Rastín was still crying out when he felt the overlord’s foot on his back. For a moment he shouldered the overlord’s full weight, nearly buckling; but he ground his teeth, closed his eyes, and fought to remain steady. Instead of climbing, however, the overlord pivoted, turning to face the mass of workers as he granted reward and the liquid bread flowed freely. Under the strain, Rastín blacked out, but knew he must have succeeded in holding his own when the overlord’s platform began rising into the sky and he no longer felt as if his back would burst.
Shouldering his pick and ax, he trudged off to find a new area in which to dig. Although there were many diggers, there were scores of open areas; he chose one of these. It took the rest of the day to excavate a pit ten spans deep and twenty spans across.
By evenfall, Rastín was spent. He made his way very slowly to the thousand-fold gates. His position among the old and infirm must have seemed an invitation to the night criers, for they howled in the shadows not far off. A part of him would have welcomed the end they would bring. Death in this way would cheat the ageless, because it would bring no glory to them or anyone else.
The fiery tendrils of an overlord’s whip lapping at the darkness just behind him stirred Rastín into a run. He pulled the old one to his right along with him, urging others to run as well. For a moment, as he turned his head back, he could see many pairs of glowing red eyes staring at him from the darkness.
Reaching the gate platform, he pushed the others ahead of him. Because the old one could barely put one foot in front of the other, Rastín led him to the gate. The two guardians, who stood one to either side of the gate, brought their weighted chains around as if to strike him for trying to enter the gate two abreast, but apparently thought better of it and stopped midstrike.
As Rastín stepped into the gate’s magical field and the bone-chilling cold, he glimpsed his father’s face—not the ruined face of the present, but the noble face from a past Rastín had never known. Emerging into the colossal passageway that led through the fortifications into the city, his thoughts turned inward. This day the dearth of discoveries was as remarkable as the abundance the previous day.
He was slow to realize, as he made his way to the central laborers’ encampment, that none of his kind were in the corridor with him. Instead, he was in a corridor filled with the mute beasts who carried and pulled things and did the other heavy work in the excavations. Before this day he had not realized his kind and their kind were separated in some way on the return, but now it was not only readily apparent, it was unpleasant and unnerving.
Entering the vast city with its great stone edifices, he did not find the familiar path to the central camp. Instead, he stood before an endless span of twisted serpentine towers; directly in front of him was a sloping passageway with arches on both sides that looked like it would take him under the towers.
Faced with the unknown and a break from his routine, he felt suddenly afraid and alone. He tried to go back into the corridor and return to the gate platform, but the moving mass of beasts prevented this. Soon he found he was being ushered forward toward the passageway beneath the towers.
Although confused, he did not allow panic to set in. Cycles earlier when he was taken to his first dig, in what was already without question the most terrifying experience of his young life, he had been slow to the gates and had come face to face with a pack of night criers. The fact that he survived the encounter led many to believe the ageless smiled upon him and that he walked within their grace. But it was his father’s council on the previous day that had saved him.
Túrring had told him, “No matter what you encounter in the dark land, you must find calm and resolve not to show anguish, sorrow, or fear. If you show any of these weak emotions, our enemies, even those amongst our own people, will use those weaknesses against you and you will live forever after in fear.”
“I will make you proud, father,” Rastín promised. “I will not show weakness.”
His father finished, saying, “You will be allowed to cry later beyond the hearing of others if need be.”
And indeed he had cried later, sobbing long into the night though he was weary to his bones from the day’s labors.
So now, as then, he closed his eyes and waited. Seeking to find inner calm, he breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. He opened his eyes only after a ten count of heartbeats, finding clarity and strength instead of confusion and fear.
He stepped forward unafraid and started through the passageway, because it seemed the only way to go; but one of the she-beasts in the moving mass stepped around him and blocked his way. Although she could not speak, her eyes told him that she meant him no harm. For his part, his eyes told her that he had no ill intensions toward her, and his lack of fear seemed to calm her.
