Elizabeth Heydon - Elegy for a Lost Star

“The secrets of the spies,” said Trug.

“The secrets of the Lightcatcher,” added Omet. His voice always scratched on the Bolg ears when he spoke in his attempt at their tongue, but none of the Archons winced.

“Those are all worthy answers,” the king replied. “There are greater secrets, secrets I will impart to you in a moment, to keep locked in your hearts, guarding them with your very souls. But we are guardians of many smaller, sometimes more urgent secrets as well.” He turned to Vrith, the Quartermaster. “How long can we stand a siege of the mountains if we are totally beset and surrounded?”

“Two months and sixteen days during this season,” Vrith answered rotely, as he had done many times before in several different languages. The Archons were accustomed to being questioned in this manner, and had been since early childhood. “Two days less in winter.”

“How many of our traders and agents are now outside Ylorc?”

“One hundred twelve,” Kubila replied.

“How many of the invisible routes used by the doves of Roland has the master of hawks discovered?”

“Nine,” said Trug.

“What lies at the bottom of the passage opened by the recent explosion of the Lightcatcher?”

“We don’t know yet, sire,” Dreekak said reluctantly. It was an answer that an Archon hated to give, but was best given quickly, lest the king believe that one was covering a weakness in his or her training.

The king nodded. “All these small secrets, and countless others, make up the thousand. But what is the one?” He watched them for a moment, then turned to Harran and called upon her wordlessly.

The young Loremistress thought for a moment, then answered. “The secret of why you have chosen us, what you are training us for.”

“That is it,” Achmed replied, pleased. “Your training is finished, at least that which was needed to bring you to the status of Archons. This is my last word to you as students: What is the secret of wisdom?”

Greel, responsible for mining, spoke. “Before acting, envision your act carried out a million times.”

“Before speaking also,” added Yen.

Achmed assented silently, then gestured for them to move closer.

“For all this time that I have taught you such secrets, I have kept one to myself, unshared, unrevealed to any but Grunthor.” And Rhapsody , he thought bitterly, but she did not retain it . “But if you are to fulfill my wishes for you as Archons, there can be no secrets between us. I share with you now the thousand-and-first secret. But you will need light in this lightless place in order to grasp it.”

Achmed took from his cloak an egg-sized stone that glowed clearly with light as bright as that of midday. The Archons shrank away from the radiance, but discovered a moment later that it was cold, and did not sting their night eyes, the eyes of cave dwellers who had lived in the belly of the mountains for centuries.

“The Nain discovered these stones a thousand kings before Faedryth, their present ruler. Their use was lost and found a hundred times between then and now. Let none of the lore you learn be ever lost in the same way.” He handed the glowing stone to Harran. “You will need this to see what must be seen before you can understand.”

As he spoke, he slowly lowered his hood and began to unwrap the cloths from his face. Between the mesmerizing effect of his words, and the vision in the bright light before them, only Grunthor, who had seen and heard it before, was breathing.

“To comprehend my purpose, my reasons for training you thus, you must understand something that you do not know about me as of yet. I was born from an unholy union to a terrible purpose: to find, hunt, and kill a spirit that no one could see. That purpose came to me as a racial imperative; I never knew my mother, but feel her blood in my veins still.”

The pale, purplish skin of his forehead, etched all over with veins, was no preparation for the sight of the whole of his eyes, mismatched in color, shape, and position, resting in skin so translucent and light that they might have been floating unsupported in his skull. The Archons swallowed in unison.

“While through my veils you may have recognized the traits of my Bolg father, one of a dozen soldiers that raped my Dhracian mother, who they chose to kidnap by a toss of the bones, what you now see is the bastardization of the race of which I was the first of a generation. The Dhracians are an old people, born of the wind, descended from the race of Kith, as you have studied, Harran. But the purpose of the Dhracians was singular—we were jailers, guardians. Eventually, when we failed in that task, we became hunters. But instead of being brought up with the training, the knowledge, and the understanding of the lot that was bequeathed to me by my Dhracian blood, I was instead raised by Bolg on the other side of the world, tortured and tormented and eventually imprisoned.” The voice held no trace of regret, no plea for sympathy, just a flat, toneless sound that indicated the import of the words.

“One day the urge in my blood became too great to deny; I knew I needed to find out what was driving me to murder. In order to escape from the Bolg, I was forced to kill he who had been made to guard me, my brother of sorts, really not much older than myself.”

The Archons stared at the newly revealed nose, its flaring nostrils almost like that of a horse, but made of delicate flower-petal filigree, underlaid all through with the vein lattice.

“In order to survive my flight, I was forced to consume him.”

The Archons nodded nonchalantly. Cannibalism had been common among their tribes before Achmed took the mountain. At Rhapsody’s insistence, it had been outlawed; the king had acquiesced not because of any of her arguments against savagery or because of how the practice was viewed by the outside world, but because he needed as many of his subjects whole and intact, and therefore uneaten, as possible.

The king’s virtually lipless mouth, made for tasting air for traces of fear, whispered in the darkness.

“Now that you have finally seen my face, you can understand. This is how I know what I know. How I feel you enter a room. How I hear you breathe any curse, smell your fatigue. It is in my skin. It is my blessing, and my bane. I can feel the rhythm of the world around me; I cannot hide from it. It is not flawless, but it is rarely wrong. And now I will tell you what you need to know in order to understand why we guard the thousand and one secrets.”

He turned to Harran and leveled his uneven gaze at her, as if he were sighting down a weapon. The Loremistress maintained a stoic aspect, but her thin body was quavering like a leaf in the wind.

“I have allowed you to study the lore of Roland, and of other lands on the continent, but have often indicated to you that what you were learning was really folklore, tales that have been polluted because they were told by generations of idiots, rather than preserved by Lirin Namers and others skilled in the art and sworn to the truth. What do you remember about the lore of the F’dor?”

The young scholar swallowed, her dark face growing pale.

“F’dor were the children of Fire, the ancient culture that sprang from it,” she intoned, reciting from the texts she had studied. “It was the F’dor who tamed fire, and gave it to mankind for its use in protection, in the warming of homes in winter, in the forging of weapons. The F’dor, now long deceased, were the forefathers of steel, of hearths, and the givers of the gift of flame to man.”

Achmed nodded thoughtfully. “That is what texts say, indeed. That is what the imbeciles who tend the Fire Basilica in Bethany preach to the hapless numbskulls who attend services there. That is what the world believes. I tell you now, it is the greatest lie that has ever been told.” His eyes glistened and he motioned them closer, to keep his words so soft as to barely be audible.