The Survivors

CHAPTER 25

Corin carried Omer’s body to the far side of the crevasse and laid it on a shelf of stone that protruded from the wall. He sat next to the wrapped body for a long time with his hand resting on the still form, as if hoping for some sign of life. Bradok didn’t know what it felt like to lose a child, but he could see it in Corin’s eyes.

“This ground is too hard to dig a grave,” Much said in a soft voice. “Let’s gather some stones for a cairn.”

As one, everyone moved, gathering loose stones, even ranging up the nearby tunnel. Kellik stood watching over the scene, his warhammer on his shoulder. After a long moment, he turned and walked back out onto the narrow bridge. With an almost casual swing of his hammer, he hefted it off his shoulder and brought it down in the center of the narrow causeway.

The heavy sound of the hammer on stone drew everyone’s attention.

“What are you doing?” Rose cried, rushing to the edge of the narrow bridge.

“The Rhizomorphs and the Disir are still over there on that side,” Kellik said, swinging the hammer again with a resounding crack. “This is the only way across, so I’m going to close the door on ‘em.”

Again he swung his hammer hard.

“Do something!” Rose shouted to Bradok as Kellik struck the bridge again. “He’s going to kill himself.”

“Tie a rope to yourself, you moron,” Bradok yelled.

Kellik stopped, hammer in midair, then turned and walked back, looking rather sheepish.

“Sorry,” he mumbled as Rose and Much cinched a rope around his chest and tied it off to a column of rock.

“Think next time,” Bradok said with a wry grin. The grin vanished, and he added, “We’ve already lost too many friends.”

Kellik nodded and went back to work, swinging his hammer. Bradok turned and joined those who were piling rocks around Omer’s body. In a few minutes, the boy was completely covered.

Corin had moved aside as the other survivors paid their final respects. “Thank you all,” the Daergar said once the cairn was finished. Then he sat down again by the mound of rocks.

Much took a step toward the Daergar, but Bradok put a restraining hand on the old dwarf’s shoulder.

“Let him be alone for a while,” he said.

“Bradok,” said Rose at his shoulder, her voice urgent.

He didn’t have to ask what caused that urgency as the stench of death washed over him. The Rhizomorphs were coming again.

“Hurry up, Kellik,” he yelled, turning back to the bridge.

On the far side, he saw them come shambling out of the tunnel. If the Rhizomorphs noticed or cared about the bodies of the Disir littering the floor, they showed no sign. Instead they locked their gaze on Kellik and the narrow bridge he was trying to destroy.

Kellik swung his hammer again and again, gouging great chunks out of the bridge. The Rhizomorphs howled and staggered forward, determined to take the bridge before he could bring it down.

“Run, Kellik!” Rose screamed.

Bradok swore and grappled with his sword, trying to draw it despate the hobbling pain of his wound. Before he could free the weapon, Chisul charged by him, sword in hand. He leaped over Kellik, heedless of the yawning chasm below, and charged into the advancing Rhizomorphs.

The first of the mushroom men had already reached the bridge as Chisul met them, bowling them over, sending some screaming into the blackness below. He chopped at arms and legs, keeping the stunned Rhizomorphs at bay as Kellik continued to hammer.

A thunderous crack echoed through the cavern followed by the creaking and groaning of stone.

“There she goes,” Kellik yelled, racing along the bridge.

Beneath him the narrow causeway of stone began to crack away, broken in the center by the smith’s strong blows. Kellik dashed along the collapsing stone, leaping to safety as the last of it dropped away. Across the wide crevasse, the other side of the bridge still stood, reaching out over the expanse like the prow of a ship.

Chisul had heard the bridge falling, pushed the nearest Rhizomorphs away, turned, and ran. The gap was far too wide, yet Chisul didn’t hesitate, vaulting toward it with a look of grim determination. The Rhizomorphs shot globs of yellow spit at him, which clung to his cloak, but none hit his exposed face.

He was only two paces away from the gap when one of the fallen creatures behind him darted out its long tongue and caught him fast by the ankle. Chisul’s eyes went wide, and he cursed and screamed as his feet were pulled out from under him.

