By John C
Wright
We who live within this mountain-sized fortress
of a million windows of shining light, we cannot
see, where flat high rocky plains lift their faces
into our light, the long dark shadows cast by the
rocks and hillocks and moss-bushes radiating away
from the pyramid; darkness that never moves,
straight and level as if drawn by a ruler. Even
the smallest rock has a train of shadow trailing
away from it, reaching out into the general night,
so that, looking left and right, the traveler sees
what seem to be a hundred hundred long fingers of
gloom, all pointing straight toward the Last
Redoubt of Man.
But no traveler is unwise enough to step into
such a high plain lit so well. The bottom mile of
the pyramid is darkened, her base-level cities
long abandoned, and the lower windows covered over
with armor plate. A skirt, as it were, of shadow
surrounded the base of the pyramid, and one must
travel away from the pyramid to expose oneself to
the shining of the many windows of the Last
Redoubt; even before leaving the protection of the
skirt of shadow, there are many places where the
ground has been tormented into crooked dells and
ragged shapes, dry canyons, or deep scars from the
ancient glaciers or the far more ancient weapons
of prehistory. Such broken ground I sought.
I entered the canyons to the west within the
first two hours of traveling, and encountered no
beasts, no forces of horror.
My way was blocked by a river of boiling mud
shown on none of our maps. The telescopes and
viewing tables of our pyramid had never noted it,
despite that it was so close to us, for ash
floated in a layer atop the mud-flow, and was the
same hue as the ground itself. It was not visible
to me until my foot broke the sticky surface and I
scalded my foot. Perhaps it was newly-erupted from
some fire-hole; or perhaps it had been here for
centuries. We know so little.
This mud river drove me south and curving around
the side of the pyramid, and I marched thirty
hours and three. I ate twice of the tablets, and
slept once, finding a warm space behind a tall
rock where heat and some uncouth vapor escaped
from a rent in the ground.
Before I slept, I probed the sand near the rent
with the hilt of my Diskos, and a little serpent,
no more than an ell in length, reared up. It was a
blind albino worm, of the kind called the
amphisbaena, for its tail had a scorpion’s
stinger. I slew it with a fire-glittering stroke
from my roaring weapon, and the heavy blade passed
through the worm as it were made of air, and the
halves were flung smoking to either side. It was
with great contentment I slept, deeming myself to
be a mighty hero and a slayer of monsters.
*****************
The encampment and stronghold of Usire, I knew
from my books, and from my memory-dreams, lay to
the north by north west beyond the shoulders and
back of the Northwest Watching Thing. There are
other watchers more dreadful, but none is more
alert, for the ground to the Northwest is a wide
and flat in prospect, and it is lit by the Vale of
Red Fire; and there is neither a crown nor
eye-beam nor wide dome of light to interfere with
the view the monster commands.
To go to the country beyond the creature, my way
must go far around, for the North way was too well
watched. To my West was the Pit of Red Smoke
itself, a land of boiling chasms and lakes of
fire, impassible. To the East of me, I could see
the silhouette of the Gray Dunes: and here was a
sunken country populated by thin and stilt-legged
creatures, much in shape like featherless birds,
and they carried iron hooks, and they were very
careful never to expose themselves to the windows
of the pyramid as they stirred and crawled from
pit to pit. The canyon-walls were riddled with
black doorways, from whence, now and again, the
Wailing which gives the Place of Wailing its name
would rise from these doorways, and the
bird-things would caper silently and flourish
their hooks. To the east I would not go.
I went South.
Each time I rose after snatched sleep, the
shapes of two of the Great Watching Things, malign
and silent, were closer and clearer to my gaze.
First, to my right, rising, vast and motionless,
the Thing of the Southwest was but a dim
silhouette, larger than a hill. It was alive, but
not as we know life. There was a crack in the
ground at its feet, from which a beam of light
rose, to illume part of that monster-cheek, and
cast shadows across its lowering brow. Its bright
left eye hung in the blackness, slit-pupilled and
covered with red veins, seemingly as big as the
Full Moon that once hung above a world whose
nights came and went.
Some say this eye is blinded by the beam, and
that the beam was sent by Good Forces to preserve
us. Others say the beam assists the eye to cast
its baleful influence upon us, for it is noted by
those whose business it is to study nightmares,
that this great catlike eye appears more often in
our dreams than any other image of the Night
Lands.
