> “But why twilight?” I asked her, as I had several times before. “Does sunlight harm these halls, or do they have some disposition against it?”
>
> This last caught her attention, and she turned to me with sorrowful eyes. “Oh, my love,” she said. “These halls yearn for the sun’s warmth as few things ever have. It is a tragedy and a crime that they languish in this half-light.”
>
> ”Then why does the sun withhold itself?” I wondered aloud. She laughed and wept at my question, fleeing around a corner and forcing me to give chase lest I lose her and find myself abed and alone once more. I finally found her kneeling before a curious fountain that I had not seen before or since, watching the water come down from its peak in gentle waves.
>
> She looked up at me as I approached, and I saw the tears in her eyes. “The sun is caged,” she said, “its jailor long dead. His key might be yours, on a happier day, but I fear that your hands are not meant for it. The red glow that breaks the night will be forgelight, not dawn, though in that dull fire you will shape its herald.”
>
> She wept then, and did not speak. I believe that night was when she realized what took me much longer to grasp - that no matter her intentions, I will die by her hand.
>
> - Excerpt from the collected letters of Goresje Di Sazhocel Selyta, Royal Archives, Ce Raedhil.
----------------------------------------
The clouds sat low atop the steep valley walls, a featureless roof just beginning to take a golden tint from the evening sun. Below them the torrent of water thundered downslope. Emerging from the sheer black stone of the Sanctum, it took a dramatic fall into a small lake before beginning down a series of cataracts and waterfalls that took the river to Tel Satisva, the large lake in the center of the plains near Tinem Sjocel.
At least, that was the assumption. The valley was only traversable for a short way down its length, widening at the far end into a meadow that terminated in an abrupt, dizzying dropoff. Mark and Jyte stood at the edge of the cliff while the river flung itself down in cascading white sheets beside them.
Jyte shook his head, stepping back. “A far drop,” he said mildly.
“Just a bit,” Mark chuckled, leaning forward to get a better view. “So, what do you think?”
The Aesvain captain turned to survey their surroundings. The meadow was broad and grassy, dotted with small white flowers and hemmed in by forested slopes that rose up into the cloudbank. The river bisected the valley in a straight channel, so swift and powerful as to be utterly impassable.
“We’ll have to keep a close eye on the young ones,” Jyte grunted. “Between the river and the ledge, the footing here is as unforgiving as any I’ve seen.” He rubbed at his eyes and sighed. “Better than we could’ve expected, though. There’s space enough, and I’d seen signs of game as we were coming down. The forage should be enough to pad what we’ve brought for a short while - but likely not long.”
Mark nodded. “Well, we shouldn’t plan on staying here too long anyway,” he said. “At least not most of us. Even if we keep sending the daily all-clear code, they’ll catch on eventually. If that happens before Maja can help out then we should be long gone.”
“Agreed,” Jyte said, his brow furrowing. “Although as things stand our path is simple - we’ve got no way out, so we all stay here.”
“Yeah, they’re working on that,” Mark said, looking back toward the Sanctum. The hazy sparkle of the control room’s windows was barely visible this far down, a mere twinkle at the edge of the clouds. “I get the sense that Arjun has pretty much exhausted all of the leads from the Sjatel documents. He’s working with Gusje to try and get information out of Maja, but…” He trailed off, frowning at the Sanctum walls.
“You don’t think she’s got any?” Jyte asked. “Or that she does, but she’s not able to say?”
“I’m not so sure she would even if she could,” Mark said slowly. “She’s been waiting a long while for someone who could try to free her, and if we leave now she’s right back where she started.” He shot a pointed look at the control room and raised his voice. “Which is definitely not our intention, by the way,” he said, “just so we’re clear.”
Jyte snorted. “You’ve got a healthy sense of paranoia,” he observed.
Mark shrugged. “She seemed to know a whole lot for someone who’s been stuck on top of a mountain. I’d assume that she can hear whatever we say as long as we’re within her zone of control - that is, Tinem Sjocel and probably a bit beyond that.” He rolled his eyes and raised his voice again. “Which is totally not an issue, because we’re all working together - even if it is super creepy.”
“Is it necessary to insult her?” Jyte grumbled. “Even if she isn’t what we thought, she has power.”
“Nope,” Mark said, flashing him a cheery grin. “Don’t worry, I feel like we’re going to get along just great.” He stretched, looking around at the foggy confines of the valley. “That said, I don’t know when we’re going to have any actionable intel considering how locked down she is. After the initial conversation we had it’s been harder and harder to find a way to worm around the lockout. I think part of it is that we don’t know the right questions to ask.”
