Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [147]
Trone led them unerringly to the base of the rocky hills. The landscape on the eastern edge of the grasslands was not as dramatic as the gullies and rifts where the gimblewolves roamed, but it was barren. Where the grasslands grew green, here, lumpy boulders sat in piles beneath the blue sky. It was as though a giant’s children had been stacking rocks when they were suddenly called to dinner, leaving their playthings behind them.
“Not the kind of place you’d expect to find a well, eh?” Trone muttered, frowning. “The grassland wells are all watched closely by the town nearest to them. Their locations are known. Our records show no well here.”
“Maybe it was dug by the church members? That would explain why it’s half buried now,” Wataru suggested. “Let’s go find the ruins. Do you know where they are?”
“Fine, fine, we’ll go,” Trone said with a toothy smile. “But remember, this is your first expedition. You’ll do as I say.”
“Yes, sir!”
Trone spurred his udai past a small crag and around a pile of rocks, coming to a stop in front of a rise of reddish brown earth. “There it is.”
Wataru didn’t need to look where he was pointing to find the ruins. In a large section of earth where no grass grew, several posts stood supporting nothing, their sides blackened by flame. It was as if a bundle of evil-looking spears had been dropped down from the sky and stuck haphazardly into the ground. You had to squint and look at them from a distance to see how those black spears formed the outlines of what was once a building, and even then it wasn’t easy.
“So the roof burned and fell down?”
“It was still there after the fire, actually. Wind and rain did the rest. It’s been ten years, after all.”
The two slowly rode the perimeter of the chapel ruins. If they had just been passing by without knowing the history of the place, the burnt skeleton might not have seemed quite so ominous, so threatening. But to Wataru’s eyes, every lump of soot on the blackened ground inside those pillars looked like a body, frozen in a final agony. He felt sick to his stomach.
Trone’s udai snorted plaintively and took a step backward. Trone patted the beast on its neck. “He’s scared.”
Wataru’s udai also kept its distance from the ruins, stomping its hooves in place.
“Have there been no reports in Gasara about strange things going on here, or strange lights?”
“Not a one. Most of the folks that come to Gasara have no business coming to a place like this.”
“And you probably would have to get quite close to see the glow of the gemstone anyway,” Wataru muttered.
Trone growled deep in his throat. “We’ve no proof it’s a gemstone, so don’t jump to conclusions. Let’s dismount and take a look around.”
Roping their udais to a protruding rock, they approached the ruins on foot. Trone walked with his hands empty, swinging by his side, but Wataru couldn’t relax without his right hand resting on the hilt of his Brave’s Sword.
“I don’t like the feel of this place,” Wataru whispered.
“Nor I.”
The two stepped inside the outline of the ruins and began pacing its border. Every time his foot fell on something that cracked, or he felt a lump in the soot, Wataru was sure he was stepping on someone’s bones, and it sent shivers down his spine.
“The bodies of the believers were all carried from here and buried in the town’s communal grave site,” Trone said as he looked around. “You won’t find any corpses left here. So don’t worry about stepping on anyone’s remains.”
“That’s a relief,” Wataru said, still walking on tiptoe.
“Take a look,” Trone said, touching one of the blackened pillars. “It’s thin. Your leg could hold more weight than this. When all your builders are women, children, the elderly, and the sick, you can’t carry anything much sturdier than this.”
The sun had begun to angle down in the sky, but it was still quite light. Still, Wataru felt that here, where the chapel once stood, seemed somehow darker than it had been outside the line marked by the scorched ground.
“Wataru,