Hello, party people. The next part I'm going to do here is from the end of "the trap" - "the children's gifts."
Some of this is old, like from 2017 or so. When rewriting "the trap" I tried to preserve some of the original language. Just to piss you off.
(READ!!!!!) Link to disclaimer:
Just another day in You-Know-Where (Scarlett_156's blog): My disclaimer (scarlett156.blogspot.com)
––––
THIS IS ALL COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
Copyright © 2024 by Kristi A. Wilson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Which is me.
Brief synopsis:
Naxosos and his cohort of eight other people – including his friends Korsis Zarodi, Tagros Naemas, the two priests Naimejo and Tolalo, and the sorcerer Joliel, and with Thais, the Goddess-on-Earth and her Second Nirith far ahead of the rest of the company – have, acting on information gathered in the dream-world and basic intuition, set out to try to free the six warriors attached to the Children of God where they have become trapped in a box canyon as they obtain water for the tribe. Naxosos employs sorcery to enact this rescue and in the process a great many memories are enkindled.
The group is presently at a narrows, where it has been suspected correctly that an ambush was laid.
Even at a mile out, the Spires were menacingly tall, sheer, and precipitous to the extent that they appeared man-created.
The area was quiet to view except for meandering dust devils. In fact, the gusting winds provided substantial relief from the heat. Breaking his silence, Joliel informed Naxosos that another reason desert folk avoided the Reach involved storms that arose without warning, and the lack of any sort of shelter to protect a traveler from same.
"Are they taking me somewhere to hide me?" Naxosos asked, voicing his own particular dread. Then, shifting uncomfortably in the beast's saddle: "Hey, I would like to walk; this creature is getting tired." (In truth, the donkey seemed bothered by little; his own behind, however, was getting tired and he yearned to walk.)
"Stay on," the sorcerer replied firmly, giving him a wry look as though in suppressed amusement at his discomfort, "you'll need your strength at the end." Now that one walked so close Naxosos could have touched him. (The donkey, to its credit, did not bolt or shy away, though it kept setting its ears back.)
"I don't much like the way that sounds." Up ahead, Korsis and Naemas had uncovered their faces in order to converse, but now were re-covering to shield their eyes from the sun.
"I wasn't in favor of your coming along, just so you'll know. They actually figured out where the warriors were late last night, after lights-out in the camp; I set out at midnight and verified that they are where your priests said they are. And that there are many Jaras, hm, yes." With a keen look: "So put that particular part of your anxiousness to rest." Smiling toothily: "Personally, I think you and Naemas and Korsis should have stayed behind. Me and the women, and your priests, could do what is needed. But oh well."
"Naemas is right. This is very uncharacteristic behavior for you, friend."
"Wait until you see where I screwed the lights out of your girl, excuse me, girls – oh, wait: your girls and your catamite, although not all at the same time – and then you'll see why I'm being so nice. The rest of your life will be a nightmare of jealousy! Naemas knows! Do you not perceive how upset he is?" Then: "This part is going to be bad, the sun will be right in our faces."
"So, I'm not going to be warehoused somewhere?" (He has to be lying…)
The sorcerer gave him another fey look. "Is that truly your most prominent concern, my liege?" he said, then: "Not unless we lose. Then, yeah, they'll probably want for you to hide. There are lots of places we could hide in forever! Most of them are exceedingly pleasant!" The sorcerer's tone suggested an almost childlike relish for the idea.
"So, we could…lose."
With a snort: "You could."
Ahead, spindly-legged shadows trailed Naimejo and Tolalo on their donkeys.
As wispy plumes of high-flying dust yellowed the upper air, the sun's setting turned the western sky a blazing silver-gold-copper and everyone went looking at the ground.
***
They trudged until the sun was but a radiant sliver over the western mountains, at which point they were only a couple of stadia out from the Pass and able to see down into the foothills and lowland, with the two arms of Onyx Spires drawing in on them like the beak of a gigantic raptor. The heat lessened, though Naxosos had been given to understand that this place never froze like other parts of the waste at night.
Gloom coagulated about them as they stopped for a few minutes to rest, eat and drink, and say vespers.
So tedious had the march become before this point that Naxosos had quite lost track of his fear, but now (watching the sky darken by slow degrees as he stumbled slowly about, sipping and nibbling, trying not to limp, groan aloud, or otherwise show that he was in distress from the ride and his burned shoulders) terror started to seep back in.
