by Layton Green
What a lonely existence, Val thought, looking at Ferin with a grudging respect. An entire year down there alone. The human desire for survival, to claw out an existence on even the worst of terms, was a powerful thing.
The black sash gypsy led them out of his hovel and through a convoluted series of passages before the barrow opened into a wider tunnel with smooth stone walls and a trench running through the center. An ancient sewer, Val guessed.
Ferin stopped to speak in a hushed voice. “We’re beneath the city now. I know of two entrances. We want the second.”
“Why?” Rucker asked. “What’s yer plan?”
“I’ll show ye soon enough. Quiet, now.”
He ushered them through another confusing section of tunnels, creeping along in silence. A rancid odor drifted into the passage. Not long after, they saw a ray of weak blue light spilling down through a sewer grate. As the party edged around it, Val looked up and caught a glimpse of a golden stone tower shadowing a broad avenue. A foot with a giant spur on the heel crashed onto the grate not a second later, causing everyone to still and Val’s heart to thump against his chest.
Whatever demon the foot belonged to kept thundering down the street. Val scurried past the grate with the others, his pulse still pounding. A hundred yards further, they encountered a smaller tunnel branching to the right. “Entrance number one, if ye don’t count the sewer grate,” Ferin whispered. “I followed the tunnel once. It led to a cellar in the southwest corner of the city.”
Val wanted to know why Ferin thought the second entrance was better, and he soon got his chance. When another side tunnel appeared, sloping upward and to the left, Ferin said, “This is the one.”
“What happens if we keep going?” Rucker asked.
“The passage is blocked. Cave-in.”
They followed the side passage until it dead-ended at a stone door. Ferin eased it open, revealing a set of spiral steps. Face tight with concentration, he led the way as quietly as a mime, pausing with every step to listen. Nothing accosted them, and the stairway ended at another stone door.
Ferin eased the iron handle to the side. The door opened without a sound. They stepped into an old, cobwebbed basement filled with casks of ale. He curled a finger for them to follow, leading the group up a set of wooden stairs and into the house proper. After bypassing the first and second landings, which opened onto tiled hallways filled with tapestries and beautiful murals, he continued to a rug-lined hallway with a series of closed doors. Howls and strange cries emanated from the street outside.
Moving with the wariness of a wild animal, Ferin slunk to the second doorway and eased it open. It contained lacquered cabinets, a plush rug, and a four-poster bed with gauze curtains. The bedroom of some nobleman, Val guessed.
Ferin made them crawl on the ground towards the window. When Val peered under the bed, he saw a bloodstained wooden floor and two skeletons clutched in each other’s arms, both with gaping holes in their ribcages. As if something had found them under the beds and ripped their hearts out.
The black sash gypsy crawled to his knees and risked a glance from the bottom of the window. Moments later, he motioned everyone forward. Val gripped the windowsill and saw a portion of the city sprawled below.
Directly across from their position loomed an ivory citadel with a pair of spires and ornate trim. Lining the street below were two- and three-story buildings made of the city’s signature golden-hued stone. Every window looked broken, most of the doors had been smashed, and there were jagged holes in the walls, as if giant bodies had crashed through. Demons of all sorts roamed the town, and Val pulled back with a gasp when he saw live gargoyles squatting like vultures on one of the rooftops.
“What are we looking for?” Rucker asked, in a rough whisper.
Ferin pointed on a northeast diagonal. In the distance, Val saw what he thought was a grassy courtyard in the middle of a large rectangular building. He looked closer and realized the grass was a basin of emerald water, the size of a municipal swimming pool, surrounded by statue-columns that supported a roof terrace. Steam rose off the water, and dark shapes slipped in between the statues, disappearing into alcoves or stepping into the basin. More demons congregated on the rooftop in small groups.
“Best I can tell,” Ferin said, as he ducked below the sightline, “that bathhouse serves as their palace. If the crown is still here, that’s my guess as to its location.” He moved away from the window, turning to face them with a grim expression. “Somehow, we have to get inside.”
