by Jeffrey Hall
“He needs a healer,” said Requiem. When he spoke his mouth felt dry, his tongue leathery.
“So do you.”
Requiem came gingerly to his feet. With each movement he could feel his new wounds, brutal and deep. The scar stone had taken more from him than he’d thought it would, but less than he had hoped. He’d thought that the last flurry of spells would kill him. He had misjudged his own reserves.
“They heal,” said Requiem. “They always do.”
“I hope so, for your sake,” said Grey. “That one on your neck looks like you damn near lost your head.”
Requiem put his finger to his throat. A deep line split his skin, flirting with the bottom of the lump. Any deeper and it may have torn an artery. That one would be hard to conceal.
Maybe I will turn into you before I go, Dorja.
“You saved him,” said Grey. “Took his hand, but you saved him. That monster was gonna tear him to bits while I lay crawling in wumps… Thank you.” Grey wrapped Garp’s wound in a piece of cloth. “But don’t think I trust you or that stone.”
“Don’t think that,” said Requiem.
“Look at this mess. Three-quarters of our supply gone or ruined thanks to a herd of wumps.” He ran his hand through his hair, not caring that it was spattered with blood and other filth. “I thought the stones were under wraps. I didn’t think they could see a thing. What could have gotten them so worked up?”
Requiem shook his head. “It wasn’t your rocks that done it. Something spooked them. They were trying to get away. Didn’t start stealing stones until the wagon tipped.”
“The thunder?”
Requiem nodded, his neck shooting pain as he did. “But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky when it happened. Not sure where it came from—”
“The shadow.”
“Shadow?” said Requiem.
“I was knee deep in the runts when it came. A darkness overhead. It passed by like a phantom, and the wumps were hollering something fierce. Did you see it?”
Requiem remembered the darkness that had overtook the sun when he’d had his eyes shut and was waiting for the world to be done with him. He’d thought it was just the presence of a beast, but maybe it was something else. “Didn’t see it.”
“Wonder if that’s what spooked them.” Grey finished tying up Garp’s arm and put it comfortably beside the unconscious man. Grey stood, dusting himself free of the battle, wiping the blood on his trousers, altogether making himself look a shade more unkempt. “Bothane won’t be happy about the load.”
“You don’t look too stressed about it.”
“Stress ain’t gonna do shit to help sell the story to them.” Grey turned, continuing to survey the damage. “We’ll promise them double next time. Clink a bit harder for a month.”
“Sure you can keep that offer?” said Requiem. Mining at a normal pace was hard enough. Put a number and a whip to one and they’d break just like the rock they worked. Requiem felt sorry for those men and women. He tried to imagine himself back in Silver Hole and couldn’t stomach the work that would be asked of him if he was in their position, especially with the pain of his new wounds radiating over his body.
“Won’t have a choice unless we want the Younger’s men to come a knocking.” Grey nodded towards him. “I’ll tell you one thing I was wrong about.”
“What’s that?”
“You and that girl. Protected her like she was one of your own.”
“She ain’t mine,” said Requiem. “Just trying to see her to her people and then that’s that.”
“Sure about that?” said Grey as he went about picking up the stones scattered about the ground.
But even as Requiem tried to deny it, his own blood stared back at him from her clothes, like a sanguine sigil professing a loyalty he didn’t remember giving.
The rest of the road to Bothane was quiet, quiet and slow. With one horse left to pull the now-rickety wagon, they eked across the land like a man that had lost a leg, hobbling.
It didn’t matter that their load was now lighter. The horse had lost its companion, and despite Garp’s insistent nagging, the gelding refused to pick up its hooves any faster.
“Hurry up, you damned clopper!” shouted Garp from the cockpit. “You’re gonna make us later than we already are.”
“For the last time, would you keep it down?” said Grey.
“To the Abyss with that. I ain’t gonna lose any more weight on account of this mopey son of a bitch. They are docking us even now.”
