Chasm of Fire

by Michael Wallace

  Fascinated and repulsed, Naila lifted the gun again, ignoring the cry for mercy from the other woman’s lips. She pointed at Kara’s face this time.

  “No. Please!”

  Naila fired the weapon. For a split second, nothing happened, only another buzz, and that strange shimmering in the air. Kara looked up at her, mouth open and eyes wide in shock. Something rippled on her forehead, and suddenly all the bones seemed to be dissolving from her face. Her teeth sank into her gums, and in turn her jaw folded in on itself as her nose turned soft and melted toward her lip with nothing to hold it in place.

  “Oh, my God,” one of Anderos’s companions said.

  The other, who had turned gray when he’d spotted Kara’s shapeless legs, made a gagging sound, turned, and heaved onto the floor.

  Kara looked up at Naila with a horrified, haunted expression that dissolved into a scream. The shot seemed to have affected the bones in her neck as well, and she couldn’t hold up her head, which had turned so soft and rubbery that it looked like a nightmarish attempt by a child to form a mouth between two misshapen eyes, no longer held into eye sockets.

  Even then, Kara didn’t die, but lay on the ground moaning with spittle draining out of her mouth as she wheezed for air and gurgled a plea for help.

  “By the Elders!” Anderos said. “Don’t make her suffer, woman. Do something.”

  “Not yet,” Naila said. “This is interesting. And important. Won’t your master want to know—”

  Anderos drew his sword and swung it at the fallen geometer. It struck her neck, but even that didn’t do the job, and he stabbed three more times, one after another, his face grim, until it was done.

  He looked up at Naila, panting and sweating. “What kind of monster are you?”

  “It was necessary.”

  “Not like that!”

  Naila handed the gun to one of the other two men, who fumbled at it before tightening his grip. She bent and removed Kara’s moon amulet from around her ruined neck and over the top of her misshapen head.

  “It turns out this wasn’t the most useful artifact in the vaults,” she told the dead woman. “Didn’t do you any good, anyway. All the same, I’ll see if I can put it to better use.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The monster with no face heaved itself toward Carbón and his companions with a rapid windmilling of its arms. It had no hands, but the stumps at the end of each limb flattened against the ground to gain purchase, and though it was large and clumsy looking, it was soon approaching as fast as a man could run. It was a good eight feet tall, and its bulk left a trail of crushed grass and dirt.

  Each person in Carbón’s party reacted in a different way to the advancing threat. Iliana drew a dagger. Grosst dropped her cane, reached a meaty hand into her cloak, and pulled out a pistol. Kessie turned as if she would run for her life, but instead dove to the ground and squirmed through the tall grass to escape on her belly. Thiego held up his hand with the underworld bracelet, as if to use it as a talisman against the monster, and believing that the cabalist would know better than any, Carbon followed his lead, and held up his own bracelet.

  Grosst steadied her aim, waited until the monster was about fifty feet away, and fired. There was a sharp retort and a puff of gun smoke. The ball struck the creature in the eye, and there was a wet slapping sound as thick black blood squirted out. The monster made no sound, but its arms flailed and it plowed into the dirt.

  “How do you like that, you devil?” Grosst shouted. She dropped the weapon and took out a second pistol as the monster heaved itself upright and made as if to come after them again.

  “By the Elders, stop shooting,” Thiego warned. “Hold up your bracelets. All of you.”

  “Do what he says!” Carbón shouted.

  The creature slowed as the four adults lifted their arms to show the underworld bracelets. Carbón’s arm was vibrating, and he could feel the bracelet picking up energy from the others—Iliana to his left, Thiego to his right, and Grosst in front with the unfired pistol still in her free hand. A tingling sensation raced up his arm. The monster continued to slow, and there was more limb flailing than movement, but onward it came.

  “Now?” Grosst said. “Now can I fire?”

  Thiego fumbled his free hand in his satchel, groping for something. “No! Hold your place.”

