'There goes the Ministry of the Treasury,' groaned Below.
I felt a tremor run through the tunnel, accompanied by the very distant sound of an explosion. A moment later, chunks of rock blasted off the wall a few yards behind us. The force of the shock almost knocked me into the river again. As soon as I had my bearings, I looked out and saw the soldiers had stopped advancing for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on.
'Over here,' yelled Below.
They heard his voice and instantly began advancing again.
I readied myself to spring out of the shadows at them. I didn't know what good that would do, but I thought in the confusion I might be able to subdue at least one of them. I was praying that Calloo still had a few more rounds of fight in him.
When I looked back, I saw that the Master was again grimacing with pain. He brought his hands up and clutched his head. 'Not my palace,' he croaked. We felt another tremor, heard another explosion, and a moment later out in the cavern the floor erupted and geysers of rock and steam shot straight up. It wasn't enough to kill the soldiers, but it was more than enough to scare them. They fled in the opposite direction, abandoning their posts and disappearing around the other side of the sphere as pieces of the cavern ceiling gave way and showered down.
As soon as they were out of sight, I motioned to Calloo to bring Below. We made our way across the uneven concrete floor, wending around the craters and watching for falling debris. Two more blasts occurred before we drew close to the base of the wondrous structure. The Master was drifting in and out of consciousness as the place came apart around us. The crystal sphere rippled in the explosions like a real soap bubble, but I saw no sign of its cracking.
Inside the paradise, I could see Ea and Aria, looking out at us. She held the baby, and they were waving to me. 'Bring him closer,' I yelled to Calloo. My intention was to mash his face right up against the shell of crystal. I ran ahead and motioned for the prisoners to move away. As I ran toward them, I saw a flash of bright light reflected. I turned in time to see Calloo detonate and burst with a deafening bang, the parts of him flying out behind the Master. Gears, springs, rotors, flesh spread out across the cavern like confetti in a high wind. Below fell forward, unharmed.
I rushed to him before he could get away and lifted him to his feet. My adrenaline was pumping wildly, and I had unusual strength. I forced him over to the crystal wall and shoved his face against it. Three more explosions blasted out of him, again furiously rippling the bubble but not cracking it. The last one I could tell had diminished strength, and I feared that the enzymatic effect I had induced with the shudder was wearing off.
Ea and Aria were watching me from inside the paradise. As I held onto Below's quivering body, trying to stay on my feet in the face of the aftershocks, I noticed that the Traveler looked very weak. This was my last, best chance, and it wasn't going to work. I had decided to simply kill Below and be done with him, when I noticed Aria hand the baby over to her companion, step up close to the boundary and touch it as if begging me not to give up.
The Master came awake then and began struggling with me to free himself. He had gotten some of his strength back and was able to turn and wrap his fingers around my throat. I did the same to him, and we were locked in that position. As he applied pressure, I let go with one hand and punched him in the side of the head. This slackened his grip, but not for long.
Clutching tightly on one side to his shirt collar and on the other his jacket lapel, I steeled myself against his trickery. The smoke cleared and his face melted and transformed into that of a saber-toothed cat. His hands became snakes that twined more completely around my throat. Small dark birds flew from the sleeves of his jacket, their fluttering wings blinding me for seconds at a time.
'You are already dead, Cley,' he said in the deep voice of the creature he had become.
'It is all an illusion,' I repeated in my mind, but I was losing the strength in my neck muscles as the twin serpents applied greater pressure. No air was passing into my lungs, and I was growing light-headed. I could feel my grip on his clothing quickly weakening.
As my hands slipped to my sides, he spun me around to face the crystal and smashed my face into it as I had done to him. He pulled me back quickly then, and I could feel his lips on my left ear.
'When this is over, I'm going to do some work on you. I think Greta Sykes could use a mate.'
I was slipping in and out of consciousness, finding it hard to focus. Looking up one more time, I saw Aria in front of me, through the clear boundary. She was touching the bottom of her veil, and although I was barely alive, I knew instantly what she had in mind. I slackened every muscle in my body and dropped to my knees, so that she would be face to face with Below.
I heard the Master begin to scream, and I knew she must have lifted the green cloth. The snakes turned back to fingers, loosened, and then left my throat. For a moment, the air around us became dead calm and a strange silence pervaded the underground chamber. Then a sound like thunder was instantly everywhere, followed by a great cracking noise like a frozen river thawing all at once. The explosion blew us back across the cavern amidst a wave of crystal shards. Even when I landed, I did not stop, but rolled and bounced another few feet before coming to rest.
I looked up from where I lay and saw the Traveler walking toward me, passing through a gap in the sphere that was like a jagged doorway. Aria was behind him, carrying her son. I blacked out for a few minutes then. When I finally came to, they were standing over me.
'I forgive you, Cley,' I heard her say flatly from behind the light green veil.
The Traveler leaned over and gave me his hand, helping me to my feet. 'You have journeyed far,' he said to me.
