World's End (48 page)

"Quiet now," commanded Bilblox. "Easy there."

Kõrgu went quiet. Bilblox strained his ears to hear everything he could. The bridge was eerily quiet. At the first warning signs, the Jasberians had begun to flee and now only Bilblox and a few stragglers stood in the middle of the bridge. Yet again, Bilblox felt a rage within his chest as his beefy hands curled together.
If only I could see, I'd know what to do,
he thought.

"Leif, are you there?" yelled Bilblox as loudly as he could.

"I'm okay," came a distant shout. "I'm holding ... piece ... wood."

"Can you swim to shore?" yelled Bilblox.

"Forget ... me!" yelled Leif. "Get off the bridge!" A staccato of small cracking noises started nearby and began to engulf the entire bridge.

"Kõrgu, into the water!" Bilblox ordered. "Get Leif. HURRY!"

The massive wolf whined. Despite her master's command, it was hard to go against her instinct and leave his side. Bilblox knelt down and muzzled Kõrgu's ears. "Go now," he said. "Come on, Kõrgu. Rescue Leif."

Kõrgu barked loudly and jumped into the water. Immediately, she paddled toward Leif. Alfonso's father weakly grabbed Kõrgu's neck and they headed for the shore.

Crack! Crack!

The bridge shuddered. Seconds later, it swayed wildly, pitching Bilblox into the water, away from the relative safety of the harbor and into the raging current of the open river. He surfaced easily and began to tread water, hoping he'd hear a noise—any noise—that would tell him which way to swim.

H
ILL AND
R
ESUZA EMERGED
from the hold of the slave ship and walked down the gangplank with the other prisoners. They had arrived at a settlement somewhere along the desolate shoreline of the Sea of Clouds. Dozens of circular domed tents, known as yurts, filled a rocky clearing. Beyond the clearing lay desolate scrubland. Horses were tied up to gnarled and bent pine trees. The smell of sizzling meat and smoke from domestic fires filled the air. Hill and Resuza ignored all of this. They were captivated by a long convoy sitting along the shoreline, made up of over a hundred sleds. Some contained prisoners, while others were empty. An ominous quiet hung over the settlement.

"What is this place?" asked Resuza as she and the other slaves lined up on the shore. She spoke in her native Uralic tongue and the man standing next to her grunted a terse reply.

"Slave camp," said the man. "This is where we get sold."

"Then what?" asked Resuza. "Where are we going?"

Their exchange was interrupted by the approach of several horsemen galloping toward them. The horsemen were dressed in leather armor covered with feathers, which made an eerily familiar flapping noise as the men approached.

"Oh
no,
" whispered Resuza. She sounded like a young girl, and indeed Resuza felt that way, since the horror of her own family's destruction came back to her. The horsemen were Dragoonya.

Hill drew Resuza close to him. His thoughts drifted everywhere but kept returning to Nance, Alfonso, and his brother, whom he so desperately wanted to see again.

They stared blankly at the horsemen. Strangely, leading the group was a boy much smaller than the rest of the Dragoonya. He appeared to be about Alfonso's age and his eyes glowed in the sunlight. They were entirely white.

"That boy looks familiar," whispered Resuza.

Hill nodded.

The Dragoonya horsemen arrived in a flurry of billowing snow and pounding hooves. The boy who was leading them dismounted his horse and approached the group from the barge. Immediately, the slave traders knelt on the ground and bowed their heads. The slaves followed their cue, and all of them, including Hill and Resuza, knelt down and bowed their heads.

"Get up, vermin!" shouted the boy in Uralic.

The slaves and slave traders alike rose to their feet. The trader with the red beard, the one who seemed to be the leader, stepped forward and addressed the boy.

"Honored Master, we bring you one last group of slaves for the convoy," said the trader. "After you are through with them, they will die with little fuss."

"They look half dead," observed the boy.

"Dearest Master, they are in acceptable shape," insisted the red-haired trader. "We caught most of them within the week."

"Put them in the convoy," ordered the boy. "Give them bread and water, enough to sustain them but no more. It's seven days to Dargora and I want them alive when we get there."

"Did he say
Dargora?
" whispered Hill to Resuza.

Resuza nodded somberly.

The slave trader bowed with elaborate deference and then said, "It shall be so, Lord Nartam."

Resuza's knees buckled. Hill held her tight and prevented her from falling.

A short sinewy man with dark black hair, dressed in Dragoonya attire, approached Nartam.

"Konrad, any news of Kiril?" Nartam demanded.

Konrad bowed deeply. "No news, Lord Nartam, but I assure you that he will emerge soon enough. He promised."

"Indeed he did," replied Nartam. He turned and stalked back to his horse, followed by his Dragoonya henchmen. Amid a series of curses and blows, the slave traders began herding their prisoners into the sled cages. Meanwhile, the Dragoonya horsemen galloped away.

The slave traders, on edge from their encounter with the Dragoonya, savagely hit the prisoners as they forced them toward the cages. Some of the prisoners fell to the ground in abject fear. One or two tried to run but were mercilessly cut down.

Resuza and Hill shouldered their way into the middle of the group of prisoners to protect themselves.

"Nartam," whispered Resuza in astonishment. "How? He's just a boy."

Hill nodded. "It's what we feared," he said. "Of all people, Josephus was correct. After Firment gave us the news, he suspected that Nartam had ingested enough ash during his battle with Alfonso in the Founding Tree to become young again. It's incredible. He's now Alfonso's age."

Resuza stared at her adopted uncle. "You
knew!
" she whispered. "You knew all along!"

"Yes," Hill replied sadly. "It was Marcus Firment's greatest secret. The Wanderer said he had discovered Nartam at the head of a vast horde of Dragoonya, somewhere in the vicinity of the Sea of Clouds. Given the mood in Somnos, Firment's revelation would have panicked the entire city. Only Josephus, the Grand Vizier, and I knew. I'm sorry—we couldn't tell anyone. Not even you and Alfonso."

Resuza pursed her lips angrily, but said nothing. "Nartam can't discover us," she finally said.

"I know," replied Hill. "He'd do anything to learn about Jasber and Leif. And Alfonso." He paused. "And the Foreseeing Pen. Give it to me."

Resuza handed it over. "Are you going to use it now?"

"I'm not sure," replied Hill.

They maneuvered to the edge of the group of prisoners so that they were out of sight of the slave traders. Hill palmed the pen to hide it from view and pressed the emerald embedded in the top of the device. They heard a slight click. A second later, an incredibly thin streak of fire shot out of the tip. It struck a medium-size rock, scorched it, and cracked it in several pieces. A nearby prisoner gasped and pointed at the rock, though he was too addled to make the connection between the rock and Hill's actions. Hill quickly clicked the pen, and the flames disappeared.

"What are you doing?" Resuza whispered. "Use the fire to distract them. Burn all the scrubland!"

Hill shook his head and returned to the middle of the crowd of prisoners. They continued to march slowly toward the cages. Resuza looked at him questioningly.

"It's not the right time," he said. "We only have one shot at escaping and we don't know enough about the pen to use it well. We also may learn something about their plans. Why are they so desperate to find Kiril?"

Resuza slowly nodded. "My sister is in Dargora. Maybe we'll find her." They stared at each other and realized they had made their decision. In the future they'd look back on this fateful moment and wonder how things might've been different if they had made another choice.

The prisoners began entering the cages. Resuza and Hill were packed in one cage with a dozen other mute, sullen slaves. Hill dug inside his jacket and took out his Dormian passport, which indicated that he was the foreign minister of Somnos. With a deep breath, he tore up the passport into little pieces and scattered them in the snow beneath the cage. Once the convoy started, the paper would be trampled and destroyed.

That done, he looked at Resuza with a somber but determined expression. "We'll wait for the right time," he told her. "For the moment, though, our identities and the pen must remain hidden—even if it means becoming slaves."

A
LFONSO PARTICLE-CLIMBED
toward Marta's family. When he was about twenty feet away, he shouted at them. They shrieked in fear when they saw a young teenager floating above them, surrounded by steam and smoke.

"I am a friend of Marta's," Alfonso yelled out in Dormian. "Let me help you!"

Before they had a chance to say anything, Alfonso swooped down and scooped up Marta's mother, a skinny, gray-haired woman who looked remarkably like her daughter. Alfonso had no time to explain himself further. The fire was already beginning to devour the roof of the townhouse and the heat was becoming unbearable. In his other arm, he grabbed Danyel, Marta's younger brother. They were terrified but luckily did not resist. Alfonso dropped them off next to Marta, and returned for her father and Stoven, her older brother.

