He turned full circle. Damn him for a fool. He could see now that he had slept in the wide open. The stone he had leaned against was in the middle of a rocky field dotted with stunted shrubs. Already wan light crawled over the landscape, revealing more and more how stupid he had been. To his left he saw that the land fell away to a tiny valley filled with dark-leaved trees. To the right the land peaked in a barren red-brown hill, which met another to form foothills. Above were the ranges he had crossed the night before. The whispering turned to snickering laughter. These must be the rebels, and they thought him an idiot. Not the first impression he had needed or intended to make.
Clenching his hands tightly, he shouted, “Show yourselves, cowards! I seek you.”
A voice called from behind him. “What do you seek, dust-mad heathen? Death or a quick death?”
“I’m no heathen. I seek Danton.”
“He’s dead,” a disembodied voice said. A few chuckles sounded after it.
“Kill him now,” another voice, deep and grating, said.
Brill’s stomach dropped as he circled around, trying to spy their location, to count their number. No Danton meant he would have to fend for himself. But Salinda had been so sure he was alive and well and here in these foothills. Plu had set him down here for a reason. If he tried to put himself in their shoes he could ask himself, would he have trusted a stranger—one obviously so keen to be seen? The answer was easy—of course not. He had to be firm and show no doubt or he was dead.
“I don’t believe you,” he called out, tilting his head in the direction of the disembodied voice. “I seek to join this rebel force. I have escaped from the vineyard.”
He heard the sound of boots grinding grit. As if he had materialized from nowhere, a man stood twenty paces away. He had a beard and dark hair and eyes. He looked half-starved and his clothes were only slightly better than rags. “How did you escape?” he asked.
Brill began to relax, until he saw a vicious-looking array of short blades and a longer sword attached to the man’s belt.
“Who’s asking?” he said a touch cockily.
The bearded man’s hand hovered over the hilt of one of the swords. Sweat gathered between Brill’s shoulder blades, but he held himself still. The rebel didn’t answer, but he relaxed his hand and began to walk around Brill, drawing closer in a slow arc, looking him up and down as he went.
Brill remained tense but unclenched his hands in readiness for an attack. A rock hurtled out of nowhere. Brill ducked under it. Another rained down from the other side. The ragged rebel watched him, neither smiling nor frowning as Brill dodged the various stone missiles. Next a dagger winged toward him. Brill heard its whistle as it cut through the air. He was tempted to catch it, but didn’t trust his reflexes after so much misuse and torture. He would need training before he was ready to fight again. He dived to the ground, hearing the blade hit the boulder and then clatter against the rocks behind him. When he looked up, the bearded rebel lifted his hand and the barrage of missiles stopped.
“You’re a boy,” he half-laughed, half-said. His comrades snickered from their hiding places.
Someone called out. “Give ’im to Andy … he likes boys.” Brill jerked his head around, trying to see who it was. More jeers echoed. Brill tried to pinpoint their positions. They were well hidden in this barren landscape. This lot were good, he thought. “I’m young, yes,” he called out. “But I’ve seen a lot … done a lot.”
“Who are you?” the man asked. There was no humor in his voice. His dark eyes glittered with intensity.
Brill met his gaze. “I am Brill of Duval province, leader of the Duval insurgents.” He didn’t want to divulge everything.
The man nodded. “The Highland Confederacy?”
Brill’s eyes widened. “Yes. You know of it? My father—”
“Yes, I’m acquainted with Hubert’s philosophies. I’m not sure I agree with him … you know, all that caring and sharing and then all the deaths …”
“But …” Brill couldn’t resist the appeal of speaking to someone who had known his father, or at least of his ways.
The man frowned, though he let the hardness slide out of his face. “You landed here last night on a dragon. How did you do that?”
“Salinda.”
Except for a fractional widening of his eyes, the man held his expression firm. But Brill was now certain this man was Danton. “Salinda sent the wine for Danton …”
“And?” the man whispered.
