“Take as much time as you want,” he said.
Rocza shifted on my shoulder. Loiosh shifted on the other, then they both settled in. I stared at the fountain some more, letting my mind wander, just watching the jets. If it were an oracle, I’d ask it what was going on with that bloody house, or rather, “platform”; but there was no way to form my need for a clue into anything useful. Could I isolate some of what I didn’t understand? Well, one piece was, just why was the connection between Precipice Manor and the Halls of Judgment so important? The trouble was, even if I learned the answer, I probably didn’t know enough necromancy to make sense of it.
Magic is confusing.
I glared at the fountain and dared it to contradict me.
6. In the Past Darkly
On a day when the Enclouding was so thin I could not bear to look in the direction of the Furnace, I leaned against an outer wall of the shack that was my home, flexed my hands, picked up my creation, and studied it.
My creation? Where? What?
I always looked for patterns in my completed work, and sometimes found them. I knew they weren’t really there, that they were something my imagination imposed on them, overlaid like a blanket of fog lying over the evergreen forest beneath me. But I always looked anyway, I suppose the way an artist will examine a completed work: is this what I meant to capture? Is there more here than I intended? Did I do good work? I watched myself handling the completed carving, and it made no sense, and it was exactly what it should be, and I reflected on art and didn’t know why I would have those thoughts.
It was different, of course: an artist, I believe, is aware during the process of creation, whereas I never was. I would sit down with my set of chisels and my three hammers and my stone, and breathe in the harsh, acrid smell of the Enclouding, taking it as deeply as I could, and as I exhaled, I would see people, animals, trails, ridges, streams, hills, valleys; and as I watched and studied, my hands would carve. Or so they must, because afterward they would ache, and the callus at the base of my left thumb would perhaps have grown a little harder, and there would be chips in my eyes, and dust in my throat, and in my hands would be a carving that hadn’t existed before.
It didn’t happen often: maybe every twenty or thirty years would I feel that I could reach out and see. I’d tried on other occasions and got nothing, no visions, and the marks on the stone were meaningless.
And a year or two from now, when I began to long for the city again, I would come down from the mountain—my mountain—and begin the long journey to Dragaera, where I would bring my creation to House Athyra itself, nestled in the arms of the Palace like a veritable bird in a nest, and they would praise me and praise my work and study the lines and circles and triangles looking for meaning: Why was one line deeper than another? Why was one circle inside of another? Eventually, there would be an auction of the mind, and someone, someone old and near death most likely, would pay for it and I’d stay in the House for a year or maybe two, until my mountain called me back. Then I would buy supplies and hire porters and begin the long journey.
I did not try to understand the meaning; I enjoyed looking at the patterns in the abstract collection of sculptured doodles, and let my imagination take me where it would.
It is joyful and sad to finish a piece of work. On that day, the joy predominated, I suppose because the day was so fine, the air just a little chilly, the way I liked it, and as I studied the tablet I’d made, though I could discern no patterns, still it felt like a good day’s work.
Someday someone would have it, and spend hours, days, maybe years staring at my work, absorbing, finding meaning that I’d placed there, meaning I had not, and some that perhaps I had without knowing it. Though money would change hands, still it felt like a gift, a personal gift, from me to whomever that stranger was. My work would come to mean something to that person, there would be a bond between us, beyond the ties of House and perhaps kinship. As long as either of us lived, and quite possibly beyond, there would be something tying me to another in a way that a mother, a son, a lover, a student, even an artist could never know, and I valued that nearly as much as the work itself.
For that moment, I was content.
And utterly mystified.
I came back to the present, to the fountain.
What?
I looked at my hands, and they were no darker than I remembered them, and my only callus was the one at the base of my forefinger, from holding a kitchen knife. I took a breath, and there was no smell of the Enclouding, and no dust in my throat.
I turned to Discaru. “I think I got someone else’s memory.”
“No,” he said. “That isn’t how it works.”
“Uh. Maybe just pure illusion?”
He shook his head.
“So that, what I saw, that was real? That was me?”
“Yes. What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
I turned back to the fountain, wondering what it was I had once carved into stone, and why.
I was searching for something. What was it?
Around me was the Whiterose Chasm with the high hills on either side rising, as far as I could tell, to the Enclouding. It was hard to keep my footing, because there wasn’t a spot of ground not covered in stones, and they were all different sizes. And I was moving the small ones, looking under the big ones, for—
For what?
I stopped and took a moment to breathe. It was important that I find it, I knew that; I could feel the importance in my stomach.
“Kelham!”
I turned and looked in the direction the voice had come from. She was about five rods away.
“My lady?”
“Are you all right, Kelham?”
“Yes, my lady. Catching my breath.”
“Very well.”
I caught a glimpse of my sleeve: black, with the emblem of the Hawk on it. It seemed entirely reasonable that I be wearing the livery of the House of the Hawk, not even worth remarking on, except that, at the same time, it made no sense whatsoever. And, for that matter, who was Kelham, and why was I answering to that name, and why did it seem so normal that I was answering to that name? And what was I doing here, and why did it seem like I knew?
And, as I was thinking this, I went back to moving stones and searching under boulders for—
What was I looking for?
I knew she was my liege, Lady Mundra, and she, too, was a Hawklord; I just didn’t know how I knew that.
There was a small, shallow pond to my left, perhaps eight rods across, and on the other side was my sister, Ialhar, and she was also searching for—
What was it?
Meanwhile, the me that knew what I was looking for kept looking, until—
“My lady!”
The Countess looked up. “You found it?”
“Not the signet,” I said. “But look there, just in the shade of the granite with the lichen growing on it … it’s moving, now it’s—”
“I see it,” she said. “Good eye, Kelham. Rodwik, will you show yourself, or do I have to cast a reveal?”
He appeared and my hand instinctively went to the sword over my shoulder and the enchanted dagger at my side. The Countess held her hand out to me, so I didn’t draw. My sister walked up and stood behind the Countess.
Rodwik bowed elaborately, hand sweeping the ground. “What an unexpected pleasure to find you here, Mundra.”
“My lady,” said Ialhar. “May I cast a reveal anyway? He may have help.”