We won’t condemn two young men for the tragedies that followed, for in those days of our Memory, the true nature of Creation was veiled from the senses. Instead, we’ll distance ourselves from our illustrious predecessors. We’ll remember the roots of the conflict and recount its effects through the choices and experiences of those who first faced the Outcry. To do so, we’ll begin by retracing what followed the disappearance of Crown Prince Revyad Grahritan.
Doctrine, Book of Ages, Thirty-Seventh Amanuensis
Trelin Vemeura tried to loosen the collar of his ceremonial uniform.
Beyond the balcony archway, the turquoise sun of late afternoon washed over the Court gardens and, farther down past the cliff, struck emerald glints off the gulf, picking out the contrails of atmospheric shuttles.
He drummed his fingers on the windowsill, reached for the perceptual practices that marked him as a Visage of History, and forced down the sour dread climbing his throat. Behind him, heavy footsteps echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling, while outside, wavering in the heat shimmer, the reassuring silhouette of the Sensorium cut across the twilight halo of the planet’s rings.
He breathed in through his nose and blew toward the ritual torches burning in the corners of the antechamber. He would never know horizons other than this.
The tongues of flame trembled faintly, then went back to licking the incense diffusers, releasing the ever-present fragrance of government. The sweet, smoky aroma soaked into clothes and hair, clung to skin for days. Maybe it was only habit, but the young Visage had always preferred the Cult’s gentler scent.
«Vemeura!» A familiar voice thundered, still some distance away.
Trelin turned, adjusted his fragrance vial with studied nonchalance, and feigned surprise. The other man came on at a half-run, caught the gravito-magnetic hilt at his waist, dipped one end into the sheath on his left hip and ripped it out again, loaded. A dark wake of loose grains took the shape of a saber in one fluid motion, made instantaneous by decades of elegant violence. A sharp flick of the wrist then turned it into a whip that cracked in warning.
Trelin Vemeura swallowed against a dry throat. Guilt squeezed his lungs and climbed up his throat until it beat behind his ears.
«I don’t have the grains,» he confessed.
The armed man’s stance slackened.
«You don’t have the grains?»
Vemeura unclipped the case he wore on his right side, opened it, and turned it out over the windowsill to show it was empty.
«I don’t.»
The other man started to retort, then hesitated. He gave up, let his weapon break apart into its sheath, and burst into a belly laugh that stirred the scorching air.
«I could’ve killed you, Trel.»
Trelin smiled and stepped toward him.
«You could. My point is, you wouldn’t.»
They embraced, both stifled by ceremonial garments designed to prevent movements that wide.
«If I were you, kid, I wouldn’t be so sure.»
In the antechamber of the throne room, Commander Qutal Raan dropped onto a couch and waved the young man down beside him. Trelin felt the knot in his stomach cinch tighter. He took a seat on the sofa and leaned forward, trying to look more curious than anguished.
«Did something happen?» The stiff collar cut his breath short.
«Took the words right out of my mouth.» The soldier clapped him between the shoulder blades just hard enough to rock him forward, tugged him closer, and murmured, «What’d you do this time?»
«Nothing!» Trelin realized he’d shouted; he lowered his voice. «Nothing, really. I kept my head down, like you told me. I thought it had something to do with you.»
It was more hope than conviction, and he knew he was wrong.
«Me? Please. Again: you stopped asking questions, right?»
Trelin swallowed to moisten his dry throat. Not only had he failed to set the obsession aside; there was a very real chance Qar had hit the mark. Every one of his terrible choices flowed from the search for the book.
«It’s been years since I’ve even talked about it…» he hedged.
«But you never stopped looking!» The soldier shook his head between broad shoulders. «Just like your father: you confide in me, you ask for advice, then you just do as you please. At least he had the good sense to keep the crazy talk to himself, and he was armed!»
«But the Voices followed the Prophet's example, they were pacifists.» Vemeura bit his tongue.
«And lunatics. And exiles. And dead, all of them.» Qar brought his hands to his temples and massaged them. «I’m tired of having this conversation, Trel. Let’s stay in the present. What do we know about this surprise audience?»
Trelin glanced around to make sure they were truly alone and edged closer despite the heat.
