Bright of the Sky Read online

  The creature held him under a dark gaze. Quinn fought for standing, wrestled for control, until the gaze dismissed him. To such a being, Quinn was not interesting.

  Then the creature strode off, with a grace of movement unlikely in one so tall. The crowd parted for him swiftly, but no one would meet the creature's eyes. As the crowd dispersed, Quinn watched for the figure, but it had disappeared.

  A tugging at his arm got Quinn moving again, despite a sense that he had just been given a clue to some profound puzzle.

  They went past the strangling victim, who lay, one knee raised up, hands clutching at his throat, staring at the sky-bright. Those watching him lost interest, leaving him in his agony.

  This vision clung to Quinn. Then the woman was leading him off to the side, down an alley with wagon ruts carved in the golden soil. He followed her, feeling drained by the day's irreconcilable images. He held the pack beast's reins as his companion made yet another house call. This time, though, she came back outside and motioned him to enter.

  One look at the four men inside, and Quinn knew they were lying in wait for him. He landed the first blow, sending one of them crashing. The hut was small, and he was confined amid the three remaining men and the woman, all of whom rushed him. Filled with a savage will to escape, he spun around, lashing out again and again. He jabbed backward with an elbow and connected with flesh, but as he swung around to complete the assault, his stomach met a fist even larger than his own. The man looked surprised when Quinn managed a knee to his groin. But then Quinn was down on one knee, and they had his arms behind his back.

  Looking up from the floor where they were securing ropes around his wrists, he gazed into the eyes of the woman who'd saved him from the desert. She slowly unwound her head scarf, then pulled her hands through her hair in a casual gesture of one home from a trying journey. Her hair was startlingly white.

  They had been traveling for many days. Gagged and bound, Quinn was imprisoned in a tall jar with breathing holes at the top. His kicks could not shatter it. With no vision of the outside world, he couldn't gauge the passing of days, and slept between bouts of shouting for release. All ignored.

  The jar was bad, but he could bide his time. They hadn't killed him, nor delivered him to the bronze creature. They had taken his boots and his pictures. At intervals they let him out to take food and walk and relieve himself, under guard. So he was not dead yet.

  Sometimes he fell to thinking that he had gone mad at last. That this impossible world was his final refuge from sanity. He had seen unearthly creatures, and an unearthly sky. The black wall that rose like a tidal wave. Yet it was a consistent madness; and in his better moments he knew just where he was.

  On his brief reprieves from the jar, he found never-ending desert-all hard yellow soil, without landmark or habitation. No trees grew on these plains, increasing its look of blasted flatness. Once, he saw a few round shapes floating in the sky. With no way to judge distance he couldn't tell if they were large or small. Dirigibles, he guessed. He listened to every word the guards spoke. The sounds of some words were familiar, and now and then a bit of meaning coalesced and shredded under his scrutiny.

  When his captors tried to put him back in the jar, he fought them, even weak as he was from inactivity. Since they avoided hitting him, he presumed that they wanted to keep him healthy. He held on to this thread of hopethat they were permitting him to live-for all the reasons that he had to live: for Sydney, here, and for Mateo, there. Both in jeopardy because of Titus Quinn.

  For a time he was sure that he was traveling on a train, or at least some kind of rolling transport. He tried learning about his captors and his surroundings by smell. He had taken to standing in a half crouch, with his fingers gripped through the holes in the top of the jar. There, the air was freshened, laden with scents other than his own. He let the air flow over his tongue, under the roof of his mouth. As he concentrated on the smells, an odd thing began to happen. Wisps of memory came riding on the smells. Faces of people, structures. Emotions, not all of them bad.

  They let him out for a meal. The train was gone, nor were there tracks or any evidence for the conveyance. The journey continued in a cart pulled by two beasts such as he had seen before.

  Not once in all his out-of-jar intervals did he ever witness night. The sky, he remembered, never ceased, and it never dimmed except to a twilight. Effortlessly, the word sailed into his consciousness. Bright. The river of the sky was called the bright.

