by Orrin Grey
It was small, and not much to look at. Like the pocket lanterns people sometimes carried in the City. Just a short metal tube, closed at both ends, with a blue lens on the top and a button on the side. The Soldier pushed the button, and the Blue Light came to life.
The illumination it created, while brighter than his shoulder lanterns, was ghostly and unpleasant. It made the damp walls of the tunnel seem to slither with invisible life. But the Soldier kept it on, because the Wizard had said it would keep him safe, and while he didn’t believe for one moment that the Wizard had his best interests at heart, it would do the old man no good if the Soldier died in this hole without bringing up his prize.
By the unsettling blue glow, the Soldier walked to the arched door of the first chamber. It was so wide that he could not have touched both sides at once, even with his arms extended all the way, and within the chamber he saw the ghost light glitter off of a pile of gems as big as his bed. The gems were the kind that he had seen polished and used to make lenses for the more powerful filament weapons, and he knew that each one of them was worth more than he or his mother had ever earned.
As he stepped into the chamber to fill his pockets, he saw a sudden flicker of movement in the shadows. For a breathless moment, he thought that it was another trick of the Blue Light, but then it resolved itself, a darker shape moving out of the darkness. Its hide seemed polished, like the beetles that he had sometimes seen in his travels, and it glittered with all the colors of the gems that lay piled in its lair. It was as big as a man, but it moved on all fours, claws clicking on the stone floor as it slithered along the wall, a long tail sliding sinuously behind.
Its head was unusually large compared to the rest of its body, and as the Soldier stood frozen it opened its eyes. They were round as saucers and bright as lamps, brighter than any light the Soldier had ever seen, brighter than the lanterns back in the city, or those on his uniform. Brighter than the faded disk of the sun that hung in the dusty sky. They washed the room with white illumination, chasing away the strange shadows conjured by the Blue Light. And the Soldier’s blood froze as answering lights appeared behind him.
Slowly he turned, just craning his neck, to see that two other creatures, twins to the first, but each one bigger than the last, crouched in the tunnel behind him. They barely fit into the space he had just passed through, the one too large for him to touch the sides. The biggest of the two was larger than his mother’s living room, its head hanging low, its lantern eyes each the size of a door. As he stared at them and they stared back, he saw small variations between them besides their size, though they were obviously all of the same breed. The largest seemed more heavily armored than its siblings, the plates of its chitinous body less polished. The middle one seemed almost to be made of metal, and was so dark that its skin seemed to drink the light.
The Soldier’s heart was pounding, his blood roaring in his veins so that it was all he could hear. With a movement as slow as the settling dust, the largest of the creatures reached one of its horned purple-black claws toward him. Its palm was as large as his torso, and he knew that it could rend him to pieces with the same ease with which a cat slays a bird. But instead it placed its claw on the ground, and lowered its head before him in a bow, its lantern eyes briefly extinguished. As it did so, the other lights went out as well, and the Soldier looked around to see three monsters, all kneeling before him, like hounds trained for the hunt.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the Soldier took first one step, then another, sliding past the enormous beasts and out of the chamber of gems. As he did so they opened their eyes, but made no move to stop him, following the Blue Light with their luminous gaze.
In that moment, the Soldier knew—or thought he knew—the Wizard’s plan. He would wait at the top of the ladder, and the Soldier would bring up the treasure and the Blue Light. The Wizard would ask only for the Light, saying that the Soldier could keep the treasure. But now the Soldier knew the secret, that the Light controlled these creatures somehow. How, the Soldier couldn’t say, perhaps it was the light itself, perhaps some sound the device emitted that only they could hear, like the whistles that had been used to call the war dogs back in the army. However it worked, as soon as the Wizard had it, he would sic the beasts upon the Soldier, and take both treasure and Light for himself.
In the next chamber, the Soldier found more treasure still. Ingots of precious metals, stacked higher even than the jewels in the chamber before. The third and final chamber seemed the most roughly-hewn, with stalactites and other natural rock formations dripping onto a pile of gemstones larger and more valuable than those in the chamber before. So the Soldier filled his pockets, all the while making sure that the Blue Light stayed burning. He even emptied out his army bag so that he could fill it with treasure, leaving behind his spare uniform, helmet, and replacement bulbs and filaments for his weapon and his shoulder lanterns. Then he turned and climbed back up the ladder, leaving the strange creatures in the darkness below. Only when sunlight once again touched his face did he press the button on the side of the Light and let it go out, dropping it into one of his many pockets.
“Did you find it?” the Wizard demanded, before he had half-pulled himself out of the hole. The Soldier nodded and stretched, listening to the crackle of the bones in his neck. “Give it to me,” the Wizard’s shrill voice called. “I must have it! We had a deal!”
“We did,” the Soldier said, his hand on the grip of his filament weapon. Then he pulled the trigger and watched the Wizard die. He’d seen so many die in battle, after all, what was one more? He would not realize until later, as he was trudging toward the city, that even had the Wizard attempted treachery, only one of the creatures could possibly have fit up through the hole in the ground.
