The Ashen Word – Novel Excerpt

The Ashen Word

By Amara Mesnik
Book 1 of the Floating Worlds Quartet
To Query 2023

First Silence

 

The night was dark when the end began, for there was no moon in the sky. 

It was a quiet, placid night, just as it was every night in the mountains of Palar. The wind caressed the verdant woods, stirring whispers from the evergreens and fragrant salutations from the grand Library’s ever-blooming orchard. All was well, for in Eupana, all was always well. The people lived in Paradise, and they should want for nothing more. 

The young Scholar was certainly content. Sokota Velor, 6th of his name, lived a pleasant life at the Library, spending his days reading and remarking to the other intellectuals dressed in creamy linen robes. Occasionally, he ventured around Eupana, traveling between villages as an honored guest. Out there, his job was fairly simple—maintain the Enlightenment, keep the countrysiders faithful, and swap infants between isolated towns to ensure genetic diversity. And, as a newly-specialized Scholar of Antiquity, to bring any remnants of the Old World to the Library for cataloging. 

Remnants such as the small brass pin that sat on the table in front of him, confounding him to no end. 

It was about an inch across, emblazoned with two equilateral triangles which pointed inwards like an angular infinity. Encircling it was a tiny inscription. The letters were legible enough, especially under the power of his magnifier. But there was something strange about the text itself. 

Sokota peered through the glass.

Armed Forces of—

“Stones, is this where they’ve stuck you?”

Echoing footsteps marked the arrival of a pair of young Scholars, who craned their necks to admire—or scoff at—the massive fresco of the Founders painted across the vaulted ceiling. Sokota sighed as his former roommates crowded the table.

Jolin Talley, 8th of his name and a Scholar of Physics, clapped him on the shoulder. “Surrounded by old junk, with not even a bunk to sleep on? It’s no wonder no one wants to join the Department of Antiquity.”

Sokota carefully placed his magnifier onto its holder. “I don’t live here. I just… lost track of time. For those of us who actually enjoy the work, it’s easy to get carried away with it.”

 “Right, I can see the rest of your department is equally as invested,” said Gose Fridell, 9th of his name and a Scholar of Botany, indicating the empty Hall.

“Well, as you always say, there’s no urgency in things long past.” 

“Then it should be no issue for you to join us for a nightcap.” Jolin ran a finger across a book on the table, frowning when it came up dusty. 

Sokota glanced back at the pin. It just made him itch. There was something so familiar about it. He had to solve it. And what if he was close?

Jolin followed his gaze, then snatched the little pin from the table. He held it up to Sokota’s work light, squinting. “So, this must be your new fixation. What am I even looking at, here?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Can you read what it says?”

“‘Armed forces of…’” Jolin abruptly dropped the pin back onto the table with an echoing plink, drawing back his hand as if contaminated. “This is…”

“A remnant of a Calamity, yes,” Sokota said calmly, and Gose shrunk back, too. “Relax, it’s just a bit of metal. It’s not going to corrupt you.” 

“Then why did it do… that?” 

Sokota picked up the pin and ran his thumb over its letters; he could feel them, just as he could see them. Yet somehow, that fourth word, he just couldn’t…

“It’s unenlightened, that’s why,” Gose said. “You shouldn’t be looking at it in the first place. The Old World is dead and gone, and these dusty old books are worth as much as wiping papers to the public. You should transfer to Botany; what we discover about the plants of Eupana will help the countrysiders for generations.”

Sokota reached for a green-bound book, embossed with botanical designs. He dropped it onto the table in front of Gose with a resounding thud. “Perhaps if you tried cracking open one of my ‘dusty old books’, you’d find someone from the past already knew the things you’re ‘discovering’. Perhaps you wouldn’t need to relearn everything from scratch.”

Gose lifted the book’s cover with a hesitant finger, then let it fall. “Maybe for physics, something like this would be helpful. But we don’t know if the plants of the Old World were anything like ours.”

“Well, that’s why you cross-reference with other books, too, which clearly mention that they were.”

“Aren’t you always telling us how half the books you read turn out to be fiction?” Jolin goaded. 

