I was a vain and silly girl that thought her road was straight and bordered with water and shade. Ornamented with fragrant nightflowers, to be traveled under a clear and star-spattered sky. Is that enough? Perhaps that demonstrates my silliness, but not my vanity. I have been told by some of the faithful that raised me that all that was needed to truly be Lucindite was love, and that all the rest would follow. That is easy as finding sand in the desert – I loved with all my heart, and tried to emulate the priestesses in all I did.Later, I heard an Ilsaran ballad that claimed only loss could make room for love and show the shape of it, that every sorrow deepened the well of joy. It was a beautiful song, but I was full of joy and love already. Must we only acknowledge faith when compared to despair? Are we incapable of appreciating the beauty in a thing, simply because it is not surrounded by all that is ugly? My faith was lilac surrounded by orchids and lilies of the night, and I wondered if a well too deep could ever be full.I was given early to the care of the Illumination; my mother's family is an old one in Spellgard, one of perhaps no more than a dozen that still give their eldest daughters up to Lucinda to become priestesses, into whatever was the latest incarnation of Her mortal organizations. For me, that meant the Presage and what could at times seem an endless sea of other students, so I grew to cherish our places of solitude.I never chafed at the choices made for me, as some expected me to; no one can be forced to devotion, and I needed little prodding. I could always have left when I came of age, but this was my whole world, from the heady scent of alurialis to the moons' market, libraries and star-shrines to winding dead-end streets. While children elsewhere played at princesses and giants and dragons, I played at priestess and imitated my favorites while envying their grace and mystery. I was shown at a toddling age what grandmothers in most other worlds (as I thought them) would never know.Those other worlds seemed barbaric, in any case. We heard stories sometimes, of children with magic in their blood and how they were discovered. Setting ablaze their hair (or worse, their homes), calling creatures from beyond they couldn't control, binding others to their will without realizing or knowing how to release them. Crossing the eyes of their neighbors! We also heard what sometimes happened to those we don't find, that don't find some other sympathetic home. Even those that were allowed to leave their homes unharmed seemed to have a long and lonely road of fighting with the demons inside them.Not me. Not here.
In Spellgard there were others like me, in different schools of learning. Spellweavers shaping the Al'Noth as natural as I breathe, clerics that dabble their fingers in the river of magic and sense its flows, scholars with their books and apprentices and lecture halls; I was surrounded by people that could sense what was latent in me. They were tasting the air, knowing the presence and direction of water without being certain of the shape it would take, and they prepared me for it as well as they could, long before the first outward signs.The exercises in mental disciplines and focus of will started early, but I often questioned their use. I imagined that there were little spells just sitting inside me, waiting to come out. I wondered why the others could not just read my heart aloud like a wizard's scroll and show me what it was. I wanted to know the words that would make the magic happen; they told me it was there, why shouldn't they be able to tell me what it was and how it worked?Mirisse told me I was like a newly planted garden; because she was a skilled tender of plants she could tell that something was growing, that seeds had been planted. She could water them and give them sun or shade and a space of their own, but until they poked out of the ground she wouldn't know what to call them, and sometimes even then they'd fool her. Mirisse was like that; she gave a similar speech about the bleeding, but since one of her pastimes really was tending to a night garden I couldn't blame her. She is the same one that told me the pale stripe on my skin was just a patch of moonshine.I was young, but every time I learned better, I felt that I had matured. “Now I understand, now I am wise.” I couldn't see how the lessons I was learning were the same, over and over. Is everyone as guilty of these patterns of error? Are the wise ones just those that practice to recognize their own foolishness and expect it at any moment?The 'seeds of my garden' were black, my gifts of what the superstitious call the dark arts. The first channeling can hardly lock one's path for the rest of one's life - many natural casters learn by imitation, forcing their wills to shape new patterns. It's difficult, but could it be greatly more difficult than stopping a flood inside of you with a mental wall and redirecting its flows?So it isn't everything, but who would say that, as if there was something undesirable about the art itself? As opposed to what, the skills some use to roast men alive or hurl them through portals to nowhere so that they might fall for all eternity?Still. I pray for the Protectors and those who go war, and love them and thank them, but I would be more comfortable in a burlap sack than in mail. I told myself it was the same thing. Good for others, but for me? I wasn't sure.
