by Mark Eller
"So you came here," Aaron said.
"I came here," Lorn admitted, "to help build this city." Rubbing a dust coated hand through his hair, he gave his head a small shake. "I'm just an ordinary man. Isn't much I can do to make a difference in this world, but I figure if enough good-hearted people gather together in one place, they'll eventually make the world a little bit better."
The look he gave Aaron was bitter. "We small folk can only do our best and hope important people like you don't tear it down."
Aaron nodded, accepting the implied criticism and insult. "I'll try not to make things impossible."
"All we can ask," Lorn told him. "You building this city, giving people like me something to hope for, that's something." Turning back to the wall, he picked up his trowel.
"That's something," Aaron murmured to himself, realizing an entire world of consequence took place outside his immediate sphere. He had always known his actions created unintentional effects. Until now, he usually pictured those effects in a negative light, not realizing while some were harmed, others benefitted.
A question," he called one last time. "Why the water running beneath your home?"
"I like the sound," Lorn answered without turning his head. "It helps me sleep." He set a stone in place, carefully checking its fit. "You might want to wander out to the cave. The real news is over there."
* * *
Fewer people had left New Beginning than Aaron originally thought. More than three hundred stood outside the cave's entrance. Their postures were expectant and hopeful; their voices hushed.
Aaron frowned angrily. Aidan Franks died from some unknown cause within the cave. He had given orders for nobody to go in or near the place.
He saw a stirring among the crowd, a growing murmur of voices as Aaron reached the back of the gathering. A voice shouted exultantly, and a small cheer rose.
"There's the light," somebody near the front yelled out. "She's coming back."
Who's coming back?" Aaron silently growled, but the who didn't matter. He would see to it the woman never disobeyed his directives again. He started to push through the crowd, but it parted for him. Whispering people reached out with tentative hands to touch him.
"It's the Chosen," one woman breathed just before running her fingers along his arm.
"Sir," a young woman asked, "could you--could you please?" Turning her head, she exposed a purpled birthmark spread across her cheek and chin. "If you could touch it?"
Frightened by the implications, Aaron pulled away. Searching within himself, he realized his dampening monitor, the one decreasing his influence, had relaxed its hold. Even when angry, the One God's emissions seemed to speak of love. Aaron exerted a small part of his resources to dampen himself down and moved deeper into the crowd. People still parted for him, but their looks were only friendly and curious.
"I see her! She's coming!" shouted a man crouched at the cave's entrance. Grebfax stood nearby.
"Who's coming?" Aaron demanded. He turned to his foreman. "Mister Grebfax, I hope you have a good excuse for this."
Obviously embarrassed, Grebfax shrugged.
"Hi, Daddy," Autumn trilled, rushing up to him, Leona Harbor following close behind. "It's really very simple. We've done tests on the cave for weeks now. At first we shoved goats inside, but they wouldn't go far past the opening, so we caught lots of mice and threw them in the cave, and then we put cats at the entrance. Since none of the cats died, we decided to send in a real live person. Leona thinks Mister Franks died because his Talent was big time over stimulated, so she decided to send a woman in but wanted to wait until you said it was okay."
"We wanted to run tests for a couple more weeks," Leona Harbor broke in. "I was against doing anything so quickly, but a war is coming and opportunities can be lost." She raised her hands shoulder high. "Even so, I wouldn't have done anything without your permission, but apparently she felt different." She lowered her hands. "I told her no, but you can see what effect that had."
"So you're at fault in this?" Aaron demanded of Grebfax.
He shook his head. "Didn't know a thing until one of the workers told me he saw a woman crawl inside. After letting me know, she ran off shouting out the news. That's what brought everybody out here."
A spontaneous cheer burst out as the man crouched at the cave opening reached to grasp a hand. Standing, he pulled the grinning Amanda Bivins with him. Aaron saw she held a low burning torch in one hand and had a filled pouch attached to her waist.
