The light of the Well had given way to the Irminsul and its green valley surrounded by countless miles of brown desolation. With a sound like thunder the giant door closed, shutting out the wail of rushing air and leaving only the engines’ low hum.
47
Waking left Astlin disoriented. The crisp sheets and constant hum reminded her that she was in her large but utilitarian stateroom on the Serapis. She didn’t recall leaving the hangar, but she remembered collapsing in bed and weeping, finally, till sleep came.
How long was I out?
Astlin groped for a reason to rise and failed until a familiar yet surprising need beckoned. I’m hungry, she realized with growing wonder. She hadn’t eaten since getting transessed years before. The elemental body she had now—her perfected form as Smith called it—apparently mimicked human anatomy well enough to crave food.
Astlin rose, put on her dress, and left the room. While her vision was adjusting from heat to light, two children ran by. Their laughter filled the grey corridor and removed all of Astlin’s lingering doubts about refusing Shaiel’s Will.
Another hunger pang struck, driving Astlin to seek the galley. She might’ve searched the huge ship for hours, but a crewman gave her general directions and the scents of sanitizer and aromatic vegetables led her the rest of the way. The rapid clatter of metal on wood ceased as she entered.
“Welcome, stranger,” said Cook, standing at an oblong stainless steel island amid banks of ovens and fryers. Astlin scolded herself for wondering what he was doing there.
Cook beckoned with his knife. “Blocking the door is a fire hazard.”
Astlin crept over to stand beside him at the counter, which was heaped with vegetables arranged in two piles—whole and chopped.
“I figured you’d turn up sooner or later,” he said.
“How long has it been?”
“Two days.” Cook fed a peeled root into his blurring knife. Neat thin wheels emerged on the other side. “We’re due at Keth tomorrow—which is good, since a lot of supplies got blown from the hangar.”
Shaiel’s Will had left raw scars on Astlin’s mind, but one question nagged her enough to face the pain of the wound.
“The light that filled the sky—where did it come from?”
“The ship can project a field around itself,” said Cook. “Normally it disrupts Workings, but Tefler funneled prana through it.”
“I didn’t think Tefler could fly.”
“He can’t. In fact he threw up and nearly passed out. But Zan talked him through it.”
Astlin didn’t bother hiding her surprise. “Zan?”
“It was all his idea,” said Cook. “He doesn’t know where it came from—probably something in his past.”
I’ll have to see if I can help him remember, thought Astlin.
“Sendings don’t seem to work on you,” Cook continued, “but luckily you caught on.”
Avoiding Cook’s gaze, Astlin fiddled with a root. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”
The chopping sounds ceased again. Cook set down his knife and sighed. “I wasn’t happy with you. But I don’t think staying mad does anyone much good—especially Xander.”
“I kept reliving it,” said Astlin, “trying to convince myself there was no other way.”
“Was there?”
Astlin’s chest felt hollow. She hung her head. “I don’t know.”
Cook’s rough hand cupped her shoulder. “People say our loved ones live on in us. It’s actually true in your case. A part of Xander will always be with you.”
Astlin gave him a demure but heartfelt smile. “Thanks, Cook. Any more words of wisdom?”
Cook drew another knife from the rack beside him and passed it to her. “I’ll tell you everything I know about cutting vegetables.”
Astlin couldn’t keep her smile from widening. “I’m useless in the kitchen.”
“Every cook needs to master water and fire, so you’re halfway there. And since your stomach’s rumbling, I’ll tell you what—help me out, and you can help yourself.”
Astlin took the knife in hand, selected a carrot, and sawed it into segments.
“Those pieces are about the right size,” said Cook. “Now let’s work on your speed.”
Astlin munched on carrot sticks during the rest of Cook’s lesson. The simple act of chewing the sweet crunchy root gave her comfort.
“Don’t hold the knife with your finger pointing down the blade. Pinch it with your thumb and forefinger; then wrap your other fingers around the handle. Keep the knife in place, rock it in a circular motion, and feed the carrot through. Make sure to tuck in your fingers.”
