The Prologue
EDITED 2006-01-01
This is the first final edition of the Prologue, taking all edits you have made into account and (very) heavily modified under my own second editing. If you have read it previously, you will find if you choose to read this entry that substantial portions have been altered.
Further editing, suggestions and comments are, of course, welcome and much appreciated, and should be left as comments to this entry in the form of a copy of the paragraph in question, with edits marked clearly in bold, red font and comments marked clearly in bold, blue font. For anyone who sent me a *.doc file containing edits to the original version, I have gone through and marked out your edits as I applied them subject to the following key:
Original Edit
Issue Resolved; Text Changed
Decided to Ignore Suggestion
Suggestion Invalid (i.e. text misread)
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Anyone who cares can have their marked-up *.doc file back to see what I've done with their suggestions. Please note that many of these edits have gotten lost between the version you all edited and the final product, so it's frankly not worth your time to look at it, but if anyone's curious, the option is there if you like.
Lastly, but by no means... least...ly?, thank you all for your input.
Hello, add-a-writer... sorry about the above, that was my pretentious ass stage. If you read it, do whatever you want with it.
A dell was nestled between the feet of two close mountains, no more than a brief gap in thick valley forest. The morning sun had burnt most of the fog away, but a thin mist still hung like a veil around the edges, adorning the trees and the threads between them with drops of pearly dew. The sky was purest azure, without any wisp of cloud; the grey remnants of a thunderstorm that had beaten at the valley for almost two days had been driven off by an eastern wind shortly before dawn. Mountains had cut the wind away as it turned toward the south, and now only a soft breeze played across the leaves and in the shimmering grass. Birdsong rang sweetly in the crisp air, but it was quiet and politely subdued, as though the birds wished to leave the valley’s occupants to their thoughts.
The dell was almost perfectly circular, cut in half by a gurgling stream splashing over pebbles in its shallow bed; it leapt in delightful spray over the little stones and dove into the wind. Trees were thick around the clearing, but there were only two in the glade itself: on opposite sides of the stream, their branches hopelessly intertwined, stood a laurel-tree and a linden. They were the only trees without threads; every trunk on the clearing’s edge was wrapped in them from root to crown, bending inwards with the pull. The ropes criss-crossed the hollow in a thick net, stretched tightly in a wild pattern; there were strings as thick around as a fist and as fine as a hair, strings frayed and whole, faded and brilliant, welted and smooth. They were all grey, although some were so dark they were almost black, and some so light they gleamed like snow in the dawn sun. There was only one truly black string, thick as two fists; it rested on the other threads, looping around them and over them, and all those that it touched were frayed and bleak. The trees to which it was bound were warped and rotten, bulging in white and leprous growth; viscous, blackened sap trickled slowly down their bark like blood. They bore no leaf or fruit, but the twisted branches sagged beneath the weight of their own disease; when the wind blew from the west, it would whistle in the snags and the trees would moan in a wretched terror. The ground beneath them was dark and barren; only weeds dared grow near their buckled and misshapen roots. It was usually near these trunks that the strings would snap; the space around them was littered with pieces that had worn off or been cut, and the stream slowly took them and pulled them sadly away, tearing them loose from the brambles.
There were two smooth stones in the clearing, just the size for sitting, across from each other over the brook. Upon the larger sat an old woman, wrapped in heavy black robes. A deep hood wreathed her face in shadows, but the light falling across it was reflected by two fierce eyes, staring out from the depths of the hood with all the merriment of a stone. Deep wrinkles scored her ancient skin like cracks and her lipless mouth resembled a gash; her hollow cheeks deepened the relief. Elbows resting on her knees, spindly fingers splayed and touching tips with those of the other hand, she sat with her index fingers resting on her nose, buried inside her hood to the second knuckle. Her wrists were wasted, thin to the bone, and her hands resembled those of a corpse: the skin was grey and tight, knuckles knobby on thin fingers that were white with old scars; her nails were long and sharp as talons, bleak as her skin. She was thin as death, her robes collected tightly at her waist with a dark string, frayed at both ends, that looped twice around her despite being no longer than her arm.
