REBELLION Sálemór was alone—subjectively, at least. He knew that the monster was close and watching him. Though he could see nothing in the damp, chthonic tunnel ahead, he could feel the presence of his singular antagonist. The Beast. The Monster. His challenge. It was close: waiting for him, evading him, or both. It was a cunning silence, and by the clenching tension riding down the curve of Sálemór’s spine, it was aware of him, behind him, perhaps. Treacherous shadows billowed, stretched, and whispered in the gaps between torches clamped to mold-damp walls. A dozen species of slime and fluff had long claimed this ant-hill nightmare of tunnels and chambers. Centipedes (as long as a large man’s hand) scurried across the grime-littered floor or picked their way along rough-faced walls, snapping mites, midges, and other living things into their lethal, curved mandibles. The incessant, hissing whisper of the maze was the sound of centipede movement through mold, through litter, and ragged shreds of something that might—once—have been clothing. Centipedes. They were monsters of another sort: voracious things that devoured anything they could kill, catch, or scavenge. Children from rude, country hamlets wore the marks of centipede predation. The scent of babies seemed to attract them, and the skin of unfortunate infants bore the red Braille of centipede appetites. In the Southerlies, where indolent mosses coated the skin of rocks, trees, and shoes left too long in unobserved shade, centipedes were a common enough presence as well, useful as fish-bait. Here, beneath the castle, and here, in the Initiate’s Labyrinth, they were something else: a different species of monster. Bats twittered and chirped in the distance and the dead among them littered corners and nooks with their odd, diminutive skeletons. A few of them crunched underfoot, as Sálemór moved forward. “Your task is a simple one, Sálemór,” Master Haddam had said, days before Sálemór’s descent into the damp, stygian nightmare locked beneath even the oldest castle wine cellars. “Slay the beast set loose in the labyrinth, and claim the rights and responsibilities of a civilized human.” “And if I fail?” Sálemór had asked. “Rebellion is the only failure,” Haddam said, after an awkward length of silent consideration. “And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are no rebels in our city…no miscreants or malcontents. Human law and human privilege are all that rule us.” Dark implications had lurked in the old Master’s words; something like granite lent its weight to his voice. There are no rebels in our city. So easy a declaration! The echoes of that statement played through the convoluted shadows between Sálemór’s conscious thoughts and threw his gaze into the countless shadows and corners of the nightmare surrounding him. Water dripped in the distance and the sound was enough to tighten Sálemór’s grip on the knife in his right hand. He wondered if the absence of rebels in the city might reveal their bones here, amid the litter of bat-scat, centipedes, and slimy, ambulatory molds. Were rebels food for the beast he was now expected to kill? As if drawn to some subtle cue, a centipede crossed through a wavering, amber moat of torch light and vanished into the shadow beyond. Bats chattered and fluttered in the distance. Something large moved between Sálemór and the bats. It wafted a scent in his direction: an aroma like blood, like sweat, and like the cloying stench of feces. Sálemór froze and scanned the shadows ahead. The monster, he thought, was there. Just ahead. He took account of the maze around him: this particular down-slanting tunnel ran on an unexpected diagonal, slashing across the labyrinth like a scar. It took some effort to remain calm, and as Sálemór held his breath, he strained against maze noise, hoping to hear the monster and judge its motions. He steadied himself as best he could, clenching the lavish expense of the Initiate’s Knife strapped in his grip. Old Haddam had cinched the bindings himself, securing the handle of the weapon snugly in Sálemór’s palm. Even if he relaxed his grip and flexed his fingers, the knife would remain in position: the initiate’s burden. The blood of the beast…or failure (rebellion?) was all that might release those bonds. The importance of those bonds came to Sálemór, as he listened to Haddam, muttering quietly—whispering incantations that might have been prayers, riddles, or the arcane formulae of some forgotten alchemy. The knife was the deadliest thing Sálemór had ever touched; its blade was tempered lead. * In the city above, the streets were loud with the noise of traffic, laughter, complex braids of conversation, and the dull, white noise of one million lives. Arēs stood, rigid on a balcony, brooding over the gleam of night-light and the excitement of advertising lasers, scrawling their cunning seductions across the faces of distant buildings. The city, like a crater stood within a ring of tall buildings: a wall around the castle, where the Masters went about their arcane business, and where the Legislature did their complex bidding. To follow the average rooflines of city buildings was to ride the slope of a bowl to the castle at its lowest point. The center. The core. “You’re a citizen, Arēs …just like the rest of us. You don’t have