The Canto of Blood, Opus Four "I expected, at the beginning of my sojourn among the Onagir, to encounter a primitive people, not just in terms of material possessions, but also in cultural sophistication. I was prepared for grubby men dressed in greasy rags, bare breasted women cramming sagging teats into the mouths of squalling babes, and widespread disease. I was wrong. Do not misunderstand; they are an agrarian people with no metal working beyond the cold forging of brass and copper and very limited resources. And, they are human; I would not mislead you into thinking that the Onagir are some paragonic noble savage, mystically removed from the harsh pragmatism of daily life. There are squalling babes and sagging teats, but no more than in Mirabalpura, just not as well hidden by pretense and conceit. But the Onagir comport themselves as human, not as some band of hairless apes. They are modest and clean. Their use of textiles is highly advanced, utilizing a wide variety of flora and fauna for materials, and a range of dyes that make them colorful to an almost painful extreme. "Their use of color and patterns as a form of communication and expression reminds me of how appropriate it is that these, of all the Qaiyorian peoples, best relate to the synesthesiatic Eerith. The Eerith most certainly do not perceive this world in the same manner as humanity. They cannot; after all, they do not possess the same sensory organs as we do. Fortunate indeed, then, that the first people to attempt to communicate with them should be this 'primitive' people. "As I underestimated them as a culture, so too did I grossly prejudge their religious practices--the working of the obeah. I expected complex rituals, crowds of workers, complicated dancing, chanting, and shouting, even the occasional blood sacrifice. Quite to the contrary, except for a trend toward fetishism, the obeah workers of the Onagir espouse a progressively abstract symbolism tending toward extreme minimalism. Through the layering of paragons into a relatively small number of symbolic items and gestures, even the most elaborate of rituals are understated events and certainly are not public spectacles." --Granth.-- *** S is for silence, the loudest of sounds. T is for time, weaver of all. U is for useful, the greatest of accolades. *** The wind trailed lazy fingers across the riverbank and paused to toss a whirl of dust across the assemblage. The two newly formed coteries and the Archmage sat uneasily in chairs carried outside for them. Uncertain, they had decided that proximity and a clear line of vision to Annenayea was worth the risks of gathering outside. Night and Reese stood behind the coteries like twin minarets. At a discreet distance around them waited a ring of troops, Shadis' guard against the unexpected. A ringing broke the relative silence of sighing wind and stamping horses. The Archmage shifted nervously in his chair, causing the copper rings of the scepter he held to clink together noisily. Niotrosa was pouring sand from one hand to the other. Ria's hands drifted unconsciously to the hilts of the blades she wore at her hips, clenching and releasing the wrapped leather. The sun was dawning at their backs, the wind in their faces. Thin clouds raced across the sky, torn and stretched, unraveling skeins tinted in hues of red and purple by the rising sun. Annenayea hung, caught half in shadow, half in light. The sun illuminated the alabaster and granite stone of the leading edge, casting the main of the city into deep shadow. The transparent glitter of the arcane shield shrouded the drifting fortress, flashing moments of curling rainbows, catching the reflections of the light like a soap bubble. The hair of Ria's neck and arms prickled and she let her vision widen, extending into the unseen realm of the arcane. Dioya and Michelle had begun to draw the coteries together, linking their minds to each member individually, with deliberate and slow precision--no need to rush; no margin for error. She focused on Dioya, her own lifeline, and watched as he worked. The old man's touch was gentle, almost coaxing. He seemed to first extend himself, letting them grow comfortable with his presence on their own terms and then gracefully withdrawing, pulling them after him, sometimes repeating the process several times like a glass-blower working a weld, until the courses of power were fully open; but natural, preferable, artful compared even to Michelle's steady hand. Ria wondered at what training the old mage had received in those portions of his past which he refused to discuss. A final connection--as Ria watched, Dioya extended an invisible hand toward the brilliant spark which was Reese. The Eerith returned the gesture, touching the web of energy lightly, a butterfly's landing on the petal of a flower. At the contact, the Eerith seemed to flow into the web, absorbed and diffused, a drop of ink in a pool of crystal water, permeating the whole. For a moment, Dioya let the energy net rest, flowing across itself until each of its members was calm, settled