They gathered on the prow, having sailed the Queen out far enough over the infinite black that there was no possible way any air current could blow the stolen box back onto land, or even leave it wedged precariously in some crack or crevice of the edge cliff.
It was a precarious position for an airship. Air sank here, pushing out of the worlds and into the Outside. Jerl knew the navigators guessed that the great bubble of air around them was hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of miles across, but it was ever-expanding, and ever added-to by the sun’s constant off-gassing and creation of new air, new water, new dust and sand. The pressure from above, and the lower pressure below, meant the engines were turning over at a slow thrust while aimed upwards, just to hold them steady.
Without engines, they could never have come here at all. Sail ships that strayed too faar out down here and got caught in that constant air current were doomed. Even now, they were trusting to Derghan’s good maintenance and their supply of fuel.
Best not to linger, therefore. But there was a conversation to hold beforehand.
“So. We’re determined to do this,” Whisker checked. “We’re throwing away a powerful tool, here.”
“That’s exactly why we’re throwing it away,” Jerl said. “Losing it has weakened Civorage, I’m sure of it. This way, he’ll never get his strength back. The wound becomes permanent.”
“Far be it for me to ignore the power of a permanent wound…” Whisker joked, then coughed into his sleeve. “But still. Others of us could use it. If we’re going up against the man who’s held this power for ten years, surely it would be best if we outnumber him?”
“Maybe,” Jerl agreed. “But…we already do outnumber him. I have Time. Mouse has Mind. And the plan going forward is to find more of the Words, use them, and discard them in turn. We shouldn’t fill up on just one power, we need to be ready to expand our arsenal.”
“Besides…” Mouse added. “I…don’t want to inflict this on you. Mind isn’t easy. It’s deafening, sometimes. And there are people here I wouldn’t trust with that power.”
The crew, elf and human alike, looked around at each other. Some were clearly a little offended, others wondering who he meant, others still nodding in agreement. Jerl’s was most emphatic among these last. There were several on the crew he’d trust with his life but never with his, or anyone else’s, mind. Mouse’s acquiring the word had been gamble enough.
In the midst of all the confusion and looking aside, Mouse drew the box from his pocket and flung it overboard.
Several people shouted and darted to the rail, but it was too late. The box plummeted away, swiftly becoming invisible against the uninterrupted haze and void, and was gone.
“There. Decision made.” Mouse looked around, daring anyone to object. There were a few who would have liked to, Jerl thought…but then his eyes fell on Harad, who was standing at the back. The tall and sturdy elf was smiling.
“Alright,” Jerl declared, addressing the whole crew. “There’s no more argument to be had here. What’s done is done.”
“Not for you it isn’t,” Ju-Wi pointed out. “You have the power to undo that.”
“That’s not something I’ll ever do lightly,” Jerl told her. “I’ve only done it once so far, and it wiped out the good and the bad of what happened. So here and now…this is the decision we’re living with. And for my part, it’s one I wholeheartedly agree with. Now let’s get back up to warmer and less treacherous air. Our next stop is the Oasis.”
“And after that?” Harad asked.
“After that,” Jerl said, and took a deep breath. “…After that…we start building an empire. Now, everybody man your stations. Let’s get moving.”
They jumped to. Derghan vanished below decks, Amir and Gebby went to the helm with a fresh flight plan, Marren and the riggers returned to their usual haunt around the bottom of the main mast. In seconds, the deck was empty. Jerl looked up and to starboard, and after a few seconds of searching his eye found the tiny, comma-shaped speck that was the Oasis, the home of Prince Sayf himself.
He wondered how different he really was to Queen Talvi. All the stories painted him as practically her exact opposite, but he hoped that was untrue. Talvi had been unexpectedly warm and kind, after all.
In any case, of the two Crowns he knew how to find, Sayf was the closer. Talvi’s palace was far, far away now, and Jerl wasn’t sure he’d ever meet her again.
The engines changed angle and spun up, the deck swayed as the Queen lurched, and Jerl spared one glance over the side again, down toward infinity and wherever that box was going. Good riddance, he decided. He wasn’t at all sure what the future held…but if there was one thing he was determined of, it was that nobody else would gain Mind. Not if he had a choice. Two was quite enough.
With a grim nod, he returned to his cabin to update the log and enjoy some warmer air.
He felt pretty good.
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INTERLUDE: LIMBO
Neither time, nor place
Ekve was a little girl.
Her name was Leisena, and she lived with mama and papa in a small house outside the Masters’ walls. Sometimes, the leather collar around her throat itched and hurt and choked her, but Mama said they couldn’t take it off or the Masters would be angry, and she just had to get used to it.
She played outside when the weather was nice and the evil dark wasn’t around. She liked to sing, and everyone said she had a pretty singing voice.
Eventually, one of the Masters said so too. She told Leisena that she was buying her and taking her to the palace to entertain the Emperor himself. Leisena didn’t understand why mama and papa were so sad.
The palace was amazing. They dressed her nice, washed her, did her hair up like one of the Masters, and even gave her jewels and gold to wear. They even took her collar off, and said she’d never need it again. It felt so good when they took it off…
Then she was given to a teacher who taught her how to sing better than she’d ever sung before. Eventually, her teacher said she was ready, and Leisena was dressed better than she’d ever been, with makeup and facepaint just like one of the Masters.
They took her to a party. She’d never seen so many of the Masters in one place, and she didn’t really understand what they were doing. Many of them had no clothes on, and were hugging and moving against each other in strange ways that made her feel weird so she didn’t look at them.
When Leisena was taken up on a high stage to sing, they clapped and whistled for her. She sang her very best, and felt so proud and happy. It was the best she’d ever done, the best singing she could do!
But there was one Master, the Empress Ekve herself, who sat on a high seat with her chin in her hand and a chalice in the other hand, looking powerful and beautiful, and listened as Leisena sang with a soft, strange smile playing on her face. After the fifth song, another Master approached and whispered in the Empress’ ear.
The Empress’ smile widened, and she said something in reply, watching Leisena with an expression the young girl couldn’t read. The whisperer looked up and gestured, and suddenly Leisena was grabbed roughly, dragged across the room, and tied down on a large table in the middle of the party.
They did things to her she didn’t understand, that made her feel strange and ashamed and scared. Then they did things that hurt, and laughed when she screamed and begged them to stop. They cut her. They stretched and bent her. They broke her. And they thanked her for making such pretty music for their entertainment.
Leisena screamed until her throat hurt, until her voice was gone and she could do nothing more than squeak like a mouse, and then not even that. All she could do was suffer, and wish it would stop…please stop…
Eventually, they did. By then the pain had started to go away on its own, and they stepped back to watch her, smiling and whispering to each other. A face came close, a beautiful, smiling face. The Empress. She kissed Leisena, and said she loved her, and licked the blood and tears from her trembling cheek…and said goodbye.
Leisena didn’t understand what she meant by that. She was so tired, now. So sleepy…
She just wished her mama was there.
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Ekve was a baker’s apprentice.
His name was Boran, and he worked hard in the Masters’ kitchens, baking the finest white bread for their tables and feasts. Baking was a passion and an art, a science. The precision and minuteness of measuring out the perfect amount of flour and water, and the perfect amount from the sour dough. The perfect rise, the perfect knead and bake…Boran was one of the lucky few who found joy in his work. The journeyman baker spoke highly of him, praised him for his skill, and even the Masters said the occasional kind word to him.
Then the famine came.
Boran never learned the why of it. Unseasonal dryness out in the wheat-growing lands, or some such. Or a blight, perhaps, or a plague of insects. Whatever the truth, there was little flour, and little else besides.
