It was, much like Litzia’s endeavor in the morning, an aimless search, one further hampered by the populated streets and the scorching heat. We did not fly, for I bade we search on foot despite my wounds. I misliked the notion of forming a pledge so soon, with a mind still so befuddled by the earlier events. What emotions would leak out then should our hands join, I dared not think. Instead I let it simmer in me, and pretended that my grievances were naught but bodily suffering.
Periodically, I must force myself to return from these fuzzy thoughts to the task at hand: Acis. That white wyverness who was as a twin or shadow to her pledge. Looking for someone with her unique appearance should not prove too difficult, that is, if she only wandered, or besieged by some sudden fancy, and had forgotten the way home to her pair. Not so simple. For some reason Hortensia had insisted that she was likely imprisoned against her will.
For Acis should know better than to stay away for long.
For it was a matter of life and death.
‘Twas like a vow between passionate lovers, who swore to the stars they could not live a day without their beloved. Till death do us part. Only between Acis and Galanthus the statement was literal. It hinted at a connection deeper than the pledge. Though the nature of which I could not even begin to discern.
Some exaggeration, some gross hyperbole, mayhap. And Hortensia was known for many larks. But too, I had seen another side of her in the early morning. And if I had learned little more of Hortensia than her peculiar competency, I knew now, for a surety, of the existence of something else beneath the surface of that cerulean wyverness. Something sinister, dark and alluring. No curiosity would spur me on an expedition to these unknown regions any time soon, but I had developed a respect for her guidance, a trust in her words. And now when she had hinted at the worst outcomes for a matter seemingly trivial, I believed her.
All the while Litzia kept a slow pace so I could follow in my limped state. And while we searched the lower tiers of the mountain, others of our Ala searched each house on the upper. I could recall too well the local maganates’s enmity for Acis, that day in the Sanctuary.
But we could not be sure to put all our bets in one place, and had not the time to spare.
At a crossroads, a familiar outcrop entered our sight. There, before the tea shop of Acis’ mother we had visited a few days before, a small crowd gathered.
Doubtless our Ala-sisters had come by here first. And now we heard Acis’ mother giving instructions to her aids, directing them to this location and that. Upon seeing us, a glimmer of hope came to her eyes, which soon dissipated at the want for her daughter.
She eyed me with recognition, and then my wounds. “Were you in a brawl? Was there trouble up there?”
Litzia shook her head, “Not for Acis. We search still. Do you know where we may look?”
Satya, the mother, frowned, “I am not sure. There are places indeed she might go when her senses are lost, but your sisters-Alae believed otherwise, that she is held captive.”
“We must look wherever we can, say,” there was a sudden halting in Litzia’s voice, but quickly she overcame it, an understanding flashed into her eyes. She had been there when the Loredan girl confronted Acis, and had developed a theory as to the reason for their enmity. Now she seemed to have arrived at a conclusion. But what lines of reason she was following then, I could not begin to guess. “Say, ma’am, is there a place Acis would go when she was younger?”
Satya knitted her brows, “she was an active child, and would hardly leave a place unexplored: the fish market near the docks, the piers, or in the shallow water, the Sanctuary, where the tunnels sound deep…” her voice took a distracted turn and then she seemed lost in thoughts.
“I wonder...” Litzia said, “There must be someplace she went only when in doubt, when herself was lost.”
The aged woman regarded my pledge-sister strangely, and she shook her head, “Mayhap not, she was not one to brood in solitude. Always in the company of her cohort of urchins, that child. Such lonely things you speak of better suited that girl, aye, the Loredan’s daughter… who did mention a place that was theirs alone, before they fell out—” then fervent life came to the mother, and her eyes opened wide, “—one, a derelict in the northern face of the mountain—the ancient cistern’s ruins. None goes there, since the irrigation has flooded its many parts. But... What reason had she...? Not now, ‘tis yet early. Unless- nay, that is evil! The time is not here yet!”
So suddenly she grabbed my arm, the wounded one. And heedless of my grimace, she pleaded, “Go there, Estival Alares, I beg of you! You must! And do you find her there, all on her own, then you must fetch Galanthus, for without that girl, she would-!”
“Ma’am,” Litzia plucked her hand from my pained arm. “We shall at once. But stay calm, and tell the others where we are headed, if they come here.”
She drew away, troubled, while mumbling some words of approval. But as the woman trod back inside her house, something else had occupied her mind entirely.
A sense of urgency hurried us, helped by a mother’s distress. We had a destination now, if there was no more surety in the course than Litzia’s vain search for the marks in stone. Only a guess. And only she walked now with even more haste than in the morning, more desperate, for a fear unknown, rather than vain hope.
