My last centuries in the tower were long but not lonely. I compiled and cared for my Archives, apprenticed many, befriended some, and dubbed many masters. There were always the quiet, mysterious adventurers, who silently accessed my archives and left, or simply stopped for a rest. Others were louder, and more relaxed, and in my Common Room and elsewhere spoke, argued, laughed, challenged, consoled, sobbed, learned and sang over mugs of hot cocoa or mead.
Then, every time, they moved on. At first, I saw them off with a grin, imagining their future adventures and hoping--or in some cases dreading--another visit; but then, the adventurers stopped coming back. Centuries passed, and finally I knew, finally I…accepted…that they never would. It was foolishness, really, but I felt somehow sad, lonely and regretful--stationary in a world of moving people--and I could find no way to free myself from the feeling. Then Lady Moirin Tierce wrote me a poem.
Like a bird, I've found a nest
A simple place where I can rest
Before I move on, as I always do
[More]
I added to the poem in Jan 2005 out of loneliness. There are now two from Moirin, one to her from Rigil and one to her from myself. Partly broken, but even I cannot salvage everything.
My own psyche was little balmed by the words; I am still, and ever will be, the boulder in the river. No fish ever do swim back. The salmon perhaps, but here the analogy breaks, for I have known no humans so loyal to that which has cared for them. Perhaps because those who stray into Towers such as mine are not the loyal kind in the first place. Waystations and libraries do not appeal to the productive member of society, but to the loneliest of heart and most desperate of soul. These I familiarize with, as their aches ease in the comfort of my Library. And then they move on. And yes; like birds, as she said.
Her Visit
I remember well the way it went. So here is another telling, a story in a sense, of my time here. This, as of May 2005, is actually, by golly, being updated! Honestly, if this color scheme bugs you, use a different page style to read this. "Grey light" and "No style" will give you the plainest and highest-contrast text.
A knobby finger stroked the spines of a score of solid tomes and paused over a leatherbound volume with unintelligible words etched into it in dark, now smudged, ink. The intrigued guest grasped the volume and opened it on his forearm, allowing his ratted brown cloak to be powdered as dust flew from the pages he swiftly counted. His enumeration complete, our cloaked stranger let the book fall shut and cradled it reverentially in his palms. The room was silent aside from his movements and the idle crackling of a taper on the wall. A thinly diffused aroma of roses wafted slowly among the dust particles that remained bouyant in the air, falling with the most unhurried countenance. The gap in the bookshelf gaped at the stranger's back when he turned and stole from the chamber, which for all its scholarly bounty did not deign to admonish his impolite haste or his unbathed air. The library in the magician's tower was not concerned with such things.
In its foyer, where he was wont to sit, the magician looked over his steepled fingers to the hearthfire, whose golden flares wavered familiarly in his vision as was their custom and warmed the comfortably still air. His eyes were faraway but finite, so like his imagination, his ambition, and his torpid, or perhaps merely inarticulate, heart. Anon the pitter of quick feet near his door came to his ears, and two resounding brass knocks rang through the magician's tower. The magician rose with curiosity at this vicissitude and sped to unlock his heavy oaken door. A quick breath of cold air freshened his aspect at its opening and with a new smile he let the door yawn open to cast illumination into the night. "Welcome, traveler," he said.
He stepped aside to allow the figure in. She dropped her hood as he closed the heavy door against the still night and stared around the chamber as one awakened to a bright light. Her dark red hair spread unkempt across her strong boned face and neck and over the grey layers of her cloak. "In Ansadar it is said that this place is a myth."
"It is a waystation for those who come across it and has never been more, I'm afraid."
"For all the rumors, one would imagine..." she mused.
"The solitude those rumors afford is welcome, to say the least," he noted with a small smile. She raised her eyebrows. "A truth that does not imply that company is any less welcome, of course. It is an ambitious wayfarer who chases myths in the middle of the night. This tower will be honored to accomodate such a visitor."
