“What’s our plan?” Kilda asked. She unsheathed her sword and spun it in a few circles.
“Spy, ponder, attack?” Louis answered, observing the door.
“What if they are a thousand beyond that door?” Selen asked. He wrapped a loose, brown shawl over his short, sleeveless green tunic and passed his bag over his shoulders.
“Or they may be dead,” Lissandro replied, trying to stay positive. He heard a chuckle.
“Do you know how pathetic you are?” Eliot said. “Those people are above the human nature. They will wipe you out as soon as you step inside. I should have freed them myself.”
“Shut up,” Lissandro sighed. “Your Übermenschen don’t frighten me. Selen, open the door.”
Selen stepped to the door, took out the key, and placed it on the sculpted relief. A series of locks clicked before a deep hum resounded in the whole room. In a cloud of dust and a rumble of crushed stones, the circles fit into each other and rolled to the side. Lissandro coughed and covered his eyes. Once the dust dispelled, he peered over his arm. His eyes widened.
“Oh.”
Lissandro straightened and glanced at his companions out of the corner of his eye. They displayed the same confusion. Slowly, Lissandro lowered his sword and slipped it behind his back. Next to him, the monk laughed his guts out.
39
Selen lowered his sword. He would have dropped it if he hadn’t felt the whiff of a threat in the air.
The hall on the other side of the short tunnel opened on the forest and alleys. In the sunlight, the silver cups, gilded ewers, and vases placed on the altars and low walls dazzled him. The dainty mosaics on the walls and floors were fresh and motley. Elegant, broad feather bouquets decorated the pedestals of the statues representing the Daughter of the Roses and other deities. In front of them, an assembly of some hundred half-naked persons had interrupted their ceremony. Their eyes, large as plates, stared at them. Of Ahanu, they only had the copper skin color and the dark hair. Concerning the rest of their appearance, the Nuharinni were literally children.
“I don’t think I can fight against them,” Selen whispered to his friends.
“These are no children, Selen. Look at their faces,” Lissandro whispered.
Selen examined them. Though they were small, their faces had depth and maturity. Some had wrinkles or white hair. Yet, many of the Nuharinni showed peculiar expressions Selen couldn’t point out. The Children broke their stare. While some of them ran in panic, others grabbed spears and shook the blades at them. The Nuharinni shouted words Selen didn’t understand. One little man with ibex horns around his neck stepped out of the crowd and gave orders to the warriors.
“Are these pygmies?” Louis asked.
“Some kind of small people, at least,” Lissandro answered. “I think they want us to follow them.”
Kilda grabbed Eliot and threw him over her shoulder. “We may need a translator. One wrong word, and I stick you,” she said, giving the monk a push in the ribs.
Carefully, Selen and his companions put their swords away and walked to the other side. The spears guided them downstairs, out of the hall and onto an esplanade. The Nuharinni reached Selen’s waist and were barely taller than the dog. Thus they regarded it as a ferocious beast. Selen grabbed the dog by the collar to avoid any incident. He stared at the faces again. Some had deformed skulls. Others had tiny eyes and drooling smiles.
“They look weird,” Selen whispered.
“Small people are only a bit different from us,” Lissandro whispered with reproach. He had raised his hands over his head.
“I know what dwarves look like,” Selen said, knowing these Children weren’t dwarves either. “I mean these people are weird. Something is wrong with them.”
The sandy path led to habitations. The people who had been at the gatehouse followed around them. Eyes spied from behind bushes and low walls. Amidst the vegetation, ruins rose. The façades were carved as the gatehouse’s walls had been. The stone had turned green, and roots twined on the stairs leading to the porches. Vestiges strewed overgrown gardens. Judging by the size of the statues half buried in the soil, a glorious city had once stood here. The sculpted effigies had the characteristic of the Children. However, they were noble in attitude, richly dressed with stone pearls, and their features were smooth, a world of difference from the Nuharinni fidgeting around them.
