The Stars Askew (22 page)

Armand pulled his knees up with the intention of rolling over so he could talk to the Westerner, but the idea of moving again was too much. Soon they would begin work again, and the agony would return. He breathed deeply, his face pressed against the cold wet stone, and waited with dread.

Finally the barbarian called out again, and the prisoners took to their feet. Armand struggled up, took up a pick. Moments later he was again in torment. So the hours wore on, Armand stuck in some hellish trance. The heat, the wetness, the exhaustion, the suffering—he could not conceive of a more terrible combination. Mechanically, he continued, his mind dulled, the stone wall magnifying and distorting eerily.

A deep rumble filled the tunnel, as if the mountain were breathing out. The timberwork above groaned, and dust fell from the roof. The other prisoners pressed themselves against the rock walls. The rumbling passed and the mountain rested once more, leaving Armand blinking in the whirling dust.

Without a word, the prisoners began to work once more. So the hours wore on interminably. Finally the Westerner checked the cart and called something indistinguishable to the others, who hooked their tools onto the side of the cart. Together they began to push the cart back up along the tunnel.

In places, the tunnel was flat and they were able to build up momentum; in others, the tunnel took on an incline and the cart slowed to a crawl. Finally the carriage rolled out of the tunnel mouth, reached the crest of the slope, and rattled with ease toward the wide factory entrance. Armand no longer put any strength into pushing it, but the others didn't seem to notice.

Inside the factory was a burst of warmth and action. The bloodstone was tipped into huge furnaces. Chemicals were added, and a number of prisoners were employed in skimming impurities from the boiling surface of the liquid. From there the liquid was poured onto huge sheets, where it cooled into a crystalline precipitate at the far end of the factory. Finally it was shoveled into barrels and loaded onto the train carriages.

Watching the details of this process, Armand could see why working in the factory was coveted. The factory was kept warm by the furnaces, but there was enough air from outside to breathe. Meanwhile, there were only a small number of tiny motes of bloodstone in the air. Here one would be less vulnerable to the cancer.

His gang stood beside their cart, which was not quite filled to the top. There they waited as, over the next half hour, the other gangs pushed their own carts into the factory.

Prisoner 7624 inspected each of the carts with an eagle eye, occasionally poking the stone, before he decided they had each made their quota and the prisoners were marched back to the camp. As they came near, Armand noticed a small body being lowered into a grave in the cemetery. One of the children had died.

Once inside, he shuffled to the outhouses and, with disgust, retrieved his grandfather's ring. Once cleaned, he slipped it through a piece of twine he pulled from the frayed bottom of his pants. He hung it from his neck and it fell beneath his jacket. There it would stay, hidden, the last remnant of his past life.

A little later Armand collapsed onto a seat in the mess hall and stared at the plate of paste before him, so tired, he could barely eat. Eventually he forced the stuff into his mouth.

“If we're to survive, we have to ally ourselves with one of the factions,” said Irik.

Armand lifted his eyes. The oppositionist had been sitting beside him, unnoticed. Irik stretched his arms above him as if he weren't tired at all. He nodded at the moonfaced man. “There are the collaborators led by Tiedmann, who help the guards to enforce the camp's rules. I think there's little chance of allying with them. As far as I can tell, they practically run the place. Captain Raken spends all his time conducting experiments off camp somewhere. Then there are the barbarians, who are a little caste unto themselves. They are experts in carpentry and are sometimes allowed to work in the forest. Then there are the rest of the men here. These masses die fast, or contract the bloodstone disease and are transformed.”

Armand looked across the hall at the throng of stinking humanity, wretched and dissolute, staring into the air as if they were already dead. In the far corner, the barbarians sat, whispering in their strange harsh dialect, filled with hard consonants and lilting vowels. In the center, Tiedmann sat imperiously at the head of his table, his pale face frightening to look upon.

“Or we could build our own faction,” said Armand.

