He shrugged at the man beside him, then looked for anything he could use to defend himself. If the chains that held him to the rock were fastened to his wrist, they might have served as a weapon, but they were fastened to his right ankle, which made them useless.
A pack of the black beasts rushed toward Van and his fellow slaves, attacking anyone they passed.
“Oja! Oja! Oja!” the man beside Van shouted while waving his arms to fend one of the creatures off, but it didn’t yield. When it leaped on the man, Van kicked its flank as hard as he could with his free foot. The beast gave a short yelp but twisted aside just before it struck the wall, kicking the rock with its feet and landing on all fours. Van marveled at the beast’s uncanny reflexes.
Golden eyes shone eerily in the dark, glaring at him as though in contemplation. Then a dark mass filled Van’s vision, and warm wind enveloped his face. The beast’s breath smelled curiously of green wood, like a split sapling. Fangs sank into the arm he instinctively raised to protect his throat. Viselike pressure was followed immediately by the pain of rent flesh. Groaning, Van grabbed the animal’s snout with his free hand and slid his fingers along its muzzle, jabbing them into its eye.
The beast released his arm with a squeal and staggered back a pace or two, its gouged eye closed. Instead of fleeing, it bit the leg of the next slave in the line and bounded deeper into the chamber, biting everyone it passed before vanishing into the darkness.
Van pressed his hand against the gash on his arm while gasping for breath. Although the wound throbbed painfully, it hardly bled at all. The other slaves chattered excitedly while clutching their wounds. Unable to escape, chained to the rock as they were, the terror had been intense, yet no one appeared grievously injured.
The man beside Van gripped his leg and cursed, “Ottaku ehzeh! Lagi logi, ged maieh!”
Van frowned at him.
Why?
Why had the beasts attacked?
Ossam or wolves would only attack people if they were starving or to protect territory or their young. Had they come charging into the mine because they were being chased? It was possible that they might bite instinctively if they were overcome with fear. But…
That creature wasn’t afraid.
The golden eyes that had met his for an instant had shown no trace of fear or confusion. Rather, they had been cold and calculating.
The eyes of a warrior. A warrior dispassionately obeying orders.
Van shook his head. There was no use thinking about it. He squeezed the gash on his arm and let the blood drip onto the floor.
It’s going to be pretty swollen by morning, he thought in disgust. But there was no use worrying about that, either. Van was suddenly overcome with exhaustion, as though his body were filled with lead. Perhaps it was a reaction to the sudden terror. Moving his chains aside, Van lay down and, with a deep sigh, closed his eyes.
The next morning, the slave girl who brought their breakfast moved clumsily, as if she, too, had been hurt. When she passed Van a bowl of thin gruel, he glimpsed what looked like a makeshift bandage made of rags wrapped around her forearm.
The slave foreman’s footsteps, which usually echoed through the chamber as he marched down issuing orders, sounded tired and listless.
On the third morning after the incident, the slave girl’s hands trembled violently, and she spilled the gruel. Even in the dim light, Van spied the rash on her face and hands. He wondered if she had rubella. Recalling the medicine his mother had given him as a child, he said, “Try drinking some tsukki, cocklebur powder, if you can find any.” Although he doubted she understood, his concern must have been evident, because she raised her eyes and smiled faintly. However, even smiling seemed to be an effort.
Seven days after the attack, the man beside Van failed to rise in the morning. He lay curled up in a ball, as though in pain. Van called to him but got no response. Reaching out to give him a shake, he found the man’s body was already cold. Van vaguely remembered hearing the man coughing violently in the night. He might have groaned later, but Van had been so exhausted that he only lay and listened. Now he wished that he had gotten up and rubbed the man’s back. Van’s body felt oddly feverish and heavy at the idea, pushing the thought to a distant point in his mind. Here and there, he could hear people coughing, a dry, rasping sound like withered branches rubbing against one another.
The next morning, four more of those who lay chained to the rock wall in Van’s chamber failed to wake. When Van left for work, he saw corpses scattered about the other chambers as well. The slaves who could still move and the slave drivers with their whips who supervised them all had racking coughs that grated in their chests.
Somewhere in his mind, Van knew a disease was spreading, but this didn’t trouble him. They won’t be forced anymore to carry these loads that bite the shoulders, shred the flesh, and scrape the bones. Soon, I won’t have to, either.
On the night of the eighth day after Van was bitten, he was seized by a splitting headache, and his body was racked by chills that made his teeth rattle in their gums. Fierce shudders rippled through him in successive waves, then gradually lessened, replaced by a soaring fever. His temperature was so high that he thought he must be breathing fire. Instead of visions of dappled light, he was assaulted by a horrendous nightmare that caught him in the throes of the fever.
A tree root stretched toward Van, reaching for the wound on his forearm. He screamed and tried to cover the gaping sore but found he couldn’t move. The root burrowed through the hole in his motionless limb, drilling its way up to his shoulder. There it forked. One prong headed toward his neck, while the other moved from his collarbone down toward his chest. Inching along, they separated into multiple tendrils that tunneled through his veins, spreading slowly through his body.
The pain was excruciating.
Van screamed soundlessly. Again and again, he prayed for oblivion, sure that he could no longer bear the pain. But in dreams, such prayers were futile. Van experienced the moment the root reached his brain in vivid detail. He had braced himself for stabbing pain, but instead, when it shot through a point deep inside his head, a hot rush of pleasure numbed his body. Van’s abdomen hardened from stomach to groin, and he arched back, trembling.
The ecstasy lasted a long time. His heart beat so fast that he felt it would burst. He couldn’t breathe.
When death felt near, myriad lights burst behind his eyes, then were sucked together by some unknown force, whirling and expanding. Luminous granules scraped against the inner walls of his body, which in turn slowly crumbled.
I’m falling apart…
Van’s body was dissolving into fine glowing particles. Even the solid rock that should have been beneath him shattered. Everything connected to him dissolved into light, tumbled into chaos, merged and mingled.
He saw himself reflected in each drop of light emanating from his disintegrating body.
Van hurtled back through time with dazzling speed. There was his wife with her playful smile. His son’s laughing face. His mother, father, and older brother. The door to his house. Wazu, his dog, trotting out from the door’s shadow. The smell of smoke from the hearth. The clear light of the sun dappling the ground through red leaves.
Don’t go.
Van desperately strove to stop the tide, to pull his disintegrating body back and bind the fragments together. The strength of that thought must have imparted some power, because, with agonizing slowness, the infinite grains of light that had burst forth in a shower now began to gather and weave themselves into the shape of his body.