Wave Mandate

by Schneider, A. C.

  What to do?

  He deliberated for a second, no longer. It was time to see if anyone was home.

  Chapter 18: Wake

  The Prophecy, Caras 1

  The blackness is so intense. Not a passive, mere lack of light kind of blackness, but a hungry, relentless blackness, pulling in, swallowing.

  It’s cold and anonymous. It hates us because we are a source of light. We are the object reflecting the light that is our own image, so we are its enemy and it wants to eradicate us.

  It will not let us go.

  We are afraid. We hold on but we can feel our grasp slipping. We are losing. We are going. We don’t want to go.

  Please don’t take us!

  We can’t see what is inside the black, what is after it. There is nothing after it. We feel this. We don’t want to become nothing.

  Please!

  A hand. There is hope. It reaches into the black.

  Reaching...

  Reaching...

  And she’s awake. The vision is gone, replaced by a new kind of blackness, but even as the ever-so-real and vivid images fade she knows this blackness is different, that behind it there is consciousness, there is life. She could smell it, taste it, feel it. She only need pull back the shade in order to see it.

  A gasp heard from close by confirms her sentiments. Even in the dark it’s unmistakably familiar. A voice follows.

  “That was activity!” The voice seemed to be addressing itself under the assumption no one else was listening. “It was real,” it continued breathlessly. “That was real, right? Yes. Yes it was.”

  Analel opened her eyes just a crack and light poured in from the room, banishing the black once and for all. The unfamiliar surroundings were disorienting at first. Where am I? She thought. Bleeps from nearby machines intermittently filled the silence and the air smelled of disinfectant. She was lying in a bed, not her own, wearing a white dressing gown. The partitioning curtain to her left ultimately gave it away.

  The infirmary.

  The voice she’d heard, clearly her mother’s, came from the other side of the partition. She was attending to another patient and looked tired but flush, recently imbued with the kind of newfound energy flowing through a depleted body after a long and exhausting effort finally bears fruit.

  “OK,” said Erin, standing up and holding both her palms out in a posture that asked all things before her to freeze in place. Drawing in a deep breath and releasing it, she dropped her hands and smoothed out her cloak. “OK,” she repeated, and turned to go, probably off to get someone of consequence and inform them about whatever real thing it was that just happened.

  Analel called out to her. “Mother.” The word came out scratchy, weak. She had wanted to say it louder. It bothered her that she didn’t have full control over a simple thing like the volume of her own voice. It was loud enough, though.

  Erin stopped mid stride and leaned over in Analel’s direction. “Annie? Annie, are you awake?” Analel nodded and Erin rushed over, dropping to a knee by her daughter’s side. She stroked the top of Analel’s head, tracing her hand down along her daughter’s cheek and stopping by the chin to cup her daughter’s face, ever so gently. Analel nestled into the palm, her mother’s long red hair falling, draping itself over her own thick auburn mane. Mother and daughter, fire and earth, together, as natural as breathing.

  “Oh my sweet girl, how are you feeling?” Erin’s voice was only slightly above a whisper, soothing, like her touch.

  Analel tried scooching up to more of a sitting position but a throbbing pain hit her behind the eyes and she had to squeeze them shut, collapsing back down to her pillow and lifting her hand to her forehead. It felt clammy. “Oooh… I thought I was doing OK… Ouch.”

  “Take it slow, Annie,” Erin said, smiling proudly. Her daughter successfully traversed a rite of passage. She was witnessing Analel’s coming of age before her very eyes. “You did real well but you’ve been out of it for a short while.”

  Analel gave a slight moan and pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “How long is short?”

  “About three days.”

  “Three days!”

  Erin laughed softly. “It’s quite normal when a Prophet’s pushed out of a session by an offensive Wave Thought for the first time. I saw the post-duel Wave patterns, Annie. You held on for a good while. One day soon you’ll make a strong Prophet Mother.” She ran her hand through Analel’s hair for a second time. “I’m so very proud of you.”

