Chapter 7 Daesra #2
“Well, it is a lot of souls. The best and worst of humanity, before they’re sorted.
That happens on the other side of the river.
Dividing them up there makes everything so much neater, cleaner.
After all, they can’t stay here forever, with more and more arriving all the time.
” He shudders, looking out over the people. “Think of the overcrowding.”
It already appears overcrowded. Smells overcrowded.
The hum of voices has swelled to more of a low roar.
“So across the river, shades are judged and sent to different places, some of which are better than others.” I sweep my hand out at the river.
“Why don’t they just swim? Cross at a different point and skip both the line and the judgment? ”
It’s the first thought that occurred to me.
But then again, I am the son of Sea and never one to follow the rules.
Never mind that the river looks like the toxic effusion from an iron mine and probably even less appealing to a mortal than it does to me, as far as swimming goes. The delta looks worse.
Orseus shoots me a sardonic glance over his shoulder.
“It’s named the River of Hatred for a reason, not just to sound intimidating.
The water affects a shade if they enter it.
Feeling all the hatred one had the capacity in life to feel is not the best way to arrive on the other side—and that’s if they don’t end up getting washed out to sea, and you saw what happens there.
If they find a diffuse-enough spot to make it over the delta, they’ll have to contend with the River of Regret instead.
Those are the risks of crossing without waiting for the ferry.
If one thinks they’re stronger or better than their peers, then they’re welcome to try to get ahead that way.
But mortals are such hateful creatures with much to regret, and it doesn’t usually work out in their favor. ”
I arrest both his physical and verbal momentum by grabbing his arm, stopping him in the sand that is turning to rusty earth beneath us. “Would the river affect me the same way?”
He frowns down at where I grip his arm, and then up at me.
“I don’t know. No god has ever come here and tried to swim it.
” He pulls away from me to gesture at the end of the line.
“I suggest you wait with everyone else. The ferryman—he also has a name, Kardon—will take you across, but as you can see, he’s very busy and also rather brusque, I have to warn you.
Not much for wheedling or bargaining, or for those who try to cut, so don’t get any ideas. I can head back from here.”
I feel surprisingly bereft at the thought of him leaving me, probably because he’s the only company I have in the underworld—not because I like him or find him attractive in the slightest, I tell myself.
But he only agreed to guide me to the underworld, not all the way through it.
As the gatekeeper, this is much farther than he had to take me.
He could have left me on the beach with the ghouls.
Nonetheless, frustration rises within me. “So, if I can’t cut the line and I shouldn’t risk swimming, then the only solution is to wait my turn to be ground up by the underworld like a good little mortal?” I scoff and fold my arms. “No, thank you. I’m a god. I stand apart from all this.”
“You’ll still need a way to sustain yourself, as they’ve found.
” He nods at one of the encampments along the delta.
Now that I’m closer, I spot shades congregating hungrily around cages of beechwood bound in twisted grass ropes, shouting and pointing, while more are trapped inside with decidedly desperate expressions.
The ripe scent of humans takes on a coppery rankness, and the rust-colored mud a deeper red.
There’s a raised platform in the middle of the encampment with what looks disturbingly like a chopping block stained with blood.
A wide clay basin rests beneath it, suspiciously clean—or thoroughly emptied.
These shades look like they’re going about another business entirely from those waiting in line. And that business looks like slaughter, even from a distance. A somewhat organized slaughter, but still.
“What is the flour in that overstretched mill metaphor of yours?” I ask, feeling vaguely ill.
Orseus gives me a patronizing look. “Aether, of course. Anyone here has only the barest amount they had as a human. Without it, they would have no—well, not life, but afterlife. What makes up everything else is thanar. Flesh and bone, the air you’re breathing, this dirt.
” He bends to scoop up a handful and let it run through his fingers like flecks of rust. “Thanar weighs on one’s aether, dragging it down eventually, and thus mortal souls fade.
There are faster methods to release a shade’s aether from their confines, as you’ve seen and done yourself.
They’ve found another method.” He tips his head at the cages, the chopping block.
“Unless you’re a god such as yourself, the easiest way to access one’s aether here is through the blood.
So these shades have entrenched themselves on this side of the river to feed upon the blood of others like leeches.
Blood farms, I call their settlements. If they manage not to fall to creatures of the sea like those we met back there, they can eke out a meager existence on the aether they steal.
” He purses his lips in disapproval. “But it’s no way to be. ”
I don’t want to examine the encampment—blood farm—any more than I have. Or to consider that what I did to the corpses on the beach is anything like what the shades are doing over there.
Instead, I look to the long line we haven’t even reached yet.
But Orseus doesn’t steer us that way when he carries on.
Rather, he leads us precisely where I least want to go, save back to the beach—toward the closest farm.
I did say I had no interest in waiting in line, but joining the shades in their bloody enterprise is even less appealing.
And yet, he’s still here guiding me, so I don’t complain for the moment.
Pogli protests with a little growl, the hair on the ridge of his back rising, but he follows.
I, too, can smell the tang of blood with greater intensity now.
“Thanar itself is what makes shades fade?” I ask, if only for something else to talk about.
“Is that so strange?” Orseus says, his posture as casual as if we were taking a normal stroll along a normal riverbank, not through literal hell.
“Earthly elements are unable to sustain a human’s soul forever, causing one to age in the mortal realm, no?
Just as there, souls here can try to replenish themselves in whatever way they can, as long as they can.
They can eat and drink, and there’s an infinitesimal amount of aether to be found in this.
But everything that grows has been watered by these rivers, the effects of which are eventually enough to make them lose themselves.
Which is why some prefer other forms of sustenance.
See those trees farther from the bank?” He gestures between encampments where rows of oddly lush trees are planted, bearing bright red fruit.
I would suspect the rusty color of the soil for their brilliant color if I didn’t have a darker suspicion.
“If a shade can’t yet stomach the thought of blood, those in the farms came up with a solution to such squeamishness.
These trees are watered with blood of the less fortunate.
The fruit provides more aether than any other grown in the underworld, except for that in the Blessed Isles.
These farmers, so to speak, trade it to those waiting in line. ”
“Trade for what?” I ask in as much puzzlement as distaste. My stomach turns at the sight of the fruit. “They’ve only arrived with the clothes on their backs. All they could offer is a spare tunic.”
“Or their willing ignorance in looking the other way when the farmers snatch someone from the line—confused stragglers, the elderly, lone women or children who haven’t banded together, that sort of thing.”
I glare at the shades gathered around the cages with far more open contempt. “Not things,” I say through gritted teeth, “but people.”
“People whose blood becomes the very fruit they were traded for. It’s rather a neat design, all said.
These farmers have re-created the cycle of the underworld practically at the gates, despicable mockery of it though it might be.
” Orseus sneers at the encampment along with me, and I appreciate that little bit of solidarity at the very least.
But there’s not much else to put me at ease.
I force myself to look at the shades in the cages, searching for a glimpse of red hair, and I breathe out a sigh of relief when there’s no sight of Sadaré, at least in this encampment.
I quickly scan the line, but there are so many people and I’m so far back that I could easily miss her.
Not to mention there are other blood farms.
I have to hope—with the same hope that I’ve been feeding myself on this entire time, however empty it might be—that she’s made it beyond this point. Or that she was never here at all, even if that means Isha has more sinister intentions for her.
Orseus’s scornful glance extends to those standing in line with their eyes averted from what’s happening right next to them.
“After all, those waiting to cross the river need stamina for the journey ahead, since the other side is home to creatures that will hunt them without discriminating—shades, even, that are too far gone with hunger to care. So, most here are happy not to question when the line gets shorter or where the fruit comes from, as long as it’s not one of their friends’ or families’ heads on the chopping block. ”
“What is the desired destination, exactly?” I ask.