She remarks how she felt a pinge of guilt for leaving Earls and makes it clear to herself and the others that she must send him a note of approsh once they arrive at the Crossroads. Their arrangement, she maintains, was always temporary and she often warned him that she had a wandering soul. Even as she justifies not saying goodbye to Earls, there is melancholy in her voice.
Nine days pass. Most nights, the gang sleeps in a crowded tent in small alcoves in the Tunnels. On occasion, a forgotten tavern or grewst would call to them like light sticks in the fog. A welcome reprieve. These became the most prized nights. They would laugh and pass the time with off-color jokes and stories of past exploits, competing with the farthest places they’ve been, their unhappiest times. Their loneliest.
To be a traveler of the Land is to lead a solitary life. When the states were formed, three laws were agreed upon. The first, the Law of Isolation. All states would govern themselves, and none other shall interfere. The second, the Law of Population, declares that no state is allowed more than ten thousand friends at any given time. Some states live far below this allowed population number, such as Radiba. Others, like Yikshir and Niance, push dangerously close to the limit. Whenever it does, a solution is prepared that results in what Logan has read as “state-sponsored cleansings” of the lower classes. The last of the three laws is the Law of Passage. Each state is to provide a safe and peaceful passage through its territory. Carvinga, wanting nothing to do with the other states, created the Tunnels. In the far northeast, the Long Bridge spans a thousand miles over the state of Aska which connects the bordering states of Aripa and Jussin, allowing the Askan folk a privacy they intently seek.
The Three Laws: Isolation, Population, and Passage, are all that bind the Land together. The Laws’ purpose is to prevent any conflict that could escalate into the total annihilation of friends, a war like the Last War. Letting cultures be, keeping the Land sparsely populated, and preventing border confrontations have kept the past two and a half millennia peaceful. Of course, man-to-man violence and ill moralities are still prevalent in the Land; but the need for power, the desire to spread and conquer have been seemingly tamed. Though there is not an overriding government for the states, their compliance to the Three Laws is the mutual fear of war. A fear of ending everything, and because so, the Laws are as common and absolute as the rising and setting of the sun.
Without catastrophic war or friends overpopulating the Land, freks of all types, of all backgrounds, have appeared. They are ever-changing beasts, evolving faster than during any time before, and ultimately the friends of the Land are no longer the dominant species; they are not the predators of yester but have become more often prey. A simple piece of the Land. And so, Radibians, like Logan, believe everything resides within the Flow of the Land, an attitude that grows ever-more necessary as the remnants of the older era continue to erode. In his travels, especially off thoroughfares and central arteries, where the Land stands empty of anyone but him, Logan wonders about his own place. About where one belongs in the Land old, untouched.
As they travel north, Iahel grows eager to reach the Carvinga Treasures, a monument she last encountered over two years ago. Sanet titters at the label and refuses to let Bernard in on its irony. Watching Bernard discover the Land, commenting on things no one has bothered with in a long time, makes the trek more pleasurable than usual. He sees the grand things that Logan has forgotten. Having taken the trip a half-dozen times before, Logan’s grown to view the sights as dull, though admittedly he’s only traveled through the northern bits of the Tunnels a few times before. Once with his father and on a couple of occasions when chasing a girl. Like now, Logan?
His thoughts of the lone trip west, after the Crossroads, are interrupted when Iahel hints that she may be interested in heading there with him. Concerns over the Victors notwithstanding, the idea of having company fills him with a temporary comfort.
Ahead, illuminated by the strip of pale-yellow neon, are mounds and endless mounds of trash. Over the past few miles, the ceiling has risen a hundred measures higher. When the first hint of the Treasures is seen, the smell confirms their proximity. Rotten, foul, and sour stenches mix in the air. A decomp’s kiptale. The click click click of the decomps digging and scurrying through the piles of old furniture, rotten food, and waste amplifies as they continue toward the mounds. When Brute catches its first glimpse, he leaps from the back of the krake and runs off toward them, disappearing around one of the initial heaps. Above the enormous trash piles, large holes populate the vast ceiling. Where they lead is anyone’s guess, but most assume the Carvinga Treasures are the dumping grounds for the state above them. The sewers of the Land.
