Runick - Chapter 2

They stared down at the Mediation Chamber, hidden in the shadows of the highest balcony. Far below them six children stood alone on the floor, neatly lined up and presented in their Dedication outfits as they tried their hardest not to fidget. Shanarad kept staring around themself, mouths agape, drinking in the sight of the Centre between them. Rikka was childishly glad that they were so obviously disoriented. Ever since he’d met them he’d been wrestling hard with his own culture shock.

Which was odd, wasn’t it? Especially considering his own career path, so carefully chosen and tailored for him. He’d known all about Hasyol; about its population who came in braces with their minds somehow linked, about its religious nature, about its agriculture and mineral wealth and chief imports and exports.

And somehow, Rikka had merrily believed that this qualified him as knowing all about Hasyol. That was odd, wasn’t it?

Then he’d met Shanarad. And yes, they were a pair of people who shared the same name and apparently some sort of mind-link; but exactly how had they evolved that? Why was no one like that in Akona? Yes, they were religiously-minded. But what religion? What exactly did they believe? Yes, of course they did things differently, they were foreign and Rikka knew that one should expect strange behaviour from foreigners, but then…

Then the phrase ‘cultural differences’ had very suddenly been demonstrable, and Rikka had realised that he’d never, ever come across any cultural difference of any kind before. And that was odd.

“This happened to you?” Shanarad chorused quietly, dragging Rikka’s mind back into the room. That was so weird.

“Yeah,” Rikka whispered back. “To everyone here, on your sixth birthday. I was dedicated into politics. I’m good with languages.”

“Impressive.” Shanarad glanced at each other. “We have priests who select our children to be melded. When they are three, though, rather than six.”

“Melded?” Rikka glanced at them in surprise. “You aren’t born like this?”

“No,” said Shanarad, shaking their heads in perfect unison. “We are chosen by the priests and matched up, according to our qualities.”

“How do they know?” Rikka asked, fascinated.

“How do your High Ministers know?” Shanarad asked. “They are your Wise People, like our priests.”

Ah, yes. The High Ministers. The glue that held Akonan society together, that chose the futures its people would receive, whose sanctity of Akonan culture was the closest thing Rikka’s people had to a religion, and whom he’d sneaked Shanarad in to see when they would be performing their most sacred of duties that no one was allowed to see. Shanarad appeared to have really brought out the devil in Rikka.

Except now he was really having second thoughts.

The enormous door to the chamber opened below them, and a pair of musicians stepped out and played a small fanfare. Rikka’s fingers clenched the balcony’s guard rail tightly, the skin on his knuckles whitening. Here it was, then. No going back. Unless he dived Shanarad to the floor quickly before they saw anything, of course, but somehow Shan’s impressively muscled frame acted as a deterrent.

Behind the musicians the shadows in the doorway moved, and three Akonan High Ministers stepped into the chamber, faces painted bone-white and crimson robes swirling; and Shanarad’s gasp seemed to Rikka to fill the whole Centre, bouncing and echoing off every surface. He jumped violently and leapt away from the balcony, staring about them for non-existent enforcers he was sure were about to come swooping in at any moment.

“What is it?” Rikka whispered tersely, nerves jangling; but Shanarad could only stare in stunned disbelief, jaws dropped as the first Mediation began –

The gong sounded, and jarred Rikka awake. He’d fallen asleep, he realised stupidly. He hadn’t meant to do that. Had he really been that tired? Maybe he was ill from sitting in a hospital.

He certainly felt sick as he pushed himself up onto his feet, but then, he always felt sick if he slept out of routine. Rikka liked routines. They helped him define the world. Even weirder than Shanarad having two bodies, he felt, was their complete lack of system or procedure in their lives. They had an utter disregard for things like set times of day in which to eat, or sleep or pray or anything else; they didn’t know how to queue to save their combined life; and, of course, nothing was too weird or unnecessary to say.

Stretching awkwardly to get the kinks out of his back, Rikka glanced out of the small window the room used for light and saw the last few Hasyolans heading home. It was a long process: every time they met another dyad or pair they had to stop and talk to them. Which, on reflection, explained the small size of the city, Rikka realised. The Hasyolans would probably take three days just to walk from one end of a Main Level to the other. They were absolute menaces to the Anti-Congestion Laws.

Carefully, Rikka folded up the dirty clothes he’d worn for the last week and pushed them into his backpack to fester at the bottom. He’d been looking forward to getting them washed once they’d reached the city, but it struck him that if they had to use Shanarad’s masterful getaway plan he’d have no time to get his clothes back. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to flee the country for a day or so; quite apart from getting clean clothes, Rikka hadn’t realised just how much he valued mattresses. He finished packing, dressed to go, sat on the edge of the small bed and waited.

After half an hour, the streets outside were finally clear and Rikka heard a very quiet knocking on his room door. He opened it and Narad winked at him, beckoning him with a finger on her lips to follow her. Silently, they crept out past the darkened, curtained cubicles containing pairs of sick-beds, and Rikka resisted the urge to hold his breath lest there was anything airborne and contagious around him. Really, whether he caught any illness or not, it didn’t seem to matter. He was going to need a week just to let his nerves recover.

They were almost at the archway out of the hospital when Narad grabbed his arm suddenly and pulled him into the shadows. Rikka glanced down at her. He couldn’t hear or see anyone around, but then, that assessment included Shan. It was very possible that he was hidden somewhere outside and watching the doorway for them. After about a minute of waiting, they heard the shuffling of feet, and a dyad wearing medical uniforms on both bodies came in, laden down with bundles of some sort of long, grass-like plant. They carried their load through the room and into the back of the building, presumably to the storerooms, and Rikka and Narad slipped quietly outside.

The moons were bright, both approaching full, and they turned the otherwise short scurry to the squat Temple building into simultaneously the longest and shortest scurry of Rikka’s life. The light made him feel exposed, and he stared mistrustfully at the tiny houses they passed, certain that every window contained two voyeuristic faces eager and waiting to leap out and demand of them what exactly they thought they were doing. It never happened; but all the same, Rikka was extremely glad when they reached the doorway to the Temple and could hide in the shadow of the carved lintel.

They were odd carvings, actually, at once familiar and foreign to Rikka, but nerves and impatience made him push them out of his mind and face Shanarad. Both bodies were wearing a mingled look of reluctance and deep unhappiness as they stared up at the Temple doorway, and Rikka sympathised. Showing them the Akonan Mediation ceremony had been treason on his part; but this would be heresy for Shanarad. The High Ministers were governmental. The Priests were religious.

“It’s not too late, you know,” Rikka whispered as quietly as he could. “We don’t have to do this.”

“No,” Shanarad murmured back, summoning a look of determination from somewhere. “We do. And you know that. We have to know.”

Which was true, but the gravity of the situation, combined with the lack of any sort of planning to follow - and therefore the lack of a safety net - was suddenly weighing very heavily on Rikka’s mind, now that they were about to commit themselves. He glanced about the deserted city one more time. It was so silent and peaceful. Would that change tonight? Was Rikka about to make the good people of Hasyol form a pitch-fork wielding mob who would be after their blood for heresy? What even was the punishment for heresy here? Maybe it was to have people go and sit in your house; foreigners were weird.

Of course, Rikka thought slyly as Shanarad eased the door open softly and began to slip inside, forming a mob would involve them all coming into contact with one another. Knowing the Hasyolans they’d end up chatting inanely about whose melds hadn’t quite worked and whether all the recent rain was good for the harvest, rather than actually forming said angry mob. That was comforting.

He slid through the door and stopped, allowing his culturally-retarded mind a few seconds to catch up with his senses. The Temple was as alien a place as Rikka had ever seen, as different from the Akonan Edifices as water from stone. He was accustomed to splendour; marble and gold and painted plaster, coloured windows and all the bigger the better. Here, they were standing in a low corridor, the floor blanketed in a thick sand-like dust that swallowed all sound and seemed to dry out the air. An overpowering smell of spicy incense assailed Rikka’s nose and throat, making his eyes water and leaving him wanting to cough. The walls were a simple, rough plaster affair, uneven and cobbled in places, although it was hard to be sure; the only lighting was a pathetic attempt from a string of stuttering rush-lights set at intervals along the walls at head height, which dazzled Rikka more than if they’d simply been in the dark.

But, someone had made an attempt at decoration. The carved marks from the doorway were painted onto the walls in an elegant tumult of line and colour. Rikka quickly decided he didn’t like them. As he turned his head the light played tricks on him, and the paintings seemed to move on the edges of his vision. Probably, he thought, because they were Religious paintings; religions always seemed to be trying to freak out their followers in some way.

Shanarad set off in front of him and Rikka very quickly found that walking on the sandy stuff was hard work, more so without vision. Shanarad, of course, seemed fine. Did having two bodies afford one twice the balance? If so, he seriously had to grow another body, especially if Travelling was going to be his life now. And that seemed likely, since he was a treasonous heretic. Maybe he should learn to run faster, too. A hidden piece of spitefully jutting flooring tripped him up, and Rikka elected to simply lay a hand on Shanarad’s shoulder in the absence of having a second body himself.

They continued for what felt like far too long, considering the size of the Temple from the outside. After a while they reached a staircase and Shanarad paused, looking back along the corridor in confusion.

“There should have been three doorways by now,” they murmured uneasily. “They must have been removed while we were away.”

“Ah.” Rikka sighed, dread settling in like lead. “You don’t know the layout of the building any more, then.”

“No,” Shanarad muttered. “We’re sorry, Rikka. We didn’t expect this.”

Both bodies placed a hand each on Rikka’s arm, still holding Narad’s shoulder, and he felt oddly comforted. Despite how weird he still considered double-bodied entities to be, they were wonderfully companionable.

“It’s fine,” Rikka told them, forcing a smile. “It’s not like we had a plan anyway. We still just need to wander aimlessly until we find a priest.”

They squeezed his arm briefly and let go. “Onwards, then?” Shanarad chorused.

“Might as well,” Rikka said, peering down the stairs into the gloom. “Are the paintings getting thicker, by the way, or is it just me?”

“They are getting thicker,” Shanarad informed him. “Do they bother you?”

“They’re giving me a headache,” Rikka said, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. “Well, them and the smell and the lights combined. I keep thinking they’re moving.”

“You’re meant to,” Shanarad said as they began the descent. “It’s an illusion, we think.”

Rikka stopped himself from questioning that. Until Akona, this had very much been Shanarad’s religion, their system of belief and way of looking at the world. They had probably believed for years that the paintings were moving. As they picked their way down the uneven staircase, Rikka thought he could see them watching the paintings, faces unreadable.

They were almost at the bottom of the staircase when Shanarad suddenly did a double take at one marking and leapt backwards, almost trampling Rikka’s foot.

“What?” he hissed, staring around wildly and shuffling his feet back. “What is it?”

“That symbol,” Shanarad said quietly, voices thick with dread. “That’s us.”

“You?”

Rikka stared at the strange fresco. The offending mark was a symmetrical swirl of line and colour, almost like a stylised depiction of a tree. Narad reached out one hesitant arm to touch it, and Shan grabbed her wrist, stopping her. It was the freakiest thing Rikka had seen them do yet; hearing them speak independently had actually been weird, now that he understood them, but he’d never seen them behave independently like that. Evidently they were in two minds on this, and somehow it scared him.

He crept closer. “What do you mean, ‘you’?” Rikka whispered.

“We have marks,” Shanarad stated. “Birth-marks. They aren’t especially clear when we’re born, but they become so after melding, particularly among dyads. Dyads’ marks become the same, in fact. Just reversed.”

“Like Brekallan,” Rikka breathed, remembering the patterning beside their eyes he’d tried so hard not to stare at.

“Yes.” Shanarad was clearly distressed, voices rising. “When the birth-marks are overlapped, you have the symbol for that person.”

Narad tore her arm from Shan’s grip and pulled her sleeve up to her elbow, brandishing her forearm. Even in the weak light Rikka could see her birth-mark. It was like a crescent with branches.

“You see?” Shanarad said. “This is us! We are on this wall! But we don’t know how!”

How, indeed? Rikka’s heart was thudding painfully in his chest, and he fought his suddenly overly-dry throat to swallow.

