Sisay’s Quest | Part Three: Old Wars
This content was originally included in an issue of Duelist magazine. The original article can be accessed via Internet Archive here.
Main Magazine Page: The Duelist #25
Short story by Kij Johnson
Long before she met Gerrard and joined his quest, Sisay began collecting the artifacts that made up Gerrard’s mysterious Legacy. After facing down both minotaurs and goblins, Sisay and the Weatherlight crew enter the Adarkar Wastes, in search of the Juju Bubble.
“Old Wars” is the third and final installment in an exciting new series of short fiction in The Duelist. Written by Kij Johnson, winner of the Theodore A. Sturgeon Award, this is a story of Sisay’s youth—and of her own quest.
Sisay bent over the chart rolled out on the great cabin table, corners weighted down by books and decanters. “It should be simple enough,” she said, “Take the Weatherlight into the Adakar Wastes, find the hut, get the Juju Bubble, and fly out.”
Her first mate Meida snorted. “Right. If the crazy guy at the library was right. If we can find the village. If it’s still there. If the Bubble exists.”
Sisay sighed and swallowed some wine. “Meida, it’s there. I’m sure of it.”
“I suppose.” Meida rubbed her eyes. “Maybe I’m just tired of all this jaunting about. I need to see my girls again.”
“Your ‘girls’ are full grown,” Sisay said dryly. “They have babies of their own.”
Meida grinned. “A mother won’t want to see her kids just because they’re adults now? I bet your own mother is pining to see you again, big grown-up girl that you are.”
“All right!” Sisay said. “As soon as we pick up the Bubble, we’re heading straight back to Femeref. I want to see my parents too.”
With Meida and the minotaur Tahngarth beside her, Sisay watched the ground as the Weatherlight ghosted along. Though only leagues from crowded Argivia, the Adarkar Wastes were more barren than she had ever imagined land could be: nowhere the green of grass, not even near the blue-gray waters a few leagues west. The wasteland extended to the horizon and to the ocean, a grim plain of what looked like shattered gray glass; the chaotic rubble of loose rocks and boulders might go fathoms down. Though the Weatherlight nearly skimmed the ground, Sisay saw no movement but the little puffs of dust kicked up by her ship’s passage. For the fourth time she said, “What could have caused this?”
Again Meida answered, “Old wars. Any villages here are long gone, We’re not going to find it, captain.”
“No,” Sisay said. “The man at the library said the village is newer than this… desolation. It mus have been built since then.”
“Where?” Meida gestured. “There are no ruins visible and we can see a long way. Are we going to crawl over this entire place?”
“If necessary.”
“Captain,” Tahngarth said suddenly. “What if the village was not built on the wastelands, but beneath them?”
Sisay smiled. “Quite cunning, Tahngarth. That’s what I was thinking too.” She gestured, indicating the ship’s slow progress close over the ground. “We’re looking for ruins, yes, but we’re also looking for holes in the ground. Unfortunately, in ground like this you have to be immediately over a hole to see it.”
“Captain,” Tahngarth said, “any underground place breathes. When it’s warm above, it breathes out. When it gets cold at night, it breathes in.”
“All right,” Sisay said slowly. “How will this help?”
Tahngarth grunted. “If we see dust moving for no reason, it might indicate underground spaces,”
“The village,” Sisay said. “Meida, let the searchers know what to look for, and we’ll see if this works.”
Meida saluted and trotted away.
“Tahngarth, that was clever thinking,” Sisay said.
“Of course,” he said, eyes on the sky. She thought he looked smug, but it was hard to tell with minotaurs.
A wind came up as afternoon wore on, but it was no more than a breeze, and when Vidats shouted, “Starboard, three-quarters aft!” Sisay saw the slight darkness he pointed at, as if the air were dirtier there than elsewhere. Her lookouts marked it, and the ship changed course. It was dusk when they came to the series of gaping holes in the tumbled ground.
“This is it,” Sisay said with relief. “Just the way he described it. We’re only an hour from the coast. We’ll head out there, sleep in the water tonight, and start tomorrow.”
At dawn they brought the ship back to the underground village.
“Can we land?” Meida looked down at the broken boulders that formed the surface. Her expression was dubious.
“Meida, we can land on anything.” Sisay gave the orders, and the ship’s curved landing spikes emerged from the hull. The Weatherlight seemed to hover for a moment before it dropped with enough force to drive the spikes through the rubble. Glassy stone and metal shrieked against each other and the ship lurched sickeningly before setting at an angle.
