by Lucia Ashta
The voices grew so close to us that I could make out some of the words as they ran ahead of their speakers to round the corner. I muffled my sense of alarm. Aletox wouldn’t be moving toward our death. Certainly, he and I could take on a few guards. My alertness had returned. My heartbeat thumped in my ears. Every muscle in my body announced its readiness to do what was necessary to survive another day.
Aletox had a plan. Aletox always had a plan. He was as cunning as my father, with a dangerous glint to his dark eyes.
“Ale, good bread, and a fine woman’ll be my reward for this,” came a voice without its owner.
A mean chuckle came next. “Who promised you that?”
“Bish told me he’d make sure of it once I brought the prisoner to him.”
“Bish?” Deep, cruel laughter snaked its way around the corner, too close to where I was; each step brought me closer to it. “Bish’ll bend you over and fuck you before he fulfills his promise.”
“Nah. He looked me in the eye and promised. He’ll hold true. The only fucking that’ll be happening will be me bending over a sweet little maiden. He promised me that she’d be young and pretty.”
The guards were too close. I thought I might even be able to smell them and their sour hopes. In the dim light I could make out Aletox tightening his hand around the grip of his sword though he didn’t draw it.
Another few steps and I longed for my own sword, wondered where it had ended up. I’d had the sword since I came into manhood, when it was still too heavy for me to wield with any kind of legerity. I’d grown into it. It had killed many men and beasts and protected me from death on more occasions than I cared to recall. I would have to find a way to recover it. Swords were special. Once you found one that was loyal to you, you did everything you could to hold onto it. I clenched and unclenched my right hand, yearning to feel the ridges in the hilt, to catch a flash of the engraved vines that wound across its blade, the blue jewel, fine enough for kings, that crowned the hilt.
Then we reached the corner where we were bound to run straight into the buffoons in uniforms of the royal guard. I could already smell them, an unpleasant mix of sweat, spent manhood, and wood oils, the cheap ones that smelled cheap.
In a flash, Aletox disappeared to the right.
I couldn’t see where he went, but I followed. I lunged my body in that direction, hoping that I too could find the way through what looked like solid wall. Wishing I could be a magician like Aletox, I threw the weight of my body in his trail just as two big, burly guards rounded the corner where I was certain they’d run into the ripples of us if they’d known how to sense anything beyond themselves.
Eight
All the while we wound through the tunnels, I wondered at their existence. Ilara hadn’t told me of this subterranean network that ran within the walls of the palace. Had she known of them? It was difficult to imagine that a girl raised in the palace had never come across one on any of the typical adventurous explorations that all children undertook. I wondered how many times I’d walked past the many entrances the tunnels must have without knowing it. Did the tunnels connect the entire palace? Did the King know of them? It seemed unlikely that he didn’t, yet, why weren’t they guarded or sealed off?
Once we put the hallway that connected the many prison cells behind us, darkness enveloped us like spilled ink spreading on a blotter; it claimed everything. Even though my eyes were sharp, I couldn’t see a thing.
Aletox was still moving quickly. I followed by sensing the energy of his momentum forward, by allowing myself to be engulfed in the wake of his movement. I narrowed the gap between us so that I could feel the cool air caused by his forward motion. Our boots hitting the rough-hewn floor came in a staccato pattern sounding in the otherwise perfectly still darkness.
“Halt,” Aletox said. I stopped a fraction of a second before slamming into him. I smelled the scent of something about to burn, like a smoldering fire, and the freshness of tender plant leaves. He always smelled like this; I remembered it from childhood. Today, I could also smell hakusha though I knew he didn’t care for the stuff. When brewed, its leaves gave off an acrid fragrance; their taste was even more bitter. He’d been with my father just before coming to my rescue. My father was the only person I knew who insisted on drinking the stuff every day.
“Back off a bit,” he said, so I did. Before long, the faintest of glows was born. It was just enough that I could make it out, but it wasn’t strong enough to illuminate much.
It grew. I could begin to make out Aletox’s face. The strong, straight nose, the thick, imposing eyebrows dark as his eyes, the thick lips, rich in color, set in a determined line, the pronounced cheekbones that gave his face a sinister cast, all made softer than they usually were by a diffuse yellow glow.
My eyes grew wide as the light grew in intensity. This wasn’t the flame I was used to, that all Oers were used to. The hallway we’d just escaped was illuminated by torches that left charred marks up the stone walls behind them. Fire was how the population of Planet Origins created light during the intervals when the Suxle and Auxle Suns gave way to the purple light of the Plune Moon, or inside where the light of the suns couldn’t reach. Homes were illuminated with candles when one of the suns had set and the other not yet risen.
“What is it? Is it faithum?” I’d never believed the Devoteds’ claims that, once they reached a certain level of faith in a higher power, they began to see themselves as part of this higher power, a reflection of it, a microcosm within a macrocosm, a hologram of a world within a world. Once they achieved what they claimed to be oneness with this greater power, they could achieve things that were thought impossible. They could perform faithum. I’d heard of some of their feats, unattainable manipulations of the physical world.
