The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1)

by Mark Reynolds

  Or maybe not.

  Above him, Nail paced furtively.

  “Can they do that, Jack?”

  He looked up, startled by Ellen’s question. She was looking at him now, her expression asking not so much for an answer as some measure of reassurance.

  “No,” he said. “The most they can hope to accomplish is to delay it. The train and the tracks aren’t really subject to the rules of reality; the ones that say it should derail if it slams full-speed into a broken section of track. The train and the rails are just physical representations, a means to an end. It doesn’t have to be a train and it doesn’t have to run on tracks. That’s just a convenient way of thinking, like the sun setting in the west, or the moon in the night sky. They can delay the way back to reality, but they can’t stop it.”

  And as he said it, he heard a voice in his head add: You think—you hope! —but you don’t really know, do you?

  “But if they delay you enough, won’t you run out of time?”

  He shrugged, a gesture he hoped would express his indifference to her train of thought, and not his discomfort. “They’re running out of time, too. Every minute they delay, their power fades a little more. And power for them is the difference between being the most feared creatures in the Wasteland, and being dead and forgotten. It’s as simple as that.”

  Again that sly, too-knowing voice: You hope—God! How you hope! —but you really just don’t know, do you, Jackie boy?

  Ellen nodded, uncertain whether she believed him or simply appreciated that he would tell her what she wanted to hear.

  “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Will they be all right?”

  “Who? Lindsay and the others?”

  She nodded, her attention now fully devoted to him. “I read what you wrote about them. It was still on the computer. Will they be okay?”

  “Yes,” he nodded, the answer to this question, at least, he readily knew; understood. “They’ll be fine, now.”

  Then Jack waited; waited for the next inevitable question, the one he could not answer, but was expected to. What about us? she would ask. There are two of us, and only one ticket. Who stays and who goes? It was what she was wondering. It was what he was wondering, too.

  But Ellen never asked the question, and for that, he was grateful. Instead, they both sat in silence upon the half-constructed stairway, staring out at the horizon as if looking for rain clouds they knew they would never find, or some hint of distant mountains lost.

  “Ellen?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why do you always come up here?” He wanted to add some explanation for the question about how it wasn’t safe, or it was uncomfortable, or it was too exposed. Instead, he let the question hang out there alone, a cloud in an otherwise empty sky.

  She shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know. I guess it’s … it’s like hope.”

  He waited, wanting her to explain.

  “High places always make me feel more hopeful. You can see everywhere from up here. The whole world is laid out before you, and it’s like you could choose anything. You can go anywhere, or be anything. Everything’s possible from way up high. I think the Stairway to Heaven is supposed to symbolize that in part. It’s hope and optimism. You keep working on it, building it higher and higher, trying to attain what’s up there just beyond your reach. You may not get to heaven climbing a stairway, no matter how high you build it, but sometimes its enough that you try. I think God appreciates the effort.”

  She smiled, staring off at the distant horizon far away over the rails and the squatting form of Lovebone, past the other members of the Tribe of Dust that paced the edge of the barrier like wild dogs awaiting the fall of darkness. The brilliant sapphire blue of day was starting to darken in the direction that they conveniently thought of as east.

  “I guess I never saw it that way before,” he confessed.

  “Really? How do you see it?”

  He considered for a moment then lied. “I never really thought about it.”

  * * *

  Gusman Kreiger crossed the cooling sands towards the distant, hunched form of the mumbling bone priest, staying clear of the barrier. Not for fear, no; his hands had healed very nicely, thank you for asking. But it cost a great deal of energy and that was coming in shorter and shorter supply of late. He gave the barrier a wide berth so that Jack would not realize how very small it really was, or how little time he actually had left. Jack had surprised him. Never again.

  Kreiger gave Hyde a similarly wide space; he was no longer certain of the bone priest’s grasp upon sanity, such as it was here in the Wasteland. The fat man’s skin was covered over every inch he could reach with spells and bindings to hold the animal spirits to his will, augmenting his power with theirs. The writing etched into his flesh, old words in ancient tongues, bound the mana of Wasteland creatures into Reginald Hyde. And as he bound the pure essence of beasts and dregs unto himself, he lost a little more of Reginald in the crowd of his own psyche. And the spirit-saturated bones piercing his flesh only made the home of Reginald’s mind that much smaller and more dangerous.

