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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sparky" data-source="post: 1846095" data-attributes="member: 13681">Round 1.6 Sparky vs. Warlord RaltsDead LettersBy Sparky 1 - mustachio2 - note3 - pattern4 - cascade The blank-eyed Writer sat, gnarled hand hovering, hitching rhythmically. The whispers in his head had ceased. He blinked placidly at the acolyte who brought scents of citrus, ash and metal with her as she wove through endless ranks and rows of identical desks. She paused here and there refilling ink wells, collecting pages into a leather folio and making marks on a bulky earthen tablet. The acolyte turned and saw her charge’s rhythmic twitching. She rushed to him cursing herself roundly while swiftly consulting her tablet. Neatly plucking one vial from dozens attached to her belt she unsealed the tiny bottle and stopped dead, eyes wide. The Writer was trying to speak. His voice was rough and quiet, “I am inc… incom…”  Through stark disbelief she glanced at the missing finger on the Writer’s hand. Incomplete, yes. This man always made her uneasy. He panted, jaws working, still attempting speech, his whole body caught up in the hitching physical stammer, “Inc… ink… …empty.” The acolyte shut her mouth and swallowed, upending the vial into the Writer’s well. She felt a stab of relief as his mask shifted (1) and with a mark, a rustle and a tinkling of vials she was gone. The old body relaxed, breathing normally again. The grasping whispers returned and the Writing began once again.*** Imala tied up her skiff and chased up the muddy river bank after Ahanu and Ankti. “Wait!” She called, “You must not go!” Ahanu stopped and turned slowly, eyes growing hard as he looked down at the old woman. She was not making this any easier. He clenched his fists and felt the tug of the scar over his missing last finger. No matter all their planning and hoping. The River was dead. The Serpent was dead. What chance could Akando have had against men who killed gods? Ahanu stopped and turned slowly. “Wait? For how much longer? There is nothing for us here.” He took Ankti’s arm to lead his her away. Panic welled in the old woman’s belly and she lunged, “No! You cannot leave! Akando will return to us and we will finish. He will!” The old woman wailed and collapsed on her knees, weeping, tearing her hair, “We have to keep fighting. Waiting.” Ankti crouched awkwardly around her pregnant belly, “Neither fighting nor your tears will feed our child, Imala. You are a kind woman. Come with us. The monks will give us food and homes and work.” The old woman looked down at her wrinkled hands. They looked unfamiliar to her. Old and weak and tired. The hands she remembered were strong and poled her raft up and down the River. She reached out to touch the younger woman’s belly, “Stay until the baby is born. Let him be born by the River.”  “Him?” Ahanu stepped forward. “Have you… had a Telling?”  Imala swallowed the lie on her tongue. It tasted like ashes. The Serpent had not whispered a Telling into her ear through the reeds on the riverbanks in many, many years. She stood, leaning on Ankti. “I will make a hura for the birthing. Come.” Imala’s bones ached and she leaned rather more heavily on Ahanu’s arm that she liked as the three returned to the river and Imala’s skiff. Ahanu poled them out into the murky, lapping water. From the prow the old woman could see the bulk of the Monastery in the distance where it squatted over the river, choking life from all the land below. Our land. Akando, time grows short. You will be hearing the whispers of my passing soon, writing them on the pages for the thieving monks. She closed her eyes and let her fingertips trail in the water, a prayer carried on the river. Please, Akando, return soon to me, to our people. I cannot keep them here forever with lies and empty promises.