Chapter Twenty #5
first male apprentice looked quickly between Isaac and Zaria, opened his mouth,
didn’t seem to find the words, and left the tent entrance. The second boy tried
to pull the girl away, but she was staring at Isaac again, refusing to move.
“I know
you,” she said.
Isaac
blinked back at her.
She
pointed a finger. “The tower. Berith’s tower. You’re the boy that always stared
out the window. You’d watch us every day.”
Isaac
didn’t answer.
“You’re
Berith’s son.”
“No,”
he said. “I’m not.”
She
stared back, just on the edge of speaking. Her eyes were green and tinged with
red.
“I know
you, too,” Isaac said, suddenly remembering. “You lived four houses down from
the apothecary. Your chimney was broken. Your father worked as a tanner. You
always played with two boys at the herbarium. You’d put flowers in your hair,
which, I imagine, was to hide the smell of leather.”
The
girl’s mouth became a tight line. Her empty sigil was
black and scabbing.
“Did
you ever keep the dog?” Isaac asked. “I saw you feeding a stray, one time. It
liked to follow you.”
“That
was . . . years ago.”
Isaac
shrugged.
“No,”
she said. “I found it dead one morning. Neighbors butchered it for supper.”
“Oh.”
Sand
blew in from beneath the tent. The air was hot and swirling.
“Come
on,” said the second boy, tugging her back.
“Why
were you in his tower if you weren’t his son?”
Isaac
lay back on the bedroll, feeling dizzy.
“That’s
enough,” Zaria said. She leaned over, nearly dragging the tent with her. “On
you go. If you get stuck on the climb, just sit tight, and we’ll be like to
cross paths. Otherwise, this is a farewell.”
The
second boy nodded, dragging the girl away. She was beginning to weep again.
Slowly, the sound of footsteps faded into the distance. Isaac tried to
concentrate on breathing. Despite the heat rubbing against his skin, he felt
chilled and feverish. His skin was glossy with sweat.
“Drink
up,” Zaria said, handing him another bowl. “Meat and fluid. Suck it down.”
“Can
you cook it, at least?”
“Drink
the fucking stew.”
He did.
He made an effort to swallow three more batches of the
thin, salty broth, and every finished bowl seemed to help his mind pierce the
dizziness.
Berith.
The blood.
He
gazed through the entrance of his tent, anxious.
“Right,”
Zaria said, feeling his forehead. “Still looking pale. You’re staying on your
back until the morrow, at the very least.”
“Z.
Where’s my father?”
She
looked down at him. Blood caked through her spotted fur.
“He
said—” Isaac tried to sit up, felt the world spin around him, and fell back to
the roll. “He said he was running out of energy. Has he . . . ?”
“There’s
been no sign.”
“How
long have I been out?”
“Couple
hours, at least.”
He
tried to sit up again. Her hand pushed him down.
“I need
to find him.”
“You’re
in no condition.”
“I
don’t care.”
“Well,
I fucking do,” Zaria said, “and I’ll give you worse than Soren if you keep
acting fierce about it.”
There
was nothing else he could think to say. “Please.”
“By
Oerin’s cock, you’re just itching to hurt yourself, aren’t you?”
He kept
looking at her.
She
sighed, stifling a growl. “Fine. But so help your furless arse, if I see a
single spell.”
“I’ll
be good.”
“Like
fuck, you will.”
With a
gentle effort, she helped him crawl from the shade of his tent. The sunbaked
stone burnt his fingers as he rose to his feet. Now that the day had advanced
by several hours, the heat of the desert had settled into the formerly shaded
cavern, and the light was now so bright it felt like a physical weight on his
skin, if not a couple knives stabbing through his eye.
He
stood as straight as he could, leaning against Zaria’s side, blinking through
the glare.
To their
right, there lay the colossus, its scattered form so utterly massive that Isaac
found it difficult to view it as anything other than a collection of bony
hills. Rock and sand smothered the rest of the crater basin, piling into dunes
and mountains. Above the spot where the obelisk once rested, there was a deep
valley wrenched through the high cliff walls, curved like a cage of ribs.
Segments of the necropolis were visible amidst the rubble. It must have been
the first time the buildings had ever been exposed.
Much of
the cavern still lay in shade and darkness. The titan had only sundered a path
through the middle of the rocky ceiling, leaving a good portion of the crater
in shadow, like a half-blinking eye.
As he
looked, he could see the Khador students making their way towards the ruins of
the necropolis, their robes almost lost between the concrete, boulders, and
sand. The crucified skeletons had been scattered amongst the mounds of ossein,
the stars of the necromancer flags flapping in the breeze. Isaac continued to
sweep his gaze, taking in the full scale of the destruction.
Eventually,
he couldn’t resist any longer, and he gazed at the spot where Berith had died.
His
body was still there. In the bright sun, the skin was turning ashen, the
spilled blood already thick and brown from the desert heat. Isaac could see
lividity marks, sand collecting in the open eyes. He knew that exposure to the
sun would accelerate the decomposition. His uncle would start to smell, before
long.
The
world spun again. Only Zaria’s grip kept him from fainting.
“Isaac,”
she said. “I’m sorry. I know that—”
“No.”
He swallowed, looking again. He kept his gaze centered on Berith, as if in
defiance. “It had to be done.”
Zaria
nodded. “Right. Won’t argue otherwise. Just . . . seemed like he was trying to
say something, at the end.”
“Whatever
he was going to say, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“Aye.
Too little, too late.”
“Very
much so.”
The sun
was hot and merciless. The wind was full of sand.
As
Isaac gazed over the corpse, watching the robes sway and flutter, he felt a
pressure building on his lungs. He tried to breathe, and he nearly vomited on
the spot. His knees quickly began to buckle. His anxiety spiked into terror.
Zaria
turned him away, resting on a knee. “Right. As you say. There’s nothing over
there. Nothing you need to see any longer.”
His
body was chilled and heavy. Even the effort of standing was leaving him
breathless. As he caught his breath, and the world stopped lurching beneath
him, he saw the faintest hint of a building, through the distance and debris.
It was fairly small, rectangular in shape, and the walls were nestled right
into the bedrock of the cavern wall, such that it almost blended into the dirt
and sand. No more detail could be seen through the gloom.
But
there it was, all the same.
Unmistakable.
He had
imagined this building his whole life. He had been holding it in his mind’s eye
as he died of thirst in the desert. He had kept it in his thoughts all the way
through the giant skeleton, from mouth, to neck, to chest, abdomen, pelvis, and
all the way through the legs. After all the leagues he had travelled, all the
tribulations he had suffered, he had come to the end of his journey. There was
nowhere else to go.
Zaria
seemed to follow his gaze. “That’s it? Over there?”
“Yes.”
“Sure
about that?”
“What
else is left?”
She
glanced back at his tent. “Aye, well, we got two good hands between us, and not
much light in the day. Best we get packing.”
He
looked up at her. She cast a sharp figure in the sunlight. He looked at the
scar on her eye, the gash on her nose, the tawny fur lining her cheeks and
ears. He felt both a warm and chilly sensation, deep in his chest, reminding
him of how he had felt back in the extraction chamber, when she had refused to
leave him behind.
She
noticed his gaze, peering down at him with concern, followed by confusion. The
feeling of warmth only increased.
“What?”
she asked.
“Thanks,
Z,” he said, quietly.
“Sure.”
She shook him, managing a quick smile. “Glad to aid my squire. He’s certainly
done enough for me.”
They
set to packing up their supplies, aiding each other whenever their injuries hampered
their progress. The sun burned his skin, weighing him down, the light reminding
him of blood.
He did
not look at Berith again.
They
made their way down from the pyramid, through the canyons of ossein and metal
ships, over the hills of sand still falling from the land above. He had to lean
against her as they walked, and she kept him tucked to her side, holding her
captain’s cutlass tightly in hand. From the way she moved, he knew she was just
as beaten and exhausted as him. Even still, Isaac never doubted she would help
him if he fell.
They
entered the shade of the cavern, leaving behind a giant skeleton, a field of
fibrous bone, and a single, lone body, still wrapped in sun-eating robes.