Chapter 20: Sampialpha

What a gift it is to be able to look back at one's life and say with certainty that it has run its course. In my ongoing sojourn across the wastes of the world, I have seen many living people, but precious few of them are truly alive. From the autumnal towers of Clarion I feel as if I can see all of Tarthas, as surely as if I stood atop one of the shrouded luminaries, and what fills my eye is a mountain of gaping mouths climbing over each other, each one screaming to be fed. Existence has replaced life.

I've heard it said that a world is defined by its heroes, and so hollow is our world that an undead construct was made to be its champion. At least I hope it has. I am the latest runner in a generational relay. I took the torch from the dead fingers of those who ran before me, and I pray to the Four Winds that one of us at last has crossed the terminus. The Winds growl, and a small point of pale gold has appeared in the sky to the south, so I choose to believe the thing is done. Time will tell for a certainty.

I climbed for thirty days before finding this room. I almost climbed for another three before stopping, as a joke, but this room is too perfect. It's walls and décor are old and ornate, from a time when every piece of a house was a work of art. The city itself is a priceless relic of that age. Gargoyles and grotesques stand sentry on every gutter and drain, each interior wall is at least twenty feet high and graced with massive paintings framed in onyx and ivory, and outside buttresses run betwixt each bay of windows as vertebrae run from a spine. Such lavishness is at its most beautiful when abandoned. The moonlight is somehow brighter as it seeps through the broken lancet windows, and the dancing of dust motes in its cold beams is so hypnotic I often find myself entranced for hours watching them. Better than friends they are. Better than a city of people to love, hate or ignore. People should be more than dust motes wafting through the air, but from a distance, you will see that that is all they are. I am grateful that I am not one of them.

I wonder if that is why Abdiel loathes flying. As the one tyfloch immune to the rot, I once thought it criminal that he so rarely took wing. But my time in Thirty-Third Day cured me of all delusions of community, and I know my vantage point upon the prison spire was largely to thank. Abdiel must detest what he sees when looking down from so high up. Even looking back on those years I spent in Haven, when I'd first begun to come back to life in my heart, I see its crowds for the faceless demons they were deep down.

I was a boy when I first arrived at Haven. No, I was a broken boy when I first arrived at Haven. It would be some time before I found wholeness, but I did manage to fall into a pattern of behavior there that I could fool myself into enjoying. There is the best place to begin my tale, now that I've assured you of my cynicism, so I'll recall the events of my first excursion with the militia. There I think I will find my footing, that day having been one of awakening for me.

For years I'd cleaned the floors of the Orbital Archive, a nearly abandoned section of the Bibliotheca. The Bibliotheca was the one remarkable feature of Haven. At my time of dwelling there I believed the docks to be remarkable, as I learned a great many things from the travelers I encountered in its winesinks and pillow houses. A port city is a fine place for exchanging knowledge, but there are many, and they all have docks and seedy taverns. But only Haven had the Bibliotheca. It expanded in sheer enormity both upwards towards the sky and downwards towards the hidden Sun that the unlettered masses think birthed the Devils. Hear me not wrong, the Devils are real, but they are not children of nature.

The Bibliotheca had been built over generations dating to far before the Fall, if the annals are accurate. Knowledge was archived in means that changed from one era to the next, and stored in so many ways that learning to access them all was its own field of study. And it was akin to archaeology, or transcendography, or any of the higher schools in both difficulty and importance. The Orbital Archive was one of the oldest galleries according to some, and the newest according to others. I tended to think it was built somewhere in the middle of the Bibliotheca's history, as the empirically oldest galleries used more complex and advance media, whereas the most recent had merely finer implements of the same sort we use today. The Orbital Archive relied mostly on visual simulations conjured by captive jinn, a technique still known but very rare, and one common in the medial days between the times of myth and now. The jinn are hardly alive, save one enslaved as the task master of the others, and he alone speaks somewhat freely. I spoke to him when I could, mostly because he was prone to telling the most amusing sort of lies.

