The Forgotten Sky

by R. M. Schultz

  The sixth councilmember, the Herald, in a mask of forest green scales, arrives from a back chamber and eases into a seat beside the Messiah.

  Is the Herald the Grand Matriarch Vinessia?

  “We’ll give you the location,” the Messiah continues. “Find out who sent the Whisper and why. And, Nyranna”—he pauses as if talking to a friend—“we, unlike Uden, do not desire Elemiscists as slave-servants. Our desire has always been to build a galaxy free of slavery, even free of whatever kind of magic your people utilize, other than for communication and travel. We compensate our Whisperers and Striders accordingly. We only desire content people working in whatever way suits them, a well-run machine of a system that supports everyone who does their part.”

  A clatter and an echo rattles around the domed roof; Breman dropped a glass of wine.

  On purpose?

  Nyranna’s muscles tense. She wonders whether the Northrite or Uden is more dangerous to her and the Elemiscist people. Pieces move like some networking three-dimensional game in her mind. So many colors, so many shapes, sizes, powers, and abilities held by each. Uden is her enslaver and always has been. Could she work with the Northrite and slowly slip out of Uden’s grip? Except the Northrite were well known for, at least to Udenites, creating glorified slaves to their currency of marcs, indenturing them with work they could never escape. Working the people of the galaxy into early graves. Servitude of a different kind.

  “Forgeron, give her the planet’s location on her Star Map.”

  ***

  Nyranna sends out a mass Whisper to all the Whisperers of the galaxy, keeping the message anonymous: I’m on Anihelios searching for the Whisperer who sent the distress message to the Northrite. Please respond to me. I’ve come to offer aid.

  Nyranna’s feet sink into a springy path of humus beneath verdant green. Her way is lit by the reflected light of layers of concentric rings—planet rings—arcing around the night sky at different angles in yellow, purple, and red: laser-lighted viewing platforms or running tracks for the ancient gods, to entertain themselves with the deaths and births of the inhabitants of this planet.

  Shadows whisper in the canopy of trees, amongst the roots, the bows, the leaves.

  A Whisper slips inside Nyranna’s head, but there are no words. It’s only a cry of surprise. Several others join the first, mass Whispers sent to all the Whisperers of the galaxy without the need for established individual contacts.

  Then the voices all fall silent at once. Snuffed out. Nyranna cannot find their points of contact amongst the lights in her mind.

  Did the unstable sun finally explode and wipe out the inhabitants of Iopenia and Pseidoblane? Those who refused intragalactic orders and did not evacuate? Or is there something else out there?

  Nyranna glances skyward.

  Change is written in the air here. The feeling embeds into the tender flesh at the base of her painted toes.

  A spiny nut plummets before her, cracks against a rock, and splits open to reveal red pulp and flowing juices. The shell wobbles like a decapitated head. The deep blue needles of the trees sound different in the growing wind, branches waving like arms in distress, the trees themselves singing with hushed tones, their vocals a gentle roar granted by the strumming hand of a breeze. Mustiness from deep within the bowels of the planet seeps through a layer of fallen needles, amplifying amidst the sweet tang of blossoms.

  No one has answered her Whisper. The mass of voices couldn’t have all been from Elemiscists on this abandoned drifter. No one is here. Or they are hiding.

  The mysterious Whisper that the Northrite claimed originated here was sent just after Iopenia’s sun started beating and might be connected to the event.

  A twitchy sensation rises in Nyranna’s fingers and hands. She shakes them out.

  Her fingertips run inside her dress, across her chest. A glowing red tattoo like a welt and shackle, her linkchain, her overseer’s elemental tracking device, stands up in rubies of flesh.

  Even out here, Nyranna’s overseer’s eyes lurk in the darkness, burrowing into her soul. If she runs, they will hunt her down like a wild animal and butcher her. They did it to plenty of others, and being the first-ranked Strider-Whisperer amalgam of Uden does not make her special enough. She’s theirs. Discarding the v-rim she was given before her Stride will do nothing to help her hide, but still she doesn’t trust those damn things.

