Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (Max Quick Series Book 3)

by Mark Jeffrey

His footlockers and closets lay open, clothing and other things strewn about from their frantic search for Ragazzo. Giovanni slowly started to pick these items up, smooth them out and return them to their proper place.

  He opened the closet, half expecting to see Ragazzo hiding in the corner. But the boy was not there, of course. He righted the cabinet that had fallen over and placed some of his newly re-folded linens inside.

  But something tugged at his consciousness, some idea played there just out of the corner of his mind’s eye …

  Gripped by some compulsion, he went to a footlocker at the end of cabin and opened it.

  Inside were his books. He’d brought many of them along for the long voyage, studying their ancient manuscripts and parchments as he usually did far into the night.

  Digging around now to the bottom, he found the tome he was seeking.

  This book was different, Giovanni knew. This was something he’d bought from a blind merchant in Persia years ago, a curiousity. The merchant had sold the book to him for merely a penny or two — he claimed the book was cursed: he wanted it off his hands, but cleanly, in way where there was payment involved so that its cursed karma could not rebound back onto him.

  The language in which the book was written was unfamiliar to Giovanni, which was saying something. He believed it may be sanskrit or Hindi some Indus-valley related dialect too old to be recalled by living minds.

  Nevertheless, it was illustrated. He could look at the beautiful pictures within, with their impossibly fine detail and gold leaf ink. As a master painter himself, he marveled at that detail: he had no idea how it had been accomplished. Nobody had a hand that steady! Nobody had painting implements that fine! The technique used here had bordered on sorcery.

  Giovanni opened the cover. He shuddered as he did so: this book always felt … heavy. More solid, more substantial, more real than reality itself. And the atmosphere of the room grew crowded, cramped with portents like a wound spring.

  The wood of the ship creaked and snapped with a report like thunder, causing Giovanni to jump. Yes, he said, relaxing by degrees. That sort of thing happened with this book. It was just the bones of the ship, settling in after its trials at sea.

  Even the sounds this book made were more real, larger than reality. He turned the fine parchment pages and the very sound they made as they slipped over one another was like the crackling of a massive bonfire. He smelled the oldness of the tome, not in a musty way, but a pleasant woodlands sort of aroma, mixed with a frankincense, some powder that had been sprinkled on the pages to preserve them better as the ink dried.

  The illustrations swept past him, enrapturing him as they always did. This book was about armies, it seemed. There were soldiers with bows on elephant-back. It chronicled a war. The people looked like Hindus and the terrain was mountainous in the extreme. Everyone once in awhile, a king would appear in the illustrations, and for some reason, the king was always depicted as blue. He wore a sharp black beard that jutted from his jaw.

  And in the sky, now and then, appeared flying fortresses of some kind. Vimanas, the book called them. They were vimanas — and sometimes beams of yellow burst from them, burning the armies before them to the ground. He could almost see the beams sweep back and forth, back and forth … he could almost see the armies moving, running frantically away …

  How had he known they were called vimanas? Giovanni found that he did not know.

  Then the next page showed something completely unexpected.

  In the king’s tent, seated on the ground, was Ragazzo. The blue monarch was listening intently to the boy, seemingly astonished at what he was saying.

  Giovanni stood bolt upright, still holding the book, and gaped. “It’s him! Appius! I’ve found him!” Giovanni howled. “Appius! Come quickly!”

  He heard the frantic footsteps of Appius as he ran down the stairs from the deck and through the corridor. When he appeared at the door, Giovanni shoved the page in his face. “Look. Through some witchery, Ragazzo has contrived to translate himself into this tome, existing between its pages as we do between one moment and the next.”

  Appius shook his head. “Giovanni … that is a picture. It is not the boy. You’ve become obsessed with him, you’re seeing things that are not there.”

  “No,” Giovanni shook his head vigorously. “No.”

  “We know the boy is old,” Appius said. “He was there when this book was made. The artist painted simply this meeting. He is whispering treachery into this king’s ear, even as he whispered it into yours.”

  “He is here,” Giovanni said. “I am certain of it! Come with me.” Giovanni turned and ran to the deck, eyes becoming blistered by the intensity with which he stared at the page. Appius followed, with a troubled cloud across his face.

  “The madness of this island is taking you,” Appius muttered, shaking his head. “We should have never come here.”

  Giovanni tore the lid from the great black cauldron on the foredeck. He was greeted with a whoosh of flame: the cookfire was hot and well-fed, and the coals and wood were both pounding out waves of heat. Good!

  Without a second thought, Giovanni tossed the book into the fire.

  At once, the fire swelled with new life as if he had poured oil upon it.

  “Giovanni, no!” Appius yelled, but too late to stop him. “What have you done? That book must be priceless and rare beyond imagining!”

  “It is,” Giovanni agreed. “But I think the man who sold it to me may have been right. It is cursed! And I believe Ragazzo is inside of it, even if you do not. Well. If he is, then fire will drive him out. He cannot live between two pages that have been reduced to ash!”

  “You might also kill him!” Appius protested.

  “That is possible,” Giovanni said, a new, calm detachment coming into his voice.

  “Then we will have endured the journey back to this horrible place for nothing!” Appius raged. “Your daughters, Giovanni! Our daughters! We are here for them!”

  “Yes,” Giovanni said calmly. “Yes, we are. Wait, Appius. Just wait.”

  But the book did not burn. It was proof against flame.

  Giovanni stoked the fires to great heights. The book brightened the conflagration, but did not partake of it. It remained inert, untouched in the heart of the inferno.

  Appius stared in amazement. “Giovanni …”

  “It is cursed,” Giovanni said. “Or rather, it is constructed with a science that lies beyond our ken, which is more likely the case. Or both — for curses and sorcery are merely under the guise of another name. It must be so.”

  The book snapped open with a suddenness that startled both men. Their faces were so alike due to their relation that they seemed to draw back as one, and gape as one, as if a mirror were next to one of them.

  Impossibly, an arm emerged from a page. It felt around at the burning coals and panicked, muscles taut with sudden pain. It spasmed, trying to escape the heat, to no avail.

  “You see?” Giovanni said, eyes wide, triumphant. “You see? Ready yourself. He comes!”

  A shoulder and a head appeared next. Ragazzo’s mouth gnashed with pain, and his eyes bulged with surprise at finding himself in a fire — but he had no choice — the heat was driving him from the book. He had to escape.

  Wriggling furiously, he freed the rest of himself from the book and dashed from the cookfire onto the deck of the ship, smoking, shrieking and quaking in agony, hardly aware of his surroundings.

  Appius tackled him and smothered the flames. When he had done so, he let Ragazzo go.

  By degrees, the boy came back to himself. He had some burns, but they were not major. And now that he was out of the way of flame, he was not in agony any longer. He coughed and tried to make sense of what had just happened to him.

  “Ah,” Giovanni said taking three long strides to reach him and then going to one knee and dragging him up by grabbing his shirt. “You thought you could hide from us forever in that book, didn’t you?”

&n
bsp; “It’s a Niburian Book,” Ragazzo managed to gurgle out. “You should not have it.”

  “What I own, is my business,” Giovanni said. “And whatever knowledge it imparts to me is likewise a prize I claim. You dirty little urchin! Your people are misers of knowledge. You horde what you know and you do not share. And my wife dies. And my town dies. And my daughters die. And you speak to me of ’should’? How dare you. How. Dare. You.”

  Giovanni slapped him fiercely across the face and let him drop to the deck. He turned to Appius. “Chain him.”

  Then Giovanni cast his gaze out at the isle, truly taking it in for the first time. Colors he had never seen nor knew existed lay before him, colors he would have no idea how to mix pigments for. There were no pigments that could capture these, he realized then. These were new primary colors, which should have been impossible.

  A rich rip of flowers crowned a steep craggy mountainside that sprang up just beyond the beach. A sharp smell of their fragrance lay on the sea air.

  “Let’s go now to this island of yours, Appius. I wish to see this cave of the faerie folk for myself.”

