by Lucia Ashta
I thought that if I ever got out of here that I should do something to ensure that I could think myself a good man when death did finally come for me as it did for all men. I had enough sand to allow me to be a champion for just causes, of which there were plenty. I had the skill to allow me to carry out my goals, which I could choose to be true.
I stopped in the middle of the room with another realization just as pronounced as the one I’d had during the eerie purple glow of the Plune Moon, impossibly, less than a day ago. Not only would I discover something exciting about other worlds and my relationship to them—a discovery that felt just a few steps ahead of me even as I paced my cell continually—but I was in the midst of choosing to be a better man. I could choose to be a good man, righteous in all his choices. I could leave the world of Origins a much better place than I found it. That would be something. I could choose a purpose for my life when I hadn’t before.
I walked to the bed and sat heavily upon it. A wave of dust rose beneath me. I leaned forward, face in hands, elbows on my thighs. I stared into the wavering flame of the lone candle tasked with illuminating the entire cell. Why had I never thought of this? Why had I never before desired to imbue myself with such a worthy purpose? This bothered me. A lot. Why had I never chosen to be a good man—one that I could be certain of—before this moment? I found that I cared more about this than I did about my escape. All of a sudden, I cared more about the kind of man I was than whether I’d continue living. Strange. All of this was strange. Why hadn’t I wanted to be a better man than I was for the woman I loved? Was it simply because she’d never asked it of me? Because she accepted me as I was?
I brooded until my eyelids began to droop. I hadn’t achieved resolution, but I was in danger of falling asleep, wasting whatever time I had. Stand, I told myself. I didn’t. Stand, I tried again. It took more will than it should have to get myself upright again.
Something was wrong, and I had no idea what. I should be able to focus more than this. I should be able to break myself out of here, even if it had never been done. For Ilara, I thought, dangling the ultimate motivator in front of me, urging myself along, willing myself to rein in all of myself that I could.
All right. I needed to achieve two things immediately. I needed to unbind my hands, and I needed to find a way out of here. I would work on unbinding my hands first since I could see no ready way out of a room that didn’t even have a window, just four stone walls, a stone floor and ceiling. I stood in the middle of the room where it felt best, as far away from the walls that enclosed me as I could get. I brought my wrists up to my line of sight.
A jingling of keys outside the wooden door. A key scraping the old lock before it managed finally to turn. A grunt of effort as a man pushed in the massive door. Then a man I didn’t know, in the uniform of the royal guard, stood in the doorway. Outlined by the light of torches in sconces lining the hallway, he pronounced my death sentence.
“Lord Tanus, you have been found guilty of your charges. You will be executed for the attempted murder of King Oderon the Great at the setting of the Suxle Sun.”
“There will be no trial?” I asked, surprisingly indifferent just then.
“Lord Drakos, ruler of Planet Origins since King Oderon remains unconscious, has declared a state of emergency. There will be no trials. Lord Drakos has found you guilty.”
“There’s no chance of appeal, I take it?”
“No, Lord Tanus.” The man, whose hand hadn’t left the metal handle of the door, began to retreat. “I suggest that you prepare yourself.” The man exited fully and pulled the door shut behind him. Never once did he look me in the eyes.
I hadn’t moved from where I stood. I brought my wrists back up in line with my eyes.
I’d never believed in the claims of the Devoteds who said there was something greater than us out there that cared for us, and that all we had to do was to trust in this force we couldn’t see nor otherwise prove existed. Maybe I should have believed. Maybe it would have given me something better to do now.
I examined my bindings. They sparkled in the dim light of the candle. They must use the same science that the cords used for the mind merge between the King and myself did. They were composed of what looked like crystalline particles although they seemed to be of a lesser density than the mind merge cords. After all, they’d come from the guard’s wand, streaming out with ease. The wand must have programmed them to bind as it passed above them, instructing the particles of crystal to link to one another.
Could there be something sinister in the use of energy against the citizens of O? I’d never considered the possibility. The rule of Oderon was using energy, and crystals to manipulate it, as tools of enforcement against its people. Could this be the reason most citizens of Origins no longer believed they could do much more than what manifested right before their eyes? Was this why so few Oers attempted transporting, mind communication, or anything like it? Was disempowering Oers the way to garner impunity in the use of energetic tools? Had this all been intentional, so that energetic tools such as force fields could be used?
It couldn’t be, could it? But if it was, fuck them. Fuck them all. It was more important now than ever to return Ilara. She wouldn’t stand for it. She loved Planet Origins. She was a self-proclaimed protectress of its people.
I would get out of my bindings, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I could, that I hadn’t been tricked into believing myself weak and disconnected from all that I was made of, from all that surrounded me.
It must be simple, I told myself. A bit like the force field, except that my bindings consisted of crystalline particles as well as programmed energy. All I needed to do was to connect with the energy that directed the purpose of the particles used to bind me. If I could connect with this energy and modify its programming, I’d be free.
I squashed a seed of fear within me before it could sprout. There was no sense in wondering if I’d be able to manage it in time, before my appointment with a guillotine, a purposefully cruel mode of execution at a time when there were so many other options available.