"Moirin." She smiled wryly and followed his long strides toward an arched doorway on the far end of the chamber.
"I take it you hail from the Royal City. I have seen few from there of late."
"I'm afraid I am no exception. I hail from the sea," she said quietly. They entered a long, narrow hall with arched wooden doorways at regular intervals along the right. At the end was a tall staircase that disappeared into the roof, which the magician led her to. "I came to this island of Iarte to seek one whom I care for."
It could be no chance travel, the magician mused, that brought one to his region. Somewhat intrigued, he asked further. "You believe I can, somehow, help you?"
"I would hope so," she looked intensely at the back of his head as she started up the stairs behind him. "Like calls to like; a myth may know a myth. If this library and its keeper are the gem of Iarte I do not doubt you can, in some way at least. And you must be, for if Ansadar were ever competition, it is no longer." A breeze of icy air swept down the staircase and she smiled at the breath of imminent winter. For the moment, the magician chose not to reply. They ascended a stairwell that was trapped in infinity; only a few steps in, she realized that she could not see the floor beneath or anything above. As they climbed, she stared variously at the shifting hues of his deep blue robe, his quick soft-soled feet before her, and the scrolling dark stones that surrounded them. Occasionally they passed more of the arched doorways, but these lacked doors so she peered within, only to find that the dim light from the wall scones showed her nothing but an old red carpet. She had long lost her ability to distinguish one curving flight from the next when the magician paused at a landing exactly like all the rest, this one's entrance tightly shut with an ironbound door.
"I hope I haven't tired you," he said with a sheepish smile.
She shook her head, looking up at the staircase that spiralled on. The magician inserted a key into the iron lock. "Then your journey has," he continued gently. "If you choose to, avail yourself freely of my tower's hospitality. I shall call upon you in the morning." He beckoned her inside and added, as an afterthought as he held the door, "Ansadar, my lady, is a proud city. Your time in it must have been excessively short. Hopefully, you will have a better impression of it soon enough."
"I look forward to the morning, then. Thank you, sir."
"Magician," he said. "That, at least, is no myth."
The ambient light of a rainy evening struck the delicate latticework of a wrought iron shutter and stenciled glorious roses and wicked thorns upon two still, pale hands with its shadow. The hands, unaccustomed to such tracery, jerked at the unusual shapes before folding, rather possessively, around a thin booklet on the table. The Magician had apparently forgotten all about her that morning, but presumably with no ill intent. Moirin had chosen to browse the mysterious room below hers, and found that, like hers, its diameter was much greater than the foyer or the view from outside would imply. It had taken a good thirty paces to reach the shelves opposite the doorway and she couldn't help but wonder whether there was more behind them. No inch of the room's circumference was spared; shelves were built into the wall and books lined every available inch except space for a light by the entrance, leaving no room even for a window. Warily she had approached the shelves, with the vague intention of 'getting started' by determining the organization of the volumes. To that end, she removed several books in succession from each row and browsed them all, but she found herself more absorbed by their enchantingly quaint words and sturdy binding than by anything of particular consequence. The first two were entirely confusing, but the third appeared to be an account of a journey across a region Moirin could not identify. Among those that she decifered with any surety there was but one flat chronicle of history, several personal journals, three incomplete guides to wildlife and a collection of letters to a "fair Lord" who seemed on the whole unfair. Eventually, in a haze of archaic meter, she returned to her chamber one flight above, taking with her the last of the works she had intended to look at. She could not tell if any time had passed, or how much. The ambiguity--the infinity--here was oddly relaxing.
"I trust you did not find a lack in our hospitality?" Moirin looked up as the Magician entered her spacious chamber. She looked at him with some surprise; she wouldn't have recognized him but for the deep blue robes. Perhaps it was the light, then; here, the shadows on the magician's face were gone. The single window, twice her width, illuminated the entire room as well as if there were no roof at all. Whereas the night before he had seemed lined and wizened, the smiling face that greeted her was clear, and though fully formed, suggested no particular age. Her selection from the wardrobe complemented her hair, the magician noted idly. He nodded with some amusement at the rabbit-like look that acknowledged his entrance, and felt a tinge of rue for having disturbed her solitude.
