Paragons of Ether

by Ryan Muree

  “You should not have come home,” her mother said to her, unmoved by her father’s words.

  Emeryss swallowed. “Mother, I—”

  Her mother pulled away from them, hand raised, and headed for their home. “I need time.”

  Most mothers would have been happy their child was home. Most mothers would have been proud of what she’d accomplished. But not hers. It was never right. No matter what, her mother would have done something, anything—everything—differently.

  “Come,” her father said. “Let’s go to the feast.”

  Issolia and their father walked on down the shore to the tables of food and the gathering people.

  She was starving and went to follow, but the oracle had been waiting behind her father.

  Emeryss jumped a little and then sighed. “Callo—”

  Callo tossed five shells at her feet.

  They bounced across the wooden dock. Three stopped with their hollow insides facing up. The other two landed down.

  “What… what is that?”

  “They sense the ether,” Callo said. “You are the herald of the end.”

  Chapter 7

  Neeria — Revel

  Emeryss lifted her chest. “Callo, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.”

  Callo’s mouth shut. Her eyes pierced her.

  The evening wind bit at Emeryss’s knees and elbows, and she crossed her arms. “You were wrong about my destiny when I was a child. I changed it. I’m not a Scribe. I’m a Caster.”

  “So?”

  Emeryss tucked the lock of hair blowing across her face behind her ear. “So… you said I’d be nothing more. You were wrong. You gave me the wrong destiny—”

  “I don’t give out destinies, child.” She held her arms up to the starlit sky and the calm sea. “I read them.”

  “Well, you read them wrong.” Emeryss stepped carefully around the oracle’s shells to head to the feast. “I really don’t think—”

  “You think I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Emeryss stopped. “I don’t mean to disrespect you, Callo. I can see ether, so I’m sure you feel something, but…”

  “You let that Ingini man with black ether dust stuck in his fingernails fall into the ocean from a great height.”

  Emeryss’s breath caught in her throat.

  “He had a weight around his neck. A burden, perhaps, or was it literal?”

  She froze. How would she know about that? How would she—

  “All things return to the sea, and the sea never lies.” Callo smiled. “You have brought the end. You have brought the war, and it will end everything.”

  “Maybe… maybe that’s a good thing,” Emeryss swallowed. “Not the war part, but the end of things being the way they are.”

  “Maybe. Maybe it is good. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s both.”

  Emeryss found her strong spirit again. “Cryptic messages where multiple things could be the answer and fit the description isn’t predicting anything. It’s just a way to convince people—”

  “You did what no one else could. You are not alone in this, but you are the catalyst.”

  Emeryss rolled her eyes. “The catalyst for…?”

  “The end.” Callo held her hands out. “You’ll bring it here—”

  “I really don’t—”

  “—Right here. Raining fire. Spidering lightning. Eruptions from the earth.”

  Her heart rate increased. How would she know that? “Do you mean Neeria? Or war?”

  “Both.”

  Callo was wrong. She had to be wrong.

  “They have no reason to come here. They don’t know about me—”

  “They know,” Callo said. “How did I know?”

  Emeryss didn’t have an answer for that.

  “The void is in control,” Callo continued.

  Emeryss chewed her bottom lip. “I’ll admit, I don’t know how you figured out some of those facts, but if you’re trying to predict the future, then why be cryptic? If I can’t figure out your hints or your code, then I can’t stop it. Do you want that to happen?”

  Callo folded her hands and peered down at her fingers. “You were a Scribe. You translated ether into pictures. You know it speaks in code, lines, scribbles. This is all I’m relaying to you.”

  “And the difference was that I knew what I was writing and in great detail,” Emeryss said. “Glamour, Healing, Reduce Size. Whatever it was, I knew what it meant. You’re just telling me triangles, circles, dots. That’s not helpful, and it might not even be something. The whispers might just be your inner thoughts…”

  Callo smirked. “What I read from the ether is more complex than random sigils. When it says to me that the void is in control, that’s all it says.”

  Emeryss wrapped her arms tighter around herself. The smell of the stews and laughter from the feast had drifted to her. Her stomach growled. “And who or what is the void?”

  “The void is etherless, and it’s at the seat of power, running everything. It is the empty. The hollow.”

  She looked to her family at the feast and back to Callo. “Aren’t we etherless? Neerians?”

  “Use your ability. See for yourself if we’re etherless.”

  Emeryss already knew the answer. She’d walked around the streets of her home, letting the veil of the ethereal realm fall over her. It had revealed bright pinks and greens and blues in her family and neighbors. Ether truly was everywhere. Could they learn to cast or scribe like she had?

  “Okay, so bad people are in control,” Emeryss said. “That’s pretty understandable all things considered.”

  Callo nodded. “And if you don’t stop them, then it is the end.”

  “The end. The end of what…? The end of their reign? The end of our lives and our world?”

  “Possibly. War is certain. Death is certain—”

  “Death is not the end.”

  “Your family. Your friends. The man with the silver arm. The girl with the rainbow hair—”

  “But—”

  “Everything you know will end. Are you willing to stand aside and let them die?”

