Category: Other Page 134 of 177

Morbat, who was not Morbat, stood before the Tree of Re-Naming. The sigil shimmered in the space between Anthuor’s antlers, and increased in size and importance until nothing else was perceptible in Morbat’s sensorium. The emblems hung like ornaments from the branches of the Tree. Morbat knew not the language nor meaning of the symbols so expressed, and simply chose three which seemed to him both true and beautiful by the stirrings of his heart.

He chose:

Rock
Starfish
Annihilation

Anthuor laughed and the walls of the Cave of Unnaming shook heartily in reply.

“You have chosen well. Rock, for the weight under which you will be ground to dust. Starfish, for the poison your flesh will always bear. Annihilation, for flouting your oath in my name, and running your flag against the wind.”

“Rise, Annihilation, and your poison flesh be ground to dust!”

At that, the skeletal form whose name was Annihilation rose up to its full height, and there was a great creaking heard deep within the earth. Rock against rock, crushing, inexorable power. And in his bones, the magician Annihilation felt that same force, crushing him from all sides invisibly.

The structural integrity of his bones turned in slow, short impossible moments to nothing. They fractures, shattered into shards, and shattered again. Over and over until the little sharp bits were ground literally to dust. And his tattered cloak reduced to a few stray fibers.

In this moment, in the darkness, one who dwelt there, freely by right, stirred in reaction in her nest. Arising out of a great hibernation, she crept to the place of the noise, and found only a pile of dust, and a few stray fibers.

She yawned. Eager to return to sleep, she gathered up the fibers in her mouth, thinking they looked soft to sleep on, and returned to her nook, where she added them to her bedding and fell back to sleep.

Her name was Dis.

Delrin exhaled into darkness. The air was cold, and despite the dark, she perceived a small cloud of mist expelled from her breath. Her skin glowed slightly in this place, she noticed, a dull illumination against the black.

She heard then too a sound, as if far off. A trickling of water, as in a babbling brook, the sound of soft footsteps becoming nearer. The peal of bells, and drumbeats on crystal overwhelming her senses. In the darkness, the arch of a doorway appeared, first as a crack of light in the stone wall of the cave, widening out to a portal through which a bright white light streamed copiously. And into this positive void stepped the silhouette of a great beast, like unto the form of an elk. Anthuor.

The beast breathed out jets of steam through its great nostrils, and she felt herself fixed under the penetrating stare of its eyes.

“Be at peace, little one,” Anthuor said to her in his deep booming voice, which filled up the emptiness of the chamber.

Delrin bowed her head in reverence, saying nothing.

“I have been with you since before you were born,” Anthuor continued.

“When your father pledged his store-houses to the magician
in exchange for a child,
and the two took a vow on my name,
I was listening.

When you were born,
I inspired you with song.

When you frolicked in the wood as a child with all my creatures,
I was there.

When you left home to find your destiny,
I followed close behind.

When you found your true love in the Great Forest,
I bore silent joyful witness.

And when you slipped and fell from the cliffs into the Weeping Waters,
It is I who caught you up, and brought you to this place.”

“For all these things, and more, I thank you,” Delrin said. “I have, I think, always felt your presence. I submit myself then into your protection in this dark land. For I know not where I am, nor the way forward.”

“This place,” Anthuor began, “is the Cave of Unnaming.”

“It is a… disagreeable name, I fear,” she said.

“For those who come here wrongly, indeed — it may prove their undoing. For those who come with a pure heart, and in the spirit of truth, no harm shall befall them.”

“Would that I may prove to be the latter…” Delrin said, trailing off.

“What must I do to return home?” she said.

“To leave this place,” Anthuor said, “one must be unnamed, or forever dwell in darkness.”

“Then let me be unnamed,” Delrin said without hesitation.

“First, understand the consequence,” Anthuor replied.

“Given that you are here as my invited guest, you may choose to dwell here, intact as you are. With all your memories and emotions, though in darkness. Should you choose to do so, a place has been prepared for you deep in the Hypogeum…”

“And if I choose to leave?”

“Then your name and your history will be stricken from you. In choosing a new name, you will pass out of this place as one new to the world, with no memory or knowledge of your home, your family, or your love…”

Delrin cried out, “I beg your forgiveness for saying so, but it seems an unfair choice: dwell forever in darkness with my misery, apart from the love I have found, or return to the world with everything stripped from me. It is not a beautiful choice.”

Anthuor huffed, “The third option is return to the almost certain death from which I delivered you, as fulfillment of the oath sworn under my antlers by your father and the magician before you were born. You would resume your fall into the Weeping Waters, whereupon you will likely drown and be dashed upon the rocks.”

Delrin wept bitter, silent tears, as she weighed these options.

“Tell me one thing,” she said at length. “Does my love yet live?”

Anthuor answered with a nod, “He does — though he himself has gone to another place out of your reach.”

“Then I am decided. So long as my love lives, I will not sacrifice a chance at being reunited. I found him once, and even if I am caused now to forget him, I know I can find him again. Let me be unnamed, and reborn.”

“So be it,” replied Anthuor. “You are unnamed.”

