Stillness of the soul is a far off dream on nights when the screaming madness of the unquiet mind comes a-calling, Myrl thought as he tried once again to find his emotional balance point and the internal peace he usually could command in the solemn darkness of his chambers at the end of most days.
He had read that various monarchs in other countries would have a veritable raft of servants surrounding them all hours of the day and the night, not just a slate of rotating guards that followed Myrl and stood outside of his chambers unless he called for them. Myrl couldn’t imagine it being at all comfortable. From the notes and essays his father and mother had both written in their journals, his family was not the kind of Royalty that demanded guards, manservants, and bellmaids in the bedroom as the Crowns slept.
Two members of his Guard now stood outside of the entrance to his rooms. Two more would come and replace those first two just after midnight. Some other set would replace them, in their turn. But the idea of having guards and servants IN his room as he slept was disquieting to Myrl.
He knew that both Lord Ashe and Master Elbana would check in on him as he slept. They had both done so for as long as he had been in their care. And he knew Donk would have squeezed his huge frame into the king’s room to do the same, if the act of engaging in such an undignified maneuver were not too far a line for the orc to cross.
But to have people stand around him as he slept? Odd and disruptive.
Now, as Myrl stood stripped to his waist and sweating in the center of his sleeping chamber, the smallest of the rooms in his personal quarters, a small trickle of blood making an elegant ess-curve as it trailed from the small incision he had made near the inside of his left elbow, meandering toward his wrist. He had only needed the one drop, but his mental state after being briefed on the tragedy at the docks had shaken his composure.
His hand had shook slightly, just enough, when he had punctured his skin with his sgian. The small knife he had learned the art of the blacksmith specifically to forge. And using it tonight there had been a slight tremor in his hand as the blade had sought a drop of his blood. The accident had been a minor one. Myrl’s blood had dried on his arm before it had been able to reach his hand. But, still, for the first time ever while completing this ritual, he had slipped.
And now he felt his concentration had slipped as well.
He took a deep breath. And slowly exhaled as he closed his eyes, forcing his mind to still its chasing of its tail. He sighed, and began the recitation of the mantra that allowed his simple spell to become a ritual.
He needed to contact the Voice of the Void.
It was an odd title. Myrl had been using it as a way to not say the name of the being that he was attempting to contact. Invoking such names too casually was a bad idea on good days. It would be a horrible idea to have happened on a bad day, like today, just because he had allowed himself to slip into sloppy patterns and behaviors.
The darkness of the room now began the slow pulsing that told him the magic had begun to send his will off into that Other Place where the Voice of the Void waited. It ebbed and flowed as Myrl’s heart beat in his chest. Slower, now that he had calmed himself.
He took another deep breath, and started to repeat the string of syllables that made up the vocal component of this ritual. His voice dipped and dropped, almost breathy, with some verses, and then soared slowly up into the tenor range with others. He couldn’t “sing” in any higher registers than that.
Originally, he had wondered how he could complete the ritual without being able to hit those much higher notes, until Lord Ashe had leaned over the book he had been reading from, and told him to just move his efforts down an octave or two until he could recite the piece in its entirety.
“The range of the singer is never as important as singing the song correctly. Find the rhythm, and the meter. Learn the words. And the rest will fill in around you as you work.” Lord Ashe had told him, giving his charge a rare smile.
After the third recitation, as Myrl’s body ran with sweat and his lungs burned with the effort of the song, a deep and gentle voice pulsed and rolled in the air around Myrl.
It said, “You are the Single Mind with whom we have conversed. You are the Myrl.”
“Hello, and greetings. I am Myrl. And you are the Mind of the Void who speaks with the Voice of the Void, and you collectively call yourselves Havonash’Omi.” He had been worried about the name. To say it out loud when he had been scrupulous about avoiding speaking it might have led to him botching the sounds, running the syllables too closely together, or mashing the vowel and consonant sounds in unfortunate ways.
Forging ahead in spite of uncertainty is sometimes the best policy, and this evening it bore fruit. Myrl could feel the pleased smile in the words that flowed from the rift in the air his words, magic, and blood had created.
“We are, young King. Thank you for saying Our name with such precision and giving Us such joy.” There then came a rippling of the light from the rift, and the darkly muted colors of violets and reds shifted to blues. “And We have been left to ponder…We wonder now… Why the Myrl, who is already King, still contacts Us. You have Your Kingdom. Your kind often forgets the bargains you make once you have your treasures. Why does the Myrl call upon Us still?” He could feel the warmth in the voice. It was solicitous, and while Myrl had very little experience with the concept, it was seductive. The intonations and timbre of the Voice had always been subtly feminine, though deeper than most men’s voices. The Voice was deep in the harmonious ways a choir could achieve depth.
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It was a single mind speaking with a multitude of voices, and it sounded to Myrl as though it cared.
He blinked.
“We did make a bargain, you and I. We made a deal for aid and for power. While I did not need your aid for my goal of taking my family’s throne back, you made your offers in good faith, and you accepted my offers in that same spirit. I would not break my Word. Not to you who offered me help when I needed it. My not needing that help for one goal does not mean I do not need your help. And it does not mean I could forget my promise to you. I will just need a different kind of help now than I thought I needed earlier.”
