by JDL Rosell
Erik’s head felt tight with pressure, and he ground his teeth. There’s another reason. There’s another explanation. “He gave it to me to keep me well. So I wouldn’t get sick.”
“That was our agreed explanation. And it turned out rather well, did it not? Every time you refused it, you got sick. We had assumed that would occur, of course, but had no way of knowing. Until you.”
Erik shook his head over and over, trying to shake away the logic of his words. “Liar,” he muttered. “You’re a murdering liar.”
“Is it such a betrayal when you are made for a marvelous purpose? It is an honor and privilege to become what you are, what you will grow to be. Or have you not read The Sons Incarnate?”
Erik thrashed against his bounds, trying to get his hands on Vodrun’s neck. “Shut up!” he snarled. “You’re a blighted infidel, just like me. You’re fek on the Font’s walls, Crow.”
“You speak as if you held it in renown.” Vodrun clasped his hands behind his back. “But that is beside the point. The religion aside, the text is quite insightful, particularly for your father and my purposes.”
“I don’t care fek for your damn purpose or any of your lies.” All he could think was: not Fafa, not him, anyone but him…
Vodrun tsked at him. “We have been over this, Erik. I do not lie. I talk to you to reason with you, to show you your destiny. And I cannot free you until you understand.”
Erik rattled his chains and strained forward, letting all his frustration and rage show on his face. “Then send me back to the fucking grave!”
The Kimamali was silent a moment, his eyes downcast. When he looked up, Erik saw they were hard and angry. “You think you were the only one to make sacrifices?” he said softly. “I gave twenty-four years to this work, in this far corner of less than nowhere, toiling in obscurity when I could have had fame and distinction. Twenty-four years; eight of them alone, and the rest with no one but your father to talk to. Everyone hates and fears me here. Do you know what kind of life that is?”
Erik laughed quietly again. “What, should I pity you, uncle? You think I care one fuck for you?”
Vodrun’s mouth tightened, his skin becoming even more taut. “I see you wish for an adjustment period, but we do not have time. Which is why I gave you a control stone.”
Erik’s skin went cold and clammy as quickly as if he’d been dunked in the Fost’Fluum. He worked his mouth, but nothing came out. He couldn’t. He can’t control me. “Liar,” he managed.
“Am I? Then why did I split open the base of your skull?” Only the nekromist’s mouth smiled, his gaze like a coiled viper’s. “It is not a pleasant experience, being controlled, not that I can tell from my subjects’ screams. You should not wish it upon yourself.”
His heart raced, and his head pounded. He looked at his wrists, bound with four loops of rope and heavy chains, raw and red where they cut in. I can’t escape. I can’t get out, not even by death. I’m his slave. He felt so lightheaded that he hoped for a moment it was all a dream. But the chains were too real. The fear, squeezing his ribs with unrelenting fingers, would not ease.
Vodrun studied him with those viper eyes. “I can see your ears are dammed to reason, so I will return when you are in a more accommodating state. We have important things to discuss, Erik. And the Rook, he is not a patient man right now.” His small, pink tongue peeked over his lips. “Not to mention, we must stop a whole world from being torn apart.”
He turned, and Erik suddenly realized he was going to leave him there, bound, alone. He couldn’t stand another moment more. “Wait!” he cried. “We’ll discuss it now. I’ll listen.”
“Do not lie to me, Erik,” Vodrun said dismissively. He looked him up and down. “You are afraid to be alone, knowing what you are. Well, you will have to face it sooner or later.” He turned again to go.
Fear rose in Erik, inundating as sunlight, caustic as acid, filling every hair and nail and pore. His throat was shut, dammed as if with stone. His vision grew dark at the edges, and his head set to splitting. His eyes clung to Vodrun’s receding back like a drowning man to driftwood.
Then the dam burst. He screamed and pulled at his bounds, again and again, straining to do anything but wait, wait, wait for the control to slip away. He became fear, and it devoured him.
Vodrun did not turn back.
