The Stars Askew

by Rjurik Davidson

  It was a surprise when someone whistled to Armand and Irik as they crossed between buildings toward the mess hall. Ohan leaned against one of the barracks, crutches propped under his armpits.

  Armand stared at the barbarian blankly, his exhausted mind unable to comprehend what Ohan had said.

  “I’m Irik,” said the former oppositionist.

  Ohan nodded and turned back to Armand. “Perhaps you’d like to visit the carpentry shop this evening. A little while after eating.”

  Armand sensed something was happening. “Irik also.”

  Ohan pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Only you.”

  Armand glanced at his friend. The oppositionist raised his eyebrows and closed his eyes, resigned to his exclusion. He reached out, held Armand’s hand briefly with his own warm one, squeezed, and let go.

  Ohan hopped away on his crutches toward the mess hall. Armand watched until the Westerner passed through the open doors and into the sparse building.

  He and Irik found their own table to eat at, away from the tribesmen. They didn’t speak. Armand couldn’t admit that the barbarians might be taking him under their arm but leaving Irik out in the wild. When they left the hall, he, too, squeezed Irik’s warm hand, then let it drop away.

  Back in the barracks, Armand lay on his cot for a while, resting his aching muscles. For the first time in days he felt something other than exhaustion and resignation.

  The carpentry building was a medium-sized wooden hall with just a few strips of paint left on wooden beams. When Armand was halfway there, he saw 7624 staring at him from the square. A shock of fear struck him, but he walked on, feeling the malevolent eyes on his back the entire way. There’s something wrong in that man’s head, thought Armand. Something had broken, and the two parts couldn’t be rejoined. Alarmingly, 7624 seemed to be taking quite a dislike to him. Through the open window of the carpentry shop, a Westerner said something to the others inside. Everyone, it seemed, was watching Armand.

  Armand stood before the door at a loss, confused by the memories of long-gone etiquette. Eventually he turned the creaking handle and stepped inside. In the center of the carpentry shop sat many of the barbarians, including Ohan and Ijahan. Together they were quite a sight, for they were the only prisoners allowed to retain long hair, strung with red and orange beads, green and yellow feathers. The Commander had never carried through on his threat to shave them, and even in their grubby state, the colors were glorious in the grayness of the camp.

  “My barbarian friends,” said Armand.

  The chieftain Ijahan smiled, an expression that seemed to shift the great lines across his face. “We don’t think of ourselves as barbarians, Armand. The rulers of Varenis are the barbarians.”

  Armand saw the logic to the man’s argument. The barbarians had their own culture, their own practices. He had little doubt that there was a nobility to it, even if they didn’t have the trappings of higher civilization. Indeed, they possessed the same principles he adhered to—loyalty and honor—while Varenis was a cutthroat world of maneuvers and betrayal.

  No sooner had he found a seat than three little knocks came from the direction of the far wall. Two of the barbarians quickly pulled the table back from the wall. Another pulled away a mat and lifted a handle hidden in the dirt. A square section of the floor rose, then a hand appeared, holding up burlap bags filled with material. The Westerners rapidly hid these behind a pile of planks. Then a Westerner’s head poked through the trapdoor.

  Ohan gestured to Armand. “If you want to escape, you must dig. Ten more body lengths and we should be beyond the fence. Then we dig ourselves up and out. When we are ready, we will escape at night. The guards won’t notice we are gone until morning. They may expect us to head west toward the plains and away from the mountains. Instead we will journey south along the mountain range. There are still tribes there who live beyond the province of Varenis’s empire. They will help us and we will join them. After the winter we will return for the women.”

  Armand’s skin crawled with an unnerving energy. This chance to escape would only come once, he knew.

  Armand descended into the passage and crawled along, a flickering little oil lamp in one hand, two empty burlap bags in the other. He ached terribly. Soon he would be nothing but a bag of bones.

  The tunnel came to a rough end. He seized a sawn-off pick that lay on the ground and began to dig away at the rocky earth, periodically filling the bags. Exhausted from the day’s work, this task seemed a special kind of agony. His shoulder muscles blazed with pain. He felt his neck spasm. His back was aflame. Yet he forced himself on.

  When he returned, he knocked on the trapdoor above him three times. A second later he was out into the carpentry shop. Another Westerner took his place below.

  Armand braced himself for his demand. “My friend Irik must escape with us. He’s loyal, hardworking, honest—all the things that are too rare in this world.”

  The chieftain took a deep breath. “Only you. No one else. You must promise this.”

  Armand looked down at his rough and worn boots. It suddenly struck him that they had been worn by someone before him—a dead man. That they might be worn by another, if he didn’t escape. Irik wore similar boots.

  “I beg you,” Armand said. “Please.”

  Ijahan shook his head, pulled his white beard. His responsibilities seemed to have drained him.

