The stranger took him not to the mountains, as Qora anticipated given the draconic love for heights… but down into the mists beneath Prime’s high cliffs, where dark forests dripped into pools he recognized with a start as the models for the ones in Qufiil’s memorial park. The warmth he associated with Faulza’s approval intensified as he stumbled after his guide, until he wondered if he would burst into flame. This place… this place was known to the God. Had Zafiil walked this very path? What had she seen here? Trees, and more trees, and trees again?
But where the trees met the base of the cliff, concealed by the canopy and the fog, was a dwelling bored into the rock. And it was full of dragons.
“The secret,” Qora guessed.
“You have sworn to keep it.”
“Yes,” Qora said, wondering what technological device was hiding them from modern sensors. There must be something. When the dragon didn’t immediately answer, he said, “I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“Your species is discreet,” the stranger said, relenting. “Wait here.”
At last, the culmination of his searching. What had motivated the Voice of the God to remain here? Because if he’d been gone since the Faulfenza’s entrance into the Alliance nearly two hundred years ago, he’d had more than enough time to investigate the places Zafiil had seen. If he was here, it was because he’d decided that of all those places, Akana Ris was the one worthy of habitation. Akana Ris, and apparently this society of secret dragons.
Qora thought of Gella Allen’s revelations. A dragon in disguise as a FIA translator had been assigned to this system, centuries past. Had this community existed then? Perhaps he’d been part of it? Why did it seem to be taking so long for the stranger to return? His every limb hurt from the tension. Should he lean against the rock? Stand apart from it? Walk? Get damper? The mist was making his fur feel clammy.
The guide ducked out of the entrance. “He is away.”
Could his heart explode? Qora touched his mouth—he wasn’t shouting. That was good. He was trembling, though. All that energy did not want to dissipate. “What do you mean, away? Away where?”
“Climbing,” the dragon said. “He does that… goes away sometimes to climb the Enemies.” A wave of a long gray limb toward the forest, which shrouded the sky so completely that the great pylons of rock were invisible. “I don’t understand it… why creatures who can’t fly would risk themselves so.”
Did he remember something about the Voice and mountains? There was a Scroll about the Voice’s life prior to the FireBorn’s arrival, wasn’t there? Yes, he’d been born in the mountains. “He does this often?”
“Often enough for us to be amazed that he always returns unscathed.”
“Then you’ll know how long before he gets back….”
“Oh… a few days. A few months. It is not predictable.” Qora’s face must have betrayed his dismay, because the dragon said, “Do not fear. You will be our guest for as long as it takes. Or if you prefer to return to your companions… I can summon you when he returns….”
The tension that refused to dissipate found its release in what some might have called anger, and Qora chose to call his innate stubbornness. “Which way did he go?”
“What?”
“Which way did he go? I’m going to get him.”
“But… we don’t know—”
“Just point me in the direction that will take me to where I can see the rocks,” Qora growled. “I didn’t bounce all over the known nations to be stymied now.”
The dragon studied him, then sighed. “You will not be offended if we overfly the area you search?”
“No,” Qora said. “Just don’t interfere.”
“We will not. This is a thing between aliens.”
“Yes,” Qora said. “It is.”
* * *
The dragons did more than direct him—they outfitted him with supplies, a map, and a pack before dropping him off at the boundary of the area they patrolled as their own. No doubt they expected him to wander the wilderness for weeks; he hadn’t felt the need to tell them he had a compass surer than any piece of technology lodged in his heart. When he moved toward the Voice, the sense of rightness increased; when he took a path away, that certainty faded. At least, he assumed Faulza was guiding him toward the Voice… if the God wanted him somewhere else, though, there was no use fighting that either.
Qora spent the day walking, peering upward and squinting at the way the sun reflected off the mist. Came the sundown, and he made a rough camp in the lee of a tumbled set of stones. The Chatcaavan following him overhead circled, a distant flying figure, and then skated away, so Qora supposed his site had been deemed acceptably safe by his hosts. He investigated the pack made up for him; half an hour later he gnawed on some of the dried meat while propping his toes up against the portable warmer and thought his adventure could be going more poorly. Laniis had even accepted with good grace his brief report, which he’d decided he might as well make before she fretted herself into calling him.
The base of the canyon surprised him: not the rocky, barren area he’d expected, but moist and densely foliated even out from under the trees. Not the sort of place he would have expected to find a Faulfenzair prophet; imagining the Faulfenzair messiah, a creature born of fire, walking these ridges was shocking in an interesting way. Now that he was close to his quarry, he could find pleasure in the absurdities. He felt more himself, in fact, than he had in months.
