“It’s nice and cool in here!” Zhalera couldn’t help whispering. “But that smell—!”
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here since…well, since you, Falthwën. Whenever that was!” Kalas joked as he walked across the open chamber, his footsteps coaxing creaks and groans from the floorboards. Near the room’s center, he stopped and cocked his head.
“What—?” Zhalera began when he signaled for silence.
Her eyes widened when she heard it, too: a faint scraping coming from somewhere beneath them. Both of them looked to Falthwën for instruction.
“Àya? Àya, Deridzhasrinme?” he called out in a low voice. “Soram dusidzhu nir?”
From under the floor came a muffled thud. More scraping.
“Wait, over there,” said Zhalera as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. “Someone’s been here!”
She followed a dirty path toward a series of thin, dark lines carved into the grit. She knelt, tried working her fingers into the cracks. Kalas joined her, used his knife to pry at the floorboards. Less than a minute later, the pair had uncovered a panel hidden within the floor. Neither was able to raise it.
“Locked?” Zhalera suggested.
“Stand aside, my children.”
They obeyed, and Falthwën rapped the heel of his staff against the door. After a flash of greenish light, somehow familiar, Kalas thought, something within the panel gave way with a metallic pop.
Kalas reapplied his knife: this time, he managed to lift the lid just enough for Falthwën to poke the end of his staff into the opening.
The smell Zhalera had noted earlier felt like a punch in the face as the cleric tipped the panel out of the way. She gagged and scrambled away from the dark hole.
“That smells like—” she choked against the bile rising in her gorge. Her olive complexion seemed almost as yellow-green as the diseased-looking trees they’d passed outside.
“It is,” agreed Falthwën as he leaned over the black source of the foul odor. “It’s also something worse. Here, our noses will adapt—trust me on that!”
That thud from before repeated itself. So did the scraping noise. Closer each time. Falthwën muttered something under his breath and the head of his staff glowed with a subtle phosphorescence. He held it above the hole as the sound came nearer.
Something covered in filth crawled into the weak green light, stared up at them with its eyeless face. Zhalera clutched at Kalas’ arm and stifled a scream: Kalas failed to stifle his own.
“What is that?!” he cried in spite of his efforts. “What happened to him?”
The man—the last of him—had gaping wounds where his eyes should have been. His jaw moved but his voice was gone. The arm he held up toward the sound of their voices ended just below the shoulder. Falthwën swished his staff: as the light shifted, it revealed ragged stumps where the man’s legs used to be. With his remaining arm, he dragged himself as best he could, landing with that nauseating thud with no other limb to brace him. Behind him came similar noises, some followed with feeble groans.
There are more of them?!
“Falthwën?” Zhalera hissed, still clinging to Kalas’ arm.
“We’ll find no help in Deridzhas!” he growled. With a heavy sigh and an angry prayer, he took his staff and drew a hurried shape in the air above the mouth of the dungeon. Roiling energy crackled in thin lines that trailed behind his movements.
“Master Kalas! The lid!” he instructed.
Kalas freed his arm from Zhalera’s grip and grabbed the panel. He slammed it into place atop the cleric’s arcane symbols, still shimmering in the dust.
Hey, those shapes look familiar…
This time, he took hold of Zhalera’s arm and pulled her toward the door through which they’d entered and the daylight beyond. With a word, Falthwën slammed his staff against the panel, and hot light erupted from the depths where the maimed had lain, coruscated between the planks of the floor as it burned away the dust and stung their eyes.
The thuds and muffled groans ceased at once.
“Those people! What happened to them?” she keened, repeating Kalas’ question.
“It seems the lie Marugan told the ilmukritnàm about us had some basis in truth: Deridzhas is now haunted by the ilrâigme-edhume—the eaters-of-men!”
Chapter XIV.
