No Return

by Zachary Jernigan

  His copper hair was trimmed to stubble and his features were thicker, softer than an elderman’s. No sign of physical retardation marred his face.

  One detail alone surprised Pol: two stubby horns sprouted high on either side of Shav’s forehead.

  The victor of the last fight, still swaying unsteadily, announced the main event.

  “Stasessun!” many in the crowd chanted. It grew as more picked up the call.

  A tall, coffee-skinned woman of ambiguous ethnicity, heavily tattooed and clad in simple gauze wrappings, stepped from the crowd. Pol could tell from her walk alone that she would be a formidable opponent. Her limbs were thin blades of muscle and bone.

  The whistle sounded. She came out fast and strong, swarming around the lumbering Shav, who ducked his head into two meaty fists and took the onslaught of jabs and knee thrusts. He did not attempt to fight back, and the crowd laughed. They clearly thought the fight a washout, the quarterstock a moron. At the end of round one, he looked flushed but unhurt. Stasessun rolled her eyes, and sat facing away from him in her corner.

  She started taunting him in the second round. She spat, cursed, and laughed, all the while taking carefully placed potshots at his ears and shins. Most of the crowd laughed with her, but a few held back. Late in the round, having taken her abuse without fighting back for almost three minutes, Shav launched a slow but well-timed cross that glanced off Stasessun’s temple and sent her staggering. She snarled and came forward, landing a few rapid blows before the whistle sounded.

  “I’m impressed,” Jarres told Pol. “I’ve seen only a few men go past the second round with her.”

  Shav smiled as he walked to his corner. He bled from multiple cuts around his ears. Bruises pocked his forearms and shins. A few in the crowd crossed to his corner to offer words of encouragement. Stasessun’s fans looked on in annoyance. The mood had taken a turn.

  The third round began. Stasessun came forward, unsmiling. She hopped from side to side as the quarterstock watched from between his fists, the unmistakable glint of calculation in his eyes. Her first punch got through, landed square on his chin. He shook it off but did not recover in time to block the two kicks that followed, landing on either thigh. He grunted and watched her, taking hits.

  By this point the crowd was subdued. They watched Shav, and waited.

  The moment came. Stasessun moved in close, following a right jab with a left shovel hook to Shav’s temple. He caught her fist halfway to its target and, quicker than Pol would have thought possible, caught her under the chin with an uppercut—a gracefully fluid move that lifted her off her feet.

  The sound of bone breaking was clear and distinct in the silence.

  She landed on the floor, neck clearly broken. Her life bubbled from her lips.

  Shav tipped his head to either side, vertebrae popping loudly.

  After a short pause, the crowd erupted. Pol yelled with them, cares for the moment forgotten. Men jostled against him, unconcerned that he was elderman and they human. Someone slapped his backside and he did not turn to see who had done it. He pictured Ebn there with him, back to back with the rabble, and laughed out loud. She would never understand the allure of violence, the intoxicating feeling of forcing another to submit.

  “Hey!” Jarres yelled in his ear. “You want something to drink?”

  “Yes,” Pol answered immediately. The response surprised him. When had he last been intoxicated in public? A year? Two? No matter. Surely Adrash would approve a sacrament in his honor. In return, he would bless Pol with wine and song and violence—perhaps even a new friend in the struggle to come.

  “Yes,” he repeated, peering over the crowd to locate Shav. He had no intention of letting the quarterstock disappear without introducing himself. “I will definitely have a drink.”

  PART TWO

  VEDAS TEZUL

  THE 15th TO 26th OF THE MONTH OF SOLDIERS, 12499 MD

  THE CITY OF NBENA, NATION OF DARETH HLUM

  The Castan Badlands lay beyond Nbena, the fifteenth gate in Dareth Hlum’s five-hundred-mile-long defensive wall of Dalan Fele. Since very few had business in the badlands and no one traveled to the

  region for pleasure, most of the routes leading from the capitol to Nbena were ill maintained. Many could be dangerous to the unprepared traveler.

