by D M Wozniak
The idea of the two of them, in this confining space, under the moon and stars…
I push it out of my mind.
“Are you tired?” I ask.
One glance at her tells me it was a stupid question. She’s visibly exhausted, but she nods anyway. “What about you?”
I shake my head. “We’re going to take turns. While you’re sleeping, I’m going to heat the air in this sphere, so we fly higher. For a fullbell. When I’m done, my body will be depleted and I’ll need to rest.”
“Alright.”
She’s already slinking into the corner and covering her face with her black hood.
“I’ll wake you in a fullbell. You’ll need to stay awake and warn me if we’re getting too close to the ground. Just like you did earlier.”
She mumbles something as she shifts in place to get comfortable.
“What’s that?”
“How far are we going to fly, your grace?” she repeats, already forgetting to call me by my name.
I look out at the hills rolling by. “Until the end of the world, if that’s what it takes,” I say.
But she’s already asleep.
Looking down at her, I am envious of her peace. But I remind myself that I will soon be in her coveted position.
Taking a deep breath and holding on tightly to the railing with one hand, I ready myself for the storm to come.
My body shakes as I touch my voidstone, the chorus of wind sudden and deafening. I picture a cave in my mind, the analogy my teacher used when I was a child. But this chorus is far more than he ever imagined, so the analogy morphs and becomes something new.
The wind forms dark swirls that whip around me in a cyclone. Sometimes I think I see faces mixed within the black currents, looking at me in outrage. Dark eyes, wide. Dark mouths, screaming. How dare you! You are hurting us, and you are killing yourself too! You fool!
It’s only my imagination.
Looking up, I push the voices away and concentrate on heating the trapped air. It takes a long time but eventually I see the indivisibles moving faster, bouncing off of their confined walls, like slaves searching for some elusive freedom.
We’re leveling off.
My feet eventually become numb, and I can no longer stand. I slink down into the corner of the basket next to Chimeline, but I continue to hold on. Just a little bit longer. For the memory of Marine, and the revenge which is yet to come.
The man behind the veil. I am coming for you.
When I feel us rising, I let go. The world seems hesitant to come back, as if it’s unsure if I still belong in it. Collapsing on top of Chimeline, I try to wake her, but she is sleeping underneath her robe. The rise and fall of her chest. I open my mouth to say something, but I cannot speak. I try to peel back her black hood and reveal her face but my fingers are incapable of grasping. My mind as well. Everything is silent and still and I can no longer think upon anything except the rise and fall.
The rise and fall of Master Voider Democryos.
Voidreaming
It is late afternoon on the last day of the first week’s sessions. And so, predictably, all the students have fled campus—their tiny minds so overfilled with this new world, that they need a brief respite. Except for Marine. She waits for me after class underneath an arched walkway. Leaning against a stone column twice as wide as her, she is wears an elegant black dress and sandals that would look completely out of place in Giriya. Just beyond the shelter of the portico, dark storm clouds loom and heavy rain starts to fall.
“Master Voider,” she says, coming near and handing me the book I had lent her weeks ago: Asima's complete writings of Xiland, Volume 1. “I believe this is yours.”
“Did you enjoy it?” I ask, returning it to my satchel.
“Very much so.”
A sharp crack of thunder fills the courtyard, but Marine seems oblivious to it.
“I was wondering if you had time to discuss it,” she says.
“Now?”
She grasps her ponytail in her hand, fanning it out behind her. “Whenever is most convenient to you.”
I look out into the thunderstorm, and then back to her. She stands in front of me, one leg crossed over the other, her head down but her eyes looking upward.
It’s only been a few weeks since the submaster brought her to the citadel, but already she seems a different person. I remember the first time she charged into my room, a brazen, young woman covered in the sharp edges of her lake town upbringing. A big fish in a small pond, as they say. But now all of these sharp edges have been smoothed over, leaving an appealing self-assurance.
And she has done this all on her own, in an amazing short amount of time.
“Walk with me,” I say.
I briefly touch my voidstone as I step out beyond the shelter of the stone portico’s ceiling. I create a sphere of pressurized air that encircles me and keeps me dry from the elements.
It’s wasteful voidance. But I cannot help myself.
She runs to my side within the tight sphere and grabs my arm, as the two of us begin walking through the courtyard. The heavy raindrops above us sound like distant taps upon glass.
“It this part of the air manipulation lesson?” she says excitedly.
“Yes,” I answer. “You will learn this later in the year. The hardest thing to do—as I am doing right now—is to keep the manipulation dynamic.”
“Dynamic?”
“Centered around me, while I walk. You’ll notice I am not touching the voidstone now, but this sphere of pressure still exists.”
“Ah.”
“This is called dynamic voidance. While initially manipulating the indivisible, you must program them to be relative to a source. In this case, the source is me.”
I look briefly at her, to see if she is paying attention. She is rapt.
“Although, like most actions done within the void, dynamic voidance lasts only temporarily.”
“There is great disorder to the natural world, and the power of a voidstone holds no permanent sway,” she replies, reciting from memory.
I nod. “Very good, Marine.” I clear my throat and look down and sideways at her. “So, tell me what you learned about Xi Bay.”
She takes a deep breath, obviously bottled up with much excitement and opinion. “It is a wealth of beauty and mystery,” she says. “The indigenous species of fish, alone, could fill a voider’s life with purpose.”
“Are you interested in the study of underwater organisms?”
“Very much so.”
“Well, then you should speak to submaster Mander. The study of living organisms is his specialty. In fact, he has made several travels to Xi Bay to collect specimens and bring them back to the citadel. Last year, he brought back a species of seahorse with a membrane which makes it invisible to the human eye. We are studying its indivisibles for reapplication purposes.”
“The Pygmy Seahorse?”
“Yes.” I chuckle to myself as I recollect a past conversation.
“What is it?”
“I find it humorous that Mander likes to embark on his trips to Xi Bay only when the citadel is covered in a layer of snow and ice. How convenient for him, to escape winter.”
We have left the courtyard of the master wing, and are now walking down the length of the university grounds, toward the Royal House. A few upperclassmen amble around—their spheres of air surround them as they move from building to building, stacks of books in hand. As long as the books stay dry, I tell myself, it is valid use of voidance.
Despite the dour weather, a smile crosses my face—it gives me great pleasure to look upon all of this, and realize the great work we are doing here.
We are the instruments of great change in the world.
“Does he use air manipulation as well?”
“Hmm?” I ask her, shifting my attention back to Marine. Her eyes seem to be the only source of blue in the gray world right now.
“When your submaster dives below the waters o
f Xi Bay to do his research. To collect specimens, and such. Does he create spheres like this one?”
“Oh, yes. It’s very much the same thing, except it’s far more effort.”
She looks at me in confusion.
“It’s the pressure.” I extend one of my hands above us. “To create this sphere of air does not take much effort, since all that exists above it is more air. And the raindrops, which are negligible. But when you go underwater, the weight of the water presses down above you. This creates a challenge.”
I grab the gold setting of my voidstone to illustrate.
“When a voider needs to breathe underwater, he or she must remain in the void much longer, and must maintain the sphere of air against the weight of the water. And the deeper one goes, the risk increases exponentially. That is why we have never explored—”
“Blackscar!” she exclaims.
I nod. “Much of Xi Bay has been explored, but a trench rips though the middle of it, where the turquoise waters drop off into the most pitch-black and icy depths you can imagine.”
“Have we ever been able to explore the depths of it?”
“No,” I say. “It is beyond our capabilities. Some have tried.”
“You mean they—”
“Died.”
“By voideath?”
I hunch my shoulders. “They never came back. Whether they succumbed to voideath or drowning, it does not matter. They died.”
“Is that how they came to name it?”
I turn to her and purse my lips. “Blackscar? I imagine so.”
Soon, we are walking down the sinuous, black-brick road leading to the Royal House. Past the short, stone wall at our side, the entire Northern Kingdom is on display, thousands upon thousands of clay rooftops, glistening wet with rain. The low, dark clouds extend to the horizon.
Walking up the stone front steps of the Royal House, I stop and turn to her before entering my home. Rolling thunder echoes in the distance as the rain picks up.
A few drops start to leak through the sphere that I have created, and we both look up to the gray skies.
“You see?” I say. “Nothing lasts forever.”
She smiles, wiping some raindrops from her fair cheeks.
“I should return to the dormitory,” she says, glancing back across the courtyard. “This will be a good test.”
I look at her in confusion. “What test?”
She twists the ring on her small finger—the ring every student wears. It contains the tiniest of voidstone fragments.
“Air pressure,” she mumbles, studying my crumbling dome around us.
“Oh no, no no no,” I shake my head, suddenly understanding her intent. I put my hand on hers. “You are not even close to being ready for that.”
She looks genuinely surprised at my protest. “I can do it.”
“No, you can't.”
“The other students were doing it in the courtyard!”
“They were upperclassmen.”
She pulls her hand away from mine and gives me a look of stubborn acquiescence.
It’s coming down harder than ever.
“Listen,” I say, the words coming out of my mouth despite my knowing that what I am about to do is dangerous and wrong. “Why don’t you come in for a bit, at least until this storm passes.”
She rises up on the tips of her feet. “I do have more questions. About Xi Bay. About the Pygmy Seahorse.”
“I’m sure you do.”
I laugh as I try to push my moral restraints away. They warn me that this might be the first step on a path that I should not take. But I don’t want to think about the consequences. I don’t want to see the destination.
Suddenly, the fullness of the rain begins to hit us as my sphere dissolves, and she lets out a playful scream. I grab her arm and pull her with me, as we run up the entryway and into the shelter of the Royal House.
Careful, Dem.
Cages
Three things shepherd me awake: singing birds, a crying woman, and blinding sunlight.
My lips and eyelids crack in dryness, and for a long time I simply lay where I am, motionless. The light is too harsh, so I just listen to the strange, layered sounds of my new surroundings, wondering if this is a voidream.