In the middle of courtyards circled by decaying columns, huts of wood had been assembled. They arrived in the middle of the village and were soon the center of attention. Women and children, the tiniest sort Selen had ever seen, stepped out of their huts. Selen was surprised to see so many people going around naked, but what shocked him was the amount of deformities in their bodies. Club feet, extra limbs, and skin diseases were common.
When the Nuharinni considered his group harmless, some made bold moves to touch them. Slipping between the spears, children poked their hands and legs. Timorous, they stepped back with a laugh, revealing their horrendous dentition. Compassion filled Selen’s heart.
“What happened to these poor people?” Selen asked.
“It looks like the whole village bathed in radioactive waste,” Lissandro said.
The man with the ibex horns faced them again. The children were shoved to the side by his warriors. Silence fell. Crossing his arms over his chest, the Child fixed them. From the ruins of a temple, a group of Nuharinni came down their way. Selen wondered if it was their elders. These were dressed with skins and bone plastrons. Their bodies hadn’t been spared either. Thus it took them time to reach the village square. They halted at a short distance. The elders yapped orders to the Children with threatening swirls from their sticks before debating together. Even among their peers, they displayed a similar aggressiveness. However, their gazes weren’t devoid of intelligence, and each time they glanced at them, Selen knew it wouldn’t turn out well.
“Won’t they even talk to us?” Louis asked.
“We don’t speak their language,” Kilda said.
“Yes, but they don’t know that,” Louis replied.
Selen understood what his friend implied. If the elders didn’t try to communicate with them, it meant they judged them unworthy of it. At best, they discussed how to get information out of them. At worst, they fixed their execution.
“Shouldn’t we try a move as long as we have our swords?” Kilda asked.
“They may be small, but we are outnumbered and would be defeated in a trice,” Selen answered.
The elders must have reached a consensus as Selen and his companions were poked by the spears up the stairs leading to the temple. They crossed the threshold and ended in another ruin. Although the place was littered with rubble, basic furniture showed that people still lived in there. Their guards pushed them inside a well-lit room. From weathered blue stone beams above, red parrots took their flight and flew out through a rectangular window. Selen followed his companions inside a cage. The Nuharinni closed the door behind him and left the place. Puzzled, he looked at the cage.
“Are they stupid?” Louis asked.
“Please. You’ve seen their faces,” Lissandro replied.
The cage was made of hollow stems bound with bark, and the door had a rotating wooden lock fixed by two sticks. Besides, no one had taken care of their weapons and bags.
“Maybe they consider we have nowhere to run to,” Selen said.
“Should we go out? Where do you want to search first?” Lissandro asked, turning to them.
“Search? How will we find what we’re looking for in such a place?” Louis sighed. “They can’t be interrogated, and this village is the last place where we will find a library. It’s the people who built this I wanted to meet,” Louis exclaimed, motioning to the decrepit architecture around. “As this one had expected as well.” He nodded towards Eliot before sinking down onto a stone near Lissandro.
“What happened to the villagers?” Kilda asked.
“It happens sometimes that a child is born a m
onster,” Selen said. “What I don’t understand is why they let them live? Let alone procreate.” He thought that the lives of these people must be such a misery. Maybe they had been tortured? Maybe he and his companions had only seen a tiny part of this place, and these were the slaves of some cruel lords?
“There are too many. They must have a disease in their blood,” Louis said. “Or could they have done that to themselves for a ritual?”
Lissandro chuckled. “No. This is only what happens when you pick your wife in your own village.” Selen and Louis looked at him. “It’s inbreeding,” Lissandro carried on. “Generations of inbreeding. What a waste.”
The dog uttered a bark. Footsteps came in their direction. An old man with animal skins and bone necklaces appeared in the doorway. Amidst his long, white hair, his face was long and stern. In silence, he hobbled from one side of the cage to the other, observing each of them with his heavy-lidded eyes.
“Our first visitor,” Lissandro said. “I’ll make sure he gets his money’s worth.” He gesticulated like a fool and uttered sharp animal cries.
The old man halted, raised an eyebrow, and looked at Lissandro in such a way that his friend lowered his head as if he were being lectured.
