by Garry Ocean
“Another one?” she blinked with her long eyelashes, not understanding.
“Yes, another one. A year later…” he stopped, carefully choosing words. “After they disappeared. I asked a man from the Valley to arrange for it.”
“And..? Did he…” she was not brave enough to finish her question.
Instead of an answer, the Supreme One got up from the chair and went to the farthest corner to a fireproof safe, skillfully camouflaged for the room’s interior. Cleo knew that her father kept important papers in it. The Supreme One opened one of the drawers and waved for her to come up.
“The hunter told me that he had gone as deep into the Forest that time as he had never done before. With great difficulty, he managed to find another campsite. Everything was upside down and thrown around there. Of course, the site was already taken over by all sorts of plants, but he did manage to find something,” with these words the Supreme One stretched out his arm and unclenched his fist. Cleo gasped. This thing was impossible to confuse for anything else. It was Leo’s locket. Exactly the same as the one she had around her neck now. Two identical lockets. They were a present from their mother that she had made shortly before her death. Cleo never took it off, even when she went to bed.
“Open it,” father was looking at Cleo attentively and understood what she wanted to ask. “The hunter found it tied up to a high tree branch.”
Cleo’s fingers trembled when she was opening the locket. The lid slid to the side, and she caught in her palm a piece of paper folded four times. She unfolded it carefully. No doubt. She could have recognized her brother’s generous handwriting among millions. She started to read.
“There are only three of us left. Yesterday we buried Shon. Some swamp beast had bitten him. But his death was not in vain. Shon had found irrefutable evidence that people had lived here before. It is difficult for me to describe it. I saw similar pictures in an old book that depicted a large self-moving vehicle. It was moving along two specially designed racks that looked like iron. So Shon found the remains of these tracks. I am now convinced more than ever that the Old City is not a myth. We are starting out today. We decided to walk along the tracks. The Departed Gods help us!”
Cleo reread the note several times. Then she carefully folded it back and hid it in the locket. Tears were chocking her. The Supreme One wanted to hug his daughter but she drew away.
“Why did you hide it from me all this time?”
“What did you expect?” the Supreme One avoided looking her straight in the eye. “I’ve lost my wife, then my son. And then to lose you? I am sorry but that was beyond me.”
“You should have told me everything! It was your duty!” her eyes were filled with anger.
“Oh yeah? So that you take your loyal friends and set out on a search mission? I still remember how Gunn-Terr and I were looking for you in the steppe dwellers’ lands. And you were only eleven then. What were you searching for? The Book of Prophecies?”
“The Book of Enlightenment,” she corrected. “And not eleven, twelve.”
“It’s all Leo’s fault, and his endless fantasies about the past lives. Don’t you see where it ends up?”
“To be honest, I didn’t believe him,” Cleo choked on her own tears. “I was just playing along to make him happy. But he did believe. And turned out to be right.”
“At the cost of his life,” the Supreme One burst out, but stopped under his daughter’s look. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t do anything without telling me. Promise?”
“Will you introduce me to the hunter?” the girl answered with a question.
“All right, let’s make a deal,” Cleo’s father looked her in the eye. “The Celebration starts in a decade. Then there will be an Exodus. When everything is over, we’ll come back to this conversation.”
“I agree, father. But don’t think you will be able to get out of it later.”
“Just like your mother,” the Supreme One smiled. “All right, run along now, you still need to get ready for the Ritual. Or did you forget?”
“Are you itching to marry me off?” Cleo feigned being offended.
“Don’t be silly!” the Supreme One burst into laughter. “From the times of Archy the Wise himself, no one was able to win the Big Hunt. I personally believe that his youngest daughter had come up with this Ritual to spite all men. She was so ugly that she even banned drawing her. All her father’s might and influence couldn’t marry her off. They say she died a spinster.”
“Mom told me how you’d got this scar,” Cleo touched her father’s forehead.
“I was young then,” he gave out a feigned sigh. “I thought that was the only way to draw her attention.”
“And you succeeded, didn’t you?” Cleo smiled. “Mom said that when she saw you in the pool of blood, she promised herself that if you’d make it out alive, she’d kill you with her own hands.”
“Really? Is that so?” the Supreme One raised his eyebrows in surprise. “She’d never told me that.” Then he added, laughing, “She always kept her promises, though.”
“This is love, right, dad?” Cleo became a little sad. “I am afraid I will never be able to love anyone like that.”
“There, there,” the Supreme One patted her tenderly on her back. “Mark my word, I will play with my grandchildren soon enough.”
“That will never happen!” the girl puffed and rose on her toes to give her father a kiss on his forehead. “All right, I need to go get ready, perhaps someone brave like you will show up. I must look irresistible!”
“Run along, then,” her father’s smiled and shouted after her as she was leaving, “I’ve heard Aunty Lu is helping you with the outfits?”
“You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” Cleo’s voice responded from behind the door.
********
When the hunters landed on the riverbank, it was already dark.
“It’s getting dark fast here,” Nick thought, “We must be somewhere in the equatorial zone of the planet. What does this tell me?” he asked himself and smirked sadly, “So far, absolutely nothing.”
