Chapter 23: A Crucial Articulation of Lies

Color may be a ruse, but time exists. If ever one had a reason to doubt it, to call it a construct or a fabrication, it would be me, and I raise my hand in testimony to the power of its flow. I wish he hadn't told me what I am, without telling me what it is. Sometimes I wish I'd never met that man at all. You'll know of whom I speak eventually, so don't worry over my rambling just now. It may be a symptom of where I'm at in my retelling, or maybe a malaise of this room. It's so perfect, so beautiful. The fabrications of my eyes and mind are so perfect. I can recognise the colors as they once were, but because the torches have long since guttered out, never to be relit, the colors I see now are just echoes, so dull and un-assailing. And the moon and Sun, warring between water and fire, they each take hold of the cobwebbed dilapidations around me and wrestle them into different forms, and I think of how this place must have appeared when there were people in it, but then it shrinks away from me, and the Sun and moon spit on me with disgust. This room was meant to be empty, its colors revelling in their desaturation. This empty ballroom is a shrine to decay, an untended grave, a harbinger who testifies to the omnipresence of time. I think I need to leave this room because I am populating it, and its beauty is in its emptiness. When the liminal space is occupied, it ceases to be liminal, and the slow memory of its brighter days attracts the unwelcome sting of nostalgia.

I have packed up my things and found another place, equally beautiful, but in a way that fills me with a loneliness that I don't find as appealing. I've been evicted from a space that was cathartic to me; a grand gallery of loss. Every cobweb in there was sublime, placed to maximum effect by hands that must have been gnarled and weathered beyond the span of Mitra's wheel. I would dearly love to see the loom on which those webs were woven. I want to go back so badly that it aches, but the thought of retreading my steps is nauseating, so I'll content myself to write here.

I wish I could show you this place with more than words. How do you describe Tarthas? Tarthas is emptiness, defeat, the echo of loss before the desiccated cosmos is turned to void, a vision of a grave that is frozen so permanently into your mind's eye that you see it even in death. Where I sit now, on a porch outside what must have been the room of a powerful man's young daughter, I look into a world veiled by mist. The gold light of salvation is behind the tower now, and before is nothing but a battery of violent silhouettes. I'm watching a troupe of players readying for their performance behind a semi opaque curtain, and they have paused in their movements, realizing the play has been canceled due to there being only an audience of one, but they are deliberating on whether or not to continue the show. And why would they not? Without the show, what is an actor or an actress? Better they perform to an audience of one, then to depart to their real act, the act of attending parties and wasting time at brothels and taverns as those in their audience do in earnest.

There is a soft blue glow to the mist, and through it I see the ashen grey of Tarthas, its shapes all a clutter of stabbing things. I call it a warscape. One cannot look upon it without seeing in their mind the battle of the Fates. All there is to question, in the minds of many, is whether the Fates battled each other, or us. But I feel there is a fouler thing at work. I am convinced that an angry mind was woken and released from the crypt that contained it. As we shackle the jinn and confine them to our purposes, caging them in boxes and jars, so a mighty one has done to this great, dark, brooding consciousness, and upon its release the world was sickened, and the Fates struck the world to extinguish the miasma, leaving the gaping blood-hole we name Sun, and the weeping ghost we style moon.

Caduceus wrote letters in the air above a console with his finger. He stood on a ledge about a pace and half out from the walkway, carried there by a tamed elemental. I watched him writing, jealous of the gifts of his kindred. He looked down at me several times before pausing his work. I did not mean to draw his attention with my unease, but it was inevitable. He sent the elemental down to bear me up, then asked what vexed me.

Conversing with a lucien can be in itself vexing, so I was not particularly thrilled with Caduceus's offer to help me sort through difficult feelings. I don't believe they mean to be irksome. Rather I think their speech is influenced by their photonic nature. What others depend on for sight, they secrete from their pores, and so they tend to look to the dim spaces as a starting point for their own reference. To me their conversation is reminiscent of the way our minds riddle themselves in dreams; simultaneously elucidating truths while submersing them in artifice.