Naemas and Korsis were sweaty and dust-covered, but neither would hear of changing places with Naxosos, or taking a portion of his water. (Tolalo overheard Naxosos making these offers, and the subsequent refusals, and angrily shushed the three of them.)
Naimejo brought out a flask and everyone but the sorcerer had a drink; this was a great surprise to Naxosos, who had never seen anyone drinking when Joliel was about that the other would not importune for, sometimes rudely demand, and occasionally outright purloin, at least a couple of swallows.
Observing, he noted the same casting-about behavior as before, as though the other might be on watch for a threat.
Onyx Pass was an eerie place even from afar. Up close, the Spires, gigantic fanged jaws on each side with gusts whistling through, their shadows growing long, running together like spilled ink, did ably suggest a lurking menace.
Their repast was a short one and soon they were making ready to march again. Despite the advancing twilight, visibility was adequate due to the light-colored ground. The sorcerer broke his silence to advise them to hurry, or lose the light entirely: "It's a lot darker down in the lowland."
Before they moved out, Tolalo gave each of the donkeys some water, then performed an incantation over them so they would not tire, and to heal the sunburned areas on their faces and ears.
The three animals stood expectantly and eagerly, hides twitching, as the old priest held his hands over their foreheads and muttered a chant. The reaction of each was a startled snort and head toss, and to prance a short distance – one kicked its heels and brayed.
Upon finishing, Tolalo inquired of Korsis and Naemas: "How about you, either of you two?"
Naemas chirruped "Sure!" and Korsis replied with a chuckle "No fucking way!" almost on the instant. (Jealously, Naxosos wished he could ask for relief from his sore haunches, but didn't dare.)
Tolalo laughed and held his hands out, and performed a similar incantation over Naemas, who shuddered comically, rubbing his arms, and exclaimed "Brrrrrr! Cold, cold, COLD!" After this, Naxosos observed that for a short interval his friend seemed to emanate a faint but perceptible chill, and his increase in alertness and poise was as noticeable as the donkeys'. (Korsis, who had refused healing as he typically did, had also regained strength and endurance, but via more conventional means: A drink of water, a bite to eat, and a minute of prayer.)
Everyone except Joliel was shrouded in grit, Naemas and Korsis more, and Tolalo and Naimejo less so, and equally swathed in pale sand to the knees. Each carried a good amount of water; however, none did more than wash his hands before eating.
("Look, Naxo stands there expecting for us to wash him off," Korsis Zarodi had joked, to which Naxosos's terse reply was, "No, it's just that I'm in too much pain to move right now." "I'll heal you," Tolalo had offered; Naxosos refused.)
The sorcerer, looking as he always did, had stood nearly the whole time playing with his scrawny beard, his unblinking stare toward the west and the lowland, and the mountains beyond.
Wincing in pain, Naxosos was the first to remount. He was eager to be off and felt the donkey also wanted to be moving again.
The track left by the Goddess-on-Earth and her Second on the camel was being erased by breezes as he watched. The brooding Spires and the increasing dark combined and recombined in his head to form a whirl of disagreeable scenarios.
Joliel said, in seeming reply to Naxosos's unexpressed ideas, "Don't worry about the women! You've seen what they can do. Each of them separately can do that; what they can do together is always more than enough." Yet the sorcerer continued to gaze up into the Spires, especially those to the north.
He seems to wish to reassure me, was Naxosos's worried thought.
"That's what I said, too!" Naemas said, taking the pack donkey's bridle and starting westwards. Then, in the tone of quotation: "Each ill that befalls the Goddess-on-Earth creates a new garden for God's Children!"
Ignoring Naemas, the sorcerer gazed at Naxosos and uttered tonelessly, "That's why I argued against your coming along, Naxo: She expects for me to protect you. You are not really needed. In fact, you are a liability." Then, with sudden cheer: "But whatever! I have to go ahead now and make sure you fools don't get lost. You'll see me a little later."
To Naxosos's surprise – and the donkey's relief, or so it seemed – the sorcerer began to drift away, sidling off in the direction of the Spires to their right, his attention seeming drawn to something high off the ground.
"I won't get lost, dick," Korsis muttered in answer to Joliel. "Believe me," and Naemas stated as he walked off, "Funny you should mention it: I was just thinking of now nice it would be if we never saw you again!"
