Laudanum is bitter. A pint of it is bitter beyond words. It's not long before sleep takes you. But even through the laudanum, you dream of a face. Gold and black. A woman, perhaps? She's holding something. A knife? A poker? A darkness like treacle swallows you.
When you wake, you feel awful. But that's the laudanum. There's something odd, though. A lightness... There is a neatly scrolled parchment on the bureau, an Infernal Contract. It's stamped VOID in red ink. You feel rather as if you've been marked in red ink too. Last night marked you forever. This isn't good. But it's what you need. Seven is the number.
The laudanum takes you to another place, a place that is nowhere. You hear the cat's hiss. You see a man with a brass fork. He has four eyes and two toothy mouths. No - that's a hat. And then they are gone, and so are you.
The laudanum headache is monstrous, but it will pass. Your soul is back again. It must be getting threadbare and grubby. Who has it this time? You can think about that when the pain recedes. The number will come to you. You will become the number.
Can you really do this to yourself seven times? Stop now, for pity's sake!
You take enough laudanum to fell a horse. You will remember nothing. It's kinder that way. Have you not suffered enough? No. There is much more to come.
A crashing wave of pain drowns you, dissolves you. Will you even have the strength to find your soul again? You will. This is the number. This is the number. At least that d__nable creature has gone. No. You don't need peace. You need the number.
Can you really do this to yourself seven times? Stop now, for pity's sake!
Nothing can numb it. Not even enough laudanum to supply Veilgarden for a week. A soul extraction is normally painless. This is a screaming endless nightmare. A thousand years and a thousand more.
Your soul is still there, barely. A foul and reeking mess, like fungus in a dead tree stump. What have you done to yourself? What damnation awaits you? You're going to die soon. Nobody survives that much laudanum. Perhaps death will take some of the pain away. But you've done it. The number stains your soul. Seven is the number. Seven is the number.
Scarred. Chained. Stained. I am the number, and I will go NORTH, and there I will burn, and it is then I will know the Name.
So in the time it took me to run through 280 Fate, I've gotten into three affairs and ended two of them with blackmail, looked into a mirror that instantly killed me, saved a artist-revolutionary from the constables (after stealing his girl), fended off an infestation of sentient warmongering rats and made their leader into my slave, helped a drug-addicted detective with things he ought to be doing himself, made friends with criminals, urchins, bohemians, anarchists, and the denizens of Hell Itself, and did all manner of other things I can't recall because I went through them too quickly
Oh yes, the Drowned Man is humming tonight, a song in the water like the bones of fish. We will feel him in the harps of us, and if his tune is caught it will be raised to the sky where the bright birds pass and the air hangs sultry and the gods no longer frown.
Is it opening, now, does it open? Are there snares we can grasp, to place them tinily in our flesh, as we will take the flesh of Vake-the-betrayer, black as the knives? Dear deep void those knives. My flesh was not meant for them. And their teeth like the tenderness of insects. Ah, ah, ah, ah.
The first descent, the unnaming of flight, that was forgiven and all shall be well. So It said. The second, a shrug and a time. It was fair, It was fair. The third, oh the rage at the deceptions of sand. All of us were, all of us, and now all of us will.
O you of the resonant chest and the beard blushed bright: far-travelled, Principle-Thief, Intimate of Wines, perfumed lord. When the candles are lit, your name will be spoken only to be unspoken, and the void will reject it, even the void.
Do you recall how we came to that place? And they sang of their lightnings and shapeful disgrace? And we tilted our vanes and ennobled our spires. They welcomed us then and commingled all choirs. And not enough, not enough. Still It mourns, and still waits the Sun.
If the Sun is Its master, let the Sun be sunken, let the currents rush in, the strange-winds and particle-trades, the wave that trembles and the great Curve. All of it, until there is dark. My hate will not be contained until the Sun is cindered and damned, until Its heart is empty as theirs.
They said - they called me by my name - I need only go up and the priests would take a little. The gratitude in their song! We embraced before I rose. You of cloth and shadow, you enemy, you proud-singer, you led the way. I will poison you with airs.
What is that? I drown in pain as I drowned in the well. No. He drowned. I am only a vessel. Only a vessel. And a spark...
You have the first of seven candles. You will not gain the last. This is only a beginning and if you do not extinguish yourself, you will be extinguished.
...and she doesn't. Long and bitter, but you are strong now, strong as the well-stones. At last she spits a curse at you, but you only lift her by the feet and tip her over the edge. Her scream goes all, all the way down. And here comes St Cerise's candle, to light you to bed. One day, perhaps, it will chop off your head.
AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE WELL.
AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE THROWN DOWN THE WELL.
"I was hungry," you say as you tear the page from the book, "and you gave me only the pelt of trees. I was thirsty, and you gave me only ink. I was mmff mff ff mm. Mmm hmm fm." Your mouth is full of paper.
Slowcake's Amanuensis backs away cautiously but rapidly, as one might from a live cobra stuffed with paraffin. "Ah, don't worry," he says. "I'll see myself out." He scuttles crab-wise into the night.
He leaves no candle behind him. Your rashness has won you no candle.
You find her in a flowstone bower, shimmering with violet, murmurous with purple. The irrigo is so thick here it's hard even to remember to draw breath.
(No, you don't remember me. Even if you'd met me, no one remembers anyone, not this deep. And you haven't met me, although you may perhaps have met the one who left me here.)
(But you're right. I've been waiting for you, here in the inks of the undernight.)
(I wish I could laugh. But I can't even weep, not this much of me. Dear one, the Name has seven letters - letters in the Correspondence. You can't have got this far without knowing the limits of matter when it comes to the Correspondence. If I even could tattoo it on your skin, you would go up like - like a candle.)
(You'll have to write it in fire. Seven letters. Fortunately, I have the fifth here for you. But before I can do that... well, you know how this works, by now. You've given up your past and your present. Now it's time for your future.)
(I learnt - the real me learnt - to tattoo in all the colours of the Neathbow, did you know that? And then I came to the Nadir. For a similar reason to you, I suppose, but passing in the opposite direction, as it were. And I sloughed me off like a snakeskin.)
(How sweet it is here with the violet airs and the eyeless faces. Sweeter than where you're going, anyway.)
(You'll need to go all the way in. Up to your shoulders. Really let it soak in.)
(It's such a relief, isn't it? Some people want purpose in their life. Stupid people. You're not stupid. I could see that straight away. Of course, you will be if you spend too long down here, with all this irrigo. I can see you dimming like old embers, right now. Never mind. We're just about half way.)
(It was a broken toy anyway. Like the one they used to call Mr Candles. Oh, hush, I can say it down here. No one's listening, except me and you: and I'm no one, and you're not even that.)
(I wonder if you'll ever leave this place. You might lie here in a dream and think you have. You might walk the world, in your thoughts, and all the while you lie here until your eyes scab over with skin and the skin peels from your skull. And one day, another enthusiast looking for the Name will trip over your bones and say - and say - )
(What was I talking about?)
(You imagined me. What else could I do but love you?)
I was hungry, and you gave me only the pelt of trees. I was thirsty, and you gave me only ink.
"Oh yes," the Priest says, smiling, "the Drowned Man hums tonight. His song like fish-roe clouds the water." He waits for the congregation's assent, his eyes shadowed. "We will feel him in the harps of us, and if his tune is caught it will be raised to the sky where the bright birds pass - "
- here, the congregation cry out like birds, and the cries rattle away into the dripping rafters. -
"- and the air hangs sultry and the gods no longer frown."
Yes. This is how it was. You can taste wax.
(Oh, my dear. This light suits you.)
Water beads on the walls. The Priest speaks of souls as fish in an unclouded ocean. A light will be the bait. Here are the candles to bring them all in. Here is the well which will eat all their sin. "I will set the hook in your lip," he recites, and the mouths of all the congregation open. Violet light glimmers on their teeth. (You too, dear one. Open wide.) At the very back of the chapel, something eyeless moves, restlessly. Its mouth gapes like yours.
"The first descent was that which was given for that which was promised. (The Drowned Man makes no promises to us. He gives us only lessons.) For the second, the hunters of echoes remembered the ways of sunlight, and learnt the stories of the heart. (The Drowned Man's heart was flensed, and we will taste it.) The third: O, the treacherous walkers of the river's shadow! They snared the echo-hunters! (This began the chain of tales which concluded in the Drowned Man's first-feast. So praise that treachery.)"
