Quintessence Sky

by David Walton

  Ramos stepped right to the very edge of his own precipice, his toes over open space, looking straight down at the rocks and the spraying mist from the crashing waves. There was no smell of salt; this was Horizon, after all. He swayed slightly, his sense of balance compromised. It would be so easy. So simple, just to fall forward. Hardly a decision at all. A brief and terrifying fall, and then it would be all over. What was his life, after all? He had failed Antonia. He had failed Elizabeth. He could do nothing for them. Better to die here, alone, than to give his enemies a chance to use his death to coerce others.

  And yet, he couldn't do it. It was more than just the fear of committing a mortal sin; he was well beyond that. It was just that, even now, he thought of life as precious. Antonia's life was precious. He couldn't let her die. Helpless rage surged through him. If what he was doing was right, why was it all turning out so wrong? Was God truly just an architect who had started the machine of the world and then let it go? Didn't he care about the evils being committed in the world right now?

  If God truly cared about the events of this world, then wasn't this a time to intervene? Ramos's faith was slipping away like salt through his fingers. He didn't know what to think anymore. He had the Scriptures, yes, but what did that mean for him, now? Gideon had asked for a sign in a fleece, and God had given it to him. That's what Ramos needed. Some hint, some sign, that God cared about the good and evil deeds men did, and that all that was happening was part of his great design.

  A giant wave crashed against the cliff face below him, sending another crest of spray into the air. But this time, it was no natural wave. It was the leviathan, leaping out of the sea directly below Ramos, just like it had done to swallow the wayward salamander. Its massive bulk cleared the water entirely, a fish leaping to catch an insect, only the fish was as big as a building, and the insect was Ramos. Before he could move, the leviathan's huge jaws had enveloped him. Its enormous body smashed into the earth, its teeth tearing through rock, rending away a piece of the cliff with a sound like an avalanche, swallowing Ramos whole.

  ANTONIA knew her body was close. Catherine had told her so, although she couldn't see it herself. The world around her was a mystery; she couldn't see it like the people did, not through physical eyes. She could sense the people around her, track their movements, but her own body was as invisible to her as the air. With Catherine's guidance, she flitted around it, even passed through it, but she couldn't enter it, couldn't marry her spirit to her body. She couldn't become herself again. It was maddening.

  And there was fire. She couldn't see it or smell it or feel its heat, but she could tell it was there. Just a smolder at first, dry wood slowly heating and catching the flame of the torch. It spread from branch to branch, licking upward, smoking, gathering around Catherine.

  Antonia screamed in frustration. These men were burning Catherine, and she could do nothing about it. They would probably burn her own body as well, before she had a chance to get back into it. She didn't even know if she ever would, but she certainly couldn't if it was burned away. She was so helpless, unable to rescue Catherine or douse the fire or even call for help.

  Help. Maybe she could get help. It wasn't just those people close to her whom she could sense. Maasha Kaatra was far away, still with Tanalabrinu's manticores, but she could see his spirit. If she could reach him, if he and the others could come before it was too late, then maybe there was hope.

  She flew toward him. She moved at a frustratingly slow pace, but at least it was in a straight line. Tanalabrinu's manticores had retreated to high ground, where they had reached a kind of stalemate. The mercury bullets had long since run out, but Rinchirith's manticores had them surrounded and pinned. Fierce fighting continued, but Maasha Kaatra sat far from the front line, on the edge of the Gorge, his legs hanging over the side.

  Antonia rushed to tell him what was happening.

  "What can I do?" he said. "Death is the fate of all men."

  The roars and cries of battle seemed strangely faint here. The land around was quiet and still.

  "You can fight!" she said. "You can stand against oppression and rescue the innocent."

  Maasha Kaatra turned his head slowly, wearily, to face her. "Ten years ago, I watched as my girls were murdered by Portuguese sailors. I was ready to take my own life then, but Christopher Sinclair convinced me there was another way. He told me stories of an island with magical powers, where the dead could come to life. I knew these stories already. I had read them in the books of Jabir ibn Hayyan. A recipe for the creation of life. So I knew they were true.

