Till the Mountains Turn to Dust
By J. S. Volpe
Copyright 2012 J. S. Volpe
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover image: File licensed by www.depositphotos.com/magann
For Tiffany
CONTENTS
Title
Copyright
Dedication
1. New Portland (5 A.C.)
2. Drell (926 A.C.)
3. Den Demestrion (2135 A.C.)
4. Colbon (3388 A.C.)
5. Shandar (4904 A.C.)
6. Peridor (5989 A.C.)
7. The T-Net (6692 A.C.)
8. Nioedo (7407 A.C.)
9. Ravenshaft (8681 A.C.)
10. Giv-Golos Repository (9987 A.C.)
11. Haven (11012 A.C.)
12. Across the Universe (12013 A.C.)
Also by J. S. Volpe
1
New Portland
5 A.C.
Reynard ran.
Behind him a sound like thunder filled the world. Closer to its source—probably around the city center by now—the sound would resolve itself into a thousand separate elements: screams, explosions, the roar of collapsing buildings, the whir and rattle of machines, the crunch of skulls under all-terrain tank treads. But distance mercifully fuzzed them into that single incessant rumble.
He was racing down a cobblestone street, a narrow channel between row houses, all of which still sported damage from the Cataclysm five years earlier. The cracked brick facades on either side resounded with the clattering footfalls of himself and the ten or twelve people behind him. He didn’t know any of these people and had no idea whether they were following him on purpose or just fleeing in the same direction he was. Too bad for them if they thought he was heading somewhere specific—a safe house, say, or a rescue transport. He had been in town only two days and didn’t even know what neighborhood he was in right now. All he knew, all that mattered, was that he was heading south, away from the implacably advancing army of the self-proclaimed robot-god 1000001, the army that had already obliterated countless other towns amid the southern foothills of the Salt Stairs.
A harsh mechanical buzz suddenly drowned out the rumble as a swarm of link drones shot onto the street from an alley half a block back. Reynard forced himself to run faster, a feat he would have thought impossible a second earlier. Behind him the buzz swelled rapidly. Then came screams. Then came a series of electrical crackles and snaps, and some of the screams abruptly stopped.
And then from a building to his left a young woman’s voice called, “In here!”
Without even looking, relying only on the survival instincts that had helped keep him alive for over seven centuries, he veered toward the voice, barreled through an open doorway, caught a fleeting eye’s-edge glimpse of a whitely clad figure, then stumbled to a halt the moment the door slammed shut, cutting off the buzz.
He had covered the three miles here from the city center in one continuous run, and now that he had stopped, now that survival was assured at least for the moment, his legs lost all strength and he dropped to his knees. As he hunched there, gulping down breaths, sweat dripping from his nose and chin, he stared absently at the frayed maroon carpet beneath him. After a moment a pair of feet in white lace-up ankle-high leather boots stepped into view. The hem of a starchy white skirt floated above the boots.
Nostrils flaring, he sucked in another breath and with it came an interesting admixture of odors: fresh linen, oiled leather, and above all else an unfamiliar scent that reminded him of exotic spices. It was the unique scent of the person who stood in front of him.
“Are you hurt?” the woman asked. Her voice was gentle and strangely accented. Not that the latter fact meant anything; strange accents, strange languages, strange entities, strangeness of every sort abounded since the Cataclysm. Normal didn’t exist anymore.
He raised his head, eyes quickly and thoroughly exploring the figure before him: up the stiff cotton skirt; over an old white leather belt, cracked and worn in places, especially around the hole the silver tongue was thrust through; up the column of carved ivory buttons that divided the high-collared tunic; over the tunic’s slightly puffed shoulders; down the form-fitting sleeves that dead-ended in neat, even lines at the wrists; briefly beyond the sleeves to the slender hands, open and empty, nails clipped short; then back up this outfit whose uniform-like primness and whiteness led him to surmise its wearer was a nurse of some kind, up to the head and face that crowned it all.
