Vhaasa tested the rope a few more times, pulling hard. Satisfied, he fastened it to his burden and began to haul on the other end. Ghetti’s unconscious body, swaddled in jeweled armor and splinted with similarly ornamented swords and spears, was lifted up the last stretch of the ascent out of Neph’s Chasm, where Mogrus waited at the lip of the defile to haul him in. When the rope was clear a few minutes later, Vhaasa began his own hand-over-hand climb.
When he had finally juggled both Mogrus and the treasure-swaddled Ghetti up out of the defile and onto flat land again, he flopped on his back on the leaden stone of the rim and loosed an inarticulate shout of triumph and relief. Mogrus winced.
“You sound a bit unhinged when you do that, Vhaasa.”
“You cut your own rotting arm off, Mogrus. Don’t talk to me about hinged or unhinged,” Vhaasa retorted.
“When an arm is rotting, it is customary to cut it off.”
“Ha. Ha. Ha. How’s Ghetti?” Vhaasa asked.
Mogrus paused a moment, “I believe he’s dead, Vhaasa.”
The two sat for a while in silence. It was a long while. They looked out across the hardpan north of them, noting the scattered carcasses of the iryx dotting the landscape. It wouldn’t do to spend much time wondering what had killed them. It was something. That was all that mattered.
“What do we do, Mogrus?”
“We return to the real world, back to the true Vast Land with all due haste.”
“Uhl’iir?”
“…I think it may be considered somewhat impertinent of us to return to Uhl’iir with the… prize you’ve chosen for yourself.” Mogrus motioned with his shortened arm to the treasure-loaded travois upon which rested Ghetti’s corpse, “Besides. I’ve come to assume that our benefactors Iiatro and Neliphus are not terribly interested in our return. We would likely have much longer, more pleasant lives somewhere far away from Uhl’iir.”
“So, we just run away with all of it? Won’t they come after us or something?”
“Vhaasa, there are a great many fugitives who go to Uhl’iir seeking anonymity and perhaps a new life. There are exceptionally few fugitives from Uhl’iir. I believe there is a virtually infinite supply of places we can go in which absolutely no one will give a whit that we have stolen from the Potentates of the ‘mongrel city’.”
“They call us that, do they? The kith in the interior?”
“Aye. It isn’t as inaccurate as we Uhl’iiri might like to think. Not so unfair a moniker.”
“Ah. So, what about Ghetti?”
“He did not die in the Chasm. That is something,” Mogrus said.
“Truth,” Vhaasa thought a moment, “Mogrus… what actually–“
“Don’t do that, Vhaasa. Don’t even begin.”
The two unlimbered the body of Ghetti and walked north past the slaughtered iryx, dragging the travois of treasure behind them. The way back was long, and their burden was heavy. A length of age-blackened chain trailed from beneath the bundled goods, clamped tightly into the desiccated hide wrapping the haft of a relic which shared a distant ancestry with that of swords and axes. A blade which laughed from the depths of ancient history at the endless necessity of oblation.
EPILOGUE
Far to the north, in the City-State of Uhl’iir – called a great cosmopolis by it’s near-extinct nobility, and a mongrel nation by all the rest of the Vast Land’s many cultures – two unreasonably wealthy men sat in a lavishly landscaped rooftop courtyard overlooking the southern walls of their city. The one called Neliphus was on his fourth tray of strangely cured meats, and had just decided that he had grown tired of the most recent installation to his slave-garden. She was not truly still. That was the problem.
“Have you listened to even one of my words in twenty at any time in the last decade, Neliphus?”
The one called Iiatro had grown irritable with Neliphus and his obscenities. The man had been staring at that waif for over an hour, chewing and sighing.
“Hmmm?” Neliphus asked.
“I have come to inform you that it appears that Uhl’Neph has been appeased. I do not often make personal visits to deliver missives, and would appreciate your attention,” Iiatro said.
“Yes, well,” Neliphus slowly turned to regard his fellow Potentate, frowned at Iiatro’s priestly garb, unsuitable for a pleasure estate. “It is, of course, an honor, dear Iiatro.”
“That is not all, Neliphus. The sacrifice has been performed in accordance with the Uhl’Neph Pact, but something has gone strangely. My clients are most distraught. They predict an interruption with the next cycle of appeasement.” Iiatro explained.
“Well, dear Iiatro, I do understand that that will come as something of a challenge for the Uhl’iiri… in one hundred and twelve years!” Neliphus shouted this last, “When your cultists have found something that will affect the lives of anyone living, I will be pleased to pause in my diversions to discover a course of action. Now, kindly smother yourself, Iiatro. Your attire offends my garden.”
Iiatro’s smile touched only the very corners of his eyes, unwitnessed by anyone present in the slave-garden of the Potentate Neliphus. Etiquette finally allowed Iiatro his most dear desire in the world. Tomorrow, he would have Neliphus slaughtered. He would have it done with the utmost delicacy… to avoid any risk of spoiling the meat.
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Many Thanks for Reading!
If you’ve made it this far through the Vast Land, you might be interested to know that there’s further yet to go. At the time of this edition there are three more Tales of the Vast Land novellas available, each longer and more immersive than this intoductory work. Take a look around my author’s blog if you’d like to read about other works generally keep up with what I’m writing.
Other Tales of the Vast Land:
The Salt Gates Run
The Roaming Fane
&
A Rattle in the Crossbones
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Zachary Seibert escaped from a dream he had some three decades ago, and is most likely a figment of his own imagination. He is the creator of the Vast Land, an original setting assembled from loose bits of cosmology found hiding in his subconsciousness, and is co-author of the Calefactory series with Chris Capps. He lives on coffee and speculative fiction at a desk in his pre-frontal cortex, which has a very good view of the midwestern United States.
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