malins
Stumbling Seeker
It's a bit out of control. It's going wherever it wants to go. Some characters have appeared that were never planned, some have gone missing a bit.
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Every Shadow Burns My Face
- Thread starter malins
- Start date
That happens.....
Who or whatever is lighting your path, Malins, is doing a wonderful job!
Repertor
Artifex Imaginum
That must be the work of the muses.
It's wonderful, Malins.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Oh the Muses, they must be careful.
They might guide us but are they keeping watch where they themselves are heading?
The world has already lost the Graces that way...
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Milk and Honey (4)
... I am a murderess.”
----
Who? Where? When? Why? - elsewhere, anyone freshly confessing a murder unknown would first be asked.
But he was a Priest, not a guardsman interrogating a captive for the King’s Judge.
Whomever she had murdered could not be made alive anymore and she would not murder again.
The King makes no laws inside the walls of the Temple, and here the law was to save souls, not to deal out perfunctory punishments for the satisfaction of crowds.
“So it is Murder that you were punished for?”
“Yes, that is it. That… that is what I was punished for.”
A murderess discovered in the Mad Queen’s tent, or a murderess sent out to kill on her behalf?
And why brand her with such a curse, instead of taking a life for a life?
It had not been done by any justice of this world.
“Your punishment was done by, or ordered by, the Queen Tsilsne?”
“No.”
“You were… sent to do murder by Tsilsne?”
“No,...”
Well well.
Barking up the wrong tree all the time?
They all had assumed the ‘Mad Queen’ to be the origin of her curse one way or another, given the obvious magical nature of the punishment.
A person on many grounds assumed to be a witch although posthumous proof was notoriously difficult.
Especially with her being burnt already – not that there was, by verifiable record, too much truth to the idea of the ‘Mark of the Witch’ but you’d want to look anyway.
Who else had been around working witchcraft and raising devils?
“So, Tsilsne was innocent both of your deed and your punishment?”
“...no… neither... guilty, guilty ... as guilty as I am.”
Which was it?
She seemed close to collapse, hiding her head in her hands, even though veiled already.
She would confess the actual deed at a later date.
In another interview.
That confession wanted out but it was too painful now.
As a thing taken all in one, it was too large to escape outwards through any wound a human being could sustain and survive.
It had to come out in small fragments, piece by sharp-edged piece, each tearing her only so much as she could bear.
There was another question though with which he pressed on.
“Who was it that punished you then? Who conjured a devil to curse you?”
“My punishment, … it … it sprang from my deed itself… I was alone then… there was no one other there left who would know… who could judge… or strike...” – Her voice fell away.
You were the last left alive in a desolate place?
You ... murdered the last soul there with you, and then the Devil came to burn you?
“Father, please, I can’t go on. I cannot speak of it. It is unspeakable.”
“You have done very well, Anrirathu.”
“You will participate in the purifications. They will help you find peace, and the rites will strengthen you to better face your predicament.”
“Thank you Father, I will do so.”
Her questioning on the matter of the murder would continue at another time.
He would be piecing together the things he had learned today with the notes of Sister Noiramas and the observations of others.
Building bit by bit the picture of who Anrirathu was, where she came from, and what fate had come upon her.
And from there, finding ... what one day she might become.
He had enough to think about already.
One thing was certain, he would stress once again to all, that the warnings about unveiling her should be taken seriously.
‘Unveiling’, in fact, was the very word that had come into use to describe the End of All Things, the End of Times.
When the illusion of the world was swept aside and the sheer terror beneath it revealed.
For one who stared into the face of a Devil made just for him, … it might feel as if that Unveiling had indeed arrived, the end of all.
He knew he could not send her away in this state.
So, after she had recovered enough to hear, he continued.
“There is a little thing I would like you to do for me, Anrirathu.”
“Yes, Father?”
... I am a murderess.”
----
Who? Where? When? Why? - elsewhere, anyone freshly confessing a murder unknown would first be asked.
But he was a Priest, not a guardsman interrogating a captive for the King’s Judge.
Whomever she had murdered could not be made alive anymore and she would not murder again.
The King makes no laws inside the walls of the Temple, and here the law was to save souls, not to deal out perfunctory punishments for the satisfaction of crowds.
“So it is Murder that you were punished for?”
“Yes, that is it. That… that is what I was punished for.”
A murderess discovered in the Mad Queen’s tent, or a murderess sent out to kill on her behalf?
And why brand her with such a curse, instead of taking a life for a life?
It had not been done by any justice of this world.
“Your punishment was done by, or ordered by, the Queen Tsilsne?”
“No.”
“You were… sent to do murder by Tsilsne?”
“No,...”
Well well.
Barking up the wrong tree all the time?
They all had assumed the ‘Mad Queen’ to be the origin of her curse one way or another, given the obvious magical nature of the punishment.
A person on many grounds assumed to be a witch although posthumous proof was notoriously difficult.
Especially with her being burnt already – not that there was, by verifiable record, too much truth to the idea of the ‘Mark of the Witch’ but you’d want to look anyway.
Who else had been around working witchcraft and raising devils?
“So, Tsilsne was innocent both of your deed and your punishment?”
“...no… neither... guilty, guilty ... as guilty as I am.”
Which was it?
She seemed close to collapse, hiding her head in her hands, even though veiled already.
She would confess the actual deed at a later date.
In another interview.
That confession wanted out but it was too painful now.
As a thing taken all in one, it was too large to escape outwards through any wound a human being could sustain and survive.
It had to come out in small fragments, piece by sharp-edged piece, each tearing her only so much as she could bear.
There was another question though with which he pressed on.
“Who was it that punished you then? Who conjured a devil to curse you?”
“My punishment, … it … it sprang from my deed itself… I was alone then… there was no one other there left who would know… who could judge… or strike...” – Her voice fell away.
You were the last left alive in a desolate place?
You ... murdered the last soul there with you, and then the Devil came to burn you?
“Father, please, I can’t go on. I cannot speak of it. It is unspeakable.”
“You have done very well, Anrirathu.”
“You will participate in the purifications. They will help you find peace, and the rites will strengthen you to better face your predicament.”
“Thank you Father, I will do so.”
Her questioning on the matter of the murder would continue at another time.