«Not much,» he admitted. «Ididel seemed irritated. Someone must’ve forced his hand.»
«They overrode the Priorate’s authority?» Qar huffed. «That’s not a good sign.»
«I know. I’m afraid it’s about Rev. I haven’t heard from him since he left.»
As if in answer to the mention of Crown Prince Revyad Grahritan, a sudden gust revived the torches. Their scent spread thicker than before as the throne room doors groaned open under the weight of time. The automatic system hadn’t been replaced in millennia, since little attention was paid to innovation in a palace meant to remind visitors of the might of Harit’an’s children, colonizers of an entire galaxy.
Trelin and Qar sprang to their feet, straightening instinctively into something fit to stand before the sovereign. The young Visage felt the shirt stick to his back, slick with nervous sweat.
Some subjects claimed they respected Yarek the Fraternal, Ethnarch of the Harites and Patron of the Memory of the Conscious, for his sheer physical presence; others for the cold stare buried beneath brows permanently drawn in a scowl of judgment; others still for the unshakable steadiness of his voice. In truth, everyone feared him for his mind, because his bloodline's gift ran in him at an intensity no one had recorded before, and he didn’t hesitate to exploit it.
For all those reasons, and plenty more, Trelin Vemeura trembled as he waited to be received.
They advanced in small, composed steps, crossed the threshold, and raised their eyes, ready to prostrate themselves, one in the clergy’s manner and the other with the salute of the Guard’s officers. Neither had reason to. The sight of the empty throne, lit by the sunset coming through the tall stained-glass windows, shook Trelin to the bone.
«Where…?» he murmured.
«Don’t drop your guard, kid. And sharpen your tongue.»
Yarek never entered last. He always made sure he was already seated. Always. Rev had once told Trelin he did it because he believed an unoccupied throne stirred in subjects the urge to sit in it. Yet right now the seat was empty, and so was the rest of the hall. Even without the sovereign, the air remained oppressive.
Fears he had been managing until then detonated in the heart of the young Visage of History, forcing him to muster every scrap of concentration to retake the reins of his mind without drifting away from reality. He anchored himself to his senses, to the smell of incense and the pale green light, to the rough weave of his uniform, to each detail of the countless objects adorning the room, gifts from planetary regents to generations of ethnarchs. He thought of Revyad.
«I should’ve gone with him,» he breathed. «Something’s happened.»
«Don’t work yourself up. You can’t know that.»
The Prince’s departure had been rash, but neither of them had any say. By tradition, the last word belonged to the heir. Revyad had chosen to bring his trial of valor forward, unwilling to explain himself or hear reason.
«If he’d waited a couple days…»
«Trel, listen to me: it’s not your fault.»
It was. For far more reasons than Trelin was willing to admit, even to himself.
«I studied the route, I plotted the course for him! If he’d waited for my initiation, I could’ve helped.»
«He's got cartographers with more experience than you, kid. He'll be fine.» Qar knew nothing.
Trelin Vemeura pressed his lips between his teeth. How could he tell his mentor that the Court cartographers had approved a false route? How could he explain that far more was at stake than colonizing a forgotten chunk of rock in some corner of the galaxy?
He was on the verge of giving in and telling him everything when the chance was taken from him. From a small door at the far end of the nave, hidden behind a column to the right of the throne, a gaunt, stooped little man emerged, dressed as always in dull gray. He extended an arm toward them with a practiced flourish.
«This way, please,» he squeaked.
Without waiting, he vanished again, and the opening closed behind him.
«Vlespo seems in an even worse mood than usual,» Qar remarked. «I didn’t think it was possible.»
«Let me do the talking.»
«With pleasure.»
Only a handful of the most trusted bureaucrats were allowed into that wing of Palace Grahritan. Past a string of anonymous little administrative offices, those corridors stretched to the private wing where the ruling family usually resided. Even here, nothing had changed in millennia.
The little man ahead of them hadn’t gone far. As always, he scuffed his shoes along the polished floor, instantly signaling his presence to anyone who’d had the misfortune of dealing with him more than once. He stopped in front of a small door identical to all the others, pulled a ring of keys from one pocket, and clicked the mechanical lock twice. He smiled at his guests and went in. An old metal plaque fixed beside the door read “Office of Planetary Cartography”.
