Inspired by Tolkien, in humility and deference.

— Eredadain

Thanks to daw the minstrel for beta reading! 

To See

ONE: The Shadow of the Past

Chris Aiken looked up from the cook stove at the approaching truck.  Black with a yellow stripe from fender to tailgate, it looked like an angry snake speeding across the dry riverbed.  The dust it raised drifted slowly east, blenching the sun just rising over the decaying mountains lurking on the edge of sight.  The dust made the sun red, doing nothing to improve Chris’ mood.  He stood and waited as the truck slid into the campsite, tin cup of coffee steaming in the morning chill.

The man who stepped from the truck was tall, well over seven feet, and dressed entirely in rich, black leather.  Black hair hung straight to the middle of his back, plaited today into a single heavy braid.  The raven of his hair contrasted sharply with the marble white skin of his face.  Depending if the face was in sun or shadow, it shifted from beatific to corpselike.  The eyes were hidden by sun glasses that reflected nothing.

“You have news.”  The man’s voice flowed from his thin lips like a cold fog.  Each word seemed to go on endlessly until it dropped into nothingness.  The s stung Chris’ ears.

“Nothing much.  I told you I would call you when I had something definitive.  Kjarl needs to shut the hell up…”

“Kjarl does as he is told, as should you.  Even though you excel at what you do, you are not the only archaeologist in this field.  Remember, all are expendable.  Tell me what you have found.”  The engine of the truck ticked quietly as it cooled.  Across the flat the dust settled to the warming earth.  The sun rode to yellow above the hills.

Chris looked at the tall man with unhidden dislike.  “Just because I take your money, Samuel, doesn’t mean you own me.  I run this dig, and when I find something important, I'll tell you.  If I called you every time I dug up some old rock or piece of iron, you might as well live here.  This riverbed has some historical fragments; there was obviously human activity here at one time.  But it’s too ancient to make much of it.  Some of the smaller stones show signs of being worked, and there are elevated levels of iron in the soil.  But other than that there’s not much.  The biggest artifact so far is the corner of a larger block, maybe one meter by one meter.  It’s too square to be natural, but it could be anything, maybe nothing more than part of an old bridge.”

“What of the seismic readings, the ones that show larger pieces?”  Chris caught the barest tremor of excitement in the normally inflectionless voice.

“That’s why Kjarl needs to keep quiet!”  Chris growled.  “I told you I’d tell you when I find something.  Anomalies are nothing until confirmed by excavation.  What if it’s simply an ore deposit?  Or an underground spring?  Hell, it could even be random variation in the instrumentation.  The heavy equipment is coming later today, but it’ll take me two to three days to dig that deep.  I’ll call you when I get close.  For the time being, stay away!  All you do is slow me down and get in my way.  And tell that sneaky shit Kjarl to stay out of my way too, or he might find himself on the wrong side of a shovel."  Chris tossed the dregs of his coffee at Samuel’s feet.  The splatter made little pockmarks in the dust.  One cold drop flecked the polished steel of Samuel’s boot tip.

“You are treading dangerous ground, my friend.”  Samuel pulled himself even taller.  His icy voice seemed to fall from his mouth and coil around Chris’ feet.  “I will tell you what is important or not, when I am to be called, and when I arrive or leave.”  He pointed at Chris’ heart with his left hand.  Chris noticed, as if for the first time, the missing finger.  “And if you cross me, or fail to learn respect…well, there are worse things than death.”  Samuel clenched his hand shut.  Chris felt his throat constrict, and for a brief instant, a bright light flashed in his mind.  As quickly as it came it was gone.  All that remained was the false flare on the back of his eyelids, spots that as they faded took on the disconcerting shapes of serpentine eyes, lidless and rimmed in red.  Samuel got in the truck and roared into the east.  Chris stood silent for a long time after the truck was out of sight.  For the first time in his life he felt something akin to fear, and accompanying helplessness.  It was a feeling he did not relish.

*      *        *

A phone call.  Is that all it takes to wreck a man?  To set him on a path otherwise successfully avoided all his life?  It was a slippery slope, the descent into fear.  Fear bred self loathing.  Self loathing meant failure.  Failure, ultimately, meant death.  Chris had conquered all these things on his way to where he stood now, cheating death and reaping the rewards.  In a world where failure meant death, and success meant life, Chris had been successful for a long, long time.  But now…something here was different.  There was something here Chris didn’t understand, and a man, maybe, whose power Chris must take seriously.  Chris had “found things” for other powerful men before, but each time the client eventually recognized who was in charge.  This time felt different.  Only pride kept Chris from jumping in the jeep and heading west.  I should have forced a face to face with Samuel before I signed anything, Chris thought, as he fitted the coupling of the plasma hose to the generator.  But Kjarl was adamant that all dealings would be with him until the contract was signed.  “My client is a busy man,” Kjarl said over and over in response to Chris’ demands.  Chris had not been allowed to meet Samuel until after the deal was completed, or maybe things would have been different.  It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.  Kjarl was an effective negotiator, and the large sums of cash he offered seemed ridiculous for the apparent simplicity of the job: survey twenty kilometers of old river bed for remnants of an ancient city.  Fifty percent now and the balance upon proof the city existed and its exact location.  Child’s play.  But as soon as the ink was dry Samuel appeared, his cold voice and piercing eyes making Chris regret his decision.  And what rankled the worst was Chris’ inability to shake the discomfort or thrust it aside.  Whenever he was around Samuel, he got the feeling his skin was slowly being peeled back, every nerve and thought exposed to that baleful glare.  Fear was as foreign to Chris as failure, so quitting was never a viable option.  But working under the constant enmity was wearing.  Tension and isolation were conspiring to crack Chris’ solid foundation.  He hoped this latest seismograph proved fruitful.  Six months of this crap and both he and Samuel were losing patience.  The money was phenomenal, but at what cost to himself?

Chris looked over the deck of the plasma shovel at the growing hole, nearly sixty meters deep and one hundred on each side.  Two days of digging had brought him this far below the level of the plain.  Slow going.  The plasma shovel was powerful enough to move this much dirt in an hour, but for this work Chris needed delicacy, at which the plasma beam also excelled.  Computers directed the cutting beam, set to remove normal substrate and leave other objects as directed by the operator.  The problem was, Chris didn’t know what he was looking for, so he had to work around every object larger than a pebble.  Still, it would have taken dozens of workers months to excavate this deep with shovels and brooms, a time frame Samuel made clear he was not willing to accept.  Nor was Samuel willing to have so many people know his business.  So Chris plied the plasma shovel alone, stopping frequently to catalog strata and artifacts, thankful at least for Samuel’s bankroll.

Thus far the excavation had revealed only one item of note: at fifty meters, nestled among the normal river stones and debris, a fossilized tusk of gigantic proportions.  Though broken at the base, the tusk measured over six meters in length.  No expert in ancient fauna, Chris was still amazed that he had never heard of any elephant type animal that had grown such tremendous appendages.  Tagged and bagged, the tusk lay in the shade of the tent.  Chris had had to use the jeep to drag it from the hole.

But that was it, the only intact bone.  Though this river was long dead, it had once been mighty.  The section where Chris worked was nearly half a mile wide, sloping gently to the east and the rising hills, and rising rougher and more abruptly to the hills to the west.  Once it must have teemed with life of all kinds.  One of the facts of nature is that water gathers men and animals, and where life gathers, so does death.  There were a few fossils of fish and other aquatic creatures, and isolated pockets of calcium deposits, but whatever had killed the river had also eliminated all other traces of life.  A mystery.  One Chris had no time to ponder.  The plasma beam whittled away at the hole, millimeters at a time, vaporizing and recondensing the soil in growing piles away beyond the camp, little mountains shadowed by the collapsing mountains to the west.  Finally Chris shut down the machine as the sun dipped below the earth.  Purple fingers fled across the plain, pulling down the mantle of dark.

As he lay on his cot that night, Chris felt in his bones he was digging in the right place.  In his mind’s eye he could see the relief of the plain laid out below him, as if he were an eagle soaring high above this tortured land.  The dry river bed ran from the north, at times creating a floodplain several miles across.  During the last ice age, some one hundred- forty thousand years ago, massive ice fields covered the land to the north.  Water and time had flattened the mountains and widened the valley, but the melt had been so gradual the valley was not gouged by the flowing water, but had rather been filled by silt.  And then, somewhere to the north, the land had risen and shut this river off.  The earth changed, and what once must have been green and fair was now desolate and barren.  Mountains far to the south, nearer the sea, had risen, shutting off this land from the ocean moisture.  It was a yellow land, warm but not hot.  Dry as dust.  Near where Chris was digging, the river had once forced its way between two opposing mountain chains.  To the east the now lowered hills marched north and south, paralleling the river for hundreds of miles.  To the west a line of hills, once great mountains, ran perpendicular to the river, terminating in a larger out thrust of bare rock, like a finger pointing directly at the excavation.  Where the river thrust through these ancient ramparts would have been a natural location for a city of men.  Tomorrow might bring better news.

*      *        *

It was dark.  The stars swung in unfamiliar constellations and a strange moon hung uncomfortably in the sky.  Wolves howled in the distance.  Chris held his arms out before him, and the moon came and settled in his hands.  To his surprise the moon was smooth as glass.  Suddenly the moon went dark, but shimmery, as if reflecting starlight in its mirrored surface.  The sound of hooves silenced the wolves, and at a distance, but nearer, came the sound of metal beating on metal, and faint screams, and a man yelling in a tongue he did not understand.  There came a roar, loud but faint as the ocean, and then a piercing shriek that raised the hairs on his neck, even in sleep.  Concentrating to hear the faint noises, Chris became aware that the moon in his hands was growing very heavy.  Slowly he sank under its weight and was overcome, but he felt neither pain nor sadness.  The moon killed him.  But that, he was sure, it had the right to do.

*      *        *

No memory of the dream remained as Chris fired up the plasma shovel for the day’s digging.  Seismic readings taken yesterday at the bottom of the hole confirmed dense objects starting within approximately ten meters.  What’s more, the objects appeared to be oblong in shape, which lessened the chance that he’d been digging for nothing more than erratic boulders washed down from the mountains.  Besides, he knew beyond a doubt that there was something there, something meaningful.  Each time in his life when he’d made a major discovery, it was preceded by this papery feeling, as if the boundary of the hidden world he was closing in on had texture.  To breach this boundary, bring to life the dead things of an ancient world, was the ultimate triumph.  Understanding and truth lay in wait beneath the rough skin of the world.  A careful and patient man, one who took time to learn from these treasures, was prepared for the time when he would be placed beneath the ground.  Chris knew as one who had seen, nothing lies unburied, as nothing lies buried forever.

It took three hours to dig the remaining ten meters.  Chris pushed hard, telling the machine to ignore any object smaller then ten centimeters.  Still, as he approached the objects, time seemed to slow, until finally the plasma beam jittered and danced around a pale white stone, exposing first the top, and then one meter of the side closest to the shovel.  Chris shut down the unit and walked slowly down the depression.

The stone appeared to be polished granite.  The surface, though pocked, shone slightly reflective in the sun.  Most surprising of all were the faint markings graven into the stone.  The carvings were unlike any language Chris had ever seen.  As he traced his finger through the runes, a feeling of sadness washed over him.  Faintly he heard the clang of metal on metal, and the neighing of horses.  Standing with a start and looking around, there was nothing but the soft whir of the solar generator and the sighing of the wind.  With a shiver, he climbed back onto the shovel and started clearing the remaining dirt.

*      *        *

Chris knew he should have called Samuel two days ago, when he first uncovered the stones, but something, pride, maybe, or spite, held him back.  Now that he had discovered the ancient city, he was loath to let it go, give it over to Samuel for whatever purpose.  After the first day it was a moot point anyway.  He’d uncovered so much, working late into the night, that Samuel would know he hadn’t “just” uncovered it a short time ago.  Chris’ only excuse now would be to plead radio failure.  Certain parts had magically fused together in the night.

