We ran the last short distance and stopped at the gateway to the greenery. Exercising caution, I peered out the portal, alert to any Spood presence. I saw nothing to alarm me.
The green world beyond the gateway was a forest. It was a kanser forest, dense and thick with underbrush. Where we were I didn’t know, but I felt certain we had to be yet within the city. The archway we had come through was part of a wall that extended to either side and rose to a considerable height. We followed along the wall to the right and it began to curve. We seemed to be within some sort of sealed enclosure, for the wall was high and unbroken, with no visible exits. I noticed the craftsmanship was Spood quality, not like the seamless and magnificent fortress walls of Grell.
Ra-ta was descending to his rest. I wanted to get out of here while still being able to see and judged there to be less than three hours of daylight left. I searched the high wall for some way up, but there were no handholds.
Bones lay scattered everywhere. I recognized both human and animal. Clumps of can-rak feces cluttered the ground, so we had to be careful where we stepped. The presence of feces struck me as curious. It was all over, as might be expected, but why had there been no trace of it in the hallways?
Then, the source of the fetid odor we had been chasing throughout the underground revealed itself. Rotting, maggot-infested flesh clung to the few remaining bones of a headless man lying in the grass near the wall. Flies droned as they attempted to occupy every rank strip of decomposing tissue. The can-raks had devoured the best parts and left the rest to putrefy. We skirted the body and continued to follow the curving stone.
A half hour later, from ahead and above us, a horn sounded. The high tone of a single note blasted across the forest. We froze, expecting discovery. A second blast followed, just one note extended, a single breath long. We ducked down into the brush and eyed the surrounding foliage. The sound seemed to have originated from some distance ahead, and nothing indicated detection of our presence.
The can-raks appeared excited and began to whine and rock back and forth. It was apparent they desired to respond to the horn summons, but wouldn’t leave me to do so. I instructed them to go, telling them I would follow. At once they galloped off through the interior underbrush, leaving us to scramble after them.
The four of us negotiated the sharp brambles and treacherous roots as best we could, but soon lost sight of the beasts, which seemed in a great hurry to get somewhere. We halted when a fierce din of screeching and roaring erased the pleasant chittering of birds. We moved forward with caution, parting the undergrowth, and soon entered upon a scene of unimaginable ferocity.
I counted them. Ten. Ten can-raks, each in a blood frenzy, tearing and ripping to bits what once had been an equal number of drooves. It was a terrible scene, a scene of flesh eaters running amok, devouring without restraint. I had never encountered such voracious blood lust in all my years. It was mind numbing, the rage and the near insanity of the green beasts as they fed.
As we watched the horrific scene, my thoughts shifted to the drooves. Where had they come from? I surmised that this was a pen, and that the can-raks were captive within the curved walls of this enclosure. When the horn summoned them for mealtime, they responded with enthusiasm. That had to mean there was no food supply readily available to them within these confines and that all came from the outside. Therefore, the drooves had to have been let in. But how? From where?
Then I saw the gate. We were at the farthest point distant from the open archway that had led us into this verdant garden. On this end, a closed gate of crosshatched metal bars was visible at the wall near where the can-raks fed. It guarded a passageway. The gate seemed similar to the one the three unlucky men had tried to open.
By my reasoning, someone had driven the drooves through the open gate, closed it, and then summoned the can-raks via the horn blasts.
Izzy cleared up the picture even more.
“Gor-jar can’t eat,” she said, “so they had to get something that could. Can-raks are perfect for disposing of slave sacrifices. They not only kill them, but clean up the mess too. Nice and tidy. Still, feeding them slaves is not enough. You have to feed the beasts too often, and you certainly can’t keep losing valuable workers to them. So you feed them something else—drooves.”
I agreed with Izzy. Can-raks were the stomachs of Gor-jar. There were ten of them and that’s a lot to feed; the seven of us would have been but an appetizer.
For now, we had no worries. The hungry can-raks were getting their fill, and by the grace of Ra-ta it wasn’t our flesh expanding their stomachs. Let them eat. I would have to get them all under my control at some point, but I felt it sensible to wait until they finished gorging.
We figured they might be feasting a while, so the four of us found a safe, distant spot to rest and revive. We had discovered a small stream within this self-contained forest and traced its source to an artesian well. We drank our fill of sweet, cool water, and even slapped a bit over our reeking bodies. Izzy and Lillatta went off to see if they could scrounge some berries, leaving Javen alone with me.
As we sat on the downed trunk of a kanser, I looked over at the boy. Javen poked a stick at the ground in an aimless fashion. His damp, dark hair glistened in the rays of the setting sun. I could not judge his mood, but his appearance and appeal had much improved after the freshening in the stream.
“So, why didn’t you follow me when you saw me go after the can-rak?” I teased. “Didn’t you say you came along so you could protect us?”
Javen’s response was not what I expected. He turned his face to me and glared.
“You joke about it, but it is not funny. What were we supposed to do with no light to follow you? I was so happy when I saw the can-rak had not eaten you, but I have since wondered why you just took off. You should have told us. How were we supposed to know you hadn’t gone insane? How were we supposed to know you were in no danger? Why did you do that to us?”
Javen’s tone caught me off guard. I had not expected a harsh rebuke for my actions. However, he was right. I had dashed off without a word. In my defense, I felt I had to move fast to save the three men and could not have stopped to tell my friends this. Still, that was no excuse. I could have told them at any time that a can-rak posed no danger to me.
“I’m sorry, I should have told you. You have every right to be furious. I know I have a tendency to keep things to myself. When I was young, my father insisted I tell no one about our secrets, and I guess I still follow his words. I’m sorry I’ve been so selfish. Can you forgive me?”
Javen listened with a stoic countenance and then gazed at me with a look I could not read.
“I’m sorry I spoke as I did,” he said. “You have a right to your secrets. I know it must have been hard for you growing up. You’ve done so much for us and . . . I had no right to question you. I was angry, I . . . I didn’t want to lose you.”
My breath stopped and held with Javen’s last six words. I had not expected to hear such sentiments from him.
“You mean a great deal to me, Sanyel,” Javen continued, “and I was afraid when you went after the can-rak I would never see your face again.”
Javen paused and his eyes glistened. His warm hand reached out to grasp mine, and in a voice husky with emotion, he said, “Sanyel, your face is all I desire to see. I want to see it always.”
I felt transported to a place I had never been, one I could scarcely imagine. In speaking of his feelings for me, Javen unraveled some tangled ones of my own. I had known since our first meeting in the Creet encampment, when Javen made me laugh, that he was no ordinary boy. There was sweetness in his manner, and an openness I had not encountered with others. The attraction was mutual, I knew, though I had hidden mine through teasing.
I hadn’t fooled him, though. His hand clutching mine was soft, calming, reassuring. I felt safe. Had I ever felt safe? It was a wonderful, powerf
ul feeling. We stood and Javen pulled me gently to him. Our bodies touched and the sensual thrill was unbearable. His arms closed around me as my pulse accelerated. My heartbeat grew erratic. Our faces drew near and his dark eyes locked into mine. He closed his and slightly cocked his head and I willingly followed his lead. When our lips touched in that first light caress, I felt suddenly weightless, separated from the world, floating in a body of pure—
“What’s this? Can’t we leave you two alone for even a minute?”
Lillatta and Izzy had returned. Lillatta’s teasing words broke into our private heaven and slammed me back to earth. Javen and I quickly disentangled. I know I was blushing.
Our passionate moment amused the two of them.
“What were they doing?” Izzy asked. “Were they checking each other for ticks?”
“I believe so,” Lillatta answered. “Ticks love to feed on the Raab, and we know they both have that rich Raab blood in them.”
They laughed and I let them have their fun. Javen just gave them a self-conscious smile.
The two had returned with a couple handfuls of berries and nuts. We devoured them in short order. The slight repast recharged our energy, but daylight was slipping away and we were no closer to escaping our cage. I wanted to round up the can-raks before darkness. I knew from experience how terrifying an uncontrolled can-rak could be in the night—let alone ten of them.
I approached them while they still fed. I shouted to get their attention, cutting through their raucous clamor. When sure I had their focus, I repeated the commands given the original two. Soon the beasts were humming and playful and eager to occupy the limited space around me, so I had to give them additional instructions to keep a reasonable distance.
Blackness was erasing the last vestiges of twilight. We had retreated into the forest a fair distance from the feeding gate to avoid detection. We would stay the night and search for an exit in the morning. I thought about Brilna and hoped she no longer waited for us up on the high fortress walls. I knew she had water, but she must be getting hungry by now. She had done all she could for us. It was time to look after herself.
We would find a way out, of that I was certain. In the distance, I could make out the outline of the wall against the starlight. Its height, along with no means to scale it, meant the Spood designed the wall to keep things in. I imagined this pen to be a few hundred years old, judging by the height of the kansers. Of course, that was assuming there was no forest prior to the building of this enclosure. In any case, the age of the structure was not preventing it from serving its purpose.
We were stuck in here unless we could find an escape route. The front gate might be an option, but who knew how well guarded that was. I would give it a closer look in the morning. My companions had each found a comfortable spot and were soon asleep. Though exhausted, I stayed awake, observing the sparkling sky. Numa and Nima would show tonight. If I could just get up on top of those walls, I could maybe find a way down on the backside and. . .
I awoke with a start. I had fallen asleep and the night had nearly fled. After finding the twin moons through the kanser leaves, I judged the time to be a few hours before dawn. Then it struck me. How stupid! Tall kanser trees inhabited the majority of the space within this enclosure. There had to be some growing right next to the walls, their branches perhaps even overhanging it. If I could scale one and exit onto the top of the wall, I could scout the terrain and look for a way down the other side.
Excited by the prospect of escape, I leaped up and roused the others. After explaining my plan, we agreed to spread out and follow the walls all the way around, to search for just one tree tall enough and close enough to the wall to serve our purpose. We would have to be careful wandering around in the darkness, but I felt finding an exit outweighed the hazards. I told the can-raks to stay put while we explored.
Izzy found it—well, actually them—a small grove of kansers that had sprouted next to the wall about two hundred paces removed from the feeding gate. I pulled the ceiling light I had taken from the white room out from the leather coin bag. I debated if I should use the light to aid me in climbing the trees. I decided it was too awkward to hold and too easy to spot. I would have to feel my way.
Kanser bark is rough. After climbing but a short distance, my chosen tree already had me scratched and bruised. I had left my sandals behind for easier climbing and now my feet bled from the abrasive contact. My hands were a bit more seasoned, but even they were not immune to the kanser’s bite.
Within minutes, scattered light from torches lining the main streets of the city popped into view. I cleared the top of the enclosure and looked out across the building tops, all much lower than the wall crest. I clutched an overhanging branch to steady myself, and then with extreme caution stepped onto the stone ledge. With relief, I saw it was wide enough for me to walk along.
The wall had no railings, so to avert dropping off into space, I avoided wandering too close to an edge—not easy to manage in the dark, even with moonlight. I contemplated jumping down onto the roof of one of the surrounding dwellings, but they were too far down to risk what would have been a certain suicidal leap. I checked, but found no handholds that would allow for descent. I would have to make my way toward the front gate and hope a plan presented itself to disarm the guards and raise the gate.
I had no way to signal my intentions to those below, so I hoped to connect with them later—if I didn’t fall off the wall and kill myself before then. The wall ledge was treacherous and often in shadow from the kansers. Its surface, cracked and broken, left upraised stone blocks that created obstacles in the darkness. I tripped or banged my toes and shins on more than one occasion. My progress was slow, but at last I caught a glimpse of the top of the wooden gate ahead. I realized at once that this gate was not like the one the three men had tried opening. This one opened by ascending straight up instead of pushing inward or outward. Being in the down position, the gate’s top was currently flush with the surface of the wall I walked. I paused to listen. An erratic wind moaned, squeezing through some narrow crack, and then circling around to come through and moan again. I heard a banging noise from somewhere across the city, then silence.
I moved over to the top of the gate and saw no one. The wooden gate was as wide as the stone wall, and as I crossed over it a staircase appeared out of the gloom to my right. These steps headed down and out toward the city. I chanced an exploration, cautiously following the stairway a few steps down, where I found a stone platform that supported the gate-raising machinery. I was now on the other side of the wall, viewing the gate from its opposite face, and I could see the platform overlooked and was adjacent to the passageway the doomed drooves had traveled. There was no one here, not a single guard.
