No Such Thing as Fate
The Seer's mouth stretched back in a feral snarl, cheeks aching with the strain. He would not cry. He would not beg. The mob had his body, yes. They were going to destroy his mortal shell and put an end to his present threat. But they could never see what he had seen. They could never destroy the dream of him.
Fire all around him. Heat pooling against his skin…smoke from his boots as the leather finally began to give way and melt. A sea of shouting…those wagging tongues…those animal grunts and growls. If he was free, if he had only had time to complete his plan…he could have ripped those tongues out of dirty throats and left them twitching on the forest floor.
He could have gouged their eyes out and left them moaning, spluttering on the blood that streamed down their cheeks. He could have turned them as blind as he appeared to be, deaf as they wanted to make him…defeated, as they foolishly thought he was.
In a certain way, in a trivial way, he was blind. He couldn't see the mob, but he could feel each and every single one of their eyes. They were all averted. Not a single peasant, knight, or noble dared to look him in his blind face. They were all afraid of him still. They were ready to tie him to a post, set him on fire, and let him scream…but even now, the brutes were afraid of him. They knew he was more than a twisted old man. He was a spirit. An energy. A god.
But something was wrong. Something itched, travelling across his face like the legs of a beetle. Irritating, it crawled to his bound wrists, to his boots in the fire as the flames began licking his skin and the pain began to grow. The itch was entirely separate. The wrongness, the strangeness of it.
Because in his Mind, in his magic, he could see what was causing it. His milky orbs rolled in his head, homing in on the chubby little face of a boy. The child was at the forefront of the crowd, pushed there by the milling legs of the peasants. He was missing his parents. He was terrified.
And he dared to stare up at the old man on fire.
Through an arcane fog the Seer could see this boy, a smoky, stilted vision that was startling in its clarity. Wide grey eyes in a chubby face, hair black as night hanging messily over his forehead, plastered by sweat. Terrified. Wetting his pants.
He could see him in his own future, the future that was always in flux. He could hear the boy's voice. Heard him at the moment of his triumph. Heard him cry with the certainty of Praios in the burning sun, "I will save Nuri!"
Nuri. The Fairy Queen's daughter. Trained in the Harp and his last and only hope. The little princess could save him if his wizened, shriveled spirit ever managed to find its way back to the Faery Realm.
But apparently, if this boy had anything to say about it, she wouldn't.
Something in his black heart smiled then. He unclenched his teeth for the first time, spitting blood at the little boy. "You!"
The ugly, harsh noise of the crowd fell like a dropped cloak, muffling all sound. The townspeople grew quiet. Instinctively, they glanced anywhere but the Seer and found the only person who was different. The only person not looking for something to fixate on. They saw the boy.
How easy it was, the Seer thought, to send frightened sheep to their destination. He only had to bare his teeth, like a herding dog. Their imagination…their dreams, lay waiting for a spark. I can see the Future. He chanted, sweating as the pain in his legs grew worse, as someone threw an extra torch onto the pyre. I can change the Future. I can make my Vision into Truth.
"It's you…" he hissed, struggling to keep control of himself as the fire roared hungrily to life, beneath his feet and beneath the minds of the villagers…clouding their eyes as they stared at one of their own children, at an innocent little boy. They stared at him and saw only danger. "You spell doom!" The Seer cried again, his weedy voice echoing in the morbid forest.
Someone standing right behind the boy shoved him away. Night-hair fell forward on stumpy legs, crying fearfully, crawling outside the circle of people. Some of the Knights who still had their wits about them barked sharply in rebuke, helping the boy up, guiding him away from the others.
The Seer smiled. He was already seeing the boy's future…already watching it change, because of him. Because of the Seer, the successor of Satinav…the future God of Time.
He threw his head back and screamed, voice distorted by smoke and heaving agony. But it was a human word that slipped out into the night air, flickering beneath a starless sky as a black shape wafted above his head, and a feather drifted down towards him. "Corvus!"
Summer lay low and heavy over Andergast. Crickets sung loudly from the wheat fields and between the loose wooden boards of the houses and shops. The Raven soared across the treetops, wings flapping a bit more than usual to keep afloat in the deadly still air.
