John R. Fultz's Blog, page 47

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 20

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Another inspirational piece from Zdzislaw Beksinski.

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10  Chapter11  

Chapter12  Chapter13  

Chapter14  Chapter15 

Chapter16  Chapter17

Chapter 18 Chapter 19

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Chapter 20.

A Walk Among the Orchids

After explaining Wail’s plan to the council members, Harmona ate dinner with her girls. She read them stories out of Astrid’s favorite book and sang lullabies until they fell sleep. They were still sleeping in her bedroom. She couldn’t ask them go back to their own rooms until she knew they would be safe. As insulated as the children were inside HearthHome, there would be no real security on Gaeya until the Yicori were gone.

Ever since she had ruled against sending out more war parties, Duval had ceased to visit her and the girls. After Dorian’s death the man had sat outside her door for seven nights in a row. He even stayed by her bedside when she had her fainting spell. Fighting the Yicori had wounded him far deeper than the scars on his jaw. Duval had grown used to the killing and the dying. He was more interested in revenge than preserving lives.

Everyone was changing. Chancey had recovered from the worst of his wounds, but Brix lay senseless in a deep fever. Chancey didn’t speak much when Harmona visited him. Not even the girls could lighten his mood. He sat beside Brix’s bed, his limbs white with bandages, and nursed his pain. Harmona wondered if she would ever hear him laugh again. He belonged on a stage, not on a battlefield. So did Brix.

Harmona kissed each of her sleeping girls and slid from beneath the covers. The stone floor was cold on her bare feet. She pulled on slippers and a thick robe, grabbed a towel, and headed downstairs to the bath chambers. The guard stationed at her door was handsome in his polished etherium mail. His name was Arno, and he was barely eighteen. She smiled at him as she closed the door and whispered her destination. Arno nodded, resting a fist on the pommel of his blade. He’d held this assignment ever since Duval stopped coming.

In the steaming, bubbling pool she lay back and tried to forget everything for a few moments. A matron sprinkled flower petals into the water and poured in flasks of fragrant oils. Torches flickered in their sconces, and most of the citadel slumbered at this late hour. Deep below the Inner Sanctum weaponsmiths and armorers were still working night shifts, but the martial training in the courtyards had ended at sundown. HearthHome was as quiet now as it ever got. The calm was an illusion, but Harmona enjoyed it.

The battlements had been quiet ever since the final war party six days ago. Sometime soon the Yicori would finish devouring the bodies from that battle, and then they would swarm the walls again. Harmona had learned to enjoy rare moments like this one, floating on the warm water, eyes closed, nothing to do but keep breathing.

Her moment of serenity was over too soon. She dried herself, pulled her robe on, and headed back up the stairs of Hearthtower. Arno sat on the top step, his head leaning against the wall. Sleeping on the job would get him a tongue-lashing from the captains. She nudged his leg when she reached the top of the stairs. He sat still as a stone. She touched his shoulder and he tumbled down the stairs leaving a trail of crimson drops. A pool of dark blood slowly congealed where he had been sitting. Something had slashed his throat open.

She pulled open the bedchamber door and rushed inside. It was dark but for a single fat candle burning beside the bed. She ran to the lumpy bed and pulled back the covers. Sabine and Astrid lay on the mattress, bound with ragged strips of cloth at wrists and ankles. Their eyes were swollen with tears, and they tried to scream at her through the cloths stuffed in their mouths. She reached to untie them but froze when a voice spoke in the corner of the room.

Elodie stepped out of the shadows with a tall figure directly behind her. The six-year-old was bound and gagged like her sisters. A pale hand sat on her left shoulder while another hand held a hunting knife to her throat. The knifeman urged Elodie to step forward, and he stepped into the candlelight behind her. Shadows gathered about his eyes like unwashed dirt. His black hair hung in long, matted clumps, and he smelled awful. His lean cheeks sported a rough beard, and his body was emaciated. His tunic and leggings were torn and stained, little more than rags. He stared at her with the eyes of a hungry rat and held the blade against Elodie’s neck.

“Anton,” Harmona said.

“Lecuyer,” he said. “That is the name of my house. Lecuyer.”

“I understand,” Harmona said. “Please put the knife down. I know it’s been hard. You’ve been living in the catacombs, stealing crusts from the kitchen for weeks. Give me the knife and I’ll fix you a good meal. Everything will be fine if you just let her go.”

“You never listen!” He hissed like a snake. A pale foam dripped from the corner of his lip. Elodie shivered in his grasp. His dirty fingers dug into her shoulder.

“I will,” Harmona said, stepping closer. “I promise I will listen. I’ll do anything you want. Just let her go, Anton.”

“No,” he said. His eyes flitted around the room, searching for invisible enemies. “My mistake was in trying to save the others. But you had Wail cut them down. Now they’re all cowards, too afraid to leave.”

“No, Anton,” she said. “Some of them are fighting for HearthHome. There’s a war on. The Yicori–”

“Don’t speak to me of the Yicori!” He spat, moving the knife closer to Elodie’s neck. The girl’s tears made damp rag of the cloth in her mouth. “This is all your fault. You and Wail. Everyone who’s been killed by those beasts–it’s on you. I tried to tell you. I said let’s leave this place. But it’s too late for the rest of you. You’ve chosen to stay here and die.”

“Give me the knife, Anton.”

“I found your shrine and begged the stone faces for mercy,” he said. “They wouldn’t listen either. They wouldn’t even raise an eyelid at me…”

“Give me the knife…”

“Stay back.” The knife’s edge touched Elodie’s skin and the girl jumped. A tiny drop of red emerged beneath the blade. Harmona gritted her teeth and squeezed her fists. If she had the staff in her hands, she would incinerate him. It was leaning in the opposite corner when she had left the room, but now it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe Anton had thrown it out the window after he murdered Arno and snuck in here to tie up the girls.

I’m going to kill you for this.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” she said. “Cut me if you want, just let my girls go.”

“Here’s what you’re going to do,” Anton said. “You, me, and the little one are going to the orchid garden. You’re going to open the Hidden Gate so I can go through it. Or–and this is entirely up to you, HearthMother–I’m going to slit your daughters’ throats one by one and make you watch them bleed to death.”

“All right,” Harmona said. “All right, I’ll do it.”

“Let’s go,” he said, waving his knife at the door. “And be quiet. You scream, she dies.”

Anton followed her down the stairs, guiding Elodie with his rough hand on her shoulder, sometimes by grabbing the back of her hair. Elodie moaned into the gag. Harmona whispered to her and tried to make eye contact. “It’s all right, baby girl. Everything will be fine…”

“Shut up,” Anton said.

Harmona moved quicker, down into the quiet Sanctum, past the Great Hall and into the courtyards. Anton forced her to use the least visible pathways. He knew where all the guards were stationed. Obviously he had planned this for several days.

Let him leave. Let him be cast into the Nexus, alone on the Thoroughfare with a knife and a bag of stolen biscuits. He won’t make it far. Letting Anton leave Gaeya was letting him commit suicide. There was no saving him now. She had already tried that and failed.

They entered the garden, moving between the giant blossoms by moonlight. They stopped before the big arch of stone. Harmona turned to face Anton.

“Let my daughter go, and I’ll open the Hidden Gate. I promise.”

Anton lifted Elodie in the crook of his arm, pulling her tiny face up level with his own. The knife’s edge touched her daughter’s neck again.

“Open it now,” Anton said. “Or she dies.”

Harmona’s heart hammered inside her chest. “Okay! Okay, you win…”

She turned to the arch and opened her mouth to say the Word of Command.

A gentle sound stopped her, like someone gasping for breath. She turned and saw Anton standing there, his knife still poised at Elodie’s neck. The tip of a red blade protruded from Anton’s forehead above his eyes. His arms suddenly went limp, his knife clattering to the pavestones. Elodie rushed toward her mother as Anton’s body collapsed.

Bruno stood above the bleeding corpse. The broad knife in his hand was more like a short sword, and the blood of House Lecuyer dripped from its blade. His slit yellow eyes blinked once at the dead man and then once at Harmona.

Harmona squeezed Elodie as tightly as she dared. Elodie cried into her mother’s shoulder. Harmona whispered soothing words and caressed Elodie’s hot forehead.

“I was taking a walk,” Bruno said. “Couldn’t sleep.” He gestured at Anton’s body. “Friend of yours?”

“No,” Harmona said, clutching her daughter. “Not a friend. Just someone I tried to save from himself.”

Bruno grunted. “Some people aren’t meant to be saved.” He wiped his blade clean between two big orchid leaves and stuffed it into a leg-sheath. “Some people just need killing. That’s something you learn pretty quick when you travel the Nexus.” Moonlight glinted on the green-black scales of his bare chest. He must be a handsome specimen among his own kind.

“Thank you,” she said. Words were not enough, but they were all she had.

Bruno escorted her and Elodie up the tower stairs. Astrid and Sabine had almost succeeded in freeing themselves. Harmona cut them free, hugged and kissed them for a while, and introduced their reptoid savior. After the terror of Anton Lecuyer, Bruno wasn’t scary at all. Elodie hugged his thick neck, and soon the girls were calling him a hero.

 

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In the morning Harmona and the girls visited Bruno and Dima in the nursery. The reptoid stood over Svetlana’s baby like a proud father. The matrons had also grown fond of him; they brought him mugs of ale and legs of roasted fowl. When the world was overrun with monsters, it was good to have at least one of them on your side.

“Who is Dima’s father?” Harmona asked.

“You’ll have to ask Svetlana that question,” Bruno said.

“Do you love her?”

Bruno shrugged. “She’s too ugly for me,” he said. “But I love this little guy. He’s going to grow up and be a warrior like his mother.”

“Where is your family, Bruno?”

“Gone,” he said. “Dead for a long time now. Uxx is no more, so my kind are scattered across the worlds. We have no home of our own, so we fight other peoples’ wars for them. During times of peace we work as bodyguards and enforcers. It’s our way.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Harmona said. “Not for you, not anymore. Gaeya can be your home too. After what you’ve done for us, you will always be welcome here.”

Bruno laughed. “The Yicori will not welcome me so well as you.”

Harmona frowned. “You’re right,” she said. “I’d better hold my invitation until I’ve got a safe world to offer you.”

“It’s like I said,” Bruno told her. “Some people just need killing.”

“I’m sick of killing,” she said. “Killing and dying.”

“These creatures who feast on the bones of your people,” Bruno said. “Their descendants will become the Potentates of Urbille one day. When that happens they’ll still be feeding on your people. So I say wait, HearthMother. Wait until you have killed the last of these Yicori. Then you can be sick of killing.”

Harmona knew he was right, and she hated herself for it.

 

NEXT:

A Double-Sized Grand Finale!

Ch. 21: “Lords of Aphelion”

&

Ch. 22: “The Slaughter”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

_____________________________

—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 19

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This terrific piece by the great Zdzislaw Beksinski inspired me quite a bit while writing A FEW ODD SOULS. It’s obviously some kind of inter-dimensional portal, very similar to the Urbillian “portes” in the novel.

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10  Chapter11  

Chapter12  Chapter13  

Chapter14  Chapter15 

Chapter16  Chapter17

Chapter 18

——————————————

Chapter 19.

Harvesters

Svetlana had never ridden a horse, but Wail’s mechanical steeds were a lot easier to master than living animals. He kept them hidden inside the ruins of a collapsed stone tower. Wail opened a chest full of coal, deposited a fresh chunk into each stallion’s chest cavity, and activated them with a Word of Command.

Their coal-burning hearts burst into flames, and black vapors shot from their nostrils. Each one stamped a forward hoof to indicate readiness. Their saddles were intricate leather creations designed to minimize damage to the bodies of Beatific riders. Svetlana found the saddle comfortable enough as Wail led her through the basics of riding the four-legged machine. With the reins in her fist she controlled the animal’s forward direction, and by squeezing her legs she made it walk, trot, run, or stop.

Crag and Skiptrain had both ridden Urbillian horses before, so they allowed her a few minutes to get the hang of it. Before long all four of them were galloping along the Lesser Thoroughfare. Svetlana enjoyed the wind in her hair, the wild exhilaration of racing through the night. Iron hooves thundered against the road between the worlds.

“I’m going to open the first vacuity a little way down the road,” Wail had told them. “I’ll do it without stopping. You will see the air light up and the fissure open ahead of you. Let the horse carry you straight through the vacuity. Every time we do this, we’ll skip dozens of worlds like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake.”

“What if something gets in the way?” Crag asked.

“Leave it behind,” said Wail, “or run it down.”

“You said the Harvesters would see us,” Skiptrain said.

“Yes, we may have to kill one or two of them today,” Wail said.

“You take them down regularly,” Crag said. “What’s the secret?”

“Head shot.”

Crag grunted. “Of course,” he said. “Beatifics, Harvesters, they’re basically the same design with the same weakness.”

“Destroy the brain and there can be no rebuild,” Wail said. “It’s fundamental.”

The faster the horses ran, the more lightly their hooves touched the Thoroughfare. At full speed the roaring wind drowned out all sound. Svetlana watched the woodland fly by on either side of the road, trees and rocks blurred into fleeting colors.

The first vacuity opened directly ahead of Wail. A ball of blue lightning appeared in the center of the road and grew large enough to engulf it. Then the sphere compressed until it was a two-dimensional plane. A distant Affinity lay gleaming on its other side: A yellow desert with orange moons. The horses carried their riders headlong through the vacuity into the heat of the desert world.

The sky was all shades of purple and black, filled with flocks of white bats. A forest of tall cacti the color of dead flesh rose from the sands. Svetlana’s eyes scanned the sky. She half expected the Faceless Angel who took Dima to swoop down on her at any moment. But Wail opened two more vacuities with no sign of Harvesters, and no interference from natural predators.

The next vacuity brought them to the Greater Thoroughfare. They passed through worlds full of raging storms, worlds frozen by ice and snow, and a stretch of Empty Lands blasted into dust by forgotten wars. They crossed a dried up seabed where forests of rainbow coral glittered in the sunlight.

Eventually they came to a green ocean world with no sign of land anywhere. The road itself stood on massive stone pylons rising from the waves. It ran above the churning waters as far as the eye could see. Starlight danced across the ocean’s surface as the black horses ran along the road-bridge.

A flaming meteor dropped from the sky, followed by two others. The balls of flame fell in a single arc, converging on the point where they would meet the road ahead. The bodies of winged giants gleamed inside the flames, and they raised the blades of massive swords. The flames fell away from their silver skins as they desended, and now they were flying instead of falling. Their heads were smooth and faceless, like the one who had stolen Dima. Svetlana drew her pistol.

“Here they come!” Wail shouted, raising his musket high. His shot went wild as a Harvester’s blade slashed at his head. He ducked and lost his triangular hat to the wind. The second Harvester fell upon Crag with its heavy blade. The Inspector weaved his mount unexpectedly at the last second. The sword missed him and struck sparks from the road. Crag fired three shots at the Harvester. One of them must have hit because the Silverwing spewed flames from a hole in the side of its head.

Svetlana emptied her pistol into the third Harvester as it dove toward her. Three rounds sank into its broad, seamless chest, but still it swung the blade at her head. She saw the clumsy attack coming and ducked beneath the weapon. The Harvester flapped its wings faster to keep up with the pace of her horse. Shoving the pistol back into its holster, she pulled Takamoto’s blade from its sheath.

The Harvester soared above her for another attempt at decapitation. Why it didn’t strike at her mount to slow her down, she could not guess. Maybe these baby-stealing machines were stupid. Wail said they had human brains like the Beatifics. But Skiptrain’s steam carriage also had a brain. That didn’t make it clever. The sword was not a weapon that a machine could master with any kind of finesse. Takamoto would have laughed at the Harvesters’ lack of skill.

The next blow came obvious and heavy from her left side. She ducked beneath the sweeping metal again and responded with a flick of Takamoto’s blade. It sliced through the Harvester’s right wing close to its root. The wing fell away and the Harvester slammed into the road a second later, tumbling and clanging, mangling its other wing in the process. It might stumble after them on foot, but it was no longer a threat.

Wail dueled with his Harvester from the back of his speeding horse. His dark blade and the Harvester’s bright metal clashed and clashed again, neither swordsman relenting. Crag fired more shots into the one he had wounded, and it came crashing to the road in front of Svetlana’s mount. Metal hooves ripped through silver skin like paper, leaving a trail of cogs, wires, and gears behind them.

The last of the three Harvesters lost its blade when Wail’s sword dashed it away. The weaponless mechanoid changed its tactics completely: It dropped right onto Wail’s back, wrapping arms, legs, and wings about him. Wail’s right arm waved free, still grasping his sword, but it did him no good.

The smothering Harvester began to spark and glow. Wail couldn’t shake it off. It exploded in a ball of flame shot with streaks of blue lightning. Wail and the Harvester flew from the horse’s back in several pieces.

“Wail!” Svetlana screamed his name as if it might change what had already happened. Of course it was too late. Wail’s riderless mount began to slow; it stopped a ways down the road.

Svetlana, Crag, and Skiptrain halted their mounts to examine the wreckage. Pieces of charred metal, shards of elastic skin, melted gears, fused clumps of wire and cogs, they all lay scattered across the road-bridge. Splashes of black oil here and there sparkled like dark blood.

“Wail?” Svetlana shouted his name again. She wasn’t sure why. It was better to shout than to weep. She had wept enough today. The green ocean roared in her ears as she studied the mingled remains of Wail and the Harvester. The Silverwing had destroyed itself to take out the highwayman. Maybe that was the Harvesters’ plan all along.

“Here,” said Skiptrain. Svetlana watched him pick something out of the debris. He held it high as they came near to him. Wail’s head with its bronze face miraculously still attached.

Svetlana caught her breath, and her throat tightened.

“Where’s the rest of him?” Crag asked.

Skiptrain waved a hand to indicate the wreckage. “Scattered…”

“No,” Svetlana croaked. She took the head from Skiptrain and looked into its dark opticals. There was a crack in the left lens. Invisible blades sank into her heart.

“Wail?” Her eyes welled. “Wail! Come back! We need you!”

“It’s no use,” Crag said. “He’s gone…”

Svetlana screamed at the skull, a wordless expression of pain. Tiny lights sprang on behind the damaged opticals. She heard a whirring and clicking sound. Wail’s head vibrated in her fingers.

“That was unpleasant,” it said.

Svetlana nearly dropped the head.

“We thought you were…” She lost the words.

“I was,” said Wail’s head. “I mean I am. It’s hard to explain. You’ll just have to trust me.”

“Can you still open the vacuities?” Skiptrain said.

“I implanted the causal vacuity node in the back of my skull,” said the head. “If it wasn’t damaged by the blast, then we shouldn’t have a problem.”

“You’re alive?” Svetlana asked.

“Of course,” said Wail. “If you choose to call it that. I’ll need a complete surgical rebuild. That is, if Skiptrain can smuggle me back into the Urbille.”

“My pleasure,” Skiptrain said. “If we survive this trip.”

“Let’s get moving,” Crag said. “There might be more of those things.”

“They expected me to be travelling alone,” said Wail. “If I had been…this would’ve been the end of me.”

“Isn’t it nice to have friends?” Skiptrain said. He took the head from Svetlana and held it in front of him. “Alas, poor Yorick…”

“What does that mean?” Svetlana said.

“Nothing. Let’s ride.”

Skiptrain tucked the head into his satchel with its face sticking upward so Wail could speak to him as necessary. They rode as a trio now, building gradually to their former speed. Svetlana’s muscles ached, but she ignored them. Wail said she would toughen up after a few days in the saddle. The Affinities flew by, individually or in clusters. There was no time to marvel at celestial wonders or breathtaking landscapes. They rode on steeds that never got tired, and Wail’s head opened six more vacuities before they stopped to rest.

The road crossed a blue plain toward range of black mountains. Islands of rock and jungle floated in the sky. Winged apes darted between these islands, sometimes descending into the ruins of ancient temples on the ground. In a copse of white-barked trees beside the road, the riders camped for awhile. The clockwork men could go on without rest. Svetlana knew they were only stopping because she was exhausted. They had travelled with Organics before. She didn’t bother to argue, but fell into a deep and dreamless sleep on a bed of palm leaves. A short while later they woke her up and rode on. She had learned to fight like a warrior many years ago. Now she learned to ride like one.

She spoke to Wail’s head before climbing back into the saddle. “How is it you can still talk to us and open these gates?” she said. “When other Beatifics lose their heads, they seem to die.”

“A false impression,” Wail’s head said. “Beatific brains usually go dormant when separated from their bodily systems. A death-like sleep that can be fixed during the rebuild process.”

“But you’re awake,” she said. “Not dormant.”

“I’ve made a few self-modifications that the Potentates never planned on,” Wail’s head said. “The causal vacuity node wasn’t the only thing I incorporated.”

The black horses ran at full speed again, vacuities springing to life one after another, a plethora of worlds receding behind them. At a certain point they would reach the remote edge of the Nexus and stand before the gates of legendary Aphelion.

Svetlana recalled the words of Gehosopha the Composite Being: A city of immense wisdom and light. The city upon which all other cities were patterned…

She gritted her teeth as the black steed galloped on. She gripped the reins tightly in both fists, ignoring the pain in her thighs and the ache in her back.

She watched the skies for Faceless Angels falling like meteors.

 

NEXT: “A Walk Among the Orchids”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

_____________________________

—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 18

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This piece by the great Les Edwards is the closest thing I’ve found to capture my vision of the monstrous Yicori.

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10  Chapter11  Chapter12  

Chapter13  Chapter14  Chapter15 

Chapter16  Chapter17

Chapter 18.

Kill Or Be Killed

Harmona sent a messenger to pull her daughters from their studies. She waited for them in the dining hall instead of the Great Hall. Anything to make things seem as normal as possible.

A bowl of chopped fruit would be an unexpected midday snack. Her oldest would think it a bribe. Sabine was suspicious of everything since Dorian died. Astrid and Elodie followed their big sister around like puppies.

I’m not with them enough.

The tutors and the matrons are raising them.

How do you fight a war and still find time to raise your children?

Wooden cups held cool water for the girls, but Harmona poured a cup of red wine for herself. She was still trying to think her way out of the siege. The assault she had led beyond the gate was a success. She had inspired the defenders of HearthHome, showed them how to take the fight to the enemy. Now she deeply regretted it.

The councils and captains wouldn’t let her go out to fight again.

“You’re too important,” Duval had said. His fellow captains agreed. “If we lose you in the field, we lose our leader. We can’t afford to lose you. Not now.”

“You need the power of Sala North’s staff,” she said, “and I’m the only one who can use it.”

“We need you alive and safe more than we need you fighting alongside us,” Duval said. “Your green flame is more than a weapon. It’s a symbol. It burns at the heart of everything we’re fighting for. Think of your girls, Harmona. They need you most of all.”

She hated to admit it, but Duval was right. She stayed inside with the matrons and the children while the defenders of HearthHome rushed out of the gate to face the Yicori a second and third time. Each time bodies piled up before the gate, and each time the Yicori dragged them away for feasting. There was no end to the cycle of killing, as there was no end to the Yicori’s numbers. Hundreds of the brutes died, but it didn’t seem to matter. Thousands more kept coming.

Brix had been wounded in the third outing, and Chancey nearly died while dragging him back through the gates. They were both in the infirmary now, along with sixty other wounded warriors. Less than two hundred remained in fighting shape. The StoneFathers’ estimate of forty to sixty percent casualties was yet another lie. If the cycle continued, casualties would reach one hundred percent soon. Then HearthHome would fall. Its children–born and unborn alike–would all die.

After the fourth assault Harmona had made her decision: No more war parties outside the fortress. No more battles outside the gates. She announced it at last night’s council. A sense of relief was the immediate result among her people, but the captains were not happy with her. Duval argued against her during the council, the first time he had ever done so. A few days later small bands of Yicori started climbing the outer wall again. Any day now the horde would climb the walls en masse like a pack of spiders swarming a fallen log.

Harmona could evacuate HearthHome through the Hidden Gate right now. Yet if she ordered such a thing, her people would be refugees between the Affinities, a population without a home. They certainly couldn’t go back to the Urbille. The fight for Gaeya was almost over, and the New Organics were losing. Wandering the Affinities like some lost tribe of prehistory was preferable to death, but not by much.

Duval and the captains urged her to speak with the StoneFathers, but she denied them. The thirty-nine faces had ceased pouring wisdom into the minds of the Artisans and LoreKeepers. They were silent now in the darkness of their deep chamber.

“Wake them,” people said, “Wake them and tell them we need their magic!”

“Don’t you understand?” she said. “The StoneFathers put us in this trap. They set us here for the explicit purpose of fighting these creatures. They are not going to help us stop this. They want us to fight. Or die.”

“Then we fight,” said Duval. “We keep fighting. We send out more war parties.”

“No more war parties,” Harmona said. “But we could get out of here. Pack it up and find another world. Somewhere quiet on the Nexus. We need to use the Hidden Gate to stage an exodus before it’s too late. I’m calling for a vote.”

The council had voted to stay and fight for Gaeya, but it was close.

Duval was giving her the cold shoulder. For three days now he hadn’t spoken with her or the girls. He kept to the company of his fellow captains and the swordsmen that he trained every day. Harmona thought he would be there for the girls during this ordeal, but she shouldn’t have expected it of him. He was a warrior, and these weren’t his children. He might love the girls, but he wouldn’t forget about his dead brothers. He owed them vengeance. He wanted to keep fighting the Yicori directly, but her decree made that impossible. Nobody was ready to defy her direct orders. Not even the anxious captains.

The New Organics’ time in Gaeya was nearly done. Despite the vote, evacuation plans were prepared and distributed. Harmona wondered if the New Organics would fare any better on the Nexus. She would rather have a family of refugees than no family at all.

The next time the council voted, she was sure to sway them in favor of leaving.

The girls arrived in the dining hall. Elodie smiled at her mother, but the other two pretended to be uninterested. Elodie jumped into Harmona’s lap. Her sisters climbed into seats at the table. Harmona kissed each of them on the cheek. They were perfectly beautiful, even when dressed in their drab school tunics. Their hair was long and dark like Harmona’s, and Elodie had her mother’s curls.

“Have some fruit.” She offered them the bowl.

“Why did you take us out of classes?” Sabine asked. She didn’t touch the fruit. Elodie grabbed a slice of stoneapple and shoved it into her mouth.

“I need to talk with you about what’s happening outside the gates,” she said.

“Tutor says there are monsters in the forest,” Elodie said. She talked with her mouth full.

“Not monsters,” Harmona said, “Yicori. They’re…aliens…”

“They want to eat us,” Astrid said.

“Is that true?” Elodie asked.

Harmona nodded. “Yes, the Yicori are dangerous, flesh-eating savages.”

“They killed Daddy,” Sabine said. “They want to kill all of us.”

“That’s what they want,” said Harmona, “but they can’t get inside our walls. We keep them out with oil and flame. As long as we’re in here, we’ll be safe.”

“Will we have to go out and fight them someday?” Astrid asked. “Like Brix and Chancey did?”

“No,” Harmona said. She held Astrid’s head in her hands and kissed her forehead. “I promise you will never have to take up a sword. You are my daughters and I will keep you safe. It’s what I called you here to talk about.”

She explained to them about the alarm and how it would sound when the time came for exodus. Told them where to run, to keep a satchel packed and ready. When the alarm sounded they must go immediately to the orchid garden, where the Hidden Gate would be open and ready. Matrons and children would go through the porte first, followed by Artisans, LoreKeepers, and finally the warriors. The girls understood it all and asked few questions. She was about to dismiss them when the messenger came: Wail had returned to Hearth Home with a group of Beatifics and some kind of alien.

Harmona grabbed her staff, sent the girls back to class, and headed for the orchid garden. She was more than ready to vent her frustrations on Wail, but the sight of Skiptrain and Sala North threw her off balance. Wail looked exactly the same in his tri-corner hat and black cape, waving at her as she approached. She ignored the highwayman and embraced Sala with a tiny squeal of delight.

“It’s so good to see you,” Harmona said. The hug lasted a long time.

“I missed you too,” Sala said. “Every day.” She wore a less ornate face now that Skiptrain wore the troupe leader’s mask. But her voice was the same, as was her graceful way of moving. The woman had practically raised Harmona and Dorian. Sala taught them to read and to think, to act, to travel.

“I heard about Dorian’s death,” Sala said. “I’m so sorry.”

Harmona nodded and pulled away. “Too many have died here lately,” she said. “But don’t worry, you’re safe inside these walls. For now.”

Skiptrain embraced Harmona next. He introduced her to Inspector Crag and his frail-looking wife Caroline, then to a reptoid named Bruno, and finally to Svetlana. The blonde girl was about the same age as Harmona, which meant she could pass for a citizen of HearthHome. Like the lizard-man, Svetlana gave the first impression of a seasoned warrior. But there was a longing in her eyes, a restless craving, that made her seem more like an anxious little girl.

Was this all the reinforcements Wail could manage? Two old friends, two mercenaries, and a pair of lovestruck Beatifics?

“Svetlana has come a very long way to be reunited with her son,” Wail said. Harmona kept her eyes on the outland girl. “I’ve reunited a husband and wife already today. With your help I’ll do the same with a mother and son.” He described the birthmark on the child’s leg, and Harmona remembered seeing it. Wail had brought her the baby not long before the problem with the Yicori started. She saw hope flicker in Svetlana’s eyes, delicate as glass and precious as gold. Now she understood the girl’s desperation.

