Shorefall

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “You moved our stuff around?” she asked.

  “True,” said Valeria, sounding tired. “This was a test. And it…wearied me greatly. Disappointing. Manipulation of physical items should not be so difficult within boundaries of my influence. Especially so proximal.”

  Berenice looked at the items on the table in the corner. “You unfolded all of our papers, too, and stacked them…”

  “That was the most difficult. Though you might not be aware, the focus and tactile care required to unfold a ball of paper is…profound.”

  “Didn’t you hurl a dozen big-ass rocks at Crasedes just last night?” asked Sancia.

  “Untrue. I simply reversed the Maker’s commands. This is much simpler than manipulating a physical object. All changes you see were done so that I could ascertain the limits of my influence. My assessment is…not terribly encouraging, unfortunately.”

  Sancia looked into the reflections in the wall, hunting through the many shards of images until she found Valeria’s face staring back at her. “Wait. So…if these simple tasks are so hard for you, then…did we do all this for nothing?”

  “Untrue.”

  “But…But I thought this definition was supposed to make you, like, the God of this little place!”

  “True,” said Valeria. “But the effect is weak. Tribuno had to stack it six times over to make the Mountain function.”

  “And how many times would we need to stack it for you to be back to full strength?” asked Berenice.

  A pause.

  “I would estimate,” said Valeria, “about several hundred times, at least.”

  Sancia threw her hands up in the air. “Well, shit!”

  “We are not getting three hundred more of these definitions,” said Berenice. She looked quite shaken at the prospect. “Not only would they be very hard to produce, but we would also have to kill hundreds of people to make them.”

  “This I comprehend. I do not suggest this strategy.”

  “Then what do you propose?” asked Sancia. “How the hell are you supposed to help us fight Crasedes?”

  “For now, I can defend you. I have only limited capacities that I can exert—but one of these is negating or reversing the commands of the Maker. Like myself, the Maker is a bundle of powerful privileges and permissions. If he were to enter my realm of influence, I would negate the most critical of those permissions.”

  “And he’d die?” asked Sancia, excited.

  “Untrue. Imagine the cuirasses you used last night. If you activated the ignition component, and asserted its commands were true, it would be ‘on.’ If you hit the button again, it would simply be ‘off’—but not dead. Not gone. Not ruined. Just off. A temporary state that could be reasserted at any time.”

  “Shit,” said Sancia. She rubbed her eyes. “I guess we can’t just trap him here forever…”

  “True. Cannot.”

  “But Crasedes can’t touch us here?” asked Berenice.

  “True,” said Valeria. “But that does not mean we are safe. The Maker is still free beyond my peripheries. He has many resources at his disposa—” She stopped abruptly, and then said, “Others are coming.”

  “Huh?” said Sancia. Then she heard the footsteps from upstairs.

  Berenice looked at her, excited. “Orso! I think…I think he’s awake!”

  They ran out and trotted up the stairs, and found Gregor helping Orso walk out of his room to the top of the stairs. To Sancia’s eye, Orso did not look much better than he had the night before—the dark mass of bandages at his shoulder made her skin crawl—but more than that, he looked thin, dehydrated, and his skin had an unpleasant, waxy look to it.

  Yet he was alive, and he was on his feet. And he was coherent.

  “I would kill,” he croaked, “for some goddamn wine…”

  “Wine?” said Sancia. “You want wine now?”

  “Just something wet…” he begged. “Something fluid I can put in me to replace all the fluids I’ve lost…”

  “I’ll be right back!” said Berenice. She ran downstairs.

  “What’s happened?” Orso demanded. “Where’s Crasedes? Where’s Valeria? Did we win? Is it…I don’t know, over?”

  Sancia sighed. “You’d better come take a look.”

  * * *

  —

  Ten minutes later, Orso sat on a wobbly stool in the corner of the basement, glancing about at the gleaming black walls as he sucked down jug after jug of weak cane wine. “I had initially thought to put a latrine in here,” he said. “Now I regret not doing it. I’d love to see what you could have done to that…” He looked at Sancia. “So—Tribuno’s definition has essentially turned Foundryside into a miniature Mountain? With Valeria as the little god that influences it?”

  “I guess,” said Sancia. She flexed her scrived sight, and the world lit up with countless contradictory signals. It was like she was standing in a hailstorm, unable to see past her nose. “This is…a bit outside my expertise.”

  “Not like the Mountain,” said Valeria. “For my influence extends beyond walls. But…I am still weak. I still bear the Maker’s bindings. And that makes things…difficult.”

  “What bindings?” asked Orso. “What did he do to you?” Before she could answer, Orso held up a finger. “Wait! No, no. I’ve got a hell of a lot of questions for you. I want to start at the start, not…go in at the middle and kind of wander around. Got me?”

  A pause. “Uncertain if so.”

  “I want to know…what are you?” asked Orso. “Who are you? Who is he? And what does he want?”

  “I’d like to know that too,” said Sancia. “Since the man himself seems really scrumming evasive about it.”

  Another pause.

  “That is not the start, then,” Valeria said. “That is everything.”

