Scavenger of Souls (3 page)

Aleka's promise—or was it a warning?—rang in my ears like an echo off the glassy stone. There were so many things I wanted to know, so many things only she could tell me. About my past. My family. My father. Myself. I knew how a starving man felt when he saw an oasis in the desert. The only difference was, I felt like I'd been starving for seven months, and it was finally coming to an end.

All we had to do was cross the plateau of stone.

We hadn't gone more than a mile before I realized how hard that was going to be. The sun had barely cleared the horizon, and already it hammered down on us, making the air writhe with heat, the black rock sizzle like a brand. Not only that, but the stone that had seemed so smooth at first glance turned out to be sharp and broken, stabbing into the soles of my shoes with each step—though that wasn't surprising, considering my boots had been worn down not only by me but by whoever had lived and marched and died in them fifty years ago. Though the kids had started off with a burst of energy, it soon took all my coaxing and hand-holding to keep them on the move. I began to imagine that a giant fist had smashed down on the surface of the plain, shattering everything into shards and splinters of stone that sparkled like a trillion fragments of glass. Waves of heat radiated from the surface, weird ripples that made everything in the dead zone sway as if it was alive. The effects of light and sound produced by this wasteland made the journey as disorienting as it was exhausting: every time I saw one of the stone shapes rising in the distance, I caught my breath, thinking I was seeing an actual, living human being—or worse, one of the monsters that hid in human form. I wouldn't have been completely surprised if these figures had sprung to life and chased us across the plain, like shadows freed from the coal-black ground.

I touched one of the monoliths as I passed it. I'm not sure if I was testing to see if it was alive or simply checking to make
sure it was really there. It burned my fingers as if I'd thrust my hand directly into a fire.

The farther we traveled across the deadly plateau, the more I began to wonder what had created this place, whether it was the result of some natural disaster or a leftover from the wars that had swept away the old civilization. Laman used to talk about the bombs that had been dropped in those days, bombs that could not only level buildings but vaporize entire cities, mimicking the power of the sun for a split second of total destruction. He'd told me that was why there were so few traces left of the old times, why everything was desert, why we so rarely stumbled across the remains of a highway or skyscraper or playground. That also explained why the sky stayed filthy and brown even after all this time, because everything that had been incinerated down here had entered the atmosphere as a permanent, oppressive cloud. What that meant was that every time you breathed, you breathed residue from the world before: houses, shopping malls, people. That used to give me a sick feeling, until I considered the alternative, which was not breathing at all.

But in all his stories, Laman had never told me about bombs that could turn the landscape to volcanic glass. He'd never mentioned a power that could make everything melt and then re-form into the polished, mocking shapes that surrounded me. I supposed this might have been the site of an actual volcanic eruption, the ground heaving upward and spewing out superheated rock that had cooled into
these twisted, lopsided remains. If that was the case, though, I couldn't figure out what had happened to the volcano, unless one of the larger rock formations was its extinct cone. Aleka, as usual, said nothing, and no one asked her for an explanation. What could have had this effect on the landscape, short of some prehistoric monster that had scoured the land with molten fire, was beyond me.

As noon approached, a more pressing problem presented itself: water. I had carefully weighed the canteen in my hand when we set out, and I could tell that we'd drunk far more than usual as we inched across the scorching plain. The kids especially we kept dousing with water, hoping to keep their small bodies from drying up in the blaze. But we'd also discovered that the river had become completely undrinkable in its narrow channel through the rock, its depth little more than a few inches and its color the black of ash. Aleka might say that the watercourse grew again once it reached the canyon, but at the moment, pure water seemed as far off as that oasis in the desert. And like the spectral rock forms that crowded us on all sides, I was beginning to wonder whether the oasis might turn out to be a mirage.

