No Return

by Zachary Jernigan

  Berun wondered if they had anticipated the content of Abse’s speech. Probably they had—most likely they looked forward to a violent message, an excuse to turn their newfound power against their enemies.

  As Berun ran to the Black Suit camp to retrieve the speech, he considered how vastly his opinion of Vedas had shifted over time. Once, the man had seemed self-centered and haughty, shockingly ignorant of the world beyond Golna. Only on rare occasions had he shown potential. Certainly, he had saved Churls’s life. As a result, Berun’s affection for the man grew.

  Ultimately, however, Vedas had only won Berun’s respect by choosing to rewrite the speech. This decision changed everything. It proved Vedas cared more about people than faith. If he had not mentioned the speech, or worse yet believed its message wholeheartedly, Berun would have turned his back upon him with little regret upon reaching Danoor.

  Aresaa affirmed Vedas’s commitment once and for all. He stood before one hundred and fifty thousand people and declared war against God. He spoke nothing of faith, manipulated no myth to support his argument. Had he congratulated the gathered Anadrashi on their good works, told them to continue praying and fighting for the destruction of their enemies, they would have showered him with wealth enough to sustain him for the rest of his life.

  Instead, he marked himself for death. He spoke words to spark revolution.

  The spheres of Berun’s body shivered with pride to hear Vedas’s voice echo off the walls of the coliseum, to see the effect it had upon the assembled people. They were already rising from their seats. Some spat angry words, red-faced with indignation. This was not the message they had come to hear.

  A growing minority held their fists aloft, shouting words of encouragement. They had waited for this message, even if they had never admitted it aloud.

  Nonetheless, these few would not stop the majority from tearing Vedas apart.

  And then the broken tip of the Needle rose above the coliseum, sending a wave of dread through the restive crowd. Soon, thousands of Tomen would flow down the hillsides and flood the city, carving its citizens from crown to sacrum with their recurved swords. For a time, even men who had been inspired by the speech would blame Vedas. Looking to the sky, counting the dead, they would say, You have angered God!

  Berun knew then with absolute certainty that he must carry Vedas to safety. When men regained their courage, he must be alive to inspire them again.

  ‡

  Berun crossed the northwestern border of Danoor, entering the salt flats of Neuaa at a run. At his back large portions of the city burned. Its light sent his shadow into the darkness, toward the hills and their hidden sanctuary. Before him the broken spheres of the Needle spread over the horizon in disarray. In another two hours, the sun would rise and they would be safe.

  Churls shuddered in his arms. Her eyes snapped open. “Berun? What are you doing? Where...” She moved her shoulders, raised a hand to her face and groaned. “Make the world stop moving. Stop. Stop right now.”

  “No,” he said, and kept running.

  “Fine,” she said, and threw up all over his chest and herself. He stopped and let her down. Unable to stand on her own, she leaned against him. He helped her remove her leather halter and shook the clear fluid from it. There had been no food in her stomach. Shivering, she turned and pressed her body against his.

  “You’re warm,” she said. “I never noticed that before.”

  He smiled. “You’re probably the first to notice it.”

  “Do you have my pack?”

  “Yes.” He removed it and helped her get a heavier shirt on. The edges of her wet halter gripped between two fingers, he lifted her again and resumed running. She curled in his arms and closed her eyes, though he knew she did not sleep. Every now and then she raised her head to stare forward, and he wondered what she expected to see. The salt flats extended for miles in all directions, and the hills where Vedas rested could not yet be seen. She did not comment on the Needle’s new arrangement.

  “How did you find me?” she asked when they were but a handful of miles from their destination.

  “The map returned to me for a while,” he lied. “You and Vedas both appeared on it.”

  She peered up at him, clearly skeptical. “Right.”

  As he began ascending the ancient switchbacked path up the grassy hillside, she asked, “What about Omali? I thought you lost the map when you threw him out of your head. Does this mean he has power over you again?”

