Beneath the Vault of Stars

by Blake Goulette

  What few ilmukritme managed to stand stared at the spectacle in front of them, arms up to shield their eyes from the violent radiance They approached without their weapons and, with the backs of their fingers pressed against their foreheads and a wholly different tone, uttered something else: an epithet, a sobriquet laden with suppliant intent.

  Kalas, still aflame, paid them little attention. His thoughts were elsewhere when everything around him erupted in a tantrum of ineffable light.

  4.

  Kalas’ senses ceased to function. Indeed, for a moment he thought he’d died; however, the incessant pounding inside his head suggested otherwise. He opened his eyes. Wished he hadn’t as daylight stabbed at his retinae.

  Wait—daylight?!

  “What…what happened?” he asked the cleric who was kneeling over him. “Falthwën! You’re all right!”

  “Just a little bump,” he deflected. “Nothing a little…rest couldn’t fix. No, I’m more interested in your adventures! Seems you’ve been busy, my child!”

  Where there had been cliffs on either side of them were only wide, hilly spaces stippled here and there with suns-bleached scrub. At the side of the road, a smattering of tall, thin trees provided a modicum of shelter.

  “Where are we?” With Zhalera’s help he sat up. She let her arms remain around his shoulders.

  “We’re a few miles from Deridzhas, perhaps the only town within the Ilvurkanzhime.”

  “How did we get here?” Kalas closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. “Last thing I remember was…rainbows. Why is that? I can’t…The horses were spent, the ilmukritme had us surrounded…Rainbows. It was nightfall, too, but…I don’t understand!”

  “Rear axle’s broken. Probably from the fall,” said Rül from the other side of the overturned cart. “You think we can get it repaired in…Deridzhas, you said?”

  “The fall?” mumbled Kalas, still confused.

  “From what I’m told,” began Falthwën as he held out one of his green lozenges, which the youth accepted without question, “after one of the cave dwellers brained me with a rock, the lot of you tried to escape, but, as you said, the horses had given their all and the dwellers had you surrounded—why they thought you were ‘accursèd ones’ I can’t say for certain. Miss Zhalera was about to reveal her sword—”

  “No! You said not to!” Kalas interrupted. Zhalera held him where he was as he tried to rise.

  She’s strong! he observed.

  “—but she didn’t! That’s when you—you!—brought us here.”

  Kalas said nothing, allowed himself some time to consider the cleric’s story.

  “It’s getting harder and harder to discount the immaterial around you people,” grunted Shosafin.

  “You were on fire, Kalas!” said Zhalera as she released his shoulders and repositioned herself in front of him. “Is that what happened when the wolf—no, you don’t remember, do you?—anyway, fire was all over you, but you weren’t burning up! Nothing was! Some kind of energy surrounded you—all of us!—then BOOM! you knocked the ilmukritme on their backs, and seconds later, we were here! And—you won’t believe it!—one of the ilmukritme somehow ended up in our cart!”

  “Did he hurt you? Is everyone all right? Where—”

  “Not a ‘he!’ A girl! Maybe five, maybe six and a Seven! She must have taken a hit, too: probably got knocked around by all that energy. She’s unconscious, but Falthwën thinks she’ll be all right in a few days.”

  Kalas stood, with Zhalera’s help, and walked over to the cart.

  “You dropped us a few feet from the ground,” said Rül, attempting to repair things as best he could. He stood, rested against the handle of some kind of huge wrench. “That’s when the axle broke, I’m guessing.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry…”

  “I’m not blaming you, Kalas! Just making an observation!”

  “The horses?”

  “A little banged up, but they’re safe. They’ll need a few days to rest. Longer, really, but if we take things slow—a lot slower than we have been—we should be okay. They’re bred for toughness. I just hope we can find what we need in town.”

  “Maybe,” said Falthwën, who’d joined them, though his tone belied his doubt. “It’s been many, many Sevens since I’ve visited these parts of the world.”

