Meek

Chapter 61: An Urgent Whisper

In the days before history, a clan of nomads had settled near a convenient ford--or 'break'--in the Ehrat river. Soon huts appeared across both banks. The huts became houses, the village became a town. The earliest mention of Ehrat Break, as far as Eli knew, was in a faded scroll that described floodwaters roaring down from the mountains, overflowing the river banks, crushing buildings and lives, sweeping half of the town away.

So the people of Ehrat Break had rebuilt the town on stilts.

The stilted town spread wider and rose higher, but also anchored downward into the earth. The town became a city in which the central boulevards of temples and markets and mansions rested on heavy arches planted deep in the ground. The river ran beneath the city's heart, in vaulted chambers wide enough to accomodate floodwater. The darkness was only pierced by occasional shafts of lights from the wells and grates above.

For centuries, the city grew. The rulers of Ehrat Break diverted the river into canals: this one for cooking, that one for sewage. One to fill the fountains in the courtyards of the guildmasters, one to slake the thirst of smiths and servants, one with overflow to fill the basins in the neighborhoods of the poor.

The city had teeming with loud clamorous life, but Eli found himself looking at a graveyard. Humps and ridges of melted stone crisscrossed the downslope that started just beyond Payde and his meager picnic. Hundreds of buildings, partially-dissolved into slumping boulders, littered the hillside.

Farther down, the mist started.

Just gauzy fingers of whiteness at first, curling around the stone. Then denser toward the city proper, becoming so thick that the road below was completely lost in the fog. Yet the highest remaining spires of the city were visible in snatches. The tops of melted towers and lumpy, drooping steeples thrust upward through the mist like enormous stalagmites.

The highest spire must've been Heaven's Reach, a bone-white, skeletal finger that rose from the center of the mist-covered city and pointed accusingly at the sky. So impossibly high that the 'fingertip' was lost in the clouds.

"That's ... remarkable," Riadn said.

"Aw, it's just a little meal I threw together," Payde said.

"How does it stay standing?" Lara asked. "Nothing that tall is stable."

"Magic," Payde said.

"It's the stone of the Weep," Riadn said, taking a chunk of dried meat. "In places, it melted together as strong as steel. I've heard it called 'cursestone.'"

"Superstitions," Payde scoffed.

"Where are the trees?" Lara said in dryn.

Eli frowned at the slope in front of him. Clumps of grass peeked from the increasingly-rare patches of ground not covered by melted stone. Weeds and bushes grew from the dirt that had accumulated on ledges or creases. But he couldn't see a single tree with a trunk thicker than his wrist.

"No tree here," he said, then switched to Iolian. "The hillside's been clearcut."

"Huh," Payde said. "What takes that much lumber?"

"Shipbuilding," Riadn said.

"What, to invade the capital with a fleet of river barges?" Payde scratched his chin. "You're such a southwoman. Everything's boats and sails with you."

"How many shields can you raise?" she asked him.

"At the moment? Two strong ones, maybe four weak. But by the time we reach that mist, I'll be better."

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"Did you expect mist?" Lara asked.

"I didn't," Payde told her.

Riadn shook her head and chewed her jerky.

Eli said, "The old river must've turned to rapids or falls. Dropping through the holes in the melted stone streets."

"Maybe," Payde said.

As they ate, Riadn examined the clear land between them and the mist. When she gave her okay, they remounted and headed onward. Payde took the lead, but didn't range far ahead. The free-standing mounds of stone joined together more often as they descended, forming high waves and crests.

Perfect for ambushes.

Nothing happened, though, until Lara dismounted to inspect a stand of tree stumps. "Chopped down within the past few months. And see the tracks?"

Eli didn't see anything in the smooth, rippling stone road.

"Carts," Riadn said. "Hauling a lot of weight. Hauling lumber?"

Lara nodded. "Yeah."

"Why does she need lumber in the Weep?" Payde called, looking back at them from up ahead. "If she is building ships, I'll eat your hat with a roasted onion. Maybe it's for firewood? Bloodwitching is chilly work."

"Too much for firewood," Riadn told him. "Face front."

As they continued, Eli's sparks scanned the stone furrows and moraines. He spotted a pile of loose stones twenty yards to the side of the road. A burial mound. Old, though, half-covered with orange-flowered trumpet-vine.

He spotted three more before Riadn said, "I'm losing the trail."

"I'm not," Lara told her.

Eli felt a flush of pride, but Riadn didn't care. She just said, "Then you'll find the way."

***

The mist thickened, muffling the clomp of the horses' hooves, the squeak of leather, and the rustle of wind. Water beaded on smooth stone, pooled in hollows, then trickled and dropped. Faint plunks sounded in the quiet, yet nothing about this reminded Eli of the deep, dripping troll chambers.

The mountain felt like weight but the city felt like weightlessness.

The sparks paid little heed to darkness, but mist blocked them. So Eli kept them moving in flanking circles, peering through them at strange, suspicious foggy shapes that upon closer inspection were utterly innocuous.

So far.

Lara shivered behind him, and in dryn murmured, "This is a dead place."

Except she might've said, "This is a place of the dead," he wasn't sure.

A sudden flapping sounded through the mist, and Eli drew his battered sword while Liadn nocked an arrow. The flapping receded, and after a moment they continued.

The path gradually lowered.

The mist gradually thickened.

Then something moved between hillocks of stone.

Payde pulled his axe and wheeled his horse to charge closer.

"Just a doe," Riadn said.

"Living or dead?" he asked.

She didn't answer, and they continued onward.

The grand city gate, a stone arch that had once been wide enough for three carriages abreast, now drooped in the center, forming two uneven entrances. The outer wall of the city vanished into the mist to both sides. It looked mostly intact, though the top folded and dipped in places.

"Hold a moment," Lara said.

Eli reined in his mount and she dismounted, stepping into the film of water that covered the road as the trickles of condensation joined together.

She walked in a small circle, then a larger one. "The trail's gone. Mixed in with the lumber wagons."

"So let's follow those." Eli looked at the gate. "There's only one direction they could've gone, anyway."

"Always a pleasure," Payde declared, "to enjoy a new city's hospitality."

"From here we stay close," Riadn told him, setting her bow aside. "Meek, you're in front with Payde. Lara, ride with me."

He hesitated. He didn't like being separated from Lara, even though he understood that Riadn wanted shield and 'healing' mages taking the brunt of any trouble.

"You good with their?" he asked Lara in dryn. "With this?"

"It makes sense," Lara told him in the same language.

She settled onto place on Riadn's mount. The mist felt colder without her pressed against Eli's back. He took a breath and started walking his horse toward the gate--and Payde lifted a gloved hand to stop him.

"What?" he asked.

"There's a bandit camp in the city, as well as a Bloodwitch. Choir alone knows what else. We lost the trail and ... we never like walking through a front door. We'll find another gate and circle around."

"Oh."

"This is nothing. Riadn adores scouting. She'd scout for a month if I'd let her. But of course I don't. For obvious reasons."

"Uh..."

"Cause if we stay too long, all the lasses fall in love with me. It's a terrible burden."

"We can only thank the Angel," Riadn said, solemnly, "that's it's also an imaginary one."

Payde gave a snort of laughter.

"This way," Riadn said, jerking her head. "We'll follow the wall and find another way in."

"Once we do," Eli asked, "how're we going to find the kids?"

"It's a big city," she said. "But it's empty."

They rode along narrow lanes between buildings that looked more intact than the ones farther uphill. Perhaps they'd been built more sturdily. The windows were square-ish, instead squashed into slits, though the stone had often melted into ropes that dripped across the openings and hardened there like prison bars.

"You don't have an accent," Payde told Eli.

"Raised by a grasslander," he said, having prepared a lie.

"One of your parents?"

"Long story. Isn't that what you say when you mean 'none of your business?'"

Payde chuckled. "That's it exactly."

Eli didn't like the mist or the cramped, jumped, misshapen buildings. He'd grown accustomed to full awareness of his surroundings. Despite the sparks constant feedback, he felt blind here.

Riadn refused to enter the Weep at a narrow gap where city wall flopped outward like the tongue of a panting dog. She rejected the next possibility, too, but then found a building that slumped against the wall, forming a ramp.

She dismounted and scouted ahead, then they rode up the ramp and trotted less-steadily down the other side. Into the city. The mist thickened and the streets narrowed. Drooping, half-melted building loomed to either side. The ground was smooth and rippling, and swirled in places like water into a drain. Despite the stone draping almost every surface, spidery plants that rooted in windblow dirt kept catching Eli's attention though his sparks.

Even Payde fell quiet in the eerie streets, merely grunting his agreement when Riadn suggested turning left, toward the front gate. That way they'd surprise anyone lying in wait--and Lara could look for tracks.

Except after a few blocks, Eli tugged on the reins. "There's something ahead."

"I don't see anything," Riadn murmured.

"Neither does he," Payde told her. "He feels it. We both feel it. There's some kind of magic screaming from the center of the city. And from on high."

"From Heaven's Reach?"

"I reckon so. It's itchy, like ants behind my eyeballs."

Except Eli didn't feel an itch. He felt the wave of pressure like warm breath against his sparks. Like a lover's urgent whisper in his ear, goading him onward, toward recklessness.

"That's where we'll find the witch," he said, staring through the mist. "At the Reach. And the children."

"That's always been likely," Payde told him. "But now you're suddenly sure?"

"The Reach burns with power, and ..." And his troll-changed soul chimed to the magic here, so he figured the Bloodwitch's changed soul would feel the same. "... what else would turn a lost mage into whatever the witch is? Why else make camp in the Weep? I thought she just wanted an empty city to claim as her own, but no. Feel that. No. She's here for the Reach."

"Then that's where we're going," Riadn said.