I've remained infatuated with the irony that I discovered my favorite book in a cobbler's workshop that I visited after a strange slough of mishaps, rather than the iconic mass library where I resided for half of every day. It's titled Sisyphus Smiles, a small tongue twister. I found it a comforting read, as I could see no future for myself beyond the perpetuity of daily toil. This cobbler seemed to exult in his own personal pendulum, so I attributed enough credibility to his worn copy of the book to seek out my own. I found it in a subsection of a small gallery devoted to military writing from one of the more autocratic ages. The author, Praetorian Konrad, devoted his semi-retired years to compiling ways the common person could employ a soldier's discipline. My copies of his texts were quickly as worn as Cobbler Matias's, and I acquired the smallest print edition I could so I could carry it with me at all times.

I found myself in Matias's house on the day after my acceptance into the militia. I was searching for a proper pair of boots, for a soldier was as dependent on his boots as much as he was his weapon, and to my ire there was not a shop in all of Haven that had a well made pair to sell. I found myself above ground in a dust soaked alley beneath a tangle of steel girders and endless stone walls. Torchlight trickled through the joints of interlinked catwalks and raised foundations, falling mute and green on the thick, dusty air. Mired in frustration, I took to cursing and flinging loose stones, then turned to leave in a huff. I stopped when I heard a crunching sound and a cry of pain, followed by a heavy thud.

There are times I wish I had the power to inflict the worst torments of Tarthas on entire groups of people. The targs, vagrants from various kindreds who long ago settled the upper levels of the magnacities so they could raid the ground settlements from above, were not worth the sweat perspired while beating them. If there were a switch that could bring about their complete and thorough annihilation, I would have flick it without a thought. I found half a dozen of them laying broken around an old tarrasquin man who'd been stabbed at least two dozen times. Their knives were all as broken as their limbs and necks, and the old saurian; his back propped against the wall of an empty storage shed, was eking out shallow breaths while looking sadly to his left. When I came close enough to see clearly through the dust, I saw another targ, a tyfloch, laid over the tarrasquin's lap. His head was twisted almost all the way around and the old man had ripped off his wings. I followed the tarrasquin's dying gaze to a girl, huddled on the ground, clutching her torn tunic to her chest.

Her face looked old at first, but that was an illusion cast by mud and trauma. I saw that the stone I'd thrown had struck yet another targ on the skull and killed him. The targ held a branding gun in his dead hand, its needle still glowing orange. I imagined the girl was more likely covering the mark he'd been putting on her than her exposed breasts. Knowing better than to approach one in that state, I sat on the ground by her fallen guardian.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"Will you survive?" I asked.

He shook his head, and when I did so I saw the deep cut under his jaw.

I removed the faceplate from my dust mask and firmly gripped his forearm. "I'll take her to safety, if you wish."

He turned his head to look at me. I may as well tell you now, that I have seen very few of my ilk in this world. I am human, but of a mysterious variety, and I could tell the dying guardian was wrestling with the strangeness of my icy complexion and luminous, un-pupiled blue eyes. Im time he nodded, and the pebbled skin around his lips twitched. With a pained grunt his head slumped forward, his massive neck no longer able to support his heavy skull and bone armored crest. I held a hand to his nostrils and felt the scarcest of winds blowing from them. I leaned close and told him earnestly that I was a friend, and that I would in fact take the girl safely. He mumbled that I'd better, then died.

I stood quickly to avoid the smell of his sudden release of excrement. I would have put my faceplate back on my mask, but I wanted the girl to see my face before offering her protection. I sat in front of her as I had her companion, and waited there silently for her to speak.

She was pretty in a tortured and malnourished sort of way. Other men may not have found her as appealing as I, or the targ troupe who sought to claim her for their coven, but the applying of face paints and light bending glamours is a denial, not a preference. I have always found tragic beauty to be much closer to nature and reality, and maintain no desires for transient lust.

