ACrucible of Time

by neetha Napew

  The teenager shook his head, the strands of snowy hair clinging limply to his etched cheeks. "Found him in big house. Think drunk. Eyes like poached eggs. Red cheeks. Said regretted that ville didn't have medical skills or drugs. Hoped Doc got better quick. Ready for testing. Tomorrow."

  Ryan bit his lip. "Yeah, I haven't forgotten. Fireblast! Surely they won't expect a sick old man to have to take part in this testing."

  "Think will," Jak said, huddled under a mottled gray blanket while he shook off his wet clothes. "Yeah. Afraid that think will."

  "Mebbe he'll be okay by then and be able to take part," Dean suggested.

  "Doubt he'll be in much shape to take part in anything for a couple of days," Mildred said. "Children of the Rock can't be that insensitive, can they?"

  None of the others answered her.

  SUPPER WAS BROUGHT around to their hut by a brace of the younger women, one of whom had a vile cancer disfiguring her face, a rotting hole of fringed flesh, where what remained of her nose joined her mouth. The upper lip was already consumed, showing the line of her rotting teeth.

  She tried hard to keep her head turned away from the gentle golden light of the two oil lamps that smoked on the table by the side window, concealing the worst of her hideous scarring from the outlanders.

  There were bowls of thick soup, with chunks of carrot and parsnips floating in it, followed by some tough mutton chops, with whipped potatoes that had been grievously undercooked, leaving hard lumps. The bread was good, fresh-baked rolls, with a dish of salted butter. Mugs of frothing, creamy milk completed the meal.

  "Soup tasted bitter," Krysty commented. "Recognized some of the herbs in it but I don't know what it was that gave it that sour aftertaste."

  Mildred drained her drink, wiping a white mustache from her upper lip. "Didn't notice. Potatoes were lumpy enough to match the tough mutton. Mustard took away the worst of the flavor from that."

  Doc had been awakened and had sipped at the soup, but hadn't felt like facing the meat, drinking the milk and asking for more to combat the dryness of his sore throat.

  Within minutes he was fast asleep again.

  RYAN YAWNED. "Dropping off," he said, puzzled at how his voice seemed to be coming from a vast distance away, echoing inside his skull.

  "Could go for a walk, lover. Fresh air do us good. It's real muggy inside here."

  Ryan opened the door of their cabin, looking out into the late evening. The rain had almost ceased, still dripping noisily from the overhanging branches of the towering trees. The cloud cover was being lashed away in the rising wind, showing an occasional glimpse of a sliver of moonlight.

  No signs of life were visible outside the buildings of Hopeville, though all the huts showed lights through the slitted shutters. There was a burst of laughter from the big house where Brother Joshua Wolfe lived, and the sound of someone playing a piano, loudly and badly.

  "Someone's having a good time," Krysty said, joining him, her warm body pressed against his.

  He glanced behind them. Doc was snoring loudly, mouth gaping open. Dean and Jak were lying on their beds, folly dressed again, as they all were. The youths' eyes were closed tight and their chests were moving rhythmically.

  J.B. and Mildred were locked in each other's arms on a double bed that they'd contrived by pushing two of the singles together. They also looked like they were asleep.

  "Only us chickens awake," Ryan said. Krysty yawned, leaning up against him. "And it's only a matter of time before…" The rest of the sentence muffled by another massive yawn.

  Ryan burped, wincing at the bitterness that came flooding into his mouth, reminding him of the flavor of the thick soup. The odd flavor of the soup.

  A loose shingle was rattling on the roof, distracting him from what he felt had been an important chain of thought. He'd remembered something that really mattered, but he couldn't now recall what it had been.

  "What was it?" he muttered.

  "What? Didn't hear you, lover."

  Her voice was indistinct, like it came from inside a suitcase. Ryan steadied himself on the frame of the door, feeling the roughness of the hewed wood.

  "Didn't hear you, lover."

  "Said that before."

  "Did I?"

  "We going for that walk?"

  A flurry of rain dashed into his face, making him blink. For a moment he was worried. Something was definitely wrong. He shouldn't be feeling this tired.

