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octo-l95 · 7 days ago

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Whumptober 2024 - 23 - “Forced Choice”

((First part here))

When first the Lady whispered to me of a cache of forgotten wisdom hidden in the heart of Mmatont Anchert, the image of a library had blossomed in my mind's eye: dusty parchments, fat worm-eaten tomes, crumbling scrolls crowding each other for space on warped and collapsing shelves.

What I had not envisioned was what Rahm and I found when our gruff guide opened the Living Wood door.

A breeze colder than ice assailed us from a chamber of unbroken blackness. I could see no ceiling and see no walls; only a rectangle of floor smeared golden before our feet by the light of the Soud's torch. I stepped into it. My boots crunched over the fragile granules of ancient insect carapaces and layers and layers of… bird droppings?

The door closed behind us suddenly - very theatrical, pissmop! - and Rahm and I were in the dark.

"A moment, a moment," he muttered. I imagined him smacking his lighter against the heel of his hand and yes, it cracked suddenly to life with a muted blue burst. Despite the chill, Rahm's face was shiny with sweat, eyes wide, nostrils flared. I imagine my expression was similar, though more handsome of course.

"It stinks like Juste," I whispered.

"Birds."

Aye. Birds. I hooked his elbow with my own and we moved deeper into the room. Rahm thrust the wee pymaric light before us, but it made few inroads through the ink: no walls, no structural planes to catch the glow and reveal themselves; only an empty void where we had expected so much.

"I hope that boy is all right," Rahm said suddenly. I yelped a nervous laugh - I could not help it! - and he tensed against my arm.

"You know they have killed him. Let it go. He was nothing to us. Perhaps he touched children or worse! Licked his fingers at the supper table! Put your mind on why we've come."

My arm was colder and the room a bit blacker when he pulled away from me. "You're an asshole, Bastion. I know where your mind is."

"My mind is fixed firmly upon obtaining the algorhythms needed to chase the pieces of the scattered human soul, I have never hidden this-"

"In order to bring your sister back!" Rahm sounded triumphant, as though he was exposing to the light some long hidden and grimy secret. I always did love my self-righteous friend. And so I hated to scoff at him, but I cannot control my ego when it is in control. Which is often. Daily. Hourly.

"I had to pick SOME deceased subject, Rahm. She is as good as any other. I knew her well, I can identify whatever mind that reconstitutes as either belonging to her, or evidencing too aberrently. Should I have chosen that lovely young soprano who threw herself off the Spire last year, bashing her pretty brains out all over Rue Jonovan? I didn't even know her favourite colour."

Rahm's lips worried over his teeth with unvoiced emotion. I frankly did not give a whore's fart whether he believed me or not. I continued: "You? Your mind? You are after the resurrection of your dead son. And not for the good of us all, not to overcome the gods' crime, not to raise us from the muck that mortality condems us to; you wish it to apologise to your wife and to mend your cracked heart. Well, I think that is a WASTE - a disgraceful WASTE of a spellwright's intellect and a great man's mind!"

A strange expression passed over Rahm's face. For a moment I was fearful he would weep. But that was not quite right. It was sorrow yes, but… why, if I hadn't known better, I would have thought it was sorrow for ME.

What a fool that Rahm Ripa.

"What is here!" he suddenly challenged the emptiness, and wheeled away. He spun about, blue light feebly punching at the black, dust motes wildly bobbing. I saw a single small feather catch, then vanish again. "We were told of this place by Lady Ilganyag, Eldest of the Old! Who heard the First Words spoken and saw the Arbiter Khert take hold!"

No response.

"Try it in Tainish," I suggested. Rahm glowered deeper. Understandble. Dreadful bother to translate and localize verse, you always lose something. One really must learn Continental to enjoy the written works of Gari Fiat at all.

"Look onto the khert," he bade me sharply.

"Ach, very well, but you watch my back while I am vulnerable." I felt the Lady stir in my thoughts but say nothing as I complied. With a steady inhalation, I imagined my breath sweeping the flesh and blood and baggage from my bones; my bones themselves crumbling like ash behind me as I stepped forward through myself, and opened my eyes to the khert-lines.

I stumbled. Rahm caught my arm. A fool, but a friend.

Cutting golden through the blackness, the khert-lines here were thick as hawsers, knotted and twisted around themselves, Aspects and ghosts both sluggishly pulsing through them as though as cold as we were. Phantoms fitfully fluttered in the far, far corners of the room, and still more spiraled against the ceiling far above, skittering blind ghost fingers for some khert-line to follow towards freedom. Feeling Rahm watching me, I dropped my gaze and squinted through the gilded slashes, leading him deeper in.

There. An undefined void against the golden glow of the khert, I saw a Shape. It was a well-known shape to any son of Juste and follower of the Lady. The lines skittered around it, unable to intersect, and the ghosts themselves seemed repulsed. I heard Rahm gasp. A familiar belch of panic gripped my midsection when I tried to return to my fleshly eyes and found them sluggish. Then I steeled myself and with a moment's concerted effort the khert was blinked away, the blackness was returned - burning with no after images, no scintillation of pupils dilating - and I was immediately able to see the blacker black that loomed before us.

Every filament of Silver throughout my body burned hot. The torc at my throat clenched enough to leave me breathless.

In crackling old Tainish, the great Agib asked: "What do these Humans desire."

Oh, what a creature! Imagine a great avian raptor as tall as two men, of ebon plumage and silver razor talons. Now stretch its neck out to thrice the length of its body, give it the beak of a crow, golden human sclera, and irises red as fresh blood.

Rahm gibbered a moment and grabbed his own collar. Then our torcs relaxed, leaving us panting in tandem. Distantly sexy. The bird cocked its head to the side, then level again, then back. It was looking at Rahm's wee lighter. It occurred to me that a creature such as this must not often see such devices. In fact this was a newer design out of the Fluirstadt workshops, using starfly lymph and mirrors, and likely completely revolutionary to such a Mmatont shut-in.

"Give that to Agib," croaked the bird.

Rahm moved to comply and I snatched at his arm. I swear to the dead gods these Crescians do not know how to negotiate.

"We are come for knowledge," I interjected, making the lighter my own. I crushed the shiny bargaining chip to my chest, afraid he'd snatch it. "Lady Ilganyag sent us. She-"

The agib exploded into movement! It drew up on its claws, extended its legs, and shook open its dusty wings! They reached to the ceiling, embers of red burning deep at the roots of the primary quills. "Not the Lady of this Agib!" I think it said. The words were so garbled, the vocabulary so archaic. "Not the Lady of this Agib!"

Inside my head, my own bird was still.

"She wants not a thing from you!" I called, "My compeer and I wish only discourse with a brother scholar, one that I recognise has a savvy appreciation for pymary and pymarics! We have more than this lighter; we have an entire collection with us - in our luggage - of the most modern devices in use today. More than I can say of these savages keeping you prisoner."

"Agib is no prisoner," said the bird. Indeed, I realised suddenly there were no chains on this creature. But what a black, sad room it had been crushed inside. How was this more than a cage of stone, the floor a morass of shit and feathery down-

Oh, shit. SHIT. It had been shitting. Eating. Senet beasts only eat to repair wounds.

"Great injury," the bird lamented, folding its wings. Looking closer, I saw gaps in its primaries, and grievous half-healed fissures in its breast and legs.

"You fought with something," Rahm guessed politely. The monster shifted. All its plumage puffed suddenly, throwing off dust and muck in a choking cloud. It shook, then settled, its down sinking and skirting over its fearsome First Silver talons. Red eyes swung between my face and Rahm's.

"What do these Humans desire?" it asked again, "Humans of Ilganyag. Agib will give you single thing. You will all your precious creations give. Give to Agib all your precious creations. Single thing will Agib give."

Doubt nibbled at me. I knew that these creatures had for all time been the keepers of pymary, for they were the keepers of Old Tainish, the first language of the world. They alone fluently spoke the first words, and had taught them to men when they had thought them ready. If there were secrets, these testy great squawkers would have them. Having had one nesting inside of me since I was a boy, few know them as well.

But this monster did not seem as… put together, as my Lady Ilganyag.

Rahm must have had similar thoughts for he asked: "Who are you, my Lord? How can Humans know what it is Agib… Agib has to give?" It was charming to hear the Crescian try to modulate his Tainish into the old cadence, and use the older words.

"Agib knows," it replied simply.

"Agib knows words," Rahm agreed, "And Agib… knows that words can be spoken to… mirror reality, or to conjure a reality that is not real."

