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Once, when Essek was very small, he lit himself on fire.
He would have just barely learned how to toddle around the huge manse his mother occupied when a new face appeared in the kitchens, a flat-nosed orc with big eyes and small tusks. Her name was Dev’rill.
From the Undercommon detholir, or choice, and vrin’klatu, essence. Dev’rill, the essence of a choice. She took a liking to Essek; would sneak him little bites of rice dough dusted in dusk-almond flour, or tiny slivers of imported fruits. They could still import, then. Of course, they were not at war. That would come later.
Essek, still mute, would sit on a stool out of the way and watch, wide-eyed with wonder, as Dev’rill cooked her way through entire traditional twelve-course meals (only for religious occasions, and only ever consumed in miniscule portions), humming along breathily as she stirred and seared and pan-fried and blended.
There was a certain dish, made for the final day of L’tangin D’sussun. Parchment-thin sheets of rice paper were stacked on top of one another with honey drizzled in between each of the layers, like mortar. Then it would be cut and assembled into a dodecahedron, a thick paste of honey and hazelnuts used to assemble the pieces into three-dimensional reality. The entire structure was brushed with a flammable oil and set alight, burning until it collapsed and revealed a veritable bakery’s worth of goods inside the hollow center, symbolizing the Luxon’s gifts to the Dynasty’s people.
Essek’s favorite of the treats found inside were ssinjin xukuth, balls of sweetened and chewy rice dough filled with custard dyed red, to represent the inside of a heart. Dev’rill made the best that his toddler-mouth had ever tasted, especially when they were still warm from the oven, perfuming the air with an earthy sweetness.
It would have been some very special occasion, then, that required the building of one of these sugared Beacons. Dev’rill must have been exhausted, the meal and the dessert demanding so much time that she hardly even noticed Essek on his little perch in the corner. And so, when she stepped out of the kitchen for just a moment, he found himself with a window of opportunity.
She had just put the xukuth into the Beacon and sealed the final panel, so Essek knew that they would still be warm inside their flammable hull; a delicious nut waiting to be cracked. He pulled his stool over to the counter, grabbed the Beacon with two clumsy hands, and set it down on the floor.
Later, in adulthood, he would wonder why the option of simply smashing it never occurred to him. But, he was very young, and he had only ever seen it burned. So he squatted down next to it, fumblingly lit a match (as he had seen the adults do), and set it on fire. Pholor chath.
When he originally had taken it down from the counter, the oil coating of the Beacon’s surface had stuck to his hands and his clothes, leaving a sheen on his arms. Essek went up like a shooting star, burned like a wildfire. Dev’rill, drawn by his screaming, had run back into the kitchen, and doused him in a panic. When she saw the burns, she, too, began to scream.
Essek was too young to remember the actual pain, or the way the fresh burns had looked. But he knew that his legs (from their proximity to the origin of the fire) had taken the most of the damage. He grew up hearing, nerves destroyed, pathways interrupted, lifelong. The scars were healed magically, so well that you could never tell how mangled the flesh used to be, how twisted the muscles were underneath the smooth purple skin left behind.
But he never did see Dev’rill again.
The first things that they will take are his hands.
Essek has overseen the process too many times to feign ignorance, to live out his remaining days in denial. It’s simple logic; the same as cutting away the scorpion’s stinger. Mage-binding protocol.
So he turns his hands over, and over, ignoring the way that the thin skin of his knuckles pulls on broken bones floating shallowly in their sockets. He thinks, you have served me well.
They have not, of course, served anybody but himself well. They have stolen gods, started wars, signed orders that no good man would ever give out. They tremble in their brokenness, now, twisted at angles they have never before seen, ragged fingernails and shattered metacarpals forming hideous abstract geometry. Essek doesn’t know when they will come to take them away, only that they will . So he says goodbye, to each callous and bone, every print on every finger.
He closes his eyes, thinks about what his hands have felt. The dryness of chalk, the smooth surface of a pearl, the hard metal of a conjured spoon, the polished handle of a painted umbrella, the wrinkled wrapper of a cupcake, the roughness of a match, the squish of clay, the pristine cover of his spellbook. The fabric of Caleb’s coat, filthy after a trek through hell. The stillness of his body.
Essek is glad that Caleb isn’t here. Essek wants Caleb here with a ferocity that leaves him breathless. He closes his eyes and does not weep.
His hands are removed within the hour.
His mother always dresses in white.
