Dark Immolation

by Christopher Husberg

  “Deciphering?”

  “Deciphering is a complete exploration of another’s sift. When an acumen performs a deciphering, he or she gains complete control over that person.”

  There was a rush of movement behind Cinzia—almost like a slight breeze, fluttering her hair and clothing. Cinzia looked over her shoulder to see Astrid, her dagger drawn and pressing into Cymbre’s neck.

  “You’d better tell me, right now, that that isn’t what Wyle is doing to Knot.”

  “I already told you,” Cymbre said, eyes wide. Her eyes flickered to Jendry. “It isn’t.”

  Astrid glared at the voyant. “Try anything and she dies,” she said.

  “Don’t move, Jendry,” Cymbre said. “It’s fine.” Cymbre met Astrid’s eyes. “Wyle is not deciphering Knot.”

  “How can we believe you?” Cinzia asked.

  “Because when Knot wakes, he will still be himself. Deciphering is… an ugly process. The deciphered person is never the same. If Wyle is successful, Knot won’t have changed at all. If anything, he will be more himself. Knot agreed to this. If you stop Wyle, you’d only be going against Knot’s wishes.”

  Astrid relaxed, releasing Cymbre from her grip and sheathing her dagger, but Cinzia was not convinced. “What are Wyle’s chances of success?”

  Cymbre rubbed at her throat, glaring at Astrid. “We have no way of knowing. As I said, nothing like this has ever been attempted before. It is all theoretical.”

  “But you really think this will stop his episodes?” Cinzia asked.

  “If Wyle can locate Knot’s sifts in the Void and stabilize them, then yes.”

  Cinzia looked down at Knot. Everything seemed very far away. Knot, Wyle, Cymbre, Astrid. Cinzia felt as if she were in a vast expanse, and everything were moving quickly away from her at once. “The Void,” Cinzia whispered. She shivered. It did not sound like a place she ever wanted to see.

  * * *

  Knot was alone but he was not, he was there but he was not, he could see the night sky and millions of tiny stars above him and below him and all around him but he couldn’t feel their light, he was alone in an ocean of blackness but he was surrounded by infinite existence, he couldn’t move or speak. The tiny lights offered no comfort, coiling instead around him in a quiet cacophony.

  “Knot, can you hear me?”

  Knot turned his head, but saw nothing but tiny mocking lights in the darkness.

  “Knot. Focus.”

  The voice came from all around him. It was impossible to focus on something so all-encompassing.

  Memories flooded through Knot’s mind, more memories than there were stars in the sky. He was on Bahc’s ship in the Gulf of Nahl, and Winter’s eyes were on him. He held a child on his knee; he tilled the earth with a worn, rusted plow; he directed soldiers from a command tent on a battlefield; he fought for the people next to him on the front lines. He was murdering, he was loving, he was playing warsquares in a room of gold and marble. He lay with Winter’s head on his chest, strands of her hair tangled in his beard. Winter arose, walking towards a crib illuminated in moonlight.

  And then, in a vague memory, Knot recalled someone telling him that when the procedure began, he would need to find himself. He would need to sort the real from the unreal.

  “Knot, focus on the sound of my voice.”

  Many of the memories were not his. Some of the memories seemed like they might’ve been, but Knot knew them to be false. He locked on to the one thing he knew was real.

  He was on the deck of The Swordsmith’s Daughter. Gray sky covered gray seas, and next to him stood Winter, her hair flowing around her face in the wind.

  “Good,” the voice said.

  And Knot was back in the blackness, pinpoints of light twinkling around him.

  Wyle stood in front of him.

  Not Wyle, Knot realized. Not exactly. It was a translucent form of the man, faded and barely visible. If Knot squinted he could see points of light beyond Wyle’s form, blinking in the dark distance.

  Knot took a deep breath. He was in the Void. He’d always loved a clear night sky, and what he saw now was similar, but magnified. Tiny colored lights, looking very much like varyingly colored stars, surrounded him on all sides.

