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.
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