Alexandria (42 page)

They heed his words and settle themselves. They dine on scant pickings and a couple of rodents by the light of a small fire, then lie down wearily to sleep. Jack and Lia toss and turn and the night feels much longer than usual.

When light finally breaks, Thomas leads them to a rank waterway that feeds the swamp, and he is less profuse in conversation as they near the head of it. They pad along the muddy ground on the eastern bank and Lily wades out into the water. As she lumbers along in the current, Ruck watches keenly from the bank, with one forepaw raised daintily as if waiting for it to be kissed.

Thomas comes to a full stop and looks around at the trees, seeming to almost count them. He steps away from the bank and takes giant steps through a confused web of flora, pulling branches aside and scouting around.

“Come here and give me a hand.”

Jack swings the machete down and hacks his way through to the spot where Thomas stands. He pulls the leafage away, and tucked down underneath is a little rowboat made of lashed-together reeds and wooden crosspieces.

“Where did you get this?”

“Found it,” says Thomas.

“Whose is it? Are there people here?”

“None that I’ve seen, other than passing wanderers.” Thomas pulls at the prow of the little skiff and dislodges it. “This looked to have been forgotten. So I took her out. I’ve explored only through parts of this, and I know it’s crossable, but, listen,” he says heavily, “keep on the main course. Don’t stray. Easy to get turned around in there.”

Jack nods and helps him drag the skiff back to the muddy bank. Lia looks pensively at the small craft. They tether it to the shore and then launch it out into the water to test that it floats. The reeds are pitched and hide-covered and it slips straight with the current and bobbles atop the water, right and true.

“This passage will take you across to the far side. Keep a quick pace and you’ll make it by sundown.” He looks down to the ground and takes a slow, deliberate breath. “I hope you reach your destination,” he tells them earnestly. “Careful of what you find there. It’s a dangerous substance they handle. I’ve seen with my own eyes what it can do in the wrong hands, as I’m the one that placed it in them.”

“It’s not your fault,” says Lia. “It’s monsters.”

Thomas lets out a terse laugh. “I make no excuses. I wish there was more I could do for you.”

“There is something,” says Jack.

“Oh?”

“If you see your friend Collins again, tell them they’re in danger if they stay there. The Temple will come looking for us. They’re likely to kill anyone they come across.”

Thomas winces. “Of course. I think I’ll see them again very soon.”

“I’m glad you told us what you know. And she’s right—it’s not your fault. They still would have become killers.”

“That may well be.”

“We’d better not waste any more light,” says Jack, glancing at Lia. He climbs into the little skiff and grabs the makeshift ore resting in the hull.

Thomas nods cordially. “I’m glad to have met you.”

“Thank you,” says Lia. “We’d have been eaten by wolves if not for you.”

Thomas smiles. Lia takes his hand and steadies herself as she steps into the skiff. When they’re situated, he unties them and heaves against the stern and pushes them into the current.

“If you see my brother, tell him that Thomas says
hello
. Tell him I love him.”

“Who’s your brother?”

“You’ll know him if you see him.”

Jack plunks the ore into the water and they float downstream toward the sprawling marsh, and a network of moss-covered branches envelops them. Thomas stands on the bank like some rustic frontiersman, his long beard flowing in the breeze, and the bear and the wolf sit nobly at his side. They stay for a long while and watch Jack and Lia diminish away into the rusted iron swamp, worrisome looks on each of their faces.

Chapter Fifteen

Arana speaks to his father. It matters not whether they are connected through portals in time and space, where living mouths commune with dead ears and a resonance is carried across the threshold, or more detached and mundane channels through which thought and message evanesce and never return. He whispers breathlessly with newfound ease, and he forgives his father for the forgery of his youth and the unkept promises of transcendent greatness. He feels his father’s presence, the duality of him, tangible and elusive as he was in life—the legendary man who carved the Temple’s first stone with strong, gentle hands.

