Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  I tried once more, to no avail. It was stuck fast, and I couldn’t even get it out of my sack without ripping a larger hole in my bag.

  At my wits end, I fished out a plastic food storage container and emptied the contents of the artifact box into it. I would swipe a new one when I got to work. It was riskier, because all boxes were dealt out when an old or damaged one was being disposed of or when we got new artifacts, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I would figure out how to salvage my bag after I returned the pilfered museum property.

  It was awkward opening and emptying the box while it was still inside my bag. When I heard the bigger pieces fall into their temporary home, I drew them out for inspection. Inside the food container was a good deal of that black soil and the pottery shards, but the rings were nowhere to be seen.

  With an exasperated huff, I felt around inside the bag, sure they must have just missed the container, but they weren’t there either.

  Perplexed, I reached inside the artifact box, fingers gingerly exploring the narrow space, trying to avoid nicking myself on the corner where the metal coil was embedded. I felt the cool touch of the rings at the far end of the box, but they didn’t budge. Were they what the metal was stuck on?

  My index and middle finger slid through the hoop of the rings, and I felt them give. Emboldened, I tugged harder and the rings came free easily. I rocked back on the stool and nearly toppled over.

  The bag dropped, followed by a metallic clang on the floor.

  There, laying on the floor, was the straight full-length blade that had almost killed me in the street tonight. The metal gleamed.

  “This cannot be.” I reached for my bag, lifting and inspecting it. Sure enough, the metal coil was nowhere to be seen.

  My gaze darted between the bare knife blade to my bag and back again.

  “How …?” I breathed, unable to compute.

  I looked at the two rings on my fingers, staring at the strange striations on the pale metal knuckles. They seemed no worse for wear, which didn’t make sense if they had been stuck to the spool of metal, or blade or whatever it was.

  Taking up the dish rag again, I carefully lifted the blade for inspection. I told myself that it had caught on the rings and somehow twisted around them. When I yanked the rings free, the blade had sprung back into shape.

  Impossible.

  It would require an insane tensile strength, not to mention heat, to bend a blade like that.

  Further, the blade wasn’t supporting my theory. The whole thing was completely intact and unblemished, right down to the tang. The holes punched into it, for the handle lugs were smooth and unbroken. There were no stress fractures or burring. It was in pristine condition.

  I recalled the knife-wielder holding up his naked handle, and I found myself sharing in his shock.

  My gaze drifted to the strange rings on my fingers, and a surge of curiosity swept over me. Professor Lowe’s words bubbled to the surface.

  Something else. Something very important.

  I felt a sudden urge to reunite the rings and the blade. It was only the rational, scientific thing to do — test the phenomenon. Like a child holding a live wire, I wanted to see some sparks.

  I placed the blade on the countertop, and then very gradually, I brought the rings to the blade.

  Other than the clink of metal kissing metal, nothing.

  Perhaps more force was needed. I pressed it down harder. Still nothing happened. I tried raising my hand and moving it around before touching the two together. Maybe kinetic energy was the key. Nothing but a slightly louder clinking sound. Then I remembered the blade had been between the two rings so I tried placing it there again. Still nothing.

  After more nothing and that irritating metal-on-metal noise, I yanked my hand away in disgust. In a fit of bad temper, I slapped my ringed hand down on the countertop.

  The knife blade skidded away several inches as though frightened by the sound.

  I stared in shock, then rushed to get a notepad and a pen out. It was time for some experiments.

  I couldn’t see.

  Something hot and heavy pressed down on my face, keeping my eyes from opening. No matter how I pushed at the thick pliant mass, more of it slid down, keeping me blind. I jammed my fingers upwards, trying to stem the tide, and I felt it flowing like sand around my outstretched hands.

  With a panicked scream, I realised it was surging down past my clawing hands to cover my nose and mouth. It swallowed my head, and with a painful, mocking slowness, it moved for the rest of me. I struggled as more and more of it rolled over me, heading towards my feet.

  It was sinking over me, or I was sinking into it, plunging head first into the thick, cosy depths, and …

  I realised, realising … this was comforting. I was safe. I was hidden.

  But hidden from what?

  Then the heat grew, no longer comforting but sweltering, then burning. I wasn’t in a safe place. I was in an oven, a furnace.

  I still couldn’t see, and I felt my skin beginning to blister and bubble.

  Suddenly, the dense material scattered in every direction, as though it couldn’t stand to touch me a moment longer. With this sudden departure came the return of my sight and gravity. I lurched downwards, seeing a landscape of jagged mountains, darkly lustrous and unnaturally sharp. In the seams between these razored monoliths were vast, slow-running rivers of slag. Throbbing, angry red slop, winding and moving in a dozen contradicting directions.

  And I was falling towards one of these slag-filled rivers.

  The burning air whistled past my ears, becoming a terrible, condemning word.

  TRAITOR!

  I started awake to the buzzing of my phone and promptly kicked the stool out from under myself. I slid unceremoniously off the countertop where I’d been lying, scattering my notebook and writing utensils.

