How to Traverse Terra Incognita Read online

  “But Her Majesty says that everything is still too small,” the official continued. “Everything is too small to remember; that memory must be writ large; and that the streets stand sadly empty. It is Her Majesty’s will that the scale be larger.”

  Simon de los Santos stared unseeing at the ground, beset by sudden phantom aches.

  “You are to start again.”

  When the queen and her retinue had long gone, Simon de los Santos rode to the lone radio station that once served to broadcast his regular instructions to everyone involved in the project. He stared at the microphone for a moment, before taking out several sheets of paper. Then he began to read from the papers in his trembling hands, quietly thanking every project team leader. At a certain point he stopped, set down the congratulatory list he held, and spoke into the microphone.

  “My friends and colleagues, on behalf of the queen, I thank you for all your time and effort. I personally thank you for your commitment to seeing the project through. You are released from your duties, as this—part of the project is complete. Go back to your true homes, with pride in your part in this tremendous achievement. Goodnight and goodbye.”

  IN THE NEXT three years leading to Mon Jiera’s demise, these are the things Simon de los Santos did not do: make new plans for a larger replica, entertain questions about the mysterious next phase of the project, encash any of the monies allocated for the continuance of the project, judge any beauty pageants, nor watch the races.

  Instead he did two things: he waited and kept himself abreast of all the minutiae of the dying queen’s medical conditions.

  When he was informed at four o’clock one morning by his sources that the queen’s final day had at last arrived, Simon de los Santos dressed himself in his customary white linen suit and made his way in the predawn darkness to the rooms of suites on the top floor of the hospital, where the queen waited for death. Upon seeing the queen’s favorite, the officers and ornaments of the court respectfully accorded him privacy, with the guards stationed at the door the only other people in the room.

  “My Queen,” Simon de los Santos softly said, brazenly taking her small leathery hand in his.

  Mon Jiera, barely recognizable, opened her still-bright eyes.

  “My Queen,” he said. “Do you remember me?”

  Yes, she nodded once and with great effort.

  “Do you remember what you asked me to do for you?”

  No, she offered, looking at him uncertainly.

  “You tasked me to create a replica, so people could remember things as they are.”

  Ah, her eyes blinked.

  “The first one I built was too small, and the second was still not big enough to encompass memory.”

  Oh, her brow furrowed slightly.

  “For the third and final replica, I realized three things. First, it was as much for you, your memory, as it will be for those who come after all of us. Second, there is an insurmountable problem of scale. And third, I cannot build you what you asked for—but I can give it to you.”

  She looked at him.

  “Will you let me show you, My Queen?”

  Yes, she nodded.

  With great tenderness, he carried her in his arms, the vanished strength of his youth belied by the quiver in his hands, to the nearby armchair next to a window.

  And her hand in his, they waited.

  When dawn came, its radiance spilled first over the distant mountains, turning shadows into vibrant greens and browns. Then the roads sprang gently into the light, grey and black and white, stretching and winding and intersecting in the city, as the first motorists and bus drivers drove their vehicles of red and yellow and blue and silver. People began to appear: joggers, newspaper vendors, delivery men, schoolchildren in their khakis, in ones or twos at first, then as the sun rose, in clusters and crowds, as the city roared into life.

  When the sun was higher in the sky, when every tree and monument and lake and building was enveloped in sunshine, Mon Jiera sighed her thanks and leaned her head against her favorite.

  She smiled and took one last look at Simon’s replica.

  FALLOW’S FLIGHT

  FALLOW BEAT HIS thin grey wings against the thick air, struggling against the call of gravity, and made his approach toward the Aerie. Dozens of other dragons, all larger, all female, flew around the towering structure—their massive heads limned by haloes, their bodies glimmering with iridescence, their long powerful wings thrumming with every stroke. They dwarfed Fallow, as they did all males. These dragons were warriors.

  Just like Glorious was. Fallow shook his aged head, casting the sad thought away to the chill air. The old dragon landed gratefully on a rocky portico, folding back his wings with a grimace, and bowed his head to the dragon that guarded the area.