“How much do you think they’ll dock us when there ain’t nothing left to give after all your yammering attracts an army of thieves to pick us over?”
“Don’t worry,” shouted Garp over his shoulder. “We have old Requiem back there to take their hands and keep them from grabbing spit.”
Requiem leaned his head back against the wood of the wagon, a thing he could do now thanks to the space created by their lost loads. Garp hadn’t shut up about his lost hand and Requiem’s part in it since they’d set back on the road. And every word found its way under Requiem’s skin. He was getting tired of it. Exhausted of his own guilt swelling inside of him like a tick latched on for too long. “It was an accident,” he admitted for the hundredth time.
“Was Bolliad an accident too?”
“Ask Proth,” said Requiem.
Garp held up his stumped hand. The cloth around it was red as if it had been dyed that way. “This is my Bolliad, you hear me? One simple flick of that damned sword of yours and my world goes crashing into the Abyss. My world turns into the Shamble.”
“You’re being dramatic,” said Grey. “It’s just a hand.”
“Just a hand?” shouted Garp. “How the hell can you say that when you’ve got two on leather as we speak? To hell with you, Grey.” He turned. “And you can go straight to the Abyss too. I hope that girl of yours chokes on a stone and her daddy kicks you dead.”
“That’d be easier,” said Requiem. The entire journey had been exhausting. This girl, all the oddities that had occurred since he found her… Part of him wondered if it wouldn’t be easier if she had just died during the wump attack. He wouldn’t be so far away from the Edge if that was the case.
“Look,” said Grey suddenly. “We made it.”
He pointed to the top of a hill where the roof of a tower could be seen piercing the sky like a headstone marking a former life. A past time.
Bothane.
Once they were past a curtain of hills and road, the city, a monstrous thing, rose from the plain and farmlands that surrounded it, the turrets and keeps forming its skyline looking like claws of a beast reaching out from beneath the world. From their vantage point they could see the Spokes, the series of bridges that ran from the surrounding lands into the inner rock Bothane was built upon, the strips of stone keeping the main city from falling to the Abyss entirely. A thing visible far below it, an achievement credited to the Elder’s greed, for pushing his miners so deep that they popped out the other side of Moonsland.
“Now will you shut up?” said Grey.
Garp slumped. “For now, until I see our fate clearly.”
Requiem looked at the city with relief. Inside of it he was sure he would find help for the girl, and in turn, finally be done with this adventure. Just so long as he knew she’d be safe and that he wasn’t putting her in the hands of some masked monster…
He shook his head, in disagreement with himself. That wasn’t the deal. Just get her awake and get her to her people. Her safety be damned. Why in all the Abyss was he caring what would happen to this girl who didn’t even speak when he was only a few days away from not caring about a damn thing ever again?
He balled his fist, attempting to callous himself against the haunts of his mind as the wagon rolled closer to the westernmost spoke known as the Painted Way. The rocky surface of the road had been dusted with flecks of minerals dropped from the constant line of caravans coming over the bridge from the eastern provinces. It looked like a
mutilated rainbow upon the ground beneath them, a colorful memorial to all those who’d come before them to pay their tithe to Glimmer by way of Bothane.
“My least favorite part,” said Garp, gulping. Requiem peered over the top of the wagon and into the cockpit to see Garp glimpsing the nearby edge of the spoke and then slamming his eyes shut.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Requiem.
“Doesn’t do heights,” said Grey, half-smiling.
“A miner is meant to be beneath ground, not so far above it,” said Garp. He clenched the side of his pants with his one good hand so tightly Requiem thought he might rip them.
“Think of it this way, this was all once the same ground as the stuff we just came from,” said Requiem. “Miners just dug a little too deep.”
“Doesn’t help a lick,” mumbled Garp. “Just let me know when we’re through.”
