Quintessence Sky (19 page)

CHAPTER 11

RAMOS stood in a field of yellow wildflowers
that stretched to a distant forest line. Thousands of bright blooms
swayed in a gentle breeze. The temperature was mild, and thick
clouds glided through a blue sky.

King Philip sat on a three-legged stool that
his page had carried for him on the four mile walk from town.
Philip himself had ridden a horse, as had his guards and his inner
circle of advisors. It was a small retinue for the king, who
usually rode with at least a hundred. The king's advisors were all
generals, battle-hardened men who had commanded armies in France or
Italy or Turkey. The government was run by bureaucrats, but the men
Philip trusted were those who fought for him.

Ramos tinkered with his device, adjusting the
height of the wooden stand, checking its balance, nervous for
everything to be just as it should be. He briefly explained the
apparatus. The pearl and prism were shut inside a box mirrored on
the inside, but a black wooden barrier could be slid into place,
dividing the pearl and prism into separate compartments. A hole in
the front, set at the proper angle, would let out the invisible
light.

One of the king's advisors, a thickset man
named Carillo in a cream white doublet, yawned.

"The strength can be adjusted," Ramos said.
"This is low power, with no salt used at all." He held one of the
flowers in front of the device and lifted the barrier. The petals
blackened around the edges, then curled and shriveled until nothing
was left but black powder drifting away in the breeze.

Carillo snorted. "Better a flint, my lord, if
I wanted to light a cookfire."

Ramos replaced the barrier, ignoring the
comment. He explained how he had split the light into colors with a
prism, how the candle had melted, how he had deduced the existence
of invisible light outside the span of colors they could see. The
men shuffled their feet and looked impatient. He was losing them.
He had never been good at presentation; the things that seemed
crucial to him weren't necessarily of interest to his audience.

He decided to skip the explanation and jump
ahead. He had set up a simple wooden crosspiece in the field. He
walked over to it and placed a hat on the top point and wrapped an
old cloth around it to serve as a cloak.

"This is an enemy soldier," he said, "and
this is high power." He opened a hatch at the back of the device
and pulled the top off a jar of salt water.

"I hope the enemy is lame," Carillo said, "or
you'd be dead by now."

Ramos tipped the jar into the compartment
where the pearl sat. He had only used a few drops before, but,
irritated at Carillo, he poured it all in, filling the compartment
with the white liquid and leaving a slick of wet salt behind in the
jar.

Ramos motioned at the men. "Stand back,
please."

Some of the men edged back slightly, but
Carillo held his ground.

With a flourish, Ramos pulled the barrier
free. For a moment, nothing happened, and he feared he had ruined
the experiment by drowning the device. Then the stick figure's
cloak exploded in a rush of flame, as did a wide swath of flowers
around it. In moments, the figure was incinerated, the clothes
vaporized, and black ash drifted through the air.

Ramos replaced the barrier, and the remaining
flames died away, leaving nothing but blackened, smoldering wood.
He was gratified to see a layer of soot coating Carillo's cream
doublet.

The military men broke into excited
conversation. "The box would be clumsy to transport," Carillo said,
dusting off a shoulder and trying to look unimpressed, but the
others ignored him, discussing how this might give them an
advantage in their wars.

"How many can you make?" asked a man with a
thin mustache. "Could you surround a castle with them and keep them
continuously supplied with salt water? A wall of fire would be a
formidable barrier."

Ramos shook his head. "No, my lord. I . . .
to be honest, I can make only this one. Four at the most. I . . ."
He trailed off, reddening as he realized how limited this device
was. It required a quintessence pearl, of which only four existed
in England. He thought he had something marvelous; he had planned
to amaze them. Instead, he had wasted their time.

"Look on the bright side," Carillo said.
"Just before your enemy cleaves your head in two, you can throw
salt water in his eyes."

The men laughed. Ramos's face burned.
Surprisingly, it was the king who rescued him. He raised a hand,
silencing the laughter. "It is
Ignis Dei
. The Fire of God.
You have done well, Ramos de Tavera. Better even than your brother
before you. Rest assured, you will be rewarded." He stood, slapping
his thighs. "In the meantime, continue your work. You are the power
of the armies of God."

Ramos felt a warm, grateful glow. His
monarch, this great champion of the Church, was pleased with him.
His sense of euphoria remained while the king and his retinue
gathered up their things and rode away. Once they were gone,
however, the enthusiasm faded. The king was kind, but his
demonstration had been a failure. The weapon made an impressive
show, but what good was it? They couldn't mass produce it. It was
dependent on the pearls, and they only had four of those. Worse,
the pearls were dependent on the shekinah flatworm, so they
couldn't send one to the wars in Turkey or France. Without the
shekinah, they would quickly fade to uselessness.

Barrosa clapped him on the back.
"Congratulations! I hope you remember your friends when you're
sitting at the king's table."

Ramos shook his head. "It's a novelty, that's
all. It won't make any real difference in the wars, and the king
knows it."

"It could. You just need to work on the
design. Make it more portable, easier to carry and aim."

"That won't help without more pearls."

Barrosa gave a mischievous smile. "What if we
had more pearls?"

