Echo from the Void (Lunar Lives Book 2), page 26
“Watch out!” Marjaa shouted, but it was too late.
The figure stumbled down the bank and, lacking an asp, didn’t repel the fluid. She fell into it, screaming as it digested her and she disappeared beneath its surface.
Marjaa hobbled over to the Reproacher, who continued trembling, but the gurgles had reduced to a low, almost-inaudible hum. Marjaa pushed back the cloak at the Reproacher’s chest and saw the left hand inside the Reproacher, shriveled now, a yellowish fluid like that of the sinkhole leaking out around the knife. Only the thumb moved, but it did so weakly and seemingly without meaning. The strings and sinews were either broken or tied to unmoving fingers.
Finally the Reproacher went silent and lay still, the thumb curling inward in a spasm and then releasing. Marjaa took tentative steps toward the dead figure. She pulled her blade out, and with it came the corpse-like left hand that had been controlling the Reproacher. She wrinkled her nose at the putrid thing that had caused her so much suffering. Its clinging flesh resisted being slid off her blade, but when she placed it under her foot and pulled back on her knife, it came loose.
The world around her possessed a strange quiet, and she felt unsure what to do. A bird cawed in the distance. She could hear her own breath. Something felt off, and she suddenly realized the sinkhole was no longer burping. The surface of the lake lay perfectly still and smooth like a tightly tucked yellow blanket. Then a deep rumbling came from the earth, and Marjaa felt movement beneath her. She scrambled up the side of the sinkhole, but ventured a look back. The yellow fluid had begun draining in what looked like half a dozen circling pools, its former level leaving a brackish line of muck along the edge of the sinkhole. It disappeared quickly, draining down the whirlpools as Marjaa watched in shock. As the last of the fluid sank into the now-gaping holes, only wet earth remained, pockmarked by a handful of open spots and stinking puddles in a few low points. Without the obscuring steam, she could see Lina more clearly and she noticed . . . she was moving! The void-bonds had disappeared, and she now lay in a pile on the opposite bank.
“Lina!” Marjaa screamed and started slowly limping toward her across the now-empty sinkhole. Lina pulled herself up from the ground and looked in her direction. She stood, her face shining in relief through the exhaustion, and started toward Marjaa. They kept moving toward each other, taking tentative steps with their damaged bodies, stubbornly working toward meeting in the middle.
Chapter 14
Esrit awoke in a slow dawning consciousness. He had no idea where he was. Above him the moon of Edifice hung, serious and spartan in its drab gray, dotted with its network of spires. Across the sky stood the deep blue of Abyss with its freckles of green algae islands. For a moment, he thought he was in first life on Chancel again. Then he turned his head and saw the home planet, its signature lavender cap reminding him that that part of his life had ended long ago. His life was lunar life, and his home was Echo. He sat up with a start, remembering his circumstances.
He moaned as his head swam and he clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering. The warm breeze of a pleasant evening did nothing to sooth his shivering. He forced himself to stand, taking in his surroundings.
Night approached, boasting of its coming dominance, Sprel not yet tucked behind the horizon but well on its way. The twisted tree stood in the distance, its shadow long and gnarled. He felt bad, but considerably less bad than before he’d passed out. How long had he been asleep? A quarter of a tide? He started walking toward the tree as fast as his body would let him. Anxiety and the desire to chastise himself threatened to overtake him, but his mind seemed capable of grasping only the simplest concepts, so he focused on the tree. Would Lina and Tomf already be there? Had he slept away their chance to confront the Sacrosanct? He felt like his body had taken the sleep from him more so than him giving in to any comfort.
His physical state baffled him. He’d known people in first life who got addicted to some of the entheogenic elements, and they had talked about withdrawal. What he felt now was similar to what they’d described. But what had he been addicted to? Lightning? He couldn’t make sense of his experience, but he felt his body craving the animating energy he had come to take for granted. Now, in its absence, he felt listless and sick.
