City at the Top of the World Read online

  The sky above was still the alien purple twilight she had seen from her berth. The other prisoners were well ahead of her down a dimly lit tunnel of polished rose quartz and amethyst. On the other sides of those translucent walls, Aeryn thought she could make out the shadowy shapes of men and women going about some unknown business.

  Aeryn was led past a great many cells, great geodes, large enough for two people to comfortably stand or lie within, of shimmering royal purple crystal with iron barred gates affixed to them. All manner of persons from all manner of tribes were placed in these, two per cell, and they watched Aeryn taken past with forlorn eyes.

  The fair man who had caught her in the cargo hold pointed to an empty cell, smaller than the others. “You shall stay here till the first chiming,” he said, pushing her through the cell door and removing her leash, “at which time you will be selected for your new home. Please try to remain calm; hurt neither yourself nor others.”

  With that, he left her.

  Wait

  ***

  Aeryn did not wish to share her feeling with this new companion, hoping that she felt the same way. The two spent many hours together in uncomfortable silence, avoiding one another’s gaze, as far from each other as the concavity of the geode permitted.

  All that time, the sky remained a strange mix of pink, yellow, and purple. Passage of time was immeasurable, and the silence only made it worse.

  At last, the ‘first chiming’ came. The chiming was unlike anything Aeryn had ever heard, for it was like the tinkling of a glass bell, but it echoed and reverberated through the hall of crystal prisons louder than the great bronze gong that the Elders would use to summon the entire village together.

  Several Northmen arrived, quiet as ghosts, to open the many cages where men and women were being kept. Leashes were fastened to the collars of Aeryn and her cellmate. The woman gave Aeryn a forlorn look before they were dragged off in opposite directions.

  Go with captors

  ***

  Aeryn felt this might be her last chance to escape her fate. She did not know what stood between her and her freedom, but this man stood between her and the first door on that path.

  All of the rage and all of the resentment she had been harboring during her days in captivity swelled within Aeryn. A bitterness rivaling that of the fair men’s strange liqueur rose in her throat.

  She lunged at the tall Northman, her hands moving for his throat. Ha! This will show them for not keeping a woman of Desert of Pa’el Noor, a Child of the Ever-watching Eye, bound. This will show them that we are not all slaves, things to be had and used!

  The man may have frowned, Aeryn could not be sure. Perhaps his expression did not change at all.

  How could he be so strong? she wondered. Had he even moved? Why does it hurt so badly and why can I not move?

  Those were the final thoughts passing through Aeryn’s mind as she lay crumpled and broken on the floor of a small, though not uncomfortable, cell in a sky sail of the Northmen, farther from her home than she could ever dream.

  The End

  ***

  The young boy opened the door slowly, cautiously, looking aside with a hint of a blush. He was not one of the fair men, but he was not one of Aeryn’s tribe or one of the other southern desert peoples either. His hair was light brownish blond, and his skin was peach colored; much lighter and fairer than her own people, though he was darker than the dreamers as much as she was darker than he. Once he had told her that he had been taken from “the Nest”, but she had not understood what he meant. They understood very little of what one another said, though the boy often looked away from her, slightly red-faced, when he placed the meal on desk-table of her cell. That made what she was about to do that much harder.

  “Evening meal”, the boy said quietly placing the lacquered tray on the table. In the moment that his back was turned, Aeryn turned from the port hole and positioned herself between him and the door. “Eh?”

  There was a look of hurt and mild betrayal written upon the lad’s face as Aeryn’s left forearm caught him across the neck and shoulder. He crumpled to the ground with a moan, and after a hard blow from the serving tray, on the ground he stayed.

  She now had the keys which the boy carried and a door through which escape might be a possibility. The boy would not remain out long, Aeryn thought, surveying the mess she had made from splattering her stew all over the room. She considered that she might bind him with some scraps from her spare clothes, but she also remembered the intense and dragging slumber induced by the strong spirit of the fair men.

  Give the boy the strange drink

  Tie the boy up

  Strangle the boy

  ***

  Aeryn stared defiantly, never taking her cold eyes off the fair man’s face as he placed binds on her wrists and fastened a leash to one of the metal rings on her leather collar.

  “But to guide you,” the man spoke in the tongue of her people, though the words sounded odd, strained, with the wrong syllabic emphasis, “should you be possessed by the fear to run or bring harm to yourself. You are a guest, honored, to the people of Polaris, who mean no harm to you and are blessed by your presence and necessary services you will provide.”

  Some hospitality, Aeryn thought as she was led by the man from her cell down a series of narrow and twisting halls, trying to keep pace with the man’s quick step so that the leather leash did not snap her neck forward to violently.

  She was ultimately led down the same ramp by which she had been taken into the ship all those days ago. The sky was still purple with the alien haze of perpetual twilight that enveloped this city.

  The pale men led her and a few other slaves down a dimly lit hall whose walls were made of a highly polished translucent pink and violet stone, through which Aeryn could see the shadowed outlines of strange hominid figures going about some unknown business.

