QUILLER
Two Days Later
I concentrate on the strange moans that ride the sea wind, rising and falling with the gusts that sweep this rare ice-free stretch of tundra along the shore.
“The dead are the source of the moaning?” Elder Hoodwink asks from behind me.
“I don’t know the source, elder. It was late when Lynx and I arrived. We both wanted to get home, so I didn’t have time to search the caverns. But I can tell you the moans crawl up from the tunnels deeper in the earth.”
We keep our voices low, for it’s unwise to speak too loudly this close to the chambers of the dead.
I gesture with my spear. “It’s just over that rise.”
Stepping wide around a puddle, I turn to look back at the three men and one boy who plod the game trail behind me. Mink guards the rear. Just in front of him Elder Hoodwink hobbles, using his spear as a walking stick. Long silver-streaked black hair sways around his wrinkled face. In front of Hoodwink, RabbitEar and Jawbone walk side by side. We all carry spears and quivers over our shoulders. “It isn’t much farther.”
“One hundred heartbeats?” Jawbone asks. His blond hair has a wild shine in the sunlight reflecting from the glaciers.
“A little more. Maybe two hundred.”
Jawbone skips at his father’s side, smiling, but RabbitEar barely notices. His gaze, like Mink’s, constantly scans the shoreline. The tracks of saber-toothed cats, short-faced bears, and dire wolves are visible all around us. Only Elder Hoodwink keeps his gaze focused on his unsteady feet.
To the east, the Ice Giants are so brilliant and blue they could be carved from some turquoise stone. A haze of wind-blown snow obscures the tors, but lower on the slopes herds of mastodons and bison lumber along the sinewy game trails. I study them as I listen to the wind. The eerie cries ebb and flow, sometimes sounding far away, other times right beside me on the wildflower-strewn trail.
The wind has picked up, flapping my cape around my long legs. Because I am very tall I can already see the dark entry to the underworld caverns of the blue faces, but my companions can’t.
I continue along the trail, happily listening to my son’s soft laughter.
Hoodwink says, “Then perhaps wind flows through the tunnels and chambers and produces the cries, not spirits.”
“Yes, perhaps. But I . . .” When I accidentally step into a puddle, I exclaim, “Blessed Jemen! And I’m already soaked.”
Jawbone laughs. “We all are, Mother. The bottom of my cape is so heavy, it feels like I’m totin’ rocks.”
Like all Rust People, he tends to drop the ‘g’ at the end of words.
“It’s good for you.” RabbitEar ruffles Jawbone’s blond hair. “Helps strengthen your shoulder muscles, so that you will be prepared to climb the quest wall day after tomorrow. When you return from your spirit hunt, you will be a man, and I’ll be very proud of you.”
“Thank you, Father.” Jawbone gazes up at him and smiles.
RabbitEar props his spear over his shoulder, and his red hair and beard gleam in the late afternoon glow. He’s seen twenty summers pass, two more than I have, but he looks much older. The stresses of war and starvation carve lines across his forehead and around his mouth. “Let’s hurry, Quiller. We can’t afford to waste time. It’s been so muddy, it’s already taken longer to get here than I thought.”
“Yes, I know.”
I turn back to the trail, sidestep another puddle, and head for the rise.
Early summer is always raw and wet along the seashore, but I appreciate the quietude of Mother Ocean this afternoon. Her voice is muted by the thick green hills of zyme that hug the shore and stretch in an unending blanket to the far western horizon.
“Lynx told you this place is what caused the rebellion one thousand summers ago?” Hoodwink calls.
“Yes.”
Hoodwink pants the words: “And how does Lynx know this?”
“Jorgensen told him.”
“Jor-gen-sen.” Elder Hoodwink lets the name roll around his mouth. “A strange name for a strange man.”
“Strange? That’s a kind description,” I answer.
Wild stories surround the man who calls himself Vice Admiral Steven Jorgensen. His devotee, Sticks the Dog Soldier, says Jorgensen is the last member of the long-gone god-like race we call the Jemen, and swears he saw Jorgensen change from a wolf into a man. I’m not sure I believe it, but I have seen long-dead legends come to life and walk in this world again, so I will not discount the possibility.
When a hare breaks from the wildflowers and bounds away across the tundra, I whirl with my spear lifted. The hare charges toward the shoreline, where condors flap above the huge tubular thing at the edge of the water. Most of it remains buried, so the top merely looks like a massive white ring upon the ground. There are many more tubes out in the ocean, thrusting up through the zyme like giants. I swear they are Jemen tombs, but we’ve found no bodies inside, just strange symbols painted over the walls from top to bottom. Not even Mother Ocean can wash them away.