Another thing holding him back was the feeling that he, Chris, and only he, was meant to find something hidden at the site.  Though the dreams were lost upon waking, they left a residue of memory, like a scent from childhood, and as the days went on the scent strengthened.  The ghosts of lost dreams were piling up, nearly ready to break through into the waking day.  Chris sensed this as he picked dirt away from the growing expanse of city.  Nearly a full block now lay exposed, crumbled streets and avenues and jumbled walls, and at the edge of the digging, the top of a wall the seismograph indicated went straight down several meters.  Chris surmised it was a wall built on the edge of the river.  He was starting to visualize the layout of the city and how it fit the terrain, even though thousands of centuries had passed.  A strong part of him now said to forgo unburying the city, and to focus on the river bed.  This stood in opposition to common sense, but Chris was used to following his hunches, so today he was excavating along the river wall, tearing down through the layers of silt at a frenetic pace, looking for he didn’t know what, but giving in to the sense of urgency he felt prickling in the back of his brain.

In the late afternoon, as the sun was slipping behind the piles of tailings, the plasma shovel unexpectedly shut down.  For ten hours it had done nothing but remove sand and fine gravel.  The river lay exposed for nearly three hundred meters south along the great wall.  The wall ran along the edge of a great causeway, and down ten meters right to the original bed of the river.  After all these millennia the stones still fit tight and true, and the wall remained unbent and unbuckled.  Near the base of the wall was where the shovel had shut down.  Chris looked at the display screen.  UNKNOWN MATERIAL was flashing in bright blue letters.  Chris typed a few commands and the machine whirred to life.  The plasma beam spit from the end of the probe and then quit.  UNKNOWN MATERIAL flashed on the screen.  Chris jumped down and sprinted to the end of the digging.  There, under a fine layer of dust, gleamed the top of what appeared to be a sphere of dark matter.  Taking out a trowel, he slowly dug the soft sand away from the object.  Finally he was able to lift it out, a warm, smooth ball, approximately forty centimeters across, heavy in the cradle of his hands.  Looking down, Chris knew he held his death in his hands, but no part of him cared.  The stone was his by right, and his fate was no longer his. 

Many thanks to daw the minstrel for beta reading!

TWO

Bell Falls

The jeep was running too warm.  Somewhere back along the way an errant stone must have hit the radiator, and now coolant was beginning to leak from the front of the coil.  Chris gauged the distance to the river in his mind; already he was nearly two hundred kilometers west of the dig, and the river between him and the ocean must be near.  He shook his water bottle; about one liter.  That, and the ten liters in a jug in the back should be adequate, unless the radiator decided to blow completely.  Then no orb in the world would be able to save him.  Samuel would catch him; he’d die sure as those ancient peoples.  Checking the dial, he saw the temp creeping up.  He’d have to stop and let the engine cool.  Ahead, a bare outcrop of rock thrust onto the plain. As he slowly approached, Chris could see a dark crack, some twenty meters wide, open to the south.  He could cover the jeep with canvas and hole up there for a while.  Besides, at first light Samuel would be looking for him.  Chris knew without a doubt that Samuel somehow knew he had found the stone.

Just twelve hours ago, as he’d held the stone for the first time, the neighing of horses had returned, louder than ever, and sounds he now knew to be of battle.  Amidst the shrieks of fear and anger, a cold, fell voice had risen, so terrifying it threatened to still the heart, and then had fallen away into nothing.  As he stood frozen in the excavation hole, the orb held before him as a ward, the world turned dark, or his eyes ceased to see.  Then there was a light, as the moon rising, yet in the west.  A voice, ancient, distant, and clear, spoke in a strange language he somehow understood:

        Tall ships and tall kings

                Three times three,

        What brought they from the foundering land

                Over the flowing sea?

