Chapter Text
“There’s nothing more I can do,” the cleric said. “He’ll be with the Void before sunfall. You should say your goodbyes.”
She stepped back. And then there was an uncomfortably long stretch of silence where nobody said anything at all.
Each and every one of them too struck by the horrific reality of the situation to talk, or maybe they were struggling to think what words to offer to someone they did not want dead exactly but who they would not pretend to miss. Oh, that was a bitter thought. Would be bad to go out with a bitter thought. Turn it around, even if it was becoming difficult to form any thoughts at all: The silence was an attempt at respect. Apprentice Mason had rarely earned respect from anyone, let alone the elders, but maybe on his deathbed—maybe they would give him that, at least. Give him dignity, spare the platitudes. He drew another agonized breath, and the only sound in the room was the terrible rasping noise as he struggled to keep living.
One more breath. He wanted to—he had to—he wasn’t ready! Not that he was surprised by the cleric’s verdict. No, he had clung to whatever scraps of hope he was given as the fool he was when she was sent for three weeks ago, but deep down he had known that it was never going to get better; that every day would only be more painful than the last, until he would die.
Everybody else in the village had known it too. These past few days when even potions could not help him out of bed, not even the cleric had been able to look him in the eye for long.
Another breath. His chest burned. Every last bit of will to fight it. He wanted to keep going so much, even though one after another he had lost every good thing, every joyful thing, every brightness and hope. He just wanted to live.
“Void calls for us all in turn.” Harsh voice. Loud, too, but at the same time far away. Master Mason talking, and of course it would be him, no one would have dared to speak before he had said his piece. The Apprentice was not able to turn his head, but in his mind’s eye he could see the Master standing by the doorway, arms crossed and his mouth a familiar tight line, lips moving only barely what was necessary as he spoke. “The strong and the weak alike. Half a mason, half a nitwit, he was nonetheless a part of the whole and his passing will be felt. Goodbye, Apprentice. May your suffering cease.”
He inhaled sharply, and said nothing more. Master Mason would be the one to most feel Apprentice Mason’s absence, yet some part of him must have been relieved. Two times he had threatened to send Apprentice Mason to the nitwit house, back when the Apprentice had still been an apprentice in practice and not name only, and even now reciting what was supposed to be an eulogy he could not resist taking a jab at his character.
The Master said little, and kept to what the custom required. Still even those few words made the Apprentice’s eyes water. Master Mason was saying him a goodbye and all he could do was draw another rattling breath.
Each in turn, the other elders wished him a peaceful journey to the Void. The Apprentice tried to concentrate on their voices, but he kept slipping. At some point most of them left. It was getting dark. Either the day was already turning to night, or it was the Void’s darkness creeping closer, reaching for the Apprentice’s erratically beating heart. The darkness was filling his chest, eating him from the inside out and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. He was beyond exhaustion and the promise of nothingness was almost sweet, but he had to stay awake. He had to live.
Silence again. They had stopped talking. Maybe they had stopped talking a while ago; but then there was somebody new right by the apprentice’s bed.
“Scar,” said a softer voice. "Can you hear me?"
"That’s no way to address a dying man," scolded Master Mason. He had not left the room with the others, then. He was not a kind master, but he would not shrink from his duty.
"That’s what he would want," said that voice that belonged to Apprentice Mason’s best friend, Apprentice Librarian, and his boldness must have stunned even Master Mason to silence, because he went on: "Scar, I’ll miss you. Do you hear? I don’t know what to say other than I'll miss your laugh and your voice, and I’ll even miss you trying to get me to sneak away from the duty. I should’ve come with you more often. I’m sorry I didn’t. I wish it wasn’t your time to face the Void."
Then, with double the boldness, he took Apprentice Mason’s hand.
The Apprentice had never quite managed to be what was expected of him. For most of the villagers his passing was merely an unfortunate end to a life that had been somewhat unfortunate even before he had fallen ill, but at the death’s doorstep he had a friend to hold his hand.
He had a friend. That made a difference.
In darkness, he gasped for air until his heart gave out. He stilled, and he died.
