by A. R. Daun
New Savannah itself had been a revelation. Home to more than 20,000 souls, the city had been restored to much of its former grandeur. Cobblestone streets meandered between elaborate mansions, which displayed a myriad of architectural styles. Some had prominent square or rectangular exteriors with slender curved iron stair railings and Venetian windows, while others sported gabled porticos flanked by Greek Doric columns, their sloping roofs strewn with elaborate heavy cornices and parapets. Arches and domes predominated in others, and even the simplest boasted Palladian or Venetian windows.
And everywhere there had been crowds of people, a veritable congestion of bodies that clogged the streets and alleyways of the city. They strolled singly or in small groups; they dined and chatted on chairs and tables of tiny sidewalk cafes; they haggled noisily in the market district, exchanging Colony-approved scrip for various wares and luxury goods. Here and there packs of children played, their yells and screeches providing a counterpoint to the dull roar of adult conversation that permeated the humid air.
Jaq had taken these all in with wide disbelieving eyes. Pham knew that compared to the laid-back lifestyle in the less populated and scattered Conch Settlements, New Savannah's frenetic milieu must have been an egregious assault on her senses. He had sympathized with her plight, but at the same time had been secretly proud of the accomplishments of his community.
Now the girl continued to silently gape in wonder as Marco returned her gaze, the faint tracings of a smile visible in his regal face. Pham had the strong urge to nudge her into some sort of action, as if they were both still in school and the teacher had suddenly asked her a question that she could not answer. He restrained himself, as he could not blame her for the awestruck silence.
The Lord Marco was an impressive sight. He was all rounded curves and soft flabby edges, a mountain of protuberant flesh burnished to a dull grayish hue. He wore nothing but a dark semi-transparent sarong that wrapped around his thick waist, held in place partly by rolls of belly fat that drooped down like soft lava. The sarong reached to just slightly below his knees and did nothing to hide the bulge of his enormous member, which was fully tumescent. He was completely bald, the enormous dome of his head shining in the dim light, but curly tufts of black down, bristly as the hair on a wild boar, formed a matted tangle across his chest and down the upper part of his abdomen.
“Now on to your tale, Ms. Vega,” Marco said, his voice a mellifluous and deep baritone. “Tell us...how are things in the Settlements? Did Ammara send you, or was it your liege Lady Vega?”
Jaq gulped. “My Lord,” she squeaked in a high breathy voice, then stopped, and continued more firmly.
“My Lord, things have not been going well in the Conch...” She stopped, not sure how to continue.
Marco stopped fondling the girl to his side and rubbed his chin instead, then settled to a more comfortable position on the throne, his bulk causing the chair to groan in protest at the shift in weight.
“Continue child,” he prodded her. “Tell me everything.”
Jaq bit her lip, then looked at Pham plaintively. He nodded to her, willing her to go on.
“My Lord,” she started. “I...I just don't want to say anything against anyone. Especially...”
“Is it something to do with Ammara?” Marco asked gently, then slowly stood up. He walked down the steps towards them, and Pham thought he could feel the ground tremble with each step his Lord took.
Jaq cowered and took a step back, but Marco reached out to her, halting her instinctive flight by placing one massive left hand on her shoulder. He bent down, his gigantic frame dwarfing Jaq.
“Is she in trouble my child?” He said, his rumbling voice almost a whisper, a soothing cadence creeping into his inflection. He placed his right hand on her cheek, caressing it gently, and Jaq arched her back and stared into his eyes as if hypnotized.
“Yes my Lord,” she said, and Pham realized she sounded different now. She spoke in a somnolent and languid monotone, the words dripping out like hot melted butter. Jaq had always been somewhat tomboyish, even when she had been younger, but Pham now found himself responding strongly to the new blatantly erotic timbre of her voice.
