Pokemon Brick Bronze: Return of the Shadow

by 2b2tEternalLegend

After two thousand years, the Dark Lord has escaped his prison, amassing evil forces to destroy the world. His parents kidnapped, Bronze Tercano sets out on a journey to defeat Team Eclipse, a sinister organization with demonic backing. Only Bronze, his friends, and the Pokedex Holders can stop this threat by applying age-old wisdom to a modern world dominated by science. (IN-DEV)

19. The Three Quentins

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The Three Quentins

or

Riding The Steelix

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While Jake fell away from the cage and not into it, Bronze and Tess were brought by Cobalion to an unpeopled part of the desert. It was late noon and they rested in the weeds that grew along the base of the mountain's foothills, while the Serehgir glimmered at the edge of their sight.

"What do you suppose is going to happen?" said Tess.

"Too late to wonder," said Cobalion. "Here they come for the test."

Coming across the sands from the shadows of a dune was Quentin. The ordinary, everyday, usual Quentin. There was no desert snake hissing and clacking at him, and he himself did nothing but continue his way across the waste. He looked just as he always looked. When Tess saw him her feet seemed to grow larger and she couldn't find a resting place for her hands.

"Alright, Tess, what is this? What are you doing here?" He had every right to sound annoyed.

She had nothing to reply. She felt Cobalion close to her, felt his mind within hers, but he had nothing to suggest.

"Tess," said Quentin, and his voice was unwontedly compassionate. "I can tell you that I've had reservations about you going off with that Tercano boy. But now I see that you've done better than I ever thought you could. You've got the right to make your own choices at this age. If you were ever concerned that I thought bad of you, don't worry about it any longer."

Bronze, too, was uneasy. She felt him moving lightly in her mind, feeling her response to this unexpectedly reasonable Quentin.

"That is nonsense," said Quentin to Quentin. "We cannot make an exception for her recklessness now. Tessa Woodhall must learn to manage her restrictions."

A second Quentin was standing beside Quentin.

It was impossible. It was just as impossible as if Quentin was here in the first place. But there were two identical, dour Quentins standing in front of them. Cobalion shimmered, but did not materialize into cheribum form. Tess backed into the shimmer; she felt that the god was opening an invisible wing and pulling her close to him. She could feel his tremendous, wild heartbeat, a frightened heartbeat, thundering in her ears.

"We're Namers," she heard him say through the racing of the heart. "We're Namers. What is their Name?"

"Quentin."

"No, no. This is the test, Tess, it must be. A training session from the Almighty. One of those Quentins is a demon. Another is an angel representing the real one. We have to know which is the real Quentin."

Tess looked at the two men who stood glaring at each other. "Cobalion, you can feel into me. Can't you feel into them? Can't you see which one is which? Or are you not going to tell us."

"Not when I don't know who they are. You're the one who knows the prototype."

"The what?"

"The real one. The only Quentin who is Quentin. Look again."

Suddenly beside the two Quentins stood a third Quentins. He raised one hand in greeting, not to Tess, but to the other two men as he drew level with them. "Leave the poor girl alone for a few minutes," said Quentin Three.

The three men wheeled, stiffly, like marionettes, and walked across the desert and away to the cliffs. "We must think," said Bronze. "We must think." Cobalion's heavenly form almost became opaque for a second, and Tess felt that he was restraining himself from spouting fire.

"Two of them are demons, then," said Cobalion. "I don't know why I should have been shocked at finding them here. But you must name the real one."

"But if these demons are opposed to heaven, then why are they doing Arceus's bidding by giving us a test in the first place?" said Bronze. "Is He controlling them?"

"Yes, but no more than He controls all things. If you fail to name the heavenly Quentin, the real one, the one still in Roria, will be open to being attacked by the dark powers, these two demons. The demons are very conflicted: they only gained the power to become enfleshed a days ago, but they are being forced by Arceus to do what He wants. Unless you fail."

"Well, I think that's a stupid test," said Tess. "What do I have to do to name the angel one? Call him out?"

Cobalion sighed and flung several glassy wings heavenwards so violently that he lifted several feet, materialized fully, and came down with a thud. "There's a word, but if I say it you'll just misunderstand."

"You have to say it."

"It's a four-letter word. Aren't four-letter words considered the bad ones on this planet?"

"Come on," said Tess. "I've seen all the four-letter words on the walls of the bathroom at my old school."

"Loof," said Cobalion with a puff.

"What?"

"Love. That's what makes people know who they are. You're full of love, Tess, but you don't know how to stay within it when it's not easy. It is very easy to hate our enemies because they deserve it more than any other group. You love your family. That's easy. Sometimes when you feel awful about somebody, you get back into rightness by thinking about them."

"I can't believe that you don't understand what love is," said Bronze.

"I was trying to make a joke," said Cobalion. "Perhaps I am a little out of practice. But that does not mean I can understand what love is. None of you can, either. Tess, do you love me?"

"Of course."

"Do you love me in the same way that you love sweets?"

"No."

"Or that skinny Jake?"

"That's different."

"I thought so. That's the confusing kind, the one that Arceus uses to multiply the species. Not the kind you have to have in order to name Quentin."

"Isn't this for Bronze too, not just me?" said Tess. "Why isn't he in on this?"

"This test is to develop your love, Tess," said Cobalion. "That isn't Arceus's goal with Bronze at the moment, and even if it was, this wouldn't be the way to go about it. He loves things in a different way than you do. Of course, Bronze, you will eventually need training for your love, and not from me. The time you have now is Arceus's courtesy. But not forever. He is very jealous. One day He will only have Himself as your beloved."

"What will happen to us if I fail?" said Tess.

"When a god has done as much good as I have, I will be given a choice from the Lord," said Cobalion. "I could throw in my lot with the Dark Lord..."

"What!" cried Bronze.

"Quite a few of those who fail do."

"But the Enemy hates you. He's..."

"You know what his kind is. Sky tearers. Light snuffers. Planet darkeners. The dragons. The worms. Those who hate."

"Cobalion, you couldn't."

"I hope I couldn't. But others have. It's not an easy choice."

"What if you don't go to the Dark Lord?"

