The Chronicles of Trellah, Book One: The Perpetual Rain

by T. S. Graham

  A series of barks echoed through the columns as Sophina rushed to the sun-filled aisle that was aligned with the fog-shrouded finger of stone. From here she could see Mrs. Tanner, who was on her knees with the rope in hand, bearing the full weight of the cage as the scar-faced vrahkole howled his shrill call from the ledge where Sophina had left him.

  A grahdor streaked low overhead. Then another grahdor zipped by, and another, each with numerous vrahkoles crouched within the baskets strapped to their backs. Sophina knew who these vrahkoles were: the ones they had encountered at the mountain pool. They must have been hidden close by, waiting for a signal to swoop in and help.

  The scarred vrahkole leapt onto the cage as the grahdors descended into the mist. He tore open the trapdoor at the top of the pen, and the youngsters began to clamber out.

  Boom!

  In a crushing instant, a massive pillar had crashed down before Sophina. She stumbled back, staring at a wall of stone that a heartbeat earlier had been a clear path for sunlight.

  Something rushed at her out of the billowing dust. As she turned to run, she glimpsed a set of rutted cheekbones bulging below two empty eye sockets. The necrah was closing in. She had to find a lighted path before it was too late.

  Sophina cut hard to the right—then left—in a wild search for sunlight. But only more dark passages opened up before her. She had somehow entered the crater’s inner labyrinth, with no clue as to which way to go. She felt the necrah closing in as she careened through the maze, and was struck by the most horrible realization: Escape could no longer be a priority.

  Knowing that death was imminent, Sophina thrust the whistle to her lips and blew, sending forth a piercing call that ricocheted through the pillars. These may be her last moments alive, but at least she had completed her task. With the necrah focused on her, Talfore would be free to slip through unnoticed to the other side.

  Then, she saw it: a glow coming from an aisle up ahead.

  Sunlight!

  Sophina sprinted for it. Something cold brushed her shoulder as she turned the corner and jumped. The next moment she was tumbling out into the open, awash in the sun’s warmth. She stopped at the base of the stairway and rolled to face the pillars, but the necrah was nowhere to be seen. She stood up and looked toward the crater’s north rim—just as Talfore vaulted onto it from within the pillars.

  He’d made it! It wouldn’t be long now before he would ignite the firestones and release the water from the reservoir upon the crater, freeing every atom of the drahtuah into the atmosphere. Sophina was sure that the sight would be something to behold, but she had no intention of watching it. She just wanted to get back inside the cavern so that she could carry Eliot away from this dreadful place.

  She climbed the stairs as the scarred vrahkole passed the last juvenile into the arms of another adult, who straddled the neck of a grahdor as it flew in place beside the cage. He then leapt back onto the ledge as Mrs. Tanner released the threadbare rope, sending the cage plummeting into the valley.

  Sophina felt like the weight of two worlds had been lifted off her shoulders—until something caught her eye. It was the necrah vrahkole, staring at her from the shadow of the pillars. It seemed smaller than before, but its vacant eyes were no less unnerving.

  It walked toward her, slowly at first, but picking up speed as it neared the sunlight. Then, it charged straight into it.

  Sophina didn’t feel the scream burst from her throat, but she heard it. She turned to run but it was too late. The death bearer delivered a dreadful blow to her back, pinning her facedown against the stairs. She fought for a moment, but it was pointless. Her body fell limp as she was hoisted into the air, and turned to face her assailant.

  Sophina knew something was amiss even before she saw the vrahkole’s skull within the hood. The chill of phantom hands breaching her skin never came because the fingers that gripped her were firm and warm. She gaped at the face of cracked bones and curved teeth before her—and noticed something that had eluded her before: a pair of crimson eyes glowering at her through the eye sockets. She reached out for the gruesome mask, but a calloused hand grabbed her by the throat. She tugged at the hand, but lacked the strength to pull a single finger from her fast-collapsing windpipe.

  As the world went dark, Sophina willed herself to take one final swipe at the mask. Her finger snagged the lower jaw—and the skull slipped free of the hood and shattered onto the stairs below.

