Chapter One: The Pirate
The end of world came almost without
warning.
No dark clouds, no ominous
celestial portents of any kind. One day, the sun shone, the two moons continued
their lazy chase across the Aerthian sky. The next moment, the sky parted and a
great and glowing sword of light burst from the wound, striking Aerthos down
and cutting a vicious swath of death through all its inhabitants. Man, woman
and child, animal and vegetable fell before its dread blade, and when all had
perished, even the Reapers stood for but a moment before they, too, were slain.
The world became like a lump of
coal, blackened and dry. Cracks formed in the crust of the land, splitting the
world wide to its core, until, at the last, every last ounce of life was sucked
away to slake some bottomless thirst that lay beyond their perceptions.
Even the Reapers, the old woman thought with a shock that stirred
her from her dream. The most powerful
beings in all of Aerthos, those who held the power of life and death in their
hands, who could pass between the lands of Aerthos or through time itself as
easily as a mortal could step from their beds. What manner of being has such power?
The screams of the dying were
still fading in her ears as her eyes adjusted to the pre-dawn darkness. The
winds toyed with the curtains of her room, blowing in from the east and the
south. The same dream had first haunted her nights almost five years ago to the
day, and she had not even the barest concept of what she could do to stop it. Surely the gods do not give us dreams of the
morrow in order to punish us with fears of the unavoidable, she had
thought.
As Song-Mistress of the Sky
People, she had to be on the watch for dreams of grave portent. Sometimes the
dreams were simple – go west for rain; watch the baker’s tower for an
unexplained fire; treat the mason’s son with dried farol root and the extract
of a spicy persimmon fruit to reduce his fever. For two incarnations of the
Song-Mistress, there had been few concerns – the sandstorms which frequented
the deserts notwithstanding – but now, this. She sighed ruefully.
A short-legged fur-covered animal
appeared as if from thin air, its bright orange eyes sparkling in the
half-light.
“Ah, Merlo,” the woman smiled.
“Did I wake you with my dream?”
The creature shook its head. The
old woman stroked the creature’s soft iridescent fur, causing her hand to
momentarily look as if it was fading in and out of reality. In truth, it was a
side effect of the creature’s natural camouflaging abilities, but Merlo had
ways of using her fur’s shifting color patterns to achieve a variety of
mystical effects as well.
The creature’s fur was the least
of her uses to the old woman, however. As with all of her kind, Merlo was
connected to all her species, living and dead. All memories and thoughts were
stored in the aether of the world, floating in and out of their kind’s grasp.
It made a fitting companion for a Song-Mistress – Merlo’s access to her
species’ memories gave her a veritable library of history that stretched back
thousands of years. Access to the whole of history helped put whatever visions
the Song-Mistress might receive into proper context.
Sometimes, the best the creature
offered was comfort. With the series of dreams like unto the one which had just
awakened her, there was no context that helped, no historical anecdote that
reassured the Song-Mistress. The dreams had troubled her and it had grown long
since past the point where she had considered them a simple trick of anxiety or
bad wine. What she had dreamed would come to pass, and though the final outcome
was unclear, she knew that all life hung in the balance. She was old enough and
wise enough to know that all too often the least desirable outcome stood the
greater chance of happening.
But it was not until a month
earlier that she had been given hope. Hope, strangely enough, that came in the
form of a corpse.
She put what steps into motion as
she was able, and now, with those steps already on another edge of the world,
she was helpless to do aught but wait. Patience was not a lesson that had come
easily to her. By the time she had a grasp of it, she had so precious little
time left. One more irony to add to the
pile, she mused. One more pinch of
incense to add to the flames.
She exhaled, contemplating rising
early to meditate in her prayer room. It was on the west of the city; it would
still be in shadow for another two or three hours. She decided to stay here for
now, and go to her prayer room when the sun was higher and that extra bit of
cool would be most appreciated. For now, she decided to remain in the quiet
shadow of her room, alone with her dark thoughts and the merest fragment of
hope to drive them away.
“Fly well, my niece,” she
whispered, flexing her old and tired fingers in an ancient gesture of good
fortune. “Find what we so desperately need and return with it to us.”
Sleep would not return to her that
morning. But all day long she would pause and look to the north, for sign of
the airship’s return.
"Dead Man" is the new Aesirium novel by author Ren Cummins, due out by the end of 2013.
You can read more about his previous novels at http://talariapress.com/the-chronicles-of-aesirium/
