by Perrin Briar
“I was trying to tell a story,” Jera said pointedly.
“And I appreciate it,” Elian said. “But we’re on a deadline here.”
“Okay. Well, about five hundred years ago the City of Goleuni grew strong and powerful, and was populated by, surprise surprise, the Goleuni – the snake-lizard type people we were running away from before, during our earlier skip. They wanted to take over the whole world, but before they could attack, the human cities united and defeated them. We were successful, and the city was destroyed. No one’s been back since and no one knows what happened to them.”
“Wait, wait,” Elian said. “If the city was destroyed, how are we going to find the first clock piece?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we can search amongst the wreckage, or maybe there’s a surviving member of the city somewhere.”
“We saw them. They were chasing us with spears. I’m guessing the discussion doesn’t go too well.”
“Maybe there’s a clue on this column,” Jera said. “Help me get these vines off.”
She moved to the column and reached up to pull at the vines. Elian gripped her arm and pulled her away.
“Don’t touch it,” Elian said. “This is witch’s snare. If you touch it, it will snare around your fingers and hands and won’t let go.”
“Oh.”
Elian drew his knife.
“Try not to touch anything unless you’re absolutely positive what it is,” he said. “In fact, even if you are positive, still don’t touch it. Let me do the touching.”
Elian cut at the vines with his knife, which convulsed and pulled away. Then they grabbed the knife and tightened around it, but only succeeded in cutting themselves again. As Elian cut the vines free, the writing on the column becoming clear.
“Oh no,” Elian said in dismay. “It’s the Old Tongue.”
Jera fingered the inscriptions.
“Can you read it?” Elian said.
“Some of it,” she said. “I never learnt it all.”
“More than me, anyway. What does it say?”
“‘Welcome, weary traveller,’” Jera read, “‘to the City of Goleuni. This is a city of… rest? No, peace. You are kindly asked to leave all your weapons at the security gate. Your belongings will be protected and returned to you at the end of your stay. You do not need to fear for your belongings, nor your personal safety. There is no crime in the City of Goleuni.”
“Sounds like a real warrior race,” Elian said with a smirk. “Does it say anything about how to find the temple?”
“Yes,” Jera said. “Wait a minute.”
She frowned in concentration, her lips moving without making a sound.
“It says the temple moves,” she said.
“What do you mean it moves?”
“It moves from place to place all over the city.”
“That’ll be what the rumbling sound we heard earlier was,” Elian said.
“Probably.”
“How does it move?”
“It doesn’t say. They built it like that so others couldn’t find it.”
Jera turned to Elian and smiled.
“What’s safer than a temple that no one knows the location of, than a temple that keeps changing location?” she said.
“Including us. Does it at least say how to find it?”
“Yes.”
Jera frowned.
“It says to follow the sign,” she said.
Elian waited for more.
“That’s it?” he said. “What sign?”
Jera frowned.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Let me read it again.”
Her eyes trailed over the writing. She squinted at the edge of the crossbar.
“There’s more,” she said. “Instructions. But I think it was written on a second column.”
She moved to a pile of rubble strewn across the ground like a child’s toys.
“Come cut these vines off,” Jera said.
He did. Jera bent down to examine them.
“It’s no good,” she said. “The writing’s been worn off.”
Jera bent down to examine the foliage below the crossbar. She came across the broken remains of the second column. Elian sat on a rock, took off his hat, and fanned himself with it.
“Brilliant,” he said. “Stuck in a dangerous jungle with no clue about which way to go or what to do.”
The deep rumbling began again. The birds took flight, hovering over the jungle. The leaves on the trees trembled. Elian laid down flat on the stone he sat on. Jera grabbed the stone pillar and held on tight. The rumbling died away.
Elian stayed laying on the rock, looking up at the canopy overhead. Jera let out a sigh, stepped back, and looked up at the pillar again. Perhaps she missed something… Her eyes widened.
“Hey!” she said. “Elian, come look at this!”
“What is it now?”
“Just look!”
Elian sat up and looked at the pillar but couldn’t see what Jera was referring to.
“What?” he said.
“The dial! It’s the sign! The triangle has moved! I think it’s telling us which way to go!”
Elian stared at the dial. Jera was right – it had moved. It had been pointing to the centre of the circle. Now it was pointing north east.
“How did that happen?” Elian said.
“It was the earthquake. It must have been set up so the Goleuni could always find it.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
“We’d best head in the direction it says before another earthquake strikes.”
Jera moved to place her hand on a tree in an expression of self-satisfaction. Elian grabbed her hand and pulled it away.
“What did I say about touching things?” Elian said.
“What? It’s just a tree.”
“Is it?”
Elian tapped the tree with his knife. Six-inch spikes snapped out from the trunk at blinding speed, and then slowly retracted back.
“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” Elian said.
“Only in nightmares,” Jera said, her face pale.
“Be careful where you walk,” Elian said. “Anything could kill us in a second out here. If you step on something you shouldn’t, you’re dead. If you walk into something you shouldn’t, you’re dead. If you breathe in something you shouldn’t, you’re dead.”
