The Seer's House

Another excerpt from my NaNo. Samara/Arianne, who has been masquarading as her brother, hears rumors that the South might mean to attack her Northern nation. The King does not believe them, but she can't shake the feeling that there might be truth to it, so she seeks out an old wise woman, who has served the king sometimes as a counselor. The wise woman, Sibel, is one of the Sealigan, the Blessed, Children of the Goddess Arendil, and she is a powerful Seer. The trader mentioned is one who has brought news of the war to the King. Sam met with him and his family to hear him out when the King wouldn't, and he suggested that she go see Sibel, who "is both wise and learned, and will know the truth even if no one else does."

When I finally made my way through the winding city streets to the Seer’s home, I found the front door wide open. I announced myself, but no one gave an answer, so I followed the long front hallway, passing closed doors, to a small back room, where I heard murmured voices.

The room was crowded with books and loose papers and strange objects, and the air was thick with incense. Every surface seemed cluttered with something, and every sitting place in the room was heavily cushioned.

The old Seer sat in the middle of the room in a wooden rocking chair, bent over a table before her, fingers roving across something. Her lips moved, forming letters I couldn’t quite hear. She was old – very old. Her face was deeply lined. The deepest, I couldn’t help but see, were the laughter lines around her lips and eyes.

Next to her knelt one of the trader’s sons, the youngest, Michel, diligently taking down all that she said on a sheaf of paper in his lap, a serious expression on his young face.

And then he saw me, and all seriousness melted away as excitement took hold. He yelled out my name and rushed across the room to wrap his little arms around my waist.

He called me Samuel, but when the crone looked up from her table at me with unseeing, milky-white eyes, she said in a scratchy voice, “Ah, Rani. I wondered when you would visit old Sibel.”

I started at the use of my given name and cast a nervous glance at the little boy, but he merely smiled at me and returned to her side, sitting on the floor at her feet, cross-legged. She touched her fingers briefly to the top of his head, as if to affirm that he really was there, and then she gestured me forward.

“Come see, little one.”

So I did.

“I’m Sam,” I corrected, hesitant to offend.

She waved a hand as if to dismiss my words. “Yes, you are,” she agreed, and said no more.

I was startled to find what she had laid out on the table – a game I’d played with a Samuel, a child’s game of Seeing. It was a long, unrolled length of fabric with the letters of the alphabet and the numbers from zero to nine pressed into its surface in dark ink. With a hollow triangular planchette, the players maneuvered about the board, making words out of the letters – it was said that the spirits spoke through the hollowed out triangle, and that the players did not move the piece themselves.

It was a silly game, but a fun one.

She smiled at me. “Yes, my dear, to you, I’m sure it’s only a child’s game,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. “But sometimes it is the simplest ways that are the best. Will you look with me, and see what can be known?”

I frowned at her, doubtful. “What might I learn?”

“Anything,” she said, a secret smile on her lips, “Everything; nothing. It might speak to the past or the present or the future – but it is oft hard to know which is which, for time is cyclical, and the future can look much the same as the past. Even the most skilled can get it wrong.”

“Then why do it at all?”

“Because there is much to learn. Even if all we see is the past, it can teach us much about the future.”

“Then why not just study history?”

Sibel grinned at me. “Because the future may mirror the past at times, but there are always differences, and these tools can help us foresee those before they happen. The tools and the abilities given to the Seers are not so great as the foresight of the Great Dragons of yore, whose breath is so hot that they can breath gold into liquid, and use it as a mirror into all times, but we do get glimpses, snatches of possibilities, and those can help us to determine the right path to take.”

“Dragons?” I asked, bewildered. I’d seen drawing of dragons and other mystical creatures as a child and enjoyed them nearly as much as Samuel had, but it had never occurred to me that they could be real. I’d seen bones of the giant cats that used to roam the Ironwall forest and the Kamphuis mountains, and some of the old giant wolves still lived, but dragons?

She laughed. “That is all you heard from what I just said, isn’t it? You’re certainly your mother’s daughter.” Before I could ask, she nodded and said, “Yes, I knew your mother.” The old woman touched Michel’s shoulder and pointed to one of the shelves behind her. “Fetch me the golden tome back there, won’t you? The one on the right – no, the other – yes; exactly.” When he returned with it, she set it out on the table before us and carefully turned the old, crackling pages, feeling with her fingers. Eventually, she tapped a page decisively and bid me look.