“She sent greetings.”
“Liar!” Danton yelled and stepped forward, his long blade already in his hand and aimed at Brill’s throat. From their various hiding places, the others leaped up, brandishing their weapons.
Reflexively Brill stepped back against the boulder, eyeing the blades glinting in the morning sun, and added hastily, “She said, ‘Tell him I send my love and will see him soon.’”
Danton stilled and then he exhaled. “Thank you,” he said with something akin to relief as he lowered his sword. “That is what she would say. But why would she send a child to me? Why would she risk her life for you?”
Brill puffed his chest out. “I’m no child. I’m seventeen going on eighteen. Do you mean she is in danger now? But Plu is going to collect her.”
“She’s coming here?”
“Yes, she said she would come this evening. She didn’t think Plu could carry us both so far.”
“How did you convince her?
Brill shrugged. “I’m not sure. Things have changed, I suppose …”
The rebel stood to the side, glancing casually at Brill as if he couldn’t take him seriously at all. “Come on, tell me why she helped you.”
Brill tried to hide the anguish he felt. The pain was still too close to the surface. “The Inspector interrogated me.” He felt the heat emanating from his face. “In the end she summoned the dragon.”
Something in Danton’s eyes grew cold. He nodded once and clenched his jaw. Next thing he was slapping Brill on the back companionably. “Welcome, kid. Too bad you didn’t bring Salinda with you. We can wait, though. How’s old Mez?”
“He died before I got there. A couple of months ago, I think Salinda said.”
Danton sucked in an audible breath and his eyes grew fierce. “So Mez is dead. That does change everything.”
*
In the city of Barrahiem there was no music, no voices lifted in song, no footsteps echoing in the corridors or whispers of discussion humming in the air. Occasionally, Nils heard the soft lap of water from the deep lake, distorted and loud in the emptiness. But that was all the sound there was besides his own breathing, his own weeping.
Hunger drove him to the gardens in search of food. The storehouses full of sealed food packages and technology reminded him too much of what had been lost. He would seek food there eventually, but for now, he could not. The large cavern where the main food supply grew had run riot. Food abounded, but the orchards and vegetable beds were overgrown and unrecognizable compared to the order he remembered. Overhead most of the growing lamps still shone out their bright heat, which, combined with the glow from the shuwai, ensured that the plants had plenty of light. The stream that provided irrigation still flowed unabated. He checked the flow, noting that it had increased and changed course, wiping out a number of the palon tuber patches, which were now more like a marsh.
As he chewed on some bloodberries, he tried to imagine what had happened in Barrahiem while he slept. He could not shake the feeling of loss. The study of the heavens and the manipulation of the elements, among other ethereal subjects, were the Hiem’s religion and livelihood. The most highly valued occupations belonged to record keepers, archivists and historians. His people kept their secrets in the deepest places of Margra—caverns and vast storage vaults, the whereabouts of which only the Hiem knew. Was that now to be lost?
The archives would reveal the awful truth. For awful it must be. He stood and went to search the records down in the honeycombed tun
nels beneath the city. It did not take long for him to locate the first account. It was in his family’s section.
Within he read of Ruel moon, which in his youth he had seen from the observatory at Trithorn Peak. At that time it had been cracked and had developed deep fissures. It was held together by bands of red power placed there by Moon Binders, the prior inhabitants of this world, ancient before the Sundwellers and the Hiem settled there. Ruel had seemed so solid then, and the power that had held it together was beyond even their imaginations to comprehend. That such power had failed, and the moon finally split, were still facts he found hard to believe. Yet he had only to look around him at the empty city to know that they were true.
