Commandment

by Daryl Chestney

  “No,” the general replied.

  Although Lakif hadn’t been privy to the woman’s words, she could only imagine the gravity of what had been recommended.

  “Then capture the Kulthean! His ransom alone would…” the figure pleaded. Indeed, it was a woman. Perhaps she wanted Bael for herself!

  “No.” The authority in Rasp’s voice checked the subordinate.

  “At least search them!” she begged her commander. “They may have money enough to help with supplies!”

  Lakif gulped. While they had some money, she was far more concerned with losing the Rare Earth Stones. To this ragtag lot, the Stones might be perceived as valuable and quickly confiscated. Then they would be back to square one. She questioned her heart. How would she react if a soldier demanded her treasure, she wondered. Would she defend her Stone? Would she risk her life for it?

  Yes.

  Only now did she appreciate the abbot’s protestations. The Stone was worth more than her own heart.

  “I said no!” Rasp contradicted firmly. His tone was stern enough to jar the Acaanan, who wasn’t even the victim of the reproach. Lakif’s pulse softened.

  “They have fulfilled their end of the bargain, in dramatic form, I may add.” He settled the issue.

  Rasp pushed the woman away and gestured for the three to draw close.

  “Although I am curious, it is not for me to pry into your motives in seeking the Bard. You must be searching for something. Only those who desire solicit his hoary ear. But remember this, if ever you find what you seek, I offer this advice. Do not hold on too tightly, for anything can be taken away.”

  Lakif wondered if the general was talking to them or reflecting about other matters entirely.

  “Thank you for your understanding,” Bael said. “What kind of man is the Bard? We have heard many tales.”

  “A man of profound wisdom he is. He saved me once, when I was utterly lost…” His voice drifted off. “He always treks the Old City, but nevertheless is quite elusive. It’s a chore for even my own scouts to track him down.”

  “Is he as ancient as the tales hint?” Bael asked.

  “Indeed. I gather the Bard will be around until the crack of eternity.”

  “Where can he be found?” Lakif squealed.

  “Of late he favors the music of the Octave, a wandering band of disgruntled musicians. He is not far from their dulcet harmonies. My scouts have informed me that the Octave haunts the Taenarum caves near the ruins of Ixion. The caves lay within sight of the giant wheel.”

  “What is that?” Bael asked.

  “Ixion was built over an underground sea. They constructed a wheel for harvesting water from that submerged bay.”

  Rasp began tracing lines in the dirt with the tip of his sword. The three leaned in to appreciate what he was scribbling in the soot. The diagram was a makeshift map, illustrating several local landmarks. Most importantly, it included the path of the Leviathan. But before their eyes the map vanished, swallowed by the soot, as had happened to their footprints.

  “Follow my instructions to the wheel of Ixion and then to the caves. Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the Fornix should be able to point out the landmarks. The way is largely clear of danger. Before you storm off, I offer another word of advice. If you seek the Bard’s council, bring a bottle of liquor. His ear is through his mouth.”

  The three thanked the general for his aid. It was no protracted farewell; he didn’t dally in rallying his troops. Lakif suspected that they had some pressing affairs to attend to. At a word, the troops fell into line. Lakif was impressed by the obedience showed to their liege. They breathed to carry out his commands. Rasp himself mounted Crown. The mare didn’t freak at his hands as it had with Torkoth. A heartbeat later, the lot was thundering off across the next dune.

  Lakif for one didn’t know how to interpret the masked leper. He spouted military words like wars, spies, and scouts like a true general. But Lakif’s image of a general was that of Grimpkin, the legendary strategist who fielded the final battle of the Renaissance on the plains of Phlegra. Rasp was a far cry from that noble avatar. But Lakif felt the embattled leader was fighting a very different kind of war.

  Stranded in Erebus and without a guide, Lakif feared that they wouldn’t be able to retrace their steps. She fretted that they would flounder through the caverns and stumble into disaster. Now that Rasp was gone, they would be vulnerable to the denizens of Erebrus. The fact that they had left no tracks in the soot to follow only compounded her anxiety.