“I’ll take you to the nursery myself,” Harmona said. “Since our current troubles started, no families have adopted incoming infants. The matrons provide daily care for a dozen new arrivals. I’m sure your Dima is one of them.”

Svetlana wiped at her bloodshot eyes. A warrior never wanted to show tears.

“Wail described this place so well to me,” Sala said, “and it’s just like I pictured it. Quite lovely, Harmona. When can I meet these daughters of yours?”

“As soon as their lessons are done,” Harmona said. “I promise.”

Harmona turned to Wail. “Doctor, I require words with you in private.”

“I’ll accompany you to the nursery,” Wail said.

“No. Please wait in the dining hall with your guests.”

“Bruno will come with me,” Svetlana said. She leaned on the big reptoid’s armored shoulder. “He’s perfectly tame.” Bruno gave her a toothy grin.

“Come,” Harmona said. “Sala, join us. Wail, stay here.”

“As you wish, HearthMother,” Wail said. He bowed with mock solemnity.

Matrons came from the kitchen with hot loaves of bread and platters of roasted fowl. Bruno’s big nostrils sniffed at the aroma as he followed Svetlana out of the room.

In the nursery it wasn’t hard to find Dima. He was the only new arrival with any kind of birthmark. Sala explained Harmona’s plight as Skiptrain had related it to her. This woman had to be a remarkable specimen to track her baby across the Affinities. Even to survive such a journey was a miracle for a flesh-and-blood Organic.

Svetlana took the baby in her arms. The matrons were crying and Harmona couldn’t stop herself from joining them. Only Sala’s and Bruno’s eyes were dry now, since Beatifics couldn’t weep and reptoids didn’t know how. Svetlana held Dima to her bosom like he was a dream suddenly made real. She kissed him and cooed at him, twirling him about in her arms. Dima giggled and grabbed her finger in his tiny fist. Svetlana wept and laughed and even sang a little. After a while they left her alone in the nursery with her son. Bruno slouched outside the door like a clockwork hound awaiting its master.

Harmona filled Sala in on the grim details of the HearthHome siege. The sounds of warriors training and blades clanging came through the vaulted windows as they walked toward the dining hall. The morning exercises had begun, and beneath the citadel the forges were still churning out new blades and suits of armor. Etherium blades had replaced the earlier steel weapons, and they were superior in every way. The etherium should have turned the tide of the war in the New Organics’ favor, but it did not. The numbers of the Yicori were simply too great. And all of this was the fault of the StoneFathers.

“Wail is nothing but their tool,” Harmona said.

“Wail is nobody’s tool,” Sala said. “I thought you of all people would see that. You underestimate him.”

“You’re soft on him because he rebuilt you,” Harmona said, smiling. “But I’m glad he did.”

“I go by Noemi now,” she said. “A new name seemed appropriate for a new life.”

Harmona met Wail among the tables, and he followed her into a private meeting room. She might well lose her temper on him, and she didn’t want to make a scene. She needed Wail to listen. And then to speak. That was going to happen one way or another.

“You knew all along didn’t you?” she said.

The last time she asked him the question, he didn’t answer.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know about the Yicori. I swear it.”

“How am I supposed to believe you, Wail?”

“I didn’t know until my last visit,” he said. “Yes, I knew about the time-shifting property of the Hidden Gate. I knew that it cut through space and time. I thought Gaeya was a prehistoric paradise. The StoneFathers chose this world, but they didn’t tell me why. Not until it was too late.”

“And now?” she said. “What do you say now?”

“This is our one chance to end the Potentates,” Wail said. “We’ve got to take it.”

“You like to use the word ‘we’ a lot, but you’re not the one dying here,” she said. “It’s my people who fight and die in this place. It’s only been six weeks since the Yicori found us, and already half of us are dead. Many of us are too weak to fight. Pregnant women, young children, wounded men and women. You should have brought an army through that gate.”

“I would if I had one,” Wail said. “I’m here now. Let me help.”

“You want to die fighting Yicori, is that it? Oh, we’ll just put your Beatific body back together with some wire and string. You’re not really human anyway, right?”

Wail said nothing. His bronze face stared at her. She looked away.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s quite all right,” Wail said. “I understand. Have you spoken to the StoneFathers?”

“No,” she said. “I’m not taking their advice anymore. They’re poison.”

“Nonsense,” Wail said. “They’ve kept you alive this long.”

“Not all of us,” she said.

“But now you’re a fighting force,” Wail said. “Your warriors have learned how to kill these brutes. You have etherium blades and armor. Now you are more dangerous than them.”

“They are endless!”

“No,” Wail said, “they can’t be. That’s impossible. There is a finite number of those things. Most of them died off thousands of years ago. All we have to do is get rid of the remnants. This world belongs to the New Organics.”

“You sound just like them,” she said. “They told me at least half of us would die before this war was over. But we’ve already passed fifty percent casualties, and there is no stopping the Yicori. We might have done better sacrificing our flesh and blood to the Potentates. At least they would have given us replacement bodies. When the Yicori kill one of us that person is gone forever. Do you understand? We don’t get rebuilt!”

“I do understand,” Wail said. “But you can’t give up. There’s no place for Organics along the Nexus. There hasn’t been for thousands of years. But if you succeed in wiping out the Yicori, their descendants will never evolve into the Potenates. They will never conquer the Empire of Stone and rule the Nexus. If you win here, you make the Nexus safe for humankind again. You negate the birth of a cosmic predator race that made homo sapiens terra an endangered species. You win not only this world, but all worlds. You’ll bring the humans back, Harmona.”

“And all I have to do is kill every last one of those brutes,” she said.

“Great deeds always fall to reluctant souls,” Wail said. “History calls them heroes.”

“This is a fight for survival,” Harmona said. “It’s kill or be killed. There are no heroes.”

“Let me speak to the StoneFathers.”

“No,” Harmona cut off his next words. “Come with me.”

She led him back into the dining hall. Skiptrain, Noemi/Sala, and Bruno were gathered about Svetlana and her baby. Crag and Caroline sat on a nearby terrace overlooking the central gardens. Harmona wasn’t sure if the presence of Beatifics in the citadel would be a good or bad thing for its population. There might be old grudges stirred up by having them here. She thought of Anton Lecuyer, the would-be rebel, living like rat somewhere in the catacombs below the fortress. None of the attempts to capture him had succeeded. She couldn’t worry about the presence of Beatifics now. There was a small matter of life and death that took priority.

She sat down at the big table and called for wine. She explained HearthHome’s dilemma, leaving out Wail’s conspiracy with the StoneFathers.

“We can’t hold out much longer,” she said. “We have to win this war with the Yicori–to wipe them out–or we have to abandon Gaeya.”

“Not much of a choice when you’ve got all these children to protect,” Bruno said. He stared at Dima in Svetlana’s arms. One of his black talons caressed the babe’s tummy lightly as a feather. Dima wrapped his tiny fingers around it. He made the sounds a happy baby should be making.

Harmona explained the StoneFathers’ gambit. “If we exterminate the Yicori, their descendants will never become the Potentates. And the Potentates will never make us an endangered species.”

Crag had rejoined them while Harmona was speaking. Caroline sat quiet as ever by his side. “These StoneFathers,” Crag said. “Somehow they spoke to Caroline when she was in the labyrinth. What are they?”

“The only true enemies of the Potentates,” Wail said. “Thanks to them we have a chance to change everything. To fix the Nexus.”

“With genocide,” Harmona said.

“Aren’t all empires built on such crimes?” Skiptrain said. “History books are written by the victors.”

“Is it really genocide when you’re fighting an enemy that’s trying to devour you?” Wail said.

“Who cares?” Bruno said. “It’s a matter of survival, the one constant in the universe. Conflict. Struggle. Death. Only the strong survive.”

“The Reptoids of Uxx have a straightforward philosophy of life,” Wail said. “But Bruno does make a point.”

“No, I mean who are they?” Crag asked. “These StoneFathers. This Ministere de Stone.”

“The original architects of the Nexus,” he said. “The Binders of Affinities. Call them spirits if you will, but they are non-temporal entities. They built the Thoroughfares and they lost the Nexus to the Potentates. They liberated me from servitude, and they brought us all here to Gaeya. This is what it comes down to, my friends. This world is the final battleground between the Potentates of Urbille and the Ministere de Stone.”

“It is not going well,” Harmona said.

“There may be a way to turn the tables on these Yicori,” Skiptrain said. “Harmona, you said the new weapons and armor made your people more effective at killing their enemies. But your technology here is primitive compared to what exists in the Affinities.”

“We could never smuggle enough guns out of the Urbille,” said Wail. “Or enough ammunition. Security’s too tight.”

“Not the Urbille,” Skiptrain said. “There is a place with enough advanced weaponry to defy even the Potentates.”

“We’ve been everywhere along the Nexus,” Noemi said. “Seen wonders you wouldn’t believe.” She and Skiptrain shared a strange look, an indication that they also shared the same thought.

“Aphelion,” Svetlana said. Eyes and opticals turned to her. She finally looked up from the baby. “I hear things,” she said.

“Is that place real?” Bruno asked.

“It is,” Skiptrain said. “A magnificent city far enough from the Urbille to withstand its influence, and therefore the most likely to aid our cause. The Rude Mechanicals won the favor of Aphelion’s Triple Monarch decades ago. It will be my honor to serve as Ambassador of Gaeya. Let me ask for help.”

“You’ll never make it across the Nexus in time,” Harmona said. “The trip could take weeks or months.”

“Not if we use Wail’s vacuity technology,” Skiptrain said. “It creates shortcuts between Affinities.”

“It’s actually the Potentates’ technology,” Wail said. “I stole it from a Harvester. I learned a lot about them when I took one apart. They use it to parse the Affinities faster than anyone else. I adapted one of their causal vacuity nodes to create the Hidden Gate, although I couldn’t have perfected it without the StoneFathers.”

“Can you use it like the Harvesters do?” Skiptrain asked. “To travel inside the Nexus?”

“I’ve done it several times. However, there are risks. Using the Harvesters’ technology has begun to draw their attention. We may run across one or two of them on the way. But it’s worth the risk.”

“How likely is this Triple Monarch to aid us?” Harmona said. “We have nothing to offer in return.”

“On the contrary,” Wail said. “We can offer them a Nexus freed of the Potentates.”

Bruno smiled, showing off his big, sharp teeth. “I’m beginning to like you more and more,” he said.

“Count me in,” Crag said.

“Inspector, you don’t have to–”

“You didn’t have to help me get Caroline back,” Crag said. “But you did. I owe you. And after what the bastards did to her–what they did to all of us–how could I skip out on my chance to get some payback?” Crag turned to Harmona. “Can Caroline stay with you while I’m gone? She needs the company of other women. Children. Sunlight, fresh air.”

“You are both welcome as long as you care to stay,” Harmona said.

“I’ll take care of Caroline,” Noemi said. “Harmona’s going to be busy.”

Crag thanked both women with awkward hugs, then went to spend a few more minutes with his wife. It was almost time for the girls to return from classes. They would finally get to meet Aunt Sala and Uncle Skiptrain, the legendary performers they’d heard so much about. The visitors would keep their minds from the siege. They had never seen a reptoid before, so she was sure they’d be mildly terrified then utterly fascinated by Bruno’s presence.

“I’m so proud of what you have become,” Noemi said.

Harmona shook her head. “I only ever wanted to be an actor.”

“That was your first mistake,” Noemi said. They laughed. Harmona couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed like that. Her heart swelled. She couldn’t wait for the clockwork woman to meet her daughters. Sala/Noemi was the only grandmother they would ever have.

“I keep a stable of Urbillian horses on the other side of the gate,” Wail said, “not far from where we left Skiptrain’s steam carriage.”

Svetlana came to him, the baby sleeping on her shoulder.

“I’m going with you,” she said. “Dima has been safe with your HearthMother. He will be safe here a little while longer.”

Wail stiffened. “My dear lady, we cannot ask you to do such a thing. Stay here with your son.”

“I must go with you,” Svetlana said. “To Aphelion.”

“Are you sure about this?” Bruno said. The lizard-man literally poked his snout into the conversation. “I’ll go, Svetlana. You stay here.”

“No,” Svetlana said. “I owe Wail too. There is nothing left for Dima and me where we came from. But if I help to save this place, we might find a home here.”

Harmona raised a hand to touch Svetlana’s cheek. “You already have a home here,” she said. “You don’t have to earn it.”

“Yes,” Svetlana said. “I do. For myself and for Dima.”

She kissed the top of the baby’s head. Harmona understood.

“Then I’ll stay with Dima,” Bruno said. “Until you get back…”

Harmona watched in silent awe as Svetlana kissed the reptoid on his scaly cheek.

“If only you weren’t so ugly,” Svetlana said. “I might fall in love with you.”

Bruno huffed through his flared nostrils.

“If only you had scales,” he said, “and a nice tail…”

Bruno took the sleeping baby in his arms. Harmona watched him, fascinated by his humanlike nature. Her children were going to love having this gentle monster around. Perhaps it would make them feel safer. She had seen plenty of reptoids in her days travelling with the Rude Mechanicals, but she’d never seen anything like Bruno. She wished Wail had brought an army of reptoids just like him.

“Do you really think this will work?” Harmona asked.

“It has to,” Skiptrain said. “Just hold on a few more days.”

“If they come over the walls, I’m sounding the evacuation,” Harmona said.

Wail handed her a tiny black box. “If the worst should happen, open the lid and set the bird inside free. It will lead me to wherever you are in the Nexus.”

Harmona took the box. “What makes you think I’d want you to find me?”

Wail shrugged. “The Nexus is a dangerous place.”

“You’re a bastard, Wail.”

“I’m a doctor.”

 

NEXT: “Harvesters”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

_____________________________

—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 17

[image error]

I found this image online while I was writing the novel, and it fits The Urbille perfectly. I wish I could find the name of the artist who created it, but my efforts to do so have been futile.

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10   Chapter11  Chapter12  

Chapter13  Chapter14   Chapter15

Chapter 16

———————————————-

Welcome back!

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s no original illustration from me for this week’s chapter. To be frank, I no longer have the time and energy to do such illustrations. Why? Because I’ve decided to write a new novel this summer–beginning now. So for Chapters 17-22, I’m going to post images that inspired me while was I was writing A FEW ODD SOULS. I don’t think anyone who’s read this far will mind–my writing skills greatly exceed my illustration skills. 

Thanks again for reading! –JF

PS. A special thanks to the keen-eyed Robert Massey for helping me find and destroy any typos that might have slipped by me during the editing process. 

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Chapter 17.

Silver and Brass

The DISTENDED BLADDER was mostly empty this early in the morning. A few bored Beatifics sat in pairs here and there, holdovers from the night before. A Doxie turned her porcelain smile at Crag as he came through the entrance, but lost interest as soon as she saw Caroline. Crag led her into the establishment by the hand, like guiding a sleepy child.

The rage that had consumed him in the judging hall still simmered in the coils of his belly. He would let it burst free later, when some pinhead gendarme hauled him in to see the Tribune again. He’d have a bullet ready for the Tribune’s skull next time.

Wail is a Surgeon.

He can help her.

If he survived the plan he’d set in motion.

By now Skiptrain and the two hired guns had done their part. The wailing of distant sirens confirmed his estimation. If everything went as planned, Skiptrain would meet Crag here and they’d get Caroline out of the Urbille before sunset.

Keep her hidden until then. Don’t give them a chance to take her back.

By now they know their prize is lost.

Crag wondered who would find him here first: Skiptrain with an exit plan or gendarmes aiming to drag him back to the Ministere. He chose a curtained booth in the back of the tavern, where the morning sun hadn’t reached yet. Crag needed the shadows. He couldn’t stand look at the sun today. He sat across from Caroline and held her hands.

He ordered two expensive lubricants and a bowl of soapy water. He took a napkin, dipped it, and wiped at the grime on Caroline’s porcelain face. His fingers moved lightly, careful not to put stress on the fracture that ran from her left forehead to the top of her delicate nose.

“This one was always my favorite,” he told her. He restored the face’s shine as much as possible. Caroline’s opticals focused on him, but she still hadn’t said a word. He used another napkin to polish her lenses. Their color had faded from green to grey.

Wail can fix her.

He wondered how Wail could fix a broken mind. A murdered spirit.

He held a cup of warm lubricant to Caroline’s lips, helped her drink it down. He whispered sweet words, but he didn’t know if she understood him.

“Say something,” he begged. “Anything. Say my name, sweetheart. Do you know me? Who am I? Say my name.”

Caroline squeezed his hands and her opticals swiveled. She looked down at the table, saw her reflection in a tiny puddle of oil. She trembled fiercely, like her body would shake itself apart. Still she said nothing. Crag slipped over to her side of the booth and took her in his arms.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said. “It’s okay.” He kept saying it until she stopped shaking. She lay in his arms helpless as a baby. The slight weight of her head on his shoulder and her arms around his neck, these things let him know: she recognized him.

“You don’t have to talk. It’s okay.”

An gaudily dressed Beatific with a burgundy coat and powdered wig pulled back the booth’s curtain. He slid into the empty side of the booth. Crag didn’t know his face, but his voice was unmistakable.

“Hello, Crag,” said Wail. “Caroline…” He doffed his top hat in her honor. Caroline raised her head, looked at Wail, and returned her cheek to Crag’s shoulder.

“Nice disguise,” Crag said. “I was expecting Skiptrain.”

“He’s working on our exit plan,” Wail said. “How is she?”

“Look at her,” Crag said. “See what they did to her. She won’t say a word.”

Wail leaned across the table, inspecting her face and neck. “Hmmm,” he said. “She’s suffering from physical and mental trauma. Very common among those who survive the labyrinth. Most of the prisoners down there never see the light of day again. She’s one of the lucky ones. Let’s get her back to my workshop, where I can give her a full exam.”

“Fix her, Wail,” Crag said.

The Surgeon nodded. He called for a private carriage and they left through the back door of the tavern. Wail slipped a ruby brilliant into the barkeep’s hand on his way out. The carriage was completely enclosed and driven by a Beatific, so the gendarmes wouldn’t stop it for inspection unless there was an accident. Another brilliant in the Beatific driver’s hand secured his silence as they reached a row of dilapidated warehouses.

Crag lifted Caroline in his arms as the coach rumbled away. He followed Wail through the wreckage to the hidden grate and carried her down into the highwayman’s hidden lab. The big reptoid was sleeping again, and the Organic girl sat in the corner sharpening her long blade. Skiptrain hadn’t returned yet. Crag hoped he would arrive soon. Things were heating up and the Ministere would want Crag to play the fall guy. If he didn’t get Caroline through the gate soon, they might never make it out of the Urbille.

Caroline lay on her back atop one of the workbenches. Wail began to gently examine her while Crag observed. Wail pealed back the elastic skin covering her arms and legs, treated her joints with high-grade oil and sprayed her gears with rust-away. Wherever her silver bones were visible, including her naked skull, he applied a solution that restored luster to the metal. He replaced her faded opticals with new lenses of bright green glass. He pulled her flexible skin back into place with the skill of a master artisan, repairing holes and rips with a honey-like epoxy. He made all her wounds disappear. Except the ones he couldn’t see.

When Wail pulled back her breastbone to check her coils, heart, and torso gears, Crag couldn’t watch anymore. He went to sit on the other side of the chamber with the reptoid and the girl. The scaly warrior had woken up and was devouring the last of Wail’s canned food. Crag sat on an iron chair and stared at the big stone face carved into the wall.

“Ugly, isn’t it?” Svetlana said.

Crag nodded.

“I keep waiting for it to say something,” she said. She was trying to lighten his mood, but failing at it. From her lithe limbs, windburned cheeks, and the weapons she carried, he guessed she was a professional mercenary. He had no idea where Wail found her and the lizard, but they must have been good choices because the operation had gone off without a hitch. So far anyway.

“How is your wife?” the reptoid asked. He had the face of a blunt-nosed crocodile.

Crag sighed. Wail had pulled a plastic curtain across his workspace to protect Caroline’s modesty.

“She’s dead,” Crag said. “We both are. We died when we gave our bodies to the Potentates.”

“How can you say this?” Svetlana asked. “She’s here and you’re here. You are together and obviously you’re both alive.” She leaned forward, sliding her sword back into its scabbard and laying it on the cot behind her.

Crag shook his head. He remembered feeling like this when he was a child crying his eyes out over something. He hadn’t wept in hundreds of years, not since his fleshy opticals were replaced with glassy ones. He couldn’t weep anymore, but the words poured out of his mouth like tears. They fell one by one and he let them. He was tired of fighting the flood.

“I work for the Potentates,” he said. “The Potentates, can you believe that? They took my body, my flesh and blood. My bones. They took my wife’s flesh and bones. My parents, my friends, everyone I ever knew. The Potentates took their living bodies and replaced them with these machines. Do you know what they did with all of that stolen flesh? Thousands of years of discarded bodies?”

Bruno and Svetlana exchanged a look. The reptoid knew more than the girl, but he didn’t know the ultimate secret.

“They ate us,” Crag said. He almost laughed. “They’re carnivores, flesh-eaters. It’s all a big scam. Or a joke. Maybe both. They tell us we’re alive inside these mechanical frames and we believe them because the alternative is too horrible to consider. But it’s the truth…”

Svetlana took his hand. It was strange: an adult-sized Organic hand holding his five-fingered mechanism. Her hand would be a tasty tidbit for the Potentates.

“I’ve been working for monsters who feed on the human race,” said Crag.

Svetlana and Bruno said nothing.

“The thing is… I wouldn’t mind it,” Crag said. “I’d forgive all these terrible sins, all this consumption of flesh, all their petty laws and cruel punishments. I’d forgive all of it if they had just left Caroline alone. I’d still be working for them. They took everything from us, and then they took her from me. See what’s left of her? They only gave her back as a reminder that we’re all dead anyway. We always have been, we just deny it. We can’t admit it to ourselves or to each other because it’s…too obscene. Too awful.”

“All masters devour their servants in one way or another,” Bruno said.

Crag shook his head. “It’s not right,” he said. “What they did to her. They already took her body. Now they’ve taken her soul.”

“Maybe not,” Svetlana said. “Maybe Wail can help her.”

“She can’t even say my name,” Crag said. “I’m not even sure she knows who I am. And I let them do it to her. I should have taken her and ran twenty years ago. It’s all my fault, but I’ll make them pay for it. Somehow, someday…”

Svetlana embraced him, but he couldn’t feel her soft and firm arms. Not after he’d felt Caroline’s frail and wiry ones.

Wail moved the partition aside and removed his rubber gloves.

“Is she?” Crag couldn’t say the rest of the words.

“She’s in much better shape now,” Wail said. He took a seat beside Crag, handing him Caroline’s heart-key. It gleamed like new-minted brass after his varnishments. “I’ve examined her heart and central workings.”

“And?” Crag stared at the key.

“As I suspected, her organs have been damaged by a prolonged period of stasis. I believe that, at some point during the first few years of her sentence, they confiscated her heart-key and let her wind down. Perhaps she was causing a commotion, or telling them things they didn’t want to hear. In any case, they let her wind down. That in itself is not deadly as the Potentates would have you believe. However, we’re talking about a dormant period of at least fifteen years. Lying in a damp stone dungeon. All that disuse and inactivity led to rust, calcification, and dehydration. I’ve been able to fix most of those problems. However, I recommend a complete rebuild as soon as the opportunity presents itself. For now I’ve repaired her as well as can be expected. She’ll be able to walk steadily and independently. Even run, if she has to.”

Crag looked into Wail’s gleaming opticals. “What about her mind? Tell me her mind will come back. Tell me she’ll speak again.”

Wail sighed. “What she needs is peace, calm, and rest. In a place where she can begin to forget what happened. Once she processes the trauma of her ordeal, once she comes to grips with it, her full sense of self should return. Along with her memories and personality.”

“Are you sure, Wail?”

“Nothing’s for certain,” Wail said. “She will never be the same. You don’t go through something like that and come out unscathed. She’ll be someone new, someone wiser and stronger. It will take a while, but she will get better. She will improve day by day once we can get her out of here.”

“But nothing’s for certain,” Crag said.

“That’s right.”

“Except for that fact that we’re all dead in this place,” Crag said. “Beatifics, Clatterpox, we’re all just spirits trapped inside walking prisons. We’re dead machines playing at being alive.”

Wail gave no response. Svetlana wrapped her arms about her knees and leaned back into the corner. Lost in her own thoughts, maybe disturbed by Crag’s truth. The reptoid opened another can of food with the talon of his finger.

“Who’s to say what is truly alive and what is not?” A voice spoke from behind the partition. A Beatific hand spread it aside, and one of Skiptrain’s porcelain faces looked at them. It sported a slight smile in the form of painted purple lips.

“Based on what I’ve seen today, I know I can’t answer that question,” Skiptrain said. His usual bohemian garb had been replaced with a businessman’s waistcoat and top hat. He moved through the city like a chameleon. So did Wail. They were experts at hiding right under the noses of the Potentates. But how long could it last? Now that the Surgeon was at large inside the Urbille, the gendarmes would be out in full force. Of course they were too stupid to know that the highwayman had been living among them all along, moving in the shadows, hiding in this sunken grotto.

Crag admired Wail’s skill at remaining unnoticed almost as much as he admired the man’s courage. Nobody openly defied the Potentates of Urbille. Nobody but the Surgeon. It took guts. Even if those guts were mechanical.

“I do know that love matters,” Skiptrain said. “It might be the only thing that matters. The only thing that’s real. Do you love her, Crag?”

Crag’s fingers trembled. The shaking travelled up through his arms, planting itself deep inside his chest. His cogs slipped and rattled. He nodded his head, unable to say it out loud.

Yes, I love her.

“Then she is real, and so are you,” Skiptrain said. “Your love survived the loss of your original bodies. It will survive this too. By your ability to give and accept love–and nothing else–you must know that you are a living being. No matter that cogs and springs fill your breast instead of meat-muscle.”

“He’s right,” Wail said. “These bodies of silver and brass are only vehicles for the spiritual essence that inhabits them–the smoky residue of what we used to be. We are fragmented, torn, and diminished. Yet we live. We love. We exist.”

“Conversion takes away our flesh,” Skiptrain said, “but not our souls.”

Crag pulled the plastic tarp aside and looked at Caroline. She lay quiet on the table, her freshened skin gleaming a light brown. Wail had replaced her broken face with a new one that he must have pulled out of a cabinet somewhere. It was beautiful, a sculpted masterpiece with enticing red lips and arching black eyebrows. She wore a simple shift of white linen. Her green opticals stared at him as she lifted her head. He took her hand again, and she pulled him close. They held each other in perfect silence for what seemed like far too long. Now that Skiptrain was back, they had to get moving. Wail had given him a shred of hope, and that was enough for now.

Wail stood before the great stone face on the wall. Its eyes were still closed, but its lips were moving slowly. Wail listened to its deep whispers. Its voice seemed to rise up from somewhere deep within the earth.

“Yes, I believe they will be of great service,” Wail said to the face.

The grinding of stone rose from the chamber’s floor.

Wail turned to address the room.

“The StoneFathers invite all of you to Gaeya,” he said. “A world beyond the reach of the Urbille.”

“How is that possible?” Bruno asked.

“It lies outside the Nexus,” Skiptrain said.

“It’s where my son is,” Svetlana said. “When can we go?”

“Now,” Wail said.

Caroline stood beside Crag now, and her joints did not creak or squeal at all when she moved. Crag still wished she would speak. Maybe Wail was right. Maybe she just needed time.

Wail turned to Crag. “On Gaeya they will never find her,” he said. “The New Organics will keep her safe, and HearthHome will do wonders for her. From there you can go anywhere you want. You might even decide to stay.”

Crag nodded. It was a chance. More than he’d had the week before.

“I heard them…” The words fell softly from Caroline’s mouth.

Crag leaned in and listened. “Talk to me, sweetheart…”

“The voices,” Caroline said. Her voice was barely audible, as if speaking at a proper volume might shatter her brittle bones. “Voices inside the stones. Down in the dark. They told me secrets…”

“What did they say?” Crag asked.

Let her say anything. Anything at all.

Maybe she will be all right, if she can just talk about it.

“I don’t remember,” Caroline said. “It was cold. I was so lonely.”

She wrapped her arms about Crag’s neck and squeezed him hard.

“Is it time to go home?” she asked.

“Yes, baby,” Crag said. “It’s time.”

 

####

 

Less than an hour later the Rude Mechanicals marched through an Urbille porte onto the Lesser Thoroughfare. There were fewer of them than the last time they’d hit the road. Skiptrain walked in the front as usual. His gaudy robes and showman’s cane were on full display. The ostrich feathers of his hat bobbed up and down with each step. Noemi, whom everyone in the Urbille knew was his beloved consort, walked near to him. Today she seemed a bit taller than normal, and she wore a long blonde wig tied into a single braid.

Two lesser-known members of the troupe sat on the back of the steam carriage, a pair of Beatifics who cuddled and whispered like lovers. And there went Old Albertus in his bronze face and motley travel tunic. He had traded in his long rifle for the musket on his hip and the greatsword beneath his cloak. Most interesting of all was the troupe’s new bodyguard: A hulking reptoid in argent armor with a black visor that hid his ugly face from the gendarmes. Reptoids were common mercenaries and guns-for-hire along the Nexus, but this was the first time anyone had seen the Rude Mechanicals hiring outside protection. These were dangerous times, after all.

