malins
Stumbling Seeker
the story so far, including the 'inspirational' images...
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Every Shadow Burns My Face
- Thread starter malins
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malins
Stumbling Seeker
what is dead can never die. Therefore, this continues.
---
THE MOUNTAIN SHALL OVERTURN (1)
The sun had risen well into the sky before the Regent emerged from the tent.
Wordlessly waving away her maids who nevertheless continued preparing her bath.
Her writing that tried to capture the crazed dreamwalk of the night – that she had hidden away, tucked in with other secrets.
A few sacred sheets concealed among the profane scribblings.
There they were, pages cut out from books, stolen, … among them one that had near stopped a girl’s heart in a garden, all those years ago, when under the eyes of that man twice her age she’d been promised to, ... promised to second – the volume had fallen open, there, and it was as if she’d been turned inside out and revealed for all to see. She hated it and loved it and still needed to look at it all those years later, a horror she couldn’t avert her eyes from … a destiny she couldn’t escape?
That book, she had found in the library at Verdesgord, during one of those morbid summers of waiting, spent inside those heavy, doom-laden walls that had stolen her sister’s life, waiting to grow, waiting to bleed, waiting to be just enough of what might pass for a woman to be given away, to take her sister’s place.
It had been wrapped in plain leather, no ornament.
Someone, a long time past, in small timid hand, had inscribed upon the cover, “Companion to a Young Girl’s Dreams, If They Be Wild.”
She had clutched it to the heart.
For was she not a young girl and were her dreams not wild and oh what it meant for the world that ever someone had lived who had been like her!
The book had been so easy to steal, so easy to conceal.
So easy by then it had become to walk unseen, to shift sideways between people’s sight.
To weave between the columns and slip among the shadows.
Things you learn when you have been playing tag with the Devil.
The book so easy to conceal, in the ridiculous crassness of the plush, overdecorated chamber she had been allotted … but what a disappointment it had been when she had first cracked the iron latches that held it closed and found inside ... a dry treatise of jurisprudence? 'On the Methods of Justice in Manifold Times Past & Present and Realms Near & Far'. But leaf past the introduction, and there were dreams, and destinies. Terrifying, beautiful secrets of her own.
And it had felt to her, as her body changed, as Verdesgord summers passed, she had grown into the very form of the woman in the drawing, as she was raised on her cross to suffer, nothing hidden, everything of her for all to see. Nowhere else had she seen that. Any of that. But then one day it had been a secret no more, nothing hidden, he knew, he knew what it meant, he knew what she was.
And more than that.
He had the hands that could do it, she knew.
The heart that could do it too? ... She knew.
And another page, older still, stolen too, that dictated her morning ritual.
Stolen from the story of Tuensin-Ran, who had stolen from the gods.
It was late, too late really, to greet the day as she had done ever since, but she felt the need for the ritual, to pour out her worries even if met with no answer from the Gods.
And so she went out, ignoring the selection of fine garments presented for her choosing. Instead she picked loose silken robes made in the style of her homeland, that she knew would be easy to slip into even with her left arm still throbbing from last night’s injury.
His claws always sink deep, she knew, but the wounds never festered and the skin always closed quickly.
Like brine poured into oil, the marks would sink through her skin and disappear, the scars always on the inside.
Likewise she ignored the delicacies laid out for breakfast, which dutiful Mirasintsa, she knew, had risen two hours before light to prepare.
Instead, on her way to the sanctuary she picked from the abandoned orchards, white-fleshed early ripening apples with a sour tangy taste that deliciously pricked the tongue.
You I take for my plunder, she thought to herself and smiled, as she looked down the hillside upon the surrendered town of Caridiulte, which in reward for its submission had been spared the traditional three days of rapine and pillage.
It was the castle, yet unconquered, that mattered.
Where Count Irion Ondriscensu cackled at the helplessness of her magnificent army and cooked up his plans of reconquest. A war become a bloody see-saw tilting back and forth across the once prosperous land, not at all only a matter of gallant knights charging or fearless pikemen standing firm, rather seasons of hovel-burning, well-poisoning and field-salting. And no, the orchards were not … ‘abandoned’ … – rather the Crown of Belquemer had seized these hills opposite the stronghold, and cleared them of their rightful owners.
But ignore all that for a moment, now walking along the outskirt of the forest, cool air wafting out pleasantly while the day warmed up.
Forget what you know.
Forget what you are, forget and take in only what your senses give you.
You are not the Regent Queen who sends men to death and glory by the thousands, who grants mercy or deals out doom with but a wave of the hand or a raising of the brow.
You are not the Mad Witch, of which the noble houses of Ondriscensu and Galishad and half the lesser lords of Belquemer could only not agree whether they wanted to impale, crucify or burn her at the stake – any way so long as her feet did not touch soil as she died -- but you live, and your feet are firm on the ground.
You are not the bereaved mother who has no graves to mourn the children she has lost and nothing but pangs in her heart for the one that still lives.
You are not the widow and not the avenging warrior.
You are not the howl of anguish in the night.
For a minute, let yourself not be that.
Forget all the battles won and all the things you ever lost.
Forget a while.
Forget, as you cannot forgive.
In this moment all you are is just a young woman walking slowly, with her eyes closed, along a winding path at the edge of the woods.
If they knew not the price of the cloth that made up your simple square-cut garment, an onlooker might take you for a barefoot peasant girl, apples in the crook of her arm.
High grass brushing against your calves. And you have not even done up your hair, and yes you are walking barefoot, shoes kicked off carelessly once past the perimeter of the camp, and then when you remember for a moment you are Queen, Queen, what a ridiculous idea, you, you must laugh.
Queen! Your grandfather, had he not scraped limpets from the rocks for his family’s sustenance?
Now forget again.
Your left hand reaching out, to be caressed by leaves as you pass.
Now and then a bough snapping against your arm or just now the sting of a nettle.
Not unwelcome, no.
To your right runs the valley.
Faint chimes and bells sounding, whether it is from the temples or the markets, or from the hills rising beyond, cattle being led to the meadows.
A faint hint of shepherds’ song on a fickle wind.
Out of the forest, rich dark scents, strong and fateful.
Where things would die so life could be fed.
Not for the empty folly of vengeance, crown and glory.
Damp earth – then dry, rough roots, soft round pebbles or sharper gravel.
