I was, at this point, somewhat accustomed to things I'd previously thought to be legends turning out to have been real all along. But there was a difference between that and what I was hearing. "There's no such thing," I said.
King held out a hand, palm up, and suddenly he held a circle of complete darkness. It was a blackness more total than any I'd ever seen, to the point where it took me a while to realize he was holding a sphere rather than a circle. It was as though he hadn't just removed the light but also removed anything that the light could have possibly reflected from. "In the beginning, there was Void." He said, quoting the scriptures.
"There are five elements, divided among the gods," I replied, trying not to stare at the demonstration. "Void's not an element, it's just the nothing that was there before! It's never mentioned again anywhere in the scriptures." I hoped. I hadn't actually read all of the chapters, but I'd been exposed to the teachings far more often than I'd have preferred. I was pretty sure that it would have come up. I mean, sure, every now and then a Void cult sprung up, promising power from the nothingness that had somehow escaped the gods, but none that I knew had ever claimed to be Void personified.
"Oh, I know all about the scriptures," King said. Mercifully, he moved his hand, and the disquieting nothing vanished as though it had never been. "Believe me," he continued, "I turned to religion in my darkest times just like everyone else. And just like always, it had no answers. But there's an interesting tidbit about those first Gods: There were ten of them."
Ever since I'd been told that other places taught The Ten instead of The Nine that I'd grown up with in Opal, I'd wondered how that extra god had been explained. I'd been told that it hadn't, that the tenth was only mentioned in passing or implied by the missing husband to the Lady of Subtlety. Now I was seeing the effects of that - with a missing tenth god, people could fill that gap with anything they wanted. In this case, King was obviously some sort of self-hating Mind.
The demonstration, as surprisingly disturbing as it had been, could have been done with simple illusions; trivial for a Mind. With the sort of power over his own thoughts that he had, who knew how he'd altered himself? Mind magic could be turned inward; I'd done it many times to calm myself down. King was just operating on a larger, more terrible scale.
If King noticed my frenzied introspection, he didn't let it stop his speech, though I doubted he'd have done that for any reason. "The Lady of Rains, and the Lord of Oceans," he continued. "The Lady of Breath and the Lord of Winds. The Lady of Soil and the Lord of Quakes. The Lady of the Hearth and the Lord of Blazes. The Lady of Subtlety... and the Lord of Lies." He grinned as though that explained anything.
"Not exactly a trustworthy source." I managed.
"You have no idea," King spat the words with surprising force, "how right you are. I spent years of my life tracking down the so-called 'Book of Lies', the alleged missing chapter to the scriptures. There were dozens, and all they had in common were the title and their adherence to the theme of not saying a single word of truth. Useless, until I realized who the true Tenth God was. Even the *name* of the Lord of Lies was a lie, you see. The gods did not destroy the Void, they only displaced it. It is still there, still waiting. Some people think that the Pure are the gods reincarnated. If the elements can do it, why not Void? It's the perfect complement to the Pure of Mind. It's a necessary balance. Mind created life and, well, Void takes it."
"You're insane," I said. I'd certainly thought so before, and learning of King's specific delusion had only cemented it.
King chuckled. "You're not the first to say so. You probably won't be the last. But, really, you're the one ignoring the blatantly obvious truth about the Void. I mean, I realize we're underground and you can't do what I'm about to say, but still, it's easy. Go outside at night! Look up! What do you see? It sure as shit ain't the elements. It's Void. Pinpricks of Fire outnumbered by vast, unthinkable, Void."
I struggled not to repeat myself, instead settling for "I don't understand."
"You don't believe, you mean," King said. "I can't blame you! Ask this lot," he said, gesturing to his generals in the crowd, "they didn't believe at first, either. You'll see. Because the elements, they're about creation. But Void, it's the opposite. It's about destruction. And the longer you're with me, the more you'll see that's what I do." He turned to face his audience. "Isn't that right?"
