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EFFIGIES OF OBLIVION

The universe shimmers with a terrible silence.

A time of no song comes.

I must admit, my soul feels relief at departing before it claims Verpace.

~ Notes from his Deathbed, Shirhir the Blind

* * *

It was a frozen night, the kind of night for banshees to shriek out for the souls of the dead, for ghosts to scream through shattered steel skies with ill intent, and for pitiable humans to cower about their little dwindling fires in rightly humbled terror.

Snow flashed like glass across Esterra’s cheeks.

She reached for her old leather and wool gloves on her belt, but her hands grasped nothing.

She hissed a foul curse between her numb lips.

That damned thief.

Should have hunted him down and taken his hands , she thought with a grimace.

She crouched with her back to the howling wind to retrieve her cloak from her pack.

The wind tried to rip it from her hand, but she was ready for it and clenched the fur with an iron fist.

She pulled the cloak over the sling that bore her licht-cursed arm, looped the old cord around the bronze latch there and clipped it closed.

Fighting the wind, she drew the rest tight about her left side, then tied the belt together.

The vindictive wind howled at her.

She growled back. Finally, she pulled the fur hood up and pulled on the cords, then tied them together with deft fingers and her teeth. Wrapped in the patchwork of old skins and faded wool, she squeezed her frozen palm in her armpit for warmth.

The cloak bore the marks of Esterra’s myriad travels.

Fire had seared the leather trim, water had stained the thick wool in hideous blotches, as if whatever poor creature had first grown the stuff was infected with a horrific and incurable illness.

Various beasts had torn and gouged the cloth, which she had patched with a thick needle and thread, a difficult task with only one hand, but she had managed.

Smoke from innumerable campfires had infused the thick cloth, and the animal grease of countless weary meals cooked on those same fires had seeped through the thing.

She never bothered cleaning it, hoping the scent would cover her own human smell from the creatures of Verpace.

She had no idea if it worked, but it didn't hurt to try.

In any case, the damned thing kept her warm.

Stars, I am tired .

The hollow had been uphill the entire way, and her calves ached.

Yet there were greater evils in Verpace than steep slopes, and Esterra shrugged her pack onto her back with her usual weary determination.

She set off into the snow.

She immediately sunk down to her knees.

Even then, she had an inkling she only walked on more snow beneath, simply compressed hard enough to carry her weight.

A crevasse or pit could be the end of her.

The wind dropped off as she slid and floundered down the slope, the great tawil looming high above her.

Peering from the cover of her furred hood, the expanse of the new area unveiled its grim face.

White hillocks of windblown snow had flooded the tract.

The white roofs of buildings, with tips of crumbling towers and broken slices of walls, poked up from the icy landscape.

No trees grew here.

There was no foliage at all.

The wintry landscape extended to the farthest point of her vision without respite.

Icy fingers slipped around her heart, and she shivered.

This could end badly.

Cold moonlight shone down.

The white light shimmered off the ground like water off a blade, painting a horrid picture of death by freezing.

The dark tops of buildings rose like tombstones around the woman as she strode forward.

Broken arches, cracked and covered with slick ice, loomed over her as she pushed forwards.

The storm did not abate.

Her boots sunk deeper into the packed snow with each step, and she could not feel her toes.

Even with the cloak wrapped tight around her body, the cold penetrated to her bones.

She would die of hypothermia if she did not find shelter.

But each building was solid stone, without clear entrance by window or door.

Their hard faces repelled her, refused her succour and forced her back out into the mindless storm.

As she floundered through the snow, her hope dwindled.

This was where the journey would end, without meaning or hope, a pointless existence with a pointless end. This was Verpace. She should not have expected anything else.

She shivered uncontrollably, both from fatigue and cold.

Her muscles desperately wanted to shake off the icy embrace of the stars, the stars which took all evil souls in the end.

Or so the childhood teachings of the Valley taught.

It was not the only religion she had stumbled across in her life, but it had some of the best stories.

Her thoughts drifted along such meaningless paths as the cold claimed her body and her legs pushed her onward into the white death.

Her movement was automatic, thoughtless.

Frost claimed her eyelashes, threatening to freeze them shut each time she blinked.

The stinging pain of ice numbed to a thrumming pulse within her muscles, a sensation like voices heard from another room, muffled, incoherent, unimportant.

Her extremities grew distant, vanished into the storm, together with any clear or logical thought.

Faces and places from times long past drifted across her mind’s eye, as if the memories needed to be witnessed just once more before her mind succumbed to the cold.

Esterra wanted to sleep.

Her memories, her belief or non-belief, her life, none of it would matter in a few minutes if she just lay down and slept. What lay beyond would manifest itself and she would finally know the truth. She expected no clemency, did not need it. She needed to lie down and…

A sudden glimmer of light caught her eye, a flash of golden warmth.

