Face Of The Void

---

Face Of The Void - book excerpt

Prologue

The noonday sun beat down on a clearing surrounded by trees that Desa couldn’t name. Skinny trees with trunks that rose fifty feet before sprouting a single branch, fat trees as large as a house with roots slithering into the earth like grasping tentacles: all of them growing green and strong. They were well south of the Borathorin, far beyond the borders of the Al a Nari. It was summer on this side of the world.

The clearing was about half a mile across, dominated by a rock-strewn hill that rose about fifteen feet into the air, and at its crest, the ruins of something that might once have been a temple stood solemn and forgotten.

Crouching at the base of the hill in brown trousers and a white blouse with the top buttons left open, her eyes shaded by the brim of a hat, Desa wiped the sweat from her brow. “This is it.”

Kalia stood a few feet away, dressed in similar clothing, seemingly unbothered by the heat. The woman had grown up in a desert. A little scorching sunlight was nothing to her. “You’re sure?”

“If I’m wrong, we’ll know soon enough.”

Rojan Von Aldono emerged from the forest with the strap of his knapsack slung over one shoulder, his face glistening with sweat. “My people have formed a perimeter,” he said. “Are you certain you wish to enter that structure? If this is a place of the gods, there may be devices that we do not understand. Some may be dangerous.”

Desa stood up, knuckling her back. “Mercy brought us here for a reason,” she said. “There’s something here that we need to see.”

The ride south had taken the better part of two months. It would soon be mid-winter back in Aladar. Months in which Desa had left her people to fend for themselves against Adele. Against Hanak Tuvar. Mercy would appear now and then to point them in the right direction, but the goddess – or whatever she was – could only remain with them for a few moments before she was yanked back to the abandoned city in the desert. As such, they had been forced to make several course corrections.

Desa reached for Kalia and felt a moment of reassurance when the other woman took her hand. Together, they ascended the hillside until they reached the top. The temple was just a collection of stone slabs that had once formed the base of a building and pillars that no longer supported a roof, all with moss growing on them.

She saw nothing of note until her eyes fell upon a set of stairs that led down into a cavern of some kind. Or more likely the temple’s basement. Desa wasn’t sure, but the structure was definitely man-made. How old was this place? How could her primitive ancestors have managed such construction?

Drawing her pistol, Desa lifted it up in front of her face, its barrel pointed skyward, and cocked the hammer. “I’ll go first.”

Leaning one shoulder against a pillar, Kalia folded her arms and sighed. “Really?” she asked, eyebrows rising. “Are you expecting to find trouble down there?”

“I always expect trouble,” Desa muttered. “And I am seldom disappointed.”

She raised a hand, triggering the Light-Source in her ring to hold back the darkness. The walls of the tunnel were composed of a thick, gray stone that sparkled. Down she went, step by step, until she reached a large dome-shaped chamber.

Waving her hand back and forth, she searched for something, anything, that might make this long journey worthwhile. But there was nothing. Only mud and lumpy rocks that protruded from the floor. Maybe they had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe this was not the place Mercy wanted them to find. What could-

Her light fell upon a stone arch in the middle of the chamber, a smooth doorway growing out of the floor with unmistakable glyphs on its surface. They weren’t in any language that Desa recognized, but it was clearly a form of writing. What she wouldn’t give to have Dalen with her on this expedition. She was willing to bet good money that there was a reference to this device – or something like it – in the Vadir Scrolls.

Pistol in hand, Desa crept forward and narrowed her eyes. “I think I’ve found it,” she said. “This must be what Mercy wanted us to see.”

As if the sound of her name summoned her, the goddess materialized right in front of Desa, blocking her path. Once upon a time, the sudden appearance of a hooded figure in black robes would have been terrifying, but now, it was almost blasé.

Mercy had her hands up in a forestalling gesture as if trying to warn Desa not to get too close to the arch. She kept shaking her head for emphasis.

“What is it?”

The air stirred when the goddess vanished and then reappeared next to the wall, pointing insistently at the ground under her feet.

“You want us to dig something up?”

Mercy was gone before she could answer, pulled back to her desert prison. That was always the way. Sometimes, she could stay for a few minutes, and sometimes for only a few seconds, but she always vanished when Desa was about to ask something pertinent.

Exhaling, Desa focused her thoughts and let the exasperation drain out of her. She cleared her mind, going through exercises that were so familiar they had become rote, and reached out to the Ether.

The cavern became a tempest of dancing particles. Even the light emanating from her ring had changed, now visible to her as tiny packets of energy expanding in all directions.