It depicted dragons much as I’d seen them in the books mother had shown my brother and me – except these beasts were fiercer, more dangerous, more real. They were no caricatures, meant to amuse children. They were monsters the size of small mountains with great wings that could block out the sun. I flipped through the pages and found more images of them, green and gold and red and blue ones, and finally a great black beast that seemed to dwarf the others, as well as strangely beautiful men and women, tall and fair.

Text accompanied many of the images, but I could not read it. When I asked the Seer, she nodded and said, “Few can read the script of the elves. It’s a strange language -”

“Elves!” I cut in, startled. I turned the page back from the black dragon to an image of an enchantingly beautiful couple.

“Yes child. But you did not come here for a history lesson, did you?”

“No,” I agreed, and then, barely hesitating, I repeated, “Elves?”

Sibel smiled fondly at me and shook her head in rueful amusement, wearing an expression I’d often seen my mother wear. For the span of a heartbeat, she looked so much like my own mother that I couldn’t help but wonder who she really was, but then the moment passed, and her expression shifted, and she was only an old woman again. She was probably a mother once, too, I told myself, And all mother’s must have had naughty children with an insatiable curiosity.

With a sigh, she said, “Elves. They lived with the dragons in the winterlands beyond the Ironwall, before the All-Mother lead her children south from the island that is now known as the Grey Hinterlands, the Grey Waste, where our ancestors were born and lived until the first Cold came and made that part of the world unlivable. Even the All-Mother, in her infinite wisdom, could not have foreseen it. We traveled south, and the elves left our continent to look for warmer climes. Our ancestors beyond the Ironwall live still in the palaces left beyond by the elves, who were beautiful and had power beyond our reckoning, and sung magic into the very walls of their homes to make them stand against time.

“The north froze, and the southern half of the continent cooled and became livable. Once, it was a terrible desert, but the great cold made it a summerland, where your God Cynin created your father’s people, after His Thatelles Fell, and some became Arendil’s Ronin, Her Companions, and He left Her in anger and disappear, too proud to repent of his actions.”

I nodded slowly, taking in all that she had said. She left me then to think it over, disappearing into the front of the house. It sounded like a grand, impossible story, but in its own way, it did make sense. Except… “Cynin?”

“Your Lonely God,” Michel answered for her, eager to help.

“But…. He did not give His name to His children to know. How could you know it?”

He smiled at that. “All children know it, who are children of the All-Mother, for She hides nothing from us. There are texts that speak of the Goddess Arendil’s brother, Cynin, who she loved dearly. Your people do hold that He was Her older brother?”

“We do,” I agreed, withholding the truth that, although I had been taught it, few believed in the relation. Especially in the south, people tended to ignore any relation to the All-Mother with great fervor.

He nodded, and continued, “To your people, a God’s true name is a thing of power, isn’t it? But to us, it’s merely a name, a way to be closer to the Gods. It’s known.”

“It is known,” the old woman put in as she returned. She settled into the rocking chair with a teacup full of something hot enough to steam. “And that is why it is important to study all religions. All ways lead to one another, and one can learn much about their own Gods by learning about others. They are often all interconnected.”

She smiled at me, and sipped her drink for long enough that I began to think she’d forgotten about me. But then she tipped the cup back, swallowed the last of it, and set it on the floor next to her. I could see the dregs of what looked like an early tea, and I wondered if it was for her health. She clapped her hands loud enough that I jumped – Michel didn’t, and I wondered if the behavior was regular for her. How often was he here?

“Go on now, Michel. It’s time for the grown-ups to talk.” She waved her hand in a shooing motion. He opened his mouth to argue, and she fixed him with a stern look. “We will continue your lessons another time. Now, Sam and I must speak about the past, and that is not a topic for children. You are young, and your time is the present and future.”

He argued briefly with her, but he quickly gave in and bowed his head with a deference that surprised me in one so young. He gave me a quick, fierce hug, and then left us.

When he was gone, she said, “There’s some potential in the boy for the Seer gift. It’s a pity his parents mean to take him before I can really teach him anything, but then again, if the All-Mother means for his gift to manifest, I suppose it will, with or without me help.” She spread her hands and considered me with her blind, murky gaze. “Now, ask your question.”

“I don’t –”

She made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat and said, “You do have one. You cannot lie to me child. I can see the truth in your thoughts, which is a good deal more honest than the truth you wear on your face, and the truth you speak with your tongue.”

