by J. Gibson
Swift are the works of the Matron, on high
Seven in seven, the number of life
When I arise, when I arise”
A clearing materialized from the fog, which diminished with their footfalls beyond the hedgerows. Air that had been dead came alive in jerks and fits, lifting their hair and clothes and dropping them in repetition. The rush grew, cooling the dampness against Athenne’s skin and turning it to ice.
The broad face of a mountain claimed the opposite edge of the clearing, a rocky structure that disappeared into the sky and glittered with crystal fragments. At the sides of the area, open water, blanketed by the silver veil of the omnipresent haze. A light shone overhead, perhaps the sun, but heatless. In the center of the space, the figure of a woman took shape.
“When I arise,” she sang. “When I arise.”
Her tune faded as they neared. She stood atop a platform, a round structure of stone, roughly a foot tall, ornamented with the Matron’s septagram in black.
“Who are you?” Athenne asked.
“I am the siren, Ennaletes.” Her honeyed voice sent a tingling through Athenne’s scalp, ears, and neck, akin to fingers tracing the surface of her flesh.
Athenne shuddered and rolled her shoulders. “Are demons not the children of Isanot?”
“I have chosen another. Here, I attend the Patron of None. My sisters of the ocean sing seafarers to shipwreck. I guide those in need of answers, the despairing and the hopeful, each.”
“We must go back,” Bhathric rasped.
“If it were the Matron’s will that you should die, we would already have killed you, Bhathric Ezeis. The two of you are selected for another purpose.”
Bhathric walked around to the creature’s side. “Dispense with the cryptic riddles. How are we selected? For what?”
Silver eyes in deep sockets flickered in the muted light, the siren’s flesh so pale it had an ethereal glow. “You happen to be here, so your selection happens to be.” The ends of her mouth bent up, revealing fangs. “All things that are, are—all things that do are random to each other, where the best interest of everyone cannot be fulfilled. Fate is the craft of the hand.”
Bhathric’s anger flared. “Tell us why we are here,” she growled. “Where is Eclih?”
The creature locked focus with Bhathric, her high cheekbones and sharp features accentuated by an outline of blonde hair. “You are in the right place at the right time. Nothing more, nothing less.” She turned toward them. “Follow the path the Matron has forged for you. If you do, Eclih Phredran shall be returned.”
The siren’s hand raised, wrist hanging limp. “Away.”
At a sweep of the demon’s arm, a cyclone erupted; a swirling vapor which locked her from their field of vision. The cover as dense as a fortress wall rose from the ground and closed around them, until the moisture coated Athenne’s face, mouth, and eyes. It churned rapidly at first, but weakened. When it came to a halt, it diffused and revealed to them the fork they had been at previously. Except, the rightmost path had become another hedge wall, leaving their first way and the way that had formerly been left.
“I grow weary.” Bhathric stormed off down the remaining unexplored pathway. Shimmering drops of water, catching the light, drifted away as she passed. Athenne strode after her.
Their footsteps scraped and crunched against the gravel and wet pebbles. Shadows shifted, and the rocky track melted into cobbled street. They had surfaced in a city, nearer countryside, or so it looked.
“Where, now? Do you recognize this place?”
“Anger will not avail us, Bhathric. We’ll be finished when we’ve seen what she wants us to see.” Athenne squinted through the darkness. In the distance, yards away, a man stood. He cast a spindly shadow, much like a spider, splitting the road asunder. Athenne marched against him, past a number of empty homes.
He mumbled to himself, too low to make out, even in range.
“It’s him,” Athenne called to Bhathric over her shoulder.
The priest became frantic, yelled, swiped at the air.
Athenne backed away.
“Can he see us?” Bhathric slipped behind him.
The man continued in his terror. He walked in rigid paces toward a house across the street with a light in its window. Soon, he had entered and vanished. When they crept up to the door, the living quarter went dark. Athenne peered within, perception dulled by the pitch.