Behind him, the amphitheatre is half-full of women and children, stark and clear in the bright morning light. They sit with strangely placid faces and watch the man they know as their King commune without hurry in the blinding sun.

Arana imagines that his father would not know him if he were truly here now, so different is the boy from the man. He thinks of what he was meant to be—a protector of his father’s vision, a kind authority. Long hours he has spent searching for some connection between himself and that boy, and the trail has run cold. Through peacefully closed eyes he asks his father for his own forgiveness in return.

Silence greets him, and he expected nothing more.

He turns slowly and faces the sparse crowd, stripped of false vestiges. They do not thunder with applause, nor do they shun him. They only sit in the liquid sun and wait.

Down the quarry road, a battalion marches. Arana looks on sternly as they assemble before him. Rows of horsemen lead the parade, war-painted and severe, followed by men of every age, suited and armed and freshly shorn, marching with stoic calm toward the amphitheatre. The great and courageous Sons of the Temple, clad for an undertaking more dangerous than any they’ve met before. The ranks fill in slowly. Morning shadows glide across their faces as the men form one line after another and settle into rigid formation.

When the last warrior takes his place, Arana paces forward to the lower gallery and speaks to his followers.

“Some of you are old enough to remember a man named Thomas,” he says plainly. He meets recognition in some of their eyes. “Some of you remember his betrayal of my father. This man arrived unbidden, he spoke dangerous lies about his true home, and he fled in our time of need. He left us to suffer. Some of you remember this.” His voice is crisp and low and it cuts through the air like a whip-crack. He speaks simply. Gone are his well-practiced theatrics. “But all of you, even the youngest… all of you remember the two men caught spying on our land barely a month ago yet. You remember barring your doors and hiding in the darkness.

“We know now that these men share the same origins as Thomas. We know they are from a place that preserves dead ways, a place that seeks to use these ways to destroy us. They hate what we have built. They hate the vision that we share. And the day has come when we must make a stand, or allow ourselves to be swept away by their wickedness.”

Younger siblings and worried mothers nod somberly in the amphitheatre. In the wings, Keslin cracks a thin smile.

“In recent days,” Arana continues, “you have noticed that certain people were taken from their duties. These people were corrupted—and they are now safely removed, and will remain so until the matter is resolved.”

Stifled chatter crisscrosses the amphitheatre.

“This morning, our army will march south to the hidden city. We do not know what they will encounter when they get there, but I will say this—our numbers have never been stronger. There are no other fighters spoke of in the land with the power to overtake us. Join me in asking that the light of the Beyond shine down upon them on this important venture.”

Arana closes his eyes and raises his face toward the bright, clean sky—his only deceit—and as the warriors steel themselves for another ruthless campaign, the gathered forms in the audience raise their faces as well, true believers all, and the Temple grounds hum with the sussurus of their whispered incantation.

The reed skiff glides through the murky water, leaving behind swirling fractals of slimy film that spin around in their wake like elongated curlicues. Slithering forms cut gracefully through the surface then resubmerge in silence. Jack dips the ore and rows them slowly forward, perched up on his knees like a little gondolier, looking side to side as they go. There is a ubiquitous buzz that permeates the swamp and he listens in, trying to separate the sound out into its constituent parts—there are insects of many varied forms, the rasping of sedge grass rippling in the wind, smoothly flowing water, and a deeper, more subliminal noise that sounds like the steady breath of the swamp itself. Lia sits curled in the stern and watches the dark landscape drift by like a gloomy cyclorama.

“I don’t like this.”

“It’s just a little ways farther. Thomas said we’re close.”

“I heard him.”

They crouch low and float under a fallen pile of warped I-beams, crosshatched over the water like a jumbled overpass. A gallery of long-legged birds sits perched atop, and they turn their heads dismissively as the tiny boat moves past. Jack rows them around a bend in the waterway and pilots the craft toward the rising sun. The iron skeletons of a once great city rise above them, fragmented and decayed, more imposing than they had seemed from the hillside.

