Paragaea

by Chris Roberson

  “Well, now, that is a sticky question,” Yasen said, chewing his lip. “You see, my employers at the Six Brothers Consolidated prohibit us from taking on any passengers, wayfarers, or stowaways in the course of our route. To do otherwise would be to risk offending my employers, which could mean censure at best, and elimination at worst.”

  “Elimination of your contract?” Benu asked.

  “No, elimination of me!” Yasen drew a finger across his neck, and stuck out his tongue. “My employers take contracts very seriously, and I'm sorry to say that renegotiation of terms is rarely an option.”

  The master of beasts began to pace in front of them, clasping his hands behind his back. “However,” he went on, talking at breakneck speed, “it occurs to me that there might be another alternative. While neither I nor the freight master are permitted to allow passengers, we are either of us empowered to hire on new labor, circumstances demanding. And considering that we lost the lion's share of our guard contingent to those bloody fenrir, I think that circumstances are quite demanding at the moment, don't you? Yes?”

  Leena and Hieronymus glanced at each other, having trouble parsing out his meaning.

  “Are you offering us a job?” Balam said, squinting his amber eyes at the figure pacing faster and faster before them.

  “Precisely. I can't pay you much, if anything, beyond two square meals a day, but our course will bear us southwards, and Hele is one of the stops along our route.”

  The four companions looked to one another, and shrugged.

  “Why not?” Hieronymus said. “Count us in.”

  “Splendid.” Yasen said. “We've four new guards, which puts us at three-quarters strength at best, but you'll not hear me complain. Now, come along with me, and I'll introduce you to the beasts, and show you the burdens you'll be guarding.”

  The company followed Yasen Kai-Mustaf around a line of tents, past a copse of gnarled trees, and came at last to the beasts. These were the shapes they'd glimpsed shadows of in the night, but nothing could have prepared Leena for the sight of them in the broad daylight.

  There were some dozen of the creatures in all, each standing nearly seven meters tall, so huge that even Balam came only up to their knees. They had long, giraffelike necks, surmounted by narrow heads looking almost like that of a sheep, and were covered in a rough gray hide, like that of a rhinoceros.

  “What are they?” Leena breathed, barely above a whisper.

  “These, dear lady,” Yasen said, indicating the enormous creatures with a grand gesture, “are my babies, my only friends, the finest indriks you will find anywhere on the Paragaean continent.”

  “Big, aren't they?” Hieronymus said, leaning over and whispering into Leena's ear.

  “Too big,” Balam said, looking up at the giant creatures uneasily.

  “No,” Benu said, shaking his head slightly, “that is the normal size and proportion for an indrik.”

  “Well, I say they're too blasted big,” Balam sneered.

  “What?” Yasen said, overhearing the whispered conference. “Do you fear these gentle giants? Nonsense! They're as tender as a babe in arms, and wouldn't hurt a fly. Provided, of course, the fly wasn't in their path as they walked by, but then, that would really be the fly's lookout, and not the fault of the indrik, now wouldn't it? They are nature's perfect engines, my friends the indriks. They can go without food and water for days, thanks to their prodigious size, and can live into their eighties, so that once you teach them a route, they'll remember it for as long as you're likely to require. Some of these beasts have been walking the trade routes of the east since my grandsire first plied the cargo trade, back when there were only four brothers in the Consolidated Shipping Concern. And some of them will be walking these pitted roads long after you and I have moldered to dust.”

  “I wouldn't be so sure of that,” Benu said with a slight smile.

  The indrik, having fed and watered, were driven back to the road. The indriks in the lead and in the rear carried howdahs upon their backs—large platforms the size of a boat's deck, ringed with railings that rose a meter above the planks, and covered by a sheltering canopy. The other indriks in the train were each loaded down with crates and bales strapped to their broad backs.

  When the indriks had all been led back onto the road, everyone clambered up rope ladders and climbed aboard the howdahs, with the freight master and his able landsmen in the rear, and the master of beasts and the guards in the front.