On the other stone sat a little girl, no older than seven, with a long curtain of white-blonde hair that fell almost to the ground when she was standing. She was naked, sitting with one leg curled under her and trailing the other in the stream, looking thoughtfully into the water. Her elbow, too, was on her knee, her chin nestled between the middle and index fingers of her fist, her pinkie touching her nose. Her eyes were yellow as the sun, traced softly by the ghosts of pale lashes and eyebrows nigh invisible against fair skin. Every few minutes they flickered to the older woman, calculating and cold; she studied her like a chesspiece on a board. She had a graceful but unsmiling mouth, framed by delicate pink lips beneath a gently upturned nose. Her skin was smooth and ashen-pale; she had no freckles, no moles, no bruises, cuts, scars or spots. The only mark she bore was above her left eye: a quarter of a circle, drawn intricately in red upon her brow, fringed with rays like the sun. Any similar brand on her companion’s face was lost in the shadows of her hood.
After a while, the little girl extracted her foot from the water and began to draw with her toe in the soft sand of the bank. Outlining a face, she made two large eyes, the pupils vertical like her own, and added a long scar beneath the leftmost which traced a sharp cheek and ended just beneath the corner of a grim mouth. Adding a curtain of long, lank hair, she sat back on the stone and inclined her head to the right, tracing the lines in the sand with her eyes before reaching down; she captioned the picture ‘Mirrin’ in flowing, curved letters, and washed the sand from her finger in the stream.
“Handsome,” said the old woman suddenly, nodding at the picture. Her voice did not match her frame; it was heavy and clear, biting and sudden as a knell. It said that she knew too many secrets and was as old as death itself, but there was no whisper of frailty in that sharp tone. Without looking up, the girl rubbed the picture out with her foot and drew the outline for another. It was time to push the conflict.
This one was clearly an elf: he had long, pointed ears and a sharp nose; his eyes were smaller, the pupils round. His mane of hair she carefully filled with lines, so it looked darker than Mirrin’s hair had been. She added the sweeping wings of a butterfly on his ear, and drew the jagged shape of an eight-point star in the lower left corner. She captioned the picture ‘Allear’ across the left side, in plainer writing, but with long tails on the letters. When she looked up, the old woman’s gash of a mouth was drawn back in a scowl, revealing grey teeth. Aggravation emanated from her like waves of heat.
“Him, not so much,” she growled. The girl’s eyes narrowed. Considering options quickly, she decided to push her luck.
Beside the elf she drew another face, older than the two before had been; his mouth was drawn in a cruel smirk, graceful eyebrows arcing over cold eyes. His cheeks were sunken, giving his face a handsomely sculpted and slender appearance. To his right she added a curved hunting horn and gently traced a thin web behind him with the edge of her nail. Instead of a caption, she drew two lines curving steeply in opposite directions, overlapping like an eye with long lashes tilted on its side; the symbol of the Silver Chain. When she looked up, the old woman’s hands were clenched into fists, long nails digging into scarred palms. Her breath passed sibilantly through gritted teeth.
“Get rid of it!” she hissed, dragging her bony knuckles nervously along the surface of the stone. The stream gurgled up and swept across the drawing, blurring the outlines; the girl stomped the rest of it out and stood up.
“You’re still afraid of him, Medra,” she accused. Her voice was high and clear, like windchimes in the summer breeze; there was laughter and lightness just under the surface of it, albeit suppressed now by the gravity of her tone. “Even after so many years, even though his Tàrem are all dead and his Glyphs are gone, his body buried in cold stone under barren mountain, the Silver Chain around his throat, you’re still afraid of him.” She leaned forward across the stream, resting her arms on the old woman’s knees, peering inside her hood with narrowed eyes. “You know the Chain won’t hold him, not forever. Perhaps it will take him a hundred years, perhaps a thousand, but what measure is mortal time to us? He will not create a creature like Luster again; you know as well as I do he makes mistakes only once, if ever. How will he be defeated then? He will create more Tàrem, or a more fearful creature. Glyphs he will certainly have no shortage of; there will always be those foolish souls who consign willingly to serve him. He will capture us again, re-forge his Horn, twist Fate to his liking. Is this what you want? Medra, poor Medra, you cannot have forgotten that servitude.”
The old woman named Medra extracted her hands from her hood and pushed the girl gently back onto her stone with a hand on each shoulder.