The beast twitched and threw its head, frustrated with the pair of us. I think it had grown accustomed to its solitude. "Humans," it said, "Humans invented the thing that is lying. Ilganyag lines her nest with it! Agib do not lie. Agib love the garden, admire the garden, protect the garden; never is there cause to speak untrue words about the garden!"

"But how can we KNOW?"

The beast puffed its breast and throat again, weaving its long, long neck in a serpent pattern. Rahm extended mollifying hands, his rings flashing in the soft blue light. The sight of them captured the bird's wandering eye. I chuckled. Apparently it loved shinies just as much as my mistress.

Without looking away from the glinting jewellery, in hisses and croaks it recited: "The garden is the garden, paths and stones fixed. Motive and movements determined. The world is in this garden grown and for this garden meant. To change the garden is to KILL the world. Agib alone know how to plant, to prune; the tools are of the Agib and the Agib alone have the tools. To lie is a tool to shape humans; a lie cannot shape the garden. Human tongues never can twist the heart of the garden; only the hearts of humans."

"That was true once," I said, not caring for its arrogance, "But there is a reason Agib have become passing rare, isn't there? Humans have surpassed you and taken your tools-"

The Agib's terrible eyes flared. "AGIB COULD PRUNE YOU NOW, ILGANYAG HUMAN."

Incomprehensible pain opened my insides like a knife. The sun itself burst out of my entrails, up through stomach and esophagus, into my mouth and devoured my eyes, my sinuses, my brain in fire. I have no memory of how I came to be on the ground but then I was, all of reality shrinking away from me - I was in the dark, screaming.

When sensible again, I saw Rahm crouched protectively over me, shielding me, and the wee lighter was in the Agib's beak. All of my friend's rings were gone. Rahm's lips moved but I couldn't hear his words through my groaning, through the echoing pain.

How was I alive? Briefly, I did not wish to be.

Small red hands come from the beast's silver maw. They drew the lighter in, greedily in, clinking against the other jewellery already in its mouth. Then its bill shut, and we were all of us left in the dark. I sobbed like a child in Rahm's arms.

"He did not speak!" I wailed, "He did not speak!"

"What do these humans desire," asked the Agib a final time.

I desired nothing more in that moment than to flee from this room, from this structure, from this island, and away from this monster. It was nothing like Ilganyag. My Lady leads me on a merry dance, but I know the steps. I can sense her moods like a hound turning its snout to the wind. She hates me, but she loves me too. She feels the same about every one of us.

No similar ambivalence from this bird in the black. I knew it cursed us all, and would peck the eyes from a newborn's skull. It had, too. Somehow I knew that it had, countless times. It had been the God of the Soud Vaghal; one of the things on the mountain beneath whose shadow the primitive Tains had cowered and sacrificed.

"I want nothing," I whispered. I'd never said that before. I'd never meant it. I've not meant it since.

Rahm held me tightly as I shuddered, but he was not so defeated. I wonder now what thoughts were behind his eyes as he cast them through the lightless room and towards the unfathomable power of the Agib in the Dark. Did he think of Iori sobbing over their dead boy? The boy himself, dissolving into the khert like sands captured by the surf and pulled into the sea... I wanted to tell him that no answer this creature gave would be answer enough for any of it.

Rahm shifted softly against me and drew his shoulders back to speak. "I wish for us to fly," he said, "Humans cannot shape the garden, but to look down upon it as the Agib does, and behold its splendour, might inspire our tongues towards the same reverence as yours."

A long moment passed. Very faintly I could hear the muffled clinking of metal inside the bird's body, as its tiny hands turned its new treasures over and over. Then:

"A good trade."

---------

A few days later, Rahm and I were back in Tain. Our boat had landed in a little fishing town called Orniers, similar to Lurick and quite as dull. Still, our inn served a fine side of pork and I had ordered a bottle of Omid Red, stewed apples, and a wedge of that soft cheese they make in the west. Rahm swirled his pour in his slim brown fingers, naked now of their pymaric finery but no less elegant.

I'd felt sour and cross since returning. I had left the monster's room to be ill, but Rahm had stayed behind, conferring with the bird and watching it produce formulae of incredible complexity. Now he had a stack of notes and numbers written with impossible precision - they nearly looked pressed with type.

"Did it use its wee mouth hands?" I asked, piling cheese and pork on a slice of good rye, "Did his human moiety ever emerge?"