  "I traveled here with Sinclair, and I watched him make those stories live. He healed the dying, and brought the dead back to life. But I learned something. Death does not belong with life. Death cannot be reclaimed, except at a cost greater than one is willing to pay. So I sought, instead, to die.

  "All I want is to be with my girls again. It's all I've ever wanted. Yet, I entered the void to find them, and they were not there. What if I cross the river into death and do not find them there either?"

  Antonia huffed in frustration. If they stood here talking much longer, it would be too late. "Catherine is dying as we speak. She's being murdered, just like your daughters were. If you must die, do it for a reason. Your girls are dead, but she's not, at least not yet, and neither am I. Would they want you to sit by and do nothing? Stop trying to die for them, and live for them instead!"

  Maasha Kaatra's body straightened, and his eyes focused. An intensity started to burn there, a sense of purpose. He stood up. "You are wise, little one."

  He drew his curved sword out of the scabbard at his belt. He hefted it, raising it high above his head and back down again.

  "Go!" Antonia said. "Or there won't be anything left to save."

  He ran toward the battle, bellowing his daughters' names. Antonia rose higher. She could see him charge into the fray, whirling and spinning with his great sword. He was just one man against a multitude, but the manticores had seen him emerge from the deep. He represented the power and strength of the earth snakes. Tanalabrinu's manticores surged down around him, fighting with renewed fervor.

  The Gorge under Antonia suddenly glowed red, and a salamander crawled out. Antonia flew as high as she could, hoping it wouldn't sense her. Then another came out, and another. They loped down the hill toward the fighting, lunging and snapping. All through the battlefield, more salamanders erupted out of the ground.

  Rinchirith's troops, convinced it was Maasha Kaatra calling them forth to fight, fled in panic, while Tanalabrinu's troops pursued them, now gaining the upper hand. The salamanders seemed willing to attack either side, but they, too, were running down the mountainside, giving the impression that they were chasing Rinchirith's fleeing manticores.

  Antonia didn't know if Maasha Kaatra could get there in time to stop the burning, but she had done all she could. She was just thinking this as a salamander leaped high and snapped its jaws around her, plunging her into darkness.

  RAMOS was the leviathan. His body was gone, crushed and digested within seconds, but he still remained. And he was not the only one. He knew now that the salamanders throwing themselves over the cliff were sated with the spirits they had devoured, all of which now vied inside the leviathan's mind. Ramos fought, hardly knowing how, his spirit battling instinctively for dominance.

  Most of the spirits were passive, resigned to their fate, but one was strong and wild, the spirit of the leviathan itself. It was not an intelligent creature, not aware of itself as an individual, but it was young and fierce and full of life. Ramos fought to keep his sense of self, waging a war with no weapons, no strength of arms, just the power of his spirit struggling to survive.

  He was himself, and he was the leviathan. He saw what the leviathan saw, felt what it felt, swam where it swam. But he could not overcome its instincts. It was a fish, not a man, an animal driven by the need to eat and reproduce and survive. These needs drove its actions, and so Ramos—the leviathan—
continued his feast, feeding on the bodies of salamanders living and dead. With each bite came a rush of fresh spirits, and yet Ramos maintained control.

  It was the quintessence, not the spirits themselves, that this creature craved. And yet, there was more to it. Just as the manticores' minds could connect through a quintessence bond, so this great beast was connected to every salamander it had ever devoured, and through it, to every shekinah flatworm those salamanders had devoured in their turn.

  In fact, this act of grasping and chewing and swallowing and digesting was not really feeding at all. It was a stage in the life of this extraordinary creature, as it developed from a host of shekinah flatworms to a handful of salamanders into a single leviathan. Through its mind, however simple, Ramos could see the whole picture.