"If I do not go with them, then I must unmake myself."

"What!?"

"I'll ask you a riddle. What do you have the more of, the more of it you give away?"

"Love, I suppose," said Bronze.

So, if I care more about naming and fighting and lighting than anything else, then maybe I have to give myself away, if it's the only way to show my love. All the way away: to unmake myself."

"If you do it, does it last forever?" asked Tess apprehensively.

"Nobody knows. Nobody will know till the end of time."

"Do I have that choice, too, if we fail?"

"It is not an option given to mortals, youngling."

"All that happens to me is that I go home? Or continue on without you?"

"If you can call it all. There would be rejoicing in Hell. But I have forgotten that you are still fresh in the faith. Perhaps you don't believe in Hell?"

Tess pushed this aside. "But if we fail, then you will die?"

"Not die. I must choose. It's better to unmake myself than to be unmade by the Dark Lord."

"It's like what we've been talking about, or why we faced the Djinn at Anthien," said Tess. "It doesn't seem to have much with this naming business. It's all so cosmic, so big. Cobalion, I don't understand any of it, but if you think Quentin is going to help me, I'll do my best. You will help me?"

"As much as I can," said Cobalion.

One of the Quentins, the second one, returned from the shadows. She went closer and smelled: yes, he had the Quentin smell of the sea and what she always thought was encrusted salt. But all three of the Quentins could manage that much, she was sure. It was not going to be that easy.

"I assume that you are as confused by all this as I am, Tess. Why two strange men should wish to impersonate me I have no idea. It is most inconvenient. I am told that it has something to do with you as well as your unfortunate companion Bronze. I had hoped that this time around, at least, would not be one of my problems. It seems to me I have had to spend more time with you than a girl your age should need. It is certainly my misfortune that you aren't nearly independent enough. And now not only do I have to cope with your girlishness, which is equally difficult, but now these two others!"

This was Quentin, at least the old Quentin. He had played on that speech many times before in many different words.

"For some reason obscure to me, you are supposed to choose between the impostors and me. It is certainly in my interest to have you pass this absurd test. Then perhaps I can keep you out of my hair and teach you something worthwhile about taking care of yourself."

"He isn't talking right," said Tess to Bronze. "I'm not sure it's this one."

"And then," said Quentin Three, appearing beside Quentin One, "I will have time to concentrate on present problems instead of those which ought to be past. Now, Tess, if you will just for once in your life do it my way, not yours. If you would simply stop approaching each problem in your life as though you were a scientist and had to solve the problems of the universe, and would deign to follow one or two basic rules, you and I would have a great deal less trouble in our relationship. The world is not actually very complex. Humans can be reduced to ciphers, at least on paper."

This, too, was the authentic Quentin. She was baffled. Had Arceus wanted her to meet a stupid cadre of spirits, or two demons with flawless powers of human-likeness and an angel that mocked her inability to discern what it was? She looked to Cobalion and Bronze and found no guidance in either. The young king's eyes wavered uneasily.

The first Quentin joined the other two. "Tess. Stop panicking and listen to me. "It is imperative that we stick to essentials at this point. Our number is peripheral." The real Quentin was very fond of discarding peripherals and sticking to essentials.

She asked Bronze, "Which one do you think?"

"None of them," he said. "They're nothing like Quentin when we left him. They certainly don't talk the same. If one is the right one, it doesn't know how to speak to you properly."

Despair settled like a stone in the pit of her stomach. She had been so certain that the moment she heard Bronze's opinion everything would be all right. Everything would be settled. All the problems would be taken out of her hands. She would no longer be responsible for anything. And instead of this happy and expected outcome, they seemed to be encountering all kinds of new troubles. Bronze, her beloved Bronze, did not know what to do.

"Tess," Quentin Two said, "I urge you to resolve this nonsense and tell the impostors that I am Quentin. This whole farce is wasting a great deal of time. I am Quentin, as you have cause to know."

She felt Cobalion probing her thoughts wildly. "Tess, when have you been YOU, the most YOU?"

She closed her eyes. She remembered the first afternoon Jake had come to her house. In her journey she found out that Jake was an honor student, but he was far better with words than with numbers, and she had given him some advice on weighted averages. Her easy competence with the averages was one of her surprises for Jake. But at the time she had not thought of surprising him. She had concentrated wholly on Jake, on what he was doing, and she had felt wholly alive and herself.

"How is that going to help?" she asked the god.

"You didn't know Jake very well, did you?"

"No, and now he's gone and I've got to save him, and you are wasting my time!"

It came out as more than a yell than a statement. In the hot sun she realized how much her anger and grief was like fear. No one had ever told her. She was not afraid, but the sensation was like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. She kept on swallowing.

"But you loved him, didn't you?"

"I wasn't thinking about love," said Tess hotly. "I was just thinking about the averages."

"Well, then," said Cobalion as though that explained the entire nature of love.

"But I can't think about averages with Quentin, if that's you mean. I can't love these...things."

"You love me."

"But, Cobalion, you're so awful you're lovable."

"So are they. And you have to name the real one."

Tess looked at the three men in their identical clothes. "It's like a game on the telescreen."

"It is not a game," said Quentin Three sharply. "The stakes are much too high."

Cobalion, "Do you think these Quentins would believe anything good about you?"

"Not likely. Maybe the angel, but I think they're all imposters."

"Would you like him to see a different Tess? The real Tess?"

She shrugged.

"Well, then, how would you like to be different with him?"

Frantically, she said, "I wish I had gorgeous blond hair."

"You wouldn't, not really."

"Of course I would!"

"If you had gorgeous blond hair, you wouldn't be you."

"That might be a good idea. Ouch, Cobalion, you hurt!"

"This isn't any time for self-indulgence."

"When Quentin is being nice like he is now, he's not being the true Quentin. Being sweet on Quentin would be like blond hair on me." Panic churned within her as if she had been concussed. "Cobalion, if I don't name right, if I fail, what will you do?"

"I told you. I have to choose."

"That's not telling me. I want to know which way you're going to choose."

Cobalion shivered as though a cold wind had blown through him. "Tess, there isn't much time. They're on their way back. You have to name one of them."