“And even if we figure that part out,” he sighed, “there’s still the Emperor of Ash coming for us, whatever its true form really is. If the Sjocelym don’t get us then it will, and based on what we saw in Sjatel I don’t think the Sjocelym have a chance without Maja’s backing. Whether she has a chance - well, I suppose we’ll find out if we get that far.”
Jyte began to pace slowly back upriver, walking along the river’s edge. “We’ll either know the answers in time or we won’t,” he said. “I’ve little enough time to spare thinking about things that may yet to come when there’s so much happening in the moment.” He gave Mark a rare grin. “Would you believe I used to complain about the work involved in maintaining an eight-man squad? I didn’t even have to handle my own food back then.”
“Funny how that happens,” Mark agreed. “A couple months ago my biggest worries were things that don’t even make sense here. Nothing like a little apocalypse to give you some perspective.”
They walked along in silence for a while longer. The valley narrowed as they traveled upstream, the steep walls pressing in until they were walking on a narrow shelf of rock that jutted out from the escarpment below the waterfall lake. Mist from the falls had given rise to a thick carpet of moss and algae that made the path treacherous, and they moved with careful, deliberate steps until they stood safely at the drenched lakeshore. In the rock face beside them there was a door, the access back up to the Sanctum’s tunnel system. Mark opened it and reached down to retrieve the rock he had used to jam it open, setting it just inside the door as it closed.
The noise from the falls cut off as the door slammed shut. “Well,” Mark said. “Glad we went through that again, I was beginning to dry off from the first time.”
“We’ve at least got enough water,” Jyte pointed out. “It’ll be nice not to worry about that for once.” He brushed the droplets from his hair and clothes, spattering the stone around them. “No matter how bad things are here, at least we’re not still back in Sjatel.”
Mark snorted. “Buddy, you’ve got a low bar,” he replied, turning to the stairs. “I’ve been in plenty of shit places I’d choose to go back to before that city.”
He began to walk up the staircase, but a touch on the arm from Jyte pulled him up short. The Aesvain captain wore a troubled expression. Mark raised an eyebrow and adjusted his pack.
“What’s up?” he asked.
Jyte took several seconds to respond, looking somewhat frustrated. “Why?” he asked.
Mark frowned. “Why what?” he asked.
“You stayed in Sjatel when you could have left,” Jyte said. “You fought the Sjocelym instead of helping them. You traveled with us instead of leaving in your chariot. You’re not Aesvain. Why are you up here with us and not down there with them?”
“I mean, it’s not that complicated,” Mark said. “Leaving you and going back with the Sjocelym would have made us bad people, right? So we didn’t do that, and instead we did the other thing.”
Jyte blinked, then sighed and shook his head. “How did someone like you survive traveling through Tinem Sjocel?”
Mark patted his rifle and grinned. “My winning personality,” he said. “I mean, come on - give us a little credit. It’s not like we’ve just been blundering through the countryside.” He paused and frowned. “Well, maybe a little. Our first encounter with the Sjocelym didn’t go that well.”
“Let me guess,” Jyte said dryly. “You drove your big, shiny chariot up to the gates of the first city you saw, told the man in charge everything you knew and then had to flee for your lives so you wouldn’t get robbed and murdered.”
There was a long pause. “Okay, yes,” Mark scowled. “Although it was a planned retreat rather than fleeing, and I think we technically ended up robbing them back.”
“And then the next city you came across, what’d you do?” Jyte asked. “The same thing?”
“No, of course not,” Mark retorted, omitting that he had suggested precisely that. He had listened to the group when they disagreed, after all. “We parked the chariot outside and walked in.”
Jyte gave him a flat look.
“And yes, other than that it was mostly the same and didn’t end up working out that well in the end either,” Mark admitted. “You’ve got to understand, we’re… really, really not from around here. If we seem a bit stupid it’s probably just because we’re figuring out everything as we go.”
“A bit stupid,” Jyte said, shaking his head. “Perhaps you’ve learned the word wrong, because normally that’d be a much smaller thing than what you’ve done. Nevertheless… thank you. If not for your peculiar sort of stupidity, I’ve no doubt I’d be dead along with the rest of my people.”
