by Adam Burch
I time the patterns of Goth’s wanderings. I venture into the depths of the tower to find the hidden compartment and the nightscript reader. Faria didn’t teach me to read nightscript, but he showed me the primer. With it, I’m able to begin learning. It takes a few days to navigate the data banks of the thing. It’s one thing to gain ability to see with touch; it’s another thing to apply that ability to learning a language. Over several weeks I discern words, then phrases. Then bits and pieces form sentences, and finally thoughts.
The tablet’s a trove containing everything from the postdiaspora history of humanity to myths and legends of the Miralian Empire. I reread The Chironiad. Chilleus and Cuillan were brothers and lovers who ended on opposite sides of the civil war. Cuillan fell in love with Penalea of Amazonia while Chilleus led the Anjins of the Miralian Empire against the Chironian rebels. In the end, they fought in single combat, and Cuillan died in his brother’s arms. Penalea committed suicide as Chilleus burned Cuillan’s body with his Anjin laser in a victory ceremony. Later, Chilleus went mad and sacrificed himself in an assault on a shield station, which turned the tide of the war in the empire’s favor.
Phaestion once said that we were those ancient warriors reborn.
Perhaps this isn’t the best story to read.
I turn to the tale of Leontes, commander of the Anjin mechs who held off a direct assault on Miral a generation later with only a single battalion. Leontes’s men were slaughtered to the last man, but his sacrifice bought the empire’s armada time to return from deep space and wipe out the Chironian Army. Leontes is the name my father chose for his house. I now know that Faria’s people, his brothers he called them, all died at the end when the Chironians lost the war.
It seems we’re all weirdly connected to this lost history, I think.
I decide I’d be better served by studying something more practical. I’m going to need more information to find Miral and Faria’s lost treasure.
My visits to the room gain in frequency. Days bleed into one another. I sharpen my body during the day; I hone my mind at night.
I read the history of the Second Age. There’s startlingly little. Here’s what I learn—the Fracture is composed essentially of what ancients called “wormholes” or “Einstein-Rosen bridges.” The bridges are tributaries of dark matter that run throughout the universe. The dark matter gives space density, which holds gravity at an equilibrium so the universe doesn’t fly apart at the seams. It runs through the cosmos in great, thick veins. Dark matter, like all matter, is composed of tiny strings that vibrate like music. Ships equipped with a Fracture saw convert the matter of the ship to energy that vibrates at the precise resonance of the point of entry. Thus, ships are able to infuse into and travel along the veins of the Fracture like boats on rivers free of time dilation.
However, Fracture Points are unpredictable. Just as there is dark matter, there is dark energy that counteracts the gravitational force of the matter and causes the universe to expand. Thus the Fracture Points move and shift over the course of eons, just like a living organism would. There was once a point near Ancient Earth, but it closed. The Great Grandmother, birthplace of all humanity, was lost. It’s curious to me, however, that there has been so much movement within the last ten thousand years. Cosmically speaking, that is not very long in the timescale of the universe.
Then I run across a sentence from a science text that catches my attention. Doctor Seldon Jones of the Prospera Institute of Stellar Cartography on Lyria posits that the Fracture Points show evidence of artificial creation and stabilization.
Jones thinks that someone created Fracture Points? Who? I wonder. The Great Song’s science officers also hypothesized that the Tao solar system was not natural. What kinds of beings would have the power to rip open the fabric of space-time, and move and create planets? I don’t have answers and neither does the tablet. The questions are too big for me to worry about now, though.
I read about Market, the intergalactic hub for trade, and its nearest jumping points, Thera and Nonthera. I read that most ships, at least since this data-bank entry was made, are rocket-fuel based and just rudimentary shells made to withstand short flights to and from Fracture Points. Artificial gravity and cryogenic sleep have been tried throughout history for longer flights but are often deemed too expensive.
Artificial intelligence isn’t trusted throughout the Nine Corridors. Human pilots mechanically maneuver ships to the points along with rudimentary navigation computers. AI was prominent on Miral before the fall, but there are no longer any worlds like that. Every planet that developed self-replicating AI suffered some kind of ecological collapse or the Fracture mysteriously closed on them.
