by Lou Hoffmann
Rami accompanied Sergeant Rayehl’s group, while Bradehn was with Zhevi under Sergeant Behrta. He and Zhevi had gravitated almost automatically toward one another, probably because they were about the same age and by far the youngest among the cohort. They talked together quietly as they waited, concealed in the trees on the landward side of the mountain and waited for the signal to go in. It was small talk—they didn’t know each other well at all, and soon they fell silent. Bradehn, either bored or nervous, started fiddling with his oak staff, sending small lights from the heel to the top, where they’d emerge with a small popping sound.
Proving, Zhevi thought, that not all wizards are smart.
“Stop,” he whispered. “If the sarge sees you doing that, he’ll have your hide! We don’t know if anybody’s around who could see those lights before we’re ready for them to know we’re here.”
Bradehn leaned forward and peeked around his bush of concealment to meet Zhevi’s eyes, his gaze horrified. “I’m sorry!”
Zhevi didn’t know whether to say it was okay, or to tell him he should be sorry. He was more inclined to do the latter, but he didn’t want to be cruel. In the end he didn’t have to decide—they got the whistled signal it was time to move.
No one interfered with the platoons as they ran across the open space to the cave entrance, weapons at the ready. The entrance was wide enough for six of them to enter at once but instead, as planned, they lined up along the mountain on either side of the doorway and filed in one after another staying in the shadowed corners as they entered. They executed the plan beautifully, but in the end the stealth proved unnecessary.
There would be no fighting, and little saving of children. The captors were gone, having apparently fled days or weeks earlier, and at first it seemed they left behind them only empty cells and rotting corpses. The battle transformed into a gruesome search of cells and corridors and a few children were found clinging to life. One thing left behind by the enemy proved to be a boon. The halls were strung with lights, pipes connecting one to the next indicating some kind of fuel automatically fed through them, and they still burned steadily. As they moved past a large open area just inside the cave entrance, Zhevi separated from the others as they all fanned out to move through the maze of cells. He made sure to keep Bradehn’s green beacon light in the corner of his eye, both because he was supposed to and because it provided a tether to safety and sanity that he sorely needed.
Not that he was threatened physically, but the nightmare he found himself walking through threatened to undo him. Some of the children appeared to have simply wasted away from neglect and starvation in cells that weren’t even locked, but some had been split open or half-eaten, their gory wounds clearly made by wild animals or perhaps monsters. Zhevi heard retching nearby, but he knew it came from a fellow soldier, rather than a child. Some part of his mind wanted to join him in upchucking his provisions, but by the time he’d carried the fifth dead child out into the corridor to be collected later, a strange sort of numbness came over him.
The lieutenant’s voice, apparently magnified by some wizard’s trick of Bradehn’s, rang out at one point, momentarily shattering the silence of the dead caves. “Keep to the plans. Search all areas. Bring out the dead. If any are found alive—” His voice broke on the word. “—pass them back to me and I’ll see to it they get immediate care.”
Zhevi was nearly to the end of his corridor, searching it and its side branches to the right as assigned, before he found life. But what he found then, coming into a large, open room with a cold fire pit in the middle, was no child.
“You’re a caveblight,” he whispered, as if the pitiful thing needed to know that. And, indeed the vaguely bearlike creature was pitiful, even as it screeched and hissed and bared its long fangs. It tried to stand, but its thin, weakened legs couldn’t hold it up and it toppled sideways, hitting the stone floor hard.
“And you’re dying,” Zhevi said, “starved to death.” With a sickening sympathy that felt as right as it did strange, Zhevi understood what had happened. The monster, all of its four eyes blind to anything but heat in motion, having little sense of smell, could not find meat in a cave full of it because the meat was already dead.
In a sudden flurry of ineffectual motion, the blight scrabbled its already ruined claws against the stone floor. It raised itself up and flopped down hard, then set up a weak yowl far too much like a human crying in grief.
Zhevi, the best of the young archers at the Sisterhold, pulled his bow from his shoulder, nocked a single arrow, and sent it unerringly into one of the monster’s glowing eyes. It died instantly. Zhevi had been dwelling on the horror of this place, but now the sadness of it washed over him, and it included a deep pity for the creature he’d just killed.
“Maybe I don’t want to be a soldier after all,” he whispered to himself.
But with his next breath he began to wonder why the creature had remained in this cave long enough to starve to death. Though he thought of it as a monster, it was indeed only a natural beast. They lived in caves, but were known to hunt the darker, older forests of the continent at night, since the warm-blooded prey there were easier to catch and meatier than the bats that shared their caves. There was something more to be learned about this beast’s plight, Zhevi thought, and he glanced around the large room. The chamber was larger than most in the caves, and lit by only a single lamp, so it took a moment before he noticed what looked like a pile of white and gray fur in a shadowed corner.
Dreading what he would find, Zhevi slowly advanced until he recognized what was there. A female caveblight bound in heavy chains, bloody from having just given birth, starved to skin and bones, lay curled around her obviously dead infant, mewling weakly and so very pitifully. What an awful tale this told! The jailers had wanted to keep the caveblight male there to frighten the children into subservience, so they chained its pregnant mate.
