Beneath the Vault of Stars

by Blake Goulette

  “C’mon, Nashmur!” said Rül as he pushed up the sleeves on his robe. “Let’s get a running start! Between the two of us, I’ll bet we can push through whatever it is that’s holding her back!”

  The commander grit his teeth and clenched his fists, looked to the farm boy for his signal.

  “Now!” Rül shouted, and the two of them bore down on the girls.

  The echo of their pounding strides alerted Pava, who leapt out of the way just in time. As one, both men collided with Zhalera. She’d been so focused on trying to reach the symbol that she didn’t realize what was going on until she lurched forward and into the unseen resistance. It absorbed her, held her aloft as Nashmur and Rül, repelled, bounced against the floor.

  Suspended in midair, she twisted for a better angle, tried to cross the emblem’s threshold as she prayed aloud: “Su pirathëthu—sethreva hwishalu!”

  Whatever power held her relaxed its grip. Against her will, she dropped her sword as she tumbled to the ground. Both she and her weapon hit the floor at the same time: Zhalera just outside the rim of Valaran’s mark; the shimmering tip of her sword just within it.

  “HISH! Ágazhëthu!” she exulted, eyes raised, just a moment before Valaran’s gemstones exploded in a blaze of honey-colored light and energy and flung her across the room.

  3.

  “Did…did it work? Are we—Kalas?! Are you all right?!” Zhalera wondered as she opened her eyes, tapped the swelling bump at the back of her head. Kalas, his ears and face still streaked with his blood, cradled her in his arms. Nïmrïk and the others crowded around, worried about her now.

  “It did!” he assured her as he ran a finger through an errant lock of hair, black as night moments ago; now a blend of lemon-tinted silver, and smoothed it back behind her ear. “The music is…fixed, I guess, and The Song in my head—it’s so loud!—sounds…well, I don’t know, but it sounds…right, I guess!”

  “I take it back,” she said as she sat up and wiped at the blood beneath his ears: “I’m not jealous! Not after seeing what it did to you!”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t pleasant. At all! It’s kinda like what happened on the day of my second Seven. Only worse! But enough about that: how are you? Nïmrïk said you flew through the air and landed pretty hard!”

  “My head hurts. All right, my everything hurts, but I’m pretty sure I’m all right. It was the strangest thing, just…stuck in the air like that!”

  “It was strange to look at,” said Rül. “Creeped me out!” Nashmur and Pava agreed.

  “How’d you come up with the idea to put your family’s sword on Valaran’s marker?” Kalas asked. “That was some pretty quick thinking!”

  “I don’t know. Not really,” Zhalera admitted. “I remembered what Sifuran said about how she used to ‘help’ people, how she’d put a part of herself into certain things. When Falthwën made it glow, I thought he’d done something to it: I didn’t realize what it was he was showing us. I didn’t understand why he wanted me to keep it hidden, either…and then there you were: screaming, bleeding…I thought you were falling apart! I thought your ears were broken: I shouted and shouted but I don’t think you heard me. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  She tried to remove the blood above his lip with a gentle swipe, smeared it more than anything. With both hands, slick with sweat, she cleared away as much as possible.

  “Better,” she smiled as she pulled his face closer to hers and kissed him.

  “You’re not going to slap me again?” he teased when she pulled away.

  “Guys! Something’s happening!” said Rül as he pointed toward the sides of the Vault where the erumedas colored light seemed to writhe and pounce along the walls.

  “It’s in time with the music,” Kalas explained. “If you could hear it, you’d—”

  “I can! I can!” shouted Pava as her eyes widened with amazement. The others offered similar reactions.

  “It’s like before, but…now there’s something else, something under everything. A message, maybe? I can’t understand it, but it sounds—it feels—like there’s a thought underscoring this music,” said Nashmur, head cocked.

  “We still have no idea what they’re doing, do we?” Rül added. “Kalas: what do you think?”

  “Me?! I don’t know! Right now, I’m hearing—I think I’m hearing the same Song as the rest of you.” Turning toward Nashmur, he continued: “Commander, I sense a message, too, but—”

  The six elume—and Zhalera’s sword—caught fire: seemed to, at least, as their corporeal forms erupted in sheets of raging flame, as their music changed keys and crescendoed. Their Song continued to build upon itself as the room started shaking again. This time, however, it seemed right.

