“My lamb fell asleep almost immediately. I was puttering about the room, sorting her dear ribbons and laying out her dress for the morrow, when a strange feeling came over me. My hands and arms felt heavy, my tongue dry and swollen. It was all I could do to stagger to my bed. I fell instantly into a strange state. I was asleep, yet I wasn’t. I could see things, hear things, yet I could not respond. And thus, I saw them.”
The geir pressed the Keeper’s hand more tightly. He leaned close to hear her, yet was barely able to understand her words spoken fast and tight.
“I saw the night crawl through her window!”
The Keeper frowned, drew back.
“I know what you think,” the geir said. “That I was drunk or dreaming. But I swear it is the truth. I saw movement, dark shapes blotted out the window frame, crept over to the wall. Three of them. And for an instant they were holes of blackness against the wall. They stood still. And then they were the wall!
“But I could still see them move, though it was as if the wall itself were writhing. They slid to my lamb’s bed. I tried to scream, to cry out, but my voice made no sound. I was helpless. Helpless.”
The geir shuddered. “Then a pillow—one of my lamb’s silk embroidered pillows that she’d sewn with her own dear hands—rose up in the air, borne by unseen hands. They laid it over her face and... and pressed it down. My lamb struggled. Even in her sleep, she fought to live. The unseen hands held the pillow over her face until... until her struggles ceased. She lay back limp.
“Then I sensed one of them come over to me. There was nothing else visible, not even a face. Yet I knew one was near. A hand touched my shoulder and shook me.
“ ‘Your charge is dead, geir,’ a voice said. ‘Quickly, catch her soul.’
“The terrible drugged feeling left me. I screamed and sat up and reached for the evil creature, to hold him until I could summon the guards. But my hands passed through air. They had gone. They were no longer the walls, but the night. They fled.
“I ran to my lamb, but she was dead. Her heartbeat stilled, her life smothered out of her. They had not even given her a chance to free her own soul. I had to cut her.[37] Her smooth, pale skin. I had—”
The geir began to sob uncontrollably. She did not see the look on the Keeper’s face, did not see his forehead crease, his large eyes darken.
“You must have dreamed it, my dear,” was all he said to the woman.
“No,” she replied in hollow tones, her tears wept out. “I did not dream it, though that is what they would have me believe. And I’ve sensed them, following me. Everywhere I go. But that is nothing. I have no reason to live. I wanted only to tell someone. And they could not very well kill me before I fulfilled my duty, could they?”
She gave the box a last fond, grieving look, then placed it gently and reverently in the Keeper’s hand.
“Not when this is what they wanted.”
Turning, head bowed, she walked back through the crystal door. The Keeper held it open for her. He spoke a few comforting words, but they were empty of conviction and both the speaker and the hearer—if she heard them at all—knew it. Holding the lapis and chalcedony box in his hand, he watched the geir wend her way down the gilt-edged stairs and out onto the large and empty courtyard surrounding the cathedral. The sun shone brightly. The geir’s body cast a long shadow behind her.
The Keeper felt chilled. He watched closely until the woman had vanished beyond his sight. The box in his hand was still warm from the geir’s fast hold on it. Sighing, he turned away, rang a small silver gong that stood on a wall sconce near the door.
Another Kenkari, clad in the multicolored butterfly robes, drifted down the hall on silent, slippered feet.
“Take over my duties for me,” the Keeper commanded. “I must deliver this to the Aviary. Summon me if there is need.”
The Kenkari, the Keeper’s chief assistant, nodded and took up his place at the door, ready to receive the soul of any new arrival. Box in hand, the Keeper, his brow furrowed, left the great door and headed for the Aviary. The Cathedral of the Albedo is built in the shape of an octagon. Coralite, magically urged and pruned, swoops majestically up from the ground to form a high, steeply pitched dome. Crystal walls fill the space left between the coralite ribs, the crystal planes shine with blinding brilliance in the light of the sun, Solaris.
The crystal walls create an optical illusion, making it appear to the casual observer (who is never allowed very close) that he can see completely through the building from one side to the other. In reality, mirrored walls on the inside of the octagon reflect the interior walls of the outside. One outside cannot see inside, therefore, but those inside can see everything. The courtyard surrounding the cathedral is vast, empty of all objects. A caterpillar cannot cross it without being observed. Thus do the Kenkari keep their ancient mysteries safely guarded.
Within the octagon’s center is the Aviary. Located in a circle around the Aviary are rooms for study, rooms for meditation. Beneath the cathedral are the permanent living quarters of the Kenkari, the temporary living quarters for their apprentices, the weesham.
The Keeper turned his steps toward the Aviary.
The largest chamber in the cathedral, the Aviary is a beautiful place, filled with living trees and plants brought from all over the elven kingdom to be grown here. Precious water—in such short supply elsewhere in the land, due to the war with the Gegs—was freely dispensed in the Aviary, lavishly poured to maintain life in what was, ironically, a chamber for the dead. No singing birds flew in this Aviary. The only wings spread within its crystal walls were unseen, ephemeral—the wings of the souls of royal elves, caught, kept captive, forced to sing eternally their silent music for the good of the empire.
The Keeper paused outside the Aviary, looked within. It was truly beautiful. The trees and flowering plants grew lush here as nowhere else in the Mid Realms. The emperor’s garden was not as green as this, for even His Imperial Majesty’s water had been rationed.
The Aviary’s water flowed through pipes buried deep beneath the soil that had been brought, so legend had it, from the garden island of Hesthea, in the High Realms, now long since abandoned.[38] Other than being watered, the plants were given no further care, unless the dead tended them, which the Keeper sometimes liked to imagine that they did. The living were only rarely permitted to enter the Aviary. And that had not happened in the Keeper’s inordinately long lifetime, nor in any lifetime that any Kenkari could remember.
No wind blew in the enclosed chamber. No draft, not even a whisper of air could steal inside. Yet the Keeper saw the leaves of the trees flutter and stir, saw the rose petals tremble, saw flower stalks bend. The souls of the dead flitted among the green and living things. The Keeper watched a moment, then turned away. Once a place of peace and tranquillity and hope, the Aviary had come to take on a sinister sadness for him. He looked down at the box he held in his hand, and the dark lines in his thin face deepened. Hastening to the chapel that stood adjacent to the Aviary, he spoke the ritual prayer, then gently pushed open the ornately carved wooden door. Within the small room, the Keeper of the Book sat at a desk, writing in a large, leather-bound volume. It was her duty to record the name, lineage, and pertinent life-facts of all those who arrived in the small boxes. The body to the fire, the life to the book, the soul to the sky. That was how the ritual went. The Keeper of the Book, hearing someone enter, halted her writing. She looked up.
37
The first words an elven child of royal blood teams are those that will release his soul from the body after death. He repeats these at the time of death and the geir then captures the soul to take it to the cathedral. However, if the elf dies before the words can be spoken, the geir may free the soul by cutting open a vein in the left arm and drawing off heart’s blood. This must be done within moments after death.