Chapter One
A Light in the Void
A terror lurked under the mountain, a creature of tentacles and wrath. He desired the souls of little girls, and tonight Mia would sate his appetite.
"I must be brave, I must be brave," she mumbled to herself like a chant. "I must be brave."
She had been locked in this cell for days. Maybe weeks. Purifying herself. Awaiting her great sacrifice. Time flowed strangely here. There was no window. No light. Nothing but stone. A little cube carved out from the rock, three steps across, that was all, and the ceiling was so low Mia could reach up and feel the mold. A tomb. Every once in a while, a hatch clanked open near the floor. Dim light glowed. Somebody slid in a bowl of porridge, a cup of tea, and a fresh chamber pot. Mia never saw their faces, only hands gloved in white. And then the hatch would close. The light would die.
Did they come once a day? Twice? Three times? She didn't know. The food was always the same. A bowl of gruel. The tea was bitter and lukewarm. But they told Mia that beyond the void, she would feed on honeydew and the nectar of the gods. That she would praise the voidminds with the other honorable girls. That with her purity, she would bring another year of peace to Hypnos. Another year of harvest that did not mutate, clean water that did not burn the gut, and no radiation from the sky.
"It's an honor," her mother had told her. "Our family is truly blessed."
Yet as the voidgazers had led Mia to this cell, Mother had cried.
Mia was only nine years old, but she understood many things. She was good at slinking through shadows, hiding in corners, and eavesdropping. The adults joked that she had antennae on her head, that she picked up everything. She heard that Mother was dying the slow death of the sun. The same radiation had killed Father last year. The poison came from the sky, mutated crops, and changed those who played outside the domes. Mia remembered how Father had wilted, shrinking until he was skin and bones, and as his body withered, the cancer inside him grew. A cancer was a creature from the sun. An alien that infected your body and spread out tentacles. It drank the poison in the rain, and it ate your flesh.
The wise ones often chose orphans for the sacrifice. Why sacrifice a girl who had parents to love her? The creature under the mountain demanded a little girl, but he didn't care which little girl. So long as she was young. So long as she could worship him, travel with him to a land of honeydew and nectar. A land where the sun did not burn, where no cancer grew, where she could praise him under the blue sky. When Mia learned her mother was dying, she had known what that meant.
She was alone. She was loved by none. She was a sacrifice. Honored. Blessed. So why was she now crying?
A key rattled in the door. Mia pushed her empty dishes and full chamber pot toward the hatch, waiting for them to be replaced. But this time it wasn't the little hatch that opened. It was the entire stone door.
Light flooded the cell. Mia squinted and covered her eyes. It burned.
Fabric rustled. The scent of rose petals wafted into the cell, mingling with the stench of the chamber pot. A masculine voice spoke, as deep as this pit, as soft and soothing as velvet.
"It's been sixteen days, little one. Like the sixteen arms of Mezmeron. Have you been praying to our lord?"
Mia blinked in the light. A gangly man stood in the doorway, hooded and robed in black velvet. A bronze talisman hung from his steel necklace. The amulet was shaped like tentacles gripping a planet, an eye in its center. She recognized that symbol. A Planetary Embrace. And she recognized the man who wore it. Erafel. Worshipper of the Light in the Void.
"Mia." His voice remained soft. "Did your tongue wilt?"
"I prayed," she whispered. "I prayed so hard."
Erafel knelt before her and pulled back his hood, revealing a face so gaunt it was downright cadaverous. The cheekbones shoved against the skin, and the eyes peered from shadowy sockets. Old radiation scars ran down his left cheek. He had no eyebrows, no eyelashes. The sun had burned them away. But he still had long, gray hair that hung from his scalp like molted snakeskin. A powerful voidgazer, he spent too much time staring into the void, and that changed a man. He reached out a pale hand tipped with fingers that were too long. They had more joints and bones than fingers should, and their nails were sharp. Nails like claws. Each of those knobby fingers was the length of Mia's entire arm. They reminded her of spider legs. The terrible digits caressed her hair.
"Call me Father," he said. "You're a holy one now. You may address me as a voidgazer does."
She trembled under his touch. His fingertips were searing hot. Or were they icy cold? Mia could not tell. His nails scraped across her skin, raising steam. Or was it frost? Extreme heat and cold felt the same, and so did her terror and worship.
