Wanderers of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 2) Read online

  He would rise tomorrow stronger than ever, with more clarity of purpose than ever. He would tear open the sky and force the stars to return if he had to, if that much was expected.

  ***

  The dream world shooed him out before the sun rose. He remembered only wandering through familiar blackness, the stars somehow following him as he searched. He would chase a figure, only to have it disappear in an unsure blur, never catching its form or intent.

  His eyes thrust open, and he witnessed the sky ignite from stark black into the faintest powdery blue breathed upon the chalkboard. The water warbled in the river nearby, but joining this was the breathing of a myriad of beasts, grunting and groaning in their sleep.

  Kechua rose carefully, his surprise evaporating immediately. A circle of the rock-antlered beasts surrounded him, encircling him in layers that switched direction, and lay four times upon themselves. Beyond the innermost ring of hosf lay a tiny halo of rather large and pale crickets, mimicking their gigantic siblings.

  Kechua brought the staff close and ensured the knife’s resting place at his side when he noticed the two furious red eyes of Wolf glaring at him beyond the sheltering spheres.

  Only the crickets reacted to Kechua’s movements, scattering like an exploding herd of fleas over the mountainous beasts.

  The inner hosf snapped to their feet with all the force of practiced soldiers, igniting a chain reaction in the outer circles, until all present stood with horns down, facing Wolf.

  “No, no. It’s alright,” he said, standing up stumblingly, still half asleep. They stood their sentry, but a few looked at him quizzically. “It’s fine. Thank you for your gesture, but I can handle him.” He smiled, leaning on the great staff for support, moving towards the beach of his lake. The creatures followed in his wake, far enough behind that Wolf could stand beside him while he drank the fresh water, using the chill to wipe the dust from his eyes.

  He paused a moment, grasping again at something that had come to him as he slipped into dreams.

  “Ah, faltering resolve already,” Wolf murmured low and with a rolling snarl. “Two mornings without my guidance and you’ve become a farmer.”

  “Not a bad idea.” For a moment, he actually thought about it, of settling for a while and opening those books, yet it immediately felt wrong. He felt restless, though safe, but there was one thing remaining. “But no, I did have an idea, before I go.” He glanced back at Wolf before returning to the forest.

  The thought of leaving the books and seeds tucked away in the remains of the school had been one idea. He dismissed that, however, feeling safer keeping everything with him. That some creature remaining in the library might make a feast of them.

  “I hope it’s not too late, but it didn’t occur to me until I was dreaming. Even then, I didn’t remember until I’d seen the staff again,” he muttered. “You might appreciate it, old one. The knives and staff are borrowed things. I think it’s time for something my own.”

  He set his pack onto the small edge of the wall but took no food, afraid of losing the urge and inspiration if he even smelled something soothing. Ivy crawled up the blackened shell, the grass venturing into the shadow of the yawning crack.

  The black plates glimmered like ebony in the morning light, radiating a funny warmth to his touch. Perhaps someday, he would have the skill to properly carve something from this trophy, but another prize drove him.

  Carefully eyeing the pouring wound and the placing of the reddened thistle-clustered thickets, he rummaged within the grass. It took him longer than he expected, but as the sun peeked over the mountain, he found the cluster of barbed whips that had pierced him as he died well intact.

  He selected two choice sets, one a sword blade as long as his forearm, and the other having been shattered, leaving a much stumpier pair.

  “I don’t suppose you could go fetch my pack like a good little dog?” he muttered.

  “Pfah!” Wolf grunted.

  “Um, hello?” he spoke to the hosf, who hovered just inside the forest, watching the scene.

  “Yes, Lord Earth.” One shivered forth, slipping to a bow.

  “Is there fallen wood in the forest? Maybe a pair of logs or such? Dense wood, and tough?”

  “The forest is young but created old. If you will it, we shall find what you seek.”

  “Uh, thank you. Could you bring them here when you find them?”

  “As you say.” The creature bowed again, swooping back into the cover of the forest, hooves clattering into the distance.

