Life and Limb (The Ebon Chronicles) (9 page)

"And I you, Adon Still," Ebon said, shouldering his rifle, "But you seem to like strangers.  And be liked by them."

We continued down the main way, walking nearly a mile until we finally reached the main tunnel's end.  It was down a gentle slope, a hundred feet, and it ended at a solid round metal slab.

"A door," I said, the flashlight beam caressing the grey surface of the machine, "Of some sort or another."

"This is it," Ebon said as he stepped lightly down the small path, "Whether you know it or not, this is a moment you will remember forever.  This is when you won Tyche's hand in marriage and we opened up the door on our new world."

"We'll work together," I said, excitedly slapping my hands against the dull carbon grey wall, "I promise you, Ebon.  When we get back to the city, you and I will work together to bring peace.  And we'll use this place as a sanctuary for the downtrodden.  Your strays will populate these corridors and know that there is a place for them.  They will be safe."

Ebon was staring at the wall with few features, studying the strange writing at its center.  Wiping the long streaks of dust behind it away, he uncovered a small compartment door.  With our hands working together we cleared away every bit of dust, uncovering layer upon layer that had accumulated along its surface so that not a single inch within our reach remained obscured.  And when we had finished, we each took a step back to read the writing.  Ebon did so aloud,

"Return to surface."

"It's an elevator," I said, a note of shock entering my voice.  I opened the compartment at the back of the machine and it opened easily, a thin sprinkle of dirt trailing from within, "An elevator to the surface.  That's what this place needed.  Some way for people to get down here, to populate it all.  This
is
a city."

Ebon was shaking his head skeptically, pulling another cigarette from his coat pocket and lighting it.  He coughed wildly into his hand after a single drag.  His dirty hand reached up to the single switch inside the compartment, pointing.

"No," he said, "Something isn't right."

He looked up the hallway behind us, trudging up the slope to the main corridor and ran down one of the adjacent paths.  I heard his footsteps echoing behind me, and slowly ledged my way back toward him.

"Ebon!" I called out, struggling up the incline on my cane, "What are you doing?  We're nearly out of here!"

"No!" I heard his voice echoing down the hall in a rage, "No!  This isn't right!"

"Ebon!" I shouted as I tried to give chase, "What's wrong?"

Moments passed in silence.  I heard my leg and cane stiffly echo as I followed him through the passage to one of the rooms where I saw his flashlight spilling out into the main way.

"Ebon," I called out to him, "This place is incredible.  It's a keep, a warren, a citadel.  It's everything we need to secure a foothold in the region.  This land is isolated, safe from the mad cults and the ripper dogs.  They can't reach us.  We can build it all down here.  And you, Ebon.  You're founder of a new world."

He turned, leaning down suddenly and snatching his flashlight from the floor, he smashed his cigarette on the ground and said,

"Where is it all?  This is a shell, a hollow shelter of glass.  If it was designed for the old world, where are the computers?  Where are the machines that tell us about its history?  Why, in all this vast expanse of tunnel have we seen nothing but the same floor, the same walls?  There's nothing here.  No plumbing, no lights.  This is not a place meant for people to live."

"We'll build those things," I said bracing a hand on his shoulder, "In time it will have all of that."

"This isn't what it appears to be," he said as we walked back toward the machine, "The architects didn't build this way."

When we once again reached the compartment, the writing, and the button, Ebon leaned heavily on the metal wall, his hand running across it as if he could divine some greater meaning to this strange place.  Placing a hand on his shoulder, I said,

"Maybe they just went mad at the end."

"A whole world," he said snorting, "No.  Not even this one."

I patted his shoulder.  Even if it didn't satisfy Ebon, I had found what I needed.  I pressed the button and prepared to return to the surface.

A sound echoed through the passageway, a gentle whirring and chugging that I knew to associate with an elevator.  At first.

Then it changed, transformed into a thundering series of explosions so loud that I quickly threw my hands upon my ears and took a step back.  My foot slipped as I fell backward, and with the flashlight clattering to the ground beside me I saw something spilling out beneath the wall.  A few seconds of silence followed.  A black ooze was spilling beneath it, tracing along my legs and over my hands.  I watched in shock for a moment.

"Not a door," Ebon hissed, taking another step back in that bubbling silence, reaching down to pick me up, "That's not a door at all."

I scrambled up Ebon's arm, slipping again as I raced up the divots in the floor, crawling fist over fist as quickly as I could as I watched my flashlight sink into the thick black pool slowly rising up.

