Of Birds of Balm I

This was a good enough spot. Rich and golden was the sheen that licked: the tongue of the great sun, Aeris. Aeris the chief source of the Right-Hand Path.

Indeed, Sourcing and the arts were all the comfort left in the world, save the viridian bed of foliage upon which Rekamé Araxes had collapsed. How many ripe-thinking people, especially in a time of god-cursed civil massacre, would yearn for an artefact of myth?

Rekamé bore witness to the tranquillity of mid-morning. Somewhere in Chaparralion, the great forest that split a continent. A place so vast that none entered it expecting to find anything more than solitude. And so desperate was Araxes for that feeling, that not even dear father nor mother were told of his leaving whence nor why. For a blesséd curse was set upon him that morning: the Chalice of Erudition. Sava’s Goblet.

Seeming to appear in random locations at random times; the Cup of Knowledge is a reverent legend.

Said to move outside the boundaries of even transcendent beings, altering the fabric of every Tempochronum Aeuvum like a needle through wool, the Cup has been worshipped in fine art and tales. Monarchs commission portraits with the chalice in their grasp, drinking from it. Interpretations of differing design and evolution of function clouded the truth: but awe persisted firm.

Quests for a sniff of the dry marble were the very exodus of myth: one sip of its contents gives the knowledge. That is how the tales begin, before forking and branching and trying to fill the gaps beyond that alluring statement.

A symbol. A symbol that bestows secrets that could command a continent from one seat; transform the Pearl Desert into a temperate beacon of life; make the embodiment of aspects of infinite wisdom and knowledge envious – for even he cannot comprehend its mechanisms nor metaphysics. So sweeping is it, that a fraction of its gift would make one tread amongst the Celestials, or at Aeris’ side, or to drink with Cirien. Hieronymos Sava, whom petty minds attach to it his wicked name, is said to be the most lusting for its divine grace.

As if Rekamé had not enough to fall concerned with. Not had he made his legal majority before his brother, Pántoko, had bred four sons with the king’s daughter and been crowned Pureus II, King of Pearls. Not had he made love nor thought of heirs or the spread of scions, before his brother had betrayed his queen’s sacred Esthebian traditions and declared himself Paramount Shén-Tênín, the highest god-king. Not had he tended the court of their native Paruskyn before Pántoko, then Pureus, had gave war unto his own wife. Bolstered by the avarice of the Kwaqari Amirs and Amirahs; foreign rapacity raping the good lands of the east in the name of his own, once dear, brother. And such war was fracturing the reality of all that meant culture on Iniryen.

And so maybe the missing god, in all his avid inquisition of mortal affairs, had somehow influenced the artefact. Or maybe the Cup itself made the decision. But what would one drink? It came in his cradling pillow-side in the earliest of hours, void of any liquid.

Rekamé rolled his face amongst the moss. Only the aria of flowing stream-whispers and the comments of birds would offset his corybantic moans. Expressions of the utmost irritation. ‘What a loathful existence. As if I hadn’t enough to weigh on without his war or this cup. What a bore,’ he told the whistles of the wood. They did not care.

Rekamé turned back to face the arboreal world. Still did Aeris’ glimmering tendrils bless the life of the earth. Aeris, sitting as the largest sun, between her three heralds. Nameless children beside passing mention in the histories that Rekamé read; histories that still sparsely offered them more than first, second, and third. The same histories that made known to mention that the heralds’ visits were the closest relation one might ever have to fully realising Aeris’ grandeur.

Rekamé left his mind. The turbulence of worry. Of his brothers’ own retainers slitting throats on rumours in the name of a Cup. They would know what it was, for it told one’s mind should they lack the education to read the numerous inscriptions in languages far beyond the reaches of only the Perytonic Ocean. Languages of frozen places and dusty coasts. Rather, he turned to Chaparralion.

Gleefully did he blink those amber eyes at the spectral shades of green. His home Paruskyn was a city of high stone, slates and browns, with fierce scarlets as trim upon the richest temples and Tênín-owned buildings, that too boasted patronising dry schorl brick.

But Chaparralion had hues. From a spectre’s ghostly conifer, to the translucent limes of light-bathing leaves. And muddy sages and basils that boasted for skin rougher than the scruff of a spine drake. Nature’s complexion exceeded the tint of any plain stone city. Even Yakto.

Rekamé smiled. His glinting flaxen teeth came through as he did, between two craterous dimples that his dearest mother so loved to squeeze.

