Wherein problems are observed (Ch. 11)

“You want something poetic, don’t you? Oh futures who cares, it doesn’t take a prophet to tell you Jepchy won’t win this war. I can tell you that when the treaty is signed, the shaman brought to bear witness, as every contract between northerners must have at least one, will release a pair of strange northern rodents. They’ll devastate the local wildlife to no end. You’ll have loads of dead birds and starving moles. How’s that for a concrete prophecy?”

Excerpt from the seeings of Taisotin the lucid, the litany of days to come, second standard edition.

“Looking at the most prolific prophesiers, Jin, Gubita, Ayela, what strikes us as the common thread? I believe it to be not just the scope and distance of their foretelling, but the murkiness. It stands to reason that whatever process is underway during prophecy, there is both an element of natural skill, but also a tradeoff. One cannot prophesize far and accurately and often; something has to give. I realize my fellows will not want to hear this, but understanding what makes the Pontiac special makes her no less so, just as understanding the craft of the architect makes his palaces no less impressive.”

On the lay prophets, Introduction, Eato the half heretic.

 They walked down the mountain. It grew warmer as they descended, for a variety of reasons Wicker desperately wanted to explain to Gracchus. But by the time they settled down each night, there was only so much Gracchus would put up with before turning in to sleep. This dampened Wicker’s mood greatly.

The Tapestry was heavy, and unwieldy, and besides whatever else it was, it stank. On more than one occasion Wicker had suggested it at least be put to some use and carry their meagre possessions. Gracchus had each time responded with sulky disdain, and once had even implied he’d simply head back if he was ever forced to concede on even so minor a point. In truth, they both knew the state of the tapestry hardly mattered to the efficacy of the thing. There were times when Gracchus barely had to brush up on it to know exactly why the cobbles of Tellyphill were misshapen before the Khazar’s invasion or the crops of Meyrkopp out of season five years past.

“It’s not very useful most of the time, is it?”

Wicker hazarded this observation towards the end of the trek downwards. This followed a rather lucid explanation for the exact colors chosen for the seals of Kadyp’s many councils.

“Yeah, Maroon is an ugly color. Exactly why the council of agricultural tradition ended up with it!”

Wicker briefly considered what would happen if she explained she’d been referring to his ability to discern the past. The options seemed endless, and yet none seemed very much better than holding her tongue. She did that.

At the top of Pontiac’s point, the cold held a while longer. Dolstoy had always felt that the passage of seasons was most pleasant there at top, where the days were eternally damp, and the temperature varied only gradually. Naturally, there was never a proper storm to speak of. But just this once, it seemed to him that a bit of extraordinary weather would do no end of good. After all, he was going to confront one of the most powerful men in the world.

True, the man was a good friend of his and had been for many years. And true, the children were busy at play in some fantastic world of their own. And true, a storm would probably destroy some priceless ancient manuscript or artifact or just ruin the summer pilgrimage for some poor sod. Oh, the summer pilgrimage wouldn’t be taking place, would it? No pilgrimage ever would again. The thought saddened Dolstoy, and he took a moment to examine the sadness. He looked out the great glass pane that made up the Eastern wall of the library. Of course, there was never anything to see but a thick layer of cloud if you were lucky, and fog otherwise. Today was a good day, and the texture below was clear and mostly uniform, yet detailed and granular enough to delight the mind.

A contemplative mood set upon his embittered psyche. Why should he be saddened? He’d known for a very long time that this was exactly what Mel had been planning. And he’d done everything in his power to aid it. To his astonishment, the quiet rustling and shifting ever present in the great library was quite getting on his nerves. Strange, to imagine he’d suffered silences natural and artificial, and yet this place so many felt was the pinnacle of relaxation could bother him so. He must’ve been going mad.

Back to sadness. He wanted to examine it, not dance around it. He wanted to know why the thought of no more pilgrimages would be sad. People coming from every cranny and hole to bother the residents and the Pontiac? What was the rush? If she ever prophesized anything of immediate importance or interest, it should’ve been known in every city within the day, every town within the week, and everywhere else got along well enough without news of any other kind, so why should prophecies be any different?

