by Jeffrey Hall
Her mind raced as she thought of how to evade it. If she had treated with a stone like gallamite or knew what stones could counter its essence, she could have disabled it just like she was sure Chendra did each morning, but she didn’t have that skill. Instead, she ran her hands through the stones in her pouch, feeling their surfaces, trying to recall what she had hurriedly stuffed into her bag and how she could use it.
Ruby. Phase crystal. Red dew. None of them would work. Only when she pricked her finger and nearly cursed did she remember she had a lone nugget of barrow stone.
She plucked the stone from her pouch and brought the thorny grey nugget to her face. It looked silvery in the darkness, a jewel greater than it was. Commonly it was used by Geomages to help farmers strengthen their fields or to bolster a person’s strength temporarily, traits she found worthy to treat with many years ago, but there was a less common use for it that wasn’t as in demand as the other powers that could be drawn from it, other than by children wanting to play pranks on their friends.
It could make something smell like rotting flesh.
Dash swallowed, remembering the scent she had conjured dozens of times before when she was first starting her studies in Geomagery. It would make her head spin and her eyes water, but what other choice did she have?
She whispered the simple spell, “Chagara molk bin dara sin…”
The essence pulled through her and with it came the rank smell of the dead. Sour and vomit-like. If it weren’t for the fear caused by the stone hag, she might have passed out from the stench, but her adrenaline kept her going. She finished the spell and felt the essence pull back. An unexpected sense, but she remembered the essence of barrow stone being fickle like that. Besides, she could still smell the rotting flesh. The spell had worked.
She tossed aside the sapped nugget of rock and came once again to the edge of the hallway. The stone hag lurked closer now, pawing at one of the walls, pressing its nose so close that it looked like it was attempting to find a way through it.
Dash took a deep breath, attempting to ignore the stench coming from her, and shuffled into the grand hall.
She hurried as quick as she could without putting her feet down loud enough to make anything more than a pitter-patter. She could hear the creature shuffle, and in the back of her mind she saw it chasing her down, its terrible teeth bared like a sky-tinted trap. She shot into the adjacent hallway, sure it was in pursuit despite what she had done to mask herself.
The darkness of the corridor welcomed her. She dared to glance over her shoulder, her hands already in her pouch, searching for something to defend herself with, only to see the end of the hallway empty. She could still hear it sniffing, she could still hear its claws tapping on the polished stone, but it hadn’t followed her.
She rested against the wall, catching her breath. The unbearable stench of rotting flesh seemed fainter now, her nose growing familiar with it. When she found she could stand again she continued her journey into the stone library.
The chamber looked sleepy as she arrived, as if Chendra had dimmed the glimmer stones above to allow her collection to slumber more peacefully in their motionless lives. There were so many stones glittering back at Dash. So many of them precious and rare and valuable…
A handful of some of them and she would have enough to buy her way out of certain situations she was prone to, forget helping one of the Scarred.
Just take what you came for, she told herself. You are no thief, she said even as she reached into the container of dadaline and scooped four of the shards into her pouch.
She turned to go, but the white glare of the fire bones stared back at her like eyes without pupils.
“Go on,” said the shadow, suddenly. She was so enticed by her escapades that she jumped at the sudden reemergence of the Abyss’s voice.
Already? she thought, amazed at how quickly it had found her again.
“Take what you need,” said the voice. “You’re already a burglar. What’s the difference between one stone or many?”
“One stone is out of desperation. The others would be out of greed.” But even as she spoke, she did not move, standing in the center of the library, gazing at the stones like wares in the window of a shop.
“You’re desperate to feel safe. What will do that? One stone or many? Take them and you’ll be one step closer.”
To what it did not say.
“Quiet,” she whispered, but already her resolve was lessening, already the shadow’s voice was making sense.
“Go on,” it said again.
And before Dash knew what she was doing, she was dipping her hands into the fire bones, into the arrorium, into the tergodian, filling her pouches with them until they were bloated like a toad’s neck and the containers were near empty. All stones she had never treated with before, but ones she knew would be valuable to the right hands. To the right Geomages.
All the while, the shadow was laughing.
At last, when she could carry no more, she turned to the darkness and said, “Shut up.”
But the darkness only laughed louder.
“Let’s see how much you’re laughing when I buy enough black lens to last the rest of my—ahhh!”
She’d turned, and there was the stone hag, its jaws open to show the endless blue rows of its teeth.
She had just enough time to wonder where the scent of rotting flesh went before its fangs clamped down on her flailing arm and horror-filled darkness took her.
Chapter 10
“This ain’t what I signed up for,” said Requiem as he watched the caravan make its way through the forest path like a tremendous serpent, too big to be in a hurry. Too imposing to feel threatened.
“What did you think we were going to do? Pat a few wumps on the head?” said Shint as he and the five other thugs from Proth’s Prodigy sat watching intently from their vantage points in the tree.
The flag of Bothane fluttered from the lead wagon, purple and black like a hard bruise, like how Requiem felt in his gut as he watched the thing unfold.
“Don’t kill soldiers,” he said.
“Good,” whispered Shint. “Half of them aren’t soldiers anyways. Irregulars that the Elder hired as extra hands to get his brother his tithe.”
“Don’t kill irregulars either.”
“By the Abyss, what did we bring him for?” said one of the other thugs. He wore his hair long in a ponytail and was missing his front tooth.
“He’s one of the Scarred. He’s one of Proth’s brothers. He’s gonna help,” said Shint. “He’s gonna help or else he and Carry’s deal is off.”
Requiem ran his hand over the stubble on his face, wondering if the deal was even still needed. They had taken a day to make it to the outskirts of Bothane and settle into the Fluttering Forest. Who knew if the girl he did this for was even still alive. Dash had promised him she would be okay, but the more stories Shint and his crew told him of her shortcomings, the more the faith he had in the plan dwindled.
“She once went missing for a week after her work was due to us. We found her deep in the Purple, comatose with black lens, unable to talk,” Shint had told him. And then later, “There was another time she charged the wrong essence in a pile of guarium and turned the entire stock to powder.”
“And you still use her,” said Requiem.
“She’s sloppy, but she’s got skill… when it works.”
When it works…
Requiem didn’t like his chances, nor did he have a good record with luck. He had a bad feeling he would never see the girl or the Geomage again, yet here he still was, sitting upon a limb of a tree, waiting like a bandit to pilfer a wagon train for one of Bothane’s most notorious crews.
His luck was poor, and the trust he had in the Geomage now even poorer, but his stubbornness was still strong and was always one of his most unwavering qualities.
It’s what made him such a good miner once upon a time.
He could see the front line of the caravan now. T
here was a group of soldiers at the front, four upon horses, their leader, an officer distinguished by the feather on his helmet, upon a high-back, a beast with a high-arching spine that when saddled allowed for a better view of things to come.
Good to ride on plains and open road, bad to have in a forest. The creature was too big to deftly maneuver between trees should the need arise. A need they would put to the caravan momentarily.
Beyond, walking beside the wagons in single file, were the irregulars Shint had referenced, men and women with paltry weapons and no armor. A meat shield to protect the Younger’s precious collection. One they were no doubt receiving a pittance to defend, if any at all.
“That’s the one,” said Shint, pointing to a cart in the middle of the caravan that was painted dark blue like a body of water. A group of six irregulars walked beside it, slumping on their spears as if they were about to fall asleep on them.
“What’s inside?” said Requiem.
“You’ll have to crack it open to find out,” said Shint.
The other thugs laughed.
Requiem had to refrain from cracking the thug himself. He had been insufferable during their journey from the Purple to here, going on and on about Proth and the Scarred like they were gods, talking about how much better off the work was since the fall of Bolliad and the Shamble.
Didn’t he witness the same atrocities Requiem had? Villages burned. Battlefields littered with bodies like twisted shrubbery out of place. Great migrations of people uprooting their homes to avoid the consequences of the ire of two sparring brothers fighting over their father’s scraps. The monsters of Moonsland feasting on the leftovers like they were feed in a trough set down by the spatting siblings. All for what? To see who had the right to carry on the tradition of their father?
It was a horrible time in Moonsland. One that would never have happened if Proth, a man Requiem once considered a friend and a mentor, hadn’t cut the world.
Yet this man Shint and his cronies called it a paradise, a god-given gift.
Requiem couldn’t wait to rid himself of his new company. Just as soon as he helped them lift their wanted cargo from the wagon train, violence-free.
“I can get that wagon for you,” said Requiem.
Shint and the others looked at each other.
“There’s a lot of steel down there,” said Shint.
“There is,” said Requiem.
“The fire bones would take care of most of them,” said Shint, pointing to the tiny nuggets of white stone embedded along the trail, a trap set up by one of his men hours ago.
“Don’t need their blood to take the wagon.”
The other thugs murmured amongst themselves, but Shint just kept staring.
“Show us how it’s done then.”
“Will you at least tell me what I’m grabbing?”
“Two trunks. Think you can lift them?”
Requiem nodded and turned his attention back to the caravan, but as he did, he felt a hand fall on his shoulder.
“If this doesn’t go well, then we do it my way.”
“What? You don’t believe in your god?”
“Gods make mistakes. They made us, after all.”
Requiem shrugged his hand away and slipped down the tree. The red leaves from the flutter tree greeted him in their wispy travel, the slight wind that ran through the forest taking them high and far away like they were migrating birds in flight. The moss beneath muted his reconnection with the ground. Slowly, he worked his way through the wide trunks, using the shadows of the forest to conceal his advance.
He came so close to the caravan that he could hear the murmur of the soldiers as they passed, one of them regaling the others of his bowel problems, and the bestial grunts of the high-back as it labored along the road with its short, stubby legs.
From his vantage point he had a clear view of the bend in the road, a place that exposed a lone cart momentarily.
“When outnumbered, best to divide that number,” Dorja always said when talking about dealing with crowds.
Trying to take on an entire force meant grave movements of the scar stone, and grave movements meant grave costs.
