by Matthew Ward
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“There is no time to waste. We must get to your Ruler. Your people have made a horrible mistake. They’ve killed the bairsgn. We’re all going to die now if we can’t fix it.”
Maedc asked, “Are you sure? Does it hurt? Why can’t we feel it?” A thousand thoughts kept flowing through his mind. They weren’t dead, so the bairsgn couldn’t actually be dead.
Tkz stood up. The side of his leg had cuts all over it and bled quite badly. “It doesn’t hurt.” He glanced down at his leg. “Ignore that. It’s unimportant right now. It’s difficult to describe. It was more the initial shock. Imagine you were walking toward the river, and all of a sudden it didn’t exist anymore. You rely on it to live, and it’s gone. Your first reaction would probably be similar.
“I can’t be sure they succeeded. But they’ve at least severely injured it. I don’t sense the flow of spior anymore. Oh! I can’t get over the shock. How are we to survive when the most important thing has just disappeared? The prophecies were correct.”
The group began the two-day trek to Talamir Center. Maedc hoped they had that long.
XXI
They spent the morning dragging the vessels to the mianl building. The room was nearly filled with the objects. If these proved too few to store all the spior from the bairsgn, Eidr would start using the mianl building itself and the soil under their feet. There would be a lot of leakage, but at least it was something.
Finr said, “Is everyone ready? Take your positions.”
Drystn nodded and saw everyone else do the same. Bile rose to the back of his throat. He had never been so scared in his life. They might actually defeat the bairsgn—or die trying. Drystn focused his attention on the large, potted shrubs he brought. They had decided these would probably hold the most spior as opposed to large amounts of grass or herbs.
Eidr lifted his arms as usual. Drystn never quite understood why he did this, but if it worked, he wasn’t going to judge. Drystn concentrated fully on his first shrub. The spior flowed into it as Eidr moved the spior. Immediately, he felt the bairsgn try to pull it out. Drystn didn’t pull the spior like he had been taught, but instead used a technique they had all practiced where he continuously pushed the spior back into the vessel.
They had practiced sparring matches with the spior to simulate the bairsgn’s attempt to get it back. One person tried to pull it out while the other kept it in. Even with Eidr’s amazing strength trying to pull it out, once spior was inside of something, it was much easier to keep it there.
The bairsgn was much, much stronger at pulling the spior than Eidr at their practice sessions, but Drystn had momentum on his side though. With great effort, he managed to keep most of the spior in. He didn’t have enough mental energy to also see how the others were doing. This made him appreciate Eidr’s strength to be able to pull spior out of the bairsgn.
After a remarkably short time, the shrub began to shake; it had reached its capacity. The shrub exploding wouldn’t be as dangerous as the boulders or mianl shards, but it would still lose a lot work that went into storing the spior. If it exploded, the bairsgn would get all that back for free, and the distraction might ruin the other’s concentration.
Drystn quickly shoved the shrub to the side and pulled a new one forward so that Eidr would never have to shift where he pushed the spior. The shrub began to fill up more quickly than the first one. Eidr dumped the spior into the vessels too rapidly to keep up.
Maybe as the bairsgn got weaker, Eidr was able to go faster. Drystn heard a shrieking sound. He tried to keep his focus, but he managed to glance around to see who had made it. With the flick of his eyes, it appeared that no one had. They all remained intently focused on the task. Loegr shoved a mianl shard back and moved another forward. The sound continued.
Deep down he knew none of the humans in the room had made it. The shrieking was not of this world. It had a wild ferocity to it and modulated octaves far too fast for any standard set of vocal chords. The sound drove shivers through his spine, not from fear, but the sound waves themselves were so intense as to shake his body.
Spior fell out of the shrub. He needed to focus better. For all he knew, the bairsgn didn’t even have a voice. Drystn tried to comprehend how such a blob could shriek with such intensity. It was so loud and painful he thought his eardrums would burst. He couldn’t concentrate any more, and spior flowed out of the shrub faster than it entered. He had to pull himself together before he ruined this.