"Yes, Father," she whispered. "I prayed and I'm pure."
Fool! she told herself. Why did you say that?
She should say the opposite! Say she had not prayed. That she was not pure. Maybe they would let her go. Maybe they would find another orphan. Another unwanted girl to feed to the beast, one more pious than little Mia, the tinsmith's daughter. Why should it be her?
But where would she go? An impure girl. An orphan. Scars on her arms. She was already infected with sunlight. Already tainted, already changing. They would send her into the dark mines to toil for uranium, or worse—banish her into the sunlit wilderness outside the domes. She had seen what happened to those exiled. Seen the creatures they became, crawling in the dirt, pawing at the domes, begging with toothless mouths for scraps. Sometimes they ate one another. Sometimes they ate themselves.
"I must be brave," she whispered her chant. "I must be brave, I must be brave."
She thought of the realm beyond the void. A realm of honeydew and nectar and sunlight that did not burn. Her scars would heal and nothing would hurt, and at night stars would fill the sky.
Erafel took her hand in his. His strange four-jointed fingers coiled around her hand like serpents, trapping her. He led her down a stone corridor. The cell had been dark, but the corridor was bright and blinding.
Her purification was not complete. A staircase took them deep under the temple to a small white chamber. A pool of black water, not much larger than a bathtub, took up most of the floor space. A kosab—a pool for ritualistic purification, its water taken from the deepest underground wells. Erafel left Mia there in the care of nuns. The women, robed and masked, bathed Mia, scrubbing her until she was raw and red. When she was clean, they soothed her skin with herbs, and they anointed her with rose-petal oil.
"You are holy," they whispered, crimson tears in their eyes.
The nuns draped her with the finest robes of blood-red silk, painted her lips with crushed berries, and adorned her with precious metals and rubies. All the while, the nuns chanted and prayed, and the light reflected in their amulets.
Mia chanted with them. "Praise Mezmeron, who came from the void. Praise Ninazu who still tarries. Praise Ereshkigal in the center of creation. Praise the Light in the Void."
Over and over, they repeated those words. The words of the gods. Of the beings who came from beyond. Soon Mia would join them in their realm.
Finally she was purified, robed, perfumed, and ready for her journey. Erafel had waited outside the kosab chamber. Now he led Mia down a wider hall, swinging a bronze censer shaped like a squid. Mia's father had forged it before his death. He used to make such beautiful things. She followed Erafel, intoxicated by the scent of smoke, and the nuns walked at her sides, hands pressed together in silent prayer. They approached a heavy stone door, and for a moment, Mia thought they would lead her into another cell. That she was still impure. That she required another sixteen days in the darkness. But when Erafel opened the door, he revealed the sky.
The sun crackled, white and swirling like a cauldron of molten metal. Nemesis was a small sun. They said she was smaller than the sun back at Earth. But Mia had never been to Earth. All she knew was this cruel white light that burned her. This sun was small but too close, too bright, too vengeful. Even the dome around the colony did not always protect one from the curse of Nemesis. Planet Hypnos suffered punishing daylight to view the darkest of nights.
Erafel led her onto a balcony drenched in light. Mia's legs trembled, but she followed him bravely. She would be brave. She had promised. From up here, she could see most of the colony. A few streets of basalt cobblestones. Apartment blocks. The school and fire station. Several thousand lived here, and not all of them voidgazers. Some came here to worship but others merely to escape, hiding from Earth, hiding from their past, hiding from themselves in the blinding light and impossible darkness. Mia's parents had claimed this was a utopia. That the work they did here would bring about the Final Blessing. But to Mia, Hypnos was simply home, the only world she had ever known.
A crowd had gathered. It seemed the entire colony had come. They stared up at the balcony, silent. Not a cough, not even a murmur sounded. Even the strange birds who lived within the dome, naked things with black skin and faces that seemed oddly human, silenced their relentless caws. Uranium miners stared with jaundiced eyes, their skin charred. A woman shed a red tear. Children gazed with wide eyes, clutching the hands of their mothers. Mia knew those children. She knew them all. Her friends. Now they only stared at her as if staring at a wretched one. Were they jealous? Mother had said they would be. Mia looked across the crowd, seeking Mother, but she was not there. She was still bedridden most likely. Still sick from the sun. Maybe dead already.
