The Man Without Hands

by Eric Malikyte

  Kurt started moving. “Better start walking, Sal. My patience is not what it once was.”

  “Somehow I doubt that man’s ever been called patient,” Linda said quietly to Sal.

  The two Masku lingered at the base of the mountain for a time, arguing amongst themselves, but Kurt heard their footfalls at his back before long. Fear is an excellent motivator.

  After hours of hiking, Sal collapsed in the snow, his breath streaming from his facemask. “That’s it, I need a break.”

  Kurt stopped. “According to your coordinates, the base is close.”

  “Fuck, man,” Sal said, his eyes pleading for mercy. “I heard that on some late-night conspiracy talk show. I don’t even know if it’s accurate.”

  “It’s accurate,” Kurt said, closing his eyes and picturing the ancient city he’d seen in his dreams. “I know it.”

  “Great,” Linda said, placing her hands on her knees. “Well, even if you’re certain and we’re close, we both need rest. You can’t just brute force us all the way to the top, we’re not like you.”

  “Clearly,” Kurt said, crossing his arms. The peaks of the great mountain were growing nearer. “Very well. I suppose the artifact isn’t going anywhere. We will rest for a time.”

  “Thank you,” Sal said, sprawling out in the snow and reaching for his box. “Been dying for a fix all day.”

  “No needles,” Kurt said, glaring at the junkie.

  “What?” Sal said, clutching the box tight to his chest. “It’s been hours, I’m gonna get withdrawals.”

  “Don’t argue with me,” Kurt said. “I need you focused for this.”

  Sal complied, begrudgingly.

  Linda camped out next to a tree and glared at Kurt.

  He took a seat on a rock, staring at the looming mountain peak, and their destination.

  Soon, he thought. We’ll see each other soon, beloved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SAGE

  Sage awakened to find himself in a small stone cell. The corridor outside was lit by torches. The smell of dust and mold permeated the air.

  He sat in silence for hours, tugging at the chains that bound his limbs to the dirty stone floor.

  Where was Reysha? Why had she risked her life for his? She had been so close to being a Valier...so close to having what she wanted.

  In the hours since he’d woken, no one had come to see him. Not even his so-called family. With the passage of those painful hours, spent staring at the rotted skeleton of a long-dead Sulekiel criminal whose name was probably lost to time, the reality sank in. Maybe that skeleton belonged to one of his father’s men. That thought was enough to give him pause.

  His only visitor had been a Valier named Taliki, a quiet man with no patience for his sarcasm or conversation. He’d brought him a meal, sliding a dusty bowl filled with a raw fish under the bars before he left.

  Sage’s head was pounding. How far from Suleniar was he? He’d never experienced something like this before, at least not while he was still within the walls of the city.

  Looking down at his chains, he wondered if maybe they had something to do with it. They were almost certainly made of abaniel, a particular metal that made it impossible to gather one’s Sulen. It was likely that the bars to his cage were composed of this very same material. The headache stayed at a constant level, never worsening to the point where he’d be unable to move. Small comforts.

  When Taliki returned, he carried no tray of food.

  “The High Elder has summoned you,” Taliki said. His face was dark, almost grey, his expression hidden beneath a black hooded cloak that wrapped about his body.

  “What, took her this long to figure out she wanted to banish me?” Sage said, rising, his shackles clanking and dragging on the stone floor. “Funny, here I thought she made up her mind fifteen processions ago.”

  Taliki’s expression did not change; he opened the gate and grabbed Sage by the arm, yanking him forward. “Move it, and no talking.”

  Sage stopped in his tracks, clenching his fists.

  “I said move,” Taliki said.

  “I know what you said.” Sage glared at him; the Valier backed up, a shaken look on his face. Was he really afraid of him?“Let me ask you a question,” Sage said.

  “I said, no talking.” Taliki’s mouth said one thing, but he looked visibly shaken. If Sage wasn’t careful, Taliki might do something stupid. He had to be careful with the abaniel shackles suffocating his connection to his own power.