"Bingo," Aaron said as the entire matter finally became clear. Amanda once explained to him she was a null, one of the few people outside the Clans possessing no Talent at all. Since Amanda Bivins always did exactly as she desired and to hell with who it pissed off, Aaron understood why nobody managed to stop her insanity.
The man holding Amanda's hand gasped. Dropping it, he staggered back several paces.
"Keep back!" Amanda shouted. "I have several Stones on me, but they don't look like Talent Stones!" She startled upon catching sight of Aaron. "I guess you were going to find out sometime."
"I found out now," he said sternly. "You have a ship waiting for you down the river and a son in N'Ark. You will leave tomorrow."
She tossed her head sassily, a movement seeming out of place on a woman near forty. "I already planned on leaving so I had to do this today or not at all. Aaron, I saw more than just rocks in there. We need to have a gathering to talk this over." Her face broke out into a grin. "If I'm not mistaken, Chin finally has an exportable product, and a very lucrative one, too. I doubt you'll spend a dime of your own money in this place again."
* * *
"It doesn't fire off my Talent," Grebfax observed as he ran his thumb over the small stone in his hand, "but it's doing something. A tingle is running all through me."
The stone he held was the only one Amanda brought with her into the house. The others, she said, were safely hidden away.
"Just be careful when you get around your wife," Amanda told Grebfax. "Don't get frisky unless you're interested in having a healthy boy."
"What!" Leona's sharp yelp echoed off the walls.
"There's another chamber beneath the area where Aidan was digging. It has a few piles of these stones lying about, and I saw where they had been dug out of the walls. The best part is one wall bears a series of very clear pictographs."
Reaching out, she lifted the Stone from Grebfax's hand. "If I'm not mistaken, those pictographs say these Stones have an effect on men. Any man holding one for an extended time will father nothing but male children.
"Like a rough form of steel," Aaron noted. In all his years in this world, the only native iron he'd seen were a couple naturally magnetized Talent Stones. This world was incredibly iron poor, but it did have Talent Stones so there had to be a few small iron deposits somewhere.
Only the thing in his hand was not exactly iron even if he could feel his magnet responding to it. This stone seemed to be a compound, natural iron intermingled with trace impurities from other metals, which was impossible since steel did not occur naturally.
A humming deep within his mind told him this Stone was magnetized but apparently not enough to fire off anyone's Talent. Maybe its strange composition caused it to work on a different part of a person's brain than a real Talent Stone. After all, evidence showed different steels had varying effects. Sarah's carbon steel sword had been a great Talent magnifier, but Aaron's more modern knives and guns only gave him, at best, a slight boost. On top of that, Aaron once experimented by melting down one of his guns to make magnets from the metal. Some of the steel did become magnetized but did not become a Talent Stones.
"This needs to be studied," Amanda said. "My first guess is Aidan died because he was in the middle of hundreds of these. My second guess is women won't have problems mining them because it doesn't seem to affect them in the same way."
"But this is wonderful," Aaron told her. "This is─"
"Expected," she said. "Think about it; the on
ly cases I'm aware of where twin males regularly live is among the Chins, and it's very rare with them. I bet there are more places like this around the Chin lands. It might be that sometimes a baby or two is made near one."
"Expected?" Leona asked.
"We know about Aaron," Amanda explained. "He's the only person I know outside the Chins who has living male twins, and I have another healthy son by him." She pointed toward Aaron's chest, to the place where his shirt hid the bag containing his Talent Stone.
"You don't own a normal Stone, Yours was artificially created, and it was brought here from another world. I bet your Stone is why you've been so successful with your children."
"Go, Daddy," Autumn said enthusiastically. "Keep making them babies."
* * *
The next day Amanda agreed to be transferred directly to her home in N'Ark. Before leaving, she spoke to her boatpeople, giving them orders to head down the river to connect with her shipmaster. Once there, they were to give the master Amanda's orders to head back to N'Ark. When they arrived, Amanda would figure out what to do with them.
Before being transported, she pulled Aaron aside for a short conversation.
"Well," Aaron asked her.
