Canto of Sand, Opus 2 The state funeral for those who had died in the assault on the traitor Tarfn was, by all accounts, a thing of great pomp and beauty. Ria noticed little of it, the exhaustion lingering from the previous night's enlightenment had rendered her useless for more than standing where she was told and not falling over. The ceremony was at the foot of the Colossus, a giant memorial erected years earlier to commemorate an earlier band of Mirrish loyalists who died at the traitor's hands. Silently, the catalogue ran through Ria's mind: the betrayal of the previous Archmage and the summary slaughter of most of the Council, the wholesale massacre of the priest of the Oracle, untold numbers killed either directly or indirectly as a result of Tarfn's actions on behalf of Sin-Alb and the Sinari.How long until justice? she wondered. How long until Miacradasa herself would seek vengeance for her children? Her attention drifted across the assembled crowd and focused on an unlikely pair. The archivist Granthtan and Dioya were discussing something frantically. The gesticulations of the elderly pair against the somber tableau of the proceedings were oddly comedic. Her amusement turned to foreboding when Dioya broke away and began to push through the crowd directly toward her. Dutifully she shuffled forward to meet him. "Where's Reese?" the elder mage demanded without preamble. Ria shrugged and scanned the crowd. The Eerith Kernin stood dutifully beside Asadu's corpse but the other Eerith was not in sight. "Haven't seen him all day," she replied. "And you don't think that's odd?" "Not until you mentioned it, no. I've been.unwell." "Let's go ask Kernin," Dioya insisted, taking her by the elbow and pressing through the crowd. Mindful of the disturbance they were creating during the ceremonies, she ducked her head and allowed herself to be led. They approached behind the Eerith, as if joining his vigil. Dioya spoke first, eyes forward and tone low to avoid drawing undue attention. "Where's Reese?" The Eerith replied in a similar low and soft tone. "I'd rather not discuss it." "I'd rather not have to ask. Where?" Dioya demanded. "How's your stomach today, Warlord?" the Eerith asked instead of answering. "Reese?" Ria said in surprise. Dioya cursed loud enough to draw stares. "Tell the librarian he was right," he spat and fled into the crowd, shoving his way through. "What's going on here?" Ria questioned. The Eerith replied softly. "A physical form is a malleable thing for our kind. I can appear as Kernin's preferred body as easily as I can wear my own. Kernin needed to be seen here. Reese did not." "So you are Reese, then?" "As much as any Eerith is an individual, yes. I am Reese." "Then where is Kernin?" "Doing what he believes he has to do." "Stop going in circles. What is he doing?" "He's gone to kill Tarfn." "He's what?" Ria stopped and lowered her voice before she began to shout. Reese nodded. "He'll kill a good deal of Sinari too, I'm sure. He'll kill everyone involved or responsible for this." "That's insane. He can't possibly." "What's to stop him?" Reese interrupted. She fell silent; his words from earlier haunted her: 'He currently has a level of protection well beyond what a handful of magi can burn through.' Now he was calmly discussing one Eerith decimating an army. "I have to speak to the archivist." She turned to go and then turned back. "Reese, if Eerith can mimic each other, what else can you mimic?" "Anyone or anything we've ever seen." "And how often have you.never mind." She backed away until she was clear of the deathwatch and then headed for where she had last seen Granthtan. He had not moved far, but she had to rush to catch him as he tried to drift away from her. "You don't seem to want to see me today," she whispered, grabbing him by the forearm. "I have work to do," he answered, pulling free of her grasp. "Dioya said to tell you that you were right. I'm assuming he was referring to the Eerith." The archivist pushed away from her, through the crowd, almost at a sprint, leaving her frozen by his parting words. "He was referring to his mother." *** Almost two thousand years and it had never changed, the frightened child of post-collapse Mir still lurked just beneath the black robes of its eldest mage, waiting to squeeze his heart and hunch his back against old terrors. Through the deserted streets of Milabulpur, like a fluttering rag driven by the wind, Dioya sprinted, a ghost of tattered cloth in a city mourning the grandeur of its past. A lifetime ago, he had run these same streets, a fatherless boy fleeing bullying peers, driven by the same stigma which haunted him now: a mother's blessing, a mother's curse; a heritage he had hoped long buried and forgotten, inescapably returned as surely as his childhood nightmares. They had pelted him with cobblestones torn from the streets; he had learned to bunch his clothing around his shoulders to absorb the blows and protect his neck and face. What greater crime could there be in the eyes of a panicked nation and its children than an outland mother and a father who had brought the imperial armies to ruin? He had hoped that boy had been out-grown, put aside like a too small coat, but he never truly believed it. Now he knew for sure. The past was never forgotten--a hundred years or ten thousand, he could never