What differed about the incident that morning was its ‘in your face’ blatancy. It started after four, not quite five, hours before his iPod clock radio was due to jar him awake with death metal decibels. The weirdness centered over the rock collection on his mantle: the fist-sized lump of rose quartz he had pried from a ledge in the White Mountains, two-toned basalts from Prince Edward Island, and the miscellaneous curiosities he had scrounged or purchased over the years from quarries and rock shops like the one down the block.
He watched in the reflected light of a street lamp as they vibrated and danced to the edge of the mantle, dropping like lemmings onto the floor. All save the newest stone, which sat rooted in place as its neighbors trembled and fled.
An aura appeared, warping the grid of brick and mortar behind the mantle. The air became flecked with specks resembling video static. Out of nowhere, a frigid wind wound up and howled through his living room, scattering leaves and grit that crunched under his bare feet. A tree trunk sprouted in his fireplace. The air of the apartment filled with the pungent aroma of coniferous resins.
Voices arose, male and female, their language unintelligible, their tenor distressed. Human silhouettes appeared, mostly insubstantial and sketchy, but occasionally a limb would solidify, a face would emerge as if slipping from behind an invisible curtain. The eyes of a woman appeared and locked into his gaze. Fierce and feral, she had murderous intent. He fled out the door, carrying his shoes, careening down the stairwell and out onto the sidewalk.
Outside, all was calm. The visions disappeared as abruptly as if flipping a switch. He stood in his underwear wondering if he should creep back upstairs. He chickened out, went to the car and selected a wrinkled shirt and a pair of stained khakis from the bag of dirty laundry in his trunk. He had driven to work two hours early, skipping breakfast. In his cubicle, he sat and stared at his baggie of ‘zombie pills’, heart pounding. He sure needed one, but fought the urge. If Ambien were the cause of these visions, he didn’t need to conjure them at work. His composure finally returned, about the time folks started showing up in the office.
The kernel of dread that had lain dormant most of the day, began to reassert itself as his four o‘clock quitting time neared. As irrational as it seemed, he couldn’t help but worry that the hallucinations were somehow connected to the physical space of his apartment, and specifically the stone on his mantle. He didn’t usually stop at the pub in the middle of a workweek, but he needed a little extra courage that day.
The shot and a beer hadn’t done much to ease his concern, but at least they gave him the will to get off his stool and move towards the door. The little no-name pub with the green, neon Rolling Rock sign was the only drinking establishment left in Greymore on this side of the bridge. The place had languished for years, though lately the clientele seemed to be undergoing a transition. Used to be, one would only find Italian guys from the brass mill camping on their barstools. Of late, an influx of fringy twenty-somethings like Miles had come to frequent the place, charmed by the moldy ambience, not to mention, the proprietor’s tolerance for death metal.
Charles, the lead singer of the band with which Miles’ played rhythm guitar, had persuaded Earnest, the owner to let them play a gig there, to boost patronage with a little live music.
But despite the lack of a cover charge, the band’s presence had no discernible effect on patronage or liquor sales. The few friends who showed up were broke, dry, underage, or all of the above.
At least they hadn’t scared off the regulars. It took a lot more than growling voices and thudding basses to drive an old man off his bar stool.
That gig at the pub was Miles’ last with the band, which imploded and disintegrated like all of the other failed bands Miles had joined over the years. Ironically, it was one of the best shows he had ever played. No audience, no stress, no flubs … and unfortunately, no tape.
Miles stepped out the door into the cool evening air and went to his car, parked at a broken meter. His apartment building was just up the hill a few blocks, an easy walk. Regardless, Miles drove everywhere he went, even to the grocery store a half a block away.
He parked in space right next to the stairwell and sat there, idling for a minute. He felt fine, the whisky and beer imbuing only the mildest of buzzes. He pressed park and turned off the ignition. The apartment building hadn’t burned down. No windows were smashed. He took a long, slow breath and stepped out of the car.
The stairwell echoed with his footsteps. He paused outside his door and pressed his ear against the weathered paint. Coldplay piano chords chimed from his clock radio. In the absence of anyone to punch the snooze button, it had come on in his absence and had stayed on all day.
