Endling #2 Read online

  I wanted to call out and ask if he was all right. But I was afraid I might startle him, with horrible consequences.

  Finally, amazingly, Renzo was standing next to the steaming pool.

  He waved with Khara’s sword. She grumbled under her breath, but I saw her eyes light.

  “Do you think he’ll come back?” Tobble asked me in a low whisper. “He wouldn’t really steal Khara’s sword and leave us behind, would he?”

  “Of course not,” I said. But I wasn’t completely sure. The last human male I’d trusted had been a scholar named Luca. And he’d betrayed us.

  Still, I told myself, this was Renzo. We’d gone through so much together. He wasn’t like Luca. He was part of our family.

  Renzo, wreathed in clouds of steam, thrust Khara’s sword into the boiling pool and used the sharp tip to feel around. Then he removed the sword, waited until it had cooled, and reversed his grip, sticking the hilt end into the water. He withdrew it slowly, carefully, like a fisherman with a tentative bite.

  We saw something slowly coming into view. Renzo hauled it up by sheer strength, bracing his feet against the walls of the pool for leverage. A heavy metal object clanged onto the ground.

  A shield! Renzo had snagged it by its carrying strap.

  Again, more fishing around. Renzo, drenched with sweat, seemed to be growing increasingly impatient.

  Finally he returned to us, holding the shield over his head. Like the theurgically enhanced channels, the shield, too, shed drops of magma as if they were no more than raindrops.

  “I can feel another object in there,” Renzo reported, wiping his brow. “But there’s no way to get a grip.”

  “Break the sides of the pool,” Gambler suggested. “The hot water will drain out, revealing the prize beneath.”

  Renzo nodded. “Yes, that was my thought, too. But once the water is released, it’ll flow into the falling magma. The entire chamber may become one great teapot of steam.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to get back through the steam,” Khara said.

  Renzo nodded. “It would be utterly impossible . . . if we were to come back this way. But there may be another way out.”

  Khara looked at me. “Did Daf Hantch lie about this being the only path?”

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “But that doesn’t mean we can find the other way.”

  “Where does the steam go?” Tobble wondered aloud. He craned his neck, gazing upward.

  “The wobbyk asks a good question,” Gambler said, sounding a bit surprised.

  Gambler still sometimes had difficulty seeing Tobble as a fully equal creature, a peer. Felivets eat wobbyks. It required a major adjustment in felivet thinking.

  Of course, dairnes have been known to eat wobbyks, too. I’d reminded Tobble of that fact when we’d first met, but he’d been unfazed. Fortunately.

  “The air is too dry, even with so much heat,” Gambler said. “This place should feel wet. The air should cling.”

  We all stared straight up. And that was when an amazing thing happened. A bright shard of light peeked into view far above us.

  “It’s the moon!” I blurted.

  “We’re at the bottom of a volcano,” Khara said. “Of course. The steam escapes up the spout.”

  “Which is how we shall escape, if we are lucky,” Renzo said.

  As the moon—that lovely sliver of hope—moved into view, Renzo shuttled us beneath the shield to the pool, one at a time. It wasn’t easy to see through the steam and the bubbles, but there definitely was something in that pool. Something square, something made by hand and not by nature.

  “Will your sword shatter the stone sides of this cistern?” Renzo asked Khara.

  “In your hands? No,” Khara said. “In mine? Yes.”

  Tobble had wandered away and now came tumbling back, excited. “There are steps! A circular stairway cut into the rock.”

  Khara considered this new information. “All right,” she said. “When I break the cistern, the water will flow out. The box will be hot, too hot to touch. But with my sword I can slide the box out and Renzo can carry it on the shield. The rest of you start up the stairs, and we will follow.”

  I didn’t like the idea of missing this bit of madness, but as I preferred to avoid being parboiled, I went along with the plan. We’d climbed perhaps a hundred stairs when we heard a huge blow, a yelp, a clattering of footsteps, a banging of steel, and, most heartening, giddy laughter.

