No Return

by Zachary Jernigan

  She stopped as suddenly as she started, and sheathed her sword. “I called my technique The Dull Sword. Quite creative, don’t you think? Not surprisingly, I’m the sole practitioner of the art. It’s not the beautiful thing fencing is.”

  Vedas shook his head. “I’ve never seen anyone use a sword that way,” he said, voice soft with admiration. He turned away, coughing into his fist.

  Churls dropped her head. Seeing further into the spectrums of light than a man, Berun saw the flush of her cheeks and drew his own features into a smile, a demon mask above the fire.

  Vedas had finally done something charming.

  ‡

  Berun scooped handfuls of dry dirt and snuffed out the fire. He brushed the char away from the larger pieces of wood, revealing the unburnt flesh underneath, and set them near the bundle to cool. This task finished, he soon became restless. Just as he had done the first night out, he cautiously began constructing sculptures out of the firewood. He moved slowly, as quietly as a snake whispering through grass.

  Vedas and Churls did not stir, and so he proceeded to the next step, mirroring each sculpture by rearranging the spheres of his body—a slow, painstaking process. The arrangements became more complex as the night wore on, until finally he achieved his goal: a break in the link, so that one group of spheres no longer touched the other. As he broke the magnetic bonds of his being, an intense feeling of pleasure passed through him. His mind blinked rapidly on and off, each instant of existence mounting upon the other until he felt on the verge of decohering completely, scattering on the ground like droplets of mercury.

  Creating sculptures and mirroring their shape had been his habit from the moment he woke in his father’s foundry. Quite possibly, his father had instilled the urge in him out of compassion. Berun could not sleep or obtain sexual release, and so the sculpting occupied his mind and kept his vital energies from stagnation. He was, despite his mechanical composition, a being who had inherited a man’s spirit, a man’s needs.

  On rare occasions, instead of sensual release he experienced a hallucination, the details of which never varied. His mind drifted of its own accord and rose above the world as it shrunk slowly below him, ripping open along a seam on its far side and spreading like a blanket under his feet. He counted the multitude of islands speckling the surface of the ocean. He lost himself in contemplation of the permanently spinning storm that lay on the other side of the world, sure that if he stared long enough the clouds would part, revealing what lay beneath.

  Sustaining this vision for long was an immense effort. Something always drew him away. His father, no doubt, confounding his creation for arcane reasons once more.

  Berun’s curiosity burned intensely, yet there was little cure for it. The world was a known quantity, and had been for millennia. Several large landmasses lay just off the coast of Knoori, many of which bore the signs of ancient inhabitation by the elders. The remains of bridges, avenues that had once linked to the mainland, lay crumbled underwater. Beyond the islands stretched the ocean, breached here and there by tiny spurs of rock never meant to support life. The outbound mages of Stol had captured this image of Jeroun from orbit—a hundred times, a thousand. Reproductions had made their way across the continent long ago.

  An unending storm across the ocean? Madness.

  Tonight, Berun began to feel the call of the vision early on. It lay just under the surface of his consciousness, almost frightening in its potency. He felt as if he might fall forward, crack through the thin crust of earth at his feet and never stop falling. For the first time in his life, he fought to stay grounded in waking reality. He struggled to reconnect the two halves of his being, and failed. The towering buildings he had erected to mimic the sculpture trembled as wave after wave of dizziness crashed upon him. A voice spoke from the heart of the wooden city. The ground shook with its volume, drowning out the words.

  Atop a tower of bronze spheres, Berun swiveled one searing blue eye, searching for his companions.

  They were gone, as were their supplies. No indentation in the ground where Churls or Vedas had lain, no sign of the fire. Instead, before him spread the complete map of Jeroun, intricately drawn in the loose dirt. Danoor glowed like a molten glass bead, and a line of fire extended from it to Berun. On the other side of the world, the perpetual storm glowed as if an island of magma were being born under its cover. The Needle blazed in the sky above, stretching from horizon to horizon, closer and more radiant than the moon itself.

  Berun looked down again to see an invisible finger tracing a figure in the dirt: a man with no features except for eyes and two small horns sprouting from his forehead.

