Oro'thion's Story

Some men sought solace in drink, others in prayer; Oro'thion found his at the edge of the Dhakira, where memory pooled cold and unfathomable as the night sea. The Sea of Memories was a place of tranquil beauty, the lake’s surface reflecting the cloudless night sky above - regardless of the actual time of day. Countless stars shimmered and danced with the gentle waves that spread across the water. The moonlight added a silver sheen to the Tasmia, the carved namestones resting in the lake. It was a peaceful and serene scene, a place of solitude and reflection.
  Furls of vapor that drifted just above the ground filled the air with the scents of lavender oil, scorched brass, and the lingering sweetness of overripe miram fruit from Last Prayer. It was a mixture of comfort and grief, the familiar smells of rituals and offerings joined with the fading essence of half forgotten memories.
  Oro'thion's fingertips brushed against the cool vapor that drifted just above the ground, a reminder of the passing of time and the change of seasons. The touch was refreshing and grounding, a connection to the land and the elements.
  His nimble fingers moved with the unhurried gravitas of one who had long ago learned to cradle his regrets. He slid his hand into the water and along the first row of Tasmia, each stone bearing the name of a soul returned to the Sea of Memories—the script carved sharp and precise, the namestone’s edges smoothed by time and, possibly, the caresses of mourners past.
  It was said, that if one pressed his palm against certain stones, one might perceive a sensation akin to the heart’s faint flutter before the final sleep overcame it: a namestone’s echo, the vestige of a life’s final longing. Tonight he tried it once again, as always unable to resist the quiet compulsion that dogged him in this place.
  He found a fresh stone, still more vermilion than the moonwashed slate of its elders. The incising was shallow, and the name—Lemenet—was unfamiliar, but he recognized the hand of the maker, if not the person who made it; a mother’s careful and loving, yet uneven script, tendered by the hesitancy of uncertain hope. He pressed his dark thumb on Lemenet and waited. The stone was cold and silent, yet a sudden draft teased the line of his jaw, bringing with it a pang of childish nostalgia—of a time when he had still held similar dreams of hope and familiarity and belonging.
  He allowed himself the smallest exhalation, condensing memory as one might fold a letter that had never been meant to arrive. Oro’thion let his thoughts trail away from the child’s name. That way lay distraction, or dissolution—both punishments reserved for those servants of the Raven Queen who wandered too freely in sentimental fog. Mastery, he reminded himself, was found in hard clarity, in concentration and focus, and in knowing yourself. He forced his gaze outward. There was work to be done.
  He turned and started to rise, as he realized he was not alone anymore. A shiver of movement at the edge of his peripheral vision had his senses on alert.
  It was not the somber, gliding shadows of the Duskmaven’s mute attendants, nor shadows of souls that lingered beyond the veil—he could always feel their lifeless hush when he was close enough—but something sharper, tighter, as if memory itself had gathered up its skirts and taken sidelong interest in him. Oro’thion squinted into the grey mist, now thickening along the banks and coiling between the slender cypress trunks and little shrines that stood sentinel along the water’s edge. He waited, every sense a hair’s breadth from the present, every habit and caution honed by years spent courting the dusk.
  The figure emerged after a long, ceremonial pause. Not a spirit, nor yet a supplicant. A woman, tall, veiled, moving with a measured cadence unlike the trembling grief of mourners or the jittery deference of fresh initiates. Her cloak was woven of some lustrous fabric, dark as obsidian but lined in the subtle violet of deep twilight—queen’s colors; albeit worn with a stranger’s disregard.
  She bore no markings or emblems, and her hands were hidden, folded together in her wide sleeves at the hollow of her waist. He could not see her eyes through the veil, but the shape of her face had an essence of something unyielding and ominous like the looming shadow of a tombstone on old snow.
  Silence fell for the lengths of a long breath. Then she spoke.
  “I bring to this house the words that have traveled far.”
  Her voice was a low and steady hum, like the distant tolling of a mourning bell. Each word felt like it was enunciated with a sharp precision that echoed through the stagnant air, cutting through the stillness and sending shivers down Oro’thion’s spine. The cadence of her speech was hypnotic, drawing him in and holding him captive, like a serpent’s lullaby. There was a hint of a foreign accent, adding an air of mystery and intrigue to each syllable she uttered. And with each word, Oro’thion was more and more certain, that the language he heard - and understood - was no language he had ever heard before.
  With gloved fingers, the stranger took a small box - lacquered ebony inlaid with a sliver of mother-of-pearl in the shape of a crescent moon - from the wide sleeves of the rich dress and set it atop the roof of a nearby shrine.
  She withdrew her hands slowly, folding them again, the gesture formal as a ritual. Oro'thion’s gaze fell to the crescent-moon box, and though he had seen many vessels of memory—urns, reliquaries, the ochre-glazed ossein flasks favored by the necromancers of old—this seemed to seethe with more than the mere echo of grief. It radiated purpose, a pressure in his temples, the entreaty of a caged tide.
  “There is a live for every stone,” her voice continued, “a name for every forgetting. There are debts. Oaths. Bindings. You know this. The debts, especially.”
  Oro’thion’s nostrils filled with the metallic tang of approaching storm; the texture of the air changed, as when a phrase transmuted from mere melody into incantation. The meaning of the knowledge she carried was not lost on him. He froze in place, utterly motionless, like prey before the looming predator.
  “Who sends you?” His voice rang hollow and unfamiliar in his ears.
  This question failed to make the woman even flicker. She merely tilted her head. The veil shifted, two layers sliding over one another; the shape behind grew no less indistinct. “Those who remember the old covenant,” she said. “Those who survive on the interstices—the gaps in your Lady’s design.”
  “Too poetic,” Oro’thion said gruffly. Whether the tremor in his voice was a deliberate provocation or his own betrayal, he could not know. “Tell me the names. Speak plain, and I’ll do the same for you.”
  But she did not answer, not with words. Instead, one hand rose from her sleeve in a motion so sinuous and fluent it bordered on the burlesque, holding a heavy card of expensive vellum. She placed it next to the crescent-moon-shaped box with the care of an embalmer safeguarding a king's heart. The ink on the card was so fresh that the broad, flowing calligraphy-which looked eerily familiar-glistened under the lamp's glow. In the bottom left corner, a crescent moon, matching the one on the box, was embossed in deep midnight foil, covered by a delicate, swirling design that, when caught in the right angle of evening sunlight, resembled a blindfold suspended in the air.
  Oro’thion stared at the card. No address, nor any name, just a single line:  
  *To You, the Named and the Nameless: The Blind Storyteller bids you join him at the Market of Melodies, Last Bell.*
  Nothing in his years following the Duskmaven’s directions prepared him for the particular chill those words set crawling across his skin. He stood still for a long moment.
  When his eyes rose from the card, he was alone again.
  Gone. Not a trace of the stranger lingered: no footprints, no vapor, no imprint in the fabric of the air, only a violet crescent fading above the shrine almost as if the box, too, had never been there at all.  
  He shook free of the moment, his shoulders and arms milling as if trying to take flight, wondering if this had been a vision from his Mistress, if he had been back in her palace for a second. However, as the violet crescent faded from his sight, so did the memory of the strange encounter. Forgotten was the stranger and the box, the talk of debts and the stranger’s eerie knowledge.    
  Only one line remained in his mind; as the thick vellum card remained in his hand:
  *To You, the Named and the Nameless: The Blind Storyteller bids you join him at the Market of Melodies, Last Bell. *