“Like I’d share it with you. I’m saving this bad boy for next time I see Veltai.” Kegohr grinned, and his expression grew distant, lost in happy memories. He’d only had a few days as a couple with Veltai, a fearsomely strong human Augmenter, before she had to go back to our guild, but those days had clearly left a deep impression.
While we talked, Vesma was watching Tahlis, a scowl on her face. He was leading the way, so he couldn’t have seen her glare even if he’d had his sight, but something about her demeanor clearly showed her disapproval, as he paused and gestured for her to join him, then started to talk as he walked.
“What’s bothering you, girl?”
“You,” she answered.
“Do I not take life seriously enough for your terribly sincere tastes?”
“You’re rude, and you’re not funny.”
“Humor is a matter of opinion. But if you don’t like me, you could have avoided me, so why have you been treading on my tail for the past hour?”
Vesma hesitated, but only for a moment. “I have a question.”
“Really? Because that sounded like a statement.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone taking the core of a Vigorous Zone before. Is all this wasteland from that one act?”
“All of it.” Tahlis sighed. “This used to be a fertile land. Even in neglect, the soil was rich and the plants bountiful. After all, what is earth if not the food our own food grows from? This valley fed the whole Gonki region, its farms so efficient that most of our men and women could be trained to go away and fight wars. Even in decline, we ate well and lived happily.
“All that has changed thanks to the meddling of the Cult of Unswerving Shadows. When Targin and Saruqin took the core, they took all that was good and healthy from the Zone. Its power remained but in a twisted form. It drove out the other elements, leaving the land as dry as a dustmite’s junk. There’s enough power still for cored creatures to grow back after they’re harvested, but they come back tougher and more brutal. The harvests for trade that sustained our economy are gone. We can’t grow our own food and can barely pay for it to be transported in. Whichever way you look at it, we’re set to starve.”
“Why would the Unswerving Shadows do that? Surely, it undermines them too?”
“Ha! The Shadows are as unswerving in nature as they are in name. Once they have an idea in their heads, there is no moving them. By getting hold of the Earth Core, they can empower their own people in ways that ordinary cores could not. They have drawn the land’s power close to their chests, and so have gained a temporary advantage. But they are too foolish and greedy to see how destructive it could be in the long run.
“This is the problem with people who follow the Straight Path. What is good inside them withers away.”
“This business with the Straight Path,” I said as I approached the lizardman. “It’s confusing me. Where I come from, a phrase like that would sound good. When people are honest, we talk about them following the straight and narrow. I think there’s even some scripture verses about how the straight way leads to eternal life.”
“Eternal life?” Tahlis asked, bemused. “How would you ever be reborn? Your homeland is a nonsense place.”
Thinking about reality TV and politicians, I was inclined to agree with him, but my question remained unanswered.
“Still, the phrase ‘Straight Path’ sounds like a good thing…” I recalled how Xilarion had explained to me that the followers of this path were willing to cut corners, to find the quickest way to their desired ends. But I wanted to hear Tahlis explain it. After all, if he could provide a different perspective, I’d get a better understanding of the various paths and how they operated.
Tahlis stopped, sighed, and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Look out there,” he said, gesturing to the valley below us. His cloudy eyes didn’t follow the direction of his hand, but he tilted his face into the breeze, as if he were smelling, or perhaps feeling, the currents swirling through the air. “Does the road we just followed run straight?”
“No,” I said, looking back along its curved, sometimes winding route through the abandoned farms, rocky outcrops, and long stretch of desert. “It follows the curve of the river. Sometimes, it alters course to go around the scenery or the places people live.”
“So, if you wanted to build a straight path up this valley, what would you do?”
“I suppose I’d have to fill in part of the old river bed, knock down some abandoned farms, smash the rock outcroppings, and use them to fill the holes.”
“What if the river still ran or those farms were still occupied?”
I pondered how different that would look and gave a slow nod.
“Then my straight path would destroy livelihoods, not just where it went but among the people further down who relied on the flow of the river or the food from those farms.”
“And if instead of barren rock and desert, the lands between them were forests or plains, places where you could see the trees grow and the animals run free? Places teeming with life?”
I thought about what we’d seen in the desert. Not just monsters, but other living things—foxes, hyenas, crows, scuttling beetles, cacti, and stands of tough, pale grass. That land already teemed with life, as Tahlis must know after living here for so long, but he doubted my ability to see it.
“My straight road would destroy those living things,” I said. “And the fragile ecosystem in which they live. I would be ruining everything I went through because I didn’t have the patience to make the extra effort and go around.”
“You’re smarter than you smell. Which is good, because you smell strange and confused.”
“This is a strange and confusing world.”
“Exactly! The world is