They gave me to Durik. Some thought I had potential, and he was well-respected, though I was ignorant of the reasons why. He was not what I had grown accustomed to in teachers, as I had stuck close to my favorites in all their varied shapes. He had a cold face, a practical mind, and sorrow in his eyes. So different from Mirisse, whose mouth was made for laughter. It wasn't what he did, it was just... did he have to be such a necromancer? In my youth I consoled myself with his lack of pointed beard or skeletal parts, but he still occupied himself primarily with the business of the dead, instead of all the other things the field could offer.I struggled with many things, not least the seeming shift in focus and motivations. I had grown to embrace the belief that the spark of magic lies within every living thing, making the life of each person filled with the potential for the sacred. I had been educated – I knew that the body once the soul has fled was of little significance. The soul was with the goddess, that was the important part. Whatever became of the body afterwards, well...someone took care of that, like someone took care of purchasing supplies or changing the candles. Someone else.Once I began adding my voice to prayers during Reclaimings, I began to wonder how I'd come to be participating in corpse-burnings, and why I'd never really thought about it before. Putting restless dead back to sleep, giving last rites to remains so that they could not be disturbed, or taking the bones of those without fear and making use of them, whether actively or in reserve... seeing these things firsthand began to wake me up. A little. Things that had seemed distant and unimportant to me were slowly brought into focus, giving shape and definition to those vague thoughts of “out there” and “whatever is done.”Between rites and debates I was asked questions that frustrated me, given answers that irritated me, and was set to tasks that seemed a waste of whatever potential I was supposed to have had. He would ask me to name the last known Lucindite in living memory to undergo the Rites of Unliving, and I would ask, “In whose living memory?” and then he would stare at me unblinking until I crumbled and recited what I knew of Melizaphei. That was fine. I was not usually flippant – I think he brought it out in me. But to then ask me to name all of the known Lucindites in living memory who had ever undergone the Rites of Unliving, their tasks, whether or not they had been completed and what had become of them? That seemed purposely impossible. If there were more than a handful in the last few thousand years, we'd either lost the knowledge of them or it was kept from me, and all but two of the names we had contained question marks in at least one field of what he'd asked.If there was purpose there must have been in asking me questions I could not possibly answer, it escaped me then. Always. I was wise, remember?
Sometimes I gave answers I thought would please him and got the opposite effect. He trapped me once, asking if I believed those that wished their mortal shells turned to ash with starfire showed less faith than those who gave their bodies into our care. I agreed; it seemed an easy answer. He was quick to turn my quick answer into an hour's lecture.We have been taught that form is an illusion, that Lucinda sees the heart, that in death the shell is all that remains. We say the words, and yet... What is that “yet”? Is it doubt? Uncertainty that Lucinda will provide for the immortal soul and no harm can come to it whatever is done to bones and sinew? Is it fear?It is vanity, a conceit of the living to retain control after death. Nothing more. The humblest apprentice is the hero of his own story. We may believe with our hearts entire that what becomes of our bodies matters not after our time on this world is done, that we will be safe with our Lady, but we are either perturbed by or grateful for the notion that in some way our stories will go on without us. What right our bones to stir from sleep, lacking our minds to direct them? It is no different from the declarations of property written to keep a favored brooch from a disliked relative who coveted it, as if the soul could rest easier for having been in control of its material possessions. We are all of us vain - those of us that give what we had lay down smug in our goodness, and those of us that hoard go relieved that our treasures are out of reach.When I ventured that he seemed to judge both harshly, he gave me a withering look and said I was being foolish, that a death was no way to judge a life and we were not the people to do it. He could be maddening.
Each time I thought to catch him in a contradiction, he shamed me. We are a diverse bunch, we that worship the Lady in all her guises. There are men that walk like soldiers and hold their staves like swords, swaggering spellflingers with a rod in one hand and a horn of ale in the other, scholars with beards sweeping the floors of rooms they scarcely leave, and our teachers have tools ranging from books to beakers to song and sand. More than a handful of those delight in a bit of showmanship, working spells with a flair to dazzle bystanders or strike fear in the hearts of others. Durik was not one of them.That's not to say he was not a powerful man, but he didn't often put it on display. He had a demeanor that seemed to say, “I could... but I don't.” It was easy to underestimate his abilities, as I did, and once the error is realized there had to be a little awe for him and a healthy dose of fear. He dazzled with his subtlety, not audaciousness, and I could imagine him being a different kind of terrifying to those without some sense of magic to follow his actions when he chose not to rely on the crutches we so often use to facilitate the casting of spells.So I teased about the occasional pomp in his ceremonies that seemed to depend on those gathered. Why bother at all, if true power was shown in subtlety, and why for some and not for others? Shall we also turn the fires blue and chant with goblets of blood? Never missing an opportunity to edify, he said, "if the situation requires it."He claimed that even if I hadn't the smallest scrap of talent, that I would learn more of being a priestess in a day at his side than another year in the Presage, or for that matter a decade being coddled at the night-shrines - if only I would open my eyes and ears.Listen carefully - you need to understand when it is best to say what someone wants to hear, even when it is not strictly necessary, and when to say what is needed, even if it is not strictly wanted. If you can begin to learn when is the right time for which, you will be ten times better a priestess.
