The Sleeping City

Chapter Thirteen: The Other Half

She was the first one up. Her night had been wild and plagued by the dark shapes of nightmares. Garyn was still deep in sleep. She could tell he had suffered much. It had only been a matter of days that Ketua had been away from her village, but this man had been locked from his home for years. Living in the forest with what was left of his people dressed as wildmen. Everything they had known and loved locked away still under the curse. She could not fathom how she would feel if the same had happened to her, if it had been her village that had fallen, and yet it was. She was one of them inside. In her blood and bones, she owed these people as well as she owed the Atual. She would make it right and she would not ask Garyn to give any more of himself than he already had.

She waved her hands in Onnu over him and then headed off alone towards the city. She used her ability to cover her tracks though she knew that he knew where she was headed. She felt out in the earth for the little empty gaps she had felt yesterday. Long narrow tunnels running downward, she found the emptiness of them, sense them by their not being and followed them out of the wood.

She could see the cities large wall covered with iron plates. They were designed to keep bad magic out but served now to keep the curse in. She loaded a bullet into her sling and swinging it over her head lobbed in over the high walls. It zapped against the air revealing for a moment a flash of a woven iron next domed over the city. It was gone in the next instant.

She hummed to herself and swung another stone. This was zapped away exposing the iron net again. It was a Xarraday cage. A network of magic woven iron meant to do act the same as the walls, to keep bad magic out. She hummed again and was still. She felt out on the feet of the boy she was to meet but could feel nothing. Her range was not that far, or he could be in a tree. She thought for a moment that she would simply call out, but then thought against it when she heard a strange and wild roar erupt from behind the walls. She could only imagine it was the nightmares.

She felt out into the earth and found the tunnel again. She was close to the wall and to the sound, she had heard. She cut off the bottom portion of her tunic and dosed it in the flask of oil she had been given by Thenu, then wrapped it around a stick and lit it with her flint against the dagger's edge. She held the torch tightly in her hand and prepared to descend into the unknown. " Please let there not be skeletons or spiders", She pleaded with the gods and Kings as she carved away at the ground beneath her feet and fell sharply down into the tunnel below.

She waved the torch around to take in her surroundings. The tunnel was narrow and dark, but blessedly free of spiders and skeletons. There was, however, an old, disintegrating rope that ran along into the depths. She filled in the place where she had fallen, returning the earth and stone with skill. Then taking a deep breath braced herself for what she might find as she delved deeper down the dark path under the wall and into the city.

Garyn and his men had referenced a door, but she had found her own path, which she guessed from what she found along the way had either been a smugglers tunnel, or a secret escape route for the wealthy. She found no one along the way. No one had had time to use it to escape. However, it was the magic was done it acted fast.

She wondered if she would meet the boy here, but she heard only the sound of rats, and the occasional terrifying quake of a nightmares cry as she went. She understood why the merchant band had gone so deep in the wood, braving against wild men rather than listening to the calls of nightmares.

They pierced into Ketua's chest and grabbed her heart and stomach. A few times she wanted to stop and turn back, each time bending over herself to vomit into the dust instead.

When the cries became very loud she placed her hands on the earth to feel for the nightmares on the earth, but their feet did not register. She knew she had to be right beneath them and yet she could not feel them. " This must be part of why they are called nightmares", She said to herself shaking her head.

She did not know how she would surface with one right above her. She sat down and waited in the dust, the torch burning low. She could be stuck here in the darkness forever if the monster did not feel inclined to move.

She sprang to her feet when she heard it making a new sort of sound and reached her hand against the earth to feel for the feet she was sure would be there. There was someone, and they were moving quickly over the ground as if in dance. She dug her way out of the tunnel by moving the earth at an angle until she had surfaced. She shook the dry dirt from her hair and reached for her sling.

It was a boy. It was the boy. Ketua knew as soon as she saw him. His long black hair was pulled into a ponytail which swung around as he wielded his sword against the nightmare before him. He was losing, of course, he was losing. The form of darkness was an unnatural enemy. Ketua reached in the rubble for a stone. She only had time enough to give it a rough shape before she loaded it into her sling and let it fly.

The bullet struck true. The nightmare stumbled back enough to allow the boy one more swing to finish the creature off. He turned around and she could see his face. Dust clung to his features but did not dull his eyes. His eyes. They did not look like her eyes, still, she searched for some resemblance, some kinship in him.

Ketua's mind was elsewhere. She should have run to him, but she was frozen in place. The world felt still the moment she realized that she had very nearly done that which she thought she might never finish. The impossible part was already over. She had found the stranger who was in one moment giving her a thumbs up and saying thank you and the next he was down.

Ketua wanted to run to him, but her mind was too fuzzy to control her legs. Instead, she shifted the earth under him so it rolled like a wave carrying his body towards her on its crest. He came to rest at her feet and as she bent down to see if he still lived. Ketua raised the back of her hand to his nose where she felt his faint breath hit her skin. He was alive. She noticed that he wore a cord around his neck.

Instinctively her fingers traced along the cord and followed it to the other half of the amulet which he wore as a necklace. She placed both of her hands around the stone and could feel its energy pulsate through her. She considered pulling out her own amulet and uniting them, but quickly realized that they weren't out of danger yet. The first part of her journey was done, but they still weren't safe where they stood.

She could feel that there were still more nightmares out there and that somewhere beyond the walls more darkly dressed men waited for them, wishing to do them and their loved one's harm.