Beneath the Vault of Stars

by Blake Goulette

  “I suspect you’ve enlisted Ilbardhën’s help for your education? I’ve known many who can wield a sword—and wield it well, and Ilbardhën…His instruction should serve you well. Just as yours will serve him.”

  “What? ‘Mine?!’…What are you talking about?”

  Falthwën just smiled. “Come, the others are waiting for us.”

  Above ground, Kalas saw Shosafin had wandered some distance away. The soldier stooped to retrieve something from the earth. He whistled, and Breaker thundered into view.

  “My sword,” he said as he cantered toward the well. “Dropped it.”

  After they’d refreshed the horses and had something to eat, the four returned to the cart and continued their trek across the plains. Shosafin and Breaker led the way.

  “You’re learning more about The Song, aren’t you?” Zhalera asked Kalas once they were underway. She smiled.

  We must be responsible for our own choices.

  “I guess I am,” he allowed.

  “What’s it like? Hearing the Song? You said it sounded like hope, once. What you were humming: are there words? The harmonies were beautiful!”

  “If there are words, I’ve never heard them!”

  “I wonder what the whole thing would sound like,” Zhalera mused.

  Kalas thought about Falthwën’s incomplete descriptions of the Song, the implication that creation was only a fragment of the whole.

  “I don’t think anyone—anything!—could survive The Song in its entirety! Creation is only part of it—Falthwën called it ‘a collection of melodies.’ It does make me curious to know what its other parts might look like—might sound like!”

  “Not trying to eavesdrop,” said Rül, “but it seems to me that all of us see and hear part of this Song every day. All this talk about creation and I can’t help thinking about the way the suns paint the sky with all those colors when they rise and when they set—about everything they rise above and set behind. There’s a kind of music in the way each of us lives his life, right? I don’t know…that’s just the way it seems to me.”

  Neither Kalas nor Zhalera knew quite how to respond to their stout friend as he drove his horses. Falthwën, judging from his sudden laughter, found Kalas’ and Zhalera’s introspection amusing.

  “Well said, my boy!” he roared with a clap on Rül’s shoulder. “Well said indeed!”

  The winds abated with the changing terrain as grasses gave way to trees, as flat and unadorned prairie gave way to hills and valleys studded with columns of stratified rock. Nights and mornings, Shosafin practiced his maneuvers while Kalas watched. Having no sword of his own and remembering Falthwën’s warning about Zhalera’s heirloom weapon, he searched among the trees for a suitable branch; finding one, he carved away enough material to fashion a crude “blade” with which he attempted to mimic his instructor’s motions.

  “Stone and water,” said the soldier one morning as he traded swords with the boy. “As you shift your weight, let the whole of your being fluctuate between immovable stone and flowing water.”

  “How do I know when to be one or the other?” Kalas hacked at the air with his borrowed sword.

  It’s lighter than it looks, he noted.

  “Every motion is an opportunity. Consider your every movement. In time, not only will you learn when to be one or the other, but when to be both and neither.”

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “How can stone move like water? How can water be like stone?”

  “Tell me, lad: have you ever been swimming?”

  “I live in the desert,” Kalas reminded him with a smirk.

  “Of course. All right, consider this, then: that…thing we’re not supposed to talk about. When Falthwën and I found you there, much of it was exposed—visible—right? You’d actually been inside part of it? We left, heard an explosion, and returned, and what did we see then?”

  “Uh, some rocks…fell away from the cliff and covered it?”

  “That’s right! Immovable rock had to flow around its shape, and so it did. In a complementary manner, if one were to jump into a pool of water—that well, for example—and land on his belly, he’d understand just how inflexible water can be!

  “We’ll have opportunity to discuss these things later. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, we’ll come to the mouth of a canyon that’s as tall as your Empty Sea is wide and twice as narrow.”

  “Falthwën said something about that,” Kalas confirmed.

  “That canyon is the gateway to the Ilvurkanzhime.”

  “The ‘Wastes that Devour?’ That doesn’t sound good…”

  “There’s a reason for that,” Shosafin remarked as he traded swords again.

