by Capps, Chris
One of the pale disciples, the youngest girl started grinning, hugging her knees and bobbing her head from side to side with her eyes closed. She was humming along with the chaotic packets, weaving back and forth and occasionally twitching her head back. Her finger rose like the conductors I had seen guiding the band of minstrels that followed the Cardinals of our city. Soon the sound was moving her whole body, causing it to sway from side to side in an ecstatic dance I don't think even Ebon understood.
"Her brain," Ebon said picking up a feather pen from the desk and handing it to her, "This little one can understand it. We found her several years back, nursing at the breast of a mad woman whose hair was falling out."
She traced the air with a pale hand, her mind occupied elsewhere. Erratically she was writing transient invisible words and only occasionally crossing them out to be speedily replaced by others.
"That poor girl," Freezy said sympathetically, "She inherited her mother's madness."
"My doctor says no," Ebon said, "The well the mother had been drinking from was contaminated with quicksilver and blight. Of course she likely only noticed it at all because it glowed in the dark. We don't know where the woman came from or why she was alone. She died a year later in our care. I don't have to tell you the brutal future the girl faced alone, so we kept her. Learned what she had to offer. Named her Delphina after the constellation."
"She knows what we're after?" I said incredulously, pointing at the girl on the floor. When Ebon nodded proudly, I asked, "What is it?"
"Took a long time," Ebon said, "The others helped. The boy Sculptor back engineered the language of the space based computer. We didn't have our own device to send messages back, so Vela crafted perfect instruments to emulate its digital tones. He's the one that called you in."
"The others?" I asked.
"Rhea and Alvus are not fulfilling their purpose yet," Ebon said grinning and motioning with his head at the eldest man and woman, "We'll learn what they have to offer us when their time comes. But that time will come."
The two looked to each other, their hands entwining between their faces and a knowing smile shared by both.
"I reckon they're gonna have a baby," Freezy said from the corner of her mouth, hissing sideways through cautious teeth.
"I get it," I said darting a look back at her.
"And that brings us to me. I have no particular talent aside from picking up the strays I find and guiding them. You two look a little lost yourselves. I couldn't help but notice your leg, Adon. Do my eyes deceive me or is that a metal melthorse's leg you've got?"
I looked down at the hoof scuffing the floor with round dry tracks and nodded,
"My old one broke."
Ebon slowly staggered back to his chair, collapsing into it finally and chuckling to himself.
"Fair enough," he said, his laughter drying up, becoming desiccated and quiet. He nodded, narrowing his eyes again at my leg as if it was a distant memory from his own life, "We all make sacrifices, Adon. We all have things we've left behind. You're going to need help if you're going to reach that star in time."
"Pa always was a storyteller," Freezy said, "I guess he spilled everything."
"Way I see it," I said, my own eyes narrowing across the room at the old man, "You and I don't have any reason to trust each other. You've built up this army to go find the shooting star for yourself. You've got more men than I do, and you've got some way of talking to it directly. Why give up all that and help me?"
Ebon nodded slowly, eyes on the couple with fingers still entwined. He breathed heavily, eyes returning to me,
"This isn't an army. It's not a traveling band of warriors intent on taking. You of all men must surely know the greater voice a man hears in the dead of night. A purpose greater than avarice. I've encountered the bounty the stars have to offer us already in my life. They're grand, more grand than can be owned. And then, in the jaws of war I lost it. The truth is, it doesn't matter who owns the wealth of history. It is here now to profit all creatures of this scorched land. I'm here to build a new history, a new civilization. You know the corruption of the Anquan walking cities. You know the backs they tread on to stay alive. And you've seen both sides of it. The world up there and the world down here."
He knew where I was from, I realized. And yet that didn't stop him. Better the corrupt city I had come from own this treasure than lose it in the dust forever. He continued,
"History is full of brutal places, horrific civilizations that brought order to a savage land. And so in my advanced age I realize this is the only way. No more chaos, no more loss. Even the brutal hands atop that steel plate can save us from ourselves, organize us into something greater. A man once tried to show me that, but he had to die before I would understand, spend a life watching all of this."