It was true; if there was anything Sokota both admired and begrudged about the people of the Old World, it was that they were just so damn creative. 

“We may not be able to Bloc-check tangible texts,” came a new voice. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out ourselves.” 

All four young men straightened as the Head of Antiquity, Dartha Monoc, 10th of his name, approached with a stack of books under his arm and a gray-whiskered smile. “We can use correlative data to determine which ideas are consistently expressed across our artifacts, and from there can sort them into categories and genres. It’s a science, something I’d hope the two of you would be familiar with.”

“Of course, Scholar Monoc,” said Jolin, nudging Gose. “We didn’t mean any disrespect.”

“Yes, my apologies,” said Gose. “Anyways… we should be off. Sokota, we’ll be in the East Turret, if the lack of oxygen in here starts getting to your head.” 

Sokota lazily waggled his fingers as his agemates departed, pretending he hadn’t heard Jolin mutter “too late for that” as they turned the corner. 

“Not so easy to convert others to the cause, is it?” Scholar Monoc asked, amused. “There is a reason I do not encourage my unpledged students to choose Antiquity, especially in their first life at the Library. It is a lonely, futile art. They do not see preservation as advancement. All they see is a clutch of would-be blasphemers, prodding the Calamities as if we’re seeking to awaken them. Here— imagine what they’d say if they knew how we categorized this.” The old Scholar withdrew one of the books from under his arm. It was a cloth-bound octavo with gold leaving along the dusky purpura cover and spine. Sokota knew what it was before he’d even read the title: The Aruvas Cycle, the story of the settling of the New World by the stone-blessed savior, Aruvas. 

“In my five lives as a countrysider, I never could have guessed how much was fiction,” Sokota said. “If I had known how much was being hidden from me…”

“You never would have. You know the pledge you made when you joined my department. No Scholar of Antiquity or Ritual would ever reveal our secrets to those outside our pact. The truth is a burden others do not need.”

Sokota shrugged. “I don’t feel burdened by it. I am enlightened by it.”

Scholar Monoc said nothing, and for a long moment, Sokota thought the conversation was over. But the Head of Antiquity kept looking at him, and it was only when the young Scholar’s eyes widened in realization that Monoc took on an arch smile. 

The dense stone floor seemed to waver beneath Sokota’s feet. “Why?”

Monoc placed a comforting hand on the young Scholar’s shoulder. “You are happy here, are you not? You do good work, and I would not want to distract you with irrelevant topics when you have only just taken the pledge. Rest assured, you will be told the full truth when you are more senior. And you will understand why I do not want to rush it.” 

Sokota stared at his mentor. Suddenly, this man he’d known for over twenty years, who had practically raised him, was a stranger. Sokota felt confused, angry, sorrowful, betrayed— 

Ah. 

The young Scholar bowed his head. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, teacher Monoc.”

“And I have plenty more,” Monoc laughed, setting down the rest of his books. Suddenly, he paused, and slowly, carefully, picked up the pin. Sokota’s heart rate increased with every moment of his mentor’s silence. 

“You recognize it.”

“Where did you find this?”

“In bin 49.” Sokota gestured towards the shelves of archived small tange. Bin 49 was one of the newer collections, consisting of clothing- and accessory-related items brought to the Library within the last four years.

Monoc abruptly looked up. “Why were you looking in there?”

“I was just cross-referencing something with another item from that bin—”

“But you took this. Why? Why today?”

Sokota hesitated, venturing a glance at the little cesium clock on his desk. It was after midnight, but neither of the days his work straddled was a festival day. 

“I don’t know, it just drew my attention. What’s today?”

The Head Scholar still looked agitated, but he shook his head. “Nothing, Sokota. Never mind.”

“Will you tell me what you know about this? Why is that word doing… that?”

Monoc tilted the little pin in the light. “I have suspicions. This has been an ongoing project of mine for some time. But to answer your question would be to reveal some of that unhappy truth, and I need you sharp for the task at hand.” 

Sokota’s heart sank, but he said nothing as Monoc gestured to his 3I and shared a proi message. “We’ve received a request for a pool-swap, but it’s a rather urgent one. And it’s, well, different.”

