by Wight, Will
On its own, the Mist is harmless. We live in it, work in it. But when it senses prey, it’s more deadly than a wildfire. Everyone around is in danger.
The foreman was the one who finally got Adrian’s head in the noose. Her beetle-black eyes were cold when she ordered the drop.
They lifted him up, pulled the rope tight, and dropped him short.
He kicked a few times, the Mist surged up, and then they both went quiet.
“Well,” the foreman said, “that’s that. I’ll expect to see you all at work in two hours.”
Without another word, everyone went home. Even me. I couldn’t sleep, but I tried; I knew I would need my strength for today’s work. Besides, disposing of madmen was familiar work for anyone who stayed in Asphodel any length of time.
Not that it was usually quite so…graphic. Or personal. But I repeated that to myself until the sun rose higher and the bell chimed, letting all the harvest crews know to report to their fields.
As I did every morning, I picked up my equipment: hoe, gloves, hat, spade, shears. I made sure it was all in place, and I made the usual hike down to the Fields.
When I got to the edge of town, a little collection of propped-up wooden shacks next to the tangled rainbows of the Midnight Fields, I noticed two things. First, no one was working. Everyone on my crew was gathered up in the town, silent, tools hanging forgotten at their sides.
Second, a woman with loose, stringy hair was walking from worker to worker, asking a question that I couldn’t quite make out. A woman in a white nightgown.
Eventually, as I knew she would, she made her way over to me.
“Have you seen Adrian?” Phelia Corydon asked. She had panic in her eyes, but none made it into her voice. “I woke up, and he wasn’t there.”
Later, the foreman made it very clear that I should not have told her. She almost had me brought up on charges before the Overlord. By telling Phelia what happened to her husband, I might have made her vulnerable to the Mist, and thus endangered all of us.
But as it happens, Phelia Corydon acquitted herself well. I told her the story that I’ve just told you, and she didn’t scream. She didn’t attack me, or break down into tears, as I might have in her place.
Like a true woman of Asphodel, she made a mask of her face. Then she spat at my feet.
Without looking at anyone else, she walked into town. I don’t know where she was going, but I heard later that she had reclaimed Adrian’s body and was taking the case to the Overlord. It’s probably true.
So I’ve told you the whole story, even the parts that I should probably leave out, for my reputation’s sake. But as I said already, I don’t have much of a reputation.
I know, I should have realized immediately what the Mist had done to us. I should have insisted that we take Adrian inside, wait for morning, and examine the evidence.
It hasn’t been long. I’m still shaken by the whole thing. I’ve had enough practice staying calm that you’d think I’d be able to keep my head in any situation, but I’ll tell you what: this one gnaws at me.
But, given time, I’ll pack it away. Shove it down. I’ll bury the memory so deep that I don’t feel anything, so it can’t be used against me. As much as I can, I will forget Adrian Corydon.
I have to.
In their attempts at self-preservation, Travelers of Asphodel often throw away the only parts of themselves worth protecting.
-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 4: Rose
MAELSTROM OF STONE
There is always time for patience…
-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 5: Green
When Chloe etched the final rune into her knuckle-sized sapphire, it felt like being let out of prison.
She dropped the sapphire—cut into two dozen facets, all covered in fresh, blocky runes—on her workbench, next to a sprawling collection of her tools.
“That’s one sapphire heartstone done!” she called into the swirling tunnels of her house. “In record time! You should go ahead and retire, I’ll take over for you.”
She always tried to make jokes when she needed to leave the house in a hurry. Sometimes she could slip away while her grandfather chuckled.
Chloe pulled her padded leather jacket on with one hand and opened the door with the other. Maybe, if she were only quick enough, she could make it outside.
The scuff of her grandfather’s slippers behind her warned Chloe that she had been too slow.
She spun around, favoring him with a bright smile. “I was just heading out, grandfather…I mean, ah, Grandmaster Ornheim. Can I get you anything while I’m out? Something to eat, or…”
Chloe’s grandfather, whose name was once Deiman Uracius, looked like nothing more than a village child’s idea of a wizard. He sported a white beard long enough to reach his belt, had he worn one. But of course he didn’t, because that would mean forgoing his traditional thick, brown robes. Rings of precious metals and gems flashed on each of his fingers: plain halfsilver bands; gold rings set with sunstone; rune-etched rubies; obsidian bands with small caps of iridian sand. On his face, as always, he wore that small, infuriating, invincible half-smile.
Nothing will ever disturb me, that expression said. Nothing ever could. If gold coins rained from the sky I would not laugh, and if the sun failed to rise I would not weep.
Grandmaster Ornheim laced his ring-speckled fingers together and fixed his granddaughter with that same not-quite-smile. “I am proud to be your grandfather, Chloe, you know that. But it is important you not call me that.”
Chloe would be lucky to get out of this without a twenty-minute sermon on Enosh cultural propriety. “I know that, Grandmaster, I apologize.”
The Grandmaster took no more notice of her words than a golem would have. Less, if the golem were well made. “Not even in private. Our habits in private never fail to carry over into the public sphere.”
