Shower of Stones

by Zachary Jernigan

  But Fyra had already disappeared. A second later, she reappeared at Shavrim’s back. After a brief pause, she closed her eyes tightly and thrust her ghostly hands into his shoulder.

  Shavrim gasped and the girl cried out. Screams ripped from both of their chests, creating a disharmony that grated awfully upon the ears.

  ‡

  They struggled: he, away from her, and she, away from him. Her arm seemed stuck inside the man’s flesh, though such a thing was clearly impossible in her insubstantial state. The screaming continued, un-abated—Fyra continuously, a siren screech unhindered by lungs, Shavrim pausing only for harsh gasps of air—while both sought to undo what had occurred.

  Vedas kept his blade pressed to the flesh of Shavrim’s quivering throat, not in the least dismayed by the cut he created there. He had never slit a throat, but he knew the difference between a shallow wound and a killing wound. He knew it by feel.

  “What’s happening?” he shouted to Churls. Berun closed around Shavrim and held him down, avoiding contact with where he and Fyra were fused.

  “No idea!” she answered, taking one step in his direction, only to take one step back. “Fyra! What are you doing? How can I help you?”

  The girl brought her teeth together, altering the pitch of her agony without lowering the volume. Her voice resounded inside Vedas, settling in the pit of his gut, in his bones. His temples throbbed. It took a will to stand: he fought the temptation to simply let his knees fail beneath him.

  Shavrim’s voice grew hoarse. He coughed between breaths, flecking the ground with blood.

  Churls’s indecision had come to an end. She ran forward and knelt at her daughter’s back, thrusting her hands through the immaterial body, placing her palms flat upon Shavrim’s shoulder, just where the girl’s wrists entered. She leaned her head forward—into Fyra’s own, creating the illusion that they shared a skull. Churls shook as she pushed, clenching her jaw against the vicious rattling of her teeth. Her breathing came in quick, shallow bursts.

  She closed her eyes, and the girl’s opened. White smoke poured out, evaporating above Fyra’s head. The girl’s lips came together, shutting off her scream so suddenly that Vedas flinched. Still, a humming issued from within her: the sound of her pain continuing behind her sealed lips, building up within her small form. She rocked back and forth in time with Churls, and gradually, hairsbreadth by hairsbreadth, more and more of her wrists came free.

  Shavrim’s screaming intensified with each pull, raw like a wound ground in glass.

  Berun kept his broad hands on the man’s upper arm and thigh, holding him down. Vedas thanked fate for it, too: without the constructed man’s help, Shavrim’s seizures would surely have prevented Churls from assisting Fyra. The girl would have been thrown around like a ragdoll.

  Vedas kept the blade to Shavrim’s neck while circling around his head, coming to Churls’s side. He reached for her, intent on helping in any way he could. By pulling with her or merely laying a hand on her shoulder. If power could be transmitted through Churls to Fyra, then surely …

  “No!” mother and daughter yelled in unison, halting their movements. Fyra’s radiance doubled, tripled. A metallic sheen fell over Churls, as though she were reflected in a silvered mirror.

  Vedas reached forward again, only to be stopped as Churls’s head snapped up. Her face had taken on a harsh angularity. Her eyes were two golden slivers of light.

  “No, brother,” she said. “Let us do this work. Afterwards, you do yours.”

  She turned back to her task, the appearance of the goddess fading.

  Fyra and Churls began moving once more, a moan escaping their lips, increasing in volume until it was an oddly-pitched chorus, as of a hundred voices howling—

  —and, for a moment, appearing at their backs, disappearing through the temple’s back wall, rank upon increasing rank—

  —kneeling, hands upon each others’ shoulders—

  —rocking back and forth, in time with Churls and Fyra, adding weight to their struggle—

  The dead, coming to aid one of their own.

  Vedas blinked and they disappeared, leaving the afterimage tattooed upon his eyelids.

  Below him, Shavrim cried out again and again, a series of hoarse, surely agonizing coughs. Fyra had managed to pull nearly half of her hand free.

  “Hold steady, Vedas,” Berun cautioned.

  Vedas looked down to see the tip of his sword in the dirt. He pressed it home once more.

  Churls’s movements became increasingly jerky. Now, her elbows were locked. Only her neck and shoulders moved back and forth.

  Nonetheless, it was enough. Finally, it was enough.

  With a gasp from both parties, they fell back—Churls onto the ground, Fyra partway submerged in the ground at her side, half-in, half-out as though she were floating on her back on the surface of a salt lake.

  Shavrim gave one last gasp and went slack, head lolling on the ground.

  Vedas dropped his sword and knelt at Churls’s side. Her pulse was strong but irregular. Her breathing came in jerky inhalations and shuddering exhalations, in through the nose and out through barely parted lips. Under her eyelids, her eyes swam in twitchy patterns. He watched her for the space of a dozen breaths and then willed his suit to unmask his face. Mind struck unfathomably blank, a sound in his skull like the hiss of calm waves, he bent to kiss her.

  “Vedas.” Berun’s voice seemed to arrive from a great distance away, his methodical, accented speech tinny in Vedas’s ears. “What are you doing?”

  “This,” Vedas answered. He pressed his lips to hers, and the world dissolved.

  ‡

  The sun hung directly before him, though he did not shield his eyes. He stared at it directly for an indeterminate time, several heartbeats or the better part of an hour, wondering at its appearance. He had never before noticed, but it was not a stable, unvarying thing. The sun pulsed, expanding and contracting slightly. It breathed, varying its light in intensity from one moment to the next.

  Someone squeezed his hand.

  He shook his head, and finally registered his surroundings

  He stood on a vast, red-soiled plain carpeted in white and yellow flowers that swayed in the breeze, moving like the surface of the sea. The horizon was close, a knife’s edge or a table-end. It smelled as it always did on the outskirts of Danoor, away from cooking fires, inefficient plumbing, and the press of bodies.

  He breathed in the ancient, baked dust smell of the desert, and knew.

  The plains of the Aroonan mesas were a holy place. None but the Aroya people and their closest descendents were allowed to walk on the heights. This restriction was one of the oldest and most binding rules of the Knosi people.

  He could not bring himself to care about trespassing. His mind moved glacially, catching up to his curiosity slowly.

  Someone squeezed his hand, and he turned.

  Churls stood at his side, the fingers of her left hand entwined in his right. His naked right hand, he noted by feel.

  He looked down. His suit had retreated far up his arms and legs. The borderline between skin and suit was chaotic, appearing almost like the torn edges of multiple strips of fabric. Centered upon his chest was a perfect circle of flesh. Small holes in the elder-cloth peppered out from it, forming a five-limbed swirling pattern that extended onto his shoulders and arms. He had never chosen to make such designs upon his suit. Point in fact, he doubted he possessed the skill necessary to make such a thing occur.

  Examining the design, he registered a second shock.

  Where exposed, his skin reflected the slanting sunlight as though it had been flecked in metallic dust—as though he had been at work at a grinding wheel, honing the edge of a tool. He scratched at the portion of his exposed chest, and then stared at his upraised hand. He made a fist, and the skin of his knuckles did not pale slightly as it stretched over the bone underneath: instead, each knuckle warmed in color, glowing bronze under his nearly black skin.r />
  He looked at Churls again. Her skin had once again taken on a metallic aspect to match his own. Silver to his bronze. Vaguely, muzzy-head, he recognized the significance of this.

  She smiled at him oddly. The lines of her face were subtly wrong. No, even its structure was wrong, marked by higher cheekbones and a thinner jaw. The skin of her face seemed too tight, stretched taut and glistening over the bones of her skull.

  His lips formed two names, but he spoke neither.

  Churls. Ustert.

  Her smile widened, revealing two rows of small, perfectly straight teeth, lacking any gap between her two incisors. His cock stirred, and he grimaced, tightening his suit around his genitals, clamping down physically on his arousal. Without taking his eyes off Churls, he rubbed at his jawline, finding it smooth, as hairless as that of a child’s. His scalp, too, was without a hint of budding hair. His hands felt oddly outsized, palm too broad over his mouth, fingers extending too far around his cranium.

