Life and Limb (The Ebon Chronicles) (6 page)

Heads turned to him from the army, and he spoke to one of the soldiers nearby.  That man raised his voice, holding his hands to the edges of his covered mouth,

"Bring them!"

"Let's go," the rider above us said.  Freezy's fingers drifted to her throat with a terrified,

"What?  We're just travelers."

"Simple travelers, sir," I said leaning more heavily on my cane than I needed to, "We don't wish to cause you or your men any trouble.  We have nothing to offer you."

"Please," the man on horseback said, "Do as they command.  We're travelers too."

We walked between the twin lines of soldiers, every face scorched and dirty, and every reddened weary eye turned toward us.  At first I thought the men were whispering as we passed, then I realized its uniformity.  It was a prayer, its words obfuscated by the howling wind.  We walked up to the carriage where the bald man with bulging eyes motioned for us to ascend before he disappeared inside.

With a look at Freezy I knocked my hoof twice on the way up the stairs, entering the darkness of the carriage within.  Freezy closed the door behind us.

Inside was a small room with a stairway off to the side leading up and a blue cloth covered doorway on the opposite wall.  There was talking coming from the curtain beyond.  Cedar oil incense hung heavy in the room, overpowering my senses with the smell of far off and exotic lands.  Nine candles were arranged along the staircase leading up, and silks and rugs covered every surface with jingling bells hanging from their edges.

"There," the bald man said pointing, "He's in there."

From beyond the curtain I could hear an old man talking.  It was a powerful voice, aged by drink and sand to the sage withered husk of a near ancient storyteller,

"I don
’t know what’s there now, as I never could bring myself to return," it said slowly, "I suppose after so many years, with the radiation dispersed, it now is like it was when we first spied the valley."  I passed the room, my approach softened by the carpets underfoot.  Cautiously, my hand passed to the edge of the curtain, pulling it aside as the voice continued, "And if someone hasn’t found a way to tame the fires there, you may still find a field of burning wheat."

I looked beyond that silk veil and saw that the room didn't have one man, but a small congregation dressed in white.  The old man sat at the opposite end of the room.   He was seated in a throne of dog skin, massive aged hands resting on a weathered sword. Each breath he took was labored - weighted, so it seemed, by every man he led. He had hanging at his neck a pair of shattered glasses. Leaning against his throne, wrapped in leather cord and adorned by velocitrops tooth, was an ancient hunting rifle.

But the thing that most caught my attention were the eyes. Those eyes watched me enter, long creases in cheek and brow, torn by time. The whole of his face was framed by a long dramatic white beard, braided along its edges and wrapped in places by leather strips. The armor he wore appeared to be ornamental, but it held together what the desert had left of his body with dented and cut steel.

At his feet, arranged around the room, sitting with feet tucked under dirty knees were four figures of varying age.  A girl of about sixteen, a boy that could have been her twin brother, and a slightly older couple sitting leaning against the wall with straight backs.  Their pale shining heads turned as I entered without sound, wearing thin faces drawn long beneath bulbous scalps.  I walked into the midst of the congregation, pulling a chair from a nearby desk and sat down heavily.

"And here they are," the man said holding his palm upturned toward me, coughing into the other one, "What are your names?"

I looked to Freezy, who shrugged and shook her head.

"My name's Adon Still," I said, "but for the past few weeks I've been going by the name Riderman."

"Don't want to tell you my name until I know what's going on here," Freezy said.

"You're Freezy Breezy," the old man said, "And my name is Ebon.  Ebon the Waste."

"Plexis Ebon?" Freezy said, her eyebrow cocking, "Destroyer of the East Scourge?"

"You're talking about that city we destroyed," Ebon said leaning back in his chair and folding his hands across his metal stomach, "I'm sorry to say, but yes.  I had a hand in that.  They came across the dunes far outside their territory and tried to take something from us."

"Stories of fallen cities often reach welcome ears where I'm from," Freezy said.  The white faced disciples at Ebon's feet had turned now, their large eyes studying her.  She noticed them, and fell silent.

"No," Ebon said, "I've said all I will on that matter today.  Freezy, you will be glad to know we ran into your father and sisters on our way here.  They were healthy.  We told them about our quest and they were most cooperative.  And they were rewarded with food and supplies to last them a month."

"That's nice of you, but I don't understand," Freezy said, "Why?"

"Ebon the Waste helps who he can," Ebon said.

"So what brings you this far North?" I said, twirling my cane between my hands, trying to look as casual as possible, "There's nothing in the Northlands."

"Isn't there?" Ebon said grunting as he righted himself in the throne.  He held his hands outstretched in front of him and let the two eldest of his disciples grab his wrists and pull him up.  With a lethargic grunt the heavily armored man stood, walked to the desk on the far side of the carriage room, "Something fell to the Dustlands, and we're here to make sure it isn't lost."

He leaned on the desk, pulling a drawer from within and pushing the button on a device on the table.  It clicked and stopped its slow mechanical spinning.  He took a reel from the top of the device, placing it in the desk and put a different spool on, running the strip from end to end and pressing play.

The device started beeping wildly, a harsh stream of sound scratching and peeling from it.  Ebon held up a finger, pointing down at the box,

"Packets of digital data.  Turned to sound and then to radio wave.  Then broadcast to Earth over the course of several years.  It's been in space waiting for someone to receive its call and send a signal back, to tell it where to land."

The spool twisted and whirred.  The methodical beeping and crunching of audio cracked out in quick bursts.

"It took a long time to understand what it was doing, what it all meant.  In truth, we didn't even have a computer to process the information."

