A Breach in the Heavens

by NS Dolkart

“I have no idea. I left a few hours later.”

  He twisted his mouth thoughtfully. “If the elves didn’t catch that last woman and her kids, it’s probably too much to hope for that they all got poisoned. Someone always sneaks through.”

  “Could be.”

  He glanced up at her, noting her cold expression. “I don’t get why that was your breaking point, Phaedra. I really don’t. We’ve known what Psander was like for ages. She locked us outside her gates, for Ravennis’ sake, when we came to save her from Magor’s army. Why is this the thing that made you hate her all of a sudden?”

  Phaedra had to think about that. He was right, Psander had always viewed people as expendable, had never valued people as anything other than tools. And he was right that she’d done the same to them. But this time was different. This time was worse.

  “Those people were defenseless,” she said.

  “So were we.”

  “No,” Phaedra said, “we weren’t. Not like the villagers. They never had any Gods looking out for them the way we did. They didn’t have any prophecies told about them. They were just… they were helpless. Against the Gallant Ones, against Psander, against the elves. There was never anyone on their side, trying to protect them. Psander was manipulating them the moment they met her. Hunter and I failed them. So in the end they were trapped between Psander and the elves, and one fed them to the others. That’s more horrible than anything Psander ever did to us.”

  “She’d have fed you to the elves too, if she thought you were more useful that way.”

  “Maybe, but she never did think that. We were always more useful to her alive, all five of us. She treated them like livestock.”

  Narky accepted that silently and did not speak again for nearly half a mile. Phaedra’s horse clopped on, Narky and Dessa beside it. Dessa had been silent since they left that morning, walking with Phaedra’s staff and listening awkwardly to the conversation, most likely afraid to intrude. Phaedra felt bad for her, but it had been Dessa’s choice to join them on this last leg of Phaedra’s journey.

  “If Psander is just like the other academics were,” Narky said suddenly, “it’s no wonder the Gods turned on them. Treating people like tools or livestock, manipulating them – that’s Their territory, you know? Psander’s like a Goddess herself.”

  Phaedra bristled at the description, though she couldn’t deny how perfectly it matched Narky’s view of the Gods. He’d always seen Their mystery as manipulation, Their motives as nefarious – even for his own God. He probably saw God Most High as the worst manipulator of them all.

  It was an extension of the way he saw people, she thought. They were always after something.

  Phaedra saw the same tendencies, but they had never struck her as nefarious. Of course people and Gods wanted things – what was so devious about that? Even altruism came from desire. When Phaedra thought of Hunter, gorgeous, selfless Hunter, she knew that his friends’ safety and happiness brought him satisfaction. She knew that her pleasure gave him pleasure too. That had been obvious long before she kissed him.

  Not every desire caused harm. Not every attempt to affect the world was manipulation.

  She was on a mission, one that God Most High had endorsed, to overcome Illweather’s nihilism and change the Yarek’s behavior. If the Yarek repented to God Most High instead of battling Him, would that give the Lord Above more power than a final battle would have? Phaedra didn’t honestly care. It would save thousands, millions from harm. It would protect Gods and people and animals, and turn the world from conflict and chaos toward cooperation. Narky could call that manipulation if he wanted to. Phaedra called it righteousness.

  The Yarek, when they finally reached it, was even bigger than she remembered. That thicket of vines and brambles – had that grown recently? The earth around it was broken, and she could not help but picture the root that had once dragged her underground with the elf Olimande’s head and ashes. Whatever the dangers of that thicket, Phaedra was not fooled – no distance from this monster was safe.

  Phaedra dismounted from her horse and took her staff from Dessa. “Stay here,” she said, more to Narky than to her rescuer. She was about to negotiate for the fate of the world: the last thing she needed was Narky’s tact.

  She slipped out of her shoes, fine Essishan creations though they were – if the Yarek communicated partially through the earth beneath her feet, she didn’t want to miss any signals. The soil between her toes was soft and rich. Oh yes, the Yarek was enjoying it here.

