Warlord, page 25
But when even Apache—an ardent survivor if there ever were one—failed as I did to react to a new danger, it was a hard slap of reality that our condition was even grimmer than I’d thought.
Rocks slid onto the trail between Beraal and us. Just a few, slightly bigger than my fist. Apache and I stepped around them, apathetic Walmart shoppers detouring our cart around a box of macaroni and cheese fallen off a shelf. It wasn’t till it happened a second time that either of us reacted.
I murmured to the princess, “Someone’s above us. Hold on tight. With me, boy.”
I leaped twice to catch up to Beraal, who lethargically left her haze and took notice of me only when I touched her shoulder. I whispered, “There’s a gazraal trailing us from above.” One of the lions of Mars was stalking us, waiting for the right moment to pounce.
She squinted at the rock face. “Where?”
This time I had the better vision. Not a gazraal. Two legs, four arms. Leaving concealment just enough to spy down at us before fading back. It was a Tarn. I felt relief shoot through me.
“It’s your clanmates checking us out, right? Should you hail them first?”
Beraal squinted. More dark shapes appeared in glimpses along the narrow escarpment, weaving out and dropping back behind projections like schooling fish swimming through a branching coral reef. Before she could reply, I stated facts like a detective revealing the murderer.
“They don’t walk upright. They’re a long way off but to my eye they’re bigger than Khraal Kahlees. They’re pale. Not Tarns.” I raised my rifle.
Beraal sucked air through tusks and teeth. “No, Benjamin Colt. There are too many. If we fire on them, they will descend on us in a horde too large to contend with. They would overwhelm us.”
I couldn’t disagree. If I’d had an M4 in my hands, I would have. “What are they?”
“They should not be here,” she said as a non-answer.
“Beraal, what are they?”
“The white apes. But that cannot be.”
“Keep close and let’s move.”
In tighter formation we pressed on, and I kept my gun ready.
“We cannot fire unless we have no other choice,” Beraal urged me. “The white apes are intelligent but are maniacally aggressive. They fear nothing. They defend their troop with a ravage fury if threatened.”
“If they don’t start anything, neither will I, but they’re about to tickle the finger for my happy switch.”
I knew she didn’t understand me, but she got the gist.
“They will tear us to pieces until their last number if it comes to a confrontation.”
I kept tabs on them as we hurried our pace. We were being shadowed. Twice now I’d lost sight of them and thought perhaps they’d lose interest, only to see their dark mirages reappear, to my disappointment.
“Are we in their territory?”
“I can’t believe so. They are all but extinct and live far, far to the north in the cold northern mountains of the Sharpa. In the underworld, they guard the entrance to the Temple Farnest at the end of the River Blix. Soldiers of the White.”
“Then the Endangered Species Act is working, ’cause they’re making a comeback.”
Talis Darmon spoke for the first time in so long, her voice was like a half-remembered song to me—so faint in the radio receiver, it was hard to recognize. “They have some purpose. Why haven’t they attacked already if they mean us harm? Why haven’t they departed if we demonstrate no ill to them?”
There was no complex reason. “They’re animals, Princess.”
Apache stopped short, sending the princess against the back of his thick, wrinkled neck. He sniffed the air rapidly, then growled as he lowered his chest, ready to charge. I hefted her off him to shield her behind me. Beraal and I had rifles up, and I strained to make out the danger just as Apache sprang ahead. A snarling war broke out in the darkness.
“Protect the princess!” I yelled and launched forward.
Our path had been progressing down a narrowing valley, two bluffs of tiered walls the boundaries. From the blackness, Apache’s barks were challenged by screeching howls, and I expected to at last see one of the apes up close as I sped through the crevasse.
Apache was faced off with one, all right. It menaced him from a perch on top of a huge, flat boulder. The path had widened into a sheltered pit, a natural amphitheater. And in all the best seats of the craggy steps set in the walls, white apes crouched. I burst into the opening and my eardrums nearly shattered as the spectators unleashed in a unison of threatening hoots, fists pounding chests, tusks bared.
