CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER
8
Julia watched the scene before her, tears swimming in front of her vision. Smoke poured forth from the great scar in the earth, and even from this distance they could hear the groan of machinery. Peter returned from the bushes, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, and stood beside his sister. And as they watched they heard Louisa behind them.
She was humming again—that same song she always seemed to have stuck in her head—but standing here before the volcano, looking at the task that lay before them, the song seemed different. Haunting, almost. It unnerved Peter almost to the core, and he shivered despite the heat.
“Stop that,” he said, and Louisa’s humming stopped as quickly as it had begun. “We can’t be heard. Come on. Follow me.”
The compass wasn’t necessary now—they were headed toward the volcano, and there was no mistaking where it was—but Peter still led the way, his father’s gift firmly in hand. They walked out of the clearing and down a steep ridge. The going was hard, over the same rocks and thorns that had plagued their steps before, but despite the terrain and the heat and the constant whine of insects there were no complaints. All three of them were intent on getting to the volcano, and getting there quickly.
The smell of sulfur was becoming unbearable. Louisa seemed to be the only one who wasn’t badly affected—perhaps because of the makeshift mask Peter had fashioned for her out of his scarf. Julia was almost choking on the stale air, tripping over fallen logs and sharp rocks as she tried to catch her breath. And then she stumbled into Peter’s arm, held out as stiff as a suit of armor. She looked up through stinging, red-rimmed eyes to see that they had arrived.
The volcano loomed before them, its mouth yawning open and belching acrid smoke. Miners moved back and forth across the gash in its southern edge, all covered from head to toe in black dust. The men dug and shoveled as the women carted away buckets full of soil to a group of children, who were pawing through the dirt as if searching for something precious. The older children, Julia saw, were moving among the miners with buckets of water, holding dripping ladles up to the lips of the grown-ups. And there was something else—something that was not a man.
There were dozens of these creatures moving among the miners. They were perhaps twice the size of Peter, each one thick and hulking and with arms the size of small trees. Their skin was dark and swarthy, blistered by the sun and by innumerable scars. Peter, who prided himself on never being afraid of anything, felt himself shrinking back in revulsion. The eyes under those massive brows were small and dark, but there was intelligence in their faces. These monsters were not just dumb animals.
Louisa gave a small cry as she saw them. Julia, not stopping to think, grabbed her stepsister’s hand in hers and squeezed as tight as she could. Louisa was still, but Julia could feel her shivering as they watched the creatures. They moved to and fro among the workers, and as the children watched, one of them swung its arm back and knocked a man to the ground. He lay still, not moving even after the creature had passed. The work went on around him; no one stopped to help.
Julia shifted her gaze and found herself focusing on a child — a boy, she thought, not much younger than herself. He was walking along the edge of the workers, close by the clearing, offering his water to the women carrying their loads of dirt. He handed up his ladle to a bedraggled, beaten woman with ragged clothing—more ragged than most. The woman released her load and gratefully accepted the ladle, drinking slowly and deeply. And as she raised her face to drink the last cool drops, Julia gave a little cry.
Peter shot her an accusing glare and put his finger angrily to his lips, but Julia shook her head. “Alyce,” she said in a voice that was barely a whisper. “It’s Alyce. That woman, over there—no, there.” Peter squinted his eyes and peered in the direction indicated.
“Are you sure?” He squinted harder. “It might be. She’s so much older …” He shook his head. “I can’t tell.”
“Who’s Alyce?” Louisa had removed the scarf from her face and was trying to look over Peter’s shoulder at the woman. Her voice was a good deal louder than a whisper, and Peter shot her a furious glance.
“A friend from before,” murmured Julia. “She’s not far. I can get her.”
“Get her? Are you mad? You’ll be seen.” Peter gave a shake of his head and considered the matter final.
“No one’s watching,” protested Julia. “Look—she can’t be a stone’s throw away. The guards are turned away—I can reach her …” And, just like that, she had darted out from behind the cover of the trees, deaf to Peter’s hoarsely whispered protests.
The landscape was barren but for a few of the same boulders that had littered their path to the volcano. Julia, keeping a wary eye on the guards, crouched behind the largest one she could find.
“Alyce!” she whispered huskily. “Alyce!”
