion. Step one: Make sure that she was the first to be cast into the pit. She had to get inside the exact tunnel the wumkak was approaching through—and she had to do so before the creature got too close. The Umbyans had to be blind to what she was doing if they were to be fooled into thinking the beast had killed her.
“Hey, you!”
The witch doctor fell silent as he spun to face Sophina.
“That’s right, I’m talking to you! You may be important here, but you’re nothing to me!”
“Sophina—what are you doing?”
Sophina ignored Mrs. Tanner as the witch doctor displayed a maniacal smile. He moved toward her, unsheathing a blade from his belt as he walked. He brandished the dagger before her eyes, openly reveling in the savage atmosphere he was creating.
“Go ahead—cut me loose!” Sophina taunted.
The witch doctor clenched his teeth as he raised the blade.
“Sophina—don’t!”
“Do it, you ugly freak!”
But the witch doctor didn’t cut. Instead, he looked to the balcony where the eldest dark-skinned Umbyan now stood at the stone railing that overlooked the pit. With a callous stare, the royal Umbyan pointed a crooked finger at Sophina and screamed “Kar wumkak,” ordering the sacrifice to commence.
With a barbaric scream, the witch doctor sliced his blade at Sophina’s hands—but it cut only the rope, for she had released her grip just before impact.
Sophina dropped from the rigging and landed upon the loose sand of the pit floor. She rose and made her way to the nearest tunnel, careful not to tip the Umbyans off that she already possessed the same physical gifts that Mosi did—the ones that had led them to believe he was more than a mere mortal.
She looked into the tunnel for any sign of the wumkak. The air was dank and still. There was no sign of movement.
In a lull between the fresh chants of Um-by-ya, Sophina heard a distant rustle in the cave to her left. She peered into the burrow to find that something was indeed moving toward her. She couldn’t yet coax the details of its appearance from the murk, but one thing was clear: It was massive, with a body that filled the entire passage.
Sophina knew what she had to do. She drew a deep breath—and stepped into the unknown.
The beast halted as she entered its subterranean environment. She could make out two antennae waving like silent bullwhips as she crept forward, just far enough to be free of every prying Umbyan eye.
It has to be close, she thought. It’s the only way they’ll be convinced.
The wumkak glided forward and stopped, perhaps confused by her boldness. It was twenty yards away, close enough for her to detect a face beneath the probing antennae. Instead of eyes, there were pink folds of skin; a kite-shaped mouth lined with fangs stretched open behind two bony appendages that clacked together below a snout of bristling whiskers, and huge cupped ears strained forward to capture any sound that came their way.
Sophina knew what the flesh-eater was doing: using echolocation to size her up before it attacked. It was capturing the return echoes of those clacks with its ears and translating them into a detailed mental image of her body, including her size, shape, and the exact distance between them.
Knowing this made her yearn to run, of course. But her timing had to be perfect, and that meant holding her ground. The wumkak had to make the first move.
One shot, she told herself. That’s all you’ll get.
She pulled the cloak hood tight to her face and turned sideways, digging her boots into the sand like a sprinter preparing for the starting gun. She was ready to react, but didn’t know if that alone would be enough.
Countless legs roiled the sand as the wumkak rushed forward, faster than Sophina could have dreamed. She took two desperate strides and dove—just as the monster’s teeth snapped behind her with frightful force.
A collective gasp rained down from the upper stands as Sophina flew over the pit floor as if propelled by cannon fire. She tumbled across the sand and rolled to face her attacker, knowing that she was lucky to elude the first strike. She was no match for this perfect killing machine.
The wumkak coiled its snake-like body high in the air, exposing a carpet of teeming, flesh-colored legs as it smacked its bones together in search of the meal that had somehow eluded it.
Sophina regained her footing just as it found her. Another gasp swept through the crowd as she leapt up into the air—just as its jaws snapped into the sand where she had been. She landed upright upon a stone shelf halfway up the pit wall and jumped up onto the icy floor of the arena.