It was night. He'd been a Raven for quite a few months…learning to fly, learning to listen. Learning what to eat and how to find it. Thankfully, acquiring the taste for a Raven's diet hadn't been difficult at all. His beak, tongue, and bird-like brain were all designed for it.
But as he searched from one Faery Gate to another and found no trace of Nuri or even a run-of-the-mill Faery to help the Bird Man return to Neirutneva…he felt bitterness sour his mind. Hatred, anger…the need to be proven right. His only defense against despair.
So he came back to Andergast, looking for the little boy who wet himself. The little night-haired boy who dared to watch the Seer burn.
It wasn't hard to find him. As he'd always known, the Seer was more than the old man's fried corpse, more than the Raven…the Seer was Sight itself, unending knowledge to the farthest reaches of Time and beyond.
And the Boy…he had a special connection with the Night-Haired.
He followed his Mind's Eye to a modest hut just outside the castle walls. This was where the poor lived and the newcomers who hadn't yet earned a place in the community. Holding back a delighted, hacking caw, the Raven fluttered down to perch on the window sill.
As he had foreseen the boy was there, crying, clinging tightly to his mother as she tried to put him back to bed. The father leaned against the doorway, crossing his powerful arms, his face gentle with concern. "How much longer do you think he'll have these nightmares?"
"A man being burned to death screamed at him. Some brute shoved him, and he had to be rescued…it's a wonder the poor mite isn't out of his mind." His mother said, touching a gentle finger to the boy's trembling mouth, shushing him tenderly. "If only I hadn't let go of his hand…"
The Raven titled his head, perturbed. He hadn't cast any spell on the boy, and his dark dream powers were nothing more than fizzling energy at the edge of his imagination. He couldn't induce nightmares in anyone and yet the boy's were quite powerful. They were delicious, deliberate, always the same. He could see them like a black cloud flying around the child's head, sucking in and out of him with every sobbing breath, like a parasite living off his terror.
Perhaps the boy had some sensitivity to magic…perhaps that's why he had stared at the Seer, unable to shake the feeling that the Old Man could see. Maybe at the burning he had even sensed the Transmigration spell, and some animal part of him knew the predator had not yet passed on. The enemy wasn't dead.
The Raven whistled through its beak…the human equivalent of a deadly snarl. The more he learned about Night-Hair, the less he liked him.
There would be time enough to deal with him…every 13th Fridas from now, every bad harvest, every plague or blight that brushed through Andergast would have superstitious peasants throwing rocks through his windows and beating him in the street. Someone would kill him, sooner or later.
And the Raven had other things to do…like find a Faery.
Still, it would not do to leave without paying his respects. He huffed softly to himself, dancing lightly along the sill towards the lantern in the open window, obviously lit to comfort the child and drive away his nightmares.
Using all his strength he swept his wings out. One of them caught the lantern and knocked it clear off the sill into a pile of filthy hay, waste fallen off a cart. A troop of little orange flames rushed from the cracks in the glass and grew into a monstrous, destructive dance against the wooden walls of the hut. With a harsh caw he hoped would sear into the mind of Night-Hair forever after this night, the Raven took to the skies, still laughing.
Far beneath him, a burly shadow moving down one of the narrow alleys stopped suddenly. He looked up at the Raven's call and saw orange shadows flickering on the black edge of the forest. Turning, he saw the tiny outsider's house go up like kindling.
The man broke into a run and dove blindly, smashing the wooden door down and disappearing into the flames. A crowd gathered. Men came rushing up with buckets of water and their wives followed them with more buckets and pitchers. The rest focused on sweeping any debris away, keeping a clear circle around what was quickly looking like a giant's tinder pile.
Seconds later, coughing and swaying, the figure from before emerged again, cloak wrapped tightly around himself. He fell to his knees in the mud, bathed by firelight. Throwing back his hood and gasping, he turned his face up to stare at the stars, grateful just to be able to breathe again.
Another voice had been running parallel to his, coughing and hacking and sobbing all at once. Now a sooty black head revealed itself, with red-rimmed eyes burning with tears, staring out pitifully from the man's arms.
Some courageous fool who had rushed to make sure his own house was safe and then stayed well beyond the blaze…that fellow stepped forward now, his voice painfully loud and full of self-congratulatory wisdom and a mocking sorrow. "It is as the Seer said! The poor babe…already, his ill-luck has destroyed his home, his family! Not even his own parents are safe from the doom he harbors within himself!"