Mia gazed at that sun. Nemesis crackled above the horizon like a blazing eye, staring like everyone else. Mia squinted, trying to see past the sunlight to the desert, the cursed lands beyond the domes. She wondered if the wretched ones crawled there. She wondered if her mother had been banished among them.
Erafel spoke to the crowd, his voice sudden and startling and shockingly loud.
"People of Hypnos! It is the summer solstice. For the past year, Mezmeron had blessed us. Our crops have grown strong. Fifteen of our babies were born with no deformities. Three acolytes spoke their vows, donned their robes, and became sworn voidgazers. Mezmeron has blessed us for our worship. And the time draws near when Ninazu will rise. The day will come, my children, when Mezmeron will call forth his father. And we will be the first to feel his blessings. Hail the Void!"
"Hail the Void, hail the Void!" the crowd chanted.
"A year ago," Erafel continued, "we sent a girl to Mezmeron so that she might teach him our ways. Now our lord demands a new sacrifice. We will gift him a daughter of Eve, and in return, he will bless us for another year."
A child in the crowd suddenly broke free from his mother. The boy ran closer to the balcony. Mia recognized him. Berl, the son of a blind seamstress. A friend. Perhaps her only friend.
"How many more years of this?" the boy demanded. "My cousin was chosen two years ago. And still Ninazu has not come!"
The crowd muttered. The boy's blind mother cuffed him. Whispers of "blasphemy!" sounded through the crowd.
Erafel raised his hands in a placating gesture, though with the length of his fingers, it was hardly soothing.
"Do not punish the boy! From the mouths of children come the purest questions." Erafel looked down from the balcony at the boy. "We cannot know the mind of Mezmeron. We don't know why he waits to summon his father. Only when he deems us worthy will he call forth the Prince of the Void. Until then, we must serve and worship. Every child we give brings us closer to the Day of Blessing." He raised his hands higher, and ardor filled his eyes. "Let the procession begin!"
* * * * *
They took Mia down to the courtyard and placed her upon a palanquin. Four burly voidgazers, robed and hooded in black, lifted the corners of the palanquin and carried her through the crowd. People stepped forward, showering Mia with gifts. They gave her strings of emeralds and diamonds. They placed blessed herbs between her feet. One woman gifted her goldfish with real golden scales and diamonds for eyes. The little jewels moved their platinum tails and chinked. Soon the palanquin was heavy with treasures, and gems and precious metals shone across Mia. A hundred bracelets, rings, and necklaces adorned her like a cocoon, and she imagined that she shone as brightly as the sun.
The voidgazers carried her through the colony until they reached the doorway in the dome. There they must wait. The sun still shone, bathing the land outside with radiation. The dome was transparent, letting in visible light but blocking the cancerous demons who rode the sunbeams. The procession did not wait long. Sunsets were quick on Hypnos, and as Mia watched from her palanquin, Nemesis sank below the hills, gilding their crests, until even that glow faded and darkness cloaked the land.
Night had fallen, and they gazed into the void.
Hypnos was not like Earth. Was not like any other planet. Mia had seen paintings and photos of Earth's night sky. She had admired a darkness strewn with countless stars. But there were no stars in Hypnos's night. Their only star lurked below the mountains now. The night was black and bare, for Hypnos floated on the very edge of the galaxy. Their sun was the last among a hundred billion. The rest of the galaxy swirled behind them. Ahead lay only the emptiness.
There were other galaxies out there. In an hour, Andromeda would rise from behind the mountains, a single, dim light in the sky. The other galaxies were too far to see with the naked eye. The scientists said that billions of galaxies filled the universe, but they were lying. Looking from here, Mia could see none. Just blackness. Just a void.
But the void stared back. For the void was not empty. Intelligent beings lurked in that darkness, and the people of Hypnos gazed upon them and worshipped their power. Some called them voidminds. Others called them the Old Ones. Little was known about them. Mankind had only ever met one. But soon the rest would come. Soon the blessings would spill forth and lights would fill the night sky.