Darts zipped by as she leapt straight up onto the lip of the royal balcony. She vaulted over the railing and strode toward the eldest dark-skinned Umbyan, who cowered before her as the ravenous wumkak stretched ever closer to her friends below.
A guard dropped from a catwalk with his blowgun raised. He leveled his gun to fire but froze when Sophina grabbed the frail old man and thrust him out over the railing, where he screamed for dear life over the beast’s ever-widening jaws.
“Talfore!” yelled Sophina over the ruckus brewing in the stands. “Tell them that they made their sacrifice, and Mosi’s soul has returned—in my body!”
Talfore’s eyes sharpened as he realized what she was trying to do. He turned to the witch doctor and called to him as loudly as his weakened body would allow: “Sar yatvin, dahl umzuri fathee!”
Now Talfore had the witch doctor’s complete attention. Talfore looked back to Sophina and finished with an emphatic, “Sar yatvin—Mosi!”
A hush fell across the stadium as every Umbyan eye focused on the girl who had indeed performed godlike feats, and now held their terrified leader’s life in her hands.
The witch doctor peeled away his mask, exposing his real face. Beyond his sharpened teeth and red eyes, his appearance was anything but threatening.
Now it was time for Sophina to seal the deal.
“Tell them I’m angered that they have ignored my teachings and attacked the people of Trellah!” she continued, with a boldness she’d never known.
Talfore translated her message, but Sophina wasn’t listening. Mrs. Tanner had sent her a look that would have made her swell with pride under calmer circumstances.
When Talfore was finished, Sophina spoke again: “The attacks are to stop, or it will never snow on the mountain again—and their city will melt into the valley!” She paused to let Talfore translate, and then ended by saying, “The prisoners will be set free so that I can go with them and deliver the same warning to the people of Trellah. If they obey me, I promise them that the ice will return!”
The witch doctor listened to Talfore, then turned and hissed at Sophina. Her confidence plummeted with his show of aggression, so she pushed her captive farther out to show just ho
w serious she was.
I’m the only person you’ve ever seen with the powers of your precious Mosi! Sophina screamed silently. You have to believe me!
“Hashan vannar!” bellowed the witch doctor, and he turned and pointed at the prisoners. Seconds later the wooden arms were swung over solid ground, and three guards rushed forward to cut the ropes from her friends’ hands.
Sophina pulled the old Umbyan back onto the balcony and set him on his feet. She was surprised to find him crying—not tears of sadness or fear, but of unbridled joy. He reached out and touched her cheek with a trembling hand.
“Fathee?” asked the old man, his face aglow.
“Fathee,” Sophina repeated. She didn’t need an interpreter to know what that word meant. It meant father. She smiled at the son of Mosi and then jumped off the balcony, landing upright on the arena floor to the delight of the masses. As she stepped toward her friends the unmasked witch doctor appeared before her. He looked deep into her eyes and then dropped to his knees and bowed his head. Every Umbyan in the stadium then did the same.
“You think beyond your years, Sophina of Thomasville,” Talfore said. “You did not come to us by chance.”
The witch doctor growled an order to a nearby guard, who rushed forward and returned Talfore and Jantu’s ivory staffs along with the bow and firestone arrow. A joyous murmur then spread through the albino masses as their fathee led the three outsiders toward the opening in the wall.
“I want to kiss you,” said Mrs. Tanner, “but I’ll wait until we’ve left our present company behind.”
12 THE CAVERNS OF MOUNT VAHKAR
One question weighed on Sophina’s mind as they left the confines of the Umbyan arena: What had come of the people who were in and around the tower when it fell? Her eyes remained glued to the disaster that played out below as she followed the others along a softened ice shelf between the Ice City’s perimeter wall and the cliff.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to Talfore and Jantu, who struggled to keep their inner turmoil from showing.