Under Fragile Stone Read online

  Mirkrin took his compass out, but the needle spun lazily, failing to point in any one direction.

  ‘Too much iron,’ Paternasse told him. ‘That’ll be no good down here. I think I can keep us pointed the right way, but that’s assuming we can find a route that’ll take us out.’

  They pooled the food, and Paternasse rationed it out, keeping two thirds of it for later. The paltry pieces of sandwich were downed in seconds, and then they all felt even more miserable than before. Nothing was worse than feeding a hunger with too little food.

  ‘What was that?’ Nayalla said suddenly.

  They all froze, listening intently. There was a skittering sound and then a wet, gulping noise. All five of them jumped to their feet and rushed back up the corridor. Casting their lights around, they spread out. Paternasse and Dalegin crept into the room with the well. They could see nothing moving. They were about to leave and continue their search, when Dalegin tugged Paternasse’s sleeve.

  ‘Jussek, look!’

  There, within the well’s stone walls, ripples disturbed the inky waters of the pool.

  * * * *

  The mist had grown so thick over the road that Jube had slowed the lead wagon down to a crawl. Taya and Lorkrin were fast asleep on top of some sacks near the front of the flatbed and Draegar was dozing in his usual sleeping position, curled up into an armoured dome that offered both shelter and protection.

  ‘Can’t see a thing out there,’ Jube muttered. ‘It’s like looking into the esh.’

  Emos nodded. He was weary but couldn’t sleep, his mind haunted by thoughts of Nayalla and Mirkrin. He put down the wood chisel that he was shaping into an amorphing tool for Lorkrin and shook his head in exhaustion.

  ‘We need to pull over for a while,’ Jube called back to him. ‘Let the engines cool down and refuel. I probably need to top up the oil too.’

  ‘We could do with some hot food and drink, too,’ Emos assented. ‘I’ll take a turn driving when we get going again. I won’t sleep tonight.’

  Jube found a flat stretch of grass under the trees and pulled the truck off the road. Khassiel brought the second wagon to a halt behind them, cutting the engine and jumping from the cab to stretch her stiff limbs.

  The sudden silence woke up the sleepers. Taya and Lorkrin blinked and looked groggily over the side of the flatbed. Draegar uncurled and sat up.

  ‘What’s all the rubbish on the road?’ Lorkrin asked.

  There were pieces of clothing, tin cans and other bits and pieces strewn down the road.

  ‘Looks like your side of the room after your friends have been over,’ Taya murmured.

  ‘At least my friends keep the mess on my side of the room.’

  ‘Let’s get a fire going,’ Jube said. ‘That’s a damp mist. It’ll put a chill on you if you let it. Fetch me a pot down, Taya, lass. I’ve a hankerin’ for some tea.’

  ‘I’ll get some wood,’ Lorkrin piped up, jumping over the side of the wagon.

  ‘No, you won’t!’ Emos said sternly. ‘I’m not having you wandering off into these woods in a fog. I’ll go. You and Taya stay here.’

  Lorkrin folded his arms, looking out into the trees with a sour expression.

  ‘We’re not babies, y’know,’ he sniffed.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Cullum grunted, grabbing a lantern. ‘I need to stretch my legs anyway.’

  He had fallen asleep with one leg tucked under the other and was now pacing about woodenly, trying to rub the pins and needles from his unresponsive limb. He picked up his weapon, a battle-hammer with a flat head on one side and a sharp spike on the other, and made his way off into the woods.

  ‘You work on their tools,’ Draegar told his friend. ‘We’ll get the firewood.’

  He lit a candle and followed Cullum into the grey darkness. Emos shrugged and sat down to finish the finer work on the tools he had started. Jube picked up kindling from under the trees nearby and got a small blaze going. Cullum came back with an armful of wood and Jube soon had the food heating over the fire. The Noranian headed back into the trees to get more and that was when they felt the ground start to shake.

  The carefully stacked wood of the fire collapsed; the pots clattered to the rhythm of the trembling ground and the wagons bounced on their suspension. Taya and Lorkrin deliberately stood up and tried keeping their balance, but tumbled to the ground, giggling. They stopped abruptly when they saw Emos’s anxious face and they remembered where their parents were and what this tremor would mean for them. Even as this thought occurred to them, the earthquake quickly faded into stillness. Somewhere out of sight of them in the forest, there was a sharp crack and they heard Cullum bellow. Khassiel seized her crossbow and another lantern and charged into the woods. Emos leapt to his feet.