"Adon!" Ebon said grabbing the collar of my shirt and sliding me across the floor.  He was screaming more words, pulling me into one of the passages at the side, but with the rumbling all around us, I heard nothing.  It was like a long thunderclap, sustained over the course of several seconds, with the seconds showing no sign of ending.  I rose, now pulled aside into one of the passageways and Ebon tore the belt from his coat, wrapping it beneath my arms.  Another ringing silence filled our ears, and Adon used it as best he could.

"That's not an elevator!  It's a drill!  We've just called it back to the surface!  We're standing in the reservoir that the oil will spill into!  Grab that machine the second it passes us and don't let go!  If you let go you die," he said lashing the leather belt beneath my arms.  Tearing a strip of leather from his coat he braced our arms together, palm to wrist, lashing them tightly with the improvised rope, "If you let go, we both die!"

The thunder began again before he could say more.  All words he shouted after that were lost.  The loop he had buckled around my arms and chest was loose, loose enough to lash to something else if I got the chance.  I understood immediately as I saw that metal wall begin passing us at the edge of our hallway, leading backward up the main way.  It lurched like an inevitable force of nature, pulling back as oil sloshed and swiveled backward.

Ebon was gripping one of the divots in the wall tightly.  I found myself placing my pegged hoof leg in one, and that saved my life in those moments.  As the wave passed us, it knocked us back like a black tide, threatening to topple us over.  Soon it was no longer coming in a wave, but pooling into the room, quickly filling it up to our chests.  That's when I saw the drill, and the hooks at the front of the machine.

Though deafened, Ebon must have seen what we were going for too.  He shined his flashlight directly on the hook, still two steps out of reach.  At the speed the drill was going, I had to lunge as far as I could in one go.

My hand was outstretched, the leather harness gripped in it.  I fell, my head submerging beneath the thick black oil and filling my eyes.  Blind now I lunged again into the darkness and felt the thick metal hook in my hand, looped the leather harness around it, and hoped desperately that Ebon knew what he was doing when it came to tying knots.

The harness pulled me up, but with agonizing slowness.  Jets of freezing cold air sprayed from the front of the machine, freezing and thawing layers of skin in flashes, leaving numb and dead pain in its wake.  I spat the oil, coughed it, and pulled myself with weakened arms further up toward the machine.  Something was holding my right arm down.  I realized it was Ebon.  He was under the oil.  Though I couldn't see him, I could feel him, and the level of the black ooze surrounding us.  He grabbed the hook in his hand too, pulling himself up with a barely audible whoosh of air.  The rumbling changed frequency, speeding up.  Soon we were pulling up from the oil, speeding past it and dripping the thick black ooze with a chill like death.

Wiping my eyes, I realized that the flashlight had been lost.  There was nothing now but a slippery foul smelling poison all around us and a rumbling so loud that it left in its vacuum only a ringing that proved to be just as loud.  We clutched the hook, occasionally realizing that our feet were touching ground, occasionally trying to stand - only to slip and tumble back into our harness just as quickly.  And then we were flying.

The machine backed up the last stretch of hallway with unparalleled speed and confidence, pulling us up so that we dangled beneath it when something behind started grinding.  The rumbling stopped at that point, and I could almost hear Ebon when he screamed in my ear,

"It's found the cable!"

A red flashing light illuminated our ascent, an unknown warning light from a bright bulb inside the machine, leaking out at seams and cracks.  It lit all around us, and I could see Ebon hanging in front of me, soaked from head to toe in the tar-like ooze that we had emerged from.  The walls around us were glittering, reflecting the warning light above us.  Our hands were attached to the hook, hanging and gliding easily against the harness.

Ebon's hand slipped and he fell.  Our arms were lashed together now clutching one another.  The only thing keeping him from falling into the unreachable depths below was my free hand.

I cried out as the harness tightened like a noose around my chest.  Nails digging into flesh, I tried to pull Ebon back to the hook, but couldn't.  His other hand reached up to my elbow, up to my jacket, but slipped each time.  He scrambled, and I screamed again, every muscle in my body straining to pull him up.  Rib snapped and shoulder popped out.  I wailed and thrashed my leg out, kicking the wall in front of us with the hoofed peg leg, kicking with all my might until the leg, crafted of steel and bone, detached and fell into the inky black below.

The harness was constricting me.  Killing me.

A look fell over Ebon in that dark red light.  His hand was at his hip, pulling the knife from his belt.  He reached it up to where our wrists were locked together.

"Ebon!  Stop!" I choked, screamed, clutching his arm tightly, watching blood mingle with the thick ooze around it.  He was screaming too,

"Promise me Adon!  Promise me when Tyche gets here you'll leave the city with her!  Leave it forever!"

"We'll both make it!" I yelled.

"Get her and go to my desk!" Ebon yelled back, thick lines of black running down the knife's blade as it sawed against the leather rope, "Leave the city, Adon!  Forever!"

The leather around our arms snapped, but I gripped his wrist tight.  His own hand opened against mine.  I strained, feeling the old man's thick wrist ready to snap in my grip.

"Adon!" he cried, raising the knife again to my wrist, "Let go!  I'll kill you!"

And we saw daylight.  The tether attached to the back of the drill pulled it back onto land, and it stopped.

I was blinded by the sun, gasping.  I let go of Ebon where he lay, oozing on the dust as it blanketed him, wrapping him like a statue in seconds.  The chugging machine died, and I hung there, lashed to it, struggling to breathe. 

After a moment, I saw Ebon stand weakly, trudge over to the belt harness wrapped around my chest, and snap his knife against it.  I clattered to the ground.

Ebon clutched his wrist, rolling onto his back and grimacing at the sky.  I breathed weakly.  He started to laugh, and I tried to, but my chest was stabbing me.  We had done it.

"Hey!" I heard from the distance.  It was Freezy Breezy, "You missed one hell of a storm!"

I coughed and held my chest, the thick mud across it spilling over as I found a way to laugh without pain, deep in my stomach.  And we laid there.  And we laughed.

Part 2

Hours later I found myself lying once again on a cot in the wagon.  It had been a slow recovery from the events that had just transpired.  I leaned up, feeling the tightly wound cloth bandages across my chest to help alleviate what Freezy had called a 'sure fire sign of two-maybe-three broken ribs.'  The black ooze, petrol, had been sloughed off with a bathing knife, and I had been given fresh clothes by one of Ebon's men.  The clothes reeked of long marches, but I was glad for them.  And with the loss of my leg, I then found myself depending on crutches as I stood up and faced the camp.

Ebon was standing beside the oil slick drilling machine when I emerged, and I managed the trek to him on the crutches with little difficulty.  He looked up, cradling his arm in a sling.

"It's a drilling machine," he said.

"Yeah.  I can see that," I said, "Let me guess, it drills for oil."

"It has a nuclear engine inside it.  Completely closed system for the most part.  The reactor is strong, but safe.  Won't melt down, and even if it does, the engine is small enough where it won't be a major catastrophe.  The FNF engines on these Plexis models is, from what I've gathered, foolproof.  The glass is burned from the soil as it drills down."

"I'm sure the city will find a way to make fools out of themselves with it nonetheless," I said.  He didn't laugh, instead nodding to it once more,

"They'll get a lot of use out of something like this.  With a reactor like this, it could easily drill a tunnel from coast to coast, or more.  Until it decided to stop.  A network of tunnels could be as useful as an underground city to those who knew what they were doing."

"Where's Freezy?" I said.

"She agreed to send word to your city.  With my four scouts at her side she'll be able to find them easily.  They're specially trained to find those Anquan cities - and avoid them.  But I told them they'd be making an exception this time.  I hope you don't mind that I arranged to bring Tyche here."

"After what we've been through, I can't imagine riding another three days."

"Should be four before they get here," he said, "How's that leg going to be in the mean time?"

"It'll fare," I said cautiously, "But I don't know about the pain.  Soon it will be worse.  I don't suppose your army stocks pain killers."

"We'll do what we can," he said shaking his head from side to side before looking down at his arm, "We have liquor, and we have a local anesthetic.  Between those, we'll pull you through."

That night I sat in the carriage throne room with Ebon, losing my fifth game of Metago against Delphina when the pain started to grow.  In minutes it was overwhelming.  I shifted away from the game and wandered on twin crutches to the desk where a bottle of corn still liquor waited for me.  I drank deeply from it, ignoring my scorched throat, numbing the nerves in my leg as best I could.  By midnight I was once again on a cot in one of the army tents thrashing in fevered delirium from the pain.

The interrogation drone once again visited me in my dream, this time joined by my imagination's version of the Keterling.  They jeered and prodded, needle teeth grinning and bony hands slapping at my face.  When I woke, it was to Ebon.  His hand was holding my head up and one of his men was at the stump of my leg.  The man, wearing a stained brown coat, was applying a thick gritty white salve.

