Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Chapter
Twenty-Five
The days blend into one another as we travel, heading steadily west towards the sunset.
And it’s…really nice.
Kalos stays out of his fugue state. He’s alert and his normal caustic self. We trade jokes and talk as we walk, avoiding most villages if we can help it. We pass a farmer picking fruit from his orchard and offer to work for a few coins. The job ends up taking three days, and by the end of it, Dingle’s eaten so many rotten apples that he’s breaking wind constantly and I never want to touch another apple for as long as I live. But we get coin and the farmer offers us some old clothing. I guess we must look pitiful, and it doesn’t help when I cry over the boots he gives me.
Real shoes. Real honest-to-goodness shoes. Not flimsy sandals. Shoes that can stand a hike. I want to kiss them.
After that, we fare better in the next few towns. People are willing to have us help with tasks, and we’re not chased out of shops when we enter. We look less “vagrant” in the farmer’s cast-offs, I suppose, or it could be that there’s a lot more people on the roads here.
Because the farther west we go, the more travelers we see. There are people fleeing the western coast, as Aventine has been attacking its neighboring kingdoms and seizing land. Some place called Parness was burned to the ground, and we see people fleeing. There are pilgrims searching for Aspects, leading trains of worshipers along the cobbled roads towards the nearest city. There are a lot of merchant wagons, too, which confuses me. Everyone seems to be fleeing east and yet the wagons are heading west.
I comment on this to one elderly farmer as we muck his stable, wielding pitchforks and tossing filthy hay and animal dung. (Well, I say “we.” It’s mostly me with Kalos making disgusted commentary and just stirring the hay with his pitchfork.) “Is there a big market in Aventine?” I ask, since I know it’s the biggest city west and along the coast. “Is that where all the merchants are heading with their wagons?”
“More likely crystal hunters,” the old farmer says, voice cracking with age. He points a gnarled finger at the horizon, as if he can see it through the weathered barn walls. “They’re heading to the Dirtlands to see what they can scavenge. They go crazy for the crystals over in Sunswallow I hear.”
I think about Margo’s necklace, dripping with crystals. They’d come from a floating palace that crashed to the ground, killing everyone inside. Horrible to think that people are collecting them as tokens now.
I’m still thinking about the crystals days later, as the roads flatten out and the world around us becomes more desolate. Here I thought we might be in danger of missing the Dirtlands. That we might not see the strange, so-called dead lands if we stayed to the main paths.
Ha.
Ha ha.
It’s impossible to miss the landscape that everyone refers to as the Dirtlands. It’s a dead place. Not like a desert, where there are cacti and lizards and things surviving despite the harsh environment. This place is actually dead. No grass grows. No trees. No birds, no wildlife, no nothing. The land is just gentle hills of dirt and more dirt, and when the sun hits the south just right, it glitters and gleams as if even from here we can see the remnants of the palace. The only moving shapes are the merchant wagons, who veer off the road, heading deeper into the southern portion of the Dirtlands so they can go and collect crystals.
It’s unsettling here, too. There’s a feeling in the air, a bit like a shadow walking on your grave. It feels very “not right” in the Dirtlands, and the more we approach, the less I like it.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I tell Kalos as we watch another wagon pull off the broken cobbles of the road and head south. “I don’t think I want us to stay here after all. It feels…weird.”
“It’s because the land is dead,” he says, bending down to fish a scrap of something out of Dingle’s mouth. He gives the goat’s head an affectionate rub and snorts with wry amusement when Dingle prances away, clearly interpreting this to be a game. “Tadekha drained all the magic from the land for her Citadel. Now her crystal palace is gone but the deadness remains. You sure you don’t want to stay here? We can make a tent. I won’t plague anyone here for certain.”
No, he wouldn’t, because there’s no one around. I put my hand to my brow, shielding it as I stare at the retreating wagon, its wheels sticking in the loose dirt. I’d swear even the clouds have disappeared over that part of the land, as if they’ve been sucked away, too. I can’t imagine staying here. Yes, Kalos wouldn’t harm anyone, but we wouldn’t last. There’s nothing to eat or drink, no shade, no shelter, no nothing.