Forge of Stones

by Vasileios Kalampakas

Two steps beyond

  He woke up feeling refreshed. He sat up and flexed his arms and legs, all the time his gaze towards the direction of the bullhorns. It had been a more than pleasant change to find themselves under the shadow of the immense structure that seemed to blot out the suns quite effectively, making the whole area have a different feeling all together.

  The one thing they noticed almost immediately was the different climate. Instead of the scorching heat and sticky moisture, they felt they could have actually been back in their own world during a hot summer overcast day.

  The heat was much more sensible, and their sleep had felt much more relaxing and refreshing than before. The moisture was still a bother, but it was not as aggravating as before. And there was no night time to worry about the chilly wetness that would brew through their bones. It was an almost pleasant, almost comfortable climate.

  Even the vegetation seemed to be somewhat different. The trees for one thing were visibly smaller, and the canopy above them evidently thinner. Even though the shadow let less light through, the canopy was thinner and let even more of it through. Lighting conditions were about the same as before: a twilight of sorts that though eerie at times, did not put a strain on the eyes.

  The greenery was still lush but it looked as if it had shrank a notch; the leaves were smaller and thinner while the stems resembled those in normal plants instead of the monstrously thick greens they were starting to get used to. There was less rotting vegetation on the ground and a lot fewer dropped leaves. It almost felt like a weird forest that could have been somewhere on one of the far away lands of the Territories, like the south where it was said plants like no other grew.

  Amonas decided not to go for a little exploratory walk as he had done so before, so as not to alarm Hilderich a second time. Now that they were in the bullhorn’s shadow he knew they were on the right track and all they had to do was keep going in the same direction. It seemed only a small matter of time before they’d reach the huge structure proper.

  He would have to worry about what they would actually do only when they got there. For now, he was more than content to feel a gentle rush of air which was quite a novelty in contrast to the non-existent wind in the sunlit parts of this place.

  Water was an issue but Amonas thought they could rely on that strange hard-skinned fruit with the sweet watery juice inside. He could see clusters of the trees that bore it at various distances, and a nearby tree had even shed some of its fruit of its own volition. Amonas thought they would probably be most ripe and quite sweet, if trees worked like they did back home.

  The word ’home’ even though only uttered in his mind brought his thoughts to a halt. He looked at the ground reflectively with a fleeting sadness worn on his face. It was not just that he longed to see Celia again, even though they had not been apart for more than a week:

  It was the worrisome feeling of being unable to protect her that wore him down. He had told his kinsfolk to keep their distance from her, even if something happened to him and he would be unable to be there for her. More so, especially if something happened to him.

  As luck had brought things about he was far away and out of reach, with no means to communicate that he still drew breath. His people would probably think him dead, or at the very least running for his life, fearful of getting caught.

  With each passing day without hint of him, without a message of some sort, without some kind of proof, they would eventually silently accept the fact that he might not have escaped the clutches of the tyrants.

  If he was being kept alive, reason would dictate that they’d somehow manage to know as they usually did and perhaps hope he would still be alive when the uprising began in earnest; which if all had been carefully arranged, was a matter of days.

  But men had been known to completely vanish before; men that had attracted the ire and viciousness of the ruling scum that still chose to wear the facade of divinely appointed men of honor.

  He was just one man after all. He would not hold it against them if they already believed him dead, drowned at the bottom of a lake or butchered and fed to wild boars or roaming dogs. They had seen it happen before, they all knew the dangers and the ignominious ways the Patriarch and the Castigator chose to dispose of their enemies.

  But he could not bear the thought of lovely Celia thinking him forever lost, never there to return her trusting gaze, never more to hold her when the nights were cold. He wondered then, how did she take the news? What did she make of them? Was she drowned in sorrow, was her spirit broken?

  He never thought of her as a fragile thing, a snowflake that melt by touch alone. She was not a little woman or a hapless gal. She never did mind her own business, and she always spoke her mind. She was proud of her accomplishments, and knew her strengths and weaknesses well.

  That was though what he feared most. He was one of her few weaknesses, now that he was gone. He felt a knot in his stomach at the thought of her giving up, burying him in that little ritual they buried their dead kinsfolk with no body to say her farewells too.

  He could picture her dancing to the tune of a weeping song in his memory, and then losing herself in the hills and fields, roaming the lands like a ghost of her own self. Until her days became unbearable; until the thoughts and memories crushed her like a millstone crushes seeds, grinding them to oblivion.

  No, he thought with a sparkle erupting in his heart and his gaze shooting upwards through the canopy toward the uncaring, seamless sky. She was with child, she would try and burn the world itself before anything happened to their child.