I was expecting a cheer from the people, given how raucous they'd been the previous days, but instead, they just inclined their heads in unison. That didn't really do much to dispel the whole "void cult" feeling.
"I've already shown you." King was not going to stop talking anytime soon. "I've done something that not even a Pure Mind can do; I took Pampa's power from her, and made sure you received part of it. The closest thing to giving I can do, and it's really more you getting in the way of me taking it than anything else. I made you, if not Pure, then Gifted at least. Nobody else in this entire world could do that. And I took it away again, as you pointed out. Do you remember what it was like, to have such a gift? To be connected with your element on a personal level?"
He paused long enough for me to realize that wasn't a rhetorical question. "Yes," I said. The feeling of my connection with the mud had almost entirely faded, but the memories were still fresh and alternately comforting and terrifying.
"Imagine feeling that every single night. Imagine the moonlit sky being a part of you. Imagine that everywhere in the city where there is nothing, resonates with you. Imagine the places *between*. These belong to you. That's how I know what I am. I can't expect you to believe, not right away, but I want you to remember your time as Gifted. Remember it, and know that that is what life is for me, only on a far grander stage."
He gestured to the crowd, and they stopped their creepy head-bowing. Sensing that the time of explanations - bizarre though they were - was about to be over, I spoke up. "What about the Pure Mind?"
King laughed fully this time, though at least the generals didn't join in. "Oh yes, of course, your mission! You remind me of a younger Seven. So eager, so dedicated. Let's hope you're smarter than she was about obeying orders, shall we?"
Pawn Seven didn't react; hadn't reacted the entire time. She already knew everything that was happening, because this exact thing had happened to her, and now she was trapped. It didn't bode well for my chances, and suddenly the mission seemed more out of reach than ever before.
"As it happens," King continued to enjoy the sound of his own voice, "the timing of your initiation into our little group is convenient. Suspiciously convenient, really, which is why I had to test you with that whole Mudslinger thing. The eclipse is coming up soon, and when that happens you'll be able to act on your precious mission."
"Eclipse?" I asked. The conversation had taken too many abrupt turns for me to be able to follow all of them, I just had to latch on to whichever one stuck out the most.
"I can predict them," King said, as though such a matter were trivial. "Eclipses are a force for the Void. They say that one happened on the day of my birth, though they only say that because I told them to. Makes me seem scarier. But still, Eclipses being of Void is pretty obvious. I mean, the moon shifts into a disc of darkness that eats up the sun? That's some serious symbolism. And, like the eclipse demonstrates the inversion of void and fire, so shall this next one be accompanied by my own inversion. From below the streets to above them. From outcast to caster-out. You get the idea."
"You're going to overthrow the surface," I said. I'd so far avoided saying the words 'void cult' out loud, but the number of similarities was getting out of hand at this point.
"Yes and no," King said. "I'm only overthrowing the surface because that's where the people I want to hurt are: The enforcers of the E.I.S: my brother and sisters."
"Brother and sisters?" I said. It seemed like I was never going to escape that family, despite how dysfunctional it appeared. Still, given the Witchdoctor's hostile reaction to King, it made perfect sense they'd be related. "If your father was a Mind, how are you a Void, much less a Pure one?"
King just shrugged expansively. "How do two nobody weakbloods end up giving birth to a Pure? It is the will of the gods, that's how. I don't pretend to know why my patron element decided it needed to manifest in the son of a Mind. Seems Void could have done everyone a favor and not tainted me. Of course, then I wouldn't have rescued you from my siblings, which admittedly I did mostly out of spite. But still, you owe me for that."
I opened my mouth to ask another question, but he turned suddenly. One moment he was playing to the crowd, the next he was a foot away from me, staring me down like I'd direly insulted him. The words died in my mouth.