out-run or out-live who he was and the history that had made him so. Like a caiman in the river, it waited just below the surface, ready to strike in an unguarded moment and overwhelm him. Succeeding generations had forgotten the hysteria that had gripped Mir and especially Milabulpur in those dark days, and Dioya had persevered. Grievances that time could not amend were redressed by the grave and the hardships of one child's youth were kept hidden safely. He had seen entire generations live and die without ever suspecting the black mage was anything other than privileged royalty, hereditarily secure in his position. It would be inconceivable that he had matured in that fevered air, let alone that his back was laced with scars. But it was different now, he reminded himself. This time he was running toward, not away. The streets he now ran had once led through ghettos, a borough of the failed and foreign, too offensive to tolerate, too politically difficult to kill outright. His mother had moved here after his father's death, choosing to be surrounded by the brutal honesty and poverty of her own people than the aloof tolerance of her husband's enemies. It had taken him decades to understand what that sacrifice meant to her son and to the people who had lived here. She had given them hope and replaced tired resignation with a quiet dignity. She was their queen, sitting in the throne of their hearts, a spindle as her scepter. She had reared a son to a man there, stern and unrelenting, placing principle over privilege. He had hated her for it then and he would carry the guilt of that to his grave. She had died before he had found words or wisdom to thank her. He could only hope she knew and that a mother's memory had set aside the spiteful tirades of a foolish son. She had taken in sewing, spending painful, blinding hours working to pay her son's formal tutors, who demanded payment in coin. For other lessons on subjects not so formal, she treated with in barter, exchanging remedies, charms, even advice and small foretelling. It was to these lessons he now returned, to his mother's sewing room itself which he had kept these many years as a haven and a study after her death. He hit the door with the heel of his hand. A dozen arcane wards dissolved in an instant and Dioya stepped into a room outside of time. The door snicked shut behind him. The walls were draped in red and gold fabric over dark stained wood, decorated with knick-knacks and overstuffed furniture; fashions which had gone, returned, and faded from vogue again. The rooms single light was a stub of candle, tallow--bee's wax was too expensive--which sputtered on unflaggingly. The wick had burned for over a thousand years; he had little concern for its flickering now. Dioya moved the luminant to a wall sconce and cleared the surface . . . the knee-high, black lacquer table that rocked with one too-short leg and spilled bark tea when someone walked too close on the loose floorboards . . . The sconce was mirrored and the wall behind it brick. When it was built, the apartment had bordered a bakery and the one brick wall was welcome for the heat it had provided. In a race where every second counted, this was the hardest part: the calm and the focus. Dioya lowered himself into an overstuffed armchair and thought about why he was here. In theory, he could have worked the art from anywhere, but a thousand years out of practice was no time for experimentation. It was a time for rituals and patterns, old places and symbolism. So he was here, the place he had learned it all, the place he had practiced, the place where, eventually, he had turned his back on it. He twisted in his chair to stare at the single candle, letting the glow carry him back through he halls of memory. He had known his trainer only as Owl. Debatably, even Owl himself had forgotten his real name. For the tattooed antique of a man, Doiya's mother had cooked, mended his rags, made the occasional social call to extract him from brushes with the law--all of this by way of payment, but in truth she had paid her son's instructor in the most valuable currency of all--purpose. In a foreign land among a hostile people, his mother had seen the man for who and what he was and had given him one final pupil and the recognition he deserved. "There are three arts. They will teach you there are only two." There was no question who 'they' were, not in Owl's lectures. "Willpower and Authority, these they already teach. But they forget the Song." "Owl," his mother had interrupted softly from a corner of the room, "This tear had blood on it. Do you need a wound dressed as well?" "Ah, no, m'lady. 'Tis well enough, just the shirt, to keep out the chill." "Of course. Have you considered that perhaps the Song is just a different application of the twin powers?" "In truth, I think there is but one power and that, Authority. 