Gathering of the Chosen (7 page)

Carmaz kicked the door to the cage, but it
was locked tight and his kick only succeeded in causing the cage to
sway. Of course, due to the injuries he had sustained earlier, his
kicks were not as strong as they could be, but that didn't give
Carmaz an excuse to give up.

But even if I do escape, how far will I
get before the crustaceans catch me again?
Carmaz thought.
And I don't even know where Saia
is
. This situation seems
hopeless.

But Carmaz banished that thought from his
mind. He was well acquainted with feelings of hopelessness—it was
impossible to grow up on Ruwa and not feel that way—but right now
he could not afford to dwell on it. He would instead focus on how
to get out of here, which was within his ability.

Still, his broken right arm made it hard
to think, because the pain from it was so awful that it distracted
his mind from everything else. With a supreme force of will,
however, Carmaz forced himself to forget about it long enough to do
what he needed to do to escape.

Then Carmaz jammed his hand on his
unbroken arm into his pants pocket and drew out the lock-pick that
he had been given by his grandfather many years ago. As quietly as
he could, he stuck it into the cage's lock and began fiddling with
it. Every now and then he'd stop and watch the crustaceans to make
sure they weren't coming to get him for dinner, but most of the
crustaceans were either busy preparing the fire or watching two
younger-looking crustaceans fighting each other, trying to use
their claws to tear each other apart in a frenzy of loud
combat.

They're crustaceans,
Carmaz thought
as he resumed picking the lock.
I doubt even they know why
they're fighting. At least it's distracting them from me.

Then Carmaz heard the lock click, causing
him to smile for the first time in several hours. As carefully as
Carmaz could, he pushed the cage door open; its hinge, thankfully,
did not creak. Once it was open wide enough, Carmaz stepped out of
it, though he did so bent over and without making a sound.

Again, the crustaceans were too distracted
by the fight and the fire to notice him, so Carmaz made his way
around the cage to the thick jungle that surrounded the village.
Once he was deep enough in the jungle that he was sure that the
crustaceans would not be able to find him if they came after him,
Carmaz walked through the muddy ground and thick undergrowth, his
eyes on the tiny village itself as he walked.

The question now was where to find Saia.
Carmaz's first guess was the somewhat larger hut near the west side
of the village. He had seen one of the crustaceans who had captured
Saia step out from that hut, and because he didn't see Saia
anywhere else, he assumed that that was where his friend was being
held. The only problem now was entering the village and freeing
Saia, which was currently impossible due to the amount of
crustaceans located there.

At least it was impossible until one of
the crustaceans looked toward Carmaz's cage and noticed that it was
empty. Without warning, the crustacean shrieked and pointed at the
empty cage, even hitting one of its friends on the head to draw its
attention to Carmaz's empty cage.

All of the crustaceans dropped what they
were doing and ran toward the cage. They stopped by the cage
briefly to inspect it, before they tore it apart in rage. Then all
fifty of of them ran into the jungle behind it, which they seemed
to have deduced was where Carmaz had fled.

Maybe my luck isn't so bad after
all,
Carmaz thought.
But they could be back any minute.
Riuja isn't a huge island, so it won't take them long to search it
all and realize that they can't find me. Gotta find Saia and then
find a way off this cursed island before our 'hosts'
return.

So Carmaz dashed out from the jungle
toward the large hut, though he almost tripped over the bones
scattered around the village's streets. Soon Carmaz reached the hut
door, which was locked, but he broke the rusty old lock off with
one kick and then opened the door.

“Saia?” said Carmaz as he stuck his head
into the dark hut. He wrinkled his nose at the stink of the hut's
interior, which was like a combination of excrement and mud. “Saia,
are you there? It's me, Carmaz.”

Carmaz spotted his friend immediately.
Saia was lying on the dirt floor of the hut, still almost
completely naked from his swim, his only piece of clothing the
pants with rolled up leggings. Deep, bloody claw marks on his arms
and legs marked where the crustaceans had grabbed him, and his
dark, curly hair was matted slightly with blood. Still, Saia had
enough strength to raise his head high enough to look at Carmaz,
his eyes full of both fear and relief.

