The Books of Knowledge
Slate looked over at the silhouette of Arianna asleep in the seat next to him. Or so he thought she was asleep; she must have sensed Slate was staring at her, because she opened her eyes.
“Watching me sleep, Slate?
No, I was looking out the window,” Slate lied. “You’re just in my line of vision.”
“Mmm, I see. Where are we?” Arianna asked as she sat up and gave Pilotte a scratch.
“Outside of Doth.
Doth? I’ve never heard of it."
"No, me either."
The train car was silent but for the steady rumble below it. Other passengers had drifted off to sleep or settled into books and magazines.
“How many more stops do we have?” Arianna whispered.
“I don’t know, I don’t think very many,” Slate answered.
Just then, the train entered a tunnel, which made the car quieter still.
“I’m scared, Slate,” Arianna said as she rested her head on his arm.
“What are you scared for?” Slate asked.
“And I’m scared of war. I’m scared of the weapon.”
“I’m scared, too. But we can’t blindly believe everything Maydal said. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t believe anything you don’t see for yourself, and, even then, you have to question that.”
“I just wish there was something we could do.”
“There may still be,” said Slate.
“But what?” Arianna asked. “You heard Maydal. Whoever or whatever is behind what’s happening doesn’t matter.”
“The Maydals of the world are always convinced of the worst, but they don’t do anything about it. They’ve already decided that things are going to end badly, so they just wait for their worst fears to come true.”
“What could he do, though? What could anyone?”
“I don’t know. Yet. If war should spring from the Books, perhaps the ones we've got could somehow also prevent it.”
“But who could we trust them to? The Protectorate is broken, apparently. And surely we can’t do anything with them ourselves.”
“I don’t know yet, Arianna. But I don't think hope is lost.”
The two were quiet for some time.
“What did you think about how the paragraph in the Book we translated spoke of the Gods’ ability to fly to the heavens?” Arianna asked.
“I don’t know what to think about that at all,” Slate said.
The train bumped, jarring some of the sleeping passengers awake. There were groans and mild curses before they fell back asleep.
“I miss my mom. And Brit, and Mart,” Arianna said.
“Yeah. I wonder where my brother is,” said Slate.
“I’ll help you look for him."
“Maybe, Arianna. Maybe when this is all over.”
They curled into each other’s arms and were rocked back to sleep.
Sometime later, the train’s horn blared and a porter announced arrival at Grail’s Wharf. Slate and Arianna gathered their belongings and sleepily shuffled off the train.
An outrigger rested along the banks of the Gee River, some three miles from the depot in Grail’s Wharf. Slate, Arianna, and Pilotte waited outside until it opened, then chose a used canoe from the merchandise on display. They purchased supplies using the last of their goldquartz, and then paddled off downstream toward the Crescent Mountains.
The Gee River was steady and smooth and required no portaging, leaving the friends free to talk and eat and stop when they needed.
After a long day of travel, the western sky began to take on the bright orange glow of twilight. The team beached the canoe and set up camp, where they continued to talk deep into the night about what sort of future was in store for the world. With no hint of rain, they slept next to each other under the stars.
After three such days, the canoe reached the end of the traversable portion of the Gee River, at the feet of the Crescent Mountains.
The hike to the crest of the Crescent Mountains proved to be the most physically demanding thing either Slate or Arianna had ever done. Even Pilotte seemed to have a hard time with it, though not too. There was no recreational trail with cutbacks and signage. Instead it was up, straight up, for over seven thousand feet. The ground below the climbers’ feet consisted of tiny flakes of scree that made good footing impossible. There was nowhere to rest on the trail, and no sign of water. The sun burned hot, its glaring heat bearing down as the climbers reached innumerable false peaks. The three continued to climb until their muscles felt like they were going to burst, until their heartbeats were echoing so loudly in their ears that they couldn’t hear anything else.
At last, they reached the apex of the great mountain and could see down into the valley on the other side. They fell to their knees and screamed what little screams the thin air would allow, overjoyed to have reached the top and unwilling at that moment to consider they had only come halfway.