  Another skyquake shook the heavens as Phaedra approached, but the air around her stayed calm. For the first time, standing in this quiet node, Phaedra was able to look straight up at the source of the skyquakes.

  The sky above the Yarek was rippling like the surface of a pond, the waves rolling outward from the tree’s center. The Yarek’s trunk – the entire, gargantuan length of it – swayed gently as its upper branches shook the sky. As Phaedra watched, the sky seemed to sink closer toward her, and a single upper branch snapped off. She ducked, irrationally – if that branch came down on top of her, no change in stance would save her.

  It didn’t, though. It landed with a crash a good hundred yards to her right, with more than enough force to shake the ground beneath her feet. Phaedra planted her staff and walked on.

  Bandu had said she would understand the Yarek if she listened properly. Was the Yarek speaking now?

  “Talk to me,” Phaedra whispered. “I’m listening. I promise I am.”

  The ground continued to tremble, and the wind to whistle, but they did not form words. Were they supposed to form words? Maybe Phaedra was doing this wrong. Words were hardly Bandu’s strength, yet she understood the Yarek perfectly. Maybe Phaedra was listening for the wrong thing.

  “Try again,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m trying too.”

  She felt the Yarek’s approval in the wind, in the soil, in her skin. Yes. This was the way of it. Phaedra could not translate what she felt into coherent words the way the elves had done, but this might do.

  The Yarek was asking her something, that much she knew. She began to imagine that it was sending her images of some kind, and she closed her eyes to better make them out.

  They were terrible images, visions of what had happened to Criton. He must have been here already, with other creatures – no, those were people, the Yarek simply wasn’t differentiating – and the great tree had devoured them all as they tried to cut it down. Phaedra shuddered and tried to banish the visions from her mind. Perhaps she had misunderstood its intentions – its ‘question’ must have been some kind of a threat instead, something like, “Are you here to cut me down too? Because this is what happens…”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not here to cut you down.”

  Its response came in such a torrent of sensory information that Phaedra found she was panting, her breaths quick and shallow, her heart palpitating in her chest. It was saying something about the destruction that was coming soon, but what exactly it was saying she couldn’t guess.

  “We…” she said, hoping her words would make sense to it, “we can avoid that. I think you’re saying something about the words colliding and destroying everything, right? We can keep that from happening. We can keep the sky from cutting us to pieces.”

  She could feel the Yarek’s skepticism in the suddenly cold breeze, in the prickling of the hair on her arms. She hoped it would understand her reasoning well enough to accept it.

  “You’ve opened a gate before,” she said, “a big one, large enough that Salemis came through. We just need to open an even bigger one. A gate so big that the whole wall comes apart.”

  Oh goodness, she had no idea what it was saying now. It was objecting somehow, she was sure of that much, but how? Curse Bandu for refusing to join her here! How could Phaedra convince the Yarek to help her if she couldn’t even decipher its responses correctly? This was too delicate a negotiation to rely on guesswork.

  And yet, Phaedra had no choice but t
o plow ahead. To give up was death, not only for her but for every living creature, and the Yarek besides. All she could do was explain her intentions, and hope that the Yarek would understand her better than she understood it.

  “Psander and I will help you,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t understand you better – I’m guessing you don’t think it’ll work? I– if that’s true, I think you’re wrong. You have Psander and me on your side, and Psander has all the magic of the Goodweather court at her disposal. Illweather swallowed its own court, so in a way, you have that too. The whole world that God Most High built out of you will be unified in the effort. I think it can be done, especially if God Most High lets us try it instead of fighting you.”

  The bitterness of the Yarek’s response sank into her bones and shivered through her skin. Something in what she had said had angered it. Was it the mention of God Most High? Did the Yarek not believe that its ancient enemy would allow it to unify, even if it meant saving the worlds He had created? She could see a valid objection there: if it was God Most High who had brought them to the edge of destruction, sending messengers like Eramia and the long-ago Dragon Knight to influence the islanders’ actions and plant Goodweather’s seed here, then how could they expect Him to sit by and watch the Yarek unravel His mesh?