She smiled and looked down at the booklet she held. "Your library has taken very good care of me."
"Then come," he said swiftly as he led the way back. "I've deprived you of sustenance long enough."
"I have not felt it," she said lightly as she rose.
The magician turned. "No, I would not expect you to. My tower has that effect on people." He grinned. "I don't entirely appreciate it, because with the recipes at my disposal I can do much better than two flat meals a day." He led her to the stairwell. "There was a time when much more than that occured here," he said with a sigh. "What is it you have come to learn from me, wayfarer?"
"Many rumours abound that, I imagine, imply an awkward history to this isle and its neighbors," she hesitated. "It is uncertainty in this that leads me to you."
"You ask to hear of Aphelion. It is one of my most treasured possessions; it is a long and lovely tale."
"Yes, Aphelion. I need only hear part of the tale, I imagine." The magician nodded, and knew he would tell her everything regardless. And of that he knew a great deal.
They descended more slowly than they had climbed. Moirin stopped and entered several of the chambers this time, each of them lined with books and the Magician followed her with comments. "I keep no shelves in rooms with windows. The idea of one falling out is an effective deterrent." Odd, Moirin thought. She preferred to read by sunlight and to fight the breeze for every page. To each his own, perhaps. "No work, regardless of location or nature, may ever leave my tower. To that end, this." He guided her to a room that assaulted her sinuses with its ink-stained air. It contained nothing but an array of tables with quill and parchment neatly placed upon them, nearly each of them occupied by an unkempt individual. Hunched over one was a bent figure whose rheumatic hands stroked pages quickly and surely, completely ignoring the two at the door. "I suppose one would call him a druid," the magician murmured, "but I have not inquired. He is here solely for the volume he now copies. Once, it was memorized in its entirety. Sadly, things are no longer as they were."
Moirin coughed as the left the room, but paused at the door. "Fresh air would suit you better, perhaps," the magician. "I shall remember that." Moirin, however, was gazing inside the room behind them.
"Is it lonely--It is lonely, I imagine, to entertain so many guests, or in any case, to entertain some guests for so long, without ever knowing them."
"It is not mine to entertain them. The Tower--" he guestured airily--"is enough. I do sometimes miss their entries and exits, and that is regrettable. I have not conversed with my visitors, nor recieved any of my own, for some time. I merely keep the peace, which does at times need to be done."
"How irksome. You must get frustrated, then."
"Not quite. I do not anger easily."
She laughed lightly as she followed him down again. "Then you have my respect. I am the colloquial screaming fishwife, I'm afraid."
"You, a fishwife? You may hail from the sea, lady, but some things are beyond belief."
"You do not know me very well at all, then, lord Magician."
"That I may not," he conceded. He was silent for a time. They returned to his entrance hall and the magician chose a door near to the staircase. Again Moirin marvelled at the size of the tower. The dining room was as wide at least as the foyer had been, with enough seats at its heavy table to seat six score of the heavyest gentry. From its vaulted wooden ceiling hung a long chandelier that would not graze Moirin's head had she been standing on the table. Like everything else in the tower, it was already entirely lit. "I did know Aphelion. And by the booklet you chose, though I doubt you've read it, it seems my library has guided your hand. It contains a few poems by the..." he hesitated as if cutting off an awkward comment. "By one who had written many more whose like I have never seen."
Moirin realized then that she still held the little booklet she had taken from the library chamber. He took it from her hand and led her by the elbow to a high-backed chair on the left of the head of the empty table. Once she had seated herself he disappeared through a door in the wall and she gazed down the long row of seats identical to hers. The polish had not worn, and the place settings for each gleamed silver and white. No dust had come; no class had left. All that was gone was its cheer. Each daintily placed fork lay in dignified solitude, reflecting with undeniable precision each flicker in the candlelit chandelier above.