Where it’s been shady since the last rains, soft mud squishing between the toes; where the sun has insisted, brittle dry flakes crumbling beneath your soles.
Steeper now, so open your eyes: The sacred place is near.
The valley dotted with bright blots of color, splotches from a painter’s palette, bright as Ladicari's, shrinking with your pupils. Other eyes, sharp eyes, would make out banners and heraldry, flags and cannon and catapults. But you are content with innocent colors dancing, skipping with your steps. The world is mild when you don’t hold up the crystal.
Fate says there must be war, war to the death, war in which bloodlines must perish that flourished since the dawn of days.
But for now, no thought of empty bellies growling in the town or treason whispering among the tents.
Because here is the sacred place, and if the Gods are good they will accept a belated morning prayer.
Slabs of sacred stone jumbled amid ancient oaks, dappled in sunlight.
Stones that had stood straight in the Dawntime, since sunken into the soil.
Stones made sacred not by priesthoods’ murmurs but by hopes and prayers of honest hearts brought to this place, aeon upon aeon.
Stones smoothed by uncounted hands and yes, striped with the blood-trace of ancient sacrifice.
She stretched herself out upon one that leaned just right, and sighed.
Comfortably cool the stone supported her.
No sorrow.
Perhaps, a God or two would consider being good, as in this moment Tsilsne was happy.
And when Tsilsne was happy, the Gods had one less reason to worry of what might befall their creation.
---
THE MOUNTAIN SHALL OVERTURN (1)
The sun had risen well into the sky before the Regent emerged from the tent.
Wordlessly waving away her maids who nevertheless continued preparing her bath.
Her writing that tried to capture the crazed dreamwalk of the night – that she had hidden away, tucked in with other secrets.
A few sacred sheets concealed among the profane scribblings.
There they were, pages cut out from books, stolen, … among them one that had near stopped a girl’s heart in a garden, all those years ago, when under the eyes of that man twice her age she’d been promised to, ... promised to second – the volume had fallen open, there, and it was as if she’d been turned inside out and revealed for all to see. She hated it and loved it and still needed to look at it all those years later, a horror she couldn’t avert her eyes from … a destiny she couldn’t escape?
That book, she had found in the library at Verdesgord, during one of those morbid summers of waiting, spent inside those heavy, doom-laden walls that had stolen her sister’s life, waiting to grow, waiting to bleed, waiting to be just enough of what might pass for a woman to be given away, to take her sister’s place.
It had been wrapped in plain leather, no ornament.
Someone, a long time past, in small timid hand, had inscribed upon the cover, “Companion to a Young Girl’s Dreams, If They Be Wild.”
She had clutched it to the heart.
For was she not a young girl and were her dreams not wild and oh what it meant for the world that ever someone had lived who had been like her!
The book had been so easy to steal, so easy to conceal.
So easy by then it had become to walk unseen, to shift sideways between people’s sight.
To weave between the columns and slip among the shadows.
Things you learn when you have been playing tag with the Devil.
The book so easy to conceal, in the ridiculous crassness of the plush, overdecorated chamber she had been allotted … but what a disappointment it had been when she had first cracked the iron latches that held it closed and found inside ... a dry treatise of jurisprudence? 'On the Methods of Justice in Manifold Times Past & Present and Realms Near & Far'. But leaf past the introduction, and there were dreams, and destinies. Terrifying, beautiful secrets of her own.
And it had felt to her, as her body changed, as Verdesgord summers passed, she had grown into the very form of the woman in the drawing, as she was raised on her cross to suffer, nothing hidden, everything of her for all to see. Nowhere else had she seen that. Any of that. But then one day it had been a secret no more, nothing hidden, he knew, he knew what it meant, he knew what she was.
And more than that.
He had the hands that could do it, she knew.
The heart that could do it too? ... She knew.
And another page, older still, stolen too, that dictated her morning ritual.
Stolen from the story of Tuensin-Ran, who had stolen from the gods.
It was late, too late really, to greet the day as she had done ever since, but she felt the need for the ritual, to pour out her worries even if met with no answer from the Gods.
And so she went out, ignoring the selection of fine garments presented for her choosing. Instead she picked loose silken robes made in the style of her homeland, that she knew would be easy to slip into even with her left arm still throbbing from last night’s injury.
His claws always sink deep, she knew, but the wounds never festered and the skin always closed quickly.
Like brine poured into oil, the marks would sink through her skin and disappear, the scars always on the inside.
Likewise she ignored the delicacies laid out for breakfast, which dutiful Mirasintsa, she knew, had risen two hours before light to prepare.
Instead, on her way to the sanctuary she picked from the abandoned orchards, white-fleshed early ripening apples with a sour tangy taste that deliciously pricked the tongue.
You I take for my plunder, she thought to herself and smiled, as she looked down the hillside upon the surrendered town of Caridiulte, which in reward for its submission had been spared the traditional three days of rapine and pillage.
It was the castle, yet unconquered, that mattered.
Where Count Irion Ondriscensu cackled at the helplessness of her magnificent army and cooked up his plans of reconquest. A war become a bloody see-saw tilting back and forth across the once prosperous land, not at all only a matter of gallant knights charging or fearless pikemen standing firm, rather seasons of hovel-burning, well-poisoning and field-salting. And no, the orchards were not … ‘abandoned’ … – rather the Crown of Belquemer had seized these hills opposite the stronghold, and cleared them of their rightful owners.
But ignore all that for a moment, now walking along the outskirt of the forest, cool air wafting out pleasantly while the day warmed up.
Forget what you know.
Forget what you are, forget and take in only what your senses give you.
You are not the Regent Queen who sends men to death and glory by the thousands, who grants mercy or deals out doom with but a wave of the hand or a raising of the brow.
You are not the Mad Witch, of which the noble houses of Ondriscensu and Galishad and half the lesser lords of Belquemer could only not agree whether they wanted to impale, crucify or burn her at the stake – any way so long as her feet did not touch soil as she died -- but you live, and your feet are firm on the ground.
You are not the bereaved mother who has no graves to mourn the children she has lost and nothing but pangs in her heart for the one that still lives.
You are not the widow and not the avenging warrior.
You are not the howl of anguish in the night.
For a minute, let yourself not be that.
Forget all the battles won and all the things you ever lost.
