Chương 23: Part 23 - Ladies and Gentlemen, For Our Next Trick

There are those who object to the expense of fortifying Sjatel, although it can be hard to distinguish honest concern from complaints about the state of my treasury with other aims in mind. It is fortunate that a king need not explain his actions, as the truth would disconcert them more even than my silence. I dream of nothing now but twilight and a bloody sky. I know it is a warning even if her words slip away from me at dawn.

My efforts to summon her into my waking mind may yet succeed, but I will not wait for clearer answers before acting - the look in her eyes was warning enough. Red sky to Sun's Birth, but the daylight yet wanes. - Excerpt from the collected letters of Goresje Di Sazhocel Selyta, Royal Archives, Ce Raedhil. The streets of Sjatel were thick with foul-smelling smoke, so much so that Mark and Jackie stopped to fashion makeshift masks. The few scraps of cloth in Mark's pack did little to help with the oily reek, however.

Jackie coughed and held a hand over her mouth.

"God, that stinks," she said.

"I know Jyte said they were going to burn the bodies, but I never expected it would be this bad."

"Burning hair, leather and bone," Mark replied.

"Very distinct smells. My bet is those fires get real hot considering how dried out the bodies are." He winced as the wind picked up, peppering his face with sand and ash.

"And the wind, Christ. With this sort of breeze I'm hoping they built the fire a long ways away from the houses. All this wood scrap lying around would go up real quick."

"Quicker than we could run away, you mean," Jackie said.

"Now I'm sort of wishing I had stayed back with Jesse and the others. Let's just hope they know what they're doing." Mark chuckled, then broke into a coughing fit. Grimacing, he motioned that they should continue on through the smoke. It took several increasingly-stifling minutes of travel before they broke through into clean air just short of the encampment. The clearing was unchanged from the day before save for the giant pyre northwest of the fort.

It smoldered and flared in the steady plains wind as they walked towards the small group of halberdiers manning the fortress gate. Jyte strode out from a humble command hut to greet them, looking harried and tired. He was clad in a simple grey tunic with a green-on-gold device stitched into the shoulder and wore only a short blade at his hip. He raised a hand in greeting and smiled ruefully as he drew close enough to smell the smoke on their clothes.

"You've been caught in the pyre draft, then?" he chuckled.

"Nasty business. Best if you make it to the shore for a wash, better a bit of salt on your clothes than walking around smelling like burnt corpse." He paused and pointedly looked around, then let his eyes linger on Jackie's bloodstained shirt.

"And fresh corpse. Seems you've found something in the old city after all," he said.

"I hope the others you left with are well. We've had many go searching in the ruins that haven't come back."

"They're fine," Mark said, shrugging his pack off.

"The city's dangerous all right, but not the way you think. There were scriptsmiths operating out of a building near the old port, left over from when they were supporting the Sjocelym soldiers who were here before you. Based on what we saw, I think it's a fair guess that the scriptsmiths are the reason some of your people never made it back."

"Not the first nor the last to die by their hands," he said darkly.

"But that doesn't explain why you've found trouble with them. I'd thought you were on good terms with the bloody-handed bastards."

"Yeah, so did we," Mark replied wryly.

"Right up until we disagreed on something and they threatened to kill half of us." He looked at Jyte and raised an eyebrow.

"This is where you can say that you told us this would happen." To his credit, the Aesvain captain gave only a slight nod.

"I did, and so would've others," Jyte acknowledged, "although in this case I might've been happier proven wrong than right. The Sjocelym are dead, then?"

"Most," Mark confirmed, drawing a wince from Jackie.

"One alive but wounded, we're hoping to get him to talk a bit."

"I would tell you not to trust what you learn from him," Jyte said, "but I figure you know that as well as we do now." He sighed and swiped a hand over his eyes, looking back toward the smoke cloud from the pyre.

"These scriptsmiths," he asked, "did they have any stocks of food or water?" Mark nodded and waggled his hand.

"They were handling the resupply for the Sjocelym soldiers," he said, "so they have some on hand, but not enough to matter when you're talking about thousands." Jyte nodded solemnly, still looking out beyond the fort.

