All Light Will Fall

by Almney King

  “How the tables have turned,” Neil growled. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

  I drew the weapon from his temple. “I’d worry about yourself,” I told him.

  “Vin, he’s getting better,” Tessa said. “The halos worked.”

  Vin moaned, choking on the blood in his mouth. His breaths were heavy but the spasms had stopped. It seemed he would survive. “What are you going to do now?” Neil hissed. “Do you think they’re just going to let you go?”

  I looked at the natives. They watched me. There was confusion in their gazes, confusion and disbelief, and even greater—there was awe. “Where are the red woods? Which direction?” I asked the eldest Meridian.

  He was silent for a moment then said, “You betray your own kind.” His words hung in the quiet. It was neither a statement nor a question. It was a judgment, spoken with certainty and spite.

  “I never gave them any indication to trust me,” I told him. “They were reckless.”

  “Treacherous bastard,” Ryan sneered.

  I ignored her. “Where are the red woods?” I asked again.

  “Why tell you?” the Meridian girl demanded.

  She was right. Why tell me? Because I had saved them? I didn’t suspect that I had. Meridians were strong, resilient creatures. It was as Neil had said. Eventually the tables would have turned. I was simply a well-timed distraction. “I shall tell you,” the boy said in Hedai. Then he held out his hand. “If you hand over that possession you carry. You have no right to have it.”

  He wanted the relic, Uway Levíí’s relic. There was no way I would give it to him. I couldn’t let it go yet. Not until I saw him again. And I had a feeling that I would. “The relic is mine,” I said. “When Uway Levíí wants it, he can return what he stole from me. Then he can have it. Is that not just?” I argued.

  The Meridian glared, but I could see him thinking it over. It was shameful of me, to use his purity against him, but it was all I could do. There was already too much blood. “Very well, igle,” the boy said. He lowered his hand. “When you meet Aieti again, you trust that you will give back what is his. And as it is written, I trust that he will slay you in return.”

  His words were bitter, but I took no offense. After all, he was right. During our last encounter, Uway Levíí was very eager to kill me. No doubt he would try again. That was why I needed the relic. It wasn’t a keepsake. It was a shield. “Take the river Sesani,” he said. He pointed to the far of the village where a line of river boats waded in the waters. “Follow the summer stars east. They glow red by the light of Cerniphilus.”

  He showed me to one of the boats. We eased from the deck into the water. The waves were high, rolling one after the other below my shoulders. A swarm of pond flowers swam over the ripples, the small neon blossom glowing in the dark.

  “Will you kill them?” I asked suddenly. My voice was hallow, and it struck me how emotionless it sounded. Then I realized that it wasn’t fear I felt for Neil and his team. It was pity. They had been so reckless and trusting of me. They were like overgrown children, corrupted and confused.

  “The Meridian do not kill if it can be helped. It is not our way.”

  To kill was not their way. Then was it the human way? Perhaps it was. We were nurtured by violence. Even our love was violent. It was selfish, and greedy, and unfeeling. It had to be. Why else would my father abandon us even through all of his love? And why else had I killed and continued to kill so I could return home? Because it was my nature. Not as an arsenal. As a human being. I had tried so desperately to separate the two, to separate myself. Arsenals did not feel. Arsenals did not disobey. Arsenals did not love. And yet I was guilty of all these things. Because no matter how deep and dark the grave, I was still awake. I was still a human being who retained her pride, her dignity, and her own corrupted freewill.

  “Then what will you do?” I wondered.

  He glanced back at me, brushing the trees aside as we waded through. “They will bring our dead from the waters. Then when our elders return, they will decide.”

  I wondered where their elders had gone. It seemed strange for them to have left, but the young Meridians were capable. They were like humans in that way. Their will to survive, to live, was powerful. But it was a steady will, with a consciousness we humans did not share. Our will was negligent. And how could it not be when we were so endlessly haunted by the shadow of death.