"Remember Tyche," Ebon said, "You mentioned conversations you had at the rectory.  What did you talk about?"

"Music," I said weakly, "She wanted me to learn to play an instrument."

"What instrument?" he asked.

"A violin," I said, the gritty salve slowly numbing the pain in my leg, "We were going to save for one."

"A fine instrument," Ebon said, "Were you planning on having children?"

"Two," I said, "A boy and a girl.  But you can't control that sort of thing, no matter what the rectory priests claim.  We were going to name them June and Mara.  Or Mara and June, depending on the..." I winced.

"Depending on who arrived first," Ebon said nodding, "What's she look like?  Picture her."

"Long hair, dark.  Eyes like the sky on a cloudless day.  A smile like untouched snow."

"Have you ever seen snow before?" he asked.  I shook my head.

"Only when she smiles.  It's like the sun."

In my delirium, I heard Ebon talking to someone beside me.  Someone else was in the room, writing down what we said.  I could hear pencil scratching paper.  The soldier at the base of the cot rose, taking the salve with him.

"Leave it here," Ebon said.

"I can't advise you to keep applying it," the man said, "It's potent, but too much and he could-"

"Leave it," Ebon said, "I owe this man my life."

"She has a laugh that sounds like the rain," I said smiling as my eyes started to lose focus, "Not the blight rain.  Like a new rain, one that you could catch in your hands and drink."

More sleep.  I dreamed of meeting Tyche in the courtyard of the rectory.  The parasol above her head kept out the harsh rays of the sun as she sat on a flowered bench.  She smiled sweetly, holding out a gloved hand for me to kiss.  I sat next to her, producing a delicate dove.

This never happened, understand, it was a dream.  Doves have always been more a creature of legend in the city.  She reached out with slender fingers and stroked the cooing bird's back, her smile widening as she said,

"Oh Adon!  Look at it!"

And then she was at the magistrate's office again by my side.  We were being married, walking down between hordes of onlookers as the magistrate smiled down at us benignly and laughed.  In this bliss of dream he had been transformed, turned from monster into a jolly laughing fat man with a white beard and a cohort of kindly angels.  Everyone sang.

Days passed like that.  Both in dream and around my broken body.  I lay at night in that blissful sleep waiting for Tyche to come, and I awoke to Ebon's questions about the life I would soon set out on, or to Delphina with her Metago pieces arranged in front of her.

"Who are you?" I said one night as Ebon sat next to me, losing his own game of Metago against Delphina, "They don't seem to make men like yours where I'm from."

"They don't make men like mine at all.  They make men like you.  Men like mine are scattered on the side of the trade roads.  But I think you understand a little bit.  You picked up Freezy Breezy.  She's like us.  Do you know what that means?"

"No," I said.

"She could teach you a lot about how to live," Ebon said, "She's picked her adventures carefully.  Right now she's running across the badlands in command of four battle hardened men.  A week ago she was a vagrant farmer's daughter.  But who are you?"

"I'm Adon Still," I said, "Idle player of music."

Hands placed a wet cloth on my forehead.  I could hear the clinical voice of Ebon's doctor behind me say,

"No infection.  Just as I said."

Ebon looked up, an expression nearing sadness as he nodded, and reached down to squeeze my hand.  He smirked to himself,

"Looks like you're going to pull through after all this."

"You said that we've all made sacrifices," I said, trying to reach up and adjust the cloth on my head, but giving up after a moment.  My body was paralyzed, not in muscle, but in will, "Who was your brother?"

"My brother," Ebon said leaning forward heavily, propping his frame on elbows intersecting at knees, "Was a boy named Crassus.  He was different like the architects.  It was only after he died that I started gathering others.  We split off from the rest of the Plexis tribe, left a man called Thunfir the Broadback in charge.  We traveled west.  Crassus had a curiosity, an innocence I don't think I'll ever encounter again in my lifetime."

"How did he die?"

"Don't want to talk about it."

"Did he die well?"

Silence.

"Yes," he said staring into the undulating tent wall at the far end of the room, "He did.  Sometimes I go on walks, have a good long stare into memory.  I think about Euclid, the man who betrayed us.  I think about the city he was from, the man I saw hanging from chains lashed to an unfathomably large machine.  I think about those things a lot sometimes."

