II

Feeble sunlight slipped through the crooked gaps in the carpentry, tracing beams of falling dust through the dry cabin air. The thin, gilded streaks of light made their leisurely descent along the greyed wooden walls all morning long. Bending to gently caress each plank along the crate’s edge. Slowly pouring down in thick amber rivulets until meeting the edge of a bed. By midmorning, the light had come to rest placidly on a mass of dark whorls, wavy strands of dusken hair sprawled all over the straw bedding. A flock of swallows were perched outside the window, sparkling shadows on the wall with the nimble quivering of branches. The first of the feeble sun rays finally made its way towards the young woman’s face.

She turned away from the light, clutching her quilt, swaddled by the cold. She squinted towards the hearth with one eye open, privy to the scent of damp ashes. Not an ember in sight, no doubt the work of those wretched morning showers. The sap lamp still rumbled gently on the crate just above her head, its humble flame startled by the breeze. As soon as the damp winds picked up in strength, the swallows were gone.

Something about waking up with no recollection of dreams still innervated her. Mornings were rough, silent exercises in willpower. No divine light did reach that accursed bog of a land, she had come to conclude. For what peace and quiet the land of Eridanos giveth to Ianthe, it taketh away one half of her life; the fertile, nocturnal underbelly of psychic life, turgid and fecund source of meaning as well as power for any true-born sorceress such as her. Regardless of the lovely solitude and silence, she could never stay for long in that place, where sky and land met and the world folded into itself. She thought that maybe the reason the gods did not bless people with dreams there was because they were already walking among them, roaming those vast deserts stretching way beyond the walls of the Archmage’s little clockwork garden. Certainly, more than one deranged dolt – or doltesse, perhaps, she couldn’t remember – had set out to die in the outer wastes, in search of the world’s very edge; in search of some Hyperborean relic or Apollo’s heavenly chariot.

Ianthe soaked in the silence for a while, then rose to sit bedside, lazily huddling beneath her woollen quilt. As her eyes grew attuned to the brisk morning light, she probed the crate beside her in search of a small, powdery stone with a reddish hue. She carefully scraped a smidge of powder with the inside of her nail and put it under her tongue. It was dry and bitter, with a salty metallic twang to the taste.

A sharp, ecstatic tingling quickly spread through her mouth and into her neck, towards the back of her head and down her spine. She could hear that faint, coarse but flute-like hum that always came with the first nip of the day. Suddenly the air grew thicker. Her breathing deepened. The world around her slowed to a crawl, completely deafened, muffled to all senses. All of it, apart from the sole object of her clear conscience, which was now the trifling fire burning inside of the lamp. She reached out to grab the handle and calmly walked towards the hearth. With a graceful wave of her hand, the fire rose from the lamp and floated towards the logpile, engulfing it in flames.

She looked at the pot with the mint tea she had brewed the night before. It stared back at her like a dark abyss of dead foliage. She’d had to rinse the old iron pitcher with garlic water in order to drive away the blackflies, but found the sour taste that came afterwards impossible to wash away. It made anything she poured in it taste like a spicy, nauseating crab soup, and her cherished mint tea was sadly no exception. The only other pot that had something in it was a tightly shut casserole. But she wasn’t hungry, it was only the cold which gripped her wiry flesh and bone to the marrow. She put the revulsive tea to heat with a loud yawn.

She took a left from the main road into the steep trail which led to the pond, hopping along sturdy beech roots so as to avoid slipping, ass first, into the cold mud. Naught but an average Eridanos morning all around, it seemed. Cold, damp, hazy and turgid… Truly the land of dreams. Summer days seemed to come in singular clumps, evenly spaced throughout the year, if there was even such a thing as ‘years’ at all to begin with. Such a thing as seasons, at least, there clearly wasn’t, and yet its inhabitants could not care less. They kept close watch on the date through meticulous counting. The women of the village prayed and danced in Elaphebolion in honour of springtime, skies still sobbing with cold wintry showers. They struggled to light the fire for Persephone’s summer sacrifices, and even held a feast every Easter, with unleavened bread and cider. They worked hard and toiled, all to please the gods; any god, for all that mattered. Their devotion was ferocious, insatiable, and with each new arrival, more gods, rituals and customs were added to their holy stirring pot, frothing with every seasoning imaginable. What with all that, they hardly had a day to spare. Their busy liturgical calendar gave them something to look forward to; some festivity, sumptuous ceremony or teary-eyed vigil always on the horizon, there to provide some semblance of structure to the inscrutable numbness of the days marching in step to the tune of perennial rain and the mud and the frogs and the frostbite, and some more rain thrown in for good measure.

She sat in her usual rock by the pond. In some nicer days like that, the water was clear enough to see her reflection, and the skies didn’t gleam their blinding white light upon her eyes. She laboured her dark, winding locks into a tight but delicate bun like Mistress Korina had taught her, letting a pair of wavy tresses fall down to frame her pale visage on either side. She’d added that part, because of the way it made her face seem less rounded. She leaned in to soak her face, as if a quick rinse could get rid of the myriad tiny scratches she’d gotten from clawing at herself in restless dreams. The grey of her eyes seamlessly blended with the clouds behind her reflection, like two holes in her skull. Somehow, even though her meagre diet was already baring her cheekbones – an old, guilty pleasure – it seemed like not even hunger could take away the round fullness of her cheeks. She had always despised the way they bloated her profile with their soft contour. Roundness was the shape of privilege, of pettiness and shallow suffering. The unaesthetic bearing of boorish, agora-dwelling pigs parading their lice through the halls of the Apokryphos, plodding the afternoon along with their listless, snivelling wives who pray louder than they speak and carefully measure each person in sight like their every breath costed them money.

