“Father of fathers, I need a word that has never been said,” the prince said. “Do you know of such a word?”
Anger contracted the old man’s face and it further broke into bloody lines. He tried to raise a hand toward the prince but the pain of his moving flashed across his face and his limb came to rest on the floor as he let out a guttural whimper.
“Please,” the prince asked again, “I need the word. I was told that you know of all.”
After an evident effort to subdue the pain consuming him, the Father of fathers returned his stare onto the prince. Fear had given way to hatred and disdain.
“You…” the old man croaked, his speech broken, interspersed with rushed, whistling breaths.
“Know. NOTHING,” he shrieked raising his head toward the prince.
Pieces of flesh tore from the back of his skull and remained stuck to the stone floor as the words fell like the hollow beats of a great clock.
“NOTHING,” he repeated, raising his convulsing body up from the bloodstained floor.
The prince felt a slight pull in his innards, the same as he had in the gory room below the monastery. But it passed before it made an impression on him.
“The word, please,” he pleaded, as the Father of fathers brought a bloody talon-of-a-hand toward his face.
The old man started laughing uncontrollably.
“A word?” he wondered out loud, his eyes beyond the prince now.
He convulsed, coughing and laughing at the same time, bleeding from too many infected wounds. One last time he made eye contact with the prince.
“Never said?” he asked.
His bloodied face twitched, his eyes were wide and maniacal and had an unsettling quiver to them. He held himself at a weird angle for a moment, pus, blood and some greenish exudate oozing down his chest. His face froze into a sneer and in its stillness the prince recognized the undeniable light of lucidity. The moment stretched, heavy with the longing of the living and the regrets of the dying. Then the old man smiled, a twisting of his features that further tore at his face, and his eyes grew wider and shown bright with madness.
“There is no such thing,” he sneered malevolently.
Then he writhed. His body arched and his head snapped backward violently. He let out a pitiful, bubbly sound and went rigid. The Father of fathers hung in the air for a second and then crashed down to the floor in a sharp, moist sound.
Chapter Twenty One
Syndjya, Capital City of Alymphia.
Year Hundred and Fifty of the New Age
Fall Passing Festival.
“Cass,” Nikos called from the steps of the weapon barn. “We need more broad swords. Bring me five, would ya? And don’t forget about the ceremonial dagger. Old Baccus’ll be mad at you if ya do.”
Cassien looked up from his hearth to the door of the barn but Nikos was already gone and could be heard shouting orders to trainees in the courtyard. He sighed, rubbed his face and then walked to the far end. He pulled a broad sword out of a large barrel, considered how to procede for a moment and then turned around.
“Hey, Baley!” he called out over the crashing of hammers on steel and the hisses of red-hot blades plunged into cold water. “Give me a hand with those!”
Baley, a pale broad-shouldered lad who was sharpening a thin blade against a grindstone, looked up from his work station twenty feet away. He looked around for a second and then spotted Cassien in the back corner of the barn.
“What?” he shouted back, his hands never stopping their back-and-forth motion over the wet stone.
“Gimme a hand,” Cassien shouted, waving at him to come.
Baley rested the blade on his work station and quickly made his way to him.
“Nikos needs five more of those,” Cassien told him.
“Ya, ya, always needs more that one, doesn’t he?” Baley replied with a grin and a reproving shake of his angular head. “Want me to help you carry them?”
“No, just stack them on my arms.”
Baley pulled the broad swords out of the barrel one by one and carefully arranged them flat on Cassien’s forearms, making sure that the sharp edge of the blades did not touch his skin. As he loaded Cassien’s arms he shot him a few side-glances with a curious, maybe worried, look on his face.
“Hey, Cass,” he eventually asked, “you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m alright,” Cassien replied, probably too fast for it to be a straight answer.
“Cause, well, you been kinda off the past couple days.”
The taller boy rubbed his large hands on his leather apron and leaned forward at the waist.
“I mean, you’re always kinda off, for sure. But it’s festival season and, you know, that normally makes you happy and weird and…”
Baley scratched at his neck, an uncertain look on his face.
“Well, I mean, more than usual that is. But you’ve been awfully gloomy and serious. Me and Lem we was talking about it and we thought maybe something is wrong, you know, so I thought I’d ask.”
Cassien looked mildly embarrassed and a bit confused. Baley and Lem were usually inclined to tease him and them showing concern was slightly disconcerting. Cassien forced a smile.
“Thanks, Baley, I’m fine,” he semi-grunted, the swords weighing uncomfortably on his arms. “But I really need to get these to Nikos.”
“Ya, for sure, just, you know, I wanted to make sure.”