With the sun gone, they opened the door in the dome, and the procession continued into the wilderness. Mia sat on her palanquin, her jewels chinking. Even at night, it was not safe to spend too much time outside. The radiation lingered, clinging to the rocks and sand. But once a year on the solstice, this journey was undertaken. Any burns were seen as signs of devotion, any sickness a purification.
They walked through the night. Erafel led the procession, swinging his censer, while his acolytes followed, carrying the palanquin, dark robes swishing. The air was thinner out here, breathable but wearying, leaving one always out of breath. Most of the colonists remained inside the dome, daring not face the punishing surface. Sometimes adventurers, emboldened with wine and dreams of glory, dared venture outdoors after sunset. Even they, after taking a few paces, retreated into the comfort of the dome. They mumbled about the thin air. About the poison clinging to the rocks, glittering like crystals even in the darkness. About the wretched who lurked here. But Mia suspected that it was not those things that frightened them.
It was the sky. A sky that was pitch-black. A starless sky. The sky at the edge of the galaxy. Looking upward, that sky disoriented the mind. It felt less like a sky above and more like a void below, a pit one could fall into and tumble forever. The human mind could not grasp such vastness. Such emptiness.
But it's not empty, Mia thought. A shiver ran through her, clinking her gifts of jewels.
They were out there. The minds in the dark. And they saw her.
Onward the procession marched. Erafel chanted, leading their way, and the nuns trailed behind, raising their voices in song. Mia sat still, the bracelets and necklaces weighing her down, and she imagined that their weight kept her from falling upward into the chasm in the sky. Was it true that one could see the stars from Earth? Sometimes she thought that the stars were just a legend, just a tale told to children so that they would not fear the emptiness in the sky.
The dome became smaller and smaller behind them, the lights of its lanterns fading. No vegetation grew in the wilderness. No water flowed. The only animals were the strange dark birds that rose at night and the snakes that slithered underfoot. The days burned, but the night froze the flesh, and Mia could not stop shivering. The footprints from last year's procession still marked the ground, as did footprints from many years past. The gray soil was thick and hard and held a grudge against those who marred it.
Movement caught Mia's eye. She glanced to the left, jewels chinking. She could not see far. The dome was distant behind her now, its glow but the faintest haze, and while the voidgazers held lamps, their light did not shine far. Mia squinted, studying the shadows. Just a trick of her eye? A figment of her mind?
No! There! Movement again. A scurrying shadow. A twisted, bony form like a spider the size of a man. It vanished into the murk. The procession kept marching. The voidgazers kept praying. Had nobody seen it?
Then—there again! Another figure in the night, wretched and knobby, scurrying across the soil. Then another farther away, and more to her right. A creature raised a bulbous head, and the lamplight shone in three lambent eyes. A slit opened in a leathery head, baring teeth like hooks, and a terrible screech cut the night.
Mia cowered. But the voidgazers kept walking, lanterns held high.
"Fear not the sinners who cower in darkness!" Erafel cried. "The Light in the Void will banish them. The Day of Blessing approaches. Be gone, wretched ones!"
All around they scampered and scurried and screeched. Sometimes they almost seemed human, but when the lamplight shone on them, it revealed deformed bodies, legs that dragged like tails, arms that coiled like the roots of trees, rib cages that thrust out from the skin, heads that melted into torsos. Mia knew who those were. Colonists banished from the dome, subjecting them to the punishing sunlight. Slowly the light changed them. Mia watched as one of the wretched leaped onto another, sank teeth into flesh, and devoured his victim alive. A few crawled toward the holy procession, reaching out hands without fingers, opening mouths without teeth, begging. They could not speak with words, but in their mournful cries, Mia could hear the despair.
Let us back in! Make us human again!
Mia's parents used to frighten her with stories of the wretched ones. Behave or they'll crawl from under your bed! Sometimes, when she was bad, they would threaten to send Mia into the wilderness, to let the sunlight peel back her humanity and reshape her. She covered her eyes, unable to bear the miserable beings.
The oracles are like them, Mia thought. The oracles live in a cave in the wilderness. But they are blessed ones.
A wretched one managed to crawl closer. He had no legs but sported enormous hands to compensate. The fingers were normal, but the palms were the size of dinner plates. With one of those paws, he grabbed a palanquin-bearer. The voidgazer grunted and kicked the poor creature aside. Like a beaten dog, the wretch fled, and the voidgazers walked onward.