From that day at Trithorn Peak, Nils had dreamed of studying the heavens like Trell, his grandsire, had. Glancing up from the archive record he was reading, Nils realized that Ruel’s end had happened far earlier and more violently than even his revered grandsire had predicted. It had broken apart, leaving a trail of debris in the sky, which was named Shatterwing by the survivors. When Ruel had split, a large section of it had impacted the surface of the planet, nearly destroying it entirely. Even at the time of the most recent records Shatterwing had been the source of meteors that had continued to bombard the planet.
There was a kind of excruciating comfort in reading the archives, re-living what had occurred so long ago now. Luckily for him, the timepiece on his sarcophagus had failed, which had to be why it had released him. A tender was supposed to have woken him after one hundred years. But according to his research he’d been asleep for sixteen hundred and forty-five years, give or take, and the end, when it came, had been a mere twenty years after he had been interred.
He had been an outcast historian … inept through choice. The only career he had ever really wanted to pursue was to study the sky … to delve into the mysteries of science—but that had not been his assigned calling. Trell was already the family’s representative in that field; the Elders would not allow another. That denial of the path he had longed to take had sown the seeds of Nils’s misdeeds, the so-called rebellion against the order of things that had led to him being imprisoned.
From the archives of his kin, Nils pieced together the catastrophe that had wasted his world, taking with it his people, their great works and much of the knowledge they had hoarded for that future, greater age.
The impact site had taken out Stregahiem, the city that was beneath the continent of Strega. Then for some reason the Hiem had begun to die elsewhere, too. The records were patchy—a shocking reminder of the chaos that must have reigned at the time. His people were usually so meticulous that only a severe trial would have overset their attention to detail, their dedication to the greater work of the Hiem. One historian spoke of the amount of dust in the air, clogging lungs. Another record mentioned a virus that had dropped thousands of Hiem every day. Perhaps the Hiem had become too full of despair to care for themselves. After reading the accounts from the time, Nils was left with no clear explanation for the mass dying off. The Hiem’s legacy now belonged to Nils and Nils alone. What a burden for one so unworthy as he considered himself to be.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Well Met
Next morning, after an exhausted but troubled sleep, Salinda was once again working on the vines. Turning the leaves over, she examined them closely as she worked her way through her allotment. The spray had been successful: the disease had been arrested.
Other prisoners passed by on their way to the cistern or to gather manure. None of them took particular interest in her, although one or two noted the quality of her grapes. Salinda chewed on some vine shoots, sucking down the fresh sap. The other prisoners shunned her for eating the vine leaves. They saw it as evidence that she was as dust mad as Mez had been. They could think what they liked. She smiled to herself as a spurt of strength from the sap energized her.
The air was heavy and hot all day. Picking up a fallen bunch of leaves to fan herself, she tried to estimate when Plu would return. The sun was sinking fast, turning the sky and ribbon clouds bright purple and red. Although she was still uneasy about the possibility of being seen the night before, she began to relax on the way back to her camp. Surely, if a guard had seen her, one of them would have come to question her. If it had been another prisoner, he or she would have turned her in for extra privileges by now. If they hadn’t informed on her yet, she had a chance to get away.
A step behind her alerted her to a presence too sharp and deliberate to be a prisoner, too brisk and light to be a guard. Calling upon all the lessons Mez had taught her, Salinda tried to act calmly and not as if she had been caught red-handed doing something she ought not to have been doing. Turning around, she bowed.
“Inspector.” Salinda thought hard. “I was returning from my allotment.”
He stepped close to her. “Where is your helpmate, Salinda?”
Salinda cast her gaze down to the ground and licked her now dry lips. Resisting the urge to back away, she said, “I … I … left him with the remainder of his task, Inspector. He should meet me at my home site when he is done. He is new and unaccustomed to work. That makes him slow … troublesome creature that he is.”
“Interesting. You trust him then to tend the vines without your supervision?” the Inspector said, bringing himself closer so that his lips nearly touched her neck. Instinctively, she took one step back, but he matched her, stepping forward and placing his face closer to hers, almost nose to nose.