“Different how?” 

But before the Head of Antiquity could respond, there came a sudden, hideous sound. An ear-shearing creak, like the tearing of rusted metal, tore through the quiet library, redoubling off the tall stone walls and echoing in each airy chamber. 

Sokota’s hands flew to his ears as he leapt to his feet. Then he was running after Scholar Monoc, making swiftly for the grand atrium of the central tower, where the source of the sound no doubt lay. 

The staircases and hallways were suddenly alive with a sea of off-white as dozens of Scholars emerged from studies or dormitories, racing for the atrium. Sokota and Monoc were swept up into the tide, which finally spilled into the spiraling mezzanine. There, they joined the cries of shock and horror that rose from every mouth beneath the vast, high dome.

The gargantuan hourglass, which had hung suspended on its side in the airspace of the atrium ever since the Library had been built, was turning. 

*

Far across the globe, another man was jolted from his slumber. He sat up in bed, trying to put his finger on what exactly had woken him. But all he felt was a strange sense of foreboding, deep in his gut. 

“Rohann, what happened?” came the drowsy voice of his wife. She’d always been a light sleeper, but lately, with two young children, neither of them were sleeping through the night. “Another Primal dream?”

“I’m not sure,” said Rohann, brushing the dark hair from his eyes. “I felt a shift.”

“In the room?”

“In the Deep Augur.”

Rohann knew Vasha’s expression would grow stern at the mention of it. In the pre-dawn light issuing through the window of their Oxineitika apartment, he saw her eyes narrow.

“You told me you were done with it.”

“I am. But, per min’eye, it seems it isn’t done with me.”

Vasha sighed. “What shifted?”

“I don’t know. It was so far below the surface I barely felt it. It wasn’t even a feeling, but rather… a lack of. It was as if a noise I hadn’t realized I’d always been hearing fell silent, just for a moment. I fear it was a warning.”

“From who?”

“And about what?” Rohann’s suspicion rose. “Erdis would know.”

“Erdis is gone, per fac’. There’s nothing you can do.”

A bittersweet pain lanced through Rohann’s chest. There was always something he and Mikel—no, she went by Nyssa, now—could do. But there was no guarantee they wouldn’t end up sharing their leader’s cell. 

“He’s still alive,” Rohann murmured. “I’m sure of it. And if he’s alive, there’s still hope.”

Vasha didn’t answer. She might have already fallen back asleep. Rohann lay down next to her, closing his eyes. He prayed to the Creator that Erdis wasn’t suffering. But he knew quite well what the House did to captured Radiants. 

As soon as he relaxed into the darkness, the sensation came again. The shift. The resounding silence. The radiating signal of impending doom, followed by a dream of rushing sand that fell like stars.

He had that dream every night until he died.

*

With one final rumble, the hourglass stopped, the chamber that had been full of sand now raised above the one that had been empty. The atrium, still ringing with the echoes of the ear-shearing creak, fell to a stunned silence. 

Then the stopper mechanism in the center of the hourglass shifted, and the sand began to pour. 

“What’s happening?!” a Scholar cried out as the others began to murmur and fret. 

“What does it mean?!” called another. 

Only Sokota was silent, studying the falling of the sand, listening to the dry rush as it descended ten feet onto the bottom of the lower chamber. He turned to Scholar Monoc. 

“You knew this was going to happen. What does it mean? And don’t give me nonsense about an unhappy truth.”

The Head Scholar didn’t respond. His bushy gray brows were furrowed as he stared at the falling sand, eyes half-glazed. 

Sokota leaned into his gaze impatiently. “Are your ancestors speaking?”

“No, I’m counting. Or rather, estimating by volume how much time is left.” The old man drummed his fingers on the railing, not breaking his gaze from the gritty runnel. “I will have to put together a formal model, but if the passage of sand remains consistent, my initial calculation is around five years.”

“Until what?”

Scholar Monoc beckoned for Sokota to follow him. Once the two were in a quiet gallery, Monoc said: “Do you remember the man who came to the Library a couple years ago in search of a pair of books?”

“The madman from Venecra?” 

