kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"MindYourself"

words

She wasn't quite sure who she was. That wasn't her most immediate problem, though. She was trapped. Whoever she was, she didn't like being trapped. She had a positive aversion to it. A large window broke out of the rough hewn stone walls upon a verdant valley, from far too high to chance a climb down. The obvious way out of the room was a door. To call it a weakness, however, would have been strong optimism indeed. Rich oaken slabs were bound by hardened steel, and from the hollow sound when she tried to force the door, it was just as solidly barred.

She sat down to think about what she had available to her. Her feet were bare, and she had on a simple brown tunic tied off by a length of rope. She considered the window again just long enough to mentally measure off the rope as just shy of three feet, let alone the requisite two or three hundred. The room itself was barren.

She was lost musing about secret doors and catacombs of passageways when a skittering noise broke her out of her reverie. Rats. Rats somewhere behind one of the walls... not quite behind, but perhaps inside? Maybe there was a secret passage after all. She quickly examined the area of wall and floor whence she heard the skittering. To her surprise, she found a keystone almost immediately. She pushed it into the wall until it would go no further, and then she pushed against the area where she assumed the door would be.

The wall moved slightly, and she positioned herself more opportunely, given now that she could see the structure. The door swung freely opening into darkness. She peered into it, and her eyes adjusted just soon enough to see two small grey forms disappearing around a corner. Rats, all right. She wished them thanks. She stepped over the threshold, and turned around to close the door.

An image flashed into her mind, unbidden but savored. A handsome face, somewhat aged yet still appealing. His name whispered itself to her lips but she could not catch it. She had a vague impression of enmity, but was unsure. She clawed at the memory until it faded, with no glimmer of added recollection.

Putting herself to the task at hand, she finished closing the door and turned back to the dark hallway. No torches lit her way, and now she had closed the only entry light had to this domain. Clutching the wall, she sidled down the corridor, hoping that she was not merely making her position worse.

Her eyes gradually began to make patterns out of the blackness that engulfed them. In gradations of nothing, she began to make out another face. It was wisened but graceful. It was a feminine face that had once known beauty but had discarded it as a whim of childish days, no longer necessary, for the beauty within shone forth. It was a face that she felt kinship to, and wondered if it could be her mother.

Her parents, then? That somehow felt wrong. The man was not close to her, and seemed not nearly as old as the other. She got the odd feeling she was missing something important. She shrugged it aside, annoyed at herself. Of course she was, but she was doing the best she could.

"Patience," she cautioned herself. "Patience allows for everything into its place." Her voice surprised her. It was deeper than she had expected, reminding her pleasantly of the valley she had seen momentarily out of the window. Still she could not pull a single thread of memory from within her mind, that she had not just experienced.

Her fingers found air. A side passage, or a turn. Perhaps another room. Cautiously, she explored the area, not letting a single handspan escape her notice. It was a T. Faint memories pulled her in both directions. Somehow the area felt familiar. She knew that she had never seen this place, but still it resonated within her.

Hesitantly sidling down the left passage, a memory triggered, unrelated. She remembered sitting calmly, waiting for the man to present himself. She had been waiting for him for many years. Not quite waiting, but more expecting. She had prepared for him. The memory stalled as she tried to direct it, and so she lay against the wall and forced-but-not-forced herself to relax. For some reason, she had no trust for the man. There were others with him, none that she could recognize. Perhaps they were retainers, or guards. He must have been someone important. She expected something. She couldn't quite lay her mind on it, but she had expected him to do something. Something that she could not say. Perhaps he thought it was a surprise.

The memory ended, leaving her heart pounding. Something of the encounter was missing. She had so many questions and nothing but broken fragments of dreams.

The corridor abruptly ended two minutes of inching along further. She traced the contours of the tunnel, and it indeed simply dead-ended. After what she guessed to be an hour, she abandoned it, her prying fingers availing her no passages, secret nor blatant.

