by D M Wozniak
“What do you mean, it is both the light and the dark?”
“I need to pray on this,” Blythe says in reply.
“Dem! Are we moving on?” Colu shouts back at us, and I nod back in reply, nudging my horse gently with my feet.
Soon we’re moving again at a slow walk, and I look sideways toward Blythe. He seems lost in deliberation. I’m not sure if he’s praying or just consumed in silent thought.
My patience reaches its limit.
“Blythe, tell me,” I insist.
“I can’t,” he answers.
I exhale deeply before raising my voice. “You know, you have some nerve telling me I have no faith, when you keep the truth from me.”
He looks at me sharply. “Yes, you have a right to know, but I need to start at the beginning. If I told you what they said, it would make no sense to you. Like trying to build a temple starting with the bell tower.”
“Well fine, then. Start at the foundation.”
He purses his lips and looks away. “I need your promise before we continue.”
“What promise?”
“That what I am about to tell you, you will share with nobody. That this knowledge will die with you.”
For a moment, the only sound is our horse’s hooves on the road, which transitions from sand to red cobblestones. Far ahead, Colu says something to Chimeline and she laughs brightly.
“I give you my word,” I reply.
After a pause, he continues. “There are secrets handed down from effulgent to graycloak, generation after generation. They are written down in a private language.”
“That’s the white book you carry around. Chimeline was reading it earlier.”
“No. I am not talking about the Book of Unwanting. The white book which you refer to is meant for the people of this world. The secrets which I am about to tell you are not.”
“What do you mean, people of this world?”
“Non-effulgency,” he says. “You, Colu, Chimeline.”
I nod.
“The scripts that I am referring to are passed down through the effulgency—in our own language. The same language I just used, but its written form. None of you can understand it. Even the existence of this language is a secret.”
My mind returns to the void. “Are the voices the authors who wrote the scripts?”
“That is a good question, but no,” he says, shaking his head. “Let me explain it another way. Do you remember the fragment of the relic ship that I showed you? Back in the temple?”
Twisted blue metal.
“Yes.”
“I told you it was from the ship that first sailed across the sea from the land beyond. It is how we—the effulgency—first came here.”
“I remember.”
He looks up to the cloudless blue sky, and points.
“Our relic ship came from across that sea. Not from the waters of this world.”
For a moment I simply stare upwards, squinting my eyes until sweat falls into them, and then I bring my gaze back down and wipe my brow with my white undershirt.
Shaking my head, I quietly laugh to myself. “You mean to tell me that you fell out of the sky?”
“It is as I feared,” he answers flatly. “You are not ready.”
I quiet down, once it’s obvious that he’s not telling some sort of effulgency parable. He’s being literal.
“Listen,” I say. “You can’t honestly say something like that and expect anyone to believe it.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Fine,” I concede. “Just explain to me what happened. How did your boat fall from the sky?”
“It was not a boat. Not in the way you’re picturing it,” he says. “Think of it instead as a citadel, capable of traveling great distances.”
A citadel?
I look up again. “Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know where, exactly. That is the problem with what happened. We lost much in the crash.”
“Crash?”
He nods. “It was scuttled.”
“There was a mutiny?”
“Yes. The survivors of the crash were the first authors of the scripts, which we continue to pass down, generation to generation. At least fifty times we have passed these memories down. Fifty times we have rewritten our ancient texts onto strong parchment with fresh ink. But I fear that with each generation, the scripts become less truth and more legend.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, for example, some effulgents centuries ago started the belief that all souls had been already freed in the crash. That your voidstones, as you call them, were not axion. There was a schism in our ranks. They declared there was no proof of souls in soteria. The touch test, as you call it. We call them the Protherists.”
For a moment, I pause in thought, trying to ground myself despite Blythe’s confusing terminology. Axion. In soteria. But this schism is equally as confounding. How something so fundamental could be kept secret outside of their society, I cannot understand.
But then again, they’ve been able to keep so much else secret.
“I had no idea,” I reply. “I thought all of you believed in the same dogma.”
“You would be surprised, master voider. Sometimes the way of unwanting has many roads that run in the same direction.”
I offer a grunt of understanding. The university is full of disagreements as well. Conspiracies against master voiders by their own submasters. Ages ago, the university was destroyed, only to be rebuilt after much healing in our ranks.
“What the Protherists believe goes against what is written. Today they are finally proven wrong and the original text is proven correct. This is what I meant by the light and dark.”
“I’m not sure I’m following.”
“When I heard the voices of my brothers and sisters in your stone, I felt both vindication and sadness. Both light and dark. I was relieved that my faith was rewarded with understanding.” He takes a deep breath. “But this is an understanding which I do not wish to own. I would give it away, if I could.”
He finds a rag in his saddlebag and wipes his sweaty face and scalp with it. “Good Unnamed, I have no idea where to start. It’s hard enough teaching this to a graycloak.”