“I’m sorry,” Lissandro mumbled.
The man stepped near Lissandro and uttered sounds while tapping his breast. “Kowahya.”
Louis jumped up. “He is trying to communicate. Say something, Lilo,” he exclaimed.
“Kouwayra?” Lissandro repeated, unsure.
“Ko-wa-hya,” the old man repeated, pounding his chest with each syllable.
“Kowahya…” Lissandro pointed to his chest. “I am Lissandro.”
“All right. We’re not spending the day on this,” Kilda said. She grabbed Eliot by his clothes and dragged him near Lissandro. “Translate and no low trick,” she whispered near his face.
“Ask him what happened here,” Louis said. “Why is everything in ruin?”
Eliot said a few words. Kowahya shook his head, his face low. He put a hand on the cage and tapped the stem. Eliot translated as the old man spoke.
“All I know, I learned it through the archives. We were once a great civilization. The Nuharinni were the strongest and the most advanced of all the tribes, at least until the Trevaldian came. After the war against the Trevaldian, my people found refuge behind the mountains and built this city. You can see by the magnificence of the vestiges that they hadn’t lost their arts. As they blamed on the other tribes the calamities that happened in Trevalden, they made themselves unreachable and refused any contact. They thought that we could prevail on our own,” Kowahya chuckled. “It probably worked for a few generations, but in the end, tensions stirred among the people. To prevent anyone from fleeing, the gates were sealed. With time, diseases spread. Monsters were born in numbers. The Nuharinni thought they had been cursed. There were sacrifices, riots… Progressively, they lost their knowledge and regressed—” Kowahya swiveled towards the window and cocked his head “—to that.”
“Ask him why he hasn’t been afflicted,” Lissandro said to Eliot.
When the monk was done translating, Kowahya turned around and shifted his animal skins to the side. Selen covered his mouth with his hand. The old man’s spine protruded and twisted in unconceivable ways. Walking must be a torture. Kowahya spoke.
“Not all of us have brain damage, though with all I see every day, I wish I had. Why did you come here? No one has ever found this place.”
“We are here because you poisoned our people,” Louis said.
Eliot translated. Kowahya stared bewildered at Eliot, as if he didn’t understand Louis’s words. Kilda pressed her dagger on the monk’s ribs. “I told you not to mess with the translation,” she hissed.
“I didn’t change a word,” Eliot snapped back.
“You wanted to eradicate us,” Louis insisted, facing Kowahya. “You wanted your revenge. You poisoned us.”
“This is impossible.” Kowahya shook his head. “No one here…”
Eliot paused. Kilda pressed on his ribs. The monk cried. A trickle of blood soiled his tunic.
“No one…no one here has contact with the outside world,” Eliot squeaked. Louis and Lissandro exchanged looks. “The door was locked. If I could contact the outside world, revenge would be my last thought.”
“It can’t be,” Louis whispered.
“Let’s face it,” Selen said. “No one here has the brains to scheme such an attack on Nysa Serin.” He approached Louis and Lissandro. “But the monk can, and he had no idea what was behind that door.”
“The monk and Mauger,” Louis said. He scurried to Eliot and seized him by the throat. “Who gave you orders? Who is behind all this?”
Eliot hesitated. Kilda twisted the blade. “Mauger,” Eliot squeaked out of pain. “I get my orders from Mauger. But we are more. I just don’t know them.”
“I don’t get it,” Louis said. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you why,” Lissandro said. “They are a sect fascinated by the Nuharinni’s civilization. They thought they would open this gate like a Pandora’s box and restore the glorious days of the Children, consequently wiping out thousands of people. Am I wrong?” Lissandro lashed out. Eliot lowered his eyes with guilt. “And then what, imbecile? Would you have bred them or would you have mixed your degenerate genes to theirs?”
“Do you have the antidote?” Louis asked. His eyes narrowed. Should Eliot say yes, he would be hacked to pieces, and Selen wouldn’t mind giving a hand.
“Not me. I don’t know it. I was sent to spy and make you fail,” Eliot whined.
