Jadde - The Fragile Sanctuary (33 page)

Between many sleep periods she learnt, and
in her fascination, knowledge filled her mind. Time seemed to flow endlessly
without the anchor of seasons to remind her. The bottled water run out so she
did a daily journey to the waterfall to fill empty bottles, and when the plastic
and vacuum packed food ran low, she rigged long fishing lines through the
waterfall down into an unseen pool below. Bated with fruity morsels, she caught
salmon and trout. Then she ate them with the strands of green pondweed like
slime. They kept her sustained and eked out the remaining wrapped food. She
began whispering to herself as if talking to a companion. Then the whispers
turned to full voiced conversations and she realised her voice was brittle and
croaked from lack of use. So as she wandered around she began to sing both to
exercise her voice and to keep up her spirits. Her hair grew and her clothes
began to fray and become thin. Vaguely she realised time and seasons were
passing outside her retreat, but her thirst for new knowledge drowned her
anxiety.

Cabryce absorbed books about the ancient
ones machinery, procedures, lifestyle and specialised knowledge. The whole
complex she had found was called a Genetic Research Institute and had been set
up to find a permanent way of annihilating creatures called quarter-men.
Apparently it was a secret, closed community and the whole ancient world was
oblivious to its existence. She found shelves of books in other rooms and learnt
of computing, building and systems maintenance, various scientific specialities
and a host of miscellaneous but mind blowing information which made more sense
of other books she’d already browsed.

Then her sleep periods became disturbed, she
realised her unease was caused by a growing concern that the ancient complex
would become her tomb and that her new found knowledge would be lost forever.
She switched her research to finding out how to leave this place. Nardin needed
to know of it, he could use its knowledge against the Brenna. Telling Nardin
would be easy, but she also had to find Malkrin to tell him too. First, she had
to avoid the Brenna; there was no way she was going to risk meeting Erich
Gamlyn again.

Then an idea struck her, perhaps she could
find her way from here to the mysterious strangers with their hero Falconfeather.
She owed that at least to the poor man who had lost his life trying to extract
her from the Brenna. It would be easier to find them than Malkrin who wandered
somewhere in the vast deadlands. The idea was a good one and she kept it firmly
in her mind and began methodically searching endless corridors and into the far
corners of her new home looking for an exit that led anywhere other than the
waterfall. She looked in huge metal rooms entitled refrigerators and freezers,
the units had failed over time and inside were shelves of desiccated remains. After
many hourglasses of time fruitlessly exploring the walls in each cavernous
space and small room she steeled herself to enter a pitch dark space where the
lights had completely failed. In an entrance lobby she made out stairs leading
down. Then as her eyes acclimatised to the deep gloom she made out signs in the
usual clear lettering of the ancient sign-makers. Above one a skull and
crossbones appeared in the gloom and the wording beneath stated:

No unauthorised
Personnel

 And below, words in capital letters:

ARMOURY & MUNITIONS

She was about to walk away certain that the
words didn’t mean it was an exit, but alongside the room she noticed a further corridor.
The lights had also failed there and from a distance it just looked an
impenetrably dark corner; that’s how she had missed it. Carefully she ran her
hand along another support rail and her feet along a sloping ramp. Amongst the
shadows the corridor continued its downward incline. It was so dark it made her
shake and bought back the terrible panic of her first discovery of the passage
entrance from the waterfall. She fumbled down in the dark with a hand firmly
gripping the handrail until her outstretched fingers found a closed door. It
opened with a reluctant push and again that hiss of air as the microclimate within
escaped into her caverns. She knew enough now to hope whatever was behind the
door was well preserved. The room, corridor or passage beyond was still
impenetrably black as she peered into the even darker void. It was impossible
to risk going further without light.

Cabryce retraced her steps thinking hard;
there had to be some form of emergency lighting. She guessed the ancient ones
would not use oil fabric wrapped around thick sticks like her people did. Then
she had an idea; the vehicles went out into the outside world and their
operators must have needed light at night. She walked to the nearest vehicle
and wrenched a door open. It was the one labelled Command Vehicle. Inside were
racks of equipment and carelessly strewn operation and code files. She opened drawers
and peered under the work stations and then under rows of metal hats and then
where long ornate poles were clipped. Alongside these was a rack with an assortment
of boxes. The word ‘flare’ leapt to her attention and she found one which said:

‘Orange, Handheld –
sixty second duration.

