CHAPTER ELEVEN
Druadaen finished the first tamaril he’d picked and looked around the tree’s twisted trunk. Still no movement up in the ruins, and there were no signs that they attracted visitors.
The hike to the hill had been easy, except for his feet; he’d remained several yards to the side of the road. Traveling directly upon it as an individual in desperate circumstances was an invitation to ambushers, particularly in a sparsely populated area such as this one.
In hindsight, it had been an unnecessary precaution. The further up the slope the road wound, the less wear it showed until it had become little more than a half-grassed path. There were sandal and boot prints in what had recently been mud, but they were all heading back the way he had come. Some other marks might have been the edges of hooves, but no sign of the ruts left by wagons or even carts. By the time he arrived at the foot of the orchard, Druadaen was convinced that settled lands lay in the other direction.
The fruit trees had grown wild and intermingled with others, all protected by ample skirts of bushes and brambles. But only after walking among them, and seeing how uneven the rows were, did Druadaen realize he was looking at new growth. The original trees had long since become mulch for these offspring. He also discovered that it had been a mixed orchard, but the alternating rows had become ragged ranks. However, upon spotting the first ripe fruit, his mouth began to water.
It also stopped him in mid-stride; peeking through the branches about twelve feet off the ground was a yellow spiny apple. It was a fruit he knew from Arrdanc, mostly cultivated near the coasts of Othaericus and along rivers in the southern drylands of Mihal’j. Two happy realizations rushed in upon him simultaneously: eating no longer meant risking his life; and, the chances were good that he would find other familiar flora and fauna.
Within minutes, it was no longer a matter of chance; peering into the shadowy canopies of the other species of tree, he spotted clusters of purplish, plum-sized fruits: tamarils. They were typically grown on mountain slopes back home.
By the time he returned to the ground with a half dozen of each, he was crisscrossed by cuts from brambles and thorny vines. He paid no mind to them, nor to the infamous tartness of both fruits. After all, he’d found food, and better still, while in the higher branches, he heard a chuckle of water over rocks from further up the slope.
He could have easily eaten more than one of each fruit, but ignored his stomach’s appeals. In addition to husbanding his food, he could not afford the lethargy that might follow a larger meal. Since he had no way to carry his bounty, he hid what remained before making his way to the uphill edge of the orchard, courting the sparse shadows as he did.
What had sounded like a stream was actually water tumbling through the remains of an open, stone, irrigation system. The sections had long since cracked apart and split in many places. It had once carried water to croplands hugging the eastward slope of the hill; they were now lush, lightly wooded meadows due to the diffuse trickles that ran down from the ruined half-pipes.
Druadaen’s throat seemed to get a bit more dry every time liquid sparkles jumped up from the higher reaches of the irrigation system, marking where the flow hit a gap or break in the broken stonework. He surveyed the broken towers that peeked over the crest of the hill. Thirsty or not, if he didn’t inspect the source of the water first, drinking it could mean imbibing an awful dose of harmful minerals, diseases, and even animal wastes—or otherwise, if the ruins were home to unseen inhabitants. That resolve to inspect the source of the water, to survey the region from a tower, and to comb the ruins for salvage all pointed him toward the same destination: the hilltop.
He considered the three possible routes to approach. The road was too open and obvious; if the ruins had occupants, they would keep it under observation. Following the ruined irrigation system meant moving uphill in an open field. The final alternative was hug tight against the downhill edge of the orchard until he came upon the shortest, or best concealed, path up to the crest.
Druadaen wished he could wash his hands—it was unwise to handle weapons with sticky palms—but turned and jogged down toward the lower tree line that overlooked the road and would shield him from any eyes that might be watching from the hilltop.
At the point where the brush stretching up beyond the orchards began to dwindle, Druadaen came to an even more overgrown lane that branched off from the main road and ran uphill at a steep angle. It was only thirty yards to the crest. At one time, the lane had given defenders in the now-ruined towers a clear field of fire upon any ascending attackers. But that approach was hemmed by overarching trees. The lane itself was still mostly intact, dotted by the cobbles that still stuck through the grass here and there. And halfway between the main road and the crest, there was a crumpled figure, lying at a strange angle.
Druadaen slowed, reversed, crouched, and took a longer, careful look.
The dark, awkward angles that stuck up from the side-slumped corpse were familiar; it was wearing armor too stiff to flatten against the ground. Also, unless Druadaen’s eyes were being too hopeful, the outline of its feet were squared off: boots or heavy shoe. There were no weapons nearby nor the thrashed undergrowth typical of a recent melee. However, near the center of the path, an irregular track of crushed weeds and grass extended five yards upslope from the body.
Druadaen, feet aching from cuts and moving over rocks, crept forward again until he reached the fly-covered body. He pushed it over on its back and dragged it—again, slowly—into the higher weeds at the side of the road. A quick scan behind showed no movement along the crest or in the ruins. Promising. However, until reaching this point, there had been intermittent birdsong. Here, there was only silence. Not promising.
Once under cover, he took stock of the corpse as the flies returned—along with a thick carrion stench. The dead man’s face was cut and bruised, but there were no signs of a killing blow. Not until Druadaen undid the heavy leather armor’s straps.
A putrid mass of half-rotted organs and bone chips poured out. The consistency was almost like heavy porridge, and much of it was just as gray. Druadaen covered his nose before he could arrest the reflex; then, swallowing and reminding himself of things that had smelled worse, he finished freeing the armor.
Something massive and blunt had crushed the man’s lower left abdomen, fraying and scarring the cured leather without penetrating it. However, despite the smell, armor was armor and whereas Druadaen could easily wash off a stink, he couldn’t shrug off a blade.
Once he’d wiped it clean with rags from the watchhouse, Druadaen shouldered into the hardened leather and looked for a weapon. All he found was a still-sheathed dagger, but there was also a wide, well-worn loop on the opposite side of the weapon belt: probably for a heavy, single-handed axe. There might have been more to learn from a closer study of the dead warrior’s kit, but ever since emerging from the upslope limit of the orchard, Druadaen presumed an attack could come at any moment. No time to waste, therefore. Staying to the side of the lane, he moved up toward the crest.
Peering over that grassy lip, Druadaen surveyed the level hilltop. The remains of three towers brooded over the scattered ruins, even as they pointed overhead at the post-noon sun. One of them rose up from within a small, mostly collapsed keep that was the largest structure. The pyramids were lower and smaller, apparently fortified underground entrances, but two of the three were clogged with stones from their own inward collapse. And just beyond the furthest of them, he heard what he’d been listening for: the smooth rush of free-flowing water.
Druadaen almost started in that direction, but reined in his thirst and reconsidered the two closest towers. The taller one was merely a hollow shell; fire or age having swept away its floors, it appeared more like the cross section of an improbably large chimney. However, either time or squat sturdiness had favored the second tower, which was largely intact up to the third story. Beyond that, attackers or force majeure had sheared off the higher floors.
Druadaen studied its structure with the eyes of his roof-running youth. He saw the signs of treacherous footing and loose masonry but also a promising, if zigzag, climb to the top. Passing his sword through the wide loop on his belt, he made for its black-shadowed entrance.
Druadaen hauled himself over the broken edge of the second tower’s highest floor. Climbing up from beneath had allowed him to determine that the carved tenon corbels supporting were still firm and not unduly weathered. Even the remaining part of this top floor looked sturdy, but around ruins one could never tell. Druadaen walked slowly and carefully to the closest exterior wall; usually the best-supported part of any upper level. He followed along until he reached a point where he could see beyond the shattered and saw-toothed rim of it in almost all directions.
Again, his Courier training proved invaluable. Guessing the hilltop to be no more than three hundred feet above the surrounding terrain, and the tower beneath him adding another thirty-five, the horizon would be roughly twenty miles away. But that presumed a perfectly clear day rather than the present humidity. So he was surprised to spot terrain features far beyond the presumed limit of his vision.
To the east, a high, distant mountain range ran from north to south: a single, mist-shrouded wall of sharp, forbidding peaks. However, whatever existed between those mountaintops and the moisture-grayed horizon was a complete mystery.
A similar view presented itself to the south. There, he descried the end of a different and less imposing mountain chain barely rising above the horizon. However, rather than presenting him with its broad side, he seemed to be viewing it end-on. The north was not mountainous but hilly and rolling, building into a series of ridges that were increasingly uneven and forested. However, what the terrain lacked in majesty it made up for in mystery.
Sprinkled across that rugged landscape were structures at once imposing and enigmatic. Lines of great stone rings—some broken, some tilting—staggered away into the distance. Other strange shapes appeared singly or in clusters, some fully visible, others barely rising up through the low-lying haze. Their details blurred, he only had impressions of what the structures might be: snapped obelisks, half-domes, tilting remains of slab-sided citadels, all ghostlike in the water-heavy air as they faded into the distance.
Finally, Druadaen turned west. He had purposely left that facing for last, anticipating that what he saw there might be far more absorbing, and so, distract him from careful study of the other directions. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he reflected that, until this moment, he had never fully appreciated the extraordinary advantages conferred by the Consentium’s much-coveted telescopes.
But naked eyes told him everything he needed to know. At the edge of his vision, small gray tendrils climbed toward the clouds: fires. Here and there were hints of lines in the surrounding sward; cart-tracks. As he shifted his attention to where the road from the watch post threatened to disappear into the west, he caught a glimpse of angular green expanses: farms. And at two points, a tiny, dun-colored patch sat astride the highway: towns.