-27-
Grilgor, the pig-faced leader of the tusker raiding party, gripped his spear as the line of people in gray caftans approached, a dozen men and women trekking single file through the valley. The triangle of blue dots painted on their foreheads marked the humans as followers of Devla.
It also marked them for death.
Following a bizarre memory loss that Grilgor still couldn’t explain, he was demoted from captain of a slaving crew and ordered by his masters in the Protectorate army to roam the middle portion of the Ninth, the vast plains and old-growth forests, searching for gypsy caravans and other Exilers.
The devout followers of Devla were the greatest prize of all. A hundred Devlan scalps would have Grilgor promoted back into the far more profitable profession of slaving.
Concealed just inside the forest, shielded by a group of beech trees with gnarled limbs, the tusker leader crouched, eager, as the worshippers drew near. Grilgor had thirty armed tuskers, battle veterans all. As usual, the Devlans were armed with scrolls and good intentions.
Grilgor licked his thick lips at the thought of another slaughter.
As the worshippers passed by the grove, he gave the signal. The tuskers rushed out of the trees, clubs and spears raised, huffing and snorting and whooping. The last two groups of worshippers, cowed by the might of the tuskers, had either fled or awaited their fate with bowed heads, secure in their faith. Silly, dead fools.
This time, the lead worshipper broke rank first–only she stepped towards the charging tuskers. Grilgor was even more surprised when she threw back the hood of her caftan, revealing skin as black as deepest night, inch-high dreadlocks covering her scalp, and an intricate, sapphire blue tattoo twisting around her arms and torso.
But the greatest surprise of all came when the woman produced two boomerangs from the folds of her caftan, flicked her wrists, and knocked two of Grilgor’s charging warriors senseless.
As he roared at his men to kill the woman, the rest of the Devlan shucked back their hoods and drew a variety of weapons. Grilgor snarled. So the fanatics have decided to fight.
Still he didn’t worry. Except for the dark-skinned woman, the Devlan did not look like seasoned warriors, and the tuskers outnumbered them three to one. It was not until the last Devlan in line, a thin young man with flowing mahogany hair and stormy eyes, raised his arms and swept Grilgor’s men off their feet with a blast of gale-force wind that the tusker leader cringed in fear.
Wizard, Grilgor whispered.
A geyser of earth exploded skyward. The young mage whipped his hands in a circle, and a tornado of rock and earth tore into the tuskers, blinding and wounding and driving them to the ground. With the tables turned, the rest of the Devlans rushed forward, tearing into the fallen enemy.
Grilgor reeled from his hidden vantage point inside the forest. He debated fleeing, but this would be his second failure. The Congregation would never forgive him. Even his own people would shun him. After a moment of indecision, he puffed his chest out and remembered who he was. Grilgor the Gargantuan, twice the size of a regular tusker, born into battle on the plains of Paragoth Teer.
There was only one wizard, and he had yet to spot Grilgor. The wizard looked young, untested, and probably of weak gypsy stock. If the tusker leader could kill him, they could still win the battle.
Weak the wizard might be, but he was still mage-born. Grilgor would have one shot and one shot alone.
The tusker leader hefted hi
s spear, took aim, and heaved with all his might. The math was simple: if the wizard was well-trained and put his Wizard Shield in place, then Grilgor’s attack would fail, and the wizard would kill him. If the wizard was unshielded when the spear hit, then he would die instead.
Secure in the simplicity of his logic, Grilgor snorted and stomped in disbelief as a whirring object flew out of nowhere and met his spear midway, knocking it down before it reached the wizard. He turned in time to see another boomerang thrown by the tattooed woman, right before it struck him in the temple.
It was the last thing he ever saw.
The dreadlocked woman stood above the fallen tusker leader, toeing him to ensure he was dead. He was an enormous specimen of his kind, much taller than the others and as thick as a tree trunk. She stared down in disgust at his necklace of desiccated human ears.
