by Sarah Zettel
Heart led him up a narrow side street toward a three-story house. They splashed mud and stumbled over the penitent. Jay cursed the ones who were trying to run the other way, shoving and jostling and forcing him against the walls and into open doorways.
Heart barged up to the mouth of a back alley and through the honor guard, who were in too much chaos to stop him. Jay let the Teacher go and pushed his way between their shoulders. The guard didn’t even look at him.
Hands grabbed him from behind and shoved him against the wall. Jay looked into the terrified eyes of Holding the Keys.
“What is happening, Skyman!” he thundered, slamming Jay against the wall again. “What is happening!”
“Invasion, Holding.” Jay grabbed Holding’s hands and forced them away. “They are Skymen, like me. They are masquerading as the Nameless, that’s all!”
A measure of sanity returned to Holding’s face. “You’re coming to tell Her Majesty.” He snatched Jay’s wrist and nearly pulled him off his feet as he raced around the corner of the tavern.
King Silver knelt in the mud, straight-backed and slack-jawed. Her eyes stared at the glowing sphere as if locked into place.
“Majesty,” said Holding. “Majesty, Messenger of the Skymen says these are not the Nameless. He says they are known to him.”
King Silver didn’t so much as blink. A gust of wind blew her black hair into her face and she didn’t even flinch.
Jay swallowed hard. He needed her. She couldn’t go catatonic on him. Not yet.
He knelt in front of her. “King Silver, those creatures are called the Rhudolant Vitae. They are nothing more than a race of Skymen. Do you hear me, Your Majesty?”
Slowly, King Silver focused on him. Her faced twitched back to a painful kind of life. “Are you sure, Skyman?”
Jay nodded. “I know them, Majesty. I have lived among them. There is no mistaking them.”
“Skyman,” she hissed. “I have listened to you and listened to you and what has happened? My city has been torn out from under me. I cannot count the dead I have laid on the pyres. Tell me quickly why I should not lay this new disaster in your hands?” She stood up, and the controlled fury on her face reminded Jay sharply that this slender girl was a strong, fast soldier of war.
“Majesty.” He bowed his head humbly and spoke to the mud puddles. “Unless you want the People, all the People, to be reduced together to the level of the Notouch, you must find a way to wake the power that the Nameless, the true Nameless, left in the Realm. That is what brings the Skymen here. They seek to steal it for themselves.” He raised his eyes.
“And do you now suggest you know how to do this?” Behind her thunderous expression, Jay saw yearning. She wanted to believe him. No, she needed to believe him, because otherwise everything she had done, from her grandfather’s death to the retreat from the High House, was wrong.
“I do.” Inside, Jay rebelled against the game he was forced to play, but he had no choice. No matter what she was, King Silver could still kill him here and now. He needed her. Later she’d be beneath notice, but for now she was his only hope. “Majesty, you must buy me time!”
“Why?”
“So that I can find the power the true Nameless left behind. For all their tricks, we still have a march stolen on the Skymen. The keys to the world are just outside your city walls. I need just a few days more and then the Skymen are dust at Your Majesty’s feet!”
Bit by bit the rage drained out of her face and Jay saw a little girl standing in front of him, tired and frightened.
“All right, Skyman,” she said. “Take whom you need. Take a troop with you, if you need to, and go search for this power. I would have you gone from my sight and out of my hearing.” She looked toward the glowing sphere. “I warn you, though, if you do not bring me back victory in those pale hands of yours, then hide yourself where you think best, because I will have your life otherwise.” She leaned against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. Holding the Keys laid his hand on her shoulder. Jay stood, feeling oddly abashed, and hurried away.
Jay ducked through the maze of houses and barricades, trying to plan, but his head was full of the screams still sounding around him and the crying of someone who had believed she was a King.
Lu drew the blanket back over Broken Trail’s trembling body. She plucked at the thick, brown felt as if she were trying to pick it to pieces. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, but whatever she saw there, it wasn’t the polymer dome. The white fabric and struts couldn’t have caused three days of nonstop murmuring and tossing back and forth. Once, Lu had put his ear close enough to her mouth to hear what she was saying, but his translator disk provided him with nothing but a stream of random syllables.
