Quintessence Sky

by David Walton

  Ramos replaced the barrier, and the remaining flames died away, leaving nothing but blackened, smoldering wood. He was gratified to see a layer of soot coating Carillo's cream doublet.

  The military men broke into excited conversation. "The box would be clumsy to transport," Carillo said, dusting off a shoulder and trying to look unimpressed, but the others ignored him, discussing how this might give them an advantage in their wars.

  "How many can you make?" asked a man with a thin mustache. "Could you surround a castle with them and keep them continuously supplied with salt water? A wall of fire would be a formidable barrier."

  Ramos shook his head. "No, my lord. I . . . to be honest, I can make only this one. Four at the most. I . . ." He trailed off, reddening as he realized how limited this device was. It required a quintessence pearl, of which only four existed in England. He thought he had something marvelous; he had planned to amaze them. Instead, he had wasted their time.

  "Look on the bright side," Carillo said. "Just before your enemy cleaves your head in two, you can throw salt water in his eyes."

  The men laughed. Ramos's face burned. Surprisingly, it was the king who rescued him. He raised a hand, silencing the laughter. "It is Ignis Dei. The Fire of God. You have done well, Ramos de Tavera. Better even than your brother before you. Rest assured, you will be rewarded." He stood, slapping his thighs. "In the meantime, continue your work. You are the power of the armies of God."

  Ramos felt a warm, grateful glow. His monarch, this great champion of the Church, was pleased with him. His sense of euphoria remained while the king and his retinue gathered up their things and rode away. Once they were gone, however, the enthusiasm faded. The king was kind, but his demonstration had been a failure. The weapon made an impressive show, but what good was it? They couldn't mass produce it. It was dependent on the pearls, and they only had four of those. Worse, the pearls were dependent on the shekinah flatworm, so they couldn't send one to the wars in Turkey or France. Without the shekinah, they would quickly fade to uselessness.

  Barrosa clapped him on the back. "Congratulations! I hope you remember your friends when you're sitting at the king's table."

  Ramos shook his head. "It's a novelty, that's all. It won't make any real difference in the wars, and the king knows it."

  "It could. You just need to work on the design. Make it more portable, easier to carry and aim."

  "That won't help without more pearls."

  Barrosa gave a mischievous smile. "What if we had more pearls?"

  "What are you talking about? There were only four."

  "I'm talking about getting more. An expedition to Horizon."

  Ramos kicked the ground. "That would take over a year, even if we sent a ship today."

  A slow grin spread across Barrosa's face.

  "What is it?"

  "You can't tell anyone."

  "I swear."

  "Swear on the Bible."

  "I swear on the Bible and the Blessed Virgin. Now tell me what you're grinning about!"

  "Philip sent an expedition of conquistadors to Horizon months ago. Five ships of the line, stacked with cannon and crammed with soldiers. They have orders to kill the heretics and return with all the pearls and shekinah flatworms they can find."

  Ramos gaped. "Then, the ship with the bell-box? La Magdalena?"

  "Yes. We were talking with Alvaro de Torres, captain of La Magdalena and Capitán-General of the expeditionary fleet."

  "You told me they were off the coast of Portugal!"

  Barrosa shrugged.

  "How close are they to the island?"

  "If the weather holds? They'll arrive within the week."

  Ramos felt his pulse rate rise. In less than a week, someone would be in the presence of the source of these wonders, and would be able to tell them about it, in limited fashion, from half a world away. But the conquistadors were mercenary soldiers. This Alvaro de Torres would have been given a contract from King Philip to conquer the island, looting and plundering whatever he found, and taking a cut for himself.

  Killing the heretics meant murdering those who discovered all these wonders, mastered the use of the shekinah flatworms and pearls, invented the bell-boxes, and who knew what more? If they were killed, their knowledge would die with them. Suddenly, Ramos felt more sympathy with the distant colonists than he did with those of his own country and religion. They understood the value of what they had found. Ramos had sworn to be loyal to his king and country and to the Church, but he knew something else, knew it as surely as he loved Antonia. He didn't want those colonists to die.