“Special engagement in the Outer Affinities,” Skiptrain told the gate captain.

“Only five of you this time?” the captain asked. His nine black opticals scanned the caravan for anything illegal.

Skiptrain slipped him a tiny pouch full of brilliants. “We’re meeting additional players on the road,” he said. “Enlisting some new blood for the troupe.”

“Ah, scouting for talent,” said the gate captain. “Wish I had the life of an actor. All that travelling must be nice.” He tucked the clinking pouch into his belt.

“Wearisome,” said Skiptrain. “Often exhausting. Be glad you have a job where you don’t have to leave the comfort of the Urbille.”

The gate captain laughed. “Be careful on the road. They say the highwayman is up to his old tricks again.”

“We shall remain ever vigilant,” Skiptrain said. He doffed his hat, gave a quick bow, and strolled through gate.

The troupe rolled through after him. The Lesser Thoroughfare ran through a wilderness of brambles and tangled trees. The route Wail had chosen was designed to throw any investigators or gendarmes off the trail. They wouldn’t expect the Surgeon or his accomplices to take the Lesser Thoroughfare. Wail said he could bring them to Gaeya using either road.

When the Urbille was far enough behind them, the troupe stopped near a pile of ruins smothered by moss and ivy. Svetlana and Wail removed the costumes that made them resemble Noemi and Albertus enough to fool the gate captain. Although it was probably Skiptrain’s bribe that did the real trick.

“Your disguises worked, Skiptrain” Wail said. “You don’t have to come any farther. Go back to the Urbille if you want.”

“Not a chance,” Skiptrain said. “It’s been ten years since I’ve seen Harmona and the boys. We have postponed this visit far too long.”

“We?” Wail asked.

Skiptrain turned his opticals toward a dirt path leading from the road into the woods. A hooded figured walked from the trees toward the road. Noemi pulled back the hood of her cloak to reveal her familiar porcelain face. She hugged Skiptrain and looked to Crag and Caroline on the back of the steam carriage.

“Inspector Crag,” she said. “Do I have the pleasure of meeting your wife today?”

Noemi took Caroline’s hand with subtle grace. She offered a brief curtsey, mocking the formality of Beatific society. “I’m deeply honored, Madame,” she said.

Caroline nodded, but said nothing. She would whisper sometimes to Crag, mostly things that didn’t make much sense. She wouldn’t talk to anyone else either, but at least she was talking. That was an improvement.

“They did a number on her,” Crag said, filling the silence between the two women. “But Wail fixed her up.”

“Of course he did,” Noemi said. “The man is a marvel. Who do you think rebuilt Albertus and myself ten years ago?”

“It was the least he could do,” Skiptrain said.

Noemi put her arm around Skiptrain. “And yet he’s done so much more.”

Skiptrain introduced Svetlana and Bruno. The reptoid lifted his visor to greet Noemi properly. He wasn’t entirely a brute, just built like one. Svetlana smiled but said little. She carried herself in the manner of a warrior prone to silence. Crag wondered if she came from a world full of adult Organics, and how long it would be until the Potentates claimed every last one of them. He decided not to ask.

The troupe marched on.

When a few more Affinities lay behind them, Wail called a stop.

“If Gaeya lies outside the Nexus,” Bruno asked. “How do we reach it?”

“A vacuity,” Wail said.

Bruno turned his big head toward the doctor. “You want us to jump through a vacuity? There’s no way back from those things.”

“The Hidden Gate is a special kind of vacuity,” Wail explained. “It’s been stabilized, and it works in two directions.”

“Is that even possible?” Bruno said.

“It is,” Wail said. “The Potentates and their servants have the power to create vacuities inside the Nexus. That’s how the Harvesters move from world to world so fast, while the rest of us crawl along the Thoroughfares. Yet they have no real control over the random vacuities that manifest in the Urbille during severe weather. These cracks in reality are natural, transdimensional phenomena, the results of aligning so many worlds along the same matrix. Entropy will not be denied.”

“You lost me,” said Bruno. Crag listened. He was lost too. Caroline relaxed with her head in his lap. His legs dangled from the back of the steam carriage.

Wail laughed. “What I’m trying to say is the Potentates have the technology to travel across the Nexus by taking shortcuts. These shortcuts across the Affinities are a special type of vacuity, cultivated deliberately and brought into existence by this technology. I stole an important piece of this ‘shortcut’ tech, and with the help of the StoneFathers I took it apart, learned how it worked, and used it to create something even better. A stabilized hole in space/time leading to dimensions outside the Nexus. Gaeya is the world we chose for the New Organics. A place where they can thrive.”

“Where do we find this gateway?” Svetlana asked.

“We summon it,” Wail said. “At any point along the Nexus that displays a low level of interdimensional cohesion. In other words, we find a weak spot in the fabric of the Nexus, and we use it to open a door to the worlds beyond. In this case a specific world that exists not only in a different Affinity, but also in the remote past.”

“You’re taking us into the past?” Bruno said.

“Not our past,” Wail said. “The past of a parallel dimension.”

“One that’s outside the Nexus.”

“Precisely! You’ve got it, Bruno.”

“Don’t patronize me, Wail. I’m not a stupid lizard.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Wail said.

Crag interrupted from the back of the wagon. “How much longer until we find one of these weak spots?”

Wail looked into the tangled forest on either side of the road. A dozen rose-quartz moons hung in the sky above a range of needle-peaked mountains.

“This place will work fine,” he said. “We’ll have to leave the steam carriage here.”

Bruno and Skiptrain led the carriage to the side of the road and hid it behind a copse of trees. They covered it with leaves and branches so that nobody would see it from the road. When they returned, Wail was standing in the middle of the Thoroughfare chanting an incantation. A bright glow lit up his skull from the inside.

There shouldn’t be light glowing like that inside a Beatific body, but Wail was far more than a standard Beatific. If he could rebuild entire bodies and steal the Potentates’ technology, what else could the man do?

Wail chanted and glowed until the air above the road exploded into a fissure of swirling radiance. It expanded slowly, pulling at the hem of his cloak with its innate gravity. The vacuity widened until it stood taller than anyone on the road. Crag peered through the breach into a garden of giant purple orchids.

Wail motioned for someone to walk through the vacuity first.

“If I go first, it will close behind me,” Wail said.

Crag held Caroline’s hand as they stepped across time and space. The others came through one by one after him. When Wail stepped into the garden, the fissure closed behind him. A ten-foot arch of graven stone marked the place where the vacuity had been. On this side the Hidden Gate was locked into place. One pinpoint moment chosen from the vastness of eternity. Outside the Nexus. Beyond the reach of the Potentates.

Crag wondered if this was real or not. It might only be a dream. He could be lying in his own dark cell inside the labyrinth, imagining Caroline’s escape. He felt dizzy in the soft light of this new world. Caroline’s hand in his was the only thing he could trust.

Six moons hung in the sky above a collection of stone towers. Three moons rising, three moons setting. The horizon gleamed bright and green beneath a rush of violet clouds.

“Welcome to HearthHome,” Wail said.

 

NEXT: “Kill Or Be Killed”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

_____________________________

—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 16

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SVETLANA

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10   Chapter11

Chapter12  Chapter13

Chapter14   Chapter15

——————————–

 

Chapter 16.

The Operation

Crag made the call from a public service box on the Avenue of the Iron Spleen. He used a nine-digit number reserved for Tribunal Inspectors and added a three-digit priority code so he could speak to the Tribune directly. He plugged the earpiece into the socket on the side of his skull and held the microphone close to his bronze lips.

In four hours dawn would light up the Urbille, and the streets would be full of pedestrians and carriages. Right now the Reclaimed Zone was deserted, a winding maze of cobblestone and concrete lit by flickering gaslamps. Drifting night-fogs filled the air, and a few scattered fizzleshades blinked in and out of existence like candles in high wind.

The Rude Mechanicals had returned to the Urbille a couple of hours ago, and Wail had walked right into the city disguised as one of them. His iron horse had trotted away on the Thoroughfare to wait for him in some covert location. Wearing a porcelain face with a foppish smile, dressed in robes of gaudy design, Wail fit right in with the actors. Crag flashed his badge at the gate gendarmes on the way in, just to make sure he avoided malfeasance charges later. The gate captain would report his return to the Tribune, who would be expecting Crag’s call.

A pair of auroras clashed like dueling serpents in the sky. Azure versus Violet. Crag felt the tingling of a rabidity on the rise in some other part of the city. He waited in the calm of the deserted street. The dead line came to life in his ear with a series of crackling and popping sounds.

Finally, a transistorized voice said: “Hold for His Eminence.”

Crag asked himself the question again: Should I hang up?

He waited.

The familiar voice of the Tribune sounded in his ear. “Inspector Crag. You’ve made no attempt to file an official report for at least a month. And now you call me at this hour?”

“You still want the Surgeon?”

“You know I do, Inspector.”

“I’ve got him,” Crag said. “I’ll bring him in just like I said I would.”

“You wouldn’t have made this call if it was that simple,” said the Tribune. “What’s the catch? And remember that you work for me, Crag. You work for the Potentates. They see all and know all.”

“I want Caroline,” Crag said. “Like you promised.”

“Of course,” said the Tribune, “we’ve already agreed to that. Deliver Wail and I’ll write up an order rescinding–”

“No. Not good enough,” Crag said. “I want her out of the labyrinth now. Tonight. I want her waiting for me at the Ministere de Justice. That’s where you’ll find me one hour after sunrise with the Surgeon’s head. I’ll even throw in the rest of his body at no extra charge.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait,” said the Tribune. “A coach must be sent to the Palace with an executive writ…”

“Then you’d better get on that, Boss. If I show up and Caroline isn’t waiting for me completely unharmed… Well, let’s just say your highwayman problem will go from bad to worse. No Caroline, no Wail. Looking at my pocket watch I’d say you’ve got about four hours.”

“What you’re asking is preposterous.”

“Then it’s a good thing you’re the Tribune. Nothing is beyond your reach. Or you could just say ‘no’ right now and I’ll disappear. You’ll never see me or the Surgeon again. Until the day he comes for your head.”

“The Potentates aren’t going to like this, Crag.”

“I don’t think they’ll even notice,” Crag said. “Four hours.”

He cut the connection and relocked the box. Going back to his flat for fresh clothes was what he really wanted to do. But that wasn’t an option now. He had to stay hidden until dawn. Delivery time.

He crossed into the Commercial Zone on foot, ignoring the fizzleshades of beggars and thieves that followed him down Cerebellum Street. They faded to nothing as he turned the corner. He saw the rabidity rising from a distance. A concentration of winds and conflicting energies somewhere in the Rusted Zone, dispersing clouds of rust as it ruptured local reality. By the time it had died away, Crag met Skiptrain at the DISTENDED BLADDER. The actor was conversing with a table full of Beatific bohemians, artists, and thespians.

Skiptrain detached himself from the table and met Crag at the bar. They stayed long enough to down a single shot of spiced lubricant. The place was filled with Doxies looking to accompany the rogues of the stage home for some illicit merging. The place was a lot like every other bar on the edge of the rust, a slum joint for Beatifics who needed a little dirt–or a little adventure. The lubricant hit the spot and seemed to clear Crag’s head. He followed Skiptrain, who had recast himself in a plain porcelain face, black tunic, and olive-green cape. Beneath the cape the handle of his antique pistol gleamed with silver inlays.

Skiptrain led him to an abandoned factory, then to the hidden passage and its floor grate, where they climbed down into Wail’s secret workroom. Wail had gathered two more agents for the operation, a big reptoid and a grown Organic woman with a blade. Crag took Wail’s belief in these two at face value. Wail would get the worst of it if things went sour. They relaxed as best they could in the underground chamber until sunrise. Wail lay himself on one of the cots as Skiptrain and Crag took out their heart-keys.

“Are you sure about this?” Skiptrain asked.

“Absolutely,” said Wail. “I’m a doctor.”

 

####

 

The Clatterpox-driven carriage rolled up to the tower of glass and steel that was the Ministere de Justice. The sun had been up for nearly an hour, and the Urbille had come shambling, steaming, clanking, whistling, and grinding to life. Crag checked his watch, then dropped it back into his coat pocket.

Climbing out of the carriage, he secured the topper on his head, then reached inside the vehicle to pull out the body of Aimon Wail. It lay wrapped in a dirty blanket from his hidden lair. The tri-corner hat, sword, and pistol were missing, but the body was completely intact. Not a mark on it. That fact still made Crag nervous. Nothing to do about it now.

He tossed Wail’s body onto his shoulder and carried him toward the entrance. Wail’s dead innards clanked and squeaked against his silver bones. Crag tried not to think about Wail’s heart sitting still as a stone inside his breast, its cogs and gears no longer moving. He tried not to consider Wail’s brain, dying or already dead inside its silver skull. If the man was mad enough to attempt this and fail, then Crag would mourn him. Crag would still come out on top, regardless of what happened to the highwayman.

A crew of gendarmes came to escort him as he passed beneath the trio of jade gargoyles and entered the building proper. His escorts led him directly through the building to the Tribune’s golden bench. Crag didn’t need an escort, but since he was bringing in Public Enemy Number One he had expected the tight security. He stood before the high bench and stared at the Tribune’s veiled head. Wail’s body was heavy on his shoulder, wrapped in the blanket like a shroud.

“Where is she?” Crag asked.

“Lay your burden down, Inspector.”

Crag sighed. He placed Wail’s body on the floor before the bench. The gendarmes held their rifles at the ready. If they were suspicious, then the Tribune must be as well. They were extensions of his thoughts more than anything else. Tribune Anteus waved a long finger at the body. Crag flipped the blanket back to reveal Wail’s handsome bronze mask. He unclipped the face, exposing the silver skull beneath, and handed the face to the Tribune with his own hands.

“Where’s Caroline?” Crag asked. She was in the building. He could sense it.

The Tribune caressed the bronze mask with one finger and waved another hand toward the entrance. A gendarme left through the door. Crag waited.

“So this is the mechanoid who’s been causing so much trouble,” said the Tribune.

“I destroyed his heart-key” Crag said. “Let him wind down and die.”

“Nice work, Crag. This success almost supercedes your impertinence. I’ll indulge you this time. But tell me: Did you discover where he took our young Organics?”

“Still working on that one, Sir,” Crag said.

“Yes, well I suppose it doesn’t matter. If this is the infamous Surgeon, then our problem is solved.” He summoned a captain and gave instructions for the body to be disposed of in the usual post-execution way. Two gendarmes dragged Wail’s body through the door marked PUNISHMENT. A moment later the entry door opened, and a gendarme entered with Caroline at his side. Crag’s gears locked for a second as he recognized her. She was dirty and bedraggled, but she was his Caroline. His everything.

“I expect a full report by this time tomorrow,” said the Tribune. “Enjoy your family reunion tonight.”

Crag couldn’t say her name. His voice was hiding somewhere deep inside his coils. He opened his arms as the gendarme led her closer. Her porcelain face was cracked and smeared with mud or oil. Her joints squeaked with rust sounds when she moved, and her entire body quivered like it might fall apart at any second. He squeezed her tight in his arms, but not so tight that he might damage her. It felt like he had drank some kind of burning oil. It flared like fireworks in his chest, mingling with his deep anger.

They had treated her like an animal. Let her rust and fall into disrepair. What else had they done to her for twenty years?

He held her close and whispered her name. Her frail arms eventually wrapped around him, but still she said nothing. He held her broken face in his hands without removing it from her head. It was the one with turquoise lips, the one that used to be his favorite. He would buy her a new one just like it. She would have the best lubricants, adjustments, and body maintenance that money could buy. Crag would spend every last penny to get her back to full health, if that’s what it took.

She’s alive. At least she’s alive.

And she’s back in my arms.

Caroline looked at him with murky, colorless opticals. They were greasy and their tiny hinges coated with dust. Dust covered her entire body, and the once-fine dress she wore was little more than grey rags now. He told her how much he loved her. That he never forgot about her. That he was sorry it took him so long to get her free.

The Tribune left his bench and the gendarmes filed out. They left the lovers alone in the judging hall to have their private moment. Caroline said nothing. She stared at Crag as if she almost recognized him. When he touched her face, she touched his. Their foreheads touched, and Crag couldn’t stop the instant merging. It was magnetic, the force that seized them both in its grip. It had been twenty years since they last touched minds. Twenty years of loneliness and guilt and suffering.

She was different now, inside as well as outside. Her mind used to be an infinite playground of colors, sensations, dreams, and concepts. His own thoughts hovered above it now like stormclouds above a wasteland. Barren and lifeless, dotted with the bones of dead thoughts. The skies above her consciousness were black voids without light. The looming darkness terrified Crag, and the emptiness of her hollowed-out spirit urged him to madness.

Crag broke the merging. He pulled his mind away from what was left of Caroline’s. He held her porcelain close to his bronze and stared into her smudged opticals.

She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t alive. What was she?

“You’ve killed her soul!” He shouted at the empty golden bench. “Bastards!”

The echoes of his voice rebounded from the chamber walls and faded to nothing. Soon the hall would be crowded with defendants and gendarmes going about the daily business of the court. Right now there was only Crag and Caroline, standing broken in the overwhelming silence.

 

####

 

An alley of grey stones linked the Ministere de Justice with a lesser building of glass and steel. It stood in the shape of a flat mushroom, its second floor overlapping the first, both of them circular in design. Its broad metal doors were stamped with Urbille words: DISCORPORATION/RECYCLING.

The gendarmes transporting Crag’s body might have followed one of two other paths if he were not a Beatific. Another alley led to the six-wheeled steam lorries used to transport prisoners to and from the labyrinth. A third alley led to temporary holding cells and interrogation chambers.

Svetlana understood that Crag worked for these people, so he’d known exactly where they would take Wail’s body. She crouched on the adjoining rooftop with Skiptrain and Bruno, hiding themselves behind a tall chimney.

“That’s the place,” Skiptrain said. “We’ve got to move before they get him through those doors, or he’s a goner.”

“He may be a goner anyway,” Bruno said.

“There he is,” Skiptrain pointed below. The four gendarmes carrying Wail had reached the alley’s midpoint directly below the observers. The gendarmes wore their usual cylinder hats and black coats with rifles slung across their backs and pistols at their waists. They wouldn’t expect an attack on the sacred grounds of the Ministere de Justice. On that Wail and Crag had both agreed. Wail’s plan depended on it.

“Quiet and fast.” Skiptrain said. “No guns.” He pulled a long slender knife from his boot. The Urbille word for it was poniard. It looked like a toy next to Bruno’s broad cleaver-knife. Skiptrain held the weapon in his fist point-downward as he leaped off the roof. Svetlana and Bruno dropped toward the front two guards, while Skiptrain landed on his feet behind the other two.

Svetlana used the force of her drop to bring Takamoto’s blade slicing through the first gendarme’s skull. His hat fell in two symmetrical pieces as the blade lodged itself in his skull. Sparks exploded from his cluster of opticals. Bruno’s big knife tore the second gendarme’s body in half from collar to groin. The man fell apart spewing cogs and copper coils, sparking and bleeding oil.

Wail’s body fell to the ground. The gendarmes who were holding his legs reached for their sidearms. Skiptrain’s poniard slipped over a man’s shoulder, entering his brain through his left optical with a crunch and a shiver. Skiptrain held the man’s head steady and twisted the blade. The gendarme died twitching and sputtering.

The last man standing pointed his sidearm at Svetlana. Before his finger squeezed the trigger, Bruno’s knife went spinning into his skull point-first. The gun hit the ground first, followed by the gendarme’s limp body.

“Nice work,” Skiptrain said. “Let’s get him out of here before anyone discovers these bodies. Crag said we’d have at least sixty seconds.”

“You’re pretty good with that dagger,” Bruno said. “For an actor.”

“I wasn’t always an actor,” said Skiptrain. “Let’s go.”

Bruno picked up Wail’s body all by himself. His bronze face was gone, and Svetlana almost screamed when she saw his naked skull glimmering and bobbing against Bruno’s back. It was made of silver, just like Bruno had told her. There was no light in Wail’s dark eye-lenses. Bruno climbed the alley wall, digging talons into the soft stone. Svetlana used the holes he left behind to follow him up, while Skiptrain climbed up a drain pipe. The actor wasn’t a warrior, but he was agile, quick, and deadly.

They ran across the rooftops, leaping from building to building. Bruno carried Wail’s body like it was practically weightless. Several times Svetlana expected an arm or leg to pop off Wail’s torso. She cautioned Bruno to be careful with him. The reptoid chuckled as he leaped over a trash-choked alley.

“He’ll be fine,” Bruno said.

They crossed into the Commercial Zone and dropped into a backstreet with a steaming sewer grate. Still kilometers away from Wail’s workshop, but it was the place Skiptrain had scouted earlier, so it’s where they brought Wail. Bruno lifted the grate with one big hand and climbed down into a stinking tunnel of liquid slime. It flowed like a green river through a round-walled passageway. A three-foot walkway of filthy stone ran above the flow. Bruno sat Wail’s body down on the ledge.

A pale green light filled the tunnel, the green river refracting the glow of Skiptrain’s tiny lantern. He sat the lantern next to Wail’s body and unbuttoned a pocket on his own waistcoat. He pulled out a brass key identical to the one he and Crag had used to wind their hearts at sunrise. Svetlana knew the secret of the clockwork men now. Every day their hearts must be wound with these individualized keys, or they would die. Even Bruno understood this. It was the custom shared by all Beatifics, and it freed them from dependence on anthracite, the primary handicap of the lower-class Clatterpox.

Wail lay dead or dying now because he hadn’t wound his heart-key this morning. Instead he had given it to Skiptrain, lain back on his cot, and died. It was all part of his plan. Skiptrain held the brass key in his fingers now as if it were something holy that he both loved and feared. His opticals examined Wail’s silver skull.

“Okay, here goes…” Skiptrain inserted the key into Wail’s chest slot.

“I hope he’s right about this,” said Bruno.

Skiptrain nodded. “Of course he was right,” he said. “The man’s a Surgeon.”

Skiptrain turned the key once, twice, then again, and again. It turned and turned.

“How much does it take?” Svetlana said.

“Ninety-nine revolutions.” Skiptrain wound Wail’s heart back to life slowly.

“You realize that if he’s right,” Bruno said, “it means that Beatifics don’t have living brains at all. Only pieces of dead meat locked inside clockwork bodies.”

“That’s not what it means at all,” Skiptrain said. “How do you define death and life? What is the dividing line?” His nimble fingers turned the key. Twenty eight, twenty nine…

Wake up, Mechanical Man. Svetlana wanted to shout it.

Wake up and take me to Dima as you promised. Wake up!

“I meant no offense,” Bruno grumbled.

“None taken,” said Skiptrain. His blue opticals focused on Bruno for a second. “Simply a matter of perception. And perspective.”

Bruno shrugged.

Skiptrain turned the key. Eighty nine, ninety, ninety one…

A rat-like thing scurried along the wall trailing yellow-black tentacles. Svetlana hoped there weren’t more of the disgusting things down here. The smell was not the worst thing about this place.

Skiptrain made the ninety-ninth turn, paused, then took his fingers off the key. A series of tiny clickings led to an explosion of coughing from Wail’s throat. His arms and legs quivered, and the lights behind his opticals ignited. He propped himself up by his elbows. His bright skull-face seemed to grin at Svetlana.

“Friends,” said Wail. “I take it the operation was a success?”

Bruno looked at Svetlana, but her eyes were on the man who’d just returned from death. Maybe Bruno was right–maybe these clockwork people weren’t truly alive at all. Or maybe they were simply a different kind of life. One that didn’t even know its own limits. Wail would show it to them. It was his purpose. Svetlana hugged him as she would hug a living man. He was alive enough for her. Alive enough to take her where little Dima was waiting for her. And for that she loved him.

Skiptrain and Bruno laughed. Svetlana weeped silent tears and hugged Wail until he protested. Moving her to arm’s length, he cradled her face in his cold hands. His naked skull and teeth gleamed at her. Like the bronze mask, they didn’t move when he spoke. He was a skinless thing of strange beauty.

“I told you the brain-death theory of winding down was inaccurate,” Wail said. He got up, and they followed him through a maze of sewage corridors leading back to his workshop. As they moved through the tunnels, he spoke non-stop like a man glad to be alive again.

“Yes, the human brain is still alive at the moment it’s implanted in a Beatific or Clatterpox body,” Wail said, “but it soon experiences a full cellular death. The dead tissue is then transmogrified by the Incantations of Conversion with exposure to processed electromagnetic energy. The organ is polymerized, rebooted, and it becomes a pseudo-organic processing center for the new body. It can endure extended periods of shut-down without decay. These bodies are far more durable than anyone suspects. Everybody knows that a Beatific can have his or her mutilated body rebuilt, as long as the all-important brain hasn’t been damaged. Yet still Beatifics live in fear of winding down because the Potentates let them believe that winding down equals true death. It does not.”

They reached the hidden door that led to the workshop. Wail spoke an unintelligible word and the stone slide aside, admitting them all to the underground laboratory. When the slab of stone slid back into place, the sewer stink was trapped outside.

“Who else knows this?” Skiptrain asked. “Besides you and us.”

Bruno and Svetlana sat on the cinderblocks that Wail had substituted for stools. The great stone face carved on the wall was silent and ugly, staring at her through closed eyelids. Was it the idol of some ancient god that Wail worshipped? Or some grotesque decoration that served no real purpose? She decided to avoid looking at it.

“All Surgeons would know this truth if they were allowed to conduct experiments,” said Wail, moving about his workshop. “Unfortunately, they are not. The Potentates strictly enforce Surgical conduct and they propagate the illusion that Beatifics and Clatterpox brains remain alive during Conversion. Which is a kind of half-truth because our brains do die as they metamorphosize. And what is death but a kind of metamorphosis? The only experiments allowed by the Ministere de Science are those conducted to serve the Potentates’ direct interests. Secret programs in secret laboratories. One of these Special Programs caused the death of my son twelve years ago.”

“Was he…like you?” Svetlana asked. “A Beatific?”

“No,” Wail said. “He died the night before his appointed Conversion.”

“That’s why you started a war against this city,” Svetlana said. “Isn’t it?”

Wail nodded and snapped on a fresh porcelain face. He dressed himself in a burgundy overcoat with cloth-of-gold trim. The ruffles at its cuffs and chest reminded Svetlana of Lord Chevallier. Wail strapped the greatsword to his side and holstered his long-handled pistol.

“Where’s Crag?” Wail said. “I thought he was coming with us.”

“I told him to meet me at the BLADDER,” Skiptrain said.

“I’ll fetch him and his lovely bride,” Wail said, “while you finalize our exit strategy.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until dark?” Bruno said.

“Oh, no,” said Wail. He donned a powdered wig that made him look like any other Beatific of high status. “We need to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible. They’re already looking for me. The Tribune will assume I returned to life somehow and slaughtered his gendarmes. They’ll be looking for Crag too, maybe trying to blame him for my escape.”

“They won’t go to the BLADDER right away,” Skiptrain said. “Too disrespectable.”

“I’m counting on it,” Wail said. He picked up a gilded walking cane that he didn’t need at all. Now he looked nothing like the infamous highwayman, unless he opened his cloak to reveal blade and pistol. A black top hat completed his disguise.

“Get some more sleep while you can,” he told Svetlana. “We’ll be back soon and it’ll be time to leave. Until then, stay down here.”

Svetlana leaned her back against the bricks. She used one of Wail’s bottled oils to clean Takamoto’s blade. Bruno lay snoring beside her. She was still tired, but she couldn’t just lay down and sleep. She was too close to the end of her journey. Too close to Dima.

She drew her whetstone along the edge of the blade again and again. Making it sharper. Sharp enough to remove the heads of mechanical men. She watched the stone face on the wall as if it might come to life and devour her.

It didn’t move.

 

NEXT: “Silver and Brass”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

_____________________________

—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 15

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GENDARMES

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10   Chapter11 Chapter 12

Chapter 13  Chapter 14

——————————–

Chapter 15. 

The Urbille

The entry porte to the Urbille looked like any other along the Greater Thoroughfare: a pair of towering obelisks engraved in swirls of ancient sigils. The black sky was studded with stars, but a colossal orange moon blotted out most of the night. It took up half the sky and hung low enough to drop at any moment and pulverize everyone travelling on the road. Svetlana hadn’t seen a moon so large anywhere else along the Nexus.

What set this porte apart was the orderly nature of its guardians. Twenty-one soldiers stood in a triple row before the gate, each one wrapped in a dark overcoat with a rifle resting against his shoulder. Beneath the brims of their cylinder hats clusters of oval lenses shifted in all directions at once. They looked more like the faces of spiders than those of men.

“The final porte will be well-guarded by gendarmes,” Bruno had said. “We don’t have the paperwork to enter the Urbille ourselves, but if we hire on to an incoming caravan it’ll be up to our employers to provide it. They’ll pay a permit tax to the guards, deduct it from our wages, and we’re in.” It wasn’t hard to find a Beatific merchant caravan in Oblivione. There was brisk trade being done between the City of the Potentates and the City of the Goblin Queen. Oblivione provided a rich tribute to the Urbille every calendar year.

“Do all the cities on the Nexus pay such tributes?” Svetlana asked.

“All the ones that wish to remain standing do,” Bruno said. “Except for…”

“Except what?”

“Forget it. It’s not even real.”

“Aphelion?”

Bruno nodded. They stood in the great basalt plaza of Oblivione amid bustling crowds of goblins, Clatterpox, and horse-drawn carriages. The Beatifics always used mechanical horses, but the coaches of wealthy goblins harnessed living horses, which the drivers whipped mercilessly as a matter of general custom. Svetlana didn’t like it here. She was eager to leave the goblin city as soon as possible.

“According to the tales I’ve heard,” said Bruno, “Aphelion lies at the farthest point of the Nexus from the Urbille. Some claim it was destroyed ages ago, others say it never existed. Others say it still exists at the distant edge of the Potentates’ domain.”

“Is that true?”

“I have no idea,” Bruno said. “But I like to think there is one place along the Nexus where sentients can live in peace. One place where men don’t kill each other.”

“Sounds like a dream to me,” Svetlana said.

Bruno snorted through his flared nostrils. He sold the doorless iron carriage to a goblin scrap-dealer. Domo’s books brought a nice stack of golden coins from a Oblivione bookseller. Each coin had the hideous face of the Goblin Queen on one side with the sigil of the Potentates on the other. Svetlana replished her satchel with fruits, acorns, raisins, and freshwater for her canteen. She took no meat while in Oblivione. Bruno had warned her of the goblins’ taste for human flesh, as well as their tendency toward cannibalism whenever meat became scarce.

Great, gutted boars hung upside down at the butchers’ stalls, along with the skinned carcasses of unidentifiable creatures. An alley of seafood merchants made Svetlana wretch as she passed. Goblins preferred to buy their fish half-rotten. They ambled along on their private business, shoving handfuls of raw oysters and clams down their gullets.

Svetlana held the green tiger on a leash, now that the carriage was gone.

“We can’t take him to the Urbille,” Bruno said.

Svetlana stroked the big cat’s fur while it gnawed on a boar bone.

“We can’t just leave him here,” she said. “He’s a warrior like us.”

Bruno looked at her strangely, the visor of his helm raised in the grey light of morning. The chatter of goblins filled the air, and Svetlana had almost grown used to the reek of the place. Bruno’s vertical pupils closed and opened as he regarded her. Svetlana got the sense that her words about the cat had impressed him.

“The goblins will eat him,” said Bruno, “unless we hire someone to take care of him.”

“Luckily we have a bag of gold and a chest full of Creep City jewels.”

Bruno found a family of Clatterpox innkeepers willing to take the tiger into their stable for a hefty fee. He paid them enough to keep the tiger in meat for a month, then convinced them that one of the Beatifics who patronized their business would buy the tiger eventually. Beatific visitors knew well enough to stay away from goblin-owned inns. Each Beatific carried a tender human brain inside his silver skull, and goblins would crack open those skulls to feast on the grey matter. Or they could sell stolen brains on the black market for a small fortune. Beatifics engaged in commerce with goblinkind, but they were under no illusions about the dangers involved.

The Clatterpox innkeep referred Bruno and Svetlana to a caravan stuffed full of crossworld goods and about to depart for home in the Urbille. After acquiring a handsome porcelain mask for Svetlana, the pair approached the caravan master. A trio of carriages, wooden coaches supported by iron wheels, lined up behind the inn while a crowd of Beatifics inspected their cargo. The leader, a powder-wigged Beatific named Charles Chevallier, had already hired two Beatific guardsmen. Svetlana stared at the bronze faces which set the two hirelings apart from those who employed them. Lord Chevallier and the rest of his companions wore typical porcelain faces painted into serious, comical, or serene expressions.

Bruno crafted a clever lie while Svetlana stood behind him in her own porcelain mask. Would they truly think her a Beatific? Or did they have some kind of sixth sense that would alert them to her humanity? She wore Domo’s purple cloak pulled close about her shoulders, and a broad-brimmed hat shadowed her eyes. The hilt of Takamoto’s sword rose above her shoulder, marking her as a warrior. Bruno would do the rest.

Lord Chevallier nodded and rubbed the buttons of his coat with rubbery fingers. The expression on his porcelain face–one of wisdom and privilege–never changed. Neither did those of his porcelain-faced family. Svetlana felt a sick urge to tear off their masks and see if their skulls were really made of silver as Brono said they were. She could peel back the synthetic skin of their graceful bodies to see if their entire skeletons were made of that same metal. Her morbid thoughts were interrupted by the stern visage of Lord Chevallier inspecting her.

“Good Lady,” he said with a polite nod. “That is hardly the face to wear for this kind of work.”

“I’ll be fine,” Svetlana said.

Chevallier’s wrists were hidden behind lacy ruffles. He waved his hands in an expression of mock defeat. “Tell me, Sir,” he said to Bruno, “is she any good with that sword?”

Bruno smiled, a crocodile stalking a meal.

“The best,” he said.

Lord Chevallier clapped his hands once and hired them both. Bruno and Svetlana would serve as a vanguard marching ahead of the caravan, while the two Beatific guards would bring up the rear. The lord and his six family members, the youngest a newly Converted daughter and the rest including his wife and four sons, piled into their carriages. Crates, chests, and barrels were stacked securely on top of each roof. Three pairs of mechanical horses were led from the stables by a trio of Clatterpox coachmen. Each one harnessed his steeds and climbed into the drivers’ seat. The caravan rolled through the sweltering streets of Oblivione for about an hour and finally exited through the Beatific Arch. Svetlana was glad to leave behind the stink of goblins. Even the dangers of the road were preferable to spending another hour in Oblivione.

The company crossed nine Affinities, at times passing other Beatific caravans heading the opposite direction. Nobody said anything about stopping or resting, and Bruno noticed Svetlana’s exhaustion as they marched into the tenth realm after Oblivione. It was a rainforest of yellow ferns, purple palms, and mountains the color of bone rising above it all. Bruno pretended to inspect one of the front coach’s wheels and casually slipped it off its axle. The carriage groaned with the screeching of metal and stopped.

Lord Chevallier stuck his head out the window. “The wheel’s gone out,” Bruno reported. “We’ll need a couple of hours to fix it.” The Clatterpox driver seemed perfectly willing to let the reptoid do his work.

Svetlana struggled to stay on her feet. She had been marching for at least fifteen hours without a break. Bruno gave her a covert nod as he took tools from an iron strongbox. “Find a dry spot under one of these ferns and get some sleep,” he said. “If Chevallier asks, I’ll tell him you went on patrol.”

Svetlana nodded. “Work slowly,” she said, and moved into the underbrush.

Bruno woke her up a short time later. She was still exhausted, but he reached into his satchel and took out one of the vials from Domo’s travelling bar. He hadn’t sold any of the serums in Oblivione. “Just a sip,” he said. Svetlana tipped the vial. Its colorless contents poured into her belly like slow fire. Not a biting, burning flame this time, but one that warmed her and burned away her fatigue. They resumed the journey a few moments later.

Twice more during the trip she drank that serum, unable to stop the coach a second time without raising suspicion. In the mornings when the Chevalliers gathered at sunrise to turn their heart-keys, she kept her cloak closed and mimicked their actions. Another save by Bruno, who gave her the idea. By the time they reached the porte leading to the Urbille, she had fooled House Chevallier into believing she was a typical Beatific.

She ate and drank very little, afraid to give herself away. She subsisted mainly on the raw energy of Domo’s potion. She carried a hollow sensation in her belly, but still was not hungry thanks to the serum. Bruno said the hunger and weariness would hit her when the last dose had worn off. She wasn’t looking forward to that, but as long as she made it into the Urbille first, she could find a place to regain her strength.

The Thoroughfare had offered no threats to the caravan. This close to the Urbille bandits and outlaws were rare. Still, she heard the Chevallier children talking about a highwayman who robbed Beatifics along the road. Chevallier and his wife, ignored such talk. Yet they had doubled the amount of bodyguards on their return trip, and that act alone said they too feared the highwayman.

Now the final porte lay directly ahead beneath the enormous orange moon. The squad of gendarmes encircled the carriages as they approached the obelisks. Between the two great stones, the road came to a dead end. There was only gray rock and sand beyond the arch. This was the Greater Thoroughfare’s ultimate destination, the doorway to the Urbille itself. Beyond those two stone pylons lay the center of an empire spanning thousands of worlds. And somewhere beyond them Svetlana would find little Dima. She dared not think anything less hopeful. Her son was beyond that gate, alive and well. She had crossed universes to find him. She would kill every last one of these spider-faced gendarmes if she had to.

A guard walked by her, his eye-lenses swiveling at her. He paused for a moment, and she thought he might turn his rifle on her. But his blue-green lenses shifted and he continued his circling of the caravan. Each gendarme scanned the carriages, ignoring the Beatific faces staring back at them through the windows.

Chevallier’s slim arm and lacy cuff emerged from the carriage door. A small leather bag clinked into the hand of the lead gendarme. “That’s for the two additional mercenaries we picked up in Oblivione,” said Chevallier, his finger pointing at Bruno and Svetlana. The gendarme captain nodded and gave his men a signal. They stood back to let the caravan pass.

The captain walked up to Bruno. “Offworlders are restricted to the Commercial and Outland Zones. You’d best remember that.”

Bruno waved a big claw at him .”Yeah, yeah. I’ve been here before, chief.”

Svetlana held her breath as she and Bruno stepped through the plane of the porte. The sensation of falling when she used these gateways had left her long ago. It was nothing special now, just a transition from one state to another, one moment of time to the next moment of time in another space. But taking that final step had her dizzy in the head for another reason today. A flutter of fear rose from her stomach into her chest. She clamped it down as the Urbille appeared before her eyes.

The porte opened on a broad ridge overlooking the whole of the Potentates’ city. The Thoroughfare led directly down the slope into an expanse of jagged metal, gleaming glass, and curved silver spires. Clouds of red dust floated in the sky, and a million smokes wafted from the tangled cityscape. A range of green hills stood at the center of the metropolis, an ancient forest dwarfed by concentric rings of urban decay, rusted ruins, and bizarre construction. The architectures of various ages blended together like the rings at the core of a god-sized tree.

At the epicenter of the woodland core stood a second walled city built of dark stone with a mass of vine-smothered towers. This single citadel stood taller than any other structures in the Urbille. It was a massive fortress, even when seen from this great distance. Up close its size must be terrifying. Bruno didn’t need to tell Svetlana this was the Palace of the Potentates; the twinge of fear returned when she squinted at it. The sky above the Urbille was a wash of purple, crimson, and grey. Dancing auroras sprang up like fireworks and disappeared seconds or minutes later.

The sky is unstable.

She wished she knew what her thought meant. A cold wind blew across the ridge, which was made of stone and black ash. Bruno prodded her, and she realized she had stopped walking. She moved aside so the first carriage wouldn’t run her down, and jogged a little to regain her place at it’s front.

The first settlements alongside the road here were little more than shanties built from discarded sheet metal, or tents sewn from plastic tarps. Rusting Clatterpox milled about the outer slums, spewing black and pale smokes from their exhaust tubes. Some had run out of precious coal long ago, so they sat or leaned like ugly statues among the refuse and rubble.

The city itself was all shades of grey, black, and crimson. There was no green anywhere outside the emerald core. The sun stood high in the sky, but still the Urbille lay in shadow. A cloud-canopy of copper rust and industrial smokes kept sunlight from reaching the streets. Yet golden shafts of light fell through the clouds to warm the central forest, as if the clouds were not permitted to shadow the woodland.

The stone-and-metal buildings of the city rose on either side of the caravan. It entered the Urbille proper via the Avenue of Copper Lungs, which led directly through the city to its opposite side. According to Bruno there were three additional gates to the Nexus here: Two leading to the Greater Thoroughfare, which becomes the Avenue of Copper Lungs, and two for the Lesser Thoroughfare, which becomes the Avenue of Industry. The two Thoroughfares crossed the city in a perpendicular arrangement, but each one skirted the edge of the Potentates’ forest by circuitous and complicated routes.

The population was mostly Clatterpox and Beatifics, with scattered crowds of goblins and alien entities. Bruno and Svetlana parted ways with Chevallier when the caravan reached the Plaza of Polished Bones. Chevallier whispered something to Bruno through the window of his carriage as it rolled away. Bruno showed her a pouchful of Urbille coins the merchant lord had given him.

“What did he say?”

“He knows you’re not a Beatific,” Bruno said.

“Will he betray us?” she asked. Her face sweated behind the porcelain mask and she wanted to take it off. She glared at him through its eye holes.

Bruno met her eyes. “He will say nothing unless they interrogate him.”

Svetlana nodded. Good enough for now.

“Let’s rent a room so I can take this mask off,” she said. “I need food and sleep. Then we’ll find Dima.”

The first inn she recognized as such sat in the corner of the bustling square. Svetlana coughed. “They should call this the Plaza of Choking Smokes,” she said.

Bruno grunted. “I’m hungry too. We’ll have to find an inn that caters to Organics. Otherwise no food.”

He led her past several likely venues to a stone building that might have once been some kind of holy temple. The sign above it read SKIN AND BONES in the language of the Urbille. “This is the place,” said Bruno. Inside the clientele was entirely alien. Rubbery-limbed beings with pastel hides stared at her as she entered. Svetlana would be the only human staying here, but they must believe her Beatific disguise. Bruno paid the Clatterpox in charge, paying extra to avoid questions.

The barrel-bodied man of iron led them upstairs to a room he had prepared especially for them. The tubes along his shoulders and neck expelled acrid vapors as he made his way up the steps. He showed them to a big wooden door set with iron bolts, then he lumbered back down the steps.

Bruno opened the door and she followed him inside. Only after they had set their bags on the floor did they notice someone else was in the room. Two gendarmes stood in the far corner, one on either side of a rectangular window. Their clustered opticals gleamed like turquoise jewels in the gloom. Each one held a rifle, one pointed at Bruno and one at Svetlana.

A third gendarme stepped through the door behind them. They looked exactly alike to Svetlana, but somehow she knew this was the captain from the gate. The one who had warned Bruno not to wander. Had Chevallier let their secret slip to this man? It seemed certain that he did. The captain held a pistol of black metal in his fist. He pointed it at Svetlana’s belly.

“Good evening,” he said. “Take off the mask, please. Slowly.” There was no mouth visible among his rows of nine eye-lenses, but maybe it was hidden below the high collar of his coat.

Svetlana sighed. “My pleasure,” she said. She removed it and threw it on the bed. The pistol followed her every movement. Bruno stood firmly in the sights of both riflemen now. A rumbling sound in his throat reminded her of the green tiger. Bruno’s clawed fingers flexed into fists. His scaly tail slapped the floor.

The captain turned his attention to the reptoid. “Settle down,” he said. “We’re only asking questions here.”

The nine lenses swiveled back to Svetlana, and the captain cocked his head.

“How is it that you are a living human being in the Urbille?” Svetlana heard the genuine awe in his voice. The captain’s fingers rose up to caress her cheek with a light touch. “You are like the young ones, but you are no child. Where did you come from?”

“A long way from here,” Svetlana said.

“Why?”

“To find my son. One of your Harvesters stole him. But he is mine.” She grit her teeth and stared into his nine lenses. The captain tilted his head the other way, a spider-face considering something that amused it.

“This is the Urbille,” he said. “Everything here, and everyone here, belongs to the Potentates. Now you do too.”

“We are free citizens of the Nexus,” Bruno said.

“You may go, reptoid,” said the captain. “Stay in the zones designated for your kind and you’ll have no trouble with us.”

“What about her?” Bruno said.

“Oh, the Tribune will want a few words with her,” said the captain. “It’s highly illegal to enter the city under false pretenses. The most likely outcome is a swift execution. If you’re lucky.”

The captain’s free hand reached for Svetlana’s arm. She pulled Takamoto’s blade from its scabbard and sheared off his arm at the elbow. It fell sparking and leaking fluids, trailing severed wires and spilling tiny cogs.

“Right, then,” Bruno said. He charged head-first into one of the riflemen, knocking him backwards through the glass window. A rifle exploded into Bruno’s chestplate as the glass roared outward. Reptoid and gendarme fell into the street below with a shower of gleaming shards.

Another sweep of the blade severed the captain’s legs as Svetlana ducked the second rifleman’s shot. It blew a hole in the wall above her head. She spun and lunged, Takamoto’s blade slicing through the rifleman’s neck. His head fell to the floor with a thump, nine eyes swiveling in blind confusion.

“Extraordinary…” said the captain. He lay on his side now, aiming a revolver at her with his last intact limb. She jumped onto the bed as he blasted three new holes in the wall, then she took his head off too. It mumbled something unintelligible as it rolled hissing and popping across the carpet.

The wounded Beatifics didn’t spew blood, they leaked oil, wires, and tiny cogs. Svetlana felt sick. She had grown used spilling blood a long time ago. Why should dismantling these mechanoids be so distasteful? Maybe it was her empty stomach.

The door exploded and more gendarmes rushed into the room. She jumped through the broken window into the alley below, where Bruno was stuffing the gendarme he killed into a rubbish bin. Shouts fell from the window above. Other windows began to snap open.

Svetlana and Bruno ran. Bruno had taken the gendarme’s rife. He slung it across his back and pulled the silver pistol from its holster. They ran around a corner, passed a Clatterpox lying half-dead among the trash cans, and slipped into a busy street. A Beatific coach came rolling through the crowd of Clatterpox and aliens. Bruno ducked and led her into another alley across the street. A group of muddy-faced children were playing with scraps of metal in the alley. They stopped their mock duel to the death when the lizard-man and Svetlana raced by without explanation.

The duo moved through a foul green fog that choked the alleys, coming at last to a broad avenue lined with warehouses and foundries. The only witnesses here were a few Clatterpox moving among the loading docks. A six-wheeled lorrie rolled down the street. Bruno observed it for a few minutes from the alley’s mouth, then motioned her forward.

“We’ll hide in one of those warehouses,” he said. “They’ll be looking for us in lodging houses and taverns.”

“Where are we?” she said.

“The Rusted Zone,” Bruno said.

“You’ve gone outside your restricted area.”

“Nobody tells me where to go,” Bruno said.

They crossed the broad avenue quietly, but never reached the opposite curb. A series of lights flared to brilliance down the street. They stood caught in the white-hot glow of spotlights held by six gendarmes. A dozen more soldiers stood behind the glaring lamps, rifles already raised to their shoulders. Ready to shoot down the fugitives.

“Drop the weapons.” A metallic, amplified voice.

Svetlana weighed her options. She could run and risk a hail of bullets, or stand here and trust them not to shoot her. Bruno was dumbfounded, as if the lights had blinded him. His slitted pupils blinked madly, but he didn’t move.

“Drop the weapons and get on the ground, Organics!” said the voice, louder now. “Or we shoot you dead right here.”

A wind blew across the street. Svetlana’s blonde hair flapped about her face. The braid had come undone while she was running. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and the smell of ozone filled her nostrils. She held Takamoto’s blade ready. She would die before she gave up looking for Dima. If this was to be her death, she would take as many of them with her as she could.

A strange pressure filled her ears. What was wrong with Bruno? He twitched, but did not move or fire. A bolt of blue lightning fell somewhere beyond the tops of the warehouses. The wind scattered leaflets, trash, and old newspapers along the avenue.

The air between Svetlana and the gendarmes crackled and ripped itself apart. Bruno had warned her about the Urbille’s strange weather. Suddenly she was falling, but not to the ground. A swirling hole of crimson light hung suspended in midair, pulling her toward it. She fell sideways toward the fissure. Beyond the rip in reality another world raged with lava and leaping flames. A deep valley with a molten river lay surrounded by oozing volcanoes. Bat-winged creatures flapped between the peaks, some of them soaring near to the fissure on its opposite side.

Svetlana couldn’t stay on her feet. She fell toward the vacuity as the gendarmes braced themselves against its overwhelming gravity. Something grabbed her right ankle as she hurtled toward the volcanic world beyond the breach. She looked back to see Bruno holding her by the leg. Additional vacuities had opened up along the street, pulling in loose debris with sudden bursts of gravity. Strange worlds glimmered beyond each crack in reality.

“Hold on,” said a voice she did not recognize. Suddenly she lay in Bruno’s big arms, her loose hair and cloak still trailing toward the fissure. If she let go of Takamoto’s blade, it too would fly into the molten world. If Bruno let go of her, she would fall into it herself. She wrapped her arms about the big reptoid’s neck.

The gendarmes gripped their weapons and waited for the rabidity to pass. As soon as it died away, they could fire at will, and she was sure they would.

A dark flame moved among them. Or it might have been a shadow. Svetlana could not tell which. A blade of dark metal gleamed with rabid light, then disappeared again and again and again. When the vacuity stabilized and the hole in space closed itself, the wind died down and the gendarmes literally fell apart. Heads, arms, and rifles fell to the pavement, shuddering and spewing oil. The headless, often armless, torsos still stood upright, still waiting for the rabidity to pass. Some of them wandered aimlessly, bumping into one another and falling into heaps.

A single dark figure stood among the wrecked soldiers now. Bruno still clutched Svetlana in his arms. She felt ridiculous in the new calm, so she jumped out of Bruno’s grasp. The man in black walked closer, the heels of his boots click-clacking on the flagstones. The blade of his greatsword dripped with black oil. He removed his triangular hat to reveal a face of finely sculpted bronze, handsome in its own crude way. His eyes were twin black lenses. He bowed to her, cap in one hand, sword in the other.

“Welcome to the Urbille,” he said. “My name is Wail.” It was the same voice Svetlana had heard seconds earlier, when the gendarmes had still been alive. If mechanical men were truly alive at all.

“Please forgive the rabidity,” Wail said, “it was the best way to distract them.”

Wail sheathed his weapon, replacing the hat on his smooth hairless head. A pistol of strange design hung at his hip, but he had not drawn it. Eighteen gendarmes had fallen to his blade in as many seconds. Even Takamoto would have been impressed.

“By now the Tribune knows you’re here,” Wail said. “So you’d better come with me. More gendarmes are on their way.”

Svetlana looked at Bruno, who seemed to have regained his senses. Was it the lights or the rabidity that had paralyzed him? He nodded at her.

“Why should we trust you?” Svetlana said.

“A little bird told me all about you,” said Wail. “I have lots of little birds fluttering here and there about the Urbille. Lots of eyes and ears who know how to stay out of sight. Whatever you’re looking for I can help you find it.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Yeah,” Bruno said. He was already back into protective mode. “Why would you do that?”

“Many reasons,” said Wail. “Firstly, I am a gentlemen.” He looked at Svetlana. “Secondly, you are the only human above the age of sixteen to set foot in the Urbille in over a thousand years. Thirdly, I’m quite fond of humans. I used to be one myself.”

Sirens moaned in the distance. Night was falling on the Urbille. The sky had faded to shades of violet, and dark clouds moved in from all sides. She could not see the green forest from here, but she knew it must lay in shadow now too.

They followed Wail through a maze of alleys, across wastelands of junk metal, and crossed a stone bridge above black water thick with serpents. The sirens grew louder behind them, but Wail moved swiftly and always along obscure routes. Sometimes he made them lay back against a wall, and they stood unnoticed as squads of gendarmes marched down the adjoining street. Other soldiers piled into the backs of steam lorries that rumbled through the streets shaking down Clatterpox pedestrians.

Eventually Wail led them into a sunken basement beneath a ruined structure in the Reclaimed Zone. Svetlana’s weariness caught up to her now. She saw only blurs of black and silver on either side of her head as she walked. She was glad for Bruno’s inhuman endurance. Wail might have led her anywhere, for any purpose, as weak as she was now. She needed sleep and food.

Wail opened a rusted door that led to a metal grate in the floor. He lifted the grate and they climbed down using the rungs of a metal ladder. The flickering of candlelight filled the chamber into which they descended. A stone-walled sewer complex, unused for centuries, had been converted into a secret den. One wall was covered by shelves lined with ancient books. More books and scrolls lay upon six workbenches littered with bits of mechanical bodies. Another wall was stocked with liquids and serums in rows of multicolored flasks. The third wall was a stained mass of flat stone, yet someone had carved a great face in it. It was the face of a wise old man with eyes and lips closed. Svetlana wanted to examine it closer, but the need for sleep overtook her.

She collapsed on a pile of blankets, one of many scattered about the place. Sleep took her away as Bruno and Wail conversed in low voices. She dreamed of a sunswept meadow trapped inside eighteen rings of shadow. She lay on the fragrant grass, sunlight warming her skin. Dima was there, nestled in her arms. Takamoto was a shadow, rushing out of the sunlight to join her. He wrapped his long arms about her and Dima, but he was something horrible now, something bestial. His tendrils ripped at the baby, and she rose up, stabbing at him with empty hands. She jerked awake on the pile of blankets, unsure how long she’d been out.

Wail sat on a chair at his workbench, tinkering with a collection of wires and gears. Bruno lay slumbering nearby. Her throat was parched and sore. She reached for her canteen, then remembered it was lost back at the SKIN AND BONES. She asked Wail for water. He brought her a tin cup full of it. She drank it down and sat with her back against the brick wall.

“You live down here?” she said.

“Sometimes,” he said. “When I have to.”

“Are you alone?”

Wail rubbed his bronze chin with a black-gloved hand.

“Most of the time,” he said. “But I have some friends arriving soon. They’re out preparing for a little job.”

“What is your business?” Svetlana said.

Wailed chuckled behind his bronze face. “Revolution? Evolution? Modern Mechanics? Take your pick. I am a proud thorn in the side of the Potentates. That is my current business, although I used to be a Surgeon right here in the Urbille.”

“You said you used to be human.”

“Yes.” She heard him sigh.

“What happened?”

He looked at her, his expression static. “You might say I was a victim of tradition. A tradition I am working hard to destroy.”

“You’re an outlaw,” she said. “Like me.”

“Bruno told me why you’re here,” said Wail. “Your courage amazes me. What is your son’s name?”

“Dima.” Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall.

“You say he was taken by a Harvester? A silver-winged mechanoid, no face?”

Svetlana nodded. The stubborn tears insisted on falling anyway.

“I’ve rescued many a child from those bastards in the last few years,” Wail said. “But I’ve never had the chance to reunite a stolen baby with its true mother.”

Svetlana’s heart skipped a beat. “Can you find my Dima?”

“It will be my pleasure to try,” Wail said. “Do you recall any distinguishing marks or features? Too many Harvesters still get by me these days. I’m working on a solution to that.”

I will know my baby when I see him. When I touch him.

“There’s a birthmark,” Svetlana said. “A purple blotch on his upper thigh. Here…” She showed him the spot on her leg where Dima’s mark was. She had never told anyone else about the birthmark. Nobody cared anyway. Nobody but Takamoto, who knew already. And his caring had led him to his death.

Wail placed his hand on her shoulder. “I intercepted a child with a mark like the one you describe. A healthy male. It was only a few months ago by the Urbille calendar. His abductor was returning from the Outer Affinities.”

“Where is he?” she said. “What did you do with him?” She almost grabbed Wail by the collar and shook him. He was impeccably calm as he delivered his revelations. He took her hands in his own. His touch was surprisingly gentle. Perhaps he was more surgeon than swordsman after all.

“I took him somewhere safe,” Wail said, “with green trees and blue skies, and people who would love and care for him as if he were their own. A world called Gaeya. He is in good hands. I will take you there, and you will see this for yourself.”

Svetlana hugged him to her. There was little warmth in his mechanical bones, but he returned the embrace. She let the weeping claim her body for awhile, wracking sobs of relief mingled with gratitude. No joy yet. She would not allow herself that until she held Dima in her arms. But there was no gratitude greater than this.

She pulled away from Wail and wiped her eyes. Bruno snored loudly on his cot.

“When can we go?” she asked.

“Soon,” Wail said. “As soon as we’re done here.”

“Who’s we?” said a new voice. Svetlana turned her head. Two Beatifics in longcoats and top hats had climbed down into Wail’s sanctuary. She reached for Takamoto’s blade almost by instinct.

Wail stood up and adopted the manner of a servant making formal introductions.

“Lady Svetlana of the Outer Affinities…” He waved a hand at the new arrivals. “May I present to you my associates: Master Skiptrain of the Rude Mechanicals, and Inspector Crag of the Ministere de Justice.”

Skiptrain and Crag peered at her. Their faces–one golden, one bronze–leaned forward on their slim necks. Their eye-lenses glared at her.

“Shards of Aphelion,” said Skiptrain, “She’s an Organic.”

“A fully grown one too,” Crag said.

“Gentlemen,” said Wail. “Our list of assets has grown by two sizable factors tonight.” He indicated Bruno, still snoring in the corner.

“A reptoid,” Crag said. “Not bad for muscle, Wail. But do you really think she can cut it?” He poked a mechanical thumb at Svetlana. He didn’t say the next words, but she could almost hear them inside her head: She’s only a woman. She’s no warrior. She’d heard it all her life, defied it just as long. All men, flesh or mechanical, were the same in this way.

Wail turned his amber opticals on her.

She felt his smile, although his bronze face didn’t move.

“Oh, yes,” Wail said. “I think she’s just what the Surgeon ordered.”

 

NEXT: “The Operation”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

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—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 14

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DOCTOR WAIL (a.k.a. “THE SURGEON,” a.k.a. “THE HIGHWAYMAN”)

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10   Chapter11

Chapter 12  Chapter 13

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NOTE: I announced a while back that this chapter would be accompanied by a special illustration inked by the great Kelley Jones (BATMAN, DEADMAN, ALIEN, etc.). Well, you can’t rush genius! Kelley is still working on the piece, and I’ll post it as a “bonus” illustration as soon as I get it. Meanwhile, I did the above piece, which gives us a long-distance look at The Highwayman. We’ll see him in much greater detail when KJ finishes his inking process. Thanks for reading–please tell a friend and help spread the word. Cheers!–John

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Chapter 14. 

The Highwayman

The morning after the troupe’s twelfth performance, when the nocturnal celebrations had died away, the Rude Mechanicals loaded up their steam carriage. They moved through the streets of Neopolis with Crag at their middle, almost one of them now. They waved at the Beatific fans hailing them along the streets or from passing coaches.

Crag sat on the back edge of the steam carriage, his feet dangling above the road. He watched the spiral towers gleam like sculpted ice above the smoke and squalor of Neopolis. The excitement died when they entered the Clatterpox territories. Crowds of worker drones marched toward their shifts in factories, foundries, and industrial complexes. Everything in the lower depths of the city was owned by those in the crystal towers, the wealthiest of all Beatific families. So wealthy they had bought their way out of the Urbille and establish an extended version of the Potentates’ domain.

Crag had no idea what role his parents played in the machinations of Neopolis. The city had swallowed them up, and he had lost touch. He didn’t want to leave without seeing them, yet here he was heading out of town.

It’s the job. I have to do the job.

I’ll come back when Caroline is with me.

“We mustn’t stay too long in Neopolis,” Skiptrain had said last night. “The fans here are fickle. During long engagements they inevitably turn against the performers. They like their entertainments best when the come and go like capricious lovers who keep them at a distance.”

The man certainly knew his business. Sala–Noemi–taught him everything she knew over the last two centuries. They were practically one mind in two bodies at this point. The way Crag used to be with Caroline. A constant connection that ached like a phantom limb ever since it was cut off.

The road ran across a patch of strawberry fields toward the twin obelisks that marked the porte. Nine gendarmes with rifles guarded the spot, but they knew the Rude Mechanicals and let them pass without questions. The actors were draped in cloaks, robes, and waistcoats of expensive fabric, gifts from their patrons in the crystal towers. Strands of precious stones and clever jewelry glimmered on their limbs. Their porcelain faces offered red and purple smiles, and pools of painted shadow surrounded their opticals. The only face that remained the same was that of Skiptrain. He wore the gold-and-ivory mask that marked his status. It was the same face that Sala North had worn in her heyday.

She was still an excellent actress, whatever name she chose to call herself. In every one of the twelve performances Crag had witnessed, Noemi was the standout. Her words and tone, her movement and impeccable timing, these things gave her the power to evoke spectator emotions. Establishing that empathic bond turned Art into Alchemy. It activated subtle changes inside the hearts and minds of those exposed to it. Noemi’s performance enlightened everyone around her, both onstage and off. He almost thanked Skiptrain for having her rebuilt after the Surgeon sliced her apart. But that would be a crass thing to say, so he kept it to himself.

On the other side of the porte the Greater Thoroughfare ran through a dry and dusty tableland where tufts of desert grass grew in clumps. Spires of speckled rock stood here and there, and winged lizards flitted from stone to stone. The road wound toward a range of mountains on the horizon.

Skiptrain took a small box from his satchel, a rectangle with a tiny lock built into the side. He took out a small golden key, inserted it, and turned it clockwise. The top of the box flipped open on hidden springs. A tiny bird made of brass and copper filaments stood revealed. Its eyes were tiny diamonds. Skiptrain whispered to the bird and it sprang to life, flapping tiny wings like a real hummingbird. It swirled into the air, zoomed above Crag’s hat, and sped off toward the mountains. In another second it had disappeared altogether.

A curtain of dust and sand blew across the road. Organic opticals might weep and sting, but the Rude Mechanicals kept right on walking. A yellow sun burned high in the sky, and banks of green-yellow clouds hung above the desert. If there were any moons in the sky here, Crag couldn’t see them.

The clockwork bird was either a toy, a spying device, or a messenger. Skiptrain had promised to contact Wail. Crag trusted the man to keep his word. The troupe was heading back to the Urbille for a few days before their next crossworld engagement. A perfect time for Skiptrain to set a meet. Crag had already cleaned and polished his sidearm to prepare for it.

The troupe passed into a world of tree-like fungi and colossal mushrooms. The road bisected forests of living crystal and arched into sculpted bridges above rivers of flame. The occasional heap of ruins marred the wilderness, and sometimes smaller settlements burned watchfires in sight of the road. In another world a pack of elephantine insects had gnawed a mighty forest into kindling, building massive nests from rotting logs. In the next world crowds of ghosts stood on either side of the road, weeping and pleading in the midst of a phantom metropolis.

“We’re about halfway to the Urbille now,” Albertus said. He looked through a telescopic lens at the remains of a vast temple on the summit of a blue mountain. He showed Crag the vision, cackling with amusement. “The Hall of Vitrekeus, where my ancestors ruled a kingdom two thousand years ago. Once it was a place of glory and learning, but now it serves only to mark the halfway point between Neopolis and the Urbille.”

Crag squinted and took another look at the stately ruins. A hundred colors of moss and lichen smothered the stones. A few stubborn trees blossomed between the shattered towers.

“It’s very beautiful,” Crag said.

“My people gave all this up when they came to the Urbille,” Albertus said. He snapped his fingers with a grinding of tiny gears. “They traded their world for this…” His fingers removed the porcelain mask he wore. His naked silver skull stared at Crag. “Immortality,” said the skull. The colors of twilight swam across its polished forehead.

Crag had never seen anyone else’s naked face except that of his wife.

“Why show me this?” he said.

Albertus replaced the mask. “Just to remind you, Inspector.”

“Remind me of what?”

“Of what we are now,” said Albertus. “All of us.” He lay the barrel of his long rifle across his shoulder.

“You’re a strange bird, Albertus,” Crag said.

Albertus shook his head, stirring the feathers rising from his hat.

“Thank you,” he said.

A world of twenty moons followed as the road ran along the coast of a turquoise sea. Spires of green rock rose from the ocean like the towers of a sunken city. They might have been actual towers in some bygone age, but now the barnacles and crustaceans were their only tenants. Crag witnessed so many wonders on the return trip that he grew immune to wonders. Strange worlds passed like weary dreams, and after a while he walked in a perpetual daze.

Now the road ran straight as an arrow through a black marshland. Willows grew from snake-infested fens. The night was cold and humid, as if a storm was about to break. Or a rabidity, something that should only occur in the Urbille. A cry from Skiptrain at the head of the troupe halted all movement. The carriage belched steam from its exhaust pipes, and its mechanical guts rumbled. The brain inside its lucid dome seethed with electricity. Crag had never seen it do that before.

A rabidity or an electrical storm was on the way. Or something worse. Crag was about to yell out “Why have we stopped?” when he saw the dark figure on the road ahead. Still as a statue it sat on a horse of gleaming black metal. Orange embers burned in the steed’s nostrils, which expelled black smoke. Its iron hooves sat quiet on the roadway. Crag would have heard those hooves approaching, so he knew the horseman had been waiting here for some time.

The rider wore a triple-pointed hat to match his pitch-dark cape and gauntlets. A greatsword with a silvered hilt hung from his left hip, a long-handled pistol holstered on his right thigh. The highwayman’s face was a masterpiece of bronze. The face of a man bred to war and darkness and sacrifice. His opticals were black mirrors reflecting every gaze they received.

Crag stood among the silent actors. The fingers of his right hand twitched. He rolled his fingers, popping tiny bubbles of air caught inside their lubrication tubes. The joints of his wrist gave a tiny squeak, but nobody else heard it.

Skiptrain raised his hand to wave at the highwayman. The rider did not return the greeting, but slid off his clockwork horse. The steed was a fine example of Urbille technology at its best. Only a Surgeon would know how to build such a fantastic beast. Wail’s mount made the other mechanical steeds Crag had seen look like clumsy machines. Its red opticals blazed with internal light and heat.

Wail approached the Rude Mechanicals with patience and grace. Crag went to stand beside Skiptrain and Noemi. Mistaking his intentions, they moved away from him. He faced the highwayman alone.

“Inspector Crag,” Skiptrain said from the side of the road. “Meet the Surgeon.”

The highwayman halted before Crag and doffed his hat. “Inspector.”

“Hello, Doctor Wail.”

“I hear you are anxious to meet with me,” said Wail. He took another step closer. The pommel of his greatsword gleamed through the opening of his dark cloak.

Crag’s fingers twitched again. He resisted the urge to draw his gun.

“You know who I work for,” Crag said.

“Yes.”

“I need to bring you back,” Crag said. “To stand before the Tribune.”

“I see,” Wail said.

“Failing that, I’m to bring him your head,” Crag said. “I’m giving you a choice.”

“How terribly generous of you.”

“I’d rather take you in whole,” said Crag, “give you a chance to explain yourself. But I’m taking you in either way. You decide.”

Wail threw his head back and laughed. His bronze face turned to Skiptrain, Noemi, and the rest of the troupe. “It appears we stand at cross purposes, my friend,” he said. “Let’s settle the matter in the traditional manner. Like gentlemen.”

Crag’s hand found its way to the grip of his pistol before he realized it. He didn’t draw it though. Not yet. The Surgeon’s black opticals stared at him. He said nothing.

“A duel,” said Wail. “I offer you the choice of weapon, Crag. Will you face me with sword or pistol?”

“I could just shoot you right now,” Crag said.

Right in the forehead, a bullet to the brain, the quickest and most successful way to kill any Beatific. He knew how to exploit that weakness. One clean shot to the brain was all it ever took. There was no coming back from that.

“Very well,” said Wail, throwing back his cloak. “Pistols it is.” He unbuckled the greatsword and handed it to Specious, who was suddenly at his side. Perhaps they had played out this scene before. Wail walked to Crag and turned his back. Specious’ porcelain smile coaxed Crag into doing the same.

Let them have their flair for drama. It would still end with a headshot.

The Surgeon’s back felt massive against Crag’s narrow shoulders. Specious began the count. The duelists took their first step, then a second, a third, and so on. At the count of ten the custom was to turn, draw, and fire. Or run, and be branded a coward forever.

Six…

Seven…

Beatific dueling had been illegal inside the Urbille for centuries. But this was the open road. The only laws out here were the ones that could be enforced.

Eight…

Nine…

Ten.

Crag spun about, drawing and firing in a single motion. The pistol kicked and roared in his hand. He watched the barrel of Wail’s musket belch a gout of flame and smoke. The tri-corner hat went flying from Wail’s head.

A tremendous impact drove Crag backwards. The musket ball, forged of something harder and lighter than iron, ripped through his chest near the left shoulder. He staggered backwards. He was entitled to another shot. So was the highwayman.

Crag squeezed the trigger again. The second shot went wild as he fell. There was no second shot from the highwayman. The back of Crag’s skull slammed against the pavement. His face snapped off and rolled away as the wind took his hat. He lay on his back, the wound in his chest steaming, popping, spitting sparks. A few shattered cogs and wires protruded from the round hole. Something inside him groaned and whirred. His vital gears slipped, his innards growling and pinging.

He looked into the sky above the swampland. It was full of stars and moons and glimmering nebulae. The sheer beauty of it washed over Crag as he lay there leaking oil onto the road. The winking stars took his breath away.

“Now that we’ve settled that issue,” Wail said, “perhaps we can discuss more weighty matters. Do you accept defeat or should I cut you into pieces and drop them into the swamp? The choice is still yours.”

Wail’s boot pressed Crag’s wrist against the road, so he couldn’t have fired another shot if he wanted to. Crag let the weapon go, unwrapping his fingers. The Surgeon scooped up the pistol and it disappeared in the depths of his cloak. The tiny brass bird flew out of his other hand and landed in Skiptrain’s upheld box. Skiptrain closed the box and tucked it away.

Wail helped Crag to his feet while the Rude Mechanicals watched in quiet fascination. Crag picked up his face and snapped it back on. Wail examined the hole his musket ball had made in Crag’s chest.

“I can fix that,” he said, clapping Crag on the back. “You’ll move a bit more slowly until then. Perhaps it will encourage you to listen, which is all I ask of you.”

Crag nodded.

Listen. Play his game, and live.

There will be another chance to take him down.

Crag wouldn’t give up the dream of Caroline’s early release so easily. But he’d have to play it smart. Set everything up for the next head shot. The one he wouldn’t miss. If Wail wasn’t going to kill him, then he had an advantage. Play along. Be an actor. Set it up.

“I’ll listen,” Crag said.

They sat him up on the steam carriage, his back resting against a crate of costumes. Wail rode his iron steed alongside the slow-moving vehicle. The Rude Mechanicals strolled down the road in their usual unhurried fashion. A gentle rain began, dampening the road as they moved along its shimmering length.

Crag wasn’t in pain, but his reduced mobility was annoying. His biggest problem was the empty shoulder holster where his gun should be sitting. But the highwayman wasn’t about to give that back to him. Not yet anyway. Crag would win his confidence.

“I understand that you’ve accumulated quite a file on me,” Wail said. The triangular hat was back on his head now, despite the bullet hole in its peak.

“Tracking information is part of my job,” said Crag. “It’s the part I’m best at, as you can tell from my shooting.”

Wail chuckled. “I used to be like you. I served the Potentates, and I gloried in it as my life’s ultimate purpose. I learned so many things, but I never questioned what I knew. Not until it was too late.”

“Too late for your son,” Crag said.

The black opticals focused on him for a moment, then turned back to the road.

“You think you know who I am,” Wail said. “And I suppose you do, at least on the surface. You know who I used to be, you know what drove me to do the things I do. You know more terrible secrets than you can even bear to admit.”

“What I don’t know is why,” Crag said. “You’re stealing young Organics. Skiptrain says you’re building an army. What’s it for?”

“What is any army for?”

“To conquer,” Crag said.

“Or to wage a revolution.”

“You really think a small community of Organics can win a revolt against the Potentates? They have the armies of worlds at their disposal. They have powers that make them masters of all they survey. Lords of the Nexus. They conquered everything, and you think you can take it from them with an army of stolen children?”

“You see, this is where your ignorance begins to make itself apparent. The Potentates, for all their majesty and omnipotence, did not conquer these worlds. They didn’t build the Nexus. They stole it. They’ve stolen everything, for eons. We’re stealing it back.”

“You expect me to believe the Potentates stole the Nexus from its original owners, so you must know who they are. Enlighten me, Wail. What theory is it that drives your skin-and-bones revolution?”

“No theory, just facts,” Wail said.

The troupe passed through the next porte into a range of hills thick with golden grass. Long-necked beasts dipped their snouts into a nearby lake. A sea of jagged ruins lined the southern horizon.

“Let’s hear your facts then,” Crag said. “Make me understand.”

First I’ll understand what you are, then I’ll make you trust me.

Then you’re mine.

“Are you familiar with the Ministere de Stone?” Wail said.

Crag shook his head. Wail went on at great length about bodiless spirit-lords inhabiting the Nexus. These ephemeral entities, existing outside of space and time, created the roads between the worlds eons ago and used it to weave an empire of worlds together.

“This road is their road, as is the Lesser Thoroughfare,” Wail said.

“You speak to these stone spirits?”

“They came to me when I needed them the most,” Wail said. “My son and wife were dead. Murdered by the Potentates.”

“Came to you how?”

“They usually manifest as faces of living stone,” Wail said. “They saw my pain, and they promised me vengeance. They became my patrons. I’ve learned many things from them, almost as much as I learned from serving the Potentates. I make the perfect insurrectionist because I know how the Potentates work. I know their arcane sciences, and I know their Great Lie. They built a new world with this lie, atop the blood and bones of the old one.”

“Where did you take the Organics?” Crag asked. There was an edge of madness in Wail’s words. Crag needed something concrete to bring him back around.

“You’re asking the wrong question.”

Crag waited, playing along.

“You should be asking: Why do the Potentates need Organics in their domain? You should be asking: Why are Organic humans so rare across the Inner Affinities? You should be asking: Why do the Harvesters keep doing their jobs when the Urbille is overpopulated and in danger of crumbling under its own weight?”

“Okay,” said Crag. “Why?”

“That is indeed the question, Inspector,” Wail said. “Why do the Potentates bring children to their city as Organics, have them raised there until the age of sixteen, and require by law that every human shed their physical bodies at that time. Why Conversion? Why transform these frail, fleshy beings into mechanized entities that live forever?”

“The Potentates can do whatever they want,” said Crag. “They own everything, so they set the rules.”

“You’re missing the bigger picture,” said Wail. “Think about the yearly intake of Organic infants in the Urbille. Thousands of babies harvested primarily from the Outer Affinities. Now consider the amount of Conversions done every year compared to that number. As a former Urbille Surgeon I can tell you that the number of Conversions per year matches or exceeds the amount of Organics brought into the city, but not by much. Think now, Crag, about all those bodies shed like suits of clothing, all that flesh and bone, all that siphoned blood. The only thing we retain when we’re Converted is our brains.”

Wail paused to laugh. Crag thought he heard anger inside the humor.

“The brain, they tell us, is the source of life and consciousness,” Wail said. “So we transplant it into a Beatific or a Clatterpox body, and we preserve that life indefinitely. We say goodbye to the flesh. Goodbye to the flesh, Crag.”

The caravan rolled on through a purple morning shot with red clouds. Flocks of winged amphibians soared on warm updrafts.

“Where do you think all of that abandoned flesh goes?” Wail said.

“You did thousands of Conversions, Doc,” Crag said. “You tell me.”

“Should I?” Wail asked. “Should I tell you?”

Crag waited.

The Surgeon sighed through his bronze lips.

“Now you’ve asked the right question,” said Wail. “You’ve come all this way, and you deserve an answer. Like me, like everyone in the Urbille, you deserve to know exactly what it is you’re serving.”

Crag watched a winged thing swoop out of the sky and grab a tiny rodent in its claws, pulling it into the sky even as it devoured the carcass.

“The Potentates are carnivores,” Wail said. “They always have been. Highly evolved, yes. Capable of bending reality with the forces at their command, yes. But they cannot change their essential nature. They’re meat-eaters unlike any other. They have an abiding and all-consuming passion for human flesh. It’s a pathology with them. During the last Organic Age they hunted down nearly every human being in the Affinities, depopulating entire worlds. They gathered millions of humans into their great city, promising them wealth and eternal life. They built the Urbille to serve their gross appetites, and its purpose is solely to sustain them.”

Crag took off his top hat, rubbed his skull with a clicking hand.

The words of the child-killer came back to him again, a melody that would never leave his ears, a ghost that would haunt him forever.

I’m saving them, Inspector. From becoming like us.

From losing everything that makes them human.

“They eat us, Crag,” said Wail. His voice grew horribly soft. “They’ve eaten us all. They’ve built an obscene empire out of their own mad guilt. A vast machine filled with lesser machines to serve their endless hunger. Forever harvesting our kind like beasts in a crossworld cage. Managing a vast cosmic game preserve of human cattle. Those are your Potentates.”

“Even if that’s true,” Crag said. “Even if they eat human flesh…they give us new bodies. They give us new life…”

“Do they? Do you really believe we’re alive?”

The child-killer’s words again.

Prisons. That’s all these bodies are.

“Not even the Surgeons know the truth of it,” Wail said. “The Ministere de Stone showed me the horrible truth. So now I bring the truth to those I liberate.”

“And the Rude Mechanicals?” Crag asked.

“We know all of it,” said Skiptrain. He walked nearby, listening to the conversation.

“That’s why you steal the Organics,” Crag said. “To keep them from becoming like us. To save them from being…”

“Devoured,” said Wail. “It’s the only word appropriate for this context.”

“Why wouldn’t they just kill us?” Crag said. “Why bother to preserve our minds in these mechanical bodies? We’re still human, right?”

“I used to believe so,” said Wail.

“So did I,” said Skiptrain.

“The truth is often painful,” Noemi said. “None moreso than this one.”

“The Potentates are so wracked with guilt over consuming the flesh of fellow sentient beings, they can’t stand it,” Wail said. “So they alleviate that guilt with the gift of Conversion, fooling themselves and us into thinking there is no death involved, no predation. They justify feeding on us by sparing our brains and transforming us into self-aware mechanoids. And they’ve done it for longer than anyone remembers.”

Crag couldn’t wrap his mind around a guilt that deep. Or a hunger that ancient.

“We’re going to bring them down,” Wail said. “With the help of the StoneFathers, we’ve set a plan in motion that will make them pay.”

“Where is your army?” Crag asked. “All these Organics you’ve saved?”

“A place called Gaeya,” Wail said. “A world far removed from the Nexus.”

“How does one reach such a place?”

“Perhaps I’ll tell you, Crag,” said Wail. “But first tell me why you’re hunting me.”

“You’ve stepped up your game,” Crag said. “You’ve been robbing from Harvesters, taking Organics before they even reach the Urbille. I’d like to know how you do that too, but I’ll leave it alone for now. You’ve become such a thorn in their side that they sent me to track you down.”

“But this isn’t your job,” said Wail. “You’re a city Inspector. You keep the Urbille free of crime. Yet here you are on the Thoroughfare, outside your jurisdiction. What did they promise you?”

Crag bristled.

Don’t tell him. Keep your secrets.

“My wife,” he said. “She’s been in prison twenty years.”

Why are you telling him this?

“I bring you in, I get her back. Otherwise it’s another thirty years.”

It felt good to say it out loud.

“Why did they take her?” Noemi asked.

The troupe passed through another porte, crawling ever closer to the Urbille.

“There was a child,” Crag said.

Don’t tell them this. You’ve never told anyone.

“A dirt-caked, shoeless little boy from a Clatterpox family,” Crag said. The memories flooded into his brain and out his mouth. “She found him in the gutter outside our flat one morning. Little fellow was sleeping on top of a steam grate. Marks of abuse on the limbs and torso. Signs of parental neglect.”

The entire troupe listened to Crag now. They walked a cold road through snowbound hills. Flurries drifted on the night wind.

“Caroline couldn’t wait to get our own child,” Crag said. “We were both eager to start a family. It wouldn’t have been that much longer until our number came up. I guess she was a bit too eager. She gave the boy food and tended his wounds. Gendarmes came by later and returned him to his Clatterpox folks.

“His name was Andre. He came back two days later, eyes blackened, a broken finger. There were other signs of abuse, more invasive ones. We reported it, but the gendarmes did nothing as usual. The Clatterpox kept abusing their charge, and Andre kept showing up at our doorstep. After two weeks of it, she couldn’t take anymore. She hid the boy from the gendarmes when they came around this time. I didn’t find out until I got home that night. She begged me not to give him up, but I told her we had no legal right to keep him.

“We argued all night, and in the end she won. She knew Andre couldn’t stay with us forever, but she refused to give him back to his abusers. She was right. It only took three days for the gendarmes to figure things out. I was out on a case when they came and arrested her. Took the boy back to his shitheel parents and put Caroline on trial. It’s always been against the law for Beatifics to take in Clatterpox children, so she had no real chance. She denied that I had any knowledge of what she’d done, but I know the Tribune didn’t believe her. He needed me, though, so he let it slide. He sentenced Caroline to the labyrinth. Fifty years for helping a lost child.”

“For twenty years they’ve held your wife prisoner,” said Wail. “And you serve them like a blind dog, whipped when its nose turns the wrong way. You must truly love this woman.”

Crag said nothing. It was true.

“You’re a lucky man,” Wail said. “They took my wife too. And my son. But I’ll never get them back.”

“I’ll never get Caroline back either,” said Crag. “Unless I bring you in.”

The highwayman nodded.

“Well, then I suppose we’d best not disappoint the Tribune.”

“What does that mean?”

“Only the Tribune has the ability to release someone from the labyrinth. So you’ll have to keep your word.”

“Are you serious?” Crag asked. “After all this, you’re going to give yourself up?”

“Do you really want your wife back, Crag?”

“More than anything.”

“Then you no longer work for the Tribune,” Wail said. “You work for me.”

Crag let the words sink in. The night wind whistled through the hole in his chest.

“In that case,” Crag said, “can I have my gun back?”

 

NEXT: “The Urbille”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

_____________________________

—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 13

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THE DEAD KINGS

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10   Chapter11

Chapter 12

———————————–

Chapter 13. 

The Road to Oblivione

Svetlana could have been sitting inside the coach, enjoying the luxury that Pepper Domo would have lavished on himself. She chose to remain on the driver’s bench alongside Bruno. They had saved one another’s lives, and by the code of warriors they were equals. She would not insult him by asking him to drive her, or by offering to be his driver. So they drove together, and the cushioned interior remained empty.

The road ran through a green wilderness dappled with sunlight. The smells of decaying leaves and sprouting blossoms hung in the air. The weeds grew tall on either side of the Greater Thoroughfare. It was the same shade of pale stone as the Lesser Thoroughfare, but twice as wide. The six worlds they had crossed since leaving Creep City were bleak and calm. The spirits of the dead roamed aimlessly alongside the highway, sometimes whole crowds of them, but they had no power to walk the Thoroughfare. The portes to these worlds were unguarded except for a few weeping phantoms.

After killing his employer, Bruno had insisted on escorting Svetlana to the Mummy Lords as planned. He left Domo’s corpse for the vampires and they drove away from the crypt-mansions. Svetlana’s hands and feet were still tingling and half-numb, but she had managed to sit upright on the bench. Her clothes and Bruno’s armor were stained with black gore. The reptoid did not seem to mind, but Svetlana felt dirty and longed for a bath. Bruno guided the carriage through sloping streets full of lumbering corpses. The sweet-sour smell of rotting flesh filled the air like an invisible fog.

The black mountain of towers and terraces stood directly ahead, the elite domain of the Mummy Lords. The carriage rolled through a royal gateway guarded by bat-winged sentinels. They flapped about like jade gargoyles, waving hooked spears of rusted metal.

“Here’s the plan,” Bruno said. “I wasn’t able to collect for the serums Domo delivered for Herr Vivant’s coven, but we’ve still got a full shipment for the Mummy Court.” His taloned thumb pointed backwards at the remaining crates and kegs on the coach’s roof. “Our only way in is to deliver these goods on behalf of the Apothecaries. We do that, and we collect the fee that would have gone to Domo. We’ll be rich. But you’ll have to do your part.”

“I want no part of this plan,” Svetlana said. “I only want to find my son.”

“This plan will serve that one. Don’t you believe me?”

Svetlana flexed her fingers. Their feeling was coming back in tiny pinpricks of pain.

“I believe you,” she said.

“Then put on one of Domo’s robes,” Bruno said. “You’ll play his emissary.”

“I look nothing like Domo,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Bruno. “The Court of the Dead Kings does not care if Domo appoints a human to make his deliveries. After all, the mummies here used to be human. Bet you didn’t know that.”

“No,” she said.

“We deliver our product, collect a chest of loot, and get out of here fast.”

“I came here to get answers,” Svetlana said.

“The Dead Kings will be more apt to grant you wisdom once you’ve delivered their potions, salves, and serums. Domo has them addicted. You will be able to ask them anything, provided you remember who you’re supposed to be.”

“Do you think they will know the secret of the Faceless Angels?” she said. “The Silverwings?”

Bruno expelled air from his scaly nostrils like a cough. “Domo said they would know.”

“He could have been lying,” she said. “Just to get me here.”

“The Dead Kings are nearly as old as the Nexus itself,” said Bruno. “They know many secrets.”

She sat inside the carriage and wore a seven-colored robe from Domo’s luggage. Bruno drove through another royal gate, offering the Apothecary’s password to the winged guards. They looked like the ink drawings of devils Svetlana had seen in one of her father’s old books. She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old when she saw it. All of her father’s books were stolen or burned when he died. The devil-guards peered through the coach window at her, horned foreheads and coppery scales, bloodshot eyes blinking. Their wings thundered against the carriage walls, and with a chorus of screeching they were gone. The carriage rolled up the royal way toward the black palace, which opened its gates to welcome the trader from Nil.

Svetlana was glad she could not see all the terrors on display inside the palace of death. It seemed more like a massive collection of tombs than a castle. Each tower, each cuppola, every shriveled garden and web-smothered archway, they all reeked of ancient dust and moldering bones. The dead moved from corridor to corridor in various forms and guises, some quiet as the wind, others howling or giggling, sometimes singing in flurries of echoes. Eventually the coach stopped, the door opened at Bruno’s hand, and she stepped out in a flutter of silks.

She stood before pair of iron doors designed with intricate patterns of thorn and thistle. Fanged serpents large as horses writhed among the vines, and three crowned skulls sat atop the tangled thorns. Two guards stood before these doors in armor of baroque design. They held bronze spears three times their height, and their heads were those of great bulls. Flames burned in the empty sockets of their eyes, lighting up the gloom about the thorngate.

Svetlana bowed to one knee, following Bruno’s lead, and the great doors began to open. A flood of shadows came forth like a chill wind, and the lights of ninety fires ignited as one, the torches of a god-sized tomb sparking to life. A hooded figure with a crooked staff emerged from the darkness. Its hands were skinless yellowed bone.

“Greetings from Domo of Nil,” Svetlana said. “Here is your shipment.”

The shadows inside the hood were impenetrable, but she felt invisible eyes on her face. “Where is Domo?” a voiced hissed.

“Sitting on his lazy ass somewhere,” Bruno said.

“I have been chosen to make this delivery,” Svetlana said, as she had practiced with Bruno. “Domo sends his regards and apologizes for his absence.”

“We only do business with Domo,” said the hooded figure. It turned away.

“We’ll give you a fifty-percent discount,” said Bruno.

The hooded one paused and turned back to the carriage. “Very well,” it said. The bone fingers snapped, and a swell of green light from within the vault became a pack of slack-mouthed spirits. They grabbed the crates and barrels from the top of the carriage and carried them into the darkness.

A brawny corpse with half a face lumbered out of the shadows with a chest full of gold, silver, and jewels. It must have weighed more than Svetlana, but Bruno took it on his shoulder and remounted the carriage. The green tiger sat licking its paws. It had been here so often that the dead no longer disturbed it. Plus it had eaten well of Domo’s corpse, and a full belly was making it sleepy.

“I wish to speak with the Dead Kings,” Svetlana said.

The hooded figure pulled back its hood. A skull covered in rotting flesh made her grimace, but she kept herself from screaming. It must be rude to scream in this place. Something told her that fear of any kind would destroy her here. So she swallowed the terror of the rotting face. Tiny green worms crawled in and out of his nose and eye sockets. The skull’s grinning mouth did not move, but somehow it spoke again:

“If you can master your fear and enter the darkness, they will receive you.” It shambled away from her, leaning on its crooked staff.

Bruno gave Svetlana an “I’ll wait here” look, and she followed the rotting man into the royal vault. The interior was alive with dancing shadows. Torchlight flickered on the lids of a hundred sarcophagi built into the walls. She imagined each coffin was filled with a corpse that would stumble out at any moment. With every step, she was more sure of it.

At the far end of the vault a round dais supported a trio of thrones. The glimmer of jewels flickered on the arms and backs of these seats. In each throne sat a desiccated figure, mummies with skin like withered papyrus, round mouths agleam with teeth, eye-sockets filled with spectral light. The odor of ancient incense mingled with the smell of an open grave.

Each mummy wore a fantastic crown set with sparkling stones. Black shrouds wrapped their emaciated bodies. Necklaces of ruby and opal hung on their chests, and diamonds glittered on their fleshless fingers. Ancient hidebound books were scattered about the dais, along with heaps of scrolls inscribed in ancient tongues. Chests bulging with all manner of treasures lay heaped behind the triple throne. Banners with faded sigils hung between the torches, flags of the nations the Dead Kings once ruled.

The rotting man faded into the shadows, and Svetlana stood alone before the dais. The oppressive silence of the place was unsettling; not even the burning torches made a sound. She kneeled and pressed her forehead to the floor as Bruno had instructed her to do.

“Arise, Mother,” said a rasping voice. “We know why you have come to us.” She did not know which of the three mummies spoke. All three of them faced her as she stood, their skull-faces identical beneath the splendid crowns. Their eye holes were full of starlight.

“If you know this,” she said, “then you must help me.”

“You come to ask us questions with simple answers,” said one of the mummies. His lipless mouth was still, yet somehow he spoke loudly. “We are bound to answer, as you have done us a favor.”

“A favor?”

“You have added a new citizen to our realm.”

In the shadows behind the triple throne the ghost of Pepper Domo stood shivering and naked, his eyestalks downcast. He was only there a moment, then gone.

“I have many questions,” Svetlana said.

They answered them all and told her many things besides.

The Faceless Angels worked for the Potentates of Urbille, harvesting the Outer Affinities for human children. The children were perfectly safe in the arms of these Harvesters, who carried them crossworlds to the Urbille. There the Ministere de Naissance determined a suitable family to raise each stolen baby. At the age of sixteen these adoptees would trade their physical bodies for the mechanical bodies of Clatterpox or Beatific. It would be fifteen years until little Dima would lose his Organic body. Until then he would be raised in the Urbille, so that’s where Svetlana must seek him.

“How do I find the Urbille?” she asked.

“You came to us on the Lesser Thoroughfare. Now you must take the Greater Thoroughfare to Oblivione. There you will find a caravan heading for the City of the Potentates,” said the Mummy Lord. “It is far from here, and there are perils, but your sword and pistol will be welcome additions to any merchant caravans.”

“Why did they take my baby?” she asked. “Why Dima?”

The mummy chuckled. “Perhaps you were chosen by fate,” it said. “The Harvester came to your world looking for livestock and he found it.”

“Livestock?”

“That is how the Potentates categorize humans,” said the mummy.

“Once I get to the Urbille,” Svetlana said, “how do I find my son?”

“There is no legal way to do this,” said the mummy. “You will have to defy the Potentates. If they catch you, they will condemn you to the living hell of their dungeons, which are not made to support the existence of Organic beings. If only you were dead, you would be so much stronger. They might even fear you as they fear their infamous highwayman.”

The mummies chuckled at some private joke.

They told her about the Empire of Stone and how it united the dimensions via the Nexus. They told her of the Potentates war among themselves and the crumbling of the worlds along the Nexus. Now the last of the Potentates controlled every world from their home at the center of the Nexus. Or at least they believed that they controlled them all. The further-out worlds, those called Outer Affinities, were still wild and disordered. Creep City sat on the border of such territories, and Svetlana had passed through many of them.

The mummies spoke of empires risen and fallen. They sang ancient warsongs, conjuring phantasms of battles, victory parades, and decadent revelry. All the splendors of the last Organic Age stood revealed in curtains of colored mist. Svetlana felt she were dreaming as the grand events of the past swam through the shadows of the vault.

Eventually she asked them a final question.

“What about Bruno?” she said. “Can I trust him?”

The Mummy Lords were silent for awhile. Finally, one of them raised his skull and spoke. “What is trust?” he asked. And that is all they would say on the matter.

The rotting man returned, bearing a golden tray with selected serums for the Dead Kings. Svetlana saw this as a cue to leave. The mummies drank to her success as the rotting man guided her back to the carriage. Once again she rode inside the carriage as it passed along monolithic avenues. She sat lost in thought as Bruno and the tiger made their way to the outskirts of the necropolis.

When the carriage rolled through the porte into a desert of stone arches, she shed the robes of Pepper Domo and took to the driver’s seat. It was good to be back in her own clothes with Takamoto’s sword resting on her back again. She had missed the comfortable weight of it.

Several worlds later she sat beside Bruno and cleaned the barrel of her pistol with an old rag. Trees with black boles stood like towers about the road. There was nothing else to be seen here but the dense layers of fern, flower, and vine. It was rather pleasant after the city of living death. She fought the urge to fall asleep.

“Gates of Aphelion, we did well,” Bruno said. “Even at half the price, selling that stock of serums made us two of the richest people in the Nexus.”

Svetlana looked at him from the corner of her eye. Reassembled her pistol.

“Trust me,” he said, “you can’t get into the Urbille unless you have some loot. You’ll have to buy a visitor’s permit just to get through the gate, and those things ain’t cheap. I’ll need one too, since I don’t have a trader’s license.”

“You?” Svetlana said. “You don’t have to accompany me. This isn’t your problem.”

Bruno was silent.

“If you do not want my help, then I will not give it,” he said.

“I didn’t say that I did not want your help.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“Nevermind,” she said. “How far is it to Oblivione?”

“At least a dozen more Affinities,” said Bruno. “Take a nap if you want to. I don’t need one. I only sleep once a year, during the season of hibernation. Your kind are more delicate. Sleep. I will drive.”

“You barely know me,” she said. “And yet you killed Domo, whom you knew for decades. How can I trust you, Bruno?”

Bruno’s laughter was a blend of huff and growl.

“It’s not my problem if you don’t trust me,” he said. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll let you pay me for helping you.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she said.

“No,” he said. “You need someone who knows the Nexus. Someone who’s been to the Urbille. Someone like me.”

“And why do you need me?” she asked.

Bruno shrugged. “Maybe you remind me of someone I used to love,” he said. “Or maybe I’m just an outlaw on the run after killing my boss and stealing his treasure. That’s what you are too, Svetlana. You should know that, or you’ll never survive what’s comin’.”

Svetlana shook her head. “I am only a mother,” she said. “And I need my baby.”

“Get some sleep,” he said.

She decided to trust him until he gave her a reason not to. Most men eventually did. Takamoto and her father were the only men she’d ever trusted for long. Bruno wasn’t exactly a man, but he was worthy. Her enemies were without number, and she was glad to have an ally.

When she woke and rejoined him on the driver’s seat, the road had brought them to a world of reeking swampland. Twisted trees rose from the slime, and black vultures circled above the road. Twelve moons lay scattered across a darkening sky. A ruined castle cast its dark shadow from the top of a hill. The croaking of toads and the songs of insects filled the humid atmosphere. The Greater Thoroughfare ran wide and straight through pools of marshwater, somehow remaining dry as a bone.

Bruno greeted her with a grunt. “Good time to wake up,” he said. “Look ahead.”

A caravan of six carriages approached from the opposite direction; clockwork horses pulled them along in pairs of two. Red banners with black sigils flew from each carriage, and armed guards sat in the driver’s seats. As they rolled closer, passing the iron carriage on its left side, faces appeared at the windows of the coaches. They were pale as bone and painted with red at lips and eyes. It took a moment for Svetlana to realize these were painted masks.

The drivers, too, wore masks. Theirs were bronze or some other dull metal, threatening and grim. Yet the faces inside the coaches were sophisticated and eloquent. The last of the masked ones stared at Svetlana as the big caravan rolled by.

“Beatifics,” Bruno said. “From the Urbille, according to those banners.”

“The Urbille?” she said. “We must turn around and ask to join them.”

Bruno bared his fangs for a moment, huffing through his snout. “No, they’re going the wrong way. We need to find a caravan heading for the City of the Potentates. We’ll have no trouble finding one in Oblivione.”

Svetlana knew he was right. She stared at the line of moons arcing across the sky. It was fully night in the swampland now. The cry of a hungry beast split the evening, a lonesome predator announcing its territory.

I’m getting closer, Dima, she whispered. I’m coming for you.

We will find this Urbille, and we will find you.

Beyond the next porte the road ran across a flatland where a great city had once stood. Like most of the cities along the Thoroughfares, it had fallen to ruins. A group of refugees, survivors, and aliens had built a new community amid the shambles of the old one. It reminded Svetlana of Nil, and she recognized a pattern that endured from world to world: Life springs from death. The sight of another lively community existing in the shadow of ruins gave her a little hope. A tiny flame that she chose to cherish in silence.

“This place is called Nub,” Bruno said. “There is a tavern here known as the Volcano. Domo used to lodge there when he passed. They accept anyone’s coin.”

A stone building next to a sheep corral bore the sign of a flaming mountain. Bruno stabled the carriage, and they went inside for a supper of roasted lamb and strange vegetables. Svetlana found her appetite again and ate mostly vegetables, but the meat was tender and spiced. The patrons of the Volcano were mostly aliens, although several Beatific merchants dined at private tables. She watched them sipping at goblets, but never saw anyone lift his porcelain mask to eat the food.

“Tell me about these masked ones,” she asked Bruno. They shared a bottle of purple wine and a bowl of yellow cherries.

“The formerly fleshed of the Urbille,” he said. “Traded in their flesh and blood for mechanical bodies. It’s what all humans do in the City of the Potentates.”

“Do they ever take off those masks?” she asked.

“Only in private,” he said. “Or in cases of public humiliation. The masks are their public faces.”

Bruno wanted to stay the night and try his hand at a nearby casino. Svetlana convinced him to get back on the road. “I can sleep in the coach if I get tired,” she said. “I want to get to Oblivione as soon as possible.”

Bruno followed her back out to the carriage and spat into the mud. The tiger was feeding from a bucket of meat scraps provided by the stable keepers. They were round-bodied beings with semi-human faces and six jointless arms each. A few weeks ago Svetlana would have been startled by their inhumanity, but they were kindly enough. She had grown used to grotesque wonders.

The iron carriage left town on the Greater Thoroughfare in the dead of night. The sky was moonless and full of blinking stars. The road glimmered ahead as the lights of Nub disappeared behind the vehicle.

“The Greater Thoroughfare seems far less dangerous,” Svetlana said.

“With me at your side you’ve nothing to fear,” said Bruno.

The tiger growled uneasily as it pulled the carriage into a pale mist. The vapors smelled of nightflowers, but there were no flowers in sight. Only reed-like stalks of grass hemming the road. Soon the mist obscured everything, even the tiger. Svetlana heard the beast’s gullet rumbling as it walked through the fog. The carriage moved slower now.

“What is this fog?” Svetlana asked. She turned to see Bruno’s head lying against the headrest of the bench, his fanged mouth open, red tongue hanging loose. His eyes were closed, and gentle snoring came from his snout. The carriage had stopped completely.

Svetlana stood up, or thought she did. She fell forward into the traces. The leather harness caught her like a spider in a web. The tiger lay sleeping or dead in the middle of the road.

The mist was nothing natural. It was a weapon.

She struggled against the lethargy that made her eyes close and lost the fight.

####

She woke with the sweetness of the vapors still in her nostrils. There was pain, and cold metal, but her vision was mass of shifting blurs. She lay on the floor of the carriage’s cabin, black chains wrapped around her wrists and ankles. She squirmed around to get a better view of her condition. Bruno lay like a dead man beside her, wrapped in the same dark chains from shoulder to ankle. Someone had stripped off his armor, along with Svetlana’s boots and weapons.

Her eyes focused on the green-black scales along the back of Bruno’s neck. A drum pounded inside her skull. She wasn’t sure if it was interior pain or external noise. Her ear against the coach’s carpet told her that the vehicle was moving. The sound she heard was the iron wheels rolling. A biting stink met her nostrils and she wanted to puke.

Something dark and gleaming hovered before her face. She focused her eyes, rewarded with a stabbing pain behind them. The barrel of Bruno’s pistol glimmered before the tip of her nose. A short, fat figure sat on the cushioned seat and aimed the weapon at her. Whoever was holding the gun had the reek of a dung rat.

“I see no fear in those eyes,” said a voice. “I see something else altogether.” Throaty, wet, like the sound a man makes when he’s choking to death on his own blood.

The gun withdrew and a round face with a pointed chin replaced it. Its leathery skin was orange with crimson warts, but its flabby throat was fishbelly pale. A wide smile revealed a mouthful of pointed yellow fangs. The ears were huge and pointed, ugly with tufts of black hair. The nose too was pointed, set with a golden ring through the septum. A bronze skullcap enclosed the tiny head, which sat upon a bloated body draped in rusted chain mail. A broad belt supported a curved blade, its pommel bearing a thorny sigil that was also branded into its owner’s forehead.

“A pre-Conversion model, are we?” said the goblin. “You’re as fleshy as I am. Not from the Urbille, that’s for sure. What are you, Goldilocks?”

Svetlana struggled against the chains but they were locked tight. The goblin laughed at her thrashings, which achieved nothing but a few groans from Bruno. The reptoid was finally waking up.

“Stop it,” said the goblin. He aimed Bruno’s pistol at her face again, one claw ready on the trigger. She lay still while Bruno coughed and moaned. The goblin pulled the gun back again. “What a strange pair. A true beauty and a true beast…”

“Who are you?” Svetlana said.

Stall him. Give Bruno time to wake up.

The goblin laughed and spittle dripped from his lower lip.

“I am your master,” he said. “You may call me by that name, or you may call me Drakus the Great. I am the greatest magician in all Oblivione.”

Bruno’s laughter was deep and hearty. “There is nothing magical about you, Drakus,” he said. “You’re a rogue, a scoundrel, and a robber.”

The goblin aimed the pistol at the reptoid’s snout. “My reputation precedes me. You forget the Sleeping Fog that laid you at my feet. A product of my great magic. My soldiers drive your carriage now. I gave the big cat some raw meat and we became fast friends. I will forgive your impertinence once, Lizard, but do not insult me a second time. Now tell me about these books. What are they? Are they valuable?”

Drakus lay the gun aside and pointed to the stack of books that Domo had been reading. They lay in a heap on the seat beside him.

“Tell him nothing,” Svetlana said.

Bruno bared his fangs at the fat goblin. “I don’t know anything about books,” he said. “Those were Pepper Domo’s things before I killed him.”

Drakus scratched his pointed chin, where the wisp of a beard attempted to grow. “This girl of yours is going to the flesh-pits of Oblivione,” he said. “She’ll fetch a good price on the slave market. However, they might not want a specimen like you. Too big and vicious, too hard to control.”

Bruno laughed. “You don’t know her very well.”

“Nevertheless,” said Drakus, “I can kill you now with your own gun.” He shoved the pistol into Bruno’s face again. “And sell her for a fine profit. Taking this coach is already a win for me. I don’t need you, Taildragger. So give me a reason to keep you alive.”

Svetlana strained against her chains, but Bruno lay still. His serpent-eyes blinked, and he sighed. “All I can tell you is which of those serums is poison,” he nodded toward the cabinet built into the carriage wall. “And which of them will give you the magic you crave.”

Drakus opened the cabinet with his stubby, clawed fingers. An array of bottles, vials, and flasks filled the shelves. Domo had emptied nearly half the contents on the journey from Nil, but there were at least a dozen full bottles or vials left. Drakus rifled through them, looking at their chromatic colors in the glow of the window. Outside the chattering of goblins filled the road.

“Which ones are poison?” Drakus asked.

Drakus raised the bottles and vials one by one, fourteen in all, and separated them into two piles based on Bruno’s words.

“Are you sure?” the goblin asked.

“Positive,” Bruno said.

“So these six vials, they are the poisons?” His claws tinkled against the containers.

Bruno nodded. “Powerful enough to kill a living man with a single drink.”

Drakus laughed. “You must think that goblins have no brains,” he said. “You’re trying to make me drink fluids from these other eight vials. Therefore these eight must be the true poisons, which you want me to drink so that you can escape.”

“That’s not–“

“Therefore I won’t drink from the vials you have chosen as safe,” said Drakus. “Instead I’ll make you drink one of them.”

“No,” Bruno said. “Please…”

Drakus’ smile grew wider, swollen pink gums glistening above his fangs. His dark eyes blinked inside tiny pockets of fat. “Ah,” he said. “Now you beg not to drink from this vial.” He paused with the vial hanging over Bruno’s snout. Drakus blinked madly. “You’re trying to trick the trickster, Scaley Dick. You want this serum, don’t you? You want me to pour it down your gullet so you can use its magic to kill me.”

“No,” Bruno said, “no, that’s not the one…don’t make me drink it.”

Drakus stoppered the vial and grabbed another one. “Oh, I won’t,” he said. “Instead I’m going to make this girl of yours drink from one of the vials you say is poison.” He uncorked the vial and held Svetlana’s chin in one claw, while his other lifted the tiny bottle to pour its contents between her lips. He squeezed her jaws, forcing her mouth open, claws biting into her skin.

“No,” Bruno said. “Don’t do that. I lied. They’re all poison. They’re all poison!”

Drakus paused over Svetlana’s mouth. Her eyes rolled as she endured in his grip. Takamoto’s blade lay on the seat opposite to Drakus. She could see its grip and hilt, but there was no way to grab it with her wrists chained behind her back and a two-hundred pound goblin squatting on her stomach.

“I don’t know whether to believe you or not,” said Drakus. “You’ve succeeded in confusing me. But there’s still a quick way to tell if these serums are poisonous.” He dripped the syrupy fluid across Svetlana’s lips and onto her tongue. She tried not to swallow it. His booted feet stamped on her lungs, and she had no choice. The bitter fluid seeped down her throat.

Drakus sat back on his seat and observed her. Bruno lay still. The goblin’s eyes flitted from Bruno to her and back again. He clapped his pudgy hands together and squirmed on the cushions. “What’s going to happen?” he said. He leaned his head forward, balancing elbows on his knees. “Will she die? If so I can still sell her for a good price, but it won’t be at the slave market.”

Bruno watched her. A tiny glimmer of hope glowed in his slit pupils.

Or was it fear?

When the serum hit her belly it blossomed like a fire inside her. The warmth, heat, and vibrations ran along her legs and arms like shockwaves, slamming into her brain like the back of a shovel. Her vision exploded with flashing lights, and she inhaled a great breath into her lungs as her back arched. She screamed as the power ripped through her body, and the fat goblin chuckled. He thought she was writhing in pain. Dying.

Svetlana opened her eyes. An aura of light surrounded her now, but it did not burn or give off heat. It made her feel lighter than air. She grit her teeth as her legs ripped apart the chains confining her ankles. In a swift pivoting motion her bare heels slammed into Drakus’s face. Her legs snapped to rigid hardness, pinning the goblin against the back wall of the bench. His eyes bulged as his fingers grabbed for the pistol again.

The shackles on her wrists came apart like flower-stems. She pulled both legs back and sent her right foot flying into Drakus’s face. The kick snapped the goblin’s neck with a sickening sound. Drakus fell forward and Svetlana caught him in her hands. She punched a fist into his rib cage, howling as the wave of mad energy rushed through her veins, spilling radiance from her eyes, nose, and mouth. She pulled the goblin’s greasy heart from his chest with a shower of purple gore.

Turning to the door, she kicked it off the hinges. The body of Drakus flew from the open door, and the screeching of alarmed goblins filled the air outside. The carriage slammed to a halt, and the tiger roared. A trio of goblins with curved swords rushed toward the doorway, leaping over the corpse of their leader. Svetlana jumped from the doorway, a lioness amid a pack of squat gazelle.

Goblins rushed at her from before and behind the carriage. She grabbed them by their heads, one by one, wrenching the tiny skulls free of their bodies. They fell spurting blood and viscera from the holes her unstoppable fingers tore in their bodies. She howled like a demon, exulting in the slaughter, all the while wondering what was happening to her. She watched from some dim, distant corner of her mind while her body released its rage.

An arrow struck her in the shoulder. She pulled it out and stuck it through the archer’s eye into his tiny brain. When eighteen dead goblins lay in pieces about the carriage, the last few fled into the dark woodland on either side of the road. Svetlana raised her nose to inhale the night air beneath the golden moons. Six of them floated in the sky, each one larger than the last. Something about the moons stirred her blood. Or perhaps it stirred the serum in her blood.

She found the tiger chewing on a goblin corpse. She leaned against the big beast’s back, hugging it with weary limbs. She calmed herself by calming the big cat. Her heartbeat slowed, her breathing returned to normal, and she staggered back to the coach. Bruno still lay wrapped in chains on its floor. She pulled him out and with the last of her serum-given strength, tore the chains from his body. The glow had died away from her skin, but her muscles still bulged with the serum’s magic. The power faded rapidly, and she leaned against one of the big coach wheels.

“So they weren’t all poison,” she said.

Bruno rubbed his limbs where the chains had been. “None of them were poison,” he said. “I knew I could confuse the half-wit. Most of what was left in the cabinet were hallucinogens. The rest were serums of potency, like the one you drank. Bit of an overdose there. One sip would have done you fine. Sorry about that.”

“How did you know he would give me the potency serum? How did you know that I wouldn’t just hallucinate all the way to Oblivione and wake up in the slave pits?”

Bruno gave her a toothy grin. “I was hoping he would make me drink it, but when he picked you I figured it was worth the risk. Either you go mad with strength and set us free, or you take a long head trip leaving me to work something else out.” He grabbed her shoulder, and she looked into his yellow orbs. “We got lucky.”

Svetlana washed the goblin blood from her body in a stream running near to the road. The cold water brought her back to feeling normal, although a crazy energy still lingered in her arms and legs. She didn’t mind it.

“At least they didn’t take us off course,” Bruno said. He piled the goblin corpses into a buffet for the tiger, who was feeding voraciously now. “They were heading to Oblivione too.”

Svetlana squeezed water from her hair and looked in the direction Bruno was pointing. The forest ran on for several kilometers, but rising above the trees in the distance stood the barbed towers of Oblivione. A great black citadel of stone crowned a distant hill thickset with repurposed ruins. The black spires were wicked of design, silhouetted like spears against a pair of red moons.

“Let’s get moving,” Bruno said. “There might be more goblins in this stinking wood.”

Svetlana dressed herself in clean clothing, chose a crimson-and-white cloak from Domo’s luggage, and joined him in the driver’s seat. Bruno had found his tarnished armor and put it back on. The sun was rising as the tiger finished his meal. Bruno stirred him to action with a gentle tug of the reins. The carriage rolled on beneath the dark boughs amid the wavering songs of nightbirds.

“What will find in Oblivione?” she asked.

“Goblins,” Bruno said. “A whole filthy city of ’em. But the place is always full of caravans. It’ll be easy to find one bound for the Urbille. We’ll get you a porcelain mask, so you can pass as a Beatific. Avoid unwanted attention.”

Svetlana’s skull sang ghostly melodies. “Maybe I drank the hallucinogen,” she said. “And all of this is happening inside my head.”

Bruno threw back his head and laughed. Then he put on the silver helm with its mirrored visor. If he’d been wearing that the first time, the fog would not have made him fall asleep. Apparently goblins were more resourceful than Svetlana had suspected. Nasty little creatures. Bruno’s voice sounded hollow when he talked through the visor.

“Maybe none of this is real,” Bruno said. “Maybe we’re all living out the same dream. Or the same nightmare.”

“How can we know for sure?” Svetlana said. She strapped Takamoto’s blade across her back and watched the rim of the world turn crimson.

“How do you know when you’re dreaming that you’re not awake?” Bruno said. “You don’t. A dream always seems real to those inside it. One of Domo’s philosophers said that everything we see is a dream within a dream.”

“If our lives are only dreams,” said Svetlana. “Then who are the dreamers?”

Bruno huffed. “Our true selves? The gods? Maybe there is no dreamer, only the dream itself.”

“I never expected you to speak with such philosophical depth,” Svetlana said.

“I never expected you to kill nineteen goblins with your bare hands,” he said. “But, Shades of Aphelion, I am glad you did!”

Bruno laughed, deep and heartily, until Svetlana found herself laughing too. She wasn’t exactly sure why. It must be the lingering effect of Domo’s serum. They laughed at the absurdity of existence and the wild beauty of dawn. Shadows between the trees watched them with coal-bright eyes.

The road ran through a gate carved in the likeness of a demon’s face. Svetlana and Bruno were still grinning as they passed beneath its stone fangs and into the festering crowds of goblins.

NEXT: “The  Highwayman” 

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

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—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 12

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HARMONA

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9 

Chapter10   Chapter11

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Chapter 12.

A Matter of Time

The world was still green, but it no longer seemed quite as good. Once again Harmona stood atop the Hearthtower watching the sun rise over the worldforest. Three of the six moons were out of sight, the other three pale as bone against the blue sky.

The armor crafted for her by Artisan Therol was lighter and more comfortable than she’d expected. Plates of silvery metal fit snugly upon her legs, torso, and arms. The intricacy of the overlapping scale-plates was stunning. There was no time among the armorers for indulgent decoration, but Therol had engraved the tower-symbol of HearthHome on Harmona’s breastplate. The suit was light as leather yet strong as steel.

“We call it etherium,” the artisan told her. “Following the guidance of the StoneFathers and using ores from the deepest catacomb, we’ve created an alloy of fantastic durability. And it will fit our soldiers as lightly as a second skin.”

The next batch of swords would be made from etherium as well. By that time every one of the 450 soldiers inside HearthHome would complete their training. All of the martial skills they had acquired during the last few weeks would need to be adapted and re-learned by men and women wearing armor. Yet after donning her own set of scale-plate, Harmona realized that the nature of etherium–strong but light–would not require as much adjustment as she had imagined. Perhaps a week more of training, now that everyone was armored.

She leaned on the black staff and observed the spread of HearthHome’s walled environment. From atop the central tower she could see nearly everything except the Inner Sanctum, which lay directly below the main tower. The Great Hall stretched forward from the base of the tower like a great cylinder turned on its side. A maze of walled gardens and orchards surrounded it in all directions, although most of the produce had been picked clean in preparation for siege rations. The four Towers of Lore stood to the north, south, east, and west, miniature versions of Hearthtower with peaked domes at their summits.

From the south rim of the towertop she looked upon the Grand Amphitheatre and the sculpted landscapes of the Outer Courtyard. Now her eyes rose to the great wall that encircled the entire citadel. Men gathered near the watchtowers or paced along the walls, keeping eyes open for the latest Yicori incursion. The black oil was gathered in vats along the wall at precise intervals, and the watchfires burned day and night.

The gardens of the Inner Courtyards had been cut back to half their size in order to create a training yard ran by Captains Duval, Macre, Andolir, and Fedgemont. Even at this early hour the clang of swords and shields filled the air, rising from that great concentration of discipline and sweat. Not so long ago Harmona could stand up here and listen to the wild symphony of birdsongs. Now the clangor of steel and etherium, along with the grunting and shouting of determined warriors, drowned out any other sounds.

Since the first assault of the Yicori upon the wall, sentries had driven them away three more times. No human lives were lost thanks to the burning oil that scorched the apelings from the walls. The Outer Wall was blackened on every side, but the stone stood strong.