  We waited on a landing until Khara and Renzo came stumbling in, tripping over each other, dropping a rectangular stone box and the shield, and laughing like crazy people.

  “Well done, Khara!” Renzo said when he could speak.

  “Well done me? Well done you, Renzo.”

  “A masterpiece of careful planning and flawless execution,” Renzo said, and I didn’t need my gift to understand that this was humor, not literal truth.

  “Yes, with a great deal of frantic running and general panic,” Khara replied, wiping away a tear of laughter.

  9

  An Endless Stairway

  Renzo opened the ornately carved box. It had been cunningly made, and perhaps protected by durable theurgic spells, for the objects inside the box were bone dry.

  With a low whistle, Renzo drew out a crown of gold decorated with precious diamonds, rubies, otrastones, and trynnes.

  “I suppose you’re thinking of how much you could make by selling off the jewels and melting down the gold, Renzo,” Khara said.

  “Nonsense. It’s a work of art. Quite beautiful, don’t you think?” He reached over and placed it on Khara’s head. “It’s worth far more intact.”

  Khara snatched the crown off her head and flushed angrily.

  “I hate to say it, but it suits you,” Gambler said.

  “My family is noble, or was, once upon a time,” Khara said. “But I am not. I am just a girl who sometimes works as a trapper or a poacher. Crowns are not for me.”

  “Just a girl who wields the Light of Nedarra,” Renzo said. “In any case, if I were going to steal anything, it’d be your sword, Khara. It’s worth ten times this crown.”

  “We should start climbing,” Khara said, clearly ready to change the subject. “It’s a long, long way up.”

  “No!” Tobble yelped. “I want to see the other thing!”

  The other thing, the second of the two objects, was a tube as long as Khara’s forearm, but no wider than my wrist. Compared to the crown, it seemed an object of little value, a cylinder wrapped in worn leather and bound with corroded steel rings.

  “Do you want to play with it, Tobble?” Khara asked.

  Tobble greedily grabbed the tube and turned it around in his nimble paws. “Oh, look! There is glass on this end. And . . . and a smaller glass at this end.”

  “Do you suppose Daf Hantch is still waiting for us to deliver the objects?” I asked

  “Waiting to kill us, you mean?” Gambler said with a snort. “No, by now he’s guessed we’re not returning.”

  “But—” Tobble hesitated, still playing with the worn cylinder. “I wonder if . . .”

  “What’s wrong, Tobble?” I asked.

  Tobble shrugged. “Is it wrong for us to take these things that don’t belong to us?”

  “They lied to us, Tobble!” Renzo cried. “They were almost certainly going to kill us!”

  Tobble stared through the cylinder. “Still and all, it doesn’t feel quite right.”

  “There’s a reason for that, Tobble.” Khara patted his back. “It doesn’t feel quite right because it isn’t.”

  “Oh, please,” Renzo said with a groan. “I just risked my life for these things. They’re worth plenty, and the coin they bring could well save our lives down the road. They’re not going to do any good to anyone, stuck in the heart of a volcano till the end of time.”

  “Byx?” Khara said. “What do you think?”

  I scratched an ear, delaying my answer. It was moments like this that reminded me why I could never be a l
eader. I had a million answers, not just one. Leaders weren’t allowed to be uncertain.

  “I suppose,” I finally said, “you could make the argument that we’re doing a small wrong for a greater good.”

  Renzo groaned again, but Gambler nodded. “I agree with Byx,” he said. “Finding more dairnes, helping a species revive, defying the Murdano—that is by far the greater good.”

  “So I can keep this thing?” Tobble asked hopefully.

  “Yes,” said Khara. “You may keep your silly toy.”

  “But be sure to feel guilty about it,” Renzo added with an eye roll.

  “We really must continue climbing,” Gambler said. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t had much to eat, and what I have eaten was not good.”

  “Agreed,” said Khara. “Let’s go.”

  We climbed the eternal staircase in silence. It did seem as if we were trying to make it all the way to that distant moon. The ascent wound for two hundred steps at a time, pausing at small landings before beginning again. And again.