Miles turned the key and bustled inside. All seemed fine. No apparitions. No delusions. The stones were all in a row on the mantle where he had left them. He stood and took inventory of his head.
Satisfied with his sanity, he went into the bathroom peeled off his grungy work clothes, and adjusted the water in his shower nice and hot. He decided he’d go get a couple pizza slices from Panarea’s after his shower, come home, and go to bed early.
Miles lathered up his stringy hair. Was it getting thinner or was he just imagining that, too? Something clattered outside the bathroom. A high-pitched whistling. What the hell? He hadn’t turned on the stove to make tea. Wrong pitch for his teapot, anyhow. Maybe it was the plumbing? Miles shut the valve. The squealing persisted. Miles rinsed, toweled off, and burst out of the bathroom.
The squealing came from the mantle. He popped his head inside the living room. Miles’ heart skipped and fluttered. Stones lay scattered across the floor. All except one. The chalcopyrite hissed at him and then fell silent.
Miles approached the stone cautiously. Reached out for it gingerly. Tapped it. Plucked it off the mantle.
It felt really cold. It didn’t quite burn like dry ice, but almost. A thin coating of frost had accumulated. Miles passed it from hand to hand and almost dropped it. Its weight seemed to fluctuate. The center of gravity shifted randomly, shifting from one edge to the other.
This was just wrong. He had to get rid of this thing—dump it, toss in the river—or better, bring it back to the place he bought it. Someone else had to see and acknowledge what this thing was doing. It couldn’t all be in his head. Could it?
The rock shop was just down the street. He had kept the receipt.
Miles brought the stone into the kitchenette and put it on the center of the table. It immediately started to vibrate and creep towards the table’s edge, He grabbed a tin of now stale cookies his grandmother had sent him and clapped it over the stone. He scraped it onto the lid and secured the top.
Miles ran into his bedroom and pulled on some clean jeans and a T-shirt. When he came back the top had popped off the cookie tin, and the squealing had resumed. Now the tin surrounding the stone squealed in harmony. Miles grabbed a paper shopping bag, swept the cookie tin into it and made for the door.
As he burst out of the stairwell and onto the sidewalk he snuck a peek inside the bag. The sides of the cookie tin were crumpling in and out, as if it were breathing. The air above it warped the light like a liquid lens, alternately magnifying and telescoping the rustic winter scene printed on the tin. The head of a horse pulling a sleigh appeared to rear at Miles.
Miles crumpled the top of the bag closed. Hallucinations? Couldn’t be. The cold seeping through the tin stung his skin. Real condensation seeped through the brown paper. Whatever has happening inside that tin was real, too real. Miles hit the sidewalk and ran to his car, heading to the rock shop and exile.
Chapter 6: The Caravan
Bimji winced and waited, lying cheek to stone, wondering how he was to die. Torn apart in the imminent explosion? Dashed against the boulders below? Tortured slowly by Crasac guards?
A bright flash snuffed the shadows. A blink later – thunder, curt and brittle. A shock slammed through Bimji’s insides as the stone beneath him rippled a
nd heaved. Rocks flew. Smoke and dust billowed out over the void. A Polu fell atop of Bimji. Another barely avoided spilling over the brink.
Bimji expected the overhang to crumble and fall but it held, protecting them from the force of the blast, directing all projectiles down and away from them. Tarikel had intended its mass to provide the bulk of the material that would block the road. Bimji squirmed to see what their fiery alchemy had wrought in its stead. Rocks sluiced down chutes, but this was not the cataclysmic avalanche Tarikel had predicted.
The patrolling Crasacs had reversed course and swarmed back towards the Polus with Tarikel in tow.
“Toss the bastard over!” said the gruff Polu. They grabbed Bimji’s arms and legs and lifted him.
“No! Put him down! Preserve him!” A Crasac officer and his patrol rushed to the precipice.
“We want him tossed, we’ll toss him,” said one of the Polus. “We have a commission from the Alar himself to enforce these uplands. This is our territory.”