  Just beyond Rül, under the strongest shadow, a fragile-looking figure clothed in close-fitting garments rested on a bed fashioned from some of their baggage. Silver-colored hair streaked with black framed her heart-shaped face. Her fair, almost cream-colored skin had a few fresh scrapes and cuts in places, but the cleric had already tended to them.

  She looks so peaceful. So helpless. Harmless, Kalas thought. What happened to her—to all of them—?

  “Made her a couch,” said Rül, quite pleased with his design.

  “I still don’t understand,” Kalas insisted as he turned the conversation back to his original question. “You’ve told me what happened, not how it happened! The Song, right? But…but how?!”

  “Your friends have told you what they know as best they can,” Falthwën defended. “It’s unkind to demand from them what they cannot possibly provide. To the heart of your question: How did you direct The Song to bring us here? Perhaps an illustration would help…Music has rules like clefs and time signatures; it has directions like sforzando and pianissimo. In the hands of one conductor, an arrangement might sound one way: in the hands of another, surprisingly different. Think of exercising this privilege like conducting the music according to your own interpretation.

  “That’s my none-too-terse way of saying: only you know how—even if that knowledge prefers to remain locked away from your conscious thoughts…for now.”

  “The way we were there, then we were here…It’s not unlike the way Marugan moved when he tried to cut me in half,” Shosafin, who’d been listening, remarked.

  “Ekume hear The Song in much the same way as erume. They’re party to its privilege as well. Seranà is seranà regardless of who exercises it: it’s the wielder’s intent that determines its character. Kalas’ intent was to preserve his friends from harm.”

  “Falthwën! She’s waking up!” hissed Zhalera as she rustled his shoulder.

  The ancient cleric approached, knelt, and, with his rough hands, he took hold of one of hers, massaged its tendons with his fingertips. Some of the suns-light caught in the facets of his ring.

  “Dzhâra afilo nir, dhëmínahal,” he soothed. “Time to wake up, my little child.”

  The girl’s long-lashed eyelids fluttered, opened—then opened wider still when she realized where she wasn’t.

  “This isn’t—! Where—? What happened? Why am I—My family—!”

  “Easy now, little one! You’re safe—we mean you no harm!”

  On the verge of panic, the girl’s violet-colored eyes darted in every direction, searching for some means of escape when—

  “Ilosar!” she whispered with a reverent hush when her eyes found Kalas. With rough speed, she pushed Falthwën’s hands away and almost glided across the dirt toward the young man, around whom she wrapped her trembling arms and would not let go.

  “Come again?” said Kalas, puzzled, as he cocked his head.

  With care, he convinced the girl—young woman, really—to let go of him, to sit back down and share her story.

  “Tell me, miss…?”

  “Pava. Please, call me Pava.”

  “Pava, my name’s Kalas. This is Zhalera, that’s Falthwën, that’s Rül, and—where’d he go? Never mind. Pava, we’re sorry for hurting any of your people. When you attacked us, we didn’t know—”

  “No! No, it’s we who should be sorry! We never should have attacked, and I—Oh! Your head!” she exclaimed when she noticed the reddish brown streak in Falthwën’s beard, the mottled bump on the side of his head.

  “Oh, that?” the old man chuckled as he ran his hand over the wound. “I’ve weathered worse!” His ring sparkled in the suns-light, and the g
irl took a breath, as though the spectacle triggered questions in her mind; she never asked them, however, chose instead to remain silent.

  “Pava, why don’t you tell us what happened,” Kalas coaxed. “From your perspective?”

  5.

  The ilmukrit girl said nothing for a while, but Kalas could tell she was attempting to organize her thoughts in the way her eyes moved to and fro as she sorted her memories.

  “Years ago,” she began, “before my first Seven, something happened to our villages. The iltithme-kali—light collectors—that had harnessed the glory of the suns for generations had begun to fail. We made all the adjustments we knew how, but nothing helped. It was like the light itself just stopped working! It made no sense! We had to abandon some of the smaller outposts, which meant more crowding in the larger districts, which led to lots of other problems, too.

