The Nick Of Time (and other abrasions): Shadows Of Polaris chapter three

The Nick Of Time

(and other abrasions)

Shadows Of Polaris

by

Al Bruno III

Chapter Three

The Sentries and Constables scanned the sea of faces for someone that looked out of place. Audra was glaring at Father DiSorbo, her shimmering hands clenched into fists. She still didn't know there was a gun aimed at her.

There was only one thing for Matthew to do. He pointed at Jack Diamond and shouted "There! There he is!"

And just like that Jack found himself the center of attention.

The Sentries opened fire, spraying bullets into the crowd.

Jack dove behind an altar made from cinderblocks and returned fire.

High school had led Matthew to develop a healthy ducking instinct. He was down on all fours in seconds. The crowd erupted into pandemonium. Shrieks and shouts almost drowned out the gunfire. At least a dozen people stepped on Matthew's hands as he tried to reach Audra.

A few of the more adamant preachers kept right on talking until a second spray of bullets reduced their gospels to screams.

There was a pause in the gunfire. Matthew peered out from behind the toppled frozen custard stand. The Sentries were changing the clips on their assault rifles, their movements perfectly in synch. The Constables held their pistols at ready and surveyed the carnage. To Matthew's eyes they seemed to have hit everything but their target; bodies were splayed about them in a wide arc, some perfectly still, others twitching and moaning. The man in the bearskins was lying on his back, an exit wound in his chest, his eyes staring blankly up at the stars. Jack popped up from behind the cinderblock altar and fired once.

One of the Constables fell, his face reduced to tatters. The Sentries opened fire again ending chips of stone flying everywhere. The surviving Constables crouched behind the Sentries and started chanting in a familiar language. Matthew felt his skin crawl, particularly the skin on his back.

Audra crawled up behind him, "Did you get my custard?"

Matthew's incredulous glare was all the answer she needed.

"Oh well." She pinched his shoulder, "You were brilliant with that 'There he is!' Brilliant!"

"Saw it in a cartoon once." Matthew said, "Where were you?"

"Beating the crap out of a certain loudmouth priest."

The chanting ended. There was a subdued whoomp! And one by one the Sentries burst into flames. The flames however did not consume them, the flames radiated out from them. Glowing like angry stars they advanced on Jack, their footsteps causing the flesh of the fallen to bubble and dissolve and the scattered tracts and leaflets to curl and smolder.

"Ok this is bad." Matthew crouched down low to the ground, "We have to get out of here."

"Right." Audra said, "On the count of three we make a break for the road."

"Ok."

They weren't the only ones with that idea. Anyone that had survived the initial onslaught was running or crawling for the mouth of the dead end street. Jack leapt up from behind the cinderblock altar and fired twice. The first shot sent a Sentry tumbling backwards, the second went wide of its mark and shattered a window across the street. The Constables were firing back, one of their shots caught Jack Diamond in the leg.

"...Three!" Audra shouted.

Matthew was so hypnotized by the carnage, he almost didn't hear her. He crawled for the street, following Audra. Fresh gunfire peppered the air behind them.

They ran for a few moments, Matthew trying not to stumble or collapse. He couldn't believe at least one of those bullets hadn't hit him. He tried to keep track of how many minutes they'd been running, how many intersections they'd passed but the agony building in his lungs made it impossible.

Maybe I'm going to make it through this thing after all.

They were practically alone on this street. Anyone out on their sidewalks or front steps was retreating back inside. Some of the refugees from the massacre were reduced to begging for sanctuary on doorsteps. No one was taken in. There was a heavy drone filling the air, a maddening buzz. Audra led him along a high stone wall, pausing before a locked and chained gate. She slipped a pin from her hair and started working on the padlock. "Oh my." She said grimly, "This is one of the expensive ones."

Matthew looked back to see the streetlights were going out one by one. "What's going on?"

Wails and shouts echoed up the street behind them. Audra didn't even look up from her lockpicking "Retaliation."

"Retaliation? The Sentries are doing this? Why?" Shadows were swallowing the entire neighborhood, the electricity flickered out city block by city block. Soon the only light they had left was the stars.

"Group punishment."

Matthew reeled, he started at the blackened city block "That's inhuman!"

"I am trying to concentrate here!"

"Can't you just cast a spell or something?" The buzzing sound was growing louder, it sounded like a fleet of low-flying helicopters but there was something strangely organic about the reverberation. It made Matthew feel nauseous.

"Can't you shut up?"

Once again his only light came from the stars but their fluttering illumination played tricks on his eyes, twisting the bustling Olathoe skyline out of scale. His gaze traced its way along their confused outline and found its way back to the Pole Star, to its pale, eons old light.

That star, He thought, as he concentrated on it, that star knows secrets. Will it speak to me? Will it taunt me with prophecy?

Dark shapes flitted between the skyline and stars, their motion startling Matthew from his fugue state. What the Hell was that? He thought. What just happened to me?

"I think something's coming." he said.

"I know. I know." Audra dropped her hairpin, it clattered to the sidewalk, "Damn it!"