'Tis my thought that Will and Song are styles of use. If the bonding of a coterie is not a thing of the Song, I'll eat my hat when I get one. To my mind, Will is the art of gaining authority through force and intimidation, and the Song is the same gain by seduction and deception. "Listen, lad, whatever the terms may be, there is a power they don't teach, mayhap even that they fear. The Song is older, slower too, but stronger. The Will, it is fast and simple, popular now because of that and because of its pretensions." "Pretensions?" Dioya had questioned. "The Will is masculine and arrogant. It places the worker above the work. The obeah must tell the work exactly." "Magi, dear." "Pardon, m'lady?" "Workers of the Will are Magus. Obeah is only for workers of the Song." "Ah, true, true. My error, boy. These magi must tell the work exactly what to do and how to do it. For this, they must be stronger than the clay of the work and they must be very knowledgable of this work. That makes the work difficult; it elevates the worker in the eyes of those about him. That is the pretension of Will and, ultimately, its weakness. For a ob.magus to, let us say, mend a broken bone, he must know all things about the bones and the body. He must know what the structure should be, he must know how the blood should flow, he must know, in effect, everything. He must be informed enough to perform the work in mundanity. The mage who would set a bone must be a mendicant using the art to work faster and better but not; not, not, not, to do something new or that he does not fully know. Every mage must be a specialist and is limited by both knowledge and imagination. Don't misunderstand, it is useful, like for poking holes and driving nails; I tease, it has many uses. It is for the urgent, the immediate and for conflict, in especial. But, the Will is not an only and it is not always a best. "The Song.well, some say it's female in opposition to the male dominance of the Will, but that is a fool's simplification. The two forms are no more exclusively sexual than deity is; the entire line of discussion is flawed from its fundament. Why are you wasting my time with this?" "But I." "Never mind, boy, never mind. The Song is the form of convincing the work to use its Authority upon itself. It is the seduction of the will of the work. Where the Mage must instruct and force his clay, the obeah must convince the work to agree with him, to believe in the primacy of what the obeah believes. Even, even, even if the obeah himself knows that, as he works, this belief is not true. This passing not truth must be hidden from the work until the work has made it truth. "To use Will, the bone must be bound to proper form and it is the worker who must know all the details of this form. To use the Song, the bone must be made to believe that it is whole and that it should bend all of its own power to make this so. The bone knows the ways and forms of being bone and it will guide the working. Great knowledges are not required. Great seductions are. "You'd have the boy learn to be a courtesan before he is a mage." Owl laughed. "There is no small truth to the comparison, m'lady. True, true. But with more conscience. A worker who is not always aware of the consequence to the whole will find a great tally levied against him. To convince a bone to return to the form that is its original--that is a small ripple in the Great Song. To convince a bone to break--that is a harder thing. To convince a bone to remain broken--that; that, that, that, is a disharmony that will find another worker to repair. To kill, use will. Ha, I like that. But 'tis true, the Song is for slow, large workings. Its uses for destructions are limited but very, very severe indeed." "But how does it work?" Dioya had questioned. "Philosophy is all well and good but how do I.I don't know, grasp it, talk to it.Where does it start?" "The first should be the eyes. I know an artist who can work in flesh and who knows the old designs. Chanters shouldn't be too difficult to scrounge up in." "No tattoos, Owl." "But, m'lady, without the ritual tattoos, in especial the eyes, he'll have a terrible time." "Owl, he can't. You know as well as I do that the racial stigma of the tattoos will lock too many doors for him. The tattoos are expedient, not requisite." "True. True, true. And more's the pity. The doors, I mean. Very well, we'll work the harder." Owl had twisted his head then, favoring Dioya with a gaze that went through him, unfocused, and yet seemed to see all, a metallic flickering in his eyes like the hypnotic stare of a snake. "Learn to see, boy, not just to look. Be still here," Owl tapped his forehead, "and listen to the world. All things are one thing. No thing is ever just itself, it is part of other things, and these things are portions of an even greater system and so on. Your arm is part of your body. Bone is part of your arm. Blood and marrow are part of bone. Your heart is part of your body but; but, but, but, there is no bone in your heart. Your heart, it pumps the blood, the blood from the bone and for the brain and all the rest. Each is a not a separate thing and, yet, it is. It is the balanced harmony of being separate and being whole which is the founding stone of the Song. "The body is a simple example but look outside it. The air which feeds the lungs also carries the spores of fungus and lifts the wings of birds. The water you drink is part of the cycles of rain, river, and sea. Your food is the flesh of other creatures who are, in turn, part of their own separate cycles. Your waste rebuilds the depleted land and your corpse will feed generations of worms who turn the soil which grows the grass to feed the beast which drink the water and breath the air and feeds a future man, one who breaths the same