She took time to stare and poke at her dry lips, just slightly less pale than her face; her eyebrows, petulantly slanted upwards at the far ends; her nose, still just a tad too long and a tad too slim for the wide contour of her cheeks. After finally turning away from her reflection, dizzy and faint, she was left wondering why she always bothered to look at all in the first place. That was the conclusion she reached every morning, and every morning she gazed at herself still, up until her very face contorted before her eyes, seeming like a haphazard jumble of grotesque and unrelated parts, each threatening to tear apart the shoddy whole by the seams. ‘Even me – the me of my reflections – begs me to stop. Most likely, though, she’s just as sick of me, of standing still. If only it were me who could break her gaze, and not just the other way round.’

A tangled nest of blonde curls suddenly peeked out of the mounds, springing onwards. The snot-nosed fawn had kept her promise. Scrawny Klymene carefully made her way down the slope, tightly hugging a decrepit rucksack, not unlike the bundle she herself had arrived in as a baby, according to the older women of the village.

They said that it was uncommon for mere babes to be sentenced to a lifetime in the rotten bog, but that ended up being Klymene’s very own blessing. By the time Ianthe first met her, she was already a gleeful maid, who loved playing hide and seek with herself, that is, finding a good hiding spot, then retracing her exact steps towards the counting place with choreographic precision. She often became joyously lost for hours in the act of doubling her own life, making a perfectly symmetric mirror out of her time, and wandering all around, so that it surprised Ianthe to see her return from her task so soon. The sack she brought looked like a solid trove of tomes and scrolls, swiped straight from the libraries at the museum.

Ianthe had traded her one of her last bits of orichalcum, which young Klymene used to practise the few or so spells Ianthe had taught her, so far to little avail. The girl –though certainly a child of Phantassos’ own ilk, just like her– had spent her entire life in the wastes of Eridanos, and thus never christened into a pact with the Dreamer, so her aptness for the arcane arts was severely impaired. Most likely, it was already too late for her. Neither of them ever dared bringing the subject up. They had known each other for just long enough to be able to peer through each other’s petty masks, but not long enough to actually peer what truly lay behind them, therefore just how much that forlorn fact truly weighed on the girl’s shoulders remained a mystery to her.

They chatted for a while. About the colour of the sky – A brand new shade of grey, slightly shaded like parchment – and about the village, bursting with dancers warming up for the following moon, when they’d dance the night away in ecstasy for the deer-wounding maiden. About how those foul-mouthed Aeginean twins had shunned Klymene away from the village, just for leaving a batch of ritual cake dough out to spoil, and how she’d still managed to snatch the foul dough for herself. She then used it to bake ‘the foulest cake’, which she fed to the ‘old crooking hen who watched over the books, with the dead voice and prong-like hands, so that for once she’d drag herself out of her roost and leave me to pursue our mutual benefit in peace’.

Klymene could weave a story, and she was always enlivened at the prospect of awing her so-called master. Even if words eluded her, she was quick to find her way out of the most absurd rhetoric dead ends into which she stumbled. She’d grown up in that same museum, but she and the old lore keeper had become estranged. Now she spoke about who’d been the closest thing to a mother for her as just another unpleasant face in the agora. She truly was a mid-morning sun: radiant, pure, but still slightly distant and lukewarm, floating in and out of clouds. She and Ianthe understood each other like two flickering stars, just two birds of passage sharing a pond in the cool breeze. They lulled the glade with their deep sighs and the flimsy rattle of their heartfelt laughter.

Klymene lay on the grass beside her master, absent-mindedly piling rocks while she speaks.

“Mother Auleia has been raging for weeks, scolding whom she meets and spewing hatred. She says the Golden-armed Artemis had been chastising her with nightmares about a ‘sickness of the swamp’, or that the swamp was sick, all because the last festival of Elaphebolia was not to her pleasing. But I’ve seen the Lady Artemis’ effigy they whittled this year, and I know last year’s was twice as big, so I think the Matriarch’s just looking for ways to put the blame on others. She’ll spew something about damnation and miasma and we’ll all go back to the usual, once we’ve been publicly informed that the underworld still hungers to claim back all of our lost souls, that the beatings will, in fact, go on, for our own sake and mostly virtue’s sake.” Klymene stabbed her pointing finger emphatically at the sky with each declamation.

“She even ordered the orichalcum lamps to be lit a full night earlier, ‘to cleanse the miasma’, and sent the men of the mines back with a scolding after they dared bring her the same amount as last year. She wanted double that.” The girl always spoke either in such frantic outpours, or with slow, dragging hesitation. It was hard to keep up with her, but she didn’t really care that much if she was being listened to, as long as you didn’t shut her up like the rest of the women. She shrugged and fell to rest her head upon her bent knees.