“But what did you mean by that?” I asked, struggling to keep up with her between labored breaths and the throbbing pains.
She halted, looking at me with somewhat wild eyes. “I do not know, I felt, Aster. I felt, on that day when we came to the Sanctuary, that Acis’ greatest threat is her own person.”
So said vaguely, and grabbed my hand and pulled me along, not so gently. Winded lungs took whatever consideration pain had not swept away, and I gave her a resentful glare. Her attention lay too far ahead, too mindful of the goal, she could not catch my expression.
“Why,” I raised my hoarse voice to override the crowded main street, few places in the lower rings were quiet enough for normal speech, “why care? Do you not see them as foes you’re made to live among? Why care now when one day you would have them best, killed, and some, for your freedom?”
“Why?” she turned sharply my way, in the middle of crossing the street, no trace of guilt or hurt in her voice, only impatient anger, “Because I do not resent them my enslaving, sister! It is her I hate. Her servants have no part in it, not entirely. And I think of those two as friends. Believe what you will, ‘tis the truth. Think you I’m one to watch in idleness a friend’s suffering for her master’s deeds?”
Again, she raced ahead, almost stumbling over an ox cart. Though it was her fault, she glared at the driver, who shrunk in fear at her anger. A cluster of halted traffic quickly accumulated behind it. Those along the blocked street raised their shouts only until they caught sight of my pledge-sister. A wyverness in Tithonus is a feared sight, like as not being the Dawn’s alaris.
I yanked away as she relieved the driver of her unfair hate, irritating my woundw in the process. Then, suppressing a gasp, I marched past the wyverness and looked at her sidelong.
“In this I believe you, and will come with you, as I ever will. But you are right. I have cause to doubt and mislike your plan. For I think you are thoughtless. Think you a challenger of the Dragon can afford to spare who she may? Gladiola, Hortensia, Galanthus, Acis, all of them are loyal to the captain, and even Valerian by honor and Thea by the mark. Will you still call them friends when they stand against you? For that is unavoidable if you lay to this course. But, say, to be sure, you can borrow that champion’s hand without harming them or aught others, what then? What would become of this city? Don’t you see? Thea told you how it worked, did she not? The people here depend upon the captain’s ward. What would you do about them? Or the thousand women of the crew? Think you they will find another shelter? Another provider? Alas! They would be in ruin, as soon conquered by a foreign power, even as us! Even so, no matter!” I waved my hand forcefully. “What you do, I but follow. I am bound to your pledge for the thoughtless promise I made, but know that I rue it! I rue the day you will bring doom to us all, to all my friends, to the only home I ever know, if one may call it that. So drop your pretension of friendship. And either lie or lie not, do not sway whichever way you like whenever. For I cannot and shall not tattle your plan to the officers. You know well I can’t. I am but an azure of no use, who must follow her better and her mark. And of such tools you must needs for your quest of insanity, I am the least and only. So that part, I play.”
I gasped for breath as last, and maintained an aching pace. I had said my piece. And tears of frustration welled. Not only because I was wroth with her. Nay, there was not it in me to be angered. An azure cannot be angry. I could not. And yet my chest boiled, tightened. At the heart of it, all of that wandering speech, I wanted but to tell her I would never care to betray her, to tattle her plot to the officers. I could not. An azure slave could not. She ought to trust in me for that. But of course she did not, she had nary a trust in me, and never would. I was to her a pledge-sister as Acis and Galanthus were her friends - a mere pretty word to dress her distaste and petty grudge for us all.
Healthy and greater in vigor, Litzia overtook me in no time, all the while avoiding my accusing gaze. She never broke the silence since, out of either anger or doubts, despite being much wrathful only moments before.
In such tension and awkwardness we rounded our way northwards, only pausing at times to ask for directions, not once spoken to each other. In time, I bent my will back to the matter of Acis' well-being.
It was still guessing work, however sure Litzia might be of her presentiment. And as we gained on the unpopulated part of the mountain, I became doubtful of this course. The path was harsh to traverse, and soon the laid roads gave way to nature, the only signs of civilization being the broken columns and half-buried masonry.
Near the mountain’s peak, just beneath a path leading to the Sanctuary was where the treeline began. Somewhere in the middle of this descent was an ancient and enormous cistern, said to have once supplied the community in this place with water. It had been untold years since, Aurora had blessed the mountain’s heart with an ever-flowing clear spring, rendering the cistern into disuse. Now the ancient system underground still worked, storing rainwater and feeding through cracks and fissures in the waterproof material by Aurora’s spring itself. Broken parts of the cistern discharged overflowed water, creating chance springs and streams and pools shaded under great boughs we now passed in person. All of this I had learned through Thea during that excursion with the gentile girl Mathilda. But in person it was less sorry ruins and more a pleasing reconquest of nature.
