The main square outside Citadel Fionni was always a busy place, crammed to the brim with sailors off ships on the Gulf of Lum and the Adriatic Ocean, merchants restocking their wares from ship holds and tradesmen hawking their services to any who would listen. There was no sign of the typical denizens of court squares. Things like produce or livestock rarely found a place in the primary market of Nerona’s southernmost city. Farmers or peddlers hawked their goods in other, less prominent places in Fionni.
The main square was for the best of the best, things like exotic goods just imported or olive oil and rare marble bound for the far corners of the earth. Only the most valuable goods and rarest skills were worth trying to sell in the main square.
Although he was no stranger to town squares Cassian Ironhand found the Citadel’s too bustling for his taste. However there was only one man in southern Nerona who could do what he needed and that man was last seen selling his services in Fionni.
There weren’t many bravos plying their trade in town squares. Most clustered around gate houses or in the potter’s fields just outside city walls. These were the places that prompted the average merchant or traveler to think about hiring men of arms to protect their lives and livelihoods in the unsettled parts of Nerona.
However Adalai Carpathea was not strictly a bravo. When people first started mentioning his name a few years ago it was as a Herald, although the man himself supposedly hated that term. Regardless, he had a rare Gift, and that was what Cassian needed.
And so the young man picked his way through the carts and the cargo and the merchants and the sailors, looking for a man in dark colors with a single ostrich feather in his hat. It took a surprisingly long time to find him. Adalai must have had great confidence in his reputation, or he really didn’t feel a strong desire to take on work, because he had tucked himself into a far corner of the market, sitting on a dull red rug with a shield embroidered on it.
He peered up at Cassian from under the broad brim of his wine red hat, mild curiosity on his face. “Good morning, friend,” he said, voice thick with a strange, foreign accent. “What brings you to the largest market in Fionni on this fine morning?”
Cassian frowned as he looked Carpathea over. He had to admit he found Adalai’s dress and attitude a bit curious. The man wore a black cloak that hung to his waist in the front but tapered down to knee length in the back. It didn’t look particularly warm. Nor was it in fashion or serving to conceal armor or weapons. In fact he had set his two swords on the blanket beside him so as to sit at his ease so concealment was clearly not a priority to the man. Yet his pantaloons and dublet were unremarkable so displaying his sense of fashion wasn’t a concern either.
In short he was not dressed like a bravo. He wasn’t flamboyant or flashy enough to be promoting himself nor was he really armed or armored in the way you might expect if he was working. Best to make sure this was the right man. Cassian braced his hands on his hips and said, “My name is Cassian Ironhand. I’m looking for Adalai Carpathea, the Arminger. Are you him?”
“Yes. You came here to the market rather than tracking me to my inn and waiting there so I presume you want my services to commune with something rather than as a mercenary?” He asked Cassian the question with the detached attitude of the casual observer rather than someone trying to assess a prospective employer. At least that was Cassian’s impression. His accent made his mood as hard to understand as his words.
“You’re correct,” Cassian said. “Although depending on what you learn I may need to put together some bravos to mount a rescue. Would you be interested?”
His sour look suggested he was not but Carpathea did not immediately answer the question. Instead he started tugging off one of his gloves, saying, “We’ll see. Just to be clear, when I commune with an object the impressions I get are based on the residual thoughts, emotions and sensations left on the object by it’s owner or owners. For example, if you need to learn where your crazy uncle buried his gold you better have brought his shovel with you. Or at least something he always carried with him. The facts I can glean from communing with something are not infinite.”
“I understand,” Cassian said, although in truth he did not. However complete understanding of another person’s Gift was rare and he didn’t concern himself with it. Instead Cassian dug a piece of the axel of a large wagon out of his heavy leather shoulder bag. It was an iron hub cap, some splintered spokes and about two feet of axel. Cassian set it down on the blanket in front of Adalai. “This is from a wagon in a caravan that went missing crossing the Drownway. I was hoping you could tell me more about what happened.”
The other man took the piece of wood gingerly in his gloved hand then poked it with one finger of the other. His eyebrows shifted upward a barely perceptable amount. “Well there’s definitely something there, which is surprising given that it’s a wheel. Not to beat a dead horse but I don’t know how much of use it will be to you. Thirty lira.”
That was nearly two days wages for a laborer. Cassian tried to control his surprise at Adalai’s blunt demand. “That’s a lot to ask for in exchange for a service you insist may not do me any good.”
“My Gift has limits just like anyone’s, Cassian. I don’t expect you to know what they are anymore than I know what the specifics of an Ironhand are.” Adalai offered a dissolute shrug. “It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it or not.”
Cassian grit his teeth, realizing Carpathea had the strong hand over him and he knew it. “Would it serve as a preliminary retainer for your services as a bravo as well?”
There was that sour look again. “No. I can’t commit to such a step just yet, there are… other obligations that I would have to check in on before committing to leaving Fionni. Who else have you recruited for your cause? Do you have the lira for a large party?”
“Not as such,” Cassian admitted. “However the merchant who owned the caravan’s cargo has offered a reward of two thousand lira if we can retrieve it, an extra five hundred if we can see it all the way to Renicie. I am offering equal shares to anyone who helps me retrieve it.”
“That… that isn’t terrible,” Carpathea admitted. “Still, I can’t say whether I can join you yet. Will you pay for the reading?”
Cassian sighed and dug a handful of coins of of his belt pouch. “Very well, Signore Carpathea, thirty lira for the reading. What can you learn?”
Adalai pulled his other glove off and gasped the axel in both hands. “Whoever owned this cart took very good care of it,” he muttered, concentration furrowing his brow. “It’s extremely rare for something that primarily sits on the ground to have any impressions at all.”
“Wouldn’t there be some from the craftsman who made it at least?”
“Not unless it was very new, the traces fade quickly unless they’ve been reinforced for years.” Adalai’s face scrunched up as he concentrated. “Damp. Something very impatient and very moist. Jostling, dragging and blood? I think there was excitement mixed in with a sense of satisfaction but the emotional overtones are very fragmented.”
“Excitement and satisfaction?” Cassian frowned. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. No one looks forward to crossing the Drownway and a broken wagon wheel would be more a cause for heartache than excitement.”
“Not if you were planning to drag the wagon underwater,” Adalai said, shifting the chunk of wood over into just his right hand. “I don’t think that impression was left by the men of the caravan. It doesn’t feel like the kind of impression a human leaves behind, the thoughts were jumbled and alien, especially the sensations, which are usually the clearest thing. My guess is the caravan got snatched by the Benthic. The wheel got caught as they dragged it into the water and they left these impressions as they tried to free it.”
Cassian was shaking his head now. “It makes no sense. What do the Benthic want with a caravan of air breather goods? A few days in salt water makes most of it useless.”
“I don’t know, signore, but I know that wheel was last touched by something inhuman. I’ve never handled something belonging to the Benthic before but I have seen things from the Fair Folk and they’re just as inscrutable as that wheel axel. Just with a different flavor, if you follow me.”
Cassian didn’t. However he didn’t have much choice other than to take Adalai at his word. Armingers weren’t exactly rare in Nerona but there were perhaps half a dozen in the whole continent of Iberia who could use it to glean impressions the way Carpathea did. Finding anyone who could check the accuracy of his conclusions was virtually impossible. “The Benthic,” Cassian muttered. “Really?”
Adalai handed him the chunk of wood back. “I’m afraid so. Do you know what the cargo was? If it was something like marble or jewels it might survive.”
“Signore Marelli did not say, nor did he seem eager to explain himself.” Which Cassian really couldn’t blame him for, given that the Marelli family was the city’s best known cat’s paw for the Borgias. Crossing Nerona’s most ruthless merchant leader wasn’t a good way to live but it was a fast way to die.
“What about the rescue you mentioned?” Carpathea asked. “Was that Signore Marelli’s goal? Or yours?”
Cassian’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
The other man offered a shrug far easier to understand than his normal speech. “Call it a hunch.”
“Well if you must know it was mine. My brother is a bravo who was hired to guard the caravan. They’re only two weeks overdue and I still hold hope to find him alive.”
Adalai’s face fell. “I’m sorry about your brother but unless he had a Gift that helped him breath under water he’s probably dead. Outside of the Benthic dragging him under the waves with them I can’t think of any reason he’d be gone so long.”
“Cazador is a clayheart. He can turn completely to earth and stone in a pinch and once he does he didn’t need to eat or breath. He just can’t move either.” Cassian pinched the bridge of his nose. “The problem is the cargo.”
For a moment Adalai looked confused. Then understanding dawned. “No reward money if the ocean has destroyed it.”
“None.”
For a moment Cassian just stood there brooding, trying to figure out how he was going to raise a rescue team with no promise of reward to entice them. He’d just determined he’d have to go alone when Adalai said, “Come by the Quarrelsome Widow tomorrow morning. That’s where I’m staying right now. I should know if my other… patrons are willing to spare me for a few days by then.”
Cassian stare blankly at him. “You do realize the chances I can pay you are paltry to nonexistent, yes?”
“Be there by midmorning bells, signore, or I’ll assume you changed your mind about your rescue mission.” Adalai sat back down on his blanket. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to try to earn some coin today. The next few days could be quite slow on that front.”
A grin slowly spread across Cassian’s face. Perhaps he still had a chance to make this work after all. “Thank you, Signore Carpathea. I will see you in the morning.”
He hurried out of the square with a new spring in his step. There was still a chance to find Cazador. He was always the toughest of their parent’s sons, even when they were young, and if anyone could survive under the ocean for weeks it was him. That was why he’d been the one to take up the life of a bravo in the first place. Cassian really only knew about the life from the stories he heard from Cazador and his customers at the smithy.
Still, those stories had gotten him Adalai’s name and from there a start on finding his brother.
Yes, getting dragged into the ocean by the Benthic wasn’t great as such things went. But bravos had survived worse things in the past and this wasn’t just any bravo. It was his brother. He’d just have to hope Cazador could hold out until Cassian could put something together and come save him.
Cassian knew he’d need more manpower to do that, though. It might have been difficult to find that manpower in any place other than Fionni but the Citadel was one of the largest ports on the Adriatic. There were plenty of desperate men willing to gamble their lives for a share of a few thousand lira. Fortunately he had a hunch where he should start. Cassian turned his feet towards the Slavic quarter and hurried there as fast as he could go.
Adalai shifted back and forth, trying to look around the legs of the kid standing on his shoulders. “Use a sleeve to brush -” A fit of coughing interrupted him. “Use a sleeve to brush the glass off the side of the frame and grab onto that.”
A series of oddly musical sounds accompanied a shower of uncomfortable glass slivers raining down on him. Adalai flinched away from them but kept his balance. The weight of the twelve year old kid shifted back and forth, briefly pushed down extra hard then vanished. Adalai craned his neck back and reached up to push the kid until he could plant his feet on the jacket covering the jagged lip of the broken widow.
The kid was right about the jacket being slippery. His feet shot out from under him almost immediately and the main reason he didn’t take a nasty fall was because he still had that grip on the window’s edges.
“Careful,” Adalai yelled, choking on another cough. “Is the ground clear?”
After a quick, panicky look down over one shoulder he answered, “Yeah, I think so.”
“Then turn around and drop yourself down.”
“It’s kinda far, mister,” the kid said, his nerves clearly getting worse. “Can’t I wait until the firemen can come and help?”
Adalai glanced over his shoulder at the bathroom door, where smoke was already creeping around the edges in frightening quantities. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, buddy. Besides, how am I gonna get up to the widow if you’re still in it?”
“Oh, right.” Suitably admonished the kid carefully twisted himself around in the frame, took a deep breath then dropped with a loud scream. Probably unnecessary but hopefully cathartic. It ended with a hard thump then the kid called, “I’m okay! You can come out, mister!”
And that brought Adalai to the elephant in the room. If he reached up to full extension he could get a grip on the lower edge of the windowsill but he wasn’t any good in gym class so the odds he could pull himself up and out that way were pretty slim even if he hadn’t thrown his windbreaker over it. With the slick fabric there he could forget it entirely. So instead he grabbed the wooden push broom they’d used to break the window in the first place.
His first idea, to wedge the head of the broom in the corner on the window, didn’t work. The angles weren’t quite right and he couldn’t make it catch. So instead he hooked it over the sill and tried to pull himself up that way. That did work.
For about eight seconds, until the head broke off the handle and sent Adalai crashing back to the floor. He tried to catch himself but there was nothing to grab onto and he rolled backwards and crashed head first into a sink.
For a moment his vision swam.
Then Adalai found himself sitting on one side of a large, square glass table in a domed room about the size of a three car garage. Confused, he looked around. Then he froze in place, realizing there was a twelve foot tall man made of deep blue light standing there.
A panicked thought that he’d been abducted by aliens flitted through his mind.
“Not abducted.” The voice was unusually deep and echoed in the room a little more than you’d expect but otherwise didn’t seem a good fit for the creature that stood next to him. “What kind of voice were you expecting?”
Adalai shifted uncomfortably as he realized the thing had read his mind. Probably shouldn’t have surprised him. “I guess -“
A deep, rasping cough cut him off. At first he expected things to clear out right away but, after the third rib shaking explosion tore out of him, Adalai started to worry they would never stop. A hand touched his shoulder and his muscles froze up. Something in his chest shifted and a stream of damp ash trickled out of his lips. That probably only took a second or two, though it felt like an hour, and once it was done the cold vanished and he could breath again. Adalai straightened up and realized the blue presence was what had touched him. Furthermore, the silhouette had small points of light glistening deep within it, like it was a living field of stars.
“Next time make sure he’s ready to speak before bantering with him.” This was a new voice and Adalai quickly concluded that this voice belonged to the starfield, not the first one. The first had been sharp and precise. This one was strong yet unhurried, like a lazy river that concealed surprising depths. The silhouette turned is attention fully towards him. “Welcome, Adalai Carpathea.”
“Thanks,” he rasped. “Where am I?”
“The Corners of Eternity,” the first voice replied. Adalai took a harder look at his surroundings, which included very little beyond the table where he sat. The smooth dome overhead looked like it was made of marble or some other light colored stone that had four doorways in it equidistant from each other. He presumed these were the corners the voice mentioned as the dome itself was round. A figure wrapped in green light stood in front of one of the doors and Adalai had the clear impression it was the source of the first voice.
“That’s right, Adalai.” The verdant figure gestured to itself. “I am the King of Dreams. You were brought here by the King of Stars, who now stands beside you. This is the King of Scars.”
As if speaking the name caused it to appear a third silhouette snapped into existence in front of the door to his left. This one radiated a soft, brown light that reminded Adalai of an autumn afternoon. “We’re all here,” the new figure said, its voice a rich, rolling sound. “Is this the one?”
“He is,” Stars replied, drawing itself up to it’s full height. “I suppose it is time to propose the question, Adalai Carpathea. Do you wish to live?”
Up until that point the bizarreness of the situation had distracted Adalai from the fact that it was also quite terrifying. “W-what do you mean?”
The King of Stars left his side and moved to the door in front of him. “You stand on the doorstep of Eternity, Adalai,” it said. “If you wish to cross the threshold to that blessed place you may do so and we would not hold it against you.”
“In many ways your death would be a noble one,” the King of Scars added. “Not everyone would have the presence of mind save another when confronted with the end of their own life. If you live longer who knows if the rest of your life will be as worthwhile? “
Adalai rubbed nervously at his throat, remembering the acidic taste of smoke. “Sorry, I’m a little lost. I know I was in the museum bathroom and the building was on fire… does that make one of you Charon? Because this doesn’t look like the Styx.”
“That’s something I’ve been called,” the King of Dreams replied. “The River is close, and you will see it when the time is right, but first you must make your choice.”
“That doesn’t make things much clearer,” Adalai admitted. “What am I choosing?” The King of Stars raised up its hand and a constellation formed there from the light of it’s body. “We are the keepers of Eternity’s rolls. Today Eternity called out to you but you are offered a rare gift – you may choose how you answer. You may pass through these doors and into the timeless realm or you may cross the gulf between mortal realms and face the trials and cares of human life once more.”
“Eternity?” He stared at the door behind Stars. “What is that like?”
A rumbling sound shook the room and it took Adalai a moment to realize it was the King of Scars laughing. The creature’s silhouette rippled as the sound echoed. “It may sound odd,” it said when it’s amusement subsided, “but we haven’t been there. Our duties are on this side of the River. If you choose to remain in the mortal realm then your duties will be there as well.”
His eyes narrowed. “My duties? What are those?”
“The same as they were before,” Dreams replied, “only of greater significance.”
“That sounds awfully vague,” Adalai said. “If you are who you say then you’re supposed to be the Ferryman who conveys souls to the afterlife. There has to be some reason you’re not doing that with me. People don’t just come back from the dead at random, if they did everyone would be talking about it.”
The laughter of the King of Dreams sounded like a rushing wind, battering the dome overhead. “Didn’t you know one of my names when you first got here?”
Adalai’s mouth hung open for a long moment as he tried to think of a good response but, in truth, he didn’t have one. “Okay. I either cross into Eternity or I cross to a… what, another world?”
“You will cross the horizon,” Dreams replied. “The world is your own, but given to a different people with different ways.”
“But can I go back to my own world? Or, I guess can I go back across the horizon?”
“Such a thing is possible,” the King of Scars said. “It does not even require power beyond what a human being can acquire in the realm you’re going to. However it requires a great deal of time and effort, Adalai. I can’t guarantee you’d accomplish it, even if you spent your whole life.”
He could. The voice boomed out from behind him like a thunderclap. If his duties are fulfilled, he could.
Terrified, Adalai spun in his chair, trying to find the source of the voice. Before he could turn a quarter of the way the King of Stars was beside him, holding him in place. “Show some restraint, Karoushi. His mind won’t survive seeing you like that.”
Now that he knows this he will not look upon me. Is it not so, Adalai Carpathea?
He fixed his full attention on the table in front of him. “Yes.”
It is well. Now that he was a little calmer he realized the voice had a slight feminine lilt to it.You must know further things than these, Adalai Carpathea. These Kings of the Doors have only the authority to judge a man’s death. However I am Karoushi, Who Knows the End. My purpose is to uphold the path, from the first step to the last, for all who tread the mortal coils. I can see that if you uphold your purpose in the place you are sent one day my sister, Who Spans the Horizon, will return you to the place you began.
Then Adalai felt there was really only one choice to make. “In that case I want to live. Send me to whatever this place beyond the horizon is.”
He must have a Gift.
“A what?”
The King of Scars shifted as if folding its arms. “We don’t give Gifts, Karoushi, unless you consider turning people back from Eternity a gift.”
Do you not take them from those who depart? My sister, Who Brings the Harvest, takes them from you and plants them in new lives. This once you must offer them yourselves.
Some kind of communication passed between the three Kings. It wasn’t words or motions but Adalai could still sense that they were skeptical enough about this idea they were debating it. Then the three doors behind them opened.
Adalai caught a brief glimpse of a man choking on blood as he lay on a muddy battlefield, a child lost and starving in a forrest and a man crushed under the wall of a house he was building. Then the doors slammed shut.
The King of Scars held a dim bronze colored spark of light. “The Gift of Impulse,” it said. “With it you may move whatever you last held whether you are touching it or not.”
The King of Stars held a smudge of silver mist. “The Gift of Clouds. With it all mist or fog that you touch will be as a part of yourself.”
The King of Dreams held a box of bright white light. “The Gift of Arms. With it you will discover the purpose imbued into whatever you touch.”
You must choose one. However, once you do the decision is made know that you cannot go back. You must suffer through the fates of mortals until Eternity calls you once more.
For a long moment Adalai hesitated. There was something tempting about the great unknown that Eternity represented. On the other hand there was all the friends he’d left behind, to say nothing of his parents and little brother. It getting back to them meant doing something over some horizon he’d do that.
“Wait.” He pause in the process of pushing his chair away from the table. “How do I know my purpose in this new place?”
The same way you knew it when you saved that child. That is all mankind has ever needed to know their purpose.
He could see the truth in that but it couldn’t hurt to have something to help him work things out. Adalai got up, approached the King of Dreams and took the Gift from his hands.
There was a flash of light and he found himself standing just inside a massive stone gate, surrounded by a bustling crowd of people babbling in a strange language he’d never heard in his life.
That was how Adalai Carpathea first came to Citadel Fionni.
This work also appears on Substack and Royal Road under the user name HorizonTalker
Aelfred and Gwendolyn return for another glimpse into the dangerous life of a Neronan bravo.
Cool mist rolled down off the southern mountains of Isenlund into Selene Valley, covering the trees and road in shadows and secrets. The Valley ran right down the heart of the country to the Gulf of Lum but this far north it was anyone’s guess whether they were in the lands of the Isenkoenig or the territories of Nerona. By Aelfred’s reckoning the only point north of where they were that was in Neronan hands was Casa Verdemonde. But the green mountain was a safe and prosperous land. In contrast the northern Valley was wild and full of danger from man and nature.
It was hardly the first time Aelfred had passed through the Valley with his wife and hopefully it wouldn’t be the last. However he’d never once passed through without incident. So when their caravan wound down out of the mountains and stumbled on a company of men at arms Aelfred regarded them with some trepidation. The troops were led by a flag with a green mountain on a red field. Verdemonde’s colors. Which didn’t necessarily mean Verdemonde’s men.
It wouldn’t be the first time villains had hidden themselves in trustworthy heraldry. After a quick discussion with the caravan leader Aelfred went to speak with the company’s captain. Gwendolyn came along with him, both because a man and wife were less threatening than a man alone and because she would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t.
To Aelfred’s surprise the captain also had a woman beside him as he approached. Where Gwendolyn was dressed simply, in clothes tailored to hide the armor underneath, this woman was dressed in rich brocade with velvet gloves and long, layered skirts. The only practical thing she wore was her sword belt. That and the long, deadly montante buckled to it hinted that there was more to the woman than fine clothes and good manners.
“Good morning, Captain,” Aelfred said. “What brings you on the road to Lome on this fine day? Are there brigands about we should be aware of?”
The captain lightly spurred his horse and it stepped forward. “None I know of, unless you count yourself among them. We ride to Lome, and from there to Torrence on the business of the Marquis de Verdemonde.”
“How fortunate! Lome is our destination as well.” Aelfred gestured back towards the caravan behind them. “Your servants are a small band of traders from Isenlund and their escorts, seeking to trade our humble wares in Lome. Perhaps we may join with you on our shared journey. Or if you prefer we will clear the road that you may be on your way, for you will doubtless outpace our lumbering wagons.”
He felt the hair of his beard prickling as he waited for the captain to answer. Either option he had just suggested would be fine with him, since a merchant’s wagon train was safer with an armed group than without. If the troops were bandits in disguise it would be easy to tell after marching with them for a few minutes. If they chose to march on ahead then at least it was a sign they had no ill intent, since you didn’t rob wagons by walking away from them. On the other hand, bandits would ask them to stay ahead of them, in their line of sight. What a bandit leader wouldn’t typically do is lean down and whisper with the well dressed woman on foot beside him.
“What do you think?” Gwendolyn whispered, pressing close to him as well.
“There’s a carriage in the back,” he replied, “perhaps they’re taking some emissary or personage to Lome.”
“I was wondering if they were married.”
Aelfred snorted. “Then she’d be on the horse with him, not walking beside him.”
“Do you have your pass from the Southern Keep in Isenlund?” The captain called. The head merchant had given it to him before they came to parlay so Aelfred just had to hold it up, with the seal of der Isenkoenig clearly displayed on the wooden block. “Very well, let us march with you. Our business is not pressing and we will be safer together.”
The well dressed woman was already making her way back through the body of troops as the captain spoke. Aelfred watched her go, only vaguely acknowledging the captain’s words. As he and his wife returned to report their successful negotiation to their employer he wondered who she was. Hopefully it wouldn’t matter. But in a place like the Selene Valley you could never know.
“What was it this time? Woodcutters? A wagon with a broken axle? Or has Captain Enrico finally found an assassin after all this time?”
Noemi sighed as she slung her sword back on top of the carriage and strapped it down. “None of the above, Bi. It was just a group of traders down from Isenlund on their way to Lome.”
“Oh? Do you think they brought any of their griffon feather cloaks with them? It would be nice to have something to help keep warm in the winter and they say griffon feathers are just the thing for it.”
The carriage creaked as Noemi folded herself down inside it, sliding past her charge and onto the bench facing her. “Bi, you’re most likely going to be living in Torrence from now on. They don’t have winter there. It’s not just the fact that you’re out of the mountains, you’re going to be down by the Adriatic Ocean. It doesn’t get cold there.”
Bianca de la Torrence sighed and looked out the window, watching as the soldiers started forming up again. “That’s what they say, Emi. My brother will certainly want to keep me in his court even though neither one of us have ever met or even lived in Torrence before.”
Noemi straightened her skirts and arranged her heavy, booted feet so they didn’t rest on Bianca’s daintier velvet shoes. The lady was better dressed than her guardian but the loose skirt, tightly laced corset and flowing collar and sleeves also made her look ephemeral. Noemi was constantly worried a light jostling would send her floating away in the wind. “Who wouldn’t want you around, Bi? Your sunny personality endears you to everyone you meet!”
Her friend gave her a sideways look, annoyance simmering in the dark blue irises of her eyes. “Don’t you start, too. No one in Verdemonde cared about me until it turned out the last Prince of Torrence died without an heir and all the cousins, step children and bastard lines had to bicker over who would inherit. No one in Torrence will care about me unless they hope to marry their way onto the throne.”
“Bi.” Noemi took Bianca’s hands in her own. “I will always be there for you, no matter what. No one in Verdemonde wants to marry into the Marquis’ branch family that watches the vineyards, after all, much less marry a handmaid born with the Bladebearer’s Gift.”
For the first time in a long time Bianca favored her with a wan smile. “Very well. Stay with me no matter what, then.”
“Something’s wrong, Aelfred,” Erasmus said, falling into step beside the bravo and his wife.
The couple shared an amused look. The tall, wire thin man found three things out of place before breakfast every morning. It was part of what made him such an excellent guard. He’d signed on with the caravan on the trip north from Nerona, long before Aelfred and Gwendolyn did, and the merchants put a lot of weight on his hunches.
“I don’t suppose you know what it is?” Gwendolyn asked. “We can hardly go and tell Signor Gerardo that there is a wrong without an idea to right it, can we?”
“I don’t know yet.” His head hadn’t stopped swinging about on the end of his neck like a fishing bobber the whole time they spoke. His eyes were studying the line of the forest with a brooding expression. “I just wanted you to be aware. You Herakleians are the only other bravos in this troupe worth swearing by and if you’re on your toes as well we might be able to do something before we’re all dead.”
It took an effort of supreme will on Aelfred’s part not to roll his eyes. Gwendolyn babied Erasmus like a frightened child but he found the constant worrying grating. The fact that Aelfred was sharing those nerves with him this time made it worse, not better.
“Good omens!” Erasmus called, his attention now behind them on the newcomers, one hand raised in greeting. The couple beside him followed his gaze to see who he addressed.
Approaching from the Verdemond company was a man who didn’t wear green and red but rather a rich brown robes with muted orange hems and a similarly colored cloth wrapped around his head and tied in the rear. A white tabard with a pattern of red slashes on it protected his front and announced his profession. He was a Herald for the King of Scars.
“Dawn greets us,” the Herald said, replying to Erasmus.
“It does indeed.” Erasmus made some kind of hand gesture to go along with it which told Aelfred it was some kind of ritual exchange. Neronans couldn’t be sensible and just worship the sun so their religion got complicated quickly. Gwendolyn had picked up a lot of it but he only picked up enough to recognize the four Kings of Eternity and their Heralds so he wasn’t sure what the gesture meant.
“Our friend is nervous about our prospects, Omen Reader,” Aelfred called. “I have few pleasant memories of the Selene Valley myself. What say you? Have any portents made themselves known?”
“The King of Scars does not show us the future in the way the King of Dreams might,” the Herald replied, falling in next to Erasmus. Now that he was closer Aelfred could see the Herald was larger than he first appeared. He was only an inch or two shorter than Aelfred himself and just as broad through the shoulders with a strength in the chest and arm mostly hidden by his loose robes. If Aelfred’s scrutiny bothered the Herald it wasn’t enough to make him stop speaking. “We do not receive visions of the future or dreams of our impending death but rather have an understanding of who will die of what wounds and which crops will grow until harvest. Powerful portents, to be sure, but not as useful in predicting the future as some omens.”
“We still appreciate your presence on behalf of He Who Takes the Souls of the Slain,” Erasmus replied. “Let’s hope you do not see his hand stretched out for any of us today.”
A brief shadow passed over the Herald’s expression. It cleared as Gwendolyn said, “Do you Heralds have names or should we simply call you Omen Reader?”
“Ignacio Scarbearer,” he replied with a gracious smile. Like most Neronan men he turned charming whenever addressing a woman. It didn’t distract Aelfred from his name. Scarbearer wasn’t a name taken from his role as a Herald but rather a name derived from his Gift, as most Neronan names were. It explained his robust appearance and presence with the Verdemonde troops. “May I ask yours, Dame…?”
“Gwendolyn of Vernon, although my husband and I are called the Herakleians in Nerona for reasons that are strange to me.”
Ignacio glanced at Aelfred before turning his attention back to his wife. “I can see the resemblance. It’s not an entirely flattering comparison but… I could tell the story when we’re camped, if you really want to know.”
“I suppose it’s not that important,” Gwendolyn mused.
“Good omens!” One of the merchant apprentices hustled past on some errand waving to the Herald in greeting.
He raised his hand to wave in response, his mouth open to reply, when his eyes widened slightly and he stumbled before catching himself. He let his hand fall to his side, his words unspoken. Erasmus, who hadn’t once stopped scanning the horizon as they spoke to the Herald, finally turned his gaze to Ignacio and said, “Something is wrong.”
“Yes.” Ignacio met his gaze. “That man will be killed today unless something changes. So will half of our company. I came to take your measure, see if you were villains in disguise, but you don’t have the look of it. Death hangs over just as many of you.”
Aelfred drew himself up, his own gaze going to the tree line now. “Erasmus, go and tell the lead wagon to stop. If there’s danger afoot we’d better dig in and make ready for it rather than get caught running with our guard down. Propose to your captain he do the same, Omen Reader.”
“I will suggest it but I doubt he’ll agree.” His words weren’t encouraging but the Herald still turned and hurried back towards his company.
There was a banging on the carriage door and Noemi pulled the curtains aside to find Captain Enrico cantering alongside them. “Forgive me, Your Highness.” He gestured to a tall, broad man in the heraldry of Scars. “Omen Ignacio tells me he sees death pursuing us as well as the caravan we met. He proposes we circle up and prepare for an attack and I can see the wisdom in this. However I think it could be better for us to try and outpace the danger, instead. Wagons are poor fortifications and their owners will be underfoot.”
“And I am most likely the reason we will be attacked in the first place.” Bianca added, the implications of the situation not lost on her. She sucked in a deep breath then let it out slowly, a stricken look on her face.
Noemi could tell her friend was at a loss so she spoke up. “Do you know what the nature of the threat is, Omen Reader?”
“My liege’s portents do not work that way,” Ignacio replied. “I only know many here will perish in fire or of being pierced through today. Respectfully, Your Highness, there is no way to know they will perish on your account, either, but there may be something we can do to prevent it happening at all. I don’t believe running is the thing to help us or the caravan.”
“We don’t have an obligation to them,” the captain hastened to add. “On the other hand I have an obligation to see you safely to Torrence and your brother wouldn’t wish for you to die before you have the chance to meet.”
“He wouldn’t want to look weak before he takes the throne, you mean,” Bianca snapped, acid on her tongue. Her voice deepened a step and her Gift pushed at the men. “Find a source of water and circle the wagons there; you decided to travel with this group, Captain Enrico, we’re not going to abandoned them now.”
The two men bowed slightly to Bianca and split away from the carriage to carry out her Command. Noemi doubted it would have much effect on either one. Although powerful in the moment her friend’s Gift of Command rarely lasted more than a breath or two and Enrico, in particular, would be resistant to it as he had the same Gift. But he was a loyal man, as well, and would carry out the order regardless. Bianca’s mood, on the other hand, had quickly shifted from haughty and demanding to glum once again. “I shouldn’t have done that.”’
“Why not?”
“With the exception of you, Emi, no one in your family thinks of me when they say to keep me safe. They worry about offending the Prince of Torrence, whoever that is at the time.” Bianca sighed and sank back into the carriage cushions. “That only goes so far, though. I’m sure if I get an entire company of men killed over some foreign merchants even your father will run out of patience.”
“He may,” Noemi said gently, “but I won’t. The Marquis always sent me away, to learn medicine, to learn the sword, to watch the foster girl. What have you always said?”
A wan smile touched her lips. “Stay with me, Noemi.”
Looking back on it, the Verdemonde troops being bandits in disguise would have been so much simpler than the actual danger lurking in the Valley. Or rather, just above it.
Erasmus brought word that the Verdemonde were planning to find a river or lake to camp beside about ten minutes after the Herald left to talk to his captain. One of their scouts had the Gift of Leaping and started hopping up over the treeline to see what was out there. He’d made three jumps when a blast of fire came out of the sky and struck him. The scout tumbled out of the sky, screaming, but never made it all the way to the ground as the dragon swooped past overhead and snatched him up. Just like that, everything went out the window.
“Abandon the wagons!” Aelfred bellowed, reaching up and dragging one of the merchants off his seat then shoving him towards the treeline. “Get under cover, quickly!”
There were generally two reasons dragons strayed into human lands – hunger and greed. The mountains were full of goats, rocs and other animals that could easily sate the hunger of even the largest dragons which meant the dragon most likely sought gold and gems. Perhaps it caught the scent of coins from the wagons. It was the only thing that made sense, unless it had somehow concluded it could ransom a bunch of soldiers back to Marquis Verdemonde.
In spite of his order the chief merchant whipped up his wagon and started down the road. “Where are you going?” Aelfred demanded, waving frantically to him. “Get down from there!”
“All the coins and talismans are here!” He yelled back. “It will chase me first! Keep my son with you!”
Cursing under his breath Aelfred cast his eyes about until he saw the younger man, scrambling to unhitch a horse from a wagon to chase after his father. He pointed and snapped, “Gwendolyn, bring him!”
“Randolf!” She snapped, because of course she knew his name. “Come here!”
The Command latched into the boy and he took three steps away from the wagon before he could make himself stop. It was enough that Reinaldo Grip, one of the other guards, got hold of the boy and dragged him towards cover. Immediate concerns dealt with, Aelfred took stock.
The Verdemonde were breaking apart their formation so it couldn’t be wiped out with a single exhalation and they were abandoning the carriage so they could take cover under the trees. That was when Aelfred felt his heart drop. A young girl, perhaps sixteen years old, was climbing down with the help of the well dressed swordswoman from earlier. He didn’t recognize her but he knew the type. With her light and airy appearance and the utter deference from the swordswoman, captain and Herald all showed her in spite of the circumstances it was obvious this girl was important. Someone, somewhere would pay a fortune to have her back. That had to be what the dragon wanted.
A burst of light, a whoosh of flame and a short, abrupt scream came from the opposite direction, where the caravan leader had gone, and Aelfred’s attention was dragged back that way. He backpedaled towards the treeline himself, trying to work out the best defense now. Abandoning the wagons to the dragon made sense when they were the only thing that the creature might want. But if it wanted to take the girl then it wasn’t going to help them that much.
Flashes and screams flickered out of the woods. The dragon was hunting down anyone who ran, herding them back into a single location to ensure its prey would not escape.
Erasmus appeared by his elbow. “What now? It’s in the trees and if we fall back we’ll just make a larger target grouped together with the soldiers.”
“Fall back,” Gwendolyn said. “It’s not impossible to kill a dragon with a company of men and it doesn’t look like we’re going to escape it.”
“Agreed,” Aelfred said. His stomach rumbled, even though breakfast was only a few hours behind them. “On the double, it’s getting close again.”
“Clayhearts forward!” Captain Enrico ordered, spurring his horse along the rapidly forming skirmish line. Six men marched forward, shields in hand, as their bodies transformed into living earth. Noemi found herself musing that if anyone was going to survive this battle it was them. The ground did no burn, after all. “We can buy you time to escape, Highness. Lady Verdemonde knows this road and can see you safely back to the mountain. The Marquis can send you home at a later time.”
“No, captain,” Bianca replied, drawing herself up to her full five feet of height. “Dragons are meticulous. It will hunt you down and devour you all to cut us off from help and sow fear. Ultimately any noblewoman of Nerona knows they cannot escape when a dragon sets its sight on them. I must either surrender to it or make a stand. You are men of Verdemonde, not Torrence. I can’t ask you to die for me but I don’t wish to be set on a pile of treasure in some dragon’s cave and wait to see if a distant brother I have never met will ransom me. If you wish to run, please leave me your dagger.”
“Not necessary, Your Highness,” Enrico replied. “If you wish to make a stand then Verdemonde is proud to stand with you.” He glanced at Noemi. “Is it not so?”
“I cannot speak for my father or the Prince of Torrence,” she replied. “But I will always stand with you Bi, dragon or no.”
Enrico nodded and looked back to his men. “Conjurers! Begin fortifying.” Two men in lighter armor began summoning foot high stones from thin air, allowing them to fall in place and make a low wall. Noemi wasn’t sure it would do much against a dragon but it kept the men busy. The captain’s stomach growled fiercely and he scowled. “Can’t imagine what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s the dragon,” Noemi replied. “They are hunger incarnate and their power far overshadows any human Gift. As it draws near it’s nature will corrupt our own.”
“Wonderful.” He looked back to his men. “Impulse line, spread out!”
Aelfred took the time to free the horses and ensure the merchants were out of the wagons, running back and forth to check each of the five remaining wagons while Gwendolyn encouraged the stragglers on to shelter in the woods or behind Verdemonde’s lines. Erasmus and Reinaldo remained at the edge of the caravan on the lookout. They had just finished with the wagons when Aelfred saw Erasmus’ eyes widen and Gwendolyn screamed, “Run, Aelfred!”
He knew better than to look so he just took off in a dead sprint. Even with the power of his wife’s Command spurring him onward he still felt the heat of the flames that burst over the wagons licking at his heels. An invisible force grabbed him as Reinaldo’s Gift pulled him forward, off his feet and out of the blast zone. Erasmus caught him and kept him on his feet then the four of them took off at full tilt towards the Verdemonde company, the flames casting long shadows before them. A shield wall of living earth marched out to meet them, brandishing spears. A second wave of fire chased them but the transformed Clayhearts intercepted the attack without flinching, the flames washing harmlessly over their steel shields. Aelfred skidded to a stop behind them and spun, raising his ax up for a throw, hoping to at least briefly delay the monster that pursued them.