“Elder?” I call to Hoodwink. “What do you think the tubes are made of?”
“Impossible to say. The material is nothing I have seen before.”
“Is it possible that they are iron?”
“Not likely.” Hoodwink shoves wind-tangled hair behind one ear. “Zyme loves iron. It gobbles it up as though it can’t get enough. If these were iron, they would have been eaten up long ago.”
Our old stories say that almost one thousand summers ago the enemies of the Jemen cast crushed meteorites over the zyme, and that’s what caused zyme to change into a monster and grow and grow—but zyme retreats from these tubes.
War Leader Mink frowns at the circles of open blue water that ring the tubes out in the ocean. “Do you think the tubes are poison? There are never fish near them, and I’ve never seen a seabird land on one.”
Hoodwink stops, breathing hard, and leans on his spear. “Let me catch my breath before we continue on?”
“Of course, elder, but let’s not linger here. My bones always start to hurt when I stand too long near the white rings.”
“Mine, as well, War Leader.”
Jawbone takes the opportunity to charge off across the tundra to peer over the edge of the closest white ring. I love all four of my children, but there’s something special about this boy who hears voices. The massive brow ridge of his birth people, the Rust People, is just beginning to form. I have the feeling he’s going to grow into a powerful, muscular man. Today is a good day. He’s acting like a normal thirteen-summers-old boy. I cherish these moments, for they will be gone before I realize it.
“This Jor-gen-sen . . .” Hoodwink gazes at me. “Did he tell Lynx what the blue faces are?”
“All he said is that they were innocents.”
“Innocents?” Hoodwink grimaces and tilts his head, listening to the forlorn cries. “They do sound like children.”
“There’s a woman in there,” Jawbone announces as he leaps around the tundra puddles and trots back to stand beside Elder Hoodwink, staring up with a knowing expression.
“Is she speaking to you?” Hoodwink asks as he pats Jawbone’s shoulder.
“She’s singin’ to me.”
“Right now?”
Jawbone’s smile fades. “Can’t you hear her, elder?”
“No. She sings only to you.”
Jawbone slaps his ear. “I can’t hear her very well.”
Hoodwink says, “Can you ask her to sing louder?”
“I—I don’t think she’s really here, elder. I don’t think she’s human, either. She’s singin’ to me from far, far away in a vast, dark land.”
Hoodwink smiles. “Then how can she be here in the caverns?”
Jawbone blinks, as though trying to reason it out. “She can be in two places at once, I think. Maybe four or five. She says she’s comin’ to help me.” Jawbone’s blue eyes narrow, as though he’s not sure he wants this spirit to help him.
Hoodwink flexes his fingers and winces. “Well, then she’s a good spirit. Let’s continue on. My hands are already aching.”
“Yes, elder.” Taking a new grip on my spear, I climb over the rise and walk down the other side toward the dark opening in the earth. It’s ice-rimmed and resembles a gaping maw ten hand-lengths wide. “It’s narrow inside and patches of ice cover the floor. Be careful.”
Ducking low, I enter the tunnel and reluctantly descend deeper. The darkness breathes cold, wafting the musty odor of the dead. The scent is cloying, nauseating, and fear tightens my chest. This is the sort of underworld den no one would enter by choice.
“Could we light a torch? I can’t see my feet.” Hoodwink leans on his spear, breathing hard.
“Oh, sorry. Should have already done that.” RabbitEar reaches into his quiver and withdraws a birchbark torch. “Jawbone? Where are the coals we saved from our lunch fire?”
Jawbone pulls a soapstone bowl from his belt pouch beneath his cape. After removing the stone cap, he places it on the ground so that RabbitEar can touch the tip of the torch to the coals.
“You’ll have light in just a moment, elder.” RabbitEar blows on the coals until tiny flames flicker through the shredded bark, then he rises to his feet. “Recap the coals, son.”
Jawbone quickly puts the stone lid back on the bowl, and tucks it back in his belt pouch.
“Cold in here.” RabbitEar lifts the torch higher.
“And it’s going to get colder. The passageways ahead are thick with ice.” Bracing one hand against the wall, I cautiously lead the way through the wavering yellow gleam.
“Mother, what’s that strange scent?” Jawbone asks. “Smells rotten.”
“The dead.”
“How can they smell after one thousand summers?”
“Don’t know, but they do.”
Hoodwink says, “The scent probably oozes up when they start to melt in the summer. I’ll bet in the winter they have no scent.”
