by Forbes West
Some of the shops are makeshift cafes. You see one where a couple of people and Ni- Perchta are cracking open the boiled shells of bright red trilobite-like things. A sign showing a painted picture of one of the creatures reads Boiled Trilos in English. The restaurant-goers are stripping off the shells and chowing down on the meat. It looks like they’re composed of one giant lobster tail underneath the shell.
Seeing a Ni-Perchta close up after years of hearing rumors and reading explanations of their features is frightening to you—beings as intelligent as any human being, but they are not human. Their skin color is gray-white, making them look almost as if they are the inverse of a photonegative. Their eyes glow a little red in the darkness, but you read that in regular daylight they are a dull gray. Their ears are slightly pointed. Other than that, they are very human-looking, though everyone seems to be on the tall side. From all the scientific reports you’ve read in Cosmopolitan magazine, you know that it is possible to have kids with them, though the Ephors, the police of the Witch-Lord, will kill or abduct any product of such relations.
You nudge Jaime along, quietly berating him for staring at the Ni-Perchta driver. “Look around for a cab,” you tell him. “We’re going to Nikh-Cunm Station for the steam mono.” He nods in understanding, but then trips over something sticking out of the cobblestone street and falls over, right onto your bags.
You curse under your breath, picking him up as a few humans and Ni-Perchta look over at you. “Quit making a scene, Jaime,” you say.
“You quit making a scene!” he replies loudly, attracting even more attention.
At this moment, you see the Ephors for the first time; there is a group of five heading over. They come from nowhere, the Ni-Perchta warrior-police of the Witch-Lord of The Oberon, and are dressed in gold and green armor that is as ornate as it is tough, made of individual plates that almost look like hand-crafted leaves or feathers. Each wears a half-mask made out of black cloth to cover their mouths, and the one in front wears a half-crown with one wing. Each is armed with a long, serrated blade and an ancient-looking black ori-staff with a few small orichalcum stones embedded in the hilt.
Jaime looks so happy to see them as they come up to you; they’re about six feet away. You touch your little crucifix necklace.
“Oh wow, Ephors! I’ve read about them,” he says before the lead Ephor lowers his half-mask and stares at him. Then Jaime says, “I’ve read about you. Hi, I’m Jaime Van Zandt and this is Sarah, er, Sarah Orange. I don’t think we changed the…well, sorry, let me start again.” Jaime spoke in accented and stilted Perchta. You can recognize only his name and your name in his mini speech.
The lead Ephor holds up his right hand and speaks in clear, if accented, English. “I am Dwelka Storma, and I am the Ephor inspector of off-world barbarians and their customs.”
“I was talking,” Jaime says, annoyed, and you look at him as if he has just grown another head, then put out a hand nervously, which the Ephor pointedly ignores.
“You bring Jesus Christ and his teachings here?”
You and Jaime look at each other, confused, and then Jaime panics. “Um, no. No, Morgan Freeman on the loudspeaker told us, uh, not to bring any Bibles or Korans or the secret books, and we haven’t. You…your people…” Your eyes grow wide and Jaime makes a motion like he has this all under control. “Your people do not like converting, people being converted.”
Dwelka Storma smiles a little. “So there isn’t a group of packages marked oranges that contain thumb-sized Bibles made in San Antonio, America, on that ship you just came in on?”
You shake your head repeatedly. “I only go to church at Christmas. I’m not a Bible smuggler, if that’s what you think.”
Storma comes forward and grabs your crucifix necklace in one armored hand, twirling the little cross piece. “Of course that’s what I think.” He lets go and calls out in Perchta, a sort of lyrical language. It sounds to you like Japanese being spoken by someone with a Russian accent. The four Ephors back up as Storma steps to the side.
You notice that humans and Ni-Perchta in that crowded place are watching this scene play out, and your heart starts beating hard. You think something awful is about to happen. One of the Ephors expands his ancient steel staff, which extends out nearly three feet and glows a grim green. Lightning shoots out from it, striking you and Jaime with one concentrated bolt that knocks you out for a moment. You fall on your back, your body quivering from the shock, your teeth rattling. You taste blood. Jaime takes most of the blast and is completely out. Someone in the crowd screams.
