Esar, Age 21

17 Years Ago

While Yanset reviewed the notes from the previous night, someone new came into the laboratory. Esar had never seen the young woman before, but she was all too familiar. She had to be Kelsam’s sister, Thady Bauricta, and she had no business looking so much like her brother. She had the same deep brown eyes, and twice as many dark-brown curls bounced around her head, barely confined by the headband she wore.

“So you’re Esar! I guess we’re kind of opposites, huh? I look back at the past, you look into the future!” Thady greeted him.

“Huh?” Esar said, his brain too fogged with sleep to keep up with anything resembling cleverness.

“I’m here representing the Archaeology Department,” Thady explained. “I hear you’ve been dreaming about lost Bhadrat. Maybe not-so-lost Bhadrat, if we can study it.”

Esar blinked, and for a moment he saw Thady descending a rope ladder into a deep shaft.

“You want to go to Bhadrat,” Esar said dully.

“Of course I do! They’re the ones who made the constructs, after all. We must be able to find out how to stop them there, and so much more knowledge and history that’s been lost.”

A far-away part of Esar might have been excited at the prospect of discovery, but he was too tired to care.

“You won’t get too far talking to him,” Yanset said to Thady. “Unless it’s talking about his dreams, he doesn’t have a lot to say.”

“But I do want to hear about his dreams! That’s why I came down here,” Thady said.

“Digging in Bhadrat. A shisao ring,” Esar said, too exhausted to speak in complete sentences. He felt like little more than an obedient parrot.

“Shisao!” Thady repeated. “That is exciting.”

“I know, right?” Yanset said. “I’d love to see it for myself. It’s a shame the whole countryside is swarming with constructs.”

“But we have the Ethereal Guard. They can fight the constructs, now. Danthan Semfrey even sealed one himself.”

“Danthan sealed a construct?” Esar echoed.

“They talked all about it at the meeting two days ago! I swear, you’re so absentminded,” Yanset chided him, as if it weren’t the fault of her experiments that Esar was losing his mind. “I didn’t think you’d go for it, to be honest. Bhadrat's scary.”

“So are the snakes up in northern Namai,” Thady said. “Didn’t keep us out of the ruins there, either. Only reason no one’s excavated in Bhadrat yet is because we couldn’t do anything about the constructs. Now we can.”

“Excellent. Etherret will be so glad to hear it. Let me just get a student to watch Esar in case he dozes off and we can go down to his office and talk.”

Esar should have gone with them, should have been part of the conversation, but he was so, so tired. For the last year he’d lived his life on the cusp of sleep and wakefulness, but he never felt rested. And he’d dreamed so many dreams.

He had never dreamed of Kelsam.

It still hurt to think of the man he loved. Kelsam had kept on sending letters for a while, even after he found out the truth, but Esar couldn’t bear to read them. At last the letters had ceased, which hurt as much as it was a relief. It was easier to exist as he did now, in that half-waking space, where he was too exhausted to remember how much he cared.

Esar slipped back into sleep soon after Thady and Yanset left. He dreamed of the shaft that he’d glimpsed Thady climbing down. It was a tomb, Esar was sure of that. Maybe when he got to the bottom he could rest.

Over the next few days he was vaguely aware that plans were being made for an expedition into Bhadrat. Danthan would go, along with three other members of the Ethereal Guard, to deal with any constructs they encountered. And Thady would go, along with a team of archaeologists to study what they found and to search for an answer that would allow them to put an end to the constructs for good.

Even when he wasn’t asleep, even when he wasn’t wearing the symbic apparatus, Esar continued to descend. How far down did the tomb shaft go? Was there an end to it? Would there be light at the bottom, or was there no end to the darkness?

The darkness consumed him, making it difficult to see the real world around him. The light of the present day couldn’t reach his eyes. The darkness of the future was in constant, nauseating motion, currents following a multitude of interwoven paths.

He had to eat, but food turned to dust in his mouth, tasteless and dry. Once he dug his nails into his arm, drawing blood, trying to remember what it had been like to feel. He caught only glimpses of the real world, like Thady talking to the student who was watching him, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying over the roaring in his ears. The weight of a thousand years of stillness lay on his chest, and stale, suffocating air clogged his lungs.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Thank you, Esar. You’ve done all you can. Rest for now,” Danthan told him. Esar didn’t know when. He wasn’t sure when anything happened anymore. Maybe Danthan hadn’t said it yet, but he would say it someday.

“Thank you,” echoed Raen, who held his father’s hand and looked at Esar with uneasy curiosity. He wasn’t quite three years old, now, Esar thought, only he saw a man superimposed upon the body.