air which you once did. "It is this great interconnected harmony which is the Great Song, and each Vall within it is as a separate note in the song." "Vall?" "Oh indeed. Where one thing ends and another begins in this grand system is difficult to determine. It is a subjective thing, different for each worker. For me, my arm ends at the pit of my chest but to your mind, it might include the curve of the shoulder. Which is correct? Both are, lad, both are, for it only matters in the mind of the obeah, not to the clay. That is the Vall. The Vall is the completeness of a thing, wherever that limit is set." "So the Vall is an illusion?" "Dear me, no. The Vall is the purest of truth. The illusion is that the Vall exists at all. Things cannot be separated from each other. Yet, for the worker, there must be limits to his work. The Vall is the edge of completeness which he chooses to employ within his work. Indeed, at its greatest extent, there is but one Vall and that is the whole of the Creator's work. But, wherever it is applied, the Vall is the completeness of the thing. "The beginning of the Song is to learn to still the dialogue in your mind and hear the harmonies of the Great Song. From this, within your sight, you will be able to find the Vall of things, your Vall, for your workings." "I think." Dioya had stopped, then continued when his mother nodded. "I think I have seen this." "Tell me." "When I have trained with the coteries there is a time when everything .well, it swells, like the world is a river and only I move above it. When the power first rises up and takes me, it's like I see too wide." "You are a member of one of these coteries." "No. I.I failed." "What? At pleasing them and their whims? How did you fail, boy?" "It's the sharing. My power, it's mine. I can't share it. I don't want to share it. And I don't want theirs either, my own is enough." "Ah, I am vindictive." "Vindicated," Dioya's mother had corrected softly from the shadows, but Owl continued without pausing. "It is as I have thought. The conjoining of a coterie is an act of the Song, not of the Will. Of course you cannot share with them or take of theirs, you are complete in your own mind. Your Vall ends at yourself and the Song is Err to you. You are beyond them and full within your nature. "You see the whole of the song. You see the Vall of your working. Now you may alter the Tith to your desire." "I'm confused again." "Tith. Tith, Tith, Tith, that is a word new to you. Good story behind Tith. When the King of the Wood stands watch, those who come to challenge must bring a tribute of food or some such supply, no less than one tenth of that which the challenger possesses. This is the tithe. Legend says when Albous came to challenge, he had nothing, for, of course, Albous owned only himself. With no tithe, he would have been turned away but the King, he looked at the spirit of Albous and saw that, if he could, he would give the tithe and more. It was the inclination of his nature to give and to give freely. So, the King allowed his challenge because the tithe was paid by his intent. From this comes the word Tith. Tith is the true intent of a thing true to its nature. "Now, Tith is not the intent which you usually think of. Often you may say 'I intend to do this and I intend to do that' but the Tith is the inclination of nature which leads to the intent. Consider: you awake in the morning and you intend to arise. But still you remain in bed. You think of the day ahead and of works you must do and the things you intend for the day. Then, somehow, on a level below your talking thoughts, you arise. It is the Tith, not the intent to rise, that truly lifts you up. The Tith is the bent of your nature that creates the intents of the thinking mind. "If you can convince a thing to change its Tith, it will do your bidding, at least within the Vall of your working. Change the Tith, and the Err, the nature of a thing, will change. And, if you have learned to see the way of things clearly, you will guide the Tith of the work towards its Err and increase the harmony of the Great Song." "But Owl, even when I see what there is to see, how do I communicate with the.Tith, of a thing?" "Wise boy. A good question, well ahead of your lessons. The learning the language of the Tith is the training in the Song. That is what we will work upon. "Fortunately for us, or at least for you, since constancy is harmony, there are rules and rituals in the reaching of the Tith. The first of these is Sympathy. The hour grows late but I feel obliged to answer your question in brief, before we part to meet and train again later. Like calls to like, the Vall of one thing calls to the Vall of another and will ask the Tith to act likewise. By this, you can move a thing by its simulacrum." Dioya pulled his eyes away from the candle and returned to the present. The remembrances had answered his need, his pulse slowed and he felt at peace with what he had to do. Somewhere, memories of lessons continued to surface, refreshing his training. "Like calls to like," he whispered and swept the room with his gaze. He stood and stepped to the small hourglass near the door. Dioya rapped it sharply on the table's edge and let the sand poor from the break onto the black surface. With his forefinger, he traced a crude map of northern Qiayore and the Wyr