She told me her name; Eris. Her voice was so weak and shaken that it caused me pain to hear. I wanted dearly to hold her in my arms and smother her with wholesome interest, but I knew better, so I told her that my name was Victor, and asked if there was anything I could do in the moment to help her feel more comfortable. She asked, very politely, if I had any water. I offered her my skin. She took a few meager sips and handed it back. I noticed how scrawny her arm was when she reached for the water. On closer inspection of her body I saw that she was terribly thin, though that made me feel drawn to her, rather than repulsed. Her head, hands and feet looked much too large for her body, arms and legs. I speculated that the targs wanted her because of her frailness, making her easy to physically dominate. I offered her some dried fruit, which she refused, and resumed my patient vigil.

The alley was lit by dying torches that flickered in a melancholy rhythm. I found myself bobbing my head to the beat of failing ballasts, which brought a smile to Eris's chapped lips. I again offered her my skin, and this time she took a long enough drink to quench her thirst. She apologized while handing back my near empty skin, and when I took it our gloved fingers touched. I told her she had no reason to be sorry, and again sat silently, bobbing my head to guttering torches.

"You can refill at my father's shop," she said, her lips a bit less chapped. "He has a clean pump."

"Are you ready to walk, then?"

She nodded, though she did not seem eager. I asked how close she was to the tarrasquin.

"I never knew him. My father did though, from years past. I expect he'll be sad he's dead."

"So he was guarding his old friend's daughter? You must have been on an errand. Have these targs stolen from you?".

Her response took some time, with long pauses between each couple of words. "The errand was complete. We were returning. But, don't the targs take from everyone, even those with nothing?"

I stood slowly and extended my hand. She stood on her own, wincing a little, then bowed slightly. I removed my cloak and draped it over her slender shoulders, then bid her lead the way. We strode through dark roads through thick dust, our masks hiding our changing expressions. I walked closely enough behind her for her to feel protected, but took care not to tread too closely, and we made the trip in silence, towered over on either side by the massive, rust robed pillars of old Haven. Beams of torchlight took the place that shadows would hold in a Sunlit wood, a thing I've only seen in a false dream. Here the dark was the Sun, and the torchlight the rare thing that drew the eye and caused subtle waves of fear. I saw a ladder made of old cables dangling from a low hanging beam, likely where the targs descended from. The surfacers did their best to destroy any means the targs might use to drop down, but like roaches and spiders, they kept making new ways. I drew the shotel I'd checked out before emerging to the surface and hacked at it. It was a cheap and poorly maintained weapon, with severe notches in its cutting edge, but I hit with enough force to slice it some eight and a half feet up, having made a high swing. At least they'd be unable to descend quietly now.

There was a long stretch where the torches had been put out. Eris quickened her pace at first, but I whispered to her not to, and according to the unique nature of my eyes I cast a pale luminescence that only I could see. I risked frightening her by pulling her close, noting how tall she was as I did so. Her head rose clean to my shoulder, not a common feat among women of my kindred. I whispered to her to maintain that distance, and kept my shotel drawn. We moved slowly and quietly, taking deliberate steps. When I saw a shape lurking into view, I pointed my weapon directly at it while we continued our deliberate traversal, and each lurker I pointed to immediately stopped and backed away. These were not likely targs, who are vicious and tactical, but desperate exiles who lingered close to the settlement so as to harass those forced to leave its borders, either for food and drugs, or for petty revenge. We quickened our pace when we were again under torchlight, and in another hour reached the outskirts of her village. Her father's shop was on a small street over a mile from the market square, and their house adjoined it in the backlot.

Matias was much older than I expected. Forty years was a venerable age on the surface, but he was well into his fifties, and hale as I had ever been. He was hiding when we approached, an old, many times refurbished arbalest pointed at a crack in the store window. Eris went to the window first and told him all was well and he let us in. Still, friend or foe, my presence brought him sadness.

"He killed twenty of them at least," I told Matias.

"And you just happened upon them?" His voice was husky with held back tears. It gladdened me to meet a man his age who still wept when a friend was lost. I bowed low to hide the smile that would likely have been misunderstood.

"We're in your debt," he said.

"You owe me nothing. I only wish I'd come upon your friend and daughter sooner."

Matias shook his head vehemently. "Eris, tend to yourself, then put together some food."