  It began as a shekinah, just one of many, born of starlight in the trunks of the beetlewood trees. Its light shone out, generating a quintessence field that affected many other plants and animals. Over time, however, as its starlight poured out, a residue of salt built up in its body, and its light waned. Finally, it migrated to the mountain caves, leaving trails of salt behind it on the ground.

  Deep within those caves, its overheated body cooled by the rock, it excreted salt and starved for lack of starlight. Finally, unable to live without the light, it devoured its neighbor. Eating the neighbor did not mean the neighbor's death, however. The two merged flesh and mind. Combined, it grew in strength, but also in need, and soon ate a third, and a fourth, vying with other devourers and eating them in turn.

  Thus it entered its second stage of life, that of the salamander, eating shekinahs for the little light that remained in them, and excreting the extra salt that had built up in their bodies. This is the salt that made its way through streams and rivers into the earth, where plants drew from it, and were in turn eaten by the animals who needed the salt as well.

  The salamanders were more mobile and could roam the caves, seeking quintessence that had become trapped in rocks or pools. But soon they began to devour one another, merging yet again. As one gained ascendency, the other salamanders submitted to being eaten, eager to join their minds and strength into the greater whole. Fully developed, now, with fins and a tail, the leviathan would splash down into the deep mountain streams that emptied, at long last, into the sea.

  The part of Ramos that was not the leviathan struggled to make sense of this. Why would such a complex multi-stage being exist? Why the move from the land to the sea? What benefit did it gain?

  Then this, too, became clear to him through the leviathan's memories. The ocean abounded in quintessence. All the quintessence that flowed into the world from the stars and filtered, unused, through land and water, eventually found its way here, to the edge of the world, where it collected and reacted with the salt, making the water fresh and giving it its power to heal. Here the leviathan could glut itself on the quintessence it could find by sifting the water through its jaws, or by eating sea creatures smaller than itself.

  And this was the truly remarkable discovery for an astronomer: quintessence was not infinite. The stars did not generate an unending supply. Quintessence had to be returned to the sky as part of an ancient cycle, one that combined the actions of sun and stars and land and animals.

  The leviathan surfaced. Its deep bellow echoed against the cliffs. Then it began to glow.

  It was nothing like the simple glow of a shekinah. This was a spotlight aimed at the stars. Quintessence flowed thick and heavy, like liquid gold, pouring out of the leviathan and into the sky. The spirits, except for Ramos and the leviathan itself, flowed up with it. They were returning to their constellation, perhaps even following the quintessence threads right back to their own bodies in England and Spain and Africa and Cathay.

  And Ramos knew, too, why the island had been covered by storms that blocked the stars, why the salt deposits in the ground were running out, and why a miasma had been seeping up into the lowest spaces where quintessence no longer reached. Maasha Kaatra had interrupted the cycle. He had usurped the place of the leviathans and torn quintessence down from the sky. He had broken the connection between the human spirits and the stars under which they had been born.

  The leviathan knew nothing of the great cycle. It felt no need to replenish the heavens with quintessence. It was just a beast, following its own instinctual behavior. As his beam of golden light illuminated the sky, Ramos could see other beams, farther away, blazing up out of the sea.

  Driven by instinct, Ramos swam towards these with great strokes of his tail. The lights converged, hundreds of them, and soon the water seethed with leviathans. They swam over and under each other, each demonstrating the strength and color of its quintessence light, trying to attract a mate. Before long, Ramos's leviathan had paired with another, and the mating began.

  Ramos began to drift. He was not a leviathan, and had no wish to live like one. Perhaps now he would die. Perhaps he would rise and become part of the heavens. He didn't know. Part of him noticed that now, as the leviathans mated, the rays of light were speckled with thousands of tiny specks, drifting up into the sky. Ramos had no doubt that, in some fashion, these specks would find their way back down to Earth in beams of starlight striking the beetlewood trees, from which tiny shekinah worms would begin to grow.

