Shards of Time (26 page)

“Do you speak any other language than Plenimaran?”

The youth looked down at his feet, saying nothing, but the answer was clear.

“Please, you won’t be in any trouble,” Alec told him.

“It’s not allowed,” Nothir explained.

“By whom?”

“Them that live in Deep Harbor.”

“You mean the Plenimarans who ruled here? They’re gone now. You can speak as you like.”

“What language do you speak?” asked Seregil.

The youth shrugged. “We just call it the grandmother’s tongue.”

“Could you speak a bit of it to me, please? There’s no need to be afraid,” Seregil assured him.

“Don’t do it, Noth,” the second oldest muttered.

“Really, it’s all right,” said Alec.

Nothir let out a breath. “Very well.
Saugas melistook rak solis, mekir
. That means ‘It’s a nice day today, man.’ ”

Seregil raised a brow at that. “It’s some form of Middle Konic! The pronunciation is a bit blurred, but it’s unmistakable.” Turning to the youth, he said,
“Eah salma wodi megak, Nothir.”

The boys went wide-eyed for a moment, then the younger ones began to laugh. Nothir quickly shushed them and said something to Seregil in his own language. Seregil laughed in turn.

“What’s going on?” Alec demanded impatiently.

“I said I was glad to meet him, and he says he’s glad to meet me, too, even if I do speak like my tongue’s been split.”

Seregil spoke at length with the boys, then looked to Alec and shrugged. “None of them recognizes my description of the boys Mika saw.”

“Ask him if there are any towns near here,” said Alec.

Seregil spoke again, and one by one the boys shook their heads. The little one said something that sounded scared and the others nodded, then the next-to-oldest added something else, to which Nothir made a cutting motion with his hand.

“There’s one near here, back in the hills east of Menosi,” Seregil explained. “This boy, Agus, says he’ll guide us there if we pay him, but he won’t go in. Nothir doesn’t want him to go.”

“Try telling him you’re a great lord and the rest of us are warriors. No harm will come to Agus,” said Alec.

Seregil translated that. Nothir and Agus turned away and spoke with their heads together. Nothir seemed angry, but the other boy carried the day, for he turned to Seregil and nodded, saying something.

“He’ll take us now, while there’s still daylight, but once he’s gotten us there, he’s coming straight back,” said Seregil.

“Fair enough. How much does he want?”

Seregil asked and the boy named his price, pointing to Nothir. Seregil took half a dozen silver sesters from his purse and gave them to the youth. “He wants to make sure his family has the money, in case he doesn’t come back.”

“Must be a rough town,” one of the soldiers said with a laugh.

“What’s it called?” asked Alec.

Agus shrugged and fetched his pony. He led the way, and they rode across the plain to the base of a rough, stony rise several miles on with a dry riverbed meandering near the bottom. The bed was filled with rounded stones covered in moss and weeds.

The boy pointed west and said something.

“He says Menosi is over this rise,” Seregil explained.

There was no sign of a path, but the bank was level and they rode upstream until they reached the crumbling remains of a good-sized town on a small rise facing over the river, its back to the ridge and Menosi.

“That’s the town?” Alec exclaimed in dismay. Some house walls were still standing among the foundations of buildings long gone. Ravens had made the place their own. Dozens of
them lined the broken walls and watched their approach with wary black eyes, muttering and croaking among themselves, but didn’t take flight. It was eerie. The breeze was stronger here, and sighed through the wreckage like a mourner. It reminded him a bit of the sighs they’d heard in the lower cave.

As soon as they started up the hill toward it, Agus turned his pony and galloped off like ghosts and demons were already chasing him.

“Looks like you wasted good silver, my lord,” Oris said, shaking his head. “No one’s lived here in two hundred years!”

“More than that,” murmured Seregil.

“No wonder the other boys didn’t want him to come here,” said Alec.

They rode slowly into the ruins and fanned out to make a thorough search of the place.

Alec and Seregil made their way through what had once been narrow streets. They were little more than debris-strewn paths, now overgrown with thistles and vetch. Here and there snakes lay basking in the late-afternoon sun. There were many poisonous ones on the island, Zella had warned, and so they gave the ones they saw a wide berth. Most of the houses were little more than foundations.

“What happened to this place?” Alec wondered.

“Abandoned, and the stones most likely carried off by other builders,” Seregil noted as he dismounted and stepped into one of the foundations. “I daresay you’ll find most of them in Menosi or Deep Harbor. Builders don’t let dressed stone go to waste.” He walked around the foundation, nudging things with the toe of his boot. “This was a simple dwelling. You can still see traces of a central hearth. There must have been a smoke hole in the roof.”

“How old do you think this place is?”

“Well, it’s clearly been abandoned for centuries. No way to know how old it was before that.”

They continued on, working their way toward what proved to be an enormous open space at the west end of town, closest to the ridge. The streets and buildings simply ended around the circumference of an enormous span of barren ground. There were no foundations, no walls or broken
stone, not even any weeds. Walking across it, Alec saw that it was just hard-packed clay and gravel.

“It’s round,” Seregil called to him.

Turning, Alec saw him striding around the circumference of it with his hands clasped behind his back. “I think it’s a nearly perfect circle and most of the major streets end at its edges. It must have been some sort of ritual space, or a large market.”

“No sign of any temple or altar.”

“I wonder if they played some kind of game here?” Seregil touched the ground and licked his finger. “Salt. Odd.”

Just then they heard cries from nearby and ran to see what was wrong.

Sergeant Oris and two of his riders stood over a round hole, talking excitedly.

“Fetch a rope,” Oris ordered and one of his riders ran to get it.

“What happened?” asked Alec.

