Gravestone Column. The oakenstone courtyard around Serib was loud with human sound. Above the clouds and into sunlight: through spacious arches under curled roofs she had great vantage and survey of sun-swept Hadaeon - misty with distance its mountains that had not yet been hammered into winged towers and volcanoes cold of their hollow. Nothing was in the shade now.
∞
Wind rushed through her eight locks, for this was Haven-o’er-Hadaeon, the city well in flight.
Have you and I been here before, dear reader? Or somewhere similar enough.
∞
Ahlzvyr was hidden or altogether gone. She walked away from the ill-functioning grandclock that was once a cliffside willow-tree, bumped dizzily into groups of elites - loud Werewolves and Angels with bellies full from a feast - deep in discussions going nowhere soon. Bickering over definitions, without which nothing could begin. No questions were being asked as to reach conclusions, nuance had shortened into chants and phrases more and more extreme. Some great dish had been served prior to her arrival, having since steamed itself chill and the occasional diner was still savouring each bite. Cleaning plate after bowl after fingers reluctant to stand, as duty called their name.
Too long had it been since their leadership was needed or ever needed at all, with Falsehood’s Last King dead long ago, and after that had Ravin’s ‘little’ brother Greed not ensured everything would run itself? While unsettled by her here-there travel, Serib could see apparent: Greed’s age of prosper, the greatest page of Courtdom’s height was turning.
∞
One last cake, they told themselves.
∞
And duty was calling, for the courtyard was becoming progressively deeper in council or debate as Serib watched on unnoticed, snatching balance and bearing wherever she could. Those diners that could stand to discuss and detail, a small group remembered what were steadily named ‘the old ways’ of Hemloch: they asked questions gleaning Justice, Bravery, Moderation and Wisdom. Convinced a change had come but not an ending; they were determined to design a plan. As that, of chaos making order, long had been Courtdom’s way under Truthdom.
∞
Serib budged her way through the crowds strong for her size, hearing the creak or scrape of ill-sized doors opening and closing over the shouting: an array of archways all leading to and from the courtyard to other halls or corridors. Doors of gathered ages carven from oakenstone some, infinity runes their handles and hinges, the smell of rust a sludge on the wind as other openings were of steel craft, inert and immovable, whether fully closed or midway-slid their technology a hindrance in Timelessness, only able to obey laws that now are being lost.
Whenever any door closed it was more a slam thrown by the winds, and some debaters would fall to the ground that lightning had struck.
∞
And past one such slamming door Serib was sure she saw Gadail, and Ithuriya with her broken armour and halved-spear, in a hall moondark with butchery and shattered glass. The same she had left behind - though as she approached the door almost running as so much and many were in her way - souls entered the doorway and came from it. Runes pulsed. The vision of their curve was gone, replaced by other scenes.
Gadail was no longer there nor Ithuriya with him. Had she been chosen again to lead, or would another in her place with her name? Who would hold the splintered spear and wear the damaged helm?
∞
To those who would speak with her, Serib asked what was happening. Most were scared to leave the courtyard, the rest mad with uncertainty. She heard their shouts and whispers; rumours that to go through those rusting doors or doors with rusting hinges was to be lost forever. For Time was missing, they said, and the ages were as pages flipped through a blur. And who wishes to be lost in a story not their own? Was all this true or did they repeat what had elsewhere been said?
Just as she tried to recount all The Stalker had told her before rudely throwing her with a slam into the willow tree, a shadow twice her height was loom.
∞
“Are you our new master shaman?”
A large clawed hand or paw patted her shoulder and Serib turned to see a Werewolf tall, broad in his steel where the banner of his tribe was bright across his chest; and with that worn-proud emblem Serib supposed he was loyal to Truthdom and Time. If she wished to find the prisoner Lillian and speak with her to know her side of the divide pulling ages as pages easily apart, this loyal soul would be of no easy help.
∞
A greatsword was strapped across his back, curved and easily unsheathed from its scabbard if need be. There was in his eyes a shamanic glare, a grace though raw as hers. A veteran with his last journey yet untrod.