A motion caught Drystn’s attention out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t ignore it this time. A huge, black mass came streaming out of the hole in the ground. The bairsgn couldn’t compete on the spior level, so it appeared to be resorting to a physical defense.
Drystn shouted, “Look out, Finr!”
The goo flowed toward Finr, as if its sole mission before it died was to get to him. It looked like a river of fluid, but somehow it didn’t run everywhere. The water arm maintained its shaped and swiped straight at him. He had no time to move. Finr yelled something, but no one could hear it over the shrieking bairsgn. The fluid engulfed Finr, then retreated back to the hole.
Drystn watched in horror as spior flowed from the mianl back to the bairsgn. It would keep coming for more people until it killed all of them and got its spior back. They would all die and fail the one chance Talamir had at surviving the bairsgn.
Drystn yelled, “No!”
Nothing seemed real anymore. He didn’t care if he died as well. He had barely gotten Finr back, and now he was gone forever. Sobs wracked Drystn’s body as he tried to keep his focus on the task. How had such a thing happened so quickly? He didn’t have time to help.
A huge quake began. If the bairsgn couldn’t win on spior, it would defeat them with its physical strength. The ground shook so hard it began to split. They would all fall into the ground and be devoured by it before they could defeat it.
Drystn dropped to the ground from the shaking. He realized that the bairsgn must have been responsible for the quakes this whole time. The giant beast shifting under the ground had been causing all this fear. He felt a surge of anger and wanted to kill it even more now.
Eidr shouted back, “Stay focused. We’re going to do it. I sense he’s almost lost too much to keep functioning.” Drystn heard this, and he realized the shrieking sound had diminished.
Eidr grabbed the spior from Finr’s mianl as it headed into the hole and reversed its direction. Drystn refocused on the shrub. He shoved the bush back and grabbed a new one before it exploded. The spior flowed so fast now. Eidr didn’t even wait for Drystn. He just started pushing it into the mianl of the building and everywhere. He made a gigantic, dense ball of it. Eidr was so strong and the bairsgn so weak, he didn’t need to funnel it into any of the vessels anymore.
A high-pitched siren reverberated throughout the building. This scream was different from the first. It was the bairsgn’s dying breath. The vibrations shook everything with violence. Drystn thought the building would collapse. The crack split right in front of him, and he almost toppled in—he almost threw himself in with grief.
One of the boulders and a shrub did fall in. Out of instinct, he grabbed for it, but he pulled back at the last second realizing it probably didn’t matter anymore. He rolled away from the growing hole.
Eidr yelled, “We’re going to do it! It’s almost dead.”
The wail fluctuated pitch some more, and then it all fell silent. The ground stopped shaking.
Eidr said, “It’s over. He’s dead.”
Drystn collapsed to the floor, exhausted and relieved. They had saved Talamir from this beast. It was only then that he realized the cost and began to cry again. The thing had killed Finr. He knew it would be dangerous, but he hadn’t thought one of them might die from it.
The loss streamed through his body in a surge of depression. It was a pain he couldn’t have fathomed feeling before this moment. Drystn rocked back and forth on the ground with his k
nees pulled into his chest.
Loegr and Ninml ran over to see if he was okay. Loegr reached down.
He asked, “What’s the matter. Did it get you?”
“No. It got Finr.”
Niml crouched down. “I know. It’s terrible.”
The three held each other in an awkward huddle. They would get through this together. Through blurred lenses he saw Eidr on the other side of the room swaying, covered in dust like a strange dirt statue of a child. He had a hardened look in his eye, and he just kept staring into the pit. He must have wondered what he had done. A horrible sensation entered Drystn’s gut. He couldn’t help but half-blame Eidr for Finr’s death. If only he had killed the bairsgn faster, he’d still be alive. The anger passed, but the thought remained.