“From what I understand, that means they won’t be sparing anything for your foolish master.” Ianthe smiled wryly through the hassle. She’d lost track of her stores, and now the mere thought of facing the elders, disrupting their ceremonies with her unwanted presence, made her feel faint. She sighed heavily, falling to rest her back against the grassy slope behind her. She had to shield her eyes with the back of her palm from the overcast glare of noon, which was starting to give her a headache, or perhaps it was the thought of how much she regretted paying the girl in advance. She would have to make do with her last pinch of orichalcum.

“Did you see where they stashed it?” Ianthe said.

Klymene flashed a doleful little smile sideways to her. “In her chambers.” Then she turned away inexplicably, her eyes dashing towards the forest.

“Why do you flinch?” Ianthe snidely smiled to herself, for seeing into the lass’ childish ways. “Did you think I’d ask you to give the ore back?”

“Oh, not at all! I just thought I’d better be going.” A smile couldn’t hide the adorable crackling in her voice. She even let out a little fake cough to go along, hurrying to her feet.

Ianthe laughed with a wide smile back at her, in search of a reaction, but Klymene stood still, staring hesitantly. Even the usual shine of her flaxen curls looked opaque against the beaming white skies. Shadows and darkness, ever the great equalisers of beauty, had blurred her youthful factions, and right then she looked just like the quivering outline of some kind of palm tree, ever so slightly swaying with one hand resting on her hips. Ianthe playfully hissed at her and dismissed her with a dispassionate wave of her hand, somewhat hurt by her callousness, although used to it.

After they had parted ways, Ianthe recounted the spoils her little crook had brought her. Nothing but piles of commentaries on the teachings of the first Helioniktos and folkish, heretical treatises on dream interpretation. Such disparate, unbelievable names as ‘Alkindus of Basra’ and ‘John of Ruysbroeck’ seemed to clasp together all kinds of bits of scripture and worldly wisdom, from all four corners of the world, just to arrive at the most banal of conclusions. Not bad, but not unheard of. She had had more than her fill of arcane tomes; countless treatises on oneiropoiesis, techneidolia and the teachings of the Iatromantoi and dream hunters. All manner of florilegia compiled by Constantinople’s brightest minds had been relentlessly engraved into her memory, etched into her skull through careful jabs of her tutor’s whip. Now, it seemed to her that Klymene had taken her for some kind of erudite hermit wizard. Alas, she would have contented herself with any old tome of Sir Amadis’ knightley chronicles, telling of exotic kings in winged chariots, or even a feisty Occitan love song. This only convinced her more on the idea that it was due time to return to civilization, at least for a small while. For that, she needed to acquire some Orichalcum. A new chase was afoot. The timepiece of slowly rising tedium had been upturned.

After supper, the turgid swamp air began to grow still, clinging to her bare shoulders like a slimy cape, fastened by the heat of a feverish sun that dared peek through the clouds in ever growing intervals. It felt as if the earth itself were clogged up, sweating foul vapours through the loose, dark soil.

The afternoon dragged on. She spent most of it reading, staying away from the sun and nurturing her thoughts in silence. All of them were well received, as long as they kept her away from remembrance. If there was one thing she understood about the healing arts, it was that peace and silence were the soul’s only cure. So she bided her time, clutching her pain, withering away in silence. One day the mists of oblivion would finally wash over her. All it came down was knowing how to let time, the great thief of memories, work its ways. It had been a long night, but at long last she could feel a longing growing about the back of her mind, yearning for a long-awaited dawn.

Once the sun’s wrath had waned in the later hours of the day, she decided to head out for the river. On her way there, she was surprised to come across a vaguely familiar face. A young Etruscan man, with a long mane and a quick step, catched up to her on the road. They’d clearly met before, but he introduced himself all the same. She wondered how he’d come to the conclusion – Even if correct – that she’d already forgotten his name.

He was neither seedy nor unkempt, and his clothes, aside from the occasional soot spot, were well mended. He said his name was Sveitus, and she gave him hers in return. She couldn’t think of a reason to turn down his offer of escorting her. Truth is, he seemed to be of the sort who was hard enough to deter, but easy enough to please, as to not be much of a bother having around. Besides, and perhaps more importantly, he was soft-spoken and well-mannered enough to pass for some kind of sorcerer,, and she was keen to the prospect of bartering for some orichalcum, or preferably an act of charity between two followers of the arcane path.

He had recognized her for the longbow wrapped around her back. An old gift from a certain headless Norman retainer, back in Sicily. Or perhaps Tarento, where the sunkissed olive gardens reached out to the sea. That time, she had pestered old Marengo for a whole fortnight until he agreed to impart on her his peoples’ way of bowfishing, carried about in shallow pools that one could fashion with stones.

Then she recalled that this Sveitus was the same lad who had brought her the arrows on the foreman’s behalf, some months back.

Boorish, mundane inquiring followed. About her state of affairs, with a passing comment on how dangerous it was for a young lady to live alone in the woods, what with the creatures lurking in the bog, all on top of the usual perils of the wild. She replied that she feared not the Architect’s orphaned alchemical aberrations; that she had seen worse in the vast expanses of the Terra Incognita, much to his chagrin. His brow became furrowed with that deep-seated, conniving little innervation that Ianthe’d seen time and time again. The kind of prying, paternal disdain so-called men showed toward children and other frail, meek beings who refused to vie for their safety at every turn. She couldn’t bother to address it at this time. She had to lead the talk elsewhere, lest he became too curious about her past.