As I approach the burial chamber, more tunnels veer off like crooked tree roots, heading deeper into the ground.
“The moans are louder down here,” Mink whispers.
“Just wait. Very soon, you’ll think they are coming from inside your own head.” Stepping past the ghost of my own shadow that looms large on the wall to my left, I duck into the first cavern. As the light flutters over the ceiling and walls, it takes shape, spreading sixty hand-lengths across, but it has a low ceiling of solid ice. If I reach up, I can touch the faces.
The others quietly move into the chamber and gather around me to stare open-mouthed at the dead frozen in the ceiling. There are hundreds of them, thousands if you look into the adjacent caverns that veer off from this chamber and plunge into the depths.
“What is this place, Quiller?” Mink asks.
“A burial chamber.”
“Doesn’t look like a burial chamber,” RabbitEar whispers. “All I see are heads. It looks like butchery.”
“They are even more interesting than you think,” I say. “Please, grind out the torch.”
He frowns. “Grind it out? Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s all right now. You’ll see why.”
RabbitEar grinds out the torch on the floor.
When the yellow light dies, the faces begin to pulse and the cavern fills with soft blue light. The smallest faces pulse rapidly. The biggest are slower, but steady and bright, as though timed to the long-vanished heartbeats of the dead. If I listen hard, I can hear the faint staccato of thousands of hearts thumping. The sight is so stunning, it’s like being clubbed in the head. Gaping jaws and opaque eyes stare down upon us. For as far as we can see into the adjacent tunnels, faces flash.
“Blessed gods.” RabbitEar breathes the words as he searches the ceiling.
Along the tunnel to my right, I glimpse what appears to be a small shadow trailing over the wall, as though pursuing the dancing phosphorescence down into the earth. “Did you see—”
“Look at their faces,” RabbitEar interrupts as he reaches out to touch a woman’s cheek directly above him. “They have oval faces and pointed chins. They are all Jemen.”
The small shadow has vanished, but I’m getting a headache. The pulsing light suddenly feels like stilettos piercing my brain. When I squeeze my eyes closed to block it, Mink walks over to me.
“Feeling sick?”
“Yes.”
“I feel it, too. We can’t stay here for long. This place is evil.”
“I agree.” Opening my eyes, I see Mink massaging one shoulder.
Hoodwink says, “Pain is already working its way up my spine into my shoulders.”
“Mine, too. Gods, it’s hitting me harder and faster today than when I was here with Lynx. I’m not sure how long I can stand this.”
“When it gets too bad, just go,” Mink instructs. “We’ll meet you outside.”
Elder Hoodwink uses his spear to point at several faces. “Look at their eyes and mouths. They look terrified. What happened to them?”
“War,” I reply.
Our people have many stories about the fate of the magical Jemen, the gods who breathed upon the ancient bones of our ancestors and brought us back to life—as well as bringing back long-horned bison, mammoths and mastodons, dire wolves, giant lions, and other creatures. They called us Reecurs, because they re-created us. At some point, warfare broke out. That was long before the Sky Jemen sailed to the campfires of the dead in ships made of meteorites.
Hoodwink hobbles a short distance away. “Did their shamans paint their flesh with a glowing paint? Is that why they pulse blue light?”
“I asked Lynx that same question. I memorized the word he used. He called it cesium 42.”
Hoodwink nervously licks his lips. “What is that?”
“I don’t know. It’s something Jorgensen told him.”
“Jorgensen says many things he fails to explain,” Hoodwink softly replies.
“He thinks we’re too dim-witted to understand.” Mink scowls and shifts his spear to carry it across his chest. He has his black hair tied back with a cord, but wind has worked strands loose and they hang around his sun-bronzed face in tangles. As he edges forward to stare up at the face where Hoodwink’s hand rests, he asks, “Even if their shamans painted them with glowing paint, why do they pulse?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
I’m staring upward into frozen eyes, when Jawbone says, “Mother, where are their bodies? I don’t see any bodies.”
“I haven’t seen any, either.” My gaze drifts down an adjacent passageway, following the shining faces for as far back as I can see. “But I haven’t explored all the chambers.”
Hoodwink smooths his hand over the face in the ice, tracing its shape. “The Dog Soldiers keep a fragment of a story about the great Jemen war. They say that the Old Woman of the Mountain, the leader of the Sky Jemen, rounded up the families of those who had rebelled against her and herded them like bison to a vast lake where they were slaughtered. It was known as Black Lake, because of the somber forests that surrounded the water. Over hundreds of summers, the Ice Giants consumed their bodies, but the Dog Soldiers say their faces are still there, buried deep in the ice. That’s why we occasionally see Jemen skulls melting out of the glaciers.”
