Shattered Past

by Lindsay Buroker

  “That would happen to me a lot if I studied rocks for a living.” Kaika thumped her on the shoulder, a sign that she was teasing, Lilah assumed.

  “I can see where it wouldn’t be as exciting as blowing up rocks.”

  “Exactly.” Kaika remained crouched beside the tarp, her eyebrows lifted. “Can I help with anything?”

  Temptation teased Lilah’s tongue. Maybe she could ask for just a few tidbits about Vann, not necessarily to encourage gossip, just to gain more information so she could make a logical and rational decision about him. Maybe it was her imagination, but Kaika almost seemed to be offering that.

  “Professor?” Vann called from within the tunnel, his voice muffled by the walls.

  “Maybe later,” Lilah said and stood, half-relieved he had called in time to squelch her curiosity. What would he think if he knew she was out here asking questions about him? She headed to the entrance of the tunnel, wondering what Vann and Bosmont had found to talk about back there for so long. She peered into the gloom. “Yes?”

  “Will you join us?” Vann asked. “And bring a lantern?”

  “Yes...” Her curiosity roused, she hurried to find a couple of lanterns and light them. They might not be able to return to the outpost for more equipment easily, but the new soldiers had brought quite a bit with them, including food and light sources.

  She almost grabbed her hunting rifle, but that was silly. What could she possibly need to worry about in a little stub of a tunnel?

  With a lantern in each hand, Lilah headed into the passage. In the beginning, the squarish tunnel showed signs of tidy machine-led excavation, with the walls shored up by beams at regular intervals. That stopped about a third of the way in, where someone had dug a hole in the wall. Perhaps the first fossil had been found at that point? Beyond that, the sides of the tunnel were irregular and hadn’t been shored up. Rubble littered the ground. Had the thieves Vann had spoken of extended Captain Bosmont’s passage?

  The shadows lay thick at the back, and she was more than halfway down the tunnel before Vann and Bosmont came into sight. They were prodding something along one stone wall. Had they found another fossil?

  Vann waved for her to join them, stepping back to make room for her. He pushed Bosmont back, too, so she could see the section of wall that they had been examining. The chiseled rock of the tunnel came to an end only a few feet beyond them, several large boulders blocking the way. Lilah handed Vann one of the lanterns and kept the second one, lifting it toward the wall.

  Everywhere else, the tunnel was composed of the same granite they had dealt with outside. Here, a smooth gray stone reflected the flame of her lantern. She slid a hand along what felt like glass under her fingertips.

  “Oh,” she said, a memory popping into her mind. “I’ve seen this before.”

  “Good, because I haven’t,” Bosmont said.

  “Nor have I,” Vann said, “but I don’t spend a lot of time looking at rocks. What is it, Li—Professor?”

  Lilah smiled at the slip. It wasn’t the first time. She should have invited him to use it, since he had given her his.

  “A Referatu tunnel,” she said.

  “Witches,” Vann snarled and spat.

  His vehemence surprised her, especially since whoever had used magic to mold and shape the old stone wall had likely lived hundreds, if not thousands of years earlier. But he’d made it clear before that he didn’t like magic. It was, she supposed, the typical Iskandian response. Somewhat familiar with Referatu history, Lilah knew that most sorcerers in the past had been helpful people rather than evil souls. A few had gone rogue, but mostly, fear and superstition had turned them into something the common man feared. There were countless tales of witch drownings from centuries past, and the newspapers sometimes mentioned recent incidents, too, especially out in rural areas. She admitted a hint of disappointment at Vann’s stance. For some reason, she had thought him someone who wouldn’t give in to superstition, perhaps because he was so casual about this supposed curse originating with the fossils.

  “Huh,” Bosmont said. Surprisingly, he was the indifferent one. “So that’s what one of their tunnels looks like before it collapses?”

