Later, when he was again at his desk, he reached for another volume of collected records. His eyes drifted over the words, another account telling of death, of air filled with dust. Something caught his attention as he was turning the page. He flicked it back and stared.
There was an entry about a strange creature that breathed fire and flew across the sky. He read on, but nothing further was recounted about the beast. Discarding that volume, he found another from a different Hiem archivist around the same date. Again the strange creature was mentioned. However, this record noted that the being had first appeared when the dust of Ruel moon had finally settled. Yet another entry, by a Hiem called Kirken, told of huge wing spans, mouths breathing fire and the ravenous eating of the dead. Picking the devastated cities clean, the flying creatures had multiplied. Nils slammed shut the record on his desk and shouted, “Fools!” Not only had they not taken steps to purify the air after it became thick with dust or to stop the spread of disease, they had failed to properly record the appearance of a new creature on Margra.
Nils felt his fascination for these creatures grow, felt curiosity override the despair in his mind. What secret did these newly formed beasts hide? What were they? Where did they come from? His mind was alive with pinpricks of memories, of facts, of ideas. He had to know more about these creatures. Had to.
*
Belle moon had risen and set ten times since Nils had awoken from his long sleep. After much anguish and debating of mind, he decided he must venture out into the world of the Sundwellers. He had to see for himself what remained above.
There were maps and food to pack and a shroud to make before he could begin. A shroud was always worn by his kind when going to the surface. It hid one when necessary and sheltered one from the elements, particularly the light. When he had made all his preparations and deposited his supplies in the various compartments of his shroud, he was ready to go.
He strode through the center of the city, along the ordered but deserted streets. The cream-colored stone of the buildings and roads glowed eerily, bathed in the light of the shuwai and the few working streetlamps. As he wound his way further through the city, further than he had trodden since waking, there were sporadic piles of bones and even more dust. There was no evidence of suffering, just a city preserved through time. Despite himself he shuddered.
The door to the central stair, which led to the network of Ways, opened easily enough. The vibrations caused by his people using the Ways had once been like background noise. The life energy of the Hiem resonated with the power of the Ways, creating greater synergies. Now these were empty, silent spaces, a mere shadow of what they’d once been, reaching ever outward from this once thriving city. He sensed the Ways like hollows in his mind. The Ways were not linear as far as he knew, though at times they appeared to be, but for distant travel between the continents they bent the world around them, making travel faster and more convenient. The Hiem had used them frequently to access the surface so that they could observe the Sundwellers, to record history and events, and chronicle the lives of those above. The Ways were also used for travel and trade between Hiem cities and towns. Standing there, he half-expected, half-hoped that one of his kin would emerge.
He took a step and rode the stair to the north junction. The power of the Way still drove the connecting stair, which was a relief. One entrance to the Way proper was locked, so he went to take another stair, but the power of the Ways had clearly malfunctioned there, as that one wasn’t working. He had to climb to reach the next entrance. Two hours later, sweating and exhausted, he came to a section of the Way that was filled with debris. The roof had collapsed, completely blocking the path. He realized he would have to return to the city and start again. He sat on the stair to catch his breath, cursing himself for being a prisoner of sleep, for being a fool in the first place, because if he hadn’t broken the law, he’d be dead now along with his kin. He’d be dust. As he stared at the stairs, he knew this was not the time to fill up his heart with regrets. It was the time to move forward without looking back. He groaned as he stood to descend the stairs and return to the city. He would simply have to find another route.
The next day he took the north-west stair and won through, making it to a functioning Way. He traveled along, alone in the dim light, trying not to remember how it was before. At the Way Gate, the exit point to the world on the surface, he saw a depiction of the exterior landmarks etched into the fabric of the wall—a vast green plain with clear blue sky surrounding a small township. He ran his hand over it, following the lines of the soft hills, thinking about the artist. A tender and careful hand had drawn that painting, lovingly crafted it with detail so the picture almost had a life of its own. It was no use dwelling on it, thought Nils. He opened the Way Gate and stepped through. It was immediately clear that plain did not exist any longer.
It was sunset. Luckily, the shroud provided some protection from the harsh rays of light. Filtered through his hood, he could see that the colors along the horizon were vivid crimson, with streaks of darkening violet spreading with the onset of night. The change in the sky’s complexion struck him as odd. Then the sensation of being out in the open overrode his surprise. There was an absence of weight and warmth around him. On the surface the air moved, shifting his shroud, and he nestled deeper within its folds.
Then his gaze dropped to the terrain around him and he forgot about the strange colors of the sky. It was a ruination of what had been depicted in the painting on the Way Gate. There was little vegetation and the ground was riddled with broken rocks and stones, all brown and gray. With the sunset, the colors deepened to carmine and then to black while he watched.
Walking westward for about an hour, he kept his shroud clenched around him, protecting him from the elements and from prying eyes. Although he saw no one, he felt as if he was being watched. This nervousness probably stemmed from how long he had been held in his prison of sleep.