∞
Serib thought if the apprentice in front of her could not tell she clearly was no master, the situation was hers to take control of, away from Gadail’s plans for her and The Stalker’s maps. All span and sprawl led to Lillian, and to that meeting she had set her ambitions. She had heard The Stalker’s view and now she wished to hear Lillian’s - the angel accused of harming Time.
“I am.” She lied to the tall werewolf - and it is from here - these choices of whether Truth or Falsehood leads, that such legendary falls can begin.
∞
“Wherever is your totem?” the Were-apprentice bowed. “Your robes in the sun… lightning of all colours.”
“Not all totems are large.” her robes being a totem was ruse good enough for now. “What is your name? I am Serib.” She tried to add the honorific ‘il, yet something caught in her throat.
“Ah yes, how vacant of me. A strong name - I am Iron-Chest.” The tall Were offered Serib to walk with him, and his growl soon cleared the busy way.
“I know of you - you were not always a shaman?” Serib asked him, for Sentinel Iron-Chest was a known warrior of the werewolves, having fought in many of defences of Truthdom against Falsehood, mostly for long-bombarded Haven.
She knew from Gadail the woodlands of Hadaeon were in a lesser age used as fuel for Falsehood’s primitive furnaces. Iron-Chest was among those formidable werewolves and angels allied that Falsehood met, when a mythical tree too many had been felled and treaties broken.
∞
“I am late to the shamanic calling.” The veteran admitted, grey around his nose.
Many debaters looked at Iron-Chest as he spoke of himself and passed by; Serib saw pity in their eyes, or fear at his tall shadow passing.
“Though proper warriors as I once was and shamans as you have our similarities: Truth keeps our blood the same, I’m sure you agree. You seem lost, my Lord, far from your Ehl’yiteth.” Iron-Chest sniffed at her, his aging snout dry from the abrasive wind - so far from sturdy cliff and brook his homeland. “It is good to at last meet one of the four.”
The warrior thought Serib was among Gadail’s number - one of the four lords of Ehl’yiteth. Swift ambition had left her unable to plan out her lie:
“Your full name is much longer, if I remember rightly. Tower-lost things. You can smell that I am from Ehl’yiteth?”
∞
“I know its bark well.” He smacked his lips hungrily, and Serib smiled to have found another soul fond of farbark. “After Timelessness stretched its unseen floods to us Hadaeans, though I am still patchy with grey I felt younger or renewed, that Gravity’s long pull had lessened. And from then on since, grace has been known to me. I am called by it, ancestors calling my name through the present plight of voices. Did the grace grow with my greyness? Was it given to me a gift by some other force, is Chance’s coin still out there spinning even now in Timelessness? These things I’ve considered but cannot answer. In furlough and following my grace I went to Ehl’yiteth’s plains and steppes in search of a master, to turn this old thing into a totem.” He raised his chin towards his greatsword, its hilt jutting from behind his shoulders. “Alas I found no lords, for its lands, rivers and fires had come under dark ruin. Only the winds were still free; in all my travels I’ve seen no such despair as Nature in chains. Few were the known routes through that maze of loss and anger as all roads seemed to move or disappear into the changing world, as though on Whim’s word alone. I drank and camped with nomads that found me struggling in the Timeless wilds of Ehl’yiteth, and they told me of The Spring-Sworn… a shaman once, the Dark Spirit that had corrupted and enslaved three of the four elements… by slaying three of the four lords the fourth she seeks, breathless without rest for Wind forsakes her.”
Dread was Serib’s heart to know the meadows of her home under spiritual siege, as One Lord over all elements was an ancient aim, older than Truthdom and Falsehood when Intelligence over Wisdom reigned, when rife were Wizards vampyric and Shamans unheeded, went without hearth.
“Only the winds were still free…” Serib repeated as Iron-Chest had said, hoping: could that mean Gadail had survived The Spring-Sworn so far? The veteran nodded into his words with a hope his own, that the nomads had been spared:
“After that I devoted my efforts to battling The Spring-Sworn, earning only these burns for my trouble.”
∞
Iron-Chest showed his arm to Serib; patchy and bald where his armour then fur had melted away. The skin had bubbled; to her eyes the sore scars seemed unlike those a fire could make. She tried to recall what The Stalker had said, speaking of a Dark Shaman, that her flames ‘burn longer than their fuel and into acid coil’.
