Path of the Seer

by Gav Thorpe

  Two curving spurs were being added to the front of the ship. Thirianna’s guess was that the area would later house some form of sensory array, such was its position. With her eyes and ears, she had some vague idea of the wraithbone forming out of the air, growing from the existing skeleton, its creation setting up vibrations that cut across the psychic choir.

  With her mind, she could appreciate the true beauty of the act. The nascent wraithbone existed as a potentiality within the skein, taking on infinite forms. As the bonesingers led the other artificers, the skein pulsed and flowed with their desires, their imagining of the ship’s design acting as the guide of fate. Conforming to this shaped destiny, the wraithbone solidified from its amorphous state into a physical material, fulfilling the self-destiny of its existence.

  Fuelled by the infinity circuit, the wraithbone was a distillation of the skein, an amalgam of hope and despair, opportunity and disappointment, love and hate, life and death. The songs of the artisans encompassed joy and woe, the realisation of dreams and the dashing of ambitions.

  The wraithbone was glowing with its own chill light, its future shape appearing as a fluttering image on the edge of vision, molecule by molecule emerging from its potential to fulfil its destiny.

  Thirianna’s waystone, attuned to the psychic voice of Alaitoc, throbbed with the beat of the song of creation. It sang through her body and mind, filling her with vigour and hope. Her mind was ablaze with possibilities as she glimpsed the voyages of the starship-to-be, the trials and tribulations and triumphs of its crews splaying out from the wraithbone core at its heart, a thousand and more new fates unveiled in the act of its creation.

  Slowly the chorus quietened. One by one the artisans finished their songs, until only the pipes and voices of the bonesingers were left, echoing faintly through the great hall. Each sang and played in isolation now, honing the last parts of the structure, discordance rising from the harmony. Sadness gripped Thirianna. Potential was becoming reality. Infinite possibilities were resigning themselves to a singular fate.

  The last notes hung in the air for a time, shimmering along the whole skeletal structure. And then they were gone, leaving a perfect moment of silence.

  Thirianna realised she was crying.

  It was as if she had lived and breathed with the ship. In the last moments of the song she had been taken to distant stars and far-flung worlds. And at the very end, she had seen the destruction of this mighty vessel, its conflagration in battle. Even in its birth had been sown the seeds of its death, the fate of all things, from eldar to starship, flower to star.

  As she recovered, it was hard for Thirianna to match the beauty of what she had experienced with her knowledge of Yrlandriar who had orchestrated it. The starship was as much part of him as it was anything else, something more than just the fruit of his labours. His imprint was within every part of it, meshed with the presence of the others who had joined in its making, a physical extension of his own thread of destiny.

  For a moment Thirianna felt jealousy. It was such creations, such children born of wraithbone, which had occupied her father when he should have attended to the needs of his actual child.

  She tried to suppress the feeling as she saw her father approaching, not wishing to engage with him in a negative frame of mind. She tried to mask the envy she felt, but could not help but wonder if the satisfaction of being involved in such a creation had outweighed Yrlandriar’s feelings on becoming a father.

  ‘I fear I am under-dressed,’ said Yrlandriar as he stopped in front of Thirianna, his eyes quickly taking in her extravagant outfit. He wore his rune-embroidered robes and carried his pipes under one arm, hair tied back by a bland but neat band of silver.

  ‘I felt like a change,’ said Thirianna, taken off-guard by the comment.

  She followed Yrlandriar into the workshop, and sat down as a low seat emerged from the wall at a gesture from the bonesinger. He placed his pipes on the table and sat next to her, somewhat stiff and formal.

  ‘I have a question,’ said Thirianna, unsure how to phrase it.

  ‘A question for me?’ replied Yrlandriar, blinking with surprise. He regained his composure quickly. ‘Ask your question.’

  ‘The designs on the surface of the rune you wrought for me, do they have a meaning? Was it a pattern of your creation?’

