The Fallen Mender

by R. J. Francis

  As they moved on, Makias explained that the north wing housed seven temples. These seven weren’t temples to different gods—the Celmareans, as did most mainlanders, believed in only one divine spirit—rather, each temple was devoted to perfecting an aspect of their souls needed to carry out the divine will. This refinement was achieved through ritual, study, and meditation, all facilitated by priests with a deep knowledge of the traditions.

  “Each of the seven aspects is complex,” Makias said, “but you might call them: wisdom, knowledge, compassion, the feminine, the masculine, romantic love, and practical service. Each temple here is amazing in its design. Each is unique. And each employs water as a tool in imparting the lessons Celmareans need to better themselves.”

  When they arrived in the Temple of Knowledge, the water there was not in the form Jaimin and Nastasha had pictured. The first thing they noticed on entering was a brilliant white cloud that obscured the entire ceiling.

  “What is that?” Natasha asked.

  “It’s just what it looks like,” Makias said. “It’s a cloud. Only it’s been there for thousands of years.”

  White benches, stools and tables were arranged in functional groupings around the room. Simple white flowers bloomed in planters here and there. The stone walls were subtly inlayed in hues of white. Only one item in the room, aside from the cloud above, really captured the attention: a huge marble sculpture of a sea star, mounted on a pedestal atop a low, circular dais in the center of the room.

  “Sit for a second. I’ll show you the magic of this place,” Makias told them. The others sat down on benches, while Makias remained standing. He took a deep breath into his nostrils, closed his eyes, and breathed out. Next, he reached out his finger, held it steady before him, and opened his eyes.

  Nastasha and Jaimin watched a silver strand of water descend from the cloud above toward Makias’ hand. As it neared his hand, the lower tip of the strand flattened out and folded itself gracefully into a flitting butterfly, which remained connected by a tiny tether to the cloud above. The insect circled around Nastasha’s head, and then Jaimin’s, before returning to alight on Makias’ finger. Next, the strand thickened a bit, and the butterfly “re-folded” itself into a songbird, still perched on Makias’ finger.

  “Wha…” Nastasha found herself without words. Marco and the soldiers who had taken positions at each entrance to the room tried not to become distracted by the display.

  “This is one of the ways we teach one another.” Makias turned his hand palm-up, and the bird turned instantly to mist and was caught up into the cloud above. Another silver strand flew down and spelled out the word “visual” right before Jaimin’s face. It changed color four times before disappearing into a white vapor and rising up.

  “But knowledge is not just visual,” Makias said. He pointed two fingers toward the edge of the cloud and swept his hand slowly up to a point above himself. As he did, from within the cloud the visitors heard an ascending musical scale—played on what sounded like a harp.

  “We learn about the worlds through all of our senses,” he said, twirling one hand. Suddenly the refreshing fragrance of pine filled the air, which quickly changed over to the scent of sea-spray.

  “But I see that the guards are ready. We must not delay,” Makias said. “And so, Jaimin, I need you to pull down a strand like this.” Makias drew from the cloud above another silver strand of water, no thicker than his little finger. Jaimin stood, raised his hand toward the cloud, and easily coalesced the water molecules into a similar strand of his own.

  “That was easy,” Jaimin said, and suddenly the end of his strand exploded into a fat cat, startling Nastasha, and Jaimin as well.

  “Just…like this…” Makias said, focusing on his own strand. “Keep it simple. No cats. But, yes, it’s surprisingly easy. This room is attuned to our minds. It wants to impart knowledge. You’ll find many special places on Celmarea where the energy of the worldspace has been refashioned by our ancestors to perform a specific function.”

  Jaimin’s cat vaporized, and he pulled another strand of clear water down from the cloud. “Keep that strand going, and come with me,” Makias instructed him. Jaimin followed Makias over to the sea star sculpture at the center of the room, and their strands followed behind them. Makias drew down two more strands, so he had three in all.

  With his will, Makias sent one of his strands into a hole at the tip of one of the sea star’s arms. He maneuvered the next strand into a hole in the next arm. And the third, likewise. “Your turn,” Makias said.

