Winds That Will Be — Aedan's Journal
"The
Tower: Creation, Turmoil, Passion"
Aedan's Journal. Session 5-12-01.
© 2001 Todd Worrell
The world was shades of gray. Every color was muted and faded, until it blended almost completely into the gray background. Magni's chamber was busy with clutter, but it looked to me like it all melted into itself, just outside of my range of vision. If I looked directly at the side table, it looked like an ordinary table. If I looked away and tried to focus on it in the corner of my eye, it receded into the wall until it might have been only a few cobwebs or a scratch on the paint.
I pushed myself out of bed and went back into Magni's front room. My legs felt weak and rubbery, but they worked. I don't know how long I slept, but Magni had fetched clothing from my room. He also had a basin of hot water waiting. I stripped, cleaned the blood and mess off, and changed into my clean clothes. Magni had also had servants bring a few platters of breads, cheeses, and fruits. I sat and ate until I was all out of grape jelly. It took quite a while; there were many jars of grape jelly.
"I left word with the King," Magni said, "but he was busy."
"How long ago was that?"
"Perhaps an hour."
I saw then that he had arranged Corwin's body in a rather formal death pose. His eyes were closed, his hands clasped across his chest. His cloak was arranged around him like a shroud, folded open to reveal the upper half of his body. However, something was missing.
Magni was holding Corwin's silver rose cloak clasp.
"I thought I should deliver this to Corwin's son," he said.
"Have you ever met Merlin?"
"No," he admitted.
"Wonderful means of gaining an introduction."
He shrugged, seemingly unfazed by my sarcasm.
"He should hear this sort of thing in person."
"I had been contemplating a trip to the Courts myself," I said. "but this complicates matters." I gestured to Corwin's body. That reminded me of something, and I knelt by my dead uncle once more. The trumps he had taken from me were still in his inside jacket pocket. I took them: Merlin, not looking particularly regal; Dara, smiling mischievously; and Mandor, as untrustworthy as ever.
That was when I noticed that the Horn of the Unicorn, which Corwin had kept tucked through his belt, was missing as well. Magni noticed my look and went to a closed cupboard and opened it. The horn was inside.
"I thought it best to keep it out of view, just in case." He closed the cupboard.
I stood and returned unsteadily to my seat. I had hoped the food would restore some of my strength, but it hadn't made much of a dent.
"I'm going to try something," I said, thinking of the ring that was and wasn't Grayswandir.
"Have you ever done it before?"
"No," I had used the ring, but that was out of desperation. Now I was going to try to consciously control it. Anything could happen.
"Well, if you start to die," Magni remarked, "I'll stop you."
"Thanks."
With a thought, the gray in the walls and in the air began streaming toward me. It moved in long, translucent streaks, slowly at first but quickly shooting toward me and into the ring. I felt a cold fire burning deep inside me, full of energy wanting to burst forth. I cut off the flow and formed something like a spell. The energy dissipated. It soaked into my bones and revitalized me. I stretched. My legs no longer ached. I felt wide awake and ready to fight Osric's entire army by myself.
"Wow," Magni said. "Did you do that?"
"Yeah."
By the time the King arrived, I felt as good as new. Raj was with him, and neither one of them were at all pleased to see Corwin's body laid out on the floor of Magni's room.
I made a mistake; I told Martin the truth. I should have told him the Unicorn killed Corwin. The shape of the wound looked like the Unicorn's horn could have made it. I showed them the weird, curled blade and told them of the eight-armed woman.
Martin asked about Grayswandir.
"When Corwin died, it changed." I showed them the ring. "It has adopted me, somehow."
"Do you know how bad this looks?"
"No."
"It looks like you killed Corwin and took his sword."
"No one would believe that," I said, "not only because it is untrue. Everyone knew Corwin and I were close."
"That won't matter. Bleys is going to rain shit on you when he finds out. Plus, now we have another enemy," he said, meaning the woman.
"I don't think so. She didn't kill Corwin on purpose."
"You can't know that. How can you read the mind of some freaky being? We have to regard her as an enemy until we learn more about her. I can't believe you're telling me this."
"Would you have preferred it if I had invented a story?" I felt the color rise to my face. "I told you the truth, no matter how crazy it sounds."
"Hmph," Raj crossed his arms doubtfully.
"I don't know what to believe," Martin stood and paced about the room. "It's a stupid story."
"I believe Aedan," Magni said.
"I'm sorry," Martin walked toward the door, "but I don't." He stomped out of the room.
