Shower of Stones

by Zachary Jernigan

  Outcroppings of rock began appearing under his feet. On the moonlight-dappled sea floor, they appeared like the backs of burrowing creatures. He trod heavily upon them, causing his body to ring like a bell, and tried to still his thoughts.

  Sradir said nothing, for which he felt gratitude, which in turn inspired annoyance.

  The island of Osa proper began. He ascended the jumbled, twilit steps of stone ten, twenty, thirty feet, and rose above the surface of the sea.

  Standing on the shore, a thousand rivulets of saltwater sluiced from his body. Above him stretched a wall of crystal, reflecting the night behind him perfectly.

  The sky. The sea, reflecting the sky.

  He said the words without Sradir. “Uperut amends. Ii wallej frect. Xio.”

  The passageway opened immediately. He spared the sea no backward glance.

  ‡

  He traveled a night and a full day before Sradir spoke to him again.

  Wait. Stop, Berun. Please stop.

  “Stop me yourself,” he responded.

  His pace slowed as Sradir ground him to a halt gently. He saw no point in resisting.

  I’m not doing this to show you I can. You know I can. Look up. Look around you.

  He lifted his head and did so, finding himself at the foot of a low wooded hill.

  “Yes? What of it?”

  You haven’t looked up from the ground for an entire day. Take a moment and see with these brilliant eyes of yours. This is the world we wish to preserve.

  He considered refusing, but once more, what would be the point in it? Each of Sradir’s displays of power served only to dispirit him.

  Turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees, he took in what he had noticed only as obstacles to be overcome. Behind him lay gently sloping plains, fold upon fold of golden grass and sparse forest. Miles and miles of geography, trampled under his feet in his haste to reach his companions. In the distance before him, blue mountains rose in the center of the island, his ultimate destination.

  Closer at hand, a creek wound down the slope of the wooded hill. It met another creek at the hill’s foot, and together they formed a narrow, swiftly-moving river that disappeared into the forest to the south. He imagined how a man would have viewed it—as unthreatening, idyllic, a place to rest a body after a long walk—and decided on a proper response.

  He shrugged. “It’s beautiful.”

  Sradir kept him from lifting his foot and moving on.

  It is, yes, but that’s hardly all. You’re being willfully dense, ignoring the fullness of what’s before you. Curiosity is not something you’ve ever had to force yourself to feel, so don’t start pretending disinterest now. How do I know you’re pretending? I haven’t been in here, wasting time. I’ve observed you. Fact is, I’m the closest you’ll come to a lover, a true friend, or a parent.

  “You could equally well be an enemy. A very good enemy, I’d add.”

  Sradir sighed. What occurred between us, I regret. If there had been another way, then I would have chosen it, but there wasn’t another way. To assume I mean you harm is ridiculous. I don’t ask for your thanks, but I expect you to realize the threat Omali posed to you. Ask yourself, would I have done what I did if I meant you harm? I’m here to help us toward a shared goal. That’s the entirety of it, Berun. That’s all I want you to see.

  “You said you needed my body.”

  I did. I do. I need your physical form to enter this world. Otherwise, I’m little more than a shade of my former self, content to wither away as time counts down to a close. When the threat to the world became clear even through the haze of that half-life, I focused upon the one soul attuned to my own.

  You, Berun.

  I fought the inertia of death and immortality both, because there’s something about you. I wanted to return, yes—the world still holds its sway—but if not for you I wouldn’t have found the strength to do so.

  He shook his head and tried to raise his foot again. This time, Sradir relented. He climbed the hill, descended its other side, and continued. His gaze remained fixed on the mountaintops rising over each successive summit. Overhead, wyrms corkscrewed through the sky, calling to one another with nearly human voices.

  As the waning sun sent tall shadows before him, he finally relented to his desire.

  He stopped and tipped his head back.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  Yes, Sradir answered. It is.