That feeling began to flag on the third day. On the fourth, he began to leave marks to ensure he wasn’t walking in circles. On the sixth, he stood at the base of one of the pillars, stared upward, and shouted, “How can I be in exactly the right place when I’m not where I need to be?” But his voice, muffled by the persistent fog, seemed too small to pierce past the sky to the Shoulders where the God dwelt. Grumbling, he returned to his search, and that night he glumly accepted the fresh supplies brought him by one of the local dragons. For all he knew, he would be here for months. That would be in keeping with how this adventure had gone so far. “Have you seen any sign of him?” he asked the visitor.
“No. But we never do, when he goes out this way.”
“Maybe he’s paying Faulza a visit.” That inspired a quizzical look, and Qora shook his head. “It’s nothing. Thinking out loud.”
“We will return in a week with more supplies, if they are necessary.”
“Thanks.”
He was staring at the dim glow given off by the heater some time later when a voice spoke in a bass so profound the syllables of the Faulfenzair language vibrated through his entire torso. “Paying the God a visit, is it? Do you think if you look hard enough, you’ll find a path to the Shoulders?”
No one had said the Voice was so literal, so deep the bones inside his ears ached. Qora jumped to his feet but could see nothing in the darkness… nothing until the eyes appeared, gold like fire.
“Sit.”
His legs crumpled under him, which left him staring up as a shape coalesced from the night and crouched across from him with all the inevitability of a landslide: the Voice of the God.
The prior Voice of the God.
Qora’s spine stiffened. Too much rode on his errand to allow awe to master him now. “The WorldDancer sent me to find you.”
“You’ve succeeded. Good job.”
Qora paused. Was this what other people felt, trying to have conversations with him? This sense that he was being deliberately confused? It should have amused him. Maybe it would. Eventually. “This is serious.”
“So I divined.”
That was a comment Qora would have delivered with a cocked head and a grin. The Voice’s fur was so dark there was no discerning his facial expression. “Then you’ll come back with me.”
“In my own time.”
“Time is the one thing we don’t have,” Qora said. “We’ve wasted too much of it as it is. The need is urgent.”
“Oh?”
“There’s another Voice in the worlds,” Qora said. “And he’s not Faulfenzair!”
“Mmm.”
Was a prophet of a former messiah still a prophet? Had this Voice foreseen that future? Because he didn’t sound surprised. Or even interested. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Does it bother you, Eye of the God?”
“Yes!”
“Then you aren’t seeing very clearly.”
That was a little too much after over a week of thwarted searching through the wilderness of a God-forgotten world. “I’ve never been able to see anything.”
A pause. Perhaps he’d surprised the Voice. Was that possible? “What interesting burdens Faulza gives each of us to bear.”
Which was, itself, a leading comment. “Some would call them challenges rather than burdens.”
“Some would.”
Was this what he was like to be around? God on the Shoulders, how had he managed to keep any friends? Qora said, “I’ll arrange pick-up for us—”
“Do that. For a week from now.”
Contradicting someone whose every syllable hummed with authority was unexpectedly hard, which made Qora wonder if he’d ever met anyone he’d considered an authority before. Apparently not. “Our errand is urgent.”
“So is mine.”
“What is so urgent that it takes precedence over the coming of Qiifaula?” Qora demanded, frustrated. “The Golden Age is near enough to trip our feet, there’s an alien Voice, and something else matters more?”
Unmistakably a grin now, from the shape of the sounds. “Yes. I haven’t finished my climb.”
A hiss of fur against the ground, and the eyes were rising, which meant—the Voice was going to leave him behind. “What? Your climb?”
“Zafiil would have counseled it. One week, Eye.”
It was real. The Voice of the God, whom he’d worked so hard to locate, was about to vanish again. Qora leaped to his feet. “I’m coming with you.”
He didn’t expect that to stop the Voice, but… it did. The yellow-eyed scrutiny, divorced from any evidence of a body, somehow penetrated more acutely… but the God strike him down before he allowed the prophet he’d been seeking to cow him into losing track of him. Again.
“Call your friends and tell them you’ll be out of contact.” As Qora reached for the telegem, the Voice added, “Other than that, no talking.”
“Fine.”
“That, Eye, was talking.”
Qora’s ears folded shut, but he pressed his lips together and shoved everything in his pack.
* * *
Daylight made the Voice more mythical rather than less. His coat didn’t reflect light the way fur did; when glimpsed from the periphery, Qora perceived him as the shadow of a Faulfenzair, rather than a person… if, of course, shadows had the density of singularities. That was the best way to describe the feeling of following the Voice of the God through the canyons of Akana Ris: as if following was inevitable, as if, if he didn’t fight it, he would hurtle over some event horizon past which there was no returning to a normal life.
