Naomi

Naomi and Esar left Kelsam’s sister’s house early in the morning, crossed a bridge over the muddy-brown river that cut through the town, and followed the road east. Not far from town, the road skirted a huge pit—or was it a canyon? Naomi dashed to the edge and peered down. Definitely manmade, it had been dug out in tiers. A quarry, perhaps?

“Whoa, what is that?”

“One of the clay pits. Not our destination. We’ve got a long way to go.” He didn’t slow down, but Naomi caught up quickly.

“The kind of clay that you make ceram stuff out of?”

“A fantastic deduction.”

Naomi made a face at him behind his back.

“Tsill was known for its pottery,” Esar went on. “The kilns used to turn out the finest porcelain in Elorhe. Most of it goes north to get turned into appliances, now.”

“Tsil, clay, pottery. Got it. Will that be on the test?”

“I’m trying to help you understand the land I live in,” Esar said. “A land where millions of people live, work, have families—”

“I get it,” Naomi sighed. “People here are people, even if they do have magic.”

“And we have history,” Esar said. “Right now we are in the province of Sulair, which was once the kingdom of Sulair. That was more than four hundred years ago, and even then, Sulair was never very consequential in the grand scheme of things. Not the biggest or the most important by far, just a buffer between more powerful states. But the time came when Sulair had to choose a side.”

Esar continued lecturing as they walked. Their path wound up and down and between hills, and the farther they went, the more dilapidated it became. The ground was rocky and uneven, and Naomi had to pick her way through the brush, constantly poked by twigs and branches.

“There were two great powers back then. Bhadrat, in the east, was old and entrenched, the dominant kingdom in Elorhe ever since the Asprai erected their barriers.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about those—” Naomi began.

“Would you please listen before asking me to go on tangents?”

“I was just—” Naomi swallowed her protest. She needed to learn what it was that Esar had to teach her. There had to be a reason he was telling her this story. This was her history, too, and maybe it would help her understand who she was—or what she was.

“Bhadrat had two advantages that secured their position of dominance. The first was the Tresuan.”

“Your ancestors?”

“Yes. From what we can tell, there used to be several of them—of us—at a time. Now, the power passes to only one in a generation. In Bhadrat, they used a device to focus the prophetic gift of their Tresuan on whatever the rulers wished—not only to foresee the plans of their enemies, but to quash rebellion among their own people before it became a threat. The only downside was that the symbic device they used tended to destroy its user’s mind. But they could afford to be profligate, discarding the Tresuan when they were too far gone to be of use. Now there is only one line of Tresuan left, and only one born in each generation. Even the best of us have little control over our dreams. But at least we are free.”

Esar sounded so bitter, like he was talking about a fresh wound, not something that had been done to his distant ancestors.

“But Bhadrat needed more than eyes on the future to secure its dominance. They built constructs, man-made creatures that combined vitricity and matter into something that could move without being alive, and act without being able to think. They gave their weapons many forms. Anything monstrous that the creators could imagine, they could build and unleash. Winged serpents, monstrous tigers and other mythical beasts, each more intricate and horrible than the last.”

“Did you just call tigers ‘mythical beasts’?” Naomi asked.

Esar raised an eyebrow. “Well I’ve never seen a real one, have you?”

“Yes, actually.”

That stopped Esar in his tracks. “There are real tigers where you come from?”

“Well, not really close to where I live, except in the zoo—”

“Never mind, we’re getting sidetracked again.” Esar shook his head as he strode forward again. “Where was—yes. So long as Bhadrat had the constructs and the Tresuan under their control, no one could challenge their superiority. They expanded their sphere of influence until more than half the continent paid them homage.”

“Sounds like a lovely place,” Naomi said, wrinkling her nose. “But the Rispara fought against them, right? We were the good guys?”

Esar sighed. “I’m getting there, Naomi. As Bhadrat expanded its reach, another power was rising in the north. A university had been founded in the city of Vas, and in their pursuit of knowledge, they pushed far beyond the bounds of what had previously been known and understood. Their scholarly zeal outstripped their caution, and their discoveries had implications that they hadn’t anticipated. Vas found itself in possession of certain dangerous secrets that they felt obligated to protect.”

Something tugged the hem of Naomi’s tunic, and she had to stop to untangle herself from a thorny branch. A thread came loose when she freed herself, and she pulled it out and let it go, watching it drift away on the wind. “What kind of secrets?”

“I don’t know. The secrets drowned with the city.”

“Adrin went there,” Naomi said. “That’s where the Ocean took him, when he was chosen.”

Esar stopped to turn back and stare at her. He looked thoughtful for once, instead of annoyed.

“What?”

“You don’t even realize—look, no one can speak of what happens in the Ocean. Not even the people she chooses. But you—you’re saying things that no one else would be able to say. The power of the Ocean forbids them to speak of it. And I’m pretty sure at least one reason for that is that she’s guarding the secrets of Vas.”

“I don’t think she told Adrin any secrets.”

“That he told you,” Esar said.