to do this. You can’t do this.” Lia’s voice tore Arēs from his brooding contemplation of the castle and the grim labyrinth sunk deep into the earth beneath it. “I’ve slain a monster,” Arēs said. “And I have yet to forgive myself for that.” He paused. He shuddered. “My brother is there, now…under the castle, and he’s about to do the same. I should have warned him. I should have done something.” Lia’s presence was a compressed knot at his side. “We’ve all done it, Arēs …it’s a part of what makes us all Human. Your brother—Sálemór—will be as Human as we are, when he emerges and unbinds the knife tied into his grip.” “And he’ll wear a stain, just like the rest of us!” “A stain, Arēs …? Is that all our Humanity is to you?” Rage heated the flanks of his neck and flared across his cheeks; he felt it like a stain of a different sort. The nightscape went blurry for an instant, as Arēs felt tears in his eyes. He turned away from Lia, keeping his hands on the railing of her balcony. A breeze played through his hair, carrying with it the scent of lilac and wisteria. “Arēs …” He flinched at her touch. “Arēs …” He closed his eyes in feeble defense against the tears he heard in Lia’s voice. “Your brother will need you when he emerges; you’ve been through what he’s experiencing now, and you can help him to understand it. I can help you as well. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To have that connection, to understand the fundamental struggles of those around us and to lessen those struggles when we can; the Initiation leads to the Sharing, and it’s the Sharing that makes us Human Don’t ignore that, Arēs …don’t curse your brother with wishes that he rebels, or with wishes that you had done so. There’s no room in this city for rebels, and rebels can do no good to boys like Sálemór. Our lives are based on the Initiation and the Sharing. Don’t wish anything less for your brother. Don’t become a stranger to him.” With eyes closed, Arēs drew a deep breath. “I’m already a stranger,” he said. “And no matter how this night ends for Sálemór, in success or in failure, nothing will ever change the fact that I want something different for him.” “Different?” Arēs nodded. “And what would that be?” Lia asked, her voice suddenly brittle and suddenly cold. “Human,” Arēs said. “With hands cleaner than ours.” If there was anything to say to that, Lia kept it to herself, and for a long moment, a wall of silence stood between them. “Lia,” Arēs said, but she cut him off. “I think,”—she said—“that you should go.” With eyes still closed, he nodded. “Yes,” Arēs said. “I should go. There’s no room for me here.” * In a moment of naked, animal terror, Sálemór’s entire world balanced on the tip of his knife. The monster crouched before him. What had begun as a hunt, ended in a clumsy, accidental stumble: dumb uncoordinated luck. He’d followed monstrous noises; but the creature, when he found it, was a silent, pale, and pitiful thing. It was human, as far as Sálemór could tell: a gaunt, trembling parody of someone, something Sálemór’s own age. It was human in shape, but with no one home in its fast-blinking gaze. It was male, as its naked anatomy revealed itself. It was autistic, if its sudden, agitated rocking was any indication. It— —He— —crouched, filthy in a filthy corner, rocking…rocking…rocking, with the twitching remains of a centipede half-crushed underfoot. The human-thing had stepped on it with one bare foot. The human-thing didn’t seem to notice. Or care. Sálemór approached, despite his screaming instinct to withdraw, to pull away…or, as was expected, to lash out, and plunge the tip of his knife between the things ribs and into its heart. He crouched, feeling a wave of nausea creeping through his belly, as the creature’s face resolved into a distorted parody of: —familiar eyes —a keen, aquiline nose —the entirety of a face, composed within the set of a softly-squared jaw, high cheekbones, and a tumble of matted, ropy hair in the colors of sand and dirty straw. Something in the creature begged closer scrutiny, and so—drawn forward—Sálemór took in as much as he could, even as the feral thing scrambled away from him, never tearing its gaze from the glint of Sálemór’s lead knife. A lump knotted in Sálemór’s throat as recognition dawned. He was staring at his own face behind a mask of induced autism and any number of minute physical and mental abuses. He knew the processes (at least in theory) whereby criminals were rehabilitated and addicts cured. He read the unmistakable stamp of synaptic restructuring, and saw the hand of genesmiths deep within the existential core of the creature facing him. No one lived in those eyes: no one human, at any rate. “You’re me,” Sálemór said. “You’re everything that I’m not supposed to be, everything that I should ever hope to destroy.” Silence. There was no indication that his monstrous twin had even heard. “You’re me,” he said. “And I’m supposed to kill you.” * Arēs spoke to no one. Though Lia’s words echoed through the convoluted mass of muddled, half-formed thoughts and distorted memories, he said nothing. No one seemed to notice him, not even as he walked, sullen and withdrawn, through the press of inebriated party-hounds flowing (from bar to bar, from brothel to brothel) along the length of Valaro Street. There had been times—not