"I don't know," Rahm answered, expression distant, "It never rose the lights again and I was afraid it would change its mind if I reached for my second lighter. Sitting in the dark for hours, the great monster writing away, my best friend abandoned me for the toilet-- by the Lady, I've only been that afraid for that long a few times. He may have given me new direction for the flying machine, but he may have taken a fucking year off my life."

"Same," I admitted. Rahm narrowed his eyes at me.

"You have many more to spare."

"That is true and it is not my fault. I say if I do not begin taking Ilganyag's suggestions with more caution going forward, it may not matter. Sometimes I cannot tell if she is trying to get me killed, or merely to humble me. Try these apples, there is some rum in them."

My friend moved a few to his plate. He picked at them with little interest. "What does she say about all this?"

"She is amused," I sighed, "But largely silent. I think she and the Agib in the Dark have some history. She wishes me to instruct you to keep its existence a secret."

"I already promised it the same. Senets and their mysteries."

"Aye."

Night was falling. The fishermen had already docked and I could hear the shout and clamour of the lads unloading their catch. We'd stay one more night there, then hire a vliegeng to take us over the mountain in the morning. I thought again about that mountain; the sacred mountain from the top of which, it was said, all pymary had sprung. What had the Tains given the Agib for it? Surely more than light; more than rings.

"I thought you were after the same thing I was," I baited, pouring my friend a second glass.

"So did I."

"Lose your nerve? I say, men accosting senets for information on how to raise their loved ones must be the most tedious trope to them."

Rahm shook his head. "Didn't you listen to it? We can't shape the garden, Bastion. To attempt to… it would kill the world. Death is a part of it. There is no undoing it. But if I finish the flying machine, then… then there was a point to what happened. There was a reason."

He put the wine to his lips. He never said if he cared for the apples.

I'll be honest with you, my dear and patient readers: my friend's answer stuck in my throat like a stone. It sits there still, and galls me when I visit my friends; when Iori looks sad that day and Rahm has red eyes after a late night in his workshop. To look for a reason is to look for your own madness. There is no purpose and no reason. We pattern-seeking rodents exhaust ourselves in pursuit of melody within this maelstrom, but there's only noise, and our ringing ears. There is no purpose and no reason, Rahm.

Yet I know he must live each day acting as if there is. That is the thin membrane of sanity we all tread upon so heavily but so carefully, trying not to puncture.

I love my friend Rahm Ripa.

But I will not be put off by the arrogance and tyranny of created things; things that have seen firsthand what the determination of the grown thing can accomplish. Do you remember it tucked away hiding in its own shit? Do you remember? Something brought to great ruin, that Agib in the Dark. Something rent its breast and broke its wings. Was it another senet? Or was it someone wielding our clever pymarics, and our constructed weaponry, and our determination to obtain the tools we need to shape the garden for ourselves?

I don't know for certain, readers; but I ask you to believe with me, sincerely and with your whole heart, that it was one of us.

#lreblog #ashhhhh i love your prose sm

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octo-l95 · 8 days ago

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Whumptober 2024 - 20 - "Emotional Angst"

((First part here))

Possessed of a barbarian but fatuous dignity, the Mmatont decided we heathen visitors unfit to meet his gods. Instead we met the sacrifice. Having left most of his blood smeared down the central corridor, he was now the colour of old snow, a fringe of the same grey pressed sweatily to his moribund brow. His eyes were too blue, like daubs of wet paint on a doll.

Silver caste. I knew with one glance at his shredded midsection that he'd be dead soon, but it felt rude to say. I kept my distance and waited for our guide to return. My friend was more excited.

"Woah there," Rahm soothed, darting towards the boy on invisible legs. He was coiled in the corner, surely in shock, breaths shallow and gaze half-lidded, fixed on something I was sure only he could see. Rahm knelt to feel his pulse, try to pry his arms from his stomach. "Who are you? Let me see your injury."

At first the boy didn't answer. Then a hard blink returned him to our shared reality, and he gave a start at my friend's complexion.

"Creshit!" The word exploded from him like the curse it is in the Northlands. "Creshit!"

"Perhaps he is not interested in a relationship, Raptor!"

Undeterred, Rahm reached out again, but the Silver would not be still. "He'll bleed out faster if you continue to vex him. The Soud called him a trespasser captured for their god. I think if we are to be courteous guests and responsible researchers that we must observe-- but not disturb. You'll stain your coat with blood besides, and we are very far from a competent laundress."