As they reach the Carvinga Treasures, the stench becomes so intense they can taste it.
“Lincoln, this place reeks,” Bernard notes.
“You don’t like treasure?” Iahel jests.
Bernard rolls his eyes, finally in on the enigmit. Iahel hops down off Whistlers and begins to wander and rummage through the piles. If one can forget the stench and the blatant waste strewn over a ten-mile stretch, the site is one to behold. Some of the knolls are stacked all the way up, plugging the hole in the ceiling. Others are fresher, no more than ten or twenty feet high.
Bernard strolls through, lifting a cloth to cover his nose and mouth. Sanet and Logan, the veterans of the group, ride the krakes and watch the children play. Iahel digs into a pile, this one crammed not by waste and food but instead by old furnishings and tools.
She pulls out a small timple. “Dustian, in perfect shape.”
She digs a bit farther and finds the corpse of the timple’s owner, long left, his skeletal remains buried among the trash. The tenfooters aren’t known for their interest in art and music and likely threw the old denizen away with his instrument.
Iahel begins to pluck a few notes on the timple. “An old Canerio body I met on the kleep to Yikshir had one of these. She taught me to play it. Said it was the instrument of the sea.”
They roam through the mounds over the next few hours, growing accustomed to the smell. Logan watches as the little black decomps move like a shiny, slick black pool. They react in concert when a heap adjusts or settles. Other decomp hordes slide with ease toward a freshly fallen pile. This one a hulking muddle of food waste. Fast little festatars. Like that ooze.
Nearing the end of the Carvinga Treasures, Sanet leaves George and steps up to an unusually tall hill that almost touches the ceiling. She climbs onto it, stepping carefully as little bits and boxes shift under her weight.
“Careful up there,” Bernard shouts.
Sanet looks focused, determined.
“See something?” Logan asks.
“I chased the neox here. There’s a little opening there that leads to the surface.”
“Leads to Carvinga, you mean?” Logan reminds her.
“Yes, I’m not going all the way up again, lyn lyn. I just need to check something.”
The three others watch as she steps from object to object. Graceful and bold. At the top, Sanet reaches for the opening and then disappears.
Still on Whistlers, Logan thrusts his hips, causing the krake to move closer. “Sanet?”
No answer.
“Where is she going?” Iahel wonders aloud and shoulders the timple.
“That woman is written with mystery,” Bernard suggests.
“Or foolishness.”
They wait for a major longer before Sanet returns from the hole. Logan sighs with relief. She carries something in her fist, pocketing it before stepping back down.
“Careful there.”
“You’ve made your point, Logan.”
She finds her footing along a narrow path and steps down from the mound. It shifts. The three below step forward.
“Sanet. The pile’s moving.”
“Please.”
They quiet. The area takes on new stresses. Around them, everything stills, save for the click click click of decomps raiding a nearby mound and
the occasional crash of newly dropped garbage. When she is halfway down, the heap shifts again. Logan hops from the krake and heads for the foot of the pile.
“Do not come up here,” Sanet warns. “You’ll only make it worse.”
“I’m not. I’m here, though. If you fall.”
“I’ll be wisnok. Just one foot before another.” She steps onto a desk jutting out from the rubble. Testing her weight, she pulls herself onto it.
“There’s the next step there.” Logan points.
Iahel steps up and pulls Logan’s arm back, whispering to him, “Let her concentrate.”
Sanet steps onto the next piece of trash, and as she settles on it, it shakes, and she loses her balance. For only a minor.
Prosh this woman. Logan continues to hold his breath with every step she takes, his confidence growing the closer she gets to the ground. When she does, she bows her head, both hands gesturing thumb to fingers.
Iahel presses her lips in a grin of admiration. Sanet and Logan then lock eyes, his judgment palpable in the silence.