Every. Single. One.
I sit for a beat. Humanity seems doomed to plateau in its technological evolution. It burns out, soaring too high as it tries to reach the gods.
There’s a finite measure of what we can be. Unless we change, I think.
I study medical journals. I need this knowledge as part of the plan to take Faria’s place. The forest world of Thera has pioneered the use of purely biological healing methods and pharmaceuticals. The Barris society of the Second Star Moons sought life extension through gene parasites. Then there’s the curious case of the Gamins of Malori: an entire society of children that live for hundreds of years and can never grow old.
How do they survive? A howl sounds. Goth.
I return the reader to its hiding spot. I’d take the tome with me, but it’s not safe anywhere else. The next equinox will come soon, and the guards will return for me. The Warden cannot know that such a treasure exists. I climb the winding stairs that lead to the hallway. I make out the vent about fifty meters ahead when I freeze.
Something is wrong. I can see the vent with my eyes. Moonrise! Much too soon!
Faria has taught me many things. The lesson about judging clock time apparently didn’t stick. I figured at least several hours before moonlight. That’s what I get for getting lost in a book!
A snarl of fury raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I see the hulking pale form shifting in the shadows of the hallway before me. I can’t make out his features, only his gargantuan size in the gloaming between me and escape.
Run! I send adrenaline to my muscles. The monster’s feet smack the stone in chase. I feel his hot slathering breath at my back. Talons reach out. Faria’s not here to save my skin this time. I stop instantly and duck as Goth passes over me. I slide between his tree-trunk legs and catch a glimpse of the muscles on his pale back rippling in newborn moonshine. Pressing the soles of my feet against the back of his knees, I push with all my might, hoping to topple him. He’s so heavy the maneuver doesn’t move him. Instead, I’m rocketed backward along the slick floor. The momentum propels me into a somersault, and I snap to standing with a clear path toward the vent. I leap, and my hands grip twisted metal.
The creature has already been here! He found the vent and crushed it to cut off my escape!
Laughter. Odious, inhuman laughter sounds behind me.
I drop to the floor and stand face-to-face with the beast. His pale skin glistens with a sheen of oily sweat. I see a face more simian than human with only a bare nub for a nose. One eye bulges from its socket while the other, the size of a pin, is sucked back into his skull. Fleshy pink lips curl back with a twisted smirk, revealing broken, needlelike teeth. He rattles the chains that bind his wrists and claps his hands with the glee of a child who has discovered a new toy. Then he winces as the light of the moon brightens through the window and he lets loose a bestial roar.
I’m dead, I think.
Dead men don’t seek revenge, my father’s voice burns in my skull.
The moons are here. That’s my advantage. I must get to the higher levels, where the light will be brighter.
He swipes for me. I leap onto his muscular arms, scrambling along them to his head. I rake his face with a clawed hand as I pass over him. Skin peels under my fingernails as I go. I flip off his should
ers and take off as fast as I can.
My mind reels, recalling the schematics of the tower. The main staircase is how Goth delivers food. There’s also a cargo shaft used to get supplies from outside into the Citadel. I dive into an alcove. Goth races past me as I knew he would. I open my ears. He slows at the end of the corridor, sniffs the air, but can’t sense me. He snarls, his chains rattling as he turns a corner down the hall.
Once safe, I head back to the lower levels to throw my pursuer off the scent and reach the area where I know an entry to the cargo shaft will be. I take the spiraling staircase down into the Citadel furnaces. The automated machines shovel coal into a giant cauldron that heats the fortress. The glow of orange fire pulses and belches black smoke. I hold my breath as I round the blast columns. There’s a small iron door on the back wall. Locked.
Damn it!
Relax.
I breathe from the belly and summon the vibration. It builds and boils like the fires of the furnaces. It bursts through my body, and I lash out a fist. The door explodes off its hinges and into the shaft. I step into a vertical tunnel barely wider than I am. I stare up into darkness. The cargo elevator must be up several stories.