and trusting. Satisfied at last, he opened it to her and she touched it. The weave shivered, like a spider's web trembling beneath the soft strides of its mistress. Ria waited, letting Dioya calm and steady what he had built, gradually passing it to her control. She could feel Reese's presence, a silent observer, monitoring it all as she was. Sensing now Dioya's confidence and approval, she took the reigns of power. Like breathing in a sweet but bitter smoke, she drew the energies into herself, filling, burning with the rawness of its strength, hungering for more, and then, like a breath, she let it ebb back into the coterie. Again and again she drew in and released, each time taking more and more until she seemed to be straining to hold it all in without bursting, lightheaded. The energies washed across her senses as an explosion of stars across her eyes. The acrid sting of vinegar clawed through her nose and down the back of her throat and her mouth tasted copper. The pounding of her blood seemed set on forcing her mind from her body as she became too great to be contained within her flesh. Ria could feel power bleeding from her now, like a living, crawling flame undulating across her skin, reaching from her eyesockets like tendrils, searing the air with the heat of her breath, her hair crackling with the blue static of the tortured clouds of a desert storm. With a motion rooted more in violence than choice, she fed the power to the Archmage--thrust it at him abruptly, unable to wait, almost uncaring. It caught at him, a conflagration leaping from one dried tree to another, threatening to overwhelm him, choking him with its own hunger. Like a great serpent, it struck at the base of his skull with the force of a physical blow. Decades of study nevertheless left him unprepared for energies like these--raw and organic, stripped back to its most elemental form. He struggled against it as a man wrestles with a lion, twisting, searching for a hold. Alien, it resisted his grip and ran like wildfire through his mind. It was Dioya who saved them, damming the power at its source, cutting down the flow and starving the inferno until, first Ria, then Eubatrosa could regain their control. Gradually, he let the flow rise again as Ria funneled it to the Archmage until both came to terms with their altered roles and the increased power. Contact with Niotrosa came easier; the familiarity of family lessened the foreign intrusion of power, and experience was a rapid teacher. Dimly, Ria could sense the members of the other coterie and Night through the link, as if listening to a conversation in an adjacent room. Resolutely, the Archmage drew a full breath of power into himself and reached toward the shield of Annenayea. He let the barest penumbra of his power wash across it, testing, seeking for a weak point, tentative, fearful of response. None came and he continued to test, prodding. The shield continued to swirl; like a tumultuous sea, it rolled across itself, hiding any weakness through movement and overlapping waves of energy. Frustrated, he struck against it, hard. The energy washed across the bubble, diffusing, perhaps even partially absorbed. "More." He let the thought drift across their minds and Ria opened herself more, letting Dioya feed ever-increasing surges of force through her. She felt the Archmage gather himself and let the spectrum of energies play across the face of the shield one last time. Still finding no weakness, he began to focus, drawing the energy into a tightening beam until it was a single lance of blinding force, drilling into the shield on a point no bigger than the head of a pin. Gradually, Dioya and Michelle relaxed their grips until the two fronts, Ria and Niotrosa, remained as buffers between the Archmage and the might of the two coteries. The shield seemed to bend in on itself in slow increments then, even as it began to fail, like water into a depression, the energies of the other portions of the shield poured in to rebuff the damage. Ria relaxed her guards, withholding nothing, becoming a conduit, raw power screaming from her. Niotrosa did the same and the Archmage filled to bursting, power ripping through him like a hateful scream of fury. *** Shadis set astride his gelding and ground his teeth. The horse sensed the rider's anxiety and danced, sidestepping into the horse beside him until Shadis stopped it with a harsh jerk of the reigns. He felt a momentary twinge of guilt for venting his frustrations on the mount and took a purposeful breath, trying to steady his own nerves, and patted the horse reassuringly on the curve of its neck. He held his hand level in front of him, observing the slight involuntary quiver and how each hair stood on end, straining away from his hand. His teeth throbbed with pressure and a screeching white noise buzzed at the base of his skull. His eyes caught those of Caladyn and the two exchanged tense looks, both men of the battlefield now caught in something clearly outside of their understanding. Shadis forced himself to look at the gathering