Tall, dark shapes that you see through your clouded vision march towards you quickly in a tight formation. You can barely move; half of your body is numb. You try to scream but only a slight squeak of air gets past your lips.
One of the Ni-Perchta Ephors flips you over onto your stomach, hog-tying you as you pass out.
* * *
You wake up on a straw bed in a small stone cell that’s maybe the size of Tyler’s bathroom back on Earth. It takes you a while to come out of it, and your head hurts as bad as when you fell off your bike and knocked it on the ground two years ago. You ask Jaime to turn off the goddamn radio, but then you notice that he’s messing with the lock on your jail cell door with a small screwdriver and, you think, the hairpin that used to be in your hair.
There’s someone screaming in an alien language in a way that scares you. You shake with adrenaline and start to breathe heavy.
“Where are we?” you say in a raspy, dry voice. Jaime drops his screwdriver and looks around. He then shuffle-crawls away from the cell door. Dark shadows cross his face as he moves away from the meager torchlight that illuminates the dungeon. You sit up and take some straw out of your hair. “Where are we?”
“Temple of the Witch-Lord. We are under arrest for Bible smuggling.” He kneels next to you. “Crazy.” You look at him incredulously. He pats your shoulder. “I asked for the Network rep, but they seemed to ignore me. Can you believe this?”
Jaime mutters something about this being exciting. The screaming stops.
“Plenty exciting,” you respond, palms sweating and your heart increasing its pace. “What’s the penalty for Bible smuggling?” you ask. “Oh God, we stay here for a few years?”
Jaime shakes his head. “Oh no. No, it’s either being released in Gug territory to be eaten, or decapitation. They don’t do trials here. I’ll just have a hand chopped off because I’m the accomplice; you’re the actual suspect. And you’ll be...” He doesn’t finish his sentence.
You swallow.
“I have a plan. I break the lock on this door, and then we sneak down the hall. The Ni-Perchta are not really on top of proper law enforcement procedures. I still have that,” he gestures to the screwdriver, “and then we get to the American Residents’ House in the Forearm Quarter.”
“Are you nuts? This isn’t a video game. They could kill us for escaping. Oh my God.”
Jaime nods rapidly. “I’m…I know, but God, I’m scared, Sarah, and we...”
You hug each other. There’s a large and bloody gouge on Jaime’s back. “Something bit me in here. You believe that?” he tells you. “When I was asleep.”
You nod, hugging him tight and then letting go. You feel in your back pocket that book you were given by Scratch, ages ago it seems, and take it out for a moment, then put it back. You think about how it would be back home—the cops would take everything out of your pockets any time you were arrested. Jaime is right—law enforcement procedures are really lacking here.
“Wait, you don’t need to pick this lock,” you say. “Let me look.” It’s a simple combination job from Earth, something you remember from high school. Kneeling down, you notice it has forty digits. At least it’s not something strange, like a Ni-Perchta lock. It’s just a rudimentary, run-of-the-mill Master lock that can be cracked.
“Are you serious? They lock their jail cells with these? I had that lock in high school on my locker,” you whisper.
“Los Alamitos High had these locks, too—The Oberon is amazingly third world,” Jaime says. “So advanced yet so behind.” He continues. “Forty digits means, of course, sixty-four thousand combinations. Which leaves us S.O.L.”
“Look, Jaime, I want you to follow what I have to say, okay?” You can hear your voice trembling. “I’ll keep an eye on the corridor. We can hack this cheap thing. Here’s what you need to do.” You don’t want to touch the lock yourself as your hands shake too badly. Jaime puts his hands on the lock, looking at you with amazement.
“First thing, dial the lock back to zero. Okay. Pull down on the shackle thing.” As you continue to give him directions, you can hear boots click-clack down the stone floor of the dungeon, coming closer at first and then just fading away. Next he discovers the number and you write it down in the dust of the dungeon floor.
