The Voice of Voices
C rushing, suffocating . . .
Stone pressed against Alton from all angles, threatened to pulverize his bones. He could not breathe and panic surged through him.
Darkness. He could see nothing.
Did the guardians hate him so much that they had decided to kill him by crushing and entombing him?
Be easy, Green Rider, came a voice, or many voices in unison.
How could he, he wondered, with all this weight against his chest suffocating him?
But then it felt as if the stone contracted, gave him more space to breathe, and no longer pressed on him. However, it remained contoured around his body. He wiggled and writhed, but was stuck, and his panic began to rise again.
Easy, Green Rider.
“Who are you?” he demanded. His lips brushed granite as he spoke.
Enter the stone as you would from within a tower.
He wasn’t in stone already? But he knew what the voice meant. He settled mind and body as much as he could under the circumstances, and sent his mind into stone.
The space his mind traveled in was cavernous and fluid, broken by the familiar structures of granite: pearly pink feldspar, chunky columns of hornblende, and clusters of branching quartz crystal.
It occurred to him that he was seeing inside stone at the most minuscule of perspectives.
But, to some ex tent it had to be illusion, for these elements of mineral and crystal were bound together.
Molten magma, came the voice or voices, in the time before time, cooled into the granite you know and created the formations.
“Who are you?” he asked.
He was familiar with the song of the guardians that maintained the magical essence of the wall, as well as the beat, like a stoneworker’s hammer, keeping the song in rhythm.
Aside from his late cousin, Pendric, who had merged with the wall east of the breach, he’d never been addressed directly in this manner.
Light glittered in the cavern, a flurry of sparkles that coalesced into a roughly humanlike form. It appeared female, but was entirely translucent crystal. This was a completely new experience for him when it came to the wall.
“Green Rider Deyer,” she said in a voice underlain by a chorus of others. Her words reverberated off the crystal formations and made his ears tingle back in his body.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I am the Voice of Voices. I am the union of all guardians who were sundered from those on the other side of the breach.”
“I understand,” he replied. “You speak on behalf of the guardians this side of the breach.”
“We are the guardians between the breach and the null tower. We speak as one.”
“You mean Tower of the Earth? You can’t reach the guardians beyond the tower?”
“This is correct,” she replied.
He’d have been more fascinated by all this were he not concerned about his body being fossilized somewhere in the wall.
“Why have you trapped me in here?” he asked. “If you want to kill me, just do it.”
The Voice of Voices did not speak for a while, and he wondered if she were consulting with the rest of the guardians before responding.
Presently, she replied, “If sacrifice to the wall is your desire, we will accommodate you.”
“You misunderstand me,” he said. “Sacrifice is definitely not what I desire.”
Her features lacked detail, and her nature so alien she was difficult to read.
“We did not think so,” she replied. “We would welcome you for we seek new blood, but your sacrifice could prove counterproductive.”
Back in his body, he shuddered. He was relieved they did not intend to sacrifice him, but the ominous words about their desire to obtain fresh blood was worrisome.
“We have drawn you in,” the Voice said, “because the wall grows more frail with every passing day.”
“I am doing my best,” Alton said. “We’ve lost the old ways, and we discovered that the only way to fix the wall is with more sacrifices. Even if that was an acceptable solution, there are too few magic users left in the world in this day and age.”
“So the failure of the wall that will cost hundreds of thousands of lives as opposed to a few is the better alternative?”
“You are suggesting an impossible choice. How many lives were sacrificed to build this wall? A war’s worth of casualties, that’s how many. The man who created the magic of this wall was a terrible person, a murderer.”
“Theanduris Silverwood,” the Voice said in an almost whisper. “He was a necromancer.”
“Yes, and he left us vulnerable because there are so few left who possess magical abilities, and of those who do, our magic is minor, a distinct disadvantage when it comes to facing a powerful foe like Mornhavon the Black.”
“Still, even one life—”
“One life?” he asked. “I thought it was counterproductive to sacrifice me.”
“The other Deyer. Young blood of the line will—”
“My brother? Who were you,” he demanded, “before they sacrificed you to the wall?”
His words seemed to take her aback. She drifted, her crystalline form agleam. “We must—”
“Who were you?” he asked. “Were you a baker? A farmer? Maybe you worked in a shop or tended a family?”
“I—We are guardians.” She appeared perplexed.
“You were an individual once,” he said, “before you were a guardian, before they took a knife to you.”
“We—”
“No. You. The individual.”
The Voice of Voices fell silent again. In the background, the song of the guardians continued on. Whether she was consulting with the others, or thinking back trying to remember her life of a thousand years ago, he could not say.
“We— I . . .” she said. “I was a Green Rider.”
Her answer chilled him.
“I was a Green Rider,” she said again, but with more confidence.
“It is why I was chosen to be the Voice of Voices to speak with you.” She leveled her gaze at him—not that she had actual eyes.
“I remember someone espied me moving my gear with my mind. We were encamped with the soldiers of the Fifth. The spy informed the Black Shields, and they took me and questioned me. They wanted to know if any other Green Riders had magic. I was strong and resolute. I denied that any other Green Riders had magic despite the torture. It was just me. Even Silverwood could not break me.”