~
A great shadow hung over the would-be celebration at saving Talamir. Drystn had trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that Finr had died during their struggle with the beast. The immediacy of the grief lessened, leaving him with his thoughts. He sat in the church with the others, silently watching Eidr and Conl prepare for the funeral. The service would begin shortly at first sunset and last until darkness.
They hadn’t contacted anyone about the death, because no one knew anything about his family. They also didn’t have a body. This would require Conl to make some changes to the standard ceremony. Drystn got up and stopped just outside the church doors. A burst of outrage tinted the world red. A huge but hidden battle for the future of Talamir had taken place. Someone gave their life for it, and no one would ever know. What sort of justice was that?
Drystn leaned against the building and let his nerves settle. He watched the sky turn orange as the sun disappeared over the cliff. The sun would continue to light the sky long after First Sunset, but Talamir darkened at the lack of direct light. He went back inside and informed Conl that First Sunset had come.
Conl had set up the pyre of dried grass outside, indicating a funeral that night, but no one in the town knew of any death, so no one would come. But then a straggler did wander in, and he sat at the back of the church.
Conl and Eidr began. The words sounded strange now that they had all been privy to special knowledge about spior. What did the Church of Spior even mean if the laws of spior were incorrect?
Drystn watched as the beginning of the ceremony unfolded. They chanted together and took turns remembering interesting moments they had had together. The stranger didn’t have anything to say; he had probably come out of respect. The interior portion of the service ended, and the group walked outside to light the pyre.
The group wasn’t big enough to complete the standard circle around the fire, but they spread out and tried to make it work anyway.
Conl’s deep baritone called out, “From spior we come; to spior we return.”
The smoke mesmerized Drystn for a few moments as full darkness settled on the group. He swayed to the gentle crackle of the fire and dancing ashes. The community brought him comfort. A satisfying sense of closure and finality overcame him. Drystn realized that this was what the church was about. It didn’t matter if any of it was true. It brought their community together and gave them a support system in their times of need.
The service ended, and the mysterious stranger disappeared. The group stayed out by the fire long after they would normally leave. They told stories about Finr, but they also let whatever trivial matters that came to mind into the conversation as well. A kernel of respite blossomed within Drystn. Losing Finr felt like the end of Talamir, but it wasn’t. They had only lost one person to save everyone else.
~
Eidr went back out to the church to clean up. He didn’t feel like being around people. The whole experience of killing the bairsgn left him drained physically and emotionally. They could reminisce in private. He didn’t even know Finr, except over the last few days. His only encounters with him focused on using him to train harder for the bairsgn fight.
Eidr picked up a chalice from the decorative table and carried it into the back where supplies were kept. When he came back out, the man in the black robe sat in one of the pews. He hadn’t heard anyone come in, and the sight of a stranger startled him. Every time this person showed up, bad things seemed to follow.
Eidr said, “What are you doing here? Who are you?”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you would get so strong so quickly. I’m not sure what coming here will do. I’m just at a loss for what to do. I’m stuck now.”
Eidr moved closer, suspicious.
He said, “Stuck? What are you talking about? Did you give me these powers?”
“In a sense. I’m sorry. I would have gone back if I realized it would happen so fast.”
“The killing of the bairsgn?”
“Yes.”
The man sat and stared into the empty space in at the front of the church. His hood covered his face, and Eidr wished he could see it to get a better read on what he was thinking about. After a time, he realized the man wasn’t going to say anything else.
Eidr prodded. “You would have gone back to where?”
“I can’t explain that. It’s too complicated.”
“What’s going on?”
The man sighed, as if this were the most obvious thing in Talamir. The man stood.
He continued, “I’ve said too much already.”
He flew out of the room with remarkable speed. Eidr couldn’t help but think the man actually flew. It was strange. He noticed before that there was a smoothness to the motion, but it hadn’t occurred to him to look at his feet to see if he walked. People can’t fly. Eidr figured his exhaustion produced these crazy thoughts.
