by C. A. Lang
Alim and Dannac scrambled to the top of the pile.
“We’ve already wasted too much time in here,” Alim said. “We’d best move on, or risk contracting the Hex.”
It was true, but Capra wished she could at least find Vasi’s body, bring back her amulet for Rovan. It pained her to think about the boy. “I can’t believe she did that...”
She knelt and poked at the rocks. What kind of person could decide to destroy themselves with a split-second decision?
But wait—something odd in the rocks. A fragment of uniform ridges. Curved, tooled. She picked up a rock fragment, stood. “These formations weren’t all natural. Look at this.” She turned over the rock and revealed a deep, chiseled symbol. Three circles, each touching the other.
A voice said, from behind, “I noticed just before the explosion.”
She whipped around. Vasi stood among the rocks, arms crossed. Capra’s jaw dropped.
“What?”
“You’re not dead.”
“No, I am not.” Vasi flashed a hint of a grin. “Sleight of hand. The creature was easily distracted by illusions. I caught some fragments in my back when I ran from the explosion, but nothing I can’t deal with.”
Capra wanted to embrace Vasi, but didn’t. “Well, that was some trick.”
“There was very little magic involved. Just enough to set off your charges. There is more to me than vihs, you know. Now, I have seen that symbol on dozens of Koratian artifacts, but I don’t know what they mean. Three is a strange number to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Duality is nature. The third is out of place. And these ruins predate the colonists, yet they show the same symbol. There was religious imagery here. Archons... the true archons... and the sacred demiurge. ”
Capra gazed at the symbols. “True archons?”
Dannac shook his head, and she took this as one of his cues to drop the subject.
Alim cleared his throat and gestured to the open desert. “I hate to break up the lecture, but the shadows are still destroying the city and blocking our escape.”
With that, they resumed their trek through the Hex.
A few hours later, Capra slowed and clutched her abdomen. Something was wrong, and she had the feeling that they were reaching a point which if they passed, the sickness would kill them. She looked to Vasi and winced. With Dannac’s strange mood ever since they had split up days earlier, Vasi seemed more of a friend than he did.
“Something wrong?” Vasi asked.
“I’m starting to feel it. The Hex, I mean. Aren’t you?”
“A little.”
“Why would I feel it so much more than everyone else?”
Vasi looked deep in thought. “The men are larger and stronger, despite that you could fight them both at the same time if you needed to. And me... well...” She appeared to struggle with something. “Let me show you something. Just a little trick to strengthen your resistance to illness.”
“Oh, come on. Are you kidding me?”
“No, why?”
“Ehzeri don’t just reveal their secrets to ex-soldiers. And I’m the last person who should be attempting these tricks. I don’t really believe in it.” This despite that her adult life had been spent snuffing out this power and dodging its attempts to kill her, but the rest of the world was abandoning vihs, and she thought humanity couldn’t do this fast enough.
“Do you want to survive or not?”
“I’m starting to think none of us are going to survive if we don’t find those tunnels you mentioned. Alim is an idiot.”
Vasi ignored the comment and began to direct Capra into a series of guided thoughts. The odd part was that she asked that Capra focus on the amulet she wore.
“It is just an aid to focus. I have one too, under my shirt. It helps to... it just helps to ground the practitioner.”
More nonsense. About the only good thing about it was the way it broke the monotony of the desert and distracted her from thinking of the Hex. When she finally cast aside her cynicism and made a concerted effort to focus on her amulet and visualize it as a quilting point for the vihs that flowed behind the invisible structure of reality, an odd sensation buzzed beneath her skin.
“There’s so much of it,” Capra said, after glimpsing mentally this vast network of energy, like rivers of lightning.
“It is deceptive. Not all of it will flow through your point, you see. There is a network, and if you...”
“Family connection?”
“Yes.”
“But I am not Ehzeri.”
“Well, everyone’s place in the structure comes with a small amount of individual power... anyone can learn to use it.”
She would not pretend to understand it. The grids and webs of vihs formed a structure too awesome for Capra’s sharp disbelief to shatter. Not only could she see them in the immediate area if she really focused, she could also follow them beyond the physical space and trace them back to even more convoluted knots.
Her own web joined with another. This one glowed less brightly than the others she had seen, and compared to the cords extending from herself, they were dull, barely glowing.
“Vasi, am I draining someone else? I don’t think this belongs to me.” She didn’t know why she asked the question, but it was the first thing that came to her.
“You need to do this, Capra. Draw it into you, envision it flowing through your blood and protecting your flesh from harm. Repeat these thoughts as much as you can.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Vasi skipped away, down the crest of a dune. “I must concentrate to find the nearest entrance to the vaults. I think if Alim actually sees them, he’ll change his mind about going underground instead.”
What was going on here? So far, Alim had been the most straightforward with her. It was almost easier to deal with him knowing that he would be after her as soon as it was convenient than trying to understand Dannac and Vasi’s strange behaviour.