“And how about the affairs of the Chthonics, then? I hear Matriarch Auleia’s been placing all sorts of demands on your lot…‘Give her an inch and she’ll take a furlong’.” She quoted the saying with proverbial intonation, flashing a mischievous smile sideways. She didn’t allow him to reply. She was intent on making him forget about the sole mention of her travels.

“Are your people familiar with that saying? Truth is, she will make you quite miserable if you comply, but just the same if you don’t … Some people don’t know a single thing but pain; they end up taking it for granted … That’s how she manages to carry on with her duties like that, without a smidge of care for the poor women who toil to bring forth her arrangements … Toil and hardship are just the way of the world for those kinds of people: real suffering is reserved for punishment, all the rest is just how life goes. And let me tell you, their idea of life does not take kindly to the screamers.” She could feel the words sliding down through her mouth, complete thoughts fully formed, as if, in her solitude, somehow a vast repertoire of liverish thoughts and petty observations had built up on the back of her head. Adult observations, much too bitter for poor Klymene to handle, and thus rarely spoken.

“Can’t complain about this winter, milady. The miners’ cough is rough in the rainier seasons. Almost all of the men have it, but it usually only claims the young souls, the famished stragglers plucked straight out of the streets’ fraudulent bosom. Luckily, we haven’t buried a single soul this winter yet. Apart from a small issue which I would like to discuss with you further on, life has been uneventful.” His smile was lax, but avoidant.

“Pray, milady, are you headed to the river? Care if I join you…?” He said.

“I don’t see why not.” She thought to herself.

She waved a hand at him, gesturing onwards along with a nod.

The skies dimmed gently all through the afternoon, like pale ice sheets melting into a dark, starless pool. Sveitus had built a sturdy hearth between the riverbank and the ravine, well-cared for and lined up with symmetrical stones. Ianthe was drying her peplos after diving into the pool to collect the evening’s spoils. She laid the dress by the fire and covered her nude body with her thick cloak. It was sturdy and woollen, mantled in grey fox fur, submerged in the steaming dragon lakes of Mount Smolikas, then coated in the dragon’s offspring’s blood. It had spared her an arrow wound or two, and even carried her through the harshest of winters, far inside the reaches of the unknown while attempting to cross the alps. Headed towards neither France nor Helvetia, they had – as many augurs recently took to saying – ‘gone under’, reaching some unknown nether region where snowy peaks stretched beyond sight. That same steeled fur coat had stood its ground in raging snow and hail, as they waded through jagged foothills, all drenched in muddy snow, half-frozen to death, awaiting for the smallest hint of the skies clearing in order to trace their way back safely, stars-willing. An odd moment of glory in her short career as a sightseeing guide. Before realising that divination had never been one of her callings.

A small part of her still believed that the reason she never lived up to her potential was because, deep down, she enjoyed getting lost. Peril and adventure, even if just for one’s own life’s sake and not glory, were far more enthusing than the straight-forward, calculated business of killing, but old Marengo was all about business. Survival brought men together; wealth and fame tore them apart, thrusting each into their own cage made out of petty ambitions. This was something she held as the highest truth, and the reason why peasant families were close-knit and warmer towards their own than the most virtuous, affluent households in the Acropolis ever were.

Night befell on the riverside. There was a quiet fervour in the way the wind caressed the trees, solemnly whispering through the crags.

“I was hoping to ask you, m’lady… How did you ‘vanish’?” The long-haired man interjected, sparked by the realisation of a void.

She shrugged. “I just happened to wander here. I was certainly not thrown in at spearpoint. I merely walked in. Much more peaceful it was when I first arrived, I’ll tell you that. Not to mention clean.” One of her eyebrows lifted barely, with playful contempt.

“Ah, but what have we men of the earth done to wrong you? We serve our purpose well, do we not?”

“That is true, I suppose, for what it’s worth.” She nodded with a smug, conceding smile, waving a hand. “But that doesn’t mean I prefer you being here. I should be alone. But alas.” Her dramatic sigh was followed by a faint sardonic smile. She was fixed on his eyes like a moth to a flame, trying to catch the faintest glimmer of doubt. Surely a man with such cultured airs would never see himself as quite a peer to those sullen, impotent brutes.

“Well, then I will tell you how I got here…” The young man straightened his back like a sharpened monolith, smiling theatrically. “I was the Grand Architect’s Grand Apprentice.”

Not minding any possible reply, he turned to pat the solid rock beside him with a proud smile. “You can trust the gods to smite me right at this spot if I were to lie to you, milady, when I tell you that I’ve carved mountains at least thrice as tall as these dusty cliffs. That I’ve made many verdant, soft-backed hills rise from the soil. That the spires I carved out of solid rock once threatened to puncture the heavenly spheres. Gaia herself fearfully trembled at the snap of our fingers. But that power was none of my own, so I left. In fact, I realised that a man of my intellect cannot be made a powerless beneficiary of some distant, charitable force, without so much as the chance of repaying the favour in any way. And yet…”

“Magic was a part of my life for such a long time that I felt lost without it. Rapturous dreams I once had for countless nights, filled with boundless shapes of the infinite, became so commonplace as to lose their entire meaning, like a name repeated aloud all too many times. Yet still, losing them felt like a betrayal all the same. It didn’t matter at that time. That same remorse fueled my will and steeled my nerves. I learned to bask in it, just to pull through. Rage can be useful sometimes, but only when turned to oneself.”

