“The Spaniard” is a serialized novella.
Synopsis:
A lone gaucho traverses a barren landscape in a 1930s era alternate world, chasing a shade that took what he loved most from him. Joining him is the mysterious Gunslinger, a woman he has met only in dreams, and a trickster spirit, who may or may not have an agenda of his own.
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This week’s episode:
The Spaniard is faced with a decision that will have permanent repercussions.
As soon as he stepped over the threshold and climbed the stairs, cerulean blue light bathed him in its glow. The small figure of the gunfighter rested against the lip of the basin; he turned back to look at her. The Gunfighter appeared to be dosing, her head tilted in repose, a little to the side. It was best to just keep going, and as much as he didn’t want to, he put her from his mind. There was nothing he could do for her now, except offer a prayer here and there, and hope she was still all right and alive on his return. If he returned.
It took half an hour to retrace his steps through the tunnel, back to the first junction from the city’s memory. At the entrance, he carefully studied a sigil on the wall.
The pain had seemed unendurable at the time, and yet, he had overcome it in the moment to bring the Gunfighter to a place of safety. It had been the same surge of invincible strength he’d felt in the caverns far below the mountain.
A sickening twist wrapped around his stomach, driving a lurching panic into his gut.
A fearful thought slashed into his mind like a knife.
Something had gone out of him when his fingers brushed the sigil. It wasn’t memory or his strength or energy, not in the traditional sense. But as he stood there collecting himself, some deep, integral part of him had changed since taking on… Whatever it was that had channeled through his veins, and given him the knowledge he now carried. The digging in his stomach turned a little more tightly and his heart beat quickened. Despair churned.
What would happen if he touched it again? Asked a question? Demanded something of it? The last two times, it had given him something.
But had it taken something in return? What was it taking? His memories?
…No, those were still intact, as far as he could tell. He inhaled sharply, steadied himself against the wall.
Could he be sure of that? He…No, he couldn’t. He didn’t have the time to sit there and search every true thing he knew about himself, his life, and everyone he’d ever loved to be positive of that fact. What had it taken?
Or was he simply plaguing himself with ghosts of the mind?
His aunt Dolores have been prone to fits of the imagination, his mother had told him. Ghouls, specters, fears, and worries about people and things and events that could, but had not, happened. He was not becoming like her, of this he was very sure.
It still wasn’t clear to him, but there was something of him gone.
If it had been taken, could it be given back?
A flicker of relief. Could he give the city’s gift back in exchange? He didn’t know, but he used the relief of that thought to clear his mind and review the choices he could make.
There were only a few options. He had a map from their starting point outside the cave entrance that had stolen him through the mountain into the chamber with the pool. The Spaniard did not have enough information to navigate himself to where his quarry was hiding. If his suspicion and his fear was correct that each time he drew from the sigil, something was taken in exchange for the knowledge he was given, what else might he lose?
Memories of his wife and his love for her?
The blossoming love he now felt for the Gunfighter?
The Spaniard paused. Had he articulated that thought before? He couldn’t remember, but there it was, hanging in his mind as it came to him. It was not the same kind of love he’d had for Imelda; that had been an abiding love built over years, of calloused hands, pulling at ropes; long hours in the night, whispered musings after lovemaking; regret, and blood, and sweat and experience raising a farm and tending to the land together.
This was something new, fragile, and pure. It could not be anything other than something different from what he had with his wife. The Spaniard felt sure that the Gunfighter felt similarly. Her feelings for him would not be the same as those of her late husband. If they both survived, and he came back, they might be able to make a life on that.
He shook his head to shake the thoughts from his mind. This was not the time, but he could not have helped the intrusion anymore that he could help anything else that had happened. The truth unacknowledged will surface at the most inconvenient of times. Imelda had used to say that, and he would shake his head when she did, inevitably proving right in the long run for whatever situation it was that had prompted her reflection.
He stared at the sigil once more; the glow was drawing him in like a moth to a golden flame that pierced the darkness.
The Spaniard could try finding a way back to the entrance to the cave, and risk exposure once again. Zalmon’s sentries knew that position, and it was likely they would be laying in wait for either himself or the Gunfighter to burst out through that exit in a desperate bid to reach the Ziggurat, with no recourse for another path out of the tunnel system. It was likely certain death, or he would just be putting a target on his back and wasting all of his previous efforts.
He could try staying put and waiting it out, but time was a precious commodity, given the likelihood that the Gunfighter would likely succumb to infection from her wounds if not properly treated with medicine.
There was navigating the tunnels through blind luck, but there was no telling where he would end up, what he might encounter, and would inevitably, be a complete waste of whatever precious time and lead he had in the element of surprise against Zalmon.
There was one course.
Given everything that he had now considered, it was not a plan he liked.
Approaching the sigil, the Spaniard thought carefully about what he wanted to ask of the city, holding his hand back and flexing his fingers. They hovered, sensing the living pulse emanating from the carving.
