Wincavan unfolded the robe and laid it atop a cabinet. He wondered which of his forebears had found the combination to open the cubicles. The code was a family secret that was passed from generation to generation. He himself, childless now, had long ago made preparations to pass the information to his sister’s son, who was worthy.
One by one, he removed the crystals: lush Omyra; dark, haunted Sycharis; milky Ossia, bone-white home of the epic poet Aran Kolmindi (whose works are as lost as his world); Candliss’s beloved Kahjadan… They warmed his palms, and his eyes misted with the certainty that he would not see their magnificent phantoms again in this life. He wrapped them in his clothes, remote Endikali in a shirt, drowned Sensien in a sock, Shalinol and Moritaigne and bleak Mindilmas (where MacAido had lost his life) in a pair of trousers with patches on both knees.
When he had finished and tied them all together, he returned to his room and dressed. He debated taking the goliat flagon with him. On this final night in the Hall, he realized it was all he had left of his father, and so he stuffed it into a pocket. Then he secured what provisions he could, hauled everything out to the stable which he’d helped his grandfather build, and lashed it down on Armagon’s flanks.
The big wassoon watched him curiously, pawing at the soft clay, bending its head to the saddle. It snorted when he led it out into the snow.
He went back for his scarf and a hat, and, in an afterthought, returned to the museum. He strode lovingly down the gleaming aisles, trailing fingertips on the cases. Somehow dust never settled there. He paused before Memori Collin’s black weapon, sheathed in a matching holster, resting against red cloth and the ages. Her name was sculpted in stark silver characters on the bronze plate, above five digits he knew were a date but which meant nothing to him. Somewhere in the room he heard a sob, and he got the key, unlocked the case, and removed the weapon.
The black metal was cool to his fingertips. He slid it out of the holster. It was heavier than he remembered. The grip slipped down into his palm, and his index finger curled round the trigger. Still squatting, he extended the weapon, peering through the sight, and slowly tracked it round the room, as though an invisible enemy lurked somewhere among its shining exhibits. It felt oddly comforting. He took it downstairs to test it against the courtyard wall.
He pushed a stud forward and the thing vibrated. He pulled the trigger. A narrow white beam sliced through the stone. It was quite satisfying: the weapon should provide adequate protection against goliats, who were now very much to be feared, or any of the few carnivores that would not hesitate to attack a lone man. He slid it into his coat. Hero’s weapon. In a sense, Rotifer was right: Wincavan did have a taste for magic.
He left the front door unlocked so they wouldn’t have to break it down. Then, bending his head into the falling snow, he mounted the wassoon, steered it out of the courtyard, and turned onto the West Road, toward the forest and Grimrock.
The woods engulfed him. The only sounds were the muffled whump of Armagon’s hooves, the whisper of snow falling into the trees, and the rasp of his breathing. He pulled his fur-lined hood over his head and tightened the drawstrings. Soon the land started to rise.
He crossed the wooden bridge over the Malumet, trudged by the farms and the Battle Green (no one knew why it was so named), tasted the large wet flakes, and began to count the cost of his actions.
The tower was terribly far. In good weather, in the summer of his youth, it had been a long, exhausting trek. For an old man, weighed down with despair, it seemed hopeless.
He rode until almost dawn, to put distance between himself and the Community. If experience held, the appraisers would arrive at the Hall in the late morning to begin preparing for the auction. When they discovered he was missing, they would assume he had fled into the gaunt structures of the inner City, and they would search there. No one would expect him to leave the warm confines of the ancient buildings. There was, after all, no other place in the world where a man could live.
Nevertheless, Wincavan was cautious. Fearing the possibility of pursuit, he made his camp behind a heavy thicket, using one of the light tapestries of the City Builders to set up a lean-to, pitching it against a fallen tree. It sheltered both himself and—to a lesser extent—Armagon. He tried to build a fire, but the wind came from all directions, and the driving snow smothered the flames. Finally he gave up, wrapped himself in his blankets, and drifted wearily to sleep.
In the morning he woke stiff and cold. The storm had blown itself out, but the sun was a yellow smear in an overcast sky. He got the fire going this time, put on a pot of coffee and a slab of veal. Then he pushed swollen feet down into his boots.
He was on his way quickly enough, driven by falling temperatures and the growing certainty that he would die if he could not reach the tower quickly. And yet, the risk entailed nothing so deadly as remaining in a Hall bereft of its living phantoms, confronting the terrible awareness of a future limited to Rotifer’s practicalities. Surely it was better to die out here than to stagger on from year to dreary year, burdened by his knowledge. In a sense, he was perhaps the last of the race of men, direct descendant of those who had tamed, and somehow lost, a universe. (Memori Collin’s metal weapon lay against his ribs.)
The crystals, still wrapped in his clothes, swayed gently on either flank of the wassoon.
He pulled his scarf up and wrapped it about his face. Saliva leaked into the garment and froze. Flurries blew up, and the wind rattled the trees. Gray shapes moved through the falling snow.
His hood was quite long, designed for severe weather. He might have been looking out of a tunnel, and the illusion carried some comfort. He tried to withdraw into a corner of his mind, away from the stiffening fingers and aching muscles and erratic lungs. His clothing grew heavy, and his heart pounded.