  As we passed the fifth such landing, I muttered, “Who built these, anyway?” I’d been hardened by our long travels and many pains, but climbing thousands of steps was still a struggle. And I knew if it was difficult for me, it was even harder for Tobble, although he hadn’t complained at all, and refused all our offers of help.

  “This staircase was created from the top down, by someone wishing to defend against anyone below,” Khara said.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Most warriors use their right arm to wield their blade. As you climb, see how there’s no room for your right arm to move? Anyone descending would have much more room.”

  “That’s the kind of thing that an average, everyday girl armed with a sword worth more than a palace would just happen to know,” Renzo teased.

  “My toes look small!” Tobble interjected. He was toying with the cylinder, but we were all too weary to respond.

  Up and up and up. When we reached the fiftieth landing—ten thousand steps—we stopped and ate a glum snack of jerky and dried sunweed. Gambler tried a bit of the sweet herb and spat it out. (Dog promptly ate it.) “I shall wait,” Gambler said. “I’m not that desperate.”

  We returned to our exhausting, relentless climb. The only sounds were our labored breaths and heavy footfalls. The muscles in my legs screamed in silent agony, and the air couldn’t seem to feed my hungry lungs.

  Finally, after hours of struggle, we dragged ourselves onto the final landing, a wide, flat space large enough to hold a dozen men. There we came face-to-face with a door of thick, ironbound oak.

  But before we could even contemplate trying to open that door onto whatever horrors lay beyond, we desperately needed to sleep.

  We decided to take turns keeping watch, and I offered to go first. Khara and Renzo stretched out on the ground, using Dog for a pillow, while Gambler curled up in a corner, head tucked beneath a paw. Tobble fell asleep instantly—it was a special skill of his—with his head resting on my shoulder. He was still clutching the leather-bound object we had found in the stone box.

  Carefully, trying not to disturb my sleeping friend, I reached into my pouch and retrieved the worn map I had carried with me for so long. In the silver glaze of moonlight, I traced my index finger over the path we’d taken so far.

  There was Tarok, the sentient island rumored to be carnivorous.

  There was Dairneholme, the village on the island where a northern colony of dairnes had once existed, according to myth.

  There were the treacherous mountains, there was the icy sea.

  And here we were, sitting in a volcano because of me. Because of my desperate hope that I might have glimpsed a solitary dairne on Tarok.

  “Byx?” Tobble whispered.

  “I’m sorry, Tobble,” I said, folding the map. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I was dreaming. There was fire and lava, and I was trying to escape on a slug pony, but I couldn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you savrielle?” I asked.

  Tobble tilted his head. “What’s that?”

  “Don’t wobbyks savrielle? It’s when you control what’s happening during a dream.”

  “While you’re asleep?”

  “Of course,” I said. “That’s the whole point. Dairnes do it all the time.”

  “Oh, my.” Tobble looked impressed. “How did they teach you that?”

  I shrugged. “It takes a lot of practice.”

  “If I could savrielle, I would have flying dreams every night,” Tobble said, adjusting the tie at the end of his braided tail. He pointed with his chin at the folded playa leaf in my hand. “You were looking at your map.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry, Byx. We’re going to find the island. And we’re going to find more dairnes. I just know it.”

  I smiled. “You’re a good friend, Tobble.”

  “And so are you.”

  “Rest,” I said. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  “Long journeys are the best kind of journeys,” Tobble murmured as his lids dropped and he drifted into slumber.

  I patted Tobble’s head. I felt hopeful and fearful, anxious and grateful, lonely and loved. In my old world, in my life with the dairne pack, had I ever felt so many things at once? Was I ever this overwhelmed? This confused?

  I used to chafe at being the runt. My siblings teased me. My parents fretted over me. But now, looking back, I could see how easy I’d had it.

  I had been responsible for no one.

  And now I felt responsible for so many.

  I gazed up with a sigh. The moon had slipped away on its own long journey, followed by a handful of luminous and steadfast stars.

