For Doric it was even worse. Lord Despaard waded through with the dwarf upon his back, and Vanstrom did the same for Jack.
“If you tell anyone of this, Despaard, especially that wizard,” Doric said from his perch, “then I will likely have to kill you.” The lord nodded solemnly.
When they emerged from the other side they found their bodies covered with black leeches, each the size of Pia’s thumb. She cried out in disgust, and it took them several minutes to remove the wretched creatures.
Her brother remained silent throughout.
But at least Canifis is behind us now.
She kept her eyes on him, for she could tell that he was weak and exhausted, hungry and cold. They all were.
“Never a rope, Jack,” she said. “Not us. Not for you or me.”
“What does that mean, Pia?” Arisha asked. “Why do you say that?”
Arisha had lasted the journey better than most. She had swum across the river, her clothes bundled above her to keep them dry, and although she was obviously tired, she did not seem exhausted like the others. Now, her dark hair was slick, the silver band that held it more brilliant than usual, and her blue eyes shone in a face that was reddened from exertion-a face that had been challenged but not beaten.
Pia’s respect for her had only grown, and she responded to the question.
“We were born and raised in East Ardougne. We were thieves. There, ‘never a rope’ is a saying. You are trained as a thief by one of the guild-masters. You trust your brothers and sisters absolutely, and you can never steal from them. If you betray them, it is certain death. The rope is what we are taught to fear-the hangman’s noose. Any other death is to be welcomed, for it means you didn’t get caught by Lathas’s Justice, and you haven’t told on your brothers and sisters. Anything else is a death with honour.”
Arisha looked at her curiously.
“So you think anything other than hanging is an honourable death?” she asked.
“To hang you have to be caught,” Pia explained. “If you are caught by the Justice you will be tortured into telling on your brothers and sisters. Therefore, we are told it is a dishonourable way to die. That it is the way of cowards and traitors.”
“You have been told that by wicked men who would use you,” the priestess said, “to ensure that you are so afraid of hanging that you would throw yourself into an army of swords rather than give yourself up. It keeps them safe.”
She turns what I say into questions and uncertainties. But there is something in her words…
“I don’t know,” Pia whispered, embarrassed by her ignorance. “I don’t understand.”
“The world is not just, I’m afraid,” Arisha said. “Even an honourable person can hang. That does not undo the good work they have done in life.”
Ahead, Karnac called a halt and stared into the distance.
“There it is,” he said. “Hope Rock.” He pointed south, to a mesa that stood above the swamp like a pointed finger, barely visible in the darkness. “That is our home. It is a natural fastness surrounded on all sides by water.
“Come, if we make haste we will be there within a few hours.”
Pia’s energy returned with every step she took. Now that she could see their destination, her will to be there powered her on. It was the same for Jack, as well, and the party as a whole moved more quickly.
A boat waited for them at the edge of a still body of black water. In the darkness behind them, through the swamp, several lights came and went.
“Marsh lights,” Karnac commented. “We all thought they were ill spirits before he came from the west and told us otherwise. Now we know they are a natural phenomenon.”
“Who came?” Lord Despaard asked.
“You will see soon enough. Now, the people from Misthalin will go in the first boat with me. In we get!”
Pia didn’t like boats or water. In Ardougne, in the winter- when traders and merchants were scarce-she had been forced on occasion to work the river, hacking out ice blocks with her brothers and sisters to earn what little they could. It had been cold, painful work, and once she had seen something in the water, something big.
Things live beneath the waves, she thought to herself. Horrible things.
She looked at the black waters and sat Jack down beside her in the middle of the boat, as far from the sides as possible. It was cold on the water-colder than on land. Then as the oars beat their steady rhythm in the rowlocks and the boat moved forward, she closed her eyes.
She only opened them when they ground to a halt on a beach of oily gravel. There, at the bottom of the sheer rock, a lift awaited them.
“Don’t be scared, little Pia,” Doric said, his eyes scanning the heights above them. “It is safe. I am sure of it.” Yet when they were in the lift and it began to move upward, the dwarf closed his eyes and gripped his axe tight.
I am not the only one who is afraid. And he even bested a werewolf.
When they finally arrived at the top, they were greeted by a group of people, nearly twenty in all, dressed in rags, their eyes shining with hunger and their bodies unwashed.
They look at us as if they’ve never seen another human before.
“It is a time of miracles,” a gaunt woman muttered from the rear of the onlookers. “Small folk drop from the sky, and visitors cross the river from the west to make war on the undying. Blessed be these days, for change is coming.”
Karnac led them to a small fire close by that gave little warmth. The inhabitants closed around them in a ring, as if fearful they would vanish if they lost sight of them. It made Pia nervous. She took Jack’s hand and sat down with Arisha on one side and Vanstrom on the other.
“Are you all part of the Myreque, like Vanstrom?” Lord Despaard asked.
“We are,” Karnac confirmed. “We fight the Undying Ones any way we can, and we seek a way out of this dreadful realm. We escaped from the ghettoes of Meiyerditch, nearly two years ago. I led over two hundred of us out then. Now we are less than thirty.”
He waved the onlookers back, and for the first time Pia got a good look at their home.
The summit of Hope Rock was a plateau, its edge a ring of rising stone that reminded Pia of a castle’s battlements. This natural wall rose to the height of three men, keeping the plateau hidden from view save from directly above. Against the circle’s inner wall, natural ridges and outcroppings, supplemented with crude wooden beams and scaffolding, provided a means of reaching its top. Below, at the circle’s base, Pia noticed a dozen caves from which people ducked in and out.
But it was the contraption at the far end of the plateau that made her gape. A great swathe of canvas was delicately rested across much of the plateau’s area. Nearby stood a squat metal object in a small wicker frame. It reminded Pia somehow of a stove.
“What is that?” Doric asked suspiciously.
“That is the balloon,” Lord Despaard answered with a sudden grin. The nobleman dashed forward. “Master Peregrim? Master Peregrim are you here?”
Pia spied a diminutive figure appear from beneath the balloon’s voluminous folds. He looked no bigger than Jack, yet when he stepped forward she saw how wizened his face was behind a grey wisp of beard.
A gnome.
“Lord Despaard? By the gods! It is you!” When he spoke, his voice was high-pitched and his speech fast. He grabbed Lord Despaard’s hand and shook it firmly in his own. “Have you come here to liberate us from this dreadful place? Can that be true?”