Arena

by Karen Hancock

  She returned to the harvest, pausing to confer briefly with a couple of her fellow workers, their glances darting Callie’s way. A little later, she saw them trudging back to the temple, their sacks full. A tolling bell drew the remaining workers after them, most likely a summons to the noon meal, if the baking bread and hot grease she’d been smelling were any indication. She wasn’t hungry, so she kept wandering, returning at last to the meadow at the foot of the cliff.

  The climbers were a little farther up now, showering the ground with an almost continuous stream of pebbles. None of the Sitters had moved, and though they gave no sign of it, Callie felt as if they were staring at her. She settled among the rocks above the trail where she could watch both wall and gate, and waited. A couple came down the path to investigate the road’s end, but soon wandered back up to the temple. The birds chirruped. Insects buzzed near the trail. The sun beat upon her. Listlessly she lay back against the rock, staring at the Gate. As before, it danced in constant flux, now red, now clear, now silver and gold. From blood to living fire, it changed and changed again, filling her with that inexplicable yearning.

  The afternoon passed. A group of people came down to the wall, but she ignored them, engrossed in the Gate, as if by staring she might make it draw her up to it. After a while they went away. Later, Wendell came to feed the Sitters. He called to her from the path below her perch, but she pretended not to hear him.

  It was late when Pierce found her. He climbed to the flat rock on which she sat, then stood beside her, but she ignored him as she had ignored everyone else. “Callie,” he said softly, “you can’t just give up.”

  “You have.”

  He squatted, bringing his bearded face even with hers, sandalwood scent wafting from his robe. “I’m just trying another option.”

  “I don’t want to serve Mander,” she said.

  “You’d rather sit here for the rest of your life?”

  She watched the Gate flicker and shift. The temple bell tolled. “Did you know,” she said after it faded to silence, “that you have to wear a collar if you serve him?”

  Pierce shifted his weight back and sat down, wrapping his arms about his knees. “Yeah.”

  That’s right. He already wore one. She’d seen it last night. She finally looked at him. His left eye socket was bright green around the brow and temple, purple on the lid, and there were dark shadows under both eyes. His lip was still scabbed, his skin gray, his eyes flat.

  Her gaze dropped to the silver strand at his throat.

  From the cliff came a shout and a rush of pebbles. Another climber dangled at the end of his rope. She felt just like him, banging helplessly against the rock, too tired to haul herself up again.

  After a long silence Pierce stood. “They’re holding an Ascension tonight,” he said. “Why don’t you come watch?”

  “I can’t. The device might come on.”

  She felt his reproachful gaze. It was a lame excuse. Without the key, she couldn’t access the device even if it did appear. “I’m too tired,” she added, as if that would be a better excuse.

  He sighed, then started down, stopping after a few steps. “Whit and the others are here.”

  “They gonna sign on, too?”

  “Already have.”

  The climber righted himself and once more inched up the rock. Pierce said no more and left as the tiny figure rejoined his companions. All that work, and for what? In another fifty feet they’d hit the band of sandstone and have to quit. Or die.

  “I should’ve stayed with Garth,” she said, then laughed at the absurdity of the sentiment. “Like I had a choice.” Bitterness ignited into frustration. She lifted her face to the darkening sky.

  “Why have you told us to do what cannot be done?! You’re not being fair.” Her echoing voice sounded embarrassingly whiny, but if the Sitters heard her, they gave no sign, and the climbers were too far away. Only the crickets took notice, having cut off their high-pitched chirps when she spoke, and now starting up again.

  Pierce was right. She couldn’t just give up. The Sitters’ long hair and beards showed the uselessness of staying here. And while Garth’s Canyon of the Damned might well be the way, she’d never climb it. Which left only Mander.

  It was dark when she arrived at the temple for the Ascension, and though the ceremony would not begin for another hour, the main court already hummed with activity as Manderians settled everywhere with their blankets and picnic dinners. Determined to watch this miracle in the flesh, Callie traversed the long court and climbed a staircase to one of two balconies flanking the Grotto of the Ascension. There a single monitor offered a canned view of the Gate and would presumably provide close-ups of the Ascension. She peered over the balcony wall into the grotto, but found little to see for the moment.

