The Victor's Heritage (The Jonah Trilogy Book 2)

by Anthony Caplan

  Corrag skipped dinner. She wasn't hungry. The housebot knocked on the door and then went away. It was late when Beithune knocked. Corrag let him in. He had the two headsets and the cube. They set up the cube on the end of the bed and sat together against the wall, adjusting the pillows.

  "Are you ready?" asked Beithune.

  "Yeah," said Corrag. But the truth was she wasn't sure. She feared it would turn out badly, that Beithune and she would be lost in the virtual space and there would be no getting back. It was a strange, primitive fear that she quelled, like a fear of spiders. She had learned with Ben that fear itself was the biggest threat.

  Beithune turned on the cube. They put on the masks. There was no intro, just blackness. Then they were plunged into it and falling through bubbles and cold.

  Sea was all around them. When she tried to breathe she got a lungful of water and choked. They had on some kind of weights strapped around their waists and were sinking rapidly into greater blackness. Corrag counted four other bodies in the swirling water with her. Beds of kelp shadowed above and swayed all around. Corrag felt the full throttle of panic. There was no way to breathe. This was a sudden death before the game even got started. In the murky depths of the ocean, Beithune turned and looked at her, squinting. She felt lost, totally disoriented, and stricken with a paralyzing, overwhelming hysteria.

  There in the distance was a glint of color, a golden eel swaying by a rock, the entrance to its cave. Corrag kicked and was suddenly made weightless. Her effortless movement gave her hope. Menacing, the eel opened its wide, evil mouth, showing its rows of teeth, and thrust itself at her in a wriggling lunge. Corrag arched her back, feinting, and kicked hard, swooping to grab a blue stone on the floor of the cave behind the eel. She turned and there was Beithune behind her. She grabbed Beithune around his neck with her free left hand. They both could breathe; the blue stone was a kind of exterior gill. The eel made one last lunge at them from the corner of her eye, but they swam away unscathed, Corrag holding onto Beithune, sharing the stone's life-giving oxygenation.

  It was cold, and the murky water made picking a direction difficult. Now they were alone, sinking deeper into the cold. The others had drowned, their useless avatar bodies hitting and bouncing on the bottom sand. Holding hands in order to share the stone, Corrag and Beithune swam carelessly, letting the current carry them over a ledge. In the distance was a hammerhead shark. It lunged, circling back once it sensed them. There seemed to be a shipwreck below the ledge, the remains of its cargo strewn over the seabed. There were trunks and books, pages waving, the words on them printed in some strange forgotten language, candelabra and shoes encrusted with barnacles and sea life.

  They drifted over the wreck. Beithune tugged at her. It seemed he wanted to explore. Corrag resisted, but then relented, not knowing exactly what he saw down there.

  The boat's name was Aschelon -- written on the stern and the steam stacks, and its home port was Le Havre. Time was no longer relative for those onboard. Skeletal victims were scattered randomly, tatters of clothes still hanging on most of them. Whatever accident had befallen the ship, it must have occurred instantly, trapping the passengers forever in the poses of ordinary shipboard life: eating meals, lying in bed or playing cards around small tables in the berths, stuck in the passages where the water had risen instantly around them. Beithune picked a door and pushed against it, then kicked it open. He motioned for Corrag to follow and she did, grabbing him by the hand so he could breathe again.

  They drifted through the ship's labyrinth of halls and decks, eventually finding themselves in the captain's quarters. Beithune gathered up a knife and an astrolabe from the floor. An open closet door revealed a book with Hebrew letters on its faded cloth covers, swaying languidly in the invisible currents. Corrag examined it and heard a voice. It was Beithune.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Keep it."

  Corrag stashed the book in a pocket of her vest. Then they slipped out the door and drifted, welling over the deck of the ship. Appearing out of the murkiness, the shark dove at them. Corrag tilted her head, sensing its approach, its cold eyes. They were prey now. It shot forward, no longer circling, with hunger-sharpened senses. Beithune kicked and struck at it with the captain's knife, tearing its throat. The shark made a serpentine struggle in retreat, swimming away, trailing a silty ribbon of blood. Beithune tugged at her, and they followed the shark's trail of blood into the blackness of the deep.

  They kicked against the upwelling of the water, attempting to swim deeper. The blackness was broken in the distance by a faint luminescence. The lights were coming from a stone structure, turrets and a tower in the center -- some sort of castle. Beithune and Corrag descended and slowly drifted around the castle wall until they came to a set of ruined stone stairs at the top of which was a set of ominous doors. In front of the stone stairs loomed a sword, its blade encased in flames. Corrag dropped the blue stone in the pocket of her vest and held the book instead. She approached the sword and with her free left hand reached for the flaming blade. She gripped the blade and pulled. The doors opened. She dropped the sword and swam for the inside, holding her breath. Beithune followed, barely squeezing through before the doors swung shut again silently. The two of them stood in the courtyard of the ancient castle, surrounded by warriors in armor slumped against wooden tables and flat out on the floor, seemingly either dead or asleep. The warriors began to rustle, awakening. The two of them could breathe unaided again as if on land, but Corrag’s breath came raspily, as if she had a cold.

  "Where are we?" asked Corrag.

  “The King of the Underworld. All the dead heroes are coming back to life because we found them. It's been thousands of years for them asleep. They will probably try to kill us. Look in the mirror,” said Beithune.

  He dragged Corrag over to a mirror on the wall besides one of the banquet tables. They both were dragons, reflecting scaly green skin and claws.

  "What do we do? We'll never be able to fight them all. It’s not like we literally can breathe fire."

  "Let them kill us. And whatever you do, don't think of yourself as Corrag or think of family or home. You'll never get back," said Beithune. He took her hand to reassure her.

  "I'm scared now. This is exactly what I feared," said Corrag.

  "Don't be scared," warned Beithune, his voice rising.

  The first of the warriors rose silently now and rushed around the hall, spreading the alarm. The dead men all grouped as one and surrounded Beithune and Corrag. One old man with a javelin approached tentatively, and Beithune jumped at him with a swirling kick as the old man lunged with the spear. The warriors rushed in with swords drawn, hacking at the two of them. Corrag was surrounded. She curled into a fetal ball, holding her breath, as she felt the swords in turn falling on her, cleaving her legs and shattering her ribs. She could hear the thudding of metal against flesh, the spurting of her blood and the gore of her dragon body spattering against the walls and the armor clad bodies of the furious warriors. She listened for Beithune's voice to tell her it was all right, but she didn't hear him. She fought against the desire to hold thoughts of her parents, Ben, the Hunnewells of New Albion. Instead she concentrated on feeling the book she held in one hand and the blue stone in the other, and blocking out the furious blood lust of the undersea castle's ancient heroes.

  Awakening as if from a dream, Corrag opened her eyes and looked around. There was Beithune lying next to her, and now the sun was out. It was midday and hot and the ground was dusty, and the noises and smells of people and animals, sheep, goats and donkeys, pigeons in boxes, erupted into her consciousness. They were both covered in scratches as if they had crawled through thorn bushes, and their clothes were torn and in ribbons, hanging on them like old skins off two snakes. Standing, they both did their best to cover themselves. They were beside a stall selling fabrics in a busy market on the outskirts of a great city in the desert. The sun was huge and broiling. They looked for shelt
er under the shade of a tent, flapping white cloths held down with stakes in the sand. The wind kicked up, and clouds suddenly swept over the surface of the sun, blackening the day.

  Inside the tent, a crowd of people surrounded two men, one standing and the other on a pallet raised above the ground. The lying man had his eyes closed, and the standing man spoke in soft words, addressing himself to the crowd of onlookers. Corrag could not hear the words he was speaking, but was curious. Who was he? She felt she needed to hear. She thrust forward through the crowd. The standing man turned and addressed himself to a redheaded woman who knelt by the pallet. Corrag couldn’t hear what he was saying. He seemed to want to console the woman. Then he turned his attention to the man lying there before him lifelessly. He held his arms over the man and turned his palms upward, in a begging pose. The crowd continued to buzz expectantly, as if this was all a show.

  The dead man sat upright, and an audible gasp rose through the air. Corrag turned to Beithune who had reached her side. They exchanged a knowing glance.

