by Mark Johnson
How unusual. She’d have to ask for a look at the stone when they were finished.
Nic placed the stone near the device’s thinner end. No reaction. She wasn’t certain what he’d been expecting. Light? Sound?
He frowned, then thumped the metal object with his fist. It jerked, the thinner end twisting toward the vibration stone.
Sarra gasped. It shouldn’t have been able to do that. There didn’t seem to be a functioning program within the device, so what commanded it to move?
“What’s happening?” said Tokkus, as Nic stepped back. The object waved back and forth on the table, as if it were striving to reach the vibration stone.
“It’s an artefact,” said Sarra, staring at the table. “Mechanisms need to be triggered. But that thing triggered itself when it sensed the vibrations in the stone. It just needed electricity to power it.”
Before Cess could switch it off, the object jerked harder, stretching out and bumping the stone.
There was a white flash and a loud bang. The stone burst to pieces, fragments scattering the room. Sarra pulled back, blinking to clear the explosion’s purple after-image. Tokkus wiped at his face and Kemmer dusted the front of his shirt, his eyes wide. All that remained was a smoking black stain on the table and a scattering of small stone chunks. The artefact lay still and undamaged. There was the smell of smoke in the air.
Cess hastily flipped the switch to stop the electricity flow.
“I… I… had no idea…” said Nic, his face white, his eyes wide.
The BarracksSir rubbed his eyes. “I’m no weaver, but that artefact should not have destroyed that stone.”
“No,” Nocev said, her voice meek, “that shouldn’t have happened.”
Vibrational and chaos objects were combustible, certainly, but not explosive. Had the objects contained chaos and vibrations, there should have been sparks or small flames instead.
Sarra held up her hand for silence and emptied her mind. It took moments to access WestBarracksWall’s gem to check on recent chaos fluxes. She dropped her hand when she had her reply. Everyone was breathing loudly.
“The WestBarracksWall surveillance gem didn’t record any chaos in this Wall,” she said. “If that was a chaos versus vibration explosion it should have set alarms off all over the cluster. But… nothing.”
Gods, what was this thing?
“Tokkus,” said Kemmer, “schedule a BarracksSirs’ conference for tonight. And the TowerMiss, if she can make it.”
“Yes, BarracksSir, I —”
“BarracksSir,” said Nic. “Before that, I want to do another test. I don’t think anything will explode.”
Kemmer took a moment before replying. “Right, then.”
Cess turned to Sarra. “Initiate, could you weave something into the artefact? Just to test a theory.”
“What, just any weave? Why?” She knew what Cess was thinking, but she wanted to play for time while her mind grappled with the impossible.
“Nothing complex,” said Cess patiently. “Just drop a weave onto whatever that thing is.”
“Fine,” she said airily. A simple heating weave would do. Once it made contact it would spread over and envelop the metal piece, raising its surface temperature.
Nocev squeezed Sarra’s hand. There were seven other people in the room, and they all stepped back from the map table. She swallowed. Her heart thumped hard.
Weaving the silver weaves into the thing probably wouldn’t be a good idea. Just a simple vibration weave would be fine.
A white tendril of vibration stretched from her hand, shaping into knots with density and charge as it drifted through the air. The weave vanished the instant it touched the artefact.
Zale gasped. Nocev’s scream blended with her own. Sarra stumbled backwards and fell, pieces of the pulverized stone pricking her elbows. The hairs on her arms stood on end. Tokkus’s strong arms pulled her up, away from the artefact on the table. Nocev clutched her skirt to her thighs.
“It shouldn’t be able to do that!” Sarra hissed.
“What happened?” said Tokkus.
She couldn’t take her eyes from the piece of Hell made solid. “The weave. It was dismantled and sucked away, like it never was. It didn’t leave any trace of the weave I’d created, Tokkus! It shouldn’t be capable of that. Nothing is! Except…” Her voice trailed away as stray thoughts supplied the only possible answer.