I remember my mother telling me once, how a time
came when that great eye, over a period of weeks,
was seen to close; and a great celebration was
held in the many cities of the pyramid, and they
celebrated for a reason they knew not why. They
knew only that the eye had never before been known
to close. But the lid was not to stay closed
forever and aye; in eleven year’s time, a crack
had appeared between the upper and nether lid, for
the monster was only blinking a blink. Each year
the crack widened. By the time I was born, the eye
was fully opened, and so it had been all of my
life.
Second, to my left was the great Watching Thing
of the South, which is larger and younger than the
other Watching Things, being only some three
million years ago that it emerged from the
darkness of the unexplored southern lands,
advancing several inches a decade, and it passed
over the Road Where the Silent Ones Walk between
twenty-five and twenty-four hundred thousand years
ago.
Then, suddenly, some twenty-two hundred thousand
years ago, before its mighty paws, there opened a
rent in the ground, from which a pearl or bubble
of pure white light rose into view. Over many
centuries the pearl grew to form a great smooth
dome some half a mile broad. The Watching Thing of
the South placed its paw on the dome, and it rises
no further, but neither has the Watching Thing
advanced across that mighty dome of light in all
these years.
It is known from prophecy that this is the
Watcher who will break open the doors of the
Pyramid with one stroke of its paw, some four and
a half million years from now, but that the death
of all mankind will be prevented for another half
million years by a pale and slender strand of
white light that will emerge from the ground at
the very threshold of the great gates. More than
this, the dreams of the future do not tell.
Between the Watching Thing of the South and of
the South-West, the Road Where the Silent Ones
Walk runs across a dark land. The Road was broad,
and could not be crossed except in the full view
of the Watching Things to the South and the
South-West. But the ground on the far side of the
Road is dim, lit by few fire-pits, and coated with
rubble and drifts of black snow, where a man could
hide.
In this direction was my only hope. Suppose that
the eye-beam does indeed blind the right eye of
the Watching Thing of the South-West, and suppose
again that the dome of light troubles the vision
of the Great Watcher of the South more than the
Monstruwacans have guessed: I could cross the
Great Road on the blind-side of the South-West
monster, and sneak between him and his brother,
perhaps to hide among the black snow-drifts
beyond. I would then follow the road as it wound
past the place of the Abhumans, and then leave the
road and venture north, into the unknown country
called the Place Where the Silent Ones Kill.
*****************
Many weeks of terror and hardship passed, and my
supplies grew sparse.
Once an party of abhumans came upon me by
surprise; I slew two of them with my Diskos,
though it was a near thing, and I fled when the
others stopped to chew their comrade.
Once a luminous manifestation meant to wrap me
in her misty arms; but the fire which spun from my
weapon could do hurt to subtle substances even
when there was no material substance for the blade
to bite; swirled lightning dispelled part of the
tension that held her cloudy fingers together, and
she flew off, maimed and sobbing.
Once a Night-Hound ran at me suddenly from the
darkness, and I chopped him in the neck before he
could rend me; the blade of the Diskos shot sparks
into the smoldering wound, and the monster’s huge
limbs jerked and danced as it fell, and it could
not control its jaws enough to bite me. A soft
voice from the corpse called me by name and spoke
words of ill to me, but I fled. I will not write
down the words in this place: it is not good to
heed things heard in the Night Land.
*****************
As I passed through the abhuman lands, they grew
aware of me, and hunted me.
I was driven far away from the Road into lands
that grew ever colder. Each time I lay down to
sleep, the hills between me and the Pyramid were
higher. A time came when I passed beyond the sight
of the Last Redoubt; even the tallest tower of the
Monstruwacans was not tall enough to see into this
land where I now found myself. I was beyond all
maps, all reckoning.
At first, I walked. Each score of hours my dial
counted, I slept four. Because there were
crevasses, I struck the ice before me with the
haft of my weapon as I walked. Then I grew aware
of how loudly the echo of my metallic taps floated
away across the utter darkness of the icy world,
and I grew very afraid.
After this, I crawled across the ice in utter
blackness. I surely crawled in circles.
After four score more hours, about half a week
of crawling, I felt a pressure in the air. It was
so malign that I was certain one of the Outer
Presences must be standing near. All was utter
black, and I saw nothing but ghosts of light
starved eyes create.
