The Light That Binds

by Nathan Garrison

  “There’s nothing to watch,” Orbrahn said, flicking a hand. “The ruvak seem content, now that three-quarters of our defenses are reeling back and aren’t pressing the advance. Our wings are holding them off for now. I’ve instructed the messengers to brush me if anything changes.”

  Though he saw the sense it in, Yandumar still felt like smacking the boy. The impulse lacked any real strength, however, and dwindled completely from his mind as he turned his attention forward once more.

  Eventually, they crested the lip of the hovering mountain and began banking along a familiar landscape. Looking around now, it almost seemed like nothing was amiss. Only the horizon, which showed nothing but the sky, let him know that it wasn’t all an illusion. Settling down near the voltensus, he dismounted the skyship and was not surprised at all by who was there to greet his arrival.

  “Yandumar, how good of you to join us,” Vashodia said, holding up a hand towards the woman beside her. “The queen here was just saying . . . well, actually, she wasn’t saying much of anything at all.”

  Yandumar glanced at Arivana, who indeed looked like she was in no mood for talking. If anything, she looked touched by sadness. But if so, it seemed a lazy sort of sorrow, as if she were too worn out to fully acknowledge the depth of her grief. After today’s events, he couldn’t blame her in the least.

  “So,” Yandumar said, turning his gaze back towards Vashodia, “this is what you’ve been up to all this time.”

  “Do you like it? I worked so very hard on it. Although, I haven’t settled on a name.”

  “Why not call it ‘Vashodia Domicile’?”

  “Please. As if I’d take inspiration from the valynkar. In fact, it was my study of the ruvak vessel that gave me the best ideas. You see, while light and dark can form constructs simply by proper application of will, chaos requires a more . . . intentional approach. They rely much more on their thorough understanding of the underlying systems rather than the energy itself. If you know me at all, you can see why I appreciate their efforts.”

  Yandumar shook his head. “I may know you better than most, yet even I can’t explain the tone of admiration in your voice.”

  Vashodia shrugged. “I admire useful things. It’s why I put that same ship I studied at the very heart of my . . . hmm . . . what are we going to call it?”

  “You’re harnessing chaos?” Yandumar said, alarm raising the timbre of his words.

  “Of course!”

  “How is that even possible? You’ve no ruvak blood in your veins.”

  “Oh, I’m not using it directly. But in my studies I did find a tenuous connection that allowed me to reshape the latent chaotic energy, augmenting—and even amplifying—my own ample supply of darkness. Whereas light and dark stand in opposition to each other, chaos resides . . . off to one side.”

  “What? Like three points of a triangle?”

  “Don’t be silly, Yandumar. It’s more like three points of a square.”

  Yandumar scratched his chin. “Doesn’t a square have four points?”

  Vashodia giggled. “It does indeed! Tell me, smart man that you are, what do you think comprises that fourth point?”

  Sighing, Yandumar threw up his hands. “I am not the right person to be having this conversation with.”

  The mierothi tsked at him, wagging a clawed finger. “Once again, I find myself disappointed in you. More importantly, so would your son.”

  “Mevon? What does he have to do with this?”

  “Why, he’s the answer to your question.”

  He stared at her blankly for an embarrassingly long moment. “Oh . . . you mean voids.”

  “Bravo! I knew you could do it.”

  “Is that why the ruvak react more violently to them than most?”

  “Indeed. And why they’re so keen to hunt our voids down.”

  Yandumar nodded. He’d seen just this morning how far they were willing to go. “I take it you have a plan, then?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But—”

  “I have many plans. Some are dead, some are in motion, and some . . . well, let’s just say I still have a few snakes up my sleeve.”

  Is that a good thing? “That doesn’t tell me much.”

  “Oh, you wanted specifics? Why didn’t you say so?”

  Yandumar rolled his eyes. “You know, for all that you claim you aren’t the child you appear, you sure do make it hard for the rest of us to believe you.”

