Oberheim (Voices): A Chronicle of War, Christopher Leadem [recommended reading TXT] 📗

He reached and sweated and pulled, till he was nearly halfway up.

Then suddenly the wraiths were aware of him and streaked down from the high walls with a shrieking wail that was horrible to hear. They reached him, swirled about him and gnashed their sharp teeth from mouths that were like bats' mouths and screamed their terrible scream. He reached with one arm to ward them off, nearly fell. He found his grip and seized a stone and hurled it at the nearest. It went clean through, and he nearly fell again.

But then, as he hung by one hand, vulnerable, the screaming increased and they came closer but did not finish him. Then he realized that they could not. They were as fear, and could not physically harm him, but only make him do the things to harm himself. So he cautiously recovered himself, stood firmly on the tiny ledge, and put them from his mind. There might be other obstacles to reach her, but these he would not fear.

He reached up and continued to climb as the noise died away and only a ghost image of the wraiths remained frozen in the air. Climbing steadily, he had almost reached a level with the first buttress—-one last knot of stone—-when a low studded door burst open from the darkness of the wall to the extreme right, and four black wolves poured out and rushed headlong toward the place where he would emerge above the cliffs, and he was hard pressed to reach it before they did.

These were no illusion. He leapt to his feet and pulled the long knife from its sheath as the first was upon him. One back-slash with the blade as he dropped to a knee and it fell dying before him, its throat cut. The others closed as he rose again and they snarled and tore as he kicked and slashed, and after a time two more were dead but his legs were badly marked and it was hard to stand, and he fell to the ground.

Then the last, the largest, which had bided its time was upon him, going for his throat. The knife had fallen away and he reached up with his hands to grab it around the neck and try to pull it off. He succeeded partially, raising himself halfway; but it was soon at him again, tearing at the side of his face. Driven by an overpowering rage, he seized it just below the ear and dragged it away until he had its neck firmly in his two hands, and squeezed and kicked until the wolf moved no more. He let it fall to the ground as he rose, and sullenly brushed the dirt from him and strained his eyes to focus on the dark castle before him.

There was only one entrance, near to the small door which had emitted the wolves, locked tight upon their demise. There it was: a vast arch guarded by a spiked portcullis. To his amazement as he came forward he saw that the grid was raised, the way open.

He stepped toward it cautiously, came to it, looked about him for some kind of trap. But he found none, passed through and entered a long corridor, which led in time to a double-door upon his right. He entered a broad chamber of half-light, knowing he had reached the heart of the Castle. He entered.

A lone figure sat in a heavy throne at its head, a circled fire to one side, an enormous leopard chained to an iron ring on the other. Six doors stood silent at the back of the chamber.

"Hello Nieman," said the bald figure from its throne. The firelight distorted his features, but the fat and sneering visage would have been ugly in any light. He wore a mantle of crimson, edged in gold.

"Where is she?" he demanded.

"Not so fast," spoke the other calmly. "I am not a person to offend."

"I'm not afraid of you."

The mouth gave a dry, humorless laugh. "Do you know who I am?" He twisted a ring around his fat finger with the opposite hand.

"I know what you're called," retorted Nieman, his anger growing. "The ancients called you daemon. Religious fools say you're the Devil."

"And what do you say?" It turned the ring more quickly.

"That you don't exist. I am talking to myself." He looked to the row of doors, tried to feel her presence among the stone. He stepped toward the second in line.

"Stop!" cried the visage, which he ignored. He pulled open the door as the great cat broke free of its chains and came after him. It rushed and leapt full in his face. But he had turned; he caught it in mid-air and hurled it against the wall. It gave a cry of pain and alarm, crashed to the floor senseless, where he left it. He was tired of killing.

"Fool!" cried the god. "Do you still doubt me?"

"The servant is real but the master a dream." He paid no further attention as the visage dissolved into excrement. But the fire remained.

The way before him was too dark to see, so he went back to the entrance and pulled a torch from its mount just inside the arch. He returned to the door, and looked inside.

He entered a shallow stone hallway which ended in a tight spiral of stairs, leading downward. His torch was the only light. He descended slowly, the way cramped and his legs tight and bleeding, and after perhaps three hundred steps came upon a long catacomb, which he entered from a recessed hole in its side. The way was thick with webs which he brushed aside with is free hand, as he stepped out silently into the endless row of tombs.

She had to be there, somewhere: the way the shadows played upon the walls, the branching crypts and long row of stone caskets. The way his shadow-self stalked behind him, so tall.

