Oblivion's Grasp

by Eric T Knight

  “What?” Rome turned to Quyloc. “Does he make any sense to you?”

  Quyloc shook his head. Ricarn had a small, faint smile on her face. Nalene looked outraged.

  “Why don’t you just tell us straight?” Tairus growled. “This is serious.”

  “Yes, yes,” Ya’Shi agreed. “Deadly serious.” His face grew very grave.

  “So?”

  “She wanted to go back to land. The turtle took her.”

  “Unbelievable,” Tairus said.

  Cara approached tentatively then. “I may have something to add.” Quyloc beckoned her closer. She then proceeded to tell Rome what Ya’Shi and the Ancient One had told Netra about being the doorway to returning the Children to the Circle.

  As she told the story, Ya’Shi brightened. “I remember that now! I did say something like that! What do you think it means?”

  Tairus shook his head with disgust. The look on Nalene’s face was murderous.

  “It means that Netra is our only chance now,” Ricarn said. “There is nothing we can do about it. She will either succeed or she will fail.”

  “Can’t we go help her?” Rome asked Quyloc.

  Just then ki’Loren shuddered, hard enough that people staggered.

  “What is it? What happened?” Nalene asked.

  Ya’Shi held up one hand, his head cocked to the side as if listening to something. Then, very seriously, he told them, “It could be gas. She ate something recently that didn’t agree with her.” He turned to look at all the people streaming through the valley below. “A whole lot of something.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Tairus said.

  There was another shudder. Every Lementh’kal within sight was standing stock still, looking upwards.

  “Or it could be this,” Ya’Shi said. He walked over to the place where they had entered ki’Loren. As he did, a new opening appeared, much smaller this time. The rest followed him out into the sunlight.

  Ya’Shi looked up the slope of ki’Loren and pointed. “There it is. Definitely indigestion.”

  The hunched, gray-skinned man was a stone’s throw up the slope. He was on his knees, his hands plunged into ki’Loren’s side up to his elbows. He seemed completely unaware of them.

  “It’s the one who brought the trees,” Tairus said.

  “What’s he doing?” Rome asked.

  “I do not know,” Jenett said, “but it is troubling to ki’Loren.”

  A handful of Lementh’kal had followed them outside and now two of them detached from the rest and walked up the slope. Each was carrying one of the odd staves. When they were close, they stopped and spread out. Taking their staves in both hands, they slammed them down on the ground.

  Immediately a handful of strange, multi-legged creatures burst from the ground around the man and swarmed over him.

  Every one of them shriveled up and died, rolling harmlessly to the ground.

  “Look!” Cara cried. “There’s something around him!”

  “What?” Rome asked. “I don’t see anything.”

  Quyloc had slid back the leather wrapping on his spear and was staring at the man. “Look closer,” he said. “Unfocus your eyes.”

  “That doesn’t—”

  “Just try.”

  Rome did as he said and a minute later he started. “I see it. It’s like a blurriness around him, stained with gray. It’s on the ground too. It’s spreading. The plants where he’s touching…they’re changing. What’s happening?”

  Ki’Loren shuddered again.

  Fifty-two

  Josef smelled the approach of ki’Loren long before any of the other Children did. He looked up and saw it float up behind the palace. This was something he had never encountered before. It brimmed with Song, but not ordinary Song like he was used to. It smelled of the Sea. It was so rich, so vibrant, that it almost hurt.

  He released his hold on the oak trees and jumped down to the ground, then made his way around the palace, drawn by the promise of that unusual Song.

  As he came around the side of the palace, he saw a group of Lementh’kal emerge from ki’Loren and run around the opposite side of the palace. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around. It was simple to jump over to the thing.

  Josef climbed up the side, shaking with anticipation. An idea began to form in his mind.

  He knelt down and put his hands on the ground.

  As ki’Loren moved away from Qarath, Josef knew what he was going to do.

  Normal life was lost to him forever. He couldn’t ever again touch the plants he loved so much. But what he had done with the trees had showed him something, showed him that he could make something new.

  Josef sank his hands and forearms into ki’Loren’s side and then he began to pour himself into her, to merge with her.

  To alter her.

  If he could not have the life he knew and loved, he would make new life in his image.

  Fifty-three

  Shorn and Netra stood on the sands of the Gur al Krin, looking down into the gaping mouth of the tunnel that led to the prison. It was still dark, dawn more than an hour away, but the hole showed as a patch of deeper darkness. Just standing there was almost too much for Netra. Her hands were shaking and there was desolation in her heart as she remembered the last time she’d been on this spot: euphoric, confident, sure. Filled with stolen Song.

  And it all went terribly wrong.

  All at once she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. The sands were rising up around her to swallow her. There was no way she could go down into that hole. There had to be another way.

  “What if we’re wrong?” she asked, turning to Shorn, imploring him for an answer. “What if he’s not down there at all?”

  “Then we look somewhere else” was his implacable reply.

  Netra clenched her hands into fists, trying to quell the shaking. It did no good.

  “Time is short,” Shorn said.

