by Ben Galley
Maro felt uneasy as he left Ganeth’s body behind. It wasn’t that he much liked him. Shahn had made that the first lesson and Maro had learned it. Of course, he had never known anything else. Had never known love, even as small a piece of it to call like. Still, he felt something as he resumed his lonely trek through hollows beneath the Sightless.
It was like a weight and, after a time, he began to wonder if the little beasts in their caves and alcoves watched him pass beneath their cursed branches. The Willows could pierce the bark of a tree leagues away with their sight. They were Landkist. Use it too much, and they were wont to lose the white to black wells, whatever humanity and sense they had to this hateful tree and all its burrows. It didn’t matter much if the Sightless watched him or not, cast its judgment or not. Maro hated it, and he never expected to feel such a bitter thing.
Maro had never been much of a thinker, but when he came to a shallow valley with raised green mounds, he climbed atop the tallest and sat to do just that. He could see the many doorways that opened up onto the milky bowl and marveled that he had only just now reached it after an untold time spent flitting through zagging tunnels and navigating dirty trails.
He sat to think, and then realized he had a hard time doing it. Impressions came and went, which he at first took for an effect of the land around him, perhaps of the white vapors that kissed his bare knees and swirled like an ocean among the mossy mountains. There was no order to it, but one thought did form itself in the calm and soothing chaos.
Maro hated those above. He hated the Sightless with its leering black eyes and too-many bodies. He hated the Willows with their knowing sight that told them nothing. He hated the hateful Raiths watching from their trees with their green-eyed beasts and toothy champions. He hated Shahn and Maja more than either could hate the other, and he thought that when he finally reached the Emerald Blade, wherever it was, he’d use it to kill the lot of them and start the land again.
He thought the Sage who had once ruled these lands was a hateful, spiteful being to have concocted such a trial. Or perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps he had left the blade as a gift meant to unify, and not a challenge meant to be won. He nearly smiled as he thought it.
There was another feeling that creeped and crawled beneath the surface like an earthworm through loose soil. He glimpsed Ganeth’s face on the backs of his eyelids in the midst of a long blink and shook it away. He pictured Vela’s crumpled form against the side of a carven tunnel, and though he had not killed her, he knew he would have. They said there was no shame in this. They had been saying it his whole life, but Maro was wise enough to know that saying a thing enough meant its opposite as much as its truth.
Kai. Where was Kai? Was she lying in one of the tunnels he had passed by? Was she one of those who had met her end on the bludgeoning bones beneath Ganeth’s red knuckles?
He thought of them all. All the children he had grown with, been raised with and would have counted friends and perhaps something close to family had the folk of the Emerald Road not needed them to bear the burden of their elders’ sins. Of the sins of the Sages and their ilk. He thought of the boy who could have been raised among them but was not. Brega was as much a stranger as the Embers of the west and the Skyr of the northern cliffs. Maro knew he was alive. Knew it in his bones. He thought that might be a boy he’d like to kill.
And then he heard something that was distinctly separate from the whispering, nothing he had grown maddeningly accustomed to in the lands below the Sightless thus far. He remembered the child he’d forgotten. The one none among them should. He remembered Sohr, and how much he liked games and riddles.
That was the problem with thinking. It was as like to get you killed as anything sharp or heavy, and while Maro had yet to find anything that fit that description in these lands, he hadn’t really bothered to look. Others had. Others were more bent toward thinking than he, and as the first thorn opened a gash across his back that burned like no blade ever could, Maro rose and spun just in time to dodge the next.
The laughter was more mischievous than cruel, and Maro knew he had fallen into Sohr’s game. He only hoped he’d learn the rules quick enough to kill the maker before he fell. Given how his head already throbbed from the thorn’s toxins, he felt the first misgivings of fear since being thrust beneath such a macabre thing.
He dodged the next thorn and leapt to a neighboring mound, trying to piece the vaporous clouds of white that swirled around them, like rivers of mist. A shrill whistle sounded like air passing through a narrow chute and Maro easily avoided the next sharp bit of yellow-green. He could almost smell the potent stuff that had coated it and then realized it was the scent of the blood running down his back made as it mixed with the purple stickiness. He wondered if Sohr had brought the poison in or if he’d found it.
No matter. Maro was quick. Quicker than the rest and quicker than Sohr, though not half as clever. He angled toward the direction the thorns had come from. He could just make out the gray outlines the root walls made at the edge of the bowl that wasn’t half as large as the mist made it appear, and each time his bare feet touched the softness of one of the green mounds, he winced in anticipation of some new trap.
He felt a burning in his thigh and looked down as he landed. A thorn protruded from the soft bit below his groin and started its own syrupy river. Maro whirled and heard that laugher bubble up from the twisted trails below the mounds, drifting down from the airy heights and their nested alcoves. There had been no whistle to precede the latest bolt, and Maro nearly smirked for Sohr’s cleverness. The sounds had come from his lips and not from whatever reed he used to send his missiles.
Clever. Clever and quick.