“The Lady Ammara has changed. She disappears for days at a time, sometimes for weeks, and when she reappears she'll not tell anyone where she's been. The Lady Vega worries about her constantly ever since Uncle Denzel disappeared.” At this a frown passed over Jaq's face. Pham knew that Jaq was particularly close to the man, as she considered him to be the father she never had, and his heart went out to his friend.
“I miss him terribly too,” she continued, then paused as if reminiscing. Her voice took on a strained note, the languid tone evaporating into the humid New Savannah air.
“Uncle Denzel gave me my bow, and taught me how to use it. It was one of the many things he found during expeditions he organized to the Near West. He told me once that he would take me on one of them...” She trailed off, a wistful expression on her fair features. “I....I guess the Lady Ammara knew about this. My desire to go out there, and how inhibited I felt in the Conch. She approached me one day, several days ago, after one of her disappearances. I was weeding in one of the tomato rows, and suddenly there she was standing above me. I was so surprised I dropped a bag of picked fruit, but when I tried to gather them up she gestured for me to stop and join her.”
Jaq stopped and frowned again, and Pham decided the magic the Lord Marco had used to ensnare her mind must be strong enough to make her relive the moments during the telling, and for some reason this discomfited him.
“She led me beneath the shade of a tall tree, the one called a Black Olive, whose branches spread wide enough to embrace scores of the faithful. It was a hot day, and so I was glad for the shade. She looked at me then, but I could tell she was distracted and all out of sorts.
“What can I do for you, my Lady?” I asked her hesitantly.
“Did you know there were four of us at the beginning, child?” She asked. Although her eyes were on me I could tell they were staring past me and into some personal memory, and I suddenly knew she was talking about the Immortals.
“No I did not know, Lady Ammara,” I replied, and though my voice was firm, I felt strange and unbalanced inside. I knew that she was an Immortal, and someone to be revered and worshiped, but I have known the Lady Ammara my entire life, and she has been like a close Aunt to me. But for the very first time, I truly felt the gulf between her and ordinary people like me.
“Well,” she continued, and her eyes were still gazing far far away. “It's true. We came on a ship, but you probably already know that part of the story.”
“The Odyssey,” I whispered, saying the name of the vessel that had been imprinted in my mind during those long idyllic days when I had to go to classes. We were taught that the survivors of the Rising had come from this vessel, one so huge that whole cities and towns could fit inside its confines, and that she had been lost and overwhelmed during the frantic escape when our people began the journey south.
The Lady Ammara smiled dreamily.
“I'm glad you have not been slacking on your lessons Jaq,” she said. “Yes, the ship was called the Coral Odyssey, and it was huge beyond description, especially for someone like me who had never been on such a vessel before, although you should not believe those who have imbued it with supernatural attributes.”
She chuckled humorlessly, then shook her head and frowned, though her manner was not one of stern disapproval, but rather the indulgent reproach a parent might give to a precocious child.
“It was a great ship, the largest of its kind in the world.” She continued. “But it was made by men, and the passengers and crew it served and ferried were mortals as well. All except for four people who had been touched by someone who was definitely not merely human, but was something else...something...from a place far far away.”
“An angel?” I asked breathlessly. When I was younger I had been infatuated by the idea of heavenly beings
who would watch over and protect me. It was a childish idea that I had finally outgrown, but now, in the presence of the blessed Lady Ammara, the idea did not seem quite so naive.
She chuckled again,but this time with some genuine emotion, and gently stroked my cheek with one hand.
“My dear child,” she said. “Who knows? The notion can't be any more outlandish than the ones I've considered over the decades. But wherever he came from, the one thing I know is that he changed us. There was your adopted mother, Diwi, and of course myself. There was also Marco, who was at the time part of the crew.”
At this her beautiful face contorted in a grimace.
“And one more,” she said after that slight pause. “One more who had Risen to become what you call an Immortal. One more who was also part of the crew, but at a higher rank than even Marco. And she was significantly more powerful than any of us, even then when our powers were still budding. Do you know of whom I speak, child?”
