Phoenix Without Ashes (9 page)

Aram advanced a step. Devon backed away from the ax. He gestured at the cassette gripped in Aram’s free hand. “Won’t you believe me?
That
is the voice of the Creator. I watched Micah, listened to him as he created it.”

“My last warning, boy,” said Aram. “Perhaps thou fearest me not, but others will be coming soon if thou, as thy say, have attacked the Elders. Thou art a heretic and an idolater. They will confine thee or worse.”

“The hills...” said Rachel, her voice strained. “Hide there.”

“I’ll be back for you,” said Devon. “We can’t live like this; we have to fight them.” Hopelessly, he started to turn toward the edge of the porch.

Rachel tried to pull away from her mother’s restraining hand. “Devon, I love you—”

Aram slammed the door.

Old William the metalsmith had long since departed for home and his evening meal. The moon was clearly framed in the eastern sky as Garth cleaned up the remnants of his day’s labors. He turned as the door to the smithy flew open.

“What do you want?” Garth’s voice was as flat and hard as a tempered blade.

Young Goodman’s teeth gleamed in a feral smile. “Elder Micah has sent me. The Elders demand your presence and aid.”

Garth turned to arrange tools in the rack above the bench. “For what reason?”

“Your friend,” said Goodman. He underscored the second word with irony. “Curious Devon.”

“What are you talking about?”

Goodman said with satisfaction, “Devon has proved himself demon-possessed. He has defied the Elders and stolen a holy relic from the Place of Worship. He has also attacked and injured two Elders.”

Garth realized his mouth was open and consciously shut it. “I cannot believe that.”

Goodman extended his animal smile. “You may believe that Elder Micah has called together a group of men to seek Devon out and restrain him.”

“My work is not yet finished.” He turned away and resumed placing the tongs and hammers.

“It is a direct order of the Council.”

Without looking at him, Garth said heavily. “Then it is my duty to obey.”

“Then make haste,” said Goodman. “Micah believes Devon is making for the hills. Once there, he’ll be difficult and dangerous to root out.”

“As dangerous as a mountain cat?”

Goodman’s face went pale. Anger constricted his words. “If you ever—” He did not complete the threat.

“I might.” Garth shoved contemptuously past him and out into the night.

ELEVEN

The six-sided moon shed a cold glow from the east as Devon fled toward the hills. The underbrush tore painful cat-scratches in his flesh as he climbed across gullies. Territory that was familiar during the day, now, by night, became an alien landscape. Devon took a shortcut through a narrow peninsula of woods. In the sudden darkness, a night bird screamed and he began to run. A tangle of fallen limbs caught him just below the knees. Devon pitched headlong into the strewn dead leaves.

He lay stationary for a few minutes, letting the panic subside and catching his breath. The leaves crackled with the rhythm of his expanding and contracting ribcage. He twisted his head so that his nose was no longer buried in their bitter scent. The knotted pain below his ribs began to subside.

When he heard the distant sounds of the mob, he knew it was time to continue. Devon got to his feet and went forward, feeling his way between the trees. Behind him, the moon showed itself only intermittently through the forks and branches of the interlocking crowns. To his right, an owl hooted, the sound still louder than the shouts of Devon’s pursuers.

Devon burst free of the sheltering trees and found himself on the verge of a broad meadow. Then he saw the telltale flicker of torches on the far side; they were between the hills and him. While he had rested in the woods, a portion of the mob had evidently raced ahead in a pincers movement to cut him off from the hills.

He turned back, but the rest of the torches were still behind him. He saw the winking lights distantly, among the trees. Devon retreated to the edge of the woods; the woods would give him his only chance at a hiding place.

The searchers wended their way around the treetrunks of the grove; these woods had not been cleared in cycles. Devon could hear voices now, though he could not make out individual words. He heard the tramping of heavy boots through the dry leaves, the sounds of branches being ripped aside. Turning, he saw that the other group had nearly crossed the meadow toward him.

Devon dove into a thicket of tangled briars, rolling to escape most of the thorns. He burrowed into the fallen leaves, heaping them over his legs and body. As he completed his makeshift shelter, a breeze-eddy whirled up hundreds of leaves and scattered them over Devon’s briar thicket.

