by D A Godwin
“I have always enjoyed the unrestrained elvish perspective on festivities,” Treven commented as they arrived. Tormjere was hardly surprised that Treven knew he was approaching, but eventually he was going to ask him how, like Father Gelid, he knew so much about the world he could not see.
“You mentioned having few elvish visitors,” Shalindra said, “but have you been able to spend time with them?”
“Unfortunately, I have not. A few have petitioned me in Kirchmont, but that journey can be as difficult for them as coming here was for me, though for different reasons. Tormjere was the only one of our group to meet an elf last time.”
“They must have been from Silvalaria,” Enna said. “Their nation lies only a few day’s ride south, between us and my home of Ildalarial.”
“That close? Have you been able to establish amicable relations with them?”
“Indirectly,” Shalindra answered. “We have reasonably cordial relations, as we do not compete for any resources and both have a common enemy in the goblin tribes. Most of our pilgrims actually come all the way from Ildalarial.”
Treven tapped his chin. “The ones who were to stay in the magnificent accommodations we now occupy? The weather could certainly play a part. I’ve heard that the southern parts of the Kingdom have seen so much rain that flooding has become a significant problem, and that on top of record snowfalls this past winter.”
The mention of snow sent Shalindra’s eyes once more to the white-capped peaks of the Three Sisters.
They aren’t going anywhere.
She tossed an annoyed glance at Tormjere and tried to return her attentions to the festivities, but the worry never left her eyes.
“You’re beginning to look almost as unhappy as he does,” Enna told her. “Honestly, I should have you both thrown in the lake.”
Treven chuckled. “I believe that would be the highlight of the day, and it might even begin a new tradition.”
They all shared a laugh as Shalindra blushed. “I have been given every reason to be happy this year, but there is always something to worry about. I did not mean to cloud this day.”
“Fear not,” Treven said with a smile. “Those who care about us the most overlook our failings the quickest, as Father Ignatius will hopefully ignore my intent to sample your innkeeper’s ale. I hear that it’s excellent. If you’ll excuse me?”
Treven placed his hand on his acolyte’s arm, and bowed his head as he excused himself.
Shalindra answered him with a smile of her own, and both women bowed.
“He is so good at putting my mind at ease,” she said when he had gone. But you both know the source of my concerns. The full moon arrives in only a few days and I cannot stop thinking about what I will attempt.”
“You still have not told anyone?” Enna asked.
“No. Birion will ride with us to Rumbleton, and Marie knows that we will be gone overnight.”
“It’s just another day,” Tormjere said, though not believing it any more than she did. For everyone else it would be, but for her, it could well be the most important day of her entire life.
“I feel as if I should be preparing somehow, but formality has never been a hallmark of my relationship with Eluria. She will see me as I am, and I can only pray that is good enough.”
In Her Light
The next two days passed like an eternity, each one crawling slower than the last as the moon waxed slowly towards fullness. Yet the morning of their departure arrived with terrifying swiftness, and it was all Shalindra could do to maintain an air of normalcy for those around her.
She left the temple with Enna after the morning prayer, as she always did, but today Tormjere and Birion awaited them with horses and a squad of soldiers. After the briefest of greetings, they rode for Rumbleton under the pretext of inspecting the road and rotating the guard. There were many reasons Shalindra had elected to keep her attempt secret, but the biggest was simply the odds of failure. She and Enna had seen enough of those already.
They reached the town quickly and without incident, and Birion sent the men to their posts before conferring with her.
“Do you remain committed to this course of action, my lady?” he asked, his voice raised just enough to be heard over the roar of the falls. “Given recent events…”
“I know your concerns, but we will be in no danger.”
The knight bit off any further protest. “When do you plan to return?”
“I expect by midday tomorrow.”
“I will stable your horses then. If you have not returned by midday, we will come looking for you. I wish you success, whatever your endeavor may be.”
He left them with a salute.
Shalindra took a deep breath and nodded to Tormjere, who shouldered a small pack and led them across the rope bridge once more.
I’m still surprised he’s letting you go.
He was adamant in voicing his displeasure with the idea, but I am no longer a princess to be kept under guard.
They followed the same path as before, though this time Tormjere kept a more comfortable pace. The day was clear and bright, and the summer sun shone down on the valley with all its strength. The air grew thick and oppressive as they left behind the cool mists of the river, until even the shade of the trees was not enough to offer relief from the humid heat.
The butterflies in her stomach grew more restless with every step as they climbed higher out of the valley. Not a word was spoken. Tormjere stalked a few paces ahead, alert for danger, and with footsteps as smooth as they were quiet. Enna trailed an equal distance behind her, her quiet presence as supportive as ever. Neither of them could help her with the question she had wrestled with for days: what would it feel like to speak to a god?
She ducked beneath a branch and stepped over a rock, wondering as she did so if she would be able to navigate the conversation with Eluria so easily. Would it even be a conversation? She repressed a sigh. No matter how she approached the subject, she was always left with more questions than she started with.
