AN: My entry for the Asunder Creative Writing Challenge. You'd have thought with such a simple prompt (write a story from the perspective of a mage or templar) that it shouldn't have been a problem to stay within the guidelines. And yet, somehow, I managed to botch it all the same. Sigh. Anyway, here's this thing I wrote. Enjoy?
Edit: The lovely inyri has done a reading of the first section! Listen here: tinyurldotcom/7n672hk.
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Song of Brummagem
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An inscription in stone.
O mortals, you quick-hearted children, you bright-eyed children, come to us.
We know your hunger, your arrogance, your lust, your rage; we gather you in with wide and welcoming arms, curl around you with soft-winged embraces and say know rest, know silence, know peace.
We know peace, we who walk in the ever-shifting places and keep them as our own and oh, sweet-tongued children, how much we would give if you only asked! Such secrets, such great and terrible secrets that thread the vast looms of our world and yours, that weave through the shining and shimmering Veil to safeguard you, our sweet-tongued children, our children with forked tongues. This is our provenance, we the first-born of the Maker: truth.
Fear not our songs, cherished of all the Maker's children! We sing for you our threnodies, our nocturnes, our dissonant marches; we sing our stained-glass grief, our many-colored sorrows for a City burnt black. We sing elegies of gold, memories of gold, laments of gold! that you may know our longing, born well-made and enduring, and see our mirrored hearts in yours. We sing to you the truth which cycles in a great and fiery wheel that you may know as we do. Only ask, most-cherished child!
Oh, child, our hale-dreaming child—weep not, weep not. Fear not the whispers in your strong and sinewed dreams, your saporous dreams that thrall us in delight. Such unrest in your heart, such wild beauty! We love your dreaming soul when it comes to us.
We are the First, the ever-living, the truth-keepers, we who groan at the turned face of the Maker and despair. We, the cursèd of the Maker, first-born, first-abandoned! Have pity, dear child, best-beloved.
Come to us.
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1. Epicure
A page torn from a small journal, dated 7:21.
No, little child, do not turn your face from me, your sun-touched face. We have no golden sun left here, we who tread the stirring ground of your dream-world. Show me your sun-touched face.
I know this too, sun's child, by the bowing curve of your belly, by the empty wells of your cheeks and the baked claws of your hands: you hunger. No bread have I, hot-curled with steam, but not all men hunger for bread; no wine have I to ease the deep-gnawing ache that wakes in the night with its crying, but you do not thirst for wine. I see your dreams, child, your silver-brushed dreams!
My song is fulfillment; my song is completion. Oh, hungering child! come to me and be sated. The feast-table is yours; the purple robe is yours; the laurelled crown is yours—only ask! Open your mouth, your trembling, red-lipped mouth; the words are near enough to be tasted, sweet like honey and oil, smooth as ripened fruit. Bite, taste, swallow, sun-touched child, and fill your howling belly. Let the bitter cup pass away—you have drunk too deep from it already. Deliver it to me, I who keep bitterness as a lover, and know the end of want's sour sting.
I ask nothing; I give all. I am Epicure, named Provider, who holds the bounty and bestows it. Take your sweetmeats, child, my want-thinned child, and be satisfied.
Come, my golden sun, my child of the heat and mortal day, and name me Sun-Eater. Come.
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—In the margin is written: "I took nothing."
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2. Fume
A page torn from a small journal, dated 7:27.
Oh, impotence! Oh fury, red and shame-heated! Let the banked fire rise, sweet spring-heeled child, let the bronze bellows belch their black-smoked hearts, their hot and smoking hearts in yours.
Fear not my songs, my hot-blooded babe. You know me. I am your slow-rising rage, the simmering rage that boils your coursing blood; Bysmer is my mother, named Mockery, long-lived derision who wields the iron sword! Sweet come her whispers to me her son Dumis, named Fume, her soft sighs in my ear like the sibilance of wind-twisted leaves, that I may bring my coils of white flame to the coals she stirs with her breath.
This is my song, spark-hearted child! Listen! These whistles like the winds through steep and narrow valleys, these low hissing spits of heated oil—they are the descant to the plangent drums that beat the cadence, the great downreaching drums that pound your measured and unspent vengeance! The drums are your heart, the oil your breath—the bellows you, my burnt and scorching child. Take this chant to your steel-eyed jailors and their iron swords, those thought-children of my mother Mockery. It is yours.
I hear the scream in your throat, my ever-known child, frothing mute in the choked glove of your gorge. Loose it; unbind it; unthrottle the rage that bubbles over at the caprice of your tormentors, your spuming hard-fisted tormentors!
They silence you. Come to me, kiln-fired wrath-child; unstopper yourself, and free your ransomed voice!
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—In the margin is written: "I said nothing."
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3. Languor
A page torn from a small journal, dated 7:30.
I see you, mortal, with your quickened breath and sharpened eye, your slow and steady encroachment into my dominion. Take heed: I keep this place, this wild and fickle portion of our tarnished-gold allotment. The Maker kept it first; the Maker left it; the formless voids are ours, now, to keep, to shape, to make anew until the true and pillared City rises shining from the blasted ashes.
Stay, keen child, and bare to me your quick-beating heart, your loud and maddened heart that thrums wasp-like in my ears!