As he bent over to put his hand on the stranger's shoulder, a fist bolted from the blue. It hit square in the man's kneecap. There was an audible crack and he fell with a howling shriek of pain. "Shut up, Oldrid…you've no idea what you're talking about." A dangerous, graveled voice came from the child's savior. Dark eyes, sharper than flint, glared at the hostile crowd.
Oldrid struggled back, whining. A friendly neighbor took up the cry, shaking his fist. "That brat is the doom of Andergast and all who harbor him, bird catcher!"
"Is he?" Gwinnling muttered, tightening his grip protectively around the weeping toddler, glancing up at the sky, his eyes hunting for something he couldn't seem to find at the moment…black wings, perhaps. Or a beady pair of eyes glaring down from the trees.
"Is he, really?"
The orphan Geron's childhood with Gwinnling was tolerable. The birdcatcher was caring enough, but Gwinnling had never married, never had children of his own. He was better with his hands than his words…fixing things instead of hearts. But he gave Geron what he could.
Geron. A boy who wasn't always angry but was never truly happy. Always restless as if the Seer himself had possessed him, always climbing some new wall, or out of yet another hole he'd dug himself into. Always climbing up. A boy with hair like ash and eyes like steel…like a sword resting in charcoal, razor-sharp yet hidden and unassuming.
Gwinnling once bought Geron a flute. The little boy proudly proclaimed he would call all the birds to him with song, and they would catch every single one and become the most renowned in all the world. The birds would like the music so much, he said, that they would never want to fly away. He danced through Andergast warbling the sweetest tunes, with a gift for music that made feet tap and memories swell.
Until Geron realized his flute gave a very clear warning sign to undesirables that he was approaching, that the Doom of Andergast was nearby. People would cuff him and yank his hair…kick him if he dared to trip. They would shout or throw things or corner him, taunting and teasing until he was nearly biting his own tongue in fury and hurt.
He put the flute away in the chest by his pallet. When Gwinnling asked him why, the look he received in answer…he wondered sometimes what would happen if someone were to draw out that ash-hidden sword, if those coals ever burst into flame.
There was a bit of a villain in Geron. How could there not be, the way everyone he ever came across treated him? Sometimes Gwinnling saw it. He remembered smoking a pipe and sitting on the ladder leading up into the second floor of their rickety house, watching his adopted ward.
No more than eight, Geron was balanced precariously on a stool, clutching a pale blue songbird in his hand. A Sapphire Starling with dark cobalt streaks, like smeared kohl, reaching from its eyes to the tips of its wings.
Wiry and thin, Geron's eyes shone fiercely as he put the beautiful little bird inside one of the many wicker cages hanging over his bed.
Gwinnling took out his pipe a moment. "What you have there is a songbird, Geron. A pretty little ornament, not a pest. What are you going ta do with it?"
"I didn't mean to catch it...and they shouldn't be killed. They shouldn't even be caged."
Gwinnling lifted an eyebrow. "Then why keep them?" he watched as at least a dozen other brightly colored birds twittered in their cages, clawed feet wrapped around the bars like scaly little hands as they peered down at the two humans, wings spread for balance.
The dusty sunlight beams slanted through the colorful feathers…almost like stained glass in the Cathedral of Hesinde.
Geron jumped down from the stool. As he did so, he inadvertently revealed the portrait of his parents hanging on the wall. The painting Gwinnling had created from memory the morning after their death. He'd seen the couple briefly in the marketplace…watched them anxiously gather their child from the crowd the night the Seer died. The father, Brynvi, with his black beard and steel-grey eyes, and the mother, Glenvylla, with her twinkling, merry brown eyes and aquiline nose. Black haired as the father was.
He couldn't bear to think of Geron forgetting their faces.
Geron, meanwhile, was still thinking of an answer to Gwinnling's question. But he followed Gwinnling's gaze to the picture, and a dark, almost hateful look clouded his features.
"I want them." Geron murmured, still glaring at his parents. "I want them to stay here. With me."
Nothing ever went right for Geron. Always trying new things…always trying to impress, never bowing to please. Asking to join the knights and getting tossed into a muck-filled stable. Wrangling his first independent job during the Spring Faire and ending up in debt because a group of bullies smashed the stand he'd been charged with guarding. And then there was the time he snuck into the Academy of Magic.