I spit into my hands and rub them together as I’ve seen heroes of aquagraphics do. I press my palms against the walls of the shaft and, with the opposing pressure, lift my body off the ground and proceed to shimmy skyward. I move centimeters at a time, but this is the only strategy I can think of.
After six stories and about two hundred more meters, I realize I’ll never make it back to my cell at this rate. I need to travel in the open even if it risks Goth.
I grip the edge of the next cargo porthole and push myself through. It’s barely wide enough for me to fit. The sharp edges of the glassy rock scrape away my flesh as I drop onto the hallway floor. The moonlight’s definitely brighter here, and that’s good, but it also means the guards are scheduled to come for me on this day. I carefully pad down the corridor until I reach an air vent. I listen for sounds of Goth. Nothing. I can usually make out the rattling of his chains or the smack of his feet even at a distance. Now, though, it’s utterly still.
Could he be hiding?
I could enter the air vents from here, but if Goth is still on the hunt, he’ll watch that path. The main stairwell might be the only route fast enough, but it leaves me vulnerable. During the last equinox, Faria told me not to worry about Goth because of his hatred of the light.
It’s a calculated risk. I head for the corridor’s main entry and take the giant spiral stairwell that treads up and up through the entirety of the colossal tower. I take four steps at a time, but it’s still too quiet, too easy for me to not feel nauseated with unease. I finally reach the level of my cell, gently shouldering the heavy iron door to the hallway. It creaks on rusty hinges. I leap into the corridor, ready to face the Goth, but I’m alone.
Feeling like a nervous fool, I tiptoe gently to my prison cell. I hear movement in the stairwell. The guards!
I need to get back inside. I find the nearest air duct grate. I spring up to the ceiling and gently lift myself inside the vent shaft. I quietly crawl along the tube until I’m above the cell I’ve called home for the last year. I glance through the grate and see everything below empty, just as I left it. I release the grate and quietly drop to the floor of my cell.
Safe. And with time to spare.
Goth’s snarl near the open cell door hits just a split second before his talons grab hold and I’m scooped into a bear hug. The moonlight now affords me a look of every detail of his monstrous face. Hot, stinking breath spews from his tooth-filled maw. I scream as he gnashes his incisors into my shoulder and tears away a chunk of flesh. He chews and swallows, then licks his fat purple lips.
I kick out as violently as I can. He pulls me in tighter, and his talons puncture my back. My old wounds rip open. He laughs, the malevolent sound echoing throughout the tower.
I must not die here! I have one weapon left. I push the anger down into my belly, feeling it boil to a pitch.
Become the storm, Faria said.
The rage vibrates until I can hold it no longer. I see the face of my father laughing in the twisted features of this hideous thing.
Why run, boy? the leviathan asks in my dreams. This time, I do not run.
I let the energy burst through me as I strike. The tips of my fingers connect with Goth’s skull, and I feel the vibration pass into him like an electrical charge. I drop to the floor with a thud and roll away. Goth takes one step forward, then his misshapen eyes roll back into his skull, and a sad, mournful groan escapes from his lips. For a moment, I actually pity him. Any feeling I have, however, is cut short as his head explodes like a melon showering me with chunks of bone and gray matter. The huge muscled body falls forward, slamming with a thud against the floor of my cell.
Men’s voices enter the hall.
“His door is open?” someone asks.
I hear the guards pull their humbatons from their belts, ready for trouble. They round the corner into my room and find me standing over the headless creature, anointed in blood and moonlight.
“Leontes?” one of them murmurs.
“I surrender.” I raise my hands in the air.
CHAPTER 23
CADENZA
My return to the Wendigo is without fanfare. I’m smuggled into camp during sleeping hours and held in the guards’ barracks until morning. I’m the picture of abject humiliation when The Warden inspects me.
“Now you understand what I can do to you?”
“Yes, lord.” I make my voice raw and wilted.
