Beneath the Vault of Stars

by Blake Goulette

  “You and Grandfather probably would have been great friends,” said Kalas.

  “We were, actually,” corrected Tzharak. “Some of these drawings are probably his—and in fact, it’s probably my fault his collection became what it did! Sevens ago, I asked him to hold on to ‘a few things’ for me—including that unwieldy stone table!—and, well…

  “I don’t receive that many visitors—actually, Wodram might have been the last person to step inside this place! Anyway, you’ll be leaving for Ïsriba soon, yes? Surely Falthwën is better able to answer any questions you might—”

  “Actually,” Kalas interrupted, “it’s not about Ïsriba. It’s about this…I don’t know, this thing Father and I discovered in the Empty Sea. In the wall of the Empty Sea. Gandhan said he thought it must have been there before the Empty Sea became the Empty Sea. Falthwën asked me to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary before he left. We wouldn’t have bothered you, but no one seems to know exactly where Falthwën is, and, next to him, I guess, you’re the oldest person we know…”

  Kalas described the artifact and its behavior to Tzharak, who expressed keen interest in the boy’s story, though, when he’d finished, he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

  “Your description sounds like nothing I’ve ever encountered!” said Tzharak. “Do you still have that—what did you call it? ‘not-paper?’ Doesn’t sound like anything of mine: Wodram must have discovered that one on his own.”

  “I think it was in Father’s pack…which means it’s still…I mean, it’s probably…”

  “Say no more. I’m sure it’s waiting for you back in town. Whenever you’re ready to retrieve it. I’d be curious to see it, of course, but I’m even more curious to see this—what did you call it? an ‘artifact?’—yes, I’d be most curious to examine this artifact of yours.”

  “That would mean a trip into the Empty Sea,” said Vàyana as the color drained from her face. “I’m not…I don’t think I could— and the cliffs! Oh! The stories I’ve heard! The injuries I’ve tended! And Falthwën’s leaving for Ïsriba soon, and—”

  “Shâu Vàyana,” Tzharak said, his eyebrow raised, “you’re under no compulsion to accompany us! Now, I know Falthwën charged you with ensuring the children’s safety, but consider this: Sharuyandas sru unskinned most of the zhàrudzhme; most of the others, even if they do return to Lohwàlar, will most likely search for the boy among the villagers, not leagues and leagues across the desert!

  “I have reason to believe Falthwën’s preparations will take some time—days at least—and what Master Kalas has discovered certainly sounds ‘odd’ to me! Perhaps if I saw it up close, had a chance to experience it first-hand, I might present a more thorough report to the man?

  “Ilbardhën, can I impose upon you to escort Vàyana to the Sanctuary and these drawings to Sàrush and the rest of the town Council? Tomorrow, of course: the suns will set before you reach Lohwàlar, and although my home is admittedly small, I have room enough for everyone. And, if you’d further indulge an old man, I’d be grateful for the company.”

  4.

  In the morning, before both suns had risen, Tzharak had prepared a simple breakfast for everyone. Over the meal, each complimented their host for his hospitality—as well as his considerable prowess as a cook. Tzharak laughed it off, mumbled something self-deprecating about how it only took him a couple hundred years to learn how not to burn the toast, but Kalas understood the old man appreciated their praise.

  After the five had finished eating, Shosafin and Vàyana—her relief and gratitude writ large across her face—said their goodbyes and returned to Lohwàlar. Tzharak disappeared from room to room, reappearing each time with packs, food and water, and tools for the long hike ahead of them. He’d pause, wiggle his fingers and close his eyes, then resume his task.

  “Can we help?” asked Zhalera.

  “Thank you, dear one, but we’re almost ready—Ah! Here we go!” he replied as he tossed another handful of items into his pack and grabbed a sturdy wooden staff. “Let’s go: the suns won’t last forever!”

  In spite of his advanced years, Tzharak seemed to flow across the desert: every change of pace well-considered, every movement precise.

  Like Father, Kalas couldn’t help thinking.

  He led them down the Pump Road, pointing out various geological features and describing what they used to look like, how they’d changed over the centuries.

