The layers of rock she flowed through were not even, as she expected them to be. At one time they’d probably looked that way, all even with one placed atop the other by time and the elements. But the quake had broken up the layers and made them more … interesting was the word she wrapped her mind around. Shards jutted up here and there, and she passed right through them. A stretch of sand was ribboned with strips of slate. Coarse grains of something crystalline and pale gray were spread across a scattering of obsidian chunks. There was more of the curious blue and malachite mixture.
She could tell she was near the camp or perhaps had rushed by it and was at the mountain with the mine shafts. She saw large pieces of the ore the Dark Knights coveted, one a massive section with thick red veins in it that she knew would yield good, pure steel. It was covered by bands of obsidian and chert. She was pleased it was so deep, so the Dark Knights would not find it and profit by it. That deep part of the earth, at least, was safe from the horrid men.
Mudwort was amazed that she could see colors and feel textures, though she warranted that her active imagination could have been responsible for some of those sensations. She thought she could also smell the richness of dirt that had never been farmed and smell the dustiness of sand and the acrid tang of chipped slate. She would have lingered under the ground for quite some time-or rather let her mind tarry there-had she not felt a startling wave of heat.
Her eyes snapped open and she looked around, thinking that perhaps some goblin had started a fire near her. then realizing that was a foolish thought. She was still alone on her little rock, well above Direfang, who was in turn perched above Moon-eye and Graytoes and all the rest. None of them were paying any attention to her. Those who were not sleeping were still reveling in their freedom.
Moon-eye still fawned over the sleeping Graytoes. Direfang still stretched on his back, his chest rising and falling too unevenly for him to be sleeping. He’d been sleeping before but not right then. So he was pretending to be asleep, she decided, as she and others so often had done in the slave pens. Pretending so he could have peace.
She wiped the back of her arm across her forehead. She was hot; something in the ground had made her hot! A part of her was suddenly frightened, but a greater part was curious. So she closed her eyes again and steepled her fingers against the stone, leaning forward on her arms as if poised to dive into the earth. In a sense, that was what she did, sending her mind hurtling against the stone and wondering why she’d never more fully explored her surprising abilities back in Steel Town. Perhaps the impetus of freedom gave her power, or perhaps it had driven her mad.
“Mind fouled?” she wondered. “Mind broken?”
If her mind had gone rotten and she were only imagining all of it, it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, she thought. She was enjoying it, and it had been a long time since she’d enjoyed anything. If madness was fun, so be it.
Again, she raced through the earth, slowing when she encountered something interesting, such as a tree root so old it had turned as black and as strong as obsidian. The tree that once grew above it was long gone, and Mudwort futilely tried to picture what it must have looked like. Then she continued on her journey, no longer focusing on the Dark Knight camp. She’d tired of that place and of those horrid men. She spiraled outward from her lofty perch.
There were things-goblins, men, animals, she couldn’t determine what sort of creatures-moving across the ground, maybe coming in her direction. Perhaps some of the goblins who’d remained in the camp had changed their muddled minds and escaped and were following them. Perhaps surviving laborers were headed to Jelek or the city of Neraka. The things moved with purpose, steadily in one direction, though they did not move quickly.
Then her mind brushed creatures that stirred in the earth to the south, where Direfang intended to go. They were smaller creatures, stirring among the sand and rocks. Snakes, she suspected, because in the past she’d seen several snakes slither out of holes beyond the boundaries of the slave area, sunning themselves in the hottest part of the day and returning to their holes at dark or when a knight walked by and disturbed them. Once, months and months past, she saw the goblin called Brak grab a snake that had slithered too close to the pens. Brak had reached out with his leathery arm and snapped it up, catching it behind the head so it could not easily bite him. Probably he ate it, but Mudwort hadn’t watched; her attention had been distracted by something else at the time.
No doubt all the burrowing animals for miles around the Dark Knight camp had been affected by the quake-either killed or displaced, their homes broken just as the buildings in Steel Town had been broken. They were all stirring.
Just how far had the devastation reached?
Mudwort wondered again if any of the ogre villages in the hills to the east had been shaken and battered. She hoped they’d all been destroyed. Because Direfang wanted to go south, perhaps she should concentrate on exploring in that direction.
South.
Farther.
“Ack!”
All of a sudden, she felt a bitter taste in her mouth that no amount of spitting would relieve. Odd that she hadn’t noticed the taste before. Perhaps she’d been too preoccupied to notice it building up. But right then it was all she could think about. It had settled firmly on her tongue and made her eyes sting. It filled her nose with a dry, unpleasant scent, and again made her feel unnervingly hot all over.
Curious, that hot, bitter sensation. Mudwort instinctively knew what it meant.
Something very, very bad waited to the south.
23
Direfang finally slept. For quite some time, he’d been resting, stretched out on the rock, right arm draped over his burning eyes to keep the sun out. He felt almost nothing in his left arm, which a Dark Knight had deeply slashed. He was glad that any pain from that wound was not competing with his other aches, especially with the pounding in his head from the horse that had clipped him. The pounding would not stop.
But he was a little worried about the arm. He’d looked at the wound, which ran inches deep below his left elbow, practically to the bone. He’d wrapped a strip from a Dark Knight tunic around his arm in an effort to staunch the bleeding. The cloth was black and, therefore, did not show any blood, but it felt warm and sticky. He didn’t want to think about his wounded arm. He had plenty of other things to be concerned about, such as all the goblins who milled at the base of the foothills and were waiting for his leadership.
When next he woke, it was well into the afternoon, and his skin felt burned from the sun. He could hear goblins chattering below him, one calling out shrilly that Direfang had woken up again. Others turned their faces toward him.
He let out a great sigh and propped himself up. Dozens of the goblins called to him, the words blending into an annoying buzz before turning into a chant that was picked up by most of the crowd. Krumb and Thema were at the front, repeating his name over and over. He shuddered. It didn’t look as though many had left. What had seemed a good idea two nights past, escaping from the Dark Knight camp and returning to free the rest of the slaves, had turned into a nightmare. What was he going to do with all those stupid goblins?
Those goblins, clearly more than one thousand of them-perhaps close to two thousand-had waited at the base of the foothills for him all through the early-morning hours and into the afternoon. The faces he looked down on carried myriad expressions-most of them hopeful and filled with anticipation, some of them worried, eyebrows raised in question. Not many appeared angry, but some glared at him.