Chapter Eleven
Arana Nezra the Second lies supine on the floor of his private terrace, arms and legs outstretched, staring listlessly at the billowing white mountains that pass above the joists of the wood beam awning. He has grown weary of watching the horizon for his searchers to return—no news arrives and day after day they do not appear.
He recalls dreamily the feelings of astral invincibility that his father instilled upon his young mind, and he reaches into his inner abyss and attempts again to conjure them, to call forth the powers he has been told since birth he possesses, and he cannot feel even a wisp of them. Prior to the intrusion five days ago he had thought that his very presence acted as deterrent enough, a stopgap against further violation, but he knows now that is not true, and he wonders what he is, far within, if he cannot make a weak man tell secrets merely by intentioning it, or control the fate of a people with the will of his own heart.
Keslin clambers unannounced up the terrace stairs, straining for breath as he reaches the top. He looks amusedly at Arana, flat on his back. There is a metal serving platter laid with pitchers of water and wine and Keslin pours a bit of each into his mug and falls back on the padded bench, looking contented.
“Anything?” Arana asks.
“Nothing yet. Give it time. He’ll talk.” Keslin swigs from his mug and throws his arm over the backrest and reclines his head like a leisure traveler who’s found the perfect spot.
“And if he doesn’t?” Arana sits up and faces him. “What if these two were just scouts clearing the way for a larger attack?”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
“We’d be slaughtered!”
“I hardly think so.”
“They’ve… they’ve done something to me, Keslin.”
“Oh?”
“Worked some force over me… a curse.”
Keslin smiles. “What kind of curse, Arana?”
“My gift… they’ve ruined it.”
“This is why your powers have failed?”
“It must be.”
“And you’ve felt them previously… these powers?”
“I—I always thought they would come… I’ve been told my whole life…”
“You’ve protected us with your powers, with your gift from the Beyond, this is what you think?”
“Yes,” he says sharply. “Don’t you?”
Keslin sighs out a long exhalation and smoothes his hands along his thighs and rises. He comes around the low table to Arana and places a roughened hand on his shoulders. “You’re on in years, Arana. You’re not a child anymore. How have you gone all this time and not realized the truth about yourself?”
“What does that mean? What truth about myself?”
“You do not have powers, Arana. You are not a gift, not from the Beyond or anywhere else.”
“You lie.”
“I’m the only one who’s ever told you the truth.”
“My eyes, Keslin. You can’t explain my eyes.”
“The prophet that you’re so fascinated with, he called your eyes a fluke, I believe that’s how he put it. The trait was once common, he said.”
“He told you this? A fluke?”
“He did. A trait mostly gone, he said, but not entirely by the looks of it. Stronger traits overtook it. Just before he left us, he told me these things. But I think I knew it already.”
“Stronger traits?” Arana clasps his hand over his mouth and stinging tears well in the corners of his contentious blue eyes.
“It’s true. I’m sorry. You are a man, Arana. Nothing more.”
“No.”
“Then conjure magic. Possess me with your mind control.”
“It can’t be,” Arana says. “My father—”
“Your father has done you wrong, I fear.”
“He loved me…”
“I’m not saying he didn’t. He loved you deeply, more than anything. And he didn’t lie—he believed. Until the day he died he believed, and so does your family. I think you know I’m right on this. I’m surprised you’re only now questioning yourself.”
“It’s a curse.”
Keslin places his hands on him and whispers softly and with great sincerity. “It’s not a curse. You do not have powers. But it’s going to be all right. There are other ways,” he says, a broad smile spreading across his craggy face. “We do not need magic. I know far more effective methods.”
Balazir’s brisk gait carries them southward, his sturdy hooves kicking up clods of mud as he trots through the soggy woodlands. Lia wraps her arms around Jack’s waist and the two of them pulse with the rhythm of the horse’s stride, checking constantly over their shoulders for any sign of their pursuers.
“That was lucky,” Lia says flatly.
“What?”
“Finding those people like that. They would’ve gotten us if we hadn’t found them.”
“I know.”
“What if it’s gone?”
“Huh?”
“Our luck. What if it’s gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jack, they’re still out there. And what if they send more?”
“Just keep watching.”
“I am… but there’s more out here than just them.”
“I know. Don’t let it get to you.”
“Okay, it’s just… we’ve got so far to go. Are you sure the map’s right?”
“It hasn’t been wrong yet.”
Lia takes it out and unrolls it. She furrows her brow and looks at the map, and then at the terrain. She doesn’t even know where they are, it all looks the same, and she worries that Jack is only guessing when he shows her their progress.
“Jack…”
“Yes?”
“If we don’t make it…”
“We’re going to be fine, Lia.”
He speaks it so sincerely that she wants to believe him, but she knows his subtle ways and she can hear the hint of uncertainty in his voice.