  The Yarek’s mood was spiraling, she could feel it. It had been expecting destruction, and vengeance, and Phaedra’s suggestion that God Most High might allow it to unify was an insult. The Yarek was anticipating a fight – it welcomed a fight, even if it took thousands of years to recover from its splintering.

  “I know I’m suggesting a different end from the one you imagined,” Phaedra said, “but please listen to me. I’m here on my God’s behalf, to offer you peace.”

  Images of Criton again. Peace was impossible.

  Phaedra shook her head and wiped her eyes, trying not to think about Criton and whoever else he had dragged along with him. She could not let herself get distracted, she had to focus on this world that still remained and must continue to do so.

  She tried again. “Making peace with God Most High is only impossible if you choose to make it that way. Listen to me, please listen. God Most High protected me on my journey here. He chose to save me from all danger so that I could make this offer. He believes reconciliation is possible, if you are willing to repent.”

  The air went still, so still that Phaedra’s breaths were the only wind. She waited almost an eternity for the Yarek’s answer, suddenly very aware that at any moment it could choose to devour her instead. In the stillness and the silence, she could feel its fury building.

  Why was it reacting this way? What had she said wrong? She had thought at first that it was reacting well to her argument – it was only at the very end that she had somehow triggered its rage.

  Was it the talk of repentance that had done it? Gods, that was it, wasn’t it? To tell the Yarek to repent was to insult it beyond all reason, to suggest a subservience to the Gods that had never been a reality.

  How could she have imagined the Yarek would see it any other way? Repentance was hard enough for people, whom the Gods had created and nurtured, who had no pretense to Their power and no hope of living without Them. Yet even for people, submitting entirely to their Gods’ mercy was a challenge. For the Yarek, who had fought the king of Gods and only barely lost, the very notion of Godly mercy was an insult. The Yarek had been torn to pieces and still come back to fight another day – what did it need its enemy’s mercy for?

  So what if the destruction of these worlds set the Yarek back eons? It was no slave, no godserf, no mere creation. It was primordial.

  What could she say to this being? How could she convince it that eternal servitude was worth the lives of her friends, her species, her world? Repentance required submission, it assumed servitude. If the Yarek insisted on revenge, nothing would convince it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She had to hope that it was only angry, that revenge was not its guiding principle.

  “Please, just tell me one thing: why Goodweather?”

  For a moment, the monster’s fury abated. She could feel its curiosity at her change of subject, even as its anger burned beneath.

  “If the ancient Yarek was split into Illweather and Goodweather,” she said, “the cruel half and the kind one, then that Yarek must have been half kindness. Right? Because that kind half held its own against Illweather for thousands of years before it agreed to send you here to free Salemis. It unbalanced the world it inhabited for that opportunity, and gave Illweather the chance to consume it, which is what’s happening now. I don’t understand why a being of kindness would do that, if sending you here meant this world’s destruction too. Is my entire understanding of the Yarek and its castles wrong? Is there no kind half?”

  Silence. And then, at last, a gentle breeze. A hint of reconciliation, of a willingness to listen. Possibly a statement that Goodweather really was kind.

  “Is its seed not kind, then?”

  The sun was warm. The breeze blew on, as gentle as before.

  “I understand your anger,” Phaedra said. “But you see, we all believed that Goodweather sacrificed its balance against Illweather to make our world kinder – to bring balance here. That’s what Bandu thought, anyway, and a kind being wouldn’t have deceived her on purpose, so I have to assume that Goodweather agreed with her. I have to assume that. Bandu believes in kindness, and Goodweather is the closest thing she has to a God. Let she with no church raise skyward her steeple. That’s you.