She is Umavi, high holy, a facet of the Beacon’s light made manifest. White is the color of priests, of mourning, of birthing, of light. Down here in the dark, she seems to glow like the rising sun, her spotless robes making her look for all the world like a huge, sanctimonious moth.
She says, “Dal’haruk d’ussta khel.” Son of my body. She does not say anything else for a while.
Essek’s mind floats; the empty space where his hands should be pulses with a pain that is so great it ceases to be pain altogether. Deirta says, after maybe five minutes of sterile silence, “When I was carrying you, I prayed for a new soul. It was selfish of me, I know. I have repented.” Essek opens his aching eyes and peers at her through half-shut lids. She has never told him anything like this.
“I have had so many children from so many lives, and not one of them belonged to me. I begged the Luxon; I said, I have given so many from my body for your Plan. I wanted one, one child that would call me mother past the age of thirty.
“When you were born, I did not become attached. I refused to. I knew you would soon undergo anamnesis and discover you were no Thelyss. Perhaps Mirimm, perhaps even Kryn, it is not for me to say. I let the wetnurse name you; that’s how certain I was that you could not be mine.”
She takes a breath, smooths down her impeccable robes. “I am told that you were a remarkably fussy infant, always crying, always needing something. The nurse began to call you eszak, for the worry you put her through. I thought it was quite funny, I suppose. And so you became Essek, and I became a mother, once more. And you never did go through anamnesis.” Essek shuts his eyes again, bites his cracked lip until it bleeds.
“And then I had Verin. You see, it was the same woman that nursed both of you, and by then I supposed she had become rather tired of my unruly offspring. Verin, for evil. A bold statement, perhaps disrespectful, but I didn’t have her fired. He would choose a new name when he entered his true Den, anyways.”
Her delicate hand flutters over the Beacon-shaped pendant hanging about her neck. “But he was mine, as well. I found myself with two children, two new members of my den, born of my body. My sons. Worry and Evil.”
Essek begins to shake, trembling uncontrollably.
“I had thought, foolishly, that after becoming Umavi I was beyond the Luxon’s lessons. I believed that I had learned all there was to learn, that I was beyond sin. I was so thankful; not one child, but two, belonging to me.”
She drifts closer, looks down at him through the bars of his cell. She says, “I was wrong. You were never my son at all. Tomorrow I will be lighting your pyre, Essek D’nau Hal. Do not shame me by begging. You were raised better.” She turns on her heel and sails out of the tiny space in front of his cell door. Essek of no Den drops his head in between his knees and vomits.
When they come for him in the morning, Essek is sitting up straight, his head resting against the back wall, his eyes open. He says, “I will not be able to stand on my own.”
They haul him up and out, dragging him through the halls of the prison he used to glide through like a pleasant garden stroll, a savant in his domain, a master in his element. He is as far from that man as he is from redemption, now; worlds away.
Essek has never heard the city so silent. No street vendors hawk skewers of crickets or spider legs, no children play at being soldiers in the streets, every shop that they pass is dark and lifeless, like a corpse. He had known that his execution would be spectated, but now he wonders at the marvel; an entire city marched into the desert to see one man die.
The bottoms of his arms are capped with mage cuffs specifically designed to hold a prisoner who wants for wrists. The cold iron squeezes on the raw places of dismemberment so tightly that he is able to feel his heartbeat through the vise, rabbit-like and panicky. He thinks, I am going to die.
Until now, it hadn’t really sunk in all the way. Now he thinks, with total detachment, oh. I am going to die. It becomes a mantra, every torturous step punctuated by the thought. I am going to die.
He loses time; a journey that should take upwards of two hours seems to take mere minutes, swimming in and out of awareness. The only constant is pain, and the words, I am going to die. He wants Verin. He wants Jester. He wants the Nein. He wants Caleb. He does not want to die. He does not want to die. He does not want to die.
When they exit the bounds of the city, he is shoved unceremoniously into an open cart. They thread chains through the iron loops on his cuffs and then to the sides of the carriage, until he is forced to crouch with his back flat against the wall and his arms spread apart as far as they can go.
The ride is a bumpy one, jolting the fresh wounds at the ends of Essek’s arms with new agony over and over again. At a certain point, they leave the perpetual night of Rosohna behind them. The guards don isto vet, veils dunamantically enchanted to place the wearer in a shroud of darkness. Essek receives no such treatment
By the end of the journey (about a day-long, with the horizon just burgeoning on evening when they halt), he can’t see anything. His cheeks are caked in salt from tears, and he feels stiffness sitting on his skin like a shell, cracking to reveal wet and weeping sores. When they unchain him, the movement of his sun-ravaged limbs causes him to emit a noise he didn’t know was possible to create. The guards laugh and squeeze his burns, jeering to one another.