  “These boats have never left Fesafaun,” the Meridian said. “When you reach the red wood, return it to the water. It will find its way back to us.”

  I nodded then jumped into the boat. The boy held it steady as it rocked under my weight. The inside was plenty spacious, and as I admired its artistic design, I realized something. There were no oars. “How do I control it?” I asked.

  The boy blinked as if the answer was obvious. “You do not control it,” he said. “The river is your guide.” Before I could ask, he gave the bow a gentle push. The boat eased forward, gliding with a will of its own. I looked back at the Meridian boy. He stood in the glow of the water. The beam of the trees surrounded him, and he kept his eyes on me, watching me until I disappeared in the light of the night.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LOST

  The river took me. I didn’t know where, and one can hardly ever tell. Whatever the sprit may do. Wherever the spirit may go, man can never tell. That was fate I suppose, that blind unknowing of the world, of one’s own self. Only in the end would the spirit come to know, in the breath of its final years. And whatever it would discover there, death, or love, or loss, was said to be its destiny. But that I did not believe. I did not believe that man was led by destiny. We were led by the heart’s desire, our flesh and the beauty of freewill.

  The consequences of choice and the will of the spirit; that was fate. Destiny was something different. It was a path, designed by the hand of God, and I had always wondered how He could turn so blindly to mercy at the sight of my suffering.

  He was not so adamant to move. God, even in all His power, was only as mighty as the spirit that followed Him. I knew this. But man was weak, small, attuned to desire, to wandering. The very fate ARTIKA wished to cast off. Because they knew that they were slaves of that fate. To control destiny, that was their ambition, the desire of their will. And somehow, I was a part of that will. By fate, or by destiny, I did not know. I only knew my wandering and the endless run of the river.

  I had traveled north for miles, high into the mountains where a crown of sun rode low on the violet hills. There were creatures there, deep in the river, giant beasts grazing on the thick of the trees. They were angu, long-necked mammoth-sized beasts, and with their mighty tusks, yanked the giant tree blossoms down to eat. It was unfathomable to witness so close, to watch them move and breathe, to admire the art of their hides and the strength of their backs.

  The boat went forth between them. The herd was still as I passed through. From the hangs of their necks, I heard them speaking to each other. Their groans of conversation rolled deep into the mountains. I closed my eyes to listen. The sound was so alive and rich I thought to reach out and touch it.

  But suddenly there was something else. It was a whistle, or perhaps a hum, coming closer, rising higher in the wind. The angu rose up, and with a twitch of their ears, turned towards that jarring sound.

  I waited. I listened.

  A flash of light burst out of the treetops. It soared until it touched the stretch of the clouds. The flash exploded, and the shadow of some dark mass fell over the earth.

  There was something up in the sky, and as the smoke cleared, I saw it: a massive aircraft made visible by that single shot of fire.

  The angu groaned again, and in a fit of panic, began to stir. The boat rocked and I gripped the sides to keep it steady. But the waves were too violent, the angu rising on their hind feet, stomping and shoving, shoulder to shoulder in the wrath of the river.

  A hiss sounded in the trees. The yell of thunder. The earth r
attled and the wind shook.

  They came from nowhere. The Meridian, hundreds of them, stormed from the tree line into the river. They came with weapons and aboard flying machines, and astride armored beasts, shooting, and launching, and blasting their way through the valley. They fought, clashing together in a storm of steel, in whirls of fire and bright booms of smoke.

  In a startled moan, the angu rose to their feet again, blasting their hooves into the deep. The boat lifted suddenly. I saw the waves turning, the sky spinning as the boat jumped and threw me into the water.

  The rapids ripped around me, the waves tossing me left and right. I couldn’t see. Everything was swimming. I was up suddenly, reaching for the surface, then forced down again. Up again then down again, fighting the vicious twist of the waves.

  They washed me to shore, up into the midst of the battle. And war, from where I stood, never looked so alive, so conscious, so wild and unsteady.

