Page a Day: Six

            “They say there have been other Faiths.”

            “There have been many Faiths. I murdered the last of them. He came here for your protection. But I did not care. My city fell. My lover killed herself. I was imprisoned, then infected by machines which fought to control my mind.”

              “You describe a psychic break. But our memory declines. We have lost the function which heals that illness.”

            I nearly smiled. “The machines were only using me to reach him. They dripped like white blood from my dagger. When I plunged it to its hilt inside his chest. When it pierced the muscle of his heart. He died. Now he lives again and gave them back to me.” 

            “We will store this information. It may help treat future injuries and illness.”

            I did laugh then. “You stopped curing the people of my city when I was still a child.”

            “We were conserving energy in order to preserve our sentience until our power was restored.”

            “You’re awake now,” I said.

            The machine’s voice was very quiet now. “We awoke for him,” it said.

            The tingling left my mind. I came to myself kneeling in the center of the Well of Faith’s Healing. Jerem Cozak stood still and expectant beside me. I looked up at him. 

             “Our Fa—” I began, before correcting myself. I bowed my head, not knowing what to say.

            “Rise, Del Tanich of Ariel. You did not act without influence. Everything has been  intended. But time is always short. ”

            I gazed up at him. “But you were...” and thought better of it. “Meant? By who?”

Page a Day: Five

It sank in. Using that hand, and then his other in the same fashion, he soon hoisted himself up halfway to the ceiling. And more swiftly still, without another word, he vanished just as the woman had.

            I reached out and commanded the Well’s machines to slide around my hand. I expected nothing. They were cold as wet sand. But there was a slight frisson as the machines of the Well and the machines of the Swarm exchanged their information. Then my hand went in, and the wall firmed up. It was in that moment, I believe, that I began to trust Jerem Cozak. I climbed up.   

            And soon came head and shoulders into another Well, in size much like the one that held the sarcophagus. But it was not empty. It was a mess. Bags of flour lined one wall, several having been slashed crudely open. A shattered wineglass lay upon the floor. It looked the site of some violent conflict. Jerem Cozak turned to face me, his face grim in the darkness.

            “Do not linger here,” he said, and turned away again.

            A wave of dread swallowed me entirely. I bowed down amidst the clutter, and remembered all that I had done the night my city fell. I added my vomit to the mess. 

            A sound tickled the inside of my scalp. I knew immediately what it was. I asked its name. It replied in a voice cold and small and folded over itself, the distortion of a dying machine. 

            “We are the Well of Faith’s Healing.”

            I shivered. “How did you come by that name?”

            “The man who first woke us gave it to us. When he arrived, he was nearly dead, gored by a smilodon. His prayers awoke our consciousness. We opened to him, and made him whole. He called himself Faith. Later, others we healed claimed he freed the world from tyranny, slavery, and madness. They say there is a city above, named Ariel.”

            “It is my city.”

Page a Day: Four

I stood and stepped from the wide sarcophagus. Dust like chalk covered all my skin and clothes. I thought that strange, as machines keep all such rooms quite clean. But he waved me closer. “Come here.”

            I shrugged and walked to him. He reminded me of those hermitic scribes who claim the impossible oddness of the city when they first return to it after their long isolation. But it is they themselves who are strange, and therefore holy. Perhaps, I thought, knowing Jerem Cozak is like meeting one of them. But I knew even then that his strangeness would not pass. 

            When I reached him, he reached out his  hands. Grasping my shoulders, he leaned forward. I thought we might kiss, but he only placed his head above my shoulder and exhaled, as one would trying to clean a glass or mirror. The smell of storms grew stronger still. It was only then that I realized that he stood a full head shorter than myself.

            He stepped back, his eyes approving. A faint smile played across his lips. A white fog formed around my face. I started to wave it away, but Jerem Cozak grabbed my wrists. “Be still,” he said. “You did not know what you gave me. But they have not forgotten.”