of magi his riders protected. It was painful to view. Something in the way the light around the magi twisted seemed to bite at Shadis' mind, a wrongness in the sight itself which made his eyes ache. He could not see them clearly; the haze of power just beyond his sight made them appear out of focus, as though a swarm of gnats fluttered about them, clogging up the air and making it seem to squirm. The ground beneath them looked to rise and fall with a slow rhythm. He let his gaze slide sideways, away from the oddity, and the rest of the world was normal. Even the air a few feet above the coteries was clear, mundane. Someone laid a hand on his arm and he turned to face the Dun Ri. The other man was silent, simply pointing upward, towards the accursed floating city. At first, Shadis could see no change and then a flicker of motion caught his eye, drawing his attention. Seconds passed and it occurred again, a twitch on the surface of the bubble, the swirl on the face of a calm pond just after a fish has turned beneath it. He waited, breathless, for the motion to repeat. It did but now dark lines were forming, like the shadows of sharks hunting just below the surface. The black forms encircled the motion, turning about it like a whirlpool of darkness. "Stand ready!" he called, trying to keep his voice steady, trying to forget the feelings of helplessness that had gripped them all the last time the accursed city had shown activity. Minutes crawled by at a torturous pace without change. The sudden crash of thunder caused his mount to rear in terror and, stunned, Shadis found himself abruptly meeting the ground. Instinct curled him into a ball and rolled from beneath the horse's stamping hooves. For a time, all concerns of magic were forgotten in the immediate struggle of the riders trying to control horses already driven nearly mad by a fear they could not understand. The soldiers were not in much better shape. Shadis grabbed the trailing reigns, dodged a slashing hoof, and pulled the horse's head tight against its chest. With his weight dragging at its head, the beast did not have the strength to rear up and, unable to lower its head, it lacked the balance to kick. The horse steadied and he pulled himself back into the saddle. A quick glance showed that Annenayea's plight remained unchanged but, distracted by the tableau around him, Shadis had neglected to notice the heavy storm front encroaching from the North and West. "No way this storm is natural!" shouted Caladyn, standing now, holding his mount's bridle in a tight grip. "Rider coming in from the postern!" "Hold position!" he yelled back. The irritating breeze of the morning had escalated quickly into a low roar. Its gusts drove waves of dust and debris across the riverbank, making it hard to see or hear. "I'm going to meet him! Whatever you do, don't let anyone disturb them!" Caladyn nodded fiercely to show he had heard and Shadis kneed his mount into a walk, threading his way towards the outer ring of guards. He stood in the saddle and saw a rider at the edge frantically waving an arm over his head. Shadis returned the gesture and the two pressed through the crowd toward each other. "Sir, I'm afraid you need to see this!" "No time! Tell me what it is!" The two men leaned toward each other until they were almost touching and still they had to yell over the growing wind. "Sinari, lots of them! Massing on the opposite bank!" "Crossing?" "Not that we can tell! It's hard to see at this distance but it looks like the witches!" Shadis cursed to himself. "As long as they stay on their side of the river, not much we can do! Stand by!" *** Dioya drew deeper from the coterie, slowing their bodies, drawing every ounce of energy beyond what they needed for survival and feeding it through the wide-open Ria into the Archmage. Eubatrosa was beyond cognition, consumed now with the roaring energies. "Pull back," sighed Reese's voice into the howl of the web. "Killing him." "Too much," agreed Night. Dioya heard the voices only distantly, as if he were dreaming them. "Burning them all from the inside." "Pull back!" ordered Reese's voice, piercing Dioya's mind like a knife of ice; and then the Eerith's presence faded and Dioya could no longer sense him, but it was enough. With an effort akin to climbing a cliff by the tips of his fingernails, Dioya began to block the flows, withdrawing. Eubatrosa fought him, trying to overpower his will and draw even more power, consumed with the intensity of his purpose. "No!" shouted Night. Compared to the fading whispers of Reese, Night's voice was deafening command echoing in their minds. "Even if you burn completely, it will not be enough!" Some fragment of Eubatrosa heard and understood, and he finally allowed the power to flow back into the weave of the coteries. With the energy came a return to a semblance of self, a terrible fatigue and the black depression of failure. Dioya felt himself slide forward, his rigid muscles relaxing, and he wondered for a moment if he had fallen from his chair. "Failed." the thought echoed