“Carmaz?” said Saia, whose voice sounded
dangerously weak. “Oh, thank the gods. I thought I was a goner for
sure.”

“Don't thank the gods for what they didn't
do,” said Carmaz. “Anyway, I am glad to see that you are alive. We
need to get out of here before the crustaceans return. They seem to
think I'm in the jungle, but it won't be long before they figure
out the truth and come back. Then they'll probably skip the fire
and just eat us raw.”

“I can't stand on my own,” said Saia. He
gestured at his legs, which were even bloodier and more cut up than
his arms. “The crustaceans tore up my legs. You'll have to support
me.”

Carmaz scowled.
Just what I needed.
More bad luck.

But Carmaz said aloud, “Fine. I'll help
you and we'll see how far a couple of cripples can go.”

Carmaz dashed into the hut and helped Saia
onto his feet. Saia certainly wasn't joking when he said he
couldn't stand. He had to lean heavily on Carmaz. In fact, to
Carmaz, it felt more like he was carrying Saia with one arm, rather
than merely supporting Saia so he could walk on his own.

Saia looked at Carmaz's broken arm that
hung limply at his side. “You don't look like you're in much better
shape than me.”

Carmaz rolled his eyes. “It's fine.
Nothing to worry about. You just focus on your wounds, all
right?”

Thankfully, Saia was not a very heavy
person, so Carmaz managed to get them both out of the hut quickly.
A cursory view of the village revealed that the crustaceans still
had not returned, but Carmaz wasn't going to press their luck.

“All right, Saia,” said Carmaz, breathing
hard due to his fatigue starting to catch up to him. He also winced
when he felt his broken arm again, although he tried to ignore it.
“We head to the beach and then try to swim back to Ruwa.”

“Swim?” Saia repeated, looking at Carmaz
in confusion. “I assumed you took your grandfather's raft to get
here.”

“I did,” said Carmaz. “But then it sprang
a leak and sank.”

“I guess the gods really
do
have it
out for you, don't they?” said Saia.

“Shut up,” Carmaz said. “Anyway, swimming
is our best bet. If the crustaceans stay distracted long enough,
then by the time they return here, we ought to be back on Ruwa well
before they even realize we're gone.”

“Just how do you intend to swim across the
freezing waters between Riuja and Ruwa with a broken arm?” said
Saia, pointing at Carmaz's broken arm. “That's not even counting
myself. I don't think I can swim at all in my current
condition.”

“We'll figure something out,” said Carmaz
as he led Saia around the hut to the surrounding jungle. “We always
do.”

“That sounds an awful lot like what
Grandma always said,” said Saia. “You know, about how the gods will
provide and all that?”

“I said
we'll
figure something
out,” Carmaz said, putting as much emphasis on 'we'll' as he could,
though his fatigue and broken arm made that difficult. “I rely on
the gods for nothing, and neither does any proud Ruwan.”

“Okay, okay,” said Saia. “Just saying that
that is what Grandma would always say before we went hungry for a
week and had to hunt swamp rats for breakfast.”

Carmaz rolled his eyes, but before he
could respond, he heard the shrieks of the crustaceans behind them.
Alarmed, Carmaz looked over his shoulder, as did Saia, to see the
crustaceans burst out of the jungle. The crustaceans spotted Carmaz
and Saia immediately, causing the lead crustacean to point at them
and shriek what might have been an order to its fellow villagers to
catch the two of them. Then the entire village stampeded toward
them, shrieking and snapping their claws as they did so.

Carmaz tried to run, but Saia could not do
much more than limp. The two of them tripped over a bone anyway and
fell onto the ground rather ungracefully. The impact wasn't very
hard, but falling down for even a moment sealed their fate.

Still, Carmaz rolled over onto his back,
despite the pain in his broken arm, and rolled to a crouch. He then
drew the rusty, broken knife from his pouch that his grandfather
had given him when he was a kid and he held it out in an offensive
position, although he knew that there was no way he could fend off
so many crustaceans at once with such a puny weapon.

