Lantern Road: 8 by Cullen Read online

  -----------------------------------

  Lantern Road: 8 by Cullen

  by John T. Cullen

  -----------------------------------

  Science Fiction

  * * *

  Clocktower Books

  www.clocktowerbooks.com

  Copyright ©2002 by John T. Cullen

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

  * * *

  Lantern Road

  Hardly anyone noticed a disheveled and breathless young man stumbling along the cobblestones of the Obayyo, the great imperial highway that ran in perpetual night around the island of Oba like a glowing ring of myriad lanterns.

  For most of its length, the legendary Obayyo ran up into black mountains on one side, and down along the sea glittering in fog on the other side, always with a damp wind that was cold and cutting.

  Anything could happen along the thousand klix of the Obayyo, so what was one more disturbance, one more running felon, one more pack of pursuing policemen in gleaming brown armor and elaborate helmets?

  The Obayyo, or Lantern Road, crawled with an endless traffic of souls both human and Shurian, high born and low born, from lowly cargo bearers to traveling ladies and lords, knaves and thieves and murderers, clowns and fools and pilgrims, spies and merchants and priests.

  Every ten klix was a police station manned by Shurians in brown armor with swords and shields. Every hundred klix the Obayyo passed through the gates and walls of an imperial district prefecture—a vast and grim fortress with dark towers and curving roofs. Dotting the mountainous countryside were villages where smoke curled from chimneys and wan light made tiny windows glow. Even less accessible were the mountain castles of local princes and lords, not to mention the distant forest haunts of robber barons. Life on Oba might center on the imperial palace, but all life circulated on the Obayyo.

  The long ago sage had said: “If you tire of the Obayyo, once having breathed its air, you are tired of living and must either commit duello, or else resign yourself to a monastery."

  Shur was the single large moon of a gas giant that sent up a greenish luminous tinge in Shur's lower sky. The high road had never seen daylight because, as Shur orbited the gas giant, it turned synchronously with relation to the star, so that Oba Island was always twilit, while on the opposite side of Shur a steaming sea pushed clouds and winds with rain and humidity toward Oba.

  Also visible in the sky, on this bustling night when the disheveled and breathless young man stumbled along the road, were Shur's twelve moons, the largest blood red and big as one's thumb held at arm's length, the smallest just specks like swollen silver-blue stars. The night sky was black in one direction, carpeted with stars like the lanterns on the Obayyo, but glowed milky green jade in the other direction. The Shurian natives called it their eternal daylight, while their human slaves called it perpetual twilight.

  The young human, Jory O'Call, often looked back in a whirl of emotions that seemed timed with his sharp, ragged sobs for breath—terror because the Lord Ramyon's soldiers were hot on his trail, regret that he had been betrayed and would never see the lady Ramy Ramyon again, worry at what might happen to her, and shock that one's life could be so drastically altered in one ill-fated moment.

  Jory O'Call dodged right and left, earning angry shouts from hurrying cargo bearers, and the occasional glancing blow of a walking stick from a puffy gentleman. Eya! they called after him, ‘filth!,’ or nah!, ‘rat!'

  Jory's mind was a muddle of flashing images: the last moments of sweet enjoyment—then the door's breaking under ax blows, the retainers’ shouts as they burst in waving swords, Ramy's screaming as she covered her face with trembling fists and realized her own end was near. Jory knew he would relive those moments forever, but nothing could bring her back. He would likewise remember, with dread, the looming third gender in Ramy's marriage, whom the Shurians called their baba, but whom humans distastefully called a wasp. Jory had caught a brief glimpse of Ramy's baba—a hulking copper-colored shape who was actually Ramy's sister—capable of the most terrible vengeance.

  Something more had happened, Jory guessed as he tried to figure out why he was still free and on the run. His lungs made sawing sounds, and the thick, moist, plant-scented air scraped over his open mouth and throat. Not just the betrayal. Something more that caused the Lord Ramyon's retainers not to kill Jory and Ramy instantly. The retainers, as they were called, were petty nobles without land, who dwelt in a lord's castle and acted as officers for the ordinary Shurian soldiery, those being peasants and riffraff not far above the despised human slaves.