“I knew you’d come for me,” she says. Her breath tickles the back of his neck when she speaks.
“We should have left when they first stole us.”
“They would have killed us for sure. We were so small then, Jack.”
“I don’t like it that you had to go through any of that. It never should have happened, anyway. We should have… I don’t know… but we should have done something.”
“There was nothing you could have done. I thought they’d kill us the night we ran. I was almost sure we’d die, Jack, but I still wanted to go. We made it further than I ever thought we could, and if this is it…”
“Lia, it’s okay.”
“If these are the last days we’ll spend together… I’m okay with that, and you shouldn’t blame yourself if anything happens. I know how you are sometimes. I want to be here, and I wouldn’t ever give this up for anything.”
Jack feels one of her hot tears drop on the back of his shirt and soak through.
“Me either,” he says.
He guides them to a languid creek and Balazir dips his head and drinks. They fill their waterskin and set out rations from the food Sajiress gifted them. Lia pulls her oversized boots off and sits on a rock and soaks her sore feet in the cool water, and Jack makes a visor of his hand and looks back over the ground they’ve just covered.
“Where are you, Halis?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” Even with a good horse, the two of them in this enormous landscape leaves a small and helpless feeling in the back of his mind, and between the reassurances he gives Lia he has to fight off his own growing sense of doom. “Let’s go. We can eat while we ride.”
Lia pets Balazir’s long face and kisses his cheek, then hooks her foot in the stirrup and swings herself up behind Jack and they surge forward.
The narrow cut on Balazir’s hindquarters has been drawing flies all day and he swats constantly at them with his tail. Lia covers the wound up as best she can with a scrap of cloth that refuses to stay put. As she fusses with it again, Balazir swishes his tail around and lashes her across the face, and she yelps and gives him a playful slap on his hind and he bursts into a gallop that catches Jack off guard.
“What are you doing back there?”
“Nothing.” She stifles a laugh, then jerks her head around to make sure nothing is following them, recalling harshly the last time they let their guard down. “How’s your chest?”
“Itchy. Your shoulder?”
“It’s okay.”
The sun finally manages to poke through the simmering gray mantle that stretches to the furthest horizons, and the yellow light shines down in distinct angled rays that spotlight the far off hills with patches of glowing brilliance. They emerge into an open meadow and Jack gives Balazir a sharp, quick heel-spur. Lia braces her arms tighter around his waist and they rumble across the rolling country with the damp wind buffeting against their faces.
“He’s fast.”
“He’s one of the best.”
They barrel south along the coast for most of the afternoon, watching the scenery glide by and feeling more thankful than ever that they aren’t hiking the distance on foot. Balazir is quick to respond to the lightest of touch and he runs more powerful than Jack could have hoped. Lia keeps vigil, and out of the corner of her eye, blurry in the distance, she sees a glint of something shiny. It flashes just for a moment, in a random beam of sunshine, and is gone before she’s even sure it was there at all.
“Jack…”
“Yeah?”
“I think I saw something.”
He slows and trots to the side. “Where?”
“Over there, on top of that hill.”
He squints and peers off. All looks peaceful and still, save for the darkening skies, which stir with the threat of more thunderstorms. “What did you see?”
“Something shiny, I don’t know.”
He surveys the entire ridge with slack eyes, then pulls Balazir to the left and sets him running again. Nature gives way to more man-made rubble and they meander through the relics of old homesteads and residential streets. Most are piles of compost, but some of the larger manors were poured in stone and still stand against the onslaught of years, gothic looking in the midst of thorny vines and lazily sagging boughs. The stone looks old, yet unwizened by fire and heat, and Jack and Lia are absorbed by some of the most intact sites they’ve ever happened upon.
“It almost looks pretty,” she says in wonderment.
Jack keeps quiet and looks into the darkened recesses and collapsed living rooms, leery of the abundance of hiding places the neighborhood affords. They round a bend and saunter down a main street, structures leaning on either side of them.
“People have been here,” he says, “recently…” He points off to a row of buildings where the brush and vines have been pulled clear, leaving behind a tarnished and veiny silhouette. Footpaths are worn down through the undergrowth and a few stone pits bear the mark of recent fire. “Don’t seem to be here now, though.”
In the center of a jumbled, overgrown roundabout stands a thickset stone building, official looking, with columns and a stately entrance that spills down into the verdant, once-groomed circular park that surrounds it. One entire facade, running the length of the building’s side, has been cleared of all vegetation and words have been painted crazily, with curlicues and flourishes and letters that stand as tall as a man. Time Gets Everything, it says.
“What is this?” Jack says, and ambles closer to investigate.
Lia’s hands seize around his midsection. “What if they’re still in here? What if they’re not friendly?”
“I think… I think everyone is gone.”
