Coda – Teller of Fate

Teller of Fate

Coda: The Uttermost Farthing

* * *

His memories told him he’d been here less than two years ago. The young Hermetist’s superiors said it had been just shy of fifteen thousand years. The discrepancy had to do with incompatible Time valences between Aions—something like that, anyway. He never had been good at the abstract stuff.

He’d been a soldier. So had his daddy and his daddy before him. That discipline was all he knew. When he’d come back… ‘Come back’—ha! He’d been expelled; literally kicked out of paradise. He’d had no way of getting back home and, truth to tell, no inclination to. The closest thing to the army had been the Hermetists. He’d signed up.

Heaven wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. There’d been no St. Peter; no Pearly Gates; no Jesus. There’d been plenty of angels, though. Terrible, just like that gypsy elf had said. Glittery white things; damn near blinded him even looking sidelong at them. They had voices, but only in his head. They didn’t say anything about love and forgiveness. They treated him as if he were an intruder, an annoying thing underfoot.

He’d wandered in their city of glowing pyramids for what seemed forever. He never hungered or thirsted or slept. He never found Cheryl, his lost love. Maybe she was a sparkly angel now and didn’t care about him anymore.

Eventually, a golden-brown horse-man thing had grabbed him and thrown him over the high crystal walls of the city. He had fallen or maybe floated, he was never sure which, among spheres he remembered from his last visit to the City Glyph.

He didn’t remember anything else until he’d woken up in a bed on a world called Mercurius. No one had anything to tell him about what had happened. He’d gone to the impossible church-looking mountain city called Azhure’en. Well near to it, anyway. A bald woman in an all-white outfit had asked him if he wished to become a seeker after knowledge, if he wanted to become more than human. What choice did he have? He’d said yes.

Now he was here, back where everything had really gone wrong; just another soldier following orders.

It looked like everything had gone wrong here, too. It took a lot of imagination to see the Glyph that he remembered. No one had called this place home in a while, by the look of it. Aside from two steel buildings in the middle of a large open space, every other building had been wrecked. Burned, blasted, or just toppled with age. It was city of ruins and hidden ghosts. Only the sky was familiar, the sky with its damned floating spheres.

A noise, at once strange and familiar, brought his eyes to ground level. A coral-coloured trumpet of swirling light appeared in the open space.

A moment later, someone stepped out of it.

She was short and thin and dressed in shimmering white robes. In her hand was a red metal rod a bit taller than she was that flashed and flickered as it caught the largely steel blue light overhead. She saw him and immediately walked over.

Her stride was firm, her back straight. He thought she looked odd as she approached and realized she was incredibly old. Her hair was wavy, exceptionally long, and silvery gold in colour; the Hermetist had never seen the like. Two white combs held it back from her heart-shaped face. That face was white, and it sparkled. Lines of the palest blue crisscrossed it. Her eyes captured his attention. They were liquid ruby fire and had gold dust scattered across them.

His expression must have triggered some memory in her, for she recognized him. As she approached him, she said, “Well met again, sir!” It hadn’t changed at all, that voice. It was strong and merry. Her eyes twinkled as she addressed him. “So, you survived those angels, I see! And joined the children o’ Hermes, as well!”

Now he remembered her! It was the gypsy elf, the one who had sent him to find Cheryl. How had she lived so long? Was that normal for elves?

He remembered himself and his mission. “Greetings, Dame Dævara Tatharsdottir, Teller of Fate. I am David Hermit.” He bowed.

She serioused up, as much as he suspected she could, anyway. “Greetings to you, David Hermit.” She managed a graceful curtsy with only the slightest stiffness returning upright.

“I’m to be your escort during your stay here. Where is it you’d like to go?”

It was only then that Dame Teller looked around. The light left her eyes for a moment, then. “Ah, me!” in barely a whisper. “I haven’t been here since before the last war, I’ve not.” A single tear dimmed the crazed alabaster of her cheek. “My beautiful, fine city; what evil has befallen you.”

She looked over at what appeared to be the ruins of a large inn of some sort. Cracked and shattered crystal domes topped it. The hand that gripped the staff trembled for a moment.

David felt helpless. He’d hated this woman while he sought his dead beloved in heaven. He’d later learned better of her. Now, he wanted nothing more than to comfort her, and didn’t know how. Well, maybe one thing, “The truce with the Myr has lasted these five years UT. The governors have promised that Glyph will be rebuilt.”

She looked at him, tears unwiped, and smiled a sad smile. “And who will come to live here, I wonder.” Seeing his sadness, she rallied. “Be not downcast, good sir!” speaking more to herself than to him. “The Spire at least is saved. Many miracles there are, that it may yet bring. Now—” she moved up next to him and took his arm—“Show me to the Effor Gate, if you please.”

“None of the gates are working right now, Dame Teller.”

“I know, I know, Dear Heart. You’ll just have to keep an old woman from fallin’ into Nonspace, you will. And please call me Dæv, alright? And I shall call you Dave.”

David had to laugh at that; her laughter was that infectious.

