Palaces of Light (7 page)

Higgins nodded again, but this time with a weak grin. It had been a kind of catch phrase and private joke between them since they had first met, and its familiarity made them both feel better.

By this time, the crowd had dispersed, the sec teams had assumed their positions around the ville, and the six men had returned from the armory. Collecting their mounts along the way, they were now ready to go.

K turned to them. “Keep it frosty. There’s more of us, and they’re on foot, but don’t take anything on trust.”

The mounted sec men exchanged glances that mixed both surprise and shock. This wasn’t what they expected from a baron best described, in the interests of their own safety, as driven and confident.

“I know,” K said simply. “But this is the chill zone. I might not come from here, but I listen to my people.” He stared at them. They returned the look with a ripple of understanding.

“Okay, then,” he said, nodding, “let’s get out and meet them.”

They set out into the evening, the cooling air flowing around them as their horses kept up a steady canter. It was only a short while before the approaching party came into eye contact. Even as shambling shadows in the distance, they seemed strangely sinister, and it was with a sense of apprehension that the sec party grew closer.

K was a little puzzled by their behavior. With a mounted sec party headed toward them, which they had to have realized would be armed, you would have expected them to at least slacken off the pace a little, or to show some kind of sign of acknowledgment. Instead, they kept coming at the same steady pace, as though not seeing the sec party moving toward them. Or not caring, which, the baron reflected, would be a scarier prospect.

“Lock and load, but keep it casual unless they show the slightest sign,” he called over his shoulder to the party at his rear. He liked to lead from the front, and in the same way he knew that he had no real need to issue the instruction. It was perfunctory. His men knew him, and they knew what they had to do.

K dragged his own Remington from the holster on the horse’s saddle and slipped the safety, holding it barrel-up against his shoulder. It looked casual, but he was skilled and practiced. The longblaster could be leveled and the first round buried in a bastard’s heart before he had a chance to take a breath.

Now that they were near, he could see that the immensely fat man with the cane had a brown derby on his head, almost white with dust. He also wore round glasses that blanked out his eyes as the baron rode close enough to be able to establish eye contact. The group at his rear was a motley collection. The stocky men were adorned with web belts of which they carried a variety of battered musical instruments, all of which had seen better days and clanged gently together in rhythm with their footsteps. They also had puppets of wood and cloth hanging from the webbing that crisscrossed their bodies. Carved of wood or made of cloth and stuffed, the eyes of the puppets stared sightlessly and chilled in a way that made K shudder.

Gathered just to the rear of these were the two tall men. The skinny guy had bug eyes that might have been due to the effort that he had to expend to carry the wooden booth that was on his back, or may just have been the result of madness from being in the wilderness too long. K wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care. He could just see that the faded paintwork on those portions of the booth visible was covered in strange stains that he couldn’t—and wasn’t sure that he wanted to—identify.

That just left the big guy that looked like Higgy—well, maybe not so much up close. Tight curls in his hair and beard gave him a deceptively angelic look, which belied his bulk. Just visible was the heavy pack that he carried on his back, but it was his clothing that was most remarkable—leggings, and a vest of patched and multicolored diamond shapes, hung with bells that jangled only dully, so clogged were they with the dust that also faded his clothes. His brown boots had bizarrely turned-over cuffs that only made him seem stranger. There were also the objects that hung from his belt, strange, shrunken objects that looked like dried fruit, and yet… K didn’t want to consider the thought that suddenly struck him.

Indicating with a tilt of the Remington that his people should pull up behind him, the baron brought his mount to a standstill about a hundred yards from the oncoming party. It was uncanny the way they had just kept coming despite the approach of what was obviously a superior force. It was either a completely stupe action, or perhaps an act of supreme confidence. K couldn’t be sure.

The mounted sec party came to a halt, dust settling around them in the darkening twilight. The walkers kept coming, until they were only a short distance away. Then, when they were close enough for all of them to make eye contact, the immensely fat man held up his stick so that it was raised above his head. At this sign, they came to a silent halt.

