by Nathan Long
I squinted at the map. There wasn’t much to it. I didn’t see any lakes or oceans or roads, and it was hard to tell what the scale was. “How far is this? How long is it going to take to get there?”
Rian-Gi pursed his lips. “Hmmm. Riding a krae, four perhaps five days.”
“And a ship?”
“Two days? Perhaps less.”
I cursed to myself. Brother Aln had said the church had sent a ship after them days ago. That meant whatever they’d gone to do, they’d already done it, and I’d be getting there almost a week too late. Goddamn it! There was no way Lhan was still alive. But I couldn’t give up. I had to go and see for myself. I had to.
I looked up at Rian-Gi as he started to roll up the map. “Thanks for this. I owe you, big time, but I gotta get going. I—I’d kill myself if I didn’t….”
“My dear girl, there are tears in your eyes. You love him that much?”
I don’t know why, but I snapped at him. Maybe I didn’t like him seeing me cry. “What’s it to you? You jealous?”
He looked miffed for a second, then shook his head. “No, not at all. I would not deny you your future with him. I hope you will not deny me our past.”
I shrugged, uncomfortable. “Everybody’s got a past. I got more past than most. No worries. And thanks again.” I took the map from him and turned to the window, then stopped. I was still in my bag-lady outfit, and all of a sudden I was starving. Not the best way to hit the road. I turned back to him. “Uh, I don’t suppose you can hook me up with some water and some chow? And… and if you had any old clothes, maybe a spare sword, I’d really appreciate getting out of this bed sheet.”
He smiled. “I can give you better than spares. Wait here.”
I studied the map while he left the room, trying to figure out if any of the places I’d already been were on it, and what cities and towns I was going to have to avoid on my way to Toaga or Udbec or whatever it was called. Before I’d made much sense of it, Rian was back, carrying something big and bulky and wrapped in a blanket that he had a hard time getting through the door.
He set it down with a clunk, then opened it. I almost cried. It was all the gear I’d had with me the night I was kidnapped—the heavy duty loincloth-bikini and the made-to-measure sleeve and chest armor I’d got when I was a gladiator in Doshaan, the riding boots and clothes Lhan’s servants had made for me, and best of all, my custom-made six-foot-long Aarurrh-style sword, weighted and balanced just for me. And Lhan’s clothes were there too.
“Fantastic! How do you still have these?”
He looked down, sad. “The priests left them behind on the night, so I kept them, hoping, though I had betrayed him, that Lhan would someday return, and need them. And you too, of course.” He turned toward the door. “Dress yourself. I will ask my majordomo to prepare some food for your journey.”
“Excellent. Thanks.”
He paused at the secret door. “Mistress Jae-En. I hope that if—nay—when you find Lhan alive, you explain to him why I—why I did what I did, and ask him to forgive me.”
I gave him a hard look. “I’ll tell him what happened, but if you think I’m gonna plead your case for you, you got another think coming.”
He turned a pinker shade of purple. “No no, of course not. It was cowardly of me to ask. I will ask him myself if—that is when you bring him back alive.”
He bowed himself out, and I stared down at Lhan’s clothes, looking very empty and forlorn without Lhan in them. “No, pal. I think you had it right the first time. If. If I bring him back alive.”
***
Running on Waar was better than sex, maybe even better than riding a Harley. How could I hate bounding across the landscape with big twenty-foot strides like the kind you have in dreams, like the ones you see antelopes doing on nature shows? I coulda run like that forever and never got tired of it. I felt like Wonder Woman.
