Bright of the Sky (14 page)

Sleeping, he dreamed of the alien being in the village, staring at him, approaching with the garrote. Quinn stepped closer, engaging with the creature, eight inches taller, with a reach a yard long. I will kill him, he thought. The creature gazed at him with black eyes, without fear. Waking in the middle of the time-that-passed-for-night, he tried to remember what had happened to him here. But at his probings, the strands of memory dissolved.

In the morning, he woke with a start, feeling watched.

There on the edge of the clearing stood a woman. Even at this distance, her hair was iridescent in the morning light. She wore it at chin length, and was dressed in the same quilted, squarish jacket and pants that Sen Tai had worn. Standing to meet her, he saw she was tall for a woman. She regarded him a long time without speaking. He let her stare at him, because he was frankly staring at
her
. The strength of her face gave her years, but without lines, he thought her young. Her skin was very pale, and would have seemed chalky except for its fine tone. He couldn’t decide whether she was beautiful—but striking, certainly.

Reaching into a deep pocket on the front of her jacket, she withdrew something and held it out to him.

His pictures.

He took them. Though creased and grayed, Johanna’s likeness looked out at him with her half-playful, half-ironic expression. Her expression held strength, the kind she would have needed here, the kind he had so loved in her.

“Nahil,” he said.
Thank you.
He tucked the photos in his own jacket pocket. This was a small triumph—to demand his pictures, and to receive them.

The woman bowed slightly from the waist. Then she said in heavily accented English, “I am called Anzi. I will teach you to speak. When you speak Lucent words, then you leave the cage.” She gestured at the walled garden.

The man who could kill him wished instead to teach him. Perhaps Yulin had absorbed the message that humans were on their way. And that one of them had already arrived.

Quinn said, “I have forgotten your words.”

Anzi nodded. “You forget. You remember, soon.” She gestured for him to follow her as she turned down a path.

The overhead canopy closed in, obscuring the sky, tingeing the under-story with a false twilight. Now and then she stopped to point at something, and utter its foreign name. She was pleased when he began to repeat the sounds after her.

He pointed to the sky, describing its fullness with a wave of his hand.

“The bright,” she said.

“What is the bright?”

She frowned. “Bright is . . .” She struggled for a moment, then said, “Above us.”

Her linguistic compromise brought a smile to his face.

She joined in, smiled broadly. Then the smile vanished, as though their endeavor were more serious in nature. She began naming things closer to the ground. Some sounded familiar.

Once, when she pointed at something, he gave the name on his own, from the Lucent tongue, as they called it. This brought a clap from Anzi. He thought it strange that the language these Chinese-seeming people spoke was not Chinese, if he was any judge, but some tongue with origins he couldn’t even guess.

He stopped on the path, unable to wait any longer with the foremost question on his mind. Anzi turned, waiting for him.

“Where is my daughter?”

She didn’t respond. To make it clear, he brought out Sydney’s picture. “Where?”

She pointed over the wall, a gesture that thrilled him. “Long way ago,” she said.

“But she is here. Johanna is here.” He pointed over the garden wall. “Far away?”

“Wait for asking, yes, please.” She continued walking, and he joined her, struggling to restrain his questions.

Nearby, a long patch of leaf mold humped up, revealing a black snake a yard long, slithering away from them. She spoke its name, then added, in English, “Like Earth, you remember?”

It startled him to hear this, though he’d known he was not on Earth. Just where in all the cosmos
was
he, then?

He put the question to her: “Where am I?”

She told him in the Lucent tongue. Then in English: “Master Yulin’s garden of animals.”

“No.” He waved his hands large around him. “Where am I, where is Master Yulin, where is the sky?”

She looked up at the sky, and she understood him. She spoke a phrase in her language. Then in English, she said, “You will remember. This is All. This is, you may say, the Entire.”

The Entire.
Yes. That seemed right. It seemed like memory. “But how can you look the same as me? How can you be human?”

“We copy you. You were copied. We had such choice, how to look. We chose . . . that culture of long ago.”

“Chinese,” he said.

“Yes. Chinese. It was so important a sway once, when lords create the All. We chose such form.”

