The Forgotten Sky

by R. M. Schultz

  “Nyranna.” Arrigale takes an antigravity seat apparatus from her briefcase, drops it in front of her, and sits. A soft light glows beside her, and her v-rim twinkles blue. “I’ll cut to the chase and be honest. This is the most grievous criminal case I’ve ever been involved in or ever heard of in my lifetime.”

  Nyranna nods.

  Arrigale continues, “The Northrite council’s expedited your trial. You’ll be tried as a representative of Uden and of Uden’s Royal Father. Frankly, the council seems pressured for time, more so even than with the escalating tensions, as if they need to deal with a much more pressing issue. None of this bodes well for you.”

  “What do we do?”

  Her attorney clasps her hands in her lap and crosses her legs. “Where have you been, Nyranna? What have you done?”

  Nyranna explains how the Northrite summoned her from Staggenmoire and of her travels after, leaving out the parts about the Elemiscist insurgency.

  Arrigale leans back, sighs, and uncrosses her legs. “They’re charging you with high treason, the assassination of royalty to obtain control of a planet, all while acting as an agent of Uden and of Medegair. When you’re found guilty of executing your Royal Father’s orders, Uden will be named a criminal organization or will be forced into treaties to support the Northrite’s claim to the War Times Act in order for Uden to maintain intragalactic relations and trade.”

  “So, we’ve already lost?”

  “They have the spiders you were carrying on your person, the kind that would’ve killed King Goldhammer of Staggenmoire if the Moonriders hadn’t done him in first, spiders that killed a Northrite attendant in their own palace.”

  “The Northrite sent me to that planet after I visited with the king of Staggenmoire!”

  “Any witnesses who could corroborate your story?”

  “Elion.”

  Arrigale shakes her head. “We may question him, but he will be a much stronger witness for the people of Grendermane, the Northrite council. Anyone else?”

  “The Northrite council themselves … and Breman.”

  “Then yes, we’ve already lost.”

  Nyranna paces with her forehead in her hand. “What do we do, then?”

  “You don’t stand a chance. You’ll receive a death penalty and criminalize Uden even if you and Uden are innocent. As your attorney, I urge you to beg for some plea deal in exchange for information, if you have any information the Northrite may find helpful.”

  “Isn’t there some intragalactic law that will grant me immunity until another organization conducts an investigation of their own?”

  “No. Not since the evidence was gathered and secure-documented to the galaxy archives by Elion, an independent third party.”

  “Who works for the Majestic Space Pearl, a black-side Northrite holding.”

  “A technicality. We’ll never prove a tie between those organizations.”

  “You have to give me something!” Nyranna throws an empty tray against a wall, and it clatters and falls.

  “Arguing with me isn’t going to get you anywhere. You need to face the gravity of the situation.”

  Nyranna snaps, “Then give me a tablet with laws pertaining to defenses in such cases, and I’ll research my options myself.”

  Arrigale stands, red-faced, smooths her pants, hands Nyranna a tablet, and leaves. The door slams down behind her.

  Where were Uden and Nyranna’s Royal Father now? Abandoning her like her father, sending her down a winding path into a dark forest, hopefully to find a cavern system with light. Her only home.

  Besides appointing an attorney of Uden birth, one who has lived most of her life on Grendermane, Uden would not tie themselves to Nyranna. Medegair probably didn’t believe Nyranna would poison the king of Staggenmoire, but would he face the Northrite, their primary enemy, and display some kind of power? Or would he fold completely on the issue and fight the Northrite later, when threatened again, after she was long dead?

  Nyranna’s mind bucks under straining tension and seeks shelter.

  A memory unfolds: her sitting on the stalactite tree. The soft green glow. She longs for the comfortable feeling. Contentment. Happiness. Neither emotion settles inside her. The air is stagnant, no chirping swallows, no humming bees. The light grows dim, becoming faint, dark. The tree is less solid, twisted, the bark harsh and biting. Everything is faded. Something on the cavern floor far below is on fire.

  The insects return, biting, stinging. She slips.

  Falls.

  Jaycken

  Jaycken ducks under a lintel and steps inside an old privy building at the station on Jasilix, having returned home victorious from the trial in the mist on Pseidoblane.

