“Do you mean that some other people, different from you, also live here?”
“In the ancient times, yes. Very different people. They had three eyes—one of them in their foreheads, where we have our ear. Their legs were different and stronger than ours, and they had wings. You’ll see Aytana when we get to her cottage.”
“What happened to them?”
“Essray took them to Heaven because they were very good. They were the builders of the Holy City.”
“So one day they flew up into the sky in big flying houses like the Star Carousel?” Erina inquired with condescending interest.
“Oh, no. I’ve told you: Essray took them up right into Heaven.”
Erina nodded.
“Why did Aytana stay here?” Duncan asked.
“To speak with the Ashuraii, to give them the key to the entire Holy City.”
“It will be quite interesting to talk to her,” Erina said.
After a one-hour walk, they found themselves at a wide, shallow stream. According to Captain Ziku, the stream meant they were very close to their destination.
Shortly after that, Maru noticed something ahead. “My captain, over there.”
Captain Ziku raised his head. A structure could be spotted in the midst of the vegetation.
“Is that what we are looking for?” Foxso’l asked.
“Yes, Captain,” answered Ziku. “It’s the only dwelling place in this forest.”
A few yards ahead, they came to a brown148 zungai cottage. It was small and rustic. A dense white smoke was coming from a chimney on top of its slanted roof. The only other distinctive features were two small windows hung with colorful drapes, and a small door on one side.
“Excuse me.” Tully turned to Duncan. “I must get to the captain.”
“Certainly.”
Private Tully hurried to join Ziku and Maru.
“What do you think of this story?” Duncan asked Erina, in a discreet tone.
“I don’t know. It’s mixed up with legend.”
“So it would seem, but what if an advanced civilization did thrive here? This Aytana might be the key to help us find some way off this planet.”
Erina pointed at the cottage. “That certainly does not look like any advanced space vehicle to me.”
According to the custom of his people, Captain Ziku clapped his hands repeatedly to call the attention of whoever dwelt in the cottage.
“Maybe nobody is at home,” said Foxso’l.
Ziku shook his head and pointed at the chimney, which was belching thick smoke.
The group had been waiting for about fifteen minutes when the captain clapped his hands once more. “Donya149 Aytana, Donya Aytana.”
“Excuse me, my Captain.”
Ziku turned around.
“I couldn’t find any footprints or trails,” Tully said.
“Strange.” Ziku rubbed both the top of his ear and his forehead. “We’ll enter the cottage,” he decided and unsheathed his sword.
Maru and Tully checked their weapons. Captain Ziku tried to see through one of the windows, but the drapes were too thick. The door had no lock or knob. Approaching it, he slowly opened it with the tip of his sword.
A small living room appeared, rustic and rather dark. Followed by the scouting party, Ziku walked in. In one corner, some embers were glowing in a hearth. To one side of the fireplace, an old copper pot hung from a hook. Next to a window, a door, barely ajar, connected to another room.
“Hey, there is someone inside there,” Foxso’l whispered, the tips of his fingers clinging to the rim of the cracked door.
Ziku approached him and glanced respectfully through the narrow opening. He knocked on the door. “Donya Aytana, may we come in?”
“Yes,” an elderly female voice replied. “Come on in, come on in.” The six visitors stepped into the room, one after the other.
“My, my, my. Good morning, good morning.” The female was lying on a wooden couch, her body covered with many blankets.
“Donya Aytana,” Ziku said and waved a hand to his right. “With us are Captain Foxso’l . . .”
“Donya.”
“Lieutenant Dahncion, Ensign Erina . . .” They bowed their heads slightly.
“. . . and your servant, Captain Ziku, with my soldiers Sergeant Maru and Private Tully.” The three Zureedaii stood at attention, deferentially.
A few tears fell from Aytana’s eyes.
Ziku bowed reverently. “We are under your roof with the Ashuraii, Donya Aytana.”
“I know, I know.”