  ‡

  As promised, the land led him to it. A mile due south of the weapon repository, Adrash had carved a roadway into an ancient lava flow. It descended ten miles into a verdant thorn bush and cactus-studded plain, ultimately depositing him at the entrance to his destination.

  He passed a hand over the finely pitted surface of one massive basalt pillar that helped form the entryway. It and its neighbor rose fifty feet over his head, the crossbar at its height extending nearly twice that length. An army could have passed through, thirty men across. A family of wyrms could have roosted upon it. He wondered what Adrash’s intentions had been, creating such a massive monument. Had he been so bored with existence?

  Yes, Sradir said. That’s it, exactly.

  He climbed a broad stairway of black stone, gazed down into the partially cloud-covered valley, and found his sense of scale confounded a second time.

  Though he had known a valley to be his destination, a ridge of stone had shielded it from view during his descent along the lava road. Nothing from Sradir or Shavrim had led him to expect anything other than a natural feature of the land.

  Surprise, Sradir said. Welcome to Shavrieem, useless monument to my brother.

  Berun rocked back with a shrill creak.

  An entire nation could have attended games in the coliseum Adrash had carved into the immense, almost perfectly circular depression. Danoor’s Aresaa Coliseum, itself the most massive stadium on the continent, could have fit inside the terraced space alongside a hundred of its reproductions. Row upon row of stands, divided by staircases that plummeted the better part of a mile, circled the walls of the valley.

  Even the lowest seats possessed a spectacular view, rising nearly three hundred feet above the earthen floor. Gated entryways, each large enough to sail a galleon through, were spaced at regular intervals in the walls below them, leading Berun to believe that more construction existed beneath the valley itself—immense tunnels, holding cells, and training areas.

  He sensed amusement, but also a measure of annoyance, from Sradir. Adrash never was one for half measures. Boredom drives even a god to extraordinary measures. This pleased him for a time before it too became something of a sore subject. We once shared this place as a sanctuary together, a place removed from humanity, but after the creation of Shavrieem …

  It waved Berun’s arm in a vague gesture, almost as though it had for briefly forgotten itself.

  Silent, he wondered at the odd intimacy of the moment.

  One of the low-hanging clouds shifted to show a greater stretch of the coliseum floor. He immediately focused upon the temple revealed at its center. Roughly hewn from red stone and open to the elements on all sides, it stood out from the clean, complete lines Adrash had crafted.

  Shavrim’s answer, Sradir said. Not that Adrash ever noted its existence.

  “They were not happy with each other?”

  Frequently.

  He started down the nearest staircase, the spheres of his feet automatically conforming to the steps. More and more sure of his balance, he moved ever faster while keeping his eyes focused on the temple. Shavrim had been no more specific than to say they were to meet in the valley, but Berun felt confidant that he meant the temple.

  As if in answer to his assumption, Shavrim walked out of the temple’s shadow. Shirtless, newly scarred over the length and breadth of his torso. Carrying the black knife Sroma in his left hand.

  From miles away, their stares locked. Berun kept his features carefully composed.

  Hello, brother, Sradir pr
ojected. We return in triumph.

  Shavrim closed his eyes, as though weighing these words. He nodded slowly, stone-faced, then turned away and re-entered the temple.

  Sradir made a clucking sound. When it spoke, Berun knew it was only for the two of them.

  Oh, Shavrim. You always knew how to ruin a good thing.

  ‡

  The dynamic between the three had changed: Berun recognized this the moment Churls and Vedas stepped from the temple’s interior to greet him. Though both had thinned further in his brief time away, they appeared well rested, far from frail. Indeed, they appeared harder, knifelike, every muscular twitch more defined on their frames.

  Shavrim followed several paces behind, breathing heavily, three long wounds raked across his chest. There were lines on his face that had not been present only days ago. His red-rimmed eyes scanned the heights of the valley as if he expected an attack.

