Lady of Drith

by Chad Huskins

  The resemblance is uncanny, she thought.

  Drea flipped forward a couple of decades until she reached the portrait of Bor Syphen, the man that Lady Blackveil said had been killed in a duel by Zennit Kalder at the opening ceremonies of the Temple of Loraci. They look the same.

  Drea flipped forward some more, looking at the portraits of Wendel Syphen, Ozlin Syphen, and Taephos Syphen. Sometimes they wore thick beards, sometimes they had hair, and sometimes they were bald. But all of them had the same hawklike eyes, the same egg-shaped head, the same chin. The artists had also captured their height, their demeanor, their shoulders, everything.

  It couldn’t be a simple coincidence.

  Drea’s mother had taught her the masculine art of logic, and in logic, the proper assessment of evidence was imperative. Think clearly, don’t jump to any conclusions, she told herself.

  Yet her mother had also told Drea to trust her instincts—she’d also said it in Drea’s dream, when she appeared in front of the Charred Temple. And even though that had been a dream, Drea felt it was her mother speaking to her in some way. Also, Halorax had encouraged Drea, saying her instincts were strong.

  Trust them.

  Suddenly, Drea recalled the first conversation she’d ever had with Vaedris and her new-sisters, in which Vaedris had casually mentioned that House Syphen’s previous patriarch, a man named Daedosh, had died almost two decades ago. In his will, Daedosh Syphen had left everything to Phaedos, an estranged cousin that no one had ever met before. Then, when Vaedris was barely three years old, Phaedos Syphen suddenly appeared in Drith, and took over the estate of House Syphen, just as her parents were dying of plague.

  Drea flipped through the pages of the genealogies until she came to a portrait of Daedosh Syphen. It was the same egg-shaped head on the same well-built frame. The same deep-set, hawklike eyes. The only difference was that Daedosh had a long, flowing white beard, which covered most of his face.

  And for Drea, the final piece of evidence came from Lord Hiss himself. When Drea had asked him if he could curse himself to death, Hiss’s answer had been blunt. “It’s possible,” he’d said. “Though a far more powerful curse has been laid on me. The curse of long life.”

  And the person that cursed him with that long life was Lord Syphen, Drea thought. And if he can curse others with long life, who’s to say he can’t curse himself?

  Thinking back on what Lady Blackveil had said about the Temple of the Hidden Door, and how they had been around for perhaps hundreds of years, it made Drea think of how hard it would be for such a conspiracy to carry on from one generation to the next.

  You would need a great leader, she thought. One with a singular vision, and capable of being there at every step to make sure that nothing went wrong. The Hidden Door would need to be guided by a careful hand, and it would not be able to survive with a new leader every few years. Not with them all following The Way and constantly trying to overthrow one another.

  Drea looked down at the portraits on the pages. The resemblance was too uncanny. Her artist’s eye was certain of it. And, with increasing conviction, Drea came to believe that she wasn’t looking at the portraits of a dozen separate men.

  No, I’m looking at the portrait of just one man, she thought. Phaedos Syphen.

  Numbly, Drea put all the books back where she found them, and made her way back to the cottage. When she got there, Thryis was lying by the fire. She sat up quickly and asked Drea where she’d been. Drea didn’t answer, she just laid down beside Thryis and held her by the fire.

  Drea stared into the flames, half wondering if she’d dreamt tonight’s terrifying ordeal, and half wondering if she’d made too much of a leap in logic when it came to the portraits of the past Syphenus patriarchs.

  It wasn’t too long before she fell asleep, her mind drifting from one phantom threat to another. There were dark clouds and dark shapes, images of her mother by the fireplace committing suicide, her father’s last words…

  And then, all at once, the darkness cleared and Drea stood in a familiar field. The grass was whispering, the sun was on her back, the wind was humming in her ears. When she turned around, she found that she was alone at the entrance of the Charred Temple.

  Its door stood open.

  From inside, a voice softly whispered, “Drea.”

  Something compelled her to go in, something within her own heart. It was a calling. A summons.

  “Drea,” the voice said again. It was calm, but persistent. Refined, and inviting. “If it’s control you want, you have but to step inside.”

  Drea hesitated. She took a step back, recalling the words of Lady Blackveil. And if ever you see the Host in your dreams again, run.

  “I heard what you whispered to Hyra,” the voice said. “I know your thoughts. I know what you have planned. I can help you. I can help you with all of it. You took a chance listening to Lady Blackveil, now at least hear my side of the story.”

  Drea took another step back, then stopped. It’s just a dream, she told herself. It can’t hurt you. And what would it hurt to hear him out, to finally confront the phantom of your dream?

  She hesitated only a moment longer.

  Then, for the first time ever, Drea Kalder stepped inside the Charred Temple.

  : The Man in the Charred Temple:

  Her footsteps sounded hollow and meek on the ancient stone. The doorway was dark, but behind her was a luminous sun, which cast light into the room and painted the floor with her shadow.

  The Charred Temple was chilly. Drea stepped further inside, moving slowly, as though she suspected a trap. Perhaps there was reason to.

