by G. Deyke
~*~
I wake at last to a throbbing pain in my skull. I am lying belly-down, with my face turned so that my blind right eye is nearer the ground, on a flat gray stone beneath a rainy gray sky. The fresh clean rain tastes good when it trickles into my mouth, but hurts as it strikes the back of my head.
I have never much cared for any gods but Snake (what kretchin would?) but now I offer a brief prayer to Rain-shaker, in thanks for this rain; for the rain is all that assures me that I am home, and not in those wretched Unnamed Lands.
Now I sit up – my ribs hurt as I do, but not enough to stop me – and I look around. I am sitting on a flat gray shore. Rain is pooling on the even stone, and rain is falling from the cloudy sky (that, at least, is a textured sky and not as flat and colorless as even the sky was there), and rain is feeding the deep green sea, which laps gently at the shore. This is no storm, only a steady rain.
Ler's boat has been dashed to pieces. Scraps of wood litter the shore; the glittering golden sail is lost to the deep. Ty stands to his waist in the sea, searching it with his hands.
Therrin lies a ways away, limp. I make certain she is still breathing before I look away.
My ribs are sore, especially on the right side, and my right elbow stings when I move it. I strip off my coat – I am very cold without it – and pull up the sleeve of my shirt to see: I have a small, shallow, but bleeding wound. The shirt and coat are undamaged, though stained.
Now I feel for the painful spot on my head, and find that it hurts even to touch my hair lightly. I think I ought to forgo the binding today. There is no one here to see me anyway, no one to call me kretchin, no one to hurt me and bring me back to her (but I must not think of her, I must not).
I lick my lips and whistle to Snake. They taste salty.
Ty turns to see me, and comes out of the water holding one of our packs.
“This is all I can find,” he says grimly; “and now that the water's gotten into it, I don't know how long we can make the food last. We had better find the temple soon.”
I nod and stand up, donning my coat again. My right ankle feels a little strange, but it holds my weight easily enough, and the feeling quickly passes as I walk to Therrin. Still, I remember how that leg was hurt in the Desert, and I am afraid. I must not lose the ability to walk again. I must not. I try not to think of that past, and look instead at the still girl.
She was always pale – but was she always this pale? I whistle to Snake. It must be the rain on her face that makes her look so sickly.
“She hasn't woken yet,” he tells me.
I nod again, and look around, and wait.
The curse – I wish I hadn't looked for it – is standing near the place I was lying when I woke. It is looking away, at the even stone all around us, stretching in every direction but that of the ocean as far as I can see. This must be the stone plain, then. It is a bleak and desolate place, though it is all the better for the rain, and not as forsaken as the Unnamed Lands.
At long last Therrin stirs. She coughs and sits up and looks around. Her fair hair is plastered to her skull with the wet, and her eyes are strangely bright, and her face looks waxen.
“Is this the stone plain, then?” she whispers hoarsely. “Gods, but it's cold here.”
“Yes,” says Ty, approaching us with the lone pack. “We crashed here while we slept, and the boat was destroyed. These are all the supplies we have left, and they've been in the water.”
“Then we must find Karr,” she says. Her voice is so weak that it pains me to listen, her eyes bright with passion or fever. “We must succeed.”
“If we don't succeed we shall likely die,” Ty agrees. “Unfortunately I don't know where we are – Curse might, but even if it does, I can't give it a direction. I don't know where in the stone plain the temple is. It's near the center, I think, but that's hardly enough to find it by.”
Therrin pushes herself to her unsteady feet. “I can feel him,” she whispers. “I can feel him calling me.”
She totters off, and we follow.