Though she perceived it not immediately, her memories slipped furtively away from her.

In the darkness of the cave, he revealed to her then his magic sigil floating dimly illumined in the air between them.

“Choose now three emblems from this tree. They will become your new name, and will determine through which door your shall pass.”

Though Delrin recognized not the arcane symbols before her, she chose three without hesitation.

They were:

Queen
Marsh
Heron

“Fitting choices,” Anthuor explained. “Your heart speaks true. Queen, for your grace and royal bearing. Marsh, for the desolation of your past which is to follow. And Heron, a noble bird well suited to those wastes, and patient, a fisher.”

“I dub thee, Heron,” Anthuor proclaimed. “Pass now through the door, and may your patience be rewarded in the end.”

Anthuor stepped aside from the threshold, through which light poured, and Heron stepped through.

Morbat the Magician sensed something was wrong. That there had been some fundamental flaw underlying the transformation which lead him here. He could not quite pin it down — and it itched at him.

Having slid down behind the girl on the trail of light into the Hypogeum, the magician got the impression not all of him had quite made it. When he finally put his skeletal finger on the difference, he realized what must have happened. His flesh had dissipated somehow in the transition; he was but a grinning skull atop a jangly assemblage of long, skinny, rattling bones, wrapped in a grimy, tattered, threadbare cloak which he sensed had not always been soiled.

Presently, though, he could not call to mind a time when it wasn’t so. Nor a time prior to having been standing in this dark cave. Nor when he didn’t hear that dreadful sound: a hum in the distance, a torrent of gushing air, a peal of bells, drumbeats on crystal…

The hooves of the Resistor sounded, Prince of the Dark Wood, striking the back and belly of Acho, playing his bones like xylophones summoning the dead, dying, and never-having-lived, as he traversed the many worlds closer and closer to this place.

Where there had been neither portal nor passage prior, a light shone suddenly, and into view of its threshold could be glimpsed the form in outline of Anthuor.

“Who come ye here without summons?” boomed the voice of Anthuor in the dark echoing rock chamber.

“I am called…” Morbat wrestled to remember his name.

“I am…” he paused for a long time.

He sensed a great weight pressing in on him silently, and inexorably, from all directions at once.

“I am unnamed.”

“It is so,” said Anthuor.

“Or come you not to this place at all.
That you’ve lost both your
Name and flesh in the passage speaks volumes to me.
You who swore oaths upon me
And then knelt at the Ruined Altar,
To bid another undo each one.
You sacrificed your self truly then,
This end today an end you created.”

“Behold now, this sigil.”

The sign of Anthuor hovered in the darkness, self-illuminating.

“Make now three decisions
upon this tree of forking branches.
Choose now three emblems
whose names will become your own,
and the forms of which shall determine
through which door you shall leave this cave,
if leave it you ever shall…”

The quadriga was adopted in ancient Roman chariot racing. Quadrigas were emblems of triumph; Victory or Fame often are depicted as the triumphant woman driving it. In classical mythology, the quadriga is the chariot of the gods; Apollo was depicted driving his quadriga across the heavens, delivering daylight and dispersing the night.

Source: Quadriga – Wikipedia

The crushing pressure of great talons lifting him high up into the dark air is what woke Benda. The body of the huge eagle which held him was dark against the black sky, its wings blocking out the stars with their dull thudding flap.

Bound still hand and foot by the harsh ropes of the Xenarths, Benda experienced a moment of sheer panic. He realized in it that the harp Eril had been left behind. And according to his read of the situation, it was altogether hopeless. Wriggle as he might, the talons held him fast, pressing his cloak around him tightly, and the great eagle flapped on to nowhere.

In the height of this panic, as the black earth sped by below them, Benda thought he heard a small voice, muffled. It seemed to be issuing from his chest, his heart even. This astonished Benda, as the voice after a moment said aloud, “Never fear, I am here!”

Benda had, by this point, experienced a great many things. For a moment, he thought it could be Machef, who had the ability to speak directly in the well of one’s heart, as an inward voice. But he knew not where his friend the sable golek had gotten to. Benda dared not speak a reply aloud, but after getting his wits together, he ventured a stifled whisper in the direction of the voice.

“Who? What? Where?”

In the folds of his cloak, Benda felt movement stirring, what felt like a pinch, and then the voice replied, “Tob! Tob Gobble!”

Benda nearly cried out for joy, but held it in. At least I won’t die alone, he thought, but did not say anything. “How?” he whispered, flabbergasted, for he thought he had left Tob far behind when he made his escape – which had turned instead into his capture.

“Nevermind that now,” Tob whispered. “We haven’t much time. I know what to do. Give me a low note…”

“A low note?” Benda whispered hoarsely, without comprehension.

“Sing!” Tob jabbed him in the ribs with a pointy object.

“Ow!” Benda replied.

“Now!” Tob’s voice was rising in frustration. “Sing!”

Benda took a deep breath, glanced up as best he could at the bird, who seemed either unaware or uninterested in the miniature drama playing out in Benda’s cloak. And he let out a deep low hum.

“Lower!” Tob prompted. “Louder!”