*** The Monastery sat at the top of the falls with a commanding a view of the moonlit lands below. Remnants of the river trickled feebly around the massive flanks of the squat, sprawling building to run down the naked rocks. Smoke from a hundred fires plumed from warm chimneys. It was meal time. A door opened high on the cold stone wall. Two pale bodies wound only cursorily in linens fell out, stick-thin limbs coming free as they dropped, tumbling to land on a stack of bodies and bones and refuse. Carrion birds screeched their displeasure from nearby roosts. The door shut. A hollow bang brought the monk out of his study of the pages before him. He stood stretching his back and prodded the failing fire with an iron, smiling as the embers leapt and swirled. He adjusted his eye glasses and peered at the stack of pages written in the crisp, mechanical hand the Order taught to heretics and pagans. He sat again and spread the papers before him, eyes gleaming in the firelight, “All the secrets of your tiny lives waiting for me to pluck them out.” He shifted the papers, many in different tongues of all the lands. They were confessions of love and guilt. Regret and triumph. Last wishes, wills, dying words. Dead letters. He had read thousands of them - tens of thousands - mining them for assets that the Order might tax. Or secrets that would secure the Order’s power. No one could hide from death. And the Order owned death. A knock at the chamber door put an end to his glad wallowing, “What?!” he snapped. “I… I brought your dinner, Brother,” came the reply, “And this evening’s log and letters.” It had gotten later than he’d realized. “Come.” Backing into the room with the great tray, the girl, a wisp of a thing, barely placed it on the monk’s dining table in time. She shook her hands, pressed white from the weight of the tray. She handed the leather folio and heavy earthen tablet to the brother. He peered at it, murmuring. “Two deaths. Thirteen complete letters and seven vials administered.” The monk squinted at her. She wasn’t leaving.  “Well?” “It’s the Naiadin, Brother,” the girl began. The monk leaned forward, ears burning. There was only one Naiadin. A man taken twenty years ago. The Naiadin people had proven… elusive. And there was not another to replace him. If this man was spent the Order would have no link to their movements, their whereabouts. “Do I have to drag it out of you, Acolyte? What about the Naiadin?”  “He… spoke.” The monk scrambled out of his chair and snatched up the two glossy folios in manner quite ill-suited to the holy contemplative he considered himself. The wide-eyed acolyte trailed along in his wake hoping that this wasn’t, somehow, her fault. The monk burst into the whispering hall, stirring monks and acolytes like pigeons in the high rafters.  Slowing to a more decorous speed, he seethed between winded gasps at the girl beside him, “I certainly hope you didn’t wait to share this little bit of information.” The girl shrank into herself. She darted past, ducking her head to hide teary eyes as she led winding way to the man they sought. She stopped in front of a desk like all the others. The Naiadin sat hunched. He was Writing. Relief flooded the brother’s face as he registered the Naiadin’s working form and the acolyte could have soared to the bell tower in that moment of glimmering hope. She might still escape punishment. “What is this?” The brother’s hiss brought the girl back. She opened her mouth to reply and noticed the brother was not addressing her. She looked down at the paper and circled around to get a better look at the curious writings. (2) The Writer paused, mouth hanging open, blank-eyes blinking as the monk stabbed at the fragile paper, voice cracking as he bit off and spat each word, “I said. What. Is. This?” The Writer’s lips worked as he mouthed several syllables before the sound came, “...tried. Cannot… write… letter. Me.” With a shaking hand the Writer pointed at the ghostly symbol, fixated on the incompleteness. “M-me.” The monk leaned close, eyes wide and mad behind the glasses, “I’m not a fool, to be taken in by your savage tricks. I will ask one more time - what is this?” The Writer closed his mouth, eyes widening to show white all around under the mask. The tiny reflections in the monk’s eye glasses began to hitch. Rhythmically rocking as the empty man attempted speech. “I.. I..” The monk threw up his arms and roared, “Enough. I know very well what it is. It’s a code,” he sneered, “You people are smarter than I gave you credit for. I wouldn’t have thought people living in the mud could be so clever.”The Writer subsided into passivity again and the monk, finished with his tirade, hurried off, acolyte flapping along behind all the way to the man’s chambers, “See that I am not disturbed.”The door slammed in the girl’s face and, with nothing else to do, she collapsed against the wall, shaking as she cried silently into her robes.