THE WORLD MAKER PARABLE releases April 14, 2020 and is available for PRE-ORDER.
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CHAPTER 1: PENDULUM DANCE
Hang-Dead Forest north of Banerowos was aptly named. Rhona had lost count of the corpses half a mile back. She towed her prisoner on a length of cord. Thus far she had ignored Djen’s every word, half because she was tired of listening to the woman spit hatred, and half because Rhona wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. Leading the woman you loved to the tree from which she was sentenced to hang had that effect on people.
“I do as the Raven wills,” Rhona said.
Djen spat. “Fuck Alerion. Fuck you and your reflexive bullshit.”
They ducked beneath a trio of low-hanging corpses. The dark bones were long picked dry. Only tatters of clothing remained.
“It’s the truth,” said Rhona. “Alerion’s will is our command. Those who ignore him are a threat to the continued unification of home,”
“You really are full of shit,” Djen hissed. “Alerion’s words are so ingrained into your skull they may as well be his hand shoved up your ass and moving your mouth.” She heaved a sigh. “Never in all my years would I have thought you’d be the one to dance on strings. I suppose I never really knew you at all, Rhona.”
Rhona halted. She had tried these last hours, these last days, even, to ignore the bitterness Djen spat her way. Some of it was rightly earned—Rhona didn’t deny that. She just wished Djen could understand why she had done what she had done.
“I suppose if I had,” Djen continued, “I would have foreseen you betraying me to Alerion.”
“How could I not?” Rhona asked. “You and Sonja unleashed the Vulture from her cage.”
“We had to, you idiot,” Djen snarled. “You and Alerion all but doomed Jémoon when you imprisoned Luminíl. What Sonja and I did was for the future of our home. For the survival of Jémoon and all its people. If you would open your eyes—if you would all open your eyes—you would see how absolutely wrong you were to have kept such power in chains.”
Rhona yanked the cord and they continued on the way. She focused on the forest; she had always found peace here among the dead. For that, some called her mad, but what did Rhona care? She inhaled deeply. The trees smelled of death and fear, if fear could be said to smell like anything at all. It varied from person to person. To Rhona, fear smelled like a foul breath clouding in the night, and that too was a very particular scent. In Hang-Dead Forest a foul breath was defined as an odor of iron and rain—magic. More specifically, mirkúr.
They marched on through gnarled and twisted trees. Guilt nipped at Rhona’s heels like a hungry dog and her heart stung. It wasn’t supposed to have come to this. She loved Djen for all her flaws, for the gravity of her sin—could she really string her up to rot amongst the dead? Could she really watch Djen join the countless corpses in their pendulum dance?
“You’ll have to whether you like it or not,” her conscience said. It called itself Te Luminíl. “Country over person—it is the Raven’s way. Alerion’s will is our command.” It sighed. “How could we have ever loved such a thing as Djen Shy’eth?“
Rhona frowned. Ever the formal voice of woe, she thought. Te Luminíl—the vocal trauma to her silent grief. Loving Djen had come easily to Rhona. In fact, it had been the easiest thing she had ever done, which made it all the more worse how quickly she had turned Djen over to Alerion. Had Rhona always been so fickle?
“No,” Te Luminíl said. “You are doing what you know is right. Country over person. If minds like those of Djen Shy’eth and Sonja Lúm-talé can be so easily swayed by the darkness of the Vulture Luminíl then what reason do you have to believe a word they say? The Vulture is the personification of entropy—Luminíl had to be contained.“
They came to a small clearing in the depths of the forest. At the center was a tree unique from all the others: white of bark and black of leaves. For that Rhona called it the Lost Tree; it seemed so out of place in a wooded world of death and fog.
Yet by branches have so many lives been claimed, she thought. From the branches of the Lost Tree she would hang her beloved Djen; to its roots she would give her blood in reverence. Blood paid was a debt owed and it was best to curry favor where you could, especially in times like this where uncertainty was king.
“If you would stop taking sips from the wine Alerion serves,” Djen said, “you would know how absolutely wrong he was, how wrong you are. You would understand the severity of what you did to Luminíl.” She sighed as they stopped at the base of the Lost Tree. “You will…”
Rhona turned to look at Djen. It was the first time she had done so since leaving Banerowos. For a moment she allowed herself to get lost in Djen’s full-moon eyes, to imagine the taste of her lips and the gentle warmth of her breath.
“Keep your tongue,” said Djen. “You have that look, but your words mean nothing.”