“Perhaps the reverse is true as well.” Chloe snapped her fingers as though she had just realized something. “That would explain all the lectures! You don’t give enough of them to your students, so all the undelivered speeches bubbling up within you must carry over into the private sphere.”
Her grandfather’s patient smile didn’t flicker. “Your tolerance is nearly inhuman. You absorb every word of my wisdom with the patience of a mountain, and yet you still find time to put every one of your tools up in its proper place. How do you do it?”
She was becoming too predictable; he hadn’t even glanced over at the workbench. Chloe let her shoulders slump—she needed to show him that she wasn’t happy about this—and marched over to the workbench, hurriedly scooping up her tools and dumping them into the appropriate rack, drawer, or box.
Grandmaster Ornheim strolled over to stand beside her, plucking her carved sapphire up from the surface of the workbench. “This is functional. Clean. I can see how this might work quite well, actually.”
“Of course,” Chloe said, but she couldn’t help a little spark of pride. She had worked for hours on that heartstone, after all, even if she hadn’t done it willingly.
“Have you any thoughts on the golem?”
“Oh! Yes, hang on…” after a moment she found it: a glass jar of sparkling golden sand. Iridian.
She poured a handful of iridian into her hand, and then willed it into the air. A tendril of sand rose, following her thoughts, spreading out into a gleaming sheet of tiny stars.
“I was thinking something like a bird, you see.” The sand condensed into a glittering model of a stationary bird. She wasn’t sure what kind of bird it was—there were no birds native to Ornheim, so she had only ever seen them on trips outside—but this model looked like a bird to her. “I’d like a light rock for the body, maybe something volcanic, I’m not sure.”
“And the skystones?”
“Here, here, and here.” At each word, a hole appeared in the iridian bird: one each at the tip of the tail and at the end of both wings. “Before you say anything, I know it will be a little unbal
anced, so I’d plan to put the heartstone here, in the middle of its back.” Some of the spare iridian floated around the bird’s back, encircling where the heartstone would go.
This was the one part of the process to which Chloe had actually invested time and effort. Anyone could carve the runes of a heartstone; the process was mostly tedious memorization and hours of mindless drudgery. She would rather spend her time in the mines. Designing the golem itself, on the other hand, actually took a degree of creativity, even artistry.
Plus, in her personal opinion, skystones were amazing. With only a little mental effort, an Ornheim Traveler could make those little blue stones rise and hover in midair. She had begun practicing with skystones since she had first felt her bond to Ornheim’s vast earth.
Grandmaster Ornheim waved his hand, and the iridian wrenched itself from Chloe’s control, flowing back into the jar in a sparkling golden river. One tendril of sand even reached back out and pulled the lid back on. “Very good. You’ll be ready to assemble your golem soon, but don’t get ahead of yourself. You’ve got plenty of time.”
This from the man who would spend six weeks studying a block of marble before he first touched it with his chisel. “Yes, Grandmaster.”
Before her grandfather could say anything else, Chloe turned and pulled open the door. Some of her friends were going Beneath today, and if she was lucky, she might get there in time to join them...
Grandmaster Ornheim’s hand rested softly on her shoulder, and she almost screamed in frustration.
“I hope you’re not leaving quite yet.”
“No, I’m not,” Chloe said, in the most unconvincing tone possible.
“You need to—”
“Yes, I know. You tell me every time.”
The Grandmaster stroked his beard, always playing the venerable old teacher. “You do? Then tell me, what must you do before leaving?”
Chloe briefly wondered if she could just start running. How far would she make it before her grandfather brought her back? It was an unfair thought, of course, since Grandmaster Ornheim would never physically stop her from leaving. His disapproval, along with the inevitable lecture when she returned, was enough to keep her in place.
Besides, she owed him more than that. Even if he sometimes made her want to slam her face into the side of a boulder.
“An Ornheim Traveler must always stay and watch the Cycle,” she recited. “It is by the flow of the Maelstrom that our lives are guided, and we must respect that flow.”
“Lest we be crushed beneath it,” her grandfather finished. “Sit. Watch the Cycle. The City Beneath has existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. It will still be there in an hour.”
An hour? In her estimation, she could learn the Cycle safely in one look. It wasn’t that much different from glancing at a clock, after all. Not in principle, anyway.
Chloe walked up to the edge of the cliff outside their house and leaned on the railing. Her home—like everyone’s home, here in Ornheim—was carved into the side of one of the more stable mountains. A path three or four paces wide stretched out from the front of the house like a porch, terminating in a seemingly endless drop down to Ornheim’s dark surface. Only Master-level Ornheim Travelers were allowed to descend that far.
Master Ornheim Travelers, or those few who fell through the thin wooden safety railing. Chloe didn’t spare much thought for the drop, though. She had lived with that threat for most of her life. And she had better things to worry about.
Above her whirled a Maelstrom of Stone, flying and dancing in an endless cycle.
Rivers of shining golden iridian drifted by, twisting like giant ribbons on an invisible breeze. A star-shaped chunk of rose quartz the size of a barn rolled in a lazy orbit around an inverted mountain with a flat top. It looked like it had been torn up from the ground by the roots. As Chloe watched, she saw specks of blue flickering toward the bottom of the floating island. It was kept aloft by veins of skystone, then.
