The past.Matriarch Old-Winds-Running-Through-Young-Leaves rested a hand on the face of the monolith. That is the best that her name's first verse can be translated without the nuance of sign. She could feel it, the stone, and she listened to it whisper with the soft life that all stone has. Fresh memories, joyful memories, had been made here. It was sad to leave this place behind, for moving on from a good memory is always sad. And yet it there is a happiness in farewell. Urtelem know this, for they know many kinds of happiness that the wiser peoples so often forget.
Gently, as if in a soft voice, the mother signed to her old friend. Will you not come with us?
The signs returned to her were full of fluent depth, and not entirely clear. It is unusual enough to sign a two-handed dialect with four hands, and Nguxhil's words are always stranger still when they are Nimble.
No, said the signs, suggesting sorrow that is not sad; I cannot not stay in this place, because the city that is the City is also my staying-place. It is where I wander back to after I wander somewhere.
Old-Winds-Running-Through-Young-Leaves smiles. So it is, then. You have given us so much already.
She runs her hand over the surface of the Holy Stone. It is one of many, though dusk has long since hidden what shadows are not concealed by the Cipher Pyramid. No matter. The herd will remember the Stone and its siblings in the circle, remember them well.
Beneath her fingers the matriarch feels the shallow imprints of circles, angles, arcs in arrangement. Oh, what they had been given. Thank you, Nimble. Thank you, Spiral-Palms.
A sharp, low clap of rock hands. The herd uncurls, looks up from the gleam of moonlight sweeping the Purple Sands. Old-Winds-Running gives the signal. It is time to move on. It is time to say goodbye.
It is time to greet the new day.
The present.Sun does not fall through the canopy of the Great Lenses; It leaps and glides.
None of the Great Lenses have spread to their full height yet. Their boughs are still stretching. It is exactly as Nimble had said, in her way. Fifty winters it would take for a Lensling to stand up from the earth of wakefulness into the heavens of dreams. Quite a time, even for Urtelem. Herdsfolk could come and go in that time. Joy was one who had come.
A pebble, as they are called, and a particularly little one at that. Joy clambered over sandy turf with all the unwieldy effort of a child realising what it means to explore. His parents let him go. He won't get far, and there are plenty of friends who will watch him.
A small slope- Just enough for Joy to trip over his own wrist and tumble gracelessly down, coughing grass. Rolling comes naturally, but a pebble's reflexes aren't quick yet. No matter. Joy is hard to dent.
To his fresh eyes, this space is new, barely a few arm's lengths from his mothers. Heart overflowing with wonder, Joy slowly creeps over the broad rock face that has been revealed from beneath the thin topsoil. One of the glass people watches him, stirring seamlessly from that basking stillness they have.
There are circles marked in the rock, a great abundance of them, sectored and linked with lines more intricate than a spider's web. Glyphs hide between them and in them. Joy sits flat and stares. Communication has rhythm, has an elegance in each sentence. To take the shape of each part and fit it together into a whole, complete from every angle, is to write like the Urtelem. Joy does not yet know what these things mean, but he can feel their pattern. He was made for it.
On the two-hundred and fourth day of the sixth year of the Script, three seventeenths of a sector west of here, opens one, the date forming the center that the story spirals around,
the family of Warm-Summer-Rain-Songs found a feathered slouch wounded on its hindleg. For a day and two nights we brought it grass, but it grew ill. Therefore we made it comfortable and delivered it to the vultures. May their hatchlings grow up strong. An addendum.
On the twelth day of the seventh year, a ring of red sunflowers was found in that place. The soul rests easy.Joy traces the lines with his finger, follows them on to another story, finds an object blocking his way and a glass person looking down at him with a grinning scarlet skull. He smiles and signs his favourite words: What is this?
This one, laughs the lensling as he signs, was written when a Maker came to the grove. Other than that, I don't know. Joy signs back with a pout. Why not? It feels so simple, to him, to see the pattern in the story, though all its words are foreign.
Oh, my head isn't the same as yours, rock-baby. We have different stuff between our ears. (This expression confuses Joy greatly.) The lensling notices, and signs a little further over the graven slab. If you want to see what the Maker did, look for yourself.
There on the up-slope stands the Holy Stones of this grove, in their perfect circles. Every inch of the henge is painted in swirls of vivid white and orange and pink, immortalising the rise and fall of the sun at all times of day.