She was a lovely specimen, eminently fuckable, with light-brown skin and long, straight black hair, both of which contrasted strikingly with her white outfit. She looked young, perhaps only twenty or twenty-one, but her expression was calm and assured as she peered into his face.
“Are you hurt?” she repeated.
“No, just run ragged.”
She let him catch his breath a few more seconds, then extended a hand. He took it, reveling in the feel of her soft, smooth palm as she helped him up. Yes, he would definitely have to bed this one.
“Thanks,” he said, wobbling a little on still-shaky legs. “I owe you one.”
“No no,” the girl said. “We—”
A loud flat bang smacked the house as something exploded nearby. The windowpanes rattled in their frames. A faint haze of plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. In the depths of the house something small and fragile shattered.
The girl grabbed an oil lamp that sat burning on a table beside the front door. “We need to go.”
“Good idea.”
She brushed past him and strode down a hallway that led into the depths of the building. He followed.
Halfway down the hall she led him through a door on the left and across a kitchen/dining room. They passed an old iron stove that still radiated residual heat, a white ceramic sink heaped with unwashed cookware, a wooden counter littered with crumbs and flour. A table opposite the stove was laid out with a meal for four, the plates and platters covered with cooling roast beef, potatoes, carrots, biscuits. China teacups contained a brownish fluid—tea or coffee probably—that sloshed about like storm-tossed waters as something else exploded outside, closer this time. A crystal decanter in the center of the table thunked to its side and purplish liquid glugged out across the white tablecloth.
The girl strode past all this without a glance. On the far side of the room, she threw open a door and led Reynard down a dim musty corridor, then through a door on the right and down a flight of wooden stairs. The smells of dirt, clay, mildew grew strong as they descended.
At the bottom was a cellar with a hard dirt floor, bare wood walls, unmarked sacks and crates stacked here and there. The light from the girl’s lamp threw ever-shifting, sharp-edged shadows across everything.
She led him straight toward a shadowy corner on the far side of the room. As they neared the corner, the lamp-light thinned then banished the shadows, revealing a rough, moldingless doorway cut into the wall.
“Where’re we going?” Reynard asked.
“Safety,” she said simply, passing through the doorway. “The others have already gone ahead.”
“Others?”
She didn’t answer. He passed through after her.
They headed single-file down a narrow corridor rough-hewn through striated limestone. The walls were stacks of colored ribbons, each ribbon representing centuries of
lives and weather and occurrences compressed to mere centimeters. The corridor ended at what Reynard at first thought was a huge room, but soon discerned was a thirty-foot-wide arched brick tunnel that ran perpendicular to the limestone passageway. A gutter ten feet across and six deep extended down the tunnel’s center, its bottom caked with a hard, greenish substance.
Turning right, they headed along the wide, flat stone expanse that ran between the gutter and the wall. At intervals rusty lamps of a design Reynard didn’t recognize were affixed to the wall about eight feet up. None of them were lit. Several hung askew, their glass covers missing or broken. On the floor were signs that people had recently passed this way: prints in the dirt, hairs, a piece of yellow thread.
“What is this place?” Reynard asked. “A sewer or something?”
“We don’t know exactly. My friend Grace thinks it might be an old underground roadway of some kind.”
While technically answering his question, she had done so in a way that flung up a host of new ones. Who constituted the “we”? Were they the ones who cut the limestone passageway? And had whoever cut the passageway known this tunnel was here, or had it been discovered by accident?
Before he could ask anything, the girl glanced at him and said, “My name’s Solace, by the way.”
“I’m Reynard.”
“I haven’t seen you around town before. Are you a newcomer?”
“Yeah. I was really only just passing through. As usual, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Story of my life. What about you? You a resident?”
