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When an earthly soul is lost all the Viadine weep at his sacrifice. But the Diadune have failed and order among our phratry will be restored. Dandrae’s sacrifice shall not be forgotten and his name shall go down as one of the shadows reborn through courage...
——Rahuael, First Chronicler, Viadine Secretorum
* * *
THEY TOLD CARNE THEIR names when they came for him—names not of earthly origin. Cashi, Elia, Galen, Kedrik, Malachi. Five who attended Carne, escorting him to the baths, a special room in the gold tower. It reminded Carne of Roman baths of old. It was the gios who prepared Carne for the rite of transference.
“How many are you?” Carne asked as they removed his black leather shoes, his fine suit, his short clothes. And then finally they lifted the nightingale medallion necklace from around his neck. Galen set it carefully to the side.
“He will be the fourteenth of our brotherhood,” Cashi said.
They bathed Carne in a soothing milk bath. They depilated every speck of hair from his body. They shaved his head.
“It will grow back,” Kedrik assured him. “After you are refashioned and reborn.”
They handled him carefully. Hands stroked over him in an almost worshipful manner, other hands toweled him dry. In that moment he felt like a babe about to enter the world for the first time. Clean and with a sense of lightness he’d never experienced before.
Someone handed him a cup. He hesitated before drinking the contents.
He looked into the pale, porcelain face of the man who handed him the etched crystal goblet. There seemed to be some eerie golden light shining from within the glass. The castrato placed Carne’s hands around the globe and he felt the warmth emanating from the liquid.
“To soothe your soul,” the man said softly in a musical, mesmerizing tone. “To help ease the exchange. Drink all of it. It will bring you closer to those who call upon you to make this sacrifice.”
Carne lifted the glass to his lips and drank deeply. Silky and smoothly sweet like honey it slid down his throat. It didn’t taste like anything he’d ever imbibed before. It was almost an orgasmic experience as he finished the contents of the glass and he felt the man take it from his grasp. Carne’s whole body pulsed, his eyes rolled back, and he felt strong hands catch him as he fell backward, boneless, as euphoria overtook him. The spasms of pleasure shattered him and he could actually feel his soul beginning to separate from its shell.
“Not yet,” he heard one of them say.
Carne’s soul hovered. His breathing slowed, he was semi-conscious at best. His soul floated free inside his own body. “I’m ready,” he whispered. “Yes, yes. Fabienne.”
They brought him upright, supporting him as he stood. He gained equilibrium. Then they oiled his flesh with sacred oils of myrrh and almond, orange, and valerian. He floated in a void of absolute calm and peacefulness, with the odd tremor of pleasure shuddering within his body.
They led him from the room. He entered the chapel and had a sense of being surrounded by violet light—blinding and brilliant. He smiled because at its core stood Annatoly, dressed in a gold robe, waiting for him. The sense of a presence—no, more than one—circling the altar. He had no awareness of their gender, only their comforting presence. Annatoly motioned for Carne to join him at the center of the circle.
There seemed to be utter and complete silence, so still, even the candlelight didn’t flicker. Annatoly turned Carne to face him. Everything was blotted out but the man before him.
“Do you willingly offer yourself as host redeemer to the Gios of the Nightingale?” he asked in a supernaturally resonating intonation reaching to every corner of the chapel.
“I do,” Carne said, in a voice that almost wouldn’t work. He was far too relaxed. Almost a sense of being outside of himself and barely connected.
“You understand the commitment that will be required and are willing to accept the ties that will bind you to the brotherhood?”
“I do.” Although he wasn’t certain exactly what that would mean, it didn’t matter. If this is what Fabienne needed, then this is what he would do.
Annatoly carefully lifted one of the masks from its stand. It was a white mask trimmed in black swirling design along the outer rim, similar to the one that Annatoly had worn the night of the masquerade in Paris, except for the intricately patterned symbols gracing the perimeter. Slender strands of silver chain draped down. Links that would secure the mask in place. Tiny holes were drilled along the edges of the fine porcelain. The inside of the mask was painted crimson, odd symbols etched in crimson covered the inside. As the mask was brought closer to his face, he realized it wasn’t red paint. It was blood. And something told him it was the blood of his ancestors. He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry, when the mask was affixed to his head, and he tried to tamp down the rising terror. Feeling a burning sensation against his skin, instinct making him want to rip the mask from his face. He curled his fingers into tightly clenched fists, then inhaled deeply from his diaphragm and released the breath slowly. Breathing exercises for relaxation he’d learned from his music masters, now held him in good stead to endure this ceremony. The sense of calm reasserted itself even as the last chain hooked through the mask and it felt as though the mask fused with his skin.
Annatoly led him to stand between a set of candelabrum mounted on silver stands, facing those who would witness the transfer. He tried not to think about what was going to happen; tried not to consider how his life was going to be changed forever.
And then he saw Fabienne walk down the aisle toward him. And suddenly everything fell into place.
Fabienne was shaved and naked, the same as Carne. His body gleamed in the candlelight. Two blank canvasses. Annatoly repeated the ceremonial words to Fabienne. Then he lifted the second mask from its case. A golden mask intricately scrolled in dark blue around the edges.
As Annatoly was about to affix the mask, Fabienne reached up and stopped him. He looked at Carne. One last chance, the look seemed to say. I’ll stop this now if you but ask it.
That sense of rightness settled over Carne. He nodded. His fingers unfurled. Fabienne released Annatoly and the mask was affixed to his face. Two identical, and yet different in so many ways, about to merge and transmigrate.
The singing was low at first as Fabienne was escorted to his place on the other side of the alter. And slowly the voices began to crescendo. There was a basin at the center of the room, bearing a fire. Annatoly recited words in another language that Carne didn’t recognize, even as he tossed something into the flames. The singing grew louder and louder, blotting everything else out.