The Masters of course continued to eat well. The kine…did not. And Boran had a wife and two boys. He could not bear to see their ribs so, could not bear the temptation of working with so much food, so much plenty so close to hand…
What harm if he made the loaves just a little smaller? What harm if he took just enough from each one for an extra loaf, that he could smuggle out to his family at close of day?
What harm?
Now, he stood on the sand, naked for all to see and armed with a battered, notched and too-much-used spear, shoulder to shoulder with other slaves, man and woman, young and old, all made equal in their lack of dignity.
They were here to fight for their freedom, proclaimed the arena master. But Boran knew who the pale figure in front of them was, his own lithe and well-muscled body barely less naked than the slaves’, adorned as he was only by a harness of dark leather and brass studs. A show of contempt for the possibility that these wretches might harm Bomirdd, the most infamous and feared fighter in the arena. Or perhaps a way of showing off the sleekly oiled perfection of his form in contrast to all these lumpen, wretched slaves.
All Boran’s teacher’s pleas had been for naught, all his argument for mercy, pointing out that sending the apprentice to this end would only rob the Masters’ table of his exquisite baking, had fallen on deaf ears. The Emperor himself had decreed no mercy for thieves in this time of strife.
“Form up, everyone,” the old man said. Boran had never learned his name, but he was a soldier of some kind. One of the legions who’d been sent to war against another city’s legions because the Masters said so. He’d come back alive, so probably his side had won. “Form up, and let’s see if we can’t give the Laughing Death a mark to remember us by.”
Boran swallowed, and nodded, and hefted his spear. It felt heavy and ungainly in his hands, like its end was too heavy. But he was strong from years of kneading dough. He felt he could use it well enough. Not like the poor boy who could barely lift his.
Together, they formed a tight prickly knot, spears leveled at the elf’s chest. Bekhil laughed, a bright and oddly merry sound. Boran had always imagined the Laughing Death’s mirth would have a brittle edge of madness in it but…no. Bomirdd seemed genuinely happy they were there, and genuinely delighted to face them.
He raised his wychwethel. Even that small movement made it thrum in the air.
“You who are about to die!” he called. “I salute you!”
Then he blurred. A flash of pale skin shot away to Boran’s right.
Boran lost his balance, for some reason. He fell down and hit his head hard in the sand. Something heavy fell down next to him, something that sprayed hot red liquid all over his face.
It took him the rest of his life to figure out that…his head…
No…
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Ekve was a miner.
His name was Rishi, and his hands hurt, all day, every day.
But still he worked.
His back too, and his knees, and his feet. But still he worked. Toiled in the dark for years, and years, sleeping in the mine, coming up only rarely when gas claimed the men lower down and they needed to let it clear. Then he’d go back inside, and pull out his friends’ bodies.
When his lungs started to hurt, he still worked. When he had coughing fits, which was often, they brought up a black sticky mess from deep inside his chest.
But still he worked.
But he couldn’t work so well any more. His hands wouldn’t grip the stones so well, his back twinged and spasmed preventing him from moving. His knees were constant grinding agony. He slowed down. He stopped producing as much.
They beat him. That in itself was not new or unusual, he’d been beaten before. but this time was fiercer, harder. And yet, somehow, the blows didn’t land so strongly. He felt almost numb to them, now, as though all the scars on his back had combined into a thick callous like armor. As they whipped, they told him, and called out to the other miners, that the Emperor had decreed a righteous war against the upstart Fey of Vathwychen, and that this mine’s output was needed to keep the loyal soldiers armed and armored.
Rishi promised to work harder, and he tried to keep that promise. Truly, he did. But he was too weak, too broken. And the coughing was getting worse.
One day, he had a coughing fit that went on, and on, and on. He couldn’t stop himself, he couldn’t breathe. It was like his lungs themselves were rebelling and trying to climb up out of his chest. His head swam, his ribs were on fire, his body heaved and spasmed and shook with the endless, wracking cough…
Until he blacked out.
He woke in the valley, a ways down the hill from the mine. Naked in a ditch, alongside bones and the sweet stench of rotting meat. A skull stared him in the eye, still covered in the wriggling white things that were eating the last of its mouldering flesh.
He coughed. He tried to move. Tried to crawl away from that pit, but though his spirit clawed for life, to escape and go somewhere, anywhere else, though his one prayer and wish in all the world was to die somewhere other than that terrible gruesome mass grave…he could not. He made it perhaps a quarter of the way up the slope, then coughed, and coughed, and coughed again, and there was no more strength in him.
He lay there and dreamed of somewhere soft and warm and pleasant, where the sun didn’t burn and the air didn’t stink, and where men could stand straight and tall under the open sky.
And he never moved again.
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Ekve was a mother.
Her name was Lusa, and her family was being relocated. She didn’t know the details, only that the Emperor had declared there were too many Kine here and needed to be more there. At first when she’d heard the news, Lusa had been terrified of being separated from her husband and children, but the Masters had been kind and kept families together.
Supposedly, they were going to work good farmland in a place called Valai, hidden-land. They’d walked for weeks, and her fears of a terrible forced march had proven further unfounded. Far from walking with whips at their backs and leaving those who stumbled where they fell, the pace was gentle, and the provisions good. As they marched, the slaves sang. At end of day, as they camped and ate, they began to speak eagerly of the farming in Valai and the pretty landscape they were entering.
It was beautiful, Lusa agreed. High mountains of yellow-gray stone that rose steeply all around them, their slopes speckled with grazing goats and beautiful with bright flowers. Between them were wide, flat grass valleys and meandering rivers whose waters were a crystal blue quite unlike anything she’d seen before.
A wonderful land for her children to grow up in, far from the dirt and squalor of the city.
Eventually they came to a compound, high walls of split logs atop an earthwork, with another wall inside. They marched through twinned gates into an open space, and Lusa wondered why this was necessary.
An elf stood at the gate, watching the marching column. now and again, he would tap a slave on the shoulder and direct them through a smaller gate behind him.
He tapped Lusa on the shoulder. “You, through there.”
“Yes, Master.” The reply was rote. To question the order, to ask ‘why’ would only result in a beating. She would be told why when the time was right. Lusa squeezed her husband’s hand, smiled at her daughters and sons, and obeyed.
At first, there was no readily apparent reason for the space beyond. It was the other half of the walled compound, apparently, the half hidden from sight to those arriving in the other side. For some reason it had been excavated, dug down to five times a tall man’s height or deeper, though the near end was a shallow enough slope to walk up.
The only other entrance was a wide door, built into a large stone barn that pierced through the dividing wall. The other slaves were lined up there, and Lusa joined them. Something prickled at her now, some feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
She glanced up at the tall, bald man beside her and saw her fears echoed in his expression.
Then the barn doors opened, and Lusa’s own shocked cry was lost behind the blood thump-pounding in her ears now. Before them lay a family, much like her own. A man, a woman, five children…all dead. Their throats were cut open clear to the bone.
An elf-captain in thick metal armor patrolled past them, the plumes on the helmet under his arm wagging in the breeze. “Slaves,” he announced, raising his voice. “Bury the dead.”
None of the slaves moved. They were all too shocked, to dismayed, too…lost. After a moment, the elf scowled, and there was a sharp thrum as his Wychwethel jumped from its sheath, howled through the air, and struck a woman near the front of the row dead, right through the chest.
“Bury the dead,” he repeated, chillingly calm.
The slaves obeyed. What choice did they have? Lusa found herself struggling with the weight of a young man, maybe eighteen years old. His body was skinny and light, but he was still so heavy…
With the help of another woman, she carried him down into the pit and lay him down, on his back, his hands resting crossed on his chest. Then back up the slope, to the door, which was now closed.
Minutes later it opened again, and there were more dead to bury.
