Shadowbridge

by Gregory Frost

  “The snake,” said Leodora. “Where did he go?”

  The two men looked at her, then at each other, then at her again. “Snake?” asked the bearded crewman.

  “The snake who guards your cargo. He was wrapped around that mast there last night.”

  The other one said, “She seen it, too.” They remained facing her, their faces tight with worry as if weighing what to do with her, and she thought that perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything, that the snake was their secret.

  Abruptly, the bearded one said, “He weren’t crazy then. He were tellin’ the truth.”

  “And we trussed him up for nothing,” said the other. The morning sun glistened off the stubble on his face. “This snake, he speak at you?”

  She nodded uncertainly. Behind her, Diverus said, “I saw it, too. Talking to her.” They all looked his way then. “Last night. It was telling her a story.”

  Said one to the other, “But why can’t we see it? Why these two an’ not us?”

  “Does it matter? It’s real. That’s all, that’s what matters. We have us an avatar on board. We been blessed.”

  An avatar. She’d spoken to an avatar before that no one else had seen…and Soter hadn’t seen the snake, either. But Diverus had.

  The bearded sailor grabbed her by the shoulders. Close up, he smelled of sweat and brine. “You brought on us luck, girl, you and your friend. You ever want to venture between spirals some more, we’re your men. We’ll take you.”

  “Thank…thank you.”

  He let her go and lifted his end of the crate again. To his partner as they carried it the rest of the way off the boat, he said, “We go back to Merjayzin and get him released first thing. We’ve committed a crime here, we have to make it right. Make it right with the avatar. Bring that poor sod back on board and let him talk all he likes…” They climbed onto the jetty, their words fading.

  Diverus asked, “We saw an avatar?”

  “Apparently.”

  He stood still a moment before asking, “What is an avatar?”

  “A spirit of the gods. Or a god made flesh.”

  “Or snakeskin.” He smiled a little sheepishly and hefted his bundle of instruments.

  “Yes, snakeskin.” With a final glance back at the mast, she followed him up and off the boat.

  From right below, the stairs looked even more imposing than they had from the boat, impossibly steep. At least, she thought, they were wide.

  Responding to the same view, Diverus drew a breath and started up. The sack of instruments rattled on his back.

  As she ascended, the two sailors waved to her; they grinned as if the oyster girl, Reneleka, had arisen from the water and handed them her pearl. And, thought Leodora, perhaps she had. Perhaps the snake did indeed herald great good fortune.

  . . . . .

  Twice on the climb up the steps they had to stop. The second time they stood parallel to the pulleys that lifted the platform, still a dozen steps below the top. Turned around on the steps, they could see that the ropes securing the platform ran from the pulley in beneath the opening in the wall, and as they watched, hands reached out to grab the goods and drag them off the platform, out of sight into the darkness there. The workers remained ill defined in the shadows. Clearly a large space existed beneath the surface of the span—possibly nothing more than a place to store goods; but with the memory of their climb up Vijnagar still fresh, they both could well imagine a much more extensive underworld. The semicircle out of which the pulley beams projected was itself an ancient opening, the lip of pinkish stone grooved as from years of ropes cutting into the face of it as cargo was raised, perhaps from a time before beams and pulleys had been applied.

  Down below, the sailors had become no bigger than gnats and the boat a toy in a crystalline harbor. Off to one side of the boat, something serpentine floated upon the surface. It might have been nothing more than the ridge of a reef. Farther out and to the south, a cluster of small islands rode the horizon. Leodora wondered if fishermen lived there.

  Above them threadbare pennants snapped in a strong breeze, which buffeted them as they came up the final few steps.

