by Damon Alan
“Open it,” Alarin said.
The priest jumped in his chair, startled. “I didn’t hear you coming, Master Adept.”
“That’s because you’re getting old, Lunis. Master Edolhirr and Lady Emille are within?”
“It is a sad truth that I am getting old,” the priest replied. “The two you seek are inside.” The old man turned toward a glowing rectangle on the door and spoke. “AI Basil, open the safe room.”
A male voice that was also strangely soft emanated from the air around them. “Please state entry code, Priest Lunis,” Basil replied.
The priest said a series of numbers and letters in the language of the newcomers.
“Well done,” Alarin said as a door slid sideways to reveal stairs leading down into the floor. They were lit by the strangely bluish lights of the newcomers.
“You know how to open it as well,” the priest said. “You wish to make me feel useful in the last of my time.”
“And do you feel useful?” Alarin asked as he entered the portal in front of him.
The old priest smiled. “I suppose I do.”
Alarin turned to the old man and nodded. “Don’t let anyone else past these doors without my permission.”
“Of course, Master Adept. You keep the old teachings. I would eagerly sacrifice myself to preserve that.”
Alarin took the stairs into the room below. It was a dozen arm spans wide along each wall, and square. The room was lit with newcomer lighting, although dimmed and changed in color to suit the eyes of Alarin’s people. Beds for eight lined one wall. Along the opposite wall lay desks, with glowing machine windows showing views from outside the Great Hall walls. Two of the windows, which the newcomers called screens, used to show views to the west but now fluttered with sparkling snow.
Are newcomer machines blinded by their sun weapons?
From the room any approaching enemy could be seen long before they arrived. The other walls contained storage lockers with supplies for a long stay below ground. Months worth of food, dried to a brittle crunch, and a water supply from a spring in the mountain under the Great Hall.
Master Edolhirr and Emille sat in large leather chairs around a table in the center of the room. They had several of the food packets open, with the contents spilled out onto plates. The food was still dry.
“This is terrible food,” Edolhirr said.
Emille looked at him, puzzled. “This is what the newcomers eat? We should be trading them food for their gifts of iron.”
“You’re not doing it right,” Alarin said. He grabbed a packet, opened it, and poured some water inside. He inserted it into a machine on one of the desks as he’d learned to do during his time with Peter Corriea.
“Did you see the destruction?” Alarin asked as the food hydrated and cooked.
“I only sensed it with the gift. Your guardsmen grabbed us and spirited us here without letting us look around,” Emille said angrily before her father could speak.
“For our safety,” Edolhirr chided.
Her attitude definitely reminded Alarin of Merik. The sense that others should serve her whims wasn’t a small thing. Maybe high skill with the gift created such arrogance. Maybe it was because Emille was so young.
A bell chimed and the food rose from the machine, still in the packet, but now steaming and soft.
“We are trading them food,” Alarin said as he scooped hot goop out onto a plate for Emille. “They can’t seem to get enough of what we grow.”
The young woman took a hesitant bite. “Delicious!” She pointed at her plate with a grin. “I was wrong, they should give us more of this.”
Alarin smiled weakly at her enthusiasm, then sat down next to Edolhirr.
Edolhirr’s eyes were closed. The old man’s mind was elsewhere. “My gods, what power they wield.”
“My people. Our people. They’re dying down by the sea,” Alarin said.
Edolhirr just wiped at one of his eyes.
Alarin touched Edolhirr’s mind lightly to ask for permission to share thoughts.
The old man nodded almost imperceptibly, and Alarin joined with him.
Together, as one observer, they were in the sky, immersed in a haze of fire. With a push of Edolhirr’s will, the fire disappeared from perception, although Alarin knew it was still there. It lived on the edge of their combined consciousness, climbing toward the great emptiness above.
Below lay the shattered remains of Zeffult, and what seemed like countless dead. Buildings burned, and the land itself ran in orange molten rivulets into a large hole ripped into the center of town. Flaming dust rode the wind to the southwest, where most of it would fall into an ocean made angry by an approaching storm. Death from the dust seared everything around, in a similar way to how Faroo rained life-giving warmth and light down on Nula Armana. But the energy of this dust was much more powerful than the loving caress of Faroo, and so would kill rather than nurture.
“I’ve seen enough,” Edolhirr whispered.
In a flash they were each back in their own minds, reeling from the instant change of sensory input.
“This is what Franklin Gilbert did to Merik’s retreat east of Zeffult,” Alarin said quietly. “I don’t know how we resist such power, if they turn on us like this.”
Edolhirr grabbed Alarin’s arm, shaking it. “You have to be certain we can trust your friend.”
“This was not Sarah Dayson’s doing,” Alarin asserted. “She went to stop it. She obviously failed.”
“They are no more united than we are,” Edolhirr said. “This is a problem. On both sides.”
Looking up from her food and seeing her father’s distress, Emille dropped her utensil. “Father?”
Edolhirr smiled at his offspring, and silently reassured her.
Emille picked up her spoon and resumed eating. “Alarin and I should be married soon. He needs me to help him stop,” she waved her spoon idly toward the devastation, “this. Merik foresaw it.”