  Analel smiled abashedly, feeling more like a child for the compliment than the formidable Prophet her mother described. “Thanks, but not feeling very strong at the moment.” Erin’s answer was to pull her daughter in closer, hold her tighter. They stayed like that for several minutes, their breathing patterns slowly melding into one.

  “I’m sorry, Annie,” said Erin after a spell. “I hate to do this, but I need to leave you for a short while. There’s something I have to take care of.”

  “Does it have anything to do with the other patient you were attending to?”

  Erin regarded her daughter quizzically, wondering how long she’d been awake. How much had she heard? How much had she Felt? Her eyes stole a glance in the direction of the gap in the curtain, a look of strange curiosity in them. “Yes. Yes it does,” she said. Then, shaking off the feeling, she turned her attention back to Analel, saying, “But never mind you that. You just get some rest. I’ll be back to check on you a bit later and if everything seems alright you should be discharged by tomorrow, won’t Quinn be thrilled to hear it?”

  “Poor Quinn, I nearly forgot about her. How is she?”

  “Much worse for the wear than you, I’m afraid. Honestly, I don’t know how that girl will ever get on without you.”

  Analel laughed. “I’m sure she’ll manage.”

  “I’m not. We almost had to admit her, nearly gave her a bed right next to yours just so she could get some sleep.” Analel laughed again.

  Feeling better about leaving her daughter now that she’d lightened her mood, Erin stood and started for the door. Halfway there she stopped and turned. “Oh, and you’ll be happy to know your sacrifice worked. Your Student won, rather impressively, I might add.”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I mean... I knew he would.” Analel looked down and smiled to herself. “He’s very talented and has a unique outlook on things.” Looking back at her mother, she continued, “It was just a feeling.”

  Erin smiled back at her daughter but her eyes betrayed some concern. “You get some rest now,” she advised for the second time.

  “My clothes?”

  “Folded inside your bed stand,” and she turned to walk out.

  “I’m sorry, but can you please get the lights for me, mother.”

  Erin stopped by the doorway. “Of course.”

  Analel didn’t catch when her mother threw the Wave Thought to turn off the lights but off they went regardless. Now there goes a ‘strong Prophet’, she thought to herself.

  Alone in the room, but not quite, she turned her attention to her neighbor. Her mother must have left a lamp on for a glow was emanating behind the curtain near her mystery roommate’s headrest. She tried throwing a Wave Thought of her own to turn it off.

  It didn’t work. The light stayed on.

  Chapter 19: Politics

  Parliament - Isle Castious, Osmos

  Sitting still is undoubtedly the second most simple state of physical orientation one could possibly find themselves in just behind lying down, and yet the Patriarch marveled at how not one of the Island Representatives seemed to be able to manage it.

  Blumbrock, the extremely wealthy Representative from Isle Castious, drummed his fingers with a businessman’s impatience. The Isle Borgus Representative would not stop incessantly shifting in his seat. Representatives of Stellus and New Stellus, who hated each other passionately but had to sit next to one another due to some quirk in parliamenta
ry seating etiquette involving the spelling of their Island names, were more likely to use their chairs as clubs to beat each other over the heads with than actually sit in them.

  All this the Patriarch took in as he entered the Representatives’ Chamber of Parliament with his entourage in tow. Despite being shielded on every side by First Clansmen, all of whom were jockeying for a more honorable position in relation to their leader, it was impossible not to notice him: First off, he was tall, very tall, a full head and shoulders taller than the next tallest person in the room. His tapered beard was long, even for a Mainlander, and unlike the other First Clansmen who followed him he wore the traditional fighting garb of his people, not the more formal dress of his own privileged Clan.

  The Patriarch’s choice of apparel spoke volumes about the man, for although clean and well kept, no amount of laundering could ever erase the wear and tear of forty years of fighting among the jagged rock faces of the Black Ranges. History was inscribed in every faded patch of cloth, every scratch and groove cut into leather.