Harmona peered beyond the high walls into the depths of the woodland. The Yicori were out there somewhere and in greater numbers than ever. The last two wall attempts had come only two days apart. The Yicori were growing more brave as the main force of their horde assembled. She imagined them out there among the massive tree roots, drooling and snarling, craving the flesh and blood that lay just beyond the big wall. But where were they? She saw no sign of them in the morning light.

They came from the trees…

Of course. They couldn’t be seen from up here because they weren’t travelling on the ground, moving through open meadows, crossing streams, topping hillocks. They hid in the branches of Gaeya’s great trees, moving between them like oversized apes. As far as anyone could tell, they only came down to feed. She scanned the treetops closest to the Outer Wall and watched the sea of leaves rustle in the wind.

There. The wind wasn’t very strong today, but some of the trees quivered, their leaves fluttering in half-seen patterns. Patterns of movement. Harmona walked the entire rim of the Hearthtower, scanning the tops of the trees. Invisible currents moved among the branches in every direction as far as she could see. The trees outside the walls were full of Yicori. She couldn’t see their shaggy, brutish bodies, or their veiney, oblong skulls, but now their presence was obvious.

There were thousands of them out there.

A familiar anger rose in her throat. She cursed the StoneFathers for not telling her this day would come. She thought of her daughters, safely nestled inside the Inner Sanctum with the rest of the children. If the outer defenses fell and the walls were breached, there would be no way to save them. If total defeat threatened, she could take a small group of them through the Hidden Gate, but they’d be marooned on the Thoroughfare. Not much of an improvement over death.

“Damn you, Wail.” Where was the bastard when she so desperately needed his help? Would he even help if he were here? He was a tool of the StoneFathers, serving their will because he had nothing else left. So perhaps it made no difference.

Now that she could see how great the Yicori horde truly was, she couldn’t wait another week. They were sitting out there in every tree, and it was only a matter of time until they came pouring over the wall from all directions at once. Would the flaming oil work when that happened? They’d run out of it before they burned away half the horde.

Her soldiers were armed and armored. The Yicori expected them to sit in here and wait for the inevitable slaughter. So maybe it was time to do the unexpected. Time to put the strength of metal blade and silver skin to the test. To defend these children with nowhere safe to go.

She marched down the spiral stair with a giddy sense of purpose. At the same time her stomach rebelled, but she refused to allow its sickness. She paused at her quarters to pick up the etherium helmet Therol had made for her. It framed her face with pointed wedges at both cheeks and one above the nose. The helm’s crest was a Gaeyan condor spreading metal wings, its eyes set with a pair of black jewels.

With helm and staff on display she walked through the sanctum into the training yard. Duval and a fellow captain noticed her from across the field of dueling men. They all wore the glittering scale-plate armor now. Their helmets were less ornate than the HearthMother’s, each one topped with a spiked crest. Their shields bore the sigils of the Hearthtower and condor. There were three hundred armored men and half that number of women. More women would be training right now if they weren’t pregnant. The matrons now served as caregivers for all the citadel’s children.

Another reason to do what must be done today.

“HearthMother.” Duval greeted her formally, lowering himself to one knee, helmet in the crook of his arm. He was striking in the silver armor, and the triple-scar on his face could not ruin his natural handsomeness. His hair and beard had grown longer, most likely to cover his scars. She knew he felt some embarrassment about his torn face, but the wound had earned him respect and credibility with the defenders of HearthHome. There was no other captain regarded as highly, and none of the others spent so much time advising Harmona.

If this place had a king, it would have to be you, Duval.

“Captains,” she greeted them formally and loudly. “Soldiers of HearthHome! Sons and Daughters of Gaeya!”

One by one, each pair of sparring partners broke off their duels. They removed helms and gauntlets, giving her their attention. Someone kneeled, and that started the rest of them to kneeling. She hadn’t expected that either, and it almost made her weep. She let the new-lit fire in her belly burn away that weakness.

“I have stood atop the Hearthtower this morning and seen our enemy surrounding us on every side.” Men’s eyes darted nervously, and women regarded her with grim expressions. “As your leader I have reached a decision. You can see that I, like you, am dressed for war. Your blades gleam with the brightness of our hearthfires, and your eyes burn with courage. The time has come to fight for your homes and your children. Are you ready to fight?”

The soldiers cheered as one, raising swords and shields above their heads. Duval stared at her. She had not discussed this with him, but there was no time. The enemy was at the gate, .

“The Yicori are hiding in the treetops,” she said. “They haven’t seen our bright armor yet, though some have tasted our blades. And our flame.” She raised the black staff and green fire flared at its head. Another cheer from the onlookers. Others now were stopping to watch her address the troops, including a trio of curious LoreKeepers.

“The time for waiting and training is over,” Harmona said. Her voice rang from the stone walls. “The Yicori are here and we must not let them swarm our walls. They fear our flame already. Now we must teach them to fear us.”

Another cheer. An excitement ran through the armored ranks. Hearts were beating faster. Harmona could almost hear them pounding beneath etherium breastplates. She was playing a role, like she used to do with the Rude Mechanicals. But this role was that of an avenging queen, a goddess of war. She must play it to perfection, and she was ready. No more waiting and fretting. Time to act.

“Today is the day, my friends! Now! Let us take up our swords, open our gate, and march out to meet the enemy. Let us spill Yicori blood across the rich black earth, take their heads to line our walls! Make them fear us! Cut them down!”

The soldiers cheered and wailed and saluted her. She turned to Duval, who looked concerned and confused. “Assemble them at the front gate in fifteen minutes,” she said. “We’re taking the fight to the Yicori.”

“Are you certain?” Duval asked. His blue eyes bored into her own. Suddenly she missed Dorian, an unexpected stab of pain. Or guilt. But she had no time for such things.

“It’s time,” she said.

The captains began barking orders and the transition from practice-yard to full formation began. The clanging of metal and the shouted bravado of men filled the yard. She stood before the front gate, waiting for the captains to get their men into place. She spoke with the gate captain and advised him to open the gates wide enough for three men at a time to run through, but no more. While the soldiers poured out, there would be no room for Yicori to leap inside, but the gate must be closed immediately after the last soldiers passed through it.

Duval and the captains insisted on leaving a third of their force inside the walls as reserves. That meant 300 soldiers under twelve captains would follow Harmona into the chaos beyond the gate. The gate captain gave Harmona a curved horn that would signal a retreat, although Duval carried one just like it. Until the master of the gate heard that signal, it would remain closed.

StoneFathers preserve us.

Duval gave the call, and gatesmen cranked the winch that opened the great stone doors. A blast of forest air, earthy and fragrant, rushed into the courtyard. Every second the gap grew wider and wider, and every second Harmona feared to see a mass of Yicori pouring through the gap. Harmona held her breath until the gates stood wide enough for three people to pass through it shoulder-to-shoulder. Then she ran headlong into the green shadows with Duval on her left and Macre on her right.

They ran between gnarled tree-roots and clusters of giant ferns. Here and there rays of sunlight fell through the canopy, and sprinkles of pollen glimmered on the air like faerie dust. Yet the forest was quiet. The shouts of men and women running in armor and waving weapons at unseen foes faded to an eerie calm as the gate rumbled shut behind them. The entire company stood outside now, in the killing fields below the great trees. Where was their enemy? Harmona studied the high branches. Her eyes couldn’t penetrate the canopy very far. There might be a thousand Yicori moving into position up there completely unseen.

“I can smell them,” Duval said. “There’s a reek on the wind.”

Men stood with shields and swords at the ready. Eyes scanned left and right, then up, always up. Waiting. Ready to kill, or to die. It began as a slight trembling in the branches. Then a shower of moss and leaves began to fall on the ranks.

“Stay within sight of the gate!” Harmona yelled. “Don’t get lost in the trees. They’re coming!”

“They move quietly,” said Duval, “until they strike.” The horror in his eyes was one of memory, not expectation. He was reliving the attack that killed Dorian and marred his face. She sensed his anger rising like a fever.

“Come and get it you bastards!” someone shouted. Someone else howled a war cry, and if he’d carried a spear instead of a sword he probably would have launched it into the branches.

Harmona raised her black staff. A blast of green flame shot from it and rocketed through the tree canopy. It left a vertical shaft of scorched leaf and wood, and the flames spread into the trees themselves. Now the howls of Yicori filled the forest, and they dropped from the trees like shaggy white boulders.

They grabbed men and dashed them against the tree trunks, wrapped their fanged mouths about arm and leg, slashed with crooked talons. The initial onslaught might have destroyed the company two weeks ago, but the armored men bounced off the trees and raised their swords. Those with enemies gnawing at their limbs drove blades through the eyes and into the brains of the Yicori. The beasts’ fangs and claws could not pierce the etherium armor, but their blows could still knock men off their feet.

Silver metal sank deep into matted fur, sliced open distended bellies. Duval split a beast’s ovoid skull, spilling its brains across the ferns. Harmona blasted a Yicori full in the face with her flamestaff. It lumbered at her through the gout of burning emerald as if it were no more than a spray of harmless water. Yet its fur caught fire, and when it came close enough to grab her there was no flesh left on its blackened skull.

Three times she was knocked down by the claws of the brutes, and three times she responded with a fatal blast of fire. She carried a sword, but it was largely a symbol. She hadn’t had time to get comfortable using it. Her staff was far more formidable, and it too was a symbol of her leadership. A raving Yicori ripped a man’s arm from its socket, and the first spray of human blood littered the battlefield.

She burned the arm-ripper to a crisp. The bleeding man howled and clutched at his ruined shoulder. She couldn’t do anything for him, so turned to face the next rushing Yicori, launching a bolt of flame down its throat. She heard another man die in agony, then another. The Yicori had figured out how to break their enemies apart like shellfish, tearing off their limbs one by one.

Heaps of dead and dying Yicori filled the glade, yet now the bodies of men and women began to join them. Duval killed one beast after another, and most of the warriors followed his example. But the initial shock of their superior arms had worn off, and the Yicori were adapting quickly. More of them dropped from the trees. Their greater numbers meant eventual retreat or annihilation for the defenders of HearthHome. Harmona’s soldiers could only stay out here so long. How many dead men would it take to make her or Duval sound the horn of retreat? She had no time to count the bodies as she moved about, casting flames where they were needed.

The Yicori kept dying, but more of them kept on coming. At least a hundred shaggy corpses lay across the glade. There were maybe a dozen dead men and women. Harmona remembered her daughters inside the sanctum, afraid and probably wondering if their mother would make it back. She had to keep fighting for them. This was no time for weakness. Her people were dying, yes, but they were killing far more Yicori. Eating away at the beasts’ numbers, one sword-stroke, one flame-bolt at a time.

The black staff grew hot in her hands, and she had to drop it. She could not command the staff’s energies unless her bare skin touched it, so she had not worn gauntlets. Yicori blood stained her etherium scales crimson. It leaked down her face from the condor crest. She pulled the sword from its scabbard and met the next charging Yicori. The monster scooped her up in its arms, like a bear might hug its prey, and she looked into its impossible eyes. Planets and stars swum in tiny constellations within those pitch-black orbs. Its tiny snout of a nose gaped redly, and beneath that was a fanged maw large enough to snap the head right off her shoulders.

Tearing herself away from its eyes, she drove the sword point-first through its breastbone until the tip emerged from its hairy back, dripping a syrupy crimson. In its death throes the creature tossed her away, and she crashed against a tree bole. Her sword went flying into the underbrush, and she fell into a mass of tangled roots. There was pain, but no broken bones thanks to the armor. She straightened the helm on her head and realized she had no weapon.

A new wave of Yicori dropped from the trees. Duval stepped in front of Harmona, and a leaping brute smashed into his shield. It drove him and her back against the tree, snarling and snapping at his shield. Duval thrust his blade into the beast’s mouth, piercing the back of its oversized head. It fell away from them, and Duval turned to check her condition.

“I’m all right,” she said.

“They are too many,” he said. “We’ve got to withdraw while this is still a victory.”

The reek of the slaughter hit Harmona all at once. The smell of blood and guts and feces mingled into an aroma of death. Turning away from Duval, she wretched into the mud.

“HearthMother!” Captain Fedgemont brought her the black staff, which was still warm to the touch. Like everything else it was stained with Yicori blood.

So many Yicori had come down from the trees that while some continued fighting others fought among themselves to devour the corpses of soldiers. The turning point had come. Duval was right.

She blew a clear, loud note on the horn while Duval and Fedgement defended her. It rang through the treetops and bounced off the citadel walls, echoing through the worldforest. Even the Yicori paused for a moment, unused to hearing such an odd sound on their world. Perhaps they thought it was the cry of some giant predatory bird about to swoop down and join the killing.

All those who could do so broke off their engagements and fled for the gate. The Yicori snatched fleeing men and tore them apart. Getting back to the citadel’s entrance required a wall of flame from Harmona’s staff. Her palms were blistered from its heat by the time she reached the gate. It stood open once again, enough for three-at-a-time to pass inside.

Soldiers in red-stained armor rushed through the gate. Some carried the wounded between them, while others formed a human barrier to support the retreat. Now the deaths came quicker. Harmona wept as the cost of a successful retreat dawned on her. She rushed away from the gate, weaving nets of green flame among the slavering brutes. Men rushed on either side of her, heading for the gap. She would have stayed there and died for them if Duval hadn’t grabbed her about the waist and carried her through gate.

Her last glimpse of the field was a red tangle of Yicori and human bodies. Fresh packs of apelings dropped now to feast on the dead. One soldier was still alive in the red chaos, crawling toward the gate that was already swinging closed. Harmona reached for him, but Duval pulled her back and the door was almost shut. The crawling man had no legs, but he refused to die. A Yicori leaped on him, lifted him high, and tore off his head.

A few shaggy claws were shoved through the gap, but the closing gate sliced each of them off. They fell twitching and bleeding in the courtyard. The smell of death was in the courtyard now; it had slipped in when the Yicori failed to.

Those inside looked to Harmona with filth-smeared faces, their fine armor tarnished with gore, some of them biting back the pain of open wounds. She took off her helmet and lifted the steaming black staff in her throbbing fist. Her face was a mess of tears and blood, but she didn’t care.

“Now…” Her voice gave out. She cleared her dry throat. “Now they fear us!”

The soldiers cheered and waved their bloody swords in the air. Some of them grabbed the sliced-off Yicori claws and brandished them as tokens of victory. The captains led the company into the Great Hall, where wine and physicians waited for them. A light, steady rain fell across the worldforest, quenching the fires the black staff had started.

Harmona washed her face in a public fountain and waited for Duval’s report.

“Fedgemont didn’t make it,” he said. They shared a bottle of sharpberry wine in the courtyard. Neither of them felt like joining the survivors yet, and neither of them had taken a serious wound.

“How many others?” Harmona asked.

“Twenty-six dead,” Duval said. “Twice that number of wounded. Yet without the armor and weapons of the StoneFathers every one of us would be dead. We did well today, Harmona. You did well.”

His blue eyes sparkled, and she looked away. The face of the crawling legless man lingered in her mind. She couldn’t recall his name.

“Too many deaths,” she said.

“No,” said Duval. “Less than ten percent casualties, and most of the wounds aren’t severe. This was a victory.”

Harmona laughed as she cried. She wasn’t exactly sure which one started first.

“Twenty-six dead and you call it a victory?”

Duval moved closer to her. He took her blistered hands into his own. “You need to see the physicians,” he said. “Get some balm for this.”

“I will,” she said.

“Harmona.” She turned to face him, closer than she’d ever been to his lips and his strong, square jaw. “No war can be won without losses. We killed at least two hundred of those things today. Two hundred Yicori! That means we killed ten times more than we lost. We are ten times more deadly than them. The next battle we will fight even harder, and we’ll know that we can win. Today you did what I never expected, and it’s restored the faith of everyone here. We have hope now, something we sorely need. We made them fear us.”

Harmona shook her head. “No, I don’t think they fear us at all. They’re too dumb for that. We have simply learned how to kill them. Now you tell me we’ll get even better at it. We have changed from hunters to killers, and we’ll never be the same.”

Duval smiled. “At least we’ll be alive.”

Harmona almost embraced him, but she pulled away at the last second.

“Thank you,” she said, wishing the words meant something more.

“I can see now how we’ll have to fight this war,” Duval said. “We’ll keep going out to meet them until we’ve slain them all. If we can learn to do this while keeping our casualties to a minimum–“

“We still don’t know how many are there,” she said. “They could swarm over the walls, five thousand, ten thousand of them at once. What’s to stop them?”

Duval had no answer. “Perhaps the StoneFathers can tell us their numbers?” he said. “Give us a better idea what we’re facing. What do you think?”

“It’s worth asking,” she said. “After I take off this armor and wash the filth from my hair. Tomorrow there will be funerals for those lost today. I’ll speak to the StoneFathers tonight.”

“I’ll go with you–“

“No,” she said. “Meet me at the eleventh hour. We will talk. Sleep won’t come easy tonight.”

She left him there and went to find warm water, fresh robes, and bandages for her hands.

####

The StoneFathers were waiting for her. The eyes and mouths of all thirty-nine faces glimmered with soft light. They had been doling out secrets and wisdom for weeks now to LoreKeepers and Artisans. Her initial anger at their lack of honesty had kept her away until today.

“Do you see how mighty we’ve made you?” said the face of the Seventeenth Father.

“The etherium has made you invulnerable,” said the Fifth.

“And deadly,” said the Sixth.

“Twenty-six more people died today,” Harmona said. “Were they part of your plan too?”

“You led them into battle,” said the Seventeenth Father. “Yet you blame us for their deaths?”

“I did only what you forced me to do,” she said. Her anger was back, burning in her palms beneath the clean bandages. “Can you tell me how many there are? I need the exact numbers of the Yicori. It will help our strategies.”

“As we have said, this is the last tribe of Yicori,” said the Ninth Father.

“There can’t be more than three thousand,” said the Twenty-Fifth.

“Possibly quite a bit less,” said the Thirty-Ninth.

“You killed two hundred today,” said the Seventeenth. “You make us proud.”

“Do not be proud!” Harmona said. “Do not take pride in our killing to survive. Do not take pride that you trapped us and forced us to fight for a home. Rather you should be ashamed. More will die as we continue to fight. And if you’re right in your estimations, we are still outnumbered ten to one.”

“We understand,” said the Seventeenth. “Your Artisans are preparing even now to forge the first blades of etherium. They will slice quicker and deeper. Your next battle will see twice as many Yicori slain.”

“And twice as many of us dead? Fifty deaths the next time? A hundred the time after that? Is that the heart of this mad game? We keep killing and killing and in the end its all just numbers.”

“We predict ultimate casualties in the forty to sixty percent range, with total victory as the end result,” said the Ninteenth Father. A bat flew out of the tangled moss hanging from his chin.

“Sixty percent?” Harmona took a deep breath. “That’s at least two hundred more people dead. Acceptable losses? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“In the greater scheme of things, yes,” said the Seventeenth.

The thirty-nine stone faces stared at her in silence. They never blinked.

“Tell her,” said the First.

“Go on, tell her the rest,” said the Ninth.

The Seventeenth Father groaned, a sound like a disturbance deep in the earth.

“The transition is already underway,” said the Seventeenth, “therefore it can do no harm. You have earned a greater portion of the truth.”

Harmona waited. Would they give her the whole story this time or keep telling her only what she needed to know. She tried not to think about hundreds more dead bodies in bloodied silver, or packs of Yicori devouring them raw.

“Long ago, as your breed reckons the flow time,” said the Seventeenth, “we built an empire of worlds. We cast a matrix of immortal stone across a network of parallel dimensions. We gathered Affinities in their thousands and wove them together. The folk of these worlds served us for eons.”

“The Nexus,” Harmona said. A road between worlds made of imperishable stone. Of course it was the StoneFathers who had made the Thoroughfares. Who else could it have been? Wail had always called them something else. The Ministere de Stone.

“We ruled this network of worlds from our home at the center of the Nexus, a place known to you as the Urbille,” said the Seventeenth. “Lesser empires grew beneath us, and empires within empires, yet the whole of it served our interests. Civilizations arose and fell, but the Empire of Stone persisted, a cosmic constant bringing order to a chaotic universe.”

“Until the day when our nemesis arose where we least expected it,” said the Twelfth Father. “An advanced race of great power invaded our Nexus.”

“Like a virus,” said the Third Father.

“With arcane powers they set loose the forces of entropy that we had dammed for so long,” said the Seventeenth. “A wave of cosmic disruption swept across the Empire of Stone, devastating world after world, spreading the disease of apocalypse from reality to reality. They brought us low. We survived only be separating ourselves from space and time.”

“Long and long again it has taken us to reestablish ourselves within the Nexus,” said the Fifteenth Father. “The Urbille is rightly ours, and we will take it back.”

“Our conquerors stole it from us along with the remains of our scattered empire,” said the Seventeenth. “They took the Nexus and all its worlds, only to war among themselves for the next ten thousand years. Their neglect allowed the worlds of the Nexus to fall further into ruin. Their nature was to be vicious, and they slaughtered themselves in stellar conflagrations, until only a handful were left to rule a crumbling transdimensional empire.”

“These last few conquerors became known as the Potentes of Urbille,” said the Sixth, “and they have reigned over the Nexus far too long now. They are few, but their powers are still great. So we have waited, plotted, whispered, appointed our champions, and made our designs upon these Potentates.”

“The Urbille and the Nexus will once again belong to us,” said the Seventeenth Father. “Your people, whom we have rescued from living death, are making this possible.”

“I don’t understand,” Harmona said. “What do the Yicori have to do with the Potentates of Urbille?”

“Patience, little one,” said the Seventeenth. “There is more to reveal.”

“You know that the Yicori are flesh-eaters,” said the Fifteenth Father. “You see how they crave the taste of human meat. Wail has told you the Potentates are carnivores, has he not?”

“He has…”

“The Potentates feed on human flesh that is cast aside during the Conversion process,” said the First Father.

“Their Harvesters gather fresh meat from across the Affinities,” said the Second. “And the population of the Urbille swells ever greater with clockwork replacement bodies. Nobody in the city has an inkling that the fair flesh they were so eager to escape goes to fill the bellies of the Potentates. This is the truth that Wail discovered, and it’s the truth that drove him mad. Yet it drove him to us, and we made him sane again. Gave him a purpose.”

“I know this,” Harmona said. “All of us do. It’s why we agreed to leave the Urbille. And now we find another species that wants to devour us.”

“No,” said the Ninteenth. “Not another species.”

“One and the same,” said the First Father.

Harmona felt dizzy.

“The Yicori that you face here on Gaeya,” said the Seventeenth Father, “are of the same bloodline as those who call themselves the Potentates of Urbille. In fact, the shaggy ones are the direct ancestors of the highly evolved Potentates.”

“Yicorithicus Minor,” said the Sixth Father, “evolves into Yicorithicus Major over the course of several million years.”

“Yicorithicus Major are the Potentates,” said the Seventeenth. “The brutes you fight on this world are Yicorithicus Minor. They will evolve into our nemesis, those who stole our empire.”

“If they are allowed to live,” said the Ninth Father.

“Your people are cutting out the roots,” said the Thirty-Ninth Father, “so that the tree of evil never grows.”

“But how?” Harmona asked. “How are we fighting the distant ancestors of the Potentates millions of years before they evolve into cosmic conquerors? How is that possible?”

“It is in the nature of the Hidden Gate,” said the Twenty-Ninth Father. “All of the worlds along the Nexus flow in a simultaneous and linear temporal progression. The past is the past anywhere along the Nexus, and the future is the future. The Greater and Lesser Thoroughfares flow through space, penetrating and binding domains of positive matter, but they do not flow through time. The Nexus links thousands of dimensions into one great network.”

“But the Hidden Gate,” said the Eleventh Father, “isn’t like the gates of the Nexus, the ones you call portes. The Hidden Gate is a vacuity, an anomaly, like the random fissures in time/space that occur during rabid weather inside the Urbille. With Wail’s help, we manifested and stabilized a vacuity of our own–a hole in space and time–a breach leading outside the Nexus to a specifically chosen world at a very precise time in the remote past.”

“Gaeya lies removed in time and space from the Nexus,” said the Third Father, “by a factor of approximately fifty billion years.”

“This is the birthworld of the Yicorithicus Minor, who will one day become the Potentates,” said the Fifth. “We gave you this home in the remote past so you can destroy this race of carnivorous brutes before they evolve into our nemesis.”

“If these proto-Potentates are completely extinguished here in the past, their descendants will never evolve to conquer the future,” said the Thirty-Ninth Father. “Think of the lives you’ll save across the worlds. Think how many millions of your kind they have devoured, replacing Organic life with mechanical lies.”

“The Yicori here stand at the most fragile point in their evolutionary history,” said the Seventeenth. “Once they pass this phase, a hundred thousand years from now, there will be no stopping them. They will destroy this world and consume several more before breaking into the Nexus and destroying the Empire of Stone. Your people can stop all of it, Harmona. This is why you are here. This is how we bring down the Potentates and reclaim our domain.”

“So you’ve chosen us to weed your garden,” Harmona said. “To drive the serpent from your paradise. You call us champions, but we’re actually your agents of genocide. You didn’t bring us here to save us, you brought us here to use us.”

“And in so doing, we have saved you,” said the Sixteenth.

“Except for the sixty percent of us doomed to die in the struggle,” she said.

“Acceptable losses to win a world,” said the Sixth. “And to save the future from the omnipotent predators who have stolen it.”

“To win an empire of worlds,” said the First.

“To save the lives of everyone who has been devoured by the Potentates,” said the Seventeenth.

“Except for my people! My people don’t get a second chance, not even in mechanical bodies! We die and we stay dead. For you and your rotten empire.”

“For your own world,” said the Seventeenth. “Gaeya is yours forever.”

“Once the Yicori are gone,” said the First.

“What else will you do?” said the Thirty-Ninth Father. “Lead your people back through the Hidden Gate, a pack of refugees lost on the Thoroughfare and begging for a home? How long would they last out there? This is your home now, Harmona. Your only home. You must fight for it, and you have already begun to do so. Take pride in it.”

Harmona nodded, her temper subsiding beneath a grim resolution. “We will do this only because we must,” she said. “Once it’s done I will have this chamber collapsed and sealed. I will take no more advice or assistance from the StoneFathers. We win this war, we commit this genocide, and we’re done with you. You’ll leave us alone and let us find our own way on Gaeya.”

“Agreed,” said the Tenth Father.

“Of course,” said the Ninth.

“We have an arrangement then,” said the Seventeenth, “once the Yicori are gone.”

“None may survive,” said the Fifteenth.

“Not a single one,” said the Third.

“The roots must be cut out,” said the Seventeenth, “so that the tree can never grow.”

The eyes of the great stone faces flickered like torches. She imagined the day when this chamber would be dark and lifeless, the walls and their faces collapsed into piles of dead rock. A silent tomb. She wondered how many more deaths it would take to reach that day.

NEXT: “The Road to Oblivione”

Send your feedback to: johnny-nine@comcast.net 

_____________________________

—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —

A FEW ODD SOULS – Ch. 10

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VIVANT

Previous Chapters:

Chapter1  Chapter2  Chapter3

Chapter4  Chapter5  Chapter6

Chapter7  Chapter8  Chapter9

————————————–

Chapter 10. 

Creep City

The iron carriage rolled from world to world. Svetlana rode with Bruno in the driver’s seat most of the time. She felt an odd desire to prove herself to the reptoid.

Maybe it was his dismissal of her as less than worthy to be travelling with him. But it was Pepper Domo who called the shots and paid the bills. And maybe Bruno had a point when he said Domo was “sweet” on her.

It didn’t matter. Dima was all that mattered.

I will find you.

The promise had become a silent prayer.

The road led across a plain of purple grass where herds of shaggy mammoths grazed. The air was crisp, as if it might snow. This world reminded Svetlana of her homeworld in autumn.

Domo referred to each gateway as a porte, and not all of them were guarded. In fact, the farther the carriage got from Domo’s world, the less battles she and Bruno had to fight. Another band of scavengers had fled when Bruno shot their leader in the head. One of the portes was set in a tangled forest where sunlight never broke through the upper canopy. The road led through a mass of towering mushrooms, a forest-within-a-forest where six-legged wolves stalked the carriage. Bruno blasted three of them to ash. It took six slugs from Svetlana’s pistol to bring a single beast down.

Sometimes the road led through kilometers of ruins, the former capitols of dead worlds. Nothing was left of those places but heaps of slag, the bones of dead towers, and piles of blackened bones. Even in those landscapes of endless wreckage, figures moved like shadows, eyeing the carriage, calculating the odds of a successful raid. A glance from Bruno sent most intelligent creatures running in terror.

The remains of fallen civilizations lay scattered across the Affinities. Yet just as often the road ran through pristine wilderness or star-flecked wastelands. The carriage rolled across a marshland where clouds of cosmic dust hung between clustered moons. The oily water on either side of the road reflected the stars, creating the illusion that the road floated in the night sky. Svetlana looked for the constellations she knew as a child, but they were nowhere to be found. These were strange stars gleaming in strange colors.

When the porte appeared at the far end of the marsh road, a colossal reptile rose from the slime. It glided legless along the road, fanged mouth open wide enough to swallow the carriage whole. Its forked tongue slid out like a red carpet toward the iron wheels. Svetlana scrambled for her pistol, but as usual Bruno was quicker. He grabbed a spear-gun from behind the bench, aimed it for a half-second at the serpent’s black cave of a mouth, and let the spear fly. It pierced the back of the serpent’s mouth and sank deep into its brain. The beast’s head flew backward and its massive coils spasmed, sending up spumes of muddy water. The green tiger waited for the beast to thrash itself off the road, then pulled the carriage through the gate. The great coils fell still, and a pack of eight-legged lizards rushed out of the swamp to devour the dead giant.