  The holding cells to which Aeryn and the other captives were taken were great geodes of shimmering royal purple and, if not for the locked iron bars before them, would’ve seemed not a prison but a princess’s djinn-wrought chamber from the stories her dear mother Ti’ala had told her as a child. Each geode was furnished with naught but two small yet soft-looking pallets.

  “You shall stay here till the first chiming,” one of the pale men explained, opening the barred iron gate to her crystalline prison. Another pale man gently pushed Aeryn through. She shuddered at his touch.

  A woman with hair and skin similar to the boy who had brought her meals was shoved into the cell with Aeryn by the first man, who unhooked the leashes from their collars, saying “You will be chosen and given new homes in the city. Until then, dream.”

  Talk to cellmate

  Ignore cellmate and wait for First Chiming

  ***

  Aerin took the stopper from the vial of the strange liqueur the boy had brought with her food and, lifting his head a bit, poured its contents down his throat. It would keep him down for some time, but perhaps he would dream nice dreams. Dreams of her? Dreams in which she had not taken advantage of his simple and trusting nature and laid him out?

  Whatever he dreamed of, the scene would appear to her captors that the boy had shown up in her room drunk and possibly belligerent. In defending herself, she might have escaped. They would look for her, certainly, but they would try to draw the story from the boy, who would be confused with drink and maybe muddy their efforts to find her. That might buy her time

  The corridors of the sky sail were dark, narrow and twisting, though the pleasant scent of cedar made Aeryn feel as though she were in a giant jewelry box rather than a prison-ship.

  A box in a box, she thought, climbing under an upturned wooden crate. Aeryn had seen these large wooden containers before; the fair men would sometimes carry them to the villages and open them before the Elders, revealing a treasure inside for all to see. Occasionally, they would use those boxes to take food and other gifts given by the Elders (as though the lives of their pe
ople were not gift enough!) back onto their sky sail with them.

  Now I am the treasure in the box, Aeryn thought wryly, but not a treasure these folk will have.

  Aeryn was jolted against the sides of her hiding place when the sky sail shook with a great thud. The ever-constant vibrations of the air vessel had ceased. They had landed.

  Try to sneak off the vessel

  Wait and stay hidden

  ***

  Aeryn removed the stopper from the bottle. The bitter aroma that Aeryn was growing used to wafted into her nostrils, strangely comforting and inviting her to enjoy its powers. Yes, she would sleep until it was time to be moved. She would sleep and she would dream.

  The liquid danced on her tongue and down her throat with fairy feet, weaving its magic of warmth and welcome. Had her people any knowledge of the plant, Aeryn would have recognized the hints of licorice that were subtly woven with other complex elements known only to the dreamers of the northern cities. It was an acquired taste, she found, though she was well into acquiring it.

  Aeryn lay down on her cot and closed her eyes.

  Flashes of light exploded on the back sides of her eyelids, and soon, she was home again. Her mother was hugging her, kissing her, welcoming her back. The yora declared before a great gathering of her people that the Eye had delivered them, and there would be deserts no more, for Great Sabri’s banks had flooded and the fields were full of food and game and none should hunger again. Uncle Ashoor stood among them again, as did Velina, and To’a danced the celebratory dance.

  The next summer when the fair men came in their ship to take men and women from the southlands, the people drove them away with their spears and arrows. No, not drove away. Destroyed. A handsome man threw large red rock which the yora proclaimed had been found at the foot of the Eye; the rock pierced the sky, leaving a great purple and black hole in the expanse of blue… a hole which the stone knocked the sky sail through, never to be seen again.

  The handsome man whose eyes were like a tiger’s and skin the hues of majestic twilight turned to Aeryn and took her by the hand. He was a prince. She was a princess. They ruled together justly for many years with many children. On her deathbed, a runner came to her. Men were marching from the southeast. They had come from over the seas. They were killing all in their path. Sola’i and Ira’i had fallen before their swarming hordes and they now pressed upon the alabaster walls of the palaces of Kieab. The Eye had closed upon her people, watched them no more. A Curse. Acres. Akhirs.

  Wake

  ***

  Uncomfortable as she was under her box, Aeryn did not want to risk getting caught in haste to escape. She waited for some time, and her patient caution proved well founded: two of the fair men came into the cargo nook, kicking at a few boxes. Aeryn squeezed her eyes shut tightly and held her breath, as though it would make her invisible to the Northmen.

  “Do you think she is here, sehr?” one asked in the strange misinflected speech of the fair men.

  “Frankly, I do not care,” the other man replied. “We have enough of the wyhossa, do we not? Of what use are they to this city? Polaris is beyond hope.”

  “It is not for us to say/But only to Her words obey.”

  “The White Lady is mad; the other cities do not suffer so much as here.”

  “Is that why the White Lady keeps asking for more than one wyhossa?”

  “She asks for more than the other Lords because she is greedy and mad.”

  “Do not say such things.”

  “Or else what? All dreams end, and so must the dream of our people.”

  “I would call you blasphemer, if I did not know in my heart you are correct. If the wyhossa escaped, good for her.”