River. He stared, fixing it in his mind. Without breaking his gaze, his hand felt along the floor beneath the armchair until it found his mothers sewing kit. He slid out a needle and absent-mindedly dropped the kit into a pocket of his robe. "Blood calls to blood." He pressed the point of the needle against the soft skin of his wrist until a pin-point of blood welled from it. He stretched his arm over the sand map and, with the other hand, squeezed the tiny wound until the drop fell onto the scattered grains. "I am with my brothers. Where they have fallen, I walk. I am where I am needed. I am where I am called. It is true in my heart. It is true in my mind. It is true. "I believe." The world fell away like shards of glass from a shattered mirror. *** Granthtan had barely reached Lorgrenese's vault before he heard Ria shouting after him. He scowled and ignored her. The archivist had never believed he would fully escape her, but he had hoped to have enough time to find what he sought before she caught up. "I don't care who you are or what your official status is, you're going to tell me what's going on!" She stormed into the vault, blocking the exit. Granthtan spoke over his shoulder, not sparing her a glance. "Ask and I'll answer what I can. First, tell me what Reese said when Dioya spoke with him. What is Kernin doing?" "He said Kernin was going to kill Tarfn.and the Sinari." "Is that all? He's an Eerith, the exact words are very important." Ria pursed her lips in frustration and concentrated. "I think the exact phrase was something like 'kill everyone involved or responsible'." Granthtan nodded. "That sounds about right. This is very bad, I think." "Why? If he can do it, our problems are solved or at least a lot more manageable." The archivist shifted a stack of books from a stool to the floor and sat down wearily. "Everyone responsible, that's what he's after. Think about that for a minute. You work with an Eerith. If you lead a squad of magi onto the field of battle and get them killed, who do you think your Reese would hold responsible?" "Me. I lead the mission, those men would have been my responsibility." Her voice trailed off as realization dawned on her. " Nioratosa. You think he'll go after Nioratosa." "After Tarfn and the Sinari but yes, why shouldn't he?" The two stared at each other until the silence of the vault became overpowering. "So why just Kernin? Why aren't all the Eerith on the attack about this?" Ria asked. "I don't know. The Eerith are part hive mentality, like ants, and part incredibly individualistic. I think this is some kind of test, maybe, for us. I haven't figured out the Vall of that part of things yet. But, that's part of why I think Kernin has to be stopped before he kills any of them. I think its reasonable to assume that the rest might be letting this play out right now, but they certainly will finish what another Eerith starts. If Kernin can kill Tarfn, then even if we could stop Kernin, we'd have the rest of the Eerith at our throats." "The Vall?" Granthtan shrugged. "It's an Onagir word. I picked up part of the language last year when I was there. It's their term for where something ends and another begins, like the parameter of a circle. It's a good term for the Eerith. Where does one Eerith end and another begin? Who knows? I'm not sure they do." "So why Dioya and what's this about his mother?" Granthtan shrugged. "Who else? Nioratosa? That would just alter the priority list. Eubatrosa? I'm not sure how far the shared responsibility extends but I think that the father and commander of the offender is on the short list of candidates. That leaves you, me, Dioya, and a whole lot of people who don't know a thing about the Eerith. At least Dioya has a chance." "What about me? And you, for that matter? If this is all as dire as you claim, he'll need all the help he can get." "That's where his mother comes in. How will we get there? The Eerith move at the speed of the elements--wind, fire, whatever--how do we get there in time to prevent Kernin from attacking Tarfn? And remember, the Eerith has a considerable head start on us." "How do you even know where he's going?" "We have to gamble. If he knows exactly where Tarfn is and goes straight there, I'm not sure there's anything that can be done. However, it's more likely that he'll go to the battlefield where Asadu died and work outward. That behavior seems more consistent with what history we have of the Eerith." Ria held up a hand in protest. "Hold on. This has happened before?" "Similar things have. This is not the first time an Eerith has gone on the warpath, at least from what I can tell in the histories. There was a reason they called them daemons--once one of them went rouge, I don't think they were very particular about their victims." "Fine. So we teleport to the battlefield." "To a place you've never even seen? Maybe we could get close but a blind teleport is worse than suicide; it may not even be possible." Ria shook her head. "It's possible. But even if you live, odds are you end up further away from your target than when you started. But still, someone can teleport there." "Of course. Nioratosa and a handful of wounded mages who have never even met an Eerith. Next bad idea, Warlord?" "Don't get snide. I see your point. So, how is it that Dioya can get there? He's been there