Dryland's End

by Felice Picano

  “And here!” ’Dward’s voice rose. “Is this your companion?”

  Another bubble nearby, and within it, prone, wrapped in white silk, the naked body of Alli Clark.

  “Is she paralyzed or dead?” Ay’r asked. He dashed toward the bubble and began to tear at it with the thorn, to get at her.

  “Wait! Don’t! You’ll trip the Arach’s guideline!” ’Dward shouted.

  Too late, the line was severed as Ay’r reached into the broken bubble and began to grasp through the silk wrappings at her neck, looking for a pulse at her carotid artery. He had just found it, regular and strong, when he heard that same high-pitched eerie whistling he and Oudma had heard last night. Only now it was much louder and much closer.

  “The Arach!” ’Dward cried.

  “Help me get her out!” Ay’r said.

  Together they grabbed through the gluey wetness of the bubble and struggled to pull her body out. Ay’r had just managed to get her free and, kneeling, had Alli Clark half in his arms, half on the ground, when he heard shouting.

  “’Harles!” he said. “He needs help.”

  “No. It’s a warning! The Arach’s headed here to protect its food supply. Can you carry her? We must leave!”

  Ay’r hefted Alli Clark’s inert body over one shoulder and they took off, following the radii back out of the circle. The shouting was coming closer.

  They had almost reached the fernbrake when ’Dward stopped so suddenly that Ay’r really dropped his load.

  “Back. Give me space!” ’Dward shouted.

  Then he dashed forward. Directly into and underneath the elongated body of the largest spider Ay’r had ever seen. Its eight hairy legs were so tall, he had thought they were thistlebush trees.

  “Wait!” Ay’r stopped and dropped Alli Clark’s body to the ground, intending to join the fray. He could already hear ’Dward’s shouts as he lunged under the beast looking for its soft parts, and trying to avoid its stinger, a palp as curved and dangerous looking as a scimitar. Heedless of Ay’r, shouting, the Drylander youth jabbed with his knife and thorn foil again and again, as the Arach pulled back, raised itself, then turned again, swinging its stinger at him in arcs.

  The force-field! Ay’r turned it on and felt the magnetic-electrified shield working. He rushed in to try to cover ’Dward.

  “Back, ’Dward!” he shouted, trying to stay where the stinger would strike next.

  This new electromagnetic force was more than the Arach could tolerate. It began to bring its long legs forward, attempting to sweep the electrical impulses away from itself. As it panicked, one leg caught Ay’r and tripped him. Ay’r fell backward and saw another leg knock the thorn sword out of ’Dward’s clenched fist.

  The youth turned. “Run! Save yourself.” he shouted, trying feebly to elude the stinger at the same time that he danced in place, trying to avoid the Arach’s legs, which were now swinging wildly, grabbing at him.

  Ay’r inched back along the ground and shut off his shield.

  The Arach sensed that the irritation was gone, and it seemed to back off slightly. But in a second, one leg had grabbed ’Dward around the middle. Then another had him tight, and now –

  Ay’r twisted the shield dial and focused it into a beam. The thin laser Struck the Arach’s stinger the very second that it sliced down toward ’Dward, the same second his little knife stabbed high and up into it. The high-pitched whistles now circulated around them in an earsplitting frenzy. The legs loosened their grip on ’Dward’s body. The stinger fell, lasered, to the ground. Then ’Dward dropped to the ground.

  Ay’r turned the dial to “shield,” then darted in to grab at ’Dward.

  The Arach was gone. Ay’r could hear its whistles as it stumbled in pain through the fernbrake.

  “Wait! My trophy!” ’Dward scrambled for it, unaware that Ay’r’s laser – rather than his own knife – had torn it free.

  The new crashing through the half-trodden fernbrake sounded like Humes. In seconds, ’Harles and P’al were with them. ’Harles summed up the situation in a glance, said the Arach would be back, and, without a glance, added, “All of us take a part of her. Hold on tight. We’ll be running.”

  They heard the whistlings again when they finally broke out of the thistlebush wood with their burden.