“But it still clouds your wits just the same.” Her smile back was clearly sardonic. She figured his head ought not to be in the right place in some way, it had to.

Most of the men thrown to the Pits – just like the women on the surface – were mad. It was not a wise or amusing madness like some sages of the old mysteries, nor the cryptically tiresome madness of the women above ground. It was madness of the wild and incoherent kind, balancing between mundane torpor and frenzied confusion, ending in complete katatonia. To pass by the miner’s cough was the noblest way of dying most of them could aspire to. Whether it was their madness which saw them sentenced to the mines, or the mines themselves which claimed their sanity, she did not know, though some of them did seem to be thrown ‘just in case’, with seemingly no ailment to their souls on arrival.

“I’m not as prone to such fits as most men of poor standing, my dear lady. I’ve learned to protect myself from myself. For as different as we might be, both of us were trained in fighting the allure of the arcane. That same method can be applied to all human passions. I let my penance guide me, without indulging in guilt.” He looked down, reaching for words. She oddly respected his silence with curiosity.

“So, I returned to my home village. Worked in my family’s workshop. Raised all manner of wild birds as gifts for the pilgrims of Astraea. Surely you know how the legend goes, that it takes a pair of wilful wings to bear the people’s humble offerings, all the way up to her star-veiled throne. I tried my best to aid all of the wandering souls at the end of their means, who frequently passed through our hamlet on their way to the shrines up in the Pindus. Just like my father’d always done and probably still does… “

“And I felt miserable every second of it.” He drew a deep breath, then smiled. “I know, I’ve no right to curse my luck. My apologies for the rambling. There is something I need to tell you, which makes me stumble on my words, but we will get to that. I should not have placed my burdens upon you, so feel not obliged to repay my mumbling with sympathy of any kind.” After saying that, he leaned behind on a tree-trunk to gaze placidly at the stars.

She shrugged. “If anything, I’d say we’re even now.”

The moon was veiled in clouds as the gentle breeze waned. It was a restless quietude. The trees’ hypnotic sway suddenly gave way to stillness.

Glancing at the man sitting beside her, Ianthe found still no reason to mistrust his words. The flash of a golden earring through the well-groomed hair, the choice of words, even the plain irreverence of his kind, those who – though reasonably schooled – wielded magic as a simple craft rather than an art; he seemed to fit his image like a glove, quite comfortably. Fortunate bastard he was, in that regard. He was coarse and scrawny but stood straight. Though ill-mannered, he moved with an air of lordly freedom, surely learned rather than borne into. A clueless, overzealous servant, wallowing in praise for that same master who’d tossed him aside to the depths of Tartaros alongside his supper’s pickings.

Once, back when she’d first arrived, Ianthe had shared a bottle of wine or two with a boastful bear of a man who was quite keen on meeting her. He was a lonely drunk, not unlike her old master, although of a much sadder kind. Both were large, lively, passionate, rubicund men who stomped and roared about most foolhardily, at least in appearance. But while ‘Il Matto Marengo’ was content to wither away on quaint, safe earnings with his merry band of brigands, this quartermaster from the mines seemed much more genuine in his restlessness; deeply malcontent, refusing to resign to his fate. He bored her with his deafening rambles all night long, but she did catch the mention of one ‘foreman’s aide’. A young Etruscan man who was adopted by the absent god of these slumbering forests – the so-called Grand Architect – lifted like fresh cattle for the Apokryphos from the same spiralling filth-nest of Old Town slums from whence his master had risen from.

Now that she could take a good look at him, she’d seen his eyes – opaque like fertile soil – always gleaming with an ever-present comeback. Whenever not affixed to some person or thing, they darted, raced and voraciously drank from every source, every movement, every light. She recalled the last time she’d seen those eyes. That passive alertness, testing the waters with every gesture, each one riskier than the last one. She’d seen that wistful glance in many flat-eyed street urchins, wandering half-drowned through the Rasna quarters when the autumn floods dragged them out of the gutters. Those soggy, quivering brats would grow into young men with full beards, but still carry that same gaze with them for the rest of their days, like a small splinter of terror forever frozen inside their pupils. A look that foresaw death at the turn of every corner, not out of terror, but rather out of a renewed sense of wonder in the face of inevitable doom. That penitent boldness, that inert agitation, were the marks of an overabundance of life; the understated genius of those who’d held court, face to face, with Hades, and came back with a perpetual death fright.

She wondered if the man sitting next to her was as much of a coward as those wrangling Etruscan youths. The kind of boastful, loud young men that everytime they tripped it was the ground’s fault. The kind of lads you could see on every corner, who were always almost catching fish, always one nummus short of this apple or that ashwood sandal, always a single card away from winning back their raft from the cobbler’s son, that greedy bastard. Men who waded through life as if the slightest misfortune afforded them the right to live and act like those who truly have nothing to lose. Who watched fortune’s crumbs slide through their open palms and then turned their backs on her without shedding a single tear, for they knew not how to weep, only how to scream and squabble. From years of witnessing them and their ways, she knew now that only the weakest – and yet meanest – among them would be able succeed; those who could hold the screaming back to an impotent mumble, harmless enough to warrant some form of pity, the single sustenance of their trifling spirits. Those types were usually quick to flee Old Town in order to try their luck in the Polis, never to be seen again, but Ianthe reasoned that at least one of them must’ve made it to the Apokryphos, studying under the arcane servants and fulfilling his dream of being seen and commiserated by older, wiser men of influence who’d take him under their wing.

