Wanderers of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 2) Page 28

  Rutger chuckled. “Own it? Claim it? No, that’s not how you do it. See, that’s the trick, gotta know what you’re looking for, and the second you recognize it, you have to give it your all.” He bit down hard as the thing vibrated furiously, whistling and humming and rumbling. “You’re right, you can’t claim these things.” His voice trembled as the staff’s tantrum ceased. “You become them.” He nodded with a burning look at the staff. “You don’t deserve this, you can’t. The way these things are given, it’s never without explanation. You never go without knowing. But you don’t. If you knew what this was, you would have gripped the sands the second this Season began and rode out on a wave of conquering fire!” The staff trembled in his hands, and he bit hard against it. “This is no simple staff. It has a name, and once I know that name, once I have calmed its . . . defiance . . . ” He struggled again with the trembling wood. “I will take that name as my own. I will become it. That is how you do it.”

  Kechua charged at the man, clubs drawn. Even with a renewed bout of squirming of the staff, the man made a flourishing gesture in the sand between them. From the disturbed plot of soil burst a beaming white flame that Kechua’s feet flinched away from. The man fell back, twisting his path to the side, and skidded to a halt in the soil.

  Rutger flourished the ground twice more, and flames tore forth. “You could have created anything, killed anything. You could have ended this season by now by your hand alone!” Rutger shifted back, scowling, and wedging the staff under one of his arms, holding the other out in an almost accusing gesture. “I am worthier than you. I have fought for every single drop of knowing I have, scratched and scraped for the truth.” He gestured at Wolf. “When I’m done with him, I’m coming for you. I’ll wash away the red with a coat of silver, I think.”

  “I look forward to it,” Wolf almost cooed.

  “But you won’t interfere, will you? Won’t help the little boy.” Rutger chuckled. “I can feel it in you, all of you,” the man snarled, turning away from the creature to parry Kechua’s blindsided attacks, and sent the boy lunging back into the sand.

  “Who are you? What do you know?” Kechua snarled. His right hand stung with pain unhealed. He tried to get a sense of the man’s rhythm, but he was a stranger in both form and dedication. His living coil stilled itself until it was time to strike out, his heart almost returning to a perfect collected calm between the bouts of violence.

  “I found something when I was stationed overseas. There is the archaeology you know about, the silly things that tell you of societies and religions, and then there is the second kind. Sometimes, things slip through the greedy grips of things like him, the tiniest discarded tidbits that hint at the hidden world. Every single line, every notch or stroke upon the surface anathema to everything we know. They whisper of incredible, impossible things, with words that convey more than sentiment. They convey power itself; knowledge itself. I came across one of those artifacts, a tiny shard of pottery, but I knew it was important. I knew it was substantial.”

  Rutger dipped the staff into the ground again and tore it upwards, scattering a wall of sand in front of him. Within the suspension of the sand, he drew a flourishing rune, one which caused a ripping explosive wind to tear through the veil, pushing against Kechua’s braced form.

  “But even better, even better you handed yourself to me too. One of the Blessed, didn’t even have to hunt you down, still tender and easy. Just a touch of your blood in this staff is enough to make it remember, just a little more and it will scream its name to me!” His lip curled in a toothy half grin.

  “And then what?” Kechua snarled, moving to flank Rutger to the side, sliding out of the range of the strikes of the spinning and groaning staff.

  “I will kill you, drink your blood and eat your flesh.” Rutger held the staff’s head pointed at Kechua’s face, stunned. “Then you will return to life the next day, and I will do so again. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Then it will be time to seek out more of you, and I will tear each of them apart and bathe in their power.” His voice rose and a low cackle drummed against the earth below.

  Kechua scowled, tumbling out of the way.

  “Won’t be enough to make me a god, but all the better. What fun is that, wouldn’t you say, Wolf?” Rutger laughed, holding the staff again at rest under his arm.

  “You will change with the act, no matter how you resist it.” Wolf’s form shuddered in crumpling confusion, but the snarl remained in his voice.