Of course I coulda had a nicer landscape to run through, not that it was all that bad at the beginning. The farmland around Ormolu was the same lush and neon-colored candy-land I remembered from before, with fields full of purple plants, pastures full of six-legged orange sheep-pig things, red shrubs with blue fruit, and little villages of hexagonal houses sprinkled all around, but the next day, as I got away from the center of the country, things started to get a lot drier and dustier. The fields were nothing but bare stalks and dead plants, and the pastures were filled with dead sheep-pigs and sick-looking maku, which were Waar’s answer to buffalo—big shaggy six-legged bastards with heads like fists with eyes—only these all looked like they had the mange, and I could see their ribs through their hides. Dust devils whirled across the red dirt roads, and a whole lot of farms and villages were just plain empty. Half the time there wasn’t anybody around to be scared of me as I ran through the town square.
And the further I went, the worse it got. By the third day, the fields were full of six-legged skeletons, baking white in the sun, and the villages looked like they’d been abandoned for years. I didn’t understand it. I knew rain was rare in Ora. I knew they had to import a lot of wood from down south because there wasn’t enough rainfall up north to grow forests. Lhan and Sai had told me all about it. But why wasn’t there enough water for farming? Hadn’t I seen a whole aquarium full of water back in the Temple of Ormolu? Why weren’t they irrigating these fields? It made no sense.
On the fourth day the farms disappeared completely, and I was out on the plains—the same kind of area I’d showed up in the first time I came to Waar. That had changed too. The endless carpet of blue-stalked plants with little match-head flowers that I remembered from before had all wilted to a dry charcoal grey, and every now and then I’d see the dried corpse of a wild krae lying on the side of an empty creek bed.
I saw a few live animals too, and ran away from a few more. I surprised a pack of shikes, which are scary, screeching four-armed spider monkeys, tearing apart the corpse of a dead vurlak, which is like a fur-covered econo-van with teeth, and they chased me for a good half mile, and there was a run-in with a live vurlak later that day, but I jumped up on a jumble of rocks and hid from him and he gave up after a while.
At noon on the fourth day, I saw a tribe of Arrurrh, the four-armed cen-tiger guys I’d been captured by once, off in the distance. They were hunting wild krae, and I was tempted to go see if it was Queenie’s tribe. Fortunately, I’m not insane, so I didn’t. If it wasn’t her tribe, they’d have eaten me for lunch or taken me as a slave. If it was her tribe, the bulls woulda probably killed me as soon as they saw me. Her chief had tried to have me killed once before. He’d probably think I was back for revenge. Instead I looped wide around ’em and kept going.
Still made me wonder how Queenie’s daughter Kitten and her sweetheart Handsome were doing. Probably had a litter of little four-armed, tiger-striped kids running around by now. I hoped they were alright. Them and Queenie had been better to me than just about anybody on Waar—except Lhan, of course. I wished ’em well.
Finally, later that day, just as the sun was touching the horizon, I saw through the heat shimmer what I first thought was another giant rocketship temple in the distance, and I wondered what the hell it was doing way out in the middle of East Bumfuck. As I got closer though, I saw that it wasn’t a rocket ship, or a building, or anything man-made. It was a mesa, a wide, straight up shaft of rock, all red and majestic in the setting sun like something out of Monument Valley back home, only way taller, and all by itself. There weren’t any others like it for as far as the eye could see. I also saw that there were ruins on top of it—a bunch of crumbling walls and towers so old they almost blended in with the natural rock.
And I saw one other thing too, an airship, endlessly circling the top of the mesa, and every now and then firing an artillery bolt into the ruins.
CHAPTER NINE
TOAGA!
As I got closer, I saw that the airship’s balloon was painted the same orange as the robes of the priests of Ormolu and had their hexagon
with a dot in the middle symbol painted on the side. I also saw something else—more than twenty other airships, all burned and broken and deflated on the rocks around the bottom of the mesa, and looking like the skeletons of dinosaurs right after the comet got ’em.
My guts clenched at the sight, imagining Lhan had been on one of those ships, and had fallen to his death with all the rest. I didn’t get how it had happened, either. One temple ship against more than twenty pirate ships, and the priests didn’t have a scratch? Even the Oran navy wasn’t that good.
By that time I was close enough that the temple ship could have seen me if they’d known where to look, so I hid behind a rock and waited a half hour ’til the sun went down, then pulled on my hood and cloak to hide my light skin and started forward again.
It was creepy as hell tip-toeing through all those dead ships in the dark, with all their burnt ribs looming up on either side of me and their killer floating over my head like a circling hawk. In the dim light of the little moon I could see mangled bodies spilling out of the wrecks, and smell them too. The whole place stank of death and charred wood. Part of me wanted to stop and search through the corpses for Lhan, but I told it to go fuck itself. Looking for his body would mean I’d given up on him being alive, and I wasn’t ready to do that. Not yet. I mean, the temple ship was still circling and shooting. That meant there still had to be somebody alive up there to shoot at, right?
I kept going until I reached the bottom of the mesa, then started to climb. It was obvious pretty quick why somebody woulda put a castle here back in the day. Even for me, with my Earth strength and my jumping ability, it was an almost impossible climb. The sides of the mesa were nearly as smooth and flat as a stone wall, and sometimes I had to search around for minutes for my next finger hold or foot rest. On top of that, I had to stop moving every time the navy ship came around my side of the mesa, just in case they were on the lookout for ninjas.
My fingers and toes were cramping before I was halfway up, and my muscles started to burn like I’d been running a marathon. Then, three quarters of the way up, the climb stopped being hard and became impossible instead. I reached a point where the rock face bulged out above me in a smooth curve, like I was looking at the underside of a balcony, except the bulge went as far as I could see in either direction. I was under a lip that seemed to go all the way around the mesa. The frustrating part was that I could see that the rock layer above the bulge was all rough and chunky and full of hand holds. If I could get there, the rest of the climb would be cake, but I couldn’t get there.
Well, I might be able to, but if I went for it and didn’t make it, I was dead—smashed to a pulp with all the other corpses down among the broken ships at the bottom of the mesa. See, I was in a good spot where I was. There was a two-inch-deep hole for my right foot, and good grips for both my hands. I had plenty of resistance to push off from if I wanted to jump, and I could see an easy hand hold on the lip of the bulge that I knew I had the power to reach, but power wasn’t the problem.
Fear was the problem. Even just thinking about making that jump was making my sphincter tingle. I had to jump ten feet up and five feet out with my back to a twenty-story drop and no rope or safety net to catch me if I blew it. There would be no do-overs. There would be no take twos. There would be a Jane pancake on the rocks of an alien world and I would never know if Lhan had lived or died. On the other hand, what were my options? Was I supposed to climb down and give up? I didn’t even know if I could. Some of those hand holds probably wouldn’t work in reverse. And even if I could, I hadn’t come all this way to say, “Never mind. I guess I’ll go back to Ormolu and forget Lhan existed.” It was up or nothing.
I crouched in close to the wall and tensed my muscles, ready to spring. Time to—
The warship came around the corner of the mesa only about twenty yards over my head. I nearly slipped outta my perch as I held myself back from jumping. Goddamn it! I’d been ready! Now I’d have to psych myself up all over again.
I waited for fucking ever until it floated past and slid around the other side of the mesa, then got ready again. Foot set? Check. Hands loose? Check. Target sighted? Check. Brain off? Check. Then go!
I kicked up as hard as I could, letting the weight of my sword and flapping cloak pull me out away from the wall as I shot up past the bulge—and kept going. Stupid idiot! I’d been so wound up that I’d kicked way too hard. I whooshed past my target hold like Superman headed for the sky, getting further away from the wall with every second.
I flailed at the jagged wall like I was trying to swat a mosquito, and snagged a knuckle of rock with my left pinky. The one-finger grip failed a second later, but I’d managed to pull myself closer to the wall and grabbed again. This time I caught a proper hold and clamped hard as the rest of me slammed into the wall all at once, knees, elbows, stomach, shoulders and face. I knocked my head so hard I didn’t know where my arms and legs were, and for a sickening second I felt myself sliding down the rough wall without being able to tell my hands what to do.