He would be piecing together the things he had learned today with the notes of Sister Noiramas and the observations of others.
Building bit by bit the picture of who Anrirathu was, where she came from, and what fate had come upon her.
And from there, finding ... what one day she might become.
He had enough to think about already.
One thing was certain, he would stress once again to all, that the warnings about unveiling her should be taken seriously.
‘Unveiling’, in fact, was the very word that had come into use to describe the End of All Things, the End of Times.
When the illusion of the world was swept aside and the sheer terror beneath it revealed.
For one who stared into the face of a Devil made just for him, … it might feel as if that Unveiling had indeed arrived, the end of all.
He knew he could not send her away in this state.
So, after she had recovered enough to hear, he continued.
“There is a little thing I would like you to do for me, Anrirathu.”
“Yes, Father?”
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Actually I think there's not much to fear right now, there will just be a minor task that helps her calm down a bit. She's probably in the best place she could be right now. Just an interview instead of an interrogation with hot irons. 'Purifications' instead of public execution. Well, if they understand precisely whom it was she murdered maybe they'd make an exception...
All in all Anrirathu has turned into something almost like a 'Schrödinger's cat' character. As long as she remains enshrouded, she could be ... anything. The very act of revealing her will define what she is, force her to be one out of all the horrible possibilities...
You've created a true tragic character. Superb conception, Malins.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Milk and Honey (5)
... “There is a little thing I would like you to do for me, Anrirathu.” -- “Yes, Father?”
---
“We are always quite in need of people who are good with the quill. You know your letters well, don’t you? I would like you to write something for me.”
He considered what he'd give her to copy, but then came to a simple decision. He’d just let her write the Twelve Stipulations from the Principal Edicts, on the casting out of the Abominations and the powers of priests and kings. Something that even in upheaval she could put down from memory.
And, it might be superstition - but it would be helpful to see her do it, as it was said a devil wasn't able to write them. Especially here in the Middlelands, where all that got started, where those few prescriptions had shaped the landscape itself. That's why the carpet of land between the cities of our Kings is dotted with monasteries and temples of many persuasions, all of which will adhere to the Edicts, but other than that it matters not whether they have Gods or Goddesses, one or ten of them or a thousand, be they winged ones or horned ones; airy, fiery or invisible ones; ones with hooves or feet-like fins.
He handed her papers and quill, and told her to write out the stipulations. She took some time to arrange things for herself, as she needed to keep her shroud from messing up the ink. As she began, he understood that she probably couldn't see much of anything she was writing but was sure enough to do it almost blindly. She finished quite quickly, with a fluid motion of the quill.
She stood up and handed him the sheet. The first few words showed some insecurity, unsurprising as she wouldn't have written for months. Then a clear handwriting appeared, the way the letters were shaped and connected clearly showing the North's highest traditional school. This was not the hand of someone who would only record how many barrels of smoked fish were stored in some warehouse. The choice of words was not quite orthodox, but then the Northerners did always try to smuggle a few loopholes into the Stipulations. They tended to believe more in divination than definition by law.
The Priest put aside her writing. She had a distinguished hand, perhaps the Chronicler could later identify by comparison which person in Tsilsne’s retinue wrote with that hand.
Some letters of that Queen of ill fate, such as her answer to the declaration of the Nine Kings demanding her surrender for crucifixion at their hands, had been sent out in many copies that were recognizably copied out by different hands. The Order had received one of them, as she had wanted her answer to be known to all – men of Temples as well as men of Castles; the Chronicler had acquired several other examples, and they might well find evidence of Anrirathu’s hand among them.
The Priest was not surprised that she also passed the second test flawlessly, when he gave her some columns of numbers from the expenses and incomes of the Order to add up.
Anrirathu would easily qualify to take on any scribe’s task at the Order.
She shouldn’t do all too much of it though, as it couldn’t possibly be good for her eyes with that mask on her face.
He told her again, that she had done very well.
But there was greater talent she had beyond her writing. From what he had heard with his own ears, and from what he had been told was the reception of her excursions to town with Sister Vidrisit.
“You sing with the most remarkable voice, Anrirathu. Where did you learn this?”
“It is something I’ve mostly always done for myself…”
”… as a little girl I guess I sang pretty much the songs any little girl would sing. As I grew a bit older I learned it was inappropriate.”
“You were taught that... singing was inappropriate?”
“Not singing as such – the way I was doing it. It was not proper, and it seemed I couldn’t do it the way it ought to be. My voice wouldn’t take any lessons. So I went still except when I was sure no one could hear.”
A lament of ancient ages came to mind, ‘song of my soul… die thou, unsung, as tears unshed...’, he couldn’t even quite recall which was the source of that sorrowful chant, a song that tore the heart but was not meant to be ever heard.
“I would sing only to myself, proper or not, with speakable words or not. To myself and the birds and the trees and the face of the mountain and whatever else there was that would answer, but not with words.”
“We hear you now. The town, the folk on market day, they have heard you.”
“I changed. I was changed.”
“It has to do with... your curse?”
“When I came out, I could not speak. It was as if I had forgotten my words, as if all things I could say were unspeakable. But I remembered my song. Out there, …. there was no one… except the birds and the trees. And the mountain. And I found I could sing, and it made the unspeakable, just bearable.”
“I would not have learned to speak again if it was not for my song.”
“I do remember, when you first … emerged … from the hermit’s cell after we had brought you here, you did not speak, but we would hear you sing. When no one stood near you.”
The Priest remembered that emerge was the word Anrirathu had used to describe what she had done after she received her curse. For most of your lifetime you did not share your song. So even before, you spent much of your life concealing yourself, in hiding, though not of your own choice, it seems. Was it your fate from the beginning to be a hidden thing?
“I think it is how I found who I am, that I even am someone at all. And once I had done that, I could find words, I could speak. And sing for others’ ears.”
Many people came to the Order to, in a way, forget who they were. Because they had been criminals and sinners and sought a new self.
The Order helped them build that new self and make it their new home, so they could move out of the poisoned quarters of their former self.
With Anrirathu it was different; the challenge was first to discover that former self, and then perhaps find a new one, another self than that of the murderess who carried an unspeakable curse. It occurred to the Priest that her evasive answers to some questions perhaps came because she struggled to even know who she was. As her self had been forced into hiding.