  The cabalist found whatever he was looking for and pulled it out. It was a small black cube, perhaps an inch on each side, which he rotated in hand while Carbón and the others gaped back and forth from the Guardian of Secrets to the oncoming monster. One edge of the device had a ball-bearing-like object emerging from the surface, another side a flexible disk, and a third edge a pair of knobs. He stopped when he reached a face containing five identical switches in a row. Still staring at the monster, he flipped the first switch back and forth, turned the fourth one up, and then flipped the fifth switch three times.

  “It’s still coming,” Grosst said. Then, more high pitched, “It’s still coming.”

  The monster was less than twenty feet away, and Grosst was almost in range of its arms. Her pistol hand was shaking. The monster was tearing at the ground, struggling forward, inch by inch.

  “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” Carbón asked Thiego.

  “I’m talking to the wandering stars. You’re lowering your bracelets! Hold them up!”

  Thiego flipped the second switch and third switch, then flipped the fifth one back to its starting condition. The monster had torn apart the turf with its appendages, and was throwing up clods of dirt and rock and chunks of rusting metal. And still advancing.

  Grosst fired, and the clap of exploding gunpowder seemed to leave her surprised, as well. The creature turned its eye toward her. She dropped the gun and turned to hobble away on her injured foot. Before she could make it far, the monster uncoiled one of its appendages and flung it after her. The end wrapped around her ankle and yanked her off her feet.

  Grosst screamed and clawed at the ground as the monster pulled her in. Her eyes bulged with pure desperation, and she begged for the others to rescue her. Carbón couldn’t help but remember the attack in the mines. A witherer had grabbed her then, too, and if not for Pedro Torres cutting out part of her foot, the withering would have spread up her leg and killed her. Now, it appeared that she would die under similar circumstances.

  “No!” Thiego cried. “Don’t fight it. The rest of you, forward with your bracelets. We’re almost . . . yes! Now!”

  Suddenly, the creature stopped. Its arm unclasped from the engineer’s leg, and as she scrambled away, still crying out in fear, all the monster’s limbs shrank toward its body. Something scratched in Carbón’s mind. Words whispered in his head.

  What is the half-life of europium-155?

  It was Thiego who answered, his voice shaking. “The half-life is 4.76 years.”

  What is the critical mass of plutonium-239 in grams?

  “Ten thousand.” The cabalist sounded more confident now.

  What is the plasma containment strength of a Calypso-class fusion reactor?

  “3.21 times ten to the eighth power,” Thiego said, “advancing on a logarithmic scale based upon power output, with equivalent deductions for secondary guardian effects.”

  Correct. You are authorized for full C-2 access.

  Thiego let out a long, slow breath. “Blessed be the wisdom of the Elders.”

  Carbón had no idea if the words in his mind had come from the monster itself or some other source, but the creature now dragged itself backward across the ground, and as Grosst reached the others, grabbed her cane, and heaved herself upright, it vanished into its hole.

  “What the hell was that about?” Grosst said. “All that old science stuff—how did you know it?”

  “It’s the same test the artifact gave us at the mines before it burned Salvatore alive,” Thiego said. “Only this time I was better prepared.”

  “Fine, good. But did you have to wait so long to pull that trick?
” Grosst’s fear seemed to be vanishing, replaced by anger as she recovered her pistols and set about reloading them by jamming paper wads containing ball and powder into the muzzles and tamping them down. “I’m not some foreigner you can sacrifice to your monsters, yeah?”

  There was a metallic taste in Carbón’s mouth, and he took a pull from his waterskin, first to swish and spit the taste out, then to drink. Something Thiego said struck him.

  “What did you mean, talking to the stars?” he asked the cabalist.

  “Just what it sounds like.” Thiego took a deep breath. The cabalist was panting, sweating, and visibly shaken. “I gave them instructions and they sent commands to the monster.”

  “But they’re so far away. Millions of miles away.”

  “Billions, isn’t it?” Iliana said. “Something immense.”

  “Exactly,” Carbón said. “Every child knows this.”