  He searched for words to express his concern. He wondered if it would even be wise to do so. He did not want to reveal more of his own ignorance, having revealed enough ignorance to account for several lifetimes.

  “Quit worrying,” a voice said. “You’re safe here.”

  Fyra stood before them, her expression calm. Unlike when they had met, she was now painted in the shades of life. Her pale, freckled skin shone with an inner light. Her eyes were liquid, the color of seawater. When she grinned at him, he returned the expression automatically, unselfconsciously. He had once, as a child, smiled that way. He drew strength from the solidity of her presence.

  “You’re not completely you, Vedas,” she said. “Neither is Mama. I couldn’t prevent bringing something of them here with you. They wanted to see this, I think.”

  “What?” he asked. “Wanted what?”

  “Vedas,” Churls said. “Do you know where we are?”

  He shook his head.

  “We’re in the land of the dead. A vision, sustained by those who have passed.”

  He tore his eyes away from Fyra, though breaking the contact between them took a physical effort.

  “How do you know this?” he asked. “This is all your doing, the two of you?”

  Churls nodded to Fyra with an expression of unclouded affection Vedas had never before seen. “A lot can be passed between a mother and daughter, in the moments where they struggle together. We know each other better now—far, far better than in life, undoubtedly. And it’s not our vision completely, Vedas. We’re not alone.”

  Between heartbeats, an army of thousands grew behind Fyra, silent and arrayed in every style of dress the world knew. Vedas’s gaze passed over those closest to him. The sun shone through a few of their bodies as though they were formed from glass. Most did not visibly breathe, for why should they? Some were stiff and gray, granite statues rather than men. Many were strangely flat, an image on a canvas. Not one appeared as substantial, as concrete, as Fyra.

  He recalled her claiming to be better than anybody, ever, and he no longer doubted it.

  The girl stepped forward, taking his left hand. Together, they faced the dead.

  ‡

  For a time, nothing moved, and Vedas became aware of a sound.

  A low thrum.

  The first hint of the ocean lapping upon the shore.

  Thunder, so faint that it could have been imagined.

  It was all of these sounds, but it was also a symphony of voices. He knew this, and did not know how he knew it.

  The dead could not hide their thoughts, not completely. They wanted to be heard.

  “Magess Um,” Fyra said. “Tell him what you told me.”

  One among the assembled ranks stepped forward. Skeletally thin and nearly translucent, she was a mere whisper of a person, wrinkled and wrapped in dun robes. Despite her worn and watered appearance, she held her chin up, holding Vedas’s stare. She did not stoop, and stood only an inch or two shorter than him. She could have been his grandmother, such was the similar hue of her skin, the nap of her hair, and the straight breadth of her shoulders.

  “This is Jojore Um, former Magess of the Knosi Kingdom under Queen Medn,” Fyra whispered. Vedas looked down at her, surprised by the note of respect in her voice. “She is the oldest of us, much older than I knew any of us were. She has experience no one else has, by thousands of years. It is an honor to talk to her. Listen.”

  Jojore did not smile. She did not even open her mouth.

  Vedas Tezul, weak-blooded cousin, she said directly into his mind. Hers was a flat, haughty rasp of a voice, heavily accented though comprehensible. I am not pleased to meet you. Nor am I impressed by what I see. Regardless, you are standing here before me. You are at a crossroads, with the fate of all life drifting in the wind. Wish that it were otherwise, it matters not at all. You will have to do.

  Vedas frowned, but not at her words, insulting thought they were. A series of nearly colorless slowly-moving images of himself accompanied her speech, forming in his mind and quickly collapsing, as though she were shuffling through a bystander’s memories of him.

  … ten or eleven years old, running along an avenue in Golna, carefree…. older, into his early twenties, thinner and likely stronger than he was now, lifting an opponent amid the chaos of a street battle…. holding the body of Sara Jol…. and only days past, atop Fesuy Amendja’s stronghold, facing the man he had then known as The Tamer.

  Yes. Him, Jojore said. You are not to doubt this man, Shavrim Coranid. And yet you are not to trust him. He is legion inside himself, and there are worse than the one the girl just saved you from. There are worse than even the being Shavrim is now suspects. He has forgotten much that is a danger to you, to himself.