“Nothing like a nice afternoon stroll,” Jera said.
Chapter Six
Crossroads’ police station was wide and squat, its milky white walls scuffed with grey marks. Two dozen uniforms milled about outside, chests out, noses up with collective ascendency.
Bull Bill tied his horse up outside and headed toward the entrance. Two young boys ran across his path on the boardwalk. Three constables chased after them on foot.
“Come here!” one of the constables said.
“You’ll have to catch us first!” the eldest boy said. “But your legs are carrying too much weight!”
“You little…”
The constables, out of breath and sweating, resumed the chase.
Bill entered the station. A billboard covered one whole wall, plastered with notices and wanted posters. The largest was of Elian Stump, in the centre. Bill’s jaw muscles tightened. His reward of one hundred gold pieces had been crossed out and replaced with one thousand. Bill didn’t have to look long before he found his own poster with a reward of fifty gold pieces. He unpinned Elian’s poster and laid it on top of his own.
He turned and moved to the front desk. He removed his hat, exposing his bald bonce, and held the peak between his hands and affected a softer voice.
“Hello, there,” Bull Bill said. “I’m sorry to be any trouble, only I’m looking for someone and wondered if he might be here.”
“Name?” the overweight constable said.
“Elian Stump.”
The constable looked down at Bill from his elevated position, and then glanced at the bulletin board at Elian’s poster.
<
br /> “You’re not Elian Stump,” he said.
“Oh, you meant my name? Silly me! My name is Phil Potts.”
“Why are you looking for Elian Stump, Mr Potts?”
“He owes me money.”
“I see. Look, if I were you I’d write it off. You’re never going to be able to collect it from him after today.”
“Why not?”
“He’s wanted by various peoples. Peoples of means. And once they have him you can say goodbye to recouping your losses.”
“But he’s here?”
“In our holding cells. And no one’s allowed to see him.”
“Not even creditors?”
The constable shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I see.”
Bill put on his hat.
“Well, thank you for your help anyway,” he said.
There was a murmur of voices and the atmosphere in the station had abruptly changed from open joviality to a sense of purpose. Constables marched out the front entrance, or into the hidden innards of the offices in the back of the station. The clatter of horse hooves grew louder outside, and a cloud of dust drifted past the door. Bill unclipped his pistol and laid his hand on it.
A tall figure, silhouetted by the dust, walked into the station. He was a distinguished gentleman in a white uniform with a long flowing cloak that had brown dirt smudges along the bottom. He had a silver royal crown on his epaulettes. He wore his sword and pistol on his hips like he knew how to use them. Half a dozen uniformed men followed him. Feeder fish in the wake of a shark. He strode to the desk, inches from Bull Bill. The overweight man shrank beneath the gentleman’s glare.
“I’m here for Elian Stump,” the gentleman said. “Where is he?”
“He’s, uh, in the interrogation room, sir,” the constable on duty said. “If you’ll permit me, I can arrange-”
The gentleman continued through the room into the police station, his entourage on his heels. Only once they had passed did the overweight constable relax. He wiped a hand across his sweaty brow.
“Who was that?” Bill said.
The constable stared at him with wide watery eyes.
“Why, that’s the deputy commissioner!” he said. “Lord Richard Ascar.”
Chapter Seven
Richard, bone weary and tired from his hard ride, marched through the station’s corridors. He’d been in enough stations to know instinctively where the holding cells were located. Constables he met in the corridors stopped and saluted him as he passed. He gave them no recognition.
He came to a corridor with thick white doors down either side. He marched down them, checking the name tags written on the chalkboard beside each door. He came to the one on the end with ‘Elian Stump’ on it. Richard ran his hands over his hair and smoothed it down. He reached for the door, took a deep breath, and entered.
“Well, Stump,” he said with a forced smile, “as you can see, no one can escape the long arm of the law for long-”
He stood stock still when he saw a man, decidedly not Elian Stump, tied to the chair. The man smiled sheepishly around the rag in his mouth.
Chapter Eight
“Tell me again what happened,” Richard said, massaging his temples.
“I don’t know how else I can explain it to you,” Chief Constable Lamarr said. “I was interrogating him when there was a knock at the door. The Lady Wythnos came in with a pistol and forced me to hand him over.”
“Jera had a pistol?” Richard said, barking a laugh. “She is a gentlewoman. She wouldn’t know which end of the pistol to hold, never mind hold you hostage with it.”
“But she did,” Lamarr said.
Richard shook his head.
“This is the town Stump grew up in, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Lamarr said. “But you’ll do no good snooping around his family and asking questions. They stopped communicating with him a long time ago.”
“So far as you know.”
“I know.”
Richard consulted a file he had in front of him.
“According to this file,” he said, “something similar happened two years ago. You had Elian Stump within your custody and he somehow managed to escape. Isn’t that right?”
The chief constable’s expression became hard.
“No, sir,” he said. “He escaped.”
“He escaped,” Richard said, voice dripping venom. “You were alone with him then, too, weren’t you?”