Forget a while.
Forget, as you cannot forgive.
In this moment all you are is just a young woman walking slowly, with her eyes closed, along a winding path at the edge of the woods.
If they knew not the price of the cloth that made up your simple square-cut garment, an onlooker might take you for a barefoot peasant girl, apples in the crook of her arm.
High grass brushing against your calves. And you have not even done up your hair, and yes you are walking barefoot, shoes kicked off carelessly once past the perimeter of the camp, and then when you remember for a moment you are Queen, Queen, what a ridiculous idea, you, you must laugh.
Queen! Your grandfather, had he not scraped limpets from the rocks for his family’s sustenance?
Now forget again.
Your left hand reaching out, to be caressed by leaves as you pass.
Now and then a bough snapping against your arm or just now the sting of a nettle.
Not unwelcome, no.
To your right runs the valley.
Faint chimes and bells sounding, whether it is from the temples or the markets, or from the hills rising beyond, cattle being led to the meadows.
A faint hint of shepherds’ song on a fickle wind.
Out of the forest, rich dark scents, strong and fateful.
Where things would die so life could be fed.
Not for the empty folly of vengeance, crown and glory.
Damp earth – then dry, rough roots, soft round pebbles or sharper gravel.
Where it’s been shady since the last rains, soft mud squishing between the toes; where the sun has insisted, brittle dry flakes crumbling beneath your soles.
Steeper now, so open your eyes: The sacred place is near.
The valley dotted with bright blots of color, splotches from a painter’s palette, bright as Ladicari's, shrinking with your pupils. Other eyes, sharp eyes, would make out banners and heraldry, flags and cannon and catapults. But you are content with innocent colors dancing, skipping with your steps. The world is mild when you don’t hold up the crystal.
Fate says there must be war, war to the death, war in which bloodlines must perish that flourished since the dawn of days.
But for now, no thought of empty bellies growling in the town or treason whispering among the tents.
Because here is the sacred place, and if the Gods are good they will accept a belated morning prayer.
Slabs of sacred stone jumbled amid ancient oaks, dappled in sunlight.
Stones that had stood straight in the Dawntime, since sunken into the soil.
Stones made sacred not by priesthoods’ murmurs but by hopes and prayers of honest hearts brought to this place, aeon upon aeon.
Stones smoothed by uncounted hands and yes, striped with the blood-trace of ancient sacrifice.
She stretched herself out upon one that leaned just right, and sighed.
Comfortably cool the stone supported her.
No sorrow.
Perhaps, a God or two would consider being good, as in this moment Tsilsne was happy.
And when Tsilsne was happy, the Gods had one less reason to worry of what might befall their creation.
Last edited:
But does she remain happy?
A story like a song, the words captivate, even if one reading doesn't quite capture them.
RacingRodent
Consul
It Lives!
Hurrah!
Great to see a bit more of what Tsilsne is up to
Hurrah!
Great to see a bit more of what Tsilsne is up to
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Good to see you back, Malins, on this mysterious story!
malins
Stumbling Seeker
THE MOUNTAIN SHALL OVERTURN (2)
Sun and shade played on her face as leaves rustled in the wind.
Calm and beautiful.
It was blissful to let go.
Stretched on ancient stone.
Imagining, remembering, then forgetting.
Low regular breathing.
Had someone followed her?
If so, while watching her drifting to sleep, he might blink, and in the next moment, he would see her dancing.
Amid the stones. Wild and free.
Childlike, moves unencumbered either by the rotely learned steps of her native tradition or the styles of the Belquemer court.
Mouthing syllables of silent song.
If you were still watching, you’d see her vanish behind one of the leaning stones, but she wouldn’t reappear where you’d expect her.
Where had she gone?
Oh there she was.
Rising from where she had rested.
Had you just dreamed you saw her dancing?
Or had she?
As she opened her eyes and rose, she saw around her, etched into the bark of the trees, or painted upon the stones, symbols of the many faiths followed by the peoples that made up her host.
There were the gods of mercenaries from afar, the horsehead god of the fierce Herguelyuks; and here the Invincible Sun, his moonwife and their twelve sons who had divided sky and earth and set upon the latter the tribes of the Zubali.
Of these peoples she had hired cavalry and archers but also some of the best men for deeds that others deemed undoable.
There, the eight-sided star of the True Path and more of their saints than she could count. It was the most common faith of those who lived to the north of the Narrow Strait and to the East of the Gabardine Empire. Those gods of course also had their improvised little shrines here.
And there, she recognized the manifold face of Merciful Redemption.
Over here, someone had, since the last time she’d visited, carved some gnarled roots into an intricate representation of the Serpentwined Sisters, a dark cult of those forests and hills where the authority of the Middlelands kings petered out and the wild Rifeket mountains began, which if you followed them north long enough you would finally reach the pass of Inakohtuo that led to where the land of her birth lay, the land where the sun rose dull red above the slate-grey North-Eastern sea.
It was Rifeket men, experienced miners who knew how to quickly drive passages through stone and went toe-to-toe with tunnel-trolls, whom she had hired as sappers to dig under Count Ondriscensu’s seemingly impregnable stronghold, but even they made little progress. The darkness underneath that castle was of a different kind, they said, a darkness where you should not dig, which they likened to the darkness below a mountain of their land, called Gaunabant, beneath which lurked all sort of demons.
She had looked that up on a map, and found that Peak Gaunabant not only did exist, it was indeed even, as papers went, under her rule, through one of the principalities that was vassaled to Belquemer and therefore subject to her Regency. In truth it was a wasteland unclaimed by any ruler and the people who toiled there dug in depleted mines that yielded so little no one would care to seize or tax them.
But still she’d decided to one day visit the place. If only perhaps to find out more of the cult of the Serpentwined, that no book or teacher spoke of, and in those years past when they had travelled down from Inakohtuo to spend the summers at Verdesgord, her father’s party had always hastened to the great wooden halls of Irm Tuvenis where King Balthorg would receive them, a man whom most called Bristlebeard, some just The Bear, or Thunder-axe, or Skullsplitter, or other such things; it was said that he could cleave a man clean from the top of his skull all the way down so that he split into halves which hopped one-legged until they fell at his feet.