The weave had been extinguished like a candle flame, like it had been drowned by chaos energy. But there was no chaos energy nearby, that she could see.
Gods, she wanted to burn the cursed thing, for fire was the only thing that could neutralize evil devices. Metal with high concentrations of chaos energy would shrivel into energetically-barren slag, once tossed in a fire. Her fingers itched to throw it out the window, but shriveled back at the thought of touching it.
All eyes settled on Kemmer.
“Girls, get the TowerMiss. Now! Tokkus, get the BarracksSirs. Tell them we’ve found a dark artefact.”
7
Zalaran Morgenheth and Repaan Lethrien stood atop WestBarracksWall, leaning motionless against the chest-high crenulations, watching shadows lengthen.
The wind rose, tickling Zale’s freshly-shaven cheeks. The two men needed no coats to fend against the wind, unlike the other guards, standing nearby. Zale watched stray, floating white vibration clumps become absorbed by small gray ‘clouds’ of chaos energy, in a slow condensation process. Chaos pulses appeared from nothing and nowhere as evening descended, a process that would reverse at dawn, as vibrations re-established sovereignty conquered the chaos pulses. It was a twice-daily battle he’d watched ever since he’d been a child. Where the two energies met, the stronger of the two survived, though reduced.
As his eyes followed one such battle, something shimmered down within HopeWall itself. Zale looked closer. One of the pavilions glowed with the silver energy he and his three friends used. The energy they barely understood.
“What is it?” said Paan, who would have felt Zale’s confusion in his own mind.
“Down in HopeWall, Paan. The pavilion on the eastern side, one up from being southernmost. The silver energy. I see it.”
“What?” Zale felt Paan’s confusion and alarm flare then recede. Paan squeezed his eyes and opened them. “I can’t feel anything.”
Zale didn’t dare blink, for fear he might miss something. “Silver forms. I don’t think any of the women down there can see them. They’re human-shaped, but a little indistinct. They don’t move normally, like they stand very still, then only move with purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, there’s no scratching their ear or fidgeting. They’re like human reflections, or echoes. They’re just floating around, not really —” He blinked in surprise. “They’re gone, just disappeared.”
“What was it?” said Paan. “Nothing other than us and the hexagons should make the silver energy.”
“I don’t know.”
Zale felt Paan’s mind run through a range of emotions before settling on something close to consternation. “We’ve never seen the silver energy from any source other than ourselves, or Polis. But the pavilions are artificial constructs. This is new, Zale.”
“So what does it mean?”
“It means keep quiet and say nothing. We’ll speak to Cess and Nic when duty’s over.” Paan plucked at Zale’s sleeve. “But avert your eyes. Zale. The others’ll think you’re ogling the women.”
Zale tore his eyes away and growled, forcing himself to examine the barren lands outside HopeWall cluster. Above all, their secrets had to remain concealed.
Behind them a wooden door set into the stone floor slammed shut, the sound louder than the rising wind, or the faint cry of crickets that followed each gust. A large figure joined them, holding a battered old folder. Dark-skinned and ba
ld, he wore a thinning cloak that reached his knees.
“I have watched guards enter and leave this cluster for many years,” said Sergeant Tokkus. “Few stay long, for the restrictions are many, and young men resent the restrictions placed upon the Tower novices and initiates.
“You say you were guards in Armer, and Initiate Nocev attests that you were remarkable guards at OremWall. But rarely at HopeWall have I seen guards so confident and erudite in the company of the TowerMiss.” Tokkus finally turned to look at them. “Whatever you are now, Master Zale, Master Paan, back in the verdant hills of Polis Armer you were no mere guards.”
The four men had agreed, even before the Seekers had found them, that they’d be safer using nicknames. They could have completely changed their names, though there seemed little point if their accents remained the same. If someone — anyone — came searching for four Armen men, it would matter little what names they used.
