by J. C. Staudt
I’d like to show you how it feels, but you seem to know already, Daxin wanted to say, but couldn’t. As he shuffled past the old murrhod, there was a spoiled, decaying smell.
As soon as Daxin was outside, the murrhods slammed the door behind him, and he heard the wooden crossbar scraping into place. He was standing on a beach, surrounded by a cluster of thatched mud huts that looked out across the Underground Sea. He knew he was in one of the slave colonies, but not which one. The place was entirely unfamiliar, for all he could discern past the cloud hanging over his mind.
Walking through the sand proved difficult; every effort to lift his legs even an inch sent flashes of pain through his midsection. The passing townsfolk were a mixture of humans and murrhods, both of whom took equal care to ignore him. By Infernal, if I can just get to Lethari, this will all have been worth it. At least then, I can die happy.
Bent over like an old man, Daxin made his way to the water’s edge. He turned in a slow circle to get his bearings, unable to move his head from side to side without starting a fire in his throat. The beach stretched on for half a horizon in either direction, the lanterns in Sai Calgoar’s port faint to his left. There was light from the entrance far above, the sea’s waters an interminable blackness before him. He could make it to the light, he decided.
But when he turned to begin his trek, the sand shifted underfoot. His body was too broken to balance itself, and the mere effort proved his undoing. He fell face down in the sand, feeling every grain that rubbed at his sutures. Getting up again seemed too impossible to try, and shouting for help in a place like this was futile, even if he’d had a voice to do it with. Is this really how I’m going to die? he thought. Alone in this dark place, away from everyone I know? I never even saw my fortieth birthday, for Infernal’s sake.
Daxin had always imagined himself dying in his bed at home, aged and wizened, surrounded by his family. I think that’s how everyone must imagine themselves dying. I suppose we can’t all be so lucky. He had never considered meeting his end before he’d achieved everything he set out to accomplish in his life. Thinking about all the things he’d failed to do hurt more now than he could’ve imagined. I tried to chase the woman I loved, to show her what it means to make a promise. I tried to make it noble and right and good, but instead I’ve let it turn me bitter and heartless.
And then there were Toler and Savvy. How wrong I’ve done by the people I claim to love. I thought I knew what you both wanted, even after the thousand times you showed me otherwise. I should’ve been there. I should’ve given you my support. I should’ve told you how proud I am, and how important you are to me.
Even now, Daxin knew that had Lethari been standing here in front of him, he would’ve delivered Vantanible’s caravan routes without a moment’s hesitation. Every place, every date; every sliver of information I can remember. Because after everything I’ve learned about the hazards of love, I’m still too stubborn to know when to quit.
The sea lapped at Daxin’s boots. Its freezing waters ran up his leathers and around his waist. Gulls gathered, webbed feet padding toward him through the sand, cautious. Salt burned at his sutures while the village around him went about its business and the day outside warmed. Daxin could still see the glow of Sai Calgoar’s port, his cheek sinking in damp sand as white froth slid in around his face. Somewhere over there was the long flat rock, the place where memories of better times had made him the happiest he’d been in many long years. It was better to die this way, he decided. He wasn’t with his family. He hadn’t done everything right, or accomplished all that he thought he would. But it was better to die like this than to die without warning. Without having a chance to remember.
Small hands took Daxin by the upper arm and hoisted him to his feet with surprising strength. It was one of the murrhods, a wiry youth with rough black fur that smelled damp and musty and tickled Daxin’s underarms where the creature was supporting him. The murrhod wore a beaded necklace, a loincloth, and a slave’s shackles around its ankles, though there was no chain linking the two cuffs together. Daxin began to recollect the circumstances of his capture; the slender canoe that had appeared from the shadows as he reclined on the long flat rock, the blowgun, and his attempted escape. There had been two murrhods in the canoe—one as black as tar, the other as white as pure daylight. Was this one of them? Perhaps the murrhod knew how little strength Daxin had left, because it didn’t seem to be afraid of him.
“Sorry Mama Jak was so rough with you,” the murrhod said. “Can’t have you dying on the beach here, though. I can take you as far as the vale, but from there you’re on your own.”
