Quest SMASH

by Joseph Lallo

  They just stared at him, their faces already peeling from exposure.

  Tandor ran through the experiment room, back to the stairs that led up to the entrance of the birthing room.

  Loriane! He had to get her out of here. He ran up the stairs.

  Blood pumped in his veins. His face was burnt; he could feel the sting of cold air on raw skin. The numbness of the injury was wearing off.

  Up, up. Black spots danced before his eyes. He missed a step and stumbled against the wall, bracing himself with his hand. By the skylights, the skin on his arm was peeling in big slabs, leaving raw and oozing flesh. The sight made him feel sick.

  While he stared at it, the ground rumbled deep below his feet. Tandor listened, holding his breath. The floor vibrated with a low keening. The sound increased in pitch, and increased until the metal-and-stone construction of the building sang. Tandor ran. He almost blacked out, but he ran. Up, up, up, into the corridor. Into the room at the end.

  “Loriane, Loriane!”

  The room was empty, beds abandoned, a trolley of medicines upended in an aisle.

  Tandor ran towards the exit.

  “Loriane!”

  The guard post was deserted. Shouts drifted in from outside.

  “Loriane!”

  The roar of an explosion overtook him.

  Chapter 29

  MYRA SAT stark naked, legs spread on the birthing chair. Sweat-soaked hair clung to her head.

  The elderly palace midwife knelt on the cushion facing the girl, and placed a basket with soft towels under the chair. She nodded at Myra. “You’re almost ready.”

  Myra’s expression was distant. Her lips trembled, and then she muttered, “Help me, help me, help me.” With each help, her voice became louder. Her breath sped up, her legs trembled, her one hand dug into the flesh of her thighs. She howled.

  The midwife cursed. “Oh, come on, girl. It’s not going to happen with screaming. If you want to be a breeder, you’ve got to do better than this. Push, by the skylights. Push, push.”

  Myra wailed and panted. Tears ran over her face. “I can’t. Please help me, Mistress Loriane.”

  “She’s right,” Loriane said. “You have to do this. We can’t help you any further if you don’t want to be helped.”

  While Myra wasn’t looking, the midwife reached between the girl’s legs, trying to examine the baby’s progress.

  Myra screamed and kicked. “You’re not touching me!”

  “Right. That’s it.” The midwife wiped her hands on her apron and rose. “I’ve had enough. I’ll be back when you decide to behave.” She walked off between empty beds where women who shouldn’t be walking had vacated their beds to get away from Myra’s screaming.

  Myra, her eyes wide, stared after the woman’s broad back. “She can’t just leave me!”

  “Yes, she can,” Loriane said. “You’re behaving like an idiot.”

  “But I’m going to die.”

  “Yes.”

  Myra’s eyes widened. She clearly hadn’t expected that answer. Her lip trembled. “Mistress Loriane? You’re kidding me?”

  “No, I’m not. You will die if you don’t do what we say.”

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “Then for all you’re worth shut up.”

  The girl was shivering with another building pain. “I’m scared. I’m so scared, Mistress Loriane, please help me, please . . .” She threw her head back.

  Loriane covered the girl’s mouth with her hand. “Shut up, shut up.”

  She kneeled at the pillow the midwife had just vacated, put her hands on the girl’s sweaty and blood-slicked thighs, fixing her with a hard stare. “Or I’ll tell Tandor that you behaved like an idiot.”

  Myra clamped her lips, her eyes blazing with anger. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Good. Now shut your mouth and push.”

  Myra pushed. Her face went red until she gasped for breath. Then she pushed again. Loriane patted her knee, knowing that girls didn’t like being touched at this stage.

  She whispered, “Very good, keep going, keep going. You’re almost there.”

  Myra pushed and pushed. Drops of fluid dribbled on the towel in the basket under her.

  The silence was heavenly.

  Two of the women who had left came back, peeking around the corner of the door. Their eyebrows rose. They had probably expected Myra to be dead.