Benda’s voice dropped several steps, and as best he could he let out a loud, low, sustained note. The eagle’s flight and demeanor did not change, so Benda kept on. Tob, meanwhile, put his reed flute to his lips, closed his many eyes, and summoned the memory of Makkarin in his heart, and the images from his vision. Through pursed lips, he blew out and the flute sounded its awkward croaking sound. He trilled around, reaching for just the right notes, and finally struck onto a melodic pattern which meshed over Benda’s low drone.

Benda began to feel very strange and light-headed. He gasped for breath, and felt altogether… wrong. Somewhere far off, as if in a daze, he heard the strange sound of a flute, and focused wholly on it. It seemed to glow in his awareness. His own voice had faltered, but the transformation by then was complete. Through the power of Benda’s charmed Cloak of Becoming, and the combined magic of Tob’s flute and Benda’s song, he had become, bodily, a great silver fish covered in scales.

The eagle who was Murta became suddenly aware of a lessening of his load, as the magical transformation completed itself. He looked down at his talons, and in this moment, Benda’s body writhed once solidly on its own. In the confusion, the eagle who was Murta loosened ever so slightly the grip of its talons, and Benda the Fish slipped out of his grasp, plunging in free fall, and gasping through the air below.

Murta let out a cry, and adjusting his course through the upper airs, dove after his prey. Somewhere, muffled, there was the sound of a flute playing with all its little might. Benda was only aware of the dark, however, and his strange body’s gasping for air, and the feeling of weightlessness as he fell. His gills pulsed, but he could find no relief. A great heat and terror rose in him as he fell through the darkness, the eagle screeching after him.

But Benda remained just out of reach, and as the two great animals dove through the darkness, one after the other, the eagle could not trap him. Just at the moment where Benda felt his whole body would burst for lack of air, he hit ground. Only it was not ground. It was the vast dark surface of an enormous lake, and Benda’s slippery body easily splashed down into it with nary a spray produced above the surface. The eagle’s talons swept down, raking across the water, but failed to find purchase. With a flap of its wings at the last possible moment, it veered off, up, and away into the dark air, circling.

Benda, meanwhile, breathed deeply below the water, though his human mind reeled at this incredible feat. His body, however, thrilled at the touch of the dark water, and he swam and dove, and cavorted in it with glee, all thoughts of the great bird of prey passing from his mind. As he swam, the loose and now meaningless rope bonds sloughed off his body like skin from a snake, and he was free.

The little sound of a flute he heard in the back of his mind suddenly trailed off. And a still small voice somewhere deep within him now shouted, “Benda! Swim to the surface! Now!”

Instinctively, Benda obeyed, his great body pulsing once more with all its might, as the spell wore off and his body transitioned back to that of a man. He broke the surface of the water, and gasped a second time, gills now gone, and water sputtering in a cough out of his mouth. From within his cloak, Tob reprimanded in a loud whisper, “Shush! The danger is not yet passed.”

The fall of Delrin from the Great Bridge is considered by scholars to be one of the pivotal events in Quatrian mytho-history, and is the climax of the infrequently performed, but always treasured, Dark Dance Cycle. The incident is considered the triggering event for the later fall of Abdazon and the ending of the Age of the House of Wealth.

Mere seconds after her fall into the Weeping Waters far, far below, the woodsman Elum and Lux, his owl, dove off the Great Bridge in after her. Meanwhile, the magician Morbat hurled curses at Delroy, her father, and against the city of Abdazon, vowing that he would see its ruin for having deprived him of his rightful prize, his marriage to Delrin.

Though startled at having lost her footing and slipped from the rocky cliffs, Delrin experienced the actual fall itself in a state of preternatural calm. A quiet suffused her being throughout, and she had the sensation of suspension, of slowing down so much that she was no longer falling, but possibly hovering.

The wind seemed to whisper to her, and she heard a voice boom out, as if resonating inwardly.

“Come, my child.”

And the next thing she knew, she was standing in a dark space, on her two feet, lightly misted still from the vapor of the giant waterfall by rights into which she should have now fallen to her death. Was she dead?

She held up her hands to examine them, and found that they glowed slightly.

Elum, whose own fall lagged several seconds behind hers, was far enough away that he had unwittingly lost sight of her amidst the mists and vapors of the Weeping Waters. He was effectively falling blindly, but for Lux who trailed him at a near distance, just out of hand. The rigor of her senses was somewhat greater, a creature whose lineage spoke the language of aerial dives from high altitudes to track small moving targets since time immemorial. And she too lost sight of Delrin in her fall. But she saw where she went: a slight rend opened in the veil of the mists, and Delrin passed bodily in, before it closed back up again.

Though Lux was a creature of free fall, Elum was not. At least not in air. His line came, in truth, from the ancient Buorthern mariners who had settled the land now called Quatria before it had any name. They were seafarers, and fortunately, they were divers too. To these old-paths, Elum linked himself on the canals of light, and felt their somatic memories flood his body, his sensations, his skin. And as the two, at long last in their fall, neared the waters far below the Great Bridge, Lux found the opportune moment, and bouncing against a slight updraft coming off the falls, swept the shoulder and arm up of Elum in her talons, slowing his fall just enough that he could plunge safely into the waters below. She released him, and he broke the surface of the water like a fish, and went down, down, below.

