by Guy Antibes
Most of the men entered the room by the gallery and descended the large stairway that came down between the fireplaces on one of the long sides. Others came through the main entrance. Anxiety mixed with excitement and anticipation, almost palpable, filled the air as the gathering grew.
In the corner, a drum beat the call to assemble in low, slow strokes. Through a hole close by, the sound carried through pipes throughout the lodge. Obsomil, King of Diltrant, called for the gathered men to sit down. A wolfish grin spread over his face as the final few people entered the hall and strode to position themselves directly in front of him. He looked down into their eyes.
Obsomil’s hands shot up, clenched fists as if to punch two holes in the ceiling far above. “Behold!” he shouted to those in the room. One of the men behind him uncovered what he carried and held it up for all to see.
“This is the fulfillment of my legacy! My grandfather cast off the chains of the Grethian priests. My father planted in me the desire for Diltrant to look to the future instead of the past. And now, the culmination of these two great men’s efforts!” Obsomil said. The group broke into a cacophony of shouting. The king moved back taking the Hand of Grethia from General Bloodin , and then strode to the wall. Pulling down a light holder, he waited for the wall to move aside, and then he seized a torch. Obsomil bolted down wide steps plunging into the secret passage. The men in the hall rushed to follow!
Down and down they raced. Thirty-three men followed their king as they made a mad dash to keep up with him. Other torches lit up the rapid procession. After nearly two hundred steps, the stairway widened out to reveal an alcove large enough to contain them all. A set of ancient, dull metal doors prohibited further progress.
Obsomil turned around, eyes gleaming, “I will now take the Hand to Grethia!” He took up the relic and placed it in an indentation in the wall about twelve inches square. Obsomil looked around at his men, his back to the doors. He grinned, slowly turned around and deliberately pushed the hand down into the cavity at the bottom. The Hand fit perfectly.
Strange noises emitted from behind the wall and doors. Eyes widened, mouths dropped, sweat beaded foreheads as, first a crack, and then a slanting beam of orange light struck out from the doors as they opened. Light from a huge chamber beyond illuminated the alcove.
~
Jan awoke, startled. He was the sole occupant of a spare stone room about 15 feet square. The bed he lay on was merely a straw stuffed mattress on a wood and leather frame. A thick wool covering lay, unused, at his feet. The whitewashed cell wasn’t dirty, but it wasn’t warm or inviting. The window was lightly barred and large. Tall trees darkened the emerging morning light. Steps were heard outside the door, and then someone fumbled with the lock. It flew open.
“Quickly, into these clothes, off-worlder,” said a man bursting into his room. “Our King requires your presence below!” The figure flung an armful of clothes and some shoes to Jan and walked outside the cell, standing with arms folded, impatiently tapping his foot on the stone floor. “We go, now!” the voice outside his cell was very insistent and must have assumed that Jan would magically be ready if the man so decreed.
Jan threw on his clothes and exited the room taking the fruit and bread that had been delivered while he slept. As they walked, Jan began to fill his stomach. He thought about the lack of trust that Obsomil had shown him after he had returned from Port Alchant. He was a prisoner… not ill-treated, but a prisoner, nevertheless.
“Quickly! All of them are waiting below!” Another man urged them through an opening in the wall of the Great Hall. Down the steps they went. Jan arrived breathlessly at the bottom to the scene of Obsomil, with gleaming eyes, looking through the open doors.
“Jan,” boomed Obsomil. “Only you can explain what lies beyond. I do not want to end my existence prematurely through ignorance. The air is dry and odd. We only know of this place because my grandfather found the doors beneath the lodge when he remodeled their monastery!”
Jan peered into the room. Lights were on. Power existed… maybe enough power to get him home. His spirits rose as he stepped into the room. He laid a hand on a large vehicle of some kind. Something was thrust in his hand. His blaster. Jan looked at the power setting. Someone had played a long time with it, draining much of the battery.