From the day Gwinnling took him home and set him up as a birdcatcher's apprentice, Geron was disaster prone. He was always breaking things, or things were always being broken around him. It wasn't until he was twelve that the boy figured out he had magic in him. (Ironically, things broke far less often once Geron realized he could do it on command.)
Or he was not magical in and of himself, the townsfolk whispered bitterly…but a powerful magic force fueled by emotion…namely anger…flowed through him, and its aim was to do evil to others.
They said that Geron had dark magic, that he asked to join the College and was laughed at. That he jumped the wall trying to see the Headmaster. That he attacked the apprentices with fireballs when they seized him sneaking across the courtyard.
Nobody seemed to care that the bird-catcher's freak had never conjured so much as a spark, nor had he ever conjured a spark since.
Or that his clothes were singed, his face bruised and nose bloody when Gwinnling took him home in disgrace, limping and holding his shoulder gingerly.
Gwinnling sat beside him upstairs that night, letting the fire warm them both as he watched Geron stare into the orange flames with dry eyes. It crackled loudly, vibrant and glaring against the heavy silence.
What could Gwinnling say? I told you so?
His thoughts sifted back to the miniature catapult in Geron's bedroom, downstairs. "First a Minstrel, then a Knight, then an Engineer…now a Magician?" he asked softly, watching carefully to see if his words hurt Geron or not. "And what's wrong with being a bird catcher, hmm?"
Something cracked loudly…too loudly to be natural. Startled. Gwinnling glanced around and saw that a piece of half-whittled wood by the fireplace had split down the middle. Something Geron had been trying to carve into a dragon for weeks…unsuccessfully.
"Nothing," Geron said, his tone even, his voice clear. That was the frightening thing with Geron…he had become so skilled at hiding the emotions in his body language, his voice, even his eyes…only the fact that they were barely blinking hinted that anything was wrong.
"I think I will be a bird catcher. For now. Then maybe, I'll be a Hunter. Catch more things."
"You could catch a fairy?" Gwinnling asked hesitantly.
He didn't know why he said it. Something about colored light in a bird's wings and music that could summon a flock without fear. Something about a boy with dreams of all he could be.
"Fairies aren't real," Geron said calmly. "Magic is held in the hands of the mages. Mages are stupid. Fairies are stupid. And stories…" he sniffed, gingerly wiping dried crusts of blood off his nose. "Stories are for children…they don't come true."
Nuri's fingers ached. She could barely feel the bones of them anymore. Her arms felt like someone else had seized her by the wrists, forcing her to move them up and down, up and down…and something had her hair. Something like a fist of wood had seized her by the head, forcing her to stay upright.
Notes of music rang from the Harp, pure and clear, echoing from end to end of the cavern. From the misty, dark heart of it behind her, she heard the crows like a black river, murmuring and flapping and rushing by. A cold wind that smelled like foul bird droppings and dried blood made her gag.
The first time she heard Geron's voice, it wasn't his voice at all. It was music from a flute, rolling up from his heart and between his lips, turned into magic. She hadn't heard music in all her time in Aventuria…she hadn't heard it for so much longer in the Faery realm. Of course she answered him back. For the first time in years, she revealed her hiding-place because she couldn't resist the magic of his song.
Later she realized Geron's music was a part of him that people had used to hurt him, so he hid it away, to keep it safe because he thought no one liked it. Just like she hid her magic from her family and ran away to the world of humans. Geron had been hurt by his own people just as she had.
"Then he trusted and sang again…" she sighed. No bird stalled in flight. They were well-used to the sad, breathless whispers of regret from the pale, wasting child below. "He sang for me."
From her poisoned fingertips the music soared like lightning. It gave life to the darkness, disturbing and scattering it until each piece of shadow became a black crow, ready to spread the will of the Bird Man.
The first time she saw Geron, it wasn't his face. It was eight chestnuts held together by sharp sticks, bobbing along just outside the cracks of light in the wooden wall that hid her away. The chestnuts danced a little, and a gruff voice grumbled, "Geron here is my dearest friend of the forest, my lady fairy."
She laughed. How could she not? It was so fresh and new…something had woken up inside this boy, as nothing woke up any more, ever again, in the dismal kingdom of Faery. Something like taking a bandage off a deep wound, letting the sunlight and the pain warm it. A good pain.
