Prospero's Half-Life (32 page)

After
forty-five minutes of walking the trees petered out and they found
themselves on a wide, low barren that sloped gently down into the
rushing highway of dark, glittering water. They paused by the edge
of the treeline, exhausted and unable to comprehend the scene that
was unfolding before them. It was instantly obvious what was
occurring, but their tired minds refused to make any sort of sense
of it.

There were
somewhere in the vicinity of fifty people gathered on the bank of
the river, with more in a motley assortment of canoes, rowboats,
and pontoons mid-stream. Here and there in the crowd on the shore
there were oil lanterns providing a stunningly bright illumination
to everything. There was no shouting, or really any vocal noise at
all. The silence of the scene was almost as unnerving as the
activity. Carolyn turned to Richard.

“
We should go back into the trees,” she said, her voice badly
frightened.

“
You should step back into the trees,” said a voice behind
them. Richard whirled around and received a vicious blow to the
nose for his efforts. He sprawled backwards, hitting his head
particularly hard on the ground and blacking out.

When he awoke
he was in a tent, and it was dark. He thrashed out and there was a
scuffle on the far side of the tent as soon as he began to move. A
figure moved past his position and out through the tent flap. A
moment later several figures entered the tent and an oil lamp
flared into life. After Richard’s eyes adjusted he saw three people
crouched around him. Two were blunt-faced men, the kind that
Richard would have once expected to patronize cramped sports bars
and mutter dark secrets to each other about transactions involving
greasy stacks of paper currency. The third was the ambassador, the
one who had brought a severed head as a meeting-gift. The
ambassador saw that Richard was awake and grinned, in the same
sharkish manner that Richard remembered so well.

“
Good morning sleeping beauty,” the ambassador said, his voice
light and jaunty. “Thought you might take a little walk along the
river tonight?” Richard grimaced and looked away to the wall of the
tent. The ambassador’s face grew angry in shocking speed and he
snapped his fingers. One of the blunt men swung down and clipped
Richard on the jaw; his head jarred painfully off of the
ground.

“
Let’s try this again,” the ambassador continued, his voice
back to its previous
aren’t we so
jolly?
tone. “Where do you think you were
off to?”

“
Getting away from here before the whole place goes up in
flames,” Richard groaned, spitting blood. “No point in sticking
around when everyone’s going to be slaughtered anyway”. The
ambassador laughed, a rich, cultured sound.

“
Oh, I doubt that,” he chuckled. “I’d suspect otherwise. I know
who you are, you see”.

Richard swore
inwardly. “Is that so?” he asked neutrally.

“
It is. You’re one of the council members for that ancient
idiot you think is some kind of...saint, I guess? I know none of
you would have abandoned him willingly, so let’s try this one last
time. If you don’t answer me correctly, I’ll ask my friends here to
begin breaking every bone in your body, starting with the smallest
and working their way along. What were you doing out
here?”

Richard shook
his head and laughed weakly, although he really felt like
sobbing.

“
Since you won’t believe the truth, I guess I’ll tell you I was
out spying and let the festivities begin”.

The ambassador
rose to a standing position, stooping slightly under the roof of
the tent. He stretched and cracked his knuckles, and the sound was
as loud as a gunshot in the tent.

“
It doesn’t matter,” he said easily, “and anyway, I think that
I’d best leave your bones intact. My prestige trophies should be as
damage-free as possible, after all, although I hope to gain many
more in the coming days, and perhaps you won’t be so valuable after
all. We shall see. Still, as a leader of these people, you shall
net me great prestige”. He crouched again, and his knees popped
loudly. “You will also help us quickly pacify this area. The people
here will see you in our hands and despair will come over them much
more quickly”.

Richard began
to laugh again, harder this time.

“
I doubt that,” he spat. “I really do. In fact, I really hope
you don’t encounter any resistance at all”.

The ambassador
stared at him, angry and confused. Then he got back to his
feet.

“
Have a bit of fun with him,” he told the goons that still
crunched over Richard. He then left through the flap without a
second glance.

Later, as he lay bleeding and bruised in the darkness,
struggling to breathe, his reeling mind associated a snatch of
Tolkien, and he could hear the
boom
and the
clang
echoing through the broken crawlspaces of his
head.

