by D M Wozniak
Let them hear us. I have no secrets to keep.
“What did they say?” Blythe repeats back to me. “Many things. Some, more troubling than others. It took time for them to trust me, given the betrayal they suffered at the hands of the empowered. A man with a heart as dark as axion.”
“So, he’s working alone, then.”
He nods, forcing a half-smile.
“How can the voices be sure?”
“They know everyone who is in soteria. Everyone who enters into axion,” Blythe answers. “Like we can recognize another with their voice in a darkened room. Except more so. To the enervated, every presence is special and unique. There is no concept of a name to a soul, which is why we have carried on this tradition in your land.”
I don’t fully understand the concept, but I take his word for it. “Meaning we can trust the other effulgents.”
“Yes.” His forehead is still deeply furrowed.
“What is it?”
Blythe looks at me. “They told me something else. Something far more troubling.”
“What?”
“He found the Axiondrive.”
A gust of wind sprays us with temperate rain, and I wipe the water from my face. The nearby willow strands sway in hushed whispers, as if they are carrying on Blythe’s words to sibling trees.
“But the Axiondrive was destroyed.”
He shakes his head.
“Hold on. You said that there was a mutiny and your vessel was destroyed.” I raise up my voidstone by its gold chain. “And that these fragments were all that remained.”
“That is what I thought too,” he replies. “But it seems that the core of it survived. A very large core.”
“How large?”
He looks up. “Based on their description, I calculate that it’s nearly the size of this tree.”
“But you said that the entire thing was roughly that size,” I reply. “How could the remainder be the same, if all of these fragments exist?” I gesture to my voidstone.
His eyes go to my stone. “I would venture to guess that voidstones are but tiny fragments of the massive original. Chips around the edge, if you will. It is all relative.”
Dropping my gaze, I pull a fistful of grass away from the damp ground and let the blades fall over my pants. Many of them stick to my palm. “So frustrating,” I eventually mumble.
“What is it, master voider?”
“I just wish that I could communicate to the souls like you can.”
“Why?”
I look up. “Because I think that they may be wrong, Blythe. Misled, somehow. But I can’t help you get to the bottom of this if I can’t communicate with them.”
“Why don’t you believe them?”
I shake my head. “I believe in their sincerity. But a voidstone that large is unheard of.”
“Just because you have never seen something, doesn’t mean that it’s not real.”
I look up at him sharply. “Just because you’ve heard something doesn’t make it real either.”
Colu lets out a deep groan of agreement.
“It’s buried underwater,” Blythe answers, levelly. “Somewhere underneath Xi Bay.”
“There is no way...” I begin, but then my mouth hangs open, as a recent memory overtakes me. The rain-filled world of green, blue and gray suddenly disappears. I only see flickering gold and red. A tense dinner conversation, seemingly a lifetime ago.
What if we found a stone larger than you can imagine?
I remember the way the candelabra flames looked in the king’s eyes, when he had asked me the question over dinner. I thought he was drunk. And maybe he was, except it wasn’t on redcurrent wine. He was drunk on power.
They’d be like gods, wouldn’t they?
“Master voider?”
This image is replaced by the smug commander we met on the road. His red cape over polished armor glinting in the firelight. The news that the war has ended.
The bay was always the objective. It was never about invading the south. It was always about taking control of Xi Bay.
“Master voider?”
“The war,” I say, as the rain-soaked world returns. “This entire war has been about claiming a massive voidstone.”
Colu leans in. My gaze passes over each of them as I tell them what the king said.
“How did your king find out about the stone?” Colu asks.
“The empowered must have discovered it, and then sought out the king’s help on the matter,” Blythe says.
“But why?” I ask, to no one in particular.
“Because of Xiland,” Colu says.
We all turn to him.
“Up until now, Xiland controlled most of Xi Bay,” Colu says. “Which means this massive stone of yours would have been in Xiland-controlled waters.”
“Then why didn’t the voider-effulgent go straight to the Xian Emperor? Gain his help instead of the king’s?”
Colu blows air through his lips. “Maybe my emperor is not a puppet like your young king is.”
I nod softly and then look at Blythe. “They said the voider-effulgent found the Axiondrive. But what does that mean? What are his plans?”
“He’s in the process of raising it.”
“Raising it,” I repeat. “Because it’s underwater.”
“Yes.”
“It would be incredibly heavy. Would you agree?”
He runs a hand over his glass-smooth head. “You are correct, master voider.”
“Heavy?” Chimeline asks.
I raise up my voidstone by its chain, feeling its weight. “Even small voidstones are heavy. We’ve always measured their power not by volume, but by weight, and we’ve been conscious of the fact that they are far heavier than other substances their same size. Maybe it is simply that.”
“Simply what?” Colu says.
“The voider-effulgent found the massive voidstone somewhere in the bottom of Xi Bay, but he couldn’t raise it to the surface on his own. No voider could raise up something that heavy. He would need help from—” I stare into the gray rain.