through the weave, no single speaker but a knowledge given voice by agreement. In his mind's eye, Dioya saw Ria and Niotrosa as burnt wreckage, the blackened frames of houses of flesh gutted by fire. Even deprived of the coteries' power, Eubatrosa still writhed in the coils of the liquid flame of the arcane inferno. "Failed." F'cresa was linking directly to the Archmage, leeching away the energies which still threatened to consume him, and Dioya reached to join her, shunting away the fury back into the other members of his coterie. "The old way," her mind whispered to him as they brushed. "The way of life, it is a living thing." Exhausted, he forced himself to remain clear headed. "Seduction," he affirmed, a distant memory of a laughing Owl teasing at the edge of his consciousness, and he began to draw the power of the coterie into himself once again. As he did, F'cresa reknit his weave--nips and tucks, old connections rerouted to new. The coteries she left intact, only removing herself from Michelle's web, replacing Niotrosa and Ria's ties to the Archmage with direct feed to herself. As Dioya let the power pool again, he watched her continue to draw the force from Eubatrosa and then, to the elder mage's surprise, she reached, outward, adding a third and then a fourth flow into her web. Seeresses, he realized, Sinari Seeresses forming coteries and aiding the assault on the shield, a mystery ominous in its implication, a mystery irrelevant to the task at hand. F'cresa set herself and Dioya gave, no subtlety now; time was their enemy--power, raw and sudden. *** The storm broke across the riverbanks as ferociously as it had arisen. Black anvils of clouds blocked out the sun in a sky turned a menacing, sickly green. Lightning bounded from cloud to cloud and struck upon the river itself, sending balls of blue flame dancing across the water like insane dervishes. Rain came, not as a fall, but as an eruption. The water hurled down from the sky in liquid walls, angry fists of wind and wave set to pummel the earth into submission. "Get a tarp over these people!" the Dun Ri ordered in vain. Only a handful of men could hear him in the confusion of the heavenly maelstrom. "Don't block the line of sight!" Caladyn bellowed out as though trying to outdo the storm itself. "Line the horses, shoulder to shoulder and dismount! Windbreak!" As if in defiance of any human intervention, a peal of thunder seconds long roared from the sky and the surface of the Wyr itself exploded, a great waterspout twisting upward, howling with the fury of a damned soul. *** F'cresa did not attack the shield; she embraced it. Burgeoning with power, she reached to it, welcoming it, offering herself to it, one life feeding another. The two flowed together and she let it take her, ceasing to be, giving it herself and her power fully and freely, feeding a hunger centuries old. Fear clenched Dioya's heart as he felt her cease to be. No; she was there, tiny and engulfed within the shield but alive, invisible to the ancient power by virtue of insignificance. Dioya could feel her still linked but just barely. "Now," purred Night with a grim satisfaction and the coteries opened fully. Every ounce of being, every moment left in their lives, every hope spurred by desperation--all and more they poured into the fading spark which was F'cresa. Hearts ceased to beat. Lungs drew no breath. In a broken second, they were dead, only she was alive.and dissonant. She was not like the shield, no arcane contrivance, no force of nature. She was individual, unique, a thing in harmony with nothing except by choice. And. She. Did. Not. Chose. Against the flowing, unified harmony of the shield, one untuned note rang out, a cry of defiance, a cry of individuality--a crack, a breach, the beginnings of a resonance shattering the weave of the song which had held for centuries--a pulse that, once started, could not be undone. Like a virus, it spread through the shield, carrying dissonance in its wake until the shield tore itself apart to escape the very harmonies which had once given it life. The song became a scream. *** In the heart of the maelstrom, the literal eye of the storm, Shadis saw the miracle. He saw the black sharks turn back on themselves and he saw the lightnings of the clouds striking upward, into the city of Annenayea--not into the shield around it, but into the city itself. In a heartbeat, in the time between the lightning and the thunder, the shield had ceased and only the city remained. And above the city, illuminated by the flashing lights of the storm's fury, he saw the form of a man rise up, ghostly white and giant in proportion, borne up as if by some invisible set of talons by his chest and Shadis heard, in one long cry, all the mournings of a people, the sorrow of two thousand years. To his surprise, he found himself weeping along with the heavens. *** V is for valor, a virtue modeled within our time. W is for war, a state of being and not an event. X is for xeroma, the preisthood's stare. *** Floating, sinking, drowning, she could not