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Perhaps I should lose all sense at the sight of you, waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. However my first thought is that a stranger is wearing my son’s face, because there is a standing call for your arrest the moment you are seen this side of the Ashkeepers, and because your soles are flat on the floor.
We regard each other for a moment, heads tipped in contemplation. I consider the possibility that I am being cheated: that some interloper has stolen your visage to manipulate me into some indiscretion. Then there is the chance that you are the one being cheated, and that one of your enemies has broken our den’s wards to steal me away as leverage against you. I hope that is not the plan, not least because I do not think it would work.
There is the chance that my queen has sent this apparition, in a test of my loyalty. I banish that thought, back to the Underdark whence it came.
Perhaps we should have swept each other up by now, clinging giddily.
“Would you mind casting something for me?”
For years, I learned of your magic from glowing reviews of the Marble Tomes, from honors accrued on your rise through the Lens. Still I remember a tiny slip of a child calling a family audience in this same room. With a practiced scowl of concentration, like a scholar five times your age, you sounded out syllables from a page of notes in your crooked, childish script, half the ink bleeding through. You arranged books and pillows and other varied props in circles around your feet, and then waved us back, warning us off for our safety. Perhaps I should have asked after your safety too. Moments later, you were enveloped in those props, vanishing as gravity magnified and your slice of the world collapsed in on you.
You lift your fingers now and curl them without fanfare, the gestures simultaneously precise and careless. Perfunctorily, you vanish and reappear in five, ten seconds, just beyond my reaching fingers.
It takes me a moment to understand that you just banished yourself. This magic briefly erased your existence, not only from our plane but from time itself. It is a dazzling demonstration of casual dunamancy, in the hands of a master.
The unease remains, though I can no longer doubt you are Essek of Den Thelyss. I speak on instinct, and follow the incantations of a good hostess. “Would you care for coffee?”
“Of course, you honor me with your offer.” Your reply is exquisite Undercommon, with an accent to suggest a place in the highest echelons. Like your dunamancy, