Gol || The South Star

... ever shall they seek out those with the truest spirits and the strongest sense of purpose...

"Look up, my friend."

The Reader lifted a head in surprise, following Hedwyn's hand to where it gestured above a rise in the mountainside. Above them, curtains of delicate light hung and trembled, shimmering like sunshine on water. There was a slight streak of green, a rend that deepened and grew as the Reader watched. Then, shivering damasks, looping spirals, flickering flames of red and purple. The Reader felt as though the lights ought to be accompanied by dramatic sounds, the bangs of fireworks or the percussion of great drums. But the symphony was utterly silent, almost solemn in its dance. The lights were comforting in their own way; even at the summit of Mount Alodiel, in a remote and frozen wilderness, there was something else out there that was still alive.

The Reader imagined the fear the first exiles must have felt when they saw the sun setting on the horizon of the Downside, as their first night began to rise. They must have each felt such despair within their hearts as the darkness descended, only for it to spark back to life as the stars began to shine.

Hope. It was the only condition the Reader knew anymore. Bitter love, contempt for corruption, blind hope. A permanent state of anticipatory bereavement.

"Oh..." said the Reader on a small, outward wisp of a breath. "How beautiful."

"The sky does not shine so brightly in the Commonwealth," agreed Hedwyn.

Is it the same sky? wondered the Reader, though did not speak the thought aloud. Mesmerized by the gilt splendor of it all, the Reader turned slowly, in a full circle, gazing into the brilliant density of the celestial alignment, like a storm over a black depthless sea, made brighter still by the twisting auroras composed of tiny star grains –– points of light so fine and numerous they seemed like luminous vapor, the entire sky hung with veils of light like dazzling smoke.

"Were that the rest of the Downside were thus," said the Reader.

Hedwyn let out a long, chest-deep sigh. His green eyes glistened. Reflecting no light save their own, they shone brightly in the snow and star-muffled night, and there was in them a look of such uncommon energy and kindness and understanding that the Reader, for a moment, forgot about the imminent passage through the Scribesgate, under Celeste's knowing eye, the Liberation Rite, the weight of choice and consequence, of saying goodbye, hanging over all their heads.

Suddenly, startling the Reader, Hedwyn dropped to his knees, his smile sliding from his face like water off wax, his back crashing against the scree at the foot of the slope. He looked crumpled. The boy pulled his eyes open, blinked his way through... tears.

Hedwyn was weeping.

The Reader crouched across from him, every muscle thrumming. Hedwyn's eyes, which were always so open, now seemed unguarded, achingly vulnerable. The silent sobs didn't merely burst out; it was as though every bit of him between the tears and the outside had been leveled.

"It is all right," the Reader told him, but Hedwyn already knew it the lie of it.

"My friend... we've taken everything from you," the boy murmured, drawing close. He held the Reader's head between his hands. "You... who cannot earn your freedom... you're not coming... coming with..."

It was not a question.

The Scribes had created a manic world nauseous with the pursuit of freedom. The Nightwings, all the Triumvirates, bore the crosses of their wrongdoing while drowning in the thick sweetness of their unappeased ache for return, a shameless greed as they coveted their liberation. All the waters of the Sea of Solis wouldn't fill a bucket with a hole in it. It was their fall, and their fellowship. Desire. The hole in the bucket: the gulf of yearning into which the soul emptied itself.

Hedwyn smiled a small, sad smile. "Deserters, they are wont to say, have given up everything. Oaths. Families. When you desert, it breaks you. It leaves you willing to do anything, because you've already forsaken everything you could have cared about losing. Oh, my friend... how wrong they are."

The Reader looked askance, color highlighting sunken cheeks, before putting an arm round his shoulders. The Reader had no idea what to tell Hedwyn, for the former knew only how to bury things precious, or how to send them away forever. The Reader did not know how to make them endure. Those secrets belonged to the Scribes alone.

The Reader knew how to read the stars; reading matters of the heart was another trial entirely.

But then Hedwyn grabbed his companion in a hug so fierce, so crushingly insistent and so breathtakingly desperate, that the love therein seemed to seep clean to the Reader's bones. Even the Book of Rites could not have enshrined a truth so pure.

Hedwyn held the Reader for a little while. His palms felt warm and dry in the Reader's own. The Reader pressed gently, and Hedwyn's fingers returned the pressure, but only just, as he had tilted his head skyward to watch the heavens one by one cut their way through the onrushing darkness, until the blackness glittered, the stars tiny flames burning beyond the bounds of time.

The Reader remembered, though not very well, what it was to fall asleep holding the hand of another; how precious such an experience, how fortunate those to whom it was vouchsafed by the gods of friendship, or of love. The Reader had thought the memory lost forever. Perhaps the Scribes had deigned to return more than just a promise of freedom.

"I am not as enlightened as Mae," said the Reader, quietly, "nor as wise as Tariq, nor as learned as Volfred, but I do believe that our nature, at its best, hinges on restlessness, on wanting something –– something else, something more, whether it be true love or liberation from the Downside or a glimpse of true freedom just beyond the horizon. It is the promise of happiness, not the attainment of it, that has driven me from the beginning, and it is the folly and glory both that marks me your Reader. To help my friends earn their freedom from this place, to see them returned to the light of the Commonwealth... it is enough."

"But I made you a promise, my friend. I swore to you I would get you home."

"Oaths may make a liar a liar yet again, having lied about the oath as well."

"But it cannot alter the worth of a man's word. I will find a way."

The Reader cast a glance at the landscape. The scarlet sumac had passed back in Black Basin, leaving little more than rocks and snow. The drippage along the stones had slicked to a shiny and deceptive glaze. It made the Reader conjure a vision of skimming backwards on one foot, the other leg, crooked and emaciated, extended, arms becoming wings, soaring over the Fall of Soliam, up, towards Freedom...

Hedwyn held the Reader's gaze. "My friend..." he couldn't smile; it was too painful, "who will you choose to liberate this night?"

The Reader did not answer immediately, but held Hedwyn closer. The latter stared ahead of himself for a long moment, then gradually lowered his head into his hand and began to cry again. The sniffles became sobs, the tears running sideways across his cheeks. Hedwyn cried until there was nothing left but a raw hurt that nibbled at his insides like a hungry imp.

"I am sorry."

Slowly, the Reader raised both arms, hesitating for only a moment, then slowly rested one hand on Hedwyn's arm and the other on his back before sliding it upwards to cradle his neck.

Softly, again: "I am so, so sorry."

The Reader moved closer, holding Hedwyn's shoulder, pulling his head to chest-height. Embracing him fully.

"Don't do this," wept Hedwyn into the Reader's robes, clutching at them. "Not like this..."

The Reader lowered one cheek to the top of Hedwyn's thatch of red hair. Allowed the boy to feel for himself the sublime pain that throbbed inside of the Reader as it did inside of him.

"I must."

They sat together, then, as they mourned, bundled into the Reader's sacraments, warm and aching in the chill of the night. Some ways away, in the amber glow of the Blackwagon's torches, it began to snow. Tears exhausted, Hedwyn's breathing slipped to a slow rhythm. The Reader spared a sidelong glance, knowing that in such circumstances, one ought to return to one's Blackwagon, to one's own bunk. But the Reader did not move.

Hedwyn fell asleep first. The Reader sat in the dark, listening to him breathe, stealing a little of his warmth. Since he was asleep, the Reader began to stroke his hair, running hands over strands so red they ran almost bloody between each finger.

"I love you," a low murmur. "I love you so much. Thank you."

With a sigh, the Reader settled down, eyes closed, and willed the mind to empty.

And, before long, began to weep silently, without witness.

Milithe || The Bog Star

... their knowledge ever-waking into newfound depths of consciousness, they lead us all to better know ourselves...

Sanctity and sentiments both were distant things to Sandra the Unseeing: understood in abstractions, but avoided at intimate distances. Here was a woman, thought the Reader, who once treated being told to face the music as an invitation to dance. But now, the Scribes had her pinned. Her hands held in place, the magician out of tricks.