"And thousands is what I have. We've been able to stretch the rations meant for the Sjocelym soldiers, but with the number that've come seeking refuge…" He shook his head wearily.

"I ought to concern myself more with it, but we'll see another attack before things get too dear. I take it you've found something else of use aside from supplies," he said, "or you'd not have sought me out."

"Nice working with someone who's quick on the uptake," Mark said, grinning.

"The scriptsmiths were guarding an ancient transportation device. It's a gateway that lets you instantly walk between cities, as long as the other city has a gateway as well." The Aesvain captain gave Mark an incredulous look, then turned his gaze to Jackie.

"Is he well?" Jyte croaked. Jackie shook her head and gave Jyte a wry grin.

"I won't say he's sane, but the gate is real," she replied.

"We saw them use it, Ce Raedhil to Sjatel in one step. It's how they were keeping the troops supplied - and why they made their forward base in Sjatel to begin with, I think." Jyte stared for a moment longer before closing his eyes." Jaa tseve," he breathed.

"You're saying we could use this gate to escape Sjatel. Move all of my people out."

"Potentially," Mark said, holding up a cautionary hand.

"There are some big issues to work out. Right now there's no way to turn it on, and even if we could the gateway is only set to go to Ce Raedhil - straight to the Archive, actually."

"I imagine there'd be some objections if we set several thousand Aesvain and a mob of my gold-cloaks marching through there," Jyte snorted.

"Yeah, we asked and it turns out they'd literally rather die than let that happen," Mark confirmed. Jyte blinked and looked at him with a sober expression, but Mark continued talking.

"Very concerned about not disrupting the capital, seeing to the defense of Idran Saal, and generally with keeping the whole gateway thing a secret." He shrugged.

"Anyway, we're hoping between Arjun, Tasja and the surviving scriptsmith we can figure out how to get it working. Well, with a little help from you all." Jyte's brow furrowed and he spread his hands wide.

"If there's a chance at saving my people, you can have whatever you need," he said.

"We've likely got another day or so before the abominations move against us again. I've no idea how we'd help with this gateway, though. Aesvain don't usually hold much with the scriptsmiths' craft." Mark grinned.

"How do your people feel about clearing roads?" he asked. Jesse sat quietly on the cold stone floor. His eyes were closed, his legs crossed and his hands resting lightly on his knees. The piercing headache he'd had upon waking up had faded to a dull throbbing in his temples, but he still felt bone-tired, drained by the boost to his speed and acuity during the earlier fight with Sjogydhu. The whole fracas had only lasted seconds.

His initial relief at being able to access his passenger's strength once more had faded to a vague unease at the toll such a brief burst of action had taken on him. He had been tired after the first battle, unconscious after the second. The progression, he reflected, was not encouraging for a third attempt.

"Feeling better?" Gusje asked, lowering herself to a seated position beside him. Jesse looked over, too tired to be startled by her sudden arrival.

"A bit," he said.

"My head doesn't hurt so much anymore." She nodded, tilting her head back to look up at the bright opening in the dome above them.

"I think Tesu will be fine without the asolan now, if you'd like to try it," she offered.

"I don't know if it will help you, but I've yet to hear of an illness it can't overcome." Jesse managed a faint smile and shook his head.

"No, I'm fine," he said.

"Don't want to risk Tesu's health, Arjun needs him." They both looked over at where Tasja and Arjun sat with the injured, bound scriptsmith, making him outline what he knew of the keystone in minute detail. He had been recalcitrant at first, but at a looming glare from Jesse the man had paled and become immediately more helpful. Just as well, for afterward Jesse was nearly overcome by a spell of lightheadedness. Staying seated seemed to help, as did keeping his eyes closed.

He let his eyelids drift down again, enjoying the way that the others' hushed conversation reverberated under the dome.

"Have you fought in many battles?" Gusje asked.

"Before you came here, I mean." Jesse pondered the reason for her question for a moment before it occurred to him that she was likely just bored. He suppressed a smile and opened his eyes once more.

"Yes and no," he replied.

"Mark and I have both been soldiers for several years, but fighting is very different where we come from." He laid a hand on his rifle.

"Everyone has weapons like this," he explained.

