Quintessence Sky (3 page)

Paul and Thomas had reported seeing something
unusual—a blight, they called it, a region of forest where the
plants were dying. It was just one of a host of strange things that
had been happening on the island recently. Ferocious lightning
storms blocked the sun and deluged the colony with rain nearly
every night. More alarmingly, the salt harvest had been declining
for weeks. Salt was the fuel by which they generated a flow of
quintessence, and without quintessence, they couldn't make food or
fresh water or do any of the other miraculous things they needed to
survive.

If this blight could shed some light on the
salt shortage, it would be worth the trip. Despite Matthew's
concerns for her safety, Catherine knew she was the best person for
this expedition. She knew the forest, she could speak the manticore
language, and she was one of the best experimentalists in the
Quintessence Society.

The manticores reappeared, beckoning her in a
new direction. As they ran, she asked them about recent politics
among their various tribes. It was always hard to stay current with
which leaders were growing in power, which tribes had allied with
each other, and which had become enemies.

"A new river is rising," Thomas said in his
own language. Manticores referred to their tribes using water
imagery, which seemed apt to Catherine, considering that a tribe
represented a long stream of memories shared from member to member
across generations. Tribe loyalties were based less on physical
families than on these memory families, and tribes could merge and
split and trade members as alliances shifted. It made it difficult
for the humans to keep track.

"What is this new river?" she asked.

"Rinchirith hates the humans, and he draws
many to his course. The river of Christ grows wider, but as it
does, there are even more who wish the humans gone."

It was bad news, but not surprising. As the
colony grew stronger, more manticores were drawn to join the
converts—whether or not they truly understood the gospel—and ally
themselves with a growing power. That very strength, however, drew
the hatred of many others, especially those who had died at human
hands in the battle for the colony the previous year. Catherine
thought she remembered Rinchirith.

"His brother died on the wall last year,
didn't he?" she asked.

"Two of his brothers," Thomas said. "His
hatred is strong." Paul was quiet, but his tails waved a grim
assent.

By the time the sun had passed its zenith,
they had left the beetlewood forest far behind and crossed the
plains, where herds of grazing fire buffalo cropped the grasses. In
the distance, Catherine saw a puff dragon, a reptile the size of an
ox that could make itself light enough to float through the air. It
drifted on the breeze, trying to get in position over a buffalo, at
which point it would plummet, crushing its prey under its suddenly
substantial weight.

The sun grew huge as it moved toward the
west, and the air grew steadily warmer. Since Horizon was so close
to the edge of the world, the sun was cold and distant in the
mornings, but vast and blazingly hot in the evenings, nearly
filling the western sky. The animals that thrived in the cool took
shelter, while reptiles and others that craved the heat began to
appear. More sophisticated animals changed color or extruded spines
to help radiate heat away from their bodies, allowing them to
remain active all day.

The fire buffalos caught flame, burning away
the thick hair they had grown during the night to insulate them
from the cold. Eventually, Catherine and the manticores sat and
rested for a time, tired after hours of traveling. Catherine caught
the scent of burnt hair on the wind.

"I don't understand why some manticores hate
us so much," Catherine said. "I know we made some mistakes early
on, but there's no reason our races can't be friendly now. You two
have learned English, learned to read, even accepted the gospel.
Why can't they all be like you?"

The two manticores didn't answer, but she
sensed something was wrong. The poses of their tails
were—what—disbelieving? And from Paul, a sense even of
animosity.

"Can you truly not understand?" Paul said.
There was a rough edge to his voice.

"Understand what?"

"You humans have changed everything, our
security, our way of life. Hundreds have died because of you.
Ancient memory fountains destroyed. The structure of tribes and
families shifts, some following human ways, some hating them, but
all revolving around you. All choices must now consider, what will
the humans do? And how many more will come? Everything is
different. And you do not
understand
why some would hate
you?"

Catherine was taken aback by the venom in his
tone.

"But you're a friend," she said. "You worship
God now. You can read and write. You probably know more Greek than
I do."

Paul stared straight ahead, not looking at
her. "Because I see the writing on the wall, as the king did in
your book of Daniel. I know that to survive in this new world, I
must know the human language, the human beliefs, the human thought.
It does not mean that's what I wish for myself. Or for my
people."

"Then, you don't truly believe in
Christ?"

"My father sent me to convert, for the
benefit of my memory family. It is who I am now. It is what must be
done."

Catherine didn't know what to say. The humans
had brought culture to this island, hadn't they? They had taught
the manticores to read, shared with them the Bible and the ancient
writings of the Greeks, taught them the gospel as well as
mathematics and rhetoric. They had given them the key to
civilization. It had never occurred to her that they might not want
it.

"Paul exaggerates," Thomas said. "There is
much we have learned from you."

Paul lashed his central tail in the
equivalent of a scowl. "My name is Hakrahinik," he said.

THEY RAN on, through growing shadows. The
conversation unnerved Catherine, as did the news about Rinchirith,
and she was glad Matthew had insisted on her manticore bodyguard.
It still irked her, though, that he had tried to prevent her from
going. They had shouted at each other, and she'd cried despite
herself. He said he expected her to continue to pursue scientific
exploration and experimentation after their marriage, but did he
really mean it? Or would he expect her to stay at home and give
those things up? He'd tried to apologize, but she hadn't given him
the chance. She'd simply taken her pack and headed off without
saying goodbye.