  Hitting the floor with a hard, dull thud, I sat there, staring and blinking up at my kitchen counter. My phone rumbled again, sliding across the countertop, working its way to the edge. Numbly, I registered it was falling as it plummeted into my bag, which lay in a formless lump on the floor. From within the folds of the crumpled bag, the alarm continued to buzz.

  My body ached from having fallen asleep in a slumped position. I gave a symphony of groans as I crawled over to the bag. I was terrified to learn the time, scrunching my eyes shut as I turned the phone around. I opened one eyelid.

  6:00am

  I collapsed onto the floor again, the phone hoisted in victory. Six! I could get to work on time. There was a distant throb in the back of my head I was sure would blossom into a full-blown tension headache, but I was going to walk through those museum doors with my pounding head held high.

  I didn’t have any more time to celebrate, and I staggered to my feet. Rubbing my eyes and yawning, I spotted the notebook with pens and pencils scattered around it. My gaze wandered up from the notebook to the bare knife blade on the countertop, and I raised my hand to stare at the rings, still on my right hand.

  So, last night had happened after all. It hadn’t been part of the crazy dreams.

  I didn’t feel so steady on my feet as I scooped up the notebook. There, in black and white, in my own handwriting, detailed the dozens of experiments I’d done last night with the rings and the blade. I’d concluded whatever the rings were made of did not react to any direct physical stimulus.

  With too little sleep and wired with the madness of the night, I considered the stimulus was psychological — reacting to my thoughts and feelings.

  It had been small at first, just nudges and pulls, no doubt my own disbelief making things more difficult. But millimetres at a time, I began to move the knife blade across the counter. I measured fastidiously each time, recording my results in the notebook, but eventually I found I could, with a little mental effort, ‘will’ the blade across the length of the countertop with one push, and then back again with one pull.

  I was so thrilled with this discovery the next push
sent the knife flying towards my electric kettle, but with an outstretched hand and a flex of will, I stopped the blade mid-air. I’d relaxed my mind and body with a gasp and let the blade rest on the countertop. It now sat where I’d left it.

  It would have been past one in the morning when that happened, and the fatigue of the prior day hit me like a cement truck. I’d lain there staring at the knife blade and the rings until my eyelids became too heavy to hold up.

  Rather than grappling with the enormity of what I’d discovered, I got ready for work. Discovery or no, I needed to keep Shelton off my case.

  I tucked the notebook into my bag, followed by the blade, then the container full of soil and pottery and finally the rings, placing them in a snug side pocket. I took three steps from the bag and stopped, looking back over my shoulder, feeling an overwhelming compulsion to go back and put the rings on.

  “Next thing you know I’ll be looking for Hobbits,” I muttered as I stripped down and hopped into the shower.

  The warm water was good for my throbbing head, and helped my nerves as well. As I scrubbed my scalp, I sorted through the realities of the day ahead.

  I couldn’t take the rings back, not now. This was more than just an archaeological discovery. It was a scientific revelation. Metal which provided a conduit for mental signals to alter magnetic fields! The fact it seemed to be thousands of years old only made it more amazing.

  Thinking you’ve nothing to learn from the old ways reveals you’ve learned nothing at all, my mother used to say.

  “Don’t you know it, mum.”

  I still had so much to learn, test and explore. It was going to take time, and that meant I had to find a way to keep the Archive software from sending an overdue alert. I thought about checking the box in, minus the rings, but then strange Professor Lowe came to mind. I assumed he was a scoundrel or con artist but maybe not. What would happen when he came for the box, after having said something to me, and the rings were gone?

  This musing caused me to wonder why he was keeping the rings to himself. This kind of discovery would make a scholar world famous. Why hide it in a pile of dirt and broken ceramics?

  This was getting complicated.

  I finished my shower and went through the motions of getting dressed as quickly as I could. It was already half-six. All this thinking was slowing me down.

  I was going to have to put the Archive set on the back burner and hope that Shelton didn’t notice. That might give me a few days, maybe as much as a week or two to do more tests. Maybe I’d even show the rings to Professor Schottelkirk. With her approval, we could put these mysterious little relics under some more granular tests and get an idea of what they were made of.

  I rushed about making a cup of coffee, putting the kettle on and popping a filter into the pour-over. I ground my coffee beans earlier in the week, and so I had plenty but couldn’t find the spoon I usually kept near the kettle.

  I spied the vagabond utensil in a far corner, nestled between the extra plastic food containers I’d gotten out. It struck me as funny that I’d even been able to notice it, a dull glint in a mound of pastels.

  Mindful of the time, I stretched a hand towards the spoon, one hand in the overhead cupboard, groping for a mug. I only saw a flash before something sailed up the length of my extended arm and struck me in the jaw. My teeth clicked together.

  “Ow.”

  The hand in the cupboard knocked one mug over and sent another tumbling to the counter, where it shattered in a spray of chunks and slivers. A moment later, nursing my jaw, the spoon landed on the floor with a rattle.

  The only sound in the flat was the rumble of the electric kettle.

  Blinking stupidly at the spoon and massaging my injury, I looked at my hand, expecting to see that I’d forgotten I was still wearing the rings.

  My fingers were bare.

  Could there have been some residue, some trace elements from the rings? No, I’d just showered, unless the residue had been absorbed into my pores, but that would mean it was inside of me!

