by Cindy Dees
“How’s that?” Will asked.
A shrug under a white robe. “We are called to the old blood. Our tie is ancient, but powerful nonetheless.”
Rosana glanced at her friends in turn, and Eben shrugged when she got to him. He had no idea what this guy was talking about.
Lakanos asked politely, “What sort of business do you conduct with your most excellent caravan, sir?”
“We carry supplies.”
Hatma chimed in. “I have heard legends of the White Caravan, but I was given to understand that one has not been seen in decades.”
“We were called.”
“By blood?” Rosana asked.
“Aye. Just so.”
“Whose blood?” she followed up.
“Of this we cannot speak.”
“I thought it was my blood,” Rosana responded.
“It is your blood. But not you.”
Eben turned that puzzle over in his mind. He said aloud, “So, the blood of a relative of Rosana’s calls to you. Where is this person? How will you know where to find him or her?”
Silent stares were the only answer he got.
Rosana tried, “Why do you seek my … family?”
“To deliver our goods, of course.”
“Do you seek my uncle?” she asked. “Last I saw him, he was traveling the Estarran Sea. How will you find him?”
Palpable frustration rolled off the man in white. He obviously didn’t want to talk about any of this, but just as obviously felt obligated to do so with Rosana. He said reluctantly, “We know where to find the one we seek. And he does not move.”
“I have another living relative?” Rosana exclaimed eagerly. “Who? Where?”
“You do not know your own blood?” the man exclaimed back.
“I was separated from my family as a baby. Please, tell me what you know.”
The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He tried again, but still, no sound came. Finally, the man muttered, “I am sorry. I cannot speak of it.”
Lakanos and Rynn both reacted strongly to that, trading significant glances with one another. Eben frowned. What was he missing?
The man in white tried again, and words came this time. “We go to the White Tower.”
“What is that, and where is it?” Rosana asked.
“I cannot tell you.”
“But if I find this White Tower, I’ll find more of my blood,” Rosana echoed.
“Most assuredly.”
Rosana nodded firmly. “Very well. As soon as our work here is finished, I shall seek this White Tower.”
“Come with us,” the man in white offered. “You may travel as one of us, and we will take you there.”
“Uh, no.” Will didn’t sound amused.
Rosana placed a hand on Will’s sleeve. “Thank you for the offer, sir, but I am needed here for now. One day, though, I will find the tower, and maybe I will find you when I do.”
“Perhaps, white daughter. Perhaps.”
And with that, the members of the White Caravan rose silently to their feet, bowed deeply, and moved off into the gathering heat of the day, seemingly unconcerned for the danger of being caught out in midday.
“Strange bunch,” Eben commented. “Anyone have any idea what they were talking about?”
Everyone made negative sounds except for Rynn, he noticed. The paxan was silent, looking troubled, as if that odd encounter had made a certain sense to him. But whatever Rynn knew, he obviously didn’t want to share.
Eben was intrigued when Hatma led them to the ruin of an old mining settlement about an hour later. Only crude foundations remained. It didn’t look like it had been much of a place before, and it looked even less impressive now. They picked their way over the rocks and debris, and he noticed the rocks looked well worked, even and smooth. “Why did this place fail?” he asked.
Hatma shrugged. “Probably because it’s haunted.” That got everyone’s attention. She continued, “We’re going underground shortly. Stick close together, and do not believe your eyes if you see strange apparitions.”
“You mean ghosts?” Rynn asked.
She stopped in front of a relatively intact structure. It looked like a mine entrance, and turned out to be one, with long steps leading down into the earth through a hatch in the floor. Hatma said, “Yes. I mean ghosts. And there are eidolons and creatures of the dark down here. We will undoubtedly be attacked at some point. Stay close, backs together, and do not let them separate us.”
The steps gave way to mining tunnels, which gave way to wide, high-ceilinged passages containing entire roads that Hatma called ktholes. They looked and felt ancient.