move, could not breathe, buried, dead--Ria awoke with a harsh screech, clawing at the bedclothes which enshrouded her. She gasped for air and found it bitter, gagged, coughed, and felt panic rise again. A fit of coughing, a low moan of despair, she gulped down shallow breaths, her throat and lungs screaming in denial, searing with pain, raw and torn. She swallowed blood and began to calm. With the calm came exhaustion. Momentarily pushed aside by the tyranny of fear, it returned now with a crushing vehemence and even the act of remaining awake seemed impossible. She collapsed back on the bed and drifted in the heady languor of the half-world between wakening and dreams. She was alive; the concept slowly wormed its way into her consciousness. They had fought and they had won; she was alive. And the others? she wondered and forced herself upward, into a seated position. "Alive. Your Archmage had the worst of it, but all survived," spoke Reese's voice, close enough to her ear to startle yet faint enough to seem distant nonetheless. She turned to face him and saw, instead, merely a grey whisp of smoke, coiling upon itself. Ria started to reply and then thought better of it. She stood and walked stiffly to the low table at the bed's end. She splashed water from a pitcher into a basin and, cupping her hands, rinsed her face, trying to clear the lingering haze of sleep from her mind. She dipped a cup into the basin and lifted it to her lips. She let the water trickle past her broken lips, wincing as they stuck to the edge of the cup. She swished the water around her mouth and spat it back into the basin. "And the Eerith?" she asked. Her voice was hoarse and her throat tight. She had, she realized, probably been literally screaming her coterie's power to Eubatrosa. "My people.Our people, are free, as is Sin-Alb. Most of the spirits have returned to the land, for how long or for forever, I do not know." Ria found a chair and pulled it to the table so she could sit. "The Seeresses helped us?" "The Sisterhood has worshipped the Eerith for as long as they have Sin-Alb. In this, our will for them was indistinguishable from his." Ria opted not to pursue the point; without the aid of her enemy, they would all be dead, of that she was sure. "You sound different," she noted. "This is the first time you have heard me speak. Normally, I pick the words from your mind and give them back to you as if you had heard them. That is not an option at this time. It is temporary. It will pass." She started to ask what he was talking about and then realized what he meant. She tried to extend her sight and could not. Reaching for him mentally, she found nothing. "I'm deaf--mentally, magically--nothing." "Or blind. Your language has a surprising lack of terms for this kind of thing. As I said, it will pass, a few weeks at the most. It's much like staring too long into the sun, as I understand these things." Ria nodded. It was reasonable. She already knew that she had physically and magically screamed herself almost completely out of a voice. "We have to get to Talashara." "There is time; a few days more before the river may be forded. Time now to rest, then you may go to the Oracle." "If the Archmage can get back to Mirabalpura, he can go by sea. The six thousand heavy infantry from Mir along with Niotrosa's coterie.You said 'you'." "Pardon, Warlord?" "You said 'you'. 'You may go to the Oracle', not 'we'." Somehow, the realization came to Ria almost as a relief, a long suppressed truth that could finally be discussed. "I am tired, Ria. So very tired." "So am I!" Her bark became a cough as she asked more of her voice than it could deliver. She continued in a softer tone. "We're all tired. You were the one who gave me all the lectures about living and fighting permanently exhausted, so don't give me that line. I deserve better." "True. Apologies. I'm fading. The only reason I remained intact at all after facing Sin-Alb was duty. Your continued need provided enough to allow me to hold together this long." Ria did not understand. She did not even try. The physiology of the Eerith was probably a mystery that even the Onagir did not understand, and she was almost certain that the Eerith did not know, themselves. But she knew the important fact--a mortally wounded soldier holding on just long enough to complete some last mission before letting go--she had seen it on the battlefield, but she would not accept it, not this time, not now. She had suspected for some time and she was ready, maybe. "You told me before that Night linked to Niotrosa to share knowledge." "Yes." "That's a transfer of energy. That should be a two-way channel, that's what you meant when you said nothing was free. I'm right, aren't I?" "In part, Warlord, but." "Then take what you need from me. Don't mince words, Reese. I know you can do it, you've as much as admitted it before. I'm burnt out but you don't need more power, not that kind anyhow. You need stability, constancy. Well, I'm solid enough, that's for certain. Take what you need." "You've no idea what you're