Quintessence Sky (18 page)

What was sound, anyway? It was invisible.
Humans made sound by blowing out air, but sound could also be heard
underwater, and could be made by striking with a hammer or plucking
a string. Generally, it only traveled a short distance; even a very
loud noise rarely traveled more than a mile. The sound diminished
as it traveled; close to the source it might be very loud, but as
it traveled, it was changed somehow by passing through the
air—dirtied, as it were, and made less. It reminded him of
Aristotle's theory of how a prism turned regular light into a
rainbow. He said that the light passing through the prism was
dirtied depending on how much of the glass it passed through, so
that light passing through the thick part of the prism was colored
differently than light passing through the thin part.

What if sound worked the same? Perhaps
quintessence was just the carrier, the aether, and either light or
sound could travel through it like water in a riverbed. If
quintessence was a purer carrier than air, then light passing
through it would be less dirtied, and thus purer, more white, as
indeed the light from the shekinah flatworm and the pearls seemed
to be. In the same way, quintessence-carried sound would not be
dirtied as it was in air, and thus could travel a much further
distance.

As a theory, it left a lot to be desired, but
perhaps more details would help flesh it out. Anyway, there was no
sense philosophizing when he could simply test the idea. If
quintessence light could pass through a prism without changing
color like regular light, then that would support the theory. If it
did change color, he would keep thinking.

Barrosa had long since gone to bed, and Ramos
was alone in the secret cellar. He took his time, gathering what he
needed and setting up the experiment. On one table, he directed
lamplight through a prism; on another, quintessence light from his
pearl. At first he was disappointed. The resulting rainbows looked
the same. Red turning to yellow, passing through green, and fading
to violet.

He sighed. If quintessence light had passed
through the prism without changing, or at least had changed
differently, that might have given him a clue, a piece of knowledge
that he could pick at and pull into real understanding. He nearly
went to bed right then. The revelation came quite by accident. On
the red side of the quintessence rainbow, an ordinary candle stood
in its holder. The quintessence light was not shining directly on
it. No part of the rainbow touched it. The candle, however,
melted.

Ramos examined it in confusion. The wax
pooled beneath it in a lumpy mass and was still hot and soft to the
touch. What had happened? The candle had not been lit. The room was
not hot, and none of the other candles in the room were melted. He
slid the prism across the table and shone the rainbow on another
candle. Nothing happened. He shifted it to the right slightly, then
a little more, until the rainbow shone on the wall a few
handbreadths away from the candle. When it reached this point, the
second candle rapidly melted. Heart pounding, Ramos lowered his
hand in front of the candle, then swiftly pulled it back in pain.
His skin was red and tender, as if he had burned it in a fire.

A chill rippled down Ramos's skin.
Invisible light.
There was some kind of
light
shining
to the left of the rainbow, as if it continued past yellow, orange,
and red into more colors, colors that could not be seen. And not
just any light, but a kind of light hot enough to burn skin and
melt wax. He tested regular light the same way, but as he
suspected, it had no such effect. Only the quintessence light could
melt candles and burn his hand.

Aristotle had it wrong. It wasn't the prism
that produced the colors, any more than it was the prism that
produced this new kind of light. The prism, after all, hadn't
changed. The invisible colors were a characteristic of the light,
and if that was the case, then the visible colors were as well.
That meant the prism didn't add colors to the light. The colors
were already there.

He aimed at another candle, and this time, he
dropped the pearl into a jar of saltwater to increase the intensity
of the quintessence light. The pearl blazed into brightness. At
first, nothing seemed to happen. Then, with a deep
whoosh
,
the swath of air from the prism to the back wall erupted in flame.
The candle, the holder, the table—everything in its path—vaporized
in a violent explosion of heat and light. An invisible pulse
blasted into Ramos, throwing him backwards and knocking his head
against the table behind him.

He lay stunned for a few moments. He touched
the back of his head, and his hand came back bloody, but the wound
was already healing, thanks to the quintessence pearl. He stood and
surveyed the damage. The room was a wreck. In a line from the prism
to the wall, there was nothing but soot, the black particles still
swirling gently through the candlelit air. A hole had been punched
in the earthen wall, leaving dirt still crumbling to the floor.

Ramos sat up, letting his head clear, and a
slow smile spread across his face. The king wanted a weapon. Ramos
had found one.

THE GIANT salamander snuffled and poked its
nose through the square entranceway. It was as tall as Catherine,
but so thick in the body that the opening wasn't wide enough to
admit more than its blunt head. Its pink face was wormlike, devoid
of features beyond a pointed nose and that gaping mouth. Catherine
was close enough to see a few wet hairs hanging limply from its
chin, like a beard. Its wet skin glistened. It was much larger than
an ordinary salamander, of course, but its dimensions were
different, too. It was shorter and plumper, like a leech with
legs.

It planted its feet and squeezed, shoving its
body into the too-small hole with a squelching noise. It was coming
through after all. Fold after fold of flesh rippled into the room
until the whole salamander emerged, its bulk blocking the soft
light of the spirits beyond.

Catherine flattened herself against the wall,
trying not to be noticed, though the monster was close enough to
touch. She hoped it couldn't smell her, or that it preferred eating
glowing spirits to eating human flesh. She felt a throbbing in her
chest that seemed connected to the pulse in the creature's skin. It
was like holding a shekinah flatworm in her bare hands and feeling
the pulse of its power, only much greater.