Toward the Fringe of Civilization
O
utside, the suns seemed twice as hot as they had before. With his free hand, Kalas swiped at the sweat beading on his brow and rolling down his face. Nothing seemed out of sorts nor any different from when they’d entered the eaters’ abattoir, though even that brief exposure to the fetor that accompanied its underground horrors had seeped into the fabric of their clothes. Zhalera clutched at Kalas’ arm, turned aside as she lost her battle with nausea. As the stink of vomit mingled with the reek of human filth, he felt his own stomach flip once or twice. An unexpected wave of debility seemed to lap against his feet, soak into his legs and weigh him down. He stumbled, caught himself against the side of the building.
“Kalas!” Zhalera begged. “Can’t you get us out of here? Like you did in the canyon?”
“I can’t!” he lamented after a moment’s concentration. “I don’t know why—I don’t know how! Falthwën! You know The Song! Can’t you get us out of here?!”
Falthwën had already stepped in front of them as they ascended the steps toward the road. He held his staff in both hands as he looked from side to side, closed his eyes for a moment and…Kalas had no idea what he was doing.
“Uh, Falthwën?!”
“I can’t! Not like that. Not…right now. We’re all right, though. For the moment. It seems as though we’re the only ones in town. Still, we need to hurry back to Rül and the others.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” argued Kalas even as the three of them quickened their pace.
“Not the time, my child! Now, come!”
Kalas and Zhalera followed Falthwën through a gap in the wall, past several of those unhealthy-looking trees, and back onto the neglected road. From there, they sped toward the rest of their party, only pausing now and then to catch their breaths. Despite Falthwën’s insistence that he couldn’t spirit them away from Deridzhas, Kalas suspected that the enigmatic cleric was…augmenting their pace somehow: he thought about the night Falthwën and his father had returned to town with Ëlbodh, about the impossible speed they’d achieved; now, things made more sense.
As they put some distance between themselves and the abandoned town, Zhalera quickened her pace, and Falthwën commented on how much her color had improved. A short way beyond the wall’s irregular border, the air seemed cleaner, less tainted, and Kalas wondered if it was just his imagination.
“Falthwën…the ilrâigme-edhume: why…why do they… y’know?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” he confessed after a moment’s consideration. “Could be desperation: living in this suns-blasted place for who knows how long would test anyone’s spirit. Or it could be…something else, too.”
“Why would they…it looked like they went limb by limb?” added Zhalera. “Like they were farming people!”
“No wonder Pava and her people attacked us: if I thought eaters were coming for me…” Kalas said. “But the town: it looked like it had been ages since anyone lived there. Sevens even. Would the ilrâigme have been responsible for that?”
“Perhaps indirectly. Especially if some of the Deridzhasrinme succumbed to…something that suggested cannibalism was their best alternative. That is, I wonder if these eaters-of-men were the original inhabitants of Deridzhas.”
“What were they like the last time you were here? I mean, they probably weren’t eating people, right?” said Kalas.
“Deridzhas was a mining town, respected for its abundant mineral deposits. Those piles of rust we passed were probably the remains of mining apparatus. If memory serves, the last time I was here the Deridzhasrinme had begun work on a new shaft, one intended to reach deeper into
the earth than anything they’d ever attempted in all their history. My business took me elsewhere before they’d made much progress.”
“What if those people they kept underground were also ilrâigme?” Kalas continued. “What if they just…Maybe Zhalera’s right: maybe they are ‘farming’ people. Each other.”
“Let’s keep walking,” Zhalera suggested with a look over her shoulder as she stepped ahead of the others. “And let’s talk about something—anything—else!”
2.
Even before they reached the cart, Kalas had a sense that something had gone wrong. When it came into view, its scattered contents confirmed his suspicion. Neither Rül nor Pava, nor Shosafin nor any of the horses were anywhere in sight. Suspending caution, Kalas took a few hurried steps towards the overturned vehicle—he would have taken more, but he tripped over something. He picked himself up, dusted himself off, and turned to see the wrench-like tool Rül had been using earlier. It was covered in blood and what appeared to be chunks of skin and hair.
“Rül?! Shosafin?!” he cried out as he retrieved the implement.