She left the room in as polite a hurry as she could. I heard a door shut only an instant after her weeping began.

"We will feed you at least, and I'll hear no more of it."

"I have urgent need," I replied, "or I would gladly stay."

Matias sighed, then looked down at my feet. "Then you'll have to come back for your boots. I can have them ready by noontide."

"Truly?" I asked, elated. It had not yet dawned on me that the man was a cobbler. "You've divined my very purpose."

Matias had a shaved chin and bald head, but his mustache made up for all that his scalp and chin lacked. It wiggled and danced when he furrowed his almost equally prominent eyebrows. "What's your purpose?", he asked after some quiet thought.

"I am newly conscripted to the militia, and my first detail begins this evening."

He pulled a short stool out from under a table and slapped it. "Put your left foot up there, out of your current boot."

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I complied, and he took a great number of measurements. "You're a tall lad," he said, "with high arches and long toes. You'll be for the outriders, or the long range patrol. And a spearman by the look of these long arms."

"I played at learning arms as a boy," I said, "and the spear seemed my only aptitude."

He directed me to set my other foot on the stool, also unshod. I apologized for the smell. He laughed, reminding me of his profession.

"You'd be surprised what you can learn during your training. It all gets down to what's in your heart, in the end."

"You clearly have shoe making in yours," I said as I admired the varied footwear he had displayed on racks.

"No," the mustache writhed, "I have Eris in my heart. Whether you work or fight, lad, do it for what you love, and you'll find yourself in the service of kings."

"Have you cobbled for any members of the corporatarchy?"

He nodded, the mustache bristling proudly. I raised a hairless brow. I was surprised he hadn't commented on my features, even upon the removal of my mask. Most did, even if they were not shocked. I had yet to meet another who looked as I do, with pure white skin and not a single follicle of hair, not to mention my eyes.

"Several members of the Board wear my work. If you ever find yourself in their presence, look for my maker's mark while you're kneeling."

I looked at the nearest pair of shoes, fine heels for a wealthy lady, and on the tip of their pointed toes was a small flower studded with green gems. "I'll be proud to wear your mark, ser."

He stood slowly, popping his back in several ways once erect. "It won't be visible. Best no one knows the quality of your boots, or they might try taking them while you're still breathing."

I heard a faint sound and turned. Eris had just begun opening the door she had earlier vanished through, and was startled to find me already looking at her. She was wearing a plain frock and had bathed, but her face still looked haggard from her ordeal. The frock was not low in the front, but a small piece of the mark made on her showed. It was red, and still bleeding a little. She stepped into the room, seeing that both of us were looking at her somewhat expectantly. After a quick curtsey she gestured for us to come to the house.

We followed, washed, and sat at their small table. Matias was no taller than his daughter, but he was broad, and between his broad frame and my long limbs, the table was crowded. Only Eris took up a meager allotment of space. Before sitting daintily between us, she placed a ceramic board on the table, then set a bowl of steaming broth, a pot of pungent tea, and a plate of baked cauliflower. I wondered why such a well-to-do craftsmen was not situated in the market square. I waited until we'd each spoken a word of gratitude before asking. Matias was kind, if predictable, and spoke of his gratitude for my chance arrival in time to bring his daughter home. I seconded his sentiment, then added my gratitude for the wisdom of the Aban Atar, whose guidance tempered the Board of Law. Eris was thankful for yesterday, as it was better than today, and safe refuge from tomorrow. Matias looked embarrassed, but I was amused. If only I could have shown it in my eyes. I felt uncertain how Eris would respond to a smile.

I discovered the book after we ate. I insisted on being allowed to help clean up in spite of both their protests. Afterward we sat down for a moment and I answered Matias's barrage of standard fare questions. He did not seem as interesting of a person as his daughter, but I liked him all the same. The book was on the mantle. I could not quite see the cover, but it was jackal-eared and very worn. I was delighted to see that Matias was a lettered man, but he assumed I'd seen the title.

