“You remember me,” I reply softly.
“Your grace is perceptible even to these blind eyes. How could I forget?”
“How are you?”
He doesn’t respond, just stays in a shadow.
“I need a favor, Israfel.”
He speaks wearily. “I have little to offer and less to give. What is it you require?”
I suddenly feel selfish and ashamed. “A feather.”
“You’re in luck my dear; a sickness plagues me. Age has finally caught up, I fear.”
Age? I think to myself.
“Age.” Israfel takes two awkward bird steps into the light. He resembles a buzzard more than a raven with bulbous sores under his drooping white eyes. He ruffles himself, and sends many feathers to the ground. “I’m not as beautiful as I once was.”
I speak truthfully. “Oh no, my dear Israfel. You have been given a gift which I have only ever dreamed of; you are very beautiful.” I snap to attention as the sound of many feet trample towards us, echoing from all around.
“They have come for me,” Israfel says sadly, turning to hobble back to his nest.
“Who has?”
“Thanatos.”
“The Society of Thanatos?” They were supposed to be dissolved, and the number I hear now is far greater than what could have remained. What could they be doing and what do they want with a Israfel? I can’t let them take him; he is too valuable and too powerful to be in the hands of a dangerous ilk cult – and consciousness knows what they could accomplish with the magical components of his body. I also envy the raven for his silent and dignified death and won’t let these intruders take that from him. And above all else, I must complete my own mission.
As fast I can, I grab Israfel who squawks wildly in surprise, and run deeper into the darkness. I can’t risk jumping through the glass and killing the thing I am trying to rescue so I stealthily unlatch one of the big glass plates and slip out onto the roof like a cat with a bird in her mouth. With the city lights on the other side of the storeroom I have the advantage as I slip along the ledge and down onto a rusty fire escape.
Suddenly the window I used is pushed open and someone calls back to the others. There’s a commotion and I am unable to hide both myself and the raven quick enough. Following the feathers, they are led right to us.
I make a break for the next section of roof and, after reaching the other side, kick out the fire escape which links the two sections. Two society members follow the rusty cage to the bottom but the rest use an alternate route to pursue us. I could easily out run, out jump, and out hide these puny beings, but I have a very fragile companion to think of. I’ll just have to outsmart them.
†Delano †
I’ve wasted enough time trying to find an easy way down. I take a breath and start jogging parallel to a Lower City path. When it curves out ahead of me, I turn the jog into a leap and sail over the path to the walls of the opposite side, then let my feet drag along the slope as I skid down the vertical rock-face to the bottom. When I reach the path below and roll out of the near free fall, I take an inventory of what I started with. My bag is intact, my sword is still under by jacket but the soles on my Phobes are a half-inch thinner. A couple of young filth-covered children have gathered to watch me with wide eyes.
“Don’t worry,” one of them says looking up the thirty foot wall I just slid down. “You’ll get better with practice.”
I can’t help laughing. “You know where I can find any of these things?” I ask, showing them my list and handing them each some cash. They point down the path and then run off, yipping and hooting at their new fortunes.
I start my walk. Sure enough, the path opens up into a plaza with a well in the center. Torches light the area and a sparse drizzle makes their flames dance and recoil. Carts with wooden framed awnings shelter the few merchants who brave the weather and the night in the hopes that someone like me will come along with a list and a wad of cash. Overhead, several stone buttresses cross over the plaza and funnel rain down in streams.
Immediately, I am recognized from my clothing as an outsider and a swarm of men with turbans and gowns accost me with offers. I quickly sort out who is the worthy among them and then take each aside, one by one. Ideally, I would spread out the list over various market places for secrecy but I’m in a rush and this will have to do.
The vendors send out kids, errand boys, to other parts of town to retrieve various items and tell me to wait till morning. With nothing else to do, I sit under an awning and doze, waking only as the items begin to filter in throughout the night. As the sun begins to rise I am greeted by the last merchant.