Kalia was a galaxy of molecules at the foot of the stairs, and yet, somehow, Desa could still sense the contours of her face. The other woman was frowning as she stared at the spot where Mercy had been standing. “What was that about?”

Unable to reply, Desa probed the ground with her mind. She found something she had not expected: a metal box buried about three feet deep. Now, wasn’t that interesting?

The world snapped back to normal as Desa released the Ether. “Something’s down there,” she said. “Help me dig it up.”

The crackling campfire sent motes of flame into the night sky along with a plume of smoke. Its flickering light reflected off the trunks of nearby trees. They had settled in for the night about a mile north of the ruined temple. Rojan’s people were all curled up in their bedrolls or enjoying a second helping of a stew made from goat meat, carrots and celery.

Desa sat with her back against a log, the metal box resting in her lap. She traced the glyphs along its lid with one finger. What a strange device. It had a locking mechanism, but no keyhole. Who would design such a thing?

Standing just a few feet away, Kalia put one hand on her hip, cocked her head and flashed a smile. “Any luck?”

A grimace betrayed Desa’s frustration. “No,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I can’t get it open. I’ve probed the device inside through the Ether, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“What do you think it does?”

Falling back against the log, Desa covered her eyes with both hands. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” she said through a yawn. “A weapon, perhaps. Something that we can use against Adele.”

Kalia turned her head to stare thoughtfully into the fire. She really was quite lovely. There were days when Desa wished that she could have met the other woman years ago, but then, things might have gone wrong if she had encountered Kalia Troval as a young woman. Or rather, they might have gone wrong sooner. Love always went wrong. It was the way of things.

“Hmm,” Kalia murmured. “Maybe you should ask Mercy about it the next time she makes an appearance.”

“I intend to.”

“Still can’t believe the ghost in the dead city was a goddess.”

Desa crossed her arms, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t think Mercy is a goddess,” she said. “Not really. She’s powerful but fallible.”

Kalia sank to her knees about five feet away, folding hands in her lap and breathing deeply. “Then what do you think she is?” she mumbled. “What else besides a god could survive for so many centuries.”

“Perhaps she’s a creature from beyond the stars.”

“What?”

Turning her face up to the heavens, Desa squinted. “Is it really so unbelievable?” she asked. “We saw Vengeance fly off into the sky when she left us. My people believe that our world is only one of many in the cosmos.”

Inspiration fell upon her like a tidal wave. She had the Ether in an instant, the world transforming before her eyes. Particles. Particles everywhere she looked. She could trace the contours of every object with her mind, every blade of grass, every rock, every tendril of smoke. It was all there for her: a world just begging to be explored.

The locking mechanism was a pair of switches inside the box. Switches with small, metal prongs directly across from them. At first, Desa had thought that an oddity. Why include such a useless feature that only took up valuable storage space? But now, she saw the solution.

She began a pair of Infusions, feeding strands of the Ether into the space between the molecules that made up those two prongs. It only took a few seconds to complete the work. She would only need a tiny amount of kinetic energy. Releasing the Ether, Desa triggered the Force-Sources she had created.

The lid popped open.

Kalia’s jaw dropped, a soft gasp passing through her lips. “Almighty,” she hissed, scooching closer. “You did it.”

“Ingenious,” Desa said. “Whoever created this wanted to make sure that only a Field Binder could open it.”

Inside the box, she found a blue crystal with a brass cage around it. The whole thing was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. But she still had no idea what it did.

Mercy appeared a moment later, standing before her in black robes that seemed to drink in the firelight. The darkness in that hood threatened to swallow her whole. Desa did not know how the goddess had been trapped in such a menacing form, but she was confident that Vengeance had a hand in it. A cruel joke. The goddess of benevolence cursed with a form that made everyone too afraid to accept her help.

“What is it?” Desa asked, communing with the Ether the instant the words left her mouth. Once again, the world changed, and so did Mercy. No longer a shadowy wraith, she now appeared to Desa as a matronly woman in a blue dress. Black curls framed a face of dark-brown skin. Her eyes shone with the warmth of the sun. The Ether revealed the truth. Always.

“Technology,” Mercy said. “You must power it with the Ether. The Infusions will have faded after ten thousand years, but they can be renewed. Take it back to the clearing where you found the temple, and activate it there.”

What will I see?

“The truth.”

And what was that archway in the cavern?

“The answers you seek are in the device. Do not go near the archway until you understand its purpose. Some dangers are best avoided.”