Heading towards the intersection, this time on the opposite wall, she came upon a gap sooner than she had expected. She silently blasphemed against whomever had created a complex of tunnels, without much harshness. After all, it was the selfsame tunnels that had allowed her escape thus far. And beyond that, if they were nothing save a simple passage, were one to find her missing it would be trivial for one to have her missing no more.

Suddenly, she heard the slight sound of footsteps. She pressed herself against the inside wall of the new intersection, and held her breath. Seconds passed as she waited for the footsteps to near and pass. Strangely enough they did neither. An omnipresent echo coughed lightly after each step of hammered steel on stone. A minute passed, and then five, and to her amazement she neither had breathed again nor had need to. Wonderment filled her with regard to her body. While lithe and healthy, she did not look like any sort of athlete.

The footsteps gradually died away, still not in any direction but everywhere softer. She slowly let her breath out, and breathed in solidly. There was no burning need for air, but her chest welcomed it none the less.

Panic nearly engulfed her for a split moment before her instinctual calm could overtake it. The way that she had come was blocked. She had heard no stone moving, felt no passage of air, yet the main corridor she had ducked out of was no longer immediately connected to where she stood. She shook the idea that she was being herded and headed down the hallway.

Something flickered separate from the patterns that formed out of the nothingness that otherwise enveloped her perceptions. Her myriad of colorless images slowly coalesced into a staunch grayness as she approached what she was sure now was a torch.

Closer to it, she began to make out the sides of the walls. The torch was mounted in the wall, but not securely. As she debated whether being able to see further along the corridor versus being seen immediately a voice came unbidden to her lips. "Illumination within leads to illumination without." The voice was the same and the phrase was just a phrase, most likely one that had been repeated to her by some instructor time and time again.

Still, that was enough to decide her. The torch remained where it was, and using its light while it lasted, she walked warily down the passage. Before the first torch ran out, a second joined its beacon to the firsts fading rays. The passage was definitely slanted downwards, and she wondered how much further she had till she would reach the ground. Whether she would even reach the ground or if the tower, or castle it must be for her to have walked this long in it, simply kept on going to uncharted depths.

She heard footsteps again just as another memory hit her. She pressed herself against the wall but knew there would be nowhere to hide given the torches. The memory came choppily as she fought to deal with her immediate situation. Knowing what sought her would not help if she was simply caught again. She saw a ritual being prepared, two slender sun-worn arms reaching out spreading a bag of dried herbs into a small spring. Drums echoed an off-beat staccato. The herbs were consumed by the water, dissolving as if burned leaving the surface pristine. From behind her somewhere, she heard skitting sounds. The image of a rat appeared gently in the water.

Rats! The drums! Quickly, she shut the memory out and felt behind her for the catch she already knew was there. The wall gave way to her weight and she scrambled through. The drums were his footsteps, and they had been getting closer. She padded off as quietly as she could after the fleeting forms of the rats.

There were no torches on this side of the wall. The passageway behind her slid shut silently and of its own accord. Still, she seemed to be gaining on the skittering that she heard before her. The skittering did not change course but she run straight into a wall, unprepared. She made not a sound but for the collision with the wall before her. She sat down quickly to inventory her body and ascertain what had been damaged.

As she sat her last memory came back and she was subsumed. She was preparing for his visit. He was to be her death yet she would make no move against him. He had his honor, of sorts, and she had her own. She had to allow him civility, and show him the way to his own destruction. If he chose not to follow, if he saw too deeply, then certainly the valley would be destroyed. For he had that power, and though she did as well it would destroy the valley to save it in such a manner. She slowly opened the next pouch of herbs and listened contentedly to her two rats, one upon each shoulder. Though it was a delicate ritual, perhaps her last, she could not bear to be without their company.

Her eyes opened without meaningful perception as once again they had succumbed to the utter abscence of light. It was not what her eyes perceived that had roused her, but her ears. Somewhere in the recesses of the darkness she heard the sniffling of a rat. One of her rats. What was her power? "I know you," she said quietly to the rat. Laughter answered her. It was him.