“How do you know?” Duncan asked with annoyance, though he softened his tone as he spoke.
“It’s not too hard to tell you apart from the Zureedaii, even for my old weary eyes.” Aytana wiped her tears away using the edges of her sheets.
“Captain Ziku said perhaps you wanted to talk to us,” Foxso’l added.
Aytana remained silent for a moment. She looked deeply moved by what was transpiring in her house. “Yes, yes, so many things to speak, so many . . .”
No one spoke for about a minute.
“Yes, yes,” Aytana resumed, composing her voice. “But first things first. I have something for you, something I kept for so many centuries, so many . . .” She sighed. “But I don’t feel very strong today. So if I’d ask you to pick it up for yourselves . . .”
“Certainly,” Duncan said.
“Please, in the other room, to the left of the fireplace. There you’ll see a red stone, amidst the stones of the hearth arch. Pull it out, and you will find something for yourselves.”
Duncan raised his eyes. “You may want to converse with Donya Aytana.” Erina nodded.
Foxso’l and Duncan immediately left the room.
82.
“How long have you lived here?” Erina asked, kneeling down by the bed.
Aytana’s eyes showed deep emotion. “All my life, almost.”
“We heard you belong to an ancient civilization that lived in this world before the Zureedaii.”
“Yes, yes, young lady, but that was a long, long time ago.”
“It is said that your people were very advanced, as well as wise.”
“Not all of us.” Aytana gave a candid giggle.
Erina paused and began arranging the rim of the blankets in front of her. Then Foxso’l appeared from the living room. He caught Erina’s eye, summoning her to the other room with a jerk of his head.
Erina nodded. “Excuse me, Donya Aytana, I’ll be back in a moment.”
The venerable female remained silent, looking at the ceiling with a face full of joy.
Stepping into the living room, Erina found Duncan holding a small, intriguing device. It was difficult to tell what kind of material it was made of. It was smooth, barely translucent, and it had the shape of two pyramids joined by their bases. Erina approached it with a scanner.
A blipping came from the object, followed by a pulsating red radiance emitting from all its faces. A fan of light flashed along the plane that joined the two pyramids. The light fan split up into two luminous cones that moved away from each other, until collapsing into two laser-like beams on the top and bottom apexes of the pyramids.
The device went inert again.
“Wow,” muttered Duncan, looking in awe at the object. He had laid it on a table when it became active.
“What the heck is this?” Foxso’l asked.
“This is precisely what we are going to ask Aytana right now,” Erina said excitedly.
But no sooner she had said that, another voice, grave and reverential, came from behind them.
“My regrets, Ashuraii.” The three Realitians turned around. Tully was standing solemnly at the door to Aytana’s room, holding one hand to his chest. “Donya Aytana is no longer amongst us.”
“What?” Erina exclaimed in frustration.
“She has just passed away.”
83.
Today: Never complain.
“Do you want some water?”
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Duncan looked hesitantly at the soldier who was offering him his canteen. “I can’t accept your share.” By now, water ratios had grown low for everybody.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Tully asserted. “We Zureedaii need less water than you Ashuraii. I’d be very glad to share mine with you.”
Duncan stared pointedly at Tully and reluctantly took the canteen.
“Have some more,” Tully invited.
“That’s enough for now, thank you.”
“Do you want some, Miss Erina?”
“No, thank you, Tully.”
“You look tired.”
“I’m tired.” She nodded. “But not thirsty.”
Tully put his canteen in his backpack again.
They had already spent five days in the desert, and there were no signs of any change in the landscape—or of any clouds in the sky. Wearied and not very talkative, Foxso’l was riding alongside Duncan on his annay.
“I spent some time last night playing with that thing we got in the cottage,” he eventually said, switching reins from one hand to the other.
Duncan moved an arm back to his backpack, reaching for the pyramidal device. “So you did?”
“Did you find out anything new?” asked Erina.
