Hell's Gate(48)

Although she had been banned from setting foot in her own village, the cacique had not actually forbidden her from visiting the warazu camp, and so each night Leila crept in among them, easily slipping past the guards (who she thought must be half-blind). Their strange metallic huts were hidden in the forest, amid tall stacks of mysterious objects. She followed the scent of rotting meat and vegetables and came across a mound of strange containers, hollow metal gourds that had once held food. Soon Leila began stealing the unopened gourds from their stacks, and after returning to her hut she cut them open with one of their own metal knives (also stolen). As distasteful as the contents often were, it was sustenance, and Leila quickly came to realize that the Warazu Who Worshipped a Crooked Cross had become her salvation—and her family’s. “Thank you for the Crooked Cross,” she told the river and the stars.

“This food will make you stronger,” Leila whispered each evening, ladling unrecognizable meat and fruit into her son’s gaping mouth. He often reminded her more of a hungry baby bird than her own child. The boy almost never responded, but from his general appearance, Leila knew that his health was improving with each passing week.

And then the screaming began.

At first the cries had come from slaves, most of them locals captured by the warazu. Some of the tattoos these slaves bore were familiar to her; others were not. Leila estimated that there had been more than two hundred of these wretched men clearing trees and hauling away stumps and rubble. For reasons unknown to her, the warazu had set out to uncover one of the ancient causeways that crisscrossed the tribal land. Then, instead of using the road for travel, they built a long, low wall out of wood and stone down its middle. The screams of the imprisoned, and especially those who tried to escape, often lasted for hours. Recently, though, a new cry had risen from the forest beyond the valley. It came one night as she was returning from gathering fruit and lasted only a few moments. A shout had come in the language of the warazu followed by a sound that was unmistakable to anyone who heard it—the gurgle of life torn from the throat of a dying man.

On this starry night, Leila tried to put the screams from her mind, as she looked out across the fog lake and contemplated another foraging raid. She hesitated just inside the doorway of the hut. A downward glance confirmed that her son and mother were still asleep.

The warazu are posting more guards now, she thought, knowing that her nocturnal descents below the surface of the fog lake and into the warazu camp had become increasingly dangerous. But she also knew that her family needed food and that she would risk anything to obtain it.

Leila stepped outside and shivered, not knowing if it was the night breeze or Serebur?’s breath, absent these five years, that chilled her body. If only something so wonderful were possible.


A strange and beautiful music came from one of the metal huts, lasting forty-five minutes and accompanying Leila’s descent into and return from the encampment. She was clutching an armful of canned food as she reentered her thatched home. Damp, musky air filled the tiny room.

The scent of black earth and mushrooms . . . and flowers.

A whisper, unidentifiable but familiar, broke the silence.

There was an out-of-place silhouette on the floor and Leila released a deep breath that became a gasp. She also released her grip on several of the metal gourds, but as her eyes quickly adjusted to the dark, she relaxed ever so slightly. The shadowy figure on the floor was her son.

Were you listening to the music, too?

“You should be asleep,” she whispered, some part of her brain wondering why her mother hadn’t stirred at the sound of the gourds clattering to the floor.

As usual, the boy said nothing.

“Go on,” she said, gesturing toward his sleeping pallet. “It’s very late.”

The boy replied with a wet gurgle and for an instant—only for an instant—six eyes, not two, reflected the moonlight that angled in through a solitary window. She neither felt nor heard the rest of the cans dropping to the ground around her feet.

A moan escaped Leila, and as she fumbled to light a candle her mind tried to comprehend what she was seeing—or thought she was seeing: two dark shapes backing away from behind where the boy sat, retreating from the sudden spark of light.

The candle’s flame held steady, then shifted, first to the left then to the right as breezes passed her on either side, foul-smelling and throwing impossible shadows onto the walls.

The cave. The shadows moving toward Serebur?.

No!

Then the room was still.

“NOOOOO!!!” Leila cried, rushing to embrace her son, who folded into her arms like a doll.

She pulled back.

The boy’s eyes were vacant, unfocused. Then his head flopped over to one side, with a sudden crack.

Leila extended an unsteady arm and the candle threw sputtering light onto the woven pallet where her mother lay motionless in a widening puddle of—

An instant later, Leila heard the sound of someone screaming. At first, she was startled that a person could create such a bone-chilling cry. She was not quite aware, yet, that the screams were her own.





CHAPTER 16





Stolen Food, Stolen Dreams


A conflagration will come upon the earth . . . and plagues . . . And their error: that they acted against themselves, this human race.

—EGYPTIAN REVELATION OF SETH (APPROXIMATELY FIRST CENTURY B.C.)