Kingdomturn

by Matthew Williams

  The Monitor shook his head. “If I knew or could recall how to recover damaged information, this Interface would no longer be in a state of collapse. Whatever the source of this corruption is, it will eventually lead to absolute destruction.”

  “What are we supposed to do then?” Wyand demanded.

  “As I told Grigg, protecting human life must remain the top priority. With that understanding, the only option is to end the Cultivators before they end you,” the Monitor replied bluntly.

  Wyand looked away in disbelief. “There has to be some other way…” he whispered.

  “There is none that I am able to comprehend. I shared this same conclusion with Grigg, but he was not receptive to it either,” the Monitor said.

  “What about the people of Provenance?” Wyand said suddenly. “They would know how to cleanse the corruption, wouldn’t they?”

  “It is possible,” the Monitor replied. “But contacting them could prove problematic.”

  “I don’t understand,” Wyand said. “We try to reach out to them every turning. Why haven’t they responded to the beacon that we activate during Kingdomturn?”

  “Because no beacon has ever been activated on this world,” the Monitor explained. “Allow me to show you.” Lost in confusion, Wyand nodded tiredly and felt his consciousness shift once again. He stared down at one of the viewing windows, similar to those Grigg watched in the room at the top of the Hall, but this one was somewhere else, somewhere profoundly dark and deep. Its lonesome glow was the only source of light in the small room, and Wyand suddenly understood where he was.

  This is part of a seed ship, he realized.

  Yes, the Monitor replied. More than that, though, it is part of the seed ship that serves as the foundation for the structure you call the Hall of the Venerates.

  Wyand recoiled. The ship is under the Hall?

  It is a part of the Hall.

  Wyand thought to leave the small room so he could discern the ship’s location in the Hall, but when he tried to exit, the ominous pressure and darkness rushed towards him. He refocused his thoughts on the viewing window until his vision returned. As he looked at the window, he realized it didn’t show a part of Aldhagen as the other windows had. Instead, a single word was centered within the outline of a handprint—CRIMORRAH.

  What is it? Wyand wondered, staring at the mysterious text as it flashed rhythmically.

  It is the name given to this particular seed ship, and by custom is also the name given to this world, the Monitor said. This viewing window controls the true beacon, and it can only be activated by the touch of a human hand.

  If this is the true beacon, then what has been activated every turning? What’s the column of red light that shines up from the top of the Hall? Wyand asked.

  Just that—a column of red light, the Monitor said simply. Nothing more.

  Wyand stared at the viewing window, desperately reaching with nonexistent hands towards the glowing text. We have to find it, he determined, but then another thought broke in. If you showed all of this to Grigg, why didn’t he activate the true beacon?

  He chose another path, the Monitor replied. I can show you the rest of his story, if you feel you are ready to witness it.

  There was no hesitation this time in Wyand’s reply. I’m ready.

  ---

  “His eyes are moving!” Grigg heard Taerius shout from somewhere above him. Grigg blinked, then quickly realized he was looking up at the ceiling. He turned his head slowly to the right, struggling to overcome the inexplicable stiffness in his neck, and saw Taerius standing over him with an elated smile.

  “You came back! You’re not asleep!” Taerius proclaimed.

  “I’m…not asleep, no,” Grigg responded, still trying to understand what was going on. His head felt very heavy, his memories cloudy and elusive. Taerius knelt down close to Grigg’s face.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that,” Taerius said softly with a worried frown. “But we’re still not too late to see.”

  “See what?” Grigg mumbled as he turned to his side and attempted to sit up. Lissara was suddenly there to help him upright.

  “Grigg,” she smiled, and simply hearing her voice brought thousands of pleasant memories into his mind. But the comfort was short-lived as he watched her expression fade into one of concern. “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Grigg replied. “I found this strange disc, then the next thing I remember was seeing Taerius just a moment ago.”