“Allira!”
She stood, wrinkling her nose. The tusker smelled of rotting garbage. Behind her, the young mage was walking towards her, leaving to the others the task of dragging the dead tuskers into a pile. Soon they would light a pyre and offer the sacrifice to Devla, thanking Him for the victory.
“Elaina caught a spear in her side,” the mage, whose name was Branyn, said. “She requires your attention.”
Allira nodded and saw a wiry blond woman lying on the ground, jaw clenched, bearing her wound in silence. The bleeding was substantial. Allira squatted, reached into her pouch, and cleaned the wound. After that, she applied a paste to stem the blood flow.
When she finished, Elaina thanked her and tried to rise. Allira eased her down with a smile.
“We’ll set camp close,” Branyn said when he returned, after meeting Allira’s gaze and hearing her unspoken request. “She can walk in the morning?”
Allira tipped her head in response.
One of the Devlan lit the pyre. The tusker corpses burst into flame. Branyn floated Elaina beside him as the group of Devlan left the battle site, trekking far enough into the forest to escape the smell, which would alert predators. They set camp by a lazy creek and conducted a short worship service. After that, they dispersed to forage and shield the perimeter of the camp with loose foliage. Ward-craft was not a skill Branyn possessed.
When camp was set, Allira slipped into the forest to sip her tea and commune with nature. The canopy of ancient beech calmed her spirit. Her scouting party was one of several sent by the Prophet to roam the Ninth, striking back at the Congregation’s death squads.
The genocide carried out in the privacy of the wilderness west of the Great River, far from prying eyes, caused her thoughts to roam to another place and time, a land far across the ocean, a dry, wild place of unimaginable beauty. Allira’s birth land. An ancestral lineage that had stretched for eons until wizards from an island empire arrived on cloud steeds and brought Death at their heels, crushing Allira’s peaceful tribe as a mortar grinds spice against the pestle.
All except her. Spared by a stroke of fate she would forever resent, the eight-year-old Allira had been sent to a lonely water hole in the desert before the attack, a punishment by her mother for stealing honey. When Allira returned that night, cold and starving, to find the massacred remains of her family and friends, she wept so long and hard that when she was finished, she found she no longer possessed the power of speech.
She had not uttered a word since.
After years roaming the harsh landscape on her own, Allira emerged into a coastal village with a beach like crushed stars. A young girl belonging more to the desert than to human civilization, she learned to communicate in other ways, and people seemed to understand her. One could learn an entirely new language, she realized, when one did not use words to speak.
Restless, she did not stay in the village for long. Honoring the tradition of her people, she healed those she could, and decided to help others without a voice. The soles of Allira’s feet could recount many experiences. Many. Back in New Victoria, she had spent long months in the Fens, easing the pain of those poor forgotten souls until her supplies ran out. She debated finding more roots and herbs and returning, but decided that instead of dabbing at a fever with a cloth, she could do more good by fighting the infection at the source.
Allira’s scouting party returned to the main Devlan settlement, a sprawling tent camp hidden in plain sight within the endless brown plains west of the Great River. Thousands had joined the cult in recent months.
Not a cult, Allira corrected, eschewing the demeaning terminology the Congregation had imposed. The Devla were a religious tradition spanning millennia, surviving against all odds into the present.
She had also joined the cause, though she considered the particulars of the religion unimportant. If she did believe in God—after what happened to her tribe, she had her doubts—then she believed that the same God served many different peoples, under many different guises. The god of the sky was the god of the desert was the god of the seas.
Picking her way among the canvas tents and prayer blankets, Allira made her way to the pavilion housing the Prophet. The great man wanted a report from her. Allira commanded respect from her dual role as the camp’s best healer and one of their most potent fighters. Still, she sensed her presence both pleased and saddened the Prophet. Like the rest of the Devlan, he was painfully aware that Allira’s skills were of the earthly variety, and that no true cleric walked the land.