"That," he said, "is me taking your ability to speak, at least for now. You've said enough; do not presume to tell me what either of us is going to do. I am the boss here. I took the name King because I am the opposite of your Queen, but also because my word is law. If you remember two things from your initiation, let them be that I feel the Void that surrounds us and is within us as though it were a part of me, and that I can take anything and everything that you have." He paused, continuing to stare me down. Finally, he said, "You may leave now."
I couldn't object; the words formed in my mind but vanished somewhere between there and actually being voiced. Pawn Seven took my arm impassively, pulling gently to indicate that King's statement was more of a command. I left with her, speechless.
Once we were outside, she spoke. "Your voice will return," she said, though her tonelessness was far from reassuring. Compounding this impression, she added, "probably."
I didn't reply, mostly because I couldn't. It hadn't occurred to me that this might be permanent, and it should have. I knew that King was willing to maim in order to keep people loyal, I had only to look at Seven next to me for proof.
Ever since I'd started the process of leaving Opal, the possibility that I might not return had been in the back of my mind. The original Bishop Two had far more experience than I did, and he'd died in Chankota. How would I fare better? I'd told myself that so long as I planned ahead and worked hard, I could overcome any issues. While the doubt never really went away, it remained a theoretical thing. Something that might happen, but was not guaranteed.
Now, though, I began to picture my future underground. I could end up like Pawn Seven: a broken agent, struggling futilely against her bonds, unable to even remember the organization that had sent her. King could do this easily, without even considering it. For all I know, he'd already begun. The very real possibility that I'd never see my home again stayed at the forefront of my mind.
"You can do this." Pawn Seven said. "You will return home."
Surface thoughts! A wave of relief came over me. Even if I remained mute, I could still make myself understood. When I'd first come to Utijan I'd been afraid that my inability to speak the language would leave me grunting and thinking vividly of what I wanted to communicate, like an infant. That I was now comforted by this same thought was a reflection on just how bad things were.
Pawn Seven didn't take us back to her shack, which I insisted on thinking of as hers even though it was supposed to be mine now. Instead, she guided me through the tunnels once more, waiting until we were far from the government undercity. Then we went aboveground and walked another few blocks.
She'd led me to one of the small parks in the city; barely the footprint of a house, it hosted a lone tree and no visitors. She sat on the ground underneath the tree and motioned for me to join her.
"Your house," she said, "has a magic-proof room. Pawn Eight mentioned it in one of his communications, in case I ever needed a secure meeting area." She looked at me but her face and voice were just as blank as ever. "You might wonder why I haven't suggested we go there for this conversation."
I wanted to ask how we were going to have a conversation if I couldn't talk, but of course, I couldn't talk.
Still, something of my frustration must have gotten through, because she explained. "There is much I've wanted to tell you. And now that you are one of us, terrible as that is, I can at least speak freely."
I was glad there was at least a little upside to my new found inabilities.
"The magic-proof room," Pawn Seven said, "would not work against King. Void is an absence of magic, after all; it'd be like he was right there in that room. That said, he can't eavesdrop on us the way a Mind would, by simply knowing our thoughts better than we do ourselves. He can know your thoughts by taking them from you, that is true, but you will know if that happens because you will not be thinking those thoughts anymore."
This line of conversation was itself somewhat disquieting because it sounded like Pawn Seven had bought into King's whole 'Pure Void' persona.
She nodded. "I believe him, Bishop. Whether this is due to reasoned consideration on my part or simply because he took away my ability to be skeptical of his claims, I do not know. The result is the same: I truly believe that he is Void personified."
It was good I couldn't talk, because I wasn't sure how to respond to that. I couldn't believe that a Pure like King could exist. It wasn't that I thought that Pure couldn't be evil; even the scriptures had tons of examples of that. It was that I didn't want to believe an avatar of destruction could just casually walk the earth. The explanation that he was simply a malformed Mind was, to me, far simpler. I still didn't understand the power transfer, but that was one unexplained detail in a sea of things that made perfect sense with that assumption.
