NeverSleep

by Brindi Quinn

  “What information?!” Pedj demands, fists menacing. The cowardly zombie plays brave only because Feligo’s sword has the Count secured.

  Bexwin shrugs. “For one, I know more about your enemy than anyone else. I’m closer to your enemy than anyone else.”

  “What do you mean?” I say. “What do you know of Ark?”

  “His endgame. His origins. Banal details like those.”

  ‘Banal’ he says!

  “That so?” says Pedj. “And what would a guy stuck in the Amethyst City his whole life know about Ark’s origin?”

  “Everything.”

  “Be specific!” Feligo commands.

  “The great Ark is unlike any other being. He is of two breeds. His father, a man of considerable power, fell in love with a shadow, a naefaerie . . .”

  “We already know that,” I say.

  But Bexwin is not finished.

  “OR should I say, my father fell in love with a naefaerie.”

  What?

  “I know Ark’s origin because Ark’s origin is my own,” says Bexwin. And on that note, he begins to whistle a melancholy tune I have heard before, coming from the mouth of a gray man.

  In the same way that a candle is snuffed by a solitary blow of air, my false understanding is snuffed, and a new light is shed in its place.

  Warn the stripling.

  How . . .? HOW COULD I NOT HAVE SEEN IT BEFORE?!

  In the vision I saw in the Gloerlands, only one being escaped Ark’s wrath unharmed. How suspicious that only man should be spared! Bexwin, who possesses Void as Ark possesses Void. Bexwin, who has all along appeared to know more than he should. Bexwin, who diverted Feligo’s army so that Awyer would have a clear path to deliver the Amethyst. Bexwin, who supposedly fell under the sleepness, only to awaken again without explanation!

  They say I remind Ark of his mother. It is because I am more woman that I should be. It is because I am in love with my pactor, against my predisposed nature. Ark’s father fell in love with a naefaerie. Bexwin’s father fell in love with a naefaerie.

  Yes, it is obvious to me now.

  Bexwin and Ark . . . are one in the same.

  Chapter XIV: Visitor

  “You are Ark,” I say with newfound knowing – to which Pedj responds with a,

  “WHAT?!”

  “He is Ark!” I say again. “Think back on what has transpired and you will see that he and Ark are one in the same!”

  “Oh, stop!” Bexwin throws backward his head and releases a series of hissing laughs. “Are you obtuse? I’m not Ark!” Yet laughing, he discreetly tells Feligo, “If you could only hear the wild accusations your naefaerie’s making. It’s downright absurd! Is she always so quick to jump to conclusions?”

  “You are Ark!” I insist, fear welling. “You must be! Why else would you have escaped his attack at the Gloerland altar!? Of all of those drained sorcerers, only YOU survived! If you are not Ark, then how else do you possess the knowledge that you do!? How else would you have awakened from your slumber!?”

  A second wave of understanding hits me. “When you were asleep in Feligo’s home, Ark spied on us from Dimensia through Awyer! BUT after Feligo severed Ark’s ties, YOU miraculously awoke! You were only asleep so that you could spy on us! You–!”

  “Enough.” Bexwin’s voice falls flat. “I’m not Ark, and if you say it again, it’ll be your head. I admitted only that my father fell in love with a naefaerie. That was the truth. He DID fall in love with a naefaerie . . . while he was married to my mortal mother.”

  Feligo falters. “What?”

  “I’m not Ark, you dastards! Ark is my b-RO-ther. Well, half-brother, more accurately. We share a father – a man of considerable power who cheated on his wife with his naefaerie. Ark is the product of a disgusting, forbidden pairing – that between a human and a faerie. To ice the cake, it also happened to be an adulterous union.”

  My breathing quickens. So, too, does my pulse.

  Bexwin’s confession incites me, but not in the way it should. Rather, I am livened by what I have heard. A human-naefaerie pairing. A pairing between pactor and faerie. Warden and ward. Existent and non. That is the part I concentrate on because I cannot help myself.