At the moment of surrender, when he thought he was empty of everything but despair, other things filled him, things that would have seemed menial were they not so insistent. There were the stenches: his unwashed body, the cloying of death, the thousand formulae, each unique in their poison. They filled his nostrils and wove together like a tapestry of infinite colors, but even as they emerged from the same fabric, Erik saw each individual thread and understood its contribution. Each one wound into his mind, then became part of him. He extended through the air, a cloud of smells, and everything sung in his ears.
Then each of the stones began to pull out from the floor and walls and ceiling and introduce their long lives to him. He saw into every pocket of air, every strain of sediment, every year of their enslavement to the whims of men, and the long, dark sleep before. The tower room became another layer in his mind over the tapestry.
On and on, his consciousness spread, enveloped, learned, understood. Every lonely corner, every bloodstained plank, every link in the chains around his wrist joined in their own tapestries, intermeshing, weaving, never still or complete. And all billowed into Erik, becoming him.
Where the fear had been, calm numbness washed in. He felt warm and weightless, like he’d become a ray of light, like he was free of his bounds and body. Light can’t be bound. Rope and chain can’t contain me. A wild energy sprang up and sang and danced inside of him, thrilling like lightning in the sky, reverberating like the boom of thunder.
Even as he watched Vodrun turn, face widening in surprise, the moment fragmented. Time twisted into itself. Where it had been a string pulled taut, it now twisted in a knot. The moment absorbed others until it contained many, and he became present in them all. He was a prisoner, he was unbound; he swam in a sea, he slept on a reed mat; he was falling in a pool, then caught by a hand of nothing; he was eating a piece of the moon, he was breaking it himself, he was the Moonbreaker; he was dying, he was rising, he was dead.
But of all those moments, he honed in on one: Vodrun’s face frozen in horror, hands around his neck, spine snapping beneath fingers. Whose hands? My hands? And all the while, the little girl’s voice sang the children’s rhyme, over and over: You see, I see—Two-see! Two-see!
Then he was back, the string of time unraveling, and there was just one moment, one location, one body. His hands and knees ached from falling to the stone. His wrists and ankles were raw from struggling against his bounds, and his ribs ached. Yet he was unbound, free.
He raised his head and saw Vodrun, splayed across the floor like an unstrung marionette. It hadn’t been a dream, he could see that now, but he felt nothing towards what had happened. Towards what he’d done. A remembrance of the emptiness that had filled him settled in his gut, and he was not frightened. He knew it now. The Void was part of him.
He stood, and the world grew fuzzy, just the opposite of the clarity of everything before. He left his body. He saw it, standing there, dull-eyed and bruised as some part of him rushed away.
Then, as if he were rain on rocks, he was dashed apart, and knew nothing more.
Eleven
“Rise, Flawed. It is past time for your lessons.”
The voice was dampened behind a layer of fog. He tried drawing a breath, but his mouth seemed stuffed with wool. He sat up, coughing, but it wouldn’t come out. He opened his eyes, but it was as if a white blindfold was across them, and he could see nothing. He tried speaking, but only another cough came out. Panic welled in him, and he pawed at his eyes.
“Mother above… Not another one…” The words were urgent, but the voice sounded calm from the distance. It was as if he floated within a cloud
, and all he touched was soft, no air weighing him down. As if he’d left the world altogether.
Then the cotton evaporated, and his senses came rushing back: the smell of sweat from his night terrors; the scratchy reed bed below him; most of all, the bright, intense light that shone in his eyes. He put his hand up to cover it. It was more painful than the mist, sharper. Everything had been soft and gentle, if dulled. He almost wished it back.
“It is over, Son of Qel’Amode. Straighten your senses.” A woman’s voice, one he recognized, though not well. He couldn’t see who it was, though. She kept shining the light so he couldn’t get a look.
“Can’t see,” he growled. This woman didn’t even know his name and she treated him like this. “Can’t see a blighted thing.”
