As was common to many Talgos, Cyprian’s appearance inspired a mild sort of awe. Where his cousin, Stendahl drew one in magnetically with deep green eyes, oddly white hair, and a gentle mysterious nature, Cyprian was frightening. His dark mystique was almost a third person there beside them, hovering in its intensity. He embodied the Talgo recklessness, ferocity, and command presence that in different times held together nations and drove screaming legions. And he was still a young man. As with his strange cousin, the common people were fascinated with his goings, although his lifestyle bred conspiracy theories and controversy. Lanier had cast his life before this young man’s bloodline and had been there when he was born; but even now he clearly felt a pull, like the feeling of again seeing an old boss from years ago.
“I’ll tell Grebel I saw you.”
“A farting old woman…” Lanier reminded, pointing a finger in the air.
Cyprian grimly joined two of the escorts to return to the harbor topside. Lanier watched him leave, his mind no doubt conjuring pictures of other Talgos and the wreckage that was left in their wake. Those at Moloch’s gaming tables and machines turned to watch him leave; and people throughout pointed and discussed him. Lanier at that moment showed in his face the helplessness of a man watching his house burn.
Out of his sight and along a broad corridor lined with tropical plants and painted softly with blue tinted lights shining through the acrylic sea windows, Ventrey trotted gently up to join Cyprian and the two escorts Lanier had provided.
“I’ve got this, guys. L wanted me to walk him personally. Head on back.” His voice was chatty and routine; and the two escorts only nodded to do as they’d been instructed. Unseen by Ventrey, Cyprian grinned and lowered his head as he slowed his pace. When Lanier’s men were out of earshot, four others stepped from the shadows and engaged their carbines. He was surrounded on all sides and stopped where he was, his hand resting tenderly on his own weapon.
Ventrey stepped close to make eye contact and puffed up his chest and shoulders, like he was setting up to say something threatening. He coughed.
“Did I upset you, lapdog?” Cyprian’s voice was soft.
“You can’t just threaten them like that. Jeopardizes the whole structure we’ve got here. You brought it on yourself, honestly. And I’ve got a lot of anticipation here; because I was just going to have someone put a slug in your forehead on the ship. A couple of the guys thought better of it to see what you could do.”
“Risky.”
“I don’t know about that. Fascinating though. Nobody’s going to start a war over you…the world isn’t like that anymore, Talgo.”
“Less chatter!” The guy behind Cyprian spat this out.
“You want to see something amazing?” Cyprian’s grin was sinister, thrilled.
Another of those surrounding Cyprian, the one with a burn on his cheek, smiled wickedly, “Whatever. Rich boy.”
The young Talgo watched the face of the one who’d last spoken, the one excitedly awaiting a show full of drama and color, swirling action and a thrilling recount for his friends. He did the same for some of the others and saw the same eagerness, a boyish delight in a playground brawl with the biggest kid in school. He had clearly seen this before and was maybe surprised at how alike these sorts of people are.
“I know your tricks, jay bird.” A darker man to Cyprian’s side spoke, one with an eye squinting more than the other. “Two breakers in your carbine – fires twice as fast. You prance around like a dancing idiot while we panic and try not to shoot each other because you’re you. They write books about you, jay bird.”
Ventrey had been watching the olive man who’d spoken, then at last turned back to Cyprian, “Give me back my gun.”
Cyprian kept silent. He turned his eyes to each of the men about him, waiting on one of them to do something other than threaten. Impatiently, he raised his eyebrow and gently shook his head as if to signal, ‘well, I’m waiting’. Perhaps they were only blustering. At any rate, when he moved, it was with ferocity.
Like a crocodile attacking, Cyprian leaned in and thrust his right heel behind him, crunching backwards the knee of the man approaching him there. The fellow quickly went down grunting like an animal and collapsing around that knee. Before he had even fallen, Cyprian had shifted his carbine to his forearm and slung a ball of lightning through the falling man’s forehead exploding it in charred and smoking fragments.
Smoothly as if he’d seen their return fire in slow motion or on game film beforehand, Cyprian twisted the insulated shield of his carbine through the air blocking their shots in sequence. He spun a full circle throwing his carbine arm out to smash Ventrey’s jaw with the barrel, drawing out a tooth and fired multiple precise shots off, throwing the others into defensive moves shielding themselves. Lightning popped and rushed around them and hissed as balls popped out of existence in searing flames.
In a blur and seizing their hesitation, Cyprian jutted his forearm toward the olive man, placing his barrel in line with and pointing into the other carbine’s barrel. There was shock in the fellow’s eyes as the two of them fired, Cyprian’s firing twice, and exploded the weapon right there on the attacker’s arm. He screamed like a hog as his arm up to the shoulder and the lower part of his neck burned away.
