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Divine City RisingAndrew Gould# Divine City Rising
It started early one morning, just after sunrise. I was walking along the battlements and saw someone running across the meadow. This was not a jog. This was full speed ahead. This was a person running for their life. As the figure got closer to the city, I recognized my friend, Owin. Owin was a Guardian. He’d recently been assigned to Uruk Watch. He must be bringing news from the tower, I thought. But there’s never any news from the tower, I thought.
I took off running across the battlements, down stairwells and back alleys, and met Owin just as he entered the city. He didn’t slow down. I don’t think he saw me, or heard me call his name. I caught up with him and asked what was happening. He looked over his shoulder, recognized me, and said between heaving breaths, “An army coming. An army.”
We found Gamling in the Hall garden, on his hands and knees pulling weeds. Gamling Theo was the oldest member of the Council. Years ago he had been its leader. Now, he was more of an advisor, a mentor to younger Council members. He had long hair that he tied up in a series of intricate braids and knots, and wore a slim robe with cutoff sleeves (a story for another time). Unlike other men his age, he shaved first thing every morning. He was superstitious about it.
“How many?” Gamling asked, picking dirt out of his fingernails.
“Sixty thousand. Maybe more.”
“Banners?”
“The flags were black, with a white circle in the middle. The circle wasn’t complete. There was a gap.”
Gamling didn’t reply. He stood there, looking back and forth between Owin and I, and his neat pile of weeds in the flower bed. After some time he said, “Everyone took the day off. Go to their homes. Tell them what you told me. Tell them to meet at the Altar.”
“Do you know the sigil?” I asked.
“Why are you still here?”
The Divine City was a two hundred year old secret. It wasn’t on any map. It wasn’t visible to the naked eye. Spells were cast long ago to cloak it. From nearby peaks, even if you knew exactly where to look, all you could see was a massive mountain meadow full of dandelions and wild flowers. You might have heard of the city. You might have heard stories about demon worship, sacrifices, and world domination. The names people call it are wrong, of course, and the stories are nothing but gossip. Secret things tend to inspire conspiracy and fear.
Secret things also tend to get found out, eventually. The question, now, was how? After two hundred years, how could this have happened? The Order had spies everywhere, and every time someone or some group found some nugget of truth about the city, they were there to muddy the waters with misinformation, and occasionally murder. Surely they would have heard whispers about an army being raised, especially an army of sixty thousand (maybe more)! How could our spies have missed this? How could this army get so close to our secret and invisible city undetected?
“One traitor couldn’t do this. It must have been several. A secret society formed inside of our secret society. A secret, secret society.” We were back in the Hall garden after rounding up the Council, waiting for orders. Owin was pacing. I was sitting cross-legged on a stone bench. “Maybe it was the spies who turned. Or maybe the spies were poisoned, or kidnapped, or cursed with some kind of dark magic that made them periodically forget things.”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“How can we fight if we don’t know anything about our enemy?”
“We pick up our swords. Cast our spells.”
“If they can pull off this kind of surprise, what else can they do?” Owin stopped pacing. He was quiet, staring at the dirt. He looked at me. His face was white, and there were tears in his eyes. “We barely have a standing army. We haven’t fought a war in thirty three years.”
The plan, according to Gamling, was to defend the city, and pray to Origin the shields held. That was it. We wouldn’t go out and fight. We wouldn’t try to slow them down, or weaken them before they got close. Our objective from the outset was strictly survival.
Gamling sent Owin back to Uruk Watch, then said to me: “I need you to go up to the top of the Tower and ring the bell. Ringing that bell will set off the other bells around the city.”
“I didn’t know the city had bells.” I said.
“Our soldiers know bells mean battle, and to report to Tilly Square.”
“And after I ring the bell?”
“Do you have armor? A sword?”
“I have armor.”
“Then I suggest you find a weapon and prepare yourself for war.”