For a brief moment she thought her mind had finally broken, that she saw things she wanted to see, the last shreds of hope tying together to paint false pictures to keep her from giving in to her weariness.

But then she saw it again, a sharp sputter that could only be fire.

Sluggish but with renewed stubborn determination, she struggled forward on her numb legs, snow dragging at her boots like frozen weeds in a frigid swamp.

Her eyes threatened to close, the siren song of sleep still attempting to lull her mind.

She knew her willpower would only carry her so far before it discarded her unwilling body like a dirty rag, to be buried in the snowfall and never seen again.

She pushed forward nevertheless.

Now the light spilled out across the snow in golden rivers.

It came from a brazier in the top of what was likely once a tower, the flaming logs spilling embers across the floor.

The tower had a little open covered platform at the top, the floor of which was almost level with the snow.

A last burst of vigour enveloped her, and she made the last few paces in a shambling jog, blackness clawing at the edges of her vision, muscles burning even through the numbness of the frost.

She gripped frozen stone with frozen fingers, slipped, gripped it again, pulled herself up even as the muscles finally gave in to the total fatigue, even as they failed.

Esterra did not check for any enemy, but collapsed into the cloud of heat around the brazier and absorbed it greedily, her dark skin flushing red.

Unconsciousness claimed her.

Esterra awoke to a dull scratching sound.

The shroud of sleep clung to her mind in warm folds, softer than any cotton or silk, and she rolled herself in it without question.

But the scratching was persistent.

It refused to let her drift back, scratched at her very mind like a nagging thought.

She swore without words.

Annoyance grew within till it was all she knew.

Stars damn it, what is that?

It took her a few moments to realise her head was propped on her pack, and her damp fur cloak was still wrapped around her.

The scratching was punctuated by the occasional crackle of wood collapsing in the fire.

Fire .

The warmth thawed her memory, and she recalled where she was.

The scratching continued.

Could be a damned beast about to eat me , she thought.

With a growling mental sigh, she decided to refuse the welcome embrace of sleep and forced her eyes open.

The strangest man she had ever seen was perched on a gigantic bag.

He stabbed with a bronze stylus at a parchment spread across his bent knees, writing runes with intense focus.

His tall, pointed hat sagged with damp, and his beard ran down his chest in tight braids, the ends tied with bits of grey string.

Two bright blue eyes sparkled over his gnarled nose, which twitched now and then in motions betraying a desire to sneeze.

All about his person there lurked pages, scrolls, and the corners of small leatherbound volumes, peeking out like little curious mice peeking out of their nest, their furtive brood hiding behind them, waiting for a morsel.

Every pocket was full to bursting with paper, and his hat-band was stocked with multiple styluses and tiny bottles of ink and folded letters.

His scarf had a scroll or two poking out at mad angles, and Esterra did the only thing that seemed appropriate.

She laughed.

The man jumped at her cold-hoarse laughter, and she laughed all the harder as he teetered precariously on the gigantic bag beneath him.

Tears streamed down her cheeks when he fell off with a shout, and the resulting crash and wild cloud of pages sent her into hysterics.

Arm clasped around her midriff, her laughing sent her rolling straight into a puddle of melted snow and hot embers.

That sobered her right up.

As she rose, stiff muscles cursing her name, the man stood up as well, gathering the scattered pages while muttering under his breath.

He tucked them away in various locations on his person and bag.

Esterra checked the knife at her belt, felt the grip, and some tension faded.

She stretched and checked her pack.

Everything was there.

“Who are you?”

she asked.

“A question best left unanswered in these times, don’t you think?”

he replied.

His tone was neutral, cautious.

He kept his eye on Esterra’s right arm.

“You’re breathing still, scribe.”

“I pulled you in from the cold,”

he said, placing the last piece of wood on the cooling fire.

“Yet another reason not to eat you,”

Esterra said.

“You jest, but I have met both lichtridden and cannibals in my time, and the two are not mutually exclusive by any means.”

Esterra eyed him up and down, curious at his analytical manner.

"You didn't trace your forehead."

"Trace my…? Oh, right, because of your arm."

"Aye."

"I'm not one to put much stock in superstition.

Your arm isn’t diseased.

The licht isn’t contagious.

And your mind isn’t addled.

Unlike the stories of Pire the Peccant.”

“Who?”

“The tractwalker who revels in cruelty throughout the decadent tracts in the distant ghrub .”

“Oh.

Heard of him.”

“The point being that your mind at least seems clear.”

“Well you’re a breath of fresh air, aren’t you? My name is Esterra Stake, since you seem to place stock in such things.

While we may not be fast friends, an alliance wouldn’t be amiss.

I’d say we have less than an hour before we freeze to death, unless you have more firewood stored somewhere nearby.