"The secret to living through any storm, with your spirit burning bright. Here." He stood and took the book off the mantle, then crouched by me and showed me the forward. It was a long winded and slobbering epitaph for the long deceased author by some forgettable sycophant, filled with blithering displays of pseudo-intellectualism and desperate clamberings for esteem. I was surprised that Matias had caught the essence of the text proper, seeing how infatuated he was with the bloated prose of the forward. When he'd finished assaulting my ears with that excrementory dissertation, he handed the book to me to peruse on my own. I flipped hurriedly past the many pointless introductions, glossaries, bibliographies and addendums, right to the meat of the thing, and was taken aback by the first sentence.

'Our lust for gratification woke the dread spirit that lurks within all shadows, and now the very sky is filled with boulders too large even for Atlas to bear.'

Intrigued, I read on a little more. 'If only we had looked to the much smaller burden of Sisyphus, we would not find ourselves locked away in Tartarus, bereft of warmth and light.'

"Does it strike a chord with you?" Matias asked.

"The prose is strange. Current pronunciations of the Fates, but an archaic etymology of Tarthas."

The mustache ruffled like a caterpillar that couldn't quite curl itself around the edge of a leaf. "It's from a medial era. Crystalline tablets had become cost prohibitive, and jinn too dangerous to shackle, sparking a mass resurgence of material codices and authors became less uniform in their vernacular. I've found a score of similar oddities to the one you pointed out. But its message rings clear, regardless of the indecisiveness of the author's pen. It's yours. I think you'll benefit greatly from it in your days as a soldier."

"I can't take any more from you." I raised a hand before he could protest, and set it back on the mantle. "But I'll acquire my own copy from the Bibliotheca, and study it actively."

Matias's ample eyebrows did a dance at that. "The Bibliotheca! You have access?"

I nodded. "I spent my whole childhood in service to the Erudites."

"My boy, I'm impressed. Then perhaps, I don't suppose..."

"You'd like a new copy?".

He nodded excitedly. "I've worn the back cover clean off, and smudged half my favorite passages."

"I'll see what I can do. If I cannot avail more than my own, I may find a book seller elsewhere who has one for sale. And don't debate with me over the matter. Your boots will be more than ample payment for my simple kind deed."

"Simple, maybe. But blasted brave, and rare at that. You deserve free help, my son. And on that chord, I should get to cobbling. I work fast, but you haven't much time. I don't suppose you've ready any books on the abzu?"

He gave me an odd look, and when I shook my head made a gesture with his that one makes when trying to shrug off disappointment, then went to cobbling. I did what I could to assist, though Eris was far more knowledgeable of the craft, and her bony fingers worked every bit as quick and skillfully as her fathers. Now and then a strand or two of her crow black hair would come loose from the bun she wore it in and dangle in front of her eyes. I can't articulate why, but each time it happened my heart leapt. I found myself wishing for the whole bun to come undone and for her hair to fall over her beautiful, dark eyes. I also found the prominence of her facial features riveting, though they were largely due to her being malnourished. I stole a few looks at their larder, and pondered over Matias's robust build, and figured she must have had an eating illness. People who suffer often lose their appetites, and it had not escaped me that there was no sign of a mother.

We lunched late in the afternoon, and I observed that Eris hardly ate. The work went brilliantly throughout the rest of the day thanks to the skill of Eris and Matias, and the very fine equipment he had in the hidden workshop under his storefront. His patrons must have wondered how he worked so quickly. Never had I seen such machinery, save in fragments of a past I on occasion recalled. But the credit went to the artisans. A machine has no panache or flair or talent, only the means to perform a task when operated. My boots did not look attractive, but the fit was perfect, and they could be fastened in the time it takes to blink an eye. No time was wasted on any luxury or flair, only the utility. With little time to spare, I thanked Matias profusely and told Eris how glad I was to have met her, though I lamented the circumstances. I scrawled my block and silo numbers on a scrap of paper, in case they ever wished to hire me on as an escort for future errands, then left them for first detail.

