Gather it, Dranic murmured telepathically through the leaves to Yothan and the others. The knowledge was what mattered, not the rituals. Learn him. Memorize him. The matron, too. Carefully though. If the Mornae didn’t care about their progress, they would. The defect was large. They had known it before as a feeble thing, nothing to alarm, beaten down by more powerful forces, but now it had metastasized into something more. Something no one present should ignore.
The knights hemmed them in to ensure they ignored it.
“Well?” the priestess’s consort asked.
He had been watching from a hall. A proud example of the Mornae. He bore black blades at his thighs; a film of black silk wrapped his chest but not enough to inhibit his communion with the goddess. The languid way he leaned against the wall masked the threat of a knight of Isilayne, who, in an instant, could slay them all.
Dranic glanced at each valmasin. One by one, they nodded to him. They needn’t speak. They spoke a hidden language which traversed the vines, the air filled with spores and pollen, miniscule living realities. From their murmurings, Dranic knew they had all seen the defect’s growth. But they had also made an agreement, and their lives depended on its outcome.
In the past, the valmasin would have spoken freely, sharing the details with the mother and father. It could take hours, even days, but the parents would wait patiently, attentive to every word. The life of the child depended on it, and the future of their house as well. The valmasin were impartial, caring only for the purity of their findings. Sometimes they would disagree and even debate. It was all part of the process. It was not for them to decide, but to give all their knowledge to the matron so she could judge. A hundred years ago he would have asked her openly. All information served the greater goal of encompassing the full knowledge of the child’s essence.
But today, this house wanted Dranic to speak only a single judgment, a single word. The chamber stilled. For the first time, he decided in favor of his own safety and that of his kind.
“Voravin,” he said.
Excellent. Pure. Mornae.
That was all they demanded now. No description of each quality. No projection of what the boy may excel at. That age had passed. Only one thing mattered now.
Sufficiency.
The knight captain relaxed and nodded at Dranic.
The matron raised her hands higher, to the great goddess. The consort grinned, a white slash against ash skin. The mother, also a matron, approached and the valmasin stood apart as she wrapped the boy. She moved exquisitely and gracefully, her blue, crystalline eyes like a twilight sky. Dranic knew every curve of her, every filament of muscle and skin, every fit and strength of each bone, in her essence. It never ceased to fill him with awe to see how perfectly these people manifested their union with the Dark.
And yet… the leak.
“Voravin,” he repeated awkwardly.
The words he wanted to say sat at the edge of his mind, his tongue needing to spit them out. He clamped his jaw tight. His companions stared at him wide-eyed.
“Voravin,” he muttered uncontrollably.
Knives left their sheathes.
The matron looked about, flustered, brow knitted, pressing her child to her chest. She stared at Dranic, perturbed by the repetition. His companions bowed their heads. She was a high priestess, summoner of blue fire, supreme amongst the Mornae. She fixed her gaze on him, and knowledge passed between them.
She knew! Had she felt it? The emptying of her vast reservoir of power? What could she do now? Taint or not, weakness or not, her boy would have to be enough.
She whirled about, silk fluttering, and left the chamber with her entourage.
Once alone, Dranic’s companions gathered close.
“We should have left with the others,” Yothan whispered.
“There is nothing for us here,” Feroh said.
“The knowledge will endure,” Haran said.
“From now on, everything we say is a death sentence,” Yothan said.
“Someday they may need us again,” Dranic said. “We are Harahn. Our purpose is bound to them.”
“Curse him,” Yothan said. “All our work is wasted.”
“But the knowledge, brothers,” Dranic said. “The knowledge will endure even if our flesh does not.”
They all nodded.
“From destruction, knowledge,” they said in unison. “From knowledge, destruction.”
They closed their eyes and fed the information they’d acquired from the Mornae to the unseen place, a secret garden of possibilities.
The dark green leaves rustled in response, the edges turning to dust, carried up and out the chamber into the chill summer night.
SUMMER
An east valley pear will perish in a week. A bump will bruise and even crush its flesh. Its skin will easily tear. Like any living thing, it is delicate.
And yet, for fifteen cycles, we have toiled in the shade of their trees, bled into the limbs, made ourselves slaves to their growth.
Why?
The violet-black pears of an east valley orchard hold the power of the ages. All the history of this world, the rich glacier waters, the blackened loam, the sulphureous vapors rising from the heart of the world, the kith itself, the mysterious elements of this land, and the power of the sorcerer glyphs carved into the valley’s foundation conspire to create a singular object which has the power to lead us one step deeper into the Dark.
To neglect their care is to build our pyre.
FROM MEMORIES BY JEVAN LOR’VAKAYNE, SON OF SAVRA.
