by Erik A Otto
“Timothur said to make a dramatic entrance. It seemed appropriate.”
Paulo nodded. “Quickly, then, we must do our part.”
Sebastian followed Paulo to the stairwell. Paulo glanced back and saw that the gargoyle had frozen in place, as if a statue. It was such a strange beast. How did Sebastian control it? When would it awaken?
They raced down the stairs as fast as they could. Paulo tried to make sense of the muffled screaming and war cries through the walls but he was unsuccessful.
Two apprentices passed by, talking urgently. Then a nobleman was running up the stairs, looking frightened. None of these people paid them any attention.
During their intense scheming the prior morning, Paulo hadn’t had the opportunity to ask Sebastian about his trip to the top of the Snail Mountains, or about his control of the gargoyle. Even though he knew it wasn’t an appropriate time, even as they were both concentrating on making their way down the stairs, his questions begged for release.
“I didn’t know the gargoyles could be…manipulated like that,” Paulo managed to ask. “To pick up a man like that.”
“Now you do.”
“Why would they do that? What purpose does it serve?”
Sebastian replied sternly, “You don’t want to know, Purveyor.”
They reached the end of the staircase and moved to cross a small span of the courtyard. Paulo ventured out first.
The courtyard was in disarray. A litter of bodies lay where Timothur’s men had been. Another line of prostrated men formed from the stables to the procession, clusters of arrows pointing out of their backs. In the procession, stalls were overturned, and none of the attendants remained. Paulo watched as two noblemen were running out of the courtyard gate, only to turn about and return with even more fearful looks on their faces.
No one impeded their path, so they continued forward. Sebastian took over the lead and gestured to another exit. “Here it is. The staircase to the Holy Sanctum.”
The doorway was open, and no guard was present. With Paulo’s help, Sebastian shut the door behind them and locked it. This way librarians and some of the garrison men with keys could follow them, but no others who might want to flee the courtyard.
As they descended, the walls of wood and bone changed to hard packed earth and thick support timbers. The air became dank, and the staircase opened up into a helix circling a deep chamber. This must have been the Well, as Paulo had heard it described.
They encountered a man on the stairs, running upward. He was dressed in librarian robes. “What happens above? What is this of the infidels attacking, and a gargoyle as well?”
When they didn’t answer him, he asked again, “Fellows? Apprentices? Who is it that passes?”
Paulo and Sebastian tried to hide their faces in the shadows and walk past.
“Se-Sebastian, is that you?” the man questioned, incredulous. Then the librarian started running up the stairs, away from them, at a faster clip than before.
Paulo and Sebastian quickly turned to chase after the librarian. Paulo managed to snag his ankle, and the man fell awkwardly on the stairs. He crawled up the man’s body to put his weight on his back, then held his arms while Sebastian seized his legs. “What should we do with him?” Paulo asked.
Sebastian looked over the railing and shrugged. It could have been a trick of the light, but his eyes looked dark, menacing even. It reminded Paolo of Zahir.
What happened to him at the top of the Snail Mountains? Sebastian seemed…different.
Whatever the answer, Sebastian was right about this librarian.
Together they hoisted the man up and shoved him over the railing. “Wait, wait. Please, by Matteo’s good grace—” The librarian grasped at the railing and caught with one hand, but his hold was weak. He let go and fell, impacting violently off the staircase below him. He twirled into the gloom as he screamed in pain. The scream abruptly stopped, but they didn’t hear him land.
Sebastian explained, “He has fallen into the boggy muck at the bottom of the Well. He will be preserved, but he won’t survive.” Sebastian continued descending the stairs as if he’d just swatted a fly and nothing more.
They walked down two more levels. Sebastian stopped at a silverstone door that was pressed into a short offshoot to the staircase. “It’s just beyond this door,” he said.
Paulo felt at the handle. It was locked. “Can you watch the stairway?”
