by D. T. Kane
“Dark paths on a rain-drenched night, Stephan. Haven’t five-plus millennia taught you to knock? I’d never barge into your memory parlor without announcing myself.”
Stephan frowned at him, the expression accentuating the wrinkles that had only recently begun to form at the edges of his mouth.
“You didn’t deign to imagine a door into your parlor, Master Horologer.”
“Well, that’s because I don’t really like vis—”
“And you’ll address me by my title when I don the robes.”
Devan suppressed a grin at that. He knew very well that Stephan liked to be called by his title even when he wasn’t wearing the robes. But at least then he wasn’t so serious.
“Of course, Virtuo af Virtuo,” he replied. Most of the others had long since translated their titles from the old tongue. Not Stephan.
“It’s poor form for any of our kind to be late, but doubly so for you, Devan. How can we expect you to keep the Path—light time itself!—safe if you can’t even keep a simple meeting?”
Devan maintained his expression of respectful insolence. Truth be told, he’d completely forgotten about the meeting. But it wouldn’t do to admit that. Better to deflect than engage Stephan directly.
“Protect the Path? That’s precisely why I’m late. Don’t you see all these books?”
Stephan folded his arms, glare narrowing.
“I’ve found no fewer than six unexplained alterations in the past two days alone. All in seemingly unrelated texts. Do you know what that means?”
“Of course I know what it means. Why do you think—”
Devan spoke over him. “That means six independent rogue strands. If the Path frays anymore it’ll snap. Something big must be causing it. I don’t have time for meetings, particularly one called by an Aldur who won’t even speak to me.”
Stephan’s face softened and he grasped Devan by the shoulder. That only made him feel worse.
“Don’t give me that look, Stephan. It’s in the past. My past anyway. Still in his present, it seems.” Devan lifted a shoulder, trying to free himself from Stephan’s failed attempt at comfort. “But you need to listen to this. It’s a bit complicated, jumps back and forth through time. But if you bear with me, you’ll understand before long and...”
Stephan didn’t exactly interrupt him, but his narrowed eyes might as well have been an exclamation. Devan let his voice trail off. Sometimes, you just had to let Stephan bully you.
“Haven’t I been telling you for some time of great trials ahead?” he asked, once certain Devan would remain silent. His voice grew heavy. “They may now be upon us.”
Devan raised an eyebrow. He’d always assumed Stephan’s forebodings were just the paranoia of eons. The look on his long-time mentor’s face certainly didn’t look febrile, though. It shown with the trepidation of one who knew when true concern was warranted. Devan’s stomach quickly turned to a cold pit.
“You know I admire your dedication,” Stephan went on, the darkness of his expression lifting somewhat. “But the strands of which you speak are precisely why the Virtuo Pettur has called the meeting. If you’ve some grand theory, the entire Conclave ought to hear it.”
Stephan frowned, though Devan thought he was trying to look reassuring.
“And it will do you good to see the rest of us. You spend too much time alone.”
Devan shook his head. The Virtuo Pettur, Master of Elements. Devan just called him Val. Or had, anyway, back when they’d been speaking to one another. Val hadn’t the least bit of interest in horology, resolution of the anomalies that constantly threatened the one true timeline. He couldn’t have discovered anything Devan didn’t already know.
“I’ve no interest in seeing the Virtuo Pettur. Or anyone else, for that matter, Stephan.”
Stephan snapped his long, dark hair back over his shoulder. He always did that when he was annoyed. The silver streaks running through it caught in the firelight.
“I won’t have your personal enmities interfere with your duties.” His voice pitched low in anger. “Everyone is already there. Your presence is required.”
Devan sighed, scratching the scar at the edge of his eye. To conceal his inability to meet Stephan’s burning stare, he pulled his chronometre from the recesses of his robe. Flipping it open, he noted sourly that Stephan wasn’t exaggerating. Ten of its twelve hands pointed to the Conclave. Everyone else really was there. Then the eleventh hand snapped to the Conclave as well. He looked up.
Stephan was gone.
Muttering something about haughty old men, Devan shoved his timepiece away and flopped back into his chair, legs hanging over one of the arms.
“While the others prattle on, we’re going to get some more work done, Agar.”
The statue’s lion continued to rear back, not deigning to reply.
“So many rogue strands at once,” Devan mumbled to himself as he reached across the writing table for another book. “There must be a connection.” Stephan had tried to hide his worry, but Devan hadn’t been fooled. If the most powerful of the Aldur was concerned, then there really was trouble. And Devan might very well be the only one who could stop it. There was a reason the Conclave had raised him to Master Horologer despite being the youngest of their number; young being a relative term amongst beings who lived for many thousands of years, of course.
He rubbed the burn from his eyes—reading and writing for days tended to do that—rested chin on hand, and propped the massive volume against the statue. Emblazoned across the front in bold, golden letters was A Complete History of the Keepers: Their Leaders, Customs, and Deeds. The tome’s text was written in a flowing, but hurried hand; a stray drop of ink here, a smudge there. The pages were old and yellow and smelled familiar, like a beloved elder’s sitting room.
Devan traced his index finger across the page, mouthing words as he went. The volume began with a brief history of the Keepers. How Agar had founded them as the overseers of the Symposium, a center of learning for any who sought knowledge of the elements. Their mission was to ensure that such knowledge was never again kept from the masses as it had been in the land of Sykt, from which Agarsfar’s founders had fled.
The Keepers also served as one of the three arms of the land’s government, along with the conservative Parents of Tragnè and the Commons, a body of twenty laypersons who were selected at random every two years to serve in the sixty-person Senate.
This was all history Devan knew by heart of course, but he reviewed it often. All of it. One had to know time like an intimate bedfellow in order to keep it safe. The smallest deviations could indicate the early onset of grave ills. The Aldur existed to stop such anomalies before they caused the Path to wander, and to direct the Path back on its intended course when it was afflicted.
He flipped through pages, slowing when he arrived at a page headed The Grand Master Keepers—A Chronology. Each Grand Master Keeper was listed and underlined, followed by the years of his or her tenure and a short description of deeds (or not so short, depending on notoriety), beginning with Agar himself, 25 D.A. to 1 D.A. Devan scanned over the familiar summary: Country’s namesake, founder of the Symposium and Keepers, sacrificed himself at the Valley of Ancients to achieve victory over the Shadow Lord Ralmos, King of the Elsewhere, Kahn of Despair.
Devan flipped past Agar’s entry until he arrived at Rikar Bladesong, 977 A.A. to 1014 A.A. The list of deeds that appeared under Rikar’s name was similarly impressive. By a Linear’s standards, at least. Champion of Agar’s Tourney; full Keeper by age 20; High Keeper by 30; Blade Master Keeper; successful sponsor of legislation in 1014 to reopen relations with the North after centuries of embargo. The vote had been 31 for, 29 against (eidetic memory was part of Devan’s job). Rikar and his young apprentice, Taul Lightsblade, had only garnered 12 votes from the Keepers, their own brothers, but had swayed 19 members of the Commons to win the measure. Of course, none of the Parents of Tragnè had voted for it.
Devan grimaced as he r
ealized he’d gotten wrapped up in his reading. Aldur had a sort of proclivity for history, and there was no greater distraction than a library full of it. But he wasn’t reading for recreation. Unexplained changes in history were a sure sign of something gone awry. It was for such aberrations he searched.
He turned the page. Without even looking, he knew what it would say: Taul Lightsblade, succeeded Rikar Bladesong in 1015 A.A. The Great Unifier. He’d always been fascinated by Lightsblade, one of the Constants who held the Path together.
Some of the other Aldur had their own ways of visualizing the True Path, but Stephan had always taught him to think of it as a wide river encircling a tall mountain. Reach its summit and you could see all time at once, though no one, neither man nor Aldur, had ever done so. The flow of the river represented the forward movement of time, its course around the mountain indicative of the Path’s perpetual cycle. What had been would be again, that which had already occurred would once more. And it was the Aldur’s duty to make sure it remained so. The death of time itself was the fate that awaited them all if the Aldur failed in their duty. Endless chaos.
