Quintessence Sky (37 page)

He had instructed his men to bring this
creature, this
Rinchirith
, onto the deck of
La
Magdalena
. From here, they could see the conquistadors on the
beach, drilling. He didn't yet know what strength the manticore
might have, but it seemed practical to intimidate him as much as
possible, to get the meeting started on the right footing. If
Rinchirith could lead him to where the remaining colonists were
hiding out, or assist him in finding and gathering the valuable
goods he had been sent to procure, then it would be worth playing
the game of collaboration and alliance.

Torres had been to the settlement. He had
seen the melted remains of what must have once been grand
buildings. He had also seen the defense that even a single colonist
had been able to mount to evade capture. If all of the colonists
could run like the wind and cast blinding light from their bodies,
they would be formidable opponents. Already apostate, they had
apparently made a pact with the devil to gain unearthly powers,
with the consequence that the powers had come back to destroy them.
That was always the way with sin. It seemed so good at the time,
but later, it destroyed your life. Buried memories clawed for the
surface of his mind, but Torres shoved them back down again.

It didn't matter. What mattered was this
moment, this meeting. An officer who spoke English stood by to
translate their conversation.

The manticore's gray fur rippled in the
breeze. It snapped its pincers open and shut. "Greetings," it said.
Its tails moved in a complex way that made Torres feel faintly
nauseated. "I am called Rinchirith." The translator stumbled a bit
over the pronunciation of the name.

"What can I do for you?" Torres said.

" I believe you can help me, and in return, I
can help you. I wish to unite my people into one tribe," Rinchirith
said.

"I see," Torres replied. "With yourself as
chief, no doubt."

"I have many who follow me. But many more do
not. If I am seen to have the friendship of the human people, more
will join me."

"No doubt."

"I have seen a vision of the future. I have
seen your people coming here in great numbers, relentless. I used
to think we should destroy you, but you are like the cacari that
lives in our forests. If we cut off your arm, another grows in its
place. Instead of fighting, I wish to join my power with
yours."

"And what do you suppose that you can do to
help me?" Torres said.

"I will fight with you against your enemies,
both human and manticore."

It was laughable, really. This creature
probably had a dozen warriors fighting with sticks and clubs, and
he wanted to ally himself with the most powerful empire in the
world. Torres glanced out at his six hundred armed conquistadors
marching on the beach. "Yes?" he said. "And how many fighting men
can you contribute to this cause?"

"There are thirty thousand manticores who
have pledged their lives to mine," Rinchirith said. The translator
spoke the words with no emotion, but Torres got a sense of barely
suppressed rage from the manticore's tone and body language.

"Thirty thousand!" Torres laughed. "Quite a
number. Can he corroborate that?"

There was some back and forth between the
translator and the manticore as the meaning of the word
'corroborate' was discussed. Rinchirith bared his teeth.

"He says he can show you," the translator
said.

Rinchirith gave a piercing shriek, and all
around him, more manticores appeared, literally springing into
reality out of thin air. They covered the deck, surrounding Torres
and his men, and clambered all through the rigging. On shore, they
appeared as well, a host of them all around his men and continuing
back into the trees as far as he could see. There were, indeed,
thousands of them. Many were the same gray color as Rinchirith, but
others were white, orange, brown, and black. The manticores began
to snap their pincers together in eerie unison.

Torres tried to back away, but there was
nowhere to go that was not covered with manticores. All these
thousands had been there, invisible, all the time. His heart
thundered in his chest. He was not ready to die. The manticores
leaped up and down into the boat's hold by passing straight through
the deck, as insubstantial as air. Yet it was clear that those
pincers could cut and those teeth bite if they wanted to
attack.

"Do we have an agreement?" Rinchirith
asked.

"Of course," Torres said. He took a deep
breath, got control. "We would be glad to help you fight your
enemies in return for your assistance fighting ours. We grant you
exclusive trading rights and agree to support you over any rival
leadership, in return for which you will furnish us with those
goods we wish to take home to our masters."

Rinchirith bared his teeth again, and Torres
wondered if it was a grimace or a smile. "Agreed," he said. "As a
sign of good faith, we will show you where the human vermin are
hiding."

Torres smiled uncertainly. This was good
progress, wasn't it? He had barely landed, and already he was on
good terms with a powerful local chieftain who would help him find
and kill the English. He got the impression, though, that
Rinchirith would just as readily apply the term 'vermin' to Torres
himself.

MATTHEW had never been so happy to see a
crowd of red manticores materialize out the air around him. He
wondered if Parris had called them through his bond with
Tanalabrinu. The manticores lifted them and carried them through
the storm until they arrived at a hidden cave entrance and slipped
through. Inside, they found Blanca and Joan Parris waiting for
them. Parris ran to his wife and embraced her.

Three people had come through the void from
England, one man and two young women, and only now was Matthew able
to get a good look at them. He had never seen the Princess
Elizabeth before, and at first glance, he wasn't sure which of the
girls was her. Both were young, bedraggled, and dirty. One was
shaved bald, and the other was covered in blood.