  He grunted. In truth, he had tried not to think of his father. “No, I don’t think so.”

  He halted atop the rise above the small valley. He knew where to look, and still it was difficult to locate the door of the monastery or its many-slitted windows. The single-room building had been built into the hillside without disturbing the lines of the slope. As a result, it was almost completely hidden from view.

  Churls peered over his arms and then slumped back against his chest. Perhaps she had been expecting a fire, or some other sign of the valley’s habitation.

  “Vedas did it,” he said.

  She did not move. Did not breathe.

  “He won the tournament and gave the speech, Churls. He told his brothers and sisters not to fight the White Suits anymore. He told them to fight Adrash. This was enough to upset people. And then the Needle rose, of course. When the crowd saw it, they blamed him. They would have killed him.”

  She inhaled sharply. “He’s alive, then?”

  “Yes, Churls. He’s alive. Injured, but alive. He passed out soon after the speech. I carried him from the coliseum to here. He only woke up right before I left.”

  He paused. He had always known he would tell her, yet he had never found the right expression.

  It was too late to worry about such things now.

  “Your name was the first word out of his mouth.”

  The breath came out of her in one long sigh, and he began the descent into the valley.

  CHURLI CASTA JONS

  THE 2nd AND 3rd OF THE MONTH OF ASECTICS, 12500 MD

  THE NEUAA SALT FLATS, THE REPUBLIC OF KNOS MIN

  They stood together on the hilltop. Usveet Mesa was a black wall on their right, stretching over the horizon at their backs. The cracked tile floor of the ancient lake Neuaa lay before them, glowing orange in the fading light of dusk. Directly across the twenty-mile expanse, the city of Danoor still smoldered. Without any breeze to speak of, a hundred thin pillars of black and grey smoke rose straight into the sky, connecting earth and heaven.

  “We’re stuck here, then?” Berun asked.

  Churls nodded. “They’re looking for Vedas, and they know you helped him escape. I didn’t get wind of it, but someone’s probably still looking for me, too. I didn’t hole up in that hotel for nothing.” She kicked a rock, sent it tumbling down the slope. Visiting the city had not put her in a good mood. “I’m sure the guard doesn’t give two shits about me, but the Ulomi White Suits? I bet even in the midst of chaos they’re angry about the murder of one of their champions.”

  Berun grunted, and she wondered what he thought of her, now that he knew what had occurred after they split up the first night. Even then, he did not know everything. She had not told him about stealing the bar’s chip money, or how she found another group of White Suits the next morning and got herself in even more trouble. They broke her left femur and cracked her pelvis. They did not rape her, but that was hardly the only way to humiliate a person.

  And of course, she had not mentioned being healed by Fyra while she slept—this, despite the fact that she suspected the girl had led Berun to the city to find her. She was not ready to discuss her daughter’s ghost with anyone. “Most of the Tomen have retreated into the hills,” she said. “Some say they’re waiting for Vedas to return, but I don’t think that’s very likely.”

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  She shrugged, and wiped a strand of hair from her eye. “Why would they listen to Vedas? I can’t imagine people who lo
ve fighting more than Tomen. You think they’ll quit killing their enemies and start working with everyone else toward the nearly impossible goal of killing Adrash? That’s ridiculous.”

  His thousand joints whispered as he crossed his arms. “Perhaps they’ve been waiting for the right message. You didn’t hear him, Churls.”

  I didn’t, she thought, and felt the familiar stab of guilt. I let him down.

  She did not doubt Vedas’s message had been powerful, yet it did not change her opinion of Tomen. The rest of the world might rally around a far-fetched dream—perhaps even Nos Ulom would one day see the threat of destruction for what it was and attack Adrash—but Toma would not. She had seen what Fesuy Amendja did to the Castan gladiator. She had made herself look.