Is the Creator helping me?
he wondered. If there
were
a Creator. At this point, Devon felt sure about nothing.

As he lay supine, he felt something sharp and hard pressing against the small of his back. Thinking it perhaps a rock, Devon started to scrabble silently behind himself at the protuberance. Then he saw the flicker of torches beyond the translucent leaves covering his eyes and he froze.

The sounds of branches bent and broken, the crackle of crushing leaves were all around him. He heard a voice he was sure belonged to Elder Micah.

“Well, Young Goodman, did you see anything on the meadow?”

A negative response.

“And what about you? No? And you?”

Indistinguishable mutters.

“Perhaps the other party didn’t outflank him.” Garth’s voice. “Maybe he made it to the hills.”

“He didn’t have much start.” Aram. “He left my home only minutes before you arrived.”

A voice Devon did not recognize. “He caused no harm to your family?”

Aram again. “Only by frightening them. He’s a madman.”

Devon smiled slightly. There would be no public admission of Rachel’s wavering.

“We had best be moving on,” said a voice. “If he’s ahead of us now, he will be increasing his lead.”

“We will find him,” said Micah. Mutters of agreement. “Even if we must search the entire world.”

The sounds of sod-booted feet crashing through the undergrowth toward the periphery of the meadow. Torchlight replaced by steady darkness. Micah’s voice, diminished with distance: “We shall divide into smaller parties. Elders shall decide.” Other voices, calling out names.

Slowly and cautiously, Devon began to clear the leaves away from himself. Then he turned over and stared at something bright metal. He brushed away more leaves; more metal gleamed in the dim, filtered moonlight. Devon cleared a wider circle and paused, fascinated. There was a metal plate set into the floor of the forest. He brushed more debris away from the plate, oblivious to the bramble thorn ripping at his clothing. Finally he realized he was looking at a disc, roughly two and a half meters in diameter. At one edge was the protruberance that had dug so painfully into his back; it was a tiny dome, the surface of which was composed of triangular panels.

Devon touched the dome and let his fingers rest there for several seconds. There was a click from inside the cold metal and the dome opened like the two halves of a shellfish. Devon saw within a smooth panel glowing red. It was triangular also, roughly about the size and area of his palm. Not knowing precisely why he did so, Devon brought his fingers down onto the panel. Resilient, almost like flesh, it was neither warm nor cold. Another click. The panel turned bright green. Suddenly alarmed, Devon took his hand away. But whatever process he had started could not be stopped.

A bell chimed softly, incongruous in this forest thicket. A black dot appeared precisely in the center of the disc.

And then the metal opened.

To Devon it resembled the petals of a flower opening. Metal segments drew aside and away, irising apart. The unseen bell chimed again. The panel beside Devon’s hand continued to pulse a brilliant, glowing green. Devon looked down into utter blackness and it seemed to him to be the darkest, deepest hole he had ever seen.

Micah and the others stood staring at the sheer rock face looming above them. Some of the searchers thrust their torches close to the stone, looking for footholds. They found none.

“Even if he was a mountain goat he couldn’t have climbed this,” said Garth.

“It wouldn’t stop him if he were a demon,” somebody said.

“Devon is no demon,” said Micah. His eyes were deep-set and invisible in the wavering shadows cast by torchlight. “He is but flesh and blood. He could not have escaped by this route.”

“Perhaps he doubled back and sought an entrance to the hills further down.”

Again Micah shook his head. “We would have seen him. This canyon funnels only to here.”

Aram said. “Then somehow we have overlooked him in the meadows or woods.”

Micah nodded. “That must be it. We shall retrace our steps. He may still be hiding, driven to earth like a beast of the hills.”

“The groves,” said Aram. “I’ll wager he’s hiding up above our heads where we never thought to look.”

“Thus we shall trap him,” said Micah.

The men started back toward lower ground.

What manner of hole could this be?