  “I guess it’s too much to ask someone like you to question your Elder’s judgment,” Sage said, yanking his arm away from the Valier. “You Valier are, after all, trained to follow orders and little else, right? Yet, it strikes me as odd that you would blindly follow the Council when they lord their wealth over you. Have you ever seen their homes?”

  “What I do, I do in honor of my father.” Taliki closed his eyes. “I was not a Valier when your father made his move against High Elder Geidra.”

  “Oh?”

  “But my father was.” When Taliki opened his eyes, they were glowing with the fury of Zhelon. “He was one of the first to be cut down, thinking that Kyrties was a brother. I won’t make the same mistake with his offspring.”

  “Point taken,” Sage said.

  He didn’t argue further. Taliki grabbed him by the shackles and led him into the city, and he cursed his father’s name for making his life so damned complicated.

  2

  The torches burned at the edge of every wooden bridge and on the cusp of every stone building, and Sulekiel walked with their auras burning bright and vibrant against the darkness. Most of them scarcely noticed him, but those who did held nothing but contempt for him in their stares—as if they had expected him to be in chains all his life.

  The history tomes claimed that before the war with the Shar, the Sulekiel had developed many great inventions, technologies that could harness the planet’s own Sulen and perform wondrous feats.

  How far we’ve fallen, Sage thought. Once we were giants who commanded the power of the planet itself. And now we live in caves, believe in fairy tales, and send our children off to die for the mistakes of their forbears.

  And maybe the tales of Sulekiel greatness were myths too. Maybe they had never been more than they were now? Worms, crawling and writhing beneath the surface of Gaiulen.

  They walked past the cathedral; it was lit up with hundreds of torches which cast shadows in every direction from the statues over its carved blue-stone surface. Finally, they approached the Tower of Judgments, which wasn’t so much a tower as it was a building carved from a stone support that acted like a pillar inside one of the caverns they had built the city in. There were six stone statues atop the arch above the entrance meant to honor members of the legendary Dirkus the First’s group of warriors, all of whom had supposedly died defending the First City.

  The statues stared down at Sage, judging him with their cracked faces and blank eyes. Their lives were mere myths, with so many changes and additions to their stories that it made their struggle all the more unbelievable.

  “They’ve seen better days,” Sage said.

  “Another gift left in your father’s wake,” Taliki said. “Most of the damage was repaired after the battle, but the cracks are still visible.”

  “Even myths die.”

  “Tell that to Malo’Thul.” Shadows hid Taliki’s dark expression as he pushed the metal doors open; they clanged against the walls that led up to a stone staircase lit only by torches. He pushed Sage forward up the spiral stair, and it wound and wound up in darkness, until he emerged at court.

  The chamber was massive, oppressive. It had been carved by some of their greatest artisans, Sulekiel who were long since dead. If the great mythical Malo’thul hadn’t swallowed their spirits long ago, they likely would have taken up residence in the gulf between where he stood at the entrance and where the Elders sat, looking down at him from their seats.

  Even the stone-carve
d faces of ancient Sulekiel Elders looked to judge him far above where the Council sat.

  “Approach, Son of Kyrties,” Elder Geidra said, a look of contempt on her face. She was dressed in her black and red ceremonial court robes, the colors of death. “You stand accused of breaking our most sacred laws, committing sedition, and consorting with the agents of the Shar.”

  “What?” Sage shouted, pointing at Geidra. “I haven’t consorted with any of your imaginary enemies!”

  “Silence, Son of Kyrties!” Geidra shouted, her voice booming through the chamber.

  Taliki yanked at his chains. “You will speak only when spoken to.”

  The Valier dragged him to the ornately carved circle which marked the center of the floor, his chains slinking behind him and sending a metallic ringing through the chamber. Inside the circle he stood upon was the sigil of death: like two serpents entwined with each other, ending in talons and twisting into knots at the top and bottom to create an oval. Two spikes shot off on both sides of the oval, near the middle. It was the same symbol used to depict the Shar and Malo’thul.