“What is it?” asks Blythe.
“Other voiders,” I say slowly, finishing my prior thought.
“You believe they are helping him raise it?” Blythe asks.
“It would make sense that they would. If there was ever a prize to be had, it’s this.”
I look down and pull out another fistful of grass as I collect my thoughts, but this collection I keep in my clutched hand.
“I wonder how long he’s known about its existence,” I mumble. “Probably as long as the war’s been going on.”
“Much longer than that, master voider.”
I look up. “How do you know?”
Blythe shakes his head, as if trying to put the pieces together himself. “He began speaking to them when he was just a child.”
I lean backward in shock. “He can talk to the voices as well?”
“Of course,” Blythe answers, as if I am a dolt. “He is one of us. He speaks our private language.”
I pause in thought, until he continues.
“Somehow he realized his power as a boy, when he was but a graycloak.”
“How could he?” I ask.
“I should be the one asking you that question, master voider,” he motions in the direction of my stone. “How could a graycloak stumble upon one of those fragments without anyone else knowing?”
I look down momentarily. “I suppose it’s possible that he simply found one,” I answer. “Voidstones are naturally present in the ground. Farmers have been finding them in their fields for years. They travel to the university bearing them for a hefty sum of gold.”
He grunts, as if unsatisfied with my answer, and then stares out into the distance. “They said that long ago, when he was a young graycloak, he discovered that he was an empowered. He began entering the void.”
A sharp wind makes the hanging branches sway.
“Despite this, he was on the way of unwanti
ng. He was even able to perform eleutheria.”
“Eleutheria?”
“The freeing of souls in his fragment. But then something happened.”
I wait.
“He stopped trying to help them. He stopped speaking with them.”
“What do you mean?”
“He turned on them. He abandoned eleutheria. He somehow got access to another stone. A larger one. And then began using them,” Blythe shakes his head.
“How many is them?”
“I do not understand your question,” Blythe says.
“How many souls are trapped in an axion fragment?”
Blythe presses his lips together and looks down, running his palms gently over the blades of grass. He then looks at the clump of grass in my hand, and motions with his head.
“Open your hand, and let them fall,” he says.
I do as he says.
“That is roughly the number of enervated in that fragment of yours.”
I look at the green blades scattered all over my pants, dark enough that they almost blend into the black. There are dozens—possibly hundreds—and as I wipe my damp palms together, more of them fall.
“What about the voidstone underneath Xi Bay?”
When I look back at Blythe, he’s grazing the top of the wet grasses with his palms while looking out at the rain. For a long time, he’s silent—to the point where I’m not sure he even heard my question. But then he answers.
“The souls in the Axiondrive is comparable to the entire field of grass we’re sitting on. More than one can count.”
“Good Unnamed,” Chimeline says.
“It is a great evil,” Blythe murmurs. “A great evil, hidden in plain sight.”
I shake my head forcefully.
“You don’t agree?” Blythe asks sharply.
I clear my throat. “No, no. I agree. I just find it hard to believe how all of this was masterminded without my knowledge. Raising the Axiondrive. The war. Even the king being in on it. He may be a drunken fool, but I cannot see him willingly aiding this voider-effulgent. Or, for that matter, my...” I shut my mouth and look down.
“Or what?” asks Blythe.
“Marine,” I add. There is a span of awkward silence, so I decide to fill it with honesty. “She may not have been a trustworthy wife, but she had a good heart. I cannot see her being part of something this dark.”
“Perhaps she didn’t realize what he was doing,” Blythe says.
Colu grunts in approval. “Your woman was duped. Just like mine was. For some reason, effulgents have a sway over—”
Chimeline interrupts with a guttural sound.
We all turn to her.
She’s convulsing. She closes her eyes, and then puts her hands to her head.
Colu rises to his knees. “What the fuck?”
“Yes,” she utters, her choking sounds becoming formed words. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”
I crawl over the damp grass to her.
“I did it,” she says. Her face is a balled-up knot of tension. “I did it. It’s done.”
“Master voider?” Blythe looks to me warily.
I grab Chimeline’s shoulders like I did last time, and shake her. But it doesn’t seem to work.
“This happened once before,” I tell him. “In the airship. She was dreaming.”
“This ain’t no fucking dream,” Colu says.
“He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.”
I shake her again, harder this time.
She goes silent, her body relaxing in my arms. Her head falls backward and I have to catch it with the palm of my hand.
“Chimeline.”
She opens her eyes and blinks rapidly.
“Can you hear me?”
Blinking a few more times, she then nods once. “Dem.”
“Who’s dead?” I ask her.
She looks around and sees Blythe and Colu.
“Chimeline, who’s dead?”
“I...I don’t know.”
“Who were you talking to?”
She tightly shuts her eyes. “I don’t know. Nobody.”
“Master voider,” Blythe says. “Maybe she needs to lie down. Or have a drink of water. I have some in the saddlebag.”
