The Wrack

by John Bierce

  Dawn was a little easier, but he was always happiest when his replacement arrived, and he could leave the open semaphore room at the top of the rickety wooden tower.

  He did not go up to the top save for his shift, so the other seers might not know him a coward.

  His shifts were easy enough. Few messages were sent at night, so there were few to pass on. He merely had to watch the spirit current that hung alongside the tower. A few leagues after this tower, it shot high into the sky, out of sight of any seer. When messages came through them, he need merely transcribe them onto paper, assemble them into a message chain, then send them on their way through the other spirit current, which ran through the semaphore room and all the way to Ladreis.

  He had a brazier to keep him warm in the cold desert nights, and a little lantern for assembling message chains, but he preferred as little light as he could, and he sat on the floor, so he might not see the ground below, and he watched the spirit realm and the spirit current from one eye, and the stars with the other.

  His days were quiet ones. He went to sleep after dawn and awoke in the early afternoon. He ate a quiet breakfast, exchanging greetings with any of the other seers about, and then he took a stick of graphite, a drawing board, and a small stack of paper, and he walked out into the desert.

  Ivrahim had never tried his hand at drawing or drafting before he was taught to be a seer. He had, to his surprise, turned out to have quite a deft hand at it, and he suspected that was what had earned him his spot as a seer. When his left eye was plucked out, he had to relearn much of it, for losing an eye hurts one’s drawing immensely, but it recovered quickly.

  More than just being good at it, Ivrahim found that he enjoyed it. He found a peace in it he got nowhere else.

  So he spent his days drawing. There was no worry about using up paper, as their weekly supply runs brought more every time, for it would be ill fortune for a semaphore tower to run out of paper. Since it had been built, huge piles of paper had accumulated in the corners of the storeroom, each sheaf bound in waxed cloth to keep rodents from eating it.

  At first the other seers teased him gently, saying he would swiftly grow bored of the empty wasteland around them, with only a single tower and a single well to draw. But when drawings started to accumulate around the tower, pinned to the wooden walls, resting on tables, and drifting under beds, the teasing quickly ended.

  This made Ivrahim happy indeed, for even though he knew the teasing gentle, it still made a part of him flinch— that cowardly organ deep inside of him. For Ivrahim had been on the receiving end of cruelty for the sin of his cowardice often enough that a part of him could no longer tell a gentle jest from a cruel barb.

  It also made him happy, for he knew his art was good.

  He drew the tower, yes, and he drew the well, but he drew so, so much more.

  Ivrahim drew the skulls of cattle that had died in the great cattle drives across the desert, from Lothain to the great cities of Galicanta. He drew the green and brown striped lizards that sunned themselves in the dirt, and the grey lizards with the blue necks that sunned themselves on the rocks. He drew the shy little desert mice hunting seeds and bugs, and he drew the wispy dry plants that grew those seeds and the little bugs that ran about the rocks. He drew the long brown snakes and the tiny grey ones that lived under rocks.

  Ivrahim drew the sunsnakes, those bright blue vipers who alone among the ground-dwelling animals did not conceal themselves— for anything they bit died, and anything that bit them died likewise, for their flesh was as deadly as their venom. Though the other seers thought him mad, he was not worried, for the sunsnakes feared nothing, and they hardly stirred themselves when he drew close.

  Ivrahim drew all five types of scorpions, from the tiny brown ones whose sting could not penetrate his skin to the immense, dull white giants the size of his hand, who Ivrahim knew to keep a very respectful distance from. They would not kill him, but they would make him very sick indeed. He drew the great desert tortoises with their ancient eyes, which grew so large the tops of their shells came above his waist.

  Ivrahim drew the skittish desert antelope, who would only come close enough to draw after many weeks of sitting quietly near a salt lick until they grew to trust his presence. He also drew the wild desert goats, who once they were canny enough to realize he carried no weapons, simply walked right up to him, sometimes even trying to nibble his paper. His fellow seers asked him to kill one to add to their larder, but Ivrahim merely smiled and shook his head. He would show them the newest drawing, and they never had the heart to ask again.

  Ivrahim drew the hardy desert trees with their little waxy leaves, the fierce hawks that patrolled the skies, and the vultures that circled even above the hawks.

  The rains were what Ivrahim dreaded the most, for they came unpredictably, and when they did, he would often be trapped in the tower for days by the rain, the mud, and the fierce floods that flowed like hammers through the little gulches of the desert.

  But the rains were also what Ivrahim anticipated the most, for afterward, the desert would erupt into color. Countless flowers and green plants erupted from the ground. Little ponds dotted the desert, each filled with tiny colorful fish, which came from he knew not where. Frogs and toads of a dozen sizes clambered from the ground and filled the air with their songs. Birds sang, and countless buzzing insects filled the air. There were even tiny, fingernail-sized freshwater crabs that appeared in the pools, only to bury themselves away like everything else when the pools dried.

  And Ivrahim did his best to draw them all.

  Years passed, and other seers came and went, but Ivrahim never left his little tower. He worked his midnight shifts, drew, and accumulated back pay. He drafted an improved map of the local spirit realm currents, which the Ladreis Collegium actually commended him for.