  For some reason Lord Ramyon's men had let him escape. Were they expecting him to lead them somewhere? Ah! It came to him in a flash of insight. A conspiracy! They were always looking for a plot, a conspiracy, a plan to topple the lawful lord and replace him with some senior warrior. Oba was a closed society ruled with an iron fist, more by the cruel rigidity of its laws and customs than by a weak emperor or hundreds of petty quarreling warlords. “Disunity is strength,” said the long ago sage. That sage, however, had lived centuries ago before the arrival of space travel.

  In the foothills of the Oba Range, on the other side of the island from the Emperor's throne room, sprawled Kusi-O, the space port. Oba might be a backwater, but it had one extremely valuable commodity. Oba was a fungal treasure house. More than a million species of all sorts of fungi flourished in the hothouse atmosphere of the water world—some medicinal, others with manufacturing value, others for warfare, still others that glowed in colorfully. The lights on the Obayyo, carried in pretty paper lanterns slung on a pole over each journeyer's back, were fungal, bioluminescent.

  Inevitably, despite Shur's isolation, visits had come from various interstellar trading organizations, bringing curiosity and commerce. That lure had been greater for the feudal lords than its perceived danger to their way of life. Meeting at the imperial palace a century ago, the lords had induced the emperor to sign a set of decrees establishing Kusi-O while limiting its effects on Oba. The space port would be surrounded by a high concrete wall. Inside was bathed in light, outside in the gloom of Oba. Aliens must never set foot on Oba proper under threat of decapitation. Shurians and humans must stay out of Kusi-O, or face a gruesome death.

  The Raum Transport League and the Oban lords conducted commerce through a bureaucracy that filtered through the drum wall that surrounded Kusi-O, a tall concrete structure guarded on both sides. All through the gloomy night, gravless boats rose and descended between Kusi-O and RTL's orbiting starport. The pillar of bluish, hazy light beaming straight up guided Jory toward Kusi-O, though he feared how anyone's eyes could endure such brightness close up.

  Tonight, there was no conspiracy, whatever Ramyon's men thought. Jory simply had no place else to run. Either way, he faced death. At least he had some place to run to, however briefly. How, he asked himself as his leather shoes began wearing out and the rough cobblestones pounded the bones in his feet, can I have come down to this? And what of Ramy? His heart ached for her, knowing that she was probably facing her father at his most terrifying.

  Heart pounding, Jory jogged unsteadily along the Obayyo. Cargo-carriers, both Shurian and human, trudged by in pairs or quartets, with various sizes of fungiport urns hanging by knotted ropes from poles slung over the carriers’ shoulders. Passing pilgrims and mountebanks blended with the vast majority of ordinary Shurian peasants hur
rying to market. The Oba lowlands smelled tank-like of the sea.

  Now one of the frequent fogs rolled in suddenly, making ghosts of passers-by. The fog smelled like sea weed. It blotted out the many wooden hawkers’ stands on either side of the road. The many lanterns look like cotton glowing from within. Jory remembered delicate ancient Oba poems, of which he was a specialist. One liners. Two liners. Three liners. Each a sacred tradition practiced in the rice paper walled courts. To compose a successful three liner over cups of shwafter dinner was to honor one's host beyond all measure. To house a poet, even if it were a human pedagogue, was to display ineffable social grace.

  All gone now, finished forever, in one mad moment, Jory thought. His rear hurt from a tiny cut where he'd barely escaped a cutting weapon, as he jumped through a window on the high castle ramparts just hours ago. He could almost feel the prick of the first sword point in his back as Ramyon's soldiers caught up with him, or the Obayyo police in the brown and brass armor with elk-horn helmets. He could foresee the way he would tumble on the cobblestones, captured in a hard fishing net, and dragged behind a horse to the castle, where his head would wind up on one parapet, his torso on another with his mingled arms, legs, and inner organs suspended in a net basket for all the world to see. The long ago sage had said: “When an Obaman does something wrong, that is a crime. When a human does something wrong, that is a crime. When Obamen and humans do things wrong together, that is an abomination."

