I continued beyond the main hallway, beyond offices and classrooms on the lower floor. A voice droned from somewhere, lecturing in a dull monotone that even Kichlan would have struggled to match. The thought made me smile and realise I missed his lecturing, at least compared to his silence and his distrustful glances.
The building was roughly divided between the disciplines; the kind of unofficial rule new students spent their whole first year trying to work out. Ground-floor rooms were allocated to the military; architects preferred the upper hallways. I knew the ways well, even after all these years. How many was it? Ten years? Yes, it must have been.
I found the half-hidden stairs behind an out-of-place bookcase in an old, empty office. The stairs themselves were an architectural wonder, and I could understand why the first architects who had come to learn and teach here had been attracted to them. They wove their tight way through the building, bypassing the rest of the levels to reach the top. Proud Sunlight had a strange roof. Designed with odd angles, some areas made of great sheets of glass that let the sun or the moonlight in, most built from the stone itself. What might have once been an attic had been divided into rooms, and these the architect lecturers had claimed as their offices. It was here I would find Jernea. If he was still alive.
I made my way down a thin hallway. Deep afternoon sunlight glanced in through patches of glass above me. It lit some of the offices, while others were left in dark shadow. A few faces I did not recognise watched me from desks as I passed them. A small group of ridiculously young students passed me in the hall. They whispered circle theories and hardly noticed me. I remembered what that was like, to have such passion, to be so skilled, and ready to create your future with both.
I had almost given up when one of the faces I didn't know did more than just watch me pass. Young for a teacher, his black gown too big for him, his silver bearclaw too bright, he was twitching through the invisible contents of a slide when I walked past his office. He looked up, surprised, placed the slide on the desk and strode into the hallway.
"You!" He pointed to me, and I stalled as a streak of warm light touched my face. "Who are you?" He approached me, hands hidden in folds of black cloth. The crimson satin edging on his gown surprised me. He must have graduated young and with high honours to have made second-senior lecturer by his age. "You're not a student."
I wondered what tipped him off? The scars? The clothes, or just because I looked colossally older than everyone in the Other-damned place? Which was exactly the way I felt.
"What are you doing here?"
I repressed a sigh. "Just looking for someone."
"Just looking?" He stepped into the sunlight and I noticed sporadic pale hairs dotting his chin and upper lip. Didn't help my mood. "You can't just look. This is an exclusive university, only the best-"
"What's going on here?"
I turned as a woman stepped out of the office at the end of the hallway. She strode toward us, step sure and brisk, and the young teacher took an involuntary step back.
"Who are you, what is-" Then she saw me, bathed in the light from the roof, and she stopped. "Ah. So, you did come." She was still in shadow so I could not see her face, but I could hear the rueful smile in her voice alone. "I suppose they were right." Another step, and the light touched her as well. I realised I knew her. Her sun-browned face carried more lines than I remembered, her dark hair was pulled back where it had always floated free. Dina. Only now, she wore a gold edge upon her black gown. Architect dean. It was rare for a woman to lead any university faculty, but she had always been skilled. Jernea's assistant when he had mentored me, a sub-senior lecturer those ten years ago. Quite a rise.
"Petr, thank you, but you can go now."
The young lecturer made to argue, but Dina cut him off.
"Please. Leave us."
With a final scowl in my direction, Petr returned to his office. Dina watched him go before casting her hard eye on me. "They did better work on your face than I expected, when I was told you were scarred."
Of all the students Jernea taught, why would she remember me? "It will never be the way it was."
"No, it won't." She seemed to hesitate, to be debating something silently within. "I suppose you have come to see him."
"It was my last resort." I had already steeled myself to hear of Jernea's death.
"I'm sure it was." Instead, she gave me a sad smile. "I will let you see him, but you should be prepared. He can't help you, he can't help anyone anymore."
"He is still alive then?"
Dina laughed, full and throaty. "That old bear will outlive us all. He refuses to hear the call of the Other, and you know what he is like when he sets his mind on something. The Other can shout as loudly as he wants, the old man won't listen."
I couldn't help but grin. "That's true." Jernea was one of the most tenacious people I had ever known. A powerful binder, a highly skilled architect and a determined teacher.
Dina gestured to me, and I followed her back to her office. "I must warn you, he is not the man he once was."
Her office was large, but narrow, almost a corridor of itself. Full bookshelves lined the walls, floor to partstone, part-glass ceiling. Only section of the university's ancient and priceless library. A desk, a few chairs and a rug alone broke up the uniform tones of wood and sandstone and leather-bound paper. Jernea was sitting at the far end of the office, beneath a large glass section. Late afternoon gold seemed to make him glow.
"He is no longer employed by the university," Dina said, softly. "He has not worked here for years. However, he feels safe in this room, he feels more at home here than in an old and empty house." She rubbed the back of her neck and looked at the floor. "Truth be told, I feel better when he is here with me. I don't remember a time at Proud Sunlight without him. He has carers, of course, and they came to me. Explained his situation. His distress. I was glad to have him back, to care for him. He doesn't need much. They feed him every day…" She trailed off as I slowly approached my old mentor.
Jernea sat in a strange chair, wrought of some kind of thick poly. It couldn't have been comfortable: too straightbacked, legs out, arms on hard rests. Not a cushion or any kind of padding in sight. He wore a gown of faded blue that was done up loosely down the front. His bare skin was thin and withered across stark ribs, and there were countless tiny holes in his chest.
"Other's hell," I hissed. "What have they done to you?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Dina said, behind me. "I should have thought of this. You can't see them."
"See what?" I glanced at her, angry. There were more holes on his forehead, down his neck, even his arms.
"The pions, of course. It's a complicated system, tied in to the chair itself. It keeps him alive. They're pumping blood down to his extremities, monitoring and compensating for oxygen loss, as well as maintaining the workings of his left kidney-"
"Stop." I held up a hand, closed my eyes. "I- I don't want to know." I could imagine pions looping around him, in him, binding him to the chair, to this life, like colourful chains. And I wished I couldn't, because I didn't want to remember Jernea like that.
He looked like he had been spun from glass. Nearly transparent skin stretched across the bones of his face and hung in wrinkles around his neck. I could make out the veins at his temples, every sunspot that had ever dotted his cheeks. His eyes were white with cataracts, his hair thin. A blanket was tucked in around his legs and his once powerful and expressive hands were curled and skeletal, shaking on his lap.
"Jernea." I crouched beside him.
His head turned, ever so slightly, but his sightless eyes passed me by. He mouthed words, but they came out only as wet sounds.