I’d followed Apache blindly into an ambush. I tried to call him back to me. “Apache, come. Let’s get out of here. C’mon, boy.”
Behind me, Beraal yelled over the animalistic fusillade, “Benjamin Colt, we cannot retreat.”
“Back to back, Beraal. The princess between us.”
The princess’s other armed protector did as I asked. She spoke with ferocity, proving to me she was as ready as I was to die defending the princess. “The path of retreat was cut off by their horde. We had no choice but to follow.”
No more of the shrieking, glass-shattering howls, now a coordinated hooting showered us from all sides. It was so dark, the rudimentary sights of the rifle might as well not have been there, but same as Apache’s fixed attention, I aimed the muzzle at the chest of the one on the boulder.
Talis Darmon was at my ear. “Benjamin Colt, in there. Next to the pool. A cave.”
Her finger pointed past the wide shallow pool of a stone fountain where cut into the rock face was the coal-tar black hole of a mouth into the mountain. The pool reflected the starlight, and I was reminded of a place like it that exploded out of memory like an airbag deploying in a head-on collision.
I didn’t see a choice. “Slowly. With me. It’s a better place to defend from than here. If they try to cut us off, I’m going hot. Don’t leave me to have all the fun, Beraal. We’ll burn as many as we can before it’s swords and fists.”
“They do not move to stop us,” Beraal said as we took our first few cautious steps.
“This is what they want,” Talis Darmon said. “They herded us to this place.”
I called Apache. He fixed his tormentor in place with his fiercest tirade before finally trotting to my side, still foaming and barking at the opera of white apes all around us. I wish I’d had a bang. Or a flashlight.
“I’ll lead,” I said without looking back.
The intensity of the hoots diminished, but their echo pushed our backs into the tunnel like waves shoving a drowning man to shore. I came within an inch of running barrel first into a wall, halting only because a dim light reached my eyes at the last moment. The tunnel curved sharply and what I saw past that turn was like a missing sock pulled from behind the dryer. It hadn’t gone to some fifth dimension. And like that mystery, I had the answer to what this place was. A dim amber stone glowed from a recess in the wall and around it, more pockmarks dotted the curvature of the walls. In the pockets, tiny stone figurines.
But no white apes.
“Do nothing rash.”
My muzzle snapped to where a dried up shrunken man stood, his arms folded in judgment like one of the carved figures. His face, where not covered by long white whiskers, was sunken and coarse as though he enjoyed the same diet we did. His clothing, no better than ours.
The princess’s gentle touch on my forearm guided my rifle away. “Water priest, we are in peril,” she said. “I ask for your ancient and honorable guild to shelter us. The creatures outside mean us harm. We have been in the mountains for many weeks without help.”
Like I somehow knew he would, the old man tittered—disturbed, mad, or malevolent. His sniggering changed pitch—amused at our plight. I wasn’t so depleted to ignore the bad manners of some ancient tweaker after Talis Darmon’s humble request for help. If he had any pearlies left in his wrinkled mouth, it’d be worth the brief joy of smashing them down his throat with my buttstock before a cyclone of gnarly white apes hit me.
Instead, my growl seemed to break the crypt keeper’s amusement at our expense, and he recovered some manners.
“I have suspected for many days that Red royalty was nearby. The ninth ray told me you were tapping into its flow. The Hortha brought you to me. Whether I give you shelter or let the rightful masters of this realm sacrifice you to their god depends on who you are and why you are here.”
25
I’d once seen a room of full colonels shrink into a bunch of cowed navel gazers when a command sergeant major ripped into them for lax security around their TOC. Every one of them made inspecting the color of their boots their immediate occupation until a staff sergeant took charge and corrected the deficiency. Churchill once shamed a woman who’d called him drunk by telling her she was ugly, but he’d be sober in the morning. Whereas one was a sermon at the fire-and-brimstone end of the spectrum of world-class rebukes, Churchill’s was at the other end of the scale, a scolding disguised in pretentiously polite humor.