Periodically, he dismounted and walked. Armagon watched with luminous brown eyes, slowing his own pace to match.
The second night was less stormy, but the clear skies brought bitter temperatures. Wincavan quit early, got his shelter up, and slept by a steady fire.
In the morning he considered going back. He even turned the wassoon around, thinking to end the foolishness and save his life. But they’d gone only a few steps when he stopped, sat indecisively aboard his mount for perhaps ten minutes, and swung his head once more to the west.
Hour after hour, he searched the horizon for mountains. He would see them first, and, within a few hours, the tower. But even after that it would be at least two more days!
Hopeless. My God, it had been hopeless from the start.
In the end, he was overtaken by hallucinations, intensified perhaps by the gentle rhythm of muscle and sinew on which he rode. His father traveled beside him, and occasionally there was a third rider: sometimes it was Oliver Candliss, sometimes Memori Collin.
They wore their uniforms and sat straight on their mounts, urging him forward, eyes trained to the west. Grimrock is there, Emory! You don’t see it because your eyes are old now. But it is not far. Keep on.
On the fourth day, late in the afternoon, he fell out of the saddle. Deep snow cushioned him from serious injury, but he twisted his left elbow and knee. He limped badly after that, and the arm never stopped hurting.
He halted every couple of hours to put up his shelter and build a fire.
He came to regret his rashness, to regret it with all his heart. But in other, perhaps less rational moments, when his invisible companions rode with him, he seemed never to have known a fiercer pride, never to have experienced a more intense joy.
The frigid air stung his lungs, and his coat became an intolerable weight. While he counted his heartbeats, Memori Collin’s message changed: Emory, she whispered, her voice very like the wind moving across the snowfields, all we ever were rides with you. And he realized, yes, if I die it will be as though none of them ever lived.
And he knew it was so: Tears squeezed from his eyes and froze on his cheeks, and gasping in the knife air he urged the big a
nimal on.
So they rode together, Emory Wincavan and his father (young again) and Oliver Candliss and Memori Collin. In time the sharp edge of the cold diminished. The reins grew slack in his hands, and the world filled with the steady tread of the wassoon. Even the hallucinations disintegrated, until there was nothing but Armagon, the snow, and the knowledge of what he carried.
It was dark.
He clung to the creature’s furry neck, vaguely aware of its warmth. And his last thought, as the saddle slipped away from him, was whispered into the animal’s ear: Forgive me…
The goliats found him in the spring. Nearby lay the carcass of the mount.
They burned the body in accordance with tradition. Because he was not one of them, they could not invoke the blessings of the spirits of the place where he had fallen.
Memori Collin’s pistol burned unseen with him, and when the flames drove the temperature of the pile sufficiently high, it exploded, startling the onlookers.
They recovered the crystals and distributed them among the females, who admired them greatly, and put them aside for the solstice festival.
The flagon they knew as their own.
There was one among the goliats who recognized the old man’s features, who remembered the great hall at the edge of the Ruin, and the lambent specters flickering within its western chamber. After some difficulty, he acquired one of the jewels, possibly summer green Omyra. He inserted it into a rough leather pouch, which he tied to his belt. Afterward, he carried it always with him.
In time, when the goliats drove their enemies into the prairies to the north and east, he had occasion again to visit that haunted place. It was cold and dark, and he stood long in the shadowy courtyard. After a time, he extracted the jewel and held it aloft. “Thank you, Old One,” he said.
It glittered in the starlight.
NEVER DESPAIR
The rain began to fall as they threw the last few spadefuls of earth onto the grave.
Quait bowed his head and murmured the traditional farewell. Chaka looked at the wooden marker, which bore Flojian’s name, his dates, and the legend FAR FROM HOME.
She hadn’t cared all that much for Flojian. He was self-centered and he complained a lot and he always knew better ways to do things. But you could count on him to pull his weight, and now there were only two of them.
Quait finished, looked up, and nodded. Her turn. She was glad it was over. The poor son of a bitch had fallen on his head out of the upper level of a ruin, and during four excruciating days, they’d been able to do little for him. Pointless, silly way to die. “Flojian,” she said, “we’ll miss you.” She let it go at that because she meant it, and the rain was coming harder.
They retreated to their horses. Quait packed his spade behind his saddle and mounted in that awkward way that always left her wondering whether Lightfoot would chuck him off on the other side.
She stood looking up at him.
“What’s wrong?” He wiped the back of his hand against his cheek. His hat was jammed down on his head. Water spilled out of it onto his shoulders.
“It’s time to give it up,” Chaka said. “Go home. If we can.” Thunder rumbled. It was getting very dark.
“Not the best time to discuss this.” Quait waited for her to get on her horse. The rain pounded the soft earth, fell into the trees.
She looked back toward the grave. Flojian lay with the ruins now, buried like them beneath the rolling hills and the broad forest. It was the sort of grave he would have preferred, she supposed. He liked stuff that had been dead a long time. She pulled her jacket tight and climbed into the saddle. Quait moved off at a brisk trot.