  There were two more arms to the sea star, each with a hole at the arm’s tip. “There is a tube in each arm,” Makias explained. “Send your strand all the way up until you feel it meet mine in the center of the star.” Jaimin focused his strand into the next hole.

  “How am I supposed to feel it?”

  “You’ll feel it.”

  Oddly, Jaimin could sense what the tip of his strand was “feeling,” and he knew exactly when it had merged with Makias’ strands in the belly of the echinoderm. “Pull down one last strand and thread it into the final hole,” Makias said, and Jaimin did. “Now, form a ball in there, where all the strands meet.”

  “How big?” Jaimin asked.

  “Just keep going bigger and bigger. You’ll know when we have it.”

  Jaimin envisioned the tips of his strands becoming a ball in the sea star’s stomach.

  “Bigger,” Makias said. The ball grew larger and larger until everyone heard a loud click from the center of the statue. “Well done,” Makias said. “Now stand back.”

  With a strong vibration and a low rumble, the dais on which the pedestal stood rose up into the air, lifting the sea star sculpture all the way up into the cloud. Cut into the side of the dais was a shell-adorned spiral staircase, leading down.

  “Congratulations,” Makias said to Jaimin. “You’ve just unlocked the archives.”

  The group carefully descended the narrow steps into the archives. Marco went down first, and the soldiers stayed on guard up top. Jaimin detected a slight ammonia odor in the air. “Oof—is it safe to breathe?” he asked Makias.

  “It’s…never been sealed up for this long. Hopefully, it won’t be a problem. It is ventilated, but when I lived here the staircase was raised during the day.”

  The group re-assembled at the bottom of the stairs. They found themselves in a great ellipsoid chamber, resembling a dome squashed from the top. The marble floor was overgrown with mats of waxy, dark green vines, originating from sunlit planters here and there. Leading off from the main chamber, corridors with arched ceilings housed stacks of books on both sides.

  In the center of the room, four ramps led down into a sunken seating area where, beneath the tangle of leaves, couches and chairs were grouped into four quadrants by color: coral pink, aqua, brown, and green. And at the exact center of the room, a grand marble chair was raised on a dais.

  “This place needs a bit of pruning,” Jaimin said. “I’ve been here…”

  “You have?” Makias asked.

  “In a vision. I met my grandmother here. She said I would find answers here one day.”

  “That sounds promising,” Makias said. “I remember your grandmother. She was an amazing woman, always teaching us life lessons.”

  “How did these plants survive this long?” Nastasha asked.

  “Drip irrigation,” Makias said. “From a cistern on the roof. And the light tubes bring down all the sunlight the plants need. Notice how the vines have avoided the shadows? We’ll need to cut away the plants to find the information you seek.”

  “Why?” Nastasha asked.

  “Soon you’ll understand,” he said. “Help me trim these vines. Cut them off at the base of each planter and roll them up.”

  They began the tiring and time-consuming task of detaching the mats of vines from the floor. Cutting them at the base of the planters was easily accomplished with their daggers and swords. It was rolling the leafy mats into spr
ingy logs to get them out of the way that took the most time. Makias was thrilled the place was such a mess. It meant that nobody had been down here in eighteen years, and that the archives were most likely unspoiled.

  As they cleared the floor, Nastasha and Jaimin noticed copper grooves or channels, each half the width of a finger, running from the base of the central dais, up the ramps, and down the center of each of the side corridors. Investigating further, they saw that at intervals branches of the copper channels split off at ninety degrees toward the book stacks and ran up them, and then they branched again and ran along the front of each shelf. As a result, every book in the place was connected to every other book, and to the central dais, by the copper grooves.

  “Now we’re ready,” Makias said. “Everyone remember what we are looking for?”

  “The archway,” Jaimin said.

  “It’s called Kel-sei,” Makias said. “You will need to remember that, because you are going to be the one to find the book. And, specifically, we’re looking for information that will tell us where the room containing Kel-sei is located in relation to the rest of the palace.”