He motioned with that last statement toward the wall, toward the waste beyond it. I stood cautiously, watching him, trying to discern how much of what he was saying sounded genuine. It all did. If it was a lie, a more perfect facsimile of truth had never been in my ear. I said,
"So you'll take us there. Help me identify it, tell my city what we find."
He nodded,
"What's more, I know what it is out there resting in the sand. At least I think I do. And if I'm right, I know I could never keep it with my small army. It would disappear. It needs to be defended by strong, ordered, brutal hands. And so, I am now allying myself, my forces, with what I once, in my naive youth, may have considered to be evil."
"What is it?" I asked. He shook his head,
"I think I know, but we'll find out for sure, together. I have a good guess, but like I said, it's just a guess."
Soon after that we started up a steep incline, passing into the dust blown lands. Wandering to the carriage foyer, I opened the front door.
Immediately, I was caught off guard by the bellowing force of the dust blowing into my face. A few of the men, turning back with shielded eyes and dust masks pulled in two steady lines of grey, pulling us through the hot carbon blizzard swirling around us.
And just as I was preparing to slam the door shut again to close out the dust, I saw that the wind dropped in an instant. I stared now into the spiral patterns of grey and brown rolling over hills, spilling into one another in this bizarre and alien world. Our carriage shifted up, steeping heavily in the inclined space. The man who had summoned us into the carriage walked out to close the door with a brisk click.
"Don't breathe it," he said nervously blinking and twitching his head to the side, "I think it's poison."
I retreated to the carriage's throne room where Ebon was sitting talking calmly with his disciples, teaching them a hand gesture game as he sat on the floor.
The game involved thumbs intersecting index fingers and climbing up, then waving fingers dabbling down like rain. The wordless game was shared silently, each of them smiling and teaching each other the movements.
Even the youngest girl, Delphina was making the gestures, including her own twitching variations and interruptions. Freezy was on the far side of the room holding her elbow in one hand, leaning against the desk. She looked up at me, motioning at my leg with a sideways finger,
"Still alright?"
"It's much better now that we don't have to walk," I said, "I could stand still all day."
"You'll change your mind about that, but Ebon says we'll be arriving soon," she said, "I bet the men out front are anchored to this wagon for their own sake as much as ours. Not a bad idea. I don't know, though. I don't think he realizes how much dust is in the air all the time here."
"We'll be fine once we get there," Ebon said over his shoulder, fingers still climbing up the air in front of Delphina's grinning face, "Storms are worse in spring. This is the low season." Delphina grabbed Ebon's hands as they moved upward, pushing them onto the floor and slapped them hard, causing him to chuckle and pull them away, shaking them out in wide arcs, a comical and exaggerated expression of pain crossing his face, "Ouch."
/> "How much further?" I asked.
"Six hours," Freezy said pulling out her small bag, "According to Ebon. You'll need another injection when we get there."
I saw three syringes pour out of the metago bag into her hand.
"Tell me there's more than that," I said, a gentle fear caressing the back of my neck.
There wasn't. When she stuck the needle in my arm six hours later I grimly noticed that the pain had been overwhelming, approaching an incapacitating thunder deep within me as the previous dose wore off.
"Can someone die from pain?" I asked, holding the alcohol smelling cotton ball in the crook of my elbow and flexing my hand open and shut. The pain was fleeing like a frightened animal out of my body for now, everything around me becoming antiseptic and numb.
"I suppose some people can," Freezy said unscrewing the needle from the syringe and placing all three inside the canvas Metago bag, "Others, I don't think so. If they can, they just don't."
"Freezy," I said as relief pulsed down to my fingertips, "Thanks for this."