  “That fire!” said Zhalera as its roar became accompaniment for the burgeoning chorus. “It’s like a forge, when Father would work the bellows! How are they not burning up?!”

  “They’re stars,” Nïmrïk reminded her. “Millions of times hotter than your forges. Fire itself won’t hurt them!”

  “Maybe they’ll be fine, but what about us?!” Rül wondered as he raised an arm to shield his eyes from the intensifying heat and light. “It’s getting hot in here!”

  “No argument there!” Kalas said. “But we’ll be all right. I hope! I don’t think—”

  Kalas had been yelling. All of them had been, attempting to surpass the stars’ volume. He ceased yelling when, with a blinding wash, the erume blinked into nothing more than fist-sized spheres of fire and rocketed toward the sky. Their bejeweled emblems cut into the floor emit a pulse of energy: its pressure wave knocked everyone to the ground. The erume had vanished, taking with them the strains of their Song.

  Silence settled over the Vault.

  Each remained where he’d fallen, held his breath and looked to the infinite void high above. At one another.

  No one spoke. None had anything to say.

  Like a premonition, a realization whose onset is sure and sudden, a pinprick of radiance pierced the black. The symbol at the center of the seven-sided room began to glow: faint, at first; then, drawing fire from the others, became too bright to behold. The skyborne gleam—no longer just a pinprick—rushed upon the floor in a column of multicolored splendor and a cascade of scintillating sparks that swirled within the Vault. Ropes of living energy sizzled toward the central marker, emanating from the seven that surrounded it: in the twinkling of an eye, the erume returned, assumed their familiar shapes. With arms extended, they concluded their overture. No longer wreathed in unconsuming flame, no longer incandescent, each focused on the roiling pillar they’d worked so hard to summon. The light…energy…magic proceeding from beneath their feet finished coursing toward the Vault’s center. With one final blast that overwhelmed the humans’ senses, the light…ceased. Not just the whirling construct wrought by the erume, but every hint of illumination they’d willed into being.

  Darkness and silence settled over the Vault.

  “Falthwën? Heshradan?” Kalas ventured. “Hello? Loradan—?”

  New light—an entirely new kind of light—filled the room.

  Kalas gasped. So did everyone: including the erume.

  Above the eighth symbol stood a woman—a girl?—none had ever seen.

  “It worked!” Sifuran beamed: “It worked!”

  Clothed in light itself, glittering like unnumbered diamonds, rubies, spessartines, topaz, emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts, the girl appeared to be three Sevens, give or take a few years, but Kalas couldn’t escape the sensation that she was…wholly other than her exterior revealed. Her skin, fairer than moonglow on undisturbed desert sand, radiated with a luminescence all its own. Dark tresses fell across her back, studded with jewels and tipped here and there with touches of glimmering color. She’d been looking up, toward the sky—toward the Vault’s inestimable apex. When she looked around at the room in which she now found herself, her large, silver eyes blinked once or twice with surprise before she squinted, sneezed, a
nd considered her new environs.

  The erume cast their light across the Vault, and the figure, as though noticing them for the first time, looked from one to the next, her exquisite features rigid with uncertainty.

  “My child!” said Heshradan as his peers looked to him. “Please, forgive us for what we’ve done! I am Heshradan, a member of the Great Swath, and we—this world!—is in desperate need!”

  The others introduced themselves in kind.

  Is she afraid? Kalas wondered. I guess I’d be afraid if I were in her place…

  “Tell us, child, if you would: what is your name? By what may we call you?”

  The girl, still unsure, opened her mouth and…sang, her voice clearer than nighttime in winter. Not with words—none the erume understood. Out of the corner of his eye, Kalas saw Nïmrïk straighten.

  Falthwën’s face broke apart in a wide smile: “I’ve never heard anything like this before!”

  The other erume agreed.

  “This is new music!” Yayan said as she jabbed an elbow at Peradan. “New music!”