        Seven stars and seven stones

                And one white tree.

Then the vision had faded, replaced by one more troubling and clearer in meaning: that of a black snake with yellow eyes, crawling across the sickened face of a cancerous moon.  When the yellow eyes met his, sharp pain had exploded in his brain, and his scream had rent the evening air.  The globe had fallen from his slick hands, and Chris had wakened to find himself face down in the river bed.  Quickly he had packed his few supplies, wrapped the ball in his bag, and headed west.  He hoped he’d come far enough to delay pursuit.  He had something to do before Samuel caught up with him, something important, though what it could be was beyond his imagination.

*      *        *

In the first light of morning the remains of the dig looked as peaceful as a cemetery garden.  Fog limped around the ruins, settling in low spots and curling around the bases of the buildings.  It was so quiet Samuel could almost hear the fog scrape along the ground.  The only sound was Kjarl’s labored breathing from the front seat of the truck.  Samuel dug at the remains of the fire with the toe of his boot.  Hours cold.  Ah for the weakness the years had wrought!  Confined to this form and forced to rely on such lesser servants.  He turned towards Kjarl and removed his sunglasses.  Kjarl tried to shrink behind the dash but instead fell from the truck, convulsing and writhing in the dirt.  In a few moments he was still.  Samuel knocked the ashes from his boot on a stone and got into the truck.  At least in this age, as in the past, he could rely on wings.  He turned the truck and headed east.

*      *        *

It was noon when Chris emerged from his camp site.  He shook the tarp from the jeep, folding it neatly and stowing it along side his pack.  The sun was warm, but the air temperature was only about twenty degrees C or so.  Comfortable, but not so hot it would overheat the jeep.  Opening the radiator cap, Chris dumped in a small handful of pepper.  He then added water, checked the other fluid levels and headed west.

For several kilometers the land continued much as it had throughout the night.  To his right the hills rose and fell, occasionally thrusting low tumbled arms out into the plain.  Far to the south, paralleling the sea, and much farther away than the northern hills, ran the Fir Mountains.  Chris was heading for a gap between the mountains and the hills, and then a highway to the ocean shore.  There, where the sea mountains encircled a natural harbor, was the city of Bell Falls.  From there Chris could jump a ship or plane and be anywhere in the world in a few hours.  He needed supplies, cash, and information.  And weapons.  He felt he’d be needing good weapons.

Within an hour he was at the river.  The radiator seemed to be holding, but twice he’d had to stop and add water.  He swam in the river while the engine cooled, and then filled the radiator and all his jugs.  After a brief lunch he crossed the river at a rocky ford and turned south.  The highway was an hour distant, and by nightfall he’d be in Bell Falls.

*      *        *

The plane dipped and turned as it swung back and forth across the track of the jeep.  The track was occasionally plain, but more often obscured by dust, brush, and rocks.  It ran straight west.  Samuel placed his hands palm upwards in his lap and closed his eyes.  The pilot could hear him chanting slowly under his breath, words that, though unknown, sent shivers down the pilot’s spine.  Samuel closed his hands and opened his eyes.

“Bell Falls.  We must be there by nightfall.”

*      *        *

The highway was smooth, relaxing after the rough journey through the back country.  The speed of the jeep seemed to help with the overheating, and Chris made good time. The road, first several kilometers from the river Chris had crossed earlier, now swung back east even as the river cut west, until finally they ran side by side, cutting across a smooth flat before dipping suddenly into a sharp valley.  At the bottom of the valley lay Bell Falls.  It was only about five o’clock.  He’d head to Myrtle’s restaurant for supper.

It was just getting dark as Chris pulled into the parking lot, leaving the jeep around back under an awning with the garbage cans.  Putting the stone in his pack, he entered Myrtle’s through the kitchen door, pausing long enough to glance up and down the alley.  Not even a cat in sight.  As he turned he felt a hard grip on his arm.  He jerked back, swinging the pack in an arc over his head.  The pack never fell.  A large woman gripped the pack in one powerful hand over her head.  With the other she grabbed Chris by the neck and lifted him off his feet.  She stared at him for a second before pulling him to her, smothering him in a bear hug and planting a kiss on his forehead.  “You’re late,” she said, dragging him inside.