  She would come through this, she would endure. Even if the thought of his death weighted her down, she would find a way to use it as a focus. She might even go as far as to think of avenging him. She was a fierce woman, he knew. She would be a terrible force to behold indeed; mother to a newborn, grieving wife to the man that meant the world to her. He would definitely not want to get in her way.

  The thought made him grin with a sense of pride and amazement, as well as renewed optimism. He told himself in his mind that since she would be fine, he had no reason not to do as well.

  He decided to rouse himself into action, and started off towards the fallen hard-skinned fruit he had glimpsed earlier, when a sound like a man desperately gasping for air mixed with what reminded him of creaking wooden hulls of ships made him pause in his stride and turn around to meet the source of the cacophony.

  It was Hilderich and nothing more, awaking with a clatter and a show that Amonas had never thought possible even more so in their current circumstances, without even a blanket in hand. Still, Hilderich somehow managed to give off the impression of someone who had been very violently and quite against his wishes woken during a lusciously promising dream after a night of heavy drinking. And all that with nothing but soil and fallen leaves under him to call a mattress.

  Amonas waved a hand and boosted his voice just for good measure before asking:

  “Nice of you to join the ranks of the living once more. Going to get us some of those watery sweet hard-skins, care to look for anything else while I’m at it before we move on?”

  Hilderich yawned with his mouth forming an impossible angle. For just a moment Amonas thought his jaws would fall out of place and his skin would snap in horrible ways, blood and bone spurting forth.

  Thankfully that did not come to pass but he was still mesmerized by the way Hilderich’s mouth could stretch. He still didn’t know the young curator as much as he wanted to, but he had seen enough to know that he was a indeed a man full of surprises. It’s not that he didn’t trust him or that he felt wary of him. It was just that he made him go wide-eyed with shock and surprise at the most curious of places.

  “Ehm? Hrm. Ah, the hairy brown ones you mean. The brown ones. A brown one to quench my thirst would be fine. I slept wonderfully, thank you; almost better than back at the curatorium. There was this recurring bad case of insect infestation, terrible buggers really. Never mind. Oh, and some food would b
e most appreciated, while you’re at it. Don’t worry, I believe I can get the fire going by myself.”

  “Refreshing sleep, I must say. I’ll try for some of those mushrooms but if I can’t find any, you will be the one scavenging these woods next my friend. And don’t throw all the gin in one go.”

  With that, Amonas picked up a brisk pace and walked off into the distance, not needing to hack his way through the much less denser vegetation. Hilderich languidly got up, his gaze flicking all around him, looking for an inviting bush or hopefully a bunch of fallen branches somewhere nearby.

  He rested his hands on his waist and surveyed the landscape around him. He would inevitably have to engage in a wider search than merely browse just by standing in one place.

  So he set off as well into the direction of what looked like a promising cluster of older-looking trees, their barks craggy and laden with moss, happily whistling a tune he could not possibly remember what it was.

  Amonas seemed to be well-versed in surviving skills and at ease with finding his way through this remarkably chaotic mess of a forest. Hilderich on the other hand knew his own limitations in orientation, an ability which had failed him more than once even in the simple confines of his master’s curatorium.

  So he used what he thought was a quite practical way of keeping track of his whereabouts: he took off his cloak and cloth shirt and hanged the white linen shirt on a tall yet thin green stalk; he decided he would stray only as far as he could keep an eye on his shirt. Unless he went blind or some mysterious lurking thief of the wild came along and stole his shirt, he felt safe enough to wander away in search of some hopefully less than soggy firewood.

  When Amonas came back with his sack filled with various edibles, he was surprised to see Hilderich naked from the waist up sitting next to a few piles of wooden branches and bulkier logs sorted by size as far as he could tell.

  Hilderich was sitting down on the ground idly with his back propped up against the trunk of a tree, legs sprawled nonchalantly. He looked expectantly at Amonas sack and said in a casual manner:

  “What took you so long?”

  Amonas put the sack down, laughed cordially and began picking up wood from the pile to build a fire.

  When it was time to move on again their hearts, especially Hilderich’s, were not in it. The pleasant environment in combination with their full stomachs was a major disincentive to even stand up and stretch, much less start hiking again in a brisk pace.

  Even though the ground was totally flat and the only variations in height came deceivingly from the various degrees of thickness in vegetation, it was still an activity that required some degree of energy and patience.

  In any case, all their energy now seemed to be drained from the need to digest. They had indeed enjoyed a small feast: brown nuts, some other green horn-shaped fruit with soft sweet flesh, as well as something that resembled wheat in taste and form, but was over-sized and purple in color. Then there was another kind of crisp fruit with red flesh on the inside, wonderfully juicy and marvelously mellow.