  She wishes she could be forgotten, communicating with others only when she desires their companionship, when she sends out a Whisper. She’s never truly alone; someone always desires something from her, and she always accomplishes it, moves on to the next objective.

  A sharp tang of decay and death gathers around her.

  Nyranna thinks back on the Northrite council, their discussion. Shivers. Imagines their power increasing if the Grand Patriarch dies. For what purpose did they send her out here rather than look into the beating sun? Why summon her at all, a citizen of Uden?

  Something vibrates the air, the trees, the sky. Soft blue shadows run across her exposed face. Curtains of dark moss dangle from tree limbs that seem to reach for her. Their wooden fingers brush against her shoulder, clinging to her in desperation. A million leaves rustle. For a moment it’s a sea of trees, storm-tossed and rolling, fathomless and obscure.

  There’s something in the sky. Nyranna can feel it like an icy rain on the back of her neck. The trees begin moving, using their roots to crawl through the forest with the speed of writhing worms.

  The moving trees cause Nyranna to clutch at her dress and step back. She could Whisper now, but without seeing what is out there in the night sky and describing what exactly it is, no one will heed her warning.

  The canopy heaves overhead, the sky a dancing blur of spotty light.

  Nyranna trembles. What will I find?

  Bats weave around trunks, chasing moths with luminous wings as large as her torso, both creatures ambushed by the drawn webs of arachnids camouflaged in the night, rodent-sized arachnids that perform tightrope acts of death among the unstable eaves. A creek interrupts her path, foaming and weltering with a muted roar, cutting between banks of soft moss.

  An obsidian-black spider sits on a moving tree trunk, the arachnid the size of Nyranna’s hand, although most of it is legs.

  The soon-to-be extinct spider species she read about in the newsfeed. Valuable.

  Maybe if Nyranna sells it and hoards enough marcs, she could hire someone to help her escape her servitude.

  Coincidence?

  The tree shudders, and its branches creek as it rolls slowly by. The spider remains still. Two more spiders of the same species sit fixed in different areas on the same trunk.

  She recalls more of the article: A mating pair would be priceless to a collector or museum. Unfortunately, this species is deadly to humans.

  Nyranna digs into her pack, removes the lid from a water container, and empties it in a gush onto the ground. Her hands shake as she presses the container over a spider and uses a stick to dislodge each spider into her trap. One by one. Three spiders. The arachnids do not resist or flee as she clamps the container’s lid shut. She also plucks a crawling sapling and places it in a sack.

  The wind rises, and trees bend toward her, their heartwood groaning in protest as they sway. Moths spiral out of control.

  The light of the outer rings of the planet darken, and she hears something, something that nails her feet in place. Noise like a coming tempest but with inner voices screaming, rising just over the gale, as if all the souls of the innocent or unavenged dead of the universe tear across the skies. The light of the far-off rings fly away in particles: shooting stars of neon meteoroids that fizzle and fade, consumed by the empty abyss of space.

  Nyranna’s mouth gapes, and cold air rushes down her throat like the arm of a spirit.

  Masses of shade and shadow hover overhead amidst the screams, not a black hole but …

  By the elements.

  A confounding nothingness, portentou
s, swarming, moves at an indeterminate speed. Nothing discernable lies in the blackness, only an amorphous fear called up from the atavistic recesses of her soul. Fragmented thoughts float and bump into each other in her mind: Death’s cloaked figure riding a river of shadow, lips and nostrils leaking smoke and ash; a mindless storm howling through the dead-end cavern of civilization; something beyond the limits of space and time, the empty rage of all the gods thrown at mankind in a maelstrom of fury.

  Trees toss and sway in the wind and part, creaking, roots crawling in a mass of snaking tendrils. A young man, barely more than a boy in Elemiscist robes—tiny diamonds of autumn stained glass—lies on the trail, his hands on his stomach.

  A weak Whisper rings in Nyranna’s head: You came.

  Nyranna runs to him and kneels. “You’re the Whisperer who sent the message to the Northrite. We need to leave, now.”

  The boy’s eyes are shut, blood seeping from under the lids, his chest not rising or falling. He groans as if on his body’s last breath. “No, I stay. You’re not here to report the obvious issue. Something more dangerous is starting to play out.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ll die if you stay here. I’m Striding away.”