She took it outside and pulled on a ring as
the diagram on its side explained. Immediately a vivid smoking orange seared
her eyes and she dropped it. The cavern filled with smoke and a hideous bleep
sounded.

She hid behind a safety equipment cabinet
with her hands firmly pressed over her ears. Eventually the smoke cleared,
sucked into large vents in the ceiling. The noise stopped and the silence felt
equally as deafening.

She went to the flare rack and grabbed a
handful of flares that said

Red. Handheld  –
two minutes duration.

She had no idea how long two minutes was
but the flares were larger so she assumed it was longer than the sixty second
flare.

Back in the dark passage she pulled a cord
on one, and the corridor lit in an unearthly smoky glow. It stung her eyes but
she drew a single breath in the thick air and willed her highsense to hold it.  The
hideous bleeping started overhead and the smoke was again extracted through
vents in the ceiling.

She ignored the noise and passed many doors,
all had names at eye level. The titles Post Room, Genetics Laboratory One or
Two or Three meant nothing to her; neither did rooms labelled Culture Room,
Incubator Room and Prep room. They all had words in common placed beneath each
room’s title: the words Bio Hazard, written below a strange interlocked
crescent moon symbol. She shook her head in bafflement then found doors with
individual names beginning with the title Dr. and then some that began Prof.
The next one she stopped at, held her attention and she just stared. The flare
went out and she fumbled another. Had she read correctly?

The next red glow ignited in her hand and
she glanced along the smoke fogged letters. She had been right, and gripped the
door handle.

The sign had said
General-commander
Jadde.

As soon as she entered, lights flickered
and went out with loud pops, but one stayed powered, enough for her to see
around.

A large desk filled the centre of the room
with a modest but comfy chair behind it. On the desk sat the obligatory
computer and behind sat a table and cabinets with drawers. On the wall a plaque
announced.

United States
Research Centre G-DNA2

A faded photo on the wall had a line of
words beneath describing the man as President of the United States of America. On
the desk sat dust covered pens, glass weights holding down paper, a fascinating
picture file stood with a title January 2046 with individual days numbered, coloured
files lay arranged neatly alongside a photo of two children. But on top of all the
neat organisation, a couple of grubby pages lay with ragged edges as if torn
from another document. In the dim light she bent over and read.

It was part of an account by someone called
Morris-Tailt. Then she read a strange meaningless jumble about quarter-men and
hidden weapons. A line leapt at her about the Goddess Jadde. But she was no Goddess
and had died of some illness.

After a time to get over the misuse of the
Goddess’s name she carried on reading. The place name ‘underground laboratory’ was
used. That was where she was now, she realised.

Finally another hand had written a footnote
and signed it
Kristopher
Falconfeather.

She thrust the yellowed pages into her
skirt’s pocket alongside the golden sun. If she could just get out of here she
could find Malkrin and surprise him with another mysterious gift.

Back in her usual seat in the canteen Cabryce
sat and ate the last of the sealed food. She took another look at the pages
containing Jadde’s name, used as if the writer was confident Jadde was not a Goddess,
but a person of importance. She withdrew the golden sun idly examining it; then
clasped it and dozed.

And in her dreams a woman’s voice spoke to Cabryce,
and she talked back telling it of her troubles and her plight. The voice
promised it would help, and asked some questions which Cabryce tried to answer.

She woke refreshed, feeling as if Jadde
herself had spoken – refuting her death described by Kristopher Falconfeather.

Cabryce decided to carry on down the
corridor of many names, determined to see where it ultimately led. Then she
remembered the dream voice and paused, its exact argument filled her head. In
the dream she, Cabryce, had just described the snowploughs and the other
vehicles.

‘If the cavern contains these metal
monsters then they had to have been brought in somehow Cabryce’.

‘They may have been built in here.’

 The dream voice had countered,
‘to do
that would need greater engineering facilities than it would appear your
retreat contains. Look for a very large door.’

She envisaged a large ornate door like the
one that fronted The great Hall of Justice. ‘There is no such door, my Dream Mistress.’

‘
Look anyway Cabryce
.’ The dream
voice had requested.

Although annoyed with the futility of the
task, Cabryce did as the dream voice had asked her – just in case when the next
time she slept the voice returned to scold her.