I remember feeling oddly nervous about stepping off the elemental. They bounce slightly when they are disembarked from, and their ethereal forms allow light to pass through them in mimicry of the strata they traverse. This sounds unnerving, yes, but I'd been trusting myself to them for years, and could not explain my anxiety.

Caduceus spoke in vague terms, leaving it to me to decide whether or not I wished to vent. I told him the tale, sans the metal case and clandestine meeting. His advice was as lucien as my head is bare.

"When one is lost, a beacon is sought, but a guiding light can only shine in the dark. Go where there is gloom."

I laughed, because I had spent so much time in his company that I understood him completely. 'Go see the girl, you idiot' was his meaning.

My duties ran long that day, but I was off the next and had no scheduled militia work for the remainder of the week. I checked out an arming sword with a tang so loose in the hilt it rattled, paid for the broken shotel (I'd hoped the guardhouse porters would have forgotten), and went to Matias's shop. I saw a pair of patrons through the window, saw Eris in a dark gown made of thin fabric, and in a swirl of ardor and fear, I turned and fled.

Too ashamed of myself to face myself, I searched desperately for any activity that promised distraction, relenting when even the Bibliotheca had no work for me to do. I returned to my silo by the longest route I knew. Tarion awaited me, leaning against the wall and thumbing through the latest corporatarch booklet. 'The Fifth Wind', it was titled. I kept a copy in my belt pouch, remembered a few key phrases, and neglected to do anymore. Something about Tarion gave me the impression he had done no more than I.

He wasted no breath on small talk. A simple nod propelled us into me inviting him, and he was straight to his purpose.

"I said we'd speak privately. I arranged for you to have some time, but I assumed you'd be unengaged."

"I..."

I suddenly thought discretion wise, but Tarion did not give any berth for my hesitation.

"How fares the girl?"

"She looked well. She was seeing to patrons when I looked in on her."

Tarion approved, and assured me no one wished for her to come to the least bit of harm. He then told me her father was dreadfully worried, because she bore an affliction caught from one of the many transient demographics who passed through their village.

"Born it for years, she has", Tarion elaborated.

Pity flooded into my heart, and I felt justified for my nervous flight from her father's shop. Eris was deserving of healing and succor. I was, as I am, fundamentally undeserving, and incapable of bringing anything other than harm. And so days went by where I was tossed about by an ebbing sea of thought, its calmly undulating surface blistered by tempests of desire and self flagellation, fighting against the tide to avoid redeeming my first failed visit on Eris. Weeks wore on during which I kept safe the metal case at Tarion's behest. The militia's labors proved fruitful, as the targs appeared less and less frequently and the surface villages thrived. Matias languished for what seemed an overly long time, but eventually was released and I was able to ignore the rapping of my guilt.

Only Caduceus was aware of my buried misgivings, and spoke to me in fragments between ballast. One day he showed me a lamp that, while worn and tarnished, housed one of his favorite jinn. He told me that the sky can be seen as a metaphor for the spirit of all living souls in Tarthas. There is an ever present dichotomy of powerful darkness, with splashes of dying light struggling to shine through. And finally, he tasked me with repeatedly cleaning a dark corner where little took place. I protested after a time, reminding him I'd cleaned it already, but as he pointed out, each time I went to the corner I found a space still soiled. It took time, but his message eventually worked its way into my heart, and I went to see Eris again. Matias was there, and while I thought in my mind that his presence would aid in my effort to reconnect with her, my anxious thoughts got the better of me.

A third attempt found her gone, and I spoke to Matias. He told me, after delaying me with idle talk, that Eris should be home very soon.

"Give her my best wishes," I said with a bow. Then I turned and launched into a speedy departure.