  Relinquishing his hold on the leviathan, Ramos floated up with them, born aloft with the force of the golden river. He could see the whole island and, beyond it, the sharp curve of the edge of the world and the desperate empty blackness of the void beyond. Then he ascended past the clouds and into the dark sky.

  And now he knew what quintessence was. It was spirit-stuff, the material of souls, of life itself. He could see the threads passing through the stars and back, around the world, toward the people who lived in Europe and Africa and Asia. The quintessence that returned to the sky here, near Horizon, spread out over the whole world. It fell to Earth as starlight and fueled all living things. He saw the glowing spirit lights flit down those threads, flying fast toward home. But Ramos had no home, no body to return to. His physical body lay crushed and digesting in the leviathan's stomach.

  He flew higher still, above the stars. He saw the intricate way they turned and spun, exactly as Copernicus had predicted, driven by the quintessence that flowed into them. It was a revelation greater even than those he had seen so far: the stars, the very heavens, operated by the same natural rules as things on the Earth. The world was, after all, a machine. Even the stars were part of the same mechanism that made water freeze or boil, dropped objects fall to the ground, wood burn and wax melt, rocks hard and flesh soft, and blind seeds break to send shoots springing out into the light.

  He had always been taught that the stars, closer to heaven, were heavenly in nature: unblemished, flawless, traveling in perfect circles. But here he was in the heavens, and he couldn't see God. All he saw was a self-winding watch, a system that ran itself. Quintessence—life itself—was a natural cycle, self-perpetuating. The stars were ultimately no different than rocks or centipedes.

  He flew even higher. The great machine of the world dwindled to a single point of meaning, surrounded by looming, infinite void. It was transient, a device that would exist as long as its gears kept turning and then submit to the darkness. But no. Ramos refused to accept that there was no more purpose to his life than as a tiny cog in the churning of a great machine. He wasn't ready to die, nor was he willing to let Antonia and Elizabeth go helplessly to their deaths. Their persecution wasn't just the meaningless shifting of a gear; it was evil. There was right, and there was wrong, regardless of how the machine ran.

  And suddenly, he could see something new. There was a fabric, light and strong, twined through everything. The world was made of the fabric. The rocks, the water, the air, the humans and manticores, the animals and plants, the stars, even quintessence, was simply painted dye, and the fabric, the fabric was everything, so finely woven as to be nearly invisible. Even the void itself, the very darkness, was woven from it
.

  Ramos touched it. It thrummed and sang. He ran fingers through its strings, and knew that every one of them, a thousand thousand thousand, had a name. The choices of kings, the rise and fall of nations, even the throw of a pair of dice, was in the strings. The fabric held the machine together. The sun rose and set, animals were born and lived and died, because of the shape and weave of the fabric.

  If the fabric shifted, would the machine change? Would the natural laws of the universe reverse themselves and take new shapes?

  Ramos had asked for a sign, and here it was. He couldn't see God, but he could see what God saw. He could see that the machine was not a machine in truth, but merely an expression of the shape of the fabric. And what could the fabric itself be but an expression of the will and character of God? Here, at the end of everything, Ramos found his faltering faith gaining strength again.

  He had been so concerned about the machine, but underneath it, all the time, was a deeper layer. He might study the clouds and the sun and the wind, and understand why the rain fell on a particular day, but underneath that was another reason, governed by the shape of the fabric. And who was to say that under the fabric was not a deeper layer still, and underneath that, still more?

  And now, he had a choice. Above him, in the distance, he could see a light. The light called to him, promising beauty and goodness and rest. He could drift away, continuing this journey to where it ended, and perhaps see God in truth, in all of his glory. Perhaps, there, he would see all the layers, and understand them all.

  On the other hand, he could take hold of the strings. He touched them, feeling them vibrate, and knew that, for this moment at least, he had power to command, more power than any human before had ever held, save one. All of the quintessence in the world was nothing compared to the power of these strings.