Nine
The next morning, as the sky lightened and the stars faded from view, we continued deeper into the Dead Lands. We rode single
file, with me on Ratuk, Kysa and Halek following on Rhyne. The area around us was quiet, but unlike before, it was not still.
I could sense eyes on me, invisible creatures prowling the shadows just out of sight. I kept my gaze straight ahead over Ratuk’s
carapace, staring past his horn and trying not to look at anything. Once, something called my name from the darkness, the
voice sounding distinctly like Jeran. I clenched my teeth and ignored it, despite the soft pleading that tore at my heart.
Solasti was threatening the eastern horizon, tinting the distant mountains red, when I saw a statue clearly for the first
time.
The rocky plateau had given way to a forest of petrified trees, shattered limbs and branches lying along the path.
Some of the trees loomed over us, ancient and gnarled, twisted branches clawing at the sky.
I had never seen trees so large and could only imagine what they’d looked like in life, full of leaves and flowering buds like the ones in Irrikah.
But even the most massive trunks were cracked and eroded, slowly crumbling with time, the limbs barren and dead.
Once, a sharp crack nearly made me jump out of my skin, as one of the enormous branches snapped from the whole and crashed to the ground in a ringing clamor of twigs and dust.
“Weaver’s mercy,” Halek gasped, one hand on his heart as the dust settled, silence falling over the grove once more. “That
took years off my life. I thought the most dangerous things we had to worry about were the spirits, not trees falling on our
heads.”
“They’re ancient,” Raithe answered, his gaze shadowed as he stared up at the looming sentinels. “They’ve been here since before
the fall of the kingdom. The stories say the whole valley used to be full of trees like this. Now only a few are left.”
I ducked a low-hanging branch as Ratuk wove his way between a pair of trunks. The rock beetles, used to barren plains and
sprawling deserts, found navigating a forest of trees challenging. I dodged a stone twig that might’ve poked my eye out, straightened,
and met the hollow eyes of a statue hidden behind the trunk.
I jerked, and Ratuk veered sharply to the side, nearly running into another tree. Heart pounding, I looked back at the effigy,
shielding my eyes from the rising sun. It was a statue of a tall iylvahn woman, her head tilted back and one arm raised, as
if she was gazing up at the trees. Her other arm had snapped off at the elbow, and her features had worn away so that only
a few shallow indentions in her upturned face showed where her eyes, nose, and lips would have been. From the smoothness of
the face, and the heavy erosion of the statue as a whole, it looked like it had stood here, motionless, for hundreds of years.
My skin crawled, the horror of it all creeping over me.
At one point, long, long ago, this statue had been a flesh-and-blood person.
An iylvahn simply living out her life. Perhaps she’d had a family.
Perhaps she was meeting someone, a friend or a lover, in this forest. And in one terrible, cataclysmic moment, it was all snuffed out.
For the few left behind, it must’ve been horrific.
“Sparrow.” Raithe appeared on his sand dragon, his face shadowed with concern as he rode up. “Ratuk startled back there. Are
you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I nodded to the statue. “I just ran into our friend here.”
His jaw tightened as he studied the stone figure. Seeing it must’ve been different for him, I realized. This wasn’t just a
lifeless statue to Raithe; it was a representation of what his people had been, and what they had lost.
For a few heartbeats, he simply gazed at the statue, his expression unreadable. “Raithe?” I probed. “You okay?”
“I . . .” He shook his head, giving me an apologetic glance. “This is the first time I’ve seen one,” he murmured. “There’s
hardly any information about the statues, what they look like, how many there are, if they’ve all crumbled to dust by now.”
He glanced back at the statue, a muscle working in his jaw. “I keep telling myself that it’s just a statue, but even now,
I can see the details of her life.”
“Can you?” I studied the figure, looking at the worn, nearly smooth features of her face. “Like what?”
“She’s wearing a leather apron,” Raithe said, his voice low and dull.
