Rook (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #1): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  Cut it out, he says. Look for the track, Allie.

  At my hesitation, he sighs, sending up more plumes of light and feeling.

  You know the theory. His thoughts carry a thin veneer of patience. If you don’t know the thing you want to resonate with, find another way in.

  When my confusion doesn’t lessen, he prods me again.

  There are three ways seers track, Allie. The first is imprinting. That is what I am doing now, using an imprint given to me by Vash.

  He flashes a multi-dimensional image, too quick for me to take in.

  I could also use a personal object, audio or visual recording, blood, fingerprints, urine, hair, even a smell. All of these are imprints. Imprinting is the most common track, as imprints are everywhere. Imprinting is the reason for the image ban. Imprinting is also the reason for the ban on trade in biological artifacts.

  He motions with one light-drawn hand, leaving trails.

  The second method is called a location track, he continues. This is based on the principles of spatial intersection. In simple terms, if you know the location of something in the physical, you can track it in the Barrier. To do so, however, your knowledge must be very precise. It also does not work so well for time jumps, or Barrier echoes.

  I have no idea what these are.

  The third way, he says, ignoring my implicit question. Is a line track. It denotes having a personal connection with, or a“direct line” to the thing you are tracking. Or, in this case, having a direct line to something or someone that is resonating with the thing you are tracking. Which is me.

  He waits for me to follow this train of thought.

  Use the opportunity to feel me under a track, Allie.

  I am following his logic now. If I resonate with him, and he resonates with the target, I will resonate with the target, too. Simple.

  I focus on a current of light I don’t recognize in one of his hands. The vibration immediately changes my own.

  Resonance does not have a spatial or interconnectivity limit, he adds as I play with his light. If you resonate with something that resonates with something that resonates with something… in theory, you can track any part of the chain. Distance can muddle the imprint, but it doesn’t have to. The military, of necessity, depends mainly on secondary or tertiary links. Sometimes they are forced to use links of much greater distances from the target. Most of the work of infiltration is this. Uncovering lines or “taps,” which can be complex, even tedious. Infiltrating the target’s life, hunting them to get close to their light…

  I am fascinated, picking up images from him.

  You still do this? Professionally?

  Yes, he sends.

  For who?

  His light sparks in irritation. Try to match my light… or go back and wait for me in the room, Allie.

  Touchy, touchy, I send softly.

  But I am trying to do what he says, so his thoughts grow slightly less grumpy.

  When you track, it is better if the target does not feel you, he advises. He waits for me to adjust, based on his words. When I don’t, he sighs again. This is not subtle, Allie. If I were a target, I would know I was being tapped.

  I heard you. Just let me get the hang of it, okay?

  He gives in, letting me openly examine his light.

  He is cranky today, though. I have no idea if it has anything to do with me, but I decide to try and do as he says. I keep being distracted by the mechanics of our lights’ interaction, but I am trying to find the track, too.

  My aleimi really wants to resonate with his. It is less a matter of trying, more a matter of letting it. So I relax, unfurling a fist that I hadn’t known I clenched.

  My vibration changes.

  I feel Revik’s approval.

  Good, he sends.

  He is closer to me now, and suddenly I am fighting the other thing. The pulling-nausea-pain feeling I get around him is stronger without my body, carries more of an imperative. It occurs to me that pain is likely how my body translates that imperative, like converting electrical signals. Then it occurs to me that I’m embarrassed, trying to make it scientific.

  Revik politely withdraws his light.

  Are you ready? he sends.

  I consider, for the hundredth or so time, asking him about that pull, then decide to leave it for when he’s in a better mood.

  I let him feel that I am. Ready, that is.

  He releases whatever he uses to keep us in place and we shoot across the night sky.

  Sometimes there are tunnel-like vortices that take us from place to place, but not this time. This time, the movement from one location to the next happens fast, almost instantaneously, without a breath between states.

  A city bursts out of the dark.

  Its many windows reflect the morning rays of a bloated sun peeking over the horizon.

  I recognize the skyline from my dreams. I see the jagged steel and glass squares sticking out of the ground, the dense layer of smog over honking cars and bicycles and auto-rickshaws on the street. People walk down the sidewalk in ragged patterns and stand by coffee shops and older-looking buildings with red and gold facades. I see flickers of the city from all sides, from the ground to a vantage point somewhere in the clouds.

  I am afraid, staring at the metal and glass squares looming out of the dust.

  I am waiting for the air raid siren.

  The light brightens, sunlight pouring over the land, and then––

  ––I am hovering over a different square, filled with people.

  The sky in this new place is the opposite of the one over apocalyptic Beijing.

  The atmosphere looms so high and clear I think it must belong to a different planet. The sun shines hotter here, but gentler somehow; it hangs in the sky, such a pale gold-white it is nearly blue, so small and bright I can’t look at it for long, even from inside the Barrier.

  The city’s buildings have rounded corners instead of square. They crouch around one another, yet have a kind of regal elegance, covered in greenery that makes them appear almost alive under the dense shadows of dark stone. Cut windows without glass overlook the center of town behind balconies covered in dripping sprays of purple and blue flowers.

  A fountain marks the center of the square. Watery creatures decorate the basin, foaming more of that crystal blue water from mouths and fingers.

  The streets radiating outward from the hub are paved with black volcanic tiles that look new, as if someone polishes them daily. Statues mark the passage into arterial roads that spiral out like spokes in a wheel. Flags ripple in a light breeze like silken snakes.

  A portly man who looks to be in his mid-sixties stands at a balcony, giving a speech to a packed crowd standing below. He wears dark red pajamas and a long, embroidered tunic that looks Asian yet is not.

  The crowd listens raptly as he speaks.

  I look over the crowd, fascinated by the beauty in so many of the faces I see, regardless of age. Men and women both wear their hair long. The men’s is wound in wooden clips studded with brightly colored stones, and the women’s hangs loose down their backs, woven through with thin metals, feathers and silk. More jewelry adorns men’s hands and ankles, compared to the women who wear stones at their throats and wrists.

  I listen to the crowd murmur, although the language is new to me, and apparently new to Revik, too. It is so different even my mind’s translations inside the Barrier aren’t quite right.

  Even so, the older man’s words grow distinct, however briefly.

  “I do not present this… concept from… ego, for self-aggrandizement,” he says. Words go missing in his speech, words for which my mind cannot find context. “I merely wish for sight… the urgency behind… my plea. It can be peaceful,” he adds, holding up a finger. “There is no wanting to… war. Or… living miseries.”

  The man continues to speak.

  I continue to get only bits and pieces.

  He speaks of working through differences, of wars that have come
before. He exudes confidence, yet is unsure if they really hear him, if they truly understand what he is trying to express. I feel a lot about his mind. It is almost disorienting, how well I understand how he thinks. It makes me uneasy.

  This is Balixe, Revik says.

  I startle. I’d been so focused on the man giving the speech, on trying to understand his words, I forgot I wasn’t alone.

  I look around me as Revik’s words sink in. This is more than prehistory. This is history most humans don’t acknowledge having existed at all. This is history before humans.

  If Revik is affected by this, I cannot tell.

  He continues to teach, even here.

  This is our history, Allie. It’s not prehistory from a seer perspective, but early history, certainly. The Merensithly Address, prior to the First Displacement.

  The First Displacement? I say wonderingly. So these are Elaerian? The first race?

  Revik acknowledges this silently, then adds, Most cannot even see events of this kind. Vash is very generous to share it with us.

  He gestures towards the podium.

  This man, he is very famous to seers. History describes him as the final war’s architect. It is unknown whether he was a Rook, as we think of Rooks today. He was definitely some kind of precursor to the dark forces that exist on Earth now, however.

  His words cut me somehow.

  Focusing back on the man in the red pajamas, I shake my head.

  No, I tell him. That’s not right.

  I feel Revik’s puzzlement, riding the edges of his bad mood. He looks between me and the man speaking from the balcony.

  It is right. He makes an effort to be conciliatory. Do not be naïve about his words, Allie. He was a politician, a rich man who only claimed to be a humble scientist. He used his studies to further his social and political agendas.

  It’s not his words, I say, pointing. It’s his light. Look at it!

  Revik barely glances at the man before frowning back at me.

  Light can be disguised in many ways, Revik warns me. Do not be naïve about that, either. It is the oldest game in the Barrier, to impersonate light frequencies of one kind or another. I have done it, as an infiltrator. To pretend to resonate with someone or something safe or familiar to your target is often the easiest way to get them to lower their guard. As a Rook, I did this all the time, Allie. I would adopt the light connections of relatives or loved ones, simply to get the person to open to me. I impersonated gods, angels.

  I try to take this all in, shielding myself slightly from Revik’s emotions. But I cannot just go along, letting his words stand, when they feel so wrong to me.

  No, I say. You’re wrong about him. You’ve been misinformed.

  I feel Revik’s stare, even before I focus on him.

  Allie, he says, and I feel him fighting the bad mood, the anger I feel under it. These scenes have been studied extensively by the clan elders. I’m not defending my own sight, but that of the greatest seers in the clans. He adds, sharper, I do not say this to cause offense, but you are a beginner, Allie.

  Before I can think how to answer, the scene around us shifts.

  It is difficult at first to tell where we are.

  A stone platform has been erected in the middle of a ripped up town square.

  Looking at the broken pieces of estuary and volcanic glass, the piles of burning bodies and the mountains looming up above the remnants of the ancient city, feeling fills me without warning. The emotion that rises in me shocks me with its intensity.

  Revik grabs my light arm.

  Calm, he murmurs. Yes, it is the same square.

  It affects him too. I feel his grief, but mostly I feel anger in him, unconnected to this place.

  Before us stands the same man on the platform, but he is older now, and thinner. His eyes look haunted. Someone has tied him to a pole at the center of the platform. Bruised and cut, his face hangs over a dark-colored robe spotted with blood. His feet are bare and look like they’ve been beaten with sticks. Blood drops down on them from a long gash on one leg.

  A man on the young side of middle age stands next to him. He has a thick beard, large eyes, a handsome, almost riveting face under dark, curly hair. There is something about him that is hard to look away from. He pulls eyes. He pulls light.

  Feeling explodes in me at the sight of him. It is unfocused, irrational.

  Love, regret, grief, horror, betrayal––they tangle my light.

  I can’t tell if those are my feelings, my memories, or something from the imprint Vash shared with us. Whatever they are, they hit me in a wave, too strong to fight.

  The man with the beard raises his hands to silence the crowd.

  They look up at him, and I recognize that look.

  They love him. They positively adore him.

  Haldren, I murmur.

  I feel Revik’s light focus on mine.

  The bearded man’s voice rises, whipping in the wind.

  “Kardek will die!” He speaks with passion, raising his hands as he shouts. “Yes! He will die! His death will not save us, though. There is no redemption here! It is too late… the sickness will take many more. We will starve. We are almost out of water. Our enemies will kill us!”

  Moans rise from the crowd, cries of pain.

  I flinch from that pain, feeling a part of me smashed into pieces like the volcanic rock. I feel the man’s crushing grief, his sense of responsibility. Not responsibility, exactly, not the way Revik said––but there is more sadness there than I’ve ever felt in my life. The grief overwhelms me, like a physical pain that is ripping me apart from the inside.

  It is failure. It is crushing, unequivocal defeat––the pain of defeat’s results.

  I have let all of them down.

  I have failed all of them. Their world will end.

  “…And for those of us left behind,” Haldren called out. “There is no justice! Not for your families! Not for friends and neighbors! He cannot cure you! He can never bring back your joy!”

  Haldren’s dark eyes fill with emotion.

  “But I do promise you this! He will harm you no more!”

  Shouts rise from the crowd, screams. Fists raise into the air.

  I make myself look at them, at their faces. I look at their city, what had once been so beautiful. Flowers no longer bloom from balconies. The stones are broken like jagged teeth, strewn instead with fingers of dried sticks from dead plants. Rags are crammed in cracks to keep out diseased air and icy wind. Blankets covered in ash and blood flap in smoke-filled wind, warning passersby away from the what lay inside.

  Blackened holes scar buildings from some kind of fight. Volcanic glass cobblestones are broken and torn from their moorings; most of what remains lays in chunks and powder. The crowd wavers on its feet. They are sick, thin, dirty, desperate, and clothed in rags. Many have volcanic shard knives and spears strapped to their backs. I see a few who look more like soldiers carrying branch-like devices that also feel like weapons.

  The stone skeleton of the city is all that remains.

  “This man,” the bearded man shouts. He points at Kardek. “He, who has called himself the Bridge! He stands before you, a traitor to our people! A heretic, and a liar!”

  I feel Revik’s shock ripple through my light.

  His whole attention is on me now.

  I cannot look at him, though. I cannot even care about his reaction. I am being slowly crushed under the weight of this city’s pain. Like the rest of them, I focus on Haldren to keep from collapsing. Haldren. He will redeem the old man, cleanse him through fire.

  It feels just. Right, even.

  Haldren is a friend. The way he speaks is familiar, the way the crowd hangs on his every word, as if in a trance––that is familiar, too. Moans rise with his voice, emotion-laden screams. People throw things at the old man, hitting him with pieces of ripped up cobblestones. I wince as the lines cross, but feel nothing, in my body or my mind.

  The man with the beard final
ly holds up a hand.

  He speaks quietly, for the old man alone.

  “You should have listened to me, Liego.” His voice breaks. “How could you do it? You will die the greatest mass murderer the world will ever know…”

  With these words, it hits me.

  More than that. It annihilates me.

  I scream into that blue sky. NO NO NO! Get me out of here! NOW! NOW!

  Allie! It’s okay! Revik is beside me, alarmed. No, afraid. It’s all right…

  No. I shake my head, my terror crushed by grief. I see bombs behind my eyes, the plume of mushroom clouds over Beijing. That feeling worsens, fear and dread slamming into my chest, cutting my breath. NO! It’s not all right. Get me out of here! NOW!

  He surrounds me, and then—

  I am back in that quiet place.

  It is the place he took me when my mom died.

  We float over a valley of sunset red. Towers of light billow like gold silk before an ocean with gentle waves. Normally, I think of it as his place, Revik’s, or maybe ours.

  This time, however, it feels like mine.

  Friends surround me, try to comfort me. So much relief exists in being with them, in knowing it is finally finished, that it is finally over. That I don’t have to go back.

  I don’t have to go back until…

  Revik is there, too.

  He is a different Revik, though, just as I observe a different me standing with him in waist-high water. We cling to one another, standing in that golden current. My friends are around us, and I’m so relieved to be done.

  That other Revik talks to me in a low voice. He holds me tighter, caressing my face, and we are alone now. He is still talking; he has perhaps been talking for some time. It feels as if parts of us never stopped whispering together in the dark.

  I feel myself grow calm.

  His light coils deeper into mine.

  That pain of separation is alive now, a living force. It grows unbearable.

  There is familiarity there, beyond what I’ve felt from anyone––beyond what I’ve felt from him. We know each other here. We are more than friends. It is his comfort I seek, above all the rest. I know he understands. He understands in a way that none of the others can, in a way they never will, no matter how hard they try.