The Seeds of Dissolution (Dissolution Cycle Book 1)

by William C. Tracy

  “Councilor Bofan A’Tof is, hmm, dead?” Caroom said, their voice carefully level.

  “You left the Nether in the middle of that sort of crisis?” Origon asked. “I could have come with Mhalaro. You did not need to pacify me. Your work is as important as learning more about the Drains.” Or nearly.

  “The Council is keeping it quiet,” Rilan said again. She squeezed her mouth together until it was a brown line. Now the truth was out, Origon knew she would move fast, all business. “Now we have found nothing, we must go back.” She looked toward the tent the three apprentices had shared, talking late into the night. “Wake them up.”

  * * *

  “What is going on?” Rilan craned her neck out the carriage window as they drew close to ChinRan. The traffic jam was bigger than this little town should ever see. There were merchant caravans, personal transports, horses, cows, even people with belongings loaded on their backs.

  “It looks, hmm, like an exodus,” Caroom said. Rilan marked the dirty clothes and crying children. These weren’t travelers, they were refugees. What happened, and where?

  She slid out of the carriage as soon as it stopped near the trade store. They could only be coming from the portal ground. The others bundled out after her.

  “What is this?” Ori sidestepped a running group of children, his crest spiking in alarm.

  “I thought this was a small town.” Sam was near the twins, breathing heavily as he watched the crowds flood ChinRan, his watch clutched to his chest as if someone might take it from him. Enos and Inas supported him, one on each side, though both were still reserved and long-faced after seeing the place their parents had died.

  Rilan looked a question to Caroom, who was helping Mhalaro pull his case from the top of the carriage. “This one will take care of the return,” they assured her. She plopped a handful of Nether glass into their rough hand, not even bothering to look at the denominations. She had plenty of Council traveling funds to go around. She grabbed Ori’s arm and made for the portal ground, wading through streams of people. Halfway through Ori took the lead, opening a path with his height and his wildly colored robe waving around him. Rilan smiled. Just like they used to do, cycles ago.

  Outside the town, people were streaming out of a portal a majus held open. The woman’s back was rounded with fatigue. It was an effort to make the Symphony of two places converge for even a short time, and for this many people to arrive, she must have been here a while.

  “They are almost all Methiemum,” Ori observed. “Wherever they are coming from is on this planet.” The Great Assembly could not exist without portals, but they had limits. The closer the endpoints, the more strain the majus would feel.

  They pushed through the refugees to the side of fenced area. “What happened?” Rilan called. The majus was dressed in a simple blue wrap. Rings shone on all her fingers. From the colors around the portal—sapphire blue and creamy beige—she was from the House of Grace. The rings finally jogged Rilan’s memory. Bosyln Vadeert—that was the woman’s name.

  “Something in Dalhni,” Bosyln said. “Every portal ground on Methiem far enough from the city has been accepting refugees for hours.”

  “Dalhni? Your father.” Ori looked to her, his eyebrows drawn down, his crest askew.

  “Do you have any details?” Rilan asked, a shock of ice running through her core. Dalhni was halfway around Methiem. She should know—she had grown up there. Rilan barely kept from reaching for the woman. She looked as if she might fall over.

  Bosyln shook her head. “Nothing confirmed yet, and I’m running out of notes to keep the portal open. Majus Szaler opened the first portal, early this morning, but he’s recuperating in the inn.” She pointed, one hand ringed in blue and beige drifting up. “I’ve held this one open nearly two hours.”

  “Was Szaler saying anything?” Ori asked. Rilan flicked a glance toward him. His crest was up—she couldn’t be sure without the Nether, but she caught a note of excitement. She shivered, anticipating what the woman would say.

  “He only said the city was losing power,” Bosyln said. “Refugees tell me of fires and candles going out, or Systems running down—”

  A man stopped, new from the portal, hearing the majus speak. “There’s something growing in the sky, like a giant ball,” he said, hefting the bag over his shoulder. It looked like a bedsheet, square corners distending the shape. Fear pulled the man’s face into a grimace. Others pushed past him, but even as Rilan watched, the flow was decreasing. “It’s so cold there.” He hurried on.