She hesitated a moment, then gave a small, self-conscious laugh. “Yeah, I guess I must be by now. Like you, I was just passing through on my way to…somewhere else. I only meant to stay a few days, but I found I liked it here, so I decided to stick around an extra week or two. Then I met some people and got a job at the House”—the way she said it made it a proper noun—“and the extra week or two became six months.”
“The House? Was that the building we passed through? You work there?”
“Yeah.” She raised the lamp higher and peered down the tunnel at a small light approaching. “I think that’s Grace. She works at the House, too.” Her shoulders slumped a little, and she let out a small sigh. “Well, worked, I guess.”
As the two lights converged, Reynard discovered that the bearer of the new one was a short stocky young woman with curly red hair, a pug nose, acne scars mingling with her freckles, and an outfit similar to Solace’s. The woman waited for them to reach her, then fell into step alongside them, heading back the way she had come.
“For a second there I was afraid you might be a robot,” the woman said with a nervous laugh.
“Thankfully not,” Solace said.
The woman shifted her gaze to Reynard and scrutinized him with cool, guarded eyes, as though unsure if she should trust him.
“Hey,” she said.
“This is Reynard,” Solace said. “Reynard, Grace.”
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
Grace eyed him a moment longer, then gave a small nod, her scrutiny having apparently ended in his favor. She returned her attention to Solace.
“The others are waiting at the gate,” she said. “I didn’t want to go ahead until you were there. If we got separated…” She shrugged, various unpleasant outcomes hanging unspoken in the air. “I don’t understand why you stayed so long anyway.”
“I just wanted to check for any last survivors,” Solace said. She gestured at Reynard. “It’s a good thing I did, too.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks for that.” He grinned. “Though I know plenty of folks who’d tell you you shouldn’t have bothered.”
Solace laughed, revealing teeth that were enviably white and even. Reynard didn’t think he had ever seen teeth so perfect.
“I’m sure you’re worth it,” she said. “Everyone’s worth it.”
They walked in silence a while, their shadows on the curving brick walls lurching in synch with the erratic movements of the lanterns’ flames. Occasional faint rumbles testified to New Portland’s still-ongoing fall.
“So, uh, you never explained what this House place is,” Reynard said.
“Oh!” Solace said. “It’s the House of Good Karma. It’s basically just a bunch of us doing whatever we can to make life better for everyone in these difficult times.”
“Very admirable.”
“It’s good work,” Grace said with a vigorous nod, eyes bright with the ardor of a True Believer. “We like to think of ourselves as a sort of army of love, a force of light and hope and order nonviolently combating the chaos that’s overrun the world. We feed the hungry, we house the homeless, we build, we educate, we salvage useful goods and distribute them to the needy. That’s what I mainly do: salvage. The landscape’s full of stuff just sitting around. About six months ago we stumbled across the ruins of a huge warehouse that contained nothing but shoes. There were thousands of pairs, all different sizes, all of them in beautiful condition. We gathered them up and handed them out to anyone who needed them. We’ve found tons of clothes, non-perishable food, oil, tools, pretty much everything you can think of. You’d be amazed what kinds of things are just sitting around out there.”
“Wow,” Reynard said, not even remotely amazed. He knew exactly what was out there. Indeed, he himself spent a great deal of time hunting around for worthwhile items. But his idea of worthwhile differed vastly from Grace’s. He was looking for things he could sell or use to his advantage, things far more remarkable than clothes and food, things like the fist-sized ruby he had snatched from a coffin in a sprawling necropolis and later traded to a powerful regional warlord in exchange for a suit of black-dragon armor (now sadly lost); or the laser torch he had discovered in the wreckage of a high-tech factory and subsequently used to break into the treasure hall of the Phantom Palace and rob it of seven sacks of gold (now sadly spent).
No one was sure what the Cataclysm had really been—the most logical theory he had heard so far was one advanced by an otherwise dotty scholar, who insisted the event had been the merging of many alternate worlds, sort of like a thousand different decks of cards all violently riffled together—but whatever the truth, it had thrown together more people and creatures and places and things than Reynard had ever imagined existed. There was no telling what you might come across next in this strange new world. Opportunities and possibilities abounded. Everything was sheer chaos, and it was wonderful.