The broad ways that cut the city in four had been cleared of rubble months ago. The walk up the Street to the Effor Gate passed with relative ease. Her hand on his forearm was the lightest of presences. It seemed she used the staff as an accessory rather than a crutch, but he noticed her hand tightened on it as her outer foot lifted and not when she lifted the staff itself.

They came to a solid barricade manned by Hermetists. But entire garrison had been told of her visit and the two were permitted to pass on without hesitation.

The Gate of Effor was open. It did not look out on the wide green ocean that had greeted travellers for so long. Instead, the spheres of Nonspace met the end of their road.

And end it was. David had been told that the Apian Roads could be accessed from the four gates of Glyph once. No more.

It looked like a road had gone from here, but it was only a ragged stump now. Blasting fire and heaven alone knew what kinds of magick had been levelled at those roads during the last great battle with the Myr. For good or ill, they were lost now.

Dæv insisted on going as far out on that road remained as she could, a good four yards past the outer wall. She stared down for a long time. As much as he wanted to protect her, David had trouble maintaining his balance while looking at such depth.

She had no trouble, apparently. One hand on her staff, back erect, she inclined her head and looked down the length of the Spire and into the bright abyss. No sound did she make, no movement of her body. So long did she stay that way, the Hermetist began to fear she would drift off to sleep or faint and fall.

This led to the horrifying certainty that she meant to jump. Steeling himself, he took the two steps toward her. Deep breaths: that was the key, that and not looking down.

Instead, he looked over at her face. It was composed and still. He could see her eyes brimming with unshed tears.

In a whisper that would have been drowned by the slightest noise, she said, “He died last night: my Pretty Brandær. I did all I could to save him, I did. Not all of my skill could keep the life in him. Not even my Syrat could keep Life in him. I’ve paid, I have. I’ve paid to the uttermost farthing.”

David could only stare. There was something so compelling about this elf-woman. In her grief, aged by fifteen thousand years…none of it had diminished the power and grace of her presence. He was spell-bound.

He was about to speak, to mouth what he knew were lame platitudes, when a flicker of yellow caught his eye. He looked up a moment later than Dæv did.

A spear of stone jutted out almost eight yards from what David thought was the safe edge of the stump of Apian Road. Standing on it was a figure swathed on bright yellow linen. A matching cloak with a deep hood covered him as well. For some reason, his face was covered by gauze. The cloak and linen wrappings rippled as if in a breeze.

“I’m to meet with that one—” she pointed at the figure—“I’ll need your help after, I will. But you must stay here ’til I call.” She turned a solemn face up to him. Tears polished the crimson orbs of her eyes until they seemed to burn from within. “Will you do that for me, Dave?”

The Hermetist nodded.

She smiled for him; a ghost of what had been. Squeezing his hand gently—hers was cold—the Teller turned away and walked to the stranger.

They two conversed for quite a while. At one point, the figure pulled aside its mask to reveal a dark, gaunt face.

In time, the colloquy ended. The tall, robed man bowed deeply from the waist. Dævara returned the bow, though not as low.

After the two rose, the stranger advanced one foot and raised a bandaged finger to his lips. He held this pose as Dæv turned and beckoned to the Hermetist.

By the time he arrived, she had produced an indigo silk bag. Handing David the staff, she slid a pack of cards out of it.

Those cards were different than he remembered. They looked shinier. Maybe they were new. Dævara made the bag disappear in the folds of her robe then fingered the cards of the Syrat in her hands, not looking at them. “What use being a Teller when the reason for bothering with Fate has gone? I’ve no Fate left now, I don’t.”

She was, David realized, talking to herself or to the cards. Beyond her, the strange man stood, holding his odd pose, cloak rippling in a breeze that wasn’t there.

Dævara Tatharsdottir held the deck in both hands and faced the yellow-clad figure. With no warning, she flung the cards out into Nonspace.

They did not fall. Like a choreographed flight of birds, the cards swirled in a wide triangular pattern. By the time they’d orbited the ruins once, they’d completely enveloped it.

Only then did they slow and finally stop. They had taken up stations enveloping Glyph.

The elf took the staff back from the Hermetist. After a moment, she struck the pavement hard.

The echo rang around the city and kept ringing. The cards moved outward, crossing the barrier protecting Glyph, and began to evanesce. Larger and large they became and fainter, ever fainter. “The Syrat will remain here, protecting my beautiful city. None shall threaten her ever again,” Dævara’s voice cracked as weeping claimed her.

Behind the yellow robed man was the card called The City Glyph. The glowing outline of the glyph at its center haloed tall stranger, forming a pattern whose meaning would haunt David Hermit for the rest of his days.

The red staff clattered to the pavement as it fell from the elf’s hand. David lurched to his left and caught her as she slumped over. Slight as she was, bore him down. He threw himself backward so as not to fall over the edge.

Dævara lay in his arms. David felt for a pulse just under her jaw.

No.

He found himself weeping.

Her eyes, her beautiful scarlet eyes had closed a final time.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, September 2026

© Gideon Jagged
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