“I am sorry my friend,” he says, “But I could not get you the gutter pedals.”
I look past him and see a woman crying.
He continues. “The child did not return. We fear he was taken in by the waters. He had to pass through the flooded areas.”
“Where was he headed?” I ask. The merchant tries to draw me a map on the muddy ground but I ask that he just tells me the directions; I have a good memory.
He lists the route and I head off immediately.
†Sabetha †
Holding Israfel, I balance across a metal beam with glass skylights on either side. When I get to the end, I turn and use my pistol to shatter the glass at the society members’ feet, then sprint across the next section of rooftop. I have to make my way around the factory to get to Rolla, but as we reach the ledge overlooking the parking lot, I see that there are already society members guarding her. Stage coaches, drawn by black horses, are waiting nearby. I slide down a pipe to the ground level and then dash for the car. A few people try to stop us but I throw the empty gun in one’s face and kick my way through the rest. My knee high boots look stunning bouncing off of chests and heads.
The remaining cultists come rushing out of the factory doors heading for the gate to block our exit but I press the gas pedal to the floor and run anyone down who looks like a threat. One manages to get his arm through the back triangular window that Delano broke and tries to climb in, but Israfel hops from the front seat into the back and pecks at his hand. We leave the man behind as he loses his grip and gets pulled under the back tires.
A safe distance away I turn to Israfel. “Why were they after you?”
“The ilk have many beliefs. Who knows into what diluted fantasies they have woven me.”
“I thought the cults were gone. We saw to that.”
“Something has resurrected their cause.”
“What do you mean?”
“The times are changing my dear. These old eyes can see that much.”
I get a chill.
“Keep singing, Sabetha.”
“But what about the society of Thanatos?”
“Keep singing.” Israfel weakly leans his neck down under his wing and brings it back up with a perfect feather in his mouth. I take it from him and place it in my lap while he leans back and nestles into himself. “Thank you,” I say, but he is already gone.
†Delano †
I find the spot easily enough. It’s a deep pathway that disappears into murky water. My forethought paid off though, and my bag is water proof. I sigh and then wade in, more thankful than usual that I don’t have to open my eyes underwater to “see.” Twenty-nine feet under the surface is a row of eleven doorways to what were once homes. They are eerily preserved in the stillness of the water, like blurry green paintings of ransacked homes. In the last dwelling on the right there is a craggy hole in the stone floor, leading deeper into the rock. I go up for air and then swim back to the opening. It looks like the result of a rupture or pressure build-up from below, maybe a gas or water pipe long since shut off. I slip in, head first, and pull myself along the eroded walls. It winds downward for another forty-one feet before narrowing to a twenty-six inch gap. I squeeze through only because I can sense that on the other side of this U turn is another surface, fifty-feet from where I first waded into the water. It must be some so
rt of contained chamber where the air pressure keeps it from being flooded.
I quietly break the surface and look around at the scummy, tiled walls and bits of steel cords sticking out of reinforced concrete where the walls have fallen away. It’s an old subway section, probably isolated from any useable track by miles and multiple cave-ins. Sneaking over to the edge of the pool, I pull myself onto my stomach, cloak myself with kharma and remain utterly still and silent. Garbage and rotting corpses are piled all around me. Amidst the sounds of water dripping into puddles is a crackling noise.
A tunnel dweller is breaking the bones of a young ilk boy in its mouth, and greedily sucking out the marrow. The creature’s flesh, clinging to its bones like wet paper, is a pale gray with pus-filled green spots around the armpits, genitals, and mouth. The boy being eaten has a small cloth bag still clutched in his dead fingers and a wad of cash in his front pocket.
I crawl on my stomach through the mass grave. My khopesh sword is hidden in a sheath under my jacket, the tip resting behind my left shoulder and the blade coming across my back so that the handle is on my right hip. I draw it slowly, holding it like a dagger, before rising up out of the gore and creeping up behind the green skinned abomination. I kill it with a swift, angry stroke across the neck. His exposed throat gurgles as the head rolls down onto the tracks with a thud.
