The Mountains Rise (13 page)

Daniel awoke in a small bed. It wasn’t too dissimilar to his own, and if it hadn’t
been for the difference in the room he might have imagined himself at home again.
He was shivering badly
,
although he seemed to be covered by a thick quilt and several blankets. His body
felt dry, parched, as though he had been
days
without water.

A pitcher and a cup sat on a small table next to the bed
,
so he poure
d some, or at least he tried to;
he got at least half of it on the floor
,
his hands were shaking so badly. Finishing the cup
,
he collapsed back into the bed, pulling the covers tightly up around his neck.

When he awoke again there was a woman at the bedside. She was probably in her twenties
,
though her features were coarse and rough, as though she had lived a hard life.
Her nose was bent slightly sideways at the middle, giving her face an off-center appearance.
He could only guess that it had been broken sometime in the past, possibly more than
once.
The most notable thing about her was that she wore no clothing.

One hand was lifting his head
,
and she had a cup to his lips. “Drink, baratt, or you will die,” she said in a voice
that held little sympathy. He could tell by her aura that the task annoyed her, as
if she would rather be doing anything other than tending to him.

He drank.

“I’m sorry for your trouble,” he told her, trying to show gratitude in his expression.

Her only response was to spit onto what he now realized was a dirt floor. “If you’re
able to talk then you can eat,” she answered.
She stepped out and
returned a moment later with a bowl that smelled like some sort of broth or soup
. She
pla
ced it on the table next to him, and
t
hen she left again.

Daniel fell asleep before trying the broth
,
and when he awoke again it was cold, with congealed bits of grease floating across
the top. Unable to find a spoon
,
he simply drank it from the bowl, spilling some down his shirt when his hands shook.
He was ravenous
,
and despite the lack of
flavor,
he drank until it was gone, swallowing tiny bits of meat and unknown vegetables as
they slid into his mouth. Exhausted
,
he lay back
,
and soon his eyes closed.

The woman shook him later
,
and he was surprised to realize that he no longer felt hot or cold, merely sore and
uncomfortable. His clothes smelled of stale sweat and he could feel grit under his
collar.

He also needed to pee.

The woman offered him another bowl
,
but as he took it he asked her, “Is there somewhere I can relieve myself?”

She pointed at a clay bowl with a heavy lid that was tucked against one wall
,
and he understood that it must be a chamber pot. His parents hadn’t used them at
home, but he had heard that many of the townsfolk in Colne did, preferring not to
leave their homes during cold nights.

“Thank you,” he said, but her only response was a grunt as she left.

He felt a bit strange peeing in the bowl.

Examining the small room he was in for the first time, he wondered where his clothes
had gotten to. Cold
,
he climbed quickly back into the bed.

The next several days passed slowly. The woman returned several times each day, bringing
him foods that were increasingly solid, as opposed to the simple broth. She never
spoke unless he questioned her
,
and even then she sometimes refused to answer.

“Where are my clothes?”

Bent-nose ignored the question. He had mentally given her the name for lack of anything
better to call her. She had steadfastly refused to give her
real
name, nor did she seem interested when he offered his own.

Despite the odd care
,
he was on the mend. His fever was gone
,
and his appetite was strong. The bandage that had been around his head was gone,
removed at some point while he was unconscious. The remainder of his ear had gotten
infected
,
but it had subsided now. The nub that remained was sore and covered with a thick
scab. Daniel had a hard time keeping his hands away from it
,
but he knew that if he worried with it he might
start it bleeding again.

The most frustrating part of his new living arrangement was the complete isolation,
coupled with unrelenting boredom. He had nothing to do, no one to talk to, and he
had been told several times to stay put.
Being naked didn’t help either.

He spent much of his spare time watching the world outside his room. He tried to
find a good crack or peephole in the walls or door
,
but they were all too small. Daniel was forced to rely on his special sense to explore
the world beyond his wooden walls.

He was in a town
, and to his surprise it was much larger than Colne. It might even be bigger than
Dereham, although he had never been there
,
so he couldn’t compare the two. There weren’t any god-trees growing within range
of his perception, they stopped some distance beyond the edge of where the buildings
began.

The houses themselves were all wooden, but they were oddly constructed. He could
find no sign of boards or any sort of cuts. They looked as though they had simply
grown up from the earth like wooden cypress knees.
They had no leaves or branches sprouting from them;
each was simply a gnarled mass of wood rising from the ground. Even the doors seemed
to somehow be of one piece with the rest of it. Their hinges turned out to not be
hinges at all, but some sort of flexible material that allowed them to swing while
keeping the door firmly attached.

Directing his perception downward
,
he could see that the wood that had risen to form each building was all part of a
single root, if that was the right word. He began to suspect that the root itself
originated with one or more of the god-trees outside of the town, but he couldn’t
follow it far enough to confirm that idea.