She stood in front of the fire-tender; it
was backed against the wall that led to the computer rooms and canteen. Would it
have been pushed in that far? She walked to the front of the first snowplough.
There was plenty of room around the front and she looked at the wall noticing
it was smooth rather than the irregular texture of the painted-rock side wall
or the large brick patterns of other walls. It was patterned with reinforcing
struts welded to large metal sheets. The whole surface was dented and bowed.
But all the dents faced toward her, showing whoever had hammered on the
metalwork had done so from outside.

What manner of a monster could have tried
to gain admittance? Cabryce hardly dared think as she touched the cold surface
and paint flaked off revealing brown corroded metal. There was no way the
colossal structure could open. She saw a couple of large pushbuttons and walked
to the corner. The equipment manuals had shown other control-buttons where red meant
close and green meant open; so she fully pressed the green button. Nothing
happened, not even a creak. She gave up after the third press and stood back.
After a few frustrated breaths she realised the latticework of struts fell
short in an area to one side of the dented and warped metal. It was a small
door within a large door. She walked up and examined it. It was at her height
and rectangular in shape, with a contoured groove where fingers could be placed
to pull a recessed handle sideways. She did so and something gave with a gritty
crunch. Two tugs later she still could not free it and grabbed a metal wrecking
bar from a workbench. It proved a powerful lever, and with it she wrenched the
door open.

A wall of smashed and cracked boulders greeted
her, most so big there was no hope of shifting them. She peered into gaps
noticing more boulders behind. At some time there had been a colossal avalanche
which had concealed the huge door completely. It accounted for why none of her
tribe had ever noticed such an entrance. Then she speculated whether the
ancients had created the avalanche to deliberately hide the cavern.

Dejectedly she returned to the Command
Vehicle and picked up more flares – back to the original plan.

CHAPTER
TWENTYSEVEN

M
uttering and whispered conversations
accompanied the slow progress of the long column of allied tribes. Malkrin rode
up and down the column inspiring and urging the people on. During every night’s
camp a few foolishly independent individuals disappeared; their heads always found
the next morning impaled on stakes. No matter how many sentries were set around
the large gathering there appeared to be no stopping the quarter-men beyond the
perimeter.

Even the weather was against them.
Blossoming storm clouds led to lashing rain that washed the remaining spirit
from all but the Wolf people. They were used to travelling in any weather.

Malkrin sighed with dismay as he examined
another hideous display. It was always placed alongside the sacred trail for
all the people to see. Yesterday he had ordered a section of Brenna to ride
ahead to bury the remains before the people walked through. That worked and the
people missed the hideous spectacle. But today the demons were wise to the
tactic and the Brenna had been attacked as they buried the nights’ gruesome harvest.
Only two Brenna and a rider-less horse returned and Malkrin reluctantly discussed
TrathWolf’s new plan.

‘I will lie in wait for the demons through
the night with twenty warriors and catch the demons in the act.’

Malkrin reluctantly agreed, and that night
the tribes were woken with shouts and cries of the dying. It was an expensive
victory; the six quarter-men had died at the expense of nine Wolf warriors. It
would have been ten but Seara awoke and ran with Palreth as escort to heal a
warrior.

Then Malkrin devised an audacious plan to
ambush the demons.

He scouted ahead that evening, before the
tribes camped for the night. They were four days from the Wild-cat cave; two
brave Brightwater women were with him and a band of selected warriors. Another
group of warriors searched the surroundings for watching quarter-men. A rider
gave the all-clear signal. Malkrin chose sandy ground and scooped out eight
large holes big enough to contain a man each. The women Sattie and Ethy helped
bury them under the sandy soil with hollow reeds protruding for Malkrin and his
warriors to breathe through. The warriors were buried in a circle around the two
women, with Malkrin buried the nearest to them for instant protection. They
were instructed to shout, ‘
now’
when the shadows beyond the campfire turned
into demons.

It had worked.

‘
Now. Malkrin, now
.’ The words still
echoed in his mind. The warriors had leapt out of the soil in the nick of time
and caught the overconfident demons as they swept toward the women. All six demons
perished without a scratch on the warriors or women.

Malkrin arrived back just before dawn with
his victorious brethren. He passed TrathWolf’s disappointed face, and could not
resist confirming his authority.