Dannac knew what the stupid girl was doing. He watched them walk with their closed eyes and foreheads lined with concentration.
That could have been him, accessing the power. How different would life have been if he had been born into a more responsible family? Imagine wielding the vihs, and what an Ehzeri who refused to be subjugated could do with it.
He screwed his face into a bitter frown while he watched Vasi guide Capra through the procedures he had never been taught. Anyone could learn how to connect to the power— this didn’t mean Capra was one of them. She would see it as a toy and use up whatever was available to her in a short time, just like most non-Ehzeri who took the time to learn. What made an Ehzeri was the way in which they could act collectively and multiply their power to near infinity, not the mere ability to call upon it. An individualist like Capra would never be able to join with another in such a way.
Let the girl convince Capra of the lie. She would see soon enough that it was just nonsense, and that a simple protection working was not proof of anything but that Capra had the aptitude to access the power for a short time.
There was a reason the Ehzeri called it “work-skills”. To everyone else, it was just wish fulfilment.
He guzzled some water from his canteen and gazed towards the refinery. His vision wavered and he could barely see through the haze of fuzzy specks that had plagued his sight since stepping into the Hex. There was something in the air, but was he seeing it?
“Look,” Alim said. The Valoii had scarcely said anything to him since they met, and Dannac was thankful for this. “Whatever is making the engine noise is moving.”
Dannac looked back to the armoury. Now, the temporary structure was gone, and he saw what lay beneath: a giant.
He watched it take its first steps, engines blaring with each movement of its gigantic legs and arms. “Impossible.”
“I wouldn’t believe it if you told me, but there it is. I had heard of plans for such things, but never anything this large. How di
d they solve the problem of brittle metal, I wonder?”
“Yes, well, whether or not this is a good thing depends on who it aims to attack.”
It didn’t take any special communique from Yaz to know that the Republic would be extremely interested in captured images of the machine. It was the kind of thing they would view as a threat, and they would immediately scramble to build their own version.
And they would want to know how such a backward colony like Blightcross could devise such a thing, and they would assume that it was a Tamish plot, and they would assume that every Valoii in existence knew about the plan.
In some ways, he hoped that Capra would die an honourable death before he had to make the decision to hand her to Yaz.
“Here, I found it.” It was Vasi, and she was kneeling in the sand, scooping it with her hands. “The vaults are shielded from the Hex. This is our way to the refinery.”
“They are also connected to the armoury, as you said.” Dannac bent to help her. Capra seemed in a daze, standing there with her hands wrapped round her war-trophy amulet. “Do we want to risk an encounter with Sevari’s men?”
“Sevari’s men will be too busy with the chaos in the streets.”
“Do you really think this is not what he intended?”
Vasi’s digging became frantic. “I know Sevari better than most.” She looked away. “I know him well enough to know that he does not enjoy... this chaos. Even if the shadows promised that it was related to some higher order that would become apparent, he is too stubborn to change his mystical views. He will think that these shadows are the antithesis of the worldspirits he believes in, and are trying to stop the world from turning or some such ludicrous thought.”
He glanced at Capra again. Perhaps Vasi’s help had aided her in staving off further damage, but nobody ought to be that shade of pale when labouring in the heat. No healthy person, anyway.
“You truly believe these vaults are protected from the Hex?”
“I know they are. And when we run into shadow men down there, you will believe me.”
Helverliss had sensed the presence there for some time, but only now could he gather enough strength to raise his head and open his eyes. At his feet was a pen and the piece of paper, and he vaguely recognized his complex drawing as his sore eyes focused.
In front of him stood another man in black. “Good evening, Noro.”
“Have you come to end my suffering?”
“I am here to gain information, Noro. Things you are hiding from us.”
“I cannot hide anything from you.”
“Come now. You have uncovered secrets to the human mind. Secrets to your own peculiar way of relating to the world around you. I know you have learned how to bury your knowledge.”
He thought for a moment. “Ah. Things have changed over the millennia, haven’t they? You’re no longer satisfied with the primitive order you began to create.”
“Very astute. The boy is fascinating, but we do not understand him. His desires are strange. For example, he does not copulate with the girls he has seized, but orders them around. He does not kill his subordinates, but asks favours of them. He is more interested in gazing into the mirror than any real act of fulfilment or dominance. This is all new to us.”
There was something odd about the situation. The shadows should not be asking these questions, and he should be dead or turned into one of their pawns by now.
Could they really be confused by the current state of humanity? In the end, all of his philosophical advances and those of his colleagues amounted to little. How much had really changed since the last time the shadow beings roamed the earth? Perhaps it was not understanding they lacked, but context...
He drew just enough breath to speak. “You cannot properly exist without your enemy.”
“The town is teeming with humans, and they are performing admirably. The lack of plant life makes things much easier for us, as well. Less to transmute, you see.”
“No—not humanity.” He did some quick mental figuring, using logical formulae he had devised in defining the relation of objects, substances, and subject. “You are un-life.”
“That is right. And humanity is life.”