A stilted story, from a boy who tried too hard. Geron told her many more stories during their travels together…he must have thought her a very wonderful protagonist indeed, worthy of a princess in a tower made of almond wood, surrounded by a garden full of rainbow birds and beavers. Under a soft sky green as grass.
"I wanted to make the sky green for him," she said again, tears trickling from her eyes. How strange…she thought her heart was all dried up inside, like the Dark Fairies. But then again, Geron had been a liar, and also sad and lost like the Dark Ones…but there was still something bright inside of him. Dear, angry Geron… "I would have made his story come true."
This time a voice answered her. A weedy wail that she used to think friendly…now it hurt her all the more to hear it grating on her ears. "Raahk! Make the sky green? For him! After he lied to you? I lied to you, didn't I? Why don't you forgive me so easily, then?! Haahk!"
She was too tired to lift her eyes. Too tired to see the Bird-Man who was also the Raven who was also her friend…but not anymore. He lied to her, like Geron did.
Her aunt become one with the Harp of Faery and could never leave it. Now, because of the Bird-Man, Nuri was the same. She'd known this would happen…she'd known the whole time where he would lead her. But she never thought he'd use the Harp…use her, for this much evil.
She didn't know this much evil could come from her.
She only wanted to play beautiful dreams for Geron, to make the sky green. She wanted to make humans happy…to make a world for them, a world just like Fanglari.
The first time Geron saw her, was at the gypsy woman's camp. When Nuri said she was going to count all the stars in the sky.
"You'll be at it a long time, then. And just think, what if a cloud rolls over?" Geron teased, with a mischievous smile. His grey eyes lit up like silver in the sun, his strong, handsome mouth twitching at the corners as he looked even more alive than ever before.
Nuri laughed with triumph, her eyes the strangest green Geron had ever seen. Dark, like a forest pool hidden in the heart of a forest, too close and quiet to let the wind in…only sun through red leaves, and the soft step of a fawn, and the powerful summer song of little things too small to be known.
"I like you much better this way!" she cried, excited, unashamed.
He stopped smiling then. Sometimes he could be like starfire, sometimes he could be like sunfire. Sometimes he was an icy waterfall, ignoring her, not feeling her…sometimes he was a gentle meadow, loving the sun, loving the creatures…loving her as she sat among the flowers. Humans could be like that. Happy and sad, light and dark. Awful, and then better.
But not fairies. Fairies could never go back.
"I can't forgive you." she answered at last. The Raven's wings grew still. "You could have gone back…you could have been sorry. You've had a hundred years to be sorry."
Wherever Geron was now, he was sorry. She was sure of it. He was coming to find her, smashing and hopefully fixing things all the while, trying to find his way. Geron never stopped trying.
The first time Geron heard her was right after he lied to her, as they approached the Faery Gate in the swamps. Nuri knew she was going to say goodbye…she was going away with the Bird Man, and would be long gone before her mother let Geron go.
She gave him back the necklace. After all, he was to be happy forever after and she was to be a Harp…there was no point anymore in holding on to it, and all it meant to them.
She kissed him on the lips like a human would, and she taught him her magic spell of mending…so he could fix all the things he broke so very often now that she wouldn't be there to do it for him. (But also because…what was the good of such a spell, when it couldn't fix her heart?)
Nuri was going to use the harp to put a rainbow bird in every tree.
How Geron would smile to see his story come true. His dream.
"Rhaak!" the Raven scoffed, startling her. "The Night-Hair has always been weak…I made him that way. I've taken hope from him, and family, and now you. The boy was destined to be a great Hero, by Satinav, by the so-called God of Fate."
With a jolting motion that frightened her, he swept off his perch and landed on her shoulder, claws digging into her skin. "Do you know what I did?" his wings brushed her cheek and she burst into a sob. She'd been crying off and on for days…although it felt like years.
The Raven didn't care. "I saw what he could be, and I decided differently. I changed the Future…and when I use you to reforge the Mirror, I will be the new God of Time!"
The night they kissed, Geron told Nuri about his dream, the bad one. About the Seer, and the ring, and the fire. Still lying, still hiding so much…but in his own way he was trying to prepare her for the Raven's betrayal.
