by D M Wozniak
She inhales sharply.
“Do you feel it? How heavy it is?”
She nods, eyes wide.
“Alright. Now, touch it. With one finger, and only for a moment.”
Her eyes open even wider, as she takes her other hand and places her index finger upon the matte, black surface.
Immediately, she lets out a sigh of ecstasy, and her eyes roll into the back of her head. Then, her head swivels in all directions, and she falls into me as I take the voidstone from her and grab onto her shoulders.
“You see?”
She opens her eyes and blinks rapidly before focusing on me with eyes the color of the winter afternoon sky. “It’s so loud,” she exhales.
I smile. “The wind?”
She nods. “And the indivisibles. I saw everything. Not just what’s in front of me. I saw you. I saw the walls, the floors. The dust in the air. The entire—”
There’s a knock at the door as Marine goes silent.
“Yes?” I call out in annoyance.
“It’s Elrich, your grace.”
“Shit,” I mumble under my breath, as I gently guide Marine into one of my blood-red leather chairs, my hands still on her shoulders. “Sit here for a moment. You’re still disoriented.”
Hastily setting my dangling voidstone down upon the desk, I walk to the front door. Unlocking it from the inside, I open it.
The red-faced young man looks past me to Marine sitting on the chair, but I clear my throat and his eyes dart back to me.
“What?” I say.
“Your grace, you have a dinner tonight with submaster Herrophilus and the hospital staff. I am here to assist with your preparations.”
I don’t like the way he keeps looking at Marine, so I step into the hall and close the door behind me, leaving the two of us in shadow.
“That’s at sevenbell,” I say.
He nods nervously. “It’s currently sixbell, your grace.”
“What?” I say into the dark hallway. “I must have lost track of time with my studies.”
It could be the way the shadows cross his face, but I detect the faintest of smirks in the dimness. “I am sorry to interrupt your studies, your grace.”
Normally I would tear into this boy for his veiled impudence, but my mind is too preoccupied. All I can think about is what I should do concerning the dinner.
It’s impossible to dislodge from my mind what has just transpired in the warm candlelight, just beyond my closed door. The heat and feminine sweetness of the room. And I realize that I don’t want this to end. I understand the importance of the new hospital, but mingling with these people over drinks and dinner is the last thing I want to do.
Instead, I want to stand on the beach, as the next wave crashes into me, sending me into oblivion.
Elrich must sense my apprehension, since he speaks up. “Your grace, I can come back in a halfbell or fullbell. I am sure the others will not mind if you are late.” He clears his throat. “I will not mention your present company.”
I nod. “Come back in a halfbell,” I say, as he bows and turns away.
“Make it a fullbell,” I call out as the echoes of his footsteps diminish into the distance.
When I am finally alone in the dark hallway, I pause in thought, my hand on the doorknob.
This is a crossroads, if there ever was one.
I can enter my room and tell Marine to leave. I can tell her that she is only a student, and what we did was wrong. It was emotion taking over reason, and reason must prevail. Duty over dreams. I can ring the bell and re-summon Elrich, and still be on time for my obligations.
Or I can enter my room and embrace her, and feel my age, responsibilities, and loneliness wash away into a void more beautiful and powerful than the real thing.
Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath in preparation.
And smell smoke.
“Marine?” I call out hesitantly, as I open the door and enter my room.
For a moment, all I can do is stand within the door frame and try to comprehend what is happening.
Marine stands at my desk, my voidstone in her hands. Her blue eyes are entirely white, and her body shakes violently.
Next to her, my candelabrum roars. Flames erupt from the white candles as they melt too quickly, their sticks shorten in front of my eyes. The flames consume the damask drapes and curl upwards. Black tendrils of smoke snake across the ceiling toward me.
Temberlain’s Ashes.
I run over to her, ripping the voidstone from her hands, and immediately douse the fire with it before the entire Royal House is consumed.
When I return from the void, I find my body in the throes of a coughing spasm. The tendrils have dissipated, but smoke now fills the entire room in a thick cloud. I cannot see anything more than a foot in front of me. The remains of my curtain panels are full of red sparks that flicker.
Someone is knocking on my door, loudly this time.
I stumble over to the balcony. I tear open the remains of the curtain panels and open up the glass enclosure, letting the winter wind whip into the room to clear the smoke. The cold air hits my lungs like a salve.
After a few deep breaths, I turn around. Through the thinning smoke, I see both Elrich and Anna standing in the open doorway, their mouths wide.
Then, I notice Marine lying crumpled up on the floor by my desk.
I run over and stoop down, grasping her slender shoulders.
“Can you hear me?”
For a moment I only see the whites of her eyes, and then she blinks and shuts them, as shivers course throughout her entire body. Feeling her fingers, I notice that they are ice cold, and I know it has nothing to do with the balcony’s open door.
“No,” I mumble.
I pick her up in my arms, and carry her over to my bed.
