“… And this is all we know about what could be inside the crater,” Aili concluded.
Rabam sat up straighter. He had tried aiding her during the presentation, but the questions from the council had been too many and he’d had to sit down, exhausted. It had also started raining halfway through, so they had moved the chairs and the tripod holding the blackboard from the public square to the gym, starting the current explanation from the beginning.
She stopped to enjoy the silence, without interrupting it to ask for more questions. The council members weren’t shy about asking them regardless of whether she was already speaking or not, so it was safe to assume that at least most of them had, finally, understood.
“So,” elder Nakai said, returning to the knitting needles and the incomplete holder in her lap. “What do we do?”
The sound of her voice seemed to awaken the public that had gathered all around the room. Chatter broke out, mostly people asking for a summary from their neighbors or commenting on unrelated matters. Aili wished she could cut their words out without missing what the council members were saying. At least she could hear the rain too with her domain expanded, and the relaxing tapping sound it made on the roofs.
Nobody answered the elder, so Lada looked at the empty chair.
“What do you suggest we do, Aili?”
“Nothing,” she said, feigning a bit of hesitation. “There’s nothing we can do to reach those objects, whatever they are. And I doubt the information they contain would help us.”
“The information maybe not.” Davem, the blacksmith, leaned back on his chair with a twinkle in his hazel eyes. “But if we steal their viss, we can force the monks to leave us alone.”
Aili could see the enthusiasm spread from him to all the other council members.
“They almost captured the village last time,” she pointed out, but her words were covered by someone else asking: “What if we dig through the mountain until we reach it?”
There was a bit of hesitation as the council considered the question.
“I think you’re underestimating the situation,” Aili tried again.
“We should start from the forest, though,” Caida said. Her house had been buried under the debris, so she had organized the housing situation for everyone who had found themselves homeless like her. “Higher from here. Rabam can guide us, right?”
He glanced up, as if telling Aili he was sorry, before answering.
“As far as I know the crater is at the center of the mountain and goes down almost to sea level. But nobody knows for sure.”
“So it should be reachable everywhere,” Caida said. “We don’t need to go too far.”
Lada raised both hands, capturing everyone’s attention.
“I suggest we vote before elaborating this idea further.”
“We should include everyone,” elder Nakai said, eyeing the crowd.
“Right. And if someone has another idea, speak up now.”
Nobody did, so they proceeded with the votation. In the end, they had adopted a system similar to the one used by the monks without Aili needing to mention it.
“Who wants to wait for the monks to come here again?”
Of the hundred or so people in the gym, at least thirty raised their hands. Aili knew they weren’t enough and braced herself.
“Who wants us to discuss the idea of digging through the mountain?”
The rest of the public voted, squashing any hope Aili might have had.
“Very well,” Lada said. “Let’s discuss what can be done.”
Aili couldn’t understand what was wrong with the people of Suimer. Lausune’s inhabitants had been calm, preoccupied with their lives, uncaring about the rest of the village because Zeles was better at taking care of it than they ever could.
Maybe it was Vizena’s fault. Maybe now that they had tasted a kind of freedom they’d never experienced, they were determined to keep it even if it could annihilate them. She didn’t know whether it was the right explanation, but she chose to believe it.
“I have to warn you, though,” she said. “We should still be careful not to destroy the crater and whatever it contains. Without viss, there will be no more gods, and without gods the mountain will crumble.”
They already knew that, and they didn’t listen.
“Somebody has a map?” One of the school’s teachers asked.
She helped the group of people next to the bookshelves looking for it. After turning the slim geography section upside-down, they only found a colorful drawing on two pages of one side of the mountain. It wasn’t even remotely accurate, but they all leaned on it as if it hid a secret entrance to the crater.
“There’s an old mine here,” the teacher said, pointing at a gray patch surrounded by trees. “Although they have already covered it with soil and it’s not deep.”
“We could start there,” Davem agreed. “But we’ve never done something similar on such a big scale under…”
He gestured, but didn’t say her name.
“We should ask around if someone has any idea how to proceed,” Lada commented.
“I’ve mined there for some personal projects,” a voice said from the public. “I can help.”
Aili had seen him stand and already anticipated the moment when everyone would turn to look at him and recognize who he was.
“Enem,” the public hissed at slightly different moments from all the corners of the gym.