Aletox would be the last person I would think capable of faithum. He was analytical, detached, and often cynical. Yet, I couldn’t think of what else it could be.
He looked at me, a touch of humor in the normally humorless eyes. “No. It’s not faithum. Faithum isn’t real. It’s the desperate invention of people who haven’t found the way to exist within the world as it is. They can’t accept reality, so they convince themselves that there’s another one out there, one more amenable to them.” He spoke loudly, confident within the thick stone walls of unexpected tunnels.
“Then what is it?” I wasn’t successful in keeping the awe from my voice. How could I? In the open palm of his hand lay a flat, smallish device that looked to be made from some kind of metal, and from this device emanated enough light to illuminate the hallway several feet in front of us and several more behind. If he’d told me it was faithum, I would have believed him. Even with his denial, I still wondered. There were stories of enlightened Devoteds capable of creating light.
“It’s a device I invented. The energy of my body powers it. It’s simple enough.”
“But how come no one else can do this if it’s so simple?”
“Some things aren’t meant for everyone.”
“But it would help Oers so much to have something like this. Think of all the trouble it would save.”
“My concerns aren’t the daily inconveniences of Oers.”
“But—”
“We have no time for this now. Guards will discover you missing at any moment. We need to get out of here. Follow me.”
Obediently, I did. I followed behind Aletox, a man I’d known all my life but never grown close to. He was a man no one could grow close to. Perhaps my father had, but maybe not even him. I walked, trailing the silhouette of a man who’d never been soft, who probably never would be, outlined in yellow from the front.
He stopped. I stopped. We were in a part of the tunnel where it widened enough for me to stand next to this man that I rarely saw apart from my father, and I saw my father infrequently as it was.
“You can still transport, right?”
“Of course. But we can’t transport within the palace.”
“We can.”
> “It’s forbidden. There are programmed force fields in place that prevent it.”
“I thought I raised you well enough to understand that what others believe applies to them doesn’t apply to us.”
Raised me? He didn’t raise me. He was my father’s confidant and aide. Not even my father had raised me, not really.
“I do understand that the limitations others believe exist don’t necessarily apply to me. But if you’re saying that we can break through the programs of the force field, then that’ll take a bit of time.” Even if Aletox were seemingly attempting to rescue me, I wasn’t about to tell him that I broke through my father’s force field at the splicing laboratory. It would take time to break through the programs that protected the palace, regardless.
“Time isn’t a concrete thing. Neither is the force field. We can do as we wish.”
“All right,” I said, but my voice was imbued with the doubt I possessed.
“Come on. Focus. We have to get out of here. Close your eyes and still yourself, just as I taught you as a boy.”
Had he taught me to transport? I didn’t think he had. I was no longer sure though; he seemed so certain of what he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To your father’s estate, but not the main house, my quarters, my library. You’ve been in there before.” I had, but it had been hundreds of years since Aletox, perhaps the most private man on all of O, even more so than my father, had allowed me into his private quarters.
“Did my father send you to free me?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t need anyone to direct my actions.”
“So then why are you here? Why have you come for me?” The one thing that I did remember of Aletox and the little time I spent with him was that he was mostly indifferent to me.
The man stared at me with his big, black, piercing eyes that looked as if they could swallow me whole. For a second, I almost wondered if I would have been better off locked in my prison cell, awaiting execution. He looked as if he could devour me and still have appetite for more.
“I suppose that there’s no better time or place to tell you this. Keeping it from you no longer serves the purpose it once did.”
He studied me some more. His expression relaxed fractionally. My shoulders, which I hadn’t even realized had tightened, eased. His eyes no longer looked menacing. In front of me stood a man I was as familiar with as my father. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what he said next. No amount of relaxation or shared history could have blunted my surprise.
“Brachius isn’t your father. I am.”
Nine
Of all the things I might or could have said in this moment that would forever alter the fundamental understanding I had of myself, not a single one came to mind. I stared, dumb faced, something I was pretty certain I’d never before in my life done.
“We need to get out of here,” the deranged man in front of me was saying. “Transport. Now. To my library. I’ll meet you there.”
Then lids covered the dark eyes. Mine remained wide open, even as the light in Aletox’s still outstretched palm began to dim.
The outline of his body had blurred when I finally spoke.
“What?” As in, what the fuck did you just say?
Gradually, the definition returned to Aletox’s body. When he’d fully returned, he huffed impatience before he even opened his eyes. Once his eyes opened, they blazed with annoyance.
I knew it was dangerous to interrupt someone when he was in the process of transporting. I’d transported enough to realize its intricacies and dangers, whoever the fuck had first taught me how to do it as a boy. I understood very well that if a person were to become distracted during that tenuous moment of transporting one’s physical body to another location that it was possible to lose bits both of the body and the self.
