by Dan O'Brien
A voice spoke from within it, startling Marlowe.
“I have been waiting for your call….”
*
Armon grimaced as the door groaned. Pistons and hydraulics threatened to give as the three men cranked upon the ring handle. “Pull men, pull harder.”
A thousand men: that was the length and breadth of a squadron that was neither too large nor too small to pursue Marlowe across the desert. Armon looked over them, their appearances identical encased within their armor.
Glistening black armor was retrofitted with a series of ducts that ran into the helmets of their suits. Bulky, rectangular packs were affixed to their backs. It served as a condensation system that would hopefully keep them alive long enough to traverse the wide desert into which Marlowe had stumbled.
The air of the desert was cool on his face. He could taste the plague in the air, feel its toxic touch. To say anything at all would have been beyond foolhardy. He watched as the soldiers walked, their plastic faces impassive.
He moved out into the open air outside the walls of Orion. It had been some time since he had set foot in the desert. During his training, it was necessary to wander the endless sands. By the end he had been delirious and starved, not fit for any kind of rational discussion.
The thin body armor he wore was made for desert combat; aerated and made to regenerate the breeze that surrounded him into a cooling system. The very same apparatus was rigged on to each of the walking dead, stretching out behind him.
He could still feel the sting of the injection. Every forty-eight hours as long as he was in Orion. Now as he stepped out into the desert, he feared that it might have to become more frequent. The stale taste of the air was a testament to what would afflict him if he grew careless. “Keep close men, we march through the day,” he called over his shoulder. There were no tracks. Desert winds had wiped away any trace of Marlowe.
*
Marlowe kept silent as the voice continued. There was no image. “I am glad that we are able to convene, Brother Armon. I have grave news,” continued the voice, decidedly female. “Lord Niehl has dark plans for you. Are you alone?”
Marlowe looked at the sphere with fear.
What was happening?
The voice waited for a moment. “I understand. Your silence indicates that you cannot speak to me, but I must convey to you the urgency of what I have discovered.”
Marlowe looked out across the desert.
The winds blew the sand into drifts.
“I am Shasta, Sister Shasta. We attended the same peripherals. The Babylonian Congress convened and the fate of your pursuit, as well as your life, has been called into question. They are considering sending another conduit, or many more. They are talking about dispatching you as well as the Orionian, Alexander Marlowe.”
Marlowe squeezed the sphere tighter as he heard his name. He thought to speak, but refrained. She thought he was Armon. He had to see where this would go.
“Lord Niehl has called into question the death of Brother Roth, as well as your inability to find the viable and the Orionian Marlowe. You should flee the city and pursue Marlowe to the ends of the earth, if need be. Without the capture of Marlowe and the viable, your life will be forfeit.”
She hesitated again.
Marlowe waited, breath held.
The winds howled in the background.
“Peace be with you, Brother Armon,” she spoke finally.
The glow faded and again only the light of the moon shattered the darkness. Marlowe held the sphere in his hands for a moment, simply staring at it incredulously. He recalled that Armon had been the assassin in the atrium; the same man he had driven a blade into, making him one with the floor. This man had been sent to kill him and take back Dana, and now that failure would cost him his life.
Marlowe shook his head, releasing his grip on the sphere. Picking up the pack, he extracted his pistol, replacing it into the empty holster. Drawing out the dark blanket, he wrapped it around his head and shoulders. The wound throbbed, but hurt less in the dark. Dropping the pack, he moved forward into the night. He followed the tracks into the distance, disappearing with them into the horizon.
*
The soldier rushed to the assassin’s side. The reflective plastic of his helmet showed Armon that he was looking the part of a wearisome hunter. His face was thinner than usual, dark rings circled his eyes. Tight-lipped, he looked at the solider. “What is it?” he paused as he did not know the soldier’s rank.
“Corporal, sir.”
“What do you have for me?” returned Armon, ducking his head to keep the sudden assault of the desert winds out of his eyes.
The man produced a rectangular device with a crystal-clear display that he held in one hand with a pistol grip. He pointed to the display with his free hand. “As instructed, we narrowed the bandwidth search for the frequency that you had provided us: the transponder and communications equipment in the pack.”
“And?”
The corporal touched the screen, a red dot dancing in the far right corner of the display. “This signature represents the location of the communications equipment. The beacon is stationary. This thermal signature here is in close proximity.”
“Are there any other readings?’
The corporal shook his head, the blackened helmet squeaking slightly. “Negative, sir. There is nothing out there that is the same size and located near the communications equipment. All other living thermal signatures indicate small desert animals that could not be what we are tracking.”
“Very well, lead the men. Follow the signal,” responded Armon. The soldier nodded and waved his hand. A thousand men marched again. This time they followed the corporal and left Armon to take hang back and watch as the walls of Orion shrunk slowly into the distance.
XIX
D
ana opened her eyes. Cold and wet, she felt something dab her forehead. Trickles of water traced lines down the front of her face.
Her muscles felt heavy.
“Marlowe?” she croaked.
Sephes wiped at her forehead with the brown fabric, a frown on her face. “No, it is Sephes. You fainted in the desert. I had to carry you.”
