Shadows and Smoke Page 5

  “She is the Seeker?” Jin asked, slack-jawed. He was scanning around in wonder.

  Tarl nodded. “She came here, and saw all this.” How long ago? he wondered. He did not recognize this tall blonde woman from the Center, but that meant nothing, he realized. There were thousands of people in the Center campus, and this woman could be long dead.

  “Let’s go,” Jorna called, as the avatar stood and began walking down towards the ruins. “Don’t get lost.” She and Sool followed the avatar down the embankment.

  Tarl placed his hand on Jin’s arm. It felt warm and solid. Were they moving about the circle simulation chamber, he wondered. Jin glanced up at him. “Don’t forget to keep an eye out for something interesting,” he said. “Arry will want a report.”

  Jin nodded. “Keep your own eye out, Timid.” He smiled as he said it though. “Let’s keep up.” He hurried past him, stepping high through the tall grass.

  Tarl followed, examining the ground they walked on as he went. It was dark soil, well-watered. The mountains behind them would shed water and cause weather. This stream might flood in springtime, as it swelled with snowmelt. It could have carved this channel, he reckoned. He stopped then and looked carefully, trying to gauge the stream’s course across the valley.

  It ran in a straight course, he realized, directly toward the ruins ahead. They were perhaps five miles away, he guessed, trying to gauge the distance by shielding his eyes. Looking back, towards the mountains, he noticed the stream bent, and seemed to wind between two of the nearer foothills. Atop one was a white stone outcropping, blocky and rectilinear. He scanned the hills for others, and saw a few white boulders here and there, dotted across their heights. One of them was long and flat.

  A road, he decided. There had been a road up there. How accurate was this place, he wondered as he turned to follow. Did the Center record everything the Seekers saw and heard? Their smells and textures? How did they impose this place on his mind this way? How was any of this possible?

  They stored these missions, he had assumed, in the Library. But what was that place, really? It was a big building with a domed central room, vast and wide. He went there to study books and scrolls to practice his reading and his calculation studies. They had taught him to read when he was a first-year, and it had been a struggle at first. He had hated it, feeling slow and stupid as other students had learned faster than he seemed able to. He still remembered fighting tears as he struggled with a dictionary and lexicon through a short passage. He could not read one word in three. But it had come with time and dogged effort. Like everything he learned, he thought.

  The Library stored books, he had learned. Did it also store mission simulations like this? He had overheard Archivists talking about the "dreamers” which needed “tending,” but he hadn’t known what they meant. Was this a dream? How could you store a dream like a book? He set the thought aside, meaning to take it up with Arwal the next time he talked with him.

  The woman Neera might know, he realized. But he had not seen her since that night, almost three years gone now, he realized, when she had dangled her string in front of him and tested him with her bizarre questions. She had walked past him in the Library, followed by a knot of white-robed Archivists. She had noticed him, though, and nodded as she passed him. But she hadn't spoken, or done more than nod. He frowned to himself.

  He caught up to Jin, jogging slightly. Jin looked up. “This was a road,” Tarl announced, trying to put certainty in his voice. “The stream has carved it out of the roadbed.”

  Jin raised his eyebrows. “That’s what you’ll impress Arwal with?” Jin cocked his head at him. “I found a road, Senior Seeker Arwal. Did you know this ruined city had roads? The stream eroded it away,” he said, smirking.

  Tarl smacked him on the shoulder. “Laugh away,” he said. “What did you find yet? Too busy looking at the avatar’s ass?” Jin was always leering at this girl or boy, having only gotten worse as they joined the Seeker cadre, and began mixing more with the senior trainees.

  Jin laughed. “It’s a nice ass,” he said, craning his head to follow the avatar. “But she’s probably been dead ten thousand years.” He shrugged. “Nothing yet. No obvious signs of war. This is, to your credit, probably a road bed. The stream is too long and straight to be natural.”

  Tarl glanced up. The avatar had stopped walking, he saw. Jorna and Sool had spread out away from her. She was looking down the stream, and Tarl followed her gaze to the cloud of dust she appeared to be looking at.

