Wanderers of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 2) Page 17

  “Hurt it though. I heard it scream. You said we were going to do it.”

  “Right, right. Caught up in the moment.”

  “Your dog’s one big fella. Didn’t notice it before when Susan was with him.”

  “Woof woof.” Wolf chuckled darkly. The way Tyran looked at Wolf seemed off, from the relaxed expression on his face to his eyes, which suggested a gaze at a much smaller animal.

  “I filled your skin up again and brought you another drink.” Tyran ushered him to the safety of the concrete, where Kechua shifted to sitting, the cacophony of the place overwhelming him again. “After that show, you can’t refuse.”

  Kechua drank deeply of the water, but being watched by Tyran, he drank of the apple juice gift.

  “No, thank you, I have my—” Kechua tried to refuse as the man shoved some chips his way.

  “Nah, you need your salt, plus I have a feeling that you’ve shaken some dust loose. Two more doers require some payment.” He gave a nod upwards, where two more figures made their way down. “Laura and Chris,” Tyran offered as they descended. When they arrived, he said, “Kechua.” The pair of them were only slightly older than Kechua, though the signs of youth hid under a layer of frazzled exhaustion. Chris seemed rather stunned, squinting against the light and standing in place at first, while Laura immediately spotted Wolf and almost leapt upon him.

  “Two more for your fragile army, O’ mighty one,” Wolf bit.

  Laura ruffled his fur. “Oh, he’s a grumpy guy.” Laura chuckled, “Or does he grumble when he’s happy?”

  “I guess he’s happy. You like him?” Kechua grinned.

  “He’s a big one.” She smiled, apparently oblivious to the red eyes with no pupils, emitting deep crimson across the wolf’s face. “I like dogs. I have one . . . I had one at home; Pyrenees. He was a big fella too.” She sighed, her hands slowing and retracting to her sides.

  A wash of cold passed over Kechua as he watched the creature of brutal and perpetual fury be a source of comfort to the woman, and with the wave came a shimmering wobble of the creature’s form. It felt like paper being crinkled up, with the whispered notion of seeing the potential for something else emerge once the sheet flattened once again.

  The raggedy grey wolf came back into view with his lopsided, perpetual snarl, even when the woman’s hands returned to scratching him behind the ears.

  “That was amazing what you did. It shook the stones. We thought it was another . . . thing,” Chris said. He wore circular glasses that made his round face all the rounder, his eyes opening but fighting the light. “But we heard it, and a few of us understood. It was different, it was beautiful, not frightening.” He looked at Kechua with an undeserved awe.

  Kechua hid his smile, running his hand down the etchings of the staff. Both of their rhythms had begun anew, still trembling, but ready to reach out and hope. He only needed to figure out his trap.

  The staff cooed at his touch like a reverent kitten, but it held no new secrets. In truth, there was little in the ways of war recorded. The figures across it were doing their daily tasks—hunting in forests, fishing in rivers; farming. There was nothing dedicated to warring with others, or even specific tools of fighting wild demons. The battle in the earlier time of nothingness bore no simplistic runes of smiting. In fact, each of the combatants rose their bare hands against the creatures.

  No, not the magic of flame and bedlam, but magic all the same. The magic of tools etched itself into the history of wood, and tools could be used for more than one purpose. He followed the staff up, and in each of the seasons, the ancient people fished.

  “I think I know how we’re going to kill it,” he announced. “But I think . . . ” His eyes crossed the figure of a group of eight. “We’re going to need more people.”

  “I’m not sure if we can just drag them out. A few are barricaded in shelters they made, and the others are about a moment away from doing the same. Everyone’s a hair away from not being sane,” Laura offered, and Tyran gave an irritated grunt of agreement.

  “That’s fine,” Kechua responded. “I don’t need sane people. I need people who can believe.”

  “I’ll try. I think Gregoris and Susan were figuring out the potatoes. Should you get them, Tyran?”

  “Yeah, get everyone you can,” Kechua said. “We’re going to do this.”

  The others split and disappeared into the building, leaving Kechua alone to muse, and he slipped again into his etched circle. The dirt moved in one piece, almost a slim layer of stone upon the surface of the world.