"Can I help?"

"Can you bend steel with your bare hands?"

"No." He said. The noise was growing closer, Mathew recognized that what he was hearing was a droning chorus. "Of course not."

Audra pulled a fresh hairpin from her hair and started working again. "Then- Ah ha! Got you!" She pulled the padlock free and slipped it into the front pocket of her tuxedo shirt, "Let's get to cover." She pulled the rusty gate open and slipped inside. Matthew followed her.

She led him along an elegantly sculpted path towards a wide domed building. A ring of guttering flambeaux set the dome's brass adornments and stained glass windows shimmering.

"Who's here?" Matthew asked.

"Hopefully no one." Audra shoved the front door open, "Close the door behind us."

Inside the dome everything was different. The interior architecture was broad and arcing. The air was cool and tinged with salt. The floor sloped downwards, like a stage or an amphitheater. With the door closed behind them the maddening buzz dwindled to a whisper. The sound of water burbling echoed through the chamber.

The angles of this place are all wrong. Matthew observed, It's almost like it's bigger on the inside than the outside.

And what's with that fountain?

The fountain was tall, stretching from floor up to ceiling. It was an ornate multi-tiered structure of white marble decorated with jewels and intricate glyphs. Light from the stained glass windows bobbled across the surface of the water.

Audra smiled "We'll be safe here. There's no way the Regent will strike here, I don't care how pissed off he is."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I've only been here a few years but one thing I've learned is the Regent never screws with the Atlanteans."

"You realize of course that I have no idea what you're talking about." They threaded their way between the pews, Matthew admired the flowing scrollwork that decorated them.

"Yeah." Her grin deepened, "Come here. I want to show you something."

"Explain the Atlantis thing first."

"Everything in this building, especially that fountain are all sacred Atlantean artifacts."

"So Olathoe is like Atlantis?"

"No. This place is real but no one is sure if there really was an Atlantis. But the people that come here to worship believe that they are the descendants of the citizens of Atlantis and the inheritors of the great Atlantean birthright."

"Atlantean birthright?"

"Well like all good religions they believe that they are chosen of God to rule the world and be granted eternal life in Heaven."

"You sound like you don't believe them."

She shrugged, "It seems like every religion says they're the only true way to salvation. I can't believe that an omnipotent, all knowing God would make things so that there was only one way to reach his grace. But then again, what the Hell do I know? I'm a lapsed Buddhist."

They stood before the fountain, Matthew ran his hand over the marble it was rough and clammy to the touch. The water reeked of brine. "I thought you were a sorceress."

"The two are not mutually exclusive."

"So what's the story on this Regent and his Constables?"

"Well we have time, I think I can explain. You see this city has always been, it has been the source of so many legends- Fairy Rings, Hy-Breasail, Priester John. This is where the magic lives, where it doesn't have to hide."

"Why would magic have to hide?"

"Because its human nature to lash out at nonconformity. For example, the Spanish Inquisition, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, the Salem Witch Trials... need I go on?" She turned and plunked herself down on the nearest bench.

"No I see your point."

"Okay, like I said the City has been around forever but lets just say that its best years are long behind it. The reign of Crowden was followed by almost a half a century of political instability. We're talking revolt followed by coup d'état followed by bloody insurrection."

He sat down beside her, "Your magic kingdom sounds like a banana republic."

"Matt you don't know the half of it." She pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her jeans, "Smoke?"

He stared at the crinkled cellophane, "Uhhhh aren't those mine?"

She struck a match "Want one?"

"Yeah sure."

"So it was about 1950 that the Monarchs came to power."

He took the cigarette she offered him and inhaled gratefully. "Monarchs? You mean like a royal family?"

"Monarchs is what they call themselves but they're more like tapeworms with MBAs if you ask me." She puffed contemplatively on her cigarette, "Until then they had been outsiders looking in, but they promised peace, prosperity and clean streets. Who could refuse a deal like that? They quelled the infighting and rioting. They installed some inoffensive little nobody as their Regent. Things got quiet and predictable. People got fat and happy. Citizens became sheep."

"Look, I've seen the Star Wars Trilogy, so cut to the chase, what went wrong?"

Audra blew smoke from her nose and gave him a withering look. "'The face of tyranny is always mild at first.' The Monarchs started to micro-manage the City to death. They created and enforced codes of conduct and codes of dress. They leveled whole boroughs for their own little pet projects. If the people that lived in those neighborhoods got a day's notice before the Sentries came to 'relocate' them out they were lucky. Slavery was abolished because in the Monarchs eyes all citizens were equal. Problem was if you pissed off the powers that be in any way at all you could be sentenced to decades of community ervice. To speed things along Constables were made the sole judges of an accused citizen's guilt."

"Outlander. Your presence here is a violation of the Jamestown Compact... The penalty for such trespass is conscription." Matthew shuddered at the memory.

"If they're not sure who is guilty of a crime they'll just punish all the suspects, if they have no suspects they'll just punish a whole neighborhood. What do they care?"

"Sounds awful."

