ꙮ The citadel of Fort Valaïs is ringed with balconies. Almost every echelon is smaller than the one below it, and as such, if you follow almost any hallway with sufficient determination, you’ll find some or another degree of a deck with a balcony, looking out over the moonlit night and the city below, the sweeping outer walls, sometimes a glimpse of the precarious mass of the Downbelow.
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#saint
#tana'loof
is certainly determined, she supposes, as she peers onto each deck, looking for the good Guard-Captain of Valaïs.
is, as it turns out, rather easy to find, at least, if you’re still on the Echelon that houses the guards’ barracks, or if that’s the first place you looked. He’s leaning against a railing, scowling at the Downbelow hard enough that you can somehow tell that that’s what he’s doing even before you’re at the right angle to see his face.
wonders, if for a second, she might startle him if she’s quiet enough, but then she figures that would be rather rude, so instead she knocks on the threshold of doorframe and says, “May I have a moment of your time, Tana’loof Drum?”
seems like the kind of person who wouldn’t startle; he seems, really, like the kind of person who might even have heard her sneaking up. But when she knocks on the frame, he straightens up, and any trace of a scowl is gone from his face when he turns around to greet her. “I’ve nothing but time today. Although I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, given the nature of our initial introductions. What might I call you?”
hesitates. “My name is Salme. Where I come from we really only have the one, though that seemed to startle your guards, when I said it. You can call me Sword-Saint, if that feels more comfortable. It’s not a calendrical, but it sort of has the sound of one, right?”
nods, slightly. “I would call you by whatever you yourself would find appropriate, truly. But it might be wise to have a title for the High Echelons.”
: “Salme is fine, then. Preferred, even. And noted for the High Echelons.” She frowns for a moment, and then says, “I was wondering how long you’ve been the Guard-Captain of Valaïs, actually.”
answers, immediately, “Yana’loof name-days, next Tana’loof Drum. Why do you ask?”
: “I am—a keeper of stories, to some extent, and in my travels I encountered the story of a young man who once served under a Guard-Captain of Fort Valaïs. I think it was probably well before your time, but his name was Jaromir. I was trying to see if I could find more of his story while I was here.”
nods, again. “Many young men and women of Valaïs have spent time in our ranks, at some point or another. Although I am– surprised to hear that stories are told of Valaïs from whence you came.” He turns, properly, to lean against the railing. “If you know his use-name calendrical, and approximately how many name-days have passed since his service, I’m sure we’ll have record of him in the barracks archives.”
: “Why are you surprised to hear that stories are told of Valaïs?”
: “Your worlds are not remembered here, except in… the vaguest terms, stories told to children of Yesterday’s lands. Certainly you would find them… fanciful and foolish, were you to hear them. But -you- come with a story of a specific guardsman, you seem familiar already with our ways. Clearly, you know more of us than we know of you.”
looks at him levelly. “There are very few stories I would find wholly fanciful and foolish, Tana’loof Drum. There’s always something to be learned, even in children’s stories. I was actually going to ask for your stories—about other worlds, and about the day-names that you use. As for what we already know—Valaïs has more knowledge of other lands than my own ever did, but I’ve been traveling for some time, and I’ve met other travelers during that time.”
seems to relax, a little. Like he had told himself a story about the travelers from the storied worlds that Salme is dismantling before his eyes. “Others who have… traveled between the worlds, you mean? Other than you and your companions?”
: “I know of three others, and only three, and those a long time ago, but yes.” She shrugs. “Those three remembered very little of where they were originally from—that’s how I have Jaromir’s name but little else—but it’s happened before.”
considers him for a moment, before asking, “Were you worried that you might have to defend Valaïs for a dangerous horde for interplanar travelers at some point?”
: “The thought had, honestly, not crossed my mind. You can speak; that much should have been clear even to Hale Wolf.” His mouth twists. “Once again, I apologise for his discourtesy. In any event, what would I have to fear from you, or others from the storied worlds?”
waves off Hale Wolf’s discourtesy. “You’ve nothing to fear that I can think of, aside from perhaps impertinent questions. You had just seemed troubled by the possibility that we might know more of Valaïs than Valaïs knew of us.” She shrugs. “What are these fanciful and foolish storied worlds? Did they have names? Or descriptions?”
shakes his head. “No fear, then, no. Just surprise. And a continual sense of disquiet when another knows more of me than I of them, but that’s my own frailty with which to contend.” A slight smile, and he looks up, and past Salme, a bit. “There are, the stories say, methir of them. A world with trees, and all the trees are hollow, and you can climb inside and have wondrous adventures there, and in the branches of each tree is a light like the Moon. A world where they breathe water, instead of air. A world nestled in the valley between tan mountains too high to see the peaks of, yan aflame and yan shrouded in bitter cold, but with the power to heal all ills. And yan…” And he looks distant, and the corners of his mouth go up, and you can tell, you think, which was his favourite, as a child. “Yan that’s lush and bright, full of fierce challenges, and has a tower that reaches up into the clouds, and if you climb high enough, on your own power, you can see everything in all the world and obtain your dearest wish.”
