by Dave Gross
Akyraks were the giant spiders that were hard to tell apart from the galtroot bushes, so I said let’s stay the hell away from galtroot bushes. Kazyah rode out to pluck the leaves from one to show me I was chicken. They made for strong medicine, she said, and the young men of the Sun Clan mixed them with other stuff as a drug to make them brave. She offered to make some for me, which everybody else thought was very funny.
Kazyah warned us to stay away from the water-storing purple cactus called a basilisk barrel, on account of its poison would paralyze you and then an akyrak would come and eat you alive.
Arni caught scrub rats and brought them back for praise. The rats didn’t look exactly wholesome, but Kazyah said they were all right to eat. Right away I gave Arni the sign, and he gobbled them down. I didn’t want the boss to see one and order somebody to roast it for him.
At night, Kaid’s Band pitched tents and stood guard, leaving the rest of us to take it easy. After supper and a stretch, Eando and Illyria went back to the carriage to put their heads together with the boss. They had actual maps on the map table, but mostly they talked about what the boss had read that day, even though they agreed he shouldn’t oughta be reading it. You can’t get a book away from the boss. Not unless you get his sword first.
At bedtime, Illyria conjured her little cottage. She’d offered to make another, but there still wouldn’t be room for everyone. Instead, she invited Zora, Janneke, and Kazyah to share it with her. Janneke accepted, which meant Zora had no choice, since she wasn’t getting out of her sight, especially now that she was out of the manacles. Kazyah preferred to sleep under the open sky. That left a few bunks for Kaid’s Band. They drew straws to see who got to sleep in a bed each night.
When we were on the move, Eando always took a turn scouting. He said it would be better for everybody if the Sun Clan ran into him before the rest of us. Either they were roaming somewhere else in the Cinderlands or they saw us and kept hidden. After Eando’s stories of how they put young boys in front of wildfires and made them run for their lives in order to prove themselves, I was fine not meeting those mooks.
Eando didn’t go out so much once we passed into orc country. I didn’t blame him. Orc throat-cutters made his worst stories about the Sun Clan sound like schoolboy pranks. Kaid started sending her scouts in groups of six instead of two.
I started to feel left out, and finally asked the boss to make me some more pony scrolls. He said he’d think about it, but Illyria took pity on me and made one for me without a scroll. Even though she was the one that made it, it ended up looking the same as mine always do: a big red horse with a smoky mane.
It was good to ride again. I ran a big circle around the carriage. Janneke gave me a jealous look. Illyria conjured up a driver to give her a break sometimes, but the boss insisted that she remain in the driver’s seat “in case of mishap.” That’s the price of being a professional, I wanted to say. I also didn’t want a punch in the snoot, so I didn’t.
Kazyah’s stallion came when she called. She rode bareback, holding onto the wild horse’s mane while swinging that big hammer over her head like it was a switch. I decided I’d rather take a punch from Janneke than one from her.
Without a word to anybody, Kazyah rode ahead. I ran after her, in part so she wasn’t scouting alone, but mostly to find out whether my phony pony was faster than her wild stallion. When I came up beside her, the stallion screamed.
“Sorry!” I veered away. When I ride the pony, I sometimes forget real horses still hate me.
Kazyah was looking up at the eastern sky. Something glided high above the ground. It was too far for me to make out anything more than a pair of bluish wings and a long tail.
“Dragon?” I tried not to sound as worried as I felt.
“Only a wyvern.”
“Well, that’s a relief. ‘Only a wyvern.’” Looking back, I couldn’t see the carriage, but I could tell where it was by the plume of dust rising behind it. I started thinking we should stay closer.
“You have seen a wyvern before?”
“Not, you know, in the flesh.” I’d seen a picture in one of the boss’s books. Kazyah nodded in a way that made me feel small, so I added, “Mostly we’ve run into actual dragons.”
“Is that so? What sort of dragons?”
Now it was her turn to be impressed. “Well, I couldn’t see the first one, on account of I was blind at the time, but I hear it was the biggest. The green one was big as a house.”