Her indignation was palpable, but still, the light moved away. He rubbed at his eyes, wondering if his skin looked as dry as it felt, then raised his gaze. The afterimage imprinted dark circles in his vision, but he still recognized the woman enrobed from head to toe.
“High Matron,” Erik said, rising to his feet in some semblance of decorum. As he did, a faint rattle sounded from his bedroll, but he didn't dare look down.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Flawed, I can see you are in much need of expert guidance. I have taken it upon myself to instruct you.”
She would teach him? He couldn’t see any reason to do that other than to torture herself. It was clear she didn’t like him, and he would have thought the education of an ‘fidel Flawed beneath her.
But then a thought occurred to him. Maybe he didn’t just know what she was; maybe she knew him as well.
He felt cold all over. There were signs enough for someone looking for them. He had scars on the back of his neck and down his chest, which the relict attending his bath had seen last night. And his dinner remained uneaten in the corner, showing that he was either very devoted or couldn’t eat at all.
But if she would keep pretending, he would. “High Matron,” he said, “perhaps you might instruct me as to what just happened.” After he asked it, though, he got an itching feeling. What if it was related to him being nekros? What if this, too, revealed him?
But the Senescent waved her hand as if to ward off a bad smell. “Spirits travel through here on occasion.”
“Spirits?” Of course, everyone heard the stories of spirits haunting the night. And he’d even thought he saw one or two, faint mists where none should be. But if it were a common thing here, he doubted it was happenstance, and suspected he knew who was responsible.
“Yes,” she said curtly. “Now, to get started… Firstborn, are you not?”
“Yes, afraid so.” Firstborn sons were said to take after the Firstborn of the Mother, A’Qed, the Twisted Son. Needless to say, mothers tried beating out the first signs of flaws in firstborn sons.
The Senescent sniffed. “Come.” Then she turned and quickly walked from the room.
Why in A’Qed’s burned name come up here for, then? he thought as he started after her. Then he remembered she had dismissed her attendant Yelfild the day before. Now she has to wash her own dirty laundry. It was a good thing, too. He didn’t know what might have happened with that spirit otherwise.
But just before he exited the room, the dream from the night before came back to him with a jolt. No, not a dream—a memory he’d barely let himself think of, that he wished he could scrub away from his mind. But something bothered him about it, something he had let himself forget. He had been bound one moment, then free the next. How had he broken through his chains?
With growing apprehension, he turned back towards his bedroll. With one swift motion, he pulled back the blankets, and his two rattling bedfellows fell to the floor with a clatter. Two short chains, links locked into unbroken loops as if they had been bound around something.
Bound one moment, free the next. His mind went back to that night in the Crow’s tower. At the same time, he seemed to hear an echo of that little girl’s voice: Two-see, two-see…
He hid them beneath the blankets and bolted from the room.
At the end of the hallway, the Senescent was waiting, her eyes everything but patient. But he could hardly even feel her displeasure as his mind spun to think what it could mean.
The storm had passed and sunbeams cheerily welcomed him and the Senescent as they passed through Font Amode’s halls. A glorious morning presented itself outside—a morning he would not enjoy, not with this lesson to suffer through. And strange things to think over.
When he reached her, she moved on again through the halls, leading them to their unknown destination. Straightforward as the layout seemed, Erik couldn’t keep track of it. The building was massive. And all constructed without metalchemy. How many sons went to the Mother building this?
Finally, the cramped halls opened into a high-ceilinged chapel that had a similar layout as Zauhn’s chapels. The dedication in the center was formed of a single block of white sandstone, the pews encircling it in ever-widening ripples, backless and stone to ensure parishioners stayed awake throughout worship. The windowed oculus above was shaped into the Tri-Circle, its stained glass playing rainbows across the sparkling tile floor. Amidst the pews rose sandstone columns that shone brilliantly from the many tall windows surrounding them.
