The Trials of Lance Eliot (23 page)

LANCE ELIOT IS GIVEN GOOD NEWS

THAT'S NOT TO SAY my resolution to give up drinking was easy to accomplish. For about a day I felt fine—in fact, better than I had felt in many weeks. Then depression struck like a sack of bricks. Instead of going to work, I stayed in bed, weeping into my pillow and refusing all comfort.

I began to feel sick. My head throbbed, my forehead burned with fever and my body shook. Perspiration soaked the sheets. My appetite vanished. Regis decided to take a day off from the press to keep an eye on me. When I began to feel worse, he called Atticus and pleaded for his advice.

Atticus wasn't worried. “The alcohol's leaving his body, that's all. It'll take a while, but he'll feel better afterward. Just make sure he's comfortable and let me know if he needs anything. I'll make him some aromatic water.”

“What's aromatic water?” I mumbled after Atticus had left.

“It's a drink made by steeping herbs in hot water,” explained Regis. “Much like tea, except that it's…well, not tea.”

Atticus returned with a clay teapot and a cup. “This is hierba purga. It's bitter but will do him good. Drink up, my boy.”

It was awful stuff. I choked and coughed and spluttered, but managed to drink it all.

“There you go,” said Atticus with an approving pat on the shoulder. “That was nasty, but you'll feel better for it.”

Regis had to help Eben and his family print pamphlets that evening, so Atticus looked after me. As I lay in a feverish stupor, he told me about the children in the orphanage. Some of his stories were tremendously funny. Some were sad. All of the children had lost someone dear, and I couldn't help but pity them. This was something of a milestone for me, since it had been a long time since I had felt much pity for anyone but myself.

It took two days to recover. When I had bounced back to perfect health, the first thing I wanted was a pint of beer. It took all my self-restraint (and the unceasing watchfulness of Regis and Atticus) to keep me away from the pub. For nearly two months I had numbed my pain with alcohol. Now I had to face that pain without any sort of relief.

I smoked more than ever, now that I couldn't turn to drink for comfort. Regis gave me a disapproving look every time I brought out my pipe, but I ignored him. Having relinquished one great comfort, I wasn't about to let go of another.

Tsurugi and I hardly spoke since our walk to the park. I had resumed my training with him, but we trained in silence. He seemed more distracted than ever. I saw Petra and Jian only on occasion. They seemed always to be busy. Indeed, everyone seemed always to be busy.

One day I came into the parlor to find an unfamiliar man sitting on the sofa. He had short gray hair, a red face and a mustache like the bristles on a wire brush. The sofa sagged under his weight. He looked like a ruddy walrus. I gave a respectful bow and introduced myself.

“Name's Fox,” he said. “General Fox. Here to see Atticus. Could you tell him I've come?”

I fetched Atticus and let them talk. Only after the General left did Atticus tell me he was the bravest man he knew.

“General Fox is a mouse among dragons,” he said. “They'll kill him if he makes a false move. He's our link to Senshu. When the king makes a decision, we're the first people to know about it.”

“Why doesn't he just kill Senshu and be done with it?”

“Because Senshu's a paranoid old fool, that's why. He's surrounded himself with guards. Probably the only reason he's still alive.”

I continued to print pamphlets every evening. Eben told me he had stayed up all night to compose the pamphlet after the first meeting of the new Resistance. It was written with sound logic, fiery eloquence and at least a dozen allusions to poets. The printed pamphlets were stored at his house.

“It's ridiculous,” said Cog one evening. “I'm starting to find revolutionary pamphlets everywhere: in every cupboard, on the pantry shelves, beneath the dining room table—”

“Stop complaining,” said Abigail, giving him a soft thump on the arm. “It's not that bad.”

Cog grimaced. “I'll find them under my bed next, or in the outhouse.”

Eben's wife Tirzah brought us sandwiches and blackroot every evening. We always took a break to eat and drink and talk. Regis did much of the talking. He had seen most of Rovenia, much of Weit and even parts of Tyria in his wanderings, and the others listened with wonder as he spoke of his experiences. Abigail in particular seemed interested in his travels. They spent a lot of time in quiet conversation.

I came to know Cog quite well. When he found out that Terra was a world of advanced technology, he barraged me with questions and listened wide-eyed as I spoke of telephones, motorcars and computers. He often pulled a tattered journal and a stub of pencil from one of his pockets and took notes. I once glanced at the pages and saw sketches of machines.

“Just random thoughts,” he explained. “People give me odd looks when I talk about my ideas. Staggering genius is hard to appreciate, I guess. So instead of talking about my ideas, I write them down.”

“Have you considered becoming an inventor?”

“That was my plan till Father lost his legs.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—”

“Oh hush, it wasn't your fault. He worked at a paper mill till his legs were crushed in an accident. He was able to find work here, but Abi and I had to drop out of school to help make ends meet. I built his wheelchair, by the way.”

“I'm impressed. It's a fine wheelchair. It's a pity prosthetics haven't been invented in Rovenia.”

“Prossy-whats?”

“Prosthetics. It's a branch of medicine that deals with artificial body parts, like wooden legs.”

Cog scribbled around the margins of a crowded page. “I'd never considered prosthetics—did I say it right?—but it sounds fascinating. I'd love to make Father a new pair of legs.”

We chatted for a while about his ideas for inventions. “What I really want to invent is some sort of travel,” he said. “Hunds are unreliable and caravans are slow. There has to be something quick, safe and dependable.”

“What about trains?”

“Trains? What are trains?”

I spent the rest of our break describing trains as he took notes and made sketches.