“You escaped a green dragon?”
“Actually, we got on pretty good. You could say we’re friendly.”
“You are friends with a green dragon?” Her tone said she didn’t think much of that idea. Green dragons don’t exactly have the best reputation. I was starting to feel judged.
“Let’s just say the enemy of my enemy is a great big green dragon.”
Kazyah frowned, but she seemed to be thinking it over. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to call me chicken again.
A little while later, she jumped off her horse and put her ear to the ground. After a moment, she nodded at whatever her ancestors told her. She got back on her stallion and led me a few miles off the trail to four hoodoos that looked like old men in wide hats leaning into the wind. Stepping into the shadows between them felt like stepping out of a forge and into a beer cellar.
We found a pool. We drank, and then she let her horse drink. Mine didn’t need water, on account of not being real or from our world—something like that.
When the stallion had his fill, Kazyah whispered into his ear. He wandered the base of the wind-carved pillars, tearing out weeds and wildflowers. My pony just stood where I left it, looking ahead at nothing.
The stillness of the place reminded me of the hill where we’d buried the oracle. I’d buried the dead before, but never anyone that close to me. That thought made me think Kazyah was still mourning her old man.
“I guess this trip is harder on you than anyone else,” I said. “You wouldn’t even be with us if your father hadn’t promised your help.”
“The oracle was not my father,” she said. “He was my son.”
I took a minute to work that out in my head. The oracle had to be way over sixty years old, but Kazyah didn’t look much over forty. It was hard to tell through all those tattoos.
Considering the things I’d seen, Kazyah’s youth was no big deal. Hell, these days the boss looked younger than when I met him. It wasn’t seeing old people look like young people that threw me. The thought that rattled in my noggin was Kazyah watching her boy grow older than her—so old he died of it.
“My youngest son,” she said, “and the last to die.”
We were quiet for a time while I let that thought sink in. I’d seen pain in the eyes of a lot of parents whose kids had suffered or died. I never wanted to feel that way.
A long time ago, I bought a potion to make sure I’d never have a son of my own. It wasn’t because my father got killed on account of our evil blood. It wasn’t even because my mother sold me after that.
It was because of how everybody looked at me every day of my life. They looked into my yellow eyes and saw something that didn’t belong in this world. They hated me or feared me. Even the women who wanted me, what most of them really wanted was the little bit of Hell they smelled on me. There was only one way to be sure nobody looked at a child of mine that way.
That was never to have a kid.
That was my plan, anyway. A few years back, a devil told me the potion was a fake—not that you can trust a devil without a contract. Since then I’d been extra careful.
So I didn’t really know how Kazyah felt. Until you get hurt a particular way, you don’t know nothing. And you’ve got no way to take the hurt away from those who do. All you can do is say the thing you’re supposed to say.
“I’m sorry.”
Kazyah didn’t reply. She dropped her bear hat and spread her cloak on the ground. She stripped off her sweaty clothes and stepped into the pool. Even af
ter she knelt, the water barely reached her round hips. She scooped handfuls of water to wet her black hair. In the shadows, her tattooed skin looked as dark as the red rocks surrounding us.
She didn’t ask me to leave or turn my back, so I watched her bathe. As she spilled each handful of water after the next, her body changed.
The heavy muscles of her arms and legs grew thinner. The wrinkles at her eyes spread across her face, visible even through all that ink. A couple of her teeth disappeared, and the rest turned brown and yellow. Her fingers thinned, and her knuckles swelled. Her dark hair grayed and whitened. Her heavy breasts sagged and flattened.
She turned to me and said, “This is how I should look without the blessing of the earth.”
She poured more water over her shoulders. Her skin smoothed. Her muscles returned, but not as heavy as they’d been before. Her long black hair spilled past her waist. She turned a soft smile on me, her teeth whiter. “I was this age when I emerged from the cave of the Night Bear.”
I was going to say something then, but my tongue got tangled.
She beckoned to me, and I didn’t need another hint. I dropped my kickers and leathers beside her bearskin cloak and joined her in the pool.