  Churls ran to Berun, light-footed in a way he had never seen her, ready to leave the ground. She wore calfskin leggings and a thin, tight vest, revealing the hairline cuts on her arms and shoulders, most of which had already scarred over. Her skin tone struck him as subtly wrong, too even, without the warm redness she had always possessed after days under the sun. The freckles had faded to nothing on her shoulders, upper arms, and bare scalp. They remained on her face only as a spattering over the bridge of her nose.

  He had always admired her freckles. So few humans possessed them.

  “Berun,” she said, wrapping her arms as far around him as she could. “You’re free now.” She released him and laid her palms flat upon his chest, her eyes bright and clear. “And you’re warmer than when you left, like a fire’s inside you..”

  Yes, you silly bitch, Sradir said coldly. He’s got me now. I’m the fire inside him. The god stretched partway into his limbs, and—for all the good it would do—Berun braced himself against another assumption of his body. Sradir relaxed, however.

  She’s closer to the surface, Berun. Ustert. You can feel her just behind your friend’s smile, can’t you?

  He could, and it pained him to recognize it. He forced himself to rest his hand upon her head, fighting the revulsion Sradir made no attempt to hide.

  “It’s the sun here, under the glass,” he said. “It seems to have an unusual effect over time.”

  Vedas did not quicken his pace like Churls had, but he smiled warmly. Barring the severe angularity of his face and body, he appeared much the same as he always had to Berun.

  That is, until the man stood within touching distance.

  Close up, Berun could see the fine lines raised in relief upon Vedas’s suit. Repeating vortices, geometrical patterns upon patterns. They shifted subtly as Berun watched, growing and reducing, birthing and dying. Vedas could not have created such intricate work on his own. No man could have done so.

  Berun made sure to keep his stare from becoming obvious. He composed his features into a pleasant expression and gestured to encompass the valley.

  “This is our training grounds? Is it not rather overlarge, Shavrim?”

  The horned man’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Likely. But I know of no better way to attract Adrash’s attention than to return to this place.”

  Berun looked from Shavrim to Churls, Churls to Vedas. “This is the extent of your plan?”

  Shavrim nodded. “You expected more, constructed man? Some elaborate plan to lift us from the earth and hurl us into the void? No.” He stamped his foot, causing the heavy muscles of his thighs to jump. “He comes to us. We force him to fight us on the earth we’ve claimed for ourselves.”

  He flipped his heavy black knife twice, and then threw it at Berun.

  Berun lifted his right hand to slap the weapon from the air. Upon contact, a great blast washed out the vision in his eyes and threw his body backward thirty feet. Senses scrambled, he tumbled end over end, throwing up great clods of grass and dirt. He came to rest, and though the thought of getting to his feet occurred, he could not make himself do it. All at once, he had forgotten where he was, how he had come to be on the ground.

  Footsteps. Berun levered himself up and stood, swaying as he sought to reorganize his thoughts.

  A threat. There was a threat. Footsteps.

  He fell over, tried to rise, and eventually managed to sit.

  Someone slapped his head, righting it. It had turned completely around on his shoulders.

  Shavrim swam before him.

  “Yes, Berun,” he said. “Light and sound and violence. We’ll need more of that. After thousands of years, I no longer remember how not to shield myself from Adrash. Thus, it’s up to us to shout our challenge as loudly as we can.” He crouched, a not unkind expression on his face. “And you—you’ll need to learn to defend yourself a bit better. Death will come wielding more than knives.”

  ‡

  When his companions’ breathing changed, signalling the depth of their slumber, he rose and walked a mile west from camp. He sat, cross-legged in the grass, and slowly let his spheres uncouple and spread out. The glowing blue coals of his eyes focused on the temple as his body undulated and then began forming itself into a replica of the building. It proved taxing work, for it had been some time since his form had been fluid enough to do so.

  Sradir remained silent, undoubtedly aware of his intent.

  It took numerous attempts, but finally, on the seventh, he toppled one of the pillars and allowed it to detach completely from its neighbors, achieving the separation of his being into two distinct parts.

  Sradir gasped as the wave of pleasure crashed over them.