I kneel down and take the cloth bag from the boy, placing it in my own. He’ll never know his part in saving the Hyperion. I close his fingers and then his eyes, but am suddenly interrupted by squawking and chirping from further down the tunnel. More dwellers. They’re echo-locating. I sheathe my sword sprint to the small pool, diving in and swimming hard. My hands pull along the walls, madly propelling me through the shaft in an effort to get some distance between me and the inevitably pursuing creatures. As I round the U turn, I feel the vibrations as they enter the water behind me. I have to move faster – they can swim better than me.
Damnit, they’re gaining, and I won’t get to the surface before they can drown me. I stop halfway through my climb to the top and let two grenades from my pack sink down the tunnel before clawing frantically to gain more distance. I can hear the metal bombs tink and clank off the rocks as I pull myself out of the tunnel and swim for the home’s door.
Several dwellers are right behind me, four hands grabbing my legs just as I clear the house and look up at the surface. The explosion suddenly seals the tunnel and sends a geyser of water at us. I let the shockwave send me towards the surface and as soon as my shoulders break water, take in a huge breath and pull myself along the wall. But the disorienting force from the grenades wares off and the creatures relocate my splashing form. By the time they get to me though, I’m in waist deep water where the path returns to the surface. With my eyes still closed, to avoid the splashing water from making me blink or flinch, I engage all four of them. After a few seconds of thrashing and whooshing water, pieces of the dwellers float in the ripples. I trudge back up the incline towards the market, thankful for the first time in my life that I only had to face a group of tunnel dwellers.
Sabetha wears a t-shirt and some sweat pants so as to be comfortable for the marathon and has been clearing her mind and stretching out her body and consciousness for nearly an hour. There are two darkened ilk sitting on the sofa. I stand in the doorway between them and Sabetha’s room. Half of tonight’s ilk are bloodies and have numerous scares under their high collared coats and track marks on their arms. Two-thirds of them are med students and can perform their own blood transfusions. I recall what Val said about the “poor interns,” but I chose to think that the thousand dollars I pay them per visit is more of a boon than a bane. Plus they get to practice their IV work.
Sabetha is tense, but focused. Only the deed itself remains.
“Let’s begin,” she says strongly. The goblet is filled with the necessary ingredients and a flame is added to it. The concoction instantly emits a thick smoke that will plume indefinitely. Sabetha begins to manipulate the kharma around her, inhaling deeply and pulling the energy towards herself. This will prove to be one of the most grueling tasks within her journey. Slowly but surely she reaches out and finds reserves of the necessary forces and draws them back to her position, swaying with exertion like a fisherman rocking back and forth with his pole.
I stand by her for seven hours, my presence important to her peace of mind and my ability to naturally manipulate kharma, an important magnet within this collecting portion of the ritual. Normally it would take a fraction of the time and energy, but Sabetha rightly determined that precious time and energy could be saved if she made one big “batch” and dispensed with the repetition of the ritual. Having gathered the kharma she needs, she must now simultaneously hold it together when it wishes to disperse, and then self-induce her organs to expel blood into the smoking goblet.
Were the blood needed to write the scrolls equal to the blood expelled from her body, there would be far less effort and risk, but much of the blood is consumed in the ritual, leaving only a small amount of potent liquid behind with which to write on the scrolls. In that sense, the ritual is not too dissimilar from making maple syrup, a delicacy of Northern Gothica. For every ten gallons of sap, one quart of syrup is produced. Since we can take about two quarts from each blood donor, or roughly half a gallon, we need ten bloodies to make the ink necessary for the three-hundred scrolls.
I have several hospitals standing by.