Naimejo and Tolalo on their donkeys, meanwhile, receded into dark and distance as they advanced into the Pass – they didn't talk, but cast worried glances at the towers of stone rising on each side.
Korsis began to follow Naemas and the pack-donkey, but Joliel then called out breezily, "Korsis, walk along with Naxo, will you?" The dancer growled a short response and Joliel, who was now some yards off, the wind stirring his black garment as he gazed into the north – he continued as though nothing else had been said, "Don't go too fast: If someone breaks a leg, it will cause a great interruption. As I have repeatedly informed you: Healing is not my area of expertise. I only know a couple of ways to fix broken people; neither is what you would consider convenient or friendly."
Without another sound or word the sorcerer then disappeared as Naxosos looked on, and not even a puff of dust to show the direction he'd gone.
"Just shut up, Joliel," Korsis griped as they started to walk once more; the donkey set its heels at first as the dancer tried to lead it, but Korsis then advised, comically, "I wasn't talking about you!" and so it followed him; after a few seconds he let go of its halter and not only did it follow, but seemed to hasten to keep up.
"I don't think he heard you," Naxosos remarked to Korsis, again wondering how Joliel managed to move about so swiftly. Priests he'd known who could walk unseen, or cover ground more rapidly than other men, but heretofore had supposed these skills to be the result of many years of pious and diligent study, even if one was born to the Art – and the sorcerer did not strike him as one given to study and practice.
He would have to ask about it at a more opportune time.
A couple of stars glimmered in the darkening east when, some minutes later, they arrived at the great defile (Onyx Pass, Naxosos reminded himself) of the opposed ranges (Onyx Spires).
The pass was at its narrowest about sixty yards wide, overlooking a lowland – a long-dried river valley – threaded with washouts and gullys. The sky contained some light over the mountains, enough to see by.
Stark vertical jags of naked, gray-streaked, black stone towered on each side. The stone was the same as that of Onyx Hold by appearance, which Naxosos considered strange.
He found himself glancing with trepidation at the Spires, especially those to their north, in which direction the sorcerer had vanished: A menace seemed to hang in the air, but faint, like a residue from a tragedy long in the past.
That he smelled no blood was reassuring, but something had alerted Joliel – that much was clear.
Thais and Nirith, he reasoned, had come through here and it seemed nothing had stopped or delayed them, They were not that far ahead that an attacker could have dealt with them and got rid of all traces so quickly, were they?
He realized he had been listening intently for some minutes as Korsis paced just ahead with the donkey trotting complacently in his footsteps (the creature seemed quite content to keep to the trail now that it had been cured of its fatigue and discomfort, and the heat was dying).
He could hear nothing but wind and the sounds of animal hooves crunching on the crisp-baked ground, and his own companions' trudging. It seemed unlikely that an attack would occur, and yet a foreboding remained.
Even in the intensifying dusk, he was able to observe sand- and wind-hollowed nooks and arches in the Spires and wondered if someone observed their progress.
Ever-chatting Korsis maintained an atypical silence, glancing back and forth constantly, as he kept pace with Naxosos on the donkey.
Their group was at this point straggling, the two priests far in the lead, nearly invisible against the increasing dusk; Naemas leading the pack animal ranged behind them; Naxosos on his donkey and Korsis on foot were many yards to the rear.
Joliel was nowhere to be seen. Naxosos could not even smell him.
"We should close it up, here," Korsis rasped as he trotted at Naxosos's right heel. (All the while, the dark continued to descend and the steel-lavender sky cooled to luminous, deep blue. With each stride, more of the lowland could be viewed.)
Pulling down his face-covering, Korsis cleared his nose and then spat, and said: "Lotta places we can lose the trail where we're going. Snakes and so forth, too. The old boys will wait, but we need to hustle."
"Are we about to be attacked?" Naxosos inquired – it seemed so improbable, but on the other hand his nerves jangled and the back of his neck felt like someone had poured freezing water down it.
"Not sure," Korsis answered in a preoccupied tone; then he called out: "Hey! Naemas!"
Naemas stopped; the pack-donkey stopped with him. The animal also kept glancing with apparent unease toward the northern Spires.
"We need to close it up!" Korsis repeated.
Naxosos set his heels to his donkey and it began to pace a bit faster. He said then to the dancer Korsis Zarodi: "How will you keep up?"
