The Land of Broken Roads

-It looks safe enough,- said Socks, sniffing the air and flicking the tip of his tail warily. The giant pup stretched his neck to peek in the tower’s second story window, then stood on his hind legs and rested his paws on the wall to look into the third story.

“I only know what I was told,” said Biandina, scratching her mostly-healed shoulder with her remaining hand. “The Square Tower is a cursed place and we should turn around if we see it.”

“Do you think it’s really cursed, or that the elders know it’s the wolves’ territory past it?” asked Dirt.

“I don’t know,” said Biandina. “Either one.”

“Me neither,” said Antelmu, even though he had admitted earlier that no one ever told him about the square tower.

Any other time, Dirt might have completely disregarded someone telling him a place was cursed, since that was nonsense and curses weren’t real. But after recent events, he was a lot less certain. The tower was silent, seven stories tall and wide as a mansion, big enough Biandina’s whole tribe could have lived inside if they wanted to. But it showed no signs of occupation, recent or otherwise. Its empty, soulless windows caught plenty of reflected light from the few inches of snow and banished any shadows that might have otherwise dwelled inside. If the brownish stone of the brickwork had been a shade or two paler, it might have reminded Dirt of dry bone.

Game trails through the snow darted between the surrounding buildings, or what remained of them. This town was not as old as anything from his empire, and he didn’t recognize it. But it was an old place, long abandoned, and Biandina knew it the moment she saw it.

Antelmu stepped right under Socks to look in the door, bow in one hand and no arrow in the other. He peeked in only partially, too nervous to stick his whole head in and look around.

-Well, I have looked with normal sight and ghost sight, and I don’t hear or smell anything unusual. I can’t say nothing was ever here, since the wind blows the air right through and gets rid of old smells. But nothing is here now, and my big brother and sister say this is where you should stay,- said Socks. He pushed off the tower wall and came back down, paws larger than boulders lighting silently on the ground.

The pup was growing, but what made him look truly enormous was the poofy winter fur. Even though Dirt had watched it all grow in, it was hard to get a proper sense of perspective until he stood back and compared Socks with something, like the two humans anxiously standing near him. It seemed like every day, Socks looked less like a puppy and more like a wolf, which was regretful. But that was the way of the world. At least he wasn’t getting less cuddly as well. More so, if anything.

Biandina stepped right behind her little brother as if to push past him, but Antelmu held his bow out and stopped her. “It’s okay,” he said, more quietly than he intended. “I’ll go in first.”

He visibly braced himself, squaring his shoulders and puffing his chest out, and stepped inside.

“Hey, Biandina,” said Dirt. “Here, you can take this.” He took his dagger from its sheath and tossed it to her, catching it with his mind right before it got there so she could pluck it from the air without cutting her remaining hand.

“Thanks,” she said. She deftly changed her grip a few times, working on deciding how best to hold it with only one arm, and settled on just pointing it ahead of her. In she went, following Antelmu.

Dirt sent a thought to Socks, “So you think it’ll be a few days?”

-Perhaps. I might change their minds and come back for you after only a day. But perhaps not. I think I will spend a few days with them and see what they have to teach me. I have never talked to a mated pair who claimed their own territory before,- said Socks. -I am sure you will be fine but I don’t like leaving you here.- He gave the slightest whimper, impossibly faint, to indicate his displeasure about leaving his pet behind.

“You haven’t mentioned pups, so I guess they don’t have any?”

-I don’t know, but Father said most of his children only produce offspring rarely because it is hard to protect them from the Devourer. He didn’t mention other pups with this pack,-

“Now it makes me wonder, what happens when all the land is claimed? Do all the wolves just stop having pups until some of them die?”

-The world is more vast than I know, and I know more than you. I don’t know if it’s possible to run out.-

“Okay, but there has to be an end to it somewhere, right?”

-I suppose. Mother said that if you travel far enough in any direction, you will eventually reach water that is salty and you should not drink it. I think we might have found the water if we followed the river that Ogena is on. Hèctor mentioned boats traveling to other places, so it can’t have been too far from there. But I think that water is very far from here.-

“How much land does each pack claim, exactly?”