  He returned to his pack, giving a glance into the shadows leading to the cafeteria. He caught his feet halfway into the shadows, a slice of cured meat in one hand and one of the bars in the other. He gnawed on the meat and walked back to the grass. Two stumps sat beside the prone blade bits.

  “Uh, thank you!” he yelled into the woods, though none of the creatures showed themselves to take credit. “Weird bunch,” he muttered.

  “Shy.” Wolf shrugged, the softer tone shimmering over the voice a moment.

  Kechua produced his carving tools, the new and unused one—the first to dig into the wood—gnawed away at the brown flesh. The wood parted from the tool as easily as clay, and yet when tested, it proved every bit as resilient as the ancient staff. The staff hummed pensively, propped against the obsidian shell. The vibrating tone resonated a lighter song within the empty core.

  He peeled away the layers of wood until the base forms of clubs revealed themselves. He went to the finer modifications. The first flourish added was a pair of ringed notches on each of the clubs, whereupon he wrapped some leather strips to make a more comfortable grip. In addition to the grips, he fashioned hoops for them upon his belt so he might have them at the ready.

  With the basics out of the way, he notched into the clubs themselves, wedging the pieces of barbs into the sides of each club. He set the larger of the blades into the elder brother of the clubs. The wood eagerly accepted this and fused the blade into itself, into a dual edged weapon of striking. On the smaller of the brothers, he wedged the smaller chips and added more flourishing teeth along the singular side, leaving naked wood on one side and a growing jaw on the other.

  The wood again shifted around the black rock, melding it into place.

  With the functionality observed, the part making his hands tremble with either anxiety or excitement came. As the sun shone against his hands, he carved figures into the smaller club. He began at the base, below the handle, showing himself. Inside his circle, the world transitioned into nothingness. He thought to borrow runes to depict these things from the elder staff, and yet instead, the symbols came to him on their own, flowing through his hands with a master’s ease. He depicted Wolf’s coming and defeating him.

  Upon the larger club, he etched his battle with Earth’s Cruelty. The small figure danced upon the earth, the net held by seven people. The eighth stood away, holding the ancient staff. The figure fought the creature, its faces and tail depicted, lashing out with bestial and raw fury. The circle on the club finished, he stood tearing it open, and the captured people emerged from it.

  The club lay one-quarter full, yet felt none the weaker for the omissions of its flesh.

  He held them up, raising them in a flamboyant arc towards the sky and struck the air, feeling their weight in turn. He slammed the larger upon the smaller, feeling for how it absorbed blows. Better than plastic pipes and sticks from Glalih’s forest.

  They felt utterly at home in his hands, bringing weight to his strikes; force to his will. Perhaps because of the nature of the things—perhaps because it was something within his very being—they felt natural, as if his hands had been empty before these additions had been made.

  “You look good,” Tyran said reluctantly.

  Kechua turned to the unseen man and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “I think I’m going out today. I’ll probably be back. I don’t know. I need to see what it looks like on the outside of the rock.”

  �
��I’m going to be going out too.” Kechua smiled knowingly at Tyran. “We can meet back here tonight. This time, we’ll eat some of my food though.”

  “Sounds good.” The man gave a forced grin. “See you then.”

  ***

  With Tyran gone, he had slipped into one of the newer pairs of pants, tucking away the slashed and bloodied remains of his old ones. They didn’t feel noticeably lighter in any sense, but they were refreshingly cleaner.

  The descent proved much simpler with the echoes of his own footfalls guiding him, though the pack’s weight made itself well known with every step. The clubs clung to his sides like shy children, not even seeking the energy to bounce along their tethers.

  He paused at the end of the forest’s reach, where only the tiniest saplings grew, and filled his skin at the river’s edge. A cluster of fish, big and small, gathered with silent curiosity at the intrusion of the skin, though they scattered upon the submersion of his hands.