*** Imala winced inwardly at Ahanu’s hard eyes tracking her passage from raft to raft. The man had not gladly returned to the rafts of the Naiadin. He used to laugh so much as a child. He will be glad now. Imala was finished with the hura. She smiled with pride at the festooned bundle she carried. It was as handsome a hura as she had ever seen and it would bring the baby into the world good and strong. Ahanu grunted as he tied and retied raft’s bundles, “If Akando lives, he betrays us with every breath. Better that he were dead.” His eyes glanced back up, gauging the progress of Imala’s bobbing path towards them across the rafts. “Ahanu!” Ankti hissed, “Those are not the words of a father to my son.” Ankti stood carefully, hips unsteady this close to the baby’s coming. Ahanu walked to his wife, steadying her arm.  “There is the father to my son. Helping his mother,” she smiled crookedly, balancing quite easily now that she was up. She turned to greet Imala. The old woman paused, stooping to cup water. “No, no, Imala,” Ankti drew the old woman onto the raft, “We do not require such formalities from you. Come, sit. Tell me, how is your raft?” The expecting mother’s anticipation was nearly as great Imala’s. The two were fit to burst. Ahanu shook his head as the two tortured each other with the elaborate rituals of motherhood. At last Ankti could stand it no longer, “So, great-mother Imala,” she asked politely, “Have you finished the hura?” “Yes, child.” She smiled and laid the package between them. Each pulled one end of a binding string until the knots loosed and the gleaming treasure inside was revealed. (3) “Oh… Imala.” Ankti reached out, seeming afraid to touch the beautiful weaving, as if her touch would scare the banded serpent away. Even Ahanu thawed as he knelt by his wife, fingertips stretching to brush the smooth-ridged pattern. Ahanu looked down and did not speak or make any move to pick up the hura. “Go on, Ahanu, you are the father. The hura is yours to place.”  Imala held the woven serpent figure out to Ahanu. “No. Imala. You do it.” The old woman shrugged, brow furrowing in puzzlement and Ankti gently touched her husband’s arm. He did not look up. Imala scooted over and made all the adjustments to the cords that couldn’t be done until now. When she leaned back the brown and orange serpent slithered up Ankti’s belly. Imala took Ahanu’s hand, “It does not matter who puts on the hura, but you must say the words. I will speak them with you. And when we are done, we will make preparations to put our feet on the Path.” Ahanu only nodded and began quietly, words tumbling in a steady chant from his lips.*** Consciousness – waking - came slowly, through heavy layers of time and scent and sight. His back hurt. And his hand. It felt like a claw. It looked like a claw. Eyes lit by an agile mind for the first time in twenty years moved rapidly behind the half mask.  Then the robed man had come with his demands and his breath. Twenty years of pattern and reflex submerged the confused man again. Saved him. For the moment. But the robed man had shown him something. Two small somethings. Reflections of a familiar face – his own face - in the small disks perched on the robed man’s nose. The man’s life crashed in on him in a single moment and reflex submerged him again. He had no idea how long he sat after the foul man had gone. My face, but not my face. A mask! Of course! I can feel it. I must have been in here a long time to have become so feebleminded. He smiled at his own joke. He looked around surreptitiously from the corners of his eyes and schooled his features to blankness. No one appeared to have noticed him. The monks and acolytes were gathered in clusters speaking anxiously in hushed tones. He looked down and his heart sank. His hands. They were old. Not the hands he remembered. He began to understand the span of time that must have passed; the implications spidering out covering his body with a shroud of age and fear. Imala. He closed his eyes tight, jaw clenching. I must reach the Path. Akando swallowed as he began to formulate just how best to take the situation apart from the inside.*** The rafts parted down the center, neighbors shoving off of neighbors to make room for the heavily laden raft bearing Ahanu, Ankti and Imala. Whispers and mutters flickered around the floating makeshift village. “The old woman is finally mad.” “No one has been to the source of the River since the monks came.”  “That is because it is gone.” “No, destroyed.” “Flooded.” “They will never make it.” Pretending they did not hear the words, the women sat rigidly staring ahead. Ahanu, tall and bold, stood at the back of the raft, pushing it along, steadily, head high. I am a foolish, weak man to let these women tug me up the river to our doom. He did not stray or falter as the raft broke free with only a few desultory cheers for the pathetic birthing party. A few swimmers pushed off from the rafts and carried wreaths of water grass, one for each of them, and a tiny one for the baby. Imala took them silently, smiling at the young children splashing in the water, eager to be the first to touch the raft. Ankti smiled and put her arm back to pet her husband’s leg, he was worried, “Do not listen to them. We will do this right. The monks have only what they can steal from us, my husband.”  Ahanu looked down at his wife, “They have much, my wife.” The old woman spoke, voice creaking like the logs of the raft, “Yes. But they do not have this.” Ankti propped up on her elbows to look at Imala. She leaned her head back as far as it would go to smile up at her husband. Easing herself back down, she rubbed her belly through the hura. The baby was moving. Ahanu stared ahead and felt his wife’s simple pleasure and excitement. There would be time enough for the seriousness ahead; she could have this moment of happiness for both of them. Ahanu didn’t know where their journey would lead them, but perhaps once past the monastery they would find a new land. New rivers. Imala’s eyes were locked on the monastery. Akando, we are true. We are keeping to the beliefs.*** “What do you mean ‘he was spent’?” The monk’s bellow raised with every syllable until the last became an inarticulate scream. All of the Writers flinched, sensitive ears unused to such noise. The monks were petrified. One finally spoke, raising a trembling finger to point at the acolyte trying to disappear behind the raging monk, “Sh-she sent me away. You were not to be disturbed.”  The monk rounded on the girl, inhaling deeply to better yell when she fainted dead away. The monk started to shake, hands balling into fists. Red-rimmed the edges of his vision, “Open the grates. We’ll be rid of the Naiadin once and for all!”  “But, brother, it’s not tha—“  “Shut up!” “The—“ “SHUT UP!” “You can’t simply—“ “Can’t I?!” “B-but, brother—“ “OPEN THE GRATES!” Spittle flew with the last words and the monks scattered in a fluttering of pages to evacuate the newer parts of the monastery that had grown down under the waterline in the years since its construction. Unfamiliar peals rang through the cold stone, long unpracticed alarms ringing out every sort of warning - fire, invasion, plague, flood, lunch.  Below the monastery along the rocky ridge above the falls an old man stirred. He was only cursorily wrapped in linens before being unceremoniously dumped from an anonymous door high in the cold stone of the monastery wall. He shuddered as he felt the bony corpses of other spent Writers beneath him. The pile shifted and a musical sound filled the air. Panic stabbed as the sound registered and the old man scrabbled back as fast as he could, linen binding tugging him forward with the sliding pile snagging on bones and bodies. He yanked and pulled at the cloth as the last of the pile gave way beneath him.*** “What is that?!” Ahanu winced at his shout. They were getting close to the monastery now and traveled only after dark, speaking as little as possible.  There was movement along the tall silhouette of the monastery. Light on every wall. light in every window. Strains of the cacophony of bells faintly reached their ears. But more than any of that, a stream of white, tripping down the cliffside. They heard  a great groaning bellow, as if the earth itself spoke and white froth broke through the teeth of the stone giant crouched on the mountain.  “It’s the river!” Ankti’s face glowed, but she didn’t stand. Imala had forbidden it.  “I don’t believe it,” Ahanu mumbled. Imala simply nodded and snapped her fingers in Ahanu’s face. “Ahanu. Ahanu! We have to get off of the river. Now!” He shook himself into action poling the raft closer to the shore, cursing when the staff mired in the muck of the bank, well before he’d gotten them all close enough to quickly make it off of the raft. “Take her. Go!” Ahanu swept up his wife and leapt into the mud. It swallowed his legs up to his knees. Each step was a laborious process of plant, wiggle, lean, pull, the mud sucked at his legs, but served at least to hold him up. He laid his wife carefully down and returned for Imala. He picked her up with a holler and spun her around in the mud, “Imala! River-seeker!”  