  “It feels different now, flimsy,” Kechua muttered at Wolf, who waited just beyond the school’s threshold.

  “Circle used and then broken.” The rumbling amusement tickled his back. “The creator left his universe and forgot it, and so the magics melted away like ice.”

  He ran his hand across the thin and sad stone, cleaning the dirt from its face and tracing his finger across its surface. He wiped away the constraining circle, smudging out the rune from the surface of the stone. The wobbly rock orphan remained an island on unsure sand.

  “Hello?” a female voice echoed weakly from behind.

  Kechua snapped into attention again to see Laura and Chris with three new faces. The strangers stood well back, two of them peeking halfway behind the door like scattered children, the other with his back and palms flat against the wall. All their clothes lay in chaos upon them, and while they stood in their places, their eyes juggled around constant and wide.

  He carefully probed each of their circles in turn, all of them bearing the frazzled unsureness; all of them close to unwinding. “Six would’ve been good, but eight is even better.” He tried to lock gazes with the newcomers but failed to catch their attention. Tyran and the earlier faces filtered in from the cafeteria.

  “Hello.” He gave a half wave at the newcomers, giving a tallying point to each of them. “My name is Kechua. I’ve been walking the sands for three days now, and as you can see, I am quite fine.” He gave a showman’s motion, but sadly, this did nothing to secure the trembling hearts of his audience.

  “Your clothes don’t look fine,” said one of the faces beyond the door, only audible from the silence hanging upon them.

  He loosened the straps about his ankles, lifting the cloth to reveal both his legs in turn. “Not a mark on them, is there?” He raised his shirt too, revealing his scarless chest. A fresh set of clothes would have made the point better, but there would be more wounds to come.

  “I swear to you, as long as you do what I say, you will be safe. I’ve fought the creature twice now. It remembers me and wants me more than any of you.” He again tried to lock the gazes of the newcomers, and the frantic wandering of their eyes slowed at the very least.

  “Eight then. Perfect,” he declared, eyeing another pristine patch of soil. He hovered over it a moment before pacing a little further. The circle would need to be larger than the beast, and if possible, larger than its reach too. He decided on the size, about fifty feet wide, and moved along the tracing path.

  “Scratching scratching on the earth with the hitty. What new plans and traps come now?” The creature hummed pensively, but with a jingling curiosity interwoven.

  “I don’t understand,” a woman’s trembling voice protested mildly from beyond the door.

  “Weaving a net,” he said, creating his edged circle. “It’s an old woven trap; a net that lets fish in but not out.”

  “But . . . in the dirt? And it’s not a fish.” The other woman joined the protest, having left the door to kneel at the threshold of the sands.

  “It just needs to hold. I’ll do the rest.” He nodded sharply. “I need it to stay above the soil, all the way up, and I can do the rest,” he repeated, banishing any traces of unsureness in his voice. It helped a little. The woman’s heart beat with a twinge of hopeful resolve.

  “Won’t go up with the hitty crack, Tasty Boy,” the thing hissed.

  He smiled, knotting the lines on ea
ch of the eight points. At first, he worried the knots would break the circle, but the staff sung happily as they went. To confirm the weight of his deed, he finished weaving the webbed net, and the soil trembled down flat. The assembled people, all of them at the edge of where the school ended, flinched back as the sand rumbled into place. They quickly recovered, and all eyes locked on him as he made his way into the eye of the net.

  “And finally, the bait.” He grinned. “I need each of you to stand by one of the points I’ve made around the edge.” He pointed with the drawn obsidian knife.

  Tyran, Susan, and Gregoris all took their places at the nodes furthest from the school, and the wide-eyed newcomers took the three closest to the safety of the concrete.

  With all of them in place, he raised the staff high to thrust it into the centre of the circle, the sand shifting again in compliance. The hearts of the watchers jumped in unison at the spectacle, their winding rhythms trembling with rapt attention. All of them remained starkly in their positions.

  “Now, I need each of you to reach under the line in front of you and pick it up.” Tyran looked dumbfounded, but he was the first to attempt to comply. His fingers pinched the sand at his feet and grasped at nothing. Laura and Chris both attempted but found no more substance beneath.