“You know I’ve not forgotten the bondage, Rykah, and you know I would help you if I could. I would reach up in a heartbeat and cut the black string; I would drown it in the stream and knit the web around it. What then? Should I take all those fallen threads upon the ground and weave them back into the fabric? How could you so lightly alter the Web of Fate, its every thread the future of a living being? Should I give the orphans back their mothers? They, too, suffer. Should I cast down the tyrant kings, and end the plagues of nations? Those whom I do not like, the villains and robbers and slavers, should I kill them, Rykah, should I cut their strings? And what of the poor babes frozen to death in the winter, or strangled by a sickness? Andirran plays with the lives of others on a whim. He destroys those he does not like and rewards those who serve him. I shall not become him! He may bind me again, use me to twist the fates of others to his will, but better I am forced to do it than I do it of my own volition. I am the Black Queen, Rykah. I am the overseer of Fate. I do not toy with the fabric of Fate to suit my desires, I make certain it unfolds as it was conceived. If it is destiny that Andirran should break free, I must allow it to happen. You are the one who changes things. If you do not wish to see Andirran rise, I invite you to see it so.”
The girl called Rykah shook her head sadly, long hair fanning about her face. “You know I cannot change the web, Medra, only the strands that comprise it. Should there be a man to be murdered by Andirran, I could save him. Were there the need for a hero to drive Andirran back and destroy him, if Fate commanded that he must be destroyed, I could birth the hero. When Agrilamar’s armies made the final stand against Andirran, on that fateful morning on the Continent, I fought with them; I bore a sword. But I cannot change fate! You know I could save every man, fight every skirmish, but it wouldn’t matter in the end, if fate is against me. Help me, Medra! I’ll do anything you like, take as much of it upon myself as you wish; you need never think about it again. But I need your help.”
“I cannot shun my duty, Rykah. A soldier in a war fights beneath the banner of his king, even if he disagrees with the conflict. I am the spider, and the purpose of my web is to catch flies. You are asking me to tear down the design and make a hole to spare a fly which you feel should not be caught. I cannot do it. Convince the fly to dodge the web, if you can, Rykah, but speak not to the spider.”
“If you let him rise again, he will use you for exactly that! He will break your soul and bind your body; he will use you to twist fate to his liking. He will force you to kill Luster, who helped you break free from Andirran before. He will force you to rip your own web to shreds. You will strangle every force opposed to him, until only his slaves and armies are left alive. If you will not alter Fate now, once, for the benefit of everyone, you will do it a hundred thousand times, under torture, tainting the face of Aquadioa to Andirran’s liking. How can you call this your duty?”
Medra frowned, hesitating. Rykah had been waiting for this; the argument was old, and Medra had slowly given way, but never to a visible hesitation; now she could push harder still. The woman had her reason and rationale, but such things were weak in the face of pain and memory, and Rykah could take advantage of emotion far more than duty and conviction. She had ways of working on the slightest indecision, of digging claws deep into the smallest of openings, but reason was hard to work with. As Medra opened her gash mouth to speak, the girl jumped up and caught her left hand, forcing her sleeve up to her elbow. The woman hissed and jerked it quickly back, but Rykah skipped to the other stone, standing between the her bony legs, and caught her arm. Forcing the sleeve up, she twisted it angrily in front of Medra’s contoured face; the deep hood had slipped back several inches, sunlight illuminating the tip of the hag’s long white nose and the ferocity of her scowl. Carved on the inside of her forearm, deeper and starker than any scar or spot along the taut and grey expanse, was a circular brand of white moonlight: a circle of chain bordering a web that was a smaller version of the one in the clearing, and, along the right edge, the long shape of a hunting horn like the one Rykah had drawn beside the smirking man. Medra’s angry hissing faded slowly to silence. She drew her sleeve up as Rykah pulled away, clenching her right hand tightly about the wrist through the fabric of the robe as if the mark burnt on her flesh. Her breath passed more slowly now, quietly, like the soft rustle of grass on a windy evening. The fire in her eyes had burnt away, replaced by pain and sadness.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered quietly. “I can’t. It’s my duty. It’s all that I am. The torture is hard, but it’s real. What will I be if I deny what I am?”
Rykah leant close and put both hands gently on top of the old woman’s head, comforting her. “But if you don’t, Medra, a hundred thousand others will bear such a mark. Innocents, all. Mothers and their children. Fathers. Stablehands and farmers. Warriors, beggars, princes, shepherds; everyone will suffer beneath his hand, and you can prevent it. You can save them, Medra. How could you refuse? You can protect them all against that mark. Do you remember the branding? Can you imagine a child, just a little innocent girl, perhaps six years old, taken through the Gate because her parents are servants of Andirran?” As she said this, Rykah knelt lower to present more of herself to Medra’s view, keeping the image of the little girl just on the corner of her vision, halfway in the realm of her mind’s eye, eating at the edge of her imagination. “And there Riomar stands, the Eater of Worlds, and he will sneer as she walks by and stroke her cheek, and she will scream and scream as his sorrow overwhelms her and consume her... and then they will beat her until she lies on the cold floor before Andirran’s throne, and he will descend, holding the sword with the ruby at the tip of the blade, and he will cut his mark into her flesh; and if she dares make a sound, they will kick her until she chokes on her own blood. And then, if she’s not important, he will let Riomar eat her... you know how it’s done. But if she is...” Rykah let her voice trail away ominously as she leant closer to the old woman’s head, keeping the vision of the innocent little child close at hand.