The Dominia was illuminating the port with its emerald light that Nick already got used to during his time on the planet. He could see well even in almost complete darkness. But additional lighting that the second planet of this star system was emitting enabled him to see much farther. He turned his head right and left with curiosity. Nich caught himself thinking that he behaves like Sith now. The boy was looking, with his mouth open, at the mechanisms and loading equipment on the dock he had never seen before. And Nick himself could not shake off the feeling that they boarded not the ferry but a time machine.
“From the neolith era right into the medieval times,” he thought. “What other surprises does this planet have in store for me?”
His interest was caught by a ship, lazily rocking at the very end of the pier. It had one sail. On the sides, equal distances from each other, there were holes. Most probably meant for oars, Nick thought. It seemed they still did some unloading there. Nick noticed a mechanism resembling a loading crane with a long neck. It seemed to be moved into action by a complex system of various pulleys and balances.
That moment, a loud horn sound came from the ship. The hunters immediately stopped and started to look intensely in that direction.
“Collarhorn!” Valu instinctively grabbed his long knife hastened on his belt.
“Grown-up beast!” Ron confirmed his words.
“Disgusting warthogs!” Valu cursed toward the watchmen who stayed behind on the ferry. He still could not put up with the fact that they had made them leave their spears on the other bank.
“Why did they bring him here?” Sith asked the question on everyone’s mind.
“Getting ready for the Big Hunt,” Whisperer answered. “The Celebration of the First Exodus will start soon.”
“Like there’s nothing else to celebrate,” Valu mumbled and added with a smirk, “City folks, what can you do…”
Meanwhile, someone on the pier yelled a command and they heard the sound of a winch. A huge cage appeared above the dark shipboard. Another gut-wrenching roar came out of it, and the cage started to rock back and forth. Now they could hear people shouting from the ferry. The hunters could only hear snippets of cursing. Then they heard many feet stomping behind them. They were taken over by at least a dozen of watchmen. Every one of them had a crossbow on his back. The last one running must have been their commander.
“A thousand frosties up your asses!” he shouted, rushing the soldiers. “Move your paws faster, you pregnant yellowbellies!”
Suddenly he noticed the frozen hunters and stopped dead right in front of them.
“What are you gawking at, foresters?” he yelled. “Haven’t seen your relative in a long time? Go, go away from here!”
“We are leaving, dear, we are,” Whisperer started to mumble quickly, and turned to the hunters, saying, “Let’s go, indeed. Not like we haven’t seen an collarhorn ever in our lives.”
Seemingly satisfied with the answer, the watchman threw one last angry look at them and rushed to catch up with his squad.
The hunters stood there for a little bit, looking at the ship again. The crane’s neck already took the cage to the bank and, producing breaking sounds, started to lower the violently rocking cage to the ground.
“Everything will be all right,” Whisperer muttered and started toward the dock gates. The hunters followed him one by one.
At the gate, they were stopped again by two half-asleep watchmen. One looked at the travel document and returned it to Whisperer with a big yawn.
“Why do you have to gad here at night?” he mumbled, letting them through to the entrance. “Go away, inside! And don’t forget to check in at the travel registrar!”
When the gates closed behind them with a loud clanking, everyone sighed in relief.
“All these city folks are so jittery,” Valu summarized, “I never liked coming here.”
“So where is the City?” Sith asked impatiently.
“We’ll spend the night at one of my acquaintance’s place, and tomorrow start out early in the morning,” Whisperer said to everyone. “If we move fast, we’ll reach the City before dusk.”
Luckily, the house of Whisperer’s acquaintance was not too far. The old man knocked on a door in a special way and soon enough it opened with a croak. A middle-aged man showed up. Instead of a greeting, he gave them a nod and went behind the door again. Whisperer waved at the hunters, suggesting they follow him, and went inside.
The room turned out to be quite spacious. In the middle, there was a little table full of simple food. Everything suggested they’d been expected. Three trestle-beds were set up along the walls. Valu immediately went to the table, opened a wineskin and made three good gulps.
“The only thing I like about the city folks is their wine,” he said, burping with pleasure. “If people in the valley could make the wine this good, I’d never come here.”
“Don’t get carried away, Valu,” said Ron, taking away the wineskin from him. Then he took a gulp from in as well and said, “Don’t forget, we are on business here.”
The hunters ate quickly and went to bed. Ron and Valu made themselves comfortable on the floor, using their shoulder bags as pillows, and started to snore in unison.
Sith, Whisperer, and Nick took the trestle-beds. They were rough and smelled like grass.
“What will happen tomorrow?” Nick thought and immediately fell into deep sleep.
In his dream, he saw stars again. He had a vivid feeling that he was flying at huge speed in the space toward a small, hardly flickering star. Nick felt his speed increasing so quickly that the stars around him were elongating and turning into thin glittering threads. The small star finally started to grow in size as he came closer. Then it split into two and Nick realized that was it a pair of eyes. Nick peered into them. Strong wind blew into his face. He tried to protect himself from the wind with his hand, but the hand wouldn’t obey him. He flew faster and faster. Gradually, a silhouette was shaping up and he had to squint to see it better. Suddenly time stopped and Nick saw a beautiful girl’s face framed by thick brown hair. Big, slightly squinted eyes were looking at him with attention and surprise at the same time. Her full sensitive lips shaped into a smile and she said in Umka’s voice, “I am waiting for you, Big Man.”