As my heart thumped from the exhilaration one feels when dodging a hail of quarrels, I saw her walking through darkened pillars where gardens were sometimes planted. There was a beam of lantern glow shimmering downward in such a way that it seemed meant entirely for her, giving radiance to a snowfall of ashes from where we had burned heaps of targs. That macabre and gentle rain made a soft bed for her to leave small footprints in, and I felt as if my flesh had faded into a dream, leaving only an unseen eye that felt as intensely as the heart of a new mother.

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I was standing under the remains of an arch that once led into a covered meeting hall during the old winters. I was so moved by the sight of this dark, waifish, ruin of a girl that I forgot myself entirely, watching her as if she were an apparition conjured by a jinn and unaware of anything. With sudden terror I realized that she was coming directly towards me and there was no chance for me to silently slip away. So I remained, ready for my nervous lump of mumbles to unravel in a torrent after I uttered a simple, stammering 'hello'. She lifted her hooded eyes as she came near the arch. I still remember the anxious jolt I felt upon seeing their bloodshot glow, and the confusion I felt when she paid as much attention to me as one does to a patch of still air.

I tried to convince myself that I was glad she ignored me, but that faded quickly, and I found myself trying to sooth my hurt feelings with lies. One I seemed desperte tp cpnvince myself of, was that she simply didn't notice me, that I blended into the crowd. But in all my days till then I had never seen another human who looked like me. And my hood was down, my smooth scalp aglow in the lantern light and my blue eyes blazing like stars in the Elvedon sky. She could not have missed me, milk white and frightened. But still she passed me by without a look.

I told all to Caduceus the following day. I was so sick I could not focus on even the simplest patch of floor. I left mops and rags and puddles everywhere I went, and many rooms went uncleaned altogether. He invited me to his home for supper that night. I wanted to refuse, but something in me impelled me to accept his invitation. When I arrived I was shocked to see the younger of the women who had met with Tarion and the old mercenary.

"My wife, Nashandra," he said.

She was human, and their two little children were of mixed blood. I thoughtlessly commended them for bearing two. Nashandra smiled sadly and thanked me. "We're grateful," she said with words, and with her eyes and shoulders and the tilt of her head I was told that they had lost many more. In my years this remains one of the few times I'd met children who survived the difficult trick of pairing between kindreds. They were atrocious looking, but somehow their ugliness endeared them to me. Their skin was black as pitch and mottled with pinkish blots, devoid of any phosphorous secretions, while their eyes burned bright like antique candles, though their shades of orange and yellow were more akin to jaundice than their father's candlelight glow. They were scrawny as well, with patchy hair and disproportionate facial features. This collage of misfortune swelled my heart with affection, and I was happy when I found myself betwixt them on the settle and assaulted with their happy gibberish.

Tarion's children helped prepare for the meal, and said little more than dutiful greetings to me. They were older, his daughter ten and six and his son not much older than ten, so I did not question their absence from the hearth where I kept the hybrids busy. Nashandra thanked me profusely for befriending them. I told her truthfully that it was my pleasure, and the smaller of the two became tearful and leapt onto my lap; arms coiled about my neck. This led to a tussle that nearly damaged a delicate statue near the fire. It was of thinly wrought bronze, replete with delicate etchings of a dozen different animals in a wheel over rising flames. Astride the column of fire were two men holding torches. One torch was held up, the other down.

"Mitra," I blurted, an ugly half breed runt under each arm. The children were kicking and squirming gleefully, unaware at the tragedy that had narrowly been averted. I stood and went back to the settle, where I tried in vain to calm them. Caduceus eventually came into the room and filled the space with bright and threatening light. The children calmed then, and went as bidden to the dining hall.

I was glad for the invitation when we sat down to eat. I'd never been inside a proper house before, other than the old abandoned one the militia had repurposed as a barracks. Caducueus's house was much smaller of course, and simple in every way, but it felt as spacious as a barren desert compared to my cramped silo.