Druadaen released a sigh and resisted an impulse to rest back against the weathered wall of the scarred tower. Relief didn’t allow him to rest, not yet. He had another urgent area to survey in detail from this vantage point: the layout of the ruins below.
He found the source of the water as much by sound as sight: a small, spring-fed catch basin. At one time, it had fed a number of smaller reservoirs with regulated outlets to release water into the segmented stone pipes that ran downhill. However, the passing centuries had split or broken most of the reservoirs and the water now followed the winding path of least resistance through the debris. Most of it gathered behind the one remaining sluice-head at the crest of the hill. From there, it streamed downward as Druadaen had seen and heard, spreading quickly as it did.
Unfortunately, there was also spoor scattered liberally among the ruined reservoirs and the cisterns among them. It was difficult to make out details, but Druadaen had seen similar patterns outside the lairs of large predators: bones and mostly stripped carcasses scattered in a wide arc, dried by the sun and worn by the weather. It might also indicate that predators visited the ruins to ambush animals that drank from the spring. Either way, determining the cause of the spoor—and its location—was Druadaen’s first order of business when he descended.
His survey yielded several other interesting results. The nearby tower that wasn’t much more than a shell still had a small, relatively intact building attached to it. The un-collapsed pyramid boasted a black, triangular entrance at the bottom of a down-sloping ramp. And while the base of the third tower looked somewhat promising, it was also still partially hidden behind one of the ruined pyramids. Determining its condition would require a visit.
Druadaen took one last look at the farms to the west and then lowered himself over the side of the half-missing floor with a small sigh. He wasn’t looking forward to creeping around the ruins as if he were playing hide-and-seek with Old Man Death.
But damn it all, he was getting very, very thirsty.
Crouching, Druadaen stared at free-flowing water just beyond his feet, shining as it wound around broken stone half-pipes and skipped down the sides of stepped reservoirs like it was running over a terraced spillway. He wiped his lips, looked up at the sun and gauged the amount of time he had left: four hours of full light, two more in which it would still be safe to move. But after that, he’d better be in a safe place to spend the night.
He’d been alert for such a spot as he had explored the rest of the ruins. The hollowed tower’s attached workshop proved profitless; the fallen stonework had broken through the smaller building’s wall and filled it. The tower that had been partially hidden was ruined above the first story, and while there appeared to be a cellar, its stairway had watermarks that nearly reached the ground floor: anything down there had long since been ruined.
Now, finally, he stood staring at the one intact pyramid. It sat with such timeless, sunbaked solidity that it was easy to imagine it had ever been thus, from the day of its creation down to this very moment. And from here, Druadaen could see that descending entry ramp levelled off and rose beyond ground level before access to the dark interior beyond. So, not much chance of water damage. But there was still one small problem with the pyramid.
Well, maybe not so small.
Even had he not had the training and experience of an Outrider, Druadaen could not have missed that the gruesome remains scattered about the ruined irrigation system were arrayed in the shape of a fan—one with its head centered squarely upon the pyramid’s entrance. Furthermore, judging from the condition of the bones, whatever creature denned there was either one of great size, or one that took great pleasure in breaking apart and crushing its kills.
Some of which had been human.
Druadaen sighed. His next step should have been an easy decision, after seeing that. He had water, armor, food, weapons, and a direction to travel. The day was already much, much better than it was after stepping through the Shimmer. But there was a confounding factor: there was no sign of whatever the humans had been carrying, and even the oldest of their closely-gnawed remains hadn’t been fully bleached by the sun.
Which meant that, somewhere beyond the triangle of stygian darkness that led into the pyramid, he was likely to find canteens or skins to hold water, packs in which to store food, and all manner of useful gear that would improve his chances of surviving long enough to reach the closest town.
He knew what Ahearn would have done: unsheathed his sword and charged into the darkness, hoping for riches but ready for a battle either way. He knew that Umkhira would have been alongside him, even as Elweyr and S’ythreni would have been trying to pull them in the opposite direction.
But just as he had learned to do in the Under of Gur Grehar, Druadaen was pondering the odds of survival. Which was wiser? Turning away to ensure present safety, or taking an unmeasurable risk to be better prepared for the further challenges of this mad quest? Of course, he realized after a moment, there might be another way to determine which path is best.
As he began walking toward the pyramid, he glanced at the sai’niin bracer. Well, come on then; give me a sign, will you?
But it didn’t, even after he had come to the edge of the entry ramp.
He drew the sword, shook it faintly.
Again, nothing.
“Well,” he said aloud, “unless you both want to spent gods know how many years as junk in a creature’s den, you’d best warn me off now.”
Both bracer and sword remained inert.
Druadaen sighed and walked into the darkness.