A twig cracked behind her and she whirled around. Okane stood there. He held up his hands and said quickly, “It’s just me.”
“You? But—” She looked between him and the tunnel entrance, baffled. “Where’d you come from? I didn’t see you come out.”
“This place isn’t what I thought it was,” said Okane. “I think - - -’ll appreciate it, though.”
He gestured her to follow. They skirted the thicket, through more vegetation and into a small ravine. Okane pulled aside the branches of a sprawling tree, and there in the ravine’s side was an open door. Laura brushed her hand over the weathered wood, and her fingers caught in the grooves of a carved cross.
“Could this be—”
“One of the couriers’ hideouts,” said Okane. “I’m sure of it.”
Laura stared at him. “Weren’t we supposed to be avoiding couriers? You were terrified of them earlier.”
“As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been used in a long time. It’s covered in dust.”
“And there’s no sign of them outside?”
Okane couldn’t possibly know how to track passersby, but he still said, “I’m sure. No other people are anywhere close to us. It sort of—” He gestured vaguely. “It feels empty here.”
“If you’re sure,” she muttered, and walked in.
The short entryway opened up into a wide subterranean room. The rounded walls centered about a large chunk of glowing, yellowish crystal. The crystal stuck up out of the ground at an angle, weathered into a misshapen lump and ringed by stones as if it were a campfire. On either side of the door, patches of ground had been turned over, covered in leaves and boxed in by wooden frames; on the far side something similar had been done, but rather than leaves these smaller frames overflowed with pelts. Overhead the grasses and branches of the thicket twined sturdily together, forming a roof of their own and thick brambly walls. The tunnel could be spotted just above their heads, but it dead-ended into open air.
“I almost fell right through,” Okane admitted. “Luckily some more thorns had been pulled over, so I had to slow down. Gave me time to realize what I’d crawled into.”
“It’s not quite as impressive as films led me to believe,” said Laura, but relaxed all the same. It was shelter; she couldn’t ask for anything more. “What’s that crystal? It looks pretty important.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure.”
He knelt down to get a better look at it, and Laura did the same on the other side. The crystal was pale, pale yellow, fogged up like a winter window. Could it be an amulet running out of power? Frowning, she reached out a hand and pressed her palm against its side.
Brighten, she ordered.
Nothing happened. Was it just a rock after all? Okane copied her motion. She didn’t know if he gave it an order, but as soon as he brushed it the crystal glowed. Laura felt a shift of magic, but it was wrong. Flat. She couldn’t think how to describe it beyond—
“Dead!” Okane drew back, clutching the hand to his chest as if burned.
Laura blinked at him. “It’s a rock.”
“It’s dead!”
“The magic, you mean?” She placed both hands now and concentrated. With the crystal going, she could feel its energy working. Where Gin thrummed loyal and steady, where Niveus danced excitedly, this crystal was empty. There but not there. Nothing, but it couldn’t be, because magic still lingered but there wouldn’t even be a hollow left when it was gone. She saw what he meant: it felt alive and dead all at once. A crystal coma.
A sudden, sick feeling jolted through her. Her eyes snapped open. A crystal coma.
“Is this like Clae?” she whispered. “Was this a person? A Magi?”
“It can’t be,” said Okane, horrified. “It looks nothing like a person!”
But Laura pictured Clae, imagined the same wintery fog crept across his crystal, and her mind drew far too many similarities. Could he be reduced to something like this? Would his magic drain over time to the point that anything left of him—magic, soul, otherwise—would cease to exist? Had they been stealing the last of Anselm’s humanity all this time?
“It’s not a Magi,” Okane said firmly. “Magi turn when they’re overwhelmed, and that emotion stays. Clae was angry when he died. I hate going near Anselm because he was so afraid when he died, he makes me scared now. If this isn’t … If it’s not screaming, there’s no way it was alive.”
“What else could it be?” said Laura.
