Into the Avu

1010 A.D.
The Realm of Wyn Avuqua

Down into the center of Tiris Avu.

Somehow, Loche knows the way.

Down, into the earth. Down spiral staircases into a round room. Massive. An open crystal tomb in the center. Its lid is laid aside. Into a labyrinth of bookshelves. Warm light bathes the spines of leather tomes, scrolls and sculptures. Huddled over desks are scholars, and scribes and the occasional child, reading or writing. The vaulted ceiling is ribbed in gold. The floor tiles depict talons and hearts and wings.

When they arrive at what Vincale calls, The Avu, he lays a hand along the cheekbone of a sculptured sentinel. Loche watches him and knows that a hidden mechanism will clatter below. It does, and the hemispheric dome rolls gently, silently back. Beneath is a staircase into an amber light. The captain leads them down. They enter a wide chamber. Loche has seen this place in his mind’s eye. Troughs of fire line each wall. There is a beautiful bed with high carved posts, story-filled tapestries, finely made furniture, an oak desk with quill, ink, scrolls and what looks to be a globe of the earth—its formations are astonishingly accurate. The figure of a warrior looms in a corner of the room. A tall armature clad in the Queen’s armor stands like a solemn guardian.

Vincale asks them to sit. They obey. A moment later attendants enter with trays of breads, cheeses, fruits, and goblets filled with a drink named Anqua. William, Corey and Helen take the cups gladly, almost greedily. William drinks deeply. He notices the younger immortals, Julia and Leonaie watching him. “Oh my dears,” he says motioning for them to take a goblet for themselves. “The Wyn Avuquains call it Anqua: god water. But it will not have the name we know it by for some years. We time-hoppers call it Scotch. It will ease the Rathinalya my grandson has been cutting you with… drink and take comfort. Anqua is the best medicine when you’re in need of squelching the gods among us.” He taps his high boot, “That is why I brought my own bottle.” He laughs. The cork of The Macallan is visible in the cuff.

The eager hands of Julia and Leonaie almost collide as they reach to the tray. They tilt the cups into their mouths and drink.

Edwin notices an open trunk a few feet from his father’s chair and points. Lying in and around it are what looks to be a collection of a child’s toys. Small carved soldiers, a pair of wooden swords and a stuffed leather dragon. Loche nods and Edwin darts across the floor and sits. Lornensha rises from her chair and joins the boy. The two inspect the beautifully made figures. From the trunk she lifts out a leather pouch. Pulling apart the drawstring she produces four wooden horses, one green, one black, one grey and one blue. When William sees the horses, he coughs a mouthful of scotch back into his goblet. “Oh my sweet word,” he cries, and looks at Loche.

“What is it?” Loche asks.

William does not answer. Instead, with a bewildered grin he shakes his head and stares intently at Edwin. Edwin makes clip-clop, clip-clop sounds as he trots the blue horse along the floor. Lornensha studies the leather pouch.

“Circles,” William whispers.

Queen Yafarra enters the chamber holding the hand of a boy who looks of an age with Edwin. In their wake follow four women dressed in long light green gowns with dark purple mantles. Two of them light candles, the others set a small table with plates and fill two goblets with water.

Yafarra pauses just inside the entrance. She is clothed in a long coat of soft woven fabric of spring green. It hugs her shapely, long torso. She rests a long gaze upon each of her visitors in turn.

Vincale, William and Corey stand as she enters and they lower their eyes reverentially. The others rise and mirror the gesture.

The young boy lets go of Yafarra’s hand and walks over to Edwin and Lornensha. The two boys size each other up for a moment. Edwin raises the green horse and hands it to the boy. In return, the boy smiles.

“Welcome, Loche Newirth. Poet.” Yafarra says. “It has been foretold that you would come.” She looks at Edwin. “And you bring with you, your son. Your son, God. Thi.” Her head tilts at the sight of the boys. “Behold, Thi and my son now play with toys upon my bedchamber floor.” Wonder lights in her face.

“Welcome, William Greenhame of the Orathom Wis. Father of Thi’s Poet. Your courage to bring your family out of the grip of the Godrethion horde shall be sung for centuries to come.

“Welcome, Corey Thomas and Talan Adamsman. Welcome to our younger Itonalya sisters, Julia Iris and Leonaie Eschelle. May you find here at Wyn Avuqua the beauty and light that hides within the burden of life perpetual. May your time here bring wisdom.

“Welcome Helen Newirth.” A barely perceptible glint of light shimmers in Yafarra’s eyes. “Wife of the Poet. Mother of God. What trials you have borne, I do not know. What allegiance you hold, I do not know. No one in your company trusts you—save, of course, your son—our God. Therefore, let his trust be mine. If you betray me, you betray your son.”

