by Tori Truslow
He came round the first bend and pulled the brake. Everything was still. The forest was watchful.
He jumped down and started to climb the wall of the valley, pushing his way through brakes of ferns to the mouth of a little grotto invisible from the tracks. There was a low-ceiled room at the back, green with moss except where patches of calcite glittered in the gloom. A cubical leather case sat in the middle of the floor. He took it and returned to the car.
The outward journey was mostly downhill. He covered in minutes what it had taken hours to traverse that morning. The fog was gone. The cathedral spaces had been transformed into a riot of color and hard-edged detail. There was no sign of the daemon.
Soon he emerged into sunlight. Everything was painfully visible. The smoggy skyline of the coast-long downtown faced him across the flats of Sand City. Hollow-eyed heilotim wandered the streets. Children ran naked, laying with one another or playing violent games. Huge dragonflies looped and dodged over the cesspools, gorging themselves on blowflies. Low down in the west, a fat airship crawled across the sky.
He braked the car at the back of the junkyard and retraced his steps to the shack, toting the case. He crept cautiously up the knoll. Everything seemed peaceful. Wind chimes sang in the breeze. Homemade whirligigs spun on their axles.
The door was ajar. He pushed his way into the small, square room furnished with a single table and chair, a cast-iron stove, and a metal trunk. The light filtered through a window of colored bottle bases. A doorway hung with a curtain of printed fabric led into the next room.
He thrust the curtain aside. Cunea lay on her mattress, her eyes wide open, her tongue sticking out. Her floral-print dress was sodden. The mattress was adrift in a dark, placid lake. It seemed impossible that a single body could have held so much liquid.
Elerit went and closed her eyes. He kissed her on the lips, pushing her tongue back in with his own. The inside of her mouth was still warm and moist. He rose and stepped back through the curtain. His legs were shaking and his chin was quivering.
A mass of crimson and gold caught his eye. He recognized his gown from the night before. It had been dipped in blood and was wadded up in the corner.
A shadow crossed the rippled panes. He seized the poker and struck out blindly. Stilerich fell in a heap at his feet. There was a long knife on the floor beside him.
Elerit squeezed out and went rummaging about the yard. A minute later he returned with a pair of manacles. The warrior was still unconscious, so he dragged him down to the base of the knoll and chained him to an iron post.
For a long time he just stood there. The sun sank lower and lower. His mind cleared slowly. At last he shook himself and went back up to the shack. Burnished plates arranged on a rack gleamed like discs of molten gold. Beside them was a can of oil. He took it and went inside.
Cunea’s face had sagged a little. He laid a dramach in her mouth and kissed her cold lips one last time. Then he doused her dress, the mattress, and the walls with oil. It ran down and mingled with the thickening blood. Next he soaked the gown and hung it up on a nail. About half the can remained, so he went outside and poured it down all four walls.
Stilerich had risen at last and was watching curiously. Elerit went around back, selected a file from a workbench, and thrust it into his tunic. He also laid hold of a sledgehammer. He could feel Stilerich’s eyes on him when he returned to the front. The sun was close to setting. The sky was sea green. The rusty heads of the junk-hills were touched with orange flame.
He raised the hammer and brought it down with a clang. A shower of sparks flew out. The shack blossomed as he flung himself down the knoll. Hungry tongues licked up the walls and thrust their way inside. The pillar of fire sent a column of night into the greening vault.
The horizon swallowed the sun. The pyre grew sullen and tired as dusk began to close in. He walked down to Stilerich. For a moment they regarded one another in silence.
“You got back sooner than I expected,” said Stilerich.
“I had a car,” said Elerit.
“Who was she?”
“No one. My womb-mother.”
“I thought you’d always lived in the Asylum.”
“I found her after the earthquake. I’d like to know why you did it.”
“That should be obvious.”
“To pin it on me. But why? I don’t understand.”
“Zilla wanted to be able to have you picked up whenever he liked. As that prattler said last night, it’s you he really wants. The goods are the price he was willing to pay. But don’t worry, he’ll get you one way or another. He may discharge a follower now and then, but no one quits. You know that.”
“And Brideon and Micah?”
“They try to use the box on you? I see that they did. That was planned. They were becoming an embarrassment. He’s washing his hands of the Asylum’s dregs now.”