I’d sooner die here than accept help from one of the creatures responsible for my death, Daxin wanted to say, but couldn’t.
At the murrhod’s beckoning, a large host gathered around them and hoisted Daxin off his feet. He groaned in pain, but the sound escaped his throat as a whisper. They carried him through the colony and up the slope of muddy sand until they were standing at the top of a ridge, looking over the Calgoar Vale. Daxin knew the landscape well. He had ridden the vale countless times with Lethari and his warriors in their younger days. He would be hard pressed to make it very far now. The host dumped him off at the foot of the ridge and left him standing alone there, swaying on his feet like a dying blade of grass.
He took a handful of steps toward Sai Calgoar before he had to lean against the rocks. Every footfall became a greater ordeal as the rising light-star dampened his resolve. He would never get halfway to Sai Calgoar on his own, he knew. The scrubs finally took you, he heard Toler say. You belong out here, Dax. Me on two feet, you in the ground. It was even truer now than it had been that day.
The ground rumbled with the approach of hoofbeats, and for a brief moment Daxin dreamed he was back there, on the edge of the Skeletonwood with his brother. Toler had finally caught up with him, he was sure. This time, Daxin wouldn’t pretend he was sorry for what he’d done. He would tell his brother how badly he hoped Reylenn Vantanible was dead. He would admit to copying the map of the caravan routes. He would tell him everything.
Only it wasn’t Toler and his shepherds who were galloping toward Daxin now. It was a war party from Sai Calgoar, bronze-fleshed warriors atop towering corsils. Lethari? Daxin wanted to shout. Lethari Prokin, it’s me. It’s Daxin Glaive, and I have a gift for you. The nomads caught sight of him, exposed as he was in the glaring light from the east. They halted their corsils and surrounded him.
A fierce-looking nomad dismounted and strode toward him, the strip of long black hair down the center of his skull slouching to one shaven side. His scarring was deep and intricate, his feathered necklace marking him as one of the master-king’s warleaders. “Abin than, daor lathcu teichien go tuineach?”
He thinks I’m a slave trying to escape to the colonies, Daxin interpreted. If he’s one of the warleaders, he must know Lethari. “Lethari Prokin,” he mouthed, forcing the words out hard enough to achieve a hoarse whisper that made his throat burn.
“Say that again, lathcu.” The warleader leaned in close to listen, leaving his neck exposed. He was making a show of strength for his men, Daxin knew, allowing himself to be vulnerable before a perceived foe.
Daxin repeated himself. He tried to make it louder this time, but he only managed to amplify the stinging in his throat.
The warleader studied Daxin’s sutures. “You are owned by Lethari Prokin?” he asked.
Daxin shook his head and pointed southward into the vale, toward Sai Calgoar. “Oen ein cariad,” he mouthed slowly. I’m his friend.
The warleader maintained his blank expression for a moment, then exhaled a breath that smelled of tea and olives. He began a shallow, repetitive nod. “You go back to Sai Calgoar with the herdsmen. They will bring to you Lethari Prokin. If he does not know you, they put you out of your misery.”
“Maetha,” Daxin mouthed.
The warleader motioned toward the herdsmen, who were rounding up the corsils as the warrior
s dismounted. One of the herdsmen came over, kneeling a corsil to let Daxin mount.
The warleader joined his warriors where they were gathering at the foot of the mountains. “Guintadael aer coas,” he shouted.
They’re going into the hills on foot. Why, I wonder? Daxin was in too much pain to wonder for long. The war party began to scramble up the mountainside, warriors crowding like marathon runners, warlocks and porters following behind with heavy loads on their backs. Daxin watched them scurrying over the crags until they grew small in the distance.
All the way back to Sai Calgoar, the herdsmen were rough and uncommunicative. The journey passed in a blur as Daxin began to fade, the result of too much heat and too little water. Someone must have sent a messenger to Lethari’s household, because men came shortly after they reached the city to carry him away on a two-pole canvas stretcher. Frayla greeted him at the door with a worried string of Calgoàric he was too drowsy and feverish to translate.