We rested from noon until the sun neared the western horizon. Our shadows spooled out behind us like gigantic threads, but when I looked back, there was no sign of anything they might have connected us to. I could tell from Aleka's rigid posture that she hated to waste so much time, but we didn't have any choice. The kids were practically
comatose from the heat, and the rest of us were sunburned, famished, and exhausted from carrying them and the old woman. As it was, we were barely able to find relief from the sun's assault. A shallow declivity was the best we could do, with blankets stretched across the rock to shelter us. Wali, I noticed, draped his own blanket over Nessa's shoulders, his peace offering I guess. She accepted with a nod and a weary smile. As I sank into a half sleep, I wondered if Aleka planned to march us through the night.

She did. As soon as the sun hit the horizon we were up, and with nothing to trap the heat, the relative cool of dusk—a few degrees cooler than day—hurried in. It was a moonless night, only a single bright star pulsing through the murk that covered our world. Without flashlights or flamethrowers to light a path, I was afraid we'd veer off course. But Aleka was determined not to stop now that her goal was within reach. And so, while the kids slept in our arms and the old woman in her hammock, we followed our leader into the endless black land.

She'd never let us down before, I kept reminding myself as we stumbled through the dark. And once we arrived, she'd not only give us what our bodies needed, but give me what my heart so desperately wanted.

As the sky brightened, I saw that we'd entered a part of the landscape where large slabs of the black rock lay jumbled and heaped on each other, looking almost like buildings that had collapsed or been bombed to the ground. Wali and
Soon clutched their weapons more tightly now that we'd come to a place that provided cover for enemies. I gripped Keely's hand, feeling the tiniest bit of relief when he returned my squeeze like he used to. Aleka tested one of the stacks of stone, and when it turned out not to be as precarious as it looked, she led us to its summit to survey the landscape.

Nessa's hands fumbled with her scarf as she retied her dirty-blond ponytail. “This isn't the mountains.”

“No,” Aleka said. “There are no mountains here.”

No one showed the least surprise at her announcement that we'd been chasing something that didn't exist.

“What is this place?” I asked.

Aleka stared into the distance for an eternity before answering.

“A place from long ago,” she said at last. “We need to be careful.”

“Did it look like this before?”

She glanced at me, and I was sure she was hiding something. Then she pointed and said, “We've reached the canyon. There!”

Everyone followed her finger as if an electric bolt had shot from it. In the distance, southwest of the wilderness of stone, the black desert came abruptly to an end and the color of the land changed back to its typical drab brown. But I could see, just beyond the edge of the blackness, a dark line zigzagging through the land. It looked as slender as something drawn by a pencil, but it must have been
enormous to be visible at all from where we stood. The trickling river angled straight for it, as if it was as eager as we were to get out of this dead land. It might only have been a trick of weariness and distance, but I could have sworn the light that hung over that line was softer than the angry red light of morning, a pale blue light like an exhalation of clean air and water from the canyon's mouth.

No sooner did Wali see it than he charged down the stone mound. He was followed a second later by Soon, each of them clutching a kid to their chest and leaping down the rock before pounding across the black land. Adem and Nessa were left beside the old woman's stretcher, while the rest of the kids squirmed out of their caretakers' arms and charged after their companions, pointing at the canyon and shouting words that alternated between taunts and encouragement.

“I see it!”

“Me too!”

“Beat you there!”

“In your dreams!”

“Hurry up!”

“Wait for me!”

“I need a piggyback!”

“Querry . . .”

“Keep order,” Aleka shouted over the din of their voices as she raced down the hill after her colony. “Querry, watch the children. Tyris, Nekane, guard our rear. Adem . . .”

The rest of her words were drowned out by a chorus like
nothing that came from human throats: a long, ululating shriek that emanated from the piles of black rock. Up ahead, I saw Soon raise his gun then fall, the child he held rolling free as his big body hit the ground and lay still.

