Sun

by J. C. Andrijeski

  They wanted him to kill the Bridge.

  They wanted his diggers to rip out her throat, to rip out the throat of her mate, of her adopted brother and friends. They wanted them to eat the unborn baby out of her belly.

  They whispered to him, telling him it was too late to bomb them.

  It was too late. They had to go in.

  They had to be sure.

  Deifilius knew all of this, and the delays with Marcus, Franc and their seers made him want to scream. He felt like he would rip his own eyes out, like he would tear at his own flesh, light himself on fire if he couldn’t get to them soon. That buzzing over his head was maddening, like a thousand voices in his ear, whispering, screaming, talking at him, telling him that God would lose, that God’s people would lose, and it would be all his fault.

  Demons would corrupt the holy doors.

  This rotten Eve, this seductress, this whore of Satan… this female… would destroy the world of men all over again.

  It was so hot.

  How in the name of God and his angels was it so hot?

  It felt like the temperature had gone up ten degrees in just the last half-hour.

  Opening the canteen he wore around his robes, he gulped mouthfuls of water, swallowing. It wasn’t enough. This desert seemed to suck every drop of moisture out of his scalp, out of his skin, lungs and mouth seconds after he stopped drinking, replacing it with red dust.

  Marcus cleared his throat, staring at him.

  Deifilius felt all of them staring at him now.

  “Sir?” That polite thread of contempt overpowered just that one word. “Brother Deifilius,” Marcus said. “What would you like us to do?”

  Deifilius looked at him.

  He stared at Marcus’ face, at his perfect brown mustache, at his arched brow. He saw the small smile on those lips, the look of disgust in his dark eyes.

  Yanking the gun his people had given him out of its holster, Deifilius shot him in the face. Shifting the angle of the gun, he shot Franc in the face as well, even as the other man turned towards him, eyes wide in shock.

  Deifilius re-holstered the gun.

  Cries and gasps from either side broke out as uniformed soldiers backed away from where he stood, from the two bodies sprawled on the rock. Both of them still moved, as if grasping onto life, but Deifilius ignored them.

  As for the others, Deifilius couldn’t see them, barely heard them.

  He took another few gulps of water from the canteen, spilling some down the front of his robes. He noticed only then that blood from either Marcus or Franc had splattered the front of his robe. When he looked up, he saw Gregorio watching him, his second-in-command.

  The big man’s face was wary, but careful.

  No defiance shone in those dark eyes.

  “Can I help you, Brother Deifilius?” he said, his voice respectful.

  Deifilius poured more of the water over his head, gasping.

  The silver strands still buzzed around him, but not as badly as before.

  He felt clearer now. He felt purposeful again.

  He didn’t look down at either of the two bodies that lay in the red dirt by his feet. He heard strangled sounds from one of them, but he didn’t bother to determine which one.

  He looked only at Gregorio, who still watched him with careful eyes.

  “Yes, brother Gregorio,” he said gratefully. “You can help me. I want you to break into those tunnels. Now. If the diggers can’t do it, I want you to use bombs to blow holes in the earth. Then, I want you to send in people. If they kill them, or if they fry them in OBE fields, I want you to send in more people. I want those people to dig with their hands if they have to. I want you to keep sending people until we break through.”

  He paused, gauging Gregorio’s eyes for understanding.

  “Is that clear, brother?” he said, his voice gentle.

  There was the faintest pause.

  Then Gregorio nodded. He bowed his head, saluting.

  “It is very clear, beloved brother,” he said, his voice deferential. “Very clear.”

  “Then please do that,” Deifilius said. “Please do it now.”

  Gregorio gave a full bow that time, his fingers grazing the red rock ground before he straightened, finishing with a hand to his heart.

  “Your will is mine to fulfill, holy brother,” he said.

  He turned, about to go, when a shout rose up among the crowd of soldiers.

  Gregorio turned back, even as Deifilius turned with him, staring in the direction of the shouts.

  They weren’t pointing at the ground.

  They weren’t pointing at bombs going off to the east, at any of the holes dug by hybrids, or at either of the two men sprawled at Deifilius’ feet. They weren’t even pointing at what remained of the jagged rock formation that had been called Ship Rock. They weren’t screaming about American savages, or the Bridge’s telekinetics, or the seers who attacked them in those canyons.

  They were pointing at the sky.

  “Sole!” one screamed in Italian. “Sole! Miei Dei!”

  Other shouts broke out, not all of them in Italian or English, although those two languages dominated the rest, their calls and screams blanking out Deifilius’ mind.

  He stared up, following their pointing fingers, and realized he’d been right.

  Hell was coming to Earth.

  The Bridge would kill them after all.

  “Sole!” they shouted. “The sun! Look at the sun! It will kill us all!”

  The round orb of the Earth’s star, normally the size of a coin in the sky, was entirely unrecognizable. It looked easily three or even four times the size it normally appeared, a dark red and orange orb, pulsing with power and light. Something about seeing it so close made it seem alive––like a living being, not a sphere of lit gas, or something devoid of consciousness, but a massive, living and breathing animal.