High above on the Great Bridge, Morbat bore witness to these events, and seethed with anger. His magic enabled him to see into the subtle realms, and he too saw a rend in the veil open, and Delrin pass out of this world into the Hypogeum. Such transits were not normally possible — even for magicians — requiring quite extraordinary circumstances. Seeing such an exception before his very eyes threw him into an explosive rage, and he burst into a cloud of vapor, and streamed over the edge of the Great Bridge, to join with the waters below.

He saw still clearly the light trails of Delrin where she had fallen, and traced it to her point of passage out of this world. He made himself ready, made himself nothing, and slipped in through after her just in time before the trails dissipated, and the rend healed over completely.

He too found himself in darkness, but he knew this place, or at least knew of this cave from legend: the Cave of Unnaming. He unfolded his hands from his robe, and looked down in the darkness at himself. They were skeletal. And the flesh too had fallen from his long animal face, and his long white cloak was threadbare and worn.

Reclaiming pre-consumer folk holiday traditions

More educated upper-middle class people than ever are dropping the annual consumer extravaganza known as “Black Friday” in favor of a simpler and all-but forgotten traditional folk festival, Quatria Day.

Pre-historic origins

The origins of what modern Pantarcticans know today as “Black Friday” can be traced back some quaranty thousand years ago to the Anthuorians, an obscure Old Late Quatrian religious cult evidently centered around an even-toed ungulate, endemic to arboreal forests of that subcontinent, and since extinct.

In surviving records from the time period, solitary cult adherents were described as wandering deep into the forest without any provisions or gear but the shirts on their backs. There they sought visions of and commerce with the spirit of their cult-devotion, Anthuor, who is depicted variously in contemporary Quatrian statuary and pottery as an enormous black, white, brown, or multi-hued stag, elk, blastomeryx, syndyoceras, moose, megaloceros, or roebuck.

Echoes of this ancient tradition survived the destruction of Quatria and the resulting Diaspora, and can be readily seen influencing medieval Pentarch philosophy and religious thought. From the mystical cervid encounters of San Eustacio and Saintus Hubertus, to the Pendragon/Arthurian myth cycle, wherein a white stag appears (on an irregular basis according to the Quatrian calendar) at the court of the Circulon King, ritually signaling the opening of the Hypogeum, and extending to all feast-goers the invitation to venture forth into the liminal parade space usually restricted to upper class minstrels, jongleurs, and their attendant magicians.

Forest law

In these visions, the adherent might receive either instructions in Anthuorian cuisine, forest gardening, culture, lore and code, including the law of the Keeper of Animals:

“During Hubert’s religious vision, the Hirsch (German: deer) is said to have lectured Hubertus into holding animals in higher regard and having compassion for them as God’s creatures with a value in their own right. For example, the hunter ought to only shoot when a humane, clean and quick kill is assured. He ought shoot only old stags past their prime breeding years and to relinquish a much anticipated shot on a trophy to instead euthanize a sick or injured animal that might appear on the scene. Further, one ought never shoot a female with young in tow to assure the young deer have a mother to guide them to food during the winter.”

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Contemporary celebration

Nowadays, Black Friday is conventionally celebrated on the Imperial calendar the day after Conquest, and is in solemn remembrance of the needless and on-going slaughter of the innocents. It is believed that inwardly dwelling on this inherent cruelty underlying modern Pantarctican society helps shoppers “get into the holiday spirit,” and who could argue against the data science supporting that assumption.

Based on the differences in quarantial and imperial counting systems, the dates of Black Friday and traditional Quatria Day celebrations do not exactly line up on a regular basis. In fact, traditionally, the Quatrian songboard casting system requires that on the quaranteenth hour, of the quaranteenth (or quarantieth) day, of the quaranteenth year, the notes must be struck to signal the start of this supra-national holiday which united — and still does — all Quatrians in all times and places.

Though Conquest is celebrated on the Fourth Thursday of November, it’s position on the Imperial calendar floats anywhere between November 22nd and November 28th, as in the table below.

In years such as this one where Conquest falls before November 25, Caterina Name Day (the traditional start of Winter)— and subtracting any so-called “leap years”*, The Hypogeum opens exceptionally between nightfall on Conquest, until the moment the First Wind of Winter blows in, or nightfall on the 25th, whichever falls sooner:

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Make a paper fortune teller

On Quatria Day across the globe today, children still fashion the Star of Kremel — actually originally the Star of Quastria — a kind of multi-dimensional hyper-map onto which are mapped the Pantarctican equivalents of the Hypogean and Experienced powers, and which can be used to divine one’s and one’s family’s soul path for the coming cycle.

Though it is erroneously taught today in compulsory education centers that its associations with the holiday are due to the complexity of subjugating the richer Quatrian calendrical system to the Imperial, the more accurate historic reality is that the famous paper fortune tellers so commonly associated with Quatria Day are actually symbolically relevant to the Anthuorian myth cycle as well.

