Alexandria

by Kaden, John

  Miles is stricken. Ruck jumps up on all fours and skitters to his master’s feet and glares at Jack, a low growl working in the back of his throat. Miles sinks to his knees and soothes the wolf, smoothing back his fur and whispering in his ears. He looks back to Jack.

  “Sit down,” he says softly.

  Jack remains standing. Lia watches the confrontation with dark, wet eyes.

  “I am he,” says Miles. “Please. Sit down.”

  Eriem’s side of the bed is cold. He left for the night watch before sundown. Jeneth sets her bare feet on the floor of their tiny, two-room cottage. Muffled cries have awoken her and she rubs sleep out of her bleary eyes, then shambles across the room to gather Mariset in her arms and rock her back to sleep.

  The crib is empty.

  As the fog of sleep clears, she realizes that the cries had not come from inside their cabin, but from the hillside and grounds. In a frenzy of panic she moves to the sideboard and lights a candle and flashes it around the room. All of Mariset’s clothes and toys are gone. Her hand flies to her gaping mouth. She feels like she’s been struck in the chest.

  She treads cautiously toward the door, toward the screaming. As she reaches for the lever, the door bursts inward and two men move slickly through it and grab her by the arms. Thoughts of spies and far-away armies flash through her mind, until she catches a glimpse and recognizes them as friends of Eriem. They have sat at dinner together in the Temple Hall and talked and laughed and got along well. They force her to the ground and bind her hands behind her back, then haul her back to her feet by the elbows. She flails and fights against them.

  “Settle down, Jeneth. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “She’s safe.”

  “Where is she?”

  Jeneth screams through clenched teeth and tries again to pull away. They jerk her roughly though the door and march her down the path toward the Temple.

  The grounds are chaos. They are being carried away, all of them—all who were not born here. People who have been at the Temple longer than Jeneth are being escorted from their cottages with their hands tied behind their backs, pulled screaming from their children and carted away as prisoners.

  Strands of Jeneth’s fine hair adhere themselves to her tear-wet cheeks, flushed with an anger more profound than any she’s ever known, stronger yet than the anger she felt years ago when they first stole her away from her own parents. The only image that burns in her mind is of her daughter’s face. She turns her head and bares her teeth and bites at her captors.

  Someone calls her name from the dark entrance by the amphitheatre and she looks up to see Elise being dragged toward the Temple as well. They hand her off to sentries and she is whisked away—an assembly line of forced bondage, swift and efficient. Jeneth goes limp and contorts her face in fathomless anguish. My daughter, she thinks, my baby.

  They cart them through the sanctum at the heart of the Temple, with panoramic frescoes of fire ensconcing the fevered prisoners as they are led to their confinement. Lines of young children are led down from the dormitories and set along the same path until a sizable crowd stands gathered at the mouth of the secluded staircase.

  Jeneth looks around for her friends and sees Haylen down the hall, bound with ropes and sobbing. She sees Aiden and Creston far behind, just making their way down. At the head of the stairs, wearing an oddly calm expression, is William. One of the men holding him is Eriem. She would gouge his eyes out now if loosed. She calls his name and she knows that he hears it. His head flinches slightly, but he will not face her.

  The slow crush carries her toward the keep. The sounds from below make her knees go weak. Clenched and sobbing, she descends the staircase that leads to her internment, feeling less and less human with each step she takes.

  The man once called Thomas sits stoically and absorbs the last of their tale. He pitches more wood on the fire. Wolves howl in the distance and Ruck stirs at his feet apprehensively. Jack and Lia sit on the ledge, bundled together under a warm fur, exhausted from yet another telling of their story.

  “Dead?” Thomas asks.

  “Most likely.”

  He hangs his head. “I knew Ethan. He was a boy when I left.”

  “It’s real, then? You’ve been there?”

  “Yes. It’s real. I was born there. I lived my childhood there.”

  “What is it?” asks Lia.

  Thomas pauses and thinks for a spell. “It knows things, yes, that’s true. Ways and thoughts passed down from the days before. But, it is something far more… They are… humanitarians.” He reads the confusion on their faces and explains to them the meaning of humanitarian. “You see, that’s what Ethan and Renning were doing. Helping people cope with a long, hard winter. And it’s carried on for centuries, generation after generation, all the way back to the time of the downfall.”

  Jack and Lia are transfixed. A surge of relief floods them as they realize that their journey has not been in vain.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “I was impatient. No,” he corrects himself, “I was reckless. I wanted to be part of something greater and I didn’t want to wait for it. So I left. I left when I was just a little older than you two are now. I left that home with a head full of pride and knowledge, and I roamed for years looking for a place to put it to use. I wanted to build great things. I was inspired by the palaces of old—thought people needed an anchor, something to unite them. I was humanity’s great hope, so I thought.” He rubs his eyes with crooked fingers. “In the summer of my eighteenth year, I made my way up the coast. I saw so many things along the way. There was devastation, yes… tired groups of wanderers living only to survive, barely a generation removed from the caves that hid them during the long storm. But I also saw a world on the move, a beautiful, growing world, full of possibility. That’s what I sought—a new life. A life with possibility. And there, on the central coast, I thought I’d found it. It was just a small settlement back then, but it was alive. It was glowing. I could see from afar that life for them was much more than just simple survival. I ventured to approach them and was met by a man named Arana Nezra. Said the name was of old, noble blood. He was as warm and kind a man as you could ever hope to meet. He’d led his people down from the frozen north, a hard journey that lasted years, and along the way they picked up more followers who shared the same vision that he had—the vision of a beautiful life together. That was all. It was so simple, really. I had no idea how wrong things would go.

  “We became friends. We’d talk long into the night about the world and all that had happened to it, and about the situation we found ourselves in. I told him many things he had never known before. When he asked how I knew so much, I lied. Told him I came from a city to the north, that I’d picked everything else up on my travels. He believed me. He trusted me pretty deep at that point, I think, and he had good reason—my true home was the only thing I ever kept from him. Everyone took to me very kind because of how close of friends I was with him. He’d led them through every kind of hardship imaginable to get there, and they loved him more than their own families, some did. Those people would have followed him into the ocean to drown if that’s what he wanted of them. Of course, I never worried that he would misguide them in such a way. Though he did have a love for women, I tended to turn a blind eye to all the fathering he’d done. He was so selfless with them, otherwise. He truly cared, this I believe. Cared about each and every one of them. Always talked about the life he wanted to give them. He had these grand visions, these beautiful dreams, and I told him I could help make them so. We rebuilt the settlement from the ground up, carved out planting fields, set irrigation ditches, built a medical lodge where I’d see to people. We transformed the landscape, and when we stepped back and looked at what we’d done, it nearly burst our hearts. It was perfect. It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “From that point it was set. They started to revere me as they
did him. Some offered up that I was a prophet of some sort, and the notion held. Arana and I had plans to build something grand, something permanent. We scouted out a quarry to the north with good sandstone, and we started to figure ways to get that stone back to our little haven on the cliff. We were idolized. With more food from the fields, our numbers grew. I had favor with nearly everyone. Nearly.

  “There was one, in particular, who never took a liking to me. A man named Keslin. He joined in with Arana early on, and he was a broken man when they found him. He had cleared out from a dead settlement in one of the blighted regions. One by one, he’d lost his family and been left with nothing. Arana took him under his care, and Keslin stayed right by his side during most of the long journey, second in charge, so to speak. He was jealous, I think, that I’d moved in and taken his place. Thought that I was complicating things with all my ideas. And he thought we were blind to the dangers in the world. I guess, in some ways, he was right.

  “We had a few wonderful years there… beautiful, peaceful years. And then, one night, the worst happened. It was a small band of people, they numbered far less than us, but we were unprepared for what was coming. And it was so pointless, too, because if these people had only approached Arana, I know he would have taken them in as his own, fed them and clothed them. But they didn’t. They’d eyed our tools and our food stores. They’d seen how good we had it and they wanted it for themselves. It happened while we were all sleeping, and it wasn’t simple thievery.

  “You have to understand, Arana’s people weren’t soft. Far from it. They’d endured some of the worst suffering that nature can meet out. But they weren’t vicious and brutal, not like this group that besieged us. They laid to waste everything we’d fought so hard for. They ravaged our fields, set fire to the homes we’d built, took everything that wasn’t set into the ground. It was horrible. I’ll never forget that night for the rest of my life. We lost so many children. It was death and confusion everywhere. And it was over as quick as it started, and us left there stunned on that cliff with our homes burning around us. I don’t need to speak further on it.

  “That night marked a turn. Keslin felt confirmed of his earlier suspicions—that we were defenseless, a target for thieves. He’d lost his family all over again, lost them all in the fire, and it haunted him. Arana went back to seeking his council, which was just as well—I’d had about enough of being worshipped, anyway.

  “It wasn’t long after that night when the child was born.

  “In the old days, there was a greater variety of people, you see. Different colors, different traits. The world was well on its way toward melting them all together when the downfall happened, but afterwards, after so many had been lost, some traits all but vanished. These traits weren’t gone, mind you—they were sort of hiding inside us. And when that child was born, he possessed one of these hidden traits. The boy’s eyes shone clearest blue, and that little bundle mesmerized every man, woman and child left under Arana’s care. He’d fathered the child, most likely. Took credit for it, certainly, and the boy took his namesake. Arana Nezra the Second, he was called. Soon enough, Arana started telling people the boy was a sign of something greater. Some divine protection cast down upon his people, and, oh, how they longed to believe it.

  “All this while, the change was happening. They began producing more weapons than tools. The grand vision was put on hold. Despite their child savior, these good people started to see everyone in close range of the settlement as an enemy to be bested. Troubled wanderers no longer found a home with Arana. They were chased away or, at worst, killed on sight. What I saw around me were the makings of something terrible. For the second time in my life, I left the place I’d called home and ventured out on my own. I left in the middle of the night, fearing they would have killed me if they’d known I was leaving.