  Flares shot out one side in a long, slow arc, seeming to light the air on fire.

  Deifilius could only gape at it.

  The silver strands writhed overhead, muttering, whispering, cajoling, screaming.

  He could feel the angels seeing the sun through his eyes, seeing what he saw.

  He could feel them understanding what it meant.

  Deifilius turned to his second, his voice hard as ice.

  “Now, Gregorio,” he said. “We need to get down there now.”

  Gregorio tore his eyes off the sun with an effort, shock and fear in his expression. Seeming to make sense of Deifilius’ expression then, he shut his mouth with a snap. Fear, then anger contorted the big man’s expression.

  In the end, the anger won out.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice a hard growl.

  Without another word, he turned, motioning and whistling at the commanding guards who stood closest to them.

  “Come with me!” he bellowed. “Now! In the name of the One True God, we are breaking into these caves… now! Whatever it takes, whatever losses we suffer. We will dig them out of their foul, cowardly lair. We will drag them into the light of God’s sun. We will cut their throats and spill their guts for the carrion…”

  Dazed, they all looked at him.

  Slowly at first, then building in strength, a returning shout filled the air.

  Deifilius heard fear in that shout.

  He heard the near-hysteria that lived just behind it.

  He didn’t care.

  They were doing what needed to be done. They were doing God’s work. They were doing the will of the warrior angels of light.

  It was all that mattered.

  61

  THE LAST DOOR

  THEY CAME OUT of nowhere.

  I was swimming through rippling waves of gold and blue light.

  Silent, throbbing with power and density, there was so much light I couldn’t breathe.

  All I felt was Revik.

  All I felt was Revik, the sun, the door. I knew the rest of the Four were there with us as well; I co
uld see the geometrical patterns created by the interweaving of our lights… but more than anything else, I felt bonded between those three things.

  Revik, the door, the sun created with me a new matrix of Four, woven together through the pyramid-bridge-tower, connecting us to one another, merging our minds, if you could call them that, merging our lights, merging our purpose.

  Then, with no warning, the silence ended.

  Then, with no warning, they were everywhere.

  Revik warned me. He told me they’d attack. He said once they figured out what we were doing, they would come down hard––throwing everything they had at us.

  For months, he’d told me they wanted me dead.

  Even so, the intensity of the attack nearly threw me out of my body altogether. If so much light hadn’t been flowing through me and into me and into the door, tying me between the sun and Revik and that crystal-lined crevice, it probably would have.

  As it was, it felt like someone hit me in the head with a mallet.

  The pain was excruciating. It exploded behind my eyes, a white-hot intensity that made me think at first I was dead.

  I was sure they’d killed me, that I was dying.

  Screaming filled the skies around me. Silver threads writhed across the black backdrop of night, obscuring my view of the sun, obscuring the stars, obscuring that intense light Revik had been pouring through me like lava. I couldn’t see Revik, feel Revik… I felt instead like I was wrapped in a million spiderwebs of hard metal, dipped in tar that stuck to me, suffocating me, fighting to wrap itself around every part of my skin and light.

  I think I screamed.

  My light fought back, trying to force them off the bridge-like structure that teetered over my head. They battered it, trying to break it, to snap it from its moorings.

  The flying creatures continued to batter me from all sides, but I still didn’t fall. I didn’t do anything but stand there and try to open to that higher light.

  Once I managed to open, even a little, the light of the sun starting running through me once again. I glimpsed the sun, Revik, the door.

  I felt the presence of all three, wrapping into me, binding me to them.

  The sticky, tar-like, metal, coiling strands began to slowly burn away…

  Then the image shifted again.

  I felt the floor fall out from under me. It was like I’d been dumped upside down into a new place, one cut off from where I’d been before.

  I found myself in a gray, featureless box.

  The transition happened so quickly, I could only stand there, gasping as I looked at my surroundings, trying to make sense of them.

  The room, if you could call it that, was made of silvery-gray light.

  It was light that wasn’t light, that seemed to block every shred of real, living light that might have made its way into that space.

  Looking around at it, feeling it with my aleimi, made me feel faintly sick, and more alone than I’d felt in as long as I could remember. It was like a dead space in the middle of creation, a place that ate light, ate heart, ate love.

  Everything about it reminded me of death.

  It was like a permanent state of decay. Not a decay that was dynamic; this decay never moved, never changed, never transformed into anything else.

  It just remained as it was––dead, bitter, cold.

  The beings I felt here were like death, too.

  Filled with rage for its lack, for the lack it resonated within them, they hated their metal prison. Jealousy, pettiness, hunger, sadism, indifference blotted out anything that might once have been true feeling. Tedium, contempt, disgust, restlessness, discontent left them alone, perpetually angry, perpetually ravenous.

  They felt like bones dried to powder.

  They were a murderer with dead eyes, no feeling or empathy.

  I realized suddenly they were watching me.

  Even as I thought it, a single being formed out of the smoke-like air. At first, I didn’t know whether its substance came from the silver-gray box, or if its presence made the space what it was. It felt like it could be either, or both.