The princess’s response made both seem like the reproach of amateur grievance holders.
“Filthy hermit! How dare you make threats! I am the Princess Talis Darmon Sylah, emissary of King Osric Darmon!” Had I feared her light was dimming for good? The fierceness I’d admired and frequently been the target of was not revived—it was resurrected like Lazarus raised from the dead. Her will, iron. Her presence, dominating. Her words, a condemnation delivered as lightning bolts cast from the heights of Olympus itself.
Her finger shot out, and for a moment I thought the metaphorical lightning was about to become real. “My king has long supported and protected you and your fellow recluses, despite your arcane guild’s petulant manner towards him.”
Was it my turn to stay her aggression? We were hat in hand, and she’d gone from begging to airing grievances like it was Festivus. And we didn’t even have a proper pole to celebrate around. If this was her diplomacy, maybe Domeel Doreen had no choice but to take her hostage.
How do you one-up a tornado?
I loved her all the more for it. I’d back her play.
The old man startled at her response—as did I—his manner quick to deescalate, but in his words, both apology and accusation returned.
“Temper, temper, Princess. I promise no harm will come to you or your party. The guild swears it. Though the Red Kingdom of Mihdradahl is no more friend to the guild than are any, save the Hortha. Put down your arms. None of the races of Vistara save Tarn have passed this wellspring in thousands of revolutions around the sun. I had to act to protect the sanctuary.”
“You trust only the Hortha because the apes do your bidding as slaves, priest!”
She was about to push this first hand of poker straight to the back-alley knife fight that usually takes till 4 a.m. to stir up. Now I had to intervene.
“We accept your oath, priest. In turn, I give ours that we will respect your house and customs while under your protection.”
“He is not to be trusted,” the princess growled.
“I don’t see much choice for us,” I said with as much subterfuge as I could for being in the close confines of a cave.
The hermit recovered, and with renewed fervor said, “You can trust this, Princess Talis Darmon—it was the ripple in the ninth ray that caused me to notice your presence in the Korund. My apprehension about the cause of the disturbance demanded I send the Hortha forth. What stayed my command for your destruction was the faint consideration I gave to the possibility that it was not the Necromancers of the air testing some foul science to pervert our guild’s purpose. If not your gratitude, at least acknowledge that this old man holds sacred his duties of guardianship—to always investigate with science before allowing fear to counsel me. That it could be the blood of the Sylah dynasty at work was not high on my list of differentials.”
The princess was grudgingly mollified, and her tone reflected at least a tiny amount of respect as she cooled. “Thank you, wise priest.”
Apache growled at the passage behind us, the snorts and cries from outside reduced more to the noise of a half-empty pub than the riot it had been.
The old man bowed slightly. “Then I permit you entry. What I extend to you, Princess, is a courtesy not shown to the Red for an age. I hold you to your oath. Touch nothing unless I so permit. And mind your consort, White prince,” the Gabby Hayes wannabe told me. I think he was fearful of another of her outbursts being directed at him. I’d been there.
“I am Princess Talis Darmon’s guardian. I serve her,” I replied, wanting to defend her strict sense of decorum. I didn’t want him thinking she was my “consort” and whatever that might imply. But I was secretly pleased to hear him think so.
He rolled his eyes like an exhausted cop.
“The beast. Your gadron. He minds you well, yes?”
“Oh. That he does.”
At least, I hoped he did. For the princess’s sake, I gave assurance. He was my dog, but I didn’t want to admit I had no idea if, when in someone else’s home, he bit against orders. I didn’t want the invitation rescinded and Apache was going with us, regardless. It’d be up to Gabby to mind his P’s and Q’s around him.