Lu plopped himself into his chair, one hand dangling between his knees, the other automatically laying itself across the communications keypad. He pushed the pad away with a grimace.
Too soon, he told himself. It’s just too soon to try again.
Not one of his transmissions to Jay or Cor had raised an answer since they’d walked out the door together, and a traitorous, ghost thought was starting to believe none of them ever would.
The wind outside was kicking up again. It whistled around the dome like it was calling the rain to come and play. Trail gurgled as if in answer. Lu knew that soon he’d have to check the cloth swaddling her waist again. The thought sent a sudden hard wave of nausea through him and he had to turn away and looked at the wall instead.
This is all wrong. He rubbed his forehead. I’m the hardware man. I keep the base systems up and running. I don’t take care of flipped-over natives or…His gaze strayed to the hatch… organic monstrosities.
Whatever process Trail had woken up down there had not gone back to sleep yet. It was getting increasingly difficult for Lu to force himself to go down the ladders to see what had changed since the last check. He’d dutifully set up a trio of cameras and they were storing images in his data boxes, but protocol and his job dictated that he go down there himself.
Lu wished suddenly that he was Cor. She was the one trained to deal with living systems. She was the one who knew how to make friends and think on her feet. He just knew wires and gears and the laws of inorganic behavior.
I wish you’d come back. He directed the thought through the dome and toward the building storm. I wish you’d come back and get us all out of here and back to someplace that makes sense.
One more day, he promised himself. Just one more day and I’ll give it up. I’ll send out the emergency flare and have somebody come get us…me.
One more day, maybe two, and he’d find the strength to really believe that he was alone in this forsaken place. One more day, maybe two.
12—Aboard the
“She stood up straight before him, and she said ‘I know you.’”
—Fragment from The Apocrypha, Anonymous
“This is getting to be a habit.”
Her voice hurt him. Everything hurt him; the mattress against his back, the light against his eyelids, his pulse in his wrists.
I’ll die now, there’ll be no more pain. The thought drifted through his numb mind and he was too exhausted to either choke it off or pursue it. It just hung there.
There was a pressure against his neck and he screamed. After a moment, it subsided to the level of all the other pain. Lethargy seized hold of him slowly.
Thank you, he thought as his consciousness slid into darkness.
Eric came awake all at once with his heart in his mouth. When he saw his own cabin surrounding him, he collapsed back on the bed, weak with relief.
Not a dream. We made it out. The thought gave him the courage to try sitting up all the way. It wasn’t too difficult. The blinding pain had subsided to a dull headache, which he could cope with.
Eric stood carefully, finding his balance was a little tricky, but he managed it. He walked to the door without staggering and opened it.
Aria sat in the common room. Slices of real breads and
meats lay on plates in front of her, along with a jug of something that steamed. Eric surveyed the feast. It looked like over half his luxury stock. He sank down onto the sofa and she slid a plate of meats toward him. His stomach rumbled. He folded a random selection of meat into a slice of unleavened bread and devoured it, stopping only to swig down some tea.
Aria watched him with her air of wry amusement. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Almost well, I think.” He looked toward the closed view wall and all around the common room. “Do you know how Adu managed to find us?”
“Us?” Aria said incredulously. “You were the only one who needed finding. I was along to help pull you free.”
Eric felt himself begin to stare. “I thought…I thought…”
“That because my Lord Teacher had been captured that this despised one must have been also?” She gave a sharp laugh. “Not so, my Teacher. You did a better job at hiding me than at hiding yourself.”
“Did I?” he asked the tabletop. “One more idiot action.”
He waited for an acid reply that did not come.
“What has happened?” she asked.
Eric ran both hands through his hair. “The Rhudolant Vitae are the ones the Words call the Aunorante Sangh. I have met the Aunorante Sangh, Stone in the Wall dena Aria Born of the Black Wall, and I, Teacher Hand kenu Lord Hand on the Seablade dena Enemy of the Aunorante Sangh was promptly captured and stuffed into a box for dissection.”
