Oh my holy Maker, my land is dying. The crops have withered in the fields, and the soil is hard as clay; the animals are spare and starved, and eat the bark from the dead trees. Parched is the ground, white is the sky, dry are the rivers and lakes of my youth. I call out as a lamb for its mother, I cry out for mercy. What have we done to deserve your wrath? Why does Bisunthe shine her light as hard upon us as the light of hell? Where are you, sweet Hygund, who loved the plenty of the Earth? I rend my clothing, I tear my hair, my eyes are as dry as canvas, my tears do not fall. The sky should weep blood for our sorrows, the Earth should shake its grief upon our land, so that we may mercifully die. Where are you, sweet Hygund, the foster and father of humanity? Where are your wings to shield us from the sky, your breath to cool the air? I call and call to you, and you are not there. My kindred are dying, and you remain silent. My life is frail and dead as the ash of a fire, and you are absent.
– The Book of Lament, Chapter 6
At first the nights were cold, and Anessa was glad that they mostly rested during the daylight hours. Even the days were chilly, but spring was growing rapidly, Yanthic and Vorinathe’s tracks burning gradually higher and higher in the sky each day. At summer’s peak they would each crown the zenith of the sky; at winter’s depth they barely crested the horizon.
Venthal kept their path near the road, but skirted villages and towns widely, often treading so deeply into the woods that Anessa wondered how he knew his way. Occasionally he made Signs that helped them find paths or fields to cross, or orchards where they could gather more food. Anessa knew a fair amount of woodcraft, and Venthal even more. They found food in the forest, edible leaves or bark or berries, and even ate the grubs that nested beneath hollow logs. When Anessa asked him about hunting, he said, “We can’t risk a cookfire. Soon it will be known all over this region that the Moonmages leveled Dingad, and all unknown travelers will be suspected of Unsoundness. I don’t want us to be seen at all.”
Gradually they made their way West, always toward Hulic’s rise.
At first during days’ rests they were quiet with each other. Anessa didn’t know any other way to be, and Venthal seemed to be considering something so deeply that she didn’t want to disturb him. Sometimes she cried, thinking about Dingad. He did not comfort nor chastise her.
Then, one day, resting at the foot of a great tree that was mossy and damp at the roots, he said, “You mustn’t blame yourself for Dingad.”
Anessa blinked, and then stared at him for a moment. “Who else is there to blame?”
“Nothing is ever so simple as to be a single person’s fault, Anessa. In this case I am to blame as well, for not telling you about the dangers of spells done by you in particular.”
“Me in particular?”
“Did you never wonder why I never taught you Signs?”
“I did wonder that, yes.”
“It is because of what happens to them when they are used around you. Do you remember the scouring spell, how it attacked your hands?”
Anessa nodded.
“Spells in your presence turn to weapons. I do not know why. A magister’s apprentice is typically taught the basics of Signs. I never taught you, at first because I did not want the villagers to fear you more than they already did. Later, I realized that teaching you anything would expose you to heavy dangers.” He paused, and gestured with his hand, indicating her cheek where the patch of scales lay. “Do you remember when I did this?”
She shivered and pulled away, looking down. “I thought it was to humiliate me.”
“No, Anessa. I was attempting to disguise the color of your hair. Your hair caused more trouble with the townsfolk than anything else. I thought it would make your life easier if it were darker. After it was done, I was… I feared to attempt to undo it. I did not want to make it worse.”
She looked up at him, and saw pain in his face, something he had never shown before. It was so new that she felt she couldn’t trust it. “I don’t believe you.”
“You know that you have never lied to me. As it happens, I have never lied to you either.”
It was true. He had never lied to her about mutilating her face, he had simply not explained it to her at all. “You walk a very thin line between truth and falsehood, though.”
“It is necessary in this world to care for the truth as though it is an explosive powder. It’s often quite as dangerous.”
She shook her head. “That sounds like an excuse.”
“Perhaps it is. Rest now. We walk again at dusk.”
The next day, and every day thereafter, Venthal began to tell her many things. It was difficult to get used to this new version of him. In all the time they had lived together, he had never been open, he had never been approachable. Now he seemed to want to fill her head with as much information in as little time as possible. She felt dizzy around him, unable to catch her mental footing.
He also began to teach her some simple Signs. It was difficult tutelage, because he would not permit her to echo his movements nor repeat his drawings in the dirt. When she recalled the Sigil, she did not complain about it.
But his new manner was a different matter.
“Why are you suddenly… talkative?” she asked him one day.
He studied her for a moment. “You mean, as opposed to morose and distant.”
“Exactly.”
He paused for a long while, and then said, “Unfortunately, it was… practical, for you to fear and dislike me. I could not risk being your friend in the eyes of Dingad.”
“Practical?” She felt her blood pound in her temples, hot and heavy. “You treated me like a thing. I worked for you, I lived in fear of you, I hated you, and… and… and now you act like you want me to like you!” She knew it was imperative to keep her voice quiet, but it shook uncontrollably as she hissed words at him. “I’ve spent four years as a slave. Four years! And now you tell me I’m some kind of a Weapon… why didn’t you take me away from the town when you first discovered that? Why didn’t you kill me? Why are you teaching me these things now, when you know I can never use them without destruction?”
“Forgive me.”
She stopped in shock.
“Anessa, I know that the past four years have been hard for you. But I’ve done what was necessary to keep you alive.” He paused, seeming to collect himself. “There are things that will be difficult to explain to you, and most of them you would not believe anyway.”
“Try me,” she said mutinously.
“Not today. Today we’ve talked enough.” His eyes darkened to their usual expressionless black. “It’s time to sleep. If you find you can’t, chew on some liu leaf. It’s important that you remain strong.”