  ‘Stay here!’ he barked at the two children. Then he bounded into the fog after the soldier.

  Jube got up and followed their uncle. The two Myunans stood sullenly, looking into the trees.

  ‘Make a sound and we’ll make mince of yuh,’ a voice whispered abruptly behind them.

  They turned to see two men holding broad-bladed knives at the ready. Out of the mist came more Reisenicks. Some dropped down from the trees, others materialised out of the fog. All of them wore the distinctive clothes of rawhide and fur, all with long knives or blowpipes held ready. There was the sound of clicking joints as they moved and the exaggerated features of their faces were stony and hostile.

  ‘Oh, right,’ Lorkrin snorted. ‘This is what we get for doing what we’re told!’

  The leader held up his knife, then raised a finger to his lips. Lorkrin stood up, using his body to hide Taya as she quickly gathered the tools their uncle had been working on and stuffed them into her backpack. She stood up beside him, anxiously eyeing the clansmen’s sharp blades.

  ‘Does this mean Mr Ludditch didn’t like the pendant?’ she asked.

  * * * *

  Cullum had a thin wooden stake through his left leg, just above the ankle. He had triggered a trap intended for a much smaller animal, set by the trunk of a tree. He lay with both hands clutching his leg, roaring defiance at the offending spike for its assault.

  Khassiel reached him first, with Emos close behind.

  ‘By the gods!’ Khassiel scoffed. ‘I thought you were being disembowelled, or something, Cullum. Stop being such a baby.’

  ‘Lie still,’ Emos ordered the Forward-Batterer. ‘It’s gone clean through. I don’t think it’s hit anything important.’

  ‘It hit my bloody leg! Is that not important enough?’

  ‘You walked right into a skunkrin spike. Weren’t you trained to avoid booby traps?’

  ‘I was watching out for man-sized traps. Nobody said anything about any damned skunkrin spikes.’

  Khassiel raised her crossbow. Someone else was coming. Draegar crashed through the brush. He stopped and sighed when he saw what had happened.

  ‘I thought somebody was in danger,’ he chided the injured man. ‘Is that little thing what all the noise was about?’

  ‘That little thing is my leg …’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Emos told him. ‘They don’t poison these kinds of traps.’

  ‘Lucky, my arse! Lucky would be stepping on a bag of gold. There’s a bloody spike through my leg.’

  Jube trotted up.

  ‘What’s all the fuss?’ he asked.

  ‘Cullum’s pricked ’imself,’ Khassiel cocked her head in the direction of her comrade.

  ‘That’s right!’ the Forward-Batterer fumed. ‘Have a laugh at a man’s misfortune! I won’t be able to walk on this …’

  ‘It’s not a trivial wound,’ Emos agreed. ‘Let’s get you back to the fire where we can have a proper look at it.’

  He drew his knife and cut the spine free of the branch that held it, then he and Jube helped Cullum hop back towards the road. They found the pots of food boiling over, the camp deserted. Emos jumped onto the back of the lead truck to look around. There was no sign of the children.


  ‘Reisenicks,’ Draegar growled, reading the tracks on the ground. ‘A hunting party.’

  ‘Get in the cabs!’ Emos told them. ‘Now, everyone in the cabs!’

  A dart struck Cullum in the arm.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelped, and slumped against Jube, knocked out cold.

  The miner dragged him to the cab of the lead truck and hauled him in. More darts struck the windscreen. Khassiel jumped into the other cab, quickly followed by Emos.

  Draegar, who would struggle to fit in the cab of a wagon anyway, grabbed a crank handle from the side of Jube’s truck, and Jube threw the starter switch as the Parsinor twisted the engine into life. Darts zipped through the air, bouncing off his armour and sticking uselessly in his tough hide. It would take a lot of darts to bring down a Parsinor. He fitted the handle into the socket on the front of Khassiel’s truck. As he cranked the second motor up, he looked through the glass into Emos’s eyes.

