Haust was the first to stay behind. It had been a glorious reunion, one far too long in the missing, but in the end she simply wasn’t ready. Her tenuous connection to the material translated into an even less tenuous connection to the Real, and it was all she could do to even approach the base.
He left her with a fond kiss, and a well-appointed cabin next to a spring glade. She needed to be.
Next was Sayf. He was a far hardier soul, and they wrestled and sparred low in the foothills, remembering that more visceral nature of man, and the ancient needs of every warrior-soul. E?rrach pushed Sayf’s limits hard, and took the opportunity to greatly and permanently empower him, as much as he could handle. But the Real was not for the dis-integrated or the insufficiently prepared—not a harsh judgement, that. It was the nature of man to be at war with himself, and E?rrach had been gifted extraordinary opportunities to grow in himself that few ever receive before death. Sayf would find himself, and soon. But not quite yet.
Like Haust…Sayf lacked faith, frankly. And here, faith in one’s self and in one’s final purpose—and how either came to be—was the only thing that could possibly sustain.
Talvi followed up past the foothills, and into the first of the climb. Here, the cold began to bite. The air became a real thing he could breathe, the rock no longer a sparse cloud of barely-there electrons he needed to consciously will into solidity under his feet. Now, the world was becoming as Real as he, far beyond the tolerance of even those adapted to life on his earthmote.
Which was saying something. His earthmote was special in that none but the prepared could walk upon it or enter its airspace. Any who tried were deterred by powerful and subtle magicks, which was fortunate for them, for if they had succeeded they would have been instantly crushed smaller than a proton by the local gravity. E?rrach’s home was partly here but partly elsewhere too, where it was a piece of a planet in a private place*,* one more suitable for a being like the King of Power.
That made his home a more comfortable, more solid and more real place for a being like him, far transcendent above ordinary matter and spacetime. Here, physics was of a vastly higher order: gravity was many trillions of times more powerful, matter was accordingly denser and more stable, and physical being was so robust, so magnified and mighty, even a blade of grass outmassed the whole of the Nested Worlds countless many times over.
Yet even that, to a being of his nature, was hardly discernable from the rest of the Nested Worlds, or similarly of the World Before. King E?rrach was as least as far beyond all that as a Herald was beyond an amoeba. Sure, he could unwind even if only a little, yet even that small concession still made him brute enough of a man, the entire earthmote—and therefore the entire planet in its pocket home*—*bounced up and down beneath his feet as he moved about.
The mountain, though, that was special. The mountain was symbolically and actually an ascent into the realms of the Ascended—a higher dimension to some, the new Creation in an older but perhaps truer mode of knowing. And it’s pull was practically magnetic. E?rrach yearned to finally go into the promised land, could feel the invitation pulling at his very being…
But not yet. If he left now, the world could not survive. The Crowns were not ready to hold the Nested Worlds in being, because they didn’t believe, in all the ways one needed to believe.
Soon, in the grand scheme of things. But not yet.
For now, he had an urgent matter to attend to, one only he was mighty enough to handle; might in his full being of course, but perhaps surprising to some, might of the body as well.
Not even godly matters always escaped the need to punch.
They made camp in a lodge as they had once done ?ons ago, alone together on the very last ski resort that ever existed. Only a woman could so thoroughly connect a man to where he belonged and Talvi understood that better than anyone, and so it was as ever between man and woman, in all the ways so ancient and necessary to their kind. What he needed most, when he was being so severely tempted by the Real, was the only thing that, in its own inexplicable and wonderful way, was more real than the Real.
Human connection.
None of which he received more powerfully than from Rheannach, his heart of hearts, his wife forever. She strove to follow along as far as she could and made it nearly half-way up, though for some time she was not so much climbing as forcing herself to push through air that pushed back.
He poured his power into her, and this was a point of delicate balance. She could take his fullness, in every sense of the word. But if he truly gave her that in this place…she could never leave. She would Ascend entire, because she had not the will to decline Heaven itself.
King E?rrach did, as a personal gift. The mission he had been given needed it, and so the grace needed to defer that ultimate consummation of being and love was his to mournfully wield.
And wield it he did, with the promise that, one day, he would joyfully meet his End.
Eventually, she could barely breathe. She’d come higher than ever before, this time, but in the end she had to sink onto a rock and pant, utterly spent. she gave him a flush, proud grin at the achievement, kissed his cheek, and sat back to wait for him.
Maicoh and Maingan trotted along at his heels as though nothing was different. The two were unique beings in the history of the World Before or the World Anew. They were rational animals who retained their full irrational capacity to be truly present in a moment, wholly and without any question or guile; completely integrated into each moment of life, without angst or fear or distraction. They were his finest creation, and the one truly new thing he’d made; beings who could abide in the highest and in the most mundane. They could touch the Real, and enjoy it, love it for what it was…and happily come back to the nigh-infinitely lower world of the mundane.
They were saintly companions, in the best possible way.
When they reached the threshold, the two hounds sat on their haunches by the door, seemingly unperturbed as a light zephyr ruffled their fur. Their complete beings were fully amplified in this place; those big muscular haunches of theirs that were the envy of anything canid became the very essence of barely-contained athletic power. Their minds were keener than the wisest of Heralds, their senses more subtle than words could express. Down on his earthmote, even this feather-light touch of the wind would have scoured a sturdy castle to its foundations. In the World Anew…
Up here, E?rrach felt it as an icy kiss on the cheek. Real cold. The sensation of something actually affecting him, as opposed to merely being noticed. A rare pleasure, nowadays. He took a deep, heady breath of rich, real air…
And stepped forward across the threshold.
The Jolly Tar, Crae Varthen 09.06.03.13.03
One of the Rüwyrdan was looking after Deng-Nah when Jerl slipped downstairs in the early hours of the morning. The Yunei must have fallen asleep at the table as he listened to the whispering Shades and puzzled over his box again. It wasn’t the first time: the sense of urgency was getting to him, Jerl knew. Deng-Nah felt dutybound to get the vault open and speak the Word within, and his obsession with doing so was starting to take its toll.
He looked relatively peaceful right now, though. Or at least, his head was on his arms and he had a blanket over him.
The elf—Adhdu—smiled at Jerl as he checked in on them. She didn’t speak much Garanese, but Jerl was fluent enough in Feydh to get by.
<“Two days to go,”> she said. <“Then I think he will relax and get some proper sleep.”>
<“He’s alright?”> Jerl asked.
Adhdu shrugged. <“I make sure he eats well and bathes. His body is…adequately well. I cannot speak for his mind. Duty weighs on him…where are you going?”> she asked as Jerl headed for the door.
<”Out.”>
She hesitated, then nodded her head. <”Be careful.”>
Jerl gave her a reassuring little nod, then stepped outside.
As ever, the Shades immediately looked up and flowed toward him, stopping at the edge of the pool of light his magestones cast around him. There were more of them, now. He cast his eye among the crowd, but didn’t see the one he was looking for.
He sighed and wandered away up the quay toward the bench he’d picked as his Shade-watching spot. It had a number of advantages, not least of which being that it was directly beneath a lamppost. Whoever charged the lamp’s stone must have been pretty damn good at his job, because the thing was still burning bright a week into the eclipse, with no sign of dimming. Jerl set a few more stones of his own about the place just in case the guy was good enough to make stones that glowed at full intensity right until they ran out, then settled on the bench and looked around.
He was being weird, he knew that. Or morbid, certainly. There was nothing to gain from communing with Shades, they had nothing to say beyond the nonsense mutterings that might guide Deng-Nah toward opening his vault, if they didn’t drive him insane first. But while the lads on the crew might be content to drink away the week in a tavern and play cards all day, and the Rüwyrdan seemed to have bottomless patience, Jerl had something to wrestle with. Something unpleasant he didn’t really want to put into words.
Shade-watching was a distraction. Like scratching at a scab when he knew he shouldn’t.
