Futile Flame

by Sam Stone

  Completely unlike the eyes of all the other Allucians I’d seen so far.

  ‘How unusual,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Unique.’

  ‘So your babies have gold eyes?’

  ‘Not usually.’

  I turned to stare at Ilura and her face was grave for the first time since we had met. I glanced back at the infant and shuddered. It smiled back at me with a malevolence that I would never have considered possible.

  ‘Is there anything else different about them?’ I asked, watching the creature crawl around his cot.

  ‘No, of course not,’ she laughed. ‘They are just babies.’

  Then as if to prove her right the baby began to cry. As with all the Allucians it made no physical sound. Instead its face contorted as I watched. The nurse beside its cot responded immediately as though something had freed her from her catatonic state. She embraced the child, lifting it from the cot and took it from the room.

  ‘Feeding time,’ Ilura confirmed.

  We left the nursery dormitory and Ilura led me to a ward of pregnant women. There were twenty more with child and each of the women, I noticed, had gold flecks in their eyes.

  ‘We’re evolving,’ Ilura explained. ‘And the council feels it is a good thing. This wonderful change has occurred because of Lord Caesare.’

  ‘Are you so certain this is good?’

  ‘Of course. No race can survive without adapting to their new world.’

  But I wasn’t so sure that the change was so wonderful. I glanced back at the nursery door, felt the glint of golden pupils glaring into my shoulders. I shrugged. They were just babies and the door was now closed. So how could they possibly be watching me? My imagination was running away with me.

  Outside once more, I stood looking up into the fake sky, breathing air that could not possibly be as clean and fresh as it smelled. I couldn’t help but fear the changes I had seen in my brother. He was more evil, yet somehow controlled it. He could no longer tolerate the sun. The evolution was working in both directions. I for one did not wish to be forced into the dark by my continued contact with the Allucians.

  ‘Ilura,’ I said panic rising in my chest. ‘Help me.’

  Her small hand closed over my arm. She led me shuddering back to the carriage.

  ‘You have nothing to fear. No harm will befall you in our world,’ she said soothingly.

  We left the city. I was relieved to be once more in the garden, away from the blank gold stare of those unique children. All the time I could hear a lullaby in my head that I’d heard somewhere before but couldn’t place. No matter how much Ilura patted and soothed me, I shivered all the way back. It was as if the mountain had become my tomb and the cold was seeping deep into my bones.

  Chapter 38 – Lucrezia’s Story

  Prisoner

  ‘Ilura explained things,’ I said to Caesare that evening as we ate.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I saw the nursery.’

  Caesare didn’t answer. He carefully cut into his rare steak and began eating. I reached for my filled glass of wine.

  ‘Caesare, this whole situation. This world. We don’t belong here. You realise that, don’t you?’

  ‘I can’t leave.’

  ‘Can’t?’

  I stood. My appetite had diminished since I arrived, and yet we went through a process of eating and drinking. It was very civilised behaviour in a seemingly civilised world.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ I told him.

  ‘Ah. So you can see that? You see, Luci, I am not all bad.’

  I turned to him, my arms folded across my chest. Caesare had stopped eating and he smiled at me like a man in love, hoping desperately to be understood.

  ‘This isn’t you.’ I raised my hand towards him in a half gesture. ‘You’ve changed beyond recognition. The sun burns you now. How can that be a good thing?’

  ‘I have lived underground for many years.’

  ‘How many?’

  Caesare frowned. ‘I... don’t remember exactly.’

  ‘How do they keep you here?’

  I felt a shift in the walls. The eyes were watching again, though they had not been obviously present since my first evening.

  ‘Tell me how you came to be here.’

  Caesare sat back in his chair. Confusion brought colour to his cheeks. I waited. He looked several times as if he was going to speak, appearing to be on the verge of remembering.

  ‘They’ve wiped your memory,’ I stated after a few moments. ‘You can’t tell me because you don’t know. It’s witchcraft of sorts, some form of binding spell. It may manifest itself in the intolerance to sun and it ensures your continued presence here. You can’t leave during the day because you’ll burn up. And we never know when it really is daylight here, do we?’

