Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes

by Raphael Ordoñez

  Seila squeezed my hand. “Keftu,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “What happened to you after…I last saw you?”

  “Do you not know?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “A trap was laid for me. I was almost infested.”

  “Keftu, I knew nothing. Please believe me.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “And yet I find you here with the Misfit.”

  “I went back to him. Oh, of course I did! Surely you can understand that! Did I ask you to rescue me?”

  “No,” I said. “What you said to me at the time was wise and just. And I think I know why you returned to captivity.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you wanted to find the one we spoke of. The Artificer. The Adept.”

  “Well,” she whispered, “what if I did?”

  “Surely you realize they sought his capitulation.”

  “He’s too intelligent for that. Their designs are tools in his hands.”

  “Do you love him still?” I asked.

  “I’m with you right now.” She squeezed my hand again.

  “I was your price,” I said quietly. “Wasn’t I? My safety, I mean.”

  “Baby, baby,” she said. “I did what I had to. You just couldn’t take care of yourself! But the bargain wasn’t honored, it seems.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” I said.

  She looked at me, then looked away. “The Misfit has fallen,” she said. “It seems that you, the Adept, and the Vicar alone in all the world can act with perfect freedom.”

  “If that’s true,” I said, “it’s because we’re so bound by restrictions.”

  A pool lay across our path now. I led the way along it and through an abandoned encampment of the blind pygmies. Together we climbed the side of a buttress and entered the crack that led to the tall chambers.

  Seila cast her gaze up into the darkness, eyeing the brown casings and secretions that covered the walls like blasphemous bas relief. “Let’s walk faster,” she whispered.

  We hurried through the network and up to the ancient lane.

  58 The Harrowing

  The smell of gas grew stronger as we approached Sabhenna. The square light at the tunnel’s mouth was dimmer than I remembered. We stepped into the open.

  The gaslights were throbbing brownly. Methane was in the air, but not so strong as to be deadly yet. The floor was crowded with helot women, a moaning sea of flabby flesh. Many were scorched and bruised.

  Someone spotted us and started gibbering. The effect rippled through the roiling mass. I shouted, but my words were drowned out in the hubbub, so I drew my sword and held it aloft. Its light was like a bolt of golden lightning. One by one the women fell silent and waited to see what I would do. They parted as I led Seila up through their midst.

  We climbed to the shelf where the preacher had stood. “What has happened?” I cried. “Where are your men?” The women all started speaking at once. I held up my hand for silence. “You there,” I said, picking out one at the front. “Answer me.”

  “They’ve gone to smash the gas lines and factories and punish the phylites for their sins!”

  “And left you here to die? Who’s leading them?”

  “Vol!” they all screamed. “Vol the wonder-worker!”

  “Vol is a creature of Zilla’s,” whispered Seila. “The riot was timed to coincide with the exodus. I’m certain of it.”

  “You’ll all die here if you wait for their return,” I cried. “You must follow me out.” Then, aside to Seila: “Can you lead me to the marshes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But you don’t know what you’re doing. These maggot-women have never been outside before. It will terrify them.”

  “There’s no help for it. You go ahead. I’ll follow.”

  We stepped down from the platform. The sea of flesh parted for us. Seila walked calmly through the masses, and I followed her with my sword raised high. We crossed the forum and went out between a pair of carved sphinxes at one side.

  The long alley beyond was crowded, hot with flesh and rank with breath. Somehow we squeezed our way through and reached the end of the throng. The women fell in behind us.

  “You keep them in order while I navigate,” whispered Seila. “One wrong turning, and we’ll be at the receiving end of a slow-motion train wreck.”

  Using my sword and my body, I did my best to keep the tide of women from pushing past our guide. It was delicate work. The lights continued to dim. There were explosions and rumors of explosions. Ripples of fear ran over the throngs.

  “Do something,” said Seila. “Keep them calm.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Anything. If they stampede we’ll be smashed to jelly.”

  I began to sing. It was a song my godmother had taught me, about a time before Arras was, when men first found their way into the moss-rich plains from black beginnings. My tenor traveled down the flapping masses.

  When I reached the end I started over. To my surprise they took up the song. It sounded strange on their lips, and the words and meaning began subtly to change into nonsense.

  This went on for what seemed to be miles. At last we were moving along a round tunnel of more recent construction. I recognized the corridor down which I’d followed Maruch and Gehud. A disk of gray light showed far ahead. It grew larger and larger.

  Then Seila and I stepped out into open air. We were on the sloping edge of the foundation, at the place where I’d first entered Hela. The suspension bridge led across the moat to the methane fields. The pipe that had linked the refinery to the foundation lay in pieces in the marsh below. Fire was shooting out of the open valve with a hideous cackling.

  Seila pulled me to the side. “Direct them,” she said. “Think quickly. There are tons of pressure built up in that tunnel.”

  The first women were stepping out. “Come,” I said, gesturing with my sword, pointing to the bridge. They quailed on seeing the sky and tried to turn back. But those behind kept coming, unable to stop. A woman fell down and was stepped on, screaming. I tried to get to her, but the torrent of humanity was too strong.