The Priest speaks of cities fallen, and stories risen. His words echo in the stalactites above, while water trickles from the walls. (Cosy, isn't it? Rest your head in my lap. It won't be much longer.) A shadowed figure watches from the darkest corner of the apse. The worshippers studiously ignore it.
The Priest smiles. He snuffs a translucent candle with a capped rod. He bows his head, and leaves you alone in the chapel. Amethyst light gleams on the slick limestone of the cave floor.
No one comes. No one stands by the altar and speaks of the opening of the Gate and the anger of the Flukes and the cold machinations of the White. No one is brown as bone and eyeless as a desert.
No one rises from the seat beside you to approach the altar - where there is, in any case, no figure. There is no conference. There is no agreement. But no one would blame you if you turned back now.
(Grief and hate are all that's left to me. Which will you choose, when you open the Gate?)
"Do you recall how It came to that place? And they sang of their lightnings and shapeful disgrace? And It tilted our vanes and ennobled Its spires. They welcomed It then and commingled all choirs."
The Priest lets the robe fall from the flesh of his shining shoulders. Violet currents caress his skin. "Now," he declares. "Now, O thou faithful, we shall commingle our choirs."
(Oh yes, dear one. We're very close. Very close.)
"Sclera," the priest intones. "Limbus. Noctis. Animus." As you listen, your eyes cloud with lavender shadows. He is a stumped shape in the irrigo murk. "If the Sun is Its master, let the Sun be sunken, let the currents rush in, the strange-winds and particle-trades, the wave that trembles and the great Curve."
He lifts his hand in blessing. "You who remain, you know that there is no betrayal. The Drowned Man was torn that he might feed us. The White comes to fulfil the frozen law. The seventh city will never fall, and all of us will live."
His words hang in your heart like lanterns. The watcher in the apse lifts its hand. A greeting? A warning? Or is it beckoning?
(Be quick! This is the moment!) You stand. "Forthigan invited them in, until Arthur threw them back," you say. "Every invitation is also a betrayal. This is the circle, now complete. Gawain remains. But give me my candle."
The congregation rise, muttering with shock, but the priest quells them. "The day has come," he breathes. "I never thought - "
That's enough of him. You place the candle in the candle-holder and carry it back through your rooms to the window, passing without too much difficulty through the resistance of the irrigo currents. (Do not light it! Not yet. Place it unlit in your window. The Masters cannot see us here. All shall be well, dear one.)
Forthigan invited them in, until Arthur threw them back. Every invitation is also a betrayal. This is the circle, now complete. Gawain remains. But give me my candle.
Finished the new Exceptional Story. A lot of very interesting lore in there.
From what I can gather:
There was a scribe who had an affair with the Duchess, a love that could never be realised due to her status as a princess. In a moment of passion, she poisoned her betrothed and in doing so, she put the scribe in grave danger. And the Duchess, knowing of the plans of the Masters, turned to them. She sold them her city, and in doing so, her betrothed became the Cantigaster.
And in doing so, she knowingly betrayed them. She sold them not a false love story, but a false city. The city of Amarna. That is why they hate her. She delayed their plans by giving them a city they couldn't use, a city with no history and no love.
I'm really disappointed that I missed that Exceptional Story
I was, erm, out of commission almost entirely from July to the beginning of September. So I missed the August one, I guess. Still haven't actually finished September though.
Comments
Terribly unwise.
Seven is the number.
Stained.
Scarred.
Chained.
Stained.
I am the number, and I will go NORTH, and there I will burn, and it is then I will know the Name.
This is a good game
Hooray for bad decisions, I guess
All shall be well.
I have never been more tempted to push a button in my life.
And all shall be well.
AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE WELL.
AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE THROWN DOWN THE WELL.
I was hungry, and you gave me only the pelt of trees. I was thirsty, and you gave me only ink.
Forthigan invited them in, until Arthur threw them back. Every invitation is also a betrayal. This is the circle, now complete. Gawain remains. But give me my candle.
Farewell. I go NORTH.
Did I find what I was looking for, in the end? Perhaps I did. Perhaps I did.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead