Rust

[Zadown]

Prelude

 

It’s too hot in here.

 

The air simmered with heat. It was as he was in a huge sauna, all furnished with baroque style, or in a Hell’s waiting room: red velvet, black wood twisted in tormented shapes, bronze and steel, huge chairs and massive tables. Only the flames in the fireplace illuminated them – all windows were covered, making the heat even more oppressive. Jacob Vladonov wiped some sweat off his forehead with his already wet sleeve and tried with limited success to concentrate on his master’s elaborate plan. He glanced up from his cards and watched his master carve words on the air with his right arm as he explained some minor point or perhaps was really giving needed information. Jacob shut his eyes for a short moment and fought against the lack of sleep and the hotness.

 

“… for, as you should know, my agent, the moons and planets are moving on their tracks according to the heavenly rules and agreements, and their eternal race is nearing a checkpoint, a moment of conjunction if you will. The effects of this rare occurrence should be readily apparent to even a mind of limited capabilities as yours, but in case you have been neglecting thinking lately, let me illuminate the very nature of the situation it places us in, and again state the small but not completely insignificant role you, my messenger, shall play in this chess game of powers. The sides, or North and South as the local population of degenerate humanoids call them, are …”

 

The small, grey-clad middle-aged man called Jacob tried to force a look of alertness on his tired face even though he knew master would not be looking at him. He would not be looking, but he would certainly expect him to do his duties, no matter how hard it was to follow the intricate and thin thread of thought his master wove with his words. At the moment the story of the mission seemed to wander off its intended path and digress to the territory of obvious background information, as was usual with his master. Rubbing his left temple to fight against a growing headache, he let the words flow past him, confident that he’d notice when the story would veer closer to the actual mission again. With his right hand he shuffled his deck of cards, dealing himself a hand of four cards over and over again. The distant thunder of artillery drifted in through the covered windows, muffled to the point of sounding almost like a far-away music.

 

Hope it doesn’t take hours, I’m too old for that in weather like this. The Fool, the High Priestess, Temperance, Justice … hmmm. Odd to get four of the Major Arcana like that.

 

He left the four cards lying as they were and grimaced slightly as he put his deck down. His master was again talking about his part in the mission. Time to listen.

 

 

* * *

 

“But I don’t WANNA!” wailed Minta. “I wanna go play with the froggies, nownow! I was just learnin’ how to split them an’ I want a frog zombie!” The little gnome sniffed and her hands wandered to her pocket, pulling forth a pixy-stix. “This place is dumb, just rocks an’ stone an’ books.” She jumped on a table while slurping the stix to get a better look of the place, hoping that somewhere would be something interesting, like a skeleton or something sweet. However the room was as she had described: a small library room, walls of bare stone, a few forlorn books on the half-finished shelves, rocks here and there.

 

Rosemary sat in the corner, drawing in the dust with a yellow finger bone. The results weren’t circles, not any more – they were ellipsoids cutting through each other, creating a net of intersections. She rose, sand and dust falling off her yellow robes and turned to look at Minta. “Viewing four, four major lay. Intersecting adjoining conjunctions stories parts play. Follow the deck … in and away.” She smiled beatifically and lowered her gaze to study Minta’s shadow.

 

Tzimfemme sneered at the show. “Twisted ramblings! This interrupted my travels too; there’d better be a good reason to meet here in Shadowhaven.” She took off her gauntlets and tossed them on the table with more force than necessary, then moved as to remove the rest of her plate armour but stopped, uncharacteristically showing signs of uncertainty. There was something wrong -otherwise she wouldn’t have come.

 

Minta ignored Rosemary’s words and jumped down from the table to touch Rydia. “Tag! Your it!” She then ran away, but the room was too small and she stopped in dismay at the other corner before the dust drawings. Rydia didn’t follow but frowned and bit her lip. She too felt the wrongness, saw it in Tzimfemme’s posture. Her ears drooped. “Not now Minta…”

 

 

* * *

 

“ … and thus, should this unnatural state opposite of the current status quo be achieved, the forces I represent and you serve would be so greatly inconvenienced as to be downright threatened by the new order. As you consider this, I’m sure you can see how displeased we would be in case the plans we have devised would be compromised by your incompetence, laziness or bad luck, so you should see the virtues in composing a set of actions that would negate all possible unwanted results. As a matter of fact …”

 

The mission was more or less clear now, but still his master droned on. The heat got worse and worse and he felt sleepy. Jacob’s eyes shut for two long seconds, and then they fluttered open, trying to focus on his master’s silhouette, only to have his blurred gaze fall to the cards. He blinked, not believing his eyes at first: they were shifting and changing – without his permission!