  Bosyln stared at them, leaning on the gate. “I can’t take much more. Do you know what this is?”

  “Vish preserve us,” Rilan whispered, her hand to her mouth.

  “A Drain,” Ori breathed beside her.

  One of the others would have to warn the Council, because Rilan had no intention of staying away, not when her father, one of the most stubborn men she had ever known, was certainly still in the city. Gods let him have left. She raced, Ori a step behind her, back to the rental shop where Caroom was finishing up with the merchant. Rilan gathered the group around her, making sure she spoke in the Etan main dialect so Mhalaro could understand her.

  “There’s an emergency, and we must go to Dalhni, another city on Methiem,” she told them.

  “Another city?” Sam asked. His eyes were widening, face flushing. Now was not the time for a panic attack. The twins pressed close to him on either side.

  “You won’t have to worry, Sam,” she said. “You aren’t going, but there’s a void, happening right now.” She ignored Ori’s mumbled correction beside her. She wasn’t going to call them that. “Caroom, can you take the apprentices back to the Nether, and tell the Council? Mhalaro, I would ask you come with us. This will be dangerous, but I think you may be essential as the only non-majus, if Ori is correct that the Grand Symphony cannot touch it.” She looked around the small group. “Agreed?”

  She started to turn away, but was stopped by a rumble from the Benish.

  “Hmmmm.” The sound was a low vibration, like a bass holding a chord. Rilan sighed.

  “Yes, Caroom?”

  “It occurs to this one,” Caroom drawled, a thick fibrous finger to their chin, “that Origon’s arguments in the Assembly have, hmm, not been taken fully on faith.” They stopped, and Rilan waggled a hand at them to get to the point. She was having trouble not opening a portal to the Nether here and now and pushing the Benish through. Caroom had a good head on their shoulders, and it paid to listen to them.

  “Well, hmm, this one must admit to interest in seeing Origon’s voids. In addition, if we were to observe one and deem it as important as Origon seems to, hmm, think,” they opened a wide hand toward Ori, “this one would then lend weight to your arguments in the Assembly. This fact let Inas convince this one to come along to see yesterday’s site.”

  Rilan paused. Only a few days ago, she had thought Ori’s complaints a stumbling block before the issue with the Aridori fears and the Servant’s agenda. His crest was standing nearly straight, and he was vibrating, as ready to go as she was.

  “You make a good point, Caroom,” she said. “I’d welcome help in putting this to the Assembly, when we return, but what about the apprentices?” She’d be willing to trust Caroom with them, but not to send them back to the Nether on their own, with the threat of anti-majus groups. Both places were dangerous, but in Dalhni, they’d be with three full maji.

  She bit her lip, but the decision was easy. Her father was in Dalhni, and so was one of Ori’s voids. She wasn’t the youngest elected to the Council for no reason. If nothing else, the post taught her how to make decisions. They had to go, whether it was the right decision or not. She glared at the three apprentices, and Sam hunched in protectively.

  “You are coming,” she said shortly. “You will stay out of the way, behind us at all times. If something happens to one of us, you are not to try any Shiv-cursed heroics.” She had all their attent
ions now, even though Enos and her brother still looked wan.

  “I can apply the same patch in your mind, Sam, but I would prefer not to.”

  Ori’s apprentice stared at her, then shook his head. “It will slow me down.”

  She held all their gazes for a moment longer. “Let’s go save my city.”

  * * *

  Rilan stepped out of her portal and narrowly missed being run over by a family of five, towing a cart behind them. She jumped back, then shivered in the chill. It should be warmer here than ChinRan, in the northern hemisphere. It felt more like winter in Ibra.

  She turned back and grabbed for the notes linking this place to ChinRan. It was harder than it should have been, even considering the two cities were just above minimum portal distance. Slowly, the white and olive swirled and condensed around the dark hole in the air, compressing it to nothing. Rilan took in breath, her song full again. It didn’t help with the chill in the air, and she pulled her vest tighter.

