“Jareen, it is me.”
“Silesh? What are you doing here?” Jareen peered through the slot. Silesh was alone—which explained her open speech.
“Noreen sent me. The regent’s council has inquired about your Departing. They want to know how he fares, if he has been conversant, and if he truly has the Seven Isles Fever.”
“The regent is asking if he has been conversant?”
“Yes. It appears that the archivist has no close relatives, and the regent’s representative said that the administration is therefore standing in as his family.”
“That is unusual,” Jareen said.
“He is an arch official,” Silesh answered, then paused. “In a way.”
The Arch Archivist title had a certain amount of ceremonial clout, but there was no real political power there. Mostly the arch archivist was a sort of glorified clerk and an academic, overseeing the archives and the recorders.
“Do they wish to speak with him? They could come speak through the vestibule if they wish. The fever is passed through bodily fluids.”
Silesh paused.
“Does he really have it?”
“I think so, but it is taking the slow course.”
“What is it like?”
“Exactly like how you were taught in your theory segment,” Jareen said. “It is not a hemorrhagic fever, which is a blessing, nor does it cause unusual loosening of the bowels. The mechanism of death appears to lie in the brain. Were it not so deadly, our Sisters would think it light duty.”
Silesh glanced past Jareen, her brow furrowing a little.
“Do you need anything?”
Papaya, kiwi, cinnamon, watermelon. . . The smell of a Vien vineyard.
“No, thank you.”
Silesh nodded.
“What should I tell Noreen?”
“That I believe he has the fever and that it is taking the slow course, as I said. He is conversant still.”
Silesh nodded, waiting.
“Is there anything else?” Jareen asked.
“I guess not,” Silesh said. “Fare well.” The young Sister left, taking the stairs down. No sooner were her footsteps receding than Jareen realized she had not asked Silesh anything about herself, or how her novitiate had been going since she’d left. Was it too late to call her back?
No, she would not yell after her. Jareen sighed, picked up the plates of food waiting there, and left the vestibule.
As she emerged, Coir sat down on the couch in a rush, as if he had been hurrying across the room. Jareen squinted at him.
“What are you doing?”
“I was just getting back from the garderobe,” he said.
That was a lie. He had been crossing from the wrong direction. The man was odd, but oddity was not unusual for the progression of brain fevers.
“Were you speaking with someone?” Coir asked, in a tone that sounded falsely disinterested, as if it were but a mild curiosity.
“One of the Sisters came to check in.”
“Oh?”
“They wished to have a report.”
“Who did?”
“The regency.”
Coir acted interested in his food as Jareen set it on the table in front of him, picking up his two-tined fork and knife as if he was hungry.
“What did the regency want to know?”
“They wanted to know if I thought you were really sick.”
“And you told them?”
“That you’re sick.”
“Naturally.”
Jareen was frowning now, but Coir wouldn’t have seen it, both because her face was covered and because he was staring at his plate, cutting up a piece of chicken into progressively smaller bites.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Just whether you were still talking.”
“Hmm,” he said, putting a piece of chicken in his cheek. He held up a finger as he chewed. “That reminds me. Did I say anything else startling?” He squinted as he watched her for an answer. “In my delirium?”
She shook her head.
“Ramblings, they seemed to me. You mentioned Vah’tane.”
“Ah yes,” he said. “The Gates of Vah’tane. The most particular topic of my most particular study.”
Jareen winced, started to speak, but stopped herself. Coir noticed.
“What is it?”
“Vah’tane,” she said. “It means ‘Vah’s Gate.’ It doesn’t make sense to say the Gates of Vah’s Gate.”
“Ah yes,” Coir said, swallowing. He was a quick blusher, and looked sincerely flustered this time. “See, I knew that, I just. . . forgive me. Regardless, I’m afraid I have had Vah’tane on the brain much of late. I’m sure you can understand.”
“It is normal for the Departing to dwell on the stories of the afterlife.”
Although none of the Departing she had ever known had dwelled on the Vien stories. They thought of the doctrines of their own people. Why Coir was preoccupied with the Vien’s folk beliefs, she didn’t know.
“‘Stories of the afterlife,’” he repeated. “I take it you don’t believe in them anymore than in the Wellsprings?”