"I didn't want the last of your lot, either," said a soft voice in the Reader's ear, vinegar-bitter. The Reader's grip on the orb tightened, but said nothing as Sandra continued to mutter. "Murr… he came to me as I lay wounded and fallen. All my plans and hopes laid low by one inescapable act. The Demon Scribe looked down on me, him, a creature of infinite compassion and unwanted mercy. And he stopped my heart."

For a moment, there was nothing with the Reader but the fast shivering rhythm of Sandra's words.

"I wish he had killed me."

The Reader's eyes snapped open, realizing that Sandra meant it, that this was no idle despair. The implications hit the Reader with all the force of the cold ocean.

"My life is a lie," spat Sandra. "Time cannot be measured when a single moment in this accursed thing can expand to hold eternity. One wants to live and ends up choosing death; one wants to die and ends up living. What keeps us here, really? A thread that breaks in a breeze and yet tethers my prison entire. Showing me a sliver of kindness won't save me, Reader," she added, sneering. "No more than Murr's mercy could save me. For what I've done, no god would forgive me."

The Reader held her there, staring deep into the orb's surface, into the wraith's imperious, wounded face, until the Reader's hand rose, gently, to brush against Sandra's cheek.

And whispered: "But I am no god."

Triesta || The Silver Star

... here, in this land, their purposes are shared, their goals, united...

The Reader, along with Pamitha, began the survey of the slopes around the temple cistern, the Sea-Sojourner, Underking Ores, curled to a corkscrew around its base, as though to suggest the deepest thirsts could only be quenched by the Scribes. So many times, thought the Reader, were those exiles of the Downside pushed to look to the stars to fill and fulfill them with significance. And how many times, considered the Reader, with a sudden sadness, had the Nightwings left them wanting?

It was only when a pair of spinel-speckled wings spread over the cistern that the Reader wondered if, perhaps, one's mind ought to be directed towards less morbid ponderings.

"You think too much, Reader darling," said Pamitha shortly, but not unkindly.

The Harp moved an amphora to the right, then back to the left, the whispy digits sprouting from her metacarpus handling the pitcher with ease. The Reader merely observed as Pamitha scooped the water from the cistern. Even in the sight of the Underking, illuminated by the pulsing nimbus of the Scribesgate, off in the distance, the Reader could not know where the complicated, tangled twine of Pamitha's loyalties and allegiances met their terminus, any more than the Harp herself knew. But, either way, the Reader tried to work it out from Pamitha's bright eyes, her warbling, trifling words. Even if the Harp was untruthful, or if her motives for conducting the Rites ran counter to the Nightwings' own, the Reader suspected the triumvirate –– barring Jodie, of course –– would not soon abandon the clipped Harp on the slopes of Mount Alodiel. At the thought, the Reader felt a cinder deep in the stomach, the urge to shield, to protect, to guide. Wasn't it the Voice, mocking, scornful, withering, who once said the Reader was far too drawn to wounded creatures?

Perhaps the yearning for companionship had stretched the Reader too thin over too many stars, too many souls. The mystery of the Reader's stubborn fondness for the entire triumvirate, demons and nomads and saps and wyrms and harps and bog crones all, underlined a strange sort of beauty that was never raised above the reach of all expression until it had claimed kindred with the deeper friendships formed in the Downside, a fellowship transcribed and canonized by the Scribes Themselves.

As Pamitha and the Reader made their way back towards the Blackwagon, the latter tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of the retina, so that when the Reader finally did turn to face the dark surrounding mountainside, it was as though the eyes of a billion imps were blinking out, in coded dots and dashes, the arithmetic of the living, the sum of the universe, the stories of history, the Book of Rites itself, a life older than anyone could have ever imagined.

And even after the lights were gone –– fading away together, like they belonged to a single, sleeping creature –– something still lingered in those folds of black greywacke stone, sitting quietly, almost as though the mountains, like the Reader, were waiting for something to resurrect itself on the Eve of Liberation.

