CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN: SMALL THINGS CAN GO WRONG
Starved for oxygen, Calin gasped for breath as he sat up coughing badly. The feeling as if his flesh had exploded coursed through him even though he had never got close to that fire inside. Through his blurry vision he only barely took notice of a white stone tumbling from his heaving chest to the floor. All the while, he fed his body with air and slowly his vision started coming back into focus.
His breathing eased out and he started the process of collecting himself. It had been an intense experience, not something he would soon forget. He wondered if he would ever know where he was taken. The storming dark waters were unfamiliar amongst the feelings of his mind moving through it. But wherever it had been, it had taught him that this hidden world carried a dark history, one which he didn’t understand in the least. One fact stood out, the men with the crimson suns was up to something and that frightened him immensely.
Sitting there, he gulped down a few breaths, his body was still tingling. He looked down to his arm to where the strange wound was and gasped as the gruesome silver veins in his arm started drawing back towards the gash. He grimaced with the alien feeling.
The moment the silvery grey under his skin reached the slash in his arm; silver dust rolled out of the wound and tumbled to the bed’s sheet and the floor.
He freaked out, but all he could do was watch in mute horror of the display.
To his surprise, everything about the wound that had looked festered and bad was being expunged out the gash.
He made a mental note to never get bitten again. Besides the whole thing being the most pain he had ever been through, it was also the craziest.
After the last of the silver dust rolled out of the wound, smoke evaporated from the slash. He couldn’t resist touching it and braced himself for pain.
But it was only a tender scar, with only a hint of a silver coloration remaining. The mad experience made him shake his head.
The tingling in his arm slowly ebbed away and he finally looked around in the small room of the caravan. It was the first time he really spotted the other two beds in the room. He wondered who stayed there, but was pleasantly surprised to see Kara’s rucksack next to one of the beds.
Slowly he got up and he placed his feet on the floor. Immediately remarking something odd the next moment. All the aches in his body were gone. As much as it completely confused him, he couldn’t help but marvel at it and smiled.
“Wow, some awesome medicine. Severely creepy, but awesome.”
He glanced around the bed and found his blue lined cloak stitched up masterfully, much better than the rudimentary fix from the cave. To his surprise his gauntlets were repaired as well. Showing only the barest of marks, of where the Nighthound’s teeth had penetrated through the metal. Everything looked as good as new. But looking down at his new scar on his right arm, it reminded him of that intense fight, and that he was lucky to still be alive.
A breath of pure relief left his mouth, but he had to be more careful.
The thought of leaving his friends, who had followed him, behind in this world was a scary one. He swiftly donned his attire and his sword.
Just then he spotted the white stone that had rolled from his chest on the ground.
It brought back the memory of it being on his chest when he woke up so violently. He reached for it out of a deep set curiosity, but the second he bent over, the caravan lurched from side to side. He fell to the bed and clung to the mattress as best as he could; frantic shouts came through the wooden walls just outside the caravan.
Calin launched himself to the fixed pipe next to the door and balanced himself through the tumultuous room. He grabbed hold of the door handle to make his way outside, but it was locked.
Another heave sent him sprawling towards the wall on his right. He hit it hard and grimaced as his back went into a spasm.
Someone landed next to him with a hard thud. He tumbled ungraciously back to the bed and looked toward the intruder to find Kara standing there. He had missed the small iron ladder that led up into a trapdoor in the roof.
The girl’s green eyes lit up.
“Calin! You’re awake! Thank heavens.” Her smile turned into a frown. “Do you know how scared you had me? Even Evany was beside herself, she’s been in tears most of the time. It’s been two days!” The last was exclaimed.
Calin’s eyes widened and blew out his breath in frustration.
“Ugh... Not again... why me.”
The girl regarded him with confusion and asked, “Again? What are you talking ab— wait... never mind we need to get up top. Mictoria said I have to check on you and bring her sword.” Calin raised an eyebrow at that and the girl realized his confusion.
“Just a precaution,” She said. “We are leaving the Morning trees.”
That explained even less and he quickly asked, “What does leaving the trees have anything to do with getting her sword?”
Kara rummaged through a container and looked at him in thought.
“Hmm,” She said, “I’m not entirely sure. But she has been going on and on about how it’s never safe to leave the light of the Morning trees when night is coming. So I take her word for it.”
The girl continued digging through various items. Part way through her search, Kara glanced up, regarding him with a more academic look.
“Well, you look all better,” She said. “So up top with you, I’ll join you in a minute.”
Just as Kara finished her sentence, the caravan lurched to the side again.
The next moment she tumbled straight towards him and Calin grabbed her to steady her as she struck him. The whole thing unsettled him as he set the girl down on the bed and scrambled towards the ladder. She looked flustered with frustration at being the one who had lost her footing, but Calin just shot her a wink as he reached the bars built in the wall.
It was hard to get a tight grip on the iron bars as he climbed up while the carriage seemed to go all over the place; it was a halting process, but after what felt like minutes he reached the hatch. Kara’s voice came from behind, an uncertainty in it.