  “Things continued to get worse until an eru appeared—someone claiming to be an eru, at least. He made the collectors work again, and so we trusted him. Our elders came to rely on him more and more, and soon, in every way that mattered, he held all the power. Everyone thought his presence was fulfillment of prophecy—someone who would return the light to the world—so we did whatever he asked. We had to! When we didn’t, the collectors darkened. He said it was because of our lack of faith in him, but really, I think he just wanted to punish us for our disobedience. Some of us—not enough—suspected that he wasn’t who he pretended to be, but what could we do?

  “He always seemed to know when the ilrâigme-edhume were on the prowl. Was always warning us about their movements: probably to keep us under his thumb. But few days ago, he told us a band of them would be coming up through the canyon, that you’d carve us up, destroy the last of our great collectors, and plunge the heart of our civilization into darkness. Then he disappeared—I mean he literally disappeared, leaving behind some kind of black smoke. By this time many more of us were skeptical, but then our scouts saw you coming, and suddenly we weren’t so sure. He did make the collectors work. When he wanted to…

  “Ilrâigme haven’t raided us since before I was born—something the eru took credit for—but he told us the one who’d be at the front, riding the biggest horse, was the hungriest, most dangerous one of all. Told us he’d seen him eat the legs of still-screaming babies while their mothers wept. Those who’ve had to defend our villages against ilrâigme before—who’ve seen what they’re capable of—panicked, and so did the rest of us.

  “But when you started fighting back—no, when you started defending yourselves, it looked like you did everything you could to avoid actually killing anyone. I didn’t understand. Mother and Father had ordered me to stay inside, out of sight, but there was no way I was just going to stand by while monsters ate our people! I watched as you…Zhalera, yes? I watched you use the handle of your sword, not the blade. And I watched someone else…I don’t see him here…use the flat of his to push some of us away. He looked like he knew his way around his weapon: it would have been so easy for him—for any of you—to do whatever you wanted. We’re…not fighters. Not really.

  “And then there was so much light! Powerful light that none of us had seen in years! I was above you, above your cart, near the Great Collector. I…I’d climbed up there hoping I’d be able to drop a rock on your heads. When the Kathin Iltith filled with all that light, I had to shield my eyes, it was so bright! The crystals have never glowed like that before! Then the ground shook and I lost my balance. I don’t even remember falling, but that must have been what happened…

  “Whatever the rest of my village thinks, it’s clear to me that the man pretending to be an eru was something else entirely. He wasn’t the ilosar we’ve been waiting for. We—I am sorry.”

  “This ‘eru,’” Shosafin said. Pava jumped when she heard his voice coming from somewhere behind her.

  “The ‘hungriest, most dangerous’ one of us,” Rül nodded with a grin, and Pava relaxed. A little. “He does that a lot.”

  “This eru…You said he left black smoke behind? Hmm. Can you describe him? What he looked like?”

  “He looked…well, he looked a little like…Falthwën, was it? Old, that is—I mean no disrespect! Horrible scars all across his face. Even when he smiled, there was something cold about him, about his eyes—flat gray, like they’d never known happiness. Or maybe they had, once, but never expected to again.”

  “Marugan?” Kalas asked. Shosafin said nothing. “He’s really got it in for you, doesn’t he?”

  “I suspect Ilbardhën is no longer his primary concern,” said Falthwën with a knowing look. “Miss Pava,” he continued, changing subjects, “I’m afraid we have no way to return you to your home right now. Our cart is broken and our horses are in dire need of rest. Deridzhas is not too far from here: it’s our hope to make repairs there while our horses recuperate. You’re free to do as you please, of course, but—”

  “You can stay with us,” insisted Rül. “I mean, we can make some room. You’re small: you could probably fit up front with me and Falthwën.

  Pava looked at Falthwën, then at Rül. At the road beside which she rested and toward the canyon that had been her whole life. She shook her head. Rül’s shoulders sagged.

  “No, I can’t go back. Not yet. Maybe I can help you—somehow. I have to try, at least: I have to right the wrong we’ve done you. If you’ll have me, I’ll stay.”