Cocking her head to the side, Amanda studied him for a moment before speaking. "I'm worried about you. Even though you're married, I'm worried about you being alone. Tell me Aaron, have you encountered any interesting women lately? Anybody you might find appealing?"
"There's a war going on," Aaron answered impatiently. "I've no time for foolishness."
"Nobody?"
"Nobody and there won't ever be anybody. I'm through with those games."
Shaking her head, Amanda walked toward her luggage muttering. "I knew I should have vacationed in the islands." Stopping abruptly, she turned back to him. "Okay, I'm ready to go."
Aaron sent Amanda back to N'Ark. Autumn went with her after getting Chet and Bret's address from him. Aaron was pleased by her decision. The last place he wanted his daughter was in the middle of a war. He wished he could send Melna, too, only the woman would not go. She swore if he sent her involuntarily, she would do everything in her power to return.
Aaron knew she didn't bluff. He also knew she would take the quickest instead of the safest route back.
Renford, the last of his traitorous war council, was found dead a quarter mile outside of New Beginning. Near his body lay a tube containing rolled up copies of the city plans, with emphasis lines drawn around the university's defensive details. There was no obvious sign of what killed him, but Aaron had his suspicions. Martha Heins had not been in evidence since early the previous evening.
Before noon, the cave's secret was no longer secret. The few remaining workers all heard the news. By early afternoon, Aaron wished he'd arranged for a guard detail. More than a dozen women had crawled inside looking for the new Stones. The first woman to reach them proved, despite speculation otherwise, women were affected. Upon drawing near the first pile, she collapsed. Grabbing her foot, the others pulled her back. After a little experimentation, they discovered with two poles bound together, one of them could draw out a few Stones at a time. Further experimentation proved the number of Stones a woman could carry varied by the Stone's size and the strength of the woman's innate Talent. In general, most could carry at least a quarter pound.
By late afternoon, every remaining man in camp carried a single Stone. By morning, the dozen women who had been in the cave, plus a few of their friends, left New Beginning with enough convertible wealth in their pockets to make them comfortable for life.
Not until a few minutes after breakfast did Aaron discover what had been going on. He arranged for a guard, but by then there was little need. The barn door had been left open and the cows were out. In this case, he had nobody to set as a guard except those who already received their quota of stones.
He wondered how many hundreds were gone, carried away by his late workers, and then realized he didn't care.
That night Aaron lay awake, feeling somehow lost and alone. Taking his unsubtle hint their relationship was over, Melna claimed a house of her own. Aaron noted Patton did not move in with her. They were lovers, but not openly brazen about it.
In truth, he did not care. Quite the opposite. He truly wished them well. Yes, their affair had betrayed his trust, and it did hurt, but the hurt was such a small part of his feelings for them it didn't matter a great deal. Besides, who was he to cast stones at Melna after sleeping with Missy for the last two years?
Which took him to his past conversation with Chet and Bret. At the thought of them a warm feeling, combined with strong sensations of regret, washed through him. Kit had lost the boys. According to them, she became immersed in her new marriage and the love she felt for her co-wife. Her husband truly loved her. The co-wife did not.
Matters became strained. Before long, the three entered into an ever falling spiral of hurt and anger. Kit's new husband kicked her out of his home after Kit, in a fit of anger, threw the facts of her previous marriage in his face. Warrants had been issued with her name attached. A hangman's rope waited, but in vain. Rumor said she now lived among the Clan. Other rumors said she fled the country entirely. Either way, she left her sons behind.
As for the boys, they stayed with their new family for a year before the family paid for their journey to and education in N'Ark.
Poor Kit. She had never been able to pull her life and loves together. He feared she would continue on her path of self-destruction until not even an ember remained of who she had once been. Kit had burned brightly, like a star. Only after Sarah died and their revenge was complete had her embers started to fade.
Aaron frowned. Sometimes, it seemed like the evil strands of Haarod Beech would never fade.
Lying in bed, Aaron planned. Near morning, the first Chin warriors trickled into town.