Today, the ones haunting his little pool of light were the usual mixed bunch. A bent-backed old man with the ghost of a walking stick still clutched in a fist so simultaneously skinny and arthritic it looked like a sculpture made of sticks and clay. A woman in a headscarf, her shade defensively trying to hold her baby away from the doom that claimed them both. A boy of perhaps twelve, his expression more subdued than most: he’d been trying to be brave and stoic in his final moment, with the result that his shade wore a permanent trembling lip and wide eyes.
So many tragedies…
“Mind if I join you?”
Jerl jumped, looked up, and then rose to his feet only to be waved back down by a familiar bearded figure, who grinned at him around the stem of a pipe.
Nobody could look as astonishingly out-of-place as the Shishah. He seemed to delight in it, and the clothes he’d chosen to wear for this meeting wouldn’t have fit in anywhere, but they fit this place and the company of Shades least of all. His robes were of purple cloth trimmed and edged with gold and white, which seemed to shift seamlessly between blue and red with every fold or change in angle. There was the subtlest hint of a peacock-eye pattern beneath the ever-blending hues, and the whole ensemble was accessorized with gemstones of a similarly uncertain hue.
His grin grew ever wider at Jerl’s expression, and he swirled around to park himself comfortably on the bench before blowing a smoke ring that scattered the Shades. “Unhealthy habit you’ve picked up,” he commented.
“I…suppose it is?” Jerl ventured. “Sorry, what are you doing here?”
“Now is that any way to greet a Herald? Where’s your sense of respect and propriety?”
“As I recall, you told me not to stand on such things, last time we met.”
“Alright, is that any way to greet an old friend?” The Shishah asked, then brightened and laughed. “Aha! It is either how you greet very good friends, or friends you don’t like very much, yes? And given how…disappointed you were in our last meeting, I imagine it’s the latter. No matter, no matter.”
“So…?” Jerl rolled his hand encouragingly, and got another bark of laughter.
“So, why am I here?” A chuckle. “Because you need to speak with me.”
“I do, do I?”
“You do, do you. Smoke?”
“Not…while I’m out here among Shades,” Jerl ventured. “Better to keep a clear head, you know?”
“Ah! Only a fool gets too inebriated during Eclipse, yes? But this is just tobacco. The best you’ll ever have.”
“…Sure. Thank you.”
The Shishah grinned and handed him a pouch. It was, true to his word, full of the kind of leaf Jerl could have sold for a small fortune. He thumbed a bowlful into his own pipe, and the Shishah obligingly lit it for him with a snap of his fingers. They sat and sipped smoke in silence for perhaps a minute, and Jerl felt himself relaxing. He hadn’t even been aware he was tense.
“…Good stuff.”
“Heh! You’re a man of profound and endless understatement. And poor manners.”
“Ah. Right. Yes.” Jerl fished inside his coat and found his flask. “Whisky? It’s Cloudtreader reserve.”
“Much better!” Shishah hefted the little container in a toast, took a swig, and handed it back to him. “Good stuff.”
“Now it’s your turn to be understated.”
The Herald’s chuckle was long, quiet, and heartfelt.
“Now. Seriously. Why are you here?” Jerl pressed.
“I already told you. You need to speak with me. Well…” Shishah bobbled his head in a curious way. “Not necessarily with me. A rubber duck would do. But I’m rather better than a rubber duck, because unlike the duck I will ask you the hard questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as what the fuck are you doing here? Do you have the faintest idea what you’re doing?”
Jerl snorted, but somehow couldn’t quite bring himself to look the Herald in the eye. “…No.”
“Mm. Didn’t think so. Making it up as you go along, hey?”
“Well, the idea was to get Deng-Nah’s vault open,” Jerl said, before sipping some more smoke.
“And how is that going?”
Jerl shrugged. “You’d have to ask Deng-Nah.”
“It’s failing. He’s failing. He was, in fact, always going to.”
Jerl frowned. “Why?”
“Jerl…do you really think Civorage cracked eight-dimensional geometric encryption just by sitting in a hole and listening to the whispers? Are you really that naive?”
“…I—”
“—Don’t know what eight-dimensional geometric encryption even is. Exactly. That’s how far out of your depth you are.”
“…Is doing your damnedest to piss people off your usual mode of conversation?”
The Shishah grinned ever wider. “Only with you, Jerl.”
Jerl grit his teeth. “Why?” he asked.
“Because it’s what you need, you odd duck.” The Shishah’s smile wasn’t entirely cheeky—as before, it had a benevolence to it, even if his words and attitude were otherwise grating. Jerl forced his impatience down, and thought about what the infuriating immortal had just said.
“…Alright,” he said slowly. “How did Civorage break into his vault?”
“Well…” The Shishah became somewhat more sombre, and made a slight shuffle of his rump which suggested he was settling comfortably into story mode, “…he had help of course.”
Ajhazra, Alakbir Earthmote 09.05.14.18.03
“Yes, of course…I can see the wisdom of the point you are making…”
Nils smiled at the Sharif of Ajhazra, enjoying the way the man’s usually shrewd expression was softening like a candle left too close to the cooking fire.
“After all,” he prompted, bending the power of Mind to reinforce his tone of confident rationality, “The people of Ajhazra will benefit greatly from the economic activity the city of Long Drop could produce. The rise of a merchant class is the sort of thing Your Eminence could greatly benefit from. The new middle class would be beholden to your wisdom and tolerance…and of course, more trade activity means that your eminently fair and reasonable taxes would yield greater revenue…”
He smiled broadly. “At least, that’s how it worked on Garanhir.”
“And it will happen here…” the Sharif mused, after Nils gave him a carefully aimed prod in the subconscious.
“Oh, inevitably! You, Your Eminence, have a choice before you: you can either be the visionary who led the charge and ushered your people into a new golden age of prosperity…or you can be the third camel.”
It was a carefully chosen idiom. Camel racing was extremely popular among the Alakbiri wealthy, but it was a ruthless sport with prize money only for the winner and runner up. The rider in third place got nothing except for a small cut of whatever bets had been placed on them. So to be the “third camel” was to collect a pittance while a fortune narrowly slipped from your grasp.
Of course, some dishonorable riders did rather better than the winners off coming in third, when the right kind of bookmaker was involved…but Nils knew that Khamur In-m’Eyara Sharif at-Ajhazra, who was usually guileful and sharp, did not presently have the freedom of mind to calculate such alternative possibilities, or their equivalent. All he thought right now—all he was being allowed to think—was that Nils was speaking perfect sense.
“Yes…progress will happen no matter what…” Sharif Khamur agreed, nodding slowly. “Better to be at the front. And b’Eyara, how lucky am I to have my good friend Nils Civorage to counsel me!” he added, invoking E?rrach’s Alakbiri name.
Nils smiled at him. “How could I fail to come to you, my friend? You who were such a kind investor in my mission down to the Unbroken Mote?”
“Pah!” something of Khamur’s usual attitude resurfaced in a dismissive wave. “A trifle already repaid tenfold. Not worthy of consideration.”
“Oh, but I insist it must be!” Nils said, warming to the purely symbolic back-and-forth. They continued in this vein a further four culturally obligatory times before the Sharif finally graciously and humbly allowed that perhaps Nils’ gratitude was not entirely misplaced…
It would have been a shame to completely convert him, so Nils was rather delighted to discover that he didn’t need to. He already had an army of men he’d hollowed out and turned entirely into his unthinking servants, but they lost something in the process. In most cases, what they lost wasn’t worth keeping, but some men…
Well, Sharif Khamur had something worth keeping if possible. All he needed was a few little nudges in the right direction.