‘That is how you do things my friend,’ he
stated simply and rode off to get some sleep. The next night he set a similar
trap with four women, two of which were from the Celembrie and formidable
warriors themselves who concealed long throwing knives in their clothes.

Another triumph, eleven demons died for two
wounded. Seara quickly healed them.

The next night was demon free – they had
won a small victory.  The column camped the final night around the Wild-cat
cave, again without trouble. The next day scouting bands of Brenna and townsmen
greeted them and the long journey was over.

Malkrin gave the officer a brief account of
the failed defence of Brightwater, of Boele the Bears death and other
Seconchane casualties, and then warned of approaching demon skirmishers.

‘We know already Sire Malkrin. We have had
lines of Skatheln heads left with blood written warnings about harvesting our
souls.’

‘I fear you have suffered as we have.’

‘Aye, but we found ways of ambushing them.’

‘You have lost many warriors?’

‘At first yes, but we learnt to make a good
accounting. But we have lost the Skatheln people.’

‘How?’

‘They took fright and ran off. The thought
of losing their souls was too much for such simple creatures. I had a section
catch them but they would not stop and have disappeared into a narrow pass to
the highest snow covered regions.’

Malkrin nodded understanding, ‘Bulwan was a
kind but impotent chief. The whole tribe were convinced that the Goddess Jadde
was to be found in the mountains. They have gone to seek her protection.’

Malkrin took Seara and her inseparable
friend Palreth together with TrathWolf, BalthWolf, Talgour and Thicheal to a
meeting with the Brenna Council. He left the tribes people with the Seconchane
officer who gave assurances that they would all be accommodated in the meadows
within the Seconchane fortifications.

A heavy atmosphere pervaded the Hall of
Justice, but during the long complex meeting that followed a bond was
established between the peoples of all the lands. It was a grim discussion of
tactics, and the defence and deployment of all fighters. It would be a battle
to possible annihilation and all present knew there would be no second chance
to retreat and defeat the quarter-men later.

Malkrin glanced to Jadde’s altar and remembered
his strange encounter with it, and wondered if he could summon his inner eye to
risk another view. Would his mind stay intact for long enough to summon her
help? He doubted it, after all he’d been through he couldn’t risk throwing
everything away in a blind plea that may burn his whole mind this time.

  Sire Steth and Nardin were summoned and
they shuffled in with Steth supporting his near blind assistant.

‘We . . . have found nothing of the missing
diary pages.’ Steth’s voice was loaded with disappointment.

Nardin took over, ‘But
we have discovered much about the origin of the demons.’

He had the council’s full attention.

‘Go on,’ said Bredon the Fox expectantly.

‘The ancients created the demons and
allowed them the freedom to breed. Then when they had bred in secret multitudes
and were killing countless tribes of people, the ancients realised the horror
they’d created and made a weapon of great power to destroy the demon scourge.
It used something called a biological insecticide that only targeted the quarter-men
demons. I have looked in various volumes and found references to human
mutations that accidentally combined insect DNA to human DNA and created the quarter-man
race. It was this DNA that was somehow the key to creating the weapon.’

‘The ancients were not so wise after all;
they played with their own doom,’ the Fox stated bitterly.

Nardin glanced myopically at the intent
faces staring back questioningly at him. ‘Indeed Sire. Before the killing began
and the weapons were created, politicians and well meaning people decided not
to destroy the fast breeding mutants, but allow them to set up their own ghetto.
Then when they became uncontrollably aggressive, the ancients guarded them on a
remote island. The quarter-men then escaped from this island. I discovered the
ancient’s governments allowed more communities elsewhere; the containment
problem was kept secret. An unregulated nest was spotted, then another. By then
colonies had been allowed worldwide. More unauthorised colonies appeared and
spread like a plague. The alarm was raised too late, huge quarter-man nests were
detected underground in every remote area worldwide.’

 ‘You use many strange words Researcher
Nardin but we understand the gist of your account,’ said the Fox. ‘I cannot
believe the ancients were such fools as to allow the demon scourge to prevail
when they could have eliminated the creatures before being overwhelmed.’

‘They had different values to us Sire.
Politics and false morality twisted their thinking into knots and restricted actions
to mere containment of the demons at first. Meek minded people would not allow
the destruction of sentient beings no matter how evil their intentions. They
cried something called ‘human rights’ then ‘quarter-man rights’ which
apparently none dared argue against. Then the demons began slaughtering remote
tribes, and people still refused to believe it was the quarter-men and put the
deaths down to militant human groups called hard-line terrorists.’