Raj announced he was going to ride out to the Grove of the Unicorn immediately and see if there was any evidence to be found. He, Magni, and I argued for a while before we decided we would all go. I didn't think they would be able to find the place without me.
Trick wasn't at the stables, having been left behind when Corwin had died. I knew I should look for him soon, but he could handle himself for a few days. It might even be a vacation. I chose an all-black stallion named Onyx and rode south with my cousins.
Under the night sky, the stars peered out from behind frail clouds. I closed one eye, then the other. Things still looked tinted with gray. I wondered if that was a by-product of the ring and took it off for a moment: still gray. I put the ring on.
We weren't going to the Grove of the Unicorn that everyone knew, but we decided to start there. The sun was setting as we rounded the last corner and dismounted to walk our horses the final few steps. As we did so, I saw a young priest leaving the grove. He came down the path toward us and would have walked by.
"Good evening," I called to him.
"Good evening to you, Lords." He stopped and looked calmly at us.
"It seems late to be visiting the Grove," I said.
"Indeed," he nodded, "but the Fathers felt it best that someone remain here all day."
"Oh?" Raj asked. "Why is that?"
"There were some inappropriate offerings earlier today."
"Of what sort?" Raj continued.
"I don't know. They took them back to the Cathedral."
The young priest didn't know anything else about the offerings, so I thanked him. He walked on. Raj wanted to go with him and investigate the offerings, but Magni convinced him to stay with us.
The Grove itself had been swept, the small stone altar scrubbed clean very recently. It wasn't the same place I had been and I told them so. I described what I remembered: a stormy ocean, a rocky shore. Raj led us on for another hour before we were riding on the sand along the angry sea. It still wasn't right.
I took the lead.
Desire, she had said.
The night grew thicker, the air dark and cold. Shore pines crept along the low bluff to our left.
Desire. I repeated the word in my mind as I tried to shift toward her.
The rocky shoreline moved closer to the water. Waves rose and fell, dashing themselves against the surface of the ocean.
Desire.
I painted the world as if lit by starlight, washing out the blues and the greens and replacing them with silver.
Desire.
The air closed in on us. The horses shied nervously and called out for reassurance.
Desire.
I saw the spit of sand, now covered by water. This was the place, or very near to it. I dismounted. Raj rode ahead of me.
Suddenly we saw her. A glowing-white slender woman with piercing blue eyes and white hair hovered over the water directly in our path.
"What are you doing here?" Raj asked her. He didn't seem afraid.
"Protecting you," she said. I thought I recognized her then. She was the Unicorn-Beast, the thing that had charmed Raj. My cousins and I had taken to calling her Eve after some myth Magni knew. "You are mine." She held a hand out toward Gerard's son.
"Is there something you've neglected to tell us, Raj?" I asked.
"This path has dangers," Eve said, ignoring Magni and I.
"We need to know who is here and what happened," Raj said.
"Who are you?" I asked. She paid me no attention.
"Who are you?" Raj repeated. "You're not the original Unicorn."
"In some ways, I am," she smiled a cold smile, "but no. I am not."
"Did you attack Aedan?"
"No," Eve said. I already knew that. This wasn't the same thing that I had seen in the Grove.
"Who did?" Raj asked.
"I suspect another of the Sisters."
"Who are the Sisters?"
"Those whose forms the old forces took."
"Ask her how many Sisters there are," I said.
"How many Sisters are there," Raj asked, "and are you one of them?"
"I have gone beyond them," Eve said. Damn, Raj should have known that metaphysical beings had difficulty answering compound questions. You had to treat them like little children.
"You were one of the Sisters?" Raj continued.
"All things were, at one time."
"Even she who resides at the end of this path?"
"She is more like me than like them."
"How many Sisters are there?" Raj said again.
"There were four Sisters," Eve said. "Before the Logrus and after the Logrus. Before the Pattern and after the Pattern."
"Four others besides yourself?"
"Yes." Eve began floating forward, moving toward Raj. "There are other things more important to living things than the Sisters." Magni spurred his horse forward. He stopped alongside Raj and handed him the Horn of the Unicorn.
Eve shrieked. She stretched into a shaft of bright light. The air was rent with a booming clap of thunder and a dazzling flash. When I opened my eyes she was gone.
"Well, that knowledge could prove useful." Magni said as he held out his hand. Raj returned the Unicorn's horn to him. "Good thing I brought it."
