by J. Thorn
But what of Roke? What about him? If she didn’t head south and follow Gaston’s clan, she may never see him again. She watched the buck edge closer to the clearing and could see that it was sniffing the air, searching for danger, before heading out to eat the grass that grew there . Patience. Just wait, she thought. And that applied to other things, didn’t it? She would have to wait in Wytheville for the Elk to return, and then she could tell them of the sickness that had come as they headed farther south, and that some carried on with the journey. She would tell Jonah and the others, and maybe they would send someone to find out what happened to the people that went with Gaston.
And maybe they will let you back into the clan. But maybe they won’t.
The buck looked up and then turned sharply to look behind it. A quiet sound alerted it to something or someone approaching, and Seren heard it too. A snapping of a single twig, fifty yards through the trees. She crouched and lifted the bow, aiming at the buck, readying herself for the kill. The buck will bolt soon, she thought. But the buck stayed where it was, watching behind it, not moving an inch and staring, as Seren was, into the bushes and the thicker patch of tree where the noise had come from.
Seren took a deep breath and pulled the bow tighter, readying, just as the figure of a young wolf emerged from the darkness of the branches beyond the clearing. The young female wolf was mostly white in color, and it was the very same one that had hidden while Seren killed the great leader wolf, months before. The young female was half the size of a fully grown wolf, with bright, piercing eyes. And she was agile. She emerged at a slow creep, then sped up as she rushed toward the buck.
The buck saw her and bolted, rushing forward into the clearing and directly into Seren’s line of sight. Half a second later the arrow left the bow and slammed into the deer’s chest, toppling it instantly and sending it rolling over and over in the snow.
Seren stood and walked out into the clearing, heading straight toward her kill, and the wolf moved in also until they stood facing each other, just five yards apart, looking each other in the eyes. The she-wolf tilted her head to one side and stared at the tall human.
Seren smiled. “Come on, Sorsha,” she said. “Let’s get this thing skinned and cooked up.” She crouched down, turned the deer over, and she took out her knife and the coil of rope attached to her belt. She found it much more efficient to take the catch back to the house and hang it in the cold air for a while before doing the messier part of the hunt, and it also meant that she could preserve the deer skin to be used to keep her warm or line her sleeping cot.
The wolf sniffed the air and made a low woof, in reply, lifting her back paws up and kicking at the snow playfully.
“No, not play time yet,” said Seren. “Later, maybe. Hot venison for us tonight.”
Sorsha barked in reply and began trotting around the clearing, waiting for her friend. But then she stopped, and she seemed to frown at Seren.
Seren looked up at the wolf, noticing the usually playful little thing had stopped and was looking uneasy.
“What...” she started to ask, but then she felt the ground rumble. There was a distant roar of noise, far from the north, and Seren stood up. She looked to the north, over the top of the tree line further down the valley. In the distance, the very tops of the mountains could be seen and they were normally shrouded in snow and mist. But now she saw a cloud of some kind rushing down the side of one of the great peaks.
“That isn’t good,” Seren said.
Sorsha whined softly in reply.
Chapter 39
The clans tried to go about their daily routines. The women kept the cooking fires hot, and the men spoke of the game migration and where the deer had run through the valley. The plume of smoke hung heavy in the air and with it came an odd odor, like burning leaves mixed with rotten eggs. The size of the smoky bulge did not continue to grow at the same rate but a steady trickle of haze continued to rise from beneath the distant hills. As night approached, the plume swallowed the stars and even the moon succumbed to its opaque blanket.
Jonah let his people go. He allowed them to speculate, guess and even propose solutions to what should be done. Some believed the explosion in the sky to be a sign from the gods, an ominous warning to leave Eliz and never come back. Others saw it as a message to remain where they were and to never venture toward the horizon ever again. Even Sasha, Keana and Gideon had their ideas about what had happened and what it meant.
Grumbles.
The silly, bastardized word stuck in Jonah’s head. The earth beneath their feet, which had been the only thing that remained through the ancient days of darkness and the invasions of the T’yun Horde, had shifted. His very world had become unhinged. Jonah realized that most of the Elk would not discuss it. They either pretended it didn’t matter or were too frightened to recognize it, and either way that was a problem. He would have to send scouts, and yet it was quite probable that the ground would open up again and eat them all, with a grumble.
“Ask Rav and Ghafir to come to me.”
Declan looked at Jonah. The boy had been using the end of a stick to push coals around in the fire. Jonah recognized Declan’s surly, unsatisfied look—a man emerging from a boy. “Okay.”
Jonah watched him disappear into the darkness dotted with terrestrial stars.
The ruins.
Jonah hadn’t thought of them or those people for most of the day. His focus had been on the west, and the encroaching plume, and yet there were most likely thousands of people in Eliz, and they had felt it, too. Would they come west to seek answers? Would they blame the newcomers for the portent of doom?
I might, he thought. If I were a lord of Eliz.
“Looks like we’re in for some storms, eh?” Rav asked as he approached with Ghafir and Declan behind him.
“Is that humor, amongst guards of the pass?” Jonah asked. He regretted the sarcastic question as soon as he spoke but was relieved when Rav brushed it off with a wave of his hand.
“The Elk. They’ve got all kinds of explanations. Seems like nothin’ will quiet the yappers until we find out what the hell happened over there.” Rav used his chin to point to the west.
“The hunters. Some say they remember slight shakes, vibrations. But none have felt grumbles with such power as these. They fear the gods are angry and will seek retribution for the pollution of their sacred hunting grounds.”
Jonah nodded, fully understanding the implication of Ghafir’s carefully chosen words.
They think the Elk brought this.
“Tell me what you know, Ghafir. The shakes, the grumbles,” Jonah said, accentuating the word that still felt silly on his ears. “What do you know of them?”
Rav pulled a flask from beneath his rags and handed it to Jonah, who refused. Instead, Jonah waved his arm at the three men, inviting them to sit at his fire.
“In the days before the End Times, when these ruins stood in their full glory, men had a strange relationship with our earth-mother.”
Rav’s eyes went wide, and he nudged Declan, as if to make sure the boy would not miss the eloquent and rare words spoken by Ghafir, a man who said more with his bow than his tongue.
“They needed the light and the dark liquids to fuel empires stretching over vast areas of land.”
“The ruins,” said Declan.
Ghafir smiled at the boy. “Before they became such. Yes.”
Jonah took the bottle from Rav, smelled what was inside and passed it back. Rav winked and took another swig.
“The clear liquid was water. It kept them alive in much the same way it does us now. But if you can imagine hundreds of clans, comprised of thousands of people, living in those ruins, you realize they had to get the water to their tents. Well, they weren’t tents like ours, but each clan lived in its own quarters, and some stacked one upon another, stretching all the way into the heavens. These men crafted elaborate irrigation channels and somehow sent the water to the living quarters of everyone in the circle of r
uins, which, at that time, was called a ‘city.’
“The other liquid was black. It reeked of rot and decay, and it came from deep within the earth, albeit from a different reservoir. Some of the water fell from the skies, some was taken from the lakes, and some was pumped out from beneath the surface. But this black sludge came from a different place. It was thick and viscous and needed to be cleaned. Filtered. The men running these empires used all of their resources and their powers to extract the black liquid from the earth. Once they cooked it, they called it ‘oil.’ They used oil to run their civilization, including the carts you see scattered in and among the ruins.”
Jonah’s eyes locked on Ghafir, and he no longer heard the Elk and their heightened concerns as night fell.
“At first, they found the oil in certain places just below the soil. And, like the water, they became efficient at moving it to their cities. But over time, it became harder to find the oil, and what was there was buried deep in the earth. Unlike water, the oil did not replenish itself. Once the tribal leaders burned it, the fuel was gone forever. Some of the elders of the nomadic clans claim that the people before the End Times built machines, giant monsters of iron and steel, that would consume the flesh of the earth-mother, tearing soil and dirt from her face and leaving an open wound where the black stuff oozed out like congealed blood. The men were forced to go deeper each time, as the oil closest to the surface was extracted first. They drilled and they burrowed deep, and as they did, they weakened the earth-mother until she decided she would no longer allow the men to rape her. She put an end to it.”
“How?” Jonah asked, the single word squeezed from between his tight lips.
“She shook them off like a wet dog. And many of them died, their lost souls still buried beneath many of the ruins.”
“Boo,” Rav said, his hands out and shaking.
Jonah jumped, and Ghafir growled beneath his breath.
“Ghost stories and myth. I ain’t worried about no earth-mother bitch and her revenge,” Rav scoffed. “Something crashed, blew up, fell down, whatever. We need to find out what it was.”
“No. Absolutely not,” Jonah said.
“We’re going,” Rav said. “I’m taking Ghafir and Declan with me. They’ve already volunteered.”
Jonah looked at Ghafir, his head sideways and his eye cocked.
“I don’t believe those ridiculous stories,” Rav said, although Jonah felt the dissonance between what he said and what he believed.
“You must let them go.”
Jonah turned and looked over his shoulder as Logan emerged from the darkness. The shadows appeared to be pulling the old man down into the cold dirt.
“They must go and report back before wild stories of gods and men have the clans throwing virgins into the river.”
Jonah sighed and nodded at Rav. “I can already feel regret in my gut,” Jonah said. “Take Ghafir and Declan then, and be back in four days’ time.”
“Why four?” Rav asked.
“Because that is how long it will take for an uprising to spread from Eliz to these plains. If the plume was, in fact, caused by a grumble, there will be more. And with them, death.”
Logan stood with his mouth hanging open, nodding at Jonah.
“Go now and be strong. The ruins at Eliz won’t stand forever.”
Chapter 40
“C’mon, boys. That horizon will roll away from us, I tell ya. It’ll feel like we’re walking for hours and not getting any closer.”
Ghafir and Declan walked behind Rav, each man carrying an axe, with their eyes fixed on the plume. Although it did not eat the sky the way it had the day before, tendrils of smoke continued to flow from beneath the mountains. The clouds had dissipated, leaving only a pristine late-winter sky. A light frost crunched beneath their boots. The odor of rotting eggs remained on the air.
“You feel ’em, last night?” Rav asked without turning around.
“Aye,” said Ghafir. “The vibrations that follow can last for days, and some can be brutal.”
Rav continually scanned the horizon as they walked, watching for hunter clans or ambushes. They had encountered neither since leaving the outskirts of Eliz at dawn. It was as if the people had hunkered down, hoping the earth would not break open and swallow them whole.
“I’ve not felt the earth move this way before,” said Declan.
“Then you haven’t had yourself a plump lady,” Rav said. He took a swig from his flask between short bits of laughter. “You get pounding on one and you’ll feel the earth shake.”
Ghafir looked at Declan and smiled.
“We probably won’t go to the source of the smoke.” Rav’s tone turned serious, and he abandoned the jokes about sexual encounters with large women.
“But I thought we were doing this to let Jonah know what happened, so he could make a decision?” Declan asked.
“We will. But we won’t have to go all the way to the mountains to do that. Besides, you feel that burning in your throat?”
Ghafir looked at Declan again, this time without a grin.
“Right,” Rav said, without turning around or waiting for a reply. “You have. Whatever shite be coming from that plume won’t be something we want to get close to. You been smelling it a day’s hike away. Imagine what that’ll feel like in your chest, all up close. Nope, I’ll stick to my flask for a burn in my chest, thank you very much.”
He held the flask in the air but neither Ghafir nor Declan reached for it.