He rides a slow circuit around the quaint and decaying municipal building, and they see everywhere the evidence of recent human handiwork. Clutter is cleared away and arranged in neat piles, abandoned ruins are shored up and fortified with scrap metal and hewn lumber, and in a secluded arbor in back there are the makings of a small garden. The ground was cleared and the earth turned, but the effort looks to have been forsaken, for already the weeds and bracken have begun their steady reclamation of the land.
Lia gasps. “Look.”
He sees it too and starts for his bow, then stops himself. Embedded before them in small mounds of stone are several upright poles, fastened with crosspieces that form makeshift arms, and the whole constructions are covered with tattered hides, with rotten bulbous heads fastened crooked on top.
“Do you think Sajiress did this?”
“I don’t think so,” says Jack. “It's in our words. Some group, though… wanderers, maybe.”
“I don’t like this,” she says, and moves closer.
They ride a wide path around the clan of cadaverous scarecrows and wind their way through the central district, past more hopelessly wasted residences and grassy side streets.
“Why would they all just leave?” he wonders aloud.
“Maybe they didn’t. Maybe they’re hiding… watching us.”
Jack looks at her apprehensively and quickens Balazir’s gait.
“I mean… a long time ago,” he says, “in the old days. This is all just falling apart, like everything else. It wasn’t burned, not recent, not ever, from the looks of it. It looks like all the people just left, went away, but why?”
“Olen said the sickness got everybody that didn’t burn. Maybe they all got sick and died.”
“Maybe.” It’s the likeliest explanation, but Jack still feels an odd pit in his stomach as they ride through the last of the ruins.
“It’s gone, though,” she says, “all the sickness.”
“Supposed to be.”
“If we’re alive today, that means it can’t kill us.”
“That’s what they say.”
“It must have been scary.”
Jack nods. He knows how scary sickness can be, they both do. He imagines whole families stricken down like his father, entire communities obliterated by some unseen predator, carting their diseased and dead away for shoddy funerals in mass graves. The neighborhood no longer feels empty, but possessed of forlorn revenants, lingering on through the centuries and seeping into the stone and earth like mold.
He tugs the reins and guides Balazir to a route that leads up a small hill, an old road by the looks. They clop over a slab of asphalt and pick their way carefully to the top, avoiding the sunken ditches that rainwater has dug. When they reach an open stretch, Lia hands Jack the waterskin and some dried berries.
“You know,” he says, chewing, “I think I met their children.”
“Who?”
“Sajiress. At the Temple… a while back, half year or more. I met two boys that talked like that.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
“I guess I was afraid he would—if he knew they were alive—I think he’d go straight there and try to get them. They’d all be killed if they even got close to the Temple.”
“Yeah, probably… but still, I’d want to know if my children were alive.”
They leave the topic unsettled and push ahead in silence. A drop of wetness lands on the back of Lia’s hand and she looks skyward.
“Oh no… it’s raining again.”
“How far are we going to follow them?” Cirune says, leering at Halis. Trickles of blood crawl down his left leg and pool in his boot.
Halis shimmies up the tilted piece of roadway on his hands and knees and trains the scope on the tiny horseback forms receding over the next hilltop. “Far as we have to,” he says finally.
“Cause we could get the lead on them. It’s a straight shot down the old road. I know a place up ahead where I think we could take them.”
“What if we miss?”
“What if they slip away? I’m cut up, so are the horses. We need to hurry up and get back.
Halis halts and squares himself off. “You can ride back if you want. I’m going to find out where they’re heading. You think it’s chance the two of them run the same night we caught those men looking in on us? They’re together. This boy could have been helping those two all along, for years they could have been planning this. If you want to walk away, then go. I won’t stop you. You can tell Keslin you’ve failed. I won’t fail.”
Cirune watches him ride off, then spits and kicks his horse to catch up.
The old pass sidewinds inland for a stretch and they follow it, more or less, cutting off through the woods occasionally and scanning the path behind them. They’ve seen nothing all day, save for the slight glint that caught Lia’s eye earlier, and Jack allows himself a thin sliver of optimism.
The rain falls haphazardly from indecisive thunderheads, drenching them one moment and then ceasing completely. Lia holds her little fur over their heads like a canopy whenever it pours down, though it does little to keep them dry. They haven’t seen the sun since afternoon, but it must hang low in the west and night will come early with the dense, overcast skies drowning out the dusk. Jack veers off course and takes Balazir in search of a bit of water.
“You should teach me how to ride him,” Lia says as she hops down.
“I think so, too.” He drops to the ground and leads Balazir the rest of the way down the ravine. “He’s a good one to learn on.”
Lia kneels down and splashes water on her face and neck to revive herself. She’d been dozing off to the gentle cadence of the horse’s steps, falling asleep hunched over behind Jack with her head resting on his back. A couple times she awoke to find drool running out the corner of her mouth and felt bad that he was too sweet to wake her and mention it. She wets her hands and runs them through her already damp hair and tousles it about and ties it back, and when she rises a glimpse of motion straight ahead startles her speechless and a lump catches in her throat.
“Some of the horses are touchy, sort of, and you never quite know what they’re going to do, but—”
“People,” she wheezes.
He looks up and sees the two watchers. Only their wide eyes are visible as they crouch behind a fallen, moss-covered tree trunk and stare earnestly from the far side of the stream. A boy and girl about their age, from what little they see. They look neither frightened nor aggressive, but Jack slides his hand along the saddle and grips his bow and teases an arrow out from his satchel just the same. Slowly and innocently the girl stands, and she wears not a stitch of clothing. Jack blushes at her nakedness and Lia watches dumbstruck. The boy kneeling beside her tries to pull her back, but she steps out and raises her hand and waves. Lia flicks a glance toward Jack, slack-jawed by Balazir, then raises her own hand and waves back.
“Hi,” says the girl.
The boy whispers urgently, then fastens a length of cloth around his waist and rises. He hands the girl a rolled up skin of some sort and she holds it limply at her side.
Lia looks at Jack again.
“Hello,” he says, tightening on the bow.
“What are you doing out here?” the girl asks, almost laughing.
“We’re just… going through. We’re leaving now. Okay?”
She eyes him in a fetching manner he’s not quite used to, and he feels almost naked himself under the odd scrutiny.
“I’m Kas,” she says, “and this is Jinn.”
Jinn watches expectantly, keen on the weapon he holds.
“I’m Jack…”
“Lia.”
“Are you hunters?” Jinn asks, and nods toward the bow.
“Yeah… yes.”
“Do you live near here?”
“No… we’re going south. We just stopped to drink. And rest.”
For several moments they stand on opposite sides of the stream and regard each other curiously.
“Are you bleeding?” Kas asks, seeing the deep red stains on their clothing and the sorry bandages they wear.
“We were,” says Jack.
“What kind of hunting are you doing out here?”
“It was a lion. We got attacked.”
Kas splashes across the stream and comes right up to them. “It looks bad,” she says, inspecting them. “Are you two out here alone?”
Suspicion bites them and they offer no answer.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m not going to attack you. You have the weapons.”
She raises up her hands and displays her nude form. What had looked like streaks of dirt from a distance now appear as ornate designs, painted on finely, strange totems and vines of fire snaking around her limbs and torso. Her hair hangs in knotted, tangled strands. She unfurls the bundle in her arms and slips the tanned leather dress over her head and pulls it down taut.
“You should take care of this,” she says, touching Jack’s bandage.
“We’re okay. We just needed to stop and rest, we didn’t want to trouble you.”
“It’s no trouble.”
Jinn plods across the stream and joins them. “Where are you from? You must have a home somewhere.”
“It’s kind of hard to tell. We left our home.”
“Ah. You’re going south?”
“Yes. For now.”
“To where? What’s in the south?”
“Don’t know. We’re looking for… someplace new.”
“There’s something down there,” Jinn speculates. “We just met people from the south.”
“It must be nice,” says Kas, “wherever they came from.”
“Who did you meet?” asks Lia.
“Renny, I think. One was called Renny. And the old man was…” She pauses and looks to Jinn. “What was the old man?”
“Ethan?” says Jack.
“You know them?” Kas asks, incredulous.
“Yes,” he says, “yes, Ethan, we met Ethan.” A thousand questions flood into his mind. “When were they here?”
“Two months? Three?”
“Do you two live out here in the woods?” Lia asks.
Kas laughs. “No, we live up there now.” She nods toward an obscured structure atop a high knoll. “You should come with us. We can take care of these bites.”
“Yeah,” says Jinn, warming to them a bit. “There’s a storm coming. You should stay.”
Jack and Lia find stupefied agreement in each other’s eyes and consent to follow the two young strangers to their home. They lead the horse along and ascend to the derelict mansion that rests on the hilltop. Lightning plays in the distance, throwing the structure into harsh silhouette, and a dull rumble shakes the ground under their feet. Balazir spooks and neighs uneasily.
They leave the overrun path and step onto a stone walkway, freshly cleared of debris, which leads to an enclosure surrounding the main house. Enchanting voices drift along an eddy of wind that swirls around the courtyard, making their source hard to discern. They seem to be emanating from directly behind them, almost inside their heads, and yet a subtle shift of the wind carries them off distant and woeful, like invisible voices sounding from minute fluctuations in the natural atmosphere.
A tent city stands behind the mansion and the thatching and hide covers flap around in the growing turbulence. Several bodies move back and forth, carrying their provisions inside to keep them out of the coming gale.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Not long,” Jinn says.