“The son of a nobleman bows and scrapes before me,” he smugly jokes with the guards. “What have you learned in your time in darkness, Leontes?”
I squint to pretend my eyes are pained from disuse. “I’m nothing but your servant, lord.”
The Warden nods, duly impressed. “And how can you serve me?”
“Once Faria teaches me all he knows, I’m yours to do with as you will.”
The Warden strokes his thick, blond mustache. “I’m told that you murdered the keeper of the tower?”
“No, my lord,” I say, sniveling.
“Yet Goth was found dead in your chambers?”
I shake with fear to sell the lie that escapes my lips. “He came to the cell as he did daily to feed prisoners. He was in a frenzy.” I cry softly. “He tore the door from my cell. I tried to fight but couldn’t. I’m so weak.” I gesture to my rail-thin arms, which, though strong from training, seem malnourished.
The guards chuckle at my cowardice. “Go on,” says The Warden.
“I saw the great beast in the moonlight and soiled myself with fear.”
The guards laugh.
“He ripped into my shoulder”—I point to the wound Goth made—“then the beast went mad! He slammed his own head against the black stones of the walls again and again, broke his own skull open. That was when your men found me, lord, covered in blood. Thank you for saving me! Thank you!”
The Warden and his henchmen stand silent, not certain whether to believe the story, but there isn’t much other explanation. The idea that I killed Goth seems implausible. I could explain how I exploded Goth’s head with a swift blow of the Dim Mak, but that would seem equally ridiculous.
“He tasted your flesh and went insane. Perhaps there is something poisonous in you, Leontes,” The Warden muses.
“I throw myself upon your mercy, my lord!” I grovel at his feet with pitiful whining. He’s disgusted by my presence, but Faria’s right, my father doesn’t want me dead yet, so he won’t kill me. Not until they are both sure they can do without me. Therein lies my chance.
“Clean him and return him to the healer’s hut,” The Warden instructs. “You’re mine now. Do you understand?”
“Thank you, my lord!” I lean to take his hand.
He pulls away with loathing. “Bah!” He stalks off.
Let him mock. Dead men do not seek revenge, and I am not
dead yet.
I’m shaved and scrubbed raw. I shiver when the freezing water of the pressure hose blasts me and wince when the sting of the disinfectant powder hits my face. I run my hand over the smoothness of my scalp. It’s the first time I feel clean in over a year. The guards remove my bindings and lead me to Faria’s hut. They shove me to the ground and walk away. I crawl through the porthole into the healer’s home. The fire burns low, creating long, haunting shadows. Faria sits in the place I first met him. His face, however, is not the same. His skin sags; his cheeks are hollow. His lean frame, which once carried an essence of hard strength, looks decayed. His wrinkled lips curve inward into his mouth as if he is sucking a straw.
“Master,” I whisper.
He has aged, but he’s alive, so there’s still hope. “You’ve returned,” he croaks. “And you’ve slain the beast of the tower.”
“Yes.”
“Now you understand the power and what you must do with it. I’m tired and must rest.” He pulls a fur over himself and lies down before the fire. “Welcome home, son of Leontes.”
This isn’t home. I won’t be home until it’s done.
I’m now master of the hut and Faria the assistant. He sleeps most of the day, conserving his strength, willing his body to survive another hour. The Warden must have seen his decline. Now I understand why I’m allowed the position as Faria’s replacement so easily.
The Warden sends men to check on me. I keep them satisfied by showing off my work mending fractures and scrapes, tending minor infections, and the like. In truth, I’m waiting for my moment. Faria believes Edric needs me alive as a contingency. I believe that I can’t count on my father. In his mind, I’m just a tool to be used, and the need may never arise.
I’m not the only one with designs. The yearly Combat has come and gone, and Perdiccus of House Mughal has been named champion. The standard of the manta flies over the city of Meridian this yearly cycle. Another Pavaka and purging of unwanted babes has followed. It makes me sick to be here, waiting, but self-pity is useless. No, I must make my own destiny, so I plot and I plan.