  Yrlandriar relaxed, comfortable with the nature of her inquiry. He stood up, opened a cabinet in the wall and took out a small crystal bottle and two goblets. He passed a cup to Thirianna and filled it with amber liquid from the decanter, before serving himself and placing the bottle back in its place. Thirianna noticed his actions were crisp and premeditated, a mark of physical as well as mental discipline.

  ‘The design that you see is not an invention of mine,’ said the bonesinger, shaking his head. ‘The wraithbone is psychoreactive, as you know. It is responding to you, forming itself from your thoughts and feelings, binding itself to your spirit. What you see is a reflection of yourself, as realised by the wraithbone.’

  ‘And will it ever stop changing?’ Thirianna asked. She took a sip of the drink. It was honeywater, sweet and aromatic.

  ‘Only if you stop changing,’ replied Yrlandriar. He sat down and looked at Thirianna but said nothing more. His finger tapped on the rim of his goblet, though whether from contemplation or impatience Thirianna could not tell.

  ‘I sense that you have more than one question to ask of me,’ he said eventually. ‘Your first could have been easily answered via a more distant communication, yet you come to visit me.’

  ‘I stand upon the crux of a choice,’ said Thirianna, choosing her words carefully. She did not wish to betray her own feelings on the matter lest it influence her father’s opinion. ‘My runecraft has progressed well. I must choose whether I will devote myself to further study of its lore, or remain a warlock for the time being.’

  ‘You are too young to become a farseer,’ Yrlandriar replied promptly. He took a mouthful of honeywater and Thirianna realised that he was not going to offer any further explanation.

  ‘Age is not an issue,’ she said.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Yrlandriar. ‘You have more than half of your life ahead; it would be obscene to walk a single Path for all of that time.’

  Thirianna was about to argue her case but stopped herself. What her father had said was true and it was not something she had properly comprehended. However, it irked her that he seemed so dismissive of the idea.

  ‘If it is what I wish to be, what my destiny should be, that is of no concern,’ she said.

  ‘It should be a concern,’ said Yrlandriar. ‘There are a great many things you might yet accomplish even if you do not attach yourself to this single path.’

  ‘You are a bonesinger and shall remain so until you die,’ Thirianna pointed out.

  ‘That is different,’ said Yrlandriar.

  ‘How is that so different?’ asked Thirianna. ‘What accomplishments of yours outshine the creations you now render? Is not your final path also your finest?’

  Yrlandriar looked to speak, but then took another drink. He glanced around the workshop, the slight hint of a frown creasing his brow.

  ‘Yes, that is true,’ he said when he returned his gaze to his daughter. ‘You will have a great deal of experience by the time you are my age. For many passes I have been a bonesinger and yet I still cannot reach the heights achieved by some of my predecessors.’

  Thirianna was not sure if that was an endorsement or just a passing comment. Yrlandriar’s expression was doubtful, but his words seemed to lend weight to Thirianna’s choice by instinct.

  ‘I did not learn to create starships from the air in a single cycle,’ Yrlandriar continued, his expression lightening. ‘Perhaps you are right. With many passes of study and experience you might become one of the greatest farseers of Alaitoc. That would be the reward for the sacrifice you would make.’

  ‘Sacrifice?’ Thirianna was not sure what she would be giving up. It seeme
d to her that now she had tasted the potential of seerdom, it would be hard to live without it.

  ‘To experience a life not bound to the skein,’ said Yrlandriar. ‘Would you ever fall in love, in the knowledge of all the potential disasters that might befall the relationship? Would you have a child, risking seeing its death a thousand times over every time you travel the skein? The life of a bonesinger can be lonely, I assure you. There is little in the physical world that can match the harmony of spirit that comes from the act of pure creation. Yet it is nothing to the loneliness of the farseer. At a whim you can choose to see the death of everyone you have ever cared about and yet you must often choose to let it happen, for fear it will bring doom to others to interfere.’