Sebastian nodded and stood guard while Paulo unstrapped the pouch at his waist and began assembling the torch. The parts had been extracted from the Brickstone successfully, but he hadn’t tested it. It would take some time to put it together, so he unleashed one of his many questions in the interim. “Did you find the truth at the top of the mountain, Truthseeker?”
There was a pause, and eventually Sebastian answered, “Yes, but not the truth I was looking for.”
“Tell me.”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Actually, I very much want to know.” Paulo allowed his annoyance to resonate in his voice. “I gave you the torch and the warming jacket because I thought your voyage was a good opportunity to learn about our world. I faced harsh criticism for doing so from the Fringe council. So as one of the investors in your journey, I would kindly ask that I get a return on my investment.”
This time Sebastian seemed to consider Paulo’s words at least, but then he said, “I…it’s probably best left unsaid.”
It was extremely frustrating. Paulo tried the torch, and a blast of blue flame lit up their small corridor. He looked back at Sebastian with eyebrows raised, but he didn’t apply the flame.
Sebastian sighed. “What do you want to know, Purveyor?”
Paulo set the torch to work on the door lock, blasting away at the metal. “Well, everything,” he said. “What did you see there? What does it tell you about our world? Can you confirm that the gargoyles bring the Red Rains?” Maybe it was too much, but Paulo felt he was about to burst, and they were all questions he wanted answered.
There was a pause, and Paulo thought Sebastian might change his mind about opening up, but eventually he spoke. “Your warming jacket and torch did help me. I don’t think I would have survived otherwise. The journey was long, so long. I walked and walked and had only my faith to guide me, to give me inspiration, only to find…”
There was another pause.
“Eventually I arrived near the top. The spiral at the center comes to an end at another bone mouth door, not unlike the one in the ruin in Albondo and similar to the one I know exists in the Great Library below us. The last incline to reach this door is steeper than the rest, and the snow doesn’t stay there like it does along the spiral, although it still finds a way to continually bluster in your face. In front of the door is a plateau. It’s not large, maybe as wide as this well here. Many die on the journey, and I think that most that don’t turn back die there on that plateau. It’s littered with the half-frozen, half-rotted remains of men, mostly priests from Cenara, Belidor, and other lands. So many come so far, only to die at the doorstep…”
“The doorstep to what?” Paulo asked.
Sebastian continued, “I took out my Fringe torch and cut through the bone mouth door, while these dead heroes looked on from their rotted eye sockets. The door was thick, and I was unskilled with the torch. I did this for two days while I lived in my tent, using your warming jacket and making a barricade to block the winds with small mounds of the dead men. Then, finally, I cut through, perhaps the only one to enter in many hundreds of years.”
Sebastian paused again in contemplation. “The hypocrisy was almost too much to bear; that I should accomplish what all of these faithful men aspired to do with the help of your Fringe devices.”
The door latch had melted away. With a cautious tug, Paulo pulled at the door, and it separated from the latch. He pulled harder, and the door opened all the way.
It was a dark room. Sebastian unhooked two wyg lamps from the walls outside the
room, and they both entered. Dust flew up, and Paulo coughed. When the air settled, Paulo could see two chains coming from holes in the upper corners of the room leading down to pivot around the spokes of huge spoked wheels embedded in the floor.
“So what now?” Sebastian asked.
Paulo picked the chain on the left first and fired up the torch again. “We cut through the chains and it should release the tension, allowing the drawbridge to drop. With these chains severed it can’t be raised again from the main keep.”
Paulo began his work, then returned to his inquiry about Sebastian’s journey. “What happened when you went inside the bone mouth doors? What did you see?”
Sebastian spoke softly, as if afraid others might be listening. “It’s difficult to describe. Inside was a large chamber, with many adjoining rooms. Along the walls were several berths—or pods—occupied by gargoyles. There were none of the other beasts; no mosqueros or ramolons. The room was built with silverstone and other hard glossy materials, and lights that would turn on and off when you pushed on them. None of these would take my water. As I was starved, I searched for food and found packets of paste that seemed edible at first, like finely crushed pears in different colors. Some made me violently ill. Others I could eat, and they kept me alive, even as my fingertips ached and blackened and fell off.