"Give me a hint."

"This isn't a game. Quentin was right."

"Bronze! Help me! How can I feel love for these things?"

"What a strange idea," said Bronze. "Love isn't feeling. If it were, Cobalion wouldn't be able to love. The gods don't have feelings."

"But..."

"Idiot," said Cobalion to Tess, anxiously rather than crossly. "Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people."

"Cobalion, you matter to me."

Cobalion puffed enveloping pale blue clouds from his flanks. "That's not what I meant. I meant that I only matter with earth people. You call it materializing."

"Then, if you become visible only for us, why do you have to look so terrifying, or so wonderful?"

"Because when we matter, this is how we come out. When you got mattered, you didn't choose to look the way you do, did you?"

"I certainly did not. I'd have chosen quite differently. I'd have chosen to be beautiful." After he heard this, Bronze coughed and rolled his eyes.

"Oh, I see! You mean you don't have any more choice about looking like a mass of deformed dragons or a horned horse than I do about my hair and everything? You aren't doing it this way just for fun? Cobalion, I'm not a wind or a flame of fire. I'm a human being. I feel. I can't think without feeling. If you matter to me, then what you decide to do if I fail matters."

"I fail to see why."

"Because if you decide to turn into a worm or whatever and join the Dark Lord, I don't care whether I name right or not! It just doesn't matter to me! And Jake would feel the same way. I know he would!"

Cobalion probed gently and thoughtfully into her mind. "I don't understand your feelings. I'm trying to, but I don't. It must be extremely unpleasant to have such feelings."

"Cobalion!" said Bronze. "What will you do?"

"If you fail, I will unmake myself."

He vanished. Tess swung around and three Quentins were walking towards her from the direction of the cliffs. She faced them. "Quentin." Identical, loathsome, simultaneous, they stepped towards her.

Quentin One said, "I will make you happy. I will make you equal."

Quentin Three said, "I will make you successful."

Quentin Two looked at his watch.

Tess closed her eyes. And suddenly she did not feel. She had been pushed into a dimension beyond feeling, if such a thing is possible, and if Cobalion was right, it is possible. There was nothing but a cold awareness that had nothing to do with what she normally would have thought of as feeling. Her voice issued from her lips almost without volition, cold, calm, emotionless. "Quentin Three," she said.

He stepped forward, smiling triumphantly.

"No. You're not the angel. You feel much too powerful. You'd never have to be giving things to a granddaughter you couldn't control and sent her off with a boy you couldn't control, either." She looked at Quentin One and Two. Her hands were ice-cold and she had the sensation in the pit of the stomach which precedes acute nausea, but she was unaware of this because she was still in the strange realm beyond feeling. "Quentin One..."

He smiled.

Again she shook her head. "I wasn't quite as sure about you at first. But wanting to make everybody happy and just like everybody else is just as bad as Quentin Three manipulating everybody. Bad as Quentin can be, he's the only one of the three of you who's human enough to make as many mistakes as he does, and that's you, Quentin Two. You would have offered me something if you wanted to keep up with the others." Suddenly she gave a startled laugh. "And I do love you for it." Then she burst into tears of nervousness and exhaustion. But she had no doubt that she was right.

...

Quentin Two exploded into a myriad of flaming colors, with ebony going to russet and white stabs of fire, pale as window panes. The air about the aridness was rent with a great howling and shrieking and then a cold nothingness which could only be the presence of two of the Darkened Ones. It was as though rip after rip was being slashed in the air, and then the edges were drawn together and healed. All that was left was a red gust of smoke and a huge being.

A flame-colored robe, in which her hands were hidden, covered this person from the feet to where it rose behind her neck in a kind of high ruff-like collar. Her skin was darkish and Southern and glowing, almost the color of honey. Some such dress Tess had seen worn by a Logarian priestess on a vase from the old Anthien Museum. The head, poised motionless on the muscular pillar of her neck, stared straight at Tess. it was a red-cheeked, wet-lipped face, with black eyes, almost the eyes of a cow, and an enigmatic expression.

Bronze recognized it at once. It was, to speak like the musicians, the full statement of that theme which had elusively haunted Tess's face for the last few hours. It was someone's face with something left out, and the omission shocked Tess. "It is brutal," she thought, for its energy crushed her; but then she half changed her mind and thought, "It is I who am weak. It is mocking me." But then once more changed her mind and thought, "It is ignoring me. It doesn't see me"; for though there was an almost ogreish glee in the face, she did not seem to be invited to share the joke.

"It is not expected of you, Victini," said Cobalion as he materialized, "to assume such a form. You ought to know better than to take anyone by surprise like that, particularly a still-limited one like Tess."

"I was very relieved," said Victini. The voice sounded as if the air was on fire. "I thought the Lord would have you unmake yourself."

"Quite."

"Will this Tess ever be anything but a limited one?"

"That is a limited and limiting thought, Victini," said Cobalion sternly. "I am surprised."

"You are older than me and have greater concourse with Adam's race," said Victini. "Not often do I feel the wind on my naked flesh."

"This looks rather like a mythological picture come to life," said Bronze with a smile. "Imagine if anyone else saw us four in the desert! It would turn one into a poet or a saint, if they stayed sane for long enough."

"I thought the god Victini was male," said Tess. "What are you?"

"I am Victory," said Victini. "I am not anything else. I am currently one of the highest forms of triumph: an Arcean wife. And you, you know, are not. Neither are you no longer a virgin. You have put yourself where you must meet me and you have only recently accepted that everything which Arceus has done on Earth is fact. So you get me raw, not stronger than Bronze would find me, but untransformed, demoniac. And you don't like it. Hasn't that been the history of your life?"

"You mean," said Tess slowly, "I've been repressing something?"

She had been conceiving this world as "spiritual" in the negative sense, as some neutral, or democratic, vacuum where differences disappeared, where sex and sense were not transcended but simply taken away. Now the suspicion dawned upon her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer, at every rung of the ascent. How if this biological relic of animal life or patriarchal barbarism, but rather the lowest, the first, and the easiest form of some shocking contact with reality that would have to be repeated, but in ever larger and more disturbing modes on the highest levels of all?

