Oracle of Delphi

by James Gurley

  The two-day rest had allowed their bodies to recover somewhat from the long journey. After a half hour’s delay to repack their loads, they set out once more. Tad’s pack felt a little lighter and his steps a little springier, but he knew the feeling would quickly pass. By late afternoon, Corycia broke through the clouds, at first washing the land in its warm golden light, but within hours baking them with its unrelenting heat. They trudged onward with no shade or respite from the sun. Walking became a routine with no thought given to the movement of each laborious step. Tad’s mind wandered to pleasant days in Delphi with Sira or to young King Karal, both now as lost to him as if they had been merely mirages of the dry parched plains. Ket’s soft whistle brought him out of his trance. When he looked up, he gasped.

  31

  THE DARK WALL

  A DARK WALL, A SHARPLY DEFINED SHADOW MARCHING across the plain, blocked their path. It reared thirty meters above them and continued uninterrupted in both directions as far as they could see. They saw no obvious markings, doorways or windows. In fact, the wall was as seamless as if cast in ebony glass in one massive, flawless piece.

  “What do we do now?” Tad asked.

  Ket ignored him. He dug through his pack for a small box with a glowing screen, walked up to the wall, and ran the box along its surface.

  “It’s solid,” he announced. “I think it’s some kind of acrylic crystalline compound.”

  Tad was incredulous. “Plastic? How could anyone make such an object from acrylic? It looks like it has been here for ages.”

  “It is not any kind of acrylic with which I am familiar. It is much denser and seems to be composed of a single crystalline matrix.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Ket looked at him and smiled. “It means it is composed entirely of one type of very stable molecule with no isotopic degradation. It could have been here for millennia or placed here a just few moments ago.”

  Tad looked at the wall. “For what purpose?”

  Ket shrugged. “To keep something out.”

  “Or in,” Daret suggested darkly.

  Either idea made Tad’s stomach queasy. “Do we turn back?”

  Ket’s eyes narrowed. For a moment, Tad thought Ket was going to yell at him. Instead, he went back to his examination of the wall. “No, we find a way beyond it.”

  Tad considered their options. There was no place to secure a rope to climb it, or footholds to scale its smooth surface. Certainly, they could not dig under it. Going around it could prove a long and possibly equally fruitless endeavor.

  “It casts no shadow,” Lousa exclaimed, her voice filled with a mixture of wonder and terror. She stared at the wall as if mesmerized by it. “It is as smooth as glass, but we cast no reflection in its surface. It hides the sun, yet lets the rays pass through unhindered.” He moved her arms. “I have three shadows.”

  Her words ignited a fire in Tad’s mind. He grabbed his head with both hands, dropped to his knees, and moaned at the pain. King Karal’s words exploded from his mouth,

  Beyond a wall of frozen night

  Shadows cast by triple light

  But know this now before you leave

  A friend you trust will soon deceive.”

  Lousa rushed to him. “What’s wrong?”

  He could not answer. He fought for breath as the king’s words threatened to smother him.

  “It is no product of any known race,” Ket continued, not noticing Tad’s distress. “None of our civilizations at their peaks could have produced this.”

  In the part of his mind not burning from the words, Tad realized that Ket saw the wall as a wonder of science, feeling none of the trepidation that its mysterious presence produced in him, but then Ket had not heard King Karal’s prophecy.

  “It is a product of the Dark,” Daret said, voicing Tad’s deepest fear. “This is no human made thing. No thinking mind like ours could conceive of it.” He set down his pack and sat on it, staring at the wall as if expecting it to come alive at any moment.

  “Nonsense,” Ket said. “The Dark is a force of nature. We have proven that much, at least. Sentient beings, perhaps unlike us, but sentient nevertheless, created this, this construct.”

  “Father!” Lousa screamed, finally breaking through Ket’s single-minded examination of the wall. “Tad!”