  “The line is reforming.” Tyran remarked as the sand re-arranged itself from the grasping imprint of his hand. His rhythm beat with growing faith and he tried again, only mussing the clarity of the line.

  “I . . . I have it!” the woman closest to the school screamed, her voice the tenor of a frightened budgie. She hoisted a shimmering silver rope and pulled it hard against her chest. “I have it!” she exclaimed, the thread glittering in the sun with her trembling hands.

  “Yes, you do!” Kechua’s smile gaped, and the woman hoisted the rope higher, like some proud toddler before him.

  “Yes! I see it too!” The frantic man hefted the net above them, and wordlessly, the third of the newcomers hoisted the net before her. The nervous rhythms of the successful shifted into a firm but furious pulse, and the rhythm of their hearts plucked at the golden strings and sang to his soul.

  Laura and Chris failed twice more, and each found their way across the outside of the circle, running trembling hands across the glimmering thread of the formed net. The reality of the miracle was enough to spark the same faith in their souls, and each of them gingerly raised the net from outside the circle, tugging it until they returned to their postings.

  Kechua followed Tyran wordlessly, trying not to look at the man. The rhythm of his faith fell into dark frustration as the line broke again and again in his hands. He went so far as to trace the line as the others had done, but the glittering thread crumbled to nothingness at his gentle touch.

  “I’m amazed we ended up with seven sides.” Kechua locked eyes with Tyran, smiling. “I had a different thing in mind for you from the start.”

  “Supervision?” Tyran snorted in frustration, watching with a defeated sadness as Kechua strode to his spot and dismissed the etching into nothingness.

  “Giving up, giving up. Scratch, scratch the trap away,” the monster taunted.

  “What you did for me this morning. I need that again,” Kechua declared.

  “Got one hell of a throwing arm.” The man grinned, and a trickle of sadness broke his face a moment. Still, the boiling frustration in his chest cooled a little.

  Kechua couldn’t help but smile as the people around the circle shifted without prompting, the net closing into an equally segmented seven-point shape.

  “Okay.” Kechua stole a touch at the silken, silver rope as he returned to the centre of his little sphere. The staff trembled with an anticipatory hum against his back, and he let the hungry black blade taste his flesh again. He slit the flesh of his shoulder, guiding the stream of red down onto the earth like dribbling paint. A puddle formed at the base of the staff, draining into the drab brown below.

  Tyran stood at the base of the concrete, Wolf sitting by his side with an amused curiosity.

  The thing slithered upwards, pulsing in disharmony through the sands below, jagged and mad from the lust to collect a small gift of blood. “Sweet, so sweet, mmm. A gift for me, to bait the trick. Want so much, but still the hitty hit,” it muttered and hummed.

  And then it struck. The biting tentacles wrapped around the staff, attempting to tug it downward. They snagged, the staff refusing to submerge, and writhed confusedly at their frozen state.

  “Not below, then above! Fly fly ugly thing!” the creature shrilled, and one of the toothed tendrils shoved the staff from below, tossing it skyward. Kechua tried not to laugh as he watched it sail over the wall, where Tyran snapped it from the air with an almost bored swipe.

  The ground vomited forth into the air, a pillar of dust snaking into the sky. “No more smashy! No more hurt! Time to feast!” A great vibration rumbled through the drummed circle, and the dust flowed into the air, clearing away.

  “Your trap has trapped you, Tasty Boy!” The beast laughed with a song, a blobbed silhouette gurgling and pulsing before him.

  “Behold, behold my magnificence!” The thing erupted from the earth, the sand shooting into the air and raining down, a fact lost on all present but Kechua. The magic still held.

  “A promised gift. A price paid for a feasting feast!” it roared with an operatic bass of elation.