Better go down fighting and defending
my best friend than to go down cowering like a scared puppy,
Carmaz thought, gritting his teeth as he prepared for the pain of
the crustaceans' claws tearing him apart.

But when the mob of crustaceans were not
more than ten feet away from Carmaz and Saia, a massive, blinding
light suddenly shone between the two groups. The light was so
bright that Carmaz had to cover his eyes with his good arm to
protect them, but he still heard the startled cries and shrieks of
the crustaceans, along with a loud
whoomp
sound that sounded
unlike anything Carmaz had heard in his life.

The light, however, lasted only a second.
In the next instant, it was gone, making it safe enough for Carmaz
to lower his arm to see what in the world had happened.

Standing between him and Saia and the
crustaceans was an elderly, robed man who Carmaz had never seen
before. The man was bald and leaned on a tall staff topped with a
clock, with clock patterns stitched into his robes.

Carmaz's first thought was that this man
must have been a mage of some kind. There weren't too many mages on
Ruwa, aside from Herune the Swamp Hermit, the madman said to live
deep in the Swamp of Light all by himself. Carmaz didn't know if
this man was as crazy as Herune was said to be, but if he was, then
that meant that things were going to get much worse before it was
all over.

But despite his lack of magical ability,
Carmaz sensed that this man was no mere mage, perhaps not even a
mortal. The man radiated almost as much energy as the sun, despite
his frail and old appearance. The man standing before him and Saia
could destroy the entire island and every living thing on it if he
wanted, and then remake it to his liking.

Then Carmaz noticed the crustaceans. All
of them were where they had been before the old man's appearance,
but they looked frozen now. Not frozen with ice. It was more like
they had simply stopped, like a man standing still for a painter to
do his portrait. They didn't move even one inch. Even their eyes
were as still as tree branches on a windless day.

Before Carmaz could wonder aloud what was
going on, the man said, “So you want to kill a godling, do you?
What arrogance. Let the sand of time consume you, as you rightfully
deserve.”

The man raised his hand. The crustaceans
suddenly began to age so fast that Carmaz's eyes could barely keep
up. Their shells became grayer and grayer, until soon they
dissolved into dust, leaving their naked bodies before those, too,
rapidly dissolved. Soon there was nothing left to suggest the
presence of the once-terrifying crustaceans of Riuja save for dozen
of piles of dust, but even those aged so rapidly that they vanished
as if they had never existed at all.

All of this took place in roughly ten
seconds. In fact, it happened so fast that Carmaz was not even sure
that it actually had happened at all. It might have been his eyes
playing tricks on him or maybe even an illusion cast by the man
before him, although with no sign of the crustaceans anywhere,
Carmaz had no choice but to believe it.

The man then turned to face Carmaz and
Saia. As soon as Carmaz looked into the man's eyes, he knew that
this was indeed no man, but a god. He just knew it somehow, despite
having never seen a god before. The man's eyes were ancient and
authoritative, just as the legends described the eyes of the
gods.

“Carmaz Korva,” the man said. “Your
destiny is at last at hand. The time has come for me to take you
away, where you will start the long and difficult journey ahead of
you that even I do not know.”

“How do you know my name?” asked Carmaz,
though he found the words difficult to speak in the presence of
such a powerful deity. “I never introduced myself.”

“I know the names of all who are destined
to ascend,” said the man, “for I am Tinkar, the God of Fate and
Time. And it is your fate to ascend to godhood. Or it may be, if
you work for it.”

Carmaz didn't understand what Tinkar
meant, but he managed to find enough strength to stand up straight,
doing his best to ignore his broken arm. He then looked Tinkar
straight in the eye and said, “Are you going to help Ruwa?”

Tinkar looked confused at the question.
“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you and your fellow gods,” said
Carmaz. He gestured all around them with his good hand, even though
they weren't on Ruwa. “For years, Ruwa has been a desolate land
full of despair and poverty and disease. Why have you gods forsaken
us?”

“When was it our job to ensure wealth and
health for you humans?” Tinkar said. “Anyway, you are changing the
subject. The Tournament of the Gods is starting and you have been
chosen to participate in it.”