CHAPTER 10

I come to and with a cool breeze on my face. It’s a short-lasting mercy. The next thing I feel is the awful, nauseating waves of pain radiating from my hand. I whimper.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Rev mutters. “I thought I was going to have to drag you all the way.”

My hand is tightly wrapped in something, though that something is already soaked through with blood. I touch the outside of my bandage, wincing at the pain the smallest graze causes. My head feels like it’s filled with rocks, and anything less than careful immobility will make them all tumble from uneasy perches and destroy what’s left of my mind.

“Ow,” I manage.

“You could have died,” Rev says.

I don’t answer. It feels more diplomatic.

“You would have.” she insists.

“You’re the worst bedside company, you know.”

“Don’t laugh!” she snaps. “If you hadn’t come back for that stupid potion none of this would have happened. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Where is the potion?” I ask.

“I smashed it,” Rev answers. “At least now there’s a chance you’ll behave.”

My eyes snap open and immediately shut closed. There’s too much light. I let out a pained moan.

“You do you even care about some mystery potion?”

“They said they quested for it. How much do you think it’s worth? A few silver pieces, or…” I search for a suitably impressive sum. “Thirty gold coins?”

Rev snorts.

“That would be enough to trade for Katha.”

“That’s enough to buy a herd of horses, Mal,” Rev says. “I know Godtouched aren’t exactly sane, but thirty gold pieces for a drink is beyond even them.”

I breathe in slowly. The air is filled with a strange fragrance that the breeze carries to and fro. Suddenly, there is a crack. It’s much louder now. Very close. Too close.

Light pierces into my open eyes. It streams from the myriad points I thought were stars. Now I can see that, whatever they are, is set in the inside of a large cave, suffusing it with a pale glimmer. Crystals? Next to each, there are deeper shadows. Tunnels.

Sitting up takes the better part of the last of my energy. I look around. This cave is truly huge. It bulges, wide as a field, and all around it I can see the light-giving somethings.

Crack!

I’m taken out of my pained reverie by the sound. I turn to it and see a figure with its back turned to us, facing another hole in the walls of the cave. But this one is too shallow to be a tunnel. It’s the start of an alcove, rather. As I watch, a miniature rockslide issues from within, clattering around the figure’s feet. The alcove is a little bit deeper now.

“It’s friendly,” Rev says as she crouches next to me. “Or at least it didn’t attack me when I stumbled in carrying you. Drink.”

She produces the all but empty waterskin we pilfered from the Godtouched. I try to balance my thirst against the knowledge that there will be no more water after this is gone and manage a sip.

“You should drink too,” I say. My eyes are fixed on the figure. Immobile. Watching the hole intently.

“I’m good,” Rev says. She flashes a brief smile through cracked lips. “How’s the hand?”

“Please drink, Rev,” I say.

Crack!

Another small rockslide. Of their own volition, rocks already on the floor make space for the newly arrived.

“He’s… He’s using magic,” I say, standing on unsteady legs. Rev supports me. The waterskin is left forgotten on the ground.

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“I think it might be an it, Malco,” she says. “And no. I got distracted trying to keep you from bleeding out. Don’t do that,” she adds when I take a step forward. “We should be leaving”

“You’re the one who said it’s friendly,” I say. “I might as well ask it how we leave.”

Rev doesn’t answer, but I see her raise Medrein’s sword as I begin to walk forward.

Meanwhile, the figure has broken the rock in the alcove a few more times. It’s beginning to look like a tunnel. The beginning of one, at least. It does this without moving, without pointing, without speaking a word. If this is magic, it’s no magic I’ve ever seen.

“Hum. Sir?” I hazard. The figure doesn’t respond.

Rev and I look at each other.

“Erm, hello?”

The figure is dressed in a dark hooded cloak. I see it ripple each time the stone breaks. He – it – turns its head to me, only a flicker of movement, and I take a step back. I was wrong. It wasn’t dressed in a dark cloak. Rather, it’s made of some dark substance that shines like a liquid but also hangs in tatters. It shapes the figure and is shaped by it, with no frontier between the two. The face in front of me is featureless. A black pool. For a moment, I wonder if I’m not looking at the half-insane figure of some especially twisted Godtouched.

