“Which way? Where is he?” She pounded a fist on her leg, sending a puff of cement powder into the air.
She thought she knew these white and winding passageways. After all, she’d designed the building. Long banks of windows showed the glorious city, meant to provide hope to those who were sick. The curving walls and frosted skylights were meant to emulate clouds. The meandering paths were to seem gardens in the sky. Merely walking and breathing in this infirmary should have restored health. All of it, though, in this dire moment, had become a maddening maze.
Recognizing one of the healers, Rebbec rushed down the hall toward her.
“Do you know where he is? Where Glacian is?”
“Glacian?” the woman asked placidly within her white robes.
“Yes, Glacian! The genius of Halcyon,” Rebbec insisted, clinging to the woman. “Do you know where he is?”
A light of recognition entered the healer’s eyes. “Oh, the man stabbed during the mana rig riot—? Yes? He is just ahead, in the room on the right.”
Normally Rebbec would have thanked her, but she was too intent on the doorway.
Beyond, Glacian lay on a marble table. His arms and legs were splayed out over its edges. Each limb was held down by a huddling healer. Three more worked above. Their white robes were painted in blood, their sure fingers trembling with uncertainty.
“What is it?” Rebbec asked anxiously. “What’s happening?”
One of the healers—an elderly man with eyebrows as broad and white as feathers, looked distressedly into Rebbec’s eyes.
“Our healing magic. It isn’t working with him. It only seemed to make him worse. It only seems to heat up the crystal.”
Then Rebbec saw it, a stone the size of a man’s heart rammed into a gory wound in Glacian’s belly.
“The powerstone must be interfering with the magic. You’ve got to pull it out,” she insisted.
The healer’s eyes grew wider, still. “Our faith teaches that the hand of magic is to remove any foreign object, lest fumbling fingers further injure the—”
Before any healer could stop her, Rebbec reached in and drew forth the sanguine stone. It was a briolette-cut gem. Glacian’s blood ran down its edges. Rebbec stared for a moment at the horrific thing and then thrust it at one of the healers.
“Take it. Until the stone is gone, the healing magic will not work.”
A young man received the stone with a wordless nod and conveyed it quickly from the room.
Rebbec stroked the sweat-speckled face of her husband. “It’s out, Glacian. The stone is out.”
The man’s convulsions had ceased. He lay now like a wrenched rag on the bloody table.
“There’s more…” he rasped, “…where that came from. A good…hundred for your…temple.”
“Temple be damned,” Rebbec said. “It’s you I’m worried about. Let the healers do their work. Let them close the wound.”
Glacian smiled, a rare sight. “This one…feels deep. Feels like…it might never close.”
Before Rebbec could answer, a great roar shook the infirmary. There came a rending sound and shrieks—a powerstone implosion.
A healer came from the hall. “Come quick! Half the building is gone! Half the building is gone!”
Rebbec stared in dumb amazement.
“The stone,” Glacian gasped out, “it must…have been…imperfect.”
“How could that be?” Rebbec wondered, dread veiling her face.
Glacian bleakly gasped, “What perfect stone…could have stabbed me?”
Yawgmoth stepped off Pilgrim Way and stood on a rocky overlook.
The desert was a vast, dun-colored disk far below. It did not seem so much a place but a nonplace. From this height, scrub brush and stunted trees seemed only lichens clutching an infertile stone. Footpaths and game trails formed a fragile net across the ground. A single long highway cut through the desert, linking the other eight Thran city-states to their capital, Halcyon.
Yawgmoth had walked every step along that highway. The Elder Council had revoked his banishment, had summoned him from the ends of the world, had demanded that he leave his exiled comrades and report to the capital of the empire, but they had apparently felt no need to provide transportation. While he walked Pilgrim Way, hundreds of skyships had passed overhead. Cargoes of grain and ale were apparently more precious than Yawgmoth.