  No. And just because Neerians accepted the inevitability of death, didn’t mean they didn’t try to avoid it. They just didn’t let it hold them back.

  But what was she going to do about it? Grier was a world away doing whatever it was he was doing. She had no idea what Adalai was up to. She could help fight somewhere with someone else, but with who? The RCA was corrupted. Ingini had their hands full. All she could feasibly worry about was her own people, and Neerians couldn’t defend themselves against the RCA or the Ingini.

  Callo was speaking as if a revolution was necessary, but who would lead that charge? They needed some sort of leader to rally people together and fight the corruption if they were going to win. Stadhold might help, but they were supposedly neutral. They’d never break their alliance with Revel and attack them. That would be insane for Jgenult to do.

  Callo cleared her throat. “Someone has to do something or Neeria will meet its end.”

  Emeryss swallowed. “Neeria is out of the way. It has nothing to do with—”

  “They know,” Callo grinned. “They know what you can do, and they will come for you.”

  “How? And why would they do that? Why would they destroy Neeria?”

  “Does it matter why? Have they needed a reason before?”

  Sufford came rushing back. The helplessness. The defeat. The groans of crackling buildings. The screams of people running. The whistle of RCA ships overhead. The smells, the haze…

  “Then what am I supposed to do?” Emeryss shouted, her hands trembling.

  “You must go to Her and get Her help.”

  “Who?”

  “Who else?” Callo’s gaze lifted to the great stone statue of the Goddess of Death looming over the Neerian shorelines, welcoming the spirits of the dead to cross the Endov Sea for Eien.

  Emeryss’s awe at the opportunity of meeting the Goddess was quickly
replaced with a scoff. “You want me to die to visit the Goddess? I have to die to save the others?”

  Callo’s eyebrows furled together. “No, you need to go see Her, talk with Her, ask Her for help. Complete the Ori’dhai.”

  Emeryss’s heart pounded as she looked down the coastline in the direction of the famed and distant island of Amme.

  The Ori’dhai, translated from the old tongue as “Goddess Test,” was a journey Neerians made when they assumed their new positions as oracles or spiritual leaders. It was supposedly difficult, supposedly dangerous. The Goddess waited for the traveler at the end to speak with them, gave them an epiphany, showed them their destiny. Some came back like Callo—frustrating and somewhat creepy. Others, it’d been said, were so overwhelmed they dissolved away on the breeze.

  She swallowed. “You mean actually speak to Her and wait for an answer?”

  Callo nodded. “In the times before ours, the threat to humanity has been a recurring event. As Goddess of Death, she oversees it. If this is the end, as I predict it is, then She’s the one to help us. She can stop it from overtaking everything.”

  “Because…”

  “Because She’s done it before.”

  Right.

  They knew that. It was in old texts, old stories, myths, legends.

  Callo feared the ether was telling her that this was another one of those events. Another time for the world to rebirth itself.

  Emeryss nodded slowly. “I need to think about this.”

  “You don’t have much time.” Callo took Emeryss’s hands in hers. “I see that you read ether differently now. You have opened your mind to its possibilities. You need to open your mind to this, to Her.”

  Emeryss slipped her hands free and walked on down the shoreline toward the feast.

  People ate, laughed, and mingled. Old friends argued and hugged. New friends shook hands and shared drinks. Families sang together near bright-orange fires and fed and drank—her own family among them.

  Her father sat side-by-side with neighbors swaying to a song played through reeds twisted together with sea grass. Issolia and her husband pawed over their new daughter, laughing and singing with her. Her younger siblings were sneaking alcohol in the shadows of the party.

  The Ori’dhai.

  The RCA are coming…

  No. She didn’t want to believe it. They were so far north and out of the way. They had nothing to do with any of it. Who would punish them or destroy them? Aurelis was far south. That’s where the palace was, and that’s where the king sat with his advisors.

  Callo said they knew about her, but how did the RCA find out?

  She’d casted in that fight, sure. It was possible someone who’d survived had seen her. But the reports were that she was killed in Sufford.

  Grier.

  No. He wouldn’t have told them about her or where she was, especially not the RCA. He might have moved on to his responsibilities, but he would not do that to her, to her family. Then again, his return probably sparked something in Stadhold and Revel. He was alive and well, counter to the reports. Would he tell them she was, too?

  No. He wouldn’t do that. He’d loved her. She was sure of that, and even if he hadn’t, that wasn’t who Grier was.

  She crossed her arms tighter as a warm blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  “It’s too cold to be far away from the fire like this,” Issolia said. “Come sit closer with us. Hold Hellina.”

  She nodded. “In a minute.”

  “You okay?”

  She forced a smile. “Yeah—”

  “Don’t worry about mom, Emeryss. She loves us, you especially.”

  She nodded again, and her sister walked back toward her family.

  Callo had read some things correctly. And Emeryss had to kill herself to learn how to cast. Technically speaking, Callo wasn’t wrong.

  And was Emeryss willing to gamble her home and family?

  All this gone?

  Everything she loved and cared for destroyed like that Ingini town?

  No. She wouldn’t gamble it on their lives, but why? Why would Revel attack them?

  They could come for her, but Neerians couldn’t cast. They couldn’t scribe. They weren’t a threat.

  But I am.

  She looked up.

  She was a threat. She’d figured out how to scribe at least, and if they knew, however they knew, that she’d learned to cast, they might come to Neeria to squash the possibility of anyone else learning how she’d done it.

  She’d always known they would want to know how she did it. Grier had even said they’d take her away to some training facility somewhere and make her teach them.

  Did they think she would teach Neerians?

  The RCA had become a blind, murderous gang. They were being controlled and couldn’t be trusted. She was certain Keepers were meant to keep Scribes, to keep the current power system in place, and her being in Neeria threatened that.

  If they knew about her, they might think she could teach other Neerians. And a community of people learning to scribe and cast without grimoires would be a threat, as well as an easy target.

  Her heart thumped harder in her chest with the rising drum of the musicians.

  Revel would come. They’d incinerate her friends, destroy their homes. And then, after her family and friends were murdered, they’d lie about it, just like they had with Sufford in Ingini. They’d hide the truth, cut the threads before they could be followed. They’d teach other Revelians a lesson through the decimation of Neeria, just like they had Ingini, and she would have brought them here.

  She jumped up.

  She had to leave. She needed to pack her things, whatever she thought she’d need, and go before anything could happen.

  “Emmy?”

  Issolia had called to her, but she took off for their house.

  Boots she had. She still had the mining outfit and the clothes she’d arrived in, but it would be cold soon.

  She could go to the Goddess, or she could go south, hide, blend in where it would be warmer in the winter. Shorts and breezy shirts were out of the question. Her sandals were better left at home. She needed good pants, and if it got too cold, she could wear her Zephyr suit under them.

  She’d borrow Issolia’s pants, leave her a thank you note and an apology, and return them when she got back. She burst through the door and went straight for the dresser.

  When would she return?

  When the war was over?

  It had taken years to get to the war’s current point, and destroying the Goliath had likely set progress back. Could she be gone that long?

  “I could go to Stadhold,” she mumbled to herself, stuffing her bag with scarves, extra socks, and underwear.

  Going to Stadhold wouldn’t be any better. They could arrest her, charge her for leaving, or blame her for killing Avrist, and lock her up. But she’d be away from Neeria.

  Grier would be there. He wouldn’t let them lock her up, right?

  Tears stung her.

  If he’d moved on, then she needed to, too. She couldn’t rely on him to get her out or to be waiting for her. If he’d moved on…

  She inhaled through her nose to keep from crying.

  He hadn’t been able to save her before in Stadhold, right? The only reason she’d gotten out was because she had taken a chance and ran for it. She couldn’t count on his help now even if he’d be willing. He wasn’t in any position of power, and therefore, she couldn’t trust that even if he wanted to help her that he could.

  “What are you doing?” Her mother’s voice came from the open door.

  She turned her head.

  “What are you doing?” she repeated.

  “Packing.”

  “For where? Why? What aren’t you telling me this time, Emeryss?” Her mother’s tone rose an octave and in intensity. “You can’t lie—”

  “I wasn’t lying before.” Emeryss stood from kneeling over her bag.

  “Keeping things
from us is as bad as lying—”

  “No, because sometimes telling you is worse. Because it puts you in danger. It puts everyone at risk. And now… Callo told me what’s coming.”

  Her mother’s nostrils flared. “You brought it here—”

  “I had nowhere else to go!” Emeryss yelled, and then inhaled to collect herself. “This is my home. This is my family. I spent years in Stadhold just trying to get back to this. Where else was I supposed to go? What else was I supposed to do?”

  Her mother’s eyelashes fluttered as she appeared to reconsider Emeryss’s words.

  “I was imprisoned there, and I fought my way out. I fought with my life to get out and come home. And now, I have to leave it. So, if you’re going to scream and yell at me for how I did something wrong again, then get on with it.” Emeryss turned back to her sister’s dresser and found a pair of old gloves with the fingers cut off at the knuckles. She put them on with shaky hands.

  Her mother cleared her throat and softly asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Amme.” She tied her bag shut and threw it over her shoulder. She’d said it just because it was easier and more believable than saying somewhere else. “Callo thinks I can talk to the Goddess and ask for her help in protecting Neeria in the war.”

  “The Goddess?” Her mother’s eyes sought hers. “The Ori’dhai?”

  She nodded. “If I’m gone, then the RCA will have no reason to believe—”

  “Believe what?”

  “That I’m training you on how to use ether without grimoires.” Their eyes met.

  Her mother huffed with a tinge of laughter. “We don’t want to learn—”

  “I know that, but Revel won’t accept it. They don’t trust anyone, and they can’t be trusted.”

  Her mother put her hands on her hips. “Too bad. It’s the truth. We’ll tell them we don’t want to learn and to forget it. We’re Revelian, too, after all.”

  “No, we’re not!” Emeryss squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and pieced together any strength she had left. “We’re Neerians, and they’ll never let us forget that.” She moved past her mother to leave.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Emeryss’s heart squeezed as her feet froze in place on the front stoop of her sister’s home. “What?” She turned.