For about an hour I crouched with my forearm
bare, my hand numb without my gauntlet, and the
capsule touching my lips; but the pressure against
my spirit grew no greater. I heard no sound.
So I crawled away. Over many hours I crawled and
slept and crawled again, but whatever stood on the
ice behind me, I could sense its power even as a
blind man can feel when the door of an oven is
opened across the room. I took my bearings from
this, and kept the power forever behind me.
A time came when I saw light in the distance. I
went toward it, and, over very many hours, I began
to sense the downward slope of the ice. The path
soon became broken, and I crawled from crag to
crag, from high hill to low hill of ice.
The light grew clearer as I trudged down the
mighty slope of ice, and I could see the footing
well enough to walk. I put my spyglass to my eye,
and scanned the horizon.
Here I saw, looming huge and strange, the head
and shoulders of the Northwest Watching Thing. The
crown of its head was mingled with the clouds and
smokes of the Night Land; and to the left and
right of his shoulders, like wings, I saw long,
streaming shafts of pure and radiant light. This
was the reflected glow of the Last Redoubt, bright
the dark air of the night world.
I was behind the Watcher; seeing it from an
angle no human person had ever seen it. The Last
Redoubt was blocked from view; I was in the shadow
of the monster.
A cold awe ran through me then, as if a man from
the ancient times were to wake to find himself on
the side of the moon (back when there was a moon)
that forever turned its face away from earth.
I had come into the Place Where the Silent Ones
Kill.
*****************
When Hellenore’s father forbad the courting of
Perithoös to go forward, they began to meet by
secret, and my father’s mansions, the darkened
passages of Darklairstead, were used for the
rendezvous. I helped Perithoös because he asked it
of me, and I felt obligated to do him a good turn,
even though it troubled me. As for Hellenore, she
was beautiful and I was young. She barely knew I
existed, but I could deny her nothing. She many
suitors; how I envied them!
Once, not entirely by accident, I came across
where Perithoös and Hellenore sat alone in a bower
before a fountain in the greenhouse down the
corridor not far from the doors of my father’s
officer’s country. The greenhouse was built along
the stairs of Waterfall Park, downstream from
where a main broke a thousand years ago. Near the
top, it is a sloping land of green ferns under
bright lamps, and the water bubbles white as it
tumbles from stair to stair, with small ponds
shining at the landings. Near the bottom, the
ceiling is far away, and the lamps were dim. At
the bottom landing is a statue of the Founder’s
Lady, surrounded by naiads, and water poured from
their ewers into a pond bright with dappled fish
whose fins were fine as moth-wings.
Through the obscuring leaves that half-hid them,
I saw Perithoös sitting on the grass, his back
resting on the fountain’s raised lip, and one arm
around Hellenore’s bare shoulders. In his other
hand, he held a little book of metal, of the kind
whose pages turn themselves, and the letters
shined like gems; ferns and flowering iris grew to
their left and right, half-surrounding the pair in
flowery walls. Her head was on his shoulder, and
her dark hair was like a waterfall of darkness,
clouding his neck and chest.
In this wing of the greenhouse, many of the
lamps had died a century ago, and so the air was
half as bright here as elsewhere. To me, the view
seemed like a cloudy day, or a sunset; but I was
the only one in all mankind who knew what twilight
was. How strange that, so many millions of years
after it could not ever be found again, lovers
still sought twilight.
As I approached, I heard Hellenore’s soft
laugh-but when she spoke, her whisper was cross.
"Here he comes, just as I foresaw."
Perithoös whispered back, "The boy is sick for
love of you, but too polite to say aloud what is
in his mind."
"But not polite enough to stay where he is not
welcome!" she scolded.
"Hush! He hears us now."
I pushed aside the leafy mass of fern. Crystal
drops, as small as tears, clung to the little
leaves, and wetted me when I stepped forward.
Now she was primly kneeling half a yard from
him, and her elbows were in the air, for she had
pulled her hair up, and, in some fashion I could
not fathom, fixed it in place with a swift and
single twist of her hands. The same gesture had
drawn her silken sleeves (that had been falling
halfway to her elbow) back up to cover her
shoulders.
Perithoös, one elbow languidly on the fountain
lip, waved his book airily at me, the most casual
of salutes. "Telemachos! The lad who lived a
million lives before! What a surprise this would
have been, eh?" And he smiled at Hellenore.
I bowed toward her and nodded toward him.