before?" Now it was Granthtan's turn to shake his head in denial. "No. Not teleportation--translocation." "Translocation is a myth. It's a charlatan's trick using twins to fool gullible primitives." "Like calls to like. Blood of Mir to blood of Mir. It's not a trick; it's just something you mages can't do." Ria snorted in disgust and began to pace. "A year with the savages and you start to think like them." "It's real!" Granthtan almost shouted. "Obeahism is a viable form. I've seen it. You know I'm right. If it's all a myth, why does Dioya believe? Answer that if you can. He isn't given to flights of fancy and he knows a whale of a lot more about what is and is not true than you do. The man is fifteen hundred years old!" "Supposing that the two of you are right, that still doesn't explain anything. You're saying Dioya can translocate? That Lorgrenese taught him before he died?" "No. Lorgrenese was an Archmage, but he was still a mage. Translocation is a obeah's skill. I was gambling that what I suspected about Dioya's mother was true." "She was a obeah?" "I doubt it. But she was Onagir; she would have done everything in her power to insure that her son was trained." Ria started to reply then stopped herself. She paced in angry circles for several long seconds before she was calm enough to speak again. When she did, it was with an unusual calm. "Everything you just said is a lie. But, Dioya's reaction and his own statement that you were right tell me that it isn't. So, whether you are right or wrong is irrelevant; either Dioya finds a way to stop Kernin or he doesn't. That's out of our hands. However . . . " She paused and advanced menacingly on the archivist. "However, it is very obvious that you know things that the rest of us don't. And it is equally obvious that we need to know them, sooner rather than later. You, me, Eubatrosa , Dioya if he can . . . maybe Reese, though probably not since he's Eerith . . . and for certain not Nioratosa--we're going to have a small conference. And when we do, little librarian, you are going to give us some explanations." Granthtan rubbed his eyes and exhaled heavily. "It's not that simple, you know. I'm just barely putting it all together myself. A lot of hints and clue. Today was almost pure guess work. I'm not withholding information--right now, I have a bucket of suspicions, a few hunches, and a library full of old books to cobble together some kind of understanding of things that we thought we already knew and understood." Ria ignored his protests. "Forty-eight hours. Get together what you can, check it in your books, and then give us everything you have: fact, hunch or otherwise. I'm tired of fighting without intelligence on my enemy . . . or my allies." *** A hand speared toward the sky from the sands followed by a shoulder. A head threw itself up and back out of the sand like a bather surfacing from a pool and the shrieking inhale of breath seemed as harsh and unnatural as the howl of wind through a shattered crypt. The gulping of air subsided into an aggressive panting and the remainer of the man's body began to worm from the dune surrounding it. Dioya had been successful and it had almost killed him. He shook sand from his hair, spat it from his mouth, noisily blew it from his nose, slapping his hands together again and again before he trusted them clean enough to claw the moisture-caked clots from his eyes. Blood called to blood, but the desert was not a quiet domain and the sands moved as aggressively as any waves. The spilled blood of the combatants was now buried several feet deep in the grainy dust. In the disorientation and weakness following his abrupt shift of location, Dioya had almost joined the recent dead. He freed himself to his knees then sagged back against the rise of the dune. The direct sun was baking him as he lay, but for the moment he could not bring himself to care. He lay there, gasping like a beached fish, sickened now as the rush of adrenalin spurred by fear subsided, leaving him with a shaking weakness. How long he lay there, he did not know; he may have lost consciousness for a time. Finally, he pulled his legs free of the sucking sand and rolled onto his stomach, shielding his face from the glare. It was all he had the strength for and again he hung, wavering in the grey twilight between awareness and sleep. His body recognized the passing of the day before his mind. The funeral for the Mirrish dead had run late into the day and Dioya's preparations had delayed him further. Before the desert could leech the moisture from him and leave him lifeless, evening brought a cooling wind. Dioya stirred into awareness, somewhat refreshed, and driven again by reason over instinct. The cool was welcome now, but soon the frigid desert night would become as treacherous as the heat of the day. Time to worry on that later, he told himself, remembering his purpose. He could only estimate the time his near suffocation had cost him. Surely the Eerith would arrive soon, and he had much to do. And little to do it with. Dioya mentally cursed himself for not planning better and began to rummage through the folds of his dust-encrusted robes. His hand brushed across the wooden surface of his mother's sewing kit and he felt a bemused sense of hope--the contents of any storage device of his maternal parent might be eclectic