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edenfalling---------------------------------------------
Ashes, part 1
---------------------------------------------
The magician felt like a live coal in Riam's hands, burning through the wafer-thin veil of his binding.
Riam dropped his staff and blew on his fingers before his reason caught up to his reflexes and pointed out that he had no physical injury. He lowered his hands, and blinked at the sword held a hairsbreadth from his neck.
"Splinter?" Zalir asked, sweeping her blade aside and down with a hint of humor lurking behind her professional disapproval. "Not everyone can pull a strike as fast as I can. You have to block and call time before you play wounded puppy."
Riam held his empty hands up and tipped his head, granting the point. "I know, sorry. But it wasn't a splinter. There's a magician at the border, bound to fire. I thought my fingers were burning."
Zalir sheathed her sword, all humor snuffed. "Which watch-house is nearest the breach? Or did he come through a gatepost like a sane person?"
Riam closed his eyes, tracing along the edge of Zerlon with mental fingers, probing for that blazing twist in the fabric of the world. Inside his ward there was nothing but morning sun and the slow breath of a late summer breeze, ruffling the fields and the frothy surface of the river. Outside, miasma-tainted air pressed heavy and still against the border, too thick and humid for the breeze to move. The line between was cool and strong in his mind, an accustomed weight easily shunted aside and forgotten unless he paid active attention, like now.
He traced further, into the rocky land near the northwest, and his mind snagged in a minor tear, still smoldering, with the sickly taint of miasma seeping through.
Riam slapped a patch on the binding and opened his eyes. "North-northwest, just over the hill from the owl tower," he told Zalir. "He tore the binding -- he was drawing power when he crossed, and that means something was chasing him--"
"--right into Zerlon," Zalir said. "Shadow choke them both."
"Zalir."
Zalir waved her hand and strode toward the door of the practice room. "Right, right, it could happen to anyone, but what kind of idiot rides the tainted lands alone? We don't have time for this. Go heliograph the owl tower and send them after your magician and his pursuit. I'll gather a fist and ride out to meet them. We should be back in time for a late supper, barring complications." She paused in the doorway. "Tir needs to know."
"Don't waste time finding her. I'll pass the news," Riam said, and closed the door behind them.
He jogged through the stone-and-plaster corridors to the heliograph tower perched in the central courtyard like an overgrown daddy-longlegs, the thick timber lattice holding the tiny signal box steady against the chance of storms. Riam hauled himself up the narrow ladder between tower markers, remembering at the last second to duck his head under the lintel as he swung into the little open-air box that held the lamp and mirrors, and the colored flags for cloudy days. The guard on duty -- Nabim, an older man sidelined from patrols and hunts by a wrenched knee -- grunted an absent hello and asked, "Trouble? Or just hiding from Zalir?"
"There's no point hiding from Zalir," Riam said. "Message for the owl tower: a magician crossed the border beyond the east hill about ten minutes ago. He's bound to fire, and something was chasing him."
Nabim jerked upright from his slouch and cranked the signal mirror around until it faced the marker for the owl tower. Then he opened the draw on the oil reservoir and let the lamp flame shoot upward, magnified by its lattice of glass and mirrors to nearly unbearable brightness. He uncovered the signal mirror and began flicking it back and forth -- sending the alert, pausing, and sending again. He tried four times before an answering flash of light came from the northwest.
"Fire magician crossed the boundary fifteen minutes past, beyond the east hill, pursued by something," Nabim muttered as he sent the message. "Acknowledge."
A pause, and then a brief pattern of six flashes.
"They're on it," Nabim told Riam. "Anything else I can do?"
"Wait for the report," Riam said. "I have to go tell Tir."
"Better you than me," Nabim said with a wicked grin. "You're family; she can't kill the messenger. Me, though?" He laughed.
"Her temper isn't that bad," Riam said, but he didn't try very hard to hide his own smile. "Zalir said she'd try to bring the magician back for a late supper, so I'm going to tell the kitchens to plan for guests. Make sure to tell Purrar if that changes."
"Will do," Nabim said, and dragged his chair over to face the owl tower, waiting for news from the border.
Riam slid down the ladder, hands slipping smooth over wood polished by years upon years of hands, and went to find his sister.
