The Wild Lands: Legend of the Wild Man
Page 32
Skup and One-eye circle and call to each other. A deadly dance of dominance. Each takes turns lunging, then stepping back, Skup's long black hair and stubby fingernails against the kingcrow's pointed beak and tearing talons. Skup shows no fear. He has been doing this for years, he has won every duel the one-eyed kingcrow has ever been in. The kingcrow is not so confident. Its used to having a mind bolster its own skills. Its instincts say that it can lose, Skup never allowed such weakness.
Just when Kao thinks he needs to get Skup a weapon, the young pilot attacks. A deafening shriek and he is on the bird. The kingcrow tries to fight back but Skup knows its blind spots too well. He swoops under a wing, and as the kingcrow tries to turn around and catch him, he scrambles onto its back. He wraps one arm around its neck, and with his free hand covers the bird's only eye. Blue sparks fly back and forth between the pair.
The kingcrow hops in circles just a moment longer, then settles down, and finally stops moving. Skup uncovers its eye. It looks around quizzically, but makes no move to attack.
The bright from down below flickers as the ground shakes, a moment later the dull concussions of sound reach their ears.
Elia's bird does not challenge her like Skup's did. Instead she bows her head, and perhaps following the Alpha male's lead, allows Elia to climb onto her back. A smile spreads across the young pilot's face.
“Tonight, we truly fly!” she shouts to the crowd. They cheer her on as she takes to the air, just behind Skup. The dominant pair call to the flock and they are there, willing to follow their leaders into the night and past the Spire they had all been trained to avoid. This would really be no different for Skup and Elia, instead of carrying down howluchin monkeys, they would carry people. Though this had never been attempted with wild birds.
Skup swoops back around right towards Kao and his sister. Kao has no weapons, his muscles are burnt and exhausted, yet instincts ready for battle. But Skup does not attack. Instead he lands, lowers his head, and the bird does the same. They submit.
“Forgive me,” he says, and Kao nods, he understands that easily enough. Then he lifts his sister onto the back of the bird, behind Skup.
People swarm the bird. Everyone is eager to touch the kingcrow. Never before have they been allowed to. The bird's visits to the Spire were always strictly off limits. People could watch, but the risk of the Scourge was too great to allow anyone to actually touch the bird's beautiful obsidian black feathers.
The head shepherd runs a disciplined team, and without argument, five pilots step forward. Kao is not surprised to see they all have the thickest black hair on their heads. Two clamber upon each of its legs.
The crowd resists collectively. One man, dangerous for his anonymity shouts, “The prince and princess seek to save themselves!”
Roars of agreement and the crowd surges towards Skup and his bird. Desperate hands grasp at its feathers, it takes all he has to keep the kingcrow from ripping the crowd to pieces. He can feel its fear in his own mind.
“They know there's no way they can save us all! We're doomed.” Urea's eyes, not as perceptive as her panthera's still spot the man. Orus Luca.
“The words of your Masters! People entrusted to protect us spread fear and lies!” Skup shouts to the crowd. “Someone give this man what he deserves.”
An instant later Orus Luca screams as Elia mounted on her kingcrow swoops down from the sky and scoops him up into the air, she releases him over the edge and he plummets until his scream can be heard no more.
“Murderer!” someone screams.
“Demons!” shouts another.
“Call us what you will once we're on the surface, but we don't have time for this now! We're going to save as many people as we can, but you're all right, I don't know if we can save everyone.”
On the horizon a volcano erupts. Hot lava spews into the air, briefly outshining both the moon and the white light radiating from the base of the Spire.
“We don't have much time!” Urea shouts. “The flock can carry many of us to safety, but we need to organize.”
“You and the Evanimals are going to save you, but not us. You leave the rest of us to die!”
Urea recognizes Rufus Aurelius's voice, and knows Skup does to. But they can't start killing everyone who disagrees with them. They need to save the last remnants of humanity, not end them.
“Then I'll leave last.” Urea pledges, “Once every single person is safely on the surface, I will leave.”
The crowd's intensity fades. The shouts and roars die down to silence.
Skup's kingcrow leaps into the air, taking Jacob with him. Kao finally breathes, his sister will be safe.
“Nature won't save us just because her chosen one stays!” Ntelo shouts. Urea expected the High Priestess sooner, she's ready.
“Nature doesn't want to kill anyone! Nature has no intentions, no will of its own. We're all expressions of the Earth, or god or whatever you want to call it. Nature's just a concept, like the Creator God of the old religions, it was a nice idea once, something to think about, but nothing to forfeit our minds to.
“Our religion has become dogmatic. We've been listening to other's beliefs about our relationship with the earth, with reality, with the divine. We all have to forge our own understanding of the world around us. We'll have to, the accomplishments of our ancestors are crumbling beneath us.
“Nature's not perfect, nor humanity an imperfection. Everything is just trying to survive. Everything makes mistakes. We're all Nature, there's no line that divides humanity from the rest of the planet. Nature's in all of us. Nature's greatest strength is that it self corrects, but that's only a boon if there's anything left to fix. Nature has no intentions other than the strongest survive. Humanity suffered because we became weak and docile. Nature doesn't punish, but she takes advantage. Other beings were more tenacious, more willing to adapt, so they flourished. We can rejoin the race of life out there, The Wild Man can teach us how!”
Kao looks back at the crowd with steady eyes. He makes no promises, offers them no false hope, only the understanding that those who are willing, will survive.
“But we cannot hesitate. Those that do, will perish. What we need now is for every family to decide who will go first, who is willing to sacrifice themselves that others may live.”
The crowd is silent. No one moves, then someone in the back steps forward. An older woman, hairless, not elderly but no longer young. She pushes an eight year old girl in front of her.
“Please, save my Jessica. I won't be of any use down there,” she turns to her daughter, “I love you, okay honey? I'll always be with you.”
“I don't want to go!” Jessica cries, but Elia gently picks her up and places her on the back of her kingcrow.
Elia climbs atop her bird and sits the little girl behind her.
“I have room for five more, the rest of you will have to ride wild birds.”
More parents come forward, their children bawl and scream in protest. There parents coo sweet nothings in their ears.
“I'll come down later.”
“You a
lways wanted to touch a vultus.”
“Everything will be OK.”
The gaggle of kids is lifted by parents' arms--trembling with sorrow, hope and fear--onto the birds.
“What of the High Priestess?” Aurelius shouts.
Urea curses herself for not having Elia kill him like she did Luca. He was the far more dangerous of the two.
“Save the priestess!” More people take up the chant.
Urea takes a deep breath, swallows her pride and calls for Priestess Ntelo to come forward. Ntelo obliges, looking surprised that anyone was so kind to nominate her to survive.
A pilot escorts them all to Elia's bird, they wrap themselves around her thick scaly legs. She takes off, taking children and the conniving Priestess with her.
The Spire shakes violently now, the light from below is becoming more violent. They have little time left.
More vultus take Elia and Skup's place. More children are pushed forward. Husbands push wives, grandfathers push sons. Soon the crowd is split in two, those generous enough to sacrifice themselves, and those brave enough to have let their family live in their memories. Pilots load bird after bird to capacity, sometimes struggling with only five people, sometimes they carry many as ten. Their weight pales compared to the biselk the kingcrows are accustomed to carrying. Each bird squawks politely once fully burdened, then silently dives over the side, following their leader's example.
Kao tries to step into the former group. His sister is safe, his quest is won. He needs no more toil upon this bizarre and alien world. But the people of the Spire do not allow it. A hundred hands lay upon his back and push him forward. At first he resists, but the look in their eyes convinces him. He is to save their children, their lovers, their family. None will survive without Kao. To sacrifice him is to sacrifice all.
Reluctantly, but with honor, he climbs upon the back of a bird and gestures for people to send their loved ones forward. Instead a gang of monkeys bounds forward. They greet Kao with enthusiasm, happy to be free of their masters, and clamber upon his bird with enthusiasm.
The crowd of Naturalists avoid Kao's eyes. They are guilty, shamed by the Wild Man for their slavery. He knows they seek redemption with this last act. Whether he lives or dies, he forgives them.
The crowd parts and a funeral procession carry the hermit's battered body forward. Kao shakes his head, No. This is too far. His body will stay here, his mind is already lost. But the people shove him forward.
The hunter's heart leaps from his chest when he hears the hermit say, in his own voice, “Kao.”
Kao swallows hard. Does the hermit really still live? He pulls him up from the people’s giving hands and seats the old man behind him on the bird. The hermit hugs Kao with tired hands.
“Kao, you've done it, you've destroyed the Spire,” he croaks in the hunter's ear, then Kao spurs the kingcrow and they leap from the Spire.
Chapter 45
A thousand curses upon the nonbelievers! A thousand deaths for those who destroyed the Spire, for that be Nature's will! Death to false the gods!
The Spire rattles now. Skup understands all this is no less his fault than any other's. The single prong that flew from his wing and lodged itself in the Spire glows white hot and throws out great jets of electrified plasma. It works as a miniature fractal of the Spire itself. As the Spire sucks much of the earth’s energy and channels it into the air through a vessel much smaller than the whole that powers it, the lone prong the juts from the Spire drains much of its energy and throws it into the air. And he thought Urea could pull it out, they were doomed the moment it chinked the Spire's armor. Its too high, too hot, too late.
