9.1 Who Are You?

General Summary

Day 84

When I wake, Alder is reading quietly in a chair in the corner of the room. He looks very casual - unusual for him. He shows me the book, which is an elvish children’s primer on magic. It’s a very endearing book with clever and brave protagonists learning to harness their power and control it. There’s a wide variety of introductory spells, designed to help a new student figure out their strength. Alder tells me sheepishly that he hasn’t managed to cast any of the spells.   I wish I had been conscious when he started this book. I could have told him that it wasn’t going to help him. I wonder if that other elven mage loaned it to him or if he made contact with a guild while I was asleep. Where did this book come from?   There’s not much I can do right now besides rest in my bed and use my brain for something, and Alder is overdue for some attention to his magic.   None of these simple spells will work for him because his magic isn’t housed within himself, nor is it from external sources in his vicinity. His magic is a manifestation of his bond with the Empress. This is where we begin, by talking about shadow stepping. When I step, I reach through the shadow and come out the other end, the way that Dal first taught me on this side. Alder tells me that when he steps, the entire world disappears until it is only him and his vision of where he wants to appear. I’ve never heard anyone describe it like this before.   He also tells me that he has stepped up to 50 metres before, but it is dangerous and he doesn’t do it unless the circumstances are dire. When he is floating between spaces, he can’t breathe and sometimes he can’t visualize his destination well enough and he might be trapped in between.   It sounds like he is trying to execute such a massive leap entirely alone, forcing everything else to fade. Instead, I suggest, he might try thinking about what shadow stepping is, and where it comes from. Each time we slip through the shadows, the Empress is carefully lifting him in a palm and guiding him to where she needs him to be. It doesn’t have to be just him alone.   He considers this and focuses like he would when he steps. For a moment, I see his corner get darker and he blurs a little bit before coming back into focus, astounded. I wish we had talked about this sooner, to see the look on his face!   He kneels beside my bed, which feels less uncomfortable when people usually kneel. I suppose it feels different when I’m not standing. He tells me that I’ve given him a key to understanding his magic, and he is astounded that I managed this while bed-bound. It’s not like I can go running back into the library...I’d be ashamed if I weren’t using my mind for something while my body is incapacitated.   Camellia joins us to bring me food and have me attempt standing up. The standing is easy...the remaining upright part is a little more challenging. With Alder’s help, I make it outside to a garden to spend a few hours outside. The garden is unique - sprinkled with tiny tiny lights that give a warm glow to the landscape. The flowers are all wild, and seemingly planted without pattern but not without care. Perhaps an elven or a human garden might grow to look like this if it were abandoned and left to grow free.   Seeing how restless I am (though I’m trying not to show it), Camellia asks me what will be different if I am able to get back to work tomorrow compared to a week from now. Honestly, I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what will be different, but I know what I’m doing needs to happen as soon as possible. Still, I agree to rest and recover before putting myself in harm’s way again.   She considers this for a moment and tells me that it’s obvious that what I’m doing is important and will affect a great many people who need it. She offers to travel with us for 8 months, which is how long she has before she must return to her home. For 8 months, she will help us push past injuries that would otherwise sideline us, will heal us when we need it. Apparently she has been several wizards, several soldiers, several healers....even a thief. And she is 17. My party is already extraordinarily young but a wave of ancientness washes over me when she says this. For a moment I’m lost in the impossibility of a relationship that can only last...20 years? At most? That’s barely enough time to know someone. Still, she says she carries songs of her ancestors with her, and while her life is hers, she has many lives in her.   She becomes the first person here I tell about Mistress’ magic of spirit calling. The fae hear songs and seem all connected in a great web of song. Mistress calls ancestors with her painting and this is different, but there’s a bit of familiarity in it. Camellia seems interested in being able to call specific ancestors at will.   So she will travel with us for eight months. I’m glad to have her with us - Bran struggles to keep us all standing when we keep getting into fights. But a small part of me is also very pleased to have a fae in the party. If we are to expand our circle to include the fae and the trolls, I think any overtures will be better received from a group with more than just humans and elves.   With the rest of the evening, leaning on some magic that Camellia has worked, I draft plans for the coming days. Kadia and Hella will work to restore the library. Alder will play politics with Nishvalen in the Twilight Garden. Bran...Bran will counsel me on some of my newfound emotional turmoil.   Not the least of which is the inevitability of Kadia and Hella leaving us. It is impossible to think of delaying this through inaction, but every step towards restoring the Shadowgate now also carries the thought of sending them away. It will take a long time, Kadia reassures me, and family is family no matter how far away. Unkindly, I think this is easy for them to say now, surrounded by family and not knowing what they will be walking into as they cross the Barrier. But the rest of my family (and me) all faced this at some point and chose to do it anyway. I would expect nothing different from my brave apprentice and this ancient sorceress.   The night passes uneventfully save for a single dream: I walk through the forest and come out on the crest of nearby hills, looking down at Deldrin where the two rivers join. The statues are intact and there are elvish banners flying. I would expect some of those banners to be for the Empress, but it is not so. There is no sign of her here.   I know this city predates the joining of the Osyr and the elves, and so of course it predates the existence of the Empress in her current form. Still...what were elves like before this? From what the Fourth Hand told me, we were loving and warm, and that is what we brought to the union. There is a small fear that we were better beforehand...but I banish the thought. It doesn’t matter. Maybe I was better before the Collective and before the Barrier. I have learned that it doesn’t matter what was before, only what we have grown into and how we will continue to grow.

