Dreams of Darkspace presents…

SPEAKER-TO-THE-DEAD

All stories by Peter R. Heaton

The voice had spoke with a smile--an underline to the weight of the words.  It is, a simple thing, a simple thing with simple rules: you do not trick the dead; you do not lie to the living.  There were a dozen self-destructive triggers that could have set this memory off; but this time there was no questioning the how.  It was before him.  Right there.  Staring at him.

Ready to die.

Arik did what was expected.  He watched as a beam of energy slid casually through the exposed neck, aware that the dying eyes were locked onto him. The Archons stood in the viewing gallery, expressionless.  Arik was a mirror of their stoicism.

That was what was expected.  How did they forgot that Speakers were trained to keep control?

The Archon who had performed the execution turned to Arik.  “Arik Zohn, Speaker-to-the-Dead.  We thank you for your service.”  Arik nodded slightly, and left the execution chamber, his sensar, Devran, close and basking in his shadow.  It was in the hallway when he almost lost it--the control, the thing he needed most of all.  It was the boy--the innocence on his face.  He gave his life for his weapon, a weapon, which, in turn, he gave to the Speaker.

What a stupid thing, Arik thought and it was this that made him crave the telling to this one, more so, than any other.  If it was spoken to another it would be because he could not bear the guilt.  But if it was spoken to the boyit could save him.  They need not both be buried in the same grave.  

“It is good what you have done,” the boy said to him. Devran’s face was youthful but already it whispered of the things he had seen; in the way he had watched the man die, in the way that his first thought after was to his duty to his Speaker.   “The Wizard of Menlo would be proud.”

Arik wanted to tell him to stop, wanted to tell him that he had failed his student.  But looking at the boy now, seeing the proud look in his face, he knew he did not have the strength to shatter the boy’s faith.  It wasn’t right; his sensar’s devotion to Arik was unquestioned.  He might only be a boy, but his diamond tipped keshi made him more dangerous than most men.  

Arik offered a weak smile in return.  They left the High Tower, home of the Archons, and passed out into the heat and dust of Center.  His feet carried him through the city, and before he realized it they had passed through the Bazaar, crossed the Bridge over the River of Life, and climbed the stairs up to the top of the tall walls of Center.

For a time they stood there, staring out at the sea of heat and dust beyond.  A cloud travelled across the horizon: a nomad caravan heading towards Center.

“That could not have been an easy thing,” his sensar offered.

“A Speaker cannot bring the past with them.”  It was just another thing the Archons had taken from him.  He pushed the image of the man’s death from his mind, the howling wind carrying noises of the approaching nomads to him.  

For a moment he was elsewhere--to avoid the Speaking Arik and his sensar had gone into the desert.  Unlike in Center, where the Speakers were used -- commanded -- by the Archons, the desert nomads considered Speakers to be kings.

They would not have forced Arik to give everything up to serve the dead.  

“Do you think you will be called to Speak with Kynan?”

“There are others,” he said, his eyes drifting aimlessly across the heat-glazed landscape.  “But they will pick me.”

“They should.”

They will, he whispered to the cloud of dust and man.

“You’ve earned the honor.”

Honor is a lie.

“You do not look as though you are honored.”

Someday he will understand, Arik thought.  No, someday he will die and never know.  He wasn’t sure which angered him more.  The boy didn’t--couldn’t--know that the Speaking  would only be a reminder of the things he had lost.  She had called him his desert rose--a lie from the past propping up the lies of the present.

It had been his sensar’s reminder of their duty that had brought them back to Center.  He had never intended to stay out there, even though that was his chance to escape.  He had chosen a different path but something in him had wanted to know, before he died, what his life could have been.

“Why do we always come here after?” His sensar asked gently.  The words poked through Arik’s thoughts, grabbing him and bringing him back to the parapets of Center.  

Arik swallowed, tasting the dust, teeth crunchy absently on grains to small to avoid.  Could he set him free with the truth?  There were other Speakers who would take him on.  Arik had never deserved this sensar, this boy who didn’t really understand what it really was to be a Speaker; exchanging a connection with the living for a connection with the dead.  Words remind him, he sees the smile that is no smile: You do not trick the dead; you do not lie to the living.

Another voice,  his mother--or an Archon? he shuddered to think he could confuse the two: A Speaker who lives in the past is already lost.

Here I am, he thought, already lost.

“Speaker, seldom do I--”

“Ah, yes,” he stuttered.  “No, you are right to disturb me.  We come here,” he said, pausing, almost able to swallow the lie, “we come here to remember why being a Speaker is important.”  A lie because, just like when they had gone into the desert, he came out here to remember what it could have been like.  It was stupid and pointless, but it was cathartic for him.  