  Loriane glanced at the door. Tandor needed to come back quickly. If this was over, she could maybe ask the midwife for an examination, but after that, she could stay here no longer, neither could she go to the sled with a driver no one could see, or wait in the sled for a man who wasn’t supposed to be in the palace.

  Another contraction. Myra was really getting into it now. She pushed and panted, and pushed. The midwife came back and joined Loriane with set of instruments that included forceps and needles and gut thread. This was not going to be easy.

  Loriane rose, sore and stiff from sitting in the uncomfortable position. The child inside her was kicking her in the ribs. It wouldn’t be long before she had to come back here herself.

  Myra pushed and howled and pushed. The midwife was easing out the baby’s feet, and then the abdomen. Her calming words were wasted on Myra, who was hysterical. “It hurts, it hurts!”

  “Keep going, keep going.”

  The head of the baby shot out, followed by a gush of fluid. Myra screamed. The child fell into the midwife’s hands, wet and slippery and covered in blood-stained slime.

  Loriane’s stomach cramped. She turned away from the group, scanning the room for a bowl to throw up.

  A healthy cry drowned all the women’s talk

  “That’s a big boy,” one of the women said.

  But then someone gasped.

  “By the skylights,” the midwife said in the silence that followed. “He’s Imperfect.”

  “I know, I know,” Myra cried, her voice hoarse. “Give him to me.”

  “I can’t. He . . .” The midwife licked her lips. She was still holding the squealing infant.

  Loriane swallowed bile, and swallowed again, quelling her stomach.

  In her haste to get Myra to help, she had forgotten the rule about Imperfect babies. She hadn’t even considered it, since Imperfects were hardly ever born these days.

  “Give her the child,” she said, shouldering her way into the group.

  The midwife gave her a strange look.

  “The girl is from Bordertown, and will be going back there.” She eased the squealing boy out of the midwife’s hands and proceeded to cut the cord. She wrapped him in towels to still his cries. Everyone in the room had gone very silent.

  Myra looked puzzled from one to the other. She was leaning back in the chair, still bleeding from a good tear, sheened with sweat, white-faced and totally spent. She had suffered for three days. It was probably a wonder she was alive at all. If this had happened in Bordertown, she might not have been.

  “You had best fix her up,” she said to the midwife.

  Carefully, she lowered the child at Myra’s swollen breast. The girl gasped when he latched onto the nipple and then started laughing, and crying.

  Loraine’s eyes misted up. How could she have forgotten her first time? That incredible relief after all the pain. The healthy baby at her breast. The boy would be sixteen now. Unlike her, Myra would keep her little boy.

  “I’m still going to have to report this with the Knights,” the midwife said. “They have been very strict on Imperfect births recently.”

  “The Knights are at the festival. The guard is really light. If I take her out tonight—”

  “Back to your house? Like this? She needs to be under observation. We need to notify the father’s family—”

  “She is from Bordertown, there is no breeder’s contract.” Please, she really didn’t want to argue about it now. Even the thought that Myra might lose her baby made her chest constrict. S
he still saw the nurse walk away with her beautiful boy.

  “No contract? How can that be?”

  “Because . . .” Loriane spread her hands. Tears pricked in her eyes. Because she loves this boy.

  The midwife raised her eyebrows.

  “Please, just let me take her home.”

  “I didn’t think you would—”

  The floor trembled.

  “What by the skylights . . .” the midwife said.

  The other women stopped chatting and glanced at each other. The door creaked open letting in a waft of freezing air, and a guard. He looked around the room, wordlessly and disappeared, leaving the door open. The frosty chill settled in Loriane’s stomach. Tandor had gone down there. He was doing something stupid. He was always over-confident, that was how he’d become maimed in the first place.

  She heaved herself to her feet and waddled towards the door. When she was halfway across the room, the floor rumbled again, more violently this time. Dust and plaster rained from the ceiling. A chunk of stone came down behind her, scattering bits over beds and couches. And something, something she couldn’t see or describe made the air hum with tension.