  If, as all the tales claimed, most ancient Colemaigne had once been made of spun sugar and other confections, then centuries of rain and wind had eroded the hard façade of the buildings, exposing and aging more traditional materials underneath—crumbling mortar and stone. The skinny buildings had lost their flat surfaces, their precise edges. Rooftops dipped, and tiles coexisted with thatchwork while the frameworks leaned askew. The roofs and the top floors had collapsed in most of them. It was as if monstrous claws had swung down from the sky and scoured them of their skins, leaving them to rot. The buildings were chalky ruins, their cracked beams like broken bones. The wounds looked old, and yet no one had repaired or rebuilt the houses. That seemed odder still.

  The steps opened onto a wide square of broken flagstones, off which half a dozen streets branched. To the supplies being hauled in below, there was no apparent direct access.

  Small ramps ringed the steps, wedges with their apexes facing in toward the square. At some time in the past carts would have met travelers here and whisked them away across the span in either direction. She could see them in her mind, the carts backed up to the little ramps, accepting trunks, crates, whatever people brought. She could hear them, too. The excitement of that time crackled up into her through the broken street. The sense of displacement lasted a few minutes, then evaporated as if blown apart by the wind; after that she was fluent in the language of Colemaigne.

  In the center of the square stood the remains of a fountain, with figures in the middle of some sort of animals, four of them facing four directions. The waters of the fountain trickled darkly from their mouths and down their bodies, leaving a dark stain, like blood. Soter was seated upon the edge of it with the cases beside him. His head was down, arms resting upon his thighs and his hands holding a cup between them. The stones of the street between the ramps and the fountain were pitted and cracked. Some were shattered or missing altogether, and difficult to walk on.

  At their approach Soter glanced up, then lowered his head again, as if they weren’t what he’d been waiting for.

  The fountain did contain wine, although if she’d stood in it, it wouldn’t have reached her ankles. It looked black, but Leodora remembered the stories he had told her and knew that it wasn’t. It seemed that at least one part of the myth was true. Small earthenware cups like the one he held dotted the lip of it.

  She and Diverus flanked him and sat. Without looking up he said, “It didn’t used to be like this. When Bardsham came, they had banners flying. A welcoming crowd. They knew us, they cheered us. This place was alive.”

  His words slurred appreciably. This was not his first cup of wine. She asked, “What’s happened then?”

  “Blight,” he said. He gestured with the cup toward an open stall selling vegetables and fruits. She noticed that his hand was trembling as if the cup was heavy. “I asked there, and they told me,” he said. “Terrible. Cut a path the length of the span, years ago, but the place has never recovered. Chaos. The richness is gone, washed away. Your father and me, we entered this very square once in triumph, and it was everything I said it was, a confection of a span. Good days, those. Good days.”

  She didn’t understand what he meant—his description of the maelstrom made it sound as if something like a water spout had descended and smashed across the span. Chaos—he used that word too freely to account for too much. He blamed everything on chaos, as if it dogged him wherever he went. He seemed inordinately affected by the state of Colemaigne.

  “So, what do we do? We’re here and we’re surely not climbing aboard that boat again and going back.”

  “Back? Gods, no. Not an option, going back. Anyway, it’s not blighted everywhere, according to them, or not so badly anyway. There’s another square on the opposite side, a mirror to this one. We can look. Things are better over there, they said. The
whole span might not be so bad. Depends on how far…how deep.” He lost himself in some thought then, but came out of it quickly. “And it’s early, you know, barely past dawn, so there’s not much of a crowd out yet.” In fact there was nobody anywhere save for the two vendors behind their stall. He twisted about and dipped his cup. “The fountains still run, I’m pleased to say.”

  For once she was inclined to let him have his fill, although his rambling about the blight upon Colemaigne told her very little. It was a span that had been great but had fallen upon hard times since he’d last seen it. Between that and the small stand selling produce, she thought again of Ningle. Someone brought the produce, someone caught the fish. She understood better than anyone the complicated processes that no one saw—and no one cared, so long as what they wanted was available.

  “The other side, then,” she suggested. “It’s not that far, is it?”

