2.5 Shae'deneir'lanael

General Summary

Day 16

Hella and I continue down the river for two hours until it widens into almost a lake. Alongside it, on our side of the bank, there’s a village of short mud-and-thatch huts and what looks to be a community of goblins numbering in the hundreds.   Despite our exhaustion, we manage to swim across to the other side. I’m so grateful that Hella suggested it. I don’t think I could ask this of her yet. As we hide on the other side of the river and I cloak us in a small illusion, she asks me to teach her this sort of magic and I do, though my hopes aren’t high for her attempt. Of course she’s magically exhausted. I’m sure she’ll do better when she’s rested.   We continue on and make our way down past another long set of waterfalls just as the sun sets and our blood bond fades. Exhausted yet again, we sleep.

  It’s dark, cold, pouring rain. I’m out in the middle of the godforsaken wilderness, following a soldier. I think he’s of middling rank - neither trivial enough to be dismissed nor high enough to have political pull. He’s leading me through camp, not more than 1000 men. Then, a smouldering crater and the remains of several tents and burned, blackened bodies of two dozen men. The magic in the area is tortured and wild. Something rampaging and uncontrolled struck here. The soldier looks at me and says “I feel like we’re cursed. It’s like we’ve been stalked by lightning for days. It’s been landing nearby, splitting trees. The weather’s bad but lightning strikes are rare. The lightning’s been following us. Today it hit camp. Not everyone’s here...we’ve counted several times…even accounting for the…. ones who aren’t all here any more, we’re short one. I’m not sure who. We’re still working to identify everyone. I only have a handful of wizards in this unit - they all say it’s magic and they all say it’s twisted and wrong. They’re not giving me straight answers. I know that the Imperial Mages aren’t expected to answer to those who swing swords for a living but they’re being cagier and more cryptic than usual. When I heard that you were nearby...thank you for coming to look. What do you make of it, Lady?”   I recognize what I’m seeing. This is bad. This does happen at mage academies to people who can’t control their magic. When people reach the state of being able to pull enough power to be destructive, if they can’t master it, mage academies put people like that to death. They’re recognized as a hazard and they’re killed before they can kill others. It’s not talked about, for obvious reasons. There’s certainly an amount of fear when mages push themselves that they might lose it, and once you lose it, it’s harder to get it back.   I look at the officer and make a very non-committal noise and stride off into the rain.   Sometime later I’m standing next to Dal and Thalien in another blackened, smouldering crater. This time there are no bodies save for the odd bit of wildlife. Thalien says “Are you sure about this? As much as I look, the threads where this ends well are thin,” I look at him and say, “And the rope we braid with them is strong. We keep going,”   Another memory: I’m high on a ridgeline and I’m alone. The storm is staggering in its intensity and the chasm beneath me is easily 200 m of sheer fall. It’s windy, blustery, lightning crackles all around me. I walk calmly as lightning bolts fall over and over within 2 metres of me as I walk to a single figure, huddled on a precipice. That’s where I find Lyssa. She looks at me when I bend down next to her and her eyes are swollen from crying and she pleads to me to let her die because she can’t hold it in and can’t make it stop. Lightning hits the ground inches from me. I don’t blink, I don’t flinch. I reach out gently and say “I can help you. We can go forward, together, if you’re strong enough. Will you come with me?” She looks out over the cliff and says, “I hurt so many. I should just step over. I deserve it. I’ve taken too many lives, I don’t deserve to keep living. Just let me die here,” and I slap her, “If you feel guilty for the lives your magic has taken, then you have to live to atone for it. You can’t die to make anything better. If you won’t live for yourself, will you live for them?” At this she pulls herself together and takes my hand when I reach out. I start chanting and make a series of small cuts on both our wrists. The magic flows through me as I siphon her power out of her. It leaves her drained, exhausted, and the storm dies down. I pick her up, carry her back to the base of the hill, where Thalien and Dal are waiting. Dal wraps her up tenderly in a blanket, “Thank you,” he says, “She’s so small. I don’t know, I thought she’d be bigger, to wield that much magic. Poor thing looks like she hasn’t eaten in days. That, I can fix! You two will take care of the magic, hm?”   In the next memory: I’m arguing with a stuffy wizard academy official who is staunchly standing there and saying “You can demand all you want. Without a writ, her life is forfeit.” I shout back, “You know that’s a formality. I can have a writ in a week!” “She’ll destroy a town in a week. She dies today!” I look at him and go stone cold, “If you try, you do.” Behind me, Lyssa clings to my shadow, trembling in fear, I turn and say “Your life is mine, our Mistress’s and the Empress’s. It can be claimed by no one else.”