She lay in the dark, burning with fear and resentment and something she couldn’t name. She didn’t want to sleep.
Rest. He is right, you need to be strong.
No I don’t. I need to not exist at all. I am some kind of a flaw on the Earth.
Nothing that lives is a flaw.
What about that two-headed sheep that was born on Ilker’s farm last year?
Merely strange. Perhaps one day all sheep will have two heads.
That makes no sense.
Sleep. Perform the chant of sleep if it helps.
Sleep that heals the wound
Sleep that purifies the poisons
Sleep that filters the blood
Sleep that smoothes the skin
Sleep that deepens in the mind
Sleep that rests the heart
Sleep that gathers the strength
Sleep that…
She drifted off.
When she woke in the evening, the burning feeling was gone, but now she felt lost and saddened, and that feeling persisted as they traveled. All of the birthing spring around them seemed to be crying for something rather than gladdened by the new warmth. Even the songs of birds sounded sorrowful.
For no reason, she found herself thinking about saddest parts of the Holy Book of Ynthe and the Apostolic Adjuncts. The grief of Hygund and Bisunthe after their forced separation had its own Adjunct, The Book of Lament, which was filled with the most poetic descriptions of despair. Hygund had caused a rain for many days, and Bisunthe had darkened the moons in their tracks, and all had suffered because of their grief. Humans and Moonmages both had been sorely decimated by the quarrel of the Brother and Sister, and this further devastation was unbearable. They had called out to their Gods, and their Gods had been too consumed by grieving to answer. It had been a darkness beyond any formerly known.
In desperation, the Moonmages had called out to Ynthe, and Ynthe was angered. He brightened the light of Hell until the clouds were evaporated and the rain stopped, and a hot wind swept the Earth. The moons all shown suddenly brighter than before, and humans were burnt and faint from it. Hygund and Bisunthe each went to Ynthe and begged His forgiveness, and He charged Them again to correct Their mistakes and heal Their respective peoples. But even when They obeyed, the people could never trust their Gods entirely again.
Silent tears began to slide down her cheeks.
It was wrong; all of it. It was wrong that the Gods were so selfish. It was wrong that Ynthe was so quick to anger. It was wrong that the peoples of Earth and the moons should suffer.
There was another Adjunct, the Book of Wonder, in which it said that a savior would arise and heal the rift between the Gods and temper their self-centeredness with generosity and self-sacrifice, but Anessa had never put much stock in it. In Dingad, the Book of Wonder was held in some suspicion, and there were other towns where it was considered near to heresy. Nobody ever read from it during holy days. Most humans valued realism, and the reality was that life was cruel and arbitrary.
Perhaps that’s why I’m alive.
You have a greater cause to be alive than that, and I know you can sense it.
I sense nothing right now.
That’s because you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Stop it.
“Anessa.”
Anessa stopped, her eyes on the ground. “Is it nearing dawn?” she asked in a cold voice that did not seem to belong to her. Her shoulders felt heavy.
Venthal said, “No, but let’s rest awhile. I have more to teach you.”
They found some mossy ground and sat. Anessa wiped her eyes, but it was useless, there were simply more tears to replace the ones that had been cleared away. She said, “I don’t think I can learn anything tonight.”
He examined her for a moment. “No Signs, I think. Perhaps it’s time we began with science.”
“Science?”
“I know you have learned of science; we tested you on the Five Learnings when you first came to Dingad.”
She nodded. “I don’t think I was ever that good at science, though. Is any human?”
“There are humans who do nothing else but study sciences, and yes, they are very skilled and learned. What do you know of the astronomer Burnok?”
She tried to remember. “He was sent to Hell, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. But before he died, he was a master of astronomy…”
“Wait. He died?”
Venthal grimaced. “Ah, I had forgotten. You believe that when a man is sent into Hell, he must live there, burning for eternity.”
“Is that not true?”
“It is not. Hell burns, yes, but it kills you. There is nothing spiritual about it. Hell is simply a place. A very dangerous place, a place where no man can live unprotected–and even then not for long–but just another place on the Earth.”
Anessa shivered. There was something both unnerving and exciting about hearing Hell spoken of so lightly and with such flagrant disrespect. “So Burnok died in Hell.”
“Before he was sent there… not by gods, but by humans… he studied the movement of the moons and the Earth.”
“The Earth moves?”
Venthal nodded. “It does, very rapidly. We cannot feel it, because we are being carried with it, but it does move as the moons do. And as the moons travel around the Earth, the Earth travels around… well. Around the Eye of Ynthe.”
She frowned. “Ynthe is incorporeal.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. But there is a vast power that the Earth circles, a vast energy, and it is easiest to refer to it as the Eye of Ynthe. It is unlike any other thing we know. And the part of Earth that eternally faces the Eye is known as Hell because it burns from the light and energy cast upon it. We are on the opposite face of the Earth, the sheltered face.”
“That makes no sense; the Earth has two faces?” Anessa felt a growing confusion turning to frustration.
“I will be able to show you what I mean when we reach our destination.”
“Where is that?”
“Not far from this place. Two more days and we will arrive there. It is, let us say, one of the schools of Burnok the Astronomer… men who held him in regard reside there and continue his studies in secret. You will be relatively safe there.” Venthal looked up at the sky. “It’s near enough dawn that we should settle here for the day.”
That night, Anessa lay and looked up through the leaves at the faint twinklings of the stars until she drifted off. She dreamed of Earth as a man with two heads, one that looked before and one behind. The one that looked before said, “Beware.” And the one that looked behind burned and burned, and it said a word that she recognized as her own name, not Anessa, but her true and real name. She woke with the word on her lips, but it had escaped from her.
To be continued
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