The Canyon of Babel
by Daniel Ausema
Fael awoke standing alone at the bottom of a wall of rock. When helooked over his shoulder he saw another wall rising beyond a narrow
river; he could have easily hit it with any of the small stones at his
feet.
Despite the strange location, despite having no idea where he was or
how he got there, his first thought was, "Standing? Have I begun
sleepwalking?" But another look at his surroundings was all it took to
tell Fael that he had not walked here, that no matter where he had
lain himself down--something he couldn't quite remember--it had not
been within walking distance of any place so strange. In fact, Fael
doubted he could even have walked beyond the edges of the Winged City
in the short hours of night.
Puzzled, he bent down and picked up one of the stones around him,
turning it over in his long, thin fingers. It was reddish, as were
many of the layers of rock in the canyon around him. If it held any
secrets, it did not reveal them to Fael. He pushed his dark hair from
his pale face, and then, shading his eyes with his right hand, he
leaned back and threw the rock high against the far wall. The echoes
reverberated like the echoes of a dropped knife in the narrow alleys
of his home.
As soon as the sounds had faded, Fael felt a strong need to shout, to
let his voice echo also between those walls. He brought his hands up
and yelled, "Ish al limagui." The words were an old greeting used by
Fael and his blood family to greet each other in the streets. But it
was not these words that came back in the echo. Instead the answer
sounded like, "Hilo-een."
Fael froze, all but his eyes, which darted around looking for some
other people or some reason for the echo. When he saw nothing and all
sounds had faded away, he relaxed his stance but did not move. He
decided to try again, this time in standard Aeglin instead of slang.
"Hello!"
"Hilo-een," the canyon echoed back, same as before.
Fael wasted no more time in that spot, but turned and ran. There was
something wrong about that place, something wrong about an echo that
did not echo back. He wanted to get away from that corruption. The
canyon twisted around many curves and sent arms back into the walls of
narrow rain-time streams, and when Fael finally tired of running he
had found no end to the canyon, and certainly no clue of how to return
to the City. He made his way up one of the ravine arms and sat in the
shade of a shallow cave. To be safe, he pulled the knife from its
sheath at his wrist--the knife he hadn't even thought to draw as he
ran--and rested it across his skinny knees.
His thoughts turned to his blood family back in the city. They
probably assumed he'd been offed by one of the rival gangs during the
night. Or that he'd stumbled into some part of town still patrolled by
the police. It wouldn't be the first time he'd made a stupid mistake,
though in the past none had gotten him into serious trouble. He wanted
to tell them that he was alive, to tell them to come get him, but he
knew he couldn't.
As his energy slowly returned, something strange happened. Though he
wanted to stay where he was, wanted nothing to do with the canyon and
its wrong echoes, he felt a compulsion to leave the cave and shout
again at the canyon walls. He heard no voices, saw no visions
commanding him, but he couldn't ignore the tug that pulled him to his
feet and out into the side ravine.
No stream flowed there at the time, but the floor of the ravine was no
easier to traverse for lack of water. Fael carefully climbed down the
jumbled rocks until he reached the river that here poured past the
near canyon wall. Without daring to think, he called out to the far
rocks, "Hello!"
Again the canyon's echo was not the word he had spoken, but it was not
the echo he had heard before either. Instead the rocks sang back,
"Salim!"
Fael fled again up to his cave. There his thoughts turned to the city,
to his blood brothers and whatever they would be doing now, to the
money he could be earning if only he were there. To the ways he could
prove himself to his brothers.
Throughout the rest of that day Fael left the ravine when the tug
became too powerful to ignore, found a new spot along the canyon, and
called his greetings. Each time a word came back, a word unlike his
call and unlike every other echo he'd heard. Each time he turned and
rushed back to his cave. And each time he knew that the echo wasn't
the right one, knew it wasn't the word he was looking for, knew that
the tug would soon come again.
When Fael woke in his shallow cave the next morning--half-surprised to
wake still lying down--he remembered a fragment, a clue of what had
led him so far from the Winged City. He had been talking to a man, a
man who seemed covered in shadow. Fael had been in a brief knife fight
that ended abruptly when the man walked up saying he wished to speak
with him. And then...the memory fragment broke off.
He wanted to get back to the city. By now his blood family would be
rearranging plans, making him redundant even if he did manage to
return. But still the only things outside his cave were the same rock
walls far from the city.