  The Elders sat high above him, atop a large wall, peering down on him from large, ornate, carved stone thrones. Elder Delecys, wrapped in green and white robes, was seated at the far end of the wall. In the torchlight, she looked far older and more weathered than she had in Geidra’s tower.

  Elder Makai was seated next to Delecys; he wore red and grey robes and his face was pale, the single gold streak glowed in the torchlight against the outline of his short dark hair.

  High Elder Geidra was next to him, and next to her on the far right was Elder Kanazh, his robes gold and black, his face orange and grey like Byshun’s, and his hair violet and vibrant.

  They all clutched at ceremonial staves of judgement, which they would slam into the stone floor when they rendered the verdict.

  “The son of Kyrties will bow to this council,” Kanazh said.

  “He won’t,” Sage said. “Because the Council has already marked him for death.”

  “What does the boy know of death?” Delecys said, glaring holes through him.

  “He knows nothing, with his mere twenty processions,” Makai said. “He is a child, and a fool.”

  “I’m the fool?” Sage shook his head. “You would condemn anyone who questioned your practices, your laws. You assume your myths are history, and your beliefs fact. That makes you the fools.”

  “He mocks tradition,” Kanazh scratched at his beard, “and speaks to this council as if he is our equal?”

  “No.” Elder Geidra leaned in, scrutinizing him with squinting grey eyes. “He thinks himself better than us, thinks us old and frail, and himself young and powerful.”

  “Why don’t you remove these chains and find out?” Sage tested the chains’ tensile strength by yanking his hands apart.

  He remembered how hard it had been to keep track of Kiel’s movements. It was said that Geidra and the other Elders were even above him...

  Sage didn’t care, though. At least then he’d be able to die fighting.

  “He is the child of Kyrties, after all,” Geidra said. “This insubordination was to be expected, sad as the outcome is. The blood of his family is tainted and will always be wicked.”

  “Wicked?” Sage stomped on the floor. He reached deep within himself, at the power that was locked away within him, desperately trying to break free. “You call me wicked just because I questioned you for treating the healers like garbage? For lording your wealth over the rest of our citizens? Because I dare to question your myths?” He spat at the stone floor. “Maybe it’s you four who are wicked!”

  “Your father murdered countless of my Valier,” Geidra said. “Murdered your grandfather’s sons and daughters, all because he thought he should rule our city and guide us to war against the Shar. The questioning you’re doing now would have led to such an insurrection, even if you never became a Valier.”

  “And what if I don’t believe in the Shar?”

  “Don’t believe in the Shar?” Makai chuckled. “What madness is this?”

  “His words are poison. They will be tempting for the weak of will and mind,” Kanazh said.

  “Not even his grandfather, Malos, and grandmother, Ysilis the First, will come to testify on his behalf,” Delecys said. “Surely this confirms his taint?”

  “He must have been the one who was going to the surface illegally,” Makai said. “I’m certain of it.”

  “Then we are in agreement,” Geidra said.

  “Yes,” Kanazh said.

  “Shut up!” Sage yelled.

  He clenched his eyes shut, squeezing his fists so hard that his nails cut into his skin, blood dripping onto the sigil of death.

  I dedicate this vessel—

  The faint connection to a mysterious power raged within him, his vision ran crimson, and the ground vibrated beneath him. “You condemn me for the sins of my father and nothing more! I signed your goddamned contract! You took everything from me! You tricked me! Gave me false hope! And now you’re ready to burn me alive or send me off to sea by myself to die? If Malo’Thul were real, I’d say he could swallow you all for all I care!”

  He stopped, breathing heavily. Beneath him, in the stone circle where he stood, the sigil of death had several cracks running through it now—despite the abaniel chains binding his wrists and ankles.

  How was that possible?

  The expressions of all four Elders above said all he needed to know.