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“Our Order knows all the death myths common to those in Drennos, we support your belief in your choice without judgment or favoritism, and we will help arrange your rites.”
“What a nice and useless answer,” Coir said, his tone biting. “Just what the dying need! I’m sure your mother would be proud of your faith in Vah’tane.”
“What do you know about my mother!” Jareen snapped back, raising her voice. Coir’s eyebrows shot upward in surprise.
“Well, that was the most animated I have seen you,” he said, the sarcasm gone.
Jareen struggled to master herself. She must return to the role she knew so well—that of a Voiceless Sister, and not a vienu to be interrogated.
“It is not useless to support the Departing how they and their families wish to be supported.”
“Yes, yes. To support whatever belief anyone has, regardless of how wrong it may be. And if it truly doesn’t matter, the wise and faithless Sisters merely patronize the silly Departing, offering comfort where there is none. Spare me the vapidity.”
“You don’t have to believe anything. You are free to believe or not. I am simply here to care for you.”
“Ah yes. The knowing, benevolent embrace willing to encompass all useless traditions and perspectives. Such liberality was a great intellectual fashion when I was a novice in the archives. It took me over a decade to realize it was absolute shit.”
“Is it now?” Jareen asked, not because she was particularly interested, but more to regain control, to show him that she knew how to withstand whatever tirades a Departing might indulge in. She took the neutral stance of a Sister, her hands folded in front of her. Her practiced role was her cloak of safety, and she was trying to wrap it tight after she had exhibited indiscretion at his goading about her mother.
“You know well that the traditions of old Drennos and the Erthrusian rites do not agree,” he went on. “Both cannot be true. Both cannot be real. It is either one or the other. Now, there is some comfort to being of the old rites, because in their system of thought, if you’re wrong, it doesn’t make much of a difference in the end. But if the Erthrusians are correct, then the followers of the old rites are well and truly fucked.”
“You have not considered the possibility that neither of them are true,” Jareen said flatly.
“I thought it too obvious to mention. The old Drennos clerics have had a thousand years to settle their doctrine and they still can’t, and I’ve read all the original credos in the archives, and if the Creator was talking to that guy. . . We have bigger problems.”
“So what is your concern?”
“The problem is that by supporting all beliefs, we support mostly lies.”
“It is the truth they choose.”
“Stop the bullshit. There is only one truth, and whether or not anyone believes in it doesn’t change whether or not it’s real.”
“And let me guess, you know what that truth is. The humility is staggering.” Jareen couldn’t help but push back. There was no one else there—no family to complain, and Coir was the one being combative.
“No, by Erthru’s moldy crotch, may he rot forever, I don’t know. But I know a lot more than most. I’ve made it my life’s goal to know, and I believe enough to stake my life on it.”
All three weeks of it, she thought, but she said:
“On what, exactly?”
“On Vah’tane!” Coir launched upward from his couch, pushing aside the table as he did so. He could no longer contain his enthusiasm in a seated position. There was a flush on his face that Jareen did not think the result of latent fever.
“And how would you like supported in that?” she asked. What she wanted to ask was, “why would a human believe in Vah’tane?” But she didn’t; she would play her role. It was her fortress. The man’s obsession with her native culture would not shake her.
“I don’t give a shit about your support. I’m telling you so that you might have a chance, too. Your Order does nothing for anyone by pretending to support lies. I’m saying Vah’tane is real.”
“By supporting the Departing in their own beliefs, we reduce their discomfort and provide peace in their last days.”
“Have you ever thought that maybe people need to be uncomfortable?” Coir was pacing now, up and down the carpet at the center of the room. Sweat had broken out on his forehead.
“That is against the entire mission of our Order.”
“And that is why your Order will sink with the rest!” he shouted, throwing his hands up. He stumbled and looked like he might fall. Jareen moved to his side, but he pushed her away. “Leave me alone!”
Jareen was happy to oblige, striding out of the chamber and slamming the door to her room behind her. She bolted it for good measure. As common as it might be, she would not tolerate a Departing laying hands on her in any way—except that abandoning her ward could get her expelled from the Order. The human could cool off on his own for a while. She realized with irritation that she had left her lunch out in the other room, but she wasn’t going back to get it.
