Blays scrunched up his face. "So this place is, uh…"
"Garbage?" Dante said.
"I was going to say 'in need of repairs.'"
"Enough gawking," Pila said. "Deliver them to the family-slave-pit."
Blays blinked. "Pardon me for asking, but you have slaves often enough to require a pit for them?"
"Of course, you stupid moron. Who else is going to do the forbidden-work?" She clapped her hands at her people. "Get moving!"
The more severe-looking warriors emerged from the loose mass of people to prod the intruders forward at spear-point. Mothers with young children and elderly men and women walked out from their shacks to watch them pass. A short walk brought them to a shallow quarry, though it was as shabby as the shacks. A pit had been dug out of its center, enclosed by a cage of bones inset with shark teeth of various kinds to dissuade anyone lucky enough to reside in the pit from trying to squeeze out through the cage.
Two warriors opened a door in the side of the cage and a third man with close-set eyes and an extremely high forehead yelled at them until they climbed down the rope ladder to the bottom some twelve feet below. The warriors pulled up the ladder behind them.
"Don't try to get out or you will be cursed and killed!" the high-browed man yelled down at them. "First cursed, and then killed! But if you obey, you will be blessed. Blessed, and then lived."
Satisfied with himself, he drew his head back from the hole. It was some twenty feet across and there was a bit of water in the middle of it but the sides were dug out enough to give them some shelter if it were to rain again. Dante found himself a decent-looking rock and sat down.
"Now I could be rushing to judgment," Blays said. "But I don't think I like this island."
Gladdic took a look about himself and declined to sit down. "I assume it is not our intention to stay in this hole for long."
"Not unless you find our hosts' hospitality too charming to part from," Dante said. So what do we do first? Head to the Nautilus? Get our weapons back? Or secure the boat?"
"Let's get one other thing worked out before all that," Blays said. "Let's say that, purely hypothetically, we break ourselves out of here, but they come surround us again and resume the discussion about harvesting our bone-bricks. If it comes down to it—again, this is a mere hypothetical—are we willing to slaughter every man, woman, and child on this island?"
"If we let them kill us instead, they'll all be slaughtered by Nolost anyway, right?"
"Is that a yes?"
"Yes. Although I'd hope the children at least have the sense to run from us."
"These people live in piles of bones and think you can keep sorcerers imprisoned in a hole in the ground. I bet I could stick my sword in one ear and out the other without encountering a single speck of brain."
Gladdic snorted. "You are unusually eager for blood."
Blays peered up at the bone cage and the black clouds beyond it. "Things seem stable enough out there for the moment. They haven't been getting terribly worse, at least. But I have the feeling that's about to end—and soon." He sighed and found a dry spot to settle down. "I say we go to the Spire first. Then we'll see if we can get our belongings back without the need for any war crimes."
Dante glanced up from the wall he'd been inspecting. "Do you think we'll actually be cursed if we harm them?"
"I think that was an insane bluff. But given the present state of everything, what's insane might be more likely to be real than what's reasonable."
"We'll leave tonight. Head straight for the Spire. After that, we'll grab your spear and see if they found the boat. I have the feeling that after we take our swords away from Master Lidenda, we're going to need to leave in a hurry."
Dante sent his mind into the wall of the pit. He'd been having trouble manipulating the earth in Snarjlend, and was pleased to find that he could move the dirt and rock in this spot however he pleased. He started work on lifting a tunnel to the west, intending to spit them out further down the quarry and past all the Yerabs' shacks. It was a simple task and he expected to have hours to complete it, and he stopped often to feel out into the nether to try to tell if they were monitoring him in some way. He felt nothing and nobody showed up to angrily try to kill them, and he brought the tunnel to within the last few feet of the exit before concluding his work. After that, there was nothing to do but nap.
He woke some time later feeling excellent. It was completely dark down in the pit and he tilted his ear to the cage above and heard nothing but the wind in the grass.
"Tell me someone knows how many hours it's been since sundown," he said.
"Three or more," Gladdic said. "They looked in on us just before dark, but not since then."
"It's no later than nine o'clock. We'll wait another hour and then make our move."
The stars remained locked up behind the clouds, so he couldn't count the time with any precision. Given the season, and what was surely a lack of candles and lanterns, the locals were probably all asleep already for lack of anything better to do, but Dante waited out the allotted time nonetheless. Above them, it was deathly silent besides the occasional rustle of grass in the wind.
"It's like not even the birds want anything to do with this place," Blays said. "Maybe we should take the hint."
"If we're not out of here by sunrise, it's because something has gone very wrong." Dante sent his senses out into the shadows, but felt nothing. "Let's get started."
He headed up the tunnel he'd extended from the pit. He stopped just before the end and bent the tunnel upward until it broke free to the surface. Most of the soil obeyed his commands, but some sandy remnants fell to the ground as the rest of it swept neatly off to the sides.
He formed a tall step at the base of the exit, climbed it, and jumped, getting enough of his upper body up on the ground to drag the rest of himself out. As he stood and brushed himself off, he froze.
