The Ventifact Colossus (The Heroes of Spira Book 1)

by Dorian Hart

  While the setting sun glared balefully across the desert, the four of them marched into the Mouth of Nahalm toward the single island in view. Even with the sand-shoes, Dranko’s feet sank an inch or so with each step; Ernie said the desert’s powdery grit reminded him of baker’s sugar. The tiny breeze-blown particles soon found their way into Dranko’s boots, his clothes, his mouth, his nose, his hair.

  Luck was with them; the moon was full and the sky perfectly clear. By the crystal blue moonlight, they could just make out the rising hump of the wandering island. It wasn’t going to set any records for speed; from this distance, it didn’t seem to be moving at all.

  The Mouth of Nahalm was flat; the sands didn’t drift into hills and valleys the way Dranko had imagined. The breeze was constant but light, and once the air had cooled he found walking was less onerous than he had feared. But he would have given his left tusk to be able to sit down whenever he wanted. In the desert sitting took teamwork: three stood around the edges of a sheet and stretched it taut so the fourth could sit without sinking. Any other approach meant vanishing into the sand—which a stumbling Ernie had nearly proven early in the march. And resting one at a time was almost too tedious to be worth the delay.

  So, with fewer rest breaks than any of them would have liked, they marched slowly across the desert. (Early on Aravia thought she had figured out a way to jog safely, and within five seconds the only visible parts of her were her sand-shoes and one flailing hand. Ernie, next in line, pulled her out, and she was coughing and sneezing out little clumps of sand for an hour.) But even at their cautious pace they arrived at the wandering island an hour before sunrise.

  The island was an imperfect hemisphere of rough brown rock rising up out of the sand, its sloping sides curving upward and out of sight. Its size was difficult to judge, but having been walking towards it for hours, Dranko guessed it was at least a hundred yards across and thirty yards high at its rounded peak.

  “Do we sleep on top?” asked Ernie. “What if I roll off while I’m sleeping? I’d be dead before I woke up! And how can we possibly get up there?”

  Dranko stared up at the island’s summit. “When we were on the road to Verdshane, I grumbled to Mrs. Horn that there were always tree roots under my bedroll. She told me to imagine the most uncomfortable night I’d ever spent and how pleased I would have been to have a nice bed of roots to sleep on. Perspective, she said. Always have perspective.”

  Ernie wiped sweat from his brow. “She was right. I guess this won’t be so bad.”

  “And look on the bright side,” said Dranko. “Everyone hopes they’ll die peacefully in their sleep, right?”

  “Dranko, that’s—”

  “Look in your travel kit,” said Aravia. “That netting is a hammock, and the spikes must be for holding it to the side of the island.”

  Ernie let out a relieved breath. “Oh.”

  Each survival kit came with a rope-net hammock, a dozen metal spikes, a mallet, two spare water skins, a roll of beef jerky, and a thin but strong white sheet, in addition to the sand-shoes. Dranko, seeing that the rock surface of the island was rough and irregular, briefly toyed with the idea of climbing to the top and taking a look around the desert, but the thought of taking an inadvertent dive into a sandpit of death was enough to dissuade him.

  Dranko settled down into his hammock. “Morningstar, you must love this,” he called out. “Going to bed at sunrise, getting to sleep all day long, and then marching at night. What could be better, right?”

  “Almost anything would be better,” she said. “We’re spiked into the side of a floating island in the middle of a desert, and I feel like I have sand in every place it’s possible for there to be sand.”

  “Really? Even in your—”

  “Yes, Dranko, even in my nose, which is what I’m sure you were about to ask. Now be quiet and go to sleep.”

  Dranko chuckled inwardly and thought some suppressed laughter came from Ernie’s hammock as well.

  Going to sleep was unlikely to be a problem, given how long and exhausting a day (and night) it had been. The four of them had trudged through the desert for nine hours. So severe was his exhaustion, Dranko knew that despite the sand that scratched his skin nearly everywhere, he’d be out the moment he let his eyelids droop.