  “Naaativess!” Sool shouted excitedly, pointing at the dust cloud. Tarl looked at the base of the cloud and saw figures there. Mounted figures, he realized. Horses. He had only read of these animals. As they drew nearer Tarl could see that each horse bore at least one rider, and some looked like they had two.

  Tarl shaded his eyes and noticed that the avatar also shaded her eyes. Was she ten thousand years old, this record? He would ask Arwal when they returned to the Center. When the simulation was over, he corrected himself. They had gone nowhere. This was as real as a shadow-puppet show for children, he told himself. It may have happened to this woman, somewhere and somewhen, but it wasn’t happening to him.

  He watched as the natives trotted towards them. Horses, he decided, were terrifying beasts. He’d seen pictures in the Library and knew they kept some for training in the farmlands, but he’d never seen them. They were huge. Massive. The riders were grown men, and some of these monsters carried two of them. The riders were wiry and thin, he saw, and they bore weapons. Long knives in sheaths dangled from their belts, and from the leather saddles they had strapped onto the horses’ backs. Some carried long lances in their hands, tied with feathers or ribbons, bright splashes of color in the sunlight. A few of the riders held short, recurved bows. Projectile throwers.

  Tarl had been learning the bow, when he had lived with his family. Coming to the Center had put a stop to that, but he remembered. Mostly, he recalled how hard it was. How only a few of the tribe’s hunters had mastered the weapon. Bows were difficult to make, and difficult to learn. It took endless hours of practice to become proficient. Poola, the oldest of the hunters in their little group, had been teaching him.

  Poola was a bitter old woman, but she was the best in their little group with the slender straight hunting bow, which was taller than he had been. He had sat with her while she showed him the making of the bow, how she shaped it from a stave cut from the center of a stout branch. She had even cut the tree down herself, he remembered. It was to have been his bow, that one.

  He wiped at his eye. He hadn’t thought of old Poola in a long time. She’d shaped the stave with one of her sharp little knives, a flake of flint set in a wooden grip-handle. She held it tight in her gnarled palm and drew the blade down the wood, shaving thin strips that coiled on the ground at her feet. She sang a little song while she worked and smiled her crooked teeth at him. This bow would be strong and true, she sang, and be a good friend to you. He blinked again to keep his vision clear.

  He’d been no good with the thing, he remembered. It was hard, as a skinny kid, to draw the bow. These bows, he observed, were curved in a way he’d never seen before, and shorter than his had been. The men holding them didn’t look much older than Sool, and the two thinner ones, he noted, were probably only a year or two older than he was now.

  The horses had drawn close to them now, and Tarl noted they were on the other side of the little stream from them, which hadn’t been, due to the distance and the cloud of dust thrown up by the horses, clear to him before. At a signal from the leader, the little party began to trot their horses faster. Tarl saw a man, lean and bare-chested, kick his heels into his horse’s flanks to spur it forward faster.

  “Those are weapons,” Tarl called to the others. “They’re bows. Projectile throwers. I expect they are skilled with them.” Jorna looked at him and nodded. Sool made a sound.

  “I know what bows are, Tarl.” He looked scornfully at him. “We were in the same weapon
s class with you, remember?” His voice oozed with the scorn the seniors had for the junior cadre. Sool knew Tarl had had little more than basic hand-to-hand fighting training, and Tarl suspected he knew that Tarl was awful at it.

  Tarl smirked at him, turning his attention to the riders again. At a signal from the tallest among them, a large man with a shock of black hair cascading down his shoulders, they had waded into the stream. Tarl watched the horses plunge into the water, snorting and blowing at the cold, but surging powerfully forward. The water only came up to the riders’ knees, and Tarl heard their shouts and cries as they splashed through the icy water.

  The avatar had scrambled atop a cluster of boulders set back from the road. This would offer her some protection, he thought, from being simply ridden down under the hooves of the great beasts, but he didn’t think it would save her from the bows, should the riders prove hostile. They looked menacing enough, but the avatar raised her hands, blurry and indistinct in the bright sunlight, and called out to them, as they approached.