“You saved lives,” he said. “The Green Riders have done important work for Sacoridia over the centuries. If you had not defied Silverwood and the Black Shields, the realm would have fallen to despots and invaders.”
“One life for the many. A small sacrifice.”
“Did you want to die?”
“No.”
He was determined to make her recall her humanity. If they were to understand one another, he must make her—all of them—see that sacrifice was not an option.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“We are guardians. We are one.”
“What was your name before they sacrificed you?”
“I can’t...We can’t...”
He sensed the turmoil in her and the agitation of the other guardians. “Your name, Green Rider.”
“We are not a Green Rider.”
“Once a Green Rider, always a Green Rider,” he shot back. “I order you to speak your name, Rider.” He had no idea if hierarchy meant anything in the world of the guardians, but it was worth a try.
She flailed. “I do not remember.”
He did not believe her. “What was your horse’s name?”
The crystalline structures vibrated with her distress. “I’d two. Bastard and Itch.”
He almost laughed. They were strange names for messenger horses, but it had been a different time. The Riders of old used any horses they could get their hands on. They hadn’t access to the special horses that present-day Riders rode.
“My horse’s name is Night Hawk,” he told her. “I go by Alton. What was your name? If you can remember Bastard and Itch, surely you can remember your own.”
“We do not—”
“Your name, Rider. Give me your name.”
The stone around his body pressed threateningly on him.
“Stop!” she ordered.
At first he didn’t realize she was talking to the guardians and not him. After a moment, the pressure of stone on him eased.
“I was Charmayn. Aye, Charmayn Leed of the Westerfold.”
There was more of an inflection to her tone as she spoke, an accent. He did not know of a Westerfold, but place names changed over time and he was unlikely to find it on current maps.
“My parents were fisher folk,” she said, “when they weren’t soldiering. They were killed by the forces of the Dark One when I was eleven.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I had them longer than most. I was soon sent to the orphan camps and forced to work the forge that made arrowheads. Then I was called. I never knew peace, only war.”
The Long War, and what came after, was a dark part of Sacoridia’s history. The invasion by Mornhavon and his Arcosian forces had set them back centuries, and Charmayn Leed had suffered many sacrifices, no doubt, before ever being forced to give herself to the wall.
“I was Charmayn Leed,” she said, as if surprised to hear herself say it.
“Rider Charmayn Leed,” he replied.
His effort to make her recall her individuality, however, came to naught.
“We must show you,” she said, “why sacrifice is necessary. You must follow.”
He wasn’t willing to give up on her just yet. “Lead on, Rider.”
They flowed through forests of branching crystals.
He could not say which way they went, up or down, forward, or backward.
He simply followed her light and trusted all would be well.
Pounding vibrations soon rocked their passage.
It was not in sync with the rhythm of the guardians, but random and visceral.
She brought him to the rim of a vast, jagged canyon. It shuddered under the pounding and a sick feeling rose in his gut back in his body.
“This is inside the Blackveil side of the wall, isn’t it?” he said.
“It is. The Dark One’s servants have been attempting to chip at the wall. We are holding best as we can, but there is damage from the null tower.”
“How so?”
“The great mage who resided there used powerful magics within. Spells of protection. However, those spells have eroded this section of wall. Weakened it. The Dark One has seen an opportunity to attack.”
How had he not known this? “Why haven’t you told me before now?”
“This attack is recent. You do not often connect with us.”
“That’s not true,” but as soon as he said it, he knew it was. “I was injured, almost died, and recuperated away from the wall.” He did not add that upon his return, he had largely spent his time at Tower of the Heavens.
“We are cut off from the wall to the east by the breach, and to the west by the null tower. There is no mage to mind the tower. It isolates us. Our unity is sundered. The neglect by wall keepers has endangered all.”
“The wall keepers have been gone for centuries,” he replied. “I am, as far as I know, the only one who can connect directly with you.”
“The other Deyer,” the Voice said.
“I’m working with him to—”
A thunderous hammer blow rattled the formations around them.
Clustered columns of hornblende shattered and fell into the canyon.
Duncan, Alton thought, needed to extinguish Haurris’ spells so they did not erode the wall further, but doing so would just open another way for dark Sleepers to cross over into Sacoridia.
After another deafening blow, Alton, in reflex, shielded the area with his ability. It muffled the pounding and stabilized the area.
The Voice of Voices, once a Green Rider named Charmayn, drew into herself, did not speak. Alton focused on maintaining his shield.
“We approve,” she said after a while. “You will stay and shield the wall.”
“I cannot hold my ability for long,” he said. “And I cannot stay.”
“You will then be sacrificed,” she replied, “and your brother.”
“Rider—” he began.
“Rider Charmayn Leed is dead. We are guardians. Individuality is disunity. Disunity will cause the wall to fail.”
“There must be some other way.” His body already felt the strain of holding the shield. The hammer blows slammed into him physically.
The Voice shed sudden sparkles of light and Alton perceived a change in her attitude. When he realized why, his scream reverberated among all the crystals and through a vast swath of the wall.