“I wonder,” RabbitEar says, “if the Jemen deliberately cast these heads along the shore.”
“Why would they do that?” I ask.
“Maybe as a battle strategy to terrify the enemy?”
“If so, it was a poor strategy.” Mink frowns up at the faces. “Such brutality generates the kind of hatred that makes people fight to the death to get revenge.”
“True. But it would certainly terrify me if my family’s severed heads started falling from the sky and bouncing around my village.”
Hoodwink strokes the woman’s face as though to ease her ancient agony. “By that time, I suspect the war was on its last legs, and all they had left between them was hatred.”
In the tunnel to my right, something moves. I turn sharply and stare at it. Like a gauzy haze of darker blue, the shadow slips along, darting into cracks, then leaping out and flying away into the icy depths. “Did you see that?”
RabbitEar frowns in the direction I’m looking. “What?”
I massage my forehead. “Never mind. It’s probably just my headache.”
He puts a gentle hand on my arm. “You often see strange things when you have a bad headache: floating lights and zigzagging lines. That’s probably all it was.”
I nod, but I’m not so sure.
RabbitEar extends a hand to the garish ceiling. “Why do they still have flesh? Why haven’t predators reduced them to gleaming bones? Are they, like the white tubes, poisoned and the animals know it?”
“I’m sure they must be.” Hoodwink massages his jaw and looks at the rest of us. “We all hurt in here, don’t we?”
Nods go around.
RabbitEar’s feet grate on the floor as he steps closer to Mink. “Perhaps this wasn’t about terrorizing the enemy. These could be war trophies. Taking the head of your enemy in battle is a sign of bravery. Maybe the Old Woman of the Mountain was trying to show her own people how brave she was?”
Mink slowly nods. “Maybe.”
Almost mesmerized by the faces, none of us seems quite willing to acknowledge the darkness growing in the tunnel just outside the chamber. Father Sun must be resting upon the western horizon.
Finally, Mink turns to look in the direction of the exit. “We need to leave soon. As it is, we won’t get home until full dark. There will be far more lions and wolves out hunting.” He pauses and stretches his back muscles. “And I’m not sure any of us can stand this much longer.”
Hoodwink shakes his head. “Can’t leave yet, War Leader. I want to see how far the faces go down into the ice tunnels.”
Jawbone grabs his parchment-like hand. “No, don’t! The sad man doesn’t want anyone to see him.”
Hoodwink frowns down at him. “The sad man? Who is he?”
Jawbone blinks owlishly. “He doesn’t want you to look at his scars.”
“If he doesn’t want me to, I won’t.”
Jawbone releases Hoodwink’s hand and trots away down the tunnel where I saw the shadow.
“Don’t go too far, son,” I call.
“I’m not a baby, Mother. I won’t get lost.”
RabbitEar glances at me and grimaces. “He’s a little surly today, isn’t he?”
“Of course he’s surly,” Mink replies. “He’s on the verge of manhood. By the time he’s seen fourteen summers, he will know far more than either of you ever will in your entire lives.”
RabbitEar chuckles. “As you did?”
“That’s how I know.”
They laugh.
I do not. My gaze follows my son down the tunnel. Perhaps they understand my son better than I do, but I don’t see an ordinary adolescent struggle. I see something far different. His taut muscles and clamped jaw tell me that fear lurks just behind that surly shield. He doesn’t want the three most important men in his life—or his mother, the warrior woman—to think he’s a coward, especially not just before he climbs the quest wall to become a man. But there’s more going on inside him than I can fathom. Worries me.
As Elder Hoodwink walks toward a side tunnel, RabbitEar runs after him to grab his elbow to steady his steps.
That leaves only Mink standing beside me. All around, the walls quiver and flash.
“Did you notice, Quiller? Their eyes are all open. If they’d known they were about to die, at least a few would have closed their eyes. It’s human nature. They must have died staring in wide-eyed horror at whatever killed them.”
“I thought the same thing when I first saw them.” I tip my chin toward the man with the startled expression. His blue-marble eyes have a chalky appearance, but tiny black dots glow. “See how small his pupils are? The horror must have been unbearably brilliant.”
From somewhere down the tunnel Jawbone explores, a scratch-scratch sound rises. I glance in that direction and take a new grip on my spear. I call, “Jawbone? Are you all right?”
“No, I’m lying dead at the bottom of a cliff,” he replies, as though exasperated. “I’m just exploring, Mother.”
I start to say something angry, but Mink grabs my forearm and shakes his head.