As they headed north, the mountains came into view. It was odd. How could Mia see them? It should be impossible. No sun, moon, or stars shone in the sky, and the procession's lamps did not shine far. The mountains seemed to emit their own light. A dark light. A gleaming black like obsidian, standing out against the deeper darkness of the void. A tremble scuttled down Mia's back like a centipede. The mountains seemed alive. Aware. Waiting for her.
"I will be brave," she whispered, voice shaky. "I will be brave."
The procession carried her across the foothills. Time lost all meaning to Mia. It was like being back in her cell. They might have been walking for hours, maybe only moments. Ur Eshuna soared above—the tallest peak in the range. Basalt mountainsides gleamed like the walls of a fortress. The procession approached a cave that gaped open like a mouth, black on black. A cold wind blew from within, scented of salt and decay.
The voidgazers placed the palanquin down. Mia stepped onto the ground, heavy with jewels, bearing her many gifts. Erafel unfurled his long, strange hands, gesturing at the cave.
"He awaits you inside, child," said the tall voidgazer. "Go and be with Mezmeron. The sun will soon rise. If you run it will burn you. But in the sixteen arms of Mezmeron, you will find eternal blessings. Hail the Void!"
"Hail the Void!" the acolytes chanted.
Mia mouthed the words, but she was too timid to speak them aloud. The robed figures stood, watching her, waiting. She took a timid step toward the cave. Erafel gestured again, pointing a finger the length of his forearm into the darkness.
"Can I have a lamp?" she said. "I'm scared of the dark."
The voidgazers glanced at one another, and several muttered curses. But Erafel smiled. A fatherly smile. He gave her his own lantern. The ironwork was shaped like a squid with sixteen tentacles, their tips glowing with lights. Like the censer—another work of Mia's father. It was heavy, but Mia did not drop it. She had promised her mother to be brave, yet she felt so cowardly.
The memory of the wretched ones spurred her onward. She did not want to be out here when the sun rose. With a shaky breath, she stepped into the cave, leaving her world forever behind.
* * * * *
Her lamplight illuminated rough stone. Nothing but darkness seemed to loom ahead.
Mia glanced behind her and saw the voidgazers retreating over the plains, heading back to the colony. The dome seemed so distant from here, a hemisphere of light and warmth. The lanterns of the voidgazers trailed across the desert, leaving Mia here.
A sound came from the depths of the cave. A deep breathing. A murmur. It might have merely been the wind, but Mia imagined words in its warm flow.
Come to me …
Mia glanced at the plains, at the lights retreating toward the dome, toward the only home she had ever known. A place that was no longer her home. A place with a dying mother. A place with no room for an orphan girl. She closed her eyes, memories rising in her. Memories of running around the dome as the sunlight filtered through the glass. Memories of laughing in her mother's arms. Memories of books that showed her the stars.
That place was gone now. That home was no more. That light would never more shine upon her. All that waited was the shadow.
A tear ran down her cheek. In the arms of her lord, she would be blessed. She would be loved.
She turned away from the desert and the dome, raised her chin, wiped her tears, and walked deeper into the cave.
The first step was the hardest. The first step was a war. But the next step was easier. And the third step easier still. Soon she was walking confidently, holding her father's lamp. The light didn't shine far. She could only see a few steps ahead. But she did not turn back from the waiting void, and the wind from the heart of the mountain whispered in her ears.
Come to me …
The path took her deeper into the mountain, sloping ever downward. Around her feet, she saw the signs of those who had come before her. The footprints of little girls. Fallen golden coins and lost jewels. The stains of teardrops and the echoes of whispered prayers. She was not alone.
Come to me.
She must have walked the distance of the desert before she reached the heart of the mountain. The tunnel opened into a grand cavern alight with crystals. The chamber was so large every colonist on Hypnos could probably fit inside. A lake of gleaming black water lay still, the surface reflecting the crystals that shone in stone walls. Mia fell to her knees, tears flowing, for this was a place of great beauty. Here were the halls of the gods.