---------------
Tir wasn't in the kitchens, or the practice rooms, or the guard barracks, or her own suite, or her office, or the herb gardens. Nobody had seen her, either -- her husband and Riam's nephews were on the south side of the valley, working in the fields for the summer, which meant Tir could and did rise early and steal a few hours of privacy now and then. Just bad luck she'd picked today to vanish.
Grumbling, Riam left the herb garden and cut back through the kitchens, wondering whether to try to stables or the altar next. The stables were a better bet, but if Tir had slept badly, she sometimes liked to light an offering lamp for the Mother and offer a few drops of blood to the earth, renewing her connection to the land she guarded.
Riam passed the great hall, which was cleared from breakfast and halfway set for lunch, and pulled aside the beaded curtain of the altar room. The sunburst window let shards of colored light in from the north, melding with the fading green glow of the earth window, but no flames danced in the three little palm-shaped lamps along the bare stone walls; even the dawn offering had burnt out by now. Tir hadn't come this way lately, then.
Which left the stables.
If Tir had been in either of the stables behind the guards' barracks, she would have noticed the commotion as Zalir gathered a fist and rode out to the owl tower, and would have come into the compound to give further orders and calm the jagged thrill spreading from person to person at the idea of a magician and a breached border. Therefore, Riam spun on his heel and walked back to the private suites, through the flower garden, and into the small auxiliary stable that held older horses, ones that had survived years of hunts and patrols and been retired save for training children in the basics of riding and care.
Most of the horses were out to pasture for the day, but a few were confined to the stable for one reason or another, and they whickered and stuck their noses over the gates of their stalls as Riam walked past. He patted them absently, murmuring apologies for his lack of proper attention.
Tir sat on a stool at the far end of the stable, grooming the elderly gray mare that their uncle had ridden until his death four years ago. Her wildly curling hair was unbound and she wore neither leather armor nor her chain of office, though her sword was, as always, belted to her waist. She crooned under her breath, her hands moving steady and slow, calm in a way she rarely had the time or space to be. Riam hated to disturb her.
But she was the holder of Zerlon, as he was the binder, and the broken world gave no respite to anyone.
"A magician bound to fire crossed the boundaries an hour or so past, near the owl tower," Riam said, leaning against the corner of the last stall. "He was drawing power as he crossed, but I have the binding patched until I can ride out and reweave it properly. He was also being chased. Zalir and I sent word to the owl tower, and she's riding out with a fist in case of trouble. If all goes well, she expects to be home for a late supper."
Tir leaned her head against the mare's flank and sighed. "And I was having such a lovely morning."
"Sorry," Riam said.
Tir waved her currycomb in Riam's general direction. "Oh, don't act like I'll eat you alive. You know better." She lifted her head and turned to meet her brother's eyes. "Did you tell Purrar about the late supper and Zalir's guest?"
Riam nodded.
"Good." Tir patted the mare's neck and rose from her stool, her knees cracking as they straightened. "Rain tonight," she said.
"No clouds," Riam said.
Tir's mouth quirked. "Maybe so, but my knees are never wrong. I bet one hour of cleaning that the sky breaks before Zalir comes home."
Riam clapped his hands. "Done. Knees or no knees, Zalir rides fast, and nobody wants to miss Purrar's cooking."
Tir laughed in agreement. "I'll walk around and make sure things are in order," she said as she took the gray mare's halter and led her back to her stall, pulling her hair to one side to keep the horse from chewing on the dark mass. "You make yourself useful somehow, but after lunch, we're going to the practice rooms to finish the training Zalir left when she rode out."
Riam made a sour face. "Is that truly necessary? I asked Sular to come over today for more training, and with a tear in the binding, it would be helpful to review patching techniques before I take her out to help me reweave the boundary."
Tir dropped the wooden bar in front of the stall door and favored Riam with the uncompromising expression he thought of as her holder's face. "Riam. I know you want to believe the best of everyone and everything, but the world is neither kind nor fair. Suppose the magician hadn't been drawing power as he crossed the border? He could have reached the compound in a day -- less, if he'd been bound to speed instead of fire -- and while Zalir and I and the guards are good, you are your own first and last line of defense. We can't afford to have a defenseless binder. So yes, it's necessary."