Ores || The Azure Star

... never ceasing, ever longing, as they do, for something more...

Big Bertrude's glowed gray in the south, its waterfront lights barely penetrating the swamp gas and fog of Flagging Hands. To the north was nothing but darkness, the Wyrm Gulf, and beyond that, the Sea of Solis, open water all the way to Black Basin, nearly two hundred miles distant.

Gathering speed, the Blackwagon reached the point where the coast took a sudden plunge down the cliffside. Its passengers held on tightly as the vehicle tipped over the edge and careened towards the gulf. As they fell, part of the isthmus disappeared into a shimmer, diaphanous against the murky green water. The waves heaved up in billows, tossed itself in storms and cyclones, twisted in spouts, dashed itself to mist upon the rocks, the currents beaten by the tails and breathed by the gills of the wyrms. Indeed, the Reader hardly noticed the Blackwagon's transmogrification into a vessel ostensibly buoyant and moderately seaworthy as something slipped snake-like around the hull, fleeing the sudden turbulence of the Blackwagon's launch. Something else moved through the water nearby, and for a moment the Reader thought the cut and thrust of the prow had loosed a clump of weed from its anchor. But, no… there were a myriad dark shapes, caught in glimpses between the waves and the churn of white.

The Reader's attention turned towards Hedwyn at the bow, crouched low and peering over the side of the Blackwagon at the goings-on deep below. As the surface began to churn, the boy stood slowly and a little unsteadily, with something like childish excitement sparkling in his eyes. Hedwyn looked back at the Reader, and seemed to be on the point of applauding himself. Look, he seemed to say: we're alive. Isn't it amazing?

Setting the Book aside, the Reader came up beside Hedwyn and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Nomad, steadying them both as they, together, watched the waves.

"I dislike boats," muttered Jodariel from a little ways away, glaring balefully over the side of the gunwale.

"Do you get seasick?" asked the Reader.

"No. It is a vileness of the head rather than the stomach."

"Motion-sickness, then?"

Hedwyn coughed and failed spectacularly at hiding his smile.

Jodie looked slightly more unimpressed than usual. "Evidently, you are a physician as well as a scholar, Reader. Know these mental disturbances of mine are not dangerous and, in of themselves, portend no ill omen. However, I find I am harried not by seasickness, but by the prospect of a tempest."

Instinct, perhaps? The Reader could divine meaning from the stars, and Mae, from the Scribes Themselves. What, then, could Jodariel intuit from the black stormclouds hanging heavily in the watery sky?

The Reader left the Demon to her maudlin thoughts and turned again to Hedwyn to find, though the wind was cool, sweat had begun to trickle down the back of the boy's neck, dampening his collar and plastering the linen between his shoulders. Hedwyn's hands had gone pewter white around the rail, and a look of dread flickered in his large, deep-set eyes.

"Don't think about it, Hedwyn," said Jodariel, softly, but with great assurance, evidently attuned to her ward's distress.

"Oh, cripes Hedwyn," moaned Rukey, slinking out from the cabin without preamble. "You ain't seasick, are you?"

"No," said Hedwyn shortly, not trusting himself beyond one syllable.

"Probably need a bite o'breakfast to settle your stomach," said Rukey, none-too-helpfully. "Get something solid inside you."

"Had...breakfast." This time Hedwyn managed three syllables –– but with some difficulty. Rukey took no notice.

"Ginger is good. 'Specially pickled ginger. Sits in the gut nicely," he said. "Goes well with a piece o'greasy bacon. You should try that if you..."

But before the cur could finish, Hedwyn lurched forward and hung his head over the rail. Dreadful noises tore from him. Rukey turned to Jodariel, eyes narrowed.

"Not seasick, he says."

Lu || The Vernal Star

... should they earn back their liberty, then they shall spread Enlightenment itself, and all of us shall grow...

"Monsters?"

"No doubt you thought them stories, a narrative mechanic to lend weight to one's didactic inclinations."

"It hardly seems possible... and yet, the Titan Stars..."