To Astlin’s amazement, Cook’s advice greatly improved her speed and precision. She finished three more carrots before asking, “What really happens to people after they die?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“I’m serious. We never discussed it back home, but it’s all people talk about here. Xander said that God judges everyone. Sulaiman claims he’s been to hell. Shaiel says there’s nothing, unless he turns us into walking corpses.”
“There used to be more answers than religions,” said Cook. “But since you asked me, I think the Atavists had it right. We’re all tiny parts of the Nexus. The silver cords cut us out of it, and when they run out we go back.”
“So Xander was cut from the same part of the Nexus as me, and I absorbed him.”
“The part of him you shared, yeah.”
“What about heaven and hell?”
Cook shrugged. “Some people doubt they exist. Others say the gods made them for their followers. A few—including the greycloaks—say their motives weren’t exactly pure.”
Astlin dropped her knife. “So we’re not separate people. We’re not real. Only the Nexus is, and we’re all just parts of it.”
“That’s a little simplistic,” said Cook, “but you’ve got the basic idea.”
“But I think I’m me,” she said, “not a fragment of something else. If I’m not real, whose pain is this?”
Cook set down his knife and cleaned his hands with a towel. “Everyone’s in pain because we’re all pieces of a bigger whole. Everybody knows it deep down, but the world convinces us we’re separate beings. That loneliness causes all the war, crime, and suffering in the world.”
Astlin raised her voice. “I’m not suffering because I want to be one with everything. It’s because the man I need to be with is dead.”
“Thinking you need him is part of the illusion. You won’t have peace till you let him go.”
The words struck Astlin like a knife in her heart. “Listen to me,” she said softly. “Xander was no illusion. I tried trapping him in mine, and he saved me from it. My need for him is real. The pain of losing him is real. Our loved ones hurt us, but they’re worth it.”
Cook’s thick lips parted in a grin. “You’ve grown a lot.”
A dreadful hope returned to Astlin. “Do you think Sulaiman’s right?”
“About killing Thera? Tefler thinks so. He just went to check Sulaiman’s progress.”
Astlin shook her head. “About me saving everyone.”
Cook folded her in a hug. “I think you would if you could.”
Astlin’s arms barely encircled his torso. “All of this pain has to stop.”
“You’re right,” said Cook, “but how?”
“If there’s a way,” Astlin said, “I have to find it.”
Sulaiman scrubbed a callused hand through his beard and looked to Smith. “Is the piece complete?”
The souldancer had grown to fill a dark corner of the Kerioth’s cluttered workroom—a bloated spider hanging on a web of its own clockwork flesh. The absence of the corpse pile that had occupied the same corner nagged Sulaiman like a dangling thread, but he resisted pulling it.
Presently Smith descended and scuttled toward him. “Judge for yourself.”
A length of mirrored metal emerged from the mass of gears. The object’s white surface g
ave a lavender tint to the reflection of Sulaiman’s hand as he grasped it. Drawing out the rest of the hilt and the curved blade, its lightness amazed him.
Perhaps the least reason why ether metal is so highly prized, he thought. Sulaiman himself had contributed his key. Thurif had left a knife-sized portion. Gid had supplied the rest at the cost of Sulaiman’s every temporal possession, less the clothes on his back.
Never have I struck so fine a bargain.
Sulaiman reverently tucked the white scimitar—an image in metal of his lost fiery blade—into his belt and looked to Smith. “I would know your mind.”
Smith’s beaked mouth split in a morbid grin. “Sharing my mind would take much longer than a voyage to Keth. Specify your request.”
“Why do you aid me when your liberty is forfeit should I succeed?”
“Were that true,” Smith said with a grating laugh, “you’d already be dead.”
“Will I succeed?”
“Go and see.”
“How will I find what I seek?”
“Enter the terminus where all places; all times converge,” said Smith. “Picture your destination strongly enough, and Kairos will lead you there.”
“I am decided,” Sulaiman said. “Admit me to Kairos.”
