by J. S. Fields
An image invaded Emn’s mind. She watched the flares again as they taunted the now cowed populace from atop the great gold dais that housed the Eld thrones. The hairs on her arms rose. Cellulose began to swim through the air, channeling towards the flares. They pulled at every piece of wood—from the ceiling, the floors, the thrones…anything they could reach.
Come out, Eld, Arik sneered. We came to talk, to negotiate, but we will not be manipulated further! Do your dirty work yourselves.
Bonds formed. Energy surged. Arik stepped forward, heat radiating from him. Come out or we burn the palace down, and everyone in it.
“Enough,” Asth commanded. The Eld linked elbows—and then a number of things happened at once. The energy Arik was collecting dissipated, as if he was releasing a breath after being punched in the gut. Arik dropped to his knees, followed by the rest of the flares, all gasping. Cracks began to run up the walls of the throne room, and even though Emn’s vision was spotty, she was certain that tree roots were starting to weave in through the openings.
“We are done dealing with defects who cannot or will not be trained,” Asth said. She stepped forward and swiftly kicked Emn’s legs out from under her. Emn fell to the floor, the vision clouding her mind.
“I’ll go deal with the Charted Systems beings,” she heard Asth say. “There are only the five flares. Put them all away until after the move. We can decide their fate then.”
Emn lost consciousness.
Chapter 25: Eld Palace, Ardulum
Behold, the power of Ardulum! With the andal you have so carefully tended will your ships fly faster than your enemies! Your weapons shall fire truer. Your victories shall be of Neek, of Ardulum. They shall be the victories your children sing about to their children—the victory of Ardulum and Neek over blasphemers and idolaters—the return of the one, true religion.
—Excerpt from Ekimet’s worldwide broadcast on Neek, fourth lunar cycle, 230 AA
ATALANT OVERSTEPPED AND teetered, her grip on Nicholas’s flight suit the only thing keeping her upright. Fucking telepathy and fucking balance. The world around her was muted and oddly two-dimensional, and it made walking difficult. That she was walking through a palace on a planet she had sworn didn’t exist was not helping, either.
Nicholas tried another door, first by turning the handle and then by pounding on the front. Again, it was locked.
Atalant sighed and tried to straighten. That was the third door they couldn’t open. They’d made fine progress—up to this point, Corccinth’s directions had been perfect. Enter east of the kitchen. Turn left and keep left to where the hall ends, to the Talent Chamber. To Emn. Except immediately upon entering the corridor, all the doors had locked, including the one they’d come through. They’d made it all the way down the hall without incident, but the door to the Talent Chamber was also locked. They were trapped.
“Maybe we should rest.” Nicholas walked them to the wooden wall and leaned her up against it.
Atalant dug her fingers into the soft sapwood, comforted by the familiarity of the andal. “I can’t take much more of this,” she breathed. “Any of this.”
“We’ll find her.” Nicholas kept a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Just keep telling yourself—it’s just a palace. Just a planet. Just some bipeds. Best part?” He leaned in conspiratorially. “You were right!” Nicholas left her against the wall and threw himself at the door to the Talent Chamber. A thunk reverberated through the wood, but it did not give.
Atalant chuckled. “I don’t think ‘right’ is the word we should use here.” Atalant pushed herself from the wall and walked tentatively forward, running her hands over the fungal demarcation lines in the door’s paneling. “At least Corccinth and the flares got us this far. We should be able to figure out the rest on our own, right? We’re resourceful. Chances are everyone in the palace is busy with the mob the flares riled up. We just have to find a way to break down one door. One.”
“Yeah, but Corccinth could have mentioned triggering an auto locking system, or whatever this is. Also, I would have liked a little more information on this underground flare community,” Nicholas said as he rammed his shoulder into the softer white rot in the wood. The area dented, but again, the door did not move. “Flares are kept in containment, but some aren’t? That doesn’t make any logical sense. Also, ugh.” He rubbed his shoulder and glared at the door. “This isn’t working. Maybe we should try the ceiling. Maybe it’s made of something softer…” Nicholas trailed off and pointed up, his eyes wide.