So it went. For hours, and hours, and hours. Lusa tired quickly, her clothes stuck to her where the blood soaked in, her feet chilled where she stepped in the water used to sluice the death room’s flagstones between times. Soon, she was no more thinking than a waterwheel or sawmill. Her body lumbered heavily through the work, while her mind did nothing at all. She was not Lusa, for now. She was…she was an obedient slave doing hard work.
Until she looked down at the tiny body in her arms, and the idle realization that its face was familiar reminded her to be Lusa again.
She was holding her own son.
She stopped working. She stood still, but she didn’t weep. She just looked down into her child’s pale, bloodless, dead face. Somebody shouted at her, but she paid it no heed. The shouting got louder, angrier, but she didn’t care.
Then somebody roughly grabbed her chin from behind. There was a flash of steel, sharp icy cold-hot-pain in her throat, and blood splashed across her boy’s peaceful, freckled face which grew dim and small and far away as though glimpsed through a deep-set dirty window…
With the last of her strength, she drew her little boy’s body to her chest, and lay down in the grave alongside her family.
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Ekve was an old man.
His name was Jarun, and he prayed to the Crowns every night to bring some end to this madness.
Somewhere out there, he knew, was Raksuul and the haven she had made for those who escaped. He kept a carved effigy of her whittled from wood, and slept with it under his pillow. It was equal parts a symbol of hope, and the mark by which he could identify those walking his hidden path.
Jarun was too old to escape, but there was hope for others. Younger men and women, families. People willing to dare the danger of being caught and slaughtered, for the hope of fleeing the so-called ’Masters’ and their insanity. He was a waypoint on their journey, a safe house where they could rest a night before moving on to the next.
Such rest as it was, anyway. A tiny hole under his floorboards where people could pack in like a litter of kittens and endure the daylight hours until cover of night returned and opened the way to the next safe house for them.
But he had sent his final family on their way last night, for they had carried terrible news, and a plea: “Come with us. They’re on our trail, they’ll find you. Escape with us, come and see Raksuul.”
He had said no. He was old, and lame, and slow. To go with them would be to kill them. So today he sat on his favorite stool next to the fire, ate the last of his good food, and turned the little icon of Raksuul back and forth between his fingers. His only regret was that he would never get to see her beauty in person.
The other hand was wrapped around the handle of a dagger, the mere ownership would have got him executed years ago had it been found. Slaves were not allowed to own weapons.
There was a crash at the door. No knock, no call, no warning sound of booted feet. Just a heavy impact that smashed the flimsy wood to splinters. An elf in dark armor surged through, with five more beside him, but his expression fell as he locked eyes with Jarun and saw what he was preparing to do. As Jarun smiled at him, he launched himself forward across the room with a cry of “Nay!”
But he was too late.
Jarun drove the dagger into his own heart, and with his last breath, he spat blood in the slave-hunter’s dismayed face.
In the fire behind him burned all the evidence the elves had sought that would have led them to the next station.
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Ekve was Ekve, living life after life after life. First one, then a second, then he lost count. He lived each one in full, its every memory, every moment, every hope and dream and fear and wish and experience.
His name was Leisena, and it was Boran. He was Rishi, and Lusa, and Jarun. He was Bor, Amily, Lemna, Adias, Lodar, his sister Losira, Endja, Hati, Quend, Samri, Etisha, Carow, Mar, Nistuj, Evest, Zolo, Fara, and a million more, tens of millions more.
He lived every single one. Every life snuffed out by his command. Every single death and instant of unjust suffering for which he was even tangentially responsible. Every second, minute, and year, in full, whether the life was long or short. He was them, and yet a passenger in them. He felt all they felt, knew all they knew, thought all they thought…
And yet he was still Ekve.
His soul endured the agonies of his own making for a billion years compressed down into weeks. His defiance flickered and collapsed after only the first life. After the second, he regretted. After the third, he would have begged for mercy if he could. After the fourth he hated.
His hate snapped wildly around, refusing to find a home in any single thing. At first he hated the villain of each piece, each slavemaster, each weak kine who sold out his fellow slaves for a crumb from the master’s table, each torturer and mine foreman and arena master. Each one, in each life, earned his ire, one by one, but none of them kept it for the next life’s villain was always just as terrible or worse...or might sometimes even be the previous life themself, whose perspective Ekve now knew intimately.
Then his anger turned to the kine themselves. The wansuulen, shattersouls, the wights, the humans. Damn them for their weakness and insignificance! Damn them for vanishing where the chosen race endured! Why should he care what some silly little girl who’d have aged and died in an eyeblink felt anyway?
Then his hate was on the crowns, for putting him through this. They’d made him! The four of them were responsible for elfkind, and humankind! They could have stepped in at any time and set them right if they disapproved, but they had not. For thousands of years they had quietly endorsed all that death, all that pain and misery, by standing aside and letting it happen.
Then, slowly, his hate was on himself. Because as life after life both flashed by and were experienced in their entirety, he came to realize…he could have stopped this too. At any time, he could have come to his senses. Whether empress or emperor, Ekve could have changed the course of the worlds if only he’d had the good sense to understand that humans, too, were people.
And there, finally, it remained, until it matured and pupated into loathing, then grief, then a terrible hollow despair…
And guilt. Complete guilt that only grew deeper and deeper and deeper until the pit of regret inside him seemed infinitely deep and impossible to ever fill. Until, finally, he saw himself for what he was.
Ekve was a monster.
And still the lives went on, and on and on. He wallowed for an eternity in his cringing guilt, unable to become hardened to it, unable to grow any more raw. The pain of every last one scraped across him like wind-blown sand on flayed flesh, withering him away until nothing remained at all.
And still it went on.
And on.
And ever on.
Until he reached the end, and had experienced all the suffering he had ever inflicted. Every last second.
And there had been so much of it.
He opened his eyes. He had a body again, the same body he’d worn before, naked to the air as when he’d woken up in his palace, a barely-remembered millions of lifetimes ago. And he was back…here. Here, on the first earthmote, the place where a million elves and a million humans had been woven from dust and wind together on that very first day, neither one suspecting what the future held for them. He drew breath with brand new lungs and felt it shudder into his chest as though his body didn’t deserve to breathe. It left him in gulps and gasps and sobs and he collapsed to his knees, felt his skin threaten to tear as he ground his fingers and palms into the gritty dirt below him. He felt his stomach churn and refuse to vomit, for it was empty.
He felt an unfathomably heavy hand on his shoulder.
He looked up. A brutishly handsome face, chestnut skin framed by a shaggy mane of wild dark hair, with bewitching emerald eyes that watched him with endless compassion and sorrow.
The lord of all power deigned to sit down cross-legged on the ground next to him, bare-skinned together as they had been so long ago, at the start of all things. “Do you see, now?” King Eärrach asked.
“…Yes.”
“Do you see why I have let you live, rather than destroy you? Do you understand the purpose behind your purgation?”
Tears rained down Ekve’s nose. “Yes.”
“What do you see, Ekve?”
“Life is…it’s so sacred. And I destroyed so much of it…” He drew his knees up and curled into them, unable to give proper voice to the depths of his shame. There were no words. There could not be words. Not for a crime of this order. Not for remorse on this infinite scale. He could never make right all he had done, and he knew it.
“Yes, it is. And yes, you did.”
There was a long silence, then Eärrach took him by the shoulders, pulled him into his lap, and drew him into a hug. Thick, brawny arms and legs wrapped themselves around him, bulging with obscene strength as the vast muscles of his hulking body corded up like cables under tension. They should have instantly smashed Ekve’s body to something far thinner than pulp, but he knew somehow that Eärrach was strengthening him to withstand the world-crushing power of such a godly embrace. For through the skin-on-skin contact, Ekve was brought into direct contact with Eärrach’s being, on every level of being…and perspective was now his to contemplate.