Sabetha begins contorting her body, clenching her stomach to yield the blood. Her face is squinted in concentration. She leans forward purging into the goblet a small mouthful of blood. It burns for several minutes before she expels again. Tirelessly she adds more and more, hugging the kharma tightly to her body and slowly growing paler. I bring the first two patient ilk into the room and prepare to transfer their blood intravenously.
I administer the needle quickly but not suddenly and she holds her composure. After pausing to admire her fortitude and selflessness, I use the pump to remove the air from the tube and allow the blood to flow into her thinning veins.
I carry more and more weakened ilk to the medical shuttle out front which drops off even more willing participants. In the time between feedings and watching Sabetha, I dip into the collected blood and begin writing out the scrolls with Israfel’s quill. After a grueling thirty-six hours, far faster than our most optimistic expectation, Sabetha finishes. I finish up the last of the scrolls and then make haste to Corey’s.
A time of Reckoning draws nigh,
Send the word and look to the sky.
Winged friends bring messages dear,
Be fleet of foot, there is much to fear.
Speak to none, but those of trust,
We gather in the audience, must.
There, the council will convene,
And the stage will be set for the upcoming scene.
--Delano, Captain of Central Gothica.
Twelve
The next evening, Corey’s birds take flight. I had Nigel make the payments and take the necessary legal actions to buy the Roach and the Photoshop in Sogot in Corey’s name.
I give Corey the deeds and copies of the paperwork along with the cash and a hand drawn map of the safe route to Salt Town. He seems satisfied enough, and as long as he does his part, I will be too.
Now, to let the council know I just summoned everyone to an early reckoning.
†CaptainMiquel †
I remain perched precariously atop the ornate buttress of a dilapidated but nevertheless elegant church. I am just as statuesque now, like the monolithic stone gargoyles around me, as I was when I first took this spot six hours and forty-three minutes ago. The sky above swirls and grumbles tersely, globs of purple rain coming down in lightning-lit sheets.
Behind me are miles more of my beautiful churches, rain drenched, and scented with moist timber. Before me, however, one mile out, the churches suddenly end and beyond the outermost of them (the ones so filled with character that only I can still see a
rchitecture remaining) lurks the lights of the power lane.
Ever so briefly, I ponder the circle I traveled from my youthful ignorance to my wiser agedness regarding that place in the distance. Then, so far back in years, I called it the power lane. I called it thusly because it was its name. Undarkened know it as nothing else. Then I became a sentiner and for many, many years I referred to that curious place as the cell. I would perch hereabouts and watch it from a distance, till the sun rose and fell, and rose and fell again. I would study it endlessly, till the birds came to nest nearby, so accustomed to my unmoving presence they mistook me for a portion of the church itself. And even time and again, I would lead an expedition to its very boarder. But never, never, did I make the connection. So simply he replied to me with his innocent eyes when one evening I happened to mention it.
“Oh. Like bars, Miquel?”
His word’s struck me like a blow and I staggered, recalling the horizon as vividly then as I see it now before my open eyes. Endless smoke stacks from coal plants connecting the ground to the smoggy clouds. How relative my ignorance had been. Since knowing Ezra I have returned to calling it the power lane, though perhaps not for being informed, but for being afraid to nonchalantly utter a word so chillingly apropos.
Never before this night past have I seen anything emerge from the power lane while my boots still tread upon Gothican soil. Never has the wickedness entrenched there ventured in – least of all at me. But I am prepared to wait as long as it takes to see if another of those creatures, like the one which attacked me, emerges from the coal plants.
But aloft. What’s that? A crow in the sky above? It circles, does it not? And there, upon its leg. I can see something tethered, even through this torrent of precipitation. I must follow this quarry. My legs stiffen as I rise and despite my intimidating height and generous girth, I keep my balance along the buttress and begin to follow this bird. Across my churches I stride, adding character to many as my boots leave cracks and my shoulders crumple through the stone. Perhaps I may return to repair these bits, but for now, I must reach this fowl and my churches will simply have to bear my load.
Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) Page 10