The walls of the gorge towered over me, as tall as any ziggurat in Eridu but made of solid stone, the ravine carved out as if by sword-stroke. The base of the ravine’s walls were closer together, and it widened onto the open sky near the top, the nearly-sheer walls beginning to slant away from one another, as if slouched by their own immense weight.
The wand felt warm to the touch as I drew it out from my belt. An inner illumination glowed from within the pale chalcedony on its tip and a subtle tremor emanated from the length of polished bronze. I cannot pretend to know the esoterica of what magi do, but like many noble-born, I knew enough to dabble in the inner arts, to be unafraid of the magus and what they represented.
For lack of finesse, I chose to rely on power, which Namhu’s wand held in ample supply.
I leveled the length of bronze at the top of one wall and bent my will to the task. I felt some of my self flow forth through the focus. For a moment, I became as the spirit of the sun: bright, iridescent, and reaching out beyond my flesh with a flush of force like blood rushed by quickened heart's beat.
My arm’s fervent shaking drew me back to my flesh. The power of Namhu’s wand pulled me like an unseen hand, drawing my arm across so that I made a sweeping flourish, coruscating light playing across the stone above. More out of fear than cleverness, I tried to bring my arm down, fighting against the tug of the wand.
I brought the walls of the gorge down with it.
Some of you gasp and murmur at my claim, but banish doubt from heart: it was as I say. No, the Kascians had no magus, no chanting shaman who covertly aided me. Ask any magi that campaigned with Eshua, they slew Madrubanna’s shaman in one of our very first battles, blasting the man’s very spirit from his body.
The wand nearly leapt from my hand. By the time I sundered my will from it, the gorge was giving its raging death cries. Divorcing myself from that wellspring of power lanced darts of agony into my flesh. It felt as though my arm was plunged into boiling pitch, as though flesh bubbled from bone. When I finally drew the chalcedony tip towards the ground, the wand burst apart in a flash of light. It washed over me and cast me to the ground as a child throws away an ill-favored toy. Agony followed, like nothing I have ever felt.
The wand and my right hand were gone. My arm terminated several inches above where the wrist ought to have been, skin charred and scorched black, curling like aged parchment.
I speak of it now, but there are no words for what I felt. Pain in ample measure, yes, and a mute sort of surprise. I think my heart dulled itself against the horror, lest it drive me into madness. Pain, hurt, agony, terror—these are words, but only pale ghosts of what they represent when I tell you of this maiming.
With ruined limb, I picked myself up off the ground in a lurch, moving like a man deep in his bowl of unwatered wine. I nearly lost my life then, when the shattered ravine walls fell into their death throes. Boulders the size of chariots tumbled down and crashed to ground with such force that the stone shook beneath me. One missed me by a mere stride's length as I stood, bounding past as if cast from a sling or skipped across a river.
I ran. To the Kascian camp or to ours, I knew not. The quaking ground nearly took legs out from under me, and I could only wobble around the raining stones, each a death sentence written in granite. Behind me, I heard one of the ravine walls shift, cloven like the hoof of a goat. The sound of it coming apart shook breath from chest. A gust of wind and a cloud of billowing dust overtook me, flinging me to the ground. Dust filled mouth and nose, stinging eyes. With both breath and sense nearly knocked from me, heaving and coughing, I rose among the cacophony again.
I cannot say where the stone that struck me came from. Only that it must have bounced or rolled, since I find my mouth absent several teeth on one side. It struck clean, though, for the world went dark suddenly, night shading my eyes while I was mid-stride.
Of what occurred after, you must ask others. I have only dim, fever-warped recollections of being dragged on a litter, of sinking in and out of dreamless slumber, time and again, without grasping the passage of days. I am told that they found me beneath a pile of stones, battered, broken, but breathing. The Kascians, I hear, were gone by then, but that my brother found a cairn at the far end of the ravine where the basin begins. I have the topmost stone here with me. It bears my name in rough strokes.
