Quintessence Sky (20 page)

She edged along around the spikes, but they
followed her. One of the salamanders reached the wall and climbed
it effortlessly, cutting off her escape to the larger cavern. There
was nothing for it. She dashed for the salamanders' lair, hoping
she could get through.

Too late. The salamanders were awake. They
loped toward her, grunting and leaping. More of them climbed up the
walls, swarming around her. She dropped to the floor again and
raced back the way she had come. The two exits to this cavern that
she knew about were blocked, but the stream must exit the cavern
somewhere. She leaped from rock to rock, just ahead of the pursuing
salamanders.

The cavern narrowed, but continued to twist
its way downward, following the stream. It closed to a point nearly
too small for her, but she splashed through the water, and on the
other side, it widened again. She didn't look back. She had already
seen how the salamanders could squeeze their bulk through holes
that seemed too small for them, so she had no doubt they were still
behind her.

The rock angled down sharply and the surface
became more jagged, with tortured twists and folds of rock that hid
from view what lay beyond. She heard the thunder of a nearby
waterfall, though she couldn't yet see it. She had no idea where
she was going, or what passages might leave her trapped in a dead
end, but she had no choice but to run blindly. The salamanders,
close on her trail, were gaining. They seemed just about to catch
her when she burst out into open air and the clear night sky.

At least, it looked like the night sky above
her. She was in an immense open space with stars high above, and
yet, it seemed wrong. The breeze that played on her face wasn't
fresh enough, and the smell hadn't changed. Then she saw that the
stars were moving. She was still underground, but in a larger
cavern by far than any she had yet seen. What she had mistaken for
stars were actually thousands of the glowing spirits.

The salty stream ran down into a pool. Other
streams joined it, cascading in waterfalls from other rifts in the
rock. Salamanders emerged from all of these rifts, filling up the
space from every direction. The salamanders who had been chasing
her loped past her, ignoring her, and converged with the others
toward a circular platform raised out of the rock in the center of
the space. The walls of the platform were straight and true, as if
fashioned by human hands. It was surrounded with crystals of all
colors and shapes: jagged pink blooms, turquoise starbursts, smooth
sheets of translucent sapphire. On the platform itself, his arms
raised as if to welcome the growing horde of salamanders, stood a
man.

Catherine recognized him. But it was
impossible.

She ran toward him, heedless now of the
gathering salamanders. They seemed less interested in her now,
anyway, transfixed, just as she was, by the man at their center.
She reached it and climbed up, circling him so as to see his
face.

When she had known him, he had been strong
and powerful, his bunched muscles sliding seamlessly over one
another like those of a tiger crouched to spring. He had killed a
mutineer with a scimitar blow that had nearly cut the man in half.
Now, he carried himself like an old man, hunched and fearful of a
fall. His face, once impassive, was lined with pain, his lips dry
and cracked, his eyebrows scabbed white. Before, his skin had been
so black it was difficult to see the creases, and she had marveled
to stand next to him and compare her fair skin with his. Now, like
a black-bottomed boat crusted with barnacles, his skin was layered
with chalky, white lesions.

"Maasha Kaatra?" she whispered.

His eyes swiveled to take her in, and if
anything, grew even sadder.

"Catherine Parris," he said. "You should not
be here."

"What is this place?"

He shook his head, but his face was etched
with all the despair in the world.

CHAPTER 12

CAPITÁN-GENERAL Alvaro de Torres leaned
against the stern rail and let his bosun take command of the ship.
Against all odds, they had made it, and with all five ships of the
fleet intact. Torres was no stranger to difficult sea voyages. He
had sailed around the Horn of Africa as far as the Pacific, and he
had fought in the Mediterranean against France in the Italian Wars.
But nothing had tested his sailing expertise like setting out
across the Western ocean with no land in sight and nothing but a
scrambling beetle in a box for navigation.

The trip had been made three times before,
once by Admiral Chelsey, once by Christopher Sinclair, and once
under the command of Diego de Tavera. The first and third had
returned, though no survivors had lived to tell of it. The second
had never returned, and the
Western Star
was reportedly
still here on Horizon Island, its sailors and passengers the kings
of a rich colony. A colony he was here to destroy.

The fleet sailed into the quiet bay,
apparently unobserved. A carrack, presumably the
Western
Star
itself, floated at anchor, unmanned. Torres scanned the
shore with his spyglass, and saw a roughly-built pier and a
well-worn track leading into the forest.

When King Philip first gave him this charter,
Torres had scoffed at tales of miraculous water and creatures
walking through walls. The king's court secretary, Barrosa, had
shown him enough to convince him, however, and he had seen enough
on this journey already to think the stories probably fell short of
the reality. If he succeeded in his mission, Spain would be the
greatest nation in the world, its military undefeatable. Even the
bell-box, that apparently simple device by which he communicated
back to Barrosa and the king, would be enough to give Spain a
crushing advantage in warfare if they could construct enough of
them. He envisioned multiple forces on land and sea, their
movements coordinated precisely across hundreds of miles. No one
would touch them.

