Lighting Distant Shores Read online

  “The Atlanteans were second only to the Avalonians in knowledge and magic, and even that is debatable,” Breyn spoke up, looking uncomfortable over being the current expert on the subject. “They were also second only to the Deepborn and elder Pangeans in matters of craftsmanship. But in building things that would stand the test of tide and time, they had no equal among Avalon’s sister worlds, much less in the entire expanse. Atlantis suffered storms and waves large enough to shatter entire tribes of ancient Woadfolk, with little damage to show for it.” He looked around, glancing at the waves that were still bashing against the rubble, then shook his head. “They loved the tide, and loved the depths beyond it. It should not have been able to destroy them.”

  “He told you,” a tired woman’s voice came from a small puddle we had not noticed previously. “It was the flood that wrecked our homes. It was the flood that wrecked us all.” The pool began drying up. “Take the last of our treasures and flee this place. You should not have come here, would-be king.”

  I closed my eyes and counted to five.

  “Let’s try to get all the way to the other side of this lake,” I finally said. “If they were able to preserve this much here, they may have something deeper in that actually explains what the hell they keep talking about.”

  They all nodded, and we continued our journey through the rocky subterranean sea. All along the way, voices cried out for me to gather their last treasures for safekeeping, then admonished me for trying to come save them in the first place.

  Finally, just when our raft was beginning to make alarming, cracking noises, we reached the other side of the underground lake. There were three larger openings among the boulders at the farthest end, and the water channeled through each one. I asked Karim to aim for the left-most opening, but we were tossed toward the center as we drew near. The lake flowed down into a river that dwindled into a creek, before disappearing completely against the cavern floor. It broke the laws of physics, but at the time, we were too busy leaping clear of the disintegrating raft to ponder the improbability of it all.

  The rest of the cavern seemed to be composed of more natural stone. I didn’t know if that meant the surviving Atlanteans didn’t populate this place, or if they just decided not to bother with renovating the entire cavern system. At any rate, there was only one way to go, so we took up position again and began our journey down the rocky shoreline. It opened up into yet another massive cavern, and from what I could tell, the other tunnels we had passed earlier all led to this place. However, there appeared to be nothing else here. Just bare, sandy floor for as far as the eye could see, with a handful of small pools dotting the landscape. At the other end of the subterranean chasm was another opening, and though it was hard to tell at this distance, the surrounding wall appeared to be crafted stone.

  “What are you doing?” the small ghost asked as he appeared out of nowhere yet again. “You should have left by now. You have what you came for.”

  “I really, really don’t,” I sighed as I turned toward him. “And I can’t leave yet, for the same reasons your people had to retreat here in the first place.”

  “Then you are doomed,” he replied, tilting his head and speaking softly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not doomed,” I growled back forcefully. “I’ve battled a number of giant nightmare monsters by now, and I’ve come out on top every single time. I just need to find out how to beat the one outside, so I can take you all out of here.”

  “You don’t understand,” the child shook his head. “It wasn’t the dragon that bound us here. It is the Flood that keeps us all. Turn back, or it will keep you, too.”

  With that, the little boy’s form shimmered into evaporating drops.

  “You know,” I said out loud. “Talitha was a lot less annoying when she did this. Let’s go.”

  We formed up and walked toward the only obvious place left to travel. No traps greeted us. We marched in complete silence for the first half of the way, and I decided to dismiss Carnwennan’s shroud because it was putting too much of a drain on my magic.

  Suddenly, voices all around us started speaking.

  “What is he doing?” a tiny droplet on a nearby rock asked, sounding like a young girl.

  “He thinks he can be king,” another droplet sighed, with the voice of an older man. “Because he does not know.”

  “What is it he does not know?” another droplet-child asked, this one a young boy.

  “He does not know of the Flood that wrecked us all,” the man answered, his voice following us somehow. “It was our task to teach him. And we failed.”

  “Wait—” Val began to speak.

  Hush, I said quietly over the mindlink. Don’t jinx it. Keep walking, and they’ll tell us indirectly.

  “But I tried to teach them,” protested the voice of the little boy we had seen. “Did I not do well?”

  “You spoke to him as if he were the last king,” the old man admonished gently. “The one who had already faced the Flood, and saved us from it.”

  My ears perked up. Now we were getting somewhere.

  “But I said its name!” the child shouted in frustration. “How could he not know its name? How can he be king if he is not prepared to face the Flood?”

  “He cannot prepare for what he does not know,” the old man replied. “And there is much the Expanse no longer knows, in our absence. You should remember that we did not expect to see the Flood again.”

  “But we did see it.” The boy’s voice was bitter. “And this time, the once-king was not there to lock it away.”

  “No,” the man replied. “But perhaps the time has come for a future-king to face the Flood that wrecked us all.”

  “But how can he?” the little one asked. “How can he be as strong as the once-king? How can anyone be as strong as the once-king?”

  “That was a question we should have asked ourselves, my young one,” the old man replied. “We should have searched the future, instead of merely recording the past. But now we are ghosts, and our knowledge is useless.”