“Yes. Dal Iqur was his name. While we’d like to forget his drug-fueled rambling, he may actually have been on to something. Before we threw him out for disorderly behavior, the man told me the two volumes he sought were the past and the future, the beginning and the end. Then he looked right up at the hourglass and told me he knew it was going to turn. And when. I believe he found a way into the Wellspring, and discovered a secret the rest of us could not know”

Sokota crossed his arms. “Venecrans claim to have prophecies about everything. Why should we believe a man hopped up on psychedelics?”

“Because he was exactly right. I have it marked on the calendar in my study. You’re welcome to check, if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” Sokota said, stunned into reverence. “So the madman was not a madman after all.” 

“Oh, he was certainly a madman. Defaced a few dozen volumes with scrawled nonsense that we’re still in the process of repairing. But I believe he did find a way into the Wellspring, and thus he may be right about the books.”

Sokota hesitated. “The Wellspring? Isn’t that just…”

Monoc’s expression hardened. “It’s real. I have seen it. Someday I would like to show you how to reach it, too. But I fear we are now running out of time. If those books are the beginning and the end, and the hourglass was built at the beginning of the Enlightenment, the book of the future may confirm that it is, as I presume you have guessed, the end of it. And perhaps it will tell us what happens after.”

A droplet of ice ran down Sokota’s spine. “I shall seek them at once.”

Monoc’s hand flew to catch the young Scholar’s arm before he could depart. “No, Velor. You must first perform the swap.”

“Is it truly so important right now?”

“Yes,” said Scholar Monoc with a strange look in his eyes. “It may prevent a war.”

Sokota understood. There was no War in Eupana. Not in the Enlightenment. But the other New Worlds were not so fortunate. The Calamities had reached them, one by one. Only Eupana, isolated from the rest, had been spared. 

But Paradise couldn’t remain forever. 

It hadn’t been built to last. 

The Scholars didn’t know that yet.

*

Two years after the hourglass turned, there came another great groaning of metal as the mechanism rotated once again, its stopper lifting completely to pour the fallen sand back into its original chamber, leaving the other empty as before. Then it rose, taught by some ancient program deep within the Library’s foundation, until it hung sideways once again. 

The Scholars let out a collective sigh of relief and went back to their original work. Sokota had never been able to locate either Dal Iqur or the books, but it seemed it didn’t matter. The end of the Enlightenment was nowhere near. The drug-addled Venecran’s prophecy of doom had been false, as most Venecran prophecies turned out to be. Monoc decided Sokota’s introduction to the Wellspring and the mysterious un-word could wait. 

But three years after that, Eupana suffered its worst dry spell in decades. The rains did not fall for a period of several weeks, and the harvest was slimmer than expected. It was just a fluke, the Scholars and the countrysiders were sure. Yet when the dry spell returned that following year, just past Summer’s Height, the Scholars were unsettled. The Enlightenment was stable; such a thing should not have been possible. The countrysiders asked the Library what to do, but the Scholars could only tell them to pray to the stones, to keep to the methods of the Manifest and they would be rewarded. Velor knew he was lying through his teeth.

The dry spells worsened, browning the trees in the heat of summer and turning their remaining leaves to ice when the winters began to drop below freezing for the first time in memory. The crops and the animals, too, were withering in the unexpected seasonal stress. For the first time in thirty generations, the people felt hunger. But no one dared speak out.

In the seventh year, an old Scholar finally shattered the taboo. 

“It’s Drought!” Scholar Parlus, the Head of Textiles, had exclaimed during an emergency convention. “Drought has come to Eupana!” 

“Quiet, old fool! Speak it and it shall!” a Scholar of Dentistry hissed back, even though she had seen the cracked fields across Eupana on her rounds.

“Where Drought touches, Famine follows,” said a Scholar of Zoology. “And where Famine reaches, Sickness is imminent. In their wake, Sorrow strikes.” 

The hoary-eyed Head of Modernity rose unsteadily to his feet. “Enough! We must not panic. Have faith in the Manifest. The hourglass still lies at rest. We are safe in eternal Paradise!”