He stood straight, hands joined in front of his body. He had a pendant dangling from his neck, a reproduction of Vizena’s statue carved out of the stone of her body. From what Aili could gather, the pious had entered the temple during the night while the rest of the village was celebrating and taken away as many fragments as they could while Zeles was asleep, before being discovered and kicked out.
“I’ll help you,” he continued, despite the sounds of protest coming from the rest of the audience, “Only if you’ll let the followers of Vizena leave with food, water and tools. And we want to leave at night, when the monks can’t catch us.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“You can leave now, if you want,” a man yelled. “Nobody will miss you.”
Similar considerations were expressed out loud by the rest of the crowd. None of the council members seemed intentioned to stop them, and Aili and Rabam knew better than showing to be on the side of the pious in any form or way. They were still considered outsiders, after all; the trust they received depended only on the help they could give.
“The pious want to leave,” Davem said with his booming voice. “We should listen. It’s a great deal for the rest of us.”
“Not with our resources,” elder Naika said, lowering the holder.
“They’re consuming them anyways by living here,” the teacher commented. “It’s a trade-off. We can give away a lot of food now to hopefully preserve the rest a bit longer.”
Lada looked up, then at the empty chair.
“Could you dig for us, Aili?”
“Inside the forest? Maybe, but I would need to leave the village. I don’t want to risk it again, after last time.”
“That also means the volunteers won’t be under her protection,” Rabam pointed out.
“I’m sure we’ll find someone,” Davem said, then looked at Enem. “Come here, before they strangle you. Let’s talk about the details.”
Enem was next to the wall and far from the table, but he didn’t struggle to reach it, since the crowd had moved to create an empty space around him. He bent over the drawing and started pointing, talking about people, materials and resources.
They decided to go out at night, and bring with them everyone that was trained enough to use a spear. The noises couldn’t be avoided, so every musician, be they beginners or professionals, would have played for the whole night. A group of fast runners would have waited outside the village to distract the monks in case they noticed and came to investigate. The work would have lasted three nights, from the moment the sun set to the first lights, and then they’d have reevaluated their progress to decide whether it was worth continuing.
By midnight, the gym was even more crowded and the plan had been defined in every possible detail. And yet, Aili followed the rest of the meeting with the sensation it would all be useless, but she couldn’t pinpoint why.
They returned early, and it was just the first night. Aili feared something had happened, so she made the musicians stop and focused all of her attention on the limit of her domain. She could see movement between the trees, but at least no trace of gray tunics.
Rabam was the first one to resurface, with a blank expression.
“We can’t go on,” he said. “We reached a quarter of a towerlength, then we might as well started punching the rock. It didn’t move. We can’t go past it.”
It made sense. It made perfect sense, and Aili hated herself a bit for not being able to guess it before.
“It’s the gods,” she said. “We prevent the mountain from crumbling and the rocks from detaching. That’s why you can’t dig too deep.”
The rest of the volunteers had started gathering at the feet of the external wall, caked in dirt and sweat. They looked at the long ladder that led home with something akin to desperation, so Aili carried them inside using her winds.
Rabam declined her help for the moment and propped his back against the wall.
“It would have been nice to have guessed it before we did all this.”
“You’re right. Sorry.”
“No, I’m angry at myself. Every single one of us had the information to guess it. It doesn’t always have to be you.”
Aili realized that she wanted to be the one to guess everything, and not succeeding felt like a failure. She pushed the thought aside.
“It wasn’t completely useless. Now we know why the monks weren’t worried about the gods digging a tunnel through the mountain to reach them. Or…”
She thought about the village. The first thing she and Saia had seen the day they arrived was the houses they were building on the outside.
“Or the fact it was all built before the gods ever existed, and never changed.”
Rabam’s eyes widened.
“I’ve never thought about it. I always took for granted that the mountain was more delicate than it looked, and that was why we never dug new rooms.”
“Another thing we can’t use,” Aili commented.
“No, but…”
Aili knew that look of intense focus, how dangerous it was on reckless people like Saia or Rabam.
“There are ten gods around the mountain, now,” he slowly said, eyes fixed as he gathered his thoughts. “If we steal one, and you leave the mountain with them, we could make it tremble.”
“And then what? Digging while the mountain crumbles around you means certain death. And if I leave the village again, the monks could seize it this time.”
“You wouldn’t need to go far. But no, I didn’t mean digging.”
“What, then?”
He stood in silence for a bit, then shook his head.
“Forget it, you’re right.”
“I can see you’re lying, you know? You have an idea I won’t like.”
“Exactly why you should forget I ever said anything.”