Sha’Li at the very back of the party hissed for silence, and Eben and their friends went still so she could listen. Cicero moved back beside her. At length, Cicero nodded at Sha’Li. They traded hand signals and then moved to join the others.
Cicero murmured, “We’re being followed. Close to a dozen people wearing noisy armor, so not in the business of stealth. Probably not bandits.”
“Imperial Army?” Eben asked quickly. He’d been followed relentlessly last year by a brace of Imperial hounds trained to hunt elementally aligned people like him. Ever since, he’d had nightmares of the Empire catching wind of him again.
Sha’Li shook her head. “Army types tend to walk in step with one another. This bunch is shuffling along.”
“Then who?” he asked.
Will shrugged. “Take your pick. My money’s on Anton’s boys, though.”
“The Kithmar?” Eben retorted. “Oh, I hope it’s them. I have a score to settle with them for kidnapping us and murdering my father.”
“Kidnapping and murder?” Lakanos exclaimed under his breath. “Anton Constantine’s men?”
Rynn nodded at the knight. “Long story. But yes. He’s not fond of our little group or of our endeavors.”
Sha’Li looked around. “Are there any intersections in this road we travel?”
Hatma replied low, “Not for a while.”
Sha’Li shrugged. “Then we move fast until we get to an intersection, and we’ll lay false trails when we get there. Buy ourselves time and get far enough ahead to lay an ambush.”
Eben grinned at her, liking her thought process.
“Or,” Raina responded, “we could simply move fast and stay ahead of them. If they haven’t attacked us by now, I doubt they’re planning to. Those mining tunnels were much tighter and darker than these passages.”
“Party pooper,” Sha’Li grumbled under her breath.
Eben caught the comment and grinned at her in commiseration. He preferred her plan, too. Sometimes having a peace-loving White Heart member around was really annoying. However, Raina’s plan prevailed, and they moved out fast, racing along the ancient dwarven highway as quickly as the dark and rubble allowed.
Time lost all meaning in the darkness, and Eben had no idea how long they marched. But his feet grew heavy, and his body weary. Every time they stopped to rest and sip at their precious water, Cicero and Sha’Li retreated down the tunnel to listen. And every time they came back, someone was still behind them, not quite harassing them, not quite catching up to them, pressing them as if to intimidate them.
“Do you sense any water nearby?” Hatma asked Eben.
“Very little. Perhaps a seep, far in front of us.”
“That should be the Griefalls,” she replied.
“Let us hope so. I’ve had enough of wandering around in the dark, and I’m sick of being followed.”
“You and me both,” Will replied.
Abruptly, the kthole ended. They emerged into a chasm only slightly less dark than the tunnels. Massive parallel walls of stone towered on each side of them, nearly coming to a point overhead. Only a thin slit of sunlight reached the narrow floor of the valley.
“We almost need torches to light our way,” Eben complained.
“Save them. You will need them later,” Hatma responded.
Rynn was studyi
ng the exit through which they’d just come. “If we blast that bit of rock overhanging the kthole’s entrance right there, we can create a rockslide that will block the exit and slow our pursuers.”
Will stepped forward, took aim with his staff, and sent a bolt of magic at the overhang. With a crash and a billow of dust, the rocks came down. “There. That should slow them down for a while,” Will said in satisfaction.
They set off at a blessedly saner pace. They climbed nearly as much as they walked, for the chasm was heavily littered with rubble that had fallen over the eons from the walls above them. At certain points, the passage was so narrow that Eben’s shoulders nearly rubbed against the walls on either side of him. Periodic bouts of claustrophobia made him alternately sweat and shiver. If they were attacked now, they would be hard pressed to defend themselves in these tight quarters.
When the tiny slit of sky visible overhead turned pink and then faded to black, they paused for a few hours to rest, taking turns with half the party napping and the other half standing tense guard. If their pursuers had escaped the tunnel, there was no sign of them. Yet.