  “Oh? I mean—of course!” beamed Rül, and Kalas chuckled at the farm boy’s elevated demeanor. Zhalera gave him a playful punch.

  “Be nice,” she teased.

  6.

  “I’ll stay with P—the horses,” Rül had offered after most of the others had prepared for the hike into Deridzhas. Dancer and Runner seemed grateful for the shade and the rest as they drank from the party’s dwindling reserves.

  “If anyone—anything—comes near: hide,” suggested Falthwën. “Keep Pava safe: she needs rest as well. Let Ilbardhën handle any unexpected guests. Just in case there are ilrâigme in the area, you’d do well to avoid their…attention.”

  “Hish, âu cleric,” he agreed.

  Though scattered and, for the most part, inconsequential, the trees that lined the road provided at least some protection from the suns as Falthwën, Kalas, and Zhalera trekked across the desert toward the town. Aside from a few variables, the so-called Ilvurkanzhime reminded Kalas of Lohwàlar. Granted, there were trees here: not as robust as the forest at the bottom of the Empty Sea, but trees nonetheless; the air, while hot by all measures, still felt cooler than most days back home—probably because of the elevation. He figured they were thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of feet closer to the sky than Lohwàlar. Felt that way, at least.

  “Let’s keep a low profile,” the cleric suggested as they hiked. “I’d prefer not to be surprised by Marugan again. Or anything else, for that matter.”

  Just under a league from their “crash site,” Falthwën stopped. He surveyed their surroundings for a while before inclining the top of his staff toward a crumbling stone wall nestled within the trees a few hundred feet in front of them. Wide, irregular gaps—some large enough for a team of horses—suggested that it had been some years since anyone had maintained things here. Some portions retained their weathered capstones, and Kalas guessed that, when new, the wall was about seven or eight feet tall. Now, most of what remained was four, maybe five feet above the ground. Masses of pallid yellow tree roots blotched with reddish-violet fungus had knocked down several large sections, wrapped around them and reduced them to gravel.

  “Do you think those trees look all right?” Kalas whispered, shaded his eyes for a better look. Both of his companions shook their heads in silent unison.

  A tarnished metal archway, pitted by wind and rain and blasted by sand and gravel, framed what appeared to be the main entrance into the town of Deridzhas. No gate barred their entry: either Deridzhas was a welcoming place or, like the walls, the gate had succumbed to years—Sevens—of neglect.

  �
��When were you here last?” Zhalera whispered as the three of them sought cover beneath one of the larger trees, stared at the town for any signs of movement.

  “The Wastes? Many Sevens ago. Deridzhas? I don’t remember. Probably within that same time frame. And no: it did not look like this! Now, there’s a malevolence in the air. Be wary, my children…”

  “Any one else feel…queasy?” Zhalera wondered as she put a hand over her stomach.”

  “Queasy?” repeated Kalas. Falthwën said nothing.

  “I just feel like…I don’t know…This place is…weird.”

  For a few minutes, they watched and waited in the heat, but nothing moved within the town. Satisfied, Falthwën led the others through the gate and into an open square. Some of the strange, yellow-rooted trees had taken over the place, with more than a few of them nearing five feet in height. Several curious-looking, metallic objects—most on wheels—lay rusting here and there along their path. Kalas tried each one, but they’d been abandoned for so long that their hubs had seized. Closer inspection indicated none of their components would be of any use—even if the three of them could have moved the peculiar items.

  The remains of the road deposited them in front of the largest visible building: perhaps ten or twelve feet tall, it still dwarfed most other structures. Constructed primarily from stones and mud, most showed the same signs of age and dilapidation as the wall around the town. The “town hall,” as Kalas considered it, seemed mostly whole from where they stood, though it had no door. With a shrug, he and Zhalera followed Falthwën across the square, down a few steps into a shallow, walled depression that ringed the cylindrical edifice, and through the naked portal into shadow.

  Inside the domed room, shafts of suns-light poked through a few holes in the building’s roof and illuminated a tangle of debris scattered across its rough-hewn wooden floor. Years of dust covered almost everything with a light rime.