She noticed Here and There converging: constants the same and variables rearranged. In one place a dark spirit, a dark shaman in another story, The Spring-Sworn both.
∞
Looking into Iron-Chest’s eyes of Courtdom she knew he believed what he had seen. To know Gadail could be in danger and so far away on Ehl’yiteth, in her own story or on some other thread of Destiny’s great fray by Timelessness upheaved, sharpened all that was jagged about her. She had to return to Ehl’yiteth. To see her master far from hurt or harm.
∞
More sensible thoughts than that came afterwards: how had he gone home without her? What had come of his counsel with Ithuriya? Had Timelessness made a long journey short?
The wave of worry passed. If ‘the winds were still free’, could that mean instead that Gadail was safe on Hadaeon? Why had her first instinct been peril’s ways? The darkness Iron-Chest had seen, was it a future already past or yet a state she could prevent?
Her main mistake was that she still pictured events happening linearly, behaving as though Reason still reigned in this tale of Love without respite.
∞
Yearning for certainty, there came next a moment when her eyes locked more fully with Iron-Chest’s, and Serib hesitated. Gadail, The Windlord though no novice in the other elements, would have used his mastery of water and healing rains to mend the burns of Iron-Chest as best he could the moment he saw them, with only kind thought his aim. Serib’s hesitation however gave away her lie, as there she was on her task to find a totem and meet an ancestor of Earth; Water’s mastery therefore was little known to her. She could try to heal his wounds and would try, though she was no master shaman, nor one of the four lords, especially so if The Sentinel knew three had been slain.
∞
On she twisted herself as one caught out and Iron-Chest, though an apprentice shaman masterless, was no pup in age once-fooled and twice-mislead:
“I among others have been tasked with protecting this entrance to The Gravestone Column, where Lillian Grey is clipped in her cell. I have caught you in a lie.” The werewolf took his burned arm away and returned a newly forged steel bracer to it with a click. “Do you know how I know?”
∞
The bronze-lightning in Serib’s eyes was gone waiting for Iron-Chest’s reply. Far from threat and malice his words, closer to concern:
“You would know of The Spring-Sworn were you one of the four lords, were Timelessness not about. It could be you are from a different lineage not yet succumbed to such dark ruin; older than the history we’re in.”
“There have been masters young as I.” Serib already knew she was exposed.
“It was worth a go for you.” Iron-Chest licked his dry snout. “However… you are not the first to try their advantage over my ignorance of shamanic matters - the last succeeded and I was led into a lair of webs that my Hadaeon-blood allowed me to escape.”
Or so he remembers, for we read that Fate pulled one of his hairs and the rest of him unravelled into one long thread for her designs, didn’t we?
“Though long a sentinel and defender, in my aggression I followed the liar out of that lair: The Spring-Sworn. In the end outmatched.” he ignored the burning itches of his scars, the merging of different versions. “Returning to Hadaeon from Ehl’yiteth was a long road made straight by following the bronze light… a sunrise, my eyes saw. A horizon high and voice not unlike yours.”
Iron-Chest did not understand why that same sunrise-grace which had led him to The Spring-Sworn had led to Serib as well. Back to a courtyard much the same for all its changes.
∞
Having seen Fate’s words we already know: but Serib wanted to ask what Iron-Chest meant by ‘this lair of webs’, though his questions continued: “Why have you lied, apprentice? To one of your fellows no less - I admit my ignorance though dishonesty would never occur to me. Are we not bound together by our shamanism thin as it is? Are we not in apprenticeship as one? Have you cause to distrust me? What are you up to or wish you were up to? No perdition stands strong nor long in the face of Truth united - if you are just - then let us be aligned. If you are unjust, let us speak of it and am I wrong, and will I to you align myself?”
Serib stuttered before she answered, clear and certain: “I am lost, though trying to find my way.” She watched the many open doors of the come-go courtyard closing and souls much the same here-there, and The Sentinel was warmed, disarmed by her difficult honesty. “I doubted that the loyal Iron-Chest would help me.”
“You knew not my name at that point, though you may be right.” He waited for her.
∞
Serib too was waiting - for her mind to understand her heart into words. How panicked she just had been! Immediately assuming the worst about Gadail despite all other sense.