Despite my complaints, it was eventually Durik that wouldn't have me, even though it was Durik I'd expected to confirm me in the Thaumaturge - past due, in my opinion, though the actual pomp and bustle of the ceremony itself I didn't mind going without. I still don't know what that last straw was, if there was a last straw, only that when I came to him the evening we were to supposed to see firsthand the purpose of Unliving tomb guardians, he informed me that he'd been sent another student and would have no more of me. I actually remember very little of that conversation, because I was so angry at what sounded a great deal like a wish for me to be set on fire.What he told me was that some pupils could be taught important lessons, while others must simply be burned by them, and he bid me go out and "by all means find a willing torch." I decided that he was the most horrible person I'd ever met, and that I would find someone else who would have me.I put myself at Keegan's disposal in order to arrange a meeting with him, as he was one of my favorites and my first choice. It was probably no coincidence that he was Durik's opposite in almost every way. He was short, pudgy wizard that was prone to excess, and he was boisterous and in general such a lively little man that he seemed ill-suited for his occupation. He even had red hair and a penchant for showy ceremonies and draping sleeves. He kept his face cowled for the Reclaiming I aided with, and I couldn't help thinking that he was trying to keep himself entertained as much as anything else, but I didn't hold it against him. It wasn't until we were called to receive the remains of a fallen Protector with all due ceremony that I questioned how fit I was to train with him.
I had not seen Pavel, a childhood friend of mine, in some time, and was surprised when I came beforehand to find him beside the prepared body of Alseyna Mien, a Protector in the Chapter of Change. "My grandmother," he explained, and seeing that it only confused me further, he added that Alseyna, a stern-faced woman with elven blood, had adopted his mother and her siblings when she was told she could have no children of her own. He was smiling while he talked, with the same now-green now-brown eyes I remembered and a fondness in his voice.Pavel and his family were fiercely proud of her, I found, both of the life that she had lived and the service even bones would perform while her soul was safe in the Lady's hands. I smiled at the thought, thinking that there were surely few places in the world where this could be anything but tolerated at the very most.We talked a little of our childhood, and he told me stories of his grandmother. He wiggled his ears at me to make me laugh, and confessed that he was teased so much about his ears as a child that he'd ask his Nana to enact justice on his behalf, a matter he swore she never laughed at him for even though it must have been so hard. There were memories and old laughter in his mellow voice as he told me, "And you know anyone could have just given a speech about how bullying only hurts the bully, or how they were just jealous, but Nana listened with such solemnity I could have loved her forever just for that.""That's all it took?" I asked, and he began chuckling at first, then snorted with laughter while I sat back, bemused. When he recovered, he shook his head and said, "Some time after that there was some sort of official function, the sort calling for the ceremonial robes or armor and a line of staves, and when she showed up they saw she'd transmuted her ears to be ten times the size...!""She didn't!" I exclaimed, aghast and amused all at once."She did!" Pavel answered merrily, his whole face creased in good humor. "I heard the entire hall was silent and on the edge of hilarity for whole minutes, but Nana's face was so serious and dutiful that no one dared laugh at her. They went through the whole ceremony and when she was finally dismissed she still hadn't said a word. After that I couldn't even talk about her without emphasizing that that was MY Nana."I thought she sounded amazing and told him so, and asked if everyone had stopped teasing him after that, to which he shook his head."No, but I learned to wiggle my ears, and every time someone mentioned them I imagine what Trier must have thought when she walked in, and couldn't help but laugh. All the sting was gone, and it was such a little thing to begin with." He smiled and shook his head, his mirthful hazel eyes shining. "All the Protectors in her order were supposed to be wizards that excelled at changing the shape of a thing or a person, whether it was turning a heckler into a toad or opening a pit beneath a man fighting on solid ground. But Nana, she could transmute sorrow to joy and tears to laughter."I touched his shoulder gently and commented that Lucinda must be overjoyed to have her home at last. I glanced to the shell she'd left behind, and with Pavel beside me I saw her with new eyes. This was left behind by a unique woman, who'd lived a long life marked by the scars of service and graceful aging. She'd been well over a century old, though you'd never know it with her blood. And she left even this behind, as though on her way to the goddess she'd looked back and said, "Oh, I have no need of this any longer. Please use it the best you can." Some part of her would always be in service to the Lady, and she trusted us to see that it was so... and by extension, trusted me, even if I was a small part.
