Coming to Power

by T J Marquis

  Jon raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Tinok chuckled.

  “Oh they all know I’m the most liberal among them. As protective of my artifacts as I am, I’m still all for loosening restrictions. Our people should be making use of the things we dig up - we shouldn’t be hoarding them. These big barges? They have no fuel tanks or slots for power cells.”

  “So?” said Jon.

  “So, that means they don’t need fuel! We have a few smaller vehicles that work the same way. Whatever magic or science keeps them afloat, and provides thrust, it’s built-in! Can you imagine how valuable that is? Do you know how much the Wizardess would pay us for such a thing? Or how it could revolutionize our economy?”

  “So why don’t you use more of them?” Jon asked.

  Tinok glanced to the side as if someone might be listening.

  “They’re afraid. I mean, so am I, but I know it doesn’t help… They’re scared of what will happen if the Nulians try to sack Anescama the way they did Centrifuge all those years ago. They want every last artifact available and untouched, just in case.”

  “Every one except the ones you all use for your own comfort,” Jon said flatly.

  Tinok smirked guiltily. “Yes, those…”

  Jon sighed. “But I know there are some things you’ve got that are just tools. If you put those to work… Even in the event of an attack, you’d be better prepared!”

  “I agree, I agree. I was able to get you this concession without too much of a stir. But I’m just one voice. And if I speak too loudly…”

  “They’ll depose you,” Jon guessed, “unofficially.:

  Tinok sighed and unlocked a heavy steel door that let the group into a garage full of machines and vehicles. The barge was so still, and the garage so large, that Jon had a hard time remembering that they were hovering dozens of feet over the ground.

  Here there were a number of wheeled vehicles - round and black and armored, with fat tires for rough ground. Everything else was in a different, cleaner style, with hard angles and straight lines, and overlapping white plates of armor. Everything in that style hovered. Some of the machines looked industrial - a digger, a driller, a dump truck - but there were a half dozen ziri like the one Naphte’s patroller had ridden. Tinok gestured to these.

  “Five times faster than a horse, and ten times more dangerous,” he chuckled. He seemed to take pride in his collection, eyes lingering on each vehicle in turn. “I’m gaining four barges, but I sure will miss these little hornets. Anyhow, three of them are yours.”

  Naphte surprised everyone from behind when he spoke.

  “Four you mean?”

  Tinok turned to him, puzzled. Naphte grinned uneasily.

  “Discharged, honorably of course. It’s my own fault I suppose,” he said.

  “Commander,” Jon said. “I’m sorry. It’s because you stuck up for me, isn’t it?”

  “Well, that’s part. But your friends remember - I said this whole excursion wouldn’t go over well if we failed.”

  “But we didn’t fail,” said Bahabe. “We haven’t had a chance to strike the Nulians again because your elders stopped us.”

  “True,” said Naphte, “but that’s not how they see it. Or they just wanted the excuse. Anyhow, it seems I’m a free agent.”

  “You should come with us,” said Dahm. “Your knowledge of the region could be very useful.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Naphte admitted. “But you’ll have to wait while I take care of the paperwork.” He groaned.

  Tinok waved a hand. “No, don’t let those stuffy old folk hold you up any longer. Can I be your executor? Say yes.”

  “Um, yes,” said Naphte.

  “Great - verbal contract. Done,” Tinok smiled. “I’ll sign the papers, and the elders can eat them, yes?”

  Naphte laughed. “Sounds good to me, though I will miss the post.”

  “I’m sure the soldiers will miss you too,” said Tinok. Then he shrugged. “Four for four, then. Seems fair, even if it’s hard to let go of my babies.”

  The Zansar showed the little party to the ziri and explained their controls.

  “Seems hard at first, but when you get the hang of using the levers to steer, the things really fly! You’re gonna love them,” he said.

  Tinok had the party escorted back to the other barge to get their things. Naphte was given time to wish his soldiers farewell. This they received with no shortage of grumbling against the Zansari. They were also jealous of his zirah.