She sensed the magician approach behind her and she turned. "You're getting better," he remarked.
"Or you louder," she answered, breathing in the alien flavor of the soup he set before her. He seated himself at the head of the table to her left. "It smells intoxicating."
So much for dimmed appetites, then. Magician watched distantly as she took a sip. "I hazard you would still like to hear the tale," he began, but it was not a tone that begged affirmation. "So it shall be. I know it through many eyes, but I will lend you only two. I find," he added expressionlessly, "that the tale can be quite beautiful. And thus it goes."
I wrote this a forever ago...that is, this is one of the first things I wrote in Sea Knight, back in the same time I made this tower. So if it sucks, it's your fault for wanting the rest!
Emestrel Palace tried to please all its visitors, and its efforts were remarkable indeed. In whirls of vivid and soft colors the guests shifted amongst their relatives and acquaintances, both gladly and hatefully. Some chose to idle onto one of Emestrel´s many balconies and tried to visit the stars in the sharp, clear visage of the sky.
Among those stars, somewhere, glowed a particularly bright, particularly beautiful, ring of light. Some could find it easily, while others strained to see it at all. Around it other stars had begun to wink away; one by one, very slowly. It was a dense section of the sky, so it took some time to be noticed and when it was it was the perfect menacing omen, and people invented various theories about the curiosity in the stars. Comfortable with their company, the people of Lesceron debated and fought over the subject, adding to a most entertaining night.
The royal family had mingled with the guests after arrival, but each member was easily distinguished from the guests by his or her essential regality. In the sparkling ballroom the prince and heir, Rigilien Lanacre, stood laughing in his quiet way; though his mouth remained closed, his eyes suddenly caught the light, his smile painted him with dimples and reddened his entire face. It was a laugh that showed as well as sparked amusement.
“Of course she´ll meet you. Chin up, lad, you're a prince.’ The heir looked down at the boy he spoke to and raised his chin nonchalantly, as if visual aids would encourage the younger.
The boy, his cousin James, clenched his teeth in exasperation and said, for what, to him, felt like the sixth time, “Surely it would be no transgression for you to take them, in her place.’
“Roses can only be delivered by the giving party, I´m afraid," Rigilien replied gravely. "Ah, don´t shy away. Look!’
As he glanced towards the northern corner of the room James started to stare. Princess Rinlinia Lanacre´s smooth red hair was braided and pinned into a thick crown atop her head, and it set off the emerald tiara upon her brow and the emerald choker encircling her neck beautifully. The Lanacre were truly a blessed line. As she felt his eyes, she turned and smiled, excusing herself from a conversation and moving their way. James averted his eyes--wow: the Lanacre also had admirably polished floors, he saw--as she approached.
“Rigil, James. I fear I have failed to greet you this day. Do forgive me. I pray you are well?’
“Yes, Majesty,’ James answered stiffly.
“Indeed. I fear I can never hold a secret, Rinlinia. Our delightful cousin has done us the noble honor of bringing a gift from the woods of Mir.’
James nodded gratefully. Then, deliberately, he unwrapped his moist bundle, straightened with the exactitude of the military, and presented them to her with the courtly dignity that was sewn into his limbs. None watching could have said he was a good head and a half shorter than her. “The Duke of Sile greets you warmly and regrets his absence.’
The princess met his eyes somberly. “If I fail to myself, do convey to him that I am honored, and pray my dear uncle and teacher recuperates swiftly.’ She relieved him of the roses.