“Is that what the voices said?”
“No!” he says loudly. “Our discussion was the bell tower. I am laying the foundation for you, master voider.”
“Well, I’m a quick learner. And I promise not to interrupt. Or laugh again,” I add softly.
He grunts as he puts his rag back.
“We will start with the empowered and the enervated. It is as good of a place to begin as any.”
“Empowered and enervated?”
He nods. “The empowered could harness the power of axion—the material we effulgents have presumed your voidstones are created from for ages.”
“The empowered are voiders?” I ask sharply, before remembering my pledge, and so I bite my lip and summon my patience.
“Yes and no. In some ways, the empowered were no different than voiders. Like you, they were rare—only a handful in a generation were born. And also, like you, they were powerful.”
I nod in understanding.
“The enervated were the rest of us,” he says. “We were at the empowered’s mercy. And they had none.”
“None of what?”
“Mercy.”
He closes his eyes and looks up into the sun. “It is written that the relic ship was larger than one could comprehend. A flying citadel among the stars. At the heart of this city was the Axiondrive. A massive formation of axion which powered the ship across the stars. It was much larger than these wagons which pass us on the road. Larger than even the house your student was building. And just like the sails which move your ships here, the Axiondrive moved ours.”
I furrow my brow. “That’s not exactly true.”
“What isn’t true?”
“Sails don’t move our ships. The wind does.”
He smiles. “You and your wind.”
I let out a short laugh.
“But you bring up an interesting point,” he nods. “Just as the wind hits the sails, and the sails move the ship, our vessel also depended upon two elements. The Axiondrive is comparable to sails—it has no power of its own. It is a container. A converter. It relies upon something else.”
“The voices,” I say, curiosity overcoming patience.
He looks sideways at me and narrows his eyes. “You are getting to the heart of the matter. A thousand years ago, it was the reason for the crash, and today it is the reason we are talking.”
I look down at my voidstone, grasping the gold setting surrounding the black center. Blythe said that voidstones are made of axion. The same substrate which powered his relic ship. If what he says is true, the Axiondrive would have been a massive voidstone. Larger than a horse and wagon. Larger than a house.
That’s impossible to fathom. The largest voidstone ever recorded by the university was the size of a lemon.
A voidstone the size of a house—I can’t conceive of the power that would wield.
“Do you know the answer?” he asks me. I look up and see that he’s studying me with glassy eyes. He’s close to tears.
“The answer?”
“What powered the Axiondrive. What continues to power all axion.”
I finger the edge of the necklace and think back to my recent revelation.
The winds are voices.
I cannot understand what the voices say, but that is inconsequential. They are speaking, regardless. I heard Blythe, and they heard him.
The winds are voices.
Voices are communication. Communication comes from intelligence. Thinking creatures, each one unique. Each soul carrying a message to a targeted recipient. Each one indivisible.
“People,” I answer loudly, but despite my excitement, my brow is furrowed in confusion because I’m still lost. I believe it, but I don’t understand it. Which is the opposite for me. I feel like I’m drowning, even though I know how to swim.
When I look to Blythe, I see a tear run down his cheek, and a smile cross his face. Ironically, he is the only thing I understand at this moment. I read his face perfectly. He is both happy and sad at the same time. He is happy that I have come to partake in his sadness.
“Voidstones are powered by people,” I say incredulously.
In some ways, these words are nothing new. I have heard them my entire life from judgmental effulgents, men and women like Blythe, whom I have disregarded because they had no proof. Their faith was ridiculous to me.
But now, the thought of me building an entire life around voidance without understanding its very source—resorting to childlike allegories—this is the thing which is ridiculous.
“Souls of the enervated, to be more precise,” Blythe says. “Their physical bodies died thousands of years ago, but their spirits linger on, trapped in the axion. And every time you use that fragment of yours, you abuse them.”
With these words, my shock slowly turns into a complex mix of necessity and revulsion. Guilt washes over me. I don’t dare ask him how voidance hurts the ones trapped in the void. Not yet, at least. But the idea that voidance is built upon the backs of enslaved souls goes again everything that I stand for. It goes against the entire university.
Our charter is built of goodness and decency.
Despite what the young king has done in recent years—abusing voidance for his cursed war—we remain intent on this original charter. The university has always been about the powerful few helping the many and weak.
But the ends do not justify the means. Creating good with evil is still evil.
So what now? What is the future of voidance?
Despite the sunshine, a shiver courses throughout my body as I consider the consequences. It’s as revolting as it is liberating.
If this is voidance...then I must give it up.
But that would make me nothing.
When I turn to Blythe, I see his tears coming, and my guilt cuts deeper.
“I didn’t know,” I say weakly.
“How could you? Even some among the effulgency—the Protherists—they do not believe what I am saying.”
“Why didn’t you come to us earlier?” I ask, defensiveness rising in the bottom of my stomach.
