The Artifact

Origins Of Empire

1217, AD

Seated among the aspens, he rests calloused hands on his knees. His eyes are closed and the sweet spring winds freckle his skin with serrated green leaves.

An arrow whistles past and pierces the eye of an aspen. He presses his fingers into the moss and he jumps. A cliff, jagged rocks, a water fall. He pulls his arms against his chest, his hair and his hide robes and satchel whip around him in the wind as he pierces the crest of the white water.

The flats of his moccasins find the boulders below. He holds his breath. His heart rapidly pounds into his ears. He allows the unsettled foam to rise around him. He listens. Muffled voices. He waits.

He removes his hide robe and ties its ends. He exhales. A pocket of air rises the robe to the surface and carries the garment down stream. The hunter’s arrow pierces the coat and in mock expiration it sinks.

Pressure builds behind his eyes and nose as he chokes on his sour air. He presses off the boulder and into the glade of white water refuge. Behind the roar of the falls he claws for air and his arms and hides are heavy and his chest and face numb with cold.

He has been here once before, in a dream. Except the arrow pierced him as he broke water’s surface.

He pulls himself onto the slate and out of the water. He lays upon his back, deeply inhaling and exhaling and inhaling and exhaling as the respiration of fire hollowed logs.

‘I am alive this time,’ he says, ‘I am alive.’

He presses himself off the gray slate and walks along the path, further into the dark dampness of the grotto. His hides drip a sluggish trail behind him. He removes his hides and folds and presses them upon themselves, clearing the water. He traverses the darkness of the crevasse and drags his hand along the side wall. A key hole of light illuminates the distance, he presses forward and exits the cavern.

He hears voices. He crouches behind a rock and tendrils of sloping ferns. The two hunters. He waits. He listens.

‘Where could he have gone?’

‘The cave,’ one says.

‘Just beyond the bend,’ the other agrees.

He presses his back against the rock and braces a cobble twice the size his fist against his chest. The footsteps near. He grabs a pebble and tosses it over the rock. The two hunters’ attention drawn to the clatter.

He springs from behind the rock and brings the cobble upon the head of the nearest hunter. Crimson splatters his face. The other draws his bow and aims and shoots, but he has already sprung into the cover of the ferns. He waits.

The hunter fixates on the wavering ferns. He throws his cobble with the ease of a skimming rock across still surface water and the hunter tracks and shoots. He waits.

‘Come out!’ The hunter is angry. ‘Coward! Own what you have done to my brother!’

He waits. The ferns still. A gust of wind flows through the mountain pass and over the hunter and the ferns falter in every direction. The hunter aims down the pass.

He rushes forward. The hunter shifts his bow, but he is upon the goatskin hunter as lion of the mountain and the arrow is shot past. He throws the hunter’s bow and gouges at the eyes with his thumbs. The hunter screams and grabs his wrists. He presses harder. The hunter gnaws with his teeth at the air. He reaches for the hunter’s quiver and retrieves a single arrow. He jabs the arrow into the hunters heart. The hunter goes still.

His breath is heavy and he shakes with excitement. He stands and looks over the fern gully and all around him is null but the sweet exasperation’s of spring.

He removes his compass from his satchel and overturns it, draining the water. He finds north and presses onward.

This cave is naught. The Artifact lies north.

He traverses the ferns until dusk. He follows the ways of the deer and antelope. He makes camp in a niche of the mountain, he removes his damp garments and covers his skin and hides in the dusky slate clay. He sleeps undisturbed until the birds dawn.

He walks the foothills of the mountain, crosses the glacial river over boulders and driftwood logs and he picks mulberries on the waterside. He kneels. He fills his flasks with water and washes blood from his face and hands. He spots a fish. He grabs a stone. He hears footfalls and snapped twigs and a battle cry.

He runs for the driftwood. He crosses the hollow bridge, four on his heels. He smashes the driftwood with the stone. The rotten wood breaks free, one hunter falls into the water and three lunge backward.