  The Charred Temple had been well made, even if it was now burnt. There were white marble pillars set apart every twenty feet, each one with runes of unknown origins. The pillars were blackened at their base, but remained precious white at their tops.

  The farther she went inside, the less the sunlight helped. Still, what light there was hinted at a great hall all around her. Drea looked up at a tall, vaulted ceiling, from which hung chandeliers made of iron and crystal. The chandeliers were beautiful things, completely incongruous with the rest of the scene.

  Something crunched beneath her heel. She looked down, and let out a gasp. There, gaping up at her in a permanent and silent scream, was the blackened skeleton of one of the Charred Temple’s former inhabitants.

  The skeleton lay on the floor with its arms outstretched, as though the person had been reaching for something, or someone. She could not tell the corpse’s sex; it was too thoroughly burned. Around its neck, the corpse wore a necklace, its chain made of gold and its amulet encrusted with a dark red stone. A crixstone. Sapped of all darklight.

  Drea continued on. There was a gentle breeze moving through the Charred Temple, one permeated by the lonely cries of forgotten souls. It frightened her.

  There was a door at the back of thie great hall, and she stepped through into a courtyard, which was black and miserable. Dead trees, some of them still emitting smoke from the fire that had killed them, peppered the courtyard. Wicked vines were growing out of a fountain that was filled with brackish water. On the other side was a pair of rock pylons, sculpted into a perfect gateway and crowned by cornices.

  Drea stepped around more charred bodies, never stepping over them. Even in her dreams, she was respectful of the dead.

  She continued through the pylons and entered a chamber that was immense and circular. There was a raised ceiling, from which hung more chandeliers made of iron, only these had candles lit within each crystal. The candles provided enough light to illuminate the table below them, as well as the figure seated behind that table.

  The table was wide and rectangular, and it looked like it had once been of some importance. She had once seen her father meet his business partners around such tables. This one was blackened by fire, yet draped in a perfectly red and wrinkle-free cloth. Atop that cloth were silver plates of food.

  There were cutlets and grapes, beans, car
rots, cabbages, fresh salted pork, peas, apples, oranges, squirrel roasted on a stick, soups and potatoes, garlic and tomatoes.

  The man seated before this banquet held a pitcher in his hand, and from it he poured a dark red wine into a jewel-encrusted cup. His hands were old, dried, and cracked, like old clay jars. He wore rings, all of them made of plain steel or iron, though twisted into strange designs. Two of them were encrusted with stygian stones.

  Silence filled the room. Silence, and the occasional sound of eating utensils scraping across a plate.

  Drea stood there a while, waiting to be acknowledged. The Host sipped at his wine, plucked a slice of the salted pork, and took a bite. He never looked up at her.

  Fear hardened in Drea’s gut. All at once, she realized she had not listened to her mother’s warnings. “Don’t go to him, flower,” she had said to Drea months ago, when she had dreamed this dream on the morning of Fedarus’s death.

  She felt pinpricks all over her body. She started to back out of the room, but when she did, the Host finally looked up at her through hooded eyes. “Where are you going, Daughter of Two Houses?”

  She froze in place. She could not move. Whether it was the common self-imposed immobilization of dreams or the starkness of fear, Drea could not say. She only knew her body would obey her.

  She stood there, sweating, her heart beating in her chest like it wanted to leap out of her and throttle her for her stupidity.

  The Host went back to his eating. His fork and knife scrape-scrape-scraped across his silver plate. He downed his cup of wine, belched, refilled it, then set it down and looked at her. His smile was unwelcome, it conveyed both contempt and casual play. The crow’s feet around his eyes etched outward like spider webs.

  He looked at her for a while, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and said, “Do you think it’s possible for something to come from nothing?”

  Drea just looked at him, suddenly aware that this was no dream. It wasn’t. However, neither was it happening in reality. There was something going on here, some trickster’s trick that had pulled her into a realm where a Charred Temple sat in a field of whispering grass, and Drea’s mind or spirit had been lured into it.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. “What is this? Am…am I dead? Where is this place?”

  “That’s four questions,” he said. “I asked only one. How can I answer all of your questions if you cannot be bothered to answer one of mine?”

  “I…I-I don’t know…what question…?”

  “Is it possible for something to come from nothing?”

  Drea swallowed. “N-no.”

  “So you believe everything has a beginning, including time itself?”

  “I…that is, yes—”

  “Interesting,” the Host said, leaning back and rolling up the sleeves of his brown robe. “Interesting. So then, by your reckoning, time itself must have come from somewhere?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you? You’ve just said so. Something cannot come from nothingness, which means time must have come from something else.” He leaned back farther in his chair. “So then, what did time come from? Answer quickly, or I will kill you.”

  “The gods,” Drea answered at once. She was still unable to move, her whole body was stone. Only her mouth worked.

  “Time comes from the gods, hm? Is there a specific god that created time? Which god is it that you were taught created time?”

  “Temporas,” she said quickly.

  “So, who created Temporas?”

  “The All-God, Mezu.”

  “And who created him?”

  “He…” Her mind fumbled for a minute. “Nobody created him. He was made when the universe first came into existence.”