Silly, glib thoughts. Unfitting, not his style at all. And yet, the sadness, the melancholy, the reflection, they weren’t fitting either. He was confident. Intimidating. Slightly brash, usually correct and always self-assured. He’d acted in control, he’d acted important, and everyone from prophets to diplomats to kings to those who’d known him since his days as a petulant child had simply accepted it as a fact of life. So why was he sad to see the pilgrimages go?

Sighing morosely, Dolstoy quietly left his seat and headed towards his meeting with Mel. Once more, he wished for fittingly dramatic weather. Once more, the day remained damp, the clouds remained low, and the sun baked everything else.

Gracchus and Wicker had finally made their way down the mountain, and now only the gentle gravel path leading to the docks remained. Gracchus had been too enamored with his captive, awestruck audience to properly discover Wicker’s plan once they reached the supposed safety of the laity. Wicker had been wracked with nerves and contemplations to discover too much of Gracchus’ inner thoughts. Much to their luck, they hadn’t missed much by never asking: Gracchus would’ve discovered Wicker was planning to work her way to the Gelton islands by selling various simple hexes. Wicker would’ve discovered Gracchus was thirteen and had little unique to offer beyond his insights into the past. But since neither had asked, there remained an air of mystique about the other, and a vague notion that should things become truly dangerous, the other would know the way out.

“The wharf. It’s been a year since! I missed the seasons there, you know? Only directives and complaints about my research. I haven’t even seen a cloud!”

“It’s lovely, isn’t it? The warm air, the cloud cover teasing rain?”

“Teasing rain? From those balls of cotton? Hah! There’s going to be a deathly heat here for at least a month, seeing how close we are to the coast. When all that vapor and salt builds up somewhere west of Gelton, that’s when you get the summer storms!”

Wicker couldn’t remember life under the clouds very much at all, so she took Gracchus’s word, as she had at his each and every utterance. Gracchus was very much pleased not to be doubted on this, as it hadn’t come from the tapestry; it had come from his recollections of his father’s farm and the constant insistence on memorizing cloud and weather patterns. All behind him now, he assured himself.

They trudged the last hour in what was by now an amiable silence. They passed by the various local types, overseeing cattle and sheep. The grass seemed to Gracchus somewhat thinner than it should have been, the herds just that bit too large for the area they had for grazing. He thought he saw Wicker gaping, but he couldn’t be sure.

Just as they were about to reach the village, Dolstoy was moping. He had such a variety of reasons to mope that he couldn’t properly pinpoint one. With disdain, he settled on the least of his issues: the secretary.

“The consort is in the midst of matters of divinity. You cannot enter under any circumstances. I don’t know what a ranger thinks he’s doing here to begin with…”

The man was droning on and on. Dolstoy knew perfectly well that Mel believed in the divine about as much as Faerdyer believed in the sovereignty of those he’d vanquished. He also knew that anyone acting as Mel’s secretary knew the same. The man probably believed that prophesy was just wise prediction based on data and probability at best. At worst, he thought it was all fabricated after the fact to fit what had really happened.

Dolstoy reflected on his own beliefs regarding prophecy. Rather, he reflected on his own knowledge regarding prophecy: it wasn’t random, it wasn’t inborn, it was only possible by one woman at a time, and it could be refined as any other skill. The degree of predictability was as of yet an unknown, one he would never get the opportunity to investigate. Mel had had both the time and the subject to investigate, but he’d seen no need. Why should he be the one to pick up the slack of the centuries? Had the prophecies been any good at all, wouldn’t they have stopped him dead in his tracks years before?

Mel had long since contemplated these questions, and yet, as all he’d worked towards finally bore fruit, his mind once more wandered to the question: why hadn’t the Pontiac done anything? Why hadn’t the Pontiac’s maidens, the scholars the preachers, anyone with a vested interest in almost a millennium of worship acted in a concerted way to stop him? Then he pushed such thoughts from his mind. There was only one person who knew a hint of his intentions, and for whatever reason Mel couldn’t fathom, he seemed fully supportive of Mel’s endeavors. Perhaps being forced to wait outside his room for no good reason somewhat damaged this support. And he had been forced to wait for rather a long time.