Cassien headed for the barn’s door as fast as he could, fleetingly reflecting on how surprising people could be. He was surrounded by people who cared about him, sometimes unexpectedly so. Baccus, Nikos, his friends at the temples, Baley and Lem and Aria. The thought of Aria brought forth a newly familiar longing. Something tightened in his chest and his mind started getting sucked into its ceaseless rumbling about her. For an instant he lost his grip on what he was doing and as he circumvented a work station, he leaned too much to the right. One of the broad swords shifted in his arms. Its edge came resting against the skin of his bicep and dug lightly into his arm. The sting of the cut brought Cassien back to his task. He weaved his way around the rest of the work stations more carefully and slowly grunted his way up to the door of the barn. He kicked it open and emerged onto the training grounds. The late morning sun greeted him harshly and he closed his eyes against it. The cool air felt good on his sweaty skin and the relative quietness was also a relief. The grounds were abuzz with guards, soldiers and performers of all sorts. The guards and soldiers wore their official uniforms in the color of their respective provinces. Some stood in lines at the ready while officers ran up and down their ranks checking their armors and weapons. Others were clustered in small groups and chatted excitedly. A small crowd of onlookers had already formed at the outskirts of the training grounds and salesmen offering their wares could be heard above the hum of the day. Cassien spotted Nikos in the middle of the open space. The weapon master was talking to a couple of high ranking uniforms. His arms about to give up under the weight of his load, Cassien made a bee line to him. As Cassien approached, the small group parted and Nikos ran a large hand up and down his great beard and looked around the grounds pensively. He saw Cassien coming toward him and gave him a nod.
“You can drop those here, Cass,” he said.
He then cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted:
“Unit twelve!”
His voice rose effortlessly above the commotion surrounding him.
“Unit twelve, to me for your weapons!”
A small group of five men, from Barlong given to their uniform, came running to him. Without a word he pointed at the broad swords at Cassien’s feet and they each picked one up before returning to their position.
“Thanks, Cass,” the weapon master said. “I think you’re done for the day, aren’t ya?”
“I’m going to see if Lem and Baley need some extra help,” Cassien said, massaging his tingling arms. “Then I’ll go see if I’m needed at the temple.”
“Try to enjoy the day
too if you have time,” the weapon master said with a wink.
He playfully slammed one of his bear-hands on Cassien’s shoulder and Cassien almost went to the ground. Nikos let out one of his thunder-masking laughs.
“Come on Cass, you gotta be ready. You sure haven’t been on your toes lately!” Nikos said, shaking his head at him.
Cassien grunted and gave him a smile.
“Ya, ya, I’m on it,” he replied, shaking his shoulder.
“Go have fun!” Nikos ordered, an index finger pointed at the sky and a comically severe look on his face.
Then he turned around and strutted toward a group of officers at the far end of the grounds, leaving Cassien massaging his shoulder in the middle of the busy field.
That Cassien had been preoccupied in the past couple of days was an understatement. And for Baley and Lem to pick up on it, it must have been plainly obvious. In truth, Aria had been omnipresent in his thoughts. They had almost kissed and that scene played over and over in his mind. She had been so close to him, and he had lost himself in her presence. She had pulled him in deeper than where he went during his sittings and he could not stop thinking about her skin, her lips so close to his, and her smell so fragrant in the coolness of the night. In the face of the onslaught of emotions that shared moment of intimacy had awoken, sitting had been mostly useless. And it was to his growing despair that he quickly realized that her presence in the world had become a pull stronger than his many years of practice. After that first mostly sleepless night and a handful of failed attempts at sitting, he conceded to himself that the evening’s events had changed their relationship, most likely irrevocably. As he lay in bed in the dormitory of the Great Temple, too absorbed in his own thoughts to be aware of the soft snoring and the occasional tossing and turning of the other orphans around him, between thoughts of Aria and the attempted shooing of his black dogs, he realized that the only certainty he now had was that he most plainly missed her. Hethens’s glorious Breath be praised, what wouldn’t he have given to be with her? Like the ineluctable rising of the moon once the sun reaches the lower quadrants of the sky, so, too, were the ecstatic feelings she aroused in him followed by painful bursts of anxious need. Never before had he felt her absence so sharply. Alas, for every thought of Aria that arose, however delightful, hungry or painful, one of the Shadow was not far behind. The presence in the park that had ended the night, broken the magical moment they were sharing, the presence that he sensed more than saw, left him with a worrying sense of impending doom. No matter how hard he tried to reason through it, no matter how little sense his feelings made to him, he could not shake the certainty that the Shadow carried dark omens for them.
A bird flew above the training grounds, fleetingly obscuring the sun as it passed between it and Cassien. The festive crowd around him, its noises, smells, and colors, returned to him briefly, and he realized how little he cared about it all.
“Aria,” he thought, despairingly unsure that he would even see her that night.
She would be with the royal cortege, confined to the royal box during the evening celebrations. They had agreed to shortly meet afterwards at their usual spot, but Cassien was doubtful she would be able to slip away incognito. That thought pained him greatly. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun.
“Hethens breath onto me,” he pleaded, feeling more lost and confused than he ever had since mastering sitting.
“Bring me cloudless sight and weightless heart.”