  Her speech was strange to Tarl, an accent he did not know, but after a moment he caught on. “I am not an enemy,” she called out to the riders, holding her hands up, palms towards them. “I bear no weapons.”

  The tall rider, with the long black hair, reached them first. The riders did not look at Tarl or the others and instead focused on the woman. Tarl realized that, like the avatar, they could not see them. They were solid looking, he thought. Not ghostly like her. The horses smelled of sweat and a musky animal odor. A rider trotted so close to him he had to step out of the way, and he felt the thudding hooves of its passage through the ground. The boy on its back held a bow with an arrow on the string, dark shaft fletched with white feathers. He did not so much as glance at Tarl.

  The man with the hair, the leader, spoke to the avatar. The language was strange to Tarl as he heard it. It wasn’t the speech of the Center, called Talus. It was harsher, full of short, sharp words. He did not know the language, but as the man gestured with his long lance, shaking it at the woman atop the boulders, Tarl suddenly felt a twisting sensation in his mind, as if his ears had been adjusted somehow, and he could understand.

  Jin made a noise of surprise behind him, and Tarl saw him shaking his head in amazement. Jorna noticed too, smiling at them. “Feels weird,” she said, “doesn’t it?” She glanced back at the man on the horse who was still talking.

  “…again who you are and why you come here.” The man sounded angry, scowling at her.

  “I am a shaman,” the woman was saying. “I travel from people to people, all across the land. I bring medicine, powerful healing. Your women will want to meet me. And your healers.”

  “The men may wish to know you, but our women?” The man on horseback snorted and sneered at her. “No one travels these lands without our leave. These are our lands. Where do you come from?”

  “Far away,” the avatar woman said. “As far as a woman can walk, in two hands of days.”

  “You come from the mountains,” the man said. He pointed with his lance at the granite peaks behind them. “We saw your path. You did not walk across the mountains for ten days, dressed like that, with no pack. Tell me again, with no lies, and I will bring you to the women. Are you from those ugly thieving bastards in Rado?”

  The avatar shook her head. She looked frightened, and Tarl had to remind himself that for the woman on the boulder, this was no mere record of events, these things had happened to her. She was, he realized, terrified. These men could kill her, and seemed ready to, if he had to guess at it. Or worse, he thought, they could rape her and then kill her. Or keep her captive. For the avatar this was deadly serious.

  She answered them. “I came along the shoulder of the mountains, yes, but from the south, and then turned east when I saw your camp.” She nodded towards the cluster of ruins. Tarl looked. He had seen no camp near the ruins, but he supposed there must be one.

  The man spoke again. “I say you lie!” he cried. “South is only poisoned wasteland. You did not walk from that direction either! Not alone. Are you with others? Where are they, and how many?” His voice was harsh and loud, spittle flying from his lips as he spoke. His horse danced and stamped as he raised his lance, brandishing it at her.

  The woman pointed to the south. “It is no lie!” she cried, clearly frightened. She pointed to the south. “I walked from the wastelands, I carry strong medicine, strong magic which protected me.”

  The man sat back in his saddle and regarded her. “You think I am a fool? My people have ridden these valleys for many lives of men. You came not from the south, out of those lands. You would die!”

  “If you know these valleys,” the woman said, “then you know the old ones, and the ruins of their cities.” She pointed to the cluster of low blocky hills that bore the ruins. “I seek magic and knowledge in those places. Fear me, horseman. I am not a mere woman.”

  The other horsemen muttered at this, and their leader glanced at them. He waved them to silence, regarding her, leaning forward over his saddle. “There is only trash in those places. This is forbidden. You cannot go there. Only men can visit the ruins.” He shook his head, appearing to have reached a decision. He leaned back, scanning his riders to locate one.

  “I bring strong knowledge,” she said again. “I can teach your healers many things.” She was frantically trying to keep his attention, Tarl realized, as the riders gathered close to the leader.