  With Hilderich displaying genuine culinary audacity mixing various fruit-stuffs together and roasting them in small leaf parcels, they had indeed made the best of what Amonas had come up with, which was surprisingly and thankfully, quite a lot.

  Amonas had joked about how sorry he was for having been unable to find the pack of boars for which the piles of wood had seemed to have been amassed. Hilderich had insisted that Amonas had been gone for quite some time and it was perfectly logical that having nothing much else to do, he would have kept picking up more wood if he hadn’t felt stiff by the effort.

  They seemed to have thought about it and decided it would be better for them to let their stomachs do some work first before they set off, so they talked at length, something which in the short time they had known each other they had not found ample opportunity for.

  So they lied down around the embers of the fire with hands behind their heads, comfortably peering through the canopy of the forest wherever they could, invariably seeing not a wisp of a cloud.

  Hilderich talked about his curator’s apprenticeship and master Olom. Amonas shared his memories from a time that seemed remote now, when master Olom was a close visiting friend of his father’s; a time when Olom had not become shunned by most of his peers and practically forced to live as a recluse and a hermit, rather than an esteemed member of the Curatoria Prefecta. He also talked to Hilderich about how him and Olom united their efforts with the same purpose of liberating the people first from ignorance and then from the dogmatic yoke of the oppressing Ruling Council, relaying to him how bright and hopeful those times had seemed.

  Amonas took some more time trying to make Hilderich picture what he had seen when he had stepped through the pillar of light and came back to tell the tale. He hoped Hilderich would understand the significance of that accursed place better than he could. Unfortunately, Hilderich seemed to be almost as much at a loss as Amonas was.

  All he could make of everything was that there was much more behind the Ruling Council than their rule of tyranny and oppressive dogma, something which eluded him still. Hilderich believed what Amonas had seen was open to many interpretations, all of them though bleak and chilling to think of.

  In the end he seemed to agree that if nothing else, his master’s demise and their current predicament had shown him that nothing’s well with the Territories and indeed the bases of their society were rotten to the core. Hidden artifacts beneath the Disciplinarium, curators being killed or driven away as if in a purge. Hilderich truthfully told Amonas that he didn’t know if he believed everything he had been saying, but he now believed little of what he had learned growing up, and that was enough to side with him not only in their quest to return home, but also to uncover what lay beneath all the lies he had been fed. He was living on a strange new world; what more proof did he need that the Law was a lie, and if not a lie and simply in error, what then of its divine and infallible nature? All was not well in their world, and Gods were not in the heavens.

  Amonas had been heartened to know Hilderich had changed his mind to see truth on his own. But their talk was brooding and soon became a blemish in their mood. He promptly changed the subject back to the happier times in their lives, and told Hilderich certain anecdotes about his late master that he might have been too self-conscious to admit himself. Hilderich had then been surprised to know that Olom was in fact a gin connoisseur and Amonas even remembered he had brought a distill of his own as a gift once. Hilderich somehow thought better of the old man now, though saving his life as he did seemed to have been reason enough to respect him immensely.

  Hilderich asked Amonas politely about Celia, having seen him reading some of her letters; Amonas was somehow reticent to talk about her intimately though. He apologized to Hilderich saying that it was not an appropriate time for such a discussion, but promised him that he would be more than happy to introduce her to Hilderich when they both got back and had left this sordid affair behind them.

  After a time period of grace that Amonas seemed to be less than averse to and once they both felt they could do so without pain and anguish from bellies about to burst open, they started off towards what Amonas had declared to be the proper direction.

  Soon Amonas was showing signs of uneasiness, stopping every once in a while and trying to feel the brush of air. He craned his neck as if the air had a strange scent about it, something intangible but yet evident all around them. Hilderich could not smell anything out of the ordinary or feel something out of place. He noticed though at some point while they were walking a tingling sensation, some of the hair in his back and hands rising as if a chill had settled in.

  Hilderich asked Amonas about it:

  “You are uneasy. Even I can tell. What is the matter?”

  Amonas puzzlement showed in his voice. He was hesitant, reticent; as if looking for the right words.

  “I feel.. Weird. I cannot put it in words. Nothing specific. But, there
’s something in the air. I cannot tell for certain. It feels.. Somehow unnatural. Even wrong.”

  “This whole place is wrong. The suns are wrong. There’s no night to sleep by. What could be stranger than that?”

  “Don’t you feel it? A reek of sorts. Something permeating the air, something impalpable. As if a bad taste is circling in my mouth. It makes me nervous, I admit. You have felt nothing wrong? Nothing different?”

  Hilderich shrugged, and gestured with his shoulders in uncertainty.

  “Nothing in the way you put it. Nothing intense. I did notice my hair rising slightly from time to time. Perhaps it’s the air, getting colder.”