Then everything snapped back and I grabbed on with all I had and just lay there, panting and bleeding and listening to my heart go BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Finally, after the warship had circled past one more time, I thought I could move again, and started up the lumpy wall with all my limbs as weak as lite beer. Five minutes later I was at the top, and pulling myself through a gap in a thick stone castle wall that looked like it had been knocked down a thousand years ago.
For a while I stayed where I was, which was the ruins of some kind of little hallway that had run through the base of the castle wall. There was another gap in the inner wall that seemed to lead to a big open space, but I wasn’t going through it until I could catch my breath and stand up without my legs going all wobbly.
That took another five minutes, then I stood and looked through the other gap. The top of the mesa was bigger than I expected, roughly two football fields laid side by side, but otherwise what I saw didn’t surprise me—a broken-down, high-walled compound, half town, half fort, with rubble and caved-in buildings everywhere, and a roofless castle in the middle, sticking sheered-off towers up into the night sky.
Set up among the ruins were multi-colored tents, and some of the more-or-less standing outbuildings looked like they’d been turned into bars and shops, with signs and tables outside, and there were others places that looked like they might be hostels, or maybe whore houses.
It was all deserted, though. All the campfires and torches were out, and there was nobody walking around the courtyard or in any of the tents that I could see. Were the pirates hiding? I didn’t see any lights in any of the buildings, but they had to be here somewhere, or why was the warship here? I looked up and saw the big bastard floating by on the far side of the mesa. Yup, still there, and high enough up that it could look down into the compound and see anything that was going on. If I was gonna go looking for Lhan, I’d have to be sneaky, and the best way to do that was stay right where I was, inside the outer wall.
I started down the little hall to the left, peeking through the gaps as I passed them and hiding behind the standing sections when the warship had an angle on me. Halfway around I still hadn’t seen any signs of life. I didn’t even smell any cooking or a fresh latrine, but then, as I was sneaking past the castle, I heard a cough.
I hunched down behind a mound of rubble and looked up, thinking the sound mighta come from the warship, which was sailing so close to the mesa I could hear its sails flapping, but no, the ship was way on the other side just then, and that cough had been nearby.
I turned toward the castle. I still couldn’t see any lights, but as I edged closer, I thought I heard a couple of people talking, low and quiet, then another cough. Yup. Definitely the castle, and definitely through that gap in the wall right in front of me. Hmmm. There was about forty feet of open space between me and it—so three or four long strides. I just had to time it so the warship was behind something as I made my run.
I waited until the prow of the ship just started slipping behind the building, then bolted, running as fast as I could across the courtyard. Not quite fast enough. I was still a stride away as the ship started coming out on the other side of the building, and I dove for the opening like I was diving for home plate.
Well, I didn’t hear anything from the ship, and it didn’t shoot at me, so I guess that was a win, but I scared the living piss out of the two pirates who were on guard inside the room I dove into, and they did shoot at me. Fortunately, they were so surprised that their shots went nowhere near me, and I came up waving my hands to show I wasn’t armed.
“Wait! Wait! I’m on your side, don’t—!”
I don’t think they heard me. Their eyes were bugging out of their heads like they were on stalks, and their knees were shaking.
“A demon!”
“The priests have sent a demon after us!”
They’d been standing at the head of a stairway that went down through the floor behind them, and now they turned and ran down it, still shouting.
“Close the doors!”
“We’re breached! Hurry!”
I ran after ’em. “Goddamn it! Wait! I’m not a demon! I—”
The double doors at the bottom of the stairs started to close. I jumped down the flight in one step and shouldered through just before they slammed shut, then went down on all fours as I tripped over one of the guys pushing them closed.
I came up in a little room with an open door in the far wall, and smack dab in the middle of a handful of pirates, all staring at me and raising swords and axes and crossbows.