The Merchant of Death

Journal #2 (continued)

Denduron

My plan was to climb back to the top of the mountain, get past those cannibal quig beasts, find the gate that leads to the flume, and get the hell out of here. Simple, right? Yeah, sure. I’m not even sure I couldfind that stupid cave again, let alone survive the climb through the snow and the quigs. Still, my mind was made up. It was better than staying here.

But it wasn’t going to happen today. The suns were going down and it was getting dark. Yeah, that’s right. Suns. Plural. Remember I told you there were three suns? Well, they all set at the same time, but in opposite parts of the sky. North, south and east…or whatever they use for directions around here. I figured I had to spend the night and sneak away once it got light. Besides, I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten anything since I had a banana and some raspberry Pop-Tarts before the basketball game I never made it to.

Loor brought me to a hut that was like the one I woke up in, only smaller. In one corner was a pile of furry animal skins.

Loor pointed to them and gave me a simple command. “Sit.”

I did. It was smelly, but comfortable. There was a small stone fireplace where Loor quickly and expertly made a fire that gave us light and took the chill off. Osa arrived soon after with a cloth sack that I quickly found out was full of food. Yes! We all sat around the fire and shared loaves of crunchy bread; some weird fruit that looked like an orange but you ate like an apple; and some soft nutlike things that tasted like licorice. Maybe it was because I was so hungry, but this odd meal was delicious. I would have preferred some fries from Garden Poultry Deli on the Ave, but this did just fine. While we ate, Osa gave me some strange instructions.

“Is there someone back on Second Earth whom you trust above all others?” she asked.

It didn’t take me long to come up with the answer. I told her it was you, Mark. Sure my family’s cool, and of course I trust them, but a friend is someone who gives you trust because they want to, not because they have to.

Osa handed me a stack of blank parchment paper that was all yellowed and crunchy. She also gave me a crude pen that looked like it was carved from a tree branch, along with a small bowl of black ink.

“It is important that you write down all that is happening to you,” explained Osa. “Every chance you get, write your thoughts, your feelings, and describe the things that you see. Think of it as a journal.”

“Why?” was my obvious question.

“Because you will send them to your friend for safekeeping,” she answered. “I will not lie to you, Pendragon. This is a dangerous journey. If anything should happen to you, this journal will be the only record of what you have done.”

Yikes, that sounded grim. It was like she was asking me to write out my last will and testament. Part of me wanted to refuse because doing what she asked made me feel like I was going along with the program. And I definitely was not. On the other hand, what she said made sense. If anything happened to me, nobody would know the real story. I didn’t like that. If I was going to go down, I wanted everybody to know why.

“How are we going to get it to Mark?” I asked.

“Write first,” she said. “When you are ready, I will show you.”

That was interesting. If she could get these pages to you, that meant she knew how to use the flume in the other direction. Maybe this would be my chance to find a way home. So with that in mind, I took the pen and went to work. I set myself up next to the fire, using a piece of wood on my lap as a desk. It took a while to get the knack of using the pen because it wasn’t exactly a Bic Rollerball. I had to dip the pointy end in the ink and scratch the words out on the paper. It was a pain, but after a while I got to where I could write a whole sentence without having to re-dip.

Across from me, Loor was doing the same thing. It felt like we were doing homework together. As she scratched out her thoughts on the same kind of parchment paper, I couldn’t help but wonder what she was writing about me. I knew she thought I was a toady boy, but maybe having survived a brush with Saint Dane gave me a little more credibility. On the other hand, who cares? Tomorrow, I was out of here.

That’s how I spent the rest of the night. I wrote for a while and when my eyes got heavy I sacked out on the animal skins. I’d sleep for a little bit, then wake up and write some more. Loor did the same thing. Osa was in and out of the hut. She’d come in to put some wood on the fire, then leave again. I wondered if she was getting any sleep at all. I got as far as writing about Uncle Press being captured by Kagan’s knights, and then I crashed for good. The next thing I knew, Osa was gently shaking me to wake up.

“It is morning, Pendragon,” she said softly.

I was sleeping deeply and had to force my eyes open. There was light in the hut, but I could tell it was early because there were no shadows and the birds were singing. I looked around to see that the fire had gone out and Loor was gone.

“Give me your journal,” she commanded.