None of his nicknames spoke of what he might do with women, although the way he had looked at her young-girl self had made her tremble inside and that trembling had hardly ceased for the length of the day,… not to mention the night. All the time there, though, the men would be feasting in smoky halls and swapping war stories and whatnot, and Balthorg would show off heirlooms he claimed to be troll-hammers and dragon-lances and dwarf-spears and elven-axes, half of which supposedly he had wielded himself, and for sure nobody discussed the mysteries of the cults.
If there should be peace, if there should be time, one day she would go and find out.
There were, if you looked closely, other signs still. The Serpentwined so far as she knew, acknowledged but did not worship Darkness, and even in the days when the Outstampers rode and made rivers run red, their beliefs had not been decreed outcast.
But into one trunk was etched the piscine symbol of the Double Abomination, an unspeakable cult that not only praised a raiser of the dead, but worshiped a man as God. Thus violating the sixth and seventh of the Twelve Stipulations that governed how all men must recognize and deal with the Abominations. Unless they feared not the irons of the Outstampers. If this sign had been scratched in jest it was a deadly one should the person be found. But there would be evil always and everywhere; each garden must have its serpent. It was not for Tsilsne to drive it out so long as it did not threaten to strike.
As to the faith of her homeland, Tsilsne had somewhat soured on it, although she recognized its cruel truths.
A year past, the priests of the great Temple of Rún that looked to the sea from the easternmost point of land had congregated, conferred, and finally decreed her a witch. One who should be seized where she was found, and taken to the cliff at the edge of the sea, there to hang from a driftwood beam for three days, to be then set on fire and cast down from high into the wild churning breakers. To die for sure without her feet touching the soil. On the grounds that men should not follow the word of a woman when it comes to manly deeds, such as war; but as men did, she must have bewitched them, and twisted their will, and made them un-men, and therefore must die. The North did not recognize the idea of a Queen’s regency for an infant prince.
The North also could not have cared, or could have recognized her as their own, but the truth of course was that there was no such as thing as the North, there were only brothers who warred amongst themselves, and the Temple of Rún answered to the harsh, jealous and grudge-holding lords of Auvestiva, who sought bitter revenge for past slights received from her home of Lokshada.
And, Auvestiva claimed to be the True North, the place where in winter weeks the sun does not rise above the Eastern sea, and so the masters that the priests served were not gods but men, grim men who frowned upon the flourishing trade Lokshada had opened with the South, upon the profits it had earned, and most of all, they frowned upon the new ways that had percolated into a previously secluded land.
The whole notion of a daughter of a Northern lord marrying to the South had never sat well with them. There would be less than no help from her homeland after the fall of Lokshada, and neither could she provide relief to the remainders of her family there, her still living sisters, not after the burning of the fleet of Belquemer in the struggle against the usurpers. Only twice since the terrible Night of the Knives had she even been able to exchange letters with her sister Rifedne, who, the Gods be thanked for this at least, was safe at the mountain stronghold above Inakohtuo.
Nevertheless Tsilsne knelt and honored the ancient way, her ancestors who had passed through the cleansing fountain to the Distant Shore, and she prayed for the recently dead, that they might be guided through the desolation. And she pondered her own death, which was never far, and confessed she would be lost in the Desolation if there was no one to pray for her, no one to guide her.
And she considered the promise of the Fountain of Renewal, which she would be awarded if she did not go astray in the desolation, if she was not condemned to wander the emptiness, the blackness, the darkness forever, with no one to share her grief and suffering.
If she came to the Fountain it would cleanse her of everything that was tainted, everything unclean, and she would step out into the land of the Distant Shore reborn fresh and new and free.
To join with the worthy ancestors.
It was promise and threat in one, because… what if ... the priests of Rún were right about one thing ... that all and everything of her was unclean and tainted, and she stepped into the Fountain… and boiled away … nothing to remain?
... it was a way she had felt ever since those summers in Verdesgord.
There had been an ancient serpent in that castle’s garden, well hidden, and it had struck, and she carried its poison within her to this day.
So she feared the clear, cleansing waters of the promised Fountain.
But there were other tales as well.
Like most all children, she had loved the tales of the Dawntime, read to her by the nanny in those days before she could read herself. Oh, and the pictures. The time when gods had walked among men and the world was simpler but stranger than today.
When there had been two suns in the sky and no moon. Many of the tales could make a child laugh, such as that of the Giant who was endlessly teased by the Trickster, who would always change to a rabbit and hop away before getting caught, until the day the Giant did grab him by the ears, and knowing the Trickster was immortal, threw him against the larger of the suns, the golden one, which then went dim, and gold no more but silver, and so became the moon, and that’s of course why, when you look up at the moon, you’ll think you can see a rabbit there.
And of course when there were two suns, there were two shadows for every living thing, but when one sun went out, half of all shadows in the world were released to be ghosts and spirits, but whenever the moon is full, and its light strong enough to cast a shadow again, those spirits return.
Shadows looking for their homes, for those whom they had belonged to.
… or those who belonged to them.
The part about the rabbit had made the child Tsilsne laugh.
The part about shadows coming home, grown Tsilsne knew, was true.
Looking for those who belonged to them.
Sun and shade played on her face as leaves rustled in the wind.
Calm and beautiful.
It was blissful to let go.
Stretched on ancient stone.
Imagining, remembering, then forgetting.
Low regular breathing.
Had someone followed her?
If so, while watching her drifting to sleep, he might blink, and in the next moment, he would see her dancing.
Amid the stones. Wild and free.
Childlike, moves unencumbered either by the rotely learned steps of her native tradition or the styles of the Belquemer court.
Mouthing syllables of silent song.
If you were still watching, you’d see her vanish behind one of the leaning stones, but she wouldn’t reappear where you’d expect her.
Where had she gone?
Oh there she was.
Rising from where she had rested.
Had you just dreamed you saw her dancing?
Or had she?
As she opened her eyes and rose, she saw around her, etched into the bark of the trees, or painted upon the stones, symbols of the many faiths followed by the peoples that made up her host.
There were the gods of mercenaries from afar, the horsehead god of the fierce Herguelyuks; and here the Invincible Sun, his moonwife and their twelve sons who had divided sky and earth and set upon the latter the tribes of the Zubali.
Of these peoples she had hired cavalry and archers but also some of the best men for deeds that others deemed undoable.
