Chapter Four
Druadaen was only vaguely aware of approaching the steps to the cupola atop the Great Archive and wondered if he had heard or only imagined the welcome from the guards at the bottom of the stairs. They were all that had stood between him and the small dome’s brass funicular which led down into the welcoming dark of the tube that was the sole means of ingress or egress for the library’s most restricted section: the Archive Recondite. Once there, he would finally be spared having to see the skyline of Tlulanxu and the bay that rolled outward into the wide world beyond. From having to pretend it was a pleasant place to be. From having to meet its inhabitants. Instead, he could finally be alone, at least for the few minutes it took to descend.
But as he reached the bronze doors of the cupola, he heard two muted voices approaching from its far side. One was Shaananca’s. The other was not immediately recognizable, but still vaguely familiar.
Druadaen moved slowly, keeping the cupola between them. Not because he wanted to hide—not exactly—but because the last thing he wanted to do on this day was to come face to face with Shaananca and, worse still, some visitor to the Archives. Any visitor escorted by Shaananca was sure to be a person of importance. That meant courtesies and patient, gracious answers to their questions, as well as equally gracious attentiveness to their opinions or reflections. On any other day, that would have been fine, but on this day, he would have gladly spent three hours hauling bricks if that meant he could avoid three minutes of playacting at interest and amiability.
The women’s voices neared, but then became fainter. He peeked around the curve of the cupola; Shaananca and a taller, younger woman had not stopped at the doors to the funicular, but had continued toward the stairs he’d just ascended. As they slowed and prepared to say their farewells, he ducked back. Shaananca’s title might be Master Archivist, but her senses, her alertness, and her scarred forearms suggested that her prior service to Dunarra had been of a far more active nature. Druadaen allowed that he would be lucky if she hadn’t already seen him.
A moment later, the soft pad of her sandals reapproached the cupola. They entered and, soon after, the low moan of the unspooling cable told him that one of the funicular’s two cars had started down.
After the cable finally groaned to a stop, he heard the familiar clank of the second, waiting car locking into place. He circled back toward the doors and the promise of the sheltering darkness behind them.
* * *
“Druadaen?”
He was so startled he almost dropped the radial vellum scroll he’d just finished refolding. Shaananca was standing within arm’s reach. How can she get so close without being seen or heard? “Yes, Master Archivist?”
Shaananca flapped a long, heavily veined hand at the central area of the upper reading room. It was empty. “We are alone. No need for titles.”
He nodded. Her pause and steady gaze confirmed Druadaen’s worst fear: that she had sought him out not arising from his responsibilities as one of the Archive’s assistants, but on a personal matter.
She sighed, folded her hands. “Unless my memory is going along with my knees, you went to the epiphanium this morning.”
He nodded slowly. As if it could have slipped your mind. And if Shaananca’s knees were getting stiff or creaky, Druadaen had seen no sign of it.
But as maddening as Shaananca could be sometimes, she did not do what most other adults would have done: pretend that his subdued manner had escaped her notice, or what it might signify regarding the outcome of his epiphanesis. Instead, she nodded back at him, eyes never leaving his face. “I would hear what happened,” she said simply.
It was not an order, not even a request…which was why his resolve to remain silent evaporated like morning fog in sunshine. “Nothing happened.”
Her expression became skeptical. “I doubt that.”
He shook his head. “No, Shaananca. I mean it literally; nothing happened. There was no epiphanesis. I did not enter Amarseker’s Creedland.” He closed his eyes, resolved not to cry in front of her. “I never even saw it.”
She frowned. “Forgive me, Druadaen, but I am not even sure what you mean by that.”
He nodded, eyes still shut tightly. “I went to the epiphanium. I met my dreamguide in the antechamber. He asked the ritual questions and was surprised that Amarseker had still not shown me his creedlands in my dreams. But he said that happens, sometimes. We went in and I laid down in the godpalm. He covered me with the robe of souls and gave me a sip from the cup of creed. And I waited to enter the waking dream.”
“All in accordance with the ritual,” Shaananca nodded.
Druadaen felt like he might throw up. “But it didn’t work. The dreamguide flinched a few times, looked surprised, and shook his head. He told me that my epiphanesis wasn’t to be. That Amarseker had shown him that I didn’t belong there. And that I never would.”
Shaananca put a hand on his arm. “Druadaen, I know it is painful, but think carefully: Are you sure the dreamguide said you ‘didn’t belong there’? Are those his exact words?”
Annoyance at Shaananca’s apparently insensitive attention to pointless details gave way to realization that her question did not arise from idle curiosity. Druadaen closed his eyes again, tried to remember.
He recalled the dreamguide putting out a gentle hand to help him up from the slightly concave supinial of the godpalm. “I am sorry. I…I have been shown that you are unable to enter Amarseker’s Creedlands. Neither in your sleep nor when you die.”
“B-but,” Druadaen had stammered, “how can this be? If Amarseker knew I was not worthy, then why did he consent to my becoming an epiphanet?” He did not add, after I have spent years being turned away from so many others!
The dreamguide looked not only perplexed but shaken. “I have no answer that would be meaningful to you. Or even to me.”
Druadaen had to concentrate hard; that was the point at which the rejection, and what it meant, had descended upon him so heavily that he had ceased to become fully aware of his surroundings.
“I can only tell you this,” the dreamguide continued. “Amarseker intended that you come here today, to the brink of epiphanesis. But to what end, I cannot say. To my knowledge, this has never happened before.” The dreamguide extended his dark brown hand a little farther, looked as miserable as Druadaen felt. “Come. We must leave the epiphanium.”
Shaananca’s eyes were narrow as he finished. “Being ‘unable’ to enter Amarseker’s Creedland is very different from ‘not belonging’ there.”
Druadaen felt too hollow to care, but he asked anyway: “Then what does it mean?”
“I am not sure, but I mean to find out.” Shaananca looked annoyed, but with herself. Or maybe the world. She put her free hand on his other arm. She held him hard, almost fiercely; it was probably her expression of love, he realized. “Young Druadaen, when a god neither wishes nor welcomes your devotions, the god is not indecisive or subtle. You would never have been made an epiphane.”
Druadaen shrugged. “Then maybe it was my fault.”
Shaananca frowned. “How could that be?”
“Today, when I went to the patientium, I realized I’d be willing to devote myself to any deity, if that would allow me to speak to my parents. Or to find out what had happened to them. Maybe that’s what Amarseker sensed: that I hadn’t petitioned him because of his creed, but because it was a means to an end.”
Shaananca folded her hands. “Tell me, Druadaen, why did you choose Amarseker? And why was he not your first choice?”
“Because as I grew older, I discovered that the gods I first petitioned—of Goodness, of Light, of Mercy, others—didn’t fit with what was inside of me. Their creeds had nothing to do with what I wanted to do in this world.”
“So you want vengeance?”
Druadaen shook his head; Shaananca had to know better than that. “Amarseker is not the god of vengeance; he is the patron for avengers of wrongs. And his correct title is the God of Justice.”
Shaananca raised an eyebrow. “Unless things have changed a great deal, Torm is the God of Justice.”
Druadaen sighed. “Torm is the god of divine justice, either among the gods or in their interactions with the world. Amarseker is the god of mundane justice, of our affairs with each other.” He stared at her. “Which you already knew.”
Shaananca nodded. “Naturally. And now that you have reminded yourself who and what Amarseker is, do you really believe such an entity would bring you to the very brink of your epiphanesis out of spite?”
“Maybe not, but then why did he do it?”
Shaananca sighed, released his arms. “Most of the motives and actions of gods are mysteries to us mortals, and the more complex the god, the more confounding their ways and deeds.” She looked carefully into his face. “But it is not just the rejection that troubles you, is it?”
Druadaen looked away again, shook his head. “It’s the dreams.” He closed his eyes. “I am afraid that I am insa—that my mind is damaged.”
He heard a small smile in Shaananca’s voice. “Trust me, Druadaen; you are not insane.”
He opened one eye and looked at her. “Then what causes these chaotic dreams? And why only in me?”
“Firstly, my boy, many other people have dreams such as yours.”
He momentarily forgot his terror, discovered he’d opened his other eye. “If that’s true, then why hasn’t anyone told me?”
Shaananca sighed and closed her own eyes. “The ways of temples are sometimes as puzzling as the gods they serve. In this case, I suspect it is because they do not want others speaking too much about the Wildscape.”
He blinked at the unfamiliar term. “What is that?”
Shaananca shrugged. “A space like the creedlands, but without any order or any deity presiding over it. The dreams there are not fashioned for a purpose and they are as often distressing as they are reassuring. Often they are simply strange, unfamiliar, surreal.”
He nodded vigorously. “Yes! That’s what it’s like!” If only I’d known to ask…!
In response to that thought, anger brewed up hot and fast from his gut, rose into his head. “So because the temples do not want anyone talking about the Wildscape, they allowed me to go on fearing that I was insane?”
Shaananca slowly reached out and touched his cheek. “I allowed you to think it, too, Druadaen.”
The heat behind his forehead became ice. “Why?”
“Because the lands seen in dreams are the province of the temples—only them. And they believe that it is their duty to guide people to the creedlands that would make them the happiest. So they do not speak of Wildscape simply because it points to the existence of other dreamlands. Besides, to be fair to them, very, very few people ever experience the Wildscape. Very few can experience it.”
“So because not many people experience the Wildscape, the temples decide not to at least explain what it is to those who must live with it? How is it that any god tolerates such consecrants? They are monsters!”
Shaananca shook her head. “Always bear this in mind, Druadaen: you walk without a god. So take care in your speech. If you hold the gods in contempt, do not share that opinion except with the most trusted of friends.” She sighed, looked tired. “And even then…”
Druadaen nodded. “I understand.” He had calmed enough to remember he was holding the velum scroll; he put it back within its granite arkalith. “Still, if just one of the temples had told me, at the start, that I could never enter a creedland, I wouldn’t have spent all this time trying and hoping and thinking it was because of some transgression. I wouldn’t have tortured myself with the possibility of seeing my parents again, and maybe remembering what happened to them. To us.” He shrugged. “So if I can’t do it through a creedland, then I suppose I must petition the consecrants to enact that miracle on my behalf.”