He walked through the rows of machines in the wash of bright orange light shining down from fixtures on the celling of a garage filled with machines. Up ahead stood a console that looked like some kind of reader. Archaic data tabs were arranged on it. He walked up, looking at some machines as he took in the scene. Some of the metal was burnished bright. This might have been one of the sources of the vague readings his computer had read from up in orbit.
A thin layer of dust lay everywhere. Jan looked up. The ceiling was some 8 or 9 meters high. The walls were rock, but machined smooth. Jan’s attention went back to the machines. It was like looking at a history book. He could discern their purposes; agricultural or construction machines, maybe even some earthmoving equipment.
An inset circle of metal three or so meters in diameter decorated a large empty area before the console. Shouting and the sounds of fighting interrupted his observations. Obsomil ran into the room with a few of his personal guard.
A Grethian priest leaned against the door frame, breathless. “Halt! Do not touch the holy altar of Grethia! You will perish! Only a priest is permitted to touch it! I am Pola of Alchant. I have come to retrieve the Hand from the blasphemer thief!”
Jan turned and saw another priest pass the opening with the Hand in his arms. The doors were beginning to slide shut! Obsomil turned to see what was happening. Arrows began to shoot from the opening. Another priest entered the room waving a sword and urged the archers who stood at the closing entrance to continue to shoot. Jan could only grab Obsomil and they jumped for protection behind a machine. The king’s guard returned fire, but too late. Arrows struck them down as the doors slid shut.
Once the two were out of immediate danger, they looked towards the doors. Jan searched for some kind of opening mechanism. “King Obsomil, is there another way out of here? Another set of stairs?” Jan frowned. Frustration and anger built within him.
“How would a Diltrantian know? This is the first time we have had the Hand.” admitted Obsomil, “and the first time we have set foot in here.”
“Let’s look at the console and see what it can tell us. I know how to operate this, or I should. Are any of those guards alive?” Jan looked at Obsomil, who immediately checked on his men.
Jan checked to see if a data tab was loaded. None were. He picked up the one closest to the reader. It left an outline in the thin dust.
The tab slid into the reader. The viewer lit. A man appeared on the display. He was dressed in a red jumpsuit and began to speak in another language that Jan nearly understood. Jan looked at the controls. He knew that with a little time, he could understand the words. The language was different from the version of Galactic Standard that the Diltrantians spoke. It sounded more like a variation of Galactic Commercial. As he concentrated he could recognize some words and the sentence structure.
Absorbed in thought, Jan realized that Obsomil was looking at him expectantly. “I am somewhat of a linguist.” Jan said. “I know many languages. However, linguistic abilities are not going to help us survive. I’m going to take another look at the walls.”
“None of the guards live.” Obsomil spat on the ground, “Poisoned! If I ever get my hands around that priest’s neck, he’ll never say another word again! My guards were good men. Our only consolation is that they always carry full battle gear and that includes weapons and battle rations, so we won’t starve immediately.”
Jan walked over the prostrate bodies of the guards and helped Obsomil strip them of anything useful, and then moved them further out of the way. He climbed up on the seat of the closest vehicle. It looked like some kind of sweeping vehicle. He looked at the controls and thought a bit. Then he touched a stud. T
he machine began to hum as it powered up. Jan touched the stud again and the machine was as still as it was before. “They might as well be rocks if we can’t get out of here. We could to break the doors down, but as I recalled there were over a meter thick and it looked like they slid on tracks. We’d probably break all of the equipment in here before the doors would open.” Jan looked up at the ceiling and continued. “The hall is embedded in rock… probably inside of the mountain next to the lodge. I am stumped. I can’t even figure out how they got the machines down here.”
King Obsomil had been walking around after he had taken the guards and laid them out of the way back towards the door. “This hall is supposed to be the center of hope for my people, something that will bring new life to a stagnant world.” Obsomil made a sound, and then sported a painfully wry smile. “And here I am, king of my people, in the most wonderful place, a place of promise, a place that could make my people great, and I am…” he waved his arm in futility, “trapped!”