Mirai Smith’s fluid form grew until his head rose above Sulaiman’s. The mass of gears flattened into a rectangle, leaving an empty frame with the souldancer’s face leering down from the top.
“Enter,” he said.
The view of Smith’s grim chamber through the frame vanished, replaced by a strange vista. Colossal blocks of multicolored gears turned in an impossibly complex dance. The larger blocks rippled with the movement of smaller faster gears, which were in turn composed of gears still smaller and faster. Sulaiman fancied that he glimpsed something behind the churning cogs, as if the sight before him were symbolic of deeper truths.
“If I succeed,” he told Smith, “uncounted innocents will owe you their lives.”
He’d taken one step toward the gate when a tinny voice behind him said, “All known models rule out temporal displacement. Proceeding entails violation of basic physical laws.”
The chill of the blade at his back radiated through Sulaiman’s cloak.
“For once, I’d listen to him,” rasped Th’ix.
“You disappoint me,” Sulaiman said. “A skilled traitor doesn’t delay so long.”
“Traitor?” Th’ix laughed. “I’m saving your life.”
“Or so our queen told you?” Sulaiman turned to face his betrayer, who held the Regulator’s head in one arm and pointed a grey scimitar with the other.
“She said you’d try meddling with time. Now I’m stepping in before you kill yourself.”
The shades eating his soul briefly recoiled from Sulaiman’s flashing anger. “Nakvin never released me. I’ve only done her bidding since I returned to this sphere.”
Th’ix grinned. “She had her suspicions—and sent me to learn how you’d confirm them.”
“What else does she command? That the smith and I go down to Avalon as her prisoners?”
“Not if you go willingly,” said Th’ix.
“Proximity alert,” the Regulator droned. “Subject charged with breaching a Guild facility approaching.”
Tefler walked in and stood with the workbench between himself and Th’ix. He crossed his arms and frowned at Sulaiman. “Were you leaving without me?”
“There are risks you cannot know.” Sulaiman glanced at the sword in Th’ix’s hand. “But the question is moot.”
Th’ix leveled the shadow blade at Sulaiman’s heart. “This way is better. Your scheme could only end in tears.”
“Wait,” said Tefler. “You mean no one’s killing Thera?”
“Warning,” the Regulator said. “Ambient Void reaching hazardous concentrations.”
Sallow light flashed behind Th’ix and faded. Sulaiman discerned no effects, save for a slight chill.
Th’ix cast a contemptuous look over his shoulder. “I dwell a hair’s breadth from the Void. What harm can it do me?”
“Less than my cat,” Tefler said.
Shock replaced puzzlement on Th’ix’s face as a small mummified form leapt from the table and latched onto his arm. The sword and the head clattered to the deck as Th’ix flailed at the dead cat.
Sulaiman recited a short formula of exorcism. The act diverted his prana’s flow, and icy claws rent at his life cord.
“You are dismissed,” he said through chattering teeth as he finished the rite.
Th’ix vanished, leaving only the head and the grey scimitar behind.
“Where did he go?” asked Tefler.
Sulaiman gorged his soul on prana, but the shades hardly retreated.
Tefler could burn them out, he thought. But the amount of prana required to cleanse him might also kill him. He fought back his shivering and said, “Avalon.”
Tefler threw up his hands. “I had to bribe a shipwright’s kid to bring my cat aboard, and you banish it to the Sixth Circle of hell?”
Staying on his feet took an effort, but Sulaiman marshaled his strength. “Thank you for your sacrifice.”
“You owe me,” Tefler said.
I could have left you to suffer this wound, thought Sulaiman. Indeed, letting the greycloak slay Tefler would have kept his own hands clean. No. Only less bloody.
“I’ll honor my debt by avenging you upon the goddess who slew the world.”
Tefler started toward the gate. “Help me help myself.”
Sulaiman drew the white sword and held Tefler at its gleaming point. “Your consecration to Thera would imperil us both! Your part in her downfall is ended. Whether I fail or triumph, we will not meet again.”