He finished cleaning up from the ceremony. He couldn’t shake the terrible feeling that he had just done the worst thing in Talamir history by killing the bairsgn. He thought he would be celebrated. The more he thought about the fact that this black robe tricked him, the sicker Eidr became. Had they just made a huge mistake?
On a hunch, Eidr tried moving the spior from one of the lights. The light went out as he plucked a ball free. It pulled out of the mianl with no resistance at all. Something wasn’t right. Eidr let go of the ball. Usually it would dissipate back to nature. Not this time. The ball hung there. It behaved like grassdough instead of water. Water rushed everywhere when not being held in the container of his mind. This still took effort to shape, but once done, it held its shape.
It couldn’t be. Eidr had ruined the natural order. Theory said that as new people were born, they got their spior from the people who had died. This made sense with how spior naturally dissipated. But now, maybe spior would stay put when people died, and no new births would have it.
Eidr ran back to the others to show them. He couldn’t believe that none of them had tried moving spior since the death of the bairsgn. It never even occurred to any of them that the bairsgn might be intricately tied to the life cycle of spior—that maybe the bairsgn wasn’t bad at all, but conducted spior like a grand symphony of life.
Eidr only made it halfway back. Sickly vomit came up as he rushed toward the others to tell them. The thoughts surged faster than he could think about them. It was all locking into place. He had just killed their god. What would become of Talamir without him?
Eidr burst into the room to find the group sitting around the small table. No one paid him any notice. They were too busy wrapped up in their own conversations. Eidr wanted to shout. How could they be so calm at such a moment? Drystn sat against a far wall but was clearly engaged in the conversation.
Eidr tried to calm himself and then said, “I have something important to tell you all.”
They all looked at him with annoyance. He realized he had interrupted something important, but it couldn’t possibly be as important as this.
He continued, “It’s very, very serious. Don’t give me those looks. Has anyone tried to move spior since we, you know, did what we did?”
Drystn stood.
He said, “No. Who can care
about a thing like moving spior when someone died?”
Eidr hadn’t realized how significantly Finr’s death had affected everyone.
Drystn snapped, “What about it?”
Conl seemed to have caught on to the fact that something significant had changed. He gave Eidr a sad look that comforted him. Drystn pulled the spior from an herb resting on the kitchen counter. His expression immediately changed. No one could move spior without noticing the change. Everything was different now. Drystn let go of the ball, but it stayed in front of him as if he were still holding it there.
“What the hell? What is this?”
Eidr said, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We were tricked. The bairsgn was what made spior possible. It somehow controlled it all. Now it’s messed up, and we’re in big trouble. I don’t think the bairsgn was bad. I don’t think it was sucking the spior from us. It was merely keeping spior distributed evenly.”
Silence. No one knew what to say to this. Everyone’s world was being turned upside-down like Eidr’s had a moment before. This little experiment of moving spior was too convincing. There was always a confusing mystery surrounding spior, but now this one small piece of information made it all make sense.
Conl stood. He had an incredulous look on his face.
He asked, “What do you mean we were tricked? Who tricked us? Didn’t everyone think the bairsgn was evil?”
“No.” Eidr didn’t know how to break the news to them without implicating himself. “Okay. I have to tell you all something. Don’t be mad. I wasn’t born with this power to move spior. One day, a strange person in a black robe appeared to me and gave me this extreme power. Apparently it was a trick to get me to kill the bairsgn.”
Ninml said, “But how do you know it was a trick?”
“Because he just showed up again and basically told me that.”
Conl said, “This is bad. This is really bad. There are stories of these figures in black robes going back to the dawn of the Second Age, maybe even earlier. They’ve been around forever, but they aren’t one of us. They aren’t human. Myth has it they can fly, and they have no face. But I always thought they were just that: myth. This is really bad if they’ve now shown up again. Bad stuff always happens when they show up.”