With angry tears pouring from his eyes, he once again drew his bow and ended the misery of a creature that did not deserve its torture any more than the children who had died all around it. He struggled to get his head around the idea that humans had done all of this. Humans—people who probably had families, children of their own, horses and chickens and pets. Humans had prepared this place and filled it with innocent children and creatures and worked them and tortured them and… what? Sold them?
With disgust he returned to his duty, dragging the caveblight corpses out into the corridor along with the children. The corpses were too many and too rotten to carry home, so there would be a funeral pyre. Zhevi saw no reason the blights could not go onto it. They were victims here too.
It was while Zhevi and many of the others were gathering firewood for that pyre that Maizie fulfilled her purpose, and redemption came.
They’d gone a fair way into the woods that covered the mountain’s lower slopes when she surprised him, running up from behind, and with a whining growl took hold of his sleeve and began to drag him toward a rocky outcropping surrounded by scrub pine and a couple of tall holly trees. At first he was aggravated and tried to make her stop and release his sleeve, but eventually he got the idea. There was something hidden by that brushy screen she insisted he must see. When he pushed through the branches, he found a low cave entrance. Remembering the caveblights in the tunnels, he felt a little apprehensive, but Maizie ran in, and he heard a tiny voice cry out in surprise.
Gods!
Heart beating like a war drum, Zhevi heaved aside a huge, flat rock that partially concealed the opening, letting in enough light to reveal a small tribe of ragged children—scared, nearly starved, but definitely alive.
PART FOUR: Lightning and Ash
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Can You Hear Me? It’s Important
THE DAY Lucky was to leave with Thurlock for Nedhra City, he rose early enough to see how black the sky could seem in the moments before dawn—so black that if a person didn’t know better, they might think the light could never crack it. He knew the staff at th
e manor ate breakfast early, and he knew they would always welcome him in their company, and he was of course hungry. As always. So the moment gray light chased away morbid thoughts about the end of the world, he made his way to the manor kitchen.
“We’ll miss you, Luccan dear,” Shehrice said, smiling, “but you might find Nedhra City interesting.”
Lucky wondered if he might glean a little information about the place. “Do you go there often?”
“Gods no, child.” Shehrice rolled her eyes skyward and threw her hands in the air as if the very thought of the city required divine intervention. “Haven’t been there since I was a girl.”
“Which,” Cook said, bobbing his eyebrows, “was only a short time ago, I’m certain.”
Shehrice blushed furiously. “Ach! Now, Cook, don’t be making fun of an old woman.”
“I truly wasn’t,” Cook protested. “I don’t even see any old woman ’round here.” He turned reddish around the jowls too.
None of the others gathered at the table laughed, though nearly everyone smiled into their breakfast, and Lucky realized Cook had a thing for Shehrice. He wondered if she was really as blind to it as she seemed. He hoped not. And he hoped they’d maybe get together and take some happiness from it in the future.
If they have a future.
That grim thought, which he instantly regretted, put him off his food, so he excused himself, rose from the table, and took his plate to the washing station. He almost left with a simple wave and faked smile, but he thought better of it and stepped back to where the others were still eating.
Cook said, “Ah, did ye change your mind and come back for more? I thought it was odd ye couldn’t finish your third plateful today. Was thinking ye might be coming down with somethin’.”
Lucky found an honest smile in response. “No,” he said. “I’m full, or at least I won’t starve. I just wanted to say, I’ll miss you—all of you—while I’m gone.” He glanced around the table to meet perplexed gazes. “And… well, thank you for, you know, everything.”
A confusion of farewells and your-welcomes followed him as he made his embarrassed and hangdog way out the back door. He stepped into the garden and started across, hoping to catch Han at home before he got too busy with his duties to notice him. He stopped himself just in time from calling out for Maizie to walk with him. The absence of his faithful girl trotting at his side added to his bitter outlook, resulting in Lucky having a spirited argument with himself.
The world is about to end, and I won’t even be home for it. I’ll be all alone, without my dog for comfort.
Oh gods, I’m ridiculous!
I just wish things could be the same long enough for something to become normal.
Not normal is actually pretty normal, though.
Right. Gonna have to get over that. But not today.
Han was just leaving his house as Lucky walked into his small, white-fenced yard.
Lucky said, “Uncle.”
“Hey, Luccan,” Han said. “What brings you over here so early?”
Lucky wasn’t exactly sure what to answer. I’m feeling stupidly negative and thought maybe I could whine over at your house for a while. No, not that. “Uh, I just… you know. I’ll be gone for a while and stuff. Thought maybe we could hang out for a little while.”
“I’ve got a lot to deal with today, nephew. More bad news about the Fallows not the least of it. But walk with me over to Thurlock’s. Is something in particular on your mind?”
“No. Yes. Everything.”
Han snorted a laugh, and at first Lucky thought he was making light of Lucky’s feelings. But it wasn’t so.
“I know just how that feels, Luccan. And there’s a hell of a lot of ‘everything’ going on right now.”