  When they returned to the garage, the ziri had been packed with food and bad-weather cloaks, a cobalt rifle for Naphte, and extra power cells.

  Everyone mounted as Tinok urged them to test the controls gingerly. When they’d all given a signal of readiness, Tinok opened an exterior gate. The Ox had been lowered, and a ramp had been let down from its side. Thanking the Zansar, Jon and the others cruised down to the ground and started away from the pair of hovering barges.

  Chapter 11

  The Maw

  They could have negotiated to spend the night on the barge, but Naphte was taking his discharge harder than he let on. Jon noticed but didn’t say anything. He was too disgusted with the Zansari to stay anywhere near them. He’d asked everyone’s opinion, and they agreed that they might as well get some miles behind them before nightfall.

  The ziri were fast, maybe too fast. Jon had initially been worried that his companions would have difficulty piloting these literal crotch rockets, but their controls were finely tuned and smart, seeming to adapt to each pilot’s habits. At first, Jon kept getting the steering mechanism backwards, pushing the left lever forward to bank left instead of the right one. Eventually he settled into a good groove. Bahabe tended to look like she was oversteering, but her zirah’s tight responses betrayed no lack of skill. Dahm took to the vehicle naturally, confidently keeping in formation.

  Overall they forced themselves to take it slow, getting used to the strange, unsafe vehicles. They stopped for the night under shelter of a sparse stand of trees.

  They parked, and set up camp, using the quiet time to stretch out and let their minds wander in the fresh air.

  A thunderstorm rolled in during the night and promised to pound the land into submission all through the morning. Terrible conditions for starting a journey, but Jon and his companions couldn’t be dissuaded.

  They donned their hooded cloaks, packed up the rest of the weapons and supplies in the vehicles’ storage compartments, and set out into the storm.

  Not having to worry about the traction of wheels was brilliant. The wet terrain and occasional areas of shallow flash floods did nothing to hamper their progress. Their hoods helped to keep the rain out of their eyes, though the needlelike droplets of water did sometimes sting their faces.

  Naphte was the only accomplished equestrian, and saddle soreness set in for the rest of the party after a few hours. They pushed on anyhow, until a particularly heavy band of storm hammered down upon them and reduced visibility to a handful of yards. It was agreed they should stop, and they found meager shelter on the lee side of a squat hill, huddling together to eat an early lunch in the rain. When the downpour refused to let up, they continued on at a crawl, carefully watching for obstacles obscured by the sheets of falling water.

  At various points, Jon peered back at his companions from his position at the head of their little line. Dahm looked as stalwart as ever, seemingly unfazed by the barrage of wet and the unrelenting roar of the rain. Naphte, too, looked to be in his element, though of course, he was a native of the region. Bahabe’s slumped posture astride her zirah mirrored Jon’s feelings, though. It was that moment in a journey where one might wish they’d waited until a better time to strike out…

  Long after Jon’s nerves were shot, the storm wound down into a drizzle, and then the sun emerged to warm the wet land into an outdoor sauna. The wind of their low flight dried the soaked party’s hoods swiftly, and they soon missed the coolness of the rain as the bright sun began
to bake them. Besides that, the going got easier, now that they could see.

  Jon had been counting on Naphte to have some idea what paths the Nulians would have taken through this country. Many of the ones who had escaped destruction at the fort had fled on foot, having been abandoned swiftly by the barges. Jon had hoped to find some evidence of their passage that would lead him to the bulk of the army. As the afternoon wore on, the travelers veered more and more eastward, nearer to the mountains of the Fold, and at last, they found some clues.

  Naphte said the tracks were those of beastmen.

  “It makes sense,” he said. “They’re the only ones who could get this far on foot in just a few days. There are probably some greenies still slogging along behind us somewhere…”

  They followed the beastman tracks for a number of miles and found the remains of a campsite. Really it was just an area where the already sparse grass had been trampled or squashed flat by sleeping bodies, with several piles of excrement a few dozen paces out. Rodent bones had been picked clean and left to bleach in the sun. The little party couldn’t bear the stench for long and quickly left the camp behind.

