Child of Sorrows

by Michaelbrent Collings

  He knocked quietly on the wood door. The windows beside it – the store looked to be a leatherworking shop – were dark and empty as the eyes of dead men. He waited, and a moment later knocked harder – this time with one of his canes, rapping the metal against the door hard enough to leave a dent.

  "Open up!" he shouted after a moment. The noise broke the silence that hung over the town like a pall, and it nearly made him jump. He hadn't realized how –

  (afraid)

  – jumpy he was until this moment. He looked around the street, wondering if anyone would come to a door to look out, to see who was yelling.

  No one.

  He knocked again, now hammering both canes against the door. "Open up!" he hollered. "Open up, I'm a man of the Gods, so get the door open, curse you!"

  He heard his voice, noted it growing thin and stretched as a parchment left to dry too long in the sun. Fear sank tendrils into his bones, made his muscles clench tightly.

  The sun, he realized abruptly, was completely gone. It was full night now. No stars twinkled. The only light came from the sliver of a moon and from the lanterns that hung on the sides of the auto-car.

  I don't even remember lighting them. But I must have.

  Akiro suddenly felt very alone, and very old. Conscious of his inability to –

  (flee run get away!)

  – move quickly in an emergency. He turned and began moving back toward the auto-car, which waited in twin globes of light cast by the lanterns. Bright, safe.

  Something made a noise behind him. The click of a latch being loosed. The creak of a door swinging slowly open.

  Akiro stiffened. He didn't know what he expected, but it was something sharp and bloody and terrible. Not the small, quavering voice that said, "Will you take me to my parents?"

  Akiro turned back to the leatherworking shop. The door had been opened, and a young, very slight boy stood framed in the darkness beyond. His hair was so blonde it was nearly white; straight, hanging down to his shoulders. His face was smudged and dirty, as was his clothing. He wore what looked like a smaller version of the garb of an Academic: wool pants, a white shirt that buttoned up the front, and a vest over it. Add a small suit coat, a tie, and a fedora, and he would look like a tiny student at the Great University.

  An Academic's boy? Perhaps the child of a High Academic?

  Akiro couldn't tell everything about the boy, of course, but he could tell this: the child was terrified. His lip quivered, his dark eyes were open so wide they seemed cartoonish.

  "Will you?" he asked again.

  Akiro didn't know how to answer that. He took a wobbly step toward the boy, and the instant he did the child seemed to melt into the darkness behind him. Only his terror-filled eyes could be seen, white orbs floating through the black of the shop.

  "Don't," whispered the child, and in the single word Akiro heard myriad meanings: Don't come closer. Don't run away. Don't scare me.

  Don't hurt me.

  Akiro jerked to a stop, which wasn't as easy at his age as it had once been. He swayed a bit as he leaned on his canes, but managed not to lose his balance. After a moment he said, "It's all right, child. I'm not going to hurt you."

  The boy didn't reappear completely – still just a pair of eyes in the dark hole framed by the open door. "Where did they go?" he asked. His voice was not just afraid – not even terrified. It was something more. Something worse. The boy sounded haunted.

  "I don't know," said Akiro. He reached for the boy. Slowly. Not wanting him to disappear, not wanting him to flee. He felt for a moment as though he had found the only remaining soul alive in Ansborn. And if he lost sight of him, then Akiro would be alone and doomed to roam atop the mountains forever.

  "Let me help you, child," he said, speaking as much to calm himself as to reassure the boy. "Tell me what happened and let me help you."

  "They're gone," said the boy. "They came and then they went and then they were all gone."

  Akiro frowned, not sure how to take this. "What do you mean?" He took a halting step forward. The boy still didn't run, though Akiro sensed movement beyond the darkness. Sensed him getting ready to run. Akiro went still as a statue, even the trembling that so often plagued his muscles now gone, as though his entire being sensed how important this one moment was.

  The moment stretched into two. Nothing moved. The moon hung still overhead. Akiro finally – slowly – moved the cane from his right hand, hanging it over the crook of his left arm. He reached out his now-empty hand. "Boy," he said, "let me help you."

  The eyes continued staring from the darkness. Akiro looked at him without moving, blinking, breathing. He knew, somehow, that this was his last chance. That if he did the wrong thing the boy would flee and would never be found. He would become part of the night, and no more easily caught than the darkness itself.

  The eyes moved. They blinked. They shone with sudden tears. Then the boy threw himself forward. Akiro barely had time to prepare himself before the child barreled into him, wrapping tiny arms around his waist and sobbing into his robes.

  "Where are they? Where are they?" he whispered over and over. "Where did Mommy go? Where did Daddy go?" And then more weeping, more sobs, and then the words came again, asking questions for which Akiro had no answers.

  He looked up and down the street as the child clung to him. He should have cried out, called for help. But he didn't. Because now he knew, in a deep and certain part of him, that no one would come. The town was empty.

  Everyone was gone. Everyone but this child.

  Akiro held him until the sobs quieted, stood there under the light of a waning moon until all became silent and the world fell still. The boy still held him, and his robes were wet with tears, but no new tears fell. Akiro whispered "You're safe" over and over, but he wasn't really sure if he spoke to the child or to himself. He felt as though something cold and oily had crept into his bones.