He worried for her safety; she appreciated
that. But she didn't want to be protected, not if that meant
keeping her tied up at home. What would it be like when he was her
legal husband, and had the authority to command her? Could she
trust him to keep his promises? She was afraid that, once married,
he might decide that treating a wife as an equal was too much to
ask. And what if they had children? Would he take time away from
his research to help care for them, or would he leave all the work
to her? The closer she got to her wedding day, the more she wanted
to avoid it.

Catherine had to admit that a big reason she
had wanted to come was to prove to herself that she really could
accomplish something on her own. On the ship, she'd been
unconscious, a helpless victim to the manticore bond, and her
father had rescued her. When the Spanish had captured Matthew, her
rescue attempt had gone sour, and her father had rescued her again,
using quintessence to resurrect her. When the manticores attacked,
she had figured out a way to fight them off, but in doing so, she
had burned the settlement to the ground.

Worst of all was Maasha Kaatra, the servant
of Christopher Sinclair's whose death she couldn't get out of her
dreams. It had been her job to manage the void. Her responsibility.
It had been her first time doing so, but that didn't excuse her
lapse. The wonder of what Sinclair was doing had distracted her,
and the void grew out of control. By the time she noticed, it was
too late. Maasha Kaatra had seen a vision of his murdered daughters
that day, just before he plummeted into the void. Instead of trying
to pull him back, Catherine had pushed away from him, thinking only
of freeing herself from his grasp. He had fallen, fallen, tumbling
endlessly into the empty space behind the fabric of reality. She
could still see his dwindling form in the darkness when she closed
her eyes.

This trip was her chance, finally, to do
something that mattered and get it right.

They reached the far side of the plains and
entered the thicker, wetter forest at the foot of the great
mountains. Dark clouds swept in on swift winds, and distant thunder
thrummed. The mossy foliage of the treetops grew thicker overhead,
leaving the forest floor splotchy with patches of deep darkness.
Another storm was on its way.

Catherine fished her bell-box out of her pack
and pushed the lever in a rapid pattern. Back at the settlement,
the bell on the box's twin would chime just as if she were pulling
its string. Matthew would be listening, and would be glad to know
she was all right.

The code by which they communicated had
improved over the years, and Catherine and Matthew used it often
enough that they had developed their own shorthand references. She
let him know approximately where she was and that she was safe.
When she finished, her bell began ringing in swift patterns,
Matthew wishing her luck and urging her to be cautious. She wanted
to say more, to make some gesture of reconciliation, but the code
wasn't subtle enough to transmit expression or feeling adequately.
It would have to wait until she returned.

Catherine checked her compass beetles, as she
had throughout the trip, to be certain of her heading. The beetles
always tried to crawl toward their home—even across oceans—which
made them an ideal tool for navigation. She was carrying two: one
that lived in the forest near the settlement, and one from another
beetle colony they had found elsewhere on the island. Using a rough
estimate of the angle between the directions each was facing, she
could calculate her position on the island with fair accuracy.

The beetles were black with wing covers
traced with tiny curlicues of pale green. As soon as she opened
their box, however, she could tell that something was wrong. They
were motionless, not scrabbling against the side as they usually
would be, trying to move toward their homes. Tentatively, she
reached in and touched one. It was stiff and clearly dead. What had
happened to them?

She pulled out a knife and cut one of them in
half lengthwise, from its mandibles to the top of its abdomen. Its
flesh was laced with layers of salt and stone, just as the sailors
of the
Western Star
had been when her father had dissected
them so long ago. But that had been in London. These beetles were
here, on Horizon, where the sky dipped near the earth and flooded
it with quintessence power. They weren't supposed to run out of
quintessence here.

Catherine suddenly realized how quiet it was.
She ought to hear something—the whir of a Hades helmet fly, the
chirp of a honeyguide, the scratch of a marmoset's claws in the
canopy above—but the forest was silent. The trees on this part of
the island were thicker, the trunks steaming with humidity that
blanketed the air, unlike the dry, scuttling sounds of the forests
further south that rattled when the wind blew. Still . . .

"Thomas?" she called. "Paul?" Her voice
seemed small, and there was no response.

Best to be prepared. She licked her finger
and dipped it in the salt pouch at her belt. It came out dusted
with the small white granules. She licked again, spreading the salt
out on her tongue, and felt a warm tingle as it reacted with the
quintessence in her bloodstream. She could feel the salt spark and
burn inside her, giving her power. A glowing sheen appeared on her
skin.

Dark clouds roiled above her. The ground had
been steadily sloping downward for some time, and now it became
swampy. Reeds grew in clumps around stagnant pools, and she had to
step carefully to avoid sinking up to her ankle in mud. She reached
a break in the undergrowth where the ground dropped away more
suddenly, affording her a wider view, and she saw corpses
everywhere, littering the landscape. Dead fish and frogs floated
white and rotting in putrid water. A boarcat lay half submerged in
a muddy pool, only matted fur and one ear visible, without so much
as a ripple in the pools of water around it.

No natural creature killed this many animals
and then abandoned the meat to rot. Catherine had spent enough time
in the forest to know what death looked like. Nature cleaned up
after itself. The death of one animal was food for others: flies,
grubs, and scavengers both on land and in the air. But here, even
the flies were dead. They littered the ground like seed sown in a
crop field. Carrion birds lay crashed on the ground with their
wings outstretched and their bodies broken as if they had died
mid-flight and plummeted to the earth. There was even a dead
opteryx—a scavenging reptile that, despite its large size, floated
high on the breeze like a vulture in search of rotting flesh to
eat.