As I considered my small part in the service of Alayse, I reflected on a Reclaiming I'd assisted with some time ago, and imagined a different scenario, where she was released entirely, her bones become ashes to scatter. It had no impact on the life she'd lived, and her family would still have as much pride in her as they did today. And whether burned or received, she still trusted us to see that it was done. "A conceit," I mused to myself, remembering words spoken about vanity and the futility of judging a person's life by how they disposed of the things left when life was gone.Pavel asked what I was going on about, and I started and apologized, explaining that I was just reconsidering something my teacher had once told me, and then in curiosity asked why it was not Durik instead of Keegan taking care of Alayse. A shrug was the response, and a quirk of his lips. "That'd be asking a lot, don't you think?"The comment took me aback. Asking a lot? Why? Of whom? He looked at me as if I'd sprouted horns and said, "Because of his wife?" No, still no comprehension. Durik was married? I'd never seen anything that could pass for a lover when learning under him.
"Wait, Durik was your teacher? He never told you this story? No one ever whispered scary stories about him having an arm of only bone taken from the skeleton of his wife?" I was sure I would remember a story like that.
My one-time playmate seemed stunned by my ignorance, and told me a story of an arcane priest that had been wed to a Protector. The old gossips had claimed theirs was an unlikely, storybook love that had been matched only by their devotion to Lucinda. There were many versions and conflicting rumors of her death, but all the tales agreed that it wasn't while bearing arms for the order, but a vicious murder -- and all for sidelong glances and a whispered word. Necromancer.
“Whether it was that she was thought to have sold her soul, or the cruel claims that a necromancer's wife must have all sorts of parts from different creatures...” he trailed off, then shook his head and shrugged, saying that he really didn't know for sure what had happened, only that there was some kind of sham trial in some rural court over it.“But I have heard that he is high in the Lady's favor, could he not bring her back?”“He tried, and tried, and tried, and they said he had to be dragged away from her body mad with grief, with all his powers spent in trying to heal her body and call back her soul, but the Lady would not let her go.” The way he said it sent a chill down my spine that was not aided by his addition that it was thought by some that his mortal lady had suffered so much trauma in her death that not even her name in his prayers could entice her back to the body she'd died in.I felt a little ill, but had to ask what had become of those responsible? Pavel didn't know if it was one or many, but said Durik had been locked up away from them for the duration of the trial because of his raving, only to come out all calm courtesy to chip in on the sentencing, which was in some tellings blasphemously light. “He said he didn't care though what became of their lives, because no mortal punishment could ever equal the hunger demons would have for their traveling souls after death.” I shuddered at the thought.Some kind of recompense was supposed to be made as well as the whatever the sentence consisted of, and Durik had refused all manner of suggestions until he was allowed to speak and asked for their bodies. “Not for them to be killed, you understand – just to be given their remains once they'd died. Lot of nerve to say that as a necromancer in front of who knows what sort of people out there, but when the people on trial readily agreed the court grudgingly allowed.”“Did they feel guilty?” I asked, brow furrowed in confusion as to why anyone not of like mind would agree to entrust their bodies to a necromancer with motive. Pavel gestured dismissively and answered, “Guilty? More like they figured they got off easy and would agree to anything. You hear all kinds of stories about people bargaining with their souls because death seems far away, but the sack of flesh the soul leaves behind? Who cares, they were probably laughing up their sleeves.”