  “Those are the real stars,” Thiego said. “The wanderers aren’t true stars—they’re artifacts of the First Plenty. Thrown into the void and circling the earth for thousands of years. That’s how you can see them moving with your bare eye. And that’s what allowed Salvatore to awaken the artifact. This device talks to the wanderers,” he added, holding up the little black cube, which he now thumbed back to its initial state, “and they in turn communicate with the furnace and its guardian effects.”

  “Hey,” Iliana said. “Where did the girl go?”

  Kessie had thrown herself to the ground and squirmed away on her belly the moment the monster had appeared. Now there was no sign of her. She’d apparently had enough of this place and fled for home.

  Carbón’s stomach sank. Even if they managed to avoid any more of the furnace’s so-called guardian effects, how would they make it back to the cliff face without their guide? There was a host of other dangers at the bottom of the Rift, and judging by the look of dismay on Thiego’s face when he realized the girl was gone, he wasn’t confident in his ability to deal with them all.

  Grosst wanted to call for her, but the others were more concerned about drawing unwanted attention, and shut down this idea.

  Iliana groaned. “Dumbre child—no loyalty to anything.”

  “I’m from the dumbre,” Thiego said.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “What does it matter?” Grosst said. “All this Quintana caste business—I never could understand it. What does the terrace of one’s birth have to do with anything?”

  Carbón caught Thiego studying him, and he wondered if his discomfort at the talk of the dumbre was showing. He smoothed his expression, and the cabalist turned back to Grosst.

  “You’ve got your own castes in Basdeen,” Thiego said. “Only yours are guilds. Engineers and weavers and metalsmiths.”

  “That’s different,” Grosst said. “You’re trained for your lot in life, not born into it.”

  “Is it?” Thiego asked. “Your castes and our castes—they’re both restrictive in their way. In fact, maybe that’s why we’ve burned through the coal the Elders left us to rebuild, and are nowhere near where they thought we’d be.”

  “The guilds aren’t the same thing at all,” Grosst insisted. “You treat your dumbre like filth. Nobody lives like that in Basdeen.”

  “Did you know that among the Dianans only priests can read, and that Scoti women can’t speak to unrelated males after they’re married?” Thiego shook his head. “Quintana isn’t any worse than that, is it?”

  Carbón wasn’t ready to let his own city off the hook. “It’s not any better, either. The Quinta hold all the power—they’ll throw you off the cliff if you end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And you Luminoso will declare anyone a blasphemer who asks questions about the artifacts or expresses an opinion about the arrival of the Fourth Plenty.”

  “Not anymore, we won’t,” Thiego said firmly.

  “So what?” Iliana asked. “We’re supposed to change everything? Claim that everyone is the same from now on?”

  “Why not?” Carbón asked.

  “Because humans don’t run their affairs like that,” she said.

  “You sound like Mercado,” he told her.

  “Maybe she’s right,” Iliana said. “The fact that every place you just named has its own restrictive rules—yes, even your precious Basdeen, Grosst—shows that it’s human nature to fall into hierarchies. Every country has its lords, its cabalists, its dumbre, and all the people in the middle.”

  “But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way,” Carbón told her. “That’s what I’m saying. Everyone could have the same rights and opportunities.”

  “Chaos,” Iliana said. “What you’re describing is the Festival of Fools. Like the chant—every day you are old and you are young, you are rich and poor. Every day there is no heaven and no hell, and every woman is your wife, and every man your lover. No, your plan is madness. We’re not all the same, and we should never act that way.”

  “You’re acting like my equal right now,” he pointed out, “whereas you’re only my servant.”

  She flushed. “I’m sorry, Your Grace.”

  He laughed at her mortified look. “Don’t take that seriously. It was only a jest.”

  “Lord Carbón is right, though,” Thiego said. “We have to change something. What we’re doing is obviously not working, and following that path is only going to give us more of the same. That’s what the Elders were trying to do. Change the pattern that saw civilizations rise and collapse, over and over again, with every climb failing to reach the heights of the previous plenty.”