Laying his knapsack at the nest of some vascular roots beside his duvet of mosses, Rekamé felt inside for his journal. A fine skin bound it, the origin of which his father told was once bound to a Peryton’s flesh. But the flowing black hair of pigeon-chested Rekamé still hated that possibility. Perytons were too rare across the world, and too precious to believe that he loved something made of their suffering. So, he told himself it was the skin of a Kwaqari mercenary. That, of course, did not make it made of a Kwaqari mercenary.

Accompanying that journal, felt kind-thinking Rekamé – who was, in truth, the brutal Granshi of Takaeyon for his noble birth – were his tools of creation. The richest ink money could buy: the blood of Birds of Balm, diluted to consistency and purified with the putrid humours of Sourcers that broke the Tenets of the Sun.

In dipped his quill, again of Birds of Balm, the most prestigious fowl of beauty and intellect. Their quills were pretty, Rekamé had always thought. And held ink well. And since they were dead, they did not need them; it was the greatest reuse of nature’s fineries.

So he sketched what he saw: an outcrop wrapped in creepers and bracken, that shadowed an old pool. A wide old pool, not too many paces away, and deep with stagnant water. Brackish-smelling. Peculiar, for the coast was many days march, let-alone walk, from where Rekamé thought he was. But the centrepiece was the carved stone bowl upon an attractive pillar. Not unlike the Chalice of Erudition, it seemed to tell a person that it was important.

Rekamé, unthinking and self-thinking for all his bliss, immediately sought the source of his captivation and marched onward, towards the bowl. He slid slowly down the brief incline, but his fine leather rim-based sandal-boots kept him upright, increasing his curious pace towards the pool’s bowl.

A cloudy pewter, and gritty, but masterfully masoned. Embedded were the shapes of birds, grand flower-feathered silhouettes, and encircling clouds that danced about the rim of the bowl. The great forest was ancient, Rekamé knew, but he was certain those were the birds endemic to the Isle of Balm. Never did they leave that island living. He stroked at it, sliding fingers and nails between the carvings so enticing; keen to avoid any wetting, but eager to feel things.

And within the bowl was more stagnant water. The source of the brine malodour. It seemed as though the whole contraption was a fountain once, with ancient mechanisms since lost to the passing Aeons and Epochs. The scent was highly disagreeable. Rekamé would not have it plaguing in such virulence the good energy he needed to sketch his view in the blood of innocents. It simply was not right.

The Granshi raised his right hand. Gaunt fingers, like the five tentacles of malicious a beast, pointed up toward the canopy. Toward Aeris, and her heralds. First, a sacrifice: the fastest way to perform Sourcing without the necessary education. His own blood would be more than sufficient, a notion he did muse for a brief moments, whereupon he removed one of the many vials stringed across a bandolier belt. In which was the blood of his father. He was dead soon, Rekamé knew, for his gluttony was the pit of the rebellion so incited upon brother Pántoko to spearhead as Pureus. The loyalists would win. Not because they were meant to, but because Pureus II had lost sight of his own dear wife, and that was a Tenet of the Sun. Old dear father Harkés wouldn’t be needing the blood where he was going.

One drop upon his tongue. Enough on each fingertip to stain it crimson. Rekamé drew with sliding free fingers of his spare hand a rune of four branches that met at the knuckles, whilst the main stem travelled along his forearm toward the inner elbow joint. And, finally, a peak at the brilliance of the blazing sun’s glow: it was no aid to his colour-blindness, nor his ailing sight, but burning his retinae was a worthy trade to purify the air of saline stench.

Aeris answered: the curious son of Paruskyn was given a swelling ball of liquid starlight in his hand. A gift, and more than enough heat to evaporate the salted water – to which he did.

In a meek green glow did the water turn to steam, before Rekamé closed his fist and the minute sun-ball was quenched amongst the latent and residual Imeris of the world. Satisfying.

But the smell was not gone. And the brine did return. Most peculiar, for nothing changed. Even the Birds of Balm that littered the rim seemed to look back, confused. It was as if the mystery of the bowl in the pool in the forest was special.

Rekamé did his ritual again, and Aeris gave him another little ball of oozing light. It burnt a little more the second time, but the brine extinguished with lime steam just the same.

Until it filled again.

Rekamé, who seemed to not care for his eyes, kept burning his retinae until every little glass tubelet of putrid blood was empty or dropped in a blind confusion. Such a madness that only needed ten-or-so minutes to complete.