  The maggot-bodied beast’s surface was shades of char and ash. Grey stripes ran over the constantly squirming and gyrating body. The head and tail were indistinguishable in their shape, and the only indication of a beginning and end were the appendages jutting from them. What he took to be its head featured three tentacle-like stalks. Each of them moved independently and exploded into countless numbers of the secondary tendrils—most of them barbed teeth, but some of them were bloomed eyes—all of them dripping with thick mucus. Its tail end featured three whip-like tendrils. Sharp barbs coated each of them, a flourishing pattern of serration running down their length. The scent of wet earth and rot bubbled outward, with the faintest trace of a muggy, sweet perfume.

  “Magnificence?” Kechua bellowed. “Ever a maggot. You have scales and barbs and teeth, but you have always been nothing to me.” He kept his eyes locked on the beast, and all the eyes hovered close to his head. He kept his inner sight locked onto the seven assistants, letting the words fall just long enough.

  The creature shifted in the circle, and the tendrils all shot to him like magnets. “Raise the net!” Kechua roared, throwing his hand to the sky. The staff shot through the air, landing squarely in his waiting palms.

  Cruelty of Earth. The name slithered across Kechua’s mind as the thing writhed in the net as though woven of salt and razor wire.

  The staff happily hummed through the air, and he dismissed each of the whipping fangs as they tried to strike, pushing them away just enough to keep the attention on him; just enough to force it into a rhythm.

  “Liar, trickster, so cruel and sad,” it sang, but its voice became a gurgling hiss interwoven with disharmonious music.

  He raised the staff to strike, but it trembled in his hands, resisting the motion. It gave a pensive hum. Time slowed, and he allowed it to squirm from his grasp and onto the sand again, the images flashing before his eyes. The staff’s end clacked against the earth, the symbols hovering close enough against his eyes.

  The warriors of the earlier season fought the beasts with their hands, not with such empowered weapons.

  “Alright,” Kechua whispered. The hushed moment passed, and he flung the staff back to Tyran.

  “What?” The man poised to toss it back, but Kechua drew his knife.

  “Has to be this way.” Kechua grinned. “Just trust me a little more.”

  The beast’s tendrils drew inward. “No deals for you, Tasty Boy, no more hitty either.” It purred with a clacking and gurgling savor.

  Kechua stood there, silently defiant as two larger stalks burst out of the thing’s face. Bulbous red ey
es opened on either side of him, burning him like ruby spotlights. Yet even in this confidence, its body struggled against the edges of the circle, fat and clumsy above the earth and forced to obey this declared arena.

  “Scared, scared, tasty little boy.” The appendages dripped, savoring the anticipation. Two jagged beetle jaws extended forth, the crowd of stalks parting slightly.

  “No.” Kechua smiled, taking one last survey of the assembled rhythmic souls. All of them waited, near-frozen and hypnotized by the spectacle before them. “But you are.”

  The jaws snipped closed, and Cruelty of Earth began their dance. Kechua leapt and landed square upon the closed blades. He slipped down and tried to hold them shut, but the creature easily shed his grip, forcing his feet back to the earth. The tendrils returned to him, hovering in a halo around his sides and closing in on his back.

  As the tendrils inched towards his back, hovering pensively, the creature’s body held itself. The writhing of the monster cast a repeated low bass drum, calling down towards the earth, and it yearned to return to safety. As it shifted the stony plates on its back to test the boy, they added an unconventional scraping pulse to the song. This was headed off with the vibrational—almost hissing—movement of its singing limbs.

  Below that, clinging on, was the trembling and twinkling rhythm of those holding fast on the net. He dared not steal a glance at their faces, but he felt their growing fear in the resonance of their grip and hope, which kept their hands strong and lines taut.

  He swayed within the moment, and the halo swayed with him, a nervous school of fish unsure of the single black tooth in his hand.

  The moment ended, and the trap closed in. The jaws came forth, a higher lunging angle to catch his anticipated jump, and the tendrils thrust for his back and sides.

  He slipped under the jaws, rolling forward beneath the rain of slavering lava, and launched himself onto the creature’s back. All the biting tendrils sliced into the dirt where he had been, and where the creature had wrongly predicted he would dodge. Only a single burning eye followed his progress as he ran down the creature’s back, and he gave a swaying stab directly into its pupil as he ran. The beast grunted with the stab, the blade only giving a gracing nick, but enough to fade the light within.