Dana murmured and tried to roll on her side. The very motion brought a sickly sensation. “Where are we?”
“My village.”
Dana struggled to a sitting position. Her hair was matted and her silver eyes had dulled to gray. “Your village? How far did you carry me?”
Sephes smiled, pulling away the wet fabric. “A great distance. I had little choice. I could not leave you alone in the desert.”
Dana slunk back against the stiff pillow, her neck aching and the throb in her mind ever-present. “And Marlowe? Has he come?”
Sephes shook her head. She rose from the bent position she had been in and paced to the edge of the enclosure. “There was no sign of him. He will have difficulty tracking you here,” she stated grimly.
Dana looked about the darkened interior of the room. The walls were slick and uneven, like molded clay. Thatches of dried wood lay about the ceiling. The walls were barren and there was a smell of sulfur about the air.
“Is this your home?”
Sephes kept her back to Dana. “No, this is one of the shaman’s rooms. The shaman and my father wish to speak to you.”
“Your father?” Dana asked.
Sephes turned.
Her face was very serious.
“He is the Elder of my village.”
Sephes stepped aside, allowing the entrance to be seen. The light from outside was filtered slightly. There was brightness to the air, but it was shrouded by something beyond Dana’s ability to see.
“They come,” spoke Sephes.
The door was draped in long threads of dull-colored beads. They bristled against one another as the two men pushed their way through. The first was wide in the shoulders. His dark skin was marred with swirling tattoos, tribal and frightening to Dana. His long hair was pulled back except for one
braid of black hair that fell across his left eye. A feather dangled at the tip of the braid. His ebony skin was a bright contrast to the white shock of clothing he draped over his torso and tightened around his muscular legs.
He bowed as he met her gaze. “I am Mograli. I am the shaman of the village.” His eyes were brown with a slice of red through the iris in his left eye only; his hands were covered in ornate rings. Around his neck hung a throng of teeth and bones that clattered as he stood from his bow. His white tunic had a gray stripe that ran from his right shoulder to his boot.
Dana smiled. “I am Dana.”
He reached forward and grasped her hand, rubbing his thumb over the back of it. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Dana. We mean you no harm.”
She laughed awkwardly as he released her hand.
“Thank you,” she stuttered.
The other man was taller, his head shaved clean and his eyes a deep blue. His skin was lighter than Mograli’s, but far darker than Dana’s. His leggings were sand-colored––his tunic gray and white. The sleeves were cropped around each bicep.
He wore a thick black band marked with a hawk’s feather. His white teeth flashed as he bowed to Dana. “I am Sephan, Sephes’ father, and Elder of this village. We wish to talk to you, Dana, if you feel able.”
His voice was smooth, inviting.
She nodded, pulling the blanket that covered her to her waist so that she could sit up on her cot. “Can Sephes stay?” she asked.
Sephan looked at his daughter and nodded.
“Yes, she may at your request.”
Dana smiled and Sephes moved next to the bed, sitting cross-legged on the ground. “Where is this village?” Dana asked as Mograli and Sephan sat upon the floor, their legs tucked beneath them.
Mograli glanced at Sephan.
“In the desert, beyond the Wall,” answered Mograli.
“Orion’s walls?” Dana asked, remembering what Sephes had called it.
Sephan shook his head. “The Wall of Orion separates your world from the desert. The Wall of Shadows separates us from the desert. We are behind that wall.”
Dana felt sluggish. “What is the Wall of Shadows?”
Mograli shifted his position, reaching into his pockets and producing a folded piece of fabric. “The Wall of Shadows is ancient. It was erected before your wall. The Mimic does not dare to journey beyond the two barriers of the Wall of Shadows.”
“Beyond us the desert continues until it crashes into the mountains and the horizon. Then beyond there to an endless sea,” continued Sephan. “This is the village of Shadowfall. Here you do not need to fear the Mimic or the Forgotten.”
“The Forgotten?” she queried with a raised eyebrow.
Mograli moved closer. He unfurled the fabric fold by fold, making sure to meticulously remove it from around the object within. A dark stone shone as he pulled away the last of the fabric.
“This is a piece of the Wall of the Shadows, taken when the Mimic came to the very borders of our village and crashed on the wall like waves on a shore. This piece of stone has been in the possession of the shaman of this village for many sons.”
“They say that the wall is made of the Forgotten,” whispered Sephes, who received a dark glare from her father.
“If we may, Dana, we would like to ask you some questions. There will be plenty of time to answer your questions,” spoke Sephan, his smile enticing.
Dana nodded, biting her lip.
“Of course, I was curious.”
Sephan raised a hand.
“No worries. If I may ask, where did you come from?”
She shifted uncomfortably upon the cot. “Orion.”
Sephan looked at her thoughtfully. “The city beyond the wall? That is where you have come from?”
Dana nodded.
“Did you come alone?” he pressed.
She shook her head. “Not alone.”
Sephan exhaled.
“A friend? Family?”
“My guardian, a man named Marlowe,” she answered, her head lowering.