Joy claps his hands and grins. The lensling sits on his stone and dozes in the noon warmth.
The past.Four hunters sit in an unhappy circle, though their hand-sledges are full of game and their fire crackles warm. Four hunters of a party that should have been three.
No words are shared. They spent them all the night before. The murmured prayers, the mountain songs, the promises, the thanks. What now? What to say, when all has been said and all has been done, and yet there is no ending?
All four are quiet, and yet, compared to Jorn, the silence of the other three seems loud. They do not ask him how this has come to be. They know how it began- Ended- And that is enough. Truly, all three of them hold a brother's love for him in their hearts, and do not dishonour him by wondering whether he could have survived the wound if he had willed it harder. Whether Jorn had finally trapped a hog that could match him, or whether he had fought it long enough to look into its vicious eyes and say, you win. Do your worst. Let me end here in blood and snow, as a woodsman should.
Often the gods curse us with death. Sometimes they curse us with continuity. Life, though gutted end to end by a wild tusk. Life, where a winter fever alone was enough to snatch away a wife and son.
Nalog shifts her weight, just enough to pull three pairs of eyes to the huntswoman.
"I heard a rumour, four years gone," she begins. "A clan of stonemen came to the mountains and an old man who knew their hand-tongue translated. He said they were looking for zombies. Not to smash them, like they do demon-tangles. He said they wanted to help them dream again."
It's nothing, or almost nothing. A promise with no depth. Would it be any more satisfying than a leap from a mountain or the jaws of a herakt, if it were true? Nalog glances up at the grey sky and rolls her broad shoulders back to her place in the circle.
Jorn moves. His eyes are glazed, but his undead voice still holds fire. He reaches for his staff.
"I will go."
The present.They stand like the statues they were at the dawn of their lives, unmoving and unmovable, huge. Each one is spaced an identical distance apart from those at their sides, and they share the exact same pose. One knee and one fist on the ground, head bowed, hand on heart. Eyes shut. Brow low. Gentle the Urtelem may be, but there are times when it is right to show strength.
At the center of their half-circle stands a Tedar of unusual figure, facing outwards to a bloated man with yellow-black skin. He looks back at her. He is tall. She is taller. The voice that comes from her eyeless mask of a face makes the man want to look down, see where the child is that must surely be talking, but he has spoken to the Sculptor only moments ago.
Her name, such as she tells those who ask, is Help.
"You stand in a barren place. You stand before a people that will guide you through it, if you would take their hand. In a moment you may cross over into a life that is new, is strange, and is real. Are you ready to begin the long walk?"Some have no wish for ceremony. A few prepare one on their own terms. The walk is long indeed, and the first step is soon forgotten. To each soul its own way. The man rests his hand over a silent heart. His voice is broken.
"Thirty-nine winters I've seen. All of them have... Been hard. And- many years I was happy. Now, I'm. Not." A rasp. Maybe a breath. "My years are over, but I'm still here. I'm tired. It's cold. I want to go back to my- To them. In peace. My name is Jorn. I'm ready."
Help nods, and lays a gentle hand on the man's skull. Tilts it aside. Deft as a butterfly, she incises the base of his neck with an obsidian knife. He feels no pain as she presses the smooth, rippled glass spike deep into his throat.
For the first time in many months, Jorn feels warmth.
She steps back. Nods again, pockets the knife in a small bag. The Urtelem move as one. Their circle comes undone, the unyielding pose softens, and they walk to him, past him, one by one. His hand is as delicate as a flower in their palms, but they hold it with only the slightest pressure. He feels a tug and follows. The Stonemen pass him from one to another as he walks between them, building up a confident pace at their side. Each one takes him a few steps further, laces their hands into the knotted triangle of unity, then the curled prayer of Spiral Palms.
Two dozen pairs of legs and knuckles move at a flow. Faces leak into smiles. Hands rise in plodding chatter. Another kind of warmth seeps into the man. These earthen shoulders are not a barrier. Their strength is his strength. Their heart is his heart. He is part of the stone.
They lead. Jorn walks with them.
The past.Midnight. Haste. Planned haste, yes, but there was ground to cover.
Coming within sight of the willowy thickets that line the river, Flux sights a lumpy greenish figure just about where he expected her to be. Signalling for his guide to go on ahead, the once-djinn swerves slightly upon the sedgy plainsgrowth and catches Yulosi in a broad film of a palm just as she turns to see him coming. Wraps up the goblin and drags her along behind him. Too slow, otherwise.