Mark blinked at the unexpectedly sincere tone of the captain’s voice. “Well, yeah - no problem,” he said. “I’m not really the one you should thank, though. Jackie and Arjun are probably the reason we made it through Ce Raedhil alive, and Jesse’s the one that’s got… stuff. Going on.” He gesticulated vaguely. “Gusje’s got magic fingers. Even Tasja comes through now and again, I just tag along and occasionally hit things. Seriously, if you really want to talk to someone about important philosophical junk go ask Arjun some questions. You might not get any answers, but you’ll learn a few words.”
Jyte chuckled and turned to walk up the stairs. “Cajet,” he called back. “I have decided.”
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“Excuse me?” Mark asked, following him.
“Your name,” Jyte replied. “Striker. It seems a good fit, as you’ve a preference for bashing obstacles into pieces rather than taking the easy way around.”
“I choose to take that as a compliment,” he said, mock-offended. “Not that it would matter, since I think all the Aesvain would use it whether I liked it or not.”
Jyte turned around to flash him a rough, craggy grin. “See, Cajet,” he said. “You’ve continued to learn even now. There may be some hope for us yet.”
----------------------------------------
Arjun sighed and turned to look out the window, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Okay,” he said wearily. “Try asking if she can tell us anything about the script duplication process.”
Gusje nodded and repeated back his words to Maja in a dull voice. They had been peppering her with questions ever since Gusje returned from above, and despite their initial progress they were finding themselves stymied by her inbuilt restrictions at every turn.
Maja cocked her head. “The script duplication process is functioning normally,” she said. “It is classified as a system integrity function. Access to manipulate system integrity functions does not fall within the scope of Caretaker access.”
Gusje thought she could see a bit of her own fatigue in Maja’s eyes as she spoke. The construct’s glowing face had never shown much overt sentiment, but her eyes were shockingly expressive - and, for the majority of their questioning, full of resigned frustration. She had been unable to answer direct questions about herself for the most part, proving especially unhelpful if the question related to the constraints on her behavior.
Of the people in the room, Gusje felt like she understood the least about Maja despite her central role in the questioning. Tasja and Tesu both had keen analytical minds, and even if the latter was reluctant to assist his fascination was clear. Arjun, Jackie and Jesse seemed to understand fundamental truths about Maja without being told, unable to provide explanations without lapsing into English jargon or vague abstract concepts that made her head spin.
Arjun shook his head at her answer. “Yes, that’s not very useful,” he muttered. “Although it’s possibly telling that script duplication is classed under system integrity.”
“What are you thinking, self-repair?” Jesse asked.
Jackie shook her head. “It can’t just be that, since she was able to script you,” she pointed out. “You’re not part of her existing structure by any reasonable definition.” She frowned, then perked up with a bright look, saying something in English.
Gusje turned away as Arjun scowled and responded in kind, letting them hash out whatever point of debate they had found. She had spent a long time in Ademen Tacen learning the words for each plant and insect around the base of the cerein. She knew words to describe the quality of soil, the fineness of sand, the strength and warmth of wind.
The few precious books within the longhouse had been her teachers as well, even the dry journal that talked excessively of weather observations and plant growth. Her father said that even if it did not have as much excitement as the others, it was important because it was written by one of his fathers and spoke of their cerein when it was younger. It taught her different words for familiar things, and felt like listening to stories around the fire at night.
It was galling to find that it all meant so little here.
She sighed. This felt like trying to dig through rock barehanded. Maja watched the others argue, her hands folded before her and her head slightly tilted. After a second, her eyes moved back to Gusje, who shivered. Maja was old, so old that her head couldn’t think of the time involved without it blurring into abstracts. For all that, however, her eyes were oddly vivacious, deeply expressive. That part seemed to shock the travelers for some reason, but it was the only thing that put Gusje at ease about the glowing figure. She held Maja’s gaze wordlessly for a few seconds before boredom and whimsy spurred her to speak.
“Maja,” she said, walking closer. “Is there anything that we should know?”
Gusje thought she saw a small flash of something like amusement in Maja’s luminous eyes, but unlike with prior questions she did not respond at once. She cocked her head and stood quietly for several moments before replying.
“Keeping the secrets of his trade is profitable for a doctor until he is injured,” she said. The others stopped talking to stare at her, confused by the apparent non-sequitur.
“What was that?” Arjun asked, bewildered. “What did you ask her?”
Gusje shook her head, unsure of how to take the cryptic statement. “I asked her if there was anything she wanted us to know,” she said. “That’s how she answered.”
