The Ventifact Colossus (The Heroes of Spira Book 1) (21 page)

“Tell me,” she hissed.

“Mokad said to tell you, he
may
have a lead on an Eye of Moirel. If he’s pleased with the outcome of this operation,
and
his investigations prove out, he
may
be willing to share what he knows.”

Lapis straightened suddenly, as though someone had goosed her with a pike. Her eyes and mouth both opened comically wide.

“Listen to me, Pietr,” she whispered menacingly. “If Mokad knows about an Eye, he will tell us everything, even if all we dig up here is a rusted bucket. He is playing a game for which he is not ready. Tell him I’ll be talking to him as soon as I’m off this Circle-forsaken rock, and if he holds anything back, I will tear off his face and see what kind of scar it leaves.”

She took a step back and smiled at him. “Khorl, please escort Pietr here to site nine and show him what we’ve found. Then see him to the platforms and get him off my island.”

“Yes, Lapis.”

* * *

Dranko wasn’t sure what he was looking at.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. He knew it was a statue, half again as tall as he was. He knew that while it was humanoid, it wasn’t human; no man or woman or goblin-touched had fangs that long, or claws that sharp, or eyes that far apart, or a chin that long and pointed, or wings neatly folded behind its back. And he knew that it was made of rock, some kind of striated marble as orange and luminous as a harvest moon.

But he also knew that this thing was more, and that it was worse, and that he wanted as little to do with it as possible. Its deep-socketed eyes, two blood-colored marbles with cat-slit pupils, were like windows into the Hells, and something looked out of them, eager, hungry. Though it was just an inert stone sculpture, inanimate, incapable of causing him harm unless it fell on him, Dranko had to fight down his flight reflex from the moment he laid his eyes upon it.

“As you can see,” said Khorl, “the artifact is entirely unharmed, and the greatest care has been taken to preserve it in its original condition.” The bearded man sounded bored.

Dranko wanted to make a dash for the elevator and scream for the pulley-men to haul him back to the surface. He forced himself to speak. “Impressive. But since you’ve found it, why is it still down here? What is the delay?”

“You may have noticed that the rock of the wandering islands is not of any kind found elsewhere on Charagan. The greatest care must be taken to avoid cave-ins and rock falls. We are doing everything possible to make sure that when the artifact is extracted, there are no accidents that might damage it.”

“And how long do you anticipate that will take? We’re paying for every hour you spend, after all.”

“I think I heard another three days,” said Khorl.

“Acceptable,” said Dranko. He forced himself to look at the orange monster, and though the marble statue hadn’t moved an inch, Dranko would have sworn on Delioch’s name that it was not only looking back at him, but planning to murder him, to sink its claws into his guts and eat them, slowly.

Dranko edged away from it ever so slightly. He could hardly bear to look at the statue’s cruel features, but he feared that if he took his eyes off it, it would choose that moment to strike. “Once you have it safely removed, where does it go next?”

He asked the question with all the nonchalance he could muster, but Khorl still gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I don’t know,” he said. “And I was under the impression that all of the post-operation details were none of the investors’ business.”

“That’s fine,” Dranko said quickly. “I only asked out of personal curiosity. Khorl, thank you for your time. I think we’re done here.” Maybe he could squeeze some more information out of the foreman, but he’d be damned if he was going to stay one more minute down here with that orange devil silently plotting his death.

As the pulley-men hoisted the platform that brought Dranko and Khorl to the surface, miners were still working all around them, widening the shaft that led down to where the monstrous statue had been unearthed. Khorl had already told him it had been found in its hollowed-out rectangular gap, buried deep in the gritty rock that composed the wandering island, with no sign of how it had been placed there.

The farther the elevator took him away from the statue, the more relieved and optimistic Dranko became. He stepped off the platform and onto the island’s surface and breathed in the cool desert air, only now realizing how hot and dusty the chamber had been down below. He turned to Khorl, thinking that he might risk another few carefully couched questions before heading back to the desert to find his friends.

Two thoughts came to him immediately. One was that he had no good sense of how far the island had moved since his arrival, which would make locating the others a dicey proposition.

The second was that he needed to leave
right now.
Over Khorl’s shoulder, some thirty feet away and standing in the direct light of a torch, Lapis was listening to an animated man who was vigorously gesticulating as he talked. He was tall, stoop-shouldered, and his frizzy red hair glowed in the firelight.

Lapis turned and looked directly at Dranko. She raised her hand to point at him just as he decided to run like the Hells, and even as he dashed away leaving the bewildered Khorl behind, the scaffolding holding up the array of pulleys and the elevator platform burst apart in a spray of beams and spiraling ropes.

Shouts and commotion erupted in his wake, but Dranko never looked back. He sprinted through the tent city, keeping his eyes open for any sign of where anyone kept their sand-shoes. He saw none. He should have asked Romas. More to the point, he should have had a less suicidal plan from the start.

It didn’t take him long to leave the torchlight and scattered tents behind, and find himself on the steepening downward slope at the island’s edge. Praying that his sense of direction wouldn’t fail him in his panic, he turned to his left and started to run around the island’s perimeter, barely able to see in the faint light from the nearest torches. Dranko knew there was a good chance he’d miss his rope in the darkness if he ran too fast, but as soon as Lapis got things organized, there would be search parties out in force.

After five minutes of a frantic jogging search, Dranko convinced himself that he’d gone too far and turned around. From the tent city came more cries and barked orders, and clusters of men with torches were floating free of the busy center of the island, heading toward the edges. How much time did he have before he was spotted?

Not long, it turned out. Less than a minute after he had changed directions, he found his rope because the metal spike was gleaming in the torchlight. Unfortunately, the torch in question was held by a large bearded man not more than thirty feet away.

“Found him!” bellowed the man! “He’s here!”

New plan. He’d rappel down the side of the island, cling spider-like to the wall lower down, scuttle sideways along it, climb back up at a different point along the island’s circumference, sneak into the tent city again, find sand shoes, then climb down again, all before the sun came up.

It was a stupid plan. Its chance of success was essentially zero, but there was no time to devise another.

Dranko needed to rappel downward as fast as possible, in case the man who found him pulled up his stake. He gave himself as much of a running start as he could, sprinted down the steep slope letting gravity assist as much as possible, and launched himself out into the air. The rope slid through his fingers, burning away the skin of his palms until he grabbed hold. As soon as he secured his grip, he swung back toward the island and slammed into it about fifty feet down, bruising his right shoulder, his right knee…Hells, every bone and muscle on the whole right side of his body. He’d probably broken something, but he could figure out what later.

He rappelled downward, wincing in pain, kicking off the island wall with his left foot, feeling his right shoulder burn like it was on fire.

He was still thirty feet above the desert floor when the spike gave way, either loosened too much by his initial jump or pulled out by someone up top. It hardly mattered. His brain suggested that he try to land spread-eagled, but long before his battered body could act on the idea he fell in feet first.

The sand offered little resistance; the Mouth of Nahalm swallowed him whole.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MORNINGSTAR CAST HER gaze westward into the darkness. The island was a purple-gray hill outlined against the night’s starry black. Dim orange light flickered on its top, which made sense; if the Black Circle cultists were working on the mesa, they’d have torches or bonfires lit. Assuming the island was the same size as the one upon which they had camped, it should be about a half-hour’s trudge away.

They had agreed to give Dranko three hours, but Ernie grew fidgety after twenty minutes.

“Maybe we should follow him,” he said. “Make sure he gets there okay.”

Morningstar shook her head. “We should stick to the plan. If we get too close, it’s more likely we’ll be noticed.”

They had spread out one of their sheets over the sand, and Aravia was taking the first turn lying down. The wind had calmed, stilling the restless powdery sand, and the only sound was a tiny rhythmic clinking coming faintly across the desert.

“But we could be closer than this,” said Ernie. “If it’s dark out here and light up there, they wouldn’t see us unless we were practically on top of them, right?”

“Maybe,” Morningstar conceded. “But what does it matter? If he gets caught, are you proposing we mount a rescue? How would we even get up there? Dranko says he can climb, but I know I can’t. We’d be throwing our lives away after his.”

Throwing good lives after bad.

Not that she specifically wished death upon Dranko; he was vulgar and lacked redeeming qualities, but he was part of the team, and she’d look out for him if it came to it. Still, there were limits to the risks she’d take to save his life.

“Aravia,” asked Ernie, “do you have any spells that would help?”

The wizardess thought for a moment. “I could try arcing one of you high enough to crest the angle of the island wall, but I’d have to improvise. I’d give it about a one in ten chance of working, and if it missed, you’d bounce off and fall back into the…”

“So, no,” said Morningstar. “Ernie, I understand you’re worried, but Dranko will either get caught or he won’t. There’s no wind tonight, so he can follow his footprints back here easily enough. Let’s give him time to work, and minimize the risk.”