I sat down on the bed again, leaned my back against the wall with my legs outstretched in front of me, hanging in the air beyond the bed. I brought my hands to rest on my lap. I closed my eyes, knowing that I was practiced in finding the space of stillness that I’d need. Never had I been more grateful for my enthusiasm for transporting. What had begun as the fascination of a young boy that yearned for constant adventure would save my life; at the very least it would set me free for the end of it, to show them all (but mainly myself) that I wasn’t just any manipulated citizen of Origins.
I slumped into the wall and let go of myself. My breathing deepened even if I didn’t direct it to. I sought to become one with the energy of everything around me. I searched for the understanding that I too was composed of this energy, that all of it, all of me, was one and the same.
The understanding was a familiar one, and I knew I would reach it soon. I nodded off once before I got there, but moved myself along before I could fall asleep again.
I moved as much thought from my mind as I could; I needed the space. I swam through everything within me that could stand in my way, cutting a direct path between the limiting thoughts, the patterned reactions, and the fears, shifting them all to the sides in my wake. I moved past expectations. I left them behind, forgotten in the space where I wouldn’t go to remember.
I swam a nice easy breaststroke, pushing everything that didn’t serve me to either side as I moved forward. My destination was up ahead. I could see it, a tree, a giant one on the forest floor at the beginning of a climb that led to a high ridge. Everything I needed to leave behind flowed away with each stroke.
Finally, I reached the tree. I ceased my swimming and wrapped my arms around its trunk, my legs around its roots underwater. I was there, wherever it was that I needed to be.
I’d arrived.
I was where I’d chosen to be. Nothing held me
back.
I was free.
I leaned my forehead against the tree bark, moist from the water, but no less hard and supportive because of it. I noticed my breath and how it made the water ripple beneath my nose. The water was warm and comfortable. I felt wonderfully free and content. The world was mine—as it was everybody’s—and the world would work with me. I’d take care of it and it would take care of me. There was a symbiosis as pleasant as the water on my limbs.
A turn of a key in a door somewhere. The sound of wood moving. I looked up at the tree. It stretched out above me so much farther than I could reach. But it wasn’t moving. It was still and stoic, eternal in its promise of support.
I laid my forehead back on the bark. It felt good there, like I could stay forever.
Tanus. A word that wasn’t mine filtered through somewhere, as if there were a hole in the sky above and a drop of rain fell when it wasn’t supposed to rain, when the sun was shining brightly, not a dark cloud in the sky.
There it was again. Tanus. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the word. It had nothing to do with me. Leave me alone, I thought, hoping that it would.
Then my shoulders shook hard when it wasn’t I who was shaking them. The water erupted in waves around me, splashing water up into my face, up my nostrils. I cringed at the unpleasant sensation.
I didn’t have time to recover from it before another tremor shook the water. Waves burst everywhere. Even the tree, so large that it couldn’t be moved, moved.
The world I was in shook. I shook with it, terrified to leave behind what felt so idyllic, as if I’d finally reached the one place that could feel like home.
The world—my world—rocked again, so hard that the lines of it began to blur.
Then, my world disintegrated.
I heard the word again. Tanus. That word I didn’t like.
Open your eyes. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t know what else to do. So I did.
I took in the incongruous scene before me, then closed my eyes again. It made even less sense than the tremors that shook my water world anchored in the tree.
“Open your eyes right now, Tanus.”
I still didn’t want to, but then the man shook me until I did.
Blinking at the reality of a world far less comfortable and far less kind than the womb I’d been in, I stared up into a hardened face that I hoped I might be able to blink away.
I couldn’t. The face of a man who understood too many of the world’s harsh ways waited for me to acknowledge him. He wouldn’t leave until I did.
“Aletox,” I finally whispered to the last man in the world I expected to appear in my cell, hours before my execution.
Seven
I stared up into Aletox’s face with minimal comprehension until the force of his urgent whispers prevailed.
“Tanus, you need to get up right now. We only have moments before the guards return.” Aletox gripped my biceps with strong hands and pulled me to my feet. My hands swung apart. I looked down at them in a final moment of stupor. The bindings were gone; not even a trace of them remained.
It had been that thought, that sensation of freedom that had released me from my bindings. I knew it just as I knew I wouldn’t tell Aletox that I’d just freed myself from a restraint that no one else before me had.
I still didn’t know why he was here or why he seemed to be helping me. My wits began wanting to fall back into place. Aletox was the type of man that required all of my senses in place to match. He was a brilliant man, and he was my father’s confidant. Both facts made him dangerous.
“Come on. Move it.” He pulled at my arm forcefully. He seemed prepared to drag me out of there if necessary. “Only two of the guards are in my pocket. If any of the others see us, we’re in trouble.” He studied me with piercing black eyes. “Do you understand me, Tanus?”
I nodded, a bit like a drunkard.
“Did they give you any nectar? Did you drink it?”
I shook my head, still like a drunkard. But even incomplete in my return from that place just beyond the reality of this world where I’d been able to free myself, I knew better than to drink nectar within the palace walls.