Other caravans passed them as they rolled onto the road, each with riders who looked haggard and hunched, like the weight of that midmorning sun was too much to bear. One of them rolled in from a different road, its wagon so large it looked as though it could hold two dozen men. It rocked and grumbled as they passed its slow progression along the bridge. It was the only thing that caused Garp to open his eyes.
“You got a drunk in there?” shouted Garp as he passed the two riders sitting in the cockpit.
“Mind your business, stump,” one of them growled back.
And Garp sat back, his mouth open slightly as if in disbelief. He shut his eyes again and carried on with his whimpering.
But nearby, the same riders’ wagon shook and one of them leaned back and slapped the boards it was made of.
“That ain’t no drunk,” said Requiem as he watched the way the riders’ eyes darted between them, the wagon, and the soldiers waiting at the gate. “That’s a davlish.”
“A davlish?” said Garp.
“Beast of the far west. Eats stone and turns them into gas to help it hunt. Tough thing. Its bone is half stone itself. Eldium.”
“Eldium? The clink Bolliad used to make their soldiers’ armor?” said Grey.
“That’s the one,” said Requiem.
“What the hell they doing bringing a live one here?”
“People keep them as pets here. Build burrows into the ground to hold them. Feed them the right stones to release the right scents. They think it helps their vitality.”
“Doesn’t sound safe,” said Garp, his eyes still closed.
“It isn’t.” Requiem recalled the times he had faced off with the creatures. Ravenous things they were. If they had a batch of the wrong stones at their disposal they’d release gusts of dizzying and disorienting gas into the air that would confuse anything that threatened them or anything they wanted to hunt. It was foolish to go against one without a piece of fabric to put over your face to dilute its effects, but he had done it once before...when he had thought he was entering the cavern of a piglem only to come face-to-face with the davlish that had eaten the piglem. It released a nauseating gas that nearly caused him to pass out. It was only thanks to a quick cut of Ruse that he’d been able to defeat the beast and stop its noxious mist from spewing out any further.
They were monstrous creatures, not pets. But the wealthy of places like Bothane weren’t bothered much by threats when vanity and health were on the line.
The Younger was, though. Requiem had heard amongst his travels that the new king had outlawed such acquisitions in order to keep the peace and safety of his new kingdom. But it looked like this far west, beneath the eye of his older brother, his new rules were loosely kept.
A pair of soldiers watched the comings and goings of the Spoke, their arms crossed as they leaned against the bridge’s rail. Draped over their platemail was a blue sigil with a white stone and an eye positioned inside of it.
The banner of Glimmer. The opaque eye now watching over all of Moonsland since the Younger claimed victory in the Shamble.
The soldiers watched as the caravan holding the davlish rolled lazily by, not even bothering to check. And after, when Grey nodded to them as their own cart rolled by, the soldiers just stared, indifferent.
They crossed a halved archway and were immediately welcomed to the erratic energy of the city. Everywhere people stumbled about, ambling across the beaten stone beneath their feet like puppets whose strings could not be seen but whose masters were known: the need for the clink, the business that prospered from that need, and lives that needed to be endured because of it. All about the outer wall and within Bothane Rock—the heart of the city—the remnants of the Shamble lay apparent.
Chunks of stone lay near the building they’d fallen from. Burn marks blackened once pristine stones, making them dark and worn like they were wearing a veil in honor of the dead. Rents ran across the homes like tattoos in remembrance of the trauma they had endured. Even the Elder’s keep, the highest tower in Bothane’s skyline made of silver stone, stood broken and scarred from the lone catapult strike that hit its peak, leaving it to look like a hideous, wounded cyclops overlooking the city.
It was a haunting place to return to, no matter how many times Requiem had come through it since the end of the Shamble. He kept picturing it as its once pristine and whole self, but stepping foot inside of it instantly reminded him that that city was gone. Dead. Killed. Depending on how one looked at it.
“Is this it, or are you gonna see us to our door like a proper gentleman?” said Grey.
“This is it,” said Requiem, slipping off the still moving wagon.