"No it gets better. Then they adopted a "mutilate on sight" policy egarding Outlanders. That was real trouble because until recently utlanders were an important part of the City's economy as slaves and livestock."

"That's not very civilized."

"Come on Matt, you've got to suspect by now that some of the people living here only look human. The might share an appearance with you but they certainly don't share the ancestry. You were standing in line for frozen custard with monsters of legend back there. Neat huh?"

"That's not the description I'd use."

"Poor Matt. Anyway the Monarchs have started assigning population limits for some of the City's less than human citizens and they set limits on the number of sorcerers that can live in the City at one time. They're culling the herd."

"Look if just half the people that blundered from the normal world to here ended up as slaves or a deli tray maybe it serves you right."

"What you don't think that the Monarchs have their eye on your world as well? Heck this is just a dry run, just you wait."

The finished their smokes in silence. When Matt had finished his second and she was starting her fourth he asked, "So...

"Sew buttons."

"So we're going to be here a while?" Strange shadows darted across the stained glass windows, Matthew watched them uneasily.

"Oh yeah, they'll keep buzzing the neighborhood until they think everybody is properly terrorized."

"You know Jack Diamond was going to kill you."

That raised an eyebrow "What?"

"Back there at the recruiting station place- he was aiming at the back of your head. That's why I pointed to him."

She nudged him in the ribs, "Are you serious?"

He nudged her back, "I'm serious."

"Well then," She flicked her cigarette into the sacred Atlantean fountain, "I guess this puts us about even."

"Yeah, kinda. I didn't think of it that way really..."

"Of course you didn't. But still, here we are on the run. In hiding. We've saved each other's lives. If this was a movie it would be just bout time for us to do it."

"Do... it?"

She leaned in close, her voice a sexy rasp, "Yeah do it- you know, a little desperate lovemaking to ease the tension."

"Well I am sort of tense." He leaned in closer, his eyes half-lidded.

Audra stood up, "But that's not gonna happen, you're not my type."

"I- what?" Matthew felt dizzy.

"Take a nap, I'll keep watch."

"But-"

"It's not gonna happen."

Matthew was blushing so hard it was almost painful, "I didn't think-"

Lighting a fresh cigarette she crossed to the other side of the church, "Close your eyes and count sheep. Go dream about that chunky broad you keep a picture of in your wallet."

Chunky? Matthew thought and then made a mental note to cancel his credit cards when he got back, If I get back. I don't know how she expects me to take a nap in the midst of all this craziness.

Perhaps it was exhaustion, perhaps it was the gentle burbling of the fountain but somehow he did fall asleep. And he dreamt-

...the city is splayed out before him, a vision of stretching silhouettes illuminated by a soft flickering miasma of torchlight and chimney smoke. Beyond that he can see the dim outlines of the great swamp and the twin peaks of Noton and Kadiphonek. He paces the roof of the Spire, his torch at ready. The Seers tell that the enemy will come from the west. It is his job to light signal fire when the moment of invasion comes.

Staring scornfully at the tall woodpile he wishes he could be down in the garrison with his fellow soldiers. But his place is here, the Seers and their runes choose him. "You will survive." They vow, "The outcome of the conflict is uncertain but you will live to remember."

The torch sputters as he runs his hand over the irregular planks. He knows his fate was something less than a boon and more than damnation. He had fought beside those men below for so long- to not
stand beside them now...

The thought alone was enough to fill his heart with dread. He turns his attention from the City to the Pole Star. On this damnable night it outshone all the other stars in its brilliance. From the inky depths of space its light coruscated leeringly down at him. With that light there was a voice, a whispering in his mind;

Slumber O watcher, for the past

Crawls to shadows of future cast

Beneath my light will rapture burn

Brute spirit and human mind churn

Ravenous hungers do now rise

Dark intellects from baneful skies

Only in death may you persist

Slumbering while stars turn and twist

Watchman shrouded in evernight

Your fire burns when the time is right

A thundering roar shook him from his lethargy, the tower quakes beneath him, he turns to see the mountains swooning. A cold wind freezes the beads of sweat to his flesh. The city reels beneath him, the torch dropping from his numb fingers. A second roar sends the buildings of the City toppling like dominoes. A dust storm washes over him, dust that had once been the mighty peaks of Noton and Kadiphonek.

Half blind and deaf he falls to his knees. The City is gone now, all that remains is rippling darkness. Something draws closer. He blinks the grime from his eyes to find himself staring at human face.

His face.

It is a reflection of himself, floating in the void just a few yards away.

A short distance above the first reflection a second hovers, a third dangles below, and two more on either side; each of those reflections is bordered by another four. A hundred duplicates stretch across the void until they trace the horizon.

A fresh peal of thunder shatters his eardrums, he begins to perceive that the wall of likenesses before him is not uniform. It curves subtly, leaving the impression of a sphere.

A final roar reduces the tower to ashes. He falls.

In his last moments he comes to a final realization.

It is an eye. He is seeing his reflection in a vast segmented eye...

Click here to continue