And Nuri tried to make him see how human his terrible life had made him. She crossed her legs before the fire and stared earnestly at his profile, at the strong features and the way his Adam's apple bobbed up and down awkwardly. "If you'd never been a bad luck charm and the Seer had never happened, you wouldn't be so brave and loud and wonderful."
"Loud?" Geron smiled at that. Then his face fell again. Nuri hated to see the smile disappear. Geron aimlessly poked a log into the fire. His grey eyes were shadowed, and he whispered like Nuri did at the Harp. "I would have been happy."
"Yes…" Nuri tried to be patient with him. "But there are many kinds of happy, Geron. Happy like a fairy or a child, a happiness so bright and pure you wish you'd never lost it, and the world is darker because it's gone."
She paused, wondering how to get her point across. Then she clenched her fist.
The stick Geron was holding cracked. Half of it fell into the dust and Geron gasped in surprise. He turned to stare at her.
She was smiling. "I want everything to stay fixed…but that can't be, much as I want it. Like the Faery world, eventually everything passes away. Changes. Turns dark. Sometimes, after something is broken…it becomes better. Happy again. Because it lived. It fought. It knows sorrow and joy and triumph, and the taste of it is so strong, Geron…like wine and spice and sunlight. Because your life was so terrible…you can make it so, so much better."
That is the first and only time Nuri could remember seeing Geron cry.
Trapped in the soft, sweet-smelling, dying body of the fairy princess, the Seer could only exhale as stone and ash swept through his body, rendering him into dust.
All you need to catch a bird, according to Gwinnling, is the right bait and a good trap.
A trap indeed, built of arrogance and premature triumph. Of that cursed weakness of his…to be proven right. Tricked, trapped, he spoke the word and transferred his soul, and the ring was broken asunder. There was no way back.
And the boy, the Night-Hair…Geron. Geron's words echoed in his dying skull.
"You…. it's you!"
"Let me make a prophecy for you. You will fail, and meet your own death."
"You bring doom!"
"The Doom that I am supposed to bring affects only you!"
"Bad luck charm, birdcatcher…Night-hair."
"Your time is up."
He'd thought himself a god, a prophet…capable of molding the future. He saw a hero in Geron, lying in wait to thwart him. When he met the boy after so long, and saw the wide-eyed cherub turned into a pale, bitter wisp of a man-child, glaring at him from narrow, distrustful eyes…he'd been so pleased. This is no hero, he'd thought, this is a human disaster.
How wrong he was. Self-fulfilling prophet that he was…monster that he was, he'd turned Geron into something else. A spark, waiting to be turn into a roaring fire that would devour the Seer once more. For good this time.
Geron was more than a hero. He was a survivor. He had lost so much because of the Seer that he wasn't afraid of losing anymore. To save Nuri he would give her away and set her free on the black wings of a Raven. Give up a life with her and the form of her, even the Dream of her…because he loved her.
So he gave Nuri the body of the Raven, and she lived. He forced the Seer into the body of the Faery, and he died.
The Seer had tried to avoid fate and, in doing so, had created his own Doom.
And Satinav, chained to the Barge of Time, bitter, sinful, all-seeing…Satinav's punishment fell upon the would-be-god and, as always, Satinav had the last laugh.
FINIS
Author's Notes: I've been a devoted fan of Daedalic Entertainment for years now, and this was the game that converted me. The art is soft, luminescent, and beautiful. The characters are fairly well voiced (for a game made based off a German RPG that's been scripted into English) the world-building is fantastic. The story...has a delightfully sad twist at the end, surpassed only by Memoria, the Sequel game which I also highly suggest you play.
For those of you who actually have experienced the wonderful story that is Dark Eyes: Chains of Satinav, then let me say I wanted to explore the deep love between Geron and Nuri...what made them 'click', so to say. It was so much more complicated than an innocent girl and a good-hearted scoundrel. It was broken families and dark spirits...little hints throughout the game that Geron was far more innocent in some ways then he appeared, while Nuri had seen things far darker in the Faery world she left behind. That interested me very much, and I hope you enjoy this this story of all the little moments where they fell in love just a little bit more.
Thank you so much for stopping by, and as always, reviews feed the plot bunnies! (and coax my Muse back from her paid vacation...this is the first story in what, months?)