  “You slept for hours,” Lissara said, frowning worriedly. Grigg glanced out the windows of the small room at the top of the Hall and found a clouded night sky devoid of stars. He’d lost the entire day. “You need to see this,” Lissara said quietly, extending a hand to help him to his feet. Still dazed, Grigg graciously accepted. He followed her to a viewing window that showed part of the living quarters. The memory of a dream tugged at his thoughts when he saw the viewing window, but Grigg couldn’t remember why it was important. Then he finally saw the image within the window, and he suddenly shared his wife’s terror.

  It was late, long after Reflection based on the lantern fires that had diminished to little more than sparks along the pathways, yet Grigg saw the figures of people moving in the night through the living quarters. He blinked, confused by the glow that seemed to illuminate these individuals from some light source he couldn’t see. It was a pale, sickly yellow that was both unfamiliar and worrisome to Grigg; Wyand recognized it instantly, though.

  Haugaeldr! Wyand shouted inside his own mind.

  “They just…they kept coming back to the River,” Lissara stammered. “I watched one boy nearly break his father’s arm just to get to the water. It’s all of them, Grigg—every one of the returned children.” She pointed to the people in the viewing window.

  “Where are their parents?” Grigg asked.

  “Sleeping,” Lissara replied. “Just like the children were until a few minutes ago. They stayed at the River for hours, drinking more and more water, then they all just stopped and followed their parents as though everything was back as it should be. Now they’re awake and roaming the living quarters. And that glow…I don’t know what it means.”

  “It’s coming from inside them,” Grigg realized in shock. Lissara nodded in grim agreement.

  “I told you they were sick,” Taerius said sadly.

  Surely not even the Venerates are that cruel…. Wyand thought as he watched the children wander seemingly at random until one of them collapsed to the ground at the edge of a doorway. After a brief convulsion, the child lay still and the glow became more intense. Wyand was thankful the viewing window couldn’t show the details of the doomed child’s face, but he knew the expression as clearly as if he’d been staring at it from a stride away. Pain. Pain and silent, hopeless terror. No, Wyand pleaded. Not this.

  Then it happened. In a single burst of glowing yellow, dozens of tiny haugaeldr erupted from the fallen child. Lissara screamed; Grigg just watched in speechless horror. Within seconds, the newly-emerged creatures reduced the corpse to nothing but bones, then they crept slowly into the nearest doorways. “It’s happening!” Lissara sobbed. “It’s happening just like he said it would!”

  “Taerius, what are those things?” Grigg demanded.

  “Death,” Taerius replied, his eyes swirling once again with color. With more and more of the affected children collapsing, lights from torches spilled into the night to follow the glowing creatures as they moved from one door to the next. At first, the drowsy workers didn’t know what was happening, then several of them saw another child break apart as a new batch of the glowing creatures joined the chaos. The enraged workers began stepping on the glowing monstrosities, setting them ablaze with torches, but it wasn’t enough to stop their deadly advance. Hundreds of haugaeldr swept through the living quarters, flowing into each room, injecting the occupants, then moving on to the next set of victims. Wyand felt sick—he knew the fate that awaited each worker touched by
the haugaeldr’s sting.

  “We can go now,” Taerius announced. “This was what we needed to see.”

  “Where are we going to go?” Lissara said hollowly, pointing to the viewing window with tears streaming down her face. “Those things are everywhere.”

  “We have to leave Aldhagen now,” Taerius explained.

  “Wracandyr?” Grigg shouted in disbelief. “No one knows what horrors are waiting in the lands beyond the walls.”

  “We know what’s waiting for us here,” Taerius said quietly. “Everyone they’ve touched is sick now, too.” There was a long silence that followed.

  “Grigg,” Lissara sighed. “We don’t have any other choice.” She reached out to the viewing window and placed her palm against it in a gesture of absolute sorrow and loss. “We have to go.”

  Grigg stared at his wife’s hand on the viewing window, and a sudden flicker of memory expanded into blinding recollection of the things he’d experienced during his linkage with the Thoughtcaster. The Old Kingdom. The Cultivators. The beacon. “The beacon,” Grigg muttered. “We need to find the beacon. We can’t leave! Not yet!”

  “Grigg, what are you talking about?” Lissara asked worriedly.