"And… other things. Weapons that explode, armored chariots, chariots that fly through the air. Often you're fighting enemies so far away you can barely see them."

"That sounds terrifying," Gusje said, a disturbed look on her face.

"It can be," Jesse admitted.

"But on the other hand, we never had to fight anything like the silent ones. Or Sjogydhu, with his scripted armor and weapons." He shook his head.

"It's different here, but not less dangerous. Nobody where we're from had a weapon like Sunshine." This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Your weapons are more like Sjogydhu's than they are like a blade," Gusje pointed out. Jesse shrugged, picking up his sword and holding it out at arm's length.

"Even those are pretty strange here," he muttered.

"I'm not sure I'll ever get used-" He cut off as another wave of dizziness washed over him, the sword slipping from his fingers to clatter to the ground.

"Jesse?" Gusje asked.

"Are you all right?" He shook his head slowly, pressing his lips together. Footsteps sounded on the stone, and when Jesse finally chanced opening his eyes again Arjun stood over him with a concerned expression.

"You're not looking well at all," Arjun said, laying the back of his hand against Jesse's forehead, then his right forearm.

"No temperature. Clammy, even." He peered at him and shook his head.

"Bloodshot eyes. If I didn't know better I'd swear you were having an absolutely legendary hangover."

"That's more or less how I feel," Jesse said, wincing as his headache reasserted itself with a vengeance.

"Not sure what happened, I was actually doing a lot better up until just now." Gusje stood and stalked over to where Tesu sat, hands and feet bound. The captive scriptsmith watched her mutely as she retrieved her asolan and walked back to place it in Jesse's hand.

"Here," she said.

"No arguments." Jesse looked over at Tesu and nearly objected - but he truly did feel horrible, and as soon as the coin touched his skin his headache seemed to ease up fractionally. He breathed out slowly and curled his fist around the asolan, nodding.

"Thanks," he said.

"Try and take it easy," Arjun admonished him.

"I'm becoming a little concerned about the effect your companion is having on you, to be honest."

"I think I just overdid it," Jesse sighed.

"I was feeling okay after the fight at the Aesvain camp, just normally tired like you'd expect after fighting like that. It was going up against Sjogydhu that pushed me over the edge."

"I'm not saying your efforts are unappreciated," Arjun said dryly.

"For now, though, it's best if you take it easy. Mark and Jackie will be a while yet, so we have some time."

"How's the keystone coming?" Jesse asked. Arjun grimaced and shook his head.

"It's not," he sighed.

"Tesu has been able to confirm my basic assumptions about it, but that's about it. The crystal is an upsized variant of the charge crystals, presumably used to power the gateway. The geometric pattern is used to configure the destination, but Tesu has no idea how it works."

"But he's a scriptsmith," Gusje objected.

"They assigned him here, surely they told him something about how it works."

"There wouldn't have been a need," Arjun said.

"Remember, they only use the gate at Ce Raedhil to initiate connections. If this crystal is like the smaller ones on your gauntlet, it can hold a fairly terrifying amount of energy - and I suspect we'll find that my assumptions on its capacity are low, given its size and the caliber of device it's paired with. I'm willing to bet that the heat required to instill a charge in this crystal is beyond what most of their kilns can deliver."

"I'm hoping power won't be a concern, since we can simply run electricity through the crystals once Mark and Jackie return. The batteries hold quite a lot of energy, and if necessary the solar panels or even the diesel -" He broke off as Gusje looked at him uncomprehendingly, unable to follow along with the increasingly English-language sentence.

"Powering the crystal should be the easy part," he clarified.

"Figuring out how to configure the keystone once we charge it will be the real challenge." Jesse leaned back to stare up at the ceiling.

"We should be able to reach at least one destination," he said.

"The current configuration should go somewhere, if the gateway on the far end is still intact." Arjun nodded.

"If the gateway is intact, if it hasn't been buried under sand or rubble, and if nobody has tried to modify the keystone since the destruction of Sjatel - perhaps," he said, his glum tone implying that he thought it unlikely.

"But even if we can get it to work, there's a decent chance we'll just end up connecting to a city in Sjocelym territory, or in territory unprotected by the warding stones."