  But he had a small task to perform before calling it a night. Though it was tricky, wriggling in an undersized hammock staked to the curving vertical wall of the wandering island, he fished a small bottle, hardly more than a vial, from his pack. The note was already stuffed inside. Dranko was here. He had purchased a half-dozen such containers before they boarded the ship to Sand’s Edge, thinking his travels for Abernathy might afford new opportunities, and had sealed one of his notes in each. He had already thrown one of his signatures overboard somewhere in the Middle Sea.

  This was admittedly a long shot. He had no idea if objects ever “washed up” on whatever shorelines the Mouth of Nahalm might have elsewhere along its hundreds of miles of perimeter. Was it a steep-sided bowl all the way around? Or might some traveler far to the west stumble across his signed jetsam, taking the bottle and showing it, amazed, to his friends?

  Who knew? He let the bottle fall, and it vanished beneath the sands like a stone dropped into a still pond. Satisfied, he turned his body to face into the rocky wall of the island (so the rising sun wouldn’t shine into his eyes) and tried to sleep.

  * * *

  Breakfast was a challenge. They munched on whatever they could easily retrieve from their packs while staying in their hammocks, then carefully put on their sand shoes, lowered themselves down, and checked their gear a final time.

  Trudging through the desert by the failing light of the setting sun, Dranko pondered what he would do when they reached the next island, the one where these Black Circle bastards were digging up Gods-only-knew-what.

  “Here’s the plan,” he said. “In a few hours we’re going to arrive at Black Circle central. When we’re about half an hour away, you three will stay back while I go on ahead to spy things out.”

  “By yourself?” asked Ernie.

  “Of course by myself. I’m sneaky and can climb, and while the rest of you were making honest livings before our current situation, I was learning how to not be noticed in places I wasn’t supposed to be. There’s a decent chance I can find out what’s going on up there without being spotted. Meanwhile you just relax and enjoy the breathtakingly flat scenery and wait for me to come back. We’ve seen how it’s safer to travel in a group, so we should plan on heading back together after I’m done scouting.”

  “Yes,” said Aravia, “but if you get caught or something happens to you, how will we know you need rescuing?”

  “You won’t,” said Dranko. “Before I go, we’ll work out how long you give me before writing me off and heading back to Sand’s Edge.”

  “We can’t just leave you!” said Ernie.

  “Sure you can. Look, they’ve probably got dozens of men up there, all specifically chosen for being able to smash things with their beefy arms. And they may have a few more spell-slingers like Haske, not to mention those blue-skinned guys.”

  “The Sharshun,” said Aravia.

  “Yeah, them. Point is, we’re not an army. Going in force is a fool’s game.”

  “I think it’s a good plan,” said Morningstar. “The rest of us would only increase the chances of one of us being observed.”

  The others nodded their agreement. Dranko, having expected his teammates to need a little more persuasion, wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or…or whatever one feels when your friends think you’re expendable. He went with the former.

  “Great. Then let’s keep moving before one of you figures out a reason to talk me out of it.”

  * * *

  The moon had set by the time Dranko approached the second wandering island, which was good because if there was one singular feature the Mouth of Nahalm lacked, it was cover. Even better, he could see the island well before an
yone on it could possibly see him because of the dozens of torches burning high on its surface. Unlike the rounded dome they had camped upon the previous day, this one was more like a mesa. But as his slow sand-shoe steps brought him closer, Dranko saw he’d have one unusual difficulty: the island was visibly wandering.

  Aravia had speculated that the Mouth of Nahalm was a deep layer of sand floating on actual water far below and that the islands extended all the way down, such that whatever currents moved through the aquatic substrata swept the islands slowly along with them. Either that, she said, or the islands were powerfully magical. But now those currents, natural or otherwise, were carrying this particular island away to the north. He kept altering his course to keep the mesa in front of him, and prayed to Delioch that it wasn’t out-pacing him. Dranko had great faith in his own sense of balance, but there was no one to rescue him right now should he make a false step. He quickened his strides as much as he dared, trying to calculate an angle of approach where he’d cut the island off before it could escape.