Nectar was a delicacy, a luxury suited for a royal palace. It was equal parts sweetness and potency, and it possessed a well-deserved reputation for bringing enlightenment to the unenlightened, passion to the disimpassioned, and happiness to the withered heart. But its taste, designed to lure unsuspecting animals with its irresistible sweetness, could conceal any number of herbs that could cause warping of the mind, even the death of it, from which there could be no return, even if the body was strong enough to remain living.
Like the plant from which nectar was harvested, nectar could be sinister. The Katoram plant grew abundantly in all places across the planet but the harshest and driest of its wildernesses. It waited until an animal, usually an insect or bird but sometimes rodents or larger animals, could no longer resist the temptation of its alluring colors and saccharine fragrance. When the animal bent to drink of the nectar contained within a centric, inviting well, the Katoram plant yanked the animal in, then snapped closed around it before the animal could react in its defense. Then, the slow process of mastication and eventual digestion, agonizing to its victim, began.
The plant concealed its ominous nature much as the humans that used its nectar to conceal their insidious intentions did. Like the Katoram plant that hides teeth within the walls of its alluring purple leaves, manipulators and murderers hid their ambitions within nectar’s overpowering sweetness. Edged in magenta petals, soft as silk, that came together in folds and curves as intoxicating as the inside of a woman, lay danger that not even animals, wise in the ways of nature, could resist. Courtiers, aware of the dangers that might be hidden in nectar, didn’t resist it either—not usually. They’d give their goblets a sniff, thus convincing themselves that they could scent out any danger from the depths and swirls. Next, they, hedonists all, would drain their goblets, believing that life was meant to be lived to its fullest. If death had to come for them, then let it be in the midst of nectar, sex, scandal, and gossip, the life of any dedicated courtier.
I, even in my current haze, knew better. I never drank nectar while at court though at times it was necessary to pretend that I did.
“Tanus. Did you drink nectar?” Aletox snapped at me even though I’d already answered him, unconvinced, my behavior too strange to have many other explanations.
“No, Aletox, I didn’t. I’m sure of it.”
Aletox peered around the open door to either side of the cell. “Come. Quickly. I was only able to buy us a few minutes.” He was already pulling on my arm. “I didn’t count on you being a driveling idiot once I got to you.”
Ordinarily, I was a hundred times more agile and quick-footed than the agile and quick-footed Aletox, who was a few hundred years older than me.
We stepped over the body of a fallen guard. I noticed a second one sprawled out on the floor behind me. I hesitated, just a second. Still, it was enough to compel the impatient Aletox to turn around to look at me. He answered the question that my expression must have posed. I didn’t kill gratuitously, but I wasn’t as certain of Aletox’s scruples.
“They’re not dead. Only unconscious. They wanted it that way. To erase any suspicion that might otherwise fall on them.” He resumed walking, pulling me behind him. “Don’t worry. I gave them each enough sand to buy themselves an apartment in the Allocation District. They won’t mind the bump on the head.”
With each step, my usual sharpness returned more. The dim hallway, with its scars and filth, that was so different from the palace above us, the one that the public was shown, was enough to remind me of my situation. Although not the dungeons, this was still where the unwanted were sent, to be killed or forgotten, stories below the artifice of safety, an illusion that allowed courtiers to sleep at night within their dens of gluttony or perversity, or both.
Despite my returning alertness, I allowed Aletox t
o continue guiding me. Too much was at stake to gamble on a foggy mind.
I was surprised that Aletox had been able to bribe two of the guards. The guards of the royal palace were touted as an incorruptible force. It was part of their motto: The Royal Guard, Strong, Loyal, True. Yet two had succumbed to the temptation of sand that could buy them what would otherwise require at least a decade of service in the royal guard to purchase. Perhaps these men had families for which they wanted to provide. Or maybe they grew tired of the daily struggle and grind that earned them payment in royal roones, coin that had little intrinsic worth in a world ruled by the desire of the rare and difficult to attain.
Sand was what the wealthy, and those with aspirations to wealth, coveted. Roones were used by the common folk. Roones meant nothing without the backing of the monarchy. Could I blame the guards that lay on the stone floor behind us for their corruption? I wasn’t sure. It was dangerous to judge another man in a world as precarious as this one, where your heart could beat with hope one minute and die in a sputter of desperation and a sense of futility the next.
I continued to follow Aletox. When he felt my footing sure and quick behind him, he released my arm. We hugged to the side of the walls where the shadows flocked. The farther away we got from the cells, the larger the gap between the sconces. When we crossed into the light of a torch, we scurried so that we were no more than a blur of mass and shadow that soon faded into the darkness again, as if we’d been no more than an apparition.
Voices floated down the hall ahead of us, around the corner. Still, Aletox led me toward them.
“Do you not hear the voices?” I whispered urgently.
“Come,” was all he said. He moved even faster.
The voices grew louder though still indistinguishable. I trained my eyes on the heels of Aletox’s boots as they flicked and flacked nearly soundlessly across the stone. He too had been a soldier before he met my father. He too understood the relative fragility of life and circumstance, and he’d learned to prepare for it, to increase his odds at survival. Agility and silence held a value greater than any currency or sand. They often meant the difference between life and death, yours or someone else’s.