A stone titan plodded by, looking like a craggy face the size of Chloe’s mountain. Its dull eyes were fixed on some invisible point in the distance. Some people built villages on stone titans; they avoided great danger, and tended to visit water sources quite often. Chloe could never imagine living on a mountain that wasn’t stationary, herself.
The sky of Ornheim remained in constant motion. There was no backdrop of sun or stars, as there might have been in the World Above, but layer after layer of spinning, walking, shifting, dancing, moving stone in every shape, size, and color. Legend had it that Ornheim was nothing more than an unimaginably vast cavern, with a ceiling out there in the distance, but Chloe didn’t place too much faith in that theory. For one thing, how would a roof that big stay up?
After only a few minutes of staring out at the Cycle, Chloe began to grow bored. The ribbons of iridian were circling her mountain, making a full round once every eight or nine minutes. The chunk of rose quartz, on the other hand, only took twenty-eight seconds to encircle its island, and was getting a little closer each time. The island itself seemed to drift randomly, though it looked mostly stable. The rose quartz star and its inverted island would crash together eventually, though that was hardly remarkable. Rocks the size of small towns slammed into each other all the time here, with a noise like thunder.
Nothing else even remotely interesting was happening nearby. She had a good grasp on the Cycle, or at least the part of it that affected her. What was she going to gain by standing here waiting? The Cycle took more than a few minutes to change.
Chloe had almost turned away when she noticed a flash of green on the surface of the floating island, maybe fifty paces away.
She spun back to look, since anything that deviated from the Cycle was worth investigation. But the island’s rose quartz “moon” quickly rose, blocking her view.
She waited the next fourteen seconds in utter impatience, mentally begging the chunk of rock to hurry up and cross over to the other side, so that she could see what was happening on the island’s surface.
After the most agonizing quarter of a minute she could remember, Chloe almost cheered when the chunk of pink quartz floated to the other side.
That was when she recognized what she had failed to notice before. The speck of green was not a rock formation, but a girl. A dark-haired, tan-skinned girl in a green dress.
Chloe let out an involuntary gasp. There was a girl, who looked to be less than Chloe’s own age, out in the Maelstrom itself. Alone. Even Grandmaster Ornheim would not have traveled beyond the mountain without a good reason and extensive preparation, and he likely would have brought help.
The spiky ball of rose quartz floated by on another orbit, reminding Chloe: it was going to crash into the island. It might take minutes, hours, or even a day, but when it eventually happened, that girl would die.
Saints above, what am I supposed to do?
“Grandfather!” Chloe screamed. She seemed unable to tear her eyes away from the girl in the green dress. No, I can’t call him that, he won’t answer to that. “Grandmaster Ornheim!” No response. “Grandmaster!”
He may have left. That wouldn’t be too unusual; he was a Grandmaster, after all. Ornheim was his backyard, and he could come and go as he pleased. Did she have time to go look for him? Did she have any other options?
Her grandfather, she knew, would tell her to wait. Observe. There is always time for patience; that was one of his favorite sayings. Another of his most common: You must learn the board before playing your first piece.
Chloe respected her grandfather, and patience was the way of Ornheim. Carving a golem’s hearstone took weeks, and building its body could take months. Learning to read the Cycle took years; learning to navigate the Maelstrom took a lifetime. There were no shortcuts in Ornheim, and endurance always yielded results. But she simply could not justify doing nothing while a girl died in front of her eyes.
She wasn’t sure what exactly she could do, but surely something would be better than nothing. Th
at, or it would result in two bodies lost on Ornheim’s surface instead of only one.
One of the giant ribbons of iridian floated by, and Chloe got a terrible idea. Before she could think about it too much, she vaulted over the railing and into empty space.
For a sickening instant, her stomach lurched, and she wished with all her being that she could take it back. She was going to fall into the hazy, brown distance, and—while she didn’t know exactly what waited on the ground—she was pretty sure that she would get there by means of a sudden, violent stop.
Then, in response to her mental screams, the river of iridian flowed down and cushioned her fall. Not that it felt much like a cushion at all, really; it felt more like slamming face-first into a beach. But she would take what she could get.
She had initially imagined using the iridian to form a bridge and letting the girl cross. The problem was that it was far beyond the scope of her abilities with the substance. Maybe Grandmaster Ornheim or one of his top students could do that, but Chloe certainly couldn’t. Not yet. Commanding iridian took great concentration and physical stamina, both of which increased exponentially when you tried to do it at a distance. Chloe’s only hope was to stick as close to the iridian as possible, carrying herself over to the island, and then hopefully both of them back.
Seconds in, she started to shake. It felt as though she were trying to drag a cart uphill. Soon after, she started to sweat.
It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought. Maybe I’m using too much power. Experimentally, she relaxed her mental grip on the sand.
Immediately, the gritty golden cloud started to disperse, and she began to fall right through.
She tightened her grip once more before she had fallen more than a few inches. After about ten seconds of silent, terrified shaking, she got her flying carpet of sand moving once again.