Naomi rolled her eyes. “Yes. He didn’t tell me about his nefarious plans to destroy the universe, either. How come you know about these things? You haven’t been in the Ocean either, right?”

“Because I’ve spent years putting together bits and pieces to construct the likeliest narrative. And it has been grueling work. There seems to have been—and there, you’ve gotten me off track again.”

“Yes, but it’s interesting!” Naomi jogged to catch up with him, but her foot caught in a hollow and she nearly fell on her face. She wheeled to regain her balance, then laughed at herself. That had been close.

Esar furrowed his brow. “Are you quite all right?”

“I’m good. And I am interested in what you’re saying, I just—I wish you could talk to Adrin. I think if you met him, you’d see—”

“Naomi.”

She groaned. “Okay. Fine. Later.”

“The Rispara were indeed created to protect Vas, and to counter the constructs of Bhadrat. I haven’t been able to determine how they did it—no doubt it was one of their closely-guarded secrets—but they weren’t things that people made. They were people, augmented and changed beyond the bounds of normal vitricity. The process cannot have been easy, because they didn’t make many, but the augmentations did prove to be heritable.”

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“Magical genetic engineering?” Naomi suggested.

“What?”

“Never mind. Sidetracking again,” Naomi sighed.

Esar looked at her and nodded in satisfaction. “I, and everyone else in Elorhe, believed that both the Rispara and the constructs vanished at the end of the Victorless War. The Rispara were thought to have perished, but the constructs presented a more difficult problem. When Bhadrat was destroyed, whatever means they used to control the constructs was destroyed as well. But the constructs could not be killed or destroyed. They remained, scattered throughout Bhadrat’s vassal states, acting upon the core instincts built into their nature. Protect the territory they had been assigned to protect. Destroy anything that poses a threat.”

Naomi nodded. “Okay. So now they’re like . . . zombie robots.”

How many times was Esar going to give her that quizzical look? “Yours must be a strange world.”

“My world? You’re the one who’s got magical clay and magical dreams and unkillable monsters—”

“The constructs couldn’t be killed, but they could be restrained—sealed in an inactive, dormant form. Isuld and Kierfes—the first queen and king of Elorhe—traveled the realm doing just that, sealing all the constructs they could reach. And for nearly four hundred years, the seals held, and the constructs slept. Until twenty-six years ago.”

“Okay, yikes,” Naomi said. “What happened?”

“Tell me what you notice about this place.”

Well, that came out of nowhere. But Naomi obediently turned around in a slow circle, taking in their surroundings. All she saw at first was more of the same scrubland they’d been trekking through all morning, the same brush and high, tawny grasses growing in the rocky, uneven ground. But something was off. The land was . . . lumpy, in a way that didn’t seem natural. Here and there were rock formations that looked like they had flowed before hardening, like lava, but there was no sign of a volcano anywhere that Naomi could see.

The back of her neck prickled. Something glimmered at the edge of her vision, but when she turned to look, there was nothing there. Naomi fed vitricity to her eyes, sharpening her vision. Now she could see that the melted lumps weren’t random. They’d been laid out in rows, but they’d slumped and flowed in different directions, making the pattern harder to discern.

“Well?” Esar asked.

“I’m thinking. Give me a minute.” There was something beneath the surface here, something beyond her eyes’ ability to see. The sense of something lurking beyond her sight, taunting her with glimmers and impressions, became almost too much to bear. Naomi would figure it out—she had to show Esar that she could unravel the mystery of this place. But seeing through it wasn’t a matter of acuity. She needed to find another way of looking. If she could just shift, somehow—

Naomi blinked. She found herself standing beneath a red canopy that shaded an empty market stall. This must have been a market street, but most of the stalls were empty, or nearly empty, a few things abandoned here and there. The stone walls of buildings on either side, two or three stories high, turned the street into a canyon. It was quiet and still, so stagnant that the air seemed thick, but she wasn’t alone—not quite alone.

A man she’d never seen before stood at the end of the road. He was about Esar’s age and height, and had something of the same air of exasperated resignation, but that was where the similarities ended. He ought to have been imposing, but there was a hollowness about him in spite of his ornate robes. They might have been majestic, if there had been any wind to give them dramatic effect, but in the stillness they seemed listless. His hair and beard were neatly trimmed, but his gaunt face and stooped posture spoke of deep exhaustion. Around his forehead was a circlet adorned with some kind of black gemstone. And his eyes . . .

His eyes were red. He was a Rispara.

“Who are—” Naomi took a step toward him, then stopped herself. The man looked around, and his eyes slid right past her. He couldn’t see her. This had to be a memory, like the ones that Adrin had witnessed in the Ocean. But a memory of what?

The man faced the tall building closest to him and lifted his hand slowly, palm perpendicular to the ground. Then he suddenly turned it upward, making a fist. The building shuddered and sagged, twisting and buckling like an aluminum can beneath someone’s foot. Then it gave way completely. Not only the stone but the fabric of the awning and the wood of the stall liquefied and flowed in rivulets that pooled together into a muddy conglomeration. Before Naomi could make sense of what he’d done, he had moved on, making the same motion with his hand and reducing another building to a formless puddle.