  When the first rumors of the Wrack arrived at the tower, Ivrahim gave them little attention. The other seers spoke of little else, but few unencoded messages about it were sent at night, so Ivrahim paid it no mind.

  Then, for a brief period, traffic exploded, and they were all suddenly working themselves to the bone. They began doubling up for shifts, and Ivrahim found no more time for drawing.

  And then the message traffic began dying away. Not slowly, and not evenly. Huge chunks of the message traffic would just end all at once.

  They all knew what was causing it. Semaphore towers were being abandoned to the Wrack.

  One by one, the semaphore towers north of them began to fail. Some sent messages informing them of their closure. A few kept going intermittently with only a single seer working when they could. Most just… stopped.

  Ivrahim found time for his drawing again, but part of his mind was always dwelling on the north, now.

  As the towers north of them began to fail, and the reports of the Wrack spreading into Galicanta and Geredain began arriving, the other seers grew more and more nervous, often arguing amongst themselves.

  Ivrahim kept himself out of the conversations.

  Soon the messages from the north, from Lothain and northern Galicanta, began to dry up entirely. Entire days would go by without any messages. Ivrahim was sure parts of the semaphore network must still be in operation, but it wouldn’t take that many failures to the immediate north to cut their lonely wooden tower off from the rest of Teringia.

  The other seers began to argue that they should leave. They weren’t even a multi-path tower, they were merely a simple relay, and with no messages to forward, they should abandon the tower. They should leave before the Wrack arrived.

  Ivrahim wasn’t overly worried about that. The only visitors they ever received were the weekly supply wagons, sometimes coming with replacement seers.

  When the supply wagon failed to arrive one week, that was too much for the other seers, and they fled, carrying as many supplies as they could.

  Pointing out that they were fleeing south— in the direction the supply wagons came from— didn’t stop them, eve
n though it was surely the Wrack that had interfered with the supplies.

  Ivrahim sighed as he poked through what supplies they’d left him. They’d taken most of the fresh goods, but he had enough dried goods, salt meat, and root vegetables to last him some time. It wouldn’t be the most scintillating diet, but it would keep him alive.

  His days began to take on a hint of monotony after that. At first, he spent every waking hour in the semaphore room at the top of the tower, that no messages might be missed, but before long, he resumed his long walks through the desert.

  He found, in fact, that he was quite able to keep his amethyst eye on the spirit current while keeping his living eye on his paper or his subject material. At first, he got headaches from leaving his amethyst eye in longer than a shift at a time, but they slowly receded, and soon he kept his amethyst eye in even in his sleep, taking it out only to clean.

  It certainly resulted in some truly strange dreams.

  In the weeks that followed, he slowly began to master a rare skill among seers— the ability to turn and focus his amethyst eye even through his own head, so that he might look in two directions at once. Only one among hundreds of seers could do it, and it required the discipline to ignore a truly prodigious confusion of ripples and turbulence produced by the currents flowing through his own head. Soon, however, he hardly even noticed the difference. The only oddity was a curious tangled structure floating inside his own head, behind his eyes. It glowed faintly with its own light, not merely the light of the spirit realm, and seemed far more solid than anything else in the spirit realm.

  Other seers who had his ability to look through their own heads had reported this as well, and produced a few crude drawings. There were countless debates about what, precisely, the structures were. Ivrahim merely assumed it was his soul and didn’t worry too much about it. Ivrahim’s drawings of the structure were far more graceful and precise than the others he’d seen, and he was sure they’d attract some interest. He was no true scholar, but he wrote a short monograph on the structure, and sent a copy south, just in case.

  He received no response, nor did any supply wagons come.

  Every now and then, to his surprise, messages still came through. More often than not, they were incomprehensible clusters of letters, but they were clearly man-made patterns. He wrote them all down, whether he could understand them or not.

  He wasn’t in any hurry to send them, of course. He merely noted them down on paper, then waited until he returned to the tower to send them onwards.

  And he drew, and drew, and drew.

  He’d taken to sleeping the midnight shift, during the very hours that he once had worked every night. It was, after all, the least of the shifts in message volume.

  The desert grew cold even in the summer, and in the winter, it could get painfully cold at night, even though the days were balmy and pleasantly cool. To keep himself warm, he bundled himself up tightly and often kept hot coals in a brazier next to his bunk.

  He wasn’t sure what awoke him that night. Perhaps his dreaming mind had seen through his amethyst eye and noticed what was going on in the sky, or perhaps it was just sheer coincidence.

  Either way, Ivrahim got out of bed and wandered up to the semaphore room, still half asleep.

  He shivered in the night air, and he saw the messages flowing through the spirit realm. He could see many of them already far past him, rising along with the spirit current flowing south, too far away to make out now, lost to him. More marched along past him, and he could see countless more coming. The signals were all unencoded, and it only took him a second to begin reading them.

  They were names. All of them names.

  Sleep forgotten, Ivrahim dove for supplies, and he frantically began to write, and write, and write. Name after name after name after name. They seemed to go on forever, unending and unrelenting, and Ivrahim was still writing when dawn arose. His fingers cramped and ached, but he dared not stop, taking breaks only when he made it far enough upstream in the purple spirit current that he couldn’t make out the names any longer.

  The collection of paper he had up here he hadn’t restocked in some time. He spent so little time up here anymore, only coming up to send messages now.

  He began frantically filling margins with names, writing them in ever-smaller letters with ever smaller spaces between them, with the shrinking nubs of graphite he had left to him up here.

  Some of the names were Lothaini, or maybe Geredaini, and others were Moonsworn, and others were Galicantan, and he even saw a few that he swore might be Radhan, but he didn’t take the time to consider the matter.

  He just kept writing.

  And the names kept coming and coming, and Ivrahim knew that he would have to resupply from downstairs soon. He quickly pushed as far upstream in the list of names as he could, then he simply sprinted down the stairs, four at a time.

  Ivrahim’s living eye was weeping the whole way down.

  He crashed into the storeroom more than he entered it, and he quickly filled his arms with paper and graphite. He ran up the stairs almost so swiftly as he ran down, tripping several times and dropping much of his paper in his haste.

  He didn’t bother to pick up the dropped paper, he just got up and ran.

  Ivrahim nearly stumbled right over the railing of the semaphore room in his haste. He barely caught himself against the solid wooden railing. Several sheets of paper slipped from his grasp and went gliding down to the dust and rocks below.

  In his desperation, Ivrahim hardly even noticed that the drop below didn’t beckon him, or call him, or try to pull him. It didn’t seem some great abyss.

  It was just a moderate height drop from a cramped little wooden tower.

  None of that crossed Ivrahim’s mind, though.

  He just kept writing.

  He could barely see out of his living eye as tears flowed freely from it, for all the names he’d missed in his resupply trip. For all the names he’d missed in his sleep, for none of the names had repeated at all, and he knew that no tower in the world bore enough links for a message loop this long. The names were being disassembled and reformed into new names, continually.

  The names he’d missed were gone, carried by the current up into the sky.

  His amethyst eye still saw clearly, and his hand was strong, and Ivrahim kept writing, and writing, and writing. Noon came and went, and finally, in the late afternoon, it simply ended. No message was attached to the end, but none was needed. There was only one reason that such a monumental list of names would be sent.

  Part of Ivrahim was tempted to heresy then, to hope that names sent through the semaphore made it to the ancestors since the spirit realm was how they saw the world, but he knew it was not true, for the Conclave Eidola had long since met and debated that very issue and had declared it a heresy. A minor one, but a heresy, nonetheless.

  And for the first time in a long time, Ivrahim took out his amethyst eye for a reason other than cleaning, and he closed his living eye, and he wept.

  The tears eventually dried, and he sat and simply breathed. He could not have told you how long he sat there and thought of nothing, but when he opened his eyes, he found himself at peace, not blaming himself for the lost names. He mourned them, and hoped they were still written down at the sending tower, but he didn’t blame himself, not for sleeping, nor for running out of paper.

  He thought, then, of the lives of all those thousands, and the loves they must have had, and the labors they must have toiled at, and the places they must have seen, and of even their fears they must have had, and for the first time in a long time, his world expanded past his tower, past his beautiful little patch of desert that others might see only as a dusty wasteland.

  And he stood, and walked to the railing, and he looked out over the desert, and for the first time in many years, he began to think of the future. Realized he was no old man yet, that he might yet rejoin civilization— if the Wrack left anything behind it. And he thought of his draw
ings and his knowledge of the desert plants and desert creatures. Ivrahim began dreaming of his great work, of a great illustrated book detailing the plants and animals of the desert. He thought of attending the Collegium for training to use spinel, and his mind came alive with questions, and plans, and thoughts for the future.

  And decades later, when the great scholar was in a particularly pensive mood, he would open his desk in his lavish house in Ladreis, and take out a thick, lovingly handbound volume. And in that volume lay pages filled with thousands and thousands of handwritten names, all long since transcribed to obelisks and nothing else. He had never learned who had sent them or from where. Many of the pages were spotted with tearstains, much of the writing was barely legible, and the pages were yellow with age.

  And Ivrahim would sigh, and mourn still for all the names that were lost.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Like Water Through A Sieve

  Healer Benen cursed as he dropped his knife again. He glared at it, then at the butter, then at his hunk of bread.

  He contemplated doing a bit more cursing, but sighed and reached to pick up the knife once more. His blackened fingers lacked the dexterity to pick it up off the flat table without cutting himself, so he had to slowly drag it until the handle projected off the side of the table, then try to grasp it more with his palm than his fingers, which was hardly a good position to spread butter with.

  Benen actually managed to get a little butter on the knife this time before he dropped it.

  Snarling, Benen picked up his hunk of bread by pressing it between his palms and jammed the whole thing into the butter, smearing it all about. He then shoved it at his face and took a vicious, tearing bite.

  “I think,” Nalda said, coming into his quarters unannounced, “you’ve quite thoroughly murdered that bread.”

  Benen just glared at her.