As he lumbered forward, Sprel touched the horizon and the stars began to appear like shy attendants at a ball. Had he felt better, he would have basked in the early stages of a beautiful evening. But instead, his situation monopolized his attention. What could they possibly do to the Sacrosanct? The adolescents in first life he would be fighting alongside would look to him for ideas, given he’d lived for thousands of cycles. He had no ideas.
The tree slowly grew in his vision as he drew closer to it. He hadn’t allowed his mind to entertain the worry that, because he had no conduit to dissect, he wouldn’t be able to access the portal. His heart pounded in large, fearful bursts as he approached, and the very real possibility he wouldn’t be able to get in couldn’t be ignored any more. Would some part of him actually be . . . relieved?
Something looked different near the roots of the tree, though he couldn’t see what it was until he stepped close enough to touch them. The place where the conduit had been pinned looked like a scorch mark on the trunk of the tree, and the roots beneath were shriveled and gray. He touched one of the roots gently with a claw and it disintegrated into ash. The soap-bubble-like surface of the portal shined in the moonlight. Absently, he worried about this easy access anyone could have to the Void now, but more immediate concerns took priority.
He held onto the interlocking wooden device he’d triggered to alert Lina and Tomf that he’d completed his mission. He knew in his mind he didn’t need it—it had served its purpose. Yet his heart wouldn’t let him part with it. It served as a reminder of what he’d accomplished and what they’d pledged to do together. He whispered a prayer to Bexlan-Ansibe, hoping Lina and Tomf had successfully defeated the Reproacher. He also implored his gods to provide inspiration when they confronted the Sacrosanct. Maybe they would find the Sacrosanct dead after having defeated his golems. Somehow, he doubted it.
Sweat poured from his forehead, making the soft, light fur of his face damp. If it was because of losing the lightning or being scared of what he was going to do, he didn’t know. Likely, it was both. He took a deep breath, leaned forward, and entered the portal that led to the Sacrosanct.
#
Time slipped by in bunched waves as Lina held Marjaa in the stinking, clinging mud of the sinkhole’s emptied center. Evening slipped into night. Lina cried without restraint, a rarity for the young woman who’d never felt comfortable with the sound of her own voice. She sobbed in a stream of rough-hewn emotion too intermingled and contradictory to name. Marjaa cried, too. She pushed her tears away with filthy palms, spreading mud like warpaint across her cheeks. But the fighting was over. For now.
She guessed Marjaa cried for many things: relief at the death of the Reproacher, the trauma of the violence she’d seen over the last few days, and probably most of all for the loss of her parents. Those things were powerful, but Lina’s tears were more narrowly focused: she cried for Tomf. Her lifelong companion. The person who’d been like a brother to her since Mima’s place. And as they’d grown up, she’d even started to feel . . . something more. But it was gone before it had even started. He was gone. She remembered the dopey smile and guffawing laugh of his youth. She even missed the man he’d been becoming. There had been a hardness developing, but it had felt comforting, like a protection for both of them against the world. He’d felt like home.
Eventually the torrent of her tears transformed into a trickle, though she knew there would be many more in the future. She looked at roughly where he had been overtaken by the fluid. No body remained—the transmutation had been completed, possibly hastened by the acidic substance. Grief for someone from your own tribe felt momentary, like preparation for a long absence that would ultimately end in reunion. The loss of someone from another tribe felt like a goodbye that would last forever. She squinted up at the moon of Edifice. Had he resurrected there right away? Was he looking at Chancel right now, thinking of her?
Lina’s eyes drifted back toward the ground and she started. Krift, bloodied, battered, and swollen but alive, stood quietly a few carriages from them. His averted eyes rose to meet hers, silently asking if it was the proper time to talk. She nodded, and he started limping toward them.
His left eye looked like a slit in a tuber of swollen flesh. He grimaced as he walked, and she saw blood, broken teeth, and pulpy gums. Worst of all, his right hand was clasped firmly over a gash just to the side of his belly button, where she saw what looked like deep, red muscle between his fingers. Blood soaked that side of his gray pants.