That was harder to answer, but at last Okane settled on, “Recovered Gin.”
“What?”
“Felin eat magic, right? Brecht said that there’s a problem with packs of felin digging out Gin deposits and feeding until all the magic is gone and Gin is destroyed. Some Rangers pick up affected stones and carry them where felin can’t reach, wait for magic to replenish, then sell the stone to cities.”
The ground around them was hilly and forested enough that no felin could easily reach this place, so that at least made sense. Yes, this could be chipped and tired Gin recovering from an attack. Nothing nearly so grave as what her imagination came up with.
“Exactly,” she said, forcing her brain to this conclusion. “I mean, if it was a person, there’s no way anyone would keep it in their hideout like this.”
But still the crystal glowed, and still she doubted.
* * *
The next morning she woke to the musty smell of earth and furs, and an uncomfortable warmth at her side. This wasn’t so strange—the crystal had readily produced heat all night—but in such a specific location? She blinked open her eyes and looked down. An animal was curled up there. It looked like a huge lanky dog, its thick coat fiery red save for the black bristled fur along its hackles, narrow muzzle, and abnormally long legs. Blotches of darker and lighter reds dotted its sides, but the brightest color of all was the yellow of its catlike eyes, which it fixed on Laura. It made no attempt to move.
“Okane?” she squeaked.
“Hm?” Okane sat up in his own box of furs. He was studying a page, and another beast lay flush against his leg.
“What’s going on?”
He glanced at her, realized her discomfort, and said, “It’s nothing to worry about. These are firedogs.”
Laura was familiar with the term, if not the appearance. Firedogs lived in the wilds, named such because they gravitated toward heat. Ranger myths abounded with stories of men kept alive in winter by packs of firedogs. She’d seen the like in films, but the director obviously took some artistic liberties by using kingshounds instead. The shape was vaguely similar, but the colors could never be confused.
“This place is camouflaged as a firedog den,” Okane continued, turning back to his paper. “The couriers must let them in frequently to keep up the disguise. They seemed happy to see us.”
The animals seemed as tame as regular dogs. Laura rose gingerly, and her furry companion merely snuffled and rolled into the warm spot where she’d been. Three more firedogs had stacked up against the crystal itself. One of them kicked in its sleep, and Laura had to step over it to reach Okane.
“What have you got there? They didn’t fetch you a telegram, did they?”
He held up the page. It was most definitely not a telegram. For one thing, it was many times larger than the usual note, and for another, it overflowed with complicated symbols. Laura was somewhat familiar with pictographs due to the usual labeling of Kuro no Oukoku, but these were three times more complicated. Looking at all the dense lines made her head hurt. She squinted, trying and failing to find a meaning.
“Is it … a letter?”
“It must be.” Okane spread it over his lap again. “I know the language. It’s Wasureigo.”
“Wasu—What?”
“The native people and Magi worked together a long time ago, and as far as I understand they still interact frequently. Natives call themselves Wasureijin, which means something like ‘forgotten people.’ ‘Go’ is ‘language.’ The forgotten language. My mothe
r taught me to speak some dialects, but the actual writing?” He shook his head. “I know enough to tell it’s describing landscapes, but I only learned individual letters. Grammar, syntax, everything in between … I can’t tell - - - what it means. If it says anything about their plans with Amicae, I wouldn’t know.”
Laura sat beside him. “Do you think it says where the nearest paths are?”
“Presumably.”
“Okay, let’s see … which of these is one you understand?”
“‘Forest.’” He pointed at one of the less-complicated ones. “See? It’s a lot of letters in one. Two trees sheltered by a big tree. Forest.”
“And are there any directions you recognize by it? Left or right? East or west?” His frown said no. She sighed. “I suppose they can’t have left us a map. Too easy.” She studied it some more before tilting her head. “What’s that one?”
The symbol in question was easily the simplest one on the page, and came up multiple times: a cross potent.