A bell chimed from an adjacent room, and one of the Sharif’s servants bowed as he opened the door. <“Your eminence?”>
Khamur gave the man a look of lazy impatience. <”What is it? I am in a business meeting.”>
<”Your lady guest bid me remind you of the hour, and extended her invitation to the esteemed Mister Civorage as well.”>
Khamur’s mild indignation faded. “Ah, yes. I had forgotten…” He grumbled slightly, and rose to his feet. “Please, Nils, my friend. You must come and meet my guest. An extraordinary woman she is…”
This was, if anything, an understatement. When Nils and the Sharif were escorted into the dining chamber a few minutes later, they found waiting for them about the most striking woman Nils had ever seen. He had met many a dark-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned woman before, of course, not to mention tall women who filled out an elegant but modestly cut dress in a manner calculated to pierce and capture male attention like a fish hook.
But her mind…!
He had never seen a mind like hers, of that he was certain. And yet there was an aching familiarity there, as though she was somebody he had known well, and recently. It left him with the terribly awkward impression that here was a close friend he’d somehow managed to forget entirely.
But she was old. The merest brush with the surface of her thoughts was enough to sense a fathomless well of experience, deeper than any lake, thicker than any earthmote, black with secret depths impenetrable to any mortal man…
…and to see her looking back.
“Nils Civorage,” the Sharif made introductions, “Lady Iaka of Blacktower.”
“Thank you, dear Khamur.” The lady’s hand was sheathed in a slim silk glove, and the handshake beneath was delicate while somehow suggestive oof enough power to leave grooves in an iron bar. “This is a delight. I have been looking forward to this meeting for quite a long time…”
“I’m pleased to know my name has reached your ears,” Nils ventured, still having a hard time grasping what he was looking at. His thoughts were whirling, searching for any explanation as to who this woman could possibly be. He didn’t much like the way the Sharif had failed to share her actual name, either.
“Oh, I have been following your career for some time.” She gestured to the table. “Shall we sit and talk, gentlemen?”
They did. Within minutes, Khamur dozed off in his chair as though his small glass of wine had hit him like two full bottles. Unsubtle, but Nils was unrepentant: here was real power, smiling at him across the bread pudding, and there were things he needed to discuss with her that Khamur didn’t need to hear.
“I’ve never heard of Blacktower,” Nils said, carefully negotiating the sticky business of eating delicately at an Alakbiri table. The Ajhazri in particular didn’t seem to consider a dish worth eating unless the recipe involved honey in at least two separate steps, and woe betide anyone who came to their table with anything less than an unconditional fondness for pistachios.
“With good reason,” the lady said. “I prefer obscurity.”
“For its own sake, or as means to an end?”
“Why does ‘or’ have to enter into it?” she asked. She lowered the angle of her face a little, and skewered him with eyes that seemed almost to burn with an inner blue flame…
…No. With eyes that did burn with an inner blue flame. She didn’t have irises in the conventional sense at all, just rings of eldritch fire. Nils recoiled, lurching to his feet so abruptly his chair clattered to the tiles. “What—? What are—?”
Lady Iaka smiled at him. “A Herald, my dear. Or, I was long ago. Now I’m something rather more…”
“More?” Nils cautiously scooped up his chair. He decided not to acknowledge his outburst of shock, and simply sat down as though nothing had happened.
“Well…less in some important ways. But far more in others. Far…freer.”
“Free to do what”
“Free, my dear, to create something like you…”
The Craenen 09.06.03.13.03
“Hang on, you weren’t there to see any of this.”
“Why should I have to be?” the Shishah asked.
“You mean to tell me you’re privy to every conversation between Nils Civorage and Iaka?”
“No, no. Alas, no.” Shishah shook his head ruefully. “Only that one. And it came as a surprise let me tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because up until that day, I thought she was dead. You have to remember, the Crowns made her and the other three mortal, thousands of years ago. Iaka should be long in her grave having lived a long and healthy human life. Instead…”
“Here she was,” Jerl finished for him.
“Oh yes. Popped up out of nowhere like a mushroom after rain, with who-knows-what going on under the turf.” Shishah blew out an elaborate trio of smoke rings and considered the Shades pensievely. “Well…now we know some of what, of course.”
Jerl’s frown deepened. “Are you saying…she created the Shades?”
The Shishah sighed heavily, his usual jollity forgotten for the moment. “Yes.”
“But…from what Lady Haust told me of her, I thought Iaka was obsessed with an end to suffering. Why would she—?” he gestured to the shrieking, despairing faces all around them.
“Oh, you’re anthropomorphizing them,” the Shishah said, then laughed bitterly. “And who can blame you? But, don’t let the expressions fool you. They aren’t suffering. They aren’t…anything, really. They’re no more a person than is your own shadow in daytime.”
“So…they’re not—?”
“Your father, Jerl, died that day aboard the airship. His spirit moved on to the grand adventure, whatever that may be: I promise you this, if the Crowns ever caught somebody messing with that, they’d come down with a wrath we can’t conceive. You think what E?rrach did to the Ordfey was impressive? The whole world saw and felt it. But that was just a businesslike sigh compared to what he’d do to anyone, anyone at all, who messed with the natural passage of mortal souls from this world into the Beyond. Your father is dead. What lingers is…a shadow. No more a part of him than the one you cast is a part of your body.”
“Then…what’s the point of them?”
“There’s an option you’re overlooking,” The Shishah pointed out. “For some reason, you’re assuming that a woman so terribly flawed that the Crowns themselves stripped her of her divine nature and cast her down to mortality, gets it right all the time.”
Jerl chewed on that for a moment. “You’re saying they’re a failure?”
The Shishah subsided a little, and huffed out a long, sad sigh. “Oh yes,” he said. “An abject failure…”
The young man who lay down to be the first gazed up at Iaka with an expression of such total trust and love that she could hardly bear it.
She’d found the tribe some six years into her wanderings as a mortal. They eked a living on the edges of a great frozen lake. None of them understood the hot springs that littered the area. None of them knew how the rock miles beneath their feet was kneaded and heated by the invisible forces of the worlds as they turned and shifted. All they knew that here, among an otherwise endless expanse of ice and snow, there was liquid water. On clear days, each spring and pool was easily found by the column of mist that rose high above before coming back down as a fine cold powder…and that meant the animals came to drink. Deer and elk, muskox, hares and hawks, tiny squeaking mammals and the foxes and wolves that fed on them…
And of course, the humans.
Life was hard for them. They lived in constant terror of myriad dangers both real (freezing to death, storms, starvation) and imagined (elves, skin-flaying shapechangers, the ghosts of the dead). Their lives were defined by constant hardship, deprivation, cold and fear.
Iaka had given them comfort, plenty, warmth and love. She had provided for them and loved them, and in return they delved her tower’s foundations and built its heights. Fifty years on from the day she first found them, they lived in her embrace, and she lived in the fountain of magic from the lodehead far below. But still, they suffered.
Today would correct that.
Iaka stroked the volunteer’s chest. His eyes were wet with gratitude and adulation. “Are you ready, my love?” she asked.
“I am!” he almost sobbed the words. “Take my pain, Mother.”
She smiled, bent down and kissed his brow. Through her lips, the power she’d spent years tapping from the lodehead flowed up and through, down and in…
…It felt wrong. She’d got it wrong, she knew as much instantly, as his flesh dissolved away in a dry swirl. That hadn’t been part of the plan! She tried to reverse course, to halt and correct the process she had started, but she had never planned for this, never spent time thinking about how she might do so. His spirit tried to slip away and she snatched at it desperately. The idea had been to free him, not kill him!
“No! Stay!”
He did. Or…something did, at least. Something tore loose from his departing soul and remained in Iaka’s grasp, but she may as well have been trying to hold on to a breeze. No, less than a breeze—a shadow. It slipped from her grip and slithered out away from her, and the more she fought to contain it, the more magic she drained from everything around. The magestones guttered and faded. Even the fires quenched. For a moment, the room was plunged into pure darkness. The other members of the tribe, who had been waiting their turn to be freed by their mother-goddess, made shocked sounds in the dark, little gasps and yelps of fright, then fell silent.
Iaka gasped at the cold feeling of something trying to snatch her away. She pushed it back, devoted her full thought and will into resisting as her body tried to disperse.