“Thank the Abyss,” said Garp, opening his eyes. He waved to Requiem with his stump. “See you at the bottom some day soon I imagine. Ain’t nowhere else I’m going thanks to you.”
“See you there.” He slipped the girl free of the wagon and put her over his shoulder. He sauntered over to Grey’s side of the wagon as he slowed the horse. “You gonna be alright?”
“The tithe men won’t be pleased, but we’ll squirm our way out from their booth. We’ve done so before. You, on the other hand…” He nodded towards three soldiers adorned in the sigil of Bothane, a purple circle with a black hand in the middle, who were eyeing Requiem like a thief.
“Alright then,” said Requiem, meeting the soldiers’ gazes. He slapped the side of the wagon and walked towards them.
Grey said nothing else, but Garp kept talking at Requiem’s back. “You still owe me a bottle of low. I’ll get that from you here or on the other side.”
The wagon rattled off, and Requiem was rid of his traveling companions, a pair of distractions that had helped to lessen the monotony of the road and disrupt his sordid thoughts, at least for a time. The daunting task of the trip back to the Edge alone loomed over him, but first thing was first.
The girl.
“Morning,” said Requiem as he approached the soldiers.
The soldiers squared up to him as he neared, each leaning on their halberds as if they were canes and the men were elders. “Morning,” said the shortest of the three. “Is that a body or the result of some midnight fun?”
“The result of some silent stone in her lungs.”
“Silent stone? How in the Abyss did that happen?”
“Dread Cultists,” said Requiem.
The soldiers laughed, thinking he was making a joke, but he didn’t smile back. “You serious?” said the short one.
“Where’s the closest Geomage?” Not every Geomage could work with silent stone. Each could only treat with so many stones before poisoning themselves, at least so the few he had met before had told him, yet he assumed meeting with one in the city would point him in the right direction of someone who could help him even if that person wasn’t capable of doing so.
The short soldier stood up from his weapon. “Old Pander, just off the Spear Spoke.”
“Old Pander?” repeated Requiem.
“That’s what I said. Best in the business, well, at least since the Younger took Ronald in the Shamble.”
“Thanks.” Requ
iem was already walking when the soldier yelled to him.
“What happened to your neck?”
“Wumps,” said Requiem.
“Wumps?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Who in the name of the Abyss are you?” called the short soldier, but Requiem was already putting people between them, letting the mob of the city hold the silence he wished to keep, hoping to pass through Bothane for the last time like an Abysmal wind rolling through and out and onward to fates beyond comprehension.
Geomages were odd folk. Odd folk, but ones that Requiem could relate to. They chose to risk death over a life of normalcy. Over a life of destitution. They chose to fuse their blood with the magical stones that grew in abundance beneath their feet. They chose to bury themselves in the pages of books rather than the earth like so many miners. It was a path to power, a path to escape the normal life of so many villagers, but the price was too high to pay for most.
There was a high chance of death when the essence of the stone first entered the bloodstream. Requiem once heard that out of every one hundred men and women to try, only one could withstand the transformation.
Why that one?
Something in their blood to begin with? Something in their soul? Some grand plan of the gods that no one was privy to? No scholar had an answer.
And despite those odds, people kept trying, kept trying to rise from their lot in life like becoming a Geomage was the answer to all their problems.
That’s why finding a scar stone was once so valued.
The power without the risk of death. A way out without the pain.
That’s why he had touched the stone when he had helped to unearth it those many years ago. It was the hand that every miner was looking to be dealt. All the benefits of Geomagery without the downfalls. A way to escape the clink and leap into a life of adventure, heroism, and wealth.
Little did he know that the pain was only delayed. That the pitfalls were there, they were just slow to catch up to him.
Now, he envied the Geomages. Maybe if he had had the strength to try and treat with the stones his life would have been different. Maybe he wouldn’t have left his family in the first place. Maybe if he were one of them, he and Sasha would still be together...
