snapped his reins without waiting for a response. Lodd rode after him, and they tethered their horses with the others near the mouth of the cave. Toler took a javelin in one hand and a torch in the other, and they drew up beneath the opening and listened to the thrumming from within. It was a hollow sound, and deep, like a thousand whispering insects speaking wordless in the dark. It was that sound, and the gush of cold air whipping their manes back and bristling the hair on their faces, that gave Toler pause. Something was alive in there, he was certain; the sense was undeniable. There was life within the men who’d gone before them, but there was something else, too.
His torch guttered as they strode into the black. A damp, moldy smell clung to him and made his breath catch in his throat. Lodd had gotten a whiff too; Toler heard him cough up phlegm and spit. The wind remained steady as they went, chilling the sweat off their skin and blowing tears back along their eye sockets like raindrops on a moving window. The path was flat, curling slowly downward and widening into an open cavern that rose again before it dead-ended on the other side.
The floor along the bottom of the cavern was brown and glistening in the torchlight, a gigantic mud puddle made of all the runoff that had collected here. Toler halted, but Lodd kept coming until he passed him, not looking back as he plodded the rest of the way down the slope. He leaned over to examine the sludge, then took a tender step, letting his toe fall gently into the mud.
Only it wasn’t mud.
Toler may have been young, but one advantage he had over most other shepherds was some semblance of an education. Part of coming from an affluent family meant there were always books to keep him company, and as a result he’d managed to become somewhat literate. What he’d learned from reading, while paltry, was far greater than the average Aionach-worlder could boast. One of his favorite books was an old volume his brother told him came from some school before the Heat. It was called Biology. In it, he’d read about the vast array of creatures who lived in the Aionach, both sentient and otherwise. Everything from cotterphages to brengens, gargants to sanddragons, murrhods to amarpids; he had at least a basic understanding of them all. That knowledge only came in handy on occasion, but whenever he ventured off the beaten path, those occasions seemed to come about more often. This was one of them.
“Lodd. Lodd, LODD!” he shouted, too late.
There was a wet splorch as the muck burst where Lodd touched the surface, as if his toe were a heavy stone landing in a deep pool. Viscous and brown, the substance splashed high above Lodd’s head. Flat tendrils formed, wrapped around his limbs and yanked him off his feet. They enveloped his whole body and stifled his screams as they dragged him under. Indeed, this was no mud at all. It was a creature; a living thing. Toler had read about the husking loams that inhabited the damp caves and shadowed gullies of the mountains, but before now, he had never seen one. He almost didn’t consider the possibility that this could be a husking loam until the memory of those old pages in Biology came racing back to him.
He cursed and bolted to the edge of the bank, scanning the surface for signs of Lodd. The loam would hold him under until it suffocated him. Then it would begin the slow process of digestion.
As Toler scanned the living lake, the vague shapes of other men became visible further from the shore, encased like liquefied ghosts in their tombs. The traces of one particular passage came rushing back to him, and he touched the end of his torch to the surface. The flames spread, fueled by the decaying biomass and organic matter of the loam. He thanked his stars for books, waiting for the sludge to burn away before he yanked Lodd from its grasp, hauling him to shore as the man gasped for air. The other men from the caravan were no longer in a state where breathing would’ve done them any good.
The fire wouldn’t eradicate the loam forever; if he wanted to destroy it completely, a more thorough extermination would’ve been necessary. A husking loam could regrow itself from the tiniest drip or puddle, pulling moisture, insects, and plant matter into itself as it expanded over the course of months or years, using almost none of its stored energy to subsist until live prey came near. When it got bigger, it would begin consuming rodents, and eventually it would be able to devour larger beasts. Someday it would be large enough to pull down humans again. But that day would not come for a long time, and for now, Toler was satisfied to exit the cave with his friend and leave a warning for others who might stumble upon it.
It felt terrible to leave the cave’s cool wind behind them and resume baking in the daylight. They brought the riderless horses back to the caravan and spread word of the danger. The husking loam had choked two shepherds and a merchant’s apprentice. Dead shepherds were all too common. Dead merchants were a rare gift, as Toler saw it.
“I don’t know how I can ever thank you,” Lodd told him when the commotion had died down. He’d sustained only minor burns from the ordeal and was otherwise no worse for the wear.
“I have an idea. Switch over to my crew. Blatcher will take you on. Calistari hired a couple of half-inchers from Tristol. We don’t like them, and you’re better than both.”
Lodd pursed his lips. “That’s right. You’re working Calistari’s crate.”
“He’s not so bad,” Toler said. They both knew that was a lie.
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think so,” Lodd said, shaking his head.
“It isn’t an offer. You said you didn’t know how you could ever thank me. I’m telling you… this is how.”
Lodd’s brow furrowed and he gave Toler a sideways look. “If you insist. The best I can probably do is work out a trade.”
“That’s fine. I’ll get Blatcher to talk to your crew lead. DiBellock, right? We’ll give him our scrawny bald dway in exchange for you.”
“Yeah, it’s DiBellock. He won’t be happy about it.”
Toler shrugged, frowning his indifference. “Ask me about the last time I cared whether DiBellock was happy.”