"Milady. Perithoös. Excuse me. I was just…"
Hellenore favored me with one cool glance from
her exotic, tip-tilted eyes, and turned her head,
her slender hands still busy pinning her hair in
place. If anything, her profile was more fair than
her straight glance, for now she was looking down
(I saw that there were amethyst-tipped hair-pins
driven point-first in the soil at her knees) , and
the drop of her lashes gave her an aspect both
pensive and demur, achingly lovely.
Seeing himself ignored, Perithoös plucked up a
fern-leaf, and reached over to tickle Hellenore’s
ear. She frowned (though, clearly, she was not
displeased) and made as if to stab his hand with
one of her jeweled pins.
Perithoös playfully (but swifter than the eye
could see) grabbed her slender wrist with his free
hand before she could stab him, and perhaps would
have done more, but he saw my eyes on him, and
casually released her. I wondered how he dared be
so rough with a woman so refined and reserved; but
she was smothering a smile, and her dark eyes
danced when she looked on him.
I said awkwardly in the silence, "I had not
expected to find you here."
Perithoös, "By which you mean, you expected us
to flee before we let ourselves be found. Come
now! There is no need to be polite with me-I see
all your dark thoughts. You came to gaze on
Hellenore. Well, who would not? She knows it as
well. How many suitors have you now, golden girl?
Three hundred?"
My heartbeat was in my face, for I was blushing.
But I said merely, "I hope you see my brighter
thoughts as well. Of the three of us, surely one
should be polite."
Perithoös laughed loudly, and was about (I could
see from his gesture) to tell me to go away; but
Hellenore, her calm unruffled, spoke in her voice
that I and I alone knew had the cooing of doves in
it: "Please sit. We were reading from a new book.
There are scholars in South Bay Window, on level
475, who have challenged all the schoolmen, and
wish to reform the ways the young are taught."
I did sit, and I thought that Hellenore must
have been well-bred indeed, to invite so unwelcome
an intruder as I was, to consume the brief time
she had to share with her young wooer.
She passed the book to me, but I read nothing.
Instead, I was staring at sketches that had been
penned into the flyleaves. "Whose hand is this?" I
said, my voice hoarse.
Hellenore tilted her head, puzzled, but answered
that the drawings were her own, taken from her
dreams.
"I know," I said, my head bowed. And by the time
I raised my eyes, I had remembered many strange
things, things that had happened to me, but not in
this life.
They both looked so young, so achingly young, so
full of the pompous folly and charming energy of
youth. So inexperienced.
Perithoös was looking at me oddly. Though I do
not have his gift, I would venture that I knew his
thought, then: He saw what I was thinking, but did
not know how someone my age could be thinking it.
Perithoös said, "Telemachos will be against it,
no matter what the South Bay Window scholars
suggest. All new things pucker up his mouth, for
they are sour to his taste."
"Only when they are worse than the old things."
I said.
Perithoös tossed a leaf at me: "For you, that is
each time."
"Almost each time. Mostly, what is called ‘new’
is nothing more than old mistakes decked out in
new garb."
"The New Learning is revolutionary and hopeful.
Come! Shake off the old horrors of old dreams! The
world is less hideous than we thought. These
studies prove that the outside was never meant for
man; do you see the implication?"
I shook my head.
He said happily: "It implies that our ancestors
did not come from the Night Lands. We are not the
last of a defeat peoples, no, but the first of a
race destined to conquer! The Bay scholars claim
that we have always dwelt in this pyramid, and
deny what the old myths say. Look at the size and
shape of the doors and door-handles. It was clear
that men first evolved from marmosets and other
creatures in the zoological gardens. Our ancestors
kept other creatures who bore live young, cats and
dogs and homunculi, you see, in special houses,
this was back before the Second Age of Starvation.
I assume our ancestors ate them to extinction."
I blinked at him, wondering if he had lost his
mind, or if I had lost my ability to tell when he
was joking. " ‘Evolved’?"
"By natural selection. Blind chance. We were the
first animals who were of a size and stature to
pass easily down these corridors and enter and
exist the places here. Other creatures were too
large or too small, and these were cast out in the
Night Land after many unrecorded wars of
prehistory. The New Learning allows us hope to
escape from the promise of universal death for our
race: We need merely wait for the time when we
will evolve to be suited to fit the environment
outside; and we will be changed; and those horrors
will no longer seem hideous to the changed brains
of the creatures we shall become."