  “Count yourself lucky you ride fore with me, and not abaft with the others,” Yasen explained as the indriks began to lumber forward. “If you were in that end of the train”—he jerked a thumb behind him—“you'd have nothing but the back end of an indrik to look at, all the livelong day. Never a pleasant sight, to say nothing of the occasional smell.”

  “Yes,” Hieronymus said through gritted teeth. “We've encountered it before.”

  “Have you now?” Yasen said, smiling broadly. “I knew I was right to think you a group of worldly individuals, well traveled and the like. I'm glad to have you aboard, and no question.”

  From what Yasen had said, their role as guards on the convoy was fairly simple. The guards' primary role appeared to be as deterrent, with little call for action. Aside from the tussle with the fenrir the night before, the guards on this journey had done little more than sit atop the howdah day and night, watching the scenery roll by.

  Aside from the four of them, there were only two other guards, one a heavy-browed, barrel-chested Kobolt with a broken nose, who stood only to Leena's shoulder; and the other a Rephaim who towered over even Balam, with rippling muscles and huge hands that could wrap twice around Leena's waist. Neither spoke much, keeping each to himself, and so it was almost as if the company traveled alone with the master of beasts.

  Days passed, blending into weeks. The indriks could travel long hours during the day, stopping only during the hours between sunset and sunrise to rest.

  The landscape changed around them as they moved farther south. Grasslands gave way to wide, dry plains, with high mesas on the far horizons. In the rainy season, Yasen explained, this route would become almost impassable, the plains turned to squelching quagmire, and in that season the shipping routes—and shipping schedules—doubled, tripled, or sometimes quadrupled. Most shipping occurred during the summer and winter months, with spring and fall being either very slow, or very, very difficult. It was late in the season, near the full rains, but in recent years the Six Brothers had come under new management that tried to milk every possible profit from the operation. As a result, they had been asked to squeeze in one more regular shipment before the rains, to keep from having to pay their employees the increased wages of an off-season journey.

  The master of beasts pointed out interesting bits of geography as they went along. The other guards paid him no mind, and it was clear that Yasen was grateful for a fresh—and more or less captive—audience. One afternoon, on the horizon ahead, a strange cloud roiled, where before there had been only blue sky. Their path took them underneath, and they were surprised when they were pelted by salty drops of rain, and flapping, gawking, live fish.

  “Think nothing of it,” the master of beasts said in response to their startled looks. “It happens in this spot, from time to time. But have no fear; it doesn't signal the coming of the raining season. Instead it just means we'll have a bit of variety in our diet, yes?”

  Leena slid close to Hieronymus and Benu, leaning against the forward railing and looking up at the unearthly cloud overhead.

  “There must be a gate to Earth at the cloud's center,” Leena said guardedly.

  “Undoubtedly,” Benu said.

  “If only I could reach it.” Leena smacked a fist into the palm of her other hand.

  “What would that accomplish?” Hieronymus asked. “If you were somehow able to get hundreds of feet up in midair, you have no way of knowing when or where the other end of the gate opens. It could be into the distant past of Earth, o
r its far future. In fact, the only thing you would know for certain traversing the gate is that you will likely find yourself somewhere far beneath the ocean's surface, and you'd likely drown before you made it through.”

  “Cheer up,” Balam called, holding a flapping sea bass in his hands, still slick with brine. “Look what we're having for dinner.”

  “Delightful,” Hieronymus grumbled. “More fish.”

  Finally, after weeks on the trunk road, their route led them to the foothills of the Lathe Mountains.

  “There,” Benu said, pointing to the snowcapped mountains rising in purple majesty above the lowlands. “Deep within the greatest of the Lathes, we will find the hidden city of Hele.”

  “I hope you find what you seek,” Yasen said, “but I don't envy you going down into that benighted hole. I've never been myself, but my scant dealings with the Heleans who come to the surface to do trade with outsiders have convinced me my time would be better spent in other pursuits.”

  “If it brings us one step nearer to our goal,” Leena said, resolute, “then I would walk through the gates of hell itself.”

  “You might just, my dear,” Yasen said, his tone guarded. “You might just.”