  “This is not because of a chilly breeze, Hilderich. There’s something about the place. The sense grows stronger the closer we are getting to the bullhorns. Keep a wary eye and mind. This place might not be as peaceful and indifferent to us as it seems.”

  Hilderich nodded thoughtfully in acknowledgement and asked Amonas with some anxiety in his voice:

  “Do you think we are in danger? Of the immediate kind? Someone following us? Waiting to ambush us or something of the sort?”

  Amonas sighed warily and resumed walking, his pace less energetic than before. His gaze darted around him, watching for something he felt like he wouldn’t be able to see until it was too late.

  Hilderich pulled his cloak tighter in an instinctive motion, as if it could protect him and ward him from unseen danger.

  At length, even with their slowed down pace and their almost paranoid wariness wearing them down they finally reached the base of the bullhorns. They could visibly tell because the vegetation thinned out to small bushes and insignificant groves abruptly.

  In the hazy background they could indeed see a wall of sorts engulfing their field of vision. Once they were past the last few trees and plants, a trench of sorts lay there; it was mossy but clearly man-made with clear-cut lines and angles defining it, not deeper than the height of a man.

  Beyond the trench was where the bullhorns’ front face dominated the view, defying the senses in a manner none of them thought possible.

  It was indeed a gigantic thing, blocking out the suns with ease. To their left and right, all they could see was the front face of the bullhorns for what seemed to be almost miles. The horizon was almost incapable of containing its view, an immaculate black mat wall with the appearance of obsidian.

  It seemed to be shaped like a huge mount, wider at the base and narrow on top, like a solid triangle of sorts; a tetrahedron master Olom would call it, Hilderich thought. On a second thought the term ’pyramid’ popped in his head, seemingly the right word for what they were seeing. The characteristically huge horn-like towers on the top seemed to be what distanced it from the shape of a pyramid. It seemed as if it was painstakingly constructed of large bricks or blocks of whatever material it was built from.

  The wall face rose with a small inclination, the blocks forming steps that seemed to be possible to climb with some difficulty because of their dimensions. The huge horns could be seen further higher and farther away, sitting majestically atop a tall summit that could easily be as high as any mountain of the outer Territories.

  Amonas urged Hilderich onwards.

  “Astounding, isn’t it? A man made mountain. Come, let’s have a feel for it.”

  “Is that wise? Much more importantly, is it prudent? I think I am tingling intensely. You don’t feel strange?”, Hilderich said with a worried frown on his face.

  “Oh, more than ever. But this is what we have been walking for all this time. We have to know what this thing is,” Amonas replied while still gazing all over the surface of the immense wall.

  “Can we even pretend we might be able to? I mean, look at it. An immense megalithic structure in the middle of a huge exotic forest. Not to mention that it’s not unique and there are many more like it, probably innumerable from what we saw from that hill.”

  Hilderich seemed troubled, perhaps a bit scared as well. Amonas thought it was to be expected and perhaps even wise considering their situation. He cast his own doubts aside though and concentrated on appeasing Hilderich’s fears, trying to appeal to his logic:

  “Even grains of sand in a beach can be counted, if one has enough time and dedication. Focus at what’s in front of you Hilderich, don’t fret over things we don’t have to care about immediately. You’re a curator, so where is your analytical thinking? How do you know it’s made of stone? You said megalithic. If it was made of obsidian, it would at least have some shiny quality to it, wouldn’t it? This looks quite different. Ever seen matte black stone like that?”

  “I had never seen brown hairy hard-shelled fruit with sweet watery juice and white flesh before, but I drank and ate more than one. That proves nothing. Plus, it was logical to assume it’s made of stone. Didn’t think you would feel comfortable with such vocabulary though.”

  “I can read too, Hilderich. How can you know what it’s made from if you don’t even touch it?”

  “We could poke it with a stick or something, and see if it’s dangerous.”

  “It’s a wall, Hilderich. Whatever’s strange around here, it’s not just the wall. Besides, can you honestly feel serious about yourself when suggesting that a wall could be dangerous?”

  Amonas’ voice was mockingly serious; he wanted to relax Hilderich’s doubts and make him focus on finding out as much as they could about this unreal structure. He definitely needed Hilderich’s clear and precise thoughts, not a muddied assortment of insecure comments, defeatist thoughts, and morose attitude.

  “I never thought I could be displaced in a place where the suns look sick and the nights have vanished, just by stepping into a column of light but here I am. Indeed, here we both are. After that, I would expect pretty much anything in this place.”

  “You’ll never forgive me about all this, will you? Never mind that. I’ll touch the wall for you if that’s what’s occupying your mind so fiercely.”

  Amonas held out both of his hands and touched the block of stone that stood right in front of him on the first row of steps leading to the bullhorns’ summit. Nothing happened. Amonas smiled to Hilderich disarmingly, to which Hilderich nodded unenthusiastically.