I would work with you to find a solution, if you are keen.”

The man looked at her.

Esterra could see no mad lust or violence behind his gaze.

Merely calculation and attention to detail.

“The gifting of a name is a sign of immense trust, Esterra.

I am Tarraniel Vel Teltelvishnar.”

He watched her keenly, an expectant curiosity in his gaze.

She blinked.

He shrugged.

“Please call me Tarr.

Now, we need to find an entrance into the city below us.”

He spoke with brisk certainty.

“I have no business in a city which lies under fifty feet of snow.

I seek any hollow but that one,”

she said, gesturing behind her.

“There are no other hollows, at least not up here.

I have hunted along the tawil for hours upon hours.

I was about to return through that same one we used to come here.”

“Stars above, then we are dead.

That hollow is corrupted now.

The licht found a way into its depths and spreads as we speak.”

Esterra sighed and leaned back against the wall of the tower, heart growing as cold as the stone behind her.

“I know.

I passed through there two nights past.”

Esterra glanced up at him.

“What have you been doing since?”

“Freezing, and exploring,”

Tarr said, packing his bags, checking the belts and pushing escaping scrolls and books back into their places.

“There are always at least two hollows to a tract.

You likely know that from experience already.

I am a historian, but also a cartographer, a mapmaker.

In the dozens of tracts I have mapped, there were always two or more hollows.

I can confirm that as a fact.

It allows the licht to flow, from tract to tract, according to some primary research and various secondary sources… Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You survived dozens of tracts? You? You’re not a fighter, and I doubt you are cursed.

I see no deformity.”

Tarr frowned, stuffing damp pages into his bag, ink liquefied by the snow and running across the paper.

“It’s not a curse.

The correct term is lichtridden.

And no, I am not.

A tad surprising, considering how far I have travelled.”

“You’re a tractwalker?”

“Hardly.

I’m a scholar, not a wanderer, albeit wandering is a part of my life.”

“Wait, your name… Are you part of the College?”

“The College is dead.

But yes, I am the last.”

“You bear no weapons.

How have you…”

“My staff broke a few tracts back, splintered out of sheer age.

I have yet to find another.

I have a knife.”

“I would have thought you’d make a fine meal for some of the beasts I’ve encountered,”

Esterra smirked.

“Caution and planning help one to avoid stumbling into most dangers, I find,”

Tarr grumbled, hefting his bag onto his back.

“It is time to go.”

Esterra laughed at the barb, and the absurdity of it all.

She leaned forward and pulled the last piece of wood toward her and propped it up between her knees and calves.

She wrapped a rag tightly around the end and tied the knot, using her fingers and teeth to pull it tight.

Now it needed some more fuel, to burn even through the storm.

She opened her oiled tal pouch and wiped scraped the bundled end of the torch across the animal fat within, rotating it to soak all the cloth with the stuff.

She then rose and held the torch to the fire.

The flames caught and the torch burning brightly in the icy night, a mirror to their glimmering hope.

They set off, cloaks billowing in the wind.

Sparks flew from the torch, and the flames whispered in voices harsh as gravel ground between the teeth of giants.

With each step, the cold scratched its way through their clothes to their skin, sharp teeth tearing away at their warmth.

Those same teeth tore at the torch, trying to slash away the pitiful fire and leave the two wandering witless in the white wasteland.

They passed the roofs of great buildings with round pillars and carved facades, all cracked and grey in the waste.

The carvings were of beasts and peoples long vanished from the world.

Where once ivy spread green leaves and spiders built homes of dew-speckled webs, now there was nothing but snow and ice and frozen limestone.

The tips of once-proud buttresses decorated with swirling designs peeked out of the snow like the broken skulls of ancient giants, cracked fragments of an age abandoned even before the advent of mankind.

Frozen in time, they did not see the two tiny humans pushing through the snowdrifts between them.

The great city built by so many master craftsmen and artisans was buried well and truly, the wonder of their work untouched by the sun for unknown eons.

The city could not see travellers just as the travellers could not see it.

The first black-tiled roof they reached had no breaches, and they moved on.

They could not waste a moment, with the storm showing no signs of letting up anytime soon and their torch burning low.

The wind ripped a loose page out of Tarr’s pack, and tore it to pieces before he could react.

He swore, but Esterra only saw his lips move, the wind shredding whatever words were spoken before they could reach her ears.

The snow lashed their bare cheeks with a fury Esterra felt was wilful, as if some white-robed wizard was hurling snow at them from some far tower, like in the old tales.

She snorted against the woollen scarf across her face.

There were few who could control magic, the licht, and even fewer who could maintain their sanity or body while doing so.

The licht has a will of and unto itself.

It is a power that has no master, and cares nought for its servants.