“Nope. I couldn’t even get the darn thing to turn on again, like at the cottage. We may find out more about it when we get to that Holy City.”
“If we don’t find water soon, we won’t get anywhere,” Duncan remarked.
“Just a couple of days and we’ll be out of this wilderness.” Foxso’l shrugged his shoulders.
“Sure.” Duncan glanced at Erina. She looked lost in thought, with her eyes roving over the horizon. “Anything new?”
Erina did not answer.
“Erina?”
“Birds,” she finally said, “far above the skyline. And where there are birds, there might be water.”
Duncan focused his eyes ahead, moving up slightly on his annay. “Yeah, I can see them too.”
“Well, don’t just stay there,” Foxso’l said. “Let’s go tell Xanada.”
“Excuse us, General.” To his right, Xanada found the three Ashuraii ridding alongside.
“Dahncion-Ashury.”
“Sir, Erina has spotted birds hovering above the horizon, over there.” Duncan pointed towards his left. “There may be water nearby.” “The Ashury is wise,” Colonel Azatu, Xanada’s second-in-command, remarked.
“How long until sunset?” Xanada asked.
“Less than two hours, my General.”
“Very well. We will spend the night there, whether there is water or not. Pass on the command.”
“Yes, my General.”
The command was passed, and the whole army started heading towards the chosen ground. After an hour of marching, they encountered a stony landscape. The terrain was mostly flat and gritty, and yet large flocks of birds were soaring above for no apparent reason.
As the army marched on, a scouting patrol found a natural trail cut in the stone, with a small downward slope. Captain Mitzibu, the leader of the scouting patrol, was soon reporting his findings.
“Take ten of our soldiers and check what is up that trail,” Colonel Azatu instructed him. Riding their annays around a corner, the party headed down the rocky trail.
“Halt,” Xanada commanded. A horn was blown with the corresponding signal, and the voices of all captains began to echo back discordantly with the same command repeated to their divisions.
“It looks like the bed of an ancient river,” Erina commented.
“The stony trail?” Duncan said.
“Uh-huh.”
“That would not be good news,” Duncan pointed out.
Erina turned around.
“It would mean there is no water down there,” Duncan explained.
“Not necessarily.”
“Hey, they’re back already,” said Foxso’l. The scouting party was approaching, riding very fast.
“Captain Mitzibu reporting, my General.”
“Report.”
“There is plenty of water below, my General sir. It’s like a big pond in a rocky den.”
Erina looked pointedly at Duncan with a raised eyebrow.
Moving in a single column, the army proceeded down the trail. It grew steeper as it progressed downward. On either side, barriers of stone rose to the sky, where countless birds kept soaring quietly. As the three Realitians rode on, the walls of rock on their right sloped down until a large pond, surrounded by thick vegetation, appeared before them. A lush waterfall was pouring down with a refreshing sound, its water seemingly flowing right out of the rock.
“Most likely a subterranean river,” Erina remarked.
“Wow,” uttered Duncan, overcome by the beauty of the view, which seemed magnified by the hardships of the past week.
“Don’t you think we should go ahead and take a better look at the area?” Erina asked.
Duncan blinked, reluctantly looking away from the comforting sight. Holding onto the reins of his annay, he turned to Foxso’l.
The skipper was riding casually, his hat covering his eyes. “I’m officially on vacation.”
84.
Today: Time to ponder.
Though the planet’s atmosphere was too dense to have a sky packed with stars, the limpid skies of the Iazyrra Desert made for the starriest scene possible on the planet, each star twinkling intensely with a singular beauty. The waxing moon was beginning to rise behind some stony hills, dimming the humble glamour of the stars. Its relative size was three to four times larger than a rising moon on Earth, and its color was a mixture of red and magenta.150 Tully was watching it all from his post, warming himself by the fire he was keeping—one of the main duties of his watch.
In about one hour, the bugler would call reveille, and Tully’s watch, the last of the night, would be over. It had been a pleasant night for him, despite having been on duty.