I inclined my head in apology and then remembered she couldn’t see it. “Sorry, grandmother,” I said, using the term as one of respect. She smiled a secret smile, as if I’d said something amusing. I considered her a moment, and then asked, “Who created the elves? And the dragons?”

“The same God as created the Great wolves and cats, and the mermaids and their seductive kin, the sirens, I expect,” she replied with a shrug, “But little is known about Him. Many documents were left by the elves – and a number of them, by appearance, seem to be religious tomes – but there language is hard to translate. It’s a flowing, poetic language, that seems to reach for a musical affect more than a literal one. Even where we think we know what the words say, it is hard to know what they mean.” She gestured in the direction of the book in my lap. “You see that they use different glyphs than we do. The letters themselves are different, much the way the Gods use a different set than we do.”

I touched the birthmark on my ribs, remembering that the Priestess Lillian had told me it was a glyph in the God’s language that meant ‘beloved’.

“The elves, and the dragons, I think, where closer in creation to the Gods than we are, even we mortals who have the God’s gifts flowing in our veins. Some believe He is the same God briefly mentioned in the History of the Gods who was at one time Arendil’s lover. But that is not the question you had,” she reprimanded me, smiling. “Ask the question you came to ask, Rani.”

Sibel was right, of course. But I was afraid to ask, because I was afraid of the answer. I was afraid that the whispers of war were true.

“You want to know if what they say is correct,” she said, when I was not forthcoming with anything. “You want to know what I know.”

“Yes.”

“Well then, I will tell you. What I have seen is this: darkness. A shadow on the land. Something is coming, but I cannot tell you what. War? Maybe. When I look back through records before the war that sundered the First Nation into two, there are descriptions given by Seers of the world covered in a dreadful shadow that sounds much the same as what I have Seen. But it could also mean that a second cold age is coming, like the one that drove our people out of the north in the beginning, or it could mean something else entirely, for it covers the entire continent – even the places beyond the Ironwall.” She tapped the board. “Sometimes, it is easier to see when others help. Will you look with me?”

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to, but I’d come this far, and I knew it would be rude to deny her. So I knelt across the table from her. She held out her hands for mine, and I placed them obediently atop hers. Her touch was surprisingly firm for such an old woman.

Sibel met my gaze, then, and I felt as if she was really seeing me.

She smiled and said, “Sam, indeed. You are no Seer, I think, but you have a connection to the other world through your brother’s half of your soul.”

I remembered all of the dreams I’d had of my brother since his death, and didn’t argue with her.

The wizened Seer guided my hands to the little triangular planchette so that only the tips of my fingers touched it, and then she placed her own hands on it in the same way. “You have done this before,” she said, not asking, “But it will be different this time. Are you ready?”

“What must I do?”

“Nothing. Let happen what will happen.” She closed her eyes then and said nothing else.

I felt silly kneeling there, willing the wooden piece to move so that it framed some letter. It didn’t for a long time.

And then I felt the piece jerk under my touch as if impatient, and I realized I was bearing down harder on the board than I knew I was supposed to. I loosened my hold until I was barely touching it, and the planchette rushed across the board.

I was too surprised to register anything but the movement, and I withdrew my hand in my surprise. Sibel had to prompt me with an amused, “What letter is it, child?” before I thought to look.

“It’s a B,” I said, and she nodded.

As soon as I touched my fingers back to the board, the triangular piece moved again, this time with less excitement. When it settled, I said, “E.”

And so on. I knew the word before it had finished, and I could see the edge of a smile on Sibel’s lips halfway through it.

“Beginning,” I said, when the piece didn’t seem inclined to move beyond the final ‘g.’ “What does it mean?”

“That’s easy, isn’t it? It means that you must seek for your answers in the beginning.”

I frowned at her, not understanding. “What beginning?”

Sibel shrugged. “The beginning, a beginning. Who knows? Since we have gotten this answer only with your help, I assume it pertains to you as much as it does to me. Your beginning, our beginning.”

“So I should go home?”

Smiling, she tapped the board. “I don’t know. But that beginning is not mine. Will you ask again without me? Perhaps it does only mean you.” I considered the spirit board. Her fingers still rested on the planchette. After a moment, I touched the wooden piece, too. Nothing happened. She removed her hand, and still it didn’t move. When I told her as much, she said, “Ah, well, the answers are never clear except in retrospect. I imagine, when this is all over, and you know what it means, you will wonder how you could have possibly been confused.”