Eärrach was power. The whole weight and substance of the Nested Worlds—everyone and everything in it, all that was and all that is, all of it—was but the most insignificant speck of dust next to the true reality of King Eärrach. He shook earthmotes underfoot because, even with his habitual restraint, he was far vaster and weightier in his godly body than all the world together. Ekve knew now that, if Eärrach were ever to allow himself total unrestraint, all would instantly be pulled into him with terrible, ultimate force. Indeed, doing so for the barest thought-blink of a moment had been how he’d destroyed Ekve’s palace, along with everything else within several miles. Not the barest trace of anything remained, beyond earthy rubble at the edges of the calamity.
Ekve knew all this because they were in full communion of mind, too. Not even the experience of his purgation had been so terrible as this. Every mind to ever live in the Worlds was as a passing idle thought compared to the vast, terrible intellect Ekve now knew was pulling apart and examining his own from every possible angle, carefully so as not to disturb anything in the least.
He was perfectly naked and vulnerable to the body and will of a god. He was beyond terror. So far beyond it. He was nothing. It wasn’t even his own strength of spirit that had allowed him to survive the agony of the lives—King Eärrach had lent Ekve the fortitude to endure it, he now understood, by experiencing it alongside him.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Nor was it his own strength that endured such a full body, world-crushing embrace. It felt much like wrestling as they struggled with the pain of it all. King Eärrach gave it as much for himself as for Ekve—they were grieving together. Ekve needed someone he could struggle with to retain any sense of himself, and so he did as they rolled around in the grass, contending against each other and the horror of Ekve’s sin. For Eärrach in turn needed someone he could properly embrace, someone who could receive him as a fellow embodied being. None but himself could withstand such a thing, so it was his power in both of them enabling such a consolation.
It was an intimate physical communion to go with the contact of minds, a primal entanglement of bodies and souls unlike anything anything Ekve had ever experienced. They tumbled, cried with their bodies, their souls, and in their minds, held each other, raged and consoled. The communion of mind, soul, and skin-on-skin contact was somehow life-saving: exciting, but not carnal or erotic, yet not innocent, either; loving, and even playful, but not to any mirth; adversarial, but not between foes, or even competing opponents. Same yet different from the contact of mind and soul, something with the force of Eärrach’s true power flowing between them, given as gift to anchor Ekve’s feeble, unworthy being to the world.
It was all…so many things at once, but first and foremost it was…it was brotherly, and strangely fatherly. They wept and yelled and raged, and grappled on every level with the shared shame and horror and the grief of it all, especially the little joys that had been snuffed out by Ekve’s wanton, unspeakable sin.
By some merciful magic, the horror all melted into something…else, and the end of it felt as gentle as a father picking his son up from a scraped knee. A stern father, to be sure; the rebuke was powerful, and came with total justice. But a good father, nonetheless.
“Do you now grasp the reality of your being, young Ekve?”
He did. All of it, without any possibility of a lie. “…Yes,” he sobbed, from the depths of his soul.
King Eärrach sat them both up and swallowed Ekve up in another embrace, face to face and mind to mind, more intimate than any lover, more loving than any father and son. Ekve could not help it; his shame and self-loathing was matched only by the terrible, absolute love he felt for King Eärrach. He was beautiful. In his body, in his mind, in his soul, in his very being. So perfectly, achingly beautiful, Ekve could not bear the thought of offending him in the least, let alone at the scale he’d transgressed. Yet, somehow he was still there. He was being given something by this encounter, he knew. Something he could not bear on his own.
“You are tiny, young Ekve. Tiny, helpless. Feeble, foolish, and broken. In your smallness, you have committed great evil, and you have now faced its reality. Its consequences cannot be erased, not from your soul, not from the world. You have permanently marred us all by your concupiscent wantonness of character. You now understand all this. Do you think I have been unfair with you?”
Ekve couldn’t find it in himself to sob again. Instead, he hung his head and shook it. “…No.”
“Then, my son…be at peace. Your sins are forgiven, by authority entrusted to me in ages Before. Do you understand why I have done this for you?”
“…No. No!” Ekve felt a new, far more terrible wave of grief building within him. He dreaded to ask, could not even voice his question. Why?!
King Eärrach could have answered him in his mind, but chose not to. Instead he once again pulled Ekve into an earthmote-shattering hug. “Because you are tiny, helpless, broken, and sinful…and precious beyond all measure. All of you are. In the grandest scheme of all things: all of us are, my son.” His voice was a deep, rumbling whisper in Ekve’s ear. “And you are loved, no matter what.”
All those lives and all that communion had been but preparation for those words.
They broke Ekve entirely.
----------------------------------------
> Vathwychen, the “City of Swords,” was the headquarters of the Ordfey military, and site of its training camps, forges and stables. From here, regiments of slave-soldiers were raised and indoctrinated to fight in the endless “Wars of Entertainment.” After the Ordfey’s fall, the triumphant humans robbed the city out stone by stone, and now nothing remains of it above ground, though one may walk the site and still see the patterns of ancient walls and foundations in the grass. —Denrick Roth, Elves.
APPROACHING THE HOME OF A GOD
The Oasis, Alhulw Earthmote 09.06.03.09.12
Even from the air, the palace of Prince Sayf was breathtaking. In fact, Jerl wondered if the cleverness of its construction could only be appreciated from above.
The palace was shaped like…well, like a figure. A lithe, feminine figure captured in strange, sinuous dance. Though, the figure had more than the usual allowance of arms, but the intent that this was a depiction of somebody was made explicit by an intricately beaten and shaped bronze roof that gleamed in the sunlight like a serene face.
A vast circular white collonade surrounded the whole palace, and beyond its sweep the earthmote was cultivated into a perfect luxury garden, dotted here and there with smaller guest palaces far inferior in both size and splendor to the Oasis itself, but still magnificent by any normal standard.
Within the collonade was an exquisitely groomed park, fountained plazas, flowered gazebos, and a tiled pool of clean water in which Jerl could see people splashing, swimming and playing. Already, the breeze carried the scents of perfume, spice, honey and incense to his nose, even this far above.
He almost regretted having to descend below the earthmote’s edge to dock with the gantry along its trailing edge. But this, too, turned out to be luxury like he’d never imagined. It could not have been less like the creaking wooden edifice at Long Drop with its rattling metal walkways and tangled spiderweb of rigging rope. This gantry was sculpted from the mote’s own living rock, then tiled and polished to gleaming perfection. All the usual necessary accoutrements of airship handling were clean, and stored in a…well, “shed” was probably not the right word for something built of white stone and as intricately decorated as a shrine, but if there was a more fitting word, Jerl didn’t know it.
There was no ground crew. Instead, the ropes writhed up like snakes to tie themselves, and the bolt rolled over and locked without the touch of a human hand. Still, as Jerl stood and gawped at this opulence, some people did show up, trotting down out of a large statue-flanked door in the cliff face bearing bowls, ewers, cloths and sweetmeats.
A ramp of white wood with delicately curled balistrades reached up to admit them, and Jerl trotted down it feeling suddenly and uncomfortably unkempt for this place. Bathing aboard ship was a necessarily tricky affair, given the need to carry all their own water, and frankly the best opportunity for a crew to clean themselves and their clothes was to fly through a gentle raincloud.
Hence the welcoming party.
The leader was a human woman, tall, warmly dark and staggeringly beautiful, with her explosion of black hair braided tight against her scalp before flowering up into a dramatic puff at the back, held by a tied ribbon. She wore a colorfully patterned silk gown scooped almost to her navel in the front and cut high on the hip at either side to show off her figure and a truly daring amount of flawless sable skin, embellished by delicate golden bands around her arms, and gossamer garter chains on her thighs.