Medra’s hand contracted about her wrist, and Rykah felt a single hot tear run across her foot and smiled to herself, but then the old woman began to shake her head from side to side, as if casting off a bad memory. Rykah tried to still the motion, but as she pressed her hands over the woman’s ears, Medra’s head came sharply up; the sadness in her eyes had been replaced by desperation.
“I am the overseer of Fate, Rykah, it’s all I am! My only purpose is to make sure that the web in this clearing continues as it was woven; I can’t go against it. I could never forgive myself if I changed the web. Don’t force this choice on me; I can’t do as you want. Maybe Andirran will be toppled again. Bring it about, Rykah; you are the Change. I couldn’t involve myself in Fate like this; it is not my purpose. Perhaps it will all turn out for the best in the end. Let things transpire as they were designed, and you may find it will turn out how you want, eventually.”
Behind the hood, hidden from the old woman, the girl’s fingernails bit deeply into her palm from frustration, but no change marred the childish innocence of her face; she tilted her head to the side, quickly considering options again.
“Are you willing to let him brand a hundred with this mark until that happens? Don’t involve yourself if you don’t want to, Medra, I told you I’ll do everything I can; all I need is an opening. I’m asking for a chance to change things. Please help me, just once; all I need is the opportunity. If I fail, Andirran will rise, and all will proceed as the web was woven. If I succeed and end him, I will have brought it about, not you, and you will be as you always were. The Overseer.” Rykah knelt down and gazed into Medra’s eyes, gently brushing away the woman’s tears. “Just a chance. Give me the tools to do it, but let me fix things by myself. I only need the tools.”
Medra closed her eyes and sighed quietly. When she opened them again, the tears were gone, but the fire had not reignited; she looked empty and bleak, devoid of life. Slowly she drew her sleeve back and traced the mark on the inside of the forearm with her eyes, following the web. It told of a very different fate from the one stretched between the trees; Medra had traced its contents a hundred times before and knew Andirran’s vision as well as she knew Fate’s true fabric. She envisioned herself in her mind’s eye, shackled in his heavy bonds, reaching up and reshaping Fate into the likeness of this image. Another tear dropped from the nether of her hood and rolled across her wrist. Quickly, she shook her head again, but the meaning was different now; resigned. Rykah bit the inside of her cheek triumphantly.
Carefully, she lowered Medra’s heavy black hood. The old woman had a long shock of white hair, grizzled and limp; the tips of her grey ears drooped, and the morning light carved valleys in her cheeks. Above her left eye, clear in the sunlight, shone the outline of a sickle moon, gleaming silver. Gently, Rykah bent down and kissed the hollow cheek, for all the world a little girl kissing her grandmother. Medra did not look at her, but her empty eyes gained a little warmth with the kiss, and she relaxed her grip on her forearm just slightly as the girl patted her hair.
“Please, Medra? I’m begging you. Just let me try.” For effect, she let her finger softly brush Medra’s forearm, evoking a sharp intake of breath. Gradually the woman lifted her face to the girl’s; her frown remained, but her eyes were acquiescent. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded once and blinked an assent.
Rykah’s face lit up in a genuine smile, and for the first time she truly resembled the little child she appeared. Kissing Medra once more upon the cheek, earnestly this time, she skipped across to the other stone, and shook her long hair out to the wind. Stepping carefully over the lowest threads and ducking beneath one the level of her collarbone, she turned and waved back at Medra once, mouthed ‘just a chance,’ and disappeared between the trees. The old woman shook her head again, and glanced down at the drawing still on the bank: the young elf with the butterfly, captioned Allear.
“Just a chance...,” she murmured to herself, her eyes following the point of his ear. Then, sighing heavily and cursing Rykah from the bottom of her heart, she pulled her hood back over her head and heaved herself stiffly to her feet, brushed the creases from her robe, and began to make her way from the clearing. Behind her, the gurgling stream consumed the first flake of snow from a sky slowly darkening with cloud.