  “And every collapse lasting longer than the previous ones,” Iliana said, her tone more somber now.

  “The first thing is to figure out if we can use what the Elders left us,” Grosst said. She gestured at the steaming stacks of the ancient furnace. “And what I want to know is if there’s going to be any more monsters between here and there.”

  “New guardian effects?” Thiego said. “I don’t think so. But there’s the usual collection of dangers you find in the Rift, and we’ve lost our guide. Not to mention the trouble of getting ourselves back to the ladders when we’re done. Don’t know how we’re going to manage that without her.”

  “Over here!” came a shout from the river. Kessie had reappeared. She had rolled up her pant legs and was wading through the shallows, moving gingerly upstream against a swift current.

  “What are you doing?” Thiego called back. “Why did you run off like that?”

  “Because I didn’t want to die, dummy. Come straight down to the river from there. Don’t go any closer to the furnace.”

  They did as they were told, and as they approached the river, the flattening ground revealed a snaking, humping mound that cut across the path they’d have needed to take to approach the artifact. The grass growing across it was a deep, almost luminous shade of green, and it was too wide to jump over. Carbón didn’t know what caused that color, but it left him unsettled.

  He understood what Kessie was getting at; going into the river would allow them to bypass the mound and perhaps other dangers that might otherwise block their way. He joined his companions in removing his boots, then tied off the laces and slung them over his shoulder. Once Grosst removed her boots, she gave a doubtful look at her deformed foot before planting her cane in the shallows and hobbling in.

  Carbón was surprised to enter the water and find that it was as warm as a drawn bath.

  “How bizarre,” Iliana said. “Does this river flow out of a hot spring or something?”

  “It’s the artifact,” Thiego said. “The furnace spills some of the excess heat into the water.”

  And it only grew warmer as they followed the river upstream. They picked their way past the mound with the suspiciously colored grass—the supposed danger—but Kessie didn’t seem anxious to leave the water all the same.

  “It’s heating the whole river?” Carbón said. “How big is this furnace anyway?”

  “That’s only a
fraction of the waste heat,” Thiego said. “I believe most of it is pumped deep into the ground below us for storage.”

  “How much are we talking about?” Carbón asked.

  “Kara ran the numbers the other day. Imagine taking an entire year’s output from your mines and setting it on fire. That’s how much heat the artifact generates on a daily basis.”

  Grosst let out a low whistle. “We could change everything with that much power.”

  Thiego glanced over his shoulder. “Assuming you can get your hands on it without killing yourself, the rest of us, and possibly the entire city of Quintana.”

  “I thought that was your job,” Iliana told him. “Ow, this water is getting hot.”

  She was right, but Kessie was still reluctant to make for shore, and seemed to have a higher pain tolerance than the rest. When the girl finally stopped, they were about seventy feet upstream of where the monster had descended into its hole in the ground. Grosst came hobbling up, gingerly picking her way through the swiftly flowing water, using her cane as a guide, and Kessie led them back up to the shore.

  There was a moment where they were all bracing themselves for some final bit of strangeness, some additional monster or questioning from the artifact. But the furnace sat placidly huffing steam, with only a slight vibration beneath their feet disturbing the otherwise tranquil surroundings.

  Once it was clear that the artifact posed no immediate danger, they all relaxed. Grosst threw herself to the ground, face clouded with discomfort as she examined her injured foot, while the others warily put their boots back on while keeping an eye on their surroundings. Kessie picked through the grass, always with a scavenger’s eye.

  Carbón took the opportunity to examine the artifact from a closer perspective. The stacks were each twice as high as the breaker at the mine and taller than the headwall that sent skid carts of miners into the bowels of the Nine Shaft. The conical stacks were so perfectly formed that they may as well have been shaped on a giant potter’s wheel. There were no bricks, no seams, no doors or windows of any kind, nor any other visible means of entry. The smaller outbuildings looked much the same, so uniform they might have been cast in molds.