"I doubt that, but any doubt will soon be remedied. You will not escape me a second time." He had misunderstood her statement, and had given some little away. He knew of her memory loss which likely meant he was the cause. How had he done this to her? The dry cracking of bones was pierced only by a heart-wrending shriek. Her heart stopped beating. She was not sure whether it had been she or the rats that had made the sound, but in either case it no longer mattered. "Your messengers are gone."

"Despair is a trick of the weak," she told herself. This time she new it was her own voice. She was older. This younger body had to be an illusion of some sort, though she could not see the purpose in it. Perhaps he thought to weaken her spirit by reminding her of things she had lost. Her flesh was a pleasant memory with no regrets, however, and the loss of her rats only strengthened her resolve. Existance was soiled by the likes of him.

A new sound encroached on her thoughts. Hounds. Their claws rang like bells of an unholy choir, and from the sound of them they knew exactly where she was, and weren't letting any walls get in their way. Slight jolts of pain raced through her skull, heading towards her focused attention. Almost immediately she knew what had happened. And what had to be done.

Calmly, she sat down, and slowed her breathing. She closed her eyes, and sealed off all thoughts but the sound of her heart beating. It had not the strength of youth but it had the determination of age. She let her mind latch onto its rhythm and let her youthly image disappear along with her mind that had trapped it. The pain was gone.

She woke in the same room she had begun. She now felt her proper age and her flesh attested to it truthfully. A dull ache remained in her head but she ignored it. She had already won. Slowly she breathed in the air and named it friend. Slowly she breathed out the air and named it ally. Slowly she twisted in the air and bade it tempest. She was gently lifted from the ground. She gathered two immobile forms from the ground and centered her mind on a certain spriing whence she could bury them.

He had come under guise of treaty and though she knew she could not trust it, he had more than enough might of men and magery to destroy her valley. He had had to be lured away from his position of safety, and removed. He played on his men's fear and greed, and they would fall upon themselves without him to keep them in line. They were fiercely loyal to him and would die for him. Only for him. She haggled over his conditions and allowed herself to enrage him. His mind did not catch the subtle spell that had drifted onto his shoulders, for that very spell hid itself from him by engaging his emotions more strongly. The very thing that powered it enabled it to hide and feed itself further from him. In his rage, he cast a spell of binding.

He bound her to forget, the vilest curse one could call upon another who shared the kinship of forces. This was what she had planned for, the previous two weeks. Even as she fell, she could not help but smile at his chivalric nature to please her. If he had cast anything else, she would truly have been dead.

All her skill and knowledge had gone into the construction of this one ritual. The first thing the ritual did was bind fully her mind and the valley which she had long inhabited and protected. Next it prepared a haven in her mind such that there was a core of her that would not be wiped away. A tiny portion of consciousness that could struggle. And for that consciousness, it provided two necessary things. Guides to awaken it and help it, and packages for it to find. Fragments of memory that would allow it to piece together what it once had until a threshold were reached, and it would remember. She would remember.

The other necessary thing was for him to notice some slight tampering in her mind and come after. It was an edged risk, but one that had been well thought over. If she awakened with him still in her mind, he could be trapped. As he was now.

At the spring she gently let go of the broken rats several feet above the water. They drifted much like the herbs down to the water, and burned free in exactly the same manner.

"Dwellers of earth be remembered. Friends of the air be remembered. Through fire be cleansed and water reclaimed and in this valley remember. Saviours, remembered." A single tear fell after the bodies.

Slowly she stepped into the spring. It had been a long time, and she had stood her post well. Another was coming to take her place, and the valley would remember she and hers. The comer would know. The mage's castle which had been brutally erected within her valley sank silently into the earth, turning into the very earth it sank into as it was subsumed. The mage's body still in the castle, and hers, and their intertwined minds all sank and disappeared into the legends of the valley.