  “Good tidings,” Fallow said, touching the tip of his chin to the stone floor.

  “Good tidings, grayscale,” the Guard responded, flicking her obsidian eyes slowly. “What business do you have here at the Aerie?”

  “I am Fallow, nestsire of Glorious,” he answered. “I was invited—”

  “Ah, yes,” the Guard interrupted. “You are expected by The Scarlet Brigade.” She moved to one side and with a razorsharp claw pointed to a particular alcove.

  Fallow raised his head slightly, murmured his thanks, and moved into the cavernous interior of the Aerie. Around him numerous humans scuttled, each desperate to complete their endless tasks and even more desperate to keep out of any dragon’s way, all of them naked and longhaired, all of them beneath Fallow’s notice.

  Fallow, his heart heavy, found his way to the quarters of the Scarlet Brigade, where the members of his daughter’s battlekin were waiting for him.

  It was the Brigade’s leader, Terrible, who greeted him first, offering condolences as she loomed over Fallow, easily five times his size. He spoke the required words of acceptance in a respectful tone, averting his eyes from the dragon wreathed in emerald flame. Then the others followed suit: Resplendent, with her ochre-hued halo; Brilliant, whose coils could not hide her radiant sheen; Marvelous, who extended her gleaming wings to him in sympathy; and Shrewd, whose mellifluent words left subtle trails in the air.

  As each dragon spoke, Fallow struggled to rein in his sorrow, but found himself unable to deny the power of his daughter’s memory. She was one of them.

  “Glorious was among the best of us,” Terrible said to Fallow, raising the old grey dragon’s head up. Through eyes brimming with tears, he listened to the emerald dragon tell him how Glorious died, in battle against the hated Vora, each detail repeated by the other dragons, every aspect dwelt upon, recollected, and spoken.

  In the span of the telling, Fallow’s heart broke again, and he surrendered to the deep sorrow that only fathers could fathom, brushing away his freeflowing tears with his aching wings. Terrible and Glorious’s battlekin stopped speaking and gave his grief room to breathe, watching the nestsire of their fallen companion in stoic silence.

  Later, Terrible addressed him. “We wish to honor Glorious.”

  “Thank you,” Fallow managed. “You already honor her memory. I will remember your kindness to the end of my days.”

  “No, grayscale,” Shrewd told him gently. “With more than just words.”

  Fallow looked up with uncertainty.

  “We ask you to take her place,” Brilliant said.

  “But only once, only once in her memory,” Resplendent spoke.

  Fallow’s intake of breath was sharp, and embarrassment added to his confusion. “I don’t—I’m not certain I under—”

  “A flight in her honor,” Marvelous told him.

  Fallow suddenly felt wearier than he was. No male had ever flown in a Brigade. Males were too small, their abilities too weak for combat against the abhorrent Vora. No male could bear the secret haloes or wield etherflame. The request was absurd to his ears. And I am old. And I have a nest to raise. And I—

  “It would please us,” Terrible said, her words both he
avy and delicate. “Such an honor for Glorious; I’m certain you agree?”

  “Do not worry,” Resplendent said, with a smile filled with ivory. “It will be a simple thing.”

  “It is just a crèche run,” added Shrewd, nodding at Resplendent.

  “We will protect you,” Marvelous said. “Do not fear.”

  “It will be like flying with Glorious one last time,” Brilliant offered.

  Fallow’s words failed him. He could only nod. Glorious…

  “Excellent,” Terrible said briskly. “Now you may join us in selecting a burrower.”

  THE REVILED VORA resembled gigantic winged serpents, mindless forces of destruction that grew more and more resistant to the dragons’ power with each generation. They spent months in immense underground crèches, helpless and blind in the throes of maturation, before erupting from the earth fully-formed. The dragons exhausted vast resources seeking out nascent crèches in Vora territory, with the hope of preemptive strikes, before their enemies could grow. But when they found the crèches, they soon realized that haloes and etherflame could not reach deep enough into the earth to do much damage. And the dragons could not fit into, much less navigate, the twisting and turning passageways of the crèche’s interior. It did not take the Brigades long to fix upon a solution: send something small enough to fit, armed with explosive etherflame spheres of uncanny design. Their human thralls were perfect. But even the humans proved too large to reach the center of the crèche. That was when the dragons began sending human children.