Imperfectly, Quinn thought. They’ve blurred some distinctions—around the eyes, the hair color . . .

Anzi went on: “Also, we chose such culture, but since have improved it, as all things are improved in the Entire.”

“All created by the lords . . . ,” he repeated, looking around him, at the trees, the sky, and Anzi.

“Yes, certainly.”

“They are the tall creatures, with sculpted faces?”

Her expression became more alert. “You remember?”

“I saw a lord, in a village.”

“Yes, Tarig,” she said.

Tarig.
The word seemed right, seemed awful. He asked, “They have powerful technology, beyond that of my people, beyond that of the Rose?”

She shook her head, not understanding.
Technology.

“Science, manipulating forces of nature.”

Brightening, she nodded. “Yes. Such scientific arts are beyond you. None of us know such powers. They give knowledge to us, here and there. Crumbs from their large table.” Raising her arm, she pointed in a direction through the trees. “Long way. Don’t fear.”

He didn’t fear. But he remembered.
Tarig. The face, long and beautiful. It
crouched, looking down at him, its sinews sculpted from some bronze metal, one hand
raised, four-fingered, becoming a blade, slicing the air toward him. . . . He stepped forward,
muttering, “You will die now. It’s over.” Then he turned, delivering a backward
kick, thrusting hard into the Tarig’s midsection, sending him staggering to his knees.
In front of his eyes, he saw his fists bearing down on his enemy, and a great raptorlike
scream erupted. . . .

Anzi was standing in front of him, looking worried.

“I was a prisoner among the Tarig.”

Solemnly, she nodded, as though it saddened her. As though it were an awful thing.

“Hadenth,” Quinn continued. “He died.” The creature’s name was Hadenth. He was a prince of the Tarig. Felled by Quinn’s hand after the terrible thing that happened.

“No,” Anzi said. “He not dying. Wounding. He remember you.”

The prince was hurt, but still smiling.
The memory faded. “What did Hadenth do to me that I tried to kill him?”

Anzi shook her head. “Ask later, please.”

“No, tell me now.”

Her face hardened. “Later. Master Yulin says later.”

He grabbed her arm. “I say now.”

Anzi freed herself in a swift move that wrenched his arm. Her eyes cooled. “Never touch one trained as warrior. I will teach you how not.” She moved into a fighting stance. With lightning speed, her foot swiped out and knocked him to the ground.

He stood, slapping off the dust from his fall. Normally, it would have stopped there. She was a woman, and he had a big advantage of strength. But this was not a normal time. Blood boiled under the surface, and he lunged at her. Pivoting out of his way, she yanked on his arm, using his own momentum to send him staggering. Her strength took him completely by surprise. She followed up with a kick that hammered his shoulder.

When he collected himself again, she was standing, hands in front of her, ready to punch. She said evenly, “You do not fight yet. You do not speak yet. You are not free. Yet.”

Taunting as this was, she stated the truth. He’d just lost a fight with her. It galled him, but he couldn’t afford to alienate her like this—not when he needed her to inform him. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what happened.” She stared coldly at him. “Tell me, and then I’ll practice your language. Not before.” He needed to learn the language, so it was a bluff to negotiate, but he guessed she was under pressure to teach him, and he could exploit that.

She frowned at his demand. “You must learn following Path. We all, even Master Yulin, following Radiant Path. Learn obedience, yes please.”

“I have a different path, I think.”

They faced off for a long time. Her face was as still as porcelain. “You have path; I have path. But now one, you must know.”

He doubted that. He might be in the Entire, but he was of Earth, of his own path. These things could wait, but knowing his past couldn’t. “Anzi. Tell me.”

She glanced into the glen, as though worried Master Yulin would hear her. But she relented.

“Tarig sending Titus Quinn daughter away to far land where beings are who Tarig wish to be happy. They are the Inyx, rough creatures—of herd. One may ride upon such. And Inyx wish sentients to ride them. Daughter is a fine gift to the Inyx. The Inyx accept this gift. Long ago. But one thing they wish to be happy for . . .” She shook her head, wavering.

“Tell me.”

“That she must be a gift without sight. This the Tarig did. Took her sight.”

Quinn listened to the words, trying to process them. “Her sight?”