"Ebon," I said, "Are we building a future, or is this for nothing?"

"You can't see it all," he said rising "You're very driven, Adon.  You can only see straight ahead.  You're exactly what you need to be.  And that's why you pulled through.  That's your strength.  You're not like them.  And you're not like us.  You're something else - a creature of will."  He took a bone cup from the table and sniffed it, taking a sip, "But where does it all come from?"

I lay there, silent as Ebon drained the cup of cornstill and walked out of the room into the night.  And with the help of his doctors, and the salve they provided, the last night passed.

It was the bleating cry of the city's horn that roused me from sleep on that day.  I leaned up, imagining I had hallucinated it, my heart thudding in my chest.  When it sounded again, I raised up, snatching the crutches from beside my cot.

"They're here," I whispered breathlessly.

Bursting from the tent, I walked out onto the dust swept camp, and stared out to see the city's approach.  It lumbered through the fog, red and blue lights blinking hard beneath it, sparkling the dust with its intense flickering glow.  The lights alternated, spreading like twin beacons as it bellowed once again.

Legs moved one beside the other, crushing the dust, challenging the perpetual storms, dwarfing them.  It rode with thunderous steps, demolishing every dusty hill in its path, leaving twin trails behind it of leveled ground.  Atop it, from where I stood in front of Ebon's carriage I could see the spires on top, the statues holding hands to the sky, the clock tower, the rectory.

Desperately I called out,

"They're here!"

But there was no response.  The men were sleeping, I imagined, or cowering before the might of this awakened god.  I found a horse nearby.  A melthorse, sure, but one that would take me to the city.  I leapt onto its back, scrambling with my hands gripping its saddle to right myself.  Despite only having one leg, I did it.  Spurring it forward with a gentle prod, I galloped down the fluffy dune to meet the city head-on at the spot where the drilling machine lay resting.

The city bellowed again, flashing its lights and tumbling through the storm, and I called out, both crutches in one hand calling triumphantly,

"Here!"

The horse whinnied and bucked, leading me down the trail to the drill.  I crossed paths in front of it, the horse rearing up with excitement, nearly as thrilled in the moment as I was.  Ahead of the city I could see five horses galloping, the riders each plowing forward with straightened backs.  At the head, Freezy pulled back a veil and shouted,

"Hey, Riderman!"

"Freezy Breezy!" I called back.  She approached, dismounting, and I did the same.  Hobbling between crutches I reached out and clasped her tightly, laughing into her sweeping hair as it wrapped around my face, "You made it."

"Four days you wouldn't believe, but we made it," she said, breaking our embrace and looking behind her, "Klaas!  Wyatt!  Take those horses to get a drink, will ya?"  The horsemen behind her bowed deeply, leading their steeds back to Ebon's camp.  The city bleated again, its mournful horn shattering the hot wind.  Breezy called out behind her, "Shut up, already!  My lord, that city.  And the people wear things you wouldn't believe!"

With its front legs rising and passing over us, the sky turned to steel.  The front legs easily missed the hole and the drilling machine, instead crashing into a far hill, blowing it out like a candle.

The red and blue flashing stopped, replaced instead by a circle of spotlights shining down on us.  More lights emerged, as rings opened up beneath, dilating like eyes.  Cables descended around us, drawing out dozens of soldiers.  They slid down, rifles in hand, held aloft ceremoniously as the great central aperture opened, descending a plate with an orchestra and a shower of red and white flower petals.

The platform came to rest on the ground.

At the center of this plate, arranged in front of the well dressed musicians, were four men in robes.  They walked gracefully from the platform onto a red carpet that unraveled before them.  Their feet never touched the Earth.  The troops, who had descended all around us in a wide circle were standing with steel ventilated masks, their hands across their chests in a sign of reverence for the city's masters.  I stood at the end of the carpet with Freezy by my side.  Nervously, she hissed through her teeth, her hand gripping my wrist,

"What's this all about?"

"These are the city masters," I said, "They've come to claim their prize.  Kneel."

Freezy helped me as we both fell to one knee.  Eyes turned to the roll of carpet in front of us.  It was difficult to pull myself down, but I braced myself on Freezy's shoulder.  The masters talked amongst themselves excitedly, gesturing against the calming storm and pointing behind us at the machine.

"Delightful!" an old man's voice said above me, "Tell me it still works."

"It still works, my lord," I said, staring down at a pair of felt shoes, "We found it in the ground, in that hole-"