  Remembering her last encounter with Korlandril, Thirianna had known a little of that dilemma. She had hoped that by increasing her experience and power she would bring more surety to her decisions, but recent exploits trying to divine her own future had betrayed that belief as a myth. The further one could venture, the wider the uncertainties involved.

  ‘I see that perhaps I have opened your eyes to something you had not considered before,’ said Yrlandriar. He turned slightly towards her, goblet clasped in his lap. ‘You alone will make this decision and you alone will bear the consequences of it. You ask what I think you should do? I can tell you that I would never exchange my time with your mother or the raising of you for a few extra passes studying the way of the artificer. There is a level I will never be able to attain, but it is a small price to pay in compensation for the legacy I have left in other ways.’

  ‘I see,’ said Thirianna. Her father’s honest words had sown doubt in her mind. She was back to the conundrum of the rune. How could she decide when she could not know what she would be giving up? She might not be a farseer and yet spend her life alone, leaving it without a legacy, her existence nothing more than something that happened and then was gone.

  ‘Nothing is certain,’ said Yrlandriar, reading something of Thirianna’s dilemma in her pensive expression. ‘You choose between two unknowns, and in this you are not less and no greater than any of us.’

  ‘And if I choose to become a farseer, against your wishes?’ Thirianna was not sure why she wanted to bait her father in this way, but it was a habit hard to break.

  ‘My wishes are irrelevant,’ said Yrlandriar, much to Thirianna’s surprise. He smiled slightly at her reaction. ‘We both know you will ignore them, and I cannot force my views upon you, that much is clear. So it is that I choose not to have any. Whatever you choose, I will try to remember that I am your father and I will give you whatever support I can. That is the best I can offer you.’

  Thirianna could not quite believe what her father had said, and she ran his words through her mind again, trying to detect some hint of sarcasm. There was none.

  ‘To be counted amongst the greatest of Alaitoc is not something to be dismissed lightly,’ said Thirianna. She had read treatises and works from philosophers, poets and seers who had all left their lasting mark on the craftworld. To have her name listed amongst their like was tempting indeed.

  ‘You think that fame is reward enough to forgo the life you might enjoy?’ asked Yrlandriar. ‘Is that a good reason to give up on everything else that might be?’

  ‘It is a reason,’ said Thirianna, laughing at herself. ‘Only history will judge if it is good enough.’

  ‘You are committed to this,’ said Yrlandriar. ‘I see it in your eyes. You see a future unfolding before you, shaped to your desire. It is not with joy that I realise this, but it is plain that you have cast your stone into the pool and now it remains to see how far the ripples will stretch.’

  ‘I have,’ said Thirianna. ‘Too few of us pass our lives with true meaning and I will not be counted amongst those who came and went and were forgotten. I cannot change the past that exists between us, but I am happy that we have reached an understanding.’

  ‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ said Yrlandriar, his expression stern. ‘In time, the past and the present will be of no importance to you. I will be just another thread in the great tapestry of your destiny.’

  The flux that had beset Thirianna’s thread on the skein settled with her decision. She spent some time exploring the possible fates, though she heeded Kelamith’s advice not to stray too far into the future at this early stage.

  Her life took on a regular pattern of study, exploration and tuition. Progress was steady but slow, the unwinding possibilities of the skein gradually revealing their secrets as Kelamith guided Thirianna along the pathways of fate.

  Twenty cycles after making her decision, Thirianna was met mid-cycle by Kelamith, who took her to their favoured place in the parklands, overlooking the tumbled rocks on the hillside.

  Kelamith had a box with him, no larger than his hand, fashioned from the wood of a liannin tree. A simple pattern was carved in the lid, showing a knotted design representative of the skein, winding about the rune of Morai-heg, the goddess of fate.

  Thirianna took the proffered box uncertainly, surprised by the gift from her mentor.

  ‘It does not come from me,’ he said with a delicate shake of the head. ‘Open it and things will become clearer.’