Aleka whirled, her own gun leveled. The next instant, the heaps of stone seemed to come alive as human figures appeared out of crevices and grabbed Nekane, Tyris, and Adem. Other dark shapes materialized from the ground, intercepting the children and hoisting them into the air, their legs kicking vainly. Wali bounded toward the captives, shouting, “Get your goddamned hands off of them!” But the strangers blocked his path to the children, and he fell beneath their weight, surrendering the child he was holding—Beatrice—to their arms. I lost sight of Soon in all the bodies, but I heard Nessa scream before her voice was cut short as rough hands wrapped her mouth.

For a moment I stood frozen. Our captors looked human, men with long dark hair, faces free of beards, and lean, muscular frames stripped naked except for brown loincloths. Looking human meant nothing, though. If these were Skaldi, in less time than it took to blink they'd shake off the bodies they'd counterfeited and consume the bodies they'd captured, moving from victim to victim while the skins of those they'd eaten fell in tatters to the ground.

But they didn't. They weren't Skaldi. They were people like us.

Aleka must have realized it too. Standing at the base
of the stone mound, she flourished her gun, a silver pistol. Whether she could manage a clean shot with the prisoners held tightly I couldn't tell.

“Let them go,” she said in a commanding voice that rebounded across the black land. The men made no move to obey, but one of them raised his voice in a call like a scream of pain.

Aleka spun toward the sound, her weapon on the alert.

She never got a chance to use it. A dark object came hurtling from somewhere high above and struck her arm with a sickening crunch. The gun flew from her fingers and she dropped to the ground, clutching her wrist. Her right hand dangled like a limp weed.

I shook off my paralysis and leaped down the hill for her gun, but before I could reach it, a pair of powerful arms pinned me from behind and lifted me off the ground. I struggled in a grip like steel. The only members of our party who stayed free were the old woman, who lay untouched on her stretcher, and Aleka, who stayed down, her always pale face drained of every drop of color. Soon lay too far away for me to see what had happened to him, a cluster of warriors surrounding the spot where he'd fallen.

“Strangers from beyond the Shattered Lands,” the man who held me spoke in a deep, oddly accented voice that I not only heard but felt vibrating against my back. I strained to look at him, but he held me fast. “By what right do you travel in our realm?”

No one spoke. One of the warriors lifted Aleka roughly to her feet, her head lolling on her thin neck.

“Release them, Archangel,” a new voice issued from above. The words rolled over the scene of battle, rich and melodious but at the same time as sharp as the crack of the unknown weapon that had maimed Aleka.

The arms dropped me, the other warriors freeing their prisoners as well. I turned to face the most massive human being I'd ever seen: well over seven feet tall, brown-skinned and with a chest and shoulders bulging with muscle. He was dressed as skimpily as the others, in moccasins and loincloth, except he wore an ankle-length cloak made of the same brown material. His clean-shaven face was immobile, impassive, more like the face of a cliff than the face of a man. His black eyes traveled upward to the place where the new voice had come from.

I followed his gaze and saw a man standing on the summit we'd just descended, his skin pale against the black. He was nowhere near as huge as the one he called Archangel. In fact he was small, not much taller than me, and he seemed particularly puny compared to his lieutenant's hulking frame. Like all the men, he wore no beard, and his brown hair hung to shoulder length. But the cloak that spilled over his shoulders and hid his arms and chest was red, a glaring red that made his figure explode from the empty land like a splash of blood.

He descended his perch, traveling on a narrow trail either
carved or worn into the stone. His steps were lithe and quick, almost cocky. When he reached the level ground, he strode toward Aleka, who stood unsteadily, her broken wrist cradled in her left hand. The weapon that had done the damage, a pair of palm-size black balls connected by a foot-long cord, lay coiled at her feet. I waited for the red-cloaked man to retrieve it, but he walked past his weapon, past his victim, to the discarded gun no one had yet touched. I'd thought Wali might go for the pistol when the warriors freed him, but like everyone else in our colony, he seemed too shaken to move. Everyone except Nessa, that is, who had decided to take the opportunity to braid her hair. I turned from her, shaking my head, and followed the progress of the warriors' leader.