Which was an attitude that would no doubt horrify his current company. It was certainly disappointing to discover that the scrumptious Solace was a silly do-gooder, a Pollyanna, and quite likely religious to boot. It would no doubt make it that much trickier to get her into bed. Not impossible, though. Manipulating people was his stock-in-trade. It was all a matter of figuring out which buttons to press to get a person’s psychological machinery working the way you wanted it to. In some cases, with some people, it was all so simple it bored him. Solace, he sensed, would be more of a challenge. And that was fine. The harder the challenge, the sweeter the victory.
“So what about you?” Solace asked him. “What do you do?”
“Well, for the most part I’m a merchant,” he said. This was arguably true: He did indeed buy things and sell them; except sometimes he stole them and sold them; and sometimes the things he sold didn’t actually exist. “Lately I’ve also been doing some charitable work that isn’t really too different from yours.”
He went on to explain that when 1000001’s forces attacked, he had been in Kingston Square soliciting donations for the Orphans of the Storm Relief Fund, a humanitarian effort to aid children orphaned by the Cataclysm. As incentive, donors received crude but cute hand-painted ornamental orbs that had been made by the children themselves.
In truth, there were no orphans. The only beneficiary of the fund was Reynard. His scavenging hadn’t been turning up very much lately—that happened from time to time—so he concocted the orphan scheme to generate some quick re
venue. New Portland was only the third town he had tried it in, and he had already amassed nearly two hundred of the crude copper pieces currently used as currency in these parts. As for the orbs, he painted them himself. Underneath the paint were dragon eggs he had discovered in a cleft in the mountains last month. He cackled whenever he imagined the mayhem that would ensue when they hatched.
He was in the middle of extemporaneously waxing poetic about how aiding children and showing them the virtues of goodness and cooperation would instill valuable lessons integral in furthering the return of order and sanity to the world, when he spotted a dot of light in the darkness ahead. Unlike Grace’s lamp, this light didn’t seem to be moving.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
“The gate,” Solace said. “We’re almost at the end of the tunnel.”
As the trio walked on, the light grew larger, brighter, took on a circular shape, parsed into colors: sky blue, leaf green, stone gray. A cluster of shadowy figures moved about along the bottom half of the light. Soon, dim lines became discernible, gridding the view.
The tunnel ended at a rusty metal grate twelve feet across. Beyond it, a rock-strewn slope gently descended to a stream. On the far side of the stream was a grassy field dotted with small yellow flowers. Beyond that, a forest. Of the robots, the city, the battle, there was no sign. Nearly a dozen people stood on the other side of the grate, all of them staying safely within the shade of the overhanging cliff above. In silence they watched Reynard and the two women approach.
“We were getting worried,” a man told Solace as he opened a door in the grate, its ancient hinges squalling. He was twentyish, gangly, with long brown hair and a wispy goatee. He gave Reynard a chilly, appraisive glance. Reynard realized the man either was or wished to be Solace’s lover. Probably the latter, given how the man made no move to make physical contact with Solace once she had stepped through the gate. Competition, then. But not of a serious sort. The man was barely more than a child, easily swayed or spooked.
The moment everyone was out of the tunnel, the group headed east along the stream’s bank. It was a little past noon, the sun high overhead, the sky cloudless, the air warm and still. A perfect summer day. At least meteorologically: Very faintly over the stream’s steady burble, Reynard caught the sounds of distant explosions and the indecipherable droning of a deep mechanical voice. He looked north, but the high, tree-crowned cliff obscured New Portland from view.
“How far are we from the city?” he asked Solace.
“Half a mile. Not far enough.”
A short walk brought them to a wooden footbridge over the stream. On the far shore, they headed across the field toward the woods, heedlessly tramping the yellow flowers as they went.