: “I think … hm. Those are not quite the places where we come from, or the places we’ve been. I think, they might actually, be a description of the places that once were. I’m not sure. I’m from a world filled with trees—some of the trees are people, and they walk and talk.” She thinks about the structure of the fort, and the lower echelons. “I’m guessing Fort Valaïs isn’t the kind of tower you can climb of your own ability?”
tilts his head at ‘the places that once were’, but he doesn’t interrupt. His eyes go wide at ‘world filled with trees’, though, a little, let alone some of the trees being people that can walk and talk. “What do… trees actually look like? My mother said they were covered with soft green fluff, all over, like food that’s gone spoiled, except without being spoiled. Is that true? –I’m sorry.” He contains himself, with dignity, and actually answers the goddamned question his visitor asked, to the best of his own ability. “Well. Mmm. I could certainly say I’ve done so, I think.” It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ he’s not saying.
: “But?” She prompts.
has been caught out. “…well, I’m aware of what my guards think, even if they’d never say it where they think the ‘monster of the barracks’ could hear.” A wry smile. “That when I’m standing in the Highest Echelon, I’m only doing the job the Houses pay me to do, and wholly at their pleasure. And I suppose they’ve as much right to believe themselves correct on that as I am for myself.”
considers that. Takes a moment to show that she’s truly absorbed it, and then says, “People can sometimes be very judgmental and cruel, especially if you’re different from them.” She pauses again, and then she says, “There are all sorts of trees—most of them stretch at least four or five—which is, er … methir or neave Tana’loof Drums up into the sky. They have bark which is all shades of brown or gray and can be smooth or ridged and heavily textured. They branch,” and here she spreads her fingers, “and from these branches grow smaller branches, and from there sprout leaves, which are green, yes. The leaves can be all sorts of shapes,” she traces ovals and the rounded triangles of linden leaves and the spiky points of maple leaves in the air, “and they take in light and use it to make food so that the tree can live.”
: “Oh. They sound… lovely. Thank you.” A pause, and a frown, as he processes all of this information. “Leaves come from trees, then, on the storied worlds? They simply… grow, like people grow?”
: “Generally, yes. Where do leaves come from here?”
takes a deep, slightly vertiginous breath. “From the Downbelow, the same as anything you’d eat or use for medicine. You can buy leaves there, dried leaves, fresh ones sometimes if you’ve the obols for it.”
: “Sure, but. Where do those leaves come from?”
briefly runs his fingers along the balcony’s hand-rail. “They come from the merchants who sell them…?”
doesn’t frown, because she did see this coming, but she doesn’t hide the exceptionally perplexed look on her face. “We have merchants too, on Almachadta, but everything that’s sold comes from the land, or animals, or plants, and then if it’s been cultivated or crafted that’s also apparent. I. The thought of that process being opaque is. Very strange to me.”
looks like he’s trying to make sense of that, in turn. “The merchants don’t really talk about where their goods come from, and– well. You learn not to try and tail them. Easier to get dirt on one of the High Houses.” A brief pause. “(Honestly, that’s not hard at all, now that I think about it.) But. That must… so the land is workable, then, and people… get sustenance that way? Astonishing.”
nods. “It’s different for the different places we’re from. Where I’m from it’s …” She frowns. “I have a potentially very stupid question, but do you use gnosis here?”
gives Salme the faint suggestion of a Stern Look borrowed from someone else. “My father would say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, and he’d be right. Yes, we use gnosis. It’d be hard to fight off the Undead without it, for yan thing. And I’m trying to imagine lighting lamps by hand, and I’d rather not even imagine that.”
nods. “There isn’t the kind of … ambient gnosis here that you’d find on my plane, which is suffused with flourishing gnosis. The land there is easy to work; growing things is …” she trails off for a moment, thinking not of growing but of overgrowth. She shakes her head, pushing the thought away. “Growing things is easy and food is easily accessible. Other places—some of us come from planes suffused with burning gnosis, or pellucid gnosis, or radiant gnosis, and growing things there is much more difficult. But it’s possible. Every place I’ve been to it’s possible. Is it not possible here?”
: “Well, there’s a kind of plant that grows sometimes out on the lower plates that you can scrounge up and eat. It tastes awful, but it exists. Don’t know that anyone’s tried to deliberately cultivate it closer to Valaïs, though.”
frowns. “Fascinating.” And then, with a brief apology to someone who hopefully won’t know she ever asked this question, she says, “Apologies for this morbid questions, but. You’re constantly fighting against the Undead, yeah? But. When someone just normally dies, what do you do with their body?”
lets out a short breath, but if there’s no such thing as a stupid question, there’s no such thing as a morbid one, either. “It’s… it’s very rare to -see- someone die. But, when it does happen, it’s- their body is taken by the Undead as well. It’s– when it does happen, an Apparition will arise and they will take the body, turn around, and go back the way they came without attacking us at all. It’s easier than fighting them, the Houses decreed it an acceptable sacrifice.”