His movements were so dull and automatic compared to the spectacular destruction he wrought. But Naomi was certain that he was human, staggering under the burden of human emotions. Resignation and weariness, maybe even reluctance?

A sound like dozens of feet scurrying across the floor sent a chill through Naomi, and she looked around for the source. The man heard it, too. He turned a bit to his right, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. Then he jumped, higher than any human ought to have been able to, and didn’t come down. He just stood there on nothing, some seven feet above the ground, as Naomi gawked up at him in awe.

“You’re late too, my friend,” he said, in a voice that was too soft and gentle for a man who could wreak such destruction with a wave of his hand. His greeting was intended for the source of the scuttling sound.

It had far too many legs—spindly, segmented legs that moved in waves as it crawled over the indistinct mound of what had been a three-story building. The creature was long and slender with antennae and sharp mandibles but mostly it was legs, legs that seemed to flow rather than run, moving too quickly to keep track of them. Naomi flinched when it came close, even though she knew it couldn’t touch her, it was hundreds of years away. The nightmare centipede reared up to snap at the man, but he dodged with lazy ease.

It was hard for Naomi to take her eyes off the construct. What was it even made of? Something black and metallic that undulated with hints of iridescent color. Yet the construct was too smooth and natural in its movements to be a robot. Perhaps some combination of biological, mechanical, and . . . incorporeal? Just as she’d sensed something beyond her vision in the lumpy ruin, there seemed to be something about this creature—this construct—beyond what her eyes were able to see.

All of those legs neither tripped nor tangled. It scurried over obstacles with ease, even climbing straight up a wall on one of the buildings that still stood. When it stretched out for the man in the air once more, he denatured the building to which it clung. The legs sank into the softened stone for a split second, then the creature pulled them free and scuttled away.

The Rispara pursued it, though he seemed half-hearted in the effort. He stopped from time to time to let it strike at him, evading each time, leading it on, perhaps? But where? Why?

The chase came to an end when the man leaped onto the back of the centipede. No, not onto it, into it, Naomi realized with horror. His legs sank into the body, which was turning to black dust as he collided with it, and she caught one last glimpse of his face, twisted with pain, before light and power exploded from him and it was over.

Naomi was lying on the ground, for some reason. It wasn’t at all comfortable. She groaned and rolled to get her hands underneath her, and saw Esar’s feet and legs through the tall grass beside her.

“What happened to you? You were sleepwalking, and then you fell, and you didn’t hear a word I said.”

Was he actually worried about me? Naomi sat up and rolled her shoulders, her back sore from the impromptu nap she’d taken on some very pointy rocks. “Um, I guess I was in a trance. I think I had a vision?”

Esar reached out to help her to her feet, then circled away, muttering. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. None of that was supposed to happen.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t mean to. It’s always an accident with you, isn’t it?” Esar fumed, dragging his fingers through his hair as he paced around. “You didn’t mean to come into my world. You didn’t mean to bring Jason with you. You don’t do anything on purpose. Everything just . . . happens.”

“I try to do things on purpose! Sometimes I just get thrown off course.”

Esar opened his mouth, then shut it again. Naomi’s face burned. She didn’t know precisely how, but she’d screwed up terribly. Again. Esar probably thought she was an idiot, blundering through life without any plan or reason. It wasn’t true—Naomi wasn’t stupid—but it was always so difficult to explain herself in a way other people could understand.

She had to try anyway. “I was trying to do what you asked. You told me to tell you what I noticed, so I was looking—looking hard at everything. And I could tell there was something here that I couldn’t see, no matter how hard I looked, so I looked . . . differently. And then I saw the city that used to be here. And I saw the man who came to destroy it. A man with red eyes like me. A Rispara.”

Esar stopped his meandering and crossed his arms, looking down at her from one of the mounds. “So you saw what happened here. You saw a single man destroy a city and massacre thousands of people.”

“He didn’t massacre anyone! The city was empty.”

“Empty?” The scorn vanished from Esar’s face, his eyes widening.

Naomi continued, her heart pounding. “There weren’t any people there. He said he was late—I think he gave them time to escape. He looked so miserable, Esar. I think he killed himself.”

Esar stood still, looking at her, but he didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I had planned to tell you the whole story, as I understood it,” he finally said. “This ruin was once the capital of the kingdom of Sulair. I knew that it had been destroyed by a Rispara near the end of the Victorless War. But I did not know that the city was empty when he did so.”

“So you believe me? You believe what I saw?”

“I told you I’ve been putting together bits and pieces, Naomi,” Esar said. “I’ve drawn the most logical conclusions from the evidence I’ve collected, but my conclusions may be wrong. The tragedy of the Victorless War wasn’t merely the loss of so many people and places, but the loss of our history—and not only as collateral damage. Much of it, I believe, was deliberately erased.”

“You said the constructs couldn’t be killed,” Naomi said hesitantly. “But that Rispara in my vision, I think he killed one. It just—it killed him, too.”

“Tell me all of it,” Esar said. “Tell me everything that you saw.”