Shadow Tree (5 page)

Chapter 7: Staying Alive

For many months, Resuza had woken and gone to sleep in the same way: in the darkness, surrounded by the dank odors of her unwashed neighbors, to the sound of a bass drum being pounded. The sound never failed to startle her, especially because it was more of a physical kick than a noise. The Dragoonya would choose a slave at random for the task, and everyone knew that if the drumming wasn't fast or powerful enough, the slave would have to face the
Goon-ya-radt
– the guards who were once prisoners themselves. One might think that these guards would be friendlier or more sympathetic, because they understood what it meant to suffer as prisoners, but in fact the opposite was true; they tended to be crueler than the Dragoonya. This was, in part, because the Drangoonya picked the angriest, meanest, and most twisted prisoners to lead the
Goon-ya-radt
. The group's leader was a man named Ure, whose face was horribly disfigured by a severe case of frostbite, which had withered his nose and turned his skin into what resembled a rotting piece of fruit. If and when a slave failed to beat the drum properly, it was Ure who handled the matter. He liked to force slaves into the snow, until they either froze to death or returned to the barracks looking like Ure. Once, when a little girl was chosen to beat the drum – and failed – Ure punished her simply by making her kiss his face. In Resuza's opinion, this might have been the worst punishment at all.

The drums were played twice each day – once early each morning, to wake everyone, and again at midnight to signal the start of the five hours or so in which they were allowed to sleep. Tonight, thankfully, the drumming continued for a full minute. The slave was strong, aided in his task by the fear of death. When the drumming finally slowed down and stopped, Resuza could still feel her pulse racing. She folded her arms in between her legs and tried to steady the trembling in her limbs.

There was a violent cough from below her.

“Hill?” she whispered. “Are you okay?”

No answer.

“HILL?!” she whispered louder.

A low, weak groan floated up to her. “I'm okay,” he mumbled softly. “I'm just a bit short of breath.”

Hill coughed again. Resuza was terribly worried about him. He had been coughing more or less constantly for weeks now and she was worried that he had the sickness known as consumption, which had claimed the lives of so many slaves.

“I'm fine,” wheezed Hill.

Resuza was lying on a tiny upper bunk in the Dargora slave quarters, right above Hill Persplexy – Alfonso's uncle and only a year ago, a member of Somnos high society as its newly-appointed Foreign Minister. All of that, especially the mansion where they lived, now seemed like a cruel dream. Sometimes it seemed like a miracle that they were even alive at all. After they were captured by the slave traders, the journey to Dargora took a month. The days blended together as their caravan trundled across the steppes and into “the land of frozen earth” – what the slave traders called the permafrost tundra. The slaves' cages were exposed to the wind, snow and rain. Several of the older and weaker ones died along the way, and Resuza often woke up yelling from nightmares. Strangely, the nightmares all focused on one simple fact – namely, that she couldn't remember the names of those who had died.

Resuza recalled very little of her arrival in Dargora. She was too exhausted and famished to think properly. One of her only memories of the city's landscape was of a series of giant pillars that rose up from the ground and disappeared into the clouds above. The pillars were gigantic – so wide across that if you chiseled a tunnel through the base of one of them, a large elephant could easily walk through the tunnel. At first, Resuza thought the pillars were made of rocks – like giant chimneys made of stone and mortar – but when she took a closer look she saw the pillars were actually made of bones and skulls. “Those are slaves' bones,” one old slave woman told her, who was helping unload the slaves. “One day, they'll add yours to the collection.” The woman said this as if it were an undisputable fact, as if there weren't even the faintest hope of escape, and her certainty was both terrifying and profoundly depressing.

As soon as they were unloaded from the cages, the slaves were brought to a vast series of underground cellars, carved from the frozen dirt and rock. These cellars, which were connected by a maze of tunnels, were known as the slave quarters and it was expected that all the slaves would live out the rest of their lives there. The slaves spent their time hauling coal and boiling whale blubber in giant copper vats and turning it into oil which the Dragoonya used to burn in their heaters and their lamps. Resuza tended to the vats of blubber, which was disgusting, but not too taxing physically. Hill had a much more punishing job. He worked with the ovens. His job was to unload carts filled with coal and shovel this fuel into a series of giant ovens. Each oven was situated at the base of one of the giant pillars. The pillars, as it happens, were hollowed out – and this allowed the heat from the coal-fires to rise up through them the way that smoke and heat rises up through a chimney. No one knew where the heat went, since no one was allowed out of the slave quarters to look. And new slaves were always brought in during the night.

Upon her arrival, Resuza was hopeful that she might find her long-lost younger sister, Naomi. She looked everywhere for Naomi, hoping against hope that she might have survived such a long captivity in Dargora; but she saw no one that even bore a resemblance to her younger sister. Dargora was a terrible place for children, and there were very few in the slave quarters. At a certain point several months in, Resuza realized that she had stopped looking. She had given up. Now, even to think of her sister put Resuza in a dark mood. Naomi had been captured many years ago and she would have arrived here as a child. The chances that she survived were very slim. Resuza had slowly accepted the fact that her sister was almost certainly dead. The only hope that remained was that, somehow, she and Hill could escape.