Whatever this was going to cost, it was worth it, if Gaetano, his little Tano, still lived. Inhaling deeply, working up all of his courage—he was afraid of what was going to happen—the Spaniard pressed his hand to the symbol, and commanded it.
“Show me how to get to Zalmon without detection; give me what I need to kill him.”
It was searing, crackling behind the eyes and through muscles he didn’t know existed. The Spaniard struggled to pick himself up from the ground. The pain was breaking apart his skull, but this time, it felt as though it burned through every vein, every capillary, surging through each nerve in his body. What little there had been on his stomach, he vomited into a pile and dry heaved for a few moments. He panted.
Life.
He knew.
Each time he drew from the city, it drew his life from him. A life for life. A bitter laugh rose up inside, and instead, he vomited again.
It was a quiet, sure knowledge that he felt, were he to call on the City of Magora again, there was a strong possibility he would not survive the next dose of adrenaline and power rushing through him. He dry heaved once more, feeling a wave of nausea and dizziness cloud his head.
Wiping the saliva from his mouth, feeling haggard for his thirty-four years, he staggered up into a standing position, and took the tunnel entrance in the opposite direction from where he’d come.
The going was slow, as he hung onto the sharp rock of the wall and made his way deeper into the mountain. He did not check the gold pocket watch. Checking would only make the going worse, weighing down the will to keep going amidst the fire burning through his every cell. If it were not for the map the City of Magora had given him, he would not have known where to go. Every part of him cried out in agony, from the sharp stabbing behind his eyes to the prickling of his skin. The intensity throbbed with each beat of his heart.
His throat tightened and he longed for a rest. Reaching down, he grabbed his canteen and drained the container of the pool’s sweet water. He breathed, and felt the pain subside, ebbing away as his mind cleared. Perhaps, in all their excitement and frenzy, he had been dehydrated. What a stupid thing to have done. He should have drunk his fill when he’d been with her.
With the headache receding, he found himself able to continue on. He was looking for an out of the way passage that would take him through a servant’s entrance and side-hallway into the heart of the Ziggurat. He supposed that he’d thought they would cross the river, guns blazing in a heroic, brilliant gun fight, before storming the steps and fighting their way through to the throne room.
It would definitely have ended in both their deaths.
The tunnels had taken him down, deep into the earth underneath the Ziggurat, where he would ascend a series of private staircases with landings that would let out into the main chambers at various points around the structure. He was careful, hand at the ready, as he kept after the path. The path, the path, the path. One foot in front of the other. His pulse began to race, the tension in his body increasing, as he knew he drew closer.
Until he was there. He checked the pocket watch; it was close approaching 2:30 in the afternoon.
Lord have mercy on me. Guide my feet. Let him be there. Please, let him be there.
In front was a set of five steps that would lead, he knew, to a narrow tunnel. It ran directly under the ground, parallel to the path above that was a back entrance to the Ziggurat. He drew the rifle and held it in front of him, and proceeded carefully up the steps. The Spaniard checked the landing, and there was no one there. Once he crossed the threshold, he would be within the bounds of the structure.
It came at him, as soon as his feet touched the boundary of the building, a nauseating sense of wrongness about the place. The wave washed over him, made him dizzy, and he staggered as the stench of filth and decay invaded his nose. Everything about this place was corrupted. A shiver ran through him and a sense of dread the pulled his stomach to the floor, flipped on like a switch.
The hallway here was narrow; no real space for combat. If he came across someone, he’d have to be fast and prepared for a claustrophobic struggle. His breathing became more shallow, and he stayed close to the walls. It ran a good thirty meters ahead, and another thirty behind him.
Inhaling deeply, though it meant breathing in more of the awful stink, the Spaniard turned to the left, quietly placing his feet against the cold stone that radiated a chill so strong, he felt it through his boots. It settled against his skin, like a toxic dew blanketing the ground at first dark.
Ahead, the golden sigils he had become accustomed to seemed dimmer, the sickened yellow of sodium lights glowing through heavy fog. He readjusted his grip, staying close to the right-side of the wall, periodically snapping his head over his shoulder to survey behind him.
He met no one, to his mild relief, but the tension did not leave his shoulders or his gut. The doorway lit up as he approached, a darkened staircase set aglow by the same anemic yellow light. His throat tightened as he carefully poked his head around the door.
Nothing but cold stone steps leading upward into a black hole.
The staircase illuminated the further he ascended, but the creeping sense of dread did not dissipate or ease his apprehension. The walls had not changed their shape, but his vision tunneled, and the stone felt as though it were closing in on him as the next opening high above his head gawped blackly at him.
He had four more staircases to go.
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Rachael Varca is a writer of more than fifteen years experience. She writes at Inking Out Loud, a collection of essays, poems, short stories, and home of the serialized novel, The Spaniard. To see which books she’s working on for Commonplace Thoughts, visit her at Bookshop.org.
Wow. Chapter 18 — tense and intense!