  One of the Meridian noticed me then. He was dark as ebony, his beauty stark as midnight. His hair was bright and gray as the dusk. He stared at me, with a look of confusion, then raised his weapon in attack.

  I drew the p22, but I couldn’t move. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to fire. It was his beauty perhaps, or his fragile glimpse of confusion. I didn’t know.

  There was a shout suddenly and a piercing whiz in the air. A flyer was coming down, ablaze with smoke, ready to crash into the riverbed.

  I moved. He moved. The blast caught us. We crashed, one atop the other. The p22 went flying.

  Rock burst every which way. I threw the Meridian from above me, pressing him low to the ground, shielding him almost.

  Dust surrounded us. I was on my feet again and so was he.

  I looked to the Meridian. He no longer faced me, his body turned in attention to something else.

  A bright mist rolled fast down the mountains. There was no running as it came, and when it did, it came with a vengeance, ripping through the trees and swallowing every high and low of the land.

  The rush blew me to my feet. I reached out, my hands pressing hard against the ghostly force. The light pushed back, tearing into my skin. And I saw myself unraveling. My arms, my hair, every inch, and cell, and follicle of myself vanishing in the white of the wind.

  I remembered then what this was. That it was the hand of Kurios, the might of a god blooming forth. It was incredible, and perhaps too impossible to believe. Even with me standing here. Even with it so real to the touch and so bright to the eye. And suddenly, in my faithless question of it all, the world returned. Tree by tree. Creature by creature. The grasses flickered to view. The sunshine tinkled back, ray by ray, in brilliant shots of light. I blinked the dizziness from my eyes, breathing deeply to sooth the tautness in my throat.

  I was lost again in the fog. I saw only rock. Their shadows stood tall in the gloom. But as I looked, I saw that those icy pillars had faces, bodies, and that they were not pillars at all, but statues, the ancient lords of the Meridian.

  They were perfectly still but so beautifully in motion. A hand here, held the air in an elegant caress. A body there, arched in a sort of innocent pleasure, as if he were dancing. They were alive almost, their faces alight with a glassy fire. Their lips were parted in silence but somehow still seemed to whisper to the world of the living.

  I wondered for a moment, if they were to awaken and find themselves looking down at me, what they might say. I wondered if they might tell me of Kurios. If man and Meridian, did in truth, share the same Heaven and the same saga of Eden. Were we truly the fallen? Were we truly the shadow to their beauty and the curse to their blessing?

  Even so, what did that mean? Why would God taunt us so, with all we could have been, with all we should have been? I did not know. I could never understand it. Man could never understand it. And that was our greatest resentment, our powerlessness to understanding why, our inability to rewrite and design the truth ourselves.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SPIRIT

  The sun had yet to rise, and the air was cold and still. I was alone. I had traveled for miles through a wonderland of snow. Sprouts of blue and islands of green spread vastly throughout the valley. I went high across the plains, beyond a herd of snow beast, and down through the hills, I came upon a rivulet of white falls where large reptilian creatures rested lazily on the riverside.

  The land was quiet enough to shake me, and the sunrise had long passed when I discovered the meaning of my heart’s unrest. It was the silence, and all the voices of longing I heard in that silence.

  Longing—it was more a curse than loneliness. Loneliness was a dull and mellow pain. But longing was something else. It cut deep and burned like a dry wound, never hidden and never healed. I wondered if this was how it would always be. I wondered a fate where years would pass until I returned home. Could I endure the wait?

  Time, I knew, would do no good. It could simmer the pain, but the longing would be unending. Mother and Fern, I imagined them suffering the same pain. I imagined that in the night, when they curled up in comfort, in a cradle of dreams, that the longing would come to them and dwell there forever in the beauty of their sleep.

  By midafternoon, I came across a canyon of deep blue ice. The shining ravine stood tall in the clouds. I stood below the ice and peered into the twisted passageways. There was no way around it.

  A deep hum echoed long against the walls. My instincts were howling for me to turn back. But the longer I went out of my way, the longer it would be before I could ever reach Ellis, and I had to reach him. There was no question.

