Quintessence Sky

by David Walton

  He was just about to fall asleep when the voice of Ramos de Tavera came again through the piece of wood. He told Matthew that Princess Elizabeth was sentenced to die. Matthew, in turn, told Ramos about their situation, but he seemed distracted.

  "Elizabeth needs help," Ramos said.

  It was big news, and would be upsetting to many in the colony, but Matthew was exhausted, and England seemed so far away. "I hope she gets it," he said, yawning. "I'm sure my father will pray for her."

  "I mean, she needs help from us. You and me."

  "How could I possibly help her?"

  "I have an idea," Ramos said. He went on to explain it: a mad, impossible idea that—if they were desperate enough to try it—just might work. Though if it didn't, it might just kill her instead.

  MATTHEW slept without dreams and woke later than he intended. His father was already assembling a delegation to visit the red manticores, whose tribal grounds were nearby. He chose Matthew and Parris to accompany him, but not Ferguson.

  "That's a mistake," Matthew said. "We should bring him along."

  His father raised an eyebrow. "The whole point of this visit is to solidify our friendship and ask the manticores for help. I have no desire to bring someone who is known to hate them, and will only insult them, if not actually start a fight."

  "He'll cause trouble here if we don't. Better to have him along, where we can keep an eye on him."

  "I'm not taking that fool," his father said. "I can't control what he does, eye on him or no. Our enemies are numerous, and this meeting is crucial. If we have no allies, we won't survive."

  The three of them set off at a brisk run. They hoped to find some of his father's Christian converts among the red manticores. They hadn't seen them since the fire and could only assume they had returned to their own people.

  Manticore lookouts saw the humans long before they saw the manticores. Matthew couldn't see or hear them, but he knew they would be there, silently tracking them through the trees. Finally, before they came in sight of the primary manticore village, their escort materialized. Nearly a dozen manticores surrounded them, two with English matchlocks.

  "We come in peace to treat with your chief," Marcheford said.

  Matthew recognized one of the gun-bearers as Tanalabrinu, the son of the red manticores' chief. He was not utterly hostile to the humans, but neither was he exactly a friend.

  Tanalabrinu snapped his teeth, a gesture of annoyance. "Why should we treat with you? Your kind brings only death."

  "Because of the love we bear you," Marcheford said.

  "Was it love that killed Hakrahinik and Lachakchith?" Tanalabrinu said.

  Matthew's breath caught in his throat. Hakrahinik and Lachakchith were Paul and Thomas, the two manticores who had accompanied Catherine into the wilderness as her bodyguards. If they were dead, that didn't hold out much hope for Catherine.

  "We know nothing of their passing," Marcheford said. "There was another with them, a human girl. We heard she was taken by the grays. Have you news of her?"

  "She was judged and found wanting." Tanalabrinu's manner was dismissive.

  Matthew couldn't help himself. "They threw her into that chasm? They killed her?"

  "She was judged," Tanalabrinu said.

  A stone settled into Matthew's stomach. Even after all this time, he had hoped for good news. Hatred suddenly flared in him, hatred for all the manticores, both those who had killed her and those who could treat her death with such indifference. He wanted to fly at Tanalabrinu and scratch out his eyes, but a shred of reason remained, enough to hold him back. If he did that, he would be killed, perhaps even all of them would be killed.

  Some of what he was thinking must have shown on his face, because Tanalabrinu raised his rifle and sighted it on him. "Why have you come here? Give me the truth."

  "We would speak with the chief," Marcheford said.

  "You are speaking with him. Tanakiki is dead."

  That was not good news. Tanalabrinu's father, Tanakiki, had a complex history with the humans, but he had generally supported them. He had been the brother of Chichirico, the only manticore ever to see England and return again to Horizon, the manticore who had brought Catherine into the memory family of his tribe. Tanakiki had never converted to Christianity, but he understood humans as well as any manticore could. He would have almost certainly have helped them in this difficulty.

  If his son was in charge now, however, things would be different. The assumption that they would be met with friendship no longer applied. They would have to work for his trust.