It ignored her, if it even sensed that she
was there. It pulled its glistening body toward the vertical shaft.
As quickly as it had leaped to catch the tiny sparks in its mouth,
it leaped upwards into the shaft, blocking the light. It fit so
neatly that she suspected it was the salamander that had made the
hole in the first place. She heard it squirming its way up toward
the surface. It had a long way to go.

She didn't stick around to watch it. She ran
back into the large cavern, where the motes of light still swirled
in agitation.

"It's gone," she told those nearest. "It went
up the shaft."

At first, none of the closest spoke English
or Latin, but eventually one responded in kind and spread the word.
Gradually, the eddies of light settled.

"What is that creature?" she asked.

Hayes had found her again. "We don't know,"
he said. "We can't see anything physical. We didn't even know there
was anything physical left in the world, until you arrived."

"It looked like a huge, pink salamander."

"It's a monster, that's all we know. We can
feel when it's coming closer, though not always soon enough to
escape before it devours us."

Catherine explored the cavern, discovering
openings into several more caves. Eventually she would need to find
a way out, though she didn't want to think too hard about how
unlikely that was. For the time being, her most urgent need was to
find some food and water. She stepped through into another cave
after using a mound of chipped stone to mark the entrance. She
didn't want to get lost and be unable to find her way back to where
she had started.

The cavern beyond was darker, but a small
galaxy of the spirit lights followed her into it. Although they
couldn't see, they apparently had some sense of their environment,
such that they could flee the salamander or follow her. It was a
good thing, because without their light, she wouldn't have been
able to see anything. If another salamander came, of course, they
might flee again, leaving her behind in darkness.

The cavern walls were wet and echoed with the
sound of water dripping. Spikes jutted down from the ceiling,
occasionally met by others reaching up from the floor. It was like
walking through an alien forest with stone trees and the occasional
crystal flower blooming red or white from a cavity. She found a
small stream cutting its way through the rock from one end of the
cavern to the other. The way this new cavern dipped and turned and
opened into other spaces, she was afraid she would have trouble
finding her way back, even given her precaution. She wished she
still had her pack.

She drank from the stream, which tasted cool
and—to her surprise—salty. None of the water around Horizon was
salty. Even the ocean for miles around it was fresh, the salt
consumed by all the fish and marine life that used quintessence to
catch prey, attract a mate, or camouflage themselves. Anywhere else
in the world, this water would have been undrinkable, useless to
her, but here on Horizon, both the salt and the water were
essential to life. She drank eagerly, and, though still hungry,
felt much better.

There were other creatures down here besides
the salamanders. She saw pale fish in the water, giant eyeless
spiders with too many legs skittering out of the light, and
colonies of naked bats hanging from the roof. She needed to catch
one of those fish, and she needed a fire to cook it, but she didn't
see how she was going to manage either one.

She followed the stream up to its source, a
rush of water down a smooth wall marbled with mineral deposits. It
flowed out of an opening high above her, but that was no barrier,
not with a fresh supply of salt coursing through her body. She
leaped, adjusting her body weight to control her ascent, and
scrambled up through the opening, soaking her feet.

A smaller cave now tunneled back into the
rock, following the water, gradually higher. She continued,
reasoning that it was better to go up than down, and that the water
must come from somewhere outside, though given how far she had
fallen, she held out little hope of climbing to the surface this
way.

She climbed further, not sure what she was
looking for, but knowing that sitting down in despair wouldn't get
her very far either. The lights began slipping away behind her, no
longer following, but she could see another light in the distance,
beyond a bend in the tunnel. She rounded the bend, and found it was
farther away and brighter than she had at first thought. Was it
possible it was sunlight? Could she be coming out through the side
of the mountain?

When she rounded the next bend, the light was
so bright it hurt her eyes, and it definitely was not sunlight. It
reflected off the white surface of the cave wall, and she gasped
when she realized what she was seeing. She licked her finger,
touched it to the wall, and put it back in her mouth. Salt. She
closed her eyes and savored the taste.

There was enough salt here to provide for the
colony for months. Years, depending on how deep it went. She
pressed closer to the light, sliding sideways and shielding her
eyes. Finally, she could see where it was coming from. Hundreds of
shekinah flatworms lined the walls, their bodies pressed to the
salty surface like leeches to a wound. The light from their bodies
flared and blazed in time to their motion. She pressed farther in,
barely able to see, closing her eyes to slits and blocking most of
the light with her hands. The shekinahs surrounded her. She had to
step carefully to avoid crushing them.

As she progressed, the shekinahs grew larger.
The ones at the entrance to the cave were finger-sized, just like
the ones they caught and used for light back in the colony. Farther
in, they were the size of her fist, fat and soft. Beyond that, they
were as big as her head, then bigger still. The larger ones seemed
stretched, pinker and more translucent, and producing less light.
She reached a cavern where the walls and ceiling opened up, still
glistening white with salt. The light was less bright here, and she
could open her eyes. Doing so, she realized her mistake. The
largest shekinahs had legs. They were giants three times as large
as she was, pink, earless, and eyeless, with flat tails and gaping
toothless mouths.

This was the salamanders' lair.