Beneath the Vault of Stars

by Blake Goulette

  “That’s exactly what happened at the Crescent…but you weren’t there! How could you know—”

  “What this second child doesn’t know—nor the world, for that matter—is that he has a greater purpose ahead of him. Had the tragedy that shaped that first child never happened, the second would have been cut down while still a child in some ways, and his death would have portended a cataclysm of such magnitude the world has never seen…

  “I, too, am a created being, my child: fallible, prone to error; neither omniscient nor omnipotent—and my recall isn’t what it used to be. Were I unrestrained and able—and willing—to do anything my will conceived, who among us could know what kind of horrors I might unintentionally wreak upon the cosmos? Yes, there are times when I’ve wanted to be able to do more, but I’m only considering things from my limited perspective: I am not the Creator, nor do I possess his perspective.”

  Kalas considered Falthwën’s point of view, though he wasn’t sure he understood—or agreed with—everything he’d said. The way he’d spoken, however, had the taint of some long-remembered—and long-hated—experience the cleric seemed loath to discuss further. Kalas let it go.

  Back in Lohwàlar, at the still-crowded Sanctuary, Vàyana rushed toward them when she heard they’d returned, eager to learn the details of their recent adventure. As one, all faces turned toward Falthwën for direction.

  “Did you learn more about that ‘strange thing’ you described?” she asked Kalas.

  “Uh, yeah, it…it’s covered under a whole bunch of rocks now: rock slide, maybe.”

  “Oh? That’s too bad,” she said, her eyes, narrowed, now on Falthwën.

  “The boy’s not wrong,” he defended, “but I have to ask the same of you as I asked of them—of everyone who knew about that artifact: forget anything you know or thought you knew about it. Please.”

  “But why? I—Of course! Forgotten! I have no idea what you’re talking about! Falthwën, you’re scaring me!” she whispered as she considered his stony features with greater care.

  “Good,” he said without malice. “Now then: there are preparations to be made, and I…Kalas, Zhalera: please remain with Tzharak for a while. When it’s time, I’ll return to the Sanctuary to collect you, but between now and then, perhaps the lot of you might assist the townsfolk in their endeavors?”

  “Why can’t we come with you?” Kalas blurted, hurt by what he assumed was Falthwën’s casual disinterest in them. The ancient cleric understood his tone and, in a hushed voice, confided: “Young Kalas, the next phase of my preparation is returning to your home. I only wanted to spare your emotions…but perhaps…As I speak, I’m reevaluating that decision—fallible, remember?—and, if you’re up for it, perhaps it would be best if you did come with me. srufin: I extend the invitation to you as well.”

  “Only Father ever called me Firebird!” she said. “Well, and Kalas, one time. Where did you hear that name?”

  “Hmm? I…perhaps I overheard it somewhere?”

  “Why do you—what do you want from my home?” said Kalas, confused. As soon as Falthwën mentioned his home, his mind called up blood-chilling images of Gandhan, the unskinned rudzhegu, and his mother.

  “We just left them there,” he continued, his voice hushed. Embarrassed.

  “I know, my child,” said Falthwën as he knelt, placed a strong, comforting hand on his shoulder. “I will ensure their remains are properly addressed before I call either of you to join me…Though Tzharak, I’m sure, is still willing to watch over you if—”

  “No, I want to help you,” interrupted Kalas. “Not want to, but have to, somehow: I know she isn’t really there anymore—this might sound crazy, but it’s like I sensed her kelâ leave her body. Maybe that doesn’t make any sense, but all the same…”

  “It makes sense enough,” the cleric nodded. He stood, patted Kalas’ shoulder. With another nod to Tzharak, Shosafin, and Vàyana, he said good-bye. He turned, Zhalera and the boy right behind him.

  4.

  The first sun had already set by the time the three of them reached Kalas’ house. From the outside, it looked like nothing had ever been amiss, though each of them knew the inside would tell an altogether different story. It would be mere minutes, maybe, before the second sun followed the first and wrapped the night in darkness, and the longer Kalas stared at the lightless window high above the main entry, the more it seemed to stare back, a dead eye, glassy in the deepening twilight. He shuddered, and Zhalera, observing, took his hand, tried to shoulder some of the unspoken dread both of them tried to ignore.