It was a marvel that she was speaking now as she was.
“We should see that you have your glass of milk with honey every day,” he said.
“Thank you, Father. Indeed it soothes my throat and makes it easier for me to speak. Also I do believe I can trust you.”
I’ll try my best not to disappoint you, he thought. And I understand what you mean, I’ll try not to bask in it too much, but it is much more that trust, than a cup of hot milk that enables you to speak. However difficult that may be. I would guess after what you’ve been through, receiving your trust is a great gift.I wonder when you last felt able to give it. I am privileged.
“Thank you. I will try to prove myself worthy.”
“... Would you sing for me, Anrirathu?”
“Here and now?”
“If you please.”
She got up and moved her stool, then sat down again sideways to the desk. She motioned for him to take seat opposing her. He came around the desk, taking his stool with him, and sat opposite her.
She reached out with both hands and enclosed his. He heard her breathing deep and regular, then she fell silent.
There was only the patient rhythm of the great clockwork as it tracked time and predicted the ellipses of celestial motion, a worship to the creation of the Gods as great as any prayer.
Gods. I wish I could see your face.
He could not tell when exactly he began to hear it, or where it came from, it was a low pulsing hum that seemed to envelope him.
He remembered what Sister Vidrisit had said about her song, that she couldn’t sing ‘properly’ as it seemed she skipped from the low notes right to the high register, as if the deep moaning of winds around rock-spires and the trill and chirp of birds had been her mentors and not the sound of fellow human voices.
He wondered, as the tone slowly throbbed and rose and seemed to tickle him at the back of his skull, whether that had been all the reason why her song had met with the disapproval of her caretakers. 'Not proper'. Caretakers? Because he didn’t think ‘parents’, he hoped such would not be so cruel against a child with a wonderful but unusual gift. Had she ever known the love of true parents?
Then her voice unfurled, warm and rich and strong, sad but tearfully happy, and it filled out the room, to every corner, it filled his head and filled his soul as well. No one outside would hear it, no one had heard it in a very long time, it was her full and true voice, found again with her drinking from the warm cup of trust, a voice of which the legends of the North would say it was as if it sprang from the Fountain of Renewal itself.
What monster could forbid such a voice to sing.
The last thought he had before giving in to blissfully drifting in her sea was, – yes, it is the voice of milk and honey.
... “There is a little thing I would like you to do for me, Anrirathu.” -- “Yes, Father?”
---
“We are always quite in need of people who are good with the quill. You know your letters well, don’t you? I would like you to write something for me.”
He considered what he'd give her to copy, but then came to a simple decision. He’d just let her write the Twelve Stipulations from the Principal Edicts, on the casting out of the Abominations and the powers of priests and kings. Something that even in upheaval she could put down from memory.
And, it might be superstition - but it would be helpful to see her do it, as it was said a devil wasn't able to write them. Especially here in the Middlelands, where all that got started, where those few prescriptions had shaped the landscape itself. That's why the carpet of land between the cities of our Kings is dotted with monasteries and temples of many persuasions, all of which will adhere to the Edicts, but other than that it matters not whether they have Gods or Goddesses, one or ten of them or a thousand, be they winged ones or horned ones; airy, fiery or invisible ones; ones with hooves or feet-like fins.
He handed her papers and quill, and told her to write out the stipulations. She took some time to arrange things for herself, as she needed to keep her shroud from messing up the ink. As she began, he understood that she probably couldn't see much of anything she was writing but was sure enough to do it almost blindly. She finished quite quickly, with a fluid motion of the quill.
She stood up and handed him the sheet. The first few words showed some insecurity, unsurprising as she wouldn't have written for months. Then a clear handwriting appeared, the way the letters were shaped and connected clearly showing the North's highest traditional school. This was not the hand of someone who would only record how many barrels of smoked fish were stored in some warehouse. The choice of words was not quite orthodox, but then the Northerners did always try to smuggle a few loopholes into the Stipulations. They tended to believe more in divination than definition by law.
The Priest put aside her writing. She had a distinguished hand, perhaps the Chronicler could later identify by comparison which person in Tsilsne’s retinue wrote with that hand.
Some letters of that Queen of ill fate, such as her answer to the declaration of the Nine Kings demanding her surrender for crucifixion at their hands, had been sent out in many copies that were recognizably copied out by different hands. The Order had received one of them, as she had wanted her answer to be known to all – men of Temples as well as men of Castles; the Chronicler had acquired several other examples, and they might well find evidence of Anrirathu’s hand among them.
The Priest was not surprised that she also passed the second test flawlessly, when he gave her some columns of numbers from the expenses and incomes of the Order to add up.
Anrirathu would easily qualify to take on any scribe’s task at the Order.
She shouldn’t do all too much of it though, as it couldn’t possibly be good for her eyes with that mask on her face.
He told her again, that she had done very well.
But there was greater talent she had beyond her writing. From what he had heard with his own ears, and from what he had been told was the reception of her excursions to town with Sister Vidrisit.
“You sing with the most remarkable voice, Anrirathu. Where did you learn this?”
“It is something I’ve mostly always done for myself…”
”… as a little girl I guess I sang pretty much the songs any little girl would sing. As I grew a bit older I learned it was inappropriate.”
“You were taught that... singing was inappropriate?”
“Not singing as such – the way I was doing it. It was not proper, and it seemed I couldn’t do it the way it ought to be. My voice wouldn’t take any lessons. So I went still except when I was sure no one could hear.”
A lament of ancient ages came to mind, ‘song of my soul… die thou, unsung, as tears unshed...’, he couldn’t even quite recall which was the source of that sorrowful chant, a song that tore the heart but was not meant to be ever heard.
“I would sing only to myself, proper or not, with speakable words or not. To myself and the birds and the trees and the face of the mountain and whatever else there was that would answer, but not with words.”
“We hear you now. The town, the folk on market day, they have heard you.”
“I changed. I was changed.”
“It has to do with... your curse?”
“When I came out, I could not speak. It was as if I had forgotten my words, as if all things I could say were unspeakable. But I remembered my song. Out there, …. there was no one… except the birds and the trees. And the mountain. And I found I could sing, and it made the unspeakable, just bearable.”
