Ren of Atikala Read online

  KHAVI’S DREAMS WERE DISTURBED BY fever and pain. I stood guard over him, watching anxiously, waiting for his whimpering and writhing to end and for true rest to come to him.

  Hours later though, before that happened, the ceiling of the world began to cry.

  The sky grew darker, and little drops of water fell down everywhere, splattering onto the ground, my head, and Khavi’s back. In the distance I heard the rumbling of a giant beast; had Tyermumtican come to the surface to save us?

  One of the drops hit my lips. It wasn’t salt water; it was fresh. Drinkable. I opened my mouth, letting the water splatter in.

  I sat like that, my head tilted back, watching the sky cry. The sight evoked a strange feeling. Calm. Peace. Happiness. I wanted to spend more time here on the surface, no matter how much my instincts begged me to return to the underworld. The sight reminded me of No-Kill. Did everything non-kobold cry all the time?

  Then it got worse as the falling water intensified. The relaxed, happy feeling slowly evaporated, and I closed my jaw. I knew we should find shelter, but I couldn’t leave Khavi and didn’t want to move him, so I remained by his side as the sky cried down on us. Our gear became waterlogged. The rumbling noise got closer, but I didn’t leave him.

  A flash of electricity slammed into one of the trees near our camp. It exploded with a deafening crack, and the tree-skin burst from within. I shrieked, and threw myself on the ground; I knew enough about true dragons to recognise their breath.

  The tree toppled, taking with it several of its neighbours. More flashes all around me, more of the deafening roars that followed the flashes, all bright and powerful. The water from the sky came faster and heavier, the wind blowing it sideways, battering my scales. We had angered some terrible dragon. I cried out for mercy, to be eaten and consumed quickly, all to no avail.

  The beast moved on, the water from the sky dying down and the bolts of electricity moving away from us. I dared to raise my head from underneath my hands.

  Hungry the goat was dead, his coat scorched and burnt. He had been standing underneath one of the trees and the energy had leapt to him.

  I did not know what to do. We were a long way away from the passage down into Drathari, and I had no knowledge of where to go, save for a single landmark far in the distance. As the storm retreated, Khavi’s fever became worse. He would shout and groan incomprehensible words. He needed help, but I had no idea how to get to Ssarsdale. His burning of the map would likely kill him.

  It didn’t matter. I had to try. But our supplies were running low, and all I had eaten in the last day was the hay from the barn. I felt malnourished. I knew now why Melicandra had told me that hay was for beasts only, it could not feed a talking creature.

  So I ate Hungry. I ate as much of his scorched body as I could, slicing off his meat with the Feyeater, then putting it in my mouth before I could properly think about what I was doing. I ate until my belly could hold no more. I would need the energy.

  Hungry saved us twice. Once with his legs, and once with his meat. The first time I had thanked him by giving him a name, but this time I had no material way of thanking him. I did that with my tears.

  I couldn’t bury Hungry's remains. I couldn’t spare the energy or the time. Instead I covered what was left of his body with grass and fallen tree-limbs. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

  As prepared as I could be, I gathered our equipment, then with a pained groan I picked Khavi up, carrying him over my shoulders. I staggered off into the brightness, walking towards the teeth of the world that stood in silent mockery of my efforts.

  It was hours. I don’t remember how long. I rarely looked up, except to make sure that I was following the right path. Instead I kept my eyes low, looking at the ground before my feet. I made a game of it. All I had to do was stagger a few more steps and everything would be okay. A few more steps. A few more after that.

  My muscles burned. Khavi was too heavy. I considered dumping his armour, but we needed it. I considered dropping my haversack, but it contained our meagre supplies. There was nothing I could do except continue on, using the pain of the effort to encourage me, fighting my body’s instincts the whole time. I would not let the surface kill me.

  Khavi trembled as I carried him and occasionally he would throw up, hurling bile onto my back and tail, an overpowering retched smell. The world was damp in the aftermath of the sky’s crying, pungent air that seemed to make every scent stronger. Normally the air would be full of richness, and I liked it a lot, but now instead of life and beauty, I could only smell blood, vomit, and rot.

  Infection.

  Eventually I could go no further. I had come closer to the distant tooth, if only a little, but my body had reached its limit. I dropped Khavi like a sack of glowbug meat and fell to the ground, gasping for breath. The cool grass enveloped me. I wiggled into it, accepting its grasp, trying to get as low as I could.

  Back down into the ground. Back to the underworld.

  Back home.

  I wanted to go home. I wanted to leave this terrible place. I wanted to walk through Atikala’s bazaar; I wanted to sleep with my patrolmates and live a simple life.