  “Bring her,” the leader said, and two of the younger riders slid off their horse and scrambled up the boulders. To the woman, he said, “We will bring you to my lodge, and there you will answer questions. If you are what you say…” he shrugged. “If not, we will learn it, and learn what you are.” He turned away, kicking his heels into his mount. He called to the others, and they spurred away, save the two who approached the woman, hands wide palms out. One of them bore a length of leather.

  “Where are they going?” Tarl wondered aloud. But Jorna waved him to silence.

  “Just watch,” she said. “This is where it gets good.” Tarl looked at her, puzzled, but she fixed her eyes on the woman.

  Tarl looked back at her. The men on horseback were scattering in a wide arc, galloping to scout her back trail, he realized. They didn’t believe her or at least were taking no chances. He craned his neck to follow their path and saw the leader slow his horse at a small rise in the land not fifty strides of his horse away. He scanned the landscape behind them, and then looked back to the woman and the two men he had tasked to capture her.

  Tarl saw movement there and turned back to the boulders. The woman had removed her jacket, holding it loosely in one hand. She wore a tight-fitting black shirt, and her arms looked well-muscled. She stood easily atop the flat boulder she had selected, as the two men approached. They were scrawny, bare-chested, and wore only leather skirts and sandals.

  With a word from one of them, they rushed her. What happened next was hard for Tarl to follow, but he later pieced it together when talking with Jin. She stepped to the side as the first of the two reached her, striking him with her fist on the side of the head and spinning, a graceful pirouette that unfolded into a kick that lashed out towards the second.

  She rotated her hip as she kicked, so that her boot was parallel to the ground, catching the man on the side of the neck. He stopped with a gurgling cry and collapsed in a heap. He had been lunging, and her kick had been accurate and precise. He did not move again.

  Unhurried, she turned to the other, the one she had struck with her fist. He had gone past her and down on one knee when she hit him. He snarled and came up fast, snatching a short black-bladed knife from his belt. He brandished it at her, and Tarl thought he saw her smile, a ghostly echo of a smile against her indistinct profile.

  He lunged at her, thrusting with the knife at her face, and she twisted away from him, sweeping her jacket up and enveloping his hand with it. She stepped into him then, still twisting, and Tarl realized she had pinioned his knife-hand insi
de the jacket, pinching it with some force. She continued the spin, almost casually now, and Tarl saw the man’s eyes widen as he realized what she meant to do.

  His shoulder dipped as she bent his arm behind his back. Somehow she was behind him now, flowing up against his body like a shadow. She looked over her shoulder towards the leader who was facing her now, standing in his stirrups, looking on with shock.

  She twisted, and Tarl could hear the man’s shoulder break as he screamed. She disengaged, tossing him onto the flat stone and stepping back. She glanced left, at the prone body of the one she had kicked, and then right, ensuring there were no more assailants. The whole fight had lasted perhaps five breaths.

  Jin hooted. “Amazing! Did you see that?” Jorna and Sool were also beaming. Tarl pointed. The leader on horseback had been watching the fight with wide eyes and an open mouth. He was spurring his horse towards them, towards the woman atop the boulders. His lips curled and Tarl could see his tongue and teeth as he shouted for his companions.

  “Here he comes,” Tarl said, and as he watched he saw the woman avatar stagger and raise both hands to her temples. She swayed for a moment, looking unsteady on her feet. Then she wavered, her outline growing even more dim. She leaned forward, and it seemed she was vomiting, but even as Tarl looked, she flowed like vapor and disappeared.

  Tarl glanced back towards the men on horseback. Gone. Vanished, like they’d never been there. Even the two men the Seeker had defeated were gone. It was eerily quiet, just the wind off the prairie and the babble of the nearby creek.

  “What happened?” Tarl said, just as the wrenching, twisting feeling came into his mind. His vision swam and he blinked. He was back in the white, circular room with the others. They stood where they had stood when they entered, in a loose semi-circle. This wasn’t the position we were in in the simulation, Tarl thought to himself. We were spread out more, and Sool and Jorna had been behind me by about ten long strides. How?