I didn’t particularly like that answer, and when I left the Seer’s little house, I left as lost as I had when I left the palace that morning.

Possible Actual Beginning

So, beginnings are ridiculously hard. I've been working on many variations of the same beginning for awhile now, and then I realized why I didn't like it - because it just wasn't the right place to start, no matter how I re-wrote it. So, I flipped through the first few pages of some fantasy novels of which I'm particularly fond, and I decided that I was just starting to much at The Beginning. So, for more of an in medias res beginning... I give you the (maybe hopefully possibly) first short chapter of my NaNo - The Changeling: One and The Same

(The formatting is a bit screwy, but I didn't feel the need to fix it.)

Madison caught me just as my fingers closed around a soft, sweet peach. I’d been so careful; we hadn’t gotten caught at the tart stand, or the apple seller’s, or the cart full of fresh, hot loaves of bread. I struggled and managed to wrench out of his grip, but he was after me quick.

Samuel gave a yell as I tried to dodge the guard, and I realized my twin had already been caught. Two other guards held him firmly between them, and I couldn’t leave him behind. And besides, I’d dressed as the girl today – I had less of a chance of getting away in my stupid skirt as I would have if I’d dressed as my brother. I let Madison catch me around the middle and haul me back over to my brother. He flipped a coin at the merchant, who bit it and gave my brother and me an amused scowl, and bid the guards a good day.

“Poor lot you’ve got there, chasing after those blasted miscrea’ts all day long!” he called after us as the guards pushed us back in the direction of the palace.

We struggled as best we could as they led us through the streets of Eldale, but they had long practice in keeping us in place. Sammie got in a good kick to James’ shins. He winced, and I knew he would be bruised for a good week, but my brother didn’t manage an escape, held on both sides as he was. I was faster, but he was stronger, and they knew well enough how to keep a-hold of us, by now.

My guard tightened his grip on me in case I got the same idea. They would have liked to give us a good, hard shake, I had little doubt – but father would never allow violence to be used unless necessary, even on repeat offenders, as we were, and his guards knew it.

It galled them, I was sure, to have to tramp all over the city after such recalcitrant children, but such was their lot – in times of such long peace as we lived in, even a Duke’s guards had little use beyond trailing after his spoiled children, protecting them more from themselves than any imaginary threat.

The guards who trooped my twin and me back to the palace brought us to the Duke’s solar. It was too late in the evening for him to be taking petitioners in his great audience hall, and this sort of chiding certainly didn’t require more than the Lord and, of course, his Lady, who the realm agreed could sway any decision of his with a single look.

James and the third of the Colletti household guard, Rian, held us in place while Madison explained to their Lord exactly what they’d caught us at. As soon as they left us there, ragged little children in mud-stained silks, the Duke turned angrily on us, but his wife remained seated at his side, her secret smile half concealed by a white lace fan.

“Filching. Again. When we have a full larder in the kitchens and scores of servants, ready to serve you. Care you explain yourselves?”

I didn’t, particularly, so I scowled at him, daring him to yell. Sammie took his cue from me and held his tongue, but I could tell by the way his hand shook in mine that he wanted to explain.

There wasn’t anything to say, though, that wouldn’t make matters worse.

We did it because there was no fun in being served; we did it because we could.

When it was clear that nothing was forthcoming from either of us, he launched into a lecture I’d heard a hundred times before. It began as it often did.

“You’re both nearly eight! You should have learned well enough by now not to go about stealing like ruffians!”

I tightened my grip on Samuel’s hand, and he shot me a brief glance. He relaxed a little under the influence of my composure; I felt the shaking in the hand clutched in mine cease, at least.

Father continued his rant, words I’d nearly memorized I’d heard them so often, and I chanced a glance at mother.

She had lowered her fan and was wearing her perpetually amused expression, a look that always made me think she knew more than everyone else – that a spectacular joke had been told, and she alone knew the answer to it.

She met my eyes, and her lips pulled into a deeper smile, and I couldn’t fear the anger in father’s tone when she sat next to him on the edge of laughter.

My brother, though, quelled under his glare, unaware of mother’s poorly hidden mirth. She’d told me, once, that father’s inability to tell us apart annoyed him more than our pranks, and it made him gruffer with us than was truly necessary.

