The vaulted dome of the Academy was blinding. Copper plated, it shone like a sun.
“And it is a sun,” General Travertine proclaimed to the gathering of Barronites outside on the Academy grounds. “Our dome is the only sun we have right now, apart from the energy field that provides us this diffuse, vague light.” His hand gestured in the air. “So we’ll look to this dome—our Grater Barren sun—for inspiration. For light, knowledge and hope! We can reclaim our future right here in These Academy walls! Give applause for your children! Give applause for your own, toughened, laboring hands! You have built a sun with them! To our Grater Barren future!”
The gathering of Barronites exploded in applause as Travertine opened his speech at the Grater Barren Academy’s completion celebration. Travertine was a good speaker, with loads of charisma and fierce vocal resonance. He held the crowd gripped with his words.
All of those pre-battle speeches with his troops gathered around him filtered through his mind’s eye. Wasted words to a great degree. They had never been recorded. He heard himself rallying his soldiers to battle, and probable death. How many soldiers had followed his command? Many. They had revered him. They had died by his orders. This was power—to bid men to die for their country and see them follow through with the full conviction of a driven man.
The General shivered in spite of the heat and the buoyant crowd and celebration. Then he blinked at the horizon. Something was approaching in the air. He raised his hand to shelter his eyes as they lifted and focused. It was a bird. How could there be a bird in the abyss? And massive! It’s broad black wingspan descended through the air and circled the Academy dome, upstaging him mid thought. Children pointed and shouted, then women and men, turned there attention from the General to the massive bird flying above them over the Academy. Then a shout. First one and then another. “It’s the sign! It’s the Magnus Avem!”
The giant condor banked and flew again in the direction it had come. And the crowd followed, as fast as they were able, leaving the Academy and the band and the General standing upon the stage. They followed the bird back to the edge of the abyss. And there they stopped. Stared. And cried aloud:
Water!”
A waterfall spilled into the abyss in a seemingly unending stream all of the way from the surface of the land above. It was as if an entire river had been lifted from it’s bed and rerouted to flow over the edge of the abyss.
“Divert the water!” the crowd cried. They watched through tears in their eyes to see a new water source in their desolate city. How had the bird done it? They didn’t know, but it must be responsible.The Magnus Avem was their benefactor, so said prophesy. All of the other prophesies must come to pass as well.
The General ground his teeth into his jaw, but he could not deny the bird’s act and the power of its timing. The bird, it seemed, and not the General, had given the people a new sun. A new source of hope for their survival in and outside of the abyss. He hated that bird and all it symbolized to the surviving Barronites.
These ten years since the fall into the abyss, he had worked to obscure it, just as he had worked to make that bird take form. Yes, the Magnus Avem had been his own vision—his own product of ley energy and genius gone rogue all those years ago. And still, the Avem survived, taunting him from above even now. Lording over him as he arced over the General in his abyssal shame.
It could be hard work, competing with a prophesy. But he took comfort, prophesies tended to stretch and meander into thin legend. And the General knew how legend tended toward myth. And myth toward fiction.
To the people of Grater Barren, the Magnus Avem was the stuff of legend. And the General was flesh, and had seen his people through many deadly battles. He would see them through their exile, too. He would restore them to the surface on his own strength.
ARROW
Sonia hadn’t planned to betray the Admiral or her mother’s memory, but she’d had little choice. A secret hearing followed. It had to be secret. There were too many surprises in this case to allow anything public.
Heavy boots stalked the corridor along the cell block. Interrogators. They had come to get the proof of Sonia’s guilt, and failing that, to unravel a thread with which to fabricate proof. Unraveling was their specialty and Sonia looked quite frayed around the edges already, sitting in the corner of her stone cell. Hair matted against her scalp and a slight fever igniting her cheeks with two unwholesome red patches of color, and a wild look haunting her rogue amber eyes. She was on the edge already, and they wouldn’t need long with her.
There were two of them: a black-haired man, rail thin and reeking of tobacco, and a civilian with long blond whiskers and gray bowler. The one in the hat spoke with a high, sharp voice that pared away excuses and explanations like the bruised flesh of an apple. “You say you know nothing about your real father, but how likely is that? He’s your father.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Sonia bristled. “I never knew him. My mother died when I was born. Her secrets died with her.”
The black-haired man had a knife. And he leaned upon the two back legs of his chair while he whittled a piece of wood. “Missy, I’m going to let you in on something. In this line of work, you learn a lot about human nature. And the nature of humanity is to leave a track. Trinkets. Mementos. Souvenirs. People can’t help themselves. I’ll bet you have a trinket from your mother…and maybe even your father hiding somewhere clever. Don’t you?”
Sonia glared at the man. “If I did have something, you’d have found it in my father’s villa.”
“We’re not talking about Admiral Serrated Edge. You know he’s not your father, don’t you? We’re talking about your real father. The one who gave you those evil eyes, right? You’ve kept your trinket a secret even from the Admiral. You’ve hidden it somewhere. I can see it. A locket or some cheap bit of bling, I’ll bet…with your daddy’s grubby little picture is inside of it. Do you want to tell me, or do I have to use extra motivation?” He casually fingered the sharp edge of his blade.