∞
She heard The Gravestone Column drift closer; for the choirs that had haunted her first visit to Haven-o’er-Hadaeon’s mazes sounded again their dirge. Choirs of rebels and loyalists alike to both sides of the divide she saw, singing from within the cracks and grooves of The Column. Stairways up and down its prisms. Angelic guards flew up to those songs, to try and pull the choirs from their unity, from their climb towards Lillian’s cell in pilgrimage. All the winds full of hope and despair, of all that words can be.
∞
Closer it drew untethered - as bergs to ships shall doom - and Serib thought of The Column’s foundations. Were they still Timelessly unfinished as a tale still being written, floating freely through Haven, or was the city turning itself against the sun - casting shadows from its tallest tower? A sundial broken and compass lost, showing all its depictions of Lillian’s impossible tale, commemorative in grotesque as gravestones often go.
∞
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She hushed the great noise of her thoughts and the relentless drumming of her heart to better heed her spirit and those of the angelic city, whose path was long with examples of leaving Nature behind, of controlling it almost completely. Almost. And all the restlessness of trying, of being unable to accept what cannot change and does.
She knelt and placed her hand to brick, to plank and cobble-oakenstone. Iron-Chest much the novice in such arts took a step back, on guard or with intrigue.
∞
It was in those sights and dirge-songs that Serib found her grounded voice, for in every tile and statue of the Gravestone Tall she saw from afar it was in Love that Lillian had left Haven long ago, ‘comprehending all the grief of the universe’ as the tale goes, returning with Falsehood’s Last King slain. Though the latest additions to that Gravestone Tall were bloated, ruining its shape they showed Lillian’s second journey: with Evil conquered under Falsehood fell, thus her baleful gaze to Tragedy turned, returning with Fate no more and Time’s blood spilt.
That blood washing ashore and soaking black once golden sands, those the last reliefs from wall to wall.
∞
The choirs were those of fear: their knees and palms on the earth along with Serib’s. Resting before they would rise or kneeling as in praise. The fear that Lillian was imprisoned and her promised shores were no more, and all would remain as it was. And equally, the other-fear that she would escape, and bring about ‘Spring-Sworn’ dreams. For as Minim-Syrib had seen herself in Lady Fate’s tapestries, Serib saw herself there in stone rather than fabric: instrumental in Lillian’s plan. Her shamanic form though a woman-older, hammered dark into a gravestone not hers:
“I am searching for my first totem and if not for Time’s strangeness, that would be my only task.” She spoke at last.
“A fellow apprentice.” Iron-Chest’s long lupine face smiled and whiskers curled over his war-known eyes. “As I thought. And what other task has Chance’s bludgeon or Timelessness given you?”
“My master told me not to, though all the more such weight has become intense, and I feel compelled beyond my control… I do not know if you know of him, another soul - Hunter Lord Ahlzvyr his name? From Timelessness, from a past faded aeon he has returned to ours a sworn defender of Time. A believer Time yet lives or can be saved, as you are?”
Sentinel Iron-Chest nodded, and Serib carried on her burden aloud:
“Despite his words at my throat giving me chance and choice to avoid being his prey, I will meet with Lillian, at The Gravestone Column if that is where she rests, with clipped wings as you said. Its shadow is already over us. Through all objection I will make the climb.”
∞
Soon it was not only Iron-Chest listening uneasily to Serib’s blasphemy, but some of the busy elites showed to her their uneasy glances. Were’s and Angels alike there involved, before civil war had torn the city-Hadaean entirely into sides dark and light, seen by the sun and not: those loyal to Lillian and those against her. Serib began to understand the divide and the craters of The Winged Wall, battered into its innermost side. How storms begin with smaller clashes of frost and flame.
∞
Whether Iron-Chest was an apprentice shaman or only wished he was, answering the ancestral call, he knelt with Serib as to less impose his shadow over her, as he saw about her the grace that shamans see, in the courtyard where shadows gathered by The Gravestone Tall. The grace of understanding History and oneself aligned:
“Serib-strong, you’d need better than a lie to slip by me twice; and with simple Truth you’ve already gone a step to win me over. Though, we’ll see. Do you know the human fable?
