“It was the first time I’d seen someone die,” Adria whispered as she approached the center of Windberth after her exile, her memories from so many years before only slowly finding resonance in the stone around her.
Adria had been only four or five years of age when she had first set foot inside the city. As Adria took that same pathway now, she felt a sickening knot in her stomach, like serpents with wings. Now wondering if the tragic ceremony she remembered from her childhood was simply the final scene in the unfolding of the tragedy of Windberth’s creation.
I know there is more, Adria thought. Far more to this history of stone and paper, of apples and ashes.
She said an Aesidhe prayer for all those Aeman whose lives may have bought the inception of city and citadel, this place which, for much of her childhood, she had known only to call home.
And even as her stomach turned, Adria’s heart still leapt to remember just how much she had loved these walls, this city, her brother and even her father.
On the surface, Windberth seemed pleasant enough, its people happy enough as they went about their daily duties and pleasures, bright-clothed despite the layers needed for warmth. They greeted one another more often than not, enjoyed the clean and spacious beauty of the boulevards, courtyards, and marketplace.
Children played throughout, soldiery kept order, and there seemed to be, above all else, a sense of peace. The streets were swept clean each day, and the dust and grime of the day before found its way into sewage drains which ran below the ground and into the river in the chasm which separated the two plateaus.
And as she neared the center where her first strangest memory lay, she found even a park with a few budding trees and other greenery, and at its center a fountain with the statue of a beautiful young woman, robed and sashed, a crow upon her shoulder. The girl’s basket of marble apples had overturned, frozen in stone cascade, and a steady stream of water spilling out among them and into the pool below, where the King’s pavilion once stood.
More marble apples seemed to bob upon its rippling surface, and Adria reached over the iron railing to touch one, but found it just out of reach, suspended on the end of a slender iron rod from the base of the fountain.
I dream of this, or of stories that inspired it… Adria wondered. More than the memory, more than a song… but…
Something else just beyond the reach of her fingers slipped away, enfolded under water into darkness.
And Adria turned away upon her path, beyond the fountain, where her eyes found what remained of the actual apple tree, blackened and withered, with no hint of bud or leaves or former fruit clinging to its skeleton.
Adria blinked away a sudden swelling of tears, for sadnesses returned and others only dreamed.
A fitting monument to what I remember, and to whatever remains unknown.
And still Adria wondered, Where did my father spread the ashes of those before, those he had sacrificed for the sake of the order of Heiland, the grandeur of its citadel, and the structures of its faith in him and his Matriarch?
Adria had not crossed these ashes upon her approach. But then she realized that the forest below had been mostly overgrown.
Ashes, when left to lie, become branches and leaves again, and borders are forgotten in time. And how long shall we mourn? We all walk in the shadow of death. It creeps behind us as the sun rises, and looms before us as it sets. Who are we to wear black and smear our faces with ash given the self-same sacrifice of those who came before?
Adria was glad she had never walked this way before, in her own secret wanderings of the city of her childhood. She was glad to have this new memory as she reconciled herself to the path which led her to her brother, to her father, to the Matriarch and her future which lay beyond.
Between the city of Windberth and the high citadel plateau ran a slender crevasse, carved out of the mountains by an inaccessible river, Crookfinger, perhaps a dozen yards below. Its course was brutally swift, even so high in the mountains, and the noise echoed for some distance through the gateways on either side, a noise Adria had grown so accustomed to as a child that it still barely gained her notice until she stood quite near its precipice.
Crookfinger held a critical function for the city. Too low to serve well as a source of fresh water, it instead served opposite purpose — the city’s offal, helped along by frequent rain and snow melt, ran through channels cut into the stone, and spilled into this river.
Across the river spanned another engineering innovation, a seemingly permanent stone bridge. Though rarely used, Adria had learned of a particular device of this bridge for times of defense. From within the barbican of the citadel opposite the city, ten men might turn a winch and retract bolts of iron which held the bridge together. The stones would then collapse into the water below, and the citadel would be unreachable from the city, except of course by hawks or doves. A set of stones was always ready to replace these, but so far as Adria knew this purpose had never been tested.
Still, Adria also knew that many suspected other secret ways out of the citadel itself, should all else fail.
Perhaps that is only myth, Adria wondered. Perhaps legend protects my father’s kingdom far more than armies or stone walls or rings of ash. Perhaps this is the manner of all kings… all nations, all churches and their gods. Perhaps it is often only enough to be feared and worshiped.
“Men will see walls even where none exist,” Adria said aloud as she crossed the stonework, marveling at the nearly invisible seams in its constituent blocks. “They see ghosts in shadows, danger behind closed doors and around corners of empty hallways.”
At the end of the bridge, the Knights at the citadel gate stood at attention as they saw her. No questions, no papers, no coin. They did not salute, but neither did they challenge her, and she knew now that messages must have preceded her, at least once she had entered the city itself.
And again, they let me pass, a Sister, a prince, a stranger.