“I would not have learned to speak again if it was not for my song.”
“I do remember, when you first … emerged … from the hermit’s cell after we had brought you here, you did not speak, but we would hear you sing. When no one stood near you.”
The Priest remembered that emerge was the word Anrirathu had used to describe what she had done after she received her curse. For most of your lifetime you did not share your song. So even before, you spent much of your life concealing yourself, in hiding, though not of your own choice, it seems. Was it your fate from the beginning to be a hidden thing?
“I think it is how I found who I am, that I even am someone at all. And once I had done that, I could find words, I could speak. And sing for others’ ears.”
Many people came to the Order to, in a way, forget who they were. Because they had been criminals and sinners and sought a new self.
The Order helped them build that new self and make it their new home, so they could move out of the poisoned quarters of their former self.
With Anrirathu it was different; the challenge was first to discover that former self, and then perhaps find a new one, another self than that of the murderess who carried an unspeakable curse. It occurred to the Priest that her evasive answers to some questions perhaps came because she struggled to even know who she was. As her self had been forced into hiding.
It was a marvel that she was speaking now as she was.
“We should see that you have your glass of milk with honey every day,” he said.
“Thank you, Father. Indeed it soothes my throat and makes it easier for me to speak. Also I do believe I can trust you.”
I’ll try my best not to disappoint you, he thought. And I understand what you mean, I’ll try not to bask in it too much, but it is much more that trust, than a cup of hot milk that enables you to speak. However difficult that may be. I would guess after what you’ve been through, receiving your trust is a great gift.I wonder when you last felt able to give it. I am privileged.
“Thank you. I will try to prove myself worthy.”
“... Would you sing for me, Anrirathu?”
“Here and now?”
“If you please.”
She got up and moved her stool, then sat down again sideways to the desk. She motioned for him to take seat opposing her. He came around the desk, taking his stool with him, and sat opposite her.
She reached out with both hands and enclosed his. He heard her breathing deep and regular, then she fell silent.
There was only the patient rhythm of the great clockwork as it tracked time and predicted the ellipses of celestial motion, a worship to the creation of the Gods as great as any prayer.
Gods. I wish I could see your face.
He could not tell when exactly he began to hear it, or where it came from, it was a low pulsing hum that seemed to envelope him.
He remembered what Sister Vidrisit had said about her song, that she couldn’t sing ‘properly’ as it seemed she skipped from the low notes right to the high register, as if the deep moaning of winds around rock-spires and the trill and chirp of birds had been her mentors and not the sound of fellow human voices.
He wondered, as the tone slowly throbbed and rose and seemed to tickle him at the back of his skull, whether that had been all the reason why her song had met with the disapproval of her caretakers. 'Not proper'. Caretakers? Because he didn’t think ‘parents’, he hoped such would not be so cruel against a child with a wonderful but unusual gift. Had she ever known the love of true parents?
Then her voice unfurled, warm and rich and strong, sad but tearfully happy, and it filled out the room, to every corner, it filled his head and filled his soul as well. No one outside would hear it, no one had heard it in a very long time, it was her full and true voice, found again with her drinking from the warm cup of trust, a voice of which the legends of the North would say it was as if it sprang from the Fountain of Renewal itself.
What monster could forbid such a voice to sing.
The last thought he had before giving in to blissfully drifting in her sea was, – yes, it is the voice of milk and honey.
Maybe, just maybe, we will grow to fear her?
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Umm... she's the title character and heroine of the story.
That's a dangerous thing to be, when the story is on Cruxforums, so there is some reason to fear for her!
Though she is safe from that threat as long as she remains under her shroud. Nobody goes to the cross while hiding their face!
Actually I think she will do no evil of her own. Others may have the idea of using her. As an instrument of evil or just like that. It won't work as intended...
The priest truly has her best interests at heart but he won't always be able to protect her, or protect others from the consequences of what they might do with her...
RacingRodent
Consul
And they also say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Excellent writing, each view point character springs alive as an individual from the page with their own agenda.
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Milk and Honey (6)
The last thought he had before giving in to blissfully drifting in her sea was, – this is most certainly: the voice of milk and honey.
---
It was a most confusing sensation, like a half-dream where you’re just awake enough to know you’re asleep.
More confusing was – who to be in that dream, as it seemed to him sometimes he was looking out through her eyes, other times he was floating behind and beside her.
As if he’d taken the place that would otherwise be occupied by an imaginary friend as children sometimes had them. But one who would actually be listening, for the time she took him with her.
He forgot most things as quickly as he saw them, but he understood she’d gone all the way back to before they’d stopped her singing, maybe picking up the exact same childhood song, and these had been happy times. There were dark moments in between but they were short flickers and he forgot them right away though he knew he shouldn’t.
He skipped with her down the stone stairs to the harbor, in a town of steep streets around a deep bay, and wondered with her at the tall-ships and where they might be going and when they’d come back. There were other stairs to go down but there it was dark and she was afraid of it and then the moment was gone.
Instead it was winter on a frozen pond with four feet of snow dumped on top of the thick ice in a single night; there were older boys, brothers or cousins or best friends, who shoveled it away revealing the black ice with white bubbles trapped and leaves and the occasional small creature enclosed within. They made a labyrinth of passages in the snow and the children were skating on the ice, they couldn’t race as they usually did, instead it was a game of catch in that maze. In another maze, a stone passageway, she was feeling her way along a twisted path in the dark but he couldn’t follow and forgot.
On the ice, she was best at escaping because she was small enough to duck down behind the snow and not be seen, but big enough to go fast and not fall, except where the ice was rippled and rough.
The small ones were too easy to catch, you’d just scoop up their giggling little selves right away; the bigger ones were too easy to see and you’d corner them and they had to give up – so it was always her getting caught last. Then they had her and heaved her into the snow with laughter; even if it’s a girl you’re throwing it’s hard to keep your balance when you’re on ice-skates and so they fell backwards and everyone had to dig themselves out of the snow.
He saw the fire then, it twisted and grew and shot to the sky, but then was captured and tamed and he forgot its raging, as they were all in wool sitting around the fireplace, where it felt good to be just a little cold and wet and smelling of snow and the outside because the warmth was sinking in, and they were sipping a delicious spicy hot drink, it would burn in their chest if they swallowed too quickly, he knew what it was but had forgotten the name of it.