“Right, so that you can tell it to everyone at the meeting, because the people of this village are insane and will agree with you no matter what I want or say.”
Rabam nodded. He was actually smiling a bit through the guilt.
“Pick me up?” he asked.
“I’m tempted to just leave you here.”
“Then you’d never know my idea. The curiosity will eat you alive.”
Aili evoked a wind strong enough to make him stumble, eliciting a laugh. She intensified it until it could carry Rabam back into the village.
A small crowd had gathered in the square. They were all pious, with bags full of clothes, food, tools and weapons. Enem stood in front of them like a hero. A disheveled, dirty, sweaty hero.
The rest of the village lingered around the group, glaring at them.
“We’re ready to leave,” he said. Aili heard the hatred in his voice, the same every pious used when they were forced to talk to her.
She obliged, carrying them out without worrying too much about being gentle. She realized the conversation with Rabam had made her nervous and slowed down, handling the sacks full of provisions more gently. The pious disappeared into the forest, at night, without a torch to guide them. She almost felt pity for them.
“The conversation isn’t over,” she told Rabam.
He just smiled, but it was a tight expression. Just thinking about his idea made him worried. Aili had a bad feeling about it.
“It’s madness.”
“I know.”
“You’ll die.”
“It’s likely. Are you going to help me, now?”
Rabam was bending over the bundles of herbs laid out on the table in front of him, trying to distinguish their names and properties at candlelight by comparing them to the detailed drawings in a thick book. The gym was empty at that early hour of the morning, probably because the rain was pouring down stronger than ever. The herbs had been a gift from the local herbalist, just like the small bottles that littered the rest of the table.
“I can leave, you know?” Aili pointed out. Rabam had dismissed everything she’d said up to that moment, so she was becoming increasingly desperate. “There are ten gods now, I’m not needed to keep the mountain whole. I can refuse to help you with your stupid plans.”
“I’ll make an attempt anyway. I would even have tried alone, if the council had refused.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. If you want to die so badly, why didn’t you remain at the monks’ village?”
He took an unlabeled bottle, opened it and sipped the content. Soon he started sweating more than normal, hands trembling.
“What was that?”
“Poison,” he managed to say. “From a sea snake.”
“Are you insane?”
“Now, which herbs can I use to heal myself?”
Aili pushed her viss into his body until the symptoms disappeared.
“That’s not how it works. There’s no cure.”
“And yet you just healed me. How?”
“I won’t tell you.”
He raised the bottle again, but Aili snatched it away from his hands with a wind.
“They’ll deactivate you later this morning,” Rabam said. “You can’t keep it away from me forever.”
“They can deactivate me if I allow it. They are not the monks, and I’m their biggest advantage.”
Rabam closed his fists on the table. Aili realized it was the first time she’d seen him angry, even if his anger mostly seemed to be aimed inward in some way.
“I need to prepare,” he said. “The plan has been approved.”
“It doesn’t mean anything if I won’t let you leave.”
Rabam sighed.
“You’re right: this is not the kind of relationship I want to have with you. I don’t want to take orders and execute them mindlessly. I’ve decided to see this plan through and I need a friend that supports me, not another problem to deal with.”
“Zeles died because he didn’t listen to me. And now you’re doing the same.”
“He died because it was his choice, you had nothing to do with it.”
“Saia left!” Aili yelled. “Then you disappeared, then Zeles died. Why are all of you so determined to leave me alone?”
Aili focused on the rain. It had a way to calm her down, even if it was a poor replacement for crying.
“I don’t want to be in constant mourning for the rest of my life,” she said, more quietly. “It has become too long for that.”
Rabam fiddled with the corner of a page. Aili wanted to snatch away the book too, but the risk of tearing it was too high.
“I won’t change my mind,” he said. “But if you help me prepare, maybe I will succeed. And if I fail… Is this how you want me to spend my last days? Bickering with you?”
Aili missed having a statue to pace with.
“I used my viss,” she said. “I added it to yours. The human body has a lot of healing patterns: most of them mend tears or fix broken bones, over time. One of them can destroy toxins like snake venom. Usually it’s not strong enough to fight something this powerful, but with a big enough quantity of viss it can clean up everything.”
“So it’s just a matter of pushing viss inside my body? I don’t need another pattern or something?”
“Yes. Just viss.”
Rabam’s eyes twinkled in the candlelight.
“Good.” He lowered his eyes onto the bottle of venom. “Good. I can work with that.”