“No! Away!” She accompanied the cry with a flare of blue fire from her palm, igniting a ring of it on the floor about her feet. It was piercing bright, and the shadows fled from it…literally.
They were human in shape and expression. She even knew their faces. The tribe, all reduced to dust and shades, recoiled as one from her light, then fled into the dark corners of the room and vanished.
Trembling, she brought the lights back up properly. The eerie, harsh blue glare of her flame gave way to soft magelight. It revealed a scatter of fine ash that drifted and coiled on the lingering air currents, and a scattering of debris: personal effects, little tokens and talismans, dropped in the moment of feeling the…the shade’s first touch.
Nothing else beside remained.
E?rrach’s earthmote, the Nested Worlds 09.06.03.13.03
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Maicoh and Maingan came trotting back down perhaps four hours after Rheannach had been forced to stop. She herself had retreated a little way back down the slope to where things were less…
…Well. To where things were less.
She understood his sacrifice best when she could experience the world closer to his true nature. Here, she had a small taste of what was destined for him, destined for all thinking beings who did not shy from the good and true.
It was…a lot. Too much for her, really. Too much of a good thing. Too much reality, so much of it that it scraped raw along her nerves and across her skin. Even the faint rush and hiss of the wind as it blew tiny particles of ice and sand across the ground was an experience profound enough to be bottomless. She could hear every detail of a dry leaf crunching underfoot, taste the air more richly than even a gourmet meal. It was an ecstatic experience beyond her tolerance: after these excursions, she always needed a little time alone in a quiet room to come down from it.
The hounds were immune, though. Maicoh took her hand delicately between teeth that could snap an ordinary man’s leg clean off, and she walked with them back down the mountain.
The campsite where Talvi had stayed was abandoned, the fire burned down to coals. They paused a moment to enjoy the warmth, then continued on downwards until they were back in the forest where they’d left Sayf. Maingan sniffed at the ground a bit.
“…He waited for Talvi,” she said.
“Not for us?” Rheannach asked.
“No.”
“Alright. Let’s follow them.”
Each step now felt gentler and lighter and freer. She was more herself here, back in the world that was more as she knew it. Next to the crushing weight of reality higher up, she now felt buoyed and free. The usual disparity between her own power and that of the world about her returned, strengthening her.
They found Haust’s camp easily enough. She’d picked a glade where a huge mushroom circle grew, easily twenty meters across and dense with fruiting bodies, and she and Sayf were dancing together in its centre, twirling and laughing to the lively tune Talvi was playing on a bowed keyharp.
The mere sight of them was enough to blow away Rheannach’s pensive mood. She dashed into the circle and joined them, and spent a happy interval just being with them. They all had so many concerns, but here and now there was no sense in dwelling on them. Why be miserable, when there was a chance to seize joy? Time passed differently in the King’s home; they wouldn’t be late or delayed, no matter how they dallied.
They were still high enough up for the revelry to tire them, but that was a joy in its own right. Eventually, they’d had their fill of dancing and retired from the circle to sit on a fallen tree and talk.
For Rheannach, hanging out with the three Crowns was rather like spending time with her favorite uncle, aunt and older cousin.
Maicoh and Maingan of course weren’t great for conversation. But they were good for cuddling up to and feeling warm. Between the happy feeling of exertion, and the pleasure of movement and music and company, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the world, for a little while.
Haust, of course, was the one to finally bring them back to serious matters. “He’s been up there a lot longer than usual…” she noted after a while.
“Oh, don’t start,” Sayf chided her gently. He was slowly and softly massaging Maicoh’s ears, which seemed to have put the hound to sleep. “He’ll be up there as long as he needs to be.”
“But it is longer,” Talvi said.
“The work takes as long as it takes.”
“It’s never taken this long before,” Haust pointed out, almost fretting.
“We’d know if anything was wrong.”
“True,” Rheannach agreed.
Haust sighed, but nodded and relaxed again. “How high did you go this time?”
“The saddle just below the third peak.”
Sayf gave an impressed whistle. “That’s the furthest you’ve gone yet, isn’t it?”
Rheannach nodded. “The last hundred meters were…not easy.”
“I bet.”
“Only hard ‘cuz you make it hard,” Maingan commented, lazily. She was draped over the log enjoying Talvi’s cool fingers working on her own scalp.
“We don’t all have your gifts, dear heart,” Talvi told her.
“Could.”
“No, love. Not and still be who we are.”
Maingan yawned, gave the closest approximation to a shrug that a canine body could produce, and rested her jaw back on Talvi’s lap. Her tail was wagging. “Do like who you are…” she conceded.
“There we are, then.”
The four humanoid ones traded knowing smiles, and subsided into waiting again. After a while, Sayf stirred. “…Play again, Winter?”
“If you sing.”
“Sounds good.”
Rheannach smiled, but stood and wandered away from them a little distance, until the music was just background noise and the chirping of nearby night crickets was louder. She turned her attention in a different direction, aimed it upwards toward the distant crescent of Garanhir.
It was a hard thing, loving humans. They came and went so quickly, and in just a few short years they’d go from childhood to age, and from there to the grave and whatever lay beyond it. She still remembered the various temptations the Fallen had whispered in her ear, long ago, about that subject. Now, those same temptations and machinations were putting humans she cared about in the thick of a war, and there was a good deal more at stake than their lives.
Nimico in particular was a menace. But she was mortal now. Long extended through magic and power that no normal human could have learned yet, but still mortal. And that meant the rules protected her. Heralds didn’t kill mortals except in very specific circumstances, and the Fallen were not stupid enough to invoke those circumstances…but they were damn well skirting the rules. Iaka had shown the way, and now Nimico had decided to create a couple of Wordspeakers as well. And, in her classic fashion, had elected to put them on opposite sides just to watch the fireworks.
What would happen when the others followed suit?
What if they already had?
She shivered and looked back up the mountain. And hoped that at least one thing was going to plan…
The Craenen 09.06.03.13.03
“From that moment on, the Shades were a fact of life. And because Iaka was now mortal, their creation was technically a mortal affair, and so the Crowns don’t interfere. After all, if they won’t step in to rescue the victims of storm, flood, landslide and famine…”
“I know their reasoning,” Jerl said, patiently. “I’ve heard it directly from three of them, and more than one herald. Including yourself. Twice.”
The Shishah laughed. “Fair, fair! I won’t belabor the point, then.”
“Why break the habit of a lifetime?” Jerl asked, archly.
His reward was a throaty chuckle. “Quite. Anyway…Iaka was never one to take mere abject and horrifying failure as an indication that maybe she was on the wrong path. After all, if the opprobrium of the Crowns themselves wasn’t sufficient…”
“I get it. She’s a fanatic.”
“Oh yes. Fanatical beyond ordinary mortal capability, in fact. So of course, rather than stepping back in horror at what she’d done, she consoled herself that at least her beloved tribe were no longer suffering, and were granting their own kind of peace to others, and she thought long and hard about what she could learn from what happened.”
“How long?”
“Oh, thousands of years. There were other tribes in the fullness of time, of course. But she spent most of that long age in her tower, basking in the power of the lodehead, and contemplating knowledge obscure to everyone else. It’s likely that she’s the greatest scholar in all the worlds, when it comes to magic and its relationship to the spirit and the nature of personhood.”
“After the Crowns, you mean?”
The Shisha shrugged. “She was once a Herald, remember, and having created the Shades she devoted herself to the study of them with a devotion and focus you can’t properly understand, for long enough that civilizations rose and fell unnoticed around her. And though the Crowns are old and learned even beyond my comprehension, they aren’t omniscient. By the time Iaka felt ready for her second attempt at creating a world without suffering, she understood far more than she did the first time around. Perhaps, even, more than them. Who can say?”
“And her next step was…what? the hag elves?”
“Exactly.”
“Why?” Jerl asked.