  “You sing with such…there’s so much emotion in so few notes!” added Loradan.

  The girl returned a tepid smile of her own, offered a few more notes. Her expression soured as she placed a hand to her throat, massaged her neck and tried again to speak.

  It seemed the only sounds she could make took the form of song.

  “It…mostly worked?” suggested Sifuran with a wry frown.

  “Abarandal,” said Kalas, matter-of-factly. The girl’s smile turned genuine, her pearlescent teeth shining in the Vault’s strange light She stepped lightly toward Kalas, as though it mattered little whether her feet actually touched the ground. She sang a few more phrases.

  “Oh! My name’s Kalas,” he replied as he introduced himself and the others, as if she’d asked him a question.

  “Can you…understand her?” Falthwën asked as he stroked his beard.

  “Of course! Her name’s Abarandal, and she’s wondering who we are, how she got here. Where here is!”

  “You…can understand her?!” repeated Loradan with a mixture of wonder and bemusement.

  “Right! Like I—you say that like the rest of you can’t!”

  “That’s because we can’t!” said Zhalera. “It’s all music to us. The most beautiful music I’ve ever heard (why does it sound so familiar?), but it’s just music.”

  “Do you still doubt your place within the prophecy?” Heshradan grinned at Kalas.

  Abarandal sang a new tune as she collapsed into Kalas’ arms.

  “They what?!” he gasped. “But how?! To what end? They… they think you’re a part of this prophecy? That—oh!”

  “Would it be impolite to ask what it was she just told you?” said Peradan.

  “‘I saw a great power fall upon the realm of men,’” Kalas said, his brow furrowed in thought. “Maybe…maybe there is something to this prophecy after all…”

  4.

  “It’s true,” confessed Peradan as Kalas explained what Abarandal had revealed to him. “We…called her from out of the heavens. None of us knows how long she’s been waiting. Not really. Her star has never shined until tonight. And that’s our fault.”

  “So she is a star. An eru,” said Zhalera.

  “‘Fault’ is a strong word,” Sifuran contradicted him. “We all know the prophecy: we’ve all known that at some point in history, we’d find ourselves in a situation like this!”

  “So you’d accept that you’re—that we’re—nothing but chess pieces in the hands of this prophecy? That the Creator’s gift of self-determination is a farce?”

  “That’s not what I said!” the sapphire star retorted.

  “Even a pawn…can shift fortunes,” said Kalas, conjuring the phrase from some distant memory.

  “That’s all academic now,” insisted Loradan. She crossed the markings on the floor, retrieved the sword imbued with Valaran’s essence, and returned it to Zhalera as she made her way toward Abarandal. “She’s here—that’s the important thing now. I’ll admit: I’m not sure what happens next! Kathin kelësh, according to the prophecy…but how do we—forgive me, my child!—how do we use that ‘great power?’”

  Abarandal began her song again, and even those who couldn’t understand her words recognized the sense of indirection and uncertainty in her notes.

  “She doesn’t know,” confirmed Kalas. “She has a sense that she’s been…hidden away from the rest of creation. Set apart. But to what end, she doesn’t remember.”

  “Perhaps we can help her remember,” suggested Peradan has he reached out a hand.

  Tentative, Abarandal looked to Kalas, who nodded, and held out her own hand. As Peradan closed his fingers over hers, Abarandal wrenched her hand away from the spessartine eru and retreated into Kalas’ shoulder. She whispered something in the boy’s ear.

  “He was almost captured,” Kalas explained. To Peradan, he elaborated: “She senses…darkness about you. I think: what she said was anti-light. Your close call with the ekume must have left its mark.”

  “Ah, that…makes sense,” he frowned as his eyes narrowed.

  “She’ll need instruction,” decided Yayan. “Someone to educate her regarding this world—even from before its cracking. We’ll need—”

  Before the ruby star could expound on her train of thought, spheres of darkness punctured the atmosphere within the Vault. Cacophonic riffs raked their ears as black tendrils probed the air. The noise worsened as more spheres appeared, ballooned into writhing, lightless voids.

  “What’s that sound?!” cried Rül as he cupped his hands over his ears.

