by Ty Beltramo
Several witty comebacks about Law and music immediately came to mind. But I needed to be cautious with Els. I didn’t know how much she’d take before pulling a knife on me.
I listened. “It’s not a perfect harmony. There’s a blend of dissonance, below and above. Can you hear it?” I asked.
She breathed deeply, as if she were meditating. “Yes. It sounds fitting. I like it.”
“So do I,” I said. “They’re happy. When I was here last, they didn’t sing so much.”
“What changed?” she asked.
“They got busy doing their work, I guess.” Changing the subject sounded like a good idea.
“Let’s get closer,” I said. “I want to take a look at one of those larger pyramids. I’m curious about something.”
The nearest set of completed pyramids had only a few workers around it, all performing cleanup tasks and singing. As I expected, they paid us no attention.
We walked over to the largest pyramid and began to study it.
“What do you make of it?” I asked.
She made a squinting expression as she looked. Very human. “I can barely make out some sort of energy shield encasing it. I haven’t seen anything like it before.”
That was odd. “You can barely see it? I could see it from way over there, perhaps a quarter of a mile away.”
She shook her head. “I can barely make it out from right here, just a few feet away. I guess you’re more sensitive to the finer disturbances in the planes.”
“Anyway, looking at it now, I think it confirms our theory about exactly what’s inside.”
“Why is that?” Els asked.
“Well, if our understanding of the wall glyphs is correct, inside one of these pyramids,” I knew which one, but I wouldn’t be telling anyone anytime soon, “should be hidden the Breath of Life, we guessed in the form of an elemental. But these energy structures are multilayered. The outer layer would repel any attempt to break into the pyramid, exposing the treasure within. That makes sense. But the inner layer is designed to keep something from getting out, and that only makes sense if there’s something inside that might want out.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I don’t see two layers. But you’re right. Keeping something from escaping would imply that whatever is in there might be alive and want out.”
So the builders didn’t understand the implications of their work. They weren’t just making more pyramids. They were making more vaults. That would make my job of hiding the Breath easier. If they continued to increase construction at their current rate, in no time it would be impossible to find the correct one--the only one on this entire plane that contained a captive treasure.
But I still needed to know more. I needed to see how they constructed the energy fields.
“Els, let’s go toward the center of these pyramids. I want to find someone. I’m guessing he’ll be there.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You know people here?”
“Sure, I get around. Let’s go.”
We set a course for the approximate center of the site. I noticed as we got closer that there were roads between the pyramid complexes that were being traveled by columns of builders. Some were heading toward the center, others were heading away.
We followed one of the rows, blending in with the builders and enjoying their song. I found myself wishing I knew the words they sang. Whatever they were and whatever they meant, I’d like to sing them too. Instead, we just marched along with the builders.
At the center of the site, there were rows of tools covering the ground. Shovels, picks, hammers, stone cutters, and various finer implements of construction were being neatly arranged and distributed to the throngs of builders who came down the road.
A few feet away, I saw a smaller builder directing the activities. Tool saw me and smiled.
“Elson. Welcome to the construction site. Have you come to inspect our progress? You will see that we are very diligent.”
“Hello, Tool. This is my friend Aello--I mean Els.”
“Hello, Els. I am the Tool Maker here.” He bowed to Els, then turned back to me.
“We are very pleased with the progress. In time, this land will be covered as far as one can see from the top of the great pyramids with these ‘complexes’ as you call them. Your advice to build them is a great gift to us.”
Els gave me that dangerous stare again.
“You advised them to cover the landscape with these?” She waved her hand at the pyramids.
“Uh, yeah. It’s a long story. I’ll explain it later.”
“Elson,” Tool continued, “we are glad you have returned. We knew you would like to see the complex dedicated to you.” Els snorted. “But we had hoped to have made better progress prior to your return.” He looked a little worried.
“Oh, hey, no problem, Tool. I just stopped by to show my friend here what great work you guys do. We’ve been traveling quite a bit, and these are the best pyramids around.” Tool perked up at that. “But I’m curious as to how you build the energy layers that shield the large pyramids. Can you tell me, or show me, how that is done?” I asked.
Tool thought it over. “I cannot show you, Elson. It is not something that is done of itself.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The ‘shield,’ as you call it, grows from the writings. We write the writings. The shield grows.”
“What writings?”
“The writings in the pyramid,” Tool said, as if I should know what he was talking about.
“Tool,” Els interjected, “do you know how to get inside the larger pyramids?”
“Yes. There is a door, here.” He pointed to a spot on one of the pyramids not far from us. In the middle of the side, a faint outline of an opening could be seen—by me, anyway. “I remember when this was completed that beings touched the tops of each of the smaller pyramids at precisely the same time and the door opened, then closed.”
Only one of these had ever been opened. I was sure. I hoped Els didn’t catch on that Tool had pointed to the very pyramid that contained the Breath of Life.
“Beings?” She asked.
“Yes. Each was a different sort of creature. One for each pyramid.”