Devon circled the open iris cautiously. Although the depth beneath was impenetrably dark, he had the feeling he was standing on the brink of an impossible abyss. Devon felt an indefinable sensation of
distance;
distances on a dimension that could not and did not exist here in Cypress Corners. He had experienced those distances, traveled them somewhere, sometime... When? He suddenly remembered and staggered back from the iris.

The dreams, his strange, unexplainable dreams. In them he had been transported inconceivable distances and had seen the alien, unblinking lights in the sky.

He had fallen down an endless tunnel.... But nothing in Cypress Corners was endless!

Devon stared down at the hole in the world and felt panic.
Endlessly tumbling...
Then he remembered who he was and where he was, and broke out of his reverie. The fear was still there, but it no longer paralyzed.

Leaning forward, he dropped a twig over the blackness. Rather than falling into the hole, the twig bounced against a barrier more transparent that window-plastic and then slid off to the side. Devon tried a handful of dead leaves. The leaves fluttered down until they were level with the surrounding earth; then they too gently slid off to the side. Devon gingerly started to put his toe into the hole, as though testing the temperature of a spring-fed lake. Fear had been replaced by something more insidious—curiosity.

The sounds of the searchers interrupted him. Absorbed in the mystery of the iris, he had failed to notice the approach of Micah and the others.

“... every tree,” said a still-distant voice.

Devon turned to flee—and tripped over the dome and the glowing mechanism inside. He started to cry out, then choked off the yell. Wildly flailing his arms, he toppled forward into the iris. The darkness rushed up sickeningly. He barely caught himself, his hands catching an unstable, slippery grip on the opposite rim of the iris. For a few seconds he hung there, spreadeagled across the emptiness, trying to keep himself aboveground by pressure of feet and hands against the outer rim.

Devon exerted his entire strength trying to keep himself from falling. He heard his muscles crack; then he heard something else—a strange, keening whine that made his teeth ache as it rapidly climbed up through the scale.

He heard the bell chime a third time. A pale blue light began to wash up from beneath him in the hole. The light was strong enough that Devon could see his hands gripping the rim of the iris—could see the flesh, and then the muscles and ligaments, and finally the bones as though his flesh were like glass. The whine cycled higher, drowning out even the sounds of the mob, the wind, the crickets, the night birds.

A great rushing wind sucked at Devon. He struggled as his fingers were torn loose from their purchase.
O Creator,
don’t suck me down to hell....
Then the wind pulled him down into the open iris.

Devon had time for one long shuddering scream.

He vanished into the shaft and only the pale blue light was left. The wail cycled back down the scale toward the bass. The iris slid smoothly shut, as did the small dome enclosing the control. The panel within blinked back to red.

Leaves, twigs, and dust settled back on the two-and-a-half meter disc and adhered as though magnetized. As the air stabilized, the branches of the surrounding trees stopped moving. Again the briar thicket was quiet. Once more the iris was effectively invisible.

They heard the wail as they crossed the meadow toward the trees. Those in front halted; those in the rear hurried to catch up. They huddled in a tight knot.

“The Creator’s balls!” said Young Goodman. “What
is
it?”

“Do not blaspheme His name,” said Micah grimly.

Aram said, “It sounds like the keening of some great beast in pain.”

“There is no beast so large,” said someone else.

The sound began to diminish. “Let us go,” said Micah.

“Into those woods?” Young Essau stared at him in disbelief.

“Yes,” said Micah. “Into those woods.”

“But there’s something
in
there.”

“Devon the blasphemer is in there.”

Essau looked doubtful. “He didn’t make those sounds.”

“We are going into that grove,” said Micah flatly. He walked away from his followers. After a dozen paces he turned and looked back at them. “Who follows me?” he said. “Who will do the Creator’s work?”

They exchanged looks among them. There was some mumbling.

“I’ll come,” said Garth.

“And I,” said Aram.

The rest followed.

They found little remarkable in the grove. They bumbled around the thicket, torches at the ends of extended arms, squinting up into the branches.

“No one there!”

“Or there!”

Their voices drifted back and forth across the woods. Most of the brush was trampled into the forest floor. Young Esau stumbled over the latch mechanism of the iris and fell. His fellows helped him up and stamped out the fire his torch had started in the dead leaves.