  The foliage along the river bore a marked change from the forest. The chaotic woven grass immediately gave way to tall reeds and clusters of thin-stalked brown plants with bulbed tips. Mixed marshy grasses stretched beyond the border of the framing plants—some of them with seeding tips, others simply tall blades with a faintly blue tint—and even some tiny-bloomed flowers attempted to peek through the crowd. The sound also changed. Where his forest’s banks had been largely silent, winged insects flitted through the air, each of them with a different tenor of buzzing as they went. The river itself seemed much bolder to weave its place in the sand. Once free of the forest, the muddy banks reached far beyond the water’s direct touch, followed closely by sprouting greenery.

  As he followed the middling of the forked rivers snaking its way westerly, the intrusion of the flowing water grew. The grabbing wet of the banks worked wider outwards as the river grew fatter, though slowed for the effort. The buzzing insects followed him with a varying curiosity, giving him a near-constant hum like some far-off witch’s meditative song.

  Now and then, one of the winged insects would slip too close to the water. With a splashing bloop, they would disappear into the snapping maw of a fish, silencing the buzzing chorus for a few mournful moments. The mountain shrunk behind him and the river grew, stretching itself so thin he could see the pebble-scaled bottom under crystalline water. Still, the water was enough to threaten him with slipping when he foolishly tried to cross it in its shallow state. The rocks were uneven and unsure. The young river’s bottom coughed up the silted earth as his feet disturbed it.

  He stopped for a quick bite shortly after, finding the plants upon the river budding like tiny green stones embedded into the wet mud of the banks. Small fish appeared from nowhere to regard his naked toes, and a cluster of the flying bugs sang into his ear. The chorus chilled him a little, sounding all too much like some arcane whisper into his ear when they all harmonized together. When he turned, almost sure someone was there, the insects scattered, only to reform where he wasn’t looking.

  It wasn’t the bugs driving him from his rest in the end, but the faintest inkling of a rhythm. The river drowned it out mostly, and he needed to swat his buzzing crowd away to even confirm he really felt it. A faint rhythm flowed up his arms and through his heart as they both formed a circuit against the earth, so faint as to almost be imperceptible. With his attention focused, he could feel a faraway bass pulsing through him. He traced a circuit echoing upon itself, the current steps as close in its path as the orbit allowed.

  “You feel something?” Wolf asked, his jaw clacking near Kechua’s ears, scattering the humming cloud.

  “Yes.” Kechua stood and walked through the grass as he scraped the mud from his hands, only to plunge them into the dry silt in a sparser section of the greenery. He focused again, confirming the circuit, far enough from the water he could feel the shockwaves tingling at his skin with electric anticipation.

  “There, but it’s moving away.” He nodded to the north and passed again through the grass. A ways back, the river had branched, pointing somewhat towards the sound. For a moment, he considered backtracking to follow it with firmer footing.

  He dismissed any notion of moving back, however, as the feeling already held on with the weakest threads in his heart. Rather than pointing himself towards the source of the sound, he cut directly in front of its orbit. His feet moved lightly in the loose earth, and he found himself running. The sands blurred below, his feet grazing the surface. Only a rabbit’s print remained where he landed and launched again. In those brief moments of contact, he felt the vibration, closer and clearer each time.

  The air struck his face, changing into a thickening smog of floating silt. He kept his pace until the atmosphere thickened into a mist, straining his breathing. His feet sunk into the soil again as the mist swallowed him, a white veil falling over the sun. The bass rhythm sounded, loud enough for his meager ears to hear it, though nowhere near the clarity of his sense of the earth below.

  He slumped forth on irritated legs, and soft drops of moisture beaded upon his hair, slickening his hands and pouring down his brow like some driving miniscule rain. As he walked, the ground became soggy, slurping at his shoes, and slowing his once-great pace to a struggling limp.

  A chorus of slurping followed beside and behind him, the sounds the only signs the white creature followed. The dark silhouette floated into view at times, but never enough to offer more clarity than a shadow cast in softened light.

  Kechua felt the rumbling pulses in his bones, his ears trembling in confused flurries. He summoned the staff for leverage and balance, and it reacted in a gentle shiver with each of the pulsing beats.