  Silence fell. Aeryn counted to one hundred, and in that time, she heard no movement or voices. When she was certain she was alone, she lifted the crate she hid under and crawled from the cargo nook. Aeryn moved about the empty vessel like a shadow until she found her way to the still-open ramped hatch and peered out into the cramped landing bay. It was walled by translucent pink stones, but the ground was a slick, oily black that reflected the purples, reds and yellows of the static sky. The place was like nothing Aeryn could have imagined.

  Two corridors, one of light-green jade and another of pink and purple stone, led from the landing bay.

  Take the Jade Corridor

  Take the Pink and Purple Corridor

  ***

  “I am so sorry, but I cannot spend my days as a slave to the fair men,” Aeryn said, more to herself than the boy, as she tore strips of clothing and used them to bind his feet and wrists.

  When he came to, he would be able to make enough noise to attract attention to himself even with a gag. Aeryn only needed time to find a place to hide herself.

  Yet if I hide myself, Aeryn thought, I will still be stuck in the city of the wretched Northmen with no way home!

  Her only chance would be to hide on the sky sail somewhere until the next time it returned to take more of her people. Only then could she escape.

  Unfortunately, in her effort to navigate the narrow and winding corridors of the sky sail, Aeryn found not a hiding place but a control room. Surrounded by dials and wheels and levels, a pale man looked with intense focus out the window at the dark greenish spire of a large fortress city, his hands gently grasping a wooden wheel.

  Aeryn seized upon her chance to overtake the pale man, easily knocking him unconscious. She moved him out of the control room and bolted the door behind her.

  “Now, all I have to do is turn this ship around,” Aeryn said aloud, as though the simplicity of the concept were same as the simplicity of the task. Her haste had doomed her. She pulled levers, turned wheels, pressed buttons, and fiddled with dials, but nothing seemed to change the course of the sky sail, which was barreling quickly towards the walls of the city at the top of the world.

  The End

  ***

  No, she thought, I will not poison my mind with fair men’s liqueur.

  She would await her destiny alert and dignified, not dreaming of lackadaisical non-sense. That is what the fair men wanted: stupefied and pliant slaves drunk on their liqueur.

  They prepared her for something, and the drink was a part of that. For what she was being prepared, Aeryn could not fathom. Surely the dreamers had no need of labor when they had sorcery. To what ends would she be put? A concubine for lord, a handmaid for a lady? What abuses might she face?

  She remembered the sad look on her sister Velina’s face as the fair men took her from her family. What was her fate? The fair men had many cities to the north with strange names that vanished from her mind moments after she heard them, as though she were under some hex of forgetfulness. Aeryn did not know where Velina had been taken. Or Ashoor. Or the others. She would live out her days in an alien city, likely as not, to never see her loved ones again.

  She had brooded for some time, cursing her Elders who had betrayed their tribe to these pale-faced creatures and wondering what was to become of her, when a strange thing happened. The constant vibration and wobble that she had felt in her cell ever since leaving home ended abruptly with a jarring thud.

  After several moments, a voice boomed from the other side of her door. “Arise, we are here,” it announced. The door unlocked and swung open to reveal a long-faced pale man whose straw colored hair fell about his shoulders. “It is time for you to go.”

  Go Willingly

  Try to Escape

  ***

  The desire to escape the designs of the fair men and the tortures they would surely subject her to in their dark city purged good sense from Aeryn’s mind and made her a savage animal.

  “You shall tell no one where I went,” Aeryn hissed, “For you shall not live to do so!” Her vision reddened. Or was it the boy’s face? It turned flush, and then blue, as her hands tightened about the young man’s neck.

  Then there was no breath.

  No beating of the heart to be felt.

  The s
lave, not yet a man, perhaps the same age as her brother To’a who had just led his first hunt for the desert boar, would never come into his prime. Whatever hopes and dreams he may have had for a life beyond his servitude here vanished like a bubble on the head of a needle.

  “What have I done?” Aeryn looked down at that which could not be undone, a stain upon her for which no atonement could be made. She had taken an innocent life.

  “Why did you do this to me?” the dead boy asked Aeryn in her own tongue. In her own voice. His eyes, empty and lifeless stared at her accusingly. “Would you really do this to me? Does your freedom mean so much or did my life mean so little? And I thought you were so pretty and nice, ansi.”

  The corpse melted away, his peach skin turned rubicund, gooey flesh dropping from bone into a puddle before her bed on the floor, his bones forming a neat little pile. “At least I’m free, now,” the skull whispered before the cranium fell in itself like a cracked collapsing egg, its jaw crumbling to dust. “But you’ll never be.”

  Wake

  ***

  Aeryn was weary of the endlessly shifting vista. She did not wish to look any longer at where she was going or the lands that she would never set foot upon. When she arrived at wherever it was she was being taken, she would see more than her fill of that place. A lifetime to see the city of her bondage.

  Aeryn decided it was better to get some rest before her evening meal. Something told her this would be her last chance before she would be thrust from the comparative comfort and safety of her small chamber on the sky sail.