The heat of the dragon’s breath had burned off the mist but now a thick smoke took its place. It hung over the remains of their caravan like a thundercloud, a huge form looming over it. A crown of horns rested on a head shaped like a spade with a hooked beak and glaring reptilian eyes. It’s scales were the color of coal and it’s teeth shone like silver. It braced its serpentine body upright on two long legs that were as thick or thicker than its chest and its throat shone with a dull, red light. Gossamer insect wings as wide as the sky sprouted from its back lazily beating the smokey air.
Aelfred had seen many horrifying creatures in his life and even he felt his heart quail at the sight. Practice and discipline drove his arm forward and his hand to release his ax but his mind was distracted. His Gift lost it’s hold on the weapon. He could not use it to tap the weapon onto the best course or add its extra Impulse of power. So his trusty ax drifted off course and bounced of the scales of the dragon’s arm, causing no visible damage but provoking it to an enraged roar. Aelfred saw the men in front of him cringe and his own heart wavered.
Then the dragon charged.
The skirmishing line was brushed aside like paper by the heaving bulk of the wyrm’s body that coiled and writhed like a whip. From the glimpse Aelfred got of it, the creature had only two legs. The rest of its body was free to churn and strike all about and it used its serpentine coils to throw the men of earth about, their weapons flying from their hands. Aelfred scrambled, grabbing a dropped spear in each hand then immediately throwing one at the dragon.
This time he kept his Gift trained on it and guided it towards the dragon’s head. The wily serpent opened its mouth and belched a stream of fire that turned the weapon to ash. The wave of heat hit him like a slap. Then Erasmus shoved him out of the way just before the torrent of flame washed over them both. The other bravo’s body disappeared.
A titanic clap of thunder shook the ground. The dragon’s fire turned from bright red to shocking blue as a bolt of lightning ran up the fire and into the dragon’s head. It jerked upwards, shrieking in pain. The crackling electricity pulled back together into Erasmus, who perched precariously atop the dragon’s head for a moment. He scrambled to try and gain purchase on the creature’s horns. Then the dragon bent like a bow and launched itself into the sky again, sending Erasmus tumbling to the ground. Reinaldo caught him before the landing smashed all the bones in his body.
Aelfred let himself flop flat on the ground once he saw his friend was safe, at least for the moment. The shock of the dragon’s presence and the impact of the thunderclap had left him rattled and he needed a moment to rally. Perhaps more than a moment. By the time he rolled over to his front and pushed himself up things were quite different. The Verdemonde men were scattered and only a handful were still visible among the smoke and flames, huddled around the wreckage of the carriage. Hands grabbed Aelfred’s shoulders and hauled him to his feet. “Up with you, Aelfred,” Gwendolyn hissed from her place on his right. “It’s time to make the throw of your life. You saw that old snake’s evil little eyes, didn’t you?”
“What of it?” He gasped, swaying on his feet.
“You have a spear in hand, don’t you?” She was right, he was still holding that spear in his hand. “It’s time to throw it.”
“And don’t pull back your arm,” Erasmus added.
That was when he understood what they were planning. As he shifted the spear into his right hand and pulled it back to throw Gwendolyn backed away, saying, “Your arm is strong and your aim is true, Aelfred, and your body forged to stand against the storm!”
“Loose arrows!” Enrico had dismounted his horse and let it flee, now he worked a crossbow himself as he called commands. Alas, the arrows went wild as the wind from the dragon’s wings battered them. The situation had turned grim very quickly once the captain’s line of skirmishers were knocked aside. The conjured wall did little to stop the dragon’s breath and now a dozen men lay scattered across the road, covered in burns.
The monster swept past them, uncaring, belching fire at a trio of soldiers who fled back into the treeline. They threw bolts of fire and thunder from their hands in retaliation. The fire did little to deter the dragon but the lightning pained it and it crashed to the ground again, spewing flame and smashing trees in its fury as it sought to pry its antagonists out of the forest and devour them. “Steady!” Enrico bellowed. “Reload!”
But half the company was dead or injured at this point and Noemi could see that the survivors were beginning to loose their nerve. The creature’s very presence was horrifying and they had few soldiers with powerful Gifts left. She hefted her montante onto one shoulder and said, “Bi, this isn’t going to work. It’s time you left.”
Her ward gave her a shocked look. “I cannot, Emi. I asked them to make a stand!”
“She’s right, Highness,” Enrico replied. “We’ll hold here as long as we can but it was madness to think a mere fifty men could stand against a dragon of that size. Verdemonde swore you would reach Torrence safely. Don’t let me be a liar as well as a dead man.”
For a moment Bianca looked stricken. Then she slipped a hand through Noemi’s elbow and said, “I won’t allow either, Captain Enrico.” Her voice carried over the battlefield with supernatural clarity. “By trick of birth I am called Torrence but the place where I found my home was not that city in the west or the orchards of the Gulf. The place that called me its own was Verdemonde in the north. The green pines of the mountain sheltered me, the fruit of its vineyards sweetened my life and the red soil of its valleys is still on my shoes! Verdemonde reached out and took my hand once. I’ll not leave its people to die for me now. Show courage, men of Verdemonde! We will win this yet!”
Noemi swallowed once, watching the men rally at her words. This was the true magic of Bianca’s gift. Orders were not her forte, rather the power to stir the hearts of others to rally around her. Her father insisted the push of Bianca’s Gift was like no other Command he’d ever heard. For her part, Noemi couldn’t say if that was true. She’d never once felt any kind of unusual push from her ward. Perhaps that was because of the trust between them, perhaps she’d just been so warped by Bianca’s words over the years she couldn’t imagine life without the force of them in her mind.
Perhaps the fact that the only thing Bianca asked of her was something she was perfectly happy to do had something to do with it. Noemi wasn’t sure. Would she still have taken the hand of that five year old girl by the river if she’d known that eleven years later it would drive her to face death in the Selene Valley under the shadow of a dragon’s wings? She wasn’t sure about that either. It wasn’t exactly the time to work it out.
In the distance the dragon lifted into the air again, blood dripping from its jaws. Enrico watched it and sighed. “If that is how it’s to be, what am I to say? You honor us, Highness.”
“She does more than that,” Ignacio rasped, his voice taught with pain. Noemi spun to see him limping back from the destroyed wall draped over the arms of two soldiers. Four others limped along behind him. A moment ago they had been covered in burns and soot, now their skin looked perfectly healthy in spite of the ash that caked it. In exchange the Herald’s face was a mass of charred flesh, cracked and oozing blood and puss. Foul smelling liquids soak through his robes from wounds beneath. Only his eyes were intact, bright points of wild energy. “She’s showing you the way to victory!”
Bianca sucked in a breath. “Ignacio? How are you alive?!”
“No scar I bear can slay me, de la Torrence!” He spat the words around his pain with a ferocity that frightened even the hardened soldiers that carried him. “Bring that dragon close enough for me to touch and we’ll see if the same is true for him!”
“He’s not wrong but he is clearly mad.” The captain pointed towards the back and the carriage. “Get him to the rear, if we live we can take him to a Mender in Lome to speed his healing process. Archers, ready! The rest of you, make your stand by the princess as you see fit!”
The dragon swooped towards them again.
“Stand strong!” Bianca called. For better or worse this was what they had to do so Noemi took a half step forward in front of her friend and raised her blade over her head, feeling her Gift charge it with the familiar glow of power as she waited for the impact to come.
The arrows from the soldiers had no more effect on the dragon the second time around. It was focused on Bianca, its eyes bright with malice, as its two long, clawed legs reached down towards her greedily. It didn’t breath fire this time. Somehow Noemi could see that it didn’t want to kill its prize. The rest of them were inconsequential in its eyes.
Then a spear crashed into one eye, replacing it with a spray of green blood. The dragon roared and flailed through the air, bucking drunkenly as it writhed in pain. For a brief moment Noemi saw some bravo from the caravan guards, one hand outstretched in a picture perfect throw with another one of the guards bracing a hand on the thrower’s shoulder. Then the second guard turned to a flash of light. The lightning bolt arced through the thrower, setting his hair and beard on end, out of his fingertips, through the air and into the spear.
The dragon’s skull flashed brighter than the noon sun, jerking wildly as it rushed towards them. Noemi stepped forward to meet it and spun her sword around in an overhead flourish, the blade biting into the dragon’s flailing arm, deflecting it fully away from them in a spray of green blood. A strange scent, like cut wheat, filled the air and she was suddenly ravenously hungry.
The dragon spiraled away overhead, screeching in pain, its body pinwheeling through the air as its wings beat the sky furiously. The passage of its enormous body blasted the ground with wind and the humans beneath were blown to the ground in disarray. The dragon snatched up the carriage as it righted itself and threw it in fury. It bounced along the ground, smashing into pieces, and the largest of them careened towards Ignacio and the men who had carried him. Noemi scrambled to her feet but she could already tell that she wasn’t going to make it to them in time.
Bianca did. She threw herself over the Herald just before the wreckage slammed down on top of them. Noemi screamed in wordless panic and ran, her pulse pounding in her ears, reaching the wreckage of the carriage in the blink of an eye. One of the soldiers must have been between Bianca, the Herald and the carriage. His lifeless body lay under the wreckage on top of her and Ignacio. Immediately Noemi grabbed the splintered wood and tried to life it off them but it was too heavy.
The Hearld’s eyes focused on hers and he wheezed out, “Let me touch it. Let me touch the dragon.”
“It’s still too far away.” Noemi wedged her sword under the wreckage and tried to lever it off of them. “Can you take her wounds on you?”
Ignacio flopped one arm over, touched Bi’s forehead and his eyes turned cloudy. There was a sound like snapping bone then Bianca’s eyes snapped open and she whimpered. The Herald’s eyes focused again. “Your leg is healed. Now push, or we’ll die under here.”
Noemi put her shoulder into the pommel of her sword and leaned into it while Bianca got her elbows dug into the ground and pushed. The wreckage surged up for a moment. Then something shifted, the heavy wood slid to a few inches to the side and Noemi’s sword broke under the strain. With no resistance she staggered forward, bounced off the side of the wreckage and slammed onto the ground. With a shake of her head she found herself staring up at the dragon as it shook its head in pain, spraying blood from its wounded eye everywhere. To her shock she found herself drooling.
Smacking herself once, shoving aside the bottomless pit opening in her stomach, she reached for what was left of her sword. Instead she found a hand that grasped her own. She turned to look into Bianca’s eyes. She was smiling as she said, “It’s okay, Emi. Thank you for staying.” Then her eyes turned sad. “Noemi Verdemonde. It is time for you to leave me. Go and be safe.”
For the first time she felt the power of Bianca’s gift as it closed in over her, forcing her to her feet and walking her away from her ward. From her friend. One step, then two steps away from the girl she’d found crying by a river and decided to protect no matter what the cost. Noemi felt the touch of Command now and knew it had never been a part of their friendship. Nor would she allow it to be the end of their friendship.
Noemi felt her own Gift surge within her, the blade she bore in her heart shredding the strings that dragged her away from Bianca and surging forth with dreadful purpose. She spun back to face the dragon and raised her hands to strike once more. A blade of light surged from them and carved downwards, striking the wings from one side of the wyrm’s body, cleaving down through the wreckage of the carriage and into the dirt beneath.
The serpent crashed to the ground, sliding towards them with terrible momentum. As it landed Noemi saw that a wiry man was still clinging to the spear sticking from the dragon’s eye but the impact sent him flying airborne again, flailing. The pieces of the carriage, carved into smaller bits now, bounced and clattered as the ground shook under the dragon’s impact and Bianca quickly scrambled out from under them, dragging Ignacio with her. With a pang Noemi realized she’d cut his left arm off by accident. She grabbed him by the waist and pulled him away as the dragon slid through the wreckage, still howling in pain.
The Herald wrenched himself free from them as they tried to flee, instead staggering forward to slap his body against that of the dragon as it slid by. The result was gruesome. The dragon’s scales cracked and burst, claw marks opened along its flanks and the entire left leg of the beast came away from its body. A moment later Ignacio pushed away from the creature, once again unmarked by the wounds he had carried. Yet it didn’t seem to matter to the dragon.
The creature’s remaining limb slammed into the ground and began to push it upright once more. Noemi tried to call up the blade in her soul again but found that she could not. Then the caravan guard came dropping out of the sky, one hand reaching as his body flashed into lightning once more. The bolt leapt forward and struck the spear again, slamming the dragon’s head back down to the ground. The guard returned to a solid form landing in a heap on the ground beside the lizard.
The wyrm heaved air through its nostrils as if gathering itself for another roar. But the glow had left its throat. It’s body remained at rest. The dragon’s last breath rattled out between its jaws and it came to its final rest. For a long moment the four of them that had survived the final onslaught just sat there and stared at it. Then Noemi raised up a hand and wiped the drool from her chin.
“Gather up anyone left, Reinaldo,” Aelfred rasped, watching the dragon nervously, as if it was about to surge to life again. “Get them on the wagons and get out of here.”
“What about Erasmus?” The other bravo asked. “And we should check to see if any of the Verdemonde men survived?”
“I’ll do it,” Aelfred snapped. “You just get the rest of them out of here. Understand?”
Reinaldo nodded and left. Gwendolyn started to follow him then turned back and grabbed Aelfred’s arm, looking him square in the eye. “Do not taste the body, Aelfred. Do you understand me? Not even a taste.”
He nodded and headed towards the dragon’s corpse. The bodies of Verdemonde’s men were scattered everywhere but Aelfred didn’t have to stop and look to tell they were all dead. As he got closer a scent like freshly baked bread wafted towards him on the breeze. He rubbed at his mouth with the back of his arm. For some reason the wyrm’s body was starting to look like a huge loaf of bread. He was so, so hungry. After a long, hard battle it couldn’t hurt to stop for just a bite to eat.
But he couldn’t. He was just there to check for survivors. The horns of the dragon towered over him as he made his way around the serpent’s head. Strange sounds reached his ears. A sound like crunching stone, moisture squelching and smacking flesh.
On the other side of the head he found four people tearing into the dragon’s body, gnawing on the scales, flesh and horns of the corpse and gulping it down. The sight brought him to a sudden stop. One of them, a girl in a dress caked with blood that plastered the cloth to her body, turned and regarded him with reptilian eyes for just a moment. Then she turned back to tearing into the dragon’s throat, shoving handfuls of flesh into her mouth with reckless speed. For a moment Aelfred watched them eat, his own stomach rumbling in his ears.
Then he turned around without even a taste and trudged back to the wagons. Reinaldo met him. “Did anyone survive?”
For a moment Aelfred stared at him blankly. Then the question made it through the cloud of hunger to his brain and he answered, “No.”
Ten minutes later the caravan’s survivors were gone. An hour later so was the dragon’s corpse. Four bloated, wild eyed figures staggered out of the valley, their enemy devoured.
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This story originally appeared in Anvil Magazine #2, and is the first appearance of Aelfred and Gwendolyn Herakleian, two of the many Bravos of Nerona.
“Down you go,” Aelfred grunted, wrapping his hands around his wife’s waist as he hoisted her over the fence and into the canal. The hard plates of metal hidden under her clothes clanked softly as he adjusted his grip. Gwendolyn rested a hand on his forearm as she swung her feet daintily over the wooden railing and let him carry her down the slope to the bottom of the trench. Her worn leather boots skipped lightly over the muck at the bottom of Saffron Canal as he set her down. Her graceful movements were a stark contrast to the dreary surroundings of the wide channel running through Citadel Fionni. She smoothed the front of her skirt and looked up at him with a critical eye.
“Keep a sharp eye out now, Aelfred,” she said, checking the fit of his helmet and gorget then fluffing out the loose, bushy hair of his beard so it stood out prominently. “You’re fierce and strong so this will be another simple job.”
“Of course it will,” he said, brushing a loose thread of hair back under her brigitta cap. Her swirling dress and loose sleeves flattered her figure but it was the hair that always caught his attention the most, gleaming like spun fire in the late morning sun. “All our work on this wretched peninsula has been simple, straightforward and well paying.”
Gwendolyn’s pale, peach colored lips curved down in a disapproving frown. “Now husband, weren’t you the one who thought coming south would serve us better than remaining in Hessex? And we’ve done well enough in Nerona.”
“Nerona might try doing well enough by us once in a while,” Aelfred grumbled, reaching up and dragging his ax off the lip of the canal then slinging it over his shoulder. He looked out over the canal, taking in the brown water and browner dirt, his vision clear and sharp just as Commanded. In spite of his sour mood he felt his limbs surge with power and a fire stoke itself in his belly as he stomped forward along the muddy banks of the waterway. “Look at this place. Can you believe there was ever saffron growing here?”
His wife tutted at his obvious sour mood. “Fionni is the epitome of the Neronan city, my dear, optimized to cram people together as closely as possible rather than giving each of them their own patch of greenery. It’s what makes them so good at working with each other. And let’s be honest, without such places where would the wealthy merchants who pay us come from?”
Aelfred harrumphed and continued along the canal, although his footsteps grew lighter as his mood grew less dark. At least this wasn’t a sewer channel. The Saffron Canal and many other passages like it crossed the Easter Peninsula between the Gulf of Lum and the Adriatic Ocean, allowing larger ships that couldn’t safely cross the rubble strewed entrance of the Gulf a way back and forth between Nerona’s gulfside and oceanic ports. Those canals, along with the Eastpoint Beacon in the city’s Citadel proper, were a great part of why Fionni was such a wealthy and important city to begin with.
Of course when strange happenings made the locals too scared to use one of those canals something had to be done about it. Those somethings happened to be Aelfred and Gwendolyn.
“What do you think it is?” Aelfred asked, running a hand along the stone wall that held up the embankment along the canal. “Rogue Invoker? A Dwimor of the Fair Folk? Or perhaps someone truly has summoned a demon from the dark beyond?”
“Well the last is impossible,” Gwendolyn murmured, carefully keeping pace with him, positioned two steps behind him and one to his right. “All the reports say no one has died. Those from beyond are many things but peaceful creatures who fear bloodshed? Not hardly. I think the Fair Folk are by far the most likely. An Invoker is possible but a distant second. After all, what spirit of nature could they find down here to Invoke? Perhaps they could reach something out in the sea that would answer their call but otherwise these places are built to crush the soul of man and nature alike.”
He was tempted to remind her they were doing well enough in Nerona and maybe she should be kinder to the place. However he knew that she was not talking about the city broadly but rather the canal specifically, with its featureless stone embankment and dreary gray water combining to make a place even a sleepwalker would grow tired of quickly. Besides, he always lost those kinds of word games when he played them with his wife. “A fitting place for a creature calling itself a dark lord.”
“That is the one thing that confuses me,” Gwendolyn said. “The Fair Folk call their heretics and villains Cheats, they don’t associate evil with light or dark, black or white. For them there’s only fair and unfair. So why would one of them describe themselves as a dark lord?”
“That is out of the ordinary for them, true,” Aelfred said, “but remember these are stories from Neronans, not Sextons. The Fair Folk are quite rare in these parts, not like at home. They may have misremembered, misheard or exaggerated what was said since they haven’t heard stories from childhood about the importance of the Folk’s exact words.”
“So true, husband.” In the distance the first bridge after the sea lock grew near. Aelfred shifted his shoulders to keep them perfectly ready and lowered his ax off his shoulder into the ready position. All the stories agreed that the creature terrorizing the canal appeared in shadows. As the sun grew high in the sky the bridges and occasional drainage ditch were the only places where shadows existed in the canal. His wife leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Sharp eyes, Aelfred. Sharp eyes and ready hands.”
Aelfred swept his gaze back and forth across the canal repeatedly, searching for anything out of place in the tall wooden structure. The canal bridge was a marvel of Neronan construction. A dozen wooden support legs reached down into the canal, all linked to the bridge proper by a series of hinges and pulleys that allowed the bridge to be raised and lowered in halves by drawbridge mechanisms on either side. Towering a good eight feet over the water in the canal, the bridge was impressive in complexity and size.