The fire crackled and spat out a swarm of sparkles, whisking her away from her thoughts.

“I believe there was some topic you were withholding. Care to explain now what it is that you wished to talk about?”

“Gladly I will.”

“If this concerns either of your superiors, balding or broad-chested, then you may save your breath. I wish to have nothing to do with them.”

He held back a low, genuine laughter. “Not at all. I am here out of my own accord.”

“Then you may speak.”

“I shall be blunt with you, if you may grant me the right. And if not, then my harsh words will have to suffice, for I still haven’t found a more gentle way to put it, nor do I wish to waste any more time doing so. If there’s a sole reason for why I refused to bring this up earlier, it is because I greatly enjoyed your company and wished not to spoil your evening with this troubling news.”

She furrowed her brow and braced herself, clasping her cloak.

“It’s really quite dire. We’ve lost access to our main warehouse. A foul beast – one of the forest Watchers, no doubt – attacked the southern mines, forcing us to leave behind weeks and weeks of shipments, piled up due to a faulty elevator. Supplies are dwindling as is, barely enough to keep the irrigation and the river running for about a week. I was sent to retrieve this morning’s shipment we had sent to the village, but Matriarch Auleia had locked herself in the temple, refusing to see me. In any case, no matter with whom I spoke with, word would have quickly spread about our greediness for desecrating the holy rituals of Elaphebolia, resulting in much panic and unwanted chaos. This is why I ask for your utmost secrecy regarding our dealings.“

“But most importantly, what I came to seek was your aid as an accomplished sorcerer, to help drive the beast away from our doorstep.”

“You’re too bold. How could a frail girl, sorceress or not, help you in your hunt? Do you take me for some kind of battle mage? And even if I was, a single whiffed spell inside those crummy tunnels could cause a deadly cave-in, or worse. I’d be of no use”

“True. But there are plenty of other spells that could come in handy.”

“Most of which would lie under the scope of your own training, young Architect. Sounds like your fair share of mountains, caverns and long-winded shafts… An Architect’s playground.”

“As I stated, I’ve already renounced my pact. Sworn to never practise the craft again. Magic is not a gift from the gods. It’s an aberration, hidden in plain sight by avarice and powerlust.”

“I applaud you for keeping your vows!” She said with a scoffing smile, brief. “But that does not exempt your soul from the servitude that you chose. The bonds we mages make, whether with the Dream Voyager himself or with mere mortals, are unbreakable.”

“My bond is not broken. It has been superseded by a higher oath. I plead myself only to the gods, and ultimately to Fate itself, as a humble, free man of no great importance. I’ve long renounced all the privileges of my station, else I would not be here. And that includes magic.”

Something seemed off at the thought of just ‘giving them up’, all for the lofty privilege of being trapped down there. Too convenient.

“You renounced them? Or did they renounce you? Do you even know where your master is at this moment?”

“Surely dead by now. He left some years ago.”

She shook her head, clicking her tongue. “I’m afraid he’s alive and… Not precisely well, from what I’ve heard, but it’s hardly a bodily ailment. Rather, an affliction of the soul. He’s wasting away behind walls as we speak, turning away even the Archmage’s pleas of one day returning his duties.” She tried softening her words somewhat, relieving him of her inquisitive watch as well. The grey abyss of her eyes was a hazy mirror, distressingly attentive under an indolent veneer. They usually latched on mercilessly, unfazed, the colour of weathered marble, pouring out her entire focus, as she did most of her talking with her face. Words were a distant third, an afterthought. Klymene found her eyes unsettling, although most men found them alluring. She was still torn on which camp he belonged to.

Sveitus remained absorbed in thought for a while. He was laying on the ground most haphazardly, yet his eyes, affixed on the fire, looked tense.

“He lost what he held most dear.” He puffed, smoke amidst his face.

“You mean, whom he held most dear.”

“Nothing ever came close. I was merely his one and only apprentice, his successor, held in proud regards. She was his entire reason to live, from the day they first met, until she…”

“She was killed, was she not?”

“Not quite, but yes. She wasn’t here nor there anymore. He let her go out in a feverish dream, instead of rotting tied up on a bed. One night, in a waterfront alley…”

“He was afraid they would send her down here, to Eridanos. A woman of such a fine, ancestral ilk, stripped of her arcane gift, already at her wits end… She would’ve razed the village into the ground, or died trying. So he set her free.”

He stood up silently in order to toss a dusty log into the fire. The flames stretched upwards, lilting shadowy branches. With a loud crackle, the wood collapsed into a neat pile, dimming the light once again. He stood there for a while, keeping watch over the bonfire, gauging the need for another log, looking lost.