but never sparse, he would find something useful, it was inevitable. He withdrew the lacquered case and folded his legs beneath him, settling to the sand. Without ceremony, he worked a fingernail beneath the latch and opened the box. Spools and coils of thread, a sand-filled bag studded with needles and pins, scraps of cloth folded into neat quarters, small scissors, a ceramic thimble and a smaller one of leather, a host of small items whose purpose Dioya could not fathom--he rummaged through the seemingly bottomless container searching for inspiration. His face split into a smile of amazement as he withdrew, pressed between layers of thin gauze, spider webs. Granthtan had suggested to him that there was a 'strong possibility' that the Eerith would travel to the battlefield before going after its prey, but Dioya knew better. There was no doubt in his mind that the Eerith would come to him. Like a hound seeking a scent, the creature would hover over the site of the massacre before moving after its prey. Perhaps, Dioya considered, even the Eerith itself did not know its next action. It did not matter; he had to stop it here. Mir had grown soft and forgetful. The Eerith had walked among them with soft treads until familiarity had brought comfort, like wild animals living within their houses, too long considered pets, forgetting their feral nature. Kindly spirits, gentle advisors, Mir had forgotten their own nightmares, holding their daemons close like simple oddities for their amusement. Too quickly, they had begun to think that the patter of gentle rain could never become the ravening storm and now it fell to Dioya to serve as the lightning rod for that tempest. The wind sighed across the dunes. Life stirred in the cool of the day. Insects and birds rose on the wind. Thin streaks of cloud raced across the black-blue sky. Small creatures lived, died, and hunted in the scattered pockets of vegetation. Dioya sat, immobile, unthinking, seeing it all, feeling the ways and patterns of the land, submerging himself in the wholeness of the night's rhythms. Invisible against the tapestry of the grandeur about him, his fingers dipped to touch the spider's webs. The web stretched across the sands. Life wove about itself, wind and weather folded and integrated again, the desert was one thing, one song of singular melody and varying notes, one web . . . and Dioya sat passive in the heart of the web, a spider sensing each twitch and tremor of the strands. Gently, almost intuitively, he altered the pulse of the web, a nudge here, a small tug there--a web of hunting and snaring, waiting to catch and hold a specific fly. He tucked and tied the edges, pulling them back to himself, making the web his own, waxing and waning with the pulse of its worker. Somewhere at the edges, he sensed the change--no, Dioya did not, the desert did: it was the worker, he was its tool now. It waited, welcoming to the intruder. Without intention, Dioya's lips were moving. He was speaking in barely audible tones, his voice now the voice of the land, speaking through him, finding its own tongue to describe what it encountered. "I see a great light arising in the east, a beast of fire and fury, lacking in substance, its form bound only by the frayed edges of its brilliance. It moves across me as the sun but lower in the heavens, smaller and faster but no less a destroyer. It comes to me seeking and I welcome it, calling it to my bosom, to what it desires. It is elemental as am I, unbound by reason, freed to its nature. "It strides across my sands, a titan of radiant passion, the indignation of its righteousness rising from it like great wings. In barest form, it moves as a man and spreads its arms to welcome the pulse of spilled blood beneath me, breathing death as fuel for the fire of its vengeance. I see it brush aside the human within me and the breaking of his bones pains me. "The beast stands at my heart, drawing its power into itself, increasing it multifold. It rises like a tree of blinding blue-white fire and my sand blisters to glass beneath it. It moves. It would take to the night sky like the hunting raptor and leave me. I call to it. "Are you not as I? Are we not brothers, born of the same song? Like the hot fury of your rage, do my own sands not blaze in the day? Like the implacable cunning of your hunting, do not I lie cold in the night, unrelenting and without mercy? "He hears but his intent is not my own. He pulls away. The power is mine, the blood shed upon my face, not his. The power flows back to me and the beast roars above me in frustration. We are brothers. His place is here, within, but he does not understand. He turns his anger against the land which would heal his disharmony. "It stabs at me with lances of light, filling my air with burning. Life is lost within my song, a disruption which will be long to heal, but the passage returns their power to me. The beast strikes, again and again. With each blow, it fades and I gain, in its fury, it give me its power. My brother and I grow close through shared strife. The man within me is burned, fragile. I absorb his blood into my sands and add his strength to mine, increasing my hold on my brother. "I call to him again. 