It took me twenty minutes to reach the top of the Tower. As I climbed the narrow, winding stairwell, I thought about preparing for war. I couldn’t help but laugh, at first. There was a reason I was a page and not a Guardian like Owin. I read books. I took notes. I ran errands and rang bells. I’d never even been in a fight. I had armor. But it was old. I hadn’t worn it in years. And it was cheap. I’d bought it second hand, or maybe third. Would it still fit? And where would I find a weapon? I didn’t even know where to start. Important questions, but trivial compared to The Question, the one that started in the back of my mind, and pushed itself to the front the higher I climbed. As I reached the top of the Tower and rang the bell, and as I heard the other bells ring out across the city, and as I looked out into the meadow and saw the enemy soldiers for the first time, so close I could see the incomplete circles on their banners, the Question became the only thing on my mind. Could I kill someone?
The bells rang, and the soldiers made their way to Tilly Square. They filled the square (named for the woman who found Origin and founded the Order), and filled the streets surrounding it. They listened to speeches about duty and honor, about protecting Origin at all costs. They received orders from Commander Remy. They confirmed the orders together in one giant, roaring voice: “By Origin’s Light.” They left the square and spread out along the battlements, fortified weak points in the city walls, and corralled anyone who couldn’t fight to the Keep, an impenetrable stronghold beneath the library in the eastern corner of the city.
I lost Gamling in the chaos. He disappeared in the middle of Remy’s speech and never returned. The Council went back to the Hall. Gamling didn’t. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I knew that if I went looking for him, he would reprimand me for not getting my armor and finding a weapon. But if I got my armor and found a weapon, he would wonder where I went, why I wasn’t by his side. I decided to go looking for him. He wasn’t at home. He wasn’t at any of his favorite taverns. I headed for the library, the last place I could think of, but quickly realized it would be a waste of time. He wouldn’t be there. It was too crowded.
On my way back to the Hall, I saw Owin helping his mother and sister navigate the crowds. He hadn’t gone back to Uruk Watch. He had heavy bags slung over both shoulders, and carried a handful of books. His sister, Caitlin, held a toy bow and arrow in one hand, and her mother’s hand in the other. I looked around at all the other families like Owin’s. Where did all of these people come from? How could they all possibly fit inside the Keep? This question seemed to be driving everyone mad. There was pushing and shoving, fights breaking out between strangers and relatives alike, people running as if the enemy were two blocks away. I looked for Owin again, and saw that he had dropped his books, and was now grabbing Caitlin around the waist, trying to keep her moving forward. She was crying, screaming, trying to push back through the crowd. Her hands were empty. Owin got hold of her, and they disappeared into the pack, leaving Caitlin’s toy bow and arrow in the street.
I thought of my own family, and my own sister, back in Berne Bay. My father would be out in the field right now. He’d have been out there a couple hours already. Even if there wasn’t work to be done, there was work to be done, he would say. I could remember the words, but not the way they sounded coming from his mouth. My mother was at home chopping firewood or rearranging knick-knacks on the mantle. She had a thing for elephant figurines. Or was it roosters? My sister might be in the field with my father, or maybe at the beach collecting shells with her friends. They weren’t mages, they didn’t have special abilities. They were ordinary, and I envied them. No army was marching on Berne Bay.
The room was at least a hundred yards by a hundred yards, and the Altar was in the middle of it, built around a massive hole that reached all the way down to the world-core. This was the source of magical energy called Origin.
The Council (there were fifteen of them, not counting Gamling) was gathered at the Altar, in their robes and protective masks. They turned at once as I approached, in my own mask. They asked me to go to Gamling and give him an important message: “We’re raising the city.” I thought they were joking. They assured me they were serious. They told me not to laugh in the Altar room. I told them I’d been searching for Gamling and couldn’t find him. They told me Gamling went with Commander Remy and his men to fortify the south-eastern wall. I told them I would deliver the message as quickly as I could. They told me to prepare for war.