  Ellis was alive, and I would not abandon him. I could not. Because then, I would truly share my father’s blood. In the face of my father, we would bare the same image, and I was not my father. I would stand by my word. Not for chivalry. Not for obligation. But because it was my will. The family I loved, they were my humanity. They were the stars to my wandering, and I had wandered too long.

  There was a beautiful snowfall on the labyrinth’s other side. It fell gracefully like the cold tears of an angel. I wished Fern could see it. She adored the snow. She loved the beauty of breathing, of watching those white wisps of air soar into the cold. She said it was her soul and spirit breathing. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the soul was not so invisible. I wanted it to be. I didn’t want God to see me, or my shame, or my evil. Because if He did, He would forgive me, and I didn’t want His forgiveness.Not yet. By the wrongs in my heart, I still had much to suffer.

  From the low of the hills, I spotted something. It was a village, and rising quick from the icy gates, a black smoke billowed into the air. In that moment, I felt something stir in my chest. It wasn’t fear, but a feeling so close to it, and yet unlike anything I had felt before.

  I entered the village, wandering down the long, centered pathway. My mind was half empty at first. I was blind almost, blind to the fire, to the dead twisted and turned sideways in the snow. Death, it was so heavy in the air. In the burn of flesh. In the rust of blood.

  A band of red-tags had passed through no doubt. The village was rotted with their scent. But I only needed to see the death to know of their presence here. It was instinct to them. Violence and blood was in their design, and I knew not to despise them for their obedience, but ARTIKA for its vicious will.

  But did I have the right to hate? Had these hands not killed, and had this heart not desired blood too many times before? It was against my will, of course. It was ARTIKA. Even now, in this great massacre, all of it was ARTIKA.

  I always knew that the desires of the heart had the power to outwit the mind. And that the desires of the flesh overcome both the heart and the mind for most. But with myself, I knew not where my desires lied. My heart is of hate, my mind tortured, and my flesh the flesh of a stranger.

  I suppose that leaves my spirit. It is the only right I know. It aches now to see this death, with a pain it never bore before. Seeing it was all one mighty flash of history. War hating race and race loving war. It would never en
d. Even when this world grew weary as the Earth, it would never end. Because death had its desire and man had his.

  I wandered through the smoky blur and saw the dead buried underground. Their bent hands and broken fingers were tucked beneath the ash.

  A hideous death, that’s what this was. A land made ugly by the ghostly snow prints and the long trails of blood.

  A lock of hair tumbled, swept south by the frozen air. I followed it down a path of weeping faces that were overturned and buried in the snow.

  There was tragedy everywhere. The ice-bricked houses were nothing but rubble, and the ground was strewn with the people’s belongings. Shrouds of silk. Broken pottery. Animal hides. Wooden instruments. Colorful spindles of lace and shiny relics of bronze. I saw a child’s small toy and a tiny fur boot, torn and bloodied in the snow. And between it all, between those lovely vestiges of life, the dead were still and silent.

  I heard a cry suddenly, a mournful wail that sounded so much like death. It was all in my mind, but still I could hear it. And never before did death sound so deep, so dark, so haunting.

  Then I saw her, a young Meridian girl hidden among the rubble of a once beautifully crafted hut. Its icy walls had caved during the carnage and had toppled over her body.

  I knelt down in the snow, bending low to better see that buried and bloodless face. There was such beauty to her, in the slight dip of the nose, the flower bud shaped lips and the thin, carefully constructed brow line. And I imagined, that her golden hair and that moonlit skin was even lovelier with the kiss of life all around her.

  I saw the tears from her eyes as well, frozen beautifully on the hard of her cheeks, and I couldn’t help but think how precious they were.

  I wondered if I had ever seemed so fragile. Perhaps I was once, a long time ago when I knew neither guilt nor innocence. When I was but a blessing in the womb. When I knew nothing but the softness of my mother’s bosom and the harmony of her heart.