"Before", Chapter 5: Where The Fates Converge

[Scott of Hyperborea]

"Before" or "Romance of the Three Duchies"
Chapter Five: Where The Fates Converge
Chapter Five Soundtrack: Night Castle

Said Red, when we were all awake the next morning: "Speak. I want to hear from everyone. I want to know what happened yesterday. It was important. If we don't understand what went on, we may never get to Lodermotsrik and find the sword."

Said Once: "I understood what went on once."

Said Red: "And when I said I wanted to hear from everyone, I meant almost everyone."

Once went quiet.

Then Red told his tale. He had been swept away by the flash flood, just as I had, and just as I was, he was washed up onto the other bank of the river alone, in what appeared to be evening twilight. That was where the similarities ended. Red had been in Lodermotsrik, all right, but there had been no forest there. He had seen one giant tree, reaching up high into heaven. He had felt no surprise, just the overwhelming certainty that the Landssword was at the top of the tree. So he began to climb.

The bark of the tree was rough and provided many footholds, and Red was a good climber. He climbed until he was above the clouds, until he could barely see the ground beneath him. Huge hawks with faces like fish dove at him and attacked, but holding on to the tree trunk with one hand, he fought them off with the other. Finally, bleeding and bruised, he reached the lowest branch of the tree, as thick as a wide avenue. A door led into the tree trunk, and he walked in.

The tree's inside was made of stone, like a castle, and the hallways were lined with torches. In the ceiling high above nested more of the fish-hawk creatures, who constantly swooped down and tried to swallow Red in their gaping beaks. He fought them off with grim determination, wandering the halls until he came to a spiral staircase, which he began to climb. After a few hours of labored climbing, he noticed someone else climbing beside him.

"Asari?" he asked?

"Yes," said the girl, and took his hand. "I'm here to lead the way to what you seek."

"But you are what I seek," said Red, and kissed her.

Here the notion of Red having human affection for any woman broke our ability to suspend disbelief, and Pupil was forced to explain (because Red himself refused unconditionally). Red, he said, had been a relatively normal Riverrunner from the southern land of K'Tzuni, until he came to Riverrun City to seek his fortune. There, he had met a girl named Asari, and fell in love. She had rejected him, and his heart had been broken, so in a stupor he had wandered into the temple of Anandja, Goddess of Bliss, and begged never to feel again. The goddess had answered his prayer, and it had done him not a shred of good, because although his feelings for the girl were gone, there was still an empty spot in his mind where he knew they should have been. The spot gnawed at him until he eventually forsook human society, met Pupil in the Crestfall Downs, and became a mercenary.

This revelation about our leader was so surprising that I had almost forgotten the narrative about the giant tree with which we were being entertained. Red had not. Asari only pouted one of her beautiful pouts and told Red that she couldn't possibly be what he sought, because she wasn't real. She was a vision of this place, because she was one of his fates, and this was the place where the fates converge.

As she said this, they came to the top of the staircase, and Asari disappeared. At the top of the staircase was a door, and standing in front of the door was an old man, with his beard stretching down to the ground.

"Howdy," he said. "I'm Brrapa Lu Eraro. The Landssword's right through this door, but I suggest you don't go through it."

"I'm here for the sword," said Red. "Let me pass."

"That wasn't what you said at the bottom of that staircase," said Brrapa. "You said you wanted the girl. But I don't think that was it either. You wanted the girl as a symbol. You want your heart back, don't you?"

"Wanting's not really my thing," said Red. "I'm here for the sword."

"The sword is of Sxiro, you know," said Brrapa. "Lots of people in Sxiro want the sword. Why should I give it to someone who doesn't even want it? You know, a lot of people in Sxiro want a lot of things. Ju'Uliave Mercaja of Goldenmoon wants to make his brother the God-Emperor. Keloudi Ly'Tecnomaezj wants Quercia dead. Loritis Bassarijas of Audentior wants to go home. The actual board-certified God-Emperor of Sxiro wants nothing more than to stay away from Riverrun and his date with prophecy even if it makes me look like an idiot. I want to...what do I want...well...I was talking about Control of Destiny with your friend Loritis, and I want for it to come out as soon as possible. But you? You're nothing without the sword, and you're nothing with it. Go home."

"I'm warning you," said Red. "Get away from that door."

"No," said Brrapa, "I'm warning you. If you go through that door and meet the sword's REAL guardian, you won't like him at all."

Red shoved Brrapa out of the way and pushed open the door. It led to the very tip-top branch of the tree. Handing down from it like an overripe fruit was the Landssword, all gleaming and silver. Red began inching out onto the branch, which looked just able to bear his weight. Brrapa came after him. "I realllly don't think you should be doing that."