“Fine. Can’t promise they’ll be much left on the return.”
“So what are we going to say to Jon—”
The sudden and immediate shift of the ground interrupted Declan’s question. The force threw the men to their right, each crashing to the ground as if they had been picked up and dropped by an unseen hand. A low, steady rumble approached from the western horizon. The sound rippled the soil and tore through the sky like thunder.
Declan fell upon Ghafir, while Rav had tumbled several yards to the right of them. Rav sat up, his face white and his palms down on the dead, frosted grass. He looked at the plume, which appeared unchanged in the sky. However, the horizon vibrated and his teeth rattled in his head.
“Here comes another,” Ghafir said.
“What do we do?” Declan asked.
“Hold on and send your prayers to whatever gods you believe in,” Rav shouted.
A single, sharp crack snapped their attention toward the horizon. The grasses on the plains waved back and forth despite the lack of wind. Rav waited, his eyes locked on the horizon. He was the first to see it.
“Holy fuck.”
A dark, jagged line appeared beneath the mountain and it came at them like spilled ink. Lines broke from the main trunk, black cracks cutting through the ground. The land south of the mountains pitched upward, tossing Rav backward. A black line ran between him and the other men, appearing instantaneously and with a deafening roar. Declan and Ghafir tumbled to the north side of the crevice, a thirty-foot gap in the earth now separating them from Rav.
The ground vibrated for another thirty or forty seconds while the men stared at each other across the newly formed chasm. And then it stopped.
Rav laid his head back on the cold earth. His ears rang, and he felt as though he were adrift on water, despite the dirt beneath him. He sat up and looked across the gap at Declan and Ghafir. A black canyon separated them. Dirt and debris continued to slide into the hole, which now spanned ninety feet across. Rav used his heels to push himself back and away from the edge.
“Stay where you are,” he shouted to Ghafir and Declan. “It might not be done.”
Declan reached down to touch the earth, as if to prove to himself it was still there. Ghafir stood and took a step toward the edge.
“Don’t,” Rav said. “It ain’t stable.”
Rav stood and his legs wobbled. The ground on his side of the earth’s gaping wound pitched down at a steep angle. He kept his arms out for balance and leaned back against
the rock. The ground on Declan and Ghafir’s side angled up and Ghafir leaned into it to remain upright like he would in a fierce wind. Declan remained sitting, his eyes darting back and forth from the plume on the horizon to the hole in the earth.
“What do we do now?” Ghafir asked.
As if to answer his question, the earth growled and the ground beneath split again. Rav watched clumps of earth and grass instantly disappear. He reached out and grabbed a handful of grass but the dead, frozen roots came up without a protest and did not slow his slide toward the crevice. Ghafir stumbled back from the edge on the opposite side while Declan leapt toward it.
“Hold on,” Declan said, trying to shout above the sound of the earth ripping in two.
Rav rolled from his back to his stomach, his feet heading right for the chasm. He threw his arms out to his sides, clutching at whatever still remained in the soil, hoping to slow his descent. Rav’s tattered clothes fluttered and flapped like the wings of a dying bird.
Declan ripped the pack from his back while maintaining his balance on the precipice. The space between the two sides kept expanding. The earth on each side formed massive cliffs. Declan grabbed a coiled rope and tossed the end to Ghafir.
“Tie this around your waist.”
Ghafir did so and Declan also tied it around his own. Declan pulled Ghafir to the edge, where they stood shoulder to shoulder and looked across the chasm at Rav, whose feet now dangled over the edge. The man’s rapid descent into the void had slowed but not stopped. Huge hunks of dirt and rock slid by him, falling soundlessly into the hole.
“Catch this,” Declan shouted as he tossed the other end of the rope to Rav.
Rav rolled to his back and used his heels to dig into the crumbling earth. He nodded and stared, wide-eyed, at Declan. “Well toss the damn thing already, boy!”