We were almost to the spooky grove, so we dismounted and walked the horses the rest of the way. We tied them up before we passed the boulder.
The place was as I remembered it, although the fog was heavier now. The smell of cooking meat was in the air, and flies buzzed around the slick spots on the earth that had soaked up my blood and other vital fluids. I flinched. Across the clearing, debris littered the ground around a hole in the shrubbery. That was where the great gray unicorn had fled.
The eight-armed woman stood unmoving behind the stone altar. Her hands were still clenched around a serpent-entwined staff and Werewindle, both of which pierced the heart on the altar. Behind her head, she held three blades in a curiously dance-like pose.
The world didn't seem so gray here. Either that, or my vision was adjusting. I could see the woman clearly now.
"I've brought my cousins," I announced.
"The Gold," her voice said.
"Can you see her?" I asked.
"No," Raj said. Magni shook his head, busy pulling drawing materials from his pack. Raj laid a hand on my shoulder.
"Now I can see her," he said. "Wow."
"This one thou has brought is lost to me."
I looked at Raj. First Eve had claimed him as hers, and now this. He had been holding out on us.
"What of the other one?" I asked.
"He hath the blood if he hath the desire." She turned her third eye on Magni. He fumbled and dropped his sketchpad.
"Uh…" Magni stared at the woman. I was sure he could see her now.
I had been carrying her curled sword in my belt. I held it up to show it to her. I felt a tug on it, so I released it. The strange blade flew through the air to the woman's waiting hand.
"Aedan, what do I do?" Magni asked.
"If thee wouldst join me, come forth." She regarded him.
Magni took a couple steps forward. The pale woman released her grasp on the staff. The little snake hissed and flicked its tongue at Magni. He hesitated, then placed his hands on the staff between the coils of the snake.
He wrenched. The staff came free of the stone. A spurt of dark blood gushed out of the heart. The woman groaned and the sound of her agony echoed throughout the fog.
In Magni's hand, the staff glowed with a copper tint. The snake writhed as the whole thing shrank until it, too, was a ring like mine. Magni tucked it in his belt pouch.
"I would ask one question of you," Magni said to the woman. "Who put these here?" He indicated Werewindle and the heart. He stayed close to her, but I noticed that his legs were shaking.
"They are mine price for entry."
"Entry to what?"
"Becoming a world."
We all looked at each other, wonderingly. To me, this seemed infinitely more important than anything Osric was up to.
"You didn't answer my question," Magni continued. "Who put these here?"
"The past. One bore that which thee hast. One bore the strength of the Silver. One bore the Gold."
I noticed that her hands that had been holding the staff had now joined the two other pairs behind her head. They were holding odd, curved scythes that looked like they were made for throwing.
"And what of the future?" I had almost forgotten Raj's hand on my shoulder. The woman apparently couldn't hear him, so I repeated his question.
"You said you were the future," I told her. "What future is that?"
"The Tower," she said. "Creation, turmoil, passion."
"Are you one of the Sisters?" I asked.
"They art old indeed. I am but newly come to this place." I took that to mean "no."
"And what of this one?" I indicated Raj. She turned her third eye on him. He shuddered.
"In each battle, there must be flagbearers and warriors. He may still choose, but it would be dangerous."
"How may I assist you further?" I said.
"Bringest thou to me the Gold."
Yeah, I already knew that part. Who, or what, was the Gold? Apparently it wasn't Magni. If I was the Silver, it seemed logical that one of my cousins would be the Gold. Maybe Giselle. She was crazy enough to pledge her allegiance to this thing on a whim. I didn't think it would be Gabriel; he was too studious. If this woman represented what the Tower did, she was a force of creativity. Eve was supposedly a presence of order, stability, and structure. That was more like Gabriel.
I made a mental note to try to cajole Giselle to coming here. Of course, I was sure that when I finally convinced her to come, she would talk to the woman and refuse to help. Shit, maybe Bleys would want Werewindle badly enough to get it. I discarded that thought as quickly as I could. I just didn't like him. Maybe the Unicorn would finally catch him and put him out of my misery—unless he somehow managed to kill it. I thought of the unicorn's horn and Eve's reaction to it. Perhaps we could use that to our advantage.
"May we assist you by slaying the Sisters?" I asked capriciously.
"I would not lose thee to that cause."
So the Tower didn't think I could bump off a metaphysical beast or two, eh? Well, I would have to think that she knew more about this sort of fight then I did, but that didn't mean I wasn't going to give that nasty unicorn monster a bad rash the next time I saw it.