The calm was fleeting. Suddenly she was upon him, grabbing him and dragging him into a dark recess where a large drainage pipe emptied sewage from the towers above into a narrow maw. He started to speak, to question her as he would have one of his kind, but stopped when she looked puzzled. When he started to speak again, she rushed a mud-covered hand to his mouth. The hand, though clawed and thick with fur, had five digits. One of these was like a thumb in that it was shorter and thicker than the other digits and adapted for grasping, yet it did not seem as dexterous as his own thumb.
Forcibly, she stripped him of his thick shirt and began covering him with the sewage-laden mud. He tried to resist, but the she-beast was surprisingly strong. Later he emerged from the dark recess only when she allowed him to. Covered in mud and muck from head to heel, he appeared as any other mud-covered creature, moving through the passageway.
Gripping his elbow, the she-beast began to lead him. Rastín did not resist, but he did move cautiously. The passageway opened into a vast courtyard surrounded on all sides by the serpentine towers. The she-beast led him deeper into the yard. Grass-covered hillocks dotted with trees gave the perception that he was in endless grassland—the kind of grassy land of which his father spoke; but as one born a slave in this land he had never seen.
Carved into the hillocks were holes; and within the holes he saw movement, shadows deeper and darker than the rich, brown earth. Despite himself, he began to tremble. And as he did, the she-beast’s demeanor hardened, as did her viselike grip on his arm. She began to pull him around like a possession, a thing, a toy. Her toy.
She abruptly pulled him into one of the holes. At once they came to an antechamber with crude furnishings of a sort he had never seen before. The interior of the hole was dimly lit by something similar to a torch, but it gave off neither heat nor smoke.
Beyond the large, central round of the antechamber was a room with a dark hole in the middle surrounded by rough stones. The she-beast lifted him off the ground, moving him much like one of the dilapidated beams at the dig site, and put him in this hole.
To his surprise, he found the hole was filled with water, waist deep and cool. The first time the she-beast dunked him under the water he thought she was trying to drown him, and his struggles brought her into the water with him. Once she was in the water with him, she began dunking and swishing him as if he were her life-sized doll.
Beneath her tangled mass of hair, he saw her eyes glowing in the pale light. Locks of her hair, thick like a serpent’s body, were twisted and tied. As she moved, her hair moved, shifting as if a hundred tendrils of a many-headed snake. The dark land had such snakes, and he now thought that the she-beast was a snake person not unlike those his father talked about. These people were from a time in his father’s childhood when his father and his grandfather journeyed freely between the realms.
The very idea of walking free carried Rastín’s thoughts away. He stopped resisting, allowing a bit of himself to slip away with each breath until it was as if he was no longer present—almost as if what was happening to him now was a dream from another’s life. The dreamer was cleansed, rinsed, and bedded by the she-beast. The living, thinking, breathing Rastín walked free with his father a
nd grandfather across flat, open grassland he had never seen with his own eyes but knew well. It was the land of his people, his land by right of birth.
CHAPTER THREE
Rastín woke to the movements of the she-beast. She covered him with mud, applying thick layers to his entire body. Not understanding what was happening or why, he resisted; but his strength was no match for hers.
Finally, sullen and beaten into submission, he gave in. Later, he ate and drank what she offered. He followed her when the time came to go to the dark land. Caked in mud and clad only in a wrapped cloth, he looked more like a he-beast than one of his own kind.
In one of the many wide corridors leading from the immortal city of the ageless, he joined the moving mass of beasts, quickly finding himself in the dark land on the other side of the gate. When he tried to rejoin his kind and moved to pick up tools for the dig, the she-beast tackled him and dragged him away to the ropes and carts. Soon afterward, a gargantuan he-beast was placing a harness around his neck. The harness, made of wood and leather, extended down his chest to his waist. It formed an exterior cage over his small frame and had hooks of several different types to which he could attach ropes and tools.