  “Are you ready, my children?” said Falthwën.

  The second sun disappeared, and somewhere beyond the shadows—perhaps some well-lit place, Kalas thought—the Song insinuated its melodies within the fraying edges of his resolve, gave him strength and renewed purpose; indeed, though at present its minor keys were most prominent, undergirding every phrase was a series of subtle major chords, and in the boy’s thoughts, the music painted scenes of a coming respite, an elevation from the sorrow all around him.

  “I am,” he said. Zhalera, as though waiting for Kalas’ cue, squeezed his hand and said the same.

  Falthwën nodded, closed his eyes for a moment and seemed to whisper something. A moment later, the tip of his staff burst into emerald flames which soon settled into more familiar oranges and yellows. Zhalera gasped, and Kalas could tell she wanted to ask the cleric how he did it, but for some reason, she said nothing.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  Once inside, Falthwën produced a pair of scented lanterns— from where, neither Kalas nor Zhalera could say—and handed one to each of them. Their fuel, the cleric told them, contained ethereal oils from various plants to help mask the fetor of decay.

  “Are you sure you want to be here for this?” Falthwën asked again as they rounded the couch and saw the shape of Gandhan’s corpse. Neither child said anything, but they held their ground, unwilling to walk or look away.

  “Very well.”

  Falthwën approached Gandhan’s remains, knelt, and removed the blankets the children had used to cover them. He began a low, almost whispered prayer of sorts when the bloated figure stirred, supported its mass with its flayed hand, and attempted to rise.

  “Falthwën?!” warned Kalas.

  “Father?” Zhalera whispered, though she took a step back.

  She knows better, Kalas had time to think.

  The cleric said nothing, acted like he hadn’t heard the creature or the boy, but as the revenant stretched its putrescent limb toward Falthwën’s throat, he swept it away with a gesture and a flash of light, completed his prayer, and stood. With a sharp crack, what once been Gandhan’s corporeal remains had become a heap of ash.

  “Màla,” he said to himself, and took a step toward the great room.

  “Who—what was that?” Zhalera demanded.

  “Something rare. Something I haven’t seen in…many, many Sevens: a shosayedhu, a corpse ‘worn’ by a lesser egu. I suspected we might encounter such, but I didn’t know for sure. That’s why I’d originally intended to come here alone, but perhaps it’s just as well that you gain a better sense of what awaits us in the world at large.”

  “A ghost?” Kalas wondered.

  “No,” said Falthwën, his voice flat. He explained: “Without a physical body in which to ‘dwell,’ as it were, one’s kelâ enters the shosathesh, from which it cannot return: there are no ‘ghosts’ as such. That doesn’t mean that a wandering egu, on occasion, might choose to ignore such a host.

  “It’s rare—most egume choose to operate from the darker places within the shosathesh, or tether themselves to living persons, the physical and spiritual stresses of which become unbearable for the inhabited, as you’ve seen. Given the circumstances under which your parents died—and given that Sharuyandas sru unskinned the zhàrudzh, it seemed likely that ‘sentries’ of sorts would keep watch.”

  “‘Keep watch?’ Why?” asked Zhalera.

/>   “Indeed,” said Falthwën and resumed his walk to the great room.

  He knelt again when he reached Màla’s side. Removed her shroud. Apart from the dark red stain around her abdomen, the almost contented expression locked within her features communicated a sense of mere repose, as though she might wake at a moment’s notice. As Falthwën whispered his prayer, Kalas walked around his mother’s body and knelt, too. The cleric’s speech—if it could be called speech—came to an abrupt stop. He opened his eyes, looked from side to side, and nodded, his expression quizzical.

  “Nothing has claimed her,” he said, though the way he said it suggested the observation perplexed him. “Nonetheless, let’s ensure nothing can.”