“You have embraced your task. I am very inspired,” he said with an understated sincerity that made Lina’s heart ache.
Marjaa looked up. “I guess it was my destiny—”
“No,” he said in a quiet, firm voice. “There is no destiny. There is duty. There is principle. But our tasks are freely undertaken. You chose to embrace your task.”
To Lina’s surprise, tears ran from his eyes, down his bloody cheeks. He knelt beside them. “I hope to embrace my tasks as you both have. With courage.”
Lina reached over and squeezed his hand. “Than . . . you,” she said, slowly forming the words.
Lina helped Marjaa gently to her feet. “I need to get something,” Marjaa murmured and started limping back toward the bank where they had hid in the carveouts of the mud. Krift followed, and Lina marveled at how he could stand, much less walk. He seemed unperturbed by his injuries. Maybe that was how he was embracing his task.
Lina took the wooden device from her pocket and looked into the face of the box that remained open, watching the orange eddies of color swirling there. She couldn’t say time on Chancel necessarily moved the same as time on Echo. What she did know was that as soon as she saw the orange glow, she’d felt a pressing need to get into the realm of the Sacrosanct. But she also trusted that whatever Marjaa judged as necessary to do before the next step held great importance. A wisp of cloud passed over the yellow glow of the moon Updraft, and a shadow flickered in the moonlit space in front of Marjaa, moving in the direction she walked, then disappeared. Lina shook her head, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her.
Marjaa crawled back into the hole she’d hidden in and for a moment Lina worried she’d been so traumatized by the experience of battling the Reproacher that she would remain there. But she rummaged around in the recess for a moment and came out with her satchel.
Krift nodded, a knowing smile on his lips. “Very good.”
Lina cocked her head quizzically. Marjaa stopped next to her in the center of the empty sinkhole and opened the satchel. She unrolled a parchment, and Lina remembered the map of the stars Marjaa had shown her the night before.
“I need to check something,” she said, squinting in the moonslight.
Krift drew something from the pocket of his pants with the hand not holding his wounded stomach. He smashed it in his hand, and what looked like crumbles of dry dirt began to glow in a warm bioluminescent purple light. He held the light to the map, and Marjaa studied the chart for a moment before staring straight up into the sky and placing her finger on the map. “Yep. That’s it.”
Lina put her palms up in question.
Marjaa pointed upward. “I have been mapping these stars for a few cycles. A strange thing happens in each of my maps, no matter what season I am mapping. This dark spot, directly above us, never moves.”
Lina looked upward and saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual darkness between stars. But then she noticed it. A spot that was black beyond the simple darkness of night. It looked like an absence—a place where matter was missing. She blinked. How had she never noticed it before? Now that she had seen it, she could not unsee it. It felt like one of those strange moments where she would look at a cloud someone described as looking like an animal. For several moments it would just look like a cloud and then an association would slide into place in her mind and she would see it.
“I think somehow the Sacrosanct causes this absence. Or at least, projects it in the sky directly above him. And I think he put some kind of glamour over it. Because other people would look at me like I was crazy when I told them about it. For some reason, the glamour never worked on me.”
“I see it now,” said Krift softly.
“I think we hurt him bad when we destroyed the Reproacher, so now you can see it, too,” Marjaa continued. “It appears in a different angle depending on where you are, but doesn’t rotate like the rest of the sky should. It is like the deep darkness is anchored to this spot.”
“He makes his own gravity,” Krift muttered.
Lina shook her head. What did they mean by all this? The miracles of Chancel were powerful, but she’d not heard of something so powerful it could alter the path of celestial bodies.
“You don’t think it can happen,” Krift said to Lina. “You are right. It can’t. But it does. The Sacrosanct warps reality. I think this is a reflection of the Void.”
Marjaa rolled her scroll back up. “I’ve been watching a long time. I think it is growing.”
Lina swallowed hard, not understanding how either of them could possess this knowledge. But she trusted them. And they needed any information they could get to figure out how to confront the Sacrosanct.
