First Movement: The Birth of a Teller of Fate
Chapter Two
Falling, a long way falling. Then…
Cold.
A hard, slick surface.
Sliding.
The loud squealing of flesh on marble.
SLAM!
No movement. Throbbing pain.
Darkness.
…a gentle voice, “Wake, child.”
Davida felt a soft touch through something thick and soft, that covered her to the shoulder. She was in a bed. Such a bed! She was clean and warm, and the pain was gone. Light, soft white light, through her eyelids. Cool air caressed her left cheek, bringing the scent of something subtly floral.
She took her first conscious breath, inhaling until it hurt just below her breastbone, to catch that delicious elusive odour. Warm, slightly calloused fingers stroked her cheek. Her eyes opened. As she turned, a palm joined the fingertips, warming more of her face.
Neatly bearded in black salted silver, the only other sign of age was wrinkles like short cat whiskers at the outer edges of his eyes, his green-brown smiling eyes. That same warmly timbered voice, “Welcome to Ælfen,” he said. She couldn’t help but smile back.
Davida tried to speak, but no sound came out. A coughing fit made her lean forward over her knees. She expelled something thick and jagged from her mouth. Most of the sudden pain in her throat went with it, but her voice still rasped harshly.
Her attendant handed her a cup, its cut crystal rainbowed the white light filling the room. She gripped the goblet in both slender hands. The chill wetness of condensation thrilled her fingers and palms as she sipped.
It wasn’t water. It tasted like icy sunshine, flushing her cheeks, and quickening her pulse. Lingering pains in her throat and abdomen vanished. After draining it, she again breathed deeply and made to hand the empty vessel to him.
She saw the gob of greenish ugliness she’d puked onto the pale blue duvet. Seeing her distress, her host’s smile turned to laughter. “It’s only a bit of bile child, easily cleaned.” His smile was as warm as his voice.
Not trusting hers, Davida just nodded, smiling to let him know his words had comforted. She looked past him at the room.
The ceiling was ten feet up and paneled in hexagons of multihued wood. The windows drew a gasp from her. Narrow floor-to-ceiling panels joined seamlessly, defining an ovoid room looking out on the trunks of enormous multihued trees. They stood, rank on rank fading into a soft white haze in the distance. No hint of either ground or sky could she see. Before this moment, she had only ever seen trees in holos.
She spoke, turning her eyes to him, “Where am I, then?”
⁂
When first Tathar had found the young woman lying crumpled against a pillar in the Portal room, he had been sure she was dead. The girl was human, and no human had been able to enter an elven Aion in almost a thousand years. The presence of a pulse had stunned him. Fearing what might happen were she found alive, he’d rushed her to his home.
Over the next seven days he had treated her injuries, uncovering several puzzles in the process. The injuries she had suffered: a concussion, broken collarbone, three fractured ribs, bruises, and abrasions, had obviously come from the manner of her arrival.
The first puzzle had come when he had peered into her Essence to determine her spiritual strength and found an elven soul. That explained her presence but raised the question of why she had a human body. The obvious answer he dismissed. The Templars had been gone a long time.
He reassessed after further examination with his enhanced Sight. While her body was indeed human, it had begun to change to match her nature. Something had triggered it. The Portal journey to Elvenhome, perhaps, though that seemed unlikely. He recalled the Templar involvement in altering the Fæ and wondered if, despite the almost total absence of Templar influence since the end of the war, that might have had something to do with the girl’s changing nature. Whatever the reason, in a matter of days this young woman would be an elf in form, not just in essence.
Finally, there was the riddle of the Syrat. This human girl was bonded to one. How one so young and human could be a Teller was less surprising than discovering an unknown Syrat. For many thousands of years, there had only been twelve of the decks and he knew where and with whom every one of them was.
That she was a Teller was not in doubt. The cards had left their signature imprint on her soul. Why did she not have them with her? He could sense the fresh spirit wound of separation. That he could not heal, and it worried him, for that wound would grow worse until it eventually killed her.
⁂
The Dark Man had intended to wait until sunrise, and the abatement of the storm, before heading out to the shack, but neither liquor, sleep, nor the sating of any of his other lusts could drown out the call of the cards. It insisted that none were adequate substitutes for it and that he must have it in his hands now or lose it.
It was nonsense, of course.
The Teller was gone, escaped to wherever that Portal went. The cards had stayed. They were no longer hers; they belonged to him. His magick had proven superior to her bond with the cards.
The Dark Man was all but certain that no one else on Scorn even remembered the city out in the wasteland, beyond the dome that protected the inhabited regions of this world. Even if they had, only he had the means to force an entry.
The voice of the Syrat would not be stilled.
He had bathed, dressed for the storm, and travelled to the edge of the waste before he felt any lessening of its tug.
Gravel ground and squealed under his heavy boots. The air was tomb still; the temperature cool. To his right was the sparkle of Scorn, to his left only darkness.
Here the raging storm made not a sound. No light brightened it. It might not have existed at all, but that the sand it kicked up blotted out the land and sky beyond. The Dark Man might as well have been striding along the edge of the world.
A shimmering energy fence, palest red, protected that edge. It reached five yards in height where it intersected the gatehouse ahead.
The guard bio-scanning the Dark Man recognized him. It troubled him to have his ingress into the Waste recorded, even if only by a witness. Notice usually made his ventures more difficult and less profitable. His only consolation was that the power of his name meant that he had little trouble getting past the guarded barrier.
He stepped into a large cube of coherent red energy as he heard the gate behind him buzz back to life. Immediately, the wall in front of him blipped out and the rage of the storm assaulted his ears.
Quickly, the Dark Man pulled down the plasmetal helmet he wore, sealing the gasket at his neck.
The sound dropped greatly in volume, coming now from the speakers inset into the helmet. Speaking a word of command into the chin mike made his vision go from dark to a fire brighter than any the city behind him could have boasted.
Deep orange particles of sand in their trillions danced tarantellas to the music of the shrieking ether. To him it seemed a holocaust, burning the Aion itself. He could picture the aftermath; nothing left of space but balls of shiny ash. Even filtered, it was a sight to inspire. Pausing thus only a moment, he marched out into the conflagration.
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, July 2026
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