They arrived atop the ridgeline by midafternoon but stopped short of the clearing. With nothing to do until the moon joined them, they made themselves comfortable and waited. They had brought enough food for several days, but Shalindra ate little, unable to contain her nervousness as the afternoon dragged into evening.
Would this ceremony even work, or would it be yet another false hope? If it did succeed, what would she ask Eluria? There were dozens of questions that readily came to mind, but each seemed trivial upon examination. Despite memorizing everything that Enna had been able to remember from her own lessons years ago, Shalindra had little sense of what level of piety was expected of her. Though she was terrified to admit it, she did not even know what she needed to do. She had been so eager for this day to arrive, but now that it was here she was terrified of what the evening would hold.
The moon peeked above the horizon just before sunset, full and round. Tormjere was propped against a tree with his eyes closed, but she doubted he was asleep. Enna sat in prayer, much as she had since their arrival, but Shalindra could do little more than stare at the moon’s beauty and gauge its trajectory as it arced slowly across the sky. As the hours drifted away, its path drew ever closer to the peaks of the mountains.
When the moon neared the peaks of the Three Sisters, Enna rose. “It is time. Remember to take your place at the moment Elurithlia rests atop the first of the Sisters. Do not allow your thoughts or your gaze to wander from Her light as She climbs atop the tallest peak. When She stands at the pinnacle, with one foot in our world and the other in Hers, you will receive all that She may give.”
Shalindra took a deep breath and tried to slow her pounding heart. “Will you walk with me? Should I falter…”
Enna shook her head. “Only one may seek Her. You were meant for this.”
Shalindra could not speak, certain that if she opened her mouth, her fear would come pouring out and she would flee down the side of the mountain. She sque
ezed Enna’s hand in thanks, then walked the final steps to the clearing alone.
The stone ground was empty, as it had been when she had seen it last, and yet this time it was different: it was as if the rock itself was aware of her and waited expectantly. A soft warmth stirred within her symbol, dispelling her doubts and soothing her emotions. Shalindra was barely aware of her steps as she crossed the small clearing and sank to her knees. Though her eyes remained glued to the moon, her body sought a specific alignment with the heavens.
The air was clear and cool against her skin. Only a handful of small clouds floated by, their rumpled edges rimmed in silver light. Thousands of stars gave life to the blackness of the sky above, causing the full moon to appear as the center of an immense eye looking down upon her.
She had never felt so small and alone in her life.
Shalindra laid Shining Moon across the stone in front of her and watched the moon as it watched her, each patiently waiting on the other. After long moments it rolled slowly atop the tallest of the Three Sisters, matching exactly its placement and perspective on the symbol clutched in her hands.
The sky paused expectantly.
She took a breath, and the world seemed to breathe with her.
Her consciousness ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall of her chest. The moon’s light was all she knew, its edges blurring as its whiteness and purity consumed everything around her—the trees, the mountains, even the sound of the waterfall—each faded one after the other into that light. It wrapped her in a cloak of majesty and radiance that was both warm and comforting, and she became lost in its glow.
She drifted without substance.
How long she could not ascertain, for time was a concept oddly without meaning. Everything was white, but it was a whiteness with taste and texture, brightness and shadow, and filled with coolness and warmth. She possessed neither past nor future but was aware of the significance of them both.
Another breath.
She became conscious of Enna, praying for her success as passionately as she had prayed for anything in her life. Tormjere stood silently beside her, ever watchful.
The howl of a wolf reverberated like a prayer inside her, its primal urge as easily understood as any speech of man or elf. A moth turned to her for guidance as it fluttered aloft on soft wings.
Another breath.
A woman whispered a devotion from within the temple at Fallhaven. Another in Kirchmont begged for forgiveness of her indiscretions, while still another in Merallin prayed for an end to the constant deluge of rain. Prayers of gratitude swept like a wave across the world, racing with the dawn and giving shape and grain to the entirety of what existed.
The multitude of voices grew, melding into a single tone that came to her as a steady hum, a tangible sound with rhythm and wrinkle, nuance and structure, and with a pulse that she could feel as if the world itself had a heartbeat.
It was a thing she could sample and taste, which she could see distinctly but read with her ears more than her eyes. As she sought to examine it shapes began to form in the whiteness around her, each solidifying like an ethereal haze of smoke resembling the creature from whence it originated. Though she had no form, she moved among them. One flared like a beacon above the rest, a call she recognized as a frantic plea for aid, and she felt herself compelled towards it.
The whiteness around her evaporated, and a new scene came into focus in shades of white outlined in silver. She beheld an old woman kneeling over a man, his body pierced and broken by a fallen tree. The woman’s words were lost in the wind and rain of the storm that buffeted her body, but they blazed like a torch that illuminated every injury. Filled with compassion, she let herself flow through the woman, and a life was spared.
Another breath.
Her perceptions shifted once more, nudged in a new direction by an unseen hand. Time and distance changed at equal rates, though by how much she could not judge. She heard calls for mercy and salvation like trumpets in the stillness of the night. Seeking the source of the lamentations she cast herself towards it, descending into skies above a home with which she was intimately familiar yet had never visited.