One of the pale disciples, the youngest girl started grinning, hugging her knees and bobbing her head from side to side with her eyes closed.  She was humming along with the chaotic packets, weaving back and forth and occasionally twitching her head back.  Her finger rose like the conductors I had seen guiding the band of minstrels that followed the Cardinals of our city.  Soon the sound was moving her whole body, causing it to sway from side to side in an ecstatic dance I don't think even Ebon understood.

"Her brain," Ebon said picking up a feather pen from the desk and handing it to her, "This little one can understand it.  We found her several years back, nursing at the breast of a mad woman whose hair was falling out."

She traced the air with a pale hand, her mind occupied elsewhere.   Erratically she was writing transient invisible words and only occasionally crossing them out to be speedily replaced by others.

"That poor girl," Freezy said sympathetically, "She inherited her mother's madness."

"My doctor says no," Ebon said, "The well the mother had been drinking from was contaminated with quicksilver and blight.  Of course she likely only noticed it at all because it glowed in the dark.  We don't know where the woman came from or why she was alone.  She died a year later in our care.  I don't have to tell you the brutal future the girl faced alone, so we kept her.  Learned what she had to offer.  Named her Delphina after the constellation."

"She knows what we're after?" I said incredulously, pointing at the girl on the floor.  When Ebon nodded proudly, I asked, "What is it?"

"Took a long time," Ebon said, "The others helped.  The boy Sculptor back engineered the language of the space based computer.  We didn't have our own device to send messages back, so Vela crafted perfect instruments to emulate its digital tones.  He's the one that called you in."

"The others?" I asked.

"Rhea and Alvus are not fulfilling their purpose yet," Ebon said grinning and motioning with his head at the eldest man and woman, "We'll learn what they have to offer us when their time comes.  But that time will come."

The two looked to each other, their hands entwining between their faces and a knowing smile shared by both.

"I reckon they're gonna have a baby," Freezy said from the corner of her mouth, hissing sideways through cautious teeth.

"I get it," I said darting a look back at her.

"And that brings us to me.  I have no particular talent aside from picking up the strays I find and guiding them.  You two look a little lost yourselves.  I couldn't help but notice your leg, Adon.  Do my eyes deceive me or is that a metal melthorse's leg you've got?"

I looked down at the hoof scuffing the floor with round dry tracks and nodded,

"My old one broke."

Ebon slowly staggered back to his chair, collapsing into it finally and chuckling to himself.

"Fair enough," he said, his laughter drying up, becoming desiccated and quiet.  He nodded, narrowing his eyes again at my leg as if it was a distant memory from his own life, "We all make sacrifices, Adon.  We all have things we've left behind.  You're going to need help if you're going to reach that star in time."

"Pa always was a storyteller," Freezy said, "I guess he spilled everything."

"Way I see it," I said, my own eyes narrowing across the room at the old man, "You and I don't have any reason to trust each other.  You've built up this army to go find the shooting star for yourself.  You've got more men than I do, and you've got some way of talking to it directly.  Why give up all that and help me?"

Ebon nodded slowly, eyes on the couple with fingers still entwined.  He breathed heavily, eyes returning to me,

"This isn't an army.  It's not a traveling band of warriors intent on taking.  You of all men must surely know the greater voice a man hears in the dead of night.  A purpose greater than avarice.  I've encountered the bounty the stars have to offer us already in my life.  They're grand, more grand than can be owned.  And then, in the jaws of war I lost it.  The truth is, it doesn't matter who owns the wealth of history.  It is here now to profit all creatures of this scorched land.  I'm here to build a new history, a new civilization.  You know the corruption of the Anquan walking cities.  You know the backs they tread on to stay alive.  And you've seen both sides of it.  The world up there and the world down here."

He knew where I was from, I realized.  And yet that didn't stop him.  Better the corrupt city I had come from own this treasure than lose it in the dust forever.  He continued,

"History is full of brutal places, horrific civilizations that brought order to a savage land.  And so in my advanced age I realize this is the only way.  No more chaos, no more loss.  Even the brutal hands atop that steel plate can save us from ourselves, organize us into something greater.  A man once tried to show me that, but he had to die before I would understand, spend a life watching all of this."

He motioned with that last statement toward the wall, toward the waste beyond it.  I stood cautiously, watching him, trying to discern how much of what he was saying sounded genuine.  It all did.  If it was a lie, a more perfect facsimile of truth had never been in my ear.  I said,

"So you'll take us there.  Help me identify it, tell my city what we find."

He nodded,

"What's more, I know what it is out there resting in the sand.  At least I think I do.  And if I'm right, I know I could never keep it with my small army.  It would disappear.  It needs to be defended by strong, ordered, brutal hands.  And so, I am now allying myself, my forces, with what I once, in my naive youth, may have considered to be evil."

"What is it?" I asked.  He shook his head,

"I think I know, but we'll find out for sure, together.  I have a good guess, but like I said, it's just a guess."

Soon after that we started up a steep incline, passing into the dust blown lands.  Wandering to the carriage foyer, I opened the front door. 

Immediately, I was caught off guard by the bellowing force of the dust blowing into my face.  A few of the men, turning back with shielded eyes and dust masks pulled in two steady lines of grey, pulling us through the hot carbon blizzard swirling around us.

And just as I was preparing to slam the door shut again to close out the dust, I saw that the wind dropped in an instant.  I stared now into the spiral  patterns of grey and brown rolling over hills, spilling into one another in this bizarre and alien world.  Our carriage shifted up, steeping heavily in the inclined space.  The man who had summoned us into the carriage walked out to close the door with a brisk click.

"Don't breathe it," he said nervously blinking and twitching his head to the side, "I think it's poison."

I retreated to the carriage's throne room where Ebon was sitting talking calmly with his disciples, teaching them a hand gesture game as he sat on the floor.