Day 85

Bran and I break our fast together, and I select the topic of torture for our conversation. He listens silently as I ramble about what I have remembered: About tense but peaceful negotiations that went sour, of Lord Shakshakshafa and his failure to kill all of us properly, the desperate march back to the Capital, of all but defying the Empress in my fury, and of the swathe of death I left in my wake as I went to show him how to properly end someone’s life.   But what I dwell on is the torture. Dragging out a death that could have happened in just a second. Laying a curse that would extend it to eternity and still, I feel like that wasn’t enough. And how, when I returned to the Capital, I was different. That’s why the memories are gone. I am as I was before any of that happened, and in my memory in the Dreaming I felt horror at the idea of doing something like that again but now, with Bran, I think of him suspended on the edge of death by someone like that and I can feel the sharp fury rising in my heart again.   “Who are you?” He asks, taking my hand. An unfair question and he knows it, so he asks a different one, “Did he deserve it?”   Yes. For the crime of overturning peaceful negotiations, for trying to kill my family, for failing to kill them and me, and for the hubris of laying a curse like that and thinking it wouldn’t end in his death. He deserved it.   But now it follows me as well. Our only difference being that I did the killing part properly.   “Do you feel worse for doing it? Or that you’d do it again?”   I don’t feel bad for doing it. And I wouldn’t do it again, but if I have the opportunity to lift my curse now...should I? Does her deserve the lasting torture I laid?   With characteristic wisdom, Bran tells me that if he deserved it then, he deserves it now. The indecision now is over strategy. Will it keep my people safer if I release the curse? If the answer is yes, can I let go of my anger to keep people safe?   For a moment my mind spirals - if the Collective is in touch with the assassins here, I could pretend that their attempt succeeded and release the curse without looking like I’d forgiven him. I could fake my death and continue my work here unhassled by assassins, and at the end of it, standing victorious, they would know that it was only ever a strategy and that it was foolish of them to think I could be killed or that my enmity could be softened. Bran catches me spiralling. There are no sure plans here, only grasping at possibilities that may lead nowhere and may only complicate things.   We leave the conversation in approximately the same place where it started: I don’t know if I can lift the curse and I don’t know if I would. But it feels better for having voiced it. I wonder if Thalien would have counselled me differently, remembering the scars on my arms and how deeply I drank of his magic to keep us all alive. I wonder if Mistress and Doraal would think differently. Surely if anyone has the right to make this decision it would be them, and not me. A futile thought. When I get to speak with them, there are many things I would rather talk about than a miserable soul I’ve entrapped to avenge them.   I dream of new forests - lush, peaceful trees and whispering songs of nature. I wander, lost in the woods but in an exploratory way, not a panicked way. Shortly before waking I emerge on a hillside, looking down at the place where two rivers meet, with Deldrin at the intersection.   The statues are intact, elvish banners are flying. This is the city at the height of its beauty. But there is nothing dedicated to the Empress.