Our conversation got what the boss might call “nonverbal.” Once we were clean, she drew me over to lie on the bearskin cloak. Her kiss tasted like a penny, sharp and bright. Our bodies moved together, slow for such a long time that I couldn’t tell when it got fast.
The first time felt like the echo of thunder on the horizon. I could almost smell the lightning. Her body slipped back into the shape I’d first seen, all muscle and round turns.
The second time felt like falling down a mountain. After, I thought I’d never catch my breath again.
When she came to me in the shape she should have had, I didn’t pull away. She looked different, sure, and she didn’t feel the same. But she was the same woman she’d been when she stepped out of that bear cave.
The third time felt like the whole earth opened up. Kazyah held me so hard I thought she was dragging me down into a grave. The things she knew and the things I’d seen her do, she was a power in the world. Maybe not as mighty as an ancient green dragon, but closer to that than to me. If she wanted to die, and if she wanted me to die with her, there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop her.
But in the end we didn’t die. It only felt that way. We came back to life a little at a time. Kazyah went back to looking the way she had when we’d met. We washed ourselves in the pool, put on our clothes, and headed back to meet the carriage.
That afternoon between the hoodoos was the second thing I’ll always remember about Kazyah. And after the way things turned out, it’s the one thing I wish I could forget.
13
The Sleeper
Varian
Through the rear window, Radovan said, “Boss, you’re going to want to see this.”
I stepped out onto the running board and swung around to catch the ladder, as I had done a hundred times before. This time I slipped. Radovan grabbed my wrist before I could fall under the wheels. He guided me onto the rear ladder. I clung there for a moment to let the beating of my heart slow before climbing to the roof, where I crouched with one hand on the baggage rail.
Radovan gave me a concerned look rather than remark on the added weight that threw off my balance. A jape would have been preferable to his pity.
Despite my companions’ concerted effort to restrict my diet, I managed to pilfer a snack now and then, just to fill in the cracks. It was the only way I could check my ill temper. Between the constant chill and hunger pangs, it was a miracle I had not yet reduced someone to ash with a bolt of lightning.
From the drivers’ seat, Janneke pointed toward a distant mountain. Having seen it sketched in Eando Kline’s own report to the Pathfinder Society, I recognized the famed Sleeper.
From a distance it appeared much like any of the other great wedges of granite jutting up from the Mindspin Mountains to scrape the clouds, yet this one was no natural formation. Three times around the conical mountain wound a stone dragon clutching its tail in its rear claw. Despite the erosion of millennia, the monument resembled a sinuous eastern wyrm. What I had first taken as a low cloud appeared to be smoke rather than vapor. It streamed from the dragon’s open jaws to drift over the foothills.
On either side of the carriage, Eando Kline and Lady Illyria leaned out of the windows. Illyria gazed ahead, but Kline turned his neck to search the skies.
“What are you looking for?” said Radovan.
“Chimeras.”
“The lion-goat-dragon things? Aw, they were made up by one of those—what do you call them? The guy that stuffs the dead animals.”
“Taxidermists,” called Illyria
“That’s it. A taxidermist sewed up a goat, a lion, and a snake and sold it for a fortune. The things aren’t real.”
“No doubt there are hoaxes, but I promise you chimeras are real,” said Kline. “I ran into some the last time I passed through this way. Right over there.” He pointed toward the Sleeper.
Radovan whistled appreciatively. “Tell me that’s not a real dragon.”
“That is not a real dragon,” said Kazyah. “It is a mountain.”
“I was just kidding! I know the difference between a mountain and—” Radovan stopped talking as he saw Janneke nudge the shaman sitting beside her on the driver’s perch. Kazyah made an admirable but ultimately imperfect attempt to suppress her smile.
“Do you know the Shoanti don’t have a word for ‘gullible’?” Kline asked him.