“I was already here when it happened. I used to come and go, back in those days. He never returned. They all stopped coming, even the messengers. If it weren’t for the vanished ones who kept on arriving, always alone, always tussling and screaming and shivering, we would’ve assumed the city had been conquered and razed. We’ve been abandoned, milady, for years. And I’ve had enough of holding this gods-forsaken castle!”

Ianthe stepped in. He deserved to know. “They have problems of their own. The people are sensing something, some change, some miasmic aura coming from far beyond the Synthematoi’s foresight. The divining sages preach nothing but wealth and prosperity ahead, but why do the people look so downtrodden? Even the nobles can tell by this point. They hide like savvy old cats, smelling the upcoming downpour, and refuse to step up. First the Haruspex, then your own master, relinquish their seats in the Inner Council, now there’s not a soul willing to take up their position. Ask the nobility and they can’t seem to point out why, only at one another, mumbling old blood feuds that only ever seem to matter in times of hardship. Temples are being abandoned, and churches once again overrun, but the Greek Patriarch can’t spare a single friar, he cares not anymore for our wayward souls. Very little has truly changed in this kingdom’s long, illustrious history. Which is precisely why it is fated to do so now, and – tragically so – all at once.”

Sveitus listened attentively, no longer lost in thought.

“The foreman mentioned you came through the half-buried gates. We noticed the pattern of the sigils in them is always the same, but couldn’t make out any meaning of it, or how the magic works. Are you familiar with them?”

She nodded. “Only in dreamscapes, but yes… They make up a spell. It took me a while to assemble it from the various ruins… Somehow I knew the artifice and how to set it in motion, but I’ve no clue what the sigils mean, or where they’re from. I became acquainted with them in a magnificent palace I used to visit, half submerged and outgrown with flowery vines… Glistening feathers, floating in verdant pools that used to be black marbled halls… A haven mired in musk and decay.”

He seemed to be taken slightly aback by the fervour in her words. She took her oneiric life deeply to heart, but he struggled to empathise. He was not too keen on the mysteries of dream travelling.

“Then you must help me make my return. I would much prefer not to rot in this accursed bog, no… Not a second longer!” He looked at her, inflamed with resoluteness. “There is one of such ruinous gates, nearly intact, near the entrance to the southern mines. We shall drive the beast away, and we will leave here, our pockets overflowing with so much Orichalcum you couldn’t weigh it on Dike’s scales. That will be my humble reward for your immense help. Please, milady, that is all I would ever ask of you.” “I see no other course of action myself. As for your request of bringing you along, I’d say… As long as you stop addressing me as some quaint little marquis’ daughter, I guess I would be fine with it.”

“Of course! I shall call you merely by your name then, as you so wish, my-... well, my dear Ianthe!”

“We could leave it at just Ianthe for now. That seems nice for a change.”

“Sadly, I must admit that I gave away what little Orichalcum I had. I’m completely dry. If you have no ore to spare, I have even less.”

“Then just promise you will come with us, and I’ll see that the women share some of theirs. They are fond of me.”

They sealed the deal by tracing three circles on each other’s foreheads with their fingers dipped in some watered wine Ianthe was carrying. The wine had spared them the use of blood, and they saw no reason not to partake in sharing the rest of it. They drank and merrily toasted on freedom’s sake before parting ways. They were to meet again at dawn before parting, once Sveitus had secured enough ore for the trip from begging and pestering the women.

The night was eerily silent as Ianthe neared the tricky stretch of her way, too risky to traverse with moonlight alone. As she lit her lamp, she could hear something scurrying towards the woods.

As she moved past the thicket, the light of her lamp seemed to dim, giving way to glowing curtains of moonlight, reaching down to caress the glade that gently sloped towards the pond. Suddenly, a handful of rocks and pebbles tumbled towards the water, making the full moon’s pale visage, reflected on the surface, tremble at the sight of a starless sky. Startled, Ianthe barely noticed when the splashing water extinguished the fire from her lantern.

Yet the night was clear enough to follow the fallen rocks’ trajectory, approaching carefully as her feet treaded the slope’s edge towards the opposite end of the pond. Her heart raced as she peeked through the side of a tree trunk.

On the other side, an older man was standing barely a few feet from the tree, staring at her from the clearing. There was an eerie glow about him, and above his head but slightly towards the side there loomed a floating sphere of bluish light. His gaze was tranquil, almost affectionate, affixed on her as though the dark of night were but a mere suggestion to his otherworldly eyes. They partook in a reticent instant of silence, as Ianthe’s hand raced towards her satchel.

“By St. Quirinus’ sword! I am aghast… What have I stumbled upon? Please, have mercy on me, lady of the night!” The old man said, suddenly averting his gaze, prostrating himself with severe difficulty. His ornate, colourful robes looked like they’d weathered a week’s travel through countless muddy crags and thorny briars.

“I beg thee shining one, spare me your judgement, o shining, o brilliant, o bright lady! I’m only travelling to see my family for… Ah, there she is.” The old man’s face eerily turned from rapturous fright to a warm smile, turning to face a young woman, whom Ianthe could see standing by the edge of the small clearing. Her dark mane would’ve seamlessly blended with the dark night had it not framed her pale visage like a silvery icon, adorned with eyes of pale onyx. “Thais, my beloved! I feared I would not arrive in due time for your ceremony. Can’t be but an act of fate what brought you here.” Said the old man, rising slowly.