I ignore him.
She was talking to someone. It wasn’t a dream. It was a conversation.
With the person who wants me dead.
The king started a war over a massive voidstone and simultaneously planned the murder of the one person who wouldn't go along with his plan.
Except the king doesn’t have the power to do what just happened. Only voidance can explain it.
Her admission, in the cages of Fiscarlo.
After a while, I could hear his voice in my head.
What do you mean?
Just like you’re talking to me now. Except in my head.
She opens her eyes.
As I stare into the brown darkness, her head cradled in my arms, the answer comes to me. There is only one other person in the world who would want me dead, besides the king.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” I ask. My voice is barely louder than the driving rain.
“Who?”
“It’s wasn’t the king who sent you. It was the man behind the veil.”
Her lips quiver before she suddenly twists out of my embrace. She stands and runs off, through the curtain of willow branches, and out into the blue-gray distance.
“Chimeline!”
I run after her.
Instantly, I am soaked through. But I am barefoot, and am not weighed down by my cloak. Only my riding pants and white undershirt.
She is barefoot as well, and a good runner, but is no match for me. In fifty feet or so, I catch up to her on the crest of a grassy knoll, and grab her shoulder, spinning her around. We both trip on each other’s feet and go down.
I fall against her legs, and then madly climb over her, my hands pinning her writhing arms to the wet grass.
“Do you know who he is?” I yell over the storm.
She shakes her head violently, eyes blinking as the rain seeps into her eyes.
“I need to know! You were talking to him!”
I let go, fearing that I may be hurting her.
She is crying. Her eyes are still closed and her face is wet with rain, but her throat is constricted, her usually light voice twisted in pain. She gasps for breath.
“I was the last one. The last one.”
The last one?”
“He killed all of them. My three sisters.”
It takes me only a moment to understand. The graves.
A gust of rain crashes into us with enough force to almost push me aside, and I shield her body with mine.
She clutches my rain-soaked shirt.
“He would voidspeak.”
“Voidspeak?” I frown at the term itself, never hearing it before.
“He would tell me things, except not with his mouth. With his mind. That’s what he called it.”
“In the laboratory.”
I pull away from her and stare down at her face. She’s blinking rapidly.
“The place I burnt down.”
She nods. “In the beginning, yes. But then we would talk when he was far away. When I was in the harem house and he was...wherever. That is what he was using us for. His tests.”
She swallows. “The other girls, they came first. They were unlucky, and he didn’t value them. He treated me differently.”
“Why?”
“Because of my past. What I was raised to do. He said he was saving me for something special.”
I shake my head.
“When it came time for me to be part of his tests, it mostly worked and it didn’t cause much pain. I could hear his voice. He could hear mine. There wasn’t much bleeding.”
“Bleeding?”
She takes a gulp of a breath, as if she has just come up for air. “From the ears. Sometimes it happens when the conversation goes on for a long time.”
&n
bsp; I get off her and gently bring her up into a sitting position on the grass. I pull back her wet hair and check her ears—there is no sign of blood.
I turn around so her back is against my chest.
I wrap my arms tightly around her, as if to shelter her from the storm. It’s impossible. We’re completely exposed on the hilltop. But the rain is temperate, the soft hammering of flower petals instead of the stinging of nails.
Breathe.
Chimeline does. A low and slow, trembling feeling reverberating from her body to mine. It seems like the echo of contentment, the whisper to simply be. The world of gray holds only the two of us. A spun cocoon.
There are no more secrets. No more black and white. No more right and wrong. All of that is washed away.
“I am so sorry,” I tell her.
“I’m sorry too.” She sniffles, her voice level. “I should have told you. I just feared that you would send me away.”
I hug her even tighter. “I will never send you away.”
She clutches me tighter, and I am content to just hold her for a moment.
Eventually, she pulls back and swallows. Her eyes try to meet mine, but it seems difficult.
“It was the night we met. His voice was weak, like someone speaking through a wall. He told me that he wanted me to seduce you. To use moonspit. You would be having dinner with His Majesty.”
I nod.
“He terrified me. I...I was going to do it. But you rejected my advances that first night, and then everything changed.”
She cranes her neck, looking back at me, and I loosen my hold of her.
“I lied to him,” she adds, a nervous smile creeping across her face. It’s a ray of sunlight.
“I know.”
She wrinkles her nose.
“You were speaking out loud. You told him that you went through with it. That I was dead.”
“I didn’t know what else to say.”
“You did the right thing.”
She bites her lip.
“Do you think he’ll leave me alone now? Do you think he’ll just forget about me?”
She stares at me intently, waiting for an answer.
“Chimeline, I don’t know who this man is. I don’t know his name, nor if he even has one. To me, he’s the man behind the veil. The voider-effulgent. The empowered.” I shake my head in thought. “But I know his dark soul. I have no doubt that he will continue to abuse the ones surrounding him, until he is stopped.”