Standing in the dusty emptiness of his mother’s house, the Soldier pushes the button on the side of the Blue Light. He expects nothing, for he has left the creatures so far behind, out of the sight of the city, and entombed in their strange underground lair, but he has nothing left to lose. The Blue Light makes the flecks of dust that hang in the air look like strange jewels, or tiny fish swimming in a dark ocean. Where it made the damp tunnel threatening, it makes his mother’s empty house beautiful. The Soldier feels like he could stand here forever, but he hears the distant screams of men and the sound of rending metal, and then the creatures are breathing outside his mother’s door.
He turns, and the smallest of the three creatures is looking in the doorway at him, the lanterns of its eyes bathing him in light. The shoulder of its brother is barely visible below the top of the doorway, and the flank of the largest one is like a wall outside, pulsing with breath.
There is blood on the dusty road where they crouch and wait, for they have spared no one in their rush to reach the Light. The Soldier can look toward the wall, and he will see an uninterrupted avenue of destruction and death, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks up.
All his life, he has heard stories of those who live in the tallest towers of the City. The ones for whom the rest of the populace labors, for whom they fight and die. He has heard that they live in luxury there, above the ever-hanging cloud of dust. That they see sunsets out their windows, and eat fruits and berries raised on the water that is pulled laboriously up from beneath the ground. He has heard that they are kings and princes, and he remembers the Wizard telling him that he would find treasure enough to make himself a king. Perhaps he has, in the gemstones that he now carries, but that road to kingship is a slow one, and he has spent all that remains of his patience. Instead, he swings up onto the back of the middle creature, and, the Blue Light gripped tight in his hand, orders them up the sides of the towers.
Up and up they go, with the Soldier gripping tightly the beetle-like carapace of his mount. The claws of the creatures sink into the metal sides of the towers as easily as a bayonet sinks into flesh, and they haul themselves up with the gait of a lizard. Up and up, past the highest reaches of the City that the Soldier has ever seen. Up into
the choking clouds of dust stirred up by the massive fans, and then above them, into the sunlight.
This high up, only a few towers jut metal fingers above the city, like a gauntleted hand that is slowly closing. The creatures climb them easily, leaping dizzyingly from one tower to the next. They pass windows of thick, tinted glass, and on the other side the Soldier can see wilted plants and luxurious furnishings, free from dust. This high up, a wind blows constantly, causing the metal towers to whistle and keen.
Here, huge machines turn day and night, powered by the wind, to generate the power that feeds into the City below, to pull the water up from the deep, deep wells, growing deeper every day. The enormous turbines make a sound like grinding teeth as the creatures climb past them.
At the topmost point of the tallest tower, they find a skylight, and at the Soldier’s command the largest of their number punches through it as easily as if it were made of spun sugar. The creatures drop lithely in and land without a sound, their eyes filling the darkness with light. Slowly, the Soldier dismounts.
All his life, he has heard stories of the luxurious life of those who live in the highest towers. It was all that his mother would ever talk about, all that anyone in the City below aspired to. Now he stands in the highest chamber, and looks around him, and sees only decay.
The plush chairs hold mummified skeletons, still draped in their finery. The plants that once grew fruit and berries are long dead, the books that line the walls have grown brittle with age, so that they would crumble to dust if he were to try and read them. The Soldier walks through chamber after chamber, each one immaculate and empty as a tomb, with the beasts always at his heels, their eyes following the Blue Light. Beyond an ornate doorway he finds a massive throne of precious metals, studded with gems that make the ones in his pockets seem petty bits of colored glass. On the throne is nothing more than a pile of dust and bones.
In his rage, the Soldier sends the largest of the creatures out to bring him the ruler of the enemy city. Perhaps he means to put a stop to the war, or merely to vent his anger, even he doesn’t know. But when the creature returns days later, it carries only ancient bones and tattered rags, and the Soldier laughs, alone in his tower, above a City where the people move to and fro like ghosts, in the service of the dead.
Beneath its choking cloud of dust, the City labors on, as bit by bit it falls apart. Gears continue to turn and grind in darkness, water continues to be pulled up from the deepest wells. In some far off field, men fight and die for reasons that they have long forgotten or never knew. The dust buries the city deeper and deeper every day.
But the people who live in its shadows tell different stories than the ones they told before. Stories of a day when monsters tore open the gates of the City and scaled its towers. They say that the monsters carried a new king to the highest throne, and that he rules there now, the three great beasts crouched at his feet. They say that his charges will bring him anything he might desire, and little children are made to behave with warnings that they might one day be carried off by the king’s creatures.
What the stories don’t tell is that the king rules alone, his only companion a gnawing fear, as he waits with dread for the day when the Blue Light will eventually burn out.
Author’s Notes: When I was invited to submit a story for an anthology of retellings of fairy tales through “the language of our own post-industrial mythology,” I knew that it would be a stretch outside my usual comfort zone. However, I was told that I could pick my own fairy tale, and my wife Grace suggested “The Tinderbox,” by Hans Christian Andersen, which had always been one of my favorites. I read it when I was a kid and the image of the huge dogs with their saucer eyes had always haunted me.