Her stride was long and powerful, her back straight and her bearing regal. Even from yards away she radiated confidence, authority, grace and allure…but her smile was pure warmth and welcome. “Captain Holten!” she placed a hand over her breast and bowed slightly from the waist as she reached him. “My husband has been looking forward to your arrival.”
Jerl returned her bow more deeply, putting on his formal manners. If he understood her correctly, the woman was a Crownspouse, one of Sayf’s famous harem. He could certainly believe it, she was unquestionably stunning enough to turn the eye of a god. “You have the advantage of me, your highness.”
“I am Pal.” She stepped aside and gestured to the collection of men and two elves behind her. “My entourage are here to see you and your crew are appropriately presentable for the Oasis.”
“Yes, I definitely fall short of the standard right now…” Jerl admitted, growing self-conscious of his own odor.
Pal shook her head, but her smile said she meant only he had nothing to apologise for. “No-one arrives here pristine and perfect, captain. It is a long voyage, after all. So, once you are ready and your ship is settled, you and your crew will be welcomed to the bathhouses and from there the Oasis awaits you.”
“Thank you, your highness.”
Pal smiled. “I will see you upstairs when you are ready,” she declared. “Oh and…a request. This is a place of peace, so I would ask you all please leave behind your weapons, though the elves may keep their vamdraechs. Eclipse never falls here, but we do not rob them of its comfort.”
“The last thing we came here for was violence, your highness.”
“I am glad.”
“Incidentally, this is Mouse.” Jerl gestured to his side, and was secretly delighted at the way Pal’s serenity betrayed a crack at being suddenly introduced to someone she hadn’t noticed. She came within a hair of jumping in surprise.
“Ah—forgive me. Yes. The other Wordspeaker. I apologize for my rudeness.”
Mouse shook his head forgivingly. “Not your fault, your highness. I don’t really have control over this power yet.”
“I am sure my husband will want to help with that,” Pal declared, nodding. “And if he does not, I will press him. It does not do for guests to go ignored in this house.”
“Thank you. I’d, uh…I’d really appreciate that.”
Pal smiled again, bowed again, and turned away to vanish between the statues and back into the cliffside. Jerl exhaled slowly. He’d heard stories of Sayf’s harem growing up, everyone had. They were nearly as mythical as the Crowns and Heralds themselves, supposedly the most beautiful, brilliant, intelligent, capable and wonderful people in all the worlds, men and women alike. He’d never really wondered what a person such as that would be like to meet in the flesh…
Now he knew.
Mouse nudged him in the side. “Wow. Right?”
“Yeah,” Jerl agreed. “Wow.”
“Yeah…” Mouse sighed.
They both stared a moment longer, then in a moment of mutual awkwardness came to their senses, cleared their throats, regained their mental balance, laughed at each other, and turned to tell the crew what was going on.
The baths were quite an experience. Jerl and Mouse went through together, in part to ensure Mouse’s privacy was respected, but in fact the attendants nodded at their wish to be unseen and vanished from sight after explaining the process. The first room was a beautifully decorated domed room, its walls covered in a delicate mosaic evocative of silver rain among the trees. Their clothes were deposited through a drop box, to be taken away for cleaning and mending, and from there it was on to a rinsing room where bars of perfumed soap and ewers of steaming water waited for them to sluice the worst travel sweat and grime.
From there they basked awhile in a pleasantly warm shallow pool in a room whose mosaics evoked a sandy oasis somewhere on Alakbir Earthmote, then relaxed further in a hot steam room full of plants, as though they were soaking in the humidity of the Prathardesh jungles.
The last room was a refreshing plunge in unheated water to enliven and revive the heat-dulled senses, and they elected to forego the massages. Though, Jerl would definitely have taken that option if not for Mouse.
Their clothes were waiting for them in the last room, neatly folded. Sort of.
“…This can’t be my shirt,” Mouse said, holding it up. “My shirt had patches. And a hole down here I was gonna have to patch soon…and these look like my breeches, but they’re—”
Jerl nodded. Mouse was still at heart a Street Rat, and though his father was one of the Rats’ wealthy leaders, even Whisker still dressed frugally in old, rugged and much-mended threads rather than in new cloth.
“When they say they take care of their guests, they really take care of their guests,” he said. His own clothes had not been so replaced, but they were looking better than he could remember. The leather of his belts and shoes had been nourished, waxed and conditioned, some torn stitching in his coat had been put right, and a tatter in the hem of his shirt where he’d caught it on a nail a few weeks ago had been sewn back with an almost invisible stitch.
They’d been adjusted, too. Taken in here, let out there. Somebody had sized him up perfectly at a glance.
The same went for Mouse. He paused after dressing then turned and spread his arms for Jerl’s inspection. “How do I look?”
“Handsome!” Actually, that was a weak word. Some undefinable adjustment to the cut of his shirt and breeches had done a lot to make his shoulders look broader and give the impression of rakish swagger. He’d never looked better.
In any case, the assessment made Mouse glow happily. “So..where to now?”
“I’m not sure…” Jerl said, opening the door. It opened onto a balcony above where they’d entered, facing back toward the docking gantry and the Cavalier Queen.
Pal was waiting for them, seated gracefully on a stone bench and leaning on the balcony’s carved white wall. She looked up and smiled as they exited.
“I was just admiring your ship,” she said. “I love Antage hulls, they always have that cute belly and tail in the keel…she looks quick and agile. Runs a little swifter than she's rated, I would guess?”
“Uh, yes. She always has,” Jerl agreed, surprised. “You know your airships.”
“They’ve fascinated me since I was a girl. I remember seeing the Cloudtreader when she visited Arthenun.”
“The Cloudtreader? That’s—” Jerl bit off the word ’impossible.’ It wasn’t done to accuse one’s host of lying, especially not a crownspouse. But the Cloudtreader? The first airship to visit all the major earthmotes in a single years-long voyage? She was a museum nowadays, permanently land-docked outside the Keeghan and Sons guild headquarters in Crae Laugharne. “…That would mean you’re a lot older than you look,” he ventured instead.
“She is,” Mouse nodded, giving Pal a fervent look.
“A hundred and four. One of the many benefits of being Crownspouse is the power to choose our own pace of aging, and even reverse it if we prefer. I have settled on…this.”
“I don’t think ‘settled’ is the right word…” Mouse commented, then flushed pink as Pal giggled at him.
“Perhaps not,” she flashed a smile that deepend Mouse’s blush. “Anyway. You look much more comfortable now.”
“I certainly feel more presentable,” Jerl agreed.
“You are. Very handsome, both of you. My husband will be delighted.” She rose from her bench and smoothed out her gown. “Shall we?”
They followed her up stairs which at first cut straight up through the rock of the earthmote’s heart, then started to curve around to the right in a long, elegant sweep.
It was a long climb, but Jerl didn’t find it even remotely tiring. In fact, he found it somehow almost as easy as walking gently downhill. The air down in the stairwell was cool, but grew warmer and more fragrant as the curve led upwards, and he became aware of tranquil music filtering down from above. A deep-voiced flute, the graceful run of a harp, the shimmer of chimes and bells, and the pleasant pedal drone of some kind of string instrument.
They reached the top, and he realized they had come up adjacent to the palace’s “crown,” into a courtyard shaded by cloth-hung pergolas. A long-limbed, rather gangly boy was lounging nearby dressed in a long red silk wrap, reading a book in one hand and holding a forgotten pomegranate in the other. Behind him, a strutting bird with a magnificent tail paused to release a high call then paraded away across the grass.
“Lander! I’ve told you before, you’ll get juice on the pages!” Pal called, in the entirely unmistakable tones that said mother.
“Huh? Oh!” Lander jumped to his feet, set book and fruit aside, and then surrepititiously tried to lick sticky dried juice from his fingers. “Yes. Sorry…are these father’s guests?”