Not wishing to argue further with the man he would doom, Sulaiman turned and lurched through the gate.
Sulaiman Iason trudges through the winter in his soul one faltering step at a time, and time marches beside him. The towers of spinning gears and the dark canyons between are mere signs of phenomena too complex for senses which, though they’ve known hell, must bow to mortal limits.
Paths more intricate than any maze meet and branch under skies as black as the unknown. Sulaiman knows that a single misstep could send him wandering for all eternity, but he forges ahead, guided by unshakable faith in his chosen course.
Another chasm yawns before him; its far side invisible. Sulaiman doesn’t hesitate to set foot on the slender bridge spanning the gulf. The clatter of the gears subsides as he limps across, rubbing his chest in a hopeless effort to banish the chill within.
He remembers. Or rather, he brushes against a fateful past moment.
The thread of light cutting a narrow trail through the prevailing dimness; the rustling of silk against stone disturbing the silence; the scent of lavender overshadowing the odor of dust and rotting books—all of these announced Nakvin’s intrusion to Sulaiman as clearly as any herald.
He stayed hunched over the tomes and scrolls on the ancient desk in the archives of Seele, even when she stood directly behind him.
“I know what you’re doing, Sulaiman.”
Sulaiman didn’t pause from making a note in the margin of a commentary on the Burned Book. “One should hope so, my liege.”
The silk of Nakvin’s robe whispered as she made a few discreet motions. Every candle in the room blazed with a flame many times larger, brighter, and hotter than before.
Sulaiman squinted. Queenship suits her well. She proceeds from strength to strength.
“Damn it, Sulaiman,” said Nakvin. “Take a minute out from plotting to kill my daughter, stand up like a man, and face me.”
With an inner grin, Sulaiman did as he was ordered. Nakvin stood before him; arms draped in lily white sleeves folded across her chest. Tresses black as ravens’ wings framed a pale face whose silver eyes seemed to pierce his soul.
“You didn’t think you’d keep this from me,” she said.
“I did not.”
Rage
seethed behind Nakvin’s stern visage. “Then why in the name of all the departed gods did you scheme to kill Elena under my own roof!?”
Sulaiman felt the queen’s wrath wash over him. Keeping calm taxed his will. “You know the necessity of my work. One death will spare untold innocent lives.”
Nakvin’s face fell, but she soon rallied. “Elena didn’t ask for what happened to her. Others put her into that position. She’s no guiltier than the billions who died in the Cataclysm; and less guilty than some I could name.”
The degree to which Nakvin’s claim shook him surprised Sulaiman. He was not unfamiliar with moral philosophy, having debated such matters in the Skola while he was yet a prefect on Mithgar.
Is it just to kill even a single innocent if a hundred be saved? Sulaiman had thought the hypothetical solved to his satisfaction. After all, there were far more than a hundred souls at stake, and the girl was far from blameless, whatever her mother said.
But deserving of death?
Sulaiman’s inner conflict must have shown on his face, because Nakvin said, “You’re a prefect of Midras, sworn to defend the innocent. Despenser may have made you a monster on the outside, but you’re still the same soul who gave me his cloak when I’d lost mine.”
A terrible weight pressed down on Sulaiman’s heart. He struggled against it for a moment before finally letting it crush every rationalization.
“As you say, my part is protecting the weak from the wicked. My god’s abdication changes nothing. And perhaps one who kills an innocent to save millions himself deserves death. Yet the task must be done.”
Sulaiman marched toward the stairs, brushing past a stunned-looking Nakvin.
“I’ve been damned before,” he said. “Let the pain of this deed rest upon me.” He took the first step.
Sulaiman takes another step on the timeless bridge. Once more he ponders the ancient dilemma. Astlin and Tefler have made his task more difficult, but no less needful. He struggles on.
From the apex of the white arc he spies the other side. A broad stairway rises from the bridgehead to a platform on the threshold of something so ineffable that he sees only darkness.
Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) Page 34