by Jeffrey Hall
But when the voice sounded again it sounded present. Real. Nothing conjured up from the depths of her nightmares. “Hello?” it asked.
She cleared her throat, and not knowing what else to do, said, “Who’s out there?”
“I’m Perry, and I’ve a girl that needs your services.”
“A girl?”
“That’s what I said.”
Her mind reeled. A girl in need of a Geomage? What could have happened to her to require such intervention? It sounded improbable, like a trap. But it also sounded like an opportunity. A job. A potential way out of her situation, if the Abyss was generous.
“You gonna open this door or leave us twitching in the breeze?”
She rose to her feet shakily, still fumbling for a stone that would protect her should Shint or someone else with ill intentions be waiting for her.
She found a spark stone, a yellow nugget of rock she could use to temporarily blind her assailants, so long as she could remember the words for the spell…
Tithana ben go la… Or was it tithana den athala?
She cursed her corroded mind then and wished her spell book was somewhere apparent amongst the clutter of her room. She hoped that the threat of the stone would do. It was a weak plan, but it was the only one she had.
She stepped over a pile of used laturite and stood at the door, breathing, preparing to fight.
“Please, I’m begging you,” said the man on the other side.
She gritted her teeth, put her hand on the doorknob, exhaled, and opened the door.
What awaited her on the other side was like some monstrous thing she had seen in the Abyss, all lopsided, lumpy, and large. She held up the spark stone, ready to speak the spell she thought she knew and give the beast something to think about while she scurried out, but stopped when she realized it was no monster.
What stood before her was a man with unkempt hair, turning white around his ears, a color that grew into the wispy scraggle of his beard. His eyes were set deep in his head and were made darker because of it, like they were two stones lodged in tunnels of flesh whose purpose had yet to be discovered. The cloak he wore was tattered and well worn. He fit the attire of the people of the Purple, yet she had never seen him wandering its tunnels, and she’d been there since she was forced from upper Bothane many moons ago. But most peculiar of all, and the reason for the lumpy, monstrous shape she had first seen, was the body slung over his shoulder like a sack of food.
“You Dashinora?” he said, blinking, trying to pierce the darkness with his eyes.
“Who are you?” she said, the stone still clenched in her hand.
“Perry, like I said,” said the man. “You’re a Geomage, right?”
She looked behind him into the darkness of the cavern half expecting there to be a cadre of thugs waiting to storm her shop. But other than a few passersby, he was alone. “I am.”
“Good.” He forced his way in and stood for a moment, taking in the disaster that was her home.
“Would have cleaned up if I was expecting company,” said Dash.
“More important things than a broom,” said Perry as he dropped the body onto her bed.
It was a girl, just as the man had said. Her eyes were closed, her hair was even greasier and more disheveled than her companion’s, and she was wrapped in a white, heavily stained robe, red with blood and brown with other filth. She was so thin and frail looking... Dash may have thought her dead if not for the slight rise of her chest.
“What happened to her?” said Dash as she looked over the poor creature before her.
“Dread Cultists. Filled her with silent stone. Need you to extract it.”
“Silent stone…” She was only vaguely familiar with the rock. She recalled its name popping up in the list of known stones in the Geomage’s lexicon her sister presented to her once upon a time. She may have thought about treating with it once upon a time, to put her enemies to sleep, but it wasn’t part of her blood.
Still, didn’t mean she couldn’t help the girl. All she needed was to find a way to counter its effects.
Where was that blasted book?
“Can you help her?” said Perry.
Dash finally snapped awake from her thoughts, her intrigue finally superseding her fear and reminding her of the situation she was in.
She looked across the catastrophe of her home and began turning over the rocks and other clutter that littered it.
“What are you doing?” Perry asked.
“Looking for my book.” She thought she had put it beside her bed those few nights ago, but all that was there was a toppled box of lemon jewels.
“Dadaline,” said the man.
And she stopped.
“That’s what the other Geomage said would do it. Dadaline.”
“Dadaline,” she repeated, and as the word left her mouth she recalled when she’d first treated with the stone. When she was broken and frozen, the wind of the Bellowing Days sweeping into the tunnel she called home momentarily, and she had come across a nugget of it lying upon the ground, a piece of it lost most likely from some passing-by caravan. She had flipped through her book, her fingers so cold and rigid she could barely feel the pages as she turned them. There, wedged in the depths of the tome, was a small passage describing the stone she held in her hand. Dadaline. God’s soot. Brine pebble. Old gold. It had many names, but barely any uses. Yet still, those few it did possess were the ones she’d needed then. Shelter. Warmth. Minor protection… Her sister had always told her to take time when deciding to treat with a stone since committing one to your blood was permanent and the amount one could treat with limited, or you risked poisoning yourself from stone sickness. But then, as she scrambled to find a way of life on the streets, she’d spoken the sacred words of treatment with the dadaline without a second question.
The stone had helped her that night. It had broken the string of terrible luck that seemed to follow her and allowed her to find her feet again as she stood beneath its temporary made shelter and warmed her with its radiating heat. By the time she had used up its slow-burning essence, she felt as though she could go on a little longer. Go a little harder.
She hadn’t used it again since, yet it was still a part of her blood. Ready and waiting to save her again at the time that she needed it.
Like now.
“I can,” she said, straightening. “What’s your offer?”
“What’s your price?” said Perry, putting his hand to his stubble. The motion caused her eyes to drift to his neck and the red, still healing wound that peeked through the ruffle of his cloak’s hood like a worm squirming out through the soil brown of his clothes. A clear symbol of violence.
Did he face off against the Dread Cultists who hurt the girl?
Dash nervously ran a hand through her hair. He didn’t look the type to have weight on him, but she also didn’t know him, which meant he came from upper Bothane or outside of it. And if he did hail from either one of those places then chances were he was far better off than she. She tried to calculate numbers within her head that would equate to her buying her way out of the mess she had created. “One hundred shards,” she threw out as confidently as she could, knowing that it was an astronomical number.
To her surprise, the man just kept scratching his face, unfazed by her request. Did he really have the funds to pay such a price? Would the Abyss really be that gracious to her and come to her aid so quickly?
At last, he spoke. “I’ve no weight to offer you.”
Her excitement was immediately deflated. “Then there is nothing I can offer you.” She had no time to help a girl, but she still had time to flee if Carry and Shint weren’t already marching to her doorstep.
The man held up his finger. “But I can offer you other things.”
She shook her head as she swooped down to pick up her pack.
“I can work for you. Help you clean this place up.”
She went to the door. “You can have this place and all its tr
oubles.” She was ready to take her chances. Ready to take to the road and outrun the problems swirling about like a flock of vultures ready to pick over the remains of her life. So long as she had the black lens and could find more of it she would be fine.
Her hand absentmindedly went to the pouch on her hip before it went to the door.
“I can help you with those troubles.”
Her hand stayed on the handle.
“I can protect you. You won’t need to run.”
“Is that so?” She half looked over her shoulder. “How do I know you’re capable of that? You’re just a man, a dwarf compared to the troubles that stand before me.”
“I ain’t no dwarf,” said Perry.
“What are you then?”
“A giant.”
She looked at him more fully then. He had narrow shoulders and a slender build, even with the cloak bulking him up. What could he do against the likes of Shint or any of the other Prodigy? “You’re just a miner offering up more than he has to give—”
He unclasped the top of his cloak.
“What are you doing?”
But he kept going, removing his arms from the cloak, letting it fall to the floor in a heap at his feet. Underneath, secured over his chest, arms, and thighs, was a collection of black platemail with etchings of a city she knew to be old Bolliad by the paintings she had seen of it in books she read as a child. It was old, worn armor, but beneath its scratches and use there was a sturdiness to it that said it would stop arrows and blades and whatever other manner of weaponry dared try to strike such a suit, which made what she noticed about the man next even more confusing.
His scars.
What little she could see of his flesh was marked with scars. Like a map drawn upon skin, they ran over him as if attempting to create a direction to some unknown destination. Seeing the thickness and quantity of them it was amazing that he was still standing before her today.
Then she saw the hilt of his sword and finally understood as the scar stone stared back at her like the eye of a starved demon ready to unleash its apocalyptic fury upon the world.
“You... You’re one of the Scarred.”
He nodded. “One of the last of them.”
“What...Who are you? Really.”
“Requiem. Requiem Balestone.”
“The Sword of Silver Hole,” said Dash, looking at him dumbfoundedly. She had heard his name whispered about in stories before. The youngest and most recent to find one of the sacred scar stones, he was instrumental in ridding Moonsland of the brimling infestation before the beasts could tear it apart. She thought he had gone the way of all the others, worn from what the stone had taken from him, or just disappeared. Their deeds had been spoken about across Moonsland until they’d become stale and old and things of legend, and no new gossip simmered with his tales.
But here he was, in flesh and blood, all the way down in the Purple, standing in her cluttered cavern asking for her help when she needed his more.
“Sword of Silver Hole.” He shook his head. “Never liked that one.”
“I meant no offense.”
He waved his hand to dismiss the apology. It fell back to the hilt of his blade. “You need my help or not?”
She looked at him like she would a new stone, turning her head slightly, trying to figure out the shape of him and what he could be used for, but her eyes kept falling to the red scar stone on his blade’s hilt, one of the most powerful rocks to ever be found in Moonsland, and she knew she didn’t know what to do with such power. With such a weapon.
Have him kill all of Proth’s Prodigy? That would solve her problem, but she’d have to find a new source of the black lens, something she’d already been sloppily thinking about as she was hurrying out the door. Maybe she could have him threaten them? Tell them that their deal was settled and that they would still give her black lens… A foolish, temporary fix, she thought. Besides, who knew how strong he actually was. He was one of the Scarred, but he also looked like shit. She wondered how much the stone had taken from him and how effective he could be. Could he really intimidate such a group? Could he really wipe the Purple clean of them like Abysmal gum stuck upon his boot? If he didn’t then she would be stuck in the same spot as before, but now with a sleeping girl on her hands.
