High Arkana: Chapter TWO

Cesar does not speak about Simon on the drive.

He talks about the weather, which has become unpredictable enough to qualify as a personality. He complains about the vehicle's suspension. He tells Tommy that the northern roads are full of potholes large enough to swallow a small family, provided the family travels together and doesn't mind the inconvenience.

Tommy listens.

Ellyza watches the landscape pass beyond the armored glass. The road climbs through low hills, where abandoned buildings lean into fields of scrub and wild grass. A few settlements appear in the distance. Smoke rises from cooking fires. A wind turbine turns slowly above a ridge, its blades moving with the exhausted patience of something that has worked too long without maintenance.

Cesar keeps both hands on the wheel.

"You're avoiding something," Tommy says.

"I'm driving."

"You've been driving for twenty minutes. You can do both."

Cesar smiles, but it doesn't last.

"Simon was my brother."

Tommy looks toward him.

"I gathered that much."

"Biologically, in case you're wondering. Same mother. Same father. Same miserable childhood. He was the older one, which meant he spent most of his life telling me what to do."

"Did you listen?"

"Never. It was one of the great disappointments of his life."

Ellyza turns from the window.

"He was a Sentinel."

Tommy looks between them. "And that's what, exactly?"

Cesar glances at Ellyza.

"That's a fair question."

"Good. I was beginning to think I was the only one who had them."

"A Sentinel is a guardian," Cesar says. "Not a soldier. Not exactly. We protect certain things. People, objects, places. Things that have to survive even when the rest of the world doesn't."

"Who decides what needs protecting?"

"The Covenant."

Tommy waits.

Cesar sighs. "The agreement that binds the Sentinels together. An oath. A promise made freely. The living metal recognizes someone; that person is offered the choice to accept the duty. If they accept, the bond changes them."

"Changes them how?"

"Extends their lives. Gives them access to things ordinary people can't use. Sometimes lets them sense the metal, even when it's hidden."

Tommy looks down at the pouch beside him.

"You're telling me that thing chose you?"

"Yes."

"And you agreed to work for it?"

"That's one way of putting it."

"Sounds like a bad contract."

"It was a terrible contract. No dental."

Tommy gives him a long look.

"You're not helping."

"I know."

Ellyza shifts in her seat.

"The Covenant was not created to serve the metal," she says. "It was created to preserve the things entrusted to us."

Cesar nods. "That's the original purpose."

"Then why do you keep calling yourselves guardians of people and objects?"

"Because those are the things we were assigned to protect."

"Assigned by whom?" Tommy asks.

"By the Covenant."

"Which is an agreement made by the guardians."

Cesar glances at him. "You're catching on."

"Sounds like you appointed yourselves."

Ellyza turns toward Tommy. "We were chosen."

"By the metal?"

“Yes."

Tommy stares at Ellyza, but his eyes focus beyond her.

"And the metal appointed the people who made the agreement that appoints the guardians?"

Cesar laughs. "I see why you two get along."

"We don't," Tommy says.

Ellyza faces forward again. "The metal recognizes. It does not command. The choice remains with the person."

Tommy considers that.

"So it offers you a job, and you can say no."

"Yes."

"And if you say yes?"

"You become responsible for what you have agreed to protect."

"That part sounds familiar."

Cesar's expression softens. "You'd be surprised how many people forget it."

Tommy looks out at the hills. He has spent most of his life fixing things other people break. Pumps, engines, wiring, doors that won't close. Nobody ever called it a covenant. Nobody ever offered him a longer life for doing it.

"How many of you are there?”

"Not many now," Cesar says.

"How many were there?"

"Enough."

"That's not a number."

"It's the number I have."

Ellyza folds her hands in her lap.

"There were three duties. Wardens protected the bloodline. Keepers protected the fragments and the knowledge attached to them. Watchers protected the network and its connections."

Tommy looks at her. "Bloodline?"

"The descendants of the Visitors."

"Who are the Visitors?"

Cesar exhales. "We might as well start at the beginning."

"That would be a first."

"Millions of years ago—“

“Did you say ‘millions of years ago '? We don’t have that kind of time.”

Cesar’s mouth curls up at a corner; Ellyza lifts her eyebrows at Tommy, expectantly.

Cesar continues.

"Millions of years ago, beings came to Earth from somewhere beyond. They weren't gods. They weren't the first people on Earth. They were refugees.”

Tommy plays along. For now.

"From what?"

"From a civilization that had become dangerous to them. They had lost their home. Their star system was gone, or beyond recovery. They came here looking for somewhere to survive."

Tommy studies him.

"And they built the things under the ground?"

"Some of them. They brought technology with them. They built installations, settlements, places that could be hidden and protected. The Transporter Network was one of those things."

"Transporter."

"That's what we call it."

"Like moving people from one place to another?"

"More than that. The network connects places across great distances. Some of them—nodes—are on Earth. Others are beyond it."

Tommy looks at the pouch again.

"And the metal?"

"Part of their history. Part of the technology. The Visitors carried fragments of something that came from their star. The First Star."

Tommy waits for the punch line. There isn't one.

"You're telling me the stars are made of metal?"

"No," Cesar says. "I'm telling you something survived when their star ceased to exist. We don't know exactly how. The Visitors carried pieces of it with them. The living metal remembers things. Places, events, people. It can change its shape. It can recognize someone it has known before."

"That pistol belonged to my father."

"I know."

"He carried it. I carried it. It was a pistol."

"It looked like one."

Tommy gives him a hard stare.

"You're saying my father's gun is a piece of a dead star."