Qora guessed that he was not the only Faulfenzair who’d never sincerely contemplated what the Golden Age would be like. A fantasy of harmony and light and joy, somehow better than the already pastoral bliss of living on Qufiil. When Qora had departed Qufiil and seen what the galaxy had to offer, his vision of Qiifaula as some vague “even better” version of life at home evolved into a belief that the Golden Age would spread the utopian way of life of the Faulfenza to the beleaguered aliens, so in need of peace.
That was before he’d found one of the most pivotal figures of their religion gallivanting through one of the worst planets in the Alliance. At home there, as if the cliffs of Akana Ris and the Sainai mountains were interchangeable.
Daqan didn’t speak. Sometimes, Qora wasn’t sure the Voice realized he had company at all… and then a large black hand would seize Qora’s arm when one of his wrists wavered on a particularly long climb, or he would find enough game waiting at the day’s end to feed them both next to a shelter that could serve two. It never did, though, because Daqan slept outside. One night, Qora stayed up to watch him, or tried... but the Voice did nothing to warrant observation. Only rested, arms folded behind his head as he gazed at the stars.
The next few days poured past without interruption in a dreamlike, timeless state, as if they were in a Wisdom Scroll. A quiet one. Qora had known he used other people’s chatter to divert attention from himself; what he hadn’t realized was how much he relied on that chatter to occupy his mind. His silences, he was unhappy to learn, had not been sourced in wisdom, confidence, or an inner peace that was complete in itself… they had been his way of warring with people’s expectations of him as an Eye and controlling what aliens understood of him.
Seeing it clearly for the first time made him bury his face in his hands. They were camped for the night, and his strangled oath bought him an amused noise from the Voice. Daqan poked the fire until sparks swirled up into the mist. “No talking.”
How he wanted to quip in reply! He settled on glowering pointedly, and the Voice chuckled.
“Talking without speech is still talking. Keep it to yourself. You’re learning something from it.”
That was unanswerable, because answering it would have been humiliating.
“Be at peace, Qora. You’re in the hands of the God.”
He couldn’t help himself then. He said, startled, “You know my name.”
“Of course. You were foretold.”
“Me? But how can I be important? What am I going to do that’s worthy of prophecy?”
“It’s not what you’re going to do, but what you’ve done.” Daqan smiled, teeth flashing unnaturally bright. “And that is the last I will hear from you. I will extend our retreat one day for every time you break your silence.”
Qora looked away before he could say something and inspire another shattering revelation. The one Daqan had just delivered had given him more than enough material for rumination. He had done something worthy of prophecy? But what? The only significant deed he’d managed in his short life had been surviving the Chatcaavan War… was that it? Had his involvement in it been more significant than he assumed? But all he’d done was live through enslavement.
The Voice had done this to him on purpose: fed him a piece of data so provocative it would cost him dearly to maintain his silence. But he had survived a slavery and a war, and he had a mission. He could handle a few more days without talking. More certain of himself now, he raised his chin and met the Voice’s gaze. The other Faulfenzair’s amusement would have been irritating had he not sensed, beneath the gloss of it, a hint of approval. It reminded him that even had he not been Painted, Daqan had seen some five hundred more years than Qora had, and had perhaps earned the right to condescend to the youths around him.
* * *
In the remaining days of that week, Qora clambered over hummocks, trudged through ancient forests, forded rivers, and scaled the strange pillars that dotted the basin. He existed in the strangest combination of solitude and guidance: the Voice’s refusal to interrupt or draw out Qora’s thoughts isolated him with them, and they were not comfortable. He couldn’t count on Daqan’s presence to reprieve him, either, because the Voice merged with nature so completely Qora’s eyes tried to dismiss him as a shadow, or a hollow in rock. How the Voice managed that while also being one of the largest and most powerful Faulfenza Qora had ever met, Qora couldn’t fathom. To every physical sense, the Voice effaced in a way even the most deft of Faulfenza could only hope to imitate.
But spiritually, Daqan’s presence made itself felt in every moment and every breath. Qora never feared, except that he might betray himself with an unplanned comment and add time to their reclusion.
He tried, hard, to follow the Voice’s example. To subsume into the nowness, the mythical Scrollness of it. He even succeeded. During the day. At night, though… at night, robbed of the relief of movement, Qora stared at what he could spy of the alien stars through the fog and struggled with the irony of discovering he was as arrogant as the worst of the Eldritch. Or the Chatcaava. Or the Pelted, for that matter. Historical Pelted had tried to tell Zafiil they were beacons of sanity and grace in the universe at the same time they were arranging reparations for the death of over twenty Faulfenza and the destruction of their unarmed exploratory vessel. Modern Pelted had tried to tell themselves the Chatcaava meant no harm until it was nearly too late. How Qora had pitied them, and thought himself fortunate not to be them. He still was, but not for the reasons he’d assumed.
