Chapter 39 – Teller of Fate

Teller of Fate

Fifth Movement: The Power Under Glyph

Chapter Thirty-Nine

* * *

Travelling without body wasn’t something the Templar did for preference. Bodies came with senses restricted not only by the anatomy of the organs of sense, but by the brain and, to a surprising extent, the astral bodies as well.

Without these, he understood everything he encountered exactly as it was.

For a mortal, cognitive overload would cause irrecoverable madness in seconds. For Nameless it was a terrible and seductive distraction. Reality was so much more than should ever be apprehended at a glance.

Eventually, he made it back to Mercurius, where he again donned the body he thought of as his. He walked the distance to the Mother Lodge.

Abram didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. They discussed what the Templar knew and surmised, augmented by what the Archivist could discover. After a pause for the horror to come, they made plans to try to salvage what they could.

After that, Nameless made his way back to Glyph. He had an investment to protect. It was more important than ever, now.

* * *

Dævara saw the rifle first.

Next, just at eye-level, was the muddy hand that gripped it, large and calloused.

Sheer silk, giving the illusion of privacy to the alcove, slid along the fatigues he wore. As he ducked under the curtain rod, hair barely long enough to tell its colour (blonde) made a rasping sound.

His brows slid up at their inner ends over large grey-blue eyes. His lips, thin and very red, twitched toward each not quite meeting over ivory coloured, slightly crooked teeth.

Droplets of moisture threatened to run into his eyes. “They said—” he indicated, with a twitch of his free hand, the whisper of sound without—“you could help me.”

“What would ya be wantin’, then?” She made her smile kind; it wasn’t hard. The newly lost ones always pulled at her heartstrings. It was a remnant of her early life, a sense of fellow feeling.

“I don’t know how I…got—”

“I know. Sit, Dear Heart, sit.” The elf said, motioning to the ladder-backed chair.

Stepping fully into the tiny space, the curtain fell from his shoulders, swaying into place and abruptly choking off the murmur of voices without.

The scrape of the chair on the flagstones was loud in the sudden silence.

Even sitting opposite him, she still had to look up to see his face. Both meaty fists gripped the rifle, now.

“Do you want to go back home, then?”

A slight shake of his head sent a few drops of sweat rivering down the side of his face. “My girl…she died. I came to find…that is…they—” again the gesture outside the alcove—“told me you could tell me—”

“Where to find her?”

Her nod echoed his.

Dævara Teller’s left hand rested on a stack of cards almost three inches high. She slid the pack to the middle of the table. “Gimme your hands, love.”

For a moment, she thought he’d refuse; but his lips parted again, and with a few hesitant jerks, he moved the rifle toward the wall to her right.

His refusal to remove either hand from the barrel made his movements awkward. He let go too quickly.

The scraping sound of steel on wood ascended in pitch Smack! into her hand, just as the barrel of the gun swung by her leg.

Dæv had never touched one of these ‘portable cannons’ before.

The cold, greasy feel of the barrel surprised her, but not the burning of her hand where she’d grabbed it; the weapon was made of iron after all.

The muscles of her hand and forearm shuddered strongly: this weapon had caused a lot of pain and much death.

The soldier before her had also reached for the gun, but the delaying stutter of his movements, and the swiftness of hers, made it little more than a twitch of his head and shoulders.

His eyebrows rose, his nostrils flared. “Sorry!” little more than a whisper, his voice carried agonies of remorse.

She quickly placed the rifle upright against the wall, as much to free herself of the pain of holding it as to comfort the warrior before her. “It’s alright, Dear Heart.” A surreptitious glance showed a redness in her palm, nothing more. It would fade without blistering, thankfully.

“Now—” she held both of her delicate hands, palms upward, across the table—“gimme yer hands.” If the soldier noticed the redness of her hand, he gave no sign.

Slowly, again with his little jerks, he reached his great hands towards her tiny ones.

As he leaned forwards to do so, she smelled mud, the distinctive musk of his sweat, and…ginger? No, something else. Whatever it was, it sweetened his breath.

She was annoyed, and a bit intrigued, that she didn’t know what it was: mystery was a rare thing for her, now.

His hands were calloused and icy cold. She suppressed a shiver as she placed them on the cards and folded her own over them.

* * *

Her tiny hands were very warm; the cards under his hands felt…funny.

The soldier had expected cardboard and was startled at the unexpected stiffness and something unidentified in their texture.

He felt pressure, surprisingly strong, as she stopped his hands from jerking away. Under normal circumstances, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the funny feel of the deck, but ever since Ireland things had been far from normal.

No, that was a lie. Nothing had been right since Cheryl had died in that stupid accident.

The woman had been talking. “What?”