  Ket stood and stared at Tad, but Daret rushed to his side and helped him to his feet. The burning in his mind had abated, but the implications remained – betrayal, but by who against whom?

  “Are you all right?” Daret asked.

  Tad nodded. “It was just seeing the wall. I guess it was too overwhelming.”

  Daret stared at him as if suspecting more to Tad’s collapse, but he let the matter drop. Seeing that Tad had recovered, Ket continued his monologue about the wall’s alien builders. The idea of a race capable of constructing an artifact such as the wall frightened Tad even more than the wall itself.

  “But what purpose does it serve?” he asked.

  Ket continued to study the wall as he spoke. “Our instruments have not detected it from space, nor have our telescopes picked it up. It appears to be invisible except in certain frequencies, such as a small portion of the visible light spectrum. As for its purpose, I believe it is a barrier designed to keep the effects of the Dark confined to the area we know as the Tortured Land.”

  “But no one who has come back has ever reported seeing it,” Tad protested. “How could they miss it?”

  “Perhaps they went by a different route, or the structure is not always visible or solid. This is a question I cannot yet answer.” He eyed Tad intensely. “Did the Plin never mention such a wall?”

  Tad shook his head. “Never.”

  Rather than showing defeat, Ket’s face bore a look of determination. He switched instruments and again scanned the wall, frowning as he read the results. After nearly an hour had passed, he stopped.

  “It appears that the wall is solid enough, though it is possible an opening is here, just not visible.” He began to walk along the wall, brushing one hand against its surface. After a hundred meters, he walked back.

  “Nothing that way,” he announced. Fifty meters the other direction he stopped. “Here is something odd.”

  Tad went to him. The wall looked no different, but the device Ket held hummed loudly. “What does that detect?”

  “Energy patterns, one I have not seen before.”

  Tad touched the wall and jumped back as it rang out in a deep resonate tone, like a large bell.

  “What did you do?” Ket asked, excited. “The meter went wild.”

  “I just touched it.” Tad was mystified. The tone was familiar and, though he had felt nothing but the solid wall, he sensed that something significant had occurred.

  Ket placed his hand experimentally in several places, but nothing happened. “Touch it again,” he instructed Tad.

  Reluctantly, Tad obeyed and held his hand there. This time, the tone continued for several seconds and the wall began to vibrate, its ebony surface rippling like the disturbed waters of a dark pond. Suddenly, he began to fall. He felt a slight tingle as he fell into and through the wall and ended up prostrate on the ground on the opposite side. He felt a momentary twinge of panic at his separation from the others.

  “Can you hear me?” Ket yelled. His voice passed through the wall unhindered.

  Tad fought to calm himself. He got up and dusted himself off. “Yes, just fine,” he replied. The wall was there just as it had been on the other side. Taking a deep breath, he stepped back through the wall, feeling only the slight tingling sensation once again. The wall seemed to have no depth. He was on one side, and then immediately on the other side. Ket stared at him for a moment; then stepped through the wall himself.

  “It must be only a single molecule thick,” he called from the other side, invisible. “It is more a veil than a wall. I don’t know why it responds to your touch alone, but we should take advantage of this moment. Daret, gather our su
pplies and bring them here immediately.”

  Tad started at Ket’s description of the wall as a veil. Can it be part of the Veil? He wondered. Is it a splinter of the force that nearly destroyed Charybdis and Scylla? He shuddered at the thought.

  Daret shook his head slowly at Ket’s command, but moved to obey. Lousa stared at the place her father had disappeared. She glanced at Tad with such a look of horror that he thought she was going to run back the way they had come.

  He went to her and took her hand. “Come,” he urged gently. “I’ll go through with you. I felt nothing.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded, but the look of dismay on her face did not diminish. In fact, as he stepped through the wall, he felt her pulling against him. He stood there a moment, both inside the wall and outside it, until she relented and followed him through. As she emerged, she buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around him. They remained embraced for several long moments. Tad did nothing to dissuade her. Her warmth excited him. Her odor evoked memories of the night on the Monastery grounds in the moonlight. Finally, she released him, opened her eyes, and smiled at him.

  “Thank you,” she whispered,

  From the other side, the wall looked no different, but the land had changed significantly, as if instantly transported to another realm of existence. What had been a flat, desolate plain on one side became a jumbled pile of broken earth melted like wax and sculpted by some demented blind artist. The proportions were wrong in ways Tad could not quite define. Carefully climbing atop one ridge of glassy, half-molten boulders, he pulled out his oculars and scanned the distance. He stood there in shock. For many kilometers ahead of him, ridge after rocky ridge rose up before them, frozen ripples in the earth. They curved away in both directions, leading him to believe that they emanated concentrically from some hidden central point like a gigantic bull’s-eye. Ket climbed beside him, followed by Daret. Without speaking, he handed Ket the oculars.

  Staring through the lens, Ket slowly shook his head. “We are looking at an impact zone, but what may have struck here I cannot begin to guess. There is no rubble, as one might expect from a meteor strike. It is all welded together, is as if the earth were molten before something solid struck it slowly, producing only ripples but no cataclysmic effects.”

  “A piece of the Dark struck here.”

  They looked at Daret. His eyes brimmed with tears. Tad had never seen such emotion from a Saddir.

  “Can you not feel it,” he continued in a somber tone. “We are now in the Tortured Land. I can almost hear the earth screaming in agony at what it has suffered.”

  Tad opened his senses as Simios had taught him and almost collapsed as the un-rightness of the place struck him like a heavy blow. He felt sick to his stomach as wave after wave of torment crashed into his awareness. He closed his eyes to shut it out, save himself. When he opened them, he was lying at the bottom of the ridge with Ket and Lousa staring down at him.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Lousa spoke. “You screamed and collapsed. My father and Daret brought you down. What happened?”

  Tad sat up. The queasiness was gone. “I … I don’t know. I tried to sense the land like the Plin taught me and it overwhelmed me, I guess.” He looked at her. “This place is all wrong.”

  Ket held out an instrument. “You are right. There are minute gravity variations that come and go in pulses. They are almost insignificant as far as our bodies are concerned, but they should not be possible.” He looked at Tad and frowned. “And you felt these? How?” Before Tad could explain that his mind could see the strange, twisted electromagnetic field, Ket swung around with his instrument. “There are energetic magnetic fluctuations, as well as an increase in background cosmic radiation. I believe … Strange.”

  He stopped speaking and dropped the instrument he was holding as it began to glow. A few seconds later, it discharged like a battery, throwing sparks into the air, reminding Tad of Mage light sprites. The smell of ozone and burnt plastic surrounded them.

  “If I had been holding that…” Ket did not finish. There was no need. Tad looked at the scorched earth surrounding the now molten device and knew that the energy discharge would have been sufficient to kill him.

  “Captain Winset described this phenomenon to me,” he said. “It is why there is little electrical use in Valastaria.”

  “I have heard of it,” Ket agreed. “Usually, there is sufficient warning, like a building static charge, to avoid it. This time, however, I simply felt it growing hot.”

  “We should avoid the use of any of our electronic equipment unless absolutely necessary,” Daret suggested. He now seemed recovered from his earlier emotional outburst. His face was as stolid as ever.

  “But our research,” Ket protested.

  “It will do little good if no one is alive to return with our findings,” Daret replied.

  Ket relented. “You are right. We will be more discriminate in its use. Perhaps farther from the wall, it will be safer.”

  As if Ket’s words were the cue to start out, they all picked up their packs and began walking, picking out the safest path among the half-molten rocks. The journey was reminiscent of crossing the gouged plains, moving endlessly up and down the intervening ridges, but here the very ground felt different, as if rejecting the tread of their feet. Tad knew that the ground was solid, but his mind could not convince his feet. It felt spongy, unsubstantial, as if with the next step his foot might pass through the ground completely and plunge to the molten heart of the planet. It was disconcerting. He could see that the others felt it too.

  After a few hours, he noticed something else just as disheartening.

  “The suns have barely moved since we crossed the wall. Corycia should be low to the horizon and Cleodora set entirely, yet both are as they were before. By them, I would judge it to be late morning, but I know it to be much later.”

  Ket checked his wrist chronometer. A puzzled expression crossed his face. “My watch has stopped, perhaps due to the magnetism.”

  Tad pulled his chronometer from his pocket and looked at it. “Mine is running backwards.” He reset and rewound it to no avail.

  Lousa trembled as she sobbed, “Let’s go back. I can’t stand this place”

  Her father tried to console her. “Now, my dear. We must continue. It is why we have come. There is no danger, only oddity.”

  Tad wasn’t as certain that there was no danger, but he shrugged his shoulders. “I guess we walk until we’re tired,” he joked. His attempt at levity fell flat with the others, who were in no mood for humor.

  Their march continued. Tad counted over thirty ridges each ten meters high before they decided they could go no farther.

  “I suggest we camp for the night,” Ket suggested. He glanced at the unmoving suns. “Or at least until we feel like traveling again.”

  By mutual consent, they simply dropped their packs at the bottom of the ridge they had just crossed.

  “The ridges are growing higher and closer together,” Ket announced with enthusiasm. “We are nearing the epicenter of the event.”

  Ket seemed excited by the prospect of discovering what lay ahead of them. Tad was curious but afraid. He did not know what they might find, but knew with dead certainty that it would not be good. They ate cold rations and laid out their bedrolls, but no one seemed eager to sleep. The triple suns, once so familiar to him, were now out of place and disconcerting. Even the air seemed heavy, frozen in place, with no breeze stirring. As suddenly as if turning a switch, darkness descended. All three suns had simply vanished. Tad heard Lousa cry out in panic. A light flashed on, Ket’s electric torch. It cast a feeble swath of light in the stygian blackness.

  “Turn that off!” Daret shouted.

  Ket obeyed, plunging them back into darkness. Daret lit a match, and then rummaged through his pack for paper, which he pulled out and lit. This he used to ignite kindling he had gathered along the way, back beyond the wall. The soft glow was almost me
smerizing as Tad willed it brighter. They clustered around the tiny flames, as the first Paleolithic discoverers of fire must have huddled around its wonder eons earlier. Tad felt Lousa slip her hand into his and grip it tightly. He squeezed back. Daret set to work removing pieces of electronic equipment from their wooden boxes and breaking the boxes into kindling. He wrapped the equipment in extra clothing and placed it back in his pack.

  “The fire won’t last long,” he said as he fed the wooden pieces to it, “But I suspect neither will the darkness. In the future, we must keep matches and the few candles I brought at hand at all times. Use of the electric torches could prove dangerous.” He held out two curious-looking tubes. “I have chemical light sticks, but they will last only an hour each. We should save them for an emergency.”

  Ket recovered from the initial shock of the sudden darkness and resumed command. “I suggest we try to sleep. Sleep will be more difficult in daylight. Perhaps there is a pattern to this strange day/night cycle. If so, we can adjust our marches to it. If not…”

  Tad contemplated the possibility of traveling in the dark by candlelight and decided it would be extremely risky considering that they must traverse ridges with no clear path, but it would be even more dangerous with the added risk of exploding flashlights. If they stopped each time darkness fell, they could run out of supplies before reaching the center. He hoped Ket had considered this also.

  Daret let the fire slowly extinguish itself. Lousa moved her bedroll nearer to Tad. In the darkness, in whispers, she confessed her fear.

  “I’m frightened.”

  Tad tried to quell his own fears to offer her comfort. “It’s all strange, but so far we’ve run across no real danger.”

  “No. I mean I’m frightened for my father.”