"Yes," said Victini. "There is no escape. If it were a virginal rejection of the male, He would allow it. Such souls can bypass the male and go on to meet something far more masculine, higher up, to which they must make a yet deeper surrender. But your trouble has been what old poets called Pride. You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud irruptive, possessive thing, the gold lion, the bearded bull, which breaks through hedges and scatters the little kingdom of your primness. The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. Who is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to Him."

"So that was the test?" said Tess. "All of it?"

"Yes," said Victini. "Have you learned anything?"

"Of course." She looked at the darkness under the cliffs with the overtones of finally.

"I must go to Celebi and make more plans for war," said Victini. "Flame bright, flee night." It vanished with a sound like a single loud knock at a door.

...

"The time comes from Bronze to be sharpened," said Cobalion. "I will make him into a right Logarian blade."

A change that he had noticed earlier came over the desert. The Aredian watermaster in the distance, standing beside the false dunes of the nomad's tents, began the morning chanting, adding to it now the call for the rite to initiate a youngling. He looked out across the gray light of the desert landscape, the landscape beyond pity, the sand that was form absorbed in itself. Dry lightning streaked a dark corner to the south, a sign that a storm had built up its static charge there. The roll of thunder boomed long after.

"The voice that beautifies the land," said Antarah, coming near.

More of his men were stirring out of their tents. Guards were coming in from the cliff rims. Everything around him moved smoothly in the ancient routine that required no orders.

"The world is a carcass," the watermaster chanted, his voice wailing across the dunes. "Who can turn away the Angel of Death? What the Lord has decreed must be."

Bronze listened, recognizing that these were the words that also began the death chant of the Aredian sparabra elites, the words the death commandos recited as they buried themselves into battle. With the Aredians were two men, Lance and Silver, not moving, but watching the young emperor.

They knew the peril Bronze faced that day. Each Aredian and Bronze himself knew it. The comets and caterpillars, the stars and songbirds, and the flowing sand of the morning itself knew of the test to come. They gave him these last few moments of isolation now that he might prepare himself.

"It must be done now," said Cobalion. "Send out your Pokemon."

He thought of the power he wielded: the old men would listen to him now in council and follow his plans, the men who would return to pay him that highest Aredian compliment: "Your plan worked, Emperor." Yet the meanest and smallest of the Aredian warriors could do a thing that he had never done. He had not fought the Great Worm.

"What is going on?" whispered Tess. "They're not moving, just waiting."

"In the cliffs here dwells the father of Steelix," said Cobalion. "The greybeards of the Aredians send their young men to fight its offspring, the Onix, amid the high clefts. Yet Bronze will catch it. I had counseled Ryan to bring his people here after they found the man Silver on the western borders."

"But you haven't told Bronze," said Tess.

"He already knows. Don't you understand that his awareness of the future is greater than yours? He has not told you of all the things he sees. You would not be able to sleep in your bower otherwise."

Until he fought the legendary Steelix, Bronze's world was bounded by the abilities of others. No true Aredian could permit this. Until he did this thing himself, even the great southlands would be denied to him as his fief forever. Memory returned to him of his wrestling with his inner awareness during the long nights. He saw a strange parallel here. If he mastered the Steelix, his rule was strengthened; if he mastered the inward eye, this carried its own measure of command. But beyond them both lay the clouded area, the Great Unrest where all the universe seemed embroiled.

The differences in the ways he comprehended the universe haunted him, accuracy matched with inaccuracy. He saw it in situ. Yet, when it was born, when it came into the pressures of reality, the now had its own life and grew with its own subtle differences. Terrible purpose remained. Race consciousness remained. And over all loomed the thought of war, bloody and wild.

Will there be a rock shrine here this day to mark the passing of another soul? Will stop here in the future, each to add another stone and think on the great martyr Bronze Tercano, last of the Logarians-in-exile, who died in this place?

He knew this was among the alternatives today, a fact along lines of the future radiating from this position in time-space. The imperfect vision plagued him. The more he resisted his terrible purpose and fought against the coming of the inevitable final battle, the greater the turmoil that wove through his deduction. His entire future was becoming like a river hurtling toward a chasm, the violent nexus beyond which all was fog and clouds.

Antarah moved toward him across the flour sand, stirring up little dust puddles. The dark niches of his eyes remained steady on Bronze with their untamed stare. The glimpse of black beard above the cloth mask, the lines of craggy cheeks, could have been wind-etched from the native rock for all their movement. The man carried Shah Ryan's banner on its staff, the red and yellow derafsh kaviani with a water tube in the staff; that already was a legend in the land.

Half pridefully, Bronze thought: "I cannot do the simplest thing without it becoming a legend among these people. They will mark how I parted from the ruins, how I greet Antarah, how I advised Tess during her test. Live or die, it is a legend. I must not die. Then it will be only legend and nothing to stop these people from doing terrible things in my name."

Antarah planted the staff in the sand beside Bronze and dropped his hands to his sides. His eyes remained level and intent. "They denied us the Hajj," said Antarah with ritual solemnity.

Cobalion responded: "Who can deny a desert-man the right to walk or ride where he wills?"

"I am a chief," said Antarah, "never to be taken alive. I am a leg of the death tripod that will destroy our foes."

Silence settled over them. Bronze became aware that on the inverse side of the banner was not the derafsh, but a red lion against a field of green. In one of the lion's hands was a curved sword and the rays of a sun woven of golden thread shone orange above the lion's body. At the corners of the standard were lotus flowers, and the four royal stars of Old Logaria had been sewn in an arch above the sun.

"Do you wonder what that is?" said Cobalion. "It is a banner that has not been seen for countless years: the old sigil of Southernesse. It will be your banner, for it stands for Logaria, as long as you are alive and men follow you."

"And these men will follow me?" said Bronze to Antarah. He glanced at the other Aredians scattered over the sand beyond Antarah, the way they stood without moving for this moment of personal prayer. And he thought of how the Aredians were a people whose living consisted of killing, an entire people who had lived with rage and grief all of their days, never once considering what might take the place of either, save for a dream that Arceus had birthed in them through His word.

"Where is the Lord who led us through the land of desert and of pits?" asked Antarah.