“Then follow.” He waved a hand over his bracelet and a portion of the wall pulled back and brighter amber light escaped, suggesting great depth and breadth beyond the opening. I gave the okay and Beraal took to the old man’s heels, falling into our order of march once again. The rock face closed behind me.
“Welcome to the Keep of the Water Guardian. Come. We will talk. First, your thirst must be quenched. There is no life without water and there can be no discourse without life. And discourse I desire. It has been long years since I’ve spoken with any but my own kind. The water flowing is proof enough that I stand my station. The guild needs no other confirmation, though still they test my loyalty, thinking me not worthy to be a master. My mistake? I thanked them for their diluted milk of kindness at breaking my solitude to ask every annual around the sun, ‘Is the flow safe?’
“Well, come and see for yourselves. I break my vow of humility. Today Cynar the Younger boasts! See for yourselves the diligence of my dedication. I am beyond their judgment. Behold!”
Beraal gasped, dropping to her knees and four palms. “The River Blix!”
“Bah!” the hermit spat. “If anything, it is the River Cynar!”
* * *
I reluctantly watched the princess go first to lay on the pallet and accept the healing light. When the priest offered, Talis Darmon saw my apprehension and explained. “The rays can be harmful if misused, but for severe illness, even the physicians in our kingdom prescribe its use. I think us to be so infirm that we must accept, Benjamin Colt.”
Cynar the Younger—I still preferred to think of him as Gabby the old coot from so many Westerns—sniggered. “That the rays are harmful is false. Your so-called physicians are more like frightened children than scientists. The light of the third ray has sustained me for a thousand journeys around the sun and kept me vital so to attend the work of my commission.”
I choked. “You’re a thousand years old?”
Gabby was crazy alright.
He cackled in delight. “Hehehehe! The third ray has brought me no harm!”
I mumbled, “Dude, you’re like a four-pack-a-day man saying smoking doesn’t cause cancer.”
“Hmm?” He let my gibe go unexplained. “The blood of royalty does not live in my veins, but the guild has secrets of its own. Let the princess be restored, then you and your Tarn. Your gadron needs no third ray.” He cackled some more and placed colored crystals into different settings in a panel until a golden light appeared from above, spraying its warmth onto the supine princess, its borders oddly confined to her outline.
“Allow her to rest in quiet. Come.” He waved Beraal and I to him.
“Apache. Guard the princess.”
He dropped to his haunches, his back to Talis Darmon’s prostrate figure, and eyed Gabby. He whined a little as we left, but did as commanded. He was an overgrown baby, but an obedient one.
“Good boy.”
The priest led us back out into the main cavern where the plash of flowing water became strong again. The underground river was twice as wide as I was tall, and we halted on the esplanade where our host brought out cushions. His was threadbare while the others appeared unused. I took the offered seat and then the cup as he poured.
“When you are all restored, we will go to my garden and pick enough for a meal. I have more than I need. The water is sweet. Between it and the third ray, I need little food. There is much that I carry outside to lay by the wellspring for any passing creature to share.”
I wondered if the fountain and cave combo near the crash site had a similar interior layout. “Cynar, I passed a way station like this in the Mydreen desert, a few days outside of the Tarn city. Some of my—” I almost said friends. They were not that any longer. “—companions saw one of your fellow priests, but he fled from them.”
Cynar grunted. “Those outside the guild are a danger to our kind and our commission. Many mistrust us, thinking themselves more capable, more worthy to wield the craft. As though if they but controlled the science, they could restore the oceans of Vistara!”
Beraal was fixated on the flowing surface of the river, echoes of cool splashes of water lapping against the rocks. Locked on the river, she said, “You hide from the world you try to sustain.”
“Indeed! Otherwise, the petty scientists of the atmosphere guild or others as badly misguided would try to take control of the source of water on this dead world, same as they hold control of the very air we breathe. But they would botch it! Same as they botch the stewardship of the atmosphere factories they so badly manage.”