After the food was spread, Nashandra asked me if I would like to speak to my covenant before we ate. I felt the urge to unfasten the top of my tunic and show her that as a boy I'd been marked as an agnostic, but I held back, and instead remarked that I'd prefer an older person than I speak instead.

I suppose I should discuss this point before proceeding. Before certain tragedies became known to me, I was an amnesiac who confused fractured memories with trauma induced nightmares. I bear a mark that was given to me for a twofold reason, though only one reason was known to those who branded me. My childhood took place over an unorthodox span of time, and in a way only one of the few such as me can understand. There was the wraithkin brand, given to children who refused to choose between the accepted views regarding the Fall, and there were additions made to mine at the command of unseen superiors. I was called 'Boy of the Batch', and assumed that title referred to all male children who chose withheld themselves from the covenants. I've learned a great deal since then, but those details will resonate more deeply with later events.

Tarion's wife spoke. She was a venerable woman who's face had been hardened by work and tribulation. She spoke of penance and well earned punishment, but at the end she spoke of the light that glows in the deepest of clouds, naming our hosts as icons of redemption. Then bread was broken and mouths were filled.

Caduceus's children were both girls. Their names were Nyx and Hypatia. I'd taken them for boys, but they were at that age where sexual traits are less removed from the embryonic schism. Also to blame were their odd features. They were learned children, whereas Tarion's were disciplined. He had a son and daughter, named Orestes and Autumn. Orestes had the look of a scholar in his eyes, but his limbs were sinewy from long hours at the gymnasium and his every hair was in perfect place. Autumn looked almost regal, a daughter of an oligarch perhaps, if not for her plain raiment. They both spoke when spoken to, gave thanks profusely, and ate from every dish that passed in front of them, even when it was clear they would rather have not.

After the meal, the children were ushered into the playroom on the bottom floor, and we adults went to the hearth to sit in chairs and settles and speak on the affairs of Haven. Tarion's wife, Huldah, began the conversation with what I would now call undeserved authority. Even then, as I recollect, I found her demeanor exhausting, but I tolerated her because of my respect for the other three in the room, and for the fact that she unwittingly answered many of my questions.

"The Board has shown its wisdom indeed," she trumpeted, "hiring the doughtiest warriors of Tarthas to finally summon the Winds. If only they would round up the fools who resist. To think there are those who doubt the veracity of Eidolon's sonnettes is simply embarrassing."

"They'll be rounded up soon enough, my love," Tarion said.

"Truly," Nashandra said. "You militiamen have taken a great deal of pressure off the soldiery. They should have no trouble routing these insurgents."

Tarion sighed, but Huldah spoke.

"If only the Board cared more. Those tortoise riders can't be counted on for anything. It's up to good citizens like us to take action."

Caduceus was one of the more 'dark adapted' luciens, meaning he'd been around humankind enough to adopt some of our quirks, but Huldah seemed to have almost instantly worn him out.

"Married to a militia captain, and completely ignorant of the army's efforts. Huldah, you deserve a metal."

Huldah's ears twitched, and her jaw became so tight I expected to hear it cracking. She managed a curt smile, and made a comment about the specific alloy her trophy should be made of. The room was silent for a moment then, and Caduceus made a comment that nearly stopped my heart.

"Victor, I have something for you at the Bibliotheca. A copy of the book you promised Matias. Poor man, being held for questioning so long when he is a confirmed innocent. Bring the text you borrowed with you, the one in the antique case, and we can exchange it for Matias's book.

Huldah wanted to know what the book was, and when Caduceus told her she went on a long winded rant about the virtues of hardship and a soldier's discipline. I couldn't have cared less for her words, after hearing from her what I wanted to know. So little trickled down to people of my walk. I searched for more information from the eyes in the room, and saw that Huldah knew nothing of the metal case, or likely any of her husbands off duty proclivities. What puzzled me was Caduceus's place in their game. Tarion and Nashandra seemed utterly perplexed by his comment. When I went home, I made certain the case was in my cloak's inner pocket.

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