“Humanity is not life.”
The shadow man gave an inquisitive motion with his head.
“Not in this equation.” Helverliss laughed. The impotent fools—let them run themselves into oblivion. He might even come out of it alive, whether or not that was a good thing. “You are missing something.”
“And this is?”
“You’ll love this, shadow man. You’re missing the fire giants.”
The shadow man drew back, face wrenched with disgust. “We killed them all. Their remains have become your people’s fuel.”
“You are the same, shadow man. The fire giants are the wild, untamed force of nature, and you wretches are their negative, not humanity’s. You wanted to change their natural order, of the jungles and oceans, into cold precision.” He chuckled more, relishing his revelation. It would make a great lecture, and the thought of actually living to complete it for once made him happy, rather than depressed. “And so, my friend, that is why things are not quite right with you. You have denied yourselves the very thing upon which you depend for your continued existence. Your other half.”
“This cannot be true. We wish to destroy each other. The same does not destroy itself.”
“But your mistake is in thinking it destruction. There are mediating circumstances, after all.”
“Such as?”
“Man.”
The shadow man looked even more disgusted. “Man is but a thing to be directed by his betters. You need direction and plans. You need confidence in yourselves, you need the seduction of individuality to coax you out of bed.”
“Do you not remember the legend of Akhli? What do you think that was about?”
“He tricked us.” The shadow gazed at the painting, or what was left of it. “And we learned from it. That is why rather than talking to you humans and letting you push us into our own traps, we force you to enjoy yourselves.”
“Is that what is going on out there? You have it wrong. You see, Akhli was the mediating circumstance between the two opposing forces. In the end, they were... subsumed, and mankind began to flourish. It was a way to deal with the ultimate impotence of the two monolithic forces, of this primordial yet divine lie...”
Now his weak heart began to thud. There were so many avenues of thought opening to him after this realization, and he could barely scribble on the paper scraps at his feet.
Were these shadows, along with the giants, actually man himself? A kind of dream image? A universal delusion or hallucination?
Perhaps reality itself possessed a psychology, and this could give rise to such hysteria...
How would he reconcile the relationship between the three? It could take years to work out.
“What you speak of is impossible. If that were true, our return would also bring about the return of the giants.”
Helverliss grinned. “I do believe you’re getting it, friend.”
Of all the oversights regarding the mechanical golem project, Lieutenant Baq Gorvanian never would have guessed that talking to his crew while the damned thing was running would be one of them. Engine noise drowned out everything, even the sound of his own heartbeat. His legs felt like chutney after standing atop the bloody machine for twenty minutes.
He waved at the technician standing on the other shoulder of the mechanical beast, and after minutes of futile flailing at a man too deep in his work to notice, stepped within smacking distance.
He shouted to the technician as loudly as he could. “Those first steps were far too shaky. I believe one of the gyroscopes is faulty. Do you have another?”
The technician grimaced as he wrenched tight another bolt, then wiped his brow. “Gyroscope is fine, Sir. I just had the thing’s head opened up, ain’t nothing wrong in there. The first few steps are bound to be a bit
wobbly anyway.”
They had only a few more minutes before the golem would finish its warm-up and they would have to either scramble down from it, or find some crevice to hide in once it engaged the shadows.
“I want to be damned sure that this machine is in order before it grows up and wanders into the world.” He ran through the golem’s schematic in his mind, searching for any system his team might have missed. “Maybe the bloody fuckers put a drunkard’s brains into it.”
He stepped back to the golem’s head and removed a panel. Inside was a human brain, and next to it, an obsidian tube. Golden wires connected them.
It all looked as it was supposed to, and he snapped that one shut. The final task was to test fire the cannons and flame-guns, so he opened an auxiliary panel next to the main one. Inside were several studs and a few gauges and counting mechanisms.
He fiddled with them, and the sixteen engines responsible for the arms growled to raise them. He pointed them away from the city, hesitated for a moment, and pressed a stud.
The thing shook with a thunder that rose above the engine noise, and the special cannon shot trailed smoke as it arced towards the desert. Next, he tried the flame-guns. There was a hiss, and a spark. Flames leaped into the air, a distance that seemed half the length of the main road through the city. Flaming dust ran down the golem’s arm—more of the ore from the Hex mixed into the fuel for extra damage, like the cannon shot.
Where the flame bit into the sky, the shadows parted. Gorvanian didn’t know if the fire was damaging them, but at least he could be sure that it made them uneasy.
After shutting the panel and returning the golem to its own devices, he reached into his satchel for the signalling horn he had brought. He blew it, and began to climb down the golem’s side.
There was one technician below him, climbing down the ladder. This was the worst part—no matter how precise their casting, the exhaust pipes were not perfectly sealed, and climbing down the side of the golem was an exercise in holding his breath for as long as he could. Also, his head was a hand’s length away from the multitude of engines.
His foot met with the technician’s hand. But the man below did not look up or say anything. He seemed transfixed by something in the distance.