The Night Land, a Story Retold

by James Stoddard

  Since it was not in my nature to brood, I soon rose, diskos in hand, and began making my way once more down the slope. Throughout that day, I felt uneasy, as if something followed me. I paused often to listen, and occasionally used my diskos to light the way behind me. Once I thought I saw a creature as cragged as the stones around it, crouching at the edge of the light. In my surprise I released the trigger, plunging all into darkness again. I instantly reactivated my weapon and stepped forward, but if something had been there, it was gone, leaving me doubting whether I had seen anything at all.

  In the early part of the seventh hour, after I had rested and eaten, I stepped into a small hole and tumbled across a sharp boulder. The fall shook my whole frame and took my breath away, so I had to lie, nearly helpless, gasping for air. Without my armor, the rock would have ripped me open.

  When I could speak once more I lay muttering, cursing the rocks, the darkness, and my own clumsiness. My ribs hurt, but did not seem broken.

  "Being foolish," I whispered. After only a brief time in the dark, I had taken up the habit of talking to myself in a kind of shorthand. "A moment's fall, a broken bone—die here alone—no one to help Naani. Must be more careful. Hands and knees are the way to go, feeling my path. Won't need the diskos as much—save power—mustn't overuse the weapon. Can’t see with it half the time, anyway."

  When I was strong enough to continue, I began crawling along, ever downward, feeling my way as I went.

  I crept all that day, and though it was laborious, creeping through the Night Land had hardened my muscles to the exercise of going on hands and knees. The lack of things to think about bothered me more—my mind wandered in widening arcs, sometimes I dreamed of my life in the pyramid, sometimes of my existence in the world of the past. The memories began to wind together, until I pictured Mirdath's face with Naani's voice, or thought our little house, where we had spent such happy hours together, stood in the middle of the Night Land, with the Watchers peering through our windows at the fire in the hearth. I tried to concentrate on my mathematics, especially on the problem of the Insoluble Conundrum, but the formulas slipped away.

  I whispered as I went, a ghost among the rocks. If there is a purgatory, it surely resides among the crags of that barren slope.

  After crawling for eighteen hours, without bothering to trigger the diskos I felt around in the darkness for a level place to rest.

  "If there are monsters, let them come," I whispered, casting away enough stones to make a reasonably smooth bed. I ate and composed myself for sleep. My last conscious words were: "Something follows—I’ve felt it all day. Something follows." It was true, but I was too weary and discouraged to care.

  Despite my exhaustion something roused me twice. I raised myself on my elbow, and listened, but could not discern anything, and both times I eventually returned to my troubled slumber.

  At the sixth hour, I awoke abruptly, even as on the day before, certain something was near. I listened in vain for a long time, my diskos ready, but when I detected nothing, I rose without making any light, ate, packed my gear, and continued crawling through the darkness.

  That day passed much like the one before, except that in the eighth hour, when I reached out my hand to take another step, I encountered empty space, and fell forward on my stomach, my armor rattling against the stones. I felt around and discovered a pit before me, stretching in both directions. After a moment's debate, I decided not to risk waking any inhabitants by using my diskos, but crawled to the left, keeping the pit at arm's length, but feeling for it occasionally so as to remain parallel to its edge. Once, as I did this, a cold hand clasped my wrist.

  I shrieked in fear and hammered at my assailant with my diskos, which I had been carrying in my left hand. The spinning disk severed a long, gray arm, lean and gnarled as an oak branch.

  As I leapt to my feet, diskos still whirring, I looked down into the pit and saw its entire bottom churning as if filled with serpents. No sooner did I back away than an army of arms reached over the lip, writhing in a long line along the crevice edge as far as my light could show, fingers flexing in their hunger to grasp me. I could not tell whether they were attached to a body.