'Be with me. My brother, share my harmony.' He listens now but fights against me still. It matters not, my brother weakens and my intent is pure, stronger than his. He is fading, a mere windborne spark within my air. "Brother, rest with me. "He fades and his harmonies align with mine, his dissonance healed. We are at peace. My brother is gone, faded, returned to his home. I remain." Dioya came slowly to himself. He had changed the nature of the desert for a time, inclined it to fight his battle with its strength. Stripped of the desert's expanded, inhuman senses, his mind struggled to place memories of the events but there were no words, no sources of comparison. Much of what had occurred, he knew, was literally beyond his comprehension and lost to him. Only the words of the land remained to aid his understanding. For now, it was enough to know that the Eerith was gone, burned out. It would be years, maybe decades or longer, before it had regained enough energy to manifest again. He wondered if it would remember itself. He tried to move and realized he could not. Worse, he could no longer feel himself--shock. He was dying. The desert had told him that--broken, burned, bleeding freely. Dioya reached for the comfort of the Great Song and found even that small relief was denied him. He was too weak, too far gone. Shadows clustered at the edge of his mind, their warm silence beckoning him. He fought to remain aware and then forgot why he cared. Blackness enfolded him gently and the world passed away. *** Four days the priesthood of Mir had prayed for guidance. Four days spent in prayer and supplication, days of censured smoke and raw-throated psalms. Four days without sign of divinity. After four full days, the temple remained still. The four days after the new moon, sacred to their goddess, one day for each college and the fourth day for the goddess herself. And at the end of the fourth day, as it had for each month previous over the past two years, the temple was still, their cries ignored. The High Priest and Archmage had just set aside his miter when the altar cracked, a single fault line bisecting its length, a small, almost invisible mar, but the sound echoed in the temple like the chime of a bell, or a death knell, and the assemblage froze, stunned. A sound like the roar of wind-driven rain boomed through the building, driving some to cover their ears in pain, so loud it was, and mixed within the roar was the haunting tones of aeolian harps. After the sound came the light, blazing from the slit in the altar like the blue-white rays of a newborn sun, blinding, burning, all-consuming, and they fell within it. Below them in the grey void, a city hung, torn from the earth, denied the heavens. Above it rose the anguished ghost of a man torn in twain, lifted as though by an invisible claw about his chest; his life's blood flowed through the city's streets and poured from its edge as a river, and it smelled of lilac as the grey mists turned it under and let them adrift again. They felt rather than saw a great hand reaching, grasping, hungry as a mouth, straining just beyond the walls of being, filled with longing, and fear caught their breaths within them. A form approached with the fog, shrouded in the black robes of the desert witches. The robes curled back from a fiery form who stretched out her hand, and the robes became a spear thrusting forward, through them and then gone and they, untouched. And in the void, there came a singing, the voice of a girl-child, a simple tune, the lullaby of their youths, the words now twisted strange and sung by granite stones. Hordes race forward from the north, screaming in fury, crying for blood, numerous as the sands of the desert, black shrouded women within their midst, screaming for vengeance with soundless tongues, a world of flame in their wake. And at their head came a man with their own face, wounded as unto death yet moving without falter, black flamed daemons at his shoulders, riding in a chariot of beaten brass, sweeping down as the scythe of death. A creature rose from the seas to the east, a centaur with the bodies of two men, not one, and the two did battle above their single body and when one struck the other, both fell as dead. Two women stood with hands clasped together and one shone as a new dawn and the other wore seraph wings as a guardian cloak. Behind them old robed men sat within a boat upon the sand, bailing water from within to without, sinking slow in a flood not there. A king in the west wrung water from his hands into a washbowl and turned to face the twilight. The water in the bowl became blood and cried as a newborn child as he walked into the sea. A blind man wept at the base of a tree, speaking truths in a tongue unknown, and none listened as the tree replied with the ringing of cymbals and calling horns. In the center stood a man before the horde. At his side, a child in rags, a great jeweled scepter cradled to her chest. The man held out in either hand a golden mirror and spoke first to one, "Dexter", and then the other, "Tallus", and the chalk white cliffs beneath him shattered like glass, falling away into the void like raindrops of melted snow, and darkness rose up on leathered wings to engulf them all. And the temple was as it had always been, save a hairline fissure in the altar as the supplicants stood, as if awakened from a long sleep, and were afraid. M. Keaton ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