volunteering for." "No I don't. Not the slightest clue. But, even if I don't know what, I know who and I trust that. It's not a request, Reese, it's an order. I need you here." The grey smoke settled in the air before her, shrinking, becoming denser, shorter and wider, curling into a dark, lopsided figure eight, hovering in front of her eyes. Rolling like storm clouds, like eyes staring back into hers, grey eyes matched her vision and they stared into each other, stared until Ria saw herself looking back, until there was no smoke, no separation, only her own reflection in a darkened mirror, and she blinked. She felt a snapping and a shudder raced along her spine. Her eyes refused to focus. Clouded, fuzzy, the world was indistinct and reality seemed to be fraying at the edges of her sight, the unraveling of the universe just beyond the edge of her periphery. She jerked a hand forward to steady herself; her right palm struck the lip of the table and her fingers splayed across the smooth surface. The hand was too long, the fingers streamed out to end in a haze of nothingness, the veins on the back of her hand twisted, coiling like snakes beneath her skin. She blinked again and her eyes wandered, beyond her control, each eye tracking separately. She could feel her blood stopping, reversing. Black lines trellised up her arms, across her chest, around her throat, great clinging vines pulled themselves up her face to drive hooked thorns into the sockets of her eyes. Darkness now and a silver nausea became the world. A thousand voices clamored for her attention yet none loud enough to make out the words, taunting, teasing at the fringes of her mind. Buzzing, pounding, a rushing sensation in the pit of her stomach, a feeling of frantic movement to somehow simply remain still, the babbling voices rose up like a river, threatening to drown her. She fought, striking with unseen hands at unknown enemies, and she failed, sinking, falling through the base of the world. .into a world of golden pillars and marble columns, blinding lights and razor clean edges, no ambiguity, no shades of grey, and she felt them, the Eerith, the orphaned spirits of an entire creation, waiting, standing in the blinding clarity, waiting, for judgment, for release, for purpose, for reason, staring into the brilliance and her eyes followed theirs. Honor, glory, salience, dignity, virtue, hope, sacrifice--words slammed from the crystal blue-white brilliance into her mind--sledgehammer blows driving nails of conception into her soul, seeking, each word falling short of the measure, of something greater, of something better, an unspeakable magnificence. Her forehead cracked against the edge of the table, overturning the basin, turning the water pink with her blood. She recoiled, stumbled, and fell. Her eyes were clear, the world mundane. She pressed the heal of her hand against her injured head and saw the soft inner surface of her wrist was entwined in swirling tattoos of black. "My god." she whispered in amazement. "Indeed," replied Reese in the same gentle whisper, "indeed." She felt his strong hands catch her beneath the arms to lift her to her feet. Ria sagged against him. "Niotrosa saw that?" "No. His bond with Night is much more fascicle, cosmetic by comparison. But I needed more than even I knew and.you deserved the truth." "The Vision! That was Albous' Vision!" "I'm sorry if I have injured you somehow." She felt his fingers pull aside her hand and brush lightly against her forehead. The pain stopped. "No, not at all.at least, not in a bad way." She turned to face him. He looked older somehow, his eyes darker, brown now, like hers, his hair turned grey and wilder. She moved away from him and lifted a hand mirror from the dressing table. Her own eyes were flecked now with dots of silver in the iris and her own hair was noticeably greyed. "You should rest now," Reese said. "Stay," she commanded, pulling him awkwardly onto the bed. "Hold me," she added, curling against his chest, and the Eerith folded his arms around her, stiffly then relaxing. She let his physical presence comfort her, warding against the fears of tomorrow, of uncertain futures. They were not alone, she knew now, never abandoned. So long as the children of Albous lived, she would never be alone. She let the long pent-up tensions flow from her, secure in her place in the whole, content with the knowledge of a future hope, nestled in the protective clasp of the Eerith Reese. She fell to sleep listening to a chest without heartbeat but instead, the steady echo of the crashing of waves upon the shore, and she slept a true and restful sleep for the first time since the war had begun. *** Y is for yesterday, the time that never was. Z is for zeitgeist, who we are, who we will be. Through spectrum and through sound, the feeling and the smell, all the senses bound into a common tongue--one people of one mind become again one being among many. By the language bind them, and by the language, set them free. Selah. M. Keaton ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