  Gradually, though, both the grotto and the glass-walled sanctuary overlooking it filled with gray-robed Faithful. She was watching the crowd idly, when a tall black man with an eye patch stepped through the balcony door. His companion, sporting beard braids and an earring, followed. The two of them joined her by the wall. Like Pierce, both wore gray robes and empty Strands of Service.

  “Gave up on the cliff watch, did you?” John said.

  “For a while,” she admitted as LaTeisha and Pierce came through the door next.

  Pierce drew up beside her, his gaze sober. “I’m glad you came.”

  She managed a small smile. “Where’s Rowena?”

  “We haven’t seen her since before dinner,” LaTeisha said, self-consciously touching the silver chain that gleamed against her dark skin.

  “She was talking to some girl,” said John.

  “Trying to figure a way to wiggle in with Mander, no doubt,” LaTeisha added.

  The balcony filled to overflowing, the air growing heavy with heat and stale sweat. Callie stood pressed between Whit and Pierce as they peered over the wall. Looking back and stretching on tiptoe, she could just see the monitor between the score of heads now obscuring her view. As the ceremony got under way the screen’s shimmering image of the Gate changed to a close-up of the grotto pool and its hovering shelf. The lights dimmed, the crowd stilled, and a stirring melody presaged the emergence of a tall, bearded, gold-cloaked man with flowing blond curls. He glided across the flagstone, climbed the low stair to the platform, and turned, spreading his arms.

  “Mander!” the Faithful called, reaching out to him. “Mander!”

  The man’s charisma was undeniable. His face, his manner, his expressions—his whole presence—commanded attention and approval. Yet the mindless way his subjects called his name drove a chill up Callie’s back. She murmured in Pierce’s ear, “He’s bearded, so he must not be an alien.”

  “The beard could be false,” he murmured back.

  She glanced up at him, pleased he was not swept away like everyone else.

  “Faithful servants!” Mander cried. “What a joyous day this is!”

  “Oh, joyous day!” they repeated.

  Behind her a woman whimpered, reaching past Callie’s shoulder and over the stone wall toward her . . . Savior? Lord? Manipulator?

  Callie’s aversion mounted.

  “We are gathered here,” Mander intoned, “to witness the glorification of two of our body.”

  “Bless you, Mander . . . Thank you . . . Savior . . .”

  Two robed figures entered by the same doorway Mander had used and joined him on the platform.

  “Jacki Lohman and Brian Fitz, faithful servants, what shall I give you in reward?”

  “Please, our Master,” they said together, voices amplified by unseen microphones, “send us home.”

  “Whoever asks me for the way,” Mander cried, arms raised, “I will deliver. Let it be as I have said. Tonight you will see the Gate of Freedom.”

  He helped them onto the hovering stone, then faced the crowd. “Let this be a sign of my love.”

  A sign.

  Callie glanced about. There were no triple circles here. Not in t
he rooms, not on the doors, not anywhere in the grotto. If Mander was the real Benefactor, surely the circles would be in evidence. A wild relief swept through her. This wasn’t the answer, after all. The only place marked by the true Benefactor’s sign was the cliff at the end of the road.

  Her rising triumph collapsed. That was no answer, either. The design was on the cliff, yes, but it still offered no way to access the Gate.

  The stone upon which Jacki and Brian stood glowed with a blue-white light as Mander pointed at it, and slowly it began to rise. If cables were pulling it, Callie couldn’t see them. Breathless, the crowd watched the two glide upward, Jacki sobbing tearful thank-yous while lines of moisture streaked Brian’s cheeks.

  Callie wanted to scream, Stop! It’s wrong! Don’t go!

  But she didn’t.

  The stone bore the couple to the rim, where they stepped off and walked out of sight.

  “As they have asked,” Mander said, “so I have done.”

  “As they have asked, so you have done,” the crowd repeated.