A breeze across his face woke him on a green hill richly strewn with wild flowers.
Deep ruts ran through the soft, rich soil but they had overgrown with grass.
He knew it was an awakening within a dream and he knew the place.
A place that had first earned its name in the Dawntime of legends when a mother-to-be had left the valley of her homeland to find a new place to give birth - where her child would not be seized for a sacrifice foretold.
She had ceased her worship of giants and ghosts and put her trust in the promise of the new Gods. A promise that told of a land upon which she would look when she reached the end of the hills.
She had wandered far, but from the cusp of each hill, she saw only another hill to climb, and not the river that ran through the land of the promise. But each time her faith conquered her despair and she continued.
She continued in her faith until she was spent. As her steps failed, a cold fog rose around her, clouds rolled over the hilltop and the sun faded in a lead sky; she could no longer tell where even to go, she saw no promise and no hope from the last summit, only dull grey doom, and sank to the soft ground with a last tired gasp, finally forgetting the Gods and wishing only to die there that night, to let herself be ripped by wolves.
But the Gods remembered her, they wove a cloak from the streamers of mist to hide her from beasts and shield her from cold. They made that hill her child-bed meadow, and with the rising sun she saw where she would settle and her son would raise the city.
It was only much later that men would find they had need of a king, and a wall around their town which they called Verdesgord, they had need of judges and dungeons and gibbets; wheels and crosses to break each other upon, and a place outside their walls where all could see it done.
Men saw the world through darker eyes by that time and so they looked upon that same hill, the Hill of the Last Sigh, and falsely thought it had been made for that purpose.
Centuries passed, the soil grew rich and dark and fertile, and flowers would bloom among the posts of suffering. The hill became what men made of it, a place of many deaths.
A time came when men couldn’t agree whether a Queen was a Queen or not.
Whether she should sit on a throne clothed in silk and bedecked with jewels or struggle naked on a cross spattered with blood.
For a moment he saw the ruts freshly dug into wet grass and he saw the wreaths of smoke roll and rise as Tsilsne’s cannon spoke their opinion on that, those of the guns that had reached the top of the hill and had not slid down in the mud crushing her own men by the dozens.
The Queen would herself be further forward with her personal guard.
Her maids however she'd left with the lightly defended baggage train, where Boltarg Bristlebeard fell upon them.
But Anrirathu had been on the hill.
What was she using you for?
The Queen had, in the end, neither ruled from a throne nor squirmed on a cross; she had held court sitting cross-legged in a tent; when she died, it was in flames and not nailed to wood.
It was the absence of sound that snapped him awake.
Absence of sound except for the ticking of the clockwork that was now loud as the cracking of whips.
The song was done, she’d let go of his hands and was silent.
Just as when you’re torn from a dream, there would be only a brief time when he could remember. He had to commit everything he’d seen to paper as quickly as possible.
She raised her hands and looked at them.
He looked at were he suspected her eyes should be. Just a glint from beneath the mask.
Blood?, he thought.
As if receiving his thought, “My deed, my murder, I did it … without blood.”
She rose and turned towards the stairs leading down from the tower.
He nodded, and rose as well, in respect.
You needed to go now and be alone, he thought, and you won’t be talking much anymore today. You can go. You did very well.
Her departure was wordless, it was as she wished.
She hesitated at the door, then was very slow on her way down the steep wooden staircase.
He understood it would be difficult to see where she was placing her feet, with that shroud over her face.
Then she paused and did not move at all for a long time. Frozen half up and half down the stairs. He considered that he might bring her something to light the way and turned, but then she continued down.
The next flight of stairs was of stone and not as steep. He heard her taking those steps two at a time and rushing out.
He went to fetch the same quill, inkwell and sheets he had given her for writing. He sat at the desk, and began to carefully put down everything he recalled of the visions the journey of her song had left in his mind.
He was interrupted by the announcement of an unexpected but very insistent visitor from Verdesgord town.
The last thought he had before giving in to blissfully drifting in her sea was, – this is most certainly: the voice of milk and honey.
---
It was a most confusing sensation, like a half-dream where you’re just awake enough to know you’re asleep.
More confusing was – who to be in that dream, as it seemed to him sometimes he was looking out through her eyes, other times he was floating behind and beside her.
As if he’d taken the place that would otherwise be occupied by an imaginary friend as children sometimes had them. But one who would actually be listening, for the time she took him with her.
He forgot most things as quickly as he saw them, but he understood she’d gone all the way back to before they’d stopped her singing, maybe picking up the exact same childhood song, and these had been happy times. There were dark moments in between but they were short flickers and he forgot them right away though he knew he shouldn’t.
He skipped with her down the stone stairs to the harbor, in a town of steep streets around a deep bay, and wondered with her at the tall-ships and where they might be going and when they’d come back. There were other stairs to go down but there it was dark and she was afraid of it and then the moment was gone.
Instead it was winter on a frozen pond with four feet of snow dumped on top of the thick ice in a single night; there were older boys, brothers or cousins or best friends, who shoveled it away revealing the black ice with white bubbles trapped and leaves and the occasional small creature enclosed within. They made a labyrinth of passages in the snow and the children were skating on the ice, they couldn’t race as they usually did, instead it was a game of catch in that maze. In another maze, a stone passageway, she was feeling her way along a twisted path in the dark but he couldn’t follow and forgot.
On the ice, she was best at escaping because she was small enough to duck down behind the snow and not be seen, but big enough to go fast and not fall, except where the ice was rippled and rough.
The small ones were too easy to catch, you’d just scoop up their giggling little selves right away; the bigger ones were too easy to see and you’d corner them and they had to give up – so it was always her getting caught last. Then they had her and heaved her into the snow with laughter; even if it’s a girl you’re throwing it’s hard to keep your balance when you’re on ice-skates and so they fell backwards and everyone had to dig themselves out of the snow.
He saw the fire then, it twisted and grew and shot to the sky, but then was captured and tamed and he forgot its raging, as they were all in wool sitting around the fireplace, where it felt good to be just a little cold and wet and smelling of snow and the outside because the warmth was sinking in, and they were sipping a delicious spicy hot drink, it would burn in their chest if they swallowed too quickly, he knew what it was but had forgotten the name of it.