Over the rise, he paused as the feeling of uneasiness intensified. A powerful stench emanated from somewhere nearby. He sniffed, finding the smell repulsive and oddly tantalizing at the same time. He turned to the left, along the path of the breeze, to where the scent was strongest. Here trees dotted the landscape, with shadows shifting as Belle moon began to rise. It was about half-full and seeing it made him stop still in his tracks. It was so familiar and yet so alien. There was no Ruel moon in the sky ahead of it. And though the remaining moon was still striking, its surface was marred with at least three new craters, big enough to be visible to the naked eye.
The moon added a violet tinge to the light and changed the earthy browns and grays of the landscape to silver and black. Nils ventured further and found the source of the stench in a small village. He approached it carefully and quietly.
What he saw horrified him. A fire threw light on the crumbling shacks—little more than disordered piles of rock—and the few villagers who were about. While the people in this settlement physically resembled the Sundwellers he’d seen in his youth, Nils could hardly believe they were of the same race. The Sundwellers he had known had smiled and their eyes had twinkled with intelligence. These creatures seemed to have reverted to a primitive state and were communicating with a language of pure grunts. Naked and covered in filth, they ate the flesh of others and tossed the bones into a pile. Then they preyed on the weaker of their own kind. Attacking them and beating them senseless, they threw them into pits. A wave of stench wafted over Nils where he stood, cloaked in night and his shroud. It was too much. He moved on, shifting from shadow to shadow, with his eyes on the horizon.
As Belle moon set he saw for the first time what the archives had called Shatterwing. In a shelter of rocks, he watched the remains of Ruel moon brighten as Belle moon waned. After gazing at the wing of debris with deep fascination for nearly half an hour, he walked on.
With the sunrise he saw that dry earth and rock lay in all directions—ochre, cream and gray. Some appeared to be fragments of molten lava, by
the feel and texture of them, probably blown from halfway around the globe. They lay in dark gray piles at his feet.
He consulted the maps he’d brought with him. Nothing remained of the towns they described. Nothing of the people. There was no point, no hope. In his anger and heartbreak, he committed a sacrilege and burned the useless old maps. Destroying knowledge, such as those olden maps, would have earned him more imprisonment if anyone had been alive to judge him. He guessed it was a measure of his despair. Was there truly no one left? Had any civilization remained on Margra after the splitting of Ruel moon? At that moment he realized something. He yearned for company, for conversation, yearned more than he had for anything in his life. In his youth he had sought to be free of the restrictions his kin placed on him, but now he craved them.
Tightening his shroud around him, he walked on with growing certainty that the world of old was gone. In that region, at least, it seemed none of the cities existed anymore. He could find no trace of them, no artifact, no bones, no voices on the wind. Given the information recorded in the archives, he assumed the rest were gone too. All that remained of the world of Sundwellers was what was recorded in the archives of the Hiem.
Nils didn’t know what to do with himself. Returning to the city right away was beyond him—he had too much despair inside—so he kept exploring, kept searching for something, anything. A few days’ walk south he found a small hamlet resembling a rude collection of huts, but he noted that they were better constructed than those of the first village. Although the inhabitants were not inarticulate barbarians, they too kept slaves, and they were cruel and debased. It seemed no man, woman or child was immune to abuse, degradation and mutilation … Their evil deeds disturbed Nils. He knew this wasn’t helping him at all, it was compounding the desolation in his heart. Quickly, he withdrew back into the shadows and then groped a path back to the next Way Gate entrance so he could return to Barrahiem. He had had enough for the moment.
It was some time before he had the strength to venture out again, but some vestige of hope drove him on. A few days later on his next journey he found a town further north. Larger and better run than the hamlet, there was some semblance of civilization there. He watched, hidden between walls and in the shadows as his kin had done in ages past. What he witnessed did not hearten him. There was only a thin layer of order. Unruly government, corruption and suffering were everywhere, as thick and rank as effluent.
Discouraged to his very soul, Nils traveled west and found an even larger town. Here the people spoke a language that Nils could mostly understand. It was a patois of earlier languages, mixed and jumbled together. After a few days of listening and watching, he found he could comprehend a substantial portion of it.
During the day he observed the people at their work. Even in this relatively large town, slavery abounded. Women and children were sold on the open market, their faces devoid of hope. From this he could see that the weak were kept weak through abuse and poor diet. The town’s constabulary reinforced the status quo, abusing the slaves and citizens alike just as perfunctorily as the slave masters did.
His heart was cold with fear. He could expect no companionship from these people, no exchange of ideas and no acceptance of difference. From the makeshift schoolroom, where a scant number of children were being taught, he witnessed under the protection of his shroud how a preponderance of myth was woven into their lives. The teachers explained the current situation, the chaos of government, through illogical tales about Shatterwing. It seemed the populace drew some link between the meteors hitting their cities and the events that played out on the surface. After a meteor fell, those in government were invariably overthrown. In a bizarre but sad twist, it seemed anyone suffering from a deformity was to be eliminated because their affliction was thought to draw down a meteor.