A wailing exploded inside, guttural and piercing. Rushing noises arose, followed by a violent clatter. They entered and ran to the bedchamber. The man had positioned himself on top of a woman, his fingers clutching her throat. Athenne reached out for him, but her hand passed through his back like a specter. She tore her arm away and stumbled in reverse.
“We can do nothing,” she said.
Bhathric left the room. “What is the purpose of showing us this?” She fled from the home as quickly as they had come. Athenne lingered a breath longer. The woman’s face reddened and the veins around her temples bulged as the man squeezed her neck. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she sputtered.
“Enough!” Athenne withdrew as well. “I’ve seen enough!”
The world faded out, from the corners of her vision to the center, like falling asleep. Athenne blinked, and her surroundings returned. She stood in the antechamber, as did Bhathric.
Rolling silence hung over them, except the hum that rebounded from wall to wall, as it had since they arrived, less audible at present. A reflective sullenness masked Bhathric’s face, and her hands trembled. They examined the tome on the altar in the center of the room with mutual unease, neither uttering a word for some time.
“Well.” Bhathric broke the hush. “One more, I presume.”
One more key, for one more door.
“Eclih is on the other side,” she added with determination, as if it should be indisputable.
CHAPTER XII: EVOCATION
Garron
Garron leaned back in his chair. What has caused this Undeath, and what is its aim? His notions varied as to its ends. Was the creature truly Vor-Kaal? It must not have been. No joy befell him by the revelation, either way.
Whether the being had been the highest servant of Korvaras or a lesser one, the result remained unchanged. People died, and terror spread. News came in bursts to the capital, worsening with every report. The great death could expand all the way north to Aros, and further.
Even with this, he could not feel hopeless, not since the Ennead’s warding spell. He had become industrious again, heartier by the day. Meeting with deacons, he talked to them of their journeys and lived experiences. Sitting in the Priory’s hall of knowledge, he read, took notes, pieced together intimations from the texts. He preferred obscurer readings, few as they were. The Church had curated the hall’s contents to avoid literature deemed subversive or heretical.
If the Church was right, and in the right, why must they limit access to knowledge and opposing perspectives? The feud of contrasting views, after all, had forged progress: a central tenet of Matrianism.
“Unraveled the mystery?” said a voice as he perused Elas Orimalor’s Aspects of the Celestia, a work discussing the Overrealm and the individual planes of each of the Celestial Nine.
Garron turned to see Archbishop Mallum.
“May I?” She gestured to the seat across from him.
“Certainly, Archbishop.”
“You’ll not find the answers you seek here,” she said. “If the truths we yearn for were in these clever words, bardic treatises, philosophical disputations, we would have uncovered it. Archbishop Sangrey maintains an itemized list of every book in this room, mad as that sounds. We would all be reading the work if it were present.”
The sum in view, he suspected she was right.
“Not that I lack faith in you. You are a wise man, beyond dispute. Much wiser than the rest of us to this. When you disappeared, I knew we had erred, that we had not been well enough on our guard. The failure is inexcusable. I hope you find it in you
r heart to forgive us.”
“Already forgiven, Archbishop. I was there, and even I was not prepared for what came.”
“If we had understood, it might not have been so wretched. We have seen since. Now we are ever on the defensive. In the conjecture that the trouble will persist, and we expect it shall, we consider it an existential threat. Not solely to the underlands, but to the Empire. This is our All-Mother’s true home, Father, as you well know. If we fail, if this horror that creeps across the Earth prevails and consumes us all, then we have failed Her. There is no graver a wrong. We shall not be let off mercifully.”
He had never heard Archbishop Mallum so zealous over any matter, though he felt glad of her earnest consideration. Sound of mind and learned of thinking, she lived unrivaled in her adherence to the three pillars, even by Aramanth, Sangrey, or the Vicar, Breiman Umbra.