The young girl stood in deathly silence, clasping the apoptygma (folds) of her pristine blue dress. Her weary sigh was barely heard over the frenzied chirping, croaking and rustling of the pond’s nocturnal inhabitants. Something in her fragile beauty seemed to entrance Ianthe, but still a deep-running hatred started bubbling from somewhere inside her. As Ianthe fiddled with the orichalcum flowers in her hand, the girl’s stupid and listless gaze seemed more and more like a sickening provocation. The air thickened with the scent of smoke, and a chilling wind brought forth a whisper from the deep ends of the forest.

“The amaranth’s beauty is bitter and far coveted like the sun’s warmth above an unreachable horizon.”

Ianthe turned towards the ethereal voice, and there stood another girl. Her dress a spotless white peplos with red accents, and her face stunningly alike the other girl. Indeed, they might have been one and the same. Some foul pantomime was seemingly at play, Ianthe thought, the girl’s voice still ringing in her ears, cutting deep into her very soul. From the corner of her eye, she could see the old man smiling gleefully, as if revelling in her confusion. Suddenly she could hear a frenzied choir of frogs, crickets, owls, nightingales and all manner of unseen nightly beasts burst into a crescendo, melding into a horrifying amalgamated drone as the steady pulse of castanets came closer and closer from beyond the woods’ edge. Then it was spoken:

“The attic bird cries out at night for the fate of her children lost in peril. At the sight of night she yearns aloud: ‘keep them safe from the full moon’s deceit.’

Does she ignore the wise queen of the sky unlike the careless bird, does know of vanity’s folly and warns a full month before unveiling the whole of her maddening beauty?”

Ianthe stammered and gasped for air to let out a frantic scream, but couldn’t even react as she witnessed the myriad of grey eyes rising from every corner. There was now a whole entourage of maidens, serenely standing guard . Row upon row of moonlit visages soon came to peer through the undergrowth, identical but unblended, each one a slight offset of a face she’d grown to despise, whether in still water or polished silver. Some whispered, some giggled; some sobbed quietly. Some stared a dead gaze and some cried to the heavens in agony. Soon their chaotic prattling converged one by one into an ecstatic chant:

Seal your lips with butterfly wings. Seal your lips with butterfly wings. Whence the soul doth sleep shall the craven one weep.

Seal your lips with butterfly wings. Hollow for the love of kings wicked plaything, held by strings, keep the dream alive and seal your lips with butterfly wings.

Ianthe’s hands were shivering as if at any moment they were to separate from her body and take flight on their own, such that she had to hold her quivering fist – with the crystal shards in it – using her free hand. She breathed in deeply after swallowing, as if a gust of wind forced itself down her throat, pushing her soul outwards. The bitter taste vanished as quickly as the world around her hushed and slowed. The chanting faces became blurred together like a stream of liquid marble circling around her, now as pleasing as it were horrifying mere moments ago. Ianthe’s face softened into a calm smile. As that glorious second that extends to infinity started vanishing, her very soul came down from a distant aether with but one clear purpose, one simple path laying ahead of her renewed gaze. Her chest grew as the bellows of the earth itself and with ecstatic, righteous, flaming ire, her scream was heard across the entire valley. Not a scream of terror nor pain nor anger, but a scorching commandment from the heavens that scoured the land in a single stroke of fire.

When the smoke cleared, the moon had disappeared. Had it been raining all along? At least the wind could course freely now, racing through naked, soot-covered tree trunks, some still blazing quietly beneath the sparkling rain. Now, clear of all the foliage, the woods seemed more like rusty cage bars. Along with her newfound visibility, Ianthe noticed the vague outlook of a man against a bushfire in the distance. His eyes flashed with the glint of an arcane surge. An acrid breeze reached her with the scent of sulphur and salt vapour. The crude markings of soul magic. What could one of those corpse peddlers be doing there? And why did his base sorcery seem unaffected by the magical torpor that covered this barren land?

The man watched her approach, standing deeply still. She flashed a light through her outstretched palm towards him, shakily uttering “Who goes there?” To which he didn’t reply. His dark robes seemed old and unkempt, and beneath the cowl only a grey beard could be made out, stretching beneath a pair of eyes that shone a bright, eerie yellow. They exchanged unflinching, preying stares, both glistening in the spiralling patterns of arcane frenzy.

There was another silhouette barely lying face up besides the necromancer. A young man, his clothes burnt and torn to shreds, with some scattered hair tufts in place of a scorched beard.

“He said his name was Philander.” The old man spoke in a clear, low voice. Ianthe was taken aback by his nonchalant tone.

“I shielded him from the flames, but he was already weak when I found him, so the shockwave rendered him faint. He would’ve certainly died.” His eyes refused part ways with her, with their foul magic glint and formidable gaze, unblinking, pitch black irises barely outlined beneath the glow. “His wounds are your making. Take good care of him, and you shall know great fortune.” He turned one last time towards the young man, unconscious but still breathing, and started walking away.

“Stop now, you! Wretched corpse peddler! Who are you?! Where did you come from?! Who is he?!” Her left hand flashed ablaze with a feeble, flickering flame. The ore’s effects were already fading.

The necromancer vanished under a cloud of dusk-coloured fumes.