"He is ever with us," the Aredians chanted.

Cobalion stepped closer to Bronze and thought at him alone. "Now, do it simply and directly: nothing fancy. Among their people, they battle the Steelix at the age of twelve. You are four years beyond that age and not born into the life of the desert. You don't have to impress anyone with your courage. We know you are brave. All you must do is call the Steelix and catch it quickly."

"I will remember," said Bronze

"See that you do. I'll not have you shame my teaching."

"If I fail, will you unmake yourself?"

"No. But you yourself will die, and the Lord will not save you through me."

...

Anatarh pulled a plastic rod about a meter long from beneath his robe. The thing was pointed at one end and had a spring-wound clapper at the other end. "I prepared this device myself. It's a good thing. Take it."

Bronze felt the warm smoothness of the plastic as he accepted the machine. He knew its function.

"Vaejah has hooks," said Ryan, just now reaching Bronze. "He'll hand them to you as you step out onto that dune over there." He pointed to his right. "Call the Steelix, Shahanshah. Show us the way."

Bronze marked the tone of voice, half ritual and half that of a worried friend. In that instant, the sun seemed to bound into noon. The sky took on the silvered gray-blue that warned this would be a day of extreme heat and dryness even for Aredia.

"It is the time of the scalding height of day," said Ryan to his people, and now his voice was entirely ritual. "Go, little king, and battle the Steelix, stir the sand as a leader of men."

Bronze saluted his banner, noting how the flag hung limply now that the wind had died. He turned toward the dune Ryan had indicated, a dirty tan slope with an S-track crest. Already, most of the troop was moving out in the opposite direction, climbing the other dune that had sheltered their camp. Cobalion led Tess away with the others.

One robed figure remained in Bronze's path: Vaejah Airyanam, whose name meant the home of Aredians; a squad leader of the death commandos, only his slope-lidded eyes visible between a cooling turban and filter mask.

Vaejah presented two thin, whiplike shafts as Bronze approached. The shafts were about a meter and a half long with glistening plasteel hoods at one end, roughened at the other end for a firm grip. Bronze accepted them both in his left hand.

"They are my own hooks, boy-king," said Vaejah in a husky voice. "They never have failed."

Bronze nodded, maintaining the necessary silence and moved past the man and up the dune slope. At the crest, he glanced back, saw the troop scattering like a flight of insects, their robes fluttering. He stood alone now on the sandy ridge with only the horizon in front of him, the flat and unmoving horizon. This was a good dune Ryan had chosen, higher than its companions for the viewpoint vantage.

Stooping, Bronze planted the device deep into the windward face where the sand was compacted and would give maximum transmission to the drumming. Then he hesitated, reviewing the lessons form his past, reviewing the life-and-death necessities that faced him.

When he threw the latch, the machine would begin its summons. Across the sand, a giant Steelix would hear and descend from the cliffs to the drumming. With the whiplike hook-staffs, Bronze knew, he could mount the Pokemon high, segmented, curving back. For as long as a forward edge of a Steelix's body segment was held open by a hook, open to admit abrasive sand into the more sensitive interior, the creature would not retreat beneath the desert. It would, in fact, roll its gigantic body to bring the opened segment as far away from the desert surface as possible. He had learned this biology from his father, and, he thought with a jolt of awareness, Cypress. They had been discussing Pokemon's adaptions to living in the desert months ago.

Magneton would give him the necessary impetus to make as large of a leap as was necessary to reach the Steelix's head. After he had dug in the hooks Charmeleon and Electabuzz were meant to strike the worm's head and send it flying back. Then Bronze could throw a capture device at the tender spot between the back of a Steelix's head and its first body segment, and then it would be caught.

He glanced down at the hooks in his left hand, thinking that he had only to shift those hooks down the curve of a Pokemon's immense side to make the creature roll and turn, guiding it where he willed. He had seen it done in holovideos. The captive Steelix could be ridden until it lay exhausted and quiescent upon the desert surface and a new Pokemon must be summoned.

Once he was past this test, Bronze knew, he was qualified to make the next journey north, to Flouruma City. Flouruma City, where only several leagues away in the mountains were the ruins of the ancient Logarian capitol of Atun-Kaah. He longed to see the city of his forefathers, and also to have it be restored. Atun-Kaah, the City of Caves, would be rebuilt as soon as he came to power in Roria.

But that day was not yet. He lifted his head and looked to the north. "You must gauge the approaching Steelix carefully," he heard Cobalion saying in his head. "You must stand close enough that you can mount it as it passes, yet not so close that it engulfs you or blasts you with a Hyper Beam."

With an abrupt decision, Bronze released the device's latch. The clapper began revolving and the summons drummed through the sand, a measured "lump, lump, lump." He straightened, scanning the horizon, hearing Cobalion's words. "Judge the line of approach carefully. Remember, a Pokemon that large seldom makes an unseen approach to a sound summons. Listen all the same. You may often hear it before you see it."

"I will be a rider of the steel worm," thought Bronze.

"When you take your stand along the Pokemon's path, you must remain utterly still. You must think like a patch of sand. Hide beneath your cloak and become a little dune in your very essence."

Slowly, he scanned the horizon, listening, watching for the signs he had been taught. It came from the southeast after crashing down from a distant bend of hills, a distant hissing, a sand-whisper. Presently he saw the faraway outline of the creature's track against the light and realized he had never before seen a Steelix this large, never heard of one this size. It appeared to be more than a quarter-mile long, and the rise of the sandwave at its cresting head was like the approach of a mountain. It's white eyes blinked as it gnashed the air.

"This is nothing I have seen by vision or in life," cautioned Bronze in answer to his sudden fear. "You have seen the devil's son." He hurried across the path of the thing to take his stand, caught up entirely by the rushing needs of this moment.

The thing was only minutes away now, filling the shivering air with the electrostatic hissing of its passage. Its great teeth within the cavern of its mouth spread like some enormous, rectangular stalactites and stalagmites. The musty odor from it dominated the air. He could see the friction-induced fires churning down its throat like the very infernos of Sheol.

"How far outside the Steelix's's radius must you stand in sand?" asked Cobalion. "Half a meter for every meter of the creature's diameter."

