Under Fragile Stone

by Oisin McGann

  The Blind Battalion suddenly surged forward, and behind him, Mirkrin heard his wife cry out. He turned just in time to see her collapse under the weight of a dozen of the sightless wretches, who dropped from the ceiling above him. Roaring defiance, he threw himself at them.

  Paternasse snatched a glance around the chamber, as he fought frantically against the wave of bodies clambering over him. The rest of the Seneschal forces were closing around them now. Every surface seemed covered by their dark bodies in the dim light.

  ‘May the gods help us!’ he gasped hoarsely.

  There were so many of them that the ground was shuddering beneath their feet. The stone beams and struts shook and cracks appeared around the walls. The onslaught faltered as the shaking increased and Paternasse realised that it was not the mass of charging creatures, but another earth tremor. One of the bridges that crossed the chamber broke free of the walls with a massive crack and crashed to the ground, crushing dozens of the Seneschal beneath it. The Blinded stumbled about, their bearings lost in the tumult. Paternasse grabbed Nayalla and hauled her to her feet.

  ‘They’re confused by the quakes. This is our chance!’ he bellowed. ‘We have to get out of here now!’

  She helped Mirkrin up and the old miner dragged the other two miners out from under a pile of bodies. Together, they all gathered up what gear they could find and staggered up the curve of the spherical room towards the nearest tunnel. They were forced to fall forwards and crawl on their bellies as the violent tremors made it impossible to walk. Slabs of stone crashed down around them. Noogan was struck on the arm by a piece of debris, but he kept going. They reached the mouth of the tunnel, where the ground levelled off and the earthquake started to ease. As soon as they could stand, they struggled to their feet and ran, unsteady at first as the last of the tremors rocked the floor, but then faster and more frantically as the ground became still beneath their feet. They knew the manic little beasts would be after them. They ran headlong into the darkness, holding up the last three torches to light the way ahead, not caring where the tunnels took them as long as it was away from the swarms of the Seneschal.

  * * * *

  Kalayal Harsq undid the clips that connected the generator’s cables to the bundle of wire and scrap. Around him, his disciples were looking on anxiously, and beyond them, the Reisenick villagers were standing and watching in some bewilderment. He had just performed the second exorcism of Absaleth’s spirit and the earth tremor that had marked the departure of the ghost had left him shivering with fear and tension. He pushed at the tangled mess with his foot, but it did not react. The contact told him what he wanted to know, that the exorcism had been a success; the metal’s spirit had been vanquished. But he did not feel any satisfaction. He licked his lips, wishing he could rid himself of the metallic taste in his mouth. There was something unsettling in Ludditch’s interest in the spirit – more interest than his payment warranted. The Reisenick chieftain knew something that Harsq did not, and that was worrying. Ludditch’s comment about the end of Absaleth signalling the end of the Myunans left Harsq wondering. What had he meant?

  Kalayal Harsq was probably the foremost exorcist on this side of the world. But the truth he would never admit was that what he knew about the spirits of the land was dwarfed by what he did not know. Deep down, he was afraid that what he was doing would come back to haunt him one day, that there was a price to be paid for his practices. The lack of sleep, the nightmares and now the earthquake, it all spoke of ominous retribution. He took out his air canister and tried to draw a breath of the untainted air from it, but it was empty. The priest scowled. He would have none now until he saw his Braskhiam contacts again. He wished he’d never encountered that accursed mountain and all the twisted souls who lived around it.

  * * * *

  Taya and Lorkrin watched through the mesh of their cage as the Braskhiam eshtran gave the bundle of metal another kick and then walked away, his head bowed and his shoulders slumped. One of the younger priests handed a bag of money to the clansman with the green-tinged skin, the one named Spiroe. The Reisenick poured the bronze coins on a table and counted them out, then bagged them and took them inside.

  ‘How could the soul of Absaleth be caught in that metal?’ Lorkrin wondered aloud.

  ‘What I’d like to know is how it’s supposed to get rid of Myunans, and the Noranians too,’ Taya murmured. ‘That Ludditch fella made it sound as if getting rid of Absaleth’s ghost was the answer to all his problems. Uncle Emos would know what he was talking about.’

