Schisms

by James Wolanyk

  A row of fighters knelt within the stone ring, staring back at Anna and her columns through the brass sights of their ruji. Behind them, seated along a stone table as though waiting for their feast, were the foremost breakers, the paunchy heads of the state’s old orders, the scarlet-wrapped merchant barons who’d dealt in flesh and more before fleeing from Hazan, and—

  The Venerable Gideon Mosharan.

  A glimmer of something strange and primal cut through the old breaker’s smirk, putting a rattle in his touch as he set his chalice down and pursed his lips.

  “Thus she is known from amid the ashes,” the Council croaked through its appendages. “The wretched, ignorant thing cannot grasp its fated end.”

  Anna drew even closer, prompting the firing line before her to stand and lock shoulders. Her stance was even and solid.

  “You foolish, foolish girl,” Gideon said, rising with a fit of trembling in his brittle bones. Not with anger, but with a father’s rebuke. His eyes twitched and bloomed with the onset of milky white clouds in the candlelight. “What have you brought upon us?”

  “Consequences,” Anna whispered.

  “If only it were so mild,” Gideon said.

  “Gideon Mosharan,” Ga’mir Ashoral announced, moving to Anna’s side and glaring at the loyalist fighters before her. “Your charge is collusion with a foreign enemy. The blood of the state’s martyrs imbues any capable commander with the right to removal from power, by any means necessary. Up to, and including, the dissolution of the flesh.”

  “What lunacy stirs beneath us?” the Council’s puppets droned. Mesar’s body drifted forth, more shriveled and pallid than ever before. “By what divine law does mutiny gain dominion over order? Speak your bitter truth.”

  “Perhaps to a beast, this is lawful and just,” Gideon said.

  “You knew what you were doing,” Anna said. “Now the wolves have come knocking. None of your words can turn them away.”

  “They would have lain dormant,” Gideon replied. “One life for countless others, Kuzalem. If nothing else, you’ve earned that sorrowful title.”

  “There’s no honor in betrayal,” she said.

  “Honor?” Gideon asked. His bony fingers were trembling upon the tabletop. “What honor is to be found in destroying a dying man, ah? One who has burned countless sacrifices to the ideals of his homeland?”

  “Your charges have been issued,” Ga’mir Ashoral said. “Do you dispute them?”

  Something faint twinkled at the edges of the old man’s eyes. “I submit to the instruments of the state’s destruction. What is to follow, Ga’mir? Shall I be housed in a prison of ashes? In pits of bones and the bellies of ravaged libraries?”

  “We will stand for our city,” the ga’mir replied evenly, “but you will receive the recognition you seek.”

  “Stand?” Gideon laughed. “While you were waving blades and barrels at the hordes, the breakers were sparing your rabid souls. You know nothing of their true numbers, nor what they’ll inflict upon the people once our gates are trampled beneath their heels. Speak of justice and honor as you please, Ga’mir; as Kuzalem slit the state’s throat, I did my work with a suturer’s thread. Until my last breath, I submit to the eternal. The state’s soil will cry out in delight for my blood.”

  “Ideals are a coward’s final refuge,” Anna said sharply.

  “I owe nothing to you, Kuzalem,” Gideon said. “You, however, owe countless breaths to those who are certain to perish in the coming days. Look upon your students, girl, and whisper your sweet and empty words to them. Tell them why your existence warrants the extermination of goodness in this world. I’ll hold my tongue, I swear it.”

  “If you’re so keen to make sacrifices, you ought to begin with yourself.”

  He gave a heavy sigh. “Men of great power have risen and been bled throughout my life. Any one of them could’ve brought the state to ashes, but I worked to avoid this fate, Kuzalem. These ailing bones have been ground into the earth a thousand times over.”

  “It’s not too late to save your precious state,” Anna said, turning her attention to the Council’s swarm of scarred and oozing eyes. “Order the city’s columns to assemble. Volna’s stretched too thin to regroup at this hour. Don’t let their ploy blind you.”

  “Every death that branches from this moment must rest upon your shoulders,” Gideon said.

  Anna scowled at the breaker. “We should begin with yours.”