: “Oh,” she says, softly. “What is … an Apparition, exactly?”
: “When the Undead mass and march on Valaïs. We bring as many citizens as we can into the Citadel, we guard the walls, and we fight. And we try not to… listen.”
: “To the singing, that is?”
nods. “Aye, yes. It’s… much different than what you heard in the markets.” And then he pauses, with an odd look on his face. “Most people wear earplugs. I’d rather… know that I can hear it and my feet will stay planted at my post.”
looks like she understands that at least. “I’d always rather know than not know. When it comes to anything.” She gives him a wry smile. “Where I come from, singing is just singing, and when you die your body is simply dead. We bury our dead in the earth and they stay there and decay. It’s different on each plane, but none of them are like here.” She considers another moment, and then asks, “So the Undead can’t talk? They can only sing? Is that it?”
: “Can’t, or won’t, I couldn’t say. It could be that they talk amongst themselves and that their song is a weapon they choose to inflict on us.”
: “Hmm.” She considers that, but doesn’t have anything else to add, and so she says, “Another impertinent question. I don’t supposed Valaïs goes through cycles of destruction every 1,100 years or so?”
raises both eyebrows, then scrunches up his face. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to define a ‘year’ for me so that I could be absolutely certain? I don’t think so, though. Valaïs has been here as long as anyone remembers. The High Houses say that we’ve always been here and that every day has always had a yesterday, but that’s always seemed strange to me, the argument’s just never been worth the candle.”
: “A year would be a … name-day, I think, by your accounting? But not tied to a specific individual. And yours might be fewer days than ours are.” She also scrunches up her face. “Light, that’s confusing. How far back does anyone remember? Would I have to manage to curry favor with your High Houses to get an answer to that?”
: “Well, the barracks logs go back for…” He trails off, doing math in his head. “(Moon’s crack.)” More math. “Your numbers, they’re based on looves, aye? Is there a word for a loof of looves, and then a word for a loof of those?”
wishes Aurelius or Caion was here at this precise moment, but she does her best. “A loof is this many right?” She holds up all ten fingers. “A loof of looves would be a hundred, and a loof of those would be a thousand.”
: “Brilliant, thank you. Alright. The actual logs from back then are long since dust by now but when they scrap old logbooks they make a note of the important things, and there’s been something like… tethir or methir hundred thousand name-days, give or take, uh, quite a lot actually, I’d have to sit down with paper and a pen and reference the logbooks proper, but unless your years are -remarkably- long next to how long it takes a name-day to roll around again, I think that means Valaïs hasn’t been destroyed any time soon.” And then a pause, as her actual question catches up to him, and he frowns. “I… take it that is something with which the storied worlds are contending, then. That seems like a great weight to bear.”
shrugs. “It’s been happening for. Some time. We’re trying to stop it.” She’s quiet for a long moment. “I don’t think we will this time, but the people—I think we’ll save most of them. I hope.” Another long pause, “Which is a pretty grim note to leave you on. Is there—anything pleasant you’d like to know? That you’re curious about, just for the sake of being curious?”
gives Salme a very solemn look. “I wish you good fortune in that, then, Salme. There could be no nobler pursuit.” And then he pauses, and thinks about her question, for a moment, maybe several. “What’s… the most beautiful thing you’ve heard in your travels? You– it sounded like all of you– that people sing, on the storied worlds. And you must have seen, and heard, so much, by now. And if it is a song– I do not–“ –he frowns. “I will seek special dispensation from the Houses for the tan’neave of you to sing while you are here, I do not think it would do me any harm to hear it. And I know it would be foolish of me to ask for a -description- of a sound, or a song, were it not for the fact we established earlier concerning whether or not questions could be foolish.”
smiles at him. “You should ask Wolf to sing for you, or Dyu, or perhaps the both of them. I don’t have an ear for music myself, but—I recently heard a song with words in a language that I didn’t recognize. I knew what it meant, but the words themselves in the song were strange. The meaning, even, was strange—it was about the impossibility of movement and the inevitability of change. It felt … aspirational, to me, in a way.” She considers, and then says, “I don’t have it with me now, but I had a way of playing it for you, if you’d like to hear sometime?”
tilts his head to the side, as every word she says is more unexpected, and rather wondrous, than the last. “I would like that very much, yes. With the proper dispensations granted, but. Between the tan of us, I’ll write the order, and they’ll sign it. Even if I’m just doing my job, there are benefits to being the yan and only man to ascend the highest of the Spires.”
grins at him. “It’s a plan, then, Tana’loof Drum.”
bows courteously to her. “And I’ll look forward to it, then. Oh, and– while I have you.” He rummages around in a pocket, and hands Salme seven lush, almost velvety, profligately thick envelopes sealed with bright colorful wax. “The formal invitations to the masquerade, for you and your companions. If you or yours need help putting together suitable accoutrements, let the barracks know; we’re not without our skills.” And with that, he, too, has to be off - there’s some sort of Guard-Captainy work that needs doing, and so he’ll take his leave.