  His limbs were long and lanky, no muscle tone could be seen on his arms or legs, being of such thin composition as they were, but beneath the folds of his clothing a wiry strength was clearly noticeable to anyone paying close enough attention to his abnormally long gait.

  Perhaps his most striking feature was his eyes. Wild and intense, they heavily influenced the suspicions of many that the tyrannical dictator actually believed the blatant falsehoods he levied against the Islands from the terraces of the House of the Patriarch, like salvoes from a Pulser cannon into crowds of his fellow countrymen eager to have the rationality of their hearts and minds blown to bits.

  Looking at the Islanders with all their nervous fidgeting, the Patriarch didn’t see rulers of a powerful coalition. No. All he saw were a group of old men grown soft, fat and weak. History claimed the Islanders were once great warrior peoples. There were even those who maintained they were still a great warrior nation, despite all evidence to the contrary. But who wrote those history books, anyway? The Islanders did, composing self-aggrandizing songs of praise and establishing their version of events as fact in the process.

  His own people would be the ones to sing his praises, they were already doing so. All Mainlanders were his children. He loved them dearly and they loved him. It was a love he’d earned by sacrificing their blood in battle and purges beginning forty years ago when he’d led his campaign to unite the Clans. Now the Mainlanders were a great nation in their own right, rivaling the power and influence it took the Islanders five hundred years to establish.

  The only reason that fragmented collection of sea enclaves populated by small minded men of petty ambition could presume to stand on equal footing in his presence was due to their technological advantage. That was the single solitary reason. Fat, lazy and stupid as they were, he had to admit, they understood technology.

  Yet even this made them weaker in his mind and would soon be their downfall. He always felt Islanders relied far too heavily on science and machine. With each new advance they forgot more and more what it meant to do things with their own two hands, fight their own battles. Now they feared him. They knew that unlike them, for all the power he had accumulated, for all the title and prestige coming with the founding of a nation, he was still the same marauder who’d bitten the throat out of the Father of the Bali Clan. They even invited him to be part of their precious Parliament, pitifully hoping he would be grateful just for having been asked to join their impotent international governing body.

  Yes, without technology the Islanders were nothing.

  But then he caught the eye of the Academy’s current Headmaster, Orisius was his name if memory served correct, sitting ramrod straight and without a single extraneous movement. The man held the Patriarch’s gaze steadily and the Mainlander remembered: In the early days, before the unification, he’d made an attempt at the Islands. In his youthful inexperience he tried taking Isles Corpus and Monthus before his Clan army had any real rank or file to it. Two Academics stationed on those Islands nearly annihilated half his forces, single handedly. The man sitting across the way from him and holding his gaze like no other man could was one of those Academics. Seeing him again now, something stirred inside the Patriarch, deep and hidden, and he was already starting off these proceedings in a foul mood.

  His irritation compounded when the High Seat called the Chamber to order before he’d managed to reach his place, his blood’s temperature rising by several degrees for the insolence.

  “Now that we’re all finally here,” the High Seat began, “if everyone would please take their places we can begin.” Brandolen, the Representative from Isle Lestrous, currently occupied the High Seat in the Chamber’s rotation. He struck a tabletop facing all the others on a raised platform at the front of the room with a gavel using quick and prissy taps, an annoying ceremony repeated without exception every time anyone acted in any way that was of the slightest interest to the crowd, stealing precious moments of attention away from his short term in the spotlight. “We’re already late,” he added, elongating the L as he settled his overly expressive eyebrows on the Patriarch, a minor but fitting reprimand he felt, given the Mainlander’s tardiness, “and we have plenty to cover on the agenda, so-”

  The Patriarch ignored the High Seat as he would an insect. “Yes, plenty to cover, like the whereabouts and wellbeing of my son!” His voice was full of self-import, used to having people listen to him as a matter of course, not by right, but for having laid the groundwork in brutal fashion with his bare hands.

  Representative Malcut added his own far less commanding voice to the proceedings, asking, “New Stellus requests to be recognized by the High Seat.”

