Beyond Citadel by Marcos Efron

Author:Marcos Efron [Efron, Marcos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Dystopian, Action & Adventure, Science Fiction, Teen & Young Adult
Publisher: Superior Weight
Published: 2016-05-05T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

THE CRATER’S DENIZENS included Citadel’s exiled, nomadic tribes, and people of unknown lands whose ancestors had survived the Cloud Wars. The deep basin provided concealment, and the lake sustained its people, but the Crater was not meant to be a permanent outpost.

Colonizing the Crater had been Leland Bant’s idea. Bant, his family, and the families of other Citadeleans—all branded agitators and anarchists—had settled in the Crater after their Banishment, in the year that Jacob’s father had assumed his rule over Citadel.

Bant and his convoy had discovered the Crater by chance. In an effort to avoid the Cannos, they had plotted a course into the deepest wilds of the Fallow. One night, a week into their odyssey, while camped at the base of a series of steppes that rose from the arid desert in striations of red, green, copper, and silver, Bant noted the difficulty the children had with the speckled steel ball bearings they used as playing marbles. No matter how hard they flicked the orbs in their game, they rebounded to the west, as if drawn by an invisible force.

Bant had held one of the bearings in the palm of his hand and watched it quiver and roll off.

His youngest daughter, Sybil, had tugged at her father’s hem and asked, “Is the world tipping over, Papa?”

A smile had creased Bant’s mouth. He said, “It already has, my dear, many times over in fact.”

“So does that mean we’re upside down or right side up?”

“I don’t know,” he answered with a gentle laugh. “Do you feel upside down?”

Sybil shrugged her tiny shoulders. “Sometimes, I suppose. But not right now. Do you?”

“No, not if you don’t,” Bant said, then kissed the top of her head.

The following day they scaled the steppes in the direction of the invisible force. They found the Crater, a colossal concavity excavated from the earth. The bedrock was as black as onyx and striped with silvery veins of magnetic ore.

Almost thirty years had since passed, but the struggle to survive (as well as internecine squabbles in and among the founding families) had rendered their ambition of returning to Citadel a half-remembered ideal. They had intended to go back to unseat the Ministers, but complacency had set in, and the prospect of confronting the Ministry grew less appealing by each turning season. When one or another of the elders who governed the Crater raised the subject of the reclamation of Citadel, ample reason to delay always arose.

By the time Nura and Edison passed through the fences around this oasis, the Crater was a self-sustained community governed by a dysfunctional counsel concerned only with preserving their power.

The young men who stood guard at the entrance were armed with halberds and swords. Sand and sweat streaked their exposed arms and face. Their homespun armor was forged from the clods of ore scattered about the Crater and environs. The guards had had no words of greeting for Edison and Nura, merely giving them a cursory once-over.

Lately three or four exiles per month had found the Crater, and they were all permitted to enter.

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