—
He was still gasping when he woke up again.
Desperate, in darkness, woolen cloth over him that stuck to his mouth from the first inhale, Scar woke up. He groped blindly at his face, ripped away the shroud and sat up.
He had not sat up properly for days.
He was in the Healing House, alone, and it was nighttime and silent. That should have made sense, because he had been stuck here for he had lost count how long, but something was off. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and even though they felt weak, he thought he might be able to stand, so he did.
He stood, barefooted, and waited for his knees to buckle. They did not.
It occurred to him he could be dreaming. Some said the Void was a big dream, even though it was also, in the words of the clerics, supposed to be nothingness and the end of everything.
Scar walked softly to the corridor. It had been a long time since he had walked without assistance. It was not effortless; there was the familiar instability that made him touch the wall so that there would be something to lean on if he stumbled, but his legs moved like he meant for them to move. He barely paid attention to breathing.
All in all, it had to be a dream.
Moon was full. When Scar reached for the knob on the door at the end of the corridor, he half-expected his hand to pass through it, but the knob was solid and the door creaked open. Even though every lantern was out, Scar was able to make out the sleeping cleric’s face. In the soft silvery light she looked as ethereal as he felt.
In normal times, nobody lived in the Healing House and nobody slept there if there was no patient to treat, but the cleric had traveled from the hilltop village to attend to Scar and she had made a temporary corner for herself here, her robes hanging by the doorway, her bags by the bed ready be grabbed when, come morning, she would prepare to leave.
She slept soundly. Scar hesitated. He was not supposed to be here. He was a dreamer or a ghost. But, as often happens in a dream, like directed by some will beyond his understanding, he was compelled to speak.
“Hello?” He waited for the cleric to stir. “Hello there,” he said, awkward, heart leaping to his throat as he watched the cleric’s eyes widen, and her mouth drop open. “I… remember I died. But I don’t think I’m quite as dead as I should be.”
—
A miracle of life. Whether it was for the benefit of the village was yet to be decided.
Master Librarian was the first to offer an explanation in the form of an obscure legend about immortal ones detailed in her dusty books. That first morning she recited it from memory. She was known to be wise, so many believed her, and they treated Scar with a mix of caution and awe that, even at the start, bordered on worship.
Some explained Scar’s return as the work of evil spirits or some inhuman transformation. They said he was cursed and would have gladly run him out of the village, if not worse, but lucky enough that was a minority opinion. Most of the elders—and Master Mason the first among them—were convinced Apprentice Mason was never dead in the first place; he had just managed to hang on to life long enough to get better. The cleric who had declared the death was an outsider, her word could not be trusted. This opinion seemed to become vindicated when slowly, over the next weeks and months, Scar began to again lose his ability to walk. He had survived one bout of illness, but now it had come back. His return to work at the masonry did not last long.
The ending came faster the second time around. The scene around the bed was different: there was folk outside the Healing House hoping to catch a glimpse of another miracle, there was even less heart than before in the well wishes for the journey to the Void (excluding Apprentice Librarian, who was so distraught he looked like he might cry), and the mood was not solemn. It was laced with anticipation.
Scar died.
He came back.
He could stand and walk, he remembered everything up to the moment of his final breath, and he could offer no insight into how come he was alive.
In the preceding days, Master Librarian had together with her apprentice dug through the House of Records to find every book and scroll and scrap of paper with even a hint of a mention of the legend. Now she got the whole village for the audience.
It was an extremely rare occurrence, she said, according to annals that spanned every story anyone passing through the village had ever told, for an immortal to appear. It could be a human; it could be an animal, or even a monster. Some creature living out a seemingly ordinary life, but when it comes their time, the Void will not take them. They will be spit back to the world to shape it, to change it, for good or ill; to create destruction, or wonders. Either way, the world would feel their presence, and they would keep returning—perhaps until their purpose was filled, or perhaps forever.
