Solitudes and Silence
***
Waimbrill spent his time corralling and controlling the emotions that pounded through him. Every once in awhile, shame and regret would deluge his mind, caused by somebody learning that a loved one he had cleaved had passed on. Those days were the most upsetting, when he both cleaved someone anew and dealt with waves of woe from an old soul.
Meditating, trying to turn the icy chill in his veins into the warm, calm pounding of well controlled blood, Waimbrill saw Terredor’s gentle face, upturned and wide-eyed, fearful and tender, as though waiting for Waimbrill to either begin beating him or giving him gifts. But Terredor was never disobedient; Waimbrill thought that he couldn’t have hit the lad even if it were necessary, and didn’t know what sort of gift to get him, except, perhaps, a new father.
Petromyza returned every few months, and each time a messenger came running. Terredor tagged along silently while Waimbrill went to whatever corner of Crikland the monster had attacked and soulcleaved anyone he could, accepting even a tiny scrap of brain tissue. But there were few corpses left.
Inevitably, a crowd would follow Waimbrill as he surveyed the damage, waiting for him to do something. Soulclaine were supposed to secure bodies, protect the souls of the deceased, counsel the living and, in general, understand death. But there was nothing to do here: no bodies to cleave, no relief for the living, and no rest for the dead.
He prayed to Modroben, but his lord did not often intervene in the affairs of men, especially in such rural backwaters as Crikland. Messages sent to the church garnered only instructions to counsel survivors the best he could and promises to send a champion as soon as one became available.
One grisly day in early winter, the sun shone bright, and brighter still as it reflected off the thick layer of snow deposited the night before. The light did not come with much in the way of heat, however, and Waimbrill shivered, breathing blissfully warm air into his cupped hands. The snow piled on branches and glistened like delicate frosting of spun sugar. He felt peace spilling forth from the stillness and serenity of the forest beyond his cottage. The ambient heat that emanated from his stove kept him content and contemplative. He found the wintry weather a welcome distraction from the dizzying emotions that consumed much of his time these days.
Waimbrill hoped to relax in front of the stove all day, perhaps digging into the strawberry and rhubarb jam he had received from a woman after the soulcleaving of her youngest granddaughter. It was ironic how those who live the least cause the most grief upon their passing, Waimbrill thought. This poor girl had taken only a few breaths before she died, and he spent a day and a half sitting in a dark corner, rocking and taking occasional sips of broth that Terredor forced upon him. It was the Paradigm of the girl’s mother, Waimbrill decided, that made his homespun cottage take on the air of loneliness and arbitrary, capricious cruelty. The worn black stove was ominous, its heat stultifying; distances seemed greater; his very limbs were so heavy he could barely lift them. Terredor’s presence on that day was comforting, reminding Waimbrill that he was not alone.
The beliefs that constitute a Paradigm, whether thine own or not, create thoughts in thy mind. Thou wilt apply those beliefs to everything around thee: if thou look at a teapot, thou shalt look at it through the prism of thy Paradigm; if thou stab a rival, or kiss a lover, thou shalt understand and interpret reality using the beliefs that constitute thy Paradigm. Thou mayest possess a belief that thee be worth more than anyone or anything, and thou wilt look at that teapot as something that should be thine to do with as thou please; thou wilt think nothing of stabbing a man worth so much less than thee as to become thine enemy, and thou wilt demand thy lover sing the praises of thy kisses. If thy Paradigm include the belief that thee be worthless, thou may look at that teapot and bemoan that thee should never be so valuable as to own one like that, conclude that stabbing a man only confirms thy lack of worth and kiss trembling with fear thy lover will discover thy faults and leave.
Thinking now of that overwhelming sadness, Waimbrill lost his appetite for jam. The remains of his good day were soon shattered by a contingent of boisterous Delvers, who came to say, in typically overwrought fashion, that a pair of young men had stabbed each other the night before. Their friends acted out the double murder for his benefit, but Waimbrill only scowled and walked towards Delverton. When he sensed their sudden awkwardness, he was upset with himself, for that was the very sort of detachment and alienation that made so many people frightened of Soulclaine. He knew that the young men were celebrating the life of their friends, as was their custom. But his mood was what it was, the grieving mother’s pain welled from within his spleen, and Waimbrill couldn’t think of any way to reestablish rapport. So they simply walked in silence, Terredor tagging along and ignoring the hostile stares from the other Delvers. Going to live with a Modrobenian was probably the only way to leave the Delvers alive, Waimbrill thought, but Terredor was oblivious to their blatant derision, or at least pretended to be.