  “Keep coming!” I roared, kicking and pushing them, slapping them with my sword. “Don’t turn back! Across the bridge and over the causeway!” My voice echoed down the tube, and such was my power over them that they were more afraid of me than of the open, and obeyed.

  The waves kept coming. The tube’s exhalation was thick with methane and fear. Every so often a woman or two would turn back and be trampled, but my voice always prevented a panic. The causeways filled with white flesh. It was like watching termites pour out of a disturbed nest.

  More were emerging than had been in Sabhenna. Women were draining from all over the lower levels. Rumor of their savior had passed up the ranks, and my stature grew with every new face. I was a hero, a wonder-worker, a demigod. The last waves kept trying to kiss my sandals or secure a lock of my hair. I kicked them away in disgust, but their attempts grew more and more violent.

  The last stragglers emerged. The tunnel floor was plastered wall to wall with human remains, trampled flat as a carpet. I turned and looked around the platform. I was surrounded by fat women ravenous for relics.

  “We’d better go now,” Seila said lowly. “They’ll tear you limb from limb.”

  “Climb the stairs,” I said, holding Deinothax before me. “I’ll follow.” Seila started up the first flight, and I went backwards behind her. Cries of rage and disappointment swept over the masses.

  59 Stages of Chaos

  Black towers bled into the soiled green of urban dusk. Silver tube lamps cast their sickly glow over the grated walkway. Phylites slipped silently from one pool of light to the next, eyes white-rimmed with fear, unaware of one another’s existence.

  “You see?” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s happening. Just here, just tonight. But this is how all Enoch will be soon.”

  “What do
you mean?”

  “Every man his own phyle.”

  The first positive sign of the riots was a rail-car burning on the tracks, a black frame filled with flame. Now we began to see marauding bands of helots. It seemed that Vol had successfully channeled their wrath toward the phylites.

  “Seila,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “I have this feeling that I’ve been dropped into a written history, with the power to change it if I will, though it be disaster to do so. I feel almost that I might meet my own self soon, or see myself from a distance, going about some task like a piece of machinery, or a hero in an old lay.”

  “It’s because the doings tonight have been so carefully orchestrated,” she said. “You knew the plan ahead of time, and have been living with the expectation of its coming to pass.”

  “It’s more than that,” I said. “What’s happening tonight is part of the natural development of the Ages of Iron and of Peace. Who am I to interfere? And yet I am interfering. I’ve already changed a great deal. I’m releasing built-up tension, like a healer lancing a boil. Bringing down the chimeras so quickly saved Jairus’ people from being slaughtered. And the Misfit’s defeat bought the phylites enough time to flee the area. Now, even if there is an explosion, it won’t be a fraction as deadly.

  “But that isn’t what was supposed to have happened. Jairus was to have bombed the rift. He’d planned that from the beginning, as suggested or encouraged by Zilla, no doubt. It was his parting gift to the phylites. How he hates the Cheiropt! And yet his will is no more than the Cheiropt’s appendage.

  “And these riots—they were incited by Vol with the purpose of causing the leak in the first place. Most likely everything was already rigged for it. The surviving helots would have butchered the surviving phylites in retribution, with the chimeras spreading terror over the city. That was Zilla’s touch. The chimeras made sure to remove the Misfit’s only reason to save himself while leaving his warships intact. Power was what he wanted, and the only route that remained open to him was self-annihilation.

  “Do you see? Zilla has some kind of influence on how things are construed here. Jairus was to have been represented as having released something he couldn’t control into the city, something that devoured his own people. Zilla wants all Enoch to ponder the wisdom of letting cancers like Jairus’ phyle grow in the city.”

  The lower stories of a nearby tower exploded, its windows vomiting white flame, blowing crumpled helots and phylites into the black trough of the railway. There was a thundering groan, and then it was crashing down like a felled tree, breaking into pieces that smashed against the tower on the far side of the concourse. Seila and I turned our backs to the blast as the shockwave of dust-choked air struck us.

  The ruin blocked our way now, so we turned up a side street. The phylites were left behind. The strip of dying sky was a polluted river over our heads.

  “But what’s the point of all this?” Seila said. “You seem to have fathomed what is happening, but why is it happening?”

  “They aim to send a shudder through the vegetative oversoul of Enoch,” I answered. “The world-city is a chariot drawn by two schyrothim. The schyrothim are cajolery and chaos. Zilla holds the reins. On one hand we have the soothing voice of the Cheiropt and its increasingly ineffective control. Its proclamations of peace and prosperity are like jabs now. On the other hand we have disasters like this one, flowing from tumors coddled by the Cheiropt itself. The chimeras were to have been heralds of chaos. They’re gone now, but there will be others. The people will be whipped into a frenzy of insecurity, because the things they experience don’t match up with the message they hear.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just reject the message?”

  “Because they want to believe it. They want to be slaves. When enough irruptions of chaos have taken place, Zilla will descend openly upon Enoch, and they’ll beg him to rule over them with an iron rod. They’ll beg him to make experience match message. For all his authority, though, he’ll just end up a powerless figurehead. The Cheiropt will guide every moment of every man’s waking life.”