Blanca went immediately to the injured one
and gave her a drink of quintessence water from a flask at her
belt, healing her wounds and washing the worst of the blood from
her face and neck. The injured one was younger, Matthew could see
now, which meant the one standing, whose head was shaved, was the
princess. She looked like a girl, disoriented and clearly
frightened by her surroundings.

Joan Parris was the first to kneel. "Your
Grace," she said. Elizabeth extended a delicate hand in what seemed
like an automatic gesture, and Joan kissed it.

Matthew and the others rushed to imitate her.
Whatever, she might look like, this was
Elizabeth
, the
Protestant princess and the hope of England.

Her hair had been shaved off for her
execution, of course, and the simple white dress she wore was dirty
with the dust of the road, but Matthew was surprised he had not
realized at once who she was. She held herself erect and moved with
the grace and bearing of a queen. The man with her, presumably
Ramos de Tavera, seemed just as dazed. He gripped the hand of the
first girl, who must be his niece, Antonia.

"Where are we?" Elizabeth asked. She looked
as if she were trying not to cry.

"This is Horizon Island," Parris said.

"Horizon?" She looked at Ramos. "How is that
possible?"

Blanca reached out and took her hand. "You're
safe now, Your Grace," she said. Matthew hoped it was actually
true.

"Why are we in a cave? Is your settlement
nearby?" Elizabeth said.

Matthew explained to her, with comments
inserted by his father and Blanca, of the destruction of their
settlement, the arrival of the Spanish ships, the uneasy
relationship with the manticores, and the coup by James Ferguson.
She asked many questions—how many the Spanish were and how far
away, what Ferguson was like, what resources they had. She had been
transported thousands of miles from her home and dropped in an
unfamiliar land among strangers, and yet her questions were
precise, aimed at defining her situation and making plans. She was
a survivor, Matthew realized, raised in a political environment
where her life was always at risk. She had grown up in luxury, but
she knew how to cope with peril. Despite the fact that they were
nearly the same age, Matthew felt as if she were an adult with the
wisdom of experience and years, while he was only a child.

"When Ferguson threw you out, we went to the
manticore village looking for you," Blanca said. "Tanalabrinu knew
what had happened, of course, and he had already mobilized this
group to find you and bring you back to stay in their village. When
the earthquake began and it started to storm, they brought us here
instead."

"I'm sorry," Matthew said to Elizabeth. "We
have no food to offer you, and no true shelter. If we had salt, we
could create some food, produce a fire, and protect ourselves, but
we don't even have that. I'm afraid you have escaped one desperate
circumstance only to arrive at another."

"That's where you're wrong," Ramos said. He
stood and began to untie his tunic.

"You don't believe me?" Matthew said.

"I meant, you're not as short on salt as you
might think." Ramos pulled off his tunic to reveal a crude set of
leather straps slung over his shoulder. Hanging from these were
sacks, fat and heavy with their contents. Ramos reached into one of
these and pulled out a handful of translucent crystals. "I came
prepared," he said.

There was a combined cry of astonishment from
the colonists at the sight of all that salt. Matthew laughed and
clapped Ramos on the back. "I can't tell you what this means to
us," he said. "Ferguson kept it all for himself, to solidify his
power. With this, maybe we can take control again."

"It will be of no benefit to attack your
fellow colonists," Elizabeth said. "There are precious few
Englishmen on this island, and none to spare."

Matthew looked at the floor, embarrassed.
"What then?"

Elizabeth's expression was serene. "We must
convince them to join with us."

WHEN the rain had stopped and the ground
settled, they emerged from the cave. Ramos was struck by the
alienness of the land around them. Dark clouds covered much of the
sky, but not enough to hide the sun, which was too large by far. It
dominated the sky, boiling everything in its heat and giving the
air a tropical feel. He knew from speaking with Matthew, but could
scarcely believe, that it would grow larger still as it sank toward
evening, driving men and beasts to seek shelter from its rays.
Then, once mercifully set, it would rise the next morning as tiny
as a pinprick in the distant east, leaving a chill in the air.

They stood on a rocky promontory on the edge
of a mountain, its base surrounded by forest, but the trees were
not the elm and oak and ash he recognized. They were taller than
seemed appropriate, their tops wreathed with a mossy fluff instead
of leaves. Those leaves he did see were the wrong shape: round, or
else stretched into long strips that fluttered in the breeze. He
even saw a tree with only one enormous leaf lofted high in the air
that caught the wind like a kite and collected sunlight far above
its bare trunk.

The rocks were more familiar, but even they
seemed different, a darker color than he expected, with here and
there a jagged stone that shone a glossy black. The air smelled
fresher than London, of course; that was to be expected, but there
were new smells, too, scents he couldn't identify. He followed the
others downhill, toward the forest, and when they entered the
trees, he was struck by how differently it sounded than an English
forest. When the wind blew, it didn't whisper through the trees so
much as crackle, as the lower, dead layers of mossy foliage rattled
against each other.