Quintessence Sky

by David Walton

  Besides, they had fled from England because, under Queen Mary's rule, Protestants were being imprisoned or exiled. To return would be to run right back into that danger. He supposed they could return to a different country, one with a Protestant king, but there was no guarantee that English exiles arriving with unexplained magical powers would be well-received.

  The door to the outside opened, letting in a draught of heat and the smell of rain. Parris's wife, Joan, appeared in the doorway, water glistening on her clothing. She was a small woman, dressed traditionally in a full gown with squared cap and a shawl around her neck. She was out of breath. Parris jumped to his feet. "What's wrong?"

  "Catherine rang in an hour ago," Joan said, her voice sharp. "I've been searching the colony for you. Where have you been?"

  "What was the message?" Parris said.

  "I don't know your fool code," she snapped. "That's why I was looking for you."

  They followed her back to the house, where the bell-box sat silent. Parris tried it, a quick greeting. There was no response. He tried again. Patiently, minute by minute, he pressed the lever, then waited in vain for the bell to ring. Matthew watched, his dread growing. Of course, there were explanations. Perhaps Catherine had lost the bell-box, or broken it, or was sleeping and didn't hear it.

  "Let's not jump to conclusions," Parris said.

  "Why doesn't anyone listen to me?" Joan said. "You send a young woman, all alone, into a dangerous wilderness, and then you're surprised when something happens to her. Fools, both of you. And you say you love her."

  Matthew felt a flash of anger, but he kept it inside. He hadn't wanted Catherine to go either. It was she who had insisted.

  Parris glared at his wife. "You go too far. It's not love to keep her locked in a cage."

  "Is it love to see her dead?"

  Matthew barely heard them. Where was she? What had happened? She was too smart to lose her bell-box. And it was too simple a device to break easily. They had to go out after her, right away, while they still had an idea of which direction to find her.

  The door flew open, and Blanca ran into the room. She was young, Spanish, and exceptionally beautiful, with dark eyes and long, dark hair. Matthew thought Catherine was pretty, and all the more so because he loved her, but Blanca made heads turn whenever she entered a room. She wore a long skirt and a man's loose-fitting doublet, and her hair flowed in lustrous waves down her back. In England this would have been scandalous, a look reserved for the bedroom and only seen by a woman's husband, but on Horizon, the rules were different. Catherine wore her hair the same way, and called it the only practical choice.

  Blanca's eyes were wide, and she was breathing hard. She looked panicked.

  "What is it?" Matthew said.

  "There are manticores at the barrier," she said. "They have news about Catherine."

  MATTHEW'S father was already at the barrier, to Matthew's annoyance. "Let me do the talking," he said. "This is a delicate conversation."

  "I already talked to them. They say they know where Catherine is," Blanca said.

  "Even so," his father said. "We don't want to alienate them. They're our allies for the moment, and we want to keep it that way."

  It was obvious to Matthew that Blanca didn't much like his father either, and he didn't blame her. The ratio of men to women on Horizon was about ten to one, and half the unmarried men between the ages of seventeen and fifty had at one time or another proposed marriage to Blanca. This far from England, with no parents or social structure, there was no one to tell her what to do, and she had rejected them all. It had been a subject of much resentment and debate in the colony, many believing that she had no right to refuse when there were so few women available. Matthew's father had tried to intervene and commanded her to marry a forty-five year old salt farmer whose wife had died. She had refused to cooperate. His father had been ready to throw her in the stocks, but Matthew had argued him down—shouted at him, really—and it caused enough dissention that eventually his father had let the matter drop.

  Three red manticores crouched on the other side of the invisible barrier. Once Matthew put a drop of skink tears in one eye, however, he could see it clearly, like a shimmering fence made of parallel lines of light. The lines stretched between posts of split beetlewood, and had been fashioned using one of the basic principles of quintessence: that two pieces of a living thing, separated by any distance, would retain a connection. Matthew and Catherine had first discovered that principle onboard the Western Star by playing with broken ironfish bones. They hadn't been able to see the threads then, only observe the effect one broken piece could have on the other, even across the length of the ship. It had led to the invention of the first bell-box.

  The barrier had been constructed by pulling apart split beams of beetlewood and then wrapping the halves around each other, tangling the quintessence threads. When the halves were stretched apart and pounded into the ground, the threads stretched to cover the distance like crisscrossing beams of light. Since the beams were formed from the essence of living beetlewood, manticores couldn't cross it. Humans, on the other hand, could walk through without even noticing it was there. It was much easier to build than a physical wall was, and much more effective. It couldn't be climbed.

  The manticores tested it regularly. The reds remained on friendly terms with the colonists, but many of the other tribes, and especially the grays, wanted nothing more than to see them dead. Every few days, a troop of manticores would try to scale it or break through. They hurled tree trunks at it, drove poles into the ground and scaled the poles to jump over the barrier, and tried to dig underneath. Sentries inside the barrier walked around it, guarding it night and day with matchlocks, the bullets dipped in beetlewood wax so they would pierce manticore flesh. Marcheford had strictly banned the sale or trade of matchlocks and ammunition to the manticores, even their allies. It was impossible to prevent the occasional weapon from falling into their hands, but the rule had prevented any significant manticore armament.