Before he comprehended what was happening, the large he-beast attached ropes to the harness; Rastín found himself pulling one of the large, eight-wheeled cart trains piled high with ropes, pulleys, and excavation gear. Although he had worked for many cycles in the excavations and was as strong as any full-grown male of his kind, he faltered under the load and managed only a few steps. The she-beast was there in an instant, pushing the cart train as he pulled, and then pulling with a second harness as they climbed into the high lands.
Although he had labored among them, the world of the beasts was entirely unknown to him. Early in the day, he was overcome with an inexplicable fear that the overlords hovering overhead would see him for who he was. This fear intensified whenever the she-beast was near him. It kept him focused on something other than the backbreaking work. It also alerted him whenever the enforcers with their whips walked near.
As a laborer among his own kind, he had been watchful of the overlords but not of the enforcers. As long as he did his work, he need not fear the enforcers’ whips. He feared their whips now, though, and he wore that fear despite his best efforts to the contrary.
To calm himself, he whispered a prayer to his mother. “Protect and keep me,” he implored.
He learned quickly that any time he thought he was alone, he was not. The she-beast was always near even if he could not see her. From time to time she took dirt from the earth, mixed it with water from a leather bag at her waist, and then applied this mixture to any exposed area of his flesh. As the day wore on, he realized the thick cake of mud kept away the sting of the ropes and harness. It also was useful to close open wounds, and already he had four long gashes on his exposed torso: two from an enforcer’s whip for failing to keep pace, one from a cart slip, and one from the she-beast herself for attempting to speak to one of his kind.
By midday Rastín could barely stand. His spirit was broken. Broken by the whip. Broken by the work. Broken by his inexplicable fear. Staggering, he dreamed he walked off the cart trail and that the cart train he was pulling followed him down the side of the excavation pit, rolling over him and then dragging him down with it. He felt every impact as his body was tossed about. He heard the tumultuous roar of the cart train as it careened downward, felt the tremors when the first cart exploded into splinters as it slammed into the bottom of the pit. The second cart followed, breaking apart in similar fashion.
When he hit the ground, he felt as if the world had stopped. His first thought was that the harness cage was shattered and he was free. His second thought was that he felt no agony or perhaps that his body was so racked with pain that it had overwhelmed his senses. He saw the face of his father whispering words that he could not understand. Finally, he thought about death. He felt sure death had found him, but he was not afraid. In an odd way, thoughts of death were calming, bringing him back to the here and now.
As he came around, he realized it was well past midday. The she-beast was tending to him, giving him food and water. He knew then that it was the time of the second meal. Across from him, less than a chain away, he could see those of his kind taking their meal breaks.
He thought of ways he could signal them to come to his aid. Subtly he tried to make them aware of his presence. They took no notice of him, however. This angered him until he realized that before the previous day he could not honestly say that he had ever noticed any of the beast kind. They were the faceless, the unseen, and the unknown.
Only a preternatural sense of caution kept further action in check. Somehow, he knew must not continue to try to draw the attention of his kind, so he resolved to wait until he knew more about what was happening to him and why. Although he tried his best to hide this change within himself, the she-beast noticed the subtle shift in his demeanor. She seemed to approve of it, and to show this she moved closer.
By evenfall, only the she-beast kept Rastín on his feet, and she did so with surprising care. As packs of beasts moved to the thousand-fold gates, she helped him to the gates without drawing the attention of the overlords and enforcers. She moved with him across the platform and into the gate. It was the first time Rastín had ever entered the way gate with another. What happened in that brief moment he would not be able to understand until much later, but it was perhaps the reason the gate guardians ensured his people entered the gates one at a time.