Lina felt the deep frustration of not being able to communicate. She wanted, needed, to know more, but neither of her companions knew her hand gesture language. This reminder of Tomf felt like a dagger in her guts, but she muscled through it, because the job was only half done. She hoped they’d hobbled the Sacrosanct, and the fluid retracting from their world back into the hole suggested they had, but she presumed he still lived and festered in the Void he’d created.
She pointed toward the holes and then slowly said, “Wha . . . we . . . do?”
Marjaa shrugged, a worried look on her face. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s already dead? Because we killed the Reproacher?”
Krift looked reflective. “Maybe. But we will have to go in and check. It is probably once true he still lives because the Void remains.”
Lina wanted to ask so many questions. What do we do to prepare? Do we need weapons? Can he be hurt by weapons? But she couldn’t say any of those things. However, she also had to remember that they didn’t know anything more than she did. Her companions were very intuitive and insightful and were probably wondering about the same things.
“We need to go meet your friend from Echo. Then we can make a twice-true plan. It may not be thrice true, but maybe twice true is the best we can hope for,” Krift said, kneeling beside one of the holes. Lina noticed this time that they were not puckered tight, but rather wide open, as if the Sacrosanct had lost the strength to keep out intruders. Marjaa put the map back in her satchel and shrugged it back on her shoulder. She hobbled over and put her arm around Lina. Lina returned her hug, and they stared up at the stars for a moment.
“Thank you for being brave when I felt scared. And being kind when I was so sad,” Marjaa said.
Lina sometimes forgot Marjaa was even more of a kid than she was, a few cycles younger, but also with a lot less life experience because of living on the mainland in seclusion with her parents. Marjaa’s courage and adaptability moved Lina, and she ached desperately to comfort her with her words. But she couldn’t, so she just hugged her and hoped it communicated the same thing. They may not have been sisters, but sometimes shared hardship created bonds beyond blood.
They watched the sky together in silence for a few waves. The bright lights of the stars and moons lit up the sky with dazzling, vibrant life. But her eyes kept drifting to the gaping darkness of the hole directly above them. It sent chills through her body, like looking into the emptiness of absence. Once she had noticed the void, she couldn’t draw her eyes away from it no matter how beautiful the rest of the sky was. Her eyes met Marjaa’s, and the young girl nodded as if reading her mind. She’d been observing the void in the sky much longer. Lina had assumed she was the one who’d seen terrible things growing up in an abandoned city with no parents, but maybe Marjaa had seen something terrible too, albeit a different kind of terrible.
They walked together to the edge of the hole. Lina climbed down first, her feet landing on the strange, spongy branches of the Sacrosanct’s treelike body. She helped Marjaa down, and Krift followed them both, his face a stony mask despite his injuries. She squinted against the gloom and saw a figure at the bottom of the trunk-like collection of veins.
Chapter 15
Above Esrit, a rumbling shook the Void to the point he feared the cave would fall in on him. While the world shook, a low, guttural moaning issued from the space below in what Esrit thought of as the Sacrosanct’s brain. Then the shaking stopped, and the veins on the cavern ceiling above made strange popping noises, like a release of suction. They fell from where they had attached to the ceiling, leaving small openings above, where moonlight poured shafts of colorful light into the hazy chamber. The veins dangled like willow branches from the trunk. Esrit poked at the end of one with his claw and saw a tangled nexus of roots, flexing and squeezing for purchase in the empty air. He gave the veins a wide berth as he walked toward the base of the trunk.
Some time later, Esrit watched three figures descend the trunk of the Sacrosanct’s treelike body. He narrowed his eyes, staring into the gloom. A thrill went through him when he recognized the thin, childish figure of Lina deftly picking her way downward. His eyes searched the upper part of the trunk for the hulking figure of Tomf, but only saw a curly-haired girl even shorter than Lina and a compact, fit man who looked injured in some way. He pushed the uneasy feeling at the big kid’s conspicuous absence to the side and walked over to meet Lina at the bottom.