“By the billions…”
says Lia, looking up at the structures.

“How much is that?”

“Too much.” She scoots around and kneels behind Jack, resting her chin on his shoulder. “Want me to row for a while?”

“I’m okay.”

“Do you think the world will ever look like this again? All full of buildings and people?”

“Not for a long, long time.”

“I don’t know if I’d want it to,” she says wistfully. “It’s not very pretty.”

“I’m sure it looked better when it was new.”

“Not as pretty as the mountains.”

“No. I guess not.”

“And how did they build all this anyway? Did they steal people and force them to work?”

“They would’ve had to steal a lot of people,” laughs Jack. “I think they used machines.”

“Somebody had to build the machines. Seems impossible. Didn’t they do anything but build things and fly around all the time?”

“That sounds all right to me.” Jack peers at her over his shoulder. “You’re sour.”

“I’m just nervous.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Miles,” she says.
“Thomas
. He said it’s dangerous what they have there. I just—I’m not sure I really want to know about the old days, about these people that used to live here. I thought I did, but it’s just all so sad.”

“We don’t have to stay. We can go there, warn them, and leave. I’m not sure they’ll tell us anything anyway.”

“And then where will we go? Thomas won’t use his name anymore because he’s so scared the Nezra’ll find him. Will we have to do that, do you think? Change our names and hide forever?”

Jack scrunches his face and thinks it over—it doesn’t sound like such a bad proposition. “We might,” he says grimly. “And I’ll grow a beard and make friends with a lion and a goat.”

“I’d like to see you with a beard like that.”

“You’d have to grow one, too.”

“What?”
She punches him.

“So we could hide, you’d have to.”

“What about the lion and the goat?”

“Well,” says Jack, pondering it, “the goat might have to shave his.”

“Oh… of course. I’m feeling much better about this.”

“At least we have a plan.”

“Yeah,” she says darkly, tasting his irony. “A plan.”

Sprays of light fan down on them from the canopy as they emerge from the towering gridwork and float down the middle of a wide open wetland area, through a corridor walled in by tufts of tall flowing grass stemming up from the muck.

Ahead of them, concrete roundabouts arc over the surface of the water like a giant cloverleaf, partially blocking their path. Jack navigates slowly between the network of thick, stone columns and sunken pieces of road, and at several points he draws his blade and cuts through the undergrowth because the slender passage is nearly sealed off by encroaching vines and sedge. Lia poises behind him with the spear and pushes the skiff away from the rocks that brush against the underside of its thin leather hull. Sharp angles of light show them the mouth of the dark tunnel and Jack paddles toward it. As they near the exit, a shiny snake, as thick as Jack’s leg, uncoils before them and hangs aloft from an overhead lattice of ivy—a long, lithe squiggle against the backlit opening. Jack rows against the current and slows them to a stop. The snake swivels its head elegantly toward them, then slips into the water with barely a splash. Jack and Lia sit petrified in the bobbing skiff. Something fat and heavy scrapes against the bottom, bulging the reeds underneath them, and they lock onto each other with bulbous eyes.

“Go,”
Lia whispers.

Jack dunks the ore and rushes it through the water and the little craft wobbles forward. Lia clenches the spear and stares at the opaque surface of the marsh water. It is tranquil and smooth, save for their slender wake. Jack steers around more obstacles, working his arms desperately. Lia hears a splash just to her left, and as she is turning toward it the snake launches from a plank across the water to her right, a blur of green and black, with clean, soft pink inside its wide-hinged jaw. It lashes at Jack and catches him by the pant leg, its shiny fangs piercing through the rough fabric. Lia jabs it with the spear. The long, furled body thrashes in the water as the snake tears at Jack’s pants and pulls free a scrap, then eclipses back into the slurry. A thin cut opens on his thigh and he paddles feverishly through the underpass.