Omali turned. He floated up from the ground, orange and red robes flowing around his thin body as though he had been set aflame. Wind blew across the mesa, causing the flowers to undulate like the surface of the ocean.
You will not even try, the great mage said, fingers outstretched toward his creation.
Berun struggled to lift his arm again, and then stopped as realization hit. He would not fight in the world his father had created. He would leave. Prepare himself on his own terms, in his own reality. He allowed his anger to build, let it run through his limbs like molten lead, fusing him in place. Heavy brows came together over bluefire eyes. Brass lips curled back from brass teeth. The expression froze.
He felt the pull his father exerted on every sphere in his body, yet he knew with absolute certainty he could withstand the attack. He had buttressed himself, had become his own man through strength alone. Compressing his component pieces together, he locked himself in place against his father’s influence. Deep within his chest, spheres that had always spun stopped their spinning—a fearful but exhilarating sensation.
Indeed, his father had been correct: pure will set the stars and planets in motion.
It could also stop them cold.
You will go no further with this, Berun, Omali said. He sent a second, stronger wave of force through Berun’s body, trying to bend his creation to his will. You do not want to force my hand any more than you already have. My compassion extends only so far. If you continue on this path, I will make you suffer. I will scatter you to the eight winds, Berun.
Berun’s strength wavered. He fought the urge to allow himself to expand, to mobilize himself. A voice told him that stopping his spheres would lead to death, but he knew this to be false. He possessed a body just beyond the thin shell of his father’s world. He could escape through concentration, through the force of his will.
Omali laughed. No. I have closed all the doors.
No, you haven’t, another voice countered.
Berun looked down. Instead of Vedas, at Berun’s feet lay the girl in white. The girl with blue eyes. Berun’s savior.
She stood, and then rose from the ground until her eyes were level with Omali’s. The folds of her dress did not flutter in the wind. Unbound hair fell straight over her right shoulder, every pale strand in place. Light blazed from behind her, outlining her small form in fire. She was not a part of Omali’s world, yet something of hers seemed to be leaching into his.
Beyond the fact that Berun recognized her from their previous encounter, her features were now vaguely familiar. Her face tickled his subconscious mind, but he had no time to examine it.
She extended her left hand, and the great mage shrank back.
Lavesh atross! he hissed. So asfelz! Adramass psua! He weaved graceful charms with his hands, locking long, thin fingers and releasing them explosively, hurling magma-red spells at her. They sizzled through the air, tearing black rents in the dream reality.
The girl smiled, and with a gesture halted the spells in flight, dissolved them. All wrong. I know all that stuff, and I’m learning new things all the time. You’re too old to learn anything new. She held her right hand out to Berun, but her eyes stayed locked on Omali. We’re leaving. Don’t try this again. I know where you live now.
Who are you? Omali asked. His eyes had become slits of bright amber. His skin had taken on a purplish hue.
The girl shook her head, smile still in place. Figure it out on your own. We’re leaving.
“Goodbye, Father,” Berun said.
He took the girl’s hand and they disappeared.
‡
Churls and Vedas woke only moments after Berun. The sun had not yet risen. He spoke nothing of his encounter, and opted out of accompanying them into Sent to fetch the construct horses. A fellow traveler on the trail had provided the names of a few reliable stablemen, but Berun suspected the affair would take much time and haggling—a prospect he did not relish.
Besides, he had much to consider. He watched his companions enter the walled city and then sat down to think.
For the first time in his existence, he noticed a difference between sitting and standing. Resisting Omali had sapped him of energy.
An hour later, the first rays of sunlight found him in a meditative posture, legs crossed, soles upturned on his knees, hands clasped behind his back.