As Nils headed back to the nearest Way Gate he felt as if doom was pressing between his shoulder blades. He thought about the superstition that governed the small towns he’d seen. He didn’t know much about witchery, except that the word had negative connotations. In the past, it had been a word used by the Sundwellers to describe the few Hiem who had been discovered at their work.
His thoughts turned to the people and customs he’d witnessed. He supposed it was natural that Shatterwing should play such a dominant role in their folklore, because what had happened to the planet was within living memory. But how could Sundwellers exist in a world sunk to its basest level? Would that he had died before witnessing the end of his people’s dream, he thought. Once his people had believed they would all evolve to a higher plane together, the Sundwellers and the Hiem. All hope of that once bright vision of a transcendent race was gone… forever.
As the Way Gate opened, Nils tried to leave his morose thoughts behind him. Yet when he returned to the main streets of Barrahiem, he could not fight the loss of hope. There would be no deliverance for the world above, or for him. The end was near, he feared, and perhaps it was for the best. The vision of the Hiem was dead. Any hope of rekindling it would die with him.
Of the large, winged creatures there had been no sign. “Dragon” was the name the surface dwellers gave them. They told vague tales about them around tables and in the street, and they drank a wine named after them. Such children they were. Yet this troubled him. His kin had written of these beasts so he must credit them as real … but where did they live? How did they arrive? Was it too soon after the splitting of Ruel moon for a new species to have evolved? The torture of not knowing these facts clearly and absolutely kept him from his rest. More than anything else, it was thoughts of dragons that drew him to contemplate another visit to the surface.
CHAPTER TEN
To Fear is to Know
The flicker of lamplight added to Salinda’s confusion on waking. Disoriented, she had trouble recollecting her last moments of consciousness. The air was cool and dank. Inhaling deeply, she caught the pungent scent of smoke on her skin and clothes. Another breath and she could taste it in the air. No, that terrible thing had already happened. The vineyard had burned to the ground and she was now at the mercy of the Inspector. Lying on the dirt floor, she felt her bindings, hands clasped together in front, feet roughly and securely roped.
Overhead, timbers held up a packed-earth roof. A few faint shards of light sprinkled the ground to her left, originating from a trapdoor—her way out, if only she could free herself. In the shadows she could see barrels—wine barrels in rows stacked five high, hundreds of them, maybe a thousand.
Her tongue eased along the edge of her mouth, feeling a jagged flap of skin where her teeth had cut her when she was hit. A stiff neck assured her she’d been out for hours.
“Awake now, my treasure?” the Inspector asked suddenly as he stepped from the shadows. Salinda’s heart leaped but she stayed silent.
“You do not ask me why I brought you here. Scrawny, worthless whore that you are. Why I didn’t kill you outright or give you to Ange?”
Her gaze riveted to his. She couldn’t help reacting to that threat. He smiled when he saw her fear.
She pushed herself up by her bound hands. “Why?” she asked, her voice harsh from smoke and thirst.
A grin distorted the Inspector’s face again. “Why do you think?”
Salinda closed her eyes to help gather her thoughts and swallowed once. “The vineyard? You need me to help repair it—replant it.” Was that a trace of hope in her voice?
His twisted expression was half-shadowed. “I have no need of your horticultural skills.” He watched her, tracked his gaze down her body. “The vineyard is no more. I can’t say that I’m sorry.”
He took a step and crouched down so that his face was close to hers. “When I saw you summon the dragon to aid Brill’s escape, I had a revelation.” His voice lowered, became seductive. “I did wonder how you snuck Danton out of here. What an interesting ability you have.”
Salinda tried to calm her heartbeat. The look on the Inspector’s face curdled her stomach. All along he�
��d known, and he’d played her. “Inspector? I … I … didn’t—”
He stood up. “Oh—but that’s obvious, Salinda, or should I say Baroness … or is it rebel leader?”
With a wave of fear surging through her, Mez’s gift shrank away from her. She tried to rally herself, to think. Perhaps he was bluffing. Maybe someone had told him. Proof. Where was the proof? Surely he would have acted to stop Brill escaping if he’d seen it with his own eyes. “I serve the vines,” she said.
The Inspector tut-tutted, placed his riding crop on her shoulder and lowered himself to be near her again, so close she could see the pores in his skin. “What fun my lusty guards will have when I tell them you are not a poxy whore, but a rebel baroness. I’m sure their eagerness will be enough for you. Or would you prefer their anger at being so easily deceived? Of course, anyone with brains would have figured it out for themselves. Let me see,” he said, and tapped a finger against his front tooth. “I’ve been here just on five years and you’re not dead from the pox. By all accounts you should have died within a year of arriving—long before I was posted here. Who would have thought that the then fifteen-year-old girl would outsmart everyone? … Except me, of course.”
Heat radiated from Salinda’s face. The Inspector nestled his cheek against hers. His unshaven skin felt coarse, and his breath on her skin made her stomach wrench. “Mmm …” he said. “No sign of a rash.” He stepped behind her. “Perhaps I need more light to see you by. Wait a moment … the light is shifting.”
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