INTERLUDE 2D: NOT LIGHTLESS
“There are aspects of life which cannot even be discussed with those to whom a deontology of suffering has become the measure of existence. I cannot even comprehend the words they speak, for in their schema the very definition of transformation moves into one of stasis. They are unknowing adepts of Lord Tyranny, seeking after the deadworld beyond life and all meaningful suffering, the expunging of all conscious experience. Of course if one is swallowed by Lord Sorrow and his teachings one will see only sorrow wherever one looks. Even when one smiles in joy one will afterwards think it ever bittersweet.”
– taken verbatim from ‘The Maiden’s Way’ recordings, Ismethara 945 NE
She stood at the rail on the prow of the Dremmedine, the sea breeze in her hair; she’d tried to tie it back but as usual half of it had come free, and she hadn’t the heart to have another go at it. She could smell the salt, hear the soft flapping of the rigging in the wind, the waves breaking against the hull of the ship in time with the gentle motion that rocked her, rocked everything, the constant motion that’d once made her nauseated to which she’d become so accustomed.
But she could also smell the smoke, hear the shrill wails of the dying carried on the wind. The armies of hell falling upon the weak, the defenceless. And that unearthly ringing – the Bells that spoke of Mourning, as Illodin’s Lay of Memory went.
Gong! Gong! Gong!
The Dremmedine was anchored at one of Salnifast’s hundreds of docks – the marble-built harbour-town was bigger than most cities she’d seen, and was located a few miles downriver from Mund. Even from here, she could smell the destruction, hear the devastation of it all. The far-off walls of the actual city, gleaming in the night brighter than the marble stones of Salnifast, were themselves tall enough that, even at this distance, she couldn’t have easily pinched them between her thumb and forefinger with her hand held up to her face. Mund must’ve been huge.
It didn’t look so far off. She’d seen the shallow barges going upriver often-enough, oarsmen with their backs bent against the flow of the Greywater despite the wizard-wind in the sail. She could jump aboard one, or, if they were unwilling during an Incursion, even force them to take her…
It went against all her instincts to stay where she was. Derezo, an old friend who’d actually grown up in Mund, had told her more than once what Incursions were like. Her fingers had to be white upon the rail beneath her thick woollen gloves. She would’ve rather gripped her mace and shield, felt the sway of the waves of combat as she brought the light of her goddess down upon the demons. She’d only encountered a fiend once before in her entire life, and the confrontation had gone in her favour quickly – Phanar had just raised an eyebrow and left it at that, but the unspoken praise had almost made her feel giddy. Even remembering it now she re-experienced some of the same sensation. They’d all grown, as people – as ‘heroes’, even – since the catastrophe of Miserdell, but Phanar had grown the most. He was their leader, and she respected him – loved him. She’d have taken any opportunity to impress him.
The clergy rarely got a chance to show-off in combat. Derezo had never mentioned it – perhaps he simply didn’t know – but word from one of the sailors was that the Temple of Compassion in Mund fostered a Sisterhood of the Maiden who were warrior-priestesses. Evidently these ‘Infernal Incursions’ were common-enough in the city that even the pacifists had developed their own fighting-culture. She would’ve loved to have had the chance to meet one of them, share notes. Until they’d come to Mund, she’d thought herself the only follower of Wythyldwyn to take up the path of the battle-cleric.
Yet she knew she couldn’t set foot ashore. The words of the seeress were clear on that much, at least.
Meeting the child-prophetess of Kultemeren at the shrine in Tirremuir had been a singularly frightening experience. A little five- or six-year-old girl in a simple smock, raven hair cropped at the nape of the neck, shadowed by a cadre of black-armoured guardians who stopped at a flick of the child’s fingers. The seeress approached her while she was talking to the high priest, and ruined more than just her day with a few simple sentences.
A voice so morose and detached should never have emanated from such a small child.
”Wherefore shall the daughter of Wythyldwyn forsake our sands for outland soil? Forsaken shall she be, broken by toil! Into the wyrm’s maw stretch her footprints in the sand; if farther, it be beyond the Judge’s hand.”
The implications were pretty clear, now that the Bells had started ringing.
If I go to help, I’m going to end up dead, somehow.