“And then in some places there were words or letters in front of these lights, and you could press down on them. With these buttons I could summon texts onto a window of eyeglass. Most of the text I didn’t understand as it was written in a foreign language, perhaps in the language of the Forefathers, but I found some written in Belidoran, or a language that was at least close enough to Belidoran. It’s these texts that I read for a long time. I learned…so much.”
“So what was this place? What is the role of the bone mouth chambers?”
“I don’t know what all the bone mouth chambers are for…but I think this one, the one on the top of the Snail Mountains, this was the Shepherd’s home—where he went after he wrote the Book of Canons.”
“Really? How do you know this?”
Sebastian didn’t respond.
Just when Sebastian seemed to be getting to something interesting, he would clam up. Paulo felt like shaking him. “Is it because the Shepherd spoke Forefather and Belidoran languages, and both were there? Or is it something that was written?”
Paulo had cut through the first chain, and the two strands clanged on the ground. He looked over to Sebastian, but he’d moved away. He was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, looking down.
Paulo moved on to the other chain. He knew by the amount of tension in the first chain that the drawbridge had been fully raised. He needed to cut this other chain as fast as possible.
“Sebastian, are you listening to me?” Paulo asked. He lit the torch and blasted away at the second chain.
“Yes.”
“Never mind about the Shepherd, then. What about the natural world? Are the gargoyles connected to the Red Rains? Remember what I told you about my theories before you left? Is there any evidence of that?”
Paulo stole a brief glance at Sebastian, trying to figure out if his body language might reveal some clue, or at least explain his reluctance to speak. His face contorted as if he was chewing on a slice of unripe fruit. “Yes, Purveyor, you were right. The gargoyles are used to correct nutritional deficiencies. They sample the blood of people, and it tells them what is needed for the Red Rains. The bone chuckers as well, but you already knew that. It’s true, the world is a patchwork of these systems, these unnatural things. But more than that…much more than that.”
Sebastian held up the wyg lamp that was in his hand, inspecting it. “Even this wyg lamp is one of these things. It’s living in a strange, sickly kind of way. But although these things are living, they are unnatural. They are like us but somehow different. These things…they are a mash up of living things, like different parts of plants and animals squished together. The mosqueros, for example, have parts of them that are insects that bite and suck blood. One part of this insect, once tinier than the tip of my finger, has been grotesquely grown and put together with another animal to create the unnatural thing. The ramolons have parts of two of nature’s finer creatures, a woodpecker and hummingbird, and also a large roaming beast I’ve never seen called a rhinoceros, but this concoction has again been perversely blown up and made into something unnatural—something monstrous and grotesque. The gargoyles are many things as well: bats and lizards and great birds. But because they are patched together like papier maché, they don’t always work perfectly. With the exception of the bone chuckers, these things cannot reproduce like you or I, or like other animals. Sometimes they just stop working, die, and dry out. On the other hand, they don’t seem to grow either. There are other systems that are unnatural that work with these creatures, like the bone mounds, for example. So yes, you were right. The bone mounds and the Red Rains help keep the system in balance.”
Paulo felt a rush of excitement. If only he could have more time with Sebastian. He could learn so much. Maybe when this ended Sebastian could even take him to the top of the mountain. For final confirmation, Paolo couldn’t help himself from asking one more time. “These systems, they help keep our world in balance, then? They help keep us alive?”
“Yes.”
“But if these…things don’t reproduce, what happens when the wyg lamps stop working, or when there are no more gargoyles, or when the bone mounds stop rising?” Paulo asked.
The link in the second chain had reddened and was slowly yielding. Paulo stood back. It stretched and ripped apart, the upper part of the chain snapping forward. The spoked wheel laden with the other part of the chain spun back and stopped with a clang.
When the dust settled again, Sebastian asked, “So that’s it?”
