The Archimage's Fourth Daughter Page 4

  After traversing two more cross streets up ahead, she glimpsed the reason why. There were others dressed the same as she! Some even wore cloaks or capes. Some had masks. Other women in wore sequined costumes, so short as not to be believed.

  They rapidly twirled metal cylinders with white bulbs on the both ends and occasionally tossed them high into the air. Around them clustered others, garbed like the ones who had already hurried past her.

  One structure was impressively higher than the two to either side — an entryway built like a helmet worn by a general in a victory parade. It stood at the rear of a large courtyard bare of greenery and underfoot completely covered with a random array of indentations looking like the prints of hands or boots.

  Larger carriages came into view, some with seats on the top as well as inside. They pulled to the edge of the street and disgorged their content into the courtyard. The natives that had been discharged ran from one set of indentations to another, obviously delighted, and yelling to others what they had found. It reminded Briana of the rituals of magicians, but here it was too disorganized to have any such a meaning.

  As Briana pondered, two young women suddenly surrounded her on both sides. “Selfie!” yelled one and extended a small mirror-like object on the end of a stick.

  “What movie?” asked the other. “I don’t recognize your costume. Is it not out yet? Are you one of the stars or only an extra?”

  “You are supposed to smile,” the first thrust the mirror in Briana’s face. “Like us. See. Instead, you look like a blank faced idiot.”

  “She’s in character, Hester,” the other said. “Don’t you get it? She is playing the role of an idiot.”

  The second woman thrust a small book into Briana’s hand along with what looked like some sort of writing quill.

  “Well, autograph it,” she said. “Your name, your real name. Who knows? Some day you may be famous, and this will be worth a fortune.”

  Briana thought for a moment how her name would be composed in the native’s lettering system and slowly began to make the marks across the page.

  “Look at that,” Hester said. “Look what she scribbled. Worse than a kindergartener”.

  “That precisely is my point. Like I said. She is in character. Go ahead and give her the tip.”

  “This is not worth even a buck,” Hester said. She thought for a moment. “Okay, if you are playing the idiot, you would probably like a nice silver coin, right?”

  She reached into a purse, extracted one, thrust it in Briana’s palm.

  Briana bristled. Idiot indeed! This was not the way to treat a daughter of Alodar the Archimage. She should…

  The coin was silver! Maybe…

  She examined the disk more closely. Her anger had subsided for a moment, but then it returned. Counterfeit! Counterfeit and a bad example at that. It was silver all right, silver overlaid over a copper core. She could see that the baser metal had worn through around the entire circumference.

  Briana turned to confront the two women, but they were already moving on through the crowd, looking for additional targets to accost.

  It took a while for the heat to dissolve away, but Briana found she could not return to a complete calm. The noise and flashing lights on the storefronts were becoming too much to process all at once.

  She needed something to focus on, but the visual bombardment continued its relentless onslaught. Closing her eyes did not help. If she did, the unfamiliar sounds intruded even more. She decided to continue in the direction of a tall tower farther to the east. There, in the distance, the furor of activity seemed to be much less.

  But as she did, her discomfort grew. She needed to relieve herself, but no convenient bush or tree was in sight. Her shoulders slumped under the now heavy weight of her pack.

  When she reached the tower, Briana looked at the sign across the street. ‘Ripley’s Believe It or Not’, it said. What could that possibly mean? Believe it? Believe what? And if not, then what happened? Her thoughts reeled. Even here, where relatively it was quieter, everything was still too kinetic, too vast, too frenzied, and complex.

  The experience was so unlike those recorded in the sagas. When heroes went to an unchronicled land, they coped almost immediately. That would not be possible here. Her original plan of taking a few days to sample the culture was not going to work. It could take a lifetime to figure it all out.

  This adventure could be a big mistake. When the portal reappeared tomorrow morning, perhaps she should go home. For a moment, the thought surprised her, but then it rooted, and she had to consider what to do.