  “I went south for a while, but it wasn’t to my liking. I spent long decades out there alone, and finally ended not far from where I started. My foolishness has caused a lot of death, Jack. You were right—I don’t very much trust myself around people anymore. When I saw you two out wandering on your own, I knew—at least a part of me knew—that you’d run away from them as I had.” His hard face cracks with tears. Thin rivulets run down his cheeks and leave tracks of clarity on his begrimed skin. “I am so sorry… for everything that has happened to you. None of it ever should have happened. None of it.”

  Ruck leaps up and dutifully licks his tired face. He pats the wolf down and settles him back on the ground, then looks at Jack and Lia with eyes that seek neither forgiveness nor consolation. They sit bundled under their fur, trying to untangle the strands of Thomas’s story. It does little to soothe their grief.

  “I still don’t understand how they could’ve done what they did,” says Lia. “We lost everything, too, and we didn’t turn out like them.”

  “Mmm,” says Thomas. “You don’t want to hurt them back? You don’t want to take from them? Show them how they’ve hurt you?”

  Lia starts to say no, then stops herself. “Yes. But they did hurt us. If they’d hunted the people that burned them, that would be different. We didn’t burn their homes down. They burned ours.”

  “Yes, I see. But suppose you settle down somewhere again, some nice little place that you’re happy to call home. Suppose you’re settled there, all nice and cozy—maybe you’ll have a couple young ones of your own—and then one night, long about the middle of the night, you hear strangers out in the darkness. Strangers with unknown intentions. You might feel differently, then. You might feel threatened and strike out blindly, to protect your own. It’s a short step from there to much darker tendencies. A trauma like what you went through, it changes a person. It’s changed you, I’d wager, in ways that your young minds can’t yet fully understand. And it’s not the thinking part of your mind that’s been affected, but a much older part, an ancient part. It’s hard work to stay civilized. It’s hard work because it’s not natural.”

  “So were going to end up like them?”

  “No. I just mean you have to try at it. Take Ruck and Lily for example. Consider the two possibilities. One in which the bear and the wolf are raised separately in the wild, each by their own kind, and in that way they would surely be hateful enemies. Each would fear the other and like to kill them. Or, consider they are raised by me, in which case they become friends. Same bear. Same wolf. A difference only of what they are taught and how. And of these two possibilities, I tell you, young man, young lady, it is this one,” he says, gesturing to Ruck and Lily sleeping cozily by the fire, “that is the unnatural of the two.”

  “Unnatural?”

  “Mmm. I think some part of them cares about me as they would their own kind. Then there’s another part that, if they’re provoked in such a way, could revert back to the rawest wild. But the same could be true of me. And you. There are savage ways in all of us.”

  Jack flinches. “We’re not savages.”

  “Are you so sure? There’s a thin line in here,” he crooks an elbow and points to his cranium, “that separates the higher from the lower, and at this thin line there are monsters, brutal monsters, rattling their cages, deep within the earliest forebears of our minds, fighting to break through. Always been there, even long before the downfall. Always. While they busied themselves in steel towers, there were some hidden workings buried deep, then and still, violent remains from an earlier Age when our ancient kin lived and died by the sharpness of their teeth and the quickness of their retreat—these workings written inside a body in such a way that it could spell a creature’s fate before it’s ever birthed from its mother’s womb. And it takes a lot of work to overcome that. For if you feed the monsters, the monsters will grow. And if they grow strong enough, they escape into the higher reaches and run wild and chase anything civilized clean away.”

  “It’s wicked.”

  “It’s not wickedness, not outright. It’s the drive to live. It’s what kept you alive out here in the wild, I reckon.
It’s what tore civilization to the ground, and it’s also what gave them the will to build it up in the first place. Fierce protection of yourself and others like you. All creatures have it. But, lo, it rattles those cages. Doesn’t know when enough is enough. Yes, Jack, there are monsters in you, and even you, Lia. But it’s your choice whether or not you feed them.”

  The fire has burned down to embers and Thomas pokes at it with the stick.

  “Is that what happened to Arana? He fed them?”

  “Partly. He’s a different case, altogether. He’d not been born, yet, when the fires happened. Before I left, he’d shown sparks of being a bright young boy. Had a gentle way about him. It’s discouraging to hear that he’s crowned himself King. Absurd. If he’s King, then I’m Emperor of the Universe.”

  “So what’s wrong with him?”

  “He was brought up with all that rot his father taught him, and I guess he believed it.”

  “So… he has no powers?”

  “Only the power to make people think he has.”

  Jack nods, remembering all the times he feared some force would overtake him. “Will the people at Alexandria know how to stop him?”

  “Doubtful. Not if they’re as strong as you say. Arana wants to find this place very badly, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s searched for years.”

  “Then he’ll someday find it. This map that Ethan gave you, what did it show?”

  “It was a drawing of the land and the rivers, all down the coast, and there was a star at the bottom where he told us to go.”

  “Can you draw it?”

  “Sure.”

  Jack takes the stick and works from memory, drawing a rough depiction of the shoreline. He fills in a few remembered details, then finishes it off with a little star.

  “Ah,” says Thomas, with a touch of relief, “I see. Ethan was smart. This is not Alexandria.”