  The trade route wound up into foothills a short span, reaching a depot of some sort at the base of the largest mountain before turning back and angling towards the lowlands.

  At the depot there was a wide loading dock, cantilevered out from the mountainside, so that one side was flush with the living rock while the other rose some seven meters off the ground. Where the dock met the mountain, there was a slant-roofed structure, beside which was parked some manner of tram on a track, its cargo bins empty and waiting.

  As the indrik convoy approached, a motley collection of stevedores emerged from the slant-roofed structure, went to stand at the end of the dock, and waited patiently for the indriks to pull up, one by one. After they had arranged themselves in their lines, the foreman stepped from the structure to survey their progress.

  The stevedores of Hele began to unload the indriks, loading up the spring-driven trams, which ran on tracks running back and forth up the gentle mountain slope before finally disappearing into a tunnel entrance high overhead. Most of the stevedores were metamen of various races—Canid, Arcas, Struthio, even Sinaa—though their foreman was a slight human with green skin who huddled under a broad parasol, shielding his eyes against the faint afternoon sun.

  Yasen Kai-Mustaf climbed from the howdah, and went to speak with the foreman, while Leena and the other guards milled around the dock, stretching their legs and marveling at the bulk of the mountain rising above them.

  Once the foreman had finished transacting his business with Yasen, Hieronymus, Leena, and Balam stepped forward, waving for the green-skinned man's attention.

  “Yaas?” the foreman drawled daintily, motioning distractedly for them to speak.

  “We require admittance to Hele,” Balam said.

  “Oh, do you?” the foreman blinked at them slowly, his expression unreadable. He turned to Hieronymus and Leena, and said, with a slight tinge of disgust in his voice, “Am I to take it that the…jaguar…speaks for you all?”

  “Yes,” Balam said, becoming annoyed, “I do.”

  The foreman glanced over his shoulder at Balam, and wrinkled his nose in distate.

  “We-ell, I'm afraid that Hele does not welcome visitors, only workers.”

  “We can work,” Leena said, straightening.

  “Oh, can you?”

  “We're honest travelers in search of employment, sir,” Hieronymus said, managing to sound surprisingly deferential.

  “Well.” The foreman sighed deeply. “We are somewhat short-handed at the present instant, and this current load is a large one. We've had…labor difficulties, I suppose you could say…recently, and have had to work at half-strength.” He sighed again, and looked them up and down appraisingly. Benu came to stand beside his companions, and the green-skinned man sneered slightly. “Well, I suppose if you are willing to hire on as stevedores and help get this shipment into the city in one trip, I can take you on provisionally, and see about getting you temporary access chits once we reach the city.”

  “Agreed,” Balam said, and stuck out his hand.

  The foreman looked down at the jaguar man's hand as though it were a dead fish, and shuddered. Then he waved them towards the other side of the dock. “Well, go to, go to.”

  The four bid farewell to the master of beasts, and were surprised when even the Kobolt and Rephaim grunted their good-byes. Once they had retrieved their things from the howdah, they joined the stevedores in loading up the tram.

  When the last of the freight had been loaded onto the tram, the four joined the rest of the stevedores in the rear car, and the tram began to inch its slow way up the mountain.

  From the ground, it had looked as though the distance was short, the tunnel entrance just a short ride from the bottom. As the tram inched along, though, it seemed to Leena as though time slowed and distance elongated; they moved farther and farther from the bottom, but the top still seemed so far away.

  Balam caught the eye of one of the Sinaa stevedores, and tried to engage him in conversation.

  “Mat'? Mat'ata'das'ul?”

  The Sinaa averted his eyes, and would not meet Balam's gaze.

  “Mat'uk'odat?” Balam said, leaning forward, glancing at another of the Sinaa.

  This jaguar man, too, turned away, covering his eyes.

  “Mat'tar'let Per,” Balam said, glowering.

  The Sinaa all turned away from him, their expressions hard, but one of them nodded faintly.

  “What is it?” Leena whispered, leaning in close.

  “They are Black Sun Genesis,” Balam hissed through clenched teeth. “They consider any metaman who does not follow the ‘teachings' of Per to be unclean, and will not respond.” He sneered, baring his teeth. “I lost my throne, my kingdom, and my daughter to nonsense like this. I didn't think I'd have to face it here.”

  “Courage, friend,” Hieronymus said, laying a hand on Balam's knee. “We'll be on our way in no time, you watch, and all of this far behind us.”

  Finally, the tram reached the tunnel mouth, and they began to descend once again, this time down into the cool heart of the mountains. The tunnel was darkened, lit only by a faint glow from up ahead.

  The tram rattled and clanked out of the darkness, and there before them was the hidden city, now revealed. Down in the sunless caverns, in a perpetual twilight illuminated by bioluminescence from lichens that grew on the damp walls, crouched the hidden city of Hele.

  The city was constructed in nine rings, concentric circles rising one atop another, with a spire rising up from the innermost ring. It looked to Leena like a series of Matrioshka nesting dolls, all with their top halves removed. Water ran in a gentle fall from a fissure in a high wall, and became a slow-moving, murky green river running around the outermost ring, the river Dys.

  “The water,” explained Benu, who had been in Hele in ancient days, “is suffused with a strain of algae which, when consumed over the span of years, imparts to the skin a greenish tint, which accounts for the unusual skin tones of our friend the foreman. Hele is a wealthy city, made so by the minerals dug up from its deep mines, and the fine porcelains and ceramics manufactured from the clay found in the lower reaches. Still, the city has reportedly fallen from its earlier grandeur, become decadent in its old age. Most of the hard labor in the city is now performed by immigrants, many of them metamen who have come to Hele in search of a better life.” Benu nodded to their fellow stevedores, who sat on the tram's benches with slumped shoulders. “The native Heleans spend much of their time in recreation, their favorite game a type of bowling sport using stone pins and a fired-clay ball, leaving the industry which maintains their culture to the hands of outsiders.”

  Opening off of the central cavern were innumerable caves, tunnels, and channels, snaking in and out like the passage of termites through rotten w
ood.

  “There,” Hieronymus said, pointing to the spire rising from the highest ring, his voice lowered in a whisper pitched so only the companions could hear. “There must be the palace of the coregents of Hele. There we will find the object of our quest.”

  Leena's hands tightened into fists, and in a voice barely above a breath, she whispered, “The Carneol.”

  The tram reached the terminus, and the company and the rest of the stevedores busied themselves unloading the freight. The work was grueling, the air in the terminus building stifling and close. Leena could not say how long they labored, so far from the light of the sun. In the eerie twilit gloom of the cavern, it was difficult to mark the passage of time, and when their work was complete, it seemed to Leena that it might have taken them a quarter of an hour, or the better part of a day. Either seemed as likely.

  With the tram fully unloaded, the green-skinned foreman appeared, his parasol collapsed and propped at a jaunty angle on his shoulder. He paid the stevedores a few small, squared-off ceramic coins apiece, all except for the four newcomers, whom he also presented with a small ceramic disc apiece, emblazoned with nine concentric rings.

  “These are temporary worker's chits,” he said, not entirely unkindly, “along with a few coins for your labors. Remember, though, if you can, that these chits are only for a short span, and you must appear tomorrow morning by no later than four bells at the offices of the Ministry of Foreign Labor to apply for more permanent employment. If the Ministry is unable to find appropriate placement for you by the end of this cycle, you will be expelled from the city, your rights of access revoked.”

  “Where might we find food and lodging, until tomorrow?” Hieronymus asked, slipping the coins and the ceramic disc into a pocket.

  “Well,” the foreman said, sighing a belabored sigh. “You will want to proceed to the Immigrant Quarter in the ninth ring.” He waved absently towards the exit of the terminus, and the walls of the city beyond. “You might find it difficult to find accommodations, particularly with the coronation drawing so near. Many hoteliers and tavern owners will no doubt prefer to keep empty rooms on their registers than take on unknown lodgers so soon after the recent troubles. But so long as you steer clear of agitators, you should not encounter any especial difficulty.”