It is said in the extent Anthuorian texts, that at this time of year, Anthuor wandered into the Thankless Wastes to see what was the matter there that nothing was growing anymore. At first as he walked there he thought the plants were maybe just tired, and decided he probably agreed with them that it was okay and that during winter everyone could just “take a break,” and they could come back next year when it was warm again. But when he got there, he found not even any plants left to be tired. He found only a strange creature who, calling himself the Prince of Lies, took the appearance of a crooked old man in an aged and tattered brown robe, with a chain around his waist.

The Prince of Lies hailed Anthuor, asking his name.

“That which withstands,” Anthuor replied.

The Prince of lies, in reply, challenged Anthuor to a game.

“A guessing game,” he announced. “Determine whether or not I’m lying. Best two out of three.”

“If I lose,” the Prince told him, “life will return to these Thankless Wastes. If I win, I will add you to my collection.”

Anthuor breathed a twin jet of steam from each his great nostrils in agreement.

Due, unfortunately, to lacunae in the original source texts, there is no record of the three statements made by the Prince of Lies, nor the assessments proffered in response to the first two by Anthuor. But in the place where the text picks up again, we understand that the score is tied at one to one, and to divine the answer to the final question Anthuor has produced a primitive version of the Quastrian Star out of a folded leaf.

The Prince of Lies takes this paper fortune teller, and Anthuor tells him to count to quaranteen using the device. He does, alternating it back and forth in his fingers, and unfolds the tab to reveal… the sigil of Anthuor himself.

Seeing this, the Prince of Lies bursts into flames, and the Gentle Waters roll softly back in to bathe the Thankless Wastes. The plants who have withdrawn half-way now to the Hypogeum promise Anthuor to grow again next year after they’ve had a good rest. And this is how Winter as we know it today came to be.

Following the banishment of the Betrayer in the Dark Dance Cycle during the scene on the Great Bridge, the Pentarch sailor-turned-actor Benda Betrayer was officially relieved of his duties in these ritual re-enactments of Quatrian myth and history. Though his countrymen and companions on his sea voyage, Tendar Trustless and Ofend Fool, decided to stay on and complete the Dark Dance Cycle performing various bit parts and choral accompaniments, Benda took this time for much needed relaxation and recuperation.

He had gained much acclaim through his performance of the part of Betrayer, and he was already being heralded as a natural. Rumors even circulated in the streets of the Temple Mount and the village of Elum that he might be nominated one day soon to lower ranks of the Virtuosi. Benda had no interest in any of this talk, though he was grateful there was a way for him to repay for the accidental death he had caused of the previous actor, Jan Re, who played the Betrayer. Though he was no longer legally required under Quatrian Code to retain his performance name, everyone everywhere he went called him, honorably, Betrayer, or Benda Betrayer, in recognition of the luminosity of his performance.

Though he initially accepted social invitations from local notables and dignitaries, Benda quickly grew tired of being feted everywhere he went. And with his countrymen currently absorbed in the pageants, from which he had happily retired, he found himself lonely and lacking in true companionship. Which is why when the High Augur one day sent a messenger to him to come and share tea, he gladly accepted.

“So glad you could make it, Benda,” said the High Augur, gripping both Benda’s wrists in Quatrian traditional greeting.

Benda gripped the other’s wrists in turn. “I was pleased to receive your invitation… your lordship.”

The High Augur waved a hand, smiling lightly, “Please, call me Emachus.”

Benda had never heard anyone call the High Augur by name before, and rightly understood this privilege to be a sign of honor. Emachus ushered him to a small round table and two seats, indicating he should sit.

“Thank you, Emachus,” said Benda.

The High Augur sat down in the chair beside him, and the two looked off into the distance at Quatria, the Bay of Erasure, and the sea beyond.

“You must be tired from the stairs,” Emachus said at length.

“It is my first ascent to the Crown of the Pillar of Song,” Benda admitted.

“And it shall not be your last!” Emachus smiled broadly. A servant then appeared in the garden terrace atop the Pillar of Song, bearing a tea set, and silently went about preparing and pouring a dark steaming liquid known as grel into cups for each. It was sharp and bitter in taste, but Benda had grown accustomed to it during the weeks he’d now spent in Quatria rehearsing and then performing in the Dark Dance Cycle. Grel gave one fortitude, and the will to carry on.

“I am the quaranteenth and final High Augur, the last of my office,” Emachus began, sipping the dark hot beverage. His one eye studied Benda carefully.

“It is so told in the tales, that during the time of the quaranteenth and final High Augur, the Temple Mount itself would shake, the walls crack, and the Pillar upon which we two now are perched would crumble.”

“I have averted such a future as long as I have been able, ever reading more favorable outcomes from unclear omens, and feeding back instead into the long steady processes of destiny joyous and happy occasions, wherever it was given to me to do so.”

Benda, sensing not yet his part in this monologue, opted to remain silent rather than respond.

“In that same aim, I have at times introduced alterations into the fabric of things which seemed right and necessary at the time, but which lead, ultimately, to later ruin.”

Benda began to feel this was not idle chatter.