   

Day 17

I wake, but only barely. Hella is still asleep so I take the opportunity to find some food for us before we set off again. The thin thread of magic comes to the shore where it turns into muddy footprints heading into the forest. We follow it for two hours and find a small hollow surrounded by boulders with a small fire and Rosalia mercifully alive but asleep, with her leg in a splint.   Bran is sitting by the fire, his eyes glazed and unseeing. I’ve seen a similar exhaustion before.  

It’s me, Dal, Thalien, and both our apprentices, and Lyssa. All of us are running and badly injured but running anyway. We’re moving through a labyrinthine tunnel system. Thalien is leading the way with a torch and he is completely lost to his magic as he chooses at every twist and turn which way to go. He throws his hand out at several points to tell us not to step there. He’s so lost to the threads of fate that he’s not seeing the world around him, he’s just following his magic. When we get out, he just stops and collapses with the same vacant stare as Bran does now. Looking so desperately and pulling on so many threads as he ran. Lyssa asks what’s wrong with him.

  “He’s drifting on the sea of possibilities. Sometimes when you’re adrift, it’s hard to find your way back to now, when you’re lost in what could be. He’s strong, he’ll make it back. But until he gets back, you have to help us keep him safe,”   I know there’s nothing to do but wait for him to come back, so I leave Hella and find food for us. When I return and begin cooking, Rosalia wakes. She remembers going over the falls, and then Bran cradling her and guiding them both through the river, letting the rocks strike him and not her.   Dimly, Bran sways and mutters under his breath: Shae'deneir'lanael   As he comes to, he looks at me anew before hastily drawing a symbol in the dirt. It’s one I recognize.   Elves have a concept that is tied to the Empress’ history of blood magic. There is a very specific notion around heartsblood - the most powerful, potent life force. It is distinct from the blood of the body. It is the blood of the soul, spirit, and it’s deeper and more profound. It’s the beat of the heartsblood that the elven people share with the Empress. What this symbol communicates is the dagger that seeks the heartsblood. I’ve seen it before on every banner carried by every bannerman in my army - the army that marches for me, under my name. It’s part of the name and title the Empress bestowed on me. I’m looking at my second name. Not the name I was given at birth, but the name the Empress gave me when she raised me. Because I strike unerringly at the heartsblood of her enemies. There is absolutely nothing that stops me from missing the mark once I’ve been set to my target.   Bran’s eyes clear and he looks at me,   “I saw you and an army so vast it covered a valley. They marched under that symbol and you rode at its head”   This is...a lot to take in...and a lot to explain in nearly the same breath. For someone with barely any memories, it seems so obvious and natural that I’ve marched at the head of armies and that I carry a name with such weight that it is meant only for historians and the people who entrust their lives to me.   Of course there is weight in my past. To have arrived here with runes carved into my skin, to be greeted by the spirit of a man who stood with me in front of hordes of enemies, to have said goodbye at the grave of another man I once loved, and to still not know why I’m here? To gather shards of my past from fleeting memories and an assured voice in the darkness who promises me I’m here to do her will is...of course I can’t deny the gravity of who I am.   I tell them this. I hope it doesn’t sound insincere.   Bran had another vision, while he drifted: Of lightning in a cage that called out to me.   So of course, I tell them of the Valley of Storms, where I think Lyssa is waiting for me. Rosalia has heard of it - a cursed place for as long as people have been here. It’s a valley with a metal rod at the entrance and nothing but storms inside. The storms seem to be contained within the valley, and anyone who enters is struck down by the lightning. They are not enthusiastic about my desire to enter this valley, but I have walked through storms before.   “And you will again, a thousand times,” Bran says, in a voice that isn’t quite his own.   And we rest. Before I fall asleep, cradled between my party members, I think about time - about how long Lyssa must have been here for a valley to be cursed by her magic for as long as anyone can remember. About how long Thalien must have been here to have trained an apprentice to follow me in his stead. About how Dal died waiting. Every time I lie down to rest, I feel like I am wasting time that I don’t have. I feel like an animal constrained in a cage that I know is of my own making. What sort of stupid plan was it to not leave myself a notebook of instructions?