Ignoring his look, Sanet turns to the others. “Shall we move on from this terrible-smelling place?”
Bernard nods, giving up his spot atop George.
“Approsh.”
“You’re a brave woman, Sanet,” Bernard states.
She rubs Bernard’s growing hair. “Only as brave as your friends let you.” She turns to Logan as she says this.
Is she trying to hurt me?
They leave the Carvinga Treasures, excited to note they’re halfway through the Tunnels.
❖❖❖
Over the next few days, Logan feels isolated from the gang. Since Sanet’s flam venture atop the garbage mound back at the Carvinga Treasures, Iahel has warmed to her considerably. They act like giggling sisters, though Iahel’s flirting suggests she’s looking for more than a close friend. Over duskmeals and fires, the girls use inside jokes and silent hand gestures that only they understand.
Bernard is friendly enough, answering questions and engaging in small talk, but he too has drawn distant. Logan wakes up on some morns to find Bernard having walked away. And on one occasion, he finds Bernard crying near a tunnel river. He turns to Logan as he approaches and proceeds to explain that his wet face and red eyes are from a reaction to the river. The smith’s mitts are placed carefully to the side, and Bernard’s mangled fingers drip with water.
The heat becomes oppressive in the Tunnels. At first, there was a pleasantness to it, but as they near a month of traversing the endless halls, it begins to make the friends more irritable, and the initial awe of the thin yellow neon line starts to feel mocking as if it were a torture device. Never-ending. Never-ending. Never-ending.
When footsteps of other friends arrive in the middle of the night, they come as a welcome reprieve. The last friends the gang ran into over a week ago were a boring lot who wasted no more than two words between them. The krakes they rode had bigger personalities.
Logan sits up, having decided on this night to sleep on an old bed set into an alcove that was left by travelers. The tent, across the tunnel thoroughfare, had begun to feel too crowded. It took him longer every night to fall asleep due to the agitation of their constant giggling and snickering grating in his ears. The immersion of the nineteen-year-old Iahel seemed to have lowered the maturity of the others. You’re a fifty-year-old man, Bernard, Logan would think whenever he laughed uncontrollably with the other giggle-fest girls. Logan also had difficulties being touched by Sanet, who on nights would reach out to slip with him. But the thoughts of the demvirst, of the thin woman mounting him like some primitive beast, only made him push her touch away.
On this night, he is trying to fall asleep when he hears the approach of the friends in the dark. As he squints in the faint light, he sees that they are wearing what look like red capes. His heart skips. Crimson men. Have they followed us all the way from Bomwigs?
Logan pushes himself back into the darker side of the alcove and watches as they creep up to the tent. He reaches for his pistol and loads it as quietly as possible. The crimson men, three in total, surround the tent, gesturing to each other to at once be quiet and on the ready. One of them peeks into an opening at the back of the tent. Logan aims the gun at this one, who he infers is the leader based on the length of his cape. The man looks back to the others after peering inside and raises three fingers. This puts the other two on alert. They know I’m not in there. The two others step away, craning their necks and scanning the tunnel, they seem not to notice the dark alcove where he’s hiding.
Feeling safe for the minor, Logan continues to keep his eye on the leader. His gun is trained and ready for the man to make a move. A loud blast comes from inside the tent and blows the man backward, slamming him into the wall. Shnite. At the sudden attack, the other two turn, pulling their own weapons. Logan aims squarely and shoots, taking one of them down. He then rolls out from his spot and directs the gun for a second shot.
“Hold there, friend.” The man’s hand is around his weapon as if ready to draw, but looking to the other two, he changes his mind. He places his hands to head.
As Logan steps closer, the flaps of the tent unzip, and Sanet steps out in a loose shirt, holding Bernard’s rifle. She’s shaking. Behind him Bernard and Iahel exit, half asleep. Looking impressive and imposing, Sanet steps up to the last crimson man and places the hot rifle tip to his chest. The man recoils, but dares not move.
“What are you doing here?” Sanet asks.