Essek can hardly find reason to resent them. It was their god that he betrayed, after all. Their family and friends and lovers he prevented from returning to their arms. Their fellow soldiers he played with like dolls, watching one fall, then another. These men all fought on battlefields he created. No, he can’t make himself hate them.
The long hours crouching in the cart had spelled the end for his already compromised legs; as they ferry him along Essek is only half supporting his own weight. His burned and blistered feet scrape along dry ground and blades of desert-grass as sharp as knives, marring the once smooth soles with lacerations and scrapes. He thinks, delirious, all of that time refusing to touch the ground, and here I am.
They crest a hill, and the pyre comes into view. Thousands of people, tens of thousands of people in a roiling crowd throng around the platform and beyond. He sees the Queen, and the Dusk Captain, his mother a small pale dot beside them. He sees–
He sees them.
The Nein stand stock-still in a place of honor to the Queen’s left. They are the only people in attendance who act like they are witnessing an execution. Not even the blue smudge he registers as Jester moves in the slightest. They look like mourners at a funeral that has already happened.
Essek lets out a noise, involuntarily. It is a weak thing, pathetic and trembling in the arid air. One of the guards jostles him, which makes his arms rub against the manacles, tears open more flesh. Not that it matters, now. Essek is beginning to hyperventilate. Panic descends like a vise.
They start down the hill, arrival heralded by the quieting of conversation. Every member of the crowd shushes their neighbor, points towards Essek and his retinue, the sound of it reminding Essek for all the world of the waves of Nicodranas, lapping against the hull of a ship. He is where he began, then.
Perhaps a redundant statement. He never leaves.
As they enter the throng, the citizens of Rosohna part around him like water, so silent that all Essek can hear is the heartbeat in his ears and the wheezy sound of his own breathing. He can only think, animal fear squeezing his mind, I am alone again, after all.
They near the platform. He passes by the Queen and the Dusk Captain, who both stare at him with imparsible emotion in their cold eyes. There is anger there, yes, but also bewilderment. Oh. They don’t know why. They don’t know why he did it, why he spat in the face of the country and Queen who gave him everything. He finds some sick satisfaction in this, and then immediately feels guilt strong enough to choke him. He does not meet the Queen’s eyes again.
He passes the Nein, who stand shoulder-to-shoulder as if to keep each other standing. Jester is weeping openly already; when she sees him a fresh wave of tears racks her so violently that Fjord has to grab onto her to keep her upright. The rest of them stare somewhere into the middle distance, ranging from miserable to upset to numb.
Caleb keeps his eyes trained on the ground, his mouth a set line with crumpled corners. He flicks his gaze up to meet Essek’s briefly, and just as quickly back down again. He can hear Jester whispering a muffled prayer to the Traveler, interspersed with hiccuping breaths. Essek tears his gaze away with some difficulty. He wants to say, it is nothing less than what I am owed. He wants to say, I deserve it. He says nothing.
In his fixation on the Nein he does not realize that he has come to the first step on the platform until he trips over it. His legs, always second to him in treachery, completely give out for the last time. He begins to fall, too exhausted to flail about for support.
Strong hands catch him around his shoulders, bring him upright without the violence Essek has come to associate with his guards. The person who saved him spins him around, and Essek Thelyss finds himself, very abruptly, staring into the wide-eyed and pale face of his brother.
Essek breathes, “Verin.”
Verin does not say anything, just spins Essek back around and gently pushes him up the next stair, where the other guards shore up his miniscule weight between them. There is nothing to be done about his legs now, after all of their years of shoddy service. The guards simply lift him by the upper arms and drag him for the rest of the short distance to the pyre.
He is lifted onto a sturdily-built structure of Vermaloc wood logs, arranged for proper ventilation and cultivation of flame. The soldiers hold him in place for the duration of time between his boarding and arcane bondage to the large pole in the center. The cuffs are removed at last, tearing off large strips of traumatized flesh from the raw stumps of his arms. He hears a gutteral noise from somewhere in the crowd, familiar and alien all at once.
Essek’s head whips around to where the Nein are standing. There is Caleb, sinking down to the ground, hands over his mouth, eyes filled with some emotion Essek has never seen there before. Beau gets in front of him, trying to block his view, or restrain him, or both. Jester stares, silent, eyes overflowing with tears that she makes no move to wipe away. It is this that will haunt him, her absolute misery small in the face of the roaring crowd.
