Touching the Void

by R. J. Davnall

reasons the Gift-Givers might want to keep a Sherim secret, and a similar number of reasons why Rissad might want to expose them. He was, after all, a Gifted, charged with defending mankind against the Second Realm. And if, unlike his brother, he hadn't betrayed his species, he had information Rel needed.

  Light ahead allowed Rel the mercy of blinking away Clearsight again, relieving the growing sense of lifting weights with just his brain. This time, no sound of movement echoed warning to him, so, cautiously, he edged forward until the light revealed itself. The tunnel opened into a cavern whose floor, some fifteen feet below down a tricky, uneven slope, was dominated by a pool of greenish water. Glass-still, the surface of the pool seemed a slice cut out of another world, its edges too precise and eerily circular.

  The light came from a torch standing straight up, apparently without support, half-way down to the pool. It looked as if someone had simply balanced it there on the rock, until Rel stumbled and slipped past on his way down the slope and saw that in fact the wooden shaft descended into the stone of the floor. It might have grown there, except that it was - very roughly - carved, and the rock around its base showed no sign of the crack that would give a plant purchase.

  Cold, unpleasant things wriggled in Rel's gut as he remembered seeing the Wilder in Chag Van Raighan's Witnessing lowering Rissad into the ledge by the Abyss as if it was liquid. It had been solid rock when the Wilder released him, though, solid enough that Rissad had had no hope of escape save his Gift. Trying to reassure himself, Rel clambered back up the slope and pulled on the torch, almost earning himself singed eyeballs in the process. The shaft wouldn't budge an inch, except to bend close to snapping. His hands came away sticky with something that carried an acrid smell, the kind that seems to wield knives as it pushes up your nostrils.

  Wiping his palms on his trousers just left ugly stains on the fabric and bits of fluff on his skin. He guessed the obnoxious treatment kept the torch from burning too quickly; closer inspection showed that there was no rag or straw at the top of the stick; it was the wood of the shaft itself that burned, far brighter and yet slower than a stick should. The whole arrangement suggested frightening new dimensions to the Second Realm danger ahead of him.

  Whatever the treatment was, he didn't want it on his skin any longer than necessary. He washed his hands in the pool. Grit in the water stripped the sticky layer off his hands in moments, leaving them red-raw, stinging with abrasion and cold. His fingers trembled, and now he did rub them as he walked on, in a futile effort to get dry.

  He passed through more lit caves, none of which had more than one other exit, and came to a tunnel where level concrete replaced bare rock after a few yards. Caught out by the change in footing, Rel stumbled, and suddenly he was looking out into fathomless darkness that could only be the Abyss. A draught that was more like a stiff breeze tugged at the damp cuffs of his shirt. Somewhere, water trickled. Torches, all planted in the now-familiar, sinister way, threw forlorn light against the distance across the void, barely touching the far side with the occasional glimmer.

  The concrete clearly hadn't always been just a ledge; the edge was crumbling, as if torn free when the Abyss opened. Just looking at the drop beyond made Rel queasy. The sheer, brutal space of the place crushed him back against the back of the ledge. Nothing in his Clearviewings had prepared him for this - how could it, when two eyes were simply inadequate to capturing the sight?

  The near-side wall was kinder, in that at least Rel could see where it curved over at the top. The Abyss had to close up only a few feet below the surface. The wall was scattered with the same snapped-off feet and ends of metal frames that had dotted the passages behind. More than anything else, it was those that showed him where the awe-inspiring concrete door from his viewing stood. Up close, it was even more impressive, a perfect flat rectangle vanishing into shadow along its upper edge.

  In front of it, lying on the floor and straining to crawl away from the lip of the ledge, was Rissad Van Raighan. Every part of his twisted posture bespoke pain and desperation, his uninjured leg scrabbling at the concrete while the other, broken, trailed underneath it. As Rel came closer, he realised the Gatemaker's skin was almost grey with malnutrition, exhaustion and shock.

  There was nothing wrong with his hearing though. As Rel's footsteps rang back from the chasm, Rissad twisted to look over his shoulder, then rolled onto his back with a cough that turned into a moan. The lie of his right arm betrayed his broken collarbone; an uninjured man only lay like that when pressed up hard against a wall. One side of his face was yellow-brown with the remnants of a bruise.

  Rel stumbled, his legs unable to decide between keeping their steady pace to avoid offending the other man's pride or hurrying over to him in solicitude. By the time Rel righted himself, the question was largely moot, and he knelt with as much grace as he could muster at Rissad's side. Awkwardly aware of the frustrated anger behind Rissad's pain, Rel fell back on manners; he gave the injured man a stiff nod. "Gatemaker. I'm Relvin Atcar, Clearseer-"

  "-of Federas. I've heard of you." Rissad's voice was hoarse. Rel pondered an oddity; in his viewing, he'd seen two faces for Rissad all the way through his incarceration, the 'hidden' one suggesting the Gatemaker had remained in total control, guided by some plan or other, throughout. There was no sign of that here. With a bitter grin, Rissad finished, "What brings you to my humble abode? Chag?"

  Blinking, Rel stopped short of answering and swallowed. Rissad's mind was frighteningly agile, uncomfortably direct. Pain and debilitation made his face unreadable. Was he concerned for his brother? Bitter about Chag's choice of allegiance? How much did he know of Chag's activities? Better to avoid the question and hope the Gatemaker was too pained to notice. "How long have you been down here? I know they were holding you."

  "Holding. Hah. Is that what they told you?" His fixed grimace twitched as if he was trying to sneer.

  "I Saw it. Thanks to your brother." Watching Rissad's eyes widen, Rel was moved to pity. "He's in custody in Federas."

  The Gatemaker managed to lift his head off the concrete enough to face Rel, his eyes revealed as a striking silver-grey. "No more deaths?" At Rel's nod, he laid back, his eyes closing. "I got here four days ago."

  Impossible. Rel found himself glaring in anger at the injured man below him. He'd seen Rissad captured, then starving for a long time in Wildren captivity, sunk into the concrete of the ledge. He could see the sheer-sided oval hole where the Gatemaker had somehow used his Gift to cut himself free, and the heap of rubble where he'd smashed the rock still encasing his legs. That much of the viewing had been accurate. Could he have misunderstood the Clearviewing so badly?

  Rissad must have seen Rel's consternation. "It's complicated. Which side are you on?" His frown told Rel only that the answer mattered to the other man, but not which 'sides' he meant.

  "Why did they..." Rel waved a hand at the rubble. "Whatever it was they did. Why are you here?"

  "Uh-uh." Rissad shook his head. "I'm not exactly in a position to make free with my trust. You even know what this place is?"

  Rel waited, frowning.

  "Go and take a Clear look over the edge. Take it easy, though."

  Rel glanced at the lip of the ledge. Was it safe to walk on? A more frightening thought surfaced. If he put any distance between himself and Rissad... "How do I know you're not just going to Gate me out of here?"

  The other man's face darkened. "If I wanted you gone, you'd be gone already. You think I couldn't put my Gate under you now?"

  Something in Rel's stomach twinged. It shouldn't be possible for a man so badly injured to be threatening. Stiffened with wariness, Rel's legs trembled as he eased himself to his feet. Clearsight, or perhaps just hunger, brought a wave of dizziness with its headache, but he managed not to reel. The far side of the chasm sprang into subtle grey relief, a web of jagged cracks and creases spearing into the depths. At his feet, stress lines leapt out of the concrete, showing him safe footing, and the cracks that wouldn't
drop him into the Abyss.

  Without looking forward in time, he got the sense of what he was going to see at the bottom before he looked over the edge. The faint, evanescent colours of the rock on the far side twisted into alien spectra the further down he looked. A sensation very like the taste of nausea began to build behind his cheekbones. He started to feel the need to vomit out of his eyeballs.

  There was no avoiding screwing his eyes as close to shut as he could without blinking as he knelt on one of the more solid-looking concrete protrusions by the edge and peered over. Realmlessness poured in through the cracks between his eyelashes, miserable, greedy and repugnant. It was like falling face-down in a puddle of stagnant water, but if you had to smell and taste and feel as well as see it with your eyeballs. And it stretched all along the floor - if there was any floor down there - of the Abyss.

  Just barely, by some reflex of his lizard hindbrain, Rel managed to sway away from the edge. He prostrated himself on the concrete, forehead and hands pressed to its cool, smooth-worn surface to keep from rubbing his eyes. Coughing did nothing to ease the cramp of revulsion shocking through him, but if he did put his hands to his face he doubted he could keep from clawing his eyes out.

  Breathing deeply when the cramps would let him, he counted out how long it took him to settle. The average Clearseer took twenty-two breaths to recover from a direct look at the Realmlessness through a clear night sky, and the bottom of the Abyss felt every bit as bad as that had in training. On the thirteenth inhalation, he was able to push his head and shoulders up off the floor and glare weakly at Rissad. Federas' gifted were the best in the First Realm, and Rel was not about to let Dora down. Well, at least, not in that regard. It was the whole town he wasn't letting down, really.

  The anger in that thought got him up into an undignified hands-and-knees crawl across to Rissad. The Gatemaker hadn't moved. Rel said, "That was a dirty trick."

  "Would you have believed me if I'd just told you?" The amusement in his voice didn't carry through to his eyes.

  "I wouldn't have needed to look right at it." Rel realised he was letting the other man bait him. He clenched his jaw and forced himself to calm down. At least he didn't feel hungry anymore. "What is it down there?"

  Rissad's tone turned scornful. "What does it look like?"

  "Realmlessness, but..." Rel waved a hand. It couldn't be the Realmlessness. However deep the Abyss ran, there was still a planet below it. Wasn't there?

  "You know of anything else that looks like Realmlessness?" Even cracked hoarse with pain, Rissad's voice stayed unrelenting, incisive.

  "'What we know is that we know nothing.'" Rel quipped. "Even the Wildren agree on that."

  This time, the other man managed a full sneer. "You really are one of theirs, aren't you? Listen to me. The entire First Realm is cracking apart, right here. You know any reason why they would keep that a secret from us?"

  Rel managed to keep from saying Rissad's claim was impossible. He repeated the mantra in his head. What we know is that we know nothing. Except, remembered Clearsight robbed him of even the grace of ambiguity. Recalling what he'd seen before looking over the edge with the trained precision of his memory, Rel saw all too easily the colossal strains running silently through the rock of the Abyss walls. Forces alien to gravity twisted the far side, as if the hand of God were trying to break off half the world like a lump of toffee.

  Of all things, it was vertigo that hit him the worst. The foot-thick concrete of the ledge suddenly seemed painfully thin to be all that sat between them and an endless