Segments of fallen columns are arranged in a perfect circle in the courtyard. Situated at the center is an odd sculpture of rusted scraps—a mechanical man standing brutally atop a pile of other figures, wretched and twisted—overlooking the gray valley. The parts of his body are cobbled from found objects and pieces of old machinery, and he wears patches of sod for hair atop his rusted, canister head. The mechanical man watches them with jagged, sprocket eyes. They skirt around the display and continue toward the gathering of tents.
“We don’t stay anywhere for too long.”
“Why not?”
“We just don’t.”
They reach the outer circumference of the tented settlement and two of their fellows come up to meet them. They wear markings on their barely-clothed bodies as well, and they smile crookedly at the visitors.
“Look what we found,” Kas chirps.
“Hello,” they call.
“They know Renny and…”
“Ethan.”
“Ohhh. Welcome.”
“This is Tryna and Hilen,” she says, “and here is Lia… and this is Jack.” She touches his shoulder when she says his name and her fingers trail lightly down his arm and play at his wrist. “Let’s get inside.” She pulls them along a crumbling veranda to the mansion’s misshapen entryway.
“Is there someplace dry I can tie him up?” Jack asks, twirling Balazir’s lead in his hands.
“Yes. In here.”
“You want us to bring him inside?”
“You don’t want to leave him out here, do you?”
He shrugs and follows her across the threshold and hitches Balazir to a pillar that separates the front room, facing the courtyard, from a longer chamber that stretches off into darkness. The floor collects a few random pools of rainwater from slinky leaks streaming down the walls and a small collection of goats stretch out their leashes to take sips of it.
“Sit down,” says Kas, “let’s get warm.”
Three small fires burn in a tight formation, their smoke wafting up through cracks and openings in the dilapidated ceiling. In the center of these pyres the strange chanteuses sing a wordless, syncopated aria. Their voices resound like some kind of primal howling, elusive at close range, and their divergent voices suddenly coalesce into one, indistinguishable from each other and beautifully disorienting. The small audience is so enraptured they barely take notice of the two new faces in their midst, let alone the fully-grown horse tied up in the corner.
By and by their chill wears off and the odd performance reaches its conclusion, and after their final cry the painted divas leap over the fire and run out into the screaming thunderstorm. Lia scrunches her face and watches them go.
“What was that?”
“Don’t you have singing?” Kas asks. “Ah! Wait here.” She jumps up and runs off.
Jinn sits back and studies his guests. “So… you said you left your home?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Don’t you have a family?” Tryna asks.
“Not really. Not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“We should… we probably should have told earlier, we’re sort of running from someplace.”
“You left your family?”
“Our families were killed,” Lia says matter-of-factly. “We were stolen by the people that killed them.”
“Ah…” says Jinn, and the weight of her words sinks in slowly. He inhales and struggles to form a response just as Kas returns with a basket of fruit and a bowl of goat’s milk.
“You two must be hungry.” She hands out apples and berries, and passes the bowl around.
“Thank you,” says Jack, taking a gulp of the warm milk.
“Kas, they’re running… from people who killed their family.”
“Who?”
“They’re called Nezra,” says Jack, and begins to recount the details. As their story unfolds a gathering crowds around and listens. They tell again about their burned village, their murdered parents, and the bizarre clan that whisked them away and molded them to their liking. In a world such as this, Jack figures such tales of harsh cruelty would be commonplace, but as he looks at their confused faces he remembers his own simple childhood naiveté.
“That’s how we met Ethan,” says Lia, taking over where Jack left off. “The night we ran, they caught them just outside the Temple. We found Ethan hiding from them… and he gave us this.” She draws out the map and unrolls it on the ground, then turns it over and displays the stark message scrawled on back.
“They’re dead?” Jinn asks, mystified.
“Most likely.”
“These… Nezra… what makes them so mean?”
“They’re not all mean, most of them were… normal.”
Jinn wrenches his head at an angle. “I don’t understand.”
“We don’t either,” says Jack. “But they are looking for us, and they’ll come this way sooner or later. It’s not safe for you to stay here anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because if they find you, they’ll kill you and burn everything.”
“But we never hurt them.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Kas purses her lips. “So we have to leave?”
“Yes. And soon. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter that we’ve been here, they would find you anyway. They scout along the whole coast and all through the forest. I don’t know how many homes and people they’ve destroyed, but it’s many.”
“Where should we go?”
“As far away as you can. Get away from the coast, and don’t go north.”
They are encircled by the youth of the settlement, and he lets his words rest on them. Their eyes are glassy and dilated, and even though they are enthralled by Jack’s telling it seems they do not respect the weight of it, as if it were just an extension of their amusement, a bit of storytime following the musical performance. The older relations stand in the shadows with hard-set faces, unconflicted about the authenticity of the tale they have just heard.
“Have you been followed?” an old woman’s voice sounds out from the dark gallery.
“I don’t know,” says Jack with a pang of guilt.