  Krysty hadn't answered him, leaning more heavily on his arm, making him reach around to support her slumped dead weight. The odd, cold realization that she had fallen asleep, standing up, registered. That wasn't right, either.

  "Krysty?"

  The piano had fallen silent, and Ryan had the strange, familiar hunter's suspicion that someone was watching him from the pools of the dark shadow around the ville.

  It had gone very still.

  HE WAS LYING on the bed, one arm jammed underneath him. Ryan squinted from his good eye, seeing that Krysty lay on the bed at his side, her bright hair illuminated by the flickering flames of the fire.

  A pulse pounded in his temple, like a deadening hammer blow. With an enormous effort he turned his head, seeing that the door of the hut stood wide open, a few drops of rain falling, tinted red by the fire. The door shouldn't be open at night; it should be locked and barred.

  "Bolted," he said, his tongue feeling swollen, filling his mouth.

  He should swing his legs over the side of the bed and walk the few paces across the floor, push the door closed and slide the heavy bolt. But the idea of so much effort was cataclysmically impossible, so far beyond the realm of possibility that Ryan laughed at the thought.

  There wasn't a bolt on the door. Funny. He never noticed that before. Anyone could walk in out of the night.

  Ryan burped again, the taste of bitterness seeming stronger, almost making him gag.

  The odd flavor of the soup.

  Odd flavor.

  "Odd," he said.

  Ryan closed his eye.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Ryan dreamed, a clogged, dark dream, one that carried him into deep waters and vaulted caverns.

  He was the chaser, pursuing a nameless, faceless creature along the slippery corridors. Damp streamed down the rough-hewed walls of what seemed like an ancient mine. His own steps echoed all around him, distorted, making it sound like he was surrounded, behind and before.

  He was wounded.

  In the biting chill of the caves, Ryan could feel an ominous warmth clotted around his groin and lower stomach. He touched himself, reaching inside the coat. His fingertips, numb with cold, touched hot stickiness.

  There wasn't much pain.

  A throbbing, pounding feeling lanced across his temples, and a sick dizziness. Two or three times Ryan felt that he was going to lose his balance and fall in the slimy passages. But if he fell, then his prey would escape him.

  Or he would find that he had suddenly, inexplicably, become the prey himself.

  The shafts kept forking and dividing, yet he somehow always knew which trail to follow. Onward and downward, once having to use the rotting length of braided rope that clung to the one wall like a handrail.

  His hand gripped what he had thought was his big SIG-Sauer pistol, but a feeble, guttering lamp had revealed that the blaster in his right fist was really only a single-shot, bolt-action .22. It was a Chipmunk Silhouette, a heavy, long-barreled pistol, almost unique in the bolt action, for a handblaster. It wasn't the kind of weapon that Ryan had ever carried before, hardly the sort of man-stopper that he needed for this subterranean chase.

  A black plastic box was hooked to the wall just ahead of him. It made a sinister crackling sound, and then a calm voice came from it, a voice that sounded like the man who ran the legendary Children of the Rock.

  "You have four minutes and thirty seconds to complete the testing."

  Ryan stopped and doubled over, being violently sick, his mouth flooding with the bitter taste of
golden bile. He dropped to his hands and knees, pressing his forehead to the seeping walls of the corridor.

  It felt like someone had a fist knotted down in the soul of his guts, tugging and twining, trying to rip out the greasy loops of intestines. He moaned out loud, feeling warm tears streaming down his stubbled cheeks, leaking under the eye patch, the salt stinging his skin.

  For a moment he stopped, battling the sickness. He paused in the dark stillness, waiting for his prey to give him some clue where it was lurking.

  But there was nothing.

  The blackness was filled with complex, shifting shapes. It was like being locked into the heart of a huge puzzle that had a simple solution. Once he had found the missing shapes—or were they symbols?— and slipped them into the correct places in the puzzle, then everything would be all right. Just like that.

  He heard the soft sound of someone sniggering with laughter, a vile, triumphant noise, a cruel merriment that began to swamp the tunnels all about him, flooding and welling up, louder.