A breeze across his face woke him on a green hill richly strewn with wild flowers.
Deep ruts ran through the soft, rich soil but they had overgrown with grass.
He knew it was an awakening within a dream and he knew the place.
A place that had first earned its name in the Dawntime of legends when a mother-to-be had left the valley of her homeland to find a new place to give birth - where her child would not be seized for a sacrifice foretold.
She had ceased her worship of giants and ghosts and put her trust in the promise of the new Gods. A promise that told of a land upon which she would look when she reached the end of the hills.
She had wandered far, but from the cusp of each hill, she saw only another hill to climb, and not the river that ran through the land of the promise. But each time her faith conquered her despair and she continued.
She continued in her faith until she was spent. As her steps failed, a cold fog rose around her, clouds rolled over the hilltop and the sun faded in a lead sky; she could no longer tell where even to go, she saw no promise and no hope from the last summit, only dull grey doom, and sank to the soft ground with a last tired gasp, finally forgetting the Gods and wishing only to die there that night, to let herself be ripped by wolves.
But the Gods remembered her, they wove a cloak from the streamers of mist to hide her from beasts and shield her from cold. They made that hill her child-bed meadow, and with the rising sun she saw where she would settle and her son would raise the city.
It was only much later that men would find they had need of a king, and a wall around their town which they called Verdesgord, they had need of judges and dungeons and gibbets; wheels and crosses to break each other upon, and a place outside their walls where all could see it done.
Men saw the world through darker eyes by that time and so they looked upon that same hill, the Hill of the Last Sigh, and falsely thought it had been made for that purpose.
Centuries passed, the soil grew rich and dark and fertile, and flowers would bloom among the posts of suffering. The hill became what men made of it, a place of many deaths.
A time came when men couldn’t agree whether a Queen was a Queen or not.
Whether she should sit on a throne clothed in silk and bedecked with jewels or struggle naked on a cross spattered with blood.
For a moment he saw the ruts freshly dug into wet grass and he saw the wreaths of smoke roll and rise as Tsilsne’s cannon spoke their opinion on that, those of the guns that had reached the top of the hill and had not slid down in the mud crushing her own men by the dozens.
The Queen would herself be further forward with her personal guard.
Her maids however she'd left with the lightly defended baggage train, where Boltarg Bristlebeard fell upon them.
But Anrirathu had been on the hill.
What was she using you for?
The Queen had, in the end, neither ruled from a throne nor squirmed on a cross; she had held court sitting cross-legged in a tent; when she died, it was in flames and not nailed to wood.
It was the absence of sound that snapped him awake.
Absence of sound except for the ticking of the clockwork that was now loud as the cracking of whips.
The song was done, she’d let go of his hands and was silent.
Just as when you’re torn from a dream, there would be only a brief time when he could remember. He had to commit everything he’d seen to paper as quickly as possible.
She raised her hands and looked at them.
He looked at were he suspected her eyes should be. Just a glint from beneath the mask.
Blood?, he thought.
As if receiving his thought, “My deed, my murder, I did it … without blood.”
She rose and turned towards the stairs leading down from the tower.
He nodded, and rose as well, in respect.
You needed to go now and be alone, he thought, and you won’t be talking much anymore today. You can go. You did very well.
Her departure was wordless, it was as she wished.
She hesitated at the door, then was very slow on her way down the steep wooden staircase.
He understood it would be difficult to see where she was placing her feet, with that shroud over her face.
Then she paused and did not move at all for a long time. Frozen half up and half down the stairs. He considered that he might bring her something to light the way and turned, but then she continued down.
The next flight of stairs was of stone and not as steep. He heard her taking those steps two at a time and rushing out.
He went to fetch the same quill, inkwell and sheets he had given her for writing. He sat at the desk, and began to carefully put down everything he recalled of the visions the journey of her song had left in his mind.
He was interrupted by the announcement of an unexpected but very insistent visitor from Verdesgord town.
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malins
Stumbling Seeker
Stolen Song
An old woman named Hedandra, who was known as King Hastinbar’s ‘Ancient Gardener’. She’d talked her way past everyone and proved impossible to dismiss. Unless he had done violence.
He had it from hearsay that her gifts went beyond harvesting herbs and mixing potions. It was the present King’s grandfather who had taken her into service. In a time when there was suspicion of an evil eye cast on the royal family; she had dispelled it. Long before he had been called to fill the vacant seat of the High Priest in this chapter of the Order.
Just like King Hastinbar today, the King then had nourished a strong dislike for witchcraft of any kind; he didn’t want it to be known that signs of Malevolent work had been found at court, and he didn’t want it known that he had brought in a white witch to counteract it.
Instead he had someone work in secrecy. As the old woman told her tale, the Priest thought - she has herself turned rather black over the years. Too much of secrecy perhaps.
Her story was hard to believe but it seemed she held part of a deeper truth in her hands, even though she was trying to mold what she had found into a wicked shape. Her revelations brought sense to those parts of the history of the Mad Queen that otherwise didn’t make sense at all. And perhaps, to Anrirathu’s role in it.
He did not doubt her perception of the things she claimed to have seen, either with what she called her ‘clearsight’, or how anyone else would have seen it. As a man of reason though he understood that any sense of sight may play tricks on its owner, and so he doubted the truth of much she claimed to know from that seeing.
Whenever someone relied too strongly on one sense, the others tended to atrophy; the Gardener assumed to know people because to some degree she could see their thoughts, but with that it she had unlearned entirely to hear their hearts. He wondered if she still had one herself.
She could not see right from wrong anymore; at the beginning of her tale she had still expressed remnants of pity for the ‘shadow-girl’ but in truth she was consumed by hatred. It might even be that it was envy that lay at the root of that hatred; both of them had possessed talents of similar kind but while the Gardener had spent her life toiling in obscurity, the ‘shadow-girl’ had grown into the Mad Queen Tsilsne who, whatever else you said of her, had certainly gone forth and turned the world on its head.
Purportedly the Gardener acted to shield the King and his family from evil spirits but the Priest realized - she’d sacrifice the King himself if that was the price for destroying the evil she claimed to have discovered.