  The priests packed up the paraphernalia of their trade and retired to the building they were using as lodgings. It was getting dark and one by one, the rest of the villagers returned to their homes. A light rain had started to fall and it cleared the mist that had gathered.

  The Myunans waited until they were sure that the street was clear. It was time to begin. The children had tried getting more information out of the stranger throughout the day, but had ended up doing most of the talking. They had, however, decided on a name for him. They called him Rug; because with the thick layers of clothes that he wore, he looked as if he had been put together from rolled-up rugs. He accepted the name gratefully, glad to have an identity of any kind.

  ‘Hey, Rug!’ Lorkrin called softly to him. ‘Can you pull out that pin at the bottom of our cage?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rug answered.

  ‘Would you mind giving it a try? And keep your voice down. They’ll hear you. We don’t want them to hear us. We’re going to try and escape and save our friend.’

  ‘Why does he need to be saved?’ Rug asked in an exaggerated whisper.

  ‘Because they’re going to … they’re going to skin him alive,’ Taya replied. ‘We have to get him out of here. We think they’re going to kill all of us too.’

  Rug thought about this.

  ‘I do not want to be killed.’

  ‘Then you should pull out that pin,’ Lorkrin said pointedly.

  Rug nodded. He reached through the bars and his fingertips brushed against the bottom of their cage. He leaned further, pushing his narrow shoulder up against the bars and once again, they started to bend. He didn’t seem to notice. He caught hold of the end of the pin between finger and thumb and pulled. The Myunans’ cage just swung towards him; the pin was driven in too tightly. Rug got a better grip on it and twisted it one way and then the other. Lorkrin watched in awe as this tall, gangly man used his forefinger and thumb to work loose a metal rod that had been driven into place with a hammer. With a grating noise, the pin slipped out and Lorkrin and Taya were able to push up the door of their cage.

  The two Myunans had already thought this through. If all three of them escaped now, the empty cages would be spotted by anyone coming out of the meetinghouse or passing along the street. If this happened, they would have no chance of rescuing Draegar or of making an escape. They needed to put something in the cages that would pass for prisoners in the dark.

  Taya retrieved their bags, as well as their tools, which hung on a hook by the meetinghouse door. She pulled out a pinhook and used it to fashion one of her fingers into a lock-pick. Then she inserted the finger into the lock in Rug’s cage. He watched, fascinated, as she felt around inside the tumbler until she found its shape. The tumbler effectively pressed her finger into the right shape as it turned and the lock clicked open. She took the lock off, slipped the bolt back and swung the door open.

  Lorkrin had crossed the street to the large building that housed the tannery. Outside, on the boards in front of the building, furs were stretched out on frames. There were beaver, skunkrin, otter, cowhank and hillcat skins. Those being prepared as throws and rugs still had the skin of the animals’ heads attached. Rug followed him over and helped him as he pulled down some of the hides. They arranged these liberated hides inside the cages in such a way that they looked from a distance as if they were sleeping figures. The rain was getting heavier now, and that would work in their favour, keeping the Reisen
icks inside. The two children set the heads of some of the hillcat furs – tucking the pelts inside out, so that the fleshy part showed. With the holes where the eyes and nostrils had been, and the small mouth, it was a crude but effective way of mimicking a face. They replaced the padlock just as it had been before they had escaped, and got Rug to push the pin back into place in the door of the Myunan Cage. The three of them crept into the shadows down the side of the meetinghouse. Taya turned to their new friend.

  ‘We have to rescue Draegar. You don’t have to help – it could be dangerous.’

  Rug suspected that she was only telling him about the danger to be polite. They fully expected him to help. He decided that they knew more about these things than he did and just nodded his agreement.

  They told him to wait in hiding behind a stack of barrels, then let their colours fade to camouflage greys and browns as they crept around to the alley at the back of the tannery. There were three large vents close to the ground in the back wall. Foul fumes drifted out of them into the night air. A door could be seen at the far end of the wall, but they were not about to try opening that. They could hear voices, but could not make out what they were saying.