  “I can’t do this,” she replied.

  “You can,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “You are the strongest person I know.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  He turned to her and took her arm. His almond eyes glowed faintly in the darkness. “No one but you can do this.”

  She pulled her arm away. “It’s too much.”

  Shorn did not reply. He simply walked down the sandy slope into the mouth of the tunnel. In seconds he was gone from sight.

  Netra stared after him for a long moment. Then she rolled her shoulders and forced her hands to unclench, took a deep breath, like a diver before leaping into the water, and followed him.

  It was icy cold in the tunnel or perhaps the coldness was inside her. Netra stood in the blackness utterly blinded. The darkness was absolute. It had been so easy the last time she passed this way. She remembered running confidently through the darkness as if she carried the sun with her. Now it seemed to almost physically repel her.

  “Please,” she said. “I can’t see.”

  “You don’t need to see,” Shorn said. “You can feel.”

  Netra started to deny him, but then she paused. He was right. Her eyes were useless, but she didn’t need them.

  “What have I become?” she asked the darkness.

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “but I believe in you. You can do this. Only you can do this.”

  “Promise you will stay with me. No matter what.”

  He took her hand between his two huge hands. “I promise.”

  Netra took a deep breath. When she exhaled, some of the tension left her. She thought of Cara, waiting for her in Qarath. She thought of Siena, dead by Tharn’s hand. She thought of the mother she had never known. She thought of her silent god, Xochitl.

  “Okay.”

  Tentatively at first, then more confidently, she led them down into the earth.

  They walked for hours. How long it was Netra couldn’t have said. The darkness removed all time. It removed everything. The only thing remai
ning was that sense of cold emptiness that she came to realize was the prison. With every step it grew stronger.

  And it grew more frightening.

  As bad as Thrikyl had been, the prison would be immeasurably worse. She felt it sapping the strength from her limbs, stealing the courage from her heart.

  But, strangely, at the same time it gave her renewed determination. The horror of what the Children had endured in there was heartbreaking. Every step she drew closer gave her a stronger sense of it and with every step she realized more and more how necessary it was what she did. Because, even though the physical prison was broken, what it had done to the Children was still very much intact. Nothing the Children did, no amount of Song consumed, could ever change that.

  Only she could.

  Finally, out of the darkness loomed a pale glow which gradually grew stronger. The tunnel opened up and they walked down a long slope and into a huge cavern, its far reaches lost in the dimness. The light came from a massive wall that bisected the cavern. The wall was the color of rotten ice and the light coming from it pulsed slowly. Netra understood instinctively that touching the wall would be painful, perhaps even deadly. It looked like stone, but it wasn’t. It was chaos power bound into a permanent shape. No Song could pass through it. No Song could touch it without being absorbed.

  In the center of the wall was a jagged opening, the area around it littered with large blocks of stone. There was something unusual about the blocks of stone. Netra paused by one, feeling around with her inner senses. There was an awareness within it, dim and faint. She reached deeper and suddenly realized that it was the Shaper known as Sententu, who had once held the door to the prison. Now shattered because of her.

  From the jagged opening itself a wave of bitter cold spilled out. It was not the cold of a winter night. It was different, not something felt on the skin at all. It was the cold of emptiness, of a complete absence of Song.

  Netra shivered. She put her hand on Shorn’s arm and looked into the prison. Cautiously, she extended her inner senses inside. Immediately she was assaulted by a cacophony, a prolonged silent wail of pain and terror that pierced her so strongly she whimpered and put her hands over her ears, though that did nothing to stop it.

  “I can hear them. Inside my head. There’s so many of them.” She turned her gaze up to Shorn, tears standing in her eyes. “Why are they still in there? Why don’t they leave?”

  Shorn looked into the opening. “When I was young, we captured a Sedrian-controlled moon. There was a prison there, filled with our people. They had been held captive for many years. When we opened the prison, only a few emerged. The rest had to be dragged out and some tried to run back inside.”

  Netra’s eyes widened as she suddenly understood. She turned to look back into the opening. “This is all they know now.”

  Shorn looked impatient. “Is he in there?”

  “I’m not sure. For a moment I felt something…different. A presence not like the others. I will have to go inside to be sure.”

  Once again, Shorn led the way.

  “Wait!” Netra cried. She glanced around the cavern one last time, then gritted her teeth and plunged after him.

  The cold was an ache that immediately penetrated to the core of her being. She felt as if she had fallen into a vast, deep well with no bottom. She would fall and fall forever. She would never find anything to hold onto, would never stop falling…

  Shorn grabbed her arms and lifted her upright. “Fight back,” he told her harshly. “You can do this. You must do this.”

  Netra clung to him like a stone in the midst of a flood. She clung to him as if she had nothing else in the world. She poured every ounce of trust that she felt toward him into that hold.

  And the falling stopped.

  Netra opened her eyes. Shorn was looking down at her. “Can you do it now?” he asked her.

  Netra nodded. She still felt like she was suffocating. It was similar to how it felt to enter Thrikyl, only much, much worse. There was no Song in here other than the flows which supported the two of them, and those thinned as they passed into the prison. There was a weakness in her limbs that she knew would only get worse. If she stayed in here too long the thread of Song supporting her would dissolve and she would just lie down and die.

  “I’m okay,” she said faintly. Still holding onto his arm, she looked around. What she saw made her gasp.

  The wall of the prison curved overhead like a huge bowl inverted over the city. It glowed like the full moon, lighting up Durag’otal.

  They were standing on the edge of a large plaza that had once been the entrance to the city. For just the briefest moment she was able to picture the city as it had once been. A place of soaring spires, of broad, open streets. A place designed to bring people together, with parks and benches and fountains everywhere. A city made of different colors of stone and every bit of it lovingly shaped by Melekath.

  But the moment passed and in its wake was the overpowering destruction of the place. The statue that had stood in the center of the plaza lay on its side, smashed into hundreds of pieces. The graceful spires were broken. Buildings had fallen—or been torn—down. There were blackened outlines of ancient fires.

  “Now can you tell if he is here?” Shorn asked.

  Netra listened inside, then pointed to the heart of the city. “He is that way.”

  They started down the broad boulevard that led from the entrance plaza into the center of the city. The light from the prison wall cast an eerie glow over everything. Here and there buildings alongside the boulevard had been toppled, shattered pieces of stone spilling into the street, partially blocking it.

  They had gone only a short way when Netra became aware of a woman, within the ruined building ahead on the right. Netra wanted more than anything to avoid her. She didn’t want the woman’s pain to touch her. But she also knew she couldn’t do that. The woman deserved better and so Netra reached out and brushed up against her mind.

  Her name was Randa and she was trapped underneath the rubble of a fallen wall. Crushed, but still alive. Once upon a time she had been a mother, had nurtured and loved her twin boys fiercely. But both of the boys drowned in the sea, and the grief nearly drove her mad. She became obsessed with protecting her surviving child, a girl. The girl was only five when Melekath appeared and Randa took her to him to receive the Gift, desperate to keep her safe.

  Now the girl lurked in the darkness nearby, her hands shredded from trying to move the blocks of stone that pinned her mother.

  “We’re not going in there,” Shorn said, grabbing her shoulder.

  Netra broke out of her spell, realizing that she had started walking toward the ruined building. “She’s trapped under the stone,” she said softly. “She’s so frightened. We have to help her.”

  “We are trying to.” Shorn tilted his head, then looked off into a narrow street between two buildings. “One approaches,” he said, pointing.

  Netra looked where he pointed. Shuffling, dragging sounds in the dark. After a moment she could just see a dim shape. It was a child, a boy, his lower body crushed beyond recognition. He was pulling himself with his arms. He raised his head. Their eyes made contact and she felt his hunger as almost a physical jolt.

  He growled at her and began dragging himself faster.

  A new sound came from within the ruined building. The little girl had come to the doorway. Her eyes were wild. She snarled and rushed at Netra.

  Netra shrank back as Shorn stepped between them. He slapped the girl open-handed and she flew to strike against the wall. Almost immediately she was on her feet again.

  “We cannot stay here,” Shorn said. “More are coming.”

  From all around them came shuffling, dragging sounds. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them, drawn by the siren call of Song. Three appeared on the other side of the street. Eager yips came from them as they broke into a stumbling run, hands outstretched.

  Shorn took Netra’s arm and nearly dragged her down the
street. Netra stumbled, but his grip kept her from falling. Her legs did not seem to work right. Too much was assailing her from every direction. The Children’s pain was her pain, a ceaseless litany of it pounding on her. Was this what Melekath had gone through, for all those centuries? Feeling the pain of those he loved and unable to do anything about it?

  They moved deeper into the city and in a few minutes had left their pursuers behind. Around them were more fallen buildings. In places the ground had buckled, split apart by some great upheaval. One large round building had been completely flattened by a taller one that had fallen on it. Trapped under the tons of stone were hundreds of people. They’d been gathering there, using the place for shelter. Others had toppled the taller building on purpose, crushing most of them instantly. Their collective wail of pain—a silent wail, from shattered bodies—was so strong it staggered Netra.

  “How could you do this to them, Xochitl?” she whispered. “How could you trap them in this place?” How many of the Children had asked the same question, over and over in the dark?

  Slowly they drew closer to the center of the city, where a huge spire stood. It alone seemed to have escaped most of the ravages of three millennia. Made of some kind of greenish stone, it soared almost to the arc of the prison wall overhead. Balconies encircled each level, numerous windows and doors cut into its outer walls.

  They came to the foot of the building and Netra stared up at it in awe. “He built this to be the heart of Durag’otal,” she said. “A place for his Children to create and show their art. A place for dancing and music. Even after he stopped trying to solve the endless conflicts between them, he kept this place free from the violence.”

  “Is he inside?”

  Netra nodded. She took two more steps toward the building, then froze. “How did I miss that?”

  “Miss what?”

  She looked up at Shorn. “Melekath. He’s not alone.”

  Fifty-four