He had made plenty of those over the last few weeks, but he preferred to go to the Abyss on his own terms.
He waited until the blue wagon came into view. The irregulars that surrounded it looked miserable, a collection of mopes set to put boots to the ground while the superior officers up ahead let beasts do that job for them.
These people were not his enemy.
So when they came into view he stepped out from behind the tree, still out of view, and as quickly as he could cut the air so a shock of dizziness would overtake the two men walking nearest the cart.
They grabbed their heads, moaning slightly. Before they could recover and the spell wore off, he made an upright slash in the air, which carried across the small space between him and the road and put a rent in the lock of the cart.
It popped open with a snap, and he braced himself as he felt a small wound open above his belly button. A minor addition to his menagerie of scars.
He leapt over the bush, past the disoriented guards, and flipped down the back of the wagon only to see Grey and Garp sitting upon a pair of trunks like they were benches in a park.
Both of their eyes lit up. Requiem almost fell back.
“You!” shouted Garp, standing, almost hitting his head on the wagon’s roof.
“Shit,” said Requiem, unable to think of another word to express his surprise.
“What are you doing—” Grey began to say, still seated, but Garp was already grabbing for the blade on his hip.
“Bandit!” shouted Garp. “Bandit!”
“Shit,” said Requiem again. He almost flicked his wrist to slice the man in half, but caught himself. Instead, he barreled into him, lowering his shoulder and driving him into the back of the wagon. Garp connected with the wood and made a loud oomph.
“Hey!” shouted Grey.
“Sorry,” said Requiem as he gathered the first trunk and slid it to the edge of wagon.
The trunk no sooner reached the end than appeared a well-armed soldier, his spear pointed.
“Intruder!” he reiterated.
Requiem froze.
Then the world boomed.
The soldier fell to the ground. The wagon shook as it was thrown into the air. Requiem hit his head upon its roof as he watched the first trunk slide out.
The wagon capsized, nearly tossing him with it.
By the time his ears stopped ringing and his vision stopped swimming he could hear the yells of others and the ring of metal clashing with metal.
He looked behind him and saw Grey and Garp in a heap together in the corner of the wagon, desperately trying to untangle themselves. The second trunk was exposed.
He grabbed hold of it and threw it out of the upturned cart, scurrying out after it, once more in the broad daylight.
The poignant scent of sulfur filled the air. Looking down the line he saw other carts on their side, some even shattered completely.
The fire bones, thought Requiem, his head still pounding, but it was a minor thought as already the caravan was alive with violence.
Shint and the others were taking advantage of the disorder and had snuck down from the trees to engage the confused and dazed soldiers and irregulars, running many of them through before they could collect themselves from the ground, bringing forth a trail of blood to reach the trunks.
Stop! Requiem wanted to yell, but a strong hand clenched his ankle. He looked down to see Garp scurrying out from the cart.
“Ain’t gonna let you muck up this for me too!”
“Let him be, Garp!” shouted Grey from inside the wagon.
“Ain’t nothing to do with you,” said Requiem as he kicked his leg out from the man’s grip. No sooner did it happen than he was tackled to the ground.
The soldier from the back of the wagon had recuperated and now stood atop of Requiem, strangling h
im, plunging his thumbs into his throat, a wicked glare on his face as if possessed.
Requiem gripped his blade and was just about to call upon the strength of the stone when the soldier was swiped away.
Grey replaced him, club in one hand, the other offering him a way up.
“By Bolliad, what are you doing!” shouted Garp.
But Grey only dangled his hand out and wiggled his fingers like they were a set of worms for fish. “That’s for saving him.”
Requiem took his hand and nodded. “Just came here for the trunks.”
“Then get ’em.”
“Grey, you damn fool—”
Two other irregulars came to the edge of the wagon and saw Requiem’s hand in Grey’s own. “Traitors!”
“Shit,” mumbled Grey, retracting his grip to put two hands on his club.
“I ain’t with these fools,” shouted Garp as he put up his hands.
But the two irregulars were already nocking bows and taking aim.
“Get down!” shouted Grey, but Garp wouldn’t be quick enough.
Requiem lashed out with his blade, unleashing a slice of pushing energy that slapped Garp to the floor.
The arrows passed over his head and slammed into the tree just behind Requiem, just as he bent over with a new eruption of pain on his left arm.
He looked up, ready to see the irregulars pulling out new arrows, but instead saw them both on the ground, one of Shint’s thugs pulling a sword out of one of them, while the other lay dying beside him.
“Get the trunks, Scarred. I’ll deal with these two,” said the thug.
“They’re on our side,” said Requiem.
“To the Abyss we are,” shouted Garp.
“Would you shut your hole!” shouted Grey.
The thug charged, and Garp, with his one good hand, feebly raised his blade to meet him. But Grey intervened, batting aside the thug’s sword just before it met Garp’s ribs.
Requiem looked from the fight to the trunks and then back. The thug backed up, taking them both in. Even though he was outnumbered Requiem knew he had the advantage. It was in the way he moved, the way he sized up the two miners like he was a predator that had hunted a thousand times before.