  “And then what?” the breaker asked in river-tongue. It was a light, natural tone, surely honed somewhere in the marshes beyond Kowak. He smiled at the rash of confusion that broke out across the chamber. “Death moves on swift legs.”

  “You knew about Ramyi’s sister,” Anna replied in kind.

  “Her and I both understood the girl’s power. Only one of us had the resolve to break the other. She lacked foresight and she paid that price.”

  “You caused this,” she whispered. “They never would’ve invaded without your strike.”

  “My, how clear are the waters of the past.”

  Ga’mir Ashoral barked something in Orsas, sending a rippling flinch through the line of opposing fighters. “Stand down,” she said in flatspeak.

  Their barrels did not waver.

  “Is this how it ends?” the Council droned. “Such hard-won existence, lost to the winds of time and malevolence?”

  “We’re giving you the only solution,” Anna said in flatspeak. “Relinquish command of your forces.”

  “Must I?” Gideon asked, barely above a whisper. “Why not allow the future of the state to decide our course?”

  “The Council no longer holds authority,” she replied.

  “Think closer to your heart, Kuzalem,” Gideon said. He turned, beckoning Ramyi to approach from her seat on the steps. The girl was slow to acknowledge his gesture and even slower to stand, to move to the breaker’s side with downcast eyes and hands that trembled within billowing sleeves. He rested a hand on Ramyi’s upper back, forcing a slight shudder through the girl’s shoulders. “Speak of your adoration for the state, Ramyi. Show your mentor the truth of this world.”

  Ramyi stared at Anna. Her face was not the same; it was haggard and creased, shrouding her golden eyes with lids like chipped stone ridges. Girl no longer seemed fitting.

  “It’s all right,” Anna said gently. She was struck by collapsing memories, by prescience and dread in the same vein, by the illusion that she was a northerner with a shaved head and a young, broken charge left to the world’s devices.

  Ramyi drew a long breath, moving her hands to the sash across her waist to stem the trembling. Her wrist twitched, a glint and a flash sparked in the candlelight, sleeves whirled as her arm spun up and over, driving toward the breaker’s throat. Then she moved away, chest heaving in broken swells.

  Gideon patted at his throat and the narrow blade that had been driven through his windpipe. Blood bubbled out in a pink froth, growing richer, redder, flowing down his shirt and over the silver plate he’d piled with lamb. He gurgled for a moment, meeting Anna’s eyes in vague confusion, before staggering and dropping behind the tablecloth.

  One of the merchant barons spun away and retched. The others gazed upon the body with blank expressions, nestling their hands in their laps, dabbing at wine-stained lips with their handkerchiefs as the old breaker gave a wet, final rattle and fell silent.

  “Stand down,” Ga’mir Ashoral repeated quietly.

  With hard swallows and nervous glances, the fighters began to lay their ruji upon the stones. But before the final loyalists could comply, there was a feral cry from further back in the chamber.

  Ramyi rushed to Gideon’s body and fell upon it with her blade, jabbing wildly, plunging up and down with reckless stabs. Red flecks spattered across the table, the nearby guests, the girl’s cheeks and forehead. She gritted her teeth and let
tears mingle with the blood and screeched once, twice; all the while defiling the corpse and leaving bright splotches upon her white sash.

  “That’s enough,” Anna said. But the girl would not relent. “Ramyi, enough!”

  Huffing through gritted teeth, Ramyi buried the blade between Gideon’s eyes and stood. She was soaked in scarlet, her eyes darting around frantically.

  “By the Grove,” Konrad whispered.

  “Seize them,” Ga’mir Ashoral said, sweeping a pointed finger over those still gathered around the table. Her troops surrounded the breakers and barons and loyalist fighters in an enormous rush, forcing their captives to the ground and clamping iron links on their wrists. The ga’mir then turned to Anna, lowering her voice as she gestured to the rows of petrified scribes. “You’ll need to organize them, Kuzalem. Our commanders won’t have long to mount a defense, let alone equip and deploy enough columns to halt the advance. Can I place faith in you?”

  Anna’s focus lingered on Ramyi and her dazzling mask of red specks. “I’ll handle them.”