Scar had dismissed such stories the first time around, despite Apprentice Librarian trying to convince him to come look at the books, apparently hoping that just seeing the words he could hardly even read would spark something in him. Now he could no longer keep pretending he did not notice how some people bowed their heads in his presence, because everyone was doing it. Master Mason was doing it and that was what made it finally sink in.
Maybe I’m just very lucky, he tried to say, people make up the most ridiculous stories, am I right? You don’t need to—really, there’s no need for all that, you can look at me! I allow it!—but his protests were ignored; and truth be told, he did not feel very lucky at all.
He should have, he knew. He was the luckiest man alive: after all, he got to live! Live and live again, that was all he had begged for for so long, so what did it matter he would never be a mason. What did it matter if every morning filled him with dread.
World-changing, said Master Librarian, and Scar could not fathom what that could mean . He did dream of impossible things sometimes, stonework that went far beyond what Master Mason thought him fit to learn and lands that would be vast and wild and that would have cities even though he had never been farther than a day’s walk away from the village; but all people dreamed. His reveries were just ill-suited for an apprentice. He did not feel any different than he had before: not any more skilled, not any more courageous, not any more able to affect his fate. His body that had been failing him was still failing. It happened faster too every time, he thought. He got out of breath walking on a level ground, and then next day walking proved to be too difficult a task and he stayed in the house he had been given, the biggest house in the village, anxious and increasingly angry as he approached his third death.
He got to be the worst kind of immortal. A real joke: an immortal that kept dying.
While Scar had been doing nothing much at all, Apprentice Librarian’s diligent work had been rewarded and the elders approved of his nomination to a journeyman. He was still Scar’s friend, although a distance had grown between them that Scar tried to pretend did not exist. Even though Journeyman Librarian did not bow to him, from his too-still posture and how careful he was setting his every word, Scar guessed he wanted to.
“Did you find anything?” Scar asked him, but it was difficult to keep a hopeful note to his voice when he could already read from his friend’s face what the answer was going to be. Journeyman Librarian had volunteered to help him search for a cure—to look at every obscure rumor and story, no matter how improbable or fantastical it sounded, for anything that could stop Scar’s health from draining away.
Journeyman Librarian sat by his bed. He fidgeted with his fingers. “I don’t think there’s anything more in the books about that underwater city,” he said, apologetic. “It could be better to move to something else. The trader might have made up the story herself, but even if not, the origins are not stored in the House of Records.”
“But it could still be—”
Pain in his chest cut him off. Scar concentrated on fending off a coughing fit. He was running a fever, and in the past two days his ability to move or even talk had deteriorated so rapidly that, despite all the healing concoctions the cleric had left to the village the last time she visited, if this bout of sickness did not take him, the next one surely would.
Journeyman Librarian looked at him brow furrowed, sad and fearful and deeply uncomfortable, and waited for his breathing to stabilize as much as it ever would. “There’s nothing about it, Scar. All we have is some traveler’s claim there is some structure deep in the ocean. There’s no mention of a healing power, or, or—”
“It sounds magical,” Scar whispered. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He was terribly thirsty, but trying to swallow anything would lead to the cough getting out of control. Still, he would ask the man assigned to care for him for the day—one of the farmers, not the worst and not the best of his constantly changing servants, but at least this one he knew would not cower for him or be openly hostile—to help him drink once Journeyman Librarian had left. He had come to hate asking for help, but there were some realities he had to accept, and if he had to go through this same crushing ordeal ten or twenty or a hundred more times, he could not afford pride.
“No mention of anything else that would help you, and how would you ever get to the bottom of an ocean?” Journeyman Librarian finished. “All that water. We need to look somewhere else.”
Scar nodded weakly. “I suppose. I’ll be up helping you in a few days, then we can…” he made an ambiguous gesture by turning his wrist and trailed off.
Journeyman Librarian smiled weakly. “Yes, I’m sure you’ll get better.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Scar said.
His friend seemed to shrink at that, and soon after he made an excuse to leave, but he did squeeze Scar’s hand before walking out of the door.