“Kalas? Is that you?” said Rül’s voice from the other side of the cart.
When he stood, fists wrapped around the handle of an axe, Kalas saw the farm boy’s clothing was streaked with blood, his eyes laced with an unsettling mania. Upon recognizing his friends, however, Rül lowered his axe and the unstable light in his eyes disappeared.
“You’re back! Zhi Ilun dàbiras nir! We were attacked! Some—”
“Rül, you’re bleeding!” Zhalera interrupted.
“What? I—oh, no: it’s not my blood!”
“Eaters!” spat Pava as she stood as well, clung to Rül’s arm as though the act required all of her strength and a healthy portion of his.
“Eaters!” Falthwën repeated as he raised his staff and scanned the area.
“They came for us about an hour after you left! Shosafin lured them away—most of them!” Rül said. “He took the horses, too: said the ilrâigme weren’t picky, and given Runner and Dancer’s condition…”
“Some of them caught our scent,” added Pava. “We tried to hide, but we could hear them…sniffing, slavering, getting closer and closer. One of them came around the cart, grabbed my ankle—tried to drag me away! I tried keeping it at bay with my tëvët—my crystal-tipped pike—but that fall took more out of me than I thought!
“But before it could get a second hand around me, Rül smashed its head with a wrench! He kicked it away—what was left of it!—when another came at us from the other side of the cart! He grabbed my tëvët and threw it right through the eater’s throat! Others must have heard the fighting, started coming for us, too. So Rül handed me my pike, took his wrench, and…”
“I don’t know what came over me,” said Rül, somewhat sheepish beneath Pava’s grateful gaze. “I just…no way was I going to let them get Pava! I think there were five, maybe six in all, that didn’t chase after Shosafin. I, uh…I sort of lost count after the first few. One ran off with my wrench stuck in his head, but I was able to reach my axe, so…”
Kalas, Zhalera, and Falthwën had circled around toward the back of the cart as Pava and Rül told their stories. From their altered perspective, each stopped and took in the spectacle their friends had created. The crystal tip of Pava’s tëvët lie half-buried in someone’s abdomen. It looked like he’d died trying to throw himself on top of her: his momentum, coupled with her weapon, had ripped a jagged hole through his belly that started near the bottom of his stomach and disappeared somewhere within his chest. The one whose skull Rül had collapsed rested in an uncomfortable heap just behind them, a wash of gore splayed out where his brains had been. A few other bodies in similar straits accented the macabre scene. Again, Zhalera fought against the flipping sensation in her gut.
“You’re ‘not fighters?’ ‘Not really?’” Zhalera repeated, incredulous—and impressed. Pava looked away.
“Uh, yeah, sorry,” apologized Rül, assessing their shocked expressions. “Guess we should have covered this up or something. We didn’t know when they’d stop coming, though, and, well…”
“Did you find what you needed in Deridzhas?” Pava piped up. “Will someone there be able to help us?”
“There is no Deridzhas,” Falthwën said with a sad shake of his head. “Not anymore. Not for Sevens of years, it seems.”
“Oh…” sighed the ilmukrit girl. “What will you do?”
“Well,” said Rül, with the faintest hint of pride, “before those eaters showed up, I figured we might be able to use one of these trees to replace the broken axle. It’d take some time, and it wouldn’t be perfect, but since the horses need rest—and since it’s our only real option, it seems like it’s worth a try.”
The gentle trip-trop of hoofbeats on the packed sand and rock signaled Shosafin’s return. Dancer and Runner seemed just as exhausted as before, but Breaker seemed flush with excitement as he pawed the air with his flashing hooves. The soldier held reins in one hand and his sword, black with blood and bits of flesh, in the other. His garments and Breaker’s flanks bore the same stains as Rül’s and Pava’s. He, too, seemed more energized than enervated.
“That was the last of them,” he said, addressing Rül. “For now. Might be days—might be a week or more—before others come looking. If anyone comes at all. Still…”
He caught Falthwën’s eye and continued: “What did you find in Deridzhas?”
