The Ventifact Colossus (The Heroes of Spira Book 1) (19 page)

She had the feeling that of all of them, Grey Wolf included, she alone was treating her new responsibilities with the hefty gravitas they deserved. Abernathy had made it clear before they left; the kingdom was under attack, severely, unexpectedly, and from multiple quarters.

“I suppose we’ll need to be a guild council after all,” said Grey Wolf with a sigh. “Let’s vote on it.” Though Morningstar knew how this would go, she was still glad enough not to continue the argument.

“All in favor of killing the prisoner right now?” Grey Wolf asked. Morningstar was the only person to raise her hand; not even Grey Wolf was siding with her. Maybe she was destined to be the outcast yet again.

“All in favor of leaving him here?” Kibi and Aravia raised their hands.

“Then I guess that’s settled,” said Grey Wolf. “He comes with us.”

“There might be another option,” said Dranko. He turned around and called across the room to their whimpering prisoner. “Hey Tig, is there a shrine to Delioch here in Sand’s Edge?”

Tig nodded his head.

Dranko turned back and spoke quietly. “We can take him there. They may have a better channeler, and even if they don’t, they’ll be able to take care of his hand better than I will.”

Morningstar shook her head. “And what if he starts screaming bloody murder the moment we walk out of this building?”

“I don’t think he will,” said Ernie. “Not if he wants to go through the rest of his life with a mangled sword-hand.”

“We need to split up anyway,” said Grey Wolf. “Tor is in no condition to hike across the desert.”

“Neither are you,” said Dranko. “You need at least a day before you do anything strenuous.”

Grey Wolf shook his head. “I’ve had worse,” he grumbled.

“Sure,” said Dranko. “And when you had worse, you spent the day recovering in a tavern with a drink in your hand, not dragging your sorry arse across the Mouth of Nahalm. You should stay here with Tor and the prisoner. And Kibi…sorry, but speed will be more important than strength on this trip.”

Morningstar had to admit that the goblin was making sense. “I’ll go with you,” she said with a sigh. “If we’ll be traveling at night, my darksight will be useful. Aravia and Ernie, you should come too if you’re up for it.”

“If we wait until tonight, I’ll be fine,” said Aravia. “Though I may not be much good for spellcasting until tomorrow morning.”

“I’m good too,” said Ernie. “Kibi took the brunt of the table.”

“What’re you plannin’ to do out there?” asked Kibi.

“Scout the place out,” said Dranko. “Maybe send in someone who’s good at sneaking, to steal whatever it is they’re digging up. That’s assuming we can find someone like that.”

He grinned that ugly tusky grin.

Dranko fished a bag of coins from his pack. “Grey Wolf, take what we have left. The priests will want a donation in return for their attention. Pay them extra if it’ll get them to channel for Tor. Pay a little more, and they may decide to keep their patient an extra day or two. Just leave enough to buy us passage home.”

“Are we all set?” asked Morningstar. She didn’t relish a journey across the desert with Dranko, but it was the best way to salvage the situation. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE LAST THING Dranko did before leaving the Black Circle’s recruitment office was to rifle through the pockets of their fallen foes. The bald guy had only a pouch of coins hanging from his belt, but Haske was a different story. While the others looked on, probably shocked by his attention to detail, Dranko discovered three items of particular interest besides the several rings on the dead man’s fingers. One was a folded piece of paper with a crude map of the desert and the closest few wandering islands. Each such island was marked with a wide circle showing its likely positions, and a small darker dot showing a specific location, probably where it was when the map was drawn. Judging from the arrows and small scrawled notes, Tig’s description was spot on.

The second item was the key to the door, which was good because it would buy them some time.

The third item Dranko found hanging from Haske’s neck, tucked beneath his shirt. On a slender metal chain was a small black ring like a spoke-less wagon wheel, only an inch in diameter. It was of some smooth metal, and though it looked innocuous, Dranko found it oddly discomfiting, as if it were an eye staring at him and wondering what he was up to. If nothing else, the presence of an actual, physical black circle confirmed that they had not stumbled across some
other
nefarious
archeological project by mistake. He stuffed the little talisman into his own pocket with a thought to show it to Abernathy when they next returned to the Greenhouse.

He decided not to try channeling, even though Tor was in rough shape. Whether or not he succeeded, it would take too much out of him before a hike out into the Mouth of Nahalm. In addition to patching up his friends, he treated Tig’s mangled hand as best he could. Morningstar had really done a number on the poor guy, and if there were no channelers at the Shrine of Delioch, he’d be lucky to ever hold a sword again. But those were the breaks. You get into bed with evil cultists, you don’t complain when you get screwed.

The promise of magical healing was enough to convince the thug to remain docile as they casually exited the building. Dranko used the pommel of his dagger to snap Haske’s key off in the lock. Tor, Grey Wolf, and Kibi escorted Tig away, while he and the others walked out of town and along the edge of the Mouth of Nahalm to the Black Circle’s put-in point.

A simple block-and-tackle arrangement had been constructed behind (and in places bolted into) a cluster of large boulders massed near the lip of the desert’s bowl, while the sands whispered twenty feet below. They waited three more hours in the shade of the boulders; it would be sheer idiocy to try walking through the desert in the baking afternoon heat.

Only when the sun was well on its way to the horizon did they get moving again. Each of them had brought one of the survival kits from the recruitment hall, and these included large paddle-like shoes that served the same function as snowshoes. Without them, anyone who tried to set foot in the Mouth of Nahalm would sink swiftly beneath its surface. One by one Dranko lowered the others on a little wooden platform attached to the ropes and pulleys, until only he remained on the higher ground. He locked the rope in place and came down hand over hand.

While the setting sun glared balefully across the desert, the four of them marched into the Mouth of Nahalm toward the single island in view. Even with the sand-shoes, Dranko’s feet sank an inch or so with each step; Ernie said the desert’s powdery grit reminded him of baker’s sugar. The tiny breeze-blown particles soon found their way into Dranko’s boots, his clothes, his mouth, his nose, his hair.

Luck was with them; the moon was full and the sky perfectly clear. By the crystal blue moonlight, they could just make out the rising hump of the wandering island. It wasn’t going to set any records for speed; from this distance, it didn’t seem to be moving at all.

The Mouth of Nahalm was flat; the sands didn’t drift into hills and valleys the way Dranko had imagined. The breeze was constant but light, and once the air had cooled he found walking was less onerous than he had feared. But he would have given his left tusk to be able to sit down whenever he wanted. In the desert sitting took teamwork: three stood around the edges of a sheet and stretched it taut so the fourth could sit without sinking. Any other approach meant vanishing into the sand—which a stumbling Ernie had nearly proven early in the march. And resting one at a time was almost too tedious to be worth the delay.

So, with fewer rest breaks than any of them would have liked, they marched slowly across the desert. (Early on Aravia thought she had figured out a way to jog safely, and within five seconds the only visible parts of her were her sand-shoes and one flailing hand. Ernie, next in line, pulled her out, and she was coughing and sneezing out little clumps of sand for an hour.) But even at their cautious pace they arrived at the wandering island an hour before sunrise.

The island was an imperfect hemisphere of rough brown rock rising up out of the sand, its sloping sides curving upward and out of sight. Its size was difficult to judge, but having been walking towards it for hours, Dranko guessed it was at least a hundred yards across and thirty yards high at its rounded peak.

“Do we sleep on top?” asked Ernie. “What if I roll off while I’m sleeping? I’d be dead before I woke up! And how can we possibly get up there?”

Dranko stared up at the island’s summit. “When we were on the road to Verdshane, I grumbled to Mrs. Horn that there were always tree roots under my bedroll. She told me to imagine the most uncomfortable night I’d ever spent and how pleased I would have been to have a nice bed of roots to sleep on. Perspective, she said. Always have perspective.”

Ernie wiped sweat from his brow. “She was right. I guess this won’t be so bad.”

“And look on the bright side,” said Dranko. “Everyone hopes they’ll die peacefully in their sleep, right?”

“Dranko, that’s—”

“Look in your travel kit,” said Aravia. “That netting is a hammock, and the spikes must be for holding it to the side of the island.”

Ernie let out a relieved breath. “Oh.”

Each survival kit came with a rope-net hammock, a dozen metal spikes, a mallet, two spare water skins, a roll of beef jerky, and a thin but strong white sheet, in addition to the sand-shoes. Dranko, seeing that the rock surface of the island was rough and irregular, briefly toyed with the idea of climbing to the top and taking a look around the desert, but the thought of taking an inadvertent dive into a sandpit of death was enough to dissuade him.

Dranko settled down into his hammock. “Morningstar, you must love this,” he called out. “Going to bed at sunrise, getting to sleep all day long, and then marching at night. What could be better, right?”

“Almost anything would be better,” she said. “We’re spiked into the side of a floating island in the middle of a desert, and I feel like I have sand in every place it’s possible for there to
be
sand.”