I sat up and gathered the pages I had written. She took them, rolled them up, and tied them with a leather cord. She then walked to the center of the hut, sat down cross-legged and placed something on the floor. It was a big old clunky silver ring with a gray stone mounted in the center. From where I was sitting I could see there was some kind of inscription engraved around the stone, but I had no idea what it meant. Osa looked to make sure I was watching, then reached down to the ring, touched her finger to the stone and said, “Second Earth.”

What I saw next sent a bolt of adrenaline through me so quickly that I was shocked out of any last remnant of sleep. The gray stone in the ring started to glow. It acted like the flume had when it brought me here. The flume was made of gray rock, just like the ring. When I said, “Denduron,” the gray rock of the flume had started to glow, just like the ring. Bright light shot from the facets of the stone and washed the walls of the hut, just like the lights in the flume. And like the flume, I started to hear the strange musical notes.

Then the ring started to twitch…and grow! The band actually stretched out and got bigger until it was about the size of a Frisbee. But inside the circle, where the floor should have been, was a hole. It was like this ring opened up a miniflume to…where? Osa took the rolled-up parchment pages and dropped them into the ring. The pages disappeared as if they had been dropped into a hole in the floor. Then the ring snapped back to normal size and everything ended. No lights, no sound, no hole. Just the ring. Osa picked it up and put it into a leather pouch that hung from around her neck.

“Your friend Mark has your journal,” she said and got up to leave. That was it. No explanation, no nothing.

I jumped to my feet to head her off. “Whoa! You can’t pull that hocus-pocus number and not tell me what happened!” I demanded.

“I told you what happened,” she said calmly. “I sent your journal to Mark Dimond.”

She tried to continue out of the hut, but I got in front of her.

“But how? Is that like a portable flume?” Obviously my mind was in overdrive.

“There are many things to know about being a Traveler, Pendragon,” she said patiently. “Once you are more comfortable, this ring will be yours and you will be able to send your journals to Mark Dimond yourself. Until then, be satisfied to know that the power contained in the ring is similar to the power found in the flumes.”

I wasn’t going to give up that easily. “But how can it find Mark?”

Osa took a deep breath like she was getting tired of my questions. Too bad. She knew how this stuff worked. I didn’t.

“I gave another ring to Mark Dimond,” she said.

“What? You saw Mark? No wait, you went to Earth? When? How? Did you tell him I’m here? Did you see my parents? Did you-”

Osa put a hand to my mouth to shut me up. She was gentle, but firm.

“I went to Second Earth and gave Mark Dimond the ring,” she explained. “That is all. I saw no one else. No more questions.”

She took her hand away and started out of the hut.

“Just one more,” I called after her.

Osa turned back to me, waiting to hear.

“Does this ring thing work both ways? I mean, if we can send things to Mark, can he send things to us?”

Osa smiled. It was the kind of smile I’d see from my mother when I thought I was being clever about trying to keep something from her. That smile said “I know exactly what you’re thinking, smart guy. You can’t fool me.”

“The rings can transport small objects, but they only work for Travelers,” was her answer. “Mark Dimond would not be able to send you anything. Now if you wish to bathe yourself, there is a river that runs a few hundred feet south of the village.”

She left and my mind went into hyperdrive. This ring business had just opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Maybe I didn’t need to get all the way to the top of the mountain after all. Maybe the ring could grow big enough for me to jump into it. And if I’m a Traveler, then the ring will work for me! Yes! For the first time in a long while, I felt as if I had a shot at taking control of my life again. When the time was right, I’d get the ring from Osa and punch my ticket out of here. That was the new plan and it felt good. Heck, anything would be better than climbing that mountain and getting past the quigs. So with a new sense of hope, I left the hut to start the day.

The suns were just creeping up over the horizon and I saw it was going to be a clear day. The first thing I wanted to do was find that river and wash up. Not that I’m a clean freak or anything, but the animal skins I was wearing weren’t exactly cottony fresh. I’m not sure which smelled worse: me or my clothes. A quick splash of water would be a good thing, so I picked my way through the Milago village in search of the stream.

The village was just waking up. Smoke drifted up from chimneys in all the huts. A few women scurried along carrying firewood. In the distance I saw farmers already working out in the fields. I also saw a pretty depressing sight. A group of men trudged into the village on a path that led from the woods. I figured they were miners since they were covered with dirt, like the miners who had brought glaze to the Transfer ceremony the day before. Could these guys have been working all night? I then saw another group of miners pass them going in the other direction. I realized this was some sort of change in shift. The day crew was taking over for the night crew.