I absorbed this silently, thinking to myself of Alayse and the life she had lived. Her loved ones would be no less proud if her ashes had been scattered, with no less pride in her service. She had left us a gift, but what became of it hardly affected all that she had already done. And this man or these men, even if they had meant their agreement as recompense, it did not change the manner in which they lived. I was reflecting on the differences when I dimly heard Pavel speaking over my thoughts.“He took his wife's body too, but no one seems to know what became of it.” He hesitated, then added, “I never really believed the arm thing, but I've heard it a few times. There's also suggestion that she's been animated, or that he Reclaimed her himself. Anyway, she was in the Chapter of Change, and there's just enough parallels that no one's going to ask him to hold the torch, if you know what I mean.”“He'd do it anyway,” I replied absently, trying to imagine preparing the body of a loved one taken so violently, whether to look on empty remains every day and be reminded, or burn to ash every trace... I couldn't think of how those who had done such a thing could be animated again and again to show a student how it was done, or how they would be handled in death, all the ritual preparations made, yet in the back of your mind cataloguing, “these are the fingers that grasped the sword, that held the rope, that bruished her flesh. These are the arms that held her still, these are the legs...” The body may be only a shell, but like the ruins of a city after its people are gone, there are a thousand marks of living. I'd never looked at it in quite that way, before.“You'd know,” he shrugged, “I'm just telling you why they don't ask.”“Thank you, Pavel,” I told him, and leaned over and surprised him with a kiss on the cheek. “You've given me much to think about. No goddess could ask for a better messenger than you.” He quirked an eyebrow and smiled, and we spoke only a little more before we parted ways to prepare for the ceremony to begin, and I gave my whole care to my small part in assistance. This was a gift to me as well as to the church.
When Keegan approached me later to ask what I had needed, I politely excused myself and thanked him for his time. I was still turning and turning my conversation in my mind, and though in truth no story could make me love Durik, I had grossly erred in some of my assumptions and given too little care for things that mattered.I had worked hard, I had said all the words, I had thrown myself into every task that was asked of me no matter my opinion of it, but until Alayse I had treated them as just that – tasks, stepping stones on my way to my real goal of becoming what I felt a divine servant of magic should be. I'd been told so many times that love is in the doing and I believed it, but I was always waiting for the time to start, as if I'd expected there to be a ceremony or a time when they would say, “Now you are Her servant,” and there would be some sanctity in all that I did.I'd held in my heart and mouth all of Lucinda's teachings, but still my mind had found the most ridiculous things to be concerned about instead of devoting myself wholly to study and prayer. Like whether or not a teacher has a pointed beard or skeletal parts. How hard he had been trying to teach a child with her head all full of fluff and preconceived notions of what should be! I was like a girl playing at princess and objecting to the nose of a knight.Now I understand, now I am wise. This time I caught the thought before it surfaced, turned it and examined it. I sighed at what I saw. I am a stupid girl, is what I thought, disappointingly similar to what Durik himself might have told me.I had learned that there were many a crypt filled with restless dead that could be ripe for study and practice. One Griffonclaw or another in the Protectors once told me that beyond the walls in the desert there were halfling mages whose whole existence was owed to blood magic of one kind or another. There are records of whole circles of necromancers working together to keep life flows balanced between them and pour energies into other creations altogether, from powerful divinations to offworld gates. Who knows what one might run into?As well, though I knew in theory how reviled someone like me (or at least, someone like I could become) could be out in the world, I'd never been treated unkindly for my gifts - aside from the time a student in the Presage made me cry by calling me "Dread Priestess," but he wasn't even Lucindite. ...And he apologized. In sharp contrast to the story Pavel had told, there are inns and taverns here that cater entirely to students, that would smile at a "necromancer" just the same as a Protector and never think it was strange. There are even some that don't cater to the church and would feel honored to be visited by someone like Durik.I had only begun to realize that I knew nothing at all, and that there was a world of knowing that waited. I might not have been capable of much myself, but I knew how to work a quill and parchment to record what I found, and I didn't mind fumbling in the dark. If I should find only sorrow, well, I'd heard that my reservoir for joy could stand to be a little deeper.I decided my time in Spellgard was done after all, even without the Ordination. Not because there was no more for me to learn, but because some students must be burned instead of taught, and you see, out there is a host of willing torches.