None have see nor heard Madrubanna’s remnants among their fellows. While recovering, I followed the war closely. Kascians remain, roaming the land beyond our many rivers, but the greatest bands have broken before our bronze. Clans cast themselves outward, like strands of linen being torn from one another as a garment shreds. Already, city begins to look at city with renewed suspicion or greed—I see it in your faces that you worry as much about our neighbors as about the last of our invaders.
Whatever wars come, I am not for them. The magi of Eridu worked wonders and wrought for me a hand of bronze and glass to replace the one I lost. It works nearly as well as the original. They could not do as well for my eye—see the right one, how milky and pale it is? I see but shadows and morning dew, too dark or too bright for fighting, for swinging sword or casting javelin. I may as well be blind, where matters of war are concerned.
I am not glad to suffer these wounds, but I do not begrudge them. Nor do I regret the choices that brought them upon me.
Once, worry gnawed on heart and I wondered if my brother’s way was true. Suffering and time spent recovering have brought clarity and banished doubts.
It is for you, O king, and you, priests, to decide my fate. That I leave to you, but I take for myself certitude: I have followed the Sage’s Path in word and deed and did only as Iodonna bid us all to do.
As goes my fate, so too goes yours as you accord with my way or with my accusers'. I tell you now as I told honored kinsman: the Path was meant to be walked. The ways of our foes must remain theirs and never become ours; to forgo virtue for equal measures is to aid them in disrupting the nature of Creation. We must all fail in our pursuit of the Sage’s Path but that does not mean we can do so willingly. To stray of our own accord is to stand against the harmonious nature of the Molder of Men and Clay.
I see Eshua, Lugal, and Namhu still among those who gathered to hear my testimony before sovereign and oracle. I hope that, hearing my words and knowing the truth of my heart, they will forgive any wrongs I wrought against them. If I sinned or stood against my kin and my countrymen, it was to keep them from committing acts even worse than my own.
It is not for me to say if my intent outweighed my folly. I have told you my decisions. Now, you must make yours and I must go with them.
BIO
Colton Hehr is a speculative fiction author who received his first publishing credit as a winner of Writers of the Future in 2017. He is employed by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, and is currently nocturnal. He lives in Norman with his significant other, Ariana, and hopes one day to own many, many dogs.
LINKS
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ColtonHehr
Daily Bread
E.A. COPEN
Layovers could be hell, especially in the City of Angels.
I’d been there only a handful of times over the last two decades, always just passing through, but that time was different. I felt it when I stepped out of the cab and into the street. Stale urine, burned rubber, and curdled dairy smells filled the air, the perfume of all forgotten ghettoes of modern American cities. It was the scent of desperation, of poverty. Dreams gone bad.
At the corner, a bleach blonde in torn fishnets and a blue jean skirt held a cigarette between two fingers, one stiletto heel resting on the rotting carcass of the building where she conducted her business. For a couple of tenners, I could buy ten minutes behind the dumpster in the alley, and she could get her fix from the dealer on the opposite corner. She took one look at me and decided the cigarette was the better investment of her time. Her loss.
The building in question was run-down, pain
ted grey by neglect and exhaust. A tin roof drooped in the evening heat, mirages rising from its sun kissed surface to dance in the twilight smog. Wire mesh painted diamonds in dirty glass behind chipped lettering and flickering neon promising beer on tap. Batwing doors harkened back to a time when the west was a different sort of wild, the hopeful sort, a time of Manifest Destiny and golden prospects. Now they were props placed over a tired door that’d been kicked in too many times. Two-by-fours graced the door at the cross sections and dusty plywood patched the broken footplate.
White wooden cut out lettering named the place: DAILY BREAD.
I shouldered my leather bag, plucked the cigarette from between my lips, and ground it into the pavement underfoot before checking my watch. I still had six hours and a parched throat to kill.
Inside, weary old men sat in pews shaped like stools topped with torn leather and duct tape. A pyramid of glass bottles bathed them in the neon light of their prophets named Coors, Corona, and Yuengling. Above the altar of glass, a reporter lead tonight’s downtown sermon. Protestors had taken to the streets to march on the unbelievers again. They carried signs demanding miracles and speaking prophecies of destruction. Judgement was at hand and God was coming.