  Some part of me knew that was not true, but pain sometimes drove one to desperation. To say and do things they did not want to do, to wish for things they did not truly want.

  “I want to go home!”

  I thumped my fists into the ground. I kicked and screamed and thrashed around despite the burning in my muscles. “I want to go home! I want to go home right now!”

  “Will you shut the hell up?”

  I rolled onto my back, using my tail to push up to standing. I stared at Khavi. His eyes were open.

  “Khavi!” I ran over to him, grabbing his head and cradling it in my lap.

  “How long was I out?” His voice was weak. Quiet.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “I can’t keep track of time properly up here. It’s been a long time. Half a day.”

  “I taste vomit.”

  “You threw up all over my back. A few times.” I didn’t care. I was just glad he was awake.

  “Where are we?”

  I wished I could answer. “Close to the underworld,” I said, hoping it was true. “Close to Ssarsdale.”

  “Good.” He squinted, looking up at me. “It’s so bright. Do you think it’s always this way?”

  I shook my head. “No. I remember that from my lessons. The Leader’s lessons. The surface has a different environment from the underworld. The ball of light we can see? It moves around; soon it will set, and a lesser light will be seen. The brightness will be softer. Tzala herself told me so.”

  “How long will that take?”

  I had no idea. “All we have to do is last until the lesser light comes. This glare will fade, I promise.” I searched my memories, struggling to remember what they had called it. “I think it’s called the sun. The greater light. They call the lesser light the moon.”

  “Moon. What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t think humans think like us. I don’t think there’s any meaning behind it. They don’t give a second meaning to their names, they just name things and don’t think about it.”

  “They’re so strange.”

  His voice was so quiet and weak. I touched his cheek. “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t talk anymore, okay? You’re still not well.”

  “It’s okay. I won’t die. I’m not giving up the chance to mate with you.” He smiled. “We’ll make a strong egg. Strong and gold and magic.”

  My stomach tightened as I remembered the deal, but I didn't feel as bad as I thought as I would. Instead, I could see the egg in my mind—smooth, gold, and powerful. Like the others, but with a yellow hue. It would be mine.

  Ours.

  “Good,” I said, surprised at my own sincerity. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “When I’m better,” he said.

  “When you’re better.”

  I searched for his wound. It was war
m to the touch, sickly and green, weeping black blood, and I could smell foul rot. It leaked pus.

  “When you’re better,” I said again.

  We rested until I felt like I could carry him again. I wanted to sleep, and my eyelids felt heavy, but I knew we had to get as far away from the humans as possible. Khavi remained awake and alert, if quiet and weak, but that boded well for him.

  I checked his wound. It looked better. Perhaps. It was hard to judge.

  There was no sign of pursuit yet. This was strange. Khavi had killed more than a few of the humans, including at least one child. If it were my people we would be mobilising. The idea that they had not worried me. What were they planning?

  If I allowed myself to be distracted by possibilities, I would never accomplish anything. I merely thanked my good fortune that we were not running from spears at our backs.

  I fed Khavi some of Hungry’s meat and that seemed to help. I told him where it came from, and he seemed to find the idea somewhat amusing. I ate some as well, fearing it would spoil soon, then I readied to go.

  My body ached and protested as I stood, but I knew we could not stay here. Khavi held tightly to my back as I picked him up. He was easier to carry this way, instead of an inert lump, and I felt cautiously optimistic about how far we could travel.

  I started to walk again, always towards the big tooth in the ground. Khavi would point out an occasional thing to me. An animal, a new type of tree, or a potentially defensible location that we could retreat to if we saw pursuers. Valuable and important information.

  It was hard to see far with the trees blocking my line of sight, but I did the best I could. I weaved my way between the tall columns that provided cover and shade for my sore eyes. I kept my eyes down as I walked.

  That was good because I nearly walked off a cliff and fell miles and miles to my doom.

  It was a hole in the ground, a void that dropped off into nothing. I jerked my head up, looking around me.

  A colossal opening in the earth, almost a mile across, roughly cut and circular. It went straight down into the ground, slicing through the dirt and stone like it were parchment, a void in the surface of Drathari.

  Letting Khavi off my back, I lay down on my belly and wiggled forward, daring to peek over the edge. The drop went forever, a dark chasm that stretched on and on, eventually ending with a faint, red dot at the base of the pit. I was looking into the ruins of Stonehaven, and below that, beyond uncountable tonnes of rock, the ruins of Atikala.

  I knew what the red glow was now. The fallen star. The piece of the sky that had destroyed so many lives so quickly. It seemed so far down now. Had we really walked so far? Climbed so high?