“We thank you for the warning,” says the aged matriarch, stepping toward the fire ring. Hard lines crease her brow and a long braid winds around the dark cloak she wears. “But I’m afraid I must ask that you not stay here tonight.”
“That’s fine,” says Jack.
Kas erupts. “No—it’s not fine. It’s raining terrible, you can’t send them out in that.”
“I’m sorry for them, but they can’t bring this to us. We won’t allow it.”
“They didn’t. Don’t you listen? They’re trying to help, you want to send them out to get killed?”
“Stop it, Kas. Don’t talk like that.”
“Killed!” she screams. “Killed killed killed!”
“Kas,” the old woman warns.
“We’re not stupid.” She heaves and sways unsteadily, her cheeks flaming with anger. “What are we running from? Ah? You don’t tell us anything, why are we running?” She spits the words out staccato and the whole room watches her outburst.
“This is not the time, Kas. They can stay the night, but they leave at sunrise.”
Kas makes no comment, but relaxes her posture and relents.
“We should go,” Lia says meekly.
“No. You’re staying,” says Kas. Sportive grins break out on the faces of the young flock. “I’m sorry. They mean good, but I know they lie.”
The matriarch watches them heedfully before retiring to the recesses of the mansion. The rest of the adults finish milling around and storing things away, then begin to wander off and disappear down the bleak corridors.
“We said we’d care for these cuts,” says Jinn, breaking the weird tension. “Let me get some things.”
His friend Hilen rises and they go together, whispering and laughing as they fetch supplies from a tent on the near side of the veranda.
“You said you’re running?” Lia asks. “What did you mean?”
“I wish I knew.”
“We never stop moving,” says Tryna. “Since I can remember, we never stay anywhere for long.”
“How do you know you’re running? Lots of people wander.”
“I just know,” says Kas. “They never tell us anything bad. Ever. You’ve seen a lot of bad things, haven’t you?”
Jack and Lia nod.
“We see it,” says Tryna, “we see things when we travel… and I always thought they… they soften everything. There’s more they don’t tell us.”
“Where did you start from,” asks Jack. “Do you remember?”
“Not really. Somewhere way east. My whole life we’ve been moving west, and looking everywhere up and down along the way. It’s supposed to be better here. At least they want us to think that.”
“It’s bad out east?”
“It must be. Most of us are too young to remember, and the older ones don’t talk about it.”
Jinn carries in a bowl of water and a leather flask, Hilen holds a little clay pot and strips of rough-woven cloth.
“It’s not much, but it might help. Take these off,” says Jinn, motioning to their soiled bandages.
They start peeling. The crusted wrappings pull at their scabs and draw fresh spots of blood, and besides the bites and cuts they are covered with a range of welts and bruises. Jinn and Kas clean them with soaked rags until the water in the bowl is opaque with crimson.
“How long were Ethan and Renning here?” asks Jack, wincing as Jinn douses his chest with stinging liquid.
“A few days.”
“Did they say where they were from?”
“Somewhere south, that’s all. They showed us things, they asked a lot of questions, wanted to hear where we came from, where we’re going. We didn’t have much to tell them.”
“What did they show you?”
“How to do this,” says Kas, smearing honey from the clay pot over their raw wounds. “It stops you getting sick.”
“They asked if we can plant things,” Tryna adds. “They told us to go east to the valley, but the silent ones don’t trust them.”
“That writing,” says Kas, tapping the pack where they keep the map, “it said something else. Nezra knows… something…”
“Alexandria,” says Lia. “We don’t know what it means.”
“Is it someone’s name?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s a place,” says Jack.
“That’s where you’re going!” Kas sits forward. “What kind of place is it?”
Jack shrugs. “It’s supposed to have answers.”
“To what questions?”
“We’ve heard stories about it, but that’s all.”
“Stories! Do you even know if they’re true?”
“Not really.”
Kas throws her head back and laughs. “Well, I hope you find it.” She and Jinn finish their work and bandage Jack and Lia up with the course fabric, tying off the loose ends. “Here,” says Kas, handing over the leather flask to Jack. “Drink this.”
“What is it?”
“It’s good.”
He drinks the reddish amber liquor and nearly chokes, a tingling hotness spreading down his windpipe. Kas takes it and passes it to Lia.
“Drink,” she says, and Lia does, gasping and fanning her face with her hands.
Jack takes a few apples and wanders over to lonesome Balazir and feeds him one at a time. He crunches sloppily through them and nuzzles against Jack’s honey-reeking chest, and Jinn brings over the supplies to treat his arrow-shot behind.
Kas rummages along a sagging wall for a length of dry wood and twists the rest of the fabric around one end, then wets it with the liquor and touches it to the dwindling flames. Holding her makeshift torch she beckons them forward.
“Come on,” she says, “we have things to show you.”
“You’re crazy,” Cirune says, shaking and drenched in the unabating rainstorm. “We should have took them this afternoon.”