Selen laid a hand on Louis’s shoulder. “Describe the disease to the old man and ask if he knows the antidote,” he said to Eliot. “If his answer is no, I kill you.”
His eyes filled with fear, Eliot turned towards Kowahya and stammered words, waiting avidly for a positive answer. The old man nodded and said a few words.
“He says he saw it in one of his books,” Eliot exclaimed with relief, on the verge of sobs.
Selen closed his eyes. Thank the gods. He opened his eyes when Louis grabbed his hand.
“We’re getting out of here,” Louis said.
Lissandro unsheathed his sword and burst the lock open. Kowahya made a sign to follow him.
40
Kowahya led them through rooms and hallways as fast as the wretched man could move. The walls had never been painted, leaving to the polished granite stones their natural colors. Despite the humidity of the jungle, the sculpted scenes representing the people’s life and what Louis believed to be parts of the Nuharinni’s history were well preserved. Louis thought that this whole city would deserve thorough archeological studies. He regretted they were in a hurry and tried to memorize as much as he could.
“If only I could draw sketches,” Louis sighed. “Who knows how much will have collapsed until an expedition comes here?”
“I was thinking the same,” Lissandro said. He pointed at the rustic furniture. “Those people live inside these walls, but they don’t do a thing to prevent erosion or to restore what is left.” He bent over and pulled out a sprout. “They even let trees grow in the middle of the rooms,” he mumbled, upset.
“It has some charm,” Selen said. “I have a nostalgic feeling when looking at these mullioned windows. And this ceiling…” he whispered with awe, raising his head towards a dome where a flamboyant mosaic representing birds-of-paradise fell into pieces. The sight broke Louis’s heart.
At the end of a hall, they entered a chamber filled with bibelots. Louis gaped with admiration at the heavily packed shelves. All the decoration that should have adorned each room was gathered here, at least samples of it. Louis traced a finger on the basalt bust of an exquisite, young warrior. His necklace had once been encrusted with gems. Kowahya stepped towards a cabinet with latticework and took out a book that he put on a marble table. While the old man searched through the pages, Selen and Lissandro explored the concealed treasures with ch
ildren’s eyes. In his hands, Lissandro held a marquetry inlaid box decorated with white griffins, while Selen’s gaze was lost on a collection of amethyst glasses and alabaster vases.
“This is a museum,” Louis whispered. “How is it possible?” He turned towards Eliot. “Ask him.”
When he heard the question, Kowahya raised his head from his book. “My relatives have saved as much as they could through generations. First, it was to preserve art from the conflicts, then it was to preserve it from the people. When they lost the capacity to see the beauty of things, they made firewood out of cabinets and armchairs. They made clothes out of tapestries. And the glasses…” Kowahya’s irritation took his breath away. He gestured towards the window. “Those… The others don’t care about it more than if it was one more rock on the sand. Still, they won’t take it if they don’t see it. So, I locked all I could in this room and the adjacent ones. I am ashamed to have so little left. This, for example, used to cover a whole hallway.” Kowahya pointed at a long shard of a stone stele depicting jungle animals. It was so refined that Louis uttered a squeak at the idea it had been yards long.
Selen came to them carrying a vase of iridescent purple and gold as if it was the Holy Grail. “Is that dried plants from the forest around?” he asked.
Behind them, Eliot translated. Kowahya nodded.
Selen turned to Louis. His lips trembled with excitement. “Louis. There is a whole shelf with dried herbs and seeds most unknown to us. This could change our medicine radically, the whole science…”
“I know. If only we had time…” Louis said, biting his lip. Kowahya tapped his arm. Louis swiveled and saw that the old man pointed at a page in his book. On it were drawings of the plague symptoms. “Yes. This is what we need,” Louis exclaimed, nodding with enthusiasm.
Kowahya headed to a shelf and came back with two jars that he put on the table. He went to the cabinet again and picked up a large volume. Laying it on the first one, he leafed through it until he found a drawing of a plant. He pointed at it and pointed at one of the jars.
Light from Aphelion 2 - Tears of Winter Page 43