The room was far larger than it appeared from outside, vast enough to house a grand plastic projection grid that belonged in a museum. Trelin, hanging by his fingertips over an abyss of anxiety, tightened his grip by focusing for a moment on the merchant corporation's sigil stamped into the machine's housing, remembering it had been out of business for at least four centuries. The metal wore a layered patina of grime and incense ash, like the rest of the junk in the room. Closed windows and shutters let in only a few blades of light and trapped the incense in the still air until it rotted, tingeing its smell with an acrid, alien note.
Gemiun Vlespo, the Court Curator, settled behind his pompous desk.
«Sit, sit, by all means.» He indicated the other two armchairs across from him. His aquiline nose tipped high, the few glossy hairs slicked flat, the thick wake of incense that followed him everywhere: everything about the man announced a complete absence of any sense of the ridiculous. «Novice Vemeura, it is an immense pleasure for me to see you again, even in such… unfavorable circumstances. Unfavorable indeed.»
The Ethnarch’s personal adviser had a markedly theatrical way of speaking, developed to soften the sovereign’s ill temper. He’d become skilled at hiding the worst intentions behind the pleasantries prescribed by high society, and that refined, unnatural quality in his manners made him exude a kind of slickness that was hard to scrub off, even after just a chance exchange of a few words.
Trelin tried not to let it distract him. It was partly thanks to Vlespo’s endless lectures that, from childhood, he’d learned to win people over by adapting to the way they spoke. That talent, useful in many settings, was doing essential work now, keeping his tongue moving for a few minutes and his mind off the fears rising in it and churning his stomach.
«Curator Vlespo, I return the courtesy and offer you a warm greeting in turn.»
Vlespo readjusted the scarlet fragrance vial fixed to the medallion at his throat.
«Am I to detect a hint of irony in your words, my dear Novice?»
The young man arched his brows in an expression too theatrical to be sincere.
«I wouldn’t dare!» He ran a hand through his hair. «However, to be precise, as befits a man of your rank, I find myself, to my regret, obliged to correct you: I am a Visage now.»
Gemiun Vlespo lowered his chin and clasped his hands before his mouth in reverence.
«Why yes, a Visage of History! I offer my sincerest apologies for my absence at yesterday’s ceremony. I would so have liked to attend…» He breathed in through his nose. «Better yet! Why not give me a demonstration of your perceptual talent, here and now? Smell was judged your primary sense, I’m told.»
«Indeed.» Trelin smiled. Years of work, crowned with success.
«And to think I remembered you as more inclined to sight, as a boy. A curious business, adolescence. So then, what does your nose tell you?»
Trelin didn’t even have to think. The discordant note he’d picked out in the stale olfactory landscape had to be a clue. It needled at his nostrils: necrotic, irreducible, alien. Vlespo had put it there, a few molecules evaporated who knew where in the study, purely to amuse himself with one of his little games. He wanted it to be obvious.
«It’s Luopsian sweat, Curator. From an adult male, I’d say. I imagine you’re preparing for the arrival of a delegation.» He could have stopped there, but his lips kept moving. «Acclimatizing yourself? Afraid of offending our guests with a grimace of disgust?»
The little man mimed a round of applause.
«Excellent! In such uncertain times, I hope you can forgive me if I prove skeptical. Even what seems obvious can escape our notice for a long time. Isn’t that so, Visage Vemeura? Visage Vemeura…» he repeated in a sing-song tone, «how smoothly it sits on the tongue.»
A coarse laugh broke across the room. Qar’s voice followed it.
«Forgive me. Or rather: I beg pardon, humbly, I prostrate myself, and so on. When I’m away I forget how things are done here in the capital.» Qar had sat in the armchair farthest away. He’d never managed to put on a polite face with the Curator. He continued. «Just one question: the circumstances… what was it you called them? “Unfavorable”? Right. I’d like to know why we’re here.»
«Commander Raan, the situation is rather delicate and requires a decent measure of tact. The terms of your scheduled audience have changed, I fear. It is certainly my desire to inform you, yet I find myself in an uncomfortable position. Uncomfortable, indeed.»