  In the distance, there was something else. Far, far away, another source of light, but it seemed different than the other pinpoints everywhere else. It was somehow both light and dark at once, a glowing shadow, and the other lights congregated around it, moving towards it. Knot himself felt a faint tug, pulling him towards the thing.

  “What is that?” Knot asked, staring at the strange phenomenon.

  Wyle shook his head slowly. “An anomaly,” he said. “Something we have never seen in the Void before. A few of us have traveled towards it, giving in to the pull. But those who have gone too close have not returned.”

  “Does that have anything to do with helping me stop the episodes?” Knot asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Wyle said.

  “Then I don’t care about it. Tell me what I need to do.”

  Wyle laughed, but the sound was halting. Unsure. “We need to try to understand what is going on inside you. Can you find Lathe?”

  Knot looked around him. “How?” he asked.

  “You’re looking too far,” Wyle said. “Lathe is a part of you. You need to look inward.”

  Knot frowned, looking down at himself. When he saw nothing—literally nothing, except for the strange lights blinking in the darkness—he felt panic surge in his… in his what? He was nothing. Where was his panic, then?

  “Where am I?” Knot asked, fighting the tide of panic. No, he thought. He’d placed the emphasis on the wrong word. “Where am I?” he repeated.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Wyle said, stepping towards Knot. Wyle’s steps made strange, tiny ripples in the blackness. “You can see me, but it’s just an illusion. An ability of acumency. You are here, too, but just not in the form you know. You’re still searching for yourself wrongly. Look within—beyond, and within.”

  Knot looked down again, but saw nothing but star-like lights deep in the blackness. Beyond, and within. He had no idea how he was supposed to do that.

  “You still think you’re trying to see yourself—your physical form. You aren’t. You’re looking beyond that. Not down, not backward. Inward. And… Goddess, when you see it, you’ll understand. It’s truly beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it, in the Void or elsewhere.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Knot said. “Can’t look inward if I have nothing to see into.”

  “You can,” Wyle said. “It just takes time. Try it.”

  Knot closed his eyes, shaking his head. How was he supposed to—

  There.

  Knot had no eyes to close, he’d realized only after thinking about closing them, but after he’d thought about it—right after his body, if it were here, would have done it—something changed. Knot saw something… different.

  A solid point of light, shining with a pinkish hue, like a miniature rose-colored sun. Surrounding the central light were a series of spherical glowing blurs. Each blur was translucent—almost like a perfect sphere of frayed, unraveling light-fabric— shimmering and twisting around the central light, and each blur emitted a spectrum of color, all colors at once, and yet somehow no color at all, just light. More complex even than the night sky, than the countless tiny stars.

  “You see it, don’t you?”

  And suddenly Knot was looking outward again, at Wyle’s form in the Void.

  “I… I did see it,” Knot said. “But not anymore. You brought me out of it.”

  “That’s all right,” Wyle said. “Once you’ve seen it, it shouldn’t be too difficult to see again. Do whatever you did last time.”

  Knot closed his eyes—his metaphorical eyes?—and, sure enough, the strange structure of light was before him once more.

  “Do you see it?”

  “Yes,” Knot whispered. The fuzzes of light shimmered an
d shifted around the center. “This… this is me?”

  Wyle laughed. “This is how you appear in the Void. Some say this is your true form. I can’t help but say I’m a little jealous. Your form is much more complex than any I’ve seen.”

  “What do we do now?” Knot asked.

  Wyle sighed. “I’m not entirely sure. But it seems to me that locating each of the sifts, defining where they are and their properties, might be a good next step.”

  “And the sifts are…?”

  “The blurs of light surrounding the central source.”

  “And the central source is me?”

  “I think so,” Wyle said. “Your case is baffling, in more ways than one. If you truly only came into existence when each of the sifts within you combined two years ago, then you are, for all intents and purposes, a new sift. And the central source of light looks most similar to how other sifts appear in the Void, so yes, I think it’s safe to guess that that is you.”