The prong has caused an interference loop that can't be stopped. Hotter and hotter it burns, there are no rivers to cool its tiny mass, so it approaches corona heat. The Spire is not impervious to the thorn in its side. The area nearest the shard glows almost as much as it, and warps uncomfortably. Their time is running out.
The pilots perform admirably. Without hesitation, each mounted their biselk, the poor animals now terrified of what their bout with the Spire has done and do their best to keep the Spire from tipping, but it is a losing battle. The biselk's jousts do something to drain the power of the Spire, but not enough.
Even worse, the tiny prongs suck energy from the Spire the same as the Spire does to the earth. As Skup flew over the Garden on his first flight in the air, an experience far greater and more thrilling than any he's ever experienced, he did not fail to notice the rivers boiling. Too much heat, the water is almost all gone, evaporated into the night air.
The only liquid that flows is magma, heavy and hot beneath the surface of the earth. Here and there, rivulets of it bubble forth from the surface, already one pilot and biselk have been lost to the molten rock. Their weight was too much, they stepped on ground too soft and melted into nothing, yet the magma's appetite is not quenched. It seems Tennay's candle metaphor was apt, though he didn't suspect the earth itself would be the wax to the Spire's flame.
The other pilots do not hesitate or falter. They choose their approaches more carefully, but none fail to understand the gravity of their actions. Each joust diverts energy from the Spire into their skeletons, rather than converting it into raw heat. Though they all understand they do nothing but delay the inevitable.
Already Elia has made five trips to the top of the Spire and back, the flock following her lead without hesitation. More than five hundred citizens run across the earth from the Spire, desperate to get away from the heat and waves of electricity it throws into the air. Skup's never been so smitten with Elia. She's a natural with the flock, and what she did to Luca was, well... cool. Her sweat and the shock of black feathers that cling to her make her look like a winged angel of death.
A blinding flash and the Spire trembles more than it had before.
From the back of the biselk, his body coursing with electricity, his hair as anarchic and chaotic as the biselk's antler's that surround him, he cries. “I love her!” loud and true.
Before Skup can think it his kingcrow is pumping furiously towards the sky.
Up and up they soar as the Spire's tilt grows more inclined. No longer perpendicular, gravity pulls upon it more and more.
Everything Skup ever knew tumbles out of the Spire. Without the electromagnetic field to keep everything inside, the tilt of the floor is enough to send his entire existence plummeting to the earth below it. Food, tables, chairs, an obscene amount of poker chips and cards, all tumble to nothingness. He sees more than a few people fall, they scream as they are forced to ponder their death longer than any should have to. Others have leapt and fall silently and await their first and final embrace of the earth.
The Spire falls faster and faster. Skup closes his eyes, shocked to share the King Crow's sight without the Amplification room, and is relieved to see the people of the Spire fleeing in the opposite direction. Now Skup only worries about a tidal wave of lava, after seeing the Spire collapse, he believes anything is possible.
Finally Skup sees the green sheen of the top of the Spire. The structure is a third lower in the sky than it should be. The King's sharp eyesight easily picks out Urea among the remaining people. She clings to grass, her black fingernails dug in
to the earth, her cheek resting against the closest thing to soil she's ever known.
She whirls around, and immediately starts to slide down the steep surface. Not anticipating this, Skup banks hard and they assume an interception flight. This is going to be close.
She's more than halfway down the slope already, also picking up speed. Other people cling to trees or shrubs, but Urea makes no effort to stop her slide.
This causes her to slow her fall, she digs into the thin layer of earth with her claws, her eyes pierce him even from this distance.
Skup and the kingcrow scoop up Urea in claws made for tearing flesh. They soar out and above the Spire as it plummets towards the earth.
The Spire seems to fall forever. Larger than any redwood, any skyscraper, any mountain, it gathers speed as it plummets, pivoting on its great base. As it leans gravity wrenches it apart, and huge fissures form, spewing electricity into the night like mist from a waterfall. Eventually it embraces the earth. As it crushes against the ground it shatters to pieces, some as big as boulders, some small as pebbles that fly off, charged bullets of exaltation that scatter farther than the caldera that houses the Garden. The stump is still the tallest structure save the ring of mountains. A hundred feet above the the ground a jagged crown of splinters burbles with electricity. Pieces of the Spire smash the earth like meteorites and sink into its molten crust, the carbon composites are light enough that the ground supports all but those that fell from the highest heights. Pieces of the Spire tumble along the earth and leave red hot scars behind. Many explode in a showers of sparks, white dust, and rumbles of thunder. When the dust settles the Spire lays on the earth, pointed due east towards Father Mountain,as if his gravity beckoned it to him. The Spire was so huge that pieces from the top rest at the mountain's feet, while the body of the thing lays in a messy line all the way back to the center of the Garden.