  "What is your name, boy?" he said a moment later.

  The boy didn't answer, waiting long enough that Akiro wondered if he even had the mental ability to answer. Perhaps fear had scorched away everything but the ability to run and the simple questions, "Where's Mommy? Where's Daddy?"

  Then the child moved. He drew back so as to look up at Akiro. He probably had only six or seven Turns of life to him, but Akiro was small himself, and bent with age, so the child didn't have to move much to look straight into the priest's eyes.

  "I am called Cai," he said, and in his voice was an elegance that convinced Akiro: this was most definitely the child of an Academic, at the very least. Someone educated in both written and spoken word, and who had taught his or her child well.

  "What happened here?" asked Akiro.

  He tried to ask gently, quietly. Tried to make the question as simple and safe as possible. Even so, he thought for a moment Cai might run from him again. He had to force himself not to throw his arms around the child and clutch him to him; surely such a move would only make him panic all the more, and flee all the faster.

  Cai's head whipped around, looking up and down the street as though something might appear out of the night at any moment and pull them both away to a place too awful to see or contemplate. "I don't…," he said. "I don't…." He threw himself forward, burying his face in Akiro's robes once more. "Take me away," he whispered.

  Akiro nodded. Part of his mind was saying that he must look around, that he should find out if anyone else was in this strange place, and if they knew anything of what had happened here. But that was only a small part. The greater portion of his mind screamed leave leave leave! and grew louder each time and knew that no matter how long or hard he looked, he would find no one else in this silent place.

  He gathered Cai to himself, and the two of them made their way to the auto-car. He opened the passenger door, and the boy climbed in and curled up in a ball on the seat. Akiro got in the other side. He moved the lever on the side of the wheel and the auto-car lurched forward, moving quickly to its top speed a
s they left of the town.

  Akiro didn't speak until the dark buildings had lost themselves in the deeper black of the night sky. Only then did he look to Cai. The boy was shivering. Akiro reached behind him. There was a seat behind them, and on the seat he had laid several bags with food, water. A blanket. He tossed the rough, wool fabric over the boy. Cai kept shivering, but nodded his thanks.

  Akiro still didn't speak. He needed to know what was happening – there was no way the timing of this strangeness was coincidental – but he didn't want to completely destroy the child's mind. He stayed silent, brooding about what he could do, how he could fix things.

  He suddenly wished Brother Scieran were here. His old student could be pigheaded at times, but at least he had a clear, intelligent pig's head. Akiro could have used some time with Brother Scieran to talk about what he had seen – or what he had not – during his stop in the town.

  "They're all dead," said the child. His words were still clipped in the manner of so many Academics: as though his teeth chewed each letter out in a precise pattern, with no more and no less spoken than was absolutely needed.

  Akiro was silent a moment after that, waiting to see if Cai would say more. When he didn't, he said, "How?"

  Cai shook his head. He played with the corner of the blanket, wringing it between nervous fingers. "I don't know. I was under the floor when it happened."

  "Under the floor?"

  Cai nodded. "Mother works leathers. Father," and Akiro noted they were "Mother" and "Father" now, not "Mommy" and "Daddy" – the child was struggling to get himself under control, "is usually at the University. But he came home to visit us. He and Mother were talking while she worked in the shop."

  He fell silent, and Akiro wondered if that was all the boy would say.

  I need to know more. Gods forgive me for pushing him, but I need to know.

  "What happened then?" he asked in the quietest voice he could muster.

  Cai chewed his lip for a moment. "There's a place. Under the floorboards of the shop. It's where Mother –" He broke off and flicked a glance at Akiro's robes.

  Akiro understood immediately. "I'm not a soldier or a tax man, Cai. Just a priest, and I have no interest in what you might have hidden down there. You don't even have to tell me, just tell me what happened while you were there."

  Cai nodded. "There's not much space down there. I can stand up, but Father says that'll only last another Turn or so." He grew somber, and Akiro suspected he was wondering what would happen when he reached that next Turn without a parent to see it – or if he would live to see it himself.

  "Could you see above?"

  Cai shook his head. "Not really. Light came down through the boards, enough that you could see what was under the floor when you were down there. But you couldn't see what was in the shop when you were down there. Just… shadows. Dark bits in the light that came down."

  "So you could see nothing at all?"

  Another moment of silence before Cai said, "There was a loud noise. Like a rush, like a river. Mother and Father said some –" He grimaced. "They said some things that would have landed me face down in the bathing trough with a soap stick in my mouth."

  In spite of the circumstances, Akiro had to stifle a chuckle at that. He remembered similar treatment at the hands of his own parents, the first time he chased his sister around the house, screaming an obscenity he had learned at school – not sure what it meant, really, but delighted at her shrieking reaction. Mum had jammed a soap stick in his mouth, then pushed him into a bucket of water long enough to make him gag on it.

  He'd never spoken profanity since then.

  Almost never. I'm only human.

  The traces of a smile that had appeared at the corners of his lips disappeared as he saw Cai. The boy certainly wasn't amused at the thought of his parents' words.