  Slowly the stone descended.

  Callie frowned. They hadn’t vaporized. They’d been carried to the rim and stepped onto it. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe—

  But why were there no circles? The manual was marked, the supply boxes were marked, every bit of equipment was marked, the car was marked, and the Safehaven had it—why not this place?

  And anyway, she didn’t know they hadn’t vaporized. Maybe they weren’t even real. Maybe they were holograms, like Meg. Or aliens, impersonating Jacki and Brian. Or maybe . . .

  She didn’t know. And worse, she still had no other way of ascending the cliff.

  Mander intoned some parting words and left. The stone was halfway back as the lights came up and the balcony cleared. Callie stayed put, partly to let the crowd thin, partly because she didn’t know what to do.

  Pierce leaned his forearms on the wall and looked at her. “Well?”

  “There are no triple circles, Pierce.”

  He laced his fingers and scanned the grotto. “I noticed that.”

  “And we never saw them actually walk through the Gate.”

  “No.” The stone stopped just above the water and the fountains kicked on. “Still, they are up there.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Come on, Callie,” John burst out behind her. “You saw it with your own eyes.”

  “Yeah, but with their lasers and holograms and computer-generated realities—how can we know what we saw was real?”

  “You have a better idea?” Whit folded his arms across his chest, frowning down at her.

  “I think the answer’s at the end of the road,” Callie said. “Where the symbol is.”

  “So what do we do?” LaTeisha demanded. “Walk up and ask to be levitated?”

  The others laughed, but Callie went rigid, awash with tingles. She seized Pierce’s arm. “Those things Mander said tonight—something like, whoever asks me for the way . . . and as you have asked—is that in the manual?”

  His brow furrowed. “I remember something about asking him to help, but—”

  “That’s it!” she interrupted. “It’s gotta be. I asked for the comb and the box appeared. I asked for you to be protected, and we found the cars.”

  She turned to Whit. “Do you still have the key Pierce gave you? The one that runs the car?”

  “Key?” He shook his head, brows knit as if he were still two steps behind her. “No,” he said finally. “Rowena took it.”

  “Rowena?”

  “It fell on the floor when the car stopped, and she picked it up.”

  “Callie—” Pierce touched her arm.

  “What were you saying about not giving up?” She pushed away from the wall. “I’m going to find Rowena.” She half expected them to let her go alone, but they didn’t.

  Rowena was in the chapel, talking to a dark-haired woman Callie didn’t know. “Where did you put the key?” Callie demanded, stopping in front of them. “The one from the car.”

  Rowena regarded her blankly. “I gave it to Mander.” She arched her slim brows at LaTeisha and Whit. “He called it the Key of Life. Said it was the most valuable offering anyone can bring to him. It’s bought my passage home.” She smiled, fingering her Strand of Service where an egg-sized blood crystal rested in its setting. “I go up day after tomorrow.”

  They gaped at her.

  “Sorry I couldn’t take any of you along—it’s only good for one.”

  “It’s a trap,” Callie said. “He tricked you.”

  “You’re just saying that because you can’t go.”

  Callie ignored her, already turning away. Maybe she could find the key she’d thrown at the cliff.

  The meadow gleamed like ice in the Gate’s light, the road a golden ribbon. Ninety feet up, the climbers hung bivouacked in their slings. One of them must have been reading, for a tiny light glowed against the dark wall.

  Callie raced to the tumble of boulders where she had thrown the key. It could not have landed in a worse place, for the rocks were small enough to be numerous, but large enough to form inaccessible crevices into which the key could easily have fallen. She knew the chances of finding it were slim—even assuming it hadn’t shattered on impact or disappeared with time like the boxes it was supposed to open or been seized by a mite.

  Pierce and the others scrabbled about the rocks, calling to one another, getting in the way more than helping. If the key hadn’t already fallen into a crack, someone would probably knock it there in all the bustle. She was about to call them off when she found it, caught in a weed where three boulders met. Another half inch and it would have slid into a crevice too slender to get an arm into. Trembling, she seized it and stood, her cry of triumph silencing the others.