“Emachus, of what do you speak? Take courage in my ear and in my understanding.” It was a classical Quatrian saying, and the High Augur smiled upon hearing it.

“It pleases me how you’ve so readily adapted here, torn away from the bosom of your homeland.”

“My time here has been well spent; it is certain. I do one day soon wish to return. To see my wife and children again. To report all the marvels that I’ve seen to my King and captain.”

“Indeed,” Emachus replied. “Indeed.”

The two looked off to the sea.

“And if I were to tell you, you should never return…” Emachus began, carefully.

“For in so doing, you would set off a chain of events which would not only destroy this fair land, and doom her peoples, but which would irrevocably change the face of the Five Kingdoms as well?”

Benda was quiet then, and deeply ponderous. When he came back from his thoughts with an answer, he was saddened to hear himself say it.

“Without the aid of your people, and the luck of landing on these shores, we three would have died on the deep ocean, where our ghosts would wander restlessly about as tempests.”

“So to you we owe our lives, and thus our loyalty.” He added heavily, “Though it would grieve me sorely to abandon my family to wild fortune, if you forbid us to go, I would humbly obey.”

“It is not mine to command,” replied Emachus.

“I grant you your freedom, you and your countrymen. You have earned it most truly. All debts are paid. You are free to come and go as you wish. And as reward for excellence in the performance of duties, for which you three had such little preparation, the House of Song hereby grants you three a holding, the Isle of Ovarion, and a small but sturdy ship to take you where must be gone.”

“Whether you choose to stay and settle there now, or return first to your own land to retrieve your family and report to your King, we greatly wish you to take this land as your own, and build there a palace. In fact, our tales foretell it. And of what the tales foretell, we must consider already done…”

Despite the apparent generosity of the gift, Benda sensed a dark foreboding to the other’s word. “Of what else do they tell, dear friend?”

“Of the beginning of the Fourth Age,” the High Augur replied. “The coming of the King Over the Sea, and the ultimate ruin of our beloved Quatria.”

Elum shivered in reaction to the jolt sent by his sister, Elan, on the invisible canals of light which connected them. Though such transmissions conveyed not words, the sharpness of the emotion, the fear, and the warning caused him to instantly put together what was the matter. The Betrayer was coming, and it was only a matter of moments before he would arrive…

In that same instant, on the canals of darkness, the half-mad human side of Andal heard too a strange call, as of a dark herald announcing a homecoming. Andal knew it meant his own annihilation, and with great force of will, brought his hand up to clutch the handle of his sword. He knew he had only an instant to act…

Seeing this action, and not knowing whether Andal or the Betrayer was in control, Elum notched and let fly an arrow on instinct, with a silent prayer that his aim be true at such a short distance.

In the time it took to notch and release, Andal had unsheathed his sword, and in one single movement severed the tendon behind the knee of Delroy who stood close by, facing away from him. The Betrayer, Andal realized with horror, as if watching from far away, had now full hold of him.

The arrow, whose aim was of course true, did not find its mark however. For the magician Morbat, moving faster than the eye, had closed the gap, and caught the shaft in mid-flight with one hand. Lifting up the other, he broke it in half before Delroy had even let out his cry of pain, and fallen to the ground.

Delrin screamed out, “No!” but did not resist when Elum grabbed and turned her, and forcibly shoved her forward into flight, yelling to cut through her shock, “Run!”

She did just that, and disappeared off-stage. Elum stayed to face the Betrayer who had now horrible and full control of Andal, her father’s former Best Men. The main lights went down, then, and special fires lit around the stage itself. The orchestra paused, and when the last fire was lit, deep horns rang out, reverberating from the orchestra pits on down into the tunnels connecting to the Hypogeum.

Elum on-stage began to circle his opponents, who at this time included in their number Morbat, who stood fully taller than two men, great long white cloak illumined spectacularly by fires on all sides, Andal Betrayer, and the three remaining special guardsmen. The guards, as they pivoted in opposition to Elum, around the central axis of Morbat, and the satellite of Andal, removed their armor and helmets, revealing dark tattered robes, with hoods which they drew up over their faces, as they transitioned into echoes of the one true Betrayer, and arrayed themselves on-stage to box Elum in to meet his doom.

At length, Delroy, who suffered gravely under his wound, spoke up.

“Stop this madness at once!”

His suffering voice lifted haltingly to song, and a quartet of strings broke away from the main orchestra, which died down so they could accompany him.

“I can see now,” he sang.

“That this supposed Great Magician
has not kept his word
and is in league with Dark Forces
which care nothing for lives of men.”

Elum, Andal, and the three other Betrayers continued in their silent circular march, eyeing each other, weapons at the ready.

“I, who have opened my storehouses,” Delroy sang.

“I, who have opened my heart.
Riches untold have been granted to me,
And none so dear as my daughter,
Who flees now from darkness into darkness.

I call on thee, Great Magician,
To remember the oath that we two both
Swore under the antlers of Anthuor.

The terms of the contract are fulfilled.
True love has been found.
The obligations unbound.
Go, ye, in peace, now,
You and your dark allies.”

