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OUT OF THE CAVERNS

TAHRIK

I t’s the sound more than anything that pulls me from my slumber. Something like music that isn’t music, a kind of burbling noise that is faintly familiar, but it’s hard to think through the piercing light, blinding even through my closed lids.

Am I…is this the Dreaming?

It’s impossible to force my eyes open; they feel like they are sewn shut, though the pain in my temples is enough to convince me that somehow I am awake, that somehow I am alive.

The Gods wouldn’t create a life of struggle to follow it with this type of agony in the Dreaming.

My lungs hurt, there’s a weight on my chest that feels like stone when I try to breathe, and for a brief, flickering moment, I wonder if it’s worth the effort, or if I should just let my ribs collapse into me and not force them out again.

Then I hear her voice, scratched raw and ragged, but there, and oxygen floods into me in painful, desperate waves.

If she’s breathing, you are too, whether it feels like knives in your heart or not.

But it takes everything in me just to exist; I have nothing left to move even a fingertip.

All I can do is lay on what seems to be cool grass, head cushioned on some kind of strange fabric, and listen.

Even that staggers in and out with uncertainty, words rising and falling away with a surprisingly warm wind.

Wherever we are, it’s not in the caverns.

“...more than enough. Just eat. Stop protesting. You’re all walking skeletons.” I don’t recognize the man’s voice; his words have a strange lilt that tug at something in the back of my mind, but the fish slips the hook before I can catch it.

Rannoch, though, I know immediately, even if he sounds like he died days ago, and it’s just the memory of him speaking. “First to Wren. When she’s done, I’ll go back for seconds.”

“ Wren is fine.” If I could smile, I would, the bite in her voice more proof than anything that she is, if not thriving, well enough.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Wren is right.

Believe I’d give her everything in my pack and then some, but I can tell how much it took from you to carry that one over there.

I don’t know how you did it, to be honest. You look like you can barely support your own weight.

” Admiration is clear in the man’s voice — it’s a freely given compliment with no strings.

Rannoch is more reluctant in his reply. “If I hadn’t, she would have. Or she would have stayed in the caverns when he collapsed. It’s the only way I could make her keep moving forward. I was close to leaving him behind.”

He broke his promise. The thought flashes through my head quick as the beat of blood moth wings, but then a memory of blood moths and Wren twists my stomach, waves of nausea rippling through me, and I push it away.

“Somehow I doubt that,” the unknown speaker says wryly.

“I think you had choices. And you made the one you could live with. It does you credit.” Silence.

“In any case, we have food enough for now. And some of this won’t carry.

Eat. Just eat. What good would it be to waste it?

Flame, put some more on your plate so your friend here will put some more in his belly.

And the broth is almost ready for the other. ”

“How will we get him to drink it?” Fear tightens her words, as though a hand is clasped around her throat, and it’s enough to pull a whisper of sound from me .

“I…”

A flurry of movement, and the press of bodies.

“Don’t try to speak, Tahrik!” Her hands are cool on my face, pushing back my hair, bringing a flask to my lips. “Just drink. A little, only a little at a time. Your stomach has been empty for too long.”

It’s a pain everyone in the village knows, and even now, suddenly desperate with thirst, I force myself to swallow slowly. Pure water. Not brackish. Where are we?

Her hands are replaced by larger, warmer ones, rough with callouses. “We’re going to try some broth, friend. Water is all well and good, but it won’t help you recover, and we can’t stay here much longer.”

I know that voice. How do I know that voice?

Something heavy and savory is poured down my throat and fills my stomach.

“Slowly, friend. Slowly. Tahrik, correct?” The question clearly isn’t for me, and is

answered with a low murmur of sound. I’m already fading back to sleep when he pulls the bowl from my mouth, and only catch the end of his sentence. “...move tomorrow, though. Here, we must watch and not stay still too long. We’re not safe in the walls of your village anymore.”

Rannoch and Wren snort in unison at the comment, but I’m lost to the waking world before they answer.

This time I’m roused by a velvet soft muzzle, and it’s easier to open my eyes, the needle-sharp pain having been replaced by a dull, throbbing ache.

Everything around me is quiet, other than the sweet, hay-filled breathing of the pony and the low crackling sound of a well fed fire.