  “So, the wall won’t kill us. Not outright at least.”

  “Now that the walls are safe, what do you think we should do? Any thoughts on what this thing is? A monument of some sort? Should we try and walk around it, find an opening or an entrance if there is one? Or should we climb up to the summit, to where the bullhorns are?”

  Amonas had pretty much laid out their options quite concisely at that point, but Hilderich was still skeptical with one hand scratching at his thin, recently grown beard.

  “Walking around it would take a couple of days, my guess is. We’d be searching for something we assume might exist but cannot be certain. I don’t know. The other thing that bothers me is that this wall face is shadowed, but the others can’t possibly be. That means we would be scorched dry with all that sun and nothing much in the way of making ourselves some shade. So, I have to conclude that the only viable course of action at this point is indeed to climb up the summit. We could try and search this wall from edge to edge, but I don’t know what might come of it. Quite possibly nothing. Whoever built this thing would be indeed quite an eccentric if any door would be cryptically lying in an obscure, random position. But that’s just my guess, and not a very educated one. All I have to base my conjectures upon is rudimentary knowledge of common practices and some plain old good sense. But all that’s based on a different world.”

  “Convinced we’re in another world then? That the Pantheon is a tale for conditioning weak minds and obedient slaves?”, Amonas voice suddenly became harsh, almost a rasp.

  “That’s entirely another issue. I am convinced that we are in another world because of this damn sun and all the trouble I’ve had the displeasure of enduring in this place. Besides, I’m just a Curator, and only because of chance and the edicts of the Cu
ratoria Prefecta,” said Hilderich shrugging as he uttered the last few words, careful to intone the name of the society of Curators in which he belonged now, by right of his master’s untimely death.

  “There you have it in front of your eyes, a thing that just doesn’t fit.”

  Hilderich nodded slightly in reticent agreement, before shifting the subject to the main question:

  “Well, I do. So, are we going to climb up this oddity?”

  “We are. I’ll lead on and help you when you need it. I wager we’ll need to make a few stops. It’s breathtakingly tall, for one thing.”

  “I hope we will not be coming down empty handed. Not in the literal sense, of course.”

  Hilderich was packing his cloak into a roll, while looking sourly at the height-defying summit.

  “Who can foretell? Life’s full of surprises, as you already know. Let’s hope they’ll be pleasant this time for a change. I’ve even gotten used to the peculiarities around this place, the strangeness in the air. It seems to be connected to the bullhorns. As if they exude some sort of aura.”

  Amonas’ gaze followed the slight curves of the bullhorns.

  “I thought auras were something only people gave off, and perhaps the suns.”

  “Well that’s what it feels like, I guess. It’s strange, but not exactly hostile. More like, cagey I would call. It’s like it wants to be left alone. At least if it were alive, that’s what I’d think about it.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t have a very good reason for that.”

  And with that last remark, once Hilderich had folded his cloak neatly Amonas began their long, effortful climb up the steps of the bullhorn’s base.

  The large jet black blocks, though cleanly cut and smoothly finished as if from fine porcelain, offered enough friction for a man unused to climbing to be able to push himself upwards. Hilderich felt it was somewhat like reaching for the top shelf of a cupboard. Child’s play then, he thought, only somewhat much more taxing on the body.

  Indeed only after a little more than a hundred steps Hilderich felt cramps and stiffness overtaking his aching body, especially the legs where he put much of his strength to propel himself upwards on the steps that seemed fit only for giants.

  Amonas noticed and motioned for Hilderich to take a breath for a while to relax his muscles and stretch. Hilderich’s lungs were starting to burn but he didn’t complain, just as long as they’d made some progress.

  He peered over at the landscape stretching behind them trying to make out where they had originally arrived, where they started their trek from, but he was unable. It all looked uniformly green and jarring, trees after trees after trees, a green sea under the pale blue suns. Amonas was standing a few steps above and behind Hilderich, looking thoughtfully below. While Hilderich was stretching with feet dangling over the steps below, he said with a hint of worry in his voice:

  “You know, I counted the steps up so far. You seem to be jaded. I cannot say I’m not tired either. The problem is I’ve counted one hundred and seventeen steps. If you look at the summit does it look any closer to you?”, Amonas pointed at the summit of the bullhorns without looking directly at them, but rather looking at Hilderich.

  “Uhm.. I’m not very sharp-eyed, but I’d say that they don’t. It looks like just as it did when we were at the bottom. Means we’re going real slow, aren’t we?”

  “Yes we are. I don’t know if we should go back down and forage some more before coming up again. We might actually need more than a day to get up there, it seems. And we’ll need some food with all the effort we’re putting. Not to mention water.”

