Re: PBEM Game: Yarnspinners 2
Vanheim turn 30...and lo, a prophesy from turn 0 has now been fulfilled.
In which Pherios finds out.
Pherios
"Be there by nightfall," the note said. A courier's leather message bag was given to me. I rode to Venna, to a place outside the city, on the shore of the gorge. There, just as described, I found the dark tunnel where the city's storm sewers emptied into the water.
I built a small fire while I waited, but it could remove neither the chill in the autumn air nor the chill in my heart. I dreaded this meeting. I knew I would be fundamentally changed by it, and not for the better. I searched the sky for hints, but everything was quiet. Perhaps it held back, knowing it couldn't visit anything on me so terrible as what I sought of my own free will.
I woke suddenly to the sun on my face and a boot in my ribs. "Get up, wretch," a coarse voice said. "Give me the messages."
I stumbled to my feet, dumbstruck. The creature, cloaked and hooded in black, took the bag from me with its one good hand and limped away. Could this be her? This crippled thing, reeking of decay? I wasn't even sure the form before me was female. "Wait! Galameteia? Is it you?"
It turned. "Who calls me that?"
It was her height, but everything else was wrong. Galameteia was graceful. This thing limped and lurched. Did I see a string of matted hair straying out of its hood? I tried not to look away. "Don't you know me?" I asked.
"I'm beyond names." It studied me. "Do I know you, mortal man?"
"Yes! You do! What happened to you? What happened to your hand? Why are you limping?"
"Damn fool, I'm falling apart. I was not created well."
"By who?" Created? Maybe it wasn't her.
"What have you stirred in me?" it said. "I feel my guts twist. Who are you? What's your name?"
"Pherios," I said. "Remember?"
It snorted. "My memory is no more solid than my body," it said, and it erupted in a fit of coughs. It dropped the messages and bent over in spasms. Flecks of wetness spattered the dirt by my feet. When it straightened, its hood fell open.
"Oh, no," I whispered.
It was Galameteia's face, and it was the face of a dead thing. Her hair hung ragged and dirty around her pallid skin. She was burned on the left side, and it hadn't healed. Char flaked from grey, raw flesh. Her left eye was fused shut, and her right was shot with blood. My eyes squeezed shut. I swallowed, fought to keep my gorge from rising.
"You're like all the others," she said. "You're repulsed by me. But this time I feel hurt. Why?"
"We were...friends," I said.
She thought for a moment that felt like an hour. "I don't remember it," she said. "Still...there is something..." Her good hand rose to finger something hanging from a chain around her neck. It flashed blue in the sunlight.
I almost reached for the jewel. I wanted to, but I couldn't step any closer to her. "What is that?"
"A charm," said Galameteia. "I don't know what it does."
Why had I come here, when everyone warned me not to? They were right. Every word was pain. I'd found her body, but her soul was gone.
"It doesn't do anything. It's jewelry," I said. "I gave it to you after the first night we spent together."
She raised it to her good eye, studied it. "Was it spring?" she asked, uncertainly. "Was it?"
It had been very late in winter, almost spring. Was she remembering? Or was she guessing, with nothing of my Galameteia left in her?
"It doesn't matter," I said. "You are not who I was looking for. I'm sorry."
She dropped the gem to her chest. "Then go, you who claimed to be a friend," she said. Or it said, whatever it was that wore Galameteia's skin now. "This is my destiny, pain and sorrow until my ending. You've brought me another share. Go, before your words drag more suffering out of my heart." It coughed again, and I thought I saw something crawl in the sputum in the dirt.
It was too much. I backed away, struggling to control my pounding heart. I'd wanted closure, risking my sanity to see her. Would my happy memories of Galameteia remain unpoisoned by this encounter? I didn't know.
"Nothing is left of me but horror," it said, "And every link is broken, save the one binding me to earth. I wish I could fly again." It trudged into the sewer tunnel. I stared after it. As I lost sight of it, I heard an awful, echoing howl of pain and grief.
Later I could not recall if it was hers or mine.
* * *
A week and a half later, Ji brought me a message. "Sorry, kid," he said, before he flew away.
"Go to Rhetha," the note said. "Bring her back, to the peaks." It was unsigned, but I recognized the hand of the white rider.
So Galameteia was gone, this time, forever. Did I feel sorrow? Relief? Did I fall apart again? No--I felt numb. There was nothing left.
Without telling anyone, I donned my armor and rode for Rhetha. I searched for hours before I found her trail, but when I did, it was unmistakable. The first bolt of fire killed her horse. She'd limped for almost a mile when the second hit her. After the third, she could only crawl. When the seventh and last struck her, she was just in sight of the place where my uncle told us, a year ago, how his undead troops were hit by holy fire.
Then I did collapse, next to her charred bones. She remembered. She had remembered me, and she tried to reach a place we had been together, so I could find her. And that meant she must have known what would happen to her in Rhetha.
