Esar, Age 21

17 Years Ago

It was an important meeting, so Esar tried to pay attention, but he kept drifting in and out of the present instead. The queen and king, princess and Prince Ethereal, the Ethereal Guard and several scientists from the university were all present, called together in a large meeting room at the palace. First Edardes Halwer had delivered an account of the latest construct battle, and then Yanset, Dacrine Wyess, and other scientists gave their reports. Esar only heard about half of what was said. He never dozed off, exactly, but he never felt like he was completely awake these days, either.

He’d already had to give up his coursework because he couldn’t stay focused on what was going on around him. Instead, he devoted more and more time to the symbic device and the dreams it brought him. Each new enhancement from Professor Wyess brought him closer to a perfect, pinpoint focus on future events.

“This is all very encouraging. I’d like to have more confirmation before we rely on the watchstations entirely, but I anticipate we will not need to impose on you for much longer, Esar,” Edardes Halwer said, after a report on the status of the watchstations that Esar had zoned out of. The sound of his name brought him back to the present.

“That’s good news,” he said, and tried to believe it. So the watchstations were working. They were ambient meters set up near the seals to monitor the fluctuations in the ether, giving advance notice of any irregularities caused by an unstable seal. They would be more dependable than Esar’s ability, no matter how much it was augmented. He couldn’t help but feel that his days of usefulness were numbered. The experiments were painful and exhausting, but they were all he had to give his life a sense of purpose.

“Even if we can predict with one-hundred percent accuracy when a seal will break, it doesn’t solve the underlying problem,” said Chadrys Brelamt, Danthan’s lieutenant. It was strange to see a sword hanging next to the Devoted belt on her waist, but so long as she never raised the weapon against another human, her vows would remain unbroken. “We’re no closer to understanding why the seals are breaking, or finding a way to stop them from doing so in the first place.” She looked to Zafrys and Gerimon, who exchanged a glance.

“The Ocean isn’t able to help with that,” Gerimon said, slowly and deliberately.

“Then we will take matters into our own hands,” Etherret Maisk said, rising to his feet. “I have a proposal for your consideration. Yanset and Dacrine’s work with the Bhadrati symbic apparatus has been, I think we all can agree, a tremendous success.”

Whose work? thought Esar.

“We need to take what we’ve learned and apply it to the root cause of the problem. The Tresuan’s ability, with symbic augmentation, gives us an unprecedented opportunity not only to see into the future, but to shape our future,” Etherret continued.

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Esar frowned. What was Etherret actually suggesting?

“You think we can target his foresight to suggest new avenues of research?” Dacrine Wyess asked, leaning forward in her chair.

“Perhaps. But I think it’s time we think bigger than that,” Etherret said.

Esar drifted as Etherret continued speaking. He saw the near future: Danthan with Raen on his shoulders, running around the Ethereal Guard’s training yard. Zafrys and Svetrand taking their places at the front of the Assembly Chamber. Dacrine Wyess arguing with Professor Maisk, looking angry enough to throw something at him.

“What do you think of this plan, Esar?” Queen Zafrys asked.

Esar resisted the urge to say it didn’t matter what he thought of the plan, that to the people in this room he was nothing more than a tool to be used. He didn’t admit that his attention had been drifting, and he hadn’t heard the plan at all.

Instead, what he said was “I’ll do my best.”

***

Normally, before Esar went to sleep, he repeated the names of all the sites where constructs were sealed as if he were reciting a mantra. Tonight Yanset hooked up the symbic apparatus and then read to him a new focusing text, as if he were a little boy who needed to hear a bedtime story.

“A way to stop the constructs from awakening,” she droned. “A way to stop the seals from breaking. How will we stop the constructs from awakening? How will we stop the seals from breaking?”

She repeated it again and again as Esar crossed the too-thin line into real sleep.

A woman materialized in front of the door in the storeroom where Esar had seen the men appear before. A red-eyed child, no more than two years old, squirmed in the woman’s arms, struggling to escape.

“Let me go!” the child shrieked. “I want my mama!”

Esar awoke with a start, heart pounding. Why had that door appeared in his dreams again? Why was that woman holding the child against her will? Why had the image, which had only lasted a few seconds, left him trembling with terror?

And why did every instinct scream at him not to speak of the dream to Yanset?

Etherret and Yanset were studying that door in the storeroom, trying to determine what it had been used for and how to use it again. It had a sinister aura in Esar’s dreams, as if something terrible were likely to emerge from it at any moment. But it was also an artifact from old Vas, and for all their expertise, Vas hadn’t been able to vanquish the constructs. All they’d done was seal them away for four hundred years.

Esar made an excuse for his sudden awakening and settled back in bed. Yanset took up the repetition again, and Esar fell asleep again, and after some time, he dreamed.

A blighted landscape, desiccated and abandoned. Sand and ash buried empty streets. Above it all loomed the volcano that had caused the city’s ruin.

A shovel plunged into the sand. Brown hands shook the dust and debris through a sieve. All that remained, too large to fall through the holes, was a ring made of shisao.

“What did you see?” Yanset asked upon waking him.

“Bhadrat,” Esar replied, before describing the dream in better detail. Yanset’s smile turned into a grin as she scribbled it all down.

“This is the best data you’ve ever given me.”