One elbow up, one down—this was now the extent of his flexibility. Just as a man understands he cannot turn his neck to look directly behind him, Berun knew his spheres would no longer rearrange per his command. They were stuck in a matrix, forming one thing only: a bronze man. The solidification he had effected in Omali’s world had crossed over to this one, and stuck. He would no longer form shovels or knives or hammers at the end of his arms. He would no longer carry items within his body. Splitting himself in two and achieving a release, pleasuring himself as his creator had termed it, was now impossible.
Though he had gained an advantage over Omali, strengthened his mind against the great mage’s attacks, he had crippled himself physically. He could not rotate his spheres or spread himself like a blanket on the earth to take in sunlight. Without this capability, he was doomed to a life of near-starvation.
His strength would be a weak thing compared to what it was. This was not all. He tried to summon his map of the world, and failed. Devastating losses, undoubtedly—but the suspicion that he had left a stone unturned stayed with him as the morning progressed. Suspicion became dread as certainty lodged within the spheres of his mind. No, he had not yet discovered the worst consequence of his encounter with Omali.
When the full extent of his vulnerability became clear, it seemed he might tumble into the earth in his despair. He recalled the few times he had been impacted heavily enough that a portion of his body shattered into its component spheres. A sensation beyond pain, it was the awareness of dislocation, the opposite of the release he felt when splitting himself in two. Now that he had lost control of his malleable form, rebuilding himself after such an attack would be impossible. He could very well die. Worse, he could be dismantled as Omali vowed, scattered to the eight winds, forced to live in eternal agony. Had he been a fool to ally himself with his companions and the wraithly girl with the tantalizingly familiar face? Had he even considered what it meant for him—a constructed man whose mind had never truly been his own—to trust his instinct?
The future was a depthless abyss, a limitless ocean.
And he had leapt into it without a map or compass.
‡
Motionless, he waited most of the morning for Churls and Vedas to return. By the time they wheeled their steel and brass mounts before him, the sun was near its zenith and he had recovered much of his energy—but could he run for four days alongside the construct horses? Forty, fifty miles a day? He did not know, but resolved to test it. Unless it became obvious, neither of his companions would know the full extent of his limitations. He would not burden them with such concerns.
Undoubtedly, they would soon discover he no longer had access to the map. He had been providing Vedas with daily updates on the movements of men in Danoor. The city itself remained peaceable, but several groups of Tomen had gathered in the foothills of Usveet Mesa, west of the city. While Berun and Churls doubted they could rouse the kind of numbers needed to threaten the city, Vedas thought otherwise.
The man would be disappointed, probably angry to discover he could no longer monitor their activity. The knowledge served as a calmative. Perhaps he believed keeping an eye on the situation kept disaster from unfolding.
Having only just won a small measure of freedom, Berun could sympathize with Vedas’s frustration. His master had commissioned him with a task he no longer quite believed in. His faith bound him, as did his love for the brothers and sisters of the Thirteenth. He had not spoken of the speech in some time, though Berun had seen him scribbling notes on occasion.
Thankfully, Vedas did not ask for an update upon returning from the city. He and Churls
secured their packs quietly, obviously preoccupied. She dropped her pack twice while securing it to her horse, and her angry gaze returned to Vedas again and again. In turn, he kept his back to her, far more attentive to his task than necessary.
To keep from staring at them, Berun examined the constructs, which were beautiful, sleek and seamless and overmuscled. Though not without a certain gaudy grace, the utilitarian touches incorporated into their bodies offended Berun. Saddles had been integrated into their backs, metal luggage loops into their rumps, and in Churls’s construct’s case, a crossbow holster into the neck. Riderless, they stood perfectly still.
“What’s so fascinating?” Vedas asked. As he mounted, his horse twitched its head away from Berun, who had been staring directly into its glass bead eye.
It stamped once, twice, glaring at Berun—more of a reaction than he had expected. The construct probably possessed something of the animal from which it had been modeled: a slice of preserved horse brain or heart. Nothing so exotic as the transferred essence of its creator, of course. In this regard, Berun was unique.
He straightened. “Were they expensive?”