Was it possible? I’d heard the legends about the early experiments, before the city was a city. Impossible feats of alchemy. It was rumored the near-disaster at Section 370 had something to do with moving large objects long distances. The city itself was built using Origin’s energy – its outer walls were made from a single piece of rock, raised from the earth. Its shield was powered by Origin. Its cloak was powered by Origin. Who knows what else the Order used it for, what kind of experiments they’d been doing.
“Is it possible?”
“I thought I told you to get your armor and find a weapon.” Gamling was digging through a storage shed beneath the south-east tower, piecing together a full body of armor.
“Haven’t had time.”
“Haven’t had time? They’re knocking on the door, man.”
“I’ve been looking for you.” I walked over to the far wall and looked out a little picture window. The air was hot. I could see the enemy soldiers now, individually. Their armor wasn’t uniform. Some wore cloth, others wore leather or metal.
“You found me. You delivered the message. Now, I’m relieving you of your duty. Your duty, from here on out, is to yourself.” He was trying to put on a chest plate, but couldn’t get the leather strapped properly. I walked over and helped him with it. “Now I’m relieving you.”
“The city rising. Is it possible?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would we be stuck here?”
“I don’t know.”
“How would we get down?”
Gamling stopped what he was doing. He studied my face. He must have heard the tremble in my voice. “How well do you know this city?”
“Until a few hours ago I didn’t even know we had bells.”
Gamling laughed. “But you know its history.”
“Yes.”
“Then I take back what I said. I’m un-relieving you. I have one last thing for you to do. For this city, for everyone who lived here, for the people who made it what it is today. And for me.” He grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me square in the eye. “I want you to leave.”
“Sir–”
“I want you to leave, and I want you to tell the world about the Divine City.”
I looked for the wall-mark of the Order, and found it on the north side of Tilly Square, where Gamling said it would be. I whispered the spell he told me to whisper, but nothing happened. The wall still looked like a wall. I whispered the spell again. Still nothing. I reached out to touch the wall, and my fingers disappeared. “By Origin’s Light,” I said.
I stepped through the portal, and emerged in a forest clearing. Gamling said it wouldn’t take me very far. He was right. I soon realized I was somewhere in the Donbor Range. I walked through the woods until I reached a lookout point. I could see the army, alone in the mountain meadow, splitting their formations, spreading out in a wide half circle. It was a strange sight – sixty thousand men surrounding a target none of them could see. But they seemed to know precisely where the city was, exactly how the walls ran. Then, in the blink of an eye, the city was there.
The wind changed, then stopped altogether. The hot air got hotter, expanding. There was a flash across the sky. The world darkened, as if the sun was blown out like a candle. The earth rumbled, and all at once every crack in the meadow dirt, no matter how small, burst, cutting wider and wider, creating yawning canyons in seconds. The piece of rock I stood on shot out from under my feet and pulled me up at least thirty feet into the sky. I lost balance and fell backward. I rolled down this new mountainside, rolled and slammed into a tree trunk.
I had cuts on my arms and face, and the muscles around my right kneecap felt like they had ripped in half. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and surveyed my surroundings. The rock I stood on moments ago was almost vertical now. It blocked my view of the city.
My head pounded. I felt like I was going to vomit. The wind changed again, and caught what little grass was left on the mountainside. I got to my feet and leaned against the tree.
That’s when I saw the city floating in the sky. It was rising up, up, up – connected to the earth below by a single beam of light. I believe the beam was Origin.
The Origin-beam started growing wider and wider. The earth shook. There was a bright white flash. When the darkness returned, the city had completely vanished.
It took me a hundred and twenty-two days to reach Berne Bay. The town was underwater. Like many other places I’d come across on my journey, it was abandoned, and shrouded in a heavy mist. I’d seen flooding, wildfires, cities split in half or swallowed whole by earthquakes. In one region it never stopped raining. There were survivors. Mostly nomads. Peaceful, mostly. That wouldn’t last. A band of scavengers I came across called what happened “The Cataclysm.”
I found a boat in Berne Bay. I found my house, half underwater. Inside, I found the mantle just barely above the water line, and on the mantle sat an elephant figurine.