Stoven reached up for Alfonso, but it was a different case for Marta's father, a burly, heavyset man. He shook his head when Alfonso tried to grab his hand. Understandably, he wasn't eager to grab hold of the outstretched arms of a skinny teenager who was somehow levitating in the air. Alfonso yelled for the man to grab hold. Flames were everywhere. The heat was now searing. The building was on the verge of collapsing. "Grab my hand!" screamed Alfonso.

"Papa, please!" yelled Stoven.

At last, Marta's father tentatively stretched his arms toward Alfonso, who grabbed them and turned to descend. At that moment, the entire building collapsed in a terrifying conflagration of flame and smoke and dust.

***

Once Marta's family was safe in the square, Alfonso—still in hypnogogia—began particle-climbing up toward the roof of the armory. When he arrived, he saw that all four of the armory's domes had now collapsed. The building's stone walls were still standing because they were flameproof, but the interior of the armory, which was furnished with a great deal of wood, was ablaze. The building's stone exterior was operating like a giant oven, cooking and burning its wooden interior.

It was into this hellish situation that Alfonso descended. He landed on a small support beam of the roof that was still intact, came out of hypnogogia to recharge, and then ran down a set of stone stairs that dropped into the armory itself. Here the air was dry and scorching hot.

As he ran through the top floor of the armory, Alfonso leapt over charred trusses, support beams, and blazing roof panels. He saw dozens of wooden cases that contained the armory's valuables: swords, shields, and helmets. He ignored all this and headed toward a prominent-looking doorway. Its bronze door gaped open and Alfonso sensed there was something special inside.

The doorway opened into a narrow room with high ceilings. The room's wooden walls, though on fire, were not destroyed. Rather, they blazed with a smooth blue flame. The stone floor gleamed like silver and it was hot to the touch, like a cast-iron skillet just taken off the flame. Alfonso could feel the heat softening the rubber soles of his shoes. Oddly, the room was devoid of smoke. Alfonso then saw a white-haired old man, dressed in a scarlet robe, who was kneeling in the middle of the room as if in prayer. Something about the man looked odd.

Alfonso approached and saw to his great horror that a knife was lodged in the man's back. Only the handle and an inch of the blade were visible. Alfonso rushed over to the man's side.

"We've got to get you out!" yelled Alfonso. "The building is about to collapse."

The old man looked up. Blood trickled from his mouth.

"It's too late," he wheezed. "T-Too late for me and too late for Jasber ... The Gahno ... He did this ... He took
everything.
"

"Where did he go?" asked Alfonso.

The man groaned and leaned against Alfonso.

"I have to find him!" yelled Alfonso desperately.

"Too late," said the white-haired man. Tears streamed down his face. "He took the ether, the ash, and he demanded the Foreseeing Pen, but thank heavens..." The man coughed violently. His eyes, which were terribly bloodshot, bulged outward. "Thank heavens we hid it away long, long ago."

He handed Alfonso a small leather envelope that had been hidden inside his robe.

"Take this and run," said the man. "Give it to the first monk you see. He'll know what to do with it."

"What is it?"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The sound of several explosions echoed through the room. Smoke began to enter from the doorway. Alfonso's feet felt warm and he knew the floor was melting the soles of his shoes.

"It's the last of the green ash," said the man. "I hid it from the Gahno. Now run!" yelled the man. He screamed so violently that spittle flew into Alfonso's face.

Alfonso took the envelope and bolted back through the doorway and into the main room on the top floor. Here the heat was so strong that Alfonso feared that his skin was blistering. There was no way he could survive in the room for longer than a minute or two.

With one hand shielding his eyes, Alfonso spied a relatively unobstructed path across the room to the stone stairway that led back onto the roof. This was his escape route. He ran at full speed, leaping over burning debris as he went.

Alfonso was almost at the stairway when a large burning timber collapsed and fell directly in front of him, forcing him to leap recklessly into the air. He avoided the slab of wood but landed awkwardly on one foot and lost his balance and fell onto the steps. The leather envelope sprang loose from his hand and landed with a thud, causing a puff of green ash to billow out. Alfonso watched in disbelief and only after a few seconds did he think to cover his eyes.