Etherwalker (9 page)

Chapter 6

“So come one, come all to this carnival land,

We’ve wasted them tears, filled our pockets with sand,

And Baby, you’ll see this whole show is a joke,

A spinning ballet of heartbreak and smoke.

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah! Yeah! Yeah, yeah, oh yeah!”

—chorus to “
Salt-lick Illusion
” by the Dogfish Knights

Enoch stole a glance at his gangly companion, who was humming merrily as he crouched over the body of a plump coney. With long fingers, no more than bones with gray skin stretched over them like leather, Rictus finished cleaning the small beast and spat it over the morning fire.

Enoch had half expected the specter to evaporate in the rosy light of dawn like some misty nightmare, yet there he was, licking cracked teeth with a dry tongue and chuckling to himself like an impatient little boy waiting for the morning sausages to cook.

The previous night had been an odd one, with Rictus leading him through the jumbled ruins as though they were on a carefree jaunt through the meadow, all the while singing and laughing and jabbering in that peculiar dialect.

Bubble gum? Funk? What are these words?

Enoch had toyed with the idea of bolting, sure that this towering stack of bones and leather could never match his speed through the tumbled masonry of the ruins, but each time he quelled the urge with reason.

I don’t need anyone, but he’s done nothing but prove himself a friend. I suppose if things prove otherwise, I can always stir up his wires with a little push
.

He hoped he wasn’t relying too heavily on his newfound powers, but he had nothing to gauge by.

How much is too much? Pushing the platabruja left me a little tired, but I feel capable of much more.

He hoped that in the North he would find more people like him. He had so many questions.

Master Gershom, you left me too soon.

The loss of his master had left an aching sore in his chest, and it seemed to swell when Enoch had time to reflect on all that had happened.

Rictus broke him from his reverie by announcing that breakfast was served. The smell of simmering meat made Enoch’s mouth water, and his stomach grumbled noisily.

“You’d thought that old Rictus had forgotten about the vittles, didn’t you? No sir, I may not require eats nowadays thanks to Nanny,” here he tapped the box at his chest with a bony finger, “but I remember what it was like being a hungry kid.” The specter paused, still absently tapping at the box on his chest.

“At least I think I do.”

Rictus yielded the spitted coney, and Enoch set to the hot meat with a passion, ignoring burnt lips as he wolfed down the steaming food. Rictus watched the boy eat with sheer pleasure, eyes half-lidded with imaginary delight, even mimicking the chewing sounds that Enoch made. Enoch laughed at this, and, surprised at the sound, almost choked on a leg bone. The specter swatted him on the back with a chuckle.

“Slow down, kid. We’ll rest here until nightfall and then be on our way. Odds are, we lost the witch in the labyrinth back there, but I guarantee that she’ll be on our trail soon enough with some new thugs in tow.”

Rictus crawled under the shade of a leaning monolith, and soon all that was visible from the shadows was the pulsing red light at his chest. For the first time since he’d followed the specter into the ruins, Enoch spoke. His voice sounded husky and tired.

“Why don’t we travel by day? It will be much easier going, and we won’t be taken by surprise.”

Rictus’s voice came nonchalantly from the shadows, “The daylight hurts my eyes—one of the unfortunate side effects of my condition. Besides, you’re all dirty and unkempt—we don’t want you scaring people half to death, do we?”

Enoch’s hand went unconsciously to his face, which was still swollen and smeared with crusted blood. A low, dry laugh bubbled out of the shadow.

“No sir, folks don’t take too kindly to an unwashed kid. I couldn’t go
anywhere
with you looking like that.”

Enoch looked at the garish, skeleton face of his companion, then dropped his hand and smiled.

This laughter, this unexpected warmth, finally overcame his fear and revulsion of the undead thing. He lay back and closed his eyes, surprised that he could feel this way so soon after his master had died. Enoch wondered if he should feel bad about that, but before the thought could take root, he was asleep.

Chapter 7

“And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion . . .”

—Revelations 13:2 KJV

From her secret spot in the joint between two girders, Sera watched the wagon being unloaded. The handlers were being extremely cautious, more so than they usually were with Nyraud’s little pets. Sera could tell that this was a special delivery. It had been given a private pen instead of being allowed to roam the garden like the nerwolves, the grendels, and the chee. She toyed with her hair as she mused, winding the long, blue strands between her fingers.