  “Not far,” he agreed. He stood, an unsteady moment. Prominent veins mapped his left calf and, although she’d noticed them before, it was only now she appreciated that he was an old man, strong and proud and unwilling to bend, but old nevertheless. Perhaps it was the remaining magic of this span, or the result of meeting with another divine adviser, but she seemed to be experiencing an array of epiphanies today. She found herself feeling affectionate toward him despite everything that pitted them against each other time and again. She got up and kissed his cheek. Diverus could not have looked more shocked, while Soter’s bewilderment had to swim through the muddle of his brain.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s see the rest of Colemaigne. We have to find somewhere to perform.”

  She hefted one of the cases and ducked under the strap, then started walking. After a dozen steps she turned and looked back.

  The other two were eyeing each other distrustfully. Then Diverus, as though taking a cue from her, offered his lighter bag of instruments to Soter and shouldered the second undaya case. “You can’t imagine what this place was like,” Soter said to him as though he hadn’t described it. “It was so magical.”

  Diverus traded a look with Leodora that said he was pretty certain magic was still afoot.

  . . . . .

  The far side did prove to be in better shape. Whatever tumult Soter had been describing, its effects hadn’t blanketed the whole span. Some of the slender houses near the opposite square still maintained their surface coats, which were hard like stone, shiny and carved, like sculptures, with all manner of swirls and motifs. In one lane Leodora wetted a finger and wiped it across a bright green wall before sticking it in her mouth. “Sweet,” she said around her finger. “It really is sugar.”

  “No one in the world knows how they do it, either,” Soter told her. “They’ve a guild, sworn to secrecy. Can’t even catch them working if you try.”

  More people were gathered in this square, too, the span now awake for the day. They milled about shops and stalls. It was exactly like a market day on Ningle, if not as busy.

  Soter inquired at the shops about some places and names, and was given directions and information. “Yes,” said one purveyor, “that old theater is still standing. No performances there anymore. The owner died, oh, years, long time back. Probably can find you a place to lodge, though. They got lots of room.”

  Soter strode into the lead, along a seaward lane so narrow that they had to go single-file with their luggage and press up against the buildings if someone needed to pass by, which happened every few minutes. He regaled them all the while, in love, it seemed, with his own voice. “Oh, yes, we played there for months. People were coming from half a dozen spans away to see, not thinkin’ or maybe they just didn’t care, that we would be moving on to theirs eventually. ’Course in the end we didn’t, we got on a ship and sailed off to Remorva.” He stopped talking. A look of puzzlement pinched his face as if he couldn’t decide quite how he had drifted into that part of the story. In a more subdued manner he added, “I guess they were right to journey all that way for Bardsham, after all, ’cause they wouldn’t see his like again in a generation—not before now, in fact.” He turned about and shook a finger at Leodora and Diverus. “They’d better let us play here or they won’t know what they’re missing.” He bumped into someone coming the other way. Apologies were made, and thereafter he focused on the direction he was walking. “Better let us play,” he muttered to no one.

  . . . . .

  Carrying a load that was lighter than usual, Soter didn’t notice that he was inadvertently putting more and more distance between himself and the other two. Approaching the dragon beam of Colemaigne, he thrust a finger at it and called back, “Look at it. That thing hasn’t seen a visitation in your lifetime…What am I saying? In my lifetime, which is much more considerable. Of course, used to be nobody much minded, since the span had everything.” More quietly, he added, “My gods, it’s lost its edge, hasn’t it? Gone quiet. You see this, you bloody coral ghost, you see what happened here? This is our doing, sure as I’m walking here again. We sucked the life out of Colemaigne, and the gods of Edgeworld forgive us. I ought to know what happened here.”

  He pressed against the buildings to let a woman in a dark purple wrap scuttle past, saying “Begging your pardon” as she did. She kept her head down and gave barely a sign that she’d heard him. “Not very sociable, are you,” he muttered to her back, but if she heard that she didn’t respond.

  Passing the opening, he gazed out along the curve of the dragon beam.