This is the first final edition of the Prologue, taking all edits you have made into account and (very) heavily modified under my own second editing. If you have read it previously, you will find if you choose to read this entry that substantial portions have been altered.
Further editing, suggestions and comments are, of course, welcome and much appreciated, and should be left as comments to this entry in the form of a copy of the paragraph in question, with edits marked clearly in bold, red font and comments marked clearly in bold, blue font. For anyone who sent me a *.doc file containing edits to the original version, I have gone through and marked out your edits as I applied them subject to the following key:
Original Edit
Issue Resolved; Text Changed
Decided to Ignore Suggestion
Suggestion Invalid (i.e. text misread)
Comment, not edit
Anyone who cares can have their marked-up *.doc file back to see what I've done with their suggestions. Please note that many of these edits have gotten lost between the version you all edited and the final product, so it's frankly not worth your time to look at it, but if anyone's curious, the option is there if you like.
Lastly, but by no means... least...ly?, thank you all for your input.
Hello, add-a-writer... sorry about the above, that was my pretentious ass stage. If you read it, do whatever you want with it.
A dell was nestled between the feet of two close mountains, no more than a brief gap in thick valley forest. The morning sun had burnt most of the fog away, but a thin mist still hung like a veil around the edges, adorning the trees and the threads between them with drops of pearly dew. The sky was purest azure, without any wisp of cloud; the grey remnants of a thunderstorm that had beaten at the valley for almost two days had been driven off by an eastern wind shortly before dawn. Mountains had cut the wind away as it turned toward the south, and now only a soft breeze played across the leaves and in the shimmering grass. Birdsong rang sweetly in the crisp air, but it was quiet and politely subdued, as though the birds wished to leave the valley’s occupants to their thoughts.
The dell was almost perfectly circular, cut in half by a gurgling stream splashing over pebbles in its shallow bed; it leapt in delightful spray over the little stones and dove into the wind. Trees were thick around the clearing, but there were only two in the glade itself: on opposite sides of the stream, their branches hopelessly intertwined, stood a laurel-tree and a linden. They were the only trees without threads; every trunk on the clearing’s edge was wrapped in them from root to crown, bending inwards with the pull. The ropes criss-crossed the hollow in a thick net, stretched tightly in a wild pattern; there were strings as thick around as a fist and as fine as a hair, strings frayed and whole, faded and brilliant, welted and smooth. They were all grey, although some were so dark they were almost black, and some so light they gleamed like snow in the dawn sun. There was only one truly black string, thick as two fists; it rested on the other threads, looping around them and over them, and all those that it touched were frayed and bleak. The trees to which it was bound were warped and rotten, bulging in white and leprous growth; viscous, blackened sap trickled slowly down their bark like blood. They bore no leaf or fruit, but the twisted branches sagged beneath the weight of their own disease; when the wind blew from the west, it would whistle in the snags and the trees would moan in a wretched terror. The ground beneath them was dark and barren; only weeds dared grow near their buckled and misshapen roots. It was usually near these trunks that the strings would snap; the space around them was littered with pieces that had worn off or been cut, and the stream slowly took them and pulled them sadly away, tearing them loose from the brambles.
There were two smooth stones in the clearing, just the size for sitting, across from each other over the brook. Upon the larger sat an old woman, wrapped in heavy black robes. A deep hood wreathed her face in shadows, but the light falling across it was reflected by two fierce eyes, staring out from the depths of the hood with all the merriment of a stone. Deep wrinkles scored her ancient skin like cracks and her lipless mouth resembled a gash; her hollow cheeks deepened the relief. Elbows resting on her knees, spindly fingers splayed and touching tips with those of the other hand, she sat with her index fingers resting on her nose, buried inside her hood to the second knuckle. Her wrists were wasted, thin to the bone, and her hands resembled those of a corpse: the skin was grey and tight, knuckles knobby on thin fingers that were white with old scars; her nails were long and sharp as talons, bleak as her skin. She was thin as death, her robes collected tightly at her waist with a dark string, frayed at both ends, that looped twice around her despite being no longer than her arm.