PART
THREE:

THE OPEN BOOK OF SECRETS

“I asked
myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how
much was mine to keep”

-Kurt
Vonnegut

ONE

The sun rose
into its apex above the parched, beaten circle of grass upon which
Richard Adams stood, contemplating the tawdry emptiness of the ring
of rough, lashed-together wooden walls that surrounded it. They
seemed like the crudest paradox imaginable, rickety logs that
looked to be in danger of collapsing at any moment yet were
psychologically more permanent than the seasons. He squinted in the
hard sunlight, feeling a dull pain grow behind his eyes as a
result. The warmth of the suns rays was a great comfort to his
aging bones, but they did play havoc with his fading eyes.

He eyed the
ring in which he stood with a critical eye; everything would have
to be just so for the bouts that night. Garret Spaulding would be
making an appearance, or so Richard’s master had intimated. Karl
Tiegert, entrepreneur and fighting impresario, would not pass up a
chance to impress an honest-to-goodness member of the Speaking
House. It could only mean great things for his business, and as
Karl was fond of reminding Richard, great things for Karl Tiegert’s
business would mean great things for Richard Adams. Continued
existence, for one thing; increased prestige, for another. As an
indentured servant, Richard had never really found much worth in
having a large amount of prestige, but his existence was at least
semi-precious to him, and he aimed to keep what he had.

The stands
were swept and fresh-looking; this was the first thing that Richard
had attended to, knowing that Karl harped on keeping the area clear
for the fans above almost anything else. There was no debris within
the flat, beaten circle either. There could be nothing that might
trip or otherwise disadvantage a fighter when they were engaged in
their work within the circle. Remembering what had happened the
last time, he checked each of the painted posters that plastered
the inner wall that surrounded the circle itself. It would not be
seemly at all to have a paid advertisement catch an errant breeze
and go flying off into the stands at an inopportune moment. His
back still ached from the punishments that had resulted from
that.

He realized
that it was meaningless to inspect the place again; he’d already
gone over every last inch of the arena in the time since he’d
arrived, just before dawn. It was as ready as it would ever be. A
breeze whirled through the circle and tousled his thinning,
iron-grey hair. He scrambled to run his fingers through it to put
it back into some semblance of order; Karl was a stickler for
personal appearance, as well.

There was a
heavy steel gate that was the only exit from the circle, and so
this was the exit that Richard took. They creaked loudly as he
pushed them open, and he made a mental note to make a trip to the
market to see if anyone was stocking oil that he could use to fix
them. He decided that he would stop in at the farmhouse to see if
Karl wanted anything else from the market before heading out.

The farmhouse
stood twenty yards or so from the lashed-together arena; it was an
imposing structure of dirty yellow brick, sagging slightly in the
front but otherwise in startlingly good repair for a house that had
been standing for over a hundred years, with irregular maintenance
at best for the last quarter of that. It was seemingly devoid of
life now, but when the crowds came to the arena it would be crammed
with fans placing bets, getting food, and discussing business
before taking in entertainment. Richard preferred this scene to the
one in front of him now. Without the crowds, the farmhouse seemed
haunted, as though the ghosts of the mass dead hovered about just
out of Richard’s eyesight. The wind whistled through the yard and
made strange noises as it passed through the cracks in the
patched-up windows of the house.

The interior
of the house was just as deserted as the outside; with the
amplification of the sound of the wind and the creaking of the
walls and foundation, it seemed even more so. His steps caused the
aged floorboards to groan, but he paid them little mind. He walked
past the deserted betting counter and through the messy kitchen;
the stairs were on the far side of the kitchen and his ascent was
just as noisy as his walk through the ground floor. When he reached
the top of the stairs he paused, trying to listen for any movement
or other sounds. There was nothing. He wondered if Karl was even in
his office, and then berated himself. Of course Karl was in his
office. He would be going over the books before the big rounds of
betting began that night. Richard offered up a short prayer to
whomever was listening that Karl was in a good mood.