The river metaphor was an apt one, as it also supplied a sensible explanation of the importance of Constants. Most points in time were calm, its flow through them inevitable. Any of a myriad of decisions could be made at any one point and the Path would still end up in the same place. It was like encountering a rock jutting from the waterway. To get around you could go left, or right, or perhaps even over the top. Yet whatever decision you made, you eventually ended up at the same place—the other side of the rock.
Same with most decisions on the Path. The exact same ones weren’t made every time the Path went through its cycle. This made things interesting for Devan and the other Aldur, kept them from predicting with absolute clairvoyancy what would occur at any specific point. But in broad terms, the Path would still make it to the watershed moments of time regardless of the minor decisions made by Linears, those ordinary men who lived on the Path and only ever moved forward in time.
Occasionally, an aberrant decision would occur, causing a break in the Path, something akin to a tributary. Alone, such a rogue strand was generally of minor concern. But if enough were allowed to form, time’s forward momentum could be slowed, or even stopped completely. So Aldur spent much of their time resolving rogue strands, putting the Path back on course. In other words, filling in the troublesome tributaries, erasing all events that occurred in them and eliminating their impact upon the True Path. One could even die in a rogue strand, yet remain living on the Path, so long as the rogue strand was resolved.
But certain points in time were so important and fraught with such an array of potential outcomes that the flow of time became chaotic if left unchecked, deviating from its otherwise cyclic nature. Rapids in time’s passage. This is where the Constants factored in. They generally came in pairs, a particular Linear linked with a certain landmark event, the outcome of which could materially alter time’s course. The Aldur maintained the Constants and their decisions, using them like dams to block off the many other potential outcomes of the event, thereby ensuring that the Path flowed steadily onward.
Grand Master Keeper Taul Lightsblade was one such Constant. Devan knew the man’s passage by heart. Three-time tourney champion; raised to Keeper at 19; High Keeper by 25, promoted to Blade Master Keeper shortly after; chair of the Riverdale Accords in 1015, the same year he rose to Grand Master, a position he held for decades.
Devan almost didn’t bother to read the actual page at all. But it was his duty to monitor the histories for change, no matter how unnecessary or arduous it seemed. So Devan looked down at the familiar words, beginning to read.
Taul Bladesorrow, 1012 A.A. to 1015 A.A.
He stopped, frowning. That’s not right.
Devan flipped back to the previous entry, his pulse quickening. Where just moments before the book had indicated (correctly) that Bladesong’s time as Grand Master concluded in 1014, it now read: Rikar Bladesong, 977 A.A. to 1012 A.A. At the bottom of the list of deeds was an entry that hadn’t been there moments earlier:
Murdered, along with his son, in 1012 A.A.
“No, no. That’s not right. That’s not right!”
He flipped forward once more. “Taul Bladesorrow,” he read aloud. The words were written in a clipped, abbreviated hand, distinct from the rest of the text.
1012 A.A. to 1015 A.A. Last Grand Master Keeper. Traitor. Forever to be known as “the Betrayer.” Killed at the battle of Riverdale after attempting to lead an army of shadow into the South. As a result, Keepers disbanded, barred from Senate.
The words echoed in his mind like a death threat. For a time, he could only sit in stunned silence staring at the page, willing it to turn back. Nothing happened.
He pounced from his chair and began rifling through titles on the nearest shelf. On Dwarfs and Smelting Ebon Ore—A Primer; The Last-Day Massacre: How the Leveande Escaped Sykt and Settled Agarsfar; Trimale on Shadow.
“No, no, no.”
He tossed all these unceremoniously to the floor.
“Sharp rocks on an untended trail,” he cursed.
The Law of Things; Tragnè’s Oral Histories; Taming Shadow Panthers; The Lost City of Ral Falar. That last volume nearly disintegrated in his hands and he took time to set it aside with care, despite his otherwise frantic movements.
