by C. A. Bryers
The blackened features contorted, burning eyes opening suddenly wide. “Wai—”
Lochmore’s head vanished into a black mist that cast about in every direction. The tiny appendages screamed from his torso and arms, and with a few staggered steps backward, his body dropped to his knees before toppling to one side.
“Rainne!” He sprinted to her, hands reaching to cup either side of her face.
She blinked, awareness slowly returning like dawn’s light rising over the horizon. “Salla?”
He searched her eyes, desperate for even a glimmer of identity, some sign that she was back and in possession of herself. A faint smile adorned her face, resonating with warmth and relief.
He swallowed hard. “That’ll have to do.”
He grabbed her by the wrist, leading her hurriedly down Adjutu’s Path. Once on the far side of Lochmore’s body, Salla turned, sending a tephic blast into the ceiling. The flaming beams came down in a rush atop the Adjutu, scattering plumes of fire every which way.
The two continued their flight, hurtling down the corridor, leaping over burning wreckage and dodging falling debris. Ahead, even the foyer was now ablaze. To their left, a vast section of wooden beams sagged as if turning to molten liquid. It bowed downward at the center, its breaking point clearly imminent. Down it crashed then, a gust of fire and tiny floating embers sweeping outward like a swarm of rousted glimmerflies.
Salla started to skirt them to the right in hopes of avoiding the scorching wave of heat that surged at them, but his vision went black a second before he felt the ground rush up to meet him.
In a daze, he looked over his shoulder. A flaming beam at least a dozen feet long and over a foot in girth had come down, one that could have crushed him with ease. But it hadn’t. It had delivered only a glancing blow that clipped his head and struck his shoulder, but it had sent him tumbling nevertheless.
There’s that Saar luck my old man keeps going on about.
“Salla!” he heard Rainne scream.
With dazed eyes, he saw her on the other side of the wall of heat and flame, shimmering like a mirage. Using her scarf as a mask to protect herself from the smoke, Rainne rounded the beam, grabbing him by the arm and straining to help him back to his feet.
As Salla hobbled with her toward the exit, something was there in the fog of his mind…something he had forgotten. Iriscent had left the gates wide open, and he saw the span of the bridge draw near.
Freedom, he thought. Open skies. I’m out. There might be a ch—
He was on the ground within seconds of passing over the threshold, collapsed as if someone had kicked the legs out from beneath him. Pain exploded through his head, a feeling like something was growing inside his skull, and would not stop until the bones shattered apart into a million pieces. Down his spine the agony traveled, shooting down his limbs and forcing his muscles to spasm as if his body was being fed thousands of volts of electricity.
“What’s happ—”
The voice was Rainne’s, he thought, but her cry was swallowed by a sharp buzzing sound, like a drill being driven straight into his ear canal. He felt his lungs surge to scream, but even the vocalization of his own torment became lost in the shrill cacophony that continued to escalate in strength and pitch. Between his panicked gasps, scant moments of clarity appeared and vanished. In those brief spates of time, he realized what was happening. He remembered what he had forgotten.
The safeguard Iriscent had warned him about—the tephic ward riding on a soundless wavelength around the House of Falling Rain that would act as a trigger to violently awaken the conflicting forces of the Eyes of the One and the Magsem. It was no bluff to keep him in line. It was real, and the powers he’d worked to push into dormancy were awake, two furious colossi trapped within him, raging to break free. He fought against the pounding hammerstrikes of pain, aware that it was only a matter of time before his body and mind could withstand no more.
It all started to fade away the next moment, a gentle easing into painlessness, the deafening screeching in his ears falling starkly silent. He did not know if he was truly dying this time—he had thought as much before, only to survive for the cycle to begin anew. If this was death at last coming to usher him away, he could make peace with that. He was not yet ready, he did not want to give in to it, but he could accept it.
Rainne was safe, and Lochmore was dead. Right now, little else mattered.
“He’s starting to come around,” a woman’s voice said from somewhere above.
When he opened his eyes, a face looked down at him, a crimson braid brushing against his cheek. The woman’s face broke out into a broad smile, eyes shining with relief.
“Iriscent,” he groaned.
Her expression became stern. “Iris, remember?” She looked straight ahead, and Salla saw the golden light of the conflagration that had engulfed the House of Falling Rain dance across her face. “Let’s get you back a bit. No point being so close to a fire without drinks and a buttered mushroom to roast, right?”
“You roast mushrooms?” Salla stuck his tongue out as if gagging. “That’s disgusting, Iris.”
Iriscent giggled. “See? He’ll be fine.”
Her face smudged with ashes and soot, Rainne Zehava crouched beside him, her fingertips soft as spun silk as they stroked his cheek. As hands fastened about his arms and legs in preparation to move him, Salla felt the dark, comfortable void of sleep yawn open beneath him, and the world slipped softly away.
33
The moon was full and bright as it gazed down upon the eastern rim of Empyrion Prime, laying its silver blanket of light across a black sky dappled with clouds. A stiff breeze swept over the glinting waves of the sea below, and for Salla Saar, it carried with it the scent of freedom.