A crownchild. Jerl almost went slack-jawed and rigid from shock. They were known to exist, of course. Haust was legendarily fond of living mortal lives and taking husbands, with all that entailed. And Sayf had his harem and all that entailed. But to actually meet one…
But of course, if not here, then where else?
“They are. Captain Jerl Holten, this is my son, Lander Sayfschild.”
“And her?” Lander pointed at Mouse, who blinked, astonished at being not only seen, but seen through so clearly.
“Mouse,” he said. “And I’m him, please.”
“Oh.” Lander paused and studied Mouse a moment, like a mage intrigued by a new anomalous specimen. Jerl noticed that he had not actually looked either of them in the face, nor his mother. “Why?”
“Lander,” Pal's tone was patient rather than warning. “That is tactless.”
“Oh,” Lander repeated, and bowed formally to Mouse, though he still did not quite look at him. “I apologize.”
“No, it’s alright,” Mouse said. “And as for why…maybe im just weird.”
A bright smile dispelled Lander’s perpetual distracted look, and he nodded fervently as though he was suddenly back on familiar ground. “Father says weirdness is what makes people wonderful!” he declared.
“Go back to your reading,” Pal told him, fondly. “But I had better not find any stains on the pages.”
“Yes, mother.”
And with that, he picked up his book again and ignored the guests. Pal led them away, heading for the palace doors.
“Thank you for being kind with him,” she said.
Mouse shook his head. “It was…actually quite nice to be seen for once.”
Pal nodded. “He's a bright boy,” she said. “And he devours lore. People and their messiness give him difficulty, and I fear he’s a little younger in the head than he ought to be, but…but I am very proud of him.“
Unsure of what to say, Jerl said nothing, and instead looked around as he followed Pal into the palace.
The interior was, of course, grand. But it was not in fact as opulent as he’d imagined. When he was a boy and his parents had first told him stories of Sayf’s palace at the oasis, he’d envisioned treasures beyond counting, gold and gems, chalices and idols, rich vestments and jewelry. He’d imagined every item of furniture would be made of the most precious woods and inlaid with silver, gold and nacre. Even the floor, in his boyhood dreams, had been embellished to excess.
Tacky, as only an unworldly imagination could be. And far wide of the mark too, because Sayf was not the god of wealth but the god of beauty, in its every form.
The entrance chamber was round, its floor white and polished, and the walls were likewise of smooth stone, a showcase in the elegant simplicity of good construction. The columns arched overhead to meet in the middle, and light seemed to come from behind them somehow, which drew the eye upwards, toward…
Jerl gasped. The curved dome of the ceiling was exquisitely painted, its eight panels uniting into a panorama of the First Day, and the creation of the First Folk. A panel each for Sayf, Talvi, Eärrach and Haust, two panels for the Heralds, and a panel apiece for elves and men, naked and new as they took their first breaths and gazed in wonder on their creators.
The ceiling was so breathtaking that Pal had to put out a hand to stop him from blundering into the low barrier that protected a statue in the chamber’s exact middle. It was tall, larger than life-sized and made taller by its plinth, and depicted a man of surpassing physical loveliness. His nude form was flawless, his face handsome and touched by a distant, thoughtful expression beneath a mop of curly hair. His weight was slightly on one leg, the opposite hand raised delicately to hold a cloth draped over his shoulder. The artist had somehow captured, in solid stone, every bone and vein and wrinkle of his hands, the asymmetric dimple of his navel, and all other such minutiae of his body in such perfect detail that Jerl could almost imagine the statue turning to greet him.
It was the most exquisite work of art he had ever seen, a love letter to the human form. He’d never imagined such a work was possible.
“What…? I…?”
“My husband has never admitted where he acquired it,” Pal said, pausing to look up and admire the elegant figure. “Some of us think he brought it with him from the World Before. The one thing he could not bear to allow to die with that old, fading realm.”
“Do you believe that?” Mouse asked.
“My husband is ancient beyond understanding. I doubt whether ordinary marble could survive the infinite ages of his life in such pristine condition. If it is a work of the World Before, more likely it is his recreation.” She smiled up at the statue a moment longer, then beckoned them to follow. “That is my rational thought. But my heart hopes and prays it is truly the original, by some miracle. Anyway. Come: you will have ample time to admire all the palace’s beautiful things later.”
She led them on, and room by room they were treated to a glimpse of the just some of the beautiful things. There was a long, humid and fragrant room with tall glass windows, full of flowers and trees and humming insects. There was an intense, dark room showcasing elemental beauty, where large glittering geodes and translucent crystals were illuminated by the shimmering light of burning fires as it reflected off running water. This was followed by something of a palate cleanser, a tranquil and simple space where the sweeping splendor of the cloud sea out over the earthmote’s edge was the only thing that qualified as decoration.
From the next chamber came the sound of music, and Pal stopped before opening the door.
“My husband is always entertaining guests,” she said. “And he doesn’t like to be rude to them by cutting their performance short. Please do not take it as a snub if he seems to ignore you at first.”
“Of course,” Jerl agreed solemnly. She nodded, and pushed the door open.
The room beyond was the largest they’d yet seen, and just as round as the entrance hall, but the word that sprang to Jerl’s mind was cozy. Not in the sense he was used to, it had to be said: Jerl’s usual notion of coziness involved blankets, hot drinks, and a comfortable chair by a good log fire. This was cozy in an entirely different sense.
The air was sweet and heavy with perfume and hazy from both incense and hookahs. The tiled floor was strewn everywhere with enormous thick pillows, on which people lounged and chatted, were sound asleep, or perhaps were wrapped up in each other and kissing lazily or whispering their affections. The low ceiling bore curtains and hanging braziers, and Jerl was left feeling that the room and its smoky atmosphere ought to have been dim, stuffy and too hot…but no. It was intimate.
Prince Sayf himself was easily spotted, for he lounged in the middle amidst an ocean of pillows, sipping smoke from a long pipe and letting it curl slowly out of his nose. And he was not, at all, what Jerl had expected. After all the perfection around them, after all the wondrous beauty, Sayf stood out for being markedly imperfect.
He was beautiful, of course. His face was wide and kind and built for smiling, and his dark-lined eyes twinkled merrily beneath a heavy brow. His mane of hair might be taken for roguishly unkempt at first glance, or unmanageably wavy at a second, but his beard was short and neat. He wore a loose and comfortable garment of embroidered silk, which was sleeved down his left arm but bared his right arm, shoulder and the right side of his chest, to reveal…
Well. To reveal his imperfections. The firm muscular swells of his shoulder and chest were softened by a comfortable padding of fat. His smile deepened a number of careworn lines on his brow and around his eyes, in skin that might have been called dark, or might equally have been called weatherbeaten.
He looked, in short, like a man whose lavish lifestyle had taken its toll. But at the same time, Jerl thought, if he were to snap his fingers and remove all those blemishes and signs of overindulgence, he’d actually reduce his beauty.
Right now, he was listening to a very old man sing. The man’s voice was not what Jerl would normally have found pleasing to listen to—age had added a quaver and infirmity to it that under normal circumstances would have marred or outright ruined his perfromance. But the song itself…
♫You've flown away and left your silver mask, There in the mud.
From by my feet it stares up to the sky.
I'd pick it up and give it back, If only I could,
But I am he who dropped it there, And I barely know why…
Killing for a shilling.
We left home for a king we’ll never see.
If noble men desire their throne, why can’t they bear the cost alone?
Why must they spend the likes of thee and me?
Who’ll do the killing for a shilling…♫
Mouse squeezed Jerl’s arm, and when Jerl glanced down at him he felt, through Mouse, all the—Sorrow, grief, confusion, self-loathing, regret—flowing from the old man’s soul. But also healing. The old soldier was very much singing his heart out, finally giving voice to something he'd carried most of his life, and Mouse was sensitive to every nuance.
