BeneathCeaselessSkies_Issue011

by Unknown

  I held my breathing steady, ready to fight the ritual however I could.

  Anansya strummed the gusli in her lap, and sang.

  Under the deft manipulation of her hands-dark-and-bright, the Sun and Moon each claimed the silk for their own, illuminating the strands of silk or inking them. The shadows resolved into familiar silhouettes, that of my father and myself.

  Anansya began the saga with the coming of the selkie slavelords, their shadows falling upon the golden towns along the tsardom’s coast. Folk of light died upon blades of shadow, and darkness spread across the screen. Then, under Sun’s Gate, a flame-red general rode forth with a great army. My father.

  Despite my caution, I was mesmerized by my own tale unfolding on the saga-silk. High atop the Gate, images of my mother, sister, brother and I waved farewell to Father, but when night fell, my silhouette-self escaped the capital to join the crusade in secret. Anansya captured my defiance well, tracing my journey from my time incognito among the soldiers on the march. The ordeal taught me how men lived and helped one another, and in their company I honed my swordsmanship and learned their hopes and dreams. We played games of skill and chance, like aiming the dregs of our smuggled wine at upturned bright helmets, or betting on the toss of dark knucklebones.

  But on a twilight march, Fabek recognized me through my disguise and commanded his guards to arrest me. Licks of golden light on the silk framed my journey to the Scrimshaw Tower, to be unmasked before my father. Atop the bone-bright spire, the silhouette of my father greeted and chastised me through song, and thus began our campaign together as father and son.

  The war of light and shadow raged on the silk. When laced light thawed like ice, the Tsar and I engaged Hraken’s mercenaries in epic battle. Starlight and dark sky struggled ceaselessly for the land as the Sun and Moon once did. I lifted the golden banner of the tsardom high, eager to lay siege to Palace Austere.

  So well did Anansya tell the tale, little did I realize until too late that her ritual had already snared me, thrusting me into the tapestry of shadows. I became the hero laced with light, while my body sat mindless before the screen. The past had become present through Anansya’s magic, the players and props conjured from my memories and fringed by luminescence. I could feel an odd thinness to my flesh. From the corner of my eye, I could see through the silken illusion to my real body in the Obsidian Room.

  The world of the shadowplay forced me to retell my history scene by scene. On a sun-drenched day in late summer, my father the Tsar descended on the stolen palace with his full army in a bid to win back Austere. He stood with his archers on the western edge of the screen, challenging Hraken.

  I tried to tear myself away from where I had stood during that battle, but I could not leap upon my father and push him to the ground, away from the fate I knew awaited him. Selenja was right. Anansya was strong, and the tide of her telling had me snared. It was all I can do to hang on to my identity.

  The smell of battlefield blood assailed my nostrils, and a storm of dark arrows filled the silken sky. The shadow-Hraken stood upon the battlements and raised his spear of white bone in one hand, and with the other he poured light from a black-jeweled cup. The arrows fell through him like hail through shadow.

  Nothing I could do stopped my father from stepping into the open light. I was helpless as Anansya sang us swift towards his death.

  Dark Hraken hurled his weapon. Fast as a bolt of lightning and unerring, the spear skewered my sire through the heart. I raced to his side and held his body again, even as light seeped like blood out of his wounds.

  Shadow-time marched relentlessly towards the end that Anansya intended. She sang of the morning after the Tsar’s death, when the denizens of the east awakened to leaves of gold and flame, as though autumn had fallen too soon. She sang of the black candles that burned in Orsazan, when I led the city in mourning for my father. Soon she would sing of stealing my body, and when shadow-time caught up to real time, it would destroy me.

  But there were episodes in my life that Anansya would never know, tales I had never told. Because she couldn’t script my life exactly, she skipped the parts she didn’t know. When she ended the scene where I sequestered myself in Scrimshaw Tower for a month-long vigil, there was an instant when I gained solitude. I used that moment to re-assert control of my body and struggled to speak. “Selenja! Help me, my love!”

  My words came out in a whisper. Did she hear me?

  Anansya’s incantation grew louder. My blood felt like it was on fire.

  “Selenja! Find your soul in your reflection!” I urged.

  Startled, Selenja turned her head towards the wall and met her own eyes in the reflection. Her hands faltered. “Dominin! Take my strength!” she cried.

  I felt my beloved’s will adding to my own. Selenja’s image appeared beside me on the silken canvas and took my free hand. Together we resisted the combined power of Anansya and Pol, trying to bend the shadow-world away from the witch’s script. Anansya, however, conjured a gleaming bolt that sped towards Selenja, forcing her to release my hand and vanish. But her touch had given me the strength I needed.

  Anansya could not banish Selenja entirely from the canvas, however. She was integral to my story, and soon the shadow-Selenja came to seduce me. We could have abandoned our cares to the wind to relive those tender moments, but that would let Anansya regain control. Instead, we made small alterations to the remembered past, like during my first audience with the witch, Selenja dropped a handkerchief that had not been there before. When we assaulted the castle walls, I fired more arrows at mercenaries upon the parapets, seeking to kill more than nine. But Anansya and Pol blotted out my new missiles before they hit, forcing the events to adhere to the true past.

  Beyond the silk, Fabek—already concerned by Selenja’s sudden cry—had noticed the changes in the play. I caught a glimpse of him slipping the dagger from his boot and hiding it in his sleeve.

  I slung my bow over my shoulder and raced for the walls, but chose a different ladder to scale. Once again, I sunk an arrow into the Stormlord’s chest, but instead of climbing down a rope, I leapt and landed in a bale of hay. I drew my saber and fought to reach shadow-Hraken, but made focused on parries instead of cuts to push past his defenders. By the time my sword took Hraken’s head in the shadowplay, Selenja and I had altered the script enough to wrest away a measure of power from the puppet-witch.

  I had to play my trump now. “Hraken of the Storm!” I shouted to the darkness. “These shadow-witches stole your trappings to make these puppets, so you have grievances against us all. Your hide ties you to this ritual. If you seek your revenge, come!”

  Hraken’s shadow stumbled to its feet and grabbed its severed head. “You would use my curse to save your own skin, Tsarevitch?”

  “Certain death or a slim chance of survival? I choose the latter,” I said.

  The balance of power on the saga-silk shifted with Hraken’s arrival. Now that Anansya and Pol must also contend with the Stormlord’s spirit, they were no longer dominating the struggle against Selenja and me. To maintain their hold on the spell, they manifested on the silk as well. Our three factions now vied for the ritual’s magic, each trying to bend the outcome to our will. When one faction began seizing power, the other two beat it back. If one tried to hurt another, it left itself vulnerable to the third.

  Deadlock.

  The lamp-flame flickered.

  “End this now,” Selenja begged of me and Anansya both. “If none of us yields when that flame goes out, the ritual will consume us all! Can’t you feel it?”

  She was right. I felt the magic that brought us onto the screen crushing us cloth-thin.

  Despite Selenja’s warning, no one deigned to answer.

  “If that does not sway you, then consider Fabek beyond the silk,” I said to Anansya. “I have instructed him to slay me if I am robbed of my body, and for the sake of the tsardom, Fabek will carry out his orders. The question is, will he interpret this sudden silenc
e as proof of the ritual’s triumph? The longer we delay, the more likely he is to slit someone’s throat. It might be mine. It might be yours. Think on that.”

  “How do we come to an accommodation?” Anansya said at last.

  “No!” said Hraken. “You invoked my curse, and I will have vengeance against you all, even if it means my own destruction!”

  “There’s unparalleled power in this ritual, to which we all have a claim.” I directed their attention to my real body and the five full goblets before it. “These are the cups wrested from you and your lieutenants, Hraken. Five Dooms of the underworld, five water-curses. Shadow, Oblivion, Frost, Silence, and Madness. We can divert the ritual’s power to imbue each cup with one of those dooms. We will take turns naming one of us to a curse until all five of us are bound. Then, with all five of us seizing control of my sword, we will topple the cups and let the curses spill forth.”

  “I came to claim a new body, not play with curses,” Anansya said.

  “If the curse is phrased right, it may free a body for the taking,” Hraken said, clearly tempted by the chance at a second life.

  “We will decide the first to match a name to a curse,” I suggested. “That person names a victim and words the curse as he pleases. The one named will choose the next to be cursed, and so forth.”

  Anansya laughed. “You’re clever, Tsarevitch, but I see wrinkles in your plan. Obviously, you can’t name the first person who chooses, since that would leave someone out of the chain of curses. And the last two people in the chain have no real choice in which foe they name, do they? But I will agree to this.”

  “And I,” said Hraken.

  Off-silk, the flame began to sputter. Fabek knelt next to Pol’s body, and poised his dagger so that the tip was merely a hair away from his blank, staring eye.

  Pol gulped. “Hurry. Decide who starts the chain!”

  I leaned closer to Selenja, overlapping her shadow. “You must name Hraken, or else we risk another deadlock.” The Stormlord was certain to curse me first, which would give me the opportunity to foil Anansya with a carefully-worded curse.

  Selenja nodded. “Whatever happens, Dominin, I want you to know I love you,” she said.

  “And I you,” I replied, and kissed her.

  The five of us pooled our wills and reshaped the ritual to fit our covenant. Tendrils of light swirled around our silhouettes and even spun off the silken screen to twist above the goblets. Fabek recoiled at the sight.

  Together, we spoke the name of the one we chose to shape the first curse.

  “Anansya,” said Anansya.

  “Anansya,” said Pol.

  “Hraken,” said Selenja.

  “Hraken,” I said.

  “Anansya,” said Hraken, surprising me.

  With our pronouncements, specks of golden light shimmered around Anansya’s silhouette.

  The Stormlord laughed. “You thought I’d name myself, Tsarevitch? No, I wish to see you and the witch destroy one another, for that is what you deserve.”

  “Then I will oblige,” said Anansya. “Dominin, I give you the Doom of Oblivion. Let your body forget the tenor of your soul, and let your soul not remember your life or love. When you become a mindless shell, my soul will come to dwell in your abandoned flesh.”

  A tendril of light dipped into the wine in an edgemost cup in the line before my body, giving it a ghostly glow.

  The shape of her curse was much as I predicted. She intended to follow through on her plan to become me.

  It was my turn, but which curse on whom? Pol, Selenja, or Hraken? Shadow, Frost, Silence, or Madness?

  In the Obsidian Room, Fabek moved behind my body and raised the knife in a quaking hand. I had to choose quickly.

  I could name Selenja and spare her the worst of the curses, but I would lose the chance to remove Hraken as a threat. But if I named Hraken next, I knew the likely fate to befall Selenja. Yet, my beloved was only one woman. I loved her, to be sure, but my first duty was to the people of the tsardom. That was the legacy my father left me. I squeezed Selenja’s hand. “Hraken, I give you the Doom of Frost. The cold of the grave will follow you always, no matter what refuge your soul finds. Let the chill cripple the flesh of any body you steal and thwart your sorceries and schemes....” That was how I had planned to end the curse, but I could not leave it so. “...until a true love’s kiss ousts your soul and frees the accursed one to live again.”

  A tentacle of light illuminated the middle cup.

  “So you would rob me of the joy of living again, Tsarevitch?” said Hraken. “Then I shall take pleasure in taking revenge upon you. Do I take the body of the man who stole my pelt, or the harlot who tricked the secret of my pelt from me? The latter, I think, should twist the dagger in your heart. Selenja, I give you the Doom of Shadow. I banish your soul to the shadow you cast, bound to your body until the Falls of the underworld run dry. Your empty body will become mine instead, and I will live again in your flesh.”

  “No!” I cried, but Hraken had spoken his curse, and the ritual touched the cup between the two already ensorceled. Even if my kiss forced Hraken out of Selenja’s body, she would not be returned to me because of the Stormlord’s dictum.

  In the Obsidian Room, Fabek whispered words I could not hear as he touched the edge of his knife to my throat. Perhaps he prayed to the gods, or begged my forgiveness.

