Gradient

by Anders Cahill

It was Reacher.

  His tiny green body lay in front of me, eyes closed. The tendrils of his hands, normally alive and fluid in an unending hum of motion, hung limp. I knelt down and touched his forehead. His skin felt cold.

  “This is all you’re good for,” I said, standing up. “Isn’t it? Your brilliant, incredible mind, and all you use it for is death.”

  “It is my gift,” he said.

  “It’s your curse, and it ends now.”

  “Enough,” the shipheart said with a bored look. “Kill him.” He flicked his hands towards me. My friends stood up and started moving towards me.

  The ground shook.

  I held out my arms wide in a gesture of receiving. “I’m sorry I let it come to this,” I whispered to them.

  Xayes was the first to reach me. He held a vicious, curved dagger. He lifted it in the air.

  Before he could plunge it into me, the walls of the ziggurat blurred and pixelated like a poorly focused video, and when the image righted itself, Xayes crumpled to the floor.

  The corrupted shipheart was standing now, a look of concern on his face.

  Xander ran towards his brother. “Xayes!” He looked up at me. “What have you done?” Then the world distorted again, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell beside his brother.

  The shipheart came striding down the stairs, pushing past Neka, Adjet, and Sid. “What makes you think you can succeed where that pathetic heart failed?” he said, pointing at Reacher’s body. “Do you truly believe I would build a network without redundancies? That you could just wipe it all away?”

  Sid collapsed on the floor. Adjet fell a moment later. The shipheart glanced back at them, then turned to me, narrowing his eyes.

  “Without the island,” I said, “there is no network.”

  I closed my eyes and saw the island in my mind’s eye. Saw it as it was before we began to build this city. Raw and pure. The sun rising above the distant, continental mountains. Gulls diving for fish in the channel that separates the island from the mainland. The murmur of the ocean, kissing the shore.

  “Goodbye,” I whispered, opening my eyes.

  Neka looked at me, sadness on her face. Her eyes rolled back and she collapsed to the ground.

  The world around us distorted again, worse this time, colors inverting, blots of static consuming the walls and ceiling. The corrupted shipheart screamed with agony and lunged at me.

  A titanic crash echoed through the ziggurat. Pain erupted through my body. The island split inside of me.

  A circle of light opened high above me. Someone stood in the circle, a silhouette reaching towards me. I raised my arms to take the figure’s hands, but I was falling away from the light, down into the darkness

  Falling down.

  Darkness.

  Epilogue

  Tremors rattle the earth beneath my feet. The ocean roils and chops, threatening the mainland shore. A mile out to sea, I can see an island, and on that island stand the towers of a city the likes of which no people of Eaiph could have ever built.

  As I head for higher ground, I see a raft floating close to shore. Fierce waves buffet the vessel, hurling it on the rocks, a hundred yards from where I stand, making me wince. It’s doubtful anyone from this planet could survive a shipwreck like that. But maybe whoever is on that boat is not from this planet.

  I scramble across the slick boulders and reach the wreckage just as another wave breaks and rolls away again, sluicing fragments of wood from the sundered boat back into the water. Nothing else is moving. Smaller waves spit and break, but another big one is bound to come soon. I may only have a few moments to find whatever remains from the wreck.

  The man’s cloak is so dark and sodden that I don’t see him until I nearly trip over him.

  He is lying on his back, clutching a bundle to his chest. His face is weathered and gaunt, and a nasty gash parts his left cheek. His left eye is closed. A jagged scar runs from his forehead, through the wreckage of his right eye, and down his cheek, where the flesh congeals like melted wax, leaving patches of bare skin through his curly beard.

  The ground trembles again.

  His left eye opens. He sees me.

  The baby in his arms stirs, then starts squalling, a high-pitched, piercing wail. The man says something, but his voice is too weak to hear.

  I lean closer. He speaks again.

  “Lunnana-sin,” it sounds like. His good eye is wide and intense, and he does not seem surprised to see a strange woman standing over him. “Lunnana-sin,” he says again, clearly this time, his voice stronger.

  He holds the child up towards me. The sleeves of his cloak fall away as his arms rise. His coppery skin sags over his bones, lacerated and scarred.

  I hesitate, looking to the ocean. A massive wave is gathering offshore. I say a quiet blessing in the name of Eledar, take the baby from his hands, and run. When I look back again, the water is sliding back out to sea and the man is gone.

  It starts to rain. The wind picks up. I try my best to shelter the child against the elements. The tremors are coming faster now.