Of Warrior, Worrier,
Wanderer, Wonderer.
From being a Sentinel I know the first road too well.”
He paused as some grim warfare of the past glazed over a veil his eyes, and he continued:
“Listen to me and know as well without having to tread it yourself, I hope: that across Falsehood’s battlefields it was horror. The wounded and the maimed. Not enough soil to strew us over. Too few vultures to return us all. And there were those souls that lost themselves under the shrieking horn of Violence dressed as noble War. Yet - it is not these mechanical sights from which I still reel - these scenes of bodily cruelty. Falsehood’s true horror… the lies told in its parks and bed chambers, in its arts and temples, misinformation regurgitated without question. The lies conjured from its last king, told by the king’s states, systems and provinces conglomerate, holding bitterly onto the fantasy of the king’s kingdom fallen, as Courtdom Raised inside the king’s walls and from beyond them. Before the glory when some say Lillian herself bested the king in duel, and Rejoice began. Yet we all are descendants of that same king; humans still, from humans-other who made choices we cannot now imagine. Furred, winged, bah, humans still and all. From small cuts became the gored divide between souls in Falsehood’s Dark Ages, for as one lies, the others feel they must as well. From Distrust’s slobber stems much of our being soaked with human fear, and why else would the corrupt be so covetous? What is taken must be given back! Warriors as I, keeping watch as Sentinels from walls or as soldiers marching to the front, can scarce manage a skirmish without trust in one another. Battalion between two and all. Do you and your master share Trust’s way?”
∞
Without really knowing why, Serib felt shame unable to answer that question. We may know from a chapter already past - is it the little runaway in her heart somewhere, named Syrib once and now Minim? Iron-Chest’s suggestion to follow brought her back from her innermost:
“Let us do away with that concern from our first step, and set yourself apart from The Spring-Sworn. With lies she slipped by me, with lies won my trust. It has been so long since any would do such a thing as lie - ‘soft from Courtdom’s cakes us all’ - what nose had I for it? And being a warrior alone was not enough to heal her corruption, not a battle one wins with battle.”
Serib listened uncomfortably to The Sentinel’s view. It is with lies that Falsehood rises, and reigns miserably over a miserable aeon in Truth’s place, over all that could have been. Or so she had always been told. These things she had heard and had never seen, from before her ages short a wish already granted. So it is to be young in Prosper’s age.
∞
Or - on her journeys with Gadail had she not been attentive enough to details and diction? It can be difficult for youth to see from its vantage of dreams - though too can age be clouded by wisdom misnamed? Which truths can be taught, which others must be learned on one’s own lonesome road?
‘…to align Love and Reason where we can.’ Gadail’s gale and echo.
∞
“I’m still worrying.” her defences fell, as Iron-Chest had implored her with his questions to speak the truth her own.
The courtyard was loud around her with Hadaean elites in calm panic, and she said worrying, from there wondering what could be instead of all this; under Time’s rolling fins:
“My master and The Stalker have tried to lure me away from Lillian onto a path already laid, but does all this Timelessness not begin with her? She is imprisoned but this has not erased her. I want to know what they know without question; and her cell and grave grow only larger the more we turn away. If Lillian and her words are terrible then it will be clear as she speaks, and I will see through Falsehood’s mask as I have been trained by my master. And I will join the rest of you.” Her cliffs and walls fell further, exposing strength, her frustration visible to Iron-Chest as she asked: “Does my master not see that I am strong? Does he think I will fall under the weight? Or fear his ways are wrong…”
“So far…” The Sentinel interrupted, a bark in his throat. “…all that speak with Lillian fall under her influence. It was only angels, but now a shaman has gone and fallen dark, and rumours abound that The Woodland Duke of my kin has sworn allegiance to Lillian. To seeing her free. The Were-Tribes have begun to bicker, and rogue groups have already led an attack on the city.”
Serib had seen The Stalker sitting in the aftermath of such an assault or one such as, a crater made by those trying to escape. She had walked the future Iron-Chest spoke of next:
“After the attack, some angels have in secret adopted old practices; seeing my kin as inferior. Such a divide between Were’s and Angels… not since Falsehood’s ways.”