They’d buried him at the top of the highest ridge in the area. Now they rode slowly along the crest, picking their way among broken concrete casts and petrified timbers and corroded metal, the detritus of the old world, sinking slowly into the ground. The debris had been softened by time: earth and grass had rounded the rubble, spilled over it, absorbed its sharp edges. Eventually, she supposed, nothing would be left, and visitors would stand on the ruins and not know they were even here.
Quait bent against the rain, his hat pulled low over his eyes, his right hand pressed against Lightfoot’s flank. He looked worn and tired and discouraged, and Chaka realized for the first time that he too had given up. That he was only waiting for someone else to take responsibility for admitting failure.
They dropped down off the ridge, and rode through a narrow defile bordered by blocks and slabs.
“You okay?” he asked.
Chaka was fine. Scared. Exhausted. Wondering what they would say to the widows and mothers when they got home. There had been six when they started. “Yes,” she said. “I’m okay.”
The grotto lay ahead, a square black mouth rimmed by chalkstone and half-hidden by a bracken. They’d left a fire burning, and it looked warm and good. They dismounted and led their horses inside.
Quait threw a couple of logs onto the blaze. “Cold out there,” he said.
Lightning flashed in the entrance.
They put the teapot onto its boiling rock, fed and watered the animals, changed into dry clothes, and sank down in front of the fire. They didn’t talk much for a long time. Chaka sat, wrapped in a blanket, enjoying being warm and away from the rain. Quait made some notes in the journal, trying to establish the site of Flojian’s grave, so that future travelers, if there were any, could find it. After a while he sighed and looked up, not at her, but over her shoulder, into the middle distance. “What do you think?”
“I think we’ve had enough. Time to go home.”
He nodded. “I hate to go back like this.”
“Me too. But it’s time.” It was hard to guess what the grotto had been. It was not a cave. The walls were artificial. Whatever color they might once have possessed had been washed away. Now they were gray and stained, and they curved into a high ceiling. A pattern of slanted lines, probably intended for decorative effect, cut through them. The grotto was wide, wider than the council hall, which could accommodate a hundred people; and it went far back under the hill. Miles, maybe.
As a general principle, she avoided the ruins when she could. It wasn’t easy because they were everywhere. But all sorts of critters made their homes among them. And the structures were dangerous, as Flojian had found out. Prone to cave-ins, collapsing floors, you name it. The real reason, though, was that she had heard too many stories about spectres and demons among the crumbling walls. She was not superstitious, and would never have admitted her discomfort to Quait. Still, you never knew.
They had found the grotto a few hours after Flojian got hurt, and moved in, grateful for the shelter. But she was anxious to be gone now.
Thunder shook the walls, and they could hear the steady rhythm of rainwater pouring off the ridge. It was still late afternoon, but all the light had drained out of the day.
“Tea should be ready,” said Chaka.
Quait shook his head. “I hate to give it up. We’ll always wonder if it might have been over the next hill.”
She had just picked up the pot and begun to pour when a bolt exploded directly overhead. “Close,” she said, grateful for the protection of the grotto.
Quait smiled, took his tea, and lifted it in a mock toast to whatever powers lived in the area. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe we should take the hint.”
The bolt was drawn by a corroded crosspiece, a misshapen chunk of dissolving metal jutting from the side of the hill. Most of the energy dissipated into the ground. But some of it leaped to a buried cable, followed it down to a melted junction box, flowed through a series of conduits, and lit up several ancient circuit boards. One of the circuit boards relayed power into a long-dormant auxiliary system; another turned on an array of sensors which began to take note of sounds in the grotto. And a third, after an appropriate delay, threw a switch and activated the only program that still survived.
They ate well. Chaka had come across an unlucky turkey that
morning, and Quait added some berries and fresh-baked biscuit. They’d long since exhausted their store of wine, but a brook ran through the grotto about sixty yards back, and the water was clear and cold.
“It’s not as if we have any reason to think we’re close,” said Chaka. “I’m not sure I believe in it anyway. Even if it is out there, the price is too high.”
The storm eased with the coming of night. Rain still fell steadily, but it was light rain, not much more than mist.
Quait talked extensively through the evening, about his ambitions, about how important it was to find out who had built the great cities scattered through the wilderness, and what had happened to them, and about mastering the ancient wizardries. But she was correct, he kept saying, glancing her way, pausing to give her a chance to interrupt. It was better to be safe than sorry.
“Damn right,” said Chaka.
It was warm near the fire, and after a while Quait fell asleep. He’d lost twenty pounds since they’d left Illyria ten weeks before. He had aged, and the good-humored nonchalance that had attracted her during the early days had disappeared. Quait was all business now.
She tried to shake off her sense of despair. They were a long way from home, alone in a wilderness filled with savages and demons and dead cities in which lights blinked and music played and mechanical things moved. She shrank down in her blankets and listened to the water dripping off the trees. A log broke and fell into the fire.
She was not sure what brought her out of it, but she was suddenly awake, senses alert.
Someone, outlined in moonlight, illuminated from behind by the fire, was standing at the exit to the grotto, looking out.
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 21