A delivery from the South. I thought it was still a wasteland down there. Have the jungles survived?

Instead of the usual pair of handlers, a full dozen of them stood around this wagon, barbed lances held at the ready. Sera reached up and twisted her eye-rings, bringing the details hundreds of feet below her into sharp focus.

Upper lips and foreheads glittered with sweat, knuckles white with tension. One of the larger men had lifted the door to the pen, and the wagon’s mouth was brought flush with the opening. A rumbling growl thundered from under the canvas tarpaulin, so low and strong that Sera felt its vibrations in the metal under her feet. She tried to focus deeper into the shadows where the canvas had pulled away from the wagon cage.

Just then, there was a flash of tawny movement as the rumble spilled into a roar. A scream rang out through the garden, spooking a flock of redjays from a tree just between Sera’s roost and the wagon. The intervening chaos blurred her autofocus, and it was a few moments before she was able to find the wagon again. It had been turned over on its side and was now surrounded by shouting men who were thrusting their lances into its depths. One of the men was on his back in a spreading pool of blood, his torso split open to the sky. Another angry roar echoed from below, and the wagon shook. The handlers began to panic, jabbing repeatedly into the cage. Their lances dripped red.

Sera detected a commotion at the other end of the garden. Spreading her wings, she quietly glided down to the tree below, remembering to stay distant and in the visual lee of the tree the whole time. She landed on a branch on the far side and crawled around the trunk to the branch the birds had vacated. It was moist with their droppings, something which would certainly have disgusted the other girls back at the Spire—especially Taras and Keyr.

They’re such children.
Some things require maturity.

Sera started to shake her head and then froze.

Who would be crossing the sward but none other than King Nyraud himself! He was followed by the usual retinue of counselors, guards, and lesser nobles; many rushed and stumbled to keep up—none wanted to be alone in the Garden. The King usually left such rabble in the court when he went hunting, so their presence now indicated that this had been an unplanned detour. The King looked furious.

“Idiots! Do you think I had this Ur’lyn brought all the way across the Broken Sea so you could skewer it?”

Even at this distance, King Nyraud was an imposing figure with his violet cape thrown back over broad shoulders. A giant of a man, his sharp features and slanting eyes bespoke the vain cunning of a hunter. Despite what his subjects thought, Sera knew that Nyraud was more than that—he was a hedonist who relied on a practiced ferocity to sate his appetites. She shivered and moved closer to the trunk where the shadows were deeper.

The handlers had backed away from the cage as King Nyraud approached, twisting their goads in sweaty hands. The roaring from underneath the canvas had again subsided into a menacing growl.

Fascinated, Sera quietly soared down to a lower tree. She landed on the far side and then crawled from the shadows along its length, her fear of the Hunter King swallowed up by curiosity.

What manner of beast kills armed men from inside a cage? Even Nyraud is tense!

Focusing deeply with her metal eyes, she could see the bunched muscles on the king’s neck as he approached the cage, his nostrils flared. Granted, she could have seen that from above—an angel’s eyes were
made
for distant viewing. But there was something about being close, about hearing and smelling what she saw—these are the sort of thoughts which had earned Sera her “odd-feather” status back home. This was why Taras and Keyr teased her.

Maybe I’m more of a hunter than an angel? You ever dally with your upstairs neighbors, good King?

She mused about that for a moment, then shook her head. As she leaned forward, a twig snapped under her hand.

In a flash of stormy cloth, Nyraud whirled around. Sera stilled a gasp and slowly crawled back along the branch.

There is no way he could have heard that. He is two dozen meters away!

“Surround that tree, men! We have a spy in our midst! Archers! Archers!”

The sounds of running feet filled the Garden. Sera glanced around fearfully—the tree foliage hemmed her in on both sides and above. To fly she would have to swoop low under the surrounding branches, and already the sound of arrows whistling through the lower canopy ruled out that idea. Nyraud’s booming voice carried through the leaves.

“To the left, yes! Now aim higher. Higher! Can’t you see her, you fools? There! Underneath the large branch covered with bird scat!”

An arrow was suddenly embedded in the wood next to her feet.

Time to go!

There was plenty of wing space on the branch above her. A quick leap and she had it in her hands. Or almost did. Her fingers slid through warm moisture.
Damn birds!