“Go,” I tell the statuesque Elrich and Anna. “Draw a bath!” After I set her down on the bed, I turn back again and see that they have not moved. “Go now!” I scream.
“But your grace, I have not tended the fire since morning. There is no hot water—”
“Bring cold water!”
They both flee.
Drawing back my bedsheets, I cover her with my thick, goose-feather blanket.
“Can you hear me?” I ask her again.
Her eyes are still closed, but she nods and mumbles something.
I bend down to put my ear next to her face.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
“I know,” I answer. I press the goose-feather blanket tightly around her, trying to make a cocoon out of it while trying to shut out the obvious.
I am moved to tears as I see what she’s done. What she’s continuing to do. Her cursed ambition has brought her to the brink of death. And I have come face to face with the realization that I cannot lose her. I will risk my life to save hers.
Whether she is using me to gain more power with a voidstone, or to gain influence in citadelian society as my future wife, it doesn’t matter. I am hopelessly in love with her. If I am but a milestone in her road of ambition, I am powerless to do anything to stop her.
She opens her mouth as if to speak, but her teeth start clattering as a fresh wave of shivers overtakes her.
“Dem, I’m scared,” she finally says.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” I try to keep my voice level and optimistic for her. “Elrich and Anna are fetching some water. I’m going to give you a hot bath, and then you’ll be fine. Everything is going to be fine.”
Elrich storms into the room carrying a large, wooden bucket that is obviously heavy with water. As he rounds the corner, some of it spills onto the marble floor, but he keeps running into the bathroom, his leather-soled shoes squeaking in the puddle.
Anna comes in after him, with far more grace.
“Is there another that I can use?” I ask her, and she nods.
I leave Marine’s side and help fetch water from the kitchen down the hall. There is a stone channel from the
aqueduct that comes through the wall. I lift the lever, and chilled water from the outside gushes forth with chunks of ice and snow still intermingled in it, filling my wooden bucket in no time at all.
Running as fast as I can back to my room, I pour the frigid contents into the copper, clawfoot bath. The ice chunks hit the copper like strikes from a hammer.
I do all of this over again.
And again.
As I reenter my bedroom the fifth time, I notice that Marine’s body is starting to convulse on the bed. She’s not just shivering, but fighting something that cannot be seen.
She’s in voideath.
Pouring my last load of water into the bathtub, I toss the bucket aside and run back to my desk to fetch my voidstone. The room is clear of smoke now, but it’s freezing cold with the open balcony door, so I shut it.
Reentering the bathroom, I sit down on the white and black marble floor next to the clawfoot tub, draping my arms over its curved edge and seeing that the water level has finally crept up significantly. At this depth, it will cover her body, which is the crucial detail.
The only thing left to do is heat it up, which is not going to be easy.
Just as I am about to enter the void, Anna and Elrich storm in again carrying their latest bucketfuls of water. After they pour in the contents with a hasty splash, they see me sitting on the floor and hesitate.
“That’s deep enough,” I tell them.
“Shall I fetch the submasters?” asks Anna, wiping sweat from her forehead.
Past the bathroom door, Marine’s body is writhing uncontrollably, and her whimpers are nonsensical. Her movements have pushed my goose-feather comforter away from her, and I can see her hands balled up into fists.
“No,” I say quickly. “They are too far away. Go, and close the door behind you.”
“Your grace, are you sure—”
“By the time they arrive, she’ll be dead. Go!”
I don’t even wait for them to leave before I touch my voidstone and enter the void, preparing myself for a task that may kill me.
Heating up water indivisibles is not the most complicated undertaking. It just takes patience and time. At the university, we systematically timed heating controlled volumes of water using both voidance and non-voidance approaches. They were the same.
Which means safely heating this bathtub of near-freezing water is going to take a fullbell.
Marine doesn’t have that long.
My only option is to heat it much faster, ironically risking voideath myself.
I let my guard down. All of the walls of my common sense and education come crashing down. I let the wind encircle me, letting it rip into me, into every indivisible that composes me. Faster and faster the indivisibles move below me, as the wind pulls me apart, faster and faster. An indivisible for an indivisible. They want to take me with them, back to where they have always been.
Just before it’s too late—before they grab me by every indivisible of my body and pull me irreparably into the void—I drop my grip on the stone, as it falls onto the marble tiles below. The hard sound of stone upon stone, as the light of the world returns.
Glorious steam rises in front of me.
I cannot feel my fingers, so when I dip my hand into the bathtub, I don’t even know how warm it is. I extend my entire arm in, as I stumble over the edge. It is hot. It is life-saving hot.
I try standing, but I lose my balance and fall. Crawling over the black and white marble tiles, I reach the bedroom beyond. Marine is not moving anymore, and it makes my heart drop.
How long was I in the void?
Finding her grayish-blue arm, I’m barely able to pull her down off of the bed. She lets out a thin cry.
She’s still alive.