I left Spellgard by the South Gate, with little else than what I wore. What funds I had went to a seat in a train of wagons heading west at Krellin's Tents. Rather than visiting, I'd left a handful of letters to be delivered some days after my departure. Anything I could say would sound foolish in person, and Mirisse in particular was generous to a fault. She'd want to help, would want the best for me, but I felt that my path was one best sought outside the comfortable circle of familiarity.I'd visited the tents a handful of times as a girl, and my last view of its sprawling oasis did not disappoint me. I was blessed to encounter a Wildthorn I'd once known from the city on her way to find her spirit guide, and so my quiet farewell to the desert did not go entirely unheard. We overindulged on lete and mesht-chjali, and I was sorely tempted to accept Nali's offer to travel with her. My plans had been made, however -- such as they were -- and I was still determined to find my way. I rejoined my caravan as the sky lightened, and the last I saw of Nali she was moving south from the tents alone.My resolve to be taught by the world glowed bright for many miles, and it made even the simple wagon fare exotic and exciting. By Khemit, the novelty had worn from the journey, and I was tired and lonely.The company was not native to Spellgard, and so while I perhaps benefited in safety from their perception of what it meant to be a priestess of the Lady of Spells, it left me distant from their lives and conversations. They were discomfited by displays of magic; in Khemit I'd hoped to hear of another caravan, perhaps one that employed a mage or two, but I reminded myself that my path was not to be a comfortable one. I prayed to the Lady at dusk, at dawn, before every meal, and though I did not attempt to force my gifts upon them, Magic and I continued to flagrantly exist among them.
Had I put off my departure another handful of months, I might not have made it through Khemit at all. Not long after we'd left, towns and cities apparently the world over would be struck by the Wasting Death, a malady that spread terror disproportionate to the numbers affected. I suspect many a child arriving late for supper was boxed about the ears in anger and relief that they had not joined "the missing," destined to be returned, if at all, just long enough to collapse into some foul pool of distilled person. I heard Khemit was just one of many locations that would see themselves sealed off in a panicked quarantine.As it was, the very stars moved overhead as we journeyed southwest, and the knowledge that my brothers and sisters of the faith would be watching with interest from the Tower and the night shrines pricked at my burgeoning homesickness. I wondered if Nali had found her spirit guide, and wished I had asked more questions about what exactly that entailed. On clear days, the Ire's silhouette was like a child's drawing of mountains in the sand - squat, jagged triangles that were far taller and further away than they appeared.If my determination flagged further at the superstitious whispers of the stars from my fellow travelers, it was bolstered by the tendrils of green creeping over my vision until the world seemed saturated with fertile grasses and summer flowers. There is a term I'd heard once at home, that loosely translates as "greensick." It once seemed implausible, given our own gardens and the lusher areas near the Tents, but a kind of vertigo and brief bout with fever soon left me with a better understanding of the concept.
We met no resistance other than mud and fate, which conspired to give me my first experience of mud bathing due to a stuck cart and heavy downpour. Though we were warned of orc raids by traders returning our way, the first such creature I would ever see was met some time after I was dropped safe and sound in Center -- essentially a glorified trade post squatting on the bones of some boomtown lost to the Dark Time.
For it to be a stopping point in so many trade routes, I had expected at least a small town, but its actual buildings consisted of nothing more than an inn at the crossroads and a mill for journeymen. It was a small Krellin's, in a way, and I should not have been surprised that the rest consisted of little more than tents and wagons for passing merchants. One thing it had that Krellin's did not was an undertaker, of all things, but I will get to him later.There was more to be found there than what the eyes could see, in truth, and a reason it seemed so, well... central. It wasn't its handful of residents, but the parade of the strange and interesting passing through, like a river of magic traveling along the lines of a carved rune; the setting of plain wood or stone serves as a thoroughfare for something far more wondrous.I suspect at least some of those that have attempted to settle permanently were drawn as I was to what simply seemed the best spot to watch the world go by, for I remained in what was intended as a stopping point far longer than I'd expected.
There is another permanent fixture of Center that I neglected to mention -- two, in fact, though the second will come in time. The rest loses context without the first.
Looming over a mound of crimson flowers is a block of carven stone, symbols unknown down its faces. A curious soul, on their way to get a drink before setting out again, might stand before it and wonder... what if? For many, Center's bindstone is not the first they have seen. It wasn't, for me. There seemed a difference though, somehow -- something almost mundane about those seen in the city or a temple, disguised by the day-to-day and the competition from other monuments and shrines. Not so, in Center.
Despite being jammed with tents and wagons, and alive with chickens running between wheels, the standing stone was not forced to compete for attention. It seemed always in my peripheral, and so inevitable that I should come to stand before it. In that way, at least, the town was practically designed for the stonebound, who seem to seek to place themselves at the center of all things.