  Caesare stood calmly. ‘I’m happy here, Luci. They took me in, gave me a home and made me a God. Why on earth would you think I’m a prisoner?’

  ‘Then leave, go out of the mountain for an evening.’

  ‘I have no need to. All my needs are met here.’

  I stared at him. My eyes revealing that I believed him to be a liar, a coward. Under the calm exterior I saw a shallow echo of residual fear. Something had happened, and maybe he intentionally refused to recall his phobias. Somehow that gypsy instinct I’d developed while travelling with Miranda knew it. Caesare was as much a prisoner as I was, even though he denied it to himself.

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed verbally. ‘All your needs are met, even companionship now.’

  ‘And love too, perhaps, one day?’ He looked at me shyly. My heart warmed a little to that innocent expression in his eyes. I could see the hope of love blooming there still. Maybe that would be his salvation.

  ‘I may love you once again,’ I said. ‘But only ever as a sister loves her brother. Nothing more.’

  ‘For now I will be satisfied with that.’

  Resigned, I sat down at the table once more and began eating my steak, which was still at the perfect temperature. All our needs and wants were met as long as we did not attempt to leave. I wondered what would happen if we ever did. As though hearing my thoughts, Caesare shuddered and we ate in silence. We were too afraid to think.

  As I walked down the now familiar passage to my room, the torches burst into flame before me as always, but I recalled the corridors in the nursery. I remembered once more the appearance of infinity. My mind’s eye evoked the image of the doors. There had been hundreds, each one I assumed must lead to a room. The doors were crammed close to each other, and they lined either side of the corridor.

  I shook my head. I must be imagining it. My memory, usually accurate, seemed to be playing tricks on me. But then it was this place and its people. I shuddered, recalling the new generation of Allucians. They would grow and take over this world one day. An icy cold fist gripped my heart at the thought of the babies becoming powerful. Would they be satisfied ruling an underground world?

  I felt golden eyes observing me and turned to gaze back down the now darkened passage. I peered into the gloom, expecting to see something but it was empty. Feeling strangely uneasy I rushed ahead, throwing myself into my room. Only when the curtain fell down over the doorway did I feel calm and safe, as though my rooms were somehow protected from the psychic reach of the Allucians. Being able to seek shelter from my gaolers was, however, a bizarre notion, for they could go anywhere they wished. But the whole situation was insane. Why was I running from monsters when I was a monster in my own right?

  Chapter 39 – Lucrezia’s Story

  The Darkness

  Miranda warned me of the darkness.

  ‘Everything is foretold,’ she said. ‘All that we plan comes to nothing if it is not in the cosmic design.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘The future is already played out – you just haven’t been there yet. Think of time as a series of doors that need to be opened. The doors are on many levels, and the third one may be placed behind the first.�
�

  ‘Time?’ I laughed. ‘Time moves forward. There’s no other direction for it to go.’

  Miranda looked at me with her usual patience, shrugged and shook her head. I indulged her.

  ‘All right then. Time as doors. Go on.’

  ‘There’s an alternative future coming for you, and you need to be prepared to meet it.’

  ‘Caesare?’

  ‘He will be linked to it. But he is not the enemy.’

  I was relaxed enough to smile. ‘Oh yes, he is!’

  ‘Light the fire,’ she instructed.

  I sat down, staring at the wood, twigs and dry leaves until a slight spark formed and the fire caught.

  ‘Good, you’re improving. But keep practicing always. One day your mind and those flames will save you.’

  I knew it was useless to ask her what this meant. Miranda was always ambiguous and would rarely explain herself. I put it down to her Romany upbringing. I heard her noncommittal expositions every time she read a fortune. Once I asked her why she never told them the clear vision when I knew that she could read the future as plainly as she could see herself in a looking glass.