Soon Fael was pulled from his cave to shout across the canyon. Some of
his fear had worn off, so he did not run when the unfamiliar word came
back. But he didn't stay there either. After every shouted word, after
every echo that wasn't the right one, Fael walked around the canyon
bottom trying to figure out what he was doing there. Between the
periodic shouts, he started the slow process of weaving together the
frayed strands of his memory.
Clearly, the man had cast some kind of spell on him, the man or some
associate of his. And somehow this enchantment not only carried him to
the canyon but was now making him search the echoes for...something.
But knowing this did nothing to stop the need he felt to shout and
listen carefully to the echoes. And in between shouts he imagined life
back in the city, he pictured his blood brothers dividing up his
possessions and chasing after his girl. He had no doubt that the
leaders of the gang had long since moved on, unconcerned at losing
such a minor member of the blood family.
He spent another night in his shallow cave. Around midmorning of his
third day in the canyon, Fael heard a shout that was not his own and
not an echo. It was far away up the canyon, and Fael turned
immediately to find its source.
As he walked, he unconsciously grabbed parts of various plants along
the way and stuffed them in his mouth. When he became aware what he
was doing, he realized that he knew nothing of these plants and would
never have thought to eat them back in the Winged City. But he must
have been eating such things the day before and already that morning,
for he felt little hunger. All part of the spell, he supposed as he
shrugged his shoulders and kept walking, grazing as he went.
As he neared where he guessed the voice had come from, he moved more
slowly, peeking around boulders and bends in the canyon for the
person. He had been sneaking like this for much longer than he
expected, tricked by the distances in the canyon, when he finally
caught sight of the stranger. Before he had any chance to discover
more than that glimpse, the urge to shout came over him. He tried to
ignore it as he slid around a boulder, but it overpowered him.
Shaking his head, he turned and shouted, "Hello!" "Sheltae!" came the
echo over the sounds of the stranger scurrying away from Fael.
Fael found the boy--ten or twelve years old, he guessed--after another
slow and drawn-out tracking. He was huddled behind a large rock with
the echo of his last shout still ringing in the air. He was a street
boy; Fael could see that immediately from his ragged clothing and the
old expression in his eyes. Those eyes flashed side to side as if for
an escape, but the boy didn't move. Fael talked softly as he
approached, as if he were trying to ease a cornered mongrel in the
streets. He sat down on a rock several steps away from the boy.
"I'm called Fael." He brushed his hands across his pant legs to smooth
them out, hoping the sight of the small blade strapped beneath his
right arm would not frighten the boy more. "I think you've been sent
here just like me, some spell from a cloaked man, right?"
The boy gave no answer and showed no sign of relaxing.
"You've noticed the strange echoes, I suppose. I think the spell has
something to do with those, but I can't tell what."
Again the boy said nothing, but before Fael could say any more, he
felt the beginning of the tug inside. He could have waited to answer
it, but he figured he might as well show the boy that the enchantment
was laid on him as well.
"Hold on a moment." He stood and walked a bit away before shouting,
"Hello." "Jita!" He came back and sat, this time a little closer to
the boy.
The boy looked back and forth between Fael and the canyon walls during
the silence that followed the echo until finally he spoke. "I don't
remember." The tone of his voice made Fael reassess the boy's age;
maybe he had been fooled to guess too old by the street-wise eyes.
"Last I remember I was throwing stones. I don't remember any cloaked
man."
"No, neither did I at first. Don't worry. I'll help you figure things
out here and together we'll try to understand what happened to us.
Okay?"
Fael and the boy--Nightchild he called himself--spent much of the
afternoon together as Fael showed him what he had learned about the
edible plants, the innumerable side ravines and the canyon itself. But
despite what he had said, they figured nothing out and soon separated
to different parts of the canyon.
Two more days passed, and Fael occasionally heard a faraway echo, but
never saw Nightchild. Then more echoes shivered the canyon.
The next days passed in a blur as more and more people appeared in the
canyon, each one struggling to remember what they had been doing
before awakening there. Each new arrival stayed away from all the
others as much as the canyon labyrinth allowed. But as their numbers
grew it was inevitable that there would be conflicts.
Fael was walking one morning down from his cave when he heard two
shouts immediately after each other. Above the sounds of any echoes
there might have been, came the familiar sounds of two people
fighting. Back home, Fael would have walked the other way, but here in
the canyon he felt responsible--a sort of leader of a people with no
unity--simply because he had been the first. He had certainly never
been a leader before in his life. He ran beside the river around to
where they fought.
The combatants had already tired themselves out and stopped fighting
when he arrived. The two men lay panting for breath in the dirt beside
the river.