  Brandolen closed his gaping mouth, opened in shock after the Patriarch cut him off so disrespectfully. He cleared his throat and turned stiffly away from the Patriarch toward the representative from New Stellus, thrilled someone was affording him due respect as the current High Seat. “Certainly, Representative Malcut-”

  But Brandolen was once again interrupted by Blumbrock, the mining tycoon from Castious. “What we wish to talk about, Patriarch, is your brazen attacks on the shipping lanes off Caras 3.” Cries of approval followed from across the Islands’ section of the Chamber.

  “Um, excuse me,” piped up Malcut, “but I was legitimately recognized by the High Seat. It is my right-”

  “Oh, stuff it, Malcut,” shouted Fuller from Stellus proper, cutting off his rival with unmasked relish. The Chamber reacted with uproarious laughter.

  Affronted by Blumbrock’s accusations, the Patriarch countered the businessman. “If anyone is under attack here, it is the children of the Mainland, who have been assaulted by your industries immoral, off-world mining and import of Ipsidian.” Lapsing into his notorious oratory style and no longer addressing Blumbrock alone but the entire Island section, the Patriarch continued, “These callous and transparent efforts by the Islands to flood the market and drive down prices are responsible for the starvation of countless Mainland families. We are a peaceful nation and would never attack anyone unprovoked, but when faced with the rape of our industry, when brought to the brink, who is the one to blame should individuals feel compelled to take justice into their own hands?” Shouts of approval from his entourage followed the Patriarch’s remarks, challenged by shouts of protest from the Islands.

  “Individuals?” asked Blumbrock with a curiosity that was all blasé. “I always knew you a tyrant, Patriarch, but never figured you for a coward?” The shouts of approval and dissension quickly switched directions. Blumbrock spoke above them. “Why pretend these individuals act without your blessing?”

  “The only cowards to be found in this humanitarian disaster are your corporations, using my people and their Ipsidian-rich mountain ranges to power technology for the very operations that are starving them.”

  “Interesting,” mused Blumbrock, “because we pay handsomely for that Ipsidian, so explain to me how it is that all
this money isn’t finding its way back to your people? Who controls the Mainland’s Ipsidian trade, perhaps they know the reason? Oh wait, that would be you, wouldn’t it?”

  More shouting. The Patriarch stood abruptly from behind his table, the tension in the room rising in tandem. “I will not sit here and listen to these lies and distractions. I have been patient for the better part of two years, waiting and hearing nothing about the whereabouts of my son. It was this Chamber that proposed the Mandate Race, this Chamber that sanctioned it. The Islands bear the full weight of responsibility for any consequences resulting from harm befalling the First Son of the First Family. This is the only reason I came here today, to relay this message, in the name of peace.”

  “Consequences?” The question came from Kedbury, one of the oldest Representatives in the Chamber. “You wish to speak of consequences!”

  “The High Seat recognizes the Representative from Isle Borgus,” threw in Brandolen in a desperate attempt to remain relevant, but failing.

  “You and your murderous Mainland extremists blew up the Nebulous liner!” accused Kedbury.

  “That’s preposterous.”

  Kedbury ignored the Patriarch’s denial. “You speak of your son? MY SON WAS ON THAT LINER!” he roared. Silence engulfed the Chamber and the Borgus Representative’s voice lowered to a threatening whisper. “There is no doubt as to the whereabouts of my son now, is there? Nor should there be any doubt as to the consequences.”

  The Patriarch was a lean man and the veins popping out his neck and forehead in response to Kedbury’s words grew visibly, like weeds slowly spreading throughout his body. “You dare threaten me!” Several of the younger members of the Patriarch’s entourage contracted their leader’s rage and got up to rush the elderly Representative where he stood. Fortunately, Island Guardsmen, having sensed the tension building in the Chamber, intrepidly placed themselves close to both sides of the escalating interchange and were now quick to react, carefully but firmly ushering the Patriarch’s people back to their seats.