He rapped his
knuckles twice on the thick wood of the first door on the right and
waited. Presently there was a muffled “come in!” from the other
side, and Richard carefully pushed the door open and slipped
inside. Karl Tiegert, a short, hatchet faced man possessed of a
harsh, hacked crewcut, sat behind his cheap-looking desk with a
heavy, cracked ledger open before him. He was staring down at it,
his lips moving in silent accompaniment to the numbers he was
reading off. Richard stood awkwardly on the other side of the desk,
waiting for Karl to acknowledge him. He had learned, long ago, the
value in waiting for Karl to speak first. Karl continued to stare
down at his ledger, however, ignoring Richard’s existence.

Eventually
Richard had to clear his throat and that was when Karl chose to
look up. The look in his eyes was dangerous but he didn’t
immediately launch into a tirade, for which Richard was grateful.
Instead he shook his head and gestured disgustedly down at his
ledger.

“
These numbers are all fucked up,” he said, biting off each
word. “There are people that owe me so much money it would take
them a lifetime to work it all off. I should send people after
them, but they know how to hide themselves so well by now that
anyone that I hired might never find them”. Richard said nothing,
and Karl shrugged with resignation. “I’ll find them sooner or
later. How is the arena? Is it ready for tonight? There is a House
Speaker coming, I shouldn’t have to remind you, and if the
slightest thing...”

“
The arena is fine,” Richard interrupted him. “I just need to
go to the market to see if they have any oil to fix the gates.
They’re screeching when they open and we should probably fix that
before tonight”.

“
We?” Karl asked contemptuously. “You can go to the market, try
not to spend too much on it. If that asshole Beanie is there, see
if you can bring back on of his dahlpouri, and one for yourself”.
He grinned expansively. “I’m feeling generous today”.

“
As you say, sir,” Richard replied carefully. He nodded
efficiently and left the office without waiting for Karl to add
anything else onto the order. He made his way down the stairs with
loud steps and was outside within a minute of leaving the office.
The breeze was blowing stronger, and his thin grey hair seemed to
fly through the gusts.

The market was
an hours walk down the crumbled, broken road that had once been a
two-lane rural highway. It was not a scenic walk; the land on
either side of the decayed road had been mostly overtaken by
wild-growth forest and brambles, with the occasional smoothed-out
area that denoted where a family had retaken the land for agrarian
purposes. Those farms had been slow to appear, but in the last five
years more and more of them had been established; it was
far-fetched to say that civilization was returning for good, but
Richard wagered that it had made definite inroads since the day
that he had first arrived.

That day had
been an overwhelming one and Richard’s mind floated back to it as
he undertook his boredom-inducing walk to the market. It had been
the fourth time he had been sold since that night on the riverbank
in Brantford. His previous owner, an exuberant libertine in the
seat of power in central London, had died of an overdose following
a week-long binge on adulterated poppy mixtures. He had never put
forth a will but his prestige was such that the Republic had come
into possession of his belongings – which meant that Richard had
briefly become a ward of the state. He had been put up on the
auction block in the London Trading House, which had been a first
for him. The previous three auctions he had been an item in had
been held in rough, dusty buildings decaying at the edge of large
towns. Those times had been grimy, seedy affairs, where men in
varying degrees of finery had poked and prodded at him by
flickering lamp light. The auction in London had been a far grander
affair, full of as much pomp and circumstance as could be mustered
in the rude age that human society found itself in. He had been
marched out onto a lacquered wooden stage to face an audience full
of men and women in expensive, lordly clothes. They had eyed him
critically while the auctioneer listed his skills and qualities;
the high-speed chatter had washed over him in hazy waves. One of
the men in the crowd had been dressed much shabbier than the
others; his clothes seemed to be sturdy and built more for farm
work than for impressing the upper strata of society. Despite his
appearance he had outbid everyone one of the other interested
parties in the audience, by a comfortable margin. This had been his
first encounter with Karl; the sharp-faced man had coolly dropped a
shocking amount of money and then had calmly roped him and led him
away. At the end of the other auctions he had felt degraded, like
common cattle being traded amongst gentlemen farmers. The looks
that Karl had thrown his way after the last auction, however, made
him feel like something different, something inherently more
valuable than a beast.