  At last he drew close enough to make out detail. The nearest arc of the enormous hill was covered with complex scaffolding, a tangle of ropes, pulleys, platforms, hanging lanterns, and baskets the size of cows. That must be how supplies and workers were brought up to the top of the mesa, well over a hundred feet above the sand. Though it was hard to judge now that the moon was down, this second island was at least half again as big as the previous one.

  With only a final twenty yards to go, it became apparent that the wandering island was not outrunning him, but he was not gaining on it very quickly. The first tough decision was upon him: boldly approach the “front door” and get a lift on one of the platforms, or scale a different side of the island to arrive unseen and unnoticed. He had talked a good game about sneaking around and staying out of sight, but he guessed that anything worth seeing would be heavily guarded and inaccessible.

  No, he had another idea in mind, one that played just as much to his strengths. Even his scars could work to his advantage.

  Dranko circled around to the left, allowing the island to slide past him. Only once he had hiked around to the far side from the scaffolding (and there didn’t appear to be any other “official” ways up) did he spot the serious flaw in his plan: he couldn’t climb while wearing his sand-shoes. If the island were stationary, he could unstrap them but still stand upon them, then reach down and grab them after he had secured purchase on the rock face. But the motion of his climbing wall made that nearly impossible; his shoes would get left behind the moment he stepped out of them.

  “Screw it,” he muttered. “Everyone up there must have sand-shoes. I’ll just steal a new pair before I come back down.”

  Climbing the side of the wandering island was barely a challenge; the strange gritty rock was rough and pitted, offering plenty of finger and toe holds. The only tricky part was at the beginning; he had unlaced the shoes and had to wait for a likely looking entry point to slide past, then hope he didn’t screw up and end up plunging into the dust. His experience with climbing onto moving walls was understandably limited. But having succeeded at that, he scrambled up the side of the island without any slips, all the while trying hard not to think about the consequences of losing his grip. The higher he went, the gentler was the angle of his ascent. After ten minutes of steady progress, the slant of the island’s flank pitched forward abruptly, turning his climb into more of a steep walk for a good fifty feet before mostly flattening out entirely.

  The rock plateau—at least the part he could see—was covered with canvas tents of varying size and dozens of torches on extremely tall poles. The tent city was awash in flickering shadows, but the ground sloped gently up towards the center of the island, so Dranko couldn’t see much beyond twenty yards. While no people were in view, there was a distant clink of metal against stone in an uneven syncopated rhythm, as well as a cacophony of shouts, exhortations, songs, and general chatter coming from farther in, toward the middle of the island’s flat head.

  Before going any further he retraced his steps back to where the angle of his climb had changed. There he hammered one of his hammock stakes into the rock (timing his strikes with the rhythmic clinking to mask the sound), then uncoiled his longest length of rope and tied it fast, letting its slack length fall down and away into the darkness. He prayed to all the Gods that he wouldn’t have to use it, but it never hurt to have an escape route ready.

  A tent city lit only by torches was about as perfect a sneaking environment as Dranko was ever likely to see. Unhurriedly he slipped from shadow to shadow, always moving toward the center of activity in the middle of the plateau. Within two or three minutes he started to see people, some trudging between tents hauling heavy sacks, some carrying large picks or oversized hammers. One rolled a sloshing barrel in a barely controlled stagger, weaving between the tents. There wasn’t any standard uniform in play, which gave him one less thing to worry about.

  On a hunch he took Haske’s pendant from his pocket, draped its chain around his neck, and tucked the little black metal circle inside his shirt. There was always the possibility of using it as credentials. He still felt an ambiguous unease about the thing—maybe Delioch was expressing displeasure at him wearing the talisman of an evil cult?—but after his failure to channel at Verdshane, he and his god weren’t really on speaking terms. Then, having made up his mind about how to approach this, he strode boldly out from the shadow of a tent and approached the nearest worker.

  “You there,” he barked. “Come here.”

