by T. Wyse
Their light felt like warmth upon a fever, of a confection fallen into clay. Not quite queasy, but just a tinge of growing vileness to that gravity.
Above, the blackbird arrows gathered from all directions and flowed with enough of a pattern, he felt the presence of their unified intent long before the line thickened.
He kept on, and though the road grew even smoother and wider with the stamping of legions of feet, the soil gripped him even more than the gulping loose sands.
A diamond-rimmed crown grew between the horns, forged of white bone rather than gold. A jeweled cyclopean eye rose, dead in the centre of the beast’s skull, with a cluster of smaller eyes spattered around the growing head.
The creature’s lower jaw showed itself, sprouting through the sleeping sands. Jagged white teeth grew up, forcing the road to veer around them in a kind of cautious reverence of even the smallest slivers. The teeth stood upright exclusively, rising to his knee height, and quickly his surroundings grew into something worthy of some rotted shark’s mouth.
As darkness deepened the brown of the sands around him, he realized the ice upon his looming cyclops was glass and the kaleidoscope colours were not a trick of the light. Both horns and all the eyes, big and small, poured coloured light outward, doing little to the drab brown but casting the clustered forest of teeth around him into a universe of colours.
The colours shivered with tiny shadows, far away but changing the plain white slabs into lively aquariums of movement. He walked in a near trance, in awe. People, many people, moved inside, and electric light poured forth from their fortress.
He gathered himself from the stupor, the angular rainbow of walls littering the ground around him like some broken graveyard. Wolf swayed in and out amongst them, disappearing behind a cluster, only to slip into the shadows again a moment later.
The crows hung above the crown of the cyclops, like some black ribbon in its absent hair. They slipped downward, a black curtain moving over the central eye of the building ahead like a drooping eyelid.
Wolf staggered ahead, his discomfort impossible to cover with forced grace.
“This must be the place.” Kechua shrugged. The feeling of depth—the clinging electricity—only grew.
“This place indeed feels wrong,” the creature growled.
“I feel it too.” Kechua paused, glancing to one of the smooth white shards, its pointed tip standing at the level of his eyes. “Can you get closer, or is it going to keep you away?”
“I am no mere . . . ” Wolf snarled. “I will follow you. I will not be stopped.”
The boy leaned forward, reaching to feel the smooth surface of the white wall. His hand whipped back with enough force to strain the muscle in his shoulder, a reflex that fired before he understood the feeling driving it. It wasn’t quite electricity he felt, but an overconcentrated sense of history; of voices all woven into a single moment. It was like he was a tiny child again, losing himself in the smothering tide of a hundred Glalihs folded into one.
His hand trembled just short of the slab again, close enough to feel the subtle heat radiating off the surface. He couldn’t force another taste, and his hand shyly returned to his side. “It’s not wrong, not exactly. It’s a lot, folded into one and coming out all at once. There’s screaming and pain, but it’s . . . ” He tried to find it without touching the stone again, but he could feel the memory of the shaman’s staff stilling his tiny hands.
“It should not be. Should not be here at the very least, or now,” Wolf growled into a near mumble.
“Why aren’t they repelled, like that Aspect? Like us?” Kechua muttered, glancing at the black veil of crows against the building.
“Likely, something they want is inside,” Wolf rumbled. The eye drooped further down, and Kechua was snapped out of his pensive stupor as Wolf’s form gulped entirely into blackness. “Quicken your feet or draw a circle.”
Kechua stumbled back into the path and chased the patchwork of light as it receded before him. He fought to find a rhythm in his step, but at once, the pit fell out below him. His legs locked out of shock, as if he were on a lean crystalline veil above a yawning black abyss below. He looked around, at Wolf’s shrinking shape and the fading light. There was nothing to indicate this place was special, no convergence of teeth pointing inward, but he had to fight to move beyond this one spot; had to force his trembling legs to slide forward.
