Tomorrow, he knew they would start again. Tomorrow, a fresh batch of his tribe would be laid out upon the altar of his heart to have poetry cut from them amid their cries for him to help, to save them from this darkest nightmare they had fallen somehow into.
I will grow my pain into an army, he thought, and I will take this island in my wrath. I will end you. You will burn beneath the fury of your very knives.
But even as he thought it, he heard the mocking laughter of a thousand dead and once more found himself weeping where there were no tears left to weep.
Neb
The farther east they raced, the hotter the days and nights became. Neb tried to mark his surroundings but found this new means of transportation wasn’t conducive to charting his present path.
Of course, he wasn’t confident that he would necessarily need to know his way back-despite this supposed authorization he enjoyed this side of the D’Anjite’s Bridge.
When Neb regained consciousness that first night, he’d opened his eyes upon a star-strewn night sky, the blue-green moon swollen and heavy as it prepared to sink beneath a purple ribbon of horizon. When his demands to be put down were not heeded, he squirmed and twisted, surprised that his best efforts did nothing to put the mechanical off its footing. Those first struggles were met with firm metal hands that forced stillness into him as he rode the swaying metal shoulders.
Finally, he’d settled into the ride, shifting himself to minimize the bruising where the hard steel pushed into his flesh.
When he didn’t drowse, he spent the time letting his mind wander across the vast landscape of questions that stretched out before his inner eye. Much had transpired in such a short time, and he still reeled from it. And the only words the mechoservitor had offered him had been the brief exchange that first day when he’d asked about Isaak and Renard.
“They are operational,” the mechoservitor answered. “The damage is minor but sufficient to prevent unauthorized travel.”
A thought had struck him then. “Couldn’t I have authorized them?”
Neb felt the hot steam against his side as it hissed out of the exhaust grate below him. The mechoservitor’s voice sounded reedy as its bellows worked. “Authorization may only be granted by sign and seal of the Office of the Holy See or by Papal Designee under Holy Unction of his Excellency, Introspect III.”
Beyond that, Neb’s questions remained unanswered as they lurched swiftly across rocky terrain. Still, he played them out behind his eyes and used what Franci meditations and ciphers he could to make sense of them.
Somehow, he’d been authorized to be here where the others had not been. Renard had run these Wastes his entire life, and the metal man had named Isaak “cousin”-odd that they would not be permitted to pass. Obviously, the chasm marked some boundary, for the mechanical had led them a merry chase for days-or was it weeks now?-until suddenly stopping at that point to draw its brutal line in the dirt of that place.
And both the mechanical and Renard had made the same assertion that Winters had made over a year ago now when she’d acknowledged him as the Homeseeker. It boggled him that anything Androfrancine would acknowledge the prophetic trappings of Marsher mysticism, though now he felt the call of that title even more so. It was as if even dreamless here, the hope and promise of Home twisted and writhed like a sleeping snake. Something in this wasted land summoned him.
And where have my dreams gone? He felt that pang of loss again. No, he thought. The dreams were but a vehicle. The real question, not so very far beneath the surface, made his stomach ache.
Where had Winters gone?
His last dream of her had been the night she camped beneath the spire, preparing to make her final ascent and declare herself to be something that she did not feel ready to become. He’d seen those questions and fears within her dreams and was certain she’d seen his own because of the way their sleep touched. And the dreams felt so very real. He could carry the smell of her with him for days from just a few moments near her in the middle of the night. He missed the comfort it gave him, and once more it raised the question: Why could he not dream in this place?
It neared sunset on the fourth day when they finally stopped running and the mechoservitor placed him upon his feet. They stood in a hollow bowl of stone. Set directly in the center of it was a round slab of dark metal bolted into the granite by a series of Rufello cipher locks. It was weather-pitted, but the stone around it had worn more than that ancient metal had. Around them, bathed in the scarlet light of the lowering sun, jagged glass mountains bent like bladed waves.
The familiarity of it struck him as he stretched and looked around. I’ve been here before. Of course, it wasn’t possible. But even the dry, powdered-bone smell of the place resonated with some deep-seated memory. “Where are we?” he finally asked.
But the metal man paid him no mind. Instead, it stretched out upon its stomach and placed its ear to the ground. Then, it surprised Neb by what it did next.
The metal man sighed, and it sounded like a sigh of contentment. “Here it is,” he whispered, and his voice made gooseflesh rise on Neb’s neck and arms. “Listen for it, Nebios.”
Neb looked around them again, then cocked his head toward the ground. Faintly, he heard the song. He moved a step closer-it was faint and tinny, and he realized that he didn’t so much hear it with his ears as he felt it. The slightest vibration of notes. It pulled him another step and he knelt.
It was a mournful sound, and it came from beneath the steel cap. “What is it? Why do I know this place?”
The metal man’s eye shutters flapped open. “This is the source of the dream.”
Dream. He remembered. When his father had visited his dreams he had seen the metal men all in robes at a dig. It was this place. They had discovered this place. “The source of the dream is a song?”
“The dream is ciphered into the song. The song is a conduit. Listen.”
Neb stretched out and pressed his ear to the cool metal. He could hear it, still far away, but he could make out each note. He recognized it and associated his recognition with a harp-only then the song had been played too fast and there had been fire and smoke and-
“Winters’s dream,” he said. “I know it from her dream.” And more than that: He knew this place from a dream as well. More vague images of metal men in robes digging.
Steam hissed from the mechoservitor’s exhaust grate. “It is ‘A Canticle for the Fallen Moon in B Minor’ by the Last Czar Frederico, from before the Age of the Wizard Kings.”
“Am I authorized to know this?” Neb thought he must be or the metal man would not freely offer the information.
“You are early,” the metal man said, “but you are authorized, Nebios Homeseeker. We found the source during the construction of Sanctorum Lux. We decrypted the locks and made a thorough study of the artifact. Under the Holy Unction of Papal Designee Hebda, it has been replaced and resealed for your arrival. Mark this place and know it well; the dream awaits you here. In the appointed time you will bear it to my cousin and you will both join us in the work.” He paused, his mouth flap moving and his eyes flashing. “The song compels a response.”
Neb’s mind spun, and he willed it not to. Papal Designee? His father had been an archaeological technician; he’d heard nothing about a designation from the Office of the Holy See. Of course, he’d seen his father infrequently. The man had spent most of his life in the Churning Wastes, making a point to visit Neb in the orphanage whenever he was back in Windwir between assignments. Was it possible that his father had served in some capacity Neb had been unaware of? It certainly seemed to be the case.