Song of Sundering

by A. R. Clinton

  She picked out something with apple and a simple turkey sandwich. The description said it had avocado, one of the harvests they couldn’t grow in Prin’s environment, but traded Ceafield for. It was the first time she had seen it in months. She grabbed her plates of food and scurried off to a table by the window while Kingston made his order.

  Between mouthfuls of the delicious meal, she watched the people in the market. Several familiar faces moved in the crowd. Undergrounders. They seemed the same as everyone else around them. No one looked at them with suspicion. They moved through the market as if they belonged. Tani looked down at her two plates, both half empty now, then glanced around the cafe before looking out the window again. Between the line at the cafe and the people in the market, there had to be nearly a thousand people here. Many of them had to be Undergrounders. There were never this many people at the market in the middle of the afternoon.

  She almost jumped when she looked back, and Kingston was sitting across from her, watching her as he sipped on his tea. He hadn’t gotten any food, which was probably a wise choice, because Tani would have tried to eat it. He smiled at her and then looked out the window himself, “You know, before we came here, we had been trading and visiting Prin for twenty years. Never have I seen it so peaceful. So... prosperous.”

  Tani nodded. She hadn’t been alive that long, but she couldn’t remember a time when it was like this either. Maybe his systems aren’t that bad on the surface. Maybe they are even good. But, I am still going to figure them out.

  87

  Fiher

  The fury of the music of the solar system and universe beyond has fallen upon us. It is our burden to bear. We must not shy away from the Siren’s call.

  Fiher followed the random ideas in the sermon to distract himself, recalling images in his mind of shipwrecks and gruff men in strange coats singing sea shanties with bizarre buzzing articles of instrumentation. They are like the Old Man. He wanted to ask Hafi if he knew any sea shanties. But, the man was tense. No time for singing. No place for singing. They were only a few miles away from the small town with an access tower to the SatNet which currently was unwatched. Once Hafi attached his glowing glass to the metal boxes, the Xenai would be onto their location. So long without the girl and near his own kind, the Voice was strong. He could not hide much longer. Bringing the Xenai down upon them would make it even harder to resist the sermons.

  Death is a doorway. A simple portal. We do not end lives when we kill, we prepare them to enter the next phase. To go through the next gate.

  They call the glorious shift of our worlds the Sundering. But, we were not sundered. We were not pulled apart. We were not diminished. We have come together. We have gained power and strength. We have seen the burning truth. Let it burn. Burn away all that does not serve the inevitable end.

  The Pact must be broken so that it can be reforged.

  We are salvation. We come to bring the fruit of the tree of eternal life. The truth lies before us, so we will spread it to every world. We are the Harbingers. We are the life givers. We are the solution to the puzzle that the Pact does not even know it faces.

  Fiher walked a few paces ahead of Hafi. The sermons were always so fervent. Fiher had grown out of his dislike for them over the past ten years. The sermons simply existed. Background noise. It was like having an old grandfather who had to have a TV on to break the silence. He smiled to himself as both peace and annoyance rose up within him in response to this memory he didn’t ever live. But he carried all these foreign memories with a sense of pride. Someone had lived them. Sometimes the strength of a false memory washed over him, whisking him away with it, placing him in a world he could never have even imagined existed.

  He knew others of his kind experienced it, as well, but it was something to be looked into, to take in to the Operations chamber to have worked out. A bug in their code. Squish, squash. Fiher didn’t care to remove the memories. They grounded him outside the sermons, like the girl did. They pulled him out of the small bubble he lived in and forced him to face the facets of all the worlds. This world. The former worlds. The worlds to come.

  As we drift to the end of the horizon, we will cross and all that we have known will fade. Time… Space… Existence… All will be made anew from our components. We are the foundations upon which the next worlds will be built. We are the Source. We are the Harbingers.