  ‘The future is set. If I tell them all, they will try and change it. But hints will keep them on the right path. Besides, no one really wants to know the truth about their future. Most of our visitors only want approval for their lives here and now. But remember the doors,’ Miranda repeated. ‘And step through them in the right order.’

  ‘How do I know what the right order is?’

  ‘Instinct.’

  ‘What happens if I go through a wrong door, then?’

  ‘The very idea!’ Miranda hissed as she sucked in a gasp of air.

  She grew quiet for a moment, looking deeply into the flames. I waited patiently as she summoned the information from the fire.

  ‘The darkness,’ she confirmed finally. ‘And if that takes you, you’ll never be free.’

  I thought carefully before asking her my next question. Miranda would explain herself directly if asked the right question. I didn’t want riddles.

  ‘What is the darkness?’

  Miranda looked at me over the leaping tongues of fire and as usual the flames danced in her green eyes. She stared ahead in that mysterious way she had of gazing into the future, her eyes squinted as though she were looking into the brightest sunlight.

  ‘What you need to consider is how to avoid it.’

  I sighed. Her ambiguity exasperated me. ‘And?’

  A golden-eyed Allucian baby crawled up to the fire and looked at Miranda. She stretched out her hand to pat his black shiny hair as if he were some harmless pet.

  ‘You see?’ She looked at me and smiled. Her pupils dilated to liquid gold, pulsing like the flames in the fire. ‘The darkness is already here.’

  Chapter 40 – Lucrezia’s Story

  The King

  ‘Dreams always mean something,’ Miranda had once told me.

  ‘Never ignore their advice.’

  I stepped from the comfort of my bed and pulled on my robe. My head and body felt heavy, and not just because of the intense dream I had just awoken from. A feeling of disorientation made me feel dizzy and confused. The mountain seemed to be rocking and saying like a ship caught in a violent storm. I rested my hand against the wall and the world steadied again. Something in the atmosphere of the mountain made my stomach clench with fear. I tied my robe and walked to the curtain doorway where I stood, shivering. It felt late, but the unnatural light of the mountain meant that time was subjective. The time was whatever the Allucians wanted it to be.

  I lifted the tapestry and gazed down the passageway. It was unnaturally dark and yet there were shadows flickering in a light somewhere ahead, as though the Allucians were blending into the walls again, but moving constantly. I ran bare foot along the corridor.

  The torches unusually remained unlit. Even so, my night vision was perfect and I soon arrived at the door leading out into the garden. Here I paused again. The door remained closed when invariably it opened automatically for me as I approached. I pushed at the entrance: it didn’t move. I felt a slight sense of panic and I pushed again, this time using all of my strength.

  The rock screamed in protest. It was as though the door hadn’t been moved in centuries. It scraped against the fake lawn, yanking up clumps of turf as it swung wide. I entered the garden. The fake sun was full above me and the garden bloomed and grew as normal, but all was abnormally quiet. Unlike the usual peaceful silence, this was an absence of sound which felt so, so wrong. And yes, it felt like late morning. I tried to sense the workers, but their blood trail evaded me. It was as if the world of the Allucians was all part of some elaborate dream that I had believed to be reality. I had finally woken and could sense nothing living in this world except the foliage.

  I ran to the riverside, looked for the boat, willed it to appear. But it did not. Instead the water was mirror still. Some dramatic flaw had occurred in this perfect world. The magic of the Allucians had stalled. Did this mean that my own powers would now return? I summoned a flame to my hand and a cold blue fire stretched up from my palm.

  My own witchcraft had been stifled all the time I had been here; now, however, the embargo was lifted. All the words of power that Miranda had taught me now floated behind my eyes. I could finally remember them. Whatever magic had taken and controlled my memories was now gone. Warmth flooded my cheeks with the realisation that I could now blast my way through the rock if I so chose. I would be free! I ran around the garden, dancing, happy. Then stopped.

  Caesare stood in the garden. He reached forward, plucked a flower from its stalk and watched it shrivel and die in his hands. No new bloom burst from the stalk. The garden was dying. I went to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I need to talk to you. Is there anywhere we can go and not be overheard?’