  “Father!” he bellowed. “Father, what is this?”

  The unintelligible rumbling voice cut off abruptly, and the wooden city drew itself off the ground. Rustling, splitting and cracking, it formed the cloaked shape of Ortur Omali.

  Affection swelled inside Berun so rapidly that he immediately questioned its authenticity. Without knowingly intending to do so, he rose and took on his familiar shape. He held Churls’s sword, a ridiculously small weapon in his outsized right fist. A toothpick.

  The mouth under the cloak smiled, a wicked arrangement of wood slivers. “What is this! What is this!” his father echoed. “A possibility. A potentiality. The Black Suit could be a snake, could be an eagle. Could be a worm, could be a leech. One thing is sure: he is the man to watch.”

  “Vedas,” Berun said. “He’s only a fighter.”

  “Appearances only. Is God a man?” Ortur Omali stretched elaborately, creaking like a dead tree in the wind. His fingertips were splinters, long and stiletto thin. Two pinpoints of light flared in each eye. “There is something odd about him, child. Something troubling, or possibly even encouraging. It is tough to tell the difference, sometimes. I may need him destroyed. You must avoid attachment.”

  “Why? How will you decide?” Berun had so many questions, yet his mind struggled through the confused logic of dream. His brows knitted in frustration. He brought his fist up and discovered that he could not open his hand to drop the sword.

  “I don’t need this to kill a man,” he said. They were not the words he had intended to say.

  The great mage laughed: the rustle of fallen leaves. “It is not a weapon, Berun. It is a demonstration.”

  The air wavered before Berun. It became a curtain of shifting darkness behind which the figure of his father shuddered and fell apart. The sound of twigs snapping came to Berun distantly, and the earth shuddered beneath him. A crack formed in the map drawn on the ground. A rent opened, its crumbling edge racing toward Berun. He tried to pick up his feet, but found them rooted in place.

  He tipped sideways into the black chasm.

  Abruptly, the vision ended.

  Berun stood over Vedas’s sleeping form. Churls curled in her sleeping bag a few feet to his left. Her sword belt lay on the ground next to her, empty.

  The weapon was weightless in Berun’s hand.

  ‡

  They continued south in a straight line. The air grew colder, the wind stronger. Powerful gusts kicked up fine salt crystals embedded in the thin soil and flung them against exposed skin. Vedas covered his face. During the heaviest gusts he walked half blind, the suit material grown to cover his eyes. Churls pulled leather chaps and jacket from her pack and wrapped her head with the scarf she used as a pillow. Berun barely felt the wind or the abrading sand, but the going was slow for the other two.

  They stopped just before the sun set. Instead of pounding down a fire pit, Berun concentrated to form a pick at the end of his arms and then tore a shallow depression in the hard-packed earth. He lined the windward side with excavated rocks to shield Churls and Vedas from the wind, which became even more ferocious after dark, ushered in from the ocean that lay only a handful of miles away.

  It was time to broach the subject of Churls’s route.

  “Why aren’t we headed west?” he asked after his companions had finished dinner.
>
  Vedas looked up from the fire, turned his head to regard Churls.

  She shifted, obviously uncomfortable. “I hoped I wouldn’t have to talk about it.” She sighed in response to Berun and Vedas’s silence. “Really, I thought it was obvious. I thought maybe you’d seen the error in your plan.”

  “What error?” Vedas asked. “Why would we travel south?”

  “Because of you,” she said. Her eyebrows rose suggestively. “Don’t you get it?”

  “Me?” He frowned. “Are you mad?”

  She sighed again. “Would you consent to travel with a cloak? Wear it at all times?”

  Berun had discerned her meaning, but remained unconvinced. Before Vedas could answer, he spoke. “Casta is neutral and Stol is moderate Adrashi. There’s no reason for Vedas to cover his suit.”

  Churls laughed. “Oh, yeah? Then I must be misinformed. I’ve waylaid us unnecessarily and I apologize.” Her smile disappeared. “There are three tribes living in southern Casta. The Aumarveda, the Quinum, and the Lor, all three of which are devoutly Adrashi. They wouldn’t hesitate to attack a heathen like Vedas. Fortunately for us, they do not venture near the ocean. Who would if they could avoid it?