  Knot stared at the light that was, apparently, himself. Then his gaze shifted to one of the blurs. “How do I interact with this?” he asked. “If I have no form here—no form other than the one I’m looking at—how do I do what you need me to do?”

  “You use tendra,” Wyle said.

  “I’m not a psimancer,” Knot responded.

  “A part of you is,” Wyle said. “Lathe was a very talented telenic.”

  “I know, but… I burned myself out in Izet. I no longer have those powers.” Knot had been a psimancer for a few moments, but in an effort—a failed effort—to save Winter, he had drawn in too much power, all but cutting himself off.

  “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

  “Doesn’t matter much to me.”

  “Even still, when a…” Wyle’s voice trailed off. “Either way, that shouldn’t matter. Even if you weren’t a psimancer, you’re in the Void. All people have tendra in the Void. The standard is two, although psimancers generally have more.”

  Knot concentrated. Using tendra in Izet had come easily to him, once they had killed the Ceno who had been blocking him. His tendra had just been there, as if he’d gained extra limbs.

  Things were not so easy this time. He imagined waving his hands around but nothing happened. Then he focused on the light before him, imagining tendra moving forth from his mind. Still nothing happened.

  Knot frowned, staring at the central light. Why won’t you just do what I ask?

  Knot paused. The light was himself. He was looking at himself, but the light was himself. He imagined tendra moving forth from the central light, reaching out into the hazes of color around him. Immediately he felt the difference. And, as Knot reached a tendron out into the haze of light surrounding him—surrounding the central light—he saw the difference, too. Tendrils of smoky light reached outward from the central glow.

  “Well done,” Wyle said.

  As Knot drew one tendron up through the first sphere of fuzzy light, the light reacted strangely. Knot’s tendron acted like a stone protruding from a river, and the fuzzy light diverted itself around the smoky essence.

  “Can you sense anything about that sphere?” Wyle asked. “Anything that might be useful?”

  “No,” Knot said, moving his tendron about in the hazy sphere. “I feel nothing. In fact—”

  Something passed through his tendron. Knot couldn’t tell what it was, but it was something. Then it was gone. Knot grunted in frustration, waving his tendron about in the hazy sphere again. Almost immediately he felt the strange sensation, but just as quickly it slipped past.

  After a few moments of dredging his tendron in the sphere of light, he felt it a third time, and wrapped his tendron around the sensation. Immediately, the sphere disappeared. Knot peered at his tendron, and nestled within the writhing smoke was a tiny particle of light.

  Knot heard Wyle’s laugh of delight behind him, but paid no attention to it. He knew the tiny spark he held before him.

  It was Lathe.

  He knew because of the memories. Many he’d seen already, in dreams and in visions; men and women dying by his hand. But there were other memories, too, memories he’d never seen before, but memories he immediately knew belonged to Lathe.

  A woman with short red hair. A man—a Nazaniin—young, blond, with a smirk on his face. The particle felt like a cold lightning strike in his mind.

  “That’s one of the sifts,” Wyle said. “Do you know whose it is?”

  “Lathe’s,” Knot said, turning the particle of light over in his tendron. “How do I establish its properties?”

  “I think you already have,” Wyle said. “It’s blue now, whereas it was no color before.”

  Sure enough, the particle was now emitting a bright blue light. “What do I do with it?” Knot asked.

  “Let it go,” Wyle said. “Let it go, and move on to the next.”

  Knot frowned.

  “Don’t worry, I think it will fall into place now that you’ve defined it.”

  Reluctantly, Knot released his tendron’s grip on the particle, and the thing disappeared. In its place, the hazy, spherical fuzz returned, but unlike the others it was now a steady pale blue.

  “That’s it?” Knot asked.

  “We’re treading new ground here, but yes. I think that might help.”

  Knot was about to ask how in Oblivion fiddling with a bunch of colored lights would help him, but in the context he wasn’t sure he had any right to question. He was a man formed of other men’s sifts. A conglomeration of souls.

  Knot was himself. The rose-colored light at his center was proof of that. But, until this point, Knot had been so focused on preserving whatever made him him that he’d shunned the other sifts that comprised him. Now he realized something very simple he had not tried.