  “Children,” Arivana said suddenly, startling him. “We must protect the children.”

  “And we shall,” Vashodia said without hesitation, as if the queen had been part of their conversation all along. “Along with all the rest of the miserable, useless masses. It is, after all, why I built this.” She punctuated her last words by stamping a foot on the ground.

  “You can’t mean to say this vessel will carry everyone to safety?” Yandumar said, not bothering to hide the contempt from his voice.

  “Don’t be absurd. Large as it is, it only has room on the surface for a million at most. Their salvation will be found below.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve carved out space in this vessel’s belly to grow food and store water. There will be plenty enough of both for us all to make the journey. I would apologize for it having taken so long to finish, but really, I couldn’t have completed it any faster. Besides, you all did such a marvelous job holding back the ruvak—a full three days longer than I’d calculated—that I even had time to add a few special amenities.”

  Yandumar grunted. “You mentioned a journey but said nothing about a destination.”

  “Why Yandumar, isn’t it obvious? We’ve seen that the voltensus is adept at keeping out anything powered by chaos—notwithstanding that which I have specifically exempted—yet we are still vulnerable to a concerted, overwhelming ground assault. If only there were a land that contained both coverage by voltensi and a terrain virtually immune to a surface invasion. Do you, most exalted emperor, happen to know of such a place?”

  At last Yandumar smiled. “I think I might.”

  Part IV

  Chapter 19

  Leaning into his Andun, one end of which was driven into the sand, Mevon kept watch over the Weskaran Waste. It looked different this time. Before, when he’d arrived at this beach alongside his father at the head of an Imperial armada, the desert, for all its desolation, had seemed a thing alive. The dunes had shimmered, bright with heat, and the sands had swirled into ochre mists with every gust of wind. For all humankind’s conceit about their supposed dominance, this place had stood as a reminder of nature’s harsh indifference to such claims.

  But the corpses, bloated and rotting in the sun, spread out beyond the horizon, revealed not a hint of the natural surface below it. Before such wrath, as only thinking beings could inflict upon each other, nature itself had been humbled.

  Though the voltensus had accompanied them aboard Vashodia’s ark, guarding the long, desperate train of humanity from ruvaki skyships, the second leg of the exodus had been just as deadly as the first. There was no hiding the direction of their flight. Their enemy had used this knowledge to great effect, setting down troops ahead of them. Instead of fighting on open ground, Mevon’s vanguard had faced entrenched enemy positions that had had days or even weeks to prepare their defenses. Every step had been drenched in blood, far too much of which was red.

  And when they’d reached the swamplands, it had gotten even worse.

  Mevon shuddered. If he ever had the chance to fall into a deep enough sleep, he was sure he’d be greeted by nightmares of that place. The ruvak had sprung ambushes with every muck-filled league they’d trodden, springing up from moldy bogs, swinging down from rotting trees, and striking without mercy through every veil of fog. Their squawking howls had filled every waking moment, sounding without surcease from everywhere and nowhere at once. He’d seen more than a few allied soldiers succumb to madness because of it.

  Through it all, however
, they’d retained hope by repeating a phrase that had become almost religious by the fervor in which it was uttered: Just hold on until the shore.

  Getting here, however, had proven the easy part; holding it long enough for everyone to board had tested the limits of humanity’s collective will to survive.

  His father’s armada had been waiting for them when they arrived. Those seaborne vessels, along with every skyship capable of holding passengers, had been filled to bursting before setting out across the sea. The round-trip had taken six days and had ferried only a fifth of the population to safety. Standing guard over a stretch of shore several leagues long, with little shelter from the sun, and even less in the way of defensible positions, the remaining defenders of humankind had been decimated.

  By the time the fourth wave was halfway finished boarding, it had become clear there would be no need for a fifth.

  “It’s time to go,” Jasside said.