  Intrigued, Thirianna lifted off the lid of the box and placed it beside her. Within, nestled in the velvet lining, sat two more runes. One was the Scorpion, the other was the Wanderer. Confused, Thirianna looked to Kelamith for an explanation.

  ‘They come from Yrlandriar,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I understand that,’ replied Thirianna. ‘I appreciate the gesture and the effort. What I do not understand is why he chose these two runes. Did he speak with you about the choice?’

  ‘No,’ said Kelamith. He leaned a little closer and spoke softly. ‘Your father had paid greater attention to your affairs than perhaps you realise. Remember why it was that you first came to Alaiteir.’

  ‘I was distraught, worried about my…’ Realisation dawned. ‘The Scorpion represents Korlandril; the Wanderer is Aradryan.’

  With a nod, Kelamith stood up.

  ‘It is a fine gift, and I am happy to deliver it on Yrlandriar’s behalf,’ said the farseer. ‘What have you learned about the Scorpion and the Wanderer?’

  ‘The Scorpion is a rune of concealment,’ said Thirianna, remembering the first descriptions from the texts she had read. ‘It is used to find those fates that would otherwise be hidden to the observer. The Wanderer, well, that one is easy. It allows the seer to travel to distant threads, unconnected to others.’

  ‘A very useful combination, and one that is within your power to wield wisely,’ said Kelamith. ‘I shall leave you to investigate your gift in your own time. Call on me if you need further guidance.’

  Kelamith left her sitting at the top of the hillside. With a thought, Thirianna lifted the two runes from the box. Her own rune joined them from her belt and the three wove orbits around each other, interchanging positions as Thirianna concentrated on them, the circles and ellipses they described in the air pleasing to her eye.

  The park was not the place to begin this new exploration of the skein. Thirianna allowed the runes to settle in the box. Kelamith was already out of sight, so she made her way to the Chambers of the Seers on her own, excited by the new possibilities presenting themselves.

  As she arrived, she remembered to send a message across the infinity circuit, expressing her sincere thanks to her father for the gift. It was, she told him, the best thing he had ever done for her.

  Thirianna was baffled by her next forays onto the skein. She had thought that with the power of three runes to draw upon, the maddening anarchy of diverging futures would be made clearer. If anything, the skein had become even more complex to navigate.

  She asked Kelamith about this, having become lost several times trying to locate occasions when her thread and that of Korlandril and Aradryan would overlap again. It was an exercise in curiosity more than anything else; thoughts of her friends came infrequently and it was
with dispassionate interest that she viewed their unfolding lives.

  ‘It is the nature of the skein that the greater we become, the more of it we see,’ explained Kelamith.

  The two of them shared a simple lunch in Kelamith’s rooms at the heart of the Chambers of the Seers. His apartment consisted of two areas: one for sleep and one for study. Little space was given over to anything except the basic essentials for eating, drinking and sleeping. The rest of the apartment was filled with copies of treatises, complex fate charts notated by Kelamith himself, rune boxes and storage crystals.

  The apartment was quite cluttered, unlike the cold, streamlined mind that Thirianna detected when she was on the skein with her mentor.

  ‘But that does not make sense,’ said Thirianna. ‘The greatest seers can make distant, accurate prophecies. How is that possible if the skein becomes ever more complicated?’

  ‘You are using the power of the runes to expand your horizon,’ said Kelamith. He picked at the scraps of food left in the dish set between them. ‘You must learn to use their particular qualities to focus your vision on what you wish to see. The true art of the seer is to combine the power of many runes to hone in on a specific instance. Do not use them to look at the whole of the skein, but employ their channelled power to add layers of meaning to a narrow point of reference.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ said Thirianna. ‘How should I proceed? What instance should I examine?’

  ‘It does not matter,’ said Kelamith. ‘There is no means to know the import and probability of a divergence or convergence until one examines it.’

  Thirianna was not satisfied by this answer, and Kelamith picked up on this.

  ‘Do not be too hasty to know everything,’ he said. ‘Start with something simple, something small. Pick something that you know well.’