The old woman pointed at the gushing falls and corrected him with a shake of her head, “Imala, River-finder.”*** The monastery erupted into panic, fires raged. Bells rang out a discordant clanging drone and no one could agree just what emergency to address. Some barricaded doors as others smashed them down. Some scaled the monastery’s highest domes. Most with any sense got as far from the monastery as possible as quickly as they could. People, livestock, birds all fled the monument on foot, hoof, wheel or wing.  The waters rushing through the grates swirled high, flowing into windows and balconies, cascading down stairs and flooding the lower quarters. The great building stood against the fury of the River for hours until something deep within gave way. It groaned and with a crack that echoed across distant mountains and tumbled in a roar dwarfed by the rage of the River as it plunged over the falls.*** “Hang on, hang on. We don’t have much further.” The young woman grunted, “Don’t you think I have huh-huh-hung on long enough?!“ Ahanu carried Ankti in a makeshift sling. His sides burned and his muscles trembled. He murmured encouragement to his wife. She spoke only one thing ‘he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming,’ without pausing for any more breath than it took to chant the words or berate Imala for the journey and Ahanu for her fate. “There! The Path! The Path!” Imala’s heart soared. The receding waters of the Monastery lake revealed a series stones. “It’s…” Ankti grunted, panting, “Beautiful.” She panted, grunting more. “Now, put me down!” She howled as a contraction banded her belly in agony. Across the lake a stick-thin man plodded doggedly onward. Follow the Path. Path of the Serpent. Serpent Path. Spine. Follow The letter showed me the Path. Follow the letter. He was half delirious with exhaustion. Imala beckoned Ahanu on, “Only a little further, Ahanu and you will be a father.” Ahanu grunted. Ankti grunted. She turned to help the man lower his wife over the small ridge that edged the dwindling lake. Ahanu froze, eyes wide, fixed over the old woman’s shoulder. Imala turned and her hands fluttered to her mouth. She barely dared to whisper. “Akando?” Her old legs trembled and she took a step forward.  “Imala? It is you. I have been seeing visions… ghosts.” He stepped forward and fell into her embrace.  Ankti panted, “Would somebody,” she paused to ball her fist in Ahanu’s sling, shaking it vigorously “Please. Take. This. BABY?!" she screamed.  "You!” The sweating woman pointed and all eyes followed her outstretched arm to the slim girl in dingy, torn acolyte’s robes. The old man gaped, “The ghost! You see her?” “Ghost! Girl! I don’t care! None of these worthless stones,” Ankti fidgeted, working her legs out of the sling falling against Ahanu as she did so, “Will help me have my baby!” Everyone sprang into motion at once and swirled in a flurry around the laboring woman. They carried her a little further to the top of a small rise that spouted water in a gurgling cascade down a series of strange shapes into the lake below. A small cry split the air, piercing and shrill. The small voice rose and fell and the small cluster of people collapsed into a heap, crying, laughing. Sun broke through the clouds as blood and water cascaded down the Path of the Serpent. (4)***  “And that, children, is how Nituna came to be born right here.” The woman beamed down at the young boys and girls punctuating her closing word with a finger touching the rounded stone of the highest part of the Path. Many of the children gathered around were her grandchildren, some were great-grandchildren. Others were simply cousins, or the children of friends and neighbors. Peaceful times had returned to the River and birthings were festivals again. “Now go on. The races are going to start soon you don’t want to miss them.” The children squealed and bolted toward the shore where tented rafts brightened the riverbanks. All but one. The old woman smiled at him warmly, “You too, Akando. I will come down soon.” He nodded dutifully and trundled down the hill. The old woman, joints popping and cracking, knelt carefully, hands resting outstretched on the jutting stones. She bent her head overwhelmed with gratitude, tears mingling with the bubbling water like her parent’s had so many years ago. 1 - mustachio2 - note3 - pattern4 - cascade</blockquote>

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