“There are tools in the pockets. Blacksmithing tools. She is also wearing a necklace that proclaims she has found her joined partner and they will be officially bonded soon.” A humorless smile touched his face, and he shook his head.
“Even after all this time, we aren’t that different at all. ”
“Why is she out here?” Kysa wondered, as she and Halek approached on Rhyne. “You say this was a blacksmith, but blacksmiths
are not usually known for wandering the wilderness. Why would one have traveled so far into the woods alone?”
“There must be a town somewhere close,” Raithe said, turning away from the statue. His expression was still unreadable, but
the grimness hovering in his eyes was not. “I expect we’ll start seeing a lot more statues the closer we get to a settlement.
Let’s keep moving.”
I gave the statue one last look before turning Ratuk around and urging him forward.
It was strange, but as we walked away from the statue and deeper into the forest, I had the eerie sensation of eyes on the
back of my head.
Like Raithe predicted, a few minutes later, we started seeing a lot more.
These statues were more chilling than the first one, because they told a terrifying story. Stone figures appeared through
the trees, frozen in various stages of flight, their faces twisted in fear and pain. It was obvious that they had been running
from something.
“They were fleeing their village,” Kysa remarked, staring at a trio of statues: a pair of adults and a child.
The mother held the child’s hand as they ran, the little girl clutching the remains of a doll in her other arm.
The male iylvahn—the father, I guessed—was looking back at them, hands clenched as if he were carrying something.
“Running for their lives, with everything they could carry at that moment,” Kysa went on, her voice grim.
“It seems they knew something was coming.”
I wrenched my gaze away from the little girl, only to see dozens more stone figures through the trees. Many were still upright,
though some had fallen and were lying half buried in the dust. The statues had eroded with time; their faces were blurred,
limbs snapped off and broken, and fine details worn away, but they were all still recognizable as iylvahn. They were all running
from a horrible fate that none of them could escape.
“This is awful,” Halek muttered, after several minutes of walking through a forest filled with statues. Every one of them
told a story of fear and horror, from the statues in a desperate, all-out run, to the couples clutching each other in a last
embrace, to the figures kneeling and looking up at the sky, as if praying to Maederyss in their final moments. I saw a statue
of a mother clutching two children tightly against her, shielding them from whatever was to come. I saw a younger man bending
down to help an older woman to her feet. And I saw a statue of a single iylvahn who had turned back against the tide and was
standing with his hands and chin raised, shouting something in defiance.
“I can see why your people never come to these lands,” Kysa said.
It was the first time she had spoken to Raithe without the cold, stiff tone she had used since the labyrinth.
“In the Barren Steppes, there are mass graveyards, places where hundreds of warriors and their mounts fell in battle. Their bones and shells lie there in the clay, a reminder to all who pass through. But they were warriors who died a warrior’s death.
This . . .” She shook her head at the effigies around us, her eyes tight with sympathy and horror.
“There are no words for this atrocity. The Deathless who caused this was a soulless monster.”
Raithe didn’t answer. He had slipped back into the kahjai persona again, the blank, expressionless mask that showed nothing
of what he was feeling. He scanned the forest, searching and wary. He was seeing the statues, but he was also looking right
through them. Though his face was impassive, I knew Raithe; I knew a storm of emotion had to be churning inside, and I ached
for him. I wished I knew what to say, but what could you say about something that happened so long ago?
The statues finally began to thin a little, as did the trees.
“Hey.” Halek pointed suddenly. “Is that a town?”
I peered through the skeletal trunks. The shadows were starting to grow long, as Namaia had begun to sink over the horizon,
and the forest looked even eerier in the gray twilight. But between the trees, I spotted the outline of a structure. As we
got closer, it solidified into the strangest house I had ever seen.
It was made of wood. Not stone or clay or sandstone, like all the structures I’d ever seen, but actual wooden planks. The
walls were decayed and full of holes, but I could see the grain of wood in every individual board. A set of crumbling wooden
stairs led up to a front porch that was mostly rotted away. The roof, or what remained of it, was tall and steep, coming to
an angled point far overhead.
Gazing past the odd house, I spotted more of the same kind of structure, scattered in ramshackle rows throughout the trees.
As I stared at them, I made out the remains of a town, skeletal buildings lining crumbling, overgrown roads.
An ominous feeling stole over me, and I gazed around, wondering why I felt so uneasy.
A moment later, I realized there were no statues. At least, none that I could see.
“Wooden houses,” Halek remarked, studying the structures from atop Rhyne’s back. The rock beetle was investigating one of
the broken railings that had fallen from the porch, and after a moment, took a bite out of the post. It crumbled to dust in
the beetle’s jaws, and Rhyne snorted, shaking his head.
“There are stories that the ancient people used to build their towns using wood,” Halek went on, as Rhyne turned away from
the post in distaste. “Hard to imagine now, but I guess if this whole place used to be full of trees, it would make sense.”
“Homes made out of wood seem impractical,” Kysa remarked. “Very prone to catching fire, I’d imagine.”
“Not a lot of danger from fire back then,” Raithe said. “This valley was supposedly very lush and green before the cataclysm.”
He gazed into the forest, as if he could see what the valley had been like . . . before, then he shook his head. “It’s getting
late. The spirits will be out soon. We should look for a place to make camp.”
I nodded, turned Ratuk away, and then noticed the statue behind us on the path.
I startled once again, causing Ratuk to snort and toss his head in annoyance.
The statue stood beside a skeletal tree at the edge of the path into town.
I had no idea how I hadn’t seen it before; it was literally out in the open.
It wasn’t posed like the other statues we’d seen; in various stages of running away.
This one stood motionless with its arms at its sides, staring at the ground with its head bowed.
If it had been a real flesh-and-blood person, seeing it like that would have set off all my alarm bells.
As it was, it was still disturbing. What had the person been doing there?
Why had they been standing motionless when the townspeople around them were fleeing for their lives?
“Weaver’s mercy,” Halek remarked, one hand going to his chest. “When did that statue get there? I must be going blind—I didn’t
even see it until now.”
I shivered. Something about the statue seemed . . . familiar. I urged Ratuk closer, but the rock beetle huffed and shook his
head, not moving from his spot. I gave him the command again, a little firmer this time, but the rock beetle ignored it.
I blinked. This was the first time Ratuk had refused an order. Maybe he hadn’t completely accepted me as his new rider after
all. Or maybe he was hungry. If Rhyne got too hungry, he became extraordinarily stubborn until he was fed, according to Kysa.
“Are you having trouble with your mount, rider?” Kysa asked, frowning.
“I don’t know.” Sliding out of the saddle, I came around to the beetle’s head. “Ratuk, what’s going on? Are you hungry?”
Ratuk huffed and bumped me with his head, not seeming angry or upset at all. I patted his nose. “He seems fine,” I told the
insect rider. “I guess he just had a stubborn moment. I’ll feed you soon, Ratuk, I promise.” I gave him a final pat, then
took a few steps back and turned toward the statue.
It was staring at me.
A chill crept up my spine. A moment before, that worn, featureless face had been gazing at the ground, I was sure of it. And
in the split second before my mind could register that fact, I realized two things. One, I recognized the figure: It was the
first statue we had seen, the blacksmith girl in the leather apron. And two, I had caught glimpses of it before, in the trees
or among the other statues; I just hadn’t realized what it was. It felt familiar . . . because I had subconsciously recognized
it ever since that first encounter in the woods. I had seen it following us, stalking us, and hadn’t realized it until now.
All this flashed through my head in an instant, and I heard Raithe draw in a sharp breath as he realized it, too. “Sparrow,”
he said, his voice low and tense, “come away from it now.”
In horrifying silence, the statue turned its head at the sound of his voice, sending a cold lance of fear straight through
my chest. It took two steps forward, moving with a jerky, almost insect-like gait, its movements sporadic and unnatural. Slowly,
it rotated its eyeless, featureless head back around . . . and then charged right at me.