There, the eight-sided star of the True Path and more of their saints than she could count. It was the most common faith of those who lived to the north of the Narrow Strait and to the East of the Gabardine Empire. Those gods of course also had their improvised little shrines here.
And there, she recognized the manifold face of Merciful Redemption.
Over here, someone had, since the last time she’d visited, carved some gnarled roots into an intricate representation of the Serpentwined Sisters, a dark cult of those forests and hills where the authority of the Middlelands kings petered out and the wild Rifeket mountains began, which if you followed them north long enough you would finally reach the pass of Inakohtuo that led to where the land of her birth lay, the land where the sun rose dull red above the slate-grey North-Eastern sea.
It was Rifeket men, experienced miners who knew how to quickly drive passages through stone and went toe-to-toe with tunnel-trolls, whom she had hired as sappers to dig under Count Ondriscensu’s seemingly impregnable stronghold, but even they made little progress. The darkness underneath that castle was of a different kind, they said, a darkness where you should not dig, which they likened to the darkness below a mountain of their land, called Gaunabant, beneath which lurked all sort of demons.
She had looked that up on a map, and found that Peak Gaunabant not only did exist, it was indeed even, as papers went, under her rule, through one of the principalities that was vassaled to Belquemer and therefore subject to her Regency. In truth it was a wasteland unclaimed by any ruler and the people who toiled there dug in depleted mines that yielded so little no one would care to seize or tax them.
But still she’d decided to one day visit the place. If only perhaps to find out more of the cult of the Serpentwined, that no book or teacher spoke of, and in those years past when they had travelled down from Inakohtuo to spend the summers at Verdesgord, her father’s party had always hastened to the great wooden halls of Irm Tuvenis where King Balthorg would receive them, a man whom most called Bristlebeard, some just The Bear, or Thunder-axe, or Skullsplitter, or other such things; it was said that he could cleave a man clean from the top of his skull all the way down so that he split into halves which hopped one-legged until they fell at his feet.
None of his nicknames spoke of what he might do with women, although the way he had looked at her young-girl self had made her tremble inside and that trembling had hardly ceased for the length of the day,… not to mention the night. All the time there, though, the men would be feasting in smoky halls and swapping war stories and whatnot, and Balthorg would show off heirlooms he claimed to be troll-hammers and dragon-lances and dwarf-spears and elven-axes, half of which supposedly he had wielded himself, and for sure nobody discussed the mysteries of the cults.
If there should be peace, if there should be time, one day she would go and find out.
There were, if you looked closely, other signs still. The Serpentwined so far as she knew, acknowledged but did not worship Darkness, and even in the days when the Outstampers rode and made rivers run red, their beliefs had not been decreed outcast.
But into one trunk was etched the piscine symbol of the Double Abomination, an unspeakable cult that not only praised a raiser of the dead, but worshiped a man as God. Thus violating the sixth and seventh of the Twelve Stipulations that governed how all men must recognize and deal with the Abominations. Unless they feared not the irons of the Outstampers. If this sign had been scratched in jest it was a deadly one should the person be found. But there would be evil always and everywhere; each garden must have its serpent. It was not for Tsilsne to drive it out so long as it did not threaten to strike.
As to the faith of her homeland, Tsilsne had somewhat soured on it, although she recognized its cruel truths.
A year past, the priests of the great Temple of Rún that looked to the sea from the easternmost point of land had congregated, conferred, and finally decreed her a witch. One who should be seized where she was found, and taken to the cliff at the edge of the sea, there to hang from a driftwood beam for three days, to be then set on fire and cast down from high into the wild churning breakers. To die for sure without her feet touching the soil. On the grounds that men should not follow the word of a woman when it comes to manly deeds, such as war; but as men did, she must have bewitched them, and twisted their will, and made them un-men, and therefore must die. The North did not recognize the idea of a Queen’s regency for an infant prince.
The North also could not have cared, or could have recognized her as their own, but the truth of course was that there was no such as thing as the North, there were only brothers who warred amongst themselves, and the Temple of Rún answered to the harsh, jealous and grudge-holding lords of Auvestiva, who sought bitter revenge for past slights received from her home of Lokshada.
And, Auvestiva claimed to be the True North, the place where in winter weeks the sun does not rise above the Eastern sea, and so the masters that the priests served were not gods but men, grim men who frowned upon the flourishing trade Lokshada had opened with the South, upon the profits it had earned, and most of all, they frowned upon the new ways that had percolated into a previously secluded land.
The whole notion of a daughter of a Northern lord marrying to the South had never sat well with them. There would be less than no help from her homeland after the fall of Lokshada, and neither could she provide relief to the remainders of her family there, her still living sisters, not after the burning of the fleet of Belquemer in the struggle against the usurpers. Only twice since the terrible Night of the Knives had she even been able to exchange letters with her sister Rifedne, who, the Gods be thanked for this at least, was safe at the mountain stronghold above Inakohtuo.
Nevertheless Tsilsne knelt and honored the ancient way, her ancestors who had passed through the cleansing fountain to the Distant Shore, and she prayed for the recently dead, that they might be guided through the desolation. And she pondered her own death, which was never far, and confessed she would be lost in the Desolation if there was no one to pray for her, no one to guide her.
And she considered the promise of the Fountain of Renewal, which she would be awarded if she did not go astray in the desolation, if she was not condemned to wander the emptiness, the blackness, the darkness forever, with no one to share her grief and suffering.
If she came to the Fountain it would cleanse her of everything that was tainted, everything unclean, and she would step out into the land of the Distant Shore reborn fresh and new and free.
To join with the worthy ancestors.
It was promise and threat in one, because… what if ... the priests of Rún were right about one thing ... that all and everything of her was unclean and tainted, and she stepped into the Fountain… and boiled away … nothing to remain?
... it was a way she had felt ever since those summers in Verdesgord.
There had been an ancient serpent in that castle’s garden, well hidden, and it had struck, and she carried its poison within her to this day.
So she feared the clear, cleansing waters of the promised Fountain.
But there were other tales as well.
Like most all children, she had loved the tales of the Dawntime, read to her by the nanny in those days before she could read herself. Oh, and the pictures. The time when gods had walked among men and the world was simpler but stranger than today.
