Thirty-Eight

D U S T

 

“So they weren’t trying to sack the town?”

Caleb, holding the reins, shook his head. They’d left the town almost immediately, once they were sure Jaleem wasn’t among the bodies that littered the square following the blast. The explosion had gusted outward from the pyre, spraying shards of splintered timber beyond the clearing and showering the green that ringed it in ashen chunks of debris. In the end it had harmed relatively few; all the bodies, bar a pair of middle-aged men in linen shifts, were marked by the bloody puncture wounds of Neythan and Arianna’s shortswords, and a number of others by arrows. A mother and several children had been hit by the scatter of stone and mortar where a muralled wall, now rendered rubble, had sat by the bonfire’s west side.

“All a distraction, I think,” Caleb said. “There were no more than, say, twenty men. They knew they’d a better chance of getting to you in the chaos of a blazing town than coming straight for you. Probably learned that lesson the last time, when they attacked us by that well. And with the two of you being together this time, well, it seems they, or this Jaleem at least, were wise enough to think better of engaging you both openly.”

“And you’re certain Jaleem wasn’t among the dead.”

“He wasn’t there. The pair of you had felled most of the men with him. He probably only used the blast to be certain of getting away.”

Neythan and Arianna sat in the bed of the cart beneath their blankets as Caleb drove them north along the dry scrubbed plain. The moon was dim. They’d need to sleep soon, and eat. They’d already been two days in open country before arriving at the township, but with the panic of the inhabitants and Jaleem still unaccounted for it made little sense to risk staying there.

“That blast,” Arianna said. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Neither have I,” Caleb said. “Although I may have read of it. Years ago, in the library at Dumea. There are parchments there that speak of something like what we witnessed. The writings name it firedust. I hadn’t thought their witness true until now.”

“You’ve been to Dumea?”

“I’ve been to many places, Neythan.”

“Where is this firedust found?” Arianna said.

“It isn’t. It is made. Sulphur. Cavestone. Copperwood. Cidlewood perhaps. The mixture is uncertain. The way the method is described differs from one writing to the next, and there are many writings in Dumea, believe me. Everything from the scripts of ancient tribesmen to the writings and letters of the old priesthoods speak of it. But what they say of its properties changes with each account. I could never succeed in making the stuff. As far as I knew, no one had. In Dumea the scribes think the tales of it no more than a fiction. It would seem this Jaleem has discovered otherwise. One thing is certain; that man is no more a carpenter – as you have called him – than I am a handmaid.”

“It is what he was in Ilysia,” Neythan said. “What he may have been before then only the elders would know. It is like that with every villager on the mount.”

“Well, let that the elders chose to send him after you shape your notion of him. Twice he has found us. Twice he has caused problems. Whatever he was – or is – at the very least he knows how to make a nuisance of himself.”

“So what do we do now?” Arianna said. “If he has been able to find us, others will do so too.”

“Maybe,” Neythan said. “Maybe not. Either way it changes little. The land is wide from here to Ilysia. We’ll find high ground to rest for tonight. And then continue on tomorrow. If all is well, and the mule and cartwheels hold up, we will arrive in Ilysia before the week is out.”