Lex let this idea roll around in his mind as they rode.
The heat in The Fallows seemed to increase by the moment as the day wore on. They took frequent, short breaks to pass around the water-skins and offer a drink to the horses, but before the sun had even reached its peak, they had consumed the last of the water. Things grew bleaker when they stopped for an early lunch and Lytira handed out now-stale bits of the pressed cakes, announcing it was the last of their food.
“How is that possible?” Lex asked. “The bundles were full of supplies!”
She dumped the bundles out into the sand. There were several more cloth-wrapped packages of the pressed loaves, but they were all either hard as rocks or covered with a thick, grey mold.
“It happens in The Fallows,” Lytira said. “Food spoils in a matter of days, especially once the horses begin sweating. The heat from the air dries some of the food out, while the moisture from the horses’ perspiration rots the rest of it. Travelers have long-since tried rotating the food within bundles or other methods of preservation, but it never works. It is one of the curses of The Fallows … nothing survives long traveling through here, including food.”
Lex was already feeling uncomfortably thirsty, and he knew the hunger wouldn’t be far behind. “How much farther do we have?” he asked.
“Far enough that we dare not stop again,” she said. “Spending any longer than necessary in this heat could be deadly without food and water. We’ll have to ride through, even if we get tired.”
Get tired? Lex thought. He was still tired from the previous day, even after the few hours of sleep he’d gotten.
They continued on, and with the heat from the sky above reflecting back up from the sand, Lex felt as though he were baking in a kiln. They rode on for hours, too hot and exhausted to talk.
Lex’s horse began to stumble, and again Acarius offered to carry Amelia. “Lytira could ride with you for a bit instead,” he suggested.
Lytira looked as uncomfortable about that idea as Lex felt. “No, thanks,” Lex said. “We’ll be okay. Let’s just keep moving.”
The sun was long past the noon point in the sky when a dark sliver appeared on the distant horizon, a lumpy shadow rising like a shoreline across what Lex had begun to think was an endless sea of sand. Lex wondered if it was a mirage signaling the beginning of the end for him.
But Acarius saw it, too. “Zeriphath,” he said, turning to Lex. “We’re almost there.”
Lex straightened up, consolidating all his willpower. Almost there. They were going to make it.
“I’m a bit surprised we haven’t seen any lagaroths or pippits,” Lytira said suddenly. “At least one of them has usually smelled us by now.”
Lex flicked his head toward her. “What?”
Acarius looked back at Lytira behind him. “What have I said about bad luck? You always do this.”
Lytira shrugged. “I was just saying it’s unusual.”
“What are lagaroths and pippits?” Lex asked, his voice coming out more panicked than he’d intended.
“The pippits are kind of endearing, actually,” Lytira said. “They were a common pet in Arcalon near the shore areas, though no one knows where they originally came from. Arcalonians would let them roam outside the villages in communal herds, and the children would often bring some back to run around in their homes. Pippits nest in forested areas during breeding season, but they spend the rest of their time in sandy areas, where they dig burrows and feed off insects and whatever plants they can find. Of course, when they got loose in Alleanza during an attempted trade arrangement and made their way into The Fallows, the unusual environment here...changed them a bit.”
“How, exactly?” Lex asked.
Acarius gave Lex a wide smile. “Instead of being pocket-sized, herbivorous fluffballs, they are now wolf-sized, carnivorous fluffballs with a slight tendency for territorial aggression.” His smile looked a little forced.
Lex stared. Were they serious? But then something occurred to him. “Wait, wolf-sized? You have wolves here?” A memory had surfaced of a wolf he’d seen once on a television show. “I thought those were Earth animals.”
“Of course we have them,” Acarius said. “Not here in The Fallows, but other places. You said once that you were shocked to see so many of our animals on Earth while you were there. I don’t quite understand it, but it seems Arameth and Earth have similar species and climates, just as we both have humans. Though there are also some differences, of course.”