He didn’t mind. Yawgmoth was young—only thirty-five—well muscled and taller than most other Thran. His tanned skin withstood even the blazing desert sun, and thick black hair formed a natural visor over his eyes. Dirty and tattered travel robes hid a body tuned to hard labor and deprivation. He didn’t mind the deadly journey or the council’s insulting disregard. He was used to both.
Before receiving his summons, Yawgmoth and all practitioners of “medical healing” had been officially banished from the empire. Their exile concluded a civil war that had begun a hundred years ago. It had been a war of city-state sovereignty. When Halcyon solidified its position as the capital of the empire, the war became politicized as a battle between “artificers” and “eugenicists.” Artificers believed in improving the Thran by building them bigger and better machines. Eugenicists believed in improving the Thran by dissecting and understanding the machines of biology. Both wanted to improve the Thran. There was no conflict between real artificers and real eugenicists. Each faction, though, was championed by a political party—the artificers by the elite imperialists and the eugenicists by the republican rabble. When at last the rabble were defeated, their eugenicist champions were scapegoated and exiled.
Yawgmoth and his two hundred followers had wandered for five years among lizard men and minotaurs, goblins and orcs, studying the diseases that plagued them. The only other Thran the eugenicists ever saw were outcasts—lepers and lunatics. It was no matter. Lepers and lunatics aided Yawgmoth’s research of pathogens and contagions. Though the Elder Council had thought banishment would punish the eugenicists for their “unorthodox approach to healing,” it only provided a crucible in which to perfect their art.
Disease and dysfunction were not caused by “evil spirits” or “blocked mana pathways” or “lunar cycles.” They were caused by tiny creatures that invaded a body much like an army might invade a nation. They were caused by malfunction of physical processes. The human body was no more than a complex mechanism, a machine like a mana rig. The Thran needn’t rely on healers and their attendant monkery. A rigorous study of living organisms, proper function, common dysfunction, and disease species could render a completely material and mundane program for healing.
Now the Elder Council was in need of Yawgmoth’s new science. The great artificer Glacian was rotting like a common leper. Magic only made him worse. He had languished for a year in this pathetic state. At last, the outcast had been summoned.
A smile spread across Yawgmoth’s lips. His own people finally realized they needed him. Now that they realized it, Yawgmoth would never let them forget it.
Below lay the desert. Above hovered beautiful, fabled Halcyon. Pilgrim Way connected the two, twisting its way up the sheer face of the volcanic extrusion. It was a steep and treacherous passage. Always, the road from hell to heaven would be so. Now Yawgmoth stood only a few dozen paces from the gates of that heaven.
A white marble gateway towered above the narrow road. It was twice as wide and thrice as tall as any creature that could have made the journey to the top. Niches within the columns held ornately carved figures. To one side stood a nude and muscled man and to the other a nude and muscled woman. They were the Thran’s image of perfect beauty, their limbs massive and yet posed with a supple ease across their hairless frames.
Yawgmoth laughed darkly to himself. He had seen human bodies inside and out, exploring every inch. Even healthy bodies never resembled these perfect figures.
“Of course they rejected my the
ories. They don’t even know what their own bodies look like.”
Between the figures, gigantic gates of iron stood wide open. Powerstones winked in the stout bars—jewels enchanted to repel rams and slay attackers. Through the gates fanned a white marble threshold, fronted by a clear stream. Architectural symbolism. When folk entered the city, the dust of the world below was washed from their feet. When folk left, their first steps beyond made dirt cake on their shoes.
As he approached Yawgmoth stared in amazement at the artificial stream. “What sort of people divert a river across their gate?”
“We do,” came a woman’s quiet voice from the other side of the stream. “Welcome to Halcyon, Master Yawgmoth.”
He lifted his eyes to see a young woman wearing the white robes of a council member. The ceremonial garb fit her poorly. Her hands fretted impatiently within the bulky sleeves, and the stole around her neck was uneven. Her tanned skin and sun-bleached hair showed she was used to working outside, and her pale eyes were keen and impatient above the fussy robes. Even now, her gaze dipped toward the garment, and she smiled in apology.