The people living in those buildings were
interesting in their own ways. In the area nearest to Daniel
,
there were many similar, one room dwellings. They weren’t part of larger buildings,
they were in fact each just one small room, separate and distinct, and each had only
one occupant.

The occupants were of varied sizes, genders, shapes and ages, but they all shared
one thing in particular. None of them wore clothes. Each and every one was naked
,
and all of them bore the unmistakable glow of power.

Their brightness varied, according to their relative strengths, Daniel guessed. Some
of them used shields to cover their bodies, which made it more difficult to see their
aura and to gauge their power. Watching them
,
it seemed that they spoke little to one another, preferring to spend their time alone.
Hygiene was at a minimum
,
and he knew without doubt that his mother would have been shocked to see how they
lived.

Most of them were allowed to enter and leave their rooms without restriction, carrying
their own chamber pots to the forest to be emptied somewhere, but Daniel was not one
of them. The woman
who
brought him food had given him strict instructions never to leave. He tried the
door at one point
,
but it wouldn’t yield at his touch the way it did for her
,
and there was no readily apparent latch or other mechanism to operate it.

He was a prisoner.

After a second week without any real human contact he felt certain that he was going
mad. He had begun to consider o
ptions such as gnawing a hole in the door with his teeth. That was a measure
of
the depth of his desperation.

The door opened and two men he didn’t recognize gestured for him to come with them.
Both wore the same leather armor that he had seen on the wardens. They didn’t bother
with words, simply directing him with their hands.

“I don’t have any clothes,” he protested, mildly embarrassed.

“Silence, baratt!” barked one of them.

“But…” Daniel’s second remark provoked them to action.

The closest one kicked his feet out from under him while the other drew his hands
apart, creating a red line of what appeared to be rope-like energy.

“Speak only when spoken to,” ordered the one
who
had kicked him in the legs, pushing down on his neck with one hand while the other
man brought the red whip to bear on his shoulders.
The searing pain that it created stole his breath and erased whatever thoughts had
been in his head.

After the first stroke they released him
,
and the red whip vanished. “Stand,” said one of them
,
and Daniel did as he was told, not daring to reply.

Nudity forgotten
,
he followed them through the narrow streets of their town. They walked for almost
two miles while Daniel tried carefully to memorize their path. The alleys between
the houses weren’t straight
;
they meandered at random, without bending to any apparent rationale or design. Most
of them were small, one room dwellings like the one he had been kept in, but as they
moved closer to the center of what he was beginning to think of as a city, he saw
larger buildings with purposes he could only wonder about.

They stopped at last near the largest building he had ever seen. It towered over
the others, rising almost a hundred feet in the air. On the other side of it was
a large circular area at least a hundred yards in diameter. It had what appeared
to be seats or steps rising around it on all sides, except the side facing the building.

The black-skinned forest god met them
, and two other men
who were naked like Daniel, took charge of him. The first two, who he guessed must
be wardens, left
,
and the naked ones directed him with their hands. Together the three of them followed
the forest god around the building, passing through a small gate and into a sheltered
area on one side of the circular field.

“Go out there and wait for the lights to change to red,” said the forest god.

“What do I do?” asked Daniel.

“They didn’t tell you?” asked the golden-haired man. Daniel found it difficult to
look at his blood red eyes.

“No, sir,” he answered meekly. He didn’t want another stroke of the lash, although
he had noticed by now that the previous one had left no mark on him.

The god laughed, amused by some secret joke. “Just go out there. Your opponent will
demonstrate for you in a moment.”

Nervous, Daniel did as he was told
,
and once he had entered the area
,
a wall of energy surged upward from the edges of the field, encircling it in a dome
of what seemed to be impenetrable power. A small girl stood on the other side, more
than eighty yards away.

“Hello?” he asked uncertainly, but she ignored his call.

She was naked, just as almost everyone seemed to be, aside from the wardens and the
forest gods, and she couldn’t have been much older than eleven or twelve years of
age. Her chest was still flat
,
and her hips had hardly any curve to them.
She had no shield around her
,
but he could see that she possessed a strong glow.
What caught his attention though, was her hair. It was bright red
,
and while she had cut
it
short
,
he couldn’t help but be reminded of Kate.

The circular edge of the field was marked at four points by long pole
s
rising from the wall that surrounded it. At the end of each pole was a wooden sphere
that glowed with visible light. They were blue when Daniel entered
,
but they shifted to a red hue now.

A loud noise, like a musical chime sounded in his ears as they shifted color. The
girl on the opposite side from him promptly vanished.

“What the hell?” he blurted out before closing his mouth. One second she had stood
there, clear to him with both his eyes and his ‘other’ sense, and then she had completely
disappeared.
There was no sign of her at all.
I
t was as if she had ceased to exist.