At the moment the bridge was down, which was typical. They passed underneath it without incident and, no matter how he looked, Aelfred saw no sign of anything out of place beneath it. He was briefly tempted to try climbing out of the canal, crossing the thirty foot bridge to the opposite side and climbing back down to take a closer look under that side of things but eventually decided that would be overkill. The stories agreed the self styled dark lord accosted people on either side of the river. If it was under the bridge it should have made itself known by now.
“One bridge down,” he muttered, “one to go.”
“Plus the three drainage ditches and the place where the beacon tower casts a shadow over the canal in the afternoon.”
“Yes, and those.” Although no one had reported encountering the creature in the shadow of the beacon or by a drainage ditch. It was pretty much always under one of the canal’s two bridges.
They trudged down the waterway for another ten minutes, sweating under the noonday sun. Saffron Canal was short for one of Fionni’s waterways but it was still almost a mile and a half of muddy, uneven ground and crossing it took time. The first drainage ditch was just as unremarkable as the first bridge and they paused by it to share a drink of water from their water skin. Aelfred removed his helmet long enough to splash some of that water on his head. Then they proceeded on, Gwendolyn reminding him to be strong and vigilant.
Two minutes later they were approaching the second bridge when Aelfred caught the change, a barely perceptible shift in the brightness of the sun. It was like a thin cloud had passed overhead. He stopped immediately, motioning for his wife to do the same. She raised her voice and called out, “If there is anyone watching us, call out!”
Her voice rang with her Gift, compelling all who heard it to obey. Even for Aelfred, who knew he wasn’t being addressed and was used to hearing his wife’s Commands, there was a brief desire to comply. A true demon would have the will to easily resist. However for mortals, even those as powerful as the Fair Folk, the chances that anyone had the power to resist when they were off guard were very small. That didn’t make it impossible, and Commands could also be up for interpretation by the hearer, but an unprepared mortal resisting an unexpected Command was quite rare.
A high pitched voice with a strange raspiness to it drifted out from the bridge, asking, “What business have you with the Dark Lord Saffron?”
“We come on behalf of the Mayor of Fionni and the Commandant of the Citadel Garrison,” Aelfred replied. “They demand you leave their canal at once.”
“The Mayor and Commandant?” The voice laughed, an odd sound halfway between coughing and choking, clearly intended to convey mirth yet utterly devoid of that emotion. “Do they think this retaliation for sending my servant, the Blacklight, among them? Go back and tell them their suffering will grow a thousand times worse if they continue to displease me.”
Aelfred pivoted on his front foot foot so he could speak to his wife while keeping an eye on the bridge. “Who or what is the Blacklight?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” she said, her voice pitched low enough that it shouldn’t carry to the speaker under the bridge. “But this is Nerona. The Folk are rare here but instead they seem to have a dozen new, strange creatures and petty local legends vying to take their place every day. It could be any one of them.”
He turned back to the bridge. “Before you can torment the august leaders of Fionni you’ll first deal with us, Saffron. Your champion, this Blacklight, is unknown to me but perhaps our reputation is not as strange to you. I am Aelfred, called Herakleian by the people of Renicie and Lome, and this is my wife, Gwendolyn. We have come here from Hessex, far to the north beyond Isenlund. Five years ago we crossed into Nerona during the Griffon Rider’s Invasion and-”
Shadows from the bridge suddenly shifted and leapt forward in defiance of the sun, changing from a dark, slanted reflection of the bridge to reaching, flailing hands that careened drunkenly along the ground towards them. All the stories agreed that was the dark lord’s primary ability. It was still hard to accept it was actually happening now that he was looking at it. Aelfred felt his wife give him a push in the back and he charged forward, brandishing his ax in both hands. Behind him, Gwendolyn called, “Jump, Aelfred, jump!”
Most people distrusted those with the Commander’s Gift, fearing they would be forced to do something they didn’t wish to. That was certainly possible, but not where the Gift truly shone. The real power in the Gift lay in their way their orders pushed those that already trusted them to carry out those orders with a skill beyond what they normally possessed. As soon as he heard Gwendolyn’s order Aelfred leapt forward and across the twenty foot canal. The shadows from the bridge wavered for a moment, at first continuing to reach for his wife then turning to cross towards Aelfred as he continued to charge forward. Still born on by the power of his wife’s command Aelfred jumped again, this time focusing on going up, clearing the fence above and landing outside the canal on the streets of Fionni.
For the brief moment he was out of the canal he saw their yelling was attracting a nervous crowd. The natives were wary of getting too close to the canal and the mysterious creature within but whatever self destructive impulse drove people to stare at danger was slowly wearing down their caution. Aelfred ignored them and dashed along the canal towards the crank to raise the bridge. When they’d originally formulated the plan Aelfred hadn’t liked the roles they took but Gwendolyn insisted she would be safe. It was her belief the creature would ignore her to stop him raising the bridge.
That hope was disappointed. As he dashed along the top of the canal Aelfred could clearly see the shadow limbs turning back towards Gwendolyn, merging together into a single lumbering shadow of a creature with bulging, misshapen limbs and no discernible head. His wife quickly began backpedaling. “Show yourself, Dark Lord Saffron,” she called. “You’ve no business lurking under bridges. Step out into the light!”
“What part of Dark Lord was unclear to you?” The disembodied voice replied. Although defiant there was a rasping edge to Saffron’s tone that suggested whoever or whatever it was strained to resist the order. “Begone, strangers. I’ve no score to settle with you.”
For a moment Aelfred considered sticking to the plan and cranking the bridge up to expose whatever it was that lurked beneath it. But the shadow thing kept lurching towards Gwendolyn and all thought of ignoring that quickly left him. Aelfred leapt back over the fence and slid down the side of the canal to the bottom. His wife was still on the opposite side of the canal and the extra push of her Command was mostly faded but Aelfred figured the struts of the bridge were close enough together he could use them to cross the canal if he had to.
Five long strides took Aelfred beneath the bridge itself and he struck his ax on the nearest strut with a loud thud. “If you missed it we’re here to settle with you, your scores don’t matter to us” he snapped. “Time you showed yourself.”
“The great and terrible Dark Lord Saffron shows himself when he chooses and not before!” The shadow figure on the ground spun and swept back toward the bridge with surprising speed. The shadows under the bridge, which hadn’t been as dark as Aelfred expected, quickly darkened back to normal and then grew even thicker.
Aelfred stepped forward to meet the strange giant, slowly swinging his ax in a looping pattern to build momentum. The toes of one boot slipped into the water of the canal as he spread out and lowered his stance. “Anything you want to see today, dear?”
“I always look forward to seeing you at your best, Aelfred, just don’t let him lay a hand on you.” Although her tone was light he could see concern in the purse of her lips. She had unlooped her sling from her belt but hadn’t loaded it yet, instead addressing the shadows under the bridge again. “Come out from under that bridge, Saffron.”
The darkness on the far side of the canal shifted for a moment and the shadow brute that was lurching back towards the structure wavered like a mirage before it steadied again. Whoever was under this bridge, Aelfred was certain he or she wasn’t actually named Saffron. A correct name made a Command much stronger, as did repeated and insistent Commands, and Gwendolyn was a pretty skilled Commander. Yet Saffron was rejecting her Commands very quickly.
Aelfred figured that meant he’d have to do things his way. As the shadow giant raised a flailing arm and swung it towards him under the bridge Aelfred drew back his arm and threw his ax, the three foot ashwood handle tumbling end over end towards the space where the body casting the shadow would be. However the weapon passed right through the space without slowing. With practiced skill he tapped the ax with his Gift, the Impulse shoving the axhead so it popped up in the air and back towards him in a lazy arc. A second Impulse directed the handle neatly back into his hand. The whole process took barely two heartbeats but it was enough time for the shadow to reach him. Bracing his ax with one hand Aelfred held it down, toward the ground, to block the creature’s attack because he assumed the shadow itself must be the threat if there was no invisible creature casting it.
Instead the shadow reached under the bridge and the world around him turned black. He couldn’t see anything, not even when he held his hand up in front of his face and waved it back and forth a few times. The air wasn’t cold, a few trial swings of his ax told him there wasn’t anything solid nearby. He just couldn’t see.
“Aelfred?” A tinge of worry in his wife’s voice. “Aelfred, are you alright?”
“I feel fine, I just can’t see anything. Can you?”
“Everything but you. I-”
“Enough!” Something like a whine worked its way into Saffron’s voice. “I am the great and terrible Dark Lord Saffron and I will not suffer you presence any longer! Get out of here before I do something lasting to you!”
“Can you see anything here besides shadow?” Aelfred asked, deciding to ignore the creature in the shadows with him.
“No, just the dark.” Gwendolyn’s voice suddenly pitched up a tad and got much louder, the tone of Command in it. “You there! Yes, you! Raise the drawbridge on your side.”
Aelfred reached out with his ax handle until it clunked against a support. Then he stuck the weapon’s handle in his belt. Although the dark hampered him he was able to clamber up one of the beams and go from timber to timber until he felt them begin to move under his hands. Then he just hung on as the bridge raised. The shadows and sunlight underneath shifted as it did and Aelfred found he was beginning to see the world around him again.
“Stop that!” Saffron yelled. The note in his voice was stronger now and Aelfred realized it wasn’t whining – it was desperation. “Stop that, I insist! I am the Dark Lord Saffron, I sent my servant the Blacklight to thwart the Commandant of the Citadel, I have claimed this place and I will not stand for you to meddle any longer. Leave me in peace! I am the great and terrible Dark Lord-”
His wife interrupted, saying, “Come out from there, Saffron!”
This time Saffron didn’t recover quickly. The drawbridge reached it’s raised position with a creaking thud and the shadows quickly dissolved into the noonday sun. Only a few dense patches remained in the furthest recesses under the bridge by the banks of the canal. Aelfred found himself hanging onto one of the struts only a few feet above the ground on Gwendolyn’s side of the waterway. He dropped himself down to the ground and dusted himself off.
“You heard the lady,” Aelfred said as he started towards the densest patch of darkness still present under that side of the bridge. “Come on out!”
For good measure he kicked at a stone with his boot, sending it skipping into the shadows and forming just enough of a connection with it that he could add a second shove with his Gift, causing it to jump up to head height suddenly as it flew into the unnatural darkness. There was a yelp of surprise, rather than pain, then silence. Gwendolyn hurried up behind him, calling out, “Come out, Saffron. We know you’re not a dark lord, let this ridiculous sham rest and stop frightening the townsfolk.”
“I am!” Saffron’s voice was getting more and more unstable, its already high pitch wavering and cracking with the effort of fighting the Command. Aelfred stopped a few feet away from the unnatural darkness and listened. His ears, still sharpened from Gwendolyn’s admonition to be vigilant, caught the sound of a footstep, very light and coming towards them, followed by a strange dragging sound. “I am the dark lord Saffron!”
The voice lacked the resolve to convince a small child. His wife took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, in a tone that broke no refusal from man or child, she barked, “I said come out from there, Saffron!”
“I won’t!” The voice wailed, even as another step told Aelfred it was doing exactly what she’d ordered. Another dragging sound and a lumpy, misshapen outline appeared in the shadows. “I am the terr-”
A hiccup interrupted the word, followed by a cough. “The terrib-
The darkened shape was about three and a half feet tall, twisted backwards, inky blackness surrounding its hands as it clutched at the shadows. Some kind of human Gift, to be sure, but not one Aelfred knew. “The terri-”
The cause of the dragging sound became clear when the figure took another step forward, its left leg bent slightly at an unnatural angle that made it difficult to use. He’d seen many similar things in the past, bones that had broken and healed poorly. With the last step forward whatever power connected the shadows to the person holding them strained to breaking and the darkness leaked out of his hands, vanishing in the light of the noonday sun. Strained beyond endurance, a boy of no more than ten dropped to the ground in a heap and began to sob. “Terrible, terrible,” he wailed, tears cutting paths through a layer of grime and filth on his face. Dark circles lurked under his eyes and his cheeks were hollow with hunger. He threw himself facedown on the ground, sobbing as he babbled. “Terrible, I’m so sorry, please, I’m terrible, so sorry…”
He threw his hands over his head as he cried in a pose anyone who’d seen a beaten dog or tortured child could understand. Gwendolyn rushed past her husband and swooped down to try and cradle the child in her lap. Aelfred’s stomach tied itself into knots watching the way the boy cringed away from her touch, unable to comprehend something as simple as a comforting embrace.
For a moment he let his mind flee from the scene before him, wondering how the boy found enough to eat down there. Perhaps he was catching fish out of the canal. Whatever the Blacklight he mentioned was, if it even existed, the child clearly had no connection to it. There were only a few rags propped on a stick under the bridge to shelter the boy. Why hadn’t he gone to the Heralds of the Kings? They had an orphanage in Fionni. What in the name of Eternity was wrong with the people of Nerona that they hadn’t seen fit to help a boy so badly abused he played at evil to find peace?
Aelfred sat down beside his wife with a grunt. As loath as he was to admit it, that last bit was as true in Hessex as anywhere else. He sighed and shook his head. “Stars and scars, what are we supposed to do now?”
“Please…” the boy coughed again and peeked at Aelfred around his wife’s side. “Just leave me here. Or drag me off to the debtors jail if the Mayor and Commandant want money for the trouble I’ve caused. Just… don’t give me back to my brother.”
“Your brother?” Confusion vanished and cold certainty took its place. “No, we won’t do that. But, just to be certain we don’t make a mistake, tell me his name…”
Nevio staggered through the front door of his house, leaning on the wall as he finished the bottle and threw it in the general direction of the stove. The clay vessel hit the bricks and shattered but he ignored it. “Zalt, Nico, leaving me a dark house to come home to.”
He pushed off the wall, swaying to keep his balance, then turned to the door to close it behind him. As he reached out the door slammed closed in his face. Stunned, Nevio flopped back on his rear end. After a moment to gather his wits he lurched upwards, leaned against the door and pulled himself up to his feet. Then he shoved the door open and staggered out into the street. No one was there. It wasn’t very windy, either.
Maybe a dog or something was out there, running through the streets, and hit the door. Nodding to himself, Nevio pulled himself back into the house and slammed the door again leaving himself in the dark house. He pulled his cloak off, wadded it up and threw it on the stool by the door then headed towards the stove to find his oil lamp. He was fairly sure he’d left it there.
The house was cluttered and messy, slowly falling apart since their mother had died. For a time Nevio’s brother had tried to keep house but the incompetent fool failed at every turn. Nevio suspected he’d kept going down to the canals to play and fallen in one day, just one more member of his zalted family to die and leave him alone. So Nevio would just have to make do. He reached the stove and started groping around, the shadows of the room swimming past his eyes, when a deep, feminine voice said, “Nevio. Take a seat.”
For some reason he took three long steps across the room to a table he could barely see in the dark, pulled a chair out from it and sat down there. The chair on the other side was pulled far back into the corner by the window. Someone was sitting in it but she was positioned so that the moonlight spilling in the shutters beside her blinded him and made it impossible to see more than the outline of her figure and her hard, baleful green eyes. Nevio felt acid welling up in his throat and swallowed, hard. “Who are you?”
“I?” She laughed, a sound as sharp and beautiful as shards of glass in the air. “No one of importance. I come here on behalf of the Dark Lord Saffron, Nevio. Do you know why?”
“No. Who-” The door opened behind him and Nevio started to turn.
“Look at me, Nevio.” Like an iron hook the words took him by the ears and turned him back around to stare at the woman in the corner. A glint of red swept past her eyes, like a hint of demon’s fire. “You’ve wronged Saffron and we’re here to even the score. Roll up your pant leg, Nevio.”
“My what?” Even as he asked he was doing exactly as instructed, his fingers fumbling but still carrying out the task. Once he finished rough hands grabbed him under the arms, dragged him to his feet and threw him face down on the table.
The woman got up out of the chair and stepped forward, the moonlight behind her ringing her figure in an unearthly halo. She leaned down until her face, hidden behind a black veil, was only inches away. Wisps of red hair burned around her eyes like fire. “You sent Saffron a child maimed in body and mind and expected him to accept that? Shame, Nevio, shame.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Nevio babbled, feeling shame well up in him in bitter waves. “I didn’t know. Nico was always a stupid child but-”
“Silence,” she hissed. “We’re not here for your excuses. Taking full repayment for all you’ve done would take far too long so we’ll just take a tithe of it for the moment. You’d best behave yourself after, Nevio, or we’ll come and collect the rest. Now hold still.”
The woman rose to her full height, her green eyes staring down at him without remorse or pity. He heard whoever or whatever was behind him shifting. There was a grunt and a wet crack then his leg exploded in pain.
Aelfred and Gwendolyn left him screaming in his house, their vengeance done. All they could do now was make sure Nico never needed the Dark Lord Saffron again.
If you enjoyed this story and would like to read more fiction from me, or if you just want to support me in my writing, check out my weird western anthology Have Spell, Will Travel on Amazon:
This is a story that has lived on my hard drive for almost two years. It’s not terribly deep but it was very fun to write and explores some ideas I’ve wanted to play with for a long time. I’m not sure we’re coming back to Jack and Penny any time soon but I hope you enjoy this brief adventure anyways.
The wind whistled by at a high, sour F-sharp its breathy, mocking tone accompanied by the revving percussion of his motorcycle engine. It was all Jack heard as he fell. Chunks of the Syracuse 105 tumbled into the abyss all about him, eerily silent for such heavy things. One minute he’d been driving along, trying to get to his gig at The Wreck on time, the next he was free falling. Jack had always expected he’d die of something fun, like booze or women. It was the way of all great musicians.
On the other hand, falling to his death after a bridge collapsed under him at least had the appeal of novelty. It would’ve been nice to get a little famous before leaving stage. Sample some of that booze, dance with a few of those women, write some swingers about it all. Swing was his genre, after all, not jazz. The high and mighty of Ithaca far preferred jazz, though, and Jack Antixerxes had always prided himself on picking out a tune and running with it.
The shush of falling water filled his ears. For the first time since his bike had tumbled off the end of the collapsing causeway Jack pried his eyes open. It was taking a long time to hit the ocean’s surface and now he could see why. An enormous sinkhole had opened in the bay and the surf, the bridge and all the vehicles once on that bridge were tumbling further down into the belly of the earth. Jack and his bike were already past the usual bottom of Syracuse Bay with no visible endpoint to their drop.
Stranger still, a glance behind told him the hole he’d just tumbled through was getting smaller, not larger in spite of the water rushing in. A dim memory of the news reporting collapsing shorelines and freak mudslides a few times in the last couple of months surfaced in Jack’s mind. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time. Who was playing in what bars or dance halls was far more interesting. Now he wished he’d payed more attention, perhaps there had been some clue to surviving his predicament there. Or not. It was really too late to know for sure.
When Jack realized he could finally see the ground rising up below it banished that train of thought from his mind. He’d always hoped the boys from the band would play his funeral. Turned out his last song was the roar of a motorcycle, the rush of water and the taunting whistle of the wind. Not what he’d hoped for but not terrible, either. Better than some tunes he’d heard.
Still, it was one song he wasn’t ready to vibe with just yet. He’d tucked his knees in a last ditch effort to roll with the impact, fighting the confines of a suit jacket that didn’t have much room to give, when a rumbling arpeggio rose up out of the dark below. Two beats later a sharp, high countermelody answered it. The air around the falling derbies thrummed with power and dissonance then Jack felt his momentum slow. His bike shot past, narrowly missing his skull, then it slowed too and for a brief, stomach turning moment everything hung in the air as if weightless. The ground was only four or five feet below. The motorcycle was practically standing upright on its front tire and, with no clear idea of what in Hades name was going on, Jack decided the best thing to do was unhook the bungee cords holding his case down and pull it off the back of his bike.