  After a few tens of miles more, the beastman tracks took a sharp turn eastward, looking to head up into the foothills of the mountains. Jon called a halt and questioned Naphte.

  “Could they retreat through the mountains?” he asked. “I thought they were impassable.”

  “They are,” said Naphte, “but remember, the Zansari said they’ve been poking around down here for a while, looking for a cache of artifacts.” He still looked sore about that. “If the Nulians found it first, that might explain where they got those barges and weapons. I mean, where would you hide a treasure trove of arms and vehicles? Not out here in the plains.”

  Jon nodded once. “Okay, so we try to track them into the mountains.” He looked to the sun in the west and judged it to be around the five o’clock hour. “But we don’t know what’s up there. Even if there’s a few hour’s light left, it wouldn’t pay to get lost up there in the dark. Shall we camp for the night?”

  Everyone seemed to agree that would be prudent, so they parked the ziri in a row and went about making camp on a high hill at the end of a long ridge. From here they’d have a decent vantage of the plains and some of the other foothills.

  Everyone was glad to stretch and eat, to rub the hypnotic glaze of a long ride from their eyes. After dinner, each of them went about entertaining themselves in their own separate ways.

  Jon had hiked out of sight of the others, trusting that he could protect himself if there were trouble. When he was sure no one could see him, he summoned the bloodlight, and it appeared all too readily. Why hadn’t the voice in the Light’s temple warned him of this? The invasion of those creatures’ final thoughts in his mind would have been debilitating apart from the rage that had driven him into that fight. Why would his power cause them to be held captive?

  He hesitantly touched one of the orbs of bloodlight, not knowing what to expect. Immediately he gained a vision of the creature it had been harvested from.

  A gremlin, a young adult. Nom was her name. She had been conscripted from among her family in Nul because she was particularly adept at repairing firearms. Jon’s brow furrowed in confusion. He’d thought gremlins were fabled as being destroyers of technology. It was hard to imagine them fixing things. Her last thought had been, “Macks.” Jon focused deeper, closing his eyes. Macks, short for Mackaghnel. He could almost hear it, that guttural, slobbering pronunciation of her boyfriend’s name. Boyfriend? It was too much all at once. Jon let the orb go, and Nom’s memory dissolved into the ether. That one orb of bloodlight disappeared from the net. The twisting bridges of bleeding luminescence that had connected it to the network curled away into the mass of remaining orbs.

  “Jon?” came Bahabe’s voice from behind him. He let the bloodlight flicker away, feeling oddly disoriented and embarrassed. “What was that? I was practicing my magic and I noticed you were gone.”

  “Nothing,” he tried to say, but remembered she knew about it. And this was Bahabe. He cast his eyes down. “That red light from the battle,” he admitted. “I wanted to know what it was about.”

  Bahabe came nearer, scanning the air where the bloodlight had been a moment ago. “And what did you discover? You look dazed.” She put a hand on his arm.

  Jon felt as if he were confessing a crime. “Its… some remnant of the creatures I killed.”

  Bahabe gave him a soft look of pity.

  “When I touched one,” he said, “I saw a gremlin. She had a name, a job. She was even in love.”

  “It must be something like what I feel from others. I’m sorry to say, it never gets easier.”

  “When I’d seen it, seen her, and let it go, the orb dissolved. Bahabe, am I going to have to do that with each one?” Panic gestated in his eyes. “How could I stand to touch them all?”

  “Shhh,” she breathed, squeezed his arm. “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

  He sputtered a little, but she didn’t let him argue.

  “Maybe you will have to see them all, somehow put them all to rest. But it doesn’t have to be today. If it had to be all at once, you wouldn’t be able to hide the light, right?”

  Jon gave a distracted nod, but he wasn’t sure. If the deaths of those creatures had been his crime, would his sin compound as he let it simmer? This was precisely the guilt he was trying to atone for. Still, the girl had hit on something. He didn’t think he could explore each orb this evening, even if he wanted to. There were hundreds of them. And tomorrow, there was a hunt to continue. He breathed out a long breath, suddenly feeling the day’s exhaustion catching up to him.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Either way, I don’t think I can take any more right now.”