  Tandor, for sure. Tandor never came for just a social visit, and Tandor had wanted to get into the palace, that’s why he was here.

  Loriane turned, her heart thudding. “Myra, come, now.”

  All around, women scrambled for their bedding and warm clothes. Myra just sat there, clutching the child. She could probably not walk unassisted. Loriane ran back into the room and pulled Myra up. “Come on, Myra. We have to get out.”

  The girl’s eyes were wide. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, but there are fifty floors above us, and I think I’d rather be in the street if this building is going to collapse.”

  The floor rumbled again.

  A group of knights burst from the corridor into the courtyard, into the snow . . . which was melting into sludge. Steam rose from the ground. Bears bucked and pulled in their harnesses.

  Loriane walked as fast as she could, dragging Myra with her. The girl’s steps were insecure; she was probably close to fainting. The boy had started crying, muffled in the towel. Myra stumbled. Her face was deathly white. Yes, yes, I know this is a cruel thing to do to you. “Come, run, run.”

  Myra couldn’t walk fast, let alone run, but Loriane pulled her along.

  When they arrived in the courtyard, the floor heaved again.

  Loriane pushed Myra into the sled and stumbled in herself. No Tandor. No driver.

  “Go, go,” she screamed at the bear and yanked the reins.

  At that moment, there was a roar behind them. The ground trembled and bucked. Metal creaked. Glass crashed behind her.

  The bear reared, pulling the front of the sled up with its harness. The animal sprang forward, and bounded out the gate.

  Too fast, too dangerous.

  The back entrance of the palace was in a narrow street, half-blocked with rubble. People were running out of every entrance; people lay in remains of collapsed facades. One woman hung on for her life on the crumbling construction that had been an apartment floor. A breeze stirred up her nightgown, giving Loriane a view of her pallid body. An instant, and then the sled whooshed past. People ran out of entrances on both sides of the street, screaming and pointing. The bear plunged into the fleeing crowd. Loriane yanked the reins, but couldn’t stop the animal. In the mayhem, people fell, causing others to trip over them. People in flimsy clothes, people with bleeding wounds. Glass was everywhere.

  The ground bucked and rumbled. Debris fell down from the towering buildings that lined the street. More glass. Pieces of stone. People screamed over the deafening noise. The bear was growling and snapping at bystanders.

  Then there was a thundering rumble behind them, and a huge whoosh. A cloud of smoke and dust filled the street. Every bit of glass that was still intact shattered. A rain of razor-sharp fragments pelted down. Loriane threw her and Myra’s cloaks over both of them, and when the pelting stopped, she peeked out.

  Silence, except for the creaking and groaning of metal.

  The street behind her was blocked by a heap of rubble. In the dusty air all she could see was the structure of the palace gates, no longer attached to anything. The buildings were all gone.

  The only people here were ones who no longer needed help, burnt and bloodied corpses, their skin blistered, limbs ripped.

  Someone whistled; she recognised the sound.

  “Tandor?” Her voice sounded like that of a lost child.

  She shoved aimlessly at pieces of rubble. There was far too much of it, and she had no chance of finding him, certainly not without help.

  The stupid idiot.

  “Someone please help me.”

  No one replied. Everyone here was dead. The ground was freezing up in a hard layer of ice. Soon, the pieces of rubble would have frozen onto each other.

  “Tandor, I love you,” she screamed at the silence. She had never said those words aloud, but they were true, true as she stood here, carrying someone else’s child, and wishing it was his, wishing for his arms around her, wishing for his voice to tell her everything would be fine.

  On top of the rubble appeared a tall, bear-like figure, stepping from block to block without hesitation. At first, it seemed like the figure floated in the air. It looked like some kind of demon, with strange protuberances sprouting from its upper body. Then it came closer and Loriane saw that the figure carried someone, but still did not appear to have legs. The arms and head, too, seemed only half there. Tandor was real enough, but was he alive?

  All his hair was gone, the skin on his face horribly burnt, peeling in places, black with soot and blood. Parts of his shirt were missing and the skin underneath burnt. Blood dribbled from a deep gash in his good arm.