He hoped for Hethens and the warmth of the celestial life-giver to bring him some relief, but neither did. He sighed then forced his feet into motion in the direction of the weapon barn. Once inside he checked to see if Baley or Lem needed help. But, as he expected, they did not. He knew that none of the apprentices would. They had worked tirelessly late into the night the previous day to get the weapons ready for the various cohorts partaking in the celebrations, and now their work was drawing to an end. Soon the weapon barn would empty as one by one the weapon forgers, blade edgers, and steel crafters left to partake in the festivities. Without work at the weapon barn, and his mind heavy with thoughts of Aria and the Shadow, Cassien felt a bit at a loss. He picked up the ceremonial blade Baccus was to use that evening during the opening ceremony, secured it in its scabbard at his waist and left the weapon barn for good. He headed toward the Great Temple to see if he was needed. Though, this close to the start of the celebrations, he knew that it was unlikely he would be of use. He crossed the training grounds, sighting Nikos walking along the ranks of recruits standing at the ready. He entered the crowd at the edge of the field and headed east. The streets of Syndjya were packed from building to building with visitors and locals. In stark contrast with the obtuse single-minded thoughts running in Cassien’s head, they effervesced with myriad of activities and a loud, joyful clamor. In fact, they were so crowded that it was impossible to move at more than a crawl. Only the wider avenues were kept open in their centers to make way for the parade.
It took Cassien the better part of an hour to return to the Great Temple. He had to painstakingly maneuver the dense sea of festival-goers. Pressed against cheerful strangers hailing him with loud ‘Hethens’s Breath!’, ‘Season’s Blessings on you!’, and ‘Passing’s fortune on your Breath!’ he became overly conscious of the fact that every single one of them was not Aria, their presence nothing more than the contrasting backdrop to her absence. A few times he closed his eyes and willfully let the flow of bodies carry him down one street or another, too aware of the void that kept expanding in his chest, of the ominous feeling of impending loss that coursed through his veins like a dark fire.
Eventually, he reached the Great Temple plaza where two nights prior he had watched the great bonfire burn with Aria. The rests of the pyre had since been cleaned up, and on the west side of the plaza now stood the royal box, richly ornamented and imposing on its six foot-tall stilts. In front of the stairs leading to the temple a high-altar had been raised for the season’s passing opening and closing ceremonies. The crowd on the plaza was far less dense than in the rest of Syndjya. But, although passer-bys were few, numerous guards were already posted around the plaza, in foresight of policing the crowds when seemingly the whole of Alymphia would converge onto the plaza for the opening ceremony at the end of the day.
Cassien crossed the plaza at a slow jog and walked up the white marble stairs leading to the temple. He still had the ceremonial knife at his belt and needed to give it to Baccus before looking to help his fellow temple-dwellers with the preparations.
“Although,” he reflected, “Baccus is probably at the castle right now.”
Half-way up the stairs a guard station had been set up to restrict access to the temple. He waved at the guards as he approached. They did not react to him until he drew closer, and they recognized him. The oldest guard, a Sargent in Syndjya’s city watch, nodded to him sharply and let out a half-grunted greeting.
“Back from work already?”
“Yeah, we’re almost completely done down there. The parade should start soon.”
“You ain’t gonna watch?” he asked surprised.
It was obvious that if given the choice he definitely would have.
“There’s more work to do here,” Cassien semi-fibbed, pointing at the temple behind them with his chin.
The guard waived him through with a dismissive shake of the hand and turned away. Cassien walked up the rest of the stairs and reached the temple’s portico. It had been further decorated since morning and was covered with a lush array of dark green ferns of various sizes interspersed with red and dark blue flowers. Cassien knew that the floral arrangement was meant to evoke the GrandJoy blazon but he thought it did a rather poor job of it. Past the portico, the atrium was empty but Cassien could hear activity beyond. In the nave a handful of his fellow temple-dwellers were adding left-over flowers and branches to the bouquets at the feet of the imposing columns. When he walked in, they greeted him loudly, their voices echoing of
f the high ceiling in a cacophony of ‘Hi’ and ‘Hey’ with his name in tow.
“Hi all!” he replied, scanning the large space and its many shadowy corners for one of the Brothers. “You’ve done a great job finishing up the temple,” he said. “It looks really good!”
The younger children beamed at his praise and a barrage of ‘Thanks’ bounced off the thick walls and columns in a cheerful cascade.
“Have you seen Brother Leim or Herm’ni?” Cassien asked. “I need to give one of them the ceremonial knife.”
Their answers came at him like a stampede of wild horses, eager, unruly, and all different.
“So they are everywhere,” Cassien thought.
“Alright, guys,” he replied with a smile. “I’ll find one of them, eventually.”
He left them to their task, maneuvered around the many stone benches that the nave was scattered with, and exited though a side door that led to the cloister.
The cloister was empty, as were the communal rooms and the kitchen. As Cassien moved through each of those spaces, Aria, the different Arias he had known throughout his life, walked alongside him. Her presence was almost tangible, like a soft tension against his perceptions. They had shared so much, he reflected.
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