Red pushed him off the branch into the abysses below. Brrapa screamed as he fell, with the sound growing fainter and fainter as he dropped miles and miles to the ground beneath. Then his fall slowed, he reversed direction, and he began to fall up as quickly as he had descended. "Gravity!" he shouted to himself. "That's what I was forgetting!" He waved at Red as he passed him briefly, then fell all the way up into the sky and disappeared.

Only a little shaken, Red inched out further and further, until he could just almost reach out and pluck the Landssword and...

"PITIFUL MORTAL!" came a great voice from all around. The tree started to shake. "DID YOU REALLY THINK I WOULDN'T NOTICE YOU? MUAHAHAHAHA!"

"Who..." asked Red. "What...?" And gazing down below, he saw that two glowing red eyes had opened upon the tree, and a great cavernous mouth.

"YOU FOOL," said the tree-demon. "FALL TO YOUR DEATH! MALARBOR DEMANDS IT!"

Then another of the branches reached out, grabbed Red, and unceremoniously dropped him into the air. He had fallen and fallen for what seemed like hours before he hit the rushing waters of the Eluin River and washed up on the opposite bank emptyhanded.

All of us listened intently to Red's story. And we might not have believed it, if not that each of us had a similar tale to tell of the strange wonders of Lodermotsrik.

Then all eyes fell on Quercia, and she began her tale. Like Red, she told of crossing the river, and being caught in a flash flood. She told of awakening on the far shore, in the purple glow of twilight. But she found herself not in Airosamente, nor in a forest, but on the sun-drenched shores of So-Sara, far to the south.

The quiet palm-fringed beach on which she had been washed up was the island of Zy-Rodin, on which she had spent her childhood. So-Sara was not what one might call inhabitable. Various demon fish and worse prowled its shores, the nobles of the old Empire had reverted to bone-in-the-hair cannibalism, and civilization was in a state of utter ruin. The air was so charged with magic that it occasionally discharged itself in lightning-like explosions that scorched everything within a kilometer. It was less hellish than it had been in the old days of cataclysm and apocalypse, but the wounds still bled.

Lying on the beach drinking a glass of wine was Narjone Ly'Maezjuser, who had been a prominent noble in the old empire and one of the few to survive more or less intact. The huge scar on her right face and her missing right ear were evidence that it had been more "less" than "more", but she still considered herself one of the lucky ones, and better, she had contacts who she was always insisting were going to get her a ship to the continent, where the demons were few and the cities still stood. For now, she spent her time fighting off the various groups trying to kill her and eat her organs and desperately trying to maintain a life of luxury in the midst of desperation on all sides.

Aiding her in this were her gaggle of servants, almost a dozen, who carried her baggage from place to place, cooked her food, and kept her from harm. She had retained some of them from the olden days, hired others from the small survivor communities, and rescued still others from various modes of violent death that would have befallen them without her magical intervention. Two of them were fanning her right now with palm leaves, despite the decided chill in the air. One was a young Quercia, about eleven or twelve.

Quercia walked right up to her old mistress, then ignored her and turned to her doppleganger. "Excuse me," she said, "but would you stop being me? I'm me right now, I like it very much, and I don't want any competition."

The girl completely ignored her.

"Oh, she can't hear you," said Narjone. "Quercia, this is a pleasant surprise. Travelling all the way through time just to say hello. But this isn't a social call, is it? What can I do for you?"

"Mistress," said Quercia, falling to one knee, "I'm looking for the Landssword. Can you tell me where to find it?"

"You're probably wondering why they're all fanning me at this hour," said Narjone, ignoring her. "Really, it's the middle of the day here. The eternal twilight is just an effect of the time magic. Sort of like the mist you get when casting an altrezolam spell, but the thaumatic cloud is denser and the chromatic aspect actually bends time a little. Or did I already explain this to you? You can never tell with time travel."

Actually, the two servants were looking a bit overheated. Young Quercia, in particular, was sweating and unsteady on her feet. Quercia know what happened next. The little girl fell to the ground, exhausted and half-unconscious with heatstroke. Her palm frond remained suspended in the air, waving still.

"This was when I first realized you were a maezjuser," said Narjone. "The repetitive motion of the waving imprinted on the basal ganglia of your brain as a motor program, which itself imprinted on the noetic currents of the soul. When your body collapsed, thaumic reflexes in the soul subconsciously diverted the program from somatomotor to to psionic outlets. Actually a textbook case of early maezjuser presentation. Hold on a second, I need to go back to my own time again."