  ONCE ASHORE, they journeyed in almost utter silence. They slept under the warm stars in the perpetual eclipse. Marbled clouds filled the skies, but thankfully, no rain came. Neither did they run into any people; Giovanni began to wonder whether this land was peopled at all.

  Then at last, they came upon a village.

  Giovanni, Appius and Ragazzo (gagged) hid behind a tree and watched. It was a celebration of some sort, it appeared. People danced in shafts of milky starlight flooding through the trees. The men were very thin and tall, with dark hair and dark beards. The woman wore silver dresses and flowers in their golden hair. Crisp music from flutes and harps and bells drenched the air.

  “The faerie folk,” Appius breathed in awe.

  There was a great arch made of twisted brambles and branches. Lace and frill and flowers hung from it, twirling in the hot night breeze. A couple stood beneath this arch, holding hands, drinking wine from a golden chalice.

  At once Giovanni understood: this was a wedding.

  Hurt clouded his gaze; he eyes seemed full of pepper. Appius knew what was happening: Giovanni was thinking bitterly of his own wife.

  “Come,” Appius said. “The cave is not far now.”

  SOON THEY ARRIVED at the hole at the foot of the mountain. Appius raised his torch. It was the gap — three massive stone blocks formed the doorway to the strange underworld below. The trio entered.

  Black stalactites hung from the ceiling like icicles of iron. The torchlight made their shadows dance like spider-legs hanging down over them all.

  Appius raised his torch to the wall — his initials, AQ, were there. “This is the way,” Appius said simply and they resumed their trek down into the earth.

  It took nearly a day and half to make the descent. They had slept at the halfway point, making sure they regained their strength for the final push. But when it was completed, Ragazzo, Giovanni and Appius stood in front of a wonderous arched doorway of some sort that led to another world beyond.

  “This is the Arch,” Appius said. “The Door to another world. I will not brave it again. But you will do as you will, Giovanni. I will remain here.”

  Giovanni looked up: the rock of the cavern ceiling was split, cracked. Rubble lay on the floor.

  As Giovanni’s eyes followed the damage down, he now saw that the Arch itself had likewise been rent. One side sagged: a great lurch of stone had shoved it violently down. The whole Arch was now twisted somewhat. The edges buckled and stone jutted out like splinters of broken bone.

  The scene inside this Arch was that of a tropical island. But the threshold between the two realities was just as bent as the Arch. As a result, it was distorted, imperfect. Energy crackled in random bursts across its horizon.

  A sickening premonition gripped Ragazzo. This Arch was clearly broken.

  And yet, Giovanni regarded it with mad glee. He rubbed his hands fiercely.

  A spangle of blue energy tickled the air between the worlds.

  “There!” Giovanni howled. “I can actually see it, with my own eyes, at last! That is the land of the gods!”

  Giovanni peered through the Arch into the place itself, taking in the scene shown there for the first time. Yes, this was a tropical place, and, as one might expect, the colors were lush and rich. There were great green palm fronds, with splashes of yellow and red and blue flowers. The wide sky above was a very deep shade of blue. And the sun in the sky burned with a ferocity and sharpness and clarity that was so precise, it almost hurt his eyes to look at it.

  But … all of this was also … somehow more. Giovanni had the sense that this world he was seeing on the other side of the Arch was heavier, richer, more solid and more real than the one he inhabited.

  Another world, according to the tale Appius had told.

  There is another world beneath this one.

  Yet, as he peered closer, Giovanni saw something odd. In the tropical scene on the other side, there were several birds flying. But they were … frozen. They were not flapping their wings, yet they were not falling to the ground either. They were just hanging there in mid-air, as if this were normal.

  For that matter, there didn’t seem to be any breeze at all over there. None of the leaves were moving, not even a little. It was as if time were … stopped.

  One might even describe this scene as Pocketish.

  “You will go through the Arch,” Cyranus said to Ragazzo. “You will cross over, to the land of the gods from which you have come.”

  Ragazzo looked up, clear dread in his eyes. The Arch had clearly been damaged by the earthquake.