Warlocks and shamans came and went over the next few days, but nothing they could do for Daxin seemed to help. Then one day, Daxin woke to find Lethari standing in the doorway as afternoon light flooded in through the curtains. Frayla was standing behind him, her arms wrapped around him and her head propped on his shoulder. Lethari Prokin was as hardened a warleader as they came in the nomad tribes, but the sight of his dear friend in such dire anguish seemed to soften him.
“Dax,” he said, moving forward to kneel at his bedside. “Tell me how this happened to you.”
Daxin forced air through his windpipe. The effort set an open flame to burning in his throat. “Doesn’t. Matter.”
Lethari leaned closer, straining to hear. The nomad looked tired, worn smooth like the edges of a wooden railing after the touch of many hands.
Daxin’s voice was nothing more than a hiss. “Lethari, we’ve been friends for a long time. We’ve ridden many horizons together. My last gift to you is the routes of every Vantanible caravan in the Inner East. This time, I want you to hit Vantanible so hard he’ll never recover.” Daxin began to recite the caravan schedule; the dates, times, and routes he’d pored over for hours to memorize.
Lethari had one of his servants bring him a dried animal hide and an old ink pen to write with. Daxin’s whole throat was ablaze with slivers of sharp pain, but he fought through it, never stopping until he was done.
“What of your brother?” Lethari asked, when Daxin was done. “Is Toler not still one of Vantanible’s shepherds? You know that if I send my war parties after every caravan, I cannot promise he will be spared.”
Daxin nodded weakly. “I know. Forget about my brother. I’ve taken care of him. Lethari, I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything. Ask, and it will be done.”
“There’s a place in the Skeletonwood. A village, hidden away beneath a stone…”
The people of Dryhollow Split were a bitter stain on Daxin’s memory. Maybe he’d taught them to survive. Maybe he’d given them a little hope. But he was also the reason they’d had to leave their entire lives behind and flee Unterberg. He owed them more than to turn his back on them, yet he’d abandoned them when they needed him most. Ellicia may never forgive me for that, he reflected. Vantanible would send more innocent people fleeing for their lives after this next round of attacks took place. It was up to Toler now to come clean and admit that he’d let the trade routes fall into the wrong hands. But those hands—Daxin’s hands—would be long gone by the time that ever happened. If it happened at all.
As the sepsis spread inside him, Daxin wondered if he’d been wrong to spurn Ellicia and deny himself that small piece of happiness. He still wasn’t sure. It seemed he’d made a habit of assuming he knew what people needed, then trying to force it on them. He hated himself for that. He hated that he’d chosen to push Ellicia away instead of giving her the love he’d wasted on somebody else. He had wanted Victaria back more than anything in the world, but he knew now that he could never have forced her to love him again. He could never have forced Savvy to appreciate that he was searching for her mother, just as he could never have forced Toler to fall out of love with Reylenn Vantanible and live a quiet life in Bradsleigh. But it was too late now to ask for their forgiveness.
Now that he had armed Lethari to take the revenge he had been dreaming of for so long, Daxin was surprised to find only emptiness where he had expected to feel the satisfied thrill of victory. He knew in that moment, as he lay dying, that Toler had been right. Blood only gets you so far, his brother had said. Blood had become the price for Daxin’s transgressions, in the end. It had only taken him far enough to realize he was in the wrong, but perhaps that was far enough. Perhaps that made it right that he should die, since there were so many who would’ve wanted it. He had won a hollow victory. It felt all the more hollow to think of everyone he’d thrown by the wayside to win it; everyone who would’ve been with him now, if he were dying in a more familiar place. He knew then that he had mistaken obsession for principle; extremism for justice; coercion for love. He only wished he’d known it sooner.
CHAPTER 53
To the Deeps
The cave wall was wet and slippery, but Lizneth managed to climb as high as the overhang beside the waterfall, putting some distance between herself and the cotterphages swimming in the deep pool below. There were close to half a dozen, as best she could count, but they were no more than half as long as she was tall; not nearly big enough to prey on someone of her size, she hoped.
