Chapter 1

Zaidna

The Empire of Judath

The City of Marin

Whenever the goddess Naltena spoke of Zaidna, she always described the planet as a perfect round opal when viewed from the heavens.  In her opinion, Zaidna was unmatched among worlds in its beauty, with turquoise oceans, blackened mountain peaks, and lush green forests and jungles framing every inch of its surface.

But Kirin had a hard time imagining that her world was really as wonderful as the goddess had described.  Of course, she thought, picking distractedly at her ear, she had never seen it from the Mother Star like the goddess had.  All Kirin could ever see from the windows of her home was a mass of white spires topped with round domes.  And even if the spires of the city of Marin didn’t block her view, there was nothing more than boring green hills stretching well beyond the city walls.  Except for the Goddess Forest, of course.

Kirin flicked a dry piece of ear skin from her finger before looking back down at the large map of Zaidna smoothed out in front of her.  She absentmindedly rolled and unrolled a corner of the map with one hand.  Maybe the world wasn’t completely dull.  Kirin’s home continent of Judath was definitely boring, but what she knew of the other two continents seemed much more interesting.

The voice of her bald-headed instructor, Batem, droned on in the background, and Kirin glanced lazily around at the rest of her classmates seated in various positions on the floor.  She had heard this lecture dozens of times before.  Maybe they were all slightly different, but she already knew most of this stuff and could already perform almost all of the ormé patterns required in this class, so why bother paying attention?  She tapped the center of the map in time with her thoughts.  Tetrahedrons for ice.  Mix in extra matter on top of the front face for more distance.  Add an extra five seconds for sleet.  She scowled.

“Kirin!”

Kirin gasped and looked up.

“Put that map away, please!”  Batem glared at her from the front of the room.

Kirin scooted back a little from the low table, shifting her weight on the taffeta pillow beneath her.  She hurriedly rolled up the map, accidentally tearing it in the process.  Shit.  She’d have to figure out how to mend the parchment later.  “Forgive me, Batem,” she murmured as she pushed the torn and slightly crumpled map aside.

Batem approached.  He was clad, as all priests were, in long, black robes and a sash made from the whitest silk.  The fabric looked so soft and filmy; it must have felt nice.  “Lost in your thoughts again?” Batem asked.

“I’m sorry,” Kirin muttered quickly.

Batem shook his head and chuckled.  “There’s nothing to be sorry about, Kirin.”  His voice was very high-pitched for a man, but was average for a priest.  Every Naltite priest, upon taking a final oath to dedicate his life to the service of the goddess, was castrated in an effort to become more like her.

Batem bent low, closer to Kirin’s eye level.  His long eshtan earlobes, a racial trait that Kirin shared, were exceptionally saggy due to his advanced age.  They brushed across his shoulders, dangling like small, empty wineskins.  “It’s only natural for you to daydream, Kirin.  You are a daughter of the ninth house, after all.  To become lost in thought is simply what those of your house do.  Isn’t that right, acolytes?”  He turned around and strolled back to the front of the room.

Kirin frowned.  Because she was born beneath the ninth house of ormé, she dreamed far more often than most girls, sometimes even when she was awake.  It made her much more proficient at wielding the power of ormé, but it also made it nearly impossible for her to concentrate on—well, anything to do with other subjects in school, really.  It could always be worse, though.  People born under the first house of ormé never dreamt and couldn’t even make a spark of light using ormé.  But even that was better than being a bestial lesser race, like padus or sazis, who weren’t blessed with the gift of ormé at all and were mostly stupid to boot.  Only the three high races—the eshtans, the engstaxis, and the dalanais—were invited to make their covenants with Naltena all those centuries before, and in turn Naltena blessed each of their children to come forth under one of the ten houses of ormé.

It was mostly members of the noble castes who were born under the highest houses of ormé, but occasionally a child of a high house was born in the common castes, too.  Kirin’s mother and father were both born beneath the eighth house, so it wasn’t too surprising that she ended up being born under the ninth, even though she was the only one she knew of in Judath.  She once heard her father swear up and down that some of the engstaxis up in Xeshun were trying to selectively breed their own children to be born under the ninth house, or even higher, but—

“Kirin!”  Batem’s shout cut through Kirin’s wandering thoughts yet again.