  “I helped with an excavation of one of their ancestral homes along the eastern cliffs in Mindovia—there used to be a dragon rider outpost in the caves along the ocean. It was quite interesting to see some of their ruins, though the valuable artifacts had long ago been pillaged.” Lilah patted the wall. “Similar construction style.”

  She ran her hand along the gray glassy stone until it halted, the tunnel ending in more granite boulders, boulders that had fallen from the ceiling sometime in the past. It was almost as if someone had intentionally collapsed this tunnel.

  “Oh,” she said, a new realization coming over her. “Is this...” She blinked and stared at the men. Would they know? They must. “Was this mountain the last Referatu stronghold? Erakusuth?”

  Vann stared at her as if she were speaking gibberish.

  “One of my historian colleagues would know more about it, but a few old books point to it being in the Ice Blades. Of course, most books with information on the Referatu have been burned over the years by those who feared anything to do with magic—” she tried to keep the judgment out of her tone as she spoke, noticing that Vann’s expression remained quite icy, “—but our university has managed to preserve a couple over the years.”

  “This is where Sardelle came from,” Bosmont said. “She’s that, I think. Refer-whatever. A sorceress.”

  “Well, the last of the Referatu were wiped out three hundred years ago,” Lilah said, “so she couldn’t be one of them, but—”

  “No, she really is. She was—oh, I forget what it was called. But I was here, working in the outpost, when she was found. She’d been in some magical sleep for three hundred years. We found a book with her picture in it from back then. She was the last of her people who survived some kind of secret invasion and attack that brought down the mountain and crushed everyone inside. I guess it was just luck that she survived.” Bosmont rubbed his head. “I don’t think anyone ever told me how. General Zirkander was here as the commander then. Had someone less, uhm, open-minded been in charge—” he was wise enough not to look at Vann, but his gaze did momentarily slide in that direction, “—she probably would have been killed. Good thing she wasn’t, as she helped us fight off a nasty Cofah shaman.”

  Lilah listened as Bosmont spoke, enthralled by this unexpected source into a part of history that had been lost by time and obfuscation. “So... the military has always known the Referatu were here? And that’s why they—you—claimed this mountain and started mining? To find old Referatu artifacts?”

  That was surprising, but maybe the army had thought they could use some of the old magical items as weapons. Still, wouldn’t the soldiers have had as much fear and hatred toward magic artifacts as the common Iskandian subject?

  “Not sure how it all started, ma’am,” Bosmont said, “but the mines are here because of the, uhm. Is it all right to tell her, sir?”

  “Probably not, but she’ll figure it out on her own, anyway, I suspect,” Vann said.

  Lilah frowned at his comment, and he added, “It’s supposed to be top secret,” by way of explanation.

  “I signed a non-disclosure agreement before coming up here,” Lilah said.

  Bosmont shrugged. “Good enough for me. Usually, nobody gets to know what’s in this mountain except the soldiers stationed here and the miners, and the miners don’t ever leave. It’s a death sentence for them. The soldiers... well, I guess someone comes after you later, if you blab. It was a good secret for a long time. This is where the energy sources that power the military dragon fliers come from.”

  Lilah thought of her ride out here with Sleepy. She distinctly remembered that glowing crystal up in the cockpit.

  “So,” she reasoned, “they’re some tool that the Referatu made with magic in great enough quantity that we’ve found hundreds o
ver the years, and early on, some team in the military science department decided they weren’t so disturbed by magic that they couldn’t find a way to use them as power sources? They hooked one up to what must have been a prototype flier at the time and found that these devices could power the craft? Then the army set up the mines, keeping it all a secret so that our enemies wouldn’t discover the place and try to take the power sources for themselves?”

  “That’s about what I reckon, ma’am,” Bosmont said. “And the rumor I heard is that they were originally lamps.”

  “Lamps? Ridge is flying around in an aircraft powered by a lamp?”