  Never before have I given thought that Awyer and I could share a life as mortals do. In my most indulgent of fantasies I imagined us stowing away together, at the edge of the world, just he and I and the stars. I have thought of his kiss and his embrace, but . . . bending the rules of the Vessel and . . . and . . .

  Ark was born of man and faerie. His mother and father, though of different races, they . . .

  Without control over my thoughts, I picture the same of us. Awyer pressing me close. Moving with me. In that moment I would not be an eternal being; I would be a woman, living one life with one man.

  A child. Born of faerie and mortal. What would I do if I were a mother? How do mothers behave? How do real women behave once they have committed to pairing with a man?

  I draw a hand to my chest to find that my breaths are shallow.

  Awyer. My Awyer. Awaken. Rescue me. Let me be yours, now and forever.

  “Pathetic.” A cruel voice cuts into my dream. “Your lust is quite the abomination, naefaerie. A faerie’s love brings about nothing but pain.”

  “Huh?” A girlish sound emits from me. The girlish response to being caught off-guard. Even that small reaction, I delight in. Being separated from Awyer has made me feel prim, as of late. Yes, lately I have felt too structured. But at the thought of behaving with Awyer the way real mortals do . . . I am grounded. There is no need for me to be ancient.

  I lead with my young heart.

  “Pain? How can you say that?” I ask, and my voice holds the plea of a girl’s.

  Bexwin takes no responsibility for my insulting. “If that wench had never kissed my father, none of this would have happened,” he wagers.

  “But if she kissed your father and he responded, it means that he had those feelings all along! The naefaerie’s kiss did not force him to love her! It merely allowed him to. That is how it works. I know because the same happened to us, my former ward and me.”

  Bexwin takes the edge of Feligo’s sword, which is no longer held firm, pushes it aside, and begins toward me in a saunter. His robes brush the ground in hearty sweeps. “Then she should have thought about that before he was already committed to someone else,” Bexwin hisses. “She knew the trouble it would cause, and she did it anyway.”

  I hang my head. “But it allowed him a real choice . . . sharing that kiss.”

  “Oh, they shared more than a kiss that night, and imagine my father’s surprise when he returned home to find out that his wife was pregnant. The poor man was so guilt-ridden, he never was able to leave her. To be sure, what kind of monster would abandon a pregnant wife? Next, envision my father’s shock when he found out his naefaerie was also with child.”

  “Geesh, sounds like your dad was a weal sweaze,” Pedj mutters.

  Bexwin flicks his wrist and a black handprint appears on the ex-zombie’s cheek. Smack!

  “Yow!” Pedj squeals, and holds his face.

  “My father sought a way to make them both happy. He dabbled in doppelgänging and soul-halving, and during his exploits he walked among the Void, even tainting his two unborns in the process. Arkraine was born shortly after I was. He sustained a greater mark of darkness. Not to mention his appearance was already unique given his abnormal conception. Half mortal, half faerie, and stained by Void, the boy was a sight.”

  “But it does not make sense!” I cry foul, having wrapped my mind around his claims.

  If I recall what Pedj said when he first told us of Ark:

  Since the days my grandmar and granddar were kippers, Ark’s been tryin’ to crack open the Eternity Vessel.

  And even Ark’s own proclamation at the Golden Lands:

  I have tasted the void! And with its power, I have lived young since before the time of King Resh!

  “You say
you are his brother? How? You lived within Eldrade, but there have long been storytales of Ark among the Bloődites! How is it possible?!”

  “Ooh, good point,” Pedj says meekly, still rubbing his sore cheek. He makes haste to summarize my words for Feligo.

  Bexwin does not recant. “It’s all true, most assuredly I say to you. Arkraine and I were born roughly three-hundred years ago.”

  “Ha!” Feligo’s pointed finger of accusation returns. “I suspected this was a farce from the beginning, but now I’m sure!”

  “Listen, would you?” Bexwin says in a hiss. “We don’t have all that much time, as I’m sure you realize.” He looks into the trees over his shoulder. “Void opens the doorway for all sorts of miraculous things. Cheating death, for one.”

  Aye, Hamira and Gorma cheated their deaths by the same means.

  “For the majority of our lives, we aged slowly. Slowly, I say, but wizened nonetheless. After the first two centuries, we were a sight for sore eyes, we cursed offspring. There was little we could do to preserve ourselves longer. It was almost the end for us. It should have been the end for us.

  “Then, seventy-some years ago, Arkraine happened upon a deposit of Void in the most unexpected of places.” Bexwin stomps his foot against the ground. “Here. Yel’ram. This place was undetectable to the naked eye, but my brother could feel it. Being halfway unreal allows him to detect that which is hidden.”

  “But the people of this place said that they never had visitors until you recently arrived,” I say.

  “No, no, no.” Bexwin shakes his head without patience. “We didn’t enter it. We just moved through it, more or less.”

  “Ah.”

  “In addition to detecting the place itself, Arkraine also picked up on the whispers of the people hiding within. He heard tell of a divination – a ‘Truth’ – regarding a creature that was slain here. Deep in the chasm below the falls, lie the bones of a creature from beyond the Vessel. They leave a residual amount of Void in the air.”

  “A creature?” says Feligo. “What manner of creature?”

  “The people never say its name. They’re superstitious, afraid that calling its name will awaken it prematurely . . . or something.”

  Again, I call foul. “But I feel no Void in the air! Its stench does not linger! And the people of Yel’ram remain uncorrupt!”

  “Stench? That’s unexpectedly offensive. The water masks any ‘stench’. And the people here aren’t marked by Void any more than you are. The water of the falls acts as a filter. For them, at any rate. Arkraine, on the other hand, dove right into the source. He relished in the power found there.”

  “And that’s why he wanted to cwack open the Veffel?” says Pedj.

  Since the days my grandmar and granddar were kippers, Ark’s been tryin’ to crack open the Eternity Vessel.

  Ah. I see now.

  Bexwin nods and runs a hand over his chin. “Thanks to his findings, he and I’ve maintained youth ever since.”

  I have tasted the void! And with its power, I have lived young since before the time of King Resh!

  “Psh. You ain’t weally that young, even,” mumbles Pedj.

  “But it’s more than that,” continues Bexwin, ignoring my confidant. “It’s more than just escaping death. On his journeys, my brother came to be troubled by something – a flaw of society, if you will. As I told you before, being partially unreal allows him to detect things that aren’t real. From time to time, my brother would detect a lost soul between planes – that of a faerie, unbound, wandering without a pactor. You see, faeries begin to change when they’re without pactors.”

  “Change?” I say.

  How do you know that you will disappear without a ward?

  ‘Because I have felt myself grow weak following the death of a pactor.’

  Weak? What does ‘weak’ mean? Is ‘weak’ the same as ‘fade’?

  “Many of them haunt the land, dejected after being turned down by some dastard or another. Because of his wench of a mother, Arkraine developed a soft spot for these souls. He sought a way to bind them again, but doing something like that would require more power than he could lend. He found his answer beneath the falls, where an excess of readily available magicks waited.”

  They don’t die. They drift. . . . Without a supply of power, naefaeries can do little. I find them, and offer them the power they need. And with Void, so much more is accomplishable. They may be whatever age they want to be, go wherever they want to go, and pact with whomever they want to pact with, without fear of rejection. . . . If you need to call me something, call me savior.

  “So you’re saying he’s been goin’ round suckerin’ naefaeries all this time in order to, what, help them?” says Pedj.

  “And to use them, no doubt.”

  “With the Void from this place, he sought to corrupt those of us lacking pactors,” I say.

  “But it wasn’t enough,” says Bexwin. “Not to supply the kind of jailbreak he desired. Keep in mind, he didn’t only want to pact the pactorless naefaeries; he wanted to pact ALL of them, and for that, he needed–”

  “The power beyond the Vessel,” I say.

  “Obviously.” The Count starts to pace. “He needed to crack the Vessel, but what was powerful enough to accomplish a feat like that? Amethyst. Another whisper picked up between planes – a promise that someday the Amethyst would be returned to the sphinxes. Ever since, he’d been working to make that happen. Meanwhile, I’VE been trying to KEEP it from happening. Little good that did.”

  “You were trying to stop the Amethyst from reaching the sphinxes?” Feligo folds his arms. “Then why help the boy get away at the Rusticlands?”

  Bexwin lets out a tired breath. “Simple. If you captured the stripling, my brother would have found him that much easier. I was hoping I’d be able to catch up to him on my own – hence why I volunteered to lead the envoy through the Reck – but that clearly didn’t go according to plan.”

  I think on it. I think on all that ‘Visitor’ has told me.

  “The first time I encountered Ark, he called me a wretch. If he truly did all that he did for my kind, why did he not exhibit a more nurturing attitude toward me then?”

  “Two reasons. Firstly, that was probably before he witnessed your . . . unique affinity for your pactor. My brother is annoyed by dutiful faeries doing their jobs. He views them as willing slaves, and it bothers him to no end. After all, any faeries who are happy to be pacted to their owners put his ideology into question.”

  “But that’s zactly what he does!” Pedj counters. “He makes them willin’ slaves!”

  “Well, he doesn’t see it that way. He figures if they’re able to roam without pacting, they’re free.”

  “Wiffout pactin’ to anyone but him, you mean,” says Pedj.

  The Count nods with a shrug.

  “And the second reason?” I inquire. “You said Ark was also pacting us to ‘use us’. Does it have something to do with that?”

  “Yes, Arkraine has another motive, and it’s more important to him than freeing the faeries. It takes precedence. If he was hostile to you, it was because of those you were with. You see, in addition to freeing the faeries, Arkraine has a bone to pick with mankind.

  “As I told you before, my father refused to leave my mother even after he bedded his faerie. And his faerie, Arkraine’s mother, couldn’t leave my father until his death. Even if he’d wanted to free her, he couldn’t. As you can imagine, unpleasant circumstances ensued. Arkraine’s mother was forced to watch their interactions. She was a mistress with a dastard son tied to the home of an otherwise happy family. My father was fair to them. He loved them, maybe even more . . . probably even more than he loved us. Even so, Arkraine developed a strong bitterness for Father for what he’d done. That was the start of it – the beginning of Arkraine viewing the world as a struggle between mythic and man. It goes without saying he sided with the mythics.”

  “Then how does he feel about you?” says Fe
ligo.

  Bexwin’s lip curls into another of those unfavorable smiles. “Oh, he hates me, all right.”

  “But I assumed he was the one who cured you!” says Feligo.

  “Yes, he woke me. It’s complicated. He hates me, but he also views me as his pièce de résistance. If he can win me over, his work will be justified . . . or something.”

  “What, then, were you doing in Eldrade?” I ask. “How did you enter the city that could not be found?”

  “Shortly after uncovering this place, Arkraine and I had a fight. It’s always been a bit of a love/hate relationship between the two of us. Well, more like a tolerate/hate relationship. During that fight, Arkraine cast a spell with his newly possessed Void. He banished me ‘to a place where I couldn’t be found’. Imagine my surprise when I materialized in the Amethyst City.

  “Within Eldrade, I was cut off from Void. I had only what was stored in my veins. I used it to keep from aging. Luckily, anyone can pull from color in the air. A person who is among a color for their whole life becomes conditioned to it. I didn’t have that luxury, and much in the same way you learned to use Gold, I learned to use Amethyst. Of course, I didn’t take kindly to being forced into an Amethyst cage.”

  “That is why your Pates gathered at the fountains,” I apprehend. “You were attempting to break free.” Slowly but surely, the pieces begin to fit. “And what of Ark? What did he do while you were locked away?”

  “I’m told he soon came to regret his decision. Indecisive dastard. He never was able to replicate the spell. He studied the deeper parts of the incantation and came to understand that the only place I ‘couldn’t be found’ was the lost Amethyst City. While I attempted to break out from within, he took more . . . fruitful actions. He altered his appearance and posed as a councilman of Resh.”