But immediately, it turns back to its work. The stone cracks and rocks flow down the tunnel.

“My name is Malco,” I say.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

The creature turns again. Does it seem a trifle curious?

“Hello, Malco,” it says. There is no mouth from where sound might issue, though that doesn’t seem to stop him. “You should not be here.”

“Right,” I say, pondering if that’s a threat. “I, uh, I’m not here on purpose.” How to continue? “Do you have a name?”

“No name,” it says, after a moment of heavy silence. “I dig.”

I look back at Rev, but her bewildered expression tells me something is amiss before she can.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Just chatting—”

“You can understand what it’s saying?”

I raise a quizzical eyebrow.

“What do you mean? It’s speaking Human.”

“Yeah? All those clacks and whistles sound Human to you?”

We don’t have time for this.

“You dig?” I ask the creature in what, to me, sounds like perfectly understandable Human.

“I make space inside the earth,” it explains, monotone. As if illustrating his point, another crack sounds from the little tunnel.

I nod sagely. Angering the insane blob of liquid darkness doesn’t fit in any plan that I can see going well. But I hope a small challenge won’t hurt.

“Why do you dig?”

The Digger stops. For a moment, the periodical cracks are interrupted.

“So that the space can be filled,” it concludes after careful deliberation. “You should come back then. It will have… it will have…” Silence descends as The Digger stops to consider this new and difficult problem.

“Water?” I suggest. “That would be nice.”

Its head stills in my general direction. Though it has no features, I feel its attention bearing down on me.

“Would that be good?” it asks eventually.

“Water is always good,” I nod eagerly. The Digger keeps its – his face steady on mine, and I can feel the intensity of his – her? – absent gaze. It creates a silence that begs to be filled. “You, hum, you can drink it, and you can use it to, uh, clean things…” I lift my left hand in the air, wrapped in the blood-soaked cloth. The mere act of raising it sends a wave of pain down my arm, which I fight hard to ignore. “To clean wounds, too. Hum, did someone tell you to dig?”

“What is it saying?” Rev asks suddenly.

The Digger doesn’t reply to either of our prompts immediately. My question especially seems to confuse him. Them.

“I dig the earth because it is my function,” The Digger says, and then returns to stillness and silent.

I look down and notice I’m standing on smooth and clean ground. There is no evidence of the rocky debris that flowed down from the tunnel entrance.

“What happened to the rocks?” I ask.

The Digger turns its head down and holds it there.

“They were not necessary anymore,” they say. “Should I have done something with them?”

I have the distinct feeling the conversation has escaped its initial goals.

“Listen,” I say. “Could you tell us how to get to Black Sword City? Uh, Red Harbor?” I use the city’s older name, the one it used before the Black Sword Guild took charge of it. “We’re trying to get there for the—"

“I dug a tunnel once,” the creature interrupts. But it’s a different voice that issues from them; a deep, scholarly tone. “It goes all the way to sunlight, and from the entrance you can see the great city of Red Harbor, where ships float close as people on market day. A place of the greatest highs and the deepest lows, where adventurers mix with thieves, and the two are not so easy to tell apart.” The Digger points to a tunnel. It’s no different from any other tunnel. “That’s the entrance, up the rightmost path. What should I have done with the rocks?”

The final question is asked in the earlier, completely different voice. Before I can answer, Rev jumps in.

“I understood that! Have you heard of Reach? The village?”

“I once opened a tunnel into the middle of the Barrow Hills,” they begins again in the academic, declamatory voice, “where lies the old village of Reach. A simple place, far from turbulent cities and the machinations of kings. But it is often in the unassuming and commonplace that the greatest surprises may spring from. So it is with Reach. That is the tunnel. Picking first the path to the left, then the one to the right, one after the other, all the way to the surface. What should I have done with the rocks?” it snaps the last question before we have time to ask anything else. There is an urgency to his questioning.