They arrived at Thurlock’s house before too much more could be said, and Thurlock met them outside the front door. “Luccan, you might consider letting me know next time you plan to leave the house before the birds even think about daylight. I worried, a bit.”
Maybe getting scolded before he even got a greeting from the old man should have pissed Lucky off more, but somehow, it actually did seem normal, and instead it chased away the doom and gloom.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry. Hey, Thurlock, sir—”
“Not sir, to you. Just Thurlock.”
“Okay. Do you need me to be here for anything?”
“You’re all packed?”
“Yes. I did mine last night after I helped you with yours. And I made my bed this morning too.”
“Then no, not that I know of at the moment. Why?”
Lucky smiled, glad for the thought of possible freedom, though simultaneously the fact that he wasn’t needed deflated his ego a little. Fiercely blocking his conflicting thoughts from Han’s inspection, steeling himself to deal with the pain that would surely come with the half-truth, he said, “I uh… I just thought I’d take Zefrehl out for a little ride, get better acquainted before we start out for the city.”
The half-truth not being a full-blown lie, it engendered only a dull ache in his stomach, not even any nausea. It was a little too easy to deal with. He might even get accustomed to skirting the truth if he practiced. That idea brought more pain—of a different kind—than the dishonesty had in the first place. Thurlock looked at Lucky piercingly for at least a full half minute, raised his eyebrows as if inviting confession, but then he shrugged and addressed Han.
“Safety concerns, Han?”
Lucky spoke before Han got a chance to answer. “I’ll be careful. I won’t go far.”
Both of the older men looked at Lucky with surprised expressions. What could they possibly think? No one likes being watched over every minute.
“Luccan,” Han spoke up. “Your welfare has to be our first concern, and—”
Polite by nature, Lucky rarely interrupted, but this time his feelings were too strong. “I feel like a prisoner,” he almost shouted.
After sharing a long look full of mutual anxiety with Han, Thurlock said, “Very well,” and let Lucky go with an admonition to stay within the Sisterhold proper and be back no later than two hours before noon.
Han added his own advice. “Take it easy on Zef. She’s a strong mount, a great horse all around, but you’ll be riding her all day for the next couple of days. And nephew, be watchful. Stay safe.”
As he walked away, Han’s additional thought caught up with him. “And something more is bothering you. Whatever it is, consider being honest with Thurlock or me about it as soon as possible, and don’t let it get you in any trouble.”
Lucky didn’t answer, pretended he hadn’t heard.
Han added, “Because I care, nephew.”
Lucky walked on, but then Thurlock called after him in his booming voice, “Remember Ophiuchus, Luccan.”
Lucky stopped and turned back to face the two men who stood calmly looking after him, their faces devoid of both warning and accusation. They, the wizard’s tower standing behind them, the Hold and the Sister Hills, all that his vision held at that moment melted away and he relived a moment from his last days in Earth. Inside Thurlock’s tower, the ceiling gone and replaced by a vision of stars, the strange lesson of Ophiuchus and his serpent, and Thurlock’s heavy words:
“I expect you to find your balance. Act carefully, be wise, and trust your heart to know your friends. Even more than others, Suth Chiell, you cannot afford poor choices.”
Calling Lucky back to the present moment at the Sisterhold, Thurlock, in a voice clearly audible across the distance though he hadn’t raised it at all, said, “Don’t go far. Keep the Blade and the Key close. And try to remember we’re on your side.”
THURLOCK’S LAST instructions sounded an awful lot like warnings. After the timely reminder of who he was and what was at stake should he drop the ball, and after so much had happened over the last few days, Lucky knew he’d better take any warning from the likes of Thurlock seriously. Yet he did feel curiously footloose, given no tasks and no hovering sup
ervisor. As if his mentors, who were also his only real family, had given him a gift—a brief time in which he could find a way to lighten his heart. If the day had been dark and stormy, he might have been more apprehensive. As it was he left the stables with the sun sneaking through the pines at his back, a horse he truly liked under him, and about three hours to fill however he wished.
With no clear idea of what he wanted to do with his time, he wandered near the kitchen garden, dismounted, and dropped Zefrehl’s reins to the ground—which she’d been trained to treat as if she was tethered—and invaded. He picked himself a few handfuls of strawberries, enjoying both the activity and the berries quite a lot. Still, when Zef’s low whinny alerted him to one of the gardening staff standing at the end of the row with his hands indignantly on his hips, he decided he’d eaten his fill.
After that, for some reason he didn’t even try to explain to himself, he decided to visit his room in the manor house—the place where truly bad things had happened to him in his sleep. The place Thurlock didn’t want him to stay. Why was he going there? Maybe he just wanted to see if he was brave enough. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but as it happened he never did find out whether he was up to the challenge.
He left Zef in the small yard off his room’s private veranda—where he well knew she might indulge in a few flowers as a snack—and tried the outside door. It was locked. He walked around to the nearest of the manor’s many side entrances and made his way through the halls to his room’s inside door. It was also locked. He’d never tried to pick a lock, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t do it now. He was contemplating asking the Key of Behliseth to help him with a Wish, but when he took hold of the Key with one hand and the lock with the other, the Key went cold and an icicle stabbed straight into the middle of his chest.