“I’m honored not to be counted among them,” Elerit said. “Well, I guess I’ll be going.”
“What? You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“Don’t worry. You won’t starve. These heaps are swarming with maugrelim. She was fond of feeding them in the evening.”
Stilerich glanced around. “I’ll not beg for my life,” he said. “Do as you see fit. But don’t think you can escape. There’s no place to hide, neither heilot’s den nor hanging garden. The Inversion is coming. Soon he will ascend on high.”
Elerit tossed the file to the ground in answer. He went and retrieved the case and set out into the junkyard. The whine of sawing filled the air. He glanced one more time at the ring of fire on the hill. Then the deepening gloom received him into its bosom.
* * *
It was close to midnight when he slipped into the carnival. Everything was in an uproar. Hex was shut down.
He snuck over to Vera’s car and stood on a box to look in the window. There was no one inside.
A throat cleared. He fell off the box. “I’ve been waiting for you,” a voice said. It was Buzzy, one of the painted eunuchs.
“Buzzy!” hissed Elerit. “What’s going on?”
“You tell me. Vera uttered a true prophecy tonight. Most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. Said she couldn’t help it. Of course it pissed the supplicant off. He complained to Abner. Abner had the hymenist examine her. Then it all came out. People saw you coming over here last night. You’re in big trouble, kid. What the hell did you do to her?”
Elerit shivered. “Where is she?” he asked.
“I got a little berth nearby. Here.” He handed Elerit a slip of paper and a key. “Listen. She was like a sister to us, you maugrel. You got her into this. You take care of her now. Or I’m personally going to induct you into our club, if that’s even possible, which for all I know it isn’t.”
Elerit flushed. “Thanks,” he muttered. “Be seeing you.”
* * *
The address was for the tenement house he’d visited the night before. He reached it just as rain began to pour. It was a warm, drenching rain from the sea.
The cubicle was on a middle floor near the center. It took him a long time to find it. He had to ask the way several times. The heilotim were suspicious. They could tell he didn’t belong there.
He let himself in. There was a kitchenette lit by a guttering tube-lamp, with a tiny bedroom beyond that. Vera was asleep on the pull-down bed.
He set the case on the counter and opened it. The leather fit snugly over a metal box. He opened that, too.
The orrery was more beautiful and delicate than he’d remembered, all gold and crystal and lapis lazuli. The interlocking hyperspheres were slowly gyrating. Parts seemed to shimmer or shiver, as though they weren’t entirely there. The crystals resonated audibly, hypnotically. He shut the case again.
He got a drink of rusty water from the tap and went into the bedroom. It was still raining. A gutter ran down the wall outside. The torrent’s thunder was the voice of the elemental forces of the world.
Vera sat
up in bed, wild-eyed. “What?” she demanded. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing. Go to sleep.”
She settled back down. She was sleeping in the nude. Her clothes were on the floor. There was a hastily packed bag in one corner.
Elerit went into the toilet, stripped, and showered. He returned to the bedroom and slipped into her clothes. They fit him fairly well. Then he made up his face and fixed his hair the way she did. He looked in the mirror. The resemblance was striking. As a final touch, he sprayed himself with her perfume and breathed it in deeply.
There was a single square window. He went over and peered through it. The little temple was down below, beneath the rubbish-heaped grating. He saw Skeller and Zilla cross to the labyrinth. He wanted to shout down to them, pretend to be Vera, but the window wouldn’t open.
He looked at Vera. She was drooling in her sleep. For a long time he stood there, just watching her sleep, trying to treasure up the golden grains as they slipped one by one into oblivion. Then he slung her bag over his shoulder, went into the kitchenette, and took up the orrery. He left the apartment, locking the door behind him.
Copyright © 2013 Raphael Ordoñez
Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website
Raphael Ordoñez is a mildly autistic writer and circuit-riding college professor living in the Texas hinterlands, eighty miles from the nearest bookstore. He blogs sporadically about fantasy, writing, art, and life at raphordo.blogspot.com.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
COVER ART
“The Frost Valley,” by Jorge Jacinto
Jorge Jacinto is a twenty-three year old digital artist from Portugal. His work has been featured as a workshop in ImagineFX magazine. View his concept art and commissions in his gallery at deviantArt.com.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press
This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.