“Well?” said Requiem, folding his arms impatiently.
“I don’t need your help,” said Dash. “But I know someone else who does.”
Chapter 8
“Sure about this?” said Requiem as he watched the woman who told him to call her Dash pacing about her cramped store, kicking the stones beneath her feet like they were leaves in a forest during the Bitter Times. She looked frantic, in a hurry, her long, purple-streaked hair flailing this way and that as she searched. A clear indicator of her addiction to black lens. A rare outlawed stone that often sent people to the streets from insanity, and over the Edge to meet the Abyss for themselves. That, and it could be used for illegal activities like creating tunnels straight through walls.
A perfect tool for thieves. An even better escape for the troubled minds that needed one.
This is what he got for trusting the bottom of the Purple for an answer to his problems...
“I am sure,” she said.
“And if they don’t agree?” said Requiem.
“Then you’ll have a reason to use that sword of yours.”
Requiem grumbled as he pulled his cloak back around himself. The overdramatic reveal of his identity had felt necessary, a thing he’d needed to do to show her he was capable of being what she needed despite how broken his body had become. He was already regretting his decision.
He was sure there would be more blood on his hands after this, and because of what? A sleeping girl whose name he didn’t even know?
He thought about the Abyss just outside and how easily he could meet it with just a few rise and falls of his feet…
“Found it!” Dash pulled free an old dusty tome from her floor like one would an artifact from a deep mine. Requiem could just make out the words Geomagery written on its cover beneath the dust and crumbled stone stuck to it. The book was yellow and worn and looked as if one good sneeze might send it to its tattered demise.
He was going to trust a woman who took such poor care of her most valuable possession with the life of a girl?
She flopped down on the bed next to the girl and rummaged through the book’s contents. “Let’s see here. Noctanite. Noctanite.”
“Noctanite?” said Requiem.
“The real name of silent stone.” She stopped at a page halfway through the book with text so small he could barely see it. It was a wonder it could be read at all, let alone remembered. There were notes written along its margin in barely legible scrawl.
“What is all that?”
“Experiments,” said Dash, her fingers tracing the text as if they were curves to a stone that needed defining.
“What kind of experiments?”
“Tests. Using the essence of the stone. Trying different words to draw out different powers of each of the stones I’ve treated with over the years. The language of Geomagery was discovered thousands of years ago by the stone sayers, but they only brushed the surface of the possible knowledge and words. Our connection to the stones. Geomages are discovering new uses all the time for the same stones, whether or not we share them with each other. That’s a different story.”
“Find anything good?” Requiem was curious. His interaction with Geomages had been limited throughout the years. He had often been called in for jobs after they had failed, and when he did cross paths with the ones he was replacing it was usually stepping past their body in the den of a monster they couldn’t defeat. He knew they sometimes discovered new spells, but hadn’t realized how deep that experimentation could go. He wondered if somewhere someone had discovered a way to cut the bond between him and the cursed stone on his hip.
“Could make a nugget of lemon seed blossom red flowers, strangely. Made eldium
turn into a temporary dagger that could cut other stone, but broke after one use. But that’s about as far as I took it. Stopped experimenting many moons ago when I…”
“When you what?”
She slammed the book close. “I need dadaline.”
Requiem nudged some of the piled stone with his feet. “Are you telling me you don’t have any?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have any.”
“How do you know?” said Requiem, confused about how anyone could keep track of their inventory when it was dumped about their feet like garbage.
“Haven’t needed it for a while. That, and it’s hard to come by, and it isn’t as valuable as the others. Miners have been known to toss it into piles of shale like it was garbage.”
“You know someone who has some?” said Requiem.
Dash scratched her head and looked away from his gaze. “I do.”
“Well?”
“Well, what? I need to think about how I am going to ask them. She and I aren’t necessarily on good terms.”
Requiem shook his head. “If I’m gonna go through with this plan of yours, I need to know you’re gonna hold up your end of the deal.”
“I will,” said Dash. “Don’t worry.”
He wasn’t worried. Just annoyed that there was another wrinkle in his plan, another impediment that would slow down the inevitable. “What about the girl, can’t just leave her here.”
“Why not? She’s not gonna go anywhere until I get that dadaline.”
“No. But what if the wrong people come knocking?”
“Who’s looking for her?”
Requiem shrugged. “That’s what I aim to find out once she’s awake.”
“Do you even know her?” said Dash, taken aback.
Requiem shook his head.
Dash exhaled. “Rush into a pack of cultists. Journey across half of Moonsland. Risk your neck for a girl whose name you don’t even know… The Scarred are crazier than even told.”
“We all ain’t out to break the world.”
“Well, not sure what our options are here. It’s either we leave the girl or slouch her around Bothane like a backpack.”