-How should I answer? What are some measurement words you want me to use? They claim enough to hunt on, and have some room to themselves, and somewhere for the pups to explore and play if they have any. Father and Mother claim much more than anyone else, though, because they can.-

Dirt stepped over to the building, even though his interest was lower than expected. It wasn’t ruins from his people, nor did it look like anything was left behind in it. And sure enough, once he peeked in, there wasn’t much to see. An entryway with hollow doorways on either side, and a larger room farther in. No ornamentation on the brick walls. Biandina and Antelmu were out of sight, but Dirt heard them in the room to the left whispering anxiously to each other.

-Are you offended you can’t come?- asked Socks.

“Oh, no, not at all. A little disappointed, but I don’t blame them. They can do what they like with their own territory, and I know what my kind look like to wolves. Small and squirmy, with flat little faces. But you can tell them that if they do decide to meet us, I will make some rakes out of wood and comb their fur.”

-The first thing I want them to teach me is how to send my thoughts long distances like Father and Mother do, since they can do it too. Then I will talk to you. And if not, I will find you in the dream and we can talk there.-

Dirt waved for Socks to lean down, and he did. The great pup lowered his nose to the ground and Dirt wrapped his arms around his snout, giving him the best hug he could. Then he scratched all over, everywhere he could reach. “Well, I think we have everything from your harness that we need. Have fun. See you in a few days.”

-The other two are worried they will not be able to protect you. They had better do a good job,- said Socks, trying to sound amused, but he was serious. -Goodbye for now, dear little Dirt.-

“Goodbye, Socks. Keep the havoc-causing to a minimum while you’re in their territory.”

-We will see.-

Socks gave Dirt one little lick, with just the tip of his tongue so he only got Dirt’s face. That was getting harder, too, the more the pup grew.

And with that, Socks turned and sprinted, leaving empty swirling air in the space he’d just occupied. His darkening gray fur stood out against the pale whites and grays of the landscape, which was far bumpier here than the plains Biandina’s people lived on. Dirt watched him run for a time, then walked into the tower to find the others.

Antelmu almost bumped into him in the doorway, walking back out. “Oh, did Socks leave already?” he asked, noticing the conspicuous absence.

“Yep, just now. If you step around here, you can still see him running.”

He did, and Dirt stood beside him. Together they watched for a moment, then he said, “Oh, right, come on. Biandina’s waiting. I came to get you so we can find a place to sleep tonight.”

“Isn’t it fine anywhere?”

“No, it has to be somewhere we can defend in case something happens,” said Antelmu matter-of-factly. He gave the fur collar of Dirt’s shirt sleeve a little tug. “Come on. If the wolf is gone, then stay where I can see you.”

That sounded like something the boy had been told himself, and often. Dirt gave a slight smile and followed obediently. It was strange, in a way; he saw the older boy through two sets of eyes. Through one set, Dirt’s, the boy was older and stronger than him and knew much he had yet to learn. He walked proud and had muscle Dirt lacked, and heft and size. He knew how to hunt and fight like a human.

But through Avitus’s eyes, Antelmu was but a twelve-year-old child, not yet beginning his ascent into manhood. He was younger and smaller than Biandina, and even she still needed looking after. Antelmu was a nervous but courageous boy struggling to swim in deeper waters than he was prepared for.

They walked through the doorway to the left and found a thick wooden staircase, in a part of the room the rain and snow from the window couldn’t reach it. Biandina was most of the way up, peering around the opening as if she thought something might jump out at her.

Socks had said it was safe, but Dirt checked for minds again, just to be sure, and found nothing other than the two children. Well, and some birds, but those weren’t right up close. He peeked into their minds and it looked like they were pecking through the snow for seeds somewhere nearby.

Dirt followed Antelmu onto the stairs and was surprised when they didn’t even creak. That made him wonder where they’d gotten the wood for such solid construction. Maybe there were forests nearby, or had been in the past.

Biandina saw them and stepped warily onto the second floor. She checked the doorways and motioned for Antelmu and Dirt to follow.

“I appreciate you being careful, but Socks said there was nothing here, and that means there’s nothing here,” said Dirt. “The best thing to check for is places the floor won’t hold us, so we don’t step there.”

“If Socks could see curses coming, then what about the Eye? He would have warned us,” said Biandina, a tone of scolding in her voice. Antelmu scowled at her, but couldn’t argue. Or didn’t dare.

Dirt shrugged and said, “And the other thing, I don’t think the wolves would have said to stay here if it was that dangerous. I’m sure they know what’s on the edge of their own territory.”

“If you have time to complain, then go check that doorway. Quietly,” she said, putting some iron in her voice that she must have learned from her mother.

He tried not to peek at their minds too often, since if he did, they’d eventually figure it out and he wasn’t ready to tell them. But he couldn’t help but take a quick glance and it turned out Biandina was genuinely scared, and so was Antelmu, although less so. Fear, and maternal instinct to protect the younger ones. Socks was gone, and that left her in charge.

Dirt decided to play along. He crept silently as a shadow across the empty room, watching to avoid stepping on any sand that had blown in, and looked through the doorway. It opened into another hall, with a series of smaller rooms across the way. He turned back and nodded again, then slinked through and went to look around.

He kept moving quietly to make it harder to find him and give him different orders, and that made it fun. He listened with his best wolfish ears for any hint of motion, more to detect Antelmu than some critter, and went from room to room.

None of the rooms stood out to him, nothing that could give him a clear indication of their purpose. Each room had a chimney and a spot to put a small fire, or maybe a brazier with coals. Lamp nooks were the only decoration in the walls, all empty. Most rooms were small, only six or so paces across, and maybe each one had belonged to a family, since that was around the size of most of their tents.

Dirt found nothing but snow that accumulated near the windows and dry leaves that had blown in during a warmer season. No furniture, no decoration. Just brick walls, although well-made. And in good shape, although he didn’t know how long ago the building had been made.

He tried to sneak back over and surprise the other two, but Biandina spotted him down a hallway. “Dirt, is the floor clear?” she said.

“Yep,” he said. “Up to the next?”

“Once we find Antelmu. We need to stick together.”

He was on his way back as well, with an arrow ready this time. He’d found nothing, of course. Up they went, to the third floor, fourth, fifth. By the sixth and seventh floors, Dirt was ready to stop sneaking, but Biandina insisted with hisses and sharp gestures.

After seeing the whole building, he still wasn’t sure what to make of it. He suspected it was an insula and its sole purpose had been to house lots of people, but wasn’t sure if that meant families, soldiers, or some other sort of person. And if it was an insula and its sole purpose was housing, why build just one huge one, and not a row of smaller ones?

“Oh, hey, Biandina, did anyone ever tell you what the Square Tower was actually for? Before it was cursed or whatever, when all the people left,” said Dirt.

“Yes, it was…” She stopped, deciding whatever lie she was trying to come up with wasn’t convincing enough. “I mean, no, they never did. It’s just one of the landmarks they teach us when we’re old enough to leave on our own.”

“What are all those holes in the wall for?” asked Antelmu. Dirt suspected he was changing the subject to avoid any questions about why he didn’t know the landmarks.

“I’m not sure,” said Biandina. “They look like post holes, but I can’t imagine why you’d put a post across the room.”

“They’re for lamps,” said Dirt.

The two children looked again and decided Dirt was probably right.

“I think we should stay up near the top,” said Antelmu, changing the subject again. Dirt wasn’t sure if he did it on purpose, or if his mind bounced all over like ten startled grasshoppers. “So we can look out and see anything coming.”

“I was thinking the middle, so it’s not too far to go up and down,” said Biandina. “There’s no water up here, and we’ll be going up and down a lot.”

“Not that often,” said Antelmu. He couldn’t take his eyes off the scenery, and Dirt realized the boy had never been this high up before.

“For one, you’ll be running up and down all those stairs every time you have to pee! You can’t do it in here and we don’t have a pot.”

“I can pee out the window,” said Antelmu. Giving his sister a mischievous grin, he added, “And so could you. Just sit up here and lean out…”

“Stop that. You’re not peeing out the window.”

“Why not? There’s no one here.”

“You’re just not.”

Dirt said, “I could always make a pot, if we need one.”

Biandina gave him a dirty look, but he just shrugged. “Where in the middle were you thinking? The fourth floor?”

She paused, considering, then said, “The second floor. If we have to, we can still jump out the window to get away.”