  Perhaps it simply wanted me to feel alone, cut off from the sun and Revik and everyone I loved.

  I remembered Galaith doing this to me once, many years earlier.

  I remembered him pulling me out of the light, trying to convince me the light didn’t exist, that I was alone, that I was overpowered… that I could never win.

  I wasn’t that little girl anymore.

  I barely knew who she was now.

  And whatever this being’s motives, I honestly didn’t care that much.

  The tall, skeletal figure stared at me, unblinking, from the opposite wall, hands clasped together by its chest, yellow eyes the color of urine. Its posture slightly hunched, it didn’t move, didn’t change expression, but watched me look around its space, as if waiting for me to adjust to my new surroundings, or perhaps to react in some way.

  Its body appeared even thinner than its face; I imagined it shrunken and wasted under the black robe it wore.

  It might have been Menlim in his true form.

  It might have been any of them––or none of them.

  It might have been all of them, since I suspected they were all more or less the same.

  Again, it was just another costume, another lie, so it didn’t matter.

  “You’re killing him,” the being said, staring at me through that gray, dead light. “You’re killing your mate.”

  When I didn’t react, a faint smile formed at the being’s lips.

  “Surely you know that?” it said. “He’s not like you. He is not built to channel this kind of light. You will kill him before this is done.”

  I still couldn’t really bring myself to react. Or to care what he said.

  “Do you really not care, Esteemed Bridge?” the creature said.

  I continued to look at it.

  There was absolutely no point engaging with this thing.

  Its attempts to scare me were rudimentary, crude. It had no concern for Revik. It didn’t care about him, about me. It didn’t understand love, or anything about us really, so it was pushing buttons based on things that had worked on other humans and seers in the past––the deep-seated fears we all carried, the guilts, the shames, the feelings of unworthiness and self-blame and fear.

  They worked on us because it was a mirror we held up to ourselves.

  But I could see past the mirror now.

  I could see the being holding it, and it didn’t know anything about what it was saying. It could only emulate. It could only mimic without comprehension, trying crudely to prod and hurt, to push me to do what it compulsively thought it needed from me.

  It knew nothing.

  It understood nothing.

  So why would I bother talking to it?

  “Let us through,” the creature said. “Let us through, and we will let you live. We will pull back our armies. We will kill no more.”

  I looked at it that time. Not because I believed it, of course––because I was really talking to it again. It was trying to negotiate with me.

  “No,” I said simply.

  “We are breaking through right now,” it said, staring at me. “Our servants are breaking through the red earth. We will kill all of you if you do not help us leave this place. We will kill every human and seer name on that List––”

  I laughed, shaking my head.

  “No you won’t,” I said.

  “We will kill many––” the being hissed.

  “That, I might believe. But you can’t get to the door in time. You can’t get to me. If you could, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

  I frowned faintly, looking at it as a new thought occurred to me.

  “Why are you talking to me?” I said. “You must know this wouldn’t work on me now. You’ve known that for a while. That’s why you haven’t tried to negotiate with me before. I don’t think you’ve tried to negotiate with me since I took Revik aw
ay from Salinse.”

  Frowning as I turned that over, I looked around at the gray box.

  “…This is a distraction,” I added.

  “Let us through,” the creature hissed. “Let us through, and we will leave your people alone. We will go to a new place, a new time, a new planet. We will not touch you or yours! You will never see any of us again!”

  That time, I frowned for real.

  “You’re going after the sun,” I said. “You’re not trying to bargain with me. You’re trying to stall me so you can harness the sun yourselves… so you can use it to open one of your doors before I can open ours.”

  Looking around at the gray walls, I felt a rising anger as I realized they’d already distracted me for too long already, definitely for longer than I should have let them.

  How did I get out of here?

  How had I gotten out of the box Galaith put me in?

  The instant I thought it, my light relaxed.

  Revik.

  Revik is how I got out.

  Husband? I called for him, going up through my light, through that ladder-like bridge that led up to the sky, that led up to the sun, that led up to him.

  Husband… where are you?

  There was the faintest pause.

  I felt myself moving through that pause, traveling up and up, into and through that ladder of light, following the strands until I reached the very end. I followed it all the way up to him, to our light-bond, to his mind, to his presence… to his heart.

  I felt his heart, that pale, blue-white sun that lived in his chest.

  The instant I did, light cascaded down into me in a hot flood.

  Multi-colored lava slid down that ladder and into and through my heart. Pale golds and greens, sky blue, blood red, white, yellow, orange… it flowed through me, into the door’s crystals, into the being behind them, into the presence I felt behind that.

  Something in me snapped back, steadying within that chain.

  I could feel the line on both ends again. I could feel myself again, balanced between them.

  I could feel Revik.

  In that, I could feel that the Dreng were right.

  I could feel what this was doing to him, how it was breaking down his light.

  So much joy came off him, so little concern, it was hard to watch. I felt his joy up there, his embrace of all that light, his willingness to let it run through him, despite what it was doing to him. He was beautiful up there. He was a god up there.