“Deridzhas has been gone for Sevens,” he said. Shosafin nodded.
“There’s something…wrong with it,” Zhalera insisted.
“Oh?” said Falthwën, curious.
“I can’t be the only one who felt sick—weak—just being there, can I? Something’s not right with…I don’t know, the air in that place.”
Things the world over, under, and above aren’t always what they seem.
“It wasn’t just you,” Kalas admitted, remembering his own sensations of frailty when attempting to flee. “Zhalera, do you remember how Father acted when we were, uh, down in the Empty Sea? The way we felt in Deridzhas: I wonder if that’s how he felt. I wonder why he felt that way.
“Falthwën, you said the Deridzhasrinme were sinking their deepest shaft ever: what if they…found something? Maybe that’s why we felt that way?”
“It’s possible,” the cleric allowed. “Probable, even…”
“So where does that leave us?” Shosafin asked.
Rül outlined his plan, adding, “We’ll need the straightest tree we can find. I don’t have the right tools to plane it down properly, but I think we’ll manage.”
“So long as it gets us through the Ilvurkanzhime,” the soldier grunted. “We’re too exposed out here.”
“u sà, al mekâ,” agreed Rül with a nod. He retrieved his axe, ran a fingertip along its edge, and walked from tree to tree. Pava’s eyes, Kalas noted, followed his every step.
3.
“Won’t your family wonder what happened to you?” Rül asked Pava on the second day after the ilrâigme-edhume attack. He’d felled what he believed to be the choicest tree available, stripped its limbs and branches, and had started scraping away some of its unevenness. Pava had almost wholly recovered from her fall—as well as from defending herself against the eaters—and assisted Rül as best she could.
“They will,” she ceded, “but there’s nothing to be done about that now. And that’s all right—they probably saw what your friend did, and even if they didn’t, someone will tell them about it! They’ll assume that I followed the ilosar as penance. Which turns out to be the truth—even if that’s not what I set out to do!”
“‘Shining one?’” said Kalas, who’d happened upon their conversation. He and Zhalera had been helping Shosafin patrol the area. The day before, the three of them had piled up the eaters’ bodies and burned them to keep scavengers away. In the morning, he’d been practicing swordsmanship with the soldier and his sword—as had Zhalera, with her still-wrapped weapon. As the
suns had risen, however, the heat made exertion expensive as they shed water not easily replenished. They’d built moisture traps to supplement their shrinking supply. Pava helped: her people made use of similar contraptions.
“Úrukilmukritnàm have a legend,” she explained. “We’d always believed we were waiting for an elu, maybe an eru: someone who would ‘bring the light.’ No one can say that’s not exactly what you did! Sure, sure: there are probably hundreds of interpretations…Anyway…
“Our villages are beneath the Áthradho—the Gateway. Underground, but that doesn’t mean they’re musty, lightless places! The iltithme-kali channel the suns’ glory through mirrored passages carved into the rock. By bouncing suns-light from mirror to mirror, everything’s as bright as we want—most of the time! We use that light to illuminate our homes, grow our gardens—”
“Gardens?” Rül interrupted. “Underground?”
“The Áthradholarme are beautiful places! You should visit sometime! Now, where was I? Oh! Right! When that ilímbâ—Marugan, you called him? Our villages had been getting darker, that’s true, so when he was able to lift some of that darkness, lots of people interpreted that as bringing light—but after seeing what you did, it’ll be a long time before anyone believes another weak interpretation like that! I have no idea if you’re the ilosar our legend speaks of, but we’ve done you a great wrong…”
“Pava,” said Kalas, pensive, “do your people have any legends or stories about a time ‘before the world was cracked?’”
“‘Before the world was cracked?’ Hmm…None that I remember,” she said after a few moment’s reflection. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.” Kalas smiled, but even he could tell his smile reached nowhere near his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized as she took in his expression. “I’ll ask some of our elders when I get home—maybe one of them knows what that means?”
Beneath the Vault of Stars Page 25