  The breeding pits were ready for the arrival of the Scarlet Brigade, accompanied by Fallow. The dragons arranged themselves on a roughhewn ledge, as the keening human children were brought in front of them by frightened adults.

  “Each time, the prospects are less and less interesting,” Terrible said to Fallow. “It is as if they are afraid to breed.”

  “Animals have no such thoughts, I assure you,” Shrewd said. “It is simply a dismal year. It happens.”

  Fallow looked at the human children cowering, some on knees, few on their feet, most quivering on the ground. “I’ve never seen them this young.”

  Brilliant grunted. “These are of the golden window. Five to seven years of age. Small enough to fit, fit enough to run. Not so young as to be useless.”

  Fallow regarded Brilliant. “And we are to choose?”

  “Of course,” Brilliant replied, her eyes already on one that stood defiant and with dry eyes. “A crèche has been found and marked. Tonight we burn it in honor of Glorious.”

  Resplendent bowed briefly to Terrible. “Shall we proceed? It is halfway to sundown.”

  As Terrible nodded her assent, the Scarlet Brigade moved toward the wailing children, who were too petrified to move, and made their choices, hawking a ball of spittle that threatened to drown their selection.

  Fallow followed suit, marking the one closest to him. It’s you and me.

  IN THE AIR, hours later, a child secured around his neck by Terrible’s halo, Fallow experienced his first encounter with Vora. His wings had nearly given up in the first half-hour of flight, until his daughter’s battlekin remembered his frailty and empowered his thin and shaky forelimbs with glimmering etherflame. It was only because of this benison that he was able to maneuver when the Vora appeared, managing to dive then hide himself amid the scrublands. As he watched the Scarlet Brigade fight, he fought to stop himself from screaming, before realizing that it was the child, and not him, that was making the noise.

  Above him, the five dragons engaged the mass of Vora. Fallow could not determine how many the Scarlet Brigade were fighting—the Vora fought in a tight mass of twisting bodies and madly beating wings. He could not understand what the immense warrior dragons were doing exactly, being a stranger to the workings of war. He saw Marvelous drive through the mass, like a crazed felodisé. He watched Brilliant and Resplendent’s wings shimmer in a cascade of color, causing Vora to separate from the undulating serpentine ball, as Shrewd, wreathed in violent violet, attacked stragglers with tooth and claw. But it was the largest of the Scarlet Brigade that commanded Fallow’s attention—Terrible, who for a moment hung suspended in the twilight sky in solitude; Terrible, who was engulfed by seemingly endless numbers of Vora; Terrible, who with a mighty roar burned away the serpents that covered her, her halo a garish red in the aftermath of the conflagration.

  When it was over, Fallow joined them in the air.

  “We’re very near,” Terrible told him. “Expect more resistance.”

  Fallow’s heart sank.

  The Scarlet Brigade encountered, and defeated, three more waves of Vora. By that time, the child Fallow wore around his neck, like a pendant, had exhausted all ability to scream.

  The crèche protruded from the barren ground in a series of hillocks, each riddled with irregularly shaped fissures, gaps, and holes. In the air, Terrible assigned each of her battlekin an area to deposit their burrowers, except for Brilliant and herself, whose human cargo had perished in one or another of the altercations with Vora. Resplendent, Marvelous, and Shrewd flew off to their designations.

  “As for Glorious’s, grayscale,” Terrible said in a strange tone, “you may have the lowest point, where your human child can best make ingress. Brilliant will accompany you.”

  Brilliant selected a suitable point of ingress, a wide gap that dove steeply down the crèche. “Release the burrower here.”

  Fallow hesitated for a brief moment before lowering his head. The power of the halo that bound the small child to his body dissipated upon contact with the earth. The child curled into a ball.