  The face behind the mask was revealed, and the sight of it jolted Sophina back from the brink. She tried to scream, but her cry was stifled before it could form. Her halted cry wasn’t born from terror; it was meant to serve a higher purpose. It would have expressed more than a single utterance ever had.

  If only it had been heard . . .

  13 BEHIND THE MASK

  Daddy was the word that Sophina failed to scream, for it was her father’s hand that choked her. There was no mistaking his face: the chiseled jawline and chin, the receding hairline, and the slightly turned-out ears that were always chapped by the salty winds of the Atlantic.

  But nothing of Stephen Murray remained in that cruel gaze. The loving blue eyes that Sophina had peered into so many times before were gone, replaced by seething windows into the mind of a drahtuah-crazed monster.

  She tried to reach out to him, but her arms fell useless at her sides. There was no pain left to feel, only a distant lament for a reunion that would never be.

  Then, her father was gone. She felt her body slump to the stairs as a rush of cold air inflated her withered lungs.

  It didn’t take long for Sophina to regain her senses. She could feel the drahtuah at work inside of her, restoring the strength that had been lost in the brutal attack. She sat up just as her dad flung Mrs. Tanner like a rag doll against a pillar.

  “Daddy, stop!”

  But Mr. Murray ignored her plea. He was upon Mrs. Tanner again before she hit the ground. He lifted her high over his head and hurled her onto the staircase above Sophina with a sickening thump.

  Sophina rushed to stop Mrs. Tanner’s limp body from tumbling back to the crater floor.

  “Mrs. Tanner, wake up!” she yelled. Her teacher’s eyes cracked open, but it was clear that her injuries would take more than a few seconds to mend. And they only had seconds, for Sophina could hear her father’s heavy footsteps drawing near.

  “Run,” Mrs. Tanner begged.

  But Sophina didn’t run. Instead, she turned to face her father just as he leapt at her with his filthy, overgrown fingernails extended. She braced for impact when—

  Fffffwap . . .

  Mr. Murray recoiled in midair as something colorful struck his neck. Sophina ducked as he smashed headlong onto the staircase beside Mrs. Tanner.

  “Daddy!”

  Sophina yanked the dart from her father’s neck, but the effects of the drug had already set in. He shoved her away with a stunted bellow and crawled down the stairs, his eyes glued to the piles of drahtuah that spilled out of the pillars below.

  Sophina stepped in front of him as Jantu emerged from behind a boulder at the edge of the staircase. She had known it was him who shot the dart, for its tip still dripped with the green liquid that Tahra had saved from the ice flow.

  “Daddy, it’s me—Sophina! I’m right here in front of you!”

  Mr. Murray ignored her as he continued his feeble crawl down the stairs.

  “Listen to me!” Sophina urged. “We don’t have much time. We have to get inside the cave—or we’ll die. I can’t carry both of you!” She glanced at Mrs. Tanner, who was just now sitting up. “Please, Dad, I know you’re in there! You can beat this! All you have to do is remember who you are!”

  A shadow bore down on them, and Sophina turned to find Jantu leveling his blowgun at her father’s exposed neck.

  “No!” she screamed, jumping between them. “He’s my father! I know he’ll listen to me!”

  Jantu’s face went ashen as he lowered his weapon. “This man . . . he is your fat
her?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Yes! We have to get inside before Talfore releases the water. Please, help me!”

  But Jantu didn’t move. His lips parted like he wanted to speak, but—

  “What is this?” Mrs. Tanner now held the dart that Sophina had dropped. She squinted at the green slime dripping from its tip. “This isn’t what I gave you to put on the darts,” she said to Jantu. “What did you put into his body?”

  Jantu stepped back, his face growing paler by the moment.

  “I’m . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” Sophina asked. “What did you do to him?”

  But Jantu just stared at the ground with rueful eyes.

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I did not know,” answered Jantu tautly. He was about to say more when the ground shuddered beneath their feet. A massive fire plume formed high above the cave, and an arc of blue water exploded through the smoke and flames. The ledge that contained the reservoir had been breached, sending a surge of churning liquid down the mountainside.

  “Take your father!” Mrs. Tanner yelled. “I’ll make it on my own!”

  Sophina grabbed her dad beneath his arms and dragged him up the stairs. His body felt light, but the distance she had to cover was too great. The torrent was already nearing the lip of the crater and would soon release the drahtuah with its cold touch.

  “Get over there—quickly!” Mrs. Tanner said, pointing to a waist-high lip of stone that ran along the edge of the stair platform to their right. If they could get behind it ahead of the blast, there was a chance it would protect them.

  Water gushed down into the crater as Sophina arrived at the lip. She laid her father behind it and turned to discover that Mrs. Tanner had fallen to her knees many yards back. Jantu was trying to help her to her feet, but she knew they wouldn’t make it on their own.

  She leapt toward them as liquid surged through the pillars, forming violent whitecaps as it rushed toward them. She snatched Mrs. Tanner into her arms, took three bounding steps—and jumped.

  An earsplitting hiss rang out as they hit the ground, and a vast wall of gaseous drahtuah exploded skyward behind the stone barrier. It was brighter than anything Sophina had ever seen, yet it still didn’t hurt her eyes as she gawked up at it in wonder.

  The drahtuah dissipated and the portal formed, revealing a wide vista of billowing gray clouds. Damp, salty air washed over Sophina as she rose up to discover that the crater was gone below the stone wall. Instead she peered down through a hole in the cloud bank, where, thousands of feet below, Jagged Mountain sat like an insignificant lump beside the shores of Glacier Lake.

  She would have stared at it forever if not for the hand that covered her eyes. Before she could call out in protest, the flash of the collapsing wormhole knifed through the hand—and a sonic boom knocked her backwards onto the unforgiving stairs.

  * * *

  When the world came back into focus, the first thing Sophina saw was her dad lying motionless by her side. She put her head on his shoulder, too numb to do much else. As the fog in her head cleared she realized that Jantu and Mrs. Tanner were also there, both sitting nearby with their faces buried in their hands. There were so many questions that she wanted to ask Jantu, but her mind wasn’t quite ready.

  But that changed when her father’s chest heaved.

  “What’s happening to him?” she asked, barely able to hear her own voice over the ringing in her ears.

  Jantu squinted at a ring of blisters that had formed on her dad’s neck. The green substance was doing its job faster than his body could fight it.

  “Please, Jantu! I have to know!”

  Finally, Jantu looked her in the eyes. “He is dying,” he said. “There is no changing what I have done.”

  “What do you mean, he’s dying? He can’t die! I just found him!”

  Jantu’s expression confirmed that he’d meant what he said. Sophina wanted to scream—to tell him that he was mistaken—but she was engulfed by a torment so intense that she couldn’t utter a single word.

  “Remember,” said Mrs. Tanner with a calm resolve, “his body is able to withstand things that no one from this world can comprehend. There’s no reason to lose hope.”

  “Who is this man? And why does he wear my son Verrah’s cloak?” It was Talfore’s voice that Sophina heard, but she was too distraught to look up.

  “This is Sophina’s father,” answered Mrs. Tanner. “He held the vrahkoles hostage, and used the children to mine the drahtuah. I don’t know how he got here, but I’m sure that someone here does.” She glared at Jantu, who just stared at the ground.

  “He bears the mark of the crechan leaf,” said Talfore as he touched the rash. “No one survives its poison.”

  Sophina’s grief was washed away by a torrent of fury. Mrs. Tanner’s sleep elixir was intended for use on two people: herself and Mrs. Tanner. It had been tested! Jantu knew it worked; there was no reason for him to replace it with something else, unless—

  “You knew!” she hissed at Jantu. “You knew that there wasn’t a necrah up here. You lied to us!”

  Talfore faced his son with a stern look. “Jantu, is this true?”

  But Sophina wasn’t going to wait for an answer. “It has to be true!” she claimed. “The poison would’ve been useless on something that was already dead. He left us in the cave so that he could use us to kill my father!”

  “I did not know this man was your father,” said Jantu. “You must believe me.”

  “I don’t care if you didn’t know!” Sophina fired back. “Why did you want him dead? He would’ve fallen asleep with the drug Mrs. Tanner gave you. I could have taken him away from this place—and he would’ve gotten better. You didn’t have to kill him!”

  There was a heavy pause as Jantu set his jaw. Any remorse that had shown on his face disappeared.

  “Verrah died by his hands,” he said with a quiet fury. “My brother was taken from his family before his time had come.”

  “But how did Mr. Murray get here in the first place?” Mrs. Tanner interjected. “It’s quite impossible for him to have come on his own.”

  Jantu was slow to respond, and that’s when Sophina realized the truth. She stood and faced him, her fists clenched in rage.

  “It was you!” she said with spite. “You brought him here—just like you brought Mrs. Tanner!”

  Mrs. Tanner stepped between them, clearly worried that Sophina was about to do something rash. “Sophina, stop,” she implored. “Please, listen to what he has to say before we assume the worst.”

  “How can I believe anything he says, when he’s done nothing but lie to me?” Sophina growled.

  Jantu hung his head. “You will know I speak the truth, because what I am about to say would make no one proud.”

  Sophina slumped back onto the stairs and pulled her father up into her arms. If these were indeed his last moments alive, she was going to spend them with him, no matter how furious Jantu’s words made her.

  “When Mosi died, I knew that the Umbyans would attack Trellah,” Jantu explained. “When I was chosen to gather the drahtuah in the cavern, I was sure that the gods had shown me an opportunity—a chance to give my people a defense stronger than an entire army of Protectors.”

  “How did I miss it?” Mrs. Tanner muttered. “You didn’t come to me out of curiosity; you wanted to use me to destroy your enemies.”

  “Your resistance to drahtuah was strong,” Jantu confirmed. “I needed another, like you, but weaker. I went to the river where the lands of our worlds are known to exist in the same space, and discovered a place where the men of your world ride on ships that move without poles or wind. I waited, hidden in the trees, until only one remained.”

  Jantu opened the front of Mr. Murray’s cloak and revealed a large drahtuah stone that hung from his neck by a strand of rope. “This is all it took to bring him under my control,” Jantu said. He took the stone into his hand, but Mr. Murray lashed out
, knocking Jantu onto the stairs with a fierce but glancing blow.

  “I’ll do it,” Sophina suggested as Jantu labored to get up.

  She didn’t go straight for the stone. Instead, she leaned closer to her father and whispered, “Daddy, it’s me again. I have to take the stone from your neck. When it’s gone, I promise you’ll feel better.” She ran her fingers down his arm to his hands, which were clenched over the drahtuah. His grip loosened as she slipped her hand beneath his, and she removed the stone without protest.

  Sophina stood and threw the necklace into the fast-rising lake within the crater. A fiery orb expanded beneath the surface. Seconds later a whirlpool formed as untold gallons of water gushed through the portal, spilling into a universe to which it didn’t belong.

  The wormhole collapsed with a muted flash, and Jantu turned back to Sophina.

  “I spent weeks preparing him for battle, promising him more drahtuah if he obeyed my commands. I could not take him to the Umbyans without first testing his skills on a weaker enemy.”

  Talfore stepped forward. “So you set him upon the vrahkoles,” he said in disgust.

  Jantu hung his head lower. “I brought him to the place where the vrahkoles lay their dead, and disguised him with the bones of our enemy,” he explained. “I then ordered him to destroy the guards that watched over the crater. . . . But his mind was weak. He sensed the drahtuah that was trapped within the mountain, and nothing could stop him from going to it. I returned with Verrah to fix what had been done, but my brother was dragged into the shadows and murdered. I heard his screams go silent and knew I could not save him. . . . When Kate of Thomasville presented the darts to my father, I finally saw a way to set things right.”

  “Jantu,” said Talfore, “you were released from the cathedral because the Elders thought your actions were not of cruel intent. There is no defense for what you have done.”