“Well,” Meida said, “that was exciting. Are we going to be able to get out of here?”
“We’ll just be careful lifting off, that’s all,” Sisay said. “Everyone ready?”
Meida nodded. “Groups of two. Half the crew stays on the ship. We’re just here for the Bubble, leave everything else alone. I put the new kids in with the two of us, so Tahngarth’s with you and Csaba’s with me.”
“Good.” Sisay hesitated. “Though Tahngarth hardly seems inexperienced. Let’s go, then.”
Sisay stepped carefully from the hatchway to a glassy boulder the size of a pony. It seemed steady enough, but the next one slid under her foot and only by jumping backward did she manage not to slide into a waist-deep crevasse between two rocks. Tahngarth hopped to a flat stone a few paces away. “It’s simple enough, captain,” he said. “Just watch your balance.”
“Simple for you,” she said tartly. “You were born to clamber on rocks.” She looked up at the Weatherlight‘s hull looming high overhead. “I just hope the ship is as steady as you.” She oriented herself and pointed at one of the holes that peppered the area. “All right, let’s try this one over here.”
Crew members picked their way cautiously to nearby holes. Though the Weatherlight hadn’t touched ground for many days, the search was quiet, muted, without the festival atmosphere common to landings. People grabbed nervously for their search-partners as they slipped and slid. Meida encouraged Csaba, who grew up in farmland and had never walked on anything like this. As Sisay stepped down the rough-carved stairs just inside the hole, she heard the first mate’s voice.
Sound cut off abruptly as Sisay’s head went below ground level. The steps led down to a low doorway. The captain bent over and eased through, straightening on the other side to look around. Tahngarth grunted as he followed her through the opening.
The room was far larger than she had expected from the entrance. Its lower half looked as though it had been carved from a single piece of smoke-gray glass. The upper walls and roof had been constructed of great slabs of the dark quartz, fitted and stacked without mortar. Everything in the room—benches, beds, a chest, a table, a cooking stove—had been constructed of the same material. A cupboard carved into the wall held a clutter of boxes and jars, looking a bit like dirty ice. The light that filtered through the room’s roof was a rich dreamy gray. “It must have been like living inside a gemstone,” Sisay whispered. “Who were these people? What happened to them?”
Tahngarth shook his horns. “What is it Meida says? Old wars. I have seen the mines where we cut crystal for our swords, and they are barely more magnificent than this.”
Sisay smiled. “Then they must be extraordinary indeed. Well. Let’s look, shall we?”
They searched the room and others leading from it but found nothing. When they climbed out, they flagged the hole with a strip of bright yellow cloth: nothing here.
The second hole was similar. So were the third and the fourth. Sisay and Tahngarth broke for lunch with several other teams. “I never want to see gray glass again.” Sisay rubbed her aching eyes. “I’ll probably have nightmares about being trapped in a glass prison.”
“I—” Meida began.
“Metal!” Tterso climbed from a hole, his voice the loudest thing they had heard since landing in this silent place. “There’s some sort of metal wall or something. We touched it, and it started rumbling.”
“There’s no metal here,” Sisay frowned. “Meida, can you check on it?”
“Aye, captain. Csaba?” Meida and the new crewmate pulled themselves upright and felt their way toward Tterso, rubbing crumbs from their hands.
They were half-way when the glass boulders behind Tterso started clattering. Tterso and his search partner Djella staggered to one side as the rocks heaved upward to form a mound. Sisay and the others leapt to their feet.
The hill heaved higher. Stones rolled down its flanks. Dust puffed up, half obscuring whatever was at the hill’s heart. Over her shoulder Sisay heard the crew on the ship calling for crossbows.
Tterso and Djella tried to scramble backward over the shifting rocks. Tterso appeared to have hurt his leg, and Djella was trying to help him, but it was awkward. The rest of the searchers got to their feet and drew their swords. Csaba had fallen mere steps from the cracking earth; Meida stood braced over her, sword in hand.
The mound shifted, and Sisay saw a huge machine rise from beneath the rubble, a strange clockwork creature made of black metal. A final boulder dropped from one sloping shoulder to shatter at the creature’s feet, still sunk deep in the ground cover. The metal beast towered as high as the Weatherlight’s deck. Weaving from side to side on the end of a long neck was what might be a head. It had no eyes or nostrils, only a metal mouth that did not move the way metal should.