  Roads that had long ago become footpaths climbed over the Turilen Mountains and crumbled into the Puzzle Sinklands. Cannibal tribes, descendants of Castan infantrymen who fought in the Third Autumnal War, preyed upon the unwary traveler in the Unes Forest. Though a few villages survived off the minimal trade closer to the gate, their people lived in fear of raiders who came from out of the scrubland. Child slaves moved through Nbena like water through loosely stacked rocks, and none of Dareth Hlum’s governments had been able to put a stop to it.

  Vedas and Berun took a winding, eleven-day route to the badlands gate, averaging just short of twenty miles a day. Though the pace did not tax Vedas overmuch, it took several nights to become accustomed to sleeping under open sky, and even longer to accept the reality of travel rations. His stomach grumbled constantly. He measured the fullness of his biceps and thighs, trying to gauge the extent of muscle loss day by day. Perhaps the twenty pounds he had gained in anticipation of Danoor would be insufficient.

  Largely out of a feeling of obligation, for several days he attempted to engage Berun in conversation. The constructed man had little to say on the subject of fighting and war, however—little to say, period. When he did speak, he seemed sullen, as though resentful of Vedas’s presence. In an odd way, Vedas sympathized. He had not wanted a traveling companion either, but Abse had insisted.

  Thus it was a relief to shrug off the burden of communication, and Vedas wondered if walking in silence would soon come to feel like walking alone.

  Five days out from Golna, having seen no trace of raiders or cannibals, he began thinking Abse had exaggerated the perilousness of their route across the nation. He began to hope a peaceful journey would ease the memory of Julit Umeda’s death.

  This proved not to be the case. Far from the centers of law, violence found them.

  Two men ambushed them as they rose on the sixth morning near the lakeside town of Adres. Vedas met the first, slapping the clumsy sword-thrust aside with his palm and jamming suit-stiffened fingers into the man’s temple, knocking him unconscious. Berun ignored the axe thrown by the second. It clanged harmlessly off his brass shoulder as he threw one of the stones he carried into the bandit’s face, lifting the man off his feet and killing him instantly.

  “That was unnecessary,” Vedas said.

  Berun shrugged. “They intended to kill us. They would have killed others.”

  The bandits wore identical silver necklaces, from which hung a golden pendant in the shape of a fist. Though valuable and by rights the victors’, Vedas refused to remove them.

  “They’re Adrashi symbols,” he explained to Berun.

  “What harm would it do to take them?” the constructed man countered.

  “None. But I won’t dirty my hands with the task.”

  On the seventh day, a woman appeared on a narrow pass between the Sawback Mesas and broke a spell before them, rooting their feet in the mountain itself. Quicker than Vedas could have imagined, Berun decoupled the spheres below his ankles and jumped free. By the time he landed, his feet had fully formed. He swept the woman into the rock wall. She rebounded, and then crumpled to the ground. To free Vedas, Berun pulverized the rock around his feet. Vedas’s suit stiffened under the blows, shielding him from injury but for a broken toe.

  The woman bled liberally from a shallow wound above her ear, but appeared otherwise uninjured. Vedas tore a strip of cloth from her voluminous robes and wrapped it tightly around her head.

  Berun lifted the leather pack from her shoulder and searched it. In addition to a pouch of dried meat and a solid ball of catgut, she had carried with her twelve spells, ranging from colorless liquids in ampoules to waterproofed fires
tarters. The largest was a tiny porcelain jar sealed with wax.

  “I won’t touch them,” Vedas said. The sight of the unknown magic chilled him to the core. “We don’t know what they are. Besides, I’ve heard stories about what happens to men who steal witches’ potions.”

  “I’m not a man,” Berun answered. “They must be useful or valuable to someone.” He pressed the collection of spells to his thigh. When he took the hand away, they were gone.

  Vedas did not want to kill the fourth attacker, an emaciated young man who rushed at him from a barley field deep in the heart of the Wruna Valley. Vedas disarmed him of sickle and rake easily enough, and aimed a knockout blow to his temple. But regardless of what he tried, the boy would not go under. Eventually Vedas noticed the symptoms: dilated pupils, puffy hands, and a white crust at the corners of his mouth.