“Forgive my appearance. I came right from the infirmary. I had expected you would arrive there by way of the aerial transport I dispatched to Phoenon—”
Yawgmoth waved her off. “After piecing together water passage from Jamuraa and walking all the way to Phoenon, I wasn’t about to accept charity.”
Beneath her tan, the woman blushed prettily. “Yes. My apologies for that as well. I had a battle even to get your banishment revoked. The council forbade me to send an escort.”
A glinting smile filled Yawgmoth’s face. It was a dazzling smile, and he knew it.
“So, you are the one who fought to bring me back?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “I am the one. My name is Rebbec.”
“Ah, the Rebbec. Architect of empyrean spaces!” Yawgmoth said, impressed.
The flattering blush returned. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Even among outcasts and lepers, you are known, yes,” Yawgmoth said. He looked down at the clear, cool stream that separated them. Rebbec stood on white marble, and Yawgmoth on dust. “But we haven’t heard of this—”
“It is a ritual ablution,” Rebbec said, again smiling an apology. “It is meant to remind us we are rising from the dust of the past into the clean skies.”
“What sort of people—?”
“It’s my own design,” Rebbec broke in, “and I carved the Father and Mother Thran there beside the gates and designed much of what lies within—just so you know.”
Yawgmoth patted dust from his canvas backpack. “No little trickle will be enough to wash the world from me. I’ve got it under my fingernails and ground into my skin. Even my blood is one part mud.”
She stooped beside the stream and gestured him forward. “Come here. I couldn’t get you an aerial escort, but at least I can wash the feet that brought you here.”
Staring intently at the bowed figure, Yawgmoth said, “Perhaps Halcyon welcomes me, after all.” He stepped into the stream.
Chill water snaked past laces and leather into the ragged stockings he wore. Mud streamed away in brown clouds. Rebbec’s fingers deftly worked the laces loose. She tugged one boot off and then the stocking. Her touch was firm but gentle as she laved away the dirt of the road. She massaged calluses and soothed aching muscles, then she eased the other boot loose.
Yawgmoth stood while she worked. His eyes traced the gate. “Do you do the gem cutting as well?”
“That is the work of my husband,” Rebbec replied. “The one who lies ill. The one you have been summoned to heal.”
Yawgmoth pulled his foot from her hands. “Your husband?” He picked up his dripping boots and stockings and stepped from the stream onto the white marble threshold. His wet feet slipped.
Rebbec caught him. She was strong and surefooted. She laughed. “That was an oversight of my design. Wet marble is slick.”
The laugh was contagious. “I see the symbolism. An outsider such as I can enter the city only with the aid of a citizen—”
“Else he might fall on his ass, yes. Splendid symbolism,” Rebbec said wryly. “Here, lean on me until we reach the sedan chair.”
“I have no other choice.”
“You could fall on your ass.”
“Not in such lovely company.”
Yawgmoth leaned upon Rebbec as the two made their way beneath the shadow of the arch. Ice-colored stone formed a short tunnel. There was a gentle curve built into archway so that no one could glimpse the city before crossing the threshold, and none in the city could glimpse the outer world without leaving. The slowly rising path reminded entrants they must ascend, and to ascend is work. Beyond the curve, Yawgmoth caught his first glimpse of lofty Halcyon.
The city was splendid. Its sparkling districts rose through eight terraces toward the highest point, the western plateau. Streets of white brick mazed among three- and four-story townhouses in limestone. Roofs of blue tile topped the smaller and more conventional buildings. On the highest terrace towered minarets with onion domes, flying archways and slender buttresses. A great stadium stood there, and beside it the amphitheater, Council Hall, and high court. Libraries, archives, noble palaces, temples…the city crowded the eight terraces to the sheer edge of the extrusion. A wide white wall surrounded it all. Archways in the wall led to five aerial ports, where merchant caravels hovered.
“A beautiful city,” Yawgmoth said. “A vision out of a dream.”
“That building there, with the stacked white terraces and the ivy-covered apse, that is the infirmary. That is where we are headed.”