Someone stood across from him in the darkness. Dante grabbed hard for the shadows.
"Don't do that," the boy said. "I was just coming to see you."
The pit had been even darker than the night and Dante's eyes were already adjusted to the lack of light well enough to recognize the boy. He was the young man who'd spoken up to convince Master Lidenda to enslave them rather than butcher them.
Dante glanced across the quarry to make sure no one else was watching. "If you've got something to say, make it fast."
Blays had already hopped out and helped Gladdic up as well. Wordless, he moved to Dante's side.
The young man's eyes darted between them. "I can help you. I can get you to the Great One."
"It looks to me like we're about to do that on our own," Dante said.
"You could get to her maybe yes. But she wouldn't speak to you, no. Not without the blessing of an Astendi."
"Which you're offering to give us? Why?"
"Because when you leave, I want to go with you."
"You want to leave here? Isn't this your home?"
"This island." The boy—he looked to be about fifteen; certainly not fully grown, at any rate—gestured about himself. "Things have gone wrong here. I am our only hope to fix them."
"What's gone wrong? And how can you set it right? You're just a boy."
He shook his head. "That isn't your business. Are you really sorcerers?"
"Very powerful and vindictive ones," Blays said. "We've just been discussing why we haven't simply obliterated you all and been on our way."
"Don't do that!" The boy looked quickly about himself, hunching his shoulders as he cringed at the loudness of his voice. He leaned closer to them. "Don't let them see your powers. Or they will kill you. I will take you to the Great One tomorrow night. Tomorrow day, you must work."
"Or we could kill you," Dante said. "And go to the Spire right now."
He shook his head again, harder than before. "Do that, and you doom yourselves along with my people. Please, sirs. This place…it must look mean and lowly to your eyes, but it's no
t supposed to be like this. I have to undo what has been done to it. I have to leave with you!"
Dante glanced to the others, who both gave small shrugs. "Tomorrow night, then. But if you don't show, or if there's any funny business, the crabs will be feasting on Astendi for weeks."
17
Warriors showed up bright and early to roust them from their hole. Dante climbed the rope ladder feeling tired, stiff, and uneasy about the possibility the boy had duped them. The warriors seemed casually contemptuous of them, though, not especially angry or likely to execute them, which was all but confirmed when they bothered to serve breakfast. Upon eating it, though—fish broth minus any pieces of fish, and some gruely substance that tasted like it was made from pounded grass stems—Dante began contemplating how to get them to execute him after all.
Pila marched over to them as they were finishing eating. She jabbed her finger eastward. "The scum have loitered long enough! That fish pen's been washed out for a month now. Put these turtle rectums to work!"
The warriors chuckled, rising from their seats and smirking at the foreigners. "On your feet, labor-filth. And pray your hands are tough enough."
Dante had been treated as a lord by his own people for long enough that such words made him instinctively want to demand the speaker be beaten. He held his tongue and stood. Their armed escort marched them eastward over the swarded dunes. After a quarter mile, they came to a rounded bay. It looked shallow for quite some ways out, and similar to the settlement, portions of it were divided from each other by walls of white stone.
"That one there." A warrior pointed at one of the semicircles of water. "Storm washed it halfway out. You three are to plug up the holes."
"Nothing would delight me more." Blays stripped off his cloak, tossed it on the sand, and waded into the water. Dante sighed to himself and followed.
The work was dull and repetitive and somewhat fussier than piling up rocks ought to have been: after getting yelled at by the warriors a few times, they came to understand the rocks needed to be stacked loosely enough for small fish to swim between them, but not so loosely that the waves would wash them out. It was cold, too, and Dante furtively used the nether to warm them the best that he could.
Before long, they were shivering enough to call for a break. The warriors did some muttering but stoked up the low fire of burning grasses they had going to let the prisoners warm themselves up.
Dante was just starting to feel a little better when the boy wandered down to the beach and approached the warriors. "How is our labor-filth doing?"
"The sight of them makes the eyes want to bleed, Elis," a warrior answered. "But at least they're strong."
"For now," another said, then laughed, joined by all the others. Before the laughter had wound down, a crab three feet across slouched out of the surf and dragged itself up the sand. The warriors hooted to each other and ran toward it with weapons raised.
"Do we still have our deal?" Dante said quietly.
Elis nodded. "Leave the pit at the same time you did last night. I'll take you straight to the Spire."
"How did you know we'd come here to see it, anyway?"
The question amused him. "What else would devil-strangers come to Attahire for? Our misfortunes have stripped us of everything else." The boy grew more serious. "Besides, it couldn't be coincidence for strangers to come here for the first time in my lifetime just as the most recent troubles have struck us."
"You've had them, too?"
"Bad storms. Freak waves. Rumbling in the ground. Ominous lights out to sea. Uldrag doesn't know what to make of it—not that he would know."
"The gods are destroying the world," Dante said. "And we're trying to stop them."
Elis gave him a suspicious look, then his mouth fell open. "You're serious."
"Yes. So if this is a trick of some kind—"
"It is no trick. You will see!"