Narjone opened her eyes and addressed the remaining servant. "Bring Quercia back to the camp, and give her some water. Also, take one of the less dishevelled beggars and hire her to replace Quercia. I'll be training her as a student from now on." The second servant left, carrying Quercia's unconscious body. Narjone lay back down as the palm frond continued to wave of its own accord.

"The Landssword," said Narjone. "Let me guess: a bunch of people who knew nothing about magic thought they could just waltz in and take it with a bit of swordplay or something. Maybe you thought so too. That's what bothers me about the continentals. It's not like they don't have a couple of people who can blast fire from their fingertips, but none of them really understand the nuts and bolts of it. Ha! Now I'm starting to sound like a tecnomaezj! My point is, one does not simply walk into Lodermotsrik. It's the place where the fates converge. Unless you get all your fates to converge properly, you miss it completely. Overshoot or undershoot, and end up at some fate you weren't expecting. Take this, for example."

So-Sara disappeared, and they were in a slum in Lakhesis. Again, young Quercia stood before them, completely ignorant of older Quercia's presence. This time she was fifteen or sixteen. There was also a boy, about Quercia's age. Older Quercia groaned and hid her eyes.

A rapping noise from the door. "Open up!"

Narjone turned to young Quercia. "Remember, you're just the maid. Stand in the corner and you won't get hurt." Then to the boy: “Run and hide, Paul. You're a good kid, but you can't help me here, and you can't help Quercia.”

The younger girl was sobbing. "I...can't watch."

"Then close your eyes. Don't worry, you'll this it all when you're older anyway. Listen to me, Quercia. The lineage of my teaching goes back seven thousand years. When I die, you'll be the last of us. You are better than these people. No matter how far you have to run, remember that you hold the powers of the cosmos and the ancient knowledge of So-Sara inside of you, and they can never dream of soaring to the lowest of the depths you've explored. You're better than them, and one day you'll be able to take whatever you want. Just remember that. "

The door broke open. Three men ran into the room, each brandishing a whorled green-grey stone and an air of unshakeable authority. "I am Nivrek Ly'Tecnomaezj, and you're under arrest for magic use. The penalty is immediate death."

"Fuck you," said Narjone, and scarlet fire shot from her fingertips. The three tecnomaezji all held forward their whorled stones, which absorbed the magic. One of them cut her down with his sword, and then another took out a hollow cylinder, lit a fuse on it, and blew off her head.

"You," said the one who called himself Nivrek. To his fellows: "Look, there's a serving girl in the corner there.”

Then the boy ran out, from his hiding place, awkwardly waving a sword far too big for him. “Don't hurt her! I love...” he yelled. Nivrek knocked him down and stabbed him in the gut without skipping a beat, then turned back to Quercia.

“You. You shouldn't work with people like this. They're dangerous. We probably just saved your life. If I were you, I'd get out of here."

Quercia ran. The tecnomaezji did not pursue. One of them wrote a few notes on a piece of paper, and then the three of them left. Narjone's head rolled back onto her body, and she got up.

"No," she said, "the part where I come back together didn't really happen. I'm just making a point. This is where some of your fates come from. Actually, a lot of your Karrhenian worldlines converge here. And a lot of your destinies end with you dying in a similar fashion."

"Cloud," said Quercia.

"Among others who want to do you in," said Narjone.

"I don't care about that," said Quercia. "Just show me the tyfrik shards of my various divergence points. That's what you're getting at, right? And then I'll take the n-dimensional intersection of them to find out where the fates converge. Shouldn't be too hard."

"Lovely," said Narjone. "Nice to see in all these years you've kept a bit of the education I gave you. But it's nowhere near that easy. There are forces at work in Lodermotsrik beyond what I had at my prime. You're not welcome to the center or the sword, and honestly you're not good enough to blast your way through to them."

"Just show me the damn shards," said Quercia. "I'll decide how good I am."

"If you wish," said Narjone, and she waved her ghostly fingers.

A series of scenes in rapid succession. Quercia setting a tecnomaezj church on fire from a perch on the hillside above. Quercia going begging in the Riverrun countryside, then burning down any village where someone refused her shelter. Various other images of violence and debauchery. Quercia walking into Cerce-upon-Dolor and volunteering to help the demon fish kill a tecnomaezj who had been holding off their incursions. The successful murder of the tecnomaezj, followed by the demon fish turning on her and torturing her. Her salvation at the hands of Red and his company. Through all of them, Quercia waved her hands and fingers and incanted phrases in proto-Saran. Gradually, all the scenes began to grow transparent, and behind them could be seen a tiny thatched hut. Quercia broke through the scenes and entered the hut. Inside was an old man with a long white beard sitting on an old rocking chair. Beneath him was a treasure chest.