But that didn’t make him feel any better. He didn’t like the sensation of being swallowed up by the earth. Even the tiniest mishap down here could leave them all dead or, worse, buried alive. Only his deep connection to the old, slow magic of the stone around him kept him calm. Frankly, he had no idea how the others were coping down here.
They’d been out of water for nearly twelve hours when they came across the first waterfall. It flowed clear and crystalline down the cliff wall into a pool of inviting water. Had Hatma not warned them of the dangers of tainted water in this place, they would all have rushed forward eagerly to drink from it.
As it was, Sha’Li approached cautiously with an empty waterskin. However, when she attempted to submerge it in the water and her hand touched the liquid, she hissed in pain and blew on her fingers as if they had been burned. Eben saw no damage to her flesh, but the water was clearly as dangerous as advertised.
Rosana took the waterskin from Sha’Li. “Let me try.”
Will lurched forward. “Stop! You’ll hurt—”
She rounded on him angrily. “When are you going to stop treating me like I’m not capable of doing anything for myself?”
To everyone’s shock, Rosana was able to submerge the waterskin into the pool with no apparent ill effect to herself. When the skin was full, she pulled it out, wiped it off, and handed it to Sha’Li, who took it cautiously.
“How did you do that?” Will demanded.
Rosana glanced at Hatma and Ayli and said cautiously, “I have touched Death before and know how to defend myself from it.”
Death? Eben watched, worried, as Sha’Li closed her eyes and concentrated upon the water vessel in her hands. Sha’Li’s tribe mark seemed to glow a little. It took several minutes, but eventually, she opened her eyes. “It should be safe to drink now.”
“What did you do to it?” Raina asked.
“It no longer feels tainted to me,” Sha’Li replied.
She hadn’t answered Raina’s question. Eben sidled over to her and murmured, “Is your hand all right?”
Sha’Li flexed her fingers. “I must have cleansed my flesh of the taint at the same time I cleansed the water.”
“You need to have a healer look at you—”
“Are you worried about me? No need. I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you let the experts decide that?”
She grinned. “When it comes to taints, I am the expert.”
“Yes, but I worry about you.” Their gazes met, and a strange, nervous feeling tickled his innards. Confused, he turned away. They needed to get out of this strange place, and soon.
* * *
Feverish urgency drove Raina forward, in spite of her exhaustion, in spite of her terror of what lay before them, and in spite of whoever was following behind them. The voices were always with her now, and doing even the slightest bit of healing was excruciating. Was this how Will had felt two years ago when he’d first joined with Lord Bloodroot, and the union had slowly poisoned him to death?
At least he’d had Rosana to give a piece of her spirit to him and stabilize his health. Raina had no one who could do the same for her. The Mages of Alchizzadon had succeeded in killing her, after all. It was just happening more slowly than she’d expected. Now it was a race to stay alive long enough to restore Gawaine.
They turned west into the main portion of the great fissure. Although it was wider here and more light reached them, they were also more vulnerable to attack. Mist shrouded the bottom of the chasm, and they had to slow down and move cautiously through the persistent fog. Pools of water lurked behind boulders, waiting to surprise the unwary, and a constant sound of dripping, trickling, and running water echoed around them.
Their first night in the canyon, a wave of black-skinned ogres, who reminded her greatly of the green-skinned Boki, attacked. But when Will ripped open his armor and shirt to reveal Bloodroot’s disk on his chest and the network of angry scars radiating outward from it, they disengaged immediately and melted back into the night.
The second night of their trek, more ghostly creatures attacked, monstrous and bestial. Raina had never seen anything like them before. They were accompanied by black-skinned humanoids of some indeterminate race. That fight lasted on and off for an hour as their attackers moved in and out of the fog, striking and retreating, striking and retreating. But eventually, stillness reigned and they came no more.
The next morning, they came across a line of spiked bones that looked distinctly dragon-esque. Hatma wanted to stop and camp in their shadow, using them for protection, but the rest of them voted to move on, away from the disturbing skeleton.
