Alexandria (21 page)

“Farther than we’ve ever gone, I know that.”

She turns the map over in her hands and reads the scribbled note.

Renning and Ethan dead

Nezra knows of Alexandria

“Al… exan… dria,”
she sounds out slowly, learning the exotic new word. “What is… Alexandria?”

“A place with answers, the man said.”

“What does that mean? Answers to what?”

“I’m not quite sure…” he says, “but I think I have an idea. Remember those paintings in the Temple? The ones that told how it started?”

“I’ll never forget.”

“There was a man, they called him prophet…”

“Thomas.”

“Yes. It could be chance, but the way they showed that man… the way he looked and everything… it reminded me of this Ethan who saved us.”

“Oh yes…
I remember.”

“So this prophet taught the first Arana how to do all the things he did. He told how to build the Temple and everything.”

“So where did he come from?”

“Don’t know. They spent a lot of time looking… but they never found it. Some say it’s legend, that it doesn’t even exist. But now… I think he came from
here.”
Jack points to the star. “And if one man can teach how to build a temple like ours, then think what a whole city could do. They must have temples that are so huge you can’t even imagine.”

“Not another temple,” Lia says wearily.

“I thought that, too, but… Ethan wasn’t friendly with them back there—they wanted him killed. He said we have to warn somebody about the Nezra, so I thought… whoever they are, maybe they’ll be on our side. If we can reach them.”

“Maybe,” she says, tucking the map away and slinging the pack over her shoulder. “Or maybe this prophet is the one who taught them how to burn people.”

“We don’t have to go…”

“No—I want to go. I want to find out. I’m just scared.”

Their shadows stretch out skinny and long and the timbre of the forest makes its evening transition, eerie hoots and rustlings from the peregrinations of unseen night feeders echo around them. They hike more briskly, looking for a hiding place to settle in before the light is gone. Jack draws his bow and holds an arrow between his fingers, searching for prey and predator alike. Around a bend they see a small, shaded clearing and tread cautiously toward it.

“Wait,” says Jack.

What looked like shadows from a distance now comes starkly into view. The ground is blackened, surrounded by a ring of scorched trees and bushes. A strip of black earth cuts east from the epicenter, where the flames ran their wind-driven course.

“Wildfire?”

“No…
look…”

Jack points to the straight lengths of burned wood, some still fastened together at right angles. Piles and piles of them come into focus as they move quietly into the blighted area. A wasteland in microcosm lay spread out before them. The settlement couldn’t have been much to begin with, and it has been utterly ravaged. The ash is rain-packed and old. Stray weeds poke through the charred layer, thin green shreds of life gasping for air and sunlight. As she looks around, Lia feels profoundly grateful they did not sojourn back to their own destroyed home.

“Oh
…
oh, it’s horrible.”

Slithering vines entangle carbonized skulls and ribcages, half sunk into the earth and overlaid with moss and scattered leaves. Jack and Lia take fragile steps through the hallowed ground, stilled by the dreadful energy surrounding them, drifting along like delegates of the living haunting a field of ghosts. The susurrations of wind sound like the playful laughter of distant children, ebbing and fluxing through the cool, darkening twilight.

They stop and pay their respects, breathing in the acrid musk of razed land. Neither of them gives voice to the notion, but they both know very well what happened here, and who is responsible—a menacing reminder of their own pursuers.

“Come on.”

Deeper into the woods they roam, searching for a place to lay their heads. They wander down a narrow escarpment, bound in by thick groves of trees, and by the last wisps of daylight they set a small camp.

“If you fetch some sticks and tinder, I’ll see if I can shoot something. Stay close.”

Lia hops around, plucking up dry branches and handfuls of dead weeds. Jack slinks a little farther south and picks a spot to nest. He sits patiently, steadying himself, and before long it pays off. A chubby opossum malingers across the forest floor, holding fast to the brush line, snuffling about for insects and carrion. As Jack draws the bowstring the opossum flashes its beady little eyes and starts to wobble away. The arrow lodges into its hindquarters and Jack snatches it up and kills it.

He crosses over a rocky knoll and dresses the carcass, cleaning off the arrow and stowing it, then carries the meat back to their camp. Lia sits around the little ring of stones she assembled, with sticks bunched together in the center like a little teepee. Jack sparks it with his flint and starts to skewer the meat for cooking. He’s been restless since they passed the burned village and he takes constant glances over his shoulder, worried that some soot-blackened warrior could drop from the trees at any moment.

“We’d better put the fire out after we cook this.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” She sits down next to him and holds her skewer over the flames. “It smells really good.”

“Thanks. Better than worms.”

“I don’t know, I’m getting a taste for them.”

“I can dig some out for you, if you want.”

“That’s okay.”

They sit by the warm fire, eating the greasy dark meat and licking their fingers clean. When they’re finished Jack tamps out the fire and they move to a little sleeping spot they’ve picked out. Lying close together for warmth, they listen to the sounds of the forest and stare up at the night sky.

“Do you think there’s people out there?” Lia asks, fixing on a distant star.

“People like us?”

“Same or different, either way.”

“It’d be strange if there weren’t. It all looks too big for just us.”