  "Our settlement is destroyed," Marcheford said. "Our people are scattered. An enemy people has landed with ships and weapons and men. They seek to kill us, raid this island's treasures, and return home with as much as they can take."

  Tanalabrinu seemed amused. They continued to talk, but Matthew found it hard to concentrate on their words, despite how important they were to the colonists' future. Catherine was dead. It was impossible to believe. He tried to imagine her body broken in the dark at the bottom of a cave shaft, and the image just swam in his mind. What if it was just a trick by Rinchirith? Just because he said he had killed her didn't mean he had actually done it. Perhaps they were just holding her hostage. Though imagining that was almost worse.

  He felt like he needed to see her with his own eyes before he could really believe she was gone. The problem with that was, if the manticores were telling the truth, he would never be able to see her. Her body would be unreachable. There would just be long months of waiting, hoping, watching out the window, hearing her voice on the wind, until hope finally withered and died.

  Parris was talking now. "We have knowledge," he said. "You have seen the things we can make. We would share this knowledge with you."

  Hadn't he heard? Didn't he know that his daughter was dead? Matthew had a painful lump like an acorn lodged in his throat; he could barely breathe, much less talk.

  "I offer myself, as a memory bond between our two peoples," Parris said. He approached Tanalabrinu and pulled his tunic up over his head. He turned, crouched, and presented his back to the manticore chief.

  Only then did Matthew see the emptiness in Parris's eyes. For a human to memory bond with a manticore was a dangerous thing, risking madness and loss of self. Parris had done it once before, briefly, to save his daughter's life. Only Catherine herself had endured a prolonged bond with a manticore.

  Tanalabrinu grew thoughtful. "Your people are not connected, as we are. This bond would be with you alone."

  "Yet from me, you would learn much that would benefit your people," Parris said.

  "The rest of us would stand by this bond," Marcheford said, though Matthew doubted this part of the deal had been planned ahead of time. "We are all red manticores now."

  Tanalabrinu cocked his head for a moment, then clicked his pincers. "Agreed," he said. With sudden violence, he leaped on Parris's exposed back, wrapping his tails around his torso, and plunged his memory tail, the one tipped with a sharp spike, into Parris's spine. Parris grunted and arched his back, though the tail was not piercing his skin, but merely passing through it into the flesh beneath.

  The tail would implant a tiny amount of material from Tanalabrinu into Parris. This material, separated from its source, would connect the two with a quintessence thread. It would then act like a bell-box, only much more sophisticated, sharing not just coded phrases but thoughts, senses, and memories in a flood of consciousness powerful enough to overwhelm a human mind.

  Manticore tribes were formed as memory families, in which all the members were connected in this way. This ensured that knowledge was passed down through generations, even when individual members died. Offering a member, usually a child, as a memory bond to another manticore tribe was the strongest means of forging an alliance.

  Parris was sacrificing the very privacy of his own mind for the sake of the colony, but Matthew felt unreasonably angry at him. He was escaping his grief, drowning it in the
manticore consciousness. Parris was the only person who could understand what Matthew felt, but now his grief would be a distant thing, subservient to his role as spokesman between their peoples. He was leaving Matthew alone.

  By the time they left, the manticores had agreed to a treaty. They would help the humans rebuild their settlement near the caves; manticores and humans would fight together against common enemies, whether the grays or the Spanish; and the humans would admit red manticore youths into their English school.

  Parris was quiet as they walked back, and stumbled along as if in a dream. Matthew knew he was seeing not just the woods around them, but a host of images from the manticore village as well, experiencing thoughts and memories that were not his own. He wouldn't have volunteered if Catherine were still alive. Though, Matthew had to admit: if Catherine had been here, she would have volunteered herself.

  They found the caves quiet. Too quiet. As the returning diplomatic party wound their way through small groups of colonists, the groups fell silent, casting uneasy glances their way. Something was wrong.