The licht doesn’t, indeed cannot, care who stands in the path of its storm, as long as it creates more chaos than there previously was .

Esterra snorted again at the remembered echoes of some starving lunatic she had met many tracts ago.

He lay dead, and she lived on. Who was the wiser between them?

Still the storm blew, and Esterra’s torch sputtered and hissed in wild defiance.

They came across a shattered window, but it had been a great thing made of a hundred smaller panes, and the limestone and mortar still held strong.

Tarr shook his head and pointed at another building rearing its head from the snow, only a little farther.

They pushed on.

The structure had an opening, a thin gap between two pillars, almost like an archer’s arrow-slit in a castle wall, though if it was such the bowman would have stood many paces tall.

They slipped in, the howling storm dying away to a muffled shriek outside, as if it loathed their escape.

Inside, they found a wooden door covered in a thick layer of frost.

Esterra kicked it, grinning as it gave with a muffled crack.

A few more kicks and they were through.

A stairway went down into shadows, and Esterra put a hand on Tarr’s shoulder.

She gestured with the torch at odd footprints in the ancient dust on the worn flagstones.

One boot, one dragging claw.

“We have no idea how old those are,”

he whispered.

“Can you fight?”

He looked at her, and Esterra could see his masculine pride giving way to reason.

He shook his head.

“Your honesty is commendable.

I go first.

Carry the torch overhead, not in front of my face.

If you blind me, you might not need to wait for a monster to kill you.”

They slipped down into the dusty gloom, torchlight flickering across the bare walls of the stairway.

Esterra kept count of the steps in her head, her eyes scanning the darkness before her.

The steps were deep, much more so than normal, and her calves ached after the first dozen.

Her boots sunk into the powdery dust which lay on the stones like luxurious carpet.

The ancient stuff smelled of nothing, not death nor decay nor rot.

Just dust, more ancient than human senses could tell.

Before her, the footprints descended, step by step.

Her lichtridden arm twitched a little, but she could sense the licht had not penetrated far into the city.

Or if it had, it lurked in the very depths.

Forty-three steps later, they entered a vast chamber.

The dripping snow from their cloaks created eerie echoes in the place, and they halted at the entrance, eyes wide and wary.

The chamber inspired that terrible awe which all truly giant spaces do, the kind of place which forced visitors to speak only in whispers and even then to wince in humbled embarrassment at the range and volume of the echoes that return.

The size of the place was evident even in the gloom which enveloped every corner and completely obscured the ceiling and walls beyond the fitful spark of Esterra's guttering torch.

Great square stones made up the walls, each one several metres in breadth and height.

Benches and tables of strange designs filled the room, built for beings larger than mere humans, the seats higher than Esterra’s hips.

Each piece was tattooed with intricate carvings, different to those that adorned the half-buried facades of the buildings that housed them.

The designs bore no resemblance to any creatures or plants, but were either abstract or images and patterns unintelligible to the two visitors, sometimes like runes, yet in other places more geometric or painterly, somehow all merging together in an asymmetrical yet non-haphazard manner.

Tarr nudged her forward, clearly intrigued.

Esterra let him go, peering into the shadows, every sense on edge.

Empty doorways lined the walls, seen only as darker black within the ebony night of the chamber.

She could not spot the tracks they had seen previously, lost once they had reached the thick, rotting carpet that lay here, commingled with the ever-present dust.

“Why,”

Tarr said, tapping on a table, “These are constructed of a species of wood I have only read of in books! From the rich forests of Aterr-She, razed well before the First Lichtvallen.

Priceless, even in that time.

The carvings must surely be the work of masters.”

“Surely,”

Esterra said, her dark eyes on the next doorway.

“Our torch is burning low.”

Tarr continued to study the carvings for a moment, then turned to her in shock.

“Not a word,”

she growled, stopping his outburst.

“Whatever value these once had is as dead as the trees they come from.”

She took hold of the nearest footstool and kicked at the joinery.

The furniture was in surprisingly good condition considering its age, but Esterra’s boot prevailed.

Soon enough they had four pieces of wood with old rags wrapped tightly around the ends.

She wiped the last of the animal fat from her empty tal-purse across the cloth to help them burn a little longer.

They made workable torches.

Tarr packed two of the torches away, grumbling all the while about the terrible sin they were committing, and Esterra lit the remaining from the last flames of their dying torch.

She discarded the old one, watched it sputter in the dust till it expired, then nodded at Tarr to follow.

“There is no licht here,”

Tarr said as they moved across the chamber toward the far doorway.

“It is a little odd.”

Another room lay beyond, with more tables and some shelves packed with old tomes.

Before the First Lichtvallen it seemed people wrote as if their very lives depended on it, and then others had collected these works in great storerooms.

Esterra had never understood the purpose of it all, especially when most of the languages had since vanished from the world.