  Mevon turned his head to look up at his wife as she floated on her platform just off his shoulder. The stiffness in his neck made the motion laborious. “I’ve waited so long to hear those words, I’d almost lost faith that they would ever be said.”

  “It sounds just as strange to say. But you and I are the only remaining defenders still on watch. The rest are already in their berths, and the horizon, as far as I can tell, is still. This continent has seen the end of war.”

  Mevon glanced even farther behind him. Both sea and sky were spackled by ships, the nearest of them still pushing out from the shore. And distantly, just a dark disc where the two blue realms met, he spied Vashodia’s ark locked in place between the landmasses to protect the crossing.

  “Good,” he said at last.

  “If even you grow weary of battle, my love, imagine how the rest of us feel.”

  He swept one hand across the lifeless expanse before them. Dead flesh had filled every low place between the dunes, making the landscape flat and featureless but for the occasional skeletal limb poking up from the blanket of bodies.

  “I will never tire so long as the cause is just. But this?” Mevon shook his head. “This is nothing but madness.”

  “You no longer consider defending the innocent as just?”

  “You know I don’t mean our part in this. I mean them. For every human that has fallen, both during the initial invasion and since, we’ve killed at least ten ruvak. Their use of tactics suggests intelligence equal to our own, yet they come at us with all the slavering of rabid wolves.”

  “More like rabid raptors.”

  Mevon almost smiled at that, but the pain from cracked lips halted the expression prematurely. “I think you see my point. This kind of single-minded determination to see us wiped out with no regard for their own lives isn’t natural. Whatever drives them goes far beyond mere revenge. Even if Ruul and Elos came here with our ancestors all those millennia ago bearing nothing but ill intent, no ruvak here today could possibly have any memory of it. Hatred this consuming can only be based on a lie.”

  “And a twisted one at that,” Jasside said. “But now is not the time to try unraveling it.”

  “When will it be time?”

  “Not long now, I think. Once we reach safety.”

  Mevon scoffed. “If such a place even exists.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.” She lowered her platform until it was scraping sand right next to him. “Come, husband. Let’s go home.”

  “Abyss take these clouds,” Arivana said. “We’d be able to see it by now, if it weren’t for them. Jasside told me that the sight has no equal upon this world. A bold claim, but she’s as well traveled as anyone I know. More so than myself, anyway. Before . . . recent events . . . I could count the number of times I’d left Panisahldron on one hand. The nation, I mean. Not the city. Even then, I had never gone far. To my young mind, Corbrithe had seemed the most exotic place imaginable, but now I think I’d find it difficult to even explain the differences between their country and ours. Funny how a change of scenery can alter your perspective so thoroughly. Enjoying your tea?”

  Chains rattled as Sem Aira jolted, obviously startled by the question. Arivana couldn’t fault the woman for that. She’d been rambling, and the sudden query had come as a surprise to them both.

  Sem Aira stared down at the cup in her shackled hands, a curiously confused expression painted on her inhuman visage. Arivana hadn’t seen the need for restraints, but her guardsmen—several of whom were standing nearby, hands on the hilts of their swords—had insisted. Since Richlen’s death, she had been unable to deny them anything.

  As if in a dream, Sem Aira lifted the cup to her lips, tilting it ever-so-slightly, then lowered her hands once more to the railing upon which they’d been resting. “It’s . . . fine.”

  “Yes, I suppose ‘fine’ describes it well enough. A bit plain for my tastes, but one cannot be picky in such stringent times. It’s not even as if I labored over it myself. An old woman makes it for me every morning. She lost all of her . . . well, let’s just say she has plenty of time on her hands and an instinct to nurture, the fulfilling of which seems a balm to her soul.”

  Arivana sighed, brushing hair out of her face as she turned outward, squinting in a vain attempt to pierce the cool, grey clouds through which they flew. “I see a lot of that, these days. People are doing whatever they can to make the lives of those around them better. Such occurrences are even starting to make incidents of unchecked cruelty and deprivation look like the exception instead of the rule.