  Fingers quavering, I stretched my hand over the spoon, and just as I had with the blade, focused my mind and willed it upwards.

  The spoon flew into my outstretched palm.

  I choked back a sob, fingers curling around the handle. As more of my skin came into contact with the metal, I became aware of a faint vibration. As I stood there staring at the utensil, my horror and awareness of the resonance grew. The metal in the spoon was ‘singing to me.’

  I yelped and threw it down.

  It hit the ground and — in response to my rejection of what had just happened — flew across the room to strike the wall … hard enough to gouge the drywall. Dust sifted to the floor.

  I stared at my hands and bit back another scream.

  What is happening to me? What have I done?

  7

  I made it to work on time (without coffee), but was not in a productive mood.

  Anytime I touched something made of metal — a handrail or a two pence coin in my pocket — I felt the resonance of it singing to me. And each and every time that happened, I wondered what sort of contamination had taken place. Was it radiation? Metal poisoning? Some cerebral chemical alteration?

  I was no biology major, but I knew that something which caused such drastic changes would have side effects. It might be cancer, sepsis, organ failure or just plain insanity, but I was quite sure developing a mental connection to the base elements around me was not good for my health. Maybe that was why the ancients did not use such artifacts. Maybe they discovered the power of this strange metal, but soon learned it came at a terrible cost and so hid it away or cast if off.

  “You don’t know anything,” I muttered as I swiped in. “Not yet.”

  Tariq looked up from the screen and smiled. “Morning, Ibby. Sorry, didn’t catch that. Don’t know what?”

  My attention snapped to my immediate surroundings. I hadn’t even realised I’d been speaking out loud. “I … ermm, that is …”

  Tariq looked mildly concerned and completely unaware that the watch in his pocket — the one from his grandfather (a railway conductor) — was singing a song. It was our running joke to ask Tariq what time it was. He never failed to pull the watch out and remind me who it had once belonged to. It was sweet that he and his grandfather had been close, but given half a chance, I would smash that watch to pieces just to silence it.

  But I knew it wasn’t the watch. It was the sterling silver casing, the hardened bronze gears, the spring steel ribbon, the …

  “Oi, Ibby!” Tariq waved a hand in front of my face. “You okay?”

  I shook my head, trying to focus and ignore the song. I had been staring at (well, more ‘through’) his pocket. I must have looked like a complete loon.

  “I’m sorry.” I pasted my best tired smile on my face and tilted my head just to sell the look. I’d seen Jackie do it, and I was rewarded when Tariq’s expression changed to a look of pity and relief.

  “Burning the candle at both ends, are you?”

  I nodded slowly and adjusted my bag as though it was incredibly heavy. “Life of the student intern.”

  Tariq shook his head with a smile and clicked his mouse to confirm my check in. That done, he gave me another pitying look. “Take care of yourself, Ibby.”

  I bobbed my head. “You too.” Then shuffled towards the elevator.

  Once inside, I stood in the very centre of the lift, trying to block out the intense reverberating waves battering me inside the metallic box.

  I made it to my workstation, miraculously, and took a moment to stand and breathe.

  The tube and the elevator had been the worst, but every bit of metal I got close to twanged steadily like an out-of-tune instrument. I could feel a dull throb from the scissors and stapler in the cubbies, my archaic computer giving off an unpleasant hum. It was like having new, sensitive skin. Each time my new sense buzzed and prickled, I tried to adjust to it, but then another tingle rushed in from anoth
er direction. I was never comfortable, never at ease, and on top of that, I worried some metal missile would fly at me from nowhere … like the spoon. It was maddening.

  There, in the little island of light at my desk, I breathed in and out. I mentally pushed back at the encroaching auras, trying to drive them away. The resonances didn’t stop, but they shifted.

  With a soft gritting shoosh, the computer slid an inch across the desk. In the cubbies below, the scissors and stapler clacked and scraped. My hackles rose and I backed off. If I pushed much harder, I was going to send things flying, and that was not going to decrease the stress in my life.

  I decided that instead of pushing back, maybe I should let them in. Maybe I just needed to let myself desensitise naturally. A nagging voice in my head said it could also lead to insanity, but a louder voice suggested I was nearly there already.

  I’d gone from family stress to work stress to accidental crime to creeping fear to mugging interrupted. And now I was experiencing a phenomenon from exposure to a mysterious artifact that had done something to me.

  Yeah, madness was on the bloody horizon.

  My initial attempt to let myself adjust without fighting it was like plunging into a whirlwind. I had to grip the table to stay on my feet. I reeled, and fought nausea as my mind was pulled in all directions. With a strength I didn’t know was there, I pulled myself back from the overloading storm of sensation.

  Okay. Too much.

  Next, I tried to focus on one individual resonance (the scissors), not fighting or resisting it but listening to its tune, letting it wash over me. It was strange, uncomfortable, but little by little, the discomfort gave way to a kind of familiarity. Like running your fingers over something commonplace in the dark. With the scissors settling into a comfortable ‘shape,’ I focused my attention on the stapler and did something similar. Then the computer, with its myriad of tones, which took longer.