Forests lay ablaze in every direction, the hellish devastation wrought by the flames undiluted by the whiteness in which they were depicted. Once joyous voices now cried out in terror, only to be consumed and scattered like ashes upon the wind. Creatures of death stalked through the smoldering fields, tearing down anything and anyone that stood in their path. So mindless were the cries, so primal in their execution, that they sparkled in their brevity like falling stars, and the images they painted were so ephemeral that she could gain little sense of what was happening or why. There was no salvation to be offered, no balm capable of soothing the rending of their souls. In the end, they left only the flickering embers of their passing.
Another voice called out, this one rising strong and clear above the carnage. She willed herself towards it, suffusing her strength into the caller, and the scene came into focus. Other figures hovered near an elvish woman who stood tall in their midst. A circle they had formed, and at their backs stood a gleaming suit of silver armor, the unworn metal their final charge in a world bereft of hope. One by one, the defenders winked from her sight like expired candles. The vision collapsed inwards with each loss, its boundaries slipping to empty whiteness until at the last there was only one who remained unbowed. A shadowed presence swept towards the woman and took shape. It was a thing of nightmares, rising above her with a twisted and hideous visage that was all too familiar.
The face of a demon.
Empty whiteness swept the image away. She recoiled from that outcome, filled with a desire to change what had happened.
Another breath.
Time flowed like water running up a hill to meet the spring from whence it issued. The forests stood again as they had for millennia, and the moon lit the darkness with its full glory. She wished to understand more of their purpose, to know not only their dreams and fears but their lives and purpose, to see them. But she was not a bird who could fly above to gaze down upon the lands around, nor was she gifted with eyes that could see in the light of the sun.
She sifted through the cacophony of voices, culling from them the ones that were relevant to what she needed so desperately to know. One she beheld, as a woman placed her hands on the shoulder of a man fallen from his horse. She brought herself to the woman and found herself surrounded by thousands of soldiers preparing for war. Another call came and was followed, this to another woman who asked only for protection from the sorcerer whose lair towered above her city. She flew towards another call, which passed from the lips of a young girl clutching at her mother’s hand, wishing she were anywhere other than cleaning the pots that the warriors in the camp heaped on them by the dozens.
And from these vignettes, a larger understanding grew. The death and destruction she had witnessed had not yet occurred, though it was poised to, and there remained time to prevent it.
Something brushed against her, as soft as a feather yet carrying the majesty of a mountain. It smelled like a star and tasted like the notes of a harp, filling her with hope and desire and with a joy so pure and perfect that it banished her fears to the point that she forgot even the concept of such an emotion.
But the contact was fleeting, and her awareness shrank at an ever-increasing rate as color and sound leaked once more into her senses. There was sorrow in that separation, but she knew it was not an end; it was only her beginning.
Shalindra blinked.
The moon shone bright in the sky above, a hair’s breadth beyond its alignment with the tallest of the Three Sisters. She wanted to remain there, in that feeling, forever, but knew she could not. She retrieved Shining Moon as she stood, holding the weapon before her with both hands.
I know what must be done Mistress Eluria, and I will not fail you.
With a last, longing glance towards the moon, she hurried back to where Enna and Tormjere waited.
&
nbsp; Enna jumped to her feet in surprise.
Shalindra wanted to share what she had seen, to allow them to experience even a portion of the joy she had experienced. But as she opened her mouth to speak, she realized that no sound she could make could ever convey the passion that she had felt, no words could relay the wonders she had seen, or the final, fleeting contact that had altered her very being in ways she did not yet realize. Overcome by the unexpected surge of emotions, she collapsed to her knees and wept.
Enna rushed to her and held her close. Unable to speak, Shalindra surrendered to the exaltations in her mind, and as the moon rolled from above the last of the Three Sisters, she laid her head in Enna’s lap, and slept.
* * *
Shalindra awoke the next morning, refreshed. The air was cool and damp against her cheeks and the sky clear. She pushed the blanket covering her aside and sat up, finding herself on the bench-like rock in the clearing. She separated pine needles from her hair as she stretched, for the stone had been covered in piles of the soft material before she had been placed on it. Enna lay asleep nearby, huddled beneath her cloak.
Tormjere leaned against a tree, watching them both.
Do you ever sleep?
Bad things find you when you sleep. Enna tried hard to stay awake, but she didn’t make it to the dawn.
Did you see Her last night, as I did?
No. As Enna said, that was for you alone.
Would that you had experienced such joy with me.
Enna’s eyes flickered open, then she bolted upright when she saw Shalindra awake.
“Eluria spoke to me,” Shalindra confirmed Enna’s unasked question. “But it was unlike any conversation I have ever had or can even describe. I will not pretend to understand all that I was shown, but this I know: I must travel to Ildalarial, and seek the Guardian’s armor.”
“When?”
“Before it is too late.”