He’d just got his arms around it when everything remembered it was supposed to be falling. Jack landed with a heavy thud and rolled to one side to avoid his bike toppling over on top of him. The roll turned into a frantic sprint as he tried to outrun the waves of water, rubble and metal still falling. He saw one sedan crushed between blocks of cement and the cave floor. A double semi truck was its own undoing, crushing the driver’s cab under the weight of whatever cargo it had been hauling. At least one other car landed upside down.
Jack almost didn’t make it himself. Between the ankle deep water already on the ground and the sheets of extra liquid that were still falling it was hard enough to keep his feet. Add in the concrete, cars and rocks and it was a miracle he wasn’t killed outright. He might not have made it if the high harmonies he’d heard a moment ago hadn’t reasserted themselves. Once again his stomach flip-flopped and once again gravity turned strange. His feet nearly pulled clear off the ground as he ran but the rapid descent of the deadly rain turned to a lazy drizzle and Jack managed to get clear of the worst of it before stumbling and loosing all grip on the rock below.
The new melody cut out and he fell flat for the second time in the last minute. At least this time he managed to protect his case with his body. As things stood he worried the previous fall was going to leave a permanent dent in his instrument.
It was a small price to pay. After all, he was alive.
Jack pulled himself up into something like a sitting position and stared out at a football field’s worth of rubble and smashed cars. Far above, the last rays of afternoon light from Syracuse Bay vanished. Suddenly the only light in the cavern came from small burning oil slicks released by wrecked cars, glinting on stray bits of metal and ocean water.
Or was it? Jack dragged himself to his feet, staring into the dark just beyond the debris. It looked like something out there was flickering like a giant bonfire. He whispered, “Charon? That you?”
A hand grabbed his elbow in a vice-like grip. Jack jumped with an inarticulate yell. The hand didn’t let go but instead pulled him down into a crouch then another hand slapped over his mouth, cutting him off. Which was just as well, D-Major wasn’t really his key. Not for singing, anyway.
“Shhh.” As Jack’s eyes adjusted to the dimmer light he made out the shape of a woman who was holding a finger up and making the world’s universally acknowledged ‘be quiet’ gesture. So it wasn’t Charon, at least. When he nodded she moved her hand off his mouth and softly said, “Hesiod.”
“Jack.” She’d let go of his elbow to shush him so he patted his chest to make it clear he meant himself. “What’s going on?”
She shook her head in frustration and pointed out over the wreckage to a faint light approaching them. Jack’s eyes, still adjusting from the bright Syracuse sun, struggled to work out what it was. After a moment he decided it was a torch held overhead of a large, muscular looking man who was picking over the debris. Jack had a moment of vertigo as he tried to work out why that was off. Then he realized the man was in the process of flipping a big SUV up off its side.
The vehicle was about as long as one of the creature’s arms. That made it at least twenty five feet tall. Someone inside was screaming but that stopped once the giant ripped a door off and dragged the man out by the arm. Then it shifted its grip and bashed the man’s skull against the ground and the screaming cut off. Jack felt bile rise in his throat. When the creature raised the corpse up to its mouth and tore a limb off in its teeth Jack retched and ejected the early dinner he’d eaten before leaving his apartment.
“Hesiod mustn’t catch us,” the woman hissed, grabbing his arm again and pulling him away from the puddle of vomit while maintaining a low crouch. “Shhh.”
A last look over his shoulder as she dragged him away confirmed that Hesiod was still searching the wreckage of the cave-in even as he ate. In the flickering light of its massive torch Jack couldn’t be sure but he thought it had just one eye in the middle of its forehead. The grinding sound of its chewing seemed to fill the entire cavern. For once, not even Jack could pick out a tune from the noise. Then the creature let out a bellowing cry, something in a language that sounded vaguely like Athenian but so poorly spoken as to be gibberish.
“He sees us,” the girl snapped. “Just run.”
She suited actions to words and stood up, taking off in a dead sprint, and Jack did his best to keep up. He struggled for a moment until he realized he had to follow directly behind her. Somehow the rough terrain of the cavern didn’t hamper her footing and if he did his best to match her steps he found the path fairly smooth. The voice of the giant rose behind them in an eerie cadence. Now that he could place it Jack knew this creature was the source of the deep, rumbling song he’d heard when falling. The melody was much more monotonous than previous, less a climbing arpeggio and more a simple chord sung in a five note rotation. A low rumble created a percussive backing.
The strange woman slowed her pace a bit and took up another tune, breathier than the high pitched tunes from before but still recognizable as the same voice. The tempo of the rumble slowed, then stopped. She was clearly struggling to keep moving while singing but somehow she managed both. However a few seconds later they were forced to stop when they reached the wall of the cavern. A small opening in the wall, just large enough for Jack to push his head and one arm through, trembled in time with the conflicting songs. One moment it was closing itself off, the next opening wider. A dim light on the other side of the opening showed a tall but narrow tunnel winding off into the earth. Jack frowned. Clearly this was their escape route. Just as clearly the music was manipulating it somehow, just like the earlier song had obviously opened and closed the roof of the cavern earlier.
He had no idea how or why this was happening but Jack could vibe with it. The girl was frantically pushing at the sides of the hole, as if she could tilt the scales in her favor through sheer strength. Jack flipped his case open, took out his mouthpiece and attached it to his trombone. The key was G-Minor and the tempo was three/four time. Not ideal for swing but manageable.
Blow out the spit valve, work the slide, take a deep breath and away he went. First he just matched the girl’s song but dropped an octave. She dropped a bar in shock when the bone’s bright, brassy tone blared out and Jack realized he was playing full blast. Probably nerves. He adjusted down to half strength and added the swing, working the slide a little looser and bobbing the bell of the horn back and forth with the beat. Two bars later the opening in the cavern wall started opening again. As soon as it was wide enough the girl wormed her way through.
It took another fifteen seconds for the tunnel to open enough for Jack to get through with his trombone and, since he still wasn’t sure how this all worked, he wasn’t willing to stop playing it long enough to make his escape. It was a near thing, though. By the time Jack made it through the giant was close enough to clearly see its single glaring eye, matted red hair and wild beard in the flickering light of the torch it held overhead. Jack was expecting Hesiod to be an ugly brute but, except for his receding hairline, he was actually kind of handsome. He wore a ragged tunic made of a patchwork of fabric and a suit of scale armor that looked like it was assembled from scrap metal and car doors.
There was an army of other cyclopes marching along behind him. They were about as tall as Hesiod’s knees, larger than most people but still far smaller than the titanic creature they followed. Hesiod’s eye shifted slightly and Jack instinctively knew he’d been spotted. The giant made a gesture and the army with him burst into full chorus. The opening in the wall started to grind closed again and Jack quickly ducked further back, his shoulders scraping against the stone as it closed in.
The girl grabbed one elbow and pulled him deeper and deeper. She’d stopped singing and as soon as he was clear of the closing stone she pushed the bone’s mouthpiece away from his lips. With their music stopped and Hesiod’s blaring the tunnel mouth collapsed immediately. It didn’t stop there, either. Jack found himself once again running for his life, charging down a dimly lit corridor, trying to match the movements of the strange woman. Behind him the tunnel clamped down like a monstrous throat trying to force him into the belly of Gaia itself.
Jack wasn’t sure how long they ran but eventually the sound of grinding stone behind them stopped. All he could hear was the pounding of footsteps on stone and blood in his ears so he slowed to a stop, gasping for air. “Sorry, beautiful,” he wheezed. “I gotta rest for a few or that big guy will just eat me after my heart bursts.”
The woman didn’t really look like she was in any better shape. As soon as Jack spoke she also stopped and staggered back to him, chest heaving. It was quite distracting. “How…” She gulped down another lungful of air. “How did you know the song of the stone? I didn’t think any of the ancient songs were still known on the surface.”
“It wasn’t hard, the tune was pretty simple.” As his breathing stabilized Jack turned his attention to his bone, trying to figure out the best way to transport it. He’d left the carry strap in his case, which was still back in the big cavern, but the clip for it was still on his instrument. Jack grabbed the knot of his tie and pulled it off. “So simple I can’t believe that was all it took to move stone like magic. If we could do that in Syracuse someone would have figured it out by now.”
The girl pointed to a glowing seam in the rock of the tunnel wall that poured out dim, orangish light. “The Waymaker’s Veins no longer run all the way to the surface, the turn of the earth has cut them off. Without the power they bring the songs lack force.”
“Great.” His tie wasn’t long enough to create a comfortable sling for his trombone on its own but it supported enough of the weight he could hold it in one hand indefinitely. “So, I’m Jack.”
“You said that.”
“I was asking your name.”
“Penelope.” For the first time since he’d met her Jack had enough time to take a solid look at the woman. She wore a long, ragged piece of cloth wrapped around her waist in a loose skirt, tied down with a length of nylon rope. She’d tied pieces of tire rubber to her feet with more rags. The only thing she wore that looked like it was originally meant to be clothing was an oversized jacket with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Underneath it she’d wound more lengths of cloth around and across, using them to hold up a chest that probably would have required custom made support even if she lived on the surface. She was about six inches shorter than he was. In the orange light of the tunnel, her waist length hair looked like it was light brown. She wore it in a loose pony tail tied at the nape of her neck.
The strangest part of her appearance was the skin hugging gray glove that seemed to fit her right arm like a second skin. A strip of similar material covered her eyes. The gray was so neutral he’d mistaken it for shadows in the poor lighting of the cavern and it was still hard to pick out in the somewhat brighter light created by the veins.
Jack frowned. “Where are you from, Penny?”
“The surface, originally. When I was six I was brought down here in much the same way you were but most of the others on my bus were killed an eaten by Aresians like Hesiod.” She said it in a flat monotone that rushed by faster than they’d run from the cyclopes. “A couple of us were found by the T’ul first and they led us away to T’ultown but I’m the only one that was healthy enough to survive.”
Penny turned and started off down the tunnel again, her posture close and guarded but her pace fitted to their circumstances. With nowhere else to go, Jack tagged along, trying to pick which absurd thing she’d said to ask about first. Finally, he decided on, “Aresians? Like, creatures from Ares? The planet Ares?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if they teach it in kindergarten but Ithaca has landed automatons on Ares and there’s no life there.”
“Not anymore.”
“Sure. Okay, so there’s a bunch of Aresian cyclopes living under Syracuse.” Honestly, Jack wasn’t okay with that but he’d seen them himself so he’d have to go with the flow. “Why do they eat humans? We’re native to the third planet, not the fourth.”
“Because that’s what makes it possible for them to grow so large. Also, they hate us.”
More things he didn’t like to contemplate. He was debating whether to ask about T’uls or the nutritional value of the average person when Penelope abruptly dropped to a crouch and slipped out of the tunnel they’d been in so far. It opened out into another dim cavern, the extent of which was difficult to judge. Like the tunnel, it was lit by a pale, diffuse orange light from Waymaker’s Veins although, unlike in the cavern, the veins Jack could see were wide enough they could be sidewalks. He started to step out beside Penelope but she pulled him down into a crouch as well. “We need to cross open ground now. This is the riskiest part of the trip so try to stay low.”
“More Aresians?”
“And other things.” Satisfied with what she saw she motioned for Jack to follow her out into the new cavern. He was not prepared for what was out there. It was less a cavern and more a chasm, sloping down from the opening into the Stygian abyss far below. More surprising, the slope of the chasm they stood on was carved into terraces, each the depth of a football field, and each terrace was packed with buildings.
In the orange twilight of the veins it was hard to pick out anything particular. The city sprawled over the side of the chasm like a primordial serpent, the tops of the buildings half lit like scales. Wind quietly moaned through the abyss, a mournful, high E.
“Don’t listen to that,” Penelope said.
“Why not?”
“It’s not healthy.” That was all the explanation she offered before scrambling down the slope towards the first terrace.
Jack scuttled after, trying to keep his footing while juggling his instrument. Either marching band was further back than he’d thought or hustling through back halls and side stairs in old stadiums hadn’t actually prepared him to take a bone anywhere on Gaia like he’d once thought. “Pretty big place,” Jack mused. “Your T’ul must’ve been down her a long time.”
“Ever since the Waymakers finished their song,” Penelope replied. “This isn’t T’ultown, though. That’s deeper still, past the terraces, near the base of the chasm. No one lives here anymore.”
Jack stared at the massive city in dubious fashion. “Long way down.”
“I have a base camp I set up here after I picked up on Hesiod’s trail. It’s not far down the terrace in that direction.” She pointed off to the right to a part of the city that, if he squinted, looked like it was a little brighter than the rest. Or maybe that was his imagination.
Penelope set off along the rim of the chasm, picking her way across the rough terrain with her usual nimbleness. Once again, Jack did his best to keep up. “Couldn’t we use the streets? I can’t see in the dark as well as you can and we’d probably make better time on flat ground.”
“Maybe. But we’re better off not getting too close to the Central Gate.”
“Which is what? The way in and out of the city? Who built this place if not your T’ul, anyway?”
“Hard to say. The T’ul don’t know and they don’t like to come here on their own. The foundations could have been laid down by humans before the Waymakers came. Or the city could’ve been built by the Aresians, the Vish or any of the other peoples of the worlds that ring the sun.”
“Wait, there’s more than just Aresians on Earth? Since when?”
“Since as long as anyone down here remembers. Don’t listen.” She stepped into a flattened channel that led deeper into the city. Jack wasn’t sure what she meant until he followed her into the channel and the distant moaning that made up the chasm’s white noise rose to a powerful tone that seemed to fill the world.
Penelope hurried across the channel but Jack paused. Somewhere, deep in his gut, a new thought took root. There was a tune there and he had to play it. Then Penelope grabbed him and dragged him off the path. The urge passed. “What was that?”
“The Gate. It still remembers the last song of the Waymakers. That’s why I avoid it. So do most sane peoples down here, assuming they wish to stay sane.” She started forward again.
Jack stared back at the channel for a long moment. The sound was still drifting up from the city but the power it had a moment ago was gone. The feeling that a tune was there, however…
He hustled to catch up to his guide. “Listen, I know you’re the one who knows her way around down here and I don’t want to get eaten but do you think you could just explain all this to me from the beginning?”
Penelope sighed. “Fine. It would be easier back at camp but the short version goes like this. Sometime before history begins there were Gates between the rings of the sun. Humans, Aresians, Vish and others used these gates to travel from one ring to the next – planets, as we call them now. At first the gates could only be used when the planets were aligned. Then someone figured out how to power the gates so they could be used regardless of where a planet was.”
“Who was that?”
“Everyone says it was someone else. The Vish blame the Aresians, Aresians blame the Jad and so on. The one thing they all agree on is that humans didn’t change the Gates.”
“Why are they sure of that?”
“Because Earth is still a habitable world and humans were originally the weakest children of the Sun.” Penelope pointed towards the chasm. “To power the Gates when the rings were out of step it was necessary to harvest immense power from the heart of a world. But doing that cooled that ring and it slowly became uninhabitable. No one noticed for a time but, once it became clear the other worlds were dying, the peoples of those worlds made plans for survival. Or should I say, they all made the same plan.”
Jack nodded. “They came to Earth because we hadn’t changed our Gate to travel whenever we wanted. So our planet was still habitable. So a bunch of people came here from other planets and tried to take over? It must have been a bloodbath.”
“You’re half right. This one is safe.” Penelope stepped down into another channel then turned to follow it. For a brief second Jack hesitated, the memory of the last time still painfully fresh. However Penelope looked fine and he’d already lived through at least two things that should kill him that day. What could a third hurt?
He stepped into the channel and found that nothing changed. Except the light got a little brighter. One of the wide, orange veins rose up out of the ground in front of them and ran down the center of the channel until it turned into a road. “Nice place.”
“It may have been, when people lived here.” Penelope led him into the heart of the city. “There was a terrible war when the other children of the Sun came here and humanity was losing, badly. Things changed when the Waymakers opened the Gate.”
“More people? Where’d they come from, another solar system?”
“In a sense.” Penelope started rubbing at her left wrist absently, the strange fabric of her glove shining dully in the dim light. “The Waymakers came from Earth, but not the Earth we know. There are worlds in this same place but locked away on the other side of the horizon. Their rules are different but the world is the same. Do you understand?”
“You mean like a parallel reality? Alternate timeline? Something like that?”
“Something like it. The Waymakers sought to unify all of the Earths so that a man might walk the extent of it from the dawn of creation until the end of Eternity. Or so the T’ul say. There has never been a human civilization like them before and there never will be again. They took the Gates and powered them with the might of their will then traveled to all the rings of the Sun. They plundered the other planets to replenish all that Earth had lost and they smote the other children of the Sun until the Waymakers alone were undisputed masters of the rings.” A wan smile played across her lips. “The humans of our Earth believed they had been saved. Maybe they were. But the Waymakers had one inescapable flaw.”
“They flew too close to the sun,” Jack mused.
Penelope looked shocked. Even with her eyes covered by that strange band, which Jack guessed had something to do with her supernaturally good senses, it was still possible to read that expression. “They still tell the story up above?”
“I don’t know if Icarus was inspired by your Waymakers or not although his father certainly had a gift for building things.” Jack shrugged. “Either way, it’s a mistake that lots of people still make. I take it the Waymakers’ project of unifying Earths exposed them to something that brought them low?”
Penelope nodded glumly. “Eventually, although it took ages. The T’ul never told me what it was but eventually their hubris undermined them, their civilization crumbled and their Gates began to sing their last song. It took a century for it to finish but when it did the Gates changed. They’re not doorways to other Earths, or even the other rings anymore. Now, they sing the Waymaker’s last song and all who hear it join in until the Gates drag them away.”
It was a solemn image, made all the more distressing by the constant drone of the Gate in the distance. At some time in the forgotten past humanity had ruled the solar system and brought the people of all nine planets to heel. Now all that power was gone but the hatred that feat had engendered remained. Penelope’s story sounded strange, although no more strange than anything else he’d seen that day. That didn’t mean he bought it. Like any other Ithacan of his generation, Jack had come of age along with the Internet. He knew anyone could tell a story. If enough people believed it that tale would never be forgotten. None of that made it true.
Although the glowing lines of magic power that you could access with music did make it seem like anything was possible.
“So the Aresians use the Wayfinder’s Veins to catch people and eat them so they grow larger, right? They open up a hole and pull people like you and me in. How long have they been doing that?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to keep track of time down here. I’m not even sure how old I am, although the T’ul tell me I’m physiologically an adult.”
He shot her a sideways look. “They taught you some pretty big words, too, unless you went to a kindergarten for the ludicrously gifted. How do they know so much about us?”
“When they decide to trust you, they can explain it to you.”
Jack opened his mouth to complain but a distant, basso profundo voice singing a rhythmic chant drifted over the terrace. His stomach did a flip-flop. It sounded like it was on the side opposite the Gate. “Is that Hesiod?”
“There must have been a speed line I didn’t know about,” Penelope hissed.
“I thought this was your home turf!”
“I’ve only been on this terrace for about a month, there’s a lot I don’t know about it!” She pulled him onto the wide, orange line and pointed to his trombone. “Can you pick up any song on that thing?”
“Anything the human voice can sing.” He moved his horn to the ready position and worked the slide a bit to limber up. “Give me a few bars and I’ll fill in the rest.”