Cyprian fluidly blocked another series of return shots from the remaining two attackers, men who were by now firing wildly and wide-eyed. When he fired back, two of his shots bored holes through another of them, sending him to the ground smoking like a falling airplane. Cyprian shouted and rushed the remaining attacker, the one with the burn on his cheek who’d called him a rich boy. In his moment, his chance that he’d anticipated, he only froze and hesitated as a Talgo in full war cry came upon him and drove like a spear his fist and the flaming hot barrel of his carbine directly through the attacker’s throat, bursting out the other side in a spray of blood and smoke.
Cyprian inhaled deeply and looked around himself. The railing along the corridor was lit up in St. Elmo’s fire, whispering in puffs that sounded like a flickering cutting torch. Two of the attackers were still on fire. Ventrey groaned from the floor. The young Talgo stepped closer and placed his boot’s heel on Ventrey’s throat. He powered down his carbine and slid it back, then reached into his thigh pocket for the railgun he’d taken from the man upon his arrival.
“I’m important to them…” Ventrey’s voice betrayed shattered teeth and a swollen tongue.
Cyprian held the weapon up a moment, then turned it down to fire between Ventrey’s eyes without hesitating or bragging. He widened his grip to let the railgun fall freely onto Ventrey’s chest, then turned to leave, the sound of his footsteps echoing and the false fires of his shoulder boards casting long shadows along the broad corridors.
5 THE RAUCHKA SNIPER
“There you are, getting all feathered up again! That’s what I’m talking about!” Ring was walking alongside the Recorder in a pine glade, both of them entirely drenched, their clothes stuck to them and dripping and their arms flared out. Misling’s glare was his only response.
“Listen, I’m not a machine guy. I don’t know why it got stuck up there. I would have thought the compressor doohickey would have fired up this morning after sitting idle all night; but it’s cool. Why can’t you just be excited that we got stuck over the lake so we could jump?”
“Do you have a map or some sense of orientation such that this journey is not subject to the whims of your attention deficit?”
“Are you kidding me? You have five people inside your head and not one of you knows how to get to the Cave City?”
“Please limit your responses to those which address that which was inquired.”
“I have a general sense of wellbeing that emanates from this direction over here. We’ll go that way. Should be close. How hard could it be to find…has a city in it, right?”
“You comfortably notify perfect strangers of your intent to mark the world with your presence yet you receive your directio
n from a general sense of wellbeing!”
“You know, Misling, what I find most endearing about you is how irritated you get. You love to tap on that tattoo of yours; but were you even listening in class?”
As they were walking, the clearing opened further through a gap in the fir and pine trees to a broad shining stream beyond the grassy bank of which was a weathered black statue one quarter sunk into the moss. It was of a commanding yet forgotten warlord from very long ago with his dark hands clasped prayer-like against the upside-down hilt of a cablesword, part of which was broken off near the monument’s lowest visible portion. At its prime, it was perhaps three times life size; and its location said clearly this desolate woodland was at one time either a trade route or of some other importance and not at all as it appeared now.
“What’s the deal with Farmilion…how did you wind up with him?”
Ring sat cross-legged beside the stream and skipped a flat stone across to the mossy bank. Misling admired the monument from its base, then began clambering up to get a closer look.
“Goodman Farmilion was at one time a respected dramatist. He gained a state protectorship when he lost his memory.”
“Why, what happened to him?”
“That piece of the Record is sealed.”
“Till he dies or forever?”
“That is sealed.”
“Well who sealed it?”
“That is sealed.”
“Come on!” Ring twisted to face Misling, who was curiously examining carved runes running alongside the cablesword’s length.
“He wrote dramas…for the living theater, right?” Ring referred to the popular theater conducted in and throughout registered participant’s lives with actors and magician’s tricks, an art form that had once been very prominent and influential but had faded in its importance.
“He wrote satires as well. He was actually quite feared by many in prominence.”
“Was it a Talgo who sealed his Record?” Ring watched the Recorder for a telling reaction, which was not at all forthcoming. Instead, the Recorder continued unaffected running his fingers along the night-black curves of the inscribed memorial. He scratched away a white spot of bird dropping with his fingernail.
“He was considered blasphemous and controversial, bringing new and scandalous conventions to the art. Much of popular drama today owes its boundaries to Farmilion’s early works. For example, he was the first to include the Salt Mystic as a character in a work of fiction.”
“Whatever. He seems nice.”
Misling eyed Ring a moment, then returned to his scratching, “The bakas…it comes from many people who owe him great debts, and gold as well sometimes. He gives his proceeds to the poor children who inhabit the pier bridges and leads them in a dance to the markets so their parents do not take from them what he has given.”
Ring smiled, “That’s fantastic. What did he do for these people?”
Misling’s voice went softer, “He does not know.”
Ring watched him a moment, pondering, then idly resumed skipping stones as blurry curves rippled the silver stream, “How come you’re not asking me what I really want from the Rauchka Sniper? Aren’t I mysterious?”