“Like pippits,” Lytira interrupted.
And like magical people, Lex thought. He was fairly certain Marcus hadn’t found any of those on Earth. But then again, the humans of Arameth hadn’t known magic existed in their world for the past few hundred years, so who could be certain? There had been at least one Ancient on Earth at some point, that much was clear.
Lex noted with a distant sort of curiosity that he still thought of Marcus as not himself, in some ways. Some memories had returned to him completely, in which he knew he’d been Marcus, but others still felt like retold stories, like watching a movie in his mind rather than having acted in it. This whole coming-back-from-the-dead thing was strange.
“By the way,” Lytira said, looking at Acarius, “Pippits aren’t carnivorous. They still eat insects and plants as well as meat. I believe that makes them omnivorous.” She turned to Lex. “They seem to prefer insects and only attack people as defense when startled, though they have been known to eat one on occasion.”
Of course, Lex thought. “And the lagaroths? I’m almost afraid to ask.”
“Highly intelligent, man-eating lizard creatures roughly the size of horses,” Lytira said. “They are shorter though, of course; they run low to the ground. They usually feed on pippits, but they prefer the taste of people. I think people may have been their natural diet, before the pippits arrived.”
“People, like… humans?” Lex asked, feeling his voice climb again. “Because, we’re” – he gestured between himself and the others – “not like regular people, so they won’t want to eat us, because we’re not human. Right?”
Lytira shrugged. “I meant ‘people’ in the more generic sense. Lagaroths seem to enjoy eating Sephram, humans, Ancients, and Alommans equally. I’m not certain there’s much taste difference between us, or maybe they just get tired of eating pippits. In any case, both the pippits and the lagaroths live near the Northern edge of The Fallows, these days.” She pointed forward, in the direction they were headed. “The pippits like having access to the northern woods for building their nests, and the lagaroths, though they prefer to stay in The Fallows, frequent the edges to feed on the pippits.”
Great, Lex thought. Of course they live exactly where we’re headed. “But we’re almost to Zeriphath, right?” he asked. “I mean… how likely is it that we’ll run into either of those before getting out of The Fallows? And do they ever stray out, toward Zeriphath?”
“Oh, Zeriphath isn’t out of The Fallows,” Lytira said. “It’s on the edge. That line of trees you see up there” – she gestured to the dark blur ahead of them – “is where Zeriphath stands, right where the forest meets the sand. The woods around it are the pippits’ favorite breeding grounds, though they usually stay back from the gates. Our guards shoot them with arrows if they get too close.”
Lex was relieved to hear that last part, but the idea of nearing Zeriphath was definitely less comforting than it had been.
A sound cut through the dry air. “Is that… hoofbeats?” Lex asked.
He and Acarius turned their horses around to look. From the distance, a dark shape sped toward them. It seemed to be someone riding an animal, though it looked too short to be a horse. The beast and its rider were partially concealed by the cloud of sand the animal kicked up around them as it galloped.
“Who is it?” Lex asked, his mind racing through all the possibilities for who – or what – might be coming for them.
The rider
grew closer. Acarius and Lytira drew their weapons, and Lex leaned instinctively over Amelia, shielding her.
The horse and rider barreled straight at them – then shot past them in a blur, just avoiding plowing into Acarius. “Sorry, can’t stop!” a voice yelled. “I’m late and there’s a lizard chasing me!”
Nigel.
Acarius, Lex and Lytira exchanged a brief, shocked glance before turning their gaze back toward the cloud of whipped sand Nigel left in his wake. Racing toward them from the sand-cloud was the largest reptile Lex had ever seen. Lizard didn’t adequately describe it. It called up memories from something he’d seen in a zoo in his time living Earthside as Marcus… but while those predators were most at home in the water, this one ran at incredible speed across the sand, its short, muscular legs flicking grains of yellow in all directions as it sped toward them.
Lytira and Acarius still weren’t moving, and the lizard thing was getting closer by the second. “Guys?” Lex called out, starting to panic.