  “Those mounds over there, if you were to dig deep, you’d find what’s left of New Lohwàlar.”

  “New Lohwàlar?” said Zhalera.

  “Some hardy souls attempted to build a settlement closer to the Pump, but the terrain out here, as you can see, seems to invite wind- and sandstorms. The settlement didn’t last a Seven before the desert swallowed it whole. Back then, the wind used to come up fast and hard: there are more than a few skeletons underneath all that sand.”

  “‘Back then?’” said Kalas. “I’ve been coming out here with… Father and I used to come out here all the time…Everything always looked pretty much the same to me—the strongest winds we ever felt were strong, sure, but nothing capable of this!”

  He gestured at the mounds Tzharak had pointed out. They were little more than gentle rises, easily overlooked by the casual observer.

  “Hundreds of years ago—maybe thousands, but I’m not that old!—the world was…less stable, let’s say: the ‘wall’ around my home is an example. Volcanoes, earthquakes, floods—yes! floods!—and windstorms were much more frequent. As was the rainfire. The sky would change, take on that hot, purple-orange color, and pummel the ground with streaks of fire. As a child, before Kësharan fell, I remember sneaking to the window and watching the storms. My birth mother—o shelu fîe ith nir—she didn’t appreciate my enthusiasm, but to be fair, I didn’t appreciate the death falling from the clouds!

  “Over time, the storms became less frequent, and when they did hit, they weren’t as powerful as they’d been in days past. My adoptive father believed the earth was healing from whatever sickness had befallen it. He said it wasn’t as fragile as some people thought, that the Creator had designed it better than that. In the many tens of Sevens since, from what I’ve seen, I think he had the right idea.”

  They reached the rim of the canyon just after the second sun had passed the first. Tzharak happened to be scanning the horizon with his hand raised to shield his eyes when the suns conjoined: Kalas happened to notice the old man’s tattoo shimmered in time to the Song they both heard. He whispered for Zhalera to look: she did, but wondered aloud what she was supposed to be looking for. Kalas told her.

  “Ah, yes,” explained Tzharak as he caught their stares. “In all my Sevens, Master Kalas excepted, I’ve only known one other who could see the fire within these marks.”

  “Who?” Zhalera asked.

  “It was a long time ago, dear one…I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Anyway, let’s be careful—as I know you will be—making our way down into the Empty Sea—the Ilmilëlas Shada, or the Shada pïn Milëlme, as it used to be called.

  “The Bejeweled Sea?”

  “Just so, my boy! And what a sight it was—from Kësharan, at least.”

  Descending into the canyon proved to be much easier than Kalas had anticipated. Tzharak exercised his uncanny dexterity and Zhalera proved to be a quick study, their previous excursion still fresh in her muscles. She’d piled her hair in loose buns on either side of her head to allow the sweat collecting atop her neck and shoulders to evaporate, and all of them had tightened their garments about their bodies to maximize their freedom of movement. After a couple of unremarkable hours, they reached the bottom of the Sea and proceeded along their way. When they passed beneath the stone archway, Tzharak paused and ran his fingers over its weathered surface, traced its fading contours. Kalas wanted to ask him about it, but something in the old man’s expression—

  Longing? Sorrow? Regret?

  —made him hold his tongue.

 
As they neared the Pump, Kalas marveled at its almost inaudible rhythm, remembering how loud and asynchronous it had been not too long ago.

  Father always did good work, he permitted himself to remember. Gandhan, too.

  The canyon’s cool breezes had made short work of the perspiration that had gathered during their hike: so much so that Zhalera shivered, unpinned the buns in her hair. Both she and Kalas questioned Tzharak about various topics, amazed at some of his answers and skeptical of others—for a little while, at least.

  After a time, the punctuated silences on either side of their scattered conversations stretched until it was the silences that were infrequently interrupted; indeed, the forest itself seemed unnaturally quiet: birds neither chirped nor sang, squirrels and chipmunks withheld their chatter, and even the melody of the River’s usual music seemed subdued.

  Sap and resin scents, so fragrant and invigorating when they’d first arrived, had dissolved into the background. Soon, an altogether different odor wafted through the air.