  I stood in a crouching stance, trembling in fear, awaiting their assault. They strained toward me, but seemed unable to leave the pit. As soon as I realized this, I sprinted as hard as I could go around the crevice, keeping my diskos lit. I put several hundred yards between myself and the den, then stopped, panting, my finger still on the diskos' trigger. I could not bear to face the darkness again without knowing if any more such pits awaited me.

  "Won't do," I finally said, sitting back on my haunches in the middle of the circle of light. "Won't do. Too slow. Need a plan. Need a rock and a rope. If a boy has no cord about him, shall not the same be said of a man!" The last was an old saying of my people.

  The endless solitude had dulled my thinking, but at last I removed the strap from my pouch and tied a stone to one end of it. The strap, being long and thin, suited my purposes well. Since I could no longer use the strap to carry my pouch, I buckled the pouch to my scrip. With much trepidation, I doused the light. I held the end of the strap and cast the stone before me as I crawled along, so I could tell if any pits lay in front of me.

  If my trek had been monotonous before, this proved even worse, throwing the stone, crawling to it, and throwing it again, like an animal lured forward at the promise of reward. Despite that, I felt elated; for perhaps an hour I chuckled in a rasping whisper, gloating over my presumed cleverness.

  I made up snatches of song about crawling down to see Naani, though sometimes it was Mirdath, and little verses about numbers. I sang in a buzzing whisper to the beat of the rock and the four thumps of my hands and knees on the ground. For a time I counted the casts, but lost track, began again, then forgot about it entirely.

  I slept at the eighteenth hour, and was again awakened by something just before the sixth hour. I rose uneasily, knowing there was something near me in the dark, but when I triggered my diskos, I saw nothing but rock and stone.

  During my journey that day, I felt a change in the air, which seemed to be growing warmer and heavier. When I attempted to put powder in my cup, the increased oxygen augmented the chemical reaction, making it foam over the rim.

  I fastened on this change as something to occupy my mind during the monotony of the trek, and spent several hours, between throws of the stone, brooding how the air in Andrew's day must have been like this, not thin and keen like that found around the pyramid. The atmosphere of the Night Land did not extend far up, but hung in a narrow band close to the earth, so that even the upper stories of the redoubt rose above the breathable air. For this reason, the higher cities were sealed from the outside. I cannot recall whether the pyramid was also closed at its base, though I seem to remember that we drew our air from the Underground Fields. If so, I assume we used some method to exchange our atmosphere for the air outside, though there may have been some kind of advanced purification method, instead.

  I realized, perhaps for the first time, that the inhabitants of the pyramid had much larger chests than the people of Andrew's time, with the features of those of the upper cities even more pronounced. Because of this, anyone could identify what part of the pyramid a person came from by his appearance. According to the Records, concern over these differences once resulted in a plan to shift people up and down throughout the redoubt. Since the inhabitants preferred living in the city of their birth, the edict had failed, though a remnant of it remained in the law requiring every young person to spend three years and two hundred twenty-five days traveling from city to city. In this way, they not only learned the customs of all the cities, but could try the air at every level and find the atmosphere that best suited them.

  The lack of atmosphere in the Night Land accounted for the absence of birds or other flying creatures, though our Records mentioned tremendous flying brutes that had roamed the land with mighty leaps in ancient times.
r />   When I had first decided upon my journey, some of the Monstruwacans had foolishly suggested using the small flying vessel kept beside the models of the ships in the Museum of Antiquities. This particular craft, made of the same enduring gray metal as the pyramid, glistened as if new, and was even in working condition. We soon discarded the idea, however, for no one had flown the vessel for more than a hundred thousand years, or even practiced using it. I had read the ancient Book of Flying and knew the difficulty of learning to pilot such a ship. I also doubted if the air of the Night Land would have supported it; if so the ancients would never have abandoned using the craft in the first place. Neither did I want to hang in the night for all the Forces of Evil to see, with the sound of the engines announcing my presence to the whole world.