  ‘Luci?’

  His intense gaze met mine and he seemed at a loss as to how to answer for a moment. He was on the verge of explaining something to me. I could see a new fear in his eyes. At that moment Ilura arrived.. She was breathless as she stood before us and for the first time I noticed she had been running and had not merely ‘appeared’ as she usually did. This was very strange indeed.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘The babies,’ she answered.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘They are missing,’ Ilura replied, looking around her as though they might be close by.

  Miranda’s warning from my dream suddenly became clear to me. ‘They opened some doors.’

  Ilura studied me intently. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Is anyone hurt?’ Caesare asked.

  Ilura bowed her head and tears seeped from her eyes. ‘All the nurses are dead, but it almost seems as though through natural means. As though they went to sleep and never awoke.’

  ‘They no longer need them,’ I murmured, but I was ignored.

  ‘We need to see the King.’ Caesare’s eyes were grave as he placed his hand on Ilura’s shoulder.

  ‘No! Caesare! That’s impossible.’

  ‘What are you both talking about? Why can’t we see your father, Ilura?’ I asked. ‘Surely he must be told what has happened?’

  ‘The “king” is not my father,’ Ilura said solemnly.

  ‘Then who is he?’

  ‘Not who, what is he...’ Caesare responded.

  The mountain garden began to rot around us. The plants shrivelled and died. The river level dropped and dried up leaving nothing but a dusty channel. The pool, however, was still. I stared down at the immobile water. It was as though someone had thrown a pebble into the water and it froze as the ripples panned outwards. I was looking at ripples frozen in real time. I shook away the paralysis the phenomenon caused and looked up.

  The landscape grew barren around us. I could see the city in the distance as the trees shrank. The marble and rock buildings shuddered as though they would fall apart and that dizzy seasick feeling
I’d experienced earlier made me feel once more unsteady on my feet. Ilura gripped Caesare’s leg in fear.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she cried and this time the sound came from her open mouth and not just her mind. Her hand flew to her mouth in terror and I realised that the Allucians world was truly broken; even their telepathy no longer worked.

  ‘Come,’ Caesare said, and he took Ilura up in his arms like a baby and began to run with supernatural speed across the deteriorating land.

  I ran alongside him, knowing full well that the final mystery would be solved and I would discover who and what was behind the power of the Allucians.

  Rock tumbled down around us. The mountain was reforming itself, eradicating the very essence of the Allucians from it. The ground shuddered beneath our feet as we ran. I believed at any moment it would just crack open and swallow us into the rock. Just ahead a landslide of boulders clattered down, blocking our way as they tumbled to the ground, knocking and clattering together. The rock sounded strangely hollow as it smashed into and crushed the remaining plants. I watched as years of lichen grew over the boulders in seconds. A barren tree extended out from between a crack in the boulders, and the other pieces of rock moulded together to form perfect waves of age-worn slate.

  ‘This way!’ Caesare called and I turned to see him running for an opening to his left.

  I vaguely recognised it as the gateway to the Allucian citadel.

  Ilura’s telepathy worked intermittently. Her thoughts and screams of fear came sometimes from her head and sometimes from her mouth. She tried to stifle the physical sounds but her terror was an abyss that threatened to swallow her. The Allucians had never lived without their magic and it was as though a limb was being ripped from her body. It hurt. I sympathised because I too had felt powerless without my own skills.

  A piece of blue rock tumbled down from above us. I threw myself against Caesare and we fell aside just in time. The sky was literally falling in, and as it hit the rotting grass both reverted back to their former state of thick, grey rock. Tiny hailstones of sharp blue stone rapidly rained down on us. One hit Caesare’s temple, leaving a nasty gash that bled profusely for a few seconds before healing. Caesare sheltered Ilura from the hail. We staggered on to the archway, zigzagging to avoid being crushed as larger lumps of sky-stone fell. Through the archway and we were at the citadel; the Allucian world was swiftly shrinking.