“Because elves, by design, are bound to physical reality more tightly than humans. Their spirits reincarnate, their souls return time and again rather than move on. The Crowns deemed this necessary in the creation to create a kind of collective repository and memory. As a substitute for something I have never properly understood. But by their nature, elves are less…” he paused and searched for the right word.
“Ephemeral?” Jerl suggested.
“Less transitory. They aren’t on their way to somewhere else. At least, not yet.” The Herald shrugged, neatly summarizing his feelings on a deep and daunting mystery with quite a simple, human gesture. “How that helps Iaka, I don’t know. She’s the expert. All I know is…by the time she went to the Unelmasa Set, she knew exactly how it was going to play out.”
He growled, at that. A deep, grumbling noise accompanied by a frown bordering on rage. “And she still went and did it.”
Nen Unelmasa, Manaar Earthmote Eight hundred years ago
A stranger came to the Unelmasa Set, which was interesting in itself: There were very few Fey that Cofordmar Unelmasa did not remember from some point in his many lives. And he would have bet anything that he knew all those who shared the dream of one day reclaiming the Ordfey glory.
But not this one.
He was an Ithfey, his skin not just pale but faintly blue like glacial ice, with eyes as strikingly azure as meltwater. But the soul-name he gave—Hadan—was unknown to anyone in the Set.
Still…he was a brother who spoke passionately about the days when the rightful order of things had lasted. Perhaps he had simply gone unnoticed until now, reincarnating time and again as an elf of meager means and ambition until this present Chal awoke some real purpose in him. Perhaps his next life would drag him back down to obscurity. Cofordmar did not know.
Here and now, though, Hadan’s passion was blinding. And he spoke of a new weapon that would put the kine back in their place.
“Magic.”
Cofordmar and his inner circle glanced at each other, confused and uncertain. “You…mean to teach us some new war-form?” Cofordmar ventured.
“Not a war-form. It is a…transformation, of sorts. One which will bind you permanently to the bodies you wear now. Rather than go through rebirth and a new childhood upon death, you would regenerate instead. Even if you were dismembered and the pieces scattered or burned to ash, you would return, whole and healthy.”
There was some understandably skeptical scoffing around the Set’s hearthfire, but Cofordmar leaned in to stare intently at the ithfey. “…There is always a price.”
“Not in this case.” Hadan shook his head with a small smile.
“You expect me to believe in power without sacrifice?”
Hadan angled his head slightly. “That depends. We will be required to shed something, yes. But can it really be called a sacrifice if the thing we shed does nothing but hold us back?”
“What, exactly, would we be shedding?” Cofordmar pressed.
“Distractions. Lack of focus. Petty conceits and worries. Pain. Idleness. Fear.” Hadan smiled. “We will be transformed in mind and body, this is true. But we will lose only our weaknesses, and gain true immortality. After that…imagine it. Imagine never having to worry about the future of the Set ever again. Imagine not having to hide and fret about whether your young will grow to become Penitents. Imagine never having to wear a vamdraech because even the Shades will hold no fear for us. That is the future my patron offers us.”
The Unelmasa Set glanced at each other. Cofordmar saw his own doubts reflected in the Set’s eyes…but also his hope. They were interested. And so, honestly, was he.
He turned back to Hadan and leaned forward.
“Tell us more…”
Orthogonal to reality and time.
Force.
There was no other word. In this featureless place of unspeakably hot energies, he felt only the primordial heat of creation boiling sweat out of his body, the light trying and failing to incinerate or blind him. His every step took actual effort, of the kind he’d not felt since he was a real man, so very long ago in his woodland cabin up north…
It was already much too big. Not dangerously so, but he was right to visit. It was still accelerating.
He sighed, a sound lost in the maelstrom of energy about him. He took a hold of the vast sphere in front of him, far too big and bulky to really describe, like a man trying to shoulder a planet.
He grunted, and strained, and began to crush it smaller. It took some time, in a place where time had no real meaning. Kicking, punching. Whole-body labor needed to make a dent. But a dent he made. He mauled at it until it was smaller, denser. Calculated violence, as if he were forging something with his feet and fists. Work. It fit in his arms now, heavy enough to grunt in effort.
Wrestle with it. Knead it, work loose the knots of energies building within. Mix things up, maximize its future potential. This he did on every level of his being, but mostly he did it with his body, because the thing before him was still a purely physical object. He played with it almost as if it were a hard rubber wrestling dummy, another memory boiling up from so long ago. Always strange, that: here he could fully integrate and his life became much more present. Small memories from ?ons ago became as immediate and present as making love to Rhennach only a few hours ago, or so it seemed. And so he remembered: sports in school (even though he couldn’t afford them, really), military training, bar brawls, a fight for life and death.
Fights of other kinds, some beautiful, some terrible. Some recent, too—wrestling with truth was a truth itself, one of the most ancient of mankind, and that struggle came in many, many forms.
He was growing sentimental. Enough light work. He applied his full strength and smashed.
Smaller. Fit in his hand. More force, straining now. A growl. Down to a pebble. Smaller. Smaller.
With his full strength, with everything he had. A timeless, endless exertion until he had a mote of potential, bound under its own gravity. Not a singularity, something more marvelous.
There. That ought to hold for a good long while, no matter how fast it wanted to grow.
…A nudge, in his soul. He’d long learned to listen to it. He pondered the acceleration—
…Well. That changed everything. He would need to meditate and pray, but…well, he didn’t have much time anymore.
He crushed on it a lot more, to buy a little more time. He worked on it until he felt his muscles begin to shake and his very soul strain at the task.
That was as far as he could go, for now. His muscles were sore, and he had no spare strength left to give. Time to leave. Time to pass through the Real yet again. Time to grow far, far stronger.
Time to accelerate plans. Time to mourn what could not be.
Not yet.
But soon enough.
The Craenen 09.06.03.13.03
“Hadan was Iaka, of course. The disguise even fooled me. Though I admit, I wasn’t paying terribly close attention to the Unelmasa Set. They were just…wishful thinkers. The name meant ‘Dreaming Woods’, and that’s all they were: dreamers. The fallen rump of an empire who never figured out how to move on and make do in the new world, they preferred instead to lurk bitterly in their forest and lament the good old days.”
<“Your attention was on us, I would guess,”> a new voice interjected in Feydh.
Jerl turned, and wondered how Ekve had managed to slip up and listen in on the conversation unnoticed. He certainly wasn’t being stealthy: his skin was glowing, a faint white radiance like the reflected sunlight on distant snows. But his step was soundless, and the light from his body was enough to shoo the shades away from him.
It was an effort though, Jerl could see. He’d never heard of an elf using their magic to make themselves glow like that, but it clearly wasn’t easy. Ekve’s face was pinched with concentration.
The Shishah tutted and gestured: all around them, the cobblestones and bricks started to shine, and the shades fled out of a circle of perfect illumination. “There. You can relax, you idiot.”
Ekve grunted, and sat down while his skin subsided to its usual hue. <“Thank you. I am right, though?”>
“You are.” The Shishah admitted, and Jerl felt a vague need to shake his head as though he’d got water in his ear. He was hearing the Herald in Enerlish, he was certain of that…but somehow it sounded like he had spoken in Feydh as well. “You had an earthmote, followers, and real plans. We all thought, if there was any danger of the Ordfey rising again, it would come from you.”
“So Iaka went after somebody less closely watched,” Jerl said.
<“And more foolish,”> Ekve commented, settling himself comfortably. <“We would never have taken an offer like that.”>
“No? Even if it gave you your empire back?”
Ekve chuckled mirthlessly. <“I was emperor of a million sadists,”> he pointed out. <“Over hundreds of lives I ruled them, and not by earning their love and loyalty, but by surviving their attempts to usurp me. I knew how to temper my hunger with caution, and I would have seen through “Hadan” and his dissembling. But the Unelmasa Set….they were nobodies. The children and reincarnations of nobodies who never had the wit and drive to earn real power in the Ordfey, nor to seriously pursue its reincarnation afterwards. They wanted the old days handed back to them on a tray, and were so hungry for it that they never questioned or thought about the offer.”>
Jerl grunted bitterly. “…I think I feel a certain kinship with them,” he muttered.