As bleak as this scene was, it wasn’t the depressing part. The thing that really hit me was that nobody talked. Nobody. They didn’t even make eye contact with one another. They just went about their business, doing their work or their chores or whatever it is they probably do every single day, but with absolutely no human interaction. I guess it didn’t surprise me. After what I had seen the day before, I realized that these people were prisoners. Kagan’s army had stolen everything they could from them, including their souls. There was no joy in this place. No hope. They probably didn’t want to make friends with anyone because they never knew who might be Kagan’s next victim. So they kept to themselves, living in their own personal, tortured world.

It feels kind of weird to admit it, but as I stood there watching these people going about their dreary lives, I started to cry. Normally I’m not a crying kind of guy. Yeah, a couple of times I got weepy during a movie when somebody’s dog died or something. But this was different. This was real. I stood in the center of this village and it was like I could feel a huge weight of sadness press down on me. The thing is, no matter how bad somebody’s life gets, it can always get better. Things pass and life goes on. Like for me. As bad as things were for me right then, I had a shot at getting home. There was hope. But for these people, there was no escape. Their future was just as bleak as their present. This was their life, and the hopelessness of it brought tears to my eyes. For that one brief instant, I could feel their pain.

But you know something? It didn’t last long. If anything, it made me want to get out of there even more. Yeah, I felt bad for them, but it wasn’t my problem. This struggle had been going on for a long time and nothing I could do was going to change it. I had to worry about myself right now, so I wiped away the tears, put my head down, and started to look for the path that led to the river. I had only walked a few feet when somebody grabbed my shoulder and whirled me around.

“Crabble nectar?” It was Figgis, the strange little guy who tried to sell me the sweater before. He was holding up a leather pouch that looked full of liquid. “Very delicious. Very rare. Only four quills.”

I assumed quills were like Denduron money.

“Thanks, no,” I said and walked on. But Figgis jumped in front of me. This time he held out a thing that looked like a crude fanny pack that was woven from dried straw.

“Twenty quills!” he announced while tying it around his waist to demonstrate.

Even if I wanted to buy it, I didn’t have any quills, so this was a waste of time. I tried to push past him but he blocked my way again.

“Ten quills, since you are new!” he offered.

He could tell that I wasn’t interested, but he was desperate to make a sale so he quickly yanked off one of the ten rings that he wore on his fingers.

“Two quills!” he shouted.

“I’m sorry, dude, I don’t have any quills,” I said.

This guy seemed to be all about cash, so I figured that telling him I didn’t have any would make him back off. It didn’t. He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him so fast that I didn’t have a chance to stop him. He leaned in close and whispered something in my ear like he was giving me some information of dire importance.

“Tak is the way. It is the only way. Rellin knows this.” I could feel his hot breath on my ear. He smelled like a goat. I wanted to retch. “Remember tak. Remember me.” He then let go and scampered off and disappeared into the activity of the village.

That was weird. What was tak? He spoke about it with such passion that it made me think it must be something pretty special. It was like he was tempting me with it. Maybe it was illegal and he had to be careful about selling it.

It also felt kind of weird that I understood what he was saying. The day before his words made no sense. Now I heard them as if he were speaking English. But according to Osa, he wasn’t speaking English. He was speaking the Denduron language, but I heard it as English. Still, there were some words that didn’t translate into English like “quill” and “tak” and “crabble.” I guess those are things that are special to Denduron, and therefore don’t have an English translation. Whatever it was he was selling, I didn’t want any. So I continued on toward the river.

A path snaked out of the village in the opposite direction from the ocean. Since I hadn’t been there yet, I figured it must be the way to the river. After walking about a hundred yards through the forest, I began to hear the sound of rushing water. A few yards further along, I hit it. The path ended at the bank of a river that looked to be about twenty yards across. I knelt down on the bank and dipped my hand in. Yeow! It was like sticking my hands into a bucket of ice. I’m sure it was fed by snowmelt from the mountain, and rivers fed by snowmelt are frigid. But I was feeling all crusty from sleeping in animal skins and breathing smoke from the fire, so cold or not, I had to get wet. I took a deep breath and splashed water on my face. Wow. It was like a thousand needles stinging me, but it actually felt pretty good. I took a big gulp and swished out my mouth. I wished I had my toothbrush, but this would have to do.