It was a lopsided arrangement, to send her ahead and catch up on the way. Yulosi wanted to go. She had more than a fair portion of that vexing goblin instinct to fiddle with things, prod them to see what would happen, damned be consequences. So he let her puzzle out her own way to the site on what directions could be given. Flux kept her leash short, but there was really no place to hide in this area, and his guide only had so much time before the sun rose.
Besides, she could be useful. Sometimes.
The blood angel hovered over the anomaly, a mauve sphere of light suspended from his fingertips. It marked the place, and yet even in this almost moonless night the site was clearly visible to Yulosi's cave-eyes. When he saw the forge glow of Flux near the zone the vampire let himself fall, feet first.
They exchanged some words as Yulosi was promptly unwrapped and discarded. Nothing they hadn't already yakked about at length. The deformed zombie scuttled off, the only one, it seemed, who was determined to get some use out of her god-given and worm-eaten brain.
She did not go unnoticed. As soon as the vampire was requested to make another investigative circuit, a faint shadow was cast from behind her. Yulosi chose not to comment.
"No Djinni constructed this, nor any Yivvinite. It is too artificial for the former, who are of nature. The latter lack the strength to construct so quickly, and I perceive no life in this monument, besides. Who, then, is our culprit?""Point. Shit question. Dontcha spit that rhet'ric at me, we both know 'o did this. Real question is why.""Point. Begging the question. We cannot assume that we know-" "-Godssake, Flux, these tracks're six inches deep-""-What creed these Urtelem belonged to. You, in particular, should know that the rigours of Chaos can seize any soul." There was no reprobation in that statement. What is, is. Chaos is no shameful thing.
"No Stonemen that I have yet seen migrate with such pace and direction, and I have lived sixty times your years. To construct such a monument of their own accord is, in the meanest term, bizarre.""...'sthat mean I can put bets on which god is fuckin' wit' us this time? Day's labour says it's the Great Chippa.""I concede that divine intervention is not an unreasonable assumption in this case. Urtelem do recognise the Chipper; I believe his sign is Callused Hands. A wise enough mortal, even a non-Yivvinite, could have inspired their hearts to unite and build also. Perhaps one of their own number." The peaked liquid scaffold Flux wore for a face momentarily dissolved and reformed in a different alignment, and Yulosi's eyes followed what she thought was his gaze.
"We may know soon enough."The vampire was gliding back, a pinkish star in the distance until he grew close enough for his illuminated wings to be discerned. By that time Yulosi had already wandered off again. She had seen enough of angels, alive or dead.
There was a monolith by the near end of the bridge. Yulosi ran her hand over it, already used to the gaps left since she had chewed off the fingers infected by lens.
A map. Milestone too, probably... A shrine? The upper surface of the small obelisk had been queerly distorted, broadened and flattened like putty and pinched delicately into the shape of simple mountains, forests. A line ran straight through the middle. No doubt the very river she could hear now.
Its sides and base were covered in engraved markings, mostly interlocking arcs and angles. The two largest bore uncanny resemblance to the signed names of Callused Hands and Spiral Palms. Yulosi turned and stepped onto the bridge.
A peaceful moment. The river was nearly silent, and Yulosi sat cross-legged in the night, watching stars. No railing on the bridge, nor any need for one. It was rather wide. The stones were rough-hewn, if they had been hewn at all. They were packed thick, and crystallised together, fused the same way the earth closes behind an Urtelem as she tunnels. No doubt the river, narrow though it be, was of the deceptively deep kind with an undertow. Urtelem can't swim, and struggle in mud.
"Yulosi!"And back to the chatter again.
"I presume I'll have to repeat what I just heard- Or did those bat-wings you call ears finally serve a purpose?"Yulosi cackled, refusing to be riled. She dug a filthy sharpened nail into her ear, pulled out an impaled maggot, and flung it at him. Flux dodged effortlessly, his fluid body stretching a perfect tunnel for the missile to pass through.
"You," he mused, genially,
"are disgusting.""Point! Ad zombinem."If nothing else, he was proud of her burgeoning vocabulary.
The blood angel had sighted the bridge's builders from above. They hadn't gotten far yet, and there was nowhere to hide on the plain. Yulosi had a feeling she was about to learn something interesting.
Vec,
Timemaster
