Canticle

She’d awakened earlier than usual, disturbed by her dreams. The violent images, set to the music of Tertius’s mad harping, had become commonplace, and she could set aside that discomfort-but Neb’s absence was a different matter. She saw armies on the march beneath a moon the color of dirty ice. She saw a sky absent of birds, slate gray and ominous before a coming storm. These she could take into herself, working through the mystery of heaven’s message to her. But nowhere had she seen the snow-haired boy who kept her heart. It was as if he’d been swallowed by the Wastes, and she remembered the warnings about Renard with a shudder.

She rolled to her side and struck out for shallower waters on the far side of the cavern, finding a purchase for her feet on the slick rock floor. Standing in water now waist-deep, she took the soap to herself and continued to think about the boy as she moved her hand over her body, gently washing away yesterday’s mud and ash.

She wished it was Neb’s hand that touched here and then there, soft and warm and slippery with the soap. But these thoughts were foolishness, and in these dark times, so was love or anything like it. Sighing, she immersed herself fully again, and when she came up, she took the soap to her tangled hair, picking the bits of wood and bone from the long, wet strands.

She heard the clearing of a voice in the shadows and she spun, dropping the soap as her hands went reflexively to cover her breasts. “Who is there?”

“Forgive my intrusion, Winteria the Younger, daughter of Mardic,” a gravelly voice said. A figure moved- shambled, even-in the darkness at the farthest point of the cavern, beyond the lamp’s dim light.

Winteria the Younger? She’d not heard that before. “These are my private bathing waters,” Winters said, forcing some kind of authority into her voice. “Surely my guards did not allow you passage?”

The voice chuckled. “There are more passages than even you know in these mountain deeps.”

She felt fear in her stomach, and she lowered herself farther into the water, backing away with her eyes fixed in the direction of the unexpected voice. “Whoever you are, surely you see the inappropriateness of this interruption?”

Though the outside world believed the Marshers’ dirt and ash to be indicative of an insanity bred into them, the truth was far from that. At least weekly, they bathed away the layer of grime and reapplied fresh mud and ash, carefully weaving the bones and wood back into their hair, each slathered handful and twisted braid a prayer toward home. Apart from the sleep of death, when family and friends scrubbed clean the fallen before clothing the body in earth and ash one last time, it was unheard-of to see or be seen with the skin bare and unsheltered by the symbol of their sad sojourn.

“I cannot see you. I assure you of this. I cannot break form.” The figure drew closer and she backed up farther, crouching in the shallower water as her hands scrambled for a rock.

There were none to be found.

I could raise the guards, she thought. But she had not told them she would be bathing. They were posted at the entrance to her cave, and that was well over a league above and away, through winding corridors of stone. They would not hear her.

“Stop,” she said.

But the figure shambled closer until it revealed an old man with a wild beard and long hair. At first, the grime on him marked him as one of her own, but quickly, she saw that it was similar but different. The beard, once white, was streaked in alternating earth tones, braided in a fashion she had not seen before. And the markings on his face were more intentional, forming symbols of deep brown, charcoal and black that interlocked like a puzzle. His eyes were the color of milk, and when his sandaled feet reached the edge of the spring, he stopped. He looked toward her but not directly at her.

“A new age is in the birthing,” he told her, “and it is time for our people to reclaim their heritage.”

He’s blind, she realized. And yet he knows my home better than I do. “Who are you?” she asked again.

“I am called Ezra,” he said. “I was the Keeper of the Book in your father’s time, and in his father’s time before him. Before my eyes failed and my new sight found me.”

Winters squinted at him but knew she couldn’t possibly recognize him. In her lifetime, Tertius had played that role, and when he’d died, she’d chosen not to select a new Keeper. The Home dreams had started up with a new intensity, and the imminence of it had convinced her that there would be no need. The council of elders had agreed. She felt the firmness setting in her jaw. She swallowed against it. “Why are you here?”

The old man smiled. “I’ve come bearing a message of comfort and assurance. These seemingly dark times that wound you now are but the pains of labor. When it has passed, you will find your proper place. A New Age is upon us.”

Winters felt a sudden wave of anger. “I don’t need your comfort and assurance. I need you to stop talking in Whymer circles and be plain.”

The old man smiled. “You have your father in you,” he said. He chuckled. “Very well. I’ll be plain. P’Andro Whym’s children now pay for their father’s sins. Their city is no more, and the Desolation of Windwir changes everything.”

She felt her eyes narrowing. “Explain.” She felt a sudden chill and squatted farther into the water, glancing toward the tunnel that led to her sleeping quarters and the throne room above them.

“You have read-and even dreamed-of the Homefinding,” he said, his voice lowering. “But the Book was born in a time of sojourn. Before that, we were gifted these lands-all of them-to share with the Gypsies. You know this is true. They were taken from us. And ever since, the gray robes and their watch-wolves have kept us tamed and toothless while carrying out their so-called Gospels of Whym, that Great Deicide.” She heard the bitterness in his voice when he spat the word “deicide” and it made her cold again, despite the hot water that held her. “Now is the time for a new gospel to emerge. Now is time for the truth: There is no Home to find, but there is one here for the taking.”

No Home to find? The wrongness of those words flooded her. “You speak falsehood,” she said. “I’ve seen our Home. And the advent of the Homeseeker is already upon us. I’ve met him.” I’ve tasted his mouth, she thought. I’ve seen the wounds behind his eyes and felt his heartbeat against my skin.

Ezra shook his head. “No. Perhaps that was our hope once, but another has risen. I speak the truth. You know it yourself. The dreams have changed, and these dreams change the course of the Book of Dreaming Kings. Did you not see the light-feel its heat-as it was consumed?”

She had, and the memory of it still haunted her. But she said nothing.

Ezra continued. “There is no Home to find,” he said again, “but there is one that we may take.”

Take? Winters felt her stomach lurch. He’d said it before, but it hadn’t registered. She suddenly saw Hanric’s cold, dead body naked and scrubbed clean, stretched out upon the snowy ground of the Gypsy King’s Maze. She saw the Marsh Scouts frozen in death, slain by their blood magicks, the mark of House Y’Zir pink upon their skin. She felt truth dawning, and it tasted like cold iron in her mouth. When she spoke, her voice sounded more frightened, more timid, than she wished it. “What do you speak of, old man? If ever you loved my father, tell me plainly.”

When Ezra smiled it was filled with hope. “The Age of the Crimson Empress is at hand,” he said. “It is time for us to receive the mantle of our great heritage and prepare for her coming. You believe that we are called the Marshfolk because we live in these northern, barren wetlands. But I say to you now that it is not so. Once, long ago, before we touched this land in the Firstfall, we were the Machtvolk. The Making People, in service to the Moon Wizard Who Fell.”

“We were slaves,” she said, “to men who shattered the world beneath their boots and spells and blades.”

“No,” he said. “We were the joyful servants not to men but to gods.” He took a step forward. “And we shall be again.”

When he opened the upper portion of his robe, dim light played over the white scars upon his heart, and Winters trembled at the ecstasy upon his face. She dug for words, and the ones she found were familiar but she did not know why. She thought perhaps she’d dreamed them. “Begone, kin-raven,” she said in a voice that rang out strong and clear. “Your message is unwelcome in this House.”