Chapter 4: Little Candles

 The cells were filled, as was the clinic. I commended Brother Astartes on his quick work.

  "We enforced a number of the more subjective laws," he said, "and embellished the dangers of some minor illnesses."

  "How did the Ossarians respond?".

  "Some objected, others rejoiced. I don't foresee any problems from them. If anything, our masters have been lenient of late. I'd say they were due for a few reminders."

  If Brother Astartes had any inkling of the Dolomites's alarming behaviour, he kept it well hidden. I nodded as if all were well, then went to the sanctum proper to check on the masters and present myself for assignment. They were each laying on their backs within their sleeping pods, eyes closed, nourishing lights kindled.

  "They're asleep," I told Martus. We'd stolen away to an unfrequented storeroom to discuss the previous night.

  "What shall we do?"

  I thought in that moment that while he asked of only the two of us, that brave, indecisive boy thought of all the sanctum, the porters, us Boys of the Batch, and even the Ossarian herd that our elders had recently culled. In fact, I wish to correct myself now and suggest that he was thinking of all of Tarthas, and Elvedon, and all the wonders and treasures that our scholars debate over constantly. You see, I think poor Martus may have believed in them all. I do now, of course, but I can claim no wisdom or keen vision, for I believe in them because I have seen them. Martus, I think, believed in all the fabled lands and heroes and demifauna because he had spirit, unfettered by maturity and pure of demystification. Is my experience of higher value than his spirit, or more recommendable? What I had to see with my eyes, Martus saw already with his heart. I had no such vision. I fancied myself an intellectual, but I was no more than a mimic, who by regurgitation appeared learned only to myself. So I regurgitated cantos and axioms to Martus, recited protocol and contingency, and we did our best to appear normal. But all the while, as we scurried about performing empty tasks to keep busy, our thoughts were fixed on the Dolomites in their sleeping pods.

  I went to them when our work was done. I walked among them, running my fingers over the glass lids of their beds, and stopped by Albedo Adept, thinking of that day my transport from the labor division rose from beneath the black ocean and nestled in the dock. Ice the color of soot lay in a sheet ten feet thick for miles, and I'd been told that all the seas of the world were so. That's why I felt my being shuttled into that abyss was a betrayal.

  Those ministering at the labor pool told me I was selected for a high calling. I wanted to believe them, but all I could feel was fear that blossomed into hate when the absolute darkness of the ocean enveloped my vessel. So absolute, so abyssal, so completely skewed against our survival is that terrible space, that I could never shake the feeling that I was being handed over to murderers. I felt that I died during that submergence, and that what was brought ashore was only a shell. Sometimes I look back, when thought permits, and I can verify that I was a different person before my branding, and much more so than before my journey to Ossary. The thin, needle-like rod with its mean polish slid down my throat and lit my mark from within. Before that I only know that I was, but not who. Others knew a boy who sat in a bed, unable to walk more than the span of his room without being fatigued. But those memories aren't mine, though I've been given access to them. And there was that boy across the room from me who I never saw awake. As it was Albedo Adept who chose to wake me for the work, it was his pod I stood over.

  The young tyfloch died that evening. I found him sitting almost as Turk had sat by his small campfire. I knelt in front of him and took his white hand like before. It crumbled at my touch, followed by the rest of him. I went to a storehouse and got a wooden chest to sweep him into, then asked Anassa to raise me to the roof where I set him alight with flint, naming him as his rotten fragments rose into the wind. I named him Asher, as he flew again as ashes, regaining his blessing from birth in his death.

  "You are leaving this place, Asher," I said as he floated away, "leaving this land of pain. Fare thee well. If only I could be so blessed. Become now a part of the wind, and whenever it blows I will think of you."

  As Anassa lowered me, I saw that she was crying. We held a vigil for him then. I went to each one and told them privately the name I gave him. I suggested that we move our vigil outside and look upon the warscape of Tarthas while we grieved for our little brother. I feared that death had become so commonplace at the westing house that Asher's departure might have gone unnoticed. It did not. All those waiting for their own passage gathered with me along the edge of the ringwall surrounding the house and looked silently past the flickering lights of Ossary. There was a gust of wind, and as it flowed through and around me, I saw a pair of brilliantly plumed wings beating against the clouds. An opening formed in the sky like a portcullis, showing just a hint of a piercing light that shifted in color as I wondered what the true Sun might look like, years before I served a learned sect that taught me lies.

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