Vedas began turning his head toward Churls, stopped himself. “Yes.” Churls spurred her mount forward. Her face betrayed nothing. “Tell Berun how much, Vedas. Tell him how much we could’ve had the horses for.”
Vedas looked into the sky, shook his head. “Leave it.”
“No,” Churls said. She nodded to Berun. “Stable owner recognized Vedas’s suit. Got stares everywhere we went, in fact. Offers for sex, potions, you name it for the Black Suit. But this stable owner offered two for one. A huge discount, but Vedas here doesn’t want it. It’s not right, he tells me. My faith’s not for sale.”
“It isn’t right,” Vedas said.
Her cheeks bloomed red. “It’s my fucking money! We’ve traveled two thousand goddamn miles together, and your faith’s been nothing but a liability. Finally, you get a chance to profit from it, to help out, and you can’t do it because it’s wrong. I had plans for that money.”
Finally, Vedas met her eye. “Oh, yes. I saw the gleam in your eye as we passed the gambling houses.”
The muscles in Churls’s shoulders and thighs twitched, and Berun stepped forward.
But the woman only spat. “I make my own choices. I take responsibility for myself. I don’t let my shit spill over onto others. I doubt you can say the same.”
With this, she wheeled her horse around and spurred it northward.
Berun raised his brows.
Vedas sighed. “Maybe I should have done it. Taken the discount. It would have been faster.”
“Maybe you should have,” Berun agreed. “But I’m not one for convictions, so you can’t trust me.” Their eyes met. The lines around Vedas’s eyes had deepened. He looked years older than when they had left Golna. “Do you have a plan?” Berun asked.
Vedas closed his eyes and nodded. Then he shook his head. “I only know what I’m not going to say. I’m no writer, no philosopher. If I’d known what I was getting into by leaving, I never would have left.” He opened his eyes. “And you? Do you have a plan?”
“It hasn’t changed,” Berun said. “I plan on winning.”
“Amen,” Vedas said, and kicked his horse’s brass flanks.
Berun picked two rocks from the ground and followed, metal soles ringing loudly on the packed earth. Grinding the stones in his hands, he joined the thousand-footed train of travelers following the northwesterly curve of Grass Trail to Danoor.
CHURLI CASTA JONS
THE 21st TO 25thOF THE MONTH OF ROYALTY, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF DANOOR, THE REPUBLIC OF KNOS MIN
They ran the construct horses from sunup to sundown—a grueling pace, devoid of joy, alleviated by only the briefest moments of rest. At night they collapsed in whatever camp they came upon, sleeping the night through as though drugged.
At noon on the fourth day, the mounts refused to go any further, their contracts at an end. Churls and Vedas immediately dismounted and removed the packs, anxious not to lose their belongings. Churls, who had lived on horseback during her three-year stint in the Castan cavalry, gritted her teeth as she pounded life into her cramped thighs. Vedas, no great horseman, moved about with enviable vigor. Yet another miracle performed by his suit.
Churls’s muscles loosened during the fifteen-mile descent out of the scrub hills and into the desert. She shed clothes as the weather grew hot, stripping down to a leather skirt and halter. Before long, even these began to cling and chafe uncomfortably. She considered with some bitterness that in only a few hours it would be cold and windy again, requiring yet another change of clothes. She jealously eyed the loose cotton outfits many of the travelers wore.
From ten miles away, the city of Danoor was nearly lost amid the shifting red dunes that hemmed it on three sides. Usveet Mesa, the largest and most easterly of the Aroonan chain, loomed ridiculously large at the western edge of the city. The mountain’s foothills, higher even than those ringing the valley, seemed tiny by comparison.
From five miles away, the mesa’s scope became even more daunting. Its nearly vertical wall looked as if it were about to topple over, snuffing out the pathetic signs of civilization lying in its shadow. Churls wondered what it must be like to live in such a place. Did its people grow used to living in darkness for half the day, feeling that weight pressing down?