«In that case, gentlemen…» Qar slapped his palms on the armrests and stood. «I’ve got better things to do. I’m no Luopsian, I don’t read minds, but I’m tired and I stink worse than they do. I need a shower. When you need a pilot, you know where to find me.»
He started toward the exit; Trelin waited for the Curator’s predictable reaction. Cornered, Gemiun Vlespo jolted nervously in his chair.
«Commander!» His voice had gone higher. «Stop, please.»
Trelin shot a glance at Qar, who indulged the request.
«Make it quick, Curator. A couple of lady-friends are waiting.» Qar folded his arms.
Gemiun Vlespo shot him a withering look for a moment, then turned back to Trelin.
«Visage Vemeura, correct me if I am mistaken. «Was it your charge to guide the Crown Prince in choosing the planet best suited to his trial of valor?»
Trelin answered with a nod.
«You’re not mistaken.»
«Excellent. You will therefore surely have the kindness to share with me the reasons for your choice. Those reasons, you see, interest me particularly. With your permission…»
He reached across the desk and grasped a translucent sphere resting on a gilded pyramidal stand. At his touch the sphere vibrated with a faint hum, began to levitate, and flushed with an orange glow, warming the room.
Before the young Visage of History’s eyes, the plastic projector’s ancient mechanism awoke, spitting out a malleable yellowish substance, which immediately began to take shape midair. First it was a sphere, then a geoid, then mountain ridges rose and deep trenches opened. Rings formed; a satellite appeared on an orbit wildly out of scale. The room was large, yes, but not large enough.
The Curator pointed at the new creation of his antiquated system.
«What do you see, my dearest Visage? Do tell.»
Trelin inhaled.
«13.G-91389/a.»
«Or?»
«In my original plans, I refer to the planet as Nearitt’an, if that’s what you’re asking.»
Vlespo grinned, deepening every wrinkle that scored his forehead.
«That is exactly what I wished to hear. Interesting choice of name. I must admit, Visage Vemeura, the resemblance to our world is remarkable. Someone might even call it implausible.»
«And it just so happens that someone is you,» Qar cut in, purely for the pleasure of irritating him.
No reply came. The Curator swallowed and continued.
«And it is implausible. Is it not so, Visage?»
Trelin fixed his attention on the planet's details, on the hum of the machine, and refused to sweat.
«I’m afraid I don’t follow, Curator. It’s an extraordinary discovery, I grant you. I can't take much credit, though; it was luck. I happened upon some papers that had escaped the notice of…» he glanced at Qar «…cartographers far more experienced than I am.»
«What delightful modesty. Too much!» Vlespo clasped his hands. «How could it be mere luck? This is pure talent. A feat of intellect worthy of an entire page in the Book of Ages. Visage Vemeura, you have discovered a planet almost identical to ours, a perfect candidate for a glorious colony, in a galaxy where we believed we had planted banners on every single speck of dust. Surely you will grant that a man in my position might feel a keen curiosity about the matter and decide to investigate it thoroughly.»
There was no doubt now: his deception had been uncovered. Trelin felt stomach acid burn near his heart and his mouth dry out; he braced for the panic that would come for him any moment now, and that he would have to smother the way he had smothered all the others. Vlespo knew Nearitt'an didn't exist, that it was a forgery built to hide where Trelin and Rev had meant to go together: their journey toward the Silent Spiral, the last unexplored galaxy, where the exiled Wayfaring Voices had vanished.
Out there, beneath an unfamiliar sky, lay the sacred remains of the Prophet Fahdey, the reformer, father of the Doctrine, and with him rested his final book, known only by its title: Sailing Solar Winds. In those pages, every answer. In those pages, the key to refounding the order of the Voices. In those pages, the only hope of outliving entropy and the end of time.
Trelin tried to loosen his collar, certain he would die for the search as his father had.
«It doesn’t exist,» he confessed. «Nearitt’an doesn’t exist, you’re right.»
Gemiun Vlespo slammed his pale hands on the table and burst into a cry of jubilation.
«What wonderful news! Now that every secret stands revealed, allow me one final question: by the boundless grace of the Maker of the cosmos, where have you sent our beloved Prince Revyad?»