  “Where are they keeping them?” Konrad called out. “Anna, they’re not here.”

  “What does the traitor seek?” the Council asked, using Mesar’s corpse as its conduit.

  “My family,” Konrad said, stalking toward the loyalist fighters lying in a guarded row. “Tell me where they are.”

  “How desperately he wishes to know.”

  Konrad’s lips twisted into a snarl. He kicked the chin of the nearest fighter, sending fragments of chipped teeth skittering over stone. “Volna’s coming to tear you down. If you want to mince words now, we have no qualms about letting them gut you.”

  The Council’s forelimbs clicked and scraped like a set of rusted nails. “And if we should grant you the boon of our knowledge?”

  “Out with it.”

  Anna had never seen him so stricken with fury. For some time she had considered Konrad to be a thing, a construct, an illusion woven from charm and half-truths. But there was a raw and burning core within him.

  “Very well,” the Council said with clacking mandibles. “Within the hallowed shelters of Keshannah, they slumber. With this liberation of truth, so too shall you liberate us.”

  Keshannah. Anna was struck by the familiarity of the name—she’d seen it several times on maps of Golyna’s market districts. Yatrin had even mentioned it several times during their outings in the city. Once it had been a ward belonging to the old orders, but those times were long past.

  “Get moving,” Anna said to Konrad. “We might be able to tunnel out of here, but it’s not worth burning your time. We’ll see you at Keshannah, one way or another.”

  Konrad spun away in silence, leading the remnants of Viczera Company in a brisk march toward the central lifts. Ga’mir Ashoral followed on his heels with her own detachment and a herd of shackled captives.

  Then there was only Anna, a scattering of hard-faced Borzaq fighters, and her scribes.

  “The pained, suffering Star of the South,” the Council croaked at Anna, its mere voice stirring the shadows beyond the stonework. “In this most dire hour, you show your true heart. You emanate love for the state that you served so fiercely.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “We accept your salvation within the Nest.”

  Anna lifted her chin. “There’s no salvation for you.”

  The Council screeched through its gurgling maw, raking wilted husks over stone and thrashing rows of crooked columns. Its humanoid speakers wrenched their jaws open, howling in a ghastly dirge, a singular cry of wrath and bemusement. “Betrayer,” they shouted. Pus oozed from a swollen thorax. “Cast light upon our radiance! Deliver us unto the sanctuary of the Exalted Shadow!”

  “Come,” Anna said gently, motioning for the scribes—and a shuddering Ramyi—to join her on the walkway. She tuned out the abomination’s bellowing and inhuman shrieking. Beneath her feet the stone trembled, jarred by the flailing and pounding of spiny legs.

  “Do not desert us in this sacred hour!”

  Anna turned back with hatred in her eyes. Scribes filed toward her and gathered in ranks at her back, crowding the corridor as they fled from the darkness and its ethereal howling. Last was Ramyi, who shuffled past her with dull, glassy eyes.

  “Mesar,” Anna said finally. “I hope that your essence can still hear me within the collective.”

  “He stirs, he stirs. . . .” the Council boomed.

  “Do you fear death?”

  The Council’s forelimbs raked across the stone in spasms. “We do!”

  Anna nodded. “Good.”

  With a snap of her fingers, the waiting Borzaq fighters took hold of the chamber’s blackened door edges and shoved inward. The two slabs groaned and met with strained creaking. A final wail rose behind the barrier, so faint that Anna nearly mistook it for ringing in her ears.

  * * * *

  “Center yourselves.” Anna’s voice reverberated within the circular chamber, washing over the scribes she’d arranged in radiating rings. Their concentration was mounting, swelling into synchronous peaks like waves collapsing over one another, drawing Anna deeper into the absorption state once held so dearly by the Kojadi. Tibdil, the breaking change. Gradually, the world shifted beneath her, the setstone and marble gaining a sense of fluidity, of ever-changing decay—of acceptance. Yet Ramyi’s mind was a thorn in her focus. Anna felt it seething, raging, pulsing like some septic blight upon their clarity.