 

The Fool was a small girl with indigo hair, brilliant sun shining in the upper right corner. She held a hammer and a pulsating white light and behind her loomed a cackling skeleton, tall and threatening.

 

The High Priestess hadn’t changed as much – she now wore yellow robes over the blue ones and a plethora of silver jewellery. Her vivid eyes looked out from the card with blind intensity and on the black and white pillars of the card had been engraved spiralling circles and interwoven runes.

 

Third card, Temperance, now had a female pointy-eared angel suspended in mid-air, wearing sparkling shiny armour. Her hair was green and her wings seemed to fade into the background slowly, reluctantly.

 

In the fourth card sat a naked woman holding a severed decaying arm and a flail. The two pillars of Justice were cracked and eroded, sky above clouded with lightning bolts zigzagging through it. The woman stared back at Jacob with an imperial gaze, long brown hair cascading over her bare shoulders.

 

Ice filled his veins and sleepiness disappeared as cold sweat started to pour out of his every pore. He could feel his master reaching inside him now, plucking the strings of his talent with a freezing presence. The cards were alive under his terrified gaze, but not letting them to captivate him, dreading what he’d see, he turned to look at his master again. The master was standing right before him. Shocked to silence by seeing his master face to face the first time in all these decades Jacob stood still. And when the master spoke again, his voice boomed, struck at him like a beast’s fetid breath:

 

“You thought your talent is yours and yours only, something to keep a secret? You are our creature, messenger – your talent is ours. Behold! The barriers between places grow thin, and I have summoned four daemons to help you and to guard you in this mission. Do not fail me!”

 

Jacob cringed and hid behind lifted arms in an attempt to ward himself from his master’s unfamiliar fit of anger. The last shouted words hit him like a gust of wind, and the hand of cards he had dealt flew up and away before he could catch them. Clutching the rest of his deck he took a step and another backwards, dripping cold sweat to the floor. When he finally lowered his arm to look around him, his master had gone. But there were four burning rune-circles hovering above the floor…

 

 

* * *

 

Their shadows turned darker than night, so deep black they weren’t a colour any more. Creeping across the stone floor faster than an army of spiders they surrounded their hosts and then turned into holes, devouring the girl, angel and two vampires. Minta had time to shout: “WHEE..!” Then the unfinished room in Shadowhaven’s library was empty and silent again.

 

They appeared again in a vast room hot as Solusek’s Eye, red velvet covering the windows, dark wood carved into twisting shapes everywhere and a small boring old man in front of them. Around them red runes and sigils of summoning flared one last time in the air over the floor, then dissipated. Around their necks those same runes shimmered and danced, solidifying into astral collars.

 

Tzimfemme was the first to react. “Take this thing OFF me NOW!” She let out a wordless snarl and grabbed the collar trying to rip it off with bare hands. Finding the futility of that after a frenzied second or two she drew the Lobotomy and threw it at the frightened grey-clad man. Or tried to – mid-throw the runes around her neck flashed and sent lances of pain through her, making her stumble and fall to her knees. At the same time, Minta protested loudly as she realized that she was collared.

 

Jacob stared at the four of them and swallowed loudly. “Umm… hello?”

 

 

* * *

 

“… so we are here to act as messengers? And he called us daemons?” Rydia looked slightly puzzled.

 

“Yes and mmhhmm … yes”, muttered Jacob staring at his toes and opened the door. It was late evening, almost night – the light that poured in was deep blue, more illuminating the fact it was dark than helping to see. The ambient thunder of ceaseless artillery fire was faint in the background, unseasonably sparse. In front of them they could see the jagged outline of ruined skyscrapers, faint lights marking the few lived in apartments. Below their feet was rusty iron, above them cloudy sky, horizon marked by occasional red flashes of explosions. “My master is not the most ... mmhm … practical person. But I doubt he’ll release you before we have done this … mhhhmm … quest. He is very particular about these things, I’m afraid.”

 

“And this will help the war to continue? But why would anybody want that?” Rydia’s puzzlement stayed on her face while she wound between the worst sharp metal shards and trash mounds. Her expression transformed into a displeased frown when she realized just how much rust there were; it was practically a graveyard of shininess. Tzimfemme barked a short laugh even before Jacob’s face turned so white it could be seen in the deepening darkness.

 

“But … it is the war, miss! It has always been there!” In his words was the panic of faith questioned. “We need the Zone, miss. Take it away and we have nothing. Nothing!” In his agitation he forgot to stumble over his words. None of the three continued the conversation. Following Rosemary in the failing light was hard enough as it was.

