Terror Povos: An Unexpected Arrival

The wagons were rolling slowly along, drawn through the deep roads by the under-oxen. Lithos had read that the under-oxen were not so different from those found overhill, just better adapted to heat and damp and able to see in the dark. They were slower than horses, but far stronger and more reliable. 

Lithos himself was stretched out on the roof of Schist Splitvein's wagon, near the front of the caravan, half-dozing and wondering just what the hell had happened for him to end up here. It wasn't like he didn't remember, it was just that the whole thing seemed unreal... 

Oh shit, he thought. Vinnie. Vinnie must have cast Wish, that nearly-ultimate magic. He must have erased the events in the prison, rearranged things so that all those deaths had never happened. Except the Warden. He would have kept the warden's soul. Even so, it meant that the demilich had made good on his side of the deal. It meant that Lithos owed him. 

Shit. Fuck. Damn it. He considered rolling over and just going back to sleep, but...

You can't ignore a debt, his mother's voice said firmly. You have to do the right thing by others, and hope that they do right by you. Was skipping out on Vinnie the right thing? Or did doing the right thing mean going back and paying his debt by helping Vinnie take those souls like he'd agreed to do? He was two cycles out now, and traveling with traders. It could take twice that to get back to where they'd parted, and longer to track down where the demilich had taken his brothers. 

And then he'd have to deal with Vinnie, who'd sent a ghoul to try to kill him. If Vinnie blasted him on the spot... Then I guess my problems are over. He could risk that. He could risk it in order to pay his debt and then try to make things right. Even if making things right ultimately meant going up against Vinnie, which was spider-fucking suicide. 

T'would be an honorable death, said his father's voice in his head. Far better than fleein' tae the goblin tribes and tryin' tae find a place there. 

Lithos? called a soft voice, cutting into his half-dozing considerations. 

He rolled over, trying to tangle himself further in his blankets. His siblings, in their good-hearted way,  made fun of him for it; but he found it comforting. Only this time, it didn't work; the blankets caught on something, refused to turn with him. 

"Lithos?" asked the voice again, and this time he realized he was hearing it. 

He jerked fully awake, twisting out of the blankets like an escape artist, and brought a hand up. 

James caught it. "Brother," he said. 

The air fled Lithos' lungs. He drew it back in with a terrible effort, then asked: "What are you doing here?"

"Whisper sent me back," said James. "Said it wasn't safe, after we finished off the ghoul. He said if you'd run you'd have gone this way, and then here you were on the caravan."

"Whisper," said Lithos. Then: "Is he here?"

James shook his head. "Gone. Really gone." She looked stricken. "Like, he-said-we-wouldn't-see-him-again gone."

Lithos considered that for a long, long time. "He was always going to leave us someday, wasn't he?" 

"I hoped not," James admitted. "But yeah, he was." 

"Did he want you to go into hiding with me?" Lithos asked. "Because I've been thinking I should go back to Amergin and Archibald... and Vinnie."

"He just said I should stay with you," said James. "But that's Whisper. He worries over us, but he's always been happiest taking care of himself. I think we should go back."

"Then we'll do it, Brother," Lithos said quietly. He reached for the blanket and began folding it over so he could roll it up. "You have no idea what a relief this is."

Yeah, Vinnie might kill them. But Lithos didn't think so. He didn't pretend to understand what a centuries-old demilich might want or how he might think, but the patterns were there. Vinnie hadn't killed them when they'd first pulled him out of the pile of skulls. He could have, but he didn't. He'd traveled with them, and he hadn't killed any of them then, either. He'd gotten them imprisoned, but he'd neither abandoned them nor destroyed them. Vinnie might not care about them, exactly, but he'd... taken a liking to them. Maybe only the kind of liking that a child has for an interesting toy, but... maybe not? Lithos wasn't sure.

It's worth the risk, he decided.