“Not worth it,” he says.
I sigh and nod.
We walk around together, studying the ceiling.
Finally, Mink says, “Did you also notice that while there are a few men here, most seem to be women and children?”
“I did.”
It stirs in me again, the awful silence of the Jemen dead. I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that their mysterious war was savage beyond my understanding.
The scratch-scratch noise is louder, closer to Jawbone, who stands staring down the tunnel. I have the overwhelming urge to charge down there, grab my son, and bolt outside, just run and not stop until I get him safely home.
“It’s just mice,” Mink says.
“Doesn’t sound like mice. Sounds like small feet shuffling—”
“Quiller?” Elder Hoodwink calls. “Could you please take a look at this?”
“Coming, elder.”
Ducking low, I follow the tunnel until it opens into a new cavern. Womblike, it’s circular, forty hand-lengths in diameter, and embedded all around with pulsing blue faces. More tunnels jut off and plunge downward.
“See here? This is an adult’s body.” Elder Hoodwink presses his nose to the ice.
RabbitEar whispers, “He was very tall, but thin to the point of starvation, and look at his terrible scars. Do you think this is the ‘sad man’?”
“Possibly,” I answer as I frown into the depths of the ice.
“I think he was a warrior.”
“Why? I don’t think these are battle wounds. See, here and here? Too perfect to be knife slashes. I think the designs were carved into the flesh while he or she lived.” My finger traces the air above the ice, outlining the curling white ridges that cover the arms and legs.
“So you think he was tortured? Why would anyone have tortured him this way?”
“Maybe he did it himself. As a remembrance.”
I struggle to see deeper into the opaque patches that obscure the body, trying to decipher the symbols. Like the white tubes on the shore, I have seen many rock-hewn cavern walls covered with ancient Jemen symbols. Lynx tells me they are letters, verses, and form-u-las . . . but this Jemen man’s truths were not painted upon stone. They were inscribed like serpents slithering and coiling across his emaciated flesh. “Are you saying he lived through the battle and inscribed the events on his flesh? As we paint such events on hides to remember them?”
Hoodwink says, “RabbitEar may be right. If this was Black Lake, the man may have crawled from the water, sat upon the shore, and carved his flesh while he stared out at the floating bodies of his family.”
“Gods, I can’t imagine . . .” RabbitEar shifts his grip on his spear.
Hoodwink says, “Well, if this is Jawbone’s ‘sad man,’ he does not wish us to stare at him. I’m moving on.”
My gaze is drawn in the direction of our adopted son. Before we discovered our four children in a boat floating offshore, we walked through the corpses of their families, corpses that had been ripped apart and scattered across the decimated village. If anyone can imagine how the sad man buried in the ice feels, it’s our son.
The tunnel where Elder Hoodwink walks is progressively narrowing until the shining wreckage of faces closes in around him, and the blue gleam bleaches the color from his wrinkled skin, making him appear as much a corpse as those poor people in the ice.
“Any more bodies?” Mink calls from the chamber above.
“Not yet,” I call back. “But . . .”
“Mother!” Jawbone cries out and charges into the chamber breathing hard. “Let’s go! We have to leave right now.”
I stare at the tunnel he was exploring. “Why, did you see something that scared you?”
“I’m not afraid of the boy,” he says and throws out his chest. “But he says it’s time to go. Let’s go!”
RabbitEar walks over to place a hand on Jawbone’s back. “Actually, I agree. I hurt all over.”
“Elder?” Mink calls down. “We need to leave here.”
“Yes, I’m coming.” Hoodwink hobbles up the tunnel. “I’m more than ready to return to the village and tell the others what we’ve seen. The council will wish to discuss it.”
RabbitEar leads the way back up the tunnel into the main burial chamber where Mink still stands. “Are you guarding the rear again, Mink?”
“No, I’ll take the lead.” His eyes are focused on the tunnel where we heard the scratch-scratch noise. It’s still there. It comes closer and closer, but never seems to arrive. “Come on. I don’t want to stay here one moment longer than we have to.”
Mink turns and strides for the exit tunnel, where he hurries up the incline. The amber gleam of sunset fills the maw.
“Let me help you, elder,” RabbitEar says as he reaches out to support Hoodwink’s elbow.
“Thank you, warrior. I’m very sick to my stomach.”
I follow the men with my arm around Jawbone’s shoulders. “Everything’s all right, Jawbone. You don’t have to be afraid.”
“Stop treating me like a baby! I am not afraid!” he insists, but glances behind us as though trying to make certain we’re not being followed.