‘Apathy had boiled your eyes,’ she said.

Rekamé was sharp to turn, but, of course, he couldn’t see anyone. And the brine was still radiating. He chose not yet to respond, rather putting a grasp unto the hilt of his dirk. He hadn’t sharpened it; it was more of a kris anyway. That wasn’t his job; father had always said that his affinity would sharpen his blades. Whetstones were rough against soft, wiry, tendrils.

‘Oh aeolist. I wouldn’t bother, to be honest,’ she said again. It was definitely the voice of a woman. And a pretty woman at that, because pretty women had pretty voices, father-who-did-not-need-blood had always said. Then he felt a soft hand on his cheek.

A warming smell came of her breath. One of flowers, or sweet honey and syrup-sap, or the incense made of birds of Balm. ‘Yes, that’s my odour. I’d like your chalice,’ she asked. There was not a thing the blind man could say nor do beyond infatuated shivering and moans.

‘You should give it to me. I can give you back your eyes.’

All Rekamé could do was lift a quivering hand up. Outstretched, one of ten gaunt fingers. His pointing finger, one of the few ringless.

And off it was sliced. It burnt, Rekamé screeched. The fluttering wings of birds and butterflies fleeing soon left the air silent.

‘That should give me the blood I’ll need. For the Cup, I mean. It will tell me what I can do to get you those eyes back,’ she promised.

Rekamé could not see, but he could feel. And the heat of Aeris’ mid-afternoon gaze was boiling the tears from his cheeks. Her presence faded; to his knapsack, and to the Chalice, had the voice gone.

The Granshi felt nothing but throbbing pain, and the metallic stain of blood around his lips as he sucked on his new stump.

‘Is this some pathetic retribution? Is that how you forest-folk deal with your superiors, by mocking them? I am the brother of the king,’ Rekamé bellowed. He was spinning in red circles upon that viridian plateau, unable to find direction as he spoke.

‘Now you cannot see the laurels upon which you rested. And yet you still claim them as a throne? You hold yourself solipsistic until things fall from favour. Then perhaps it is your narcissism that should beckon your impending doom. And thank you for the Chalice.’

A stony clanking of divine material rustled from the leathers of his knapsack. ‘Your eyes,’ the voice said.

Rekamé blinked. He blinked again.

He had his vision; he had his sight. He was not fingerless, it did still sting, but his face was covered in drying droplets of scathing saltwater. In front was that bowl, as though nothing had changed. Nothing, save the Birds of Balm, who did not dance around its rim.

He ran to his pack. Beside it was still his quill, and his sketch wide-open, though the ink was wet. The Granshi fumbled through the rest of the contents: a vintage tawny, one soft-gold medallion, and a gaping space where the Chalice of Erudition once lay.

Rekamé fell to his knees. A burden lifted from him, certainly, and so he thanked himself, for he had no one else to thank. Sava’s Cup was gone, but his disorientation was not.

‘Thank you,’ he said a final time. Then an arrow flew. An arrow obsidian-tipped, that shattered the moment after it touched the bark of the tree that touched his hand. For then his hand was with a great wound and with it a great pain; only then to be found by its siblings: further whistling, two more arrows, slicing his arm and shattering thereafter.

‘He’s here, but there’s something on him,’ a gruff voice rallied. Leaf and shrubbery sifted as hunters flooded into the alcove. Leather and steel rubbed. It was all most unpleasant.

Laying against a great thick-wood was a coiled being: it had seven arms, each branded raw and steaming with the runes that wrote grimoires, and each conjoined in pairs or threes. The legs equally amalgam, though there were only four, and met with one whipping tail, as a rare feline may have – a violet tail that had stripes of sky’s clean cyan and a dusting of conifer-green rosettes. It was holding one if its limbs, where the arrows had pierced it, wailing and begging for something like mercy. Without the face it would be unrecognisable. That was the reason that the bowman shot.

Its body was without skin, but not skeletal. Rather, it writhed with wyrms and lindwyrms, moving like clockwork in slithering wheels. There was nothing a man should call reasonable about such a being.

A scholarly voice broke the brief silence and murmurs of disgust. Rekamé could feel the being crouch beside his unknowingly grotesque form.

‘Lord Rekamé, do you know who I am?’ He asked.

Rekamé did not respond. He hadn’t seen this man before.