  The others were standing to one side, the apprentices behind the maji, all staring as one above the city. Mhalaro had even loosened his death grip on his precious case of instruments, his pointy chin hanging slack.

  Rilan spun. The void hung, like a malevolent toad, above the sprawling, low buildings of Dalhni, giving off an air of wrong. It was as wide as the center of the city, pulsing with some sort of sick heartbeat. The skin of the thing was as Ori had described, off-white, like a wound full of pus.

  “We must be getting closer to study the Drain,” Ori said quietly. “If possible we should be getting underneath to see how it started.”

  Rilan nodded, scanned the town, and drew in a sharp breath. Her father’s house was at the lowest curve of the void. She sent a prayer to Vish that he had enough sense to leave. She knew he hadn’t.

  “Follow me,” she told the others. Her chattering teeth made her words choppy. “I know the city.”

  The others followed, Inas and Enos supporting Sam. He was gasping, clutching at them, but still putting foot in front of foot. Every time she looked back, his eyes were locked on the thing above the city, face gone gray with barely restrained panic. She didn’t know if she would have the strength to make the adjustments he had, over the last ten-day. There was no time to reassure him now. When they got back, she would work with him one on one.

  There was no chance of securing transportation. Vehicles of all kinds were abandoned by the sides of the roads, powerless. Their Systems were gone or mechanisms stuck fast. Inas at one point tried to pick up a cycling frame, but the pedals would not even turn, no matter how he pushed. It was if the mechanism was completely frozen. They ran, or jogged, Mhalaro easily keeping up with his loping steps, and Caroom stumping along at a respectable pace for their thick figure. Moving kept them warmer in the biting cold. Their breaths made clouds of steam.

  They were not dressed for this temperature, and Rilan felt her ears and nose going numb. They had to move fast. Bright red spots were on the cheeks of the other Methiemum, and Mhalaro began to move jerkily. Caroom seemed less impacted than the others.

  No lights burned in the houses they passed. It was past the middle of the day, but the void cast a heavy shadow over the city, sucking light from all around. Farther into the city, they saw the first animals, dead of exposure. Horses and oxen were still hooked to carts, stray dogs and even animals that had obviously been family pets lay in the street. Past the first wave of animals, there were Methiemum bodies.

  He had to get out. Even he is not that stubborn.

  Their pace slowed, the cold eating their strength. Soon she had only Ori to one side and Mhalaro to the other. Behind her, Sam sagged between Enos and Inas, the three clutched together to keep warm. All of them were panting. Caroom brought up the rear, and waved a hand at her. They were nearing the center. Father’s house. The void sat overhead, a moon tethered to Dalhni.

  “I have to check on him, make sure he got out,” she told Ori. He nodded, crest flattened.

  Rilan almost missed the side street. At this time of Methiem’s cycle, early spring flowers covered the arch above it, but these were dead, flattened against the walls they grew on. The cold—the void—had sucked the life from them.

  “I must check my father’s home,” she called back to the apprentices and Caroom. Just to make sure he got out. There were more bodies here—people who didn’t leave early enough before the void sapped their strength.

  “This one will make sure they are not, hmm, lost,” Caroom boomed. Even their voice was muffled, quieter than it should have been. Rilan paused only for a second, then nodded. She would only be gone for a few moments. I have to do this.

  “Come on,” she told Ori, and Mhalaro followed them. Her breath was a thick mist as she spoke, and breathing in numbed her nose and lungs. She was dressed warmly for ChinRan, but the cold near the center was oppressive. Her hands were numb inside their gloves, feet numb in their boots. She rubbed her hands together as they moved along the side street, pinched at her nose to warm it. She looked to Ori. “Can you do anything?”

  Ori caught her meaning and narrowed his eyes, presumably listening to the Symphony of Power while they walked. Rilan couldn’t hear it, but Ori could control the music of heat with it.