“Do I get a say in this?” Alarin asked.
“You know you don’t,” she answered. “The future isn’t a choice. It’s as solid as the past.”
Alarin wasn’t sure if he liked where this was going. The young woman was skipping a lot of steps involved in a real courtship. “Did Merik teach you that as well?”
“You were there. She told us all,” was her answer.
Silence weighed on them all as Edolhirr glared at her. He finally spoke, apparently either calm enough to do so or unable to resist the urge. “Despite your vision, Acolyte Emille, you and Master Alarin are not at the point of such informality yet. You are still the student. Interrupting the discussion of two masters is unacceptable.”
“I… I’m sorry, I got too excited by all this. It’s all new, Master Adept,” Emille replied, deflated.
Edolhirr said nothing more about it to her. He tasted then inhaled his food. Once finished he joined Alarin by the door, away from Emille who rested on a bunk. “I think I’m starting to see why Merik chose her for you.”
“Enlighten me,” Alarin requested.
“You’re the only adept who might handle one both so powerful and yet still in the embrace of immaturity.”
Alarin nodded grimly. It seemed he was destined to have a firebrand as his mate.
Chapter 18 - Rain of Ash
Longnight
Eislen sat at a table in the inn and stared between the slats of a closed shutter. The view out the window was down the gangway of the docks, dozens of fishing vessels lined up against the piers jutting into Zeffult bay. To the southwest a line of storms approached, keeping the fleet docked for the day. Sea birds cawed and fought each other for scraps littering the decks of the idle ships.
City guardsmen lined the docks, normally there to keep the riff raff from bothering the men who fed the city with the bounty of the ocean. Today, however, they guarded almost empty docks and boats as the seamen spent a rare day off with their families. Most boats only had a few men remaining, repairing nets and ro
pes.
Lightning flashed in the distance, too far away for sound.
Eislen and his friends had waited for an opportunity to seize a boat, but none had yet presented itself. They were lower on money than was comfortable, and soon fate would force their hand. It was a miracle guards hadn’t showed up at the inn as they searched the city looking for the newcomer weapons. And for those who took them.
Eislen clenched his jaw. They couldn’t stay any longer. They’d have to take a boat by force.
“See anything?” Elvanik asked as he sat down across the table.
Eislen shrugged. “This is probably as good as it gets. We have to move at dusk. We’ll slip onto one of the boats with just a few men on it and make them sail it for us.”
“Then today is the day.” Elvanik ordered two sourberries, pushing one to Eislen when it arrived. “Drink. We finally have a plan to get back east.”
It didn’t seem like a great plan. Not very likely to succeed. Eislen sighed. It was hard to believe how his life was changing, but there wasn’t any turning back. “It best work. We don’t have another way out.”
“It will…” Elvanik said. His voice tapered off as the ground shook violently.
Eislen threw open the shutter and looked out toward the bay. A wave of water surged from the cliff walls, pushing the fishing boats to the end of their lines. Dock workers and guardsmen stared in astonishment as the water heaved upward then surged seaward. Clouds in the sky disappeared, at a speed both unnatural and unnerving.
A moment of silence fell upon the docks, unreal and frightening. Seabirds rose from the decks of their ships and flew toward the outlet of the bay, heading to sea with the water.
Men, all along the shore shrugged and chatted idly, wondering at the source of the strangeness.
Then the world behaved as if it were determined to end.
A blast of fire and smoke ripped over the tops of the cliffs and surged out into the sky above the water of the bay. A cracking boom louder than anything Eislen had ever heard slammed into his ears. Moments after that fiery debris rained down on the docks and the adjacent sea.
Eislen looked upward toward the cliff tops and roaring flames engulfed the houses and buildings there. Burning people leaped screaming from the city above, toward the water below. Many slammed into the dock gangway, crumpling into bloody heaps. Others crashed into boats, passing through top decks and dying in the sections below.
All who were not dead from the flames must have died from the jump.
Now. We go now.
Eislen grabbed Elvanik, who was staring out the window in stunned horror. The man came to his senses quickly, and followed Eislen toward the common sleep area. Bogner and Salla were coming the other way, carrying the basket between them. They must have instinctively known it was time to leave.
The four raced from the inn, following Eislen’s lead. Nobody spoke, because nobody could hear. The docks were chaos, some boats were already pushing away from piers, setting to sea. Guardsmen and sailor alike were fleeing, knowing that none would survive if the inferno burning at the top of the cliffs descended onto the bay.
Eislen sensed the unseen destruction corrupting the soil in the city above. He urged his friends toward a boat with no visible damage from jumpers. Several men were preparing it for departure. They waved their arms wildly, inviting Eislen’s party to join them.
Racing on board, they sat their basket down. Eislen grabbed Salla, pointed at her, then at the basket. She got the message. Watch the basket and the contents.
Others on the docks joined them as well. None were adepts, unless they were masters able to hide themselves well. Eislen probed the minds of each as they stepped onto the ship, and found no sign of the gift in any.
The three men moved to help the crew and other survivors where they could. Eventually the ship was free of the pier and they moved to the lower deck to man the oars that would propel them beyond the bay and into the grasp of the wind.
