“No sane man could, but my end is coming fast no matter what path I choose. Best, I think, to own my ending.”
“You are a better man than me, my king,” he said and began to offer me his hand to shake. I embraced him with my good arm instead.
“Be well, Admiral, I leave you in command here. You may depart as soon you are ready.”
He went, and I made my way back through the city with Rahan’s coins. Our capital seemed empty, despite the tall buildings and the crowds that gathered in the streets to bid us farewell.
I waved but could not smile. If all our many plans were to be successful, I would never see them again.
45
Sikhek Vesteal
Pain.
No sight, no sound, no sleep. Only pain and the taste of brine. My lungs and my body were crushed by the weight of it all. Death refused me mercy despite my condition, and gave me to the pain. I had arrived in hell, and all that was left for me was punishment.
I tried to forgive myself. I tried to blame others. I prayed to Adanas. I danced with madness in the depths and offered myself to any savior.
A glow appeared. It was an angel of light and love. It was dim, but it was there. Had a god heard my prayers? I pleaded with it, but it faded and returned me to my torture. The darkness was cold, and I hoped this was the end. I did not want life or power.
Release me. Whatever power holds me—whoever holds my mortal coil—let go!
The glow returned, and when I saw it this time, I flinched. The glow faded around the edges as if clouded by debris. A gurgle of water touched my ears for a moment before the sensation was terminated as though my ear canal was briefly healed and crushed anew. Pain swung round and round.
This was not hell!
This was the bottom of the Gulf of Havish, and I was a fool. Geart’s magic was what kept me from death. I remembered then what I had once been. I’d suffered worse. I’d spent a season upon the bottom of the Bessradi River, a mindless sack, no more than a jaw and a torso—passionless, unfeeling, and drawn only by the Shadow’s power and the mercury that focused it.
Geart’s magic had been strong. Purify and heal, had been the verbs and he’d laughed as he sang them. I was something else now. I was not a man nor was I Hessier. Made pure, despite its ancient and rotten core—held away from both the Shadow and the Earth and all their treachery.
An endless nightmare of pain awaited me.
The debris settled, and from the corner of my eyes I saw for a fleeting moment the wreckage of war. It spread wide around me—a carpet of broken timber and bodies in the darkness.
But we were not alone. My broken ears caught the tapping first, like the sound when submerged in a tub, long fingernails drumming on the rim. They grew louder as the light faded, and then I saw them. Eels and crabs crawled amongst the corpses. Great worms wrapped around limbs and sucked skulls empty.
One slithered across me and began to engulf my hand. I tried not to move. I’d come to my end. Let the bottom have me. Its teeth sank into my flesh and my arm jerked against my will. The motion scattered all the foul bottom feeders and the worm spit out my hand.
I listened and I searched, but did not see them again that day. I turned my head one way and the other. The pain that came was almost a reward. It was different, active, and as the light faded I somehow found sleep.
A tumble of deep sounds jerked my crushed eyes open. It was the grinding of bone and scraping of flesh and it was growing louder. Louder and closer. The dim light of the sun quieted them, and I dared a fresh look to my left. The swollen bodies of sailors and dashed ships were layered with vermin. Bits of it floated up as though the sea was vomiting the unwelcome decay back up at those who’d sent it all down.
The cold tingle of death touched me—the old feeling of magic born of our Father. Was I still Hessier after all?
This was not hell, but it may as well be. I would spend a thousand years being eaten by vermin until they overcame Geart’s magic. I could think of nothing worse.
That was a lie. There was worse. I had found a million endings for the people of Zoviya that rivaled this. I closed my eyes, prayed for death, and slept.
The sun and the noise came and went again and again. The water pressed ever down upon me. The sound of the approaching vermin made sleep difficult and then impossible. Each time the sun moved overhead there was less dead flesh around me. The crabs grew braver, and I had to twitch again and again to ward them back. They were blind—eels, worms, and crabs alike on that black shelf. I saw other things, larger things, moving across the daytime glow, but they never descended enough for me to know what they were.
That night the feasting vermin crowded close. The sound of their gnawing and sucking was gone. The rest of their feast had floated away or been consumed. I was the last meal left, and it would not take a thousand years to finish me. The lightest twitch washed them back, but as they returned they were more urgent—more of them tumbled around each other in the darkness for a taste of me.
Why did I want to keep living? There would never be a name as reviled as mine nor a ghost as tortured by the sorrows bound to it.
The sun was high overhead when I decided to invite my end. I stop moving and they rolled across me in a wave. The first bit of an eel upon my shoulder was a pain like none before—cold and vile. But it was odd. I felt something else, something hidden, something I’d felt before.
Only out at sea had I felt it—a weight like that of the ocean pressing down upon me. It despised me—as it should.
But it moved. The presence I felt around me lurched away as if freed by my surrender.
Past the pain, past the great presence, a great magic keened around me. It rose and shook the world like the day that I’d forced Spirits to give men magic.
The great thing in the water enveloped me. It pressed down and pounded upon me like boulders upon a grizzled cut of old meat.