  “The Old Kingdom is real, don’t you see?” Grigg laughed. “All we have to do is find the beacon—the true beacon, not that lie the Cultivators mock us with every turning. Then we can make everything right.”

  “Grigg….” Lissara frowned.

  “It’s too late,” Taerius said, tugging on his mother’s hand as he edged closer to the doorway. “If we stay, we die with everyone else. Time to go.”

  “No!” Grigg shouted. “If we find the beacon, I know we can fix this.”

  “There is no ‘fix’ this time, Grigg,” Lissara insisted, pointing to the viewing windows. All throughout Aldhagen, the tainted glow of the creatures reflected on the underside of the clouds above like an unnatural fire burning in the city below. In a few areas, the workers still fought desperately, but most people either wandered through the night in a daze or stared down hopelessly at the horrific scene from improvised hiding places on rooftops. As Grigg and his family watched, a steady stream of workers made their way back to the Great River and, as feared, they began to drink just as the children had. The creatures, too, seemed drawn to the river; they burrowed all along its banks, leaving traces of their sinister yellow glow shining through the dark mud.

  “Aldhagen is theirs now,” Taerius said. “We don’t belong here.” Grigg shook his head in violent denial.

  “Grigg, please,” Lissara begged as she and Taerius moved into the doorway.

  Grigg gritted his teeth and looked from his family to his home and back again. With the beacon and aid from the Old Kingdom, Grigg could save Aldhagen—he was certain of that—but not if it meant losing his wife and son. There was no time to explain, no time to convince them. Clenching his jaw painfully, Grigg turned to his family once again. “Let’s go,” he decided, then hurried after Lissara and Taerius as they raced down the spiraling corridor. Forgive me, Grigg whispered in his thoughts to the doomed workers.

  Grigg’s memory of the descent through the Hall was a haze of light windows and labored breathing as he and Lissara strained to keep pace with Taerius. “Slow down!” Grigg yelled several times, fearful the Venerates or something worse could be waiting just around the next turn in the corridor.

  “We can’t be here!” Taerius shouted back, and Grigg detected an unexpected note of panic in his voice that hadn’t been there before. The boy’s earlier confidence was gone, which was nearly as unsettling as its sudden arrival and his impossible knowledge of the future. Not certain what to expect next, Grigg and Lissara pushed themselves to run even faster towards whatever end awaited them through the Exile Door.

  The familiar layout of the main entrance to the Hall came into view, although the usual view of Aldhagen through the entryway was still blocked by the massive wall of metal. As Grigg drew closer, however, the low rumbling began again. “Not yet!” Taerius moaned. Grigg watched in terror as a thin sliver of darkness formed beneath the wall, then it was quickly replaced by the dreaded glow of the creatures that had swept through Aldhagen.

  “Run! RUN!” Grigg shouted, but Taerius and Lissara needed no encouragement after seeing the pale yellow light. Tendrils of glowing death reached hungrily under the wall, straining towards the sound of every footstep as the slab of metal slowly returned to the ceiling. Grigg knew there were only seconds before the Hall would be flooded with the voracious little monstrosities, but a part of him was fascinated by the absurdity of the situation. It felt unreal, like a sort of terrible dream, to watch something so horrific pass through the same entrance that all of the workers in Aldhagen had used every day of their lives.

  “Grigg!” Lissara shouted desperately, and he was suddenly aware of how little distance now separated him from the mass of writhing creatures that had squeezed under the metal wall. He raced after his family and they quickly made their way to the chamber of the Exile Door. Wyand shared Grigg’s discomfort when he saw the grim balconies looming over the Great River, but the frantic hope of survival in the lands beyond Aldhagen washed away all fear of Wracandyr. When they reached the edge of the Casting Platform, though, it was clear that fear of the Exile Door was still a reality for Lissara. She stepped back from Grigg and Taerius, staring wide-eyed at the fury of the frothing waters below.

  “We shouldn’t be here,” Lissara said as she backed farther away.

  “That’s why we’re leaving!” Grigg argued.

  “No, I mean we shouldn’t be here,” she said. “There has to be some other way.”