  So far, the barrier had held. Though Matthew had to admit, they still had only a poor idea of why it worked. By wrapping themselves in a mesh of quintessence threads, they could duplicate most of the manticore's miracles, even walking through solid stone. And yet humans could pass through the barrier, and manticores could not. What was different? Were the manticores actually made of quintessence in some intrinsic, atomistic way? Or perhaps the difference was the quintessence pearl: the tiny pinprick of quintessence that all Horizon creatures had hidden in their bodies, allowing them to use the power naturally.

  "You have news of my daughter?" he said. Parris spoke English, which most of the reds understood, though speaking it was difficult for them.

  The manticores answered in their own language, accompanying the sounds with sinuous movements of their tails. "She was taken by Rinchirith and his clan to be judged."

  Matthew understood the words, mostly, but he still looked to his father for the translation. Since his father had lived among them for so long, he knew the language better than anyone, with the possible exception of Catherine. But his father said simply, "Rinchirith has her."

  "Who is that?" Parris said.

  "He's a gray, a human-hater. He blames us for everything bad that's ever happened to his tribe."

  A lot of it probably true, Matthew thought. Human arrival on Horizon had hardly been good for the manticores. Besides nearly sending the whole island over the Edge, they had disrupted the balance of politics among the tribes, causing all manner of problems.

  "We insist on being present for her trial," his father said formally, in the manticores' own tongue, using his hands and fingers to mimic the movement of their tails.

  "It is not the gray tribe, nor the council of tribes, that accuses her," the manticore answered. "Rinchirith blames her for the death of his brothers, and many who mourn the dead follow him."

  "What will he do to her?"

  "He will let the earth judge her for her crimes."


  Matthew didn't know what they were talking about, but it didn't sound good. "What does he mean, 'let the earth judge her'?" he said.

  "I've heard them speak of it before," his father said. "It's a response to terrible offenses, for crimes that harm the whole tribe. The offender is brought high into the mountains and dropped into a chasm they call Judgment Gorge."

  "They're going to throw her down a cave shaft?" The mountains lay farther away than any human had yet explored. Even if she survived the fall, they would have no hope of finding her without manticore help.

  "They believe the Earth itself will determine guilt or innocence."

  "What, by smashing her body against the rocks?"

  Matthew turned to the manticores and did his best to speak in their language. "Will you take me to her?"

  "You can't stop them," the manticore said. "Rinchirith's followers are many."

  "Take me anyway."

  "No, Matthew," his father said. "You can't do her any good. Stay here and wait."

  "And do what?"

  "Pray for her safety."

  `"I don't want to pray. I want to save her life."

  "If God wishes her life to be saved, it will be saved. If not, then it will not, except if by humble supplication you obtain his mercy."

  "Good idea," Matthew said. "You try that route. In the meantime, I'll go rescue her. We'll see which works better." Without waiting for an answer, he stepped through the barrier and addressed the manticores. "I'm ready. Take me to her."

  "At least bring a pack," Parris said. "It's a two day journey to the mountains; you'll need food and supplies."

  Blanca, however, had anticipated the need. She appeared with two packs from the storehouse, her quintessence powers making it easy for her to carry both. She stepped across the barrier after Matthew. "Don't tell me I'm not coming with you," she said. "Catherine's my friend, too."

  Matthew nodded, then faced the manticores. "Let's go."

  The manticores, however, did not move. "We will not take humans to the Gorge."

  "What do you mean?" Matthew said. "Catherine is there already."

  "She is the accused."

  "And I'm her fiancé. I want to speak for her."

  "We will not take you."

  Matthew hurled his pack to the ground. "You don't trust us with your sacred spot? Is that it? You think we'll spit on it or take it for ourselves?" He knew their concerns were probably warranted. After all, several of the manticores' sacred places had been destroyed since the humans arrived—though not intentionally—and many villages as well. But he wasn't going to sit by and let everyone tell him there was nothing he could do. "This is nonsense," he said. "You're going to kill Catherine, you savage bastards, now tell me where she is."

  "Matthew!" his father said, a shocked rebuke. He started to gesture an apology.

  The three manticores hissed and took fighting stances, bodies low to the ground with pincers extended, their many tails fanned up and over their heads. Blanca jumped back behind the safety of the barrier, but Matthew was too angry to heed the warning.

  Parris dashed through the barrier and tackled him. He dragged him to the ground just inside the barrier and made his own body heavier to pin him down. Matthew thrashed, but couldn't lift himself free.

  "Let me go!"

  "You're no good to her if you get yourself killed."

  "I'm no good to her if I can't find her, either."

  The red manticores disappeared into the trees. When Matthew stopped struggling, Parris stood and helped him up. "We'll find her. But antagonizing the only manticores who don't already want to kill us won't accomplish that. We need a plan."

  CHAPTER 7

  BACK in the cellar room, Ramos set to work. Barrosa wasn't there to tell him what had been tried before, but he didn't want to know anyway. At least for now, he wanted to discover and see for himself.