Everything after entering the gate was a blur. Rastín barely managed to maintain consciousness. He vaguely remembered the she-beast bathing him and that he slept close against her mane to keep warm. When he awoke in the morning, it was as if his senses were on fire. He heard a tiny buzzer flying in the far corner of the room. When he looked for it, not only could he see it, but it was as if the buzzer were right before him. He could smell his blood on the buzzer and knew it had been feeding on him. In the blood, he could smell iron and earth and so much more.
He tried to stand, but as he did so the room seemed to shift under his feet. The she-beast was at his side in an instant, guiding him, acting as his legs and arms. Looking at her as she held him steady, he was suddenly aware of minute movements—gestures involving the muscles of the face, the eyes, and the ears—that conveyed meaning and became to his mind words. She was telling him something but he did not understand, and this frustrated her.
She repeated herself several times and finally he understood. She was telling him her name. Her name was Akharran. She was of the Wërg people. He tried to tell her he was Rastín Dnyarr Túrring of the Élvemere people. But she became frustrated and cut him off—such a long name made no sense to her. Finally, he told her that he was Dny. This seemed to please her as she responded in gestures that said, “Yes, Dny.”
As she repeated this, Rastín saw such movements for what they were for the first time. They were language. The beasts were neither mute nor dumb. They simply communicated in a way no one else understood.
At his understanding, the she-beast did something that he did not understand at the time but would later know as emotion expressed through movement. These were her tears, but they represented overwhelming joy, not sadness. Gesturing in her language, Rastín tried to ask what she had done to him, but her response was unexpected.
“Hurry, danger,” she told him.
“Yes, hurry, danger,” Rastín replied using gestures.
Rastín followed her as she left the hole and made her way back to the transition corridors. She did not speak to him as they walked or as they worked out in the dark land. Although Rastín found this odd, he did not try to speak to her, either.
Several days passed before he was comfortable enough with her language to try to reach beyond the basics of things like food, shelter, and work. Akharran seemed pleased with this progression but avoided the deeper, more meaningful discussions for which Rastín longed.
W
hile walking and working among other Wërg, Rastín began to learn things Akharran may not have wanted him to know. For instance, the Wërg constantly passed messages among themselves using their expressive language. Messages passed in this way up and down corridors, across the Wërg camp, and throughout the fields in the dark land.
The Wërg were more intelligent than Rastín had ever imagined. Their language was terse but not without its nuances, but he was convinced the Wërg would not understand poetry, books, or music. Such things would have taken too long to convey and would have seemed wasteful—lavish.
Yet he learned the Wërg language also could be conveyed using rhythmic touch. The first time he tried rhythmic touching with Akharran, she became angry and made gestures that were the equivalent of shouting. She did not speak to him all that day, but by evenfall her mood seemed to shift and she seemed to forgive him. Later, Rastín asked, “What wrong done?”
Akharran pretended not to understand, which made Rastín angry. He ignored her until she snuggled closer to him and told him, “Great wrong done.” Using only her touch she told him, “Father, mother. Sister, brother. Son, daughter.”
Together, Rastín knew this conveyed the sense of family. He asked her, “Only father, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter?”
She replied with what he understood as “clan.”
He rolled over and ignored her after that, falling asleep until morning. When he awoke, he convinced himself that if there was fault to be assigned, the fault was his, because Akharran must have known what he felt. Deep down he saw Akharran as a person but saw the rest of the Wërg people as beasts—talking beasts, but beasts just the same. After that, he forced himself to think of the Wërg as kithfolk rather than beasts. He told himself that she was Akharran of the Wërg people, and the Wërg were a good people who meant no harm. As he thought this, he absentmindedly expressed it by touch as well, which caused a commotion among the Wërg who walked with him in the transition corridor. Akharran calmed the tumult quickly, but in so doing betrayed something she clearly had not meant for Rastín to know. Akharran told the Wërg around her that she was Wërg and was not to be doubted. It was the equivalent of his father saying, “We are elf kind, High King of Élvemere.” He knew in an instant what it meant; it meant Akharran was not just any Wërg. She was a queen or as close to such as her kind had.
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