She kept walking. The horizon was changing for the first time in eight days. There was something that rose up, making an irregular series of peaks with jagged edges.
I’m heading due west, so it can’t be a mountain range. Besides, it doesn’t span the whole horizon, just a section directly in line with this road.
She resumed her routine. Two more days passed as the topography of the area ahead continued to change. She knew she was approaching her destination, as she was finding more of those enclosed carriages. Most had fallen apart as whatever held them together had deteriorated over the years, but the metal bodies were preserved and sandblasted almost to a mirror shine.
She spent most of her time trying to think of what to do when she got to the city. She hoped her team would be able to find her there. If not, she’d have to turn north and hope to find them or make it to the mountains.
The morning of the third day after seeing Lebuin and Illa in the vision, she woke and began hunting bugs before she realized what was before her. She was on a small rise that sloped down into a valley. The southern portion of the valley was open to a canyon. Not a simple one, but a large one that spread out to the south of the road. She could not make out the far side of it, but only a few miles away, in the center of the valley, were the walls of a great city. They looked brand new, yet the city beyond was ruins. The alabaster walls that drew her attention looked like the cream white walls of Llino.
The city was built on the edge of a cliff, with a drop-off to a ledge some hundred feet down that gave way to another cliff into the canyon proper. Many cream white pillars rose up from the ledge, to small walkways that jutted out of the city like raised trellises.
Piers! Those are piers! This isn’t a canyon. It used to be the inland sea that connected to rivers with a commercial waterway to the west that connected to the oceans. I’ve made it! I’ve found Imridu-Nam!
She decided to risk not having enough fluids by the end of the day in favor of having a bit more of her wits with her as she entered the city. She drank all the water collected in her canteen overnight and sucked on the dew-soaked rocks from the trap. She spent an extra mark hunting down the grasshoppers she’d subsisted on. They were larger than normal, but not hard to catch.
With her belly not full, but fed, and after drinking all the water she could find, she felt a lot more alert. She then followed the road to the city, which took most of the day.
The city was larger than she’d thought and as a result much farther away. Still, by late afternoon, she stood in the shadow of the gateway. She looked at the six-foot-wide steel plate in the road that was the gate. She knew it was the top of a solid chunk of metal designed to rise up in the slots of the walls, making a perfectly impenetrable barrier. She also knew she could control it.
“Imridu-Nam, close the east gate,” she said.
Nothing happened. Smiling, she shrugged.
I don’t want to cuss it closed. Might be dangerous, as I don’t know how to open it again.
She turned back to the city. It was at least four times larger than Llino. The main street led to her right and appeared to loop inward. There were narrow alleys that might connect to another street. She didn’t see any side streets. Almost all the buildings were crushed or crumbling. She had no desire to climb into one, for fear it might collapse onto her.
The three tiered city stood at least four hundred feet from the base to the top. The top tier held only a leaning mountain of rubble, which she was sure had once been the palace.
If that was the blue marble palace, I can’t tell from here.
The streets and winding roads provided a lot of shade, and it was noticeably cooler there. She followed the main road as it led past a market and to the docks.
She saw signs of a once-thriving city everywhere she looked. Pottery, steel hoops, window shutters. As she peered into windows, she even found some places with dishes still on the tables.
Reaching the docks, she stepped out onto the stone piers to look at the canyon that used to be a sea. A flash on the ridge below caught her attention. Testing each step, she moved out to the end of the pier and looked down. She saw two shiny silver crabs moving slowly. One appeared to be pushing something that shoved a lot of sand before it. As she watched, it pushed the sand over the edge of the ridge, into the canyon, and then it lifted the steel tool and started back towards the city.
The other crab was walking around the pillars of the pier, tapping them with one claw. Occasionally, it would stop and pull something from its mouth and put it on one of the columns. Then it went back to tapping them.
As she watched her foot shifted and a few pebbles fell. She watched them curiously as they fell. They bounced off the shell of the crab creature below her pier. It stopped what it was doing to back up and tilt upwards. After a minute it went back to whatever it was doing.
Strange things to be sure.
Turning around, Ticca saw a man standing only two feet away from her. She squeaked and pulled her dagger. It took every bit of her willpower to not jump backwards as that would send her falling hundreds of feet, off the end of the pier.
The man gazed at her calmly. He looked like he had in her vision. Not a single thing was different. He was shorter than her, standing only five feet tall. He was wearing a white lab coat, with stuffed pockets, over a blue three-piece suit, pin-striped with light grey threads. His hair was the definition of salt and pepper, cut semi-short, and it looked like it had never met a comb or brush.
“Brandon?”
“Your Highness.” He bowed and stayed that way.
After a moment, he glanced up at her, raising an eyebrow.
Ticca felt her face burning. Oh, that’s right. I have to acknowledge him first. “Sorry, yes. Um, please just stand up. You can’t know how happy I am to meet you. Seriously, I need help! Is anyone else here?”