  That night Armand couldn’t sleep as he considered how to help Irik. He could escape with the Westerners and come back for Irik when they returned for the women. Yes, that was what he would do. But in his heart, he knew Irik would never make it through the winter—none of the prisoners would—and there was no way he could help Irik now. He tossed and turned, unable to make himself comfortable. The pain was too great.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Max felt that with each step, Aya was taking him back in time, back, back into an ancient and lost world. The ruined road wound its way slowly into the rugged hill. Its broken cobblestones were uneven, either sunken into or jutting from the ground. The land had shifted over the centuries, lifting sections up on angles, twisting others out of alignment. Birch and pine forests covered the hill in copses, at places thick and ominous. No one has passed this way for a millennium, he thought.

  —You’ll never find the tower—said Max. —The landscape has changed too much.

  I’ll feel my way there. I can almost feel Iria calling me.

  —She’s dead. She’s been dead a thousand years.

  You think death is forever? You think I can’t summon her from the ground?

  —I know you can’t. You’re not a god, after all. You’re just a man, like me. But tell me this: When you built this mythic world, this pleasure park, what did you think would happen?

  Most people lived simple lives at first. When there’s not great history, people don’t feel the need for fame or for heroic deeds. They lead small lives, and are happy. But some of us had other callings. The Aediles were in charge of administration—public service took their fancy. And us—those you call the gods—we learned the Art. It was the Art that was our downfall. We wanted to create, you see, but the Art pulls you away from the human world. It changed us: Iria, me, Alerion, all of us. We should have turned our back on its powers, but its powers devoured us. Is that really what you want, Maximilian?

  Max hesitated. His dreams of heroism had scattered, his hopes of leading the seditionists nothing but hot air, his ambitions nothing but childhood fancies—so much had changed for him. What would he give for knowledge of the prime language? He wasn’t sure.

  —If I could learn the Art, I could play a part in making the world better—he said. —I could help the seditionists, help everybody.

  That’s what we all thought. You start hoping to build things. You end with war machines dancing and burning in the Keos Pass. You end up hiding in the Sentinel Tower.

  Aya became silent and brooding, and Max didn’t trouble him again. He felt pity for the
mage, even though Aya planned to return to Caeli-Amur with the Core of Sentinel Tower and eject Max from his own body. But still Max saw Aya as a lost soul, thrown into the future where everything he’d loved was gone, where the world he’d built was ruined. It was impossible not to feel for the ancient mage, who had lost everything.

  Occasionally the road sunk under the ground. They would ride carefully forward until it reemerged later, like a swimmer resurfacing after a dive. Toward the end of the day, the road became more intact, though the landscape was becoming increasingly mountainous. Dark clouds engulfed the Etolian range to their north, snowcapped the highest peaks.

  The road crossed desolate bridges, which spanned frightening steep gorges. At times these bridges were broken, their midsections having collapsed into the ravines long before. Here, Aya led his horse down dangerous animal paths, across fast-running streams of clear water, and up the steep slope on the other side.

  By the third day the road clung to the sheer sides of higher ranges. It seemed impossible that they would be able to continue indefinitely—sooner or later they would come to an impassable gorge. As they got closer, the great vertical faces of the Etolian Mountains rose up impressively.

  —Before long we’ll have to turn back—said Max. —There’s a reason this place was undiscovered.

  At that moment they passed around a face of the sharp incline, and the view silenced him. A vast valley opened to their right, reaching deep into the mountains. Along both sides of the valley, far into the distance, stood colossal statues of the ancient gods and heroes. Not only Aya and Alerion but Panadus and Iria and the other gods. Imperious, they stared over the vast space, their countenances cold and commanding. Farther into the distance, a massive minotaur’s stone muscles bulged as it struggled with a sea serpent. Farther still, a Siren cried out to the empty space, its alien jaw distended. On the opposite side of the canyon, a Gorgon faced them, its head a mass of writhing snakes; and at a greater distance a winged horse leaped into the air.

  The Valley of Icons, said Aya. The Mountain Giants built it. You see, there are places in the world you do not know about. There are things only I can show you.

  The road curled to the edge of the canyon, the valley floor terrifyingly far below. Aya dismounted, led the horse toward the cliff’s edge. Every now and then he glanced across the valley, until he finally hunched down, threw a handful of sandy earth out into the air. The grains bounced against something solid but invisible.

  Aya took the horse’s reins, then stepped out into the void and onto what seemed to be an invisible bridge, spanning the abyss.

  —This is how Iria kept herself hidden—said Max, conquering his fear.

  There’s a way of making the bridge materialize, but I’ve forgotten the formulas.

  So Aya led the horse across the invisible span. Max felt the mage’s trepidation. Whether it was from the terrifying drop beneath them or what lay ahead, he couldn’t be sure. At the far side of the canyon, a hidden road curled around the arm of the mountain, and the Valley of Icons passed from sight.

  They came to a smooth dark tunnel that led straight through the mountain. Aya halted, feeling the cold air drifting from the darkness.

  He’s afraid of what he might find, thought Max.

  Aya pulled on the reins, and they were engulfed by darkness. The distant opening on the other side of the tunnel was a sheet of brilliance growing slowly as they approached. First a bridge appeared in the sheet of light, like something emerging from beneath water. Then a tower came into view: it jutted from the rock far below and reached up to the sky like a needle. Great cracks ran through the melancholy tower’s curved stones. Elsewhere, vines gripped stubbornly, a shawl of bronze and gold, already shedding their leaves in preparation for the winter. To either side of them stood the colossal statues of the Valley of Icons, massive and stirring.