Kirin pushed away the map, which had somehow found its way back into her hands.

“I realize this might be elementary for you,” Batem chided gently, “but since the others have already had their turns today, it is time for your examination.  I trust that won’t be a problem?”

Kirin blinked.  Had everyone already gone up in front of the class and performed their exercises?  How could she not have noticed?  Kirin jumped to her sandaled feet and scrambled up to Batem’s side.

“Well, now, which sequence shall we have you follow today?”  Batem asked, eagerly flexing his knobby index fingers together in front of his chest.

Kirin looked out at the other students and immediately felt a familiar wave of jealousy.  Since they were in a temple in Marin—which was the main temple in Judath, at that—almost all her classmates were eshtans.  They had the same long earlobes as Kirin and Batem, but aside from that and the darker complexions that they all shared, the color of their hair and eyes were wildly different.  Peering back at her were sets of turquoise, gold, and citrine eyes, amongst others.  By contrast, Kirin’s eyes were about as brown as her skin, and her long hair was also a dull brown.  At least she wasn’t bald like Batem.  But still, for an eshtan to be so physically monochromatic—

“Are you still with us, Kirin?” Batem asked, snapping his fingers at her.

Kirin sucked in a breath and nodded.  “Um, yes.”

“Once again, would you please start with a demonstration of water?” Batem urged.

Kirin sighed.  Liquids were her least favorite type of matter formations.  They required a huge amount of concentration to maintain, which was already hard enough for her to do in normal circumstances.  But she was a daughter of the ninth house so she had no excuses.

Kirin shut her eyes and willed herself to relax, shooing away all the random thoughts in her head.  When she opened her eyes, she shifted her focus—just slightly—and at once she saw little sparks of golden light appear throughout the room.  In the air, the particles flowed free like yellow-white glitter; in the people and walls, they held in latticed patterns.  Batem always said that shifting focus to see primal matter was one step closer to seeing the world as the goddess could, just in a more basic form.

As more and more golden specks became visible, she actively ignored all but the sparkles floating in the air directly in front of her face.  She raised a hand and began molding the primal matter with her fingertips, drawing in the half-invisible grains of light.  She manipulated the particles like clay, kneading them until she created a thin string.  Then, when the moment was right, she tapped a single particle of light at the end, and the entire string coalesced into water.  As the primal matter became visible in its new form, she heard Batem and the students begin to clap politely.

But she couldn’t let the applause distract her, since the configurations of liquids were unstable and easy to lose control over.  She concentrated on keeping the glowing specks and strings flowing into an ever-morphing blob of water, fighting against the gravity that was constantly trying to pull her creation to the floor.

“Well done!” Batem declared.  “That is an excellent sphere of water.  Now let’s change that water into—oh, I don’t know—steam?”

Kirin did as she was instructed, raising her other hand and poking the ball of water with an outstretched finger.  The ball burst immediately, and fine water vapor filled the space, which she willed to orbit around her hand in a warm mist.

“Good!  Now convert it into light,” Batem challenged.

The corners of Kirin’s lips turned up into a faint smile.  Creating light was too easy.  Even small children could do it with just a little instruction.  She released the vapors, allowing them to condense into a liquid once more, before smashing her hand into the resulting blob, causing the water to dissolve back into softly glowing primal matter.  She sent the matter flying inward, guiding the tiny particles to collide with each other in a large chain reaction.  This created a perfect orb of white light, which pulsated just above Kirin’s fingertips and lit up the room with the softness of moonlight.

There was more polite clapping.  “Now,” Batem said, addressing the group.  “Everything Kirin has demonstrated today is something all of you will eventually be able to do, but as I’ve mentioned before, her house gives her a natural advantage in manipulating ormé that very few could hope to match, including myself.  So take note of the precision of her movements and remember that we are aiming for accuracy rather than speed.”