A large, silent crack was forming in the paneling just above the door, the wood splintering in unnatural patterns. Smaller fissures burst from the larger crack, crossed the ceiling, and meandered down the wall. Another few breaths and the two burst into the door. It happened in eerie stillness, each separation spiraling into another without any auditory clues. Atalant’s arm hair stood on end. Something whispered in her mind. She chased it, but it was gone a moment later.
“Emn, maybe?” Nicholas asked. “If it is her, you’d think she could at least get us a path—”
The door before them burst into two pieces with a loud crack. The smaller of the pieces fell to the floor. “We’re through!” Nicholas yelled triumphantly. “Go, Emn!” He wrapped an arm back around Atalant and motioned to the doorway. “Come on.”
They didn’t get far. As if his words had sparked a chain reaction, sound returned. Cracking wood crescendoed throughout the hall. The fissures deepened. The walls crumbled. The ceiling, now so striated that it looked like vein work, lost its integrity, and wood dust rained down on them. It fell into the cracks now forming in the floor, creating a strange waterfall of andal.
“Out of the hall!” Atalant yelled. She tugged at Nicholas, stumbling across the gaps in the floor. Once they moved past the doorframe, however, the conditions did not improve. They were definitely in the Talent Chamber, of that Atalant was certain. The small circular room held numerous wood pots, three thrones, and the Eld statues. It matched Corccinth’s description perfectly. The thrones, however, were coated in dust, the fine, beige powder stark against the dark wood. Atalant looked up to gauge how bad the ceiling was and instantly regretted it when a large clump of wood dust fell into her eyes.
“Damn it,” she muttered, rubbing furiously against the secreting stuk. She forgot to maintain one hand on Nicholas, lost her balance, and kicked over a large wooden vessel. It slammed onto the floor without breaking, but a thick, viscous liquid seeped over the side and began to pool.
“Aaaand there is another species with mucus.” Nicholas carefully stepped around the growing puddle and offered Atalant a hand. “Emn may be helping, but she’s not in here. No one is. We’ll have to keep looking. Any ideas?”
“Hold on.” Ignoring the crumbling infrastructure, Atalant grabbed onto Nicholas’s shirt, bent down, and sniffed. “Know what’s funny? It does smell like stuk. It is the right consistency, too, from the looks of it. I wonder why they keep it in pots?”
The back wall fell in, crashing to the floor. Atalant could now see clearly into the receiving hall and throne room, which was filled with praying patrons who seemed completely oblivious to the destruction around them. Back in the Talent Chamber, wooden pots were being crushed by the debris, their contents spilling across the floor.
“We can play guess the mucus later.” Nicholas hurriedly pulled at Atalant’s arm. “We have to go! The throne room looks stable. Let’s head there.”
Irritated with his tone, Atalant pulled herself back up, threatening to choke Nicholas in the process, and nudged him to a jog. The ceiling continued to rain as they skittered around holes and soft flooring. They narrowly avoided a thick shower of wood dust before Atalant stopped them again. Nicholas was about to object, when she pointed to the doorframe, just next to the gaping hole in the wall. Bulged striations wove across the surface. These weren’t cracks, and they weren’t forming at random. The patterns were ordered. Geometric. Atalant recognized a cluster of diamond markings from Emn
’s hips, the circles from her wrists. “Roots,” she muttered, backing well away from the doorframe with Nicholas’s help. “Andal roots.”
“Does that make it more or less dangerous?” Nicholas asked. He eased Atalant over a raised piece of flooring. “If Emn is doing this, I wish she would wait until we found her. A crumbling palace is not—”
He was cut off as a large piece of the ceiling fell into the center of the room. Atalant pushed Nicholas out of the way and dove to the floor. Nicholas stumbled backwards and fell, catching himself on his palms as the floor began to ripple and another piece of ceiling hit right where he had been standing, obstructing Atalant’s view of him.