  “It’s all right, my love.” Selenja touched my cheek. She turned to Pol. “You and I have suffered Anansya’s cruelty too long, my friend, and we cannot suffer her playing tyrant in Dominin’s body. With Madness and Silence left, there is only one way to ensure that she never hurts another again.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Pol,” warned Anansya. “You were always the stronger. Side with me, and I will make you the greatest sorcerer of shadows the world has ever—”

  “Shut up, you old crone,” Pol said. “I have been your puppet these long years because you promised me power, but all you have given us are breadcrumbs while you devoured the lion’s share of our ventures. What do you propose, Selenja?”

  “I would grant you Silence, the least of the Dooms, if you curse Anansya with a specific Madness,” Selenja said. “Let her madness be the unshaking belief that she is none other than my beloved Dominin, upholding his virtuous ways no matter which body she steals. If Dominin is lost to Oblivion, then she will have no choice but to become the man she destroys. Such is the only way to save the tsardom.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Well played.”

  “Very well,” Pol said. “Say it.”

  “Pol, I give you the Doom of Silence,” Selenja said. “Though you must live your life mute, I bless you with true silence when you ply your thieving skills towards the good of the tsardom. Use it well.”

  The other edgemost cup filled with brightness.

  “That leave you, Anansya,” said Pol. “I—”

  Anansya turned on her apprentice and leapt upon him, her black bony fingers throttling his throat.

  I unslung my shadow bow, nocked an arrow of light and fired. The arrow struck Anansya in the back, and she released Pol.

  Pol caught his breath and blurted out his curse. “I give you the Doom of Madness, Anansya! Mad to believe you’re none other than Dominin Tsarevitch, in whichever body you reside!”

  With that, the last magical tendril flowed into the remaining cup.

  All five of us spirits hurtled into my body for the final part of our ritual of curses. The cups still must spill before the curses are fulfilled. I wore my scabbard on my left side, and the cups of Shadow and Oblivion were the rightmost before me. If I could knock over the rest but prevent those two from tipping, that might yet save us from doom!

  But all five of us had the same idea, and fought to control different parts of my body. Even worse, Fabek might panic and cut my throat. Hraken seized my right hand first, trying to knock over all the cups. Selenja and I fought him, forcing my hand to reach for the hilt of my saber instead.

  M
eanwhile, Anansya took control of my left hand, reached up and grabbed Fabek’s wrist to stay the blade. Pol took the opportunity to use my voice, calling out: “Not yet!”

  Fabek fought to keep his knife a threat. “Prove you are Dominin.”

  Hraken abandoned his attempt to control my right arm, and forced my left foot to kick forward. He hit the leftmost goblet, the Cup of Silence, and spilled its curse upon Pol.

  Silence!

  Pol lost control of my voice. His surprise at his curse broke his concentration and forced him back into his real body.

  Without Hraken’s interference, Selenja and I gained control of the right hand and drew the sword, sweeping it from left to right. The steel smashed into the Cup of Madness and tipped it.

  Madness!

  Anansya was ripped out of my body and thrust back into hers. Her hold over my left hand was broken, and Fabek’s blade drew blood from my neck. I relinquished control over my right hand to Selenja and rushed to seize control of the left, preventing the sharp edge from slicing deeper.

  Anansya held her hands trembling before her eyes. “How...? Selenja, Fabek! The witch has taken my body!”

  The witch believed she was me. However, she would not take my body until the Cup of Oblivion fell.

  Hraken seized my right foot and kicked towards the cups bearing my and Selenja’s curses.

  I sped my thoughts towards helping Selenja with my right hand, driving the saber towards Hraken’s cup. Just as our blade knocked the Cup of Frost over, the foot controlled by Hraken hit the Cup of Shadow.

  Frost and Shadow!

  I regained control of my body, slowing the saber’s edge so it merely tapped the Cup of Oblivion. Only a single droplet trickled down the side of the goblet.

  “Oblivion,” I whispered. Almost.

  On the other side of the silk, Selenja curled up and hugged her knees, shivering. Hraken had taken her body, but suffered my curse. The Selenja I knew was gone, banished to her own shadow.