  He scratches at the bandage-sealed talon gashes running across his neck and shoulder, wondering, as he did each day here, what technology the Frontiersmen placed in the old station to deal with waste. He stops at a urinal—a hole in the stone—the urge to urinate as bad as he’s ever known, and quickly unadheres his suit from his waist.

  Jaycken lets go, releasing a black pipe stream of urine that steams down into the hole.

  He gasps. His hands shake as he re-adheres his suit to his skin.

  For fuck sake, I’m pissing rivers of decayed element.

  He recalls terms: irreparable damage, seizures.

  Jaycken’s back no longer hurts, but he walked hunched for an entire day after his trial in the mist, his trial with a flying monstrosity. His greatest weakness? He confronted and conquered it, passed the test.

  Is he sacrificing his body, pushing it too far too fast? Maybe soon he will be better trained, then he can minimize its side effects.

  The abilities he’s displayed are a wonder, a miracle. Manipulating forces out of thin air. He’s a Sculptor and a Beguiler and a Whisperer, something rare, something even the older Frontiersmen have not seen together in one person.

  Maybe he can become one of the greatest Elemiscists the galaxy has ever known … become the second Sentinel, if he’s not the Sentinel already. He will not end up like Lyveen, more like Adersiun, who is over six hundred years old.

  Jaycken paces back to the plateau, winding between towers on the inner cliffside.

  A rumble of conversation carries over the wind. They are all waiting for him, minus the few they lost on Pseidoblane.

  A pale hand darts from an alleyway and grabs Jaycken’s shirt.

  Jaycken jumps back, breaking the hold.

  “Listen,” an old voice whispers from the shadows between towers. Slyth. A sliver of his wrinkled head slips into the daylight.

  “Slyth, I’m sorry I haven’t been studying with you as much as I should. Or much at all.”

  Slyth waves for him to be quiet. “My visit’s not about that. I’ve come to warn you.”

  “Warn me? You should’ve done that before we left for Pseidoblane. I’m fine now.”

  “No, you aren’t. And I did not speak to you here, understand?”

  Jaycken nods, wondering what’s so secretive now after the victorious homecoming.

  “As your tutor,” Slyth says, “I was supposed to only teach you theories, because you were adamant about joining the Frontiersmen for a few years. Moreover, I was supposed to watch out for you, to make sure that you’d only be involved in research until you returned home to work with your father. You weren’t supposed to advance this far in this crazy dream of yours. I held much back. What were the chances of you reaching this point?”

  “Uh, I’m sorry for harnessing power to better the Frontiersmen?”

  “You don’t have to say you’re sorry to me! There are others in the galaxy you need to be wary of. Please, for your own safety, do not accept what Marwyn is about to offer you.”

  I need to be wary? “Of whom?”

  “Have you heard the identity of those soldiers overseeing the mining operation on Pseidoblane?”

  “Yes, Frontiersmen intelligence confirmed that those men who chased us and died inside the mist were sweavers wit
h Northrite technology wartreader machines. It only confirmed what we all suspected beforehand, what I already Whispered to the galaxy.”

  Slyth’s glass robes tinkle and chime as his crevassed forehead sucks back into the darkness.

  Jaycken already knew to be wary of the Northrite; everyone did.

  No great words of wisdom in this secret little exchange.

  “There’s a theory about Sculptors that you should hear,” Slyth says, “if you’re seeking to become the second Sentinel.”

  Why … how does he know that?

  “Theoretically, a Sculptor who can manipulate time can use his Will in combat.” Slyth’s tone is earnest. “He can part the atoms of his own body at the very fraction of a second that a weapon’s about to pierce his skin, then re-stitch the atomic bonds together just after the projectile or Paladin’s weapon’s passed through. In such a way, he will not be injured. Sculptors have never been able to stitch up true injuries.”

  Is he worried someone’s going to attack me? Here? “Slyth?”

  There’s a soft grunt of a response.

  “How old are you really?” Jaycken asks.

  “Forty-eight.” The swishing of his robes fades into the darkness.

  Another seemingly old man who is only middle-aged. Jaycken would have to obtain more power to keep himself from ending up like the rest of the Elemiscists.

  Jaycken walks away, passes through an archway at the rear of a tower, and steps up onto a dais, alone.

  A crowd of more Frontiersmen than Jaycken’s ever seen waits, filling the plateau: Teschner, alive and recovered from some wound she sustained in the mist; Ethanial, smiling; Bruan nods his approval; Axford, scowling; Satrina winks; hunched Lyveen; even Undersecretary Marwyn and the hooded Quar who found Kiesen in the port city. Many others, mostly new recruits. Rynn stands beside Kiesen, whose repeated absences were forgiven in light of Jaycken’s accomplishments, and Nadiri.

  Is Axford the one I should be wary of?

  Marwyn, short and broad, steps up the dais. Everyone falls silent; even the wind seems to listen. “Jaycken Leonbaron, you faced a great fear and vanquished it. The confrontation unlocked something inside a region of your brain that most people do not have access to. A release of inhibition and of preconceived ideas that you can’t alter subatomic particles with concentration or with forced visualization. Ingrained ideas that people cannot gather the power of the elements with body and mind.”

  Marwyn shakes Jaycken’s hand in a crushing grip and extends his other hand, revealing a hilt of black steel. Like that of an ancient sword.

  Holy shit.

  “A hilt of the elements, once meant for a Paladin.” Marwyn holds it aloft for all to see. “Now a symbol of one’s rise into the ranks of the Frontiersmen.”

  Jaycken reaches out, his fingers fumbling.

  “Join us.” Marwyn turns a full circle. “Rise from recruit to full-fledged Frontiersmen. Say the binding oath, Elemiscist and Frontiersmen Jaycken.”

  Jaycken withdraws his hand.

  Marwyn’s chest swells. “I vow to protect the galaxy and the elements. I will place the order and Frontiersmen above all else: duty over love, over family. This is the sacrifice of the great ones. I swear binding servitude to the Frontiersmen, for the good of the galaxy, to learn and to aid all mankind.”

  Jaycken looks to the crowd. To Kiesen, whose hair is tousled as if he just woke. To Bruan, who nods encouragingly. To Ethanial, whose smile has faded. To Rynn, whose face remains solemn. To the hilt in Marwyn’s hand.

  Slyth would understand this responsibility, and the more powerful Jaycken grew, the less Jaycken will have to worry about anything.

  “I swear it,” Jaycken says.

  A burning sensation snares Jaycken around the neck, and a stench of seared flesh climbs into his nostrils. He suppresses a cry of pain, of surprise.

  Rubies of red flesh encircle Jaycken’s neck like a chain.

  “You now wear the linkchain,” Marwyn says. “You’re a Frontiersman and an Elemiscist.” Then he whispers into Jaycken’s ear, “One of the officers believes you’ve even used an elementary ability of the Phantom.”

  Jaycken’s breath floods from his chest in a windy escape. The second Sentinel.

  He receives the hilt of black metal. Cold and hard. He’s never been able to summon a blade.

  Jaycken looks to the statue of Iriad: stern, proud, towering over everyone, the hilt of black metal in his hand.

  A Paladin.

  Jaycken takes a cleansing breath and raises his head, feeling calmer, more controlled. He’s not the same naïve young man who arrived at Jasilix.

  His mind and flesh entrap elemental power, channeling energy in a new way. A burning sensation extends along his arm and hand, through his fingers.

  A small blade of smoky shadow writhes and twists up from the hilt. A knife … for now.

  Jaycken hides a smile, hoping not to appear too eager. He’s utilized the ability of a Whisperer, sent out a message even though he didn’t intend to, and has Sculpted and Beguiled a flying monster. Now he’s a Paladin.

  And he possibly altered time in his dream inside the mist on Pseidoblane. He foresaw the future, how to hide his friends from the monster and the newt, and someone else realized it as well …

  Warmth flows through Jaycken like new blood, blood composed of something different, something stronger, less ephemeral, less mortal.

  The crowd erupts in cheers.

  Marwyn shakes Jaycken’s hand again and points to a mass of black rock the size of a small cruiser. It sits upon the ancient plinth in the middle of the plateau, the cache of elements that was hidden within the mist of Pseidoblane, a cache they gained access to after Jaycken’s victory. Then they Strode away with it. Now it belongs to the Frontiersmen.