It was a strange and uncanny atmosphere as the two sides faced each other. K was unwilling to be the first to break this silence. Yet the wait was straining his nerves to breaking point. It seemed as if the fat man knew that. With an almost infinite slowness he removed his glasses and produced a handkerchief, with which he carefully polished the dusty lenses before inspecting them, nodding to himself, and placing them back on his nose with one hand while he pushed the handkerchief into the back pocket of his pants with the other. He looked up at the baron, head on one side, before sniffing and finally speaking.

“So…”

He let the word hang in the air for several seconds, as if daring the baron to break in. But K kept his counsel. A crooked grin split the fat man’s face. When he spoke again there was something in his voice—not an undertone, nor any hint of sibilance, but somehow it seemed to seep into K’s mind, wrapping it up so that the trepidation that he was feeling was pushed to the very boundaries of his consciousness.

“So,” he began again, “we have traveled far to drink your wine, and to provide for your edification an entertainment that will astound you and be fair exchange for your hospitality. What do you say?”

The baron, determined to remember the apprehension that counseled valuable caution, summoned up his will and as much phlegm as he could from a throat suddenly dry. He hawked a glob onto the dry ground, landing it at the fat man’s feet.

“I say you’ve got a real strange way of talking. And of traveling. I dunno about any entertainment, and I don’t even know what edifucktion is, but I’d sure like to know where the hell you’ve come from.”

The fat man’s grin grew wider at the baron’s choice of words.

“You have no idea what you’re saying. How close, indeed, you might be to a noble truth. But that is not for you to worry about. Our plight is our own. We merely carry it with us from ville to ville as we make our way across this rad-blasted land. Our sole aim is to make enough jack to keep alive so that we might carry on to the next ville.”

“Why?” K asked, his tone hostile. Every fiber of his being was screaming at him that these weird crazies were nothing but bad. And yet somehow, even though he knew he should level the Remington and start blasting, still he couldn’t bring himself to do it. There was something deep inside his head that was telling him no, a voice that he felt wasn’t his own, and that he couldn’t deny. A voice that grew, bizarrely and insidiously, wordless as it was, more insistent as he sat astride his mount, rooted to the saddle by the beady, short-sighted eyes of the fat man.

“We are traveling players, no more and no less,” the fat man said with a shrug. He indicated those who were at his shoulder, causing them to genuflect awkwardly with a deference that wasn’t matched by their demeanor. “We will entertain and bewitch you, and all we ask is that you feed and water us before we go on our way…perhaps allow us to rest for a few days before we put on a show that you will never forget.”

There was something in the manner of those last words that made the baron’s blood run cold. And yet, even as it did so, he found that he was opening his mouth and saying something that came as a surprise to him.

“Then you must come with us. We can house and feed you. We don’t have much, but surely there is enough in our ville to sustain you. And it isn’t often that we see anything in the way of entertainment. It’ll be good for the people. Won’t it?” he added, turning back to the men at his rear.

They all nodded. And as they did, it seemed to him that their eyes were clouded in some way, as though they were suffering the same sense of confusion that he was feeling. A confusion that meant he couldn’t think with any kind of clarity. Even the words he had used seemed to him to come from another place. “Surely there is enough in our ville to sustain you”? What the fuck was that? What he should have said was “Get away from my ville, you weird fuckers, before me and my men blast seven shades of shit out of you.” It was what he would have said, normally, but this wasn’t normal. There was some weird shit going down here, and it was as though he was watching it from one side, as though he had been taken out of his own body and was now walking alongside the mounted men, side-by-side with the travelers, as they made their way in silence back to the ville.

As they approached the edge of the ville, he could see the darkness descend as the sun finally fell below the horizon. Slowly the lights of the oil and electric lamps that were dotted around the buildings began to flicker into life. But for a moment there was darkness on the edge of the ville, and in that he could see nothing but a portent. It was one that he found himself unable to act on, as he was being swept along by something that he didn’t understand, and that he was powerless to resist.

