4.

hard to say, really when the light ceased to illuminate when he choked on his own flame
you who walk in flat white desert and solitary canyons here, shadows once lay dark and blue
stretching long-armed to distant vanishing points... now his voice gets caught in the crannies
his own whisper echoes telling him: watch your shadow watch it watch it
watch: your perspective crawls without horizon


*******
A series of uncountable years passed. Sydney's followers grew in number and assembled below the slab of rock he called his home: half ruin, half cave. A pale, small fist smashed down violently upon a sundial, shattering it into a hundred concrete pieces to bake in the glaring twilight of LeaMonde. The junior prophet smiled through his hair at his followers, and bowed.
They applauded.
Pale hands upraised and beating together in unison, they looked to snatch the prophet and pull him down into their fervor. Such are the trials of leading. Up on his craggy mount, Sydney looked down on the million below, and realized that at least half of all those uplifted faces were waiting for him to fall. Smiling with open mouths and gleaming teeth, sharklike, just waiting for the moment when the leader would topple.
His smile faded away.
A touch at his shoulder- "My Lord?"
Hardin.
Sydney stared down his nose at the crowd. "They all want it for themselves, you know. They'd almost kill me for it, if they weren't so scared." He licked his red lips. "I can taste their greed."
Hardin cheerfully stated, "I wouldn't. I'm your lifelong servant, remember? Ordained."
Sydney sighed. "Lifelong."
Hardin gently rapped Sydney's shins with the flat side of his sword, reprimandingly. "It will be long."
The prophet shook his head. "No. No it won't. It wasn't meant to be." He looked straight at Hardin with his queer pale eyes. "But you knew that."
Hardin swallowed and twirled his sword thoughtfully behind him. Sydney was right, was always right. Deep in thought, he lost control of the sword and sent it clattering to the ground.
Sydney laughed despite himself, but immediately felt bad for it. He pulled Hardin with him into the protection of his shadow. "Tell me about your brother, Hardin." The prophet crossed his legs deftly as he took a seat on the ground, looked up towards Hardin expectantly.
Half a moment of surprise crossed through Hardin's eyes, then dissolved into the brown. "He was a sweet boy," he said softly. "He loved to play with the bugs. While I was still in the Peaceguard, before he... I used to make him little wooden beetles with joints in their legs, and he'd march them around the floor in rows."
And Sydney could only think of one toy he'd ever had in childhood, the toy he possessed even now: Dark, clotting in cobalt marbles at his fingertips. "You miss him?"
Head lowered, Hardin nodded.
"You feel guilt?"
Assent.
Sydney closed his eyes. "He had coarse blonde hair, was but half your age, always gangly and a bit sickly- a... a gap between his front teeth. Wore floppy leather sandals he wouldn't let you get rid of." He opened his eyes again. "He had your smile."
Hardin didn't need to raise his head; Sydney could feel the emotion rising like a blush from him, something between terror and worship.
The prophet leaned over and lifted his friend's head with one hand, cupping his chin. "I'm getting more powerful, aren't I?"
Hardin nodded rapidly.
Sydney whispered into his ear, "Tell me what my little drones are buzzing about."
Lips moving without his volition, "They say they've found new writings. They've deciphered further and... and you are not the last. The Rood Inverse will be passed on because you are... you are but the vessel and after you will come another who will bear the Mark..." Hardin closed his mouth with a little gasp and looked up at Sydney, hurt. He would have spoken anyways.
Sydney sat back, satisfied, and hummed to himself a bit. Sang to the Dark. Then stood up. "A test of myself, dear Hardin, not of you."
He walked back to the cliff, and once more, the cultists looked upwards towards him in anticipation. "So they want me dead for my Mark..." Sydney whispered violently under his breath. He raised his hands above his head in an orant pose. "Forget!" said the prophet of Mullenkamp in a voice that rung over the rocks and drove into each hooded cultist head like a stake. Slowly, the greed and ambition drained out of every face until all that was left was a dull obeisance.
Slowly, creepingly, Sydney smiled once more. "That's more like it."

****************

The night sky, with its secret smiles and hidden acts of furious love, was a manuscript: glorious illuminated ink upon rolls and rolls of deepest velvet. And every star was an open mouth, and from them poured the story of a destiny Sydney often wished he could not know. And along the highways and byways of the Dark opened wide by the night, Sydney could scry far and well, catching snatches of conversations not yet said, and snippets of names that would one day be important. rosen- hsss. grisso-hsss. joshhhhjossshhhjosshhhsss. Yet one name made itself recklessly known. It stood in prominence with no shame or question. "Ashley Riot," said Sydney out loud to the emptiness of his private tent, and for the first time, this night the name answered with an image.

"his shoulders are brown and wide and strong. and his shoulders are brown and wide and strong! and his shoulders are brown. and wide. and strong."

Then the shoulders turned, and revealed a face, and the lips, so familiar in their complete strangeness said, "Let me show you your end."

The skin Sydney's back burned.

****************

The faithful disciple heard a muffled something from the tent of his Lord that was not his typical mumbling of divination. So Hardin ventured to lift the flap of the tent and peer in at the boy sitting comatose on the dirt-- his eyes glazed and incendiary, his aura and scent dirty with fear.
"Sir?"
The prophet heard him (he heard everything) but did not heed.
Hardin would've reached his hand through eternal fire to protect the boy, would've thrown his body into the jaws of a wyvern. But tonight, tent flap held in hand staring dumbly, he had nothing to say or do.
He left the torch in its stand and closed the tent.
Hardin looked to the bleak night sky and mouthed a simple question--
Hardin asked the stars why; they did not answer his blind eyes; he was no prophet; his lord had been crying; they fell and faded; their lord had been crying; so they cried too.

In his tent, all alone, the boy curled his arms around his knees and stared into the fire. He dreamed of a knight that would kill the damsel. He dreamed of a hero that would demolish the castle. He dreamed of the end.

It made him smile.

****************

In the morning the prophet shed the last of his boyhood like a discarded skin and tossed it over the cliff. With long limbs nude and white, he scaled the mount until his fingers could grab hold of the sky: milky blue dreamstuff resting in his palms. He formed himself a pair of wings from it, made a promise to it that he would be back- "after he's claimed it and I am free." He attached the wings to his bony shoulders, fastened them with a destined dream. Then he jumped.


****************

The lark made no exceptions for prophets and demigods. The sun rose once more and the world stirred, impatient.
"My lord." Hardin gently shook his liege awake.
Sydney opened his eyes, and they were clear, fearless, and coldly void of color.
"It is good that you have awoken me, Hardin. We must prepare. LeaMonde is to receive guests."

poem by Ndi