  “Luckily for you I’ve kept a brown one and a couple of those horn-shaped soft-flesh fruit. They should do until then, with a little bit of economy on our part. I dread to think I’d climb up this monster so I would have to go back and forth each time I felt hungry or thirsty. And after all, if there’s nothing important up there, something like that pillar of light that brought us here, then we’d be stuck here, wouldn’t we? We’d have all the time in the world to go searching for new exotic fruit then, I wouldn’t worry.”

  Hilderich’s tone was ironic, even caustic, but Amonas thought bitterly that he was right. If their climb did not bring them closer to home, then nothing else would. At least not in any foreseeable future. He wouldn’t have to worry about provisions then.

  “You’re right, Hilderich. How are you feeling now? Stretched a bit, didn’t you? Lungs feel all better, refreshed? Ready to move on?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  And so they started off to the summit prepared only to stop for some breath and relaxation, careful not to push their bodies beyond their limits. They climbed slowly but steadily, sweat pouring from the pores in their skin. The higher they went the more they could feel the wind; sometimes a gentle breeze, other times a rough gale. The warmth of the air varied; sometimes it was as hot as it was below on the ground and at other times as chilly as they had never felt it before.

  They stopped when they needed to, and moved on when they felt their legs and lungs could go on. But the higher they went and the more time passed, it became more and more difficult to climb and their pace dropped considerably with their pauses becoming increasingly frequent and more prolonged.

  But they had made good progress in the time they had been climbing. They could see the horns clearly now rising as majestically as ever, indeed towering over them and dominating the sky above. But they had still some way to go before they reached the summit proper, and those last few steps seemed to put weights of lead on their legs and pour fire in their lungs with every breath.

  It seemed as if they wouldn’t make it and they would actually stop shy of the summit, forever perched on a jet black step of the bullhorns. With grudging determination though and the constant urging of Amonas to ignore the pain that made even breathing quite a daunting task, they finally reached the last step, where the summit lay all around them.

  Panting from the exertion and the toll on their lungs they sprawled themselves on the surface of the summit, which was similar but not entirely so to the blocks of black material they had been climbing on for what must have genuinely been hours on end.

  For a few minutes they lay there, doing nothing but squinting at the ever-present sun and breathing deeply, trying to get their lungs to work normally again. They felt almost unable to move their legs and their whole upper torso felt stiff from the tension and the aggravated efforts to reach the top. They had succeeded, but that had left them drained and exhausted, and staggeringly so.

  Amonas was the first of the two to stand up with a visibly strained effort. He tried to walk about the summit which was a large terrace from which the horns themselves sprouted from on either side, one of them casting a permanent shadow on the wide mat black surface, while the other one did so on one of the sides. He grabbed Hilderich by one shoulder as he was still laying down seemingly ready to fall asleep, and roused him to action once more:

  “Come on, Hilderich. A last bit of effort. Let’s stand at the shadow over there. It’s a bit of a walk but I promise, you can sleep later on.”

  Hilderich moaned audibly, expressing both the fatigue that had overtaken him as well as his reluctance to even lift his head in protest, much less walk someplace in the state he was in. But to Amonas’ surprise which was evident in the furrow of his brow, Hilderich managed to pull himself together and stand up, though he had pain written all over his face and creaking and crackling noises came from his joints, bones, and muscles.

  They reached the base of the shadowed horn, where Hilderich let his body go almost limp and fall on the surface. Amonas sat himself down with less violence and noticed that Hilderich had not hurt himself in any way by the fall, or did not seem to feel any pain. At least not greater pain than the one he already was in.

  Amonas then spoke with a weary, yet friendly voice:

  “Finally, we’ve reached the summit. And there’s some shadow to rest under. I’d try and loo
k around for what we can find, but we’re both exhausted. I think we should rest a while first. The place won’t go away under our feet right away now, will it?”

  Amonas grin as well as anything he else he might have said at that point was useless. Shortly after he finished his sentence, he heard Hilderich snore in his usually loud and unworried way. Amonas felt like sleeping as well. His body craved it, and his mind told him he could more than use some sleep right at that moment.

  Before he laid himself on the hard surface of the summit, he covered Hilderich with his cloak. He turned to face the other bullhorn, closed his eyes and before soon he had fallen soundly asleep.