A mad quest to destroy what was dead already. Although the Gardener claimed that the ‘Shadow’ she spoke of had in the end consumed the Mad Queen’s soul and taken much of her with it when it rose from the ashes of her body.
There it was. The feverish dreams, oppressive nightmares, mysterious nighttime manifestations.
Many had been complaining of such things, and requests for rituals of cleansing and exorcism had increased beyond the capacity of the Order to fulfill.
We don’t know what evil it is we seek to banish and so we can perform only the most general driving-out of spirits. It was happening here in the monastery too, several Brothers of the Order had even testified to the visitation of succubus.
When you thought about it, those complaints had begun soon after the Pyre of Tsilsne. As the ashes of the witch settled over the land. In the last weeks these apparitions had become almost a plague.
Despite all doubts about her character, there was most likely a good deal of truth to the Gardener’s story. A spirit was out there, walking though people’s minds at night.
Something that was dead but dreaming.
He had not suffered from such visitations until now – the song of Anrirathu had given him an inkling of what such a vision might feel like, in those brief moments when he felt the cold fear lurking in between warm and cherished memories.
But then he was not too susceptible to such things in general. People might expect a High Priest to be a person with a good amount of magical talent, but that was not necessarily so.
It was his task to make sense of signs, visions and prophecies, not to receive them himself; he approached them firstmost with a good deal of doubt. The sharpest weaponry of the Order’s High Priesthood consisted of the capacity for reason, a broad schooling that enabled them to inspect almost any matter under the sun or beyond it, and a good intuition for the workings of the heart. An intuition that more often than not derived from their own passionate experience of it.
He had the distinct feeling when the Gardener had left, that he had told her a bit too much of Anrirathu, her plight and the progress of his investigations in that regard.. As if she had pulled it out of me. Upon her arrival it had seemed as if she was looking for answers; when she left, she had a look of determination on her face as if she had already found them all.
But he had taken something from her too.
The Priest did not have such a thing as a spy in the King’s castle, but there were a few devout followers of Doctrine and a greater number of sympathizers, and he would see to it that they kept an eye on the doings of this Gardener. She had made a snake-pit of her heart and he feared the grimly satisfied look on her face as she left – it could mean nothing good.
His thoughts tried to return to where they were before the old woman had invaded his study, but he found they were all gone. The little bit of writing in front of him hardly made sense.
It was not a feeling grounded in reason at all, it came from that same questionable ‘knowing’ - but ...
the Ancient Gardener had stolen Anrirathu’s song!
It was all gone.
He had no idea how to get it back.
He recalled nothing now…
...except the smell of that spicy hot drink.
Well.
If a cup of milk and honey had helped Anrirathu rediscover her song...
... a cup of whatever-it-was might help him reclaim its memory.
Just the smell of it and he’d be there again.
Hedandra was slow on her way back to the town, but that gave her time to think.
Of the things the Priest had told her, and the things beyond that, which she had read from him with her clearsight. High Priest he called himself but he had no idea how much she had seen.
So they held a thing of the Devil in that monastery.
Even the name of that creature, the meaning of it, the sound of it.
Something you’d spit out. Anrirathu. Like pebbles in your mouth.
If you looked upon its face, it would take the form of your deepest fear.
It would not just take the look of that, it would become it in the flesh.
Devils and demons are fearful things but sometimes surprisingly easy to trick.
So single-minded in their designs that they blunder into the traps of mortals.
So, ... let the devil do the work.
Collect the floating shadows and bring them back into a vessel.
Then ... in destroying that, finally banish the shadow from the world.
The shadow will only inhabit a fitting vessel, what could be better than the one it knows? The one it grew in?
We mortals cannot and must not bring to life what is dead, that is outrage, that is anathema and we of the True Path did not stamp out necromancy to commit it ourselves.
Doing outrage, that’s what devils do though.
It’s what makes the devils in the first place.
Let the devil shape anew the fitting vessel for the Shadow.
Find someone who deep inside is possessed with a fearful vision of the Mad Queen.
For whom she would be the dream that is his enemy.
With all the wickedness Tsilsne had worked, it wouldn’t be hard to find such a one.
Bring that ghoul before him and ...unmask it!
The nightmare, the dream made flesh.
Seize that!
Seize the flesh of the thing it becomes.
Draw down the shadow into it.
Oh, it will come all by itself, it will have no choice!
They are bound to each other!
And then we’ll have you.
All of you.
Finally.
Then we’ll drive you up to the Hill of the Last Sigh under the weight of your doom and then we’ll nail you to the cross of your destiny and witness your cleansing, as you struggle and writhe and wither until with your last breath the dark vapor comes out and dissipates.
And I, it will be I who will put my hand on your chest and make sure to feel the last beat of your black heart.
Hedandra understood then that this would be why she was still alive, to complete this task.
Then she could die.
Well, after sending for a Sorrowmaiden and her twilight-sleep for the poor soul who had to look upon the dream made flesh.
Sacrifices had to be made.
This one would be worth it all.
An old woman named Hedandra, who was known as King Hastinbar’s ‘Ancient Gardener’. She’d talked her way past everyone and proved impossible to dismiss. Unless he had done violence.
He had it from hearsay that her gifts went beyond harvesting herbs and mixing potions. It was the present King’s grandfather who had taken her into service. In a time when there was suspicion of an evil eye cast on the royal family; she had dispelled it. Long before he had been called to fill the vacant seat of the High Priest in this chapter of the Order.
Just like King Hastinbar today, the King then had nourished a strong dislike for witchcraft of any kind; he didn’t want it to be known that signs of Malevolent work had been found at court, and he didn’t want it known that he had brought in a white witch to counteract it.
Instead he had someone work in secrecy. As the old woman told her tale, the Priest thought - she has herself turned rather black over the years. Too much of secrecy perhaps.
Her story was hard to believe but it seemed she held part of a deeper truth in her hands, even though she was trying to mold what she had found into a wicked shape. Her revelations brought sense to those parts of the history of the Mad Queen that otherwise didn’t make sense at all. And perhaps, to Anrirathu’s role in it.
He did not doubt her perception of the things she claimed to have seen, either with what she called her ‘clearsight’, or how anyone else would have seen it. As a man of reason though he understood that any sense of sight may play tricks on its owner, and so he doubted the truth of much she claimed to know from that seeing.