  “Ah, change is inevitable, is it not?” Rutger sneered.

  Kechua witnessed the full form of the man. Rutger threw away his camouflaged cloak, tossing off the surprisingly large backpack weighing him down. He tore his shirt, soiled with sweat and dirt, and threw it into the refuse pile. The man was naked from the waist up, showing just how fiercely muscled he was. “Come boy, throw off your weights.” Rutger sneered. “I’ll allow you that much. It will make my first victory all that more . . . satisfying.” His sneer deepened to a snarl.

  Kechua backed to the other side of the invisible ring, opposite the man swinging the staff idly, even as it trembled and grumbled. There was a building pulse there in his movements, but it was the overture to the coming orchestra. Kechua dropped his backpack hard into the soil. He stood there breathing, taking in the resounding footfalls below, the gentle hum of the spinning staff, his clubs ready at his sides. His sense waited for the moment when the true dance began.

  “Oh, come on, don’t be shy.” The man grinned. “Surely your favorite band there will get torn if you don’t shed it.”

  “Not my favorite band. Haven’t even heard them play.” Kechua turned his legs, trying to sway from one to the other, feeling the gentle pulses within the encapsulated universe. Rutger circled, the staff spinning and humming its overture.

  “I’ve done this dance hundreds of times before. You want my blood, my flesh? That’s nothing new.” Rutger’s strip down was meant to be an intimidation, but it was the first comfortable and familiar thing. “Wouldn’t be the same without the shirt.” He allowed himself a half smile, his hand clenched around the larger club, readying to strike.

  “If ever you take my advice, do not hold back. Do not test,” Wolf growled.

  Ready to kill, Kechua grinned, meeting Rutger’s eyes.

  The stick snapped at Rutger’s side, both hands on it, and he came towards Kechua, tracing a kind of practiced art meant to confuse him.

  Kechua edged backwards, feeling the pattern in the footsteps; tasting the rhythm of the wood shrieking through the air, each whirl spewing a gale.

  He wove between the striking wind, savoring the slipping strain on the man’s face. He backed off, dodging an expected jab at his head again, the draft of this one biting cool against his ear. He caught the other paired attack in the teeth of the smaller club, throwing the staff down, but not managing to offset the man’s balance.

  He reciprocated with the larger club, catching the air once, then twice. The momentum brought him beside the man, and he spun to deflect a third blow aimed at his back. The force of the wood meeting threw him into a kneeling position. He managed to deflect another blow and somersaulted back to his feet.

  A torrent of white flame burst forth from the ground, but Rutger used the flame as a curtain rather than an attack. He landed a hit through it, squarely against Kechua’s shoulder. No blood, but the muscle cramped immediately, weakening his lesser club. Kechua spun around the flame wall, only to stumble upon the soggy earth of the fledgling spring. He caught another blow, to his other shoulder, but managed to stop a third from hitting him.

  The hole sucked at his foot, and he stumbled, shifting to bended knee.

  Rutger landed two vicious strikes, the carved history upon the staff splattered red with abstraction. Kechua’s vision darkened and spotted, and for a single flashing moment, a vision of the black forest struck him harder than the staff. He fell backwards, his leg free, and the forest gone. A brush at his eye confirmed a chunk of his skull had been take
n by the blow, and his useless eye lay cracked and loose in the socket.

  “Drink on, old one.” Rutger thrust the humming staff skyward, a circle of whitened flame shooting upwards, and the earth trembled below.

  He was so close to grasping the man’s rhythm, but a torrent of dizziness ripped all coherence of the pulse away from the boy. Still, something more interesting called to him in that moment. The vision of the black forest lingered on like a camera’s flash in his soul. The striking pain slowed when his mind was within the forest, stretching the time between the exploding blows upon his weakening body and allowing him to think.

  The man was upon him, and simple and crude blows struck Kechua’s skull again, crushing the wounded eye. Yet instead of continuing and finishing it, the man worked on his shoulder instead.