And pronouncing these words, Delroy fainted straight away.

In this moment, two of the guardsmen-turned-Betrayers managed to get behind Elum, and seize him by the arms.

Morbat, who stood taller than two men, then boomed out his song in response in a marvelous basso profundo.

“Yea, though we swore by Anthuor, who withstands,
There dwell other powers in the Hypogeum.
We who traverse those realms
Know the power of the Changer.
It is Wormwood, not I,
Who released the Deviation.
No vows were broken.
And the clause becomes invalid
Should True Love vanish
Not by my own hand.”

Andal then, as Betrayer, closed on Elum, and raised the point of his sword to the woodsman’s throat, set to pierce it and end his life.

Suddenly, from atop the palace, Delrin’s voice rang out, clear and true, as an enormous torch sprang to life up there to illuminate her.

She sang out, to the sweet accompaniment of flute and lyre:

“Hear, o Morbat,
Who dwells in falsehood,
Who lies about what his eyes can see.
The light of True Love
Cannot be extinguished even in death.

Harm the woodsman,
And I’ll throw myself from this bridge,
Into the weeping waters.
Let him live,
And I’ll consent to marry you.”

While Morbat stood there a moment contemplating, there was heard a whoosh, and seen a white flash, and from the sky descended Lux, the owl of Elum, diving, and swooping her wings about the ears and head of Andal Betrayer. In that moment of shock, the man inside Andal managed for a moment to wrest control from the Betrayer, whipping his arms about, turning, and struck Morbat. Morbat stood motionless and as the tip of the sword touched his garment, Andal was turned to stone. The actor who played him stood motionless, stuck in his attack position. And as this transition was complete, the Betrayer was forced to flee his body, and the spell holding the guardsmen under the sway of the Betrayer broke, and the actors playing the three echoes of the Betrayer tumbled to the stage as though dead.

Morbat then seemed to rise up even taller, and though Lux dove and attacked his long animal face, the magician batter the bird away, advancing on Elum.

Delrin cried out, arms waving wildly about, as if thrown off balance. She had accidentally stepped halfway into one of the traps laid earlier by Morbat himself, and being thrown off balance, tumbled from the palace, where she was caught by strong actors below.

Elum screamed, “No!” and ran toward the place on the rocks where she had fallen from into the Weeping Waters below.

“If you jump, you will surely die,” sang Morbat.

“And if you don’t, I will kill you just the same.
Either way, I will be avenged of my loss,
Even if it means destroying this accursed city
And all those who dwell there.”

By the time he had finished speaking, though, Elum long since dove from the cliff into the falls far below to follow his True Love. And Lux followed close behind.

When certain pieces are put into a particular configuration, and their relationships and interactions governed by a more or less unchanging set of rules, the randomly scattered outcomes of mere probability can be shaped into a more refined and predictable pattern of framed results. Likewise, a compass circle repeatedly traced with a stylus on vellum soon forms a groove in the sheet — a record of motion along a path of travel that becomes habit — eventually wearing down and cutting through the page.

Such are the cycles of Quatrian myth and history — a continuous re-telling down through the ages of the Great Tales, via the daily re-living of them by the people. With some slight variations, and the occasional gross deviation, future, past, and present form a unity — the always now. It is this raw substratum that is the province of the High Augur, who listens for the tunes sung by the wind and rain, the animals and birds, the seas and stars, and divining their significance on the songboard, attunes Quatrian society thusly to the greater cosmos by the enactment of appropriate rituals, rites, pageants, plays, and performances, of which the Dark Dance Cycle is but one in a vast repertoire.

The entry of the Pentarch sailors into the Bay of Erasure, therefore, was not wholly unheralded nor without precedent. At one time in ages past, this same body of water bore the name the Bay of Pleasure. In fact, it was the subsequent events linked to the fall of Abdazon which eventually began to poison that harbor.

The city of Abdazon, though, in which the wealthy merchant Delroy waits is still many years before that final fall, but the events in which he and his family were now entangled would presage that tragic happening. As Delroy’s scouts reported the approach of his daughter Delrin and her woodsman companion, Elum, he himself went out to stand at the head of his special guard stationed on the Great Bridge, which connected the Foot and the Stair to the upper ridge of the Cyrcic Cleft, and on into the Hypogeum.

Though Delroy had ordered Andal, his half-mad Best Man and former guardian of his daughter, to his bed chamber to rest, the man appeared anyway, his manner quite unkempt, and armed with a short sword in a sheath at his side. This unnerved Delroy, who himself was already on edge, and he feared both the consequences of Andal’s involvement in the scene to surely come, or the difficulty which he would likely have to undertake in removing him from it.

While Delroy weighed those outcomes and their relative costs, Andal walked a ways off, and spying off in the distance two figures approaching, he cried out:

“The Betrayer arrives! He has hold of your daughter! We must attack!”

And he began to draw his sword, but Delroy rushed over to him, catching gently his arm.

“Nay, we go softly, dear Andal. Without bloodshed, without loss. Family is at stake — my daughter”

Andal looked at him disapprovingly, but stayed his hand, his sword sliding back into its sheath.