Lips too full for that fine-boned face curved up ever so slightly. He was far more conscious of the smile in her eyes (cabochon rubies speckled with gold). “I asked how you found your way to our city.”

And the smell of her: jasmine and roses.

“My sister…,” his crazy, new age-y, hippy, slutty sister. She’d offered a solution to his despair from the depths of whatever hellish, liberal sewer such ideas came from. If he hadn’t been crazy with grief, he never would have listened—should never have. “She told me where…that is—”

“What world d’ya come from?”

“Oerth.”

Her eyes widened. Her smile deepened. “What part of Oerth did ya leave from? From what Færie Door?”

The Soldier pulled farther from his grief the more the fortune teller spoke.

He saw her—really saw her, now. Her skin was the white of a dove’s wing with flecks of silver sparkling in it. Under her cheeks, in the hollows beneath her eyes was the palest blue tinge (along her collarbone; between her knuckles…)

“Ireland.”

Her lips parted in a grin. Her eyes danced. She squeezed his knuckles. “I’ve kin there! Where were you—in the south?”

Her hair was small waves of deep red flowing from her scalp, flooding the skin of her neck and shoulders, drowning the blue silk of her dress. Gold strands highlighted auburn wave crests.

Her hands didn’t feel so warm anymore. “Tipperary.”

He remembered the green and the blinding reflections of pale gold sunlight on the waves of the lake as he looked across to the place from which he must cross over.

“You found the stone circle at Loch Gur.” Her falling inflection indicated inquiry, but not enough to merit a question mark.

He nodded, in his mind’s eye seeing the five worn, black stones, this time by moonlight.

“You followed the rede?”

“‘Go at midnight, at the bright of the moon—’

“‘taking nothing but sorrow, leaving all of your joy.’ Her eyes flicked to the rifle against the wall. You’ve followed it, right enough.”

“I was supposed to go to where she is. Why am I here, instead?” His voice cracked. The moisture on his cheeks was more than sweat, now.

“Most Færie Doors on Oerth lead here, to Glyph. To get where you need to go, it’s a guide you’ll be needin’. That’s why you’re here, Dear Heart; so that Dævara can lead you to your love.”

It took him a moment to realize she was talking about herself. “How can you do that?”

“I am a Teller of Fate, I am.” Her eyes flickered to the pack of cards buried under his huge hands.

His sigh was loud in the tiny space. “What do I do?”

“Close your eyes and think of her whom you wish to find. I’ll do the rest.”

He did as she asked. It was too easy to think of Cheryl; he’d done little else in the months since his return from the war. The sight of her, the smell, the feel of her on his lips, on his back, his chest, his cock—ah, God!

There was a heat and stiffness in his abdomen. Almost, he forgot the present.

There was a sudden, damp coolness on the tops of his hands and the deck of cards slipped quickly from under them.

He heard a tumbling, rolling, grinding, grating sound all around him.

His eyes popped open, and he looked around for the source, but it was only Dævara shuffling the cards, that Mona Lisa smile back on her face.

She flicked her frightening scarlet eyes at his hands, and he moved them from the clean, though scarred and pitted, tabletop.

Now that it was out from under his hands, he had a better view of the deck. The cards were oddly worn, the colours only slightly faded, the edges crisp. They seemed too thin to his eyes as well.

The shuffling stopped. A moment too much later for comfort, the odd echoes stopped as well.

She deftly flipped a card over. The tone of the snap as she smartly laid it on the table told him that the cards were, in fact, metal of a sort.

He’d thought the cards were painted, but no. Was the metal itself coloured? The shine and sparkle, it couldn’t be gems, could it? Not cut that thin.

The lone card depicted an intricate shape composed of overlapping glyphs of assorted colours. The overall effect was of a highly stylized figure holding up a bright red light.

Behind this was a red-bordered rectangle divided into four by a pair of sinuous lines. Each of the four quarters thus defined contained a different landscape depicted in a differing predominant colour. Red, a violent sky; yellow, a thickly forested hill; red again, much darker, a river of something he suspected was not water; violet, the inside of a cave.

Running along the scarlet border of the card were groupings of characters in an alphabet he didn’t recognize.

* * *

“The Transmitter of Lucidity,” she said. “This is your card.”

Another authoritative snap above the first card. This card showed a different glyph shaped like a sword. The card’s background was also divided into four, this time by two overlapping ovals. Some of the landscapes were the same as the previous card, though the whole used a different colour scheme.

Two of them had discernable human figures in them; on one panel fucking, in the other, apparently wrestling though, to the Teller’s eye, this changed back and forth.

