The Pearl Fox

Passage to the Moon

The place was nothing that he'd expected. Looking through the bars of the prison wagon, the place was grim and shadowy. The great forests were almost visible. Hundreds of luminous boats drifted along the river and clustered like stars on the lake. Hanzak had never been here before. He'd never planned to come this way in all of his dreams. Further along the Blue Snake River, was the Blue Shadow Lake, then the glisterning artificial lights of the city called Moonlake Town. Yet, beyond that city, the imposing giant wall of the Cavistan Range, with the biggest mountains in Diaphry, as well as the tallest in the whole world of Blue Star. In altitude, they reached a towering height up into the stratosphere itself. The Cavistan mountains cast a great ominous shadow across the landscape from East to West. The city of Moonlake Town experienced several hours of sunlight each day, but from late afternoon until late morning, was a bleak Cavistan shadow night. Only one half of the sky was visible, the Southerly side, as the rest of it was blocked by the giant Cavistan mountains. Moonlake Town was built close to the edge of Blue Shadow Lake.

Hanzak thought of the dark cell in Whispering Village, where he was almost bitten by a snake, until he killed it with his own bare hands. He remembered how it tasted when he bit into its flesh. It occurred to him that someone put the snake in his cell, because stealing from temple was mostly frowned upon and many people wanted him dead because of it. He knew that in Central Diaphry, criminals and law makers alike united in their hatred towards temple thieves.

As the passed the city, with its towers and spires dwarfed against the vast mountains behind. The prison wagon shook across a treacherous road full of gravel. and went further towards the wall of darkness that was the mountains. Soon they went downhill and there was artificial lights with more to see. There was a wall that enclosed a fortress and a quarry. The wagon stopped. Guards opened the latch of the tail doors and swung them open. Prisoners including Hanzak were shoved outside and made to stand in a row, then ordered to get down on their knees. The floor was full of sharp debris and it hurt. Some legs were already grazed, pierced and cut from kneeling on the rubble. All around were piles of dirt and rocks, while guards patrolled up and down the quarry, and men in the distance pushed wheelbarrows full of rocks. A guard with sharp amber eyes paced around the new prisoners. "New arrivals sir!" said another guard to him.

"A bunch of pathetic rats," said amber eyes. "They look feeble. Oxes could do better than this lot. An ox is worthier."

All of the guards wore battered rusted looking helmets and mail with rhino horned plated armour covered in dust. They were filthy, and stank of nitrogen. The quarry itself, which was more vast than Hanzak first thought. Among the guards, and longer termed prisoners, was that awful gas stink and it affected their health, because they coughed so much. Coughing. Stinks. It wasn't long until Hanzak was made to carry bricks in his arms. A guard kicked him on his way and snarled: "There's not enough trolleys for the likes of you scum! Get to work!"

Guards pushed him along, and ordered him to keep walking. He learned that it wasn't a wheelbarrow pusher that he was supposed to reach. It was to the very end of the quarry, that was a mile across, up to the edge of the guarded fortress. Guards stood their fully armed, and smoke plumes rose from the chimneys. Once he reached that, he was sore and in pain. He dropped the bricks, and found that his arms were covered in blood. Those weren't just normal construction bricls. These were covered in sharp pieces of glass. Other prisoners struggled to bring bricks all that way, and he could hear them, and he listened to the guards erupt in anger. He saw guards beating prisoners with truncheons and whips, but he didn't linger. He didn't want to see it.

Shouts rose with plumes of dust when a prisoner collapsed and died. Hanzak didn't know what happened to the man, but guards brought over a stretcher to carry him off. Hanzak could hear the guards saying the prisoner was dead. Hours passed. Hanzak was now an automaton, carrying bricks to the fortress end, dumping them in a pile, as other prisoners were given the tasks of throwing it into dumper carts. None of them were issued gloves to wear, or masks to protect themselves from the fumes. But these prisoners, who didn't have to make long journeys carrying bricks, were covered in scabs, sores, bruises, gashes and open wounds because of their job. He could smell that awful gas again. A loud explosion coming from another quarry somewhere behind the fortress sounded. He felt thirsty, and there wasn't any water. One prisoner had a dislocated jaw, and another was missing an ear. Another prisoner had leather string lodged into his scalp from a whipping that was so awful that it stuck in his head. Another man lost all of his fingernails. Many of the long termed prisoners were horribly injured, mostly from beatings by guards.

At night, all of the prisoners were made to sleep there on the quarry under open sky. Hanzak was sick, and he staggered through the sleeping prisoners towards the fortress, and saw just a few guards that were on night duty. He could see a staircase at the side of the fortress, that seemed vacant. He made his way to it, and kept pretending to lay down in sleep. If anyone asked, he would say that he was looking for a comfortable sleeping area. He was never seen reaching those stone steps.

The stairs led up into a door in the side of the fortress. Then the stairs continued up and up. It felt as if it would go up to the mountain tops and to one of the three moons. It lasted ages and his legs were heavy. He soon came to a window, that faced outside into the other quarry on the other side of the fortress. More sleeping prisoners, and moving dumper carts from his quarry were now rolling through this side. All the bricks he and others carried to the carts were taken to the next quarry, dumped there, and the same happened. "Men died for this!" He had to get out of here.