He clears the river. An arrow is shot overhead. Another lands before him, he staggers backward. A third arrow nicks his arm. Shouts and hollers.

He winces and runs for the mountains. The hunters chase him cross-side of the river. He changes course and runs south and east towards the fern pass and picks and chews on a tendrils, rubbing the poultice over his wound. He treks north up the boulders and continues the way of the ridge.

He climbs the green gold lichen covered slopes where the snow melt dampens the ground and in the white veil he spots drops of misted blood. He tracks the trail up two, three, five boulders away. He crouches. He waits. He listens.

‘I am here!’ A woman’s voice, she wheezes. ‘Can you help me?’

She cups her hand around her throat, blood seeps past her iron crusted fingers. She is pale and thin and wears hides as his own.

He had been wounded here, in a distant dream.

‘Do you seek the Artifact?’ He asks behind the rock. He reaches below and tucks a sharp edged rock into his moccasin.

‘I do. My village cast me in the bowl of names.’

‘A victim of the cards?’ He reveals himself.

‘Are you not?’ She cowers.

He walks with head forward assurance and kneels beside her. She draws away. He takes his hand to her own and examines the wound, it is fresh and oozing to the beat of her heart. He searches the escarpment.

‘They went north, over the mountain,’ she says.

He sighs. ‘If you pack the wound with lichen it will slow the bleeding.’ He retreats and picks lichen off a near boulder.

‘Why help me?’ Her eyes are sunken and gray. ‘I am for the wolves.’

‘We all deserve a fighting chance.’

He packs her wound and listened for the change in her winds. A low mist rolls over the hills turning the sky gray and weak and the slate slips from moisture. Her breath deepens and shallows and she dies.

He strips her of her hides and fashions them into brace wrappings around his forearms and ankles. He withdraws his compass and orients north.

In the uplands, he sits upon red snaking lichen, he drinks of his flasks and eats of his berries. With hands upon his knees he closes his eyes and breathes steady. He waits for nightfall and carries on.

At the foothill of the mountain is a stack of smoke. Three seated shadows shift across the ground. He removes the hide wrapping from his right forearm and readies the sharp edged rock. He weaves down the mountain along a babbling stream and moves beyond the grasses as a field mouse. He waits.

‘—are felled to the north. You can see it from—’

‘But a keyhole cave has been spotted in the south.’

‘The Artifact fell from the heavens. The Church would not lie.’

‘The prophecy reads a keyhole cave. What have felled trees to do with the prophecy?’

An argument between the three. He watches between the grass blades.

‘The Great Beyond has blessed us with opportunity,’ a fourth voice says, a slender figure seated upon furs. Of his dreams, a fourth is naught. ‘The felled trees are a sign that the gods now walk among us.’

‘Hearsay,’ says one of the seated.

‘The gods care not of us,’ says another. ‘We toil and rot and find only contempt among ourselves.’

‘Gods or nay, I will find the Artifact and bathe in kingdom gold.’

‘Aye, unless I reach it first.’

‘Fools. The lot of you,’ the fourth says.

One of the three rises and walks towards the grasses with a clay pot. ‘Water, anyone?’ A show of hands.

The hunter crosses into the grass. He slashes at the hunter’s heels in quick succession and the hunter falls forward with a yelp. He lunges for the clay pot shards. The hunter claws his way forward and he pierces and drags the stone through the hand, severing the hunter’s fingers.

The three others rise at the squabble. One hunter draws a bow, another a knife, and the fourth ducks into the trees.

An arrow flies past in a narrow miss. He wraps a clay shard in his hide strap, a makeshift sling shot. He finds refuge behind a tree and throws his first stone with accuracy. It snaps the wielder of the bow between the eyes, they stagger.

The knife wielder rushes forward, slashing. He dodges and lunges at the hunter’s waist. They wrestle upon the ground. He grabs the knife wielder’s wrist, turning the knife upon the hunter. The bow wielder aims, hesitant to shoot. They yell at each other.

