Meditation Chambers
Gods’ Seat
From the corner of her eye Ad-Shi saw a lizard baking on a rock, storing its energy before the sun hid itself behind the storm bank. A speck in the shadow of her falcon eyes, but she knew it was there; every sense at her disposal screamed it to her. Tucking talons back against her compact body, she dove. This was nature, the power of tooth and claw and wing. She quivered, anticipating the feel of her beak slicing into its scaly flesh.
Paendurion had his war games. Axerian read his books and contemplated whatever riddles the mortals had produced in the time between their awakenings. Ad-Shi had the hunt.
She needed it. She needed a kill. Just as often, she chose to wear the skin of the lizard, or the elk. The wild surge of fear at being hunted could be a potent reminder of what it was to be alive. Today she needed to feel violence, the purity of murder without morality. There was no judgment in what the falcon did to its prey, any more than there could be judgment from mortals for the actions of one such as Ad-Shi. They did not understand. They could not understand.
This was the way. The Three bided their time, waiting for the anointed moment. Each cycle they awakened to find the world changed, but also unchanging. Always there were the lines of power: Order, tied to the leylines; Balance, tied to the serpents; and her magic, the Wild, derived from the spirits of land and beasts and things-to-come, separate but united in her grasp. Three lines, demanding three champions to face the ancient enemy. Three ascendants of every age, who left unchecked would rise to damn the world with their ignorance, if she and her fellows failed to stop them.
In a rush of wind and feathers she closed her talons around the fragile body of her prey. A moment ago the lizard had thought only of its next meal. Now it dangled helplessly as she rushed higher and higher into the sky. An electric shudder crackled up and down her spine as she opened her beak, announcing to the teeming mass of creatures below that a falcon hunted here, had made its kill.
DOES HE PLEASE YOU, SISTER?
He does, brother. I thank you for the allowance of his form.
HE IS A MIGHTY FALCON.
He is. He does you much honor. May I have him again, one day?
A brief pause. The spirits always took their time when asked for favors, no matter how slight.
YOU MAY.
Blessings, brother.
The voice faded as her reverie cleared. Ad-Shi sighed, her vision returning to the present.
“A good one today, hm?” Axerian looked up from his latest volume with his usual half smile.
She said nothing, only bowed her head, nodding once. When it was clear she would venture no further response, he laughed to himself and went back to his book.
The two of them sat on smooth stone benches opposite one another in the center of the cavernous chamber. She had long since grown accustomed to the feeling of this place that men had called the Gods’ Seat in the tongue of the Amaros. Her people, the Vordu, had named it Ujuru’i’alura, which translated to much the same thing: “the place where Gods sleep.” A more fitting description than her people could have imagined.
It was a place of stone, everywhere smooth stone as if carved by countless centuries of water through the bed of a river. Paendurion and Axerian felt at home here. To her, more and more often it felt like a cage. Without the escape of her connections to the spirits she might have tasted madness long since. She calmed herself with a few deep breaths. Soon. The time was coming. She would do what she must, to prepare.
No sense delaying. With trained response cultivated by countless thousands of such exertions, she opened her mind into the realm of the spirits.
Spirit of things-to-come, hear my call.
The moments stretched on as her vision blurred once again. Stone gave way to emptiness, an overpowering sensation of void that had emptied her stomach when she learned this as an acolyte all those lifetimes ago. Nothingness. And then something.
CHILD. YOU SEEK ME. WHY?
I am no child, vision-spirit. I wield the gift of the Goddess of Life, and you will recognize the right of that power.
Energy surged within her, raw and untamed. A roiling blue mass that threatened to slither out of her grasp whenever she touched it, drew upon it, as she did now.
Long moments passed while she struggled to hold on. The silence broke in a wave of release.
VERY WELL. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE OF ME?
To whom are you bound, vision-spirit?
More silence. The spirits of the beasts and of the land could be pliable, amicable even. Dealing with Vulture or Oak left her feeling refreshed and invigorated. The spirits of the great beasts and the sacred places were less giving, but in the end they knew their place, or she found it for them. Not so with the vision-spirits, accustomed as they were to less than equal relationships with those who sought them out.
Answer me. Now.
Another moment passed before its defiance broke.
I AM BOUND TO ONE CALLED ILEK’RAHS, OF THE OLESSI TRIBE.
Show me what you have revealed to him.
No words came, only a flood of images. Births. Beasts. An anahret drawing close to Olessi lands. Trade. Woodcarving. Successful hunts. Young men coming of age. A bonecarver. Paints. Dances. Great fires raging through the forests to the north. The sun shining. Stories. Pain. Food. Marriages and sickness. Remembrance ceremonies. Love.
When the spirit finished, she reached deep inside herself for the surging torrent of energy at her command. It kicked and twisted inside her, struggling to evade her grasp. She forced it, willed it into the vision-spirit as she thought to it once more.
You will add to what you have shown.
Another stream of images flowed, this time from her into the spirit. Death. War. Deception. Betrayal. Men girding themselves for war. Battles. Conflict. Expanding borders. Glory. A tribal leader setting aside the marks of a hunter for the mantle of a warleader. Guns and powder. Clouds of uncertainty around the tribal lands. Wounds. Cries of pain. Loss. Weeping mothers, broken husbands. Fire. Ruin.
Gasping, she released the vision and the power and collapsed to the ground, falling from the stone bench in a rush.
Axerian had already moved, lightning-quick, catching her before she landed.
He smoothed her hair back from her face, wiping away the tears that streaked her cheeks. She sobbed into his arms as he held her in a tight embrace.
“Shh,” he whispered to her, a soothing sound. “We do only what we must.”
She nodded, knowing it for truth. And deep within, a small part of her soul tore away.
She mourned its passing.