"You're paying me," she said with a gentle smile, "When this is all done, I'm getting some kind of cut or another from that treasure."
"Guaranteed," I said nodding, "More silver than you'll know what to do with."
"That'll be enough," she said. She motioned with her head at the far side of the room, "Looks like we've stopped moving."
The group sitting and talking amongst themselves at the far side had stopped swaying, as did the lanterns and curtains They looked up now. Ebon gently snapped his fingers in front of Delphina's face. She appeared to have fallen into a trance. He wandered to the desk and produced a small box with an antenna telescoping from the top. It was a radio. Inside was a crystal with wire wrapped around it and a small earpiece.
Delphina picked it up and placed the earpiece up to her ear, listening intently. After a moment she walked out through the curtain, out through the front door of the wagon.
"Come on," Ebon said taking the tooth adorned rifle from his throne, "She's got it."
Outside the wagon I looked down in front of us and saw Delphina walking between the twin lines of men, their faces covered against a fresh gust of wind that had kicked up, swirling all around us. Delphina walked with confidence, as if this was her own home past the rows of men and horses and rifles.
She walked to the end of the line and turned slightly to the right, looking back for only a moment with the dust stinging my eyes and buzzing like flies up my nose. Gritting teeth against dust we followed, each one subconsciously driven by an urge to draw weapons. She walked alone ahead of us, up the dust hill, her long shadow leading her up further. The sun was setting.
She climbed by walking at first, but shortly after that we were all clambering on hands and knees. The dust beneath my hoof was ready to part, ready to explode with each step into a trillion tiny specks. And then Delphina reached the apex of the hill and stood, with a vast unconquerable wind all around us. She looked down at us without expression.
We were all climbing toward her on all fours like apes, our own shadows now congregating at her feet. And when we reached the top of the hill, the thick winds blew even more dust in front of us, so that we weren't looking out onto a field at all, but rather a thick brown canvas. Shielding our eyes against the glittering dust, even with the sun at our backs, we stared out. And this is what we saw.
It was a large cylinder, a column of metal and thick spools of rubberized cable, unmoved even by the wind. A long black trail led from the spool along the ground to a wide divot in the ground, measuring around thirty feet across. And in that dent, swirling over with dust cascading into it was a hole.
A fifteen foot wide hole in the ground, made of glass.
The ring was completely black, but glittering in the spots that the swirling dust uncovered. Particles trickled in along the edges, cascading into the dark below soundlessly, venturing into the enigma with corkscrew swirls and phantasmal puffs. I shook my head, my hand clenched tightly around the pommel of my cane. Freezy yelled,
"Was this what you were expecting?"
"No," Ebon called out into the wind, cascading his footfalls down the temporary dune we stood on, "This isn't it at all."
The dust was picking up, sending showers of grit knocking into my ears, pouring down the collar of my shirt. I hobbled with my cane driving into the sand with great force to keep me steady, sliding as much as walking as I caught up to Ebon. He was approaching the hole, wind whipping around him and blowing his beard off to the side. He reached the edge, followed the long black cable back to the spool and tugged it.
"What is that thing?" I shouted, my own voice muted in the roar of the wind. He must have heard me, because I saw him shaking his head, tugging at the rope that led down into the shadow below. Again I shouted, my hands occupied with hat and cane, "What does this mean?"
"It's in there, Adon!" Ebon called back, pointing with a shaking hand toward the hole, "Don't ask me what it is, but it's in there!"
"Has this always been here?" I called back to Freezy as she descended behind us. Her eyes were squinting against the dust, a bit of silk in her hand, covering her face.
"No," she called back as we surrounded the metal spool leading toward the hole.
"We're going to have to go in there," Ebon said, quietly now that we were close together again, "It's in that hole, whatever it is."