  Dropma Fever, spread through sweat and saliva. Given the appropriate medicines, a full recovery might have been possible, but the closest village was nearly ten miles back along the road, and the young man was in no condition to lead Vedas to a nearby homestead. Possibly, the whole region had become infected.

  Fearful of contracting the disease, Vedas would have asked Berun to kill the boy, but the constructed man had run ahead to scout the hilly path before them. Not for the first time, Vedas regretted leaving his staff in Golna. Abse had forbid him to take Order property. A good ironwood staff cost almost as much as a month’s provender.

  No help for it, Vedas thought. He allowed his suit to mask his face and broke the boy’s neck with one blow.

  He still stood, fully sheathed in his suit, when Berun came pounding down the road several minutes later.

  The constructed man looked from Vedas to the boy and back again. “Why did you do this? And why have you covered your face?”

  “The boy was sick. Dropma Fever. I fear I might have contracted it.” Vedas held his hands out from his hips, afraid to touch the rest of his body. He possessed little practical knowledge of disease. “I think my suit will protect me, but I won’t be sure for a few days.”

  Berun shrugged, apparently unconcerned.

  “I’d like to wash myself,” Vedas said. “Did you see any water ahead?”

  “A creek runs across the road a few miles from here.”

  Vedas washed himself as best he could. They began walking again.

  Two day later, they crested a rise and saw the three-hundred-foot slopes of Dalan Fele.

  Berun appeared unimpressed. He had seen it several times.

  Vedas remembered it only dimly from childhood. He breathed shallowly from lungs that felt stuffed with cotton, tried to take in the scope of the wall rising over the tallest trees and disappearing to view on either side, and collapsed.

  ‡

  The memory of being carried, swaying from side to side, cradled in rocksolid arms. The sun in his eyes, then shadow overtaking. A wall stretching above him. The wall falling, rising, falling again, a gigantic door. Two glowing blue orbs, hovering in the air. A cold, brassy voice repeating his name. More voices, yelling, echoing on stone. The whisper of canvas. Warm light suffusing, the world organizing itself. Tent poles. Being laid on a soft surface. Blackness. A new voice.

  Focusing on the voice, rising up through layers of pain.

  Vedas woke, and found that he could not scream.

  “The suit should have protected him,” a man told Berun. “That is, if he wore the mask the entire time.” He adjusted his spectacles and stared up at the immense man of brass standing silently before him. “Did he wear the mask the entire time?”

  “I wasn’t there and he didn’t tell me,” Berun answered. “Can he see us right now?”

  The man leaned over Vedas. He filled a tiny plunger on the bedside table and moistened Vedas’s eyes. Once opened, they seemed unwilling to close.

  “I don’t know,” the man—a doctor, Vedas belatedly surmised—said.

  “Will he die?”

  The doctor swallowed and looked down at Vedas again. “I don’t know that either. He’s still in the intermediate phase of the disease, which is good. Receiving the spell before the fever breaks increases his chances of recovery considerably. If the spell doesn’t cure him, though, and his fever breaks, he’ll only have a few days before the disease destroys his mind, turning him into an animal. Death will follow soon after.”

  “Is that why you’ve bound him?”

  The doctor lifted his hand from the leather wrist strap it rested upon. “Yes. I can’t predict when the fever will break, it happens so suddenly. He could be dangerous.”

  Struggling to focus on the conversation, Vedas’s mind swam through a fog of heated torment. Every breath was agony, as if someone were holding a live coal against his ribs. The pulse throbbed in his head, a rhythmic pressure that compressed his eyeballs and sinuses. Every muscle in his head and neck ached with tension, and he could not unclench his jaw. His limbs did not pain him, but their numb unresponsiveness was troubling.

  He saw the world through thick, milky glass. He could neither move nor close his eyes. When the doctor moistened them, his vision cleared only a little.

  “Why haven’t you unclothed him?” Berun asked. “Won’t he be too hot?”