A feisty bunch, thought Bimji. Unfortunate, for Tarikel and himself. Most Polus behaved more submissively before their Venep’o patrons.
“Fools!” said the Crasac officer. “We need to learn what they know. We need to know how they did this.”
Bimji heard scraping, and then a thud. He turned and found himself staring into Tarikel’s bloody but calm face.
“We failed,” said Tarikel, in hushed tones. “Some rubble fell onto the road, but those big wagons will roll right over it.”
Bimji felt too sick with regret to answer or even look at Tarikel. He didn’t care about the road or the caravan anymore. He could only think of Lizbet, about how he wouldn’t be returning to the farm with her bolts of homespun anytime soon, if ever.
“Maybe the stone was too strong,” said Tarikel. “Or we didn’t use enough tovex … didn’t put it in the right place.”
A modest report reverberated up the gorge from the other end of the viaduct.
“Paoala,” said Bimji.
“Too soon,” said Tarikel. “And again, too small.”
“For Cra’s sake, you stupid Polus, separate those two!” said the Crasac captain. “Don’t let them speak.”
As the Polus dragged them apart, another explosion rocked the canyon. But this explosion was monstrous compared to Bimji and Paoala’s detonations, a basso profundo, apocalyptic rumble that shook the canyon rim to rim.
A cloud of spray and grit from the river bed flew upward and outward, bursting through the center of the closest arch. The roadway split apart and twisted two ways, spilling wagons and beasts into the gorge. Those following behind abandoned their wagons and fled as the roadway collapsed. Others milled about, confused, and were claimed as the structure collapsed.
A second explosion sent water and stone blasting upward through the farthest span. Is supports toppled inward. The roadway tilted, funneling some who fled into a gyre of crumbling stone.
The Polus, stunned, dropped Bimji and Tarikel on the ledge and backed away. The Crasacs fanned out in all directions as if they expected to be targeted next, swinging their crossbows as if mere bolts could deter the forces that destroyed the viaduct below.
“Those rascals!” said Tarikel. “How much tovex did my cousins take? No wonder we didn’t have enough.” He grinned at Bimji, but Bimji could not share his pleasure.
The middle support of the viaduct now stood alone like a tower, stranding a small contingent of the caravan. Panicked beasts careened about the small space, slamming into people, knocking some over the edge. As the wheels of wagons caught in the void, they kept rolling, dragging their still hitched teams with them over the precipice.
A smile formed on Tarikel’s bloodied face, but Bimji could garner no pride from the act, only shame for what his actions had wrought for his family.
The risk of discovery was supposed to have been minimal. Polus rarely ventured near the gorge rim, never mind Crasacs. He had expected to set the charge, flee unhindered across the moor and learn the outcome from Tarikel back at the tavern in Sinta.
Now Lizbet would never receive her bolts of homespun hemp. Their only market wagon, parked behind the homestead of Tarikel’s cousins, would likely be confiscated by the Venep’o as would the two mules tethered in the cousins’ paddock. Who would tell her of his capture? Who would finish the plowing and planting?
The Polus yanked him and Tarikel back to their feet by the thongs binding their wrists. Bimji knew he would never be returning to the farm. He would never see Lizbet again. And now he knew exactly how he was to die.
Chapter 7: The Alar of Gi
The rumble of the steam horn propagated deep into the Temple’s roots, rousing the Alar Benka from an unintended slumber. He and the Elder Brothers, accompanied by a bevy of Initiates, had just spent a long night in prayer, assuaging the wrath of Cra. Men’s voices, young and old, still droned from the many niches lining the circular corridor.
Benka roused himself from the carpeted floor of his private chamber, marveling at the stamina of his high priests, still going strong with prayers begun at dusk. Shaken by the news from Siklaa Gorge, Brother Yiall had determined that only communal prayer could stem the tide of foul fortune. So they had descended beneath the courtyard and arrayed themselves around the feet of the obelisk of Cra that speared the Temple.