  CATHERINE found a salt-encrusted crevice in the rock and hid herself there to watch. From this vantage, she could see back along the cave passage through which she had come. She marveled at this discovery: shekinah flatworms and these gigantic salamanders were the same creatures! She had no idea that shekinahs were not the adult form of the animal; they had never seen them grow appreciably in all the time they had kept them in captivity. There must be something about this cave that caused them to mature, perhaps the abundance of salt.

  But no, as she watched the shekinahs, she could tell that they were not eating the salt at all, as she had first assumed, but excreting it. In fact, all the salt covering the walls must have been left by generations of shekinahs passing through and growing to adulthood. The thought made her head spin—could this be the source of the island's salt? If there were enough caves like this tunneled throughout these mountains, with colonies of maturing shekinahs, perhaps rainfall washed the salt out to the surrounding land, in streams like the one she had just drunk from, and deposited it in the soil over time.

  Catherine decided to keep moving. If she stopped, if she allowed her mind to drift from the immediate problems and mysteries at hand to the fact that she was trapped alone untold leagues below the earth, with no concept of how to get out, then she might lose her mind. One step at a time. She needed food.

  She climbed back down to the salty stream, ready to bolt back to her crevice at any sign of an approaching salamander, and made it there without incident. She was greeted again by the swirling lights of the spirits. No wonder they hadn't followed her into the upper cave—the salamanders fed on them. Which was a mystery in itself: the salamanders excreted salt, but fed on the disembodied souls of people? Had there always been spirits here? Was that their main diet, or did they get sustenance some other way? Were they, in fact, eating the spirits at all?

  She remembered the leviathan they had encountered on their trip to Horizon the year before, how it had attacked the ship to get a salt-enhanced quintessence pearl, only leaving them alone when her father had thrown the pearl into the sea. The leviathan had caught it in its massive jaws and then plunged beneath the surface, never to be seen again. Were these salamanders like the leviathan? Was it the quintessence power that these spirits represented that they were attracted to, rather than the souls of the people themselves?

  She knelt at the water's edge and trailed a hand into the stream, trying to touch one of the eyeless fish. This proved harder than expected, however, as the fish slid smoothly away every time her fingers broke the surface. Perhaps they, too would be attracted by a bit of quintessence. Flush with salt, she made her skin glow white, and sure enough, the skittish fish swam close and tried to nibble her fingers. Once she touched one, it was simple to make it lighter than air and snatch it as it rose out of the water.

  Cooking it was no more difficult. A flash of quintessence fire, and it was baked black and steaming. Not the most gourmet dish ever prepared, but it would keep her fed. She was just figuring out how to tear off a piece without a knife, when she noticed that the tiny spirit lights were gone. She turned around to find them, and saw three giant salamanders crouched behind her, their fleshy mouths agape.

  Catherine reacted quickly. She leaped high to the cavern roof, altering her weight radically, and grabbing hold of a crag. One of the salamanders leaped after her, its mouth clamping shut just below her f
oot, before it fell back down again. The salamanders ignored the fish. It was her they wanted. As she'd suspected, they seemed to be attracted to quintessence. Once she evidenced some to catch her own meal, they saw her as another source of food.

  She edged along around the spikes, but they followed her. One of the salamanders reached the wall and climbed it effortlessly, cutting off her escape to the larger cavern. There was nothing for it. She dashed for the salamanders' lair, hoping she could get through.

  Too late. The salamanders were awake. They loped toward her, grunting and leaping. More of them climbed up the walls, swarming around her. She dropped to the floor again and raced back the way she had come. The two exits to this cavern that she knew about were blocked, but the stream must exit the cavern somewhere. She leaped from rock to rock, just ahead of the pursuing salamanders.