Under the hot weather of Tithonus, this here seemed a paradise. And there could be no doubt of these cool shades, these revitalizing streams being the hideout of choice for an adventurous kid. Yet Acis’s mother had spoken of the ruins of the cistern itself, and not its pretty surroundings.
And so we climbed, or mostly Litzia pulling and I struggling. I started to think it pointless, that no way Acis in no clear mind, for that was what I surmised from Litzia’s presentiment, would have been able to walk this far. Then again, if this was her place, and she was used to it, she might have not been met with so many difficulties as us, or had known a secret, easier path to the ruins.
At any rate. We emerged at last to a ground with surer footings. Gradually nature gave way, and we came to a raised cyclopean structure. And there were sounds faintly echoing behind broken walls. We followed it, rounded a crumbled wall, and clearer it came. The scratching of stone on stone. We saw Acis. But not all of her.
I remembered how it had been strange to see her without Galanthus. How they had always been one to my eyes, in appearance and in relation. But strange could not even begin to describe her now. There was a whiteness still, a demureness – a reminder of her pledge-sister in sight and manner. But also there were dark streaks in her hair, similar to her mother’s. And her face seemed differently shaped, her pallor tanned. And yet all this were but superficial changes. Most eerily, startlingly, bizarrely, was the fact that I could see somewhat through her person into the wall before her. As though she was made of sheer fabric, glass, or some sort of transparent material.
And yet if she seemed an apparition, or hallucination, her motions did not. With her back to us, Acis’ attention was trained on the wall. And she made sounds, those we had heard before beholding her. In her fragile, ephemeral hand was a small sharp rock. And she was scratching on the old wall with it.
The scratches, as we approached with caution, were unintelligible. No clear shapes, signs or runes could be found there, yet she seemed engrossed in the act, and dumb to all else in the world.
“I’ll stay here with her, you find Galanthus,” I said. Hortensia had warned us against trying to influence the alaris if we found her.
The wyverness regarded my wound with doubt, still she acceded. “Do not do anything unwise, for the good of you both.”
Even as she said, in the bright daylight, Acis’s silhouette flickered.
It was, much like Litzia’s endeavor in the morning, an aimless search, one further hampered by the populated streets and the scorching heat. We did not fly, for I bade we search on foot despite my wounds. I misliked the notion of forming a pledge so soon, with a mind still so befuddled by the earlier events. What emotions would leak out then should our hands join, I dared not think. Instead I let it simmer in me, and pretended that my grievances were naught but bodily suffering.
Periodically, I must force myself to return from these fuzzy thoughts to the task at hand: Acis. That white wyverness who was as a twin or shadow to her pledge. Looking for someone with her unique appearance should not prove too difficult, that is, if she only wandered, or besieged by some sudden fancy, and had forgotten the way home to her pair. Not so simple. For some reason Hortensia had insisted that she was likely imprisoned against her will.
For Acis should know better than to stay away for long.
For it was a matter of life and death.
‘Twas like a vow between passionate lovers, who swore to the stars they could not live a day without their beloved. Till death do us part. Only between Acis and Galanthus the statement was literal. It hinted at a connection deeper than the pledge. Though the nature of which I could not even begin to discern.
Some exaggeration, some gross hyperbole, mayhap. And Hortensia was known for many larks. But too, I had seen another side of her in the early morning. And if I had learned little more of Hortensia than her peculiar competency, I knew now, for a surety, of the existence of something else beneath the surface of that cerulean wyverness. Something sinister, dark and alluring. No curiosity would spur me on an expedition to these unknown regions any time soon, but I had developed a respect for her guidance, a trust in her words. And now when she had hinted at the worst outcomes for a matter seemingly trivial, I believed her.
All the while Litzia kept a slow pace so I could follow in my limped state. And while we searched the lower tiers of the mountain, others of our Ala searched each house on the upper. I could recall too well the local maganates’s enmity for Acis, that day in the Sanctuary.
But we could not be sure to put all our bets in one place, and had not the time to spare.
At a crossroads, a familiar outcrop entered our sight. There, before the tea shop of Acis’ mother we had visited a few days before, a small crowd gathered.
Doubtless our Ala-sisters had come by here first. And now we heard Acis’ mother giving instructions to her aids, directing them to this location and that. Upon seeing us, a glimmer of hope came to her eyes, which soon dissipated at the want for her daughter.
She eyed me with recognition, and then my wounds. “Were you in a brawl? Was there trouble up there?”