<“You are more self-aware.”> Ekve tucked his heels up into a cross-legged posture.
“…Wait. Sin told me once that the Hag Elves were cursed by King E?rrach. She said everyone felt his anger and upset.”
<“We did,”> Ekve nodded.
“And you misinterpreted it,” the Shishah told him. Ekve nodded solemnly.
<“Oh yes. Having been directly on the receiving end of his…disappointment…I understand the difference, now.”>
Jerl allowed the elf a brief silence. He’d gotten used to having Ekve aboard the ship, and mostly he seemed to just tuck himself away in a corner where he would hold quiet conversations with whoever came to sit with him…which was mostly the Rüwyrdan elves. Sin avoided him, and only three of the humans were remotely fluent in Feydh—Jerl himself, Mouse, and Amir. He had seen Amir take the time to converse once or twice, but Amir was the sort to cheerily share the content of any discussion if it was remotely interesting.
…Unless it was confidential, of course. Hmm.
“So, what really happened?” he asked aloud. “Who was he really angry at? Iaka?”
The Shishah sighed. “I don’t think,” he said, “he was angry at just one person…”
It had been a long, long time since E?rrach had last felt anger like this. He’d almost started to believe he was beyond it. Anger was the spur to action, the powerful sting that said ’here is something that needs correcting.’ But he’d learned a long time ago not to do the first thing anger suggested. It was almost never the right move. And how many millions of years, how many billions of years had passed since the last time somebody did something it was worth getting genuinely enraged over?
It had happened now, though.
The anger was telling him to hunt down Iaka, drag her out of whatever protective bubble she had erected around herself, and annihilate her. It was certainly no less than she deserved…
But damn her, she understood the rules he followed to an exacting degree. Apparently, she even understood the rationale behind them, too. Perhaps that was where the impotent rage in his fists and shoulders truly came from: how could somebody demonstrate so clearly that she understood, and still reject? It was…It was…
Fury abruptly collapsed into a terrible sadness. To know the true path, but yet, to willingly turn aside from it…
Her story was a tragedy. And she had dragged the Unelmasa in behind her…or…no. No, to say she’d dragged them in was to suggest she’d forced them into this, and deny them the agency they’d demonstrated. She’d invited them…and they had come with of their own free will.
It was all…legal. It was all completely fucking legal.
That was what really made him angry.
He moved among the former Unelmasa Set shrouded in a way that was usually more Haust’s thing, obscuring himself from their awareness. They were in the process of shedding nearly everything about who they had been. Personal effects, trinkets, favored decorations, even their clothes had been recycled for utility. After all, elves did not actually need clothing, not when they could use magic to insulate, warm or protect their bodies. They dressed only out of custom, habit, and longstanding convention.
Their bodies had changed already. However the ritual that remade them had gone, it had given them new and almost entirely genderless forms, barely blemished at all by genitalia, mammary, or any trace of individuality. Now, they wore their hair in identical long warhawks, their androgynous bodies were bare of tattoo or scarification, and their faces were…averaged, somehow. And that was only the superficial, physical change.
To E?rrach’s deeper perception, the erasure of their indivuality went far, far deeper. Iaka could not have done a more complete job of homogenizing them at every level. Even their memories were shared, so that what one knew, all knew.
And they all knew they had volunteered for this. They all remembered being told what would happen. They all remembered objecting at first…and then being talked around.
She had left that for him specifically. There was no ensorcelment, no bewitching power, no mind control involved in this. Iaka had simply persuaded the Unelmasa Set to discard personhood, of their own volition.
The anger boiled up again. How dare she rules-lawyer him?
And yet…what could he do? This was what the Unelmasa had chosen, and the right of mortals to walk their path, to whatever end, was inviolate. And he had made Iaka mortal, so her right to do even this was equally inviolate. As sick as it made him…the real test she had put in front of him was whether he would betray his own most sacred principles in opposition.
He would not. All he could do from now on was practice greater vigilance.
He sat and watched them begin the process of erecting their statues. They wouldn’t be complete for a couple of weeks, but he could see the shape of them in the insect-like simple intent of their remaining minds. Was that really what Iaka thought of him and the others? Or was there some other meaning behind it?
Art interpretation had never been his thing, really. He’d have to ask Sayf. Here and now…all he could do was make a statement of his own. Let it be unsubtle. A clear communication of his dissatisfaction.
The laboring corrupted elves paused a second, then continued without even glancing around. But the forest reacted to his will instantly. In days, this place would reflect the evil wrought here. In a generation, the “Dreaming Trees” would be a twisted, dark place that humans would hardly dare to whisper of, and elves would avoid. A crone forest, a place where the corruption Iaka had brought to its inhabitants would be visible…and which would follow them wherever they went.
He found Rheannach waiting for him on the forest’s outskirts and flopped down next to her. It had been a long, long time since he’d last felt so drained. She took his hand and squeezed it.
“Bad?” she asked.
He sighed. “Nothing worse than some of the things I saw and heard of Before…but…”
“Ah. Bad, then.”
“People…insist on destroying themselves. And with power like hers, she can make it very literal.”
She sighed, nodded, and looked away from him. And it was a funny thing, but there was nobody else in all the world who could be so opaque to him, when she really wanted. But of course…she was his perfect woman. And that was only possible because she wasn’t a completely open book, even to him.
“What?” he asked.
She stared off at nothing in particular for a long moment, then shifted her weight slightly and inhaled. “Do you ever think you should have just destroyed them, instead? Her, and Nimico, Vedaun and Chathamugah?”
“…Sometimes.”
“Surely you knew they’d be trouble?”
“Rhee…you know better than anyone how weird the relationship between Crown and Herald is. Are you my creation? My wife? My daughter? A little of all three and more besides…”
She gave him a steadying look. “You’re too hard on yourself. Creation and wife, yes, but daughter? No. I don’t have a father; I was never a little girl.”
“That just adds another layer of weirdness.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged, which had the interesting effect of making her wings flex. he loved her wings. Black and white magpie pinions, with a dark oil-slick rainbow sheen, complex and intricate and perfectly neither one thing nor another. Just what she was. “But…I know you’re strong enough to do what’s right, when you must, no matter how painful it is.”
“Would destroying them have been right?”
She looked at him, then glanced back toward the mutating heart of the forest and the twisted creatures building their statues within. “She’s not going to stop, you know. She’ll keep doing this, making new monsters, until she manages what she’s trying to do.”
“Then mortals must stop her.”
“They’ll need help from us. From the Heralds, I mean.”
“Yes…”
She treated him to an arch smile. “But that’s what we’re for, right?”
So, she was in a prickly mood. He just chuckled softly and shook his head, and her smile turned into a grin.
“So…what are you thinking?” he asked.
Rheannach glanced back into the woods. “…She’s using some species of witchcraft. That’s my territory, so I’m going to fight fire with fire.”
“Sanctioned witches again?”
She nodded. “Assuming it looks likely to work…”
“I do like the subtlety of it.” He focused, turning his mind inwards to a power he didn’t use often. “…and it should work. Though, not without pain and sacrifice.”
She sighed, and reached up to rub one of the stone beads on her necklace. By now, the habitual motion should have worn away the scratched stick-figure and runic inscription there, but she had preserved it over the long years. “That’s how it always goes when I get tangled up with mortals.”
Something else tickled at E?rrach’s senses. A possibility, though no more than that. It was all much too far in the future to pick out specifics, even for him. But…
“…Yeah. Sanctioned witches. You bring them to me, and I’ll empower and bless them.”
She smirked at him. “And seduce them?”
He mirrored her impish look. “With their consent and yours, of course.”