His horse shuffled its legs nervously, then looked toward Mare – who was completely calm – and fell still.
“Don’t...move,” Acarius grunted through his teeth. “Movement makes lagaroths more aggressive.”
Lex fought a powerful urge to run, barely managing to hold his ground. The creature was almost on them when Lex realized the lagaroth’s eyes were focused past them… on Nigel, who was still riding. Lex turned his head to see how far Nigel had gotten, and at his movement the creature flicked its gaze toward Lex, as though trying to decide whether he was worth stopping for. Lex froze. The lagaroth refocused on Nigel and ran right past Lex and the others.
About a hundred paces beyond them, Nigel seemed to forget he was being chased. He yanked his animal’s reins, causing it to rear. “Wait!” he shouted, his face breaking into a smile as he looked backward. “I just realized – it’s you guys! Why didn’t you say something?” He circled his animal back around, directly into the path of the lagaroth. The tip of its long tail slipped past the others in the sand, its eyes locked on Nigel as it sped toward him.
Nigel rode toward the others waving happily, apparently oblivious he was riding right into a murderous lagaroth.
“No!” Lex shouted. He reached for the lagaroth’s tail as it slipped past. He was too high atop the horse and missed, but Lytira was already in mid-leap.
Lytira landed on the surprised lagaroth and drove a dagger straight into the back of its neck. The creature thrashed for only a moment before going still, and a trickle of black liquid oozed from its wound as Lytira removed the dagger. She wiped the dagger clean with a cloth she pulled from a pocket, then slid the dagger back into its sheath on her belt and calmly climbed back onto Mare behind Acarius.
“Well done, as usual, my girl,” Nigel called out as he neared them.
As he got closer, Lex realized the animal Nigel rode was a donkey, with large buckteeth sticking out past its lips and a strange patch of yellow hair poking up from its head.
“Why aren’t you there yet?” Nigel called as his donkey ambled toward them. “You left ages ago! Here I was, all in a rush, thinking I was late… and you haven’t even reached Zeriphath yet! This isn’t a vacation, you know.”
The donkey glared at the horses as it approached, as though annoyed by their presence.
Lex quickly explained the need to ride at a slower pace for Amelia’s sake. “But I am anxious to get there,” he added. “She’s been having strange attacks, and I don’t know how much longer she can hold out.”
“Well, that’s inconvenient of her,” Nigel said, raising his eyebrows. “She’d have gotten help much more quickly if she hadn’t been unconscious.” His voice brightened. “But I suppose she can’t help it. Anyway, didn’t you just say she’s in urgent need of care from Zeriphath? Why are we all standing here? Let’s go!”
The others exchanged glances then simply followed Nigel, who was already riding toward the dark blur ahead.
As they neared the end of The Fallows, the dark blur refined itself into a spread of rich green forest. The forest spanned as far as they could see in both directions, forming an abrupt line where the sand ended. Directly in front of them, a pair of large, wooden gates towered like a doorway to the forest itself, rimmed by branches above and trees on either side – the gates of Zeriphath.
Lex had been expecting a camp, like Alowen, but this was far too large and elaborate for that. Its presence loomed behind the trees in both directions, dissolving into the shadows of the forest. The tops of Zeriphath’s dark stone walls vanished in the thick treetops. The walls were finely constructed, smooth and with no footholds for climbing, but they were also tiered – the front part of the wall formed a wide ledge about double the height of Lex atop his horse, with a tall lip around it. The bottoms of the tree branches hung just above that lip, concealing most of the ledge. What do they use that for? Lex wondered. Through the branches, he could just barely make out that the ledge formed a sort of recessed platform, and that behind the ledge the walls shot steeply upward again. Beneath the draping branches, the dark stone of the city almost blended into the shadows between the tree trunks, save the one clear area in front of the gates. The trees’ camouflage made it difficult to tell how far the walls spanned.