"Still worth a shot," Jesse said, closing his eyes again.

"Unless you had other plans today?"

"I hope not," Arjun said.

"Enough excitement for one day already." He turned to Gusje and quirked an eyebrow.

"Perhaps you could investigate the other rooms of this building?" he suggested.

"It seems to have been built to hold the gateway, so there may be helpful information simply lying around."

"Wouldn't the scriptsmiths have taken all of that a while back?" Gusje asked.

"Perhaps," Arjun allowed.

"But who knows? They could have missed something, or it could be etched on stones too large to move." He smiled at both of them, baring his teeth.

"On the off chance that the universe feels like it owes us a favor, shouldn't we at least check?" Jesse proffered her a flashlight. Gusje eyed it, then shrugged and clipped it to her belt.

"All right," she said.

"What am I looking for?" Arjun scratched his head and gave them a sheepish look.

"You know, I haven't the faintest idea," he said.

"Texts, diagrams, anything could be a clue. Perhaps consider taking Tasja along."

"Why, so I can comfort him if he gets frightened?" Gusje muttered.

"Because he's well-read and the most familiar with saon draim among us," Arjun said, a mild note of reproach in his voice.

"Fine," she sighed. Arjun and Jesse watched as she shrugged her pack on and walked over to where Tasja was standing. The two exchanged a few brief words before Gusje turned to walk towards one of the side passageways leading out from the dome, leaving Tasja scrambling to follow in her wake.

"You know," Arjun said, "now that I'm watching them leave it occurs to me that having them search like this might be a bit dangerous." Jesse raised an eyebrow.

"I heard you telling Mark that the rumors about the city being dangerous were probably a fiction to discourage exploration and explain away any hunters the scriptsmiths had to kill," he pointed out.

"What?" Arjun asked.

"Oh, no - I'm fairly confident that's the case," he said, waving a hand dismissively.

"I was just afraid that those two searching together might be dangerous for Tasja." Jesse blinked.

"Ah," he said, looking contemplatively at the doorway they had used.

"Well, we have the asolan."

"You what?" Mark asked, pressing the radio handset to his ear. The reply that came back sounded unconcerned, but distance and the hill at the center of the city left the actual words garbled beyond recognition.

"You know what, fine," he said exasperatedly.

"If everything is okay, give me two clicks." There was a pause, then two sharp pops of static.

"Good enough," Mark said.

"I'll try again when we've made it closer. Sleep tight, don't let the zombies bite." A curt burst of noise came back before the radio fell silent. Mark let out a long-suffering sigh and ran his hands through his hair as Jackie walked in to join him in the truck cab.

"Everything all right?" she asked, shading her eyes against the evening's last rays of sunlight. Outside the cab the Aesvain were bustling around as usual, raking the smoldering ashes of the funeral pyres and carrying bundles of supplies in and out of the fort.

A neat line of halberdiers marched past with their golden cloaks cracking in the wind, heading to the edge of the encampment to start their watch on the grassline - and to serve as the first line of defense if anything should emerge from amid the darkly rippling stalks.

"Apparently," Mark said, making an annoyed gesture at the radio.

"I can't hear them for shit, but I think they could make out what I was saying. Better transmitter on the truck. As far as I can tell nothing major has happened on their end."

"You sound annoyed," Jackie observed.

"I thought 'nothing major' was what we wanted." Mark snorted and took a swig of water from his canteen.

"For the short term, yeah," he grunted.

"I just don't like being stuck waiting like this. Seems like we should be doing something. Shit's precarious enough as it is without us wasting time sitting on our asses."

"Not much we can do about it, though," she said.

"It wouldn't be reasonable for the Aesvain to start work this late in the day. It's nearly dark out already."

"I know," Mark groused.

"It's just - tomorrow is the third day since the attack. Jyte's expecting another one to happen soon, and the longer the gap is the more zombies will join the mob. If the attack comes while they're helping to clear a path for the truck I'm not sure how they're going to defend against it."

"Jyte can see that just as well as you can," Jackie replied.

"I doubt he'd agree to help if he didn't think he could handle it." Mark shook his head.

"That's the problem," he said.