—
Two days later, Scar was indeed up and about, and he dedicated his time to a search for and trying out or even inventing things that would stop him from dying. He was not picky with what he would try; after all, he had precious little to lose. A kid would run to him, wave a leaf of a plant he did not recognize and tell him it was magic—and he would chew it down, because while he did not seriously expect it to do much other than upset his stomach, he had to feel like he was making some kind of progress. Even if it was only by working on the process of elimination.
Twice he poisoned himself. Once he got a rash that spread all through his skin.
When he got too frustrated to think, he worked a little bit with clay, and sometimes he sat for an hour or two drawing—and not the kind of diagrams Master Mason had taught him to make, but pointless pictures of flowers and trees he thought were beautiful—but he tired quickly. Weeks passed. He grew weaker.
And then one day to the village came a peddler. A traveling stranger in strange clothes, saddlebags filled with trinkets and a cart full of colorful cloth. They had not visited the village before—out of their normal route, they said, but there were rumors of a man that could not die and tales and stories were a part of their merchandise.
“I’ve seen many a peculiar thing,” they said, spreading out their wares, “though never anyone who has cheated the Void. I’ve traveled far! A cow with two heads, a ghost in a barn—here’s a ring that it dropped! And here my most valued treasure: a map to a house where the wishes come true!”
The villagers bought fabric for finer clothes, and some even haggled for jewelry. Scar invited the traveler to his house.
“For the map,” he said, pretending the confidence he did not feel, “you can get my story.”
The peddler eyed him, sly. “The map is worth much more than words, no matter how pretty. Besides, since this morning, I’ve heard the story thrice over.”
“You could hear it from me!”
“From the man himself? Very good, very well. For that treat, I’ll give you the story of the map. A story for a story.”
Scar was tired. He was close to an end. He did not want to recount his deaths, he did not want the word of himself to spread, and the peddler’s tale was bound to be hogwash exactly like the city under the sea. Even so, he did not hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “A story for a story. You go first.”
Far from here, said the peddler—very far, they had never traveled there, but they had heard from people who had spoken with people who had—grew a forest so old that the trees were the size of houses, and it was eternal twilight there, because the leaves were thick enough to cover the sun. No people lived in the forest; nobody dared approach it. There were monsters there, of course, but if one would dare venture in—at this point the peddler leaned closer—if they’d venture in, from the deep hollow in the forest’s heart they’d find a mansion.
“What is in the mansion?” Scar asked.
Creatures, the peddler said. The story does not tell their name. But they are powerful, and if one approaches them with respect and reverence and is willing to serve them in return, they will grant boons. Naturally like all such beings of power they are fickle, and dangerous. It would be ill-advised to seek their favor. Nothing good dwells in such a place. Nothing good would come of it.
The peddler themself would have never advocated for that kind of a journey. But they did have a map. They had had it for a long time; for a curiosity, it was one of a kind, and they would not sell it cheap.
So that was the story: a faraway palace, a dangerous journey, mythical beings that would grant wishes. Scar let out a small laugh that was on the verge of a wheeze. A wheeze would easily turn to a cough, so he cut it out, but he couldn’t help his hands shaking. If there was even a morsel of truth to the tale, it was better than anything he had chased all year. He had no riches, though. The village combined did not have much. Journeyman Librarian would have urged him to seek help from the elders, but—
“I’ll take the map,” Scar said. “I can trade for it. I can give you something even better than my story.”
“What’s your offer?”
Scar smiled weakly. “My death.”
The peddler stared at him, brow furrowing.
“You get to witness it,” Scar clarified. “Stay for a week. You can be right at my side as I die, and when I come back, I’ll get the map.”
Scar thought the peddler only now began to consider what it would mean if a man who did not die was real. They considered it. They considered it more.
“I can see all of it? The dying and the death and the rise?” The peddlers eyes had narrowed. They were expecting a trick, but there were no tricks to the deal. They would get exactly what they were owed.
“All of it,” promised Scar. “You can—you can touch the body. You can make sure.”
“Then I take the deal,” the peddler said. “I will stay as your guest, I will watch you die, and if you come back to claim it, then the map to the mansion is yours.”