  The jar began to crack open. A fork of light blasted into Quinn's eyes as the jar parted slowly, pulling strands of viscous material with it. The two halves fell of their own weight, and he saw that he was in a forest: dim but, compared to the jar, gloriously brilliant. Animal screams and twitters and the musk of organics assaulted him.

  A man stood before him, his white hair pulled into a topknot. Combined with his quilted clothing, he looked like a Chinese nobleman. From long ago.

  He led Quinn a short distance to the shore of a small lake, perhaps three hundred yards across. Hugging its shore and screening further views, graceful trees and shrubs formed a tidy collar. Across the lake, Quinn could just make out the top of a grand edifice, its masonry sparkling under the furnace glare of the bright.

  The Chinese-dressed man picked at an edge of Quinn's clothing, wrinkling his nose.

  Quinn bathed in the lake. And the glory of it made him laugh. When he emerged, he received quilted pants, a cropped jacket, and soled slippers. He dressed, and when he put his feet into the shoes, they enlarged, molding to his feet. The technology of this place confused him, with its mixture of backward and advanced.

  Around him the lush garden crowded his senses, smelling of moist soil, complex organics, and mildew-laden spores. In a tumult of growths, an upper story soared with spindly gold and cinnamon-colored fronds; crouching beneath, an understory of black, thick-leafed shrubs. Animal whoops and chitters announced other dwellers. Quinn ignored all this for now, concentrating instead on his visitor: young and fit and rich.

  The young man led Quinn into a hut, where he gestured for Quinn to sit on a bench and offered a cup of water for Quinn to drink.

  He drank, gratefully, but his attention drifted to a cylinder on the floor of the hut from which came the aroma of edibles.

  The man noticed his glance. He fetched the cylinder, a stack of three round boxes. In each were different types of what might be dumplings. The man watched closely as Quinn brought each one to his nose and inhaled. Although thrown off by the many acrid odors of the jungle, he made some judgments about the food. He ate everything in the first two boxes, leaving the last untouched.

  Then the young man spoke. In Chinese, Quinn guessed. Chinese. Quinn was certain the influence here was Chinese, although there was no epicanthic fold near the eyes, and the skin tones were too pale.

  Quinn shook his head. I don't understand.

  "We shall try this language next," his jailer said, in deeply accent English.

  Stunned, Quinn nodded his understanding. The man's utterance was even more preposterous than the Chinese version. Why would these people speak such languages? "Where am I?" Quinn asked. "What is this place?"

  "Master Yulin's palace garden," came the answer.

  "Who is Master Yulin? And who are you?"

  "I'm of no importance. But my name is Sen Tai." He looked more closely at Quinn, frowning. "You hide your eyes. Why?"

  He was referring to the lenses. "I don't know," Quinn said truthfully. "A woman gave them to me, then forced me to go with the bandits who put me in a jar."

  A smile hovered at the edge of Sen Tai's mouth. "They weren't bandits. Take the coverings out."

  Quinn bent over his hand and popped the lenses out, relieved to be done with them. He wiped a wash of tears away as his eyes adjusted. When he looked up, Sen Tai was staring at him.

  "Who is Master Yulin?" Quinn repeated.

  "He is master of this sway, of this garden, and of your life."

  "I have
a message for Master Yulin. I will convey it only to him."

  Sen Tai was very still. An animal screeched from some hidden place, as though laughing at Quinn's pretensions.

  "I've come a long way to convey this message," Quinn said.

  "It's not so far to Wen An's reach, where you fell."

  "Farther than that."

  Sen Tai nodded slowly. He stepped over to the hut wall, where a glossy rope lay coiled. He spoke into the end of the rope, using the language that Quinn should know, and didn't.

  Then he turned and announced, "My lord will come to the lake, where we will meet him." He gestured to the door.

  Master Yulin would come. Quinn hoped the master of the sway was not one of the bronze creatures he'd seen.

  But he was out of the jar. Somehow, his stature had climbed. Would he still have stature when they discovered the truth? Quinn hoped so. The truth was his game plan.