"Why?"

"To avoid the vortex of its passage and still have time to run in and mount it."

Now the clapper's deep drumming blended with the hiss of the approaching Pokemon. Bronze breathed deeply, smelling the mineral bitterness of sand even through his headscarf. The wild Steelix, the old man of the desert, lord over the Seviper, loomed, almost on him. Its cresting front segments threw a sandwave that would sweep across his knees. He glanced at his Pokemon, one behind, two to the left and right. They were stolid as ever.

"Come up, you lovely monster," he thought. "Up. You hear me calling. Come up. Come up."

The wave lifted his feet. Surface dust swept across him. He steadied himself, his world dominated by the passage of that sand-clouded curving wall, that segmented cliff, the segment lines sharply defined in it.

Bronze lifted his hooks, sighted along them, leaned in, and leaped over the river of turbulent quicksand. Magneton pushed him so that he felt the hooks bite and pull, giving himself a place to be steady: attached to clinging barbs. This was the true instant of the testing: if he had planted the hooks correctly at the leading edge of a segment, forcing the segment not to move properly, the Steelix would not roll down and crush him.

The Steelix slowed. It glided across the noisemaker, silencing it. Slowly, it began to roll, up, up, bringing those irritant barbs as high as possible, away from the sand that threatened the soft inner lapping of its segment.

Bronze found himself riding upright atop the Pokemon. He felt exultant, like an emperor surveying his world. At every side was his rightful domain. The Sereehgir was his, the hills were his province, the dunes his demesne. He suppressed a sudden urge to cavort there, to turn the Steelix, to show off his mastery of this creature. Suddenly he understood why Cobalion was warning him about brash young men who danced and played with these monsters, doing handstands on their backs, removing both hooks and replanting them before the Pokemon could spill them.

Leaving one hook in place, Bronze released the other and planted it lower down the side. When the second hook was firm and tested, he brought down the first one, thus worked his way down the side. The Steelix rolled, and as it rolled, it turned, coming around the sweep of flour sand where the others waited. To his surprise and everlasting bewilderment, he saw other Aredians come up, using their hooks to climb, but avoiding the sensitive segment middles until they were on top. They rode at last in a triple-line behind him, steadied against their hooks.

Antarah moved up through the ranks, checked the positioning of Bronze's hooks, glanced up at Bronze's smiling face.

"You did it, eh?" asked Antarah, raising his voice above the hiss of their passage. "That's what you think? You did it?" He straightened. "Now I tell you that was a very sloppy job. We have twelve-year-olds who do better. There was loose sand to your left where you waited. You could not retreat there if the worm

turned that way."

The smile slipped from Bronze's face. "I saw the loose sand."

"Then why did you not signal for one of us to take up position secondary to you? It was a thing you could do even in the test."

Bronze swallowed and faced into the wind of their passage.

"You think it bad of me to say this now," said Antarah. "It is my duty. I think of your worth to the troop. If you had stumbled into that loose sand, the Steelix would've turned toward you."

In spite of a surge of anger,= Bronze knew that Antarah spoke the truth. It took a long minute and the full effort of the training he had received from his mother for Bronze to recapture a feeling of calm. "I apologize," he said. "It will not happen again."

"In a tight position, always leave yourself a secondary, someone to take the Pokemon if you cannot," said Antarah. "Remember that we work together. That way, we're certain. We work together, eh?" He slapped Bronze's shoulder.

"We work together," agreed Bronze.

From behind him there came sudden laughter. The troop began chanting, flinging his name against the sky. "Shahanshah! Shananshah! Shahanshah!"

And far to the rear along the Pokemon's surface, Bronze heard the beat of the goaders pounding the tail segments. The Steelix began picking up speed. Their robes flapped in the wind. The abrasive sound of their passage increased.

Bronze looked back through the desert to the overlook and found Tess's face among them. He looked at her as he spoke to Antarah. "Then am I a proper Aredian, friend?"

"Hal yawm! You are an Aredian this day."

"Then I may choose our destination?"

"That's the way of it."

"And I am a man born this day here in the sands of Aredia. I have had no life before this day. I was as a child until this day."

"Not quite a child," said Antarah. He fastened a corner of his hood where the wind was whipping it.

"But there was a cork sealing off my world, and that cork has been pulled."

"There is no cork. The men are eager to raid with you in the civilized lands, raiding against Team Eclipse. They are only several leagues away."

"The Aredians will one day raid with me," said Bronze. "They'll raid with me again until no Eclipse-man breathes Earth's air. But that is not my path now. I will have to leave Aredia with the girl."

"Do you wish a gathering of the leaders to make sure this choice is wise?" said Antarah, then he froze, and bowed his head. Evidently Cobalion had told him something.

"You cannot know what I want," said Bronze. He turned away to watch the Habbanya Ridge climb out of the desert. The Steelix beneath them still felt strong and willing. It could carry them almost twice the distance of any other in Aredian experience. He knew it. There was nothing outside the stories told to children that could match this old man of the desert. It was the stuff of a new legend, Bronze realized.

"Off. Scatter onto the sand," commanded Bronze.

The troop began working down the Steelix's sides, dropping off, blending with the sand beneath their cloaks. Presently only he and Antarah remained. "First up, last off," said Bronze.

Antarah nodded, dropped down the side on his hooks, and leaped onto the sand. Bronze waited until the Steelix was safely clear of the scatter area, then released his hooks. This was the tricky moment with the Steelix not completely exhausted. Freed of its goads and hooks, the big Pokemon began burrowing into the sand. Bronze ran lightly back along its broad surface, judged his moment carefully and leaped off. He landed running, lunged against the slipface of a dune the way Cobalion told him, and hid himself beneath the cascade of sand over his robe.

Bronze cast a Poke Ball and the Steelix burst into a fountain of stars. Bronze felt his senses assailed with an awareness he had never experienced with such intensity before, even in childhood. The blue of sky was so brilliant it dazzled his inner eye. Although it was hot, he could feel the cold pangs of the spreading light; his skin drank the loveliness of the wind. He had never before smelled rock, nor the richness of the dark earth, nor the wine of the breeze, as he smelled them now.