On the other stone sat a little girl, no older than seven, with a long curtain of white-blonde hair that fell almost to the ground when she was standing. She was naked, sitting with one leg curled under her and trailing the other in the stream, looking thoughtfully into the water. Her elbow, too, was on her knee, her chin nestled between the middle and index fingers of her fist, her pinkie touching her nose. Her eyes were yellow as the sun, traced softly by the ghosts of pale lashes and eyebrows nigh invisible against fair skin. Every few minutes they flickered to the older woman, calculating and cold; she studied her like a chesspiece on a board. She had a graceful but unsmiling mouth, framed by delicate pink lips beneath a gently upturned nose. Her skin was smooth and ashen-pale; she had no freckles, no moles, no bruises, cuts, scars or spots. The only mark she bore was above her left eye: a quarter of a circle, drawn intricately in red upon her brow, fringed with rays like the sun. Any similar brand on her companion’s face was lost in the shadows of her hood.
After a while, the little girl extracted her foot from the water and began to draw with her toe in the soft sand of the bank. Outlining a face, she made two large eyes, the pupils vertical like her own, and added a long scar beneath the leftmost which traced a sharp cheek and ended just beneath the corner of a grim mouth. Adding a curtain of long, lank hair, she sat back on the stone and inclined her head to the right, tracing the lines in the sand with her eyes before reaching down; she captioned the picture ‘Mirrin’ in flowing, curved letters, and washed the sand from her finger in the stream.
“Handsome,” said the old woman suddenly, nodding at the picture. Her voice did not match her frame; it was heavy and clear, biting and sudden as a knell. It said that she knew too many secrets and was as old as death itself, but there was no whisper of frailty in that sharp tone. Without looking up, the girl rubbed the picture out with her foot and drew the outline for another. It was time to push the conflict.
This one was clearly an elf: he had long, pointed ears and a sharp nose; his eyes were smaller, the pupils round. His mane of hair she carefully filled with lines, so it looked darker than Mirrin’s hair had been. She added the sweeping wings of a butterfly on his ear, and drew the jagged shape of an eight-point star in the lower left corner. She captioned the picture ‘Allear’ across the left side, in plainer writing, but with long tails on the letters. When she looked up, the old woman’s gash of a mouth was drawn back in a scowl, revealing grey teeth. Aggravation emanated from her like waves of heat.
“Him, not so much,” she growled. The girl’s eyes narrowed. Considering options quickly, she decided to push her luck.
Beside the elf she drew another face, older than the two before had been; his mouth was drawn in a cruel smirk, graceful eyebrows arcing over cold eyes. His cheeks were sunken, giving his face a handsomely sculpted and slender appearance. To his right she added a curved hunting horn and gently traced a thin web behind him with the edge of her nail. Instead of a caption, she drew two lines curving steeply in opposite directions, overlapping like an eye with long lashes tilted on its side; the symbol of the Silver Chain. When she looked up, the old woman’s hands were clenched into fists, long nails digging into scarred palms. Her breath passed sibilantly through gritted teeth.
“Get rid of it!” she hissed, dragging her bony knuckles nervously along the surface of the stone. The stream gurgled up and swept across the drawing, blurring the outlines; the girl stomped the rest of it out and stood up.
“You’re still afraid of him, Medra,” she accused. Her voice was high and clear, like windchimes in the summer breeze; there was laughter and lightness just under the surface of it, albeit suppressed now by the gravity of her tone. “Even after so many years, even though his Tàrem are all dead and his Glyphs are gone, his body buried in cold stone under barren mountain, the Silver Chain around his throat, you’re still afraid of him.” She leaned forward across the stream, resting her arms on the old woman’s knees, peering inside her hood with narrowed eyes. “You know the Chain won’t hold him, not forever. Perhaps it will take him a hundred years, perhaps a thousand, but what measure is mortal time to us? He will not create a creature like Luster again; you know as well as I do he makes mistakes only once, if ever. How will he be defeated then? He will create more Tàrem, or a more fearful creature. Glyphs he will certainly have no shortage of; there will always be those foolish souls who consign willingly to serve him. He will capture us again, re-forge his Horn, twist Fate to his liking. Is this what you want? Medra, poor Medra, you cannot have forgotten that servitude.”
The old woman named Medra extracted her hands from her hood and pushed the girl gently back onto her stone with a hand on each shoulder.