"I understand your unwillingness to believe." Seven said. "For a long time, I shared it. Even after he tested me as he tested you, making me a Gifted for a short time, I did not believe. But I have been trapped here for years. I have seen him work. And I did some research, thanks to a wizard I was supposed to track down."
That got my attention. I'd never known Pawn Seven's actual mission, beyond a general mandate to infiltrate the Utijan underground.
Seven explained: "Yes, my initial mission was to locate a wizard, a Dynasty spy in the guide of an ambassador. Officially, the Dynasty and Opal are in a state of mutual suspicion at best. But our lady hoped that unofficially, there might be cooperation or at least coordination. At least, I believe this was my mission. I can no longer remember it."
A Dynasty wizard-spy acting as an ambassador to the Empire? That sounded suspiciously familiar. I formed as clear an image of Dalostaed in my mind as I could.
Pawn Seven only shrugged, though. "Your thoughts are easier to understand when you cannot speak, but I still cannot see them clearly enough to know if that was him. You can try to describe him later if your voice returns, but a name will do me no good. I either was never given the wizard's name or King took it from me later"
Frustrating. I'd have to find paper and something to draw with, not that my meager artistic ability would be of any help.
"I accomplished my task of infiltrating the gangs of the city before I could find the wizard." Seven continued. "Which is to say, I was conscripted into King's service. At that time, I had not yet been made to forget as much, and I was skilled at slipping away from my captors. Even though I had several chances at true freedom, for me, the mission came first."
I could certainly relate to that.
"By the time I found him, however, it was too late for me. Opal was gone from my mind, leaving only its name. I could not remember what I was supposed to do once I made contact. At that point, my only thought was that he might be able to help. I still did not believe King's claims, that he was a Pure Void. I knew he had power, yes, but I thought it might be a minor combination that had yet escaped notice. Though few wizards can overcome a Gifted of any strength, I held out hope that this was one such case."
I watched her; her face impassive, her tone even, her surface thoughts near nonexistent. And yet she was talking, possibly more in this one sitting than I'd ever heard out of her before. Even if I could speak, I wouldn't dare interrupt her.
"The wizard could not fix me. The holes in my mind were not barriers like those that a Mind might construct. Instead, the information I had, the abilities I'd learned, they had been taken from me. That is what King means when he talks about his power. Making a mental block would be an act of creation - and he can only tear down. Even then, I held out hope that King's power was some unknown combination of elements, that someone more powerful than him would be able to repair me. If it would not have meant my death, I would have gone to the enforcers then. But the wizard changed my mind, because I told him of my suspicions, that King believed himself to be a Pure Void but I did not."
I started at that but could not express my surprise.
Pawn Seven picked up on it. "Yes, even back then, ever since my initiation, I'd been under the same restrictions you find placed on yourself. I could not speak of King's delusions to anyone who did not already know them. But the wizard had never met the man. We parted after that, he to return to the Dynasty with news of King's existence, and I to whatever life I could scrape together from what remained of my memories. It took me some time, but I eventually realized why I could speak to the wizard about the Void."
She'd been looking away from me, down the street and off into the distance, but she met my gaze now. "Because he already knew. Normally the simple fact of his knowledge would not be enough - the restrictions are on my mind, I would have to know that he already knew. It took me longer to look within, to try the bounds of my own magic, to figure out the connection."
Pawn Seven had emphasized that last word as much as she could, but I didn't know what she meant. She looked away, back down the street, but continued. "Do you remember, when you had the Mudslinger's power, your connection to Pampa?"
I'd never actually told her that, but I remembered she'd been through a similar ordeal; she must have had the same connection to whoever she'd been the diversion for. I couldn't answer the question out loud, but I could still nod.
"I used to think that all Gifted were like that; connected to each other on a fundamental level. But it's not just them. Anyone who shares an element is connected. People like us, we just don't notice because our power is so weak. But I had been Gifted once, I knew what it was to feel that connection, and so I knew what to look for. It took time, but time is the one thing I had."