Shaananca gestured toward a table. As they sat, she murmured, “You must be aware, Druadaen, that speaking with those who have died is deemed a solemn and serious act—a bestowal, they call such things. It is not something the temples do lightly. And it carries a significant cost of service.”
“Or coin, I’ve been told.”
Shaananca shrugged. “Most of the gods you have approached do not buy and sell their powers. For them, there is no connection between wealth and either worthiness or devotion. The rest are not much different. If they were, then the rich would be more likely to receive the favor of the gods than the poor.”
Druadaen shrugged back. “Then I would have pledged service to a temple.”
She smiled. “The few hours that remain in your day after your studies are concluded are already dedicated here. And they earn you the stipend that keeps you housed, clothed, and fed.”
Druadaen bit his lip. No matter how Shaananca’s point galled him, it was also the truth. And as a ward of the state, he had little to complain about. His existence was in no way grand, but it was also more than adequate in every particular. “I would have found some way. Promising future service, maybe.”
She softened her tone. “I know you miss your parents. I see it every day you are here, and at every meal we take together. But that will not move a sacrist to trouble their deity. If it did, the lines of those who would pay any price to speak to their loved ones again would stretch into the hills. How is your need any different than theirs?”
“How many of them have a father who is stuck between worlds?” he shot back. “Not fully gone from this one, but not completely in the next. I thought that, maybe, if I could talk to Amarseker, to any of the Helper deities—”
Shaananca was shaking her head. “Druadaen, my dear boy. You are clever and you have learned so much, both in your classes and here. But it is hopeless to petition a god to intervene on behalf of your father.”
Druadaen looked up sharply. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
She studied him, as if reading what lay behind his eyes. “Yes, you do. Tell me: Do you think mancery, of any kind, could preserve your father in his current condition for five years?”
Druadaen felt his lip quiver. “No. It would require too much mastery, too much power to be maintained at a distance—if at all.”
Shaananca nodded. “So, by process of elimination—”
“—the power must be divine.” He shut his eyes, seeing where that led. “And if it is, then for any other god to undo it is a blatant challenge. And the greater the undoing, the more serious the challenge.”
Shaananca patted his knee. “And that is why there is no petition you could have made, no service you could have offered, which would have changed your father’s state. They will not risk going to war over this matter, no matter how unjust it might be.”
Druadaen nodded, tried to keep his grief over his parents separate from his resentment of the gods—all the gods. Which became anger over his weakness, his limitations, his failure to find a way to free his father or at least find answers…
Druadaen felt a hand cup his chin, lift his head. He found himself looking into Shaananca’s deep blue eyes. “You cannot—you must not—blame yourself for any of this.”
“How can I not?” He almost sniffled. “I was there when my parents died. And I didn’t do a thing to help.”
“And what do you think you could have done?”
Druadaen looked away. “I don’t know. Fought.”
“And you would have died.” She peered closely into his face. “Tell me, child, what is the last thing you remember from that day?”
He sighed. “Father was the first who heard something, went to see what it was. There was fighting. Mother went to help him but barely got out of the house.
“Father fell outside. Mother made it back into the house. They couldn’t win. The house was burned. There was almost nothing left.”
“And who attacked them?”
Druadaen shrugged. “No one knows. And no one knows why, either.”
Shaananca shook her head. “That is what you were told, shortly after you recovered from the rat-bite fever. I asked what you remember. What did you see and hear that day?”
Druadaen tried to recall images, concentrating so hard that he thought he could feel his pulse hammering in his temples. When he’d awakened from the fever, he’d tried to recall what happened, cried for days when he couldn’t, eventually consoled himself with reliving the happiness of the last minutes he did remember: his parents promising that they would talk about why they were on the farm and also, why the time had come to leave it. He’d been so excited…
But then nothing. They must have cleaned up the supper plates and peppered the food they had not finished. And then he must have prepared for bed. He did recall being very tired. “I remember going to sleep.” He frowned. “I think.”
“Do you remember going to sleep that night? Are you sure it wasn’t some other night you remember?”
“Uh, well…no, I’m not sure. I don’t feel that sure of anything, right now.”
Shaananca nodded. “You’re tired. Rest a moment.”
He did. The day was barely half over but he was already exhausted. He felt like he’d been pulled in five different directions by wild horses.
“That’s right,” Shaananca murmured. “Rest your head on your arms. Good. Now, tell me everything you remember about that day. But slowly.”
Druadaen thought back, but instead of becoming tense, he relaxed. He felt safe with Shaananca nearby. He even felt himself becoming drowsy, felt his awareness of the last five years slip away as he fell into living that day again.
Fell past the point where his memories ended…