  “Good, Stride far.” His chest and abdomen undulate as if a wave washes through his body, carrying down one leg. He’s still again, his life eking out of him like a hesitant phantom. He shouts one last time, a sound that is lost in the depths of the moving woods, like the moths, like the spiders.

  He wants to die here. He’s as good as dead anyway.

  Nyranna shudders and glances back to the destruction of the planet’s rings. Obliteration is this drifter’s fate. That is why the boy sent the warning. He wanted to warn the galaxy, but something happened to—

  A different voice rings in Nyranna’s head, from an unidentified contact, the one who sent the cryptic Whisper about others who think like her.

  Our insurgency’s been in the works for nearly a decade already, slowly building, gathering strength, remaining undetected. You, Nyranna of Uden, will receive an invitation soon.

  Nyranna ignores the message for now. She needs to Whisper to the others, to everyone, let them know that an affliction has arrived at the edge of their galaxy.

  There will be no reckoning with this cloud of darkness, whatever it may be.

  Cirx

  Kallstrom’s massive torso rolls beneath Cirx as he and his knights ride west over rolling hills, searching for the foreign miners and their supposed fiend.

  Cirx and his knights are a clatter of metal, of hoofbeats, of snapping banners. The gusts of salty sea wind do not blow here. Here the wind sends colder wet tendrils through his hair. Curtains of rain plummet around them.

  Cirx thinks of the tall woman in the purple dress and how she stood beside some golden fox and disappeared. If outsiders wield magic that only people in fairy tales on his world control, as well as this technology, how will Staggenmoire ever survive? Befriend these outsiders and pray they don’t start taking everything by force?

  His people are too isolated, locked away from an entire galaxy that supposedly intermingled and learned and grew without them.

  Are his people important at all in a galaxy so vast? An ant is what he is, a fish, a raindrop. If only he could become the Fiend Slayer. Other planets must also be home to fiends, but are the rules the same? On Staggenmoire, the souls of the murdered cannot rest in Heaven until their killers are brought to justice and executed, whether the killer be man or fiend. Victims’ souls are sought out and dragged to their purgatory by the Horseman, Death itself: a skeletal figure crowned with horns of writhing flame, exhaling soot and fog, riding a black horse whose eyes glow like hot embers. These souls who were murdered, taken too early from Staggenmoire, are cursed to wander in a purgatory of water and rain, wander with bowed shoulders and drooping heads, in exile, trapped in the liquid and tides of the Sky Sea, like dead sailors whose bones float in eternal graves. And the Horseman torments his victims as they wander, until they are avenged and set free.

  Cirx imagines seeing footprints the size of Kallstrom in the mud all around him.

  If he could slay the last fiend that in tales killed untold numbers of men, women, and children, a fiend of eternal life that time could not touch, he could become the mightiest of Fiend Slayers. That is why his father is so revered; he vanquished the wyrm of the swamps and granted at least nine hundred souls access to the glory and happiness of Heaven, delivered them from the eternal insipidness of purgatory. The greatest Fiend Slayer to ever live. Then came Cirx.

  Mountains rise in the distance beyond the hills like walls to the castle of Staggenmoire. Only the slosh of rain on mud greets them.

  The miners should be here.

  Cirx shouts, and his knights encircle him, lowering their lances and banners.

  After five minutes, a few men bubble up from a tunnel in the side of the mountain obscured by the thousand yellow leaves of a sea oak.

  The men are covered in mud, and scruff ravages their faces. One pushes back a helm with a blinding light on it that doesn’t dance like flame. He steps forward, into a puddle. “You the Fiend Slayers?”

  “Hail, sir,” Cirx says. “We are the Knights of Staggenmoire, sent from King Goldhammer to aid you with your woes.”

  “I’m the foreman.” He drags his index and middle finger along frayed strands of a curling beard. “I’m no city-living diplomat, but we been hearin’ some strange howls at night.”

  The others behind him nod and step closer.

  The foreman continues, “Like a pack a wolves comin’ down to tear every living thing limb from limb. We all hunker down in the mines, wait it out, but we’ve seen things at dawn, things left over … if you know what I mean. It’s been scaring my men, keeping them up at night, making them all tired. More accidents in the mines, less production.”

  Waves roll across the sky. The fearful breaths of the miners steam in the air, mingle and float hauntingly over their heads.

  “We’ll take care of any fiends in the vicinity.” Cirx motions to his score of knights. “Hide the destriers. Ready your arms.”

  They wait as sunlight ribbons away. Night falls and slogs along.

  Cirx hides in amber reeds, the hood over his head deadening the cold slaps of raindrops the size of daggers. His armor will need to soak a night in oil after this.

  The smell of rotting meat hangs in the air amidst the dull hammering of some machinery in the mines creating a steady rhythm. Glow flies sift through the night like threads of flame, their chirring songs a symphony out of key, their lights illuminating the slantwise descent of rain.

  The Sky Sea has turned navy blue—only stray rays of light from the thousand moons seep through distant shallows in the typical turquoise waters.

  Cirx’s men are scattered in the surrounding foliage, silent … at least more silent than rain drumming against ponds, leaves, and wool cloaks. Two knights, Sir Tegard and Sir Riesbold, sit in the reeds with him, silent. Tegard: a towering, strong man always more interested in reading tales and old history than training with the sword. Riesbold: overweight and slow, wanting nothing more than to be a hero in battle, fighting with his weapon. What a pair. That is why Cirx took them. He gave his Mir, Garrabrandt, two of his best. In total, there’s a score of knights at his command.

  Cirx steadies his breathing, attempting to ignore the cold soaking of the rain, imagining what kind of beast will come: a wyrm of the bogs like his father slayed, a demon slavering flame and shadow, a dragon.

  Or is this fiend a myth? Similar to the mist lands of Staggenmoire, where people supposedly wander into a fairy realm and return years later believing they have only been gone a couple of days. Cirx’s father showed him the mists when he was a child, mentioned that many believe the fairy land is lore, but his father also swore that the tales are true.

  Two hours pass.

  A sound carries over the thrumming of rain and pounding in the mines. It’s difficult to distinguish
, but as minutes crawl by, it grows louder. A wailing. Like a wraith or ghoul. Then a deep howl that lasts and lasts. After the howling dies out, Cirx whistles like a night hawk. Similar calls sound around him. Tegard shifts nervously in the mud. Riesbold’s hand finds his hilt.

  From the darkness comes the schloop schloop schloop of squelching footfalls in mud. The glow flies wink out, to hide. A silhouette appears in the navy dark, shuffling, then another. Both forms are the size of destriers.

  Better to wait until they show their numbers and cannot surprise us.

  Riesbold shouts and stands, drawing his sword.

  Cirx holds him back with an outstretched arm. “On my command.”

  The forms wail like dying men and grunt. Yellow eyes flicker open. They stomp and snort, wavering about.

  Too late for surprise.

  Cirx shouts and strikes flint. Flames spring to life on an oil torch, red hot wings rising like a demon in the night. Other torches follow, encircling the fiends in a fiery ring of ambush. The sliding of unsheathing swords sounds amidst the whicker of anticipating warhorses.

  They charge.

  Cirx swings atop Kallstrom, who breaks from the reeds with crunching hooves.

  The fiends wail again and spin around, legs and webbed feet flinging mud as they shuffle away.

  Firelight surrounds the beasts as the mounted knights press in. Two shelled creatures, like giant tortoises with snouts and teeth like sea wolves.

  Trealhounds. Harmless.

  “Halt! Knights of Staggenmoire, stop the pursuit.” Cirx reins Kallstrom in. Hooves slide atop thick mud.

  The jostling of mounted torches slows and steadies in the night. The fiends clomp away.

  “Two buggering trealhounds,” Riesbold says.

  “They are no fiends.” Cirx sheathes his sword. “Only big and loud. The pair must be in heat. The wailing I recall only from stories.”

  “Their shells would make nice tubs,” Riesbold says.

  Cirx shakes his head. “Leave them be.”

  Shouting carries from behind them, and lights, the steady lights of technology.