"I think he might. He's desperate, even if he's holding it together pretty well. They've got limited reserves of food and water, impending zombie attacks and nowhere to go but Tinem Sjocel - and the best case scenario there is that they get thrown in a pen and fed starvation rations. More likely they'd get turned away at the wall, and if that happened there's not much they could do but sit down and wait for the zombies."

"I see your point," Jackie said.

"And so he's taking a gamble on us-""-the idiots who may not even be able to make the gateway work," Mark finished.

"Hell, the entire thing is propped up on the assumption that the truck has enough juice in the batteries to keep the connection open, or that the crystals can be charged with an electrical current. We don't know that! We don't know anything!" He slouched forward and clunked his forehead against the steering wheel, closing his eyes. Jackie gave him an evaluating look and leaned back in her chair.

"Are you saying we should have sided with the Sjocelym over the Aesvain?" she asked.

"No, of course not," Mark muttered.

"I just wish the only people around with food, water and a reasonable defensive position weren't such colossal assholes. Even if we manage to pull this off and use the big fuckoff magical doorway to evacuate them, what then? We can't take the truck through, it's too big to fit. Our options are either to drive across the zombie desert and see what flavor the assholes are on the far side, or to give up the truck, follow the Aesvain through the gateway and probably have a fun time starving."

"We could go south, try and meet up with Tesvaji," Jackie suggested.

"Gusje would like that, and honestly I'm a little concerned about the sort of reception her folks are getting in Sjan Saal."

"Can't," Mark grunted.

"At least, not easily. Only path down is back through Idran Saal, and I'm not optimistic enough to think they're going to open the door for us this time. Same deal with trying to circle around the big blank evil spot on the map and go in through the Sjan Saal gate." Jackie didn't reply, and the two sat in quiet silence for a moment. The first stars were beginning to emerge in the sky outside, and Jackie leaned forward to peer at them.

"You know," she said, "I think that one's a planet."

"How can you tell?" Mark asked, squinting.

"Doesn't twinkle," she said.

"Stars are point light sources, the atmosphere distorts their light more easily. Planets can look like point sources, but their apparent size is still fairly large. They don't get distorted as much by the atmosphere, so they shine steadily."

"Huh," Mark said.

"Not that I don't enjoy science facts, but aren't geologists supposed to spend their time looking the other direction?" Jackie reached out to punch him on the shoulder.

"Wiseass," she grinned.

"I had quite a few nights where I was camped out in remote areas for jobs. It's a waste not to look at the stars when you're so far from the city."

"Funny, I used to camp out a lot too," Mark replied, rubbing his shoulder.

"Must have missed the astronomy memo. I seem to recall my attention being focused elsewhere for some reason."

"Probably picked up a more useful set of habits, all things considered," Jackie admitted.

"Still, it makes you wonder." She leaned back in her chair again, lacing her fingers behind her head.

"Is Earth out there somewhere, or did the doorway take us in a direction you can't travel by other means? Did the people who built Sjatel and Ce Raedhil send up magical satellites? Is there an old book somewhere with a picture of that planet in it?" Mark coughed.

"You have a lot on your mind for someone who can reasonably expect to be dead next week," he observed.

"Oh, come on," she needled him.

"You haven't wondered about any of this? Jesse said he saw aircraft in that wacky apocalypse vision of his. You don't think any of them wondered if they could fly higher?" She pointed up to the darkening sky, tapping the windshield glass.

"They built teleporters, for fuck's sake, and we don't know if they have a maximum range. This time tomorrow, we could be up there looking back down." Mark stared at her, then closed his eyes and leaned back.

"I swear to God, Jack, if we end up getting chased around by goddamn aliens on top of everything else you and I are going to have ourselves a conversation."

"I mean, would you rather get chased around by aliens or starve?" she asked. Mark made an irritated noise and clicked off the cabin lamp.

"Go to sleep," he grumbled. The cab plunged into dimming purple twilight. Outside, the Aesvain began hanging strings of qim at the perimeter of the clearing, drawing a ring of smoldering red around the camp.

"For the record, I'd prefer the aliens," Jackie whispered.

"Please," Mark groaned.

"Shut up."