When there had been two suns in the sky and no moon. Many of the tales could make a child laugh, such as that of the Giant who was endlessly teased by the Trickster, who would always change to a rabbit and hop away before getting caught, until the day the Giant did grab him by the ears, and knowing the Trickster was immortal, threw him against the larger of the suns, the golden one, which then went dim, and gold no more but silver, and so became the moon, and that’s of course why, when you look up at the moon, you’ll think you can see a rabbit there.
And of course when there were two suns, there were two shadows for every living thing, but when one sun went out, half of all shadows in the world were released to be ghosts and spirits, but whenever the moon is full, and its light strong enough to cast a shadow again, those spirits return.
Shadows looking for their homes, for those whom they had belonged to.
… or those who belonged to them.
The part about the rabbit had made the child Tsilsne laugh.
The part about shadows coming home, grown Tsilsne knew, was true.
Looking for those who belonged to them.
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Faith is such a comfort at times.
And among all the richness and confusion of all these gods, rituals, symbols and faiths, the enmity between them and the reasons for mistrust, war, and death, does a shadow seek Tsilsne? Does she belong to them? It would be nice, sometimes, to stay as a child and laugh at the rabbit.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Well one cannot be without the other I guess.
Anyway, stories that include magic/witchcraft of course always assume to some degree that things that are going on in the magical practicioner's mind can influence the outside world somewhat directly. (Except maybe the kind of stories that portray 'magic' as simply reading out scripted 'spells' and then boom-flash something happens.)
A lot of people in the story agree that Tsilsne must be a witch, they can't quite put a finger on why (nobody ever really sees her cast spells and it is all rather sub-conscious for her) so they make up all sort of arguments why (such as the priests of Rún).
An undercurrent in the story certainly is, what happens if a person who has such powers (influencing physical reality through thought) but never learns to process them consciously, goes through psychological trauma. While influencing physical reality through subconscious thought.
At what point do suppressed experiences, forbidden thoughts etc. knot together into a physical creature that is stuffed down the 'well of souls' to only emerge when no one sees?
At what point do imaginations, obsessions, or psychological projections actually manifest themself in the world?
Maybe what Hedandra, the Ancient Gardener, described as the 'malicious master' who must at some point have taken control of her, is ummm a physicalized version of Jungian 'animus possession'
Tsilsne has taken to a wandering lifestyle, living in a tent instead of a palace, and where ever she goes there is war. How much of that is her hunting down her violators ... and how much is her trying to escape every place on earth becoming hell as soon as she stays there long enough? And how much of that is the Gardener's fault, as it's really a bad idea to traumatize a young witch who has no idea of her powers. To make a long story short, she really needs to get herself crucified, we know already that didn't work out, but maybe there's a second chance... or maybe the cult of the Serpentwined Sisters can resolve things, because I think they know how to deal with situations like this. Because they're kind of witchy, and Tsilsne's parents way back then were already worried about having a 'strange' daughter (who might be unmarriageable) they made sure she never got there although it would have been only a slight detour...
malins
Stumbling Seeker
As for the story with the two suns, the rabbit, and the moon,
I swiped that from Aztec myth, Tecciztecatl. And of course many Asian cultures also see a rabbit in the moon, rather than 'the man in the moon'.
I'm all in favour of the Gardener meeting a sticky end.
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Remarkable! When I was a child, my dad once told he saw a running rabbit (or hare) in the moon. It is located in the upper right quarter of the full moon, actually the 'left eye' of 'the man in the moon'. See indicated area.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Well once you 'discover' it you can't unsee it (for my own perception it makes more sense than the 'man'). And it's the default in China and other East Asian countries afaik.
DON'T LOOK AT ME. I DON'T DO JUSTICE.Well do I believe in justice or don't I
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Yes I know. You just sweep up the remains after justice is done.DON'T LOOK AT ME. I DON'T DO JUSTICE.
Simple eloquence...
malins
Stumbling Seeker
IN THE BALANCE
At war, the Regent Queen of Belquemer had done away with most luxuries of the palace.
In fact Tsilsne had by necessity done away with the entire Palace, during the reconquest from the usurpers.
The great mortars turned inwards and leveling it into rubble atop their heads.
But there was one luxury – no, one necessity she would under no circumstance do without, and that was the baths.
In her Northern homeland, it had been the hot springs.
The hillside fortress, its wooden spires high above the bay of Lokshada where the tall-ships jostled in the harbor, had been raised at the face of a cliff from which gushed steaming water, slightly sulphurous but of healing quality, some of it filling great terraced pools, overflowing from one to the next, some gurgling and rushing through channels and pipes to wherever it could be useful.
Down to the lowliest scullion there was not one in that House who could not wash daily.
In fact some places in the North might well have been deserted by all human souls if it had not been for these blessings of the fire-gods, such as Auvestiva where the sun did not rise for six weeks in winter, or the stronghold of Inakohtuo that guarded the mountain passes, to where her eldest sister had been given in marriage.
Beneath Inakohtuo also they had gone when two years later the time had come for another wedding, in a land far further off.
The Middlelands, seen in spring, had welcomed with fragrance and freshness but there had been an unseen poison.
There were uncountable reasons not to think of those times but you never forget the smell of a place.
The smell of Verdesgord especially in the dog days of high summer, which in the Middlelands were more sweltering and oppressive than on the Southern coast, not even to mention the mild caressing warmth of the Northern summer – it was a very ripe aroma.
Sweaty bodies in piss-drenched alleyways, a dirty river, muddy ponds, fouled wells and a people often suffering fever that would rot their guts and make them throw up their innards. She’d always wondered if perhaps just a few good healing baths might have saved Adohinsne from whatever it was that had been eating her up from the inside. It was a poisonous place in so many ways. Though undeniably, deadly poison could lurk in clean places too.
The torrents of fate had then thrown her up at the shores of Belquemer.
Or to be honest, a slow boat had brought her right to the royal capital, leisurely drifting down the River Antamhurd as it snaked its way to the sea.
Soon she’d found herself pointed out and chosen to be a Princess.
Led into the cool fresh halls of their palaces with their ancient tapestries she guessed what they saw in her – there depicted was a princess of legends who had just her colors. The men of Belquemer in general desired their women fair-skinned and dark-haired but there was hardly one about with emerald-green eyes such as she had, … but that made her like the girl from the legend.
So, she saw herself prized as an ornament, a trophy. A stand-in for a fairy-tale girl who quite likely hadn’t even existed.