Why? The gate where the three men died had lacked guards as well. I could only conclude that the Spood felt their gates were more than adequate to prevent any prisoners from escaping, at least long enough to allow the can-raks to find and dispose of them. Of course, they hadn’t counted on a can-rak tamer. In addition, they had been criminal in their carelessness, letting their trees stretch too high into the sky. Complacency breeds error, my father once told me, and the Spood had certainly proved that the case.
In the darkness I spotted the crank used to lift the gate, found and released its lock, and then muscled a turn of the wheel.
Easy is a pleasant word, though it never applies to anything involving me. Oh, the cranking wasn’t hard. The device was ingenious, designed to allow a small exertion on a handle at one end to cause a heavy object on the other to move. However, someone had neglected to grease any part of it.
I cranked and the gate creaked. I halted and then tried again. The gate screeched. I cranked again and the gate screamed in agony. Someone had to hear this! I did not intend to stop, however. I cranked and the gate gamely protested, trying its best to alert the sleeping city. The city
did not awaken.
Slowly the gate rose, high enough for four humans to scramble beneath it. Yet it had to go higher. I was taking the can-raks with us, so I needed to raise it to a greater height. To me the can-raks were invaluable. We had no weapons and there might be a fight before we got ourselves clear of the city, clear of the evil that flourished here. The green, yellow-eyed beasts would be our protection—so the barrier had to go higher.
My friends heard the gate calling. Izzy, Lillatta, and Javen were there waiting in the droove corridor when I climbed down from the gate-raising platform. Convenient metal rungs along the wall of the passageway made the descent easy. Lillatta handed me my sandals and I slipped them back on. Then she reached into the leather bag that held the ceiling light, and with a triumphant expression produced a piece of bone.
I stared at her, not comprehending.
“It’s a droove bone, like you wanted, for your new bracelet. I found a skeleton.”
“Fantastic! Let’s keep it in the bag until I can find time to make one.”
After going back to retrieve the can-raks, we ran through the open gate and up the high-walled passageway, only to find another gate.
Oh, fuld! I should have anticipated this—double gates. You open one to let the drooves in, and then close it behind them. You open the second one, and if by chance a can-rak or two rushes through that gate, the first gate would prevent them from escaping into the city. All you’d have to do is wait until the beasts went back through the innermost gate, and then close it.
The second gate had the same climbing rungs as the first, so I ascended to the control platform and found the crank. To my relief, this one was relatively silent, and we were soon through the portal, up another short passageway and out onto a city street.
We had no idea where we were. The street was dark, for it appeared only main streets were torchlit at night, and this wasn’t one of them. Fortuitous for us, Numa and Nima’s illumination was sufficient for finding our way. I tried to remember the city layout from what I had seen from high up on the wall, but it all looked so different at street level.
The city seemed to have emptied when the sun went down, for not a soul was visible as we wound our way through the back streets of Grell. We avoided lighted avenues, and if anyone noticed our odd procession, they did not sound an alarm. What a sight we must have been! Four slaves in gray being followed by ten docile can-raks—a sight you won’t see every day.
The can-raks were behaving themselves. I had told them to ignore all else and do only what I had instructed, and to do it in silence. That eliminated their tendency to growl at every little smell that wafted to them. It impressed me with what ease they disregarded their natural instincts with just a few words from my mouth. If that would only work with people, how different the world might be.
Izzy came up to walk beside me, and I could see she had something to say.
“So, what is the plan? Where are we going?” she asked.
“We’re going to get out of the city, out of the fortress, and leave Grell far behind.”
It was not what Izzy wanted to hear.
“Lillatta, Javen, and I have been talking, and—”
She hesitated.
“Go on,” I prompted.
“We want to free the slaves,” Izzy said with resolve, as if defying me to challenge the intention.
I kept my face expressionless.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard.” I stopped and pointed. “And here’s your answer.”
We were on a street, a street of dull gray buildings. Each one looked the same and we all knew what they contained—cells with portholes, dirty straw, and misery. I turned to my cohorts, offering a conspiratorial smile.
“Shall we go free some slaves?”
The Blades of Sorrow—plus one—agreed with that course of action.
We were coming. And if judging by our previous encounters with the Spood, they would not be happy to see us.
**
~~TWENTY-ONE~~