  10

  The Far-Near

  When dawn came, we prepared to open the door. We were hungry, and not especially well-rested, but at least we were in better shape to face whatever lay ahead.

  Khara unsheathed her sword, and I drew my much smaller knife. Renzo clutched his knife in one hand and the shield in the other. Tobble, for some reason, seemed to think the cylinder from the box was a weapon, so he brandished it. Of course, as always, Gambler had his claws and cunning.

  “All right, Byx,” Khara said. “You pull the door. It probably won’t open, but if it does, stand behind it until I say it’s safe.”

  It was a humble duty, but the truth was that in a fight, I was the least useful member of our group. Even Tobble could startle an opponent with his wobbyk fury.

  I gripped the door handle, a heavy iron ring, nodded to Khara, and pulled. To everyone’s surprise, it swung open, albeit with a great deal of squeaking.

  I couldn’t see anything from my position behind the door, and waited impatiently until Khara said, “It’s all right, Byx. You have to see this.”

  I stepped around the door and felt a blast of cold, clean air. Only then did I notice that my feet were in something cold and white. Snow!

  It was breathtaking, after the dank recesses of the natite cavern. We were at the rim of a caldera, and the whole world seemed to spread before us like an endless map. To the north and east, dark mountains loomed. To the west, the land grew flatter and less imposing.

  Renzo and Khara stood side by side, shielding their eyes against the brilliance of the sunrise.

  “You see that smudge?” Khara asked, pointing. “Could that be a village?”

  Renzo squinted. “Perhaps. It’s hard to be sure.”

  “It is a village,” Tobble said, with surprising certainty. “I see a large lodge at the center. And timber walls and earthen palisades around, oh”—he muttered to himself, counting—“maybe fifty buildings.”

  Khara, Renzo, Gambler, and I all did the exact same thing: we turned and stared at Tobble in disbelief.

  Tobble was not returning our gaze. He was holding his silly cylinder up to his right eye. The other eye was closed.

  “Um . . . what?” I asked Tobble.

  He lowered the tube
. “I call this my Theurgic Big and Small Maker. If you look through it one way, everything appears tiny and far away. If you look through it the other way, things appear large and close.”

  Khara took the tube from him and held it to her eye. Her expression began as a dismissive smirk, melted into blank astonishment, and grew into wonder. “Oh, well-found, friend Tobble,” she said at last. “Well-found indeed.”

  Renzo was next to stare through the tube. His expression followed a similar path.

  Finally it was my turn. Dairnes have excellent eyesight—though it’s not nearly as impressive as our sense of smell—but suddenly I had the magnificent eyes of a raptidon.

  “This is a theurgic miracle!” I exclaimed.

  But Renzo shook his head. “I don’t sense any theurgy.”

  “Nor do I,” Khara said. “This is a made object, a result of learning and craft.”

  “It’s a very useful thing,” Renzo said. “Forget the crown and the shield. Any general of any army ever would give his right arm to have this nameless object.”

  “It’s not nameless,” Tobble objected. “It’s my Theurgic Big and Small Maker. But I suppose if you say it is not theurgic, I should change the name.” He tapped his fuzzy chin. “How about we call it a ‘Far-Near’?”

  The Far-Near had told true. There was indeed a village, a fortified human village, in the distance. However, it took most of the day to make it down the steep and rocky volcanic slope, and it was nearly night when we drew near. The temperature seemed to fall with each step downward. It was invigorating at first, but soon we found ourselves shivering and donning every last bit of clothing in our packs. Nonetheless, we decided to sleep rough, since strangers arriving in the middle of the night are rarely welcome.

  In the morning, cold and hungry, we marched up to the closed gate of the village. As we approached, six archers rose from behind the points of the log-built palisade. Six arrows flew, and six arrows stuck hard in the ground, just inches from our toes.

  I was immediately glad we’d waited till morning, for if this was how we were met in broad daylight, I could only imagine how much worse it might have been. The archers’ accuracy was disturbing: they could quite clearly have killed us.