Mercy bent over, placing one hand on Desa’s head and the other on Kalia’s A pleasant warmth passed through Desa. “So that you may understand the words of a tongue long dead,” the goddess explained. “I cannot remain. Use the device. Learn the truth. And when you have your answers, seek me out. We have much work to do.”

It took nearly two hours to Infuse the cage around the crystal with a suitable connection to the Ether. When Desa scanned it with her mind, she found something she had not expected: circuity encased within the metal. Circuity far more advanced than anything she had seen in Aladar. Whoever had created this device was at least a century ahead of the Aladri. Probably more. All she could say was that this thing would draw a considerable amount of power.

The silver light of a full moon illuminated a narrow path that cut through the forest, providing just enough illumination for her to see clearly. A good thing too. She was tired after Infusing the device; she didn’t want to have to replenish her ring as well.

“What I don’t understand,” Desa said, lifting a vine so she could duck underneath it, “is why Vengeance would want to curse her sister with the form of a wraith.”

Kalia was right behind her, grumbling as she made her way over the uneven terrain. “Everyone who encounters the ghost sees something different,” the other woman replied. “But it’s never anything pleasant.”

Pausing with one hand on a tree, Desa looked back over her shoulder. “Still, the question remains,” she said. “What purpose could it serve other than cruelty?”

“Are you sure it was Vengeance?”

Desa felt wrinkles lining her brow. “As sure as I can be of anything,” she muttered, starting forward again. The forest seemed to close in around her, and she was forced to wiggle through a gap so narrow bark brushed her arms.

“Well,” Kalia said, grunting as she stepped through. “Her name is Vengeance. So, maybe it was just cruelty for cruelty’s sake.”

Closing her eyes, Desa shook her head forcefully. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, hopping over a large root. “Vengeance is harsh, and she might even take some pleasure in seeing people suffer. But there seems to be a lesson in her cruelty. She let us go when we demonstrated compassion.”

“Well, you’ve got me,” Kalia said. “I wouldn’t presume to know the mind of a creature from beyond the stars.”

The path opened into a clearing, and a cool breeze brought some relief from the night’s muggy heat. Moonlight reflected off the rocks that jutted out of the hillside. At night, the ruined temple was an ominous shadow against the darkness, a setting right out of every ghost story Desa had ever heard.

She set the crystal down on a patch of dried mud.

Rising, Desa dusted her hands and strode deeper into the clearing. “That should do it.” She spun around to face her partner. “Mercy gave us no specific instructions about where to use this thing. Here seems as good a place as any.”

Kalia was standing at the tree line, her face barely visible in the moonlight. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Based on what you told me, I got the impression that Mercy wants us to use the device inside the temple.”

“I think she would have told us if that were the case.”

Kalia shrugged, stepping forward to glower at the small device at her feet. “I guess we won’t know until we try,” she mumbled. “We’d best get on with it then.”

Desa triggered the Electric-Source she had created.

The crystal began to glow with a soft, blue light that expanded until it filled the entire clearing. Teal beams scanned back and forth, painting images that stood hundreds of feet tall, sketching the outlines of buildings. Desa felt her heart pounding, felt sweat on her palms. She had never dreamed that such a thing could be possible. Though her rational mind knew better, some small part of her believed that this could only be the technology of the gods.

Other colours filled the image, and soon she was surrounded by transparent spires of glass. They came in all shapes and sizes. One was a perfect cylinder that stood at least thirty stories high with a ring of windows on every floor. Another was shaped almost like a set of stairs but with grass and trees growing on the top of each step. More and more appeared all around her. Some of those structures seemed to be rising out of the forest, causing birds to squawk and animals to flee.

Kalia stared up at the ghostly city in wide-eyed wonder.

People appeared as well, men and women in fashions that Desa did not recognize, each one of them as transparent as the towers that surrounded them. And automobiles. Automobiles unlike any she had ever seen before.

One man walked right through Kalia, and she screamed, covering her mouth with one hand. “Ghosts!” she moaned. “This is a city of the dead!”

“Yes, it is,” Desa agreed. “But they aren’t ghosts.” She waved her hand through the spectral image of an old woman who seemed to be hobbling across the street. “It’s only sculpted light. No different from a painting, just much more advanced.”

The front steps of a grand building appeared over the hill that led up to the temple. A fitting place, in Desa’s estimation. The building itself was magnificent, round with a domed roof.

A man in this world’s equivalent of a suit stood behind a podium at the foot of those stairs. “Thank you all for being with us on this momentous day,” he said to an audience that had gathered around Desa and Kalia. “For many years now, our physicists have suspected that the Unifying Field expands beyond the confines of our world. Beyond the confines of our solar system.”

Desa exchanged a glance with her partner.

“Now, at last, we have confirmation,” the man went on. “Not only does the Unifying Field permeate every inch of space within this universe, it also connects to many others. Worlds so very much like our own but where history unfolded differently.”

Desa strode forward, passing through ghostly figure after ghostly figure as she approached the stairs. “Other universes,” she murmured. “I think I understand.”

“That makes one of us,” Kalia said.

The man at the podium smiled for the crowd. “The Unifying Field can bridge one universe with another,” he said. “Our people will step into a new frontier, explore new worlds, create new possibilities.”

He turned, gesturing to something on the stairs behind him.

Desa looked up to find two men in white coats on the top step. Scientists, she suspected. And standing between them was a metal doorway with glyphs on its surface. Metal. So, not the same device that she had discovered in the cavern.But a companion to it, perhaps.

The image faded away, buildings, people and cars all vanishing, but the crystal continued to emit soft, blue light. Enough to illuminate the entire clearing.

Kalia stepped forward with her mouth agape, shuddering as she drew in a breath. The poor woman was trying to make sense of what she had seen. “They were travelers from another universe? And they came here?”

“And settled.”

“What?”

“They’re our ancestors, my love,” Desa said. “I’m sure of it.”

Kalia grimaced, shaking her head. “How can that be?” she demanded. “Surely, we would know about it. There would be some legend or…something!”

Dirt scuffed under Desa’s boots as she approached the other woman. “There are legends,” she said. “My people’s earliest myths are of Mercy and Vengeance leading us away from danger, to a new home.”

“Away from danger?”

Turning her back on the other woman, Desa gazed up at the ruined temple, at the spot where the metal doorway had stood. “Away from Hanak Tuvar,” she said. “Or at least, that is my guess.”

She was about to say more, but the crystal began constructing another image, teal beams drawing the outline of a room. Colour bled into the walls and the furniture. Desa was surrounded by metal tables and some kind of equipment she didn’t recognize, all sterile and white. And transparent.

A woman appeared from out of nowhere, marching across the room. She was about average height, slightly plump with a round face of dark-brown skin. Her curly hair was left to hang loose to her shoulders. A pair of spectacles sat on her nose.

Desa recognized her instantly.

Mercy.

“Daily log,” the woman said. “Well, the chancellor made quite an impression today with his speech. Grand dreams of exploring other universes. A noble goal, I suppose, if pursued as a matter of scientific inquiry, though I suspect the Council of Twelve will insist upon colonization. Since any suitable world will likely have lifeforms comparable to our own, I shudder to think about what might happen if our expeditions should encounter any less advanced societies.”

The woman paused at a counter that ran along one wall, hanging her head and letting out a sigh. “Still, we here at the Transcendentalist Project will continue our work,” she went on. “Expanding outward to other universes is a remarkable achievement, but there are those among us who see greater value in looking inward. To become one with the Unifying Field itself…”

“Are you still recording?”

Another woman came through a door that must have led out to a hallway, this one tall and slim with pale skin and red hair tied up in a ponytail. Vengeance. She wore a uniform of some kind, most likely that of a military officer. “The general is growing impatient with the delays, Nari.”

“The general’s impatience does not concern me.”

“He says that we’re making very little progress.”

Nari’s high heels clicked on the floor tiles as she paced across the room. “That is because he asks the impossible!” she protested. “Direct Infusions into living tissue? It cannot be done, and we have told him as much.”

“Listen-”

“The Field can be bound to inanimate objects,” Nari pressed on. “Never to living tissue. Not even to something that had once been alive!”

Vengeance – or whatever her name was – put her fists on her hips, thrust out her chin and sniffed. “We have poured an enormous amount of funding into this project, Nari,” she said. “Funding that could be diverted to more practical applications.”

Baring her teeth, Nari hissed. She looked very much like a cat that wanted to claw something. “So that you can create a living weapon!” she spat. “You think I don’t know your true purpose? I began this project to expand the limits of human consciousness, not to create yet another instrument of destruction. I will not-”

The image vanished, and the crystal went dark, its energy source depleted. Thick darkness settled over the clearing. It took a moment for Desa’s eyes to adjust.

Kalia dropped to one knee, retrieving the small device, cradling it in the palm of her hand. “What does it mean?” she asked. “Everything we saw…”

Desa put her hands on the other woman’s shoulders, dropping to her knees before her. She stared into Kalia’s lovely, brown eyes. “It means we have work to do,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, we start going north.”