  “Even the smallest things can make the biggest difference, when people actually take time to make note of the needs in others’ lives. Why, just the other day, two brothers gave up their room for Daye and me. It was little more than a broom closet, but it gave us privacy, something few are afforded these days, and something those brothers well knew was the greatest gift a newly wedded couple could receive.

  “Humankind is strange, in that way. We’re capable of deeds that make the worst nightmare seem a pleasant dream, and yet, at the same time, we can commit acts of such . . . such goodness as to drive even the hardest among us to tears. The fact that both extremes can be found within the same soul, well, that is one mystery that may never be solved.”

  “Why?” Sem Aira said, the words barely audible above the breeze. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  It was Arivana who now found herself jolted by an unexpected question. Most notably, because she did not have an answer.

  She had intended to bring Sem Aira out of confinement because she thought the woman must be lonely. She couldn’t say as such, however. To begin with, it spoke of hypocrisy. How authentic could her concerns appear when it was Arivana herself who had cast the woman into chains? Even in her own mind, the reason sounded false, more of an excuse than anything. But an excuse for what?

  Opening her mouth once more, Arivana chased after her purpose. “I used to think everything was beautiful, once. Not even that long ago. But that was only because I was kept ignorant of all the ugliness in the world, oftentimes willfully so. I’ve grown up since then. Opened my eyes. Yet, despite all the horrors I’ve seen, far too many wrought by those closest to me, there’s still a part of me that can’t help but see the beauty in all things. Or, at least, the potential for beauty. I thought I would have to kill that part of me in order to become the woman and the queen that such times needed me to be. But for some reason, it lives on.”

  Arivana turned suddenly, stepping close so that her face was but a few hand widths away from that of her former handmaiden. “Make me a promise?”

  Sem Aira’s eyes and the vertical slits of her nostrils flared. “I would, Your Majesty. But I’m not sure a promise from me is worth much.”

  “It’s worth far more than you might imagine. When my kind are gone, yours will be the only promise that means anything.”

  “No, Arivana! That isn’t—”

  “Don’t tell me it’s not possible, or even probable at this point. I see no value in trying to ignore t
he inevitable. Before your people kill us all, I would ask but one simple thing.”

  Sem Aira lowered her face. Twin tears trickled down her ashen, waxy cheeks, and her protruding upper lip began trembling. Arivana counted the woman’s trill breaths, losing track after a score, until at last she inhaled deeply and lifted her gaze.

  “If it is within my power,” Sem Aira said, “I will not rest until the task is done.”

  “All I ask,” Arivana began, “is that you remember us. Remember that we were capable of so much good. So much . . . beauty. Whether or not we deserve our fate for the sins of our ancestors and our gods, please, tell your people about us. Tell them the story of humankind.”

  Light blossomed all around them, blinding Arivana with its intensity. Holding up a hand to shield her eyes, she looked out in the direction they were traveling and could see that they had at last broken free of the clouds . . .

  . . . and before her stood a monument for which no amount of telling could have properly prepared her. Standing nearly a league in height from sea to clifftop, and bending out of sight only at the farthest reaches of the horizon, the Shelf blazed like a furnace as it reflected dawn’s first light.

  “Beautiful,” Sem Aira said.

  Struck nearly breathless by the sight, Arivana could only nod in agreement.

  Returning to the Veiled Empire, for the second time, felt to Gilshamed like coming home.

  During his previous venture, too many things about both himself and the land had been askew. He had been a man possessed of singular will, obdurate and obsessive in his desire to see justice wrought for ancient crimes; the continent had seemed a place infested. Now, with neither such obstacle present, he was able to look upon his arrival with fresh eyes, no longer seeing what was different, only how much was still the same.

  “It’s strange,” said Lashriel, who was standing at his side.

  They, like all the rest of the valynkar on the domicile, had gathered along the rim to watch as sea gave way to land beneath them. “In what way?” Gilshamed asked.