“We did. We have always preached about souls in your stones. None of you would listen.”
I shake my head. “I’m talking about your private language! We listen to logic, Blythe! If one of you had come to the university and laid all of this out logically, then we could have made this discovery years ago. Centuries ago!”
“I didn’t know. None of us knew.”
I’m about to go further, but I close my mouth, realizing that blame is a dead end. The university could have reached out to the effulgency as well. But we disregarded them as fools.
We were both fools. The voiders and effulgency alike.
“Dem!”
Chimeline screams my name, but there is no fear in it.
I look up. Colu and Chimeline are far ahead of us because Blythe and I have been riding much slower, consumed in our conversation.
She’s pointing to a large wagon being pulled by two white horses. There’s an elaborate green sign on the front of it that reads “Worchot’s Wares.” A trader.
She continues to excitedly point at it, and then yells back at me again.
“He found it!” she says.
A moment later, I understand. The wagon is full of all sorts of rabble, but towards its rear is a large basket that towers above everything else. In front of it are stacks of hastily-folded fabric, painted black. Some of it has ballooned out through the wooden slats in the wagon’s sides.
It’s the airship.
Worchot's Words
I dismount, leading everyone else to do the same. Meanwhile, the trader pulls his large open wagon off the side of the road. He turns past the blood-red cobblestones and onto the fine golden sand, bringing up clouds of dust.
The driver is the only person in the wagon, although a bone-white palehound sits at attention next to him.
He slowly stands in his seat. Springs underneath let out rusty squeaks and the palehound flashes his red fangs at us.
“Good morning, fellow traders. Worchot is me,” he bellows, a hand on his chest as he surveys the four of us below. He then looks to the sun behind white-gray clouds. “It is still morning, Worchot believes. Worchot has a sunstone, if you wish to be precise about things. A sunstone that happens to be for sale.”
Behind me, Blythe mumbles, “Good Unnamed.”
The trader is an incredibly short, fat man with a gray-brown beard that could double as a bird’s nest. He’s wearing indigo trousers and a green vest over a white shirt—his vest matches the color of the garish sign hanging over his seat.
Worchot grasps one of the metal posts holding it up as he attempts to exit the wagon. As he does this, the railings fastened to the sign telescope out and suddenly a makeshift leather roof appears over him.
He lets out a curse.
“Pardon me,” he adds, clearing his throat as he pushes the contraption back into place with a violent clang. Only then does he climb down, though he flashes a cautious glance at his two white horses.
“They’re new to Worchot,” he explains. “And Blood upsets them.” He clears his throat.
“Blood?” I ask.
“Worchot’s bodyguard,” he answers, pointing to the palehound. “Worchot doesn’t want the horses charging off. But then again, they’re almost ready to be turned into stew meat. Probably couldn’t charge off if their lives depended on it.”
“Where did you get the airship?”
Worchot begins to chuckle, the buttons on his green vest perilously holding on. “Business, business. But we have not even introduced ourselves.”
“You are the trader Worchot. I am the Master Voider Democryos from the Citadel.”
He looks down at my stone and t
hen to Blythe behind me. Too curious to wait for his response, I approach the back of the wagon to inspect the airship.
The basket has been placed on its side, so I can easily look into it from where I stand. I find nothing inside. Both the basket and fabric seem to be in good condition and clean.
Which means it’s unlikely that it crashed.
“It’s for sale, master voider.”
I turn around and face the trader. “I ask you a second time. Where did you get this?”
I notice him swallow and look at Blood, and then back to me.
“At a farm not one mile from here. Worchot procured it from the owner.”
I take a step toward him.
“Tell me what happened.”
He wipes his clean hands on his green vest. “You see, master voider, even the story of this airship is for sale. And quite the marvelous story it is.” He looks up wide-eyed, like he’s an actor on stage. “The way it came out of the skies, carrying two incredible northerners. Even for a citadelian as yourself, you will be amazed at the tale.”
I look back at my three companions. Chimeline’s mouth is hung open. Colu’s eye is narrowed, his thumb resting lightly on his leather sword belt. Blythe shakes his head.
“How much?” I ask him. “For the information. I don’t need the airship.”
He looks me up and down, fingering his tempest of a beard.
“One hundred,” he says.
Colu grunts at that.
The Xian is right. We’re being toyed with, but I don’t care.
“Just give it to him,” I tell Colu.
He swears under his breath, but then storms off to his horse to retrieve the gold.
Meanwhile, Worchot kicks the bottom of the ladder on the wagon a few times. A wooden seat eventually pops out between the two bottom rungs, and he sits down on it with a groan.
“Come near!” he says, suddenly cheerful. He waves his pudgy hands to himself. “All of you, gather around Worchot!”
I am already standing near. But Chimeline sits cross-legged on the ground next to me. Her pants are the same color as the sand.