Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [140]
Dartun was amazed at these accounts. “Are any of them still around?”
“It is possible.” Both men shrugged. “They’re too difficult to catch. They have killed so many.”
“How many?” Dartun was eager for more as he’d never read of such a creature in any of the Archipelago’s bestiaries. He felt both excitement and a threat, and this sort of thing appealed to his essential nature.
“Nearly everyone on the island,” the short man said casually, his voice as calm as if he was describing the weather.
“Everyone?” Dartun whispered. “But there must be hundreds of thousands on Tineag’l. Surely they can’t all have been killed?”
The tall tribesman grunted a laugh. “Tell me, how many people have you seen since you arrived here?”
Dartun saw the truth of what he said, and the concept sickened him, yet there was still some base, primitive reaction that excited him. Such was his constant thirst for knowledge and understanding. A new, unknown race was a sensational piece of information. “Please, could you tell me more about these creatures?”
“We have told you all there is. We are sorry, magician.” The two of them then headed back to their horses with that same annoying calmness. One added casually, “There have been great problems for us with the coming ice.”
Ice. That word again—changing the fabric of the world, changing people’s lives, their homes, their thoughts, bringing an unsettling texture of uncertainty about whether things would ever be the same again.
Ice. That was the reason he was now able to head for the Realm Gates since sheets of it had formed artificial land where previously maps had indicated only water. Could that bridge have allowed a new race to enter the Archipelago? Could these creatures have exited through the same gates that he was hoping to enter?
Dartun regarded his fellow cultists, who had soon lost interest in a conversation where they could understand little or nothing. The three of them were shuffling around idly in the snow, kicking up small mounds with their boots.
Todi noticed him watching them. “What’s up, Godhi? What did they say?”
Dartun rubbed his forehead as if to stir himself to some new state of alertness. “To be precise, they said that there’s some pretty major shit going on.”
Verain approached, took Dartun’s arm. “Should we be worried?”
Dartun explained what he had learned so far, while the other three simply stared at him as if he was demented.
Dartun summarized. “There has been genocide. The island has been cleansed.”
Their moods darkened considerably.
“Come,” Dartun announced, heading toward the dog pack. “A little research is perhaps in order.”
Dogs dragged the four cultists skidding along by sled into the nearest township that hadn’t suffered too much from incursions of snow. Settlements located on particularly exposed slopes had been, without their human population, covered completely. Villages had become corpses. Dartun had halted the dogs more than once, thinking that they should have reached a town clearly marked on his maps. He laughed morosely when he realized it was under snow.
Eventually they came to a settlement sheltered under a titanic outcrop of sedimentary rock. Dartun believed the place was called Bronjek, but it now bore little resemblance to the bustling town he had once heard of. The main street was little more than a muddy track, trodden by a thousand pairs of feet and rutted wheels and dog sleds, between wood and metal shacks that appeared to lean against one another for support. Thick shutters obscured most of the windows, but a few of these were open—despite the freezing cold—and that was the first indication something wasn’t as it should be.
The sign on a tavern said “Open,” but there was no one to enjoy its hospitality, no hospitality to enjoy, this once-busy street now a ghost of its former self.
There were