  ‘Get out of here!’ he bellowed to his friend. ‘I’ll find them! You know I will! Now go!’

  Stones started to smack off the sides of the trucks, one finding the windscreen of Jube’s truck, smashing a white cobweb of cracks across the pane.

  ‘Go!’ Draegar roared. Then he turned around and plunged into the forest.

  They had no choice. Outnumbered and under attack from an enemy they could not see, the rescue party were forced to gun the engines of their vehicles and flee. Driving recklessly through the thick fog, they soon outran their attackers, but Emos could not take his eyes off the back window. Somewhere back there were his niece and nephew, and he had deserted them. The Reisenicks had turned on the group. He did not know why, but the rescue party’s chances of escaping them and getting out of Ainslidge Woods were slim, if there were any chance at all. He knew Draegar was right. He had to carry on and reach the caves or Nayalla, Mirkrin and the trapped miners had no hope. But even though he had absolute trust in his friend, his heart was wrenched at his own failure to help the children.

  * * * *

  Taya closed her eyes as she was flung through the air. The Reisenicks were following a path through the cobrush jungle, but in many places the track ran up fallen tree trunks or over ravines and rather than wait for their bound captives to stumble across the obstacles, the Reisenicks carried them along, tossing them over any break in the path. Strong, bony hands caught her as she flailed over to the other side of the stream and their tight grip made her cry out. Lorkrin came flying over behind her. The Reisenicks moved quickly, accustomed to the difficult terrain and seeming to know their way through the woods even in the misty darkness.

  She was scared. The clansmen were putting more and more distance between them and the road, and soon after they had headed into the forest, another one had shown up behind them to announce that the rest of her ‘gang’ had got away. Got away? Where could they be going? They were supposed to be coming after her and her brother. Where were they getting away to?

  Lorkrin had attempted to bite through the hard cords that bound his wrists, but a Reisenick just laughed and slapped him across the head. He looked closer at his bonds in the gloom and gagged. The ‘cords’ were nothing of the kind; his wrists were bound by a long, thin spidersnake. Invertebrate constrictors, these creatures would wrap themselves around their prey and sink their fangs into it. This one had not bitten him and he realised the Reisenicks had pulled its fangs, but the reflex to constrict made it a perfect means of binding Myunans. He had tried slunching, to slip his hands out, but the spidersnake constricted with his flesh; the Reisenicks had dealt with shape-shifters before. He was forced to creft his flesh to stop the creature from squeezing his wrists down to nothing. They were now half their normal thickness and hurt more than ever.

  They travelled into the night, the Myunans sore and uncomfortable from being carried over the bony shoulders of the clansmen. As they got further into the forest, the Reisenicks started to chat among themselves. Some of it aimed deliberately at terrifying their captives.

  ‘We gonna have us some Myunan roast tonight, boys!’

  ‘What the hell are you boy, some kind o’ savage? Myunans gotta be stewed!’

  The one carrying Taya pinched her arm and she swore at him.

  ‘This one’s got spirit, but not much eatin’ on ’er.’

  ‘Nah, Myunans is stringy, but they got no bones to speak of! Plenty of eatin’ on her, just got to stew ’er for a day, add some onions, some earthfruit, bit o’ ginger … Our mama got the best recipe in the clans for Myunan.’

  Taya clenched her eyes shut. She was not going to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry. She had heard that Reisenicks ate other races, but Uncle Emos had assured her that it wasn’t true.

  Sensing light on her eyelids, Taya opened them to see that the hunting party had arrived at a Reisenick village. She had never seen one before and it was something to behold.

  The smells of old fur, spices and boiling fat filled her nostrils. All of the structures were built of wood frames covered in animal hides, all with drawings marked out on them, depicting hunting scenes, battles, marriages and important deaths.

  The place seemed to be asleep, although lanterns burned on posts along the main road through the village. Everywhere, metal and wooden wind chimes tinkled, crafted into arcane shapes to ward off evil spirits. Freshly skinned hides hung out to dry. The bones too were put to use, for each doorway had its totem of skull and bones to keep the malevolent ghosts of the forest at bay.

