White and brown and blue. The pale line of the desert burning against the chilly azure of the sky above. Dry air rushed over him and he blinked his eyes as their moisture evaporated. He focused and looked at what was before him.
He was sitting on a small hill, looking down on an immense basin. The sun beat down from the cloudless sky and to his left and right great arches of plateaus formed the edge of the bowl, their wrinkled, rusty skirts sloping down to the ivory floor of the desert. The air was so crisp and hot it felt electric. A land so striking and beautiful it pained the heart.
“Look,” said a voice, and he turned to see the pale young man sitting beside him, still flecked with blood, his flaxen hair dancing in the wind. A wide smear of red still shone on his forehead, like the bill of a cap. The boy gestured into the desert before them.
Connelly turned to look. There was movement in the basin. On the far side he saw the edges of the plateaus almost quiver, like the sporadic rain of rocks that precedes a landslide, but as he watched he saw that the movements came not from rocks but from men, men with dark skin and long black hair. They poured from some unseen pass in the mountain face and even at this distance he saw they were sprinting at a great speed. Their teeth shone white and wild and in their hands they carried rude weapons hacked from wood and stone. They wore no clothing, and once they were close he realized some were women as well.
“Watch,” said the young man to his left.
Connelly heard a cry from below. Another group of people came running from the near side, worming their way through a hidden crack in the slope. They were indistinguishable from the band of people in the distance save for streaks of mud across their faces and chest, like warpaint. The screams from the two groups intensified once they saw one another and their paths curved to meet, charging head-on, each party throwing themselves to greet the other’s approach.
“What are they doing?” said Connelly.
“Watch,” said the young man.
“What’s going to happen?”
“You must watch.”
As the two bands closed the distance they both let out shrieks of bright, glad rage. The heads of many weapons rose up into the sky like some feral salute, axe and spear and crude blade all hungry to crush and bite. All things seemed to stand still and tense, pausing to leap.
The two groups met. The spray was terrific on the white sands. Arcs of crimson spun out through the air and traced graceful circles on the desert floor. Axe and spear bobbed up and slashed down, bringing with them a rain of gore. Connelly watched as one man was spitted through the abdomen. He fell to his knees shrieking while a painted woman stooped and began sawing at his neck with a small black blade. Another painted soldier stood over a fallen foe, beating his opponent’s head into pulp with a wide, flat stone. He screamed incoherently, unaware or perhaps not caring that the man was dead. Perhaps he could never be dead enough.
Connelly could not tell the screams of agony from those of triumph, the dances of victory from the death throes, the anguish from the joy. He watched as one woman picked up a severed head and held it above her and howled with pleasure, and was in turn attacked by a painted man who coveted her prize. He brought his mace down and her knee bent strangely and the head tumbled from her grasp. Two of his comrades crowded around to savage whatever part of her still lived.
“Why are they doing this?” Connelly asked.
“Why?” asked the young man. “They would not even know the word. If you were to ask they could not tell you.”
“Who are they?”
“Killers. Killers of men. Killers of what can be killed. That is all they know or wish to know.”
“So they kill for no reason? Not for land? For hate?”
“They do not know territory, nor do they know the past, and so they cannot hate. They may someday. In the future they may understand it and use it as their reason, as their means. But it is not their end.”
“What is?”
The young man gestured before them. The desert floor was a deep red now. To Connelly it resembled a great red eye, a ring of white and a ring of red and then a circle of glistening brown, twitching and heaving. Almost none remained standing now.
“They’re killing their friends,” said Connelly.
“They have no friends. To them, friends are merely devices with which they may conquer their enemies. And when they cast down their foes, who remains? More enemies.”
“They got to learn. They got to learn eventually.”
“They have not yet.”
“How long have they been here?”
“They have always been here. They change, some. The method of battle changes, the stakes grow, but the battle itself is always there.”
“They could give up. They could go someplace else. Live peacefully.”
“There are no peaceful lives,” said the young man.
“What?” said Connelly. “No.”
“Yes. All life is struggle. It is always battle. These people choose this way because it is simpler. It is easier for them.”
“I knew peace once. I once lived a peaceful life.”
“Then go back to it,” said the young man.
To that Connelly had nothing to say. The young man nodded.
“It always finds you, in the end,” he said. “It does not matter how you come to it. But you will. Struggling against someone, seeking to cast them down and make the final blow. One day each man and creature will find themselves doing the same.”
“I don’t know what to do,” said Connelly. “How can I stop it?”
“Die,” said the young man simply.
“I can’t do that. I can’t choose such a thing.”
“Yes. And who can?”
Connelly looked at the carnage below. Vultures wheeled in the deep blue sky, mimicking the patterns below them, whether they knew it or not. “They could have never come in here,” said Connelly. “They could have stayed out. Stayed away. Stayed far away and never come close.”
“That would have meant denying the truth.”
“The truth?”
“The truth of this place. If you were to halt the revolutions of creation, much like slowing a record with a single finger, and then find the center, that place where it is still and always had been still and always would be still, and then having found the center you opened up that tiny heart like a locket, why, inside you would see an arena like this one. Two people trapped within, each scrambling to kill the other.”
“I don’t care,” Connelly said. “I don’t give a damn. A lie would be better. Any lie. I would rather live with a lie than this, and they could have chosen that.”
“They could have. But they did not.”
Almost nothing lived on the desert floor now. The vultures circled lower. The young man sighed and lifted his face to the sun. “You will see me soon,” he said. “You will see me soon, Connelly.”
“I will?” asked Connelly.
“Yes,” said the young man. Then he lifted his hand and touched the red on his forehead, and with glistening fingertips he reached forward and touched Connelly’s brow. “Wake,” he said. “And see.”
Connelly felt consciousness crystallize somewhere within him. He saw darkness. Then the walls of the jail cell formed in the shadows and he smelled vomit somewhere and knew he was still alive.
“Connelly?” said Peachy’s voice. “Connelly, you there?”
Connelly touched the floor in response, scraping the wood.
“Connelly, I think they did something to your cell. I don’t know what. I think they hid something in it.