“It looks like a number, but it’s wrong,” said Okane.
“Could it be a location?” said Laura. “There was a cross carved in the door here. Maybe it means ‘safe place’? If we’re traveling from one place to another, that needs safe roads, and it must overlap with Ranger routes at some point. We might be able to find someone on the way.”
“What happens if it leads us into a group of couriers?” Okane said darkly.
“Then we’ll approach with caution, and maybe get some answers to our current problems. If someone as obvious as Grim can sneak around them, so can we.”
Okane gave her a long look, but he didn’t seem to have any better ideas. “So if the cross is a location, and the words around it are descriptions…” He puzzled over it again, mouthing the words he knew. “So, I think it’s talking about a continuing route. In one direction is the old … thing. Place. Settlement. But that’s a bad place, so we head away from it. There are things in the middle … mountains are mentioned.… One big tree, then forest with the safe zone, then field, then rock, then river with safe zone. Big field and more bad after it.”
“So if we can figure out where those are and go the opposite way—” Laura snapped her fingers. “Thrax. The old dangerous settlement, they must mean Thrax!”
“Could we see that from here?”
“In sunlight, maybe. We’d have to find a proper vantage point.” Her mind raced. “Thrax is a stupid place to go in the first place, but the other bad areas might just mean spots in full view of other people. Couriers would want to avoid those. We should head for their so-called bad places.”
“It’s something to go on. Let’s just make sure we leave this place intact. I don’t want them figuring out we stayed here.”
“Good call,” said Laura.
They shuffled through the room, double-checking that nothing was out of place. With so little decoration to start with, the task proved easy. Okane folded up the paper and carefully stowed it under the furs, presumably where he’d found it.
“That’s done. Shall we?”
The firedogs perked up as the pair made for the door. Once it was clear they were leaving, the firedogs leapt up and charged out of the hideout. They vanished by the time the Sweepers reached the ravine.
“They’re weirdly well trained,” said Laura.
“I wonder how the couriers did that,” said Okane, pulling the door closed.
Laura was about to reply but paused. One of the firedogs stood at the mouth of the ravine, looking expectantly at them.
“He looks like he’s waiting for us,” she mused.
“Maybe it’s part of the couriers’ routine?” Okane guessed.
They watched it a while longer. The firedog gave an annoyed bark and trotted away. Laura and Okane glanced at each other. Wordlessly, they agreed to follow. The firedog led them over uneven terrain, glancing back every once in a while to check for their presence. The path it walked was narrow but well-trodden. A horse couldn’t fit through here, but people certainly could. The firedog led them to a wide clearing on a hill. Its pack lounged among the patchy grass and tree stumps, soaking up the morning light. An enormous tree rose from the very middle of the clearing, dwarfing the surrounding foliage with its sprawling branches.
“Big tree,” Laura whispered.
She hurried to its trunk and looked toward the mountains. On early mornings clouds tended to hang about the summits, but on this January day the clouds thinned. Ever so faintly, she saw the distant shape of a ruined city.
“There it is! Thrax! I saw it from the train the same way!” she laughed. “Not only is that map right, we must be close to train tracks! We can find help!”
“Then we follow the direct line,” said Okane. “This way.”
They went back into the forest, leaving the clearing and firedogs behind them. Sure enough, another little path wound here. It led them up and down a few more slopes, weaving between trees and bushes. After a particularly rocky decline, they reached a break in the trees and emerged into full sunlight. Before them the mountains soared into the sky, their jagged forms high above them but growing smaller and more indistinct as Laura followed them, until they became little more than a bluish haze on the horizon. The ground to their right remained rocky and difficult, but in the distance the landscape melted into the flatlands, gentle hills dotted with more copses of trees. Laura had seen a picture of almost the exact same view in a textbook before, and her spirits soared.
“I know where we are!” she cried. “We’re on the edge of the Terulian Plains!”