“Looking for a place to sleep.”
“Not what I saw, friend,” Logan states and steps forward.
The crimson man turns to him, narrowing his eyes. His attention returns to Sanet, then he eyes Bernard. “You’re the one who killed Franz. In the squalls of a tormisand. In his sleep.”
“And he sent a dozen people with those fires.” Bernard’s remorse for sending a man left has shown over the past weeks, but here he hides it behind vengeance and excuses. He’s hardened. Perhaps from the heat, but he isn’t himself. He isn’t the simple Radibian who spent his time night gardening.
Sanet stands firmly, unflinching.
“You can’t stop him. The Roar is already here, and the war is coming.”
Sanet steps up. “There’s no such thing as war.” She switches from Bernard’s rifle to her own crossbow and without hesitation—shunk—bolts the man through the skull. He slumps to the ground.
Bernard turns, holding his mouth. “Sanet, why?”
“These men were here to send us left because they’re after this.” And with that, she fishes from her pocket a small, flat chrome key. “They’re after the brass.”
Chapter 12
BENEATH THE STONETIN
The gang drag the three men’s corpses into the alcove where Logan had attempted to sleep. They don’t speak of the incident until they are packed and back on the road. Looking back, Logan feels an air of anxiety and paranoia in the darkness. Who else has been watching us? Who really is Sanet? How could she send that man left when his hands were on his head? Would she have pulled the trigger on me when we first met? Her mystery and purpose have become more dangerous than intriguing.
Logan and Iahel ride Whistlers, while Bernard, riding George and with Brute lounging on his shoulder, speaks first. “Was that key what you recovered at the Treasures?”
“It is. I lost it there chasing the neox and didn’t know it until I was already in the grasslands.”
“What does it open?” Iahel asks.
“There’s a stonetin a few miles south of the North Tunnels entrance that holds one of the two pieces of brass I was asked to locate and return. I was given this key by my employer’s acolyte.”
“If the brass is found in stonetins, what was a neox doing with one?” Logan asks, as if interrogating her.
For a major, Sanet doesn’t answer, walking on and leading George by its scaled scruff. “That sliver of brass was stolen from me by a crimson man after I left Misipit. I was sleeping in a ten
t, and he sneaked up on me like they did tonight. I saw him just as he was getting away. But he was fast. I had to track him across the valley fogs and through parts of Yikshir, far north of the Crossroads. When I did find him, he had been sent, and a neox was feeding off him. I scared it away and searched the body, but the brass was gone. Knowing how valuable the brass is and that there wasn’t anywhere the man could have hidden it between there and where he took it, my only guess remaining was that the neox had swallowed it.
“I then had to spend the next few months tracking it. Through these Tunnels, even past here. All the way to the Carvinga Treasures, where that frek climbed up a mound to the surface. I was determined. I had to. I had to get it back. So, I chased it up and through there, into the grassland. Which is when I realized I’d lost the key. I hoped it might have fallen out somewhere in that small turnaway back there. And, luck has me, I was right.” She pats her pocket.
“Seems like a remarkable venture for a piece of metal,” Iahel comments.
“My employer insists that it’s for the better of the Land. But also, that it’s valuable. I assume others want it because they can sell it for considerable coin. To fund their supposed war, or whatever they’re rattling about.”
“And that key there is to find another one?” Iahel asks, intrigued.
“Supposedly. And the other one is larger.”
“Dustian. You think you could sell it? How much do you think they’re worth?”
“Well, being that my employer is insistent that as few bodies as possible know about it and that these other men seem to be unspent on finding it, I imagine they’re worth a lot.”
“I’m in.” Bernard grins, his eagerness for venture whetted by the prospect of real treasure.
Logan doesn’t speak. A side trip only delays my return.
Sanet falls quiet as well and then speaks without prompt. “If you want a bit of truth, I was told how much they’re worth.” She whispers this last part as if she isn’t allowed to admit it but can’t help herself.
Advent of the Roar Page 13