He waited for her to demand explanations, to invoke the Nameless Powers, or just to swear, but instead she sighed and dropped her hand onto the pouch that held her namestones.
“What I do not understand is why they call us Aunorante Sangh,” she said. “I wish I had the learning of my ancestresses and not just their stones.”
“You knew?” Eric gaped at her.
She rubbed the backs of her hands, tracing her scars with her fingertips. “I guessed, after I heard they claimed the Realm as their home. It wasn’t exactly a long leap in a high wind.” She gave him her twisted grin. “If you’ll permit…” She broke off. “You should, I think, be getting some more rest, Sar Born.”
“I don’t want to rest.” Eric heaved himself to his feet and paced to the comm station. “I want to think. I need to think.” He gripped the back of the chair with both hands and stared at the blank screen in front of him.
“Well, we’ve two days yet before we reach the Realm,” she leaned back. “That should be plenty of…”
Eric whirled around. “Who set us on course for the Realm!”
Aria sat up straighter. “Adu did,” she told him. “At my direction.”
“You idiot N…” He bit the word off. “The Vitae may already be there!”
“They are already there,” she replied calmly. “Adu checked. We will have to be careful how we proceed, I think.”
“Careful!” roared Eric. “They’ll pick us up as soon as we poke our noses into the system! They’ll…” The air caught in his throat and he coughed, sending a shudder through his entire body. He staggered and caught himself on the sofa’s corner. Aria grasped his shoulders. She eased him onto the seat and leaned him forward. When the coughing died, she let go and stepped away. Eric did not miss the hesitation in her eyes, or the fact that she hid her hands behind her back.
“The Realm is the last place in the Quarter Galaxy we want to go,” he croaked, reaching for the tea.
She sank back onto the sofa. “Those are not the words I expected from a Teacher who has just met the Aunorante Sangh in open battle.”
“Battle.” Eric filled his cup and swigged down a long draught. “Oh yes. Five minutes after I stood up against them, they had me tranqued out and in a life-support capsule. A great battle indeed for dena Enemy of the Aunorante Sangh.” He swirled the dregs of the tea. “Those poor ones in the Temples will go down twice as fast.”
She gaped at him. “What are you saying? You, you’re sitting there alive and recovering. You held them at bay, you signaled for help from the depths of their ship. You beat them.”
“I ran away from them,” he said. “I woke up and I panicked. I was so afraid, I couldn’t control myself. I just… I just…” He dropped the cup onto the tabletop. It wobbled and tipped over, letting amber liquid spill across the clear polymer. He watched the puddle ooze toward the plate of breads. He remembered the awful pulling in the capsule, as if something were trying to drag his soul out through his pores. A sick yielding sensation had come over him, and whatever dragged at him took him…took him…
“I don’t even really remember what I did,” he said. “All I know is that I was scared nearly into senselessness and if Adu…if you hadn’t been there to pull me out, I would be a set of molecules in a lab dish.”
Aria narrowed her eyes. “You did something, or your power gift did. I got that much from the little Vitae who released you from the capsule. He was babbling about you taking over the lab. I don’t think he knew very well what he was saying. There was blood on him.” She frowned. “Is the power gift always under your command or does it ever work on its own?”
“What kind of question is that?” Eric hunted around the table for a cloth to wipe up the spill and didn’t find anything.
“The question of a Notouch seeking wisdom from her Teacher,” she retorted. “It should be obvious even to you that what everyone, from the Unifiers to the Kethran to the Vitae, has sought is the understanding of how the gifts the Nameless laid upon us work. So, if we gain that understanding first, we will have something to bargain with, or fight with.”