The images on the cards of the Syrat were highly subjective, changing between readings in ways the Teller would always find unnerving. Sometimes, like now, they flickered even as she watched. Dævara wondered what they looked like to the Soldier in front of her.

In almost two hundred years as a Teller, Dævara had never been sanguine about her craft. Once again, she silently renewed her vow to know all there was to know about the Syrat, including its making. She wondered again when her father would come.

What she divined from the letters bordering this card, the Teller expected in a reading of this nature. Those letters were changed from the last time she’d seen it, as well.

 “The Manas Body.”

Another, below.

“The Færie Doors.”

Again, to her left.

“The Infinite Will of Fyre.”

And again, to her right.

“The Preserver of the Light of Aers.”

Again “The Graal,” and again “The Greatsword,” and again “The Blue Lamp,” making a pattern she knew well.

She saw him start the first time she placed two cards atop one another, when he saw the central glyph show through.

It could be seen, clearly but palely, as if she had placed a thin tissue over the card instead of another card of opaque metal.

The landscapes on the bottom card changed as well. The cards were merging, effectively creating a new card unique to the reading.

Each time the Teller superimposed cards the effect was similar.

The soldier’s eyes widened when he saw the effect of a stack of more than two cards.

Each stack of cards was unique; each related to the one before and to his quest.

As she laid them out, Dæv spoke not of their meaning, but of his journey.

She told of things she shouldn’t have known but for her talent as a Teller; of things, as she could tell by his expression, he hadn’t known about but knew must be true.

Finally, when she’d laid out more than thirty of the cards, she began to speak of his future journey, telling him where he must go and what he must do to pass the guardians who would keep him from his love.

The last thing the reading said was, “You must leave Glyph by this Portal.” She pulled parchment and a quill from a shelf under the desk and quickly sketched a map of part of the city, labelling the streets as she went.

The pen had no ink.

She dragged it across the paper leaving a smoking line, a faint burning smell, and lines a darker brown than the paper itself.

The Teller marked an ‘X’ at the end of an alley.

“When you get here, think of the sound of the sea and speak the word, ‘Blister.’ The Portal will open. She that waits on the other side will tell you what to do next. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Then go, and good fortune attend you.” He rose with her. She stepped around him and parted the silk. The muted talk of the common room beyond flooded in.

The Soldier retrieved his rifle and reached into his pocket. As he passed her, he pulled out a handful of silver and put it into her waiting palm.

As he turned from her, both hands once again clenched around his rifle, Dævara placed her hand on his arm.

He turned and looked down. “When you get to your Heaven, ’ware the angels, Dear Heart. They are terrible, they are, and little minded to help one such as you.” He could only manage a nod. Satisfied, she let him go.

* * *

It took the Soldier a while to find his way to an exit of the Blue Griffin; this place was much larger than the taverns back home.

He passed people and things that looked like animals crossed with people. Some were larger than he was; most were smaller.

He saw rifles like the one he carried held in paws or talons more often than in hands. He also recognized swords, axes, maces. Armour ranging from chain and plate to what had to be Kevlar was present.

The armed women—well, females, anyway. He wouldn’t call some of them women at all—most disturbed him.

There were also more recognizable blasphemies. Drink, gambling, and whoring were everywhere in evidence.

He hurried, occasionally bumping into something he didn’t want to look directly in the face, even the human-looking ones, until he was breathing cleaner air.

Blessedly, that didn’t take too long. He spotted the main foyer. Beyond were the welcoming double doors leading out of this den of iniquity.

Careless of bumping into any of the living atrocities now, he hustled through to cleaner air.

That brought him to the next problem. The sky here, if you could call it that, was the greatest blasphemy of all, for it wasn’t a sky at all.

Once in the large plaza, the Soldier followed the parchment map and tried not to look up. It wasn’t easy.

The fascination of what hung over this city, like driving by a car wreck, was too tough to resist. The brightly coloured spheres far above him had nothing in common with any planets, suns, or moons that he knew or had heard of.

The colour of them was white, with streaks of blood red and blobs of purple. Their collective light banished shadows.

While he had been indoors, it had been possible to think that he was on Oerth, but out here he could no longer fool himself.

After following the map for close to half an hour and trying not to look at anything too long, the Soldier was finally at the alley.

He walked to a spot about two thirds down. On the right was a painted white circle, just as the fortune teller had written.

Now to open the Portal.

He’d never seen the sea except by plane and so had never heard it. Hoping his best effort would work, the Soldier thought of the sound of waves lapping the beach at Loch Gur and said, “Blister.”

That proved good enough. Flickering tangerine light washed over his face. He stepped into a trumpet bell of coruscating fire. It winked shut behind him.

The Soldier wasn’t seen in Glyph again for a long, long time.

— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026

© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved