io9 is proud to current fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. As soon as a month, we characteristic a narrative from LIGHTSPEED’s present concern. This month’s choice is “A Sojourn within the Fifth Metropolis” by P H Lee. You may learn the story beneath or listen to the podcast on LIGHTSPEED’s web site. Get pleasure from!
A Sojourn within the Fifth Metropolis
The coffin she carried had felt like an imposition at first—a holy imposition! a welcome imposition! however an imposition nonetheless. However by now she had carried it on her shoulders out from the Tenth College, carried it throughout plains, up and down canyons, by way of forests of metallic and wire, previous what remained of the opposite faculties of the Dying, throughout your complete width the world, additional than she had ever thought doable, all the way in which into the holy mild of useless solar Thion. By now, nearing the crest of yet one more infinite slope of tough white scree, her legs burning with the hassle of the climb, her white cloak tattered, her apprentice’s masks chipped and worn away, the coffin’s stable weight was a consolation, virtually as a lot of a sacrament because the useless man inside it.
She didn’t know the useless man within the coffin. He had not been one of many Dying, not from the Tenth College nor from some other. He had lived and he had died far past this world, these stars. However he was useless nonetheless, and thus sacred and owed this sacred obligation of pilgrimage, that he would possibly lie eventually within the Fifth Metropolis, given over to all of the useless of battle.
This ridge was not explicit, only a slope of trackless scree just like the hundreds of others the apprentice had climbed, slowly, fastidiously, sliding again half a step for each step she took. However when eventually she crested it, she noticed not one other slope in infinite procession however a complete valley unfolding by way of the mountains, and in that valley noticed the Fifth Metropolis, carved of bleached white stone however shining violet-bright within the regular thionlight.
She fell to her knees and stared, wanting over the spires and the avenues, the grand halls and nice chambers, the poles the place as soon as flew flags of the victorious useless. She might need wept, regardless that it was a blasphemy. However she didn’t have the water to spare for it.
Reflexively, she started to mutter a prayer beneath her masks, however lower herself off. No prayers right here, no sacraments. Prayers and sacraments had been for the dying, and this was the land given over to the useless. And, regardless, there was no Grasp right here to listen to them.
As an alternative, she fastidiously pulled her knees and toes freed from the scree and stood—left foot first, then proper, nonetheless smarting from her wound—and shouldered the coffin that she carried. Her burden settled, she recalled the phrases of the Fourth Prophet:
Each step a prayer, in that useless land
Each breath a sacrament, beneath that useless solar—
and started to select her approach down the slope in direction of town and all its useless.
The draw back of the slope was shaded and consequentially overgrown with free crystals of hoarfrost, reaching up almost twice the apprentice’s peak. Her first footfall, although, despatched cascades of scree—black on this aspect of the rise, unbleached by thionlight—into the hoarfrost, collapsing it and sending it tumbling down in flip. Unsure, she took one other step into the scree, sending one other cascade. The free rocks slipped a little bit, however didn’t ship her tumbling, so she took one other step, after which one other, down the trail that the slide had cleared earlier than her, with fragile hoarfrost nonetheless towering on either side.
Although it was a sin, on this place and beneath the sunshine of the useless solar, she lifted her masks and stuffed handfuls of the fragile hoarfrost into her mouth, feeling the shock of the ice after which the reduction of the water, in the end water. She shouldn’t have, after all. Even again within the Tenth College, again earlier than her pilgrimage, stealing water—life needs life! and water was the basis of life! Even there, it was a sin. However right here, on this sacred land, it was doubly so.
(She had snuck water, after all, when the lecturers weren’t wanting. All of them had. However she had discovered the habits of secrecy.)
Ashamed, she pushed the masks down over her face, and appeared a method, then one other, as if somebody might need observed her, as if there was anybody right here however the useless.
She began to mutter a prayer for forgiveness, however stopped herself once more. Each step a prayer and so she took a step, after which one other, earlier than swallowing the sinful water.
“Life is a sport, demise is the prize,” she stated to herself—absolutely that reminder didn’t rely as prayer—however took one other handful of the ice regardless.
She swallowed the final of the water earlier than she reached the underside, although. To drink some water on a primary pilgrimage, maybe that may very well be forgiven. On the very least, understood. The furtive flask her instructor had slipped to her had run out way back. However within the Metropolis, no. The Fifth Metropolis was for the useless, and he or she wouldn’t profane it.
Down within the valley, town was immense, and it appeared to her a single stable factor, a wall of carved stone, bleached white by Thion, with not one of the options and avenues that she had seen from the ridge above. She stepped in direction of it, out of the shadow of the mountain, into the obvious and white-purple thionlight. Although it was nonetheless chilly, she might really feel the thionlight towards her. Her pores and skin, already burnt and blistered by lengthy publicity, screamed on the contact, even beneath her cloak. She needed to will herself to not flinch away from it.
“Not one step backwards,” she stated to herself, the identical phrases that she had promised her instructor way back. Sooner or later, maybe, the thionlight’s burning would develop into tumors. It had occurred earlier than. She had seen them rising on the journeymen, again on the Tenth College, as a lot as they’d tried to cover them of their disgrace. However there could be time sufficient for that disgrace later. Proper now, this second: Not one step backwards.
So as a substitute, she stood on the spot, the ache too intense to maneuver ahead, letting the sunshine burn her by way of her cloak and masks, till eventually her nerves surrendered and the burning subsided to an ignorable roar. Then, eventually, a step, after which one other.
On the outskirts of town correct, there have been tall mounds of irregular stones. Coming nearer, she realized that they weren’t stones in any respect, however coffins, after which, when she drew nearer nonetheless, she noticed that between them there have been bones: The bones of the useless! She had by no means seen bones earlier than, besides that after, and within the presence of the Grasp. However right here: the bones of the useless themselves, left past town and unburied. She felt her anger rising with bitter nauseous acid, however she swallowed it down. Desecration! Little doubt these had been left by feckless apprentices of ages previous, too afraid to enter the Metropolis itself, from these ages when there would have been numerous a whole bunch of apprentices and journeymen, streaming out and in of the Metropolis, taking all of each worlds’ useless to their last resting locations.
She couldn’t handle a run, however nonetheless loped over to the uneven pile. She wished to raise them up, every coffin, every bone, every one of many Lifeless mendacity there piled and unburied, to hold all of them into the Metropolis. However she felt the coffin on her again and remembered the phrases that her instructor had stated, earlier than she had left. “This burden is all which you could handle. Take care you don’t add to it, and fail the Lifeless therefrom.” He will need to have come right here, when he was an apprentice on his pilgrimage right into a journeyman. He will need to have seen this. He will need to have identified what she would face, for he had confronted the identical himself.
She turned away from the pile. “Later,” she advised herself. “If I’ve the energy.”
No nice doorways of the Fifth Metropolis, not from this method, and never for this useless man. The apprentice would have honored him so—one of many Lifeless, in her arms! on her again!—however he had misplaced his battle, and with it the privilege of the good doorways. Such had been the customs of the Fifth Metropolis. So as a substitute she took one step, then one other, and the free scree gave solution to paving stones, and he or she had handed on her proper a cluster of intricate mausolea, and he or she realized that she was already inside the Metropolis and not an apprentice.
It was onerous for her to know her transformation—that it had already occurred. She was—had been—an apprentice of the Tenth College. She had at all times been an apprentice of the Tenth College. (Sooner or later, she will need to have been an provoke. Sooner or later, she will need to have joined the Dying. However she couldn’t bear in mind even the barest trace of that.) She had at all times been an apprentice, and now she was a journeyman. She had at all times been an apprentice, and now she was not.
She squeezed her eyes closed, and felt the load of the coffin on her again. “Time for that later,” she advised herself, after which, quoting the Grasp, “the troubles of the dying should not for the Lifeless.” This was the Fifth Metropolis. Let her time right here be for the Lifeless, let her ideas right here be for the Lifeless as nicely, and let her fear about the remainder when she had returned together with her service full.
So as a substitute, down this avenue, into the shade of a nook, out of the burning thionlight for only a second. Certainly, she will take that small indulgence in her service to the Lifeless. There was hoarfrost gathered right here as nicely, on this nook away from the sunshine of Thion, nice filigrees of it, even finer than the carvings on town’s stone. It felt flawed, to her, to see ice rising in a Metropolis. The Metropolis was for the useless and but, even right here, there was the sin of water, the basis of life. Even right here, there have been her small indulgences.
“Grasp,” she stated aloud, starting a prayer, however she stopped herself.
Earlier than, on her journey, she had stopped herself from praying out of customized, out of courtesy. She wouldn’t pray on a pilgrimage; she wouldn’t pray beneath the sunshine of the useless solar Thion; that was the order of her College and the methods of the Dying. It had felt to her a deprivation after her entire life praying for each second. It was one other struggling to be borne, one other sacrifice in service to the useless.
However now, right here, on this metropolis of white stone, the useless round her in each route, she understood it in a brand new approach. There was no Grasp right here, no college, no orders. These had been for the dying, which was to say, they had been for the residing, that they could discover their deaths. This Metropolis, although, was not for the residing. It was for the useless. She was a trespasser right here, even in her service. There was no regulation to information her, no Grasp to supervise her. The useless didn’t want such issues, absolutely. So she should resolve for herself.
Was this what it meant to be a journeyman? That she should resolve for herself?
“Then I have to resolve,” she stated, aloud. Her phrases, her breath, so scorching and residing, appeared all of the extra extraordinary within the silence of the Metropolis: an intrusion, a blasphemy, however not unwelcome. Not a blasphemy, then, she corrected herself. “Blasphemy” was a phrase for the Faculties. It was a phrase for the Dying. The useless had been past any such offense.
She reached, impulsively, in direction of the frost beside her, however stopped herself. No.
She should resolve for herself. She would resolve to not. She would resolve to maneuver on.
Nonetheless, as she made her approach by way of town—previous the carven skulls and the good mausolea and tiny, singular graves, every representing a battle, so many wars, wars as giant as all of the galaxy and as small as a single life—she would see tucked right here and there a shadow, and inside every shadow was constructed generations of frost, and he or she yearned.
She mustn’t yearn. However beneath the cloak, beneath the masks, beneath her pores and skin and all of the prayers and each phrase she had ever discovered, beneath all the teachings of her lecturers and the labors of her journeymen, there was an animal, a residing factor that feared demise. Life that yearned for water, for meals, for youngsters, above all for itself.
Water. Water. Water.
With out pondering, she reached for her knife that wasn’t there. She wished to chop out her personal tongue, to chop out her personal coronary heart, to chop herself to nothing, to chop away each a part of her that yearned to dwell.
However she had no knife, not on a pilgrimage. No blood may very well be shed on this useless land.
She considered the cancers that Thion was absolutely carving into her pores and skin this very second. They, too, yearned for all times and yearned for water. She remembered the phrases of the Seventh Prophet:
Life calls itself to life
there will likely be no finish to it
save for that the dying make
She stopped, and let down her coffin gently.
She thought that she would possibly abandon them: the coffin and the useless man inside. She would possibly run off into the avenues to rub her burning shoulders with frost, her dry tongue with water. She was already within the Metropolis. Certainly, it might not be abandoning the useless man if she did not ship him to his explicit area of interest in his explicit battle’s explicit mausoleum.
As an alternative, although, she knelt beside it. She wished to kiss the coffin, however even the scant waters of her lips—no. As an alternative, she set her brow towards it. She didn’t pray—The useless are useless and can’t reply prayers—however she thought, and if she was so accustomed to prayers that her ideas took the type of a prayer, then absolutely that may very well be forgiven.
Grasp—no.
Lifeless man.
You might be silent.
You might be nonetheless.
You might be unwanting.
No thirst, no starvation, no ache in demise.
Solely the tip of doing.
Lend me, for a second, your uncaring demise.
Lend me, for a second, your endless peace.
Your demise is infinite; no mortgage shall diminish it.
It isn’t for myself I ask for this.
It is just for my service to you and all of the myriad useless.
She almost ended her silent prayer with “That the Grasp grant me demise,” as all her prayers had at all times ended, however stopped herself. The useless man was not a Grasp. He was useless.
She paused for a second, ready for some response. When she had prayed again on the Tenth College, she might really feel the Grasp’s will, responding to her prayer, working its imperatives on her thoughts and coronary heart and the varsity itself round her.
Right here, although, there was nothing. Not even the acquainted chilly shudder of some distant will.
It was her fault. She knew no prayers had been answered right here—she by no means actually thought—he was useless, which was to say is, she had been a idiot to hope that her prayer would possibly give her some reduction.
It was unimaginable for him to grant her prayer and even to listen to it.
Not one step backward however there have been no prophets right here, no Masters, no lecturers. She was the one residing factor on this half of the world, except by probability there was another apprentice on another pilgrimage.
“I ought to keep,” she blasphemed to herself, even because the thionlight burned into her pores and skin. “I ought to run feral and fallen. I ought to resign each doctrine of the Dying, I ought to disguise within the shadows and drink the hoarfrost and crack open the coffins and eat the useless. There may be sufficient right here on this metropolis—each corpse of each battle—that I’d not thirst nor starvation for all of the size of time, and in any case that I needs to be at least ravenous and thirsting, no worse off than now.”
She stood, however she didn’t take a step.
She breathed—out and in, 3 times—and hated the factor inside her that demanded breath. Then she knelt, shouldered the coffin once more, and made her approach in direction of the middle of town.
It was a while earlier than she reached the mausoleum of the crystal battle, a grand advanced that coated the entire middle of the Fifth Metropolis, wings upon wings, corridors upon corridors. Not like the opposite mausolea and crypts of town, it was undecorated, completely with out phrases or carven skulls and even the subtlest of filigree, as if those that constructed this metropolis initially of time knew full nicely the enormity of grief it might ultimately include. So there was no ornament, solely plain stairs into hallways, solely nice blocks of historical stone.
Befitting the useless, its flat stone was black, however the aspect that confronted Thion had been bleached white. Impulsively, she reached out to the touch a pillar as she completed her ascent of a aspect stairway. The layer of white, rotten stone crumbled to powder even at her lightest contact, revealing the pure black beneath.
She shook in concern and embarrassment, to have left the mark of her passing on this sacred place. “However what of it?” she thought. “I’ve been right here. That’s at least the reality. So let that be the mark of my passage. It’s pretty much as good a document as any historical past.” Nonetheless, she didn’t contact one other wall.
Contained in the mausoleum, it was darkish, apart from the occasional shafts of painful thionlight from some entrance or one other. When it was darkish, she might virtually persuade herself that she was again within the cool, winding corridors of the Tenth College. It was solely the silence that divulged her true location. However when there was mild, she might see the partitions—lined with infinite coffins, stacked neatly upon one another in ordered rows, every instead—and he or she knew that she was in reality as distant from her college because it was doable to stroll, among the many useless and beneath a useless star.
“I really like you,” she stated as soon as to the useless, quietly, as a result of she did. It was not a sin, and but she felt ashamed.
Finally, she reached the shadowed aspect of the mausoleum, and after that there was no mild in any respect. Nonetheless, she knew the way in which as she had discovered it by coronary heart within the Tenth College, remembering the phrases of her instructor, every step, every flip, till she got here eventually to the useless man’s particular area of interest, his particular planet that he had died failing to defend, his particular battalion, squadron, unit, place. Not trusting her reminiscence, she felt together with her fingers and located the place, a gap within the wall—two openings, she felt now, one subsequent to a different.
She questioned if these had been the final two unhallowed useless of all of the crystal battle.
Hefting her coffin as soon as once more, with the energy of the final moments of her activity, an important activity she had ever carried out, she lifted the coffin up into its place—his place—after which pushed it till it slid satisfyingly into place.
Till she did it, she didn’t notice how drained she was. It was no sin, to sleep upon a pilgrimage, solely to dream, and he or she was sure that she was too drained for dreaming. She closed her eyes, breathed in once more, and leaned towards the wall of coffins. Slowly, inconsistently, she slid down till she sat on the base of the wall, eyes closed, surrounded in all instructions by the embrace of the hallowed useless, and let herself fall eventually right into a deep and untroubled sleep.
Someday later, she’s going to wake. She’s going to stand. She’s going to stroll out of the mausoleum, out of this timeless metropolis, away from the useless, again up the slopes of scree and throughout the gravel plains and again to her college, the Tenth College, arriving eventually as a journeyman. She’s going to take her new place among the many dying, together with her personal lecturers to serve, her personal apprentices to foster.
Someday later, she’s going to wake. However for now, she remains to be. For now, she sleeps. For now, she is indistinguishable from all the opposite useless on this pure and historical metropolis.
Concerning the Writer
P H Lee lives on high of an outdated walnut tree, previous a thicket of roses, down a useless finish avenue on the fringe of city. Their work has appeared in lots of venues together with Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Uncanny Journal. On occasion, they microwave and eat a frozen burrito at two within the morning, for no cause aside from that they need to.
Please go to LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE to learn extra nice science fiction and fantasy. This story first appeared within the February 2024 concern, which additionally options work by Stewart C Baker, Mari Ness, Everdeen Mason, Wen-yi Lee, Christopher Rowe, KT Bryski, Phoebe Barton, and extra. You may await this month’s contents to be serialized on-line, or you should buy the entire concern proper now in handy e-book format for simply $3.99, or subscribe to the e-book version here.
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