“We'll have to be gone before the winter sets in,” said Irik. “That gives us, what, two weeks?”

Armand could barely control a despairing chuckle. “Impossible. We'll barely know the routines of the camp by then.”

Irik glanced up at Armand from under his eyebrows. “Did you think it possible you would be here two weeks ago?”

Armand remained silent. Eventually he drew a breath. “If we could get onto the barbarians' forest gang, we might make a break for it.”

Irik shrugged, unimpressed by the idea. “That seems the only way. But
how
to work in the forest or the carpentry workshop?”

Armand looked at the quiet barbarians with their beards and long hair and wild eyes. They were opposite of the civilization he stood for. There were hundreds of tribes, some in small groups in the mountains, others in hordes that swept across the plains, still more in the forests. Each spoke their own language, had their own primitive and cruel customs. What did he have in common with them?

*   *   *

The following day Armand returned to the mine. At times the pain running along his twisted back was unbearable, and he found himself moaning loudly. When they broke for a rest, he collapsed to the tunnel floor and lay on his back, spasms running up and down his body, seizing him.

He cared for nothing, but the slow truth of his predicament began to impress itself. He needed to act. And so against the cries of his body, the second and third waves of spasm that rolled down his back, he dragged himself to where the Westerner rested against the wall.

“I'm Armand.”

The barbarian looked at him with disdain. Even his eyebrows were wild and bushy, and his face was covered with pockmarks from a childhood pox. “Ohan.”

“Where are you from?” said Armand.

Ohan turned away from Armand, answered disinterestedly. “The plains tribes to the west. We were the first to resist Varenis. The others in the north—the people of the ice-halls—still trade with them. But soon they'll know what the name Varenis means.”

Armand needed to capture the man's attention. “I'm from Caeli-Amur.”

The man's voice picked up with interest; he turned to Armand. “The free state? Independence is something to be savored.”

“Yes, but you need order to accompany it. How long have you been here?”

“Since spring. Six months. Back home, the temperatures are dropping on the plains. The rivers are running wild. The long struggle of winter is about to begin.”

“Caeli-Amur's winters are mild,” said Armand. “I think we won't have as good a time of it here.”

Ohan said, “Few survive more than half a year here. If the cold does not take you, the bloodstone will.”

“I hear there are forest gangs who cut trees. Perhaps there's a way of escaping,” said Armand.

The Westerner twisted the beads in his beard and said obscurely, “That is not the way.” His eyes caught Armand's with a thoughtful look. A moment later he stood up. “Back to work!”

*   *   *

That evening Armand led Irik to the long table where the Westerners sat whispering to one another. Armand put on an easy, gentle manner. “Ohan, this is my friend Irik. He is an expert wood-carver. Perhaps there might be a place for him in the carpentry shop?”

Ohan and the other Westerners turned coldly away from them. Armand looked at Irik, who gave a merry little laugh and looked down at his paste. “Guess they don't want any distractions from
this
.”

As Armand lay in his bed that night, he listened to the ravings of 3329. The man's voice had gained a deeper resonance, now with grumbling bass notes. The words themselves were disembodied, ruined, ragged things, descending into incoherent burbling and nonsense. Some unseen change had leaped through 3329. He had reached some new stage of his transformation.

In the morning the man was gone, his cot empty. When Armand trudged from the mess hall after breakfast, he noticed 3329 standing alone near the gate. As 3329 coughed out his incoherent ramblings, bursts of crimson liquid and scarlet dust came with them, though he seemed unaware. When the gates were opened, the prisoners marched toward the mines. But the bloodstone-affected man was allowed to wander across the land outside. Prisoner 3329 now radiated an uncanny red, as if he were lit from the inside. His body was unnervingly plastic: it lost its structure, recomposed itself.

Armand watched over his shoulder as 3329 shuffled out alone, a man caught in some feverish nightmare. When he found a place away from the path, he collapsed in on himself, as if sucking all his energy in. His body hardened, as melted wax congeals as it cools, resting in a twisted stance: widened at its base, narrower as it spiraled upward, his frozen face turned to the sky as if he could see nightmare creatures flying overhead. There he would live with the other statues in that strange bloodstone world, each thinking their metallic thoughts, dreaming their crystalline dreams.

When Armand emerged from the mine in the afternoon, the mist had turned into the season's first snowfall, which melted as it touched the ground. Before long the place would be blanketed with white. Shortly after, the snow would be knee deep, then waist deep. This would spell the end of any hopes of escape.

 

SEVENTEEN

Aya pulled the horse to a stop as they looked over the edge of an escarpment. To the south, marshy swampland gave way to a vast sandy plain, flat and featureless, stretching off into the distance. And there it was: Lixus, a parody of Aya's memories of the city. The towers and minarets stood broken, as if some giant had smashed them with an immense war hammer. Unknown fires had licked up their walls and blackened them. The walkways that had once curled so gracefully had collapsed, their remnants jutting up into the sky. The sea, which had long since been drained away by the cataclysm, had left the ships half sunken in the sandy remains of the harbor, where they lay like the bones of huge whales. More lay farther out, dotting the sandy desert off into the distance.

—They call it the Ruined City—said Max, from his powerless place in the depths of his mind.

The Pilgrim's uncanny sense told him they had arrived. “Soon all cities will fall into this state. You look now upon the future.”

“Is there nothing that hasn't been destroyed?” Aya's devastation seemed complete. A memory welled up and enveloped Max, and he found himself in a strange ancient world, looking out over Lixus's harbor.

Still naked, Aya leans against the railing, feels the air against his face. He closes his eyes, listens to Iria dressing herself inside. When he opens them again, he gazes at the white-sailed ships cutting through the deep-blue ocean. How magnificent they are, riding on their whitecaps.

Iria raises her voice so he can hear her from inside. “You have to beware, Aya. There's going to be war.”

“Alerion is such a bore, isn't he?” says Aya.

She comes to the door half dressed, leans against the jamb. “You underestimate him. While you're darting across the sea, exploring the jungles, he's preparing to move against you. You're so trusting, Aya. Or careless. I can't tell which.”

He examines her, for her tone is strange, but now she's dropping a dress over her head and her face is hidden.

“You worry too much,” he says. “Drusa has organized everything for me at Caeli-Amur, anyway. She's prepared the carapaces.”

Iria steps out onto the balcony, and though she's fully clothed, the smell of sex drifts around her.

“Drusa is simply an Aedile,” she says. “She holds no power. She doesn't care for you the way I do.” Iria wraps her arms around Aya from behind, perches her chin on his shoulder. “We should never have studied the Art. That's what it comes down to. Look at us: we were all friends once. Now we've drifted away from one another like motes on the wind.”

“You and I are still together,” says Aya.

Beneath them, students wander along a beautiful grassy walkway. Lixus was designed for efficiency and simplicity. Mosses grow in strips up the tower walls, to help with insulation. The gardens dotted around the city possess only a few exquisite flora. Technology was hidden behind the walls, beneath the buildings. Lixus embodied everything they had meant to build.

“You're my real love,” she says obscurely.

Another couple stands on a balcony on one of the nearby towers. Aya feels he's watching himself. Are they fighting over there too? “I'm leaving tomorrow.”

“Please stay,” she says. “Come with me to Sentinel Tower. We can live there until all this trouble passes over.”

“That's your place,” he says.

“That's
our
place. I built it for us.”

Her face is warm against his cheek. “You know, there are abandoned pyramids in the jungles, decorated with bas-reliefs about the original inhabitants' history. They had an entire civilization before us. Tragic, really. I want to document them, if I can.”

“You'll get bored.”

“Probably, but for the moment it's fascinating.”

Iria holds on to him, presses herself to him. “Watch out for Alerion. He'll start a war, Aya.”

*   *   *