"Give me the...nah, not in the mood for an argument," said Quercia. She shot a bolt of incinerating fire that covered the man from head to toe.

"Ow," said Brrapa Lu Eraro.

Quercia stepped back and reconsidered the situation.

"Okay," she said. "Give me the Landssword. Or I'll figure out something worse, then do it."

"Look," said Brrapa, "You're in the place where the fates converge, you've said the spells about fates converging, but your fates juuuust aren't convergent. So sorry."

"Fuck this," said Quercia, and grabbed the chest.

"I wouldn't open that, if I were you," said Brrapa.

Quercia opened the chest, and with a great whoosh it sucked her inside. She was underwater, fighting for her life against demon fish that moved through the fluid environment faster than she could follow. She tried magic, but the water quenched her fires and left her exhausted, desperate for air. She had just one hope. With all her strength, she swam to the surface. She passed out of hypoxia before she could reach it, and next thing she knew she'd awakened on the southern side of the river, wet and swordless.

When Quercia was finished, we regarded her and her story for a time. There was more darkness in her than we had suspected, and her inability to take the sword even with all her magical knowledge and the help provided by her dead mentor did not bode well.

I was next. I told of how I had found myself in Airosamente, only to be chased through a variety of increasingly improbable locations to the cave at the source of the Eluin. Of how I had met the old man Brrapa Lu Eraro, who seemed to be the only consistency across all of our different hallucinations. And then how I had ended up here.

Next went Pupil, whose story was shorter than the others. He, too, had washed up upon the Lodersmotrik side of the river in a supernatural twilight. He sat on the bank for a second, contemplated matters, and then announced very loudly to nowhere in particular:

"This is a dream. Since I'm in Lodermotsrik, it must be a magical one, and someone must be responsible. Show yourself."

Brrapa Lu Eraro walked out of the river, dripping wet. "You take all the fun out of this," he said.

"I'm looking for the Landssword," Pupil told him. "How can I get it?"

"The short answer is that you can't," said Brrapa.

"What's the long answer?" asked Pupil.

"YYYooooooouuuuuuuu cccccaaaaaaannnnnnn'tttttttttt" said Brrapa, very slowly.

"What's the long answer that conveys extra information?" asked Pupil, without skipping a beat.

Brrapa harrumphed. "Lodermotsrik doesn't exist like other places. It's been earmarked for a certain very important destiny, and until then it's just sort of absent. That makes it an opening in the fabric of the universe through which you can look back and sort of see the machinery running the whole show, which is awkward and one of the reasons we try to avoid having people come here too often. To most people, it generally shows up as fates converging. If your fate happens to converge upon you getting the Landssword, you get the Landssword. If not, you don't. Your fates definitely don't converge around getting the Landssword now, although you'll be closely involved with its ultimate destiny."

"I see," said Pupil. "Well, I can see I'm not going to get any further here. Why don't you end this dream and bring me back to the world of the living?"

"Seriously," said Brrapa, "I really meant it when I said you take all the fun out of this. Can I at least have a giant hawk attack you or something? Giant hawks are kind of awesome."

"I'd really rather you didn..." said Pupil, but before he could finish, a giant hawk swooped down from the sky, its dreadful and razor-sharp beak pointing straight at his heart. The moment before it hit, Pupil's eyes opened, and he found himself on the southern bank of the river.

Several of us groaned at Pupil's story. It was absolutely Pupil, to a 't', and totally disappointing.

"I can do better than that," said Cloud.

"Once could do better than that," said Quercia, "and he can't even put two sentences together."

"My story commences," said Cloud, ignoring her, "in the same place of all of yours. I was crossing the river when the flash flood hit..."

When Cloud woke up, he found himself in Lodermotsrik. The two rivers followed the same course, and the surrounding hillsides kept the same pattern. But where there had been only meadows and forests before, there was now a vast city, larger than Musica, larger even than Goldenmoon, the largest city in Sxiro. It stretched as far as the eye could see - mighty fortresses, sprawling parks, great glass towers. Cloud found himself at the top of one such tower, looking down. The city, for all its grandeur, looked deserted.

"This," said Cloud to himself, "must be the city where the Landssword is kept." He did not know where such a city might be, save perhaps in the realm of the gods that mortals called the Celestial Temple, but he was certain that only the legendary Sword of Mors could possibly justify a city such as this.