His heart pounding, he fell forward into the sand, twisting his wrist but scrambling forward in the packed earth. Wolf hadn’t noticed, and the conoidal void’s glossy side grew under his feet again. It was so much like the Shaman’s tent but deeper. Rather than being content to merely be silent, it hungrily sucked in the very rhythm of the earth into some unfathomable black hole.
Chasing the remnants of the rainbow light, he slid to a stop, slamming hard against the smooth white wall that served as a lower lid to the sleepy eye. The shining glass stood just above his eyeline and no door offered him sanctuary, only the picture of the smooth-shaped white stretching out in two paired bulges far in the distance.
He gripped the wall, only to have the burst of memory wash over him, flinging his arms back and sending him into the hard ground. Snarling, he leapt to the wall and clung a moment, his head poking into the light as his sense filled with the force of a river of stones striking his head.
He fell again, landing hard upon his shoulder. “Door, other side,” he sputtered. He rose to his feet, only to lean against the wall as the curtain of crows closed on the light, their path fluttering just above his head.
“They don’t seem interested in me,” Kechua whispered to Wolf.
“Their desire is pointed inward. They don’t want you, not enough, not yet.” The shadow chuckled darkly.
A few prickling eyes burned, blooming in the sea of blackness beyond, though they were still. He paused, gripping the smaller of his clubs. Would the wood be able to carve a circle as potent as the staff had? The tower to the right of his arrival silenced the thought by flickering into beckoning light through the wall of black. The other tower remained dark and flowed thick with the crows, so he made the simpler choice and begun his path around.
He moved in the dark, towards his island of light at the far tower. He kept his fingers gently on the wall, hoping whatever spell the place wove would keep the dogs at bay long enough. The woven memories washed over his fingers like he slammed it with a hammer, but the subtle warmth numbed them too. The wall’s song swirled and changed, whispering in a wave like rolling earth, filling his ears with numbing mud; clotting in his mouth like foreign mucus.
When he arrived at the crease where the bulge of the tower met the wall, a new chorus threaded its way among the dizzying music. A shrieking and metallic grinding rumbled against his arm, loose metal rattling upon dried teeth. It hurt him with every step, but at least it allowed him clarity of thought. His heart sank when halfway around the tower’s base, the light stuttered into the dimmest remnant, the colours not enough to cast themselves on the white teeth around. His arm ached and sent spasming pulses, trying to free itself from the wall. Kechua feared losing the guidance in case the dim halo died around the tower, sending him helplessly into the inky embrace of the night.
The shadows gathered, and just shy of the pale halo sat creatures on all fours, eyes glowing low to the ground in some anticipatory half pounce. He found himself with both palms flat against the tower, aching and protesting, his cheek crackling with a burning hatred. The sea of red eyes formed a second dotted halo, bucking, and swaying like water.
The red line blinked into nothingness as he passed further along the curve of the tower, and the sweet scent of the plants woke him from the aching trance in his arms and face. The faint feeling of rustling wings washed over the back of his neck, though he couldn’t place the actual sound.
A tiny puddle of light grew somewhere down his path, and it at least gave him hope as he left the remaining light of the tower and returned to the flat progress of the wal
l.
Again, he had the feeling of wings upon his neck, and after a quick glance of his eyes to confirm the line of red was absent, he made another mistake of the evening. He turned his cheek from the wall to check the fluttering feeling, and both of his hands slipped from the gnawing white. The fluttering and cold dark rushed around in place of the pain, yawning in front of his eyes. He could only ‘see’ the thing in contrast with the pale halo of the tower, pointed tendrils wrapping around his eyes and clinging with cold and clammy barbs. They slithered across his face, and with them, they brought the fluttering sensation of a sleeping limb.
He tried to recoil, going so far as to slip onto the padded earth, but the feeling clung to him like algae in stagnant water. He whipped his head towards the light and launched himself into a furious and chaotic run, desperately clawing towards the blue puddle somewhere ahead.