10
As the last day of the trip between Tristol and Rills dawned and the signs of civilization came into view on the horizon, Calistari and three of his five shepherds approached with the thought of their precious cargo and its secret full in their minds. The other two shepherds remained blissfully unaware, though Lodd hadn’t appeared blissful about anything since he’d switched to Calistari’s crew.
“Walling–Wallingford, is that how you say it?” Calistari was seated next to the coachman, struggling to write between bumps in the scrubland.
Lodd frowned, an expression that fit his long, slender face. “Lodd. Just call me Lodd–everyone calls me Lodd.”
“Very well, Mr. Lodd,” the merchant said, trying to project his voice over the noise of the caravan. “As I’m certain Mr. Blatcher has informed you, I don’t tolerate insolence. My reports to Mr. Vantanible are thorough. I reward those who do their best work and follow orders. My recommendation for you will hinge upon your behavior.”
Toler glanced over at Lodd, crinkling his mouth by way of apology. Lodd glowered back at him.
Calistari cleared his throat. “Now, first thing’s first. You will remain with the flatbed until I dismiss you. Rills does not offer as safe a haven as Tristol, so the crate must be guarded at all times. This means you will work in shifts, pairing off in twos, with Mr. Shapperton here being the sixth man. Mr. Lodd?”
“Yeah.” Lodd sighed. He’d been actively ignoring Calistari, and he looked perturbed that Calistari had caught him.
“Right. You’ll be paired with Mr. Shapperton. Mr. Blatcher and Mr. Mays will make up the second pair, while Mr. Glaive and Mr…. Rauk–Raukel, will be the third.”
Toler took a long look at Ort Raukel, the raven-haired stranger who’d joined them last week. The man had a tribal look about him, and Toler guessed he had savage blood from somewhere not too far down the line. Either he wasn’t much for conversation, or the bleak stares he threw the other shepherds were his way of being friendly.
As Rills grew in the distance, the caravan crossed ground ranging from
bone-dry to swampy. The terrain around Rills was the dampest in the Amber Coast, except near the ocean. Dust billowed in some places, while mud stuck to the flatbeds’ thick-treaded tires in others.
Rills was a dried shell of a village, like so many other settlements in the Aionach. The unruly whims of the light-star had deprived it of its former greatness. Originally built between the branches of three rivers and their tributaries, the town was a sprawling mass of stilts and trestles. Its houses were primitive, stone and thatching and corrugated steel, with stick fences lashed together with reeds and hempen rope. Time and wind had applied their influence to topple many of the town’s buildings, but the residents had scavenged leftovers and remnants from those to keep the other structures in good repair.
Bridges of riverstone and clay mud crossed great expanses of dry delta where mighty rivers had once rushed by. The Heat’s cruel effects had made a mockery of them. Trout had once swam thick in those streams. Without them, the people of Rills now had to travel far up the mountainside to reach deep water. In recent years, they’d learned to survive on less appetizing varieties of aquatic life, like freshwater eel, mollusks, and bottom feeders.
The people of Rills welcomed the caravan, lining the streets in sparse crowds, altogether a more docile people than the cityfolk. Smaller settlements felt more like communities; instead of being at each other’s throats, the people were inclined to work together. Peaceful towns like Rills often turned away the violent and immoral, leaving the cities to become magnets for those less savory characters.
“Shapperton, you good-for-nothing,” Calistari said when the flatbed hit a deep gouge and knocked the pen from his hand. “Mr. Lodd,” he yelled back, waving at the sodden implement below. “Do kindly pick that up and bring it here.”
Toler almost felt bad for Lodd, but this was too entertaining to spoil with pity.
“Hurry, now.” Calistari was shaking his arm with urgency, as if the pen would vanish when he got too far away. Lodd dismounted, used to feeling sand and hardpan beneath his feet. When he sunk into soft mud instead, he wobbled and fell over backwards, his boots suctioned into place.
They say the best friends are the ones who will suffer with you. Toler was glad for friends who were willing to suffer for him. He halted his horse and extended a hand to help Lodd to his feet. “This is the second time in as many days that I’ve had to help you out of the mud,” he said, grinning.
“Quit smiling or I’ll make sure you can’t do it again for a week.” Lodd twisted around to check how much mud was on the back of his pants.
“I’m sorry,” Toler said, forcing his grin into a barely containable smirk.
“This was a bad coffing idea.”
“Letting me rescue you a second time?”
“Letting you talk me into swapping crews.”
“I didn’t talk you into anything. You owed me, remember?”
Lodd picked up the pen, managed to get his boots free, and mounted. “Then warn me the next time I’m about to owe you something, so I can never do it again. Owing you anything is a bad coffing idea.”
“Mr. Lodd,” Calistari called from far ahead, still flapping an impatient hand. “If you please?”
Lodd gave Toler a look that would’ve lit a wet cigarette before he rode off to give Jakob his pen.
11
Toler found Calistari’s room and gave the heavy wooden door a firm knock. They were staying at a dingy old motel called the Brooks Laryn, an L-shaped building with a flat roof and rust-flecked paint. The worn billboard out front had a hanging banner strapped to it that read FREE COFFEE WITH STAY in barely legible lettering. Below that, a filigree of dead black tubes spelled