But this is no voidream. And it’s no airship either.
Except that I don’t remember landing, safely or otherwise. The last thing I recall was heating the trapped air for a second time, before falling asleep. I tried waking Chimeline. Was I successful? It’s so hard to remember. The black folds of her cloak. The winds full of screaming faces. The rise and fall...
A new, close sound adds to the strange symphony. Clucking chickens. And then the crying starts up again, further away, a girl’s soft whimpering. The faraway bird sings in reply, as if trying to sooth her pain with a love song.
My body is sore all over, but nowhere specific. I’m lying on my back on something hard.
I move my fingers and toes—there is some feeling in them. I take this as both a good and bad sign. It’s a good sign that my body has healed from being so close to voideath. It’s bad because it means time has passed. Probably a lot of it.
My voidstone.
Immediately, I bring my hands to my chest, where my necklace usually rests. But my fingers only find useless fabric.
Opening my eyes and squinting against the harsh light, I check every pocket in my cloak. And then I check them again.
The voidstone isn’t there.
I look desperately on both sides of me, checking if it fell off while I was sleeping, but I find only dirt.
I blink rapidly. My vision is still a little blurry.
Inhaling deeply and urgently, I smell life. The fertile ground. Flowering vegetation. Grilled food, somewhere, which causes my mouth to water.
Water.
I raise my head off of the ground, and bring it back down as I reel in pain. I silently ponder the cause. It’s either because of my prior closeness to voideath, dehydration, or a crash that I cannot recall. Most likely it’s the combination of all three.
I need to get up. I know that it’s going to be painful, but my thirst for water and my desire to locate my voidstone win.
I sit up, gritting my teeth at the pain. I look around, patiently. It takes a while, but my vision mostly returns.
I’m in a jail cell, empty except for me.
The enclosure is small and ramshackle, made of vertical bamboo sticks that extend into the ground. The floor is simply dirt, but it’s dry and clean. The roof over my head extends at least ten feet—too high to touch if I stood or jumped—and it’s made of layered palms, thick enough to be completely opaque. It’s dark and cool in here, but just outside, the sun over-saturates everything. It’s still too hard to make out any details.
The bars on my cell cast short shadows. It must be midday.
The clucking chickens I heard earlier are feeding on dropped seeds just on the other side of the bars.
A small, closed door marks the only exit. It’s built of the same bamboo and locked with some sort of contraption made of rope. A terracotta bowl of clear water is just inside, and I crawl over to it, raising it up and taking a careful sip. Brief dizziness comes over me as the warm water goes down my parched throat, and I begin choking.
“Your grace!”
I turn my head and see Chimeline. She sits in a matching cell enough away to allow a few people to walk side-by-side in-between them. In fact, it seems that many people have done exactly that—wearing a dirt trail between our cages.
She runs over to her bars, approaching me. They are wide enough apart that I can see her face, but not enough for her to stick her head entirely through. She clutches at the bars with one hand while looking at me wide-eyed. Her dark bangs are matted to her sweaty forehead, and her face is dirty and moist with tears.
I approach the bars of my own cell—the ones that are closest to her—and use them to stand up with a groan.
“What happened?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know, your grace. I think we crashed.”
“My voidstone—did you see it?”
“Your grace?”
“My voidstone!” I yell, and she leans away from the bars slightly. “It’s missing,” I add, this time not quite a shout.
She only shakes her head.
My vision has acclimated. Before, the outside was a white light that I could not focus on—it made my head spin in agony. But now, details are emerging.
We’re in the middle of a small farming town.
About a hundred feet in the distance is a circular well surrounded by a bench, all built out of stone. A girl bends there, tanned with the unforgiving sun, collecting water. It’s hard to tell her age from this distance. Perhaps twelve or thirteen.
She fills a large terracotta pot twice the size of her head while looking at me with piercing eyes. I try calling out to her, but she ignores me.
Soon, the young girl finishes and places the pot over her head with a grunt, somehow balancing it, and walks off down a curved, dirt path lined with reeds.
There’s not a single other person I can see, so I look at the surrounding buildings.
The well is the only thing made of stone, besides an effulgency temple in the distance. It’s fairly small—not even a quarter the size of the temple in the citadel—but somehow it seems regal with the wooden steeple that easily makes it the tallest structure around.
A dozen round huts dot the landscape, each with a thatched, palm frond roof similar to ours, though their walls are solid. Homes, most likely.
While I silently ponder this, an ox slowly meanders through the town, the bell around its neck clanging out.
Where in Temberlain’s Ashes are we?
“Dem?”
Much less disoriented, I can now see that Chimeline is clothed in a white-lace dress that starts with a high neckline and goes down to her bare feet. She also wears a necklace of ivory effulgency beads. Her black cloak is gone, and she’s supporting one hand in the other.
“I just remembered to call you Dem,” she says, sniffling.
“Has anyone spoken to you?”
“No.”
“Then who gave you that dress?”