  “Hush, little one,” I whisper, “I’ve got you.” I stroke the child’s thin, damp hair and bring it close to my bosom. It looks malnourished, but its heart and breath are strong.

  I climb into the high hills. The air is dense with ocean mist. We come to an empty farmstead. The land was tilled once, but it sits barren now. A stone wall, half-finished, sags into the soil. Stalks of grain are bundled next to the wall, withered and husked.

  A hut built from bricks of clay stands on the far side of the farmland. A well-built wooden fence surrounds the house; pasturing for hens, or maybe a goat. The gate is open. I walk through. The thatched roof has fallen through on one side, but most of the house is still covered.

  “This will do, little one. It’ll have to.”

  I bring the child inside the hut. It is empty, but there is a bed packed with straw, big enough for two, and a basket at the foot of the bed lined with blankets made from coarse flax. A family lived here once.

  I swaddle the baby in the dusty blankets, and discover that the child is a boy. He stops crying, and looks up at me with curious, grey-blue eyes. His gaze makes me weep. So beautiful. So innocent. I lift him in my arms and rock him, swaying gently as I cry, holding him close.

  Time passes. My sadness subsides. The walls of the house shake every few minutes, kicking up dust, but the baby is sleeping, and he does not wake. He’ll be hungry when he does, I think.

  I set him down in the basket and step outside, leaving him in the hut. The rain is tapering off. I run my hands over the beam of the fence. Then I turn and leap up on top of the roof of the hut, careful to keep to the edges so I don’t fall through the thatch, and look out towards the island.

  The quake is raging now. Waves lash the shoreline. The clay hut holds for now, and I pray that we’re far enough away from the epicenter. The tower closest to the center of the island collapses, crashing down on top of the pyramid hunched next to it, kicking up a huge cloud of dust.

  If only I had come sooner.

  I did not know it then, but by the time word reached me that an island had risen from the ocean, summoned by powerful mages who had travelled across the stars, it was already too late. I made my way east, over the mountains and through the sweeping desert, my heart filled with hope. Along the way, I met other travelers. Each one had a story to tell about the island. When I first learned its name, I even dared to dream he might be there; that he might have finally come for me, just as he’d promised me so many centuries ago.

  Manderlas, some called the island; or Andalas; or Lanthas. I heard a dozen variations. But all the stories shared the same disturbing theme: on the island, a city had been raised up to break the sky and surpass the gods. For that effrontery, it had become an accursed place. Those who went to the island were never seen or heard from again.

  Now, from the roof of this simple hut, perched above the thickening ocean mist, I watch it crumble
apart. Dust and debris obscure my view, leaving me to guess at what went wrong. As close as it is, the island might as well be a distant galaxy, ancient and unreachable, its whole history submerging beneath the waves.

  The ocean mist clouds the air in front of me. It is tinged with an eerie, purple hue, like some fey spirit from the legends of the mountain tribes. I look down at my chest.

  The aurastal hanging from my neck is glowing violet!

  I open my mouth to shout Oren’s name. Then, like a delfina leaping through the surface of the boundless Coscan Ocean, a ship bursts out from the dust cloud above the sinking island, streaking up towards the atmosphere.

  I lift my hand as if to slow its ascent; as if I might catch it by the tail and ride along in its wake; as if it might take me home.

  A moment later, the ship is gone.

  I am doomed to wander this planet forever.

  I sit down on the thatch and clutch my knees to my chest, sobbing. The rain picks up again, mingling with my tears.

  The child’s hungry wail comes up through the roof.

  I stand up, wipe my eyes, and rub my nose on my sleeve. I turn my back on the drowning island of Manderlas, leap down to the earth, and go inside the hut.

  Acknowledgments

  To my wife, Erica, for believing in me. To my parents, for putting up with me for all these years. To my teacher and friend, Todd Marston, for showing me that every human is an artist. To my brother-in-law, Stephan Magro, and my dear friend, Rita Powell, for helping make this book worth reading. To my editor, Scott Pack, for saying ‘yes’ to this project. You helped turn a scrap heap into a treasure trove. To my sibling-in-spirit, Fred George, for your beautiful art. And, finally, to every one of you who’ve traveled this journey with Oren, Saiara, and all the rest. It wouldn’t have been the same without you.

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  My sincerest thanks,

  -Anders

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  About the Author

  Anders Cahill is an author, musician, and educator. Gradient is his first full-length work of fiction.

  www.anderscahillbooks.com

  anders@anderscahillbooks.com

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