Bruised, aching and exhausted, he sat there on the long bridge that spanned from the shoreline of Mythili to the ruins of the House of Falling Rain. Paying no attention to the whirlwind of activity swirling about further down the causeway as efforts were made to control the inferno, he simply basked in the openness around him, the feel of no walls encasing him that shut out the light of day and dark of night.
A dozen feet away, Rainne was speaking with a few Majdi officials, glancing back his way every few minutes as if checking to see that he was still there.
Not that she would do anything if he had decided to take advantage of the confusion and flee. For certain, the thought had indeed crossed his mind again since waking. But even though he had a vague idea of the fate that awaited him, he chose not to. Too many times had he run in his life. Too many times had he let the pain of loss or the fear of losing someone dictate the way he lived. He was tired of running.
Besides, he knew something of the Majdi now. He had seen their heart and courage firsthand, and the dogged determination that refused to let them quit. If the ones assigned to track him down and bring him back had half the persistence and fortitude that Joht Tavross had displayed tonight, there was no point in running at all.
Rainne walked back to him then, taking a seat beside him.
“Well?”
She sighed. “Well, they believe me, or seem to, at least. To be honest, there were moments when I had to question the words coming out of my own mouth.” Her weary, almost vacant expression did nothing to diminish the dazzling green eyes that met his own. “We will be expected to give our full accounts of what happened soon. Delflore is apparently coming to take control of the proceedings.”
Salla said nothing, letting the ocean breeze continue to waft over them, chasing away the pungent smoke of the burning facility in the distance. With his arms folded atop bent knees, Salla rested his head there, looking at Rainne for a long while. Her scarf fluttered about her head, the smooth contours of her face still radiant despite the dirt and soot that clung to everything. A furtive glance in his direction caught his stare, and she smiled in spite of herself.
“What is it?”
He shook his head against his folded arms. “So what h
appens now?”
She seemed to consider the question. “It depends on what you mean. What happens to you?”
Salla sat upright, heaving forth a long sigh. “Oh, I know what happens to me. I don’t think they’ll waste any time tucking me back into a quaint little cell until they figure out what they’re going to do with me.”
Her gaze fell in response. “It is not fair. First stopping the theft of our tephic source at Tempusalist, and now this. The Majdi Order owes you a great debt.”
He glanced back at the blaze. “I don’t know if I actually did anything in there. I survived.”
“And you kept me alive as well. Iriscent, too.” She sniffled. “Prison is not the answer for you.”
“Trust me, I wish it were up to you to make that decision.” Salla placed an arm about her, and he felt her head rest upon his shoulder. After a few moments pondering his inevitable return to a bleak future, he stopped himself. He was tired of it.”What about you? What’s next? Stay with the Order?”
“I think my time as uhreht’sa is complete.” She sat in silence for a long while, her expression pensive and her gaze intent upon something out there in the blackness of the sea. “I have gone back and forth more times than I wish to count. In a way, Lochmore was right. By my taking on the risks of rho, my future in the Order has been decided for me.”
Before she even explicitly revealed her decision, Salla already knew the answer. “You’re leaving.”
“If they will allow it, yes. I believe I must.”
His brows knitted in concern. “Why wouldn’t they let you go?”
She took a long time to reply. “Ciracelle. I told them what I did to her.”
“Rainne, you don’t even know it was you who did that. All you have is Lochmore’s word, and Lochmore was a—”
“I am aware of what he was, Salla. But in that moment, there was truth in his words. I can feel it even now. Those feelings—that mark of responsibility for what happened to her, I do not know if it will ever leave me.” Her head fell to her hands as she tried to choke back an uprising of emotion. “Whether he had control over me or not, it does not matter.”
“Of course it matters, Rainne.”
Her scarf swayed as she shook her head. “That is not true. Not when it comes to forgiveness. The Majdi Order, there is a chance they may forgive me because that…that awful act was performed under Lochmore’s influence. But can I forgive myself? Can I ever find peace with it?”
Salla didn’t know what there was to say. Rainne had looked at it from seemingly every conceivable angle, and yet the guilt remained.
“The only solution I can find is to look for that peace elsewhere.” She shrugged, a tiny smile starting to spread across her lips and transform her expression. “Maybe in the eyes of a child I will find it. Or children, I do not know. Perhaps in building life anew, raising that life to never harm, to only heal, maybe that is the way.”
So her wish for children remained. Deep down, Salla wondered if this newfound remorse was perhaps the final piece of the puzzle that pushed her toward the decision she had wanted all along.
He hesitated to ask the next question. “What about Ulong?”
“Ulong-Afa…” His name, whispered in reverence, hung there as though his very presence was there with them. She swallowed hard, but that smile was quick to spring back to life. “My wonderful Afa has found the peace that I must someday find. He has lived the whole of his life at peace, long before he fell ill. The only thing that diminishes it is knowing that my help to him all these years has come at the cost of my desires, my freedom. Once he learned of my conflict that led to my being uhreht’sa, he has refused every treatment I have tried to give him since, the stubborn tortoiska.” She managed a laugh. “The only thing that turns him around is seeing how upset I become when he does so.”