The Templar, the one who prophecy foretold would lead them into battle and secure their freedom, still had yet to appear.
According to the canticles, the Prophet was supposed to herald the arrival of the Templar, and many had tried. Was the current prophet another charlatan, Allira wondered? There was something about this one . . . the confidence in his wheat-colored eyes, the inner peace . . . no, he was no charlatan. This she knew for sure. Misguided or insane, perhaps.
But no fraud.
Still, it was only a matter of time before the Congregation found them and hunted them down like vermin. They were doomed without the Templar or, if not the fulfillment of that legend, then another miracle.
Allira’s people had a saying about that, however. That a true miracle will only happen to someone who is not looking.
And no one, she thought, absorbing the quiet desperation of the Devlan worshippers and the blind faith they placed in their leader, helpless stalks of corn awaiting reaping by the Congregation, longed for a miracle more than they.
-28-
As soon as Will pulled the final star-shaped lever, the black marble floor disappeared, and he went into free fall. He barely managed to keep hold of Mala’s unconscious form as they plummeted into a dimly lit pit.
Something sleek and silver gleamed next to him. A wide pole of some sort. He lunged for it with one arm and managed to grasp onto it. As he wrapped his legs around the metal surface, shifting to get a better grip on Mala, he realized the surface of the pole was slick with an unknown substance. Not slippery like oil, but greasy enough that Will was slowly sliding down it, unable to maintain his position.
Trying not to panic, he took in his surroundings with a glance.
And then he panicked.
He was suspended near the top of an enormous pit that stretched at least a hundred feet across. Writhing, crackling blue fire—the source of the weak light—comprised the walls in every direction. Ten feet above him loomed a stone ceiling with no visible openings.
Dozens of identical silver poles, at least thirty feet long, extended down from the ceiling like metal stalactites. They started wide at the ceiling and tapered down to sharp points. Below the poles was a bottomless abyss.
Will had slipped a third of the way down his spiked pole, edging towards a drop into that well of blackness. For a moment, he couldn’t think. The predicament was too awful. The toxic gas had weakened him, and Mala was slumped in his left arm, unconscious. There was no apparent exit. Fire all around, and death below.
Stay calm, he told himself. Stay calm and think. The poison mist was gone, at least.
/> He couldn’t search for an escape while holding Mala, couldn’t do anything other than slide to his doom. Clutching the pole with his legs to free up an arm, he started fumbling in Mala’s pouches for a familiar green bottle: an ointment of healing.
The strain was enormous. Just as he thought he might drop her, he found the bottle, which gave him a burst of hope.
Would it even work on someone unconscious? It might heal her, but would it wake her up in time?
There was only one way to find out.
He uncorked the bottle and poured it down her throat, trying his best not to spill the precious liquid, praying it would bring her back.
Within moments, she spluttered and sucked in a deep, gasping breath. A few seconds more and her eyes popped open. She took in the situation and was able to cling to the pole by herself. Energized, feeling a bit stronger himself, he tried to climb the pole. While he didn’t slide down as fast, he still lost ground. He estimated they had less than a minute before they fell to their deaths.
Mala didn’t waste time on small talk. “What have you tried?”
“Nothing. We arrived seconds ago. I was about to drop you so I gave you a potion.”
“Quick thinking.”
“I dropped the bottle when I finished,” Will said as he looked down, realizing they had slid halfway down the spire pole, “and never heard it hit.”
Mala grimaced. “The walls or the ceiling, then. The exit has to be one of the two.” She tried to climb the metal surface of her pole and failed. “We can’t go up, so there must be an exit through the fire.”
Will had a sudden inspiration. “What about your magical rope? Can we use it to reach the ceiling?”
“I lost it,” she said, then pointed to his left, at the nearest wall. “Go.”
Five feet separated each spiked silver shaft. Will jumped from pole to pole in the opposite direction, until he came to the last pole and felt the heat of the blue fire.