Vale of Tears: A Thalassia novel

by Patrick McClafferty

  “Damn!” The guard had backed half way across the room, his face pale. “He’s got the bloody pox. The stuff spreads like wildfire.”

  The other guard, a thin wiry man with a two day growth of beard started laughing. “Won’t make much difference what he’s got, once we throw im into the Vale. One more day and they’re gone and we have a nice quiet dungeon again. Ye know they don’ keep the scum they find on the beaches very long. The gods they need their sacrifices. Until then the animals still gotta be fed, so go an get their food, Breno.”

  “Yer a pain in my ass, Raik.” The heavy set guard grumbled, but he went to get the food.

  Jineva collapsed in the back of the cell, making loud wheezing noises. Inside she was laughing at her small triumph.

  Jineva began without preamble, trying not to scream aloud.

 

  Jineva swallowed, trying hard to get control of her panic. There was a light laugh from Meara, and the laughter more than anything else helped calm the panicking girl.

 

  Jineva shrieked. Jineva’s head was pounding, and her world spinning.

 

  Jineva repeated in a mental shriek.

  Meara’s voice was sympathetic. Jineva Barillo, the last of her line, closed her eyes.

  Chapter 2

  Thin sunlight streamed through the bars in the high window when Jineva woke. Two different guards were on duty now, and their glances passed over her as they would over a piece of bad meat. She sighed in relief, and suddenly realized that the constant pain she’d felt in her head since awakening in the dungeon was gone. She felt good in fact; hungry, but good. She coughed and wheezed and burbled a little, strictly for the benefit of the guards, and slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position. Neither head turned in her direction.

  Drawing her knees to her chest, she squeezed her eyes shut as the full import of what had happened since she caught the shining fish on the rear deck of the trireme. Her family was dead, and in just over a day she would be joining them when her captors threw her into the Vale of Tears. She thought of her father’s face, and her mother’s body lying cold and still on the deck in a pool of blood; of her brother’s hand disappearing beneath the waves, and she began to cry.

  Meara let her cry for an hour before she broke in. The mental voice in Jineva’s head was hard and unsympathetic.

  Jineva’s eyes snapped open, and she looked around for someone to hit.

  The cold voice in her mind asked.

 

 

 

  The voice of Meara was gently mocking.

 

  Meara sighed.

  Jineva tried to wrap her mind around the strange word.

  The presence laughed lightly.

 

 

  Jineva was silent for some time before she continued.

  The voice answered softly.

  There was interest in Jineva’s reply now.

  Meara laughed lightly.

  Later that day one of the bored guards pushed two chipped wooden bowls into her small cell, and two more into the adjacent chamber. One was filled with brackish, foul smelling water and the other held a thin gruel, with bits of unidentifiable meat floating in the greasy gray liquid. As an afterthought, the guard tossed half a loaf of moldy bread onto the floor at her bare feet before leaving. Jineva looked at the bowls with revulsion.

 

  Meara’s voice was stern.

 

 

  Jineva’s mental voice rose in a shriek. Only seconds later it seemed, she blinked her eyes and stared at the four empty bowls at her feet. Crumbs of moldy bread were scattered over her lap, and she felt full. Her thoughts wouldn’t come into focus.

 

  Jineva swallowed, and shut her eyes, picturing her uncle sitting at her side, lecturing her calmly in his deep gruff voice. Try as she might, she just couldn’t picture him dead.

  “The first thing you have to do to survive.” He had told her. “Is not to panic. Panic will kill you fer sure. The second is to assess your situation. Deal with the immediate threat. If you are in a burning house—get out. If you are being attacked—kill the attacker and escape. After that you can plan for your long-term survival. You will need air, shelter, water, food and security; usually but not always in that order.” His smile had sent a chill down her spine. “Then you can think about revenge, but...” He had taken her two small hands in his two large callused ones. “Remember this: ‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.’“ She hadn’t understood the meaning...then.