“How big is this place?” Lex asked as he stopped his horse in the sand.
“Big,” Acarius shrugged, pulling Mare up beside him.
“Still your horses!” a voice shouted from above.
“Ack!” Nigel screamed, throwing up his hands.
Lex looked up to find himself under the aim of multiple arrows yet again, now by a group of dark-skinned, shirtless, and extremely muscular men with headfulls of long, beaded braids – only this time, the arrows were on Acarius and Lytira, too.
Archers had materialized upon the platform on either side of the gates, their lower halves concealed by the ledge around the wall as they stepped outward from the branches like shadows taking form. Of course, Lex sighed inwardly. He dropped his horse’s reins, just to be certain they didn’t think him about to go anywhere. The archers had probably been there the whole time, watching unnoticed. At least they hadn’t loosed their arrows on anyone yet.
“Rahmanasha,” one of the archers nodded to Lytira. Some of the other archers glanced at him, then focused back on the intruders below.
“I would like to speak with my father,” Lytira stated in the regal voice she had used at Alowen.
“Your father is under obligation to bar your entry, due to your sentence of banishment,” a voice boomed in response.
The archers pulled back and knelt atop the high wall, their bowed heads just visible over the lip of the ledge, as a man stepped forward. He was larger than the others and somehow gave the impression of also being more solid, his arms and legs resembling chunks of stone that had fallen from the mountain of his body. The lines of his muscles cut sharp edges beneath his flesh. He was shirtless with braided hair like the others, but tall enough that the leather wrapping which covered his waist and part of his legs was partially visible above the wall’s ledge. The surface of the wrapping was etched with pictures, as though burnt onto it – symbols and images that appeared to be lions circling a man with his arms upraised. The man stepped forward, peering down at them over the ledge, and crossed his bulky arms in front of his chest. “Well?” he said, staring directly at Lytira.
Looking up at him, Lex felt the distinct impression that this man was a walking avalanche and they were all about to be crushed.
“Hello, Father,” Lytira said, looking up. The expression in her eyes was as flat as her tone. “I see you’ve missed me.”
A man to the right of the wall shot to his feet. “You will address our king with respect, fallen daughter!” he shouted.
So this is Rahman, the Alomman-Sephram king, Lex thought. The man was certainly impressive enough to be a king.
Beside Lex, Nigel dropped his hands and bowed forward, resting against his donkey
’s neck in an attempt at a posture of respect that looked more like he’d just fallen asleep. Then again, maybe he had.
Rahman gestured downward with his hand, and the man who had stood knelt back down, bowing his head again.
“Am I ‘fallen,’ then, Father?” Lytira asked. “Is that the decree you’ve settled on?”
“I have not settled on anything,” Rahman’s low voice rumbled. “Though, as always, you make nothing easy for me.” He paused. “You have been banished, child. You know as well as I what that means. You have betrayed our people. You should not be here.” His voice softened slightly on the last statement, a crack in his mountainous presence.
“I have betrayed no one, Father,” Lytira answered, her voice still cool as stone. “I admit I caused loss and pain to our people, and for that I can make no excuse, save this – I did only what I believed to be right, for our people as well as others.”
The king’s arms relaxed slightly. “Then you have an explanation for what you have done?”
“Yes,” Lytira answered.
The king sighed and turned to his left. “Aral,” he called, and a man stood up. “You will be my Ear on this matter.”
Aral tipped his head forward. “Recording what has been heard,” he answered.
“You will do this here, Father?” Lytira asked, her voice rising slightly. “Outside the gates?”
“You are banished,” the king responded. “Unless you prove reason for us to make an exception, outside the gates is where you must stay.”
Lytira grunted. “You know there are pippits out here,” she muttered. “And I killed a lagaroth not a hundred paces back.”
The king paused, looking down on her. “Then if another interrupts us, I trust you can dispatch it.” He turned to his right. “Tala?”
The Edge of Nothing_The Lex Chronicles_Book 1 Page 24
