Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

the blue-eye sergeant’s vehicle rolled out of the crumbling inferno, the smoke filled the entire village like a cloud, the flames burning hotter until they shot up into the sky.

 

“What is that?” Kemdin murmured under his breath. His eyes were drawn to the light shining from the window. It had woken him from a fitful sleep. The general with brown eyes slept soundly in the bed, snoring and wrapping the blankets around him.

Kemdin slid on his rump near where the window overlooked the street, but still could not see over the edge. All he could catch was the eerie glow that was too early for dawn. Scooting back to the bed and rising to his feet, determined to see what the light was with a hope that a magician was attacking this Sky Child outpost, Kemdin grabbed hold of the bedpost and leaned the rest of his body out. This time he could see more through the glass than sky. He could see the land below. The view of the flat horizon that stretched towards the lake was flecked with stars, only there was a dark patch above where the light he had seen glowed. Blinking, Kemdin felt his heart beat hard as he stared at the distant yet bright glowing blaze that reflected on the lake with a tower of smoke.

Chapter Three: Inside Holes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Traveling to Roan inside of an automobile trunk was hot, uncomfortable, and dehydrating. The Sky Children only took Kemdin out when they stopped to stretch their muscles. On occasion they walked him to the bushes to relieve himself, though Kemdin had little food and water inside to sustained him, let alone to fertilize some plants. The blue-eye driver was the one that dragged him around, but General Gole was the one that gave him food and water.

One of their stops was at a large palace-like building along the iron road where Kemdin saw enormous iron carriages parked inside houses built for them, each with their rails that would lead them to the main one they had followed south. Kemdin stared at their shiny black painted shells. They looked like the beetles he and his friends used to catch on summer mornings, with horns on their noses, though the legs of these held wheels under them. And there were too many wheels for a regular carriage. The tops behind the horns had glass windows like eyes, and under the horns were snouts with teeth in the front as if grinning at its meal.

Behind the head of each of these colossal beetles, Kemdin saw a smaller cart that carried wood, piles and piles of it. Blue-eyes walked in and around these enormous beetles, wearing yet stranger clothes than those of the fancy merchants and the stiff brisk soldiers, one piece outfits the color of the sky, light blue with striped hats of blue and white. Among them were others with brown eyes that wore dirtier suits in the same shape in a gray color, hefting heavy pieces of metal, long hammers, and some pulling iron chains. Never had Kemdin imagined there were so many kinds of Sky Children in the world doing so many different things.

One of the oddest blue-eyes he met thus far was the one that approached General Gole when they had taken him out of the back of the automobile before going through the mountains. This demon was tall, but round in his middle as if his stomach or body were an inflated ball. His spindly legs trotted over to meet them, his hand taking out a round flat thing from his pocket while his other hand adjusted his short flat-topped hat. The driver had set Kemdin on the ground and locked his chains to a nearby structure that looked like a waiting cage for people. There was roof with glass walls in between the curving decorative iron bars to see through, but no doors to shut and lock it. Inside was a bench for sitting. The blue-eye driver sat almost immediately on it when he had Kemdin secured to the bottom leg.

The general spoke rapidly to the newcomer with the round belly, calling him Stationmaster and gesturing to the road alongside the waiting cage. His tone jumped in between his low threatening voice to a lighter more political one, one that General Gole had never used with humans. Kemdin didn’t understand the entire conversation anyway. Most adult talk came in the way his father used to discuss the cost of iron with the man from the hills near Herra. The general used words like ‘market shares’ and ‘economy’. Instead Kemdin gazed towards the Wede Mountains to the south that towered over the railroad station, peering at the impossible height of them. It was as if they touched the sky. He had heard of mountains, but this was the first time he had seen them. The trees on the foothills were so different from the ones near his village. However, seeing them, Kemdin shuddered.

Everyone knew that demons lurked in forests like these, different demons than those blue-eyes. Ever since he was very young he had heard stories from his mother about the sorts of demons in the world. Large demons. Small demons. Demons that ate humans, and demons that worked for witches. Demons that looked like humans and demons that were as hideous and disgusting as worms. Demons that carried diseases, and demons that destroyed murderers and brought out justice. Kemdin had only met the blue-eyed Sky Children, but they were bad enough.[1]

“…Well, I’ve authorized roads to be carved in and out of these mountains. The rail cannot take the difficulties of the mountains. You know we are tunneling through,” the general said.