Riam sighed. "Fine. You can knock me down and slice me up after lunch. But I get all day tomorrow to train Sular, and you have to let me ride out to the border the day after."
"Done," Tir said, and clapped her hands. "Now come run interference with Purrar before you find a chore that needs doing."
Riam grinned and followed his sister back indoors.
---------------
---------------
---------------
And that's enough for today.
A few notes:
1) I have no idea what the effective range of a heliograph is, nor precisely how one shapes the flashes of light, but I needed some form of non-electrical distance communication, and I happen to think fire and mirrors are cool. I may change that in December, when I do some proper research.
2) Funny how making a more detailed outline and doing some slightly less glancing world-building has stretched this introductory section out to over twice the length of my first proper attempt at this story. I promise Morgalen will appear without too much more delay.
3) So, Zalir. She did not exist at all in any sketch of this story I wrote prior to that first attempt in March, whereupon she appeared as a throwaway secondary character. A while later, it occurred to me that it would be really dumb for Riam and Morgalen to go off into the tainted lands and the Great Waste on their own. Plus there is no way Riam's sister would let him do that. So I thought, well, what if a guard goes along? And lucky me, I already have one here and named!
Then, of course, I had to figure out who Zalir was and what to do with her, the upshot of which is that she became a third main character, helpfully plugged a couple other plot holes along the way, and is also just a lot of fun (for me, anyway). Plus it means I have a questing party of two women and one man, of whom the man is the one who's always going to play the bleeding-heart compassionate role, in contrast to Zalir's practicality and Morgalen's coldness.
4) Man, I suck at physical description. You cannot tell from this section what anyone looks like, nor what the layout of the compound is, nor much about the geography and climate of Zerlon. One thing I usually do on second drafts is go through and try to insert sensory details to keep my stories from feeling like they occur in front of blank white screens, enacted by faceless manikins. But that takes time, and is more editing than writing, so you're going to have to suffer through my unfiltered blind spots for a month.
5) 1,825 words so far!
Ashes, part 1
---------------------------------------------
The magician felt like a live coal in Riam's hands, burning through the wafer-thin veil of his binding.
Riam dropped his staff and blew on his fingers before his reason caught up to his reflexes and pointed out that he had no physical injury. He lowered his hands, and blinked at the sword held a hairsbreadth from his neck.
"Splinter?" Zalir asked, sweeping her blade aside and down with a hint of humor lurking behind her professional disapproval. "Not everyone can pull a strike as fast as I can. You have to block and call time before you play wounded puppy."
Riam held his empty hands up and tipped his head, granting the point. "I know, sorry. But it wasn't a splinter. There's a magician at the border, bound to fire. I thought my fingers were burning."
Zalir sheathed her sword, all humor snuffed. "Which watch-house is nearest the breach? Or did he come through a gatepost like a sane person?"
Riam closed his eyes, tracing along the edge of Zerlon with mental fingers, probing for that blazing twist in the fabric of the world. Inside his ward there was nothing but morning sun and the slow breath of a late summer breeze, ruffling the fields and the frothy surface of the river. Outside, miasma-tainted air pressed heavy and still against the border, too thick and humid for the breeze to move. The line between was cool and strong in his mind, an accustomed weight easily shunted aside and forgotten unless he paid active attention, like now.
He traced further, into the rocky land near the northwest, and his mind snagged in a minor tear, still smoldering, with the sickly taint of miasma seeping through.
Riam slapped a patch on the binding and opened his eyes. "North-northwest, just over the hill from the owl tower," he told Zalir. "He tore the binding -- he was drawing power when he crossed, and that means something was chasing him--"
"--right into Zerlon," Zalir said. "Shadow choke them both."
"Zalir."
Zalir waved her hand and strode toward the door of the practice room. "Right, right, it could happen to anyone, but what kind of idiot rides the tainted lands alone? We don't have time for this. Go heliograph the owl tower and send them after your magician and his pursuit. I'll gather a fist and ride out to meet them. We should be back in time for a late supper, barring complications." She paused in the doorway. "Tir needs to know."
"Don't waste time finding her. I'll pass the news," Riam said, and closed the door behind them.