  Fiher glanced up the small hill ahead of him. Hafi was now quite a few dozen feet behind him, keeping an eye out for anything following as well as keeping a close eye on Fiher. He didn’t mind. He would not betray the Terran. The Terran could watch him not betraying until he was exhausted of the effort. A small glint of white light shimmered from the ground as sunlight filtered through the trees.

  A crystal!

  Fiher waved at Hafi and pointed a few feet ahead. The crystal was small. Even Fiher would have walked right by it if the light had not caught it as he was picking out his path up the hill. A patch of wild strawberries had found a home here, on the eastern side of the hill. The occasional tree offered up its shade to let the berries grow and thrive. The crystal grew with them. Its sharp edges and facets were barely visible from a small distance. It looked like a shiny berry, until Fiher stooped down, bending at the waist to peer at it more closely. Hafi came up next to him and knelt on a knee, looking at the small red stone. Fiher didn't need the Old Man to have the emotive smoke of the Xenai to recognize the emotion that covered his face for half a second. The Old Man was terrified.

  Hafi spoke, “I’ve seen these before. A whole field of them, outside Prin. They are spreading everywhere. What are they made of?”

  Fiher shook his head and raised his hands up to mimic a Terran gesture he had seen many times, “Don’t know.”

  “Why is it here?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Hafi sighed, “For being Xenai, you know shockingly little of things that are Xenai.”

  Fiher straightened and looked at the Terran, his head tilted slightly to the side.

  “Not Xenai. Crystal is it’s own.” The words of the sermon filtered up out of the background and he saw the parallels, “It is different harbinger.”

  “Harbinger?” Hafi stared at Fiher like he had just spoke at length about the technical specifications of space travel. Both ideas were foreign to the man, but not to Fiher. Could he find different words to explain to the unseeing Terran? The crystals were a clue, a message, a warning. A harbinger. Fiher could feel the beings from the Void in them. The Terran would not understand.

  Fiher jerked his head up and down at Hafi, "Harbinger."

  Hafi turned to look back at the crystal. The two stood there for a moment, contemplating its existence here, in the middle of nothing else.

  “Havi…” Fiher started.

  “Hafffffi.” The old man exaggerated.

  “Havvvvvvvvi,” Fiher tried. He could tell from the look on Hafi’s face that he had failed, but he asked his question anyways, “You sing sea shanties?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  We will sing the song of truth until we are remade into an eternal note in the music of the spheres.

  Hafi stood over the strange metal boxes with knobs, buttons, and lights that filled the control room of the SatNet tower and he screamed every foul world that Fiher had ever heard from Terrans. It was fascinating how they showed so little while saying so much. If Hafi was Xenai, Fiher would know what had happened without a word being said. Hafi hit the top of one of the silver boxes and howled in pain and rage. Fiher slid off the table he was perched on and skulked along the back wall until he could turn and climb the stairs out of the room and back into the open. Hafi's yells echoed up the stairway.

  When they finally died down, Fiher stepped back onto the top step and called down, "Make food?"

  Hafi charged up the stairs with surprising speed, "No, I don't want to make food or eat food or kill food or have anything to do with food right now, goddamn Smoky."

 
"Fur," Fiher corrected him.

  Hafi glared at him, only to sigh and sit down on the grass, "I got an error trying to contact Ayna. Her LightTab has been deactivated."

  Fiher didn't know what that meant, "No contact?"

  "Yeah, no fucking contact. No way to get ahold of her, so no way to get more men out here."

  Fiher jumped up, "We go!"

  "Fucking hell, where? Do you have a stash of Pact slaves somewhere to help us?"

  "Go Prin! Find friends!" Fiher jumped around as he spoke, drawing the figures of men into the empty air as if he could just conjure them from nothing.

  "Even if I go back, I was exiled when they arrested her. They won't let me back in."

  "Exile?"

  "Yeah, as in—if they see me—they will arrest me or kill me."

  "Fur always exile to Prin! Can get in still."

  Hafi raised an eyebrow at him, "You got into Prin and out alive?"