The roar began as a subliminal vibration in Raina’s belly and grew over the next several hours into an audible rumble and then a deafening thunder. The mist grew so thick it blocked out first the stars and then the moonlight.
A turbulent shore emerged from the thick fog, and they stopped abruptly at its margin. Sha’Li squatted down to touch the water and frowned. “It’s clean. Really clean.”
“So we can drink it?” Raina asked. She had to shout to be heard over the roar of the nearby waterfall.
“We can bathe in it,” Sha’Li said eagerly.
“I would not recommend doing so,” Ayli replied quickly. “The guardians of this place would likely take deep offense at such a sacrilege.”
“And who are these guardians?” Will asked.
“The pastors of the King’s Tree,” the shaman answered.
Raina perked up. “As in our king?”
Ayli nodded solemnly.
Hatma added, “When day breaks, the mist will burn off somewhat, and you will be able to see both the waterfall and the great wake tree.”
* * *
When dawn finally came, Will woke bleary-eyed. Worse, now they could see the challenge before them. A breath-stealing waterfall crashed down from the top of the chasm to their left, a narrow, raging ribbon of water that churned the lake before them into a roiling cauldron of angry waves and rolls.
He spied a great black hump in the middle of the pool. An island, overshadowed by a massive tree whose roots crawled all over its surface and whose branches spread wider than those of any tree he’d ever seen. It appeared that the impossibly long branches had dropped secondary trunks to support their weight as they grew too far from the main trunk. The effect was a mazelike network of tree trunks that was, in fact, a single organism. That must be the wake tree.
Which meant they were very close now. “This is it,” Raina murmured. “The zinnzari will be over there somewhere and not happy to see us.”
“How are we to cross the water?” Rosana asked in dismay. “I’m not a strong enough swimmer to survive those currents.”
Now that she mentioned it, Will noticed the water was not only turbulent but flowing rapidly around the black mass of the island, presumably racing toward the drain spout i
nto which this entire body of water emptied.
“I’m strong enough,” Sha’Li replied, eyeing the water intently. “If we join all our ropes together and I tie one end to my waist, I’ll swim it across to the island and tie it off. Then we can use it as a ferry rope for a boat if it’s over there. For surely, the zinnzari who guard that place do not swim these waters.”
It took them a few minutes to secure all their ropes to one another and for Sha’Li to strip down to a sleeveless shirt and short pants that came to her knees. Eyeing the water, she moved so close to the base of the falls that Will worried she would be caught in the down flow and violently forced under the surface.
She waded into the water, and all of a sudden, the current swept her off her feet and she disappeared from sight.
“Is she all right?” Ayli cried.
Eben answered, “She can breathe underwater. She’ll be fine.” But as Will and Rynn helped Eben feed out the rope, Will wondered. The rope was spinning out much faster than any humanoid could swim, which meant Sha’Li was caught in the current. They waited anxiously for several long minutes and were nearly to the end of their rope when all of a sudden Sha’Li’s head popped up out of the water near the shore of the island.
If he didn’t know better, Will would have thought she was drowning. She dragged herself ashore and lay there unmoving. Eben shouted to ask if she was all right, but the noise of the falls was too great. Finally, she lifted her head and looked back at them. Weakly, she lifted one hand and flashed them a thumbs-up.
Eventually, Sha’Li found and dragged back a small skiff, which she secured to the ferry rope and then pulled across the water by hand. Ayli crossed first with Raina and Lakanos. The others took turns riding over in the skiff. Will, Eben, and Rynn went last. The mist thickened as they headed out, and the shore behind them was obscured. As it disappeared from view, though, Will thought he saw something or someone moving along the shore.
He sincerely hoped those were just more of the creatures who seemed to live in this strange place, but he got a sinking feeling those shadows were humanoid. And armed. “I think the people following us have caught up with us,” he murmured.