  “So where is the library index?” Nastasha asked.

  “It’s right here,” Makias said, indicating the chair at the center of the room. He ushered his guests down into the sunken area that surrounded the central dais. “Jaimin, take a seat up on the chair.” Jaimin climbed up onto the dais via some extremely steep steps that didn’t even fit his entire foot, and sat on the marble chair, which was contoured to hold an average human bottom. For marble, it was surprisingly comfortable. Jaimin also found that the chair could swivel in a complete circle—it must have been on bearings. “Now,” Makias said, “close your eyes, visualize what you are looking for, and don’t stop until it’s time.”

  “What are you talking about? How will I know it’s time?” Jaimin asked.

  “You’ll know,” Makias said.

  “As you wish, professor.” Jaimin closed his eyes and thought intensely of the glowing archway and the doorless room containing it. Keen to follow Makias’ instructions to the letter, he visualized the Celmarean palace, and in his mind he asked the question: where is the Kel-sei in relation to the parts of the palace I know?

  Suddenly, Jaimin could see the archives chamber again as if he had opened his eyes, but his view was different. He was looking at things as if he were as small as an insect in the tiny copper moat that surrounded the dais at its base. Nastasha and Makias’ legs loomed not far away—their boots appearing huge to him. Soon he felt himself pushed from behind, and he began moving down one of the copper channels that led away from the dais. His view tilted upward as he ascended from the sunken seating area, and then it leveled out again. He heard Nastasha and the others chasing behind him. What do I look like to them? he wondered.

  From there, his consciousness, locked in the copper channel, traveled as smoothly as liquid down one of the archives’ corridors. His view shifted abruptly left, and he approached a book stack, and then he was suddenly looking up, watching the ceiling approaching. His view shifted left once again, and then it stopped. He could see the others now, running to where he was. He figured it must be “time,” so he opened his eyes.

  Jaimin found himself back in his body, in the marble chair. Looking down at the floor, he noticed that one of the copper channels leading away was now filled with water. He figured his consciousness must have been riding the leading edge of a tiny stream of water all the way to the book he needed. He carefully climbed down from the dais, followed the water’s trail and met up with Makias and the others, who were halfway down a corridor staring at a shelf.

  “Well done, Jaimin,” Nastasha said.

  “That was…do you realize?” Jaimin was still astounded by his out-of-body adventure.

  “You’ve led us right to it,” she said.

  The water had stopped at the location of a large leather-bound folio. As soon as Nastasha pulled the folio from the shelf, the water receded the way it had come.

  She carried the book to a reading desk at the end of the corridor and opened it up for Makias to examine. Its pages contained intricate architectural diagrams—stunning in detail—and Celmarean text in all sizes. “This is going to take some time,” said Makias.

  Nastasha and Jaimin looked on, transfixed by the contents of the book. The diagrams, images and text were so boldly colored and sharp they seemed to leap off the pages. And the pages weren’t made from paper—they were made from a much sturdier composite material.

  Midway through leafing through the book, Makias winced and clenched his stomach. His eyes closed tightly.

  Nastasha looked at Jaimin, and Jaimin shrugged. For a moment they didn’t know what to do, but then Nastasha spoke up: “Is something wrong, Makias?”

  “My…my brother’s been killed,” Makias said.

  “Oh no!” Nastasha cried.

  Jaimin’s head sank.

  “Talos was…ambushed on the road,” Makias said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nastasha said. “You don’t have to tell us what happened. Let’s go back upstairs.” She started to close the book.

  “No,” Makias said, grabbing her arm and stopping her. “This book is why we’re here, and we’ve no time to waste.”

  Alessa came down to the archives a few minutes later to console Makias. Just as she and General Jorge arrived, Makias found the page he was looking for: a plan showing the actual room containing the archway. Everyone studied it for a while, and Makias and the general concluded that the best way to access the Kel-sei chamber would be to dig diagonally down from the beach just outside the palace wall.