James lowered his eyes unconsciously and with some effort brought his thoughts back to the pungent scent of the nobles around him and the perfumes they so vainly cloaked their odors with. The endless dancing they engaged in, the loud chatter they could not help if they tried. Then he looked back up at the tall princess, who had oddly remained before him. "Follow me," she offered, and he followed her as she drifted to the circumference of the ballroom and leaned to the edge of one of its expansive windows, an earnest expression on her face. The ivory folds of her gown stroked the wall as she moved to the next window, never needing to dodge the people around her. After scanning several windows in this fashion she stopped and smiled in satisfaction. She spoke. “The night draws on, the moon falls, and Lord Balgeth stands on the southern balcony yet again. I do believe he spends far too much time alone with the sky. Perhaps, then, he is merely devoid of company. Perhaps you and I could…?’ An alarm sounded in James' head and he hesitated. It was then that James realized Rigilien had slipped away, without sound or word. Curse him!
“Princess, perhaps he is more comfortable alone?’ He tried not to plead.
“Come,’ she said anyway, pulling him towards the south and muttering something like, it is time to wreak more havoc. “James,’ she began as they approached the balcony, “I will be acting a little strange when I go there, because I must ask an awkward question of Lord Balgeth. All I ask is that you remain at the balcony archway to stay anyone who may drift thither.’
“The pleasure will be mine, majesty.’ He bowed, grateful to be safely out of the way. Little girls would never grow, he realized; even princesses gave the usual warning signs--a mischevious glint in the eyes, a smile that wouldn't quite look innocent--before they used their growing woman-powers to do something frighteningly mischevious. As she passed, he remembered what his father had said of her, “a touch taller than most ladies, but a far sight prettier, as light as a hair and sure-footed as a mountain pony. You will remember to deliver the roses, won´t you, son?’ and his thoughts wound around his father once more.
The stars watched Balgeth, a large lord in prominent attire, on the emptiest balcony of the palace; and he watched them, mesmerized. They were magnificent that night, as they frequently were at his own Lerindon. As he contemplated them and their ethereal beauty and the meaning of the universe, the princess weaved her way onto the balcony, apparently drunk as a tavern brawler. Lord Balgeth turned from the stars to watch her; as both uncle and subject he admitted to loving her deeply, and the balcony was no place for drunks at night.
Rinlinia, sixteen, tottered over to the white stone rail and leaned hard against it, peering into the inky blackness below. She burped. “Black can be beautiful,’ she said.
“I don´t see how,’ Balgeth replied, slowly strolling closer.
“Alas, alas, you and those stars,’ she said.
He and those stars, indeed. “All blackness needs to be outdone by stars.’ Balgeth was now but a stride away.
“I am a star.’
Her uncle shook his head. “You shine, as all Lesceron knows, but you cannot be a star unless you are surrounded by...and, therefore, are forced to pierce...darkness.’ A dim prospect.
“Oh. Well then.’ She turned around and weaved back into the ballroom. Balgeth went back to his position and looked up at the star map of the sky.
When he turned, he was too late. Rinlinia had come running back onto the balcony and was starting to vault herself over its railing when he saw her. “Oh, for death itself, I would be a star! Come and swallow me, blackness, that I may pierce you!’ Balgeth seized the drunken girl and with all the strength he could summon he threw her toward the center of the balcony.
As she felt him grab her arm Rinlinia´s hidden grin broke loose, and she caught hold of his arm herself so as not to be thrown and spun till she stood but a pace from him, her mischievous face alight with amusement.
“You slow-witted child! Your antics might have killed yourself—or me!’
He would have gone on, but she raised herself up onto her toes and pecked him on the cheek (with breath that smelled of nothing but punch, hm), and said, “I do want to be a star, uncle. Would you stop me if I truly tried?’
“If we were at peace, I would say yes. But today we are at war, and surrounded by blackness, which I acknowledge. And a kingdom needs a star at a time like this.’ He turned and looked at the shining ring of light in the sky, knowing without seeing how it washed over the girl behind him. The girl who begged to die in battle. “No. As long as you don´t drink before deciding.’
She smiled, in her loose and modest white and gold, looking for all the world like an entire constellation.
Unfortunately, the rest is history. And it's a little silly.