Zale opened his mouth, then shut it when Paan rushed into his mind, hushing him.
“We were guards, Sergeant,” said Paan. “But not by choice. I was orphaned and lived in a monastery orphanage. When I was older, I joined the guard. Zale’s father went bankrupt, and Zale was taken from an expensive école and put into indenture as a guard to pay off the family debt. We are guards, but before that our lives were on a different trajectory.”
Tokkus’s face didn’t change. He merely waited for the answer he wanted.
That was Paan’s problem. Always too polite to people who neither needed nor deserved their story. The sergeant wasn’t due the deference a BarracksSir was, and Zale had a feeling Tokkus was smarter than Kemmer. Their secrets required constant guard.
“Sergeant,” Zale broke in, “Paan means HopeWall isn’t impressive.”
He shrugged off Paan’s glowering in the back of his head.
“Yet, here you are,” said Tokkus. He didn’t seem to have taken offence.
“Again, not by choice. We can’t get further in to sell our services, and there’s no better cluster in the Wastes.”
“I meant, you came all the way to Polis Sumad. Halfway across the globe, in fact.”
“We had to get away. There was nothing for us back home.”
“Young men, so talented as to find what the sentinel weavers,” Tokkus gestured backward to the Tower with an open palm, “could not even guess existed. And you could not find satisfactory remuneration for your services?”
The man did a good job of passing off suspicion as sympathy.
“Back home they have Investigators for crime, and Seekers for chaos,” Zale said. “What use is a guard with good eyes?”
“Sometimes, Sergeant,” Paan said, “the destination matters less than leaving something behind.”
“But to come all this way? Across oceans, hills and deserts, to guard the doors of those who would once have been your servants?”
Zale’s gaze locked on the distant crags and cliffs, far to the east. “Sergeant, what’s the bloody problem?”
“It is the details you omit that I find interesting. That you lived a month in the Wastes instead of trying your luck at another Polis, surprises me. I know our worldwide reputation, and we are not a premier tourist destination. May I ask, why here?”
“Yes,” said Zale.
“Why?”
“In Sumad there would always be legitimate and legal use of our skills. Our Armen Quarter guards were almost as bad as those we locked up. Sometimes worse. Here? Guards are needed. Respected, even.”
“But to come so far?”
Secrets.
“Honestly? Sergeant, we’re infected, and running from Seekers,” Zale said. “What about you? You’re far from home.”
Paan’s burgeoning worry flared into a bonfire in Zale’s head. Zale dulled their connection, not looking at his friend. Besides, he’d made Tokkus smile a little.
“No. I am home, my brother. I have lived in the Territories almost two decades.”
“But to come here? Is civil indenture that awful, compared to the Wastes? There are apprenticeships in Sumad — if your skin’s dark enough — and monasteries and boarding houses, or combinations. They would allow you to get back on your feet.”
Tokkus muttered something under his breath and swung a muscular arm in a circle, indicating the entirety of the Wastes.
“Brothers, what do you see?” said Tokkus.
“Rocks and hills, some cliffs in the distance with a little green,” said Paan. “Yellow, brown and orange.”
“Would you be surprised to learn we live at the heart of Polis Sumad’s recovery from the Founders’ War? Mother Farrah, the Cenephan prophet, was far from ignorant. While I have little tolerance for the melding of Cenephan and Sumadan observances, she chose her seat of power well.
“Humility Territory contains remnants of the oldest dwellings outside the Center. Here,” he spread his palms, “in northern Humility, the first temples and fortresses were commissioned. It is said that here, Polis Sumad first showed His humanly form.
“Northern Humility is sacred, in much the same way one glimpse of the Cenephan canals,” he fumbled at the word, “would bring these…” he indicated the lookout guards standing on the tower top, “…to tears. Prophet Farrah chose this place, for few native Sumadans would dare raid here.”
Tokkus’s face reflected the horizon’s orange and red hues. Where sun touched the RimWall, a gentle red shimmer spread to either side, lighting rolling mounds and hills, as far as Zale could see.