 

 

* * *

 

They had reached the edge of the town and from there the border of the Zone. Jacob paused to regard the guarded gate to the camp and shivered in the cooling air, tried to shake his sweaty clothes loose from his skin. He never liked coming here, but this is what he did, why he had been granted extra years of life. And now … they had a problem. Alone he could’ve just talk with the guard, get through the usual paths. People changed here, sometimes rapidly, but they all knew him in some vague way. He was the old messenger, harmless and trustworthy. These women would never be allowed to pass that way.

 

What was the master thinking? They just make it all more complicated!

 

He turned to look at the three women, the girl having scampered away sometime during the walk. To his horror the one in yellow-blue robes hadn’t stopped but was walking away from the safe path towards the other side of the camp and the mine fields, the two others following her. With a half-swallowed sigh he run after them.

 

Whispering angrily at the least frightening of the three, the green-haired one, he tried to make them stop. Rydia just smiled. “It is safe to walk with her leading. She calculates the way – see?” She pointed at the arrowhead pendulum and the hand abacus Rosemary was using. Hesitating as a thought entered her head Rydia halted briefly and looked behind them. “Minta?” But the darkness behind them was silent. Her ears drooped slightly from worry but she kept on walking. Tzimfemme noticed her concern distastefully and grimaced. “Ha! She’ll be all right. I’d worry more about the locals.”

 

They all gathered at the point where the dangerous path ended and the truly dangerous started. A skull sign was hammered into the ground, dirt and rust making it a piece of landscape. Deep in the darkness on the other side of the deadly field a lone red star flickered and shone: a watchman’s cigarette. In the eerie, total silence Jacob realized that the distant thunder of artillery had fallen silent. It was a real sign of the apocalypse, enough to make him shudder in a way that had nothing to do with cold. A sense of unreality washed over him and he reached for his deck – there would be a way to get past the mines, past the watchmen and to deliver the message, even if it would require several cards. He had already lost four of his Major Arcana. Nothing could make it worse. No reason could be greater than to end this horrible silence. And he would not dare to risk the wrath of his master, not after what he had said about this mission.

 

Drowning in that unreality he turned at a movement glimpsed out of the corner of his eye was. A silvery arrowhead glinted mutely in the dim light pointing towards the burning red spark in front of them, an arrow set to strung bow. The yellow-blue robed woman drew the arrow a bit more, then loosed. Far from them the red star flickered, fell, vanished. Without a word Rosemary unstrung her bow and started following her pendulum through the minefield once again.

 

 

* * *

 

The soldier was young and clean, clad in rust-grey fatigues. He stared at them with a critical look on his spotless face, standing straight and angular in the middle of his small tent like a statue made of gunmetal.

 

“So, civilians, you are telling me that North wants to meet in the demilitarised zone? Why such an irregular group of messengers?”

 

He turned his icy gaze on Rosemary, then to Tzimfemme, then Rydia. The mental temperature in the room was, if possible, even lower than the actual one. Jacob had stuttered through the message, with the soldier’s face twisting in disgust at the poor and halting delivery, which contempt made Jacob stutter even more. Tzimfemme snapped and lunged forward to grab the soldier’s lapels. “Stop staring at the unimportant details! We are here, message is delivered, now act on it!” She released him and took a step back but unreleased anger still hung around him, a black cloud of irritation waiting to thunder. She had been imprisoned before and she hadn’t liked it the first time around.

 

The real messenger moved as to go between the soldier and Tzimfemme, but the motion was half-hearted and insincere. Sweat glistened on his pale skin as he muttered, barely audibly: “Mmmhh, she is right … mmhhm. You know me and how I’ve … mhmm … always delivered true messages.”

 

But Jacob could see the doubt in the soldier’s eyes. And so with an inward sigh he moved back, let the daemon-woman have the stage for long enough for him to use his only, secret, precious talent. Drawing the card he needed from the deck (and he knew it was the right one without looking), he threw it away, one more lost to this mad mission. It dropped at first, and then some unseen wind picked it, made it twist and turn, fly out and vanish to the night sky. Before it was lost it was illuminated one last time by the torches inside the tent: behind eight staves of wood coming from the upper left corner towards the lower right one a column of cars and tanks travelled, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that obscured the blue sky.

 

Somewhere, quite close now, the guns roared. The silence was broken.

[Wyvern]

Excellent story, Zadown! It had me hooked from the beginning to the end... Three things that struck me as particularly brilliant were the characterization of the Quincunx, the pompous dialogue of Jacob's master, and your amazing uses of imagery (particularly the final image of the card twisting in the wind). I thought that the concept of the Quincunx being displayed on Jacob's playing cards was very original as well.

 

Your writing is excellent as always, and this story obviously had a great deal of effort put into it. Captivating stuff.