  The first one to notice the vibrations was Hilderich. He woke up suddenly, as if emerging from a fitful sleep, having seen a nightmare instead of a dream. He could feel a throbbing sensation coursing through his body, not very much unlike a headache. It was a deeply mechanical aesthesis, as if the very air could vibrate almost visibly. As he stood upright with his senses on the edge waiting for the next sign of impending disaster, he could feel his teeth clatter upon each other involuntarily. He woke up Amonas immediately by rather indelicately kicking him in the ribs softly. Amonas was sluggish coming around when the whole surface underneath them lit up like a miniature sun lay within it, a bright white light underpinning their figures. The throbbing became a more audible trembling, a deep rumbling feeling that seemed to come from way underneath them. His surprise alerted his reflexes and with a sudden and deft move he was on his feet, his head turning in all directions, trying to establish some sort of enemy direction to no avail. Hilderich spoke hurriedly to Amonas, unrestrained anxiety in his voice:

  “Something’s happening. This place suddenly came alive. We have to do something quickly. This might be our chance!”

  Amonas was still a bit drowsy from his sleep and slow to react, but he eventually nodded in acknowledgement. Visibly a little flabbergasted from what was going on around him, he asked Hilderich:

  “Our chance for what? What are we looking for?”

  “Anything! Anything at all is better than nothing! A lever, a button, something that doesn’t fit; a mark, a sign, a sigil, a symbol! Anything that could be used as a control, anything that might react to a human touch! Anything you can find that’s not just sleek, or black or both.”

  Hilderich left Amonas standing there, trying to picture in his head what he would be exactly looking for and walked away towards the center of the surface while at the same time the rumbling grew louder and the light stronger.

  Hilderich though in a frantic state and not in complete control of his thoughts and actions, certainly far from being cool-headed and analytical in such moments, still had a knack of noticing things that stood out. The blemishes, the one piece that didn’t quite fit, the bits that were important. After a quick look at the bullhorns themselves, his mind was now working in a sort of slowed down time, where every scene in front of his eyes could be postponed almost infinitely, brought to a crawling stop.

  There, in a bubble of still time, in a heightened state of mind he would find what seemed important, come up with theories about its existence and role, its properties and characteristics, and then start eliminating what didn’t fit or was not as probable; in the end he’d come up with a solution to a problem, or a keen insight that would prove to be correct and to the point. It was a rare ability he had seldom noticed himself, and rarely gave it much heed as he seemed to not be able to use it constantly. It simply happened at certain times, as if something like fear or great necessity triggered it despite Hilderich.

  It was then that he had caught something with the corner of his eye, and had pretty much arrived to a conclusion about its significance before he could turn around and yell to Amonas:

  “Lie down! Now!”

  Amonas’ reflexes were much better than Hilderich’s and he had the clarity of mind not to question people when they instructed him to take cover, since they usually did so with the intended purpose of saving your skin. His body moved almost of its own volition and he let himself fly towards the hard surface of the bullhorns’ summit.

  As he did so, his eyes caught a glimpse of what must have been nothing less than fiery death. Amonas was barely able to see a giant ball of fire hurtling itself with blinding speed towards them, towards this particular bullhorn. There was a silvery quality about the fire and as it came over through the bullhorns beyond, he could barely make out Hilderich trying to throw himself flat against the bullhorn closest to him in a fashion that would seem rather comical in any other situation. The flaming apparition was just passing the last bullhorn before Amonas instinctively closed his eyes as if that would make it go away, and that was the last thing he saw for what appeared to be eternity.

  He only opened his eyes after the terrible sound of the sky tearing itself apart with the force of a thousand thunders or more had passed, when he could breathe once more; when the scorching heat wave above him had come and gone again in the blink of an eye.

  He thought he had gone deaf but he could hear himself getting up; the sense of sound slowly returned though his ears ringed like his head had been turned into a living bell.

  He checked around to see Hilderich and found him lying on the black surface, trying to move or perhaps stand up. He seemed quite visibly as shaken as he was himself. But Amonas knew he was alive. Whatever that thing was, they were both alive.

  It had come and gone like a God of thunder, Amonas thought. It was strange that he would think in such terms but he had no alternative to express himself by. Whatever that thing was it felt indeed as they had been nearly smitten by a fiery God of thunder.

  He offered his hand to Hilderich to help him up to his feet. Hilderich took it without second thought, dazed and flabbergasted though he was. As he did so, his gaze was fixed towards the direction of the fireball that had nearly killed them. Hilderich just stood there transfixed, looking out as if waiting for that thing to come around and finish them, as if they had been marked for death and their end was inevitably near.

  Amonas looked worried and held Hilderich’s arms trying to attract his attention, calling out his name, asking him what was the matter. But Hilderich could only afford a mere flick of his gaze, the rest of him steadily fixed on the far side of the horizon across the row of bullhorns from where the flaming thunder had passed over. Hilderich then spoke mesmerized, with grave seriousness in his every word:

  “That thing is the answer. We have to ride it, somehow. I’ve never thought anything could go that fast. It came and went in two blinks of an eye. Can you imagine that? Yet it just passed over our heads. Like a tamed star, made to fall forever.”