  “Yes,” Giovanni continued. “I wish to see if such a crossing is safe. You will go first.”

  “Sir,” Ragazzo protested, “This is not right. Look at the stones of the Arch! They are broken. And look at that place on the other side, it is unnatural —”

  But Giovanni would have none of it. “You will go through!” he snarled. “You will see whether this passing is possible. And if you die in the attempt? I care not. If you will not hazard it, I will slay you now.”

  Ragazzo believed him. Giovanni was gone, his mind melted with hate.

  Certain death versus possible death was not a choice.

  And so, steeling himself, Ragazzo stepped forward — and through the Arch.

  Immediately, a crackle of static enveloped him. His cloud of brown hair stood on end. A sizzle tickled his skin, sending a zing of panic through his belly. But he was okay, everything was okay. He was not hurt. Not yet, anyway.

  Stepping into the other side was another business altogether.

  It resisted him. It did not want him. It was like walking into a wall of molasses. He had to push against it, dig in with his heels and enter it against its will. It parted, but slowly, grudgingly.

  The air was hard to breathe. It was heavy and moved slowly. Nevertheless, he gulped it into his lungs. But the more he gulped, the more he suffocated. The air was slow and more like water than air.

  Stars swam in his vision. Oxygen was not getting into his lungs. He pushed his head this way and that. The air hurt his eyes. The world around him was still and dead. He had entered a static picture, that was all. And very soon, he too, would stop.

  And then, he would die.

  Black shadows danced in his vision.

  Panic bloomed in his brain. He had to turn around, get back, go back through the Arch. Anything was better than this —! He wrenched his body, tried to spin, but could not. He was a fly trapped in amber.

  And then, without warning, the world around him popped to life.

  Glorious air filled his lungs. Palm fronds danced in the breeze. The birds sailed by.

  Gasping, he fell to the ground in wonder. The sheer loveliness of it was stunning. The world vibrated with splendor and color and rich aromas and knife-sharp sound. It was more real than real. Everything was enhanced. All of his senses were d
renched to the point of overload.

  A sudden sound brought him back to himself again. He spun.

  Giovanni had just arrived on this side of the Arch.

  He, too, gasped for air for a moment — while staring at the dazzle all around.

  “It is …” Giovanni panted. “My God. It is lovely to the point of madness.”

  And then something horrible began to occur.

  Cyranus’ eyes suddenly lost focus, as if something internal to his body had distracted him. A heart flutter, perhaps. Or a shooting pain. He winced. What was it? Confusion spread across his brow. What was happening to him?

  The veins of his body began to stand out in relief on his skin. They hardened, raising up, pushing to the surface. A mapwork of blood vessels appeared in his cheeks, his hands, his neck. At once, Giovanni turned beet-red and began to quake furiously.

  Sharp fear entered his gaze. Giovanni stretched out a hand to Ragazzo. If he were willing to ask Ragazzo for help, even silently, even involuntarily — then he must be profoundly frightened indeed.

  With sudden terror, Ragazzo looked down at his own hands. Was this happening to him as well? But it wasn’t. His own hands were perfectly fine, perfectly healthy.

  Foam danced at the corner of Giovanni’s mouth. The redness of his skin had deepened profoundly in a few short seconds. He shook more violently now, his body wracked with spasms. He looked like a grape, about to pop.

  And then, he did.

  Every vessel in Giovanni’s body exploded at once. He screamed, covered in his own blood.

  RAGAZZO PULLED Giovanni’s bloody body back through the Arch as quickly as he could.

  When he reached the other side, Appius was waiting, with huge amounts of cloth that had had ripped into bandages. Instantly, he stripped all of Giovanni’s clothing off and began wrapping him head to toe in bandages.

  “Here!” Appius screamed, pushing a pile of the strips at Ragazzo. “Help me!”

  For moment, Ragazzo regarded the bandages and did not move.

  “If you do not help me, I will slay you,” Appius gritted. And then, more softly. “And if you do help me, I will release you.” He worked franticly as he spoke. And after a another moment, he said simply, “Please. He is all the family I have left. Please.”