Dirt played mediator and said, “That makes sense. And we can still come up to the top floor whenever we want. We have several days until Socks comes back.”

Both children found that acceptable and they headed back down to find a likely room. Dirt went ahead, since he was the closest to the stairs and had a room in mind. He led them down a corridor to a corner room, on the small side but with two windows so they could look in two directions. “What do you think about this?” he asked.

Antelmu looked back out the corridor and said, “It’s fine. We can put some brush in this hallway to wake us up if something comes.”

“It’ll be hard to squeeze out those windows,” said Biandina. She stepped over and looked out onto the ruined town surrounding the tower, and the collapsed walls at the edge of it. Those held her gaze for a long moment. “I guess I can manage if I have to, though.”

“We’ll just push you through,” said Antelmu, eyes sparkling with mischief.

“I wonder if we can find any oil. That’ll make it easier,” said Dirt.

“We’ll need some kind of strong pole to push with if she gets stuck,” said Antelmu.

“Stop,” said Biandina sternly, but then a smile broke out and she shook her head. “Don’t be pests. What do you boys want to do before nightfall? Go try to hunt something, or just look around?”

“We can go look around,” said Dirt. “It won’t be long until night comes, so let’s not start a hunt or anything.”

They descended into the ruined town, or what was left of it. The snow here was only a couple inches deep and already melting off anything dark in color, but there wasn’t much to see. Most of the ruins looked like the more damaged parts of Ocriculum, lumps on the ground without a single wall standing. It didn’t even look like the roads had been paved.

The other two followed Dirt, since he’d set himself up as the ruins expert when talking about his exploits the last few days. They didn’t find any doors leading into dark tunnels, or much else in the way of standing buildings. If Dirt had to guess, they’d largely built with wood and it was all decayed and gone now.

It didn’t take long for the other children to get bored. Antelmu spent more time looking for things to shoot an arrow at, and nearly fired at birds more than once before deciding they were too small to eat or too far away to hit. He found some noisy bushes and collected some to make his hallway trap with, and then got truly bored because his hands weren’t free.

Biandina mostly spent the time stepping around nervously, head swiveling to watch for whatever disaster was on its way to befall them.

Dirt relented, disappointed that there hadn’t been so much as a mosaic floor to discover, and headed back inside with the others. A breeze was picking up, and when they made it to their room, they found that the wind whistled in one window and out the other, stirring all the air and making it more chill than before.

They decided to use the next room over instead, with only one window, still a bit small for Biandina. Antelmu made a few trips up and down gathering the noisiest brush to set up in the hallway, and Biandina watched him out the window.

Dirt took his knife back and started carving a warming spell into the crumbly tile floor. Shaping stone with magic was one thing, but shaping stone into the shape for a completely different spell seemed difficult and potentially dangerous, so he did it by hand.

He’d hardly gotten the first sigil carved, the one to accept mana when he was ready to charge it up, when Biandina asked what he was doing.

“The way magic works for humans, is we draw or imagine these symbols to tell the magic what we want it to do. We have to get it just right. I don’t know why it’s so complicated, but that’s just how it is. Socks doesn’t see magic this way, although he understands it from watching me. But I’m going to carve a bunch of symbols into the floor that will keep the room warm for us overnight, since we don’t have a big puppy and can’t light a fire.”

“Where did you learn that?” asked Biandina. She squatted down and looked at his handiwork.

“I have a lot of books back in the forest that you can read, but you have to be able to use mana before they’ll do any good,” he said.

“What’s a book?”

“Do you know what writing is?”

“Yes, we have writing, and our elders bring it out to read on certain days, like the harvest or the spring.”

“A book is a collection of writing, all about one thing. If I were to write the story of all my adventures with Socks on one scroll, that would be one book. There’s a whole library back in the forest, all full of books. Probably over a hundred. Maybe two hundred. I didn’t count. And some of them are about how humans do magic,” he explained. He carefully traced a curve with the bare tip of the dagger, and once he was satisfied, ran over it a few more times to make it deep enough to be permanent.

“And you have to use mana? What’s that?” she asked. She was leaning in a bit closer than normal, eyes eager and interest complete.