  James Ferguson stood waiting for them by the largest fire pit, a smug expression on his face. Four thuggish men flanked him, some of his most ardent supporters.

  "How are your friends?" Ferguson said. His tone was light, but there was menace underneath it, and something else as well. Triumph.

  "They remain our friends, for the time being," Marcheford said.

  "And what was the cost of this friendship, I wonder?"

  "Only what is just. That we should fight alongside each other against our common foes. That their children should be educated in our schools, while they teach us what forest craft we do not yet know."

  Ferguson spat. "You expect our children to learn alongside those beasts?"

  Matthew glanced at Parris. There was no turning off the link; Tanalabrinu and the other manticores were hearing all of this.

  "I do expect that," Marcheford said calmly. "They have offered us friendship despite many reasons to do otherwise. I expect you to accept them as part of us and keep your tongue civil."

  A slow smile spread across Ferguson's face. His eyes glanced behind them, and Matthew turned to see that many of the other men of the colony had gathered around them. "We took a vote while you were gone," Ferguson said. "We've got ourselves a new governor now."

  "Who?" Marcheford said, incredulous. "You?"

  Ferguson gave a mocking bow. "You had your chance. You're finished now. Our way of life was falling apart, and all you could think about was your precious pet manticores, getting them to pray and parrot Bible verses like a bloody circus act. Now look at where we are. Our homes are burned to the ground, the Spanish want to gut us all, and you're still prancing around making friends with their lot. They're our enemies, if you hadn't noticed."

  There were murmurs of agreement from the others. Matthew saw that not all the colonists were part of this mutiny; some held back, and others were absent or inside other caves. The majority, however, seemed to have swung Ferguson's way.

  "They're not all our enemies," Marcheford said. "Many of them are principled. Honorable. Trustworthy." He turned his glare on those gathered around, and his implication was clear.

  "The only manticore I'll trust is a dead one," Ferguson said, to a chorus of ayes from the men nearest him.

  "And what will you do? Kill them all?"

  Now Ferguson was positively grinning. "If it comes to that."

  "With what? Your fists?" Marcheford said.

  Ferguson didn't answer, and it was quickly clear why. His skin was glowing, dimly at first, but then brighter, until the light streaming from him illuminated the cave. This was what Catherine had done to defeat the manticores in the battle for the colony the previous year. It was a powerful display of quintessence, and it required an enormous expenditure of salt. More than Ferguson should have had at his disposal.

  Ferguson gestured at the fire pit, and the glow rushed out of him and exploded into flame, tripling the size of the previous blaze into a white furnace that quickly vaporized the remaining wood. As the quintessence fire died away and their eyes adjusted, they could see that all of the men in Ferguson's closest circle were now glowing, too, making up for the fire's light.

  "You've been hoarding salt," Marcheford said. "Lying to us all."

  Ferguson laughed. "If I had been hoarding it, that would be more than you've managed to do. No, I wasn't stockpiling my own supply. I was just making better use of my time. While you were off befriending savages, I was working on providing for our own people."

  Matthew was losing his patience. "What are you talking about?" he said.

  Ferguson gestured at one of his cronies, a belligerent Welshman named Craddock. "Show them," he said.

  Craddock led them deeper into the cave, through a complex of twisting passages, past remarkable rock formations looming down from the ceiling or flowing like petrified waterfalls over the stone. Finally, they reached a crack they had to turn sideways to squeeze through, one by one. On the other side, embedded in the rock face and glittering with reflected light, was an immense vein of crystallized salt.

  Ferguson was grinning. "This is what happens when someone competent is in charge," he said.

  It was a ludicrous claim, especially since Marcheford had left instructions for the caves to be thoroughly explored in his absence. But it didn't matter. This explained why all the colonists had so willingly gone along with Ferguson's coup, or at least not challenged him. He controlled the salt. He and his friends were full to bursting with quintessence power. No one could get to the salt without challenging him, and no one could challenge him without getting to the salt.

  Marcheford's face was grave. "I promised alliance to the red manticores. They will fight with us and protect us and give us aid, if we keep our promise."