He swam more than ran, in a thick and gripping molasses that stuck to him and gripped him. He made the vague pace towards the light of a frustrated dream as the feeling of numb mothwings battered against his ears. The feeling covered his face, gripping at his nose with a lapping savor. In a dizzy confusion, he felt as though tugged back while being watched, like slipping through a cave of silent bats.
Blue light poured into his eyes, melting away the clinging chill like an inferno let against the lightest snowfall. He skidded over the earth, turning onto his side from the vertigo of the uneven cling of whatever grasped him finally letting go.
His limbs felt like they had run for days without stop, meeting the earth to slow his fall. His pack took the greater brunt of the weight, and even his clubs reached to prop him.
He stared into the blackness, squinting with aching temples to see what had touched him. No predictable pair of glowing red eyes met him in challenge, but he could feel it. He tried to trace some shape about its form—tried to find a centre or even a head—but the carving tools in his mind found no purchase on the dark. It was only a feeling, a static nothing of dancing shadow, the unsureness of the mind in the blackest and deepest cave. The blackness puddled against the offending blue, rippling gently. To Kechua’s horror, it trickled out like sludge through the crack under a door.
He slipped backwards against his sluggy limbs, unsure and unwilling after their punishment. He tried to get them up, to move, to stand, and yet they barely flailed, barely shifted him backwards as the nothing static shivered in.
A plume of blue flame awakened him, sparking his nulled senses from a stupor much deeper than he realized he had been in. The flame shot against the nothingness, boring a hole in its middle, carefully arcing around Kechua.
“Don’t move! Just stay!” a girl’s voice screamed. “Oh god, no!” she continued, and a second burst of flame cast a searing blue against the world. The heat immediately caused him to sweat, his waking limbs fighting to get up.
“Get up and get in! What are you doing!” a male voice screamed over the grinding hiss of the flame duet. “We can’t drag you, just go!”
Kechua managed a half crab walk backwards and stumbled on the stairs. He managed to see the pair of them on his right and left, both holding staffs fully vomiting blue flame against the dark.
The forms of lean dogs bit back at the touch of the heat and light, snapping and retreating, but they kept in a firm circle, always closing quickly back in. He scrambled back up the steps and found himself beyond a pair of glass doors. They projected the fire into the air itself, and numb dark lashed back harder and harder.
“He’s in! He’s in!” she screamed, and the pair of them retreated slowly, the plumes of their flames carefully receding as they each crept into a single open door.
“Up more, watch the corn,” he said with equal parts calm and a significant dose of giddy terror.
“Okay, okay, and in!” she shouted, and they each whipped the heads of their staffs up, bringing the large glass doors to a pairing close in perfect synch with one another.
“What . . . what?” she asked, stumbling on her words. “At night?” She continued her half-chewed thought while twisting a knob on the staff to choke the last lingering bits of flame. “Why?”
Kechua found himself trembling, though not because of the cold touch of the clawing dark. The floor beneath him was pale concrete, and a screaming feeling pulsed through him, louder and clearer than before. It was like the ruined college’s feeling of memory, of stamping and monotonous feet woven upon each other, but folded upon itself a thousand times over. One clear feeling did not sing out above the others. One clear pace or habitual beat did not rise to the top of the swirling whirlpool of memory, and as such, he felt his very soul writhing as he struggled to climb to his knees.
What was worse, however, was the utter chaos of it below. Just as he steadied himself a little, rising at least with blurred eyes thrust wide open, a different tide of screaming agony washed over and threw him into the opposing wall of the entry hall. Not just one drumming circle roared below him, building the pressure in his skull to explosion, but layers upon layers of them were stacked in the bony clay around him. All of them fought for attention; all of them desperate to be heard and felt.
The pressure built to explosion inside his skull as an entire race’s worth of voices shrieked against his senses. An unnumbered legion of lifetimes coursed through him in either some monastic chant or demonic hymn.
“I . . . ” He gasped, his voice flowing outward like the old Shaman’s. He struggled to find the word. Not to choose it, but to summon it.
