Alexandria (52 page)

Chapter Eighteen

The horses tremble and rear back as the hollow blast echoes across the wide-open desert, and on the distant horizon, thousands of years worth of human ingenuity billow skyward in a widening plume of thick black smoke. Jack peels off to the side and shields his eyes against the sun. The explosion looks a tiny thing from so far away, but the boom that rolls through the strata resonates in their ribcages and brings them all to a quick halt.

Hargrove’s face is cryptic as he surveys the destruction. He canters ahead and stares off at the smoke, resting his hand on his hip casually. Slowly he wheels back around, as if he is about to address the men with a speech.

“Hup!”
he shouts, and spurs his horse and tears off.

They race across the empty desert range, a ragged band of refugee cavalrymen with their makeshift armory. The men press upon Jack, fearing the explosion to be the work of the militant encampment whose fires they watched from the porch only a few hours earlier. Jack assures them that, for all of their wicked contrivances, he has never known the Nezra to possess such a power as this. After a time, Hargrove grows weary and quiets their speculations and confesses his own hand in the matter.

“I did it,” he says. “I blew the whole damn thing up.”

“So it weren’t the army?”

“No.”

A wave of relief and astonishment enlivens the haggard men and they cinch their heels and hasten their gait, crowding around Hargrove as he dispenses his secrets.

“That old fortress has been down in the earth there for almost three centuries. Built to withstand a nuclear bombardment.”

“And you burned it?” says Trevor.

“Cratered it. It was done for, anyway.”

“How’d you come across something like that?” asks Jason, a young man only a little older than Jack.

“My ancestors,” Hargrove says, and explains to them the mission his family line has been sworn to uphold.

A new sense of gravity overtakes their journey. They ride in long silence through the enormous day, where overhead the earthly atmosphere seems to have extended itself into pale blue infinity. They veer north at Hargrove’s behest, riding along the centerline of a steep dry gulch until they come to a collected pool of run-off. The thin bath tastes gritty and they drink down as much as their bellies will hold.

“You know the land,” Jack says to Hargrove.

“Been years, but I’ve been through here before. Used to make the same outings as Renning and Ethan.”

“Why did you stop?”

“Turned fifty. Took on the role of caretaker at the house.”

Another pang of regret rolls through Jack’s gut. “What are you going to do now that it’s gone?”

“Build another house. Live out my days in peace, if there’s any to be found.”

“Will people still go out on those trips? The human terrians?”

“Why? Interested?”

“I don’t know… maybe.” He thinks about the map in Hargrove’s kitchen, about the frontier of Unknown Fate, and a tingle of adventure stirs inside him.

“We’ve gone out less and less over the years. They used to send out big expeditions, every seven years, in all directions. I’ve read about them in the journals. Usually they made it back. Sometimes they didn’t. That had mostly ended by the time I came up as a boy. Most of the outings I went on were just simple upkeep. I played a matchmaker of sorts, putting one settlement in touch with another, each having something the other needed.”

“Thomas went along with you?”

“Side by side. I think he got a taste of the world and liked it. He was always spinning his wheels… but that was all so long ago it seems like another life. He set out on his own in the summer of fifty-eight.”

“Fifty-eight?”

“The year. Fifty-eight.”

“What year is it now?” asks Jack.

“Oh… if my math adds up, this would be late March of the year twenty-four ninety-nine. But that’s old-fashioned time keeping. We might as well start back at zero for all the good it does.”

Taket is only peripherally aware of the hands that roll him onto his back and apply the tourniquet to the shreds of flesh and slivers of bone that were once his left arm. The heat waves continue to boil over them, emanating from the molten crater that burns in the desert heat like an underground coal fire. The carnage spreads outward from the crater in an acrid black radius, full of dead and dying horses, dead and dying men, flaming and smoking like the hells of some medieval triptych. He screams as they cauterize the severed flesh of his arm with flaming shrapnel from the blast.

Only twenty-three remain—those who had been guarding the perimeter of the decimated oasis. They behold the wreckage with devout superstition, eyeing the source of the explosion as if it might erupt again, fearing the dark forces responsible may not yet be satiated. Noxious fumes spew from the earth like the breath of some slumbering subterranean demon now awoken, full of mean venom and ancient fury.

The brave Sons of the Temple leave the dead where they lay and drag the wounded down by the parched riverbed and arrange them in neat lines to perform a quick and reckless triage. They are sick with the task, operating on some baser level with their thinking minds disengaged from the gruesomeness. Those that can still ride are given grisly treatments by trembling, blood-slippery hands and left to suffer, the rest are dispatched swiftly in the same manner applied to the lamed horses—a slick cut of the throat and on to the next.

Taket rises, holding his severed forearm against his chest, and looks around at the carnage. His men are covered in black char and red gore. The surviving horses have run scared, cutting a wide arc outward into the dry desert then doubling back to the bank upriver. Taket limps toward them, a hellish vision, and the horses start and skitter as he draws near. Only one seems fearless and calm—a tall, brown-speckled steed with an arrowshot scar on its hindquarters. Taket calls him forth and soothes him, then fastens his right hand on the pommel and hefts himself onto the saddle.