  “Will Vedas be a leader, Berun? Can you see him rallying Knosi and Stoli mages alike to battle? Sending them into orbit to die? Inspiring farmers and bartenders and fishwives to take up arms against Adrash?”

  He turned to regard her. “You could ask him.”

  She spat. True, she could ask him. Lying within touching distance as he slept most of the previous day away in the monastery, masked and healing from injuries she could not see, she had resolved to do that very thing. She would ask him about everything once he woke.

  Yet she had not done it. They had spoken less than a handful of sentences since he rose with morning’s first light. Now it was as if a great gulf lay between them. They had become strangers again.

  “I don’t think he wants that,” Berun eventually said. “He doesn’t see himself as a leader.”

  “The good ones rarely do,” she replied, surprising herself. She had not meant to say it. It sounded too much like an endorsement. At the same time, her dissatisfaction made little sense. Had she not been the one who challenged his faith in the first place? She had read the original speech, after all, and knew it for what it was.

  By all rights, she had more reason than anyone to be happy with his transformation.

  But obviously , she reminded herself, I didn’t help him when he asked. I kept my true opinion to myself—and why? Because I feared his reaction. I didn’t want to burn a bridge.

  She exhaled loudly. “He would be a good leader, I think.”

  “Yes,” Berun said. “You should tell him.”

  “He needs to tell himself,” she said, thus skirting the issue. “He needs to take responsibility for his words. By leaving the city, he has left a vacuum someone will soon fill. I was in the city for less than two hours, and in that time I heard rumors of half a dozen men acting in Vedas’s name. Calling men to them. Forming armies. One in particular—a quarterbreed gladiator, some are claiming—is rallying men in the Old Quarter. He has a wyrm at his command, they say.”

  Berun angled his face to the sky. “Perhaps this man means to help us.” She laughed. “Whether or not it’s his intention, chances are he’ll want to keep his power once he’s got it. A man who leads others quickly gets used to calling the shots. He rarely likes it when his general comes back, quoting the regulations.”

  Berun looked back at the city. She chewed her lip and hoped he would say no more. Darkness was nearly upon them. Shivering as the first of night’s breezes caressed her, she thought how awful it was that she did not want to be outside or inside. She did not want to be in Knos Min at all. To be home, where everything smelled of mildew and salt, where she did not have to always think of Vedas!

  “Is your father still alive?” Berun asked.

  “I don’t know,” she lied—an automatic response. Her mother had never allowed her to speak of the man, though when she was small he stopped by every now and then. He wanted to see her, but only when he drank. She had always imagined he felt remorse for leaving her, somewhere deep down where his sober mind could not find it. Yes, she knew where he lived, and a few other things about him. He probably would not recognize her if they passed one another on the street, but she would know if he died. “Why do you ask?”

  “I wonder what it would be like to know for certain that Omali is dead. I fear my father will return. I fear...” He rocked from foot to foot, as though the ground were burning underneath him. “I fear father is the wrong word, but I’m used to it. I’m not a man.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “Is that a bad thing?”

  He nodded. “It is if you want to understand yourself. You have examples everywhere. There’s a person. There’s a person. Where do I look? I can only look inside. There are times when I feel anger building within me, violence I don’t think I can control. I wonder if it’s me or that bit of my father that I’ll never lose. If it’s not me, then I have no purpose of my own. It would mean that I am now, and always will be, someone’s puppet.”

  All of a sudden he stopped moving. His eyes dimmed in a way she had never seen. She reached out automatically, afraid he would fade and never reawaken.

  “Are you my friend?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said truthfully. “Whether or not you’re a puppet.”

  ‡

  Bars of moonlight glided slowly around the interior of the monastery. For the better part of an hour, she watched one move slowly over her foot. She observed another crawl across the rough-hewn face of Adrash carved into the middle of the stone floor. No light touched Vedas where he lay on the other side of the room, but she watched two bars come within inches of his outstretched left hand.

