Prison of Sleep by Tim Pratt

Author:Tim Pratt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780857669438
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Brood • Zaveta Discovers Pistols • A Discourse on Death • Zax of the Thousand Worlds • Cryovolcano • The Prisoner’s Pitch

I’d never traveled with another Sleeper before, and wasn’t sure how it would work, but Zaveta had a plan. She curled up next to the bound cultist, and once Zaveta was asleep, I fed the cultist – “My name is Ephedra” – one of my dwindling supply of sedatives. Then I sent myself to sleep, and followed Ephedra’s worm-trail.

I woke to an oddly buzzing sort of wailing, the cries of distress coming from some distance off to the right. We were in the woods, a damp and mossy place, ripe with the scent of rot and wet soil. I sat up right on the edge of a big hole, maybe four meters deep, gouged out of the ground – recently, to judge by the heaps of damp piled on all sides. I saw an earthworm wriggling in one heap of dirt, and looked away.

The cultist was facedown on the ground, and Zaveta was sitting on her again.

“Did she try to run?” I asked.

“No,” Zaveta said. “This is just more comfortable.”

The wailing intensified, and I realized it was many voices. “Where is that noise coming from?”

“I have not done any reconnaissance,” Zaveta said. “But once your linguistic virus begins to parse it–”

I nodded as the noise became words. “They’re crying out for help and food and water.”

Zaveta nodded. “The Prisoner said there would be people in need of assistance in this world.” She gestured toward the hole. “This is a mass grave, waiting to be filled, I think. There is already one body inside.”

I went to the edge and looked down, and it took a moment for me to see what she meant, but then I realized that shape wasn’t a root poking out of the edge of the hole, but a foot. “Oh, no, how awful–”

The foot twitched.

I slid down the slope into the hole and started scrabbling wildly at the dirt. A moment later, Zaveta followed – she’d taken the time to tie a rope around a tree, so we could climb back out again, something that hadn’t even occurred to me – and soon realized what I was doing. She asked no questions, just pitched in. We cleared away dirt with our hands, and once we’d uncovered two-thirds of the person – it looked like a child – Zaveta pulled her the rest of the way out, dirt cascading.

She stared up at us, humanoid, but not human: her body was wrapped in soft, translucent wings, and she had two large, red, faceted eyes widely-spaced on her face, with a cluster of three smaller eyes in the center of her forehead. She made buzzing sounds of distress and confusion, then collected herself enough to speak words. “What is happening? Why have you awakened me out of season? Where are my brood-mates?”

The distant wailing increased in intensity, and she leapt up, howling. “Harvesters!” She tried to clamber out of the hole, but slid back down in a shower of dirt.

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