In the Middlelands she’d heard endless variations of the songs of courtly love but without exception the girl would always be ‘golden-haired’. It was an improvement! Father certainly had been relieved to finally find a match for the most difficult of his daughters...
Both the unknown land that should become her new home and the stranger of a man who should become the father of her children – she had quickly learned to love them, and had they not loved her back?
It was too painful to allow any thought of either him or the twins, but when she thought of his land, her land, she’d also remember the water.
Bathing in the sea … which in the North for two weeks in high summer had been an exercise of will-power accompanied by high-pitched screaming and flailing … along the coasts of Belquemer it was second nature.
And so in Belquemer were the sea-baths and the steam-baths, and there was water from the aqueducts.
Where it lacked for that, they would send maids to go up to the cloud-fed laurel forest and carry down the pure liquid, always with a fresh laurel’s leaf afloat in it to prove they’d been up, and had not cheated to avoid the hard walk up the mountainside, and instead brought tainted water from the valley.
If a maid ever did that, she would be flogged, as she could be for many other reasons.
It was in Belquemer that young Tsilsne had first seen a girl flogged – actually whipped to the blood, barenaked...
The disciplines she’d herself endured had been milder, though the rod to the soles of her feet had never failed to melt her into a sobbing pile of woe, misery and contrition.
She’d ordered the poor thing brought to her chamber, out of curiosity to see up close what the lash had done, and to feel, and take care of her; from salves and soothing it had gone to baths and bedsheets.
“So I guess I shall be talking to dead people again most of the day”,
sighed the Regent Queen, reclining in the tub, a distinct note of exasperation in her voice.
The hands massaging her scalp paused, and she heard a breath drawn in.
The new girl, from Sbirute. Swept off the witch-hunter’s pyre and now sworn to serve her savior.
Innocently accused of being a sorceress, did she now fear to be in the presence of a necromancer…?
“Poor thing, I should not speak this way” thought the Queen.
“Don’t be silly and keep up what you were doing, it’s wonders for my aching head.“
”Don't fear, I’m not going to summon any spirits from the netherworld into this tent. “
”Or anywhere else for that matter, I don’t, and I can’t …”
”Otherwise I wouldn’t be here camping with an army. I’d just dispatch demon-hordes into Count Irion’s castle and be done with it!”
“What it is, I’ll be going through the sentences. The ones marked for death in the name of Crown and Throne.”
“I’m sure you’ll sort the pure from the wicked Milady”, said the maid.
Her memory going back to her own terror on the stacked wood of the pyre, and the miraculous arrival of the rescuing force.
It had been a dizzying experience, drawn from the lowest, the very pit of doom, to now serve the highest.
The Queen fell into a brooding silence.
Meanwhile the maid found there were the most unexpected things to comb out of the untamable curls of the Regent’s hair.
Little bits of twigs and moss.
As if she had crept over forest floor and broken through underbrush.
It must be the training with the war-master … it seemed quite wild; when the Queen had come to call for her morning bath, she’d appeared with her forearm bandaged, she was now resting on the rim of the tub, so the bindings wouldn't soak. There was the faintest trace of red seeping through at her wrist.
“Clumsy with that sword again”, she’d said that morning,
“I’ll surely never be a great fighter, like I’ll never be much of a dancer.”
It was supposed to give the Queen at least a slim fighting chance if assassins snuck in, or luck reversed on the battlefield and the ring of guards around her was breached.
She however dismissed it as a hopeless effort but nevertheless kept at it.
“Sometimes … it is precisely the innocent who are punished”, Tsilsne said, breaking the silence.
Coughing half choking on her own bloody spit, as air she'd desperately gulped in was forced out of her lungs.
Spattering the post.
When they'd started, she had managed to find a rhythm.
Cry out pain. Suck in air. Brace yourself, and you'll be ready as best you can for the next blow.
But the two guardsmen had grown bored taking turns counting out regular strikes and let the leather go wild.
Cracking and snapping anywhere, anytime on her sweat-slick skin.
Spattering the post.
A cutting blow snaking round the upper thigh made her pull up her leg with a shriek, only to have the sole of her foot singed by the next strike.
Uproarious laughter erupted at her attempt to protect herself which had her almost wrapping her leg around the post.
Look at the eager slut she is, she thirsts to ride the stake!
Of course next came a back-handed swing upwards striking at her intimate parts.
Teeth gritted, her jaw locked tight, she felt something crumble inside her mouth.
The whip went everywhere, except to her breasts; they had pulled up her shift over her back and head, leaving it to bunch in front of her.
For this she was thankful, but not for any sake of modesty as she made no attempt to cover any other part of herself.
If they see my chest they'll know I've been punished before.
Would it really make a difference though?
Her tongue probed at the broken molar.
She realized that several heartbeats had passed ... without another piercing lance of pain.
Instead there was a hollow banging din and some shouting.
She dared to crane her neck and peer out underneath her arms.
At war, the Regent Queen of Belquemer had done away with most luxuries of the palace.
In fact Tsilsne had by necessity done away with the entire Palace, during the reconquest from the usurpers.
The great mortars turned inwards and leveling it into rubble atop their heads.
But there was one luxury – no, one necessity she would under no circumstance do without, and that was the baths.
In her Northern homeland, it had been the hot springs.
The hillside fortress, its wooden spires high above the bay of Lokshada where the tall-ships jostled in the harbor, had been raised at the face of a cliff from which gushed steaming water, slightly sulphurous but of healing quality, some of it filling great terraced pools, overflowing from one to the next, some gurgling and rushing through channels and pipes to wherever it could be useful.
Down to the lowliest scullion there was not one in that House who could not wash daily.
In fact some places in the North might well have been deserted by all human souls if it had not been for these blessings of the fire-gods, such as Auvestiva where the sun did not rise for six weeks in winter, or the stronghold of Inakohtuo that guarded the mountain passes, to where her eldest sister had been given in marriage.
Beneath Inakohtuo also they had gone when two years later the time had come for another wedding, in a land far further off.
The Middlelands, seen in spring, had welcomed with fragrance and freshness but there had been an unseen poison.
There were uncountable reasons not to think of those times but you never forget the smell of a place.