"It is barbarous!" Rahm protested. He looked to me for a reaction I am afraid it was not in my nature to display. "What manner of senet is their god? What manner of monster?"

"I do not know, but in my vast experience with monsters, a gentleman is best served to remain on their good side. Leave its entrée be."

Betimes I did love the Raptor's righteousness. By day he bore on his shoulders responsibility for all of Ethelmik's spellwrights. An upright man of the crown, honest and reliable as the pole star. But by night, and in his idle hours… oh, a mouthy and licentious bird perched near his ear and he did not demur to its gifts nor its advances. All because…

Ah, yes.

The Silver did seem that age.

"He's not yours," I said. Rahm was watching the poor fool and seeing someone else. Another boy struck down not so very long ago. An overzealous son he'd been powerless to save. "He's not yours. He…" Somewhere in the aether hung proper poetry that would soothe a father's grieving heart; but I had not worn heels today; it was beyond my reach.

After some time the Soud returned with two men. Bloody knives were stuck carelessly through their girdles. Showy butchers, these, which made them seem to me clownish and base. But I was not the one they grabbed and carried away. And I was glad enough that our torch-bearing Soud directed us down a separate hall. We found less blood there, but even less light. I felt my spirits dampen and Rahm had retreated to his thoughts.

Perhaps inviting him on this little quest had been a mistake. Iori had told me as much but she was hysterically protective of the man, stifling as the swollen quilted cloak she'd sent him away in. Yes, their son had died, but men died every day! In fact it too often takes the death of someone we love to wake us to the reality of our own mortality! Rahm's heart was blackened, yet from the forest fire, always such vibrant gardens grew. He would be inspired to do greater things than run that piss-poor and dying town!

Death was the gods' crime. But the impetus of a great mind!

In hindsight I realise I was very fortunate that our environment at the time distracted me from giving any of this voice. I was still brilliant then, but it was a wild brilliance. My forest fire still was smouldering. The garden had burst through the ash but I had not yet learned how to cut it back.

Our guide removed a ring of keys from his belt. I was delighted. Keys! How quaint to a spellwright, who could pass through solid substance like a fly through a beaded curtain-

But this door before us was a DOOR. Thrice my height and ten times the width of my shoulders, I could feel its strange effect on the khert through even my obtunded Jet palms. And how beautifully carved it was! Roots and lizards, mushrooms and leaves, drooping pink flowers strew across it like a fumbled box of sweets...

One of the lizards scampered from the Soud's torchlight. Then the leaves rustled.

No! This was not pymary and no glamour. This door was not carved at all. We stood before a portal of living wood! A vital growing slab of First Timber, its branches braided and intertwined like a woman's hair, its rich green boughs thirstily drinking the newcome fire glow.

"Amazing," whispered Rahm. He splayed his gnarled and ringed fingers against it impossible lustre. The Soud laughed at we simpletons, reached for a lock hidden deep inside the branches. With the celerity of long custom, he pushed the magical gateway open, then closed it behind us. Its report was a weighty, whispery sigh; the queerest noise, and I have not since heard its like again. We foreign wrights with our fish faces all agape were ushered deeper into the mountain.

"Look there," my friend directed. I followed his gesture. The ceiling here was low stone, but throughout we spied roots no thicker than a pencil burrowing as if through pavement. They connected in some unseen way with the door, but also disappeared ahead of us, veering here and there into other locked passages. A senet network of roots - like a khert-hub network! - joining this entire buried facility together.

Marvellous. Rahm grunted humourlessly. "The Wand'ring Roots didn't go extinct, Bastion; they retired north."

"At least one of them," I agreed, "Strange sort of senet to make a god. Can they even fuck it?" I said it to coax a rise from him, but his expression was impenetrable. I relented and added: "How do they know what it wants?"

"That's never stopped the Gefendur."

A second door of Living Wood soon arose, but at this one's centre lay embedded an abstrusely designed lock of… First Timber, I think. I could not recognise the texture. The pymaric appeared wholly separate from the door itself which indicated to me it was an ensorcelled lock rather than another that accepted a primitive key. These savages were savvier than the torches and gory knives led one to expect. The Soud laid his palm flush and began a spell: "Heed me Great Khert…"

But then I confess, by the Lady's half dozen, he followed the invocation with words I did not know! Lord Bastion Winalils, well down the jagged road to becoming one of the greatest spellwrights to ever live in this blighted world, did not know this pissmop's fucking spellsong! "Are you speaking backwards," I asked him in disbelief, "Are you trying to be a clever big sod? Is this some bespoke gruftgramary to cloak a cypher?"

