Carl coughed. He stuck his finger in his ear and waggled it about but detected no blockages.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “could you repeat that?”
The dwarf fixed Carl with what seemed to be a glare, though the lenses over his eyes obscured the true expression.
“Luunchpael Bukzemwynch,” the dwarf grated out.
Carl woke to find his faced pressed against a roughly-hewn wooden table. When he lifted his head he was dismayed to find that his cheek had been resting in something sticky. He rubbed at it with his sleeve in distaste while trying to work out where he was. He had long since given up on coming to with all his recent memories intact. His brief slumbers were so deep and unforgiving that they often temporarily wiped out whole hours of his life. He had discovered that the best way to deal with waking was not to dig through dream-shattered, misorganized memories, but to rely on his sharp senses to orient himself and his quick reflexes to get him out of any trouble he might be in.
This entry is a part of my free Serialized Fiction Preview, which will run on this site and through my Free Fantasy Fiction email list through January, 2012. Starting in February, my Serialized Fiction will only be available to Patrons. Meanwhile, enjoy the preview!
More children were born in the following years. Suddenly the farm, which throughout Rachel’s entire childhood had been such a quiet, sleepy place, came alive with happy calls, crying, and the babble of the very young. Cousins and brothers of Baram’s came from next-door and helped to expand the farmhouse, raising two new rooms off the back behind the hearth, one for Carlen and one for Rachel and Baram.
The children were a special joy for Carlen. Their presence seemed to ease her loss. She guided them as they grew, teaching them how to do their chores, watching them during their play.
“They are another gift to me,” she said to Rachel one evening, as they sat by the fire. Little Gunter was asleep on the rug in front of the hearth, and his even littler sister Gerta was asleep in her grandmother’s arms. “I have lost much, but looking at these young ones, now, this is my life.”
If you need a memory refreshment, please read the first and second and third parts of this story.
The server, Gregor, fancied himself an actor. He had participated in the circle plays in the small Western town he came from. When he ventured to the Edge in search of glory on the stage he’d found a job as a server in Revel’s parlor, as well as a precious few opportunities as spear-carriers and other lowly types in several amateur companies, but his ardour for the craft was undulled. So as he climbed the stairs to the second level of the Fallen Dragon he prepared for the role he was about to play. He would discover his customer crumpled on the table. Of course he would assume the great bard was asleep, perhaps suffering from the effects of a little too much wine. But then he would check more closely, and discover that the man was deceased. His surprise would be complete. In his mind he rehearsed the hearty scream that would echo through the parlor, evidence not only of his surprise at discovering a dead man, but also of his sorrow at the loss the untimely death by poisoning of Armen Severcross, the greatest bard of the age, meant to the world of the theatre. In reality the server though it no great loss. The famed bard was a talentless hack as far as Gregor was concerned, lucky enough to have a few rich patrons. And that voice, like a crushed frog. The woman with the poison had brought a merciful end to a career that grated on the hearts of true performers everywhere.
Please catch up on Armen’s experience in the Parlor with the first and second parts.
His head snapped toward her, and he felt the world spin a little around him. The stars outside the window blurred in the corner of his eye. She wasn’t smiling anymore, but she was still studying him. He looked down at her glass. Her had been sure she had been drinking with him, but the glass was exactly half full, no less.
Please refresh your memory of the first part of this story.
Please also forgive my missing a Monday post. You’ll get another entry in Armen’s story tomorrow as well as Friday, to make up.
Armen’s eyes snapped open.
“Don’t let me interrupt you, Armen. You look like you could use some beauty sleep.”
Marath had arrived as she always did, without a sound. Armen’s senses were sharp, his hearing especially, and every time they met he felt a wound to his pride. She probably knew it, too, knew how he prized his ability to pick out variations of sound that the untrained ear could not detect. And so every time she pricked him with her perfect silence, arriving at precisely the moment when he let down his guard.
The thing that’s bothering me about this story so far is the build of pressure from edgeward that will soon provide the change in Rachel’s life. This is something she senses throughout her life but doesn’t understand, something that hangs over her all the time, but especially just before a festival. It’s a part of her from her earliest years. But as you will see next week, she’s always misinterpreted it. Let me know whether that menace or pressure or potentiality for change is even perceptible in this current draft (acodispo@gmail.com).
One evening a few years later, as she prepared the meal, Rachel heard Carlen and Gunter talking out in the garden.
“Well, it’s at least time to be thinking about it,” Carlen said in a louder tone. “We aren’t getting any younger. Sometime in the next few years.”
Rachel quietly pulled the window open, letting in a rush of cold fall air which made the steam from the soup pot twice as visible.
“The problem,” Gunter said, “is that she doesn’t spend enough time with anyone her age to get to know them. We’re a little far from town for that.”
“We could give her some time to herself, send her down to the town. She could stay with Gerta, learn the herbs.”
There was silence in the garden for a moment or two. Rachel moved to stand at the other end of the window, and she could see her parents, sitting across a garden row from each other on three-legged stools, bending down to weed. Carlen’s long white hair was wrapped up in a bun on her head to keep it out of the dirt. Gunter was looking at his wife. His back was to Rachel and she couldn’t see his face, but his form spoke of sadness.
“We couldn’t spare her, Gerta. There’s too much to be done. We could sell the pigs, and perhaps you and I could manage on our own for a while, but that money would only last so long.”
“I know, love,” said Carlen. They bent back to weeding, but in a moment Gunter straightened again. He looked out mornward, towards the town. Then he moved his stool closer to the garden bed and bent down to speak very quietly to his wife.
In any other place the wine might have been served in a stoneware mug or a cup, perhaps of wood or tin. But here the arts of civilization still flourished, glassblowing among them, and so when the ugly man held the vessel up in front of him he could see the dark red liquid within and, through the window beyond, the stars. Sighing, he set it down again on the table. The wine through the glass against the dark-stained wood was a pleasing composition. The stars, on the other hand, were cold and colorless, and the black of the aether between them was merely that: black. Infinity was an ill-suited backdrop for a dry red.
Abraham was not a violent man. He was no longer a violent man. His order emphasized the contemplative and cerebral aspects of the human being, and one tenet of the tradition was a rational respect for the lives of individuals. The masters taught that meaning comes from perception, and that the destruction of a perceiving being brought with it a regretable decrease in the order of the world. And so Abraham was a man of peace. The years he had spent as a soldier before withdrawing from the world into the sheltered walks of the cloister had decreased the reason and order of the universe; too many deaths, too many lives lost.
For centuries I’ve lain here in the darkness. The stars are the only things further than I. I am alone at the boundary of the world, and the stars glimmer beyond, shining from unknown reaches.