The smell of Verdesgord especially in the dog days of high summer, which in the Middlelands were more sweltering and oppressive than on the Southern coast, not even to mention the mild caressing warmth of the Northern summer – it was a very ripe aroma.
Sweaty bodies in piss-drenched alleyways, a dirty river, muddy ponds, fouled wells and a people often suffering fever that would rot their guts and make them throw up their innards. She’d always wondered if perhaps just a few good healing baths might have saved Adohinsne from whatever it was that had been eating her up from the inside. It was a poisonous place in so many ways. Though undeniably, deadly poison could lurk in clean places too.
The torrents of fate had then thrown her up at the shores of Belquemer.
Or to be honest, a slow boat had brought her right to the royal capital, leisurely drifting down the River Antamhurd as it snaked its way to the sea.
Soon she’d found herself pointed out and chosen to be a Princess.
Led into the cool fresh halls of their palaces with their ancient tapestries she guessed what they saw in her – there depicted was a princess of legends who had just her colors. The men of Belquemer in general desired their women fair-skinned and dark-haired but there was hardly one about with emerald-green eyes such as she had, … but that made her like the girl from the legend.
So, she saw herself prized as an ornament, a trophy. A stand-in for a fairy-tale girl who quite likely hadn’t even existed.
In the Middlelands she’d heard endless variations of the songs of courtly love but without exception the girl would always be ‘golden-haired’. It was an improvement! Father certainly had been relieved to finally find a match for the most difficult of his daughters...
Both the unknown land that should become her new home and the stranger of a man who should become the father of her children – she had quickly learned to love them, and had they not loved her back?
It was too painful to allow any thought of either him or the twins, but when she thought of his land, her land, she’d also remember the water.
Bathing in the sea … which in the North for two weeks in high summer had been an exercise of will-power accompanied by high-pitched screaming and flailing … along the coasts of Belquemer it was second nature.
And so in Belquemer were the sea-baths and the steam-baths, and there was water from the aqueducts.
Where it lacked for that, they would send maids to go up to the cloud-fed laurel forest and carry down the pure liquid, always with a fresh laurel’s leaf afloat in it to prove they’d been up, and had not cheated to avoid the hard walk up the mountainside, and instead brought tainted water from the valley.
If a maid ever did that, she would be flogged, as she could be for many other reasons.
It was in Belquemer that young Tsilsne had first seen a girl flogged – actually whipped to the blood, barenaked...
The disciplines she’d herself endured had been milder, though the rod to the soles of her feet had never failed to melt her into a sobbing pile of woe, misery and contrition.
She’d ordered the poor thing brought to her chamber, out of curiosity to see up close what the lash had done, and to feel, and take care of her; from salves and soothing it had gone to baths and bedsheets.
* * * * * *
“So I guess I shall be talking to dead people again most of the day”,
sighed the Regent Queen, reclining in the tub, a distinct note of exasperation in her voice.
The hands massaging her scalp paused, and she heard a breath drawn in.
The new girl, from Sbirute. Swept off the witch-hunter’s pyre and now sworn to serve her savior.
Innocently accused of being a sorceress, did she now fear to be in the presence of a necromancer…?
“Poor thing, I should not speak this way” thought the Queen.
“Don’t be silly and keep up what you were doing, it’s wonders for my aching head.“
”Don't fear, I’m not going to summon any spirits from the netherworld into this tent. “
”Or anywhere else for that matter, I don’t, and I can’t …”
”Otherwise I wouldn’t be here camping with an army. I’d just dispatch demon-hordes into Count Irion’s castle and be done with it!”
“What it is, I’ll be going through the sentences. The ones marked for death in the name of Crown and Throne.”
“I’m sure you’ll sort the pure from the wicked Milady”, said the maid.
Her memory going back to her own terror on the stacked wood of the pyre, and the miraculous arrival of the rescuing force.
It had been a dizzying experience, drawn from the lowest, the very pit of doom, to now serve the highest.
The Queen fell into a brooding silence.
Meanwhile the maid found there were the most unexpected things to comb out of the untamable curls of the Regent’s hair.
Little bits of twigs and moss.
As if she had crept over forest floor and broken through underbrush.
It must be the training with the war-master … it seemed quite wild; when the Queen had come to call for her morning bath, she’d appeared with her forearm bandaged, she was now resting on the rim of the tub, so the bindings wouldn't soak. There was the faintest trace of red seeping through at her wrist.
“Clumsy with that sword again”, she’d said that morning,
“I’ll surely never be a great fighter, like I’ll never be much of a dancer.”
It was supposed to give the Queen at least a slim fighting chance if assassins snuck in, or luck reversed on the battlefield and the ring of guards around her was breached.
She however dismissed it as a hopeless effort but nevertheless kept at it.
“Sometimes … it is precisely the innocent who are punished”, Tsilsne said, breaking the silence.
* * * * *
Down in the camp, the peasant girl buried her face between her upraised arms as the whips worked on her.Coughing half choking on her own bloody spit, as air she'd desperately gulped in was forced out of her lungs.
Spattering the post.
When they'd started, she had managed to find a rhythm.
Cry out pain. Suck in air. Brace yourself, and you'll be ready as best you can for the next blow.
But the two guardsmen had grown bored taking turns counting out regular strikes and let the leather go wild.
Cracking and snapping anywhere, anytime on her sweat-slick skin.
Spattering the post.
A cutting blow snaking round the upper thigh made her pull up her leg with a shriek, only to have the sole of her foot singed by the next strike.
Uproarious laughter erupted at her attempt to protect herself which had her almost wrapping her leg around the post.
Look at the eager slut she is, she thirsts to ride the stake!
Of course next came a back-handed swing upwards striking at her intimate parts.
Teeth gritted, her jaw locked tight, she felt something crumble inside her mouth.
The whip went everywhere, except to her breasts; they had pulled up her shift over her back and head, leaving it to bunch in front of her.
For this she was thankful, but not for any sake of modesty as she made no attempt to cover any other part of herself.
If they see my chest they'll know I've been punished before.
Would it really make a difference though?
Her tongue probed at the broken molar.
She realized that several heartbeats had passed ... without another piercing lance of pain.
Instead there was a hollow banging din and some shouting.
She dared to crane her neck and peer out underneath her arms.
RacingRodent
Consul
Great to see this tale roaring back to life. It is a deep, dark and rich vein of awesome imagination.