So long a time that Wicker and Gracchus had since made it to the outskirts of town and had become entirely caught up in themselves and their anxieties. The aggressive smell of salt and smoke engulfed and clung to every surface and permeated the air. ‘I suppose this is a novel and lovely experience, eh, Wicker?’ Gracchus remarked, but in a shy and self-conscious way, as if to indicate he truly didn’t know what to think of the wharf street either. Secretly, he wondered how Wicker was able to stay calm, when, to the best of his understanding, she’d had no contact with the outside world in her life.

Wicker was overwhelmed, too overwhelmed to feel self-conscious or strange, or even to have a panic attack. There was none of the wondering and awe at a new and unknown world that she’d expected, and she wondered why. Finally, this thought was contemplative enough to allow her to think about herself and how she must look to the strangely dense yet empty crowds. This easily could’ve led to a panic attack; had she had a moment to continue this line of thought. Fortunately, Gracchus had disappeared, and the imminent terror that something terrible had happened to the unpleasant boy was more than enough to burn away any fears of social misconduct.

“Terrible, terrible thing to see no pilgrims. Makes a man wonder, eh kid? Kids don’t wonder about stuff like that.”

Gracchus could not make out what kind of man he was, only that he felt it appropriate to drone on at an unfamiliar face. Perhaps that meant he’d gone senile, but Gracchus had decided not to judge so harshly. He was, perhaps, regretting the decision just a bit. What fun is it to interact with strangers if you can’t feel just a bit better than them?

“The sea took another one just last week. Third one this year. And a hundred more will go if there’s still no pilgrims next time around.”

Gracchus considered this, or at least he tried to. But parsing the meaning was like trying to untangle language a hundred years past. Shrugging in what he hoped was assent, Gracchus attempted to dislodge himself from the conversation. Turning to seek some avenue of escape, he realized the street was cast in deep dark shadows. So deep and dark that he could barely make out what the writhing, bleating, stinking masses were that inhabited the empty space between every two squat buildings. To his dismay, Gracchus noticed the long wharf was mostly empty, with only the occasional sailor loading or unloading cargo of indescript nature. To his greater dismay, Wicker was nowhere to be found. He made noises of polite assent as the old man rambled on.

Wicker was busy inspecting the charms placed above each doorway. She found it strange that the charms were placed above the doorway. But the charms themselves were standard and sturdy, noteworthy perhaps only in their generic nature: protection against storms, dampeners of anger, swingers of fortune, and a myriad of other minor effects. Looking up from her reverie, she spotted Gracchus nodding along to a hyena in the middle of the street. Finally, fear took hold, and she set aside perhaps too large a portion of her mind to rehearse scenarios that could arise while extricating her charge from this mysterious character.

Dolstoy was getting sick of waiting. It had been hours, and he knew for a fact that Mel was doing nothing of any importance. He’d considered barging in but had ultimately decided that patience was seldom the wrong choice. He waited, silently wishing harm and ruin on the changing clerks.

“So, young’un, that’s all that’s wrong! The world’s turned around and falling to bits it is.”

Gracchus’ patience was wearing thin. A year of patiently waiting for acknowledgment, for life, had been wasted. And for a boy, that was a long time indeed. Patience had gotten him nothing and nowhere. Speaking his mind had gotten him respect and stature, didn’t it?

“That’s not all that wrong! This place stinks a hundred years in each direction. And I know the Pontiac makes sure this place is all shiny and clean for the pilgrims, so someone’s been busy embezzling.”

It had come out in an angry, sardonic tone that didn’t quite fit the joviality with which Gracchus believed the remark should’ve been delivered with. The old man looked offended, which confirmed to Gracchus his error.

“It stinks of sheep shit you little – oh forget it. Laughing at an old man? Mind you don’t talk to your captain in that manner. Raise anchor and begone foul cretin!”

And the old man was off, towards the barren cliffs if he wanted to escape the smell, towards the grazing lands if he wanted to embrace it.

And Gracchus realized it was a mass of cattle and sheep and goats between the houses and shops, and he realized that Wicker was not a hundred paces away, hiding in the shadow of an alley too narrow to fit any sheep into. He still wondered why it was so dark. The sailors and working men gave them less than a glance. The wharf was quietly sad. Gracchus leaned on the tapestry and desperately wished Wicker had a plan to get away from the place. The stink of animals packed tightly together for just a bit too long permeated the air and the souls of all who breathed it.