Rhona flinched and it pulled her from her dream. She dropped Djen to her knees and drew a dagger from her cloak. “I wish things could be different.”
Djen smirked. “No you don’t—but you will. Get on with it.”
“Alf elo nor,” Rhona chanted. “Nor elo alf!“
She punched the blade into Djen.
Then she did the same to herself.
* * *
“Once more you return.”
Rhona opened her eyes to the ethereal voice she had heard so many times before. Before her towered a lithe figure of smoke and wings. It called itself Equilibrium. It offered a hand and pulled her to her feet.
“It has been a while since last we spoke,” said Equilibrium.
“It has,” Rhona said. She gazed into the vast whiteness that encompassed them, feeling peace where others had undoubtedly felt dread. The Silent Place was many things to many different souls. She heaved a sigh.
“You have questions,” Equilibrium said. “As you always do.” The spirit brushed a hand against her cheek and she felt a modicum of weightlessness. “What brings you to the Silent Place this night?”
Rhona did her best to breathe evenly, composing her thoughts as best she could. She wanted everything to be presented as clearly as it could be. With her left index finger she traced the air, leaving gossamer symbols in her wake. Equilibrium reached out with its right index finger and traced them in reverse.
“So much conflict,” the spirit murmured. “So much heartache.”
The whiteness of the Silent Place disolved in rivulets. In its place a meadow manifested. A sea of silver grass beneath a moon like none that Rhona had ever seen. Several yards away stood a tree. The tree. The Lost Tree. Equilibrium led her at an even pace, its great wings trailing into the ether.
“This is new,” Rhona remarked. The Silent Place had never before been more than a brilliant void of nothingness. “Have my memories done something?”
“You are the first to whom the truest nature of the Silent Place has manifested,” Equilibrium said. “This is a realm of memory and thought, a means for introspection, for retrospection, however they may be achieved. It is a place for the dreaming and the dead; it is a haven for the dreaming dead.”
Rhona brushed the trunk of the Lost Tree. She felt a tingle in her chest—but of what?
“Was I wrong?” she asked. “Has my life these many years but nothing but a lie?”
“You present your question broadly but you focus solely on the woman Djen Shy’eth,” Equilibrium said. “What do you think, Rhona? What does your mind tell you that your heart does not, that it refuses to?”
“Only that I am conflicted,” Rhona said. She felt stupid for her answer, for the ignorance and simplicity of her words. “I loved Djen, but I love Jémoon—I love my home. Our home. What Djen did threatened the livelihood of all I hold dear…”
“But?” Equilibrium asked.
“But…but…” Rhona wrinkled her nose. “I pushed her to recklessness. I pushed her to unleash the Vulture Luminíl—but why? Why would she do something like that? And what did I do to push her away?” She looked up at Equilibrium. The spirit gazed back from the darkness of its cowl. “I’m confused by it all.”
“Condemning loved ones to their ends has that effect on everyone who swings the sword,” said Equilibrium. “The guilt and retrospection manifest far quicker in some than in others. In you, long before Djen’s end. The heart often acts on impulse; it is fueled by desire strong enough to suppress logic either temporarily or permanently. What did you desire most, Rhona? What did your heart scream for?”
She opened her mouth to speak but the meadow had already begun to fade. Like the whiteness before it, the meadow dripped away in rivulets until the Silent Place was an endless void as black as the abyss.
Then, she saw a light.
* * *
The gray of Hang-Dead Forest was soothing to Rhona’s eyes. The smell of rain and death upon the breeze eased her mind as she strung Djen’s corpse to the lowest branch of the Lost Tree. As Rhona worked the memory of her time in the Silent Place returned and she found herself asking repeatedly the question Equilibrium had posed:
“What did my heart scream for?”
“A great many things,” Te Luminíl remarked. “A great many things, amongst them Djen Shy’eth.“
Something more than Djen, Rhona thought. Something strong enough to push her away.
“Power has the tendency to do that,” said Te Luminíl.
Rhona frowned, turning away from the tree. What are you saying?
“What, for the longest time, you sought yet at the same time denied you did,” Te Luminíl said. “Control. Authority.“
That’s madness, Rhona thought.
“Is it?“
Rhona was silent. Her body ached, her mind howled with the pain of uncertainty. She turned to Djen and brushed her cold cheek. She looked her in the eyes and in them saw a thousand possibilities evanesce. The future was forever fickle. Did that mean Rhona was as well?
She pressed her lips to Djen’s one final time.
Then she walked away, waiting for the words that Djen would never say.