The woman who had drunk from the child’s ladle turned, the heavy buckets she had just picked up quivering in her hands. She looked around for the source of the voice, and when she saw where it had come from her eyes opened wider than Julia had ever seen them. Something changed in her face, the burdens of the past weeks fading into relief. Alyce dropped her load and started forward.
Just as she did so, one of the creatures turned and saw that Alyce had stepped out of the line—saw that she had put down her pails. His fist clenched as he changed direction, heading straight for Alyce.
Julia tried without words to warn Alyce of the danger, but the creature’s fist caught her before she could react. It was attached to an arm the size of a small tree, and she fell to her knees with a startled cry of pain. The creature moved away with a growl, off to find his next victim, and a guard came up to Alyce, watching her still figure as he coiled a whip around his meaty hand. Julia cowered behind the rock, willing herself to become invisible. The guard was so close she could have reached out and touched his feet. She forced herself to breathe slowly, feeling the gazes of Peter and Louisa on her back.
The guard looked at Alyce for a moment, then reached out his foot and gave her a swift kick in the ribs. “Scum,” he muttered, and then turned and was gone.
Alyce wasn’t moving. Julia didn’t dare to whisper her name again, so she watched and waited, not daring to go out in the open but unwilling to go back to the forest without her. And then she heard footsteps behind her, running quickly and urgently. Peter.
He tapped her on the shoulder and ran out from behind the boulder. He grasped Alyce’s motionless body from beneath her shoulders and started dragging her back toward the trees. Julia, suddenly understanding, ran out and took a firm hold of her ankles, and together they hauled her back to safety like a lumpy sack of so many potatoes.
They laid her down once they were about fifty feet into the woods, where they could be certain of not being seen. The blow had knocked the breath from Alyce’s body, and her breath came in low, shallow gasps. The left side of her face was smeared with dirt and blood where she had fallen, and Julia wiped at it with the cleanest part of her skirt. It did little good.
“That guard almost saw you!” Louisa was hissing. “The same one who kicked her—he was turning to look just as you got back into the trees!”
“Yes, and if we’d been seen we jolly well would have been beaten—or worse,” said Peter. “Just had to go out there, didn’t you Julia? Had to see how close you could come to getting us thrown in another dungeon!”
“It’s Alyce! We couldn’t just leave her out there!” And any further argument was cut off, because Alyce was waking up.
She groaned and lifted herself up to a sitting position. She cringed as she twisted her shoulders, still feeling the blow from the monster, but gave a crooked smile nonetheless. “You’ve come,” she said. “My dear friends. You’ve grown, Julia. And Peter”—she reached out and took Peter’s hand in hers. “You are becoming a man.” She smiled, and a faraway look came into her eyes. “We called, and the Lord of Hosts has answered. He has sent you once again.” Julia took her hand and squeezed it.
“We’ve come,” she said. “Seems you can’t manage without us anymore.”
This brought a laugh to Alyce’s lips, and then another wince. She put a hand up to her face and looked as if she was trying very hard not to think about the pain. “And it seems you’ve brought another with you,” she said, looking at Louisa.
Louisa, for once, was neither crying nor fainting nor humming, but watching Alyce with her eyes wide, her gaze focused on the blood oozing from her cheek. Peter thought that he had never seen her so transfixed.
“This is Louisa,” he said. “Our stepsister. She was …” He paused, giving her a look that might almost be described as puzzled. “She was called here too.”
“Welcome, Louisa,” said Alyce. “I wish that we could have met under different circumstances, and I could show you all around our fair land. But perhaps that time will come soon.”
“Tell us what happened,” Julia encouraged. “Tell us what happened to you. Tell us what happened in Aedyn.”
Alyce closed her eyes and leaned back against a tree. “It’s not a happy story, Julia.”
“I didn’t think it was. Please.”
Alyce nodded. “Not many years after you left,” she said, “our people stopped attending the Great Remembrance. They said they were safe, that the Lord of Hosts had saved them from slavery and there was no more danger, no reason to remember such dark times. And soon they could see no reason to remember the Lord of Hosts himself. It was simple: they just forgot, and they thought the good times would last forever.”
She stopped and touched her cheek. The blood was beginning to clot. “Go on,” prompted Peter.
