Ninth City Burning (18 page)

There was no way I would make the Ridge now. The mere thought of standing brought soupy black pain swimming behind my eyes. My rifle was gone, but I had somehow kept hold of my pistol. I held it low, so that it wouldn't jump from my hand, and fired until it was dry. Even then I didn't let up on the trigger, for whatever good it might have done me. The last picture I beheld with any clarity was of the giant standing over me, sparks dancing like fireflies around its dark shoulders.

T
he world went hazy then, and I cannot say for certain whether I became insensible from pain or whether the giant worked another of its tricks on me. Whatever the cause, for a time I lost track of the world, and when I found it again, I was sitting alone in a plain gray room.

The place was small, probably ten feet across, with floor and ceiling and three walls all made of smooth stone, the edges rounded like a bowl set on end. Where the fourth wall would have been, the room opened onto a hallway of the same gray stone, all filled with fuzzy light that came from nowhere in particular, the way sunlight will on days covered in low clouds.

In the hallway, a man dressed smartly in black stood watching me, arms crossed. I say man because of his size—he was tall and muscled like an ox—and his bearing, which was authoritarian and disapproving, as though he suspected me of trampling his prized azaleas—though in truth he could not have been much older than I was. He had short, bronze-colored hair combed back from his forehead, features straight and deeply drawn, high cheekbones and a sloped nose that made me think of a mountain lion, an impression that only deepened as his eyes narrowed at me behind his silver-rimmed spectacles.

“Where am I?” I asked, still quite groggy.

My question had no effect on him that I could see. He only continued to watch me, appraising, over his silver rims. I was preparing to repeat myself when he spoke up in the strangest voice I have ever heard. It was low and rumbling, a bass far deeper than I would have expected, and echoed in a way that seemed wrong for my small room. It reminded me of the voice Papa would use in his stories when he wanted to impersonate a demon or monster. Even stranger, though his words came to me in English, they did
not quite match the movement of his lips, as if the sound had changed between there and my ears. What he said was “How did you gain access to the valley?”

I sat there a moment, blinking, then I said, “Who are you? How did I get here?”

That rumbling voice came again. “How did you gain access to the valley?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

He did not appear to have heard, only went on watching me in that same appraising way. At last, he said, “You will remain here until you answer.” He raised a finger, the way you might to hush someone who is about to speak up, and just like that, he vanished.

I spent several moments staring at the place the man in black had occupied before I understood he hadn't truly disappeared but rather that something had appeared between us. There was now a lid to my bowl, a fourth wall where before there had been only empty air. The new barrier was quite solid, as I confirmed by rapping at it with my knuckles, but not stone as I had imagined, or, in any case, unlike any stone I had ever encountered because when I pressed a hand against it, the surface seemed to dissolve. The wall itself was still there, smooth and cold beneath my palm, but it had become clear as glass or flawless ice.

If it wasn't already plain that I was a prisoner, this wall, invisible and immovable, provided the deciding evidence. To make matters worse, my cell, as I now considered it, offered only the sparsest of accommodations. Of particular note was the lack of a bed or anything resembling sanitary facilities. The clothes I had worn into the valley were gone, replaced by a shirt and trousers of some loose, white fabric, comfortable but wholly unsuitable for outdoor wear. A metal ring, about as thick as a finger, hung around my neck, just tight enough that I couldn't take it off. Far more surprising, however, was what I found beneath my clothes.

I had paced half a dozen circles around my little enclosure before it occurred to me that I should not have been able to walk at all. I grasped at my thigh, then undid my trousers for confirmation. My leg was completely healed, straight and strong as ever. Further inspection turned up not a single mark of the battering I had taken in the valley, as if none of it had ever happened. I might have concluded this to be the literal truth—that I had imagined all of it, from the misty summer evening to my battle with
the giant—until I discovered that a small cut on my finger, left the night before we arrived at New Absalom by the sharp edge on a can of beans, was also gone. It was as if every little hurt on me had been washed away, down to the chapping at my lips and the rough, cracked ends my boots left on my heels. All that remained was the collection of scars down my right side, what I've come to think of as my unlucky half: thin slices on my ear and neck from a boulder I thought the perfect cover from Dixieman gunfire until it began exploding into sharp little shards; the double-sided puncture through my upper thigh from a Seventy-Sixer's arrow that pinned me to my horse; the knife mark in the shape of a fishhook along my collarbone; and two star-shaped bullet holes above my hip from two equally ill-fated trips through the bridgelands.

I could only assume my captors were responsible for my much-improved condition, which made their oversight in my accommodations all the more perplexing. Surely, people ingenious enough to mend my leg would have thought to provide me with a bed or a toilet.

I was mulling this over when from one of my walls there came a small bubbly noise, like a single drop of water. I stood back, and the wall began to bulge outward, unfurling like an opening flower until it became a narrow, rounded shelf supporting a steaming bowl. The bowl contained a kind of gruel, vaguely orange in color, and in case there was any question as to its intended purpose, a practical if somewhat bulky spoon was provided as well.

The sight of food brought my hunger to life. Reasoning that my captors likely had at their disposal numerous methods of killing me far easier than poisoning, I tucked in without further hesitation. The gruel was better than it looked but needed salt. When I had finished, I set the bowl and spoon back on their shelf, and, at once, all three melted back into the wall.