But no end came. I could feel the terrible weight but it could not harm me. It swallowed me utterly, and the world disappeared as though it had never existed. The absence of experience was welcome—an ending free of the noise.
‘You did this,’ a voice said from the black. It was neither the voice of vengeful Shadow or the wicked Earth.
‘Who are you?’ I said the third spirit.
‘You, I despise most of all. Be gone from me, foul creature.’
I could not. It tried again to expel me and failed. ‘Why do you remain? Do you seek to ascend?’
‘No.’
‘Liar. You desire to take my place, to fill the endlessness with your soul.’
I began to disagree but could not. Becoming a god would please me.
The feeling of weight left me, and we began to rise up through the dark water. The sea fell away below us and we hurtled into darkness—a vast unending expanse that contained all things and nothing. My perception steadied as though my eyes were healing. All around me threads of great color lashed and warred.
We had arrived at the place where it had started—the vastness I had broken into at the cost of my family and my life.
But I was not the only passenger upon the third spirit. Another soul was there—a fleck of dust stuck fast. It seemed young, a girl perhaps.
The Shadow and the Earth turned as we rose and they lashed out, but they could do nothing. We were not there—guests with no presence, our consciousness along for the ride. They exhausted themselves and fell back.
The view of the world became a carpet of swirling lights, and I swooned as I understood them to be the souls of those below. I could see Soma gathering the east to her like a magnet. To the north Barok and his druids moved south with an army bright with magic and madness. The west was cast in darkness, as though Bayen priests still had hold of every soul, but a different darkness to the south gathered my attention. Geart was there—a jet black boulder gaining speed and size as it tumbled after a fleck of starlight. At the center of it all, Bessradi shown like a pearl stuffed in the jaw of a gnashing sea mon
ster. I could not tell if the beast would break the pearl or choke on its meal.
The battle for Zoviya was going on without me.
The view moved from Barok, to Dia, to my place beneath the sea.
‘Who are they?’ a second passenger asked.
‘We are the Vesteal,’ I said and the spirit turned, hissed at us, and struck out. I felt myself coming apart and found the tangle of black threads that bound me to the spirit. I struck the clinging mass and the girl fell back to the earth. I struck it again and again until I began to come free. The spirit shook once, and I dropped like a stone.
Darkness and lights churned and swirled around me, until with a thump, I was returned to my watery tomb.
The great thing holding me down was gone. I was free.
I feel the want to take the world again in my hands, like a bit of clay and make of it whatever I wished of it. I yearned for my dominion and world free of darkness.
But, the darkness was me. All the terror, all the misery. I had caused it.
I decided to hold still and let the bottom have me. The world needed to be rid of me before I became its dark god.
A great worm wiggled across my chest and began to suck upon my face. I tried to hold still. I tried to let it finish me. I snatched the blind thing instead and squeezed its thin spine snapped. The rest flinched back from me, and I flung the broken thing toward the waiting circle.
My heart thumped once in triumph before being crushed again by the weight of the sea.
I danced again with madness in the terrible grip of the black sea, tortured by the vision of the world moving around me.
My world.
I would have laughed. It was not mine. I was a creature now of base habits. I had no reason to join the fray. The Earth and Shadow had their champions—and this third spirit wanted none. I could see it. The Shadow and the Earth were liars. They both wished for the death of the other. The creation myth the Chaukai taught was as empty as the shell of the church I had created. And what did this third spirit want? Did I care? It would be a liar, too. The world would freeze or burn or drowned, and it would do so without me. Mankind and the world could rot.
A worm got hold of my leg. I kicked it away and would have growled if I could. I could not abide it. Death, yes. Oblivion, yes. But I could not hold still while these vile bottom feeders sucked upon me.
I grabbed at the sea floor, flipped myself over, and crawled toward the remains of the ships and the shore I would find on the far side.
46
Emilia Grano
“Don’t stand there, Franni,” Pia said.
The bloodstain hidden beneath the rug had not been visible since the day we arrived, and the spring flooding had altered the color of the entire floor when it brought gray water in up to our ankles. Still, Pia chose to complain about the spot whenever anyone got close to it.
“Pia, dear,” her mother said and took back the plates Franni had set down. “Don’t start all that again. Apologize.”
She told her mother no, and I snatched my plate before Madam Invern let them both go.
“No,” Pia said and her breakfast hit the floor with a crash. The yelling erupted like wildfire, and I made a break for the library.
“What got them going this morning?” Evand asked as I arrived.
“The usual,” I said, and we chuckled for a bit as we organized the morning’s work.
The fight would last until they disturbed her father and he abandoned his work and turned the conflict into a war. It would rage through the morning. Pia would cry, clean up the mess with their help, and the three of them would make lunch together.
It was the only time she got to spend with her father. He’d not found time like Evand had to teach us letters, and Pia wanted every moment should could with him. He knew less about being a father than Evand. He thought somehow that giving her space was the right course.
The three of them fought often enough that I’d begun to suspect that it was all designed to keep me distracted. It kept me hungry when I wasn’t careful, too, and I shoveled in the food before Pia came to pilfer mine. I sat down next to Evand, getting ink and vellum ready for a new drawing. Captain Benjam’s fast galley was due to arrive.
I studied the framed etching of the capital I had finished before I closed my eyes to learn what had changed.
“Oh, my,” I said. “Something happened overnight.”
“Draw it,” Evand said, and I brushed the new map.
“Much of the city’s center seemed different. People are in places where there should be water, and sections of the river’s edge are deserted as if submerged.”
“Casualties?”
I counted the people and frowned. “27,212 fewer than yesterday. Something terrible had happened. I can’t make sense of what it could be. Come, Benjam is arriving. He’ll be in a hurry to get back.”
I folded the drawing, discovered my plate was empty, and scolded Evand for stealing the bit I’d saved for Pia. He shrugged and followed me out into the garden.
But we slowed when we got a look at the Hemari coming in the far side. We did not know any of them. Each was covered in dried mud up to their elbows, and their sergeant’s head was bound with a bandage.
He slowed as he saw us. “Are you angry today, Goddess?”
“That is no way to greet her,” Evand said.
“Sorry for that,” another man said as he entered the garden. It was General Blathebed, followed by three Hemari officers. Evand, I could tell, knew each of the officers very well. The general crossed alone, and Evand handed him my map.
“Thought so,” the general said as he studied it.
“Yarik?” Evand asked.
“Yes. We believe he tore down a number of dams he’d built upon tributaries up the north branch of the river. A flood wall struck the city. It flowed over the dam but did not break it as intended. It struck the wharf a mean blow nonetheless. We saved our horses and the fleet, but many died ... I see you know the number. I’d hoped it was less.”
Evand had stopped listening half way through. He stepped around the general, looking toward the other officers. “I am seeing ghosts.”
Blathebed turned and took his arm. “Oh damnation, my apologies, Evand. With everything going on, I’ve injured you by not joining this gathering correctly. You are not seeing ghosts. A few of your lads from the 5th turned up in Enhedu—”
“Ellyon,” Evand shouted and his soul blazed as he rushed across wrapped the trio into a great hug. “Wayland, Okel!”
The four of them began talking all at once, and I was only just able to gather the details of their reunion through the noise of it. Evand had thought them dead with the rest of the 5th. They’d escaped and hid within the ranks of the Kaaryon militia before being swept north by a slave revolt that took them to Enhedu, where they join Evand’s brother Barok before making their way back to Bessradi. Okel was an old and scarred veteran like Blathebed, while the other two were young and beautiful. The pair connected oddly to the people in Bessradi, and I began to study them while trying to hold onto their conversation at the same time.
“You’ve been in the city that long?” Evand said. “Why am I only seeing you now?”
An awkward silence lingered. None of them wanted to tell Evand it was because of how things had gone between him and Rahan.
I noticed during the silence what was different about the young pair and said out loud, “A Grano and a Feseq? What an odd pair you make.”
Ellyon and Wayland smiled and patted each other on the back, as if wise to my power and happy to have gotten my attention. This irked me, but I was too happy for Evand to throw a Pia-like tantrum.
“I am a Grano, too, now,” I said instead, “Evand and Liv have adopted me. It is nice to meet another. I’ll call you cousin, Ellyon, if that is okay?”
Ellyon managed only a small nod while the threads of their collective souls danced around in a panic.
“Well, that will make things interesting,” Blathebed said. �
�Perhaps we should get moving though?”
Evand’s expression made me worry, and I began to wonder if my pronouncement has been wise. Then I began to wonder why Rahan would choose now of all times to reunite Evand and his men.
Pia ran in then with a spoon held high and all the morning’s fight ready to be unleashed on the noisy bunch. She slid to a halt when she saw Blathebed. Liv stepped in behind her with more calm, though she held a short sword and had brought Natan and the freemen along with her.
Blathebed handed Liv my fresh drawing and she read my numbers and notes.
“Emi is heading back to the capital,” Liv said to Natan and handed him her sword. To Blathebed she said, “We have bags packed for her. Wait for us here.”
“You and Evand are coming, too,” Blathebed said. “It is time to get you moving north.”
“I am going with Evand,” I said.
Blathebed’s happy face became a general’s once more. “That won’t be possible. Evand is needed in Alsonelm. You are needed at the palace.”
“A topic to be discussed with Rahan, perhaps,” Liv suggested, and I decided she was right not to argue it there. Blathebed would not disobey Rahan.
Liv and Pia made their way back inside and we waited awkwardly for their return. The mud-caked Hemari would not stop fidgeting and stayed as far away from me as they could, despite my season of calm. Evand and his trio chatted apart from everyone until the Natan men and our luggage started out. Franni and her girls followed, carrying full packs as though they’d prepared for this day—which of course they must have.
Blathebed led us up the jetty, and everyone’s soul calmed except for Pia and her parents.
They weren’t coming.
I turned to her as the rest made their way onto the urgent ship. “Pia, I should have known. How did I not realize?”
“Hush,” she said. “I’m home now. You have more to do.”
“This is why you’ve been fighting with your parents.”
“No. I’m a big brat is all.”
The Vastness Page 41