"Well?" Fael looked from one to the other. Neither was a fighter, even
a street fighter like himself. One had the look of a cook from any of
the city's rundown inns; the other perhaps the son of merchant. "Why
do you fight here?"
The merchant refused to look Fael in the eye. "His shout covered my
echo. I couldn't hear the word."
Fael just stared at the man, who finally glanced at his eyes then away
again as he stood up, walked a few steps away, and shouted, "Hello!"
Fael helped the cook to his feet and walked away shaking his head.
They needed to do something. If nothing happened, then the canyon
would soon overflow with people shouting, people fighting, and there
would be no food left and no space left and no echoes. Fael turned his
wandering steps up an arm of the canyon and was soon climbing, his
mind still occupied with the thoughts of what to do.
The way was rugged but not impassable as the dry streambed rose higher
and higher. But suddenly he stopped. He tried to step forward, but his
foot came down right where it had been. He moved to the side and tried
to step again, but no matter what he did he couldn't climb any higher
than he was. Giving up, he took the chance to look around more
carefully at how high he had come and the canyon view from there.
He had climbed about two-thirds of the way up, so the rim cut off the
cliffs not far overhead. He could see dry grasses and other desert
plants shifting there in a wind he didn't feel. The sky beyond was a
pale blue with a few clouds, thin and distant. Around him the red
rocks and soil formed a narrowing V disrupted by jutting rocks and
hardy plants. He turned and saw the ravine widen into the canyon below
where the soil along the river had a more yellow hue, though he knew
that many red and grey rocks lay there among the yellow. Even in the
short stretch of canyon floor he could see before the walls of the
ravine cut it off, a half dozen people walked or sat or shouted. The
river beside this soil ran smooth and muddy, a dull brown unbroken by
rapids.
Beyond the river the far walls rose up, cut by as many dry stream
ravines as the near one, to a rim that looked slightly higher. Unlike
the ravine beside him, these walls had very pronounced layers of
differently colored rocks, vertical stripes of red, yellow, brown and
grey. The plants atop the far wall were indistinct, little more than a
vague impression of green.
Seeing nothing to help him solve their mystery, Fael climbed back
down, determined to uncover the truth.
No new arrivals came for several days. Fael used the time to organize
the echoers--as they were calling themselves--as much as he could.
Something about the enchantment they were under seemed to fight any
organization, but they managed finally to all come together one
evening when the compulsion to shout seemed less.
They were a motley group, though many clearly came from the streets
like Fael had. To begin they each told what little they remembered of
what happened before they awoke in the canyon. While they talked, Fael
looked around the group. Something was nagging him, something they all
had in common that he hadn't quite placed. He had been fighting
beforehand; Nightchild had been throwing rocks; many of the others had
been doing completely unrelated things that had to do with jobs. There
seemed nothing in common, but as the stories continued Fael grew more
and more positive that there was something.
It was when he glanced at another street fighter like himself, a woman
sitting across the group from him, that the connection dawned on him.
She hadn't told what she remembered yet, but he saw the knife sheath,
identical to his own, on her right wrist.
An older woman was speaking, a witch she called herself, and said she
had been casting a charm. Fael interrupted her.
"When you cast spells, do you use a wand?"
She narrowed her eyes and stopped talking at the interruption. Finally
she answered. "Yes, I always..."
"And when witches and wizards use their wands, can they cast with any
hand or do they use their strong hand?"
Again she showed anger at the interruption, but she seemed to realize
now that Fael had a purpose in the question. "I suppose I could use
either, but I use my strong hand..."
"Which is your left hand. Am I correct?"
She could only nod her affirmation.
"And I would guess," Fael looked around the group gathered there,
"that every one of us here is left-handed."
Shocked silence answered him as each person slowly nodded.
"And each of us was doing something with our left hands before this
cloaked man took us." He didn't wait for the nods this time. "So why
would our being left-handed matter, and what does it have to do with
the echoes of this canyon?"
Silence greeted this question, finally broken by the witch.
"Prophecy." She looked around at the others. "There must be a prophecy
that this wizard wants us to fulfill."
Fael nodded. "That would seem to fit what we know. Any thoughts?
Anyone know any prophecies to fit this?"
A voice across the circle finally answered. "Maybe if we had some idea
what we could possibly learn from an echo in a foreign language then
maybe we'd have a clue to work on."
"Are these definitely foreign languages, then?" The thought had
occurred to Fael, but he knew nothing of other languages. Several
people affirmed that they had heard languages they knew among the
mysterious echoes.
The merchant's son timidly asked, "Is there a language no one knows,
some language of power or magic?