A woman of integrity, the Clergy and common body alike adored Holle Mallum. She represented in her quotidian character an unpolluted embodiment of the three virtues of the Matrian religion. Altruistic and kind, she gave for the sake of others; a paragon of order, and of progress, she had driven the force behind the inclusion of men in the greater ranks of the Church. Yet in spite of her rationality and consistency, one respect limited her reasoning: prejudicial thinking in favor of the Church. She would not consider its faults objectively, beyond what had already made itself apparent, such as in Garron’s case.
That the Church must act elevated beyond controversy. He hoped the Ennead had a plan, a way to limit the loss of life. Regardless of whether they had a strategy, he may have to consider possibilities that no one else would. He would need to discuss such ideas further with Amun, who shared a like-minded sentiment to him, or at least the curiosity and skepticism of youthfulness. Her suggestions at the Athenaeum, similar to his own passive thinking, had influenced the direction of his recent considerations.
Every stride toward the truth necessary from this point forward will require careful guidance. I must restrain myself to gentle urgings and subtle encouragements toward particular ends.
He wanted to propose the possibilities that he and Amun had concocted to Archbishop Mallum, but did not. She dedicated herself as well to the Church as to her integrity and the All-Mother, even when they might conflict in ways unknown to her. There would be no convincing her, yet.
“I must take my leave, Father. We have little time.” The archbishop rose. “The peace within this great structure does not extend to all those under our protection. For every moment we spend idle, they suffer. Their suffering is the Mother’s suffering, and so our suffering too.”
He closed his book. “As so.” None knew that better than he.
With a shake of her head, Mallum exited the room.
Invariably, he had considered the Priory a safe place. Not for himself, for he had no concern of that currently; he could perish, face exile for undermining the laws that bound followers of Matrianism to certain conduct. Not directly for members of the common body, either, who could not enter the Priory or walk upon its grounds, save the times when the Imperial Sovereign or the Ennead used it to address the people. What held him most firmly to the Church was the belief that at its heart existed the best interest of those within its domain, beyond these walls.
As he doddered toward Nihil, that endless sleep, he should be well away from such concerns, the hugging tendrils of things that might threaten his sense of the future.
What more could happen to an eldered priest who had given his life in service of Gohheia and his mortal sisters and brothers? He had endured many torments and trials, and emerged with his resolve intact. His conviction in the righteousness and rightness of the blessed All-Mother, that was.
Until what others had called the Erlan Massacre, in which he had suffered a central role, his devotion to the Matrian Church had persisted without question or self-scrutiny. He had done away with such doubts of the spirit over a decade ago, when his service under Archbishop Sangrey ended and his guardianship of the Vale began.
Dusk and dawn, hour to hour, day by day, the struggling of his aged muscles and the soreness in his frail bones, none of these worried him anymore. The suffering of another concerned him now, that woman from the countryside. One speck of pollution in her mind, beyond the cleansing of the most skilled mentalists, could inflict torment on her until her final hour, force her to relive his attack over and over. I must do something.
Earlier that morning, he had awoken to the whirring of a machine as it polished the floor of his bedchamber. As the day progressed, as in any, he slinked more immediately to the time when fate would have its say with him. The Nothing or Eophianon. From this breath until his final exhalation, he would have no alternative but to face the predestined, to take what chance and fate permitted. A single stain on the spirit, for an eternity in the Land of the Dead, reliving his worst moments up to his death, without relief or loss of sense.
Perhaps she and I share a reality—a pain that I have brought her.
Garron stepped out into the cloistered gardens.
Warmth seized the day, odd for winter, and fair-weather cumuli bespattered the welkin. Peace hung in the yard like a gliding falcon. From the residence halls, deacons came and went.
Aros persisted as a major center of herbal and medicine sources, and the deacons tended them, usually those of the first-degree. Through material magic, they kept the garden producing in spite of the weather, sun or frost. They had even grown fruits, the ripest of which sometimes fell to the ground if not harvested soon enough.
Aramanth appeared at his elbow. “Walk with me, Garron.”
A silence fell over the deacons at the far side of the yard in the Archbishop’s presence.
The two of them walked until they came to the edge of the garden, where fewer were in earshot.
“Aros,” she began, “is the sacred flower of a holy nation, a servant of which I am proud to be. When I started here as a girl, as a deacon, I sought the direction of the decent women who served before me, before this Ennead. Through their guidance and altruism, I learned to share in a great love. In their stead, I learned to forge an Empire for a new era: strong, virtuous, sculpted in the Mother’s vision, born of Her gift.
“Through us, the common body enjoys a standard of life unseen, inconceivable, in any recording of the past. Farmers and graziers, who we subsidize, provide us food. The people enjoy the convenience of our aqueducts. Inquisitors, priests, such as yourself, and vicereines bring peace and prosperity once threatened by war and the avaricious and lawless, protecting the common woman and man in thoughtful employ.
“You have personified each pillar of the Mother’s Truth. Order, progress, altruism. If needed, you would have died for the people of Erlan. You suffered, fought for them, for your place with us. I laud you, as do we all.”
Garron said nothing, only tilted his head to one side and listened. A smile crept through his lips. Shortly, he returned his expression to its stillness. Then he gazed toward her.
She stopped. “Please, do not give up on us.” A genuineness infused her words.
What had been the catalyst for this imploring?
Aramanth was the same candid, sharp-witted, commanding woman she had always been. He had hoped he might have an opportunity to speak to her soon. However, the time had not yet arrived to convey his worries.
“We have dispatched a company of chevaliers along with bishops to the underlands to investigate the goings-on there. ‘Tis the concern of Archbishop Umbra that Mythos may have a hand in these affairs. We expect that the company’s journey will be swift. When they return, they are to report their findings. In consideration of your own revealings, their orders are not to engage with anyone or anything.”
“Wise,” he replied.
“‘Twould seem, from what we can ascertain in scrying, that the village of Ghora has fallen. Whatever works here is a great power. Archbishop Sangrey and I cannot penetrate the area. Our magic is disrupted.” She smiled with one corner o
f her mouth. “To keep you informed, not to worry you.” Her eyes scanned him from head to toe, as if evaluating. “How are you faring?”
“Well.” He returned the grin. “The Beast has not resurfaced. Nothing whispers its miseries. My mood has lifted. I’m grateful for the reprieve.”
He felt well overall, but troubled. Better than before, without question. Yet in his quiet moments of reflection, the nature of his agitation returned to him. The events of Erlan and those after did not plague him alone.
It was her.
Thoughts of the woman and what he had done to her burrowed into his mind like a hound digging in search of its lost bone. The time between now and the incident could not have healed her. More for her would be necessary. He could not reverse the wrong himself. It would be incumbent on another to aid in what he must avoid.
It did not cast him into a despair comparable to his former manner of affliction, but he longed to declare the misdeed to Aramanth, to confess the harm he had caused, compelled or not. Yet to do so would be to admit a crime among the worst. He could not elude justice forever. His wrongdoing would not pass into memory without response, something which would unknot his present tranquility and force him to answer for her pain, as he deserved.
“If anything should happen,” Aramanth interrupted his pondering, “please, let me know. Do not delay. I told you that they shall not have you, and I meant it.”
“As you say it, Archbishop.”
With a look part commiserating and part fondness, she left.
He stood alone in the garden once more.
Eschewing thoughts of darker things, he remained in high spirits, ready as ever to enjoy the beautiful day. He might seek out Amun. To him, she had become something of a confidant. For her, he had become something of a mentor. He felt that he could confide in Aramanth or Archbishop Mallum, but a difference of disposition existed in Amun. A sort of free-mindedness that even Aramanth, in her kindness, intelligence, and wisdom, did not share.
His steps returned him to the Priory, that grand edifice of soaring arches and flying buttresses of white stone, unlike any other substance on Earth. Abbisad had its spires and minarets, Reneris had its pyramids, Xarakas owned the most lavish of Gohheia's shrines, and yet the Grand Priory rose above them all. He ascended steps, first to the innards of the Priory, and wandered down the halls until he had by happenstance collected Amun.