  “I’ll have my men start digging at once. You all need some food and rest,” the general told the others.

  “We’ll help dig,” said Jaimin.

  “Please,” said the general. “We’ll take care of it. We’ll work non-stop until we’ve reached the room.”

  “Wait, what does this say?” Nastasha asked, pointing to a small inscription in front of and behind the archway.

  “It says: ‘No passage for the incarnate,’ ” Makias said.

  “Well,” Jaimin said, “the archway was designed for spirits to enter, not the living. That’s probably all it means.”

  “Maybe,” Alessa said. She had a bad feeling about what it meant, but she didn’t want to dash Jaimin’s hopes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The Celmarean palace had seven dining halls. In the time of the Celmareans, three were reserved for palace residents, but the others were community spaces, where the palace chefs maintained an elaborate board of dishes and desserts that any Celmarean could partake of at any time, day or night, sometimes in the company of princesses who would come to chat. In addition, there were special, less frequently used dining spaces, such as the one in a nearby limestone sea cave where General Jorge had requested that supper be set up for his guests.

  The Sentinel’s passengers and crew were escorted to the sea cave by way of a long tunnel leading from the palace’s basement. When they arrived, out through the mouth of the cave they could see the twilit sky, and its pink reflection twinkling on the surface of the ocean, which was relatively calm today. The sea water came a good distance into the cave, lapping at the broad concrete platform that supported the dining table and chairs. Four tall tapers on the table provided lighting subtle enough to allow the guests to appreciate a dazzling display on the cave ceiling: feathery lime green and blue mats of bioluminescent macrobacteria that had colonized the damp rock.

  The menu consisted of venison stew, tryptil bread and roasted ruby seagrass. General Jorge had ordered his finest red wine to be brought out for the non-islanders, and Mascarin would avail himself of more of it than he should have, considering their precarious security situation. Alessa and Makias would spend most of the meal whispering.

  Jaimin and Nastasha were seated on either side of the general, who told them a bit more about the tutor’s recent move to the island, and how it had disrupted
the order of things here. He then updated them on the search for the assassins: “I believe,” the general told them at the end of the main course, “that we are looking for two suspects who were seen near the beach loading a heavy sack onto a cart, which they pushed into the city. Witnesses say they refused help loading the cart.”

  “Were they women or men?” Jaimin asked.

  “Young women,” he said, “in naval uniforms, which, under normal circumstances, would have been suspicious. But it was known by then that you’d shown up with female crew members, so it wasn’t reported.”

  “Has the cart been located?” Nastasha asked.

  “Sure has,” he said. “In a vacant section of the upper district. My men are searching house to house.”

  “I appreciate all you are doing for us,” Jaimin said.

  “I could never do enough for you, son,” he said. Jaimin found this an odd statement, and now he really wished the general would stop calling him “son.” He wondered why the general had waited so long before providing him and Nastasha with an update on the investigation. And he sensed there was still more old Jorge had not told them.

  “Why are you so eager to help?” Jaimin asked the general.

  Jaimin! Nastasha scolded him in her mind.

  “Do you know how many islanders I’ve killed?” the general whispered.

  “You were involved in the invasion?” Jaimin asked.

  The general took a huge swig of wine and then chewed nervously on his bread roll, nodding “yes” while a bit lost in thought. “I told you, I was Radovan’s best friend. This ensured me a very comfortable and powerful position when our country mobilized.”

  “But you knew Radovan’s mind had been corrupted.” Jaimin said.

  “Many of us knew,” he said. “But we carried out his orders nonetheless, mainly out of fear. Some in the upper ranks were taken away for special ‘visits’ with the tutor. The rest of us stayed on our best behavior so we wouldn’t have to endure those visits.” He poured himself some more wine. “We had no idea what to expect when we arrived on this island. When we saw the islanders pulling our friends under the water and drowning them, it made it that much easier to hop ashore and slaughter whomever we saw. It had become personal. We were filled with so much rage that day, it didn’t matter if it was a man, a woman, or a small child at the tip of our blade.”