  “What if...” the boy hesitated. “What if he really is the future king? Can we teach him to face the Flood?”

  “I do not know, child,” the old man replied. “Our people were better students than we were teachers. Else the Flood would not have wrecked us all.”

  “May I… may I try?” the little ghost finally asked. “May I try to teach him and save his life?”

  “You may try, little one,” the old voice replied. “Go see if he can be our future-king.”

  For a few moments, no one else spoke. Then the small boy called out.

  “Mister?” he asked me. “May I speak to you again?”

  “Please do so,” I answered, slowing our pace. The cavern exit was still a mile or so away.

  “I would ask what you do not know, and what you would like to know in its place,” the little ghost said in a respectful, yet cryptic tone. I chose to take it as an improvement over his earlier speech.

  “The things I do not know,” I said with a sigh, “could fill every cavern in this place until it burst apart, and the leftovers would still be enough to fill the sea and sky beyond. I do not even know what I need to know, so I do not know what knowledge to ask from you. The Flood and the Tidefather may potentially be the least of my worries, and I should ask you a more important question instead.”

  “That…” the boy paused. “That could very well be true. Teaching is hard,” he reflected.

  “It is,” I agreed. “So tell me what I should ask of you. Of what you know, that you can share.”

  “I know what it feels like to die,” the boy answered. “Do you already know that, Mister Would-be King?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “It feels cold and hot and lonely all at once. Teach me something else.”

  “Do you know what it feels like to try and fail, Mister Would-be King?”

  “Failure can feel a hundred different ways,” I answered, thinking back to the days when I could no
t make it to the bathroom in time on my own, or could not remember the answer to a question I had spent months studying for. “And a thousand more, depending on what you try, and how you fail. Teach me something else, little one.”

  “Very well,” the little ghost said. “Let me think of something else…”

  He was silent for a moment. I began to worry. This child’s education was starting to sound even more depressing than my own. If I save these people, I’m going to have a talk with this one’s parents, I decided.

  “I know,” the little ghost said next. “Do you know what it feels like to have your mind taken from you? To have something take all the knowledge you ever worked for, and give you madness in its place? To not know what you have lost, or why?”

  I stopped walking.

  “Yes,” I answered. “But teach me how your people learned such things.”

  It was then that I uncovered the story of how Atlantis fell, and fell again, when its people fled to Avalon.

  The oldest city of the Sun-Jeweled Seas had been a center for scholars, historians, magic, and scientists. It hosted the greatest libraries, the greatest universities, the greatest centers for learning in Avalon’s corner of the Expanse. It was a source of pride for all of Avalon’s worlds, their evidence that perhaps the old Council’s disdain for the ‘lesser races’ was unmerited, that they too could be worthy of protection from the many horrors lurking across the stars.

  The Council apparently disagreed, for one day a host of torments descended directly upon their renowned source of pride. Great beasts emerged from the Pathways, traveling across the sea and land to assault the city walls. But the city had its own protectors, large sea creatures who were also students, scholars, and teachers of Atlantis’ academies. As the ocean world’s rules of war dictated, the behemoth guardians rose to do battle, and the magic and technology that shielded the capital allowed it to sink to the depths of the sea, where fewer monsters could seek them out and the beasts of the deep could rise to their protection.

  It would wait there, until its guardians either defeated the invaders on their own, or held out long enough for the Lord of Avalon to arrive with reinforcements. Then, surely the tide would be turned.

  That strategy served as the end of the ocean world. Something rose up from the depths, something that predated even the most marvelous of the planet’s cities, and its ascent darkened the ocean floor, the tides that rolled across it, and the sky that hovered over it. The sight was visible across worlds, and the Lord of Avalon hastened to his sister world’s aid, but the black tide had already swept across much of the planet. Atlantis’ former protectors were nowhere to be found, as the dark flood left no trace of whatever it touched.

  The Lord of Avalon saw the dark tide, hosting a mass of misshapen, writhing creatures that defied understanding. The sight of them wounded even his mind, but he was not hailed as the protector of seven worlds as a jest. He drew Breaker, and the tide of maddened nightmares vanished in the weapon’s light. Desperate to save what lives he still could, he flung himself across the planet, gathering up any natives untouched by the Flood that had drowned the oceans. Then, as was his duty, he fought to retake the world, driving the Flood all the way back to Atlantis itself, where his strength failed him, and he was forced to use his power to seal the city far below the waves. Before he did so, he risked precious moments to recover what records he could from the city’s museums and libraries.

  With this final act, the world was saved. But the handful of scholars that had escaped the destruction had no desire to return to their diminished world. They kept to Avalon’s shores, and sought to rebuild what they had lost from supposedly safer shores. “We will be safe,” they thought, dwelling so close to Avalon’s mighty lord. “This time, our knowledge will not pass into the mad darkness.”

  They were wrong.