  It did look as ragged as if it had been gouged out of the sky. The sides were crumbling, and it was so thin across the middle, it was a wonder the weight of the Dragon Bowl at the end hadn’t caused the whole thing to snap off and plunge into the sea. Soter hastened to pass it by.

  . . . . .

  Diverus and Leodora progressed more slowly. The cases made passage along the lane difficult. The corners kept bumping against the uprights in the railing. When the woman in purple reached them, they had to set down the cases and step back into a doorway to let her pass. A cluster of three more people came along behind her, and so they waited in the doorway for the rest to pass, too.

  Leodora asked Diverus, “Was the bowl on Vijnagar as decrepit as this before your transformation?”

  Diverus peered at it ahead. “It might have been. The beam was crumbling and the walls of it had fallen away like that one. On Vijnagar, the bowl had broken tiles in the bottom, you couldn’t even tell what the mosaic had been. I can’t see from here if this one’s like that, too.”

  “Would you dare me to go out on one?” she teased.

  He turned to face her. “You’ve never stood in a Dragon Bowl?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve meant to. The first spans, Soter argued it was too dangerous. Too public. Someone might notice, and if my uncle came along looking for us, they would tell him. Now that I think on it, that makes almost no sense. Soter’s so protective, even when there’s no reason. I don’t know why. Jax is out in the public and I’m to stay hidden from sight. Even now, you’ll notice, and there’s no chance Gousier’s hunting us here.”

  “I thought you said your uncle was dead.”

  “I said he might be. I don’t know for certain.” She leaned around him. “As for the beams, Soter wouldn’t allow me near one. I suppose I started climbing the towers to defy him without stepping out on a beam. Your story is the closest I’ve gotten to one.”

  The impeding pedestrians had walked on, and the sea-lane was now empty. Soter had moved far ahead. Diverus slid the strap over his shoulder and hefted the undaya case. “Well,” he said, “I think I wouldn’t dare you. Unless it was the only way to get you on one.” He gave her a puckish smile and walked off clumsily with his burden.

  They shortly reached the opening onto the beam, and their regard traced the curve of its route that, tentacle-like, nearly surrounded the hexagonal bowl at the end. Not a single person sat or stood anywhere on it. The Dragon Bowl was likewise empty. This was a span where the inhabitants had long since sto
pped believing in the capricious gods. Diverus and Leodora paused and stepped back as two more people emerged from an intersecting lane and came toward him. They looked at them sidelong as they passed, but neither so much as glanced toward the Dragon Bowl.

  . . . . .

  Up the lane Soter came to a point where everything looked like the square where the trio had first arrived. The building beside his shoulder, the nearest one, was a ruin. Half the quarrels in its windows were missing. There were one or two places where bits of glossy façade remained, but most of the front of the house revealed an underlying structure of irregular stones and gray, gritty powder. He touched one stone and it crumbled in his fingers. Above, the last story and the roof looked to have collapsed into the building. It was like a house that had been consumed by an attic fire, except that no traces of fire remained, and the rest of the houses as far down the lane as he could see shared its state of decay. Seabirds appeared to have nested in the upper reaches of some of them. The surface of the lane stretching ahead comprised nothing but flinders. The sea rail had disappeared, too, reduced to stubs where the posts had been, making the route more precarious.

  Under his breath, Soter said one word: “Tophet.”

  He edged forward cautiously, and had only gone a few steps before Diverus caught up with him. Diverus set down his case and scanned the damage much as Soter had. Then he stepped out and peered over the side at the ocean below. “It’s a ruin down there, too,” he said. “Looks like pieces of the houses fell off. There must have been a quay once, but it’s just rocks now. What happened here?”

  Soter set down the instruments again. He shook his head at first, but then said, “I wager that, if you followed this line of damage street by street all the way back, it makes a straight line to that square where we climbed up.”

  Diverus squinched his face. “Like a path, you mean? Like a giant smashed them all?”

  “Not a giant,” Soter replied. “Like a curse.”