  Chapter XIII.

  Above the Gateway to the Ilvurkanzhime

  T

  he old soldier’s description of the canyon, while accurate, failed to convey the sheer magnitude of its presence. Kalas craned his neck trying to glimpse its upper reaches, but most of its rim was shrouded in swirling mists. Its vast walls seemed to stretch across the plains for endless miles. Maybe they did. A few hundred feet ahead of them loomed a razor-fine column of black: at least, that’s what it looked like from their present perspective. The winds had lost much of their ferocity over the last couple of days, but here, where they collided with the cliffs, they rallied, rippled through their clothes with a damp chill. Zhalera shivered, twisted her hair into buns to prevent it from whipping her in the face.

  “And I thought the Empty Sea was big!” she marveled.

  “This canyon only seems bigger,” Falthwën noted. “Come, we’re almost there. Once inside, we’ll be sheltered from the worst of the suns until midday. We’ll rest until the first sun catches up with the second. If all goes well, we should reach the plateau late tomorrow morning.”

  “And if all doesn’t go well?” Kalas wondered.

  “We’ll adapt as best we can.”

  At the base of the crevice, Rül stopped the cart, jumped down and removed the harnesses from Dancer and Runner. He strapped feedbags to their heads, then applied some kind of elixir to a towel and began rubbing their coats and the muscles beneath with gentle circles, whispering to them all the while. Kalas asked if he could help and grabbed another towel. Shosafin had also removed Breaker’s tack for his rub down. All three horses neighed their appreciation.

  “From all descriptions, it’s a long, hard stretch of road ahead of us,” Rül stated. “These boys haven’t had a proper massage in a long time. Got to keep them healthy—and happy!”

  Dancer grunted his agreement. Runner just kept eating.

  Hours later, after brushing the horses and giving them some time to relax, the party entered the canyon’s gaping maw. Perhaps Falthwën was correct about the Empty Sea, that it was in fact bigger than the canyon, but hemmed in by its narrower, overhanging sides and its steep slope, the comparison seemed academic. Gigantic crystalline formations high above them—quartz, mostly—studded the unvarnished walls, protected from the wind and sheltered from the infrequent rains. Refracted suns-light glinted from their facets, cascaded over every surface with varicolored light that shifted with the suns.

  “This is beautiful in its own way,” Zhalera observed. Kalas agreed. “Makes me wonder why they call it the gateway to the Ilvurkanzhime.”

  Though the wind that had plagued them on the steppes had lessened to no more than an occasional gust, the insulating properties of the canyon seemed to amplify their power to impart cold, and the noises they made, nowhere near as boisterous as before, instead creating unsettling cries and whistles as they raced along the passage.

  “The Highway only runs along the southernmost region of the Wastes,” said Falthwën. “We won’t have to worry about the worst of it. There’s a taruúnâsru leagues and leagues to the north—the Ildurgul Taruún—that constantly belches smoke and fire. For millennia, its eruptions have poisoned the land, making it unsuitable for almost all forms
of life, hence the name. If the wind is right—or wrong, I should say—we may find ourselves enduring the taint of its noxious exhalations.”

  “Sounds…unpleasant,” Zhalera said while wrinkling her nose.

  As the horses’ hooves echoed throughout the canyon, a shower of small stones rained down from somewhere high above and behind them, glancing off the cliffs and quartz. A chunk of rock collided with one of the larger hexagonal protrusions with an almost metallic ringing sound: the suns-light split again, their rays redirected as a hairline fracture spread along the crystal’s faces and altered its geometry.

  “I think getting crushed by giant crystals sounds pretty unpleasant, too,” added Kalas. “Let’s hope everything up there stays up there!”

  2.

  Warm air supplanted the chill weather of the plains with powerful gusts. When the suns had reached their zenith, Rül steered his horses toward what appeared to be a shallow cave flanked with rock crystal within one of the chasm’s walls. Scattered rays filtered into the space, illuminating their surroundings with cool, diffuse light.