We stood in rows while the michnomell blessed our weapons. I hadn't had time to return my borrowed shotel, so I'd stashed it in my belt behind my back, not wanting to be seen with it when our issued weapons were handed out. The ground militia had never been well funded, and seeing me already armed would be all the excuse needed to hold back my issued weapon for another soldier. I did not want to be armed only with the cheap weapon I'd checked out at the passing station beneath the caldera doors. It worked, fortunately, and I was handed a simple but sturdy ginkgo hafted partisan. I remembered telling Matias I'd once shown some promise with the spear. Knowing that the targs were prowling this day, I readied myself to test my aptitude. After we were divided into squads of six, each lead by a veteran militiaman of one to three years, we were handed maps with our patrol routes outlined in color coded ink. I was glad for my new boots.

My squad cut directly into the heart of the under city, coming very close to Matias's village. We hung new torches, replaced the ballasts on salvageable ones, and used grappling hooks to climb high enough to make the new targ ladders completely unusable. We were waylaid by a large but ill coordinated band of targs. We purged as many of the animals as we could, and pursued the largest concentration of retreaters into a broken drainage slough. Our leader, a two year man named Tarion, called me to follow him down the pipe where we would wait in the next hole, arriving much more quickly due to the sludge the targs would be wading through, and the rest of our squad pursued them from the rear with their torches on full blast. We found two places where they could egress and each took one. I held my partisan ready and crouched low, prepped to stab upward beneath the ribs of the first beast that emerged. It was in fact a beast that emerged.

They'd found a mire rat, a roach the size of a child that favors the coastal ruins, and drove it ahead of them. I let it pass and thrust my partisan into a targ that came after it. I was almost bludgeoned by the next targ, as I struggled to free my spear from the one I'd skewered. I managed to dodge the blow from the targ's cudgel and used the dead one as a shield, maneuvering his corpse with my partisan. I finally freed my weapon and ran the other targ through, then looked to Tarion and saw him standing on a pile of the other targs all soaked in gore. The rest of our squad came soon and reported that they'd dispatched the few that turned to fight when they heard Tarion's battle cries. Tarion came quickly to me and threw a knife past me. I turned and saw the mire rat, knife in head, just inches from my ankles. Its mandibles were oozing venom.

I turned to thank my captain, but was silent when I felt him yank the shotel from my belt.

"What's this piece of trash? You make this yourself? I wouldn't give this broken thing to my daughter to play with."

Tarion was not a big man. He stood no taller than my sternum, and was not broad like Matias. Had I not seen him standing atop a pile of vanquished foes, I would have taken his bravado for posturing.

"I came up early and checked it out before leaving. I forgot I had it."

"Uh huh. Good thing. You'd have been using it instead of that fine polearm." He flung it away and it broke against a fallen fragment of drainage pipe. "I'll speak with my man in the gateway arms. Either we provide our citizens with protection or we don't. A common man would get himself killed waving that skata at a targ."

We carried on into the night without further incident, though two other squads had also engaged roving bands of targs around the time we had, as well as exiles lurking near the villages. Two recruits from one squad were wounded, and their captain was killed. I was glad to be in Tarion's troupe. We convened where our detail began to debrief, and to my dismay one squad had taken Matias prisoner. His face was well bloodied and both eyes were swollen shut. Will it disgust you to know that I was glad for that? I would have been dreadfully ashamed if he'd seen me. In truth though, he knew I was there. How could he not? I kept completely silent, but looked as subtly as I could for Eris, tapping into the green light that I could summon for my own private use. Where the area was lit nearly blinded me, but I managed to avoid wincing or shielding my eyes. I scanned our dark perimeter, finding nothing, then dispersed the pale fog in favor of our white torches.

Upon our return to Haven proper, Matias was handed over to the sheriff and put in a holding cell. I was busily thinking of how I could discreetly visit him on my walk back to my silo, but did not yet have the knowledge of duty shifts to pass the guards without being noticed. Frustrated and confused, I unclasped my cloak and threw it onto my couch as I made my way to my bed. When my cloak hit the couch, a length of it whipped against the wall, eliciting a loud clang. A thin metal box then clattered onto my floor.

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