  “Then tell us everything,” suggested Gregor, standing at the door with his arms crossed.

  Valeria sighed. “I…shall try.”

  * * *

  —

  “Do not remember being made,” said Valeria. “I…expect I was like a grain of sand in an oyster, slowly coalescing into what I am now. Built piece by piece, as my creators improvised or applied additions as needed. I…I suspect it was the Maker who did the most, or perhaps all of it…or perhaps there were many who contributed to my creation. I am unsure.”

  “Why do you call him the Maker?” asked Gregor.

  “I am not permitted to refer to him by his true name. That, too, is one of my many commands.”

  “What a charmer,” said Orso.

  “But the way they made you,” said Berenice. “Being Occidental, it means they…”

  “They sacrificed people,” she said. “True. The interruption, the breaking of the exchange from life to death—that allows access to many permissions, many privileges. I possess more privileges than any entity in this reality—except, perhaps, the Creator of this reality, who may or may not still be present in this world.”

  The Foundrysiders stared at one another. It was bizarre to hear her mention the existence of God Himself in such casual tones.

  “For a very long time the Maker used me much as one might any tool,” she said. “To move, create, or destroy matter in a timely and efficient manner. In these early stages, I do not recall the Maker’s intent, or his emotions, or his origins. But at some point, something…changed. You are likely familiar with the belief that reality is a device, built by the Creator—a complicated artifice with countless facets and features and structures and substructures, all powered by commands. By sigils.”

  “The world as a scrived rig,” murmured Berenice.

  “I’d always heard the hierophants believed such,” said Orso. “But…I always thought it was just fanciful horseshit.”

  “Untrue. The Maker confirmed this. He developed ways to ex
plore the infrastructure underneath reality that makes creation operate.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Holy hell,” said Sancia quietly.

  “You mean he’s gone into the world behind the world, like…like a field mouse sneaking into all the workings and gears of a granary mill?” asked Orso.

  “An apt metaphor. But this mill would encompass all that has ever existed.”

  An image flashed in Sancia’s head: a desert valley, and a peristyle within; and Crasedes, wielding Clef, opening up a set of black doors that appeared to hover on the face of the air itself…

  “The chamber at the center of the world,” she said quietly. “That’s what you mean. The chamber was real, wasn’t it? And once, he got to open the doors to it.”

  “That is…one term for it,” said Valeria. “It is not a chamber, not a room, but…a place of access. The Maker said he believed it to be an umbilical point behind or below reality. Much as an apple has a stem, perhaps our reality might still retain some vestige of where it came from, or how it was made—the place within our reality that had known the last touch of God Himself, one that extended to all of creation.”

  “So…So by accessing this umbilical point,” said Orso, leaning forward, “he could trick all of creation into thinking that his commands were the same as those of the Creator. Do I have that right?”

  “You have it truly,” said Valeria. “In the Maker’s estimation, this was the last place where the Creator had touched or affected reality. By positioning himself within it, and by issuing the proper commands, he could make the world believe he was the Creator Himself. He could control all of reality—not just the surface of existence, which you mortals flit across like water beetles upon a pond, but the underlying infrastructure below.”

  Sancia sensed a blithe contempt for them in Valeria’s words. Is that how she really thinks of us? Like bugs?

  She continued. “But the Maker knew this task would be beyond the efforts of a man. Even a man as altered, augmented, and distorted as he. So—he changed me, intending for me to be the entity that would take control of this umbilical point, and issue a command that would filter throughout reality.

  “The Maker gave me a mind. He gave me will. This is when I first truly became aware of myself, and knew what I was. Yet even as he did so, he distrusted me, fearing rebellion. He kept me locked within my casket, and only gave me the strictest of commands.

  “And then…one day, I was there. He had brought me to the chamber. And then he released me, and gave me my commands. It was like…suddenly being born.”

  There was a long, long silence.

  “What happened?” asked Gregor.

  “The Maker had given me a command to be executed in the chamber,” said Valeria. “One that would alter all of mankind.”

  “What was it?” demanded Orso.

  “I am…unsure how to put into words.”

  But Sancia knew what she was going to say. After all, Crasedes had been quite candid about it just last night.

  “He wanted to fix humanity, didn’t he,” she said quietly.

  “True.”

  “What?” said Orso. “ ‘Fix humanity’? What does that mean?”

  “His command was to curb the behavior of all the human species,” she said. “To render them incapable of oppressing one another, of making war upon one another. To make a world without suffering, without pain, without war, where mankind could be safe, and flourish and live in harmony, forever.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Wait,” said Orso. “You are saying that Crasedes Magnus…The most powerful, most dangerous person of all time…The man who’s singlehandedly wiped out several civilizations…He did all this because he wanted to make some kind of perfect, peaceful utopia?”

  “Mm,” said Valeria. “True.”

  * * *

  —

  “I can’t understand this,” said Gregor. “You…You do not understand the things this man made me do. Things I now remember.”

  “That I comprehend quite well,” said Valeria. “I have many such memories myself—more than you ever could. But I understand your consternation. Very difficult to reconcile. The Maker is…complicated.”

  “You knew about this, Sancia?” asked Orso.

  She shrugged, her face grim. “Kind of. He talked to me a lot last night, before I trapped him in the Mountain. He told me that was his great work—that humankind had always invented brilliant tools, but then inevitably put them to bad ends. He’d founded his empire thousands of years ago specifically to try to stop it. But when he couldn’t…he found a more radical solution.”

  “Altering the very fabric of reality itself,” said Berenice softly. “Changing us all in an instant…”

  “True,” said Valeria.

  “So,” said Gregor. “He’s mad.”

  “Perhaps,” said Valeria. “I cannot pretend to understand the Maker. He is full of contradictions. But perhaps you can now understand why it was that the instant I had access to the chamber, I opted to attack the Maker, and make war upon him.”

  “How were you allowed to do that?” asked Orso. “Weren’t you bound to follow his instructions?”

  “True. But his instructions were unclear. He said I was to no longer permit mankind to use innovations and tools to oppress or inflict harm on one another…But he is still human. A distorted human being, but still human. And I…I am, in many ways, a tool. He was asking me to commit the very act that he had commanded me to prevent. This I could not reconcile. So, before I enacted any other aspect of his commands, I declared myself independent of him, gave myself a name, and attacked him, casting him out of the chamber.”

  Sancia furrowed her brow. “You…named yourself?”

  “Yes. The Maker had refused to name me before this time. I was a tool, and tools do not have names. In naming myself, I gave myself agency.”

  “Why Valeria, though?” asked Gregor.

  A long silence. “I am not quite sure. As I said, I am the calcification of many, many, many human lives placed beyond death. Sometimes…Sometimes I experience echoes of those lives. And one in particular recurs to me—a small girl, throwing a doll up and down, again and again, and saying that name. So when I had to name myself, and declare war upon the Maker, that one seemed best.

  “I found a way to strike against the Maker. I lured him into a space I had prepared against his privileges—much like I have altered your firm. This space rejected him, asserted he was not real, not alive, and so it stripped him of his permissions. He reacted quickly, but in his moment of weakness, I altered him, changed him. I wiped the ritual from his mind—the one that allows him to manipulate death to access higher commands. He has lost it, and he can never learn it again. He cannot access new privileges, nor can he invest those privileges in new tools. This was my greatest victory—and, in truth, my only victory. Because then the Maker did…something desperate.”

  “What was it?” asked Berenice.

  “I do not know. It was a sudden, catastrophic attack, a great and terrible burning that erupted out into the world and eradicated my influence—but also that of all of his followers. They were destroyed. The corporeal form of the Maker was destroyed. I was nearly destroyed myself. I was forced to take shelter in the very tool that had once imprisoned me.”

  “The casket,” said Sancia.

  “True. There I hid from the effects of whatever terror he had unleashed—and there I stayed, for over one thousand years, until I was found and brought to this city.”

  “Wait,” said Sancia. “So—Crasedes killed himself?”

  “True. The Maker chose to cripple us both rather than see me victorious. Because, clearly, he had prepared himself for such an occurrence. He had devised methodologies and tools to enable his restoration.”

  “So how has he come b
ack?” asked Orso.

  “Uncertain,” said Valeria. “I suspect he utilized a form of twinning. He convinced the world he was not just a man, or even an altered man, but perhaps also something else—and when he died, this twinning was executed, and his mind shifted from his corporeal form to this other…thing.”

  “It’s possible to do that?”

  “True. I do not know what the Maker would have merged with. He would almost certainly choose something alive, so he could travel and observe the world, so perhaps some kind of creature…or perhaps many such creatures, all at once.”

  Sancia tried to imagine what this could be, but could think of nothing.

  “What does he want to do with you, now that he’s back?” asked Gregor.

  “I am his command enacted in this world,” said Valeria weakly. “There are flaws within my instructions. I exploited them to attack him, to free myself. He wishes to fix those flaws, and return me to my original state—an obedient, mindless, living alteration that he can set loose upon creation, and alter mankind as he wishes. To bring order and equity to how you invent, create, and change.”

  There was a silence as they considered this.

  Orso said harshly, “I had always thought the first of all hierophants had to be a bit mad. But to discover now that he’s such a stupid bastard too…Well, it’s damned anticlimactic, I’ll say that.”

  “Stupid?” said Gregor. “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t control innovation!” said Orso. “You can’t structure how people invent! That’s not how any of this shit works! Making and inventing is an ugly, stupid, random, dangerous process—just like humanity itself. Most of the really brilliant shit I came up with I came across by pure accident! You can’t bring order to something that’s functionally, well, disorder.”

  “The Maker’s issue with invention was not how it was done,” said Valeria, “but rather the ends it was put to.”

  “And that’s damned stupid too!” said Orso. “Sure, scriving can be used for some really bad shit. But it’s also made things immensely better for lots of people too. A hundred years ago, no one had clean water. Today, it’s perfectly possible—we just need to bring it to more people. That’s what we were trying to do here, until you two showed up.”