  Their last words.

  Solemnity returned, Akiro said, "After that?"

  Cai shook his head. His shoulders bobbed up and down in a quick shrug, and as they did Akiro noted how dirty his clothing was. Wondered how long he had been hiding under the floor. "After that, there were screams."

  Akiro felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature inside the auto-car. "Your parents?"

  "No," said Cai. "From other places in the town. Like people was – were," he said, grimacing as though disgusted with the error in word choice, "being massacred."

  "You didn't come up?" said Akiro.

  "Tried to. But Mother stamped down hard on the boards that ply up like she didn't want me coming up and I think…." His voice hitched, then he continued. "I think Father said, 'Stay.' So I stayed. But what if he didn't? What if she needed me to come up? What if I was wrong?"

  Akiro suspected the last questions weren't really directed at him; that they were the questions of a self-aware child who wondered if he had done the wrong thing at the worst possible time. He answered them anyway. "He did, boy. Your mother wanted you down there, your father said to stay, and they both meant you to listen." He looked away from his driving long enough to capture Cai's gaze. "Don't you ever doubt that. You did what your parents wanted you to do, and you did right in that."

  Cai nodded somberly after a moment. "There was a bright light then, so bright I had to look away, even down under the floor. Some noises…." He drifted away, frowning in confusion.

  "What noises?" asked Akiro.

  Cai shook his head. "I don't know. Like nothing I ever heard before. Loud, but quiet. I know that makes no sense, but it was like….." He looked hard at Akiro. "You know the First Story?"

  Akiro's lips pursed in dry amusement. "I've heard it a time or two."

  "The part when the Gods come down from the clouds, and give life to the mountain? Sometimes I try to imagine that, and…. The sound that happened while it was so bright, that's the sound I have in my head. The sound of Gods coming down. Bringing life." He shook his head. "Only this wasn't life. It was bright, it was a sound that shook my center. And when the light left…."

  Akiro waited. The wheels of the air-car spun, pulling the vehicle away from the dark town behind.

  And what of the next? Will it be the same? Just dark homes grinning like skulls in the night, and no one at home?

  "What happened when the light left?" Akiro said. His voice was hoarse. He needed a drink.

  He looked over at Cai again. The boy stared straight ahead, looking out the front window of the auto-car but seeing nothing at all. "They were gone," he said. "They were all gone."

  8

  Sword screamed, and fell, and the fall was forever and all – a universe and an eternity all wrapped in one terrible package that sought to swallow her up and yet which never would. Not until she reached the clouds.

  And yet, as long and as far as the fall seemed, the scream coming from her mouth seemed somehow to be longer and farther. Not just sound, but depth and breadth and a fullness of distance and time and then more somehow added to the infinity of all.

  She wondered, in a small part of herself, how that could be.

  She wondered, in a larger part of herself, what lay below the clouds.

  She feared the answers to both.

  She breathed – finally –

  (how long to fall, that there are breaths between shrieks!)

  – and in that moment's respite from the screams that she had become, she realized there were other sounds.

  The clap of thunder, the roiling of the mists that shrouded the mountain below.

  The ragged gasp of her breath.

  The rush of the wind past her ears.

  The last sucked her breath away, dragged the next round of screams from her before they were born. And she would have been grateful for that – for a respite from herself – but the rush of the wind grew and grew until it was painful. The air flowed over and through her ears, rasped the insides of her skull until it felt like her brain was being flayed. The sound grew louder –

  (a river)

  – and louder –
/>   (a storm)

  – and louder –

  (the great tempest of the First Story)

  – and finally she was screaming again and wanted to put her hands over her ears but she couldn't because she was falling and she was spinning and her arms flung to the sides and then up and then down in the mad pirouette of a drunken dancer and then she saw the clouds and the rushing grew and she realized it was not water, was not the storm, was not even the air instead it was something else something she knew something –

  And she jerked to a sudden halt.

  No. Not sudden. It just seems sudden because the fall is over.

  She thought at first that she had fallen through the clouds, and would see at last what lay below. Every person – every person – who had descended to the mists had died. They had been found impaled on the spears around the castle within a day of the descent, many bearing mad expressions of terror so deep that those who saw them shuddered and looked away but never forgot.

  No one had ever seen the bodies placed. The nights it happened, evil mists of darkness rolled over the lands surrounding the castle. So thick they were like the clouds below the mountains. So dark they drove all away.

  And the bodies would be there the next morning. And people would not climb for a time.

  Is that what will happen now? What will happen to me?

  She feared, mostly. But she also looked forward to it. Because she had often wondered, and now at last she would know.

  But no. It was not to be. The clouds hung below her – no longer spinning, no longer rushing to meet her. Simply rolling and boiling in their never-ceasing tempest.

  The rushing sound continued, though. As though she were still falling. And she knew the sound. Knew it well.

  She craned her neck to see above and behind her, suddenly aware of the hands that gripped her. Hands covered in armor that made them huger than those of any man.

  Behind her, the metal helm of the man she had fought – the man who had twice vanquished her – split in half. The old man met her eyes.

  Then they flew.