Chapter Seven. A Trip Outside the Wall.
Seven
A Trip Outside the Wall.
It’s very late in the afternoon when I go out the Gauntlet’s back door, and head for the guard towers and the bridge over our moat.
I keep my eyes on the cobblestones, but sense the flow of villagers around me, their chatter, their sloshing buckets of water, their bundles of creaking wood balanced on their shoulders, the kinds of things that calm me even though they shouldn’t.
I see the evidence of normal life as proof we’re not in danger, and that’s faulty reasoning—
“—’nother one, aye.”
“In truth? At what compass point?”
“The carcass was to the south. ’Tis time we count all the cattle—”
I duck my head even more in hopes my hood will prevent me from hearing the talk—and when that doesn’t work, I realize only men are around me.
In the regular course of things, women would be coming and going, too, bringing in the herds of small untas that are allowed inside the wall when it’s dark out, shooing children toward home to prepare the evening meal, carting in the wash from the river.
I wonder if this is an edict from the mayor that I haven’t heard about yet or if all the husbands, fathers, uncles, and brothers are collectively putting their feet down.
And Mare thinks I can survive on my own, even with all that gold?
A stone arch links the two guard towers, and there’s a brief echo chamber as I enter the tunnel.
Glancing up, I try to focus on the sections of stones that are sound, not the ones where the mortar is crumbling, and as I reemerge into the waning sunlight, I search the meadows that undulate out toward the distant forest edge.
The pasture fences are as they’ve always been, solidly constructed and without breaks, but there are no horses in them.
Likewise, no sheeplings or cows munch in the grasses beyond the barns.
Clearly, the livestock have been locked down under cover in the barns. Not unlike the women in the houses.
Yet no one stops me as I cross onto the bridge.
The planks I travel over are slick with mud, and nailed together, they’re wide as our village’s main lane.
I refuse to look down at the muddy water.
We’re up at least ten or fifteen lengths to make sure we’re well out of reach of the balas, the red-eyed, horn-backed, many-teethed thrashers that churn the moat, but I don’t want any reminders of how hungry they are.
I wonder how a demon would match up against our reptilian guards, and fear my conclusion.
Reaching the end of the bridge, I step off onto the dirt road that snakes around to both the left and the right.
Various footpaths, well-trodden, but swampy from all the rain, are tributaries from these bigger sources, and I hook up with one that takes me on a decline through the meadow to the tree line.
Nobody else goes this way, so I’m on my own through the green-and-yellow blades.
Overhead, the sky is a ringing blue, and the sun is also vibrant, although with its low seat at the horizon, the temperature is cool and I’m grateful for my cloak.
But none of that is what I dwell on.
Even with the daylight, the troubling star that suddenly appeared in our sky is bright enough to be visible. I swear it’s getting closer, and the sight of its fierce glow makes me long for cloud cover.
So instead, I focus on the snow-covered cap of Dragon Mount.
At the moment, none of the great scaled creatures are patrolling their lair, but many times, I’ve seen them flying in great circles around the craggy apex.
They’re fearsome terrors for sure, except they’re like wasps protecting a nest. As long as you leave them alone, they’re content to stay in their fire-breathing introversion, and besides, they far more prefer grylons to we stringy humans for their meals.
Now what about a demon against one of them? The dragons would probably win.
That there might be a doubt makes me walk quicker.
As I arrive at the tree line and penetrate the weave of branches, my path disappears, but I know where I’m going.
Good thing, as there isn’t much of the waning sunlight filtering through the leaves, which have turned such a dark purple they’re nearly black.
This final stage of color change means they’re about to fall, and by spring there’ll be a fresh layer of soil for the plants I need to grow in.
Underfoot, the ground is spongy, and the smell is thick and earthy in my nose. Usually this reassures me, and these gathering trips are a time for me to relax. Not anymore. I pull out my little knife, and my heart skips in my chest as I keep my strides even and quiet.
I don’t want to be out here so late in the day, but I’ve decided Mare needs something more than the unslee I’ve been giving her.
Night-blooming alsaag is what I am after now, for it has healing properties for the heart and for the breathing.
If I can give her body greater strength, perhaps she’ll stay with me a little longer.
I glance at the sun’s position, now even lower on the horizon than when I left the Gauntlet’s kitchen. The gloaming is required for my harvesting, as the flowering buds must be picked just as they bloom or the components are worthless—
I smell something foul and stop.
The scent of corporeal rot is in the air.
My first thought is to race back to the village, but fates, what if it’s Elly. What if that horrible husband of hers has just dumped her out here?
As I track the horrible stench, leaves and branches hinder me like hands trying to hold me back, and as I fight through, veering farther and farther off track, my mind spins—
“Oh … fates,” I whisper.
The dead cow is on its back, the poor animal’s heart-shaped hooves lax on the ends of its splayed, spindly legs.
The belly is torn open in a ragged maw, the innards cast aside as if whatever had taken it down had been choosy in what it had eaten.
I stumble back, and cover my mouth and nose so I don’t throw up.
The remains have been here awhile, given the laziness of the flies, which have already gotten their fill, and the day’s warmth has rekindled the stench.
Looking into its milky, blank stare, I see nothing, I feel nothing. Then again, its death was at least a week ago.
I lift my eyes, all the while knowing exactly what I’ll see—
The setting sun is directly in a line with the remains.
To the west. The final compass point.
A pleading sound escapes my lips and I stumble back until I slam into a trunk. “Fates … we are doomed.”
Everything inside me screams that I’ve got to return to the village, and tell the others—and I know they’ll believe me because the carcass is here. The remains speak for themselves.
But then I think of Mare. I need those special leaves to help her stay alive, especially now that she’s claimed me the way a mother does.
Even though the gathering could cost me my life out here with what ate that cow.
I’ll just be quick about it.
Tripping and falling and flailing, I beat back branches and search the ground as daylight continues to drain at an alarming rate, that evil star growing ever more prominent as if it’s coming after me.
My collecting pouch slaps against my hip, and my cloak snags on brambles and branches, my hood tugging back until it almost falls free of my head.
Alsaag is a shy plant that hides under the plate-sized leaves of the forest undergrowth, and I know I’ve got to slow down or I’ll miss its eerie glow. Yet as my blood rushes in fear, I go still faster and farther, faster and farther—
Abruptly, I realize I’ve gone very deep into the woods.
I stop and look around. So many shadows, closing in on me, stalking me, just as it was the night before as I ran down the village lane.
Maybe I’ve missed the plant’s telltale luminescence, but if I double back and find nothing, it will be too late to venture this far out again.
I keep going, trying to scan the underbrush, while all my eyes really do is seek demons.
I picture them as twice the size of a full-grown man, with the teeth of a predator, the claws of a grylon, and the—
Something tickles my nose and I brush my face under the hood.
When it happens again, I notice there’s something in the air.
Black wisps are swirling around like snowflakes, and there’s a buildup on the branches, on the dark leaves, on my sleeves.
Before I can wonder too much about it, I catch the first glow.
Finally.
There’s a patch of alsaag throwing gentle shadows under some broad-leafed wallsa.
Scrambling over, I throw myself down, and pinch the heart-shaped blooms from their nests of foliage.
The stench of a dead body blooms in the cooling air and takes me back to the cow, not that I need the reminder.
How something that can so powerfully sustain life smells like a corpse left in the heat has always struck me as one of nature’s worst jokes, and I choke back nausea.
More is growing nearby, but my harvesting is slowed by the many times I look over my shoulder and bat at the tufts that are falling from the sky even though there are no clouds above—and this is no snow that I’ve ever seen.
I move farther into the brush, and the sense that time is running out trembles my hands. Images of Mare struggling to sit up spur me on, and I’m even more determined than ever to keep her alive—
Abruptly, the rushing sound in my ears tells me I have gone way too far.
It’s as though there’s a river near me, except I know there’s no water here. I’m also aware of what the subtle roar truly is.
Later, I will wonder why I went forward, but one thing is true.
My whole life changes as I break out of the forest and step into the pale, loose sand that’s encroaching on the trunks and killing the root systems of the arboreal perimeter. Standing among the skeletal cangjas and tallsi trees, I crane my neck and look up, up … up.
The Fulcrum is a towering churn before me, a horizontal band of storming energy that stretches as far as the eye can see in both directions.
Tall as the sky itself, it circulates to the right, and the dull roar burrows into the mind.
The marvel is not actually made of the bleached particles that have been trapped in its twist. Rather, the ground has been dehydrated and sucked up into its circular force, thrown free at the top and drawn back in at the bottom in an endless cycle that’s been going on for centuries.
I have seen this marvel only a handful of times before, and a shiver goes through me, my body reacting to the electric charge.
The Fulcrum is pure magic, all of the elemental energy that remained after the Dark King rose to power and took control gathered by the Savior and concentrated here during the Great Containment.
To hold the evil and its army of the undead in.
Except something is terribly wrong.
In the midst of the swirl, a black contamination has weeded through the pale waves. Bands of the rot have threaded into the entirety of what protects us, and it’s from these that the black snow spins off.
The milkman is right. The Fulcrum is failing.
And inside of it, the Dark King and his demon soldiers are poised to—
At first, the cacophony to my left doesn’t register over the hum of the Fulcrum and the horror of what I’m seeing. But then my ear locks in.
Shouting.
Someone is in trouble.