  “There is not to be much to be working with,” Ori said in spurts as he pumped his long legs. “I am only able to move the power inherent from one place to another. There is so little left, and I am still weak—” he cut off, lifting his head. “I will do what I can.”

  An orange aura grew around him, leaking to objects they passed like an octopus, moving energy from them to him. Ori was one of the best she had seen with the naturalistic function of his houses, moving heat or changing the medium of air as if conducting vast orchestras. Eventually, his aura encompassed both her and Mhalaro. The air stopped getting colder, even gained a few degrees as they squeezed together. Rilan knew he would have to take back his notes at some point, or risk losing even more of his song. After the disaster with the space shuttle, he could little afford it. He was moving slower, puffing through pointed teeth. She realized this was the closest they had been to each other, physically, in a long time.

  She turned onto a last narrow street, and heard Ori grunt behind her. He was tired, though she could tell he was trying not to show it. Only a little farther, just to check. Just to make sure. Then back to the void. They were almost directly under it now.

  It had only been a few months since she last saw the little shack, but it looked as if twenty cycles had passed. The chickens were silent lumps of feathers in their cage, cold and dead. The grass was wilted, and the new flowers that had bloomed around the porch listed like drunkards, blackened and shrunken.

  There was a pile of rags and sheets on the lawn. Her father had probably been trying to save as much as he could before he left. Stubborn man. She wondered which city he went to.

  She nearly passed the pile on her way to the shack, before she realized its shape. Her knees buckled, hitting the hard ground.

  Brahm, no. Her hands shook, and she grasped them together, on her legs, on her face.

  “Rilan,” Ori started, but she shook her head. She couldn’t speak. The freezing air seemed only an inconvenience now.

  It might not be him. She bent to move an arm, covered in multiple layers. He must have worn as many layers as he could stand in, trying to outlast the void. The arm was solid and cold, unmovable.

  “I will check for you,” Ori volunteered.

  Rilan forced her tongue to move, forcing air out of frozen lungs, whispering. “No. I have to see for myself.” It could be someone else on the ground, collapsed while running away.

  She reached, ignoring the protests of her joints in the below-freezing air, and pushed the top layer back over the head. It was stiff, and resisted. Without her asking, a tendril of orange detached from their combined aura and warmed the wrapping enough to give it flexibility. She pulled it back.

  Her father’s lifeles
s eyes stared directly into hers.

  Rilan fell forward on him, ignoring the freezing ground burning her skin. Stubborn man. Why would you never do what was easy? If she had only gotten here sooner. He could have been here for hours, or minutes. It was impossible to say, with the void above. She put fingers to his cold, frozen eyelids, but they wouldn’t move. Icy tears halted, halfway down her face.

  “Ori?” she breathed. It would cost him, but her friend detached another strand of power and heat, touching her father’s face. There was a moment of warmth, and the eyelids closed under her fingertips. She withdrew her hand, as Ori withdrew the heat. Ice spread over her father’s face. She strained to look away, didn’t, held herself rigid until it was done. Only after the layer of frost had coated what used to be her father’s face, did she turn to the others.

  Maybe we can reverse the void somehow, give back heat. Have to fix it.

  “We’ve spent too much time here, and we need to get to the center.” Talking was a chore, and her voice cracked. There was no sense wiping away the frozen tears. Rilan didn’t look up at the abomination sitting above them.

  Ori raised a hand as she passed, sending a patch of warmth into her shoulder. “Rilan, what can I do for you?”

  “No.” She stepped forward, away from his hand, catching Mhalaro’s sympathetic look out of the corner of her eye. “The void first. We must find out how to stop it.” She couldn’t break, not here.

  Rilan led the others back out of the alley to a blaze of green. Caroom and the apprentices were surrounded in a glow of emerald and tan, centered on the Benish. They must have been fortifying melodies with the House of Strength. The aura was lopsided, another spike centered on Inas, his face twisted in concentration. Good. That would help them stay alive longer. Have to stay alive. Have to stop this void.

  She put everything but that goal out of her mind, and led her group to Caroom’s.

  * * *