From the walls fell banners with the images of the foremost sancts on them: Sanct Tereas, the Maiden of the Moat, who flushed the Illuvian army away and gained independence for Vestoria; Sanct Niklaus, the first of Er’Lothe’s Recarnates, who later sacrificed his immortality to save the city of Theo’Buur from A’Qed; Sanct Eckard, the Living Testament, author of the seminal text The Sons Incarnate, from which most knowledge of the Breaking stemmed.
All was rich, immaculate, and ostentatious. Very conducive for piety, Erik mused.
The room was empty of other folk but for one, crouched over a window and scrubbing the lower panes with a splotchy rag that left behind streaks wherever it went. The relict was old, plump, and bent, and though she wore undyed relict robes, she did not wear the hood, but let her wiry, white hair spiral freely along her back. A privilege of the elderly, perhaps.
It was to the center of the shifting rainbows that the Senescent strode and mounted the raised circular platform. When she turned towards the pews, Erik took the hint and sat uneasily on the row before her.
“The first of your kind,” the High Matron began, her voice dull enough to put a storm to sleep, “was born of Qel’Amode—”
“You mean my kind, as in…”
She stared. “The first of Flawed mankind was born—”
Erik couldn’t resist. “A’Qed isn’t a man,” he interrupted again. “He’s a god, even when he became incarnated.”
“But he was birthed of this world,” the Senescent said sharply. “The Firstborn is fallible, as are all earthly descendants of the Mother. Only She Herself can be called immortal.”
He leaned his face into his hands in a gesture of supplication, hiding behind it a self-satisfied smile.
Apparently content, High Matron Ada continued. “After she made the world, Qel’Amode drew seed from it and birthed her first son, A’Qed, to protect and care for it.”
This birthing, Erik knew, was supposedly the reason the Mother’s vagina shone down on them still as the sun, saddled for another birth, or to ‘draw seed.’ A randy religion, if you think about it.
“But the Blighted One had not his Mother’s pure essence. As with every man, he was flawed with ambition, pride, and anger. Bitter at his station, A’Qed sought power in the only place the Mother had no hold: the Void inside himself, that grew with his unholy desires, until where it ended and he began became impossible to determine.”
She cleared her throat, then clarified in her dull, instructional voice. “The Void is a place of emptiness, deprived of essence, utterly separated from the Mother and, therefore, all that is good.”
Erik knew it all too well.
“The Firstborn quickly drove Qel’Amode from the world for, as
the Mother of Mothers, she could not fight her son. First, the land was seized, then the waters and all that was in them. Then the sky, and so on, until almost all was dark. All the essence of which Shelter is composed had been swallowed but for a glimmer and a faint corner where the Mother still stood, fading, though she can never fade away.
“This last glimmer was Hope, Shelter’s very essence, born of the Mother’s breast. And Hope, in staring into the emptiness A’Qed had let spread like choker vines, divined of only one way to stop it. Following the world, Hope seeded into the Mother, and from her womb came a second son, the Lastborn, Er’Lothe. For though man is flawed, strength can be forged of his passions, if it is tempered by love for the Mother.”
The Senescent recited the story with all the enthusiasm of a grain merchant perusing his ledgers. Bored, he watched the old relict move to the next window, her hands rising then falling, slow as beads of rain down glass.
“Er’Lothe, newly born and vulnerable, was no match for his brother, who was deep into the Void and its limitless potency. But though she could not fight her firstborn directly, Qel’Amode lent power to her lastborn, filling him with essence so that he shone almost like the sun himself.”
Thus we have the moon, broken though it may be. But that part of the story came later.
“The brothers fought across the Sky and the World, their war waged for a full moon’s cycle, but A’Qed had become entrenched. And though he gave ground, he would not yield.
“The Lastborn begged his Mother for more assistance, for he fought with the last of his strength. Filled with compassion, Qel’Amode yearned to lend her aid, yet knew not how to do so, barring direct intervention. But in her infinite wisdom, she devised a solution. Knowing no other being was as pure of essence as herself, she birthed the Maidens of her own seed and womb, and they, pure beings of light, bore none of the flawed nature of their brothers.”