I had never felt until then anything more than a sort of morbid curiosity about the stones, these ancient markers from when the world was young, that have somehow so loomed over the last century's wars and legends. At what fraction of a chance for immortality does it become worthwhile to risk what life you have? Oh, I was alight with interest in the magic involved, of course, but with death a near-certainty, how could the old and young alike be so foolish? How could they risk their very souls?
And yet, here I am. My legs turned to reeds in relief and fear as soon as it was done. I entertained any number of stories and superstitions, questions without answer. Would my soul still find Lucinda? Did it remain within my body at all? Was it - were all of the souls bound here, housed instead in this stone, like a tree sending spores across the world on the winds while its roots stay buried in the earth? I was strangely unfrightened by the prospect of being too early an empty shell, but very much wanted to believe that I had done what Lucinda wanted of me.
I have never unraveled its secrets, to know all that I wished to know. I have never heard of anyone who has, in anything more than idle boasts. Perhaps that whisper of a promise I felt from the stone was no mere fantasy, not the conjured echo of pride from a foolish girl with something to prove, but a calling... or perhaps, something altogether darker. If nothing else, if I truly was once a student in need of the flame, as my teacher had implied, that stone and others like it would ensure that I had the opportunity to be burned -- again and again, for as long as the strands binding us together could bear it. In time, every torch would have its turn.
Though I met or was introduced to several travelers during my time in Center, the first was, in many ways, representative of the trend the rest would follow. Master Starseeker would simultaneously accept my gifts and offer to help me, and caution that he would personally see to my undoing if ever my path took a dark turn. Though he seemed aloof, as his people so often do, he was kind enough, in his own way. He did not take offense to me expressing my opinion that ostracizing magic users forces them into a choice between ignoring their gifts and studies altogether, and accepting a life in the shadows with all that it entails -- that it's easy to stop caring for a world that has done the same to you.I have the arrow he gave me, still, wrapped in layers of cloth in case I should have need of him. There was a time I might have used it, alone and in a dark place in my heart, but two things kept the elf of Mith'oromarde from being the help he perhaps imagined when he gave it. The first is obvious: when you are most in need of aid, you likely lack the means to send anything to anywhere. The second is more subtle, but runs deep through the rest: if one offers one's hand with a bared blade in the other -- just in case -- how can another know which they will receive?And so. I was of mixed feelings about most of my interactions. It could have been, and was, better. It could have been, and was, worse.I know that most meant well, and truly I was relieved not to be the subject of a witch hunt each time I opened my mouth. You must understand, I was determined to be as open about my purpose as I was about my faith, for they are inextricably intertwined. I would not pretend that something the Lady gave me was somehow unclean, for no better reason than that it's uncomfortable for some to behold. My determination in this, however, did not lift me suddenly above mortal concerns like wishes for friendship and acceptance, or render me immune from fears for my own safety. I had seen a handful of what could only be knights of Toran from afar, and though I did not have to face them myself, I had troubled dreams of blinding armor and hunting blades for several nights thereafter. This lukewarm reception, and those that followed, I would later come to miss.I could not help but wonder, though, if generosity was not poisoned coming with such conditions. How would others, without the benefit of Lucinda's love and guidance, react in my place? How might they take being informed that they are allowed to continue existing, but do not accept the authority that judged them to start? Does a knight believe himself magnanimous, when he merely expresses his extreme distaste for what is sacred to me, and provides aid to me despite it? Surely the Great Gold, whose servants I myself am bound to aid, would extend His shield to those driven to the shadows of this world?I wished to be as kind to them as they were to me, without somehow tacitly approving of the whole. It's not as if I would blow the doors off the crypts and set the dead walking through town in rebellion, even were I able. No one reminds the evoker every day not to murder the townsfolk in a raging fire, as though he were only held in check by the disapproval of his fellows. As though evocation and "murder in a raging fire" are somehow equivalent terms. I had, for a time, my own heavenly guardians, waiting for a misstep. I understand; I do not accept. Perhaps this is ultimately the same struggle they had with me.Others were less overt, such as Sir Daniel, who was helpful and encouraging to me... so long as I left half of me at the door. The knight and his wife even escorted me to different crypts of my interest, so that I could study them. How does a young girl, feeling out the world, decide, between actions that are protective and helpful to her, and words that are hurtful and exclusive, which matters more? "Despite" didn't seem a kind word, to me; you cannot even write it without spite. They were good to me otherwise, though, and I was grateful at the time. Even now, I am certainly glad no one decides their distaste for my gifts, and by extension, Lucinda, cannot be held at bay for the space of a road. I just can no longer bring myself to thank them for it.It sounds as though I judge some harshly, but in truth it could not be more the opposite. I am glad for the many open to conversation and debate -- yes -- despite their deeply held beliefs. I remain appreciative for the hands extended to me, but no longer close my eyes to the blades in the other. I look around and I realize that the stories we tell ourselves are just that -- stories -- and rife with contradictions between the selves we wish to be and the ones that are at any given moment.And so I write now what, perhaps, I should have said then: you cannot know or love me in spite of my magic. Without it, without the Lady Herself, I would not be as I am. You cannot hold a hand out to shade the parts of me you do not like, and still claim to have embraced me.