The Garden floor was rushing up at her, and she barely remembered to spread her wings in time. The trimmed grass bent low under the wind of her passage, and only an instinctual spin to the right saved her from colliding with one of the archers, who, caught in mid-chortle at what he had thought was a downed target, dove to one side and knocked a screaming courtesan on his face.

I must gain altitude!

Tilting her tertials forward, Sera soared up into the protective greenery of the trees and began beating her wings furiously. Branches swayed in her wake and leaves drifted down onto the milling crowd below.

Where is
—? O
h!

A shadow pounced from the branch above her. Sera tucked her wings and twirled, hearing the whistle of a knife through air as Nyraud spun over her to land nimbly on a limb three meters below.

How did he get up there so fast?!

Heart beating like a drum, Sera spread her wings and let the velocity of her freefall carry her up and out of the canopy.

Arrows clattered against the girders around her as she reached the tangled iron safety of the Garden’s roof. No man would follow her there—the upper levels belonged to the birds, the clouds, and the Alaphim.

Nobody is going to believe that I escaped an encounter with the Hunter King! I don’t believe it myself. Well, not that I can tell anybody that I was here. Stupid treaty.

Her thoughts turned to curiosity as she rose through a shattered skylight to catch a rising thermal that would carry her to Windroost Spire.

I’ll have to ask old Lamech what an “Oor-Lin” is. Didn’t he used to fly over parts of the Broken Sea on patrol?

She sighed.

Back when there were enough of us to patrol that far.

The melancholy thought was swept away as quickly as it came as Sera enjoyed the gentle caress of warm air on her pinions. She was young, and what could be better than to spread your wings and stretch as the warm earth exhaled you skyward. Even now, in these dark times, to be an angel was sheer joy.

It wasn’t until she had landed at the Spire that she reached back and discovered that her ponytail was missing.

Chapter 8

“They say that she will never get off the ground. Are they worried that the core won’t reach the suborbital construction site due to faulty engineering? Ha! Nothing so mundane. No, they say she’ll never get off the ground because there are too many people in high places who don’t like the idea of folks starting up all by themselves. Settling a world by themselves. And 70 light years is a long way to send the tax men.”

— Admiral Ca’uich Na, at the groundbreaking ceremony for
El Arko de Xibalba.
The last recorded interview before his assassination.

Despite the danger of entering the city, Enoch found himself trembling with anticipation.

Babel, the city of a thousand tongues
!
Mishael Keddrik used to say that it was carved from one of the Serpent’s own fangs.

Indeed, from this distance the city resembled a broken fang piercing the night sky. Rictus had paused at the sight and pulled back his hood, the tattered remnant of a stolen burial shroud. His eyes were hidden in shadow, and Enoch wondered what kind of memories he might have of this old city. With a light wind pulling at his tattered disguise, Rictus seemed even more ghostly than ever.

Well, the disguise was his idea.

Before leaving the refuge of the ruins, Rictus had wrapped the shroud around his body desert-style, telling Enoch that he’d seen nomads from the South dressed so. Enoch had covered himself in similar fashion, cringing at what his master would have surely condemned as desecration. It did, however, hide the nature of the swords he carried. Rictus had whistled through his teeth when he first saw them.

The signature tools of the Nahuati blademasters, he had said, were rarely seen south of Tenocht. They represented an open invitation to a duel if you were lucky, and gallows if you weren’t. As handy as Enoch was with the weapons, he didn’t feel deserving of such a title just yet—nor did he wish to defend it.

He reached under the shroud to adjust his scabbard, which was chafing, and sighed.

I may have been trained in the ways of a Nahuati, but that doesn’t make me accustomed to wearing these swords on a long march.

Rictus had asked to see what Enoch could do with the weapons on their second night of travel, and Enoch had refused. For some reason he felt that drawing his master’s swords for show would be wrong. The specter just shrugged and said that he could “suit himself.” Enoch wondered if the comment referred to the shabby state of his clothing, but after a quick glance at his companion’s ancient leathers—skins kept from the edge of decay by the same tek which animated their owner—he decided that it must be another remnant of his odd language.

The journey that night had felt exceptionally long. Trudging through the crumbled foundations of an abandoned temple, Enoch couldn’t help but make a comparison between the setting and his own ruined life. Everything that he had known and loved was gone. Was dead. The numbness he had felt in the days following his master’s burial was leaving—evaporating—in the frigid heat of true sorrow.