All these plans and potential threats The Sentinel had been made aware of, by The Stalker Ahlzvyr perhaps, as to better keep watch over the moving courtyard leading to Lillian’s always-moving cell, in the tallest tower of Haven-o’er-Hadaeon.
∞
“I’m sorry these things are happening… I can’t imagine…”
So genuine her heart, that Iron-Chest knew Serib would do anything to unwind or cut what Tragedy’s depart was loosening or pulling tighter. He listened closely as she asked:
“What if speaking with Lillian will help you and your woodland kin? If her words are Truthful, we must follow Truth wherever it leads and be as light for others. Is that not how all our sayings go? Let a shaman decide; apprentice as I am; I do not know where my master is and I have not been trained to be idle nor to hide. Will you let me pass up to Lillian’s cell? You have been lied to before but I am not The Spring-Sworn - hear me - I do not know what to do, where to go, what to say.”
∞
When Sentinel Iron-Chest seemed unsure, especially as Serib asked more desperately or severely, she held all The Sentinel’s words in her thoughts as pebbles gathered along his speaking, looking for patterns as The Stalker had said to her. She took her own fear by the hand:
“What do you fear most, Sentinel? When you are alone in your thoughts. To hear from you that Ehl’yiteth is in despair… from birth my shamanism has decided for me what road is mine. What of my older sister, my parents, more shadows than memories. Without my family I fear losing my master, who in all ways is all I know. I fear lordship in his stead…”
“Grey around his snout, is he.” Iron-Chest checked the courtyard with an experienced glance, nodding at his fellow sentinels confirming: despite the multitude of souls around, the only threat was the tusked girl he was speaking with, who soon replied:
“He is old… when he is gone I will be lord, and I feel so far from the strength that should be mine. I feel I can learn the lessons he has to teach me, all except how to live without him. To be a shaman of Truth, a warrior, worrier, wanderer and wonderer alone.”
∞
Serib felt a cool breeze across the bridges of her tired feet, on her neck high above the world, and Iron-Chest was a while with his thoughts until:
“You speak bravely, as a warrior should. It is difficult here with thin air and mountains far away to imagine ourselves present - and strong as stone. You and I miss the woodlands. I suppose your future seems even further away - that you may eventually have an apprentice your own to guide. An apprentice that loves you as a master, as you love yours.”
So he spoke, having trained many warriors and sent them on. Who, wrapped in such grief-to-come as Serib was, could imagine an apprentice of their own? She was a while speechless, deep in imagination of a future unthinkable little thought before, listening to Iron-Chest’s answer to come. Though having never met one, in some words he was everything she imagined an ancestor to be - yet in others he admitted his fears, doubts and ignorance, that all the more made whole his wisdom:
“What does this old warrior fear most? I fear that I will die with the Courtdom I love still trapped in this Timeless tumult… as I feel powerless. Just an old sentinel and these are no invasions as I am used to defending against. What frontiers can we build our walls across that Timelessness cannot unbuild or is already inside? How can one reason with a flood? Who can know what a storm desires from us? The city has been cleaned and it still is filthy. What allegiances last forever, from which our past and future selves have no defence? I am loyal more to the ideal of Truth than I am to any one soul or flag, Serib. Courtdom’s waging against Falsehood has afforded me no family, for returning home to the treetops of Everwere and Gap’elyhond was never certain, and so I turned from that. In a way certain that violence would be my end. It was my choice, for I was afraid. Instead I have outlived to see tall the trees I helped to plant, alas that I have lived too long and seen forces come to cut those parks and woodlands down. To perhaps have never planted them at all, their Timeless aim.”
∞
“What do you see in me, past my strong name?” Serib asked him. “Have I come to tear anything down?”
“You do not seem Rabid to me.” The Sentinel folded his armoured arms, his scars and balder patches shiny in the passing sun as his new bracer was ill-fitting; make of that what you will. “You’re the only soul here speaking from her heart. Look at them all. Dignitaries, confused and terrified and devolving every moment with inaction. Uncertain of Courtdom’s Truth they dare not follow their own. They are forgetting that play… what was its name…” he rolled his lupine eyes in irony and laughed: “…now the name escapes me, but in its last scene the sound of Golden Hammers being dropped in Turynya is a scene one does not forget. The sound of bells that will not ring again…”
He explained to Serib he had seen the play off duty as a young soldier, and found much foundation in it which had since seen him through. The veteran stood tall over many, sniffing and comparing all that once was and he had seen.