  "Big times!" He saw the confusion on Hafi's face, so he searched for the right word, "Many time?"

  "Really?" Hafi's surprised look turned to a scowl, "Man, our soldiers really are shit."

  "I make Shara safe. Hurt her no good."

  "Yeah, we agree there, although I am not sure why you care. You're not like the others, are you?"

  He could explain to the poor man. Fiher could tell him the whole story—of how he came to be Shara's Watcher—how being a Watcher saved him. He could tell him what the Xenai wanted. Maybe it would benefit the girl to give the knowledge he carried of his kind to the Old Man, but would it benefit his kind or help to destroy them?

  They needed Shara. But, she would turn against them unless Fiher saved her. And Fiher needed the Old Man to save her—even after she was free. She would need the Old Man and Fiher. Hafi would help her survive this world; Fiher would help her survive the Voice. There could be no secrets now.

  "Xenai make other Xenai—no babies. Promise of babies made the Mindbent. Mindbent Xenai have no think."

  Hafi looked confused again.

  Fiher growled at himself, "No—thought, only outside speeches. Voice tells all what to do."

  "They all hear a voice that told them they could have babies, so they obey it?"

  Fiher bounced to affirm that Hafi understood, "Fur hide from Voice when protect Shara—and when world walk."

  "Um, okay—that is—weird. I don't really know what that means. But, if you keep helping me, then I can accept weird. But, you ever do anything that isn't helping, I will kill you. In fact, you do anything I don't tell you to do, I will kill you."

  Fiher smiled behind his whirls of smoke and noticed the distinct lack of response from Hafi. Damn Terrans can't intuit anything. "I smile to agree."

  Hafi glowered at him, "You can fucking smile?"

  Fiher turned east and skipped off, waving behind him for Hafi to follow, "To Prin!"

  88

  Yorgen

  Yorgen smiled as the thick copse of moss-covered trees thinned and he could see the towering chaos of home. It was good to be back in Ceafield after two long months traveling and hunting in Prin. They were too advanced for his liking. Their reliance on the Old Ways was a crutch. Ceafield had embraced the new world and when the technology failed Prin, they would realize their progress had been regression.

  The wooden bridge from the shores to the center of the lake was as turbulent to cross as ever. It sung and creaked and threatened to collapse. Yorgen strode across it, loving each shudder and sound of strain. As he reached the end of the few hundred feet of bridge and stepped onto the floating city that was Ceafield, he took a deep breath. The thick, sticky air was even better here. It clung to him—saturated him—and he could taste and smell the life all around, clustered within the heat and moisture.

  “Yorgen!”

  How does she always fucking know?

  Yorgen turned to the call from his right, “Marie! If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you put one of those new fangled trackers on me to know where I am at all times!”

  She gave him her usual mysterious smile rather than responding. Marie stood on the second tier of wooden walkways above. Her Illara stature put her a head above most of the Ceafield residents, but it was always the dress that made her stand out. So much fabric, and it seemed she had a new one every time he saw her. Today’s dress was a muted orange with ruffling of cream. Embroidery in a darker orange traced down the sides of her breasts, covering the entire bottom half of the bodice, where it met the skirt that dropped straight down. The embroidery swooped backwards, bringing the viewers’ eyes to the ridiculously puffed up rear of the dress. Yorgen had no idea how she got fabric to do what it did. It was some secret, just as protected as the secrets of Source was by the Illara.

  “I need the darkroom,” he called up to her.

  She gave a coy nod, “I figured you would. It’s ready for you.” She turned and walked towards her home, which sat on the edge of the Hunter Quarters. She provided many of the services the Hunters used—from weaponry to photographic equipment and film development. Hell, she provided many services everyone used, which was why she practically ran the place. It had always been that way. Yorgen remembered her the same way since he was a child: standing tall on some overhang, watching her town. His father had said the same. He could practically hear his father’s kind words about the woman now. That witch is the best thing that could have happened to Ceafield. Yorgen was grateful that she seemed oddly immortal. According to his father, she looked the same age that she was when he was a child. Some Illara source trick was the rumor—that what they saw was just an illusion that covered a withered old woman—but Yorgen knew enough from his time in Prin that no other Illara performed such tricks, let alone knew the secret to immortality. No, she was something else entirely. A good fine-ass witch.