  Amonas looked over the same direction Hilderich was, and then looked bitterly back at him:

  “It nearly killed us my friend. And you would ride it? You’ve called me a madman before. I think it’s time I returned that remark. Whatever that was, it’s not a thing of nature and it’s not something we can use. We have to think of other ways.”

  “There are no other ways. There is nothing but wild green lush forest with mushrooms and brown ones, and this. These bullhorns. All these bullhorns only seem to exist for is what just passed overhead. It went through and through each of these bullhorns, like a cart speeding on rails. Wherever it’s headed, it can’t be worse than this.”

  “Still, even if all that stands to reason, even if this was indeed built only to accommodate that huge fireball, what makes you think we can ride on it? With it, inside it, whatever would make some kind of sense. Don’t you see how incredibly powerful it is? What are we going to do? Catch it with a rope and hang on to it as if it was cattle?”

  Hilderich grinned and the effect on Amonas was for the first time totally disconcerting, perhaps even chillingly terrifying. He thought the effect of the fiery ball on Hilderich was the loss of his wit and mind. As a deep frown appeared on his face, Hilderich spoke:

  “You thing I’m losing it, don’t you? You think I just went crazy, broke down; that my m
ind left me forever and so on. But I know we can ride on that thing. And I also know that it was designed for that specific purpose. Do you want me to explain the reason why or do you think you can come to the same conclusion yourself?”

  Amonas shoulders sagged and he took on an expression of pity, looking at Hilderich sorrowfully, as if it was the last time he was seeing him; as if his mind had parted with him forever and he was talking to another man entirely. Hilderich laughed at Amonas’ look:

  “That look on you is actually funny. Doesn’t suit you getting melodramatic at all. Now, listen: What happened right before the fireball came zooming in towards us?”

  “You told me to duck and lie down flat on the surface.”

  “Before that, when I woke you up. What did you notice?”

  “I was drowsy from the sleep. Perhaps there was some kind of buzzing sound, a rumble.”

  “There were two signs - light and sound, indeed more like three sounds. There was a buzzing sound, a hum in the air clearly audible. There was a rumbling so deep it vibrated our insides. And the whole surface was lit up thoroughly, a bright white light from underneath us, so bright it shone brighter than that damn sun.”

  Hilderich was smiling with what could only be characterized as smugness.

  “So, you are saying there was a warning? All that was for us to know something was coming?”

  Amonas sounded like he considered what Hilderich was saying quite incredulous.

  “Not just us, anyone who might happen to be on the top at that particular time. Remember we where asleep; nothing like that came rushing down at exactly when we stepped foot up here. It came at an inopportune moment, some time later. In fact, these signs woke me. And I believe you would have woken as well by yourself even if I wasn’t there.”

  “And why warn us? This thing, whatever it is.”

  “Well if something wanted us dead, I believe there would have been no warning. Unless it’s part of a well played sport, it doesn’t make sense. What does make sense though is that the signs appealed to almost every sense: Sight, hearing, and touch. Now that I come to think of it, I could even taste something like copper in my mouth, and smell something too. Not sure I knew the smell, but something smelled strange alright.”

  Hilderich was positively brimming with excitement, his eyes and face were lit up and he was actually rocking about his toes and heel.

  “You are implying that it was a sign specifically designed to warn any man? Whether he be blind, deaf, or even unable to taste or smell?”

  Amonas had cocked his head sideways in a possible attempt to see if there was something messing with Hilderich’s head.

  “I’m saying exactly that.”

  “You are full of surprises, Hilderich. It could stand to reason if it didn’t sound like wishful thinking.”

  “All this is beyond far-fetched but as I have pointed out in the past, here we are,” said Hilderich and shrugged with his arms extended, indicating the scenery around them.

  “And what do you suggest we do about that? Surely, we will have warning of when another one of those things approaches. And what do we do then? Jump at it in the opportune moment?”

  Amonas voice had a sneering quality, but he was still maintaining a conversational tone.

  “Amonas, my radical friend. Have you ever boarded a ship, or a wagon train?”

  “I cannot see where you are getting at here, but I’ll indulge you. Yes, yes I have,” Amonas said with mild annoyance.

  “Well then, doesn’t always someone announce the arrivals and departures?”

  “You are again going beyond the imaginable to imply that this thing is a vehicle of some sort. That it can actually stop and pick us up? Just like that?”

  Incredulity seeped from Amonas’ every word. It was as if he was being told he had suddenly grown a third foot.

  “Well more or less, yes. But not like that. We’d need a ticket.”

  “What could possibly count as a ticket in this extremely unlikely scenario you are proposing?”

  “I’d have my keystone back now, please.”