It took me a little while before I could see straight, but when I was thinking clearly again, I searched around the floor of the cavern for Below. Somehow he had managed to escape. Perhaps the crystal had been enough of a barrier to Aria's terrible power to save him, but it was not strong enough itself to withstand the vehemence of her gaze. She was able to break through because she had something to focus her hatred upon outside the shell. I only wondered if it was Below or myself.
On the opposite side of the sphere, we found an entrance to that network of tunnels that ran beneath the City and took to it like rats running a maze. The impossible had been accomplished, but now we had an even more difficult job—getting out of the City alive.
There, beneath the streets, we ran into a band of conspirators carrying weapons, and they told us that there was a full-fledged war being waged now above. They did not have to tell me that Below was still alive, because every now and then we felt the tremors as another piece of his miraculous creation blew apart. They said the City gates were impassable not only because of the buildup of troops but also because the rubble from the decimated Ministry of the Territory had blocked the way. We were told to head toward the eastern boundary of the City, where a large hole had been blasted through the outer wall. They could not accompany us, because they were needed to reinforce a battalion taking up positions in the waterworks.
To my surprise, many of the conspirators we met had either heard of or knew Ea. While he was being held in a cage after first arriving in the City, and while the construction of the sphere was taking place, he had spoken to the workers. They could not resist his calm demeanor and his smile. As one young woman put it, 'He showed us that our own fear was the Master's greatest magic.' I learned that it was through this contact that the idea of overthrowing Below had come about. Ea was the one who had given them the
'He told us you would return,' one of them said to me. 'He told us you were searching for paradise and were a changed man.'
Then we were alone again in the dark underground, and as much as I tried to ignore it, the beauty was not willing to let me go so easily. I faced the prospect of withdrawal with great fear, for I knew that it would only slow us down. Aria and Ea would not leave me, though. We hid in the tunnels for two days while they tended me. The Traveler fed me sweet little berries from the pouch he wore on his belt, and they eased the pain and nausea. All the time we were down there, as I sweated out the last remnants of ignorance and fear, we heard the explosions continue. There was the distant crack of rifle fire, and the smell of burning flesh reached even below the earth.
On the third day, though I was still shaky and sometimes needed support to continue, we came up out of hiding near the eastern wall. The entire City was in ruins. It didn't appear that there was a single building left standing, just mountains and mountains of debris everywhere. The bodies of citizens, the bodies of soldiers were strewn amid the wreckage, and the smell was horrible. We made our way through the destruction and came to the hole in the wall we had been told about. Out beyond it we could see pastures and forests, and it seemed to me the world that had been always right before my eyes was a sort of paradise. I was weak and still groggy from having beaten the beauty for a second time, and I could not help but weep at the sight.
'Cley,' I heard a voice say, as we moved toward freedom.
I turned around and saw the Master standing fifty yards behind us, holding a leash with Greta Sykes straining at the end of it.
'It's over, Cley. They've all either died or left,' he said. 'From the time as a young man when I first journeyed here across the sea and over the mountains, my mind near bursting with a sublime reality, the only thing I was unable to see was how it would end.'
His face was now a death mask, gaunt as that of an unwrapped mummy. I don't know where he found the strength to hold back the werewolf.
'Let us go, Below,' I said. 'There's no reason to harm us any longer.'
He looked absentmindedly at the ground for a moment. 'I can't be bothered with you, Cley. I haven't the time. There is so much work to do. Last night, I had another dream. A magnificent vision,' he said. With this, he turned and hobbled back into his City.
When we were clear of the wall and out in the meadow beyond it, Ea touched my shoulder and pointed up in the sky over the smoking ruins. There I saw what I took to be a giant bird, circling.
'A vulture?' I asked.
He shook his head. 'The demon has found a home,' he said.
Those who escaped the destruction of the City settled in a valley about fifty miles west of Latrobia where two rivers crisscross. We all refer to it as Wenau, though it is not the Earthly Paradise. People still die here, fall ill, meet with misfortune, but there is a natural beauty to the place and a kindness among its inhabitants that sometimes make it seem divine.
I am here now, writing these final words to you. I have a small place with a garden in back. Ea showed me how to hunt with a bow and how to gather berries and roots. I am far from the pompous fool I was when I first went to Anamasobia. For one thing, I no longer fear the dark and sleep most peacefully with the candles snuffed. I am, perhaps, a fool in different ways, exuberant beyond all reason at the warmth of the sun and the smell of the earth. It is not important anymore to have a title, an exalted position, though in certain ways I feel I have them in being a simple member of this village.
We have all helped one another to survive and grow. Because of the memory of Below, we have no government, so to speak, no people of power. Disputes somehow manage to get settled without bloodshed and trade takes place. We are suspicious, to a fault probably, of devices that will make our lives easier, remembering how much freedom one must forsake for their comfort. Who knows if this will continue into the future?