She closed her eyes. Possibly she was tired from too much conversation. I would be, though from this end I didn't want her to stop. However much I dreaded whatever revelation she'd received that changed her mind, I had to know what it was.
I felt a sudden warmth come over me, as though I was back in Opal's desert air. Just as swiftly, it was gone, replaced with a chill in my blood. I unwillingly exhaled, then felt my body tense up. Finally, all that faded, and all that was left was a ringing in my mind, like the fading sound of a bell being struck.
"Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Mind." Pawn Seven said, her eyes still closed. "Those are the elements of our connection. And...."
For one terrible moment, there was nothing, and then everything was normal again. It had begun and ended so quickly that my mind wanted to reflexively discard it, to forget the unpleasant experience and chalk it up to something unexplained, anything, so long as I didn't have to think about it anymore. It wasn't just that the feeling was new, or even that it was unnatural, it was that it was all those things and yet somehow familiar at the same time.
"Void." Pawn Seven said, her eyes open now. "The wizard knew about Void because he had learned it. It's probably one of the secrets of their training. I did not believe in Void, but I knew of it. And when he made the connection between us to try to heal me, he connected all our elements. As I did with you, but less jarring. I am sorry for it being so disruptive, but I am not a wizard. You shrank from the connection of our Void, and rightly so. I do not remember that happening during my encounter, but it must have. The experience must have told me that he already knew, and that was how I could speak."
I didn't want to believe it, and it was so very tempting to just wall off that experience and forget it had ever happened, but I didn't have the luxury.
"When I was a child, before the organization took me in, I was raised by very pious parents." Pawn Seven's tone hadn't changed, not that that said much, "They would take me to the sermons twice a week, and the church had special educational classes for children. In my youth, I was excited. I suspect I was not the only child who found the tales of the Lord of Blazes or Winds to be interesting. Even Rains calls down a flood at one point. I am familiar with the scriptures, as many are. Did you attend such classes, Bishop?"
I shook my head. Missionaries sometimes visited the undercity to try to reach lost youths like myself, but that was as close as I'd been.
"They teach the scriptures, but they also teach other things. Non-canonical information, but deemed important nonetheless. I think the particular church my parents frequented had some connection to the Dynasty denominations because there was a focus on the Pures and the particular powers the various combinations of godhood would produce."
I wasn't sure where she was going with this, but I was still glad she was talking. Plus it gave me the opportunity to try to put the Void connection behind me.
"I was a talkative child, as difficult as that may be to believe." Pawn said, with no indication of humor, "I had many questions for my teachers. I knew, for instance, that the offspring of a Mind and a Fire would be a Rioter. I knew that the reason normal people's powers were so muddled was that we were dozens of generations or more separate from our Pure ancestors, and had been so mixed that only the barest flicker of divinity remained. But that didn't make sense to me. You met the Rioter, didn't you?"
I nodded. I'd been fortunate enough not to be directly affected by her powers. Judging by how reckless and bloodthirsty she'd made the crew of the warship she sent after me, it would not have been pleasant.
"The Rioter controls emotion, a combination of Fire and Mind. The offspring of a Rioter and a Witchdoctor, what the Dynasty would call a *Erxin-Tuhus*, has a stronger control over the portions of the body that interact with the mind. They could not paralyze you like a Witchdoctor, or make you fear like a Rioter, but they could trigger your fight-or-flight reaction to accomplish much the same thing."
I didn't know the Dynasty nomenclature, but the mixture made sense.
"What I wondered was," Pawn Seven said, "why did those mixtures not work the same way as us? The *Erxin-Tuhus* has a power clearly derived from their parents, but they can't directly affect emotion. They can't directly control other parts of your body. Their power is not a mixture, but a new and separate thing. They do not have weaker versions of their parents' elements. But we do. We have all the elements, and they behave like their separate elements. You can call up a fire in your hand, but a Rioter, whose parent was a Pure Fire, cannot."