  “So if Goodweather wasn’t deceiving Bandu, it must have made a terrible mistake. It thought it was sacrificing its ability to keep the elves’ world in balance, for the power to influence this world for greater kindness; instead, it sacrificed itself only for more strength and greater destruction. You became a tool of Illweather’s, despite your origins. Goodweather gambled and lost.

  “The way things stand, this world’s end will splinter you too. Who’s to say that kindness will win out in the end? What strength you gained here, Goodweather is losing on the other side. Goodweather’s kindness is only stronger than Illweather’s influence here, in this world. Not some future world. We can’t say what will happen to your soul after a splintering. Maybe kindness will get a head start on Illweather’s cruelty, but it probably won’t. For that matter, who’s to say that God Most High won’t build new barriers as soon as this world is over, and keep the Yarek in a hundred thousand pieces from then on? You can’t be strong now and kind later. If your nature is kindness, now is the time. This is the place.

  “Kindness means caring what happens to those around you. Repentance means looking at the destruction you’ve caused, and the destruction you meant to cause, and saying you won’t do it again. Promising that from now on, kindness and justice will be more important than your pride, more important than whether you or God Most High wins some ancient competition. The Splintering isn’t a just end. What have my people done that you’d condemn us to share it with you? You’ll survive the calamity in one form or another, but we won’t.”

  Her words were having an effect. That gentle breeze was growing ever more pleasant and more fragrant, swaying the leaves in the thicket and drifting pleasantly through her dress. Phaedra allowed herself to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, the Yarek would let her do this work.

  An image of Illweather came to her, and of the dying Goodweather, and a question she could not understand. At least she was getting better at guessing – or, she thought she was.

  “Are you asking what will happen after we succeed? After all the parts of you come together?”

  An affirmative rustle of vines, a whistle of wind.

  “I… don’t know. My plan was to pray to God Most High to give you strength against Illweather’s crueler inclinations – or really, to teach you to pray. I know it was not your way of communicating with the Gods – if you had a way, that is – but it’s the way one repents. If you’ll let me through to your trunk, I’ll… I’ll carve such a p
rayer into your bark.”

  The Yarek did not respond for many long moments, and Phaedra began to worry. If it changes its mind now, she thought, it will definitely kill me.

  She stepped forward, slowly, and made her way through the thicket. The vines and thorns did not lash out at her, but neither did they part to let her through. The Yarek hadn’t decided to kill her yet, but it was showing its reluctance.

  “You’re afraid this will make you a servant,” Phaedra said. “I understand, really I do. But I have a life to look forward to, a wonderful life, for all that I am a servant of my God. Salemis the dragon is His servant too, and so is Eramia our Goddess of Love, and Ravennis of the world below. None of Them is weak. None of Them has lost who They are. If you’re making the worlds kinder, the heavens or the earth or the world below, your dignity and glory are in no danger. We’ll sing your praises along with God Most High’s.”

  By the time she had finished her speech, Phaedra had passed through the thicket and could lean her staff against the Yarek’s enormous trunk. She put her hand against the bark, and slowly pulled Narky’s sacrificial knife from where she’d had it tucked in Hunter’s belt. “I would like to carve a prayer here. Am I permitted this?”

  The trunk warmed to her touch. She could proceed.

  The knife was not well designed for the task of carving, but the Yarek eased her way. Its bark softened, giving itself to her efforts, and Phaedra hobbled along the trunk, carving huge letters into its flesh. Her prayer asked God Most High to pardon the world, and the Yarek for endangering it. She asked God Most High to give it strength so that it could overcome Illweather’s cruel desires and spread kindness through its roots, and included the Dragon Touched words of repentance, a plea for forgiveness. When she had finished, she laid the knife reverently at the Yarek’s base and went to retrieve her staff.

  A piece of bark fell at her side with a crack. Phaedra jumped, startled, and looked up to see great strips of bark peeling away above her as the Yarek repeated her prayer over and over all the way up its trunk, spiraling upwards into eternity. As it did, it began to shake – and when the Yarek shook, so did the world.