Meanwhile, deep in the Great Forest, the other surviving Best Man of Delroy, named Ayar, lay on a pallet by the fire in the hut of Elum’s sister, Elan. He was near death, but still he struggled to live. Elan understood the urgency of the situation, though not necessarily the details which had lead to this pass. Her brother Elum had sent his owl familiar, Lux, to summon her, and she had felt his insistent calls on the canals of light which linked them. She could see that, before her, she had the care at once of two beings’ essential nature caught in a precarious balance, where the death of the unwitting human partner might yield a far worse ruin if his parasite were to escape its present mortal confines. And as his body convulsed from time to time, she plied him with strong concoctions of bark, root, flower, and leaf of certain forest plants in the hopes of lulling him into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Back at the head of the Great Bridge, Delroy, Andal, and the special guardsmen have advanced to meet Elum and Delrin, who are no longer dots on the horizon, and who can be plainly made out as they draw near. It is into this nervous, empty space of waiting that there is a sudden small flash followed by a burst of white smoke, out of which steps the huge magician Morbat. The special guardsmen begin to advance on him, but Delroy stops them by raising his hand up.

Morbat’s voice booms, “Lord Delroy, I have come to collect on my debt, nothing more.”

“And no harm shall come to you, so long as you honor our original terms,” Delroy responded, gruffly. “I trust you still remember them.”

“Indeed, I do,” Morbat replied.

They all stood silently then as Elum and Delrin approached.

Delrin cried out to them, “Father! Father!”

“Welcome home, daughter,” Delroy said, shooting a warning glance at the nearly rabid Andal. He added somewhat nervously, “Won’t you introduce us to your friend?”

She looked then at the giant Morbat, taller than two men, who stood in a great long white cloak, covering his entire body up until his head, which was that of a strange animal, with a long face and ears. And she thought she saw hooves beneath the cloak, but couldn’t be sure.

“Of course, father,” she said. “If you’ll introduce me to yours!”

They both laughed, and embraced.

“Father, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Elum of the Forest People who has become my dear friend and companion.”

Elum advanced, and shook hands with Delroy, much to the chagrin of Andal, whose hand hovered above the hilt of his sword.

“And this, dear daughter, is the magician Morbat, with whom I made a deal before you were born…” He looked dismayed.

She noted this, asking, “What manner of deal, father?”

“A contract,” he began, pausing for a long time before finishing, “… of betrothal.”

She stared at him, at the magician, and then at Elum, suddenly understanding the import of her father’s words.

“It cannot be…” she said, crestfallen.

“But it is,” hissed Andal, under the half-hold of the Betrayer.

“She is mine by right,” Morbat boomed.

“Aye, dear daughter. It is true. I promised to open my store rooms, and remove the locks from the doors, and in return, the magician conjured for us a girl child, born of your mother. We named her Delrin. She has brought us so much joy, more so than all my wealth which has expanded a hundred-fold since I followed his commands and opened my store houses.”

“My end of the bargain is then fulfilled,” said Morbat. “Let us make haste to bring the contract to its conclusion.”

“In haste may be lost the all-important details of which any good agreement consists,” Delroy replied, stalling. “I speak of the original conditions that I levied on our arrangement. That the daughter be not bound to the father’s mistakes and obligations, and that in finding her true love would she would be freed altogether.”

Lying, Morbat replied, “I see no such discovery in her heart.” His corvid scouts had sensed it, and he himself could see the glow of its awareness dawning softly in her, and in the object of her affections.

“It cannot be, then, father!” she cried out. “For in this moment, I hear with true precision the words my heart has been whispering softly these many months, that it belongs to another.”

“To whom, o daughter?”

Delrin replied unhesitatingly, “To this woodsman, whom you call Betrayer.”

“Not I, daughter.”

“It is in truth your captain driven mad by that self-same Betrayer, under whose half-hold this false charge is laid.”

In that same instant, deep in the Great Forest, in the hut of Elum’s sister lay Ayar unattended. Elan had gone out to fetch a few more healing ingredients nearby in the forest. When she left Ayar, he was in a fitful sleep. She was not gone for more than a few minutes, but when she returned, she found him rolled over on his stomach beside the pallet. Turning him again onto his back, she was frightened to realize he was covered in blood. It seeped from a wound in his stomach, punctured by his own weapon which she had lain nearby for safe-keeping. In an instant, she understood what had happened, that the Betrayer inside him had seized hold in one final giant convulsion, hurling him out of the bed, and presumably onto the point of that sword.

“The fiend!” Elan cried out sorrowfully, for she knew what would happen as the life ebbed out of him, a certainty which could not be stopped now with this much blood lost.

“It was I,” Ayar said weakly. “I have slain… slain the fiend.”

But as she watched him die, she knew his words to be incorrect. That he had only slain himself, and as his body failed, the full force of the Betrayer hurtled out of the hut, and back to Andal on the Great Bridge, to claim full-hold over him, body and mind. Elan sent out then a terrified shiver on the canals of light to her brother. It was so strong and clear that even Delrin felt it, for their hearts were now irrevocably connected.