  Hunched before him was a thick-browed gerrymander, enormous jaw hanging slack to reveal rows of large crocodile teeth and a head of bone-tipped tentacles that draped across its skull like dreadlocks. Such was the nature of the insanity that vomited them up from the Wasteland.

  Indifferent, Hyde chanted, eyes rolled back to the whites, one hand palm up in supplication, the other holding a small knife, the tip razor-sharp.

  As Kreiger watched, the slack-jawed dreg began to quiver, muscle and sinew turned traitor as if eager to escape its flesh prison and flee the bone priest. But against this instinct, the dreg leaned forward, spine arching, chest outthrust as if an invisible hook were tearing its skeleton out, dragging it through an invisible keyhole. Its back bent further and further until the spine cracked suddenly like dry sticks beneath the heel of a boot.

  Hyde’s eyes focused suddenly, his gaze manic, feral. His empty hand shot out, fingertips punching through the dreg’s chest as if the monster’s hide was the rind of a rotted fruit and nothing more. His fist tightened on the dreg’s collarbone, tearing it loose like an overcooked chicken leg.

  The gerrymander collapsed as if every connective fiber, every strand of muscle, piece of cartilage and tendon in its frame vanished. It slumped to the sand like a discarded sack of jelly, and immediately calcified, flesh turning to dust: first a statue, then an indiscriminate mound, and then nothing. A moment after it began, the gerrymander was a vague outline of discolored sand, a memory and nothing more.

  Unconcerned, Hyde took the short knife and punched it through the surface skin of his own shoulder, the blade popping free to glimmer wetly in the failing daylight. Hyde slid the living bone through the newly created hole, withdrawing the knife and leaving the protruding clavicle behind like some tribal initiation. And as his blood mixed with the blood on the bone, a spasm shook his enormous frame, lips twitching into something resembling a grin.

  “Reggie?”

  No answer.

  Kreiger cleared his throat like a man trying not to be officiously dismissed by some bureaucratic flunky whose desk he had just been directed to. “Reggie?”

  Still no answer.

  “Reginald!”

  “I’m sorry, Reginald Hyde isn’t here right now. Leave your name at the sound of the tone, and he’ll get back to you just as soon as he’s able. Beeeeeeeeep.”

  This was followed by a high-pitched giggle, a maddening, stuttering sound that grated at Kreiger’s nerves. He felt his palms tighten upon the lightning rod, squeezing silent screams from the metal as he entertained the question of what the inside of the fat sorcerer’s skull would look like if he slashed it open with the focal lens, and sprayed his addled brains out upon the sand.

  “Papa Lovebone?”

  “Yes Gusman, what can I do for you?”

  It was a high, cheerful voice, frighteningly pleasant given the
shell it issued from. And still, the fat man would not look at him, would not avert his attention from his recently tattooed flesh still dripping with ink so black that it almost disguised the wash of blood running freely down the ravaged skin of Hyde’s arms, legs, and belly. The white wizard had sacrificed half a dozen dregs to Hyde’s gross collection of manitous, all tied into him with bones and blood-ink traps and captive words; all rendered like the gerrymander. Hyde was strong now, inhumanly so. His mind was the price.

  “Papa Lovebone, I want you to give Reggie a message for me.”

  “Sure Gusman. Loosey goosey, Gusman boozeman, loosey gooseyman Kreiger. A message for Reggie. He won’t be back for a while, though. He may not come back at all.”

  “Is that so?” Kreiger leaned closer, whispering into the man’s ear. “Tell Reggie, when you see him, that I am giving him the girl.”

  Hyde turned, as if aware for the first time that Gusman Kreiger was actually there. He tipped his head, eyes fixed and clear, absorbed by something perplexing and inconceivable that seemed to be sitting directly beside him, invisible but somehow detectable. “The girl?” he mumbled, voice nearly lost upon the Wasteland air.

  “That’s right, Reggie. You know the one I mean: the tall one, dirty blonde hair, smooth forehead, modest breasts. She’s yours.”

  “Mine?” Softly spoken, words that lacked conviction, understanding.

  “But I need you to focus, Reginald. I need you to stay in control. Do that for me, and I’ll let you have her.” His words, soft and seductive in Hyde’s ears, were like the gentle coo of a lover, teasing the necromant’s mind with dreams he had not allowed himself for over a century. Not since he first realized that he would never again know those dreams, now hollow shells of dissatisfaction and longing.

  “She will be mine?” Hyde asked pathetically, turning, eyes looking up at Kreiger with an array of desperate emotions: desire, confusion, lust, fear. “You mean it?”

  Kreiger was not oblivious to Reginald Hyde’s growing erection, blood and black ink moving freely down his member. “Yes, Reggie. I promise.”

  “What must I do?” he begged, crawling towards the white wizard on hands and knees, lips trembling with anticipation both vulgar and frightening. “Tell me, and I’ll do it. Anything. Anything! Please!”

  Kreiger straightened, looking down upon Hyde’s fawning and debasement. This was why the necromant could never hold the Nexus; why he would never amount to anything without the wizard. The fat Cast Out lacked focus, his efforts expended upon the pursuit of primitive pleasures.

  Kreiger, on the other hand, had a very clear picture of exactly what the future would hold for him. “Come with me.”

  * * *

  Rebreather stared into the shallow trench carved under the rails. More than a dozen bodies of wasted dust runners and shriekers and other Wasteland monstrosities lay alongside the tracks, bodies carelessly covered by sand. Exhaustion had destroyed them; exhaustion and the depletion of power throughout the Wasteland. Too much was being expended out here where none existed except in accidental pockets and chance streams. He knew that, felt it down deep in the marrow of his bones, the pit of his balls, which no longer spoke to him except in moments of fear. Now both balls and bones were whispering tales of horror and exhaustion of which his mind refused to listen, but that his flesh could no longer ignore.

  He was close now, and each passing minute brought him closer still. He would reach heaven’s gate, or drop alongside those Wasteland dregs like so much ill-stacked cordwood, another casualty in the endless ledger that was the history of the Wasteland.

  He heard Kreiger come up from behind, his the practiced hearing of an animal that regards every intrusion as a threat. Perhaps, after so long in the Wasteland, it was.

  “There is a matter we must attend to.”

  Rebreather turned, eyes panning the Saloon. So close. So very, very close. And as far from his reach as the setting sun.

  “The barrier has nearly collapsed. If the Caretaker does nothing at all, conserves his stolen power like a miser hoarding pennies, it still won’t last beyond tomorrow.

  “Unfortunately, neither will they,” Kreiger gestured at the dregs. They had ceased their labors upon his approach, standing upright in the shallow cut of dust, eyes vacant, zombies awaiting their next command. “So you appreciate the predicament we will be in if the walls fall only to reveal that we have no army left to storm the gates.” Kreiger’s voice lowered to a whisper. “Or fend off any resistance he can muster.”

  Distant forms moved upon the high, half-ruined stairway of the Saloon, and something on the building’s peak scuttled like a caged animal.

  “Bullets?” Rebreather asked. The few he possessed, safeguarded for more than a century, had corroded to ruin over the course of hours. Like the dregs, the energy that kept them whole was running out.

  Kreiger looked ruefully at his tall companion and extended his hand, the polished brass casings and dulled gray tips of two 50mm rounds cupped in his palm. The evening light transformed them into shimmering gold, their tips black and lethal as poison. That same light made Kreiger’s face the color of a molten idol, a loving saint, a demon god. “Only two, I’m afraid. The magic goes away. Even now, there is no guarantee they will both work. One or both may misfire.”

  “Two would be best, but one will suffice.” Rebreather took the bullets with reverent gentleness, as though holding a living butterfly or a robin’s eggs. “It will be … costly.”

  Kreiger nodded grimly. “Nothing worth anything is without cost, and we are about to lay claim to the throne of God.” He tipped his head to the remaining dregs. “Use them as you will.”

