by D M Wozniak
I glance at Chimeline, wondering if I heard Blythe correctly. Her hand covers her open mouth, and then she inhales sharply.
I turn back just in time to witness Colu taking a swing at Blythe.
The graycloak must see it coming, but he doesn’t flinch or attempt to get out of the way. He takes the punch right to his face.
Chimeline screams as Blythe stumbles backwards, perilously close to the fire.
Colu follows, takes another swing, and punches Blythe a second time in the face.
Blythe goes down to his knees. Blood pours from his nose, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He raises his head and smiles, his arms loose at his sides. It’s not a devious smile. It’s full of joy.
“The Unnamed blessed us with a girl. She is an effulgent now. A wonderful woman who helps others on the way of unwanting.”
Colu positions his feet wide apart and brings his arm up, as if he’s going to punch the man again.
“Colu,” I say loudly, standing up.
But this time he doesn’t follow through. For a moment, he stands there with his fist raised, looking down at the smiling Blythe as we all look on in silence.
Then his entire body relaxes.
“It’s not worth it.”
He walks away from him, back to where he was sitting before on the opposite side of the fire. He picks up the leaf-plate and stuffs a large piece of plantain into his mouth. Then he brings his hand to his forehead, covering up his one exposed eye.
Chimeline stands and walks directly to Blythe. He’s still kneeling by the fire while rifling through one of his pockets. He takes out a white handkerchief, which Chimeline places on his nose.
“Look upwards,” she says.
“There are no colored windows to look at this time,” she adds, smiling.
“No, there is not. But there is the waking beauty of the Unnamed’s creation. This lovely morning sky.”
I shake my head at the coincidence of it all.
Colu was a mason’s apprentice at Winter’s Baiou, the very same place we are headed. Blythe was an effulgent there too, years ago. He stole this man’s lover.
Out of all places he could have been from. Out of all people he could have met along the way.
Chimeline seems to be content with Blythe’s condition. She walks around the fire, fetching the white rag Blythe used to hold the pan’s handle. She dips it into the hot pot of water and carries it back to the other side of the campfire, gritting her teeth in discomfort from the heat—I can see the drenched rag give off steam in the dawn light.
She approaches Colu.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asks her.
He’s sitting on a split log, while she stands. Despite this, his face is almost eye-level with hers.
She carefully folds the rag in half and then puts it in one hand, and brings it to his face.
Colu flinches, but allows Chimeline in as she delicately begins wiping the red paint away.
She takes her time and pays attention to the details—the sides of his face, his black eye-patch, and even his hands. She folds the rag over against itself, and goes over his face a second time.
Finally nodding to herself, she tosses the rag back where she found it and sits back down next to me.
“What?” she asks, when it’s obvious to her that we’re all staring. “We can’t have Colu looking like a redskull his entire way home, can we?”
Colu grunts for an answer.
“Home,” he repeats into the fire, but it’s only a hopeful whisper.
PART FOUR
The Man Behind the Veil
The Foundation
By mid-morning, southerly winds bring us the first hints of Xi Bay. Even though it’s at least a good day’s ride away, I feel as if I can already taste the salty waters on my tongue. With the rise in humidity, the sun seems stronger. All of us have taken off our outer layers—Chimeline’s patchwork blanket, my black flaxen cloak, Colu’s chainmail and brown leathers, and Blythe’s gray-hooded cloak.
Wealthy plantations flank us every so often. They look remarkably similar to Cleanthes’ mansion—gleaming white estates rising out of the greenery past glittering millionescents and moss-draped willows. Colu says that all of the fields here are either sugarcanex or indigo. He calls them white gold and blue gold, but I’m sure that hilma plantations lurk in the distance as well.
We also share Xi Bay Road with more travelers than before.
Wagons full of field workers, burlap bags of raw goods, and wooden coffins stacked three high pass us from the opposite direction, turning down sandy side roads that become more numerous as well.
True to my word, I’ve been discussing the incident from last night with Blythe for the past fullbell. We talk in hushed tones as we travel. Colu and Chimeline ride ahead of us, speaking on occasion, while Blythe and I follow, our horses side-by-side.
He’s far more stubborn than I thought.
I’ve explained everything twice through, but he does not relent. He even tells me that he understood what these so-called whispering voices said to him. But when I press him to share their message he becomes silent, which only adds to my suspicion that he’s delusional.
“We must try again,” he says.
I look at him riding next to me. “Try what again?”
“I must listen for the voices,” Blythe answers.
He lets one arm go from the reigns and extends it across to me. “Give me your hand.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Give me your hand!” he repeats, loud enough for Chimeline and Colu to turn their heads backwards and glance at us curiously.
I exhale as I relent, locking my hand into his by the wrist.
“Now touch your stone with the other,” he says.
“Nothing is going to happen, Blythe. This is foolish,” I mumble.
“Then we are fools.”