“I guess.” Ernie sounded unconvinced.

Morningstar tried to imagine what Dranko would do when he reached the island. Would there be places for him to hide? If the enemy had sentries posted around the perimeter, he’d be spotted almost immediately. And if he were captured, would he give them up? They were sitting ducks out here, should any sort of armed expedition be launched from the island.

She didn’t trust him. Dranko was a confessed criminal and had lied about being a Deliochan channeler. (If not for his scars and his admittedly expert field-medic skills, she wouldn’t believe he was a disciple of Delioch at all.) But he
was
risking his life already, and, begrudgingly, she decided he wouldn’t betray them.

She stared out at the distant island with its crown of lights. Dranko would be arriving there any minute.

“I hope he’s okay,” whispered Ernie.

“He can take care of himself,” said Morningstar. “Stop worrying and—”

She blinked and refocused her eyes. Was the desert air playing tricks?

Oh no.

The island was moving.

“We have to go,” she said sharply. “Now!”

“Is Dranko coming back already?” asked Ernie.

“It’s the opposite. He’s getting farther away. The wandering island is wandering away from us.” She kept talking as she and Ernie hoisted Aravia to her feet. “If it moves far enough, Dranko won’t be able to find his way back here. We need to follow it, so that when Dranko gets off the island I can see him. We’ll follow
our
tracks back to Sand’s Edge. Come on.”

They marched as quickly as they could. The only sounds were the rasps of their paddle-shaped sand shoes sliding across the sand, and their soft grunts of exertion. Morningstar’s legs were already sore. As they moved, she became more and more convinced that Dranko was going to fail. If ever there lived a man whose bravado outdistanced his abilities, it was him. And sneaking around one’s home city was one thing, but infiltrating an enemy camp was something else entirely. He had probably already been captured.

“Are we catching up?” gasped Ernie.

Morningstar had to stop walking to be certain. “Yes. It’s not moving very fast, but it’s still angling away from us. No more stops until we get there.”

There was nothing else to do but to keep slogging. They plotted an indirect course, which was made easier when the island veered a bit
toward
them and picked up speed.

“The optimal plan is not to get too close
too
fast,” Aravia explained. “We don’t want the island to go shooting past an hour before Dranko decides to leave. The goal is to approach at an angle, keep it within your sight for as long as possible.”

Now they were close enough to see individual torch fires, though soon those would be eclipsed by the island’s steeply dropping sides. Morningstar was relieved to see that the firelight didn’t wash onto the desert floor around it, so they would be effectively invisible until they were close. An irregular pattern of staccato clinks, metal on stone, came from high up.

The island continued to accelerate, probably caught in a fast-moving current far beneath the sands. It was going to pass them on a diagonal in only a couple of minutes, so they adjusted their route yet again. Now they were fleeing from it, so that it would glide by more slowly.

A sudden burst of shouts came from the island-top.

“They’ve seen us!” hissed Ernie.

It sounded like quite a commotion, dozens of men yelling to one another. What could they do? If the Black Circle cultists had noticed their arrival, the three of them might have even put Dranko’s
life in jeopardy, stirring up a hornet’s nest while he was trying to hide somewhere.

The island was now quickly sliding past them, not more than fifty feet distant. A voice from above shouted, “Spread out and find him!” So was it Dranko who had the operation in an uproar? Or had the cultists seen Morningstar and her friends, which had prompted Dranko to do something rash? Either way, what could they do to help him?

She gauged the island’s speed at maybe thirty feet each second; soon it would be past them, taking Dranko with it.

“Found him!” someone roared. “He’s here!” The shout came from the rear of the island, as figured by its direction. She looked up, and even as the moving mountain swept past her, a person rappelled wildly out over its edge on a rope, then swung down and crashed hard into the rock wall. He squirmed, rotated his body, and kicked off with his left foot, sliding down another dozen feet before tightening his grip and bouncing again into the island’s side.

Morningstar squinted. “He’s there! And he’s not wearing his sand-shoes. I don’t know what he thinks he’s—”

The rope gave way, and Dranko fell. In the second before he reached the desert floor he twined the rope around his left arm, and then he vanished into the sand. The rope followed him down like a snake escaping into its hole, but a good length of it remained resting on the surface.

“Goddess! Come on, quickly!”