  Jory heard a voice at his side—a rough man's voice, human—"That's quite a pair of horns you have there, nah."

  Startled, then angry, Jory veered from his course and nearly bumped into an elderly baba lugging heavy sacks under each arm. She hissed at him, exposing the long, thin tongue-spike that was her sex organ. Her normally mud-brown eyes flared with a dim greenish glow, a sign that she was high on a fungal opiate that many peasants used to dull their existence.

  Jory dodged past her. The speaker was a very thin human man of medium height, extremely thin. He must not have shaved in a week, for a gray-brown stubble populated the pasty wrinkles of his face. His hard eyes suggested mingled climates of dishonesty, greed, cruelty, and occasional flashes of kindness or mercy in the “inner land,” as the Shurians called it. “Go away, bandit. I have no time for you."

  The man, who wore a plain hempen cloak and hood, and carried a thin wooden walking stick, fell in beside him. “Oho! The fugitive is gutsy!"

  Jory stopped. He reached over, bunched his fist in the other's cloak at the neck, and pulled him close. “I don't have time for this. What do you know about me? What do you want?"

  The man's strength was surprising, despite his light frame. He captured Jory's hands in his and twisted them against his chest, while pressing the point of his stick against Jory's ribs. Jory, however, had studied with the castle retainers. He had traded lines of poetry for the calligraphy of parries and chops. He had learned from the bored and sometimes laughing warriors the alternative tensions between the soft, circular movements of the go and the harsh, angular movements of the ko schools of manual combat.

  In an instant, Jory stepped behind the man while his hands were still trapped under the man's back-turned wrists. Jory dropped into a spread-leg stance that made his center of gravity lower than the other's. By leaning forward and subtly shifting his hip, Jory threw the man, and the man landed with a thud on his side. Jory stepped on the stick so it couldn't be lifted against him. “What other tricks can you show me, you oaf, before I make you into fish food?"

  “All right! Let go!"

  “You have one instant to tell me why I should. Or I should break your neck and move on.” Jory was still panting from his run, and he looked nervously from side to side.

  “I can save you, Master!” To call a human Master was mockery, but this bandit was sincerely trying to curry favor.

  “I don't believe you."

  “Let's head for Kusi-O."

  “You must be crazy.” But that was where he was headed anyway, to die, impaled on the space port's locked and steel-studded wooden gate. Driven by the need to move on, Jory let him up.

  The man gathered his stick and fell in again. “I'm sorry, Master, I'm a simple sort, and my mouth gets me in trouble."

  “You are a fool, and here I am beside you."

  “Who is the greater fool, Master?"

  “You have a point there.” Jory could close his eyes and still inhale the fragrance of Ramy's berry perfume. He remembered the silky feel of her skin, and the aroused pungence of her tongue.

  The man whispered: “My name is Yedy. I come from Anamo, outside Kusi-O."

  A territory of ruffians, Jory thought, known everywhere on the island of Oba. Kusi-O, interstice between Oba and the universe. Sluice of evil.

  “There is a price on your head, Master. Lord Ramyon has sent runners in both directions on the Great Road."

  “Thank you for information I already know."

  “I must ask a favor of you before I go any further with you, Master. Will you stop a moment?"

  “Oh what is this!” Jory said, stomping his feet impatiently, while Yedy felt around Jory's head with nimble fingertips until he found the hard round plates at each temple. “Ah! Just as the gate mouse said. You have the unborn horns."

  Jory shoved him away and resumed a fast walk. “I have always had them."

  Yedy walked beside him, pressing against his side, so that Jory had to keep pushing him away. “Master, it is something that makes you desirable to somebody in the Kusi-O and may save your life."

  “You are delivering me to the Kusi-O?"

  “Only by your leave, Master."

  “You risk your life by even speaking with me. The price must be great."

  Yedy's smile was sly, his eyes closing briefly in cagey admission. “It is so. But I cannot drag you there against your will."

  Jory calculated desperately. What kind of trap was this? “Who wants these unborn horns of mine, and why?” He rubbed his hands on the rough, ringed surfaces that occupied a half a palm's width circle before and slightly above each ear. They were like hair or fingernails. It was part of him, but without feeling. A sharp blow to the head during stick practice with the retainers had once made the cuticle around these giant thumbnail things bleed, but other than that they were simply always there and he hardly ever thought of them, anymore than he thought of his toenails. Human girls had made fun of him and, though he'd bedded some over the kjirs, refused to stay with him.

  Could this be a ruse? Was Yedy a procurer for some criminal element? But they would want young boys, not men nearing 240 mendz—the tool by which human women subversively kept track of time during the centuries since humans had been reduced from conquerors to being slaves at best, or hunted and killed throughout the Galaxy—a span, as legend had it, of over 10,000 mendz by now.

  Yedy replied: “Both things are secrets I don't know and therefore regretfully cannot reveal, though you should esteem my honesty."

  “All right, I'll grant you that much."

  “I was a teacher before I fell on hard times."

  “A teacher of what?"

  “History."

  Jory's interest perked. He remembered a night of murder and riot, but also of high discussion and noble words. “Do you know anything of a certain society, ruffian?"

  Yedy nodded slowly, breaking into a triumphant grin. “The Twelve Moon Society, perhaps?"

  “Yes!” Jory almost yelled and grabbed the man by the shoulder. “Does it still exist?"

  “Ohh ... there are rumors. Then again, it may be swamp gas to assert such things. Or else, if true, they would not advertise, not after their heads decorated the Obayyo from Ramyo to Menshu, your uncle's among them."

  “Stop riddling me, you fool, or I'll hoist you.” Why was the man so infuriatingly vague?

  Yedy spoke soberly: “There are beings from many worlds in the Kusi-O. I have seen them. Great hairy beings who captain starships. They come down with their boats to collect cargo. Sometimes
they want something special. They don't say why. It is deadly dangerous for a human to be in Kusi-O, and I do not ask questions. I keep my mouth shut. And so will you?"

  “How will we get in?"

  “Yes, I will be by your side. How we get in is for those who specialize in that thing, who can hoodwink the emperor's road police and the constables in Anamo, not to mention the Fril cops on the other side."

  Jory had only seen Fril one time—they were almost never permitted outside Kusi-O—and that had been at the imperial court. Fril were humanoid, bipedal, two-armed, but they were more snake. They had fine shimmering scales all over their bodies. Their body color was silver, stippled with small and large yellow scales. Jory remembered admiring their bright, almost faint coloring as they stood to one side in long transparent robes while Lord Ramyon made audience with the emperor. The Fril, who were the officials and doers of all things in Kusi-O, came from another planet in this system. They were peaceful and honest, and fiercely devoted to their gods, which kept them pure. They were ideal keepers for the sluice of evil that could easily poison the Oba society, which had swallowed Kusi-O into its belly as a Shurian swallowed the proverbial mushroom. This saying referred to eating a tiny mushroom of one kind, thinking it to be tasty and filling, only to discover one had swallowed its sister type, which contained a poison so deadly that feudal retainers tipped their arrow heads and sword blades with it. By the time the eater realized the mistake, one was half dead. Many a disgraced official had used that very mushroom rather than slice his entrails out in duello. The Oba feudal system trusted the Fril to maintain an unchanging status quo. The Fril cops, if they caught a human or a Shurian inside Kusi-O, would turn them over to the Obayyo police at the Anamo gate inside the great concrete drum wall. The gate was called Return of Property to Rightful Owner.

  * * * *

  Just hours ago, Jory had waited on the high walls above the women's quarters at Castle Ramyon.