It was a question I hadn't really considered; until this mission I hadn't given the Pure and their offspring, nor my own ancestry, much thought. It did seem like there was a disconnect there, and I didn't like the conclusion that I thought Seven was coming to.
"The answer is Void," she said. "It changes the mixture, dilutes it and breaks the connection that would have formed a new power. It's why our powers work the way they do, instead of how they should. My Void connected to yours, because it's within you, and it's within me. It is in everyone."
We sat in silence for a time. I didn't want to believe it, but as much as I wanted to deny the connection and the sense of what Seven was saying, I couldn't. I wasn't sure it was entirely right, but I was willing to admit that there was more to the elements than I'd originally thought. Something unprecedented was going on here. I found myself wondering again at King's claims. Even if Void was a part of normal people like me, it wasn't a part of Pures; they were called 'Pure' for a reason, after all. How could a Mind like King's father - the man I assumed was the Subtle Man, my target - possibly have a Pure offspring that wasn't another Mind?
Then again, both of these facts could be true. Void could exist inside every mundane person, but that didn't mean that King was a right. He could still be a broken Mind, one who'd stumbled upon the truth that Pawn Seven had discovered and convinced himself that he was a Void. I settled uneasily on that explanation for now, but I knew I'd have to revisit it. I might have to admit there were more than five elements, but I didn't yet have to acknowledge that a literal avatar of destruction lurked in the undercity.
I found myself wondering about King's plans. He'd outright said he intended to overthrow the surface and while I didn't doubt his intent I did wonder how he thought he'd pull it off. The four enforcers had stopped breakouts from the Ward before; they had experience in stopping those more powerful than they were. Judging from the Witchdoctor Adhita's attitude when he'd seen King, there was no love lost there. They'd have no problem stopping an insurrection.
I found myself thinking about the timing. King claimed he could predict eclipses somehow. Even if they had nothing to do with the Void and neither did he, he believed it. Even if it did nothing to his power, he'd think himself unstoppable, and if he was a Mind then that belief could become very real.
"We should return," Pawn Seven said, "It would not do for us to be missing fo-"
A cart, moving unreasonably fast, rolled down the street next to the park. It kicked up a large plume of dust, which I immediately began coughing on. "Sorry," I said to Seven, "didn't mean to interrupt."
"You can speak." She pointed out. "Remember this. Unconscious or reflexive acts are often the simplest way to break free of King's control."
I breathed a sigh of relief only slightly interrupted by additional coughing. My voice had returned. "The eclipse." I said roughly, "Is it real?"
She shrugged. "I have witnessed one in my lifetime, but it was before I came to Utijan. I do not know if King can predict them."
"What is he going to do?" I asked. "Can he really overthrow the whole city?"
"He means to," Seven answered. "I am not one of his generals. I do not enjoy his confidence except when it serves his ends, such as when I brought you from the jail. I do not know how he intends to meet his goals, only that he will destroy this city if he thinks it's necessary, and he has convinced himself that it is. Unlike many of his generals, however, I do not believe this to be a good thing. As obedient as he has forced me to be, he does not have my loyalty, and I do not believe in his cause. He said it himself: Void cannot create, it can only destroy. King intends to tear down as much of the intelligence service as he can and put nothing in its place. As much as the enforcers are no friends of mine, King is worse."
"I'm with you," I said. "I don't know if he meant what he said about allowing me to continue my mission, but I'm taking the first opportunity I can get. I want to take you back with me, Seven. If we can find the Subtle Man, the man I suspect is King's father, he can repair you." I hoped that a Pure Mind could overcome what King had done, otherwise Pawn Seven was, at best, stuck in Utijan forever. "And then we can get the hell out of this city and never come back."
Pawn Seven stood, and I stood with her. "I hope that day comes to pass, Bishop," she said as tonelessly as ever, "I truly do."
With that, we walked back.