  They gathered quickly around her, faces alight with hope. Beyond them, at the meadow’s edge, a handful of the Faithful had followed them down from the temple—Wendell and Rowena among them. Just behind them stood a trio of Watchers, and to the right, another trio. And another up on the rocks. In fact, Watchers surrounded her, some even clinging to the cliff above, their pale skins gleaming in the ghostly light. Among them, here and there, other forms—transparent, luminescent men dressed in white—faded in and out like holographic transmissions. All of them watched her intently.

  Did that mean she was right?

  Callie licked her lips, swallowed on a suddenly dry throat, and approached the cliff. “Okay, Mr. Benefactor. You say we must find you and ask for your help. Well, I think you’re here now, so I’m asking: Help us get up to that gate.”

  Silence swallowed her voice. Her pulse throbbed in her ears. Please, please, please, be right.

  Moments passed. Someone stirred behind her, sighed deeply. Out in the meadow, Rowena’s voice muttered, and the crickets started up again.

  It takes a while, she thought. It took a while for the box— The triple circle flared crimson, molten light in the thin engravings.

  The others gasped behind her and one of the Sitters cried out, a rush of pebbles betraying his movement.

  She set the key’s rod against the central t, and immediately the rock grabbed it, sucking it inward. Slowly the circles moved away from each other, two separating horizontally, the third heading straight up. When the cross-facing circles were five feet apart and the top one seven feet off the ground, they flared orange-red. A line of fire shot crosswise, connecting the side circles. Another blazed downward, forming a t. The slits opened to reveal a shoulder-wide stairway angling up into the rock. The cross-facing circles had carved opposing shelves into each side of the passage wall, paralleling the stair and imbedded with lines of red light.

  Awestruck, Callie stared for a full minute without moving, afraid even to blink. Then a warm, copper-scented breeze blew out of the opening and coursed around her, pushing her from behind. Warily she mounted the red-lit stair.

  At first the staircase didn’t appear long enough to reach the rim. But by the time she
’d ascended fifty paces she saw no end to it at all, just a blurry red line disappearing into dark distance. Looking at it made her dizzy, so she fixed her gaze on the step in front of her and realized that the stairs were moving, carrying her upward like an escalator. A wave of disorientation wobbled her knees, and she groped for the wall, trailing her fingers along it for balance and reassurance.

  Up and up and up she went, until it seemed she’d gone much farther than the height of the cliff. She dared not look back, dared not even imagine how high she had to be. As it was, the end of the ride sneaked up on her. One minute she saw only the interminable red line, the next, a white doorway loomed before her.

  It opened into a granite basin where a pool of snowmelt reflected a star-spangled sky. The Gate swept upward out of the pool, radiant streams of crystal, silver, and gold woven together and sparked with spears of crimson. A film of silver-and-gold flecks shimmered across the opening, and the air and ground thrummed with an immense power, tingling across her skin and deep into her vitals.

  Trepidation seized her. This gate was something alien, something mighty beyond imagination—as different from any power she had known as light was from dark. To even approach it seemed sacrilegious— to pass through it, suicidal. Surely no earthly flesh could touch this presence and live.

  And yet, though the pulsing brightness was almost palpable, though the organs in her chest vibrated in resonance with its power, Callie felt no heat and heard no sound beyond the soft rush of the wind—still swirling around her, still urging her onward. She swallowed and clenched her fists. He had opened the rock for her, and his stairway had carried her up here. If he intended to kill her, he could’ve done so long ago. Besides, what else could she do? Go back and serve Mander?

  She lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders and stepped off the granite shore into the water. It was unexpectedly warm and effervescent, fizzing playfully around her shins. The arch loomed closer, and the humming vibration intensified. At its threshold she stopped again, her heart pounding, her hands icy, palms slick with sweat. She tilted her head back, lifting her gaze to the shimmering, blinding, living gateway above her, and caught her lip in her teeth. It was going to change her. She did not know how she knew that, but she did.