  “I see,” the Host said, scratching at the gray stubble on his chin and smiling broadly. “And who created the universe? The sun? The stars?”

  “I…”

  “Answer quickly!”

  “I don’t know!” she shouted quickly. “Please, what is this place? Please, just…just let me go—”

  “But you just said that something cannot come from nothing,” the Host reasoned. “If that’s the case, then we have to figure this out. For someone must have created the universe, and the gods themselves. Someone, or something. But then, someone must have also created those creators. And someone must have come before even them. On and on we go, backward towards the beginning of all things, seeing lots of somethings. But what was that first something?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

  “So now you see the paradox,” the Man said. “If something cannot come from nothing, then how are we even here? The answer: We aren’t. You and I are not actually here, Drea, Daughter of Two Houses. Do you believe that? That we are not anywhere? That, in order for us to be here, at some point in the past something would have had to emerge from nothingness?”

  “I…yes.”

  “Yes you understand, or yes you’re agreeing with me?”

  “I understand.” Drea had never felt so powerless, not even when she had surrendered to House Syphen. She hadn’t even felt this useless when she found her mother’s corpse the morning after she had died, or when holding her father and watching him bleed to death.

  The Host looked her up and down, appraising his new plaything. Then, he held up three ringed fingers, and smiled at her again. “Three riddles,” he said. “I’ll give you three riddles and we’ll see which, if any, you can answer correctly. If you do not answer at least one of them correctly, I will kill you.”

  This is a dream, Drea thought. It has to be! I was wrong in thinking it was real! This cannot be—

  “However,” the Host continued, “besides your life, there’s a special prize for winning. For each correct answer, I will grant you an Item of Power.” The Host opened his hands, a gesture of benevolent offering. “Something from nothing,” he said.

  Drea opened her mouth to ask what all of this was about, but she recalled stories she had heard about trickster demons—kamei, the loremasters called them—and how if a person spoke out of turn, the demons could twist the person’s words into a curse against themselves. She remained quiet.

  “Shall we begin with the first riddle?” the Host asked.

  Drea swallowed the lump in her throat.

  “I live only in the light of day, yet if the sun’s light touches me, I die. What am I, Drea?” He opened his hand, and there, having materialized out of nowhere, was an hourglass. He turned it over and said, “You have one minute to answer.”

  Drea racked her brain. The tightening in her gut and the panic in her mind caused her wits to retreat. She took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then let it out slowly.

  Her mind cleared, she started thinking on each word of the riddle—

  “Answer quickly!” the Host insisted.

  Suddenly she was panicking again. She said the first thing that popped into her head. “A rock!”

  “A feeble attempt,” the Host chortled, plucking a grape from one of the plates and tossing it into his mouth. “Let’s try it again. Answer me this: If the gods are all-powerful, can they then make a boulder so heavy that even they cannot lift it?” He turned the hourglass over again.

  Drea winced. “That’s not a riddle,” she said. “That’s…that’s a philosophical question, one debated by priests—”

  “Yet, there is an answer.”

  “No, there isn’t! It’s a device to provoke thinking, there’s no clear answer—”

  “Yes, there is.”

  The Kalderus rage rose in her, and she shouted, “Then why don’t you tell me what it is?!”

  “Third and final riddle,” the Host said, taking another swig of wine. He was enjoying himself profusely, drinking in her fear and relishing every ounce. Then, he recited a poem.

  “I am uttered first, before all others like me,

  These others are my twins, yet not exactly like me,

  In this poem, there are fifty-
two like me,

  In myself, there are, in fact, three of me,

  What am I, exactly?”

  Once more, he turned the hourglass over.

  The room went silent, and all that Drea could hear was the scrape-scrape-scraping of utensils as the Host went back to his meal. For a moment, for a few precious seconds, Drea convinced herself she needn’t worry. This is all dream. Yes, it’s a dream, after all. Nothing to fear. You cannot die from a simple dream.

  Yet her mind was already racing for answers. Panic set in, and the sweat running down her arms and down her brow felt all too real.

  Drea closed her eyes and thought back to some of the games she and her mother would play when she was a little girl. All small children played at the riddling game, but most of them were just silly things. However, she remembered her mother telling her that there were two types of riddles: enigmas and conundrums.

  “Enigmas are riddles whose answers are expressed either in metaphorical or allegorical language, and require ingenuity for their solution,” her mother had said. “Whereas conundrums rely on puns, either in their questions or in their answering.”

  That did not help much.

  Or did it?

  Drea closed her eyes and imagined a scroll, and on it she wrote the numbers three and fifty-two, for those might be key numbers in solving the riddle. Her goal was now to find three of something within the answer itself, and yet fifty-two of the same thing contained within the poem…

  Fifty-two like me, she thought. In myself, there are three of me.

  She tried not to focus on the fact that the grains of sand were falling in the hourglass. She tried not to focus on the fact that she had blatantly ignored Lady Blackveil’s warning by meeting with the Host. She tried to ignore the fact that this was all just a dream.

  She ignored it all, and started counting the letters in the poem, searching for sequences of three and fifty-two. She stopped trying to imagine writing it all down and just started saying it out loud to herself…