“How do you think it makes me look? The price of thievery is a hand! How can I possibly punish starving children for such acts when my own are running about doing the same?”

To my knowledge, father had never taken the hand of a starving child. Under his stony exterior, I knew he was a fair ruler – certainly, my good, sweet mother would never have loved him so faithfully, otherwise. Only true crimes deserved such severe punishments, and I knew he only said it to strengthen his point, but it set Samuel to shaking again at my side.

Mother saw it, too, for she finally intervened, touching a slender hand to the Duke’s shoulder. She merely gave a slight shake of her head, and the anger completely drained from father’s face. With them, that was all it took.

He sighed and gestured us forward. I nearly had to drag Sam up to them.

“Honestly,” I hissed into his ear, “He’s our father.”

When we stood before him, he leveled his gaze on me and said, “It’s bad enough that you’re being brought into me in such a way, over and over again! You’ve both ruined your fine clothes. You certainly look like no-good ruffians. But what’s so much worse is that my only son and the heir to the province is tramping about in a dress! For God’s sake, Samuel, you are too old for such games! Just because the two of you look alike enough to swap places does not mean you ought to!”

Being One and the Same was our favorite game, and we switched places as often as we could. But in this instance, we hadn’t switched. The best part of the game was confusing others, and Sam seemed to enjoy confusing father enough that he overcame his nervousness and, grinning said proudly, “I’m not wearing a dress, father. Can’t you tell us apart?”

He opened his mouth to reply and then snapped it shut. He looked between us, back and forth, suspicious. “Of course I can. I’m not wrong.” He nodded at me and said, “You’re Samuel,” and then at my brother, “And you are Arianne.”

We denied it again, and mother had to intervene. “For once, they speak the truth, Henry,” she told him in her best placate-the-angry-Duke tone.

He looked us both over once more and then, in an uncharacteristic show of frustration, threw up his arms and said, “You know I can’t tell you apart. Go on. Out with you both. And I’d best not see you dragged up here by my guards again!”

Grinning, we promised avidly that of course it would never happen again, and then we made for the door.

“And get out of those rags!” he yelled after us, and Sammie waved a hand at him as we darted out of the door. Before it snapped to behind us, I saw mother lean over and press a light kiss to his cheek, laughing.

Dragons!

A theoretical scene from the sequel to the fantasy novel I started in November.

Basic premise: The Evil Overlord wants to awaken a dragon that the Goddess, named the Golden Grace by the God who created the dragons, turned to ice/stone. He means to use it to subdue the world of men/take over the world. Basic Evil Overlord business. (The Goddess turned it into ice/stone rather than actually killing it because She saw it as the child of another God, and She couldn't bring herself to kill the child of another God, even for the sake of her children.) The heroine finds out that the dragon had a hatchling that the Goddess also turned to ice, and she surmises that it attacked her ancestors simply out of an instinct to protect its young. The night after she learns this, the God who created the dragons (and other magical beings, like the Elves) speaks to her in a dream. Additional notes - The Thetallos were created by the Goddess' brother. They're much like the Christian God's Angels and, like the Angels, a number of them rebelled against Him. The Evil Overlord is working with/for one of these dark Thetallos in his goal of world domination.

That night, Samara dreamed fitfully, of blood and fire and ash. Of great cities ruined, thousands of lives brought to ruin, all of the bright green places in the world aflame, and above it two great dragons, perfect opposites in black and white, terrible chains dangling from limbs chafed bloody from their weight. And then through it all, a single voice stilled her thoughts, until there was nothing but the voice, deep and rich and all-consuming.
So you understand, do you, child of the Golden Grace?
She twisted in her sheets, trembling as the words rippled through her thoughts.
The Golden Grace understood, and she did not kill my dragons. If the time comes that your black king has the power to control all beasts, remember that it might be the Golden Grace’s magic that holds the dragons as ice, but they are my children, and will answer to my call above all else.
She shuddered from the power of the strange god’s presence in her thoughts, feeling at once cold and hot, her legs sticking to the sheets twined about her thighs from the sweat beading her skin.
Relax, child. All will be well. There are greater powers at work here than even your black king can understood – more than his dark Thetallo can handle. Relax.
And so she did, falling into a deeper sleep, and when she woke, her body hummed with a lingering warmth, the touch of a God whose children were dragons, creatures of living fire.