too long ago—when he took drinks (and, in fate’s-honest truth, whores) in the various houses of Valaro Street; now—after a fast/silent trip home—he kept his head bowed. He’d packed scant belongings into a duffel: spare clothes, his lead initiate’s knife, money for provisions, for new boots and winter-garb. The City stood alone, in the depths of wild, forested land. There were no towns, no villages, no communities he might have recognized, and yet the city bled rebels into the wilderness. Rumor spoke of another place to the north…a town, though no one knew its name. It was simply there. To the north. The place where rebels went. Arēs was a rebel now, though only Lia knew it. He didn’t belong here. He couldn’t stay. As so he walked the length of Valaro Street in brooding, burdened silence. He’d reach the North Gate soon enough. He’d pass through it. Soon enough…and he’d vanish. “I’m sorry Sálemór,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t be here when you emerge from beneath the castle. I’m sorry.” * “No,” Sálemór said, trembling in a silence more oppressive than the labyrinth he’d just left. “No,” he said, again, as Master Apprentices sealed the great iron door behind him. It had taken an hour to trace his path back through the maze. His knife—untouched by blood—remained strapped in his grip. He’d left the monster where he found it, crouching, rocking, grunting. He’d simply walked away. Master Haddam stood in silence before Sálemór, his expression placid and inscrutable. A Master’s face was the most impenetrable of masks, and as Sálemór trembled, he could find no clue as to the thoughts of impulses of the old man standing before him. The man could have been a statue, a golem, a phantom of light and shadow. He was human, more-so than the monster in the maze, but as fearfully unfathomable. “There are things a human can do…but I cannot.” Sálemór focused on the old man’s beard rather than his eyes. Seething anger boiled in his veins and kept pounding rhythm with the thump-thump-thump of his heart. He’d been tricked (as, perhaps, everyone had) and it took all of Sálemór’s strength and restraint to stand before old Haddam, while awaiting the old man’s judgment. “What stopped you?” the old man asked. “What…?” “When someone steps through this door, without slaying the monster set before them, there are only a few reasons behind that. What reason defines your…choice?” “A simple one,” Sálemór said. “I can accept our city for what it is, and I can accept the price for living here…as my brother has done…as my parents have done; as every human here has done. This is the way of things, but I cannot belong here, if I must take part in the single crime that brings meaning to this city and these people.” “There is no place for you here,” Haddham said. “I know.” “I’ll open the West Gate for you.” Sálemór nodded. “I’ll go. Quietly and without quarrel.” The old man shifted from one foot to the other and the motion was largely hidden by the shadowy form of his black Master’s cassock. Something of a smile blossomed at the corners of his lips, and faded before Sálemór could be certain that he’d seen anything at all. “Those who rebel as openly as you have are always taken to the West Gate. The Rebel’s Gate. Once you are through it, follow the road until you come to the veldt-lands. Cross the veldt, always heading west, and you will come upon another place. A town. You’re fit for life there.” “A town?” Sálemór asked. “Does it have a name?” Haddam nodded. “It has a name,” he said. “Rebellion.” * The End “Happy people do not rebel,” I declared, once…while shamelessly trying to whip a guilt-trip on a Sunday School teacher hell-bent on convincing me that “rebellion” was a negative thing, the result of “flawed thinking.” I wasn’t having any of it. I was a…well…I suppose in diplomatic terms, I was a difficult child. Brazenly opinionated is probably a more apt description. Since those long-ago days, I’ve thought of rebellion, quite a lot…I’ve contemplated the odd paradox that is “Utopia” quite a lot as well…and wondered why humans have such screwed up views when it comes to such things. Though none of those influences have an overt reference to the story you’ve presumably just read, I think they are the very influences that percolate through my brain on a regular basis. I’d set out to write a different story for the February Writers’ Challenge…and that story will find its way into my gallery, once it’s…well…once it’s finished rebelling. I suspect it wants to be another and so it’s now on the back burner. Ripening…along with a half-dozen Russian toasts I’ll break out at the right, impressive moment. Because I wanted to meet the February Challenge (and I did, in that this story was at least written in February) I switched gears and tried to find a way to write about rebellion in another way. I suspect I will return to this theme. There’s so much more to be explored: things in this story could do with a bit of expansion, and I don’t think they’ll let me rest until they get their day in the sun. But until then, I hope that you’ve enjoyed this little foray into Rebellion…or at least the event that leads to a particular character learning of a whole town bearing that name. As always, thank you for reading, viewing, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.