Prince Eater
Other Chapters: (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8)
Arc Word Count: 23,834
"I dream of darkness and the lost. A thousand faces like mine shattered on a turbulent sea. You need not fear the way forward. Though you cannot comprehend tomorrow, I assure you it is there. You need merely walk." - Whispers, Fourth Dusk
~~~
The archive assistant brought the greatest gift humanly possible.
Bread.
So fresh it burned his fingertips when he tore into it. Steam billowed out in an orgasm of aroma that flowed into his nose and deep into his lungs. He shivered with the bread to his mouth, where he tasted the sweet glaze of honey and butter on his lips. When had he last had a real meal? A year? Two? Naevu bit the roll, moist, tearing the insides with his teeth and gently massaged the flavor on his tongue. When he swallowed, his whole body rejoiced.
He shook free of the temptress bread's hold. By his side, Saeron picked at a roll, head hanging over it and eyes shut tight. To see his ward, his child, experience such joy warmed him. They deserved this moment. It'd been a hard winter.
"Thank you, brother," he told the assistant, who now lowered two cups of fresh, warm milk to the table. "You cannot imagine the pleasure of such things."
They finished the meal to the music of quill scratching paper. Down the table a scribe sat, diligently copying Naevu's latest reports from Yevel. Two years' worth, and the young man made short work of it precisely and elegantly in his own hand. The archives were quieter than they'd been in all his years within them. Only the elderly archivist, who sat sleeping at his desk, and one other manned the facility with a half-dozen assistants. In his day, Naevu recalled the place being a hive of activity.
All were preoccupied with the war, it seemed. Busied as bees with other tasks.
The room had no windows, and was as long as many other wings of palatial complex. All sealed and fortified to men and weather alike. Within were rows of shelves, tightly packed together, with thousands of books and collections, many of them his own. Though they were summoned and must make haste, the only extant copies of his records, by law, were to be copied by the hands of a scribe three times over. Once was enough to satiate the rule and Naevu's fears. Three copies were made of all the documents contained within the walls of Athsarion. Two sets remained in the city, separated to prevent loss to fire, and the third was kept in a countryside temple in the far east of the island.
The assistant returned shortly with a heavy-bound and weatherworn volume. It shook the table when dropped, and Naevu immediately recognized the Parthecan characters etched into the leather cover. Water damage wrinkled the page ends and the green mold had taken to the paper already.
"We need to check its authenticity, if you will, professor," said the young assistant.
"What's it of?" he asked, turning it in his hands. The tome was heavy, a few hundred pages bound with thick leather cord. A master craftsman had made it. Never would its owner have left it in such a state.
"Found among the dead, some Parthecan study of the northern tribes," said the assistant. He pointed out the characters on the rear cover interior. "Can't make it out with the damage. It might be a personal mark, or nothing at all."
"It isn't a name," said Naevu, rubbing the embossed characters. "It's part of a poem, a second to last line in a stanza." He smiled. "It translates as an expression of celebration over the expectations of the author's mother. Behold my work, in other words." Naevu started to thumb through the battered pages, scanning the various paragraphs. Parthecan archivists held a specific tradition of glossaries on the margins, a truly useful tool for explaining the contents of the page. "Northern tribes. Hmm. This man conducted excavations of old villages. He calls them Snowwalkers, but we know them as Bakhad. This is a true Parthecan labor."
Saeron coughed and spoke with his mouth full. He'd gone on to a second or third roll. "Are you serious? Let me see."
Naevu gently handed the volume over to Saeron, who, with a careful hand, began prying through it with eyes glazed over. The assistant fidgeted as the teenager made quick work of the pages. How odd it was for a day to make such a difference in how the world viewed you.
The assistant gave way to the younger archivist, who must've taken the brunt of the work from his elderly senior, with a curt nod. The archivist wore a Nechekt moustache, which must have recently come into style or he'd attempted a social statement. Dark rings under his eyes made him look old, though he couldn't have been more than thirty. He pulled out a chair opposite Naevu and dropped a thinner document between them.
