The Book of the Burning

FORTY THREE

All that has risen will fall, and all that passes will come again. All that is scattered shall be reclaimed.

- The Book of the Burning

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CONN

Nava was a strange city with a cloud over it Conn was sure had existed long before this Phineas arrived. He knew very little of the Zahem religion, but what he knew, he disapproved of. Here, in Nava, he felt truly Royan. In Westrial, he was golden skinned in the summer, ivory in spring and winter, one of the many mixed blooded people, like Prince Anson, and in some places he was called “ofe,” a white boy. Even King Cedd, Sendic as he was, and Wolf and Myrne who were now waging their wars, had some Royan blood. But here in Nava the people were truly and proudly white, and though he knew little of their mythology he felt something bordering on hostility. If he had not been a mage and a priest he might have felt unseen or even ugly, but he knew men scattered like guys from what they feared.

The morals of this land oppressed him. There would be a convent and a monastery of the New Faith, or a holy grove of the old gods in this place before there was ever a Blue House. He looked around and he saw lust in men’s eyes, but it was corrupted, perverted, afraid. They thought they were evil and so they would be so. Here there would be no sacred woods, only ditches and patches of trees for shame faced me to meet up in fear. Here were no houses of wisdom with music playing, coffee served and love being made in the corners. Here were only backrooms where men darted about like cockroaches, seeking out a pleasure they were too afraid to enjoy. He had walked these streets this night and found them wanting.

There was Austin, leading a beautiful boy into a room. Conn almost followed them. But this was from his desire, not a true calling. They had not asked for him. They should have. He thought of going to Anson and Ohean, but went to the courtyard, for since they had left Turnthistle Farm, no, even before that, memories of the past were coming clearer, of those first days in the Blue Temple when he had put virginity away and began to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, when he had decided to be initiated as a priest, to be taken through the discovery of pleasure and the giving of it again and again.

He remembered it was some five years hence, at least, when Ohean had come to the temple and called for him. Conn had come down the sanctuary where the sorcerer sat  Conn did not want to interrupt the master, and though he was now a priest, and every day felt himself a priest, he was sure another mystery was happening here and he needed to keep silent for it.

Ohean rose from his meditation, and in his black robes crossed the long hall, his robes moving over the old flagstone floor. He came to the sitting image of Adaon and placed his hands on the knees of the God. Kneeling, he touched the base of the altar, where incense and candles were burnt before the God, and his hands reached into a something Connleth could not see, and then he brought from it a great sword. Connleth had never had much cause to see a sword up close, and what he saw of the hilt was silvery like highly polished metal, and its edges were touched in gold.  Connleth marveled that the sword itself was black until he realized this was the scabbard, and the wizard took it to himself, turning it around and saying, “Connleth, I am glad you are here.”

“It is time for me to go.”

But the wizard looked at him. He cocked his head and said, “You would be sad to go, of course.”

“Yes,” Conn said. “But you told me you would come back in a year, and it has been a year. More than a year.”

“Your heart is sad,” Ohean said, “but not completely.”

When Conn looked at him, Ohean said, “You still believe in innocence, and you have not yet learned the first lesson of nature, the one which all dragons teach and all wizards live. You live it as well, for once all Blue Priests were mages, back in the sunken lands, long ago.”

Conn would gladly gainsay Derek or Gabriel. He knew better than to try this with Ohean, and the sorcerer patted the ground that Conn might sit down beside him.

“How old were you when you came to this place?”

“Seventeen.”

“I thought as much. And now you are… nineteen?”

Conn nodded.

“When you came here you were all innocence, or what you thought was innocence. You were good and pure, or what you thought was goodness and purity. But you were nothing, because you were unfinished. You knew nothing, had done nothing, and now you have done so much, known so much, known so many men.”

When Ohean said it, despite his training, despire his usual happiness, Conn felt himself going red, and Ohean said, “If you were to go back home, back to that little village from whence you came, you would be stoned. You would be a horror to your family. It is the thing you and Derek Annakar have in common.

“The other thing is that you both believe in innocence, both believe in being tatnished. Somewhere in you, you know that something has…. Tarnished you. Made you less pure, less simple. And you think that if you come with me and learn wizardry you will put behind you the confusion of the Blue House. There is a part of you that longs for that. Or am I wrong?”

Conn was startled by Ohean’s words. Every sentence that he spoke was as if Ohean knew him more and more, knew him truly and spoke his own thoughts.

“But you have mistaken innocence for ignorance and dis ease with your nature for being tarnished. You don’t understand you must go on being what you are being to become what you are.”

While Conn was still working this out, Ohean held the length of the sword, black and black on black, a hilt that came to an end with a crossed circle and blue winking jewel at the heart of the cross.

“This is Reaver, the Sword of Night,” Ohean said, “and I have come for it and not for you. I will need it in the days to come, and I will need you. But it is best that you remain here.

“I speak with your Abbot and… I see. You are not solitary now as you once were. You are part of a thing. You are part of a three headed flower. If I were to take you I would destroy the rose. If you had not come, Derek and Gabriel would not be as they are, as they will be. When you come as a mage, they will come with you.”

“They are… They are Domans.”

“Did you think only Royan blood held power? And at any road, it is this ancient land, this place once called Locrys, that puts magic in the blood of those willing to receive it, and I doubt very much that they are pure Doman. They are part of you, and even that had changed them. They will come with you and you will all come as mages.”

Ohean placed the back of hand against Conn’s brow.

“What do you see?”

Conn knew better than to say nothing, or to protest that he could not see. Rarely did the vision come, but rarely did he ask for it, Now, sharply and clear he saw.