  “Come on,” she said, “let’s go back to camp.”

  The night passed without incident. Each of the men took a turn at standing guard while the others slept. Of course, Jon dreamt of Cal again - few nights had passed when he hadn’t. But this time Cal had long, pointy ears, a scaly face and sharp teeth. Even in the dream, Jon felt too tired to be surprised.

  The day grew bright and hot earlier than any day yet this season, as Naphte now led the travelers out of the foothills and in among the mountains of the Fold. It got harder and harder to maneuver the ziri through ever-narrowing paths and labyrinths of crevices. The vehicles couldn’t float high enough to just skim above the many boulders and other obstacles, and eventually, it looked as if they would have to be left behind. Naphte called a halt.

  “Look,” he said, “these beastmen were pretty sloppy in fleeing. There’s tons of sign to follow, so why don’t I go on ahead and see if the path gets any better before we get these things stuck somewhere?”

  No one was keen on letting him go alone, and they couldn’t help but be fixated on figuring out how to bring the ziri along. They were just too convenient to leave behind.

  “Wait,” said Jon. He’d been so focused on the ziri he’d not thought of it. “I can just fly up and get a better lay of the land. Maybe I’ll even catch a glimpse of the Nulians, if they’re still around.”

  “You can fly?” Naphte said. He crossed his arms and smirked. “You just have to keep making us jealous.”

  It turned out the path upslope only got worse. There were fewer and fewer crevices wide enough to ride through, and most were not connected. The mountain landscape devolved into weathered cliffs, piles of boulders and rivers of gravel. Before Jon landed from his aerial scan, he caught sight of a gaping hole in the side of the mountain, just a few miles south. There was no clear path to it, but he was willing to bet it was the beastmen’s destination. He landed and told his companions what he’d seen.

  “We’ll have to ditch the bikes,” he said, “but I’m sure we can make it without them.”

  Naphte was stroking his zirah like a pet, “All too soon,” he said sadly. “Maybe they’ll still be here when we come back.”


  It wasn’t just the ziri that had to be abandoned. Naphte had brought far more weapons than he could comfortably carry, and everyone had been given extra rations before leaving the Ox. They took what they could and left the rest.

  After speeding along on various hovering vehicles for days, trudging over rocks and gravel for those last few miles seemed to take ages. Jon found himself wishing for his worn-out old sneakers, these boots just weren’t cutting it. It was a long hour, but at last, the group emerged from a narrow ravine and stepped out onto a flat expanse that marched down into the maw of a yawning cavern. Daylight revealed some of the cavern’s interior, but its floor sloped downward before leveling out, so not much was visible from here. Jon noted that the mouth of the cavern was wide enough to accommodate one of the hover barges, and puzzle pieces began falling into place.

  “How could we have missed this?” Naphte wondered aloud. “The Zansari said there were multiple teams rooting around down here. This is too big to miss.”

  “There’s something about it…” Dahm trailed off. He led the way nearer to the maw’s opening. In the shadows of the cave they found more discarded remnants of a beastman camp - small bones picked clean of meat, and evidence of defecation.

  Dahm put a hand on the arch of stone that outlined the cavern’s mouth. He did not have to probe too deeply into it to find what he had sensed from a distance. Embedded in the natural stone of the mountain was some kind of… nervous system? Thousands of intersecting conduits of metal reached down into the earth, fading from his mind’s eye into the darkness of the deep cave.

  Focusing intently, Dahm discovered the network’s nearest terminus and explored it. His probing was like searching a room in near darkness, using touch and faint glints of light to find one’s way. There it was, a simple switch near the end of the line. What did it do? Ah, open and close. Farther down the line, what? Huge doors, expertly masked to seem as one with the terrain. He was afraid to test closing the doors - what if they couldn’t get back in?