  After several millennia, the Lord of Avalon passed on. It was sudden, and many transient Atlanteans feared his efforts on their behalf had played a role in his passing. But still, they had reason to feel safe. The Flood had not appeared since their rescue. Breaker’s seal over their stolen city still held strong. And though no new Lord of Avalon had been appointed, another force, one the old Lord was said to know personally, had covered the sister worlds with its wings: the Earthborn, somehow rising up out of their dungeon world, shattered the hungry beasts lurking in their corner of the Expanse, and forced the Council itself to bend to their might. Their rise had brought about a golden age for many other races of countless worlds, and Avalon was no different. These people brought new knowledge, new science and magic, which the migrated scholars recorded eagerly. Equally impressed with Avalon’s marvels, the Earthborn offered an alliance to Avalon’s worlds, with the understanding that Avalon’s next Lord would help them secure peace in the Expanse.

  But it was not to be.

  More invaders stormed the Pathways to the Planet of Mists, in a rare attack on the capital of the seven sister worlds. Even without their Lord, Avalon had grown mighty, and both the Earthborn and the peoples of its sister worlds had sent champions to their defense.

  Yet the number of attackers dwarfed any invasion, any Tumult, even the last Stellar War. Something as dark and unknown as the Flood itself descended upon the ancient halls, bringing with it enough armies to conquer a dozen worlds. The Earthborn mounted a defense and staged evacuations for every race present, but finally even they were overwhelmed, a fate they had not known since the Council had submitted to their vision of a secure Expanse.

  All but a handful of Atlanteans had chosen to wait out the danger once again, for despite their memory, they could think of no safer place than the shelter constructed for their protection. And indeed it held, repulsing the great dragon sent to take their halls.

  They could not fathom that the Flood had come for them once more. It was no more than a few drops, barely enough to fill a bathtub, let alone a small lake.

  But it had been enough to wreck their home.

  Their bodies had been taken, along with their sanity. They were left with little more than ghosts that could speak riddles into the wind. Before their people fell a second time, they took pains to hide what knowledge they could, ever desperate to preserve truth from ravage and time. But every desperate act only drove them further into mist and madness, until they could barely form any substance at all beyond tear-like pools.

  “And that is how we lost all of what we knew,” the little boy concluded, finishing his tale at last. “We were people that called the sea friend, and breathed beneath its waves as easily as we did above. But it was the Flood that wrecked us all.”

  We had fallen silent at his account, and now that it was ended, the silence was hard to break. He broke it for us, speaking again.

  “Thank you, would-be king. Somehow, you have helped me to remember much. I suspect I will never remember it again, and will pass away now, losing all of what I still am. Still, though, it was nice to be sane for a few final moments. You still should not have come here. Goodbye, would-be king. For all is now lost.”

  No, the mighty voice echoed in my mind. All is not lost.

  Crown him. And write hopeful love on his arms.

  “You said Breaker drove the Flood away once before,” I asked the would-be damned child.

  “It did,” the young boy nodded. “It was the only thing the creatures feared.”

  “It will have to be good enough a second time,” I answered, and stepped forward.

  The exit across the cavern was barred by a massive stone door, which Eadric stopped us from opening. I studied it to determine what concerned him, and found the cut of every stone, the script etched into every brick, to be thick with Saga magic. Whoever had constructed this barrier had done so with Shaping and Script magic on the same level as my Shelter’s most powerful wards, and had possibly used Song magic throughout the process as well. My Testifiers crooned at the sight. Karim said reading the symbols had unearthed a forgotten language, possibly even long-lost uses, of Scri
pt magic. Eadric had only grunted, but his eyes still shined in excitement as he marveled at the fitting of the stones.

  “I’m guessing it all serves to keep a whole lot of bad news firmly on that side of the door,” I said dryly, as my comrades spread out a safe distance away.

  “It’s not just that,” Karim answered. “Some of these scripts could be used to preserve the room beyond from the ravages of time, and on a level even greater than the defenses we found in the room we just left. There’s no telling what knowledge could be behind that door.”

  “None you can now possess,” the little ghost replied sadly. “The Flood would sweep it from your minds as soon as you learned it. You should not have come here. I…” the young boy’s voice trailed off. “I must go. You should not have come here.”

  I shouted for him to wait, but he did not respond. I began to inspect the surrounding area to try and learn why something that was already dead needed to run and hide.

  I found my answer in the now-stirring pools along the cavern floor.

  We had decided to keep clear of them instead of examining them carefully. They were only a few feet across, and we figured had if they were worth searching, the hundred or so Atlantean ghosts in this cave would have directed us to them. So when Scalelings began to pull themselves free of the water, I just shrugged and directed everyone to get into combat formation. Then I pointed my hand at the biggest cluster of scale-covered humanoids and prepared to blow them apart.

  “Wait!” the one in front called out in a raspy voice. “Father does not seek a fight!”

  “I don’t blame him,” I answered, not lowering my hand. “So far the only thing you ‘children’ seem good at is dying quickly. But take three seconds to talk me out of the idea anyway, without moving.”

  He raised his own hand and hissed, as if he was inhaling so that he could speak again.

  “Father wants the same thing you want, and that is the treasure beyond that door.”

  “Who said anything about treasure?” I replied, narrowing my eyes. “These people are basically just well-hydrated librarians. What are you expecting to find, other than old catalogue systems for out of date textbooks?”