“Leave me and run!” Atalant yelled in the direction she’d last seen Nicholas. She pushed off the floor and tried to skirt the rubble, looking wildly for the Journey youth, only to have her view blocked as the floor rose and curved away, forming a high ridge. It curled into her and pushed her against the wall, knocking over more pots and coating her boots in mucus. Disgusted, Atalant tried to edge back around the mass, but then froze.
From the opening in the floor, a tree was growing. It wasn’t a whole tree, more just its trunk and roots, as if the tree were growing upside down. The trunk widened into a buttress, and then a thick branch spun off and swept the floor, knocking Atalant’s legs out from under her. Four pots splintered as they broke her fall.
“Atalant!” Nicholas called from the other side of the tree. “Are you all right? I’m stuck under part of the ceiling. I can’t get to you.”
“I’m fine!” she yelled back. She sat up and heard Nicholas grunting in pain. “Just stay where you are! I’m coming to—”
The rest of the ceiling fell. The fragments of cellulose-glass and wood battered her head. She heard Nicholas yell, a crash, and then silence.
Atalant choked on the dust, tried to clear her eyes to stand, and had almost managed to pull herself back up when the wall she was leaning against fell forward onto her, crushing her against the curled floor. Her head hit something hard. She blacked out.
Chapter 26: Eld Palace, Ardulum
Permission to outfit Charted Systems ships with lasers and reflective plating is granted. Begin militia training for all interested parties, including tactics.
—Communication of unknown origin to the Mmnnuggl flagship Ittyrr, First Month of Squinth, 27_15
EMN AWOKE WITH a start. The back, right section of her skull ached as if she had been hit, but she distinctly remembered passing out without trauma. She let her consciousness sink down, assessing the damage only to find that she was in perfect health. Perfect health, with a headache that would not quit.
Her bearings came back quickly as she tossed her legs over the side of the narrow bed. She was alone, sitting on a thick mattress in a room she could cross in perhaps five steps. It was dark, but enough light came through the gap under the door that she could make out some type of animal-hair blanket at the end of her bed, a small, plastic table, and a glass pitcher of water. She stretched her feet to the floor, surprised to find cool concrete instead of wood.
Was she even still in the palace? Where had the Eld taken her? Emn reached out with her mind, searching for the other flares, but connected only to Arik.
Emn. His tone was tired as he spoke to her, words chased by images of his former detention center, the bodies of flares overlapping on the plastic floor. We’re powerless.
They weren’t, though. Powerless was being a scared, little first don on a Risalian cutter, having your mother killed in front of you, being unable to communicate with people who wanted to help you. Here wasn’t Risal, and they were adults, if only just. There had to be options.
Is everyone here? she asked.
A brief flash of anger, followed by a sense of depressed hopelessness. I can only sense you. I don’t know where the others are.
“They’re in a separate chamber, as a precaution.” Adzeek’s voice was dispassionate as it filtered under the door. “Sectioning you into pairs in our concrete chambers is for your, and our, safety. We can have you further moved to complete isolation, if you become troublesome. Remember that. We have the space.”
Footsteps approached her door, and a moment later, it slid open. Light blinded her eyes, and Emn looked away as Eld Adzeek grabbed the front of her flight suit and pulled her out of the room. Arik knelt on the ground to the right, bound in tight plastic constraints. Emn glided across the floor in Adzeek’s grip as if she weighed nothing at all, her feet only skimming the ground.
“How…” she began, but stopped just after. Cellulose crackled off Adzeek’s skin, the strands dancing in a halo around his body. He released her, and Emn tumbled onto packed dirt, sending up a cloud of particulate. Her head hit the floor and rebounded, jostling her connection to Arik. She choked on the dust as she searched for his mind again.
“In deference to Corccinth, now is the time to discuss your situation,” Adzeek said. He crossed his hands over his chest, the sleeves of his gold robe hanging in wide triangles. “You and the other flares were conspiring to overthrow the government. You are also charged with the murder of twenty-seven Ardulan scientists and inciting riots.” He knelt next to Emn, his eyes unblinking. “You are a stunning example of why flares are not allowed within the general populace.”
She’d expected more anger in his voice, considering this contrived list of crimes, but heard only disappointment. As if she had broken some family heirloom and was being reprimanded. It made no sense.