Even in thy hours of deepest gloom, remember thy Paradigm awaits thy return. It layeth among the cobwebby recesses of thy cleaved, dormant and paused, but ever-present. To activate it, force thoughts upon thyself, thoughts that are of thy Paradigm. If thou look upon that teapot, look upon it as thou wilt, and stand as thou wilt, breathe and listen and tap thy toes as thou wilt. Think as the Paradigm thou wishest to inhabit, for that is the surest way to make it so.
Their mothers wailed. Their stone-faced fathers watched. Neighbors laughed and cheered as witnesses reenacted the fatal fight. Waimbrill departed unobtrusively after refusing a salted turtle leg from Helga, who had attended the cleaving, chewing on her own iggther all the while. He thought perhaps the mantras he had been using all day were working, for his feeling of deep barren doom dwindled to a dull ache. But still his mood was poor, and the Delvers who both mourned and celebrated did nothing to ease his pain.
As frost doth overrun summer’s warmth, so shalt thy cleaved invade thine own Paradigm, and thou wilt wonder what is thine and what is theirs, and it is then that it is most vital thou lookest upon that teapot as only thou wouldst, to strike a blow for thy true nature, which shineth like raw brilliance itself in the world of dim and gray through which we, withered be, do wander.
A few knights were waiting for him when he returned to his cottage. With the usual warnings to Terredor about stealing, they gave the pair a horse to ride to their lord’s manor. A servant had died, but more importantly for the knights, so had their lord’s mother-in-law, visiting from a distant land. The servant had waited in the root cellar for a convenient time for Waimbrill to be fetched, a delay that bristled Waimbrill’s morals. He resolved to insist on cleaving the servant first, regardless of social class. The longer a person layeth in wait of cleaving, the higher the likelihood of undeath occurring, so, all other factors being equal, he who hath been dead the longest must be cleaved first.
Waimbrill felt he had little choice in confronting the knights. He wavered and considered taking the coward’s way out. After all, the chances of the servant being raised by some nefarious necromancer or through random luck were minuscule in the time it would take him to cleave the noblewoman and make his way to the root cellar. But he thought of how guilty he would feel if it happened. He realized later that he would feel the same guilt if the noblewoman suffered the same fate in the time it took him to cleave the servant and travel to her resting spot.
“But Mortiss Waimbrill, the good Lady Tanagra requireth your ministrations. She is the matriarch of her clan,” protested one of the knights, “She is of noble breeding.”
“Perhaps her nobility will stave off undeath,” Waimbrill said, “But a root cellar surely shall not. The sooner you bring me to your manservant, the sooner I can see to Lady Tanagra.”
The knights grumbled, but took Waimbrill to the root cellar, where he quickly cleaved the man with tired wrinkles who laid cold against the ground.
Three soulcleavings in one day left Waimbrill exhausted, far too drained
to care about the visiting family’s complaints. Through an interpreter, they complained about the delay, and then complained further that using a vulture beak to “destroy” the Lady Tanagra’s face was barbaric. In their culture, soulcleaving was done via sprouting mushrooms, a fact that Waimbrill found interesting. He had learned about many alternative methods of cleaving, though his own technique, Velteris, the vulture, was the most common. He knew that crabs, maggots and other creatures formed the basis for the Church of Modroben in different parts of the world, but he had never heard of a fungus before.
He was unable to ask for any details, however, before being hustled away by another contingent of knights from the same manor. One of their own had been mauled and killed by a bear. Now on his fifth cleaving of the day, Waimbrill was feeling numb. A flurry of feelings filled his mind as he finished with the knight, and walked in a daze back to his cottage, Terredor still following close behind, his presence reassuring.
They walked wordlessly through the woods, Waimbrill wondering whether he would ever rest his weary, weighted bones, or if, perhaps, they would disintegrate into powder as his flapping mouth faithfully chanted the High Prayer. He wondered if this day was being sent to test him, to see if his spirit lived up to his lord’s expectations. The thought filled him with bitterness until he recalled the words of a monk: Death doth come in fits and spurts, and at times opportune and disastrous. Sometimes thou shalt be called upon to persevere against hardship more frequently than thou supposest thou can handle. Those days that are hardest may seem daunting and cruel, but never forget that death doth not occur to spite thee.
The sun was setting, its rays dwindling and twinkling, drifting through the dense woods of leafless trees. The snow turned to sleet so cold it stabbed the lungs with each breath. The wet and the biting wind settled into his veins as Waimbrill trudged along, his boots caked with mud.