  “That’s what I heard, ma’am. Also heard that we inadvertently set up our outpost and started our mine shafts on the back side of the mountain. The witches had their headquarters on the front. We found some power sources back there, sure, but apparently this—” Bosmont waved to include the area under their feet and above them, “—is closer to where their front door was. Actually, that’s a couple of miles that way.” He pointed even further from the direction of the outpost. “But that was crushed when the mountain was blown up. Er, blown up the first time, three centuries ago. We blew it up again, the back side, a few months ago, trying to trap a dragon.”

  “Soldiers like to blow things up,” Lilah commented, trying to gauge what Vann thought of the story. He wasn’t speaking, and she didn’t know if that was because Bosmont had been here longer and knew the tale better, or he just loathed all this talk of sorcerers and magical artifacts.

  “Yes, ma’am. Blowing things up, shooting them, it’s our job. Captain Kaika was the one who rigged the explosions that were supposed to trap the dragon, an evil dragon that’d been terrorizing the fort and some villages in the foothills. And that’s why the shafts under the outpost are still an unholy mess. That mess is a big part of what motivated us to try and make a side incursion here. Figured we’d only be dealing with one layer of collapsed mountain and it might be easier to find more power sources.”

  “The collapse from three hundred years ago.”

  “Yes. Soldiers of the time did it, according to Sardelle, though I don’t care to believe that supposition, ma’am. As much as we like to blow things up and shoot things, we aren’t monsters. Sardelle said there were hundreds if not thousands of her people in the mountain when it happened. I don’t know many that would sign up for mass genocide, even if witches were involved.” Bosmont looked to Vann, perhaps silently asking for confirmation. “Anyway,” Bosmont continued when Vann did not speak, “Sardelle said she was busy running to some stasis chamber after the alarm went off, and she couldn’t know for sure who was responsible for the attack, just that nobody else made it to those chambers, and everybody got flattened.”

  “Thus ending the Referatu presence in Iskandia,” Lilah murmured, “if not the world.”

  She had read hypotheses on what had happened to the magically inclined people before, but the one book she’d chanced across on the topic had not mentioned the specific location or who had been responsible. In fact, the author had suggested that a disease wiped out the Referatu, a plague delivered by the gods as punishment for using magical powers to harm others. The prejudice and fear toward sorcerers had been a very real thing, even back when some of them had been working for the throne.

  “Bosmont,” Vann said, “finish pulling out all of the fossils, and then I want this wall down.” He pointed at the jumble of granite at the end of the tunnel. “We’ll see if there are any witch tunnels, crushed or intact back there, and get as many crystals out as we can while we’re here. That’s our job, not standing around and speculating about the past.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bosmont said as Vann walked out without another word.

  Lilah watched his broad back as he strode away, realizing with a jolt that the pommel of that sword was glowing a faint green. Magically. How could a man who loathed magic and witches—and who hadn’t objected to the idea of genocide when it came to them—justify walking around with a sword that glowed?

  She shook her head and turned back to the smooth gray wall before following Bosmont out. Speculating about the past might not be their jobs, but it definitely was hers. A three-hundred-year-old mystery might not be in her usual repertoire as a paleontologist, but since none of her Post-Dominion-studying colleagues were along, she would do her best to find out what had happened here, and perhaps what had happened back then. If she found some actual evidence, she could even write a paper.

  Was the world ready to know what had happened to end a race of people? She wondered.

  Chapter 8

  Vann pushed rocks around, clearing room for Captain Kaika, who whistled cheerfully as she set explosives against the granite at the end of the tunnel.

  “You’re just going to blow this open, right?” he asked, rolling a boulder out of her way. “Not bring down this tunnel and everything that might be back there.”

  “What’s back there is probably just more rocks.” Kaika pulled a fuse out of one of the pouches on her utility belt.

  “Probably, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I’m not using charges designed to collapse the mountain again, I assure you. As to the tunnel, I’m reasonably sure the section Bosmont and his team hollowed out can withstand some explosive attention.” Kaika waved toward the front of the passage, the part reinforced with beams and posts. “This back half is a mess. More of it may fall down, but we have Boxcar and his thick neck to clear the rubble.”

