Will Wight - Of Dawn and Darkness

“It’s a door,” Calder said, walking up to it.

“Are you sure?” Urzaia asked doubtfully.

Calder’s nose tingled, as though it was about to bleed, but he put two fingers to his face and they came back dry. The aftermath of his attempt at Reading. “I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life,” he said.

He quested around the edges of the bronze doorway until he found three symbols in a row—like human thumbprints, though the lines were too twisted and irregular. Calder pushed on them, only the slightest application of force, and the door began to slide upwards into the wall.

“Wait,” Andel said, as the door began to move, but it was too late.

If Calder had thought his impressions of the entrance were overwhelming, if he thought the previous wave of Intent was too much for his senses, they were nothing compared to the seething ocean of information that violated his mind now.

On the other side was a writhing, pulsing, squirming mass of limbs, eyes, tendrils, ears, appendages without name and without number.

On the other side was a vast book of endless pages, containing all the knowledge of countless years, such an unknowable repository of truth that a thousand humans could not hear it all with a thousand lifetimes of study.

On the other side was a world unto itself, a complex and ancient dream more real than waking.

On the other side was Ach’magut.

Calder stood frozen, all his senses consumed in the Overseer, but in many ways he was more aware than before. He knew when Foster broke free of the spell binding him, turning to flee from the Great Elder, only to come face-to-face with an army of Inquisitors.

He knew that Petal’s fear was crystallizing into the knowledge that she could not fight Ach’magut, which brought with it a measure of relief.

He knew Andel’s revulsion, which was matched only by a bizarre knowledge. The former Pilgrim was disgusted by Ach’magut’s existence, but he was still on the lookout for something to gain from this. As though he could turn Ach’magut’s knowledge against the rest of its kind.

He knew Urzaia’s grim resignation, as the Champion realized that some things could not be fought.

And he knew Jerri was terrified and excited all at once, as though she’d come face to face with everything she’d ever wanted…and it could kill her at any second.

All this, Calder knew in an instant.

The Great Elder’s tentacles slithered between them and among them, analyzing their emotions, their pasts, their physical compositions. He knew them, weighed them, factored them into his plans.

And within Ach’magut, at the nexus where all the tentacles originated, a single eye opened. It was human in shape, but bigger than Calder’s head, with an iris of hypnotic, poisonous blue.

INTERESTING.

The voice scoured Calder’s mind like a desert wind, carrying with it all the meaning one word could possibly have.

YOU ARE THE RESULT OF A DEVIATION.

From that sentence, Calder learned more than he wanted to know about how he’d ended up in Silverreach.

Centuries ago, Ach’magut had allowed an alteration to his grand, cosmic plan. He’d been willing to risk a small change that might disturb the future, in the hopes of opening up new facts and new results. That deviation had resulted in everything in Calder’s past, from the personal to the very distant—everything from the death of the Great Elders to the formation of the Empire, and everything from the meeting of Calder’s specific parents to his birth to his expulsion from the Blackwatch. Everything, as moment toppled into moment, was the inevitable result of Ach’magut’s action in the distant past.

The Elder could see it, could read the potential paths of his choices as easily as Calder could predict how a ball would roll across the floor. But the world was more interesting when it was unpredictable, as the Overseer knew well.

And Calder had ended up in this room, at this moment, with this precise group of people. Which Ach’magut had not predicted.

All this and more, Calder learned from what was essentially a single sentence. He didn’t feel like part of a conversation, he felt like a student desperately trying to keep up with a ferocious lecture from an ancient Witness.

THIS OPENS NEW PATHS. NEW DOORS. NEW ANOMALIES.

Calder tried to respond, to barter for his life, but this was nothing at all like bantering with Kelarac. This had more in common with being flattened underneath a collapsing building.

He could feel it when the Great Elder turned his attention from Calder to the others, as though the point of a sword had been taken away from Calder’s throat. To each of them, Ach’magut spoke.

Petal trembled, facing something that was so much more than her that she felt like a grain of sand that would soon blow away. She clutched her quicklamp to her chest as though it might protect her somehow, and the subtle warmth on her fingers was only a distant comfort.

Her one hope, which she clung to even more desperately than her light, was that she was too far beneath Ach’magut’s notice. Maybe the Great Elder would overlook her entirely, as she deserved, and allow her to go on her way. Even if his Inquisitors killed her, it would be better than what the Overseer could do to her.

Then his attention fixed on her, spearing her through the middle, and she knew with a bone-deep certainty that he spoke to no one else but her.

YOU HAVE FOUND YOUR HOME.

That was all, but she read volumes into that single sentence. Her body shook with an involuntary sob.

When the Great Elder said it, she could more easily doubt her own name. Her home wasn’t in the streets, where she’d spent her childhood. It wasn’t in the Guild that had rejected her, or in the box where she’d hidden for years.

She’d found it on a Navigator’s ship.

Somewhere in her mind, Petal had planned to leave once they made port at a place that felt right. She still wondered if the rest of the crew wanted her around, if they even needed her for anything.

With the Elder’s words, that possibility died.

Foster had his eyes squeezed shut, with his Reader’s senses even more tightly closed. He didn’t want even a hint of this monster’s Intent leaking through, because it would crush him to dust.

Then Ach’magut spoke to him, and Foster knew he might as well have saved his effort. He couldn’t shut out the Elder’s Intent any more than he could shut his ears against the sound of an erupting volcano.

THEY ARE GONE,Ach’magut said, and Foster’s eyes opened wide.

He stared into the Great Elder’s single, gigantic eye as though he sought clarity there. But the Overseer had been perfectly clear.

His family, his former wife and his children whom he hadn’t seen for years, were gone. He should abandon them. He may as well give up, because the future did not allow them to survive.

Foster’s heart clenched, but sheer stubbornness took over his mind. He would throw himself into the Aion Sea before he let an Elder tell him what to do. Now, he’d have to find his family again if it killed him. He would prove to himself that the future could be controlled, could be denied, and that Dalton Foster would be the one to do it. But in his soul, he knew the truth.

Ach’magut had predicted this.

Urzaia had put up his hatchets. There was no point in resisting, any more than he could resist a crashing wave with the power to capsize The Testament. Sometimes, a man faced forces so far beyond him that defiance became an absurdity.