That’s when I heard thecrack of a broken branch. Somebody was nearby! I heard someone humming a sweet tune. It was coming from just a few yards away. I think under normal circumstances I would have turned and left, but something compelled me to investigate. Remember how I described the people of this village? There was no joy here. There was only the sad business of survival. So hearing a pleasant tune being hummed felt out of left field. It made me want to see who it was. As strange as this seems, knowing that one of the Milago would actually want to hum a song made me feel that there might be some hope left in these people after all.

I remember going on a hike with my dad once through a forest that had been recently destroyed by fire. We were surrounded by nothing but the burned and black remains of what had once been a wonderful, green thicket. It was sad, until I saw that growing out from beneath a fallen log was a single, green fern leaf. As horrible as the devastation was, this one leaf was proof that one day the forest would return to normal. Hearing this tune coming through the woods made me think of that single fern leaf and I wanted to see who was singing it. So I quietly snuck through the brush toward the sound. When I pushed back the final branch between me and the singer, I saw that it wasn’t one of the Milago after all.

It was Loor. She was kneeling on a rock with her back to me, washing out some clothes. I was disappointed at first, but this posed another interesting puzzle. As I told you, Loor is a hard case. I don’t know much about the territory where she and Osa came from, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that these two were warriors. Osa had a calm way about her. She reminded me of one of those Black Belt guys who are so confident in their fighting abilities that they are actually gentle people. Of course, if you messed with them, they’d kick your ass. Loor, on the other hand, didn’t have that calm thing going on. She seemed ready for a good ass kicking all the time. Maybe it was because she was young and hadn’t gotten that wisdom comes with age thing. It didn’t matter though, all I knew was that she scared the hell out of me. But seeing her on this rock, with her hair undone and humming a sweet tune seemed completely against character. Maybe there was a soft side to her that she kept hidden somewhere below all that macho stuff. Way below. She was facing away from me and had no idea I was there. Her long hair fell across her shoulders. It was deep black, and beautiful.

Now before you go thinking I was some kind of perv watching her from the bushes, you gotta realize that I was stuck. If I made a sound, she’d turn and see me watching her and probably pick up her stick and start playing Bobby the pinata boy. I wouldn’t blame her. My only hope was that she’d finish washing up and walk back along the river toward the path without ever knowing I was there. So I stood rock still, doing my best to look like a tree.

After what felt like a lifetime, Loor stood up and started to braid her hair…and that’s when I heard it. Another crack of a branch told me that somebody was walking up behind me. My heart pounded. I thought for sure that Loor would hear this, turn around, and catch me standing there like a doofus. I also thought that whoever was behind me was about to see me doing a peeping Tom number on Loor. But I was afraid to leave because Loor would surely catch me. None of these scenarios was very good.

What I didn’t realize was that there was another scenario that was worse than all the above.

“I’ve been looking for you, Pendragon,” came a deep voice that made Loor turn quickly in surprise. I turned too, and what I saw made my knees buckle. Standing behind me was one of Kagan’s knights! He towered over me holding a spear in one hand and a rope in the other.

The guy had me. In that instant I felt sure that Saint Dane, or Mallos, or whatever he called himself had sent this guy to bring me in, the same way they got Uncle Press. And I knew one other thing-I wasn’t going to go easily. So before the knight could make a move, I made my own move. I turned and ran for the river.

Loor didn’t have time to react and I made another snap decision. She was coming with me. As she scrambled to her feet, I launched myself into a full-on, horizontal, flying tackle. I hit her and we both went sailing off the rock into the river.

Cold? You don’t know cold until you jump into a river swollen from melted snow. The only reason it wasn’t frozen solid was because it was moving so fast. But the truth was, I didn’t care. If this river could get us away from that knight, it didn’t matter to me if it froze the blood in my veins. I could always get warm later.

We hit the river in a tumble of arms and legs. The water was flowing so fast that it swept us downriver and away from the knight. There was no way he could catch up with us. I looked back and saw him standing on the shore looking stupid. He wasn’t even going to try and catch up.