Volfred fixed the Reader with a look those unfamiliar with the Sap might mistake for disdain. "You may think I jest. That I invent the names. I do not. Search the Book: you will find them all listed. They were monsters of the highest power and malevolence. All were omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. And, Reader, all are dead."

"Then we have nothing to fear, unless you weigh Udmilde's devotions with any real consequence."

"And I do not. In a way, there are no true enemies in this place anymore, Reader. In the Downside I have found a freedom unattainable in the Commonwealth: a life unhampered by possessions, since everything not a necessity has become an encumbrance. I had found too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that a sort of tranquility is to be found there."

Mae, sitting nearby, looked suddenly upset. Her eyes went wide, like two bright, vitreous coins. The girl went on with an oiled tongue, as though afraid of being silenced: "But my life was so hard, so hard, here. I roamed aimlessly, alone save for the Scribes. Oh, I was so lonely. Why was I drifting? Yes, I wish I knew why? I was not aware of the reason myself, not then. Why was I drifting?

"Did I do something bad, Mr. Sandalwood, to find no rest here?"

Do I truly deserve my exile? she seemed to ask.

And Volfred, for once, had no answer.

"What did I do wrong?"

The Reader's chest began to ache.

The Sap placed a knobby hand on Mae's shoulder, sparing a parting glance with the Reader before leading the flighty girl away from the Blackwagon and into the forest

The Reader went to the edge of the clearing and watched the two distant figures proceed through the orchard, towards the tangles of the basin. The trees, frosted with light green buds and white blossoms, soon conspired to hide the pair from view.

The Reader puzzled over the way, despite their exchange, Mae behaved with the old Sap, pecking and chirping at him, almost as if the girl were trying to remind Volfred Sandalwood of something he'd long forgotten...

Ha'ub || The Midnight Star

... they are as necessary as are those against whom they rebel...

At the edges of the Reader's unconscious mind, a nameless voyeur crept on cur paws, a nightmare lying in wait, preparing for the moment when the Reader would begin to dream...

The dark, when it came, had texture, some velvet, some satin, some like thorns and jagged stone. It shifted positions. It breathed, distended and contracted. The sighs of the Dream lifted the Reader's cloak like the flaps of a tent, and sounded in the ears like falling snow. Cut against the swathes of shadow, Reader could distinguish a silhouette, unmoving, maybe seven feet tall with its shoulders hunched and its eyes boiled away from its skull. The Reader blinked to make sure it was real, trying and falling to swallow past a lump, like pebbles in the pit of one's throat.

"Dear Reader," said a Voice, in a tone belaying all but the utmost contempt, the words with an edge of broken glass. A hand, skeletal, black, tipped with talons, brushed the hair back from the Reader's eyes. The touch was cold, and the Reader shuddered.

"A crushing defeat, yours, though mayhaps it will put iron in your backbone and sulphur in your blood."

It was as though the Reader had been garroted by razor wire, the words sharp and slicing, rendering bone and brain matter to ribbons. The Voice swarmed in the shadows, coming to life amid draughts of mercury vapor and phosphorus like an animated fresco painted on the moving wall of sleep.

"But you will try to cheat your fate, will you not? You seek to slip the moorings of your abandonment. Very clever." The Voice ran his hand down one suddenly bloodless cheek. "Your black soul indulged itself with the company of your fellow outcasts while your higher mind looked the other way, and sought freedom. Typically devious, Reader. Once again you hide from guilt and blame. If you are going to be a bringer of pain, then you ought to learn to be a bearer of it, as well."

The Reader floundered in anguish and dread, but found no voice with which to cry out.

Like lightning in the mind, the Reader saw the ribs of the Downside laid bare and bleeding –– as though witnessing the laceration of a living thing. The Reader heard the wails of the world receding innumerably, choking at their chains, muffled and congested with the floating scum of carnage that no wind could ruffle and only the Greater Titans' fire could cleanse.

"What of the sanctified language of those books of yours, Reader? Your collection. Its poetry. Its dogma. You believed merely because you could speak and read the language of belief. That is all faith is, really. And faith, like paper and parchment, so easily burns."