  The darkness deepened suddenly, an impenetrable shadow cast before him. At first, Kechua took it for a sudden shift in the day—or perhaps the spirit world calling him—but the shadow lurched forward and the hazy light hung.

  The rhythm of the steps trembled in his bones as he entered its umbral realm once more, pushing his legs against the progressively slowing mire, which lapped towards his knees when he stopped.

  The very crust of the earth gave a groaning creak as the thing’s ponderous steps fell.

  Quickening his pace, something hovered above, only presenting itself with the low whoosh of a tree cutting sideways through the air, yet never landing. The footsteps slammed against the ground and forced Kechua into an arduous jog to the side of the beast, finding the earth a firmer slog as he progressed up its body.

  Unable to look up or lose his pace, he caught a glimpse of one of the back legs as he ran. It looked scaly, like a desert tortoise or lizard. Rather than scale, the leg was coated in pale-armored stone, bubbling out like welts. As the muscles shifted to move the trunk of stone, the feeling of its joints groaning and creaking washed over him. The welts ground and cracked, sending scattershot pebbles into the sleeping dirt, waking it into tiny plumes of brown smoke.

  He ran, the miasma clearing and the swamp a light coating of pale lichen-like weeds trembling in hungry anticipation of the return of the mist. The creature carried a domed shell upon its back, and yet the shell was composed of slate varying in shades from black to grey. The armor poured down the creature’s sides, churning the earth as it progressed. The plates thickened, pouring down the body like grey waves of concrete, only to harden like sand and break into silvered goo as they shed onto the matted plants below. Where one plate fell, another younger scale peeked out, fresh and shining black.

  He passed the front leg. The miasma cleared and the thrumming rhythm of the creature’s desperate breathing brought more baritone to the operatic performance.

  He slowed to look but could not make out the creature’s face, other than a blunted visage of some kind. It hovered well above him, cutting a blurred black silhouette against the blue sky. Its breath gushed out of nostrils in billowing steam lingering at its sides, embracing the shell in a fine blanket of clouds.

  The front leg passed him again, and with its thunderous landing, the miasma fell too. He
paused, glancing at the chipping cascade of armor under the belly. One of the plates fell into the earth, splashing down in a wave of murk and mildew stink that grazed him, but he caught a vision of the underbelly. Rigid hairs dangled thick underneath, scraping the already disturbed earth as if tilling the weed. A new black plate slipped down to fill the gap in the armoring skirt, and the back leg rumbled into place beside him.

  He sputtered against the terrible air again and fought to get ahead of the beast, if only to breathe, and Wolf approached from the side.

  He gathered some itchy air and came to the calmer middle area, though his words caught in his throat. Wolf glared at him, daring him to ask for any kind of guidance. The mist embraced them again, and the glowing eyes burned through the cloud, disappearing only as the stubbed tail whipped above.

  A blazing gust of wind tore at the earth, vomiting the silent silt out into a storm of sand, beginning just beyond Kechua’s back. He recognized the nostril from the stream of moist air, but even with the creature’s head lowered so, it towered far away. The creature’s face resembled some flattened lizard, with an elongated skull and a square bony ridge that shot out from its forehead, more reminiscent of a cliff than any crested animal. Irregular grey rock jutted out in squared crowning about the beast’s face. Its eyes, nose, mouth, and ears were each accentuated with a differing pattern of rocky bone. Each made it clear that this was where the piece resided, and yet it hid vital bits within blackened shadow.

  “I see you, little creature,” the thing spoke slowly. Its words formed flawlessly, yet with an overwhelming rumble.

  The thing’s face was stunningly huge. As the dust settled, the silted rain fell to the mucky ground, and the thing became visible. The face was only one-tenth of the head, which sprawled out like some bony fern behind its skull. It resembled a primalist rock carving of a lion, the mane stylized and accentuated. The thing’s mouth opened as it spoke, the words pouring forth with a stream of hot steam, untouched by tongue and cheek.