It was silent but for the curling eddies against smooth stones and the croaking of insects; and Ring went to eye the haunting sculpture for himself, standing within its line of sight. The weathered face was threatening and powerful, evidently a chieftain or general of some sort from long ago. Armored and helmeted and taller than life, the impression was intimidating and inspiring. Although swept aside by the weight of history, here was a man who commanded his era.
When it was clear he would elicit nothing further from the Recorder, Ring thumbed his nose at the statue’s face, wiggling his fingers disrespectfully and made a sort of flatulence noise with his lips.
“Cableswords were a mark of status during the time before the Brewing. Only the most promising student in each war college or monastery would be selected to train on the weapon. This fellow here led an uprising that evidently turned into a brutal dictatorship. He toppled a dynasty, but refers to himself as, ‘The Iron Eye’” and demeans at length the insurrections he put down.”
Misling traced his finger along the length of the coil and brushed aside clumps of soil and weeds into which the coil had been submerged following engraved lettering.
“’To you who will come…but for me, slavery awaited you’”. Misling climbed out onto the monument’s soiled and weathered right forearm to face it eye-to-eye. Balancing on the forearm by lodging one of his feet around a sculpted elbow, the Recorder looked for only a moment exclusively into the old warlord’s blank eyes before shutting his own and engaging with his Pool once again. He was as motionless as an owl for some time, shuddering only occasionally as Mast memories crashed and roared, screaming inside his mind. At last, he accidentally slipped enough to shock him into awareness as he banged the crown of his head against the clasped hands and got his foot stuck.
“Oh.” It took him a moment to free himself; and he almost came out of the monument’s arms altogether in the attempt. Yet when he landed in the mossy creekside, it was clear something was wrong. Ring was missing.
“Oh. Oh no.” He nervously paced in a widening circle, then climbed a fir tree for a possibly wider view with no sign of Ring. Misling was at once sweating and did what he could to uncover an instinct or follow a sign of Ring’s passing; but nothing was clear.
Scholars and event readers, in their zeal to relish and interpret things in a Recorder’s Pool often miss the obvious point that any embarrassing bits, and often any bits at all, which belong to the Recorder himself are passed by in the recollection and disappear from history altogether. Certainly this experience of Misling wandering in the glade for over an hour as lost as an orphaned kitten was something unlikely to be offered up for public consumption. He followed a broad plan of heading towards the rising elevation, certain that the cave city would be on higher ground; but his reaction to having been left alone was not one of courage and resourcefulness.
“Arrogant and pompous…self-absorbed…blabbering
…concocting false mysteries…kidnapping and abandoning
…troublemaking…deluded agitator!” The young Recorder continued along those lines, expressing vividly his perception of Ring thus far, all the while continuing through the evergreens in hopeless search for the cave wherein the Rauchka Sniper lived.
Although the cave city was referred to as such, it was in fact only the ruins of a village housed against the walls within a limestone mountainside which had been abandoned outside recorded history. The Rauchka Sniper was a relic of the wars that smoked and exploded in living memory; and he had watched over those ruins for two generations, playing hermit and event reader for visitors from the country. As Hastine had observed, it wasn’t at all clear what someone so insulated and passed by could contribute to anyone’s intentions of gauging the essence of their age.
“How come your clothes are wet?” A female voice came from behind Misling; and he turned quickly to see her. After an hour of hearing only insects and twigs cracking, it was jolting and unexpected. The young woman was a provincial, dressed unusually bohemian in a frilly skirt and high boots with buckles along their length. Her brown hair was streaked with pastel and glittered hairfalls; and she looked perhaps a few years older than the Recorder. She was carrying a cloth bag overstuffed with biscuits and fruits.
“Where have you been just now?” Misling took a single step towards her.
“Following you.”
“Why follow a Recorder?”
“Because you were going the wrong way.” She answered in a curiously pitched voice, somewhat like what one would expect from a tiny person.
“Then why not just come from hiding and state that this Recorder was going the wrong way?”
“You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“What has changed now such that this Recorder will believe you?”
“Do yo
u?” Her head cocked just noticeably to her left. Misling took a moment to assess both this new stranger and his situation, then at last changed his direction along the alternative path he’d earlier decided against. The young woman followed him casually as if they were shopping for new dinner plates.
“So why are your clothes wet?”
“This Recorder jumped from a stalled dirigible rover into a lake and was left alone to wander in this woodland. There are no clearly identifiable landmarks; and the cave city is well hidden.”
“Most people coming down here don’t have much trouble finding it.” Her tone didn’t change; and she wasn’t laughing at him. Even so, Misling frowned at her implication.
“What is your name?”
“I’m Sylhauna. You’re the first Recorder I’ve actually seen. Are you wise? You don’t really come across as wise.”
Tearing Down The Statues Page 6