  Berun fought to hold himself apart, as two entities, sustaining the sensations. The thousand spheres of his body rang a wild harmonic tone, repeating and intensifying in waves to match his wildly stuttering senses. His eyes flared on and off in the darkness, pulsing from brief star to cold stone over and over again. He became aware of Sradir, sharing the moment, lending him the strength to draw it out longer.

  Time stretched from the two poles of his reality.

  When both of his and Sradir’s efforts could maintain the division no longer, the sculpture he had created of himself dissolved into a pool of brass once more. The components he had separated were reabsorbed into the greater whole, and the sensations wound down.

  He rested in companionable silence, vision rotated to the sky. Much like the wyrms he had seen on his way to the valley, the beauty of the Needle could not be denied.

  Yet it took him several minutes to notice the change in it.

  One of the largest of the spheres, which had for months been positioned over the constellation Indusc, had been moved further back and closer to the moon. He stared at it, dumbfounded by this change—by the change, but also by his own willful ignorance. A god moved the heavens according to his own whim, and until that point he had not bothered to consider how odd a thing this was.

  He had always observed men, noting the ways in which Adrash’s existence altered the course of their lives.

  But the very fact of Adrash? This, he had not considered.

  He formed a mouth. “Has it always been this way, Sradir? Is it this way elsewhere?”

  Elsewhere, Sradir said. Where, elsewhere?

  He focused his eyes on prominent individual stars, on the wispy backbone of the sky (each miniscule speck of which, Omali had claimed, was itself a star), and finally on the bright smudges and whorls scholars claimed to be the immeasurably distant homes of other stars.

  Entire collections of stars, millions upon millions, each with its own collection of worlds.

  Sradir chuckled. What do you think death is? There’s a world of the dead, as you well know, lying under and above this world. There’s a way to other places, as well, but no one returns once they’ve left, and thus no one can say what lies beyond.

  It’s a place of theory. Berun. Perhaps Adrash knows, but he’s never told.

  “You didn’t answer my first question. Has it always been this way?”

&n
bsp; Sradir let him feel a portion of its discomfort. Or, possibly, it no could no longer easily hide itself from him.

  I wasn’t born. I was created. I held the jar that housed my body before its decanting. It was a small clay container, no higher than a man’s knee, no heavier than a water barrel. After my creation, my education—he could hear the sneer in the word—began in earnest. Adrash, no more a father than Omali was to you, dictated the terms. I learned what he’d have me learn. Even after millennia, I still doubted…

  My point, Berun, is that I am … I am …

  “You don’t need to finish, Sradir. I understand what you—”

  I do, and you don’t. You persist in believing we’re quite different, but there’s a reason your mind resounded with mine. We are much the same. Despite having spent so much time with my creator, having witnessed his moods over the span of many human lives, having inherited so much from him, I look at the sky now and I wonder what passes through his mind. I pretend to know, but in reality?

  I know nothing. I’m here with you, wondering. Has the world always been this way? Does each world possess a god it must overcome to achieve adulthood? There are no answers to these questions. We fight, you and I, against what we can see.

  ‡

  “Drivel,” a flinty voice spoke. “Answers are for the taking, Sradir. You merely need to know which screws to put to which thumbs.”

  Berun’s eyes swiveled to the source. In the moonlight stood a tall, pale-skinned man, naked from crown to sole. Creatures crawled upon his sinuously muscled torso, and an odd darkness flowed from his back, obscuring the land behind him.

  No. Berun reappraised what he saw.

  This was no man. At least, not fully. Before him stood an elderman, though unlike any elderman he had previously seen. What had first appeared to be creatures crawling over him were in fact black shapes, one-dimensional images of wyrms and wolves and tentacled creatures. They shifted from form to form, chasing one another around the angular length of his body, avoiding only a hands-print deformity on his pectoral muscles and a massive scar raked across his abdomen.

  The darkness at his back revealed itself to be broad wings, deep and without mark or feature.