Seeing their baron and the sec party he had rode out with return with the strangers, the people of the ville began to emerge from their secured places. They were still armed, but the weapons were at ease. They gathered and followed the party as they made its way to the center of the ville. Once there, the fat man turned to the baron.

“Pray introduce us to your people, K. We have much to show them, but as yet they do not know who we are.”

It was only later—much later, after the event—that K realized that he hadn’t told the fat man his name. That should have made him wary. But no, it didn’t even register at that moment. Instead, he found himself telling the people that these strolling players had come to entertain them, and to teach them and to show them things the like of which they had never seen before.

As he spoke, he saw that the six moved among the ville dwellers, touching them, shaking hands, muttering in ears. Eyes that had been clouded with doubt were now clouded with something else instead. And as they did this, and as his people warmed to the newcomers, with their reserve weakening and their welcoming embrace enveloping the traveling players, so he, too, began to feel a sense of well-being—like a warm, white light—wash over him. Yes, these people were friends, and they should be welcomed.

What a crock of horseshit.

Except that this, too, only occurred to him well after the event.

When it was too late.

Chapter Six

The vista below them was breathtaking. Daunting, too, but that was something to be considered in a few moments, when the full impact of what they had seen had been given a chance to fully assimilate. Right now, the astounding beauty of what they could see had overwhelmed them all.

On the far side of the canyon wall, reached only by a series of twisting and narrow paths that slowly wound their way down the walls and across the uneven floor of the canyon, was a series of buildings the likes of which none of them had ever seen. They perched on a number of ledges.

The ledges on which these buildings stood were possibly man-made. Was it possible that nature had truly manufactured such a perfect platform for the foundations of such splendid isolation? The ledges came out from beneath the canopy of the rock face above for only the merest part of their depth. The majority of them were driven deep into the rock, providing shelter for that which lay beneath from whatever the elements might have to throw at them.

For Ryan, J.B., Krysty and Jak there was no way of knowing how old these buildings may be. Their knowledge of the styles in which architecture had changed over the centuries before skydark ranged from sketchy to nonexistent. There was no reason why it should be anything else. For Doc and Mildred, however, it was different. They had known the world before the nukecaust, and had histories that included a degree of education that made them appreciate what they were seeing in the context of a greater human history—a history that made them all the more awestruck by what they could see in front of them.

For these buildings were more than just roughly hewn shelters in the shadow of an overhanging rock. They were palaces of extraordinary beauty and simplicity of line that showed a taste and intelligence—a culture—that seemed all the more remarkable for being out here in the middle of nowhere.

There was little doubt that the buildings in front of the companions showed a great intelligence, both in design and execution. They were hewn from the same rock that constituted the canyon walls around them and in some ways looked as though they had been carved out of the very face of the rock itself. And yet there was an economy of line that showed an astounding use of engineering in making the walls, windows and doorways run together in such a way as to make the buildings look both independent of one another, and yet also so very much a part of an integrated design.

Despite the undeniable fact that they were of the same rock as the walls around them, they had a smooth and polished appearance that made them whiter than the yellowing stone that framed them. It was as though they had been relentlessly buffed and polished to a glorious sheen. They seemed to reflect the sun that streamed into the canyon, taking, absorbing it and reflecting it back with a luminescence that made it seem that the buildings were less stone, more marble in their makeup.

They had to have been constituted of blocks and bricks that had been hewn from the rock and then carefully placed together. The buildings weren’t of uniform height or width, with some having roofs upon them while others seemed to grow up into the rock that covered them, with no real indication of where the building ended and the canyon wall began.

The scale of the buildings, and not just their beauty and design, was also something that was enough to make them pause and gape in awe. By the size of the doorways and windows, and the occasional sign of life, it was soon apparent that the buildings were built on a magnificent scale. This was no mere ville, this was a city of such magnitude as shouldn’t have survived the nukecaust: and, indeed, wouldn’t have if not for the shelter provided by its location.

It was like a city glimpsed in a dream, a magnificence, simplicity and beauty that was a monument to the dedication, work and craft of a civilization long since passed.

It was a civilization that had a greater depth and intelligence than that which had been shallow and facile enough to be behind the disaster of the nukecaust. Doc and Mildred were certain of one thing, and the others suspected it. This city had been here longer than the few hundred years that covered the industrial revolution and the final capitulation of savagery over technology that had birthed the lands in which they now lived.

Its scope and beauty, the mystery of how it had come to be in such a place, and the intelligence that had conceived of it—these were questions that had no real relevance to them now. The only thing that really mattered was that the men they had followed, and the prey they had sought to recapture, had to have ended up in those mysterious palaces of light that shone magnificently in the early-morning sun. Whatever noble minds had given rise to these astounding edifices had long since been replaced by the more venal creatures that now used them as a domicile.

No matter how tragic it may seem, no matter how ironic or apposite, the only thing that mattered was to dismiss all from their minds but the attainment of their goal.

Not that this would be easy. Neither the dismissal nor the attainment.

“We’re seriously exposed up here,” Ryan said softly, staring down into the canyon. “If we’re not going to be spotted, then we need to take cover.”

Krysty looked at him wryly. “It’s not like they don’t know we’re here. Look at the shit we’ve had to come through to get this far.”

Ryan shrugged. “Sure. Something knows we’re here, that’s for certain. But is it some kind of weird shit thing that has power over the people down there, or is it part of them?”

“Not matter. Still enemy,” Jak stated.

“I think I see what Ryan means,” Doc said at length. “If it is some kind of agent of influence, then it may be operating the defenses on a kind of automatic basis, and therefore would not necessarily mean that the men we are pursuing—nor, indeed, any of their companions down there in those magnificent edifices—may be aware that we are at their back. And so we can assume that they may have more regular defenses that we should also take care to avoid.”

“That’s a lot of assumptions,” Mildred mused, “but I guess it can’t hurt to think along those lines and keep it as frosty as we would normally.”

“In which case,” J.B. finished, scratching his head beneath the brim of his fedora, “we’d better get the hell out of sight before there are more people on the move than we’ve already seen.”

The Armorer’s words struck home. They had seen very few people up and about at daybreak, enough only to judge the scale of the buildings. At such a distance, and with so few eyes to train in their direction, it was unlikely that they had been spotted. But if any regular sec patrols should chance this way, or even chance to look this way, even at such a distance they would be highlighted perfectly against the empty sky behind them.

Swiftly, Ryan led them along the lip of the canyon. It was clear that there were well-established paths on this side of the abyss, just as there were on the far side, where the palaces lay. This much was clear from the way in which those paths that crisscrossed the canyon floor, running across the winding creek, meandered across until they ran out of sight beneath the overhanging lip where the companions now stood. From here there was no egress, but there had to be at some point. This would be where the abductors had taken the children when they reached the canyon the previous evening. It was just a matter of finding that point.

Traversing the canyon lip, and keeping low in case they could be seen from the other side, they soon reached a point where the lip of the canyon receded so that it was no longer overhanging. Instead, it now provided a short, sloping path down to a ledge of rock that was connected precariously to another that snaked at an acute angle. The dusty surface was tramped flat and worn in the center so that it formed a groove, as if it had been trodden over a long period by many feet.

This had to be the way, had to be the way taken by the party the previous day. There was nothing else that offered an obvious path.

Ryan paused. Steep and treacherous, the path brought the memory of the strange hallucination they had suffered so recently, which had seemingly ended with him plunging to his doom. That was a hell of a thing to have come into your head when you had to be so sure-footed, Ryan thought. Even more so when he considered how open to any potential view they would be, silhouetted against the rock face as they descended.

Krysty was at his elbow, looking into the depths of the canyon, and across to similar paths that scarred the rock face opposite.

“It’s not like the dreams,” she whispered. “This can be sure underfoot. And I’ll tell you something else. There must be cover along the way.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked with a furrowed brow.