Kirin blushed.  Batem had always been encouraging, but this was bordering on flattery.

“We are not done just yet, Kirin.”  A sly grin curled Batem’s wrinkled lips.  “I know you have studied some more complex patterns, so let us try a little experiment.  Please, if you would, I’d like you to form a stone about the size of my fist in the air, and while you are doing so, recite one of the mantras of the goddess.”

Kirin extinguished the light that still hovered above her fingertips and looked worriedly at the floor.  She knew plenty about the old texts but had a terrible time reciting anything, much less on command or while working a pattern.

Batem made a rolling gesture with his hands.  “Layers, remember?  Build the pattern out from its smallest point.”

Kirin tried not to frown.  Forming the pattern was easy, but even picking an appropriate mantra was hard.  She knew the mantra of creation well enough, but didn’t know it word for word.  What about the recitation of Naltena’s ascension?  That eluded her, too.  Ugh, after four years of study at the temple, she should be able to spit out something!

Batem cleared his throat impatiently.

Damn it!  “You can do this,” she mumbled to herself as she shifted focus once more.  She might not have been able to recite one of the mantras verbatim, but she could probably summarize one.  That could be good enough, right?

She caught a point of primal matter floating in the air and began using other particles to inundate it, building a flow of energy.  “Uh, so we eshtans and the other high races.  We fought each other in wars for—for thousands of years—” Kirin stumbled over her words as she found her pattern turning to mush in her hands, the configuration unraveling each time primal matter shifted in and out of her view.  “But the fighting stopped when Naltena and her twin brother, Anoth, showed up from the Mother Star to create order.  But then Anoth tried to blow everything up—I mean, not literally blow up everything—but to stop the wars by just blowing up the people causing them, the chieftains that were around before the emperors.  They blew up.  Um, then when they were gone we started worshiping them.  Worshiping Naltena and Anoth, I mean, not the dead chieftains.  But then Naltena and Anoth really started fighting with each other and we all split sides and . . . .”

Kirin’s face grew hot as she realized her classmates were snickering at her.  As she finally completely lost focus, her pattern, now just a malformed clod of dirt, dropped down into her palm, where it broke apart and fell into scattering pebbles at her feet.

“Well,” Batem mused.  “As we can see, it is difficult to work ormé with one’s concentration divided, even for one so talented.”  He smiled wryly.  “We might benefit from a little brush up on our history lessons as well, yes?  But not to worry; this was still a useful demonstration!”

Humiliated, Kirin wiped her hands clean on her skirt and began to scurry back to the safety of her seat.

“One more thing!” Batem called, interrupting Kirin’s escape.  “Let’s take a moment to inspect that oil lamp.”

Kirin looked up at the metallic oil lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling, and the rest of the class looked up as well.  What was all this about?

“Take careful note of the flames and the shadows they cast around them.  Many unversed in ormé might say that the shadows are formed by the absence of light, and that light is formed by the absence of shadow, and indeed that may seem to be so in normal focus.  With primal matter, we Naltites are keenly aware of the light, but have you noticed the other particles floating around just out of view?  Where you might squint and still can’t quite make them out?”

Kirin looked around at her enraptured classmates, who were silently clinging to Batem’s every word.  They all knew exactly what he was referring to.  Just as the Naltites learned to view and manipulate particles of light, the Anotites, or those who followed Anoth after the Great Exodus, could similarly view and manipulate particles of shadow matter.  Both the light and shadow particles existed in all natural configurations of matter, but for some reason Naltites only ever wanted to discuss the light matter that they could see and manipulate.  Batem was breaking several unspoken rules by even hinting at the existence of shadow matter, so Kirin felt just as eager as her classmates to hear what juicy information he was about to share with them.

“Now, we’ve just seen Kirin demonstrate how to make a globe of light,” Batem continued.  “So, let’s conduct a final experiment for the day.  Let’s see if she can use primal matter to make pure shadow.”

Kirin’s excitement instantly muted.  “I . . . don’t think I can do that.”