The three of them hurried over while the island retreated. For the moment at least, none of the cultists were inclined to follow Dranko over the edge. They probably assumed he was a dead man.

Not if Morningstar could help it. With Aravia and Ernie following, she went for where the rope lay twitching. That was good; it meant Dranko was still alive. It took the three of them a minute to work out how they could all haul on the rope at once; it involved laying out one of the sheets for them to stand upon. This was because they couldn’t apply the necessary leverage to extract Dranko from the desert without toppling over themselves. Slowly, painstakingly, they pulled on the rope, praying that Dranko wouldn’t release his grip. Ernie was the strongest; without him, she and Aravia would never have managed it. But after another minute of straining and heaving at the rope, Dranko’s arm surfaced, followed soon by his shoulder and his head. His grip was loose; Dranko’s instinct to wrap the rope around his arm was what saved him. They grabbed his unconscious body and dragged it onto the sheet.

“Is he alive?” asked Ernie anxiously. “What do we do?”

Morningstar crouched next to Dranko, wondering the same. She pried his mouth open and scooped damp sand from it with her hand, and after two handfuls an instinctive cough racked his chest. A plume of dust escaped his lungs.

“Alive,” said Aravia. “Good.”

But he didn’t regain consciousness. Aravia suggested turning him on his side and pounding his back, to get as much sand out of him as possible, but when Dranko’s coughs became less and less productive, they stopped thumping him.

“We need to drag him,” Morningstar said. “We need to get back to the first island before the sun comes up, and there’s no way to know how long he’ll be out. Come on. We’ll make the sheet into a triangle. Ernie, you and I will pull on the front corners for a start.”

Ernie looked skeptical. “I don’t know if we’ll—”

“Ernie! We don’t have a choice. I don’t like it either, but this is what the Goddess wills. Grab a corner and let’s move. We need to hurry.”

And so the three of them began a long, painful trudge eastward, hauling Dranko’s flour-sack body across the night-dark sand.

* * *

Goddess, whatever were my sins, surely you have burned them away.

It was approaching noon, and only now was the city of Sand’s Edge in sight, a blurry mirage swimming in the haze, two hours away at least. A significant part of her mind was convinced she had died and gone to the Hells, but still she shuffled her feet. One, then the other, then the other, then the other. Beside her Ernie trudged in a daze, the corner of Dranko’s sheet bunched in his sweating hands and slung over his shoulder. Behind, Aravia was wheezing or coughing with each step. But Morningstar had suffered the most. The sun had scorched her like an avenging spirit of fire, punishing her for a lifetime spent hiding from it.

Their water had run out hours ago, despite their miserly rationing. It had been right around the time they realized the first island had wandered far enough out of their path that they’d be better off marching through the morning, sunlight be damned.

But it’s I who have been damned.

Everything hurt. Her skin was a mottled canvas of leathery white patches and angry red welts. Her muscles screamed obscenities. Her thighs cramped. Sweat soaked her clothes. She glanced back at Dranko, willing him to wake up and take a turn. He lacked sand shoes, but she’d give him hers and let him drag her sweat-damp body the rest of the way. But he was still out, and so they had to endure.

My soul is on fire, you wretched goblin pickpocket. You’d better be alive when we get to Sand’s Edge. If you die, I will hunt you through the afterlife.

How many hours had they walked since pulling Dranko out of the sand? Ten? Twelve? It felt like a month, counted out in seconds of pain and thirst.

For another hour the sand whispered its mockery while the sun bludgeoned them, but she would not let them defeat her. She would not fall, not let the desert have her withered, dehydrated body. Ernie had fallen twice, but both times he had stumbled backward onto the sheet and so had survived. Aravia walked with her face slack, eyes distant, her mind probably far away from this open-air oven. The details of the city became sharper. It was a wonder that her eyes still worked; they were hot marbles in her skull, dry and brittle.

Some people were standing on the lip of the desert, waving their arms. She hoped it was Grey Wolf and the others, but if it were a contingent of Black Circle cultists waiting for them, what was there to be done?

One step, and then another, and then another. And then…the scaffolding, and arms under her shoulders, and ropes, and she was lifted, and a water skin was put to her lips. She would have cried, but her tears had long since dried up and blown away.

* * *

She didn’t remember much after that. There was Grey Wolf, propping her up. There was Kibi with Dranko slung over his shoulder, and Tor helping Ernie and Aravia. There was a gangplank, and a ship, and a ladder, and the blessed cool of a dark hold.