It takes longer than it should for me to be able to focus in the dim twilight, but as soon as the color of the sky registers, I sit up in panic.

We need to get inside! Where’s Wren? The pony shies away nervously at my abrupt movement, and suddenly she’s beside me, hands grabbing my own, forcing my eyes to lock on hers.

“Tahrik!”

“Night!” It’s all I can manage, fear thick in my throat, and she makes a soft, comforting sound, almost a mother soothing a child.

“It’s alright. It’s alright! Night is different here. Every thing is different here.” Something…new…is in her voice. Something I haven’t heard before — a kind of excitement or energy thrumming low, a strange, bright music dancing. It sits uneasily in my chest.

“Where…where is here?” I don’t recognize my own voice, scratchy and rough, and I wonder vaguely how long I’ve been asleep.

Behind her, a massive tree trunk of a man approaches carefully, a small, steaming bowl in his hands. “ Here is the Corpse Bridge, the wet plains and low mountains between the lands of my people and those of the Lower Kingdom.”

“I know you,” I reply stupidly, and he smiles at me, friendly face open and welcoming.

“More or less, friend. We met in your village for the Trade. Or lack-there-of,” he adds sardonically under his breath.

“Kaden. I’d shake your hand, but save your energy for the soup, hmm?

You’ve been balanced precariously between life and death for a few days.

Anything we can do to keep you on one side and not the other is worth a weight of gold to these two.

” Nodding his head toward Wren, I notice Rannoch mere steps behind her.

“Not me as much,” Rannoch mutters, earning him twin, almost amused looks from Kaden and Wren.

“Of course,” she replies seriously, but there is affection warming her words in ways that make my blood cold. Trying to shove the thought to the side, I focus on Rannoch’s frowning face.

“I think I owe you a debt of sorts, Councilor,” I say, trying to infuse my voice with as much gratitude as I’m able to. “I certainly didn’t walk here on my own feet.”

He shrugs, not responding until Wren throws a little stone or nut at him, and then sighs, moving next to me and sitting almost shoulder to shoulder by my side. “I owe you an apology of sorts. I made you a promise.” His voice is flat, almost bland, and I reply in kind.

“You did.”

“As it turns out, when it came to it…I didn’t have the mettle in me to keep it.” He is staring at his hands, not looking at me.

“What promise?” Wren asks curiously, and then, when we don’t reply, more darkly, “Rann? What promise ?”

Rann? Rann?

“Who can say the worth of bargains made in darkness,” Kaden interjects, drawing her attention to him, distracting her.

“That sounds like a saying?”

“It is, to my people. It’s a bit different in our language, but the meaning is the same. If we translated directly to the Common Tongue it would be more…hmmm. Something like ‘a covenant unseen by sunlight is sea fog’. Or similar. There are words we have that the Common Tongue doesn’t.”

Wren is almost wistful when she replies. “I wish I spoke another language.”

“You do,” Rannoch offers beside me, smirking. “One of bone.”

“You know what I mean,” she teases back gently, and again strange teeth gnaw at my ribs. Something happened while I was asleep that I’m missing.

“Oh, Miller, I almost forgot—” Rannoch turns to me and presses a small pouch into my hand, before getting to his feet and stretching. “Keep it close, in case of need.”

Wren shakes her head at his words. “Yes, in case you ever want useless shiny stones to hang from your neck.”

“I’ve told you they have value in other places, Keeper!” He huffs with false indignation, and she grins at him like a child.

“Enough that you thought to collect them in the tunnels while carrying us?”

“Enough that they were worth gathering. And you’ll keep them on you like I told you to. You never know when you’ll need to bargain. What is worth nothing in our lands is a treasure in others. ”

“You speak and speak, but it still sounds like chickens chattering to me…” she laughs, and he growls in mock-affront.

Their back-and-forth makes me uneasy, fills the pit in my stomach with acid.

Kaden sinks to his heels in front of me, blocking them from view.

“Soup, Tahrik. For strength, as we can only stay one more night here before we need to travel. The Corpse Bridge is no place to tarry.” Dropping his voice, Kaden pushes the bowl into my hands.

“Don’t be too upset at broken promises. He meant to keep it, but your little bird there was apparently distraught when your legs failed, and wouldn’t leave you.

She begged him, and he had enough strength, just. So eat. ”