“Way too big,” she says. “How far do you think it goes?”

Jack ponders. “Not sure. But they used to know. My mom said they used to know all about what’s out there in the stars. She said people used to fly out to the stars pretty much all the time.”

“I wish I could fly out there right now.”

“So do I.”

The crisp points glitter on like a scattering of quartz crystals, cool and cryptic, and the celestial talismans of yore glide by silently above, from one horizon to the other, sailing along on their Ageless journey.

The prisoners are dragged through the central corridor, deep within the heart of the Nezran Temple, images of horrible conflagration flashing by them as they go. The blaze encompasses them and the hideous screaming demonbeasts that rise from the flames have the two mysterious travelers believing they are being led to some macabre execution chamber and these are the gates through which they must pass.

The warriors drag them past the scenes of wreckage and stop finally in front of a happier depiction of a much simpler village than now stands—rustic wood beam cabins and a flock of villagers encircling two men. Ethan’s eyes narrow on one of them. His skin is chalky and he trembles with blood loss and burgeoning infection. There is a crude splint strapped to his leg, soaked with blood, and it takes two men to hold him up.

“You know this man,” Arana says, pointing to the prophet. Ethan shakes his head. “Did he send you?”

“No one sent us. We’re roaming.”

“Roaming?”

“Yes,” says Renning, expressionless in his restraints.

“Why did you draw our Temple?”

“Because… it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Arana launches toward him and seizes him by the shoulders. Renning flinches, expecting a blow to come. Arana focuses raptly on his eyes, looking intensely through them, a growing vacantness on his face. Renning looks back, mystified. Arana stares into him for a great, long moment that stretches into awkward silence. The warriors shift and glance around. He releases Renning and clasps his hands onto Ethan’s feeble shoulders and practices the bizarre mesmerism again, boring deeply into his wide pupils.

Keslin lingers around the foyer, glancing askance at Arana’s activities, then hitches toward the corridor.

“I think I know where you’re from,” Arana whispers into Ethan’s ear. “You
know
this man, I can see it in your face. Did he tell you about us?”

“I don’t know him. Please, please just let us go and we’ll be on our way and never bother you again.”

“Only if you tell me what you know.”

“We don’t know anything.”

“You know what we call ourselves.”

“No.”

“You do, it was written on your drawing. How do you know our name?”

“We…”

“Yes?”

“Break his ribs,” says Keslin.

The men look to Arana and he nods tensely. Two warriors brace Renning against the wall while a third feels along his abdomen for the sharp floating ribs, then cracks a pickhammer solidly against his side and snaps one off. Renning hinges over and jerks with pain and the warriors adjust their footing to hold him in place.

“It only gets worse from here,” Keslin tells him. “Talk to me now and I’ll put you down quickly.”

“I have
…
nothing to tell,”
Renning wheezes. He fixes on Arana and grins through bloodstained teeth. “You will never find it.
Never.”

Chapter Nine

Morning mist shrouds the cliffs, dampening the search brigade’s visibility, and they put much reliance on the olfactories of the wolfmongrels. The silvery beasts pull their handlers along, zigzagging through the brush, seeming to run them in circles. The wind has not been kind and they lost the scent trail in a cluttered valley less than a day’s ride from the Temple.

They split ways at the crest, two riding tight along the edge of the cliff and scouring the breakers for any traces of movement or washed up remains, the others galloping on and surveying the long distance ahead. On the adjacent ridge Feiyan jerks the bridle and halts, then removes a compact scope and peers into the haze through warped glass.

Back in the valley, they follow the stream past the dilapidated neighborhoods and push into the deep woods. Halis holds to the rear and keeps his horse at a leisurely trot. A scar like a jagged wire cuts across the rutted surface of his jaw, and his lunatic half-grin shows all the teeth on the left side of his mouth gone.

The wolfmongrels coalesce and howl wildly, and Halis’s baleful rictus spreads deeper. They have found something.

When Lia rises, Jack is already stowing their things and fitting himself out for another long hike south. She sits up and rubs her aching feet, ruddy blisters blooming along her heels. Jack has two rabbits bound together with dry roots and he shoves them into the pack and slings his bow over his shoulder.

“How long have you been up?”

“A little while. I got food.”

She smiles sweetly and tries to stand up.
“Ouch
. Oh, I hurt
everywhere
. How come you’re okay and I’m not.”

“Practice.” He grins and jogs off, shimmying up a nearby tree and returning with the meat left from their cookout the night before. He tears her off a piece and stuffs the rest in his mouth. “You ready?”

“No, but let’s go.”

Lia winces at the first few steps but slowly finds her gait. She digs in the sack for her kitchen knife and carries it tightly at her side as they walk. Jack raises an eyebrow.

“You know how to use that thing?”

“Yes,” she says confidently. “If we get attacked by potatoes.”

“The woods are crawling with them.”

“I’ll protect you.”

“Here,” says Jack, holding her wrist and repositioning the blade in her hand. “Hold it like this. If something comes at you, swing up and forward. Aim for the soft parts.” He guides her arm slowly, letting her get a feel for it.

“I’m not going to ask how you know all this.” She waves the knife daintily up through the air and Jack chuckles. “Stop laughing.”