“You know I’ve not forgotten the bondage, Rykah, and you know I would help you if I could. I would reach up in a heartbeat and cut the black string; I would drown it in the stream and knit the web around it. What then? Should I take all those fallen threads upon the ground and weave them back into the fabric? How could you so lightly alter the Web of Fate, its every thread the future of a living being? Should I give the orphans back their mothers? They, too, suffer. Should I cast down the tyrant kings, and end the plagues of nations? Those whom I do not like, the villains and robbers and slavers, should I kill them, Rykah, should I cut their strings? And what of the poor babes frozen to death in the winter, or strangled by a sickness? Andirran plays with the lives of others on a whim. He destroys those he does not like and rewards those who serve him. I shall not become him! He may bind me again, use me to twist the fates of others to his will, but better I am forced to do it than I do it of my own volition. I am the Black Queen, Rykah. I am the overseer of Fate. I do not toy with the fabric of Fate to suit my desires, I make certain it unfolds as it was conceived. If it is destiny that Andirran should break free, I must allow it to happen. You are the one who changes things. If you do not wish to see Andirran rise, I invite you to see it so.”
The girl called Rykah shook her head sadly, long hair fanning about her face. “You know I cannot change the web, Medra, only the strands that comprise it. Should there be a man to be murdered by Andirran, I could save him. Were there the need for a hero to drive Andirran back and destroy him, if Fate commanded that he must be destroyed, I could birth the hero. When Agrilamar’s armies made the final stand against Andirran, on that fateful morning on the Continent, I fought with them; I bore a sword. But I cannot change fate! You know I could save every man, fight every skirmish, but it wouldn’t matter in the end, if fate is against me. Help me, Medra! I’ll do anything you like, take as much of it upon myself as you wish; you need never think about it again. But I need your help.”
“I cannot shun my duty, Rykah. A soldier in a war fights beneath the banner of his king, even if he disagrees with the conflict. I am the spider, and the purpose of my web is to catch flies. You are asking me to tear down the design and make a hole to spare a fly which you feel should not be caught. I cannot do it. Convince the fly to dodge the web, if you can, Rykah, but speak not to the spider.”
“If you let him rise again, he will use you for exactly that! He will break your soul and bind your body; he will use you to twist fate to his liking. He will force you to kill Luster, who helped you break free from Andirran before. He will force you to rip your own web to shreds. You will strangle every force opposed to him, until only his slaves and armies are left alive. If you will not alter Fate now, once, for the benefit of everyone, you will do it a hundred thousand times, under torture, tainting the face of Aquadioa to Andirran’s liking. How can you call this your duty?”
Medra frowned, hesitating. Rykah had been waiting for this; the argument was old, and Medra had slowly given way, but never to a visible hesitation; now she could push harder still. The woman had her reason and rationale, but such things were weak in the face of pain and memory, and Rykah could take advantage of emotion far more than duty and conviction. She had ways of working on the slightest indecision, of digging claws deep into the smallest of openings, but reason was hard to work with. As Medra opened her gash mouth to speak, the girl jumped up and caught her left hand, forcing her sleeve up to her elbow. The woman hissed and jerked it quickly back, but Rykah skipped to the other stone, standing between the her bony legs, and caught her arm. Forcing the sleeve up, she twisted it angrily in front of Medra’s contoured face; the deep hood had slipped back several inches, sunlight illuminating the tip of the hag’s long white nose and the ferocity of her scowl. Carved on the inside of her forearm, deeper and starker than any scar or spot along the taut and grey expanse, was a circular brand of white moonlight: a circle of chain bordering a web that was a smaller version of the one in the clearing, and, along the right edge, the long shape of a hunting horn like the one Rykah had drawn beside the smirking man. Medra’s angry hissing faded slowly to silence. She drew her sleeve up as Rykah pulled away, clenching her right hand tightly about the wrist through the fabric of the robe as if the mark burnt on her flesh. Her breath passed more slowly now, quietly, like the soft rustle of grass on a windy evening. The fire in her eyes had burnt away, replaced by pain and sadness.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered quietly. “I can’t. It’s my duty. It’s all that I am. The torture is hard, but it’s real. What will I be if I deny what I am?”
Rykah leant close and put both hands gently on top of the old woman’s head, comforting her. “But if you don’t, Medra, a hundred thousand others will bear such a mark. Innocents, all. Mothers and their children. Fathers. Stablehands and farmers. Warriors, beggars, princes, shepherds; everyone will suffer beneath his hand, and you can prevent it. You can save them, Medra. How could you refuse? You can protect them all against that mark. Do you remember the branding? Can you imagine a child, just a little innocent girl, perhaps six years old, taken through the Gate because her parents are servants of Andirran?” As she said this, Rykah knelt lower to present more of herself to Medra’s view, keeping the image of the little girl just on the corner of her vision, halfway in the realm of her mind’s eye, eating at the edge of her imagination. “And there Riomar stands, the Eater of Worlds, and he will sneer as she walks by and stroke her cheek, and she will scream and scream as his sorrow overwhelms her and consume her... and then they will beat her until she lies on the cold floor before Andirran’s throne, and he will descend, holding the sword with the ruby at the tip of the blade, and he will cut his mark into her flesh; and if she dares make a sound, they will kick her until she chokes on her own blood. And then, if she’s not important, he will let Riomar eat her... you know how it’s done. But if she is...” Rykah let her voice trail away ominously as she leant closer to the old woman’s head, keeping the vision of the innocent little child close at hand.