“Do you know what sort of creatures they were? Were they like us?” Els asked.
“No. They were of a different sort.” He seemed pleased with his answer. Oh, well. It was more than I’d hoped for.
I signaled Els. “We have to be going, Tool. Farewell,” I said.
“Elson, will you be returning soon?” Tool asked.
“Er, yeah. I’ll stop by in a while and see the progress.”
“That is good,” he said. He was very pleased with the idea of showing me my complex. It made me uncomfortable, however.
Upon returning to the prime material plane, I was surprised to find that only a few hours had passed. I could only conclude that time in the Abyss proceeded at a similar rate to that of the prime material plane, but the time of the land of the Builders flowed very differently. There, time flowed much faster. That would explain how the Builders were able to make so much progress in the short time I had been away. Here, only a few days had passed. There, who knows how much time had elapsed.
When we returned to the coffee shop, Jill was still there but watching the large flat-screen TV high in one corner of the main seating area. On the TV was a report from a CNN reporter in Chile. The graphic on the screen was a map of South America with several small bull’s-eyes in the ocean surrounding the southern tip of South America.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Jill glanced over her shoulder at me. “Oh, hey Elson. Looks like more earthquakes have been hitting around Chile.”
“The ocean around Chile?” I asked. There was only Argentina and ocean around Chile.
I looked closely at the map. The quakes did form a ring around Chile. The recorded times for each of the disturbances were very close together; too close, given the distance between t
hem.
“Is that Borse?” Els whispered in my ear.
“Yeah. But I’m afraid it’s not just Borse. He couldn’t be doing all that by himself, I don’t think,” I whispered back. Then I asked Jill, “What’s the damage to Chile?”
“Surprisingly little in the form of wreckage. But the people are freaking out. It’s all the government can to do keep order.”
That’s what I wanted to hear. Well, a bit more havoc would have been nice. “That’s good,” I said. Jill gave me a queer look. “That there’s no real damage yet, I mean.”
Jill raised an eyebrow. “What do you have against Chile?”
“Me? Nothing. Just keeping up on current events.”
She looked Els up and down and stepped forward. “I’m Jill,” she said, holding out her hand. Els took it and held it. Their eyes locked.
“I’m Els.”
“Yes. Els.” She smiled and dropped Els’ hand. “Are you taking care of my Elson?”
“Your Elson? Now I’ve heard everything: someone actually claiming him.” Els leaned against the counter and looked very lethal, in a casual sort of way.
“And no, I’m not taking care of him. It’s more like he takes care of me.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Jill said. “I hope your health insurance is paid up.”
Jill got us two vanilla lattes without me asking, and passed them over to Els.
I split out the side door with Els right behind me, and we sat on a bench in the park next to the coffee shop.
In the park, there is a life-sized statue of a WWII soldier in full combat gear running toward an unseen objective. It was a tribute to Oxford’s veterans. It could have been a giant brother of one of those plastic green army men kids play with. I like it. I always felt like I was in a war. Well, sometimes it felt more like a Three Stooges short. But one had to take what one could get.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
“What was what about?”
“That little exchange with Jill. It was a bit . . . strained.”
“She was checking me out. It bugged me.”
“Checking you out?” I asked.
“Yeah. Couldn’t you tell? She was inspecting me like I was a horse she was considering buying. Checking my teeth or something.”
“Huh. I didn’t get that at all.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“So what happened with Melanthios that you got put into the Abyss?” I asked.
“He summoned me to Washington. I was taken into the basement, to a room I’d never seen before. Aeson was there.
“Melanthios began asking questions about what we were doing to resolve the situation. He asked me some specific questions about what we knew. I got the impression he had done some thinking similar to what we had done.
“I clammed up. He started giving me directives. I kept quiet. Then he and Aeson stepped outside to talk. When they returned, the next thing I knew I was having my brains bashed in by Aeson. After that, it’s all a blur.”
“Pretty scary, huh?”
“I thought I was done for. If you hadn’t come for me right when you did, I wouldn’t have survived. Or wanted to.”
A few locals wandered by, walking their dogs. The hum of Main Street, combined with the latte, helped me relax. We sat in silence for a time, just glad that the world continued to turn.
“You were right,” she said.
“Of course. About what, specifically?”
“About that pond-scum-sucking Melanthios. I’m going to ram something very large where the sun is not,” she spat. Well, if a Vulcan could have spat, it would have sounded like that.
“Don’t you mean ‘where the sun don’t shine’?” I asked.
“Don’t correct me, Elson, or I’ll put a chain on your neck and drag you through a graveyard behind a very fast horse.”
Her expression said she was kidding, but only a little. This new rocker chick thing was going to take some getting used to.
“Did you notice the crowd of corpses keeping you company in the Abyss?” I asked.
“Briefly. I was attacked almost immediately.”
“You mean you just happened to enter the Abyss right where a town hall meeting for demons was under way?”
“I guess so,” she said. “What does it mean?”
I looked up at the statue of the soldier. Time was short. Help was short. Options were hard to come by.