  Beside the previously empty plinth stands the first Sentinel of the Frontiersmen, whose statue seems to grin encouragingly at Jaycken.

  Rynn

  Rynn paces inside the leaning tower, studying the ancient paintings of cloaked figures. The figures kneel at pools beneath waterfalls—pools of silver—under the light of a sister moon she’s still never seen.

  What happened to that moon? And are these people worshipping mercury?

  She rubs the scabbed talon wound on her scalp and conceals it with a lock of vermillion hair.

  A scratching sound echoes in Rynn’s mind, a phantom memory from her time inside the sarcophagus.

  She glances at Nadiri, who sits cross-legged on the ground, facing the wall. What nightmares did she suffer in there? Nadiri still acts as if she remembers nothing when they speak, but her demeanor suggests otherwise. Nadiri hides trauma. Nadiri, the only acquaintance or friend who has never asked her to tell the story of how she lost her eye.

  Jaycken paces along the wall, his feet kicking up dust. Kiesen is absent, but Bruan is also there, quiet, standing near the center.

  Their day of celebration has been forgotten, and thoughts of Prabel and what he must have done swirls in Rynn’s mind. She’s stronger again, no more morning weakness compounding over days.

  Rynn looks up, the crumbling underside of a vaulted ceiling almost lost in shadow.

  She wishes she were a Strider so she can just walk away from anyone, from anywhere at any time, just point at a star on a map and disappear. Talking in Whispers with people she doesn’t know seems undesirable. Or maybe if she can Beguile those wishing to use or betray her, she wouldn’t fear Prabel and others like him.

  “The Frontiersmen try to keep the power of the elements away from the masses, so people don’t get hurt by it,” Bruan says, monotone, almost as if he’s talking to himself.

  “Has anyone used the power to help others?” Rynn asks.

  “The Silvergarde, but they don’t have many Elemiscists,” Nadiri says, then is quiet for a moment, still facing the wall. “They wish to create a sustainable energy that’s not sold or purchased. They also don’t agree with Elemiscists being controlled and monitored.”

&nb
sp; Rynn wonders, then decides she agrees with the Silvergarde over the Frontiersmen.

  She’s still terrified of the thought of standing up to someone in charge, to someone with more power, older than herself, to voice her opinions, much less her outrage. The more powerful always retaliate.

  Rynn’s terrified of the thought of confronting Prabel.

  I deserve freedom, my own life.

  She actually assisted the Frontiersmen on their exploration of Pseidoblane. She has something to offer others, without it being taken from her.

  “Let’s be a bit wary of Ethanial from now on,” Bruan says. “I’ve heard it twice now from Frontiersmen that Ethanial is a survivor at heart. They say if he takes a true risk, it might be a ploy and to be wary of him then.”

  “He’s a lot better than Teschner.” Jaycken stops pacing. “She’s too … mechanical. Although Ethanial quickly had a Strider take him away from Pseidoblane before things started getting out of hand.”

  Did Ethanial know what was waiting for them? “We need to stop stalling and decide what to do about Prabel.”

  Jaycken hammers the wall with a fist. “I was finally able to speak to Teschner about it. She said in order to arrest him or obtain a warrant to search all of his wares, the Frontiersmen would need evidence or an accusation of Prabel actually forcing you and Nadiri inside the sarcophagi. You both already admitted that you don’t remember him doing anything to either of you. He’s been visiting and staying here for decades, with other travelers, and supposedly no one’s ever accused him of anything. Rynn’s been with him for a while, and she doesn’t remember anything like that ever happening. Teschner said that with the zero evidence we have, she wouldn’t know whether to accuse Prabel or any other Frontiersman here.”

  “Rynn feeling sick every morning since she started working for the merchant, and before arriving at Jasilix, isn’t evidence?” Nadiri asks.

  Jaycken shakes his head. “Teschner said it may increase our suspicion, but without a medical diagnosis, it’s not evidence. She said morning weakness can be from a million different things in this galaxy. Even traveling through space can do it.”