Snaking my arms underneath her armpits, I try to lock them together across her chest. It works well enough. Our bodies entwined, I use my legs of clay to kick the two of us backwards, towards the bathtub and rising steam.
My last wave of energy picks up her body, grayish-blue where her skin can be seen. I slip it into the steaming water of the copper tub. The bottoms of her feet touch the end, leaving only her head above water.
The coldness is coming on, radiating up my arms and legs and grasping my heart and lungs with fists of ice. The void wants me, but it’s not going to win.
I try holding onto Marine’s hand, but I slip and fall back onto the marble floor.
The Lesson
I open my eyes to dusty shafts of colored light.
“Where...” My voice cracks in dryness.
I hear the familiar and soft echo of a heavy book being shut. A moment later, a smooth hand brushes my forehead, fingers gently combing my hair.
Chimeline smiles and looks down at me, and I slowly sit up with a groan.
We’re alone in the effulgency temple, sitting next to each other on the rear-most wooden pew. A large, white tomb rests on the other side of Chimeline.
This place looks as small from the inside as it did from the outside—capable of containing a hundred people, at most. But it’s impressive in its own right. Diffused light from the painted glass pours down like rays of wisdom from the Unnamed. At least that is what the effulgent would say, if he were here.
“The effulgent is sleeping in the back room,” she says, pointing to a closed door past the altar. “The graycloak is watching over him.” Her hushed voice echoes off of the dark, wooden ceiling.
My hand goes to the gold setting of my necklace, and I exhale in contentment. The time in the cell without my voidstone now seems like some bad dream. A dark moment when I was reduced to nothing.
I fish it between my black flaxen cloak and undershirt. There’s no need to have it on display.
“She didn’t take it away,” I ponder quietly.
“Your voidstone?”
I nod. “The graycloak could have taken it after I passed out.”
“Maybe she forgot. She had her father to worry about.”
I grunt. “Or maybe she’s finally been enlightened.”
Outside, I hear the clanging of the bell tied to the Ox. It makes me wonder what time of day it is, and how long I’ve been voidreaming.
She places her hand on mine. “Thank you for healing me.”
A memory surfaces. The moment I was done with the effulgent. The weightless feeling of success, of having saved a person’s life. The man’s breathing had normalized, and the bleeding had stopped. Even though my fingers were numb, I was full of a brazen self-confidence, so I healed Chimeline’s wrist right then and there. It was far easier—just a simple bone-mending. It was the last thing I did before passing out.
“I gave you my word, Chimeline.”
She kisses me on the cheek. “I think it was also very kind of you to save the effulgent. You had every right not to.”
“Whatever people may think of us voiders, we’re not murderers.”
She pauses. “It took you a long time. It must have been very hard work.”
I nod. “I am no specialist in the area of human anatomy. This is my submaster Herrophilus’ area. He could have healed him within a halfbell.”
“It took you nearly four bells.”
Four fullbells. Too much time.
I look around the stagnant surroundings again, my eyes finally settling back on Chimeline.
“We should leave.”
“This temple?”
I shake my head. “This village.”
“But the graycloak said that the effulgent wanted to speak to you. When both of you wake up.”
I exhale. “I have nothing left to say to him.”
“But Dem, he may want to thank you.”
An intense urge fills me to stand up, take Chimeline, and quietly walk out of here, heading south.
But these thoughts are foolish.
We need supplies for our journey. Food and water. Chimeline is still barefoot. We also need horses if we ever hope to catch up to Marine and the veiled man.
And there is something
else that I need, which contradicts my recent headstrong words to Chimeline. Information on the fate of Anaxarchis. Only the effulgent can give me this, and I can’t leave here without it.
I reluctantly nod. “Alright, we’ll wait.”
She seems happy with the decision, letting out a deep breath while smoothing her borrowed dress.
“Tell me what happened while I was out.”
She bites her lip.
“It was scary, Dem.”
“How so?”
“The villagers wanted to kill you. When you were in the void.”
I furrow my brow.
“You were just sitting there over his body while touching the stone. For four bells! There was confusion. The two cages were destroyed. Many of the men thought you attacked the effulgent—that you were causing his bloody wound instead of healing it.”
I open my mouth, seeing how the poor farmers could easily interpret such a thing.
“But the two of us were able to calm the storm.”
“You and the graycloak?”
She nods.
I take a deep breath. “Thank you, Chimeline. I had no idea of the danger, being in the void.”
“Everything worked out in the end. The graycloak seems like a decent woman.”
I nod in agreement. “What ever happened to the young girl?”
“The one who stabbed the effulgent?”
“Yes.”
“She ran off.”
I utter a groan.
“What is it?”
“I still don’t know why she did what she did. She had approached me in cage previously. She had asked if I could heal someone with voidance.”
“I heard that.”
I shake my head in confusion. “I think that she was referring to the effulgent. She planned on stabbing him. She wanted to set me free.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I turn to her. “Did the graycloak say anything about her? I’m surprised she let her get away.”