Turning away from the fire, Tully looked to his right. A human silhouette was approaching in his direction from the encampment.
“Morning.”
“Good morning. Up early today.”
“Sort of,” Duncan said, with his eyes barely open. “How’s your watch going?”
“Good.”
Duncan nodded and yawned, making some lazy effort to cover his mouth. On reaching the pond, he touched the surface rather apprehensively. The water was rather cold, but still a luxury, after nearly a week of exposure to the hot dry dessert. Duncan’s skin was deeply tanned with a soft golden-blue hue bestowed by the peculiar composition of the atmosphere.
Duncan strolled around the crystalline pond towards the waterfall, and started washing his face in the spray. As the chill of the water woke him up, a strange glimmer caught his attention. He first thought it was a reflection from the campfire on the cascade, but as he continued to look, he noticed something shining behind the liquid curtain in front of him.
After some hesitation, Duncan stepped into the fresh stream, which glimmered with the intense moonlight. Moving from one slippery rock to the next, it took him five frigid seconds to cross the lush waterfall. Once he was on the other side, the sound of the water turned hollow.
The spot where Duncan was now standing was deeply carved into the rock. A green luminescence was coming forth from a small hole in the back of the hollow space. The glimmering was steady and soft. It did not look like fire; neither smoke nor heat seemed to be emanating from the opening. Duncan knelt on the ground, and started looking down through the opening on the rock. A narrow tunnel appeared to be going down at a steep angle. Its polished granite walls emanated a gentle phosphorescence generated by billions of microscopic lichens adhered to it.
Unexpectedly, the ground yielded, and Duncan was falling down the slippery, stony shaft. He screamed, to no avail, as he slid down faster and faster. In an instant, all had become completely dark. Duncan tried pressing his forearms against the slick walls in a useless attempt to break the fall.
The shaft suddenly ended, and Duncan found himself airborne. The unsettling sensation of being in the air for too long a time to hope for a safe landing struck him. Once again in less than a month, he experienced the sensation of being about to die. Many things crossed his mind in the never-ending moments he spent in the dark vacuum.
Splashing backside-down into what appeared to be a subterranean pond, Duncan plunged down deep, but soon he was back to the surface gasping for air. Stunned by the fall and surrounded by total darkness, he started swimming, panicked, without going in any particular direction.
As he moved his arms, Duncan felt the rim of the flashlight he carried on his belt. He immediately unhooked it and turned it on. He was inside a large rocky chamber. The pond spanned wall to wall. However, a small beach was discernible a few yards ahead. Duncan began swimming towards it.
No sooner had he started than a strong current took hold of his legs, pulling him down. He was now fighting desperately trying to reach back to the surface, but kept going relentlessly down.
As he ran out of hope, Duncan was suddenly jettisoned out into a very high waterfall flowing from the cave. As he fell, his eyes caught a glimpse of the moon shining on another small lake that appeared at a disturbing distance below. He screamed—again in vain—until splashing into the pond.
Fortunately, the lake was deep enough to break his fall safely. The dense and heavy atmosphere had helped slow down his falling rate, saving him from a mortal splash. Now Duncan was back up at the surface. He looked around, gasping for air, and then started swimming towards one side.
Nervously, Duncan jumped out of the water and dropped flat on the ground. He lay there for about five minutes. Kneeling down on the grass, he finally began looking at the waterfall from where he had just fallen. He remained staring at it for a while, trying to make some sense out of what had just happened. The sound of the falls was very loud, and the fresh smell of beating water, pervasive. High above the scene, a tenuous reflection of the campfire glowed dimly on top of the cliff.
Xanada’s camp was more than five hundred feet above the lake.
“Hey, up there!” Duncan yelled. “Tully!” The cliff in front of him was a vertical wall. To the right, a flat wilderness bathed by the moonlight extended towards the horizon.
Reality: The Struggle for Sternessence Page 27