  A shaft of bright sunlight was streaming through the upper window when they came to take her away. Jineva stumbled and drooled, and made her captor’s jobs as difficult as she could. The old man in the next cell, she couldn’t tell if he was living or dead, sagged limply in the guards arms as his heels bounced on the cold stone floor.

  The guard she had come to know as Breno was holding one of her arms and Raik, his sullen partner, the other. She had bitten her tongue again, purposely, and the blood was running down her chin. Turning her head to look at Breno, she coughed as she watched him with watery eyes.
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  “Ye watch out fer him, Raik. Eees sick I tell ye.”

  The sullen guard looked at his whining partner as they hoisted Jineva up a long set of stone stairs. “I’ll wipe me ands after we dumps im, Breno. Stop yer bitchin.” Breno’s face turned surly, but he shut up.

  Jineva’s eyes widened in surprise when they reached the top of the stairs and finally broke into the bright sunlight.

  Raik noticed her start, and laughed. “Behold the Temple of Tepoztecam, the greatest temple in the world, and the last thing yell ever see.”

  The great blocked pyramid rose three hundred feet above the dirty, hovel-filled city that surrounded it. Massive white blocks thrust up into the air that reeked of incense and the sweat of the guards. The grim party continued to climb a short set of steps that led to a large platform on the top of the pyramid. From here Jineva could see that long stairs led down three of the four sides of the pyramid, while on the fourth, in the place of stairs was a smooth polished ramp, more of a curved slide that led out to...Jineva blinked. Nowhere. The ramp simply descended out past the bottom edge of the pyramid and into open air. It was then she realized that she was looking at the means of her death.

  Dressed in crimson feathers and leering red and black facial paint, the priest was already raising his tattooed arms to heaven, intoning strange prayers in an even stranger language. Yellowed bone bracelets hung from his thick wrists, and bone earrings pierced his long earlobes. Greasy plaited brown hair adorned his head, and his black eyes held the same cordiality as a feeding shark. Draped loosely across his shoulders and back, and almost brushing the ground, was a long woven cape in iridescent blue.

  At the priest’s curt gesture, the first two guards casually tossed the old man’s body onto the ramp. Jineva followed the progress of the body down the slide with her eyes, knowing with a sickening certainty that she would be next.

  Meara’s voice was intent.

  Jineva was having trouble not shouting.

 

 

 

  Meara didn’t answer right away.

  Jineva took a deep breath.

  Breno grabbed Jineva’s unresisting arm, and began to drag the docile girl toward the long ramp. Raik just stood back, wiry arms crossed, grinning. The grin faded, however, when Jineva pulled her arm roughly away and spun to face the priest.

  “I need that!” She jerked the cloak off the startled priest’s shoulders and in one jump hit the slide. Three shocked faces followed her progress until, at last, she shot into the open air. The tops of the clouds seemed miles below her.

  Meara shouted above the roar of the wind in her ears. Jineva spread her arms, gripping the ends of the cloak for all she was worth. The makeshift wings popped with the strain, threatened to come out of her baggy pants, but her fall slowed. She tried to ignore the pain in her aching arms. A shriek made her look over her shoulder in time to see Breno, arms pumping madly, plummet past her, disappearing into the clouds. He’d paid a high price for her escape. Jineva leaned and turned slowly. The clouds felt like cold wet fingers on her skin as she passed through them.

 

 

  The dark water came up quickly, and Jineva just had time to release the cloak, take a breath and bend her knees before she hit.

  The dark murky water was as cold and unforgiving as death, and the initial impact almost knocked her out. Knees flexed, in the cold dark her feet felt the rocky bottom of the Vale Fjord. She pushed off and headed for the surface. Meara kept repeating over and over.

  Head popping to the surface, she gasped in a huge lungful of air, and then another. She was alive! Meara suggested. Jineva started out at a slow overhand crawl, all that her muscles would let her do for the moment. Her hand struck something solid and she looked up in tired surprise. It was the body of Breno the guard, glazed eyes still open in horror and shock as he hit the water. His once olive-skinned face was now gray. She was pushing the body away when Meara stopped her.