  Oudma had already harnessed and reined the Colleys, which were cluttering nervously between themselves.

  “Into Colley’s wingfold. Lift!” ’Harles ordered. “We leave now!” And he clambered up into the wingfold. “As soon as it has gotten over the pain of its wound, the Arach will give chase across the plain.”

  Within minutes the six of them were atop or within the giant beetles, scuttling at top speed across the baked-earth valley floor, headed toward a brightening, mist-shrouded Pelagian sunrise, filtered heavily through the overhead canopy.

  An hour later, they had recrossed the New River at another natural bridge, and ’Harles called a stop so the Colleys could rest and drink.

  Oudma looked over Colley’s wingfold at the silk-wrapped body of Alli Clark. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  P’al and ’Harles had dismounted. Both were looking at Alli Clark closely, checking her eyes and breathing and pulse.

  “The people of The Bog Way have an antidote to Arach venom,” ’Harles said finally. “We must get your companion there quickly.”

  “How far is it?”

  “We’ll arrive by nightfall,” ’Harles said.

  When the Colleys were watered and all were remounted and the trek begun more slowly than before, Oudma, sitting in front of her still-exultant brother, turned to Ay’r and said, “You see, Northerner! The Truth-Sayer wasn’t wrong! We found your companion sleeping. And ’Dward performed a bold feat!”

  Ay’r merely smiled.

  Toward sunset the land around them began to change markedly. It seemed to rise, or the fast-flowing river seemed to drop and slow down. Suddenly the reason was evident. They had been approaching something for hours and had finally reached it. To further mark the spot, ’Harles stopped the Colleys to be fed.

  To Ay’r’s eyes, the sight that now greeted them was equal on Pelagia only to his first view of the New River Valley from the plateau’s rim, high above in the mountains. An immense shallow bowl seemed to have been carved out of the surrounding flat hard-baked ground, and within its vast extent, this bowl seemed to harbor enough wetness and freshness and fertility to compensate for the surrounding continent’s being otherwise so harshly, forbiddingly dry.

  The now shallow New River rushed over the rim and into a score of small rivers that divided further into hundreds of rivulets, which spread into thousands of rills until the river all but disappeared, only to reappear as a dark spot – a lake or pond in the far distance, apparently within the very heart of the huge bowl. Around them the land rolled and tumbled, covered with furze and grasses all waving in different directions. Farther below, the land flattened, then rose again in more darkly colored grassy fields. Although the canopy was now high above, it seemed to drop tendrils into the bowl, fingers of mist that appeared to hover over specific spots and even, as Ay’r watched them closely, to move.

  The bone-dry air softened immediately as, the Colleys well fed, the travelers dropped over the rim, ’Harles and ’Dward carefully reining the large animals to guide them through treacherous mud and powerfully coursing streams. Moisture thickened the air around them, and odors assailed them, deep and sweet and loamy, sometimes rich and foul, coming from the same side of the path.

  At one point they passed and waved to laborers who were perched high on either side of the road, cutting peat in great rectangles, each slab’s side as black and glittering as a piece of fresh-sliced flesh. The Colleys passed other smaller, similar creatures hitched two to a flatbed wagon upon which the peat slabs were lowered and stacked. Ay’r was reminded of his first sight of the Pelagian Seedlings: the Fast’s probe must have viewed from within this bowl.

  There was ano
ther less steep, yet noticeable drop. Before they had negotiated it, Oudma pointed out in the distance clusters of what Ay’r at first took for small hills and hummocks, but which turned out to be the rounded roofs of houses and other buildings.

  “We’ll be going to Peat Cutters’ Village,” she said. “Although there are larger towns: Lake Edge, the capital, Bottom-most, and several I’ve not seen.”

  As her hand guided his sight, Ay’r made out across the dark waters the larger, more jumbled dwellings of other towns, and even some double- and triple-storied dwellings that he took for public buildings.

  Finally they reached level ground, but the exhausted Colleys could no longer scamper: the air was too thick and too wet for them to breathe properly, and darkness was coming. On either side of the road, Ay’r now saw the mountain people’s terraced agriculture adapted to bowl agriculture: thick rows of some sort of small-leafed dark hedge had been planted to separate plots as well as to channel runnels of land, through which placid canals had been cut.

  “Slow down!” ’Harles said to his son in irritation. “I can hardly see where we’re going.”

  “Ay’r sees better than we do,” ’Dward said. “He showed me last night in the thistlebush wood. Let him lead us to Peat Cutters’ Village.”

  “If he does,” ’Harles said, “surely his companion also sees well.”

  “I’ll guide us,” P’al said simply, and took the reins. So, behind him, on Colley, did Ay’r: the first time he’d been allowed control over the animal.

  “Is it so much darker in the North?” Oudma asked.

  “Perhaps because the canopy isn’t as thick,” her father answered.

  “Its moisture collects as ice,” P’al added. “This Bogland,” he mused, “there will be interesting legends to hear about it.”

  “Not a natural formation,” Ay’r agreed, “yet it’s been here a long time.”

  Ay’r had assumed that the dwellings of The Bog would be like those in Monosilla. While they resembled the giant shells the Ib’r lived in, these dwellings weren’t found, but constructed: the first one they passed, P’al reached out a hand to touch, and reported that they were oven-fired ceramics, pre-shaped bricks; the windows mere slits along the roof line; the chimneys larger, double holes – he guessed for both drawing in air and emitting peat smoke.

  “When you see a long building …” ’Harles was saying, as two Humes crossed almost in front of his Colley, carrying lamplight that illuminated their faces eerily in the darkness.

  “We’re seeking the doctor!” Oudma cried out, her pronunciation slightly different from what Ay’r had heard before.

  “Are you Deltans?” a woman asked, in a more exaggerated version of the dialect.

  “From the mountains. Monosilla. We’ve come a long way. Our companion was stung by an Arach.”

  “We’ll lead you to her house,” the male answered.

  “This is Ib’r, my father,” Oudma said as ’Harles dismounted and walked alongside them.

  “Give us the animal’s reins,” the male said.

  Ay’r listened to their speech enough to pick up distinctions in their language as well as a bit of argot and vocabulary. Evidently, P’al was also listening and learning: he hushed Ay’r the one time he tried to make conversation.

  The doctor’s dwelling consisted of her home and, separated by a half-open ceramic-brick loggia of sorts, an infirmary, to which they carried Alli Clark.

  Seppi was the doctor’s name, a stout, middle-aged woman with a sense of purpose and authority about her. The minute she laid eyes on Alli Clark, she gestured the men to lift her again.

  “She must be washed to get all the Arach saliva off her. Otherwise, when she awakens, her skin will be painful.” She led them into another room with a shallow pool built into one end. “Leave now! All of you!”

  To Ay’r’s surprise ’Harles stood firm. “This woman is my responsibility. I’ll remain.”

  “I’d rather have the lass,” Dr. Seppi shrugged, “but you’ll do. Give me a hand wiping this stuff off her.” She turned back to the others. “Out – the rest of you!”

  “Refreshment?” ’Dward asked.

  “Two dwellings down is an inn.” And the door was shut on them.

  A small boy appeared and said he would guide them. He seemed fascinated by their speech and strange attire and also asked if they were Deltans.

  “Tell me true, lad, where is your Legend-Teller in Peat Cutters’ Village?” P’al asked. As Ay’r should have expected, he already spoke the dialect fluently and naturally.

  “I’ll take you there, too. The inn is on the way.”

  The boy all but pulled P’al out of the dwelling, then remembered to return for a lamp.

  “Was it a big Arach?” he asked.

  “High as your dwelling.”

  “Good thing you found your companion before it found you,” the boy said with the kind of shudder in his voice which suggested that Arach tales were small-boys’ fodder.

  “We didn’t,” Ay’r said. “We had to fight it.”

  “I cut off its stinger!” ’Dward bragged.

  “High as my dwelling?” the boy asked.

  “I thought its legs were thistlebush trees,” Ay’r said.

  “Tell this at the inn and you’ll get free refreshment,” the boy suggested. He told the truth. The minute they had entered into the dwelling and into substantial lamplight and the milling and noise and herbal fumes of pipe smokers of both genders, the boy immediately ran to the innkeeper and whispered in his ear. He then remained long enough for a short quaff of watered-down local mead, then rushed off to fetch the Legend-Collector – whom the innkeeper was surprised to see wasn’t at his usual spot by the peat stove in the inn.

  “I take it that Legend-Collectors aren’t highly thought of in this village,” P’al murmured, half into his drink.

  “No, but strangers and Arach battlers are,” a woman said, close to where the travelers had settled themselves on pillows in front of a low ceramic table.

  “You” – resting her hand upon P’al’s large shoulder – “must be the trophy owner.”

  P’al smiled at the woman, who was blowsily attractive, and pointed to ’Dward. “The lads fought. That one owns the stinger.”

  She pealed laughter. “You must be strangers. Boys of The Bog Way are good only for cutting peat and” – she made an obscene gesture, then added – “and lately, not even that!” – before laughing again and leaving them.

  The food was served in low ceramic bowls shaped like and decorated to resemble leaves, yet flat leaves also held the food. It was grain based, surprisingly spicy, and, above all, heated! After the monotony of their cold provisions, they all ate with their hands, and with gusto.

  The innkeeper and finally even his wife – the woman who had approached them before – insisted they tell of the Arach hunt.

  “These two are Northerners. Our guests! And we are of the Ib’r clan,” ’Dward introduced them. “We Ib’r came first from Old River Town, but went into the mountains when my father was a lad. We’re on our way to the Great Temple. My sister and myself for initiation, these men to collect legends. For, where they come from, it’s considered an honorable profession, and they are important among their own kind. These strangers know much of our land although they’ve never seen it before. They can tell its history by looking at rocks and at how the land is shaped, and how fast and deep the waters run. Much do they know, and our Truth-Sayer tied us to them by future deeds, honoring them greatly above any of the people he had encountered and prophesying especial futures for them and for us, too, should we follow them.”

  The Species Ethnologist in Ay’r realized that although young and supposedly uneducated, ’Dward was speaking in a classical rhetorical manner that his listeners understood well. Traditional was its syntax, conventional were many of its metaphors – above all, strong and simple and old-fashioned were its rhythms and vocabulary.

  Oudma listened with as much wonder and
surprise as those who hadn’t been present while her brother related the journey so far, the fall in the Colley’s wingfold, the battle with the giant Arach. ‘Dward’s voice rose and fell, he gestured, he foreshadowed events, he withheld crucial information and then suddenly sprung it to elicit gasps from his listeners. Perhaps he had heard his father speak of his own adventures so often and had longed to equal him, or perhaps this was the first time he had been the center of a listening public – whatever the reason, the Drylander youth glowed and shone; he looked the modest hero he presented himself as and drew in the breath of the crowd and allowed its relieved release like a fine musician with a well-tuned instrument.

  Ay’r thought: ’Dward’s ambitions and talents would make him a fine man if he were anywhere but on Pelagia, even in the Matriarchy Itself he might unfold. Too bad for him. For everyone.

  His story told, ‘Dward sat slightly apart, drinking his mead quietly, while the others had to answer questions from the crowd.

  Among them were the doctor’s boy and the newly arrived Legend-Collector, the latter a tall, spindly fellow. Ay’r had already remarked to himself the physiological difference between the Ib’r clan and these Boglanders – especially the young men sitting here – who were squarer, squatter, less nimble, less graceful, as though pressed down by the heavy air, or as if their bodies were forced to deal with higher gravity within the great bowl.

  “You’ve come to the right one for legends, strangers,” the newcomer announced himself and eyed the pitchers of mead greedily. “I am Nikhil, and I possess uncounted legends and anecdotes, tales and myths. Some exciting as that true account of your young master.”