“I realise what it looks like. And I admit, it’s true I may have been lenient on him in the past, but it was not my intention to be lenient on him today. I was going to keep hold of him until you came and took him away.”
“Even though our punishment may have been extremely severe?”
“Yes. You see, I’ve seen what Elian’s misdemeanours have done to his family, my family. I wasn’t about to let that happen again.”
“And yet you did. There’s a lot more going on here than you realise, Chief Constable. This is one stitch in a tapestry of events, and you dropped it. We might never get the opportunity to apprehend him again. And here you are, his uncle, having lost him.”
Richard closed the file, slammed it down on the desk, pressed his hands on the table and leaned forward.
“I’m personally holding you responsible for Stump’s escape,” he said. “You had him in your grasp and you let him go. You will be imprisoned. You’d better hope we find him quickly. I hear criminals aren’t particularly hospitable toward former constables. Especially if they’re the ones responsible for putting them away.”
Lamarr, face bleaching red with anger, stood up.
“You can’t do that,” he said. “I’ve served thirty years in the Force with honour.”
Richard tilted his shoulder down.
“Do you see this little crown on my arm?” he said. “They mean I’m in charge. They mean I can do whatever I want, and no one can stop me.”
Chapter Nine
The jungle became dense with all manner of flowers, plants and creatures, many of which Jera had never laid eyes on before. There was a flower with a black and white spiral pattern on its petals. It seemed to sense Jera, and rose up to meet her when she came close. It positioned itself six inches from her nose. Then it began to spin, the spiral pattern hypnotic. Jera’s smile disappeared and she went cross-eyed. Her body went slack, and her eyes began to close. Two long feelers touched Jera’s face, wrapped around her head, and tied a knot around the back of her neck. Tiny jaws gnashed in the flower’s stigma, pulled on the feelers and drew Jera closer.
A knife flashed and cut the feelers. Jera fell to the ground. The flower retreated back into the foliage, the petals closing up tight in self-defence. Jera blinked awake.
“Uh… What happened?” she said.
“New rule,” Elian said. “Don’t even look at anything in this jungle.”
The thick foliage blocked out all but the hardiest strobes of light. The ground was covered with a thick carpet-like moss that stifled any noise they made.
Jera made out a hunched figure on a high branch. It was a small bear-like creature with a snout and long claws. It struck a tree branch with its claws, which snapped around the tree branch with a clack and swung its way into the jungle. Then, in a small body of water, Jera spotted a family of pigeese which turned and oinked, a mouthful of sharp pointy teeth protruding from its bill. Jera squeaked and pushed on through the foliage.
“This jungle is huge,” Elian said. “What if we get lost or head slightly in the wrong direction?”
“Then we’ll have to think of some other way to find the temple,” Jera said.
Elian took a step and stumbled forward. The ground, although still green and covered with the same moss, was not spongy, but hard. He bent down and peeled up one corner, exposing a square paving stone.
“This is it,” Jera said with a grin. “We’re here.”
She pulled the foliage aside, and then closed it agai
n immediately.
“There’s someone there,” she said in a low voice.
They laid down on their front and peered between the roots of the hedge. A group of Goleuni stood in a circle in typical garb: bare chested with leaves over their genitals. They encircled two Goleuni, who were on their knees facing the temple. One was broad featured, the other slight. The female Goleuni wore a headdress of purple flowers, the male a sash of the same flower.
An imperious Goleuni with a purple crown stood over them and waved a stick, intoning something in their native tongue, and squeezed some juice out of a purple plant onto their heads. The male and female stood up.
“I think it’s a wedding,” Jera said.
The Goleuni couple faced one another and rubbed their necks and faces together, eyes closed. They flicked their tongues over one another’s features, sensing one another as no human ever could. It was an intimate affair, and Jera’s cheeks flushed. The couple turned and headed into the jungle, followed by the group.
Elian and Jera waited a few minutes and then climbed down the incline and stepped onto the clearing of hard slate stone. Puca morphed into a rabbit and scampered over the remains. The temple’s columns had been fashioned into a series of rings that looked like both metal rings and the scales of a snake. At the base of each column was a snake’s head, wide lips curling up into a smile.
The temple had been built using huge volcanic rocks that had thousands of holes in them from where they had cooled quickly. Bugs ran out of one hole and into another, carrying twigs and leaves. Vines had wormed their way into some holes and come out of others. Broad snowball-shaped flowers hung from plants hanging out the fissures in the rocks. Tree roots entered the gaps and expanded, blowing huge holes out of the rocks, which lay strewn at Jera’s feet. Other blocks stayed where they had been placed however many hundreds of years ago, untouched.
On either side of the entrance was a statue of a male and female Goleuni on giant thrones. They were what the married couple had been bowing to earlier. They wore crowns in the shape of a chain. The male sat with his clawed hands embracing the chair arms. The female sat with her delicate claws in her lap. The details of both their faces had been destroyed by rain that ran down their faces, down either side of their noses, giving the impression they were crying. As they stepped inside, Elian felt the stony gaze of the king and queen following him.
