Zachary Jernigan - No Return

Out into the open again. The sound of cheering was a hundred nails driven through Vedas’s skull. It went on far too long. “Enough,” he finally said to Berun. “Shut them up.”

“Yes,” Berun said.

Vedas felt the constructed man crush the glass bulb. His ears popped, and the cheering softened. It became a sustained roll of muffled thunder, far more manageable.

“Silence!” Berun roared, and the thunder stilled almost completely. He lowered his friend to the ground.

Vedas stood without aid, unmasked his face, and opened his eyes. Tiers upon tiers of people—one hundred and fifty thousand of them—had gathered to hear him speak. Anadrashi of every stripe, from every corner of the continent. More souls than a person could take in at once. Vedas turned a complete circle, staggered by the dimensions of the coliseum. Though he and Berun stood on a four-story wooden platform erected in the middle of the arena, they were not quite level with the lowest stand. Perhaps the stories his father had told him as a child were not so preposterous, after all. Once, when the river Koosas flowed strong and wild, Adrash would fill Aresaa with her water and float great warships upon it...

Berun’s hand came into view at Vedas’s shoulder. In it was a folded piece of paper.

‡

“Shit,” Vedas said. Shit : The first unintended word of his address, echoing off the distant stone walls of the coliseum.

He unfolded the speech. The words swam on the paper for several seconds before organizing themselves in a recognizable fashion. He had written a full page in his small, tight handwriting. Four paragraphs, including an introduction wherein he thanked the city of Danoor and its representatives, everyone in the coliseum, the brothers and sisters of the Thirteenth, and Abse for sending him to the tournament.

Suddenly, the words of gratitude seemed unnecessary, even ridiculous. He skipped them and began with the second paragraph. Afraid to miss or mangle a single word, he read slowly, methodically.

“Respect for my abbey master notwithstanding, I cannot deliver the speech he instructed me to read. It encourages violence on a massive scale, violence that will result in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Adrashi and Anadrashi alike. It is the kind of message the Tomen are waiting for, but we cannot side with them any more than we can side with Nos Ulom or Stol. I do not wish to start a war, and yet I believe this is what I am being encouraged to do. I am no one’s puppet.”

Vedas paused his monotone reading. The stands were quiet, waiting for him to continue. He skimmed more lines, more words that only repeated his point. Unneeded clarifications. Entreaties for reason, for compassion. He skipped the entire third paragraph.

“Brothers and sisters, we are here tonight for the wrong reason. We are here because we have been told it is important to wage war upon those who disagree with us. We have been told that by winning the war Adrash is kept at bay, yet we have no proof of this. We gain the advantage over our enemies for a time and then lose it. The Adrashi do likewise. Despite the changes in fortune, Adrash still threatens us with destruction. Mankind is still held captive.”

He lifted his hand, but stopped before rubbing his eyes. The smell of blood had alerted him. He became aware of a noise—the buzzing of a beehive, water cascading over rocks—and wondered if the sound arose within his own mind.

“While children are trained to kill, trained to hate, the white god waits. He waits for proof that mankind is worthy of destruction. How, I ask you, is our war supposed to convince him? How is it supposed to hurt him? I look around and it is clear that we are only hurting ourselves.”

Pausing, he squinted to make out the blurred lines.

The Followers of Man need to stand...

Join with our Adrashi cousins...

He had written more—more entreaties and encouragements, words meant to ease the impact of his words. An open hand instead of a fist. Nonetheless, he let the speech fall between his fingers. He would not talk to his brothers and sisters as if they were children, or draw their conclusions for them.

The words that came next had not been written. They had been carved into the soft tissue of his brain over the course of the last three months. They had lain in wait for this moment.

“Our fellow man is not the enemy. Adrash is the enemy.”

He looked up. What he had only half-heard before was the sound of one hundred and fifty thousand people in an uproar. The stands heaved like the surface of the ocean. Items arced through the air, littering the arena floor. An arrow fell just short of the platform. Magefire ignited from a thousand staffs, forming constellations in the tiers. As Vedas watched, a man fell from the lowest stand. Four stories. He did not get up. It would only be a matter of time before chaos reigned. Soon, more people would not fall from the stands. They would be pushed.

Vedas turned to Berun. “I did this?” he whispered.

“Not you alone,” the constructed man said. He did not look down. Instead, he pointed to the eastern wall of the coliseum.

It took Vedas a moment to understand what he was seeing. When he did, panic gripped his throat with icy fingers.

The first two spheres of the Needle had risen into view, but they were not at all where they ought to be. They lay side by side, nearly touching. As he watched, a third came above the coliseum wall—a much larger sphere than it should have been.

Adrash had broken the Needle, and it would not take long for people to place blame.

“Time to go,” Berun said.

BERUN

THE 1 StOF THE MONTH OF ASECTICS, 12500 MD

THE CITY OF DANOOR TO THE NEUAA SALT FLATS,

THE REPUBLIC OF KNOS MIN

A dog lay in the flood gutter outside the boarded-up inn, wheezing into a puddle of its own blood. Its left forelimb was a flattened mess, as though a huge-rimmed wheel had rolled over it. Its chest was caved in and four great claw wounds had spilled the steaming contents of its bowels onto the ground.

The girl in white stooped to look at it. She reached into the animal’s chest, a frown of intense concentration on her unlined face.

Sometimes they can be fixed , she said.

The dog twitched. Its chest inflated, accompanied by a high-pitched whine. Broken ribs straightened under its short-haired skin and its intestines slithered back into its belly. Slowly, even its leg started to puff up from the ground. It howled, and then abruptly stopped breathing.

The girl stood. Sometimes they can’t.

She looked up at the small, two-story building, which had been barricaded from within, splintered wooden boards nailed across its two broken windows. Whoever was inside had undoubtedly blocked the front and back doors with furniture.

She’s in there , the girl said.

Berun saw no reason to doubt her. Not long ago, she had led him to the foot of the hills that rose from the salt flats northwest of the city. She told him of the monastery that lay nestled in the valley between them, where Vedas now lay in recovery. She touched his leg, infusing him with energy as though he had lain in the sun for hours. Then she had led him back through the chaotic streets of Danoor, always a move ahead of the roving bands of rioters and Tomen, to this small inn on a side street that looked like every other side street in the city.

The owner tried to throw her out, she continued, but she paid him more money to stay. She couldn’t walk, and for a long time I couldn’t find her. She can keep me away if she really wants to, but I don’t think she really knows that. She just does it.

He did not ask the girl for more —How do you know her? Why do you care? —for there could be no doubt any longer. She was Churls’s daughter. Unable to speculate upon how she existed and what her nature might be, he nonetheless saw the bloodline clearly. How had he not noticed it before? The bone structure, the eyes, the almost invisible smattering of freckles across her nose—they were her mother’s, almost exactly.