Yawgmoth nodded. “I was about to observe that it seemed a pile of dishes ready to be washed—but, of course, this was one of your designs?”
She cocked her head. “You catch on quickly.” She gestured at a nearby sedan chair. It was a low-slung seat encased in a fanciful framework of slender white bars. “This is our ride.”
“This?” Yawgmoth asked, gesturing to the delicate contraption. “I’m used to riding in wagons filled with manure.”
Rebbec already was climbing in. Her bulky robes hung up on the sedan chair’s frame, and she irritably tugged it free.
“Stick with me, Yawgmoth, and the city is yours.”
“It sounds as though I will.” He settled into the seat beside her. It was covered in needlework of blue and black, and the dust of Yawgmoth’s robes sloughed off on the fine fabric. He gently eased his pack into a small hold behind the seat. “I brought all my rather meager supplies.”
“Oh, the infirmary has every possible supply,” Rebbec said, checking the skies overhead. “The healers are well stocked. I’m sure they have everything you could need.”
“Knives, bone saws, curved needles, tissue clamps, leeches, shunts, opiates, soporifics, spirits…?”
A grim look came over Rebbec’s face. “I’m glad you brought your supplies. I forgot how—revolutionary your treatments are.” She cupped her hand beneath a powerstone in a raised setting of silver. Her fingers gently contacted the stone, and she pulled upward. Though the stone did not lift, the craft did. It glided smoothly and soundlessly up into the air. The vast gate fell away. Blue-tile rooftops replaced white-brick streets.
Yawgmoth stared, intrigued. “Speaking of revolutionary.”
“Imagine that this gem is the sedan chair. By pressing the base of it, I lift the craft and us into the air. To turn, I merely press on one side or the other. To lift the bow or stern, I apply pressure there.”
“And what if you let go?” Yawgmoth asked, pulling her hand away. The jewel remained where it had been, suspended on its mounting, and the craft remained in place, as well.
Rebbec smiled. “It is my husband’s design. You cannot fall from the sky. A chair could hang safely forever.”
“Unless the powerstones fail
ed,” Yawgmoth said as the craft nosed out above retreating rooftops.
“Powerstones don’t fail,” Rebbec said.
“They do fail,” Yawgmoth said. “They will fail.”
The white streets of the city jagged by below. “Once charged, they’re harder than diamonds, than adamantite. They are geometrically perfect, and unless geometry changes, they will not fail.”
Yawgmoth pointed toward the edge of the infirmary, where workers clambered among scaffolds and cement forms.
“What happened to that wing of your infirmary?”
Rebbec stared sharply at the man, but the craft never faltered. “You heard of the accident, then? Talk on the road?”
“I had time to sort among traveler’s stories…determine what emergency brought me,” Yawgmoth replied simply.
“That was an anomaly. That stone had not yet cooled when it was…when the Untouchable drove it…I think blood compromised its matrix.”
“I heard there was blood on many of the gems. Did you dispose of them?”
“Here we are,” Rebbec said, bringing the sedan chair to land lightly atop the infirmary. Several other craft perched on birchen platforms that jutted from the tile rooftop. A set of stairs led down from the spot. Rebbec released the powerstone, climbed from the craft, and descended the stairs.
Yawgmoth grabbed his pack and followed. “You did use them, didn’t you?”
A doorway opened below and Rebbec walked through it. “We cleaned and checked every stone before employing it. None showed any sign of flaw or weakness.”
“The truth is, you don’t know what caused the implosion.” He strode beside her down a gently lit corridor. “You don’t really know how powerstones work. You’ve created a whole city that relies on an energy source you do not understand. ‘Magic!’ you say. ‘It’s magic!’ Oh, how clever. And then when the magic fails, you say simply say, ‘It must have been more magic!’ Look at this infirmary! It is a monument to superstition and quackery. You’ve placed your hopes in fakes and phonies. It’s no wonder your genius husband is dying of a wasting disease.” He had said this last as they strode through a doorway into a room where sat a gray-haired man.
The Thran Page 3