  The spirit world poured into Kechua’s perceptions, sad resignation coming with its embrace. Instead, he fought the vision, but only partially. As his ribs shattered, as the staff drilled and rotated onto his lung, Kechua’s spirit fought hard against the growing film to remember the feeling of the guarded boy’s room; of the spirit realm existing upon the real.

  It was enough to push him away, from his little place in the light as the forest nearly engulfed him, and into a new scene.

  The staff towered above him, a pillar rising into the blackness above. The tiny figures stood taller than him, taller than the figure of Rutger. There was no glittering blue upon the soil, no ball of light before him, or even the sense of trees around. This was only an arena, though the burning light blew hotter at his back.

  The man was nothing but shadow there, a tiny twinkling spark somewhere along his neck, dangling as he moved with increasing slowness in his attacks. The spark dug a single lean tendril into his heart from the trinket, and it spewed pale candlelight against his otherwise black figure.

  The light came in waves of faded maroon, as if a heat lamp poured through a jostled aquarium. Tendrils sprouted out from the monumental staff, trailing from everywhere on its surface and weaving into thicker thread before wrapping around Rutger’s dark avatar. The tendrils were pulled taut, jagged and frayed like chewed barbed wire, and he gripped them in clenched teeth. The wires beyond his mouth were tamed and wove to his back, into his spine and his head, pulsing into his shadow veins.

  The man’s laughter rolled over Kechua with a bass slowdown. “Given up then, boy?” he roared, his voice shaking along the taut strings and onto the pillar’s body.

  The pillar was covered in tendrils, but so many of them were broken hairs, fragmented and worn. An eternity of formed connections grew out from it like an ancient sea anemone only to be snapped when the companion left the staff.

  He realized thin strands ran to his own hands, connecting him to various points on the staff, the rune of the rock; the hidden feeling of wanting water.

  Yet even as his lungs buckled in the material world, the cramping and seizing overwhelming him, all he could feel was sadness for the ancient and lonely thing above him.

  In a single moment, he felt he truly understood it for the first time and reached towards the staff.

  His material hand caught the rounded edge of the staff, but he caressed it, felt its warbling and sad purr rather than gripping it. In the spirit world, the jagged tethers trembled and jolted towards him in a dramatic and loosing arc. For the briefest moment, Rutger’s blackened form stumbled, his bite loosed on the red ribbons.

  The scene, the pillar, and the man whirled backwards like a frightened squirrel. Kechua was left with the black forest pouring into his soul, but he fought. He squirmed as the clay formed over him, gripping at the soil in his living hand. He lay there, focusing on the heat, on the pain as he drew gradually clearer breaths.

  “No,” he formed the word and managed to sit up, coughing up clotted blood.

  “Where?” he bit, his one eye barely focusing on the scene. The circle remained. The air had been cleared of all traces of sand, and not even a puff of a cloud flew above. He stumbled to his knees, his lung stinging and eye throbbing and useless, but the blackness of the spirit world was completely shunned.

  “Gone,” Wolf rumbled outside the circle. Kechua couldn’t quite tell which of the voices spoke, but there was little derision in it at least. “The staff fell from his grip for a moment when you reached out, and that was enough to chase him away, it seems.”

  Kechua stumbled to his feet, his legs being oddly accepting of his desire to move. “I can’t see footprints.” He walked the length of the arena furiously, rubbing his eye, dousing it with precious water. “Where did he go?”

  “Used the staff to cover his wake.” Wolf gave a disinterested growl.

  “You saw him go, where did he . . . ”

  “Westward.” Wolf cocked his head at the boy.

  “No.” Kechua’s blood froze and his blinded eye opened, trembling within its socket. “Was the guide in the staff still? Could he have?” He gasped, ripping his staff on his hurt shoulder and throwing his clubs to his sides.

  “My, not resting here for the night?” Wolf gave a low coo.

  “I can’t . . . I have to . . . ” The boy double-checked his progress, trying to figure out the position of the sun and the way his own footsteps led him here.

  “We have to go.” Kechua burst from the circle, pointing as West as he could.