  From my reading of the Records, I suspected that, countless centuries before, a band of brave adventurers had sent their flying machines leaping over the edge of the upper world, descending the hundred miles into the great Rift where I now walked. I imagined them spinning downward, seen from above for perhaps ten or twenty miles and afterward lost in the depths. These courageous scouts must have led the way for the nations that became the Road Makers, who built the paths that brought the earth's inhabitants into the Rift.

  I muttered such things to myself as I went, in a fever of what I thought to be inspiration, though in fact it was the ramblings of a tottering mind. I considered how all the world seemed to go in a circle, the Road Makers deserting the ruined earth to fight the monsters and beasts of the Rift, rebuilding civilization anew only to have it gradually cut off by the Forces of Evil; the people forced to retreat first into the sanctuary that became the House of Silence, then into the Great Pyramid, where ancient machinery such as the airships that had brought them into the Rift sat, unused, their workings forgotten. I thought of kingdoms and nations rising and falling, and imagined myself part of that cycle, treading an eternal ring through the darkness.

  Rousing myself from my reveries, I triggered the diskos. To my dismay, I discovered I had been crawling in a circle over the rough stones, wearing them away with my armor.

  ***

  Three more days passed. I had descended for six endless days and nights, and for all I knew, would continue in blackness forever. I whispered continually, a little crazed, deprived of everything save the darkness and the hard ground beneath my hands and knees.

  "The heart of the world," I whispered, over and over, to the beat of the cast stone, as I thought of how I traveled far below the level of the redoubt, deep in the depths in the monstrous night. "Going down, going down to the heart of the world. No end to it. No end at all."

  I began to believe I had died and was suffering an eternal punishment; the stones beneath my hands reminded me of Sisyphus. Of all the people of the world, only I remembered that ancient tale; only I remembered the Greeks at all. I became maudlin about it. "Greece is gone. All her glory faded into the night. She had no pyramid for refuge." Tears filled my eyes. "And I am pushing a stone down a slope, seeking my Mirdath." So my two identities became confused in the darkness.

  Abruptly, I sat down, staring in astonishment, for I saw a faint flickering, so far away I thought it my imagination. When it flashed again, I rose to my knees and gawked, like a stranded sailor gaping at a sail. At first, I refused to believe it, thinking, since it came and went so quickly, that my eyes were playing tricks. I held my breath, waiting. When it sparked again, it seemed alien to me, as if in my stumblings I had lost the concept of light. But at last I realized it was truly there. I began to laugh, and rising, wobbly and stiff, sprinted madly toward it.

  I traveled less than a dozen steps before I stumbled over an upcropping and fell hard on my face. I lay still, gritting my teeth and groaning until the pain passed. Finally, I climbed back onto my hands and knees and crept along with bruised and aching limbs. An hour or more I traveled, often raising my head to look for the faltering illumination. Though I expected to reach it any moment, I journeyed six full hours before drawing near.

  As the flame turned the night to twilight I began to hear a distant piping sound. I stopped, crouching and wary, and waited several moments, but when no danger approached, I continued on my way. The sound became increasingly louder as I went.

  Even when I came close, I could not perceive the source of the light, for several enormous rock formations blocked my view. I veered to the left for a half mile to circle them. The piping grew, a whistling, festive tumult.

  Finally, I knelt among three boulders and peered out into the mouth of a tremendous gorge created by the narrowing of the sides of the Rift. The light revealed a stark cliff climbing into the shadowed heights to my right, and when the flames flared up I could also see the wall of rock to the left. For the first time in my life, I beheld the boundaries of my world. I stared in awe, knowing from my reading of the gray, metal book that the crags extended upward for many miles above me.

  I had reached the end of the Great Slope, but not the end of my descent, for the gorge continued its decline, though more gradually than before. Multi-colored fires shone far down its length.

  Moving almost numbly, I pressed onward, walking upright, and passed between two tremendous boulders. For the first time I could see the flame clearly, gushing from the earth, massive stone outcroppings standing like giant sentinels around it. The sound, as I had already surmised, came from burning gas exiting the earth. The flame danced and swayed enormously, sometimes dipping as low as a hundred feet, sometimes rising three hundred yards. At its peak, it lit the far side of the gorge, which was easily seven miles away. It laid the whole gorge before me, wild, stark, and empty, filled with bare stone and distant, winking fires.

  As I gaped at that gargantuan flame, the only man to see this wonder for thousands of years, the madness that had overtaken me fell away like a discarded cloak. Here was a light to pierce the darkness, though it burned in a place lonely as a distant sphere. It seemed eternally holy and significant to me. Gradually, I realized how strange my thoughts had grown. As the light burned away the last traces of my foolishness, a deep peace filled my soul. I remained there a long time, drinking in its radiance, thinking nothing, absorbing its brilliance.

  With my mind once more my own, I shook my head and continued past the blue, flaming fountain, which lit my way for many miles. After so much darkness it delighted me to see my shadow rise and fall, leaping with the fire. I turned often to watch the blaze. It filled me with hope, this light that had not failed through the centuries, though it fought the darkness all alone.

  Slowly, the roaring and whistling of the fire subsided behind me, its last echoes reverberating against the canyon walls, sometimes sounding like distant flutes, sometimes, like the whispers of monsters. After six hours, the noise died completely, making the silence seem more ominous than ever. I passed four flames during that time, the third being blue and the other three green. These danced and moaned, as had the great flame, sending their weird light spilling along the gorge.

  It was my seventh day's journey since entering the Great Slope. Sixteen hours had passed since I first laid eyes upon the mighty flame, and I had been too excited to eat during all that time. Since holes and crevices dotted the gorge, it was easy to find a resting place in a small cave between two boulders. I ate four of the tablets and drank my water, which again required less powder to fill the cup. After lying down beneath my cloak, I opened Ayleos' Mathematics to the blank pages and caught up on my journal and maps. When I finished, I thumbed through the pages and took a few moments pleasure in the geometry section. I fell asleep staring contentedly at isosceles triangles.

  It was the most peaceful slumber I had experienced since entering the Great Slope, with dreams filled with Naani. I thought I heard the Master Word beating around me once, but since I remained asleep it may have been only my imagination. Upon awakening, I pondered the dream, but could reach no conclusion. The heavy air made me so groggy I could scarcely think. I ate my breakfast numbly and set out, my
diskos tied to my hip so I could use both hands to navigate between the boulders. After traveling in so much darkness, the half-twilight cast by the scattered fires delighted me.

  During that journey I passed twenty-three of the dancing gas jets, five of white fire, and the others either blue or green. Despite their ghostly lambency, they gave me hope. I slept among the rocks for seven hours, then still half-asleep, rose to my scant breakfast.

  I soon reached a place of relative darkness. What fires there were erupted in waves between the rocks, thousands of flames unexpectedly appearing in shudders of light, so that one moment I walked through the heart of a country of fire, the next through a land of night. The blazes broke the silence with a noise like stones tossed into a pool. More than once I had to scamper aside to avoid being burned.

  Choking gases belched from the ground, leaving vile fumes hanging in the air. I avoided the heavier clouds for fear of being poisoned, but took solace in thinking that even monsters and Evil Forces would not dwell amid such desolation.

  I slept that night in a place where the air seemed fairly clear. Even so, there must have been some fumes, for I had trouble waking myself up. When I finally stumbled to my feet, I had a piercing headache that lasted until the end of the fifteenth hour, when I finally left the gas fires behind. Before me rose a grayness like mist, lit by a vague, ruddy shining.

  Shortly thereafter, where the gorge turned abruptly to the left, I beheld a crimson light. I hurried forward, anxious to see its cause, and passed beneath mountainous escarpments on the right side of the gorge. The overhanging stone blocked the ruby glow, leaving me to stumble through an area of almost total darkness, where I had to trigger my diskos several times to light my way.