  Lorkrin pointed at one of the wooden vents. He got the blade of his knife under the edge of one of the slats and quietly prised it out of its frame. He did the same with four more and made a gap big enough for them to squeeze through. They came in under a workbench that offered a shadowed hiding place from which they could survey the room.

  Draegar was tied to a circular frame in the middle of the room. It was tilted back, and was turning in such a way that it kept at least half his body immersed in a deep vat of some kind of noxious liquid. At the bottom half of every turn, his head disappeared beneath the surface of the liquid and he was forced to hold his breath until he came up on the other side. He looked exhausted and semiconscious. Taya’s mouth twisted in a sob, but she stayed silent.

  ‘They’re soaking him in lacharin,’ Lorkrin whispered, ‘to soften his skin, loosen it … make it easier to take off.’

  The rest of the room was taken up with other vats, workbenches, rollers, stretching frames and shelves of tannin and other chemicals. Three women were hard at work there: one working the crank which turned the wheel that held Draegar, another scraping the dried flesh off a fresh pelt with a pumice stone, the third rubbing preservative into a cleaned hide. They chattered as they worked and it seemed Draegar was the latest gossip.

  ‘… no, no, no,’ the crank turner was saying, ‘Tarne was killed after Bluno, got ’is head chopped off by this thing. Bluno was the first killed. I was talkin’ to ’is sister in the afternoon.’

  ‘And who else did the beast kill, Willeth?’ the third woman put in. ‘I heard that Yoggo and two of the Haytrop boys got it.’

  ‘Yep, the twins, Jup and Bod Haytrop, Learup’s cousins.’ Willeth nodded. ‘One’s an uncle to Bluno’s second cousin Sistrag too, through marriage. She lives the far side of Wildrup now. One of the Haytrops had a daughter by her too, word has it. There was some argument over who was the father in that one, as I remember. That Sistrag never did learn her calendar.’

  The other women cackled knowingly.

  ‘You want to leave this thing right side up for a while, Ula?’ Willeth asked the third woman, cocking her head towards the Parsinor. ‘It’s coughin’ and chokin’ some. Wouldn’t want it to drown on us.’

  ‘Best do that, Willeth,’ the older woman replied. ‘Learup Junior’d be awful angry if we killed it afore the skinnin’. He wants to do this one personal.’

  Willeth stopped turning the crank and with a ratchet-like clicking of her vertebrae, she arched her back. She looked through the collection of bottled chemicals on the workbench next to her, picked one out, uncorked it and drank some back. She gagged, shook her head and took some more. Ula stood back to look at how the preservative was soaking in, then poked at one of her nostrils with the tip of her tongue.

  ‘Learup’s eldest is almost at childbearin’ age,’ Bettith commented. ‘She’s goin’ to be a catch and no mistake. Good knees. And nice, even features, too. Seen any suitors?’

  ‘I think Learup might have somethin’ to say about that,’ Ula leered.

  They all cackled again. Listening to them, the two Myunans seethed with hate for these women, who talked about Draegar as if he were an animal and laughed and chatted as he came close to drowning.

  ‘We need to get them out of here,’ Taya muttered.

  ‘Leave that to me,’ Lorkrin said, taking out the tools.

  Willeth had taken down another hide from its frame to work some tannin in, when she saw something move under the workbench. An animal with long, tapered ears, orange, black and yellow striped fur and a prehensile tail scampered along under the benches. She ducked her head down to try and catch sight of it and her eyes went wide.

  ‘You’re not gonna believe this girls!’ she exclaimed. ‘There’s a minkren under here!’

  ‘The heck you say!’

  ‘I’m tellin’ yuh,’ she pointed. ‘There! Under the dyin’ bench.’

  ‘Holy meat,’ Bettith gasped. ‘I thought they were all dead and gone!’

  ‘It’s gotta be worth a fortune!’ Willeth whispered. ‘That coat’ll trade for its weight in gold.’

  ‘It’s makin’ for the door. Stop it!’ Ula cried.

  But they were too slow. The door was ajar and the creature took full advantage of it, racing out into the darkness.