  “What is that?” said Kalas as he tried to cover his mouth and nose.

  “It smells like death!” agreed Zhalera as she did the same.

  “That’s because it is,” finished Tzharak as he stepped to the front of the line and scanned either side of the path. “Oh yes, right there.”

  With the tip of his staff, he poked at the swollen mass he’d discovered, almost hidden by a tangle of thick scrub. The deceased animal’s head lolled back, Tzharak’s prodding having dislodged its antlers from the low branches in which they’d become entwined.

  “That looks a lot like the deer from the other day!” exclaimed Zhalera, echoing Kalas’ thought. “Could it be?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Tzharak after poking the carcass a few more times. “Putrefaction’s already set in—that smell—and that doesn’t happen for a few days. If you saw this fellow only two days ago, even if it died right then, it would still be a few days before he reached this stage.”

  “But he was…sick or something,” Kalas insisted. “Could that have made a difference?”

  Before Tzharak could respond, Zhalera noticed something plastered to one of its tines: “Hey! Look!”

  She unsheathed her sword and pointed to a small scrap of cloth, scratched at it until it peeled away.

  “This is the deer that attacked Father!” she said, convinced. “This piece of cloth: Kalas, do you remember when it flipped him through the air? It ripped his shirt, and this is part of it, I’m certain!”

  She reached down to retrieve it, but Tzharak stayed her hand.

  “De! No, dear one! Don’t touch it! I was wrong: if that fabric came from your father’s shirt, and if this animal was sick, then you two are correct, and something…unwholesome must be at work. This much decay in so short a time is…abnormal.”

  He wiped the filth from the end of his staff. With leaves and grass, Zhalera cleaned her blade as best she could before returning it to its scabbard.

  “If Falthwën were here, he could probably tell us exactly what happened…”

  5.

  “Father said something had been fouling the water,” remembered Kalas as the three of them reached the artifact and began erecting their shelters. “But then we found Ëlbodh and Dzharëth and all of that…He thought it was the Pump. I guess after I was attacked and he went back to work, he didn’t find anything in the River—but what if it wasn’t just the Pump? What if something else is responsible?”

  Here, the trees were no longer thick and healthy like those at the trailhead: they’d been displaced by trees that looked sick, whose remaining leaves bore splotches of some kind of purple fungus; strips of bark hung like shredded rags from a majority of trunks, and this portion of the forest as a whole seemed generally stunted by comparison. Kalas had originally thought the ill effects were the result of the ilâegsali, but now, he wasn’t sure.

  “An idea worthy of investigation,” nodded Tzharak as he stretched a tent skin taut.

  When their shelters were in place, both suns had passed beyond the narrow aperture formed by the canyon’s upper reaches. Twilight filtered through the sparse branches and wrapped everything in a diffuse, warm gray. Kalas gathered firewood and built a small pyre in the ring Gandhan had built only a few days ago: Zhalera tossed him a fragment of flint from which he struck sparks with her birthday present to him. Kalas spent a moment admiring it in the fire’s waxing light.

  “This really is a great knife,” he said, and even in the deepening shadows he caught the color rising in her cheeks.

  Tzharak walked the perimeter of the dig site, being careful not to touch the object now protruding from the cliff. He paused every now and then, taking mental notes, Kalas assumed, of the shapes and lines etched into or painted on its skin. Satisfied for the present, and with the last of the suns’ rays dwindling high above, he returned to the fire. From his pack, he retrieved a well-used mess kit; assigned roles to his companions; and, together, the three of them prepared a simple meal.

  When they’d finished, Kalas and Zhalera lobbed occasional questions at their guardian while the embers in the fire pit rippled with heat, faded from bright orange to a dull purple. Tzharak answered with long, detailed stories—some of which were nothing more than creative tall tales, he confessed; however, most, he assured them, were a matter of record.

  After a while, despite Tzharak’s skillful retelling, both Kalas and Zhalera realized the long day was catching up with them. Before they entered the shelter, however, the young man posed one last question.