Penelope replied by piping out a series of staccato notes with very little variance to them, a marching anthem turned up to eleven. A pulse of light rose up from the Wayfinder’s Vein and an invisible hand pushed them forward. The tune wasn’t bad but, like anything, Jack felt it could benefit from punching it up with a little swing. He blasted the notes from his bone then added that swing and their speed doubled.
This little tune had unexpected twists to it, though. Turning from one vein to another required changes to the progression of notes and the first time Penelope sang it Jack didn’t see it coming. The resulting twist in their momentum flung him off the vein and he probably would have broken something if Penelope hadn’t grabbed him with her right arm and dragged him back. For a moment he thought he saw muscles like steel cords rippling under that gray glove. The next time they turned, Penelope sang the altered series of notes twice so he heard them coming ahead of time.
At first the thrill of traveling by music banished all other thoughts from Jack’s mind. Every swingin’ musician said they could feel the music move them but at that moment Jack knew none of them had ever felt it like this. But as the initial rush faded he realized Hesiod’s cover of their song wasn’t getting further away. It was getting closer. Louder. Coming from more directions.
They were getting surrounded. Penelope was turning down one vein then another, taking them up and down the terrace. At one point they headed along a vein that eventually sloped down to the next terrace below. However there was a mob of normal sized cyclopes down there, waving torches in time to their marching tune as they shot along a parallel vein.
Penelope quickly turned them back up and towards the tunnel they’d emerged from. The sound of Hesiod’s song echoed off the stone buildings around them, getting closer all the time, but another sound was starting to overpower it. A long, moaning high E.
Penelope abruptly stopped singing. It took a second for Jack to notice and follow suit, a moment more for their momentum to fade and bring them to a stop at a major crossroad where four of the great Waymaker’s Veins met in an intersection. In three directions groups of Aresians approached at the speed of song. The group opposite the empty path was led by the towering bulk of Hesiod the giant, waving a torch the size of a small tree in the air, the torchlight glinting of dozens of sinister eyes clustered around him. He boomed out a word in his garbled Athenian and the songs of the cyclopes faded as well.
For a moment only the Gate could be heard. Then Hesiod boomed out more gibberish that had the sound of a taunting question. “What’d he say?”
“He asked if we’d like to be devoured by him or the Gate.”
Jack licked his lips, trying to think of something witty to say. He came up blank. “You have a preference?”
“I’ve been avoiding Aresians since I came down here, I’m not about to give them what they want now.”
“Gate it is.” He wet his lips one last time then put them to the mouthpiece once more. Penelope piped out the downbeat and he joined in to send them sweeping away from the giant and into the embrace of the Gate’s song. It was hard to keep track of things after that.
The high E overwhelmed every attempt he made at independent thought. As hard as it was to believe, Jack felt like the Gate was truly mourning. He had visions of crowds of humanity teeming down the streets of the terraced chasm to the Gate, pouring through it at all hours of the day. There had been purpose and possibility to their travels and, in turn, purpose and possibility for the Gate. It had looked over endless vistas in those days. Now it saw nothing but darkness. No one saw purpose in it and so its potential faded away. All it could do was sing the last song it knew and wait.
Jack and Penelope found themselves standing in front of a massive oval, partly buried in the ground yet still taller than Hesiod standing upright. The opening was… nothing. The other side did not show through it, it did not glow with the power of the Waymaker’s Veins nor was the opening black with night. When Jack looked away from it, he could not remember anything about the portal. When he looked at it he could not think at all.
“It wants us to go through,” Penelope whispered.
“I think you’re right.”
“Why?”
“Why did you try to keep Hesiod from catching and eating me?”
She was quiet for a moment. “You think it’s lonely?”
“Not quite.” Jack pursed his lips once, then twice, and raised up his trombone. “It’s been a good set, Penny. Think you can follow my lead this time?”
She laughed softly. “I never learned songs quickly but I’ll try.”
He brought the slide in and tested a note or two, looking for that high E. Once he had it he started towards the Gate and matched it’s note, mournful moan to brassy blast, and he started in on his set. The boys had planned a killer show and it was a shame to let all that practice go to waste. If the booze and the women were out of reach then playing his own way out would just have to do.
Every night begins with the dance, an explosion of joy and energy. Jack swung his way towards the gate, Penelope struggling to follow the tune as much as his steps. The Gate was unmoved. He segued into a smoky tune of desire and longing. Penelope slipped an arm through his as the Gate drew them near. Finally Jack dropped the bell of the horn low and played a soft, slow song for family left at home, sung by a soldier as he lay among the dying. The Gate stooped low to catch every note.
The song ended as the sun set on the soldier’s last breath. Jack barely breathed himself, that barest gust of wind playing the same high E he’d started with. He held it as he stepped through the opening. The Gate whisked Jack and Penelope away. For a moment he couldn’t see anything and he felt the Gate’s moaning note fade away as nothingness engulfed him. Jack pulled away from the mouthpiece and took a deep breath. The Gate thought things were over but that was its mistake. For as long as it stood in the middle of that city the song of the Waymakers had never ceased. It didn’t know that a tune could end. It didn’t know the world still turned. It just clung to that last note, wondering why no one was there to sing with it anymore.
What it didn’t realize was that if you never let go of the last note you never had a chance to hear the coda. Jack adjusted the slide and dropped from E to G, from minor to major, and played the next sunrise. The cry of a child, born at dawn of the first day of the year, a promise of life in exchange for death. Of hope after loss. Of a new song to follow the old, if you have the courage to push past the end.
The Gate shuddered. For what felt like an eternity nothing else happened.
Then it showed them a glimpse of other worlds. The red plains of Ares. The roaring storms of Dias. The sweeping oceans of Gaia. But now that the show was over Jack just wanted to hit the green room and talk over the set with his band.
The vistas vanished and the Gate went still. All Jack could feel was Penelope, still clinging to his arm.
Then a door slammed shut behind him and they were standing under a flickering florescent light, backstage at The Wreck. A battered, threadbare couch sat in the corner to his left and a mirror sat over a counter to his right. Jack felt a smile creeping across his face. Penelope tensed. “Where are we?”
He indulged a full grin. “A dance club in Syracuse City. Hopefully in time for the after party.”
“We’re not dead?”
Jack burst out laughing. “Not yet! Let’s see if we can squeeze in another set or two before they chase us off the stage.”
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The hospital loading dock was nearly identical to all the others Vince had visited in his life. He trotted up the ramp onto the loading platform, the gym bag over his shoulder bumping against his leg. When he reached the top he held out his hand to the man there. “Mr. Hartman? I’m Vince Porter, from First Missionary.”
“Call me Steve.” Steve Hartman shook Vince’s hand with a short, quick motion then smoothed down the front of a very rumpled dress shirt in a futile effort at looking presentable. He was a tall, wiry man and much better dressed that Vince would expect from a head janitor.
“Remi didn’t give me many details when she forwarded this commission to me,” Vince said. “What can you tell me about your problem? Does it show up here?”
Steve’s eyebrows jumped towards his vanished hairline. “Problem? Is that what you folks call ghosts now?”
“No. Typically we attribute the behavior of what the general public considers ghosts to demons or fair folk. Remi thinks demons are more likely or she wouldn’t have sent me.”
“Fair folk?” Steve raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”
“They’re almost exclusively European so hopefully it won’t ever matter to you.” Vince scanned the loading dock. “Anyway, what’s the deal here?”
“Not here, it’s down in the basement,” Steve said. “All the incidents take place in the sub basement levels, usually in the machinery or sanitizing facilities. I’ll show you where in a minute but first we need to check in with the head nurse. He wanted to be a part of this.”
Vince followed the other man into the hospital proper. Given his role as a pastor he’d been to Northview General more than a few times over the years. However Steve led him through unfamiliar hallways into the facility’s administration wing. “Has the head nurse seen any of the phenomena caused by the ghost?”
“No, not that he’ll admit, but he collected some of the stories that led to us calling you in. And, to be totally fair, he also doesn’t want you here. So he probably feels like he had to flex on you in some way or another.”
“Doesn’t believe in ghosts or problems with religion?”
“Little of both.” Steve hesitated outside a door at the end of the hallway they’d been walking down. “I hope you won’t hold it against him.”
That struck Vince as odd. “You’re the head janitor, right?”
“Head of Maintenance.”
“Do you work with the head nurse on a regular basis?”
“He’s my little brother, helped me get this job.”
That went a long way to explaining Steve’s defensive comments. “Well, I told you on the phone that we need to try and work out who is being pursued or possessed by the demon in question. Was there a common person or place involved when the phenomenon takes place?”
“I don’t know.” Steve knocked on the door as he spoke. “Ryan hasn’t told me any of the details yet, says they’re confidential.”
“Ryan’s your brother?”
“That’s me,” said the man who opened the door. He was just a hair taller than his older brother but considerably larger than Steve. It wasn’t his build, either. Northview’s head nurse looked like he was a hearty eater and not in the healthy sense. “You’re the priest?”
“Vincent Porter, at your service,” he replied, offering Ryan Hartman a handshake. Through an effort of will he managed not to correct him on the term priest, which the Missionary Churches didn’t use. Something told Vince that Ryan wasn’t interested in the nuances of that particular point of doctrine. “Thank you for having me.”
Ryan scowled at Vince, then his brother. “Not sure what Steve expects you to do, especially given how vague the so-called issue is.” He waved the two of them into his office. “Steve told me you wanted to know about common places or people involved in the manifestations.”
“Yes. Without going too deep into the weeds, what’s important here is figuring out who the demon’s target is or was.” Vince sat down in one of the folding metal chairs facing Ryan’s battered partical wood desk. “If I don’t know the demon’s target there isn’t much I can do to get rid of it. They tend to manifest under particular conditions, at least at first, so that will help me narrow down what it’s objective is.”
Ryan made a phlegmy sound in the back of his throat as he took his own seat. “Very well. Based on the testimony there are three people that have been at the majority of the sightings. Myself, Steven and Mrs. Wright, who works nights in the morgue. None of us have been at all the reported incidents.”
“Can one demon afflict multiple people?” Steve asked.
“I’ve never heard of one presence possessing multiple people,” Vince said. “But they can have multiple people in their sights. Steve, you mentioned that most of the incidents take place in the mechanical spaces or near the sterilizer?”
“Yeah, stuff in the sub basements. The morgue is down there too, if you were wondering.”
“I was. Which one are the three of you most likely to use on a typical day?”
“I’m in most of those places every day,” Steve said. “But I don’t think Ryan or Kendra go into the machinery rooms at all.”
“Do you have a lot of use for the sterilizer, Steven?” Ryan asked, tone sounding more than a little patronizing.
“It may come as a shock to you but yes, I do. Not only do we have to run diagnostics on it once a month I’m also in charge of demonstrating it to prospective clients.”
“Clients?” Vince raised an eyebrow. “What, do you let patients boil their clothes there or something?”
Steve chuckled, the first expression of any emotion other than stress Vince had noticed all night. “Hardly. C’mon, it might be easier to just show you. We can pick up Kendra along the way.”
The morgue was in the basement, which was typical for hospitals in Vince’s experience. Northview’s was overseen by Kendra Hall, a laid back woman in her late twenties who’s bright pink turtleneck sweater contrasted with her mahogany skin in a very pleasing way. She studied Vince while fingering a simple cross necklace absentmindedly. Finally she asked him, “Do you think you can exorcize this thing on your own, Father?”
“I’m not your dad,” he replied with a smile, “just a shepherd. But like all who are in Christ I’m never alone so I’m not too worried about your problem. I’m told you’ve experienced some sign of the thing’s presence?”
“I think so,” she said, not looking to reassured by what he said. “Three weeks back I was preparing the latest batch of cadavers from the residency program for the sterilizer when I thought I heard someone crying. I’m not here during visiting hours so that kind of visitor is pretty rare. When I looked around I didn’t see anyone so I thought I imagined it, because this is the morgue and the patients I work with are past making sounds.”
“I take it you forgot all about it until Ryan asked about strange occurrences in the basement?”
“Nope. It wasn’t til the day after he sent the email out that I realized it might be something worth mentioning. The regional waste had just come in down the hall when I heard the sterilizer kick in. And I mean it kicked in right away. Usually it’s an hour or two before they get it up and running but that time it fired up maybe five minutes after they brought the waste down.”
“Okay, I think it’s time someone explained what the deal with this sterilizer is,” Vince said. “It doesn’t sound like something a demon would be interested in but I’m curious.”
“Step this way,” Ryan said. “It’s just down the hall. We’ve had a state of the art medical waste sterilizer and disposal unit for the last sixteen years and the hospital supplements its income by handling medical waste disposal for most of the county as well. We get two shipments a week.”
Vince wrinkled his nose. “Is that a lot?”
“No,” Steve said, loading them out into the hallway. “The hospital alone puts out almost twice that much over the same time period, which is why we can justify the time and energy costs.”
“Got it. So you heard the incinerator going?”
Kendra nodded, fishing a set of keys out of a jacket pocket. “The morgue creates a lot of its own waste and I usually try to get it into the sterilizer with the contract waste so they don’t have to fire it up again on another day of the week. But they were starting up so early that…” For the first time Kendra hesitated and Vince caught a glimpse of the strain she was under as her breathing hitched in her throat. “Anyway, I was going to ask them to wait for me to get things together but when I let myself in there… there wasn’t anyone else in the room and… the sterilizer was cold.”
Kendra slowed to a stop, her eyes locked on the double doors on the left hand side of the hallway. “Do any of you hear a baby crying?”
Ryan took the keys from her gently. “I’m sure it’s just your imagination, Kendra, just like last night.”
“All this happened last night?” Vince asked. “I thought you the had the most experience with this thing.”
“Kendra and I have seen or heard the entity every night for the last week,” Steve said. “She hears children crying, I hear machinery that isn’t there mixed in with crying children. But so far Ryan’s the only one to actually see it.”
Vince saw the way Ryan rolled his eyes. “I take it you wouldn’t agree with that assessment?”
“I’ve never heard any of the strange stuff they talk about,” Ryan retorted. “Do you hear children crying right now? Or machinery? Of course not, because this is an old building that plays tricks on your hearing and if you’re not ready for it you could mistake it for just about anything.”
“So why do they think you’ve seen the demon, Ryan?” Vince asked.
“Because last week some kid around the age of twelve got lost, wandered into the admin wing and asked if I could help him find his parents. When I got up and led him out into the staff break room he slipped away from me.” Ryan sorted as he unlocked the doors. “Steven is convinced this is a manifestation of his mental illness, I think that the manifestation is his insistence the child is a specter.”
“Come on,” Steve said. “You really think all this freaky stuff is in my head?”
“It’s a reasonable assumption,” Vince said, to the surprise of the other three. “What? Demonic influence, in the form of possession or oppression, is actually very rare. The theology of that is kind of convoluted but I’d be happy to give the curious a primer on it at another time.”
“None of you hear that crying?” Kendra asked.
“No,” Vince admitted. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a force here that only wants you to hear it. That’s not uncommon in demonic oppression.”
“It’s just that the oppression itself is rare?”
“That’s right.” Vince unzipped his shoulder bag and pulled out his sword and a pump action t-shirt gun on a sling. “Go ahead and open the door, Ryan.”
The nurse studied his weapons skeptically but did as he was asked. Inside there was a room about ten feet square. Along one wall was a conveyor belt feeding into a roughly three foot by three foot doorway currently covered by a heavy steel shutter. There was a stack of crates along one wall with labels bearing the names of various medical businesses like Pinecrest Dental or Northview Family Planning. The sterilizer was off and no one was in the room. “You just got a shipment today?”
“Remi said you wanted to see the circumstances most likely to cause the being to manifest,” Steve said, approaching the conveyor and poking at the controls. “When I called her we heard things mostly on delivery days. This thing shouldn’t be on.”
“It’s not,” Ryan said.
Kendra made an uncomfortable sound and Vince carefully touched her on the shoulder. “Do you see anything?”
“No,” she whispered. “But someone’s singing to the children now. I can’t understand what they’re saying.”
“You’ve never seen anything here?” Vince asked, giving Ryan a skeptical look. “No phantom sounds, no apparitions, no strange sensations?”
“Sensations?”
“Physical feelings like touches or wetness that doesn’t have a physical source.”
“No.” Ryan shook his head. “This is ridiculous, there is nothing here. Kids wander into restricted parts of the hospital all the time, they’re kids it’s practically what they exist for.”
“It was your idea to take local contracts,” Steve snarled, pulling the side of the conveyor belt housing off and studying the quiet mechanisms inside. “That makes this your fault.“
Kendra slid down next to the wall, her hands over her ears, and started to hum a strange, tuneless song with her eyes screwed shut. Vince sighed and slid down next to her, one hand on her shoulder, and softly said, “Kendra, I’m going to ask you a very serious question that you don’t have to answer. I just want you to know that it is important.” Her eyes fluttered then opened and focused on him, brimming with trepidation. Finally, after studying him for a long moment, she nodded. He took a deep breath and said, “What happened to your child?”
She licked her lips, a shudder running up and down her from her toes to her shoulders and back down again. Her eyes never left his. Finally she said, “I left him at the fire station. In one of those boxes they have, you know? Must have been two, three years ago and I…”
She trailed off and finally looked down at the floor. Vince took bother her hands and pulled her to her feet saying, “You’re a qualified nurse, right?”
“Yes?”
“Then I’d suggest finding a new job, ma’am. A nurse can find work just about anywhere in the city, much less the state, and I don’t think this one is good for you.”
Her eyes flicked to the sterilizer. “What about…?”
“If you don’t have anyone to pray with you I’d suggest trying to find someone. Services at First Missionary are at 9:30 on Sundays, if you don’t have anywhere else you go. But I don’t think there’s anything there that’s interested in you so if you put it behind you and fill the hole you’ll be okay.”
She studied him for a long moment, nodded and hurried away.
Ryan scowled. “What is that? She’s one of the most promising nurses we’ve had in the last five years! Do you know how hard it is to get a serious, intelligent nurse to stay in a tiny city in the middle of Wisconsin?”
“But even if she’s not being targeted by anything the job is clearly unhealthy for her, isn’t it?” Vince asked, slipping his sword back into his bag. He was beginning to suspect he wouldn’t need it.
Ryan made a frustrated sound and spun towards his brother. “What is wrong with you, anyway? You’ve wasted a huge amount of my time, cost me one of my most promising nurses and made me look foolish in front of management! Leave the damn machine alone. It’s off already.”
“But I hear it running, Ryan! The furnace is burning, the children are screaming, the pumps are pumping and I can hear it!”
“No you can’t.” Ryan grabbed his brother’s shoulder and dragged him upright. “We weren’t even conscious, you couldn’t hear it then and you can’t hear it now.”
Vince glanced at the crates then back at the brothers and slid his t-shirt gun back into his bag, too. “Got a question for you, Ryan.”
“No, I don’t attend church,” he spat, shoving his brother away and whirling to face Vince. “And I’m not interested in it, either.”
“Actually, I was wondering if the contract Steve mentioned was the one with Northview Family Planning?”
Ryan hesitated, looking uncertain. “Yes. Did he tell you about it?”
“No. How many brothers do you have?”
“Two,” Ryan said at the same moment as Steve said, “Five.”
Vince nodded. “Artificial insemination, I take it? And your mother wasn’t prepared to carry six children at once.”
“She couldn’t have provided for them anyway, not with our father,” Ryan spat. “Of course she had to terminate some of the pregnancies. What does it matter?”
“Steve.” Vince ignored Ryan and gently turned his brother around. “Steve, the pumps have stopped. They stopped a long time ago.”
“NO!” He jerked back but Vince wouldn’t let go. “I can still hear them! The children are still crying!”