Litzia shook her head, “Not for Acis. We search still. Do you know where we may look?”
Satya, the mother, frowned, “I am not sure. There are places indeed she might go when her senses are lost, but your sisters-Alae believed otherwise, that she is held captive.”
“We must look wherever we can, say,” there was a sudden halting in Litzia’s voice, but quickly she overcame it, an understanding flashed into her eyes. She had been there when the Loredan girl confronted Acis, and had developed a theory as to the reason for their enmity. Now she seemed to have arrived at a conclusion. But what lines of reason she was following then, I could not begin to guess. “Say, ma’am, is there a place Acis would go when she was younger?”
Satya knitted her brows, “she was an active child, and would hardly leave a place unexplored: the fish market near the docks, the piers, or in the shallow water, the Sanctuary, where the tunnels sound deep…” her voice took a distracted turn and then she seemed lost in thoughts.
“I wonder...” Litzia said, “There must be someplace she went only when in doubt, when herself was lost.”
The aged woman regarded my pledge-sister strangely, and she shook her head, “Mayhap not, she was not one to brood in solitude. Always in the company of her cohort of urchins, that child. Such lonely things you speak of better suited that girl, aye, the Loredan’s daughter… who did mention a place that was theirs alone, before they fell out—” then fervent life came to the mother, and her eyes opened wide, “—one, a derelict in the northern face of the mountain—the ancient cistern’s ruins. None goes there, since the irrigation has flooded its many parts. But... What reason had she...? Not now, ‘tis yet early. Unless- nay, that is evil! The time is not here yet!”
So suddenly she grabbed my arm, the wounded one. And heedless of my grimace, she pleaded, “Go there, Estival Alares, I beg of you! You must! And do you find her there, all on her own, then you must fetch Galanthus, for without that girl, she would-!”
“Ma’am,” Litzia plucked her hand from my pained arm. “We shall at once. But stay calm, and tell the others where we are headed, if they come here.”
She drew away, troubled, while mumbling some words of approval. But as the woman trod back inside her house, something else had occupied her mind entirely.
A sense of urgency hurried us, helped by a mother’s distress. We had a destination now, if there was no more surety in the course than Litzia’s vain search for the marks in stone. Only a guess. And only she walked now with even more haste than in the morning, more desperate, for a fear unknown, rather than vain hope.
“But what did you mean by that?” I asked, struggling to keep up with her between labored breaths and the throbbing pains.
She halted, looking at me with somewhat wild eyes. “I do not know, I felt, Aster. I felt, on that day when we came to the Sanctuary, that Acis’ greatest threat is her own person.”
So said vaguely, and grabbed my hand and pulled me along, not so gently. Winded lungs took whatever consideration pain had not swept away, and I gave her a resentful glare. Her attention lay too far ahead, too mindful of the goal, she could not catch my expression.
“Why,” I raised my hoarse voice to override the crowded main street, few places in the lower rings were quiet enough for normal speech, “why care? Do you not see them as foes you’re made to live among? Why care now when one day you would have them best, killed, and some, for your freedom?”
“Why?” she turned sharply my way, in the middle of crossing the street, no trace of guilt or hurt in her voice, only impatient anger, “Because I do not resent them my enslaving, sister! It is her I hate. Her servants have no part in it, not entirely. And I think of those two as friends. Believe what you will, ‘tis the truth. Think you I’m one to watch in idleness a friend’s suffering for her master’s deeds?”
Again, she raced ahead, almost stumbling over an ox cart. Though it was her fault, she glared at the driver, who shrunk in fear at her anger. A cluster of halted traffic quickly accumulated behind it. Those along the blocked street raised their shouts only until they caught sight of my pledge-sister. A wyverness in Tithonus is a feared sight, like as not being the Dawn’s alaris.
I yanked away as she relieved the driver of her unfair hate, irritating my woundw in the process. Then, suppressing a gasp, I marched past the wyverness and looked at her sidelong.
“In this I believe you, and will come with you, as I ever will. But you are right. I have cause to doubt and mislike your plan. For I think you are thoughtless. Think you a challenger of the Dragon can afford to spare who she may? Gladiola, Hortensia, Galanthus, Acis, all of them are loyal to the captain, and even Valerian by honor and Thea by the mark. Will you still call them friends when they stand against you? For that is unavoidable if you lay to this course. But, say, to be sure, you can borrow that champion’s hand without harming them or aught others, what then? What would become of this city? Don’t you see? Thea told you how it worked, did she not? The people here depend upon the captain’s ward. What would you do about them? Or the thousand women of the crew? Think you they will find another shelter? Another provider? Alas! They would be in ruin, as soon conquered by a foreign power, even as us! Even so, no matter!” I waved my hand forcefully. “What you do, I but follow. I am bound to your pledge for the thoughtless promise I made, but know that I rue it! I rue the day you will bring doom to us all, to all my friends, to the only home I ever know, if one may call it that. So drop your pretension of friendship. And either lie or lie not, do not sway whichever way you like whenever. For I cannot and shall not tattle your plan to the officers. You know well I can’t. I am but an azure of no use, who must follow her better and her mark. And of such tools you must needs for your quest of insanity, I am the least and only. So that part, I play.”