The footprints of the girls—those innocent souls who had come before her—led to the edge of the pool. Mia followed them, the crystals glinting above and around her. She felt so small here. So insignificant. So blessed. Adorned with precious metals and gemstones, she strode to the edge of the lake, and she laid her gifts of jewels and herbs upon the shore.
"I'm ready," she whispered. "I'm brave."
The water rippled. From the dark lake, he arose.
Mia gaped, tears in her eyes.
He was beautiful. He was the size of a starship. He was made of stars.
His tentacles rose from the water, translucent and gleaming. Through skin like glass, Mia saw veins pulsing with blue blood, thousands of bone segments coiling like spines, and oyster-colored muscles that throbbed and pulsed like trapped jellyfish. Jewels floated inside him, sapphires and emeralds and flecks of precious metal trapped inside his flesh. They reminded Mia of pieces of fruit inside jelly. Like graceful dancers, the tentacles rose toward the ceiling and explored the walls, curious, feeling, sensing, smelling. Suction cups lined them, each as large as Mia's head. She knew he was terrifying. She knew he was monstrous. But she could only fall to her knees in awe.
"Beautiful," she whispered. "Mezmeron, you are beautiful."
The tentacles swayed gently like anemones. If he had a head, if he had a face, they were hidden underwater. His voice spoke in her mind, gentle and soothing like midnight waves.
Come closer. Come to me.
She stepped closer, growing braver with every step, and jewels lay beneath her feet, old gifts to this god, sent here with the girls of summers past. When her toes touched the water, Mia gasped. It was cold. Shockingly cold. But she did not turn back. She stepped deeper until the water rose above her ankles.
A tentacle coiled up before her, several times her height, swaying like a serpent rising from a basket. The jewels floated inside, gemstones and brooches and golden coins. Blue veins gripped the treasures like throbbing roots, like venomous ivy, like the bruised fingers of slender dead things. Arteries flowed like rivers, tracing the serpentine shape of the tentacle. Translucent blobs traveled up and down these highways, each blob the size of a girl's heart, and within them squirmed clusters of milky beads. Were they cells? Were they parasites? Mia did not know. The vision mesmerized her. The tentacle swayed closer, looming above her, and the tip descended to form a roof over her head. The suction cups turned toward Mia.
And then she saw what they were. Not suction cups at all.
They were faces. Faces of girls growing from the tentacle.
She recognized some of them. There was Jenna, the baker's daughter. And beside her was Ellie, a waif who used to beg outside city hall. Farther up—Sophie, wise beyond her years, who always corrected her teachers, whose father died in the mines. Lost girls. Unwanted girls. Sacrifices from years gone by.
They had no bodies. Mia saw only withered nerves growing from their heads like cables, coiling around the bones and arteries inside the tentacle. Yet the girls lived. Their eyes peered. Their mouths moved silently. The gifts they had brought—gemstones and coins and jewels—floated around them, trapped inside the translucent flesh.
Mia turned to run. But the tentacle was faster. Like a chameleon's tongue, it grabbed her and lifted her. Her feet floated on air, and golden coins tumbled from her pockets and sank into the water. The faces looked at her, eyes wide, mouths screaming silently, as the flesh of the tentacle parted. Veins reached out and grabbed Mia like the hands of the undead, and Mezmeron welcomed her into his strange realm.
The flesh was warm, soft, closing around her until only her face remained free, gaping at the hall of stone. The other tentacles rose around her, full of peering faces like souls trapped behind windows, crying out but voiceless. There was no pain at first. And then the pain was everything. And when the tentacle coiled around itself, Mia saw her body wilt and decay. The skin and muscle melted from her bones, and then the bones themselves withered and withered until they were like white twigs … and were gone. She remained but a face, trapped with the others, her nerves joining the network that twisted inside.
Her eyes filled with tears. Her mouth widened but she could not scream, could not breathe.
But she saw. Her mind joined the minds of the others. She was one with the lost girls. She was one with the great mind in the pool below, and she gazed upon a light in the void. She saw the Great Shoal. She saw the gods.
Mezmeron was just one of billions. He was just one servant of the great mind in the darkness. And his voice whispered. Not to her but to the beings beyond the black.
Come to me …
A tear flowed down Mia's cheek, and for the first time in her life, she saw the stars.