  ‘Get it!’ Willeth shrieked, picking up a heavy piece of wood to use as a club. ‘We split the trade on the coat, but the kidneys’re mine. I got a recipe for pickled minkren kidneys.’

  They rushed outside, leaving the tannery empty. Taya waited a few moments to be sure they were gone. Then she crawled out of her hiding place and hurried over to the unconscious Parsinor.

  ‘Draegar!’ she hissed. ‘Hey! Wake up! It’s me, Taya. I’ve come to get you out of here.’

  Draegar’s eyelids lifted as if they had weights attached and he looked up at her. There was no sign of recognition in his eyes. Then his face changed and he said something so weakly that she had to lean her head closer to hear.

  ‘Get … out,’ he croaked. ‘They’ll … kill you.’

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to stop them,’ Taya told him, as she examined the frame he was tied to. There was a lever for tipping it back and she pulled on it, lifting his feet out of the lacharin. Then she unbolted the shackles holding his wrists and ankles and tried to help him off. He could barely move. His head rolled around his neck and his breathing was loud and strained. She looked anxiously towards the door. If he could not walk, they had no way of getting him out of the village. With great effort, he heaved himself over the side of the frame and got his feet under him. But he nearly collapsed when he tried to stand up. Every movement was laborious and seemed to take an age.

  ‘Stand up!’ she urged him. ‘They’ll be coming back. We have to go.’

  ‘My gear,’ he mumbled.

  Taya saw his bags and weapons discarded in a corner and went to pick them up. They were heavy, and too big for her to carry comfortably. She helped him pull the various straps onto his shoulders, cursing the fact that these would slow him down even further.

  Lorkrin appeared under the bench near the vent. Having led the women astray, he had returned to his normal shape and come back in through the rear wall. Seeing Draegar was up, he tried the door that led out into the alley at the back. It was unlocked. He opened it and peered out carefully. There was nobody to be seen.

  ‘He can barely walk!’ Taya muttered to him as he joined her at the Parsinor’s side.

  Between the two of them, they were able to give him enough support to make it to the door. But it was slow going and they knew they could not hold him up for long and there was certainly no chance they were going to be able to carry him.

  ‘Draegar! You have to walk. If you don’t, they’re going to kill all of us!’ Lorkrin said. ‘Come on. Get your
feet moving!’

  The massive figure struggled against poisoning and exhaustion to stay on his feet and they walked out into the alley. Rug saw them come out and hurried over to help. His thin frame was dwarfed by the Parsinor, but he was able to take a lot of Draegar’s weight. Not far away, they could hear that more voices had joined in the hunt for the minkren. Soon, the whole town would be out. But Lorkrin had been careful to leave tracks heading into the forest in the opposite direction, to lead their pursuers away.

  ‘How did you finish the trail?’ Taya asked.

  ‘Changed my feet into horse hooves,’ he told her. ‘They’ll have real problems tracking me back here.’

  Taya nodded, but she was uneasy. The Reisenicks were renowned trackers, and even with the rain, they would find his trail sooner or later. The escapees had to be long gone by then. Draegar was going too slowly. She wondered how long they could evade the clansmen even if they managed to lose themselves in the forest. The whole village would be coming after them.

  ‘We need to find a place to hide,’ she said, ‘or a quick way out of the area, a wagon or something.’

  ‘They have some wagons in the village,’ Lorkrin replied. ‘Rug, can you drive?’

  ‘What do you mean, “drive”?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Let’s get Draegar out of here first,’ Taya grunted. ‘Then worry about shaking them off.’

  It was a struggle. Without Rug, they would not have managed at all. But they willed Draegar on, coaxing and bullying and pushing and pulling him as he used all his strength to cling to consciousness. They made their way through the back alleys, from one building’s shadow to another, avoiding the lights from windows and freezing when they heard footsteps or voices. It was tortuous going and more than once, the two children thought they were going to be caught. But the hunting fever was on the Reisenicks and in the gloom of the night, four very different figures were able to slip out of the village and climb the hill into the cover of the forest.