“But night advances, Master Zale. Let us test your eyes.”
“Hang on,” Zale said, blinking hard and fast, recalibrating his sight.
“The sky here isn’t like home,” he said almost to himself. “The stars look a little nearer, their glows tighter. Out there…” He pointed north, “…I’d guess five or six miles away, there are guards atop the Walls. Over there, a pride of lions is settling for the night. Lionesses are nudging their cubs to the center of the group, and the alpha male is watching two cubs wrestle. A pack of coyotes has caught the pride’s scent, and they are drifting wide.”
“What else, young man?”
Zale closed his eyes and shifted to thermal, combining it with what he called ‘telescope’. “There. Shadows moving on that ridge with a deserted lookout tower at the peak. A forage returning. An even split between men and women, it looks like.”
Some minutes later, Tokkus’s mouth dropped, as ten figures trudged from the creeping gloom, the group easing over the circular bank that acted as a territorial boundary. “Yes, Master Zale, you were correct.”
“Paan’s got a good eye, too,” Zale said.
“Not as good as Zale’s, though.”
“Please, indulge me.”
Paan closed his eyes. He didn’t have eyes like Zale’s. Instead, he could scent energies. The lines about his eyes etched with strain, then he opened them, pretending he saw something. “I’m guessing, there’s a forage group that has… one full weaver, three initiates and one novice.”
Tokkus checked some papers from his folder. “Even that should not be evident from this distance. Tell me, what are the ages of the men in that group?”
“Sometimes my sight is better than others, Sergeant.”
Tokkus tucked the papers back in his folder. “Welcome to the lookouts, young masters. We have not had… eyes like yours in some years.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” both men said at once.
Tokkus raised his eyebrows. Zale almost swore. Again, they’d spoken in unison. Careless. If they did that too often, people would notice. And the worst person to witness it was this suspicious Sergeant.
Tokkus looked about to say something else when the wooden trapdoor thumped open again, and a group of young girls in white dresses funneled out of the floor.
“What are novices doing up here?” Paan said.
/> “Their training,” said Tokkus. “They’ll be working under remote supervision from the Tower, using the gems placed by their prophet when she built these structures. The gems help extend the eyes, mouths and hands within the Tower.”
Behind the novices were the two initiates from the previous day: Nocev and Sarra. They herded the novices to a glass bulge at the Tower’s side. The initiates began counting aloud.
“Concentration exercises to warm up,” Zale said. “My sister used to do something similar.”
Excitement fired behind Tokkus’s eyes. “Ah, Master Zale. Does weaving run in your family?”
“If it did, Sergeant, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Whatever Tokkus would have said was interrupted by another crack of the opening trapdoor. A Cenephan man and boy climbed out. The boy, around twelve years old, struggled to close the lopsided door.
“Ah, Corporal Jespow. Master Henk,” said Tokkus.
“Lad wanted to see the job,” Jespow said, clapping the boy on the shoulder. The man’s face was hard angles, the boy’s clung to youthful roundness. He would eventually have a jaw like his father’s.
Tokkus introduced Zale and Paan as ‘talented Armen lookouts’. More watchmen arrived on the platform.
“Eight men. Due to recent discoveries,” Tokkus eyes briefly rested on Zale and Paan, “there are more lookouts on the BarracksWalls tonight than when the cadvers were beaten back over a century ago. There is no shame in confessing a lack of experience in cadver combat. If the Enemy is too powerful for the Barracks gems…” he nodded at the nearby glass enclosure, surrounded by novices, “…it behooves us to know who amongst us has fought cadvers.”
Zale and Paan were the only ones to raise their hands.
“Gentlemen?” said Tokkus.
“The Armer Seekers used us a few times,” said Zale. “We were backup for when they were cleansing cadvers in the highlands. We’re hardly Seeker-standard, though.”