She snorted, leaned over, and they shared a tender kiss that did go some way to restoring his good humor. Then she was on her feet. Even as she rose, her wings tucked away into the folds of her dress, which grew a little thicker and coarser, shading from its usual translucent layers to something more rugged while her hair re-styled itself into the low braided bun fashionable among Craenen women. “I suppose I should start nearby. The Craenen are going to need a buffer against these twisted elves.”
“True.” He thought of encouraging her to be careful, or patient, or something. But that would have been for his own benefit, not for hers. He didn’t need to be in control of everything. “I’ll keep the bed warm.”
She scrunched her nose playfully at him, and strode away amidst the trees. He felt the faint twist of space yielding to her will, opening a path between, and she was gone.
He sighed happily. The perfect woman. She would handle things. It would take hundreds of years, of course…but he had the sense that they were doing the right thing. And that if they kept on doing it, there was someone in all their futures he would very much enjoy meeting.
That was an encouraging thought to go home on.
The Craenen 09.06.03.13.03
“From there, you know the broad shape of it. Rheannach established her coven among the Craenen, and in the fullness of time came Saoirse Crow-Sight and Ellaenie Banmor.”
Jerl nodded. “I’m still waiting for this to have anything to do with Deng-Nah or the reason we came to Crae Varthen,” he said.
“You haven’t figured it out yet?”
Jerl sighed. “I’m tired, I only have so much room in my brain, and I always did better with having things spelled out for me anyway.”
“You’re smarter than that, Jerl. But, fine. The reason Civorage was able to open his vault with the aid of the Shades was because Iaka wanted him to. He’s her third experiment!” The Shishah gestured up at the vast ring of the Unbroken mote, just visible below the limb of the earthmote above them in the very edge of the sky. “I mean, consider how vast the Unbroken Mote is, and how few people live there, and how tiny the odds were that Nils would happen to choose to dig right on top of a vault’s burial chamber. And then…”
He paused, and chuckled. “The security on a vault is absolutely as befits its contents. The entire point of them is that nobody should gain access until they are ready for the power and responsibility that entails. But they are meant to be opened, in the fullness of time.”
Jerl nodded. “Because this creation is incomplete and the Crowns need our help in completing it.”
“Well…yes, but a rather larger part is that this is all about continuing a grand plan that has existed for…well. If I were to write a one with a hundred zeroes after it, I’d be a tenth of the way there. But the largest part…”
“I know, I know. They’re lonely and they want company.”
“More than either of us can possibly understand,” Ekve added.
Jerl glanced at him, shrugged, and looked back out at the edge of their little pool of light, where the Shades were still stalking and watching them. “But we’re not supposed to get into them yet,” he said.
The Shishah puffed his pipe. “No. And Heralds aren’t supposed to get into them at all, though we do know what’s inside each one.”
“You do? Why’d they give you that ability?”
“They couldn’t make us what we are without that ability. But, we are forbidden from opening the vaults. They aren’t for us.”
“…I see the loophole. Iaka knows what’s in each vault, but can’t open it. But all she needed was a way to convey that knowledge to a human proxy.”
“Yes.”
“Why not just tell him?”
“The psychology of the individual, Jerl. Civorage is the right man for Iaka’s plans, but he would never have truly believed her if she just told him what the vault contains. He would have suspected some ulterior motive, some plan or trap—”
“Correctly,” Ekve interjected
“—And that doubt would have kept the vault firmly shut. The only way for him particularly to open it was to stroke his ego. He would only accept the information if it seemed like he had figured it out for himself, when everbody else was too stupid. So…the shades whispered to him. But only to him.”
Jerl shook his head. “Hang on, hang on. That’s not right. They whispered to me. That’s how I got the Time vault open!”
“Were you the one who completed the puzzle and broke the seal?”
“I—” Jerl hesitated. “…Oh. No.”
“No.” The Shishah grinned. “Civorage opened it for you. Then, a man you thought was dead intervened at exactly the right second so the open vault fell into your hand rather than his.”
Jerl exhaled. “Lady Talvi said the Words have a…will or an agenda. Or something. That they’ll influence events.”
“And what better for influencing events than Time itself? All it had to do was pick which particular branch of events you were in.” The Shishah puffed out a long streamer of smoke. “Perhaps Deng-Nah is destined to open his vault and speak the Word within. I don’t know. But he won’t do it using Iaka’s own trick. She’s too cunning and cautious to leave an opportunity her foes could exploit.”
Jerl sighed heavily. “So we’re back to square one.”
“No you aren’t, stop with the self pity.” The Shishah snorted, forming two last little clouds.
Ekve nodded. “We have new knowledge. That is progress.”
It was Jerl’s turn to snort. He looked away from them, back toward the Shades. “…no. Knowing that you wasted your time isn’t worth shit,” he said. “But…I did get to see my dad. For that at least, this whole trip might have been worthwhile.”
There was a long silence. Eventually, he looked back at the Shishah. “What’s happening elsewhere in the worlds?”
“Ellaenie has just reclaimed the Ducal Palace in Auldenheigh, and marched an army of Yunei soldiers into the city. She’s in the middle of levying an army, but the city will be under siege very soon, surrounded by superior numbers of better-equipped men, all directed by a single will even if they themselves are not Encircled.”
“You’re saying she can’t win.”
“She has…certain advantages on her side,” the Shishah granted. “But…no. I don’t think she can. Not without support from elsewhere.”
Jerl looked to Ekve, who simply cocked his head as though intrigued to see what he would do next. Then he looked to the Shishah, who was smiling faintly with that infuriating ‘I-know-something-you-don’t’ manner.
An idea struck him, an intuition or premonition from his power, and he gestured to the pouch on the Shisha’s belt. “…Give me some of that.”
The Herald’s smile grew larger. “Now? In the midst of eclipse?”
“I trust you to keep me safe.”
The smile faded into a solemn nod. “Yes. I will.” He removed the pouch and handed it over. “Take only a small pinch. And remember, this isn’t a drug you’re taking, it’s a key. Focus your mind on what it is you wish to unlock before you imbibe.”
Jerl nodded, and followed the instruction. He added a few shreds to his own pipe’s bowl along with a healthy dose of his own tobacco, lit up, tamped it down, banked and cultivated it until it was just right, then looked around, trying to focus his mind. What was he trying to unlock?
Something he needed. Some facet of the Word’s power that he’d locked away, but which he needed now. He neededto see again, where his choices would lead. He couldn’t keep on staggering blindly from premonition to premonition.
He grasped that thought tightly. He could vaguely, vaguely remember what it had been like when he first spoke the Word, and the way he had seen things then. That was what he wished to unlock. He held the sensation of it, the faint echo of memory, and imbibed.
He felt the effect immediately.
E?rrach’s Earthmote 09.06.03.13.03
Maingan sensed him first, of course. Her head came up, her nose twitched, she whined, and then she and Maicoh were scampering off to go welcome their master back.
E?rrach was in a thoughtful mood as he returned, so that even their happy bouncing and swirling around his ankles didn’t elicit more than a faint smile and some ear-scritches, followed by grabbing a log and throwing it across the lake with a thundercrack that knocked leaves and blossoms from the nearby trees.
Both hounds vanished after it in a pair of sonic booms of their own, and he watched them go with a grin before ambling over to the fallen tree the rest of them were lounging and sitting on, and flopping against it with a sigh. “Done.”
“It took a lot more out of you, this time,” Sayf commented, sliding down to inspect him.
E?rrach nodded. “Biggest it’s ever been. I’m actually…tired.”
“How big?”
He told them. The three Crowns considered the implications of that while Rheannach set her iron teapot by the fire to brew him a drink.
“It’s all going so fast…” Talvi said.
“Yes. So much faster than we expected or wanted it to. I don’t know if it’s reacting to the Words, or if the Words are reacting to it, but…”
“Or maybe they’re both reacting to a third thing.” Sayf said, quietly.
“Maybe.”
There were nods around the little gathering.
“…How is little Saoirse, anyway?” Haust asked.
Sayf chuckled. “Annoyed with me.”