  “As for the moderate Adrashi of Stol, in general I’ve found them far less accepting to foreigners—Anadrashi foreigners in particular—than eastern lore has it. Even if Vedas is not attacked outright, he’ll be a target for thieves and men eager for a fight in every hamlet. Added to this, Ulomi immigrants are common to the central valleys of Stol. Someone would undoubtedly recognize you, Berun. And unlike Casta, Stol is a land of magic users. Even you could get hurt. In all cases, a confrontation would hold us back. Our best option is to travel the Steps, where by all accounts the populous is sparse and peaceable, more concerned with living than fighting about religion.”

  Berun considered. The idea possessed a certain appeal. He had always wanted to see the Steps. “How far out of the way is your route?” he asked.

  She licked her lips. “About five hundred miles.”

  “Out of the question,” Vedas said. He appeared to calculate quickly. “That will put us in Danoor with less than a week to spare. It’s possible we’d miss the entire tournament. We need time to settle in. There are training sessions, events in preparation for the tournament that I’ve promised to attend. My order must be properly represented.” He looked at Berun. “Why didn’t you tell me we were going the wrong way?”

  Berun shrugged. “She’s our guide. I trust her.”

  Vedas’s expression did not change. “You trust her? Your master and mine gave us the route. Instead of heeding them, you’re going to simply trust her?” He turned away. “I agreed to her company. I’ll listen to her advice. I won’t agree to this.”

  “Is that how you operate then, Vedas?” Churls asked, eyes fixed on the fire. “They tell you to jump and you jump? Well, their route is fucked. Neither of you have been in this area before. Nor, I doubt, have your masters, otherwise they wouldn’t have told you to travel through the middle of Stol. The ground is fertile, and there are people everywhere. We couldn’t avoid them. You’re lucky I’m here to set you off course.”

  She kicked at the fire. Sparks flew and streaked away with the wind. “Listen, I want to get to Danoor as badly as you do. I have money riding there—money I need. My route is your—our—best chance to get there in one piece. So you’ll miss the events leading up to the tournament. At least you’ll be alive to fight!”

  She shook her head. “I admit that I need you. The journey would be too dangerous for me alone. All I need you to do is trust that I know best.”

  The wind howled over them. Vedas grimaced and stretched out on his bedroll.

  How easy it would be to leave him, Berun reasoned.

  The thought lingered in his mind. As one recalls a forgotten dream, he realized he had been playing with the idea of abandoning Vedas for quite some time. With less than a gallon of water and no navigation skills, being caught in this corner of the world would have been the man’s death.

  In lockstep, a series of other memories came to Berun.

  Yes, he had pictured Vedas Tezul’s death, on many occasions. He had enjoyed it. The recognition of this fact horrified him. To have one’s body bent to the task of murder was a horrible crime—to have one’s mind bent to hate, yet another.

  He waited for Vedas’s breathing to change, signaling sleep.

  “We’ll do what he says,” Berun rumbled softly. “He’ll see that this route is best. Still, I was wrong to keep this from him.”

  Churls closed her eyes. “Fine.”

  The fire died down to coals. “Why?” she finally asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Berun answered. “There’s something about him. I think you see it, too.”

  Churls scooped dirt and doused the coals. “No. I don’t see anything.”

  CHURLI CASTA JONS

  THE 17th TO 19th OF THE MONTH OF CLERGYMEN, 12499 MD

  THE STEPS OF STOL, KINGDOM OF STOL

  The Steps began in the fertile southern plains of Stol, extending some seventy miles to the coast and more than four hundred along it. From a hundred miles away in southern Casta, the Steps had looked to Churls like nothing more than a smooth mountain slope. Closer, the scale was even harder to conceive. Ascending to a height of twelve thousand feet in seventeen evenly spaced, gently sloping rises, the Steps stopped abruptly at the ocean, shorn clean by a giant knife blade.