Everyone looked at the witch to answer this, but it was Nightchild who
spoke up. "There is." At the looks sent his way, the child explained,
"I used to run errands for a wizard from time to time and I learned
things from him. It seems that all the wizards of the Winged City are
desperately searching for something they called the Language of
Wisdom."
The witch filled in what Nightchild didn't know. "There is a rumored
Language of Wisdom, a language that no one speaks, that no one has
ever spoken. It's said to be a perfectly constructed language, so
perfect that knowledge of any one word implies the whole language:
every word and the way to use them."
"Well, that would be easier than finding the right spot and shouting
each word until we had learned the full language." Fael looked around,
though night was obscuring the faces around him. "I think we have done
what we can for now. Think on this and we'll meet again tomorrow night
to see if there are any plans to be made."
And the left hand of the Falcon
Shall fly to the Canyon of Babel;
And there, when the word is spoken,
The answer will shatter the jail.
"Where did this come from?" The group of ensorcelled shouters was
gathered again beside the river, and the witch had spoken the words of
a prophecy.
The witch looked back at Fael with hard eyes. "Witches have their ways
of learning things. My mind is a library of things I do not yet know."
"And this prophecy...?"
"The prophecy itself, I think, helps us little except to confirm what
we guessed last night. Each of us is left-handed and from the Winged
City, the falcon." Fael thought of the rich parts of town that spread
up the valley in two directions, the wings that had earned the city
its moniker. "And here we are in the canyon. The answer to the word
that's spoken is an echo. The right echo will shatter the jail of
ignorance, the jail of folly--clearly the Language of Wisdom."
There was muttering around the circle as she explained this, as if not
everyone had trusted the guesses of the night before. Ignoring the
mutters, Fael spoke. "That is...good to know. I wish it could help us
shatter our jail."
"There's more yet. Wouldn't you like to know who made the prophecy?"
The witch seemed to enjoy the tension, the spotlight. Fael was sure
she had earned some of her living by such performances.
At just the right moment, before anyone could break the silence to ask
her, she continued. "He was a mage named Sipolius, one of the most
powerful wizards of the last century." Now she leaned in to her
listeners and lowered her voice, as if sharing a secret. "But he was
no great prophet. In fact none of his prophecies has yet come true."
She sat back up, her proud smile visible even in the growing dark.
"So someone's trusting an unreliable prophecy to lead us to this
Language of Wisdom." Fael sat back and shook his head. "That's not a
good sign for us."
Someone spoke out of the darkness across the circle. "All we can do
then is just try to make this prophecy come true so we can go back to
our lives."
"Yeah, I suppose so. Tomorrow--and how ever many days it takes after
that--let's be very organized about covering every space of this
canyon."
While the others followed their prescribed paths through the canyon
throughout the morning, Fael stood in one place and tried to hold his
mouth shut. He wanted to see if he could fight the enchantment by
sheer will. If so, they could all refuse to shout any more, and the
wizard, who surely was observing everything that happened, would have
to come to the canyon himself and speak with them. Of course, a wizard
powerful enough to enchant so many people could travel there easily
and might just as easily make the enchantment even stronger.
His speculations were cut short when a shout burst from his lips. "Damn!"
"Dahn!" came the echo as Fael swore again under his breath. He had
felt so close to breaking the curse.
He tried to remember what he'd been thinking before he had given in.
Something about how powerful the wizard would have to be. He had a
nagging feeling that this was important.
Later that afternoon he approached the witch. They were both taking a
break from repeated shouts separated only by an echo and a step to one
side or the other.
"This enchantment on us," Fael said. "It must take a pretty powerful
wizard, huh? So many people and such strict requirements."
The witch rubbed her face as if to push away her weariness. "Yes. I
can't imagine the power it must be taking, and every day too, not only
when he enchanted us in the first place."
"How long ago did Sipolius die?"
The witch was suddenly alert, her eyes boring into Fael. "I don't
know. He was famous about a hundred years ago, but wizards can live a
long time if they choose to waste power that way."
Fael blew out the breath he'd been holding and nodded. "I suspect we
have a prophet trying to make his own prophecy come true."
Fael and the witch did not discuss their suspicions with the group
that night when they met to discuss the progress of the day. Large
areas of the canyon had been covered, but there was so much more to
go, and they realized just how much more when Nightchild spoke up.
"This wizard sent us all to one side of the river, but the canyon must
echo on the other side too. Should we go across?"
A debate ensued, and most of the people wanted to get the near side
done before attempting the other side, but Fael disagreed. Sending a
few across at least to lay the groundwork made sense to him. Plus,
something in the way Nightchild had asked the question made him want
to find a way across.
When they had finished, Fael watched the witch head off to the river
and pick among the reeds there, as if searching for some magic
ingredient. He smiled and went to his cave to sleep.
Not far down the canyon they found an easy place to ford the river.
Fael and Nightchild were among the five who crossed and hunted echoes
on the opposite bank. They each took a section, and when they reached
the end of it, they would go on past all the others, count off several
dozen paces, leave a mark and begin shouting. In this way they
leap-frogged up the canyon, covering a good portion by the time they
turned to cross back to the other side. As they walked to the ford,
Fael could sense the frustration, the lowering of their morale after
another day of finding nothing.
Fael kept close beside Nightchild as they crossed back to find the others.
The low morale changed when they found themselves surrounded by their
comrades back on the other side of the river. They were all trying to
speak at once, but finally one of them spoke loudly enough to be
understood over the others.
"We've done it. Aldom found the echo!"
"Where is it?" Nightchild asked with the excitement of a child
receiving a present.
No one seemed to know the answer to that, and Aldom himself was not
nearby. They all turned up the river to search for him and quickly
found the man, a former dockworker in the Winged City, standing beside
a narrow stream, gazing into the water that fell down toward his feet.
In his excitement, Nightchild was the first to reach Aldom. "Is this
the place? Did you really find it?"
Aldom turned a dazed look on the child.
Before he could answer, Fael spoke. "Wait. This Language of Wisdom, is
it something that all of us could truly learn?"
Aldom gave himself a small shake that seemed to do nothing to change
his perplexed gape. But he spoke. "I don't know. How would I know
that?"
Fael glanced at the witch then answered. "Ask yourself in the
language. Maybe the wisdom of the language itself will tell you."
The witch nodded as Aldom spoke words that no one could hear.
He shook his head. "No." He tilted his head as if listening to an
answer, an inaudible echo. "Only one person can know it at a time."
Aldom was still too dazed to realize his danger, but someone else
asked, "So what does the wizard hope to gain?"
Before anyone could answer, Nightchild butted in. "But at least you
can tell us the place, can't you?" His voice sounded a little less
childlike, a little less innocent.
Fael looked at the witch and nodded once. Without hesitation, she
stepped forward and threw a necklace woven out of river reeds around
Nightchild's head.
Fael resisted the temptation to watch the boy's reaction and turned
instead to Aldom. "Don't answer him. As you value your life, keep
silent."
Before Aldom could answer, the witch spoke to Nightchild. "Even the
most powerful of wizards can be caught by surprise, Sipolius."
Now all eyes were on the dark-haired child with his necklace of reeds.
The witch hadn't told Fael what the necklace was or how she'd made it
during the previous night, but clearly Nightchild/Sipolius could sense
whatever power it had over him. And Fael knew that somehow those
little reeds, gathered beneath the stars and woven by moonlight, bound
the wizard's magic. He stood there unmoving, his eyes shadowed and
unreadable.
"Now," the witch said, reaching for a strand of the necklace, "I need
you to revoke the spell that binds us here. All of it: what makes us
shout, what makes us wander, what bars us from the rim and beyond."
She twisted one strand, and the boy winced. He waved a hand and spoke
a single word. "It is done." His tone was flat and yet still the voice
of a child.
"And next," she twisted another strand, and the boy mage nearly cried
out in pain, "you will tell us where we are and how to return to the
Winged City. I don't trust you to teleport us back."
He stared at her. "Do you have any idea how far..." His question was
cut off by a further twist of the necklace. "Fine. We have a long
journey to go. We might as well start now."
"I think, Sipolius, your journey may be even longer at my side. I
always wanted a little boy. Would I not make a good mother?" The witch
gave him a wry smile. "Or perhaps you'd make a better familiar. Do you
know how to fetch? Or would you rather hunt rats?"
"Oh, the dabbler of a witch wants to learn transfigurations. Let her
kneel down and grovel, and maybe I'll show her something."
"Brat!" The witch twisted Sipolius's ear until he shrieked. Sipolius
stomped on her foot and pounded at her torso with ineffectual fists. Fael
took the boy wizard by the arm and dragged him, cursing in his high-
pitched child's voice, to the head of their group, where Fael made him lead
the way up the nearest ravine toward the canyon rim.
Daniel Ausema's fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous publications, including Nemonymous, Fictitious Force, Reflection's Edge and Raven Electrick.