  “Tzharak, you never said what, exactly, you think this…artifact is. Or was. Now that you’ve seen it, what do you think?”

  “I’ve traveled vast distances during my many Sevens, and I’ve seen a lot of strange and unusual things. This artifact of yours might top the list. What is it? I have no idea—although there is something vaguely familiar about it, I can’t begin to fathom why. Tomorrow, you’ll have to show me those lights, those noises, in the morning, when there’s suns-light enough to see! And ask me again.”

  6.

  An almost death-like stillness hung heavy in the air when Kalas awoke. No animal sounds, no wind: just an oppressive, disquieting sensation that permeated everything. Neither sun had risen, not fully, though streaks of light, reflected from long, thin clouds, had begun to stretch across the sky above him.

  Father was right about this thing, he thought. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he stared down the object, daring it to…do something.

  Tzharak joined him, rubbed his hands together in brisk fashion as the chill in the morning crept across his skin, and moments later, Zhalera joined them as well.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Kalas, almost inaudible. “We’re not supposed to be here—no one is supposed to be here. This place is…wrong. Father knew it—Zhalera, remember how he got…weak while we were here the other day? How he got better the further we got from this thing? It was like that when we discovered it the first time, too, I just didn’t realize it then. It took me a while—too long—but I know it now, too. Let’s just pack up and get out of here.”

  Tzharak listened, nodded when Kalas had finished.

  “Two things, my child. One: that apprehension you feel? I feel it, too. This place is poison, a slow poison that seeps into you, mind and body, supplants vigor and strength with timidity: I feel that, too.

  Two: in spite of—no, because of—those feelings, we have to better understand what you’ve discovered here. Think about what you said yesterday: there was a problem with the Pump’s output—something wrong with the water. You wondered if, perhaps, something other than a malfunction in the Pump might have caused it. Now compare that with what you just said: something about this place, this artifact, made Tàran ill. What if that something finds its way into the River? Into Lohwàlar? We’re not that far from its course.”

  Kalas’ mind strove in two directions. That compulsion to get inside the thing persisted, but so did his father’s admo
nition. After weighing his thoughts for a moment longer, he reached his decision.

  “Father was…afraid of this thing,” Kalas admitted in a soft, low voice. “He wasn’t afraid of anything. Except this. On one hand, he’d want me to leave it alone, to keep my distance and never return; on the other, though, he’d want me to do the right thing, and letting his fear become mine is not the right thing. C’mon, let me show you what I know.”

  All three of them approached the place where Gandhan had chipped away enough rock to reveal what looked like writing, and Kalas invited Tzharak to take a close look. He stared at it for a long while: squinted, made frames from his hands, tilted his head…

  “I have no idea what this says,” he admitted after considering the markings for some time. “Quite plainly, I’m not sure if these are words: if they are, they’re like nothing anyone has used in the last thousand years. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen something like this before…Show me again what you did the other day?”

  Kalas pointed at various shapes, drew lines in the air as he tried to remember the sequence. Zhalera contradicted him from time to time, though eventually they reached an agreement.

  “Something like that,” he said, unconvinced. Zhalera offered a weak smile.

  Tzharak nodded, considered the symbols a moment longer. He rested a hand on the rocks, tapping in time to the clucking sounds he made with his tongue. With each tap, a small cloud of dust swirled upward toward his nose, until at last, he sneezed with enough force to lose his balance. He grabbed at the edge of the exposed rock for purchase and steadied himself.

  “Mister Tzharak! Are you all right?” Zhalera shouted.

  “I’m fine, dear one!” he assured her. “Powerful dust out here! Hey, wait! What’s this?”

  The portion of the canyon wall he’d used to keep from falling now bore a sizable hairline fracture. Tzharak’s eyes caught flame as an idea seized him: he disappeared within the shelter—long enough for Kalas and Zhalera to exchange confused looks—and reappeared with his staff. With a few well-placed jabs at the almost unnoticeable crack, a hefty slab of rock sheared away from the artifact. Zhalera shoved Kalas away as it tumbled toward the spot where he’d been standing. When the dust settled, they could hear Tzharak’s triumphant laughter.