I shook my head. My mouth was dry and I doubt I could have spoken if my life depended on it, or even if the Lady Ammara had commanded it. The tale of the Odyssey and the three Immortals who saved us from the swarming Risen to become the Trinity and found the settlements was one that was well known and considered dogma. But nowhere in the various oral and written sources is there any mention of a fourth Immortal. As I thought this, a shadow passed across the the Lady Ammara beautiful face, and I could sense the grief emanating from her, but whether it was for her missing son and Denzel, or for some other reason I could not tell.
“Her name is Annika,” she said, and her voice took on the reverent and hushed tones of one who is looking across the decades into some fragile memory that could disappear at any time. “The last I saw of her was from near the abandoned building that we used for shelter on that first night. She was just a shadowy figure, standing on an upper deck of the Odyssey, looking down on us. I remember thinking how small she looked in the distance, and how large the ship and how dark the night. And there was someone else, or something else, beside her. A man. Someone who should have been dead but had now been made whole.”
“Annika was that powerful, even then,” she said, and I could detect the awe in her voice. And for the first time her eyes found mine, and I felt like withering under the intensity of her gaze.
“I want my son back,” she said, and her voice was like steel. “I want Denzel back. But there's more to it than selfishness on my part.”
And she told me of her dreams and premonitions in the weeks leading up to the ill-fated expedition led by Denzel into the Deep West. She spoke of vast hell-spawned armies lurking in wait in the desert wastelands, their numbers growing daily and by the hour, fed by gargantuan living factories that spanned the continent. She warned of a Dark Master, whose terrible visage she could only see in shadows, but whose voice was the cold touch of dead and slimy things.
“There is something evil brewing, and it will come to us in time.” The Lady Ammara said. “We need Annika here in the settlements in order to bolster our defenses against this future threat, and that's why I'm speaking to you now.”
“Excuse me?” I blurted out, and blanched when I realized I had left out the honorific. I might as well have pointed finger to chest and gone “Huh?”
The Lady Ammara did not even notice my slight breach in protocol. She reached forward and grasped my shoulders, her brown eyes still glued to mine.
“But she may not want to help us,” she said. “She is still wallowing in that morass of denial that caused her to abandon us in the first place. She cannot face the reality of the now. The necessity of starting new communities and the need to look to the future instead of dwelling forever in the past.”
The Lady Ammara broke her gaze and glanced around deliberately. The fields surrounding us were filled with crops that were ready for harvest: bushy tomato plants, their lush green foliage barely covering the bright red and yellow of large juicy ripened tomatoes; vine-like cucumber plants draped over connecting ropes between long wooden poles, which canted precariously to one side due to the weight of the long elongated fruits; dwarfish pepper plants that were bent almost double with masses of colorful sweet banana, habanero, jalapeno and other varieties of pepper; beans that crawled up their trellises, grasping the mesh with tendrils that twisted and twined between the giant pods hanging down towards the fertile ground.
“I need you to bring her back to us.” She said evenly, and I gasped as if struck. “I dreamed of you as well, child. I had a vision of you on a long journey to the North.”
“But my Lady,” I protested. “There are many others who are older and more skilled, veterans who have gone Deep and who are more experienced than I am. I mean, I've never even been away from the Conch Settlements for more than several days!”
She waved my protestations away.
“That may be true Jaq,” she said. “But someone from the Deep West eyes us. Even from far away this Dark Man keeps track of our settlements with malevolent eyes, and I think it is because of his probings that I can glean some information about him instead. If we mounted any robust expedition he would know something is amiss, and the advantage we have of pretending to be unaware of his presence would disappear. I need someone who is not a Conch Scout...yet.”
She smiled gently, and touched my cheek with one outstretched hand.
“I need you Jaq. Denzel has spoken very highly of you, and told me that you would have been the next recruit to the Scouts on your 21th birthday. You are one of the better swordsmen in the community, and probably the best archer. Your ability to improvise and survive in the Near Wild has impressed even my son.”
I gulped at this, though a tingle of pride and excitement coursed through me. Like many other young girls in the settlement, I had harbored a deep and unrequited crush on the dashing and handsome Immortal, and to learn that he had singled me out for praise to the Lady Ammara momentarily distracted me from my previous anxieties.
I resolved...
Jaq gasped, and Pham saw her eyes flutter, as if she had awakened from some dream. The Lord Marco had turned his back to them and was walking ponderously back to his throne, and when Jaq lurched precariously to one side Pham moved quickly to her, wrapping one arm around Jaq's shoulder to prop her up. She leaned heavily against him, still in a daze, and Pham was suddenly conscious of the soft feel of her skin and the shapely contours of her bosom as it pressed against him.
“Are you ok?” He asked her, and by way of reply she nodded mutely, her head still lowered.
He looked up at the Lord Marco, who had sat down again with an audible grunt. A tremor passed through the girl with the raised buttocks as her liege rested one huge hand on her exposed right thigh. He started stroking it absently as he stared at Jaq with an amused expression. The girl twitched spasmodically in time to the strokes, and Pham had the strong urge to look away.
“My Lord,” Pham began, not sure what to say.
"Speak your mind Pham," Marco commanded, and Pham swallowed hard and tried to arrange his thoughts.
"My Lord," he said again. "What does this all mean? If what Jaq said is true, then this would affect all the settlements."
"Oh, I believe there is something going on out there," Marco commented casually. "I am concerned about Mara's emotional stability after hearing from Jaq, but I have always trusted her intuition, and nothing so far has given me any cause to doubt her now. It's a big world out there Pham. Much bigger than you would think, and it's been silent for so long that sometimes even I forget the enormity of what we lost during the Rising.
"And I'm not one for scientific mumbo-jumbo," he sneered at this involuntarily. "But I am aware of the drastic changes in the environment since that time. Who knows what strange and perhaps dangerous things are brewing out there that could threaten us in time?”
Pham could not say anything to this. He had lived his entire life under the dominion of the Lord Marco, and the belief that Marco was both omnipotent and omniscient, or at least as close t
o them as any other being this side of death, had over the years crept up to become dogma to him.
“Jaq,” Marco said, his voice a low rumble, and Jaq lifted her head slowly and painfully to face him. Her eyes still had an unfocused look to them, and Pham could swear he could hear her neck creaking. He tightened his hold on her.
“Yes My Lord?” Jaq whispered hoarsely.
“You will continue on your journey after you are rested. Pham will assist you in replenishing your supplies before you leave. You will take one harnessed oni to help carry these supplies, and a handler to represent me and assist you in whatever way he can to complete your task.”
He settled back on his chair, his hands continuing to caress the mute girl by his side, and for a moment seemed to have forgotten they were there..
“That is all,” he said, waving dismissively.
“Thank you Lord,” Jaq managed, and Pham started to turn and assist her out of the room, then stopped.
“Yes Pham?” Marco asked.
“Lord,” he began. “Who should be assigned to accompany her?”
The Lord Marco eyed him and smiled.
CHAPTER 40
Day -249 A.R.
San Antonio, Texas
The strange seed pods of Devil's Claws readily cling to the hooves of grazing animals and are carried and dispersed far from their origin.
The creature hid in the darkness. It was confused, its mind whirling with tiny animal thoughts and waves of emotions that lapped against its flanks with ever increasing strength.
The first few hours of its life were driven by the need to find the girl and exact vengeance on her, but as the identity of the subsumed person who had once been the ranch cook was further assimilated, new desires were emerging into its consciousness as if from hidden springs whose waters had suddenly overflowed. Its attention had shifted subtly from the girl to the man who accompanied her, and somewhat surprisingly, new and conflicting emotions had bubbled up that added to its confusion.