  But it proved easy enough to extricate themselves from the gloomy realm. They were able to locate the arid riverbed and hop to the opposite bank. As is always the case, the return trip passed far swifter than the incursion, perhaps because this time they weren’t following a crippled guide.

  At one point, Lakif cast a suspicious eye behind them. None of the war party could be seen. But the crest of a dune was split by an inky black fissure. She didn’t remember passing such a crevasse. A little voice whispered that the Dead Moon Lake was shadowing them. But that was preposterous! It must be just a trick of the gloom on her skittish eye.

  XXVIII

  The Wheel

  AS THEY REACHED THE ARCHES, LAKIF SENSED A PALPABLE CHANGE IN THE atmosphere of the Fornix. A virtual army of prostitutes had gathered. It was a much larger force than she felt was customary. It must be a special occasion. But as disreputable the clientele in the Fornix was, Lakif was comforted by their presence. Any company, no matter how base, topped the gloom of Erebus.

  The map Rasp had sketched implied that Ixion was not far removed from this festival. Torkoth advised them to solicit local intelligence before embarking for the ruins. This was reasonable. As prostitutes controlled the Fornix, they offered an attractive source.

  They chose an innocent looking girl, one obviously several years the Acaanan’s junior. She shrank awkward at their approach, as if baffled by the union of three such disparate types. She introduced herself as Jezebel. After a mild tip to nudge her memory, the girl pointed out the best route to Ixion.

  In passing, they asked about the brewing hubbub. Jezebel was happy to indoctrinate them on the happenings. The celebration was in honor of the star fall. Such an affair was religiously observed on the thirteenth dusk after such an event. Lakif found the custom peculiar. Had the holiday been annual, it would have been easier to swallow. But a star fall was a spectacularly rare event. In her own life, the Acaanan couldn’t remember another one. How could such a festival be honored over time, considering that the instigating event was so rare and notoriously random?

  The seductress went on to explain that the Fornix was preparing for a bumper turnout. On such occasions, the common clay of Grimpkin was wrestled from their habitual ennui and, if only for one dusk, demonstrated a sliver of life. As such, many were expected to venture down here. Apparently, the noose of taboo strangling the Fornix was loosened on this particular evening. In anticipation of the turnout, several braziers had been stationed around the Fornix, their collective fires welcoming in the dusk. Lakif was struck by the contrast with the heavy dullness in the morning. Apparently, it had been but the eerie calm before the frenzied storm promised this evening.

  Lakif instantly warmed to the Fornix’s present atmosphere. For the first time all day, she basked in complete anonymity. She was relieved to be free of the horses. They attracted far too much attention and would certainly label them as the bold thieves who rousted the Arachna. Without the horses, the three blended comfortably with the edgy crowd.

  Lakif found Torkoth admiring the growing assembly. The brazier light lanced across his yellow orbs, and a distinctive look of satisfaction stamped his features.

  “This is a beautiful place,” he praised the Fornix. Lakif thought the judgment strange. The Fornix was certainly colorful, but beauty was not among its roster of credentials. But on second inspection, Torkoth seemed to be inventorying the prostitutes.

  “What are you doing?” Lak
if demanded of her companion.

  “I’m looking for a woman, of course.” The swordsman seemed to be eyeballing one in particular.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Lakif snorted. “Ixion awaits us!”

  Torkoth shook his head. “It is nearly None—too late for an excursion today. Besides, we are offered a unique opportunity here, to be part and parcel with the festivities.”

  Lakif grunted. What an occasion for the Half-man to suddenly be the timepiece! She bid the Torkoth of yesterday to return, the one who was oblivious to the weight of the sun’s engine. Furthermore, the Acaanan had no interest whatsoever in the celebration planned here, no matter how rare it may be.

  “We must find the Bard today!” Lakif enjoined her companion.

  “In the morning.” Torkoth obviously didn’t share her sense of urgency.

  Lakif grumbled under her breath. Logically speaking, she should have been impressed with the progress they had made this day. It was certainly a day to be remembered. It had started with a bungled horse heist and then progressed to a fantastic meeting with Eyre Rasp in Erebus. By all accounts, she should have been satisfied and ready to enjoy a much-needed reprieve.