  Go home? But what would happen then? Be carted off to a grubby fortress in the west? No, she could not do that. She would not do that. Not yet. Not even if many days had to pass. Whatever it took. No return until she had something of value to report.

  Her stomach rumbled again. Her tongue was thick in her mouth. She had brought enough sustenance for a few days, but not for how long this was going to take. In addition to puzzling about the existence of the crafts, she would have to take care of the basics too — food, water and a place to sleep. How was that to come about? Could she even eat the food, drink the water? There was nothing familiar here, nothing she understood — nothing she could understand in any reasonable time.

  With a sudden jab of fear, Briana realized the predicament in which she had placed herself. The last of her energy ebbed away. She did not want to return, but neither could she stay. She leaned against the wall of the tall building. No one noticed or offered to help as she sagged to the ground. In all of her life, no situation ever had been this bad. There was nothing worse than this.

  And as she did, she felt a twinge that rapidly grew into a cramp. She was wrong. It could be even worse. Her time of the month was starting — starting a week early. She had brought nothing for it. And something had to be done now, sooner rather than later. Otherwise, her leggings would have a stain for everyone to see, one that would set and could not be removed.

  But by now, she could do nothing. Briana folded her arms over her knees, lowered her head onto them, and quietly began to weep. If the exiles could see her now, she thought, they certainly would be laughing.

  Exiled forever

  ANGUS, THE exile, reached behind his head and smoothed down his long, flowing hair. It would reach his waist soon and he would have to have it sheared. A daily ritual of shaving kept his face bare. Black eyes like machined spheres of hematite marked him as cunning to the other Heretics; one to be dealt with only when necessary and then with caution. Only the tips of his fangs showed when his mouth was closed. Nor did his tunic cover his arms as it did most of the others. Rather, he bared them proudly, the thick fur as sufficient as sleeves. When he stood to full height rather than slumped, he was as tall as the natives roaming freely above.

  He ran his fingers over the polished wood grain of the orange-brown table, but its beauty gave him little satisfaction. Neither did the expanse of the rocky alcove about him, though it was larger than all but two others. More than three times his height, its smooth walls rippled like waves on a placid sea, a wrinkled bubble of air far beneath the ocean’s surface.

  Small flakes of gold shimmered in a narrow vein snaking above Angus’ head. Flickering candles standing in indentations chiseled into the walls gave only enough light so that the objects on the tabletop could be seen, but the rest of the alcove was in shadow. The wax was too precious to waste on reminding one of the crushing reality of confinement.

  Untold hours had been spent by the Heretics chipping away at the alcove floor to create the flat space on which the table stood and a pathway to a small oval opening leading to more caverns and twisty passageways beyond. Caverns and passageways — the entire world of the vanquished, the exiles, the Heretics Who Proclaim the Truth.

  Angus looked at the small clock on the tabletop, its pendulum swinging back and forth in frantic haste, far faster than the glacial slowness the humans used to mark their time.
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br />   The humans. The puny, primitive humans. If they knew of his true status and that of the others of his kind, they would be laughing. He was a powerful alchemist. His brothers were potent practitioners of the crafts as well. Unfettered, subjugations of the surface dwellers would be easy. Yet despite this power, they were hopelessly confined in underground caverns. And so fearful that any use of the magics would alert the so-called Faithful, the oppressors who put them here, his brothers insisted no craft be practiced at all.

  The Faithful. Faithful to what? What an ill-fitting label. Sheep that move from one fad to the next with only the slightest prodding. The merest hint that something new was going to be more popular than what had come before. The idiots did not think, did not consider, did not engage with exercises of the mind.

  But then, it was no better here. Dinton, his eldest brother, how could he be so stubborn, so unseeing, so afraid? Whenever he had possession of the baton, the depression of the flock members always increased. There was always the risk one or more would remove their rings and surrender — unable to accept who knows how much longer — more centuries encased in rock before they might possibly be free.