  "Fireblast!" he whispered. There was a bitter anger in his heart that threatened to become a scarlet mist that would shroud his brain and imperil all sense of balance and harmony.

  Things were getting worse.

  The sickness and dizziness pressed down on the unprotected surface of his brain.

  Blood trickled down his thighs, into his combat boots, an icy feeling that seemed to be spreading from the gaping wound in his stomach.

  The floor dipped, suddenly, and Ryan dropped, a jolting fall that felt like fifty feet, but that common sense told him was probably no more than eight or ten feet. It was hard enough for him to lose his balance and to bang his elbow, a painful, bone-scraping blow that triggered the reflexes in his fingers. They opened, and the unusual blaster spun away out of his grip.

  He stayed where he was, crouched on hands and knees, slowly recovering from the shock of the fall. He reached out around him on the wet granite for the blaster, but it had totally disappeared in the blackness.

  Shakily Ryan stood. He felt for the walls, finding one, then, four or five paces off, the other one. Both were hacked from stone, both streaming with melt-water, as cold as whispered sin. Cautiously he reached up into the singing space above his head, but there was no roof to be felt.

  He knew that he could never climb back up to the previous level, which meant that there was only one way to go. And that was onward.

  But now he was weaponless, and the tumble had stretched the torn lips of his gashed belly. The blood was flowing more quickly, and he had no way of checking it. You couldn't put a tourniquet on your own stomach.

  "Lonesome, low-down," he muttered to himself. He wished that Krysty were with him in the catacomb. The Trader always used to say that in a tight spot, two were ten times as good as one.

  Ryan blinked again, reaching to rub at his good eye. He pressed hard with his palm, expecting to see a dazzling array of silver-and-gold sparks flashing across the retina. But there was nothing. No reaction.

  Just all-over sable.

  It felt like he was losing it; his senses were betraying him. Now the pain in his stomach was burning hot, making him cry out in shock. The steady dribble of blood from the wound was bitterly cold, making it difficult for him to lift and lower his feet. But when he did, it was like walking across an infinite pavement of human eyeballs that squished and rolled under the soles of the boots, making him lose his balance.

  When Ryan brushed against the invisible wall, it wasn't hard stone like it had been before. Now it was just like plunging his fingers into the rotting body of a flayed corpse. He had the horrible sensation of hundreds of blind maggots, writhing in both hands.

  "Ryan?"

  The word sounded so far away.

  The dizziness swept over him like a great wave of nausea, bringing him again to his knees.

  "Come on, Ryan."

  He couldn't form the words of a reply.

  "Ryan Cawdor?"

  His mouth was dust dry, and when he tried to speak, there was no sound, not even the faint mewing of a drowning, newborn kitten.

  Doom.

  The single word pounded in his brain, like the beating of a slack-skinned drum, heard shimmering through the heat haze of a luxurious summer meadow.

  "Ryan!"

  It was louder, meaning that he was going to have to open his eye again, which didn't seem like the best idea in the world. It would be uncomfortable and painful.

  Better by far to sleep and die.

  "Give…drink…"

  Cool liquid flowed into his mouth, over his swollen tongue and into his parched throat.

  "Good," he mumbled.

  The other voice said, "What'd he say?"

  Another man, whose voice was vaguely familiar, replied, "Said it was good, Brother. Shall I give him more?"

  "No. Sit him up. Slap his face if he won't come around. Need him awake."

  A blow jolted Ryan's cheek, making the vertigo worse.

  "Open your eye, Ryan."

  "Soon."

  "Not soon. Now."

  "Others are coming around. Except old man and the albino kid. Both flaked out."

  "Kid had two helpings of the soup, and the old-timer's got Sierra flu. Drug was bound to work a deal harder on him than on the others."

  Ryan knew that he was learning something important, something that he somehow already knew. "Odd flavor," he said.

  The men laughed. "Bet it did, Brother Cawdor. Not odd enough to stop you pigging at it."

  "Drugged." That was it. That was the missing shape in the puzzle.