“I fear it is happening again.” He held out his clawed hand or paw for Serib, patchy with burns still sore. “Shall we be allied in our confusion, on our quest to understand? I too would like to know Lillian for myself, with my own nose. I follow orders not from fools, as those around us flailing. There is enough mystery already in Timelessness without the Enemy being so close to us, yet sealed away from discourse. There should be no Truth only few know. If Time should go away…” he paused, his claws still lingering for Serib’s choice. “…or they already have… well, nothing can come into being that is not true. In following Truth, Evil was cured and only Tragedy remained. If we venture together, Serib-strong, and Time is gone, then Truth it is and Truth is not as we thought it was; and it is us that must change.”
∞
In returned gesture, Serib accepted his claws and shook his furred hand. His armour clinked. Just as when she joined arms with dwarven Ahlzvyr and saw his certainty, that he could tell no lie, in the gaze of Iron-Chest she saw instead a soul unsure of many things, a mountainous countenance battered by Timeless change and Courtdom’s rise long before. A soul that had lived through both ages. His next words surprised her:
“The old warrior in me says I should throw you from the walls of this city, now I’ve a good grip on you. The apprentice in me… though untrained, I see a sunrise around you. A bronze grace not yet tarnished as all this silver is becoming.”
Despite the busy courtyard The Sentinel drew much attention in admitting his doubt. Angels armed with spears turned their gaze towards Serib and her new companion. As he twice had fallen in his duty, once with The Spring-Sworn and there he was again despite.
“I will throw myself before you have to.” Her smile joined his and she told him: “Careful.”
∞
To distract the other sentinels, Serib again placed her palm to the wind-cool cobbles. A tremor belched up from the deep of the floating city, an earthquake-small the likes of which floating cities never know. She called to the gemstones in the walls she had seen with Gadail, passing from pier to rampart. Angels beat their wings to safer flight and Werewolves howled in warning, and the wingless races clambered for balance. Soon her head was wrapped with aches of concentration - she struggled to stand though stand she did.
∞
Iron-Chest walked with Serib away from feasts and debates, and they found a more garden-like corner of the courtyard to themselves, in the shadows of pillars where he could explain the elites’ reluctance, as doorways of infinity filled and emptied of souls brave and afraid:
“I am not sure how we will convince them and my sentinels. The passage is under guard heavier than I alone. The last shaman that spoke with Lillian was The Spring-Sworn. She returned dark, Serib, and was young much like you. Similarities and differences alike have many throwing guesses, myself among them; and to end it all Ahlzvyr has us on the lookout for one of your description and you have wandered directly into his predictions.”
“Do the words of the great Iron-Chest count for nothing?”
“Not for as much now…” The Sentinel was honoured. “…as The Spring-Sworn and I once travelled together. I was by shamanic grace mislead, or perhaps led on the longer path, to you. Following sunrises.”
Serib’s eyes widened and the lightning about them softened. Her focus narrowed on The Sentinel, away from the rambling courtyard.
∞
“Despite all that is no longer linear, as though by curse or design, souls here remember my trespass: I was seen leaving this courtyard with The Spring-Sworn. The Bronze grace I see about you… a sunrise of the new age. I saw the same about Syrib, alas I was wrong, or right in the wrong age.”
Serib was distracted in her dread at how similar two names could be. She could not ignore it, nor believe Chance was enough to explain the strange.
“Returning burned and beaten I was under Fortune to be accepted back by Courtdom after my poor judgement, and I was due sentencing, though Justice saw my task for the realms was yet undone. Released from chains back into the service of my life, spared an ending in the arena of Greed.”
“Your more shamanic senses see what others cannot… whatever grace you see with me and Syrib, it cannot be the same.”
“I hope that is true.”
“Will you tell me about the lair of webs? You were taken there - after The Spring-Sworn lied to you, you said? Does that… place… await us if we climb Lillian’s gravestone?”
“You’re jumping ahead…” Iron-Chest whined anxious as a hound before he spoke, leading Serib through the crowded courtyard gardens to another safer nook, moving with the long shadows.