About time, if you asked me. I had a few choice words for the Almighty, most of them spelled with four letters or less.
“Josiah? Josiah Quinn, is that you?”
My heart kicked into a staccato marching rhythm. Cold sweat formed on the back of my neck just like it did every time I heard her voice for the first time. Christ, after so many years, you’d think I would’ve gotten used to it, or at least come to expect it. But she still managed to surprise me every time.
Maggie was a Nebraska ten with her straight auburn hair, light freckles, gray eyes, and full cheeks. Every farmhand’s fantasy back in Omaha, probably. But then, there’s not much in Nebraska but cornfields and simple living. No one had told her a Nebraska ten was a California six and she’d fancied herself an actress some years back. I stopped in once every few years, just to see how she was getting on.
I flashed her a big smile. “Maggie Dale! ‘ow ya goin’?”
Maggie dropped off the beer she was carrying at the nearest table and bounced over to me for a hug, all smiles. I forgot all about how thirsty I was. Tell her, whispered a voice in my mind. Help her.
But I couldn’t, not and maintain my cover. She was better off never knowing who and what I really was.
I put my hands on her shoulders and leaned back for a look. “A jumper in the L.A. heat? Aren’t you warm?”
She rolled her eyes and pushed my hands away. “Nice to see you too, stalker,” she said and gave my shoulder a weak punch. “And here in the States, it’s called a sweater, not a jumper. You want your usual?”
I slid onto a bar stool and nodded. “Surprised to find ya still here, Mags. What about that big break?”
Her cheeks dimpled with a wholesome smile. She slid behind the bar and grabbed a cloudy glass to fill it with beer from the tap. “Oh, it’s coming. Brett says he’s going to introduce me to a producer soon. A real household name, Josiah. Said he liked my audition reel, believe it or not.”
Mags placed the beer in front of me. I stared into the piss-colored drink, wondering how she could still be so stupid. Of course, look at her parents. Maybe it was a genetic failing, still being young and dumb enough to believe in her dream. Give it three years, girl. See if Tinseltown doesn’t chew you up and spit you out, older, wiser, and more broken than before. It happened to me. It’ll happen to you.
It was a neon sunset. Shades of electric orange lay atop a blanket of cool blue. Airplanes raked streaks of pink across the sky like fingernails clawing at flesh while I sat on Skid Row, desperate for a fix.
I was a fifteen-year-old boy, and only two things mattered in life: music and sex. One of the two was bound to get me into trouble. Figures it’d be the music and not the sex.
It was the summer of ’95 and the music scene had lured me across the Pacific from Sydney to Los Angeles. I fancied myself a drummer. But then, so did thousands of others who were better than me. Within two weeks, I was out of money and on the street with the rest of them. It didn’t matter. Music was my drug, and so every day I sat on a corner where I thought someone might notice me and tapped with my drumsticks. Except I didn’t do it with my hands. No, not me. I was too good for that. A prodigy. I’d crafted a spell that made the drumsticks move all on their own. The gimmick bought me a sandwich and maybe some stale coffee, but little else so far. I was still waiting on that big break, and so sure it was coming.
Black shoes and dark trousers stepped up to my station, too nice to be in that part of town so close to dark. He’d be dead before he got out of the hood, killed for pocket change and fresh socks. Not that I cared. Maybe he’d give some of that change to me and I could eat well for once.
Black Shoes stood and listened to me play a minute before he crossed his arms and said, “Nice parlor trick.”
I reached out to grab the drumsticks, interrupting the spell to look up at him. He was dressed like an idiot in all black, probably baking in the heat, especially in that long leather trench coat. His hair was long and all black too, making his pale skin stand out even more. The guy looked like a damn vampire. If his money spent, what did I care? But he’d just insulted me. I wasn’t getting any cash from him. Maybe I’d take that coat from his corpse later. It’d make a nice blanket. “Drop me some change or fuck off, old man.”