I said sternly: "The Old Learning speaks of such
a possibility as well. It is hinted that the
abhumans were once True Men, before the House of
Silence altered them. The tradition of the Capsule
of release is not without roots."
"Prejudice! Antique parochialism! The only
reason why what we think of as True Men prevailed,
is because our hands were best fitted to work the
controls of the lifts and valves, our eyes best
adapted to the lighting conditions, and we were
small enough to enter the crawlspaces if giants
chased us. Those giants outside are outside
because they were too big for these chambers."
"And if we never dwelt in any place except this
pyramid, whence came the ancestress of Hellenore?
Whence came Mirdath? Or does your book prove she
does not exist as well?"
He opened his mouth, glanced at Hellenore (who
gave him an arch look), and closed it again. He
dismissed the question with an airy wave of his
hand. "Whatever might be the case here, skepticism
will break down all the old rules and old ways,
and leave us free. To live as we wish and love as
we wish! Who could not long for such a thing?"
"Those who know the barren places where such
wishful thinking leads," I said heavily, climbing
to my feet.
Unexpectedly, Perithoös seemed angry. He shook
his finger at me. "And where does thinking like
yours lead, Telemachos? Are we always to be frozen
in place, living the lives our ancestors lived?"
I did not then guess (though I should have) what
provoked him. The traditional way of arranging a
marriage, and so, by extension, the traditional
way of doing anything, could not have had much
appeal for him, not just then.
I spoke more sternly than I should have: "We are
men born in a land of eternal darkness. We grope
where we cannot see clearly. Why mistrust what
ancient books say? Why mistrust our souls say? Our
forefathers gave us this lamp, and the flame was
lit in brighter days, when men saw further. I
agree the lamp-light of such far-off lore, is dim
for us; but surely that proves it to be folly, not
wisdom, to cast the lamp aside: for then we are
blind."
He said: "What use is light to us, if all it
shows us it images of horror?"
I said, "There are still great deeds to be done;
there will be heroes in times to come." And I did
not say aloud, but surely Perithoös saw my
thought: unless this generation makes all its
children to forget what heroism is.
"Bah!" said Perithoös. His anger was hidden now,
smothered somewhat beneath a show of
light-heartedness. He smiled. "Will our writings
be published in any other place than within these
walls? Why will we do praiseworthy acts, when we
know there will be nothing and no one left to sing
our praises? Even you, who claims you will be born
once more, will have no place left to be born
into, when this redoubt falls."
I said, "Do not be jealous. I am not unlike you.
This life could be my final one. You both have had
others you forget; but this could be the first you
will remember next time."
Perithoös looked troubled when I said this; I
saw on his face how eerie my words (which seemed
so normal to me) must have sounded to him.
Hellenore said eagerly, "What do you remember of
us? Were Perithoös and I-" But then she broke off
and finished haltingly; "How did the three of us
know each other before?"
I said, "You were one of Usire’s company, and
lived in a strong place, a place of encampment, in
a valley our telescopes no longer see, for the
Watching Thing of the Northwest moved to block the
view, once the House of Silence smothered the area
with its influence. You, milady, were an
architect, for women studied the liberal arts in
those strange times; and you were possessed of the
same gift you have now. In those times, you saw
these ages now, and you sculpted one of the
orichalcum doors before the main museum of Usire’s
stronghold, and wrought the door-panels with
images of things to come."
Perithoös smiled sourly. "What Telemachos is not
willing to say is …."
I interrupted him. "Madame, I was favored by you
then, though I was of high rank and you were not.
I help sculpt the other door with images of things
that had been."
Hellenore looked embarrassed. I hope my face did
not show the shame I felt.
I turned to Perithoös, but I continued speaking
to Hellenore, though I did not look at her. "What
Perithoös is not willing to say is-since we are
being honest and free with each other’s secrets-he
cannot fathom why I am not jealous of your love
for him, even though he can see in my mind that I
am not. He sees it, but he does not believe it.
But that is the answer. Last time, he lost. This
time, me. It does not mean we are not friends and
always will be."
Hellenore was disquieted: I could see the look
in her eye. "So I have not loved the same man in
all ages, in every life…"
She was no doubt thinking of Mirdath the
Beautiful, whose own true love was constant
through all time.
I said awkwardly: "You have always loved noble
men."