  Yorgen sauntered up three flights of ramps to the fourth floor of the complex, weaving around people near the edge of the town. The bottom floor of Marie’s was the open market, and it was hell to navigate. He preferred the back way. When he reached the back door to the photography suite, he knocked a rapid pulse of five knocks, with a small break between the fourth and the fifth. Soon, the eye hole opened, “Yorgen!” came an excited voice that he didn’t quite recognize. The door opened.

  “Nartha!” Yorgen stepped through the doorway and enveloped the girl in a hug, kicking the door shut behind them. “What are you doing here?” he asked his niece.

  “Papa couldn’t find any edible game around this month. Marie said I could learn the Photoworks, and she’d pay me to help all the Hunters!” She lowered her voice, “A whole week’s food supply for the family for four days of work!”

  Marie always was a softie about the kids.

  Yorgen clicked his tongue in his mouth, “Small one, you gotta be careful around all these—” he raised his voice so it echoed around the room, which had several Hunters pouring over their processed films, “—cheap, filthy bastards!”

  Hera and Langley looked up from the nearest table, “Yorgen! You cocksucker! Welcome home!” Hera said with a big grin.

  “I hear you all owe my niece ten percent of your bounties cause of her fine work up here!”

  “Fuck off! She ain’t Marie!”

  Nartha chimed in, “Not yet! The ageless witch can’t live forever, though!”

  The room chuckled at the girl’s enthusiasm.

  “I need to do a process. Marie said the darkroom is prepped.”

  “I did it myself!” Nartha said with pride. She bounced across the floor to the large wooden door that had been covered in pitch to block out light. “The red lantern is getting a bit—well, flickery—but I can’t change it until tomorrow. But, I gave it a full charge in the sun before you got back!”

  “It’ll do just fine! Thanks, Smalls.”

  Nartha smiled, “I’ll probably be home by the time you get out.” She jumped at him, wrapping her arms around him and giving him a hug. He returned the hug, lifting her off the ground again.

  “Te
ll your dad I’ll come by tomorrow to visit.”

  “Okee Dokes.”

  He emerged from the dark room into the darkness of the abandoned film hall. Out of the thirty photos he had taken of the body, there had only been a few usable ones. Maybe Nartha would learn enough to teach him how to set up the old cams and take proper photos. The photo had dried and sat in his pack. He sighed, realizing that the Board was probably closed up for the night. He’d walk by, anyway.

  He went out the front this time, descending the outer ramps that wrapped in spirals around the buildings. He came out in front of the market, cleared out of people and locked down. He stalked quickly to the right, straight for the Board. He was surprised to find a giant crowd of people outside, as if it was the early morning Bounty Board refresh.

  He sighed and pulled the piece of scalp, wrapped in cloth, out of his bag. The black curly hair was easy to grab, so he shoved his fingers into it, lifting the scalp, covered in dried blood, above his head, “Board turn in! Let me through!”

  People shuffled around enough to let him squeeze by until he made it to the registrar at the front. The tiny closet of a room was filled with security measures, from bars that would crush anyone who tried to reach in, to multiple barricades and doors before someone could get into the actual Bounty Board. They needed a fortress with the wealth that they stored there, ready to pay for any bounties that came in. Their system was an odd one, to outsiders who used credits as currency. Ceafield was entirely a bartering economy. When a bounty was put out, it was given a credit value, but when the bounty was turned in, the Hunter got to walk the affectionately named Hall of Wonders and pick out whatever they wanted up to the credit number of the bounty. Everything from old world artwork and furniture to food was in the Hall.