All Carne was aware of was the music, he saw nothing but violet light that grew even more intense. And then he felt it, the breaking away as his soul separated from his body. He experienced a moment of fear, but there was no turning back. Rising away, an incorporeal light, he saw his body below, a moment of regret and yet, he turned away from that body. The music, my God, the music was so beautiful. Like nothing he’d ever heard before.
And then he saw another light moving toward him, wavering like a disembodied flame in front of him. And a moment, one moment when they merged as one, a stunning moment of infinite rapture and warmth. A lingering, fusing them together, and then separating, moving on. He watched as the light entered the body—his body—below. The chest heaved. Carne turned away and entered the other body—Fabienne’s body, and there was a moment when everything went black. Desperate for air, he inhaled deeply, his eyelids fluttered up, and he saw—everything with new eyes. A body that didn’t quite fit right—a shell that now belonged to him. He lifted hands to his face. The mask had somehow disappeared. And then he looked across and he saw not himself, but something—someone very different than he expected. And he knew they had both been changed and reshaped by this transformation. He felt a new power enter him, he felt the connection with Fabienne drawn from that moment when they were one. And he knew he would never be separated from him again. Host redeemer. Tied to his destiny for eternity.
* * *
FABIENNE AWOKE WITH a new sense of being. Displaced perhaps, but with an energy of renewal he had long awaited. A wholeness he had long been missing.
Annatoly picked up a goblet from the altar. He stepped to Zabrael. Zabrael waved a hand over the glass, golden light encompassed the vessel. Annatoly then stepped to Fabienne. He handed him the goblet containing the mixture. The blood of Carne’s ancestors, one drop of blood from each of the gios. What else Zabrael contributed to the mixture Fabienne didn’t know.
“Drink and be reborn.” Fabienne accepted the goblet and emptied it. A warmth starting at his belly and fanned out. He felt the body shifting and reshaping, the diaphragm expanded, his chest restructured, bones altering throughout his body. The testicles that hung with an unfamiliar weight, slowly began to be absorbed into his body. Annatoly drove his palm against Fabienne’s breastbone and it was like an arrow had been shot through his chest. An explosion erupted inside him, and he almost crumpled to the ground, but then just as quickly righted himself.
“Thus you are made, thus you shall soar,” Annatoly said. Fabienne glanced down and noticed the large emblem of the nightingale now emblazoned upon this new unmarred chest. “In mortal life known as Fabienne Brunnetto, now fourteenth in the choir of nightingales. Henceforth, thee shall be called Natanael.”
Fabienne heard an echoing of the name from those who bore witness. Sound erupted from Fabienne’s throat, a tone he’d not known in centuries burst forth clear and loud. Intact vocal chords and unmarred larynx. He broke into song, at first solo, in a voice that was neither Fabienne’s nor Carne’s, but something stronger, richer. Celestial.
Annatoly picked up the ceremonial athame from the altar and set the tip against Fabienne’s forearm. Quickly he drew the blade across his flesh. He caught the droplets of blood into a goblet. Zabrael sealed the wound. Annatoly mixed the blood with another carafe of liquid. Again, Zabrael passed his hand over it. This time a bright flame of orange erupted around the chalice. Annatoly stepped to Carne.
“Drink and be reborn.” Blood for blood. Redemption. Purification. Rebirth. Fabienne watched as Carne emptied the goblet. An aura of light surrounded him, quickly dissipating. There was no obvious transformation as there had been with Fabienne. The potion not of the same properties as the transfigurative processes contained in the wine that Fabienne had drunk. A small nightingale tattoo materialized on Carne’s right hip, marking him protected by the brotherhood. “Hence thee shall be known as Goel.”
Music once more soared, but it was different—Carne’s composition, Fabienne’s libretto, melded and enveloped the chapel. Someone helped Fabienne into a silk robe of shimmering celestial blue. And as song erupted from his unmarred throat, he moved toward the choir. His voice risen in perfect alignment with the others. Malachi stepped aside to make room for him. As he sang, tears spilled down his face. He sang with fervor and joy and thankfulness. As he took his place next to Malachi, the full choir erupted into perfect, orderly harmony. His heart expanded with unadulterated joy.
Fabienne looked across the chamber and met Carne’s eyes. Carne was crying as well. Fabienne voice soared, peaking him at an unbelievably brilliant high octave. He held his hand out to Carne. Carne nodded and smiled.
Fabienne saw the scars, his memory would never let him forget how they came to be his. Carne, his host redeemer, his lover, the descendent of the man who had ruined him. Cleansed and purified. Made whole and immortal, a love that would endure, a man who had sacrificed everything for Fabienne.
He sang for the Viadine, he sang for Carne, he sang for Annatoly. He sang for the fated Dandrae. Fabienne was gone and in his place was a different man. A celestial nightingale who would be known as Natanael. The fourteenth voice of the nightingale.
He saw them arrive one after the other. Spectral and unearthly. Fallen to earth millennia ago. He now served a far greater power than himself. Greater even than the music he’d sacrificed his manhood for two centuries ago. They were still glorious beings, wings now lost, forever earthbound. Their only joy left, their only peace, came from the song of the nightingale. Voices raised at the hour of each dawn breaking, heralding in the beauty and promise of a new day. Forever guardians of the light, protectors of hope.
As the refrain of the last song died away, Natanael searched for Annatoly. He stood near the entrance. He smiled and turned away, heading out the door. Fabienne’s friend, his teacher, his savior at the hour of his greatest need. He would never forget him. Annatoly had given him everything and more. Carne was gone as well. Natanael spent the next hours with his brethren, securing his place amongst them. Finally, in the place where he truly belonged.