Jan raised his eyebrows, expecting Obsomil to continue. Obsomil gazed about him and the fire in his eyes dimmed as his brain seemed to be processing their dire nature of their situation. the king’s eyes brightened a bit. “Show me how these things work.”
An extraordinary man, thought Jan. Quite the man to take this planet to a new level, that was for sure. Jan went back to the tabs, while Obsomil prowled around the hall like a caged feline.
“I think I can understand some of it.” Jan called.
“These machines, do you know what they do?” Obsomil asked.
“It seems to me they are mostly machines that help with manual work. They scrape, scoop, mix, grade, compact, sweep, make furrows, harvest grain.” Jan replied as he walked through the silver, gold, bronze and copper-colored objects.”
“What does this one do?” Obsomil beckoned. Off to the side of the hall, Jan found Obsomil. It was a deep bronze, a black-brown. It was about two meters wide and about a meter and a half high and about three or four meters long. There was a blade along what must have been the front. The bottom appeared to be a bright colored alloy. The front of the blade was concave, but smooth. The back of the blade had coruscations that must have been for cooling or for strength.
Something struck Jan. He looked at the blade, never used. He looked at the base. He looked at the back. Then he went to the controls again and looked at the seat. They looked well used. But the machine otherwise looked to be in perfect, unused condition. The thin film of dust still covered everything.
“The blade would have been used to push earth and grade. It’s not as big as the rest, so perhaps it was to be used on smaller roads… like footpaths. The edge of the blade probably burned any brush that got in its way. A road could be made, as hard as stone, with this machine together with the one with the big roller over there to make a smooth dirt road.” Jan thought of the rutted roads he had seen on his way into Diltrant.
“Right.” Explained Obsomil. “My forefathers never had the use of these machines. Perhaps this is a hall of examples… of patterns for us to follow.” Obsomil scratched his beard as he thought and put out his hand to feel the curves of the machines as he walked down a line of them.
Jan thought that Obsomil might be right. He mounted another machine. The controls looked familiar to what he had used at home, a million parsecs away in space and time. He looked over the machine and then the controls. The same unused implements, but as he looked at the surfaces, some were worn like a million touches at a tourist attraction. There was something odd here. The machines farthest from the center of the room did not have the wear the others showed. There was power here, but probably not enough to help him. He tried to dampen the hope that he felt, since he had no way out.
They tired of examining all of the machines and finally paused to eat some of the guards’ rations. Finally, they fell asleep.
~
A vibration moved the still air, waking Jan up. “King Obsomil, over here, quietly.”
Obsomil looked up from the long padded seat of a vehicle and went to where Jan and the guards’ bodies lay. Suddenly, Jan could feel the buildup of a charge of electricity. Jan’s exposed skin sensed a vague prickling. “Your Majesty, I would suggest we remain quiet and observe.”
“What’s going to happen? “ said the King. “I don’t like dealing with things unknown.” His face resolved into a grim frown, but his eyes widened and betrayed the excitement that crept into his features.
A rushing of air struck the room and all of the dust flew off the machines and hung in the air. It was as if every cubic centimeter of air had to move. Jan could feel the air pressure increase. As he did he noticed that suddenly they were not alone in the room. King Obsomil looked to the doors, but they remained shut. A circle of blue robed Grethian priests appeared out of thin air within the circle. Jan laid a restraining arm on the king, not that Jan could stop him. Two of the figures wore white hoods, but they did not have a symbol of the Hand on their amulets. A stooped figure stood apart and faced the group as they turned their backs to the machinery arrayed in the great hall while the dust in their air began to settle.
“Those of you who are to pass into the order of the Actobal Temple, kneel before us.” The figures in the white hoods knelt. “Put your hands out to me and repeat our great oath.”
We of Actobal and Hand Keepers of the Great Secret
We of Actobal are Hand Keepers to the Grethian Gift of Knowledge
We of Actobal will use our lives to keep the secret alive
We of Actobal will use our secret to keep Grethian knowledge perfect
“Now,” the priest intoned, “you will get to touch the relics on these artifacts of Grethian Grace.” He turned his hands and pointed with them towards the machines. Jan could see the rapture on the young priests’ faces, indeed, the entire assemblage, as they approached the first few machines, mounted them and caressed the controls with their hands.
That’s the end of the mystery,thought Jan. How did they get here? Teleportation! The Grethians had teleportation! That explains how the Alchant priest and his men made it into the lodge so quickly and through the ring of Obsomil’s guards.
“It is now time to leave.” The priest announced with a tinge of regret in his voice. “This way, quickly. Stand on the holy circle in front of the Altar of Grethia. Another time you will hear the ancient speaking of Grethian angels from this altar, but that is for another stage of your progression. You are now among the privileged. Remember, brothers, our Alchantian brethren do not even know this vault of Grethian Grace exists. It is our secret alone!”
The group assembled around the metal disk in front of the podium and, after the priest set a control, the group vanished. The air now felt like it was rushing out of Jan’s lungs. He held his breath as the air stirred again, wiping away all traces of the priests. A fine film of dust settled again on the machines.
And that is why the dust didn’t show any disturbance when they first entered the hall, Jan told himself.
The two men rose from their hiding place. Obsomil looked somewhat shaken by it all. The unknown was now much more known.
“Well King Obsomil, what do you think of Diltrant’s Grethian Relics now?”
Obsomil grimaced at Jan, and then he spat these words out through his teeth, “The only thing I desire at this point is to get my hands around the neck of that cursed priest, Pola! It is obvious there are others sharing our holy place... our Holy Place! I feel so infuriated, so frustrated.”
“Is Actobal in Alchant?” Jan asked. “I might have heard of it before.”
“Actobal is far from here… over the mountains. It rules the great plain. Going there directly is long journey from Diltrant. The route we most commonly use is to take a ship to Port Alchant and then overland to the plains and thence to Actobal. There are four great plains cities. Actobal is the largest and the closest. But it still takes four to six weeks depending on the weather and the time of year to get there. I’ve never gone. I have sent messag
es to King Mulloy. Political greetings, that sort of thing.” Obsomil paced restlessly along the spaces between the machines.
“When we return to my palace, I will reward you. My brother said you were aligned with the priests and that is why you were so easily able to get the Hand. But I can see that he was wrong. He’ll have to give me the reasons why he thought otherwise.”
“What about Bloodin?” asked Jan. “What did he think of me?”
“The General is at the University reviewing the progress of an improved engine for my ships. Habamil suggested he personally supervise the tests,” the King said. He paused in thought “Perhaps these are not unrelated circumstances. My brother sometimes acts in strange ways.“
“Does your brother have his own way of doing things?” Jan asked remembering back to Garst’s conversations in the wagon from Tryst. He didn’t want to ask this king too many questions. He felt his position was untenable enough. Although Habamil’s men treated him well, his confinement scared him more than anything had in his life. The helplessness had sapped all of his energy. Now, as he and the King moved to solve this mutual problem, he could feel his confidence began a slow re-emergence. “I don’t mean any disrespect. I haven’t met your brother, personally.”
“My brother does have his own way. I’ve let him do what he wants with the internal affairs of the country. I’ve got my own people in his ‘secret’ internal army, so I generally know what he is up to. However, I think there are things he keeps from all of his underlings. He sees you as a threat and I saw no harm in keeping you under my own personal control. Bloodin, to answer your question, remains your sponsor. He seems to trust you. He spoke by letter, against incarceration and I made certain that you were under my custodianship, not my brother’s.” Obsomil looked around the room, ending that train of conversation. “That circle? Those priests appeared from there?”