"That's one way to describe it."

"Do you have another?"

"Not one you'd like better."

Ellyza interjects from the back seat.

"It was never a weapon."

Tommy turns. "It shot bullets."

"It could become a weapon. That does not mean that was its purpose."

"Well, it did a pretty good job pretending."

"Living metal does not pretend," she says. "It responds. It remembers. It chooses."

"Then why did my father have it?"

Ellyza looks at him. For a moment, her expression seems to soften, but the answer doesn't come.

"I don't know."

Cesar takes over.

"The Visitors didn't keep everything for themselves. They entrusted fragments to people here. To communities, families, individuals. Over generations, some of those people became part of the lineages we call Witnesses."

"Witnesses to what?"

"To the history. To the presence of the Visitors. Their job wasn't to rule anybody or guard the world. They were meant to remember. To observe. To make choices without claiming ownership of what they'd been given."

Tommy looks at the pouch.

"So my family was one of these Witnesses."

"That's what the metal seems to recognize."

"Seems to recognize?"

Cesar shrugs. "I'm not going to pretend I understand something that has been here longer than human civilization."

Tommy turns toward Ellyza.

"And you?"

"I am one of the Ancients."

"That sounds like a title somebody gives themselves."

"It is a name given to those who carried the original knowledge and responsibility."

"Are you one of the Visitors?"

"No. My people came from their order. We preserve what they left behind."

"Your people?"

"Those who came before me. Those who remember."

Tommy looks at her carefully.

"You don't seem to remember much."

Ellyza's eyes narrow.

"I remember enough."

"Do you?"

Cesar glances at the rearview mirror. "Careful, Tommy. She's very old."

"Older than you?"

"Much."

Ellyza ignores them.

"Our bodies do not age as yours do. We pass through cycles. Eighty years, then renewal. The body changes. Memory does not always return with it."

Tommy looks from her to Cesar, his mind moving beyond disbelief.

"So you forget your own life?"

"Not everything," she says.

"But enough."

"Enough."

"Then how do you know any of this is true?"

Ellyza's expression hardens.

"Because some things remain."

"Like what?"

"The metal. The places. The promises."

Tommy turns back toward the windshield.

"Promises seem to be doing a lot of work around here."

Cesar smiles faintly. "They usually do."

Tommy sits quietly for a while. The road rises, then falls into a shallow valley. Beyond it, the land stretches northward beneath a darkening sky.

"So Simon was a guardian."

"Yes," Cesar says.

"Like you."

"Yes."

"And he was protecting a bloodline."

"That was part of our duty."

"But he thought you were doing it wrong."

Cesar's hands shift on the wheel.

"He believed the Covenant had forgotten its purpose. He thought we had become too concerned with protecting the people who carried the old blood and not concerned enough with protecting what the Visitors left behind."

Tommy looks at him.

"Explain that."

Cesar is quiet for a moment.

"The bloodline is important because it carries a connection to the Visitors. But the connection isn't the purpose. It's a responsibility. Simon believed the Sentinels had started treating the descendants as the most important thing, as if protecting them was the same as protecting the history."

"And he didn't agree?"

"He thought we were supposed to protect the fragments, the knowledge, and the network. He thought those things mattered whether or not anyone carried the old blood."

Ellyza leans forward.

"He was right about that."

Cesar looks at her.

"You didn't always think so."

"I have remembered more since then."

"Or forgotten something else."

Her eyes flash.

"Do not mistake my memory for your certainty."

Tommy watches them. Their disagreement holds the weight of something older than the words they use.

"So what happened to Simon?"

Cesar's expression changes. The humor retreats.

"He tried to stop an activation."

"Of the transporter?"

"Yes. Someone was attempting to open a connection from another node. Simon believed the authorization was false. He thought whoever was on the other side had no right to use the network."

"Did he know who it was?"

"No."

"Did he stop them?"

"He interrupted the activation. There was a discharge. Part of the installation was destroyed."

"And Simon?"

Cesar looks through the windshield, far ahead to the old road.

"He died."

The words are plain. They carry no decoration.

Tommy waits.

Cesar continues. "The contagion was spreading at the time. Simon was injured. I couldn't get him to a medical center without exposing him to half the population. By the time I found somewhere to hide him, it was too late."

"Did you see him die?"

Cesar's jaw tightens.

"I was there."

"That's not what I asked."

"No," Cesar says. "It isn't."

Ellyza looks out the window.

Tommy studies Cesar. The man has spent most of their acquaintance making jokes, bargaining, and pretending every situation can be managed with a smile. Now he seems to have run out of things to say.

"What did Simon believe?" Tommy asks.

"That the network was built to protect something. Not simply to move people from one place to another. Not simply to preserve the Visitors' technology."

"What?"

Cesar shakes his head.

"He never found the whole answer."

"And you?"

"I've spent eleven years trying to find it."

Tommy looks down at his pouch. The metal inside is quiet.

"Where is the fragment Simon took?"

Cesar doesn't answer immediately.

Ellyza turns from the window.

"He buried it."

Tommy looks at her.

"Where?"

Cesar keeps his eyes on the road.

"Somewhere safe."

"How safe?"

"Safe enough that I haven't been able to bring myself to look."

Tommy waits.

Cesar slows as a narrow service road appears ahead, nearly hidden by the trees.

"Simon was my brother," he says. "I buried him eleven years ago. And I left something with him that may be the only way we can activate High Arkana."

He turns toward the road.

"We're going to see my brother."

TO BE CONTINUED in Chapter 3: "Tall Tales of Truth"