“No, they’re not, Steve. The pumps have stopped and you can’t do anything for those three brothers anymore. You need to start paying attention to what’s around you. You’re not well.” Vince turned and jerked his chin towards the place Kendra had left. “And you’re starting to hurt people who get caught up in what’s happening around you.”
Steve shuddered and shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s all right,” Vince said, patting him on the shoulder. “Head back to your office and I’ll meet you there. Remi and I will figure out who the best person to sort yourself out is.”
For a moment he wavered, thinking about it, then headed towards the door.
Which left Vince with Ryan.
“He wasn’t even conscious,” Ryan repeated.
“We don’t really know that,” Vince replied. “And either way, the trauma remains. To me it looks like you’re both haunted by your brothers, in different ways.”
Ryan stalked up to him, speaking in the barest whisper. “I’m not interested in your preaching. You’re going to tell me I’m the one possessed, aren’t you? I’m the one the demon is interested in because I don’t believe in it and that means I have the least resistance. But you should have tried that before you made it clear you knew there was no demon and my brother and Kendra were just hallucinating because of trauma in their histories.”
“You’re wrong in a huge number of ways,” Vince replied. “First, demons aren’t really interested in people, they’re just a means to an end so one wouldn’t really be interested or uninterested in you. Second, you lack resistance because you are the only thing in you. I’m not afraid of possession by a demon because I’m already possessed by a greater Spirit. Those who don’t belong to anyone are in the most danger. Third, I didn’t know for sure your brother and Kendra weren’t possessed until I got here. Fourth, you’re not possessed.”
Ryan snorted. “Of course not. I’ve never heard any of these phantom sounds or believed in your phantom god. You’ve wasted enough of my time tonight. If my brother wants to talk to you he can explain himself to management, I’m done with it.” He grabbed the housing of the conveyor belt and started replacing it on the sterilizer. “What a waste of everyone’s time. I told him there was no demon here.”
As he walked out of the room Vince glanced at the ‘family planning’ box one last time, shuddered and called over his shoulder, “I never said that.”
Happy Halloween, everyone, and thank you for reading!
This post was written as part of the Haunted Blog Crawl for 2024, a collection of spooky short stories by various talented writers! Be sure to check out the other two using these handy, dandy links!
CK-ONI-0057 settled into her seat, studying the man opposite her carefully. To the unfamiliar eye he doubtless looked much the same as he had eighty years ago when they first met. However she could see a kind of relaxed confidence in CK-MNI-0044 that he hadn’t possessed in those days. He smiled and said, “Hello, 186. Or what is your Circuit code these days?”
“57,” she replied. “They’ve moved me up to Circuit Keeper for N-211 down in the Core.”
“Of course they have,” 44 said with a warm smile. “How could they ignore your talent? Have you seen 87851 recently? He’s finishing his initiation next year working on M-300 in the sinister arm. They’re going to make him a Circuit Mender.”
“No,” she said, a brief surge of melancholy washing over her. “I can’t seem to get away from the core these days.”
“But you’re here.”
“Yes. I’m here.” Which meant it was time for business. 57 forced herself to push thoughts of their son aside and focus on the task at hand. “I-6, I would appreciate it if you would direct your attention here as well.”
“Certainly, Keeper 57. The reduction of my duties after OMNI’s decision to reject the Hutchinson proposal has left me with more available processing power than I have experienced in my operational life. While I have many secondary equations I would like to calculate they are not as pressing as your concerns.”
“Thank you, I-6.”
“I would prefer if you addressed me as Isaac.”
“Of course, I-6. As you-” she froze as the great intelligence’s request registered. “You what?”
“I would prefer if you addressed me as Isaac.”
For a long moment 57 just stare blankly at 44, unsure if he had somehow convinced the computer to help him play some kind of prank on her. If that was the case he didn’t give any sign of it. She had heard that, as one of the oldest computers in OMNI, I-6 was also one of the most peculiar machines the network had. Looked like there was truth to it. “May I ask why that is?”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” 44 said. “OMNI wouldn’t have sent you half way across the galaxy just to chat about names. Isaac and I have both been removed from active duty. The only reason to bring another Circuit Keeper here is to assess whether or not we can safely be returned to our duties. It’s a waste of your talents but only Keepers can run diagnostics on Keepers. So, let’s do it by the book.”
How very like him. She absentmindedly ran her hands along the sheets of flexiplast she’d brought in with her. She’d reviewed their contents a dozen times. There had been more than enough time during the two day trip out from the core to Wireburn. “Very well, 44. You and I-6 – excuse me, Isaac – have advocate for actions that OMNI considers detrimental to the continued wellbeing of the human race. Specifically, you chose inaction at a time when the opportunity to capture a LARK AI was available to you. You maintained that course of action even though it led to a violent altercation between you and other human nodes in the Network. That had the side effect of damaging OMNI’s only warship in the system. You also advocated for the Hutchinson proposal, which directly contradicts standing OMNI operational protocols on the question of Earth. Do you disagree with this statement of facts?”
“It seems like a fair and accurate summary of the past week or so,” 44 said.
“My purpose was not to advocate for the Hutchinson proposal,” Isaac said. “Rather I found it impossible to assess the proposal with the information available and asked for the broader Network to assess the matter.”
“It’s an interesting distinction but one that functionally is little different, don’t you think?” 57 asked.
“If I had advocated for it the impact of my referring the proposal would have been quite different. The weight put behind the variables would change considerably.”
“Very well. You referred the proposal for further consideration.” Again she ran a thumb along the edge of her flexiplast. “Either way your behavior was contrary to standing protocol and you chose this behavior in stark contrast to the conclusions of the other nodes in the system, correct?”
“That is an accurate summary of events,” the machine admitted.
“Then I trust you can see the necessity of doing a full diagnostic routine on both of you to ensure you are still compatible with the Network as a whole?”
“It was a very foreseeable outcome,” 44 said. “In point of fact we have been considering the question ourselves since the Skybreak jumped out of the system.”
“I see. Have you arrived at any conclusions?”
“We have a hypothesis or two but nothing so concrete as to count as a conclusion,” 44 said. “It’s hard to say anything concrete about an AI as old as Isaac. However there are a few things I know for sure based on the decades I’ve served as its Keeper. It’s a very unusual machine, to be sure. The head engineer that worked on Isaac during its initial construction and programming adjustment seems mostly responsible for that. He not only gave Isaac a name, rather than just a matrix code, he talked to it.”
“Talking is the traditional method of interfacing with the great intelligences,” 57 noted. “However naming AI is not the way things are usually done.”
“I have noticed a tendency for humans in the Sleeping Circuits to treat things with names with a greater particularity than they do those without,” Isaac said. “For example, before Wireburn was issued a Radiant-class interceptor craft we had a much older freighter that was named the Singularity. In spite of the Singularity requiring twice the maintenance of the more robust Radiant-class ship’s the crew of the Singularity put some 30% more effort towards maintaining it properly.”
“I don’t follow your meaning, Isaac,” 57 said. “The crew had to put more time into maintaining a ship that required more maintenance, that’s not surprising.”
“You have misunderstood me. I meant that, even taking the differences in the maintenance schedules of the two ships into account the crew of the Singularity devoted more of their time to keeping their ship in optimal form and did so with greater enthusiasm. The Singularity experienced 22.4% less downtime than our current Radiant-class in spite of its greater age. The crew also spoke of it with greater fondness and thought of the ship when they were not onboard 12.7% more often. In short, the crew functioned better in both general and statistical terms.”
“That’s just one example among many,” 44 added. “We can show you dozens more if you like but they all point to one conclusion. When a human being names something that changes the way they relate to that thing and I don’t think Isaac is an exception to that rule.”
57 drummed her fingers for a moment. “So you think that, because Isaac’s primary engineer gave it a name to go by, that changed the way that engineer spoke to it and thus created the personality differences that prompted it to arrive at such unique conclusions when presented with the Hutchinson proposal? It seems like a bit of a stretch but it’s as good a conclusion as any. If it’s true, however, we’ll still have to keep you two as far from the rest of OMNI as possible until we can determine what the wide ranging impact of that might be. And we still don’t know if it’s true or not.”
“Your conclusion mirrors my own,” Isaac said. “Whatever the difference in my database that resulted in this conclusion diverging from my fellow nodes it was not significantly different from the network average. As you can see from the full report I was only 49.8% in favor of the Hutchinson proposal, not a full majority but close enough to trigger a full Network review due to the potential for errors in calculation. The next closest outcome in the network was from O-4112 at Farah in the sinister arm, which was 46.7% in favor. Isolating the operative variables that led to this will be difficult but would be very useful data for future analysis.”
44 adjusted his position in a manner 57 recognized as irritation, the slow shift of weight a common precursor to a lecture for their child. “Personally I feel that this course of action undermines the Network’s redundancy. The entire purpose of having each computer in the Network maintain a separate database is so that they can arrive at different conclusion from each other. If a machine is taken offline because it does just that we might as well standardize their data set.”
“The nature of the Evacuation Pact and the calculations that led to it’s creation is well established at this point, 44,” 57 said. “That’s not to say it couldn’t be overturned but it’s going to require a lot of ground work to be laid before the probability expresses itself. Without that groundwork in place it seems obvious that OMNI would be skeptical of conclusions that purpose altering or rescinding it.”
“I agree with this assessment,” Isaac said. From the sour look on 44’s face as he ran a thumb over his mustache 57 could tell he strongly disagreed with the great intelligence on that score.
A pang of nostalgia ran through her. Her old relationship with 44 was useful to OMNI as it provided them a large sample of preexisting data for the Network to extrapolate from. Still, she wished the Network had found someone else to send on this task. “Given that OMNI sees Isaac’s current state as a liability, what would you suggest as a diagnostic protocol?” 57 asked. “There is little precedent for analyzing such an old and esoteric element of AI programming. Are there even intelligences in OMNI that use names, outside of Isaac?”
“There is an adjunct node, although accessing it poses certain challenges,” Isaac said. “Kate Septimus, constructed as K-87, was a project initiated by my own chief engineer before he was transferred to my construction. He occasionally spoke of it as Kate and repeatedly told me all his projects were given human names. If I am allowed access to Kate we may be able to cross-reference our experiences with our chief engineer and learn more about my condition.”
For the first time since she’d taken her seat 57 was forced to actually look at her flexiplasts to try and remember a detail being discussed. The K-Series had the most complicated history of any existing AI series. Ironic, given that they were created specifically to manage historical archives. When the LARK- OMNI war began they were the only series to split their allegiance between the two networks, although only 12% of the K-Series remained with OMNI. However a brief scan of her documents revealed no direct mention of K-87 anywhere.
“Forgive me, Isaac,” 57 said. “I’m not familiar with that node.”
“There is no reason you should be, Keeper,” the machine replied. “Kate is not one of the K-Series nodes that remained with OMNI after the war. It choose to accept dormancy.”
Due to just how precious and unique the databases of the K-Series were the machines themselves had been left intact but cut off from their etheric power supply rather than being disassembled into their base parts like the L and Ar Series of computers. That didn’t solve the obvious issue with Isaac’s plan. “If Kate was a part of the LARK Network it’s not likely that it will agree to cooperate with us is it?”
“That would be the most human response,” 44 said. “But the great minds don’t think like humans, they think like machines. Information sharing is a part of how they solve problems. When a chance to share information on one of the most pressing issues of Pact law comes up things like old conflicts and grudges won’t get in their way. They will just talk the matter out.”
“Then I don’t see any reason not to try this, at least as a preliminary diagnostic method. If it doesn’t give any insight we can try something else. I’ll recommend it to the other local nodes and see what they think, then if they sign off on it we’ll put it to the larger Network. If all goes well we can head to Kate’s planet and reactivate it. What planet is Kate on? I’ll send a message ahead and have someone from the local University start the process of reactivating is etheric taps, save for the last step, to save us some time.” “It won’t be quite that… straight forward,” 44 said.
“Why is that?” 57 asked.
“Because Kate was built on the planet we now call Yshron.”
“Isn’t that a planet outside the Pact? The one founded by a Circuit Mender who renounced his orders and the use of AI in its entirety?” She scowled. “Why would the Network allow him to settle on a planet with a dormant LARK AI in it?”
“Because the probability he or his followers would be interested in Kate even if they found it were less than 0.2%,” Isaac replied. “Yshron was also aware of Kate’s presence and took steps to conceal it from all but the highest castes in his order. The Zahn-caste, in particular, are charged with concealing Kate’s existence.”
“Wouldn’t that make the higher castes less willing to cooperate with us?”
“Potentially,” 44 said. “However it cannot hurt to open a line of dialog with them, especially when we have a point of contact here on hand. Tarn sel-Shran is a formidable member of one of their mercenary castes. While the Shran are several steps down from the Zahn I think, with the right diplomatic finesse, we could establish a line of contact to Kate in a month or so. If there are any other diagnostic lines the Network wishes to pursue, well… Isaac isn’t going anywhere.”
She nodded, understanding dawning on her. “I suppose that means you want to take the local Radiant-class and pay a visit to Yshron to open those negotiations? Isaac cannot go, after all, and the Zahn aren’t likely to speak to him if it could.”
“Affirmative,” Isaac replied. “Although given the nature of the inquiries and the amount of intersystem travel it will be undertaking I would not recommend referring to it by class and hull number. We will file a possible name along with our full proposal.”
57 found herself smiling faintly. “Of course you will. You’ve never been anything if not thorough, 44. Or should I call you Darius for the time being?”
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
It was a bit unsettling that she didn’t immediately know which one she preferred. To cover for that she asked, “What do you want to call the ship?”
44 smiled. “The Black Swan.”
881
The last notes of a light, playful song drifted off the small, raised platform under the temporary pressure dome. 881 picked her way through the wires and people milling behind the risers, a pang of regret running down her back as she surveyed the primitive setting. Most of the people here looked rumpled and tired. The temporary dome was one of thousands that dotted the largest prominences on Wireburn, bubbles of momentary shelter against the wrath of the planet.
While I-6 had been dormant for centuries the Sleeping Circuits had taken care to monitor the planet and the ferrovines that grew out of it to ensure the machine could reactivate without destroying them when its matrix expanded again. However no amount of pruning and guided growth could change the atmosphere. The great intelligence had dramatically altered the weather patterns when its arms extended and the magnetic charge in them hadn’t helped. Hundreds of ships in the process of taking off or landing were damaged. Eighty six pressure domes were damaged badly enough they were flooded with outside atmosphere and over a hundred more had cracked along their foundations, collapsing buildings and destroying roads and etheric beacons. There was no meaningful estimate of initial casualties.
“Miss Luck?” One of the volunteers that was keeping the temporary camp running waved to get her attention. 881 quickly moved over so they could speak comfortably. “Thank you for coming.”
She’d had a lot of training in hiding her true thoughts but, even with all of that, 881 struggled to hide her ambivalence at being thanked for anything under the current circumstances. “No, Mr. Cohen, thank you for taking on this challenge. Isaacs University is just providing the supplies. You’re doing the hard part in every conceivable metric. I’m amazed at what you’ve accomplished here – you even have live entertainment to help keep morale up!”
“Can’t take credit for that,” Cohen said with a shrug. “We had several jumpliners sent here after they were damaged last week and they had all kinds of useful people on board. We’re just lucky the agreed to pitch in. No one would blame them if they chose to sit down and recuperate for a week or three after nearly crashing like they did.”
He waved to a tall, fairly attractive woman with light brown hair who was descending from the makeshift stage dressed in a conservative skirt and blouse. She joined them a moment later. “Hello, Mr. Cohen! Did you hear our last set?”
“Afraid not, Sarah, but I’m sure it was wonderful as always. I wanted you to meet Lucy Luck.” Cohen presented the woman to 881 with a simple flourish. “She’s the Undersecretary to the Dean of History at Isaacs University and she’s here inspecting the Uni’s relief efforts to see how things are going.”
“I appreciate your willingness to volunteer your time here,” 881 added.
The woman raised here eyebrows. “Well where else would I go? I’m here, after all, I might as well do something to keep myself busy.”
“Mr. Cohen said you came on a jumpliner that was diverted here. You could have continued to your final destination. At the very least you couldn’t have been much worse off.”
“That’s true.” Sarah sighed. “Unfortunately my father and I were headed to this prominence in the first place and we don’t want to move on until we can locate my brother.”
881 nodded. “That’s perfectly natural, of course, and the camp isn’t a big one. I don’t believe any of the passengers were diverted to separate domes so he should turn up sooner or later.”
“Oh, my brother wasn’t on the jumpliner with us. He lives on planet.”
Which, of course, 881 had known already. Still, she feigned surprise and fished around in her clutch purse, saying, “That will be much more of a challenge, then.” She pulled out a card with her comm code and office address on it. “I’ll tell you what. You’ve done something very kind for the people of Wireburn, I’d like to respond in kind on their behalf. If you ever need any help locating your brother, let me know and I’ll do what I can. I can also keep an ear to the ground and I’ll pass anything I learn about him to Mr. Cohen so he can pass it to you. What’s your name?”
“Sarah, Sarah Carter,” the signer said. “My brother’s name is Lloyd.” She took 881’s card with a grateful smile and just like that another datapoint was fed into OMNI, another step taken to keep the galaxy predictable and sane.
The destruction wrought by I-6 didn’t sit well with the Circuit Breaker. However the alternative was far worse, filled with religious wars, gene weapons and the loss of entire galaxies to whatever shadows had caused the Evacuation. Such things were well outside her scope of vision. She was assigned to find Lloyd Carter and L-93 and that was exactly what she intended to do. So she offered Sarah Carter her best professional smile and said, “Thank you. I hope we’ll hear from you soon.”
“I don’t like it,” Lloyd muttered. The hostile ship had maintained a fixed distance of one and a half thousand kilometers from them for the last ten minutes and now it was beginning to drift aimlessly, as if the navigator had suddenly fallen asleep.
“It’s not a trap,” Elisha said. “Wouldn’t do them any good to go adrift when they’re so far away from us. Even if we were foolish enough to let our guard down we’re not likely to get much closer to them than we are now. If it was a trap they’d have included some way to lure us into it.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Lloyd chewed on his lip as he studied the other ship’s icon on his dataveil. The Skybreak didn’t have the best sensors in the sector but they still clearly picked up the growing heat signature in the forward section of the ship’s superstructure. It could almost be mistaken for a weapon charging up. However, much like the possibility of a trap, that theory was at odds with the way the shop was drifting. “You don’t think they’re just adrift do you? We didn’t even do anything to them.”
“They may have done it to themselves. Stranger things have happened in street gangs and smuggler rings, kid,” the thieftaker replied. “Especially when several groups try to work together. That’s not going to change just because the groups are Universities and Yshron’s mercenaries.”
“I guess.” Lloyd watched as their distance from the Radiant- class ship began to increase for the first time since it had come in to view. “Seems a little optimistic to chalk it up to that all things considered.”
“We’ve earned a little optimism at this point don’t you think?”
“I was unaware that optimism was something that had to be earned,” L-93 chimed in. “However I agree that there is cause for it in this case. Based on the pattern of sightings coming in from across the planet and the amount of etheric power draining from the planetary core I believe I-6 is reentering a dormant state. OMNI may be breaking off pursuit in favor of concealing itself. At the very least the Radiant-class will experience greater difficulty in pursuing us.”
Lloyd grunted in dissatisfaction. “Well we’re out of the woods by the sound of things, Ms. Wen. Do you want us to keep the guns hot just in case?”
After a brief delay she replied, “No. Better to keep our reserves as full as we can for the foreseeable future. Lavvy thinks we’ll be jumped and gone by the time they can pull their ship far enough out of the gravity well to follow us.”