And if I don’t die here, I’m going to die somewhere in the Chakoban Mountains, devoured by Ord Ylon.
At least a dragon can’t destroy your soul…
It was small comfort. But perhaps she’d have chance, before her final moments, to ensure the ultimate victory of her friends. Prophecies were tricky that way.
Their lives, measured against the lives of those who die in Mund tonight?
But that isn’t the right calculation, is it? If Ord Ylon isn’t stopped, who’s to say how many more Miserdells will happen before someone else steps up to put an end to him?
She shivered, remembering his voice echoing through the walls of the building in which she’d been trapped as he drove his packs of dire wolves through the streets. The tumult as he’d thrown down the Tower of the Sword and rent the Cathedral of Chraunator into rubble.
She was sure she’d rather take a hundred of these Incursions over seeing something like that again.
Letting loose a sigh, she closed her eyes, turned her face from the wind, and, as she’d been taught, sought the place in her heart where there was only the mirror of self-reflection. She sat in the seat before the mirror, and it was more an upright pool of water than any glass or metal polished by hand of man; it was hard to see at first, but it rippled, and these ripples moved across the surface of the pool in pace with the speed of her thoughts.
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She had the prophecy squatting upon her shoulders, whispering to her of the imminence of her own demise, and the end of her time on this plane.
I accept it.
The ripples across the surface diminished.
She had the Infernal Incursion ringing in her ears, reminding her of the day everybody died. The day they all went away, never to return.
I will see them again.
The pool was almost still.
Soon I will be as nothing, pure air, and my soul be emptied of its earthly troubles. The grace of the goddess will give me the strength to endure this night.
She had the teeth of Ord Ylon closing about her. In the darkness of his mouth there was only the fumes, and the chasm that took her into the deep pits of acid, bubbling matter dragging her blistered body under the surface with its fierce, churning currents, consuming her screams along with all the rest.
I… I…
The ripples didn’t stop – they only grew, and she could imagine her doom, imagine the agony that awaited her, the grinning, sword-toothed face of the Ord –
She was not nothing – it was Kanthyre standing there gripping the rail at the prow, Kanthyre whose troubles bound her spirit tight.
How could the Maiden take me up, offer me surety, safety, when I put myself in the noose and kick away the stool?
Kanthyre was alone.
She released the rail at last, then opened her eyes, looking down at the palm of her right hand.
She willed the light to come, and it did, as it had every time since Miserdell fell, suffusing her flesh as though her skin were glass trapping a living star.
But it was dim star, this time, even when she removed the warm glove that had never been an impediment before. The radiance was off, sickly, casting too many shadows. Her gift was beginning to fail her.
“You are okay?”
Phanar had approached across the deck with a quiet ease more befitting a panther than a man, yet when he spoke from her side it wasn’t startling – his voice was soft, his concern obvious.
She let out another sigh, but this time it was half a self-mocking laugh.
“I’m just… giving up, I suppose,” she replied.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t, meet his eyes. She put her hand back down, letting the star fade to darkness, and gripped the rail once more.
It felt better, gripping the rough wood without the glove on. It felt real.
This rail in my hand – will it be one of my last real memories? Will I die remembering this moment, the time when I faced my destiny and let it destroy me?
“It’s not over yet,” Phanar said, the calming effect of his voice already working on her. “If I were Ord Ylon, I would be frightened. You and Ibbalat. My sister and I. Redgate and the Night’s Guardians. We will not easily be defeated.”
He moved closer to her as he spoke. Even here in the safety of the Salnifast harbour he was clad in his heavy gambeson – the long, padded black jacket he wore beneath his armour – just as he kept his scabbarded sword strapped to his belt. The heat of his body seemed to radiate out of him, and as his arm brushed hers she felt the heat turn to electric, reawakening her hidden longings.
His long dark hair blew in the wind, mingling with her horrible ginger locks – his scent came upon her, and for a moment she dreamt that she could smell the spice-pits of the Ashen Lands; the mists upon the Black River of N’Lem; the moss upon the ruins of Chadoath…
If he kissed me now, I would even let him, she realised with a breathless panic. Forsake my vows of piety and chastity, let him crush me in his arms against the rail…
She trembled, and moved her arm away.
