Chapter 16
Very carefully, Brine lifted his head from the sand and rolled his eyes to the north, the direction of the irate voices. It had been his experience in life that people who sounded like that, like they were one wrong word away from committing all manner of irrational violence, were the kind of people it paid to monitor.
He searched the edge of the clearing where the furious words came and saw only a towering colonnade of shiny, black pillars. Here and there, thickets of snake-tail feelers dangling down from the lesser boughs, and in a few places there were clusters of tar-drop bulbs swelling from the sooty sands, but of the two bickering speakers there was no sign.
Of course there isn’t, he thought, remembering how he’d burst into the clearing and spun in two full and consecutive circles. Had there been someone to see, he would have seen them. He would have rushed upon them and engaged them in a maniac’s embrace.
He shifted Godfy’s weight from his chest, leaning his face from the mass of gray whiskers tickling his nose, and wondered how it was the angry speakers hadn’t heard him; the barrage of thank-yous he’d loosed upon the skies, the scream of alarm he’d given for his partner, or even the collision with said partner and subsequent tussle in the sand.
He lie there a moment more, heard the next exchange come blistering through the wall of black foliage, and understanding dawned. One of the disputants, a man who sounded like an enraged bear with vocal chords, was yelling at the top of his voice. He wouldn’t have heard a band of whooping heathens as they cut through the clearing.
Brine remained froze on the ground, still trying to make out the cause of the dispute. He could tell by bear-man’s alarmed cadence and jagged speech that he was not pleased, but he had no idea as to why. He could only hope the vicious retort from the other party would shed more light on the subject.
But it did not...
When Brine first heard the bear-man’s trembling voice, he had automatically assumed the other party was participating in the yelling match. It wasn’t the most Amian of assumptions to make, as Amian’s turned away from wrath and offered kind words for slander, but as it turned out it wasn’t the most valid of assumption either.
Whoever the other party was, this man whose voice sounded like the sibilant hiss of dry leaves rustling in the wind, his voice barely rose above a whisper. He didn’t even sound angry, let alone vicious, and if he was perturbed by the other man’s verbal onslaught, it did not show in his voice.
In fact, following the bear-man’s gravelly diatribe, the hissing-man actually paused before making his calm retort. He seemed to weigh the value to the other man’s words before sharing with him his tranquil reply.
Hearing this, Brine might have thought he was listening to a couple of intellectuals seated in the royal gardens of Castle Arn. He could see them having a stimulating discussion on the finer points of Jashian tapestries, a billowing canopy to shield them from the sun, a cool lemon-water gripped in one hand, the other hand gesturing insightfully as they lent credence to their views.
Brine stilled his heaving lungs and twisted his mouth in a frown. As he listened to the hissing man speak, it slowly occurred to him that the word calm didn’t quite capture the essence of the man’s tone. For that matter, peace and tranquility didn’t work either.
What Brine heard lurking beneath the speaker’s words, way down deep and well beneath the surface, was a complete and utter indifference to anything and everything, an abject impassivity capable of shocking the conscience and frosting the soul.
The bear-man spoke again—roared again, rather—the sibilant-man offered his heartless reply, and this time Brine could picture the speaker’s papery face and corpse-like eyes. He knew those eyes!
Rolling Godfry to one side, Brine crept out from under his teacher’s bony limbs and scratchy hair and cautiously found his feet.
“Hey, Godfry,” he said, helping the old man to stand, “why don’t we have a seat over there, okay?”
“Over where, now?” Godfry said, still sounding winded as he brushed at himself with one quavering hand.
“Just there,” Brine said, pointing at the edge of the clearing that separated them from the Lathian leaders.
Godfry’s eyes lit up when he saw how close the spot was. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, yes. I think that’s a grand idea.”
Brine handed him the grip-stick and Wogol, led him to the bole closest to the voices, and assisted him to the ground in a rickety process that involved several unpleasant faces and a series of crackling joints. Brine took a seat beside him and pretended to brush at the sand on his robes as he secretly checked the acoustics coming through the boles.
The acoustics were coming through just fine. He suppressed a tense grin and glanced sideways at his teacher.
If God were with him, Brine’s bat ears would hear everything and Godfry’s deaf ears would hear nothing at all. The last thing Brine needed was for Godfry to hear his good old friend Bal on the other side of these boles and go rushing over to make friendly.
If that happened, Brine would have to yell at Godfry and he didn’t like doing that. Yelling at the old man felt like a rusty flaying knife sawing through the softest parts of his insides.
Silently, Brine vowed never again to shout at the old man, no matter how necessary it might seem at the time, and then thanked Owndiah on high that it was not necessary now.
Beside him, Godfry’s face was in the Wogol, his brows steepled, his lips moving, his voice muffled in the pages.
Brine leaned back against the squishy trunk of the bole and held very still. It was a risky business eavesdropping on the two figures like this, and he shuddered at the prospect of either man catching him in the act. At the same time, if something bad had happened, the prospect of not knowing terrified him even more.
He pulled his Wauk to the front and began counting the braids, the voices beyond the tongues taking on meaning.
“…nobody said nothin bout this place,” the husky guide was grumbling, “not one filthy word, not a peep, an’ doan’ you say they did, neither, cause I know better. I’d member hearin bout a place like this.”
Sladge paused, possibly to survey the sheer horror of the landscape. “This place ain’t right,” he said. “I swears on my life it ain’t. I can feel stuff like that, feel it way down deep in m’bones, yeh see. And this place…,” he gave a derisive grunt, as though in response to a very bad joke, “…this place feels cursed…like wizard cursed or Sira cursed or…,” he trailed off, his panting still deep and feral, “…it ain’t right.”