"What are you talking about? There were only
four."

"I'm talking about getting more. An
expedition to Horizon."

Ramos kicked the ground. "That would take
over a year, even if we sent a ship today."

A slow grin spread across Barrosa's face.

"What is it?"

"You can't tell anyone."

"I swear."

"Swear on the Bible."

"I swear on the Bible and the Blessed Virgin.
Now tell me what you're grinning about!"

"Philip sent an expedition of conquistadors
to Horizon months ago. Five ships of the line, stacked with cannon
and crammed with soldiers. They have orders to kill the heretics
and return with all the pearls and shekinah flatworms they can
find."

Ramos gaped. "Then, the ship with the
bell-box?
La Magdalena
?"

"Yes. We were talking with Alvaro de Torres,
captain of
La Magdalena
and Capitán-General of the
expeditionary fleet."

"You told me they were off the coast of
Portugal!"

Barrosa shrugged.

"How close are they to the island?"

"If the weather holds? They'll arrive within
the week."

Ramos felt his pulse rate rise. In less than
a week, someone would be in the presence of the source of these
wonders, and would be able to
tell
them about it, in limited
fashion, from half a world away. But the conquistadors were
mercenary soldiers. This Alvaro de Torres would have been given a
contract from King Philip to conquer the island, looting and
plundering whatever he found, and taking a cut for himself.

Killing the heretics meant murdering those
who discovered all these wonders, mastered the use of the shekinah
flatworms and pearls, invented the bell-boxes, and who knew what
more? If they were killed, their knowledge would die with them.
Suddenly, Ramos felt more sympathy with the distant colonists than
he did with those of his own country and religion. They understood
the value of what they had found. Ramos had sworn to be loyal to
his king and country and to the Church, but he knew something else,
knew it as surely as he loved Antonia. He didn't want those
colonists to die.

CATHERINE found a salt-encrusted crevice in
the rock and hid herself there to watch. From this vantage, she
could see back along the cave passage through which she had come.
She marveled at this discovery: shekinah flatworms and these
gigantic salamanders were the same creatures! She had no idea that
shekinahs were not the adult form of the animal; they had never
seen them grow appreciably in all the time they had kept them in
captivity. There must be something about this cave that caused them
to mature, perhaps the abundance of salt.

But no, as she watched the shekinahs, she
could tell that they were not eating the salt at all, as she had
first assumed, but excreting it. In fact, all the salt covering the
walls must have been left by generations of shekinahs passing
through and growing to adulthood. The thought made her head
spin—could this be the source of the island's salt? If there were
enough caves like this tunneled throughout these mountains, with
colonies of maturing shekinahs, perhaps rainfall washed the salt
out to the surrounding land, in streams like the one she had just
drunk from, and deposited it in the soil over time.

Catherine decided to keep moving. If she
stopped, if she allowed her mind to drift from the immediate
problems and mysteries at hand to the fact that she was trapped
alone untold leagues below the earth, with no concept of how to get
out, then she might lose her mind. One step at a time. She needed
food.

She climbed back down to the salty stream,
ready to bolt back to her crevice at any sign of an approaching
salamander, and made it there without incident. She was greeted
again by the swirling lights of the spirits. No wonder they hadn't
followed her into the upper cave—the salamanders fed on them. Which
was a mystery in itself: the salamanders excreted salt, but fed on
the disembodied souls of people? Had there always been spirits
here? Was that their main diet, or did they get sustenance some
other way? Were they, in fact, eating the spirits at all?

She remembered the leviathan they had
encountered on their trip to Horizon the year before, how it had
attacked the ship to get a salt-enhanced quintessence pearl, only
leaving them alone when her father had thrown the pearl into the
sea. The leviathan had caught it in its massive jaws and then
plunged beneath the surface, never to be seen again. Were these
salamanders like the leviathan? Was it the quintessence power that
these spirits represented that they were attracted to, rather than
the souls of the people themselves?

She knelt at the water's edge and trailed a
hand into the stream, trying to touch one of the eyeless fish. This
proved harder than expected, however, as the fish slid smoothly
away every time her fingers broke the surface. Perhaps they, too
would be attracted by a bit of quintessence. Flush with salt, she
made her skin glow white, and sure enough, the skittish fish swam
close and tried to nibble her fingers. Once she touched one, it was
simple to make it lighter than air and snatch it as it rose out of
the water.

Cooking it was no more difficult. A flash of
quintessence fire, and it was baked black and steaming. Not the
most gourmet dish ever prepared, but it would keep her fed. She was
just figuring out how to tear off a piece without a knife, when she
noticed that the tiny spirit lights were gone. She turned around to
find them, and saw three giant salamanders crouched behind her,
their fleshy mouths agape.

Catherine reacted quickly. She leaped high to
the cavern roof, altering her weight radically, and grabbing hold
of a crag. One of the salamanders leaped after her, its mouth
clamping shut just below her foot, before it fell back down again.
The salamanders ignored the fish. It was her they wanted. As she'd
suspected, they seemed to be attracted to quintessence. Once she
evidenced some to catch her own meal, they saw her as another
source of food.