He walked a long way, silent but for the sounds of his moving, then heard something like a faint groan of pain, unmistakably feminine, to his left and a short way ahead. He moved towards it, thrust the torch ahead of him and into a high, wide antechamber like a small cathedral, several caskets deep. He heard the sound again, this time a cry of terror and alarm, and strained his eyes to see. He moved closer, wedged the torch between two caskets and looked to the front of the chamber.

And there she was, the love of his life: above an altar, mounted halfway up the wall behind it, spread like a crucifix, arms and legs bound by iron shackles, garment torn, a hideous mask covering her face and spreading out in huge lizard's fins an arm's length wide. Only her eyes were visible, wide with terror, pleading against the act sure to come.

"Please, no. No. . .God. Please, I beg you. Please." And she lost all control and wept bitterly. He lowered his head, his heart torn apart.

"Don't cry, I won't hurt you." He stumbled for words, inadequate. "I haven't come to hurt you, I swear it….. By everything that is and isn't sacred I make this vow: that I will be to you whatever you need me to be, that I will never leave you, and that the day I knowingly cause you pain I will be the instrument of my own destruction. Please, don't cry."

He felt the tears pushing at his eyes, but would not leave her there a moment longer. He shook off emotion, climbed onto the altar and lifted the heavy mask from its hook above her head, set it quietly beside him.

Her deep, gentle face looked out at him with disbelieving gratitude and love. It was cut in several places from the short spikes which lined the inside of the mask; but as she had remained very still the damage was not deep. He found an iron bar leaned against the ground, remounted the altar and began to pry away the rusted bands. It was not possible to do so without hurting her, but she bit her lip and endured the pain.

And as the last shackle came off her wrist she slid into his arms. And suddenly she knew him, and trusted him, and he embraced her heavily, weeping. She returned the affection weakly, touching the back of his neck with her fingers. He had never felt this way, nor ever thought he could. The tears would not stop.

"I'm so glad I found you," he stammered. "Dear God, I'm glad. What if….. What if I had never found you?" He stepped back, and an incomprehensible horror engulfed him.

The words echoed all around him, down the row of tombs, endless.

"Never found you. Never found you. Never found….." And with a sudden fearful burst like the realization of death, he remembered. Remembered where he was, and understood. Dear God, he understood.

She slipped back out of his grasp as darkness poured into the room. Like reverse action she was back upon the wall, the iron hoops replacing themselves. The mask was up and she was crying. Her blood flowed gently down the spikes.

"NO!"

But the room began to spin, to break into fragments, and she was gone. He floated again in the cold wet nothing, the world without order or hope. He shrank into a weeping ball and clutched his head with his hands, lost as he had never been lost.

But then to his bewilderment, he began to feel a weight of substance around him, a materializing structure: his ship was coming back. A floor, walls, then the hull returned, and he knelt in the familiar control room, looking up at the monitor. The inky black was patching, broke, and he could see the outline of a vast web. This time he did not fight as the ship drew closer, and closer still. A great silver shaft was above him. . .and he emerged once more into the present, living, and unchangeable world.

*

At a distance of two hundred miles he turned his ship around, back to face the Guardians. There the vessel stood still in Space, as a single globe approached him from out of the glowing network. It came very close, filling all the screen, but was silent. Thinking it a messenger, he addressed it with words.

"All right," he said, broken at the last. "All right, you helped me find her. The one miracle of my life. I am grateful." The white sphere did not react. "But if you have that power, then you could have saved her life….. No. I left her." The realization staggered him. "I….. But now I have learned. I respect you. Bring her back. Please. . .bring her back." He began to sob without tears.

"PLEASE."

At that moment the sphere glowed with a blinding light. It might have been an unreadable message. It might have been a warning, or a gesture of peace. But whatever it was or was not, it remained beyond human understanding. It could not change the past or help him now.

As the globe receded he turned the ship again, bewildered, and flew toward unfamiliar stars.

The End

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher Leadem was born in Arlington, Virginia in 1956, the second son of an Air Force Intelligence officer and a schoolteacher. Shortly after his birth, his father transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the young family moved frequently.

Leadem's primary education was in Catholic schools, where he earned the reputation of a gifted student. Attending public high school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of James Michener, he displayed a talent for writing, and a love of history and science. At the age of fourteen, he saw a short film by Ray Bradbury about the life of a writer, which galvanized his desire to be an author himself.

Burned out by a stifling high