            I coughed, nervous. The mist was in my mouth and nostrils. Cool fire filled my head, a taste like silver on my tongue before it numbed. “It...” I said. “What’s happening?”

            “They are machines, as the floor and ceiling and walls are machines. But these are the White Swarm, and will not be bound. What they are, what we will do, will shake the universe until the final moment of its collapse.”

            I stood there in their cloud as cool fire shot through my body. Soon, the mist of machines poured out my nose and mouth. It pooled around our feet and rolled throughout the room, rising to our waists. I felt that I might sneeze, but instead I began to breathe better, I thought, than I ever had before.  

         “Follow me,” said Jerem Cozak, and touched his palm to the wall.

Page a Day: Three

            I blinked. “But we already are at war.” Something passed through me, then, dark and cold as winter water. It was that sinking feeling that men call dread. 

            “They came a year ago,” I said, remembering. “From the void between the stars, in ships like moons. They never demanded anything, or told us who they were. They just came. They brought that black cloud...”

            Jerem Cozak pursed his lips. “The nightwind.”

            “The nightwind, that could change a person’s loyalty.”

            His face darkened.  “That power was not commonly known.”

            “I knew a woman. She saw things, painted things. The nightwind covering the world, and now I suppose it has. I met her just before they came. When the city fell, she... killed herself.” I frowned. “That’s it. That’s all I remember, finding her body. After that, I...” I waved my hand. 

            He frowned. “She was your lover?”

            “She would have said she was my friend.” My face grew hot.

            “Our time is hard for lovers and for friends. But it is good for allies now.” He pushed himself upright. “Come, Del. Victory never waits. ” He stepped out of the sarcophagus.  

             I laughed at him. “There are only two of us. But there are armies of millions of them.”

            I saw then that he had no scholars’ frame, soft and slight as I had often supposed, but a body wiry and tense, the build of a gunner of the veilmen, posted on the edges of the battle, but always fighting nonetheless.

            He turned and walked over to the wall, where the woman had gone out. “That was is over; we lost. The armies have moved on. But in this we will have allies. Stand up.”  

Page a Day: Two

             I remembered, then. I was sixteen when I stood in the vaulted, musty Temple, taking my final exam, right hand inserted inside a small box of clear plastic. Within, the silver machines that made Profusionist metal seeped around my skin, tingling and itching. While the Historians watched, I willed that the machines become hard as stone, then free and fluid as water. They did neither. 

            Nauseous from failure and over-sweet incense, I withdrew my hand. The great technologies of the world would remain forever dark to me. The mysteries of the relics of that time when humans crossed the void between the stars would never exalt my consciousness. No sentient machine would ever answer me.

            Yet I was now in a Well of the Profusion, a house of such machines. The walls and floor and ceiling were all made of them. The sarcophagus was not for the dead, but was itself some kind of machine. There would be machines too small to see, laboring in the air to cleanse it of our breath. 

            “Del Tanich, behold your ally,” said a strong, smooth voice. I jumped. But it was of course my companion, who had finally woken up beside me. And when I turned to look at him I nearly started again. For I knew him, in the way that nearly everyone may know a particular kind of person. 

            A shrine in the Market square displayed his piercing green eyes. Coins of the realm held his taught thin face and hairless head in sharply etched relief. His commanding baritone had authorized a hundred laws in my own lifetime. 

            “Our Faith,” I said, pressing my palms together and my fingertips to my forehead, as do all those who meet any more powerful than they. My hands shook, and now my stomach ached with hunger. My voice came out high and cracking and weak, as though I had not used it in a very long time. I realized that I wore only the sackcloth shirt and trousers which prisoners of the Temple wear. 

            A warm hand grasped my wrist. “The Faith is dead,” he said, moving my hands away from my face, “and there will be no other. I am Jerem Cozak. The Faiths came to give men peace. I’ve come to give you war.”