Up on the hill Delphina was still standing looking down at us, glaring down into the tumbling Earth. Freezy Breezy looked back at the hole, the wind playing a thunder across it like a man blows on the lid of a glass bottle. I noticed it too. It was screaming, that open hole in the Earth, crying out into a hot and unfeeling dry rain.
We set up camp at the far ridge where a shelf of rock had been carved and weathered long ago. The tents Ebon's men set up were simple A-frames, with steel spikes gouged into the stone at their edges, holding thick ropes in place. Setting the tents up in the high wind was a matter Ebon's men managed as well as could be expected, but more than a few canvases took flight and were never seen again, spiraling off into the distant and unseen sky.
Before nightfall, twenty men surrounded the command tent, bracing it against thick beams. Ropes tied at the edges pulled the canvas out, making steep inclines up its sides to throw off the throttling wind. When it was finished, I was seated inside where I found pillows and cots arranged around a small lamp fire.
"This will have to accommodate you until tomorrow," Ebon said, leaning on his rifle as I sat at the edge of one of the cots. The others were elsewhere engaged throughout the camp, helping to deliver water and supplies to the mess tent or set up the watch order for the night. Shortly after that, Freezy came in with the metago bag under her arm, saying,
"Well, you're here. Are you really going down tomorrow?"
I nodded, lowering my eyes to the spongy bone at the handle of my cane. It was rough in my hand, like sandpaper. Then I said,
"It's good to hear about your father."
"If it's true," Freezy said, "Then yeah, it's good news. Of course I can't imagine him keeping a story like yours secret anyway. You really are mad as a midwife if you think I'm going to go as far as that cave. I'll come out here with you, but I'm not going down there."
"You've heard stories?" I said sideways, looking up at her. She smiled, eyes flickering in the lamp-fire. She nodded,
"Yeah, who hasn't? But I don't think anyone's been down there to bring back stories. This thing is new. Dust or no dust, if this area had people living in it, they would have found it. And if anyone came back out, they would have talked."
"Still glad you came out here with me?" I said.
Freezy picked up the metago bag and produced the second to last syringe, nodding,
"The girl who left this place behind swore she would never come back. She had never met someone from the walking cities, had never told her Pa she was going off on her own, and she had never cut off a man's leg before. That girl isn't coming back. This one's not
going to live off horse meat her whole life."
With the stick of a needle, I found that sleep came to me easily. My dreams were once again simple. A wind howled through the tent, threatening to pull the canvas off. And down in the valley there was a scream. It was a long sustained howl. Inhuman. It was the voice of the Earth itself, crying hungrily to the sky. In the world of dream I knew what it was screaming.
Adon.
The next morning I found the soldiers in the camp reinforcing the tents with more ropes and stakes. They called to one another, wrapping the tents in every bit of rope they could find, tying them to the stakes and yelling into the howling wind. I passed them on hoof and cane, wandering back down to the hole where Ebon was standing with Freezy. He was staring downward, his hand on the thick rubber cable. As I approached, I could hear him talking. He looked up at me when I reached the edge of the enigma.
"Freezy," he said, pulling an electric light from his coat and tossing it to me, "You'd better head on back to camp. If we don't come back tonight, take a look in my desk. Delphina has the key on a necklace."
She nodded. Whatever hunger she had for adventure, she wasn't a fool. I hadn't noticed it before, but in the glow of the light I could see that the sky was darkening, even in the rising sun. The long trails of sand above us were stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon like thin inky fingers.
"They'll be fine," he said to himself, testing the line leading down into the hole with a gentle tug. Looking up, he added, "I won't lie to you, Adon. This could lead anywhere."
He unbuckled the harness attaching the metal armor to his chest and let it fall. Beneath it I could see scars running down from neck to navel and a tattooed pyramid tracing up to his throat. Beneath his own head were geometric sigils that could only have been rats, triangular and leading down. Two became four, four became eight, and so on. He gripped the rubberized cable in his hand and nodded,
"This should hold us for the descent. I'll go first. No sudden movements."