The Reader heard someone crying. A group of people screaming in harmony, in agony. Strangulated calls and guttural, primeval noises. Explosions, shattering masonry, splintered glass, falling statues... the curl of dry velum, set aflame. The sounds echoed down from the Voice and the Reader's memories both.

"Some have the good fortune to wake up again," said the Voice. "For others, the mere act of living in the Downside is a constant nightmare. And for you, dear Reader... I shall make certain you sleep for a very, very long time."

The Reader jolted awake, the cold sweats creeping on as they always did, soaking the sheets. Waking from a nightmare only to be immediately haunted by the memory of it, Reader doubled up, unable to catch a breath. The dizziness hit like a Blackwagon wheel over a boulder, and the nausea followed not long after, the Reader's skin simultaneously icy cold and stinging with heat... too distraught, at first, to even acknowledge Hedwyn's presence.

"Are you all right?" he asked, whisper-quiet to keep from disturbing the others - Mae, who murmured secrets in her sleep, Ti'Zo tucked under an arm; Jodariel, deadly still, her pommel in her palm; and Rukey, snoring loud enough for all in the Commonwealth to hear, which rendered Hedwyn's quiet endearing, if entirely unnecessary.

The Reader nodded, managing, at last, to breathe properly. Hedwyn had bent over the bottom bunk, seemingly unsure whether to put his arm around the Reader's shoulders or to provide enough space to recover. Wisely, he chose the latter.

"What's the matter?" he prodded gently. "I heard you whimpering down here. Did you have a bad dream?"

"A nightmare. A particularly unpleasant one, and not the first. I'm sorry to have woken you."

Hedwyn gave a small facial shrug. "I wasn't sleeping, my friend." He tried to hide it, but the Reader could see a shadow gathering in his eyes. But then he twisted his head to look at their companions and smiled. The Reader had never before seen a sun move so quickly to hide the clouds. "Rukey sees well enough to that. Jodariel has ceased to notice such disturbances anymore, and Mae must have the blessing of the Scribes Themselves to dream so soundly."

"If we could all be so fortunate."

"She deserves her rest. She's had a difficult life." Then he slowed and stopped a moment to consider the Reader. His gaze was years away. "The past has a way of dropping ice to the bottom of one's stomach, doesn't it? Sometimes it feels as though memories are there for the singular task of teaching us as many things about hurting as it can."

The Reader sighed. "And sometimes the good memories are just as painful as the bad ones."

"I am so sorry. I don't..." His face shifted a little. "Is this a good time to pat your shoulder?"

His uncertainty made the Reader smile. "Yes. Now would be a great time."

But instead of just patting a shoulder, Hedwyn leaned in and wrapped his arms tentatively around the Reader. He was not so much taller: the Reader's head rested neatly just below Hedwyn's chin, where the former could feel the latter's breath lightly tickling the scalp.

The boy smelled of incense and the sour metal of his stock pot, of sleep and the sacristy.

Jomuer || The Dusk Star

... thus shall they anticipate what is to come, with open eyes and minds, and never frown upon what is in store for them...

The gentle pulsing and flickering of stars made a kind of music, a sweet mesh of whispered tones and sighing harmonies that held the Reader in its gravity like the world holding the moon.

"I read somewhere that flying is like throwing your soul into the sky and racing to catch it as it falls."

The Reader's taciturn companion said nothing for a while, gazing into the clear, cold night, fingers picking idly at the stringed instrument on his shoulder.

The Minstrel who called himself Tariq towered over most of them, Jodariel being the notable exception. His silver hair, as fine as cornsilk, fell thick and straight almost to his waist. His complexion was practically translucent, a fact that had caused Hedwyn no small shortage of concern when the Minstrel had gone missing in the Jomuer Valley, wandering the dunes under a high, hot sun in search of lost friends and lost souls.