So intent was he on his own misery, Waimbrill didn’t notice Terredor stop walking until the young man whistled for his attention. Terredor stood to the side of the path, watching a group of riders come closer.
Waimbrill heard a booming voice, “Stand aside, commoners! Stand aside!”
The riders guarded a carriage whose whiteness remained somehow immaculate even with the sleet and the mud. Lacy sheets and blankets decorated the walls with lavender lilacs and pristine lilies hand-stitched in complex geometric patterns and fringed with gold lace.
“Mortiss, I apologize,” called the head rider after he saw the black robes and pendant dangling from Waimbrill’s neck. The leader slowed to a halt, and Waimbrill saw the decorated uniform of a private officer. He doffed his cap but didn’t acknowledge Terredor, who stood a few feet further from the road, hands thrust firmly at his side.
There was a rustle at the carriage, and the white sheets parted. A woman stepped out. She had delicate features on an oval face, with hair of white tinged with a faint cast of gold, and a wide smile framing straight teeth. She stood, in a diaphanous cotton dress wrapped loosely around her waist, revealing petite pale shoulders that gleamed in the last vestiges of the daytime sun. She didn’t shiver, despite wearing only the revealing dress, so Waimbrill deduced that either she or the carriage, or both, were magical.
“Greetings, Mortiss,” she said, “My name is Lady Sendralya. May we escort you and your companion to your destination?”
Waimbrill almost refused, worried that he and Terredor would embarrass themselves before a lady of such class and grace. He envisioned them tracking mud over those pure white sheets and the kind lady’s smile screwing into a hateful sneer as she demanded payment for their ruination.
But he was tired and cold. He agreed, and two of the guards helped them into the heated carriage. Waimbrill sat on a pile of pillows, and saw that the carriage inside was much larger than it appeared from the outside, and was divided into two luxuriously appointed rooms. Lady Sendralya stretched out on a sofa of soft crushed purple velvet. Waimbrill sat in an overstuffed chair built into the wall, and found it so comfortable he instantly became sleepy. The mud from his boots fell in chunks but vanished when it touched the carriage floor.
Lady Sendralya’s chin quivered and she smiled. “Are the people of this country as charming as its woods are vibrant?”
Waimbrill, not sure how to respond, only nodded, and she chuckled softly.
He managed to croak out a question, feeling like a frog that found itself at the head of a royal table. “What brings you to Crikland?”
She smiled. “I am a Lyrimilian, a singer of some note. I have an engagement at the resort of Bryndoth to the south of here. I would so love to see ye attend. My men allow soulcleavers in without charge. There are those who sayeth that my song can cleanse a troubled mind and calm a tortured soul.”
“I should enjoy that very much, Lady Sendralya,” Waimbrill said.
She turned to Terredor and whispered. “If silence be the wise man’s chatter, young man, thou must possess the greatest of lore.”
Terredor opened his mouth, but only stammered. She cocked her head to the side as he spat out a few syllables and then blushed, his eyes downcast.
Waimbrill broke the awkward silence by asking, “You came through the mountains, did you not, Lady Sendralya?”
She nodded, “It was a long and arduous journey. I am glad to be nearing our destination.”
“The mountains are very dangerous,” Waimbrill said, “I have only traveled them with a caravan of my church, and we remained naturally unmolested. Your guards must be very brave and strong in battle.”
“Oh, they are,” she said, and smiled, “But I have little need of guarding from ordinary bandits. I am a Lyrimilian. A song dragon.”
Waimbrill and Terredor stared at her blankly.
“Yes, we are rare indeed, and we spend so much of our time in human form we sometimes forget we are truly draconic. Rather than breathe flame or ice, I sing, and my song can soothe hearts or shatter them. But do not worry, good Mortiss Waimbrill, for my people are great lovers of humanity; I would never create undue labor for you. We are outcasts from dragonkind because of our loyalty to humans.”
Terredor stared at her, still blushing, his mouth agape, eyes flush with passion, flitting downward in an occasional glance at her cleavage.“I believe we are nearing thy destination, Terredor,” she said, “I do hope to see thee again. I pray my nature does not turn thee from me. Thou hast the most darling human eyes. Please come visit, and see me perform, gentle Terredor.”
The carriage slowed to a stop in front of Waimbrill’s cottage. “Good Mortiss Waimbrill, may our paths not cross for many years,” she said, bowing her head, “But do come to see my show as well.”