  Jineva felt her stomach lurch. She commented sourly.

 

  Jineva licked her lips and gave a little laugh.

  Jineva just nodded, and gave Breno’s body another tug. Soon her feet touched the rocky shore and she let out a sigh of relief. She really had done the impossible. Pulling and tugging, she managed to get the stiffening body up onto the rocky shore before looking for a place where she could sleep for a week.

  A pine needle poked her in the cheek, and Jineva gave a little growl of aggravation before she opened her eyes. The sun had already passed below the edge of the Vale walls, and darkness was creeping around her. Although the needles were thick and relatively soft, the small pine tree she had curled up under didn’t seem so safe anymore.

  A few feet away a body lay partially wedged into the rock of the river bank; the dead white arm bobbing slowly, beckoningly in the current. Still half asleep, Jineva blinked. The face on Breno’s body became her brother’s, and then her father’s. Her memory returned with a rush, and she clenched her cold fists in both anger and grief. She had no one... but an imaginary voice in her head. Tears burned her eyes, and her shoulders shook with the violence of her grief.

  After a time she wiped her nose on the rags of her clothes, and looked down at Breno’s body. Stripping the dead man of his clothes was a slow grim job. Although wet, his boots almost fit her rather large feet, and he even had a few coins in a small leather pouch tied to his belt. His knife was old and chipped, but the point was sharp and it was better than nothing. She drew the line at stripping off the man’s smallclothes, and hurriedly pushed the nearly naked body back out into the river. She clung to the memories of Diego’s survival lessons like a spent swimmer would cling to a floating log. “Panic,” She recalled his calm words clearly. “will kill you fer sure.” She was trying very hard not to panic.It took her a few minutes longer to wad Breno’s clothes into a small bundle that she could sling across her shoulder and she was off, heading downstream to find a safer place to spend the night. An hour later the sky had gotten darker still, sliding slowly into what the romantics called “the blue hour,” that strange time just preceding sunrise and just after sunset, before true nightfall.

  The sound she heard was a tiny whimper, but it froze her in her tracks. Her belt knife was in her hand, held low like Diego had taught her, and her feet were almost soundless on the rocks. The creature was shorter than she, no more than four feet tall, and roughly humanoid. Roughly. It had four
arms, greenish froglike skin and gills set in the side of its long neck. In the place of a nose it had two skin flaps where the nose should be. It was hanging upside down by its right leg, and one of the left arms was pierced by a long black arrow. Gasping noises came from its mouth as it swung slowly back and forth.

  Jineva was both fascinated and repelled by the strange apparition she’d heard about only in wild stories.

 

 

 

  Jineva drew her knife.

  Meara’s voice was devoid of emotion.

  Jineva had taken only one step out of the shadows before the creature saw her. It swung slowly back and forth, and didn’t seem to be breathing at all now. She reached the rope in three more steps, only to discover that Breno’s knife was pitifully dull. It took her several minutes to saw through the heavy rope and lower the creature to the ground. It seemed too weak to move, or too scared.

  “Ay!” The voice of a man shouted out of the darkness. “Wha da ya think yer doin? That’s my trap.”

  “Trap?” Jineva replied, feeling stupid.

  “Trap, boy. High Priest pays a bounty fer each adult head we bring him, so’s I bait my trap with a young-un. Parents come an I’ll git em too. They’ll keep comin’ just as long as the young-un’s alive. Then I’ll have te snare me another.”

  “That’s horrible.” Jineva replied, disgusted.

  “Yeah...” The big man took a step closer and leered, drawing a long, wicked looking sword. “Now git away.”

  “No.” As Jineva stood, she palmed the heavy belt knife she’d cut the rope with, keeping it hidden behind her wrist as she rose. “Let the creature go.” The hand holding her knife was shaking.