  “I know you’re afraid,” Grigg said soothingly, taking hold of his wife’s hands. “I’m terrified! But there’s nowhere else to go. We have to try this.” He glanced over her shoulder and tried to suppress his panic when he spotted the glowing creatures at the river’s edge on the far end of the chamber. The Casting Platform would be overrun in moments. “We do this together!” Grigg shouted, pulling Lissara to Taerius and taking the boy’s hand. He wrapped his wife and son tightly in his arms and looked at them one final time. “I love you both,” he said, then Grigg and his family stepped off of the Casting Platform and into the waiting darkness.

  The next set of memories was a confusing assemblage of pain, disorientation, and terror. Grigg’s experience with Wracandyr echoed Wyand’s own recollection of the journey, so it was difficult to distinguish what was a shared thought and what was a true memory. Wyand knew what was coming next, though, even if Grigg did not. After striking against one of the many jagged slabs of stone, Grigg felt the river surge forward suddenly. All at once, he found himself falling through the air as the river dropped away beneath him into total darkness.

  There was an instant of no thought, just the sensation of an abrupt end to the fall, then Wyand felt Grigg’s consciousness slowly return. He scrambled to the surface of the water, gasping for air as he broke through. As soon as his lungs had air, he began shouting for Taerius and Lissara—sometime after the fall, he had lost his grip on them. There was a reply, but it was from a man’s voice he didn’t recognize and the words were lost in the thundering roar of the falling water. Grigg swam towards the voice, still shouting for his wife and son with every breath.

  From what he prayed was the shore of this enormous body of water, Grigg saw the familiar glow of torchlight moving closer. In the depths of the water beneath him, however, he suddenly saw a flash of the sinister yellow light that could only be one of the creatures from Aldhagen. Grigg increased his pace, desperately calling for Lissara and Taerius. Then, he heard a faint but clear reply that removed a host of worries from his mind. “Father!” Taerius called from the darkness to Grigg’s left.

  “Here!” Grigg shouted as he splashed in the direction of his son’s voice. He felt something brush against his right arm, and Grigg instinctively seized it. Taerius cried out in alarm. “It’s all right son! It’s me,” Grigg reassured Taerius,
pulling him close. “Where’s your mother?”

  “I have her here,” Taerius said. “She’s asleep, though.” Grigg felt around in the water until he gripped the edge of Lissara’s robe, then he immediately tried to find her face. “Lissara!” he shouted, “Lissara!” but there was no reply. The torches were much closer now, but Grigg still couldn’t make out what was responsible for Lissara’s eerie silence. It was a constant struggle to fight the current while trying to keep himself and two other people afloat using only his legs, but failure was the furthest thing from Grigg’s mind. His muscles screamed for even a moment to recover, but he knew he couldn’t stop. When Grigg at last reached the shallows, the people holding the torches were waiting for him and his family.

  “Is anyone injured?” a man asked as soon as Grigg was within the light radius of the torches.

  “I don’t know,” Grigg panted. “But bring your light closer. I need to see my wife.”

  “They cast an entire family!” someone gasped from behind the man, but Grigg barely heard the words. In the flickering shadows of the torch, he stared into Lissara’s beautiful green eyes and refused to believe the emptiness he saw there. Then he noticed the enormous gash across her forehead, and the truth became impossible to deny. Grigg sank to his knees and cradled Lissara’s head in his lap. His fingers unconsciously brushed through her soft brown hair, and for one fleeting instant he smelled the vandula blossoms that filled his happiest memories. Then the sweet scent was gone, and Grigg knew it would never return.

  “She didn’t have to go to sleep,” Taerius whimpered from Grigg’s shoulder. “I tried to keep her safe. We just weren’t fast enough.” Grigg offered no reply as he rocked gently back and forth, lost in the hollow gaze of the woman he loved. Then his eyes darted towards the sound of movement in the dark water, and once again he found the forbidding yellow glow drifting closer. Before he had time to react, six of the bulbous creatures leapt onto the shore and splashed through the mud towards his fallen wife.