  He took careful stock of the room, examining each cage, each shelf, each golden artifact. The room was a disorganized clutter, something that would have to change, but for now, he just left things where they were. He didn't know enough to organize sensibly.

  He found a lot more gold carvings than he'd spotted the day before: not only the flowers and leaves and mouse, but a host of other ordinary objects carved in gold: a book, a trencher, a pair of spectacles, a shoe. He was starting to suspect that these things had not been carved after all. Only a few people in the world could carve with such incredible perfection, and what would be the purpose? That implied that these objects had once been ordinary, but had been transformed into gold.

  Then he found a golden inkpot engraved with the initials J.B. Juan Barrosa. The find gave him a little shiver of excitement. If these objects had been transformed, then it hadn't been done on the island. It had been done right here. It was the alchemist's dream, to turn base material into pure gold. But how was it done?

  On a table, he found a shallow tray of water with an eel swimming in it. At the bottom of the tank, on one side, was an ordinary gold ring; on the other side, a feather, each barbule intricately formed in gold. The features were so tiny and precise, he knew it could never have been carved. He wondered if the gold would splinter away if the feather was stroked. He was about to reach into the water when he remembered the fates of Perez and Peinado. Caution would be wise. Instead of reaching with his hand, he went back and found a pair of tongs he had noticed earlier, and reached them into the water to grab the feather.

  He was glad he had. As soon as they entered the water, the ends of the tongs changed color and weight. Astonished, he pulled them out. The top half was still iron; the bottom half gold wherever the water had touched. Was it the water that was special? The eel? And why was all this gold just piled up here in the cellar? If the king had a way to turn any object into gold, why didn't he use it to mint himself a fortune? Philip had the armies, the influence, the intelligence, and the will to take over the known world in the name of Christ. All he lacked was the gold.

  "I wouldn't bother pocketing any of that, if I were you," said a voice from the stairs. It was Barrosa.

  Ramos set the tongs gingerly on the table, noticing small gold specks in the wood where the water from the eel tray had dripped. He was careful not to let it drip on him. "Why is that?"

  "Because halfway up the stairs, it turns back into whatever it was before."

  "Up the stairs? You mean the cellar itself is what makes them gold?"

  Barrosa sat heavily on a wooden bench. "Not at all. It's the worm."

  Ramos glanced at the shining worm in its glass ewer. "The worm isn't anywhere near this water."

  "It's the source of everything. If you picked up the worm and walked out of this room, then everything fantastic in here would become ordinary. All of the animals would die."

  "The worm is the source? What about these pearls we each have in our pouches?"

  Barrosa sighed. "There's a lot we don't understand. But the pearls store up the quintessence when they're here, and then use it up when they're not. If we don't come down here every day and recharge from the worm, the power runs out."

  "The king comes here too?"

  "Once a day. And he usually wants a report on what we've found since the last time."

  "I'm still missing parts of this story. Where are the men who brought all this back from the island? Surely we could interview them and find out more. Was this the only worm they could find? Where did the pearls come from?"

  Barrosa looked uncomfortable. "They're all dead." He wouldn't meet Ramos's eye.

  "Dead?"

  "Your brother Diego led them out, two years ago. When they returned, half the crew was gone, including your brother, most of the officers, and an English lord named Francis Vaughan. The ship had all this gold and treasure, and the king suspected a mutiny. Everyone did."

  "What was their story?"

  "They claimed most of the officers had been killed by invisible manticores, your brother had been killed by the Protestant renegades, and Vaugh
an had been plucked off the ship in the night by a giant sea monster."

  Ramos gave a nervous laugh. "You're kidding."

  "The surviving men were huddled in four groups around the four pearls they had brought, refusing to be separated. They said they used to have a chest full of the worms, but shortly after they set sail, Vaughan had opened the chest and attracted the sea monster, which leaped out of the sea, snatched him and the chest of worms in its mouth, and dove back down into the deep." Barrosa pantomimed the monster's movements with his hands. "Only one worm was left."

  "No one believed them?"

  "Why would they? They were filthy and raving and their stories were fantastic. They were in perfect health, but acted terrified of dying. None of the gentry were left to corroborate their tale, and who would believe a bunch of superstitious sailors?"

  "But you believe them now."

  Barrosa spread his hands. "What they brought back is as fantastic as their stories. And they were right to be afraid of death."

  "They died when they were separated from the pearls?"

  "Not at first. They were in agony if we took the pearls away, and their limbs quickly became stiff as stone, so we kept them in four cells, each with a pearl, while we interrogated them. Once we learned what they knew—which wasn't much—Philip ordered us to take the pearls for ourselves." Barrosa pointed a finger at Ramos. "Don’t look at me like that. I was following a direct command."

  "They all died?"

  "Some that day; some held out as long as three days. It was like a room full of statues at the end."

  Ramos nodded slowly. If it was Philip's command, Barrosa didn't have much choice. A Christian monarch had the responsibility to make hard decisions, decisions for the good of Christendom and the spread of the True Faith, not just for the good of individuals. It was not for men like him or Barrosa to question commands from a holy ruler. And yet, the decision made him uncomfortable. He wondered if he would have done the same in Barrosa's place.