“That’s the power from the world of magic. You have to know how to breathe it in to do anything with it. Once this is done, I’ll put magic into this spell, and it’ll keep the room warm for hours.”

She watched intently as he worked, clearly trying to memorize it all. He explained piece by piece as he went, since it wouldn’t do any harm. When he was about halfway through, dusk arrived, and he had to hurry. Antelmu was watching by then as well, traps complete and satisfied that he would hear anything coming.

Dirt had to summon a light and a warming ember against the cold night before he finished, but he finally did, and his spell worked. A good charge of mana, and the floor warmed up so fast the children jumped to their feet in reaction, staring downward. Fortunately, he’d done it right and it didn’t turn the room into an oven. Just warm enough, and he was confident it’d stay like that most of the night. And when it ran out, he could charge it back up again and go back to sleep.

Biandina laid out the blanket for them to sleep on, and the other one to sleep under. The ground would be hard, but at least it wouldn’t be cold. They snuggled in together, warm as ever. Together they lay in silence, listening or deep in thought. Dirt tried to figure out how to speak to Socks from a distance but made no progress. He mentally searched for the pup’s mind, stretching himself farther and farther to look for it. Then he tried to summon it like an elemental, casting a picture of the pup’s mind into the directionless mental world. That didn’t work either.

-Get up and close off the doorway.- said Socks, his voice faint and distant. Too far to hear any reply. Dirt was familiar with this, since it had happened last summer while they were separated.

Dirt obliged and rose from his bed.

“Where are you going?” asked Biandina.

“Just a moment,” he said. Then he inhaled some mana and spoke magic into the world, commanding the shape of the stone in the bricks to change. They were composite and didn’t obey very well, but there was sand and pebbles in the mortar, and that worked, albeit inefficiently. He grew the mortar in several places into a sheet of bare stone a half-inch thick, wedged tightly into the doorway.

“There,” he said. He lay back down.

With the added measure of safety, both children were able to rest their minds and sleep, and Dirt followed shortly after them, wondering if he could find them in the dream on his own. Usually they needed Socks for that.

Deep in the night, something moved in the hallway. He woke with a gasp, heart pounding. The night was black, no moon anymore and the stars too weak to illuminate the room. The wind had died down as well, and Biandina and Antelmu lay unmoving to his left.

Again Antelmu’s bushes rattled. Faintly, only barely audible through the stone door. Dirt listened and heard movement in the next room over, through the window. And in the room on the other side. Something crept through the building, making a fabric-like rustling sound but no footsteps. It came from many places at once, outside on the ground, in the rooms to either side, in the hallway. Above him, along the brick-and-wood floor.

Dirt very carefully extricated himself from the blanket to keep from waking up Biandina and stood. He stepped as lightly as a dust mote over to the window, where he peeked out to see what was going on.

He saw nothing. The bands of bright stars stared down from the sky, but the land circling the tower was black, not the white snow he expected. All black, in a circle ten steps out from the wall. He stared, unsure what he was looking at. A chord of fear struck him for the first time. Maybe it wasn’t safe here after all. What was that?

Dirt decided to risk it and summoned a light, outside in the open air where it wouldn’t wake the others. The blackness shimmered faintly and withdrew from the light, always too far no matter where he put it, and he never got a good sense of what that was. Another fog creature? Lots of little bugs? He couldn’t tell.

It retreated around the corner of the tower to avoid his spark of light and withdrew from his sight. The ground was bare down there now, devoid of any snow, just dirt and grass and collapsed brick. A short time later, the rushing sounds all around withdrew and faded, and all was silent again. Only then did he realize he’d completely forgotten to look with his mind sight. He was groggy from sleep and had been neglecting using it much with the humans around, but that was no excuse. He resolved not to make that mistake again.

He got little sleep the rest of the night, waking at every shift or shuffle to listen in case it had come back. When morning finally came, Antelmu was the first to peek out the window and he almost choked in surprise. “Look! Hey, get up, you two. Look at that!”

A trail of bare ground led from the tower off into the distance. From here, they could barely make out where it went—the trail of snowless ground track several miles into the distance, ending at something dark in the landscape, a dull gray surrounded by a bare patch of ground.

“What… is that?” Antelmu asked, almost whispering as they crowded the window to see.