∞
He explained to her best as he remembered, when once he walked with young Syrib on his pauldron broad:
“After I followed The Spring-Sworn… I believe I was wounded by some small blade in that woven lair unseen, perhaps small as a needle though much with poison. Enough to make an angel woozy, perhaps, but the constitution of my woodland-kin may not be known to those foreign to Hadaeon, and following ancestral grace from rune to rune I found star-laden path away. The voice of that sewn realm called herself Fate without any of Humble’s prose… a blasphemy to think one soul could control all things. The voice spoke of crowns, Serib-strong. Of vulgar totalities in power.”
Serib remembered Iron-Chest’s description of Ehl’yiteth in reign and rule under The Spring-Sworn, where only the winds were still free. Ahlzvyr’s own words went with her again, of fires burning beyond their fuel.
“What did these runes look like?” she asked, and The Sentinel pointed out the symbols of infinity all around, the rusting hinges and handles, ‘there all along’.
∞
After Iron-Chest had laid out all else he remembered, Serib added and asked again:
“If a shaman is involved, the crowns sound like totems to me. Will we go as well to the woven place, if we make the climb to The Gravestone Column as you did with Syrib?"
Iron-Chest answered not aloud, but with the uncertainty in his eyes; he knew not the rules of these runes, as by Chance’s luck or grace he had made it home from those dimensions of other-than and else.
∞
Serib followed him as he prowled away from their quiet corner of the courtyard, towards the busy doors slamming shut and throwing uncertain souls to the ground where they could in such crowds find stealth. Her summoned tremor had settled and in the clarity she saw other sentinels all angels had found them.
“I will not take you there, Iron-Chest. If we cannot get through here without violence and violence still would take us to that webbed lair where you are harmed, then we will find another road to Lillian.”
∞
Though soon, they would be surrounded. It was not Serib’s wish to summon another tremor lest in her aim to merely confuse far worse damage she would wreak upon a city already in civil war.
∞
Two Crowns.
Totems.
Where she began and The Spring-Sworn ended she did not know, as from her confusion she remembered the reason she had come to this courtyard at all from that weird cliffside willow sprouting red and violet blooms; to find route somehow back to the lake - to the fallen starspear-halved of Ithuriya and potentially, her first totem. She determined if those forces ‘Fate’ and ‘Spring-Sworn’ were searching for totems of power, then her own task must remain as straight.
∞
“You know Haven well…” Serib grabbed Iron-Chest’s burnt arm by mistake and his attention therefore, as he kept locked his eyes with those angels who once were under his command barging through the crowds, his other hand-paw curling around the hilt of his back-sheathed sword.
Serib pressed him: “Which of these doors leads downwards?”
“If Timelessness was not awash?” as he began to answer the crowds dispersed, leaving only sentinels in array. “There.”
He motioned her to the only door through which no souls were going nor coming from - when Serib listened she heard from its arches the pebbled shores wrinkling to the lap of softer waves and wind gentle through the horizon’s trees. All this - the shore of a lake she heard - yet saw only a dark corridor waiting.
∞
Further alas between Serib, Iron-Chest and that door alone, the other sentinels had begun to make of themselves apart one phalanx together, some in linked flight and the rest in march advancing over the cobbles towards them. Spears long and shields tight.
∞
Being one against many, some say Iron-Chest murmured this old poem-rite, while others claimed the howl could be heard in the forests a world apart, quiet or aloud giving pause to those against him, to learn he was prepared to fall:
‘…when I my last -
lay me riverside
under vulture skies,
in Moon-woodlands-old of Gap’elyhond.’
His howl or mutter bolstered himself and Serib while demoralising his new foes, with all the sadness of a kinship lost. His greatsword curved he unsheathed from his back and Serib saw how moon-like it shined cratered and chipped across its length; in his howl she heard the depth of the human fable upon which she too had set, of Truth to its ending.
∞
The skies of Haven-o’er-Hadaeon brewed darker, the bronze lightning of Serib’s eyes flashed as thunder overhead was deep, and it was no quake from below the sentinels next should have feared as Nature’s force above.
“Fellow apprentice…” she spoke to Iron-Chest. “…I stand with you.”