Slowly, Black Shoes turned his head first one way and then the other as if looking for someone. “I don’t see a line of patrons waiting to buy your next meal, Little Drummer Boy.”
I gestured with one of the drumsticks. “Fuck. Off.”
Black Shoes grinned, showing perfect white teeth, and extended his hands above my head. The drumsticks flew from my hands to his, except when he closed his fists around them, they were inanimate slabs of wood no longer. They’d transformed into beautiful striped sphinx moths that perched on his fingers.
My mouth fell open. It was one thing to use magic to make a few sticks dance to a rhythm, but it was another thing entirely to transform dead hunks of wood into living, breathing creatures. It broke every law of magic that I knew. “How?”
The wizard with the black shoes lifted the moths for me to see them better and smiled. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”
I let the drumsticks clatter to the ground, rose, and followed.
His name was Christian Lenore and brought me back to an expensive, modern flat on the top level of some downtown high rise where he let me shower and sleep in a featherbed. I sank into it and didn’t move until the pounding of loud bass woke me well after dark.
Still dressed in my ratty street clothes, I wandered to the bedroom door and pulled it open on a party in full swing. Loud music, dark and sensual, pumped through the air like a heartbeat, alive and vibrant. Colored lights swam across the ceiling in dizzying patterns while bodies moved all over the apartment, red plastic cups in hand. I swam through the sea of people in a daze at first, until I spied Christian leaning against the counter chatting up a busty, dark-haired girl. She was closer in age to me than him, but that didn’t seem to be slowing him down any.
“Josiah!” He waved me over and handed me a cup. “Glad you made it.”
“A little hard to sleep through the party of the century.” I drank expecting beer, but that wasn’t what was in the cup. Whatever it was, it was stronger and burned going all the way down. I wanted to spit and cough, but the girl was watching so I just cleared my throat and pretended it didn’t bother me.
Christian gave me a knowing smirk and gestured to the woman. “This is Evette. Evette, Josiah Quinn.”
Evette’s smile had dimples. I didn’t stand a chance. “Are you British, Josiah? I couldn’t help but notice the accent.”
“Australian, actually. Well, I was. I consider myself a citizen of the world more like.”
She shifted closer to me, brown eyes spa
rkling. “Really? Christian tells me you have the gift. Can you show me?”
“Josiah?” Mags ducked her head into my vision. “Is everything okay? You checked out on me for a minute.”
“Been a long year is all. This Brett, he your agent?” The beer was awful. Americans and their shit excuses for beer.
Mags shrugged. The movement made her hair shift, revealing a dark spot behind her ear, an ugly yellow bruise that was already mostly healed. “He’s more of a publicist, I guess. Enough about me though. What’ve you been up to?”
My latest trip had been to Berlin where I’d retrieved an artifact for the Vatican. A bishop had been holding a relic hostage, threatening to destroy it if his superiors went public about how he abused a coupla grade school boys. The church paid me a hefty sum to retrieve the object and convince the bishop to come forward on his own. He took some convincing, the kind that left my knuckles raw and bruised.
I shrugged and leaned forward on my arms. “Went to Berlin on holiday. You ever been?”
“No, but I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it.” She smiled as she filled a glass for someone else.
“Lovely place with friendly people. Some might say too friendly.”
“There’s no such thing.” Mags reached to pass the beer to someone. Stretching her arms tugged the sleeve of her turtleneck back. Another bruise, this one darker. One bruise was an accident. Two was trouble.
I grabbed her arm and pulled the sleeve back further, revealing the shape of it. A full ring of dusky fading gray lined in red. If she’d given me a chance to flip her arm over to examine the underside, what were the chances I’d see five distinct impressions in the shape of fingers? Pretty damn good, I wagered.
But Mags jerked her arm away and tugged the sleeve down. Her jaw clamped, and she went back to work, trying to pretend I hadn’t just seen what I saw.
Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within Page 27