Maro kept moving and kept searching as he did. Sohr was a hunter, and the only way to catch him was to turn the game around. He had chosen good ground for it, and already Maro felt the pain in his muscles turn to twitching spasms that soon gave way to numbness that made him long for the agony the initial strikes had caused.
He came down on the next mound and then went down in a tumble, falling farther than he’d have thought as he passed beneath the cool and drifting layer of mist. He hit the bones beneath with a shock that expelled the breath from his lungs and did not come up as quick as he should have.
The next bit of burning took him on the shoulder. Lucky he saw it. Lucky Sohr was close.
The shard of bone struck Maro in the collar and broke off there, cracking the bone beneath, but the poison had done its work in the wrong way for Sohr now and the right way for Maro. He didn’t feel the bite nor the ache that would soon follow. Instead, he took Sohr by the wrist and relieved him of his bone knife. He spun him around and slammed him into the hard-packed base of the mound and pressed the shard of white up and under his chin, and saw the amusement turn to fear in the younger boy’s face.
“How many left?” Maro asked.
Sohr tried to choke out a reply and Maro relieved some of the pressure. His vision began to swim, and he could see by Sohr’s look that it showed. Delay the killing too long, and he was as like to fall as Sohr was to die on the end of his borrowed blade.
Fluid that Maro at first mistook for blood trickled from Sohr’s mouth as he made to speak. It was purple, and he realized with surprise that it must be the poison he had coated his thorns with. Maro looked down and saw the wood flute in Sohr’s left hand, the knuckles blanching white as he gripped it tightly—the only hint of the fear that did not reach his face.
“The poison,” Maro said. “Where did you find it?”
“Brega Cohr,” Sohr choked out, and the syrup came out thick and spilled down his chin and covered his chest. It smelled sharp enough to sting Maro’s eyes and jarred enough sense into him to know that he was drifting ever closer to toppling over.
“It is forbidden to bring weapons here,” Maro said, disdain he did not know he felt until he gave voice to it infecting his tone. “You bring disho
nor.”
Sohr spat between laughs. His eyes showed more black than brown; the poison might not reach his blood beneath his tongue, but it was doing strange work on him nonetheless.
“Dishonor,” Sohr said. “What place does honor have in this? What are we but sacrifices to the Sage’s memory?”
“Only one can wield the blade,” Maro said, fighting past the doubt Sohr’s certainty called up. “Only one of us.”
“Blade,” another short, barking laugh. “You truly think there is such a thing, here? Sheltered as we’ve been, Maro, you were always densest.”
“Then why?” Maro said, hating the way he sounded. Hating that he sounded his age. “Why send us in?”
“To feed the Sightless,” Sohr said, though he did not sound near as certain as he had before. “Who knows? We are but children, Maro, and those that don’t belong to any. We never knew the faces of our mothers but for the white-eyed Willows and their cold regard. Shahn is no father, much as he pretended to be. If he was, he’d have stopped us going in.”
“The Sightless guides our people,” Maro said. “The Sage of Center trusted it.”
“And you trust him? You trust one of them? The would-be gods who left the World to suffer and break apart in the midst of their warring? On the back of all they have done.”
Maro felt his face flush in shame. He felt a swell of pity that nearly saw him relax his hold, but he gritted his teeth and pressed Sohr farther back into the base of the mound. Many-legged things spilled from their tiny holes and burrows and angled toward Sohr before the pungent stuff that coated him stung them and made them recoil.
“You ask me how many,” Sohr said, his voice lowering. “None.”
Maro frowned.
“I killed no one, Maro,” he said. “And the rest haven’t either.”
“Ganeth—”
“Ganeth beat his fists upon the roots and wall before you met him. I should’ve stayed with him in the bowl. Should have stayed to fight you.”
“Sohr—”
“It’s you, Maro!” Sohr yelled. “It’s you the rest fear. It’s you we mean to kill, and if the others hadn’t turned craven and if Brega hadn’t come, we’d have it done by now.”
“Vela …” Maro started, but he felt cold all over, now. He thought of Kai and wondered if it was true. Wondered why it mattered to him.
“So it wasn’t you, then,” Sohr said, nodding slightly. “Brega, no doubt. Perhaps he can kill you, then.” He quirked a brow and tilted his head like a hound might. “What is that look for, Maro?” he asked, bitter and taunting. “You had your heart set on killing the lot of us anyway. Is it truly a surprise we’d try to kill you first?”
Maro thought to answer but nothing came out. He felt a wave of dizziness rise and pushed it down with the fresh heat a new anger called up in him.
“There was never a Sage’s blade to be found,” Sohr said. “He’s gone, Maro. He’s been gone a long time, and he left nothing behind for his wayward children, for his battling tribes.”
“Then why—”
“You, Maro,” Sohr said, and much of the anger had gone out of his tone, leaving behind something like the pity Maro had only just felt for him. “You are their blade, and this is your forging, as it was always meant to be.” His eyes glistened with wetness. “On the heat of our blood—”
Maro cut his throat before he knew what he was doing. He held him up for a space of time as if he wanted to keep talking. He pressed him back into the earthen mound and screamed himself hoarse.
And then he let him drop along with the bone he’d killed him with.