Had I woken that in her? When I met her, seeking only closure for myself, did I cause her such sorrow that she would take her own life? Had it been too late to save her? If she had remembered, I should have known. I should have sensed it. I could have done something, eased her pain. But I was blind to everything but my own supposed destiny, and my own selfish desire to bury the painful past. I'd failed her, again.
I pulled her sword from underneath the bones and fused mail. It shimmered in sickly rainbows, as if coated with patches of oil. I felt a chill from it as I brought its tip close to my left hand. My palm numbed. I turned my hand over and let the tip of the blade rest on the back of my hand.
The skin grew an angry pink, and in a moment, I could no longer feel anything in my hand. Blisters formed, then grew and merged. They burst, exposing raw, red meat under flowing pus. I felt nothing, either in my hand or my heart. As the open wound spread, I wondered how far it would go before I felt something. When I saw bone? When I lost my hand, like her?
Then a voice called, "Pherios!" I started, and the blade jerked away from my hand. It started to sting.
I stood up. Approaching me from across the waste was Molly, riding one of Vanheim's mountain-bred ponies. She left her horse near mine, and she walked toward me slowly, edging sideways, as if she were afraid of me. She caught sight of Galameteia's body, or my hand, or both. "Vethru preserve us," she said, and she stumbled and dropped to her knees, vomiting.
I heard a distant bird cry. An egret? I didn't know. I wanted to believe so. It woke me. I dropped the baneful blade and went to Molly. I held back her hair until she finished, then led her away from Galameteia to the horses, where I gave her some water.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Are you?" she whispered.
"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" There was no way she could track me, a Van.
"I followed the echoes," she said. She was still very pale, and she stared at the seeping wound on my hand.
"Of what?"
"Your footsteps. The sound of your horse's shoes on the rock," Molly said. "I came because...I heard you dying. I thought. But you're OK! You won the fight. With that thing."
And had I been fighting, what could she have done, alone? But I realized it didn't matter, because she had saved me. I looked at my hand. It hurt badly. "Let me," she said. She washed it, and out of her saddlebags she pulled cloth and scissors. Of course. A tailor's daughter. "We need balm for this," she said. "Soon."
"I know. Thank you. I can't tell you what you saved me from," I said, as Molly neatly dressed my hand. "No. That's not right. I can. You're in the midst of this. You deserve to know what it's about. Do you want to know? Can I tell you everything?"
She was scared. Her fingers fumbled as she pinned the bandage in place, and she'd probably been pinning cloth since before she could walk.
"It'll be hard," I told her. "You'll hear terrible things. But this is the world we live in. You can handle it, if you want to."
She nodded, once. Somehow I knew, this was right. I would try not to scare her, but she would be frightened--probably terrified. Before, I had wanted to push her away to spare her this kind of tragedy, but now I knew that none of us would be spared. What I could do is help her understand. I'd make sure of it.
"Her name was Galameteia," I said, "And I loved her. She had a gift, like you, like me..."
* * *
It was late the next evening before we reached the rocky peak of Mount Graizon, on the Vanheim border. Even wearing my cloak, Molly shivered in the cold. "I don't see a tomb," she said.
"You are right, Vans are buried in stone," I said, as I laid Galameteia's body on the rocks. "We place our dead underground, beneath the temples in the cities. But for those called to be Valkyries, it is different." I opened the canvas I'd wrapped her in. There wasn't much left of her. Her armor I'd left in the wastes, for some future traveler to wonder over. The gem I'd given her was in my pocket. I wore her sword. Little remained of cloth or flesh on her bones. What there was smelled of char and decay. It would do.
I stepped back. "We should have a holy man," Molly said, nervously.
"I've studied the rites all my life," I said. "Your people would call me a priest." Then I conducted the funeral ceremony, with no witnesses save Molly and the wind. "Good-bye, my twice-mourned love," I whispered.
I walked back to my horse and mounted. Molly, confused, said, "Wait--where are you going?"
"It's done. It's time to head back."
"You can't leave her here!"
"Mount up," I told her. "We'll find shelter for the night lower on the slope."
"But--"
"Valkyries are creatures of the air; the carrion birds and the elements will take her now. That is the way we do things." She followed me, reluctantly, looking back several times over her shoulder at the body.
It was hard to leave Molly, the next day, when reached the road to Vanheim. I had grown to like her, and now, just as I realized how I could help her, I couldn't stay with her. She cried when we parted, and I promised her I would write whenever I could. I gave her a message for Petema, then I rode away into the forest.
Vethru had used Galameteia in his search for something, and it killed her. I needed to know why. I needed to know what was so important, what was worth the life of my lover.
I had been a student all my life. My father taught me politics, history, theology, and magic. My mother taught me riding and stealth. My uncle taught me the arts of war--weapons, strategy, and tactics. For two years, I had read every report of every scout and commander in Vanheim. I was prepared. It was time to put my education into practice.
Others would worship him; I would question. Others would obey. I would argue. Whatever the cost, I would uncover the truth. I would face god and demand that he justify his actions.
Let my visions react to me. I sighted a falcon flying into the valley. I turned my back on it and rode into the hills.
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