Instead of replying to this, Balthus allowed for an inappropriately long silence to pass between them, a silence so inappropriately long that Brine began to wonder if the hunchback had discovered the disciple’s presence and was moving around to attack, then said, “It is…what it is.”
“It ain’t right, is what it is!” Sladge barked. “It ain’t right by ha—” he stopped, or was stopped, Brine could not tell. “No way we lose a man like that, no way. Not out of the pack like that, an’ not without signs….,” he exhaled in a hiss, “…not like that.”
Waiting for the man to stop huffing, Balthus said, “It is…one man.”
“My man!” Sladge corrected. “It was MY man—They’re all my men.”
From somewhere unseen, another of those long and juicy vibrations rippled through the gloom.
“Still…,” Blathus said, “…a single man.”
Ignoring this, Sladge began to walk in circles, the sand crunching beneath his large and booted feet. “It ain’t right,” he said. “This place. Them tree-things—Them tracks.” His heavy breathing became a groan. “I told yeh them tracks weren’t right. I told yeh…The way they was comin and goin’ like that, on either side’a the river—like they was…,” another pause, another groan, “…like they was disappearin on us.”
The crunching of Sladge’s boots continued on for a time. Blathus said, “I believe the tracks… were crossing over.”
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“Not always,” Sladge said. “Not always, they din’t. Huh-uh! Sometimes…,” he stopped and licked his lips, “…Sometimes when he we crossed over, there wasn’t nothin there. There was jus’ nothin.”
“Then I would imagine,” Balthus replied, “the scout in question—”
“Scout?” Sladge interrupted. “Ain’t got no scout, old man. They’re all scouts—I scout. An’ there ain’t no way we missed them tracks! Huh-uh. Not all’a us.” He resumed his pacing. “It ain’t right.”
Feeling no need to confirm, deny, or expand upon the guide’s statement, Balthus waited in that hypnotic way of his until the big man’s groans became softer. When that time came, he said, “You know why we came.”
Sladge held his tongue, the ensuing silence broken only by another of those wet and wicked vibrations. After a time, he released a sign and admitted he did.
Balthus said, “You know what neglecting said charge means to our homeland.”
“Homeland,” Sladge huffed. “Ain’t my homeland. Maybe yours, but it ain’t mine. I ain’t got no homeland. I never set foot in that city, let alone the castle, so you can shove that homeland talk sideways. Shove it sideways an’ then go tell his royal fatness to shove—”
From the east, footfalls crunched towards them at a dead run. Sladge fell silent and Brine jerked his head to the coming barrage, tensing as he listened to the sound of something big slapping its way through the tongues and pustules.
Brine’s hand went for the seeing lens at his hip and for one terrifying moment he was five-ages old again, five-ages old and sprinting through the gardens, Jaysh and Iman jumping up and down behind him and screaming for him to run, screaming for him to run for his life or the skullries would take him.
“Sladge!” the runner screamed. “Sladge, yeh gota come see this, yeh gota come see.”
As the Lathian’s guttural voice broke across the wilderness, the horrible memory of the garden faded and Brine relaxed. He still didn’t care much for the urgency he heard in the runner’s voice, or for the way Sladge’s boots thumped off unquestioningly to meet him, but at least it wasn’t the skullries.
“I’m here!” Sladge yelled. “I’m comin!”
His voice faded as the powerful drum of his feet carried him east. A few moments more and the drumming passed entirely, slowly replaced by the shuffling of gray sleeping slippers and the stab of a cane.
Brine released the disk at his waist and scrambled to his feet, his mind a panic of wanting to know but not wanting to know. In the distance, he could hear the Harriun coming alive with activity, robust bodies slapping against tongues, booted feet stamping at sand, excited voices shouting to, “Get Back!”
Staring into the black tendrils, Brine laid a hand to his partner’s shoulder. “Hey, Godfry,” he said. “Hey, we should probably take a look at this.” He turned his eyes to his partner and found the leathery cover of the Wogol staring back at him.
For the briefest of moment, Brine played with the idea of reaching down with both hands, taking hold of the old man’s shoulders, and just giving him a good shake.
Instead, he withdrew his hand completely and stood to his feet. If he jostled Godfry now, he knew the outcome he would receive, his teacher’s blank expression emerging from the book, his baffled voice slowly finding its tongue.
What’s this, now? Found what, you say?
Brine turned to the clearing and thought the same thing he had after stumbling inside: this was the furthest point from the action and the safest place to be found. In the direction that Sladge had just fled, the direction Brine would soon follow, there were still shouts of alarm ringing in the tongues.
And besides, Brine thought, I’m coming right back. I’m just going to have a quick peak—see if it’s Egzert—and then back I’ll come. He gave the old man one last look, then trotted towards the ruckus.
He took the most direct route to the voices, pressing through the slug-like flora and the squid-like boles and seeming not to notice their flaccid caress. He simply tensed up his shoulders and powered right through, emerging on the other side to the sound of warning cries and curses and the occasional squirt of expelled saliva.
He took a deep breath and powered through the last of the tendrils, staggering into a knot of gawking mercenaries and finding that their cries had ended and that their cursing was over. They were all silent now…and holding very still.
Brine searched their faces and found all thirty of them standing in a cluster and staring up at the tongues, all thirty of them huddled shoulder-to-shoulder and heal-to-toe, not a one of them able to draw their eyes from the canopy.
They had definitely found something…but it wasn’t Egzert.