Within the enormous outer bailey, Knights of Darkfire drilled in perfect unison or sparred in pairs in the afternoon sun, sweat-drenched even in the chill mountain air of early spring. Above the towers of the keep and the temple, perhaps halfway up Mount Chancer, snow still clung to the limbs of narrow pines and stony peaks. Against the walls of the bailey stood the knight barracks and all their support buildings — stables, corrals for hogs and cattle, kitchens and bakeries, and below all of these, carved into catacombs of rock, stores put away to allow a three-year siege or more.
A second wall, taller than the curtain wall of the outer bailey, separated it from the inner bailey, which itself held only the palace keep and the High Temple. The guards at the gateway of this inner barbican seemed merely not to notice Adria as she passed — which is exactly how she had remembered them.
I suppose that, even were I not recognized, if I can make it past a few hundred heavily armed Knights beyond, why shouldn’t I be allowed to make it into the citadel?
She had secretly always thought of these as decoration, but now realized that, in fact, they were simply better trained, and better informed. Their passing glance was, in fact, simply the final confirmation of messages that somehow passed from one gatehouse to the next — perhaps a series of signals along the battlements, or pages who ran unnoticed within the walls.
And now Adria noticed something else new as she made her way up the inclined path below the portcullises and between the open iron-clad and oaken doors — could not possibly have missed it.
Just within the inner bailey, framed by the final great doorway of the gatehouse, Adria saw a tall marble statue. Standing in questionable welcome, the palace and temple looming over its shoulders as she stood just within the gate, it rose the height of five or six men.
It appeared to be at rest, even slumped, robed completely so that neither face nor bareness of limbs could be identified, and Adria could not tell even whether the figure
was intended to be male or female. With this posture, without anything to indicate thought or action or scale, it was curious. Even its arms rested behind, without any gesture of command or supplication typical of such decoration.
Such strangeness, this... harbinger… Adria shook her head in curiosity at the portrayal. She would not have imagined this image during her teachings as a child, in fact, it had been forbidden to consider or represent the likeness in any way — and yet this, most certainly, was meant to be The-One-Who-Comes, with all the appropriate and necessary ambiguity that the Sisterhood might provision.
The Sisters were all named, Adria knew, their name at birth abandoned for another chosen during their Rite of Initiation. Of course, Adria was rarely offered the privilege of such knowledge, regardless of her Royal status.
In fact, each new Sister who was sent to administer Adria’s education seemed an imitation of the last, so much so that Adria did not really mind calling them by their title alone. And likewise, they never called Adria by name, and rarely addressed her even by title. This, also, was something of a welcome change. Many of the servants, and especially those least familiar with her, insisted on using her full title, often before or after their typically single-sentence questions or answers.
Adria often grew exasperated at such exaggerated and complicated politeness. As soon as she learned the word “obsequious,” she employed it for a time regularly, until she realized that, to those ignorant of its definition, it was taken merely as a wrote description, and elicited even more excessive formality.
Adria also eventually realized that the word sounded a little silly coming from a child with two missing teeth. Of course, that revelation had come from Hafgrim’s teasing one afternoon, and she had returned to her lessons afterward with renewed relish for contrariness. Hafgrim’s moods were often catching when she was very young.
“Sister,” Adria interrupted. Not one among them had yet succeeded in earning politeness from Adria, much less a display of piety for their teachings. This new one was halfway through a lesson on natural order among the animals, but Adria was more interested in once again distracting her to lesson variations for which she was little prepared. “I have been trying to understand the core doctrine. Would you please repeat the Tenets of the One-Who-Will-Come again?”
Had she been less trained, and had Adria not been the king’s daughter, the Sister might well have thrown up her hands or given words to her displeasure — for this was not the first of such interruptions. Had she been better trained, she might have drawn Adria back to the topic at hand with a simple and honest reproach, as Adria’s father or his best lieutenants might have done.
Instead, the Sister smiled, with clenched teeth.
She must be counting to ten, Adria thought, or reciting silent curses instead of preparing the Tenets. Adria smiled sweetly while she waited, and blinked with feigned innocence and expectation.
The Sister regrouped and once more began her recitation with only a small lessening of her usual air of reverence. Her eyes waxed distant, as if she were imagining the scripture upon the far wall behind Adria, and her fingers twitched as if counting as she recited the Tenets.
—The One-Who-Will-Come is God, and is of God, and is becoming God.
—The One-Who-Will-Come has always been, is, and will always be.
—The One-Who-Will-Come was the first image in God’s mind, and will be the last emanation of God’s will.
—The One-Who-Will-Come will be made human, and will be more than human.
—The One-Who-Will-Come will be born of woman, engendered of man, but of God alone shall remain.
—The One-Who-Will-Come will remember the future as the past, and will know all things.
—The One-Who-Will-Come will carry the final sword of justice, and will speak only Law.
—The One-Who-Will-Come will destroy the liar and reward the Lawful.
—The One-Who-Will-Come will bring us unto the final war, restore order to all nations, and will unite the human race as one people, one nation, and one Law.
—The One-Who-Will-Come will heal the soul of the world, and will raise the earth and the water again unto Heaven, and all the faithful shall live in the image and the Law of God forever.
Even now, Adria knew these perfectly, as she knew the ones given to her by the Sisters before, and as she had learned those after. She had already seen it change more than once, as Taber’s influence and her temple grew. New visions replaced old. New tenets were drafted, new rules written for Sisters, new oaths taken by Knights, and new laws crafted for peasants and nobility alike.
And gradually Adria’s father had retreated from this all as Taber had taken more precedence and responsibility. Scutage was taken instead of service, tithes garnered along with taxes. Armies of Knights and Missioners were sent out into Heiland and beyond. Fortresses, temples, and monastic schools were raised among the ignorant and the enemy.
The Word came with the sword. It was the Law.
Adria often wondered if even the Sisters themselves noticed this, or were concerned, or merely thought themselves forgetful somehow. This had amused Adria some as she grew, and when she was in a contrary mood, she had tried to lead them into error, and was often successful.
When they spoke of the One-Who-Will-Come, the Sisters were supposed to use the full name, or to simplify it to “The One” when their tongues tired. But when they were dealing with a particularly difficult question of Adria’s, or when they were deep into their rhetoric of repetition, some Sisters would accidentally say “He.” Others, in just the same way, would say “She.”
Obviously, there were arguments for both possibilities, either within their own minds, or behind the closed doors of the Temple, where only the Sisters were admitted. Over time, they seemed better able to master the art of expectation and ambiguity. It was, after all, the Law.
By law, any god who had a name was proclaimed false by the Sisterhood. By law, marriages in Heiland need be approved by the Sisterhood. By law, no ceremonies or rituals could be performed except those of and by the Sisters, and all burials, births, marriages and comings-of-age were presided over by them. They were increasingly the scribes and librarians of Heiland, and they kept all records of lineage and inheritance, and served as judges for most matters of justice concerning these.
The Sisterhood collected tithes and offerings — not only in churches and at shrines, but slowly had placed Knights of Darkfire to tax many of the roads, waterways, ports, and town gateways. Over the years, Taber and her Sisterhood had gathered much of the power of the nobility for themselves. They controlled much of the kingdom’s wealth, and they controlled its standing army of knights. Of even more concern in Adria’s growing mind, they had begun to control the minds of the young with their monastery schools.
And still, Adria could not discount all that she had been taught by the Sisterhood and their schools, despite the shifting tenets of their faith and the indoctrination in the future invisible. Their practical knowledge was admittedly wide-ranging, and from them she had learned the Aeman and Somanan languages to their full extent, as well as a certain amount of Kelmantian, along with the cultures of the recognized nations.
Adria was familiar with geography, at least from the perspective of the maps which had proved of somewhat spurious quality in the wild. She knew a good deal of mathematics, of rhetoric, and even a little of the surgical and alchemical arts. Though the traditional Aeman and formal Somanan names of ingredients and procedures had not applied, she had nonetheless eventually impressed many among the Aesidhe with her skills at herbal remedies — skills which were only strengthened by her training at the hands of Shísha and others.
With knowledge gained from the Sisterhood, along with what she had gained from the Aesidhe, she had grown strong in body, ability, and knowledge. She had fashioned her own bow. She had crafted snares to capture animals or men without harm. She ha
d aided in the healing of the wounded and sick and the birth of a child.
Aniya, Adria smiled, remembering the bloodied squalling infant who had not yet been named, whose rope still wound its way to her mother’s womb. The Sisterhood could never trace your lineage in their temple towers, should they somehow find you worthy of it. When the birth cord is cut, each child belongs to us all.
“Why only ten?” Adria remembered asking the Sister, whose time with her would soon come to an end. “Our knowledge of the world grows. The Sisters changes their hoods for sashes, and even Tenets are replaced by others… so… why ten?”
“It is the Doctrine,” the Sister answered simply.
“It is a fallacy of tradition to claim as truth what is merely labeled as true,” Adria said, regretful she did not remember enough of the Somanan to speak the original. “I have no doubt that, were we given twelve fingers, the Doctrine would hold twelve key tenets, and likely name them Twelvents instead.”
It was among the next Sister tutor’s duties to educated Adria in the Natural Order of life, at least in some small way which was already overshadowed by what Adria had learned from Aeman and Somanan anatomical texts.
What knowledge Adria could glean from drawings of animal dissections and descriptions of their cycles of life led her to many more human questions, and especially the nature of her own life and lineage. But her ability to ask such questions was limited.
It was, Adria knew, easier to know a child’s mother than father. Motherhood is an obvious quality, proved by habitation in the womb, but fatherhood, Adria had come to suspect, could be kept secret. Adria had marveled, then, that her father was so obviously known to her, and yet her mother’s existence and name had remained a mystery.
There were rumors, of course, and Adria had once assumed Taber to be her mother. But as she grew, “Matron” seemed more and more an honorary title, and did not seem to apply to Adria’s relationship with the Matriarch specifically. Many called her thus, and Adria had no illusion that the Matriarch held any particular affections or affiliation for her beyond their respective status. Like in her nanny’s stories, the Matriarch had even taken on somewhat fairytale qualities in Adria’s imagination, a relative omniscience, and servants’ whispers did little to assuage this fear.
Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 Page 14