  The man, a towering brute with a neck bigger around than Dranko’s thigh, was walking slowly, clutching a bowl and spooning gruel into his mouth. He held up his spoon. “I’m on lunch break.”

  “Then I’ll be quick,” said Dranko. “The sooner you answer my questions, the sooner I’ll give you leave to go.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “My people are paying for this dig,” said Dranko. “I’m here to make sure our money is being well-spent. What’s your name?”

  The man glanced around in confusion. “Uh…I’m Romas. But shouldn’t you be talking to Khorl? Or Lapis? I’m just here to—”

  “I know why you’re here, Romas,” Dranko snapped. “And I’ll be talking to the others soon enough. But first I want to hear how things are going from someone else, someone lower down the chain of command, in case your superiors try to blow smoke up my arse. Now, tell me, between Lapis and Khorl, who would you say has more authority here?”

  “Lapis does. She’s in charge of everything. Khorl’s just my foreman.”

  Dranko whipped out the paper map he had filched from Haske’s corpse and made a show of looking at it. “Interesting. And how is the dig progressing? What have you found so far?”

  Romas scratched his head. “Are you sure you should be asking me? Khorl told me we shouldn’t—”

  “I don’t care what Khorl told you. Frankly, we’re not entirely certain Khorl is cut out for this operation, and that’s part of why I’m here. Now answer my questions…or do I need to tell Lapis that you’ve been uncooperative?”

  “No, I—”

  “Good. Now I’ll ask again. What have you unearthed so far?”

  Romas squinted down at Dranko, and Dranko returned a look of impatient expectation.

  “My team ain’t found nothin,’ but Khorl says we’re still digging for…” He scrunched up his face in concentration. “For sec-on-dar-y re-lics.”

  Dranko picked up on the operative word at once. “Still? Have any of the other teams found something important?”

  “Well, yeah. Day before yesterday I heard they finally found the big statue we’ve been looking for. Now they’re trying to figure how to get it out.”

  “Excellent,” said Dranko. Looks like Abernathy was wrong about this operation being about finding an Eye of Moirel. He tried not to let any emotions show besides a muted satisfaction. “Show me.”

  “Uh…what?”

  “Show me where the
statue is. I need to see it for myself.”

  “I don’t think I can do that. We have to keep to our own site. Boss’s orders.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll make a note to commend your discipline. Can you direct me to where they’ve found the statue?”

  “Uh…no, sorry. I don’t know which dig it got found at.”

  “How many dig sites are there?”

  “I dunno. Maybe twenty?”

  Dranko sighed. He could keep edging inward, shanghaiing random workers until he found one with satisfactory clearance, but each person he tried to bluff increased the chances that one of them would call him on it and raise a ruckus. And it was likely to wind up in the same place anyway, so he decided to raise the stakes sooner rather than later.

  “Romas, thank you for your time. One last thing before you go back to your lunch—can you find Khorl and ask him to meet me here? Tell him one of the investors wishes to speak with him, but don’t mention that I’ve already interviewed you.”

  “Uh…sure.”

  The man lumbered into the shadows and disappeared around the back of a large tent. If his luck continued to hold, this Khorl fellow would be exactly the sort of mark he was hoping to find—someone with enough authority to get him where he needed to go, but not enough to realize that Dranko was spewing one hundred percent horse manure.

  He rehearsed what he’d say, the attitude he’d strike, the names he’d be willing to drop. As long as he maintained the illusion that he could call down Lapis’s wrath, he could wangle his way just about anywhere. For an evil cult of forbidden knowledge, these Black Circle people weren’t particularly…

  “What is going on here? Who are you?”

  Three figures stepped out of the darkness and into the pool of light thrown by the nearest torch. One was his good friend Romas. To the bulky gentleman’s right was a middle-aged man with a black beard and a scowl—probably Khorl. And to Romas’s left was a tall, hawk-faced woman wearing baggy gray trousers and an unbuttoned black jacket over a gray blouse. From her neck hung a black circle pendant, twin to the one Dranko had stripped from Haske and which was now tucked into his own shirt. A small silver ring pierced her right nostril.