"The dead have no use for it. We do. One of the winter raids caught the poor bastard. We salvaged it, thankfully. And this, too, professor." The archivist slid the thin document over. Naevu knew his face, but could not put a name to it. "A student's work in need of confirmation."
Naevu fingered through the pages. It was packed with the smallest script he'd ever seen. Why would someone do this to him? "Whose?"
"Yccon's," said the archivist. Yccon took only the best under his wing. His methods of education were rather . . . extreme.
"Is this a dialogue?" asked Naevu. He paused on a middle page. The participants discussed state finance.
"Yes. With a Sadorishi of some rank."
"Interesting. How did he manage that?"
"She," corrected the archivist. "With a clever tongue, I assume." The comment met stale air.
"When's it needed?" said Naevu. Licking his fingers, he picked through the pages until he came back around to the first. There, in fine Faron script, was the girl's name. Hyra. Naevu flicked the cover closed, withdrawing his hand to scratch his bearded cheek.
Will this nightmare never leave me?
"No time soon," said the archivist. "She's off island, with her master in Gallat doing some business for the High Ward. Take your time."
What business would Yccon have in Gallat? Naevu cleared his mind of it. He wanted to ask about the girl, but thought better of it. It wasn't his Hyra. It'd never be.
"Good. I'll be delighted," he said, dropping the subject. Saeron was staring at the document in Naevu's hands. He'd seemed to have forgotten what he was doing. "Find anything worthwhile?"
Saeron blinked and shook his head. "Am I supposed to present something?"
Naevu looked down at the thin, leather bound dialogue. Should he tell the boy yes, and that he'd forgotten? No, no that wouldn't make sense. "Do you want to?"
"I." Saeron stopped to consider the Parthecan volume in front of him. He scanned the pages at the end of his finger, tapping gently on the page. "Yes. I do."
Naevu tossed the dialogue to him, much to the dissatisfaction of the archivist. "There you go."
"What do I do with this?" Saeron asked.
"Read it. Analyze it. Write about it."
"You want me to do your work for you?" Saeron no longer looked bemused, but amused.
"No, I want you to see what she did so you can do it better."
"Better than a dialogue with the Sadorishi?"
"You don't have to be better at this. She's taken her own passion, and done well by it." Naevu snapped fingers at a nearby assistant, different than before. "Paper and quill, plenty of it," he said. "You know your passion."
The assistant dropped a stack of rough cut pages, which would later be trimmed down to size, and a tin inkwell. Naevu dabbed a clean, sharp quill into the blackness. He took a page and began scribbling. A moment later, Saeron took his own.
"Show them," Naevu told him. The assistant lingered. He finished writing and handed off a paper. "Do you know Casmarc ekTydun?" The assistant nodded. "Find him. Give him this."
The assistant did not ask permission. He'd been given a task by a professor of the Faith, not some lowly archivist. Naevu lowered the quill and grabbed the Parthecan work from Saeron's vicinity. Opened, he began scanning the pages.
"What was that?" Saeron asked, and it was clear the archivist was curious too.
"I made a promise to Aelie," said Naevu. The page glossaries were neatly packed around the edges, not much space remained blank. Thorough. "And to you."
"Is this a friend of yours? Casmarc? I've never heard of him."
"I haven't spoken to him since before you were born. Quite a while ago." Naevu sighed.
"He owes you a favor?"
"He does."
Hours passed as Saeron scratched notes on paper. Some tossed aside, others piled high to his right. They drank more milk, as wine could not be served within the room. Terrible for paper, should it spill, and wine had a nasty habit of assisting in accidents. The morning passed without a word between them. The scribe worked through Naevu's records, asking questions ever so often. The Parthecan work kept him occupied, and he got up a number of times with the assistants to search for volumes to reference against it. There were few pleasures in the world as deeply gratifying.