“How bizarre,” Arjun muttered, pacing closer to where Maja stood. Her face had reverted to serene neutrality. “Well, let’s try to look at it in context. We’re well aware that she can’t give us direct answers that deal with circumventing the lockout. She’s given us answers with double meanings as a workaround before, this is likely no different.” He drummed his fingers on the top of the console, frowning.
“A doctor can’t be his own patient,” he said. “That’s the unsaid portion of the phrase. Maja cannot modify herself to escape the restrictions upon her, we knew that already.”
Jackie shook her head excitedly. “Maybe that’s not the part she was trying to tell us,” she said. “We’ve been thinking about the restrictions as a condition to be fulfilled or worked around. What if she’s trying to tell us that she knows how to bypass the restrictions entirely but doesn’t have the ability to do it herself?”
“That would make sense,” Jesse agreed. “If we’re sticking with the idea that she’s more or less like a computer then it would follow that she couldn’t modify core ‘files’ while they were in use.”
“I’m not sure how that helps us, though,” Arjun said, looking at Maja with exasperation. “She’s straining the bounds of her restrictions just to tell us that there is a problem, giving us specific steps to resolve it is likely off the board. Even if she could, I’m sure the expertise required would be well beyond even Tesu.”
“I think that’d be asking too much of Tesu, regardless,” Jackie said. “He’s having a hard enough time with Maja as it is.”
Arjun squinted at her. “That’s an awfully charitable stance to take considering he tried to stab you once,” he pointed out.
Jackie shrugged. “He’s the one who got stabbed,” she said. “Besides, we retaliated by kidnapping him and shattering his worldview, so I think we’re pretty even at this point.” She stretched and looked over at Gusje. “How about it, can The Glowy One give us another hint?”
“I don’t think she likes it when you give her names,” Gusje muttered, nevertheless turning to repeat her earlier question. Once again, Maja paused before answering.
> “The twin I see
>
> Watching from still water
>
> My most lonely brother
>
> That I cannot embrace.”
She folded her hands in front of her once more, looking at their bemused faces expectantly.
“A poem?” Jackie asked, wrinkling her nose. “That sounded like a poem to me.”
“I actually know it,” Tasja said, sounding dazed. “It’s from The Lingering Light of Dusk, a collection of poems and small scraps that was salvaged in one of the broken cities. It’s very well-known, we read it during our training for the scriptorium.” He frowned and bit his lip. “‘...cannot embrace, Watching silently from-’ Jaa tseve, it’s been a long time.”
Tesu began to speak in a croaking voice, his face still expressionless.
> “Do not pity me,
>
> Kind stranger, but instead
>
> My most unfortunate brother
>
> Most wretched of men.
>
> The twin I see
>
> Watching from still water
>
> My most lonely brother
>
> That I cannot embrace.
>
> Staring out from cups
>
> And spilled melon juice
>
> My most tormented brother
>
> Silently endures my company.”
The others turned to stare at Tesu as he finished reciting the poem, and a flush of mild embarrassment seemed to penetrate his stupor. “It’s a famous poem,” he muttered sheepishly. “Everyone knows it.”
Jackie gave him a disbelieving grin, but Arjun was already lost in thought. “A copy or backup,” he muttered. “Gusje, keep asking. Let her tell us as much as she can. We need to know more.”
Gusje nodded and repeated the question again and again, each time receiving different replies. Maja dispensed witticisms, quotes, proverbs and poetry that ranged from fairly explicit in their meaning to unintelligibly cryptic. After one such prompt she closed her eyes and sang several bars of a haunting, pentatonic chant that echoed through the control room with ecclesial solemnity.
Before long the sky outside was the murky grey-blue of twilight, although the control room stayed brightly lit. Mark and Jyte had come up to join them, although Jyte had excused himself to get his people ready to move to the valley below at first light.
They huddled bleary-eyed around a small stack of papers and scribbled notes that catalogued the clues Maja was able to give them. Arjun tottered to his feet wearily, brandishing a page full of crossed-out annotations at the others.
“All right, I think we’re getting closer,” he said. “Perhaps we could use her self-repair function to-”
Gusje shook her head, feeling the weight of the day pressing in on her skull. Arjun had lapsed excitedly into English terminology once more, something he’d done enough recently that she almost thought she was starting to understand him. Words like memori and inzhecijon were mentioned frequently, relating somehow to the script that formed Maja’s soul. She didn’t see how words could come together to make something so complex - but, given the evidence, she couldn’t really bring herself to doubt that it was possible.