The title and form of this particular story came about as I was researching “The Tinderbox” and learned that it was one of a handful of similar folk legends, categorized in the Aarne-Thompson classification system as “type 562: The Spirit in the Blue Light.” I then tracked down the other stories under this classification and pulled in bits from all of them to put this story together.
It was written for an anthology called Beauty and Ruin, which, at the time of this writing, still hasn’t seen print, but editor Josh Finney was kind enough to release me to include it here, anyway.
A Circle That Ever Returneth In
As you sit at your usual table in a dark corner of the Jeweled Remora in Lankhende, greatest metropolis in the West, you spy three unusual figures making their way into the establishment: a Sell-Sword, a Cutpurse, and a Doll Mage, by the look of them. They order their drinks and take a table near the hearth, though it is the Year of the Fly and the night outside is sticky and close. Perhaps they hope to disguise their voices with the crackling of the fire, for they are holding what appears to be an animated conversation, but one that their hunched postures and furtive glances show that they would rather not share with outsiders.
You are not just any outsider, however, and Nathor of the Guild once said that your ears were keen enough to detect a flea breaking wind. You edge closer and cock one of those impressive ears toward their conversation. You are not disappointed.
They speak of a treasure, a jewel. They call it something that sounds like the “Shining Trapezohedron,” but you’re unsure what kind of stone Trapezohedron is, so it’s possible that you may have misheard. Regardless, it sounds quite rare and, as rare things are, quite valuable. It seems that each of the three possesses one portion of a riddle, map, or clue meant to lead them to the jewel, but there is some disagreement as to how these tidbits should be shared. Each one believes their portion to be the most pertinent and therefore of the most value, which in turn should, to their thinking, award them the greatest share of the bounty.
Fortunately, before the conversation can turn violent enough to draw the attention of the entire tavern, the Sell-Sword dashes her drink to the floor, calls her compatriots some choice epithets, and all three of them angrily go their separate ways. Sensing a rare opportunity, you slip out of the Jeweled Remora and into the smoky streets of Lankhende after them.
If you follow the Sell-Sword, refer to passage I.
If you follow the Cutpurse, refer to passage II.
If you follow the Doll Mage, refer to passage III.
I
The Sell-Sword has made her camp in the swampy mangrove forests that surround the walls of Lankhende. Though you keep a safe distance and stay in the shadows, still she must detect you, for she stiffens and places her hand on the sword at her hip as she calls you out. Knowing when you’re fairly caught, you step out with your palms held toward her, to show that you’re unarmed. “You don’t look like much, and you came alone,” she says. “You’re either very brave, or very foolish.”
“Any reason I can’t be a bit of both?” you ask.
After digesting that for a moment, she laughs a surprisingly unguarded laugh and tells you to start a fire while you explain why you’re following her. Once a couple of lizard-bats are roasting over the embers, you tell her that you know she seeks the Shining Trapezohedron—saying a silent prayer to all the gods of Lankhende that you pronounce it correctly—and that you know of someone who can help her to find it, if she’s interested in sharing the wealth.
She is, and she tells you her name is Vlana. You tell her your name, and lead her to the lair of the Seer with Many Faces, in a ruined temple high atop Mount Grond, the strange lone peak that stands to the south of Lankhende.
At first glance, the Seer appears to be a statue of greenish stone that sits atop a raised dais, human in shape but with numerous arms radiating out from the trunk of its body, its head carved with faces on three sides, the one turned toward you as you enter contemplative, serene. Each of its many arms has an upturned palm, and in each hand rests some strange object: a golden carving of the sun, the skull of a bird, a trio of ordinary pebbles.
Seeing that you haven’t completely misled her, Vlana places before the Seer a scrap of faded leather or hide onto which someone ha
s drawn—or more likely tattooed, for on closer inspection the scrap appears to be of flayed skin—a portion of a map. For a moment there is silence in the temple, and then there is a sound like the grinding of ancient machinery, a loud clank that is equal parts metal and stone, and the Seer moves, each arm switching positions slightly, and the head atop its trunk rotating so that a façade of terror is suddenly presented to you.
“I know what it is you would seek,” the Seer says, its voice an echo coming from somewhere deep in a cave, “and on your life I warn you to turn back.”
Neither you nor Vlana can be dissuaded, and the Seer seems to sense it, for there is another grinding clank, another repositioning of arms and head, and now the visage that faces you is a mask of wrath. “Then go, but fairly warned. Your path will take you through the city of ghouls, to the throne of the Yellow King. There you will find your prize, and though you will return to Lankhende time and again, it will not be in your grasp.”
The road to Ghulende is a long one, and on the way Vlana teaches you the art of the sword. Her own blade is longer and of finer craftsmanship than the short one which hangs on your belt. She tells you that it is named Heartseeker, and that she forged it herself, as all warriors of her tribe must do before they can truly enter into adulthood.
As you draw nearer to Ghulende, the land becomes dryer, the trees short and dead and twisted. Gravestones line the road on every side, canting off at odd angles. They are memorials from every era of the world’s history, and every nation with which you are familiar—and many with which you aren’t—and you wonder if they’re drawn to Ghulende like iron to a lodestone.