"What may we call you?" Raj asked. I repeated his question.
"Thou may call me Desire," she told me, "but thou should call me Hell." She looked directly at Raj. "I would that it couldst be some other way. I have six other names and one of them is merely Death."
"I'm beginning to understand," Raj said quietly.
"What?" I asked him.
"Later."
Magni had collected his fallen materials and was trying to sketch this place again. He didn't seem to be having much success, for he gave up and put everything back in his pack.
"I can't get a fix on this place. It's like it shifts around," he said.
The woman—I decided to call her the Tower, as Desire was too sexual for a Goddess-thing—sheathed one of the curled daggers behind her. She held out her hand and made a fist. A drop of crimson blood hung perilously from the bottom of her hand but didn't fall. She held it toward Raj.
"Wouldst thou taste from the cup of another?"
Raj wouldn't. He would grunt, shrug, and we would ride away.
"I know what you are," Gerard's son said. "I don't need that."
I knew it. He just wasn't the adventurous type. Oh sure, when there were battles to be fought, and things to be killed, Raj was first in line. But as soon as he was faced by the unknown, especially the freaky unknown, he shied away.
Raj took a step forward and held out his hand. The Tower's blood dripped into his palm. Raj looked back at me, clearly wondering what to do next.
"What must he do?" I asked her.
"He must eat of me. He is not of the lines."
Raj wouldn't do that. He would wipe his hand on his pants and walk away.
Raj licked his palm. His eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed. Magni hurried forward to catch him as he fell. Huh, I thought. He did it. I looked at his quivering, unconscious figure. Maybe he shouldn't have.
"Bringest me the Gold," I heard, like a call from the end of a long tunnel. The eight-armed woman shimmered and faded into the mist. We were alone.
Magni carried Raj's bulk down the path to his horse. We slung him over his saddle. I checked his pulse. He was unconscious, but his heartbeat was only slightly elevated.
"Now do you believe me?" I asked his prone form.
"When he wakes up, I wonder if he'll believe me if I say 'It was only a dream.'" Magni joked.
We mounted our horses and rode back down the shore. The tide had receded and the wet sand causeway was visible. As we crossed the spit, Eve was waiting for us.
"He is hurt," she wailed like the screeching of annoying little girls. Her hand curled plaintively, reaching for Raj.
"What is he to you?" Magni asked.
"He is me, of mine." She sobbed. "He has my loyalty."
"He's fine," I said. "He's just resting."
Eve changed, turning into a twenty foot long alabaster serpent. Gold liquid dripped from fangs in her open mouth as she slithered between us and howled in anger.
"Hold your place!" Magni yelled. He drew his sword and held it threateningly over Raj's body.
"Do not hurt him," Eve wailed. With all this metaphysical moaning and shrieking, my ears were beginning to hurt.
Magni quickly dismounted and hauled Raj's body to the sand. He opened Raj's mouth and stuck his sword in it.
"Resume your former shape," Magni commanded her.
"My form is irrelevant."
"I know," Magni said. "I just want to think of you as beautiful."
Eve changed and became once again a pale young woman with long white hair. I rode around her left side, noticing that her left eye seemed to be glossed over. That was interesting.
I had been shuffling through my trump deck for a likely savior in Amber. I concentrated.
"Aedan, what is it?" she said with concern.
"Pull us through, now."
She did. I passed through the trump and into Deirdre's rooms. Magni grabbed my outstretched hand and followed, dragging the limp heap that was Raj.
"Are you okay?" My mother asked.
"Yes, thank you."
She looked us over appraisingly. It wasn't everyday that I encountered two of the primal forces of the universe, twice each, and lived to tell about it. At least this time my shirt wasn't ruined.
"What's wrong with Raj?" Deirdre said.
I looked at Magni. He said nothing.
"He's having a bad trip," I said.
"Tell me about it." She poured us each a glass of wine.
"Perhaps we should sit down."
"Ah shit," Magni stomped. "My horse!" The horses had been left behind. But didn't we have other, more important problems?
I took my wine glass and deposited myself in a comfortable chair. It had been a long night, and it wasn't over yet. This time no one had died. Well, I thought, looking at Raj, at least not yet.
"Mother, did you meet the tall, glowing thing in the Abyss: wings, heat, shrouded in mist?"
"Yes," she said. "I did." She didn't elaborate, although I waited for her.
I sighed and took a deep breath. This was going to take a while.
* * *
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