  Aya tied the horse to one of a series of iron rings that ran along the bridge wall. Without warning, he collapsed onto the cold stones of the bridge and stared up at the empty windows above.

  Max felt a flood of grief wash through him. He caught Aya’s uncertainty, his desire to turn back and leave whatever ghosts still lived in the tower to themselves.

  —We can’t simply sit here like banished children—said Max.

  There’s something heartless about you. Aya pulled himself to his feet, hesitated for a moment, and then forced himself to walk toward the tower door.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Stairs led both upward and downward, following the curve of Sentinel Tower’s outer wall and leaving a vast empty space in the tower’s center. Up, up Aya climbed, passing wide empty windows, their panes broken long ago. A cold wind blew across the valley and whined desolately through the apertures.

  Finally the stairs came to huge metal double doors, which hung dented and out of shape on their hinges.

  Something is not right here. These doors have been forced open.

  Aya stepped into the open room. A window, this one still filled with glass, ran around the entire wall, affording a panoramic view of the valley. Here, each of the statues could be seen in their full wonder: the vast stony muscles; the expressions on their faces alternately savage, desperate, melancholy, imperious. At the north end of the valley rose the awesome peaks of the Etolian range. There were places where they were impregnable even in summer. In winter, most of the passes were deadly.

  In the center of the room, a smaller spiral staircase led farther upward. Elsewhere, furniture was strewn around the place as if it had been ransacked: one chair thrown on its side, a vase broken on a table, cushions strewn on the floor.

  —Robbers.

  No. Aya walked heavily across to a panel on one side of the room. Fingers tracing over its ideograms quickly, he spoke a word in the prime language and turned to face the room.

  A moment later a pinpoint of light appeared in the center of the room. Slowly, it inflated until it filled the space, an image-sphere projecting a second almost identical room on top of the first. But this one showed the tower in its prime: the chaise longues in their place, their cushions bright and clean. The delicately carved table stood between them, exotic mountain flowers rising from a thin flutelike vase. In places, the image momentarily shimmered and broke into numbers and logograms that seemed to fall from the sky like snow. A moment later the image recomposed itself.

  Across this ghostly room walked a tall elegant woman. She wore a wide asymmetric gown that hid her figure. Her hair, drawn back sharply behind her head, swung gently as she walked, as if mirroring her calm demeanor.

  The woman’s expression was both tranquil and severe. Her arched eyebrows gave her an imperious look appropriate to a god, even if she was only one in myth. Her skin was preternaturally smooth, her lips thin, slightly offsetting her beauty. Max could see her resemblance to the statue in the Valley of the Icons, but this Iria was gaunter and more commanding.

  She sat on one of the chairs, leaned toward the table, and took from it a small round fruit. She took a bite and looked out over the valley, then closed her eyes a moment, as if thinking.

  Isn’t she the most beautiful creature you’ve ever seen?

  —She has that aura of power and of loss.

  An image of Kata came to Max’s mind, and with it a flash of his own grief. Whatever romance had passed between them, he’d cut off before it began. Was he so different from these ancients?

  Iria was one of the great Magi herself. She could have ruled a world like yours as a god.

  —Then she, too, suffered from the Art. I can see now why she chose such a remote place to retire to. Far away from the world.

  You know nothing of her. She rarely used the Art. She felt more than any of us. She felt too keenly.

  Aya watched the ancient images sadly for some time as Iria moved about her room, then stared over the vast valley with its magnificent statues. At one point she took a circular ball sitting on a stand in a cabinet and looked into it.

  I gave her that memory b
all. See, she’s looking at the two of us, traveling the world together. She loved me, see!

  Seemingly bored by the images, Iria placed it back on its stand. She yawned, revealing delicate little teeth, and closed her eyes, let her head fall back.

  Aya spoke a word, and the image of the room froze momentarily, then sped up. He turned, put his hand on the panel, and closed his eyes. Images rushed through the room at a frightening speed. They watched long days of Iria, alone, passing through her life: descending the stairs in the mornings, staring at the valley for hours, reading, ascending the stairs now and then, and finally disappearing above at night.

  Aya, staring at the panel, stopped the breathtaking scenes with Iria standing bolt upright, only a foot from him. Her face was frozen in alarm. She looked up, and it seemed that she was looking into Aya’s eyes; but it was only an illusion, for their intensity was directed elsewhere. Something new was happening.

  Iria turned around, took two steps toward the center of the room, and faced the entry doors, which stood firm, their corporeal counterparts hanging beneath them, warped and bent.

  Aya rushed through the doorway. For a moment the light of the ancient doors blinded him. A second later he leaned over the landing’s balustrade and looked down the center of the tower. The recording superimposed itself all the way down.

  For a second nothing happened. But a moment later a figure winged its way up at pace, an arm flapping beneath a length of a purple cloak. Max could feel Aya’s tension as he watched.