“Lornensha,” the Queen smiles. “Welcome.”

“Your Majesty,” Lornensha replies. She is still kneeling upon the floor with the children.

Yafarra says to her visitors, “Lornensha I have known for many, many years. As you have already learned, she is a god among us. Her gentle spirit we have allowed to live upon Endale for she brings light and healing to humankind. She has taught us much about the cultivation of herbs and roots—of love and care —of gentleness.”

Yafarra moves to a chair. After she lowers herself onto the cushion, Loche and the others take their seats. “Edwin Newirth,” she says. Edwin does not hear her. He and the young boy continue to gallop horses through toy soldier troop formations. “Edwin?” she says again. Edwin turns to her. “May I see you?” The boy looks to his father, to Helen then back to the Queen. Yafarra holds a hand out, “Come, Edwin.” Her smile is motherly and warm. “And you, too, Iteav. Let me see you both.”

The boys rise, each still holding a wooden horse. They walk to the Queen. As they stand before her, she brushes the long hair away from young Iteav’s eyes. His hair is the color of rust and orange. She focuses on Edwin.

Loche cannot see his son’s face, but he can easily tell what appears there by Yafarra’s struggle for composure. The glittery swirl of blue in Edwin’s irises, descending into a pool of impossible black, unfathomable depth, the craze and fortitude of the godhead. Yafarra’s hands clamp upon her knees. Loche thinks of how George responded when he looked into his son’s eyes and saw the infinite power lurking there. George had groped for his dagger, the muscles along his jaw taut and bulging—but he then mastered the overwhelming Rathinalya. Yafarra does not reach for a weapon. But her gaping expression is strangely similar to George’s. Loche wonders what his own face must have looked like when he fell from the cliff into the Eye. Julia takes a long, shaky pull from her goblet. William and the other immortals follow suit. The sound of a wave curling high and towering roars in his ears. But before he takes a step to intervene, the Queen flinches, and pushes her eyes up and out of the void before her. She lays her hands along either side of Edwin’s face and kisses his forehead. Iteav watches his mother and Edwin with a face brimming with fear.

“I know now,” the Queen says finally. “You are the One. The All. It is true. You are the flood.”

She touches her son’s cheek, “Iteav, bring Edwin Newirth to see your other things.” She points to an adjacent room. Iteav takes hold of Edwin’s hand and pulls him along. The two boys exit the chamber and rush to another open trunk along a far, opposite wall.

Yafarra looks at her hands, folded in her lap. Her posture is straight and elegant.

“So Loche Newirth, Poet, you have brought your son and God into a city filled with godkillers—into the eye of a storm. As you have witnessed in the Great Hall, a pestilence has poisoned Wyn Avuqua—the rebellion against the Old Law and Thi has finally overwhelmed even the Templar. And outside there waits the Hand of Thi ready with His ten thousand spears to discipline his disloyal immortal flock by blood. There is little a Monarch may do when faced with such calamities. There is no sunlight in these dark days.

“I do not yet know your power, Poet. Nor do I understand fully the power of the Painter. It has been prophesied that with your coming, the Itonalya will finally be freed from our duty to Thi. Am I to believe the time has finally come?” She pauses. Her eyebrows angle inward as she says, “But my heart tells me that you have come on another errand.” Yafarra waits. Loche feels the urge to reply, but he refrains. He is certain Yafarra will ask for him to speak when she is ready.

“You and yours are not the only travelers from centuries afar to have visited my court. And I can see in you a desire to portend some news of great import. I have been alive and have served Thi for nearly two thousand years. And though I am trapped in a body of flesh and blood, my mind, like those of my kind, has achieved a kind of time-travel itself. I can in some capacity see eventualities ahead by looking back from whence I came. But so, too, I have learned that knowing what is to come is much like changing how I remember the past, neither will bring an unchallenged truth to the present.

“And so, now, Poet Loche Newirth, why are you here? What do you seek? I shall now listen to your full tale. But you must take care in what knowledge you share, for as the wise have whispered: When meddling in the affairs of time, the Fates always have their say in the end, even if stories have a way of writing themselves.”

Each face in Yafarra’s chamber turns to Loche. He feels compelled to stand. Into what might be a nightmare or a far off memory, Loche reaches for the right words to begin telling the story he is living—the story in which he has become a character. Through the far door he can see his son. As if in answer, the boy turns to him—but it is not Edwin. A widening pupil-black circle swallows the flickering firelight in the chamber around the boy…

“A man named Marcus Rearden murdered an innocent woman.” He stops. He breathes. “And to capture him, I have risked everything. Everything…and everyone.”