  “What makes you so certain? How can you see what’s happening here tonight and draw such large conclusions?”

  “Enoch is like a bed of scale-tree coals. If Zilla lights small fires here and there, soon the whole thing will be smoldering, slow but very hot. Tonight I’m working to put out one tiny flame. But another will spring up somewhere else soon. Trust me.”

  “It sounds like you have everything worked out, then,” said Seila.

  I glanced at her, but it was too dark to see her face. “There’s only one thing I don’t understand,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Myself. What makes me so central? I was drawn into this from the first.”

  “You explained that before,” she said. “Jairus thought you were a Druin, so your arrival in Granny’s dungeons made him suspect some connection with Vaustus and me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But that was before I’d received the one clue that doesn’t fit in anywhere.”

  “What’s that?”

  “On the night after I first saw you, I received a written note at your room. It was the message that led me into the trap where I was almost infested. And I don’t think Jairus had anything to do with it. He promised you that he’d leave me alone. Whatever his faults, there’s no denying that he has his own brand of honor.”

  “Well, it was sent by Zilla, then, or his agents. He didn’t want you interfering.”

  “Yes, I know that. Assuredly. In fact, he told me so himself. But it was written in Arrasene characters. I mean, how could Zilla—”

  I broke off because helots began pouring down the opposite side of the sunken plaza we were about to enter. They were lighting their way with brands and wielding tools as weapons. Vol was at their head. At first I thought he was leading them, but then I caught the look on his face. He was being driven by the mob.

  “Another change,” I muttered. “Vol was to have gotten away. You had better stay back. Wait for me there.” I pointed to a dark doorway.

  “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

  “I want to see this.”

  I went over to the parapet. Helots continued to pour down the stairs across from my vantage point, pushing the first-comers up the sides of the basin. The wonder-worker was driven by kicks and blows toward a bronze monument at the far end.

  “You there,” I hissed to a helot just below me. “What has that man done?”

  “He convinced us to rise up against the phylites,” the man said. “I was against it myself, but what can one man do? The women were left behind, and it’s just one giant gas chamber down there now. They’ve all been smothered or fallen prey to foul beasts. That maugreth will pay.”

  I tried to tell him about the rescue, but the mob had already reabsorbed his personality. It was too late, anyway. Vol had been stripped naked and pinned like an insect to a board, face down, with nails driven through his hands and his feet. They set him up against the monument and began stoning him. His back and buttocks were soon a welter of blood. Unable to help himself, he kept trying to turn around to face his persecutors, his long teeth flashing in the firelight.

  Then by some ill chance he caught sight of me. “That one!” he shrieked. “He knows me! He is always in my dreams!” Countless heads followed the wizard’s gaze. A thousand pink eyes were riveted on me.

  “Are you his friend?” a voice called out. One or two of the nearest took a step in my direction. I turned and fled up the alley. Hundreds of feet pounded the stairs behind me.

  “What is it?” cried Seila. “What’s happening?”

  “The helots are coming. Run for it.” Together we dashed out into the street and turned up it. When we reached the next intersection a host of helots was pouring from the alley. Someone pointed at us.

  “We’d better separate,” said Seila.

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll be f
ine. It’s you they’re after, and I’ll only slow you down. Lose them and meet me at the room I took you to that night.”

  “So be it,” I said. “Good luck.” We set out in different directions.

  60 Last Stand

  It wasn’t hard to leave the helots behind. I lost myself in a deserted district to the north. The streets were like rivers of ink, for the gibbous moon had just begun to climb above the jagged teeth in the east.

  I was hesitating in the middle of an intersection, wondering if I should begin to work my way toward our rendezvous, when a familiar whine sounded in my ears. A shadow swept down out of the night and struck me a pulpy blow. My armor protected me, but I was thrown to the pavement.

  I got to my knees and drew my sword. It was glowing. I peered down the street, but it was impossible to make out anything in the murk. Just in time I threw myself down again and covered my neck with my hands. A shadow whirred by above me.

  Now I was running, making for a bend in the street where the moonbeams fell along the buildings. The creature wheeled and pursued me. At the last instant I turned and got one glance of a pulpy mass suspended from a lopsided pentangle. I lifted my blade, and the thing shot by me on one side and lost itself in the shadows.

  I sprinted down the street. As I passed an intersection a second chimera came at me from the side. I dodged it, getting in one blow, rolled, and went on.

  Soon I was being dogged by a swarm of them. My heart sank. The pieces I’d left in the pit had regenerated. The chimeras hadn’t been defeated yet at all, and now there were more of them.

  The street ended at the brink of a sudden drop. I was at the foundation’s edge. My refuge lay at the end of the shimmering causeway beyond. The idea occurred to me of drawing the creatures there and putting up some kind of defense, well outside the city. I bounded down to the bridge and dashed across to my island.

  When I reached the base of my tower I began to scale its outer wall, afraid the creatures would lose interest if I used the stairs. I kept having to pause to defend myself against the onslaught. The cloud of spinning pentangles over my head was so thick now that it blotted out the stars.