He jogged through the stone-and-plaster corridors to the heliograph tower perched in the central courtyard like an overgrown daddy-longlegs, the thick timber lattice holding the tiny signal box steady against the chance of storms. Riam hauled himself up the narrow ladder between tower markers, remembering at the last second to duck his head under the lintel as he swung into the little open-air box that held the lamp and mirrors, and the colored flags for cloudy days. The guard on duty -- Nabim, an older man sidelined from patrols and hunts by a wrenched knee -- grunted an absent hello and asked, "Trouble? Or just hiding from Zalir?"
"There's no point hiding from Zalir," Riam said. "Message for the owl tower: a magician crossed the border beyond the east hill about ten minutes ago. He's bound to fire, and something was chasing him."
Nabim jerked upright from his slouch and cranked the signal mirror around until it faced the marker for the owl tower. Then he opened the draw on the oil reservoir and let the lamp flame shoot upward, magnified by its lattice of glass and mirrors to nearly unbearable brightness. He uncovered the signal mirror and began flicking it back and forth -- sending the alert, pausing, and sending again. He tried four times before an answering flash of light came from the northwest.
"Fire magician crossed the boundary fifteen minutes past, beyond the east hill, pursued by something," Nabim muttered as he sent the message. "Acknowledge."
A pause, and then a brief pattern of six flashes.
"They're on it," Nabim told Riam. "Anything else I can do?"
"Wait for the report," Riam said. "I have to go tell Tir."
"Better you than me," Nabim said with a wicked grin. "You're family; she can't kill the messenger. Me, though?" He laughed.
"Her temper isn't that bad," Riam said, but he didn't try very hard to hide his own smile. "Zalir said she'd try to bring the magician back for a late supper, so I'm going to tell the kitchens to plan for guests. Make sure to tell Purrar if that changes."
"Will do," Nabim said, and dragged his chair over to face the owl tower, waiting for news from the border.
Riam slid down the ladder, hands slipping smooth over wood polished by years upon years of hands, and went to find his sister.
---------------
Tir wasn't in the kitchens, or the practice rooms, or the guard barracks, or her own suite, or her office, or the herb gardens. Nobody had seen her, either -- her husband and Riam's nephews were on the south side of the valley, working in the fields for the summer, which meant Tir could and did rise early and steal a few hours of privacy now and then. Just bad luck she'd picked today to vanish.
Grumbling, Riam left the herb garden and cut back through the kitchens, wondering whether to try to stables or the altar next. The stables were a better bet, but if Tir had slept badly, she sometimes liked to light an offering lamp for the Mother and offer a few drops of blood to the earth, renewing her connection to the land she guarded.
Riam passed the great hall, which was cleared from breakfast and halfway set for lunch, and pulled aside the beaded curtain of the altar room. The sunburst window let shards of colored light in from the north, melding with the fading green glow of the earth window, but no flames danced in the three little palm-shaped lamps along the bare stone walls; even the dawn offering had burnt out by now. Tir hadn't come this way lately, then.
Which left the stables.
If Tir had been in either of the stables behind the guards' barracks, she would have noticed the commotion as Zalir gathered a fist and rode out to the owl tower, and would have come into the compound to give further orders and calm the jagged thrill spreading from person to person at the idea of a magician and a breached border. Therefore, Riam spun on his heel and walked back to the private suites, through the flower garden, and into the small auxiliary stable that held older horses, ones that had survived years of hunts and patrols and been retired save for training children in the basics of riding and care.
Most of the horses were out to pasture for the day, but a few were confined to the stable for one reason or another, and they whickered and stuck their noses over the gates of their stalls as Riam walked past. He patted them absently, murmuring apologies for his lack of proper attention.
Tir sat on a stool at the far end of the stable, grooming the elderly gray mare that their uncle had ridden until his death four years ago. Her wildly curling hair was unbound and she wore neither leather armor nor her chain of office, though her sword was, as always, belted to her waist. She crooned under her breath, her hands moving steady and slow, calm in a way she rarely had the time or space to be. Riam hated to disturb her.
But she was the holder of Zerlon, as he was the binder, and the broken world gave no respite to anyone.
