No Return

by Zachary Jernigan

  Adrash disappeared.

  A fist slammed into Pol’s stomach, rocketing him backwards. His body cut a deep furrow in the regolith before his foot caught on a submerged rock and sent him tumbling. Dust puffed up around him as his limbs bent and slapped the ground. His lips pulled back from his teeth. His mouth filled with dirt.

  Chalked with iron but uninjured, he rose from the ground.

  Heavy arms crossed, Adrash stood at the foot of the scar Pol’s flying body had created. Waiting.

  Pol flung outstretched fingers forward, casting and throwing a bullet of compressed magefire at the god. With heightened awareness Pol watched it move through the void, its boiling blue surface spiderwebbed with black. As it spiraled toward its target, Pol clapped his hands together, cracking the ground at his feet. A crevice opened and shot forward at blinding speed, yet to Pol’s eyes it crawled.

  The bullet hit Adrash square in the chest and exploded. He did not move as the magefire curled around his torso, writhing upon him as though it were a living thing. Had Adrash been a man, it would have eaten into his skin like an earthmover diving into sand. As it was, the fire failed to adhere and dripped from him in long, liquid strings.

  The crevice halted at his feet.

  Adrash unfolded his arms. These are the best of your weapons? You are a fool. Labor at your task another hundred years and maybe you will do more with your powers than nudge one of my spheres. Yes, I know you. You have ambition, but little sense. Still... He cocked his head slightly. There is something. Something more than will or talent. He closed his eyes, and it was as if someone had snuffed out the sun.

  There is something, the god said again. Your voice. I know it. It is as if you wear another’s body... We have been at this juncture before, have we not? He shook his head, and for the first time an expression could be seen under the armor: a slight downturn of his lips, the faintest wrinkle between his brows.

  An opportunity. Pol reacted quickly, without forethought, letting the magic speak within him. He would interpret Adrash’s words later—if he lived.

  The sigils writhed upon his body. They flowed up his legs and torso, gathering together on his arms, turning his skin from mid-bicep to fingertips solid black. Drawing upon the emptiness of the void, moving by sorcerous instinct, he formed an unknown spell between his hands: A dangerous, lifeeating thing, a portion of nothingness crystallized, condensed, conforming to the shape of his fingers. Still, the spell was difficult to hold. It wanted to be free. He cupped his hands around it, pressed it into a small sphere. Throbbing in time to Pol’s wildly galloping heartbeats, the spell’s chill crept up his arms and into his chest. His teeth chattered and then abruptly stopped.

  The spit had frozen in his mouth, sealing his jaw shut.

  He could not hold the spell any longer. His hands flew apart and the ball of emptiness shot forward—far slower than he had hoped. It expanded in flight, wobbling like a droplet of water, contorting reality as it passed. The stars quavered through its imperfect lens and Adrash bloated into a ridiculous shape.

  Pol sagged and ungracefully sat, spent by the casting. If it did not work, he would soon be dead.

  Adrash’s eyes snapped open just before impact. The spell hit him and instantly collapsed around his body, hungry for warmth. For several seconds the god strained against the constricting envelope, every muscle in rigid definition. He fell to his knees and bent forward at the waist, fists punching into the powdered earth. Pressed on all sides, he curled in upon himself. Just before he stopped moving altogether, the fiery sigil that surrounded him flickered, collapsed, expanded, and collapsed again.

  Pol watched, struggling to make his body move. He gathered unsteady legs underneath him and stood. Cautiously, he floated toward Adrash. Though the god had stopped moving, his massive sigil continued to pulse on and off.

  Pol faltered at the halfway point, struck dumb by the realization.

  His magic is failing him.

  Before he could form another thought, his own mysterious talent woke within him again, pounding against the interior of his skull. He threw his head back, but the scream stopped in his throat. Pain lanced through his rigid limbs, gathered in his fingers and toes. The head of his erect penis throbbed as if it were going to explode.

  Through the agony, he sensed the casting of a second foreign spell.