  Dinton and Thaling would be here shortly, so Angus shoved the thoughts away. As always, Dinton would arrive first; Thaling would be the last to appear — the diplomat, his middle brother with the glib words to douse the rising anger boiling between Dinton and himself. Never venturing opinions of his own so they too could be attacked. His two, so unalike, brothers. He wondered how much longer he could keep his secret from them.

  Without preamble, Dinton entered the alcove, breaking through Angus’ reverie. He was shorter but broader like an over ripe gourd. His hair also cascaded to his waist behind, but rather than the uniform dull brown of Angus, the roots showed silver. Even in the dimness, his eyes squinted nearly shut, as if he were afraid to let anything from the outside accost his senses. His fangs did not protrude. A long rod of polished wood hung from his waist on one side and a short dagger from the other. He carried a colored cardboard box in his hand.

  “You have gone above again, haven’t you?” Dinton said without preamble. He slapped the staff at his side. “Even when I explicitly forbade it while the baton is mine.”

  Angus glanced up at Dinton, but did not rise. His brother’s time as agreed upon absolute leader was almost over. Let him feel a little more aggravation before it was finished.

  “We have been over this many times before,” Angus said. “A grandfather over a hundred native years ago, and then his grandson when his elder was soon to pass. They are the only two of which I have interacted. There is no way any other of these primitives would find out about the trades I have made.”

  “It is not the natives I worry about,” Dinton thundered as if were orating to everyone in the caverns at once. “It is the oppressive ones, the Faithful, the ones who overwhelmed us and cast us out. If they discover there is traffic with those who call themselves humans, or that the charm placed upon us has worn off, or if any new exercise of craft is detected, their next punishment will be even worse than this. We all would be given to the tigerwasps. All of us. Continual pain with no release.”

  Angus prided himself on how he carried himself in the caverns — back straight as a sheer cliff, untroubled by any threat unless directly challenged to a duel one-to-one. But every time he thought of the wasps, he could not help but wince.

  His eyes closed nearly shut and his cheeks stretched high on his face. “We should have destroyed the colony of the loathsome pests long ago,” he shuddered. “The Faithful left those huge beasts with us so we would come to use them on ourselves — even when there was the most petty bickering.”

  Dinton nodded slowly. He cleared his throat before speaking as he often did. “What the feeling would be, I, too, find it hard to think about. Boring into one’s stomach and then consuming the organs from the inside — slowly and carefully, leaving only enough of each to continue functioning until the very last.”

  “But it is the ultimate deterrent,” Dinton continued before Angus could reply. “No one dares to commit a capital crime. The punishment would be too great. For the thousand years we have been here, the tigerwasps have been employed only twice.”

  “Count the rings in your alcove,” Angus ignored Dinton’s words. His brother had a tendency to run on and on. “How many do they number now? Haven’t more than three hundred already taken their own lives, from their loss in either a half-heartedly fought duel or an overwhelming sadness they can no longer put away? What good does it do to wait any longer? Soon there will be none of us left, and then it will not matter.”

  “We must have patience,” Dinton answered. Now his eyes were totally shut. “The primitives are accelerating the destruction of their world. In a few hundred more orbits about their star, they all will be gone and this entire planet will be ours.”

  “This entire hell-hole, you mean,” Angus snapped back. “Of what use is it to us, if we must remain below the surface even after the humans are gone?”

  Angus waved his arm around his alcove. “And while we wait, what do we have to bring us joy? A meandering collection of lava tubes and gas bubbles. Small cracks in the surface to let in sunlight for our crops, a trickle of water from the rains above. No sky overhead, no wind. Once every nook had been explored two or three times over, only numbness is left.”

  “Back on the home world,” Dinton put a tone of considered reasoning into his voice, “our so-called heresies were a matter of debate —  the beliefs of one flock against those of another. But here, the risk of discovery is unforgiveable. Your dabbling, the skirting on the edge of safety must stop.” The sound of the orator resumed. “I have commanded it. Stop or else.”

  “Or else, what?”

  “Or else the wasps.”

  “Yet, you enjoy an even bigger table than this one in your alcove,” Angus said. “Without what I have done, how could these little tastes of beauty even have been possible? The monotony would indeed be complete.”

  “Mere shadows,” Dinton scoffed. “Native trinkets with no depth of meaning.”

  “Trinkets!” Angus shouted. “The objects I have obtained at great peril, mere trinkets?” With a snarl, he withdrew the dagger from his waist. “I’ll show you a trinket. But first, you will have to remove it from your gut!”

  “You are the youngest, Angus,” Dinton growled. The box he was carrying dropped to the floor and flew open. Cards and tokens scattered about. Ignoring the mess, he drew his knife in reply, his eyes now wide open and glaring. “You are the youngest, Angus, if only for a few moments more.”

  “Stop!” a third voice interrupted the argument. “What is it this time?” Thaling rushed in and placed restraining hands on his brothers’ arms. “We have made the agreement that we will not succumb to our baser emotions when we meet. We are to decide who will possess the baton for the next turn of the wheel of time. Nothing more. Why is that so hard to remember?”

  Thaling was the shortest of the three, hunched over like a rat trying to walk on only its hind legs. Long fangs protruding from his lips interfered with his speech, but his brothers had grown used to his slurs. As adults, they no longer jeered when he tried to mouth human words.

  For a few heartbeats, Angus and Dinton stared at each other. Like two feuding children, they played at who would resheath his weapon first. Finally, Angus sighed in exasperation and plunged his into its scabbard. Dinton waited a moment longer, smiled, and put his away as well.

  “If only father had publically chosen one of us before he gave into the monotony and took his own life,” Thaling said. He straightened up as best he could. “We would have no need for the periodic bickering and waste of time.”

  “Yes, certainly,” Angus said. “Our daily schedules are so very busy, that we can hardly find a few moments for this stupid ceremony.”

  “We have agreed,” Thaling said, his slur more noticeable when he became excited. “It is the only thing that has
kept us from destroying all of ourselves in a struggle to determine who was to rule.”

  “I am the eldest,” Dinton said. “By rights, it should have been me.”

  “We made an agreement,” Thaling pleaded. “Why do we have to go through with this each and every time?”

  “If Dinton would only stop harping about being the oldest — ” Angus began.

  “I choose my words carefully each time I speak,” Dinton cut in. “You are the one who pollutes the air with your hot-headed outbursts.”

  “Enough,” Thaling shouted. “To the business at hand.”

  “You are not yet the holder of the baton,” Dinton turned his attention to Thaling and withdrew his dagger again. “You cannot give me commands. I demand the respect that is my due.”

  “I do not cower to words that are merely loud,” Angus said as he brandished his stiletto as well.

  Thaling took a step backward and bared his own knife. “So this is the way of cowards? Rather than duel properly, instead, gang up two against one?” He showed his teeth, and a drool of foam began to drip from the side of his mouth.

  The three brothers stood facing one another in a tight circle, first threatening the one on the left and then the right. After a few dozen heartbeats, a gentle chime from the small clock on Angus’ table broke through the tension. Like the uncoiling of intertwined springs, all three men relaxed.

  “Yes, it is time to choose,” Thaling said, lowering his blade and resuming his usual slump.

  “If it is my turn again,” Dinton said, “my edicts remain the same. No contact with the natives. Reduce the frivolous use of water. Store it instead against when there will be drought. And above all, patience. Wait for what eventually is going to happen — for when the humans will be gone.”

  “Action now,” Angus said. “If it becomes my turn, then there will be tasks that I will command what you and your flocks are to do.” He turned and looked at Thaling. “And you, brother. Every time, you are always silent. “Have you even thought about what would be your commands if the baton were to pass to you?”