The water hit them like a wall.
The river in the Lowlands raged as always, but X reached the banks with ease, even without the powers he enjoyed in the Overworld. He had delivered Stan so the Trembling had vanished. Along with his powers went his pain. For a brief time, his body would feel relieved and renewed.
Behind him, Stan screamed at the arctic cold of the current. He scrambled for the banks, but the river kept sucking him under. A handful of guards crowded the water’s edge, laughing at him. When Stan finally made it to the riverside, his lungs were heaving. He bent over and vomited water (and ice cream) into the dirt. A guard approached him with a kindly expression, picked him up—and threw him back in.
The others roared with delight. Stan began to make for the other side of the river, but there were guards waiting there, too.
X sat in the dirt and waited for someone to bring him a blanket and a wedge of bread, as they always did when he returned with a soul. He noticed, with a shiver of dread, that Dervish stood preening nearby. X wished again that it was Regent instead.
He drew in a deep breath and steeled himself for a confrontation. He would be humble, hang his head, beg forgiveness a hundred times. He would endure whatever humiliation Dervish could devise. Sooner or later, his crime would be forgotten—carried away as if by the river. He would be sent back to the Overworld to collect the next soul, and he would steal away to see Zoe. An hour with her would sustain him for a year.
But Dervish did not so much as glance in X’s direction. He clapped when Stan stumbled. He whistled and hooted when the current dragged his big, fuzzy head under the water. Dervish was draped in gaudy necklaces and bracelets, all of them stolen from the souls of the Lowlands. The jewelry shimmered and clattered as he hopped around.
“Well done, guardsmen!” he shouted. “Well done!”
X stared openly at Dervish now, anxious for his punishment to begin. He knew the lord would still be boiling with rage. Yet the creature continued to ignore him. X had not expected this reception and it worried him.
The light had left his body now. The reality of the Lowlands—the way it sucked all the hope and happiness out of you, the way it stank like the mouth of some enormous beast—flooded into him instead. His anxiety deepened. Still no blanket. Still no bread.
X stood and waded into the river.
Stan continued to battle the current. He was red-faced and panting, wailing about the cramps in his legs. X grabbed him around the waist and hoisted him over his shoulder yet again. Even without supernatural powers, he had no trouble lifting a knot of wire like Stan.
He carried him to the side of the river.
“Thank you, superfreak,” said Stan, shouting to be heard over the rushing water. “I don’t like anyone here so far.”
The guards jeered when they saw that there was no more fun to be had. But even this was a comfort to X because it meant that life, such as it was in the Lowlands, would lurch back into motion.
He laid Stan on the ground, and waited for the guards to descend on the terrified new prisoner.
At last, Dervish sliced the air with his long, taloned forefinger and screamed, “SEIZE HIM!”
But something was different.
Something was wrong.
The lord was pointing at him.
The guards raced at X from all sides, like lions on a fallen deer. Their merriment at the river had been a ruse. They had been waiting for the lord’s signal all along.
They stripped X of his purple shirt. He saw it pass through many hands. He saw it fought over, bartered for, and, finally, carried off triumphantly like a newly captured flag.
Dervish instructed the guards to carry X to the tree on the plain. There was some grumbling at this—the men were as small and round as hobbits and unaccustomed to true labor—but they did as they were told.
X did not resist. At least now his punishment had begun, which meant that someday it would end.
It was a long march through foul, humid air. The guards groaned angrily under their burden—why had this traitor’s punishment become their own?—while Dervish strutted in front of them. The guards pinched and poked X as they bore him along. When they saw that the lord not only did not object to X’s mistreatment but rather whooped with pleasure at it, they accidentally dropped him to the ground and dragged him a dozen feet at a time.
The souls in the lowest ring of cells sensed something was afoot. They could see from the tattoos decorating X’s arms and from the bruises on his face that he was a bounty hunter. It was unusual to see one punished—and thrilling. Word was passed up to the top ring of cells and out to the farthest edges. Soon, the great black wall seemed to shake as prisoners hollered in the tongues of a hundred countries and thousands of years. All X heard as he passed was a storm of hate and anger. Occasionally, one voice could be heard above the others: “What the hell have you done, boy?”
Ripper and Banger recognized X as he was carried across the plain. Ripper was so upset she twirled manically in her cell. She wept and spat, and cursed her fingernails for not yet being long enough to tear out. Banger suggested that she take a “chill pill,” which only confused her, and tried to shout down the souls who surrounded them, calling them haters and tools.
The procession finally reached the tree. It was 30 feet tall, ugly and bare and elephant gray. Its trunk consisted of a dozen tortured, intertwining strands. Its mottled branches bent and swerved in every direction, as if in search of something they would never find. Its roots sank into the dirt like veins.
The guards thrust X against the tree and bound him to it, which brought a wave of applause from the cells. The rope sawed at X’s skin, but he knew better than to complain. When the guards had finished, they stepped away and Dervish approached.