  “This’ll be a great place for a rest,” Rül said with a nod. “It’s cooler than the road, out of the direct suns-light. You weren’t kidding, mister cleric! It was starting to get hot out there!”

  “It’ll take the better part of the day’s remains for that heat to dissipate,” Falthwën confirmed.

  While the others rested, Kalas followed Zhalera toward the back of the cave. He’d watched her trace her hand along its surfaces, follow and inspect various mineral threads embedded within the strata.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked.

  “Nothing, really. I’m thinking of Father, wondering what he might have thought about all these crystals, all this rock.”

  “He’d be pretty excited,” Kalas said. “Tell me, what do you think about all of it?”

  It took a few more prodding questions, but soon, Zhalera elaborated on the various processes (as best she understood them) involved in smelting base metals from various ores. She pointed to a band of reddish material flecked with hazy black inclusions and followed it across the cave.

  “This looks like hematite—a lot of it, too! If we could get this back to town, rebuild the smelting furnace…Not today! Not this trip! I mean, someday, after all this…wolf-business is over with.”

  “Hey, what’s this?” said Kalas as he spied something protruding from the ground. With his knife, he pried it free from the dirt and held it up, wiped away the dust that still clung to its surface.

  “It looks like some kind of ceramic, maybe?” Zhalera suggested as Kalas passed it to her. Though perhaps a cylindrical vessel at one time, now it was just a sharp fragment etched with intricate patterns and inlaid with decorative bits of stone and crystal. A quick scan of the surrounding floor revealed additional pieces that might have been part of Kalas’ discovery. Parts of the farthest wall almost had an artificial quality about them, too, as though someone had plastered over them.

  “Looks like it’s been here for a long time,” she said as she handed it back to Kalas. “But who knows?”

  “Well, it’s broken, whatever it is,” he dismissed as he tossed it to the ground.

  Hours after the second sun had passed well beyond the rim thousands of feet above them, the party packed up and set out again. Almost everyone, it seemed, had managed a few hours of sleep while the suns burned away the day’s heat—Kalas had begun to doubt Falthwën ever slept at all: he’d thought he was the first one awake when he realized the ancient cleric had been resting—not actually sleeping—near the cave’s mouth.

  After another few hours, a low, repeating sound syncopated the steady meter of the horses’ hoofbeats.

  “Where’s that coming from?” Zhalera asked, excited. “That’s…that’s not The Song, is it?”

  “Ilmukritnàm. Úrukilmukritnàm,” corrected Shosafin. “Cave dwellers. Valderïk’s men…interacted with one of their tribes on the way to Lohwàlar.”

  “‘Interacted?’” said Falthwën, and even though his back was to him, Kalas knew the old cleric had arched an eyebrow.

  “Let’s hope this is a different tribe,” the soldier deadpanned.

  “Ilmukritnàm have always been peaceable,” the cleric insisted. “I can’t imagine what Valderïk sought to gain from assaulting them.”

  “How could anyone live out here?” Zhalera wondered. “There’s no water, no trees…”

  “That’s what Valdërik’s men said about Lohwàlar,” Shosafin said.

  The noise—drumbeats, Kalas thought—increased in volume as they made their way up the incline. Underneath the heavier drums ran a thread of faster, more varied percussive instruments.

  “Sounds like they’re having a party,” Kalas noted.

  At that moment a chunk of rock sailed through the strange twilight and knocked Falthwën unconscious.

  “Falthwën! Rül screamed, gave the old man a shake. A thin streak of blood seeped from his head and ran into his beard.

  No response.

  “Shosafin?!” Kalas said with a waver in his voice.

  The soldier had somehow disappeared, in spite of the unaccommodating terrain.

  “What happened? Did something fall from the cliffs?” Zhalera suggested as she looked up.

  More rocks banged against their cart.

  “No!” Kalas hissed, “We’re being attacked!”

  3.

  “Rül, get us out of here!”

  “How? There’s only one way to go!”

  “Then go! Go as fast as you can!”

  “The cart—!”