  Vertigo started to take hold the longer I stared into that nigh-bottomless pit, so I squirmed back to safety.

  “What does it look like?” asked Khavi.

  I had no clear answer for him. Instead I just extended my claw and let him climb back on my back. “Terrible.”

  Making my way around the wide circumference of the pit took more time, but I was glad when the tree line enveloped me once again, and I could no longer see the large hole.

  I had not gotten far when the light around me started to increase. I barely noticed it at first, but it became brighter and brighter as we marched on. Just as I had begun to get used to the light in this place, the surface decided to make it difficult and painful for me again.

  We couldn’t afford to stop though. My progress was slower, stumbling in the growing light, trying to navigate when I could hardly see.

  Khavi saw it first. A glow on the horizon near the top of the tooth. I stopped and looked, expectantly, for the brightness to disappear and for the moon, the lesser light, to illuminate Drathari.

  Instead, the edge of a colossal ball of fire broke from the horizon, searing my eyes, the light so intense it heated my scales. It impossibly bright, and I shrieked, clapping my hands over my eyes. I dropped Khavi and thrashed and rolled around on the ground as I tried to shut out the light.

  “That’s the sun!” I shrieked, the realisation of the truth terrible. “That’s the sun! It wasn’t the moon! THAT’S THE SUN!”

  “Make it stop! Make it stop! It burns!” Khavi accidentally kicked me. “Go away, sun!”

  I forced my eyes open. They watered, stinging and burning. “I can’t see!”

  We needed to find somewhere to hide. The trees were not providing enough cover. I squinted through the glare. The mountain was near, and with it, the promise of return to the appropriately lit underworld.

  “Come on,” I said. “We need to go!”

  We set off again, half blind and pained as the sun crept higher and higher into the sky. The tooth was closer than I thought. It was hard walking into the bright light, but Khavi used his hand to shield my eyes, and I looked down at my feet as often as I could.

  Soon the ground began to tilt upward and became rockier, with fewer trees. I knew we were approaching the edge of the tooth. The going became slower and harder, especially with me carrying Khavi.

  “Let me down,” he said, “I want to walk.”

  “You can’t,” I said between puffs of breath, putting aching claw before aching claw as I climbed up the side of the tooth. “You’ll tear your wound.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “You hit a fully grown copper dragon in the rump with a nonmagical sword. I don’t think careful is a word you really understand.”

  “That was just one time!”

  “What about the spider’s web? You touched it and got stuck. What about charging into the human village without finding out if they were evil or not? You’re the most uncareful kobold I’ve ever met!”

  “If you don’t let me walk, we won’t make it.”

  “If I let you walk,” I said, “you’ll die.”

  “Then you should probably leave me here.”

  The suggestion sapped the energy from my legs. I stopped, leaning against one of the sparse trees that dotted the side of the tooth, and Khavi hopped off me to give me a break.

  “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we’ve been through so much together; we’ve come this far. I can’t. I just can’t. We go on together, or we don’t go on at all.”

  He didn’t say anything but dabbed at the wound on his back with a scrap of cloth.

  I turned around, shielding my eyes, and tried to see out over the group of trees. What was the name for a group of trees? I liked the word cluster. A cluster of trees. It made sense.

  “Can you see that?” I asked, pointing with my casting hand out into the distance. I could see something moving near the edge of the giant hole in the ground, although the light made it difficult to pinpoint exactly what it was.

  “I can’t see anything in this glare.”

  “There. Over there.” I mashed my cheek to his, my hand outstretched. “Look! By the edge of the pit!”

  “I think I see it,” Khavi said, his eyes watering as he squinted.

  “What does it look like to you?”

  Khavi hesitated before answering not sure of his thoughts.

  “Humans riding things.”

  Fear overrode the pain, and we set off immediately. I knew we were exposed here on the side of a mountain, but we were lightly coloured, and the rocks were dark. The humans, unlike us, had no problems seeing in the overwhelming bright.

  “There!” said Khavi. “To your left! A cave!”

  I could see it, a black hole in the white side of the mountain. I made my way towards it as fast as I could, Khavi bouncing on my back as I scurried across the mountainside, half running and half climbing across the hot, bright rocks.

  I felt we were too exposed, too visible, the journey taking far too long for my tastes. All that our pursuers had to do was look, and they would see us, unremarkable dots on the white mountainside.

  All I had was the hope that our painfully obvious predicament was not so obvious to them.

 
; I nearly fell over as I stumbled through the gap of the cave, my eyes thanking me as they adjusted to the reasonable lighting conditions. I kept my gaze turned outward to the humans who hunted us. They drew closer as I watched. From the distance I could hear a faint noise, the sound of a horn being blown.