D. MacHale - The Merchant of Death

It started to dawn on me that none of these people looked as if they were getting ready for a good time. There wasn’t an excited air of anticipation that comes before a fun event. No one spoke, or laughed or joked. Except for the booming drum, it was deathly quiet. These people all had a look of dread on their faces.

Osa then tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the far side of the clearing. I looked to see a group of four Milago villagers walking slowly toward the assembly. They were all men who were covered with dirt from head to toe. Not that any of these Milago people were all that clean to begin with, but these guys were pretty gnarly. The black dirt really stood out boldly against their pasty-white skin. The four men were carrying a large basket filled with craggy rocks of all sizes. Some were as large as bowling balls, others were much smaller. But the thing that really stood out about them was that they were blue. And I mean bright blue, like dazzling sapphires. I had never seen anything so stunning.

“The stones are called ‘glaze,’” whispered Osa. “There are mines throughout this area. The Milago mine for glaze day and night.”

“I guess it’s valuable,” I said, stating the obvious.

“Very,” she answered. “Glaze is the foremost reason why Kagan wants to keep control over the Milago. Glaze has made the Bedoowan wealthy. They trade with merchants from all of Denduron. So long as the Milago mine for glaze, Kagan remains a powerful monarch.”

So Kagan and the Bedoowan weren’t only lazy bullies, they were greedy bullies who forced the Milago to do their dirty work. Nice guys. I wanted to ask more questions, but suddenly the drummer stopped pounding and an ominous silence fell over the village. The four miners brought the basket of glaze to the platform and carefully placed it down. The whole thing was starting to take on the air of a ceremony. The Transfer is what Loor called it.

That’s when I heard the sound of a galloping horse. Someone was coming straight down the path where we had walked out to the ocean, and he was coming fast. The weird thing was, nobody turned to look. Nobody but me, that is.

As the horse came charging out of the forest, I saw that riding it was a guy who looked like he knew what he was doing. He was a big guy, with long dark hair, wearing some kind of leather armor similar to what the knights had on, but his armor didn’t look like it had seen many battles. It was clean and unscarred, unlike the knights’ armor, which looked pretty beaten up. As he galloped up to the circle of villagers, they parted to give him access to the platform. Good thing too, because he didn’t slow down. I think if the people hadn’t moved, he would have plowed over them. Already I didn’t like this guy.

“Is that Kagan?” I whispered.

Osa and Loor exchanged secret looks, like there was something going on that they didn’t want to tell me about. I caught the look and I didn’t like it.

“His name is Mallos,” answered Osa. “He is Kagan’s chief advisor.”

Mallos, Kagan, Osa, Loor, Figgis…was I the only guy around here who had a first and a last name? This Mallos guy rode his horse right up to the platform and stopped. My guess was the show was about to begin. He sat there on his horse and surveyed the assembled crowd like he owned them. None of the Milago returned his look. They all stood with their heads down, avoiding his gaze. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were afraid of him. Mallos then turned in his saddle and looked right up to where we were hiding on the roof.

“Stay down!” ordered Loor with a strong whisper.

We all ducked down further, trying to press ourselves into the roof to make ourselves smaller. But I could still see Mallos. As his horse kicked at the dirt, he sat there stock still, looking toward us. It was like he knew we were there. But that was impossible. There was no way he could have seen us.

That’s when it happened. As I looked back at him, I was hit with a realization so shocking that it made me gasp in surprise. I think the thing that tipped it were his eyes. As far away as he was, I knew those cold blue eyes. How could I forget?

Osa and Loor both sensed my surprise and looked at me questioningly.

“Saint Dane,” I said softly.

“You know him?” whispered Loor with total shock.

“Yeah, he tried to kill me back on Earth just before I got flumed here,” I said. I couldn’t believe those words had just come out of my mouth. There was a lot going on in that one little sentence. It would have sounded like fantasy about twenty-four hours ago, but right now it made all too much sense. Osa and Loor exchanged concerned looks again.

Then Loor whispered to me, “He followed you to Second Earth?” She said this as if it were an amazing thing to have happened. I shrugged and nodded a silent “yes.” It was the first time she looked at me with something other than total disdain. Up until now, she acted as if I were less important than the dirt on her boots. But now her look was one of, well, curiosity. Maybe the fact that I survived an encounter with Saint Dane proved that I wasn’t so soft after all. Of course I wasn’t about to tell her that all I did was run for my life. I wasn’t an idiot.

Looking down at Saint Dane, or Mallos, or whatever he called himself, I got hit with a strong wave of “I want to go home.” But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I was stuck here looking at a guy who had tried to kill me. Could he see me? Was he going to kick that horse into gear and come charging toward the hut? We’d be trapped up here on the roof. All I could do was hold my breath.

It felt like a lifetime, but Saint Dane finally turned away. I could breathe again. With a wave of his hand he said sharply, “Begin!”

Whoa. He spoke English. Did that mean he knew English, or that he too was a Traveler and that’s why I could understand him? That question would have to wait, for the main event finally began. One of the miners who had carried in the basket of glaze stepped forward. He was a big guy and something about the way he carried himself told me he was in charge. Whatever was about to happen, this guy didn’t seem too happy about it. Every move he made was stiff and forced, as if the pressure of doing what he had to do was physically painful.

“That is Rellin,” whispered Osa. “He is the chief miner.”

Guess I nailed that one. Of course, he was another one-name guy.

Rellin stepped up onto the platform and turned to the crowd. He then held out his hand and gestured to someone. The crowd parted and a man stepped forward to join him on the platform. He was a tall skinny guy, which I point out only because of what happened next. The skinny guy walked over to the seesaw thing and sat down on the end with the seat. Since there was no weight on the other side, he tipped his end down to the floor of the platform. Rellin gestured to the other miners and the three guys lugged the basket of glaze up onto the platform, placing it near the opposite end of the seesaw. What were they going to do? Measure the guy’s weight in glaze?

“They make a Transfer every day,” explained Osa. “Mallos chooses one of the Milago, and that determines how much glaze they must mine for Kagan the next day.”

I was right. Measuring the guy’s weight in glaze was exactly what they were going to do. The big seesaw was a scale. The miners reached into the basket of glaze and were about to pick up the first few stones to begin the process when Saint Dane barked, “No!”

The miners stopped. Everyone held their breath, waiting for Saint Dane’s next move. Saint Dane surveyed the crowd, then pointed.

“Him,” he said with no emotion.

There was a general rumbling of discontent within the crowd. Two of the knights pushed roughly past a few of the villagers and grabbed the man Saint Dane had pointed to. He was a much bigger man than the first guy. The rules had just changed, and Rellin didn’t like it.