  Vedas’s heart threw itself against his sore ribs. He tried to move, to open his mouth or at least moan. He had not removed his suit in two decades. Only his head, anus, and the tip of his penis touched open air. He had heard of others removing their suits from time to time, but the Thirteenth taught that true connection with one’s suit could only be achieved through constant contact. The thought of a stranger removing it, touching its inner surface, filled him with rage so strong it sang in his bones.

  The doctor sighed. “No. Even though I live in Nbena, I’m not a fool. I used to live in Ulias, where I worked on a number of suited men. I know how elder-cloth works. Look.” He laid a hand on Vedas’s chest. “Do you feel that? How cold it is?”

  Berun scowled. “Hot and cold mean nothing to me.”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “Ah. Then you’ll have to trust me. Your friend has a deep connection with his suit. In a way, it knows what he needs and is trying to provide it to him. Without the suit, I suspect his fever would already have broken. Either that, or he would be dead.”

  Berun shifted from foot to foot, the spheres of his body whispering against each other. “You won’t let him die.”

  “I have very little say in the matter,” the doctor said. “And you haven’t paid me.”

  An odd sound, like marbles being rubbed together in a child’s hand, came from within Berun’s body. A moment later, a box composed of small spheres emerged from his stomach. He plucked it free and it collapsed in his hand, revealing a collection of multicolored bags. He selected one and passed it over Vedas’s body to the doctor.

  The man held the bag up to the skylight. “This is good for half.”

  Berun selected another. “I thought I was being generous with the first.”

  The doctor met the constructed man’s stare. “That was generous last year.”

  “You won’t let him die,” Berun said again.

  The doctor shook his head wearily, slipped both bags of bonedust into his vest pocket, and turned to the bedside table. He returned with an ampoule of amber liquid, and broke it open. Vedas distantly felt the doctor’s fingers as they peeled his lips back from his clenched teeth and poured the liquid down. He did not taste the spell or feel it trickling into his throat.

  The smell of iron did reach his nose, and quickly overcame his senses. A shutter closed over his eyes, leaving him in complete darkness. The pain shut off suddenly. Vedas found himself alone in his mind, unable to sense his body. He drifted, untethered. No eyes, no ears, no nose—nothing. For a timeless moment, he was not a man. Maybe the spell had banished him to a far ashen corner of his mind so that it might work on the disease. Maybe the spell was not in fact working, and now he simply waited for his body to stop functioning.

  Berun’s last words
came to him without a voice: You won’t let him die. The phrase repeated over and over again, confounding in his current state, neither dead nor alive. You won’t let him die. You won’t let him die.

  Suddenly, light burst through cracks in the shutter before his eyes and he found himself back in his body. A scorching needle bit into his mind and set his skin aflame. Every joint in his body cracked at once. He screamed, arching up from the mattress, straining at the straps that bound him. Hard, cold hands the size of shields pressed him down. Someone else pressed a wet rag to his forehead. As the sedative spell contained therein seeped into his skin, he felt the overwhelming urge to shut his eyes. His eyelids dragged closed, burning like sore muscles being stretched.

  His screams became words.

  “Take me home!” he yelled.

  “Take me home!” he rasped.

  “Take me home,” he whispered before falling into unconsciousness.

  ‡

  In the warm interior of the doctor’s tent, Vedas drifted in and out of sleep. Dreams weaved around him, meshing fluidly with waking moments. A large man of gold rubble stood beside his bed, fell to the ground, rose in the body of the fever-mad young man he had killed on the road to Nbena, and then shrank to become a young girl with a black sash tied around her left arm. A candle wavered before his eyes. The flame dropped upon him, engulfing him without heat or pain. Someone spoke his name, and Vedas recognized his own voice, his father's or mother’s voice, Abse’s voice—droning, becoming music.

  Time stretched and contracted as it does for the drugged. The passage of the moon above the ventilation hole in the tent’s ceiling took hours, and the changing of the sheets under him happened in a handful of seconds. His body reacted unpredictably to touch. He neither grimaced nor groaned when someone palpated his ribs and chest, underarms and neck. He laughed instead. Tears flowed from his eyes when someone put a warm rag on his forehead.