My attention went from getting away from the knight to surviving the river. You know when you first jump into the ocean you get a jolt of cold, but then your body quickly adapts and you get used to it? Well, not here. The river water was too cold for that. It felt like my body was actually freezing stiff. But I had to fight it, because we were in rapid whitewater, and that meant there were rocks. I heard once that if you’re caught in rapids like this, the best thing to do is point your feet down-river and go with it until you hit a calm patch where you can swim to the side. That was the plan, but Loor was making it tricky. She held on to me so tightly that I was having trouble moving my arms to maneuver. I had to get away from her or we’d both drown.

“Feet first!” I yelled. “Float on your back!” I tried to push away, but Loor wouldn’t back off. Then she said the three words I never expected to hear from this macho warrior girl. They were the three worst words you could hear in this situation, but she said them just the same.

“I cannot swim.”

Oh, great. No wonder she was clinging to me. This was bad. The river was swirling us around and every time we hit a drop, both our heads went under. Each time we came up sputtering, and I didn’t know how long our luck would hold out. I had to take control somehow or we were going to drown, or bash our heads into a rock and then drown. I thought maybe we could make a train with both of us on our backs. She’d go feet first and I’d cradle her from underneath while using my arms to guide us like a rudder.

“Feet downriver!” I shouted. “Face up, lie on me!”

She didn’t move. She couldn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to, it was because she was paralyzed with fear. I can’t imagine what it’s like not being able to swim, but it must be terrifying. And with her strength, there was no way I could pry myself loose. We hit another drop and both went under again. No sooner did we come up for air than we both slammed into a rock. I barely felt it because Loor took most of the hit with her back. It must have been crushing, because it made her loosen her grip on me. Instantly I grabbed her and flipped her onto her back.

“Grab my legs,” I commanded. She did. I was on my back too, with Loor between my legs. My arms were now free to steer and keep us afloat. My train idea was working. Now if we could only ride this out until the rapids stopped.

“Use your legs to keep us off the rocks,” I said. Loor was scared, but she had enough of a grip to start thinking again. While I paddled frantically, she kicked us away from a few sharp rocks. We then hit another drop and went under again. I could feel Loor starting to squirm away from me, but I held her tight with my legs. In a few seconds, we were above water again.

Then I was hit with a terrifying thought. What if these rapids led to a waterfall? There was no way we could survive that. I had to force the idea out of my head, because there was nothing I could do about it now.

We hit a few more drops, bounced off another rock or two, and then mercifully, the river grew calm. We made it through the rapids and there was no waterfall waiting. But we weren’t safe yet because Loor still couldn’t swim. My junior lifeguard training took over at this point and I began to tow her to the side. She was so tired and beaten that she didn’t have enough strength left to fight me, so it wasn’t all that tough to bring her along. Soon we were dragging ourselves out of the freezing water and crawling up onto the bank. We lay down on the gravel, totally exhausted, totally beaten up, but alive. Luckily the three suns were now higher in the sky and they were starting to give off some warmth.

After I caught my breath, I sat up on my elbows and looked at Loor. She lay flat on her back, still breathing hard. I have to admit, now that we were safe, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Not only did I save the big, bad warrior girl from one of Kagan’s knights, I also saved her life a dozen times over on the river. I couldn’t wait for her to admit that I wasn’t the lame wad she thought I was. But of course I wasn’t going to fish for a compliment. That wouldn’t have been cool. It had to come from her. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. But she didn’t say a word. What was up with that? I was getting kind of ticked off. Not that I was expecting a full-on “Oh, Pendragon, you’re my hero!” but a simple “Thank you” would have been nice. Still there was nothing. Finally I decided to break the ice.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No thanks to you,” came the reply.

“What?” I shouted and sat up straight. “I saved you from drowning!”

“But if we had not been in the river, I would not have needed help,” she said as if she were totally ticked off at me.

“But if we weren’t in the river, we would have been attacked by Kagan’s knight!” I shot back.

Loor finally sat up and looked at me. She didn’t say anything at first, but her hard look made me feel like some sort of lower life-form.

“You were hiding in the bushes, watching me,” she said. Gulp.Busted. “If you had come out to speak with me,” she went on, “I would have told you that I was waiting for that knight.”

Huh? I couldn’t get my mind around this. “You were waiting for one of Kagan’s knights?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Why?”

“Because he is the Traveler from Denduron and he was coming to give me information about Press. You nearly killed us both to escape from the most important friend we have here on this territory. What am I supposed to say to you, Pendragon? Thank you?”