The trade caravan had arrived.  Men and women with dark, olive skin, and loose dun colored clothing milled about as the Archons’ Constructs inspected the shipment.

His temporary flight had been just as pointless.  The Archons had been patient -- or maybe they had known from the beginning -- and when he returned he had been summoned to speak with her.  He already knew who had killed her, he hadn’t needed a Speaking to know.  But he could not tell the Archons that.  

“You question your path?”

“No.” Arik replied sternly.  I know what path I have chosen.  “I have never questioned the importance of it; remembering those that have passed and speaking with their souls to make sure that they go to their new lives with a peaceful soul.  But remembering why something is important is different from questioning it.”

“It’s just an escape,” he replied knowing the blasphemy would catch his sensar unawares.

“An escape?”

“From the fear of death.”  What he really wanted to say was that Speaking had disconnected him from the living.  It had taken away everything that had once made him.  “Knowing there is afterlife has changed everything.”

That too, was true.  Had that made it easy to watch his brother die?  Maybe he had been disconnected from the beginning.  

He couldn’t remember anymore.

@@@

The room was dark.  Arik lit the soul candle, its gentle red light enough for him to make out the box before him and the feminine skull opposite: polished clean with a large opal cemented onto the forehead, seated atop the funerary case containing the rest of her worldly remains.

He tried to stop superimposing her face over the white bone; but he could not.  And no matter how many times he tried he could not fit one with the other.  His stomach had been in knots as adjusted the crank and dial to clarify the signal, but once he finally heard her voice emitting clearly from the box he had smiled and the butterflies had vanished.

“Arik?” The box asked.

“Yes, Lyza.  I’m here.”

“Why?” She asked.  Sticking out from the box were two antennae connected by a slender wire inside of a glass tube “Why?” She repeated and this time the wire vibrated so violently he feared the glass would shatter.

He knew if it was too work he had to Speak to her, not as Arik, but as a Speaker.  He reached deep inside, summoning everything he had learned from his training and experiences.

“Be calm, Lyza.”  He commanded.

“Why?” The voice asked again, more quietly this time.

“They took…” he started, wanting to tell her that they took everything from him, that they took her from him. You cannot bring your past with you, he reminded himself.

“There is another way,” he told her, his voice taking on the commanding tone of a Speaker.  The soul stopped uttering the dreaded question.  “If you would listen.”

“Tell me, Speaker.  Tell me how I might find peace.”

You do not trick the dead, Arik thought.

@@@

It was a few days later when the Archons’ servant arrived.  Arik motioned to his sensar to stop his keshi dance.  The Construct entered the room, hovering on a skiff of bright metal, adorned in sandsilk.  

The command was spoken with a tinny voice.  “The Archons’ have requested a speaking with Kynan Zhor.”

“Can they not find another?”

“The Speaker shall obey.”

With that the soulless servant floated out.  He considered the command, knowing what would follow.

The question was on his sensar’s face.  Why? it asked.  Always that question, Arik thought.

“Speak,” Arik said, his anger escaping in the words.  Anger that the boy would not understand.

“Why would you not want to Speak with him?”

“I told you a Speaker should not bring his past with him.  Sometimes it is not so easy.”  He remembered the words he had told her to say.  “It is not easy to Speak with someone you’ve killed.”

“But you didn’t do it.  All you did was your duty.  The soul of Lyza Rayel named Kynan as her murderer.”

“She did,” Arik agreed.  Not for the first time, he considered how his choices would affect his sensar.  

Is it what I deserve?  he thought.  He knew it was.  But what of his sensar?  

Did it really matter anymore?  There was a second life; who was to say one was better than the other?  

“You should leave,” Arik said.  The boy looked at him dumbfounded.  “Go to the nomads.  I will give you my box.  You know enough of it to use it.”

“But I am not yet a Speaker.”

“That does not matter.  Out there, if you have the box and know how to use it, you can be a king!”

“I do not care to be a king.  I only wish to be your sensar.  And someday, a Speaker.”

Duty always gets in the way, Arik thought.  When you are young, you can’t help but search it out, to give your life meaning.  And when you get older you realize it only gets in the way of living the life you want to live.

“You made a promise to teach me the Speech.”  The boy reminded him.

“I know.”

“It would be a lie,” the boy continued.  “I am no king.”

Arik couldn’t help but hear the unspoken phrase.  He knew his sensar was right.  They would never leave Center again.  He wanted to, for his sensar’s benefit.  But there was an afterlife.  This would not be the end for either of them.