He is helpless to say anything, to comfort her, to tell her, it will be okay. To say to Caleb–
He doesn’t know what he would say to Caleb. There might be nothing to say. It might have all been said already.
His mother ascends the platform, white robes whipping in the vicious desert wind, a ceremonial torch in her grasp. She raises it to the sky, her other delicate hand making a pinching motion; a somatic for refinement. The setting sun magnifies in her fingers, a beam of light searing the innards of the torch’s mechanisms, setting it alight. She turns to the crowd.
“People of Rosohna, I am Deirta Umavi Thelyss. I stand before you to act as a receptacle and enacter of the Luxon’s will, as I have since before the beginning of our Dynasty. On this day, the Luxon’s will is that the former Shadowhand Essek D’nau Hal, who used to be Thelyss, is brought to the death of a heretic.
He is the cause of your pain. Your mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, siblings, children, all those slain at his hand, cry for justice. Let them cry no longer.” She looks to the Queen, who raises her own hands in a bid for silence, and then brings them together with a sound like the clap of thunder. She says, “Let it be done.”
It is done.
The Umavi raises the torch, and in a moment that lasts years, one hundred and twenty years, a life’s worth of minutes, an ocean’s worth of pearls, his mother touches the flame to the wood.
Essek Thelyss’s pyre goes up like shooting star, burns like a wildfire. The wood has been treated, he knows, to burn fast and brightly, which it does. The heat is immediately excruciating, but it is nothing compared to when the flames begin to lick his skin.
He made no foolish promises to himself, alone in his cell, waiting for the end. He had not said, I will not scream. Essek is a liar in all places except his mind. He knows better.
And he screams like he is ten years old again, in the kitchen, in the inferno. There is no stopping it once it starts, it will not stop until he ends. He thinks, hysterically, but Verin! Like they are children again, like Verin needs Essek to be brave. Like Essek is still the older brother, who killed his father and then held Verin through the funeral. Like they still share a room, two heartbeats away. Like Essek was ever good to him.
He cries and imagines the tears turning to steam on his cheeks, rising like ghostly vapor, like his spirit leaking out through the pores on his body. He thinks, oh.
The pain changes, abruptly. It no longer the increasing heat as he roasts alive, it is the pain of cold air meeting fevered skin. He feels as though he is being pushed and pulled, carried, set down. Hallucinations are common at the time of death. He does not let it trouble him.
The flames pat his blistered skin with cool hands, feel where much of his hair has been burnt away. They say to him, “Essek, it’s us, it’s us, please–”
It becomes much worse, very quickly. Essek thrashes, tearing his charred flesh on the wooden surface he has been set down on. It feels real. It feels real. It feels real.
Somebody takes his shoulders and forces him down, which sloughs off burnt skin and causes a pain so intense he lets out a ragged scream, trying to curl in on himself and failing, screaming again. The voice says, “No! No, don’t do– oh, oh, I don’t know if I can– How do I fix this? What do I do?”
It sounds so real. It feels so real. It’s not real.
A new voice, rough and low, says, “Dilute a potion in a tub of cold water.” The other voice, “Do you think that will-” The new voice again, harsh and miserable, “I know it will.” Footsteps echo. Voices crowd around, saying vague sentences full of stops and starts. Essek moans, waits for them to stop. It is not real.
Another new voice, “Dalni? We have to move you.” Essek whimpers. He tries to speak, cannot. He bats at them feebly with arms that end prematurely. Verin is not here. Verin is at Bazzoxan. Verin has been at Bazzoxan since their father–
He is moved. He is vaguely aware of the sounds he is making, enough at least to be ashamed. He can’t stop. He has never been able to stop.
The water hurts. He resists the hands that place him in it gently, that scoop it up in fistfuls and pour it over his ruined body. The water hurts, but it is better, too. It feels real. It is real.
Somebody opens his mouth and a liquid trickles down his smoke-ravaged throat. He finds himself, rather suddenly, able to speak. It hurts, Light, it hurts. He says, “Verin.” He says, “Jester.” He says, “Caleb.” He says, “I’m sorry.”
He awkwardly feels around with hands that are not there, until Jester says, “Oh! His eyes, put him under, put him–”
When he emerges, he can see. Their faces, their hands, eyes huge and shiny with tears. There is silence, punctuated only by splashing and Essek’s heavy breathing. It seems to last for hours.