“Talan fell down this dry well,” he told him. “We were walking along, then I heard the sound of cracking wood and he was gone. There must have been a cover over it that he didn’t see under the weeds.”

“Is he hurt?” asked Seregil.

“See for yourself, my lords.”

Leaning over the edge, they saw the rider looking sightlessly up at them, impaled through the back on several rusty iron spikes.

“Sakor’s Flame!” one of the female riders gasped, then began to cry. One of her fellows put an arm around her and led her aside.

“What in Bilairy’s name is this man trap doing in a deserted town?” wondered Alec.

“I suppose it must have been one of the protections of the town when it was—” Seregil began, but another scream from the direction of the tower cut him off.

Moving with considerably more caution now, they all followed the continuing sounds of the cries to where another of Oris’s men lay on the ground thrashing and crying out in agony, his face a ghastly purple and grotesquely swollen on
one side. A male soldier knelt helplessly beside him while a woman struck at a nearby patch of tall weeds with her sword.

“It was some kind of huge viper, my lords,” the man said. “Matlin dropped something near those weeds and when he reached to pick it up it bit him on the face!”

With a snarl of disgust, the woman who’d been beating the weeds used the tip of her sword to lift out a long section of severed snake. More than two feet long, it was mottled red and black with a bright yellow belly. She poked into the weeds again and brought out the other half, nearly as long, but minus the head.

“The damn thing kept trying to bite me even after I cut it in half,” she said with a grimace. She flicked the tip of her sword in the weeds, and the head rolled out. The mouth was open, showing fangs nearly two inches long.

“Rock viper,” said Seregil. “It’s the largest, most dangerous serpent on the island.”

Alec looked around nervously at the piles of rocks and stands of weeds; it was perfect cover for snakes.

Matlin began to wheeze and choke. The others could only watch helplessly as he gagged up bloody foam and died.

“Maker’s Mercy!” Alec gasped. “No wonder that boy didn’t want to come in here.”

The sergeant caught up with them. “Raneus, Yola, you wrap him in his cloak and get him onto his horse. Then we have to find some way to get poor Talan out of that hole without anyone else getting killed.” He turned to Seregil. “Begging your pardon, but I think we’ve seen enough of this place, my lords. We’re losing daylight fast.”

“Yes,” said Alec. “I’m sorry about your men.”

Oris spared him a grim look, then shouted his remaining riders into formation and they galloped for the camp.

They found Mika dozing on his cot. He woke as they came in, though, and looked relieved. “I was starting to worry about you.”

Alec smiled. “Thanks for your concern, but we just had a long ride and saw the countryside, nothing more.” This was not the time to mention deaths and snakes.

“Did you find my friend?” asked Mika.

“No, we saw no sign of him.”

Tears welled in Mika’s eyes. “I hope the older boy didn’t kill him. I wish I knew his name, at least. Then we could ask after him.”

“I hope he’s well, too.” Alec ruffled the boy’s hair gently. “I suppose it’s not very interesting here for you, with no one your own age.”

“When can I go exploring with you and Master Thero? The drysian tended my arm twice today and it feels much better!”

“That’s up to Thero.”

Mika nodded, but his lower lip began to quiver. A tear slid down his cheek and he hastily dashed it away with his hand. “I’m sorry I’ve been so much trouble.”

Seregil rested a hand on Mika’s shoulder. “That’s enough now. No need for tears. Rest some more, and I’ll put in a good word for you with Thero when he gets back.”

K
LIA
had never been so disoriented in her life. Casting around, she could not find her way back to the river. The ground showed no hoofprints to indicate which direction she’d come from. The sky, which had been clear, was heavily veiled in grey clouds, making it impossible to say for certain where the sun was. The light had a strange dull glow, almost like a foggy day, but the air was clear—for all the good that did.

Standing among the dead horses again, she took stock of her situation. She had suffered nothing worse than a few bruises in the fall. She had her sword and dagger, and a full skin of water, together with a cloth-wrapped meat pasty and a couple of apples in her saddlebags. And something else.

Reaching into her pouch, she found the painted message sticks Thero insisted she always carry. Taking one out, she snapped it in two and waited expectantly for the little sphere of light to appear. It didn’t. Wondering if the stick had been damaged somehow in the fall, she took out another one and broke it. Again, nothing happened. That left her with just two. After a moment’s consideration, she broke a third. Still nothing. Whatever had happened to the first one seemed to have happened to them all. Saving the last one just in case, she set about gathering what supplies she had.

It took some effort to pull the saddlebags out from under Moonshine, but she managed it and gave her faithful mount a last pat on the neck. “You carried me through so much, my friend. I can’t believe Bilairy took you in such a horrible
way.” Her vision suddenly blurred with stinging tears. She’d found Moonshine at the Cirna horse market the day she’d met Alec. The stallion had carried her through peace and war and peace again, never flinching.

Wiping her eyes, she studied the sky, trying to guess east from west. There was no point in remaining here among the dead. Choosing what she hoped was the way back to camp, she set out across the dry, uneven plain. It was rough walking and before long she was tired and thirsty. She stopped to drink and eat an apple, then continued on.

It was impossible to tell the hour here. She rested when she was tired, drank sparingly when she was thirsty, and ate small portions to make the food last. Night was falling when she came across a deeply rutted road fringed with dry grass. In the distance she thought she could hear the river, though it was getting too dark to see that far. With only the distant rushing sound to guide her, she set off along the road. She was thirsty and hungry again, but was down to her last apple and a bit of the pasty. Resisting the urge to finish them off, she sipped from her slack waterskin and kept going.

She hadn’t gone far when she saw a tiny point of light ahead of her, bobbing like a firefly. Hurrying toward it, she soon made out that it was a lantern.

“Hello?” she called out, breaking into a run. “Please, I need help!”