  They had noticed it too, probably even sensed his Sulen grow, even if it was only for a moment. If they had been afraid of his influence before, they would be terrified of a Sulekiel who could reach out and control the Sulen even with abaniel chains shackling him.

  If he’d had a sliver of a chance of getting out of this alive before, he had doomed himself now.

  “His anger is so great that it defies even the abaniel chains!” Delecys said. “He is dangerous!”

  High Elder Geidra nodded gravely. “What is our verdict?”

  “Guilty,” Delecys said.

  “Guilty,” Kanazh said.

  “The boy is dangerous,” Makai said. “Guilty.”

  All Sage could do was stare at the cracked sigil of death. His heart was weary of the constant struggle. Part of him just wanted it to end.

  “And so it is left to me,” Geidra said, standing from her ornately carved seat. “To render final judgement. To doom, or to pardon.”

  “I already know what you’ve decided,” Sage said.

  Taliki kicked at the backs of his knees, forcing him onto all fours. “On your knees, boy, and face your fate like a warrior!”

  “I sentence you to exile by sea,” Geidra said, slamming her staff into the stone, and the other Elders did the same. The sound reverberated through the court chamber. “To be carried out immediately.”

  “You’re all cowards,” Sage said. “You shy away from killing one of your own, but you’d let starvation or drowning by sea do it instead!”

  “Take the condemned away,” Geidra said. “And prepare him to face his exile as his father did fifteen processions ago.”

  Taliki grabbed him by the arm, but Sage pulled it free, stumbling forward and thrusting his finger at the Council. “I will not die, do you hear me, Geidra? I will survive!”

  “I do not care what you do in exile, boy,” Geidra said.

  He wanted so badly to wipe that smug look off her face. “I will not die by sea, or drowning, or by starvation. I will break these bonds and I will return one day, and when I do, you had better run for the hills, because I will bring such wrath down on you that your ancestors shall wake from their graves to mourn for the fate I visit on you!”

  “See his anger?” Makai said. “Now that he is condemned, his taint runs wild, casting threats at us.”

  “Your father made similar threats to me, boy,” Geidra said. “He may have been a powerful warrior, even a threat to this council. But you are nothing. You are a child, no warrior, and ce
rtainly not a leader. These long fifteen processions, I have watched you with great trepidation, and I have known the fears of your teachers. Those that held back in your instruction to keep you below the level of your fellow Sulekiel...it was by my instruction that this happened, that you were isolated and kept from vital lessons that would aid in your succeeding in the Trials. So. No. You will die at sea, drowning, or starving, whichever comes first. And your anger will mean nothing to us.”

  “You were never going to let me pass,” Sage said, staring at the floor. “Were you?”

  “No,” Geidra said.

  Taliki grabbed his arm once more and pulled him to the spiral stair.

  “Move it!” the Valier shouted.

  Sage’s anger came to mask his headache and fever, new strength flowing through him. He was determined now. Determined to survive, to escape, and one day...return to make things right.

  There must be a way, he thought.

  3

  When Taliki pushed him back into his cell, Sage tried hard to find that source of power he had felt earlier, but even as he reached and sought, he could not find it again. So he sat there for hours, waiting for them to come for him again, to drag him off in the night, to put him out to sea on a crude raft that would capsize all too easily.

  He spat and cursed the names of the Elders and wished them cruel deaths. Maybe everyone had been wrong about his father? Maybe he had been right about the Elders?

  Maybe I’ll ask him when I’m dead, Sage thought morbidly.

  It was so dark in his cell that he hadn’t even noticed that Reysha was in the cell across from his until now. The torchlight reflected off of her citrine skin and her violet hair. Even as a prisoner, she was lovely.

  “How long have you been here?” Sage asked.

  “They just moved me,” Reysha said.

  “Part of me was hoping they’d pardon you.”

  “No such luck.” Her face was grave when she said it, as if she knew what fate they would walk to. “Geidra passed my judgment shortly before they sent for you.”

  “Why did you help me?”