“It means war is coming, and we don’t have an army. It also means that Aeson is better at this than I thought. He’s effectively put any army that we might muster out of commission before we’ve even started.”
I visualized the pictures on the wall of my home. The heavenly battles, confusing before, now made sense.
“Law and Chaos will be fighting on the same side, and there’s no one to oppose them when things play into Aeson’s hand.”
Els turned on the bench to face me squarely. “Then don’t make me wring it out of your pea brain, Elson. Out with it.” I was beginning to miss the old Aello. This one had a bent toward violence that would make one of Hell’s Angels proud. And I suspected that for her, tolerance was just another word for toilet paper.
“It means that Aeson is using the promise of whatever is in that pyramid to draw Law into an alliance. I’m sure both of them plan on betraying the other, but Aeson doesn’t care. His real goal is to keep Law out of the way until it’s too late to stop his real plan, his primary goal. He’s going to free the demons from the Abyss. He plans to unleash them upon the humans.”
“How on earth could he do that?”
“I don’t know, exactly. But when I was in his stronghold, I saw something that looked like a giant birdbath. There was a picture of it in my cave, next to the Patron on the battlefield. Aeson used it to send me into the Abyss. Maybe it gives him the ability to open a door both ways.”
Els’ eyes widened. “That’s why all the bodies. He was feeding those poor people to the monsters to give them a taste for human souls. What a fiend!”
“Yeah, I hate that guy,” I said.
“What are we going to do? We have to do something. Tell Melanthios. He’ll listen.”
“Ha! He won’t believe it. And even if he did, I would bet that Aeson has planned for Melanthios’s betrayal. He’s already used their alliance to get an edge on him. No. We have to use chess pieces that Aeson won’t have a contingency for.”
“Like what? Our assets are . . . well, we don’t have any.”
I thought it over. Life was squeezing me again. I couldn’t escape the feeling that I had been dropped into this crap on purpose. The events of the last few weeks were definitely contrived. But here I was, fighting Law, Chaos, demons, and the Abyss. And while I wasn’t out in front, I was riding the wave. The odds of that were largely against it being random. Someone was pulling my strings to put me right here, right now. Why me? It’s not like I don’t ask that question daily. But this time my situation had specifics that were unique. Imprisoned demons, bad Engineers, the power to create life, with the human world stuck right in the middle, walking in ignorance of its peril and without any means to resist the horror down the road.
“We need help. Big help,” I said. “Who do we know besides Melanthios that is powerful in Law and can help. Any Lord of Law, if we could convince them of Aeson’s real intent, would act. I’m sure of it.”
“Melia,” Els said.
“That art chick? You’ve got to be kidding.” I remembered Melia from Aeson’s Gathering. She was of the Discipline of Art, as if there was such a thing. Give me a break. But she was one of the few to question Aeson at the Gathering.
“She’s a very senior Engineer of Law, and no friend of Melanthios,” Els said. “And she’s worked quite a bit with Diomedes, whom, I noticed, your plan didn’t mention anything about freeing. Tell me you haven’t forgotten about him, Elson.”
“I haven’t. I just don’t know what to do about him. I’ll keep thinking about it. Something’ll come up. It always does.�
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I decided to change the subject before Els decided to claw my eyes out or something.
“So, where are the headquarters of this ‘Discipline of Art’?” I asked, as we got up to go.
“In Paris. There’s a small artist’s colony near the Basilica. It’s a beautiful place and they have great coffee, so you should feel right at home.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
We sat at a sidewalk table in front of a nice little café situated on the edge of the artist colony Els had mentioned. While I was completely under-impressed with the idea of meeting some practitioners of the so-called Discipline of Art, the view was stunning. To my left, the landscape dropped away quickly for several hundred feet. As I looked out over the drop-off, the city of Paris stretched out into the distance, the sheet of white buildings broken only by the protrusion of the Eiffel Tower. To my right stood the ancient Basilica: an enormous cathedral complex of white stone and lofty spires stretching into the blue sky.
It was very early morning, my favorite time, which I usually spend in a gravel pit.
I could get used to mornings in Paris.
We didn’t wait long before Melia, and two others I didn’t recognize, joined us.
Melia looked like a farm girl. Her cinnamon skin and chocolate colored hair had a slightly rough edge, like she’d spent the morning picking grapes in some vineyard.
She smiled and introduced the others to me. Gustav and Rolf. They looked French, despite their names. Gustav had a pretentious goatee trimmed far too neatly, and Rolf looked unshaven--real GQ guys. My sense of prognostication told me I wouldn’t be making many friends here.
Gustav and Rolf were preoccupied with studying me.
I stared back.
“Aello, you’ve changed,” Melia said. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine, Melia. Given recent events. And please, call me Els.”
Melia studied Els for a moment, then smiled.
“I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it. Would anyone like a cup of coffee?” Melia asked. I raised my hand. “It is quite good here. Elson, I understand you are somewhat of an expert on the subject.”