“He’s a good man.”
She sniffled again. “There is no one better. Not in all of Odyssium.”
He found himself looking at her from the corner of his eye, forcing himself to begin letting go. His future and hers did not coincide any longer. Perhaps the feelings they shared were all that was meant to be. Over time, those too would be gone.
As he felt her slipping further away, the isolation of what awaited him loomed taller, becoming more substantial. The thought of her had made his dark future appear less bleak, because with her there would always be a light to shine in on him from time to time.
“Salla,” a voice from further down the pier called out.
Looking up, he saw a trio of Majdi approaching, two of which were holding devices similar to the Odyssan Watchmen’s Compact Criminal Databases. They were for recording statements and taking notes, most likely, but the sight of them made Salla feel like an outlaw again nevertheless.
Between them, Delflore wore a pale blue dress with a floral print and a thick gathering of necklaces that seemed to be an affectation of hers, now that he’d seen it on more than a few occasions. She stopped a few feet away, staring past him at the remains of the House of Falling Rain with a disheartened look.
Turning about, Salla glanced at it as well. Most of the fire had been reduced to pillars of smoke in the darkness. The domed roof had collapsed, along with two of the watchtowers.
“Come. Let’s get you to the restora. I’ll take your statement on the way there.”
He stood, and Rainne rose with him. A moment later, he felt her hands slip about his arm.
His eyes gravitated to those hands as if of their own accord. “Can I have a moment?”
Delflore hesitated, looking tired already despite the fact she had just arrived. “I have a lot to get through tonight, and you’re just the first in line. But yes, you may.”
When she turned away, Salla faced Rainne. He stared at her in silence, wishing this was not the end.
Before he could say anything, she stroked his cheek with her fingertips as flecks of ashes fell from his skin. “If it is to be another cell, I will find you. I promise.”
He tried to keep the sadness he felt from his smile, but knew he failed. “Bring the kids someday. I’d love to meet them. And give Ulong my best.”
She embraced him in a rush, pressing her face hard against his chest. “It is not fair, Salla. Not fair at all.”
“Salla?” Delflore waited a dozen feet away with an expectant look on her face.
Rainne squeezed tighter in response.
He lowered his head to rest alongside hers. “Goodbye, Rainne.”
A sniffle emerged, her arms seemingly refusing to let him go. But when they did slip free, it felt as though it happened all too soon. One of Delflore’s aides went to her, asking questions immediately. She didn’t respond, but instead stared back at Salla as he walked toward Delflore and his fate that would ultimately be hers to decide.
EPILOGUE
When Salla Saar woke, he did so from a familiar vantage point. He was on his back, staring at the ceiling as he had so many times during Iriscent’s numerous evaluations. This time, however, he was not looking up at the crumbling, cobwebbed stone interior of a cell in the bowels of the House of Falling Rain. He was somewhere else, a room with a domed ceiling that seemed to gather the green light pouring upward from the cocoon pool in which he was immersed. The smell of burning incense awakened his senses, and the sound of soft music reached his ears even while submerged in the dense liquid.
His body devoid of the pain from the injuries that had brought him here, Salla sat upright in the cocoon, looking about the room. The chamber was clean, almost identical in design to the one he’d awoken in when he’d first discovered he was in Majdi custody. In the far corner stood a shower stall, and beside it, a table with folded towels and a robe hanging above.
A few short taps on the door brought his attention about.
The door opened, and Delflore walked inside with a smile. “Good. I’d been told your vitals showed you coming out of your sleep.” Moving across the cocoon chamber, she grabbed a towel and lobbed it to him.
“A few days. Long enough for the ruins of the House of Falling Rain to be picked through and the bodies retrieved for their proper burials. Long enough too for me and my aides to sort through all the information available, giving us a clearer picture of what may have happened in there.”
Wiping away some of the thick liquid clinging to his arms and legs, Salla felt a tingling numbness throughout his body. He was curious as to her findings, of course, but what did it matter to him anymore? It was a Majdi matter now, an event that no longer had anything to do with a man simply waiting to be placed inside another small box.
Perhaps noticing his disinterest in what she’d uncovered, Delflore grabbed a chair from beside the door and pulled it closer. “I know you have concerns about what happens next for you, Salla. I understand that. But I was hoping you would set that aside for the moment so I can compare my conclusions to your experiences.”
He let his head flop forward. “Should’ve just made a run for it.” The numbness was beginning to ebb away as he ran a hand through his damp hair. “Go ahead.”
“Let’s begin with Lochmore. Did Rainne tell you what he truly was?”
Salla blinked, thinking back. “No. She told me she saw the truth about him, but…no. She didn’t get the chance. A lot was happening.”
“I see.” Delflore nodded her understanding. “Lochmore was no longer the man he had once been. That part might be abundantly clear to you, but let me go on. You see, we live in a world of spirits, as you know. Most of us go about our daily lives without any knowledge of it whatsoever. But for Majdi, the afterlife and its realities is inherent to our everyday lives. I don’t expect you to question that reality, considering one half of the energy fighting there inside of you is castoff energy from an extraordinarily powerful spirit with which you came into contact.”