Down the beach, the warriors had successfully beaten the crab to death. They cheered and shook their weapons over their heads, then sent one of them running back to the settlement while the rest of them strolled down the beach and yelled at the slaves to get back to work. Dante waded out once more to do battle with the sea. Elis and the others stood around and watched them work, making jokes about how dim, oafish, and low-born the outlanders were.
A half hour later, a second band approached from the direction of the settlement. Arriving on the beach, the women went to work cutting up the crab while the men listened to the warriors talk about how they'd killed it; once they'd heard the tale, they went off down the beach in search of more.
Master Lidenda had come with them, too. At that moment, Dante was slogging up from the water to grab more rocks for the pens. She looked him up and down and laughed.
"They look to be built for our filth-work, don't they?" she said to Elis. "Maybe you were right to spare them!"
Elis snickered. "Their meat probably tastes foul with corruption anyway."
"We would have bled them first, of course. Tell me they haven't tried to cast any bewitchments on you!"
"None I know of. But such types could be too sneaky for me to have noticed."
"You must keep both eyes on them at all times," Lidenda said, drawing closer to the boy, suddenly very sober. "Give them the slightest chance, and they'll destroy everything they touch. Useful as they look now, once they are done with your pens, I think we should chop off their feet to limit the amount of trouble they can cause us."
"They won't be worth much to us without any feet," Elis said slowly. He brightened. "But maybe we could cut off one foot each?"
"How would you like that, sorcerer?" Lidenda said to Dante, who'd stopped, as they seemed to want him to hear them. "If I took one of your feet, would that be enough to stall your schemes?"
"Only for the week it took me to grow it back," Dante said.
She darkened, then leaned closer to Elis. "He has no such power to do that. See how they lie to you? Right to your face? There's a reason the powers have cursed them so." She smiled wickedly. "Don't believe me? Maybe you'll change your mind once you know they lied about their boat, too. It didn't sink. We found it buried in the earth. I'm sure they're lying about why they came here as well."
"What do you think they came here to do, Master?"
"Wickedness. Foulness. To bring evil beyond what the minds of good people can imagine." Lidenda straightened, eyes widening. "I see the spine of it now! They took the truth and wrapped it in lies! The world does stand on the brink. We are meant to save it—we are the only ones that can. They came here to destroy us, and ensure that the world would fall to their evil schemes."
She stared knives at Dante. From just about any other leader, he would have guessed they were spitting out lies to manipulate their people. From Lidenda, though, he thought she believed it.
And that meant she was dangerous—and almost certainly insane.
His presence seemed to be provoking her. Dante resumed hauling rocks out into the water. Lindenda soon stopped speaking to Elis, but kept watching Dante for some time after.
Dante wouldn't have been surprised if the warriors meant to work them until they dropped, but Elis called the three of them in when Dante was merely worn out. They were allowed to dry off, for good this time, and to eat whatever limpets, periwinkles, and other mollusks they could find among the rocks.
"Now, I've spent enough time among those dirty sorcerers to know we should have burned them all at the stake ages ago," Blays said to Elis. "But why do you people hate them so much?"
Elis' mouth twitched. "We're not supposed to discuss that with foreigners."
"I doubt you're supposed to run away with them in the middle of the night, either."
"As long as I don't ask if I should do that, they can't tell me not to. We didn't always, though. Hate sorcerers, I mean. For a long time, they even served as our priests!"
Blays shook his head. "Can you imagine such a thing?"
"Led by them, we worshipped the Great
One. The Spire of the Nautilus. For years and years it was that way, and it was good. Our island of Attahire flourished, and so did we, the Astendi: we protected the Great One, and she protected us in return. We traded with the city of Marca across the waters, and we raided the villages that refused to pay us tribute, and everyone was pious and happy and wealthy.
"Then one of our sorcerers—a man named Patonus—looked at this order of things and he thought: What if we had more Great Ones? How blessed would we be then? It seemed to him that he could create paradise on earth.
"So he bade his warriors and divers to catch the biggest snails and crabs that they could and to bring them to him. Working tirelessly, Patonus and his fellow priests used their hideous magics to distort the creatures of the sea. Growing them bigger and bigger. Some he used to help raid the settlements of the coast. Others he hollowed out and used their shells as our most beautiful homes and temples. It seemed only a matter of time until the Great Ones would swim through the waters of all the world, and the Astendi would rule at their side.
"But Patonus had blasphemed.
"One night, the creatures broke free from the enclosures he'd been keeping them in. They returned to the ocean and disappeared. The sorcerers searched and searched for them, but they didn't find a single one of their creations. For thirteen years, the waters were quiet.
"Then one day, without any warning at all, the creations returned. And in far greater numbers than when they'd left us. They fell upon us, fighting furiously, hungry for an unknown vengeance. We fought them as hard as we could. Sorcerers and warriors fell alike. They stained the sands red with our blood. Just as it looked like they would overrun the very last of us, the monsters turned around and marched back into the sea.
The Twelve Plagues (The Cycle of Galand Book 7) Page 25