Brandon straightened and looked her over critically. “You’re nearly dead. Please follow me. We can talk in a more comfortable location. This heat must be horrible.”
He motioned, and she started walking. He led her through open alleys, towards the center of the city.
“To answer your question... No, Your Highness. I’m the only survivor. I have managed to adapt some of the maintenance units to the new conditions. But there are unpredictable magical surges that have destroyed or mutated the genome of your servants.”
The road continued upwards, and Brandon was setting a fast pace. She knew she needed to conserve energy in the desert, and what little water she had in her body was starting to sweat out. She held up her hand.
“I’m sorry. I’m too tired. I can’t go this fast.”
Brandon stopped and looked at her, frowning. “Of course, Your Highness. I don’t have the means to bring you any refreshments here. But it’s only another fifteen minutes’ walk from here. There’s AC, food, water, bathrooms, and showers.”
“What’s AC?”
“You don’t...? The air is cooled and moisturized for your comfort.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
At the promise of food and water, she was tempted to push, but she knew if she went too fast, heat stroke could knock her out in seconds. “If I pass out, you’ll have to carry me.” She started walking again at the original pace.
Brandon moved in front of her, holding up his hands for her to stop.
“Your Highness, you know I can’t do that. It would take marks for one of the crabs to get here. You’d be dead by then.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “Bad back? I don’t understand. Do you mean you’d actually try to bring one of those things I saw down there to me? Wouldn’t it eat me?”
Brandon’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t know.” It was a statement. “I thought perhaps the entire continent was destroyed. Maybe I wasn’t too far off. Are none of the other AI
s still alive?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Look, I might drop any minute without food and water. Can you go get me some water?”
Brandon shook his head. “Pardon me, Your Highness, but may I have your hand?” he asked, holding out his hand to her.
She didn’t see anything wrong with it, so she reached out to put her hand in his, but it went right through. Nothing was there. As hot as it was, she felt suddenly chilled, and the hair on her arms and the nape of her neck stood on end. She back-stepped away from him. “What are you? Are you a ghost?”
She drew her dagger, but then she thought that was stupid, since a knife couldn’t hurt a ghost. Still, it made her feel better. She started looking for other apparitions or creatures.
Brandon started to laugh, but he caught himself. He moved back away from her, giving her even more space. She appreciated the gesture.
“No, I’m not a ghost. I’m real. But I’m not human. It will take some explaining.” He put his hands together. “Please, Your Highness, believe me. I am your servant, and I will do everything I can to protect and help you. But I’m not what I once was, either.” Glancing around at the city, he said, “I can’t even fix my home. In fact, I’m not really here, either. I’m using the nanobots in your system to project myself into your consciousness.”
“You’re using the what in my system? You mean my body?”
“Well, yes. In your body are small machines that help keep you alive, prevent you from getting sick, and many other tasks.”
“Like making me hallucinate?”
“Uh...yes. But in a good way. You have very few left now. They’ve done a lot to keep you alive.”
He seemed sincere. And she did see him in the vision, and there, he was a longtime friend. She spun her dagger, sheathing it.
“Okay, this must be one of the things Duke didn’t want to teach me. Let’s keep walking, and you can explain what you are.”
“Duke? Well, naturally, he’s still alive. Why didn’t he train you? He used to love training the emperor’s children.”
“Things have changed.”
“They always do.”
“Can you tell me what happened here?”
Brandon looked down with a frown on his face as he walked next to her. “No, I really don’t know exactly what happened. In an instant, my city was gone. I was nearly killed, too. I have protections. They were almost not fast enough. I was heavily damaged. I’ve been working to repair myself for five thousand years now. No one else has come. You’re the first new person I’ve seen in all that time.”
“Well, you look fine for a ghost.”
“I’m not a ghost. I’m a.... Well, I’m not sure how to explain it to you.”
Ticca was busy concentrating on walking, so she didn’t answer as Brandon contemplated his lack of ghostliness.
“Why...?” he began. She jumped at the sudden sound. They’d been walking in silence for a while, and she’d drifted off to a mild doze, following Brandon automatically. She wasn’t even sure how many streets they’d walked through or the path.
Great. Now, I’m lost. If this ghost is dangerous, I’m in it up to my neck.
She looked at Brandon, who had stopped when his voice startled her. As she was blinking slowly, he decided she’d recovered. “Why don’t you tell me about your world, yourself, and your life? That would give me an understanding of how to explain things to you.”
She’d never heard of a ghost wanting a story, so she decided it was probably safe. She started telling him about her life. She named her father and uncle, told of how her uncle was a famous Dagger from the war, and how her father had tried to make her a farmer like her mother and himself. She told about how much training she had from her uncle after her father’s death. She talked about the cycles working as a Dagger in Llino. She then spoke of Lebuin, but kept most of the details back. In the end, she explained how all the nations were in a war with the Nhia-Samri.
Brandon was a good listener. He made affirmative sounds at just the right time and prompted her for details, showing her he was paying attention. He asked simple questions and never complained when she kept some things vague.
The sun was set, and the moons were out when they came to a stone bridge over a dark ravine. She recognized the bridge.
“The blue palace!”
Brandon smiled. “Yes. It was the traditional vacation home of the Duianna Emperors and their guests.”
She glanced around, but she wasn’t sure where they were. “Are we still in the city?”
“We’re in the far southern quarter. This section was mostly large estates nestled into a twenty-square-kilometer wooded park.”
She walked across the bridge and gazed at the palace as she approached it. In the moonlight, it glistened like new.
“Why does it look like my visions? Shouldn’t it be in ruins?”
“It was protected by its own independent shields, much older than the ones for the city. Also, most of the power from the main blasts was blocked by large structures farther in.” Brandon turned back towards the direction from which they’d come. “My friends are buried in those ruins. This was mostly empty at the time. The few servants that survived died within a few years of some kind of blood poisoning.”
“Blood poisoning?”
“Yes. There was so much power in the area, it changed healthy blood into bad blood. The real medical equipment was lost. I couldn’t stop it.”
Ticca noticed Brandon was looking at her with sadness around his eyes. “Am I going to die of this poisoning?”
Brandon didn’t answer. Instead, he motioned for her to continue towards the blue palace and started walking again.
Maru-Ashua
Warlord Maru-Ashua ignored most of the people he encountered as he moved through the great halls of the fortress. His path took him to the stairs leading down deep into the mountain. He recalled the stories that Hisuru Amajoo had as much space beneath the mountain as it had above. He’d recently decided the stories were wrong. Hisuru Amajoo extended farther under the mountain than even the most grandiose tale dared to claim.
He’d spent marks jogging through tunnels, finding hundreds of mammoth chambers. There were open areas that could hold entire towns, complete with stone streets, buildings, and crystals that provided light like the daytime sun. He’d found vast storerooms with acres below vaulted ceilings, filled and used regularly by the staff and armies, while others had been stocked with seeds, farm equipment, and basic supplies and left alone for years, or perhaps centuries.
He moved down the spiral stone stairs, worn smooth by the thousands of feet that had used them over the years. Moving through doors large enough for covered wagons to pass through, and then descending farther, he came to the chamber he sought.
The stairs ended in a huge archway that opened to the stone room. Thirty guards had their weapons out and ready to fight as he stepped in. He stood tall, looking at the ten warriors directly in front of him. The other twenty were on the far side of the thirty-foot-long room in front of the massive iron doors, securely locked with a heavy iron chain inlaid with silver and gold.
“The moons shall guide.”
The lead warrior in the group closest to him answered. “Tis a cloudy night.”
Maru-Ashua drew one of his odassi, holding it so the bands showed to the lead warrior.
He willed his odassi to show its power. “Clouds cannot block my sight.”
The warriors didn’t move, and their blades remained ready. The lead warrior cautiously crossed swords with Maru-Ashua in salute. The other blade glowed momentarily after coming in contact with his ancient odassi.
As one, the other warriors straightened, sheathed their odassi, and bowed.
He motioned with his hands for them to step aside. They formed ranks on both
sides of the chamber. He walked over and tapped the chains with his odassi, willing the locks to be released. The filigreed inlays glowed, and the hinges creaked as the chains loosened.
“Open the doors,” he ordered, sheathing his odassi.
Four warriors from each side rushed to pull the heavy chains apart, hanging them on the side hooks that were there for that purpose. Once they were stored, the warriors pulled the releases and strained against the weight of the doors, which opened without so much as a squeak.
“Close them behind me.”
He stepped inside and examined the room in detail, while he waited for the sound of the latches being locked.
Lady Lothia was sitting at a desk. Her back had been to him, but she shifted on the chair and stood, turning to face him. He was pleased to see she looked strong and healthy, at last. On the desk was a pile of papers with neat patterns in vertical rows. Two small brushes were in a cup of water, and a bowl of ink was visible.
Fully restored, Lothia was a striking creature. He reminded himself she was not human, nor did she look anything like one in her natural form. The prison collar prevented her from taking a different shape or form, so she was locked into the shell of a woman as much as that body was locked inside the chamber. He knew that the collar, as well as many special shields built into the chamber, prevented her from speaking spiritually with others of her kind.
I’m sure the immortals know where to look for her. I’m surprised they haven’t made an attempt for her yet.
“First Warlord Maru-Ashua. It has been some time since your last visit.”
He kept control of his body. Pulling energy from his odassi, he sped his reactions up, so he could be sure to stay ahead of her in the conversation. He knew that since she was recovered, collar or no, she was incalculably intelligent, experienced, and knew every minor nuance of human reactions. Even in that form, he was sure she would be able to hear and smell better than any wolf and see sharper than any hawk.
Thread Skein (Golden Threads Trilogy Book 3) Page 41