Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (34 page)

Lizneth stopped breathing. She sank to her haunches, head
spinning. A mewling moan escaped her lips without her permission. She couldn’t
stop what came next, and before she knew it she was weeping.
Some grown-up
you turned out to be
, she chided herself.

“What’s her problem?” she heard Krinica ask.

“Get up,
zibzhe
,” said Barlyza.

Stevrin shook his head. “
Dugh vilck ru lahmed
…”

The two young does scented the air, then set their cart
handles on the ground and came over.

“This village has nothing left,” Stevrin said. “It’s not even
a place where
zhehn
live anymore.”

“It has a river,” Krinica said. “Where there’s a river, there
will always be river-scum and fisherfolk living nearby.”

“It’s better this way, if you want my opinion,” said Barlyza.
“I’ve been to Tanley a few times. It was a trash heap of a village. The
calaihn
did them a favor by burning the whole thing to the ground. Now they can start
over, and maybe it won’t scent like the
haick
of poor
parikuahn
all the time.”

They laughed, the three of them, together. Even in Stevrin’s
solemn mood, he managed to laugh louder than the two females.

Lizneth felt her jaw tighten. She was too weak to scream, too
tired to fight. The sobs wouldn’t stop coming, no matter how hard she tried to
stuff them down inside. Otherwise she might’ve leapt on one of them and started
a scrap. This was no time for a scrap, though. It was time to get even. Time to
show the
calaihn
what a mistake they’d made in coming here.

She stood, taking a moment to compose herself. “Let’s go. The
village is just ahead.”

Tanley was a black cloud of flies and stale smoke. Scorch
marks climbed the cave walls where homes and businesses used to stand. Bodies,
ikzhe
and
calai
alike, lay scattered across the expanse in various states of
decomposition. Some were little more than colorless lumps of decay, returning
to the earth. Others swayed in the river current, half-buried in mud along the
shoreline, or charred beside the blackened remains of the river bridge.

No one was around. Not a single living
zhe
. And some
of the bodies were much fresher than the others.

Just outside the village, beside Gazhakk the herbalist’s
cave-mouth hovel, stood the Dead-end Door. The giant rusted portal looked
different, somehow. There were scratch marks at the base and around the edges
of the frame, silvery slivers of metal gleaming beneath the rust, as if someone
had tried clawing it open and, when that had failed, digging beneath it.
What
sort of creature or tool makes marks like that?
she wondered.
And what
were they trying to get to?

Tanley’s
zhehn
had always accepted the door as a
fixture of the village; a mystery left unexplained. Similarly, visitors often
marveled at its construction and theorized about its purpose and origins. It
felt
heavy, solid, even without knowing how thick it was or who had put it there.
They’d long since stopped trying to open it. Older scuffs, nicks, and scratches
where tools had tried and failed to penetrate its stubborn exterior had long
since gone to rust.

“What’s that thing?” Stevrin, standing behind her, wanted to
know.

“That’s the Dead-end Door,” said Barlyza. “It leads to the
world below.”

“We’re in the below-world,” said Stevrin.

“Yeah, I know, dummy,” she said. “The world below is under
the below-world.”

Stevrin scowled. “What? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever
heard.”

“Fine. Don’t believe me. It’s true, though.”

Lizneth sighed. “Let’s keep going.”

Lizneth’s companions seemed reticent to continue. They stood
there, whiskers perked, arms folded, tails stiff with apprehension. The river
burbled. The flies buzzed.

“We’ve got to keep going,” Lizneth repeated. “See what it’s
like across the river.”

“I’m not going any further,” Barlyza said. “This is scary and
gross. We came all this way for nothing. I say we go back.”

“Yeah,” said Krinica, nodding. “I’m with you.”

Lizneth looked at Stevrin, who licked his paws and scrubbed
his longteeth.
He’s trying to be brave for the does, but he’s as scared as
they are
, she realized. “You all go back, if you want. I’m staying.”

“Come on, Stevrin,” said Barlyza, taking him by the arm. “You
heard her. Let’s go.”

Stevrin didn’t move. “No. We’re going ahead.”

“Why?” Barlyza threw her hip as she said it, drawing out the
one-word complaint.

“I don’t know. I just want to see.”

“See
what
? Everyone’s dead. I’m not staying here. I
can’t deal with this.”

“Then don’t,” Stevrin said, glowering.

Barlyza’s expression darkened. “Really? You’re staying here
with the
parikua
? Fine. Let’s go, Krinica.”

Krinica looked from one to the other, hesitating.

Barlyza blinked. “Are you actually thinking about staying
too?”

Krinica was stumped. Lizneth could tell she didn’t think for
herself very often. “I…”

“Alright then. If that’s the way you feel about it, just go.
All of you, wade through your dead bodies and have fun. I’m going back to
Molehind.” Barlyza left the cart where it stood and stomped off toward the
tunnels.

“Barlyza, wait…” Stevrin and Krinica ran over and flanked her
with comforting arms and soft words.

Lizneth scented the air and looked across the river. She
thought she’d heard something on Tanley’s main avenue. She definitely smelled
it. There was a flicker of motion, too far to make out and gone before she
could try. Something was alive among the dead.
An animal, or a scavenger
,
she told herself.

Stevrin and Krinica returned, arms linked with Barlyza
between them. By her resigned look, Lizneth knew they’d convinced her to come
along after all.
Why couldn’t you just let her go?
she wanted to say.
Why
don’t you all just go?

“Everything’s fine,” Stevrin was saying. “Barlyza is
staying.” He said it as though he expected Lizneth to be happy about the news.

“Great,” she muttered.

Stevrin took Barlyza’s hand and led her past the first body,
a
calai
warrior whose chest was caved in like an overripe bittermelon.
Barlyza shuddered, playing it up. Lizneth found herself wanting to push the doe
into a cluster of corpses just to hear her scream.
She should be happy none
of them are alive
. If they met with any real danger, Lizneth’s dagger was
the only weapon they had.

“Are we just leaving the carts here?” Lizneth asked.

“Nothing’s going to happen to them,” said Krinica. “No one’s
around.”

Lizneth considered pointing out that anyone could come down
one of those tunnels at any time and take the carts before they could get back
across the river, but she refrained. The bridge was in no shape to bear the
weight of the carts, and the river was too high to cross. She brushed past them
and strode through the minefield of bodies, making it to the bridge well before
them.

The bridge’s wooden planks were badly burned, but its stone
arches looked sturdy. Lizneth put a foot on the first plank and leaned forward
to test it. The plank gave a loud creak, but that was normal for this old
thing. “The river’s moving fast,” she told the others when they came up behind
her. “I’m not sure how safe this bridge is. We’d better cross one at a time.”

The others agreed.

“Who’s going first?” asked Krinica.

Lizneth looked at Stevrin. She had assumed he’d volunteer,
being both the heaviest and the most eager to prove his bravery to the does. He
gave a quick shake of his head to remove himself from the running. Lizneth
studied Barlyza and Krinica. “I guess I am.”

She considered her options. The river was too deep and fast
to swim across. That left her with
pick your way across, avoiding planks of
dubious stability
, or
hightail it and hope you’re lucky
. If she’d
been by herself, she might’ve opted for the latter. But since she needed to
find a safe path for her companions, the former won out in the end.

She scooped up two handfuls of dirt and started across,
marking each safe plank with a few crumbs. She made it nearly halfway across
before she encountered her first problem. One of the planks bowed so severely
when she put weight on it that she lost her balance and slipped to the next
one. That plank was even weaker.

She heard it snap, and then the floor was rushing up at her,
her right leg plunging through the hole. She found herself staring through the
gap between two planks, watching the broken pieces splash into the river and
disappear beneath the churning current. Placing her hands carefully, each on a
different plank, she pushed herself up and pulled up her leg. She tested the
next plank with her knee, found it stable.

The dirt was gone. She’d opened her hands to break her fall
and lost the rest. She’d have to use her dagger to score each safe plank from
here to the bridge’s end. There were dozens more between her and the opposite
shore.

Lizneth did the work. She carved a tiny X into each plank
that didn’t bend or break beneath her weight. The ironwood was so old and dry
and dark that the markings were hard to see, but they were better than nothing.
When she came within a few feet of the end, she leapt over the last several
planks and landed on hard ground.

Her companions were less than enthused about coming across
after her. Barlyza, in particular, looked more frightened than ever.

“You go on without us,” Stevrin said, shouting to be heard
above the rapids. “She’s too scared to try.”

So are you
, Lizneth wanted to say.
But alright. At
least I’ll have a clear path on my way back
. She left them standing there
and headed into the village.

The mulligraw fields were an unkempt knot of overgrowth,
choked with weeds and strewn with battle-debris. Lizneth passed them without a
second thought, these acres where she’d spent countless hours of her life. That
life was gone now. Her family had nothing left, not even a cottage to come home
to. It was the nightmare she’d always feared, and now it was real.

Every structure in Tanley was a black ruin. Though the fire
was days old, its smoky essence still hung in the air, clinging to everything.
The bodies here were so badly incinerated as to be indistinguishable. No one
was even around to sift through the remains, to search for survivors or clean
up the mess.

Krinica had been right, though. There was a river, and so
there would always be
zhehn
living nearby. When the last of Tanley’s
detritus had returned to the earth and new homes had sprouted here, it would be
a different place. A different village, with different
ikzhehn
, and
maybe even a different name.

Lizneth heard a noise in the rocky crevice behind where the
old inn had stood. A whimpering sound, pained and pitiful. When she scented the
air, the
haick
was hard to distinguish above the smoky stench, but there
was something familiar about it. Taking no chances, she drew her dagger and
advanced through the inn’s charred remains.

When she poked her head through the opening, she saw a gray
ball of fur shivering in the dark. It wasn’t
ikzhe
fur, though; the
scent of it was too strange. An animal, maybe. She spoke a warning to let it
know she was coming. The thing turned toward her, and from the shapeless ball
appeared a thin snout and two glowing eyes.

Lizneth started, brandishing her blade. The mouth peeled open
to reveal rows of sharp pearly teeth and a lolling pink tongue. It yipped at
her, giving her another fright. It wasn’t a threatening sound, though, and
neither did the little creature seem intent on doing her harm. It limped to a
stand, and she finally saw it for what it was: a jackal pup. Its left foreleg
was bloody, but it didn’t snarl or bare its teeth in self-defense.

Remembering her walk on the cliff with Kolki, Lizneth recalled
the strange figure that had appeared below them in the valley and the slender,
four-legged creatures encircling him.
A harbinger
, Kolki had called him.
Now here was one of those same creatures, and the Dead-end Door looking as
though something had tried to tear it open. The harbinger had come through
Tanley in the wake of the fighting, then. And those other dead, fresher than
the rest… what did it all mean?

There were unburned foodstuffs at the rear of the crevice,
some of which bore teeth marks and missing chunks. Lizneth sheathed her dagger
and knelt. When she held out her palm, the pup came to her. The animal did not
nip or growl when she ran her fingers through its fur. “What are you doing
here, little thing?” she asked.

The pup only cocked its head to look up at her through
curious eyes.

“You’re very trusting for a wild animal who’s lost and
injured,” she said. “Mind if I share with you?” She reached for a wheel of
cheese, its coating melted down in the fire.

The jackal gave only a brief growl, then lost interest.

Lizneth filled her knapsack with as much of the intact food
as she could carry, then stood to leave. “Fates guide you, little pup,” she
said, exiting the crevice.

Halfway through the burned wreckage, Lizneth heard a noise
behind her. She turned to find the tiny creature limping after her, whining as
it tried to keep up. It slipped while attempting to surmount a charred beam
that was a bit too tall for it.

“Hello again,” she said.

The pup scampered over the beam and stopped at her heels.

“What do you think you’re doing, huh?”

A whine.

Lizneth continued through the wreckage, her forepaws and
legwraps blackening with soot. The pup followed, finding openings to squeeze
through whenever it met an obstacle too high to climb. Every few fathoms,
Lizneth turned to find the animal right behind her. “You should’ve stayed back
there, with the food,” she warned. “I can’t take care of you.”