Those visions, those visions were from now. That future was here. He thought of finding a scrying bowl, a candle to call up vision. But for vision so immediate he needed none of these things. Connleth Aragareth closed his eyes and before he fell into his old visions and memories, a new one arose.

A black haired woman in blue, and she bore a black wand. She was in a stone house, and how she was cloaked in black. Now she rose in the air like no woman did. Now she took the wind as not even mages did. Her hair blue in the night. A little clump of white and yellow flowers was her name…. Yarrow…. The Woman of the Wood…. And she bore older names from older times. Times when he people roamed the world alongside heroes…. Indul the Fair Maid, the Beloved of Ivo, mother of heroes….

And Seven came down…. And Seven came down….

And she was coming… she was coming here.

But now the old vision returned, a memory of a vision that became vision again….

Stomping and storming and suddenly, Conn felt an uprooting and unsettling behind him as the tree lifted its tendrils from the ground and moved on. Trees were moving but these trees were like people, or the people like trees, Willows with long green hair, men of Oak with dark brown wrinkled skin, red maple ladies as talked about in old tales.

 Whole portions of the forest he stood in with Ohean, and with the woman called Theone, were moving, and this went on and on for some time, clods of dirt falling, crashes coming. Anson was there too, as well as a woman who looked like Anson and that fellow, that Pol Winthrop. There were three great queenlike ladies, including the one who resembled Anson, and they were unaffected. When the storm of trees was done, the remaining trees seemed very still, and very.

“Our work is nearly done here,” one of the Ladies said

She called out: “Hail Ohean, the Ancient One who crossed over the sea, Hail the King who was lost but lives again, Hail Theone, Queen of the Race of Gozen lost. Hail Inark, the Red Witch who gained her power in the worlds beneath. All Hail to Kenneth, and to Orem, who bear the Black Blood of Gozen, and possess the secret skill. Fair thee well, all fair well!” 

He was remembering a cold night on the rooftop of the Blue Temple. He was not yet a priest. He was young then. He did not feel young now. It was in those days when he felt like he would never be split from the new friends he loved. He was in their comfortable rooms, the central one, Lorne’s, where everyone stayed, and his friends were returning from some lesson they’d been to in the lower temple.

“A little past midnight. It was Cayman. He teaches a little long. You don’t mind it, but the whole night’s gone before you know it.  And Gabriel is coming with us, He’s in the bathroom, cleansing.”

“I think a lot of people are coming,” Derek said in a quiet voice. Conn hadn’t seen him from where he was in the corner of the room, his arms folded into his long sleves. Lorne was singing to himself, and gathering things, and as Conn put on his overjacket and Nialla slipped on shoes, they headed out through Derek’s door. The three First Years who had lunched with them were out in the hall looking eager and knuckling their eyes, and they all headed down the hall to where Derek had gone earlier to reach the Gorgon rooms, but now they were heading upstairs and Loren was singing, lustily.

 

They say a man gave up his

land to be the Woman’s Key!

Oh! And Seven came down

Oh, and Seven came down

Of all of them I’ve spoken

Except the one who’s broken!

 

Conn was right beside Derek, and Derek looked at him and smiled, shyly. Was it shyly? Maybe Conn was making that up, and Nialla said, “It’s times like this I wish Jon lived with us.”

They wound their way up to the next floor, and then the next and they were at the seventh, and then they emerged into the night sky and the cool night air.

It was here that Lorne grew quieter and Conn thought, well no one’s rooms were near the stairwell, so probably no one heard him bellowing.

And then they emerged on gardens and benches. This must have been the roof of the Blue House, and now, as Conn looked about, he saw that it was absolutely vast. He had not imagined the roof of the Temple, but what he saw now was trees and winding garden paths, little fountains and no end to it all. From where they emerged they were nowhere close to the sides of the building though, in the distance, he could make out what he thought was the parapet.

They were all walking toward what Conn thought must have been the windowless façade of the Temple. There was a great wall rising, the length of a large house, and Conn could see that it made a square, so a wall squaring an unseen courtyard. From there, in the day, the sunlight must have come into some inner court of the temple, but the paparet was not so high to prevent people from falling down, Conn decided, as it was to keep people from looking in. Now, through a screen of tree branches, he could see the city beyond. They would have been, Conn supposed right over the sanctuary, but now they were all taking out wine and cheese and bags of tobacco, and Lorne was singing:

 

They say a man gave up his

land to be the Woman’s Key!

Oh! And Seven came down

Oh, and Seven came down

Of all of them I’ve spoken

Except the one who’s broken!

 

Now Cal asked what Conn had not dared

“What in the world are you singing?”

“An old song,” Lorne said.

“That tells me nothing.”

Instead of explaining, Lorne sang:

 

First was the mage

Who moved from age to age

And second was his hero strong

 

Third was the starry maid,

who lived in trees,

whose wood would never die

Seven came down

Oh, and seven came down

 

Four is for the lady who fits inside

men’s hands

Who gave up arms and legs to

be an arm again

And Seven came down

Oh, and seven came down

 

“I don’t know anything more than I knew before,” Cal said.

“Sure you do,” Derek dismissed this. “the Seven are the Anyar. You’re just not paying attention.”

Connleth did not know what the Anyar were, but Cal said, “We never sang that song in a temple service.”

“The Gods don’t only exist in Blue Temples, numbskull,” Derek said….

Derek, Derek…. Well, Derek was his one true love is such a thing was real. And he was so far away right now, and they’d had so little time together. Even when they were together, as Blue priests their time and their bodies had been devoted to all. What if, when all of this was over, whatever it was, the two of them went away together to some secret place, to be true lovers at last? What if…

Conn shook his head.

“Theone. The Temple… All of this I have seen. All of it.”