  Shem’s attention was her tether across the void. It seemed to stir around her, curious and loose, branching into her awareness in tendrils of hayat. Every breath expanded a shared pool of focus, coaxing Shem out of his cocoon, bathing him in the distilled energy of a hundred scribes.

  Look through my flesh, Anna whispered across the blackness. Reach out to me and know these walls, Shem. Know them like your own mind.

  He’d never attempted such a feat, but there was no room for trials now. There was little room for hope, in fact. Shem’s only trace of existence was a glimmer in the ether.

  Icy pulses shot down Anna’s spine. She wrenched her eyes open, gasping.

  A soft crackling cut through the air. Then it rose to whirring, to the ebb and flow of vacuous air, to a crescendo gust as a glistening doorway birthed itself upon the far wall.

  “Keep your focus,” Anna advised the others, fighting to quell her voice and avoid breaking the chamber’s collective trance. She rose and circled the gathering, resting her hand upon robed shoulders to begin the evacuation. One by one the scribes rose, filing toward the tunnel with half-empty gazes and clasped hands. When she reached Ramyi, she bent down, whispering delicately into the girl’s ear. “Arrange them on the other side, Ramyi. Make them focus their strength on Shem. All we need is time, do you understand?”

  Tears were creeping down the girl’s cheeks in hard, fat drops, but she did not open her eyes. Instead she stood with wavering legs, drawing erratic breaths to still herself, before moving through the tunnel herself.

  Then there was only Anna, standing alone once more in the marble rotunda.

  Alone with eons of dominance and wisdom.

  She snatched her battered ruj off the floor and moved through the tunnel.

  Hayat was burning in bright bands along the walls, surging like never before as it coursed from Shem’s flesh and burst underfoot in dazzling veins. Rings of hooded scribes encircled the boy.

  Ramyi waited behind the masses, clenching her eyes shut in the throes of meditation. Her face was alight with lurid cobalt.

  Now Anna could feel the stability in the Nest. Its heart was thundering back to life, settling back into its notch of hayat and melded minds. Shem’s resolve was resonating within that collective consciousness.

  Anna threaded her way through the cross-legged assembly and loomed over Shem, gazing down into covered eye
s that blazed with vigor for the first time in cycles. She placed her hand atop his and smiled, unsure if he could detect her presence, unsure if she granted him courage or brought assurances of further agony. “You’re going to save them, Shem,” she whispered. “You’re going to save them all.”

  Shem’s essence flared to life and sent his sigils bounding over clear flesh. His lips shifted into an impish grin. He was siphoning some vital fuel from the gathering, weaving hayat once more with nimble hands and a nimbler mind.

  “You’re doing it,” Anna said, stunned by the excitement in her voice. “Shem, I need you to seal this tunnel.” She glanced back at the frosty sheen of the doorway. It grew brittle, shrinking until it was a collapsed pinpoint within the mural of hayat, then vanished. “Good; that’s good. But focus carefully on my words, Shem: People are in danger here. Horrible, horrible danger. And we need to move them before something bad happens.”

  His lids flicked open like evaporating water. “I listen, Anna.”

  A wave of fresh feeling—not joy, not sorrow—bit into her. She laid her broken hand on the boy’s forehead. “Dream of somewhere safe, Shem. Somewhere you would hide us if evil men were coming.”

  “Safe?” he asked, his smile fading. “Nowhere safe, Anna. Evil, evil, evil. All evil.”

  “Look within your mind, Shem. It’s not forever—just this day. Somewhere safe for them to sleep and dream.”

  With a single, shallow breath, the Huuri closed his eyes and grew still. His fingers twitched against the slab. And within that unnerving trance, probing memories and desires for some mote of refuge among the devastation, his awareness rippled through Anna’s mind.

  His essence was dancing, whirling, soaring; a caged sparrow given a taste of open flight. But it was more than freedom; he was with her, not with his body but the fruit of his existence, all of his merits and countless forms bursting into Anna’s consciousness. It was the first time he’d truly appeared to her, stripped of the shackles of flesh and ignorance. Within the void of Anna’s awareness, the blank field in which an essence should’ve lingered, Shem found liberation.