A world of snow and ice came next. Svetlana rode inside with Domo for awhile. Bruno seemed impervious to the cold and wind. “Thanks to my serums, Bruno is immune to the hazards of weather.” Domo told her that Bruno’s terrific speed was also due to alchemical treatments. She suspected the reptoid would still be a deadly warrior even without Domo’s potions.

“There is a settlement after this next porte,” Domo said. “Umbraxia. A crossworld free market, if you will. Nothing as fine or well-established as Nil, but a good source for oddities and trinkets. There are no humans at all there, so I’m afraid you will be quite conspicuous. We will find safe lodging there, but when we walk the markets you’ll want to stay close to Bruno and me.”

“I can take care of myself,” Svetlana said. It sounded like something a naive child would say, but she was tired of Bruno’s silent dismissals. The serums apparently not only made him faster and stronger, but also arrogant.

“Of course,” Domo said, his eye-stalks quivering. “Yet there is strength in numbers. And I’d hate to lose you.”

He offered her a vial of azure liquid. “This will counteract the cold.” She drank it and sat quietly while Domo read from one of his old books.

“How many different worlds are there?” she asked.

The stalked eyes looked up from their page. “If philosophers and sages are to be counted as experts,” he said, “there are an infinite number of worlds. I tend to agree with this theory.”

“Does the road run through all of them?”

Domo laughed. “Oh, my dear, no. Not even the Thoroughfare can span infinity.”

“How many worlds does the road serve?”

“Nobody knows,” said Domo. “The best estimates put the number at well over a thousand, yet alternative scenarios propose as much as three times that number. As I say, nothing has been proven.”

“Why connect so many worlds?” she asked. “What was the original purpose of this Thoroughfare? If it was meant to preserve the empire that built it, then it failed.”

Domo shrugged. “Seems to me that whatever beings conquered these worlds built this road to unify their multidimensional domain. Only by the sharing of free trade and ideas can an empire thrive, grow, and avoid stagnation. Every empire builds roads to put its stamp on conquered realms. But I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed in every history book: Empires always fall. It doesn’t matter how powerful or glorious they are, it doesn’t matter how long they’ve lasted, in the end they always topple under their own weight. Time is the great enemy of conquerors and no empire is eternal. “

Svetlana smiled. “What sort of beings could conquer so many worlds?”

Domo giggled. “An intriguing question, and one often debated by the Philosophers of Sub-Nil. The great sage Ongo Dagith has a famous quote on this topic: ‘To conquer all of time and space, or a great and worthy portion thereof, a conqueror must exist outside of time and space.’ Do you understand?”

Svetlana shook her head.

“Dagith is saying that whoever or whatever built the Thoroughfare must be an entity or entities that dwell outside of the space/time continuum.”

“What sort of people exist outside of space and time?”

Domo leaned in close to her, his eyes floating before hers. “Not people, my dear,” he said. “But something else entirely…or things. Perhaps they are non-things, since they exist outside of temporal reality.”

Domo sipped from his goblet. He raised a finger. “Before we get to Creep City, you should know–“

The carriage rocked and Domo’s words were lost. Svetlana braced herself against the wall as Domo bounced off the ceiling. She opened the door, and the wind blew snow into the coach. She stepped into the frozen night. The road itself was free of snow accumulation, but it ran through a canyon of snowdrifts now. Bruno wasn’t on the driver’s bench, and the green tiger was in a rage, jostling the coach back and forth.

Domo stuck his head out and yelled at her. She couldn’t hear a word over the roaring wind, but she saw the dark shapes whirling about the tiger. Ragged wisps of shadow with hearts of burning flame, they surrounded the feline.

Svetlana moved forward, crouching low with sword and pistol.

The tiger swept a massive paw at the apparitions, but his claws found no substance to maul. Bruno lay on the road face-down. A shadow crouched on his back, a vaguely humanoid thing of churning darkness. She swept her blade through its body and had no more effect than the big cat’s claws. The specter turned away from Bruno’s body. A flaming skull emerged from its interior darkness, a man’s skull with the fangs of a dog or jackal.

The shadow swept over her. She fired two rounds in sheer panic and swiped her blade at the skull. The blade’s tip struck a spark from the ancient bone. Something physical to fight now: skulls wrapped in cocoons of shadow and flame.

The shadow-thing’s thoughts invaded her head like burning knives. She yowled and dropped her weapons, clutching at the burning skull inside the shadow. Its invisible fingers dug into her mind. Her vision clouded and drops of blood fell from her eye, dripping across the front of her tunic. She grabbed the skull and squeezed it with every bit of strength she had left. Its flames were cold as ice, and her fingers went numb. But Domo had said his serums made her stronger. She putting that claim to the test now.

Unable to crush the burning skull with her bare hands, she slammed it against the hard road, cracking it like a boiled egg. The cloak of shadow flickered about her. She raised the skull again, the pain in her head driving her to animal ferocity. She slammed to the road again and again, until it burst into a cloud of yellow shards. The shadow and flame died as one, and she sat on her knees in the flying snow. Bruno lay before her dead or unconscious. The shadow-thing had been feeding on him when she interrupted it. Now three of the wraiths were feeding on the tiger, who leaped about trying to swat them or catch them in his fangs.

An eruption of light broke the night, then another, and another. Domo stood on the driver’s bench. His glass scepter fired bolts of glaring brightness at the wraiths. One by one they shriveled and faded. Domo leaped down to calm the tiger, rubbing its fur and whispering into its big ears. Svetlana dragged Bruno to the door of the coach. She couldn’t detect a pulse through Bruno’s thick layer of scales. She waited for Domo to join her.

“He’s alive,” Domo said, examining the reptoid. “Thanks to you.” His twin eyeballs regarded her with pride. “Let’s get him inside where I can treat him.”

“What were those things?” she asked. They placed Bruno on one of the inside benches, and Domo shuffled through his bottles of serums.

“Spirits of the vengeful dead,” Domo said. “Psychic predators, guardians of the frozen gate. That’s what I wanted to tell you about Creep City. It can be quite unsettling, especially for those who have never interacted with the non-living.”

“Non-living?”

“The undead, as it were,” he said.

“You mean ghosts?”

Domo laughed as he poured a colorless liquid down Bruno’s throat.

“Ghosts, ghouls, specters, vampires,” he said. “Drinkers of blood, stealers of souls. These are only a few of the dangers lying beyond the frozen gate.”

Svetlana nodded. How could the worlds ahead be any more strange than the worlds behind?

“I’ll need you to drive for awhile,” Domo said. “If you don’t mind.”

While the Apothecary tended to Bruno, whose wounds were primarily of a psychic nature, Svetlana climbed into the driver’s seat. The tiger was restless, ready to be rid of this cold world. She barely took the reigns in hand when the beast launched forward. The frozen gate was closer than she imagined, but it was not easy to see beyond the curtains of flying sleet. The road ran directly toward the ice-sheathed obelisks, and Svetlana guided the carriage into the world beyond.

A blast of warm air came as a relief after the frozen world. Her eyes blinked against the brilliance of instant daylight. The sky here was a great bowl of blue filled with amber clouds. An instant of vertigo made Svetlana dizzy when she looked to the side of the road. Apparently the highway here floated in the sky thousands of meters above the earth. It was a sky-spanning bridge higher than she thought was possible. Looking down from left or right, the hills, valleys, and rivers of a green world glimmered far below the sky-bridge. The carriage rolled up a long steady slope, heading toward the zenith of the arching road. The Thoroughfare was no wider here than anywhere else, and there were no railings along its sides to prevent careless travelers from falling to their deaths. The entire bridge was supported by massive pillars tall as mountains, hundreds of them stretching into the distance.

The road ran upward until it disappeared into the clouds. Gusts of wind whipped at Svetlana’s cloak and braided hair. She worried that it might sweep the carriage right off the bridge, but the tiger pulled it steadily as ever into the cloud-realm. Now and then the clouds parted, and Svetlana glimpsed the ruins of another dead city far below. This one lay near a great waterfall on the side of a mountain, a tangled heap of stone and crystal debris. For the next three hours the carriage moved through a landscape of golden vapors that completely hid the tremendous drop on either side of the bridge-road.

When the carriage reached the road’s summit, it ran level again and the clouds spread away from it. Svetlana saw the centermost pillar of the great sky-bridge now, a spire of green stone large as a mountain. Atop its flat peak rose a collection of towers and curious domes fuming with the smokes of a living settlement. It was a small city, but it was splendid and beautiful, carved from the naked rock of the mountain-spire. Strange gardens grew thick among the terraced buildings, and fountains spewed geysers of cool water.

The Thoroughfare ran straight through lofty Umbraxia and down into the cloudscape on the other side of the mountain-spire. A giant armored in bronze stood before the city gate with a great axe slung across his shoulder. Four ivory tusks jutted from his big jaws, and a golden war-helm seemed a bit too small for his head. As the carriage rolled toward him, Svetlana tensed and rested fingers on her sidearm.

The giant could have raised his weapon and sliced the carriage in half, but instead he only smiled and kneeled to pet the tiger. Massive, gnarled fingers rubbed the cat’s back and it purred, licking at the giant’s warty skin. The giant cooed at the tiger for awhile, then raised his eyes to the carriage.

“Where is Bruno?” the giant asked. It sounded as if he were carrying a load of gravel in his throat.

“Inside,” Svetlana said. Her thumb pointed to the coach. “He is not feeling well.”

“Does Pepper Domo ride within?” asked the giant.

“He does. We’re to rent lodging in Umbraxia for a brief stay.”

The giant nodded. His attention returned to the tiger for a few more moments. Domo stuck his head out the door. He waved at the giant, who stood back and let the carriage pass. Umbraxia seemed much like any other city, although it was more beautiful than most. As Domo had warned, there were no humans at all here. A race of wingless bird-people moved about the streets, dressed in flowing robes and intricately patterned clothing. Their heads were like the heads of sparrows or cardinals, their voices high and piercing with a melodic timbre.

The chittering Umbraxians walked along beautifully landscaped streets arguing, singing, and making commerce. They stared at the iron carriage with blinking birds’ eyes as it rolled along. There were no other vehicles like it in the city. Some of their kind stood as sentinels on the corners of rooftops, armed with halberds and crossbows. A few bands of the beaked folk rode in clever baskets suspended from floating hot-air balloons. Dozens of these conveyances glided between the towers, some venturing out among the sea of clouds.

Moving easily among the Umbraxians, apparently on equal terms with them, were packs of armored goblinoids much like the ones Svetlana had seen at the gate of Nil. Green of skin, pointed of ear and tooth, these waist-high warriors strolled with the proud air of giants. Svetlana imagined that in great numbers they would be quite dangerous.

As the tiger pulled the carriage toward its destination–Domo’s chosen lodging house–Svetlana watched two furious goblins in a street fight. One of them bit the other’s ear off while their companions watched leaping and laughing. She didn’t see the end of the contest since the crowds of amused Umbraxians blocked her vision.

The tiger pulled up beside a stone hall with a roof of painted timbers. The smell of roasting meat rose from its double chimney, and the bird-folk sat dining and drinking on three different patios. A sign above the house read TOP O’ THE MOUNTAIN in Umbraxian script. Bruno emerged from the carriage first, followed by Domo in his gaudiest silken robe.

Umbraxians in splendid suits came to bow before Domo, shaking his hand and welcoming him back. Svetlana examined Bruno from a distance. He seemed no different than before his fall. He must have sensed her gaze because he turned to look at her. She looked away, and he came close to her.

“Domo says you saved my life,” Bruno said.

“No need to thank me.”

“I’m not thanking you,” Bruno said. “But I am impressed.”

Domo waved them into the lodging house while attendants led the carriage to a stables. “Tonight we’ll dine with a some old friends of mine,” said the Apothecary. “At dawn’s light we’ll hit the Mountain Market, pick up a few odds and ends, and we’ll be back on the road before noon. Umbraxia marks the midpoint of our journey. Let us eat, drink, and be of good cheer tonight.”

Inside the lodging house was a domain of polished marble, fine wood, and golden trim. It looked ancient yet well preserved. Domo, Bruno, and Svetlana were the only non-Umbraxians staying here. Svetlana gathered from Domo’s comments that goblins weren’t allowed in this establishment.

“Neither are humans,” said Bruno.

Domo corrected him. “Humans in service to licensed traders are perfectly legal. You know that, Bruno.”

“What do you hope to find in this Mountain Market?” Svetlana asked.

Domo ordered a dinner of roasted fowl. “Bits and pieces,” he said. “Historical relics from this world and others. And if we’re really lucky…books.”

“He pays great money for useless things,” Bruno said. “Never enough books for this one.” Svetlana smiled at Bruno’s attempt to make conversation.

“What do you hope to find in these books?” Svetlana asked him.

Domo laughed and raised a glass. “Knowledge,” he said. “Knowledge, Beauty, and most precious of all, Wisdom.”

The crowds of well-dressed Umbraxians chirped about Domo’s private table, and occasionally he signaled to one of them or yelled out a greeting. The fowl was served with steamed vegetables that Svetlana could not identify, but the meal was delicious and filling. Bruno drank deeply of the red wine Domo ordered. Svetlana sipped it sparingly. Soon Bruno was laughing and sharing tales of past adventures with her. He patted her on the back once, almost knocking the air from her lungs. A band of Umbraxian musicians played woodwinds, and the well-mannered patrons performed complicated dances.

Domo and Bruno laughed and drank a while longer. Svetlana sat back with a full belly and listened to the lively music. She wondered where Dima was, and if his little belly was full tonight. She had no choice but to believe he was alive and well. To think otherwise would be like diving off the sky-bridge.

“One thing I like about travelling with you,” Bruno said to Domo. “You have expensive tastes.” The reptoid toasted his employer with a glass of expensive liquor.

Domo snickered and placed a hand before his vertical lips, shielding his next words from the rest of the room.

“Everything is cheap in the middle of nowhere.”

####

The rooms at TOP O’ THE MOUNTAIN were spacious and luxurious. Svetlana slept on a big mattress stuffed with feathers. In the morning she ate a breakfast of black grapes and hot bread, then accompanied Domo to the Mountain Market. It was a fraction of the size of the market at Nil, but full of colorfully dressed Umbraxians plying their trades.

Svetlana could not put a name to most of the items on display. Domo said they were mostly relics taken from the dead cities of the lower world. Merchants lay their offerings out on blankets while local musicians walked among the aisles playing stringed instruments. Domo picked up a few interesting vials and glass bottles for future alchemical uses, but his main interest were the book dealers. He spent an hour haggling with a beak-faced bookseller while Svetlana and Bruno waited patiently.

Bruno displayed interest in nothing but the weapons shop, where a collection of ancient swords and knives drew his attention. Goblinoids shuffled between the merchant stalls demanding lower prices and driving hard bargains; they paid in silver coins bearing the image of their hideous queen. When all was said and done, Domo came away with a coffer full of glass vials and three ancient hardbacks. Bruno purchased nothing, but he did accept a bottle of wine from Domo. The reptoid hung the bottle from his belt so he could take nips from it during the next leg of the journey.

Domo also bought an amulet from a goblinoid merchant and gave it to Svetlana. A crowned skull carved from bone, hung on a necklace of iron links. She refused initially, but Domo said it was a charm that would protect her from nefarious forces in Creep City. He insisted, so she hung the amulet about her neck.

Before midday they were back on the road, water and wine re-stocked, carriage wheels freshly oiled. The tiger pulled the coach down a gentle slope leading from the mountaintop and back into the cloud layer. The Thoroughfare here ended on a rocky mountainside, where the twin obelisks of the next porte stood gleaming in sunlight. There were no bandits or predators lingering about this gateway. It was maintained by the vigilant folk of Umbraxia who made their fortunes from crossworld tolls.

The next few worlds were wholly dead. One giant expanse of rock and ashes after another. A devastation so great had occurred here that it spread into the adjoining Affinities. The number of moons varied from world to world, some of them broken into clusters of floating rock. Clouds of stardust glittered in the deep void above these Affinities. The Thoroughfare cleaved its way through the ruined worlds undamaged, although sometimes its pale stone had been scorched to black.

Bruno no longer seemed to resent Svetlana’s presence on the driver’s bench, but he made very little conversation. Svetlana respected his silence. She watched the dead worlds roll by and kept her mouth shut. At least here, in the presence of annihilation, there was no one to fight or kill.

At some point she noticed transparent figures standing along the road watching the carriage. The ghosts of those who died in the conflagration that ended this world. They stared at her with empty sockets where their eyes used to be. Some of them wept blue flames. The phantoms did not follow the carriage. They made no attempt to communicate, shambling aimlessly across the charred earth or standing by the road like invalids.

“They’re only mindless shades,” Bruno said. “Harmless.” Svetlana grunted.

The ghosts increased in number until the Thoroughfare passed through a crowd of spirits so dense that nothing else was visible outside the road. Millions of staring specters disturbed by the passage of the living through their realm of quiet death. The next porte lay directly in the middle of the ghost-horde. The carriage rolled right through it into another wasteland.

Domo had warned Svetlana of the Empty Lands where nothing lived. Crossing these lifeless dimensions she began to lose all sense of time. She could no longer count how many Affinities or how many days had passed since the stop at Umbraxia. Time was a warm liquid aura flowing past her like a fog. Or a dream.

In the next world the road ran by a phantom city. A phantasmal population went about their daily lives as if pretending their world had never died. Perhaps they actually believed they were all still alive and their metropolis was still standing. Svetlana saw the molten remains of it spread across a burnt plain. Like the images of its people, the image of the city refused to die. Its lucid structures stood gleaming with antiquity.

A few worlds later the road was blocked by staggering humanoids. They shuffled along the Thoroughfare in ragged clumps, the smell of rotten flesh spoiling the air. Bruno steered the carriage around and between the ambling corpses.

In the next world two armies battled on a great plateau above a sea of flowing magma. There was no sky here since the road ran through enormous underground tunnels. Both armies were already dead, little more than desiccated skeletons in suits of rusted armor. They smashed at one another with swords and maces, carrying banners that were shreds of bloody cloth.

Domo called Svetlana into the carriage. His vertical mouth quivered in what passed for a smile among his kind, and he offered her a goblet of sparkling vintage.

“Beyond this next porte lies the world we seek,” he said. “A final preparation for entering and surviving the atmosphere of Creep City. Drink up, my dear.” He downed his own cup. Svetlana found it refreshing, and it tickled her nose as she drank.

“You may go back up if you wish,” said Domo, returning to his book. “It’s quite a view and you won’t want to miss it.”

“What about you?”

“Oh, I’ve seen it many times,” Domo said. His floating eyes were practically glued to the pages of his latest acquisition.

Svetlana rejoined Bruno just in time to see the next porte appear in the road ahead. No guardians, bandits, or predators waiting to challenge traffic here. The iron carriage rolled through the porte, and volcanic light gave way to gold-purple twilight. The road wound through an immense graveyard stretching as far as the eye could see. A massive moon was shadowed by two lesser ones.

Grave markers with sculpted angels rose like cacti from the dust. Tombstones of every shape and size were marked in diverse languages. Mausoleums stood like wicked mansions, large enough for families or entire generations. Grim-faced gargoyles crouched on the peaks of tombs large as cathedrals. A roving mist lay everywhere upon the ground, obscuring the mud and rotted layers of moss. Dead trees stood like twisted giants guarding the paths of the dead.

As the Thoroughfare wound through the necropolis, the tombs grew larger and more ornate, some of them built to monolithic proportions. Before long the road was entirely hemmed in between rows of stupendous tombs. Scenes of antique imperial courts lived alongside the road, carven into the marble walls. Entire histories of forgotten peoples played out in hieroglyph and sculpture. Eventually the road sloped upwards until it rose above the tomb-city, winding itself about a cone-shaped mountain. The mountain itself formed an inner city of tombs, sepulchers and crypts whose grandeur dwarfed that of the outer necropolis.

The people of Creep City were either gliding ghosts, lumbering corpses, or hooded figures moving through the shadows. They paid little attention to the tiger and its iron carriage. The city was alive with activity but entirely silent. It was the kind of silence that could drive a man or woman insane. Svetlana’s skin prickled, and a third sense warned her of impending danger. The carriage rolled on, turning down an avenue of mansion-sized crypts set with green lawns and lush gardens. Svetlana wondered if the gardens and foliage here were also phantoms.

She turned her eyes to the top of the mountain. A black palace stood framed against the stars. Flocks of bats orbited its sharp spires. Surely it was the Palace of the Mummy Lords. The carriage stopped before a massive crypt only halfway up the mountain. Domo popped out the door in a robe of black and crimson, waving the glass scepter in his hand. His eye-stalks stood tall and rigid atop his head.

A trio of robed and hooded figures emerged from the crypt’s immense doors. They descended the broad steps toward the carriage, passing beneath the wings of monstrous idols. Svetlana tried to step down from the driver’s seat, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak either, although she managed to stutter a bit. She tried to scream but it was impossible. Her eyes fluttered to left and right, the only things she could still control.

Domo gave her a brief inspection then turned to greet the hooded ones. Bruno was on the ground already and unloading cargo from the carriage roof. He stacked crates and kegs at the foot of the crypt stairs, oblivious to Svetlana’s predicament. Either he did not know about her paralysis, or he did not care. She recalled the sparkling beverage Domo had given her before crossing into this world. She cursed herself for a fool.

“My good friends,” Domo bowed low at the waist. The three hosts removed their hoods, and Svetlana watched in the corner of her eye. Their lean heads were bald, pale as bone, their black eyes glittering like onyx. Their faces resembled those of hairless rats with pointed fangs in the corner of each mouth. High collars of white lace rose about their necks.

“Pepper Domo, you are welcome,” said the first.

“What have you brought us, Apothecary?” said another.

Domo waved an arm at Svetlana, and the fanged ones focused their onyx eyes on her. She saw their hands now: long crooked fingers tipped with claws, thickset with jewelry. Their lips were pale, too, and slightly bluish. The lips of dead men. Yet there was no sign of decay about them. They smelled of damp earth.

Svetlana tried to speak, coughing a little. Somewhere in the back of her mind a tiny voice raged and shattered the mirrors in its tiny room. Whatever Domo had drugged her with had affected her in mind as well as body. Anger, horror, outrage, fear–these were pebbles floating in the pool of her sluggish thoughts. She was a cloud trapped inside a flesh prison. A mute passenger with no will of her own.

Dima…

She couldn’t even say aloud the name of the child she was never going to find.

Domo beamed with pride as the fanged ones sniffed at Svetlana like hounds.

“As you requested, Herr Vivant,” Domo said, “a living specimen of the Old Blood, homo sapiens terra. I offer you the most precious vintage of them all: the fresh blood of a human female.”

The fanged ones exchanged glances. Their leader turned to Domo.

“Exquisite,” he said. “And what price do you ask for such a rare prize?” His black eyes swiveled back to Svetlana.

Domo’s eye-stalks wavered. “You already know my price.”

“Do I?”

“The book.”

The fanged lord smiled at Domo. “Yes, of course. You shall have it. For services above and beyond the call of duty.” He leaned in close to kiss Domo’s vertical lips. Domo endured the gestures and bowed again, moving away from the creature’s intimacy.

“I’ve also brought your usual supply of serums,” Domo said. “The rest of my inventory is for the Mummy Court, but have your servants see to these crates.” He pointed to the baggage Bruno had unloaded. “As for the girl…”

The fanged lord raised a clawed index finger. “I’ll carry her myself.” He leaped into the air like a pouncing wolf and stood on the driver’s bench. He picked her up as if she were a small girl and leaped to the other side of the carriage. He walked up the broad steps with her in his arms.

“Don’t be afraid, girl,” he whispered in her ear. “I only want your blood, not your soul. You are so very lovely. You will learn to love it here.” He kissed her gently on the earlobe as they ascended to the gates of the crypt.

Rage boiled inside Svetlana’s skull but found no way to manifest itself. She was a rag doll, a limp body.

“My name is Vivant,” said the fanged lord. His tongue licked at her ear. “You will call me Master.”

Domo followed Vivant and the others into a courtyard full of night-blooming jasmine. A second set of gates led to a vaulted hallway lined with burial niches. The crypt was designed like a palace in every respect, the decor chosen by a someone obsessed with the splendor of grotesque things. Vivant brought Svetlana into a domed dining room hung with crimson drapes and ancient chandeliers. The chairs were lined with silk, studded with jewels and golden trim.

“Won’t you stay for a glass of wine?” Vivant said.

Domo avoided looking at Svetlana as Vivant posed her like a doll in one of the plush chairs. “I’m afraid I must depart immediately as an appointment with the Mummy Lords is mine to keep. I’ll leave you to enjoy this red harvest in privacy as soon as I receive my payment.” Domo cleared his throat, and Vivant smiled at him. His black eyes sparkled with polite malevolence.

Several more of Vivant’s kind came into the chamber, sniffing at her, whispering of her beauty, her freshness. They licked their lips with pointed tongues and caressed her in a lewd manner. One of them took away her satchel, Takamoto’s sword, and her gunbelt. She couldn’t see where they put these things. She thought they would strip her naked, but they showed some restraint. They licked at her neck like excited puppies. Or cats playing with a mouse before sinking their fangs in for the kill.

“If you please, Herr Vivant, my driver is waiting,” Domo said. His uncomfortable nature was plain to see. He wanted to be gone before the bloodletting began. He was a liar and a coward. She wished she could at least hurl a dying curse at him before he left her here forever.

“Yes, yes, here you are,” said Vivant. His servant presented a large hidebound book to Domo. The Apothecary took the weight of it in his arms and blew the dust from its front cover. Domo read the title aloud with all the fascination of a child.

“The Magnificent Malaeficarium. At last. The key to sorceries undreamed of in my world. Thank you, Herr Vivant.”

Domo turned his eye-stalks toward Svetlana. The fanged ones pawed at her skin and undid the braid in her hair. “I am truly sorry about this, my dear,” Domo said. “Your blood is priceless to these noble vampires. You were a convenient vial holding the rare substance I needed to make this deal. It’s only business. Nothing personal.”

She wanted to rip out his throat but still couldn’t move a muscle.

Domo left with his book. The vampires grabbed her up at Vivant’s signal, laying her spread-eagle across the dining table. Shackles locked her wrists and ankles into place. The vampires gathered in a tight circle, hissing and panting. Vivant turned her head to one side, brushing her hair back to expose her throbbing neck. His eyes burned into hers for a moment.

“So lovely…” he said.

His lips came close to her neck, and his mouth widened obscenely, fangs sprouting like inverted tusks. His serpentine tongue slathered her skin, but his fangs barely touched her. A lingering pause to relish the moment before entering the soft flesh. Then a red geyser would flow, and the fanged lords would drink her dry.

A length of gleaming silver sprouted from Vivant’s open mouth. A broad blade, driven through the back of his skull. Bruno swept his arm sideways and split the vampire’s skull in half. Vivant’s family fell on him like angry wolves, forgetting their helpless prey for the moment.

Vivant staggered away trying to hold his dissected skull together. His eyes burned bright as flames now. Bruno was a blur in the corner of Svetlana’s eye, and body parts began to fly across the table. A hand, an arm, a head. The big silver knife hit like a cleaver, splitting flesh and bone. The vampires didn’t bleed, but oozed a black tarry substance from their torn flesh.

Vivant leaped onto the table, leaving Bruno to his minions. His lower jaw was gone now, but his upper fangs could still sink into her neck. He lowered his face to her neck again, dripping black gore. A meaty sound filled her ears, and something rolled across the table. Vivant’s head. The wet sounds of Bruno slicing vampires to pieces was all she could hear. Herr Vivant’s headless corpse became a pile of ash lying across her body.

Bruno ripped the last of the fanged ones from his neck and hacked off its head. His breastplate was stained with splashes of dark ooze. Svetlana wanted to puke at the horrid reek of it, but she couldn’t even do that.

Bruno grabbed her satchel, sword, and pistol, then picked her up and carried her from the crypt. A few timid lesser vampires stared at him from behind corners, but they scurried like rats when he looked their way. By the time he exited the front gate and brought her down the steps, she found the will to speak again. Her voice was heavy and sore.

“Why?” she asked.

“You saved my life,” Bruno said. “Now we’re even.”

Domo’s corpse lay on the bottom step, a steaming hole in its chest. A wound that could only have been made by Bruno’s pistol. The glass scepter lay in shards a few meters away. The tiger had begun to gnaw on Domo’s left leg.

Bruno sat her on the ground next to the carriage, where she started to wriggle her arms and legs. Sensation flooded into her body, and she groaned at the pain in her joints. She looked at the great book lying next to Domo’s body. A second hole was seared through its center. She wondered if it contained any power at all, or if it was just another of the Apothecary’s obsessions like poetry or glassware.

“I guess you don’t work for Domo anymore,” she said.

The big reptoid shrugged his shoulders and cleaned his knife.

“Domo was an asshole,” he said.

 

NEXT: “Twelve Nights in Neopolis”

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—  A FEW ODD SOULS Copyright 2019 John R. Fultz  —