When they grew tired of the work and hungry again, they left the archive. The halls were empty, as quiet and bizarre as the archives had been. The whole north seemed a desolate wasteland before them. Vainarim had more company, more often, than Athsarion in those moments. A stop in the chambers of an old friend, a fellow professor who refused to die of old age, gave them another chance to eat. Pork roasted in honey with a side of creamy goat cheese. It filled their appetite for both company and food.
Saeron confessed his fears and concerns, not for the confirmation alone but for all things. The coming war in the south ate at his mind, and he let it be known. Nothing to be done about it. Naevu
was going to Sirasona. War or not.
Eerie silence greeted them.
The hall opened into the cavernous Birthing Chamber. Undisturbed waters pooled lazily under a blanket of steam. None were in the long bath, but voices did emit from various alcoves like whispers on the wind. Two years since he'd last stepped there, and his body ached for the relaxing warmth of the pool.
They took no time in debating it. Disrobed, Naevu entered the waters to the immediate relief of his knees. Vainarim had taken weight from them, but age had worn them down in return. Life equalized. He imagined rust within him, creaking like a wagon's axil after a harsh winter. Or perhaps, if opened as an old tome the ill-repair would show through with crumbling pages and mold. His feet sank to the bottom, bringing the water to his neck.
Naevu drew a breath and swam.
Saeron had entered when he'd resurfaced. They drifted together, floating on their backs a ways down. Baths were a luxury in Chorus lands. And cold. As sweet as the meals had been, this was sweeter.
It didn't occur to him how empty the chamber was until they stopped midway and took to opposite sides. Naevu rested on the submerged shelf, letting the blissful heat sink deep into his worn body. The pillars were all that remained in the chamber. No birds or plants lined the water's edge. Where had it gone?
Where the feathered throne had stood for a third of a century there now was a stepped dais of cushioned platforms. Amidst the pillows were fan boys and servants, blond haired Lusekt and dark-skinned Sirans, and in the middle of it all a pair of women. White and brown, their flesh mingled as they rested beneath the handmade breeze. The scarred High Ward Aelea--his sister, to some--and her unfortunate pet, Ibilie, the greatest singer living.
You still haven't learned, he thought.
You poor girl.
Aelea kissed her. Though he could not see well, it was all a blur of motion to him. Company gave her reason to show out, it excited her. Naevu watched them roll in the pillows from afar. A faint giggle broke the silence.
Saeron splashed his face and scrubbed with both hands. He'd taken to the ledge opposite Naevu. He had not broken, mind nor body. He'd been shaped by his dedication to Siran ways, martial meditation. The rock had turned him into one of its own. Strong. Adept.
"How long do you think I'll live?" Naevu asked in a low voice. What kind of question was that? He'd just said it, without a thought.
There was a hammering somewhere, wood to wood. Construction work? It faded. Voices in another alcove, not far from where they swam. A lecture?
Saeron wiped water from his face, giving a half smile. "Are we talking about your mortality now?" Shaking his head, he said, "I don't want to play this game."
"Somewhere along the way I've become an old man," said Naevu as he rubbed his forearms. The sight of Saeron's body made his own age all too real. He'd never have youth again.
"Men live twice as long as you," said Saeron, confident. Despite all his hardness, he was but a child. Too new to the world. "You're at the beginning, still."
"I suppose so," he agreed. The truth creaked as his joints did. Saeron knew nothing of his aches. The stabbing sensation when he climbed from bed in the morning. Walking misery.
"Is this because of the girl? The student," said Saeron. "I saw her name."
Naevu wiped at his cheek. Yes. It must've been. "No." On the dais, a ways down the chamber, a moan erupted from Aelea's lips. Far too loud to be real. Ibilie's brown figure slid lower on Aelea's body. Saeron splashed his face again. "You don't like to see her this way? Neither do I. She reminds me of Hyra."
Saeron met his eyes, silent.
"One sided, forgotten. Lost in plain sight," said Naevu. He massaged his neck. "I never told you much about my life, before. Now we've reached the end."
"It doesn't change anything. You'll still be my father tomorrow."