Halis stares at him coldly.
They nest in a cluster of trees, downhill from the arcane mansion, their horses hitched and miserable. Cirune slackens the tourniquet twisted around his thigh and casts it away, then peels back the saturated wrappings and feels gently along the open gash on his leg. His fingertips are coated with fresh smears of blood and heavy raindrops wash them away almost instantly.
“This is stupid. They’re just roaming around, they’re not going anywhere.”
“They are.”
“I shouldn’t have listened to you. We can’t go much farther like this.”
“Get some sleep.”
“How am I going to sleep in this?”
“Then don’t sleep,” Halis barks, “but shut your mouth up.”
“Crazy. They should never have put you on this brigade. Should’ve known you can’t handle it—you’re wasted in the head, you know that?”
“I said shut your mouth.”
Cirune limps a pace toward Halis. “Our orders are to kill the boy and take the girl, not follow them around for days because you have a feeling.”
“Turn back then, coward. I don’t need you here.”
“Coward? I’m not the one who’s afraid to go get them.” Cirune clumps forward and stands with his arms folded, surmising Halis from close vantage. “What happened to your face?”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t stop talking.”
“You’ll do no such thing so don’t threaten it. I know your problem—you fear the boy. You’re scared he’ll kill you like he did your brother, or tear off the other half of your ugly face.”
Halis charges forward and punches Cirune in the jaw, and Cirune comes right back with a sharp uppercut that sends Halis stumbling backwards.
“A little boy crushed your face and you fear to see him again. A little boy, Halis, and you call me the coward. If you can’t beat a boy then you can’t beat me and you’d better not try it again.”
Halis kicks their gear and sends it flying, then throws his head back and screams until every last bit of air is evacuated from his lungs, doubling over and shaking on the ground. Cirune watches in disgust. Out in this dismal environ, soaked to the bone, shot in the leg and stationed with a lunatic. He’ll ride on them tomorrow, he decides, and with all the strength he has left, with or without Halis.
A wretched cry rattles between thunderclaps and dissipates into the surging racket. They stop in the center of the leaking gallery and listen to it fade away.
“Coyote?” asks Lia.
A twitching strobe of lighting strikes nearby, illuminating their faces with blue-white clarity, and the crash that accompanies it shakes the stone floor under their feet, setting the whole mansion alive with creaks and groans. Jack glances up at the high ceiling, swathed over with wisps of cobweb and fungal discolorations, afraid some loose tiles or joists will break loose and crash down. He and Lia step over fallen shards and moldering woodwork and look at the vague designs still showing through on the wall, baroque and complicated. Gilded portrait frames, tilting like parallelograms, the canvases long-since eaten away, spindly columns and wasted furniture, overturned tables with bent metal legs, cracked marble tops. Kas lights a newly swept area where crystal vases and cups are arranged in lines, cleaned and polished, encircled by an odd collection of tarnished silverware and broken ceramic figurines, their rosy smiles fractured and flaking away from protracted neglect. She moves ahead with the torch and the others crowd close behind.
They jag through a short hallway and emerge in a candlelit foyer, vacant of debris, with the front entrance and broad windows covered over with leafy branches and warped planks. No furniture, no rats nests, no salvaged heirlooms. Empty, save for the seven unmoving figures arranged in an arc. In the dimness they appear as sculptures, as if constructed from found objects like the centerpiece in the courtyard. Kas walks around front of them and lights them aglow and still they look carved or cast somehow, delicately whittled for long years by ascetic craftsmen. Their faces bear the deep character of age—thin lips, concave eyes, gray hair touching the floor, and they wear their loose clothing in disordered fashion, slipping and falling off their frail, bony shoulders. They look like they’ve been sitting in this arrangement for Ages, at least since this rotting mansion was first deserted centuries ago during the long lost years of history.
“Did you find them here?” Jack whispers.
“No.” Kas looks at him sideways. “They’re family. We brought them.”
“Oh.”
A few have their eyes closed in repose, and some stare straight forward with unwavering eyeballs that do not flinch or dart when Kas and her small band pass by.
“They don’t talk,” says Jinn. “Not for years.”
“Did something happen to them?” asks Lia.
“I think a lot happened to them,” says Kas. “Our parents won’t tell us and they don’t tell anything, not even hello. Ever. But we followed them west. They led us.”
“They walk?”
“Ah yes, they walk. They’ll lead us away from here, too. And soon, I guess… if what you say is true. That there are people coming here that will kill us.”
“How do they know where they’re going?”
Kas just shakes her head. “I don’t even ask anymore. Come on,” she says, pivoting around and heading off in another direction. “We shouldn’t really be in here, I just wanted you to see.”
