The Deepcombers

Chapter Four

Lon's body was stretched like an animal's hide on a tanners' rack. His hands and feet were tied and his face was bound by the forehead strap. He was set to become a True Pattern feigor. His transformation occurred as strong winds filled the sails and the Prince's ship moved fast through choppy waves. Nobody knew if he lived or had died and none could imagine what played in his mind.

Lon's eyes were open and he was awake, but his thoughts were a thousand miles away, or more accurately one millennium earlier.  Slow-moving images quite unlike anything he'd ever seen before filled his head, and he didn't know what to make of these false memories. Instead of seeing reality on deck, he saw objects for which he had no reference. Metal insects with bug-eyes crossed starry skies. Spiderwebs made of steel held bowls with spikes in the center. Feigors in bulky white clothes with clear glass bubbles around their heads floated over a cold grey world that was entirely without vegetation. The boulder-strewn realm had deep ridges and valleys of jagged rock. Lon floated over the sharp chasms until he came to the edge of a massive hole from which emanated a soft white glow. Have I died? Are these the Pinc and their skywagons? Is this my own journey to meet Kluth?

Lon saw geometric shapes on a black curtain. He watched as fiery circles became cylinders which kinked to form hexagonal rods which were compressed and then diagonally diced to make triangles. It was a visual poem, a ballad of creation and although he didn't understand the runes he felt sadness and remorse well-up inside of him. The music faded and only a single white circle remained. Lon sobbed and salty tears washed down his face.

He was in Kluth's workshop now and he watched as one feigor was formed. A male body rotated on a white marble dais with his arms and legs outstretched, and his hands and feet inside a ring. This was a perfectly proportioned person and Lon felt his own body being painfully adjusted to fit the pattern.

The stone circle buzzed around Lon and he could hear tiny voices babbling birdsong inside the object. Each pain he felt came with bursts of chatter in his ears. He drifted in and out of consciousness and sharp cuts were followed by surges of comfort and pleasure and then more blissful slumber. The cycle happened repeatedly. 

Crack. Lon felt like he'd been hit in the face with a shovel, and then his mouth was soothed with warm comfort. Sharp pains surged in his arms and legs and then all appendages were bathed in pleasure and he returned to blissful sleep. In this way Lon experienced the surgery that occurred inside his body. First, he'd feel agony, and then he'd be doused in joy. 

The lad imagined white hot blades slice through his brain; he suffered intense pain as the back of his eyes were cut and folded and cut and folded and from that time forward his optical perception came through a square membrane which appeared like an empty picture frame but one made of water or clear glass. 

Lon blinked and stared. He opened and closed his eyes, but no sight came. Yet even in darkness the mind-box was always there, and it hurt. It was raw, fresh, and painful. Through the frame, he perceived more landscapes. He came to understand that he was connected to the ocean, the sky and the mountains and the moon overhead. He was also quite literally attached to a ghostly white sphere that pulsed deep underground. A single thread of wispy mist connected the red stone altar to the silver orb below.

That thread ended in his brain; it fueled a persistent symbol made of bubbling white fire that sat on the clear glass mantle and could not be blinked-away.

The shape was a circle below a line.