Chapter 22
"I don't know what to do," Brenda Montpass told Armand and Faith. "None of this was planned. A representative of Miss Bivins gave me a little money, tickets for the boat, and paid for my appearance change so I could make my way to Mister Turner unimpeded. Just before we hit shore, I started talking to Roger Khante. He was interested in me even if I wasn't in him, but I was desperate and near broke because I drank too much aboard ship and lost most everything in a poker game. I needed money to complete my journey, and he offered it to me, asking only that I deliver a letter to his brother. It seemed simple enough, but I soon found myself scrambling to save my hide. Even had to kill somebody to prove my loyalty to Prophet. "
Taking a small sip of wine, Armand studied the woman, reflecting on how quickly circumstances could change. With a flick of this woman's fingers, he and Faith had become part of the elite. They were accepted, vetted, given the best food and drink. Of course, they were also in constant danger from the madman calling himself Prophet of The Lord, but every comfort had its price.
From what he had seen, there was no longer even a pretense of an inner circle controlling Prophet. Most of the original conspirators were gone, cast off like old shoes. Late one evening, shortly after Armand and Faith joined his inner crowd, Prophet casually ordered the remainder of his former handlers but one outside to be killed by Leo Khante. After finishing his chores, Leo cut his own throat, an awkward event considering Leo no longer owned fingers.
When he was told of Leo's death, Prophet of the Lord grabbed Faith and laughed, almost as if he included her in a secret jest.
Armand found himself more pleased than ever by his wife's gray hairs. If not for Faith's age, he did not doubt Prophet would use her as one of his sexual toys. The woman, who had once been known as Three, the inner circle's last remaining member, was one of those toys, as were another four young women. None owned mind enough to think their own thoughts.
As for Brenda Montpass, she played a very dangerous game. Her changing appearance was starting to draw the man's attention. Brenda's personal intervention put Armand and Faith right in the middle of her game as wel
l as in others being played by Prophet of the Lord. For his part, Armand wasn't sure if anyone except Prophet would survive this crusade. If he and Faith were discovered, Armand hoped they would not survive. The alternative was too horrid to contemplate.
But that was in the future, and Armand seldom worried about the future. He took another sip, feeling pleased the command tent was kept separate from the others. He was even more pleased he, Faith, and Brenda spoke Jut, a language few of Prophet's followers understood.
"These steel balls," Faith asked, "why did you have them with you? It seems a little providential."
"Maybe," Brenda admitted. "I picked them up in Mister Turner's hometown. I was passing through but stopped for a while to talk to a few people. One was a special friend of Mister Turner's, a smith named Jorrin Bran. Jorrin was dying, but he didn't want to die with a guilty conscience. He had a bunch of these steel balls left over from when Mister Turner asked him to melt down some knives. He asked me to return them. I thought since Mister Turner was in N'Ark, and since I was going there to see family, I could take them with me. Imagine my surprise upon discovering he was overseas. Since I had made Mister Bran a promise, my honor insisted I chase Mister Turner down. Miss Bivins helped after I wrote to her. She and I have a rather long, though indirect, history."
"Everyone knew he was overseas," Faith put in acerbically. "It was in all the papers."
"Prison keeps a person out of the loop," Brenda replied in an equally sarcastic tone.
"Fortunate for you your conviction was overturned."
"My conviction was pardoned," Brenda corrected. "I used the last of my money to contact someone with influence. A representative of that person bribed witnesses, bought a judge, and paid off a governor."
"So did you murder your husband?"
Brenda's steady eyes rested on Faith. Armand had to admire her poise as she answered. "Yes, I murdered him. He was broke and desperate and hounded me for years. Every place I went he eventually showed up. My businesses suffered. My fortunes fell. I even changed my name, legally, in an attempt to hide from him, and still he would not leave me alone. Sometimes…sometimes he forced his way into where I stayed. He insisted our marriage gave him certain rights I did not want to give. After the fourth time, I killed him. It wasn't self-defense. It was murder."