  Snugged up to the shore was a small raft, bare except for a pole, shackles, and a large block.

  "I must bind you to these for the safety of my master," Sen Tai said apologetically. But the shackles were attached to a heavy block. Noting Quinn's glance, Sen Tai said, "He's very cautious."

  "My own master will not be happy to think me so treated," Quinn said.

  "Your master does not rule here, I think."

  Quinn submitted, remembering the jar and how much worse his position might be.

  As the young man poled him onto the lake, Quinn saw it was shallow, perhaps fifteen feet deep. As they glided to the middle of the lake, he got a clearer view of the garden. He spied cages here and there, from which wronglooking animals peered at him. One cage was spacious, and held flying insects that formed chains of themselves, and dispersed again, as though spelling out answers for him in letters he had forgotten.

  Across the lake a barge had set out.

  As it approached, Quinn saw a rotund man poling it. Richly dressed, the man poled with an athletic grace. From his upper lip drooped a long white mustache. When he reached the lake's center, the master lifted his pole and plunged it into the lake bottom with a mighty downstroke. He held the pole, keeping his barge in place. Quinn's boatman did the same.

  The man known as Master Yulin looked at Quinn with narrowed eyes. Standing face-to-face, Yulin was by far the shorter of the two. He glanced at Quinn's boatman, speaking to him in their tongue.

  Sen Tai said, "My master wishes you to answer three questions. Each one is worth your life."

  Quinn was listening. In the back of his mind he understood that the conversation would be through an interpreter. But his eyes were only on the master. "Ask, then."

  The master did, and the interpreter said, "Look at these pictures and tell who they are."

  On the other barge, the man held in his fat fingers the pictures of Johanna and Sydney. The little squares were creased and smeared, but still, seeing them in this place filled Quinn with a bright spear of courage.

  "They are my wife and daughter."

  As this was translated, the master remained utterly still, his face taking on a golden glint from the water where the seething sky cast its image. A large carp roamed through the gilded water near Quinn's raft. The forest seemed to hold its breath.

  Then, the second question: "What is your name?"

  "Titus Quinn."

  After a pause, came the third question: "Why can you not speak the Lucent tongue, if you are Titus Quinn?"

  So he did know their language. He had been here long enough to speak this exotic tongue. "I think I can speak it. I've just forgotten." Beneath his feet, the platform rocked as he changed his stance. The chains chafed at his ankles.

  The interpreter spoke softly, then, relaying the master's next words: "If you are truly he, then it would be far better for you to be at the bottom of this lake."

  The master, still unmoving, gazed at Quinn with a baleful stare.

  Taking advantage of this pause, Quinn delivered the speech he had composed over his long days of confinement in the jar. He turned to the interpreter. "Tell this to your lord: You can drown me, but my people will come. They will come and they will ask permission to travel here, traveling to distant places in our world, using your world to shorten our journeys. You can hope to control them, and they will pay you well. But you can't stop them."

  The master stood, still holding his pole, as though it anchored him to the kingdom he was about to lose.

  "What do you want?" came the question.

  "My pictures back, for starters."

  Yulin's full mouth compressed flat. Then he looked at Sen Tai for the first time.

  From behind Quinn came the translation: "Kill him."

  For an instant, Quinn thought Sen Tai was being told to kill him. But by Sen Tai's stricken look when Quinn turned around, this was not the case. After another exchange in their language, Sen Tai said in a whisper, "My master directs you to kill me."

  Gazing at Yulin, Quinn said, "Kill him yourself."

  After another order from Yulin, Sen Tai bent to unlock Quinn's shackles.

  Then he bound them to his own ankles. Sen Tai dragged the block to the side of the raft, and Quinn stepped to the other side to keep the platform from tipping. The young man looked up into the sky for a few moments. Then he bent down and maneuvered the block so close to the edge that it almost toppled into the lake. Finally, it did topple, yanking him into the water, and into its depths.

  Quinn looked in fury at Yulin. "Let me release him."