  Like iron shavings adhering to a lodestone, fragments of voidstuff stuck to his skin, covering him completely, numbing him from the outside in. Trapped, he struggled for control over his body, and lost.

  The pain faded to nothing while his mind raged.

  The spell moved his limbs. He strode forward, though his feet did not touch the ground. He bent, took Adrash’s head in his hands, and lifted the limp body. The god’s sigil flickered off every few seconds, reappearing slightly dimmer, slightly smaller each time.

  Pol pulled him in close and kissed him at the exact moment the sigil fluttered off.

  The moon disappeared. The universe flooded with sunlight—

  —and he found himself on a field of blue flowers.

  Three figures stood before him. A muscular man clothed in black from head to toe. A warrior-woman covered in freckles. A giant man composed of brass spheres. Adrash’s body lay at their feet. The man in black spoke harsh, alien words, and Adrash’s divine armor began to smoke, blistering and charring upon his body.

  The perspective lurched, and suddenly Pol was flying at great speed over Knoori. Desert. Water. The domed island of Osa in the distance. Land. Pine forests. Finally, the Aspa range. He floated above a mountaintop valley with a lake at its center. Scattered everywhere were ruins, and among the ruins lay thousands upon thousands of elder corpses, naked to the sun. Men gathered around these, hacking them open with stone blades.

  The perspective lurched again, and once more he was flying eastward over the continent. His speed increased so that he could not make out the details below. Then he was over water again: Jeru, the Great Ocean. He flew into a wall of cloud and just as quickly was out of it, descending into the alien landscape of a new continent. Glass and steel spires, entire cities of them, rose from the forests, plains and immense lake platforms. Roadways that stretched like ribbons of black silk crisscrossed the ground, and everywhere corpses lay.

  No, not corpses. Living elders, glowing with life—merely sleeping. A spear of sunlight shot down upon one, and it lurched to its feet. It turned and stared at Pol with liquid eyes the color of dried blood. A sound built in the space between Pol’s ears, rising steadily in volume.

  The howl of a wolf.

  A hundred thaumaturgical engines churning.

  The crumbling of a mountain into the sea.

  The elder screamed, and Pol saw no more.

  ‡

  He woke, sprawled on the moon’s iron soil. A yellow-white glow faded from his eyes. The spells were still upon his body.

  Above him, the Needle was broken, its twenty-seven spheres spread across the sky. One hung stationary only a few thousand miles from the moon’s surface. At the limits of unaided vision, another spun so rapidly Pol could not see its rims without quickening his perceptions.

  The sight filled him with fear greater than any he had experienced since childhood—the kind of fear he had forgotten he had ever felt. For a thousand years, the Needle had stretched straight and true. Fifty generations of men had stared into Jeroun’s sky, reassured or made fearful by the nearly unvarying sight of it. If they did not look too closely or were simply unobservant, they probably believed it did not change at all—that Adrash had no intention of using the spheres as weapons. Pol considered with what horror men would greet the following evening, knowing how wrong they had been.

  And you will still be wrong , he thought. This is not your god’s doing. He turned his head. Adrash lay on the ground where he had fallen. His chest did not rise or fall. Though whole, the divine armor had taken on a dull, greyish cast.

  Pol stood, swaying on unsteady legs but otherwise unharmed. Under
standing that a decision must be made, he nonetheless struggled to bring his mind to bear. His thoughts swam in a thick stew, making it difficult to concentrate. He had not killed Adrash—of this he could be sure. That would not be so easily accomplished. Furthermore, why would the armor still cling to the god if no life moved within him?

  The best thing would be to flee, Pol reasoned. Too exhausted to cast another spell, he stood no chance against Adrash if he were to wake. Still, Pol did not move. Already, he felt haler than he had when he woke. He resolved to wait a few moments, gather his strength.

  A little time, he thought, and I will be able to cast again.

  He did not have the luxury of rallying his reserves. Adrash twitched, and slowly began to rise. He fell twice, and rose again. Shaking with the effort, he finally lifted his head. He opened his eyes and light spilled forth, growing brighter until it pushed at Pol.

  Pol braced his legs and pushed back, but to no avail. The force of the god’s gaze buffeted him like a strong wind, and then began relentlessly propelling him backwards.

  I would go, the god said. He fell to his knees, but kept his eyes on Pol. You have done better than I imagined, Pol Tanz, but you have not killed me.

  Pol no longer sensed amusement behind the words, which burned through his mind and constricted the hearts in his chest. He wilted under the force of Adrash’s anger. He struggled against the light, all the while knowing he would be a fool to stay.

  Run while you can, the god said. You will not get the opportunity again.

  PART FIVE

  VEDAS TEZUL

  THE 27thOF THE MONTH OF ROYALTY, 12499 MD

  THE CITY OF DANOOR, THE REPUBLIC OF KNOS MIN

  The dirt floor of the ring had been raked and salted, but the smell of blood and sweat lingered in the huge arena tent. Large, smokeless alchemical lamps hung from oak crossbeams and steel wire far overhead, illuminating the restive mass of attendants.

  The light did not reach through the press of bodies to where Vedas sat in the east corner of the tent, however. His black suit and dark features blended with the shadows, and people left him alone. Of course, they knew he was there. They stole glances in his direction, whispered his name. Black Suits of one hundred orders, holding glasses of red wine or yellow lager, sharing joss and eating ostrich rinds from oily bags—the high and the lowborn, master and acolyte, speaking his name, pinning hope upon their champion.

  He had killed seven White Suits before dusk. The day before, he had killed eight. Due to the great success of the Black Suits in the tournament, and despite the creative shuffling of the brackets, he had also been forced to kill four of his brothers and two of his sisters. The final bout, after all, could not occur between siblings of the same faith.

  It had not pleased him to take any of their lives, but he had done so just the same.

  And though it might have been useful to analyze their fighting styles, glean something from his successes, he shied away from these memories. He centered his thoughts, burying the past under a tonnage of mental static as best he could. It was a challenge to sustain this state, despite the practice he had put into it. For two long days, he had not allowed his mind to wander or speculate uselessly. He had not followed the other fights or counseled with anyone about the standings. He had simply fought whoever stood before him.

  Grey, his final opponent, was only a name, a faceless rival on the other side of the tent, just as the others had been before dying by Vedas’s hand. Undoubtedly, this approach could be seen as dangerously careless.

  And yet, only Vedas and one other remained.

  Clearly, ignorance had not hampered him overmuch.

  His body ached so thoroughly that concentration could not locate a single injury more agonizing than the rest. Lifting a knee, flexing his pectorals, or balling his toes resulted in intense pain. His right shoulder clicked every time he rolled it, and stars flared before his eyes if he tipped his head too far back. His right finger was broken. He suspected his right clavicle and several of his ribs were cracked. The stiffness of his suit alone kept his torso upright and his legs from buckling underneath him.

  It had not been so bad, after the first few fights. He had won them handily enough, but this was hardly a surprise during the winnowing stage. The odds fell in a senior fighter’s favor. By the eighth round, however, experienced fighters were finally being pitted against one another, and the winners became harder to predict. Men and women who had worn suits for decades traded punches powerful enough to crush elephant skulls, dodged and deflected attacks too fast for the eye to follow, and died suddenly, often before the crowd registered the killing blow.

  Victors and dead men were separated by a blink of the eye. The goal was not to teach a lesson, but to kill efficiently. Retribution or punishment required keeping one’s opponent alive—a condition few smart fighters would tolerate. It was too easy to misjudge another combatant’s injuries and lose the upper hand. To kill a suited man was not easy, after all. Even mortally wounded, a would-be loser could still strike.

  No weapons other than the elder-cloth suits were allowed. None were needed. Sufficiently skilled in the martial arts, fused to his suit to the degree that it seemed indistinguishable from flesh, a man like Vedas became a weapon of awesome power. Only magic posed a significant threat to the brothers and sisters of Black and White orders, but magic too had been outlawed from the tournament.

  Aching, struggling to remain upright, Vedas gave up on centering his thoughts and allowed himself to wonder what surprises the man Grey had in store for him. Perhaps he would fight like Ria, the thin elderwoman Vedas had fought in round six—a flurry of deceptively wild punches and knee thrusts, a confusing fusion of techniques. Or maybe he would fight like Osuns, the immense hulk of a man Vedas had fought in the tenth round—a wall of flesh taking punishment without apparent damage, only to launch an offensive so carefully timed it nearly took his opponent’s head off.

  Or most troubling of all, would Grey fight like Jaffe, the small brother Vedas had nearly lost to in round fourteen? Unable to land a single blow, thrown around the pit like a ragdoll, Vedas had become desperate and thrown sand in the man’s eyes. Many in the crowd had booed, but an equal number had cheered when Vedas killed the man.

  He carried the guilt of the act with him still. The thought of winning the tournament under similar circumstances filled him with shame, for he knew he would make the same decision again. He had rewritten the speech, and intended to read it.

  But who would listen to the words of a coward?

  Doubt settled upon his shoulders, weighting his bones so that he sagged even more upon his stool. He might not live to read the speech. His success had never been assured. He could be the lesser man. Had he traveled so far only to die alone? Obviously, this was the case for all but one of the fighters. Why had the thought of being defeated seemed so preposterous? Was he really such a fool as to believe himself invincible, or had he simply pushed his fears to the side for fear of confronting them?

  Die alone, he thought.

  The two words settled cold and solid in his gut. He clasped his hands together to stop their shaking. Deeper than the exhaustion, heavier than the doubt, the hope he had suppressed welled up within him: a terrible feeling, like standing on the edge of the Steps, waiting for the wind to either tip him back onto land or carry him out over the sea.

  He fought the urge to raise his head, and failed. The whites of his eyes reflected the scant light. A brother met his gaze and took it for an invitation to approach. Vedas shook his head, and the man faded back into the crowd.

  The frown deepened on Vedas’s face as he tried to peer through the bodies. He shifted on his stool like a man in great discomfort. Finally, he stood, craning his neck to see into the shallow bowl of the covered arena. He searched the highest stands, the fringes and the entrances. A persistent person could get into the tent, but could not shoulder into the ranks of white- and blacksuited orders, who by right sat close to the action.


  He searched for Churls, and came up empty.

  ‡

  “Tell me you will,” he had said, and she told him she would.

  Leaving her in the whorehouse was not an easy thing to do. He regretted it the moment he walked out the door. She wanted him to stay—this much was clear, even to someone as unused to companionship as Vedas. After months traveling together, he knew her better than he had known any woman, any person, in thirty-four years of life. Still, there was mystery to her, words left unspoken between them. She possessed urges that both scared and compelled him.

  He felt crippled by his inexperience. Did she know he had never been with a woman? Likely, she had guessed as much. Did she suspect he had never kissed a woman, never held a woman’s hand in romance?

  Anyone would laugh at his naivety.

  Yet somehow he knew that, if given the opportunity, Churls would not laugh. The woman could be coarse, but she had never been cruel. She listened well when he ventured to tell her about his past. She had not chuckled or rolled her eyes while he talked of Julit Umeda’s parents, halting and awkward though his account was. Sometimes, her expression appeared to convey not only sympathy, but a deep understanding.

  Of course, sharing on this level occurred with regularity for other people, yet Vedas had rarely experienced it. He wondered, if he had held her gaze in the whorehouse, lingered just a moment more in her company, might she have shown him just how much she empathized?

  With every step he took away from her, the more tenuous their connection seemed. It stretched, turning their months together into nothing more than a convenience, a rational arrangement they had arrived upon to keep themselves safe.

  The road was lonely, after all. They had grown closer out of boredom. Perhaps he had deceived himself in everything.

  Before long, this became his conviction. If she arrived at the tournament, she would be watching out of obligation and nothing more. She would congratulate him, buy him a drink, and say she wanted to see him at her upcoming fights. They would agree to meet up again but attach no importance to the appointment, like all mild friends did in the same situation. Bonds extended only so far.