So from his high vantage point, he looked about, trying to figure out where the Landsraad was kept. To his north, he saw a wide stadium, from which metallic birds took off and landed, and with a mountainous pile of copper ore heaped up outside. To his east, he saw a larger-than-life bronze statue of a looming malevolent tree, which shouted incomprehensible words at the rushing river at short intervals. To his west was a smoldering crater, occasionally rocked by the sound of small explosions. And to the south was the largest castle he had ever seen. A red, black and blue flag with a golden star in the center flew from its many turrets. Nowhere in this entire metropolis of the gods was there any sign of life or human activity.

He knew, at a level deeper than thought, that the castle would hold the Landssword.

He climbed down a staircase he found inside his tower, and after a few minutes reached street level. Being in the shadow of these towering buildings was somehow even more impressive than seeing the whole panorama at once. The signs on the structures were written in a strange dialect of Praeta he could barely read. One said "DARJAINEN HERALDRY". Another was "CHURCH OF THE MACHINE GOD." He hurried past these, afraid of what new strangeness they might portent.

After several hours of walking - during which the twilight completely and unnaturally failed to turn into proper night - he found himself at the foot of the castle. It was not merely a keep but an entire complex of fortresses, towers, mansions, and other buildings for which he had no name. It was completely unguarded, and all the doors were open. He went in.

Something guided him, as he navigated the doors and staircases. He passed stained glass windows depicting battles he had never heard of, and idols to gods both familiar and unknown. Finally, when he could almost walk no more, he entered a large chamber full of silks and gold, one he knew in his heart was the throne room of the castle, of this whole city, of an empire larger than he could conceive. The throne was made of solid gold, and the emblem of one of the tropical fruits of So-Sara adorned its top. Upon it sat an old man with a long white beard.

"Oh, I'm not in charge," he said. "I just like to sit here. It's comfortable. Just keeping it warm, y'know?"

"By your countenance, manner of speech, and presence in this mysterious place, I must assume you are Brrapa Lu Eraro, the legendary prophet," said Cloud. "Am I correct in my assumption?"

"Right in one," said the man. "You know, you're pretty lucky. I think Lodermotsrik feels a bit lonely. It doesn't usually let people in here."

"Where is here, exactly?"

"This isn't even one of your fates. This is Lodermotsrik's fate. But this is the place where fates converge, anyway, so it's all the same."

"I'm looking for the Landssword," said Cloud.

"Oh, it's right there," said Brrapa. He pointed to a sword in a glass case at the right side of the throne. "But in this fate, the people of Sxirohalm are quite attached to it."

"Sxirohalm?"

"This city. Well, it'll have a lot of names."

Cloud considered his options. He was one for thought, not action. But Brrapa seemed determined not to let him have the sword, and he also looked like he was too old and frail to get up off his oversized throne, let alone stop him. Before the prophet could figure out his plan, he ran towards the glass case, shattered it with a blow, and grabbed -

- a handful of empty air. He was in the throne room now, and it was still twilight, but Brrapa wasn't there. Instead, the whole city seemed in the midst of a civil war. Men armed with weapons he had never seen were battling inside the very castle. A flaming arrow shot towards him and almost hit his leg.

"Get out, old man!" yelled someone he didn't recognize. "This castle belongs to the Monty Criscan Liberation Army now!"

He needed no second warning. He ran from the throne room. Two beefy guards tried to block his path in one of the corridors, but he shot them down with his fire cylinder. When he was outside, he saw the whole city - the beautiful city of the gods - burning.

He ran down the streets as fast as he could, his cylinder and sword barely saving his life on more than a few occasions. The smoke and the heat from the flames seemed unbearable now. Civilians - by the thousands - were jumping into the river - he assumed it was the Eluin - and instead of staying to fry or be skewered, he joined them. As the current swept him away, he lost consciousness, and when he awoke, he was on the south shore, back in his own world, surrounded by his friends.

"And me," added Quercia. "You were surrounded by your friends and by me."

"That I was," said Cloud.

"Giant trees, dead teachers, far-off lands, and divine cities," said Red. "Oh, and Pupil." He glared. "So far, we're no closer to the Landssword than we were yesterday morning. Rain, you have anything for us? What did you see?"

Rain had been silent all morning. Now he spoke, but his voice was faltering.

"I can't tell you."

"Come, Rain," said Cloud. "We all told our stories, even when they were very personal, like Sun's. Even when they painted us as a soulless blackguard." He looked pointedly at Quercia. "We've got to compare information. If we don't, we won't have the knowledge we need to break the spell and get the Landssword. We're all your friends. We're all here for you."

Rain reached into his tunic and produced the Landssword.

"We've got to get out of here," he said. "Now."