“He must be a trader. It must have been an accident,” the boy answered for him. He tried to help Kechua to his feet, though kept a hand wrapped around the flame staff. “Look at him. I don’t think he’s slept in days, and that might be a concussion on his eye.”
Kechua managed to remain sitting against the rightmost wall, and he bobbed upon the edge of the void’s whirlpool. He fought desperately against the rising nausea reaching the top of this throat.
New voices bubbled up, flowing over him with a rattling cool in one moment, the feeling and habits of everyday life expressed to him with the force of a jet engine against his ear. In another moment, a wave of screaming despair crushed against his chest, the voices being stilled in chunks but leaving the crushing heat.
“Are you carrying on your person any weapons, for instance firearms or knives; any incendiaries of any kind from gasoline down to a lighter or even matches?” The boy’s voice somehow rang in Kechua’s ears, and focusing on their words were the only thing keeping him afloat on the stormy ocean threatening to suck him under.
The girl chuckled and gave a whooshing slap on her hips to indicate his clubs. “I’d say so.”
Kechua staggered onto watery feet, gasping, and retching as he leaned on the wall, wherein a new set of the circled history rose to attack him. He swayed on his feet, his legs swimming and his head spinning in near explosion. He could find no firm footing within this woven madness.
“Just humor him. It’ll go faster.” She leaned back onto her wall, giving a continuing stare into the dark they had just fought back. “I know you’re tired. We just have to do the prelims and we can get you into a cot.”
He swayed in place and squinted at the boy, clearly expecting an answer. “Weapons.” He fought out and drew a ragged breath, realizing he had forgotten to breathe against the cacophony. “Yes.”
“We ask that you leave them here, including any drugs, alcohol, or chemicals of any kind,” the boy continued, and Kechua found the faintest bit of clarity in the storm, the familiarity that the boy spoke; the practiced way it moved from his lips. “Really, you can just drop your pack here. We will keep it safe, I promise.”
“No,” Kechua murmured. “I can’t leave them.” He fought out.
“It’s alright, we really won’t take them.” The girl sighed softly. “This is a school and we have a lot of children here. Can’t be too careful. If you’re willing, we’ll even consider any of the barred list as barter.”
“Not here”—
he sucked in a rattling breath—“to trade.”
The boy wavered warily, and for a moment, Kechua was swallowed by the scream. “Fair enough. Are you accompanied by any others, and are you here representing any group?”
“Oh god, I hope there’s nobody out there,” the girl whispered, her hand rising to touch her cheek in pensive worry.
“Only me.” Kechua gasped.
“If you have come for shelter, we cannot offer it in long term unless you have a specialized skillset of use to the school. While you may not have come here to barter, we do accept almost anything you can think of—seed, medicine, information as currency—and will trade fairly for it.”
“Music too,” the girl added softly.
“Someone.” Kechua forced his gaze up the stairs before immediately throwing his eyes back to the oasis of the boy, nausea overwhelming him. “Need to . . . find.”
“Ah, sibling? Relative? What is their name?”
“Don’t know,” he sputtered, his eyes gripping closed and his face scrunching as if struck. “Man . . . coming,” he said, forcing the words out. “Has staff.” He took a gasping breath to struggle out a new sentence. “Let me speak to someone in charge. I have to warn . . . ”
“I don’t . . . we don’t do that.” The girl touched Kechua’s arm gently, steadying him a little. “He must’ve been running for ages. He’s burning up and his heartbeat is crazy. Maybe we should get Professor Roberts. She’ll know if it’s a concussion or not. God, he can barely stand,” she continued.
“Can’t stay.” Kechua huffed. Her touch felt so funnily familiar; the somewhat rough but delicate hands. An ache in his chest centred him a little.
“We’ll get you a bed for the night, and we’ll have one of the staff talk to you. Chances are Professor Barret will see you if you ask, but we can’t guarantee it. In any case, everyone gets one free stay and a meal, the price being a debrief of what you’ve been doing.”