The Soud ignored me-- infuriating! The passion of the child denied and the scholar frustrated invigorated me to all but grab his yellow hair and beat an answer out him!

Old Tainish - the language of our arts - is long dead and supplanted by the New, but all the time we wrights are turning over ancient sources looking for lost vocabulary. New Material references are valuable - there are many southern animals that simply cannot be directly targetted because the Northern Tains and their Tainish had no word for them - but most valuable are the lost operations. We know today from surviving texts by the conquered old nation's priests and academics that pymary once had more expansive uses - uses that we think only were possible with operations or perhaps entire packages that were lost when the old Aldish kings razed their lands. Once in a very great while, this technology is rediscovered, and on those bright days the world sings in celebration.

You must understand, dear reader, that these discoveries are true revelation. These discoveries enable pymaric technologies that save lives, that better lives, that drag Man by inches up from the muck. Little children could be choking and dying of the Weeping Plague today - at this moment! - who might otherwise be saved by treatments developed from a pymaric operation recorded on mouldering sheepskin at the bottom of some ancient Tainish wine cask.

The Soud finished his spell. A jaunty musical response tinkled from the unlocked door. "You'll find answers here," he invited, sweeping his arm towards the black room beyond. It smelled unfathomably old. "And no answers at all."

((Last part here))

#lreblog

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octo-l95 · 8 days ago

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Do you live in North Carolina?

Did you vote with a mail-in / absentee ballot or vote with a provisional ballot??

If so, you NEED to check the status of your ballot ASAP because if there are issues, you only have until Thursday, Nov 14th at 5pm to fix your ballot and make sure your vote counts.

Why does it still matter?

Because there are some important State-level races that are SO CLOSE that they won't be officially decided until Nov 15th, when every county in NC submits their final certified vote counts. Literally every ballot will make a difference, so make sure your vote gets counted!

What should I do?

Call Your County Board of Elections (look them up here: https://vt.ncsbe.gov/BOEInfo/)

Tell them what kind of ballot you voted with (absentee or provisional), and ask what its status is.

If the status is not "Accepted," ask what you need to do to 'cure' your ballot (curing your ballot just means 'fixing it so it can be counted'). It's usually something like "bring your photo ID or proof of residence to the Board of Elections office," but sometimes it's something you can do over the phone.

DO THE THING!! Whatever they told you needs to be done, make sure you do it BEFORE Thursday, Nov 14th at 5pm.

If you voted with an absentee ballot, you can also look up the status of your ballot on Ballottrax or by looking yourself up with the NC Voter Lookup and scrolling down to "Your Ballot." If it says anything other than 'Accepted,' you should call your County Board of Elections ASAP. This only works for absentee ballots, NOT provisional. If you voted in-person with a provisional ballot, you need to call your County Board of Elections ASAP.

#Lreblog

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octo-l95 · 9 days ago

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Whumptober 2024 - 19 - "Blood Trail"

I do not celebrate my Aldish heritage. Ere my father bedded my mother, no form came to me by post polling me on the country in which I would prefer she push me out. Men who make over that accident have little else to make over, I have found. They would march for their aorta or their opposable thumb, if either were assigned a flag. Offer a plaque and a slap on the ass for the act of filling a commode, and they would demand both.

I cannot deny my Aldish boyhood left me with thick blood and hot lungs, however. Like the woolly snakes and the unnros, I can bear the cold.

Knowing this, you cannot dismiss me when I stress to you, reader, that Anchert island causes even this son of Alderode to shiver. Surrounded by icebergs, this frozen slice of risen Hell lurks at the far northeast of the world, cut off from the khert and overrun by savage Mmatont. The only way to tell it is land and not another berg is the darkness of its spruce-covered single mountain, and the few specks of firelight that burn therein.

There is only one way to reach the detestable place: a small craft on a moonless midnight, under the care of a pilot that knows the patrol patterns of the local police skiffs. I have never liked giving up coin - nor control - to these green-stinking hoods. There is no alternative. The khert-lines do not extend past the Tainish shore of the mainland. I cannot offset there.

I had never visited Anchert with Rahm, and he'd never been at all. As our boat docked inconspicuously on the great island's least populated shore, I watched him closely. I had chosen a smart, double-breasted wool coat, warm pymaric boots with a three week charge, blood red swineletskin gloves, a cosy muffler of feathers and fur.