“You could, uh, make something with them,” I suggest with a shrug. “There is a statue in Reach made of this sort of rock. It’s an old king.” Truthfully, the statue had stood on a plinth by the bridge for a few centuries now and resembled nothing more these days than the rock it had been carved from.

Quiet contemplation. Careful consideration. The Digger turns away from me and a new crack echoes in the cavern. Rocks come out. It regards them, or at least turns its head down to face them.

“We’ll be going, then,” I say.

The Digger doesn’t answer. They’re busy looking down at the rocks. As I watch, they pick one up and places it on top of another before standing back to appraise their work.

Rev pulls me by my good arm, shaking her head.

*

The tunnel The Digger pointed out as the one leading to Red Harbor is a squat thing that shoots up into the darkness at a steep incline. Right next to it is what I thought was a light-giving crystal. Up close, I can see that isn’t a crystal at all. It’s not even a hard material. It looks more like a pliable cloud, filled with a softly shining mist. I prod it, and my finger sinks into it a little without breaking the surface.

“Do you think—” I begin, but Rev interrupts me, producing a smaller cloud. One of its edges is so straight I’m sure it was cut with a sharp blade. I frown.

“What if The Digger had taken offense?”

“That its name?” she shrugs “Then we wouldn’t need to starve to death in the darkness. Think this actually leads somewhere?

“You heard the same instructions I did.”

The tunnel points insistently up, and we follow. Every time we must make a choice between two paths, we trust The Digger and pick right. At first with trepidation, but, as we find no dead ends, with increasing confidence.

It’s still a difficult climb. A slow, unsteady walk made on legs that feel strong as reeds. What healing herbs I’d remembered to pack I threw away with the rest of our supplies. Even so, I ask Rev to stop and shine her piece of cloud on me as I unwrap the bloody strip of cloth, now dry and caked to my skin.

In the dim light, what I see is still enough to make the breath catch in my chest, and then pick up and accelerate. Blood covers nearly everything but the purple spots where it’s accumulating under the skin. It seems Rao broke at least one bone before he even took out his knife. But I have set bones before. It’s the rest that I have trouble making sense of. Rao’s blade hit me directly above the wrist. One slash scraped along the side of the hand, the other pierced it from side to side. The savagery displayed is enough to make me almost turn away.

“He was trying to cut my hand off,” I said, in a daze. “For stealing from him. Rev, I think I’m going to lose my hand.”

Rev doesn’t answer. Instead, she sets her jaw and rips another strip of fabric from the thin blanket and prepares to wrap it around my hand and wrist.

“What do you need to make sure rot doesn’t set in?”

“Steelspurt. Big leaves with a white line running along the center,” I answer like I’m reading from a book. As I do, Rev ties the first knot, which will stop too much blood from escaping.

“And to accelerate the healing?”

“A paste of crushed Eyla’s Gold, a type of yellow moss. Apply on the wound and cover.”

I know she’s trying to distract me, but it still works.

Rev wraps the strip of fabric around the worst of the wounds, covering them.

“Where can these be found?”

“Steelspurt is everywhere close to water at this time of year. The moss grows on the shade of rocks and trees in humid areas.”

Everything is covered now. My hand is wrapped tight, and Rev grimaces sympathetically at my expressions of pain. She does a good job, for someone who’s never done it before.

“Then you’ll be fine, right? We just have to get out of this tunnel, and we’ll find water and flowers and moss. All the moss you need.” She rests a hand on my shoulder and smiles. “Don’t worry, little brother. You’ll keep that hand.”

Her smile falters when I look up at her. I almost don’t want to break her optimism, but I can’t stop myself from saying what I know for sure. As if withholding the truth could dispel it.

“The wounds,” I say. “The place where he cut. It’s… it’s bad, Rev.”

“Malco.” My sister grabs me by the shoulder. In the light of the cloud, her face is an impressively shaded mask of determination. “I’ll fix it. With Godtouched magic if need be. But first we need to get out of here and for that I need you to keep your morale up. Do you understand?”

In the face of her resolve, I manage a weak nod.

“Good,” Reva says softly, encouragingly. “Now let’s get going.”