"Like this!" Korsis said. In a startling burst of motion, the dancer broke into a run, and before Naxosos could prompt his mount into faster movement, Korsis had reached Naemas some thirty yards distant and stopped: Each of his strides raised a ghostly, slow-to-settle dust-plume.
The three of them with the two donkeys stood at the narrows of Onyx Pass; Naimejo and Tolalo were another couple of dozen yards ahead, where the ground began to incline toward the lowland. Upon each hand obsidian towers jutted into the darkening sky. Especially upon the right, northern arm, the spiky projections soared nearly a thousand feet. Some of them appeared hand-hewn, with arches and balconies, and creases that looked like stairs.
Naemas and Korsis stood talking. The pack animal rested with its head down, tail swishing and ears flipping but it glanced about as before, like it sensed a predator in ambush nearby. The breezes moaned and muttered.
Naxosos on his donkey was within a few feet of them when a shrill, despairing scream broke the air from somewhere high above and to their right.
So violently did Naxosos flinch that he nearly toppled from his saddle, and caused the donkey to stagger. Seeing this, Korsis ran to him and took the animal's bridle.
Naxosos exclaimed, "Is that Joliel?! What –"
Korsis began to answer but then, as the three of them looked on in varying degrees of bewilderment, first one figure swathed in dark, flapping material, then a second, plunged from a shadowy niche in the spires upon their right, to shatter upon the floor of Onyx Pass.
Especially in the case of the second figure, each of these individuals seemed to have leaped with tremendous force and not simply fallen: Each was observed to sail, robes flapping, for some distance before plummeting downward.
Initially the events were unclear in the growing dark, but the bodies in their voluminous garments breaking against the hard ground, each with a dreadful crash and splash of pale dust, made it easy enough to piece the scene together.
"What…" Naxosos repeated. Neither figure had looked like Joliel, but horrific imaginings sank barbs into his mind and his skin tingled to the point that he couldn't tell if his heart was beating or not.
"Shush!" Naemas said. "Wait!" Korsis also seemed to be holding his breath. The two donkeys snuffled anxiously and twitched as though beset by a host of flies.
The priests had stopped also. It was hard to see their expressions or hear their speech, but each seemed to frown up into the northern Spires as though alarmed, but unsure about what to do.
A minute passed during which there was a great deal of tension, but nothing happened. There was no sound or sign of approach, no voices, no hoofbeats, no clanging of weapons.
A relatively forceful wind then boomed up from the lower Pass, resulting in a sharp spray of dust against which everyone had to cover his face for a few moments.
Joliel appeared from the murkiness to the north. Even with night falling, he was easy to see with his black raiment flapping against the light-colored earth. Now he walked at a normal pace; indeed, there was a swagger in his stance.
He killed them.
How this might have happened, Naxosos could not possibly imagine, but he knew it nonetheless: One minute Joliel had been right there, the two of them conversing, and the next he had politely taken his leave, then disappearing; after an impossibly short time two men had screamed and died. Now, a handful of minutes later, here he was approaching at a walk, seemingly out of nowhere.
On the ground, the gloom increased, although enough light remained in the sky to provide an adequate view. Tolalo and Naimejo were seen to drive their mounts toward the sorcerer. The three met and talked. Joliel's deferential attitude as he conversed with the priests, hands buried in his sleeves and nodding every few beats, Naxosos would have found amusing if he hadn't been so scared.
Naxosos urged the donkey forward, Naemas and Korsis at either side. "Why didn't those – whatever they are – strike at Thais and Nirith?" He wondered. "The women did come through here; I can smell them."
Laughing weakly, Korsis said, "Of course that's the first thing he says!"
"If they were here and hiding at the time, and saw them," Naemas explained, "They left the women alone." Then, in a troubled murmur: "For whatever reason…"
"Yeah," Korsis agreed. "I get no sense of anyone having been attacked." Pointing: "Look how Derecho's footprints go! Straight line, always. No other prints. No smell of blood. No –" Here Korsis's flood of speech halted and he seemed to stand for a moment in thought. Then: "The Jaras were waiting for you, Naxo." After a short pause: "They know you're with us."
(Naxosos observed that Tolalo and Naimejo had both dismounted and paced about as they conversed with the sorcerer; neither, he noticed, approached the corpses, though they glanced frequently in that direction.)
(published 16 October 2024 Wednesday)
THIS IS ALL COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
Copyright © 2024 by Kristi A. Wilson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Which is me.
For permission contact the publisher kristiwilson156 @ gmail