  He repeated his prayer, reached down for Màla’s arm. When they touched, another flash of light overwhelmed their eyes; another sharp crack reverberated in their ears. Kalas blinked, squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding brightness, and when he could see again, his mother’s remains had turned to ash and Falthwën was across the room, splayed out as though he’d been struck.

  “Falthwën?!”

  The cleric said nothing as he stood, brushed away the dust, and approached the place where he’d been standing a moment before. Kalas wanted to repeat his question, his concern for the ancient figure’s wellbeing, but something in his curious expression stayed his tongue. Again, Falthwën knelt, studied the silvery pile of dust. With his finger, he traced a series of shapes through the powdered remains. Kalas’ first instinct was anger: How dare he! he thought, but there was reverence in the old cleric’s eyes, and the boy knew he meant no disrespect.

  “What are you doing?!” Zhalera demanded in Kalas’ stead.

  “It’s all right,” said Kalas, and Falthwën stopped his examination, tapped the ash from his fingertip.

  “Aswanthalu, dhëmmeyahal, although I should have known.”

  “Known what? What just happened?” Kalas asked.

  “The one who delivered you to Tàran and Màla, no doubt,” Falthwën said, mostly to himself. Addressing Kalas and Zhalera, he continued: “No egu could have profaned your mother’s remains—nor your father’s, I suspect. Another who…exercises a similar privilege as I do must have done something to prevent it.”

  “The one who delivered me to my parents? Do you know who brought me here? Do you…do you know my birth parents? Why I was taken from them?”

  “I do,” said Falthwën, sighing.

  Kalas waited, rapt, for the cleric to continue.

  He didn’t.

  “Well?!” he demanded.

  “I cannot tell you,” Falthwën answered after a while.

  “What?! Cannot or will not?!”

  “Both, Master Kalas. I will not because I cannot. Perhaps that sounds like sophistry to you, but I have my reasons…For the time being, I’ll have to ask you to abide my reticence. It’s asking a lot from one so young, but I believe—I have to believe—you’re capable of rising to the challenge.

  “I’m sorry, my child, for the straits in which you find yourself: none of this is your doing, nor your fault; yet here you are…”

  In Falthwën’s tired eyes, still sparkling in the lanterns’ aromatic light, Kalas caught a glimpse of a simple, unadorned hope, lambent with the ancient figure’s shepherd-like intent. A single chime, deep and resonant, pealed within Kalas’ thoughts, and Falthwën blinked, his eyes suddenly wide. He regarded Kalas a moment longer, then smiled.

  “Here you are,” he repeated. He stood, stretched, and beckoned the two to follow him into Wodram’s study.

  “What are we looking for? Father and I looked all through this place,” Kalas explained, “but all we found was…some kind of weird not-paper.”

  “Perhaps you’ll indulge an old man’s desire to look around some more?”

  5.

  The study looked much the same as it had a few weeks ago, although wind from the home’s open door—or perhaps the hole in the ceiling—had strewn a few loose leaves of parchment across the floor. Falthwën stooped to retrieve the nearest page, chuckled as he examined it, and handed it to Kalas, who, along with Zhalera, also laughed at the artless illustration crafted by a child’s hand.

  “Wait—I think I drew this!” Kalas realized, and Zhalera laughed even harder.

  The two of them pored over the various items contained within the study while Falthwën moved with careful steps throughout its confines, examined not just the codices and scrolls but the surfaces of every shelf, the mechanisms of every lock or drawer. On occasion, he’d tap, press, push, or pull as he conducted his search. “I told you, âu, Father and I searched this place not that long ago…” Kalas reminded him.

  “So you did, my child. So you did…”

  “What are you looking for? Maybe I’d remember seeing it?”

  The cleric nodded, stroked his beard, and, noncommittal, said, “Maybe.”

  “Oh? Well, all right, then. We’ll, uh, we’ll let you know if we find anything,” he said.

  “Hey, Kalas, is this the book you were talking about?” Zhalera asked as she dropped a weighty volume atop the odd stone table. She opened its pages, flipped to one of the woodcuts in which zhàrudzhme and zhàfàrokme engaged in battle.