“I can do more. I can see more. I can’t stop now,” Esar said.

“You don’t have to stop forever, but you need to rest,” Danthan insisted.

Esar tried to rest. He vaguely remembered Dacrine Wyess coming to see him, then arguing with Yanset, though he couldn’t hear the words they said. After that she didn’t make him wear the symbic device for a whole week.

But he couldn’t stop, even if he wanted to. Futures came unbidden to him now, and even in his most lucid moments, Esar couldn’t quite place himself in time. Friends and family came to visit him, fretted over him, and he saw the years taking their toll on all of them. On his mother, on Meliand and Thady, even on Yanset and Etherret. Only Danthan always looked the same, his determination burning like a steady beacon through the darkness of Esar’s mind, even when he closed his eyes.

The man with the red eyes placed his hands on the top of an altar—or was it a sarcophagus? Light traced across its surface in a familiar pattern.

“No,” Esar mumbled, shuddering. “Stop . . . don’t let . . .”

Someone far, far away said Esar’s name, but the dream went on. There was the pale woman and the red-eyed child, both dressed in the clothing of the other world. The little girl was even smaller than Raen.

“I don’t want to go,” said the child.

“What’s the matter with you? This man is your father,” said the woman.

“I don’t have a father,” the child said. “I want to go home!”

“No!” Esar cried, sitting bolt upright, reaching out his hand. Danthan shook him by the shoulders, but he couldn’t release him from the vision. “Stop him—stop him!”

“I’ll stop him,” Danthan said, holding Esar fast. “Alzyn, go get help, now!”

Esar strained against Danthan’s grasp. He saw both scenes at once—his stepfather’s face directly before his, screaming at him to come back to his senses, and the little girl screaming, too, as the red-eyed man tried in vain to soothe her. Their voices combined in an unbearable harmony, and Esar shrunk from it, trying to cover his ears. Danthan lowered his voice, but the girl’s shrieks remained loud and clear, coming from inside his head.

Alzyn brought a healer into the room a moment later, a Namaian woman who wasn’t Devoted. Her hands joined Danthan’s in holding Esar, but the vision was fading away, and he no longer resisted them.

Esar could see the room around him clearly enough, and everyone looked more or less the way they did in the present day. In the distance, the little girl was still crying “Mama! Mama!” but her voice was fading, and Esar couldn’t do anything for her.

“What did you see?” asked Yanset.

Esar hadn’t even realized she was there. She hadn’t made a sound throughout the entire incident, save for the scratching of her pen, no doubt recording the entire affair. Esar responded by rote, opening his mouth to describe the vision.

“Leave him alone,” Danthan snapped at her before Esar could speak. “Can’t you see what this is doing to him?”

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” Yanset replied. “He hasn’t worn the symbic apparatus in a week, yet his mind retains the pattern. I wonder how long it will last?”

“What is wrong with you?” Danthan asked.

Yanset shrugged. “He consented to the experiments and ample precautions have been taken for his well-being.”

“How is he?” Alzyn asked the healer.

“Physically, or mentally?” the healer replied.

Esar closed his eyes. For a few moments he was able to lose himself in a dreamless sleep brought about by his complete exhaustion. Unfortunately, as soon as he had recovered a bit, he began to dream again.

The girl was older now, nearing her teens. “I’m ready, Father,” she said, with the same cold menace in her eyes. “Let’s go.”

They walked on air, father and daughter alike, and they were headed for Thaliron. Esar thought he saw waterspouts on the horizon, out in the Ocean, but they were too dark and chaotic to be waterspouts. Esar was helpless to prevent the city’s destruction.

“Esar!” Danthan cried. “You were screaming again—”

“You have to destroy it,” Esar interrupted him. “The altar, in Bhadrat. You have to break the altar.”

“I will,” Danthan replied. “Don’t worry, Esar.”

“That’s the most important thing. You have to break it. Please, promise me that you will.”

“I promise.” Danthan held Esar’s gaze. He always looked the same, never any older. Burning like the final blaze of a candle that was about to be snuffed out.

“I have to go,” Esar said, getting to his feet.

“Esar, wait—” said his mother.

“I have to go!” Esar repeated. He knew with terrible certainty what he needed to do.

Esar returned to the storeroom in the engineering building. His dreams followed him through the unlocked door, reinforcing his resolve. Esar threw himself at the door and it fell over, cracking in two.

He sank to the ground, exhausted. But when he closed his eyes, the dreams didn’t return, only blessed darkness. For now, at least, there was silence.

For the first time in years, there was silence.