  The master shook his head, saying no, no, to whatever Quinn was asking.

  At the bottom of the shallow lake, Quinn could see the man's white topknot as he stood there, bubbles streaming up to the surface.

  A rage settled into Quinn's chest, cold and heavy. Yulin was a barbarian, and a cruel one.

  After satisfying himself that the bubbles had ceased, Yulin yanked his pole from the mud. Turning a lofty glance on his prisoner, he pointed in the direction of the hut, directing Quinn to remain there. Then he pushed his barge off in the direction of the opposite shore.

  Quinn forced himself to look into the water. He had no way to release the chain, and now, in any case, it was too late. Why kill Sen Tai? He thought it was because the interpreter now knew who Quinn was, and that information was valuable or dangerous, or both.

  Sickened, Quinn thrust the pole into the water, pushing the raft back the way he'd come. This was a violent world. In such a place, could Johanna and Sydney have survived long? A fierce protectiveness swept through him, especially for his daughter-only nine years old, for God's sakes. However old she was now, she had been a child among these barbarians.

  Poling to the shore, he felt eyes on him as animals peered from the forest thickets, some in cages, some free. He knew which state described him. But at least he was not in the jar.

  They would have to kill him to put him in another jar.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OW THAT YULIN HAD DECIDED TO DROWN TITUS QUINN, he was at peace.

  The death of a sentient must never be undertaken lightly, nor did the master of the sway easily require such deaths. The Tarig lords alone took life, and then only seldom. It was just and fair.

  Sometimes justice came in the back door, of course.

  "Uncle," came the girl's voice as she knelt in front of his dais.

  He had almost forgotten about Anzi, trembling before him, face on the stone tiles, not daring to look at him.

  Ignoring her, Yulin reviewed his decision with satisfaction.

  Titus Quinn had come to him in a jar, the terrible gift of Wen An the scholar, who sought to transfer her bad fortune to him. May she fry in the bright, he thought. Thus, all unlooked-for, the man of the Rose was now living in his animal compound, and the sooner he stood at the bottom of the lake the better, the safer. Yulin took a dumpling from the tray and chewed it with pleasure. Yes, it was gratifying to have made the decision. The man had thrown him off course when he said that his people would come anyway. He congratulated himself on
the shrewd insight that this alarming statement had nothing to do with his own predicament of playing host to the fugitive. Those who came next could never know the man's fate, or the identity of his executioner. Let them come. And may they arrive in some other sway and torment some other master.

  Yulin arranged his robes to lie more loosely around his girth. They must all die. The man of the Rose, his village captors, the gardeners, and Wen An.

  He had considered turning him over to Lord Hadenth, the lord Titus Quinn had so grievously injured. But suspicion would still fall on Yulin, even if he sent word immediately to the Ascendancy. The fiends would ask, why had Wen An sent the man here? And the answer lay groveling before Yulin: Ji Anzi, his worthless niece.

  As though divining his thoughts, Anzi spoke again. "Uncle of my deliverance? May I speak?"

  "No."

  Yulin looked down at the portraits lying in his lap. The wife. The daughter. Their fates were unfortunate, irrevocable. In the cause of his wife and child, the man of the Rose would make no end of trouble, even if the lords never found him. Yulin had heard about human attachments, and the chaos brought by a surfeit of emotion. Such as Titus Quinn so amply displayed his first sojourn here. No. The lake for this man. Sen Tai would perhaps be glad of company.

  Picking at his gums with an ivory toothpick, Yulin thought that his favorite wife Suzong would be pleased with his resolve. Yulin sighed, staring out the window that faced his garden. Soon, he could stroll alone in his sanctuary, where now the despicable stranger stalked the grounds. There he could once again enjoy his collection of exotic animals, free from his wives' complaints and his subjects' demands.

  Ji Anzi coughed softly, forcing Yulin's thoughts back to the present, and the question of whether or not to endure her protestations. He had sent for her, thinking she might aid his deliberations, but in the event, she had not been needed.