“Look,” she said, indicating across the vast mouth of the canyon. Across the way, on the paths that proscribed similar trajectories, there were clumps and clusters of rock, some littering the paths before forming walls that would provide cover from probing eyes. Some of the rock had come from falls and splits along the rock face that had formed small cavelike apertures, which would also, if used wisely, provide cover.

Ryan’s face cracked into a crooked grin. He felt better about this. If they could make anything similar on this side, then they could establish observation posts and work out just what their prey was doing, assess numbers and cultivate any weak spots. They needed any edge they could find.

Indicating to the others that they should follow him, Ryan began the descent. The first section of the path was steep, and he was cautious in case he gained too much momentum to make the sudden sharp angle of turn. The last thing he wanted was to tumble into the abyss. And, in truth, the residue of the vision in which he had fallen was still in his head, no matter how much he attempted to dismiss it.

He could feel, rather than see or hear, the others at his back. When he reached the turn, he could almost feel the extra depth of groove in the path that told of the efforts of the countless others who had gone before him, taking the care that he now exercised. Once he had got past that, and was on the other path, he almost breathed a sigh of relief. As he moved at an acute angle to the previous path, he was able to see them as they, too, took the turn. This path, although still descending at a steep gradient, was easier to negotiate.

Moments later, Ryan quickened his pace. The path was starting to level out, and they had reached a wider section that dovetailed with other paths that had either been hewn from or simply worn along the face of the rock. The way was clear for a distance, then clusters of rock blocked the way, some so long established as to have shrubs and grasses growing from beneath them, stunted and spiky in the rad-blasted atmosphere, hidden from the sun by being on the wrong side of the canyon. That might, he hoped, help them, for the sun rose and fell facing down on the side of the canyon where the palaces had been built. The side on which he and the companions made their way was in perpetual shadow, and he felt that could only be of assistance.

Beyond these sparse clusters, he could see that there was a cavern that fell back into the rock face. Its mouth was hidden in shadow from where he stood, which suggested that it might bore back some way into the rock, and provide them all with shelter. It would be perfect.

Ryan slowed to a halt, hunkering down in the sparse shelter of a rock cluster that had brown-green grasses sprouting from the cracks. He gestured to the others so that they should pull up behind him, crowding together as much as possible.

“Jak,” he murmured, “you reckon you could get to that cave without being spotted and scope it out?”

The albino teen didn’t answer for a moment. Instead, he squinted at the path in front of him, and then across at the palaces on the far side of the canyon.

“Mebbe,” he said eventually. “Hard, not impossible.”

And before Ryan had a chance to reply, Jak had set off. Moving swiftly and keeping low to the ground, he ducked when cover presented itself, then paused at those stretches that were open. Dropping onto his belly when he was as sure as he could be that there were no prying eyes from the far side, and that any chance of being observed was accidental and arbitrary, he slithered like some unholy cross between a crab and an eel across the dusty floor, so sure with his arms and legs that he barely raised any dust.

When he reached the mouth of the cavern, he disappeared from view before Ryan had a chance to really register that he had made the distance. He was gone for quite some time. Ryan said nothing while they waited. His tense silence was something that the others picked up on, and even the usually garrulous Doc maintained a tight-lipped silence.

Ryan hadn’t realized that, in his anxiety, he had been holding his breath until he saw Jak’s small frame emerge into the light, his white hair and skin thrown into relief by the darkness around him. The stabbing in his lungs reminded him to breathe, and he exhaled, almost light-headed.

Jak moved toward them as quickly as he had left. Keeping himself low and as concealed as was possible, he was back with them before Ryan had a chance to catch his breath.

The grin on the albino teen’s face as he approached told Ryan all that he needed to know.

“Goes way back into rocks,” Jak stated before anyone had the chance to ask. “Stand few yards in shadow covers you. Could sit all day and watch them, not seen.”

Ryan’s face split into a triumphant grin. He turned to the others. “I think we’ve got just the cover we need. Now we’ve just got to get ourselves in it without being seen.”