  “Ekume!” shouted Falthwën. “They’ve found us! They’ve breached the Vault!”

  “How?!” exclaimed Loradan, Hàfilrifar in hand. “This place—others like it—it’s inaccessible to those who don’t know—”

  “Don’t you get it?” raged Sifuran as he drew a pair of flashing swords from some unfathomable dimension. “Someone has betrayed us!”

  “Egu!” screamed Peradan, having produced a wicked-looking spear, as he lunged for Nïmrïk.

  “No! Never!” he insisted as he stepped out of the way.

  “How could it be him?” queried Heshradan as he readied his own weapon: a two-handed diamond-studded mace. “He’s never been here until today!”

  Undulating gouts of shadow slithered through the air, tasting it for prey and whipping at the confused erume. One slapped against Yayan, wrapped a tentacle around her leg and pulled.

  “Not today!” she roared as she severed it with her axe. A pulse of hot red light and her attacker’s appendage disappeared in a cloud of gray dust.

  Other ekume feelers discovered other prey: Loradan brought Hàfilrifar down upon countless enemies; Peradan swatted more than a few out of the way; Falthwën, staff ablaze, hurled waves of destructive energy at as many scintillating rifts as possible.

  “Too many!” said Heshradan between blows.

  An eku lanced a long finger toward Nïmrïk: the egu dodged, hunched, and, in an uncomfortable gesture that reminded Kalas of Dzharëth’s final transformation, freed himself from his human skin. Having assumed his wolf form, he launched himself toward a dark star bearing down on Sifuran, grabbed it in his slavering jaws, and, with an improbable snap, broke its neck and hurled it to the ground. His foe neutralized, he bounded after another.

  Nashmur had drawn his sword as well, but his efforts proved useless: every would-be strike passed through each eku without harm. Zhalera, wielding her ancestors’ sword, however, held her own against the darkness.

  “We’ve got to find a way out of here!” shouted Peradan as he scanned the Vault: “I don’t see one!”

  “Kalas!” summoned Falthwën between blasts. “Protect the girl! Protect Abarandal!”

  “I’m trying! My sword does nothing!”

  “Protect her at all costs!” he insisted as a shadow loomed over the boy.

  Kalas didn’t see it until it was t
oo late. Before the living gloom could seize him with its tendrils, Falthwën carved a quick symbol in the air, pushed it toward the boy. Kalas understood, tucked Abarandal against his neck and rolled clear of the cleric’s spell. Stunned, the eku seemed to shrink—if only for a moment. Falthwën rushed upon it, readied his staff for the next blow. The creature gathered its malicious strength, came at the cleric from all sides, seized his limbs and wrest his staff from his overworked hands.

  “Falthwën! No!” Kalas screamed. Loradan turned, rushed toward her captured friend with her sword at the ready.

  Again, time seemed to lose momentum as the darkness slashed at Sharuyan. Though its tentacles had seemed to Kalas like nothing more than an angry absence of light, every slash lacerated the cleric’s face, his arms and legs, his entire body. Bright white light, tinted at the edges with his signature emerald color, bled from his wounds.

  “Ilmazhas!” cried Loradan as time regained its tempo.

  “We’ll meet again, my dearest,” he insisted as his life force gushed from every new injury. “We will meet again!”

  With a smile devoid of sadness or regret—

  Like Mother’s…

  —Falthwën held Kalas with his dancing green gaze. “Heal the world, my child! The egu wasn’t wrong: there is great power within you! Let The Song reveal it to you! Become the light your parents knew you to be—the light I know you to be! When you’re ‘confronted with a choice’—and you will be!—I know you’ll make the right one!”

  The other erume had surrounded the eku that held their brother in its dark embrace, hacked and slashed at it with their various weapons: for every snaking column of blackness they felled, another sprouted in its place.

  Falthwën closed his eyes, seemed to fluctuate between matter and energy for a fraction of a moment before he exploded in waves of knife-like particles of light, crackling with crooked threads of Sharuyandas sru. When the overwhelming storm of emerald strength had burned itself out, it appeared to have taken the eku with it. Nothing remained of Falthwën except his staff.