  The elders had carved the Steps from the continent’s longest mountain chain, it was said. For what purpose, no one knew. Along with the Dras Alas Citadel in northern Casta, the crystal dome over the island of Osa, The Inverted Bowl in the central valley of the Aspa Mountains, and the Glass Plain in northeastern Knos Min, the Steps of Stol displayed the enigmatic power of the elders. Many believed spirits and enchanted men inhabited such places. Immortal black magic practitioners and corpse miners.

  As a result, the Steps were largely uninhabited. One of Gorum’s friends, a scholar, had traveled southern Stol extensively. He claimed small, long-lived men lived upon the highest and most fertile steps, where unusually warm winds brought moisture in from the ocean. According to him, these men lived in a state of peace and primitive prosperity, knowing neither marriage nor jealousy. They shared their men and women, and Adrash smiled upon them. Even the rare Anadrashi who came through their lands was treated with respect.

  Churls took the story with a grain of salt, for many of the tales she had heard differed markedly from the scholar’s account. Nonetheless, she had been to the central valleys of Stol. Gorum was right: better to take her chances with tall tales and wishful thinking than violent reality. At the very least, fewer men lived on the Steps. Churls believed in odds above all else.

  It was said a man could stand at the edge of the highest step and stare down at the glass-smooth face of the cliff, counting the geological layers of the world. It was also said a man must be careful at the edge, for sudden gusts could take hold of him and carry him far out over the ocean. Capricious, the demon winds sometimes returned him unharmed, but most often spun him in the sky, toying with him as a child does a rag doll. Bored, eventually the wind dropped him into the ocean or dashed his body against the wall.

  Churls considered such tales bullshit. Wind was wind, and only an idiot stood up on a precipice when the gusts were strong.

  Many years ago, she had shared bread with an acolyte of the Placci, a small elder-worshipping cult in Anlala. She claimed the elders had created the walls as permanent testament to their power. “They will stand immutable until the elders return to claim their kingdoms,” she had told Churls.

  Calves and thighs warm from walking uphill, she listened to Vedas tell a similar tale, and tried not to roll her eyes. Living in the city had filled his mind with so many ridiculous things. They walked a mere hundred feet from the edge. He could see for himself that the cliff face was not evenly cut. Shrubs took root in its crevices and huge sections had crumbled completely. Twice,
they had to veer around immense rockslides. Though she never doubted some magical process had carved the Steps, she rejected the idea of their ensorcelment.

  She had seen the Citadel at Dras Alas, and it too was crumbling away, eroded by wind and time.

  So much for permanency, Churls thought.

  ‡

  Each step consisted of a three-mile slope ascending seven hundred feet, topped by a two-mile stretch of grassy plain. Halfway through the first day, the clouds broke above them and warm winds blew in from the ocean, buoying their spirits and feet. By the time they stopped for the night, they had reached the base of the fifth step. Vedas, almost fully recovered from his illness, glowed with health and high spirits. For the first time in two weeks, he appeared to forget his anger over their course change.

  His course change , Churls reminded herself. Berun had given Vedas the choice, after all. Thankfully, the man had seen the sense of her position. Not that being right had endeared her to him. Clearly, he was not the kind of man who forgave easily.

  Churls observed him as they prepared dinner, and worried his good mood would dissolve when he woke to sore calves and thighs. Up until the Steps, they had traveled on relatively flat land. Climbing for so many miles, even at such a shallow grade, could take its toll on the fittest man.

  The following morning, this proved true. Though he did not complain, Vedas looked like someone who had been run through a gauntlet. Exertion revived a slight cough, which he worked hard to conceal. The weather improved over the course of the day, blowing dry and warm, yet they still fell a mile short of the ninth step. After dinner, Churls read weariness and frustration on Vedas’s features. She noted how he grunted as he stood to relieve himself.

  He was a beautiful man, she admitted—but this alone did not explain her attraction. He had stubborn pride, but none of the ingrained arrogance that made so many men insufferable around women. He had little experience beyond that of fighting, but he learned quickly. Her short bow had become a formidable weapon in his hands, and he was patient enough to hunt with it. His navigation skills grew every day. On several occasions, he had noticed the signs of dangerous beasts before she did.