But she was looking doubtfully at Perithoös, and
he was looking angrily at me. Odd that he was now
angry. Surely I had said no more than what he had
been about to say was in my mind. But perhaps he
did not expect Hellenore to take seriously the
thought that they were not eternal lovers.
Perithoös said: "No doubt if we three are born
in some remote age in the future, and find
ourselves the very last left living of mankind,
you will seek to do the noble deed of poisoning
minds against me, and worming your way into to
intimacies where you are not wanted! Is this the
kind of praiseworthy and noble things you
practice, Telemachos?"
Angry answers rose to my lips, but I knew that,
even if I did not say them aloud, Perithöos would
see them burning in my heart. With no more than a
nod, and a muttered apology (how glad I was later
to have uttered it, even if they did not hear!) I
spun on my heel and marched from the grove,
dashing the wet ferns away from my face with
awkward gestures. The scattered drops dripped down
my cheeks.
Behind me, I heard Hellenore saying, "Don’t
speak ill of Telemachos!"
Perithoös spoke in a voice of surprise. "What is
this?" (which I took to be a sign that she had not
had in her mind what to say before she spoke).
She said, "I foresee that my family will bring
more pressure to bear against Telemachos, for my
father suspects he knows the secret places where
we meet. He will bear it manfully, and not betray
us, though his family will suffer for it-you have
chosen your friend well, Perithoös."
Perithoös said, "Ah. Well, he actually chose
me."
She murmured something softly back. By then I
was out of ear-shot.
*****************
My dial marked sixty hours passing while I
descended the icy slope into this land, Place
Where the Silent Ones Kill , and I slept twice and
ate of the tablets three times. The altimeter
built into the dial measured the descent to be
twenty-two thousand feet. During the middle part
of that time, I passed through an area of cold
mists where the air was unhealthy, and left me
dazed and sick.
This area of bad mist was a low-hanging layer of
cloud. The cloud formed an unseen ceiling over a
dark land of ash cones, craters, and dry
riverbeds, lit now and again by strange, slow
flares of gray light from overhead. The ash cones
in this area were tall enough to be decapitated by
the low-hanging clouds. I spent another thirty
hours wandering at random in this land, hoping to
stumble across some feature or landmark I would
know from my memory-dreams.
Once, a flickering gray light of particular
intensity trembled through the clouds above. I saw
the silhouette of what I thought (at first) was
yet one more ash cone; but it had a profile; I saw
heavy brows, slanting cheeks, the muzzle and
mouth-parts of a Behemoth, but huge, far more huge
than any of his cousins ever seen near the Last
Redoubt. A new breed of them, perhaps? It was as
still as a Watching Thing, and a terrible
awareness, a sense of sleepless vigilance came
from it. It was taller than a Fixed Giant, for the
dread face was wrapped partly in the low-hanging
clouds, and wisps blew across its burning,
horrible eyes. How one of that kind had come to be
here, or why, was a mystery before which I am
mute.
I looked left and right. In the dim and seething
half-light of the cloud overhead, it seemed to me
that there were other Behemoths here; two more I
saw staring north, their eyes unwinking. I
traveled along the bottoms of the dead river-beds
after that, hoping to avoid the gaze of the
Behemoths: but now I knew the place I sought lay
in the direction the giant creatures faced.
The gray light faded, and I walked in darkness
for thirty-five hours. A briefer flare of gray
light came again; and I saw, in the distance, a
great inhuman face gazing toward me, and yet I saw
nearer at hand, another Behemoth to my left facing
toward him. By these signs, I knew the massive
shadow rising between me and that far Behemoth was
what I sought.
The colorless light-flare ended, and all was
dark as a tomb. But I felt a faint pressure, as of
extraterrestrial thought reaching out, and I
feared the Behemoth facing me, over all those
miles, had seen me.
I crept forward more warily. The ground here was
becoming irregular underfoot, sloping downward. I
walked and crawled across the jagged slabs of
broken rock I found beneath my feet and fingers,
ever downward. I could not see enough to confirm
whether this was a crater-lip.
After another mile, ground changed under my
hands. Here there was ash and sand underfoot, for
soft debris, over the aeons, had filled this
crater-bottom. I was able to stand and move
without much noise, and I waved the haft of my
weapon before me in the dark as I walked, the
blade unlit, like a blind-man’s cane, hoping it
would warn me of rocks or sudden pits or the legs
of motionless giants.