  “Go on,” Fallow told the child gently, his heart awash with feelings he dared not articulate. “Go on, now.”

  Before the child could move or signal understanding, Brilliant aimed a thin stream of radiant fire at a point near the child. The young female jumped up with a soundless cry and scurried into the hole, the etherflame sphere bound to her back triggered by Brilliant’s exhalation, pushing the child towards the center of the crèche.

  Fallow watched her disappear into the darkness.

  “Come.” Brilliant’s words intruded into Fallow’s thoughts. “The others must be done.”

  Fallow fought for the right words. “But she—”

  “Ah,” Brilliant said, extending her broad glimmering wings. “She knows, I’m sure. Glorious knows you’ve done her proud. Now let us take wing, grayscale. The others are waiting.”

  In Brilliant’s wake, Fallow turned his old face once towards the crèche, unspeakable words colliding with notions of honor and sacrifice lodged in his head, and found that he could no longer cast away any of his sad thoughts.

  IN THE CITY OF A THOUSAND GODS

  JINOVE HARGAM DIDN’T raise his eyes from the thick sheaf of scrolls and papers he was reviewing, when the next supplicant came through the door of his cramped workspace.

  “House of Garmoleth the Unblinking?” Jinove asked, while waving an unencumbered hand to an empty seat in front of his sagging desk.

  “Yes, good Clerk,” the heavyset man replied, before settling himself in the chair, arranging the various necklaces and trinkets he wore around his neck.

  Jinove finally regarded the man. “I remember you, sir,” he said with barely concealed annoyance. “And I remember what I told you the last time you came as a supplicant. It was the same thing I told you all the times before then. And it is the same thing I will tell you now, because nothing has changed.”

  “But, good Clerk—” the large man began.

  “No, no.” Jinove interrupted him with a swift gesture. “Nothing has changed. There is still no room in the City. There is a waiting list and, yes, the House of Garmoleth is on it. Is the first one on the list, in fact. But there is still no room.”

  Jinove barely listened to the supplicant, as the man began to gesticulate in the air. Instead, he closed his eyes and rubbed the left side of his head, where his hair was grayest, as he reflected on how much he tired of his work
. And with the seemingly endless conquests of the Imperial Forces, he suspected he’d be performing the same tasks for the rest of his natural life.

  Every time the Divided Empire expanded, it enforced among the conquered peoples, along with its ubiquitous aqueducts, roads, and economics, the Edict of the One God. This entailed complete suppression of whatever local faiths were in existence, the sequestration of all religious properties, and the wholesale relocation of its priests and movable effects to Urbem Deorum, the City of the Gods, the only place in the Empire where they could continue their worship. Conceived as a series of concentric circles around Mount Eluvium, the specific site permitted by the Oracle of the magnanimous One God, the cityplanners could not have foreseen the relentless appetite for conquest of the future Emperors. Within eight generations, the walls of the City of Gods were bursting with over a thousand displaced faiths—its stairway skyline uneven with the encircling plinths, domes, and steeples; its air thick with the babble of polyglot prayers; its streets crowded with the devotees garbed in the manner of disparate faiths from across the length and breadth of the Divided Empire.

  By the terms of the Edict of the One God, displaced religions could only practice within the environs of the City. When the City could no longer make room for new conquered faiths, those faithful were forced to wait outside the City walls—forbidden to make the smallest expression of belief, unable to even speak the name of their gods, upon the pain of death. Naturally, it became a distinct goal for the displaced to secure space within the City, for the continuance of their faith. The Governor of Urbem Deorum created the Department of Supplication to handle the issues that arose because of the effects of forced relocation and lack of space.

  It was in this Department that Jinove spent his daylight hours, a third-tier Clerk past his prime, usually assigned the repetitive chores of collating copies of public religious speeches, helping manage the flow of pilgrims in and out of the City, and reviewing the supplicant religions’ papers, then telling them to wait. He dreamed of being able to stay at home, responsible only for the space allocation of the flowers in his small garden.