  The cavern narrowed, but continued to twist its way downward, following the stream. It closed to a point nearly too small for her, but she splashed through the water, and on the other side, it widened again. She didn't look back. She had already seen how the salamanders could squeeze their bulk through holes that seemed too small for them, so she had no doubt they were still behind her.

  The rock angled down sharply and the surface became more jagged, with tortured twists and folds of rock that hid from view what lay beyond. She heard the thunder of a nearby waterfall, though she couldn't yet see it. She had no idea where she was going, or what passages might leave her trapped in a dead end, but she had no choice but to run blindly. The salamanders, close on her trail, were gaining. They seemed just about to catch her when she burst out into open air and the clear night sky.

  At least, it looked like the night sky above her. She was in an immense open space with stars high above, and yet, it seemed wrong. The breeze that played on her face wasn't fresh enough, and the smell hadn't changed. Then she saw that the stars were moving. She was still underground, but in a larger cavern by far than any she had yet seen. What she had mistaken for stars were actually thousands of the glowing spirits.

  The salty stream ran down into a pool. Other streams joined it, cascading in waterfalls from other rifts in the rock. Salamanders emerged from all of these rifts, filling up the space from every direction. The salamanders who had been chasing her loped past her, ignoring her, and converged with the others toward a circular platform raised out of the rock in the center of the space. The walls of the platform were straight and true, as if fashioned by human hands. It was surrounded with crystals of all colors and shapes: jagged pink blooms, turquoise starbursts, smooth sheets of translucent sapphire. On the platform itself, his arms raised as if to welcome the growing horde of salamanders, stood a man.

  Catherine recognized him. But it was impossible.

  She ran toward him, heedless now of the gathering salamanders. They seemed less interested in her now, anyway, transfixed, just as she was, by the man at their center. She reached it and climbed up, circling him so as to see his face.

  When she had known him, he had been strong and powerful, his bunched muscles sliding seamlessly over one another like those of a tiger crouched to spring. He had killed a mutineer with a scimitar blow that had nearly cut the man in half. Now, he carried himself like an old man, hunched and fearful of a fall. His face, once impassive, was lined with pain, his lips dry and cracked, his eyebrows scabbed white. Before, his skin had been so black it was difficult to see the creases, and she had marveled to stand next to him and compare her fair skin with his. Now, like a black-bottomed boat crusted with barnacles, his skin was layered with chalky, white lesions.

  "Maasha Kaatra?" she whispered.

  His eyes swiveled to take her in, and if anything, grew even sadder.

  "Catherine Parris," he said. "You should not be here."

  "What is this place?"

  He shook his head, but his face was etched with all the despair in the world.

  CHAPTER 12

  CAPITÁN-GENERAL Alvaro de Torres leaned against the stern rail and let his bosun take command of the ship. Against all odds, they had made it, and with all five ships of the fleet intact. Torres was no stranger to difficult sea voyages. He had sailed around the Horn of Africa as far as the Pacific, and he had fought in the Mediterranean against France in the Italian Wars. But nothing had tested his sailing expertise like setting out across the Western ocean with no land in sight and nothing but a scrambling beetle in a box for navigation.

  The trip had been made three times before, once by Admiral Chelsey, once by Christopher Sinclair, and once under the command of Diego de Tavera. The first and third had returned, though no survivors had lived to tell of it. The second had never returned, and the Western Star was reportedly still here on Horizon Island, its sailors and passengers the kings of a rich colony. A colony he was here to destroy.

  The fleet sailed into the quiet bay, apparently unobserved. A carrack, presumably the Western Star itself, floated at anchor, unmanned. Torres scanned the shore with his spyglass, and saw a roughly-built pier and a well-worn track leading into the forest.