  It was perfectly comfortable in the small oval room, neither stuffy nor drafty. The temperature was just right. Shallow depressions spaced regularly along the wall fit a body well, smoothed as they had been by the backs of sleeping monks. The stone held the warmth of the day, or perhaps the memory of the generations that had rested upon it.

  She could not sleep. It took all of her attention to keep the thoughts circling around the inside of her skull—and she knew they must keep moving, otherwise something out of the whirlwind might grab her, latch on, and open itself for examination.

  Only, one would not be corralled. A white spark moved against the flow, shouldering its way through the other thoughts, demanding attention. Churls beat it back, sent it tumbling into the maelstrom.

  But it returned, again and again.

  Fyra.

  Without a voice, the girl called to her mother. Churls felt it in her bones, the near-physical pull of her daughter’s need. She knew the feeling well, despite years trying to forget it. She remembered returning home from whatever campaign in whichever province, picking up Fyra from her grandmother’s. She remembered how she and the girl occupied Churls’s small seaside house, little more than strangers. The way Fyra hid behind furniture, staring with wide eyes as though she thought her mother was some sort of monster.

  All the while Churls had known, had felt as solidly as a punch to the gut, the intense ache of a child who wants something she has never known.

  Because Churls had wanted it too, long ago.

  Cursing Berun for putting the thought of family in her mind, she finally gave up, resigning herself to the meeting. She stood, briefly considering whether or not to buckle on her sword. It seemed pointless now. If the girl could heal a broken leg and a cracked pelvis, not to mention a hundred small bruises, she could surely take care of anything that chose to attack Churls from out of the night.

  Vedas did not stir as she left. She located Berun atop the hill, keeping watch, motionless as a statue, and kept her eyes upon him as she walked quietly beside the long, thin pond that stretched like a scar down the center of the valley. The water narrowed to a point at the valley’s northern end, inserting itself into a crevice, a twisted crack in the hills wide enough for a single person to walk. She felt drawn to enter here, and did not fight the urge.

  A small stream of cold water flowed under her boots as she walked forward, and it occurred to her how odd this was. The verdant hills housing the valley rose from ground that saw rain less than a handful of times every year. Koosas, the only river within a hundred miles, had been redirected into Danoor many eons ago, suc
king the surrounding earth of moisture.

  Where did the valley’s water come from?

  As if in answer, she followed a turn and came to the crevice’s end. She stepped out of the earthy shelter of the hills onto the baked crust of the salt flats. Suddenly, it was cold, dry enough to shrivel her lips against her teeth. She looked back and saw the juncture where the flats stopped and the hill territory began. It was a perfectly smooth line, as if the two regions had never been joined. She stepped back onto the black soil and stone, crouched, and put her hand to the earth. It was moist. She took another couple steps back and did the same. Between two rocks a small trickle of water ran. Cold, almost sweet on her tongue. Not a trace of salt.

  Somehow she knew it would be as cold during the heat of summer as it was now.

  Mama, Fyra called. I can’t go in there.

  Churls sighed and walked back. Fyra stood on the salt flats, the tips of her slippered toes at the dividing line. Churls leaned against the crevice wall and raised her eyebrows.

  “Why is that?”

  There are some places the dead can’t go. Too much magic keeps us out. She lifted her heel and grimaced, as if she were pushing at the boundary with the tip of her foot. I don’t like being kept out.

  “Then how did you know about the monastery? How did you lead Berun here?”

  A grin. I knew you’d figure it out. You’re so smart, Mama. I heard about this place from a dead man named Ulest, and then I told Berun how to find it. He was so tired from running, and I helped him with that, too. I made it so he won’t be so tired all the time.

  Churls digested this. The act seemed markedly more impressive than healing a person, but perhaps it was just a matter of her own ignorance. Still, Fyra’s knowledge was undeniably growing—and with it, presumably, her power. If the girl became angry, all the magic in the world might not be able to hold her back.