After a time, Veth speaks, standing with her sleeves rolled up and cloudy water coating her smooth arms. “Your mother. Your mother lit that pyre.” Essek nods, helpless under her sharp gaze. Veth’s lips crumple at their borders, her eyes blink heavily, and, to his complete shock, she begins to cry silently. She smooths a hand over his ragged head, holds onto the nape of his neck, and does not let go.
Veth says, in a voice echoing with emotion, “I should have seen that. I knew– I knew there was something there. Your mother. Gods, Essek, I’m sorry.” Essek’s face screws up without his permission. He doesn’t know why this is what breaks him, but he presses his face into her warm hand and cries. He just cries.
Fjord’s hand claps his now-healed shoulder, and says nothing. They are all holding onto him now, a million tiny molecules centered around one burning star.
Caleb, who seems to have been restraining himself all this time, says, “Your hands. Oh, Essek, your hands.” Jester makes a dismissive sound, still shaky, but euphoric in relief. She says, “I wouldn’t worry about it. They’ll grow back.” She lobs Essek a cheeky wink. Beau clears her throat. “If anything he should be worried about the hair. Really, Essek, you’re going to freak the absolute fuck out.” Yasha nods sagely. “Tragic.”
Essek, incredulous, embrassaingly clogged with tears, asks Caleb, “How did you do it? How– I don’t even–”
Verin puts a hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “Ess, you should be asking how I did it. I was pretty much the lynchpin of the entire operation, honestly. You really are biased, I mean, I had heard, but I just can’t believe–”
“Verin,” chokes out Essek, “You’re here. You– What did you do?”
“I think that it’s pretty self-explanatory, honestly. ” Verin smiles broadly. “Your shockingly attractive friends found me in Bazzoxan, harrassed me until I abandoned my post, and convinced me to commit treason for my idiot brother.” Jester peeks around his arm and says, “Why didn’t you tell us he was hot?”
Caleb says, “Verin, will you show him the focus? I think that a visual might be more beneficial.” To Essek’s bewilderment, Verin reaches over the lip of the tub and begins to fiddle around with Essek’s ears. Before he can do anything, Verin withdraws his hand, a small object nestled within. A pearl, clipped on a small chain.
Essek does not try to hide his confusion. Caleb takes the pearl from Verin and rolls it around between calloused fingers, ducking his head while he speaks. “I had a thought, inspired partially by our work together. If one could use an anchor to teleport, then, maybe, one could use the anchor to bring something to them. And if you looked at it through a certain lense, then you could pull someone back physically through time. So, if you had walked a path earlier with the anchor on you, and someone cast the spell, then you could be pulled back to your exact position on the path. The subject wouldn’t even have to know they were carrying the object.”
Beau says, “You’re officially dead, so I guess it worked.”
Essek stares at them in awe. “So you had Verin plant the pearl on me, and then, what? Went to where I was marched through and pulled me there?”
“And then teleported you away, ja. After the flames were high enough to hide it. ”
“You– Caleb, that’s advanced dunamancy. That’s– that’s genius. You are a genius.”
Caleb shifts away from his gaze. “It is not so perfect as all that. The physical body is not brought back. With the spell, I mean. Any damage sustained before the spell remains.”
“Oh. No, no, I’m alright. Caleb, look at me. I’m alright. You are not going to self-flagellate for saving my life.” Caleb looks haunted in the way only he is capable of. He says, “You were burning. You were screaming.”
He and Essek stare at each other, perfectly still, consumed in a tidy dark hole of their own devising. Veth says, “Caleb, look at him. He’s here. He’s fine.” Caleb shakes his head violently. “His hands–”
“Will grow back! I mean it! Sheesh!” Jester looks rather put-out at the dismissal of her hand-growing abilities.
Essek laughs a little deliriously, rests his head against the ceramic of the tub. He closes his eyes, then rolls his gaze over to face his friends, clustered around and looking at him expectantly, holding onto him and one another, all connected by a force higher than blood.
He thinks about Dev’rill and the treats she used to sneak to him. He thinks about his mother. He thinks about pearls, about Beacons. About dinner parties, and parasols, and cupcakes. A decision. A choice. He meets Caleb’s eyes. He smiles, broadly, drops his head against the wall of the tub, says, “I’ve seen enough heat for a while. I could do with some colder weather, if you’re amenable.”
Caleb’s responding smile sets a fire in Essek’s heart.