Sweat starts to beads up on your forehead as you remember this trick. You listen, still crouched next to Jaime, your knees hurting.
“Okay, pull down the shackle.” He does so and then starts slowly spinning the combination dial clockwise. “Find where it gets stuck twelve more times...” you whisper.
“Okay,” Jaime says, still looking at you like you’ve just lost your mind. He seems to be going through the motions now. Jaime reads the numbers back to you. You and Jaime jot down the rest of the numbers by writing in the dust of the dungeon floor.
“Okay. Ignore all the ones that are between numbers. So you should have only five left because seven of those numbers are in-betweeners. 6, 16, 26, 28, and 36. Okay. Which number is the odd one out, Jaime?”
“28, Sarah.”
“Okay. Jaime, this is the third number in the combination. What’s 28 divided by 4? 7. Any remainder, Jaime?”
You look at Jaime, who is incredulous that you are asking these questions instead of just telling him the goddamn answer. “No.”
You stand up, stretching your legs. “Next step is that you take that remainder number, which was 0, and keep adding 4 until you have gone around the entire dial.”
You think for a moment and carefully put those numbers down in the thick dust of the dungeon cell to help you remember.
“Jaime, one of those numbers is now your first number. Last step here—to find the second number—what do you have again, what’s that remainder number?”
“0, Mom,” Jaime snaps at you.
“Add 2 and that’s your answer, so add 4 to that until you are all the way around the dial. So what’s those numbers? Uh, 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30, 34, 38, that’s it. And now you have your second combination number. Write it down in the dust if you need to.” Panic sets into you a little bit, eating away at any remaining confidence as you think of the Ni-Perchta returning.
“Try ‘em out. Remember, your third number is 28.”
He starts to spins the combination dial and runs through the gamut for a couple of minutes straight before you hear some footsteps get closer. “Hurry, Jaime,” you whisper, your heart thudding in your chest. He spins the dial twice but has no luck. He tries the next combo and this time the lock pops open with a snick. You luck out big time.
“Isn’t the Internet the best?” you say, as you slowly open the cell door.
Jaime kisses you on the cheek, stunning you. “Okay, then,” he says, wiping his mouth as he heads out the door. The two of you tiptoe down the corridor, walking deeper into the dungeon; it has a funky smell, like an over-chlorinated pool mixed with mildew. You see other humans and Ni-Perchta in their small stone cells, some looking beaten and neglected and one with terrible burns. There are no guards down here; the Ephors seem not to worry at all about their prisoners.
At the ends of each corridor are long halls, softly illuminated with blue light that echoes with the sound of water. You almost scream and pee your pants when you look down one corridor and see what looks like a spider the size of a Volkswagen suddenly move by, its red eyes jutting out from meaty stalks that follow you with dull interest. Jaime steadies you with his hand on your arm.
In one of the cells is a Ni-Perchta hanging on the back wall in chains, passed out or dead.
“Okay...where do we…how do we?” you ask. You remember your book but for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to be working or active in any way.
There is a strange doorway, unlike anything you have seen before, made out of red and orange light that’s sunk into the stone of the dungeon. It glows incredibly bright, but Jaime isn’t taking any notice of it or even looking in its general direction. The door is shaped in the same manner as the Nemo Gate—large and peaked at the top with elaborate sculptures of dragons, people in armor, and, oddly frightening to you, squids.
You point to the door. “Jaime, are you seeing this? What is that?”
He looks at what you are pointing at and then at you as if you have become mentally challenged. “Rock, Sarah.”
You ignore him and walk up to the doorway, which seems to become brighter as you approach, and step through the door. Jaime yelps behind you. Once through the door, you find yourself outside the dungeon and out in front of the Witch-Lord’s Temple, standing on the edge of a black band of cobblestones ringing the courtyard of the temple structure. Jaime appears a moment later.
Red light flashes from three of the cobblestones. Each display a Ni-Perchta hieroglyphic which slowly fades away into little red blurs that you can barely make out. Despite it being daytime, torches are being lit in the courtyard by robed servants dressed in purple and black.
