12 Prophecy

Dinner that night was salted meat skillet fried in lard and laid between the crisp, flakey outer crust of a round loaf split down the middle and quartered for them all to share. A whole onion was chopped into the frying meat and cheese spread over top it all. Added to the meal were dried figs and bananas. It was a welcome repast shared across the heat of the campfire and beneath the light of the moon.

Poe knew himself to be have been favored by fortune to have fallen in with a man that traveled with such considered preparation. Ham, however, took no praise for the repast. He credited his wife.

A soothing lassitude spread from his stomach to the rest of his body. He laid back to take in the vastness of the night sky salted with flickering stars and was struck by a sudden insight. In the clearing when he had gazed into that dark laceration that split his world open to that other space, what he had seen were the constellations of another heaven.

The lassitude that had once filled him turned cold, replaced with dread, and he became impatient with himself and his complacency.

            “What in the stars catches your eye, Master Poe?” Durham asked, returning from storing the cookware in the hollow seat of the lead wagon. Poe smiled. He had told them many times to call him Poe, just Poe, but his father had refused such ease, demanding they be respectful. But even so, saying his name had the ring of familiarity, comfort, trust. His mood lightened a little. It was because of that familiarity that he spoke before his thoughts could leash his errant tongue. “I see the Dawn of Tears.”

The response was not what Durham had expected.

            “I’ve never heard it called that,” Larkham said before Durham could respond.

            “I have, and it is not surprising you haven’t,” Ham said in his gruff voice from the other side of the fire. “It’s the name my people have for the moon. It’s also the answer to a riddle: What did Thorsen see reflected f a sea of blood? The answer is The Dawn of Tears.”

            “Why?” Larkham asked, the pitch of his voice rising. It was the only time his father had ever spoke of his kindred.

“That is a long story. Someday I will tell it to you, but it’s getting late for the telling now. You and your brother need to turn up the sheets so that you are well rested for the morrow’s travel.”

Grumbling, the younger boy stood. “Aren’t you going to be taking your rest, too, father?” Larkahm asked over his shoulder as he and his brother made their way to settle beneath one of the wagons.

            “Soon, but there are things Master Poe and I need to discuss.”

            The boys rustled covers and their discontented whispers could be heard for a while as they settled in for the evening. Ham said nothing and waited beneath the glow of the pallid moon (much like the one on the night his life was fouled by the treacheries of old men) for his sons to fall asleep. He could barely keep the questions stopped behind impatient lips. And when they had finally fallen asleep, he was able.

            “How did you come by that name, Master Poe? It is not commonly known beyond the Isles.”

Poe sat up. “From an old beggar while visiting Dalmatia by the Sea. I was never able to determine why he singled me out among the newly arrived Initiates, but his mere presence laid a curtain of silence upon everyone as the crowd parted opening a path between him and me. He came over and asked the riddle. When I did not know the answer, he left me in bewildered silence. I would have made no more of it but when I spoke of the encounter with other’s there, they remembered no riddle. In fact they said he spoke no word, had stopped briefly to gaze upon me intently as to find some recognition there before walking off. . . . At least, that is how they remembered it. I searched for him later throughout the city, but he was not to be found by me.

That was my first encounter with Thracians.”

There was a saying among Ham’s people: Fate’s tokens touch upon one only seldom and only rarely are they cast before one’s feet. But tokens often have two faces and Ham did not know which side had fallen before his path. 

“So, you were not completely truthful when you told me the little you know of Thracians came from others and books.” Poe wondered the same at his seeming forgetfulness, but Ham waved away whatever reply Poe had ready.

“Did you find his name?”      

            Poe shook his head. “No one seemed to know it, or, if they did, gave it not to me,” Poe warily replied. He sensed the change in Ham. He had meant no harm, barely realized there was harm to be had. He barely remembered the incident and only prompted by the moon and circumstance did he remember it now. He had meant no deception and would not have expected Ham to proffer such suspicion and distress.

“You have drifted into far more than you know, Mage. Describe for me the man who gave you the riddle,” his tone was clipped, brusque, demanding.

“He was a man of uncommon height and piercing gray eyes and had a diagonal scar on the left side of his face from temple to cheek,” Poe told him tracing the line across his own face.

The token turned to gold and burned brightly with the light of the Source. Even before Poe had described the man, Ham had suspected what the answer would be. And it had proven true. The face he described was that of his mother’s brother.

Ham considered how to proceed. The riddle’s significance was far greater than a marker in a saga. It was to call redemption from despair. It was to signal that the riddler was of the Dominion.

Ham, however, did not want to be caught up in some working of the Dominion. Though once he had believed differently, believed in an ideal greater than himself to which he would sacrifice any personal gain, but that had changed when he had become the contaminating influence that must be excised. Still, the face of his kindred called to him, ritual called to him.  Even now, through all the pain and distance of time, he felt the pull of those that had navigated a people’s course through secret council and action when they had fled the purge of their race by foreign men bent on their ruin. Peaceful fishermen and merchants, they had been forced to flee. It was upon Great Ships, sailing seas and oceans that had given them succor and safety for generations, that they had searched for a new home. In that time of trial, the Dominion had counseled the Captains’ on the best seas to fish, islands to take bounty, measures to survive. Blood had been spent in sacrifice by those who could not withstand the rigors of the sea. The weak were culled. The blood made stronger so that when they found a home, it would never be taken from them again.  

So, he wondered what were his people preparing for? What future were they steering toward? How was his uncle involved? To journey so far from Thrace, from everything he was or could hope to be and become a name with no history, a face no one recognized—Ham remembered his own journey and it still terrified him. Or were other bonds at work, bonds of blood and the magik of kin? Once before his mother’s brother had sought to come to his aid, only to be met with grievous harm. And now this. What had driven his uncle so from his people.

Ham slipped deeper into the specter of memory of ancient and powerful oaths taken at the dawn of his manhood. They were a seductive pull that only betrayal gave him the will to resist. Torn, mind and spirit entrapped by impossible questions, Ham finally decided to trust not in the Dominion, nor in any oaths, but in his uncle.

“The man you met was an Aruspex, a priest who practices what your people would call divination, but of a special kind. They are counselors and healers, advisors to the Captains and the Patriarchs. They have but one goal and that is the survival and preservation of the Thracian people. They wield no direct power or authority in things of clan or family, but in things of the soul of the people, their will has the rule of law. I was one of them—a most junior one.”

           “They can forecast future events?” Poe asked haltingly. Such divulgence came not without sacrifice to both giver and receiver, and those implications made Poe wary.

“Not in the manner you assume. It is hard to explain, but what if the pull of things unsaid, things undone, people not yet met, not yet born called to you to make them said, to do, to meet, to birth by whisper or deed. Now, multiply that by all the people you see and touch and know and with each choice you make you steer your people down a specific course yet to be.”

Poe knew of purported abilities—abilities that most gave little credence to—such as the Magister’s who, it was said, was able to forecast future events, but Ham spoke of something different.

Ham gave Poe a direct and probing stare. “I tell you this not to divulge any secrets, but because the riddle you were given holds a secret meaning to those of the Order, and the fact that you were given that riddle, and that it came to me, can only mean that the force I sense in the distance and toward which you travel will have some repercussions that will affect the Thracian people.”

Poe adjusted his posture. He felt beset, assaulted by truths he had no way to validate or deny. He rolled his shoulders to take the tensions of the night’s revelations from them and sat straighter to loosen the tightness in his back.

“You say our meeting is no coincidence. That it was foreseen or foreordained by some force beyond control or understanding.”

“Whether it was foreseen or foreordained, or however it was done, I cannot tell. I left before I progressed to that level of understanding.”

“What do you sense in the distance?”

“Something vast, powerful, with a hunger that cannot be quenched, a mindless force . . . trapped. These feelings are mingled with emotions of loneliness and hurt, despair and resignation. A lost spirit is adrift in that roil of power and rage. My boys sense it to varying degrees. They began to feel it as soon as we crossed the mountains. We have held off discussing it because you were among us.”

“Is it some manner of Sorcery?” Poe asked with some trepidation. If there was Sorcery at work, he would have knowledge of how to counter it.

“I do not know. It is power of a nature and scope that I have never felt before.”

“What else can you tell me about the nature of this power?” Poe inquired, leaning in closer.

“There is little else I can provide without having more information.”

“We are back to trading.” Poe said wryly, smiling at Ham. But the smile faded when Poe say that Ham say nothing ironic about their circumstance. “I mean no slight,” he said. “It was only my regretful attempt at humor.”

Ham’s taught features lightened into his own benign smile. “No, it is my fault: too many surprises rousing painful memories, and distrust. The question was more to feed my curiosity than anything else.”

“There is no need. I too would be curious. I will tell you as much as I know.

“The power you sense is connected to a young boy whose emergent power makes him a threat to us all.”

Ham frowned. “It is hardly to be believed.”

“Believe it. In our first meeting, I was barely able to escape with my life.”

“And yet you return.”

“What else to do?” and this time the wry smile that twisted Poe’s lips was not to be put aside. “It seems its influence is already reaching beyond this land.”

Ham paused before replying and when he finally did there was a note of doubt in his voice. “You have power enough to stop such a foe?”

“We shall see.”

“Your life is forfeit if you cannot.” There was skepticism in his voice.

            “Our lives are forfeit the moment we enter into the world.” Poe said somberly. “But what we do in the span between that beginning and that ending is what matters.” Here he shrugged. “Besides, who else will protect those living so close to the edge of the unknown. It is my duty.”

            Ham knew, then, what he had to do. “Now I know what is at stake, know the price you would set for your pledge and honor. Because of that, there is a gift I will give. It is a boon to you, but you must think on everything you have spoken.”

Ham’s tone became soft, sibilant and seductive, lulling Poe’s wits, and as he talked, Ham made small gestures with his hands that went unnoticed by Poe.

“Hold this gift with the strength of everything you believe in.”

             The soothing cadence of Ham’s voice raised goose bumps. Some part of Poe’s mind rebelled, tried to shrug off the sonorous glamour that was Poe’s voice, the spell that was being woven around him. But he was unable.

            “That man you met was my mother’s first uncle. Even when I was young he was old, without family except for my mother. They say we are a lot alike. I don’t know, but he gave me something once, a long time ago . . . the gift and its responsibility, before I was ready. This is how it was given to me, as a glamour in the voice and the word and the hand. He told me that the glamour places a geis of duty and a responsibility as part of its stricture on the giver and the receiver. It is the stricture of power that rebounds upon us both. I do not know what shape the power will take with you. For me it took the shape of being able to see true to a man’s heart and knowing the failings they hide from themselves. Though I never used it for personal gain it allowed me to avoid many perils, though not all. It has its weakness, and is not so sure with those of strong in ki. I do not know how the power will shape itself to your need, but it will, and you may, or you may not, remember this moment as the geis’ power bonds to you, Poe.”       

Forlorn, in a waking dream from which he could not stir, he felt treachery without conflict, betrayal without heat, emotions that had no expression, words that had no substance. There was no resisting, and slowly his awareness of self disappeared and all that was left was emptiness filled by a voice.