"Yeah." Naevu paused to think, watching his reflection in the water flicker by candlelight. "I never had a relationship like ours, a father to me as I am to you. There's no memory of life prior to Gyrdac. And he wasn't a father figure. He was a professor, an educator. He never treated me, or Aelea, like his children. We were his chosen pupils. He respected us, but he did not love us as his flesh. He was a brilliant flame, true to the Faith. The million stars and thousand colors of the night sky are as close to his mind as you'll ever see. Men like him come only once a century. He gave us a different, universal love."
Naevu started to crack knuckles one at a time.
"I was starving when Gyrdac picked me from the mud and gave me a home. I never learned if my family had been killed. How I ended up in Udel is anyone's guess. There were Zeeks all over, occupying most of Ederrot. But you know all of that." He waved it off, sending a speckle of droplets across the shimmering water. "Bad men, they said. I saw the bodies, the women who'd been raped. I was too young to comprehend what I was seeing, and it didn't set in my mind as sour as it should have. My entire world was war, and hunger, and tears. Gyrdac asked my name, but there wasn't one to give. Might've been fear? Forgotten? It didn't matter. He took me in for no reason but his judgment, morals. To this day I've never felt a hunger like then. Not even Vainarim compared."
"Why are you telling me this?" said Saeron. He'd now climbed out of the water, sitting on the edge of the bath with his feet dangling in to the warmth.
"It's a fundamental difference in the way we see the world. They would do what we will never do. It doesn't revoke their humanity or our duty to them. They worship a warrior whose entire existence is hell-bent on conquest and domination. They want nothing less than to expunge us." Naevu snorted. "I'm proud of you. What you've become. I can't say I shaped you, or had a part. Maybe Saerhun, Aelie, or Pahal did more than me."
"They could never compete," said Saeron. "You've given me everything, sacrificed."
Of course the boy knew. How couldn't he? In a world full of sex, Naevu never had any. "Sacrifice," he agreed. "I never wanted to miss a moment, to make a mistake. Another mistake."
"You haven't."
Naevu smiled. "Do you remember when first went to Sirasona, after the speech? How frightened you were?"
Saeron raised his voice. "You told me they were going to murder us."
"Half-truth," said Naevu, laughing.
"It wasn't funny."
"It was . . . until Elea dissolved the Accan Quarters."
"So that's why you're going?"
Naevu shrugged. He swam into the center of the pool, closer to Saeron. The boy's attention now focused on the dais, where the moans rang louder. Ibilie's bottom now elevated on knees and presented as a wonderful gift, a private show. Was it a terrible thing to not be aroused? Had he lost that, too? Saeron tried to hide it, but a blush crossed his face and spoiled the act. He decided to distract his pupil.
"Gyrdac almost rejected Aelea," he said.
"Why?"
"When her father brought her, he only wanted a better life for his daughter. She couldn't speak. They feared she'd become a mute. I learned later she'd witnessed her mother's murder. She doesn't remember, but it affected her. Not sure why he took her. She came before me, by a few months, and my memory of her is as a girl dedicated to the written word. Maybe he saw something in her, maybe he saw all this. Who knows? Gyrdac raised another, a boy, before us. He'd grown and turned into warrior, and died in a field somewhere. . . Maybe her personality won through? She was a real b#tch, pushed me around."
"You let a little girl bully you?"
"She was pretty, and much bigger than me," he said, swimming over to rest on the marble ledge next to Saeron. Arms crossed on the pool edge, head resting in them. "There was a day when I was six or so. In Udel, there used to be an old ash tree by the road coming from up from harbor. Gyrdac composed songs under it. One of the few times he'd allow us to play as children. Aelea chased me with a stick, for reasons unknown. We weaved in and out of the crowds coming from the east to the sea, where they'd cross to Nech. Gyrdac would never step foot off Aelona's land so long as the enemy occupied it. We were too young to be aware of his zealotry. Seldom did anyone travel west in those days. But on that day, a hundred men on horse in armor rode west. They flew a banner with a blue sun on a field of white."
"Alonites?"
"Aye." Naevu pulled himself out of the water and sat beside Saeron. He could see from this side a lecture in an alcove, far in the rear, with a dozen people gathered around an elderly bearded man drawing numbers on cloth with a hunk of charcoal. "There was a black haired man in fresh forged chainmail, who rode up to me. Aelea struck my back with the stick about the time the horse stopped. He gave us two purple plums. Told us to share, so we did. I learned his queer accent later as from the Allato Hills. He said we were safe now. Friends had come."
"And they had," said Saeron.
"Correct. We knew they were Faithful like us. They followed the Path. No one cared what they were. They came with the rising sun, from the Land of Light, to break the shadow."
A shout descended from the pillowed dais, Aelea's bark. "Are you going to lounge all day, Naevu?" Her voice nearly broke on his name. Ibilie's tongue must've found its mark.
Naevu sighed, and said, "Even now she pushes." A pillar proved the easiest way to his feet, but even that didn't sit well with his legs.
I'm too young to be old.
Saeron brought their clothes from the far end, as no dresser came. They didn't need pampering, not anymore. Not after the black rock. Saeron dressed, and helped wrap Naevu in his professorial cloth. He squeezed excess water from his hair and beard.
"What happened next?" asked Saeron as he pulled tight the belt around his waist.
"Eh?"
"After the Alonites came," he continued.
Naevu smiled. "Another time."
The walk to the dais only bubbled tomorrow in his mind. The day his son would leave. Another time may never come. Was it worse to bury a child or never see them again? He'd cross the desert when it came to it.
The hammering picked up as they passed the final alcove, directly adjacent to the high dais. Reserved in Hygren's time for special guests and dinner parties, the alcove transformed in to a theater with wooden stage and makeshift bedding for the audience. A half-dozen young men worked quietly as they could with hammer and chisel and brush to build set pieces. The backdrop painted orange with palms and a blue sky through an open balcony.
Pillows scattered along the floor at the dais base, which seemed much higher up close. Fan boys did their work to keep the breeze going as others lounged. One of the Lusekt men, one Aelea had saved, committed to self-pleasure on the highest level, watching Ibilie. Naevu wobbled on the unstable, feather stuffed surfaces beneath him, so slowed to a near crawl as he and Saeron stepped up.
Ibilie rocked her haunches in near hypnotic rhythm with the fan. He averted his path, stepping farther to the side and pulling Saeron with him so as neither of them came up directly behind her. The scenes Aelea put on were never happenstance. She'd angled their act to best entice them. A younger Naevu would have fallen in step behind her, taken her, and been done. But the girl meant more to him than her parts and she deserved better.
Aelea's scars had faded to a milky white, like shattered ice. They stood out even more profoundly against the brown of Ibilie, her black hair flowing over pale white thighs. She dined on Aelea as a cannibal, obsessed and starved. He met his
sister's eyes, tilting his head to show his wish for it to end. Aelea clenched both hands in Ibilie's hair to hold her there, licking.
"Naevu," said Aelea, drawing out the name as a moan. Ibilie snatched away, turning with glistening wet lips and a smile.
"Aelea."
The High Ward scrunched her brow and pulled a sheet over her midriff, covering only that heinous scar. The word they'd so shamefully carved into her. Ibilie raised herself, with much difficulty and fluster. The Siran did not bother with covering as she leapt onto Naevu with a sudden, near toppling embrace. He refrained from a greeting kiss, not wishing to taste her recent meal. He instead kissed her neck.
Soap. Clean. She smelled alien, too neutral to be true.
"Saeron," said Aelea.
"Your Radiance," he replied, nodding his head sweetly.
"You've grown," she said, eyeing him.
"Leave him be," said Naevu. Ibilie dropped from his arms and skipped over into Saeron's. The boy stood awkward and nodded as she kissed him on the lips and hugged him tight and did not let go. No longer did he look up to her, as he had in Sira when they played on the beaches and in temple halls. Now he was man, towering over her.
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