  Lorkrin shivered. It was not a place that welcomed strangers. The gleam of painted metal further down the street caught his eye and there he saw two wagons parked up next to a large building. One of the wagons was the Braskhiam generator truck. He clicked his tongue at Taya and pointed with his head. She twisted around to look over her bearer’s shoulder. A dark look passed over her face. This could not bode well for them.

  They were carried up the muddy street to the meetinghouse and brought inside. The smells of old leather and animal fur were stronger inside. The place was a large rectangular hall, with an open central area in which a fire blazed. Lorkrin and Taya had not realised how cold they were until they felt its blazing heat. The damp night and the fear had taken a toll on them.

  ‘What you got there?’ came a voice, and their eyes turned towards the top of the hall. Sitting in a hefty, carved wooden chair was a big Reisenick with piercing eyes. The children immediately recognised one of the brass chains that hung on his chest. It was Ludditch.

  Beside him, on a smaller chair, sat the Braskhiam eshtran, Harsq. The two children were hauled in front of the two men.

  ‘What in the blazes …?’ Ludditch looked up at his clansmen. ‘These two are Myunans. Where’d you get ’em?’

  ‘Fell off the back of a truck,’ one of them replied, to the sniggers of the others. ‘Nearly got a whole lot more, but they got away. The boys is after ’em now.’

  ‘A truck?’ Ludditch snarled. ‘Like the one Emos Harprag was in?’

  There were blank looks from the clansmen. Taya nodded and Lorkrin scowled.

  ‘I said go out and find anythin’ that didn’t belong!’ the chieftain exclaimed. ‘Harprag paid ’is tribute, ya fools. Now you’ve gone and taken his cubs? You’re supposed to be on the lookout for … for unseemly things. Forces of evil and the like. I mean, holy meat, Cleet, if’n you had two times more brains you’d be twice as stupid.’

  ‘I didn’t know about any Myunans!’ Cleet retorted, the skin around his mass of freckles turning a deathly pale. He hunched his big shoulders and looked down at his feet. ‘I was just doin’ like I was asked.’

  Ludditch ground his teeth to control his temper. Cleet was a close cousin, and so loyal as to be embarrassing. Too stupid to be scared of anything, he would fight wild dogs in a pit for his own entertainment. But the boy couldn’t think worth a damn.

  ‘The tribute system keeps the peace, Cleet. Harprag on ’is own is a menace, but you mess with a Myunan’s cubs and you mess with their whole tribe. And the
Noranians have already got ’em riled. You ever fought a war against Myunans, Cleet?’

  ‘You know I haven’t, Learup. But my pappy …’

  ‘Yer old pappy was killed by Myunans, Cleet. But unlike you he was born with a cupful o’ sense, and he knew what you don’t, that fightin’ Myunans is like fightin’ ghosts. Now put these cubs back where you got ’em.’

  ‘But the trucks’ve gone, Learup. We don’t know where. It could take time to find ’em.’

  Ludditch gritted his teeth and scratched the thick wrinkles on the back of his neck.

  ‘All right, we keep ’em for now. Untie ’em!’ He glared down at the two children. ‘You’re alive ’cause it’ll keep the peace. Behave yourselves and you’ll get back to your pappy …’

  ‘He’s our uncle,’ Taya corrected him.

  ‘… You’ll get back to your uncle in one piece. Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ the two children chirped in unison, as knives cut the spidersnakes from their wrists.

  * * * *

  The reflections of the five faces stared back out of the well’s dark water, expressions of fear and curiosity etched upon them.

  ‘You definitely didn’t touch the water?’ Nayalla asked again.

  ‘For the third time, no!’ Paternasse insisted. ‘We didn’t even breathe on it.’

  ‘Could be a current,’ Noogan suggested.

  ‘Those were footsteps we heard,’ Dalegin said tightly. ‘Currents don’t have feet and they don’t come out of wells and wander around.’

  ‘There’s something else in here with us,’ Noogan whispered. ‘Maybe there are still some ghosts left down here.’

  ‘Makes you wonder what happened to the folks who made the place,’ Dalegin added.

  Nayalla tried an experiment, dipping her torch into the water. It kept burning, the light dulled but still glowing. Then she took a pinch of the burning powder and rubbed it on her forehead. It stuck there, an improvised headlamp that would give her enough light to see by.