  “How do you know this?” he asked. “Why should we trust you?”

  Fyra dropped her head and groaned.

  Jojore’s expression hardened. You will address me by my title. You will call me Magess Um. I am doing you a favor, never forget it nor doubt me. I know these truths because I know the relic Shavrim claims to have been.

  She sneered, and an image came to Vedas of Shavrim, naked, painted in swirling patterns from head to toe. He stood on a battlefield, alone, breathing heavily and surrounded by corpses. I was one among the dead who helped him see likely paths to the future. I would not discuss with him the fates of goat herders or fisherman. I would only speak to him matters of importance, of life and death. I grew to know him. I heard him when he came back into the world, just as I hear whenever he takes that aspect.

  “You know who he really is—who he claims to be?” he asked. She scowled, and he forced himself to add her title.

  I do. And he more than claims. He is what he says he is. I am not blind, as you clearly are. I know his nature just as I know your own, beyond the thin shield of your mind, your fragile skin and bone. She turned her head to Churls. As I know who you are. You are both ridden, hosts to souls older and more powerful than any in the history of the world excepting Adrash and Shavrim. They should not be here, but it is beyond our will to keep them out entirely.

  Vedas winced as two blinding images of Ustert and Evurt seared into his mind’s eye.

  … the two of them, svelte and severe as knifeblades, silver and bronze, locked in a violently passionate embrace on a massive bed, in the very room he recognized from his own dreams…. and then, both standing, hand in hand, alongside four others, Shavrim among them.

  The image passed too quickly to gather much detail beyond this, but Vedas imagined that one among them possessed wings.

  Jojore nodded. The pretty one. His name was Orrus Dabulakm. He was Shavrim’s favorite. And this one …

  The image returned, held. It shifted suddenly, and he stared directly at the tallest of the six figures. She—or he: Vedas could not tell—seemed to stare directly at him with dull, featureless eyes. Thorns grew from her shoulders, elbows, and knees. She held in her hand a short whip.

  … is Sradir Ung Kim.

  Her sneer r
eturned. Yes, the … artificial man … he too is ridden, as the relic Shavrim claims. He is not his own creature. She looked pointedly at Fyra, then at Churls. But he has never been his own creature, has he?

  Churls shifted her weight from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable. “That’s not my secret to tell,” she said. She opened her mouth to speak again, and then closed it. She angled her head forward to peer at Fyra. “Why did she look at you?”

  Jojore made a cutting motion with her left hand before Fyra could respond. Enough, you foolish people. Enough secrets. Time is not infinite. She met Vedas’s gaze again. There will be a reckoning for the one called Berun. It will come from two directions: from Sradir Ung Kim, and from his creator Ortur Omali. Sradir will act as it will—no, I cannot read its intention—but Omali is known to us, to many of the dead. He cast an immense shadow in life and is still felt here from his place in limbo. He is wounded, but still the most powerful agent of those who would see the Needle fall and rupture the crust of Jeroun, extinguishing life’s fire.

  “Churls,” Vedas said quietly. “You knew of this … possession?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It wasn’t my secret to t—”

  “Shut up,” he said. He shook his head, marveling at everything that had been kept from him, all that would continue to be kept from him if he did not insist on being enlightened fully. Keenly aware of his anger, he nonetheless understood it as an unproductive emotion, a petty thing that could not be allowed to last: Churls had had her reasons for keeping him in the dark, as had Berun. He would not blame them, no, yet he would not remain in ignorance.

  Their hesitation could not be allowed to shape events.

  He released Churls’s and Fyra’s hands. The world dimmed perceptibly—perhaps, he reasoned, because he could not exist alone in the world of the dead. He likely did not possess the understanding or will sufficient to sustain the link.

  As if to confirm his suspicion, Churls reached for his hand.

  He stepped forward, out of her reach, and gripped Jojore Um’s upper arm.

  The texture of her skin, like volcanic glass. The widening and narrowing of her dark eyes. During several long seconds, he seemed to stare at her through a darkening tunnel, the bright dream of the dead fading around him in increasingly constricting waves.