Dusties (Dusties Series Book 1) by Brett Murrell

Author:Brett Murrell [Murrell, Brett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldspanner
Published: 2016-08-24T22:00:00+00:00

57: History

— 17 days later

__________

Yun’s diary, Day 181

I haven’t had a single chance to write a journal, but today I found some completely blank, fancy leather notebooks in the Archives, so here we go.

I’ve been busy in the Archives, and lost track of the days. Scarlet came looking for me. Has it really been that long? I promised to meet him today.

__________

“Down there.” Yun leaned out and pointed down over the low stone wall at the edge of Desolation Point. “Off to the left a little, about fifteen hundred feet down. It was called Beacon. Not as big as Haven, but rich from trade with the bottomlanders. And around the curve to the right there was Charada, very close to the bottom.”

“Nothing but black now,” said Scarlet, peering down the cliff into the utter black. And yet, there seemed to be a slight shimmer to the mist below.

“Nothing,” echoed Yun. “No one has been to the bottomlands for a long time. Charada died long ago too. I don’t know how. Beacon died well over a century ago, swallowed by the Malfaer—something really scary hidden in the mists, at least from the little I’ve read.”

“How far down to the bottomlands?” said Scarlet.

“From here? Over three thousand feet. You would have time to regret falling off. And from here it’s fifteen hundred feet to the top. They call it the Spire, but from the maps I’ve seen, it’s a big flat mesa on top, over twenty-one miles from north to south, shaped like a teardrop with Pinnacle sitting at the point of the teardrop. Pinnacle is above us, off to the right there. The maps show sheer cliffs all around the Spire, but there are places, like here, where a big shelf opens out before the cliff continues down. Drift is on another big shelf on the other side. Vida Lake must be buried deep down in the Spire between here and Drift.”

“There was a war between the cities recently?” asked Scarlet.

“Not too recently, about a century ago. After that, the blackspawn began to show up, first a little, then more and more. Like tonight.”

Scarlet and Yun stood quietly together at the edge, alone. At times, the sounds of battle drifted from the south wall of the city. It was late afternoon Haven time, and the blackspawn attack reached its height for this day. Both of them shuddered—Yun in fear, and Scarlet in guilt for not once being at the defenses. Newly elected Rook Lord Capul would not allow him.

Hope would be there, and Trace. They could both be dead right now, thought Scarlet. Each attack caused few casualties, but they came almost every day, in the afternoon and sometimes early morning. The murder of a city, one tiny scratch at a time.

Berylata would be there too.

“Tell me about the tantyrs,” said Scarlet.

“Yes, that,” said Yun. “Haven and Drift and a city called Mirra fought Pinnacle. It was a century ago, about the time of Beacon being lost. Pinnacle had allies—some creatures called wallcrawlers.

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