"A magician bound to fire crossed the boundaries an hour or so past, near the owl tower," Riam said, leaning against the corner of the last stall. "He was drawing power as he crossed, but I have the binding patched until I can ride out and reweave it properly. He was also being chased. Zalir and I sent word to the owl tower, and she's riding out with a fist in case of trouble. If all goes well, she expects to be home for a late supper."
Tir leaned her head against the mare's flank and sighed. "And I was having such a lovely morning."
"Sorry," Riam said.
Tir waved her currycomb in Riam's general direction. "Oh, don't act like I'll eat you alive. You know better." She lifted her head and turned to meet her brother's eyes. "Did you tell Purrar about the late supper and Zalir's guest?"
Riam nodded.
"Good." Tir patted the mare's neck and rose from her stool, her knees cracking as they straightened. "Rain tonight," she said.
"No clouds," Riam said.
Tir's mouth quirked. "Maybe so, but my knees are never wrong. I bet one hour of cleaning that the sky breaks before Zalir comes home."
Riam clapped his hands. "Done. Knees or no knees, Zalir rides fast, and nobody wants to miss Purrar's cooking."
Tir laughed in agreement. "I'll walk around and make sure things are in order," she said as she took the gray mare's halter and led her back to her stall, pulling her hair to one side to keep the horse from chewing on the dark mass. "You make yourself useful somehow, but after lunch, we're going to the practice rooms to finish the training Zalir left when she rode out."
Riam made a sour face. "Is that truly necessary? I asked Sular to come over today for more training, and with a tear in the binding, it would be helpful to review patching techniques before I take her out to help me reweave the boundary."
Tir dropped the wooden bar in front of the stall door and favored Riam with the uncompromising expression he thought of as her holder's face. "Riam. I know you want to believe the best of everyone and everything, but the world is neither kind nor fair. Suppose the magician hadn't been drawing power as he crossed the border? He could have reached the compound in a day -- less, if he'd been bound to speed instead of fire -- and while Zalir and I and the guards are good, you are your own first and last line of defense. We can't afford to have a defenseless binder. So yes, it's necessary."
Riam sighed. "Fine. You can knock me down and slice me up after lunch. But I get all day tomorrow to train Sular, and you have to let me ride out to the border the day after."
"Done," Tir said, and clapped her hands. "Now come run interference with Purrar before you find a chore that needs doing."
Riam grinned and followed his sister back indoors.
---------------
---------------
---------------
And that's enough for today.
A few notes:
1) I have no idea what the effective range of a heliograph is, nor precisely how one shapes the flashes of light, but I needed some form of non-electrical distance communication, and I happen to think fire and mirrors are cool. I may change that in December, when I do some proper research.
2) Funny how making a more detailed outline and doing some slightly less glancing world-building has stretched this introductory section out to over twice the length of my first proper attempt at this story. I promise Morgalen will appear without too much more delay.
3) So, Zalir. She did not exist at all in any sketch of this story I wrote prior to that first attempt in March, whereupon she appeared as a throwaway secondary character. A while later, it occurred to me that it would be really dumb for Riam and Morgalen to go off into the tainted lands and the Great Waste on their own. Plus there is no way Riam's sister would let him do that. So I thought, well, what if a guard goes along? And lucky me, I already have one here and named!
Then, of course, I had to figure out who Zalir was and what to do with her, the upshot of which is that she became a third main character, helpfully plugged a couple other plot holes along the way, and is also just a lot of fun (for me, anyway). Plus it means I have a questing party of two women and one man, of whom the man is the one who's always going to play the bleeding-heart compassionate role, in contrast to Zalir's practicality and Morgalen's coldness.
4) Man, I suck at physical description. You cannot tell from this section what anyone looks like, nor what the layout of the compound is, nor much about the geography and climate of Zerlon. One thing I usually do on second drafts is go through and try to insert sensory details to keep my stories from feeling like they occur in front of blank white screens, enacted by faceless manikins. But that takes time, and is more editing than writing, so you're going to have to suffer through my unfiltered blind spots for a month.
5) 1,825 words so far!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-02 12:34 pm (UTC)But nice word count!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-03 03:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-10 07:56 pm (UTC)Don't info dump, but a little clarification would be useful.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-11 03:39 am (UTC)