Reluctantly, she lifted her eyes to his, then quickly cast them down again. “The vines are hardy … he could not damage them. Best he learn that I can’t do all the work—he must do his share.”
Having him this close to her was wholly unnerving. It took all of her willpower not to tremble. The Inspector slapped his crop against his high boot with a thwack! Salinda flinched. He smiled again, straining his thin lips against his teeth. “You accept responsibility for his actions, then?”
That question made Salinda perspire. Instinct warned her that he knew about Brill’s escape. Her palms were slippery with sweat, and she rubbed them against her dress. All of a sudden the air seemed too close, too hard to breathe.
“Well, Salinda?”
“Not all his actions … but … but with regards to the vines I do.” Again she lifted her gaze, meeting his steadily.
This close she could smell his clean clothes, his light scent. Salinda stood still, resisting the urge to run away as he closed in to whisper in her ear. “Bring Brill to me in the morning. I have … questions …”
Before she could answer he was striding away. Hurrying back to her camp, she gathered up a few items to take with her. She had to leave. Danger. The word tolled like a bell in her mind. When it was dark enough, she crept out into the vines and skirted the rim of the vineyard. She called Plu, three times, and he did not respond. Her heart lurched. There would be no escape tonight. Perhaps her young dragon had not made his way back from Danton’s camp. In any case, something prevented him from answering her summons. She would have to try again the next evening.
Carefully, she picked her way across the rocks and the edge of the plain on her way back to her hut. Before she went to sleep, a wave of self-pity washed over her. Mez wouldn’t have approved of such blatant abandonment to her emotions, but he wasn’t there to chide her. Even the cadre he’d given her failed to comfort her as if it too shunned her loss of control. She knew it was important to maintain her composure for the cadre to mesh further with her mind. Instead, she feared it shrank from her emotional upheaval. Try as she might to keep her fear in check, she couldn’t shake it off. Oh, Mez, I wish you were still here. But Mez didn’t see what she saw, didn’t feel what she felt and, more importantly, he didn’t have to face the Inspector in the morning and answer for Brill.
*
The echo of screams startled Salinda from a deep sleep. She smelled smoke and then the deafening screech of a dragon’s cry sent her staggering out of her blankets. With her hands over her ears,
she stared in disbelief at the surrounding vineyard, which was alive with marching orange tongues of flame. She stood there as wave upon wave of heat rolled into her. Over the roar of the fire, chilling human shrieks pierced the night. Salinda stood stock still, caught between fear and disbelief, uncertain what to do. A thick cloud of smoke enveloped her, driven by the fire front, and she doubled up, overcome with a fit of coughing.
Through the stinging tears in her eyes, she could see at least ten adult dragons firing the perimeter of the vineyard. Various blazes lined the outer rim, growing and merging as they pushed inward. She ran toward the central spoke in order to obtain a better view. Turning full circle, she looked toward the staging area and the winery. In the distance, flames licked over the roofs of the village buildings and the winery and she could even make out a spear of reddish haze thrusting high where the Inspector’s house should be.
The smell of sulphur grew stronger as it mixed with thick, white smoke. The beat of wings sounded overhead, wafting the stinging, choking smoke and ash in her direction. Gagging, she crouched down, then bolted into a section of untouched vine rows and flattened herself against the dirt. Turning her face to the sky, she saw in the reflected firelight a half-eaten prisoner in the mouth of a near full-grown male dragon. With a cry of dismay, she spurred herself into action once more. Reversing her path, she ran south, in the direction of the rocks, hoping to find shelter or Plu.
More screams echoed around her. The vines she ran through now were alight, yet she had no alternative but to traverse them to make her way to the ridge. Again dragon call screeched overhead, making her shiver despite the fierce heat. Surrounding her were the sounds of other dragons feeding and blowing fire. Dragon wings scythed through the thick air above her head, slowing and circling. She dived under the vines again and crawled across the damp soil.
Shatterwing: Dragon Wine 1 Page 6
