Remains, Part II

Boaz finally stepped off the road. There was no grass, but there was a good deal of moss, and a pervasive carpet of bull thorns.

“What should we be looking for?” he said, blinking a few times to clear his eyes for the close examination that would follow. Shazer grinned.

“There’s my man,” he said. “I doubt that much would be left on the surface, but several of the histories I read described caves or cellars of some kind. A few of the old mercenaries I spoke with at Dunan and at Lutz said the same thing.”

“Doors, then,” Boaz said, almost in complete mastery of his fear now. In the fine details, in the observation of the world in its constituent pieces, there was nothing to fear. For twelve years, he had worked for the marshal in Ahrbul, taking spot inventories of goods of passing caravans for the purposes of taxation. At first, he had been overwhelmed by the huge wagons, filled with goods, stuffed with merchandise, but he had learned to be patient and take each load a piece at a time, and as the years passed, that learning seeped into his own soul.

Fifty carts bloated with wares going north seemed as uncountable as a thousand, but there was nothing intimidating about a single barrel sitting on the deck. It didn’t even matter if it had a wooden box beside it. There was nothing overwhelming about a barrel, or a box.

Later, when the road dried up and carts stopped coming, when the marshal sent him home for the last time, he found himself staring out at week upon week without food and felt despair tickling the back of his neck. He couldn’t handle weeks, but he could make it through a day. He had gone many days without food during his life. The gods often called on their children to fast in praise or supplication. A day without food was nothing to be afraid of, and if it happened be followed by another day, so be it. A day was just a day, he thought. It didn’t matter what came before or after, and he could manage a day without food.

Now, the ruins conjured in his heart fears so primal he could not even fully understand them, but he told himself that they were nothing but piles of individual stones, and there was nothing as ordinary as a pile of stones.

He nodded to Shazer, beginning to feel excitement.

“Doors, or stairs, or perhaps other, more natural openings.”

The two men spread out, leaving the lantern on a pile of rubble, its hoods all open. Shazer began to whistle and though it was little forced, it was cheerful nonetheless. The whistle was like the light, however. Its influence spread no further than the radius of his muted sound and beyond, the silence became emboldened by the sudden challenge.