“Yes, that should set the drawbridge down. I hope that it doesn’t get damaged when it lands.”
“Good, let’s go,” Sebastian said. In a flash he was out of the chamber, pausing only briefly to glance up the stairwell to see if anyone was coming.
Paulo quickly separated the fatty-oils container from the torch and tried to wrap the torch in a part of his cloak. It was so hot to the touch that it burned his skin and he dropped it on the floor. He used a towel from the corner of the room to add another protective layer. With the towel it was tolerable enough, although he had to shift it between robe-covered hands to carry it.
By the time he made it outside the room, Sebastian was well on his way up the stairs.
“Will you not wait?” Paulo called up the Well as he ran after him.
Sebastian didn’t respond. He continued his brisk pace up the stairs.
Paulo knew he should be focused on what was to come—on climbing up to the roof again so Sebastian could get to the gargoyle—but his mind wandered. Sebastian must know more. He must know what would happen when all these unnatural systems failed. He certainly wasn’t being as forthcoming as he could be. Paulo resolved himself to confront Sebastian when the opportunity presented itself.
But he also knew his curiosity was getting the best of him. He forced himself to focus on the present. Yes, they had done their part, but the battle was far from over.
Chapter 18
The Commander
Aisha watched the eyes of the men around her carefully. Her Royal Guard knew to expect the gargoyle, so despite their looks of awe they kept their composure as it swept over the courtyard. The garrison of the keep, however, showed a more visceral combination of awe and fear.
The screams came, and the melee erupted around Timothur’s men. That was her cue, so she yelled out the line she’d rehearsed. “Granth has gone mad! He’s in league with the infidels—the infidels who spawned this hideous beast! We must stop him!” She drew her sword.
The garrison men around her were slow to react, but their heads began nodding as they digested the view of Timothur’s men fighting in the distance. They ran toward the melee, drawing their weapons
as they went. Some yelled fervently, as she had.
Aisha and her men stayed back. She hated this trickery, but they needed every advantage. These guards stood in the way of saving innumerable lives across Belidor, so they would have to fall. She again remembered her mother’s harsh words that fateful day in her chamber. “If someone needs to die, kill them. Do you understand?”
When the garrison men had made some distance from her Royal Guard, she issued the command, trying to keep the dissonance out of her voice. “It’s time, men. Take them down.”
Her men withdrew their bows and loosed arrows at the backs of the garrison men running across the courtyard. Some did it slowly, reluctantly. She yelled at them, even though she understood their moral quandary, “Take them down, or we’ll all die! Do you hear me?”
Several garrison men fell in the first volley. Her guard had time for another volley before the garrison even knew what was happening. Some of these men kept running. Some stopped in midstride, conflicted. Others turned and crouched, trying to find defensive positions.
“Keep firing!” Aisha yelled, while also loosing arrows along with her men. They launched another volley, and three more garrison men fell.
Aisha was hardly concentrating on her aim. Her own arrows were more to set an example. Besides, she needed to keep a keen eye on the outcome of the melee near the southern battlements. She managed to catch sight of the Conductor fleeing with two others through the procession to the main keep building. Nobles yelled or grabbed at the Conductor, but he was ignorant to the cries for help and desperate inquiries of the rabble. She paused before fleshing her next arrow to ensure she caught sight of which courtyard exit he used. He was heading toward the main keep staircase—returning to his chamber.
There had been a lengthy debate about what Aisha’s objective should be. Timothur had at first been adamant that she lend her full support for the run on the gatehouse, but the Purveyor, Sebastian, and even Hella believed the Conductor was a more important target. Sebastian claimed he could be a traitor, in which case he would be quick to react and might sabotage the keep defenses permanently. In that case, her goal would be to eliminate him. The others believed that if he could be convinced of the threat, he might call an end to the hostilities, and if they could protect him, then he would be an important public figure to mend Belidor after the Cenarans came. Perhaps he would even pardon the infidels.
