[First couple of pages]
Fourteen year-old Talay howled in pain. Her right ankle bled from a dozen jagged lacerations, raked by loose lava rock from her fall down a steep incline. Her spear clattered down after her, the tip of its bronze spearhead coming to rest only a few inches from her face.
Her best friend and cousin, Shaali, scrambled down after her. “I’m coming!” But her efforts caused a slide of loose rock to cascade down the slope, sharp pieces striking Talay.
“Stop!” Talay said, “Go around! You’re going to get us both killed with an avalanche!”
“You’re the one who hollered like a wounded orc! I’d be surprised if we don’t have a score of fire trogs descending on us, thanks to you.”
Talay shook her head. “Fire trogs don’t come out this far. Not hot enough.” She let out a yelp as she tried to move her foot, then caught her breath again. “They only live near the volcanoes.”
“Yeah?” Shaali said as she worked her way around a boulder to more solid footing. “Well, I see a volcano right there.” She waved toward the southwest horizon where the volcano, Angzinzon, belched a plume of gray-black ash into the atmosphere. “Or have you forgotten?”
“It’s too far away. Days of travel, and we aren’t going anywhere near there. If anything gets us here it would be a rock viper.”
“Or a giant. Or a wyvern. Or….”
Or orcs, Talay thought, but she didn’t want to scare Shaali. “Don’t be so dramatic. Just get down here already.” She grabbed the spear. Men who had been to the Ruined Lands returned with stories too vile to share with girls like her.
Talay’s face-veil had come untied, so she quickly secured it, obscuring all but her eyes again, as befitted a maiden. Any maiden seen without it faced public ridicule or, worse, lashes from her father. The same was true if any skin showed other than their hands, neck, or feet, though even those had to be covered during religious ceremonies or public celebrations.
The girls grew quiet as Shaali picked her way down to Talay. Talay ripped off a sleeve of her shirt and wrapped it around her ankle, turning the cream-colored linen red with blood. Father will beat me, she thought. It had taken her mother days to make that shirt with a roll of cloth that her father, Shannic, had worked for weeks to earn as the town smithy. No matter, she thought. Bringing back sulfur wort to save a little girl’s life would more than make up for it. If she could find some, that is.
Talay was trying to stand, using the spear shaft as a cane, when Shaali finally made it to her.
“Here, let me help,” Shaali said. But Talay shrugged her off.
“I’ll be okay.”
“That’s what you said before you fell, when I warned you not to take that route.”
“You’re not my mother,” Talay complained.
“No, I’m your cousin and a year older than you, so you should follow my advice.”
“If I followed your advice, we would still be in Tarno watching your sister wither away.”
Shaali tightened her lips and glared at Talay.
Talay sighed. “Sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
Shaali turned away, facing the volcano. “Let’s just keep moving. Can you walk?”
Talay gingerly put weight on her right foot. “It stings, but I can walk.”
The two girls slowly climbed down a rocky ravine. The land around them was a blasted wasteland of igneous rock and ancient lava flows. It was the most desolate and foreboding place in all of the world of Irikara – at least, according to the few travelers who came to Tarno. Here and there, pale green scrub plants managed an existence in the crevices, frequented only by spiders and the occasional black and yellow lizard. These were the Ruined Lands, a volcanic region where only outlaws and vile creatures held sway, as she had been told all her life.
(continued)
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Strange Worlds of Jason Kilgore 