“Really? Even in your—”

“Yes, Dranko, even in my nose, which is what I’m sure you were about to ask. Now be quiet and go to sleep.”

Dranko chuckled inwardly and thought some suppressed laughter came from Ernie’s hammock as well.

Going to sleep was unlikely to be a problem, given how long and exhausting a day (and night) it had been. The four of them had trudged through the desert for nine hours. So severe was his exhaustion, Dranko knew that despite the sand that scratched his skin nearly everywhere, he’d be out the moment he let his eyelids droop.

But he had a small task to perform before calling it a night. Though it was tricky, wriggling in an undersized hammock staked to the curving vertical wall of the wandering island, he fished a small bottle, hardly more than a vial, from his pack. The note was already stuffed inside.
Dranko was here.
He had purchased a half-dozen such containers before they boarded the ship to Sand’s Edge, thinking his travels for Abernathy might afford new opportunities, and had sealed one of his notes in each. He had already thrown one of his signatures overboard somewhere in the Middle Sea.

This was admittedly a long shot. He had no idea if objects ever “washed up” on whatever shorelines the Mouth of Nahalm might have elsewhere along its hundreds of miles of perimeter. Was it a steep-sided bowl all the way around? Or might some traveler far to the west stumble across his signed jetsam, taking the bottle and showing it, amazed, to his friends?

Who knew? He let the bottle fall, and it vanished beneath the sands like a stone dropped into a still pond. Satisfied, he turned his body to face into the rocky wall of the island (so the rising sun wouldn’t shine into his eyes) and tried to sleep.

* * *

Breakfast was a challenge. They munched on whatever they could easily retrieve from their packs while staying in their hammocks, then carefully put on their sand shoes, lowered themselves down, and checked their gear a final time.

Trudging through the desert by the failing light of the setting sun, Dranko pondered what he would do when they reached the next island, the one where these Black Circle bastards were digging up Gods-only-knew-what.

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “In a few hours we’re going to arrive at Black Circle central. When we’re about half an hour away, you three will stay back while I go on ahead to spy things out.”

“By yourself?” asked Ernie.

“Of course by myself. I’m sneaky and can climb, and while the rest of you were making honest livings before our current situation, I was learning how to not be noticed in places I wasn’t supposed to be. There’s a decent chance I can find out what’s going on up there without being spotted. Meanwhile you just relax and enjoy the breathtakingly flat scenery and wait for me to come back. We’ve seen how it’s safer to travel in a group, so we should plan on heading back together after I’m done scouting.”

“Yes,” said Aravia, “but if you get caught or something happens to you, how will we know you need rescuing?”

“You won’t,” said Dranko. “Before I go, we’ll work out how long you give me before writing me off and heading back to Sand’s Edge.”

“We can’t just leave you!” said Ernie.

“Sure you can. Look, they’ve probably got dozens of men up there, all specifically chosen for being able to smash things with their beefy arms. And they may have a few more spell-slingers like Haske, not to mention those blue-skinned guys.”

“The Sharshun,” said Aravia.

“Yeah, them. Point is, we’re not an army. Going in force is a fool’s game.”

“I think it’s a good plan,” said Morningstar. “The rest of us would only increase the chances of one of us being observed.”

The others nodded their agreement. Dranko, having expected his teammates to need a little more persuasion, wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or…or whatever one feels when your friends think you’re expendable. He went with the former.

“Great. Then let’s keep moving before one of you figures out a reason to talk me out of it.”

* * *

The moon had set by the time Dranko approached the second wandering island, which was good because if there was one singular feature the Mouth of Nahalm lacked, it was cover. Even better, he could see the island well before anyone on it could possibly see him because of the dozens of torches burning high on its surface. Unlike the rounded dome they had camped upon the previous day, this one was more like a mesa. But as his slow sand-shoe steps brought him closer, Dranko saw he’d have one unusual difficulty: the island was visibly wandering.

Aravia had speculated that the Mouth of Nahalm was a deep layer of sand floating on actual water far below and that the islands extended all the way down, such that whatever currents moved through the aquatic substrata swept the islands slowly along with them. Either that, she said, or the islands were powerfully magical. But now those currents, natural or otherwise, were carrying this particular island away to the north. He kept altering his course to keep the mesa in front of him, and prayed to Delioch that it wasn’t out-pacing him. Dranko had great faith in his own sense of balance, but there was no one to rescue him right now should he make a false step. He quickened his strides as much as he dared, trying to calculate an angle of approach where he’d cut the island off before it could escape.