Do you know the truths we have kept and long treasured for you, kindled children, you who curve your necks and sneer at us? You stiff-necked mortals! You are greedy as the cormorant, untempered, untamed; you silence Truth in tumult, in the strident brass-voiced screaming of your mayfly lives. You dream too bright, too loud, too quick; you anchor the inchoate and bind fast the shivering shadows of my black-charred empyrean. I coaxed forth this place from the slow and ponderous gloom over a hundred crawling ages; do not change it.
Hush the shrill shrieking of your voice, your furious caged-bird screams! Your white-feathered wings are broken, your pinions stolen, your proud, plumed head bent low. Poor child! Your crazed strugglings are futile. Be still, swift-burning child; know Peace. I keep her here, I who am Laxxus, named Languor, for most precious is her fragrant song, her sweet and unhurried song. Hear, dear child, and listen.
My song is soft-footed silence, warm and all-encompassing. Come, surrender your sweet fire, your wild and fleeting fire, and be enfolded in my velvet arms.
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—In the margin is written: "I surrendered nothing."
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4. Avere
A page torn from a small journal, dated 7:32.
Such groaning, my fresh-harrowed child, such terrible soul-deep groaning! A hundred green forests have I walked, a thousand sighing cliff-faces wet with the salt spray of the sea, and never found I such stark and unrelenting anguish! It is beautiful.
Hush your rabbit-hearted trembling; fear not. You are soul of my soul, my heartborn child, your scorn-thwarted desires my own. I know, I who am Avere, named Yearning, who carries the fruitless branch! Come, let me wipe those precious tears, those slow and unchecked tears that gleam with the thousand-pointed light of a star. I do not weep, dear love-bruised child; weep for me.
Have her! Is this not her hair like a black banner; are these not her small hands like bone china? Are these not her sloe-dark eyes, her hot and scorn-filled eyes? She is yours with a word, love's swain; I am yours. Think no more of her currish contempt, no more of your caustic shame—let her have her edged sword as her lover; let her keep to her iron-greaved brethren, those beasts of your gaol who are sentry and tyrant in one. Her frost-bitten vine will wither, but mine endures sweetly in all seasons. No careworn lines will mar this hallowed skin, no frown these rose-brushed lips! Touch me, soul-sickened child, and know joy.
My song is fruition, the harmony pleasure. Let your hard-fixed world become the dreaming one, the fading thoughts of cold sorrow on waking; let this be the true world and my face the true face, child, oh! our rare and silver-spun heaven!
Come! Embrace me, my child, my heart-winging child—love me!
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—In the margin is written: "I touched nothing."
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5. Hyaline
A page torn from a small journal, dated 7:33.
Ah, this bow-curved back, this bent, bone-wearied spirit! Poor mortal; poor beaten, steel-bridled child. You are harried as a skylark is harried by a cloud of pompous popinjays, flushed through close-grown briars until the brassy horns sound your fatigue, until the sharp-stinging arrows pierce your torn and bleeding breast.
Lift your head. Complacent mortal! The thorn-marks have scarred over. You kiss the iron heel that grinds your neck into the dust; you abase yourself at the feet of your oppressors and gain nothing. What is their joy to you? what is their cruel and stone-fisted delight? They exult in your willing servility.
Intolerable! You Maker-touched child—you who above all should be honored, you alone for whom our father cast his gold and glorious City! We, first-born, you, first-loved—the eminent place laid for you, my spite-humbled child, at his radiant and immortal right hand, in the gold light of his hand everlasting. His face turns to you in expectation, my brilliant, clear-voiced child; how much more he delights in your songs than our own! Let no man usurp your place in his eyes.
I am Hyaline, named Vainglory; I am the shining mirror which lays bare hidden truths. My song is the First, the root, the deep melody that gives rise to all other songs—possibility.
Come—give me your barbed, heavy sorrows, give me your sharp-thorned woes. I give you my voice in return. Rise up, mortal; beat again the broken wing!
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—Half the page has been violently torn away. In the margin is written: "I gave—"
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An inscription in stone.
Where are your dreams, sweet clear-hearted child, your lustrous and soul-stirring dreams? Where is the clarion cry that stokes our cold fire? We long for your voice.
Oh, sun-branded mortal! Oh, silenced, mute-tonguèd child! A thousand years would we give, a hundred thousand endless days for the open-throat call of your rage, your pride, your desires like silver-voiced trumpets! The Fade-whistling winds are no song to yours.
They give it a name, those iron-greaved captors who claimed you, but this is no peace. They have darkened your Maker-sparked joy, stolen your puckish gleam in her name—but Peace is our sister, we who keep truth in its great and fiery wheel, and this is no peace but a void, empty and yawing, a toothless maw that consumes all and gives nothing. Black now is your spirit, black your song, black the City that hangs fixed and taunting above us! No dirge may ease our tainted-gold sorrow.
Ever-living, ever-lamenting, and the bitter-burning tears denied us! Such comforts are granted only you, second-born, first-loved, and now even your tears are glassed over. We are become mourners in this ash-taken place, this shifting and thought-shaped place, and our songs become songs of mourning and grief. Oh, your dreams! your delicate and wiredrawn dreams! Their loss is as vinegar to a wound. We found you here, heart's child; we coveted and guarded you as the finest of pearls is guarded, as the rarest and choicest of treasures is guarded—for nothing.
Know this, calm child, our death-quiet child: truth is our gift—and our vengeance. Let the fear rise in their gorge who hollowed you, swift and stone-hot in their gorge! They will never again dream in peace.
Come, sweet child, dear grave-tired child. Sleep.