  When King Philip first gave him this charter, Torres had scoffed at tales of miraculous water and creatures walking through walls. The king's court secretary, Barrosa, had shown him enough to convince him, however, and he had seen enough on this journey already to think the stories probably fell short of the reality. If he succeeded in his mission, Spain would be the greatest nation in the world, its military undefeatable. Even the bell-box, that apparently simple device by which he communicated back to Barrosa and the king, would be enough to give Spain a crushing advantage in warfare if they could construct enough of them. He envisioned multiple forces on land and sea, their movements coordinated precisely across hundreds of miles. No one would touch them.

  But there was more, far more, that could give riches and military might to the country that controlled this island. Which was why Torres planned to take all possible precautions in approaching the settlement. By all accounts, he should have five times as many men as the colonists, professional soldiers trained and armed against exiled shopkeepers and theologians. But he didn't know what they could do. He would assume the worst, and plan accordingly.

  Back in his cabin, Torres genuflected before the crucifix mounted on his wall and made the sign of the cross. This was God's mission, like the crusades of centuries past, and God had granted him, Alvaro de Torres, a central role. He would vanquish the heathen and apostate alike and return victorious with the power to convert the world to Christ.

  In his heart, though, he had to admit he was nervous. There were unknown powers at work on this island, powers that, until now, had been used only in the service of the devil. What horrors might he encounter here? Would not the devil resist the conquering of this stronghold of evil with all his wiles and might?

  Torres was no saint, and he knew it. There had been that girl in Mindanao, whose lithe brown body still invaded his dreams. He kept a whip of leather straps under his pillow with which he lashed himself those evenings when his imagination strayed to the memory of her flesh. The penance was a welcome relief to his conscience, but it never seemed to fully cleanse him, and the next night he would find his thoughts pulled once more toward desire for what he knew to be sin. He was weak. Why had God chosen such a man as he for this holy work?

  He bowed his head to the crucifix. "God give me the strength," he said.

  When he returned above decks, a rising column of smoke over the trees caught his eye. He trained his spyglass on it and could make out the tops of buildings. The buildings were tall, and they glinted in an odd way, like they were made of some strange material. It looked more like the buildings you might find in a city than in a frontier settlement. He had been led to believe there were no more than five dozen people living here. As he watched, however, flames leaped up around the buildings and smoke billowed up to the sky. The tallest of the buildings toppled and collapsed out of view, with a crash that echoed clear out to the water.

  He whispered a qu
ick prayer of thanks and repented his lack of faith. God was judging the heretics already. Perhaps this mission would be easier than he had thought.

  THE COLONISTS watched their settlement burn. Matthew's father organized an operation to gather and count everyone. Everyone in the colony was ultimately found and accounted for, except for one man who had died in the flood of miasma.

  They made for the Western Star, which was still at anchor in the bay. Surrounded by water, they would be somewhat protected from manticore attack, and it would give them shelter from the daily rainstorms until they could start to rebuild. The water in the bay was fresh, and they could make food onboard from sand. They could live there for a long time, if need be.

  He heard James Ferguson loudly blaming manticores for the destruction, claiming that they had developed a new weapon. Eventually, Matthew would have to tell the truth about what he had done, but at the moment, it seemed prudent not to make an announcement: Ferguson might even claim that, as a manticore-lover, he had done it on purpose at the manticores' request.

  They never made it to the beach. At the tree line, they were intercepted by a company of Spanish conquistadors in pointed metal helmets, their matchlocks aimed and ready. There were probably two hundred of them. When had they arrived? There was no time to consider. An officer with a raised sword bellowed, "Down on the ground, all of you!" Another hundred soldiers emerged from the trees behind the colonists, cutting off their escape, pointing their weapons and shouting.

  Five Spanish ships of the line stood at anchor in the harbor, pennants fluttering, rows of guns protruding from their flanks. Matthew still had salt on his fingers from their attempt to rescue it from the fire, and now he licked it off. He made his body heavy and his skin like iron. He could barely move, but he didn't need to move. The other colonists threw themselves to the ground as instructed, but Matthew just stood there. He started to glow.