There was little in the valley below to suggest that there was going to be a demonstration of incredible power, nothing more than a few tents and observation towers scattered across the scrubby grassland that occupied the space between the foothills and the ocean beyond.
“I was expecting more,” Slate said to Arianna when they stopped for something to eat.
“Me too,” Arianna agreed. “But, who knows. I guess we’ll wait and see what happens.”
The next day began with a blood-red sky. There was some small activity on the plain below where Slate, Arianna, and Pilotte camped, but nothing significant until sometime around mid-morning, when a deep groan began to sound from deep within the northeastern forest pass. The whole mountain chain resounded with its echoes, as a chasm grew through the forest into which tree after tree fell, sending swarms of birds fleeing.
“A monster?” asked Arianna.
“A dragon?” asked Slate.
A huge, metal beast of a machine emerged from the trail of destruction it had carved through the forest. It was not unlike the train Slate and Arianna had ridden from Opal Pools, but bigger, much bigger, and riding on self-contained treads. Sitting atop its base was an enormous black object resembling a great iron sirrk. Its enormity dwarfed the men who crawled about it to remove the cords that fastened it down.
After a siren sounded across the valley and some frantic activity, the cart on which the iron sirrk rested began to open. Its enormity was majestic to behold in motion as it rose up to the death-gray sky and then settled back down again in one fluid motion, reforming as a trebuchet. Heavy wires the width of trees were threaded through huge pulley wheels to draw back the arm of the trebuchet, and then without a second’s wait or warning the tension was cut and the cart launched the great sirrk up into the air.
The sirrk swam through the sky for a silent few seconds and then landed.
Slate and Arianna were instantly blown back off their feet by an impossibly brilliant flash of light that consumed the whole plain. The flash gave way to a half-second of bluish-green glow, before a tremendous explosion sounded, one that shook the mountains. Three more blasts came in rapid succession, each resounding like the snap of immediate lightning.
The trees edging the Crescent Plain collapsed in a wave that radiated out from the gaping crater left where the bomb had struck. A massive ball of fire rose from the crater, belching enormous white smoke rings as though from the bowels of the planet itself. A tower of purple fire erupted skyward as the clouds of smoke and fire around it formed and reformed into horrible new phantasms. The shapes and forms of eons and eternities passed in and out of being in fleeting moments as the explosion drank up the life and sense of the world itself.
Just when it appeared as though the purple column of fire had settled into a state of permanence, the shape of a giant mushroom came billowing out of it, climbing even higher still. This was somehow even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of foam. As the mushroom cloud dispersed into the blue sky, the monstrous explosion assumed a
new form, like a great flower petal, creamy-white outside, rose-colored inside. The purple tower and cloud now stood firm, as if they were to be a permanent part of the landscape.
Slate stared up at the monster that had overtaken the sky. Pilotte cowered. Arianna was face down in the dirt, crying softly.
The air was now putrid and it made Slate sick. “Arianna...” was all he could think to say.
“Slate,” Arianna asked in a small voice from where she hadn't yet moved. “What was it?”
“I don't know,” Slate answered, shaking his head.
A chilling wind swept over the mountainside.
“Why would anyone need a thing like that?” Arianna asked as she struggled to get up.
Slate had nothing to offer. “I don’t know.”
“We have to leave," Arianna said.
“Where could we go?”
A stream of tears fell from Arianna's eyes, though she wasn't crying. “I just want to go home,” she said.
"Me too," Slate said. "I've had enough of Proterse. We can go north, to see my friend Dahzi in Morai. He's a prince there. We can find shelter, and help getting back to Aelioanei.”
“Okay,” Arianna said. “I’m sorry we ever came.”
“How could we have known?” Slate asked. “How could anyone have ever known?”
The two hiked back up the mountain, the specter of the particle bomb’s purple ghost still looming above them, and Pilotte slinking behind. The friends didn’t say a word as they choked their dinner down that night, or as they fell asleep in a sad embrace.
Chapter 26