Pal guided them to a deep drift of pillows and gestured for them to sit, assured them they would have their turn with her husband soon, then vanished off into some darkened corner, flittering among the veil curtains and smoke until Jerl lost track of her.
He looked up and realized a man in neat white clothes had swept up bearing drinks and sweets on a tray. After a moment’s thought he selected a glass of fizzing cordial that had the color (and aroma) of cherry blossom. The first sip of it vanished across the tongue and drove out a parched throat he hadn’t been aware of, refreshed him when he’d thought he hadn’t need it. He instantly sensed it was best savored rather than guzzled, and found it served as the perfect palate cleanser between bites of a heavy, sweet, dense and chewy cake.
He ate, and drank, and took in the people around them as Sayf praised the old man and spoke unheard, quiet, kind words to him. There were people from all over the worlds here, Alakbiri and Prathar and Ilẹyedun, Stórsteinners and Pāpūpauʻoleans, Craenen, Yunei and Garanese, and others besides. Skin and hair in every human shade, clothing both modest and minimal, humble and lavish, ears both round and pointed…
A dark hand touched his shoulder. Pal was back, and she pointed with an upward nod toward Sayf, who had bid farewell to the old soldier and was now sipping a drink of his own and waiting for his next guests.
Well. Here he went. For the second time in his life, Jerl was about to meet a Crown. Not so long ago, it would have been unthinkable that he might ever meet even one. He straightened his clothes redundantly, cleared a throat that wasn’t dry, and took a step forward into the circle of candelight in which Summer rested.
Before he could bow, Sayf was on his feet and grinning ear to ear. “Aha! Welcome, Jerl, welcome!” He shook Jerl’s hand and patted his shoulder as though they were old and dear friends. “And…” he paused, and to Jerl’s surprise seemed to need a moment’s concentration to find Mouse. “…Ah! There you are! That’s quite the protection you wove around yourself, my friend.“
“I…well…thank you,” Mouse ventured. “It was kind of an accident.”
Sayf nodded understanding. “Powerful magic often is. Come: I’ve been sitting too long, I need the pleasure of a good stroll, and we have much to discuss.”
He put a hand each at the smalls of their backs and ushered them toward a door on his right. People nodded and smiled at him as they passed, but it was strange, Jerl noted. The courtiers in this room responded to Sayf much as one might to a respected and beloved friend. It was deference, yes, but more than that they liked him.
And why not? His presence was opposite to Talvi’s. She had been thin and serene, and her mere presence was freezing cold. Her person had commanded respect, and as Jerl remembered the only reason he hadn’t bowed was because he’d been lying in a pool of his own blood with a bullet through his leg at the time.
Sayf radiated every kind of warmth, and smelled intoxicating. Even on immediate meeting, Jerl felt drawn to him, and the thought of bowing was…wrong, somehow. It’d be like bowing to Derghan, or any other friend.
“We were not expecting you until tomorrow,” Sayf said. “Pal tells me the Cavalier Queen is uncannily swift, though.”
“Most of the time. Sometimes, if we don’t treat her right, she sulks and dawdles, but usually she’s much too proud to be outrun by anything that doesn’t deserve it.”
Sayf chuckled. “Oh, you’re a born shipmaster, alright. I bet I could drop you on the deck blindfolded and you’d figure out where you were in a second.”
“I…probably could, yes,” Jerl agreed.
The door opened of its own accord as they approached, and closed behind them the same way. They were in another one of the display rooms, this one a gallery of sculptures and pottery, though none of the pieces matched the exquisite figure in the entrance hall. In fact, the nearest was a gorgeous blue vase so large that Jerl could have climbed inside, that had clearly been smashed at some point and mended in a way that highlighted the repair rather than conceal it. The many cracks through its shattered pottery were filled with a gold lacquer.
“There. A little privacy,” Sayf smiled as the door locked with a click.
“Surely you’re not worried about spies here?” Jerl asked.
“Mm, we’ll get to that. But really, I am more worried that somebody might innocently overhear something they shouldn’t, and carry it with them when they leave. Not all of a wall’s ears are deliberate or sinister. But…anyway. Are you both well? You’re carrying tremendous burdens…”
Jerl didn’t answer at first, and instead looked to Mouse, who looked and felt like his first reaction would be to insist he was fine.
“I—” he paused as Jerl touched his shoulder, reassuringly: Sayf would see right through it anyway. “...No. No, not really. I’m getting very sick of being left alone.”
“I would imagine it’s a lonely feeling…” Sayf agreed as they ambled between the statues, sculptures, pots and urns.
“Yes. That’s the word. I have Jerl, of course, and, y’know, my friends remember me when I actually prompt them to. But…” Mouse sighed and fidgeted with what had, this morning, been an increasingly frayed cuff in large part thanks to his fidgeting with it. Now, of course, it was completely mended. “I even slip from Jerl’s mind quite easily, when he’s busy. I’m left alone, by everyone. Even when what I really want is for one of them to come and check on me and, I don’t know, just ask whether I need anything. I have to stand there and poke Ju-Wi, a woman I’ve known since I was tiny, to remind her that I exist so she saves me a bowl of soup at dinnertime…”
He sighed again, fidgeted his expression a bit and swallowed back the rest of his emotions, though he couldn’t stop them from filling the room.
Sayf nodded sympathetically. “That’s a harsh downside of your power, indeed. I will see what we can do to alleviate it. And don’t worry about coming to remind me,” he added. “I will not forget, I promise you.”
Mouse managed a smile and a nod.
“And you, Jerl?”
“…I’m…well enough,” Jerl said, honestly but with a shrug. “I have worries. I’m afraid the time is coming where I’ll have to see the people I care about die again, and that was hard enough the first time. Or I’ll come to a moment where there’s no good course forward, and even the best one will come at a steep cost…”
“A worthy fear,” Sayf agreed. He paused by what had once been a bas-relief, in the elven style. Whoever first made it had wielded a chisel like a delicate paintbrush, capturing even the texture of its subject’s cloak and clothing. Though, who the subject was, Jerl couldn’t guess. He gave it a sorrowful look, taking in the way the edges were worn and age had worn away some of the detail. “Time is full of worthy fears. Live long enough and you will see everything fade and crumble. And you, my dear, have joined the ranks of the truly immortal. Even your own death is reversible…meaning I somehow doubt you could die even when you wish to. In that lies a worthy fear indeed.”
Jerl shivered, having not really thought of that, yet. He changed tack slightly, toward the things he had thought about. “One of my new crew is…well. His soul-name is Hakatin?”
“Heh!” Sayf laughed. “I haven’t seen him in a long age! Is he still…?” He paused, pursed his lips, then gave up on choosing words and gestured with both hands in a way that was somehow perfectly expressive of Harad and his attitude.
Jerl couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “Hah! Oh! Yes! Yes, he’s, uh….he’s definitely still.”
Sayf chuckled. “Good. I’ll be glad to see him again. We’ll want your whole crew here for the true meeting between us.”
“We will?”
“Well of course!” Sayf gestured and the door in front of them opened into a new room, this one lined with mannequins in glass cases. It seemed to be a testament to fashion and the beauty of clothing. “But what about Hakatin?”
“He…had a lot to say to me, at first meeting.” Jerl shrugged when Sayf chuckled, but the Crown remained silent to let him continue. “He thinks I’m too passive. Thinks I’m content to sit back and react, rather than form a plan. I do…I do have a plan. But I think he’s right that it could do with a little more…”
“Clarity?” Sayf finished for him. He nodded when Jerl confirmed it. “I have guessed your plan, I think. You intend on digging up more of the Words of Creation and having your friends speak them, yes?”