The panic arose when the Mercomar in the foothills had flashed frantically against the fading light, sent terse and vague reports of wicked happenings at the viaducts in Siklaa Gorge. Only the vaguest sketch of the incident could be transmitted before nightfall snuffed the mirrors of its heliograph.
One passage in particular chilled them: ‘A wind so powerful it shattered stone.’ Those words sent them dashing to their prayer rooms.
The Alar excused himself from the Brothers and hustled up the ramp leading to the circular courtyard and its soaring, phallic monument to Cra. A contingent of Cuerti guards, mustering in response to the alarm, dropped flat when they saw him. Benka was not only Alar, but a former Cuerti himself.
Stairways rose front and back up the courtyard walls, each leading to observation platforms. Out of habit, Benka made straight for the platform over the front gate, the one that faced the mountains separating Gi from Venen. As often as he climbed these stairs, he should be fitter, but they still robbed his breath and turned his thighs to jelly. Old age came with a vengeance, and governing Gi only seemed to accelerate the process.
The young Crasacs standing watch seemed shocked to find the clap of feet on the stairs connected not to their sergeant but to the Alar himself. From the panic on their faces, the Alar surmised that these boys must be new. Benka was no stranger to the more seasoned hands manning this watch tower, He often came before first light, eager for news from Venen relayed by the heliograph on the heights over Siklaa.
Benka pacified the sentries with a smile and the sign of Cra and squeezed between them to gaze down the main avenue leading to the Temple.
Below the plateau rim, a haze of morning cook smoke hung over Raacevo’s sprawl. Closer in, whorls of dust, borne by a ripping wind, scoured the ad hoc settlement of merchants, servants and hangers-on sprawling beyond the Temple grounds.
The old hands told him that thick forest had covered the plateau when the Temple was first constructed. Benka’s predecessor had ordered every tree removed in a misguided attempt to discourage Nalki raids. It hadn’t prevented the man’s assassination or the slaughter of an entire barracks of Polus-in-training.
Benka knew better than to rely on landscaping to the provide security. He employed a large detachment of Cuerti and frequent Crasac patrols to bring him peace of mind.
The Nalkies were such a threat, that if Benka had his way, he would never leave the Temple. But he had to show his face in Verden and Maora on occasion, if only to beef up the colonists’ morale and remind them that they remained the liege of Venen and subject to its tithes.
Verden was a particularly horrid place, carved seemingly from primordial wilderness.
Trees as wide as carriages haunted every road going in. Benka felt much more at home on this sun-baked, dusty plateau – which reminded him of Venen’s heartlands.
Several donkey carts appeared over the rim, escorted by Cuasars and Crasacs.
“Mercy of Cra,” said the Alar. “Is that all that’s left of the caravan?”
The sentries didn’t answer. They just looked at each other with troubled eyes, as if expecting they would be blamed and punished for the deed.
Miric, the sergeant of the watch emerged onto the platform, and bowed his head to Benka. Unlike the young sentries, afraid to speak in the presence of the Alar, Miric had no such reticence.
“I noticed you missed the first flashing this morning, your Excellency.”
“Yes, well, I had no sleep until dawn. The Elder Brothers had me up praying all night.”
“We’ve learned more details,” said Miric. “But of course, the wagon masters and their escorts will be able to tell you firsthand.”
“Tell me now,” said Benka. “What did you hear?”
“The vanguard made it through intact, mainly supplies for the garrison and a new regiment of Cuasars. They’ve gone onto Raacevo.” Miric bit his lip. “But most of our wagons were destroyed, including many of the siege weapons. Some of the stragglers are still trapped in the gorge behind the collapsed spans.
“Anything salvageable?”
“Well, they’re going to attempt to dismantle some of the siege wagons that fell and reassemble them on the road.”
“I was thinking more of … What about the … comestibles?” said Benka.
With a holiday imminent – the Birth of Pasemani – the Temple larder had long been depleted of the sauces and pickles they depended on to render their meals edible. The Giep’o concept of spice seemed limited to sulfurous and bitter onions. Eating any item harvested beneath the soil was taboo in the Sinkor faith. How unfortunate it was then that roasted roots formed the staple of the Giep’o diet.