Whenever someone relied too strongly on one sense, the others tended to atrophy; the Gardener assumed to know people because to some degree she could see their thoughts, but with that it she had unlearned entirely to hear their hearts. He wondered if she still had one herself.
She could not see right from wrong anymore; at the beginning of her tale she had still expressed remnants of pity for the ‘shadow-girl’ but in truth she was consumed by hatred. It might even be that it was envy that lay at the root of that hatred; both of them had possessed talents of similar kind but while the Gardener had spent her life toiling in obscurity, the ‘shadow-girl’ had grown into the Mad Queen Tsilsne who, whatever else you said of her, had certainly gone forth and turned the world on its head.
Purportedly the Gardener acted to shield the King and his family from evil spirits but the Priest realized - she’d sacrifice the King himself if that was the price for destroying the evil she claimed to have discovered.
A mad quest to destroy what was dead already. Although the Gardener claimed that the ‘Shadow’ she spoke of had in the end consumed the Mad Queen’s soul and taken much of her with it when it rose from the ashes of her body.
There it was. The feverish dreams, oppressive nightmares, mysterious nighttime manifestations.
Many had been complaining of such things, and requests for rituals of cleansing and exorcism had increased beyond the capacity of the Order to fulfill.
We don’t know what evil it is we seek to banish and so we can perform only the most general driving-out of spirits. It was happening here in the monastery too, several Brothers of the Order had even testified to the visitation of succubus.
When you thought about it, those complaints had begun soon after the Pyre of Tsilsne. As the ashes of the witch settled over the land. In the last weeks these apparitions had become almost a plague.
Despite all doubts about her character, there was most likely a good deal of truth to the Gardener’s story. A spirit was out there, walking though people’s minds at night.
Something that was dead but dreaming.
He had not suffered from such visitations until now – the song of Anrirathu had given him an inkling of what such a vision might feel like, in those brief moments when he felt the cold fear lurking in between warm and cherished memories.
But then he was not too susceptible to such things in general. People might expect a High Priest to be a person with a good amount of magical talent, but that was not necessarily so.
It was his task to make sense of signs, visions and prophecies, not to receive them himself; he approached them firstmost with a good deal of doubt. The sharpest weaponry of the Order’s High Priesthood consisted of the capacity for reason, a broad schooling that enabled them to inspect almost any matter under the sun or beyond it, and a good intuition for the workings of the heart. An intuition that more often than not derived from their own passionate experience of it.
He had the distinct feeling when the Gardener had left, that he had told her a bit too much of Anrirathu, her plight and the progress of his investigations in that regard.. As if she had pulled it out of me. Upon her arrival it had seemed as if she was looking for answers; when she left, she had a look of determination on her face as if she had already found them all.
But he had taken something from her too.
The Priest did not have such a thing as a spy in the King’s castle, but there were a few devout followers of Doctrine and a greater number of sympathizers, and he would see to it that they kept an eye on the doings of this Gardener. She had made a snake-pit of her heart and he feared the grimly satisfied look on her face as she left – it could mean nothing good.
His thoughts tried to return to where they were before the old woman had invaded his study, but he found they were all gone. The little bit of writing in front of him hardly made sense.
It was not a feeling grounded in reason at all, it came from that same questionable ‘knowing’ - but ...
the Ancient Gardener had stolen Anrirathu’s song!
It was all gone.
He had no idea how to get it back.
He recalled nothing now…
...except the smell of that spicy hot drink.
Well.
If a cup of milk and honey had helped Anrirathu rediscover her song...
... a cup of whatever-it-was might help him reclaim its memory.
Just the smell of it and he’d be there again.
†
Hedandra was slow on her way back to the town, but that gave her time to think.
Of the things the Priest had told her, and the things beyond that, which she had read from him with her clearsight. High Priest he called himself but he had no idea how much she had seen.
So they held a thing of the Devil in that monastery.
Even the name of that creature, the meaning of it, the sound of it.
Something you’d spit out. Anrirathu. Like pebbles in your mouth.
If you looked upon its face, it would take the form of your deepest fear.
It would not just take the look of that, it would become it in the flesh.
Devils and demons are fearful things but sometimes surprisingly easy to trick.
So single-minded in their designs that they blunder into the traps of mortals.
So, ... let the devil do the work.
Collect the floating shadows and bring them back into a vessel.
Then ... in destroying that, finally banish the shadow from the world.
The shadow will only inhabit a fitting vessel, what could be better than the one it knows? The one it grew in?
We mortals cannot and must not bring to life what is dead, that is outrage, that is anathema and we of the True Path did not stamp out necromancy to commit it ourselves.
Doing outrage, that’s what devils do though.
It’s what makes the devils in the first place.
Let the devil shape anew the fitting vessel for the Shadow.
Find someone who deep inside is possessed with a fearful vision of the Mad Queen.
For whom she would be the dream that is his enemy.
With all the wickedness Tsilsne had worked, it wouldn’t be hard to find such a one.
Bring that ghoul before him and ...unmask it!
The nightmare, the dream made flesh.
Seize that!
Seize the flesh of the thing it becomes.
Draw down the shadow into it.
Oh, it will come all by itself, it will have no choice!
They are bound to each other!
And then we’ll have you.
All of you.
Finally.
Then we’ll drive you up to the Hill of the Last Sigh under the weight of your doom and then we’ll nail you to the cross of your destiny and witness your cleansing, as you struggle and writhe and wither until with your last breath the dark vapor comes out and dissipates.
And I, it will be I who will put my hand on your chest and make sure to feel the last beat of your black heart.
Hedandra understood then that this would be why she was still alive, to complete this task.
Then she could die.
Well, after sending for a Sorrowmaiden and her twilight-sleep for the poor soul who had to look upon the dream made flesh.
Sacrifices had to be made.
This one would be worth it all.
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Much deeper than I but enjoy trying to keep up!!!
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Well it's become very much a story about magic. That's fun to write but has its pitfalls. I'll try not to have anymore witches, two and a half is enough
Actually maybe it would be refreshing to just write a battle scene... though there won't really be a battle upcoming. There might be a tense armed standoff at some point but no more armies clashing...
RacingRodent
Consul
There is as much magic in the storytelling as the story.