  “Now what?” thought Corrag.

  “I don’t know. Let’s wait and see,” was Beithune’s corresponding response.

  Down from the tent’s roof beams came a rope, and a young boy swung into the room from his lookout post on the roof. He shouted a warning, and the crowd slowly began to disperse, leaving the sick man, the healer and several dozen disciples to face the coming danger. A group of soldiers burst in through the side entrance as the last of the crowd disappeared back into the streets of the town. The soldiers carried drawn swords and advanced in an orderly, aggressive phalanx to surround the bearded prophet and his party, Corrag and Beithune among them, blending in easily by their wounds and ragged appearance. The sick man rose from the pallet and with the aid of crutches calmly approached his healer and kissed him on the cheek. Afterwards, he made his way quickly through the crowd of disciples. They stepped apart for him. At the tent’s exit, a soldier dropped a handful of coins into his palm. That was the signal for the regiment to round up the remaining people and force march them through the streets of the town to a hill on the outskirts.

  The prophet seemed to accept his fate, carrying the nailed wooden beams on his shoulders slowly, but without stumbling. In the distance, they could see a body of shimmering water, silver in the late afternoon. The boy who had warned of the soldiers tried to help him, but a soldier knocked him in the back of the legs with the swing of a poleax, and then stomped his back where he rolled on the ground. The crowd marched solemnly on.

  Corrag stopped at the boy’s side. She could hear his sobbing as she leaned down and put her face next to his. She touched the warm blood on his cheek where he’d been kicked, and put the cool blue undersea stone on his face, rubbing the bloody wound with it.

  “That’s good,” Beithune’s thought registered.

  Corrag slowly stood along with the boy. The three of them made their way up the rocky trail to catch up with the crowd. At the summit, she could hear the groans as the prophet’s body was nailed to the wooden cross and hoisted in the air. The dazzling light of the harsh sun made her blink and doubt what she was seeing, but the faces of the onlookers, their distress and suffering, convinced her that this was the crucifix of the Lord Jesus she had heard vague mentions of all her life. She and Beithune sat a distance away and watched silently, until they took his body down. The rumble of thunder indicated a coming desert storm. Corrag smelled wild flowers as the rain began.

  They followed to the tomb where they laid His body, and then the crowd dispersed with the rain and rising water in the ditches of the road.

  In the night they found themselves back out on the same road trying to find the tomb. The storm had passed, and they could hear the gurgle of water in the ditch. Stars and a crescent moon provided just enough illumination to find the road underfoot.

  “I don’t know if we’ll find it out here,” said Corrag. She was cold.

  Beithune smiled. He held out his astrolabe.

  “This will help,” he said.

  “Are you sure this is the right move?”

  “Aren’t you?” countered Beithune. They were out on the rocky edge of the mountain. The smell of smoke wafted up on a draft of warmer air from the valley. Down below were the fires of shepherds, and across on a nearby summit were the outskirts of a walled city. They could see a man approaching over the rocky terrain. When he reached them he stopped.

  “Are you travelers from the islands?” he asked. They couldn't see his face.

  “Yes,” said Beithune hurriedly.

  “And what is it you seek?”

  “The tomb where they’ve buried the prophet,” said Corrag.

  “Treasure seekers, then,” said the man.

  “Yes, absolutely,” said Corrag.

  “Follow me,” said the man.

  He led them across the mountains. They walked for hours until the dawn came. His pace never wavered during the trek. Corrag felt an immense weariness overtake her and waves of nausea and dizziness as they reached the rock in front of the cave where the body had been laid. The man turned and smiled.

  “We’re here,” he said. Beithune and Corrag slumped to the ground, exhausted.

  “We need to move the stone away,” said Beithune, finally looking up.

  “Ah,” said the man. He looked at Corrag. “Do you agree?”

  “Of course,” said Corrag.

  “Go ahead, then,” said the man. He sat down cross-legged on the ground and waited. Beithune and Corrag looked at each other. Corrag walked around the stone, examining it and testing it, pushing. It was massive. Beithune and she strained with all their might against the rock but did not budge it. They stepped away, defeated.

  “Try one on one side, one on the other,” said the man.

  They got on opposite sides of the stone and alternated pushes, but that didn’t work either. Corrag stepped away, and Beithune wiped the sweat off his face.

  “Here,” said Corrag. She handed Beithune the blue stone and he wiped it on his forehead as she had done. It calmed them down.

  "You need to help us," said Corrag, turning to the seated man, who was looking past them into the distance.

  “You had to do it yourselves,” he said.

  “Well, we can’t. We need help,” said Corrag.

  “Well,” said the man, standing slowly and stretching his arms behind his back.

  He got on one side of the stone and pushed. He was much stronger than the two of them. Single-handedly he rolled the stone a complete circuit and stepped out of the way, revealing the entrance to the tomb. Corrag rushed inside, followed by her cousin.

  When their eyes adjusted to the dark, they could see the Teacher seated on a rock ledge inside the tomb, holding his head in his hands. The wrapping on his body had fallen away from his face and upper body, but his hips and legs were still swaddled in cloths. He held his hands, wounded and bruised. He looked at the two of them. His eyes were filled with an eerie green light as he smiled. Darkness overcame his features.

  “Flee chilren. The devils are coming,” he said.

  “What about you? Will they come for you?” asked Corrag.

  “About me only the Father knows. He lacks a sense of urgency sometimes.”

  “You need help,” said Corrag.

  “Child, I will have help. You have played your small part. Now flee before it is too late.”

  “Here,” said Corrag. She handed him her prize, the blue stone. The teacher took it and held it in gratitude. Then the first reports of the mob approaching reached their ears, high pitched lurid wails, like a pack of wolves with a scent of blood bringing them on. In a second the first pair of eyes stared into the cave entrance.

  “You’re late,” said the Teacher, standing.

  Corrag and Beithune ran from the entrance towards the back of the tomb. Corrag searched with her hands for a place to hide. The noise of metal on metal and groans of pain signified the battle had ensued. When she looked back she could see the flashes
of light glancing off the shields of angelic warriors.

  “Here, Corrag.” Beithune reached out for her. She grabbed his hand, and he pulled her up through a chamber, a hole in the rock. They were rising in a well of water, breathless, toward the surface light, the two of them holding hands and then separate but somehow linked in their thoughts. She could hear Beithune laughing.

  She removed the headset. It was morning. The game was over, leaving her the vivid memories, stronger even than real life. And there was the lettering tattoed on the palm of her left hand: מנא,מנא,תקל,ופ רסין.

  Beithune slept on the floor at the foot of the bed. The clear, cold light told her it was just beyond dawn, and there would be nobody awake yet at that hour. She got out of bed and crept across the room, put on some clothes and walked carefully down the hall and downstairs. She walked down the hill, through the woods and back up the next rise to where the road crossed a small creek.

  Thoughts of Edmundstown filled her head: Ricky and Alana, the high school, her friends Gurgie and Mathew, and of course Ben Calder. She missed her old room and the comforts of her old routines. Now in this new world there was nothing that was easy. She liked learning new things and new ways, but a sudden dread had seized her with the thought that she might never see old friends, never find her way back to the security of a Federation childhood. She sat on a rock and looked at the photos in her emosponder, especially the one of Ben in the selfie he’d last sent her. She hadn’t heard from him in months. She searched for news accounts of the Basin fighting. There were detailed articles about several recent skirmishes and the new strategies Federation military spokesmen publicly acknowledged were needed to gain an advantage over the indigenous fighters and their low-tech, shamanist, insurgent tactics. She did a search for Ben Calder on the lists of dead or wounded from publicly available HumInt Corps press releases. There was nothing. Then she typed in a quick text to his profile: “Now I’m in a world apart. Except my heart.” This was from the Vences’ song A World Apart from their album Green Gas Works. She knew he had the song on his playlist, and so her text would be highlighted on his Oomo. She sent it and then sat on the bridge as the water ran. Her pain and loneliness were probably a necessary corollary to growing up, but she wanted some small amount of feeling pampered and cared for. If only Ben would send her something, anything. An acknowledgement of her existence would have been enough. But nothing came back from him.