  Acceptance.

  Knot reached his tendron out further into the next haze. This had the same effect—a rock in a river, the haze splitting around his tendron. Knot grasped at the sift, and after a few attempts, secured it. He was once again flooded with memories, this time of life in a great marble palace, of a royal instructor who cared very much for him, and of a cruel father who beat him. Knot remembered running away from the palace, running away from his father because of the pain, and his instructor because of the fear.

  These were not his memories. They belonged to someone else.

  High Prince Dorian Gatama.

  With the realization the sensation from the sift grew more concrete. The feeling that burst in one’s chest right before leaping from a high point. The particle of light—Gatama’s sift—began to glow a bright gold.

  “Incredible,” Wyle whispered.

  Knot released the sift, and it disappeared just as Lathe’s had, only to be replaced by a golden sphere of hazy light.

  Knot smiled. This might not be as painful as he’d thought.

  * * *

  “Thank you,” Knot said, inclining his head. “I’m truly grateful.”

  “Having seen what was going on in your head, I’m glad I could help. I don’t know how you could bear it.”

  “Wait, so what about all the sifts? Who are they?” Astrid asked.

  Knot chewed his cheek. Might as well get it out in the open.

  “You already know about Lathe, the Nazaniin assassin, and Dorian Gatama, the Alizian high prince.”

  “And there are nine in total? Not including the you that is… just you?”

  Knot nodded. “Nine. Darcen was a general, a master strategist and military commander. I think I must have used his knowledge for the training of Jane’s guard force. Another was Elenar. She was an investigator, a very intelligent woman who tracked down violent criminals.”

  “A woman?” Cinzia asked, the hint of a smile on her face.

  Knot grunted. “Who would’ve thought, eh? And she wasn’t the only one. Three of the sifts are less clear—I couldn’t get names, just vague memories. One, the other woman, was a mariner. I imagine that’s why fishing came so easily to me in Pranna. Another was a
warsquares champion, a master at the game. The third was a philosopher of some kind, I think. Difficult to say for sure.”

  “So that makes seven,” Astrid said. “Who are the last two?”

  “Hoc,” Knot said, “is a mystery. I stabilized his sift, but I have no clear memories of who he was or what he did. Not sure I ever will.”

  Knot paused, surprised at the emotion bubbling up within him. While he did not have clear memories of all the events in each of these people’s lives, some were clearer than others. The memories of the last sift were the clearest. “Joze was a farmer,” Knot said quietly. “A husband and a father.” Knot refrained from mentioning Joze’s painful memories; the deaths of small children were not something he felt keen to discuss.

  “So that’s it, then?” Astrid asked.

  Knot shrugged. “I think that’s it.”

  “Goddess, I hope so. I’m sick of meeting new people.”

  Knot couldn’t help but laugh. He looked at Wyle. “I suppose you’ll be wanting your information, now. I can tell you all I remember about Roden. About what they did to me. It’s the least I can do.”

  “Actually,” Wyle said, glancing at Cymbre, “I got everything I needed from you already. As we stabilized each of your sifts, I got a glimpse into Lathe’s in particular. I saw what Roden did to him.”

  Knot frowned. “Can’t say I’m happy about the way you came across it. But if it means we can part peacefully, then it’s something I’m willing to accept.”

  Both Wyle and Jendry glanced at Cymbre again. After a moment, the woman nodded. “If you truly think you got what we came for, Wyle, then we can leave at first light.”

  “About damn time,” Jendry said.

  Knot gave a half-smile. He was grateful for what these people had done for him—he already felt more in control over the personalities vying for dominance in his head. But he was glad to see the cotir go. Last thing he wanted was three known assassins around Cinzia and Jane.

  “We’ll gather our things,” Cymbre said.

  The cotir left the room, leaving Knot, Cinzia, and Astrid alone. Astrid rushed to him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and Cinzia slowly followed with a timid embrace of her own. Knot held them both, feeling like himself for the first time in a long time. For the first time he could remember.