“I'd never considered powering machines with steam,” he said, closing his journal and slipping it into his pocket. “The engine would be hard to make. Mix the wrong kinds of metal and it would fall apart under pressure, see. All the same, using steam to power it is a brilliant idea: inexpensive, efficient, fairly simple. It's genius, really. Why didn't I think of it?”

“I think you've answered your own question,” said Abigail, coming over to tell us to get back to work.

We worked six days a week and rested on the seventh day. I suppose I should take a moment to describe the Rovenian calendar, since it wasn't so different from our own.

A Rovenian year consisted of twelve months, each twenty-eight days long. The year began in spring with the months of Newbloom, Gembloom and Fullbloom. Then came the summer months of Redsun, Whitesun and Goldsun, and then the autumn months of Greenleaf, Redleaf and Deadleaf. The year came to an end with the winter months of Whitewind, Highwind and Wetwind.

Much like our own tried and true system, every seventh day was a day of rest. This day varied from profession to profession. Blacksmiths did not rest on the same day as merchants, who did not rest on the same day as chimney sweeps, who did not rest on the same day as weavers, and so on. This was to prevent all business from crashing to a halt each week.

Most people spent an hour or two at the temple every seventh day, listening to the priests read from the Book of El. Every city had its own temple, though the temple in Valdelaus (known as the Great Temple) was the largest and most beautiful of all. The towns and villages too small for temples had sanctums, buildings where laypeople read aloud from the Book.

Atticus couldn't take the children to the Great Temple very often. It was difficult for an aging man to shepherd twenty-some children along two miles of busy streets and back again. Instead, he gathered the children once a week and read from his own copy of the Book of El. It was one of the few books he still owned. Most had been sold to help pay for food, fuel and clothes.

Regis and I joined them every week. Being a lover of mythology, I was captivated by the fascinating stories in the Book of El.

According to the Book, Rovenia was founded more than seven hundred years before by survivors of the Treowen Empire. In a chain of islands called the Western Archipelago, the Treowen Empire had grown and flourished under the benevolent guidance of El. In time they developed simple machinery and advanced the study of magic, becoming the most sophisticated nation in Gea. They became proud, abandoned El and dabbled in Necromancy, setting a course for their own destruction.

Then Synnwere, a particularly wicked chap, caused a great cataclysm, though the Book didn't explain how
exactly he was responsible. A massive wave destroyed six islands. A seventh island vanished—simply disappeared. Only one island remained, and volcanic eruptions rendered it harsh and desolate.

In the end, the surviving Treowenites (presumably excepting Synnwere) boarded the few ships that had escaped the devastation and sailed east. They reached an uninhabited land and settled. Before long, a man gathered the exiles under a single banner and proclaimed himself the first king of Rovenia. Against all odds, the kingdom survived and prospered for a few hundred years. Then came a cataclysm of a different kind.

One king turned out to be a narcissistic, self-indulgent git. When his younger brother made a grab at the throne, half the kingdom supported him. The other half did not. The resulting conflict splintered the realm into two kingdoms. One kept the name of Rovenia. The other took the name of Tyria, and they had been at odds with each other ever since.

It was intriguing stuff, especially since the stories were sprinkled with mythological creatures—or to be precise, creatures I had until recently assumed to be mythological—and the Guardians, those gods or archangels El had supposedly put in charge of Gea. Interspersed among these captivating stories were less-than-captivating lists of religious doctrines. Aquila, the seer who wrote the Book, also had an irritating habit of going off on prophetic rants. When we came to these parts of the reading, I dozed or slipped outside for a pipe of tobacco.

As I stood outside one morning, wrapped in a blanket and puffing out smoke, I had an epiphany.

“Regis,” I said a few moments later. “I've had an epiphany.”

“Couldn't it have waited, old boy? We were almost done reading. You didn't need to drag me into the kitchen like this.”

“Regis, I think I've figured it out.”

“Figured
what
out?”

“Why the people and cultures in your world remind me of those in mine.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The people and cultures of Gea are similar to the people and cultures of Terra. Take Tsurugi. He has black hair, pale skin and eyes that slant a bit. It makes him look Asian—I mean, like one of the people from a continent in my world called Asia.”

“What about me?” asked Regis, grinning. “What do I look like?”

“With a nose like that you look positively Roman.”

He stopped grinning. “I'm rather attached to my nose,” he said, sounding a trifle hurt. “So Tsurugi looks Asian, like someone from the continent of Asia, and I look Roman, like someone from the continent of Roma?”

I laughed. “Something like that. These similarities puzzled me from the beginning. I asked Kana about them, but I didn't get an answer. I was going to ask again, but other things drove it out of my mind.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Do you remember what Atticus read earlier this morning about the passages between worlds?”

“They occurred sometimes in antiquity, but they've all disappeared.”

“Exactly! Don't you see it?”

“See what?”

I banged a counter in exasperation. “Long ago, there were passages, openings, portals, call them what you like, between Gea and Terra and the other worlds. Things passed through those passages. Now what if that part of the Book of El is true?”

“I believe it's all true, old boy.”

“Listen, Regis, what if there were
passages between our worlds? What if people from Terra traveled through these passages and settled in Gea? That would explain why Rovenia seems so familiar to me—it was founded by people from my own world.”

To my astonishment and chagrin, Regis laughed. “Of course that's what happened. That's in the Book.”

“It is?”

“A great crowd of Terran people stumbled into Gea around four thousand years ago and settled down. Gea received settlers from Terra until the last passage closed hundreds of years ago. If this world seems familiar to you, old boy, it's probably because for centuries it borrowed bits and pieces from yours.”