After all, the self exists only because our minds believe it does. Without the image the mind has of the body, the physical embodiment of self would cease to exist as it had. If the mind lost track of a bit of itself, or of the exact embodiment of itself it had long held, it might lose it forever.
It wouldn’t be death. Yet neither would it be life as the person had previously experienced it. It would be something in between and undefined. Perhaps something of a purgatory. I didn’t know. Either way, I didn’t give a damn. Not even a tiny bit of one.
“What do you mean ‘what?’ I told you to go to my library. And how dare you speak to me in the middle of transporting?” Aletox sounded furious. Still, he had nothing on me. How dare I? Was he out of his mind?
I seethed but still couldn’t form the words I’d eventually want to say.
“What is wrong with you, Tanus? Do you want to get out of here or not? Would you have preferred I leave you in the cell I found you in, waiting for some brute to come lop your head off?”
I stared into his black eyes. I wiggled my jaw back and forth. I breathed.
“The guards may not be the most brilliant of people, but few of them are complete idiots. Our time is limited. We have to get out of here, now.”
Still, nothing came out of me, even though by now thoughts—mostly insults—were forming into brief but pointed statements in my mind.
“Are you coming or not, Tanus?”
I stared. He stared back.
“Fine. Suit yourself. If you want to remain here to die for something you didn’t do, I can’t stop you. But I’m leaving. Don’t interrupt me as I transport again.” The latter was delivered as a threat.
I didn’t move a muscle while he closed his eyes, stilled himself, then blurred. Eventually he began to fade until nothing of him remained behind.
Only once he was fully gone and I couldn’t feel him anymore did I let out a huge gust of air. My heart was racing, my pulse gushing in my head. Suddenly, I felt faint. I scrambled to sit on the floor inelegantly, making all the noise that a man who’d just discovered his entire life was a ruse could make.
My head felt light. I felt myself losing grip on myself. I scooted back, feeling for the wall with my butt, once more in the pitch black dark that took over in the abrupt absence of light. When I found the cold stone, I leaned back into it with the relief of a frightened son in the embrace of his solid father.
Fathers weren’t supposed to transport and abandon their sons to an uncertain fate within the secret passages of a royal palace. Fathers weren’t supposed to lie to their sons for four hundred forty three years either. My father wasn’t supposed to be Aletox. I didn’t think he was supposed to be Brachius either. Was it possible that Aletox had been lying to me? But then, why would he bother to bribe two guards to rescue me?
I wouldn’t put it past either of the two men who might or might not be my father to orchestrate an elaborate maneuver that used my reactions and my emotions for whichever unimaginable result it intended. Why else would Aletox choose the moment he had to tell me what he did? He couldn’t really expect me to focus enough to transport after that, especially when there was a block in place meant to prevent transporting.
Footsteps pounding up and down stone floors reached me. They weren’t near, but they were close enough that I should transport out of here right away. Shouts followed. They’d discovered I was gone. They must have. I was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
Guards were running in the hallway out of which Aletox had led me. I expected the usual reactions to danger to erupt within me: a surge of focus and strength. However, I continued to sit exactly where I was. For a moment, I wasn’t certain if the desire to save myself even remained.
But when exploratory footsteps sounded so close that they had to be within the tunnel, I realized that I did want to save myself. Fuck my father, whoever he was. I widened my eyes as far as they could go even if all they could see was black. I shook my head. Okay, I thought. You can do this. If Aletox could transport out of here, so can you.
I closed my eyes. I listened to my breathing, felt the rising and
dropping of my chest. I listened to the beat of my heart until it slowed.
The one set of footsteps drew nearer as I grew calmer.
I reached the place within my mind where I could free myself of my body enough to transport. I felt for the familiar signs that I was ready. I found all of them. I also found a blockage which must have been the royal palace force field programmed to prevent exactly what I was doing.
The block was a tricky one. Still, as I felt into it, I was certain that I could find the way around it if only I could remain in the tranquility I was in now.
There was a part of me that heard every footfall and was aware of the reality of discovery approaching. There was a greater part of me that was able to ignore this and focus on what I needed to do to get myself out of there.
In the end, what led to my failure wasn’t the immediate threat of capture, nor was it the force field programmed to prevent transporting. It wasn’t concern for Ilara or Dolpheus. It wasn’t fear of death. It was those haunting words that Aletox had said. It was the rug he’d pulled out from under me so that I’d come crashing down to land on my face.
I managed to remain in that still space. I recognized the familiar tingling sensations that indicated that my body was beginning to blur, part here, part somewhere else. But then I thought of Aletox. I held, but I made no more progress until I returned to that stillness that required a lack of any particular thought. Footsteps sounded closer. My body tingled again; I was blurring. Then, another thought of Aletox. A thought of Brachius, and I had to start over.
When the footsteps sounded so close as to be just around the last bend, I directed myself back into my body. I didn’t have the time to complete a transport, even if I could get my mind to abandon interfering thoughts. At this point, it would be more dangerous to be captured partly out of my body. Then, damage would almost certainly be done by the abrupt interruption caused by the capture.