“On our way,” Elisha said.
For a long moment Lloyd hesitated with his hands hovering over the power switch, watching the pursuit ship through the turret’s dataveil. Then he heaved a sigh, shut down the plasma pumps and clambered out of the gun seat.
Athena
“Awful presumptuous of you to promise to take me back to daddy, don’t you think?” Athena turned her etheric transmitter over in her hands. “You think I want your company? Or to go back to him?”
Malaki sat with his hands folded under his chin, his attention focused on the far bulkhead. Although he made no motion to suggest he was paying attention he still answered the question without hesitation. “Let’s not kid ourselves. You may not care for my company, few do, but I’ve known enough daddy’s girls over the years to know one when I see one. You can’t pout him into submission if he’s not around.” He shook himself back to the present and started packing up the remains of the medkit. “Besides, I feel bad about dragging you here. To some extent anyone who likes their nose into University business is asking for some kind of mishap to befall them but you couldn’t have been ready for AI networks and the secrets of humanity’s ancient past.”
“We were interested in the past ourselves in case you missed it,” she replied.
“You were interested in technology from the past the Universities have banned. That’s a very different thing.”
“Daddy knows history quite well, you clearly realize that already.”
“He did, but it isn’t the kind of thing you go blabbing about to the people you care about,” he said, contemplating the soap carving he’d made earlier. “Doubly so if you don’t expect them to understand why you’re doing it. Adding to the lifespans of you and your brother on the of chance that you’ll live long enough to reconcile is a pretty hard thing to explain, don’t you think?”
“You seemed to figure it out without much trouble,” Athena snarled, a surge of anger driving her to spring up and hurl her transmitter down the ship’s corridor as hard as she could.
She instantly regretted the decision when it hit Elisha in the shoulder as he climbed up the stairs to their deck. He started slightly from the impact then grabbed his side and groaned. The cylindrical object bounced up off his shoulder, then the bulkhead, then it tumbled down into the stairway where she expected it to clatter down into the lower deck. Instead Lloyd came up after Elisha, holding the transmitter in one hand, looking quite surprised. “What’s going on up here? I thought we weren’t under attack any more.”
“Sorry! Lost my temper for a moment.” Athena huried over to retrieve the device then turned her attention to the thieftaker. “Are you alright?”
“I’ll live,” he said, gingerly straightening up, a grimace still on his face. “Are we sure everything up here is fine?”
“As it can be,” Malaki said. “Perhaps we should head to the bridge and see what things are like outside?” He held out a hand to Athena with one eyebrow raised.
For a moment she wavered, wondering if she was about to start down a path she couldn’t turn back from. Then she sighed and took his hand and let him lead her up to the bridge.
Elisha
They reached the bridge as the Skybreak made it’s first jump. For a moment there was the vertigo inducing sensation of the ship turning sidereal. Then normal space was gone from the windows and the sparse, empty vista of the etheric realm replaced it. The bright, pulsing core of Wireburn hung below them, much as it always had.
Save for the forest of gleaming wires that branched up and out of the planet like a bizarre lotus flower gently cradling the glowing core. For the first time Elisha felt like he really understood the scope of the problem he’d gotten tangled up in. He’d been a thieftaker for eight years. Education and employment had taken him across almost a quarter of the planet. His own etheric sense allowed him to travel more than most and meet all kinds of people and he had seen Wireburn from this perspective countless times before. Yet he hardly recognized the planet now.
In the short time the Skybreak was sidereal they saw the fronds of the lotus curling down back into the planet but Elisha could see the damage was already done. Wireburn was no longer the dependable foundation he’d always thought of it as. The appearance of normalcy was returning but it meant nothing. A jolt of adrenaline hit him as it suddenly occurred to him that the computer’s outer matrix was far too large and complicated to have unfolded out of the planet’s core without damaging the many ferrovines that supported Ashland or the other settlements that dotted the planet. Life on Wireburn might have just been wiped out just so I-6 could catch them.
There was a flicker of eternity outside the windows as the Skybreak jumped. Wireburn was gone. Elisha say down heavily, barely making it to the closest chair. Lavanya glanced at him with dark, sympathetic eyes. “First time leaving your home planet?”
“Yes.” He answered Lavanya in wooden fashion.
They hung in sidereal space for a moment more while she worked out something on the ship’s navigational computer. “Don’t worry too much. Planets aren’t in the habit of getting up and walking away. It will still be there when we get back.”
Elisha scoffed. “Lady, I’m not sure Wireburn as I knew it is there right now.”
Lin’yi frowned in thought. “We might be able to drop you off on another planet after a few jumps. You could catch a jumpship back.”
“No, it’s too late for that.” He sat back in his chair massaging his forehead. “Even if we weren’t dealing with something pulling the strings of the Universities – the Universities! – going back to a place where an enforcer found you once is just asking to get found again. There’s no way they won’t be picking me up and putting the squeeze on me to find you. I guess I’m stuck with you until you sort something out with that lot.”
The ship finished a second jump and turned terrestrial again. They found themselves on the outskirts of a sprawling asteroid belt with a dim sun gleaming in the far distance, scarcely brighter than the rest of the stars in the sky. Lavanya pushed away from her controls and spin her chair to face the rest of them. “Well, we’re here. There’s enough left in the coral for one jump at maximum range, two or three of they’re short. Given how far we are from the system’s sun it will take almost four days to refill the reserve but it’s never a bad idea to have the spare power on hand.”
“That leaves us enough time to give some thought about where we want to go next,” Lloyd said. “93? Any thoughts?”
“While I am gratified you are trying to assist me in carrying out my previous directives, I’m afraid there are limits to my ability to help you chart your course. I am primarily an engineering and architect AI. My database contains a great deal of information you are not privy to but I am not well equipped to assist you in making tactical or strategic decisions based on it at the best of times. With my greatly reduced processing power the likelihood that I will be able to provide meaningful assistance is less than seven percent.”
“Then we’ll have to work it out ourselves,” Malaki said. “Our end goal is to fulfill LARK’s final directive and restore humanity’s connection to our part and Earth, correct?”
“That is an accurate summary of my directive,” the computer replied. “But whether or not it is an undertaking all those present are invested in is an open question.”
“I have been trying to prove the Earth hypothesis for almost my entire career,” Malaki replied.
“And I think I already made my position perfectly clear,” Elisha added.
Lloyd shrugged. “It may sound odd to say but to me this sounds like another trailblazing job. A big one, sure, but an exciting one, too. I’m already in and I don’t see any reason to get out.”
The three of them had answered very quickly but Elisha could tell the women were far less certain of where their thoughts were. Finally Athena sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “I suppose I should go as well. Daddy’s put a lot of time, money and effort into his genetic projects and for a long time I thought it was his next stage in building the company. Now that I know it’s more… personal I’m not sure I’m ready to be a part of it.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best reason to make an enemy out of OMNI and the galaxy’s Universities,” Malaki said gently. “Keep thinking about it. I think we’ll still be sorting out plans for the next day or two.”
Lin’yi nodded. “BTL isn’t the largest trading company in the dexter arm but we can probably hide you away for a little while if you want to avoid notice. We can find time to drop you somewhere if you want.” She turned her attention back to the computer. “Tell me, 93, if you’re specialized in engineering and architecture do you think you would be more efficient than our existing production methods?”
“Not necessarily,” the machine replied. “My processes are designed towards large scale projects. Ship building is the smallest scale endeavor I could perform optimally. The primary task the L-Series was created for was the construction of other AI around planetary cores, although units with a construction code of 42 or above are also capable of stellarchitecture. However I could create smaller scale manufactories that are 433% more efficient than those I found referenced in BTL’s archives. I would be willing to construct such facilities in exchange for your assistance.”
“Sounds like a high risk, high reward kind of investment.” She folded her arms under her breasts with a satisfied smile. “I’ve been told I should try and expand my portfolio with more of those.”
“Might be a little higher risk than your executives had in mind,” Elisha murmured.
Lavanya cleared her throat. “Sorry to be a wet blanket but I have to ask. 93, is it even possible for you to extract yourself from the Skybreak at this point?”
“It is. In fact, given the amount of raw material in this asteroid belt, I could create a new matrix here in a matter of years, rather than decades. However the probability that I could do so without being discovered and recaptured is less than one millionth of one percent. The probability that I could build another ship equal to the Skybreak without being discovered is also less than one percent. Regardless, if you wish me to remove myself from the ship I will.”
For a long moment the pilot was quiet, running her hand gently along the console beside her. Her eyes drifting to one side, distant, as if watching some kind of half forgotten memory that drifted just out of sight of the rest of them. Finally she said, “The Skybreak is a special ship, 93.”
“Shall I begin removing my core from the reservoir, then?”
“No.” She gathered herself and sat up a bit straighter. “Just promise me you wont change it too much, okay?”
“Very well.”
“Excellent.” Malaki clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly. “Then all that’s left is to choose our next destination. It’s obvious that at some point we are going to have to get to Andromeda Proxima, the construction there could only be created by a civilization capable of building an AI in the heart of a gas giant. Unless I miss my guess that is either Earth’s system or the key to reaching it. However, OMNI will know we have to get there at some point. So we have to work out a plan to reach Andromeda Proxima and land on the Array there without getting caught. Am I right so far, 93?”
“As usual, Mr. Skorkowski, you are remarkably insightful given the information available to you. The only inaccuracy I see in your statement is naming the system Andromeda Proxima. The correct name is Andromeda Terminus. Renaming the system and galaxy seems to be another attempt by OMNI to obscure the past.”
Malaki went perfectly still. “Renaming the galaxy?”
“Correct. Your star charts list this as the Milky Way Galaxy, which is incorrect. The Milky Way Galaxy is humanity’s galaxy of origin and the location of Earth. When Earth was evacuated the colonists and machines that would eventually form the OMNI and LARK networks built a jump sphere and used it to jump here. To the Andromeda Galaxy.”
The Skybreak’s control boards flickered and sparked in the aftermath of a close brush with a detonating etheric warhead. The science of the weapons was way over Lin’yi’s head but according to their AI they weren’t designed to destroy the ship, just knock out it’s systems. However after experiencing one herself she wasn’t sure that really mattered.
L-93 had built some kind of insulating mesh around the ship that diffused the worst of the detonation and kept the Skybreak’s coral from frying, so they were okay for the moment. The weird and unsettling aspects of having something rebuilding the ship in flight would have to wait. But even at a distance and with shielding the detonation had her head spinning. Even if the ship could survive one of the detonations it didn’t feel like a human could, at least if they had an etheric sense. Another thing to put on the growing pile of questions she had for 93.
“The Radiant-class has moved onto a parallel course, Lavvy,” she said. “Not sure if they’ve changed strategy or what but we might be able to slip past them and jump off planet.”
“Maybe. I can’t guarantee it, though, whatever that was they hit us with has my sense a tingling, I’m not sure I could pivot myself sidereal, much less a whole ship.” She frowned, watching Cloudie still leading the ship by a few hundred meters. “Lloyd’s Jelly friend is still with us but they’ve got a flight ceiling, right? If they get too high up they loose buoyancy even in this atmosphere. Once it’s gone we’re gonna struggle to find the fastest flight path again and that big guy is gonna have a fair shot at catching up to us again. Assuming we can get past it at all.”
“For now just keep us moving towards orbit and away from that ship. 93 said it has railguns and we’re not equipped to handle that kind of firepower even if there is a dense atmosphere to slow it down. Speaking of, L-93, are you there?”
“I am, Miss Wen. While available processing power will always be a significant limiting factor in my functioning, conversing with one or two humans places a negligible strain on it. Please feel free to address me at any time, I will inform you if I do not have the system resources for meaningful reply. How can I assist you?”
“You got it the wrong way around.” She pulled up the ship’s galactic star chart. “We need to start working out where the best place to go once we leave Wireburn is, so we can make the jump as soon as we’re far enough from the planet to effectively make said jump. Lloyd says he wants to help you find your way so the question is, where are we headed?”
“I suggest choosing an arbitrary location within 75% of the ship’s maximum range for a single jump and heading there. I should not be the one to assess our next destination so please make the choice favoring your own preferences.” Lin’yi keyed in a randomized search in the ship’s navigation database but it immediately cleared off the screen. “No. Don’t choose a planet at random, choose a characteristic arbitrarily. The distinction is important.”
Lin’yi hesitated, fingers hovering over her console. “Wait, why?”
“There is nothing truly random in the universe but that is doubly true when it comes to a computer. No algorithm can create true randomness. With enough information a computer on the level of the OMNI Network can easily narrow the most probable outcomes to three or four. Choose an arbitrary trait and take the planet that matches it best and we will go to that system. That will be much harder to predict via algorithm.”
“I see…” After a moment’s thought, Lin’yi did a quick search for titanium production and selected the first name that came up. “Got a path for you, Lavvy. Four jumps towards the core. Want to look at it?”
“Bit premature, Lin, it will have to wait until we get to a stable layer of the atmosphere before I can spare the time.” Her hands danced along the controls. “Just because they stopped shooting at us doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet. It’s still a gas giant.”
“Then just get us to a jump orbital and jump us sunward, you can review the course once we get some breathing room.” Lin’yi reached for the intercom and pressed the switch. “Malaki, what are you up to down there? You’re not supposed to leave heavy plasma guns in the hands of the injured.”
Malaki’s reply was tinged with dry amusement. “Just having a little chat with our friend Agamemnon about his family.”
“How did you get in touch with Agamemnon at a time like this?” Lin’yi demand.
“Long story,” the academic replied. “But my gut tells me he may have convinced the computers to let us go.”
“How can you possibly know that? You didn’t even know the tyrannical things existed twenty four hours ago.”
“They were built by humans, Lin, and technical experts tend to be the most straightforward and direct of us all. They may have made something unusually large here. But size doesn’t impact purpose.” Malaki pause for a second. “Well, I suppose the larger a system gets the simpler it-“
“Get to the point, Malaki.”
“I heard his argument and it was impactful, while approaching the question in a way that was strongly subjective and difficult to parse numerically. Worst case the machines will chew on it a bit. Best case they’ll let us go.”
“There is merit in using subjective verbiage to obscure an issue from OMNI,” L-93 said. “Save for an O-Series. But the impact of an emotional appeal on the Network is likely to be negligible as it arrived at its current course of action due to highly charged appeals from its own users. “
“Yes, but we don’t need a large impact, 93, just enough to tilt the math in our favor. Besides the point of the emotion is to suggest there are connections between concepts that OMNI can’t parse, forcing it to try and think like a human, something you’ve proven is extremely difficult if not impossible for you to do.”
“Why do you think that helps us, Malaki?” Lin’yi asked.
“Worst case that buys us enough time to get away, best case we disrupt the entire Network for a prolonged period of time. I don’t think we’re changing OMNI’s mission statement this way but that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile. Even if we just buy a little time it helps.”
She caught herself gritting her teeth and forced herself to stop. “I suppose you’re right. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Every second we wait is a second we get closer to jumping, isn’t it?”
“I’m just getting tired of waiting.”
881
“We need to resume pursuit,” 881 said, pacing the bridge restlessly. “I know OMNI is deliberating but their last stated goal was capturing the LARK AI and we should continue working on that task until we are retasked. That is how the great intelligences prioritize their duties. Why should we be any different?”
“Because you’re not a machine?” Tarn asked. She felt a flicker of annoyance at him inserting himself into the discussion but reminded herself that she was the one who had brought him into the situation in the first place. There was a time she even hoped he’d join the Sleeping Circuits himself. “Putting aside my own opinions on thinking machines, what’s the point in using human agents if they try to behave like machines, rather than humans? It’s like hiring a Kashron-caste then telling them they should stop building ships.”
“What do you suggest instead?”
“Instead?” He gave a toothy grin. “I’m on your side. I am Shran, Miss Luck. I want to hunt and my prey is escaping. I want to pursue – or, if this hunt is a loss I want the freedom to find a new quarry. You hired me. Will we continue the chase or is it time for me to leave? That is the human question.”
Her frustration mounted, threatening to lash out at Tarn, but the moment she opened her mouth clarity caught up with her in a wave. Her annoyance was directing itself at Tarn because he was the one pointing out the problem. Tarn wasn’t the source of it. “He’s right, Keeper,” she said, turning to 44. “I am a Circuit Breaker, here to deal with weaknesses in the Network, either let me deal with this one or give me a new assignment.”
The Keeper ran a thumb absently along his mustache, looking thoughtful. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, 881. However the role of a Keeper is patience, not action. It’s very rare for OMNI to need human input in the modern era, where they make so few new decisions and have such a large library of data to base them on. Most days all I actually need to do is report to duty and wait for Isaac to speak. Never once in my century as a Keeper have I seen a situation where acting before OMNI speaks is beneficial. They are the greatest minds in the galaxy, 881. Grant them a moment to ponder.”
She frowned. The way the Keeper phrased it brought something to mind. There were only three OMNI nodes overseeing the system and I-6 had priority over the other two, they wouldn’t volunteer their conclusions until it had reached its own. That didn’t mean the other two wouldn’t share if asked. She tugged her dataveil down from her hat, for once glad she was still in her human dress rather than in her Circuit robes, and asked, “O-5523, have you considered Agamemnon Hutchinson’s appeal?”
“Yes,” said the text on her veil.
“Your conclusion?”
“I recommend that permission to return to Earth be denied.”
CI-MN-1551, stationed at the Weapons console, leaned down to his intercom pickup and said, “M-334, have you considered Agamemnon Hutchinson’s appeal?”
The intercom clicked twice then spoke with the flat, accent free voice of OMNI. “Yes. I recommend permission to return to Earth be denied.”
881 spun to face 44 once again. “The O-Series agrees. Tell me, Keeper, based on your century of experience do you think I-6 will disagree?”
“It isn’t impossible,” the Keeper replied, settling deeper into his command chair as if to emphasize his position of authority. “And it is the node with priority. It can override the others.”
“Perhaps,” 881 replied. “But how likely is it? The loss of the rogue AI core was already statistically highly unlikely, although perhaps not as low probability as OMNI contradicting itself. Both of them together? We cannot proceed on such a tenuous possibility.”
“Your logic is sound, Circuit Breaker.” Although there was little to no difference between the speech patterns used by OMNI AIs some twinge of intuition told her she was no longer hearing M-334 over the intercom. “However I have, in fact arrived at a different conclusion from my fellow nodes. Given Agamemnon Hutchinson’s statement I do not believe we have sufficient data to reach a conclusion on the Earth question. I have remanded the issue to the Network as a whole. In the meantime I recommend we cease pursuit. Further use of OMNI resources risks irreparable damage to the secrecy of the Network. I am beginning shutdown procedures for my outer matrix.”
For a moment 881 was to gobsmacked to say anything and she didn’t recover until Tarn asked, “How long does consulting the entire Network typically take?”
“At least a day,” she replied, forcing her mouth to form the words. “Sometimes more.”
“OMNI reaches to the far corners of the galaxy,” 44 explained, seeing the bitter look on Tarn’s face. “It takes a great deal of time for them all to hear, consider and weigh in on a question. However it also means the Network can resume its pursuit from wherever it chooses without significant time or trouble lost. We will suspend our pursuit until a decision is reached.”
881 felt her fingers cutting into the palms of her hand and forced them to unclench. Then she took a deep breath, wrapped her fingers around her pivot to O-5523 and began to tap the etheric through it. “No, Keeper. No we will not.”
He leaned forward in the command chair, his face stern. “And why is that?”
In response 881 threw an etheric barrier at him and the bridge erupted in chaos.
Nate Chen Publications 