The anger brought up a heat that reminded him of stories Shahn had told them of the Embers in the west. The Landkist of fire whom the Eastern Dark craved as his own and who had abandoned their lands in favor of taking others’. It helped to fight off the poison for a time. Maro’s head swam and his vision blurred. He navigated by touch more than sight, too weak to climb the slick mounds and too turned-around to find his way through the misty trenches.
He collapsed in a heap and felt jagged bones greet his arms and chest. The sting was washed away in a tingling numbness and he wondered absently if he would die. A part of him wanted to.
Maro believed Sohr. For all his games and mischief, there was fear in his eyes before the end Maro had given him, and fear brought honesty. The Sightless didn’t fear. They had lost it long ago, along with their white eyes in favor of black. That was why they couldn’t be trusted.
A part of Maro wanted to die here and now, to let his eyes drift closed and the blood leak out, slow and sticky until his bones were indistinguishable from the garden around him. But the greater part found that kernel of anger and nursed it back to flickering life. The greater part of him wanted to escape this place, and to turn his vengeance on those who’d sent them in.
There was a crack that signaled another. Bones broke underfoot, and the mist slid across Maro’s glistening cheeks, leaving its cool kiss behind as someone moved through the murk. He tried to move. Tried to roll over onto his back, to look death in the face and see whose mask it wore.
Instead, he remained still, his body as frozen as his will. His eyes had drifted near to closing, but he still retained enough sense to see a patch of bronze skin break his field of view. It was a child’s foot, like the rest of them, and though weathered with the calluses the Emerald Road granted all its children, it grew from a slender ankle that reminded him of a bird.
Kai.
She squatted down and must have looked him over. He thought he felt her hand upon the small of his back, checking to see if he was alive. She brandished a jagged bone of her own, and Maro thought it looked red. The one he’d used to kill Sohr.
Maro found himself wishing for the end. He wanted her to drive the bone tip into the soft between his neck and shoulder and make a quick and painful end of it. Instead, she sighed and stood, and try for the life of him, Maro could not see her face. He thought he read pity in the vision his mind made.
She left him there, spared and alone, and continued on through the clouded trenches, and he drifted well beyond what little sense he had remaining. He fell into a sleep too deep for dreaming and too light for dying, and when he felt a burning on his ear, he thought it the work of blood returning before he heard the chitter of the many-legged things that nested here and felt the clack of mandibles drawing closed with his flesh between them.
Maro screamed and twisted, ignoring the slicing bones his body had smashed as he whipped around. His body was red and covered with insects, and though he was dizzy and unsure, he sent them skittering and smashed the larger ones between his palms and stamping heels. He was crying, his tears making tracks through the blood that couldn’t dry completely in this place, and when they left him, retreating into their holes and burrows, he hugged his shaking knees and cried anew, not caring who heard.
After a time, the mist cleared some, and Maro thought it the work of day returning, though it was impossible to judge the passage of the sun and moon here. He stood, swaying, but his sense of direction had returned. He moved off, carving shallow lines into the dirt walls of the green mounds as he went so that he would not lose his way, and the farther he got, the more the mist retreated until it left nothing behind but the suggestion of fog over a mire.
There was a yawning gap between the wall and ceiling with a network of roots running up it. Maro saw dark patches of soil in the shape of feet and white markings where bone had pierced the thin bark and knew Kai had gone this way. His heart hammered in his chest as he followed, and the clearer his mind became, the less certain his intent.
The air was different at the top. Maro still felt the cool kiss of the vapor at his back, but he had no desire to return to that place. He closed his eyes for a spell and breathed in deep. He smelled pine on the wind and clay that suggested running water. He nearly smiled for the rush it gave him, and th
en grinned for the promise of freedom and those waiting on the other side.
What look would Shahn give him when he died? Maro hoped it was betrayal. He wondered how many he would get to before they brought him down and hoped it was more than few and less than all. Some had to remain to tell the tale. Some had to remain to live with the remembered fear of it.
Perhaps Kai would help him, once she saw him alive. With the two of them working together, side-by-side, perhaps they’d kill them all and not care that none were left to tell of it.
Now there was only the matter of Brega Cohr, a boy too dangerous to be left alive. The thought brought a fresh worry. Had he found Kai? Had he tried to turn her against Maro as well, just as he had with Sohr? Had he killed her when she refused?
The way grew brighter ahead, and Maro felt the softest heat greet the skin of his arms and shoulders as the sunny canopy spilled the reflected rays of the sun down into the twisted roots below Sightless. He was near the surface, now, which meant the others could not be far, if they remained at all.
And then Maro saw another light ahead, and while it was bright like the sun, its mood was different, and its color. He squinted against the bright that seemed to flicker, and while at first, he took it for an opening back out onto the mossy mounds and shallow pools of the Emerald Road, he knew with a gripping dread that he was wrong.
The tunnel opened onto a wide chamber shaped like a bowl turned on its head. In the center was a twisted patch of roots that spilled down in a spiral and formed a latticework that widened at the base of the dirt floor. It was like a wood cage shaped like a bell flower, and at its center was a pulsing heart of green, like an emerald jewel or a beating heart.