“What is obvious to me is that you are wandering around in a night storm of your own thoughts.” He met her eyes. “Don’t you understand? There is nothing we can do. The Nameless alone can count how many Rhudolant Vitae there are. There are maybe three thousand Teachers in existence, counting the students. Even if we could all be united, which I doubt, we would be drowned in the flood of sheer numbers.” He turned up both his hands so he could see his blank, smooth, empty palms. “We can’t be blinded by our superstitions, not now. This is not some mythic battle we can win because we’re touched by the Nameless and they’re not. This is real. This is happening. This is a primitive and, probably, dying people, against the oldest and most coherent power in the Quarter Galaxy. All we can do is keep out of the way.”
“It was tried,” Aria folded her arms. “It only worked for 150 generations.”
“What?” Eric looked up.
“These now are the Words of the Servant Garismit, ‘I have moved the Realm. The Aunorante Sangh will search for a thousand years to find you again, but only the Nameless Powers know now where you live.’” She quickly touched the backs of her hands, first the right, then the left, to close the quote. “If that is not trying to keep out of the way, what is it?”
“You would have the gall to quote the Words to a Teacher,” Eric muttered. “I’m telling you…”
“You’re telling me not to be blinded by superstition and you refuse to look into the Words and see that there might be truth under there.” She stabbed a finger at him. “What is that if it isn’t blindness?”
“The Words are lies!” Eric shouted. “Lies! They told us if we obeyed, if we kept the bloodlines straight and true, that we would be ready when the Aunorante Sangh came back! Well we did, and they have, but we haven’t got a rat’s chance in the Dead Sea!” His head spun. Visions of Lady Fire, her curses as he carried their baby away, his father’s calm voice, his brother-in-law’s sneaking glances stabbed at his vision. He cradled his head in his hands. “We did everything we were told and they are still going to take us all.”
“That does not have to be true,” she said softly. “Our ancestors somehow bested theirs; we may be able to repeat what was done.”
He raised his head. “Who has been putting this salt water into your head?”
“I have had plenty of time for thinking while you were recovering,” she said. “Adu helped some, but mostly I…” She touched her pouch of
stones. “Reviewed what I had learned on Kethran.” She moved her hand away from the pouch with a quick jerk. “Think on this. The Words say we were named individually by the Nameless. Zur-Iyal then tells me our ancestors must have been constructed individually by some great technology. The Vitae say they lost their home-world. The Words say the Realm was moved to rescue it from the Aunorante Sangh. The Vitae have been searching for their world for years. The Words warn they would be back. There’s also the story that the Servant was aided by a Notouch who ‘made the Realm hear his commands…’”
Eric started. “Where did you hear the apocrypha?”
She smiled her twisted smile. “From my mother, when she showed me my namestones for the first time.” She touched the pouch again. “That Notouch was my ancestress. The way she made the Realm ‘hear’ was with the stones I’m carrying. Or so the story goes, but our stories are turning out to be remarkably close to the truth, are they not?”
“What manner of Notouch are you?” Eric asked softly. “I’ve been over the World’s Wall for ten years and I never, ever thought like this.”
“You never wanted to,” she said simply. “You wanted to run away and you did. I, however, wanted to understand what the Skymen wanted of us. Now, I do.” She closed her jaw so firmly, Eric heard her teeth click together. “They want to get their flabby hands on my children. I will prevent this, Teacher Hand. If it costs my life and my name, I swear I will.”
For a moment all he could do was stare at her fierce, unwavering expression. “That’s why you left the Realm? Just to find out what the Skymen wanted?”
She laughed deprecatingly. “I admit, I didn’t think I’d find myself over the World’s Wall. I went to the Skymen because…” she shook her head. “I also thought the Words were lies. The Skymen were friends with the Heretics. The Heretics have been known to violate the caste laws. I thought if I helped the Skymen in their aims, I would be able to secure their favor and they might persuade King Silver to raise my family from the ranks of the Notouch.” She traced her scars again, slowly, meditatively. “I thought to keep my children from groveling in the mud all their lives. I did not know that to save my family, I would have to save the Realm.” She glanced up at him. “Or indeed, even save one Teacher. Nor did I expect to find that the Words of the Teachers were closer to the truth than the words of the Heretics.” She sighed. “But the Nameless did not ask my permission when they opened their eyes, did they?”