As the knife wielder looks away, he thrusts upward with the heel of his spare hand. The nose of the knife wielder caves and the hunter goes limp. The wielder of the bow cries out and shoots and misses. He retrieves the knife and rolls into the grass as a second arrow zips past.

The hunter of severed ankle wails. The fire smoke carries on the wind and into his eyes. The bow wielder coughs and the grasses shift. He waits. The bow wielder shoots, the arrow lands a ynce from his right foot.

He pulls the hide strap taught between his trembling hands. He moves quickly. He whirls to his right, the bow wielder caught reaching for his quiver, he rushes forward and wheels around the bow wielder, pulling the strap around their neck. He twists the strap over itself and over itself as a horsehair rope and the hunter claws at his throat, their veins bulge and face grows purple and lips blue and mouth foams until the neck pops and they fall limp into the grasses.

He sits back, panting, and he looks to the fire. The furs. He staggers to his feet. The severed ankle hunter laughs.

The fourth appears manifest as a dark goddess of the flames. She holds a glass bottle. She wears tight cloth wrappings the color of mulberry. Sweat beads at his forehead and he wields the knife in his left hand, the jagged stone in his right.

‘My, my, a skilled hunter you are,’ the woman says. ‘Shall we make an alliance?’

He remains silent.

‘If that is what you prefer.’ She takes the glass to her lips and spits.

A mist of red hot coals blotch his face and his left eye. He winces and wipes his face with his fore palm and the woman lunges to the right. He swings aimless with the knife, guarding with the stone in his right. She spits again and the mist finds his unprotected forearm. He reels back and she rushes forward again.

He swings with his right, reaching through the smouldering mist and the jagged stone pierces and drags through her cheek. She grips at her face and coughs and hacks, the poison leaks from her severed flesh, down her chin and her neck and her breasts, searing red.

She falls to her knees and hacks and vomits. He steps forward, wrenches her hair and drags the knife across her throat. She slumps forward in a crimson pool.

The severed ankle hunter claws his way over patches of grass towards the stream, as he had, once, in a dream. He listens to the moans of every arm fall. He waits. He watches. He walks towards the babbling stream.

He passes the lone, injured hunter who cowers, and dips his hands in the cold waters. He cleanses his arms and neck and face of the poison. He returns to the bodies and retrieves supplies.

He wraps his blemished forearm again in the hide and his marred face in the mulberry cloths of the woman. He takes an arrow, the knife, the stone. He eats of the roasted fish jerky and the pine nuts. He can no longer see of his left eye. He fashions a staff of a sturdy felled aspen branch.

He sets his compass north and walks on.

Three moons he walks the nights and dawns, Polaris his guide, through the bluebell and fireweed gullies, drinking of the blue tarns, and eating off the roots and flowers and jerky remains.

On the fourth day he came upon a square furlong of felled trees and at the heights of that distant highland, a patch of snow melt braved prominent as a black eye of the mountain spirit. He presses onward.

He rests at the foothills against a pine as a patient, tumbled boulder. His hand unmoving from his aspen staff, he rests his eyes, and at the bird song he ascends up the scabbed summit where the paths are uncarved, until the air grows cold and bitter and he embraces his hides tightly against his chest.

He comes across an unmoving body. He pokes the stiff shoulder with his staff. He kneels. The body is covered in blistering sores. He looks to the east, to the west. To the north, the snow thickens. He presses onward.

Another body and another and another, covered in swollen sores. He stops. He trembles in the cold. He is careful not to touch the snow. He presses onward.

He crosses the threshold of snow and naught, the ground black and bruised and scattered with bodies. Ahead, a white granite cliff face.

A cavern of a chiseled vein lies before him. He stands and stares as the bitter wind rips at his hides. The pulsing of his heart visible in the veins of his hands. Outside the cavern, a pile of corpses. He tears the cloth from his face and heaves and vomits.