The following night, Enoch had drawn his swords and made an effort to move through the opening steps of
Cisne Caido.
Rictus was impressed, but he thought that it might be useful to teach Enoch something a little more “lowbrow.” Every night since then, they’d sparred with shrouds wrapped around their weapons to muffle the sounds—and to minimize dismemberment. Rictus was reminded to disconnect the cable and silence his humming longsword after his shroud shivered apart in a flurry of dry powder. Enoch shuddered to think what would have happened if he’d tried to block that first strike.

At least I wouldn’t be feeling these bruises! It’s a good thing I’m covered in grave-wrappings—my arms look like they’ve been through a wool carder.

Enoch smiled in spite of his sore limbs. The nightly bouts had been a surprising remedy for his sorrow. Not curing, but bridling his grief. As he moved and spun and cut through the air, Enoch could feel the heartache softening in his chest, flowing along his arms and out along the flashing edges of the
derech
and the
iskeyar
. The sadness was still there, but it didn’t rule him.

It wasn’t the exercise alone. Training with Rictus was very different than training with Master Gershom. Laughter in place of stern command. Clever suggestions instead of orders. And the specter was
good
. Surprisingly, delightfully good. What Rictus lacked in quickness and agility, he supplemented with an amazing reach and brilliant swordplay. He focused on pressing the attack, often leaving himself wide open as he sent a whistling
volante
across Enoch’s chest. The frenzy with which Rictus pressed the attack was unnerving, and Enoch could see how even the most seasoned warrior might panic under such a flurry of blows.

But Enoch wasn’t a seasoned warrior, just a quick student with a talent for seeing through patterns. After two close losses to the specter’s tireless blade, he concluded that if he could just keep his focus enough to step through the
volante
with a
cabra breve
, he would be able to riposte under the specter’s extended arm and end the bout.

If he closed his eyes, he could remember everything about that duel, the third bout of that night; how he’d focused on holding off the onslaught of flying attacks, waiting for Rictus to pivot back on his left foot in preparation for the sweeping horizontal advance. The longsword had come rushing towards him, and this time Enoch had stepped
into
the arc, leaning backwards and spinning on his heels so that Rictus’s elbow passed inches from his face. It had been a simple matter of extending his right arm as he completed the turn. Rictus laughed and lowered his blade. Enoch’s
derech
was lodged tightly between his third and fourth rib.

“Well that’s an impressive little piece of ballet. I tell you what—I’ll give you this one.”

Enoch was surprised.

“You’ll
give
it to me? My blade is still stuck in your chest! You’re dead!”

“No, no, no. No, sir. First of all, I was dead before you met me. Second, that sword would be a real worry for me if I actually had a lung there that you could open, but I don’t. The fact that I can stand here discussing the merits of said fatal blow should be evidence enough of that.”

Here he waved off Enoch’s sputtering protests with a bony hand. Enoch remembered the odd feeling of anger at how
unfair
it had seemed. Master Gershom would have complimented him on the flourish. But what Rictus had said next still burned in his ears:

“Listen, Enoch. The real issue here is that you treated this duel as a game between equals. You saw my top-heavy offense as a flaw rather than a stratagem.

“Tell me, kid, what would you do now that your longest blade is lodged in between my ribs?” Here Rictus had spun away, whipping the hilt out of Enoch’s hand and bringing the edge of his own longsword under the boy’s jaw. “I’ve just halved your reach and brought you within the radius of my forté. More men have died with their steel in my chest then you can count.

“You are good at moving to your opponent’s weaknesses, Enoch. The real trick is adapting to their strengths.”

Enoch had been thinking about this every night since then. His duels with Master Gershom had always been structured and clinical. Wooden blades, proper counters, rules of engagement and measured ash-marks. The even-tempered study of angle verses force. He had never felt this heat, this
passion
in his training. It was new, and he liked it.

Enoch looked over at his companion. The specter had pulled his hood up again and resumed walking towards the city. Enoch hurried up behind him.

“Rictus, do people live all the way up at the top of the city—up there among the clouds?”

“No—nobody lives at the top. The middle levels were destroyed years ago, leaving nothing but a tangled skeleton of girders. You’d have to be a regular monkey-man to get through that mess up to the top—that or an angel. ‘Course, if you were one of the feathered folk, you’d probably be more worried about your useless pecker! Hoo!” At this he slapped a bony knee and guffawed.