After an hour’s walk or two, under my boot, I
felt smooth and hard stones. Stooping, I traced
their shape in the dark. They were square, fitted
together. Manmade. A road. A few more steps along,
I felt something looming the utter dark near me:
by touch, I found it was a stele, a mile-stone cut
with letters of an ancient language.
I knew the glyphs from former lives: the name
spelled USIRE.
One hundred, two hundred paces further on, and
my fingers touched the pillars and post of a great
gate. I touched a bent shape that had once been a
hinge: I touched the broken gate-bars, the
shattered cylinders that had once been pistons
holding these doors shut against the night.
Beyond the doors, I felt nothing but more sand,
and here and there a slab of stone or huge column
of bent and rusted metal. I sensed nothing alive
here; no Earth-current pulsing through
power-lines; no throb of living metal. The place
where wholesome men dwell often will carry a sense
in the aether, like the perfume of a beautiful
woman who has just left the chamber, a hint that
something wholesome and fair had once been here:
there was nothing like that here.
Instead, I felt a coldness. I felt no horror or
fear in my heart, and I realized how strange that
must be.
I was surely near the center of where a ring of
the Behemoths bent their gazes; even in the dark,
I should have felt it as a weight on my heart, a
sense of suffocation in my soul. Instead I was at
ease.
Or else benumbed.
How very silent it was here!
Slowly at first, and then with greater speed, I
backed away from the broken gates that once had
housed the stronghold of Usire. Blind in the utter
dark, I ran.
I was in still the open when the gray light came
again, and slowly trembled from cloud to cloud
overhead, lighting the ground below with fits and
starts, a dull beam touching here, a momentary
curtain of light falling there, allowing colorless
images to appear and disappear.
I beheld a mighty ruin where once had been a
metropolis; its dome was shattered and rent, and
its towers were utterly dark. Here and there among
the towers were shapes that were not towers, and
their expressionless eyes were turned down;
watching the ruins at their feet, waiting with
eternal, immortal patience, for some further sign
of the life that had been quenched here, countless
ages ago.
More than merely giants stood waiting here. The
gray light shifted through the clouds, and beams
fell near me.
A great company of hooded figures, shrouded in
long gray veils, stood without noise or motion
facing the broken walls. They were tall as tall
men, but more slender. The nearest was not more
than twelve feet from me, but its hood was facing
away.
There next two of the coven stood perhaps twenty
feet from me, near the broken gate; it was a
miracle I had not brushed against them in the dark
as I crept between them, unknowing of my danger.
Even as quiet as I was, how had they not heard the
tiny noises I had made, creeping in their very
midst?
Then I knew. It was not the noise carried by the
air they heeded. It was not with ears they heard.
They were spirits mighty, fell, and terrible, and
they did never sleep nor pause in their watch. A
hundred years, a thousand, a million, meant
nothing to them. They had been waiting for some
unwise child of man to sneak forth from the Last
Redoubt to find the empty house of Usire, dead
these many years. They had been waiting for a
thought of fear to touch among them: fear like
mine.
With one accord, making no sound at all, the
dozens of hooded figures turned, and the hoods now
faced me.
I felt a coldness enter into my heart, and I
knew that I was about to die, for I felt the
coldness somehow (and I know not how this could
be, and I know not how I knew it) was swallowing
the very matter and substance of my heart into an
awful silence. My cells, my blood, my nerves, were
being robbed of life, or of the properties of
matter that allow physical creatures such as man
to be alive.
I turned to flee, but I fell, for my legs had
turned cold. I made to raise my forearm to my lips
and bite down on the capsule, but my arm would not
obey. My other arm was numb also, and the great
weapon fell from my fingers. Nor could my spirit
sense the power in the metal any longer, despite
that the shaft and blade were still whole. The
Diskos was still alive, but I wondered if its soul
had been Destroyed, and feared I was to follow.
Then I could neither move my eyes nor close
them. Above me there was only black cloud, lit
here and there with a creeping gray half-light. A
sharp rock was pushed into the joint between my
gorget and the neck-piece of my helm, so that my
head was craned back at a painful angle; and yet I
could not lift my head.
The Silent Ones made no noise, and I could not
see if they approached, but in my soul I felt them
drifting near, their empty hoods bent toward me,
solemn and quiet.
Then the clouds above me parted.
I saw a star.
© John
C Wright 19 Jan 2003
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