He knew that the vision, if it was only a vision, was being recalled from a different When, a time when the sea had withdrawn but the desert not yet encroached, the time when the ancient harmonies remained unbroken. Now the days had roughed and the time he lived in was a dissonant one.

No matter for the Aredians. Already the word was going from warren to warren that the Emperor had captured the great worm of the cliffs. Antarah was waving the banner and the desert-men were singing. As Bronze picked up the little plaz orb from the sand and held it up for the others to see, Cobalion moved swifter than thought. The light in the Sacred Sword pulsed with brilliance; sparks flew from his hoofs, and he and Tess and their Pokemon were up and off, caught up in a vortex of chalky light. The iron legs of Cobalion moved as if he was sprinting with the wind.

.

.

.

Bronze felt the wind swoop under and about them. Riding the god, riding the wind, he felt wholly in freedom and joy; wind, angel, boy, merged into a single swiftness. Stars, galaxies, circled in cosmic pattern, and the joy of unity was greater than any disorder within. Cobalion flung himself into the wind and they were soaring among the stars, part of the dance, part of the harmony. As each flaming sun turned on its axis, a singing came from the friction in the way a finger moved around the rim of a crystal goblet will make a singing, and the song varies in pitch and tone from glass to glass.

But this song was exquisite as no song from crystal or wood or brass can be. The blending of melody and harmony was so perfect that it almost made Bronze relax his hold on the god's body. "No," said Cobalion sharply. "Hold on and don't let go. You would become a burnt-out body, a satellite circling the nearest sun."

"Is this how you travel?" said Tess. "I would gladly do this more often."

"The Djinn is angry that the Aredians have come to be loyal to you, and that you have all passed the tests. He is looking for you. And you will not need me for speed or safety, neither by land or sky. You will find that your Pokemon have evolved. All of them."

"Where are we going?" said Tess.

"To Flouruma City, for Bronze is awaited there now that the news of his return is abroad."

"So they will follow me?" said Bronze. "The Aredians?"

"Yes," said Cobalion heavily. "And admittedly, I plainly see an episode about a bloody and destructive war caused by them in your future."

"An acceptable price. But let us not speak of such things amid the heavens."

"I agree. But you have been brought here so that I could talk to you in private, without the spies of the Enemy near. The gods have learned now, if not what the real power behind our Enemy is doing, at least the form in which it is embodied at the Eclipse Alliance. We therefore know something about one of the two attacks that are about to be made on our race. The first has happened. There is a war. But I'm thinking of the other."

"Yes," said Bronze earnestly. "The other."

"Meaning by that?" asked Tess.

"Meaning," said Cobalion, "whatever way the Djinn is going to destroy this creation. You know about the why. But even I know little of the how."

"You're still thinking about that?" said Bronze. A moment of silence ensued.

"I am thinking of almost nothing else," said Cobalion. "We knew already that the enemy wanted both the Prison Bottle and the Bronze Brick. One they have, to terrible disaster for us, and one is safe with you. Some of us guessed why they desired it. The Brick may be the greater danger of the two. But what is certain is that the greatest danger of all is the junction of the enemies' forces. He is staking everything on that. When the new, scientific power from the Eclipse Alliance joins up with the old, demonic power in the Evil Djinn and his demons, once they gain full strength after building their power by waiting, Roria, indeed the world, will be almost surrounded. For us everything turns on preventing that junction. That is the point at which we must be ready both to kill and die. But we cannot strike yet. We three here do not have the power to get into the Alliance and start excavating from within. There must be a moment when they achieve it. I have no doubt we shall be told in one way or another. Till then we must wait."

"I don't believe a word of all that other story," said Tess.

"I thought," said Bronze, "we weren't to use words like believe. I thought we were only to state facts and exhibit implications."

"If you two quarrel much more," said Cobalion, "I think I'll make you marry one another."

"Take it up with Groudon," said Bronze. "Give me your best guess on what is going to happen."

...

Cobalion laid it out. At the beginning, the grand mystery for the forces of Arceus had been how Enemy was going to get the Prison Bottle and the Bronze Brick. By intense study in collaboration with Celebi, and despite the continued skepticism of others in Deep Heaven, Cobalion, in the free time afforded, had at last come to a certain conclusion. Cobalion and the Swords of Justice and Dialga and Palkia shared between them an especial knowledge of human nature that other gods perhaps will not reach in many centuries. They knew that Cypress lay in the very heart of a spiritual darkness they could not breach. The first phase of the war was always two steps behind the Djinn, helping Bronze and Jake and Tess survive, but never much more.

There was also a consensus that the Bronze Brick was the very same historical Bronze Brick that Rei of Hisui had, two thousand years ago, taken from the Evil Djinn's stronghold and destroyed a gateway to another reality where evil things had crept from. What exactly made the Brick come to Bronze through his parents they did not know; but they had all, by various routes, come too far either to consider it mere chance and imposture, or to equate it exactly with what the modern-day called Coincidence. And Bronze agreed. He thought that the Bronze Brick was among the last survivals of something older and different, something brought to Roria after the fall of the Djinn himself and going back to an era in which the general relations of mind and matter on this planet had been other than those we know.

But if the only possible attraction of the Bronze Brick lay in its association with the last vestiges of the power that the Evil Djinn had lost, this told the gods something else. It told them that the Alliance, at its core, was not concerned solely with modern or materialistic forms of power. It told the Cobalion, in fact, that there was Djinnic energy and Djinnic knowledge behind it. It was, of course, another question whether its human members knew of the dark powers who were their real organizers. And in the long run this question was not perhaps important. As Bronze himself had said more than once, "Whether they know it or whether they don't, much the same sort of things are going to happen. It's not a question of how the Eclipse people are going to act (the dark-spirits will see to that) but of how they will think about their actions. They'll go where the enemy sends them; it remains to be seen whether any of them will know the real reason why they're going there, or whether they'll all fudge up some theory of soils, or air, or etheric tensions, to explain it."