Enoch fanned away the resultant cloud of dust. He never found any of Rictus’s jokes even mildly humorous, but he tried to appreciate the sentiment.

Squinting his eyes, Enoch could see that the dingy metallic walls of the tower only extended halfway up its length before turning into a patchy tracery of jumbled bars which, for all their delicate appearance, continued firmly up into the clouds for at least a mile above the base. Rictus spoke more to himself as the towering city grew nearer, something Enoch found significantly more useful than his jokes.

“Can’t believe she’s still standing after so many centuries,” he muttered, and Enoch wondered if it was respect he heard in that dry voice. “We built to last back then, that’s for sure. You know, it wasn’t intended to be a tower.”

His voice was soft and distant, ill-suited on the grinning specter.

“What was it meant to be?” asked Enoch, curious at what could change his companion’s demeanor so.

“A ship, kid. It was the first pieces of a ship which could carry people . . .” Here he swept his shrouded arm across the night sky. “Out. Out there.”

Enoch didn’t understand.

“How could something so big ever even get off the ground?”

“Ha—well that wasn’t even all of it. The tower you see was just the core of the first rocket. See, we were building the biggest parts down here, and then launching them into that cozy space between the earth and the moon. Then we were going to stitch them all together and set sail.

“This was going to be our chance, our first good trip outta the old neighborhood, to spread a little
homo sapiens
around, you know? We’d finally found some vacancies out there, some real nice spots with all the amenities. For a while, it looked like we were going to break free from the history and the grudges and all of that dusty old badness. Finally had a chance to pull up our roots and get some real breathing room.”

Rictus was staring at the sky. His jaw moved slowly up and down, and Enoch couldn’t tell if he was trying to laugh, or trying to whistle, or trying to cry. A bony hand moved up to point at the tower and then went back to the metal box on his chest. Tap, tap, tap.

“But she never left the ground.”

“Why?”

“C’mon—don’t tell me that you haven’t heard of the Schism! The big kaboom? When the world decided that two heads were better than one?”

“Oh, I’ve read of the Schism. The Great War in Heaven.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever they’re calling it these days. Pretty soon there was no one left who knew how to fly the Ark, or that cared to.”

“The Ark?”

“That is her name. Was her name. She was the last one built. Our last shot.”

Rictus stopped talking. It was uncharacteristic, but Enoch didn’t mind. He had plenty to think of already. And to be honest, he found it kind of nice to have some quiet.

*  *  *  *

The traffic on the road had slowly become dense as smaller side trails converged from all directions. Enoch found himself in a constant state of open-mouthed awe as a kaleidoscopic parade of people, creatures, and vehicles shuffled past them.

A caravan of Akkadian traders had passed by earlier riding a short-haired variety of muridon which seemed much taller and sleeker than the ones he had seen before. Their wagons smelled of spices, leathers, and pungent oils. A young girl sitting in the back of the rearmost cart had sung a lilting song in a tongue Enoch didn’t recognize. In the yellow lamplight, her hair shone a warm cinnamon color, which he stared at mesmerized—until he noticed that she was looking at him curiously. He had stumbled over the length of his own shroud and pretended to be watching a bug on the road. The girl’s sweet laughter faded into the dust with the rest of the caravan.

A procession of performers from Axum soon followed, tattooed in shifting colors. They spun past like a flock of flowers in a windstorm. Enoch thought he could feel his eyes smarting from the wild chaos of hues.

Yet even this was forgotten as a raucous croak startled Enoch from the road. A trio of sallow-faced young men rode by on the back of what appeared to be a giant, scaly fowl.

“Swampmen from Garron,” whispered Rictus in reply to his unspoken question. “They live in the boiling marshlands north of here.”

Enoch had heard of Lodoroi—the Swampmen. They dealt in exotic breeds captured and propagated from the plagued Garronian wastes. It was said that they had made a pact with the Serpent in ages past, for the changeling sickness of that region never affected them. In the darkness, Enoch could see various cages and sacks tied to the back of their steed, some of which were empty and others which writhed with ersatz life.

The city walls came into view just as dawn broke over the eastern hills, which now crouched tawny and low like a pride of desert cats. Above the dirty stonework of the walls, a bright confusion of spires, minarets, and domes caught the morning light. While nowhere near as imposing as the impossible height of the tower, they had a magic all their own.