They were twenty feet from the tree line when the buzz of link drones grew audible over the sound of the stream. The buzz was coming from the north, the direction of New Portland, and it was approaching fast.
“Split up and run!” cried a balding man with cracked spectacles. “Meet at Grazinwyr!”
Everyone sprinted for the woods. As he ran, Reynard glanced over his shoulder. At first all he saw was the field and the stream and the cliff with its fringe of trees and the hazy white peaks of the Salt Stairs just visible above the treetops and, rising above them all, pillars of smoke from the still-hidden city; and for a moment he wondered if it had been a false alarm, if perhaps a drone patrol was merely passing by in ignorance of the refugees not far away. But then several dozen of the football-sized drones shot from the trees atop the cliff in a flurry of leaves. They streaked down and across the stream, converging on the crowd of fleeing humans, their shining silver link-cords trailing behind them.
Reynard tried to keep close to Solace as they ran, but in the jostle of panicked bodies they got separated, and once they hit the woods he lost track of her completely. He lost track of everyone. All he had were quick glimpses of figures hurtling through foliage and a confused jumble of sounds—thudding footfalls, branches snapping, brush rustling—all of which slowly faded as the group spread out, giving the drones a host of targets to track, hopefully so many targets that there would be no drones left to follow Reynard.
He headed due south, away from the robots and toward Grazinwyr, a bucolic little town ten miles distant. He had passed it in his travels a few times but never thought it looked rich enough to be worth visiting.
Before he had gone very far he heard footsteps pounding toward him from the right. From the same direction came the swelling buzz of drones.
Reynard dove behind a bush, then peered out through a gap in the branches in time to see a pudgy brunette from the group—not anyone he had had any real contact with—race into view, her face warped with terror, her cheeks streaked with tears.
She dashed toward the very bush Reynard hunched behind. He silently cursed and wished her away, wished her to trip on a stone or a root and succumb to the drones before she could unwittingly reveal his position to them.
To his relief, twenty drones shot out of the brush and streaked toward the woman while she was still a dozen paces away. There was no way she could make it in time.
She knew it too, and emitted a single wordless wail.
As the drones flew forward, their link-cords stiffened and swiveled about until the cords’ tips touched those of neighboring drones.
Today was the first time Reynard had seen link drones, but he had heard a lot about them as he conned his way through town after town in the region over the last few months. Individually each drone was no smarter than an insect, basically just a machine responding in simple ways to the environment. But when the link-cords connected one drone to another, they shared their memory and processing power, and the individuals became components of a larger, colonial organism. The more drones that linked up, the smarter the colony became. Also, the more powerful. The drones generated electricity, which they used to further their prime directive of exterminating all higher biological life-forms. Each drone by itself could unleash only a meager amount, perhaps enough to kill a rat. A larger group of, say, twenty, as now…
“No, please!” the woman screamed. “God! Why? This isn’t fair!” She knew pleading was as useless as running, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing either, her innate organic will to survive unquashable even now, even as the linked drones floated above her like a net about to fall.
But it didn’t fall. Instead lightning arced down from a small metal nodule on the underside of each drone. The woman stiffened as twenty bolts snapped through her. Her mouth stretched wide in a silent scream, and a curl of gray smoke emerged. Reynard shut his eyes and turned away, but nothing blocked the stench of burning hair and meat.
A few seconds later the crackling stopped. There was a thud of something heavy landing on the grass.
He peeked out through the bush again in time to see the link-cords separate and the drones drift apart. Slowly they turned about as if scanning for something, each one rotating individually while maintaining its position relative to the others. Then as one they shot away through the trees and out of sight.
Reynard waited until the drones’ buzz was lost amid the rustle of leaves in the breeze, and then waited some more. When ten minutes had passed with no further sign of the drones, he stood up and resumed his trek south, this time at a fast walk.