This would be the tricky moment.
Myrl had made a deal. Entities like Havonash’Omi were known to stick very strictly with any contract made, no matter how anything else may have played out for those other partners in those deals. It had led to many horrifying stories and even some verifiable accounts of would-be dealmakers dying in tragic, messy ways.
“Our deal was bargained for with the Myrl in good faith.” The tone of the Voice implied suspicion. Myrl could feel a slight breeze working its way around the shutters in the sitting room off to his left, making the sweat on his shoulders freeze.
“And I will honor Our bargain as it was made, if you refuse to change the nature of the contract with me here and now this evening. But, if you will hear my petition, I propose a minor change to the bargain we have made. I propose a lessening of Your responsibilities, and no lessening of my own.”
He waited. The light from the rip in the air that hung before Myrl continued its slow pulsation of light and the roiling motion that marked its borders. After a count of forty-two breaths, the voice spoke again.
“Our bargain called for That which We are to make five times that of twenty, twice and twice again, cease. In turn, You promised to deliver to Us a Pure Vessel.”
“Havonash’Omi, I would offer you that same price, but reduce Your portion of those you would…” Here he paused a moment. “...make to cease. In place of those cessations, I would ask for information.”
The Voice was startled now. It spoke more quickly, and in a higher, more inquisitive tone. “This is Unprecedented. We do not know how this could proceed. We cannot ask the same Price for a Lesser Value of Service.” Some words just capitalized themselves in the Voice’s speech.
“The many you have promised me in my war, are not at war with me, and I now hold the throne of my family. I assign a greater value to the information I seek, and would trade those many lives, and great effort on your part to have the information I would ask of you.”
“How shall we assign value to information versus the lives of those We would have made Cease when We do not know what knowledge you seek, the Myrl?” It paused. Havonash’Omi sounded almost panicked. “What are the Questions that the Myrl would know? How can value be assigned to that which We can not Weigh in the Great Balance?”
Myrl wasn’t certain what the Great Balance might mean, or what Havonash’Omi might mean in invoking this. But, he needed to forge ahead, and see if this being would help him in his new goals.
“I have questions for you to answer, and for true answers I will pay you what would have owed you for those many cessations. I will ask you now, and you may weigh their merit versus the price we had agreed upon.” He took a breath now, to steady himself before he launched into his questions.
The Voice responded. “Ask. We will judge the value of what you seek versus what you offer.” It was spoken in a sigh. There was disappointment in The Voice now. She, it, possibly “They” were becoming very unhappy with Myrl, and he knew it might be a part of the renegotiated price he would have to pay.
“Someone attempted to kill me today using a young woman, Lady Ocelia, who came to my kingdom as a member of a trade delegation. Who was it who tried to kill me using Lady Ocelia?”
He steeled himself for this next one, and breathed deeply through his nose. “How many people of Power in my Kingdom are plotting against me, and who are they?”
This last question set his teeth on edge to ask, but he wanted to know. “Many people died tonight near me in my city. I was told animals, beasts, attacked them and carried some others of their number off into the night. Where are these beasts, and are those they carried off still alive?”
“The Myrl.” The Voice said.
He waited.
“Your terms are acceptable. A Pure Vessel for five cessations, and the answers to these three questions. We can give you one answer now. But we cannot answer the other two yet, as their answers are shifting. Changing.”
“When can you answer the other two questions?” he asked the rift that called itself Havonash’Omi.
“That is another question. But we do not count it in your total. It is a part of the contract to know the parameters of the contract.”
The Voice was once again deep, slow, and yearning…? Was the Voice lonely? Myrl wondered. I thought it was a multitudinal mind, twined together. Does the Voice need more external contact?
“How soon can the other two be answered?” He was trying to keep his own voice free of anxiety, and he had to clear his throat so as not to squeak when he spoke. “I will need these answers as soon as I can get them, to save the lives of those who I call mine, and to be in a position to pay your price.”
“Acceptable. Your prisoner, Lady Ocelia, was sent to make deals and bargains with the Myrl in good faith by the being she knows as her mother. She attacked the Myrl in panic. Lady Ocelia was told lies, believed those lies, and attacked the Myrl in her ignorance. The one who told her those lies had no intent for your death.”
There was a pause. Myrl waited, to be certain the Voice would not start speaking again when he might inadvertently interrupt it.
“And these other matters?”
“We will deliver to you those answers in seven days and in twenty one days. The Cessations will be made once you designate those who We are to make Cease. Upon granting the final cessation, you must deliver the Vessel within one three Lunar Rotations.”
“Five cessations, and the answers to those other two questions. The Vessel. Agreed.” Myrl wanted to stick out his chin, show a little belligerence. He didn’t have it in him at the moment. Mostly he had waring feelings of triumph, and disappointment.
The rift was silent for too long. Myrl was on the verge of speaking again, restating his agreement to the new parameters of their bargain when the dried blood droplets from his sgian, and from the skin of his left arm, drifted toward the collapsing edges of the slowly darkening portal. As it closed, and the edges further wriggled and contracted upon itself, the Voice whispered a final, “...agreed…” with a hint of sadness, laced through the voice.