“Calin ... about before ... I’m so sorry for how I reacted. I ... I tried sorting through my mind. Tried to figure out what it means. But, please be patient with me. There are too many things waging war in me right now to think clearly.”
Silence filled the caravan, as Calin paused at the hatch. His muscles were all tensed up. But even from the confusion Kara’s reaction had caused him, he somehow understood the great conflict in her. With a sigh he looked down in to her anxious eyes.
“I’ll be patient Kara, you know that. You are and will always be my friend. But... it hurt ... the way you reacted.”
“I know!” She exclaimed with a pained expression. “I never wanted to hurt you! It’s just... It’s just...”
“So confusing?” He ventured.
She just nodded sadly. And the look on her face made the tension slip from his shoulders.
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“Relax,” He said gently, “You think too much.”
It was all confusing to him too.
Her features softened visibly, yet not all the tension left her face. Calin shrugged, the situation was too complicated to resolve right then. No solution presented itself before he pushed the latch open with his shoulder.
Broken rays of sunlight hit his face as his head cleared the edge of the trap door. He didn’t have time to really look around as the carriage heaved again; he just clung on for dear life, but a moment later his grip was slipping on the smooth iron bars of the ladder. Just before he fell back into the room below, a hand shot into view and grabbed hold of his arm. It was accompanied by a shout. “Hold on Nísir!”
It was utterly good timing on her behalf as he gladly accepted Mictoria’s help as he shifted himself up on to the roof of the fast moving carriage.
With a fling of his arms, he grabbed tightly hold of the closest thing. It was one of the leather straps that were strung all around a railing. He twisted his arm into the leather and finally found better handholds on the half a meter high railing; it seemed to encompass the rim of the entire roof.
Somehow it didn’t seem farfetched to assume that the Floating Gypsies lived a bumpy ride.
A knot formed in his stomach as he realized they were swaying back and forth while the caravans descended down through a mountainous pass. A sheer drop descended down a vertical cliff on the left which almost sent him scrambling away at the view, but he immediately looked away to the right.
There was a massive body of rock mightily stretched into the low hanging clouds above him. He felt small and scared at the craggy pass that screamed defiance at weary travellers who would dare journey through it.
Something that Kara had said made him look back. A pathway crept out of the thick forest between two mountains. It looked as though it was swallowing the edge of the defiant mountain pass with green.
After a moment he sat back from the side and looked at the woman holding the reins of the caravan. Calin crawled to the front to get a better view and was stumped as the reins weren’t connected to horses but disappeared under the carriage. It hadn’t registered last time; he had been too worried with the infection. The realization accompanied by confusion must have shown on his face, as the woman laughed loudly. “You wonder how the Floating Caravans work Nísir, don’t you?”
Calin nodded, yet he shifted his body uncomfortably on the roof of the odd carriage, not yet trusting it.
Mictoria was yanking at the reigns and the carriage heaved to the right around a sharp bend. Through it all Calin held on as tight as he could and the woman kept laughing next to him.
The experience was not even fazing her. She is crazy... It was all but clear as the woman seemed to utterly enjoy the terrifying ride. There was no doubt that she was.
But for some reason he couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the woman laughing while steering the Floating Caravan down the truly dangerous road. The ringlets of her hair fluttered behind her in the wind blowing over the roof in gusts.
There were shouts all around as the other carriages of the caravan reigned in to make the deadly turns.
Calin didn’t dare look over the side anymore as the carriage banked to the sheer drop. Then the snake in the dangerous road straightened a bit; though it only seemed to slightly calm the mad dash down the pass.
Mictoria set her reigns into a more comfortable position and said, “We use rocks from the Shifting Plains. My people discovered the shifting rocks many centuries ago, Nísir and we still use it to make our caravans float. It is a fitting name they gave us, for as our hearts fly to travel so does our means to do so, yes?”
Truly, Calin couldn’t help but have wonder for the Floating Gypsies; crazy as they may be, he found them fascinating. What he couldn’t figure out was Tyas’ reluctance to deal with them; it didn’t make sense in the least.
It wasn’t long before his curiosity got the better of him as the nagging questions in his head made him ask, “So how do you move them forward and turn them?”
Not missing a stride, Mictoria chuckled at him, but finally said, “I can’t tell you how we move them forward, that is, hmm what do you call it, a secret, yes? The turning is in the shape of the shifting rocks and our rudder man, handle the sharper turns at the back, be with the helm or with the spade.”
The woman smiled at him as he tried to figure it out. Just then Mictoria looked back and said, “Ah Madam Kara, good of you to join us.”
Calin glanced toward the trapdoor where Kara was struggling to get up. He quickly reached out and drew her to a more comfortable place. It was not certain if it was safer up here or not.
***
A sigh escaped Kara as she shifted in next to him. “Not an easy thing to climb that ladder.”
Calin smirked at her for a moment, but stayed silent. Then the statement Mictoria had made came back to him and he asked, “Where’s the rudder man?”
Strangely enough, Kara was the one to answer.