Sisay called, “Everyone back to the ship. Slow and careful. Don’t rouse it. Get Csaba and Tterso out of there.”
The metal beast’s head swiveled toward her voice.
“What is that thing for?” Tahngarth rumbled in her ear.
“Old wars,” Sisay breathed. “It’s not attacking, though. Perhaps it will leave us alone.”
Djella and Tterso eased backward with cautious, fumbling steps. While the beast’s attention was on Sisay, Meida pulled Csaba upright, and the two women inched toward Djella, who was having trouble keeping Tterso balanced. A stone under their feet shifted; small rocks clattered fell. The beast swung its head toward them. Sisay whispered, “Careful…”
The beast’s head lashed forward and hissed. Pale green gas spurted from its mouth. Djella and Tterso screamed and fell clawing at their faces. Even at a distance, Sisay clearly heard Meida’s curse as Csaba fell again, trapped between shifting rocks.
“Gas!” Tahngarth thundered forward.
“No!” Sisay grabbed for him, but he was already out of reach. The war beast waded through the rubble, toward Meida and the other three. Sisay fell and stumbled upright again as she followed Tahngarth, shouting to the rest of the crew, “Get to the ship! Get her in the air!”
The Weatherlight hummed as it gained power. The war beast tipped its head as if listening. From the corner of her eye Sisay saw a couple of people dive through the hatchway. Good, there were just a handful of crew members still on the ground. The ship pushed against the landing spikes, but the boulders beneath it shattered as it shifted weight. It settled deeper in the broken ground. The war beast charged the ship. Tterso, Meida, Csaba, and Djella were directly in its route.
“No!” Sisay screamed. “Get the ship up! Meida!”
With a strength born of desperation, Djella threw herself to one side, dragging Tterso along. Meida lifted Csaba bodily, then, with a glance at the looming beast, hurled her many yards to the side. The beast swung its head like a maul at the boulder where Meida stood. The rock shattered, and she fell into the rubble, glass shards flying. The war beast stepped forward.
Tahngarth hauled Tterso and Djella away from the beast, Djella staggering alongside, but its attention was focused on the ship. It slammed its head against the closest landing claw just as the ship heaved again, this time breaking free. The ship tilted then righted itself, bobbing up and out of range.
Sisay dove between the beast’s feet and forced her way through the shifting glass where Meida had disappeared. She tumbled abruptly through a gap and fell onto a flat surface. She was in one of the glass rooms, this one nearly destroyed by the beast’s passage. Meida lay curled in a ball beside a chest, as if she had been seeking shelter. Blood pooled beneath her. Sisay scrambled to her, ignoring the machine’s towering legs. “Meida? Are you all right?”
Meida said nothing. Sisay touched her face, but she was already cool to the touch. A shard as long as a sword pierced her neck. At least it was fast, thought Sisay.
The war beast moved, and glass cascaded down on Sisay and Meida. The chest shattered as the leg crashed past. And from the wreckage rolled a delicate little construct of twig, twine, and thread, bearing a sphere the color of sunset in its heart: the Juju Bubble.
Cradling it in a cut hand, Sisay crabwalked away from the beast’s legs. She saw the sun through a break, and clawed to the surface. The machine was slamming its head at the ground where the Weatherlight had been as if it didn’t realize the ship was gone.
The Weatherlight hovered over Tahngarth, who was helping Djella lift Tterso to the rope ladder that dangled down. Djella held her crewmate close against the ladder and gestured for the ship to pull them up.
Sisay limped to Tahngarth, who grunted, “Meida?”
“Dead,” she said.
“We will kill it, then,” Tahngarth said and pulled his tekyl sword free.
“We can’t,” Sisay said. “There is nothing to kill.”
“But—”
“It’s a thing, some leftover from a long-dead war. Look at it. There is nothing there.” The beast slammed its head into the glass again and again, mindless as a hammer. The ladder dropped again. “Sometimes you can challenge instead of fight. Sometimes you trick instead of fight. Sometimes there is no point to fighting at all. You walk away. Help me bring this up, Tahngarth.” She showed him the Juju Bubble, gleaming in her hand. “It was bought with Meida’s blood.”
Tahngarth looked at her for a long moment, then swung her into the crook of his arm and began the climb away from the dead village and the metal beast.
Sisay’s quest for the Juju Bubble is finished. Watch for a new series of Duelist fiction starting in issue #28.