But there was more, far more, that could give
riches and military might to the country that controlled this
island. Which was why Torres planned to take all possible
precautions in approaching the settlement. By all accounts, he
should have five times as many men as the colonists, professional
soldiers trained and armed against exiled shopkeepers and
theologians. But he didn't know what they could do. He would assume
the worst, and plan accordingly.

Back in his cabin, Torres genuflected before
the crucifix mounted on his wall and made the sign of the cross.
This was God's mission, like the crusades of centuries past, and
God had granted him, Alvaro de Torres, a central role. He would
vanquish the heathen and apostate alike and return victorious with
the power to convert the world to Christ.

In his heart, though, he had to admit he was
nervous. There were unknown powers at work on this island, powers
that, until now, had been used only in the service of the devil.
What horrors might he encounter here? Would not the devil resist
the conquering of this stronghold of evil with all his wiles and
might?

Torres was no saint, and he knew it. There
had been that girl in Mindanao, whose lithe brown body still
invaded his dreams. He kept a whip of leather straps under his
pillow with which he lashed himself those evenings when his
imagination strayed to the memory of her flesh. The penance was a
welcome relief to his conscience, but it never seemed to fully
cleanse him, and the next night he would find his thoughts pulled
once more toward desire for what he knew to be sin. He was weak.
Why had God chosen such a man as he for this holy work?

He bowed his head to the crucifix. "God give
me the strength," he said.

When he returned above decks, a rising column
of smoke over the trees caught his eye. He trained his spyglass on
it and could make out the tops of buildings. The buildings were
tall
, and they glinted in an odd way, like they were made of
some strange material. It looked more like the buildings you might
find in a city than in a frontier settlement. He had been led to
believe there were no more than five dozen people living here. As
he watched, however, flames leaped up around the buildings and
smoke billowed up to the sky. The tallest of the buildings toppled
and collapsed out of view, with a crash that echoed clear out to
the water.

He whispered a quick prayer of thanks and
repented his lack of faith. God was judging the heretics already.
Perhaps this mission would be easier than he had thought.

THE COLONISTS watched their settlement burn.
Matthew's father organized an operation to gather and count
everyone. Everyone in the colony was ultimately found and accounted
for, except for one man who had died in the flood of miasma.

They made for the
Western Star
, which
was still at anchor in the bay. Surrounded by water, they would be
somewhat protected from manticore attack, and it would give them
shelter from the daily rainstorms until they could start to
rebuild. The water in the bay was fresh, and they could make food
onboard from sand. They could live there for a long time, if need
be.

He heard James Ferguson loudly blaming
manticores for the destruction, claiming that they had developed a
new weapon. Eventually, Matthew would have to tell the truth about
what he had done, but at the moment, it seemed prudent not to make
an announcement: Ferguson might even claim that, as a
manticore-lover, he had done it on purpose at the manticores'
request.

They never made it to the beach. At the tree
line, they were intercepted by a company of Spanish conquistadors
in pointed metal helmets, their matchlocks aimed and ready. There
were probably two hundred of them. When had they arrived? There was
no time to consider. An officer with a raised sword bellowed, "Down
on the ground, all of you!" Another hundred soldiers emerged from
the trees behind the colonists, cutting off their escape, pointing
their weapons and shouting.

Five Spanish ships of the line stood at
anchor in the harbor, pennants fluttering, rows of guns protruding
from their flanks. Matthew still had salt on his fingers from their
attempt to rescue it from the fire, and now he licked it off. He
made his body heavy and his skin like iron. He could barely move,
but he didn't need to move. The other colonists threw themselves to
the ground as instructed, but Matthew just stood there. He started
to glow.

"On the ground!" screamed the officer. "I
warn you, we will fire!"

Matthew ignored him. He drew quintessence, as
much as he could. It wasn't a lot, not like the jar full of salt
water that Catherine had drunk before driving back the manticore
armies. He just hoped it would be enough.

At the officer's order, a row of matchlocks
opened fire. Iron balls pinged off of Matthew's skin, doing no
harm. He closed his eyes and released the quintessence he was
holding, and a dazzling white light blazed out from him in every
direction, not enough to burn anything, but enough to blind anyone
looking at him, at least temporarily.

"Run!" he shouted. "This way!"

He led them toward the north, into the trees.
Their best chance was to try to make it to the salt farms, the only
human habitation outside the settlement, and now the only human
habitation left on the island. At the center of the farmed area was
a cluster of buildings, surrounded by a miniature version of the
settlement barrier. There would be some supplies there, at least,
and some protection from the manticores.

Where had the Spanish come from? The memory
of his conversation with Ramos de Tavera flashed through Matthew's
mind. Had it been a trick? Perhaps Tavera had been on one of those
ships, only a few hours' sail away, and had lied about being in
England. The bell-boxes required a quintessence field, after all.
That meant he either had a shekinah flatworm, or he was in the
vicinity of the island. How much did they know?