Sokota exchanged a look of worry with Monoc, whose skin now hung loose and low after an illness had sapped him of his strength.

The meeting had adjourned with no one happy and without a plan for handling the possibility that a Calamity or two had infiltrated Eupana. But Sokota was not permitted to complain. Most other Scholars did not know the limit of their own knowledge. Few had even heard of the Wellspring. The others still lived in peace, and he had sworn not to disturb them. 

After the meeting, Monoc beckoned for Sokota to escort him back to his quarters. In the quiet, he whispered: “Scholar Parlus is right. We must resume our search for the books. Tomorrow, I shall show you the way into the Wellspring, and I will tell you everything I know.”

Sokota could hardly wait.

But the sickly old Scholar passed away overnight, and was not reborn for many years. 

*

Nearly eighteen years after the hourglass had flipped for the first time, there came a cacophony in the atrium as it turned once again. But this time, the sand flowed faster. This time, according to the model left behind by Scholar Monoc, it was counting down one year.

Scholar Velor stood below it, completely at a loss. He had already exhausted the Library’s resources to no avail. There were no records from the machine’s construction, no declaration of its purpose. There was no pattern, no reasoning, no conclusion to be drawn. Was the Enlightenment ending or not? Was something else afoot?

Finally, with a great deal of reluctance, Velor accepted a summoning from the new Head of Antiquity, a disagreeable old woman who had been at odds with Monoc even before his death. He was surprised to find her not in her study, but in her bed, tended to by Scholars of Medicine who shook their heads when he entered.

“I was wrong, Sokota,” said Scholar Tenzie, her voice hardly more than a dry whisper between coughs. “It is as you and Monoc feared: Calamity has come to Eupana. We may well follow in the Dead Worlds’ footsteps.”

Velor remained stoic. “Now you choose to listen?”

Tenzie bowed her head. “In my sickness, somehow I have developed a closer connection to the Augur than ever before. I have even glimpsed the Wellspring, and within it, I felt the pain of a heavy burden centuries overdue for release. Remedy is needed, but the Wellspring is vast and wild. There are no clear paths, and I could not risk my mind to delve deeper.”

Tenzie paused to cough, wheezing with every inhale. Velor grabbed a glass of water from her nightstand, but the Head Scholar waved him away.

“Listen, Sokota. You must find those books— the past and future. Monoc’s notes are here; I’ve preserved them all. Dal Iqur believed one book was held by the House, but another had been hidden in a Starport. For our diligence, you must retrieve them both before that hourglass runs out.”

Scholar Velor hardly knew what to make of her sudden change of heart. He’d waited nearly a decade for this victory. But there was one complication that brought about the burning ache of defeat.

“It may be impossible,” he murmured. “The House is unfriendly, and there is no way to unseal the Starports. Only two people in all the Worlds can open the doors, and they would never help us.” 

“No, Sokota,” Tenzie said, her eyes flaring urgently. “There may be another. But you must be careful not to stir what has only just settled in the other Worlds.” 

The Head Scholar told him who it was, and that night, Velor left the Library. The following morning, Scholar Tenzie passed away, taken by the choking Sickness that was spreading rapidly throughout Eupana. The Library was filled with Sorrow. And Drought and Famine continued to rage on and on throughout the World, unchecked and ignored by the Panterral Congress meant to maintain it. It was a messy, bitter end to the illusion of Enlightenment the Scholars had fought to perpetuate, even as they, too, fell victim to Calamity. 

But they had not yet failed in their duty.

The people of the countryside still believed they were in Paradise. They still believed the way of the Manifest was the only way, that the stones would cease their fury once they had been appeased. It was a trial of faith, and all they could do was pray for the only World they knew still lived.

The people were happy. 

Except for one. 

But for the first time in her life, she was close.

*

This is it, my old friend. The final cycle has begun. 

A thrumming heartbeat increased in speed, a syncopated rhythm. A sound I had grown used to fearing, now my only company. 

Godspeed, I thought, and closed my eyes, praying this restless sleep would be the last.

 

*

*

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Amara Mesnik is a Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker with a passion for all things science, fiction, and science fiction. She is currently seeking literary representation.