  A single black bird took flight from an unseen divot in the sands. It cut against the fading sky above, an echoing and declarative ‘caw’ vibrating downwards as it circled ahead.

  “Was it watching?” He didn’t break his pace to ask the question.

  “They have watched since you parted from Glalih’s mountain. Just not so bold,” Wolf growled, snapping at the wind.

  The black shape circled above, following, and ever watching as he made his way towards the west.

  CHAPTER 11:

  The Glass Towers

  Kechua spent the day limping through the sand, his legs groaning in an irritating protest that somehow drowned out his healing eye. The worst of it had been sometime beyond an hour of his pathetic pacing when the eye had begun to tremble and prickle, cold needling running behind the eye socket. In the end, he was able to see from it again.

  A beaten down path, thankfully hosting a familiar rhythm of human feet trampling it down, presented itself shortly after that. The drumming of hundreds of feet layered upon each other over time offered a comforting numbness against the aching guilt in his soul. From time to time, paths branched out. Whether coming or going, he didn’t bother to check. They wove their own smaller roads out into the sands beyond.

  Wolf skulked in his paths just behind Kechua’s sight, though the drums of his feet paused from time to time, tasting the wind with great snoutfuls of air, something making the boy a little uneasy. This tingling worry grew when Wolf broke into the rut road beside Kechua and began a low stalking stance.

  Words unwasted, the boy slowed into caution, though his half-red-tinted vision failed to see what was ahead. The feeling began as little tugging pulses at his toes, subtle but adding a kind of sickly prickle onto the woven mat of footsteps.

  Each step he took, from that moment on, was as though he walked on the surface of a stilled and lukewarm pond, yet one whose gravity was very real. The feeling deepened below him as he followed the road, and while his feet didn’t struggle, they felt a kind of gripping electricity that grew with every step. Stark black crows zipped by from time to time, some close to the ground but many more blinking in and out of the sky, all of them flowing towards the gnawing feeling ahead.

  Wolf again stopped to taste the wind, and Kechua’s mundane nose managed to catch some scent in the air. Not so much because of some overwhelming stench, but because his own sweat and blood—and the muted earthen clay smell of the world—filtered into a background static.

  He smelled plants of some kind, the odor of a field of the sweetest flowering cacti as it lay rotting upon one another.

  “What do you smell, Old Man?” Kechua asked,
and Wolf obligingly skulked to his side.

  “What do you?” he rumbled, eyes burning against the setting sun.

  “It’s like blooming plants, but too many of them together. Like . . . ” He grabbed his bag of berries, smelling them before he chomped down on it. “No, not even like the preserved fruit.” He glanced at Wolf, his pace driven by the lowering sun.

  “It is the scent of domesticated plants, of orderly agriculture meeting the enervating magic of the sleeping soil. I smell the labor funneled into it, and traces of oil and captured lightning.”

  Wolf’s ears twitched.

  “Is this place in the mountains somewhere? One of those buried bases maybe?” He squinted against the horizon and found a pair of stark white lines barely popping above the brown. The road veered sharply as if sharing his vision and aimed directly between the two guiding points. “I still don’t see—”

  Wolf silenced him by freezing dead in place.

  “What is it?” Kechua asked, his hands whipping to the club handles.

  “Nothing.” Wolf attempted to resume the pace but stopped again. His great paws seemed reluctant to proceed. “Nothing,” he repeated, the rumble in his voice less sure, less encompassing, before managing to resume the pace.

  Kechua pursued the great wolf, who no longer took stride at his side. The subtle traces of aggravation had been replaced with an overly outward sense of forced calm about the great creature.

  The snow-white caps budded into white stems, shining ice coating the surface of each and casting illusory rainbows into the sun. They grew equally tall, although reluctant to grow much further than the stubborn sprouts. They called to him to chase, sparkling in the fading sun, only to draw him into whatever trap grew below his feet.

  The pulsing cling in the earth grew as he realized the sparkling peaks were pillars, rather than mountains. Twin horns, rounded off points, grew from the horizon. Bleached and white, the sparkling ice upon their surfaces remained ever calling out to him.