Of course, location gave them little to go on at this point. They remained tired, hungry, and unsure where the map led. Laura had a general idea of the closest city: beyond Thrax, Terrae sat in the very middle of the plains. With so much vital farming area, Terrae grew more crops than it consumed; satellite towns would be scattered far and wide around it, and trains would constantly come through to pick up products to sell in other cities. Civilization couldn’t be far out of reach. They only needed to track down a train or find a satellite citizen. If it were a train bound for the south or Amicae they could get back home, but even if their ride headed toward Terrae, they knew people there. Diana and the Terrae Sweepers had helped them only recently, and Clae had told them Terrae had old ties to the Sinclairs. It would work. They just needed to know which direction to focus their efforts in. They selected the highest and closest of the plains hills to serve as a vantage point and started navigating through the rest of the rocky foothills.
“What’s that?” Okane asked, halfway down one of the slopes and gesturing to the side. “I haven’t seen something like that before.”
The grasses here grew shorter, pale green as opposed to the rich emerald they’d be in summer, but in multiple spots sprawled shapes made of rocks, raised earth, or brownish grass. Laura frowned as they passed a swirling design seven feet across.
“I don’t know. I never saw pictures of them in the books I read. Then again, photographers would’ve taken a different path, wouldn’t they?”
Okane looked around, taking in all the designs, and stopped short. “Hang on, I know what that one means. Water. I think it must mean the river with the safe zone.”
The mention caught Laura’s attention immediately. Her throat was parched: water would be very welcome. “Is it pointing somewhere?”
Okane heaved himself up the rocks nearest them. He squinted over the top, keeping himself low. After a while he descended again, confirming, “Yes, there’s a river. No sign of anyone else, couriers or otherwise.”
“Water” turned out to be a wide but short waterfall framed by colored rocks. At their dry points the rocks were regular gray, but closer to the waterline they changed into rusty reds, pale blues, and pinks with black crevices. The water came from somewhere in the mountains, cascading down into a wide pool so clear they could see the smooth rocks of the bottom, more blues and greens in heaps that had to be fifteen feet down. The water continued from that place in a strea
m, twisting away downhill but completely obscured from their previous position. Laura knelt and scooped up water with her hands. She took big gulps while Okane wandered closer to the falls.
“What are you looking for?”
“This was supposed to have a safe place, or another hideout. I guess I was—hang on.”
Another symbol was carved into the rock by the waterfall, a cross potent in the middle of a circle. Okane ran his finger over the mark. He furrowed his brows and dug in his nails. The rock scraped as he pulled the circle piece out. The symbol worked as a stopper, revealing a hollow area inside the rock. Okane reached in, and pulled out a square biscuit.
“It’s a cache.”
Laura’s stomach growled, but she eyed the food uncertainly. “If we take it, they’ll know someone came here.”
“- - -’re right.” His shoulders slumped; he must’ve been just as hungry. “Even if they don’t find us, they’ll take it out on passing Rangers, or even the satellite towns. It’s not worth—”
A low whoosh of air from behind them interrupted him. Laura turned and felt the blood drain from her face. An enormous shaggy animal approached them, its doggy head crowned with curved bull horns. Its cloven hooves clicked against the stone by the pool while its mouth opened, revealing sharp teeth.
“What is that?” Okane squeaked.
“Canir!”
“It looks different from that taxidermy in the Sullivan house.”
“Well no shit, it’s alive!”
Laura clamped her mouth shut as the canir growled. Okane’s free hand groped at his belt, as if he’d suddenly remembered he had a gun. She grabbed his arm to stop him. Maybe the gun would hurt a canir, maybe it wouldn’t, but it would bring worse things down on them. The canir grew closer, to the point they could feel its breath on their faces. It turned its head to the side to look at them with one beady black eye. It gave a long, low snarl, but made no move to attack. A mechanical clack caught their attention, and they looked up. Grim stood atop the rocks, a rifle in hand.
The Monstrous Citadel Page 21