“Wake up! Everyone’s waiting just for you!” Sith was shaking Nick by his shoulder. “How much can you sleep?”
“What, is it morning already?” Nick rubbed his eyes. It was already dawn.
“That’s some devilry,” he said in Russian.
“What did you say?” Sith was already putting on his shoulder bag. “Come on, catch up! Will be in the City soon!”
********
Walking was easy. The road was evenly paved and broad, obviously taken care of well. On both sides of the road there were narrow channels. Upon reflection, Nick decided they were designed to drain water. The road ran along some settlements. Nick could not even classify them as villages. The houses were well built, as a rule, two-storied. Some resembled small castles. Almost all of them were fenced off by tall stonewalls. In some, music was playing and children’s laughter could be heard.
Several times, the hunters were taken over by carts harnessed by four-legged animals resembling the Earth’s horses. The first time Nick saw them, his jaw dropped in surprise. From afar, they were impossible to tell from horses. They seemed to have thinner manes and shorter tails. And that was the only visible difference. Besides, there are many different breeds of horses on the Earth, perhaps there are horses exactly like these ones.
Then he started to think more trying to figure out why he was so surprised. When he had met the hunters in that swamp, he was not in the least surprised that they were carbon copies of an average Earth resident. Just a little shorter, but if they are washed properly and, preferably, given a haircut, they will not be different. “By the way, I could use a good shower myself,” Nick thought with a smirk. Nevertheless, for the rest of their journey, Nick’s mind was toying with an idea that refused to take a shape. Sith’s excited yelping kicked Nick out of his thoughts back to reality.
“The City! The Great City!” while they were walking, the boy was peering ahead all the time and noticed the city first.
Within the next hour, the hunters passed three more checkpoints. They had no problems: a quick look at the travel document, a quick visual check, and they were on their way again. At the third and last checkpoint, however, they had to wait for about half an hour. A large group of people just like them, on foot, and a dozen of loaded carts created a bottleneck. There was a noise of people’s voices, some were cursing. The merchant owners of the carts were scaffolding with the guards.
“And I am telling you this again!” a red-faced guard, who’d touch a long knife on his belt from time to time, tried to yell over the crowd. “The central gate is closed! And it will remain closed until the Celebration begins. What is not clear? The carts should enter through the West Gate, and the pedestrians – through the East Gate!”
The crowd murmured in response, someone was handing him some papers, others promised to complain about his abuse of power. Whisperer gave his hunters a secret sign. Without stopping, they went around the screaming crowd and came up to the checkpoint from the left side. The old man quickly slid to a huge guard, who was looking indifferently at the loud merchants, and gave his travel document to him.
“Make way right now!” the large guard barked at the crowd, giving it only a short glance and the people immediately parted. In a lower voice, he said to the hunters, “Move faster. Go there, through the East Gate.”
“What’s happening with the guards?” Valu asked in surprise when the hunters moved away from the checkpoint. “The Departed must have returned, since they are letting us go everywhere ahead of others.”
Whisperer only waved his arm in response, as if saying, “I have no idea.”
“And the city is indeed great,” Nick thought, looking at the tall white stonewalls. “I wonder what they are made of. Looks like polished marble.” From that distance, the walls seemed to be one giant slab. There were no seams or joints on them.
“At least thirty meters tall,” Nick estimated in his mind, “And with the towers, perhaps forty. I wonder where the builders got so much stone. I have not seen any mountain chains here… But then, you haven’t seen much here,” he corrected himself.
Whisperer led them along the narrow streets with confidence. It was obvious he felt in the city like a fish in the water. You could not say the same about the others. The stonewalls of houses looming over their heads and many city folks going about their business annoyed the hunters. Besides, the hunters looked starkly different in the busy, noisy and colorful city crowd. Nick was walking on the slippery stone paving, carefully stepping over stinky garbage that was everywhere on the ground, and trying not to run into people rushing toward him. “It’s just like an anthill,” Nick thought. The city rush made him a little dizzy. The hunters crossed a large busy square, then went along noisy trading rows, and, following Whisperer, turned into a quiet little street.
“Here we are,” the old man finally said, stopping next to a large door that had a leather boot pinned to it. “Just in case, remember: the name of the street is Butchery, and this is Red’s shoe shop. Everyone knows Red here.”
He knocked on the door three times. The door opened with a creak, and a curly little boy appeared at the doorstep.
“Hi, Sleepy,” Whisperer greeted him, “Is your father home?”
“Hi, Whisperer,” the boy responded, looking quickly at all hunters. “Come on in, he has been waiting for you.”
To Nick’s surprise, the door led not to the house, but into a spacious square yard. In the yard, there were several machine tools with what looked like a treadle, and other mechanisms and devices the purpose of which Nick could not understand. In a corner, there were several vats connected to each other by pipes. Next to them, there was a big pile of leather pieces and hides.