She leads them down another leaking corridor, stained olive-green with mold, and they enter a different wing. A chandelier lay bent and twisted in the center of the chamber and dark shapes hustle into the shadows as they enter. A bolt of lighting flashes blinding light across the walls, illuminating the imagery painted from floor to ceiling—sparse curved lines, abstract and indiscernible. Another flickering strobe bursts outside and the images reveal themselves with abrupt clarity—tangled human figures, naked and writhing, their enigmatic expressions showing either twisted pleasure or horrifying pain, perhaps both at once. Jack shirks back from the walls, fearing that the thin-lined faces are watching him somehow.
Kas sits on the remaining lower steps of a collapsed staircase and warms her hands together. Roaring wind rattles the gray wooden planks covering the doors and windows and an icy chill swirls around them. The storm is worsening, rain coming down in silver sheets.
“So, this is what we think,” she says, and she flashes her eyes toward Jinn, Hilen and Tryna. “Our group used to be very big, and there were more people.”
“A lot of families, living together,” says Tryna. “East.”
“Ah yeah, somewhere east, they say.”
“They talk about what they had. What they had… like it was good, like they didn’t want to leave it.”
“But they had to because of something—”
“Something went wrong.”
“What?” asks Lia.
“I think maybe they had a fight,” says Kas. “A fight they couldn’t make up from, and so we left. I think the rest of our family is still living out there somewhere.”
“Mmm,” says Hilen, “this is what you want to think. Probably nothing is out there. Probably they are all dead.”
“Yeah,” says Tryna, “I think that’s right. Dead. And from something… terrible.”
“It must’ve been if it made them never talk again,” Jack marvels.
“Sickness?”
“Maybe sickness. Or something like happened to you two,” Hilen says. “Maybe they had found a good place, and other people decided they would take it from them. That’s what happens, isn’t it?” He looks at Jack. “Isn’t it?”
“I… it happens. Yes.”
“Yes,” Hilen repeats, feeling vindicated of his theories.
“Whatever it is, it’s gone. If it was good, it doesn’t matter, because we never knew it,” Jinn says despondently. “And we just walk. One place to another. We always move. We don’t settle.”
“We don’t get attached.”
“Hold nothing, they say.”
“Ah yeah. Hold nothing with you.”
“When we got out here, close to the water, I think they were hoping for… hoping to find what they lost. Another good place,” Kas explains. “And they haven’t found it and now they’re sad all the time and they pretend not to be, and they don’t want to tell us why because they don’t want to scare us. But I can tell. Like I said, they mean good.”
The others nod in agreement.
The strange liquors they drank seem to amplify every sorrowful statement and Jack feels a comfort of sorts—relief to know they are not alone in running. He reaches an arm out for Lia and she folds herself into his side. Kas watches, and Jack watches her watch.
“You are lovers,” she says. Jack’s face flushes with hot embarrassment and he says nothing. “Were you told to be together?”
“No. No one told us,” says Lia, thinking back on the arranged Temple life that was almost her destiny. “Why? Do they tell you?”
“Yes,” Kas says simply. “In a way. They tell us who we can mate with. We have to keep the blood mixed around.”
“What blood?”
“Family blood.”
“Why?”
“Or else it goes sour,” says Jinn, “and the children don’t grow right.”
“Oh.”
“Of course,” says Kas, her gaze touching back on Jack, “new blood would fix that.” He gets that hot feeling again, like his ears are on fire. He’s not well acquainted with the business of childbearing, but he knows what she is driving at. Jinn watches dully, not seeming to mind her advances in the least. “Do you have children together?”
“Huh? No,” says Jack. “We… we don’t.”
Lia looks up at him glassily, then rolls her eyes toward Kas.
“That’s sad,” says Kas, “you’d have pretty children.”
“Thank you,” Lia says firmly.
“Mmm,” she says, and the moment stretches out clumsily.
“Are you tired?” Tryna asks, saving them. “We can go back, if you want.”
“Yeah, we should sleep. We have to leave early.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. We should leave before dawn anyway.”
They wander back the way they came and Jinn and Hilen prop up a little tent and gather some furs.
“You can use this,” Hilen says. “Do you need anything else?”
“Thank you, no, this is good. Everything is very kind.”
“Good,” says Kas. “And if it storms tomorrow, you can stay here if you want, I don’t care what they say.”
“We’ll be fine.”
Outside the wind screeches and drives hard rain onto the veranda. They climb into their tent in the corner of the front chamber and huddle together.
“They’re nice,” Lia says, “but they’re so strange.”
She curls against him, shivering, and he wraps his arms around her. As he lies there, the tent and the whole world beyond it seem to swirl around him, pulsating to the beat of his own heart, and just as he starts to fall backwards into a dizzying sleep, Lia speaks.
“You think it’s true, don’t you? I mean, I know there’s something there, but… do you really think it’s that place you heard stories about?”
“Hunh?”
“Alexandria.”
“Yes. I do.”
“Me too.”