  “It’s me and my thick neck that are clearing things for you right now.”

  “That’s your choice, sir. You seem unable to sit still for more than two minutes without hurling something heavy around.”

  It was more that Lilah had been pursing her lips in disapproval at him since Bosmont had shared the story about the witches getting crushed, and Vann wanted an excuse to avoid her. What had she expected him to do? Shed tears for people who had died three hundred years ago? People who preferred using magic to more honorable means of dealing with problems? Perhaps he should have tried harder to keep his thoughts to himself, but he hadn’t expected Lilah to be some... witch sympathizer. Bosmont didn’t seem to care one way or another about witches, and Vann could accept that, but to be sad that the dreadful people had been taken from the world? He couldn’t abide such thinking, not after what he’d endured at the hands of someone with that kind of power.

  All he said to Kaika was, “I can sit still for five minutes at a time.”

  “I’m sure that’s why I always find you standing at your desk to do paperwork.”

  Vann pushed another boulder out of her way, heaving with his muscles, enjoying the sensation of physical exertion. He did hate the desk. The paperwork didn’t bother him so much, as long as he didn’t have to spend an entire day at it, since he liked having the power to keep things orderly, but he hated what came with the paperwork, being responsible for hundreds of men, men who always had some complaint or another or some ridiculous request. He’d had three requests for leave come in the day before, as if this was the kind of duty station where one could hop on a train for a ride home for the holidays.

  “What do you think of Professor Zirkander?” Kaika said, kneeling to attach her fuse to a charge.

  “Don’t say that name.”

  “Professor Lilah then.” She grinned back at him.

  “I don’t think anything of her.”

  Such a lie. Even if she was a witch sympathizer, that couldn’t keep him from stealing glances at her backside whenever he walked past while she was bent over her work. And the front side was even better. Why did she have to be such an attractive woman? It would have been much easier to ignore a homely girl, but no, he kept having fantasies of undressing her and getting a much better look at all of her sides. Even if she had been homely, he might have thought of her. How many women had he run into in his life that could name the eras the weapons in his collection came from? Not many men could do that. She wasn’t anything like the usual wom
en he met, other soldiers and the girls who worked in the bars and brothels near the army fort.

  He never had trouble finding company, but women—those kinds of women—always seemed to think of him as someone to have fun with for a night, or in the case of the soldiers, as someone to date briefly on a dare. Nobody ever had marriage in mind or even a future. He’d gradually come to accept that his demeanor was too off-putting. People liked to ride the beast now and then. Nobody wanted to go through the effort of learning how to live with it.

  Now and then, he wondered what it would be like to have someone to rant to, so he didn’t always have to turn to the gym to take out his anger. He hadn’t been so angry all the time when he had been younger, when he’d been sent out on missions alone or on small teams. A lot of his perpetual frustration with life had come with the responsibility of more rank and of having to command. And teach. Gods, he hated the teaching. It amused him to think that Lilah did too. He didn’t know what he would do—what he would be qualified to do—if he left the military, but wondered what she would think if he showed up at her classroom door someday in civilian clothes and asked her to go on a date.

  Kaika laughed. “You’re thinking of her right now, aren’t you?”

  He stared at her, the tunnel coming back into focus around him. “You made me.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “It’s moot, anyway. She’s married.”

  “Is she?” Kaika asked. “Hm, you might want to check with her about that. I got the impression that was no longer the case.”

  “Oh?”

  Kaika shrugged. “Look, it’s none of my business. I’m just curious since you seem... calmer out here. Less gruff. Are you trying to impress her by not yelling at anyone?”

  He hesitated, remembering that he had curtailed a few imminent diatribes because of her presence. “I thought the way to impress a woman was by walking around with your shirt off.”

  “You do do that well.” Kaika gave him a leer that would have been more flattering if she hadn’t been giving Bosmont a similar one earlier.