  But the day had been one stroke of luck after another. Although one star had died, she felt that her personal lucky star was on the wax. She wanted to pounce on the moment while its favors were still predisposed. Of course, she and Bael could have left without the guard. The map illustrated that their destination was close enough. In addition, Lakif didn’t feel that they would have to call on the Half-man’s sword in Ixion. But their luck so far had embraced all three. Somehow, she stubbornly felt that breaking up the triad at this crucial juncture would dash their winning streak.

  Lakif looked to the Kulthean for support. Bael had been listening to the conversation quietly.

  “For once, reason allied with the Acaanan. Rasp warned of the Bard’s fickle nature. He may be in Ixion today, but the morning is another matter.” Bael’s reasoning only thinly veiled his anxiety. Another night fretting over the Bard, alchemists, and the Stones was obviously overwhelming for him as well. Whatever his motivation, Lakif breathed easier knowing her friend was of a like mind.

  “What say you Half-man?” Bael importuned the dissenter. Such an empathetic appeal would surely win over the third member.

  “Your common judgment wins the day,” Torkoth said. From his smirk Lakif wasn’t sure if by common the Half-man meant mutual or base.

  The torrid tempo of the Fornix thinned markedly as they approached the ruins of Ixion. Bael was the designated torchbearer, and those licking flames chased away the darkness. A few hobos lay curled up in isolated corners, nursing bottles of booze.

  The ruins themselves were uninspiring. A series of brick supports rose up from the razed earth. Some were thin, shaped like chimneys. Others were rectangular and long, resembling sheets of crumbling walls. A few were simple brick arches. The helter-skelter arrangement was clearly the remains of an ancient community. But the ruins of Ixion were conspicuously incomplete. Whole sections of walls were vacant. If these were the remains of ancient structures slowly disassembling through time, where were the toppled stones? Had they been carried away for another purpose? Lakif suspected that the site was just a crude framework, the initial attempt at a community that never quite materialized. Its location at the periphery of the Fornix suggested that the ruins were the vestige of an earlier attempt to reclaim the Old City. In either event, the Acaanan was at a loss to fathom the presence of the ruins, which stretched on to the limit of her sight.

  The line demarcating the border of Ixion wasn’t clear. In fact, they had probably been trudging through the place for some time before they stumbled on the great wheel. The disk was perpendicular to the earth and was supported by a sturdy framework. The wheel itself was about five yards in diameter. Wooden pegs were secured into its circumference at regular intervals. These pegs supported a chain that wound around the wheel. Remains of buckets were fastened to the chain, which dropped into a crevasse at the foot of the construction. Clearly, the device was part of an obsolete mechanism to cart water up from below.

  Lakif reflected on why Ixion had been abandoned. Was it because the local water well had dried up? This had doomed many other areas of the Old City. Had the underground sea vanished, leaving the inhabitants to flee in thirst? If so, the device could still be operable. Or had the wheel device broken, preventing them from accessing the life-giving water? There was a third alternative. Had something happened here that cursed the settlement of Ixion? Had the locals fled, delegating the wheel and the seabed to disuse? The only reason she suspected that something untoward had occurred here was the presence of a skeleton chained on the disk. It was shackled spread-eagle to four different pegs along the circumference. The wheel was also scorched in several places as if someone had unsuccessfully tried to light it on fire. She felt that the victim had been strung up to spin on a burning disk.

  Lakif paused to peer through a hole in a wall. The defect was nearly circular, and the surrounding brick was sound, suggesting that the spot was intended as a window. As Lakif peered into the area beyond, a figure suddenly appeared. He was wearing a lengthy, tan coat and wore a cap. A salt-and-pepper beard covered his thin chin. A large cello was tucked under his arm and bulged out of the back of his overcoat.

  Lakif’s eyes brightened at the sight of the musician. She didn’t call out and she didn’t want to spook the fellow, but turned and signaled to her companions. By the time they found a route into the area, the fellow had disappeared from sight. But Lakif had a sense of which direction the musician was headed, and the three sped off in hot pursuit.