Sonia’s heart raced. “I hate my mother. She did this to me.” Sonia beat her eye sockets with her fists. “She let me be born and abandoned me in Arrow to be hated! I wouldn’t keep anything from her!”
If it was an act, it was a good one. The interrogators exchanged annoyed glances and the man in the bowler hat pushed his brim forward and tried a new angle. “Is it really true? What we hear about Barronites?”
A long pause. “What do you hear about them?”
“Some kind of black magic changes them into beasts and creatures and things when they get angry.”
Sonia flinched. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Doesn’t matter what you’ve heard. Can you do it?”
“If I could, do you think I’d be here?”
“You’re a spy and you got caught. That’s why you’re here.”
“I was born in an attic. I never set foot in Grater Barren. What do I know about Barronites?”
“Does a fish need to be told he’s a fish? Do it! Give us a peek at your insides!”
She glared hard at the men sneering at her from across the cell. “I can’t do anything, and you know it!”
“How do we know that?”
“Because you’ve questioned my nurse…and Mrs. Smythe and the Admiral. You found out about my false lenses, but you’ve nothing else. The Admiral isn't lying, and you know it!”
The two men shrugged, equal parts indifference and disbelief. “Your mother must have left you something, somewhere. Tell us where you put it, and I’ll tell the judge you cooperated with us like a good soldier. A model of remorse and reform.”
“Liar.” Anyway, she'd already tried reforming and no one had given her credit for that.
“Okay, you’re right. The judge won’t be lenient, but I will.” The tobacco reeking man opened the blade of his knife again so she couldn’t fail to understand his meaning.
The interrogators bullied Sonia until she cowered into a corner of her square prison cell, but the interrogators slacked off in the end. They didn’t need any evidence. Sonia’s guilt was written across her face in glowing amber.
Proving her guilt was no difficulty. The difficulty was in the sentencing, and the judge would be on his own for that. Anyway, the judge was Horald Thornburger, and he had a lively imagination and would make good use of it with this prisoner. But before the interrogators left Sonia behind them, shattered and weeping in her cell, they satisfied themselves on one point. Apparently, the rumors were false.
Kind of disappointing, but it seemed Barronites did not transform into wild creatures when provoked. So they left her, wretched, but without a scratch.
***
Heavy doors whined on brass hinges and crashed to a close. The courtroom was itself little more than a windowless cell, though paneled in self-respecting mahogany hardwood, and bearing a state seal of the Arrow thistle, caste in bronze and hung high above the broad mahogany bench.
The court room was not large, public trials not being the rule in Arrow. But having heard all the evidence in secret, the sentencing following Sonia’s trial was to be public, and the State Council had furnished the courtroom with extra seating, which Arrowites filled with some enthusiasm.
Additional seating wasn’t enough, however, and so the sentencing would also be broadcast over the national radio. Every state venue—schools, libraries, churches—would turn on the broadcast, so the largest possible number of citizens could witness the proceedings. A good distraction from any grievances against the State.
Sonia rose to her feet in ankle swelling shackles. Her guilty amber eyes glowed, and she veiled them with heavily lashed lids, making her offense almost unnoticeable, while yet unforgivable.
The judge took his seat behind the bench while a few people in the courtroom stood stone stiff and hungry for a Grater Barren scapegoat. Nature had destroyed their enemy, denying them the chance to do it themselves, but by luck, here in this courtroom, they would have a hand of the last of their enemies’ final extinction. It was an important day. A day to remember.
The bailiff stood tall, and read his ritual, “Oyez, oyez, oyez. All those having business before the Honorable Superior Court of the Arrow Nation draw near and give their attention. This Court is now in session. The Honorable Justice Horald Thornburger is presiding.”
Judge Thornburger opened his mouth with a full-throated croak, coughed, turned red and then purple, pounded his chest once with his left fist. When his swollen throat cleared at last, he gasped out the words, “Sonia T. Edge. Your identity within the Green Guard is an obvious fraud. You are plainly not a citizen of Arrow and a disqualified from service within the Arrow military unit. Your security clearance admission to the Green Guard were obtained on false pretenses. The evidence is incontrovertible. You are hereby found guilty of spying for the enemy state of Grater Barren.”
Sonia’s eyes fluttered closed while she suppressed a sigh. There would be no sympathy from Thornburger.
“You are sentenced to die by firing squad.” He paused and the whispers filled the court room. “But I have decided, we cannot be burdened even with the expense of the killing bullet. Therefore, we will turn the Flintstock bullets on you by giving you the run of your life. I understand you are a fairly fast runner. At the front lines, our army is entrenched in a standoff against the Flintstock army on the shores of Avion. It will be your sentence, to run that stretch of battlefield between the trenches. If you can, draw the Flintstock army out, by all means. Give our men at the front some good targets to fire at. If you can reach the far side of the battlefield alive, then you may live. Though you must accept exile as your judgment.”
The courtroom whispers escalated to bold voices and audible gasps for breath. Among them, Sonia’s own.
It was a chance she scarcely dared hope for.
Apparently, Judge Thornburger had assumed Sonia was simply fast.
He had no idea.