“I… I think…”
“This reminds you of what happened at Miserdell?”
She nodded, biting her lip before she could help herself.
“And I also,” he said; for the first time in a long time she heard a trace of the burden he had to bear, there in his voice. “Yet this, as all darknesses, shall pass. Whether we are there to see it or not.”
She was loath to interrupt him while he mused like this, looking out over the stone walls of the harbour, the endless stampede of the Mundic Sea, the barely-stirring, smoke-choked sky. She could’ve stayed like this with him forever.
But she had to. She felt the moment upon her. If she didn’t open up to him now, she would carry this weight around her neck like an anchor across the oceans, only to bury herself in a sandy grave.
“It’s the prophecy.”
It was easier, as soon as she’d said the words – it was as though she’d dammed it up inside herself, and now upon the removal of that central key-stone, that word, ‘prophecy’, she’d unleashed the pent-up flood.
“The one from Tirremuir.”
There’d been a few – but none of the other prophecies were like this one.
She nodded. “It’s got me, Phanar. I’m trapped. I want to go up there –“ she nodded towards the city-walls in the foothills “– but I’ll die if I do. And I’ll die if I don’t.”
“Or you won’t. No prophet ever saw everything. We must take each day as it comes. If you want to go into Mund, I will come with you. You will not die.”
His gentle confidence was compelling, but she’d already made up her mind to believe the seeress – and…
“You said it yourself – whether we are there to see it or not. You don’t really think we’ll survive this, do you?”
He didn’t reply at first; when he did, his voice was even quieter.
“Do you really think we won’t? Kani…” He took her gloveless hand suddenly, held it fast. “Kanthyre, you must have faith! You… you taught me that.”
They met one another’s eyes.
The wind seemed to sweep them together –
Would he kiss me?
But he turned his face aside, even as she did the same; if she saw bitterness in his expression, she knew it would only be as a mirror for her own.
He folded her into an embrace instead, and it was good. It was a thing she needed without knowing it and now that she had it she didn’t want it to end.
“In any case,” Phanar said, his head slightly above and to the side of her own, “she told you that you might survive, beyond the Judge’s hand. That is the biggest loophole I have ever heard. I would personally be very surprised if you got killed in Chakobar. It’s the rest of us who will be having to watch our backs, trust me.”
“I’ll watch your back,” she said, smiling to herself, “always.”
He seemed to just accept that at face value, and did not reply.
After some time, she murmured, “What would that even mean, anyway? ‘Beyond the Judge’s hand’? What’s beyond Kultemeren?”
The tension was melting out of her minute by minute and she knew it.
Phanar didn’t attempt to relinquish the embrace for quite some time, and they spoke together softly all the while. When his sister poked her head around the edge of the door that led below-deck and started staring at them, one eyebrow expertly raised, they finally parted. Anathta invited them both for a game of cards, but the girl already knew Kanthyre would refuse; the cleric said an awkward “see you” to Phanar who acknowledged with a single, deep nod of his head
She didn’t know quite what had done it, she reflected once he was gone, as she lifted up her hand that shone as bright as it ever had, marvelling even after so many times at the beauty of the blessing she held.
Was it the reassurance? That I’m not alone – that they have as much reason to fear as I? Was it just that we’re all in it together?
Or was it the embrace?
Was it the hair mingled in the wind?
Was – is – it love?
She had no answer, but she knew the truth now. She faced it. Unhooked the noose about her neck and stepped down to face her terror headlong:
She had the teeth of Ord Ylon closing about her. closing about her. In the darkness of his mouth there was only the fumes, and the chasm that took her into the deep pits of acid, bubbling matter dragging her blistered body under the surface with its fierce, churning currents, consuming her screams along with all the rest…
I accept it all! Come, Ord Ylon! Let us play this deadly game, you and I. Let us see who is the stronger.
Wythyldwyn shall prevail!
And then the amber light came down upon her, bearing her far from the screams and smoke and incessant ringing, taking her to the Meadows of Mending, stripping away the flesh to leave only the shriven soul, ready to receive its blissful reprieve in the gardens of her goddess.
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