The rock wall rose up around every side, creating a deep cylinder without a beach or landing. There were holes and crannies running all the way around, running as high as the mass of stalactites that hung from the ceiling like a great chandelier. The cotterphages have nothing to feed on down here; there must be an underwater tunnel somewhere that leads out. Lizneth wished Jakrizah had given her a potion that let her breathe underwater, but there was nothing of the sort amongst those in her pack.
Climbing back up the waterfall seemed impossible—not to mention that there was an angry, full-grown cotterphage awaiting her at the other end. That left her with two options: she could explore the pool for underwater passages, or choose a cranny at random and follow it wherever it led her. Even if she could avoid the cotterphages and find an underwater passage, it might be too long to swim through. The choice is obvious, she decided.
The first cranny she chose came to a dead-end fifty fathoms on; the second looped around and returned to the chamber; and the third shot straight back a ways before going vertical, with walls too smooth to climb. After hours of exploring, exhausted from climbing and crawling and fighting and being chased, Lizneth collapsed where she stood and rested.
She could see the pool far below as she sat eating a handful of kelp and the last of her salted gull. One of the burrow-kin had been holding a dried scrap of something food-like in its pouch, but Lizneth didn’t like the smell, and she wasn’t ready to eat it yet. She had plenty of water, at least. Her keen sight was fading, and she could feel her senses going back to normal. It would be time to bleed her eyes again soon, but she would wait until she got to the surface to use the last of the Oculus Cordials. If I ever find the surface, she thought sourly. Or get my bearings at all. Beh dyagth, I’m completely lost. Why does home have to feel so far away?
It seemed she was taking up Artolo’s cursing habit, for what little other effect he’d had on her. She didn’t think about him as often as she had thought of Bresh and Fane and Dozhie—and even Zhigdain. She would rather they have been with her than Artolo. They hadn’t persuaded her to do things she would come to regret, like he had. Their fathers weren’t slavers and murderers, like his father was.
When she woke, Lizneth didn’t remember falling asleep. But she knew she’d slept, and it must’ve been for a long time. The water in the pool had risen; not by very much, but enough that she noticed. Her sight was all but normal again, her tail warm and her wounds smarting. The fresh bumps and scratches from the burrow-kin and the cotterphage stung over
the dull ache of those she’d received aboard Curznack’s galley weeks ago.
She felt refreshed despite the pain, but she was dirty from crawling around in the tunnels, and there was nowhere to wash unless she wanted to take her chances with the cotterphages. So she chose the nearest cranny and continued her search for a way out. This tunnel soon began to look more promising than the others. Then it curved downward. I need to go up, not down. She followed it anyway, and found herself at the waterfront again.
Frustrated, she turned back and began to climb. She climbed faster when she heard voices from across the pool. They were only echoes, indistinguishable at first. When she clambered to the top of the tunnel and crawled out to look, three calaihn were arriving at the edge of their own cranny. Theirs was a little higher up, and about a quarter of the way around the circular chamber from where she lay. They were speaking something different from the Aion-speech—their own language. What was it called? Artolo would know, and he’d know what they were saying, too. It sounded like gibberish to her, but they were laughing and carrying on as if they hadn’t a care in the world, so whatever they were saying couldn’t be too important.
The shortest of the three cast a line into the pool, and together they sat on the edge and waited. Lizneth stayed where she was, waiting to see what they would do. That passage must be the way up. If I’m patient, I can scent them and find my way out after they leave. Soon the line went taut, and together the calaihn hauled up their catch. The cotterphage wriggled viciously as they brought it close. One calai leaned out over the precipice and slashed at its throat. Black blood spilled from the wound and ran down in torrents. The beast began to writhe all the harder, its grumblings shallow and wet-sounding. They held it there until it hung still. Then they pulled it up and finished severing its head before they carried it away.
Lizneth climbed out onto the wall and inched over to their tunnel. She stepped over the dark puddle near the opening and followed the passage upward, through many twists and crossings. The surface was near, she knew by the growing warmth. She could scent the saltrock and rotted leaf smell of the calaihn, but the cotterphage’s odor was as strong as dead fish in standing water, making theirs harder to follow. Each time she lost the trail she had to backtrack until she found it again, stopping to scent in every direction and spread her whiskers for movement on the air.