“Well…that was the notion,” Jerl agreed, glancing to Mouse. “But I wanted to know if it was a good idea, first. Of the three Wordspeakers I know of, Mouse goes ignored, I have these ‘worthy fears’ as you put it, and Civorage—”
“Hmm…a parable for you.” Sayf ambled on, pausing just a beat to appreciate every mannequin they passed. “Are you familiar with electricity?”
“Only a little…”
“Of course. It’s not a widespread technology, yet. Give it another sixty or seventy years and it’ll be everywhere, it’ll be bigger than airships. Give it a hundred and people will start doing things with it you can’t imagine. And in a world like that, you need…well. You need a lot of electricity. So once upon a time, in the World Before, somebody invented a way to generate lots of it. And for fuel they used… something that doesn’t actually exist in these Nested Worlds.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is deadly poison, and turns the air around it into deadly poison. Just standing near a lump of the stuff can kill a man, and it would be a slow and terrible death at that. Can’t have that come swirling out of the sun in great gritty clouds, so we’re not planning on there being any in this world for a very, very long time. But in the World Before there was enough of it buried underground to dig up and use as fuel. See, under the right circumstances, it gets hot and stays hot, all on its own. Hot enough to boil huge amounts of water to steam and send them squirting through a turbine to generate electricity. With me so far?”
“That sort of machinery is more Derghan’s wheelhouse,” Jerl confessed. “But go on.”
“The parable is actually from thousands of years before my time. It goes that, once upon a time, a great nation built one of these poison-fueled engines to power their lands. But they were…in their culture, there was a great expectation of obedience. If the people in charge declared that a thing was to be done, then for their subordinate to try and tell them it should not be done, or worse could not, was a likely way to earn severe punishment. And so, the people in charge decreed the poison engine should be experimented with, used in strange ways to see what they could learn.”
“Why would they—?” Jerl asked, appalled.
“Oh, they had been assured the machine was designed to always fail safely no matter what they did. If something broke, if things started to go wrong, at worst they could always shut it down quickly, quietly and harmlessly.”
“A lie?” Mouse asked.
“Mmm…” Sayf’s well-groomed mane of dark hair shook as he waggled his head in a thoughtful almost-no. “It was indeed technically true that the machine could not do what they feared most. But in assuring their masters it was proof against that danger, the creators failed or neglected to convey the other dangers. And so, inevitably, this foolish poking and prodding ended in disaster: There was an explosion, and a great fire which spread poison across a land as wide as Garanhir.”
“How many died?”
“Depending on how one counts these things…somewhere between thirty and thirty million. But by contrast, only a few years earlier another land used the same poison fuel to launch a ship high into the sky that never, ever came down again.” Sayf smiled, and turned toward another door. “It flew for a lifetime of men, on a stock of fuel that weighed no more than a small cat.”
“Holy shit…” Mouse breathed. Jerl blinked, finding his imagination was now entirely foundering on that idea.
“Indeed.” Sayf chuckled and let them chew on that a moment as he opened the door to the next room and continued. “Bear in mind now, that’s the oldest example I can think of, from a time culturally and technologically not too different to the state of our world as it is now. We faced similar challenges—incredible power wrapped up in terrible danger—many, many, many more times over the long ages that followed. Culminating, ultimately, in the Words. The most powerful…and, therefore, the most dangerous.”
Jerl wasn’t even paying attention to the next room’s contents now, his mind was full of dark imaginings of an evil black fire spreading a deadly smoke across all the sky, and high above it a single ship, sailing forever without having to come down for anything.
“I think I follow your meaning,” he said.
“Good!” Sayf boomed, and clapped his hands eagerly together with a deep slap of palm on palm that rang off the walls and made Jerl remember they were in a new room…one devoted to the worlds themselves. An armillary spun gently in the middle of the hall, but unlike any that Jerl had ever seen or even heard of: this one hung unsupported in the air, with neither pedestal nor cable. It was in every sense the worlds in miniature, the earthmotes all free to float along their course without a framework of iron and gear-teeth.
Knowing what he did of magic, Sayf must be constantly using some small part of his power to maintain it.
“Woah…”
Sayf laughed again, a sound that came so easily to him. “You were much too lost in thought, my love.”
Jerl could only breath a smaller, softer ”Wow…” and approach the edifice, slowly. To see it all so clearly, as though from the outside…as he got closer, he realized the earthmotes’ inside faces were exquisitely detailed. He could see the faint roughness of forests and the smoothness of steppes, the many subtle shades of grass and tree, plain and mountain, desert and lake. He could even see the cities, as tiny patches of grey and red like lichen on a stone.
“Oh wow…” Mouse leaned in and ducked down to get a better look. “I feel like I could get out a magnifying glass and watch the airships…”
“It isn’t quite that detailed…” Sayf chuckled, and stood behind them to consider it with a fond sigh. “I have made, or had a hand in making, a great many beautiful things in my time. The most beautiful, of course, were people. But I think these worlds come a close second place.”
They paused to admire it a moment, in silence.
“It feels like a lot. Having everyone’s freedom riding on me, I mean,” Jerl said at last.
“It is far more than one man should be asked to bear,” Sayf agreed, and turned away from the orrery. “Which is why it’s time for you to meet another new ally.”
“I’ll take all I can get, but…who?”
“One of my wives. She has been waiting for this, for you or for somebody like you, for several years...” This time, the door the Crown opened was a hidden one, made to look seamlessly like the wall’s wooden paneling. It opened into a wide, curved landing with plush carpet, and many more doors along its length. On the near side from which they’d entered, Jerl guessed, it led back into the gallery rooms. On the far side were plain doors, though each had an object hung on the lintel, a random assortment that had to be mementos or personal items.
The nearest had a wooden walking stick above, which in turn was hung with bird skulls, feathers and a magestone with a natural hole through it.
Sayf knocked. After a moment, a high and youthful voice called back. “Come in!”
There was a woman in the room, busying herself at a table full of oddments amidst a haze of magic so crackling and powerful that even Jerl, untutored though he was, could feel it tingling in his teeth, though he had no idea what exactly she was doing.
She couldn’t have been more opposite to Pal, in most respects. Where Pal seemed dressed to flaunt her allure, this woman was conservatively dressed, though her gown—Garanese style, with a high neckline and long skirts—was exquisite. She was Pal’s equal in loveliness though, with a youthful heart-shaped face, a cascade of elegant brown curls that fell below her shoulders, a dusting of freckles across her nose, and large innocent eyes as startlingly green as raw olive oil.
She looked familiar, though Jerl couldn’t quite place why.
Sayf smiled proudly, and with the surprising speed and silence of a very large man who knew how to move gently, he was at her elbow, looking up into the boiling magic with interest. “Am I interrupting?”
“It’s alright, I just need to…” she grit her teeth and effort flickered across her face as she took up a pair of antlers and and used them to somehow guide and pour the magic down, down, down into a cauldron that was simmering gently on an alcohol burner. The liquid within, which looked like clear water, fizzed and frothed and smoked, and then fell quiet. The mage exhaled and extinguished the burner, set her antlers down carefully on the desktop, took a step back, then giggled and did a happy little bouncy success dance. “It’s finished!”
Sayf kissed the nape of her neck and ran his thumb affectionately along her arm to squeeze her hand. “It’s a masterpiece, beloved.”
She grinned, turned in his arms, and stretched up on tip-toes to plant a happy smooch on his lips before leaning past him to look at Jerl and Mouse. “And just in time, I see.”
Sayf nodded and made introductions. “Captain Jerl Holten of the Cavalier Queen, and Mouse of the Street Rats,” he said, “may I present my youngest and newest wife…”
The crownspouse smiled, took Jerl’s hand and shook it.
“Ellaenie,” she introduced herself. “Rightful duchess of Enerlend. And with your help I hope to reclaim my home someday…”