“I am Ardulan,” she whispered defiantly. The words grounded her, helped her focus. “I’ve not killed anyone.”
“Perhaps not here, but you have. We do not have much time.” Adzeek brought out a long-handled knife with a hooked blade and ran the flat of it on the hem of his robe. Emn recognized the design and shivered. A Dulan knife. The same as the Risalians used to terminate their own Ardulans. A knife specifically designed to sever the column of veins at the base of an Ardulan spine, bringing instant death.
Adzeek grabbed Emn’s front again and hauled her to her knees, briefly lifting her off the floor as he did so. His movements were rough but not overly so. Emn puzzled over them, over Eld Adzeek himself. Did he want something from her? Was this an exercise in humiliation? Confession?
He spun her around. She felt the knife’s tip again at the small of her back as Adzeek turned it in a tight circle, separating the fabric of her flight suit. The metal of the blade was hot against her skin. Her heart was pounding, and she could feel a vein in her spinal column pulsing with the increase in blood flow.
This was it, then. The Eld wanted her dead for crimes she’d not participated in.
Fight, Emn, Arik whispered into her mind.
“You think,” the male eld breathed into her ear, “that you are special? Think about what you have done—the pain and destruction you have caused. If you had listened to the Risalians, we never would have had to send the Mmnnuggls. Millions would still be alive. The Charted Systems would still be at peace. Now, because of you, Ardulans have died as well. The flares escaped their compound and came here to find you. All those people yelling outside—that is because of you.”
He’s twisting events, Emn! Arik yelled. We broke out before we knew of you. We would have come here anyway, eventually. All of this still would have happened. The Eld brought it upon themselves.
The ceiling above them shifted, and a sudden surge of wood dust rained down. Emn grasped at the cellulose, pulling it to her.
“I’m not sorry,” she stated, managing a quarter-turn, “for wanting to be in control of my own life. I will not have choices made for me, and I will not bear the guilt of others.”
Adzeek brought the hilt of the blade down between Emn’s shoulder blades. Pain reverberated down her spinal column. She fell to her hands and knees as she brought the cellulose together, collecting the released energy. She corralled it, formed it into a packed ball of heat, and let it hover just to her left. Ready for dispersal.
“We all have choi
ces made for us, Emn. Even the andal of Ardulum must leave the fate of its planting to lesser beings.”
Emn pushed herself into kneeling, but Adzeek pressed the heel of his foot firmly into Emn’s midsection, kicking her onto her back. She pushed at the energy, trying to send it at the eld, but Adzeek was there, in her mind. He was past her barriers. Emn lost her grip on the energy, and it dissipated, heat radiating outwards but causing no harm. She searched for more cellulose only to find the dust now a fragmented lignin shell, and nothing more.
You see what they are like! Tossing us about like thrashed andal. We have no value to the corrupt Eld of Ardulum. Emn, please! Arik struggled against his invisible bonds. You know more than us. Do something!
She could do something. She could automate bonding of the loose cellulose. She could start a reaction that would burn Adzeek and the Eld, the flares, and the palace. She could do it, but the memory of the Crippling War, of the death of the Ardulans, tugged her back from the decision.
The knife stilled in his hand. Adzeek backed away. “Perhaps Arik, then?” Emn listened to Eld Adzeek’s footsteps as he walked to Arik, saw through the other flare’s eyes as Adzeek approached, turned Arik around, and lifted his shirt.
Emn couldn’t breathe. Is this what Atalant feels like sometimes? she wondered. Powerless around those so powerful. Outcast when she should belong. Forced to make decisions when those in power make poor choices.
Adzeek traced the Dulan knife down Arik’s spine, his eyes never leaving Emn’s. Like he was challenging her. Baiting her. Almost like he wanted her to do something rash. Like a flare could choose nothing but destruction.
Except Emn could.
She sprang to her feet and ran at the eld, prepared to ram him if necessary. She’d take the knife. She’d protect Arik. They’d find a way out without burning the palace down and everyone in it.