“The larger problem,” Arjun said, shifting back to Ceiqa, “is that she can’t knowingly modify anything that is ‘her’ code, even if it’s a copy. That means we can’t use whatever methods she’s got for efficiently modifying script. Tesu, what do scriptsmiths normally use to shape stone?”
The lethargic scriptsmith took a few moments to respond, seeming to shake off a fog before replying. “In the Archives there are tools that shape blackstone like it’s clay, but nobody has known the secret to making those for many years. Most work in wrought metal, or use a chisel.”
“Damn,” Arjun cursed. “No, there’s no way we could go about revising that much script in a reasonable amount of time, not to mention that none of us know the first thing about stonesmithing.” He looked up at Maja, who returned his gaze. “I’m sorry, my dear, but I just don’t know that we have the tools to follow through on this.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” Gusje mumbled. The others turned to look at her, and she immediately regretted speaking. They were all waiting, though, so she pushed it back and kept going. “Why would she suggest a plan that would be impossible for us to follow?” she asked. “She can see us, she knows what we have with us and what our situation is.”
“Gusje’s got a point,” Jackie agreed. “The more we get into this, the more I’m getting the impression that large-scale modifications to Maja’s code would require knowledge and tools that we just don’t have. She’s got to know that there’s none of us here with the expertise to do that. If she’s got something in mind specifically for us it would have to be more targeted.”
Arjun shook his head. “I’m definitely willing to admit that our interpretations of her hints could be wrong,” he said. “Let’s look at it from a different perspective, then, following Gusje’s suggestion. What do we have, and what can we do with it?”
“Solar panels,” Mark suggested, “and charge crystals. We could put a charge at certain points in the script, if we had the right locations.”
“Good thought,” Jackie said, making a note. “We have… well, we have Jesse, with a kind-of-Maja. And maybe your sword?”
Jesse shook his head. “My Maja might be able to help. The sword probably isn’t a good idea, though, based on how she talked about it. Not until I know more.” He looked up at Maja, who stared back at him with burning eyes for a long moment before returning her gaze to Gusje.
“We should ask the Aesvain if they have anything that could help,” Mark muttered. “I know they mostly have food and basic supplies, but there’s an off chance someone’s been dragging around an old heirloom or whatever.”
Jackie nodded and continued to write, tapping her pen rapidly against the page in between words. “Not a bad idea,” she said. “Maja may be factoring them into our presumed capabilities. They had their own vinesavai, remember, and there’s a chance one of them has something or knows something concerning Tija.”
“That’s it!” Arjun shouted, snapping his fingers and straightening up so fast that Tasja nearly fell off the dais in shock. “Maja is bound to obey the legitimate government of Sjocel province, as defined in the charter she referenced. But Tija wouldn’t have had the same instructions. Tija would have obeyed the legitimate government of the province she controlled.”
Mark gave him a quizzical look. “But Tija was in Tinem Aesvai,” he said. “And she’s dead. So are all the Aesvain.”
“Ah,” Arjun said, holding up a finger and grinning. “Not all. We have what remains of Tinem Aesvai right here with us.”
“Holy shit,” Jackie said. “You think they could fulfill the condition. Elect a leader according to the rules of that charter she referenced.”
Mark shook his head, standing up. “Yeah, but how does that help us with Maja? She’s got a different region, we’re not trying to work with Tija.”
Jackie smacked him lightly on the head with the paper, looking exhilarated. “Yes, dummy, she’s got a different region. A region that is probably defined in one or two discrete places rather than threaded throughout the whole of her core structure. We just have to figure out - hey, Gusje,” she said, suddenly turning away from Mark. “Ask Maja to explain how her regional assignment works.”
“Uh,” Gusje said, once again meeting Maja’s gaze. She repeated the question, and saw a flush of excitement in her eyes like none that had come before. “I think she’s been waiting for us to ask that,” she murmured.
“Regional assignments for a control system are managed by use of administrative region identification tags,” she said. “Each is unique to the control system it is issued to and allows for interface with that region’s array components.”
“That’s - wait,” Arjun said, his face falling. “Unique to the control system it is issued to? Oh, dear. That would imply that the only place we would find the necessary script would be within Tija, or what remains of her.”
“Great,” Mark grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just what I wanted to hear.” He looked at Maja, who turned her head to meet his eyes.
“So how about it, Sparkles?” he asked. “You happen to know the gateway code for the Aesvain Sanctum?”
Maja did not react for a long moment as she held Mark’s gaze. Then, slowly, her lips curved up into a sly smile.