After standing for a few minutes, breathing carefully to calm herself, Jareen pulled off her slippers and sat down on the human bed, curling her legs beneath her. One of the dossier cases lay there, and she opened it, pulling a page free.
“[…] As to your question about why there are now only eight Trees left in the Synod when Findel consecrated eleven, that is easily explained. In the one hundred and seventy-third year after the consecration, Lleir son of Lishni wed Anu daughter of Piev and she bore him a son, Daela. It is said that Lleir succumbed to the Change rapidly, and Anu, grieving, went in search of Vah’tane after three hundred years. You may note that this is a preposterously young age but for some reason, the early stories run thus in their numbers. Some assert that our people only became long-lived at the consecration, but most of the wise dismiss this. The ages are not considered historical fact, but rather, three hundred should be interpreted as representing the fullness of time and not a specific number of years at all.
That aside, Anu departed, and so the Blessings of both Lishni and Piev fell upon their son, Daela. It is sung that he went mad at the weight of such a mantle, and he wrestled the Synod for control, murdering Nefl son of Shéna and his daughter before the Synod destroyed Daela, himself. Thus, the number of the Synod dwindled from eleven to nine. There is a ballad that tells the tale, and I would relate it, but it is over two hundred stanzas in length and cannot be extricated from the melody—for, as I wrote before, words are also melody to our people and cannot be divided from string or flute or voice, for all are one.
Then there was the invasion of 553, and the vaela riders of Miret fell in battle against the Quth of Isecan, including the High Liel and all his children. They were a warlike Tree, and it resulted in their demise. Since that tragedy, the High Liele of the Synod are not permitted to ride to war, nor their children. Now, as to your final question: what does it feel like to touch the Current? The truth is, it cannot be related. Even most Vien do not know, for it is forbidden. Surely, they sense its presence, though most do not think on it, having known nothing else. I have reached out and felt the Current, being an heir of the Tree of Aelor. Yet I too am not permitted to do more than touch its presence—never to grasp or draw it into my will. Only the Synod may do so. This is the law of Findel. Our people rarely transgress, and then only the most willful. The punishment is conscription to the front. In essence, it is the one capital crime in Findeluvié, but a crime that few are even capable of committing.
Jareen stopped reading. The light through her window was fading anyway, now that the sun had dropped its upper edge below the horizon. In the distance, seabirds wheeled over the low tide. A moment of doubt came upon her. Maybe she was wrong. Here was a Son of Aelor speaking as if the Current were the plainest truth that could be. Was it just her? She had never so much as felt the whisper that anything was more than dirt and water and sky. An insensitive. She’d been so young when she left, at least by Vien standards. She still was. And to think it would have been her birthright, if only. . .
No. It was not. And this was a princeling writing to a nereth’vanel. She hadn’t thought of that word in a long time. It was the Vien word for any non-Vien: flesh-eater. Surely a Son of Aelor had ample reason to convince the humans that they had arcane power. Were not the myths of elfland just propaganda by the Vien for their defense? She had thought through all this before. There was no reason to doubt it, now. The poor fool in the next room had been taken in.
She readied herself for bed, moving the dossier case back to the stack. As she lay her head against the coarse pillow, the music of the Ballad of Daela was running through her mind. Such a beautiful song, and yet a horrifying story of the madness of the double-blessed. If only she could hear such music again. She had never learned to play music; her mother had never bothered to teach her, and the Vien who dwelt in the embassy in Nosh did not sing to Flesh-Eaters, and likely wouldn’t to an Insensitive, either. Nor would she ever seek them out.
As she drifted in the dark, she imagined that the letters were to her. If only Jareen could write her own letters to some princeling with stars in his eyes and a preoccupation for the harp, to await such missives by ship, full of the earnest simplicity of undying youth—a letter directed to her. How blessed that would be. He might be princeling, but what sort of vien wrote to a human and waxed eloquent about music and birdsong and working in the groves? What would he write to her?
What would she write back?
Here’s what the plague was like. Here is what death looks like. Here is the misery of mankind.
No. She would not write letters.
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