  “Yeah, that looks like the one,” he agreed. He flipped a few pages further, analyzed the foreign glyphs that represented text (he assumed), but still couldn’t understand them. He’d stopped at a page with an image that showed another battle scene: in it, a lone sword-bearing zhàfàrok defended itself against a horde of zhàrudzhme; in the sky above the surrounded creature, seven points—stars?—cast threads of light against the dark mob.

  “Hey, Falthwën: can you read this?” Kalas wondered. With the book in his hands, he turned toward the cleric, knocking several of the works littering the table to the floor.

  “This room could use a little organizing,” Falthwën winked. “Here, let me see.”

  He accepted the manuscript, flipped back a few pages, scanned its contents, flipped forward a few more—laughed and shook his head when he reached the image of the solitary zhàfàrok. His overall demeanor, however, indicated a peculiar interest.

  “Long, long ago, celestial armies did battle. Most have heard that story, in one form or another, since childhood. This text relates that story from the perspective of the erume: here, in this image, the stars are sending eruyâsru against the zhàrudzhme.”

  As he handed the book back to Kalas, something near the edge of the now-exposed stone table caught his eye.

  “Oho! What’s this?” he said as Kalas took hold of the book.

  He knelt, examined the edge of the table, ran his fingers along its border, across its surface, over every singular facet. He traced its asymmetrical contours from top to bottom, closed his eyes and repeated portions of the process.

  “Tell me, young sir: did you and your father look inside this table?”

  “Inside? It has an inside? I thought it was cut from a solid rock!” Kalas gasped: “Is this table made from something like that artifact?!”

  “No, my child: I simply meant appearances oftentimes only tell a portion of the story—or an outright lie. Here, watch!”

  Falthwën stood, traced a shape in the air: the motion caused luminescent green streaks to trail behind his fingers until he brought his hand down hard and fast. Kalas and Zhalera jumped at the cracking sound as a surprise gout of flame spurted from beneath the cleric’s palm. He withdrew his hand, examined it with a shrug. Aside from the imprint of Falthwën’s blow, the table had turned black, as though some explosion had rimed its surface with residue. Other than that, it looked much the same.

  Sensing the boy’s unasked question, Falthwën nodded at the scorched stone and said, “Yes, that’s it. Go ahead: touch it. It’s perfectly safe!”

  Kalas hesitated.

  Zhalera did not.

  “What did—how did you do that?” she asked as he gave the table a quick tap. Falthwën laughed.

  Before the cleric could elaborate, beginn
ing where Zhalera had tapped it, the desk disintegrated, its substance crumbling to dust in a series of expanding circles until nothing remained: nothing except some curious object that had been trapped within its structure.

  “Magic,” Falthwën dismissed. Zhalera nodded, as though that were all the necessary explanation.

  So much has changed in so little time, Kalas mused.

  “Next question,” Zhalera continued: “what is that?!”

  Kalas followed the implied line of her outstretched finger toward whatever had been inside the stone table. It was the approximate size and rough shape of a large knife—a short sword, perhaps—smooth, jet black, and fashioned from a single piece of some unknown substance. In the lanterns’ dancing glow, it shimmered in coruscating waves of violet, and Kalas thought it changed the light rather than simply reflected it.

  Its edge—it was a sword, a bladed weapon of some sort, Kalas decided—appeared to have been chipped and polished rather than forged and ground, though he somehow knew its edge was sharper than anything he’d ever encountered: he thought, though it made little sense, that it somehow cleaved even the shafts of light that dared touch its gleaming surface.

  “It’s beautiful!” Zhalera exclaimed. She knelt to retrieve it, but, perhaps experiencing the same subtle disquiet as Kalas, looked for Falthwën for approval, which he granted with a bemused nod.

  She wrapped her hands around its hilt and lifted—tried to, anyway: it remained immobile, as though it were part of the floor, or maybe part of the earth itself. She tried again with identical results.

  “Kalas?” she asked, and he placed his hands around hers. Operating in tandem, they tried to move it again, but it wouldn’t budge.