  “What good’s a cart if we’re all…I don’t know what these people want—don’t want to know! Runner! Dancer!” Kalas said, as if a direct appeal would help. “Go!”

  Whether from his pleas or Rül’s reins, the horses, already wearied from the uphill climb, struggled as best they could. Kalas jumped from the slow-moving vehicle, his knife at the ready, and ran ahead of the cart. Zhalera did likewise, her sword in hand, though she kept it bound and sheathed for the moment.

  “Kalas, what are we doing?!” she panted.

  “I don’t know! I can’t—there!” he cried, spotting a subtle movement just above them. “Looks like they’re above us! Some kind of ridge or something!”

  “How do we get up there?!”

  “I don’t…all right, there has to be…Nëshrime! It’s too slippery to climb,” he cursed as his hands failed to find purchase along the wall. “Of all the times for Shosafin to disappear!”

  Kalas heard a faint ringing sound before a figure seemed to fly through the night, lit for a fraction of a second by the fractured rays of the setting sun before it collided with the far wall. A second followed the first.

  Dàbiras nir! Kalas thought: he’d heard that subtle ringing sound before.

  The drumbeats ceased; now, alien voices shouted obscure words as wiry figures buzzed like rumors within the encroaching black. Out of breath, Kalas stopped atop a slight plateau and saw yawning caves dotted with distant lights on either side of the road. Even in the semidarkness he noticed thin paths on either side of the Highway, carved by these úrukilmukritme, he assumed.

  That’s how they got above us! he realized.

  Above, an immense accumulation of quartz spanned the entirety of the chasm, collected the last of Tàfayan’s light and spread it along canyon’s walls. At first, Kalas thought it was a natural formation, but as the light shifted, he decided it was man-made.

  That’s impressive, he admitted as he strove for escape.

  Breaker thundered into view. Shosafin reined him in and said, “I don’t think this is the same tribe, but they must be friends with them. Or maybe they just don’t like outsiders. I disabled most of them—not permanently!—but more will come.”

  Zhalera reached the plateau as well. Though her sword remained hidden, its pommel boasted fresh blood stains.

  “I only hit a few of them—in the head,” she explained when she saw Ka
las’ shocked expression. “I don’t even really know how to use it: I’ve never…I mean, I didn’t want to—”

  “You did the right thing, lass,” Shosafin interrupted. “These people aren’t mercenaries or assassins: they’re just defending their home.”

  Rül caught up with everyone. Falthwën remained unresponsive.

  “I don’t think so,” he said when he recognized the horror in Zhalera’s face. “Just asleep. But the horses: they’re almost spent…I don’t think we’re going to make it out of here!”

  The farm boy’s words might as well have been prophecy. Mere seconds after he’d uttered his prediction, the scintillating lights flanking them winked out. Whispers, faint but rising, corrupted the sudden stillness. Soon, the great crystal agglomeration above them cast its fading radiance over twenty, maybe thirty quartz-tipped pikes or spears. The mob’s whispers coalesced into words—recognizable words: Guli ihi ilnëshrasme! Guli ihi ilnëshrasme!

  “Kalas, how do we get out of here?!” Zhalera panicked. She held his gaze for a moment—he winced at the fear in her eyes When he didn’t answer right away, she wilted, started to undo the wrappings around her sword.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she wept.

  He stayed her hand with his own.

  “Not like this,” he breathed.

  “Kalas—?” she began: when she turned to look at him, she stopped.

  Voluminous new light collected in the construct overhead as Kalas’ flesh seemed to split apart in shreds of tangible luminescence. Multi-fingered ropes of iridescent energy rippled across his body in lambent waves. As one, the voices closing on them ceased; then, their singular chant unraveled, became a tumultuous clamor. For an eternal, ephemeral moment, time seemed immobile, unable to move in any direction: when it did move again, a concussive blast flung the spears—and their wielders—to the ground: the shock rattled the gorge walls and cracked the moorings of the reflector above them. Shards rained down, spit rainbows in all directions as they hurtled through space.