Tunnel through a mountain? Through a mountain likely to be infested with demons? Kemdin wondered if they would use magic to do that or use this technology General Gole kept talking about. Then what would it be like? A machine that ate the earth of a mountain? In the past few days of traveling he had heard blue-eyes talking about a thing called an airplane, a flying carriage that would take the demons up in the air from city to city like a dragon. He imagined it, an iron dragon.

It couldn’t possibly be the last marvel he would see. He had ridden in a carriage that rolled without horses. He had watched one of those iron carriages come in, blowing steam and smoke, winding on its road like a snake from the station and past towards the north, letting people in and out. Anything now seemed possible.

“Of course I know there are still human villages in the mountains that resist us!” The general now snapped so loudly that Kemdin looked up, ducking to see if he were going to get beaten. “But they still only rely on magic. Technology conquers magic.”

“Yes, but have you ever fought against a conjured windstorm? Or lightening? Or how about a conjured dragon?” the stationmaster replied, looking smug as his rubbed along his belt line under his round belly, his blue eyes twinkling.

The general’s driver rolled his eyes, merely waiting for when they would go again. The journey tired him only somewhat more than the general. It was a day’s trip to Roan where the general had told Kemdin he would begin training as a private slave. Most likely the driver was looking forward to a break.

General Gole laughed. “Conjure a dragon? Don’t you know anything about this world’s demons? Even if a magician were fool enough to conjure a dragon, the dragon would eat the conjurer and then flee from our cannons. Dragons are not controllable. They know this.”

“But it would not fly off before setting things on fire first,” the stationmaster replied.

“Including the conjurer,” the driver murmured.

“Those humans are not that foolish.” General Gole nodded to him. “And as for windstorms and their lightening, we have already used technology to go through them. Besides, I have executed every magician that has dared oppose us. Those magicians are fleeing the land. It is only the peasants that we have to be concerned about now. Their witches do not conjure dragons. And their wizards[2], who know it is damned foolish to move lightening about where your own armies are hiding, have been running from us. Besides, these days there are few left to oppose us except clawing vagabonds that will be eaten by the very demons in the forest they hide in. In fact, I have word that on the western front we have forced the Kitai armies so far back that soon their armies will break and we will flood into the western wild and civilize it also.”

“With what rail?” the stationmaster said, pulling out his flat round box again and peering at the front of it. Up close, Kemdin saw that there were numbers on the front and around the edge. The thing was brass, shiny, with a glass face. Parts inside moved as if by magic. He wondered if it were a magician’s item the blue-eyes had stolen. The demon said, “We’ve only laid track as far as Kalsworth. The humans in Westerlund keep hindering the rail laying over there.”

The general smiled, lifting his chin. “I pity your dependence on the rail for travel. As I keep saying, give Westhaven roads or better still, build a fleet of automobiles with sturdy tires, and we can roll into the western wild without a rail.”

The stationmaster merely snorted and turned.

“How is it that you remember automobiles but have no confidence in them?” the general asked, watching him go with growing annoyance.

Remembering. They always talked about remembering. Kemdin didn’t understand how all the blue-eyes talked of remembering things that were new to their world. The general never talked about him remembering them, just the others. However, the general’s driver tilted his head to look at stationmaster as if asking the same question the general had.

Lifting his chest, the stationmaster replied, “I remember also the pollution and how they broke down so often. You have to have a repair kit in your vehicle all the time. Changing tires? What about it overheating? Our trains are efficient and safe. They work for the common good.”

“And I know that trains can also be derailed,” the general said. He turned, gesturing for his driver to pick Kemdin up to drag him back to the auto’s trunk.

Stifling a moan, Kemdin felt the demon grab hold of his arm and heave him onto his feet. The blue-eye then kicked behind his legs to make him walk. Kemdin shuffled his feet under the weight of his leg irons, already anticipating the pain of the rest of the journey in baking darkness. The longer he took, the more the pain would be delayed.

“Besides,” the general said to the stationmaster, “There is freedom in an automobile. And I think you are afraid of it.”

The blue-eye lifted Kemdin back into the trunk. Hearing only the echo of the general speak as the driver slammed the trunk closed over him, Kemdin shut his eyes, wishing the vehicle had been made out of wood. He could have broken the carriage if it had been wood. Then he could have fallen out and crawled