The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection by Scott Hale

Author:Scott Hale [Hale, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781733096621
Publisher: Scott Hale
Published: 2019-08-29T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII

R’lyeh slipped off her boots and took a seat beside the Divide. Her feet, hot and calloused, bobbed up and down in the river’s weedy shallows. Elizabeth and Miranda had warned her not to stray too far from camp, but after several days’ worth of riding, R’lyeh’s mind was about as muddy as these waters. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was going to notice her this early in the morning; at least, not while Penance’s army was stretched out across the eastern bank.

The massive river and the massive army upon it were almost too much to take in at once. She had never seen such things before, and both were equally terrifying and awe-inspiring. The Divide was miles long and wide; someone who didn’t know better might even mistake it for the ocean. The river divided Eldrus’ Heartland from Penance’s peninsula. To R’lyeh, it looked like the Divide not only separated the areas, but had drawn inspiration from them as well. In the west, the Divide was lush, vibrant; an overgrown expanse that might as well have been some submerged forest the world had more or less forgotten about. In the east, it was cold, lifeless; a pale wasteland of ghostly grass caught in some unbreakable haze, like an image seen through an icicle. R’lyeh wasn’t even that far from the Divide, merely on the outer banks north of Gallows, and even she could see the difference. Good and evil seemed like the obvious symbolism between the two parts, but for R’lyeh, measuring Eldrus’ side against Penance’s was like measuring the merits of puke versus diarrhea.

The Divide was cool, but Penance’s army was better. There was a rush to seeing it, a nervous excitement that was one-part sadness, two-parts bloodlust. On the eastern shore, row after row of pale white tents had been raised. If she had to guess, there were hundreds, maybe even a thousand, of them. Guard posts and watch towers had been constructed, too, though they looked rickety, like they might fall over as quickly as they had been put up. There were boats in the water, twenty or thirty, and that was just what she could see. They weren’t very large, and couldn’t have been anything more than the boats Penance usually used to make trades on the river. What R’lyeh couldn’t figure out was why the city-state had made their stand here. With the river being so wide and the boats being so small, how did Penance think they would get all their soldiers across? Better yet, how did Penance get all this here in the first place? Was it here all along?

R’lyeh’s heart started to pound. She began to repeatedly swallow the spit in her mouth. Her temples throbbed, and then her vision blurred. Was the world getting larger? Darker? She took off her octopus mask. Leaning forward, she splashed the river water into her face, baptized herself in its war-warmed waters. A cold shock shot through her body. Then a trickling sensation, as if the stress were melting from the inside of her chest.

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