“We started to hear rumors,” Alyce continued. “Rumors of another power. And the people said that this power was stronger than anything we had ever known—that they had been right to forget the Lord of Hosts. So when the soldiers from Khemia came, they prayed to the wrong god. They prayed to the one who couldn’t save them.
“The soldiers came in waves. They took the first prisoners about a year ago. Our king had disbanded the army just after the dark lords fell—it was thought that we didn’t need the protection because there was no longer any threat. And the king would not fight against the Khemians, because he was certain—so, so certain—that the god they worshipped was the true power in our world.
“So the soldiers came back, and there was still no one to fight. Oh, some tried. My husband, Lukas, tried to organize the men, but it was already too late. They took a few of us at a time—never enough of us to cause trouble on the journey over. And when we arrived at this cursed land we found the mines.”
She shrugged, looking all but hopeless.
“What are you all mining for?” asked Peter.
“I don’t know,” Alyce replied. “None of us do. We think it must be something to do with their god—whatever power it is that’s living in the earth.”
“Power?” asked Peter. “What power?”
It was a moment before Alyce answered, and when she did her voice was very soft. The three children had to lean in to catch her next words.
“There’s something else here,” she was saying. “Something else inside the earth. I don’t know if it’s a god or a devil, but there’s something inside that volcano. And it wants to get out.”
A shiver went through the children.
“Wants to get out?” repeated Peter after a moment.
“There was an earthquake,” said Julia. “And back in the woods, when we were coming here — something happened. The earth seemed to open up and—and it sounded like someone screaming.” Julia had been hesitant to speak, afraid that she would sound foolish, but she saw that Alyce was nodding.
“We’ve seen it too,” she said. “It’s been happening more and more. Earthquakes, the earth falling away from under our feet—something is moving under the earth. The volcano has been smoking more and more since we came. The evil wants to get out into the world, and the Khemians’ mine is only speeding it on its way.”
“But what is it they’re looking for?” insisted Peter.
“Something secret,” said Alyce. “Something that has been buried for many years. We’ve been told no more than that. If we find anything unusual, anything at all, we’re to take it to the guards.”
“Have you found anything yet?” asked Louisa.
“Rocks,” Alyce said with a grimace. “Lots and lots of rocks. We’ve been at it for months, and the guards are starting to become impatient. Their Captain especially.”
“How do we find him?” asked Peter.
Julia shot him a glance. “What are you intending to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet, but it might be good to know who our enemy is.”
“The Captain doesn’t come down here much,” said Alyce. “You’ll most likely find him in his tent. It’s back up there, at the top of the ridge.” She pointed to a not-too-distant spot. “His name is Ceres, and you’ll recognize him by the talisman he always wears — a great green stone, with the shape of a star cut out of it. But be careful—he’s a dangerous man, and he does not have a great deal of patience. It is he who controls the Gul’nog.”
“The … who?”
“Those creatures.” Alyce twisted her shoulders, trying to squeeze the ache out of them. “It’s said that they were men once—men twisted into monsters by that dark power. Praise the Lord of Hosts that you’ve come. You’ll find a way to defeat this power and take us back to Aedyn—I know it.”
At these words Peter’s back straightened and a small smile grew on his lips. He remembered the old energy that had come to him back in Aedyn—the power he’d felt with a bow in his hands, the string taut against his fingers, the arrow pointed straight and true. Let his father say now that he wasn’t a man!
After a moment, Peter realized that Alyce was addressing him. “Remember, Peter, that Ceres and his Gul’nog are not your greatest enemies here. Your enemy is the people, and their anger against the Lord of Hosts. It is they who must be changed before you can work your good in Khemia.”
Peter wanted to protest, Julia could tell—he wanted an enemy that was easier to face. But he simply nodded, and Alyce smiled.
“For my part, I will do everything I can to help you. I will tell the people that you have returned.” She stood. “I have to get back before I’m missed.”
“Don’t go!” Louisa cried. “Stay here with us—don’t go out there to be hurt again!”
“I have to,” Alyce said simply. “My son is out there. I won’t leave him.” She embraced each of them in turn. “You are most welcome here,” she said. “I thank the Lord of Hosts that his Deliverers have returned.” She smiled and slipped out from between the trees, back out to the mine.