I gasped for breath as last, and maintained an aching pace. I had said my piece. And tears of frustration welled. Not only because I was wroth with her. Nay, there was not it in me to be angered. An azure cannot be angry. I could not. And yet my chest boiled, tightened. At the heart of it, all of that wandering speech, I wanted but to tell her I would never care to betray her, to tattle her plot to the officers. I could not. An azure slave could not. She ought to trust in me for that. But of course she did not, she had nary a trust in me, and never would. I was to her a pledge-sister as Acis and Galanthus were her friends - a mere pretty word to dress her distaste and petty grudge for us all.
Healthy and greater in vigor, Litzia overtook me in no time, all the while avoiding my accusing gaze. She never broke the silence since, out of either anger or doubts, despite being much wrathful only moments before.
In such tension and awkwardness we rounded our way northwards, only pausing at times to ask for directions, not once spoken to each other. In time, I bent my will back to the matter of Acis' well-being.
It was still guessing work, however sure Litzia might be of her presentiment. And as we gained on the unpopulated part of the mountain, I became doubtful of this course. The path was harsh to traverse, and soon the laid roads gave way to nature, the only signs of civilization being the broken columns and half-buried masonry.
Near the mountain’s peak, just beneath a path leading to the Sanctuary was where the treeline began. Somewhere in the middle of this descent was an ancient and enormous cistern, said to have once supplied the community in this place with water. It had been untold years since, Aurora had blessed the mountain’s heart with an ever-flowing clear spring, rendering the cistern into disuse. Now the ancient system underground still worked, storing rainwater and feeding through cracks and fissures in the waterproof material by Aurora’s spring itself. Broken parts of the cistern discharged overflowed water, creating chance springs and streams and pools shaded under great boughs we now passed in person. All of this I had learned through Thea during that excursion with the gentile girl Mathilda. But in person it was less sorry ruins and more a pleasing reconquest of nature.
Under the hot weather of Tithonus, this here seemed a paradise. And there could be no doubt of these cool shades, these revitalizing streams being the hideout of choice for an adventurous kid. Yet Acis’s mother had spoken of the ruins of the cistern itself, and not its pretty surroundings.
And so we climbed, or mostly Litzia pulling and I struggling. I started to think it pointless, that no way Acis in no clear mind, for that was what I surmised from Litzia’s presentiment, would have been able to walk this far. Then again, if this was her place, and she was used to it, she might have not been met with so many difficulties as us, or had known a secret, easier path to the ruins.
At any rate. We emerged at last to a ground with surer footings. Gradually nature gave way, and we came to a raised cyclopean structure. And there were sounds faintly echoing behind broken walls. We followed it, rounded a crumbled wall, and clearer it came. The scratching of stone on stone. We saw Acis. But not all of her.
I remembered how it had been strange to see her without Galanthus. How they had always been one to my eyes, in appearance and in relation. But strange could not even begin to describe her now. There was a whiteness still, a demureness – a reminder of her pledge-sister in sight and manner. But also there were dark streaks in her hair, similar to her mother’s. And her face seemed differently shaped, her pallor tanned. And yet all this were but superficial changes. Most eerily, startlingly, bizarrely, was the fact that I could see somewhat through her person into the wall before her. As though she was made of sheer fabric, glass, or some sort of transparent material.
And yet if she seemed an apparition, or hallucination, her motions did not. With her back to us, Acis’ attention was trained on the wall. And she made sounds, those we had heard before beholding her. In her fragile, ephemeral hand was a small sharp rock. And she was scratching on the old wall with it.
The scratches, as we approached with caution, were unintelligible. No clear shapes, signs or runes could be found there, yet she seemed engrossed in the act, and dumb to all else in the world.
“I’ll stay here with her, you find Galanthus,” I said. Hortensia had warned us against trying to influence the alaris if we found her.
The wyverness regarded my wound with doubt, still she acceded. “Do not do anything unwise, for the good of you both.”
Even as she said, in the bright daylight, Acis’s silhouette flickered.