Medra’s hand contracted about her wrist, and Rykah felt a single hot tear run across her foot and smiled to herself, but then the old woman began to shake her head from side to side, as if casting off a bad memory. Rykah tried to still the motion, but as she pressed her hands over the woman’s ears, Medra’s head came sharply up; the sadness in her eyes had been replaced by desperation.
“I am the overseer of Fate, Rykah, it’s all I am! My only purpose is to make sure that the web in this clearing continues as it was woven; I can’t go against it. I could never forgive myself if I changed the web. Don’t force this choice on me; I can’t do as you want. Maybe Andirran will be toppled again. Bring it about, Rykah; you are the Change. I couldn’t involve myself in Fate like this; it is not my purpose. Perhaps it will all turn out for the best in the end. Let things transpire as they were designed, and you may find it will turn out how you want, eventually.”
Behind the hood, hidden from the old woman, the girl’s fingernails bit deeply into her palm from frustration, but no change marred the childish innocence of her face; she tilted her head to the side, quickly considering options again.
“Are you willing to let him brand a hundred with this mark until that happens? Don’t involve yourself if you don’t want to, Medra, I told you I’ll do everything I can; all I need is an opening. I’m asking for a chance to change things. Please help me, just once; all I need is the opportunity. If I fail, Andirran will rise, and all will proceed as the web was woven. If I succeed and end him, I will have brought it about, not you, and you will be as you always were. The Overseer.” Rykah knelt down and gazed into Medra’s eyes, gently brushing away the woman’s tears. “Just a chance. Give me the tools to do it, but let me fix things by myself. I only need the tools.”
Medra closed her eyes and sighed quietly. When she opened them again, the tears were gone, but the fire had not reignited; she looked empty and bleak, devoid of life. Slowly she drew her sleeve back and traced the mark on the inside of the forearm with her eyes, following the web. It told of a very different fate from the one stretched between the trees; Medra had traced its contents a hundred times before and knew Andirran’s vision as well as she knew Fate’s true fabric. She envisioned herself in her mind’s eye, shackled in his heavy bonds, reaching up and reshaping Fate into the likeness of this image. Another tear dropped from the nether of her hood and rolled across her wrist. Quickly, she shook her head again, but the meaning was different now; resigned. Rykah bit the inside of her cheek triumphantly.
Carefully, she lowered Medra’s heavy black hood. The old woman had a long shock of white hair, grizzled and limp; the tips of her grey ears drooped, and the morning light carved valleys in her cheeks. Above her left eye, clear in the sunlight, shone the outline of a sickle moon, gleaming silver. Gently, Rykah bent down and kissed the hollow cheek, for all the world a little girl kissing her grandmother. Medra did not look at her, but her empty eyes gained a little warmth with the kiss, and she relaxed her grip on her forearm just slightly as the girl patted her hair.
“Please, Medra? I’m begging you. Just let me try.” For effect, she let her finger softly brush Medra’s forearm, evoking a sharp intake of breath. Gradually the woman lifted her face to the girl’s; her frown remained, but her eyes were acquiescent. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded once and blinked an assent.
Rykah’s face lit up in a genuine smile, and for the first time she truly resembled the little child she appeared. Kissing Medra once more upon the cheek, earnestly this time, she skipped across to the other stone, and shook her long hair out to the wind. Stepping carefully over the lowest threads and ducking beneath one the level of her collarbone, she turned and waved back at Medra once, mouthed ‘just a chance,’ and disappeared between the trees. The old woman shook her head again, and glanced down at the drawing still on the bank: the young elf with the butterfly, captioned Allear.
“Just a chance...,” she murmured to herself, her eyes following the point of his ear. Then, sighing heavily and cursing Rykah from the bottom of her heart, she pulled her hood back over her head and heaved herself stiffly to her feet, brushed the creases from her robe, and began to make her way from the clearing. Behind her, the gurgling stream consumed the first flake of snow from a sky slowly darkening with cloud.