“It is a small platform at the back, there is a person there that has multiple means to assist. Our rudder man’s name is Christoff.”
There were so many questions to ask, but he asked the next logical one. “So how does he know when to assist?”
It wasn’t a second before Kara was smiling broadly unlike the severely conflicted person she had been with their last few talks.
“They use a tube of mirrors Calin,” She said with exuberance. “It’s incredible. The rudder man can easily see what is going on in front.” Kara’s eyes were shining with what Calin could only guess as sheer joy of the discovery. Instead of discovering the history of ancient things, Kara was finding new things that had long traditions in these hidden lands.
The girl looked at Mictoria and said, “Really Mictoria your people are amazing in all the little practical things. I wish my father could meet you.”
There was a pause after that, but the gypsy woman smiled and said, “Then I hope you find him Madam, from what you told me, he seems like a remarkable man.”
Calin watched as Kara’s eyes drifted to the distant mountains. “I sure hope we do.”
***
While they descended deeper into the valley between the mountains, Calin slowly started relaxing. The sheer drop to the left disappeared all together around a long bend in the pass. In turn it revealed long stretches of grassy plains that lay beyond the cliffs which stood as a barrier. The plains stretched for many kilometres to the one side.
Somewhere in the distance there were a host of trees, but the cliffs soon blocked the entire view as they descended further down the long pass.
Just then the only other carriage fifty meters in front of them lurched to a halt. Mictoria pulled hard on the reigns and shouted. “Christoff! Stop the caravan! Qarva!”
The next moment the carriage heaved forward and Calin strained with the momentum, gripping hard at the leather straps.
When it settled, he looked at the caravan in front of them.
The carriage stood at the wall of the cliffs and there seemed to be a tunnel filled with large boulders. The driver of the first carriage stood on the roof. It was the older man that he had seen arguing with Mictoria before the healing. The man walked to the back of his carriage saying, “Mictoria, we have a problem.”
Calin watched the woman carefully next to him as her features darkened.
“I know ... Ta-Reen,” She called back after a moment. “Set the path down into the valley of blades. We must just have to risk it. The night is not far off.”
The stoic expression the man gave Mictoria was as unreadable as a rock. But on the bottom platform of the front carriage, the rudder man’s face spoke of something different. Fear boldly flashed over his face. There was horror in his eyes. Calin gulped forcefully, seeing it.
The carriage started forward down a somewhat steep slope on the left of the collapsed tunnel.
The path looked unused, unlike the path through the pass. The immediate movement forward of Calin’s caravan sent a shiver crawling down his spine. What made that man so afraid? The question kept repeating in his mind with the decent into the valley.
As they left the shadows of the mountains and eased down into a deep valley, the grassy planes that had come back into view disappeared slowly as the cliffs of the valley rose up on both sides of them. Even the sun’s light seemed less prominent the further they went down.
On the edges of his vision, wrecks of old caravans adorned the foot of the cliffs, broken wheels and the smashed walls from the very carriages that use to protect those travellers were all over the place. Of the travellers themselves, there were no sign.
Finally Calin couldn’t take the tension anymore. He spun on Mictoria and asked, “What is down there that has everybody as quiet as the grave.”
Mictoria’s eyes widened and she threw up her hand saying in a very low voice.
“Shhhh Nísir Calin, we cannot speak loudly. We don’t want to wake the Igri.”
Before he could ask what on Earth the Igri was, she held up her hand and motioned to the cliff walls. Calin looked around for any movement but could see nothing. Then Mictoria looked him in the eyes, something about that look made Calin’s insides go cold before she said,
“Be vigilant Nísir, and pray that we make Yera’s Crossing before the night falls.”
Through the entire exchange Calin studied Mictoria’s face carefully, something about how she acted now truly made him afraid. This woman had been laughing at the danger of the descent, basking in the joys of the thrill, but now her eyes were wild and her quick smile long forgotten.
Calin glanced back at Kara as much to avoid fuelling his own fear as to check if the girl was okay. The girl had her dagger in hand. She looked uncertain which was to say the least. Yet as she moved closer to Calin, she surprised him by whispering. “Mictoria said that the only safe place in the low lands was within the trees. This valley is giving me the creeps.”
Dazedly Calin nodded, as he couldn’t help but look at their surroundings. Not a single tree was in sight. Just a seemingly endless valley of sandstone and rocks that caught the rays of the sun, yet not knowing what lurked in its nooks and crannies unsettled him greatly.
“Me too,” Calin said absently. It was too loud though when he was shushed harshly by Mictoria. Without saying anything, the woman motioned to his sword and that he should unsheathe it quietly.
Not needing further encouragement, Calin slowly started to draw on the sword’s handle. He cringed with the metal sliding against metal. It reminded him briefly of his lapse in the fort.
Just as his sword was almost out of the scabbard a rock tumbled from the edge of the cliff. It echoed loudly through the rocky canyon that crept below the grassy plains.
The mountains looked over their edges from the sides as silent spectators with a warning of what was to come.