Dwelka Storma and another Ephor stand nearby, discussing something in Perchta. No one else is about. Storma spots you. The other Ephor, a younger apprentice you guess by his youthful look, quickly covers his shock. Storma looks as if this happens all the time.
“Do not move. This will be short and to the point. I will personally execute the two of you within a minute unless you give me your contact in the Christian underground. When we took in the barbarian hordes under the order of the Witch-Lord, we did not ask for a religious takeover of the entire Four Lands. You will give me your contact or be killed,” Storma says, looking very cold and dangerous in his Ephor armor and by the look in his eyes. You feel truly helpless, and Jaime lets out his breath. You take an involuntary step backwards. You’ve almost passed the black band of cobblestones now; you’ve been slowly creeping back since Storma began his speech.
He blinks quickly for a brief second but keeps up the stony facade. The other Ephor cannot stand it any longer and tries to pick you up telekinetically by snapping out his ori-staff and using it on you. Jaime quickly makes a move and falls backwards, knocking you to the ground and barely past the black band of cobblestones.
Storma screams out a curse in Perchta and then recomposes himself. “This Ephor and I offer our apologies. We have no excuse for our actions. We have improperly imprisoned you.” He takes out his serrated blade that’s almost as long as you are tall and gives it to you. “We offer our lives in apology.”
The other Ephor gives his blade to Jaime, who takes it in both hands and looks it over.
“Thank you, but no,” you say simply, happy to be alive. You drop the sword onto the temple’s courtyard with a clang, and Jaime places his sword on the ground as well. “May we leave?” you ask, wiping your sweaty brow.
Storma looks incensed, crazed even. “Of course. You will be escorted to the mono station.”
Jaime grabs your elbow and you walk quickly out of the courtyard. Other Ephors start to walk towards you.
Storma picks up his blade and chops off the head of his companion in one fell swoop, sending up a geyser of blood out of the other Ephor’s bloody stump of a neck. You scream, and Jaime yelps and jumps back.
Storma walks away, leaving you speechless.
Chapter Five:
To Mission Friendship
You wait in the steam monorail station. It has a wooden platform like something out of the Old West and is located on the utmost end of the statue’s palm. You and Jaime only have one bag
with you. Some Ephors, who haven’t spoken a word or made a gesture except to pat your arm or drag you to the side so you can hop the mono to where your job is, have led you here. They mutter a few words of Perchta to Jaime, who chatters something back.
“Next monorail is at noon.” He points to a very large and oddly-made clock standing in the middle of the platform. Hundreds of people, and a few Ni-Perchta helpers, are scattered around the clock with luggage and supplies, like little pickaxes and home-made dynamite. Each numeral on the clock has a picture from The Oberon—a single prospector for a one, two pictures of the steam mono to represent a two, and so on. The hands of the clock are almost on the twelve, which is a picture of twelve Baleen dragons in mid-flight.
The steam mono pulls up, a strange barrel-shaped train covered in Plexiglas except for the almost-bottom of the train, which looks like stainless steel riding along a series of iron wheels. A miniature choo-choo engine pulls along the entire contraption, and a car marked with a red 5 is yours to take all the way to the end of the line, Mission Friendship/Funeral Breaks.
Jaime bows to the Ephors and helps you board. “What a neat monorail,” he says. “Better than Disney.”
The mono’s big cushioned seats recline. Seated in front of you is a hairy and slightly chubby Englishman with a red beard. He speaks a thousand words a minute to his tiny girlfriend. They both wear protective clothing and are sporting crossbows, knives, and grenades on their belts. They laugh and pinch each other, sharing what you hope is a cigarette.
“Well, that was interesting back there,” a very pale Jaime quietly says.
“Yep,” is the only thing you can say. The train car reeks of a million cigarettes, and the red leather seat has abrasive cracks that dig into your back. You finger one under your bottom and stare at the peeling pieces, afraid to look out the window for some odd reason, believing that if you do, you will attract more attention to yourself and lead the Ephors back to you.