All of these conclusions had been spectacularly proven true at the Battle of Anthien City. The only part of the riddle that remained was the function of the Brick in their plans. Doubtless, the great beings who now so often came to the Un-Cypress had power sufficient to sweep Anthien from the face of Roria, and Roria from the face of the globe; perhaps, to blot the globe itself out of existence. But no annihilating power of that kind would be used by the Dark Lord. It would be a fruitless victory. Nor had they any direct vision into the minds of men. It was in a different place, and approaching their knowledge from the other side, that they had discovered the state of the Brick and how they would use it. Cobalion confirmed Bronze's suspicions that were already lying pretty close to the surface.

It was this whispered thought that kept Bronze wakeful, with knitted brow, in the small cold hours of that morning when the others were asleep.. There was no doubt in his mind now that the enemy was trying to get the Brick to recreate the old connections between this world and another. Then they would use that power to re-awaken a Dark Era. Inevitably, all resistance would cast its lot with the Dark Lord. What could prevent it from doing so? A junction would be effected between two kinds of power which between them would determine the fate of our planet. Doubtless that had been the will of the dark demons for centuries as they worked to free their master. When the bottle had been found with the Brick, the time had become ripe.

The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already, even in Cobalion's own time many thousands of years ago, begun to be warped, had been subtly maneuvered in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result. Babble about the elan vital and flirtations with panpsychism were bidding fair to restore the Anima Mundi of the magicians. Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stilling of all deep-set repugnances was the first essential for progress. And now, all this had reached the stage at which its dark contrivers thought they could safely begin to bend it back so that it would meet that other and earlier kind of power.

Indeed they were choosing the first moment at which this could have been done. You could not have done it with older scientists. Their firm objective materialism would have excluded it from their minds; and even if they could have been made to believe, their inherited morality would have kept them from touching dirt. Samuel Oak was a survivor from that tradition. It was different now. Perhaps few or none of the people at Alliance knew what was happening; but once it happened, they would be like straw in fire. What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men?

The time was now. From the point of view that is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment. There was now at last a real chance for fallen Man to shake off that limitation of his powers which mercy had imposed upon him as a protection from the full results of his fall. If this succeeded, Hell would be at last incarnate. Bad men, while still in the body, still crawling on this little globe, would enter that state which, heretofore, they had entered only after death, would have the diuturnity and power of evil spirits. Nature, all over the globe of Imbar, would become their slave; and of that dominion no end, before the end of time itself, could be certainly foreseen.

...

It was half of the how, but not the full of it. A magical artifact, a portal to another dimension? Was his whole life to culminate in bad science fiction? Bronze had a feeling that he would not know any more specifics till the final battle came to be.

The attack, just as they went through a shower of stars, was completely unexpected. A freezing gust blasted the wind on which they were riding, taking away Bronze's breath. His knuckles whitened as he clenched the man, which seemed to strengthen into steel wire to help him hold his grasp. He had a horrible sense of Cobalion battling with a darkness that was like an anti-Cobalion, a flailing of negative swords and aluminum hoofs. The shining god was torn from his hands as he was assailed by the horrible stench that accompanied demons. Dark wings beat him from Cobalion's back and he felt the burning cold of outer space. This was more horrible than any nightmare. His lungs cracked for lack of air. He grasped out for Tess's hand and found it warm and alive but with no strength to pull him.

"Where are you?" he whispered. The words hurt with a dreadful crackling in his spine that made him think of slavering bites, clinching jaws, and a frailness in his body that could break like rice paper. It made him worry.

Out of the black came a voice, low and thin, as if it was pouring its dark essence from the darkness of vacuity itself into his shivering frame. "Here! I have been waiting for you!"

"Get away from him!" screamed Tess.

"Let me pass, you silly girl, let me pass in the name of the Dark Lord!"

"Cobalion!" she kept on shouting. "Cobalion!"

A powerful wrench, and air rushed into his battered lungs. He felt a sharp tug at the nape of his neck, and a strap on his bag tightened against his throat. The agonizing stench was gone and he was surrounded by the scent of Cobalion's breath, smelling of stars and frost. Cobalion was carrying him by his bag in his mouth, great ivory teeth clamped on the strong stuff of the refined leather.

Cobalion's hooves kept beating in the dark. Bronze held his breath. If Cobalion dropped him, the demons would be waiting. His armpits were cut from the pulling of the straps, but he knew that he must not struggle. Cobalion's breath gusted painfully from between clenched teeth as Tess clenched onto his neck.

Then the hooves touched stone, and they were safely on a mound of rocks in a glade. Cobalion opened his teeth and dropped the boy. For the first moments Bronze was so weak that he collapsed onto the rock. Then he struggled to his feet, still trembling from the near disaster. He stretched his arms to ease his sore armpits and shoulders. Cobalion was breathing in great, panting gusts, his flanks heaving.

The soft breeze around them filled and healed their seared lungs. Cobalion rolled his lips, and took a deep draught of clear air. Then he bent down and nuzzled Bronze in the first gesture of affection he had shown. "I wasn't sure we were going to get away. That was Darkrai. He must have been sent from Sinnoh to keep you from doing north."

Tess stroked the god's head. "You saved us. We'd be tumbling in outer space forever if you hadn't grabbed Bronze's bag and kept me steady."

"It was one chance in a million," admitted Cobalion. "And Cressilia helped me. She always follows Darkrai."

Tess reached up to put her arms around Cobalion's curving neck. "Even with help, it wasn't easy. Thank you."

It was a hot day, with thunderheads massed on the horizon. They were now definitely near the tropics. The desert was gone, and the unfamiliar forest stretched to the hills. The woods were a forest of mighty mahogany and towering fruit trees. In the far distance was what looked like a cluster of log cabins.

"I don't think this looks like Flouruma City," Bronze told Cobalion.

"You'd know more about that than I would. I didn't have much opportunity to learn the city's location. And if I'm correct, it should be built underneath the hills. You'll find it there."

"Thank you," said Tess. "Was it my fault that I was trying to lead where we were going? Is that what allowed Darkrai to catch up to us?"

"No. You make too much of a demand on me to tell you why we were discovered. But Darkrai has taken an interest in you, and that is not good. Get going before you are spied. And one last warning: things in Flouruma will be different than you expect. After all, there is a war going on."