“She is blind.”

He paused, trying to register the words. “They blinded her?” He looked at her, waiting for her to retract this statement, but she didn’t. “Blinded her?” he repeated. Then he whispered, “How?”

“We have no knowing. Tarig are surgeons. They do this. But we hear Inyx riders keeping their own eyes, though not the sight in them.”

A bellow came up from his throat. He kicked savagely at a thick sapling, and it snapped in two, sending a crack into the forest like a rifle shot. Anzi watched this without flinching.

She waited as he demolished several other of the master’s plantings.

Finally he rested his forehead on the trunk of a tree that was more than a match for him.

His youngster, his sweet daughter. He gazed into the garden depths, whispering, “So I attacked the Tarig prince.”

From a distance, he heard Anzi say, “We heard. We are long way ago.”

“And now? Sydney still dwells there? With the Inaks?”

“Inyx, they are named. Perhaps she is there.”

He would get it all out now, quickly. “And Johanna?”

There was a very long silence. Quinn continued to stare into the forest, seeing trees and leaves and cages hidden among them, for the most dangerous animals. Like himself. They hadn’t discovered all the harm he could do. “And my wife?” he repeated.

Silence still.

He couldn’t bear to stretch it out. “Dead, then?”

“Dead.”

He heard her say this, perhaps in English, perhaps in her tongue. The dread that had been lurking in shadow now came into clear and awful light. He leaned against the tree looking at this odd girl, all white, all cold, mouthing words he desperately didn’t want to hear, and must.

“How did she die?”

Anzi couldn’t meet his gaze. “Of sadness, they saying.”

He whispered, “How do you know?”

“Everyone knows, of her dying of sad.”

She was dead. Had been, for many years. He closed his eyes. So now, how could it hurt this much? Such old news, and so fresh.

Quinn stared into the dark forest. He placed his hand on his pocket, feeling the paper inside. He pressed his hand against his chest, hanging his head.

Sydney. Blind, enslaved. What kind of hell was this, where a child was torn from her mother and blinded? Where a woman could be left to die of grief? Whatever this place was, it had kept Sydney too long, far too long. He would find this Inyx sway. And bring his daughter home.

“I promise,” he whispered. “Sydney, I promise.”

He wandered the garden a long while, avoiding Anzi, who followed him the rest of that day. When the twilight came he slept inside the hut, where it was almost dark. In misery, he tossed and fought with dreams.

Anzi woke him as the bright streamed through the window of his hut. He opened his eyes, wondering what the terrible thing was that had plagued his sleep. When he remembered Johanna and Sydney, he groaned, and clenched his eyes against the pain.

His keeper would have none of this. She’d brought hot food, and removed the top lid to entice him. To placate her, he took a few pieces of safe edibles.

She said, “We practice talk.”

He left the hut to go to the lake. Washing, he heard a new sound, a discordant music. Perhaps it came from the master’s house, though it seemed far away. Somewhere, people laughed and had music. Somewhere, perhaps Sydney laughed, heard music. She lived, at least. He held on to that.

When Quinn came back to the hut, Anzi rose, bowing. This bowing was odd. Good food, bowing. All to please a prisoner. He picked up the pictures that had lain beside him during the twilight, and tucked them in his pocket.

Anzi watched this, narrowing her eyes. “We now talk,” she said.

“Not today.”

“Yes, today.” Eyes cold, she challenged him. Would she fight him, to make him a good student?

She gestured for him to come with her. “I show you something new.”

Giving up on privacy, he followed her in a new direction into the garden. From the depths came alien cries as creatures woke up and screamed for their pails. From one nearby pen, hidden by foliage, issued a haunting, ululating scream that could belong to no Earth creature.

Anzi walked ahead, saying the name of a plant. When he didn’t repeat it, she stopped and pinned him with a stare. “You learn faster, Dai Shen.”

“Good. Glad you’re pleased.”

“I
not
pleased. You not pleased. Not when Master Yulin putting you in his lake.” She stopped, glaring at him. “Deep in.”

“Maybe I’m a slow learner.”

“Master Yulin not yet decide, if killing you.” She raised a finger like a schoolteacher. “But may. If not learning.”