  Rebreather secreted the bullets away, turning his gaze to the looming shape upon the barren sand, the alien construction a blasphemy against the purity of the Wasteland. Concealed behind the mask, eyes narrowed upon those who gloated over him from heaven’s high walls, who held the power of the universe in their hands and plundered it for their small wants and petty dreams. He felt the subtle weight of the bullets like saint’s medallions, and the glass lenses reflected back that gloating stare at the false Caretaker, his guardian, and his last construct who could not be allowed to leave on the last train home.

  Home!

  With deliberate slowness, the tall Cast Out nodded.

  * * *

  “How’s your eye?” Ellen asked.

  “My what?”

  “Your eye.” She gestured at him. “It was all red this morning. It looked like you might have scratched it. Does it hurt?”

  “No. I never … checked it.”

  “Let me see.” She scooted down a couple steps so that she was directly above him, and said: “Look at me.”

  It was impossible for him not to. She hovered six inches away, peering at his eye critically, one hand keeping a thick shock of her hair from flopping down in his face. And he thought how wonderful she smelled. Not like Oversight—Ariel November now—with her rich, exotic, sweet smell, raw and sexual and enigmatic. Sitting beside Ellen like this, staring up into her eyes as she tried to take care of him, he was overwhelmed; she was an early spring day, dew on grass, fresh petals too new to burst out in that bee-maddening, lazy drowse of summer.

  “It looks okay,” she said, still concentrating upon his eye. “A lot better than this morning.”

  He nodded, trying to think of a way to say what needed to be said, what he didn’t want to say.

  “By the way, I liked what you wrote,” she said, not giving him the opportunity. “About Alex and Lindsay and Oversight. The city of Janus, and Mr. Quince, and Armageddon. I liked it.” She looked away suddenly, as if the confession embarrassed her. “I don’t think I got it all, but I liked it.”

  “Thank you,” he said, a little embarrassed. He had never been very comfortable with compliments, especially about his writing. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them; he simply wasn’t very good at accepting them.

  “Did all of that really happen to them?” sh
e asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you made it happen? You wrote it all down and it happened to them exactly that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are they going to be happy where they are?”

  “I think so. Reasonably, anyway. They’ll live out their lives just like anyone; have good days and bad days, like anyone. And like anyone, they’ll know when they’re happy because it won’t be like those times when they’re not. That’s about all there is, really.”

  She nodded, thinking this over for a moment. “And it will seem real to them? To us?”

  He nodded, not speaking for his own sense of dread. Soon she would ask. She would have to. She would ask because it was stupid not to, stupid not to realize the hole he was trapped in. How were the two of them getting out? How was it possible with only one ticket? How could they both escape?

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t…

  “Let’s get something to eat,” she said abruptly. “I’m starving. You’ve gotta be hungry after sleeping all day, nothing but nutmeg-laced coffee for two days straight.”

  “You know about that?”

  “It was impossible not to. I cleaned up a little while you were asleep.”

  He looked away ruefully, glad she only knew about the nutmeg. There was so much more to it than that.

  “Let’s go see what’s left in the vending machine,” she added, “provided that hasn’t disappeared along with everything else.”

  He was only too eager to get down from the stairway. “Actually,” he said, “I could really go for some coffee.”

  “Haven’t you had eno—?”

  Her voice trailed away, words stolen into the empty air. She was standing up, looking tall and alone against the haphazard stair and the deepening blue of the empty, cloudless sky. She was barefoot, something he hadn’t even realized until just then, and her feet were tensed upon the naked wood, tendons taut, toes curling defensively. She was wearing the same jeans she had found that first day, and an ill-fitting, button-down shirt that was swimming around her, the tails hanging out and draping halfway to her knees, the sleeves rolled up three times just so that her hands wouldn’t disappear. A breeze—forget where it might have come from, or where it was blowing to—swept some of her hair, dark like buckwheat honey, across her cheek and into her eyes, and she held it back casually with one hand. He thought, looking up at her now, that she looked exquisitely beautiful in no way he could exactly explain except that he would forever think of her this way, eyes scanning the distant horizon, a dimple in her brow magnified by the slanting rays of a distant and imaginary sun, the look of the searcher, the dreamer.