  "But we don't need their help. Don't you see, old man? This is more salt than we gathered in a year mining lilies."

  Parris spoke for the first time. "Why do you think the manticores haven't already mined this salt? It's right on their doorstep, after all." Matthew gave him a sidelong glance. Did he know something about this vein through his bond with Tanalabrinu? If so, he didn't reveal it.

  "I don't know," Ferguson said. "Maybe they never found it. Maybe they're too stupid to know it's valuable. Maybe it's some sacred place in their demon-spawned religion and they don't dare touch it. I don't care what they think. It's mine now."

  Matthew noticed that Craddock was now posted in front of the only exit. They were trapped deep in a cave with two men bursting with quintessence power. There might be three of them, but they would have no chance against Ferguson and Craddock, or even against one of them.

  "It should be made available to anyone who needs it," Marcheford said. "We should start a rotating duty to mine the salt and bring it out, so everyone can reach it."

  "Here's the thing," Ferguson said. "You're not in charge anymore. So you have two choices. You and your four friends can walk out of this cave and never come back."

  "Or?" Marcheford said.

  Ferguson smiled. "Or you can never walk out of here again."

  CATHERINE and Maasha Kaatra emerged into the blazing brightness of the evening sun, surrounded by manticores. The spirit lights flew off in every direction, and many of the manticores, obviously terrified by their sudden appearance, scattered as well. The remaining manticores, despite their terror, gathered close around Catherine and Maasha Kaatra, reaching out to touch them with tentative pincers or tails. Catherine climbed down from Maasha Kaatra's back and walked among them, smiling, reassuring, allowing them to see who she was. They looked up at her with awe, as if she were a god.

  She looked back at Maasha Kaatra, who was still standing in the same place, unmoving. His face was lined, and he stooped slightly. White lesions had reappeared on his neck, next to one eye, on the back of his hand. Whatever power he had drawn from the nova, he had used much of it bringing her here.

  The manticores drew them gently
away from the Gorge and down into a sheltered overhang. They washed the dust off their arms and faces. Maasha Kaatra submitted to this without expression. The manticores were of many different colors and sizes, some of which were new to Catherine. One had pure white fur, some were mottled or streaked with brown or gray, some had blunted pincers while others came to a sharp point. She had never seen such a variety in one place. It must be a gathering of some kind, of manticores from all over the island. But for what purpose?

  "I need to get home to the human settlement," Catherine said.

  No response but some tail-waving that meant nothing to her. She tried her request again in their language. This time the white one responded with rapid sounds and gestures, which again she could make no sense of. They were speaking to her, but she didn't understand. Was this a different dialect, some variation of the manticore tongue? If so, they probably couldn't follow her stumbling vocabulary any better. She gave up and submitted to their gentle care without any more attempts to communicate.

  She fell asleep, only realizing it when she woke in the dark and found the manticores gone. Maasha Kaatra sat next to her, awake, but almost like a statue in his stillness.

  "Thank you for bringing me back to the surface," she said.

  He nodded gravely. "I was glad to help you."

  "I don't see why. It was my fault you fell into the void in the first place."

  "Your fault? No. I was drawn to the void ever since I'd seen it. I wanted it. And it wanted me."

  Catherine shifted position so she could see his eyes better, but they told her nothing. "You mean you fell into the void on purpose?"

  He shrugged, barely a twitch of his shoulder muscles. "Not on purpose, not like that. But it called to me. It calls to us all, eventually. It is where we end."

  "You wanted to see your daughters again, didn't you?" she said. Maasha Kaatra was so physically powerful, so reserved, so alien to her that Catherine sometimes forgot he was a normal mortal person, with more pain in his life than most people had to endure. He had been sold into slavery, and survived, had watched his daughters raped and killed by Portuguese slavers, and survived, had fallen into the void between the atoms of the world and had still, somehow, survived. He was so good at surviving that it hadn't occurred to her that perhaps he didn't want to anymore.