He removes his compass. The arrow points at the hollowed vein. The Artifact is nigh.

He enters. He covers his nose and his mouth with cloth and the bluebells and he steps over blistered and swollen bodies covered in feces and vomit.

In the center of the hollowed darkness, a cacophony of wind sings as a shrill organ through the skylight. A keyhole of light as the target of the sun illuminates a desolate black rock from the Great Beyond. The Artifact.

He trembles. His skin begins to itch. He rips the wrappings from his wrist. A swollen red blister bites at the poison burns. He unravels the bindings at his other wrist, the hide wraps sway in his agony.

He looks back at the bodies. Not one has crossed the threshold into the cavernous room.

‘Not one has come close,’ says I.

He spins around and aims his staff at nothing, his eyes wild and red. ‘Who goes there!’

‘He who was bestowed the Sight,’ states I. ‘Why have you come to seek my guidance?’

He points his staff at the skylight and falters in his step. He grips his blistering arm. ‘Who are you?’

‘Who is I? Who is you?’

‘Josiah.’

‘Josiah, he who Sees. Why have you come to seek my guidance?’

He looks to the mound of corpses. ‘Can you help me?’

‘What help do you seek?’

Josiah fell upon his knees. ‘Forgive me, my body is weak and my left eye is gone and I fear I have been taken by the blight.’ He lays his staff and brow flush against the white granite.

‘You seek a new beginning.’

‘No, I have had many.’

‘Many, say you? What then do you seek?’

‘I dream and I see my fates. Take this curse from me.’

‘Aye,’ says I. ‘Your fates, a curse?’

‘I ask for my mind to be freed.’

‘And what of this fate? That you kneel before I?’

He looks at the shallow dimples of the black stone, reaches forward and retracts. He sighs heavily, deeply, and rests his seared, trembling hand upon the stone.

From the stone I took the form of the human who laid his flesh upon mine. I took on his scorched and blistered flesh, his blinded eye, his mental anguish. I took on his pain.

Josiah staggers backwards, pressing himself across the floor until his back meets the bodies.

I took the staff from the ground and pressed its base flat against the granite and from the base one thousand flickers of radiance were cast upon the cave walls.

Josiah cowers. I offer my hand to Josiah. He is hesitant but takes my palm in his and he rises and I feel a rush of warmth flood over me.

Josiah runs his hands over his chest and his arms and my arms and the air moves through his nostrils and my lungs rise and fall freely and the blisters and burns and bruises recede and his tainted vision emerges whole.

‘Choose a door,’ says I, as a whisper.

Josiah glances around, he looks for me. He brushes his fingers gently over his lips. He looks to the meteorite and he looks to his hand that holds the staff and to the floor of a thousand doors and to the fractured walls of the cavern and to his palms that are my palms and the novel flesh upon his wrists and his arms.

‘Where are you?’ Josiah asks.

‘I am you and you are me,’ says I, as Josiah.

‘You are me?’ Josiah repeats and his blood says he understands and his mind has learned that I have been watching. ‘Who am I?’

‘Daedalus,’ says I.

‘Where do they lead?’ He looks around to the slivers of the doors.

‘Beyond,’ says I.

‘Beyond?’

I circle the room, peering into the wavering light, some flicker with the brilliance of diamond, others blinding dark, shades of all and naught.

Josiah stops before a door, a splinter of gold and silver and bronze and marble. He steps a pace forward and the fragment shifts and morphs a blaze of radiant fire, a kindling of metal and stone.

We step forward.

The End.

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An entry for Autumn Reid | Indie Is Awesome short story contest. Prompt: Your character wins a competition, only to discover the prize is not all it seems.

Enjoyed this short story? Consider liking and subscribing to support my work and tag along with the main story line Blackwater Canyon, my dark fantasy x mystery serial novel.

Thumbnail photo credit: Peng Chen on Upslash

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