The Lady was gentle with me, all things considered. Despite my bold words, there were no stakes and pyres waiting for me when I left the crypts each day. At first a sidelong glance or a harsh word was all it took to wound me, but a long journey with superstitious nomads ended with Ezekiel... A series of hurtful strangers was broken with a pair of halflings to lighten my heart. Dwarves and townsfolk that mistrusted magic were contrasted by an escapee from Prantz, his gifts all that still brought him joy in life.
Looking back at these early struggles, they seem childish in comparison to what was to come, and yet I feel they saved my soul. Lucinda prepared me, as a warrior is trained with increasingly heavy equipment, and I learned, not just to trust that I would never be given a burden so heavy that I could not carry it, but to know. And these occasional kindnesses served another purpose, as well.
In Spellgard, I was once told a story about a follower of Lady Comfort that sought to ease lonely children afraid of the dark with magical blankets that could chase away the night with a whispered word. Though she was unschooled in the hows and whys of things, she was an old woman who had seen much and drawn her own conclusions. She wished for her gifts to lovingly accept all of the hurt and fear a child might confide, without attracting bad spirits or warping in nature over time. And so in every pattern made with her hands, there was a flaw she called the open door, a break for sadness and fear to escape through.I believe there are wizards and scholars that would dismiss the tale as fluff and superstition -- brownie seamstresses making magical blankets to ward away evil spirits, indeed! -- but I was taught that Magic speaks in many voices, and hides behind many faces. With our words -- our names and labels, stepping stones built over truths we cannot fully sense, let alone comprehend -- we dance over and around these holes in our understanding. We don't even know all that we don't know.We are all of us Magic's creation, Mirisse explained to me when I shared my story with her as a young girl. We are born to receive all that the world gives us, to change and grow from how we are nurtured and watered. We have none of us known a time without magic, and it is woven through all our souls. We are as much Magic as the Lady, and could become warped or broken under constant siege. Our hearts must be open doors, she said, not only to accept the unknown and impossible that lie behind our Lady's veil, but to carry on in our mortal lives without becoming overburdened by all that the world would share with us.
I've had much reason to think on this story, in more recent years, but even in my earliest days in Center, when I was most vulnerable to the words of others, it was not entirely absent from my mind. Those first faces to be friendly to me were the flaws in my new life's pattern, and the way some looked to me for divine guidance and wisdom -- no, answers -- steadied me and sent me inward for Lucinda's voice.
I miss her now, thinking on her words. She was good, and kind, with a deep care for the world and its inhabitants. I look around today and the view of the faith is... well, they could not imagine Mirisse. It's as if she doesn't exist. Moraken, perhaps, or even Durik as I once saw him. Stone-faced and disapproving, guardians of magic that demand the rest of the world follow their magical rules. Or, if not stoic and unfeeling, then mysterious and fey, mercurial and brimming with secrets and power but without knowledge or understanding or care of the struggles and lives of mortals. Has our faith always been seen this way, and I was simply sheltered from it in Spellgard?
I don't know that it matters, but I wonder what they see, looking at me. It's a question I still ask myself to this day. It is unimportant how the world imagines Lucinda's servants, I think at times, so long as they respect and care for the Al'Noth. And yet... how the world views us shapes those who will come to the faith in the future, to new voices to fill the ears of our goddess with prayer, and they may never have known another version than these, never met a priestess whose eternal optimism and love of the world was synonymous with her love of Magic.
I wonder quietly, however, as surely Lucinda has placed me on another path. I cannot imagine it swerving to collide once more with dear Mirisse. It did, however, cross with Lola's.
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Topic: A Host of Willing Torches (Read 400 times)