I turned my attention then to the small bench that constituted my only article of furniture. Thinking of the miraculous arrival of my supper, I began poking and prodding at the wall and was eventually rewarded by the same water-drop tone and the sight of the bench melting away into the surrounding stone. I pressed a finger to the wall again, and the bench reappeared, this time long enough to support a sleeping body. After some experimentation, I discovered I could rearrange my cell into several different configurations, one of which did indeed include a toilet.

I was in the midst of a nap on my bed-sized platform when a deafening
noise, somewhere between a bell and a sharp whistle, startled me awake. The man in black had returned. He stood in the hall as before, arms crossed, watching me through narrowed, leonine eyes.

“Look who it is,” I said, stretching. “Supper wasn't half-bad, by the way, but if you'd care to improve your recipe, I've got a few ideas.”

“How did you gain access to the valley?” he said, the rumbling question exactly the same as the last time I'd heard it.

“You're pretty rude, you know that?” I was annoyed at having my sleep interrupted and about being snuck up on generally. My fourth wall had been opaque when I began my repose, but it seemed when it came to privacy around here, I wasn't the final authority. “And you talk funny.”

His response: the same question. “How did you gain access to the valley?”

“Why don't you come on in here and ask? I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

I thought I saw something then, a twitch at the edge of his mouth, like he was considering it. And then he said, “How did you gain access to the valley?”

“Fine, fine,” I said, disgusted. “Here's how I got into your goddamn valley: I walked. Satisfied? There was a break in the ridge, and I just climbed on down.”

His only reaction was to go on looking at me in the same way. As he did not immediately repeat himself, I considered this a small victory, until he happened on a new line of questioning. “Why was there a break in the ridge?” he asked.

“How the hell should I know?” I shouted. I felt like I was dealing with an obstinate child.

“Did you cause the break in the ridge?”

“Of course I didn't! What are you, crazy?”

“I do not believe you.”

“Well, I don't give a rat's ass what you believe. I'm telling you the truth.”

“I will discover the answer, whether you tell me or not,” the voice said, the floor vibrating with the bass of it. “This is your final opportunity to cooperate. Tell me how the ridge was broken.”

I crossed my arms, mimicking his pose, and stared at him, pointedly quiet. He nodded, as if understanding my meaning, and came toward me. I had the impression he intended to take me up on the invitation to come into
my cell and chat, but then he raised his hand, pressing one finger to the invisible wall. He said something, but the sound had gone out of my cell, and I couldn't hear what, and, anyway, it was plain he wasn't speaking to me because his eyes were focused on the air between us, like a mirror had appeared there, and he was addressing his reflection. As he finished his speech, the space beneath his fingers rippled, and thick tendrils of cloudy red began to spread toward me, twisting and curling like blood poured into water.

I backed away, quite sure I did not want those red clouds to touch me, but my steps took me farther than the distance so few strides should have covered. I found myself on my bench, rolling over to go back to sleep. Then I was up and about, experimenting with my metamorphosing cell, eating a bowl of orangey gruel. In a moment the man in black was standing before me again, only now it was our very first meeting.

Somehow, I was being taken backward through my life, pulled rapidly through one experience after the next. Soon I would be returned to the Valley of Endless Summer, standing before that armored giant, and climbing back up the Ridge, and riding with the scouts, in reverse, to New Absalom. That was what he wanted, the man in black: to see how I had gotten into the valley. But if he saw that, he would see Naomi. He would see the scouts. He could find New Absalom, if he chose, and Mama and Baby Adam and all my family and friends. I did not want to think what he would do then.

I clawed at the visions around me, thrashing the way a person might at a nightmare. Time slowed, grinding with the awful heat of dry gears, and stopped, leaving me in the darkened woods, looking up at the brazier-faced giant.

“It will be unpleasant for you if you resist,” said the voice of the man in black, and for a blink I was in my cell again, inky red tentacles swirling all around.

“I reckon it's going to be unpleasant, then,” I said.

And then I was back in the forest, only now the flow of time was hot enough to burn, straining to push past as I struggled to hold it back, until all at once the whole world tore away.

And suddenly I am standing in an icy field, snow falling, hearing my sister's terrified voice through the trees . . .

And I am fourteen, slumped on a mound of grass, holding my side as hot blood pulses through my fingers, certain I am going to die . . .

And I am eleven, screaming for help as Leafcoat raiders ride my father down . . .

And I am six, choking on briny water as the tumbling ocean current carries me out, out, out . . .

The sea was all around me, forcing its way into my nostrils just as it had all those years ago, when all at once the water evaporated, and I was in my cell once again. I lay curled on the floor, a little puddle of vomit beside me, which I supposed I'd have to take credit for, there being no one else around who could have supplied it.

From somewhere overhead, that voice rumbled down. “You were warned. I advise you to cooperate from now on. It will be dangerous for you otherwise.”

Leaning against the invisible wall, I climbed shakily to my feet, so that I could look into the bespectacled eyes of the man in black. When I had a good view of his face, I spat in it. Spitting is not one of my particular talents—in contests held among the scouts, I regularly place fifth and below—but on this occasion I found a moment of virtuosity: a great gooey gob laced with bile and bits of my supper. Had there been no barrier between us, it would have struck him squarely in the face. As it was, the wad landed with a satisfying splat and oozed obscenely for several inches before something in the wall caused it to bubble and crackle and finally disappear. I decided I had made my position clear enough: I would not allow him one more moment of my past. If he wanted Naomi and Mama and Baby and the rest, he would have to break me first.

I believe he got the message. He allowed me one long look, brimming with contempt, then he was gone.