He walked over to the wooden shrine.  Along the top shelf there were visuals of each of the souls with which he had held a Speaking.  He removed the box, tucking it under one arm.

“You are right,” Arik said, turning to the boy.  “It is an honor to be a Speaker.  It is an honor to be the bridge that connects us to those that have passed onto the next life.”  He looked at his sensar, hoping that he might live to heed the advice that followed.  “When you are Speaker, you must never break the rule.  It leads only down a dark path.”

The boy nodded, donning his woven sensar’s robe, decorated with the mark of his family, a reminder of where he had come from.  Something that he would have to surrender when he finally went from sensar to Speaker.  If, Arik reminded himself.  If.

@@@

He gave the signal to his sensar.  The boy turned off the lights and left.  Arik took a few calming breaths, the only light given by the red readout of the box.  Somewhere in the darkness his brother’s skull waited, two eyes focused solely on Arik’s.  Is there another way? Arik wondered.

He forced himself to light the soul candle.  The glow grew slowly, and finally he could see his brother in the cruel, crimson light.   

Arik whispered his brother’s name.

Inside the glass tube the wire vibrated lightly.

Again he spoke the name, turning the crank slowly, watching the change in the display.  A harsh, raucous rasp escaped from the wire.  Arik made another adjustment; the vibrations growing stronger in response until words began to issue forth.

“I paid for your sin.”

“Forgive me brother.”

A high-pitched whine emanated from the wire. “Forgiveness?”  

“I wanted you back, both of you.”

“They will find out.”  

A memory of another speaking: he had told Lyza that if she lied she would have his brother back.  “The dead…they are the only friends I have left.”  

The wire vibrated.  “You do not trick the dead.”

@@@

They stood looking out over the walls of Center.  It had rained hard in the morning, but already everything, everywhere was dry and dusty.  His sensar stood patiently; it had been an hour since his Speaking, and Arik had not said a word.

“I’m sorry, Devran.” Arik finally said.

“For what?”

“You want to know what he said.”

“That is for the Speaker to decide.”

“Or the Archons.”  They would have reviewed the session by now.  With Lyza he had altered the recording of their session, but that had been necessary.  This time he had allowed the truth to reach them.  It will not be long, he thought.

He almost told him then.  But something stopped him.  Selfishness perhaps; surely the boy would leave him, knowing the truth, and Arik would be unprotected.  But why did that matter?  The boy could not fight off all of the Archons’ Constructs himself.  Arik turned his back on the desert and the freedom that beckoned.  In that moment, seeing his sensar against the backdrop of Center, he realized that he had always saw himself in Devran.  He remembered believing in the idea of Speaking as much as the boy did.  He wished that had never been taken from him.

The sound of a gathering crowd reached his ears.  He glanced down, past Devran, and saw them at the base of the stairs.  Where I back in his place, I would prefer what waits him, over what I have become.

They descended the stairs.  Devran saw the crowd, and taking note of the five Constructs that waited, pushed wordlessly past his Speaker.

The crowd inched away, sensing what was to come.  One of the Constructs stepped forward.  “Speaker Arik Zhor, the Archons request your presence.”  The tinny voiced grated against his ears, but Arik didn’t notice.  It was relieving to hear those words after fearing them for so long.

“Why?”  His sensar asked, one hand on his diamond-tipped keshi.

“He has lied to the living; he has tricked the dead.”

The boy’s face paled.  He turned back to Arik.

An endless stream of empty apologies ran through his mind.  The boy didn’t need him to say anything.  He saw the look on Arik’s face, one of sincere sadness and defeat.  

“Stand aside, Devran,” Arik finally uttered.

“You know I can’t,” the boy replied.  “I will serve my Speaker.”

But I lied to you, Arik thought.  But even as the thought entered his mind it was already too late.  The Construct that spoke was too slow;  Devran drew his keshi, activating it, the blade formed by six separate pieces that spun angrily.  It slipped into the torso of the Construct and then just as quickly decapitated the machine.  The rest of the violence happened fast; when it was done, three of the Constructs lay in scattered pieces.  The last two had torn his sensar’s sword arm off and not stopped there.

“The Archons request your presence,” one of the Constructs repeated.

 @@@

“You lied to the living.  You tricked the dead.”  The Archon said to him, while the others watched on from the viewing gallery.  “You took a life.”

Arik struggled against the thick metal shackles, even though he had known that it would end this way.  His last thoughts were of the three he had gotten killed: Devran and Kynan and Lyza.   He coudl feel the heat of the beam as it descended. He wanted to scream, to say that it was the Archons’ fault; he had only wanted what they had taken from him.

He was so much closer to the dead.

###