“It should be right here.” He passed his fingers over the spines of still more volumes, looking for his copy of Taul Lightsblade’s biography.
It was gone.
Finally, he gave up and crumpled into the chair, drumming his fingers on its arms. This was big. Perhaps even Cataclysmic. He’d dealt with rogue strands involving plenty of important historic figures. But a Constant? If Taul had been annihilated, there was no telling what would happen. The Path would triage itself for a time, but the loss of a Constant was like the loss of a vital organ. If unremedied it was only a matter of time before the Path collapsed. Without the certainty of Taul’s actions at the Riverdale Accords there was no telling what direction the Path would take; time would flow in potentially countless directions, a dam burst at the seams. Chaos would be upon them.
Devan squeezed the arms of his chair until his knuckles turned white. He had to get a hold of himself. The idea of Taul having been annihilated was absurd, a thought born of illogical panic. No one save an Aldur could annihilate a Linear, wipe them from the Path for all time. At times there was occasion to do so. Devan himself had done it. He took no pleasure in it, but The Lessons governed above all, and they were clear: Always the whole over any of its parts. So, if annihilating a Linear served the needs of the Path it had to be done. That was the fourth Lesson, and it could only yield if overridden by one of the first three. In the case of Constants, however, the first Lesson governed—A Constant, be it an event or an individual, cannot be altered. This was a basic reality that an Aldur would never even consider abridging. Taul could not have been annihilated.
Taking a deep breath, he thought it through. He’d dealt with plenty of rogue strands in the past. This one was of greater magnitude than he’d ever faced, certainly. But in theory the remedy was no different. Find the inciting incident that had altered the course of events and steer decisions back in the proper direction, thereby resolving the rogue strand and setting the Path back on course. He’d done it countless times before and could do it again. He was nearly ready to depart and begin the work at once when a thought struck him.
The meeting.
Of course! Stephan would know exactly what to do, and the others could supply any help he needed. It was rare that he ever sought assistance, but for something like this it would be negligent not to. Without further thought on the matter, he shut his eyes on his memory parlor, then opened them back onto the physical world and waited for the after image of his parlor’s fireplace to dissipate. The parlor was an illusion of the mind that his kind had long ago mastered. The immense body of knowledge the Aldur had to rememb
er could not be consciously maintained, so they’d developed the parlors as a way to catalogue their thoughts, allowing for easy recall. And, in Devan’s case anyway, a prime recluse to escape the annoyances of the physical world. Namely, its other living inhabitants.
He stood, stretching muscles sore from disuse. How long had it been since he’d last left his parlor? Hours? Days? More? Aldur didn’t require nourishment like Linears, but even an Aldur’s flesh could not be neglected indefinitely. Devan frowned, resolving to eat something before the week was out. But food had lost much of its appeal to him as of late, and now there was no time.
He was in a dim room. Most of his kind preferred to escape to their parlors from the confines of the Conclave itself, where each had grandly appointed chambers for such purpose. Even Devan had one there, though he hadn’t been to it in decades, perhaps centuries. He preferred the solitude of a place where he couldn’t be disturbed. The Northerners had been more than happy to construct this space for him, complete without any door. They’d probably even thought it an honor. The Aldur had fallen out of favor with many Linears ever since the Great Shadow War, but the men and dwarfs of northern Agarsfar still held the faith, even though Devan hated when they treated him like some sort of god.
It was closer to a closet than a room, with just enough space for the chair in which he sat—designed to precisely match the one in his parlor—and the elemental shrine. Certainly not satisfactory to Stephan’s extravagant tastes, or even Val’s for that matter, but it suited Devan just fine. The fountain at the shrine’s center burbled softly, water splashing onto the ring of fire orchids planted around its base. Torches fixed in stanchions around the fountain’s upper tier burned low, casting the space in a ruby pall. Sun shone through a lone skylight. The resulting shadows completed the elemental quintet he needed for peregrination, the act of traveling through time and place.