  “Tandor!” She wanted to touch him, but the thing that carried him turned its head. It was human, of a fashion, but consisted merely of a thin skin of dust, transparent in many places, ethereal grey in others.

  As it walked past towards the sled, Loriane realised that it was Ruko, the invisible sled driver, covered in dust.

  He put Tandor down on the furs in the back seat. His skin glistened with weeping burns. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open. He breathed shallowly. Loriane took his arm and felt his pulse. It was regular but weak, although that could be because her hands trembled so much. Loriane and Myra wrapped him up and sat down on either side of him so he wouldn’t fall over.

  The driver flicked the reins and the bear started off through the street.

  They passed many other injured, some beyond help. People with limbs blown off. People so badly burned that their faces were a mess. Some walked, but many did not, bleeding their life’s blood onto the dirt-smeared snow. There were guards and Eagle Knights, all horribly burnt, trying help each other, or too busy simply with trying to stay alive as exposed skin grew blisters. The air hummed with tension.

  You can’t see icefire, Tandor had once said. That doesn’t mean it’s not there and it can’t harm you. It just harms you less quickly than it harms others.

  The buildings on both sides of the street were badly damaged. Glass blown out, floors collapsed, people’s furniture sucked into the street.

  The number of people increased as they went. Streets flowed with a sorry tide of humanity. Previously well-dressed nobles clutching jagged scraps of clothing, carrying their loved ones, some of whom beyond help. Old people fell and didn’t get up. Sometimes, someone would haul the fallen back to their feet, but no one stayed around to make sure they remained that way.

  The ground still rumbled; buildings shuddered with some unseen force. People shielded their eyes to light Loriane didn’t see. Exposed skin reddened with the blisters of icefire burns.

  They reached the markets where a great number of people were crowded in the corner, with more people spilling into the square from the streets that led into it.
Something Loriane couldn’t see seemed to block the other side of the square.

  Myra gasped.

  “What is it?” Loriane asked.

  Myra pointed. “Over there! Can’t you see it? It’s a huge . . . person. Like—made out of light. And there’s another one, and . . . oohhh! Beido!”

  Loriane stared where Myra pointed, and saw . . . nothing. No, that wasn’t entirely true.

  It had started snowing, and steam rose off the place where the girl pointed. Then Loriane saw them, too: huge shapes, at least thirty of them, maybe even more, outlines made of steam.

  They formed a circle, towering over the city. The figure facing the people in the square held out its steam-wreathed hands.

  “Beido! Beido!” Myra’s voice barely rose over the screams of onlookers, but it seemed the figure heard her. A long tendril of steam curled towards the sled. Ruko tied the bears’ reins to the sled.

  “Look, this is your son.” Myra uncovered the baby’s head.

  Ruko rose from the driver’s seat, his hands planted at his sides, facing the steam figure.

  Loriane said in a low voice, “Sit down, Myra.”

  “But that is Beido!”

  “Myra, please—”

  Loriane couldn’t see the flash of icefire, but she could feel how it took her breath away. People around her fell . . . and died. Blistered faces froze in screams of agony. Eyes wide open stared at the sky.

  Myra screamed, “Beido, no, don’t, Beido!” Then she grabbed Loriane’s arm. “He isn’t listening. Make him listen!”

  “I can’t do anything. I can’t even see him. Sit down.” Loriane yanked Myra back into the seat.

  But Myra continued to scream. “Beido, Beido! What are you doing? I’m here. Beido!”

  A patch of steam grew in the sky directly overhead. Mist flowed out of the steam figures to join it and form a kind of dome, which was extending downwards.

  Loriane reached for the driver’s shoulder. The dust was ice-cold. “Please, get us out of here.”

  The sled remained where it was. People in the square were falling over, clutching burned faces, skin peeling from flesh, glassy eyes staring at the sky. The screams made Loriane shiver. This was hundred times worse than Myra’s screaming.