His seat was covered in fish scales, they sat in the same hold that would be full of fish on the return journey. Not that they’d be returning this time. To distract himself from the destruction raining from above and focus on the task before him, he tried to imagine sitting stomach deep in fish as the ship approached the city lifts on the return journey. The thought made him respect the work of these fishermen a bit more.
A strange thought to have during the end of everything.
A long time passed as the ship slowly moved seaward. As they left the cliffs, they saw the remnants of whatever had burned Zeffult rising skyward, blackened on the outside with the orange fires of Faroo’s soul inside. Eislen concentrated on that fire, studying it. It began to flatten into a mushroom shape.
This had to be the work of the outsiders. He’d heard tales of what Franklin Gilbert had done to Merik Sur’batti’s winery. This must be the same thing.
Such thoughts were for a future time. He still couldn’t hear anything. Light ash was beginning to rain down from above, containing the energy that only Eislen knew would kill them.
They had to get it off the ship. Or die.
Eislen stepped off the oar, leaving two other men to carry his weight. He ran up stairs to the main deck and looked toward the storms he’d seen early. A line of them stretched from over the horizon to the south, rising far into the sky in the east, then disappearing again to the northwest. Lightning flared along the storm front, flashing in playful displays of power. He reached out and touched the violent clouds. They were clear of the destructive energies in the ash.
He moved toward the man functioning as the captain of the vessel, and for the first time revealed himself to one of the crew as the gifted soul he was as he shared thoughts with the man.
Captain, we must move toward the storms. This ash contains a poison that will kill us all if we do not wash it from the ship.
The captain stared at him, incredulous. But then, used to complying to adept orders without question, signaled his men to bring the ship about and make sail toward the storms. The crew hesitated, but after a few tense moments of almost silent argument, conditioning took over and they complied.
Cloth was raised on two masts, and the ship cut across winds that pushed strongly toward the city. Eislen doubted the wind would change direction. He’d been well enough educated by Peter Corriea to know that the storms would blow toward Zeffult.
As the fiery death rose from the city the rising ball of fire would also pull wind toward Zeffult to fill the void below the maelstrom.
Nature and newcomer worked together to create this gale.
Expect strong winds, Captain. This will not be an easy ride. But if we’re not in those storms in a few hours, we are all dead, Eislen thought into the man’s mind.
The captain’s mind was awash with fear, but he nodded. He got it. Now that the rowers were free, he put those men to work hauling sea water and scrubbing the ash from the decks of the ship. The ship’s leader pointed to a bench near the tiller, indicating Eislen should sit there while the crew worked. It was what he expected from an adept, Eislen sensed.
Instead the young adept grabbed a bucket and set to work with the other men and women, clearing the ship of the ash. Able to see the areas of death missed by the crew, he concentrated on those. He could feel the captain’s surprise, and grudging respect arose within. Later Eislen would explain to the man who he was, and that there was no going back home, ever.
For now, however, he scrubbed ash into the sea. Thanks to the winds, much of what was hitting the deck failed to stick. The people on this boat would live if they worked hard for it.
And they were.
Maybe the gods weren’t done with him yet.
Chapter 19 - Trust
21 MAI 15329
Sarah stormed into a makeshift conference room, two marines behind her. Ensign Hamden and Sergeant Corza, two men she trusted completely, were fully armed and armored. They took position on each side of the door, and locked it as the hatch cycled shut. The
room murmured with intense curiosity.
She didn’t wait for them to get quiet. “Fellow officers, section chiefs… I believe we have a spy in our midst, working with the mutineers.”
Instead of getting quieter, the buzz in the room rose twenty decibels.
Sarah looked at the gathered officers from five ships, all crammed into a room that twenty-four hours prior was a dry storage hold. The acoustics in the room left much to be desired, but with the Stennis mothballed the accommodations of the Hinden had been adapted to the needs of the fleet.
She stared coldly at the officers, waiting for them to give her silence.
One by one they noticed the uncharacteristically angry face of their fleet commander, and grew quiet.
“The Schein has been on patrol in the outer system for three months, exchanging listening post crews, scanning for metal rich asteroids, and serving the Seventh Fleet in exemplary fashion. However, the conference in Zeffult was organized two months ago. There wasn’t any reason for the Schein to be informed of it, so they weren’t. Not by command staff, anyway. Someone else clearly felt they did need to know.”
The room remained silent.
“We were about to win the struggle to unify Refuge, and secure a better place for our people. That effort, however, has been set back indefinitely,” Sarah said.
A chorus of audible groans filled the room.
Sarah looked at Halani Seto’s face. The junior officer’s eyes were watery. She knew just how Seto felt.
“Until the mutineers are all in custody or killed, duty is around the clock with eight hour sleep periods. Nobody is to be in groups of less than three. Anyone found alone or in groups of two will be jailed until they can be interrogated. This starts one hour after the conclusion of this meeting. Shuttles are included in this order.”
Sarah watched as eyes around the room fell. Morale was already low, this was a crushing blow. The shuttle flights to the fleet would be cut in half, and flights for recreational breaks would halt. Nobody who wasn’t on fleet business would be going to the surface.