As the Reader glanced over at Tariq, he seemed astray in his own unfathomable thoughts, content, it seemed, to keep his own company as he continued to count the stars and brood upon the nature of all celestial bargains, ruminating on his own dependency on yet detachment from the Nightwings. Of his willingness to summon aid from the stars with nary a thought spared for the spiritual consequences to himself. For, the Reader suspected, there was a part of his strange mind that had consigned itself to follow the fate of the Scribe's chosen triumvirate, to learn of whatever conclusion lay in store for them, even if it was, in the end, an absolution Tariq himself could not share. Nevertheless, Tariq needed to know the end of the saga: the value, perhaps, of the exiles' torment.

The Lone Minstrel's voice, when he spoke, wasn't always easy to hear, his words, not always easy to understand.

"That does not happen in my experiences, Reader," he said quietly, feather-soft: "Stars fall. They are not in the habit of going back up again."

His hair loose and his fingertips calloused to rough, dry nodules, he took up a place on a small stump, righted his instrument, and began to play. Every movement was polished, every syllable precise, with a confidence beyond pretending. He played with the ease of a practiced sailmaker, his face half-lit with all the flattery that flickering starlight bestows on a lover's body. His oddly muscled hands looked slightly outsized, the Reader noticed, as though they belonged to an even bigger being trapped in a normal-sized body. It made the deftness with which he handled the strings all the more surprising. He summoned the Scribes perfect in grace and form, stories with sense and clarity far beyond the Reader's reckoning. Each ode was finely crafted, impeccably performed, wringing the Reader's feelings without giving away any of what emotions of Tariq's own might lie beneath.

"I can feel Them," said the Reader.

"Aye, They are a wonder big enough to lose oneself in," agreed Tariq kindly, velum-colored eyes aglitter. "Like the sea. Or the sky."

The Reader nodded, a ghost of a smile. "But They won't let you in."

A small incline of a silvery head. "Not until my time."

His face was soft, hard, speaking truth. Playing a lie and a lyre both. Mourning and accusing. Sad and weary and relentless.

The music broke against the Reader, arresting and fierce, beckoning gently as each note unwound, rising and tensing. It spiraled upward, growing more abandoned with each refrain.

The Reader grasped at Tariq's cloak for comfort, suddenly rootless, desperately afraid of being swept away.

The Moonlit Minstrel sighed. "Reader... we all fall. You, me, emperors, gods. The stars do not rise again. But... perhaps we may."

All the world was made of music. They were all strings on a lyre. They resonated.

And thus, the Reader knew, they must sing together.

Khaylmer || The Rogue Star

... their paths were fated to remain together...

Most days, the Reader was awed by the world. The bandit mask of a waxwing imp on a bare branch a few feet away; the clear bright sun of a frozen winter noon; the rise of the stars, like a splash of diamond dust, in the eastern evening sky. The air was so dry, so clear, and there are so few people, and almost no lights. And as the Reader lay on the roof of the Blackwagon, feet dangling over the side, and looked up into the sky, it seemed as though there was beauty to be found everywhere.

But, always, a deep sadness remained still...

Soliam || The Golden Star

... they rise to greatness, always striving, never overreaching...

Aridity ought to have felt light, freeing, the sun sucking the water from the Reader's robes. But the land unleashed grandeur at the cost of terror. The Downside was sublime in the way a poet or a bard might have used the word –– a beauty not embodied in peaceful dales but rugged mountain faces, not reassuring but daunting, the land's skin and haunches, its spines and angles, arching prehistorically under a withering desert sun.

Washed against the shores of the Sclorian, starving, injured, alone, the Reader's mind swelled out as though to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that the Reader feared the loss of the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. The sensation was feverish, dreamlike, looking out over a world where life moved more quickly, where realities were different and dangerous and consequences, immediate. The Reader felt time pass in the rain that did not fall, in the flow of lakes and rivers dried to dust in the Sandfolds.

The sky was as red as coals in a forge, lighting up the white siltstone flats along the river, the Sandfolds, the Downside beyond. Dew in the twilight had wet the needles of the chaparral and rosebush, and when the rim of the setting sun edged over the horizon, the ugly plants seemed to the Reader to be spotted with diamonds. The few sprigs of vegetation were feeble, emaciated things. The flowers in the Commonwealth, the Reader recalled, were taller, more fragrant and vivid. The memory, imprecise but unchanging, lead the Reader to an inevitable acceptance that the past remained unequaled by present life. The Reader remembered home not by indexing mentally the marigolds, daises, or bluebells pressed face-down on parchment paper, but in the shape of the sand-blasted artifacts along the river: cacti, broken cages, imp tracks in the dust. Disparate objects that surrendered to and influenced the memories, an unappeased yearning for a more abundant and happy place.

Breathing deeply, the Reader tried to forget the emptiness, a kind born of hunger and homesickness both, the weight of exile, the long anguish of living, of dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, the Reader was finally coming to a halt.

A moment, an eternity, later, the Reader fell back and lay still against the burning breeze across the desert as the light died was so sweet the Reader could almost drink it. The air grew thick with the wash of cricketsong, with swarming particles of noise and sand. Soon, the Downside's stars seemed to blaze just beyond reach, the last constellations falling in blooms and bunches low on the horizon, until, at last, the dark waters of the night began to fill the Reader's lungs.

And so the exile on the shores of the Sclorian took no notice of the strange vehicle rumbling into view, nor of the three figures who emerged, cloaked in raiments and masks, as though to shield their faces from the elements and the Reader's eyes both.

"Another piece of filth expelled from the Commonwealth."

"See? Right on schedule! What'd I tell ya!"

"You told us we would find someone alive."

"Someday. I said we'd find someone alive someday. Just not today, I guess, but don't be glum! I can see you frowning under that mask."

"I am always frowning, you scruffy cur."

"Hold," said a third Voice, lighter than the first, less flippant than the second. "This one is still breathing."

"Then stand aside. I shall send the wretch to a better place."

"Wait... the markings on the rags, the sigil on the back of the sacraments. I think this poor soul is one of them."

"It matters not. Look at it. This creature is beyond our help, as we are beyond its."

A snort from the smallest figure, all hair and flies and dust. "Broken, shaking, starving, probably diseased, goin' by that leg... yeah, good luck with that, chummy. See you back at the wagon."

"Indeed," rumbled the first figure, the broadest. "The day grows dim. You have at best an hour."

"Understood... I will not be long."

The third Voice appeared before the Reader as his companions departed, dressed in a cloak of orange and cobalt sarsnet trimmed in gold, but with the bone-white mask unfastened. He stared at the Reader with an immeasurable kindness writ large upon his features. His hair was a glory of copper fire, shining like a whisky still. His eyes narrowed in concern until they were a faint greenish glitter, like a forest pool far back in the shadow of the trees. Though he was as thin as a rail spike, his hand on the Reader's back was strong, sure. He said, gently: "Hello, my friend."

My friend... the words mesmerized, wrapping the Reader in the most wonderful embrace. The emotion enveloped, smothering the emptiness. It occurred to the Reader then that transformations of a more abrupt sort had an odd sort of tendency to recur in life, unsought, beggaring both expectation and deserving.

"It doesn't matter who you are, or what you did... none of that matters anymore. All of us," his tone dropped to a solemn octave, "we're all equal nothings here."

The boy left for a moment, returning with a stock pot, small enough to sit above a billie fire. He scraped some burnt rice and fish scales from the side and with slow, careful hands, he put the ladle to the Reader's lips, who soon began to devour the shreds of fat and grease with aplomb. It was the Reader's first meal since the Sentencing, and the heat and oily flavor stung the gums and sat heavy, like lard, in the stomach. The boy in orange and blue pulled the rubber plug from a metal canister. The Reader drank the clear, chlorine-flavored liquid, so unlike the stagnant water in the taps of the Commonwealth. Tears swam in the Reader's eyes.

Kindness. The Reader knew no truth, no sincerity, no strength, could entirely cure that sorrow that came from exile. But the boy's grace gestured towards a climate of almost divine compassion; the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness.

A flower growing in a desert place.

"My name is Hedwyn.

"And I swear by the Scribes, you are going to live."