Sephan looked at Mograli, and then Sephes. He directed his question at her. “Did you see her traveling companion?”
“I saw two forms at first. When I reached them, there was only one. Dana. She has spoken of him many times.”
Mograli stood, pacing away from them.
“Where could your guardian have gone?”
Dana pulled her legs to her chest. “A wave of sand crashed on top of him. There was that terrible thunder and then the sands seemed to liquefy and when they quieted, he was gone.”
Sephan stood as well. “The Mimic?”
Sephes shook her head. “I do not think so. Icarus was following the Mimic and he was nowhere near her guardian. It could have simply been a cave-in. There are many shifting caverns out there. He could be buried.”
“Buried,” exclaimed Dana.
Mograli’s face was serious. “Better to have died in a cave-in than to be taken by the Mimic and join the Forgotten in the Wall of Shadows.”
Sephan nodded grimly. “If he has fallen beneath the desert, then he might still be alive. There is still a chance that your guardian may return.”
Dana nodded. They all knew that there was little chance of Marlowe’s return. “I hope so.”
“Why did you and your guardian flee the city? Are you being pursued?” queried Mograli, his arms folded over one another. The tattoos matched up and created a congregation of runes that spelled something in a language she could not read.
Dana stumbled over how to explain it. “It started out rather sinisterly, but now it seems like a strange, convoluted dream. I can only remember Orion as series of interrupted segments, as if I were deaf and blind for some time and only gathered pieces. The last thing I remember clearly was waking up in a room, a dark room. And in that room I saw something that should not be there, people who should not be there. And then, as if on cue, Marlowe broke through the door and it is a blur from there. We escaped through the city, dodging soldiers and assassins until we broke through the gate and out into the desert.”
Sephan knelt close. “What pursues you?”
“A man, an assassin and….”
She paused, looking away from all of them.
“And what?” pressed Mograli.
She sighed, her eyes wide as she turned back to them. “Some thing. I don’t know how to explain it, but there is something else that pursues us. Marlowe could see it. I only felt it.”
Mograli leaned through the beads, his long hair twisting with them. Sephan rose and crossed his arms across his chest. “Do you remember anything else?”
She shrugged. “A word, a single word.”
“What word?” asked Mograli, leaning back through the beads once more.
“The Lurking.”
Sephan’s eyes grew wide.
“You believe the Lurking pursues you?”
She looked at him strangely. “No, you asked if I remembered anything else. That word: the Lurking. That is what I remember. I don’t know what it means. I just heard that word somewhere and it stuck.”
Mograli looked shaken. “Do you believe that this assassin will journey through the desert to find you and your guardian?”
Dana shuddered.
She remembered the man vividly. The very thought of him sickened her. “I believe that he would, but how would he follow me here?”
Sephan rose to his full height, looking contemplatively beyond the wall. “Men possessed of will have no boundaries for their prey. If this man means to find you, then he will search the edges of life itself to locate you. You will be safe in Shadowfall, for how long I do not know. We will try to keep you safe.”
Dana tried to push herself from the bed, but Mograli’s gentle hand on her stomach stopped her. His breath smelled of cinnamon. “You are very ill, Dana. You should rest. We will keep an eye out for your protector. If he is as tenacious as you have led us to believe, then he will find a way here.”
Dana w
anted to argue, but the gentle rubbing of Mograli’s hand made her eyes heavy. Before she could utter another word, she had fallen asleep. Her last images were of the dark face of the shaman.
*
Marlowe had shed the blanket as night dispersed. The blackness of the fabric absorbed the heat, making it of little use to him in the high dunes of the desert during the sun-ridden portions of the day. His torso armor was a marker in the sand as well as his shirt. Bare-chested, with only the slick armor of his leggings, he continued forward.
The trail had disappeared in the night.
The winds eventually wiped the easel of the desert clean. He looked down at his sunburnt arms and laughed. The runes had spread up his arm, across his chest, down his sides, and onto his other arm. Black lines scribbled in a language he could not read and markings of buildings and thick bars that meant little to him.
“At least those skittering bastards are gone,” he whispered beneath his breath. Squinting, he looked up toward the sun. The heat bore down on his shoulders and back. The heat boiled in his boots. He did not dare take off his foot protection, as the sands would crisp his feet if he tried.
The dunes rose and fell.
Marlowe found himself in a down slope of sandy protrusions. His feet dug into the sand, kicking at it mindlessly as his arms dangled at his sides. He had not had water all night and with the sun already sitting on the horizon, he knew that it would become a deadly day if he did not find something soon.
The white valley was cast in small shadows by the upslope of the next dune. In the relative shade, a small corner of this hell, sat the creatures that dared not brave the day. They hissed and snapped at Marlowe as he passed. He reached for his rifle, but realized that it had fallen from his grip in the night.
He reached for his pistol––trusty pistol.
There it had remained in its holster.
He drew it drunkenly and fired off a round, the sand spitting around the blast hole. The deadly tail of a scorpion rose in defense. Near a foot in length, it stood poised for attack. Marlowe could feel the edges of dementia gripping him.