He rides through the bloody field of dead like some arcane horseman on a mission of soul collection. He surveys the limp and mangled bodies and pieces of bodies, then rides a wide swath around the blast radius, peering into the smoldering crater that runs straight down into the earth like a tunnel to the underworld. There is nothing to salvage. He makes his way back to the provisional camp along the river, where the wounded bellow in agony as crude and painful treatments are administered to their injuries.

“If you’re fit enough to stand, come with me. We need to tie down the horses.” He raises his remaining hand and points skyward. “When the sun is
here
, we leave. If you cannot make it, it is your choice whether we end your suffering or leave you to die.”

“Do you think this is all that’s left of it?” Lia asks, clicking her heel against the bundles. “Alexandria?”

“This is all. Nothing could have survived that blast.”

“You’re sure it was your dad?”

Nyla nods. “It’s funny… he talked about doing it a long time ago, he just didn’t have the heart. It wouldn’t have lasted another twenty years, the way things were going.”

“Aren’t you sad?”

“We’ll move on. We have everything we need right here.”

“What’s it for?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does it just teach people how to plant and build? We could already do that, and almost as good.”

“I’ll bet you could. No, it’s more than just planting and building. It’s… everything. It’s our history.”

“Not
our
history.
Theirs.”

“Ours, too. Don’t you want to know what it used to be like? How they used to be, how they used to think?”

“I always used to… We used to sit around and talk about it all night.”

“What did you say?”

“That their world was like magic.”

The golden desert turns slowly to dusky lavender and they hasten their pace. They have been riding at an almost imperceptible incline, and by the dim-starred twilight they reach the brow of a sandy mound that sweeps down toward the village where Marikez resides, nestled in the bend of the shallow river. Points of torchlight flicker around the darkening settlement, shining out from the many flat-roofed tents that surround the outskirts. The tented abodes are walled with colorful cloth exteriors that billow softly in the cooling night, giving the whole settlement the mystique of some traveling gypsy caravan. Situated in the center is a more permanent structure of wood and stone, with sullen light creeping out from a wide-open doorway.

Vague forms shuffle between the tents, wearing flowing robes and banded head-dressings. Lia and Nyla float toward them on weary horses, laden with the bound platinum plates.

In the dusty yards, old women mill about the clotheslines, unpinning the day’s wash and folding everything away in woven baskets. They look up from their work with spooked faces and hiss out warnings to the others and scurry inside. In only a matter of moments, the alleyways between the tents are empty and the entire colony looks a ghost town.

“Are you sure they’re friendly?”

As the words part Lia’s lips, droves of armed men fan out through the outer quarters and take cover. She can see them in the shadows, their glinting arrows trained straight at them, following their slow advance down the sandy way.

They skirt past a few outlying shelters, flaps of red cloth snapping around them. Nyla stops in the center of a circular plaza and rides a slow circuit around.

“We’re sent by Ryan Hargrove,” she calls out to the creeping shadows.

They sit still on their horses and wait, and for a long while no one moves.

Three figures advance through the deepening night—one striding up the middle, flanked by two armed men. He enters the round market and studies the two young women who’ve suddenly appeared from the desert. He takes another step forward, squinting against the darkness.

“Nyla?”

“Yes.”

She hops down and bounds toward him, leading her horse along. Lia sits quiet and watches. The man is swarthy and sun-darkened, with a long mane of coarse brown hair. Nyla runs into his arms and they embrace tightly.

“Hello, Marikez.”

“It has been years,” he says, stepping back and taking her in. “You were so little last I saw you.”

“It’s wonderful to see you. So much has changed here.”

“More of everything, all the time. How is your family? Your boy?”

“They’re fine,” says Nyla, wearing a strained smile on her face.

“What’s wrong? Is your father ill?”

“No. He’s… he’s fine. We’ve come to ask your help.”

“Of course. Anything.” Nyla’s worried silence speaks volumes and a deep crease furrows his brow. “What is it? What has happened?”

She turns and beckons Lia to join them. She rides over, leading the third horse along behind her.

“This is Lia.”

“Welcome,” he says. He takes her hand and helps her down from the horse, then turns to Nyla. “She’s your friend from the seaside?”

“No. She… we only just met.”

Marikez flashes a look of confusion and Lia raises her hand meekly and waves.

“We have something that needs to be kept safe. It’s very important.”

A slew of onlookers have gathered around the plaza, curious old faces and excited children. They eye the rectangular bundles lashed over the saddles.

“Perhaps we should talk elsewhere,” he says.

With the kindly grace of a gentleman, he takes the third lead from Lia’s hand and guides them through the quaint neighborhood of tents and shelters. Unknown spices float on the air and Lia swivels her head, drinking in the oddities hung from beams around the open-air dwellings—dried gourds and snakeskins, carven tools and utensils, child puppets with crisscross eyes and strange little wooden toys. The leery forms shuffle and stare as Lia and Nyla stroll past with their much-burdened horses in tow. They round a corner and head toward the center of the colony. Several of the children follow along at a distance, and on either side of the lane sit families around fire pits and old men who smoke pipes and watch them pass with casual disinterest. The homes grow sturdier as they approach the innermost, and oldest, part of the settlement. Wooden structures paling from the sun, with packed layers of mud and straw insulation.