The restaurant was packed with the supper crowd.  Chris forced a seat at the counter as Myrtle brought him beer, hot beef, and pie.  She leaned close as she slid the plates across the counter.

“There was a man here, looking for you,” she whispered, her breath as warm as coffee in his ear. “I told him you had died alone, a long way from home, and we’d buried you out to sea.”  She laughed in her nose.  Chris raised an eye brow.  That was quick, but not unexpected.

“What’d he look like?”

“Your height, but not as cute,” Myrtle answered with a smirk.  “Long gray coat, dark boots, but you’ll know him when you see him by his hair.”

“Long and black,” Chris said, as if he knew.  A look of surprise crossed his face at her answer.

“Long, yes, but white, as if he’d boiled his head in bleach.  He didn’t stay but a second, just popped in, asked if I’d seen you and bolted out the door.  That was about an hour ago.”

Myrtle left in response to a yell from some longshoremen at a table, leaving Chris to ponder her news.  He knew Samuel or some of his drones would be searching for him, but this man didn’t fit his expectations.  The men he’d seen working for Samuel were invariably short, swarthy individuals, dressed in black.  Now it seemed unknown others were looking for him.  He finished his meal and slipped out the back.  Time to get under cover.

*      *        *

Chris sat under a tree in the bottom of a dark ravine, starlit sky close as a cloak about his head.  After he’d left Myrtle’s, he’d gone to a friend’s place.  The friend was gone but Chris had helped himself to food, a pile of bills and coins, a pistol, a rifle, and a hundred rounds of ammunition.  He’d then headed out of town a few miles to the farm of another old friend.  The jeep was stashed in the barn, and Chris was holed up in a dark watercourse.  The night was still, the orb warm and heavy in his lap.  Chris stared into the depths as he unconsciously rotated the ball.  The globe was black as a sky devoid of stars.  The polished surface felt like velvet under Chris’ fingers.  It was deceptively hard, as if it were inviting you to sink your fingers through the surface; the hardness was an illusion.  Chris ran his fingers over the ball again and again, unable to stop, unaware of his actions.  He couldn’t take his eyes from the surface of the globe.  The inky blackness seemed to be drawing him in.  Starlight glimmered on the curved surface, warping the silver light into bright streaks.  As he shifted the ball to gather more light, the moon rose above the edge of the ravine.  Chris gasped.  The reflection of the moon seemed to come from inside the sphere, but it moved and shifted, forming small ghostly figures.  As Chris bent lower, he realized the images were inside the ball.  A tall man, long white hair braided to his waist, stood on what appeared to be a silver dais.  Behind him, light shone so brightly it could not be looked at.  Suddenly the scene shifted and the white light was replaced with the dark blue of the evening sky.  A cloaked and hooded man was walking a road, carrying a tall staff.  He seemed vibrant, energetic, even in the minute picture in the globe.  Then, without warning, the scene shifted again, and Chris recognized the dark figure of Samuel.  He was looking with disdain at a man writhing in pain on the ground.  The man stopped moving and Samuel lifted his eyes to Chris’.  Again came that terrifying pain in his head.  Chris jerked, and the globe rolled from his lap and went dark.  As he breathed deeply to clear the pain, Chris became aware of the oppressive stillness of the night.  In the sudden quiet, there came the unmistakable sound of a boot scraping on gravel.  Chris rolled to the side and came up quickly, pistol aimed at the dark figure silhouetted above him on the bank.  Instinctively he fired but the bullet passed into nothing.  The figure raised a long staff, said something in a strange tongue, and the gun fell from Chris’ hand.

“Finally, I have found you.” said the man, climbing down to where Chris stood.  “Please don’t shoot at me again; it will do you no good.”  The man stood before Chris, his hooded face impossible to see in the dark.  “Now, hand me the Palantir.”