He wasn’t even sure he was a good friend.
The mist dissolved off the body of the Voice, delivering him to the camp with a string of small birds hanging from a line. “Such a long look, seer.”
Qora stared fixedly at the fire he was building, unwilling to be baited. He did hold out his hand for the game, however, and received it.
“Tomorrow, we go back.”
Qora’s head jerked up, but his eyes narrowed. If this was a final test…
Daqan laughed. “Such suspicion. I suppose I’ve earned it. But you can open your mouth now. I won’t punish you for it.”
If he knew it was punishment, why was he doing it? Qora set the first bird on a flat stone he’d cleaned off and started gutting it. He had more experience gutting fish, but he’d been willing to dress anything once the dragon supplies had run out.
“An Eye who doesn’t see visions,” the Voice mused. “That, I have not heard of. It makes sense, but I wouldn’t have predicted it.”
How tempting to talk! But Qora ignored the gambit and pointed instead at the thin stream that trickled past their campsite. With a laugh, Daqan took their water sacks and slid down to the water. He brought back enough for Qora to rinse his hands—his courtesies were endless, and would have been embarrassing had the Voice made much of them. But Daqan acted like someone used to the wilderness, and so the acts felt familial instead: a sharing of responsibilities.
Maybe that was why Qora could dismiss the grin the Voice was wearing as idiosyncrasy rather than insult. Of course the Voice found everything funny. Qora found most things funny and he couldn’t claim the same level of certainty in the God’s plan as a Voice could.
“You are determined to hold to my stricture, all the way to the end, are you.”
Qora ignored him, threading their dinner onto sticks.
“And if I said that Dancing was not talking? Would you reject a Dance from Zafiil’s Voice?”
Qora’s limbs froze.
“I see not.” The Voice grinned. “Let that cook, and we will talk as Faulza taught us.”
How fast did Qora finish with the birds? He couldn’t remember moving so quickly. He felt as if he inhaled, and on the next breath, was sitting with his knees pulled to his chest, hoping the firelight would be strong enough to pull the Voice’s body from the darkness. It had been centuries since a prophet had Danced for Faulza’s people, and it had been this prophet, the Voice who had companioned the messiah that had discovered the Others and opened the worlds to the Faulfenza. And that Voice was going to Dance. For him! Alone!
Daqan stretched and stepped away from the fire, staring up as if past the clouds and into the Shoulders. But he snapped into the Name of the God, the pose that opened every Dance, and the grace and brutal power of it hurt like a fist to the gut. Qora had seen Faulza’s name duplicated hundreds of times by so many Faulfenza, and none of them had looked like this. Like the God Himself had poured hot metal and made, not a figure, but a beseeching and an honoring and a demanding, all at once.
The Voice sprang into the first words, each as hot and new as lightning striking.
Faullaizaf promised us the worlds
And his dream propelled us into the stars
Explorers, ripe with longing, sweet with hope
Like youths before Entwining, seeking completion
Zafiil opened the worlds to us
And her voyage prepared us for its challenges
Explorers, armed with caution, calm and open
Like the lifemates at their Bonding, ready for adventure
The promise given
The promise renewed
And now, the promise fulfilled
I have walked the places touched by the third messiah’s feet;
The obstacles, the griefs, the shocks have made themselves known to me.
I have traveled the bridges opened by the second messiah’s hands;
The mysteries, the hardships, and the costs have been made clear to me.
I have seen the ruins abandoned by the first messiah’s decree;
The sorrows, the desolation, and the price have come to my shoulders.
The promise predicted
The promise prepared
And now, the promise on the cusp of payment
Rejoice, Faulfenza! Qiifaula comes in your lifetime.
Rejoice! It comes now, in a halo of fire.
It will purify and ennoble all it touches,
And what is refined will last forever.
Prepare!
The Voice halted, arms raised in the God’s name, and Qora choked on terror and wonder, and… too many things. Was he forbidden to speak? How could he make a sound? He knew all that had been promised by their messiahs, the joys of the world to come. This was confirmation of everything he wanted, and everything he feared it would cost.
He had buried his face in his hands, which is how the hand on his shoulder surprised him. When he looked up, the Voice’s expression was as sympathetic as it ever became. “Don’t worry. It can’t be stopped now.”
Qora put his head down that night, but there was no sleeping after that.