Despite their very bleak prospects, Resuza and Hill did occasionally discuss how they might make it out of Dargora. It wasn't just wishful thinking. They had one possession that gave them hope; it was the Foreseeing Pen, the five-inch metal cylinder they had found hidden inside Alfonso's sphere. Alfonso had pried the sphere from a statue within Straszydlo Forest, and the sphere had quickly become Alfonso's weapon of choice. In fact, it proved crucial in winning the battle of Somnos. Alfonso had given the sphere to Resuza right before entering Jasber, so she could protect herself and Hill. It seemed like years had passed since that moment, but in reality it had only been a few months.

The Pen represented escape, but it also was a clear reminder that Alfonso and Bilblox would be on the hunt for them. And one way or the other – via the Pen or with the help of Alfonso and Bilblox – they'd escape. They clung to that hope.

As for the Pen itself, they knew very little about it. Hill had played with it just a few times. Once, shortly after they were captured, Hill had unscrewed the top of the Pen and lit the inside of the barrel with a flame – much the way one might light a gas burner with a match. On that occasion, he then pressed the emerald button on top of the Pen, which caused a stream of fire to shoot out of the Pen's tip. The Pen was, clearly, a potent weapon – if one knew how to wield it properly. The problem was that, despite a great deal of effort, Hill still didn't know how to use it to his advantage, and there was really no place where he could experiment with it. In fact, Hill worried constantly about being discovered with it and he was obsessed with hiding the Pen properly. Using scraps of discarded leather, Hill had fashioned a sheath to enclose the Pen and he kept it stuffed into the side of his left shoe.

Every evening, after dining on a hunk of moldy bread and thin soup, Hill and Resuza usually had an hour to themselves. Unfortunately, this was the most dangerous time of day because the Dragoonya had informers everywhere who were only too happy to report on any suspicious conversations or activities. Any accusation at all from another slave – whether it was true or not – would usually mean that the accused would be cast out into the snow. In any case, during this time of night, Resuza and Hill lay silently in their bunks. Only after the lights went out did they murmur to each other about their plans.

Tonight, as the other slaves slept like the dead, Hill and Resuza planned to have another such conversation.

“Hill,” whispered Resuza again through the darkness. “Are you okay?”

Spurred into movement by Resuza's whisper, Hill sat up in bed and took the Pen out of its hiding place within the blanket. It was silver with a sparkling emerald embedded on top. He stared at the following diagram carved across the barrel:

Hill had managed to figure out or at least guess the meaning of the five symbols. The symbols represented the five classical elements: the top triangle represented fire and the bottom one was water; the triangle on the left was earth and the one on the right was air; the fifth symbol, the one in the center comprised of three dots, represented ether.

“What's it doing?” whispered Resuza through the darkness, “Is it happening again?”

They spoke in Dormian, which none of the other slaves understood – a precaution just in case someone overheard their whispers.

“Yes,” said Hill. He then had another fit of coughing before he finally caught his breath. Hil was huddled beneath his blanket to conceal his movements. “It's happening again.”

For the last several evenings, at exactly midnight, the emerald on top of the Pen began to glow. The glow lasted for five minutes or so. Tonight, Hill and Resuza had vowed to tinker with the Pen and decipher what – if anything – the glowing meant.

“Are you going to press it?” whispered Resuza.

“Quiet,” said Hill.

Hill held his breath and then pushed the emerald button. CLICK. Nothing happened. He waited a moment, then pressed it again. Still nothing. Hill sighed disappointedly. Finally, he pressed it once more – this time holding the button for several seconds. Then something very strange happened. The tip of the Pen emitted an intense green light and projected a small three-dimensional image, which came in and out of focus, like a brightly lit sign on a foggy night. It was the image of a hand with several numbers etched on and in-between the fingers. There was also a series of circles at the point where the thumb joined to the hand. He couldn't make sense of it. It looked like this.

Hill stared at the mesmerizing, glowing three-dimensional image. His mind was racing with questions.
Why had the Pen started glowing in the last few days? What did this strange diagram mean? What was the Pen trying to tell him?
He played with the Pen for a while longer, but nothing else happened. Eventually, the three-dimensional image disappeared.

“That's puzzling,” said Hill. “I'll need to think about this.”

“I'm tired of thinking – I want to try what we discussed,” said Resuza. “I want to go ahead with our plan.”

“What Now?” asked Hill.

“Yes.”

“Do you really think that's wise?” asked Hill.

“I don't know,” said Resuza. “But I can't just sit around here waiting to die.”

Hill sighed.

“Please give me the Pen,” said Resuza.

“Okay,” said Hill finally, handing the Pen to Resuza. “But for goodness sake, please be careful.”

Resuza crept out of bed with the Pen in hand. Resuza had rehearsed her movements and was fairly certain she could get to her destination without a noise. Whether she would go unnoticed was another matter. She tiptoed down a pitch-black hallway that was lined with slave bunk beds. At the very end of the hallway, on the left side, was an alcove that held a simple wooden table. In better times, several pitchers of water sat on the table; but even this small gesture of humanity had been discontinued as of late and now the slaves only received water at dinner. Those slaves who had been there the longest would often look longingly at the alcove, as if the days when water was once there had been the high point of their lives. Now, the table was bare and covered with a thick layer of dust. The alcove was only about four feet high, but it was surprisingly deep, so much so that Resuza was actually able to crawl under the table and hide herself completely from view.