It’s a good thing that our horses are walking and not trotting, since I take my other hand off the reigns and place it on the black surface of my stone, which hangs freely over my white shirt.
I enter the void.
The black wind is there to meet me, whipping around frenetically. Perhaps it’s just my imagination, but it seems louder than usual. Faster, more urgent, as if the slightest voidance on my part would cause me severe pain. The colorless indivisibles of the horse glisten below. My hand grasping Blythe’s. The dust in the air. A dragonfly hovering in the road in front of us.
And then something incredible happens.
The wind stops.
Complete silence. In the void.
Reflexively, I let go of the stone, because I do not know what else to do.
Blinking away the sudden brightness of the day, I turn to Blythe. His grasp is too great for me to let go. His eyes are tightly closed in concentration. Beads of sweat fall down his smooth forehead and the tip of his nose. He’s whispering something that I cannot hear.
Blinking open his eyes, he looks at me with an agitated expression. “Why did you let go?” he says harshly.
“I—” My mouth is slack open wide, because I’m too surprised with what has just happened. It has never gone silent in the void before. Ever.
“I was speaking to them!”
“To whom?”
“Grasp it again!”
The urgency in his eyes does not lie. So I do as he says.
The sunless world returns. I somewhat relax as I hear the ever-present wind again. But then, just as before, it disappears as quickly as it came, and I must consciously refrain from releasing the stone in panic.
For an unknown reason, the silence is terrifying.
No. It’s not completely silent. One current of wind remains, like a single viola string plucked and left to resonate.
The single current snakes around me—weak, yet specific. I turn my head, looking for it, but of course I cannot see it. I can only feel it, soft and snug when I stay in control, cutting into me painfully if I don’t.
What is happening
?
Before, the wind was a monolithic, unchanging medium. It simply was. Always the same within a given stone, never capable of decomposition. The smaller stones were less powerful, and therefore the wind was softer there. In the larger ones, like the one around my neck, the wind was louder.
But now? This single thread is wind too. A strand of it. It is less of something more.
Think, Dem.
It is composed of something. Built out of parts, just like a wall is built from bricks. Just like everything in this world is built of the indivisible.
But what is the wind made of?
Suddenly, the torrent begins again. A storm in the darkness, deafening, roaring, and I let go.
Sunlight.
I am out of breath, and so is Blythe. He drops my other hand, and turns to me. “It is unquestionable,” he says loudly. “I spoke to them, and they heard me. They replied.”
My mouth must still be open because he leans in, his eyes wide. “You heard them too, didn’t you?”
“I did not hear any voices,” I say slowly, as I organize my thoughts. “But something was profoundly different. Somehow, your presence altered the void.”
“How so?”
“The wind...”
“What wind?”
I re-grab the reigns tightly, as if they are the very principals of voidance, and I am too scared to let them go.
“Normally, when I’m in the void, there is a howling wind. This time, I heard silence, and then a single current. Which I have never heard before. It’s usually...loud and consistent.”
“You keep saying wind, master voider. Why?”
“Because it’s what we teach,” I snap. “It’s not meant to be taken literally. It comes from an allegory.”
“Allegory?”
I sigh. “We use an allegory of wind in a cave with our youngest students. Children who are learning about their gift for the first time. Besides, it does sound like the wind. It feels like the wind.”
“Well, your allegory is wrong. Those sounds are voices. Voices which I can understand.”
I look away from him, slowly shaking my head.
“Master voider, you are so quick to dismiss the words I say, but they are no more fantastical than your allegory.”
I don’t reply.
“You pride yourself as a man of reason. As a man of numbers and slow repetition and facts. But at the end of the day, you do not even know what your so-called gift is built from. All you have are your childlike stories.”
“That’s not true. We have an entire college at the university devoted to the study of the origin of voidance.”
“And what have you discovered?”
I close my eyes.
Blythe’s claim is absurd. I've been in the void for more years than I can remember—many of those years as an instructor. I am adept at voidance. And at no time have I ever heard a voice. Much less, someone speaking to me. He is leading me back to typical effulgent drivel. Souls trapped in stones. It’s delusional.
The leather crackles as I loosen my grip on the reigns.
But I don’t believe Blythe is lying either. His conviction is unshakable. And something happened when he touched the stone. I could feel it.
“I need proof, Blythe,” I softly reply, opening my eyes but not meeting his gaze.
“What more do you need besides what you just experienced?”
I nod in partial agreement. “True, something was different. But I did not hear voices.”
“Then you were not listening.”
I shake my head.
“You don’t have faith,” he adds, but somehow his voice is not admonishing.
“No, I don’t. I need something more than blind faith. That’s your realm, not mine.”
When I turn back to him, he nods and then replies, “Very well, then.”
He begins speaking. But his words are not in the common tongue.
It’s a whisper-like language, except deeper and from the lungs instead of the lips.
It is the sound of the wind.
My mind snaps back to Fiscarlo, when Blythe and his daughter were arguing in front of my student’s grave. Although I didn’t realize it then, they must have switched into this tongue in my presence, perhaps by mistake.
The viola.
“Was that you?” I ask. “Were you the one speaking in the void just now? The single thread of wind?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by wind,” he says. “But yes, I was speaking.”
“What were you saying to me?”
He smiles sadly, and then shakes his head. “I was not speaking to you.”
“Who else was there?”
But even before the words leave my mouth, Blythe’s haunted look from night before enters my mind. When he was crawling away from me in the mud.
I heard my people! They are crying out for help!
“Your people.”
He nods.
“You mean the effulgency?” I ask.
“No. It was...you wouldn’t understand,” he stammers. “This revelation is just as complex for me as it is for you—but in a very different way.”
I don't follow his meaning, but an idea suddenly comes to me and I act on it without hesitation.
Reaching overhead, I pull off my gold voidstone necklace and hand it to Blythe, who leans away from me on his horse and looks at me with wide, fearful eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Try it,” I say, dangling the necklace between us. “Grab the stone yourself and see if you can talk to them. Whoever they are.”
He shakes his head. “I do not feel comfortable touching that thing.”
“It’s not going to harm you,” I say.
“There is no need,” he continues. “We have already established that working together—”
“I know,” I say, cutting him off and giving the necklace another shake. “But I want to see if you can hear the voices alone. Without me.”
He sighs, and then seems to relent with the tilting of his head. “This is foolish.”
“Then we are fools,” I answer.
He flashes me a wry smile and then gives me the briefest of nods.
Blythe carefully reaches out and touches the stone. He does not grab then entire necklace, as I was presuming. Instead, he squeezes the black shard between his thumb and forefinger, while closing his eyes and squinting his face tightly. He stays like this for only a moment, and then he lets go, exhaling forcefully.
He turns to me and shakes his head.
“You couldn’t hear anything?” I ask.
“No.”
“Could you see the void?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what you mean, but no.”
“Alright,” I answer. “That solves one thing.”
“And what is that, master voider?”
“One moment.”
As I put my necklace back on, I enter the void again, just to make one final test while I’m not holding Blythe’s hand.
Everything has returned to normal. The wind encircles me, constant, unchanging. I stay there in the darkness, just to make sure it doesn’t disappear like before.
“Fascinating,” I say as I let go.
Blythe looks at me intently.
“Point one,” I say, using my fingers to count along. “The voidstone is useless to you on its own. Which makes sense, since you are not a voider. The way the stone responds to you is how it would respond to any other non-voider during a touch test.”
He nods.
“Point two. When I use the stone, the void behaves as expected. The wind...” I press my lips together momentarily as I correct myself. “The sounds are constant and unchanging.”
Blythe nods again.
“Point three is where it gets interesting. When we are connected, somehow the experience is changed for both of us. You can enter the void, whereas before you couldn’t. You say you hear voices. You say you can communicate with your people, whomever they are. I can hear all o
f this as well, although I cannot understand it.” I pause as the final thought comes to me. “It’s because I don’t speak your language.”
I drop my three fingers and form a fist.
Blythe nods. “You do not speak the private language, but you speak the truth, master voider.”
For a long time, we ride in silence.
My mind is a torrent of possibilities, as I come to grips with what has just happened. Moments ago, I believed that Blythe was delusional. But he’s obviously not. There is proof now, which I cannot discount. His language. A private language. Something that’s been kept a secret outside of the effulgency since before recorded history.
Why keep it a secret?
Could this be the key to the origin of voidance?
Blythe utters a groan of warning.
With a hand to his forehead, he looks outward, down the road. I follow his gaze.
A trio of northern soldiers are approaching us from the opposite direction, at a trot. No signage, plated armor, or draping cloaks like the ones we met last night. They are probably either deserters or mercenaries. As they near us, I pick out more detail. Their horses are so thin that ribs protrude sickly, and one is limping.
They eye Colu ahead of us with sneers. “Fucking Xian,” one of them yells out, spitting in his direction.
Colu turns his horse and grabs his sword hilt. I sense that he’s about to take their bait, but then Chimeline moves her mount in front of his and she and him exchange soft words.
At the same time Chimeline douses Colu’s ire, the soldiers pass Blythe and me. Their eyes go straight to my voidstone, which is glaringly obvious against my white undershirt, and their sneers evaporate in the harsh sun.
If it were any other day—any other moment—I would teach them a lesson in humility.
But not today. Not after what I’ve just discovered. There is a sliver of hesitancy within me. Something making me think twice before grasping the black surface of my stone.
As they pass us by in a cloud of dust, we stop our horses. I use the opportunity to focus all of my attention on Blythe, instead of splitting it between him and riding.
“So what did you tell these voices? And what did they say in reply?”
He covers his nose and mouth with a hand and coughs. “Not much, I’m afraid. But it was enough to confirm beliefs. Their very presence is both the light and the dark within me...” He grasps his bald head in his hand. “Good Unnamed.”