* * *
The hidden entrance to the inner shrine still stood open. There was no rubble in the way, but still it seemed like it was stuck. The mechanism had worked smoothly on the way in.
More peculiar was the tremor. The rumbling continued beneath her feet and in the low registers of her hearing, but no rubble fell, as though it were far off from this mountain shrine. But just because she hadn’t seen anything fall yet didn’t mean nothing would, and so she ran for the entrance.
Propped just inside was a small bundle. She slowed to a walk as she approached. It was her saddlebag, and one of the leather water skins. She looked up, out into the clearing where they had left the camels to graze. They were gone. The camels were gone, and there was no sign of Ravi, nor any evidence of a struggle. Surely he didn’t just abandon me out here? The gentle man who took on an entire nest of slavers just to save me? It didn’t make sense; there must be some other reason. Her torch guttered out, forgotten.
“Well,” she said aloud. “I can’t just stay here.” She found the water skin was only half-full when she picked it up. Her saddlebag was exactly as she’d left it. What in the name of all the absent gods could have happened to convince Ravi to take off like this? She’d head for the spring; water had to be her first priority, and she might be able to find some food there, too. She slung the saddlebag over her shoulder and started down the trail.
It was far less pleasant to walk down than it had been to ride up. The trail was narrow – little more than a shelf running along a steep rock face – and her sandals were heavy with metal, but she could not remove them because of the rocks along the trail. An odor in the air made her think of one of Auntie Nikita’s incenses – mersa, she thought. Was that what those stunted trees were, clinging to the rocks with exposed roots and gnarled branches? Maybe. Not that it really mattered. Abandoned in the middle of a mountain range in the middle of the Qaehl, there wasn’t going to be a lot that mattered except basic survival, especially coming into the beginning of the rainy season. She would not reach the spring before sunset; she was going to have to sleep on the shelf. Ravi’d better have a good reason for this, or the next time I see him I’ll box his ears.
There was only one group of people nearby that she knew of. The Bar’shetr Vasengu were hardly friendly; would they take her in? …Did she have any real choice but to try? And then she would once again be dependent on strangers. At least the Bar’shetr weren’t going to try deceiving her. The first time she’d seen Ravi, he’d looked like a kidnapper. She should have known better than to come out here alone with him… Stop. This line of thinking is unfair and unreasonable. It was clear that he had deceived her, or she wouldn’t be alone in the mountains like this… with a storm brewing, if the clouds to the south were any indication. They were dark, but still couldn’t match her mood. She couldn’t afford to waste time if she wanted a prayer of making it to the Bar’shetr camp before she died of thirst. Her mouth twisted into a scowl. She pressed on.
Chandi finally called a stop for the night when it grew so dark she had trouble seeing the path in front of her feet. Her stomach complained loudly; she hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning, and she hadn’t found anything along the trail, either. If this continued it would be a miserable walk, if not an impossible one. She tried to remember how many water sources they’d seen along their route, but her mind felt as sluggish as her legs.
There was a cleft in the rocks on the high side of the trail she could wedge herself into and try to sleep. She might even be able to doze off; she was certainly tired enough. It had been too long since she’d been able to practice effectively, and add to that the riding this morning and the walking this evening… her legs felt like there were stones tied to her ankles. The dull clink of every step had been just one more annoyance. She folded herself up in the cleft and counted the stars as she tried to fall asleep.
The moon climbed slowly into her field of view, gibbous and so blue it was nearly purple tonight. The wind rustled the leaves of the trees dotting the landscape. Insects chirped; a nightbird cried. Rocks slid under someone’s foot, and she thought she saw a flicker of red firelight. Did Ravi come back? She sat up.
The man walking up the path towards her was not Ravi. He was taller – nearly as tall as her father had been – with a nose that was sharp like a knife and a slim jaw. His hair fell loose to his shoulders, but in the light she couldn’t tell color. Even still, she thought this was the information broker Ravi had hired.
“Hello?” It seemed strange that he should be out here now, after everything that happened.
“Evening.” The man’s voice was a mellifluous baritone with an odd, hollow quality Chandi could not quite put a name to. “Mind if I stop here?”
“Go ahead. I’ve got no food, and I’ve got no fire, but I can at least share the stretch of ground.”
“I think I might be able to help with that.” Ravi’s friend – business partner? – crouched down in the middle of the path and made a pile of tinder out of the tufts of grass and twigs that came to hand, then lit it from the torch he carried.
“So you’re the one who told Ravi how to find this place, right?”
“Mm.”
“What’s your name?”
“Damodar.”
“Why are you here?”
“Another customer.”
“Another…? Oh, right. You sell information.”
He nodded.
“Do you know Ravi well?”
He shrugged and thrust a piece of dried meat at her. “Food should help you sleep.”
“…Thanks.”
She tore off a piece of the jerky and chewed it, her sight consumed by the flickering tongues of the tiny fire. She wasn’t sure how long they sat there in silence before the question found its words.
“Why did he run away?”
“I don’t know.” He was looking at her, she could tell even without looking away from the fire. It was an uncomfortable sensation. She heard the dull snapping sound of a piece of meat being bitten off, and then there was a long pause as he chewed. “If you’re not going to finish that, you should try to sleep. You’ll not find answers in the fire.”
How had she forgotten the food in her hand? She took another bite and resumed chewing. Who knew when she’d find another meal, after all. The strip of meat was gone long before she was full, but fatigue had begun to slip over her in earnest and she felt her eyelids droop. Will Damodar still be here in the morning? She didn’t think she cared, as unpleasant as he’d been in Sararaq.
“Thank you for your help tonight.”
“Mm.”
“I’m going to sleep.”
“Goodnight.”
Chandi tucked herself back into her cleft in the rock and turned to look at the stars again.
The stars blurred and faded from her vision as sleep came to her, but before she could surrender to it she heard Damodar’s voice. The words were indistinct, but then she heard the scrape of gravel under his boot. She heard what he said next quite clearly.
“Damn Ravi can’t do his own dirty work, and now I have to clean up his mess.”
There was another scrape of a step, closer, and her eyes snapped open. The fire still burned; she turned her head and saw Damodar, maybe three feet from where she huddled, wielding a long knife shining in the light. Her mouth went dry. What? Ravi’s mess…? Damodar cursed and raised the knife. Had he expected Ravi… to kill me? She scrambled to her feet, rock at her back. He reached out his other hand to take hold of her, but she twisted out of his grip and skipped back along the high side of the trail. This was not good. Could she hold him off? He looked rather more comfortable with that knife than Ravi had with his sword, and she wasn’t certain she could have held him off, either. She drew the knife Ravi had bought her.
“What – why?”
Damodar grinned as he thrust his blade at her. She jumped back, down the trail a little and closer to its center. “You really want to know?” He thrust again and she
twisted left, another half-step closer to the low side of the trail. He was playing with her. “You’ve done what Arxes needed you to do. You’re a liability now.”
He kicked out and caught her ankles, and suddenly Chandi was on her back. She scrabbled up to sitting, and as his knife hand came in for a strike she slashed wildly. He neither cursed nor cried out as his knife clattered to the ground. There was blood on her blade. She looked up to see him examining the back of his hand. Two of his fingers hung limp.
“Not bad, you little bitch. But you’ll regret that.”
How can he sound so calm saying such things? There was no trace of heat in his voice, in his movement to pick up the knife with his other hand, even in the smooth motion he used to slash deep across her shins. She screamed, and tried to stab at him. He laughed, and the mixture of scorn and glee sent shivers down her spine. She tried to back away, up the path.
“Ravi knew you would have to die when he accepted the mission.” He drove the blade into Chandi’s calf and twisted. “You were the innocent one; there was no other way it could happen.”
…What? He couldn’t mean…
“Be a good girl and scream for me again?”
She would have if she could have found her voice. Instead she took her other leg, the one he hadn’t stabbed through, and kicked at his face. Damodar brought his hand up and flipped her heels over head. Now she found her voice, as the yawning abyss of darkness covering the valley below enveloped her and she tumbled down the side of the mountain. Her screams must have echoed for miles, but Chandi was aware of nothing other than the rocks and trees she tumbled over and through. Before she hit bottom there was a sickening snap from the shin of her more-injured leg as it slammed into the trunk of an unseen tree.
She was still conscious when she skidded to a stop in a semi-level place on the valley floor, and all her wishing could not make it otherwise. The agony of her broken leg stood out from the more generalized agony of the fall. Even if she could have mustered the strength to try standing she knew her legs wouldn’t work right. That whimpering sound must be coming from her throat, but she felt no shame at it. She was alone, and even adults cried in pain.
Ravi… Ravi had known she had to die. Ravi was working with someone else to do… something she couldn’t be allowed to know, and he was supposed to have murdered her after she did it. He disappeared while she was dancing the ritual that was supposed to reseal the monsters. Except, if that was really what they were doing, there was no reason to kill her. He cautions me against excessive pride, because even well-intentioned acts can have disastrous consequences, Ravi had said after Raghu’s story. He’d been uncomfortable. By all the gods… she’d just undone a seal. Ravi should have killed her. She should have let Damodar finish the job. Her whimper turned into a wail. How could she have been so naive?
…She was the innocent. Ravi had deliberately kept her in the dark. But she’d believed him, had hardly questioned him at all. He seemed so sincere, so genuinely fond of her. Lies. It was a lie from start to finish, and she’d swallowed it all. She wasn’t a hero in a story; she was a dupe. But, if she died here no one would know. Someone had to know. Someone… had to…
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Mersa trees, as it turned out, could grow nearly anywhere. The trouble was finding viable seed. Without explaining, Zena had instructed a number of the men of the village to go gather branches similar to the one Shahin had brought. When they returned, she had the original branch planted just outside the village.
“If you plant a cutting from a tree, and tend it properly, it will take root and you will have another tree.” She explained, a wonder of itself. The boughs they had gathered were spread around the edge of the village and planted. A number of the weavers carried jars of water to each newly planted tree and emptied them at the bases, one jar to a tree. Some branches Zena declared unfit to plant, and they were laid flat on the ground in the spaces between.
Amazingly, the branches took root. Within three weeks Shahin had spotted new growth on about half of them, and the entire village had taken on the rich, heady scent of the mersa tree. The shepherds made occasional forays back to the original grove and were trying to line a path to one of their pastures with more new saplings. Over those same three weeks, though, Shahin spotted more scouts on five separate occasions, and as time wore on the villagers began traveling in small groups.
The inevitable day finally came when it was not simply scouts Shahin spotted but an army advancing from the desert’s edge, gigantic tails and claws swimming through the sea of grass and cries of tchra, tchra floating across its surface. He heeled Kamari into a gallop and raced back to the village, shouting the alarm as he went. Even as he rode through the line of saplings men of the village were gathering with spears and javelins, and the women were setting up braziers behind them. They had maintained the ground cover between the saplings; if it looked like the monsters were going to break through, they would light the downed branches on fire. With luck the smoke would turn them back where the trees alone were insufficient. That was as far as the plan went, though; if the line broke, it would probably be the end for all of them. Shahin sent Kamari with one of the women to join the herds in the center of the village and joined ranks.
The first layer of the beasts came upon the tree line and fanned out to either side. Their rope-like antenna gyrated wildly, and Shahin was put in mind of lone ants he had seen in Udhampna as a child, testing the air with their feelers as they blazed tiny trails to food. He had been right about the odor in the grove, then.
The other monsters followed around the perimeter, but then he noticed something peculiar; each of the monsters went less far than the one ahead of it. They were methodically, deliberately encircling the village, and they were doing it by scent. The trees were too young: the mersa was not enough to overpower the ordinary smells of the village.
“Ready the fires!”
The javelins had been painted with mersa resin; they would be lit before they were hurled. With luck the grass was wet enough there would not be a wildfire. The monsters were three deep in front of Shahin, and he thought he saw movement beyond them in the gaps between their carapaces. It was almost like they were being directed by something – or someone, there was always that possibility – on the outside. The deeper they stacked, the louder grew the cries of tchra-ja! He couldn’t hear the goats bleating any more over the din of the call of the monsters outside the tree line.
They began snapping their claws at the saplings, but they hadn’t yet connected that Shahin could see. It was almost as though they couldn’t see the trees.
“Light javelins!” An idea occurred to him. “Do not throw!” He lit the javelin in his hand and crept toward the tree line, the burning brand of his weapon extended ahead of him. When he was within arm’s reach of the tree line, he drove the blunt end of the javelin into the dirt at his feet. It didn’t stick. His heart leapt for his throat even as his hand shot forward to catch the javelin before it fell. The dirt was too compact. He looked up and realized that the creatures had pulled back from the area immediately in front of him. Shahin knelt and began to dig with the fingers of one hand. They could not see the live trees; they were repelled by the smoke from the resin.
“Plant javelins! Like torch stands, plant them in the earth!” Some of the more daring village men were already imitating him, creeping forward just as cautiously as he had. They had the idea. He began digging more vigorously; he needed a hole about the size of the javelins’ butt and several inches deep.
Wham. Shahin looked up from his digging to see a stinger lifting up out of the ground perhaps two feet from his head. From the corner of his eye he saw movement and jumped back, barely in time to avoid being clipped by a pincer.
Shahin’s feet were on the ground for mere moments before he pushed forward into a lunge, thrusting the burning brand into the face of the beast. It recoiled from the mersa smoke and Shahin kept a wary eye up as he returned to digging. Does it know wher
e I am, or is it guessing?
A cry of pain ripped across the village. Fighting blind hindered the creatures, but not enough, it seemed. Shahin jammed the butt of his javelin into the hole he had and swept a little of the dirt back in around it. No time to pack the dirt tight, though; there was now a hole in the line that needed filled. He sprinted for where the scream had come from, pausing just long enough to grab another javelin. He would light it on the way, and pray for favorable winds and no rain.
Hours passed like this. Weaver men and herders worked to plug holes in their line as they opened. Javelin torches burned themselves out and had to be replaced. A thick haze of incense hung over the village and lingered in his lungs. In a moment’s pause Shahin looked around, catching his breath. There were fewer of the besieging creatures than there had been. The line encircling the village had thinned from two or three deep to barely one. Just a little longer.
Finally, as the last of the mersa javelins burned themselves out, the screeching cry of a tayura reached Shahin’s ears. He looked up from the ground in front of his feet, still out of breath: there wasn’t a monster to be seen.
Shahin took a deep, satisfied breath and promptly began coughing. We did it! They had waited out the monsters, and not one of them had found their way through the fragrant fence and into the village. He tried to raise a cheer, but choked again on the smoke. He felt hoarse.
A breeze rose, following the path the monsters had taken. A little earlier and it would have broken their cover as it carried away the smoke; now it simply allowed them to breathe. With fresh air in his lungs he did start a cheer, and many of the villagers joined. It was ragged, but so were they.
Advent of Ruin (The Qaehl Cycle Book 1) Page 35