“Could it have been painted on when you were melded?” he asked quietly. Shanarad shook their heads.

“The marks evolve. This is current.”

“Is anyone else here?” Rikka asked. His mind was racing. “On the wall, I mean.”

“No!” Narad scrubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes as Shan double-checked the walls around them. “It’s just us! But how?”

“Right.” Rikka stared at the crawling fresco. “Okay. That’s incredibly creepy, I can see that. We have one minute to be scared.”

Shanarad lapsed obediently into silence and they all stood unspeaking, looking up and down the staircase and back at the symbol on the wall. Did the priests know they were coming, then? Rikka wondered. Was this a message? A warning? Or simply a coincidence? Thinking about it, options one and two were probably fairly likely. They must somehow have known when Shanarad left that they’d come back asking questions. Maybe the painting was meant to be intimidating. Which, in fairness, it was, so they’d done their jobs if so…

But if the priests here did know they were coming, they would be walking into a trap.

Crap. This wasn’t going as planned. Although, probably if they had planned it it would be going considerably better, actually. People didn’t plan enough.

The minute passed, and they all looked at each other, strengthening their resolve.

“Okay,” Rikka said. “Let’s move on, yes?”

“Yes.” Shanarad’s determination was back, and with a final glance at the symbol on the wall they pressed on, moving to the bottom of the staircase, albeit rather more hesitantly than when they’d started.

The stairs deposited them into a distinctly abbreviated two-metre long corridor where the walls were so thick with paintings they were almost black. A solid-looking door greeted them, and Rikka bit his lip. If that door was locked, they were going to have problems. He’d never seen an onomatopoeic object before; it exuded words like ‘solid’ and ‘impregnable’ out of every grain in the wood.

“Will it be locked?” Rikka whispered, eyeing the massive iron plate nailed to the door.

“No,” Shanarad murmured uncertainly. “At least, it shouldn’t be. Locks are… exclusive.”

“Antisocial,” Rikka offered with a small smile. “That would be sinful. In a temple and everything.”

Shanarad forced a pair of weak smiles onto their faces, and stepped forward, palms up and facing out as if to greet someone. They placed their hands onto the iron and, with one last glance at Rikka, they pushed gently at the door.

It trembled in a most non-impregnable way that left Rikka feeling almost disappointed and shrank backwards a few inches, before sliding noiselessly sideways into the wall. They all froze, squinting into the dim light through the doorway. Blackness seemed to be on the other side; a room so big that the pathetic best efforts of the rush-lights didn’t stand an ironic prayer. Barely visible a metre through the doorway was a balcony guard rail, apparently a solid half-wall in the Temple instead of an actual rail. Rikka remembered Akona and fought the urge to laugh maniacally at the symmetry.

“Come.” Shanarad whispered. They stepped through, and leaned out over the balcony wall.

At first, Rikka could only see black and the burned-on after images from the rush-lights as they slowly faded. Even Shanarad was barely visible next to him. They didn’t speak. Rikka stared down, widening his eyes as far as he could. There was something down there, he was sure of it; as his vision acclimatised he could just about make out something pale and circular directly below them.

In fact… Now that he looked, Rikka could vaguely see a few more. Maybe they were floor decorations of some kind. How far down even was the floor? Impossible to say in the dark, really, although his vision was clearing faster now, so he would probably be able to tell in another minute. Rikka squinted, hard. It looked like there were tiny pin-pricks of light between the pale areas, like minute candle flames or lit match-sticks.

Rikka was about to ask Shanarad what they thought when he heard their sharp intake of conjoined breath and murmured Hasyolan curse. He tensed, straightening up hurriedly to look at them.

“What?” he hissed. “What is it?”

“It’s them,” they breathed.

Rikka felt his stomach drop into his feet and he looked back over the wall. How could they tell? It was so dark it was difficult to be sure; all Rikka could see still were the pale circles and those tiny little beads of light…

…Which flared suddenly and grew, becoming a pale, sickly white glow that threw illumination and shadow everywhere across the chamber, and Rikka bit back a yell.

He’d thought he could see something pale down there; floor decorations, he’d thought. The white-painted faces of the Priests stared up at them, waiting in silence.