Rahm was wholly quilted. Like a bedspread. I think Iori had dressed him.

"Man should not be here," he muttered, rasping his hands together and stomping his feet, "We were not designed to be here. The makers set aside the north for white bears and fat waterbitches; and Alderode stole it from them."

"Watch yourself," I whispered, crushing close to confer a bit of warmth, "They do not like the A-word here. The Mmatont would have every Ald out of Tain, had they their way."

"Well, I can see how they've so far managed it with this island. No sane person would want to live here. Is that why Alderode has let them be?"

I suppose that could be the case. The Mmatont - that is, the modern Tains who occupy Anchert - have long foolishly demanded that Alderode return their ancestral valley to them, and in fact, all of pymary. I will spare you the uninteresting history of it all, but they only agreed to meet Rahm and myself tonight because he is Crescian and I am a stateless fiend and we both are Black Tongues. Alderode happily hates the two of us as much as they hate the Mmatont, and the Mmatont hate them.

It was a few hours tedium disembarking. We hired servants to haul our trunks to our arranged lodgings inside of the mountain, and paid the stinking pilot a criminal amount of money. He promised to be back the next evening. Soon enough but not as soon as I'd have liked, Rahm and I were following a swarthy towhead deep underground.

The pissmop was dressed all in natty furs, and carried an open flame torch like some manner of primitive. What a hoot! What a safari. Rahm raised an eyebrow, pulled a pymaric light from his pocket. I shook my head. These freaks thought pymary should have remained with their ancestors. If he or I were going to cast or use any of our modern devices, it might raise the curtain on inconvenient drama.

"I suppose I can understand why the formulas have remained hidden here," whispered Rahm in Continental. Why was he whispering? I doubt the pissmop could understand. "It's wholly counterintuitive that something so helpful to burgeoning technology might be found in this backwards mountain."

Rahm tucked the little pymaric away, looking about at the living stone walls and the evidence of the painstakingly slow and primitive pymary that had formed them thousands of years ago. It must have been all State change and Heat siphoning to create the Contour, then Mass displacement to crack the block from the root; finally a reversal to haul each slab outside. I could still see the corrugations in sections of the wall; time had worn the floor smooth as a mill pond.

"They weren't always backwards," I pointed out.

"Even when Tainish civilisation was at its high peak, they knew nothing of Sounding. How-"

"The Tains didn't write these formulas, Raptor. The agib did."

My Crescian friend shook his head ruefully. "Do they even know what they have? They wouldn't need to live like this if they'd sell some of their secrets."

"Nationalism," I explained at his temple, and my breath made his wee feather earring dance, "Too many fools live and die unable to see beyond the colour of the dirt their mother shit them into. Oh, to beat your chest in the mud."

"But they're letting us in. Surely the fools understand we won't be keeping this to ourselves."

I nodded. "They do, but small men are weak to that other great psychological bugbear: you see, their god has TOLD them they must-"

The toe of my boot caught on an uneven seam in the floor, and only grasping Rahm's elbow kept me upright. I looked down.

"Rahm!" I called reflexively, "Rahm. Blood."

He clawed the clasp of his quilted coat open, then hiked up its long skirts to keep them from the gore. It was still red and tacky - sticky - and ran in a trail ahead of us down the black corridor.

"Just where are you leading us!" he demanded of the pissmop.

Our guide seemed confused at first, then saw the shock on our faces, saw the blood, and laughed. "You're not in danger, Black Tongues." His features were sharp in the firelight. His teeth too white, too sharp. I did not care for the effect at all.

"I know we're not," answered Rahm haughtily, seguing smoothly to only slightly accented Tainish, "But you are. If you plan to ambush us, do it now. Here. There's already a mess to be cleaned, and I can end your life with a minimum of additional blood spilled. I'd hate to put out our hosts any more than we have."

Very sexy, Raptor.

The pissmop smirked. He raised a mollifying hand and said again: "You are not in danger, Black Tongues. If you want your poxy numbers, follow me."

"Bastion," Rahm breathed, "Going any further seems stupid even for you."

"I know," I sighed in return, "But I want the poxy numbers."

In the end, Rahm had promised me. And I knew there was something here that he wanted too. With the trail of blood between us, we hurried to catch up with the Soud.

((Second part here))

#lreblog

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