The Rhizomorphs were on him in a second, dragging him back, pinning him down, swarming him. One of them, who might have been young and beautiful before the Zhome made a perverse mockery of her body, bent down and pressed her lips to Chisul’s. He thrashed and kicked as she breathed her killing spores into his lungs.

His body spasmed, his head beating down on the ground and his feet flailing. In just a few moments, his body lay still.

A gob of yellow Rhizomorph spit sailed across the gap and past Bradok, falling with a heavy, wet slap onto the stone of the ledge. He and the others edged back. Chisul and Kellik had effectively cut off the mushroom men, but they were still trying to figure out how to get at their foes on the opposite side.

“Get back,” Bradok ordered, stepping back.

The survivors filed out of the cavern, making sure to keep well away from the edge. The Rhizomorphs on the far side of the gap hooted and called, yelling threats and obscenities that everyone ignored. The last to let them out of their sight were Bradok and Corin. Bradok kept his eyes on Chisul’s still form until the receding passage obscured it. Poor Chisul-Silas’s son wasn’t such a bad sort after all, Bradok thought. He didn’t deserve to be condemned to an eternal death as an abomination of nature.

The loss of Omer and Chisul affected everyone. As the group moved through the shapeless tunnels following the pointing image of the Seer in the brass compass, the only real sounds to be heard were the intermittent demands for food from little Bradok.

The tunnel ended after another day’s travel. Beyond it a small cavern promised comfortable sleep for the first time in days. They all needed sleep desperately.

Four days after Omer’s death, however, Bradok was still haunted by nightmares. Every night he saw images of the boy’s pure blue eyes as the life drained out of them, and of Chisul, kicking his heels on the stone as the spores consumed him.

Rose told him the nightmares would pass and so would the bad memories.

Much told him it wasn’t his fault, that Omer and Chisul had saved them all.

All that was true, of course, but it didn’t assuage Bradok’s guilt. Somehow Omer’s death came to symbolize all the dwarves he’d lost on their journey. He felt himself to be a terrible leader.

As bad as the dreams were, they didn’t compare to the dread of waking. Every mile they walked, Bradok couldn’t help but wonder what new terror would emerge from the dark to steal away more of his friends. The number of the survivors kept dwindling. Every time anyone asked him to make a decision about something, he had to force himself to appear calm and rational. Inside, he felt worthless.

“You’re taking too much on yourself,” Rose said as they started out one morning after he had slept so badly.

“I’m the leader,” he said. “If we find food, I get the glory. If someone dies, I take the responsibility.”

“That would be true if you’d recklessly sent people to their deaths,” Rose said. “Chisul and Omer gave all they could to protect us. They were willing to fight and to die if necessary.” She put her hand gently on his arm. “Your leadership has kept us from losing more.”

She was right. Worse, he knew she was right, but he still felt guilty. But if he didn’t feel bad, he told himself, then he wouldn’t be worthy to lead. The kind of leader who didn’t feel the deaths of those he led would be a depraved leader.

Bradok wanted to answer Rose, but nothing he thought of seemed appropriate to say. He did notice that she hadn’t removed her hand from his arm. As his mind took hold on that, his senses suddenly became aware of something-something changed, different.

“Wait,” he whispered, holding up his hand.

Not all the others had heard him, but most stopped in response to the raised hand. Throughout the group, both men and women placed their hands on their weapons.

At first, Bradok couldn’t say what it was that had caught his attention. Nothing in the dim lantern-light seemed out of place, and no sound reached his waiting ear. Still, something had shifted.

A puff of air as gentle as a baby’s breath touched his whiskers, carrying with it a strange yet familiar scent. Bradok had to reach back into the archives of his mind to identify it. When, at last he remembered, he shouted.

More explosive laugh than shout, the sound echoed down the passageway as Bradok kept on laughing and laughing.

“Wha-?” Rose said, her grip on his arm tightening.

“Follow me,” Bradok said, turning to face his friends. “Quickly now.”

He turned back to the tunnel and dashed forward at a slow jog so even the stragglers could keep up. It had taken him some time to identify the odor that seemed to fill up the tunnel.

It was the distinctive smell of mountain trees, of pine.

The others smelled it too, and Bradok could hear their cries of joy and their ringing laughter joining his. The tunnel ended right before him, emptying out into a wide cavern virtually overflowing with peppertops and honey mushrooms, wall root, and blackroot. There was enough food to feed them for a year, longer if they were careful to cultivate new growth.

A dazzling burst of light burned at the far end of the cave. Bradok had to squint just to see the ground before him, but he did not stop running. Laughing like a schoolboy on holiday, he raced out through the opening and into a humid blanket of warm air.

The light overwhelmed him, however, and he dropped to his knees after a few strides, feeling the prickle of grass beneath him. Rose fell beside him, laughing as heartily as he had and rolling over him and into the grass. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d pulled her up and kissed her. She kissed him back and for a long moment, the two just lay there in the grass, joined together in a circle of blinding light.

Bradok let her go as his vision began to return to normal. They’d been in the darkness so long, it took a full ten minutes before he could see anything farther than a few feet away. When his vision did clear, it felt like coming out of a dream.

“What happened?” Rose gasped as her vision also returned.

Above them, the sky was burning red with great, undulating clouds that appeared black against the sky. They found themselves sitting above a little mountain valley lined with trees and green meadows. A coursing stream cut its way through the valley and continued on down the mountain into the far side.

Beyond the valley, however, smoke arose along every horizon, great black gouts that reached up and stained the sky.

“It’s as if someone burned the world,” Rose said in awe, clinging fearfully to Bradok’s sleeve.

Bradok thought back to Ironroot and Silas and the believers and all the signs and warnings there he had ignored. “I wonder if there are any other survivors besides us?” he said.

“Surely there will be,” Jeni said, coming up near them.

“There have to be,” Kellik said, close behind.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bradok said, turning to face his little group of friends. “Reorx has led us here, to this place. There’s food and shelter in the cave and timber aplenty here.”

“And ore,” Kellik said, pointing up to a red-stained rock on the mountain.

“Right,” Bradok said. “We’ll build a forge, and we’ll make the tools we need, and we’ll build a new home right here.”

“Can we really do all that?” Kellik’s son Rijul piped up.

“We don’t exactly have enough people for a city,” Lyra cautioned.

“We’ll do it,” Bradok said. “It’ll just take time.”

Rose hugged him close while all the survivors cheered. He knew it would take work, but Reorx had prepared that land for them.

Six weeks later, Rose shook Bradok out of a sound sleep. Outside the cave, the sun was peeking through the clouds. Since he’d had guard duty the night before, Bradok had slept late.

“Look,” Rose said, sticking her arm under his nose.

“What am I looking at?” he asked, groggily rubbing his eyes.

“Me! It’s gotten smaller,” she said boastfully.

Bradok studied her arm, staring at the gray patch of skin where the Zhome had first manifested itself. He hadn’t dared to look at Rose’s arm in quite a while, but the affected skin did seem to be smaller than he remembered it, much smaller.

“How?” he asked, looking intently at her arm.

“I thought the Zhome was getting smaller, but today I did something and it actually shrunk before my eyes.”

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I got hot,” she said. “So I took off the bandage to let my arm breathe.”

Bradok stared blankly.

“It’s the sunlight!” she told him. “As soon as the sunlight hit my arm, I felt it tingling and I saw the Zhome actually shrink.”

Bradok jumped to his feet and pulled his boots on.

“Corin!” he yelled, dragging Rose out of the cave into the light.

A moment later, the skinny Daergar came trudging up the path, shouldering the axe he’d been using to cut fuel for the forge. He had a cloth bound round his eyes to protect them from the sun. None of the Daergar seemed to be able to stand the full daylight without a bandage.

“I don’t believe it,” he said when Rose showed him her arm.

“Take off your shirt,” Bradok said. “Lie in the sun and try it yourself.”

Hesitantly, Corin stripped off his shirt, exposing the gray streaks on his chest with tiny mushrooms growing in them. Within twenty minutes, three of the mushrooms had dried up and fallen off.

“I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes,” he said, standing up and showing the results to Rose and Bradok.

“My people thought there was no cure,” Corin added ruefully. “Most Daergar live their whole lives without ever seeing the surface world. How could they possibly guess that the dreaded Zhome could be cured by something as simple as sunlight?”

“So take your shirt off for a brief time every day when the sun is out,” Rose said. “Not too much. The Zhome will heal, but you don’t want to get sunburned on top of everything else.”

Corin smiled, slipping his shirt back on.

“So sunlight isn’t all bad, eh? Live and learn! I’m going to go tell Urlish about this,” he said, excusing himself.

Bradok raised an eyebrow as Corin hurried off. Urlish was the quiet farmer Rose had brought with her in the trade delegation. She didn’t seem Corin’s type, but they all had been through a lot together, and here and there dwarves were pairing off.

Speaking of that, Rose sidled up to him. “You know what this means?” she said, her hip touching his and her shoulder pressing into his chest.

“What?” Bradok asked, looking down into her beaming face.

She elbowed him hard in the ribs, which only made him gasp a little. “It means we don’t have to worry anymore. We can have children,” she said. “Just as soon as I’m cleansed.”

Bradok put his arm around her and kissed her.

Whatever else their new life brought him, he doubted he could be happier than at that moment.

Bradok opened his eyes in the predawn darkness. Something had roused him from sleep, and he lay awake, listening. After several minutes, he’d resolved to go back to sleep but knew that he had to get up in an hour anyway.

With a sigh, he swung his feet out of bed and stood, pulling on his robe. Moving as quietly as possible, he crossed the wood floor and stepped out on the balcony outside his room. In the distance the first light of the sun could be seen painting the lowlands a pale gold.

He’d watched the sun come up almost every day for six years, rising on the little community they had named Kresthorn, which meant “Journey’s End” in the Elder Tongue. Below him, he could see the wheel of Much’s mill turning relentlessly in the little stream.

Smoke rose from the chimneys above Kellik’s forge, and Bradok knew Hemmish and Rijul were up already, getting the forge prepared for the coming day’s work.

Below them, in the bowl of the valley, Corin and Urlish were tending a neat little farm with orderly fields of vegetables and grains standing all in rows.

Tal had married Starlight Anvil, the eldest of the Anvil grandchildren. Despate the difference in their ages, they seemed perfect for each other. Tal tended his gardens and the small apple orchard they had planted, serving as doctor whenever the need arose.

Next to the orchard, Xurces and Corin had put up a small brewery that wouldn’t go into full-scale production until the apple trees matured.

Xurces married Lyra, and they seemed happy just to be together and brew ale and raise Jade and little Bradok.

Even Thurl found a place, putting his knowledge of foul chemicals to better use as the town tanner.

The only person who had not stayed in the new dwarf community was the human Perin. They all had grown fond of him and missed him.

He had disappeared in the middle of the night one week after they arrived there, taking the metal book from Starlight Hall with him. Nobody minded, but Bradok couldn’t understand why the human would want a book of stories about Galoka and his people. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would interest a human.

A hand touched Bradok’s leg, and he looked back to see a little red-haired girl looking up at him.

“Teal,” he said, picking her up and setting her on the railing in front of him. “What are you doing up?”

“She heard you and insisted I know about it,” Rose’s sleepy voice answered as she joined him on the balcony.

She wore a simple robe, like the one Bradok had, though hers barely concealed her bulging middle.

“It’s all right,” she said as Teal snuggled into Bradok’s shirt. “Your son was kicking me anyway.” She put her hand on her belly and smiled. “I think he wants out.”

“You’re sure it’s a boy?” Bradok asked.

Rose smiled. “Of course,” she said. “He’s way too jumpy to be a girl.”

“Then I’ve decided,” Bradok said. “I don’t care if Corin likes it or not; if it’s a boy, we’re calling him Omer.”

Rose put her arm around Bradok, and little Teal let go of her daddy in favor of nuzzling her mom.

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Rose said.