“Oh?”
“She wanted to be here, to see all of you. When I told her she wasn’t ready for this, I got quite the little sulk.”
Fond chuckles. Rheannach spooned some leaves into a cup for her husband, then sat comfortably to let the water reach temperature. “What would happen if you’d brought her here?”
E?rrach shrugged and shook his head. “Hard to say. It might be she’d have tired out barely ten steps up the slope…or maybe she’d have strolled right to the top and even been able to go through. If she did, she’d never have the will to come back. She’s still a child, even if there’s a Crown in her future.”
“One who’s doing everything in her power to come to pass,” Talvi murmured softly. “Retrocausal communication with her present self from potential futures? I can’t do that.”
“Not only that, she did it despite there being many futures where she lives an ordinary mortal life,” Haust added.
“It was quite a feat,” Sayf agreed with a sigh. “And it saved Lisze’s life. Not that Lisze has the faintest idea what happened or how significant it is.”
“Does Saoirse?”
Sayf shrugged. “I’m not going to burden her with expectation. But she will, if she does become one of us.”
Rheannach moved the teapot off the fire to let it cool back down to the perfect brewing temperature. “How likely is is it that she’ll—?” she began.
She didn’t finish. The sensation that interrupted her was distinctive, and astonishing. All five of them rose to their fet and turned to look in the same direction, turning their attention toward Crae Varthen as energies only they could sense started washing across them. Here in this place, in the shallows of the Mountain, it created ripples that surged through the trees like the outriders of a hurricane., and they all sensed the world shift and change as an inexperienced mind went searching.
And from somewhere else, another inexperienced mind answered.
Crae Varthen 09.06.03.13.03
It’s scary, isn’t it?
Time was a landscape of river channels, of potential cutting through the icy plains of impossibility. From here, Jerl could see why he’d gotten lost: the path he’d been following didn’t even exist any longer. Somebody else had removed it. He could see the empty, dry scar of a what-could-have-been that had once been his intended course.
That’s life, he thought. You chart your course, but other forces have a say.
Doesn’t that scare you?
Visions of what-could-have-beens that hadn’t been. Smoke coiled in his mind, parting to reveal moments that never were: his own startled face with a neat bullet hole through the forehead, flat on the floor of a warehouse; the taste of blood as the hag elves’ hounds caught him and tore his throat open; unconscious death in a fireball as the Queen slammed into the Unbroken Mote. Deaths he had avoided by narrow margins, but which others had been trying so hard to inflict…
That’s life, he thought again. We aren’t alone. Everyone else gets a say…yes. It’s scary.
He saw green eyes in a round, pretty face. They smiled at him, and the smile was many things at once: gap-toothed childish innocence, carefree youth, timid, sultry, kind, stern, wise…
Fear doesn’t stop us.
No. True. Even if it did, even if the hand on the wheel went rigid with indecision, other forces still had their say. The journey didn’t halt just because of one man’s paralysis. It simply surrendered him to the will of others. And I am just one man.
And I am just a little girl.
I know. I met you.
But one day…
Jerl coughed slightly on a mouthful of smoke. Out loud, he mumbled something. A question.
“Does the future get a say in the present?”
Beside him, the Shishah chuckled. “All the time.”
All the time.
Chart a course. And if the wind or the actions of others force you off it…
Chart a new one.
Vistas unrolled. With his ordinary eyes, Jerl saw only light and shades, and two watchful figures guarding him. But his sight was elsewhere.
Again and again.
Until you arrive at your destination.
Which may not be where you planned to go.
Other people get a say.
….What do you want?
Amusement.
I want to stay up and wait for daddy to come home. I want my mummy. I want a banana. I want Aunty Lisze to read me a story. I want to play with Shrub.
A vision of a stuffed toy doy, well-loved and always kept close. A dozen other simple, selfish, childish wants. But behind them…
Behind the girl was a woman, waiting to be, wanting to be, trying to be. And that word meant so, so much and encompassed so many thousands of tiny transformations, expectations, burdens, freedoms, ought-to-bes and ideas. Jerl inhaled sharply, bowled end-over-end by the sensation of an entire gender and an infinity of anticipated lives hitting him in the head.
“What do you see?” Shishah asked.
He didn’t answer. Well, maybe he mumbled something.
Where do you want to go? And remember…everyone else gets a say.
Where he truly wanted to go wasn’t an option. He wanted to go back, to before. In his heart, in his core, Jerl didn’t want any of this. He never had.
So what was in second place?
Green eyes watched him carefully, and asked for help. And he had to confess…every course in that direction looked pretty good.
Specifics. Details. A plan.
Let me help. Start…here.
…Yes.
He lurched to his feet. They felt like they were far below him, at the end of long ropes in a high gale, and they wouldn’t go quite where he wanted them to, but a hand on his arm helped him. Altered his course.
Everyone gets a say.
But this one was saying he wanted to go where Jerl wanted to go. This one was trimming the rudder against a squall.
Everyone gets a say, including you.
Door. The Jolly Tar. Opened it after a moment of hard concentration. Deng-Nah looked up from the cube and frowned at him. “…What—?”
“Wrong approach,” Jerl told him. “This won’t work.”
Deng-Nah’s frown deepened. “So this was…waste of time?”
Jerl grinned and flopped down in the chair opposite him. “No…’cuz now we know how it doesn’t go.”
“…You’re drunk.”
“Yeah. Only way. Had to reawaken some things I’d locked off…” Jerl grinned manically and tipped his head back. The Shishah’s leaf was fading fast, and the vision of the green-eyed girl was going with it, but he still remembered enough.
Deng-Nah simply watched him. “…Explain.”
“This whole thing was groping blind in the dark. That needs to stop. I have the power to see further, and I need to use it, ‘cuz there’s….there’s an important future coming. Or…there can be. It can still not happen, if things don’t go the right ways. We came here to get that vault open because I didn’t have any better ideas. but this was the wrong way. This whole way with the Shades whispering? This is Nils Civorage’s way.”
Deng-Nah’s expression remained patiently stoic. “So, why I can’t use it?” he asked
“Because it’s specifically his way. The way chosen for him. Buuut…there’s another way. A way chosen for somebody else. And you can use that. Or rather, she can use it. And in return—well, she’d do it anyway, no need for tit-for-tat—”
“…Tit?” Deng-Nah asked suspiciously.
“Nevermind. Point is…” Jerl focused. The drug’s potency had worn of substantially, but he was still feeling very…open. Staying on course was a little tricky. “Point is…there’s a battle coming. Or really, it’s already started. And it might or might not go badly if we aren’t there. But we can be there, and we can make a difference…and you’ll see what happens when we do.”
He looked up for the Shishah, but the Herald had apparently never actually followed him through the door. He’d done what he’d come to do and vanished again.
“So, where we going?”
Jerl grinned at him.
“To begin with? A place called Lendwick.”
Also by the author:
- a three million word epic HFY story set in the near future, when humanity makes first contact with aliens and quickly discover that, actually, we're the ones to be feared...
Dandelion - co-authored with Justin C. Louis. The story of Amber Houston, a young interstellar settler who becomes stranded and quickly discovers that she has inherited an incredible, and terrible, legacy of leadership.
If you have enjoyed the Nested Worlds story so far and want to support the author, you can do so by:
-
http://patreon.com/HamboneHFY where patrons of all tiers enjoy early access to next month's chapter.
-
http://teepublic.com/HamboneHFY
-
http://paypal.me/HamboneHFY or buy me a coffee at
-
http://facebook.com/HamboneHFY/ or
-
The Nested Worlds or for The Deathworlders at
The Nested Worlds is ? Philip Richard Johnson, AKA Hambone, Hambone3110 and HamboneHFY. The copyright holder asserts his natural rights, and reserves all commercial rights and ownership of this intellectual property. This is a work of fiction, and the author therefore does not necessarily share, endorse, condone or encourage the opinions and behaviour depicted herein. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is accidental.