Perhaps it was not the mountain causing her to think such thoughts, but history itself. According to legend, Danoor had been founded upon the rubble of Hawees, an ancient elder city that had once clung to the mountainside—a city Adrash had razed in celebration of mankind’s birth. Precious stones and inexplicable glass mechanisms, proof of the legend’s origins, were still being unearthed from underground excavations.
As a youth, Churls had seen a few of these relics on display in Onsa. Her mind nearly buckled as she considered their age—a hundred thousand years, two hundred thousand? Academics insisted the elders had been interred in the ground long before the era of man, the modern and mythic history of which spanned a mere twenty-five millennia. Perhaps Adrash himself did not recall the age of Hawees’s beautiful relics.
How, Churls had wondered as she stared at the shattered remnants of an extinct people, could men worship a god who would destroy such precious things? How could men live in a city dedicated to that destruction?
She could think of no worse place to make a home.
On the other hand, she could think of no better place to host a battle between the Followers of Adrash and the Followers of Man.
‡
As they entered the vast tent camp visitors had erected south of the city, the sun disappeared over the mesa, plunging the valley into another degree of darkness. Churls made out the many fires of the Tomen camps Berun had described in the foothills.
“You see them?” she asked Vedas. “Orrus Alachum, they’ve tripled in size since we last looked! There must be five thousand of them now. What do you think they’re waiting for?”
He scratched at his thick, wiry black beard. For once, the weather seemed to bother him as much as it bothered her. His lips were cracked, his eyes red. “The winner, I assume. That will determine which way the riot goes, who they start killing first.”
“That’s a grim outlook,” Berun said. “You think that’s their plan—five thousand against an entire city, bloated to twice its normal size by travelers? They’ve done nothing so far. Maybe they’ve come to their senses and just decided to enjoy the tournament.”
Vedas regarded the constructed man. “You can believe whatever fantasy you like, but I’m done with deceiving myself. We all saw what Fesuy did to that woman on the trail.” He squinted into the distance, and then pointed to a pool of firelight below the encamped Tomen. “Another thing—what do you see at the base of the hill?”
“Another group is camped there.”
“Notice anything else?”
“No. Yes. The men are wearing uniforms. They�
�re very well organized.” Vedas nodded. “As I suspected. An army battalion, which proves I’m not the only cynical one. The Tomen intend to attack, and the Knosi government knows it.”
“They couldn’t stop them from entering the city?” Berun asked.
“How?” Vedas spread his arms wide. “The influx of travelers has stretched the resources in Danoor for months now. When you were last able to check your map, that army battalion wasn’t here, which means they must have double-timed it from the capitol. All their general can do now is send for more troops and wait for the inevitable. Perhaps they will muster enough to stand against the threat, but I doubt it. We have riots even in civilized Golna. They have a way of spreading.”
Churls chuckled at this understatement. She scanned the faces around the campfires, noted the posture of men and women as they walked from tent to tent, trading gossip. They hardly seemed concerned, but only a fool looked to the gathered masses for wisdom.
They reached the first buildings of Danoor proper, which unlike the majority of Knosi cities had never been surrounded by a wall. For millennia its relative isolation had dissuaded conquering peoples, though one could not discount its citizens’ legendary fighting skill as an equal factor. Lomen, one of Churls’s former lovers and gambling partners, had hailed from a neighboring region, and claimed all children of the mesas were taught to wield the ckomale, a pair of sickles linked together with wire.
Travelers thronged bone-dry streets the color of rust. Everywhere, the color of rust. Except for infrequent splashes of painted wood, the buildings were uniformly and seamlessly constructed of red clay and red sand. They rarely rose above the third floor and seldom existed in anything other than a rectangular shape. The uniformity depressed Churls, but the presence of lavish parks, where broad- and thin-leaved succulents fought for space with thorny, winter-blooming bushes and wiry jocasta trees, compensated for this.
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