“Nice try, but you can’t fool me twice,” said Radovan. “Not twice in a row, anyway.” He grinned down at Kline. In their faces I saw the thrill of exploration and camaraderie that once propelled me through decades of expeditions for the Pathfinder Society. I longed to share their enthusiasm, but I felt only dread weighting my empty stomach. Hunger, both physical and intellectual. I craved the knowledge concealed in the third and final portion of the Gluttonous Tome, yet I harbored an ineffable premonition that finding it would destroy me.
We reached the foot of the mountain a few hours later. Janneke drove until we found a box canyon sheltering a pine wood. There we hid the carriage and our supply wagon out of sight from the caravan trail. The horses would enjoy the shade and fresh water from the stream. Kaid dispatched scouts and set guards while I consulted my expedition.
While he had never accompanied me on a proper dig, Radovan had considerable experience exploring lost crypts and subterranean complexes as my bodyguard. Kline was as seasoned an explorer as I could have desired. While Kazyah’s role was that of guardian to her ancestors, she had already demonstrated astonishing powers of geomancy and divination. And, while her expertise was in capturing fugitives, Janneke had proven herself a skilled fighter and an obedient hireling.
My doubts rested on Lady Illyria. There was no denying her arcane talents, and her necromantic expertise would prove useful if the Sleeper were indeed an entrance to the subterranean city of Xin-Gastash. But there were too many coincidental connections to the Gluttonous Tome: I had met her when she was a child, her great uncle was the Acadamae headmaster, she studied with Benigno Ygresta, and she shared the same Azlanti heritage that the oracle had claimed traced our bloodlines back to the runelords. Too many coincidences.
And there are, I reminded myself, no coincidences—neither in life nor in death. From the Codex and the Grimoire, I had come to see life and death energy as an unbreakable continuum. The sins of the past became the sins of the present. Bloodlines were just another form of fate, a disease of predestination. Just as Kazyah called upon the spirits of her elders to guide her, so did my sorcerous bloodline connect me to …
That line of thought dizzied me. Or perhaps I grew faint from hunger. I went to the boot of the carriage, only to see that Illyria had already supervised the removal of our remaining foodstuffs.
Instead of snacking, I retrieved the essential gear and stored i
t in my satchel, replacing the incomplete Gluttonous Tome near the top. Having it near to hand felt more comforting. Radovan shrugged on a light backpack, which I knew included our rations. Perhaps I could contrive to adjust it for him.
Once I saw that everyone was appropriately outfitted, Zora presented herself. “Let me come along,” she said. “You might need a good lockpick.”
“I’m a good lockpick,” said Radovan, but he shrugged and turned to me. “Another set of hands can’t hurt. It’s not like she’s running off into Orcland without us.”
“I don’t want a knife in the back,” said Janneke.
“I’m a thief, not a cutthroat,” Zora said. “Besides, the Master made me his slave. Even after I stole everything he demanded, he still killed—” She swallowed. “If I can hurt him by helping you, that’s as much revenge as I can hope for.”
I could not resolve my memories of Benigno Ygresta with the cruel behavior of this shadowy “Master.” What had brought him to employ such wicked methods?
“I don’t like it,” said Janneke. “What if she dies in there? She’s worth a lot less to me dead.”
“I say give her a chance,” said Radovan.
“As do I,” said Lady Illyria.
“You do, do you?” I said.
“I know how it feels to be distrusted. All the girl wants is a chance to prove herself.” On Illyria’s shoulder, the little drake rustled her wings. “See? Amaranthine agrees with me.”
“I vote we bring her,” said Kline.
“There are no votes,” I said. “This is my expedition. The rest of you are—” I sought a diplomatic term that would still support my position.
“The rest of us are helping you,” said Illyria.
Exasperated, I turned to Kazyah. “What do you think?”
“We should start climbing before we lose any more daylight.”
Seeing no profit in further discussion, I agreed.
Radovan fetched Zora’s flag from the carriage roof. Janneke shook her head as she saw him return the thief’s unorthodox weapon, but she said nothing else as Zora shouldered her own pack. I noted that the bounty hunter left her helm behind, as Radovan had continually advised. Considering her preference for the crossbow, it seemed wise counsel.