  It wasn’t long before Lakif realized that they had lost the musician in the disjointed ruins. Their quarry could have disappeared through any number of broken walls. Lakif couldn’t repress a grumble of dissatisfaction. How could a musician hoisting a cello evade them? Torkoth bent low to examine the ground in hopes of delineating tracks. But there were countless scuffle marks in the dirt, and he shook his head in defeat.

  Then, out of the darkness, a shrill note rose up—the tender call of a musical instrument. The note quivered in the air, then disappeared with a snap. Another, more deeply cantankerous moan replaced it. It was the soulful tone of an oboe, wailing like a lonely ghost in the ruins.

  The three took to flight in pursuit of the fleeting music. They hadn’t taken a few steps when the first instrument began anew, superimposed on the brassy groan. Other instruments chimed in and together synthesized into a grating dissonance. The discordant music was the scent that led the bloodhounds through the ruins of Ixion, for when darkness robs the eye of function, the ears assume control.

  They arrived at the edge of Ixion, in a cavernous area largely cleared of rubble. In the distance, a steep slope rose in a series of small caves at the summit. A rusted trashcan stuffed with all manner of debris was deployed near the center. The can glimmered with a fiery blaze.

  Eight men were huddling around the burning container. Each wore a canvas coat checkered with makeshift patches, not unlike the musician seen before. Lakif immediately recognized the cellist sitting on a flat rock. His formidable cello was planted firmly in the earth between his legs. The poor instrument was peppered with nicks, chips, and scratches.

  The cellist was but one member of the string quartet. This group sat close together. His partners, the first and second violin and the viola, were warming up with their instruments. Opposite the burning bin, the woodwind section consisted of the flutist and oboist. The treble pitch of the oboe clashed acutely with the shrill whistle of its neighbor. At the farthest flank sat a set of drums. The drummer was busy stretching his wrists into oblique contortions. Lastly, the only brass representative of the ensemble consisted of a trumpeter. He was apparently the latest to arrive, as he was just producing his tarnished wind instrument from a rectangular case.

  “I believe we found the Octave,” Torkoth stated the obvious. Lakif wondered what peculia
r dispositions encouraged these musicians to play in the ruins. Who was their intended audience? Or was it simply a jam-session, a hootenanny for inspired musicians to practice their art uncluttered by distractions?

  The three approached the orchestra cautiously. Lakif for one hesitated to barge in on their busy preparations, suspecting that one of the reasons for the remote location was to be free of interruptions. Besides, musicians were proverbially angst-driven souls fueled by a rude temperament.

  “Good evening,” Bael greeted the jam-session. They hardly acknowledged his hail. The trumpeter blew sharply through his horn. The resulting foghorn honk sounded like a dyspeptic burp, clearly a signal of his annoyance.

  “Have you seen the Bard?” Lakif shouted over the dissonance. She was answered with a rude thump on the drums.

  “I said, have you seen the Bard?” Lakif hallooed. While she suspected the Octave was peevish at being disturbed, she was resolved to harass the group until they gave up their fan.

  One of them nodded toward the slope. “He’s in the box seats.”

  Other than the one who responded, the other members of the orchestra uniformly ignored them. They mumbled among themselves about specific notes and doled out pointers on how to rev up the music.

  The triad left the orchestra embroidered in last-minute details and headed up the slope toward the caves.

  The short climb winded the Acaanan. The incline ended at a low ledge that overlooked the area below. An extremely warped stalactite dripped down from the ceiling, narrowly touching the ground. The granite was streaked with white, which the Acaanan had assumed to be a type of impurity from a distance. As they mounted the ledge, she could appreciate the formation in greater detail. The white patches proved to be a slender skeleton impregnating the granite. These were not some ossified amphibian remains as had decorated the riverbed in Erebus. It was definitely Humanoid. The skeleton was only partially visible, as the majority was encased within the formation. But the right patella and tibia were completely visible, protruding from the front. Lakif couldn’t begin to speculate on what queer quirk of nature could cause the odd phenomenon. From the curious fusion, it seemed as if the ceiling had suddenly liquefied and dripped down on an unsuspecting spelunker below, only to resolidify before the victim could extricate himself.