‘Why is there no evidence in the books of
the weapon eventually used to destroy the demons?’ asked Thicheal.

‘Because the books were written before the
weapon was created. Most were produced before the United Nations proclamation
to destroy the quarter-men. However, I am convinced that somewhere nearby lies
the remainder of the account which will tell of the solution.’

‘Somewhere in Cyprusnia?’ asked council
member Erich Gamlyn and Malkrin seethed with imagined thoughts of Cabryce’s
encounter with the Brenna Ruler.

‘I believe that to be so. The account
mentions
Second-chance Experimental station
. We are the Seconchane. So I
think over time our name was derived from the words second chance, which
because we live here must mean our direct ancestors succeeded in destroying the
quarter-men from here. Therefore the experimental station must be somewhere in
or near Cyprusnia.’ Nardin bowed and sat as the meeting erupted in wild
conjecture.

Malkrin lent over Nardin and whispered, ‘4765,
what was it?’

Nardin’s face saddened and his eyes welled
up in frustration. ‘I have no idea Malkrin. It would not tie in with any library
location, entry number or title. The numbers have been at the forefront of my
research but I can find nothing.’

Malkrin thought back to his brief search in
the ancient’s library with Nardin all those weeks before he had led the
Seconchane to assist Brightwater. Falconfeather had been very specific about
the numbers, which book could they refer too? He pushed the numbers to the back
of his mind and thought of the sun and Planets emblem painted so hugely on the
far wall. He had seen the emblem on the highsense suns and had marked it as
being significant – but what significance he had no idea. He gave up and
returned to more pressing matters.

It was well into the night when The Fox
announced the dispositions of defences would be revised to accommodate the
influx of tribal warriors. He then announced a short respite for sleep. Malkrin
decided early tomorrow he would take Seara to Nardin in the lower library where
the quiet atmosphere would allow her to lay her hands on Nardin’s blindness.

The next day in the library Nardin sat relaxed.
Seara stood behind his chair and began by massaging his temples. Her eyes
gently closed and a look of warmth spread over her face and in her hands.

Malkrin allowed her time to work her gift
and walked to the giant emblem on the far wall. He read again Morris-Tait’s
account and glanced at the biology volumes Nardin had indicated. He couldn’t
absorb himself in the research and strode the library trying to pinpoint the
curiosity he had in the emblem. It was a more intricate depiction of the gold sun
emblems he had taken from the deceased pursuer.

All the time his mind repeated 4765.

Finally giving up, he returned to see how
Seara progressed. Nardin was slouched in the chair as if asleep, his face had
lost that beleaguered look now his eyelids covered his haunted eyes.

‘How goes it?’ Malkrin whispered.

Seara smiled with acknowledgement of a complex
healing nearly completed. She had her hands to Nardin’s forehead and Malkrin’s
highsense could see her gift transferring like ethereal mist from her hands into
Nardin’s face.

‘I will return later.’

He left to supervise the area of the Derant
Pass defence the council had allocated him. Hundreds of men and women were
frantically completing ditches and using the rocks and soil to raise additional
ramparts on either side of the formidable existing palisade. Large stake filled
pits had been dug in front of the first line of defence and disguised by a
latticework of sticks covered with turf. Young children walked from the town with
refreshment and supplies for the people labouring on the constructions. All
work had stopped in the fields and only hunters roamed the forests gathering as
much game as they could to feed the influx of people. Teams of Celembrie and
Wolf hunters also caught game from the plains below Cyprusnia to share with the
combined workforce. It was the first evidence of a new trust between the peoples,
and Malkrin felt intensely satisfied at the sight.

Later Bredon the Fox and the Brenna Council
rode with a thunder of horse hooves from their homesteads. Along with Malkrin
and other sector leaders they surveyed the preparations from a high bluff
behind the original palisade. The view from there was tremendous. The snow
covered Lachron Mountain rose majestically in the north. To the east, the faint
spires of the Brightwater Mountains led down to unseen plains then foothills
where Wild-cat cave was situated. To the west, distant mountains apparently
contained the Olephate tribe to whom a Celembrie mission had been sent. The
south was just a vast expanse of the deadlands. Should black demons swarm from
the east, west or south they could be spotted twenty miles away.