  "Did he say something about the soup being drugged?" There was more laughter. Ryan felt his whole body moving, as though someone were rocking the bed he lay on.

  "Drugged me." He heard his own voice, now louder and much clearer.

  "Right. Now it's time you got yourself up and walking good, Brother Cawdor."

  The words came from Joshua Wolfe, leader of the ville. Ryan took a deep breath, allowing his right hand to wander under the pillow, feeling for the familiar butt of the SIG-Sauer, ready to wipe away the smiles and laughter.

  "Don't think so, outlander." Jim Owsley sneered at him.

  Wolfe spoke again, insistent. "We've waited enough. Open your eye and get up. There's much to talk about before you and your colleagues entertain us at the testing."

  Ryan opened his eye, feeling an instant tsunami of sickness washing around his skull.

  All he knew was that they'd been tricked by the Children of the Rock. All of their weapons had been stolen, and there was this repeated talk of the testing.

  It was time to fight back against the drugs they'd been given. Now.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The tiny flickering digital numerals showed Ryan that it was seven minutes from noon.

  He was sitting cross-legged on his own bed, holding his aching head in his hands. Sunlight shone through the narrow gap where the door of their hut stood ajar. The air was heavily scented with the fragrance of the surrounding pines, freshened by the heavy rain of the previous night.

  To his right, Krysty was also sitting up, her hands laid flat on her thighs. Her emerald eyes were closed, and her sentient red hair was coiled protectively about her nape. She was meditating, calling silently on the powers of the Earth Mother to help them out of this deep, deep hole.

  J.B. stood, looking out of the window of the cabin, Mildred at his side, running her fingers through her beaded hair. Neither of them had spoken much in the past hour or so, locked into their own thoughts.

  Ryan noticed that Mildred was holding J.B.'s hand.

  Jak rested on the floor in a corner of the room, staring at the hewed logs of the wall.

  Dean sat on his bed, quietly staring at the ceiling, completely still.

  Doc lay on his back, blankets pulled up to his stubbled chin, eyes closed. He was breathing slowly and heavily, with a faint, whispering croak at the end of each intake. From where he was sitting, Ryan could make out the sheen of
perspiration that dappled the old man's pallid forehead.

  The main thing that had struck Ryan on his recovery was that all of their weapons were gone— all of them, including the panga.

  "They get all your knives, Jak?" Ryan asked quietly.

  The white head shook slowly. "Some," was the whispered response. "Not all."

  That was something.

  "Doc's Le Mat's gone, as well," Krysty said. "And his trusty sword."

  "Why fuck done this to us? All fucking words friendly shit! What's game?" Jak asked.

  A shadow filled the doorway, and the answering voice came from Brother Joshua Wolfe.

  "No game. Oh my, not at all a game! We are being careful, young man. I learned from your wonderful and wise Trader that a man who takes a chance that he doesn't have to take, doesn't often live long enough to take any further chances. Well, something a lot like that."

  "What's the danger? If we wanted to cause you trouble, then we could have done that from line one, page one. We had all of the firepower we needed." Ryan closed his eye at a shaft of pain from his headache. "Like Jak says, all your words were just a load of bullshit."

  "Possible."

  Ryan raised his voice, feeling the red mist of anger swooping over his mind. "Probable!"

  The leader of the community wasn't in the mood to be provoked. He shook his head and smiled. "Patience and forgiveness are great virtues, Brother Ryan."

  "You drugged us and stole our weapons."

  "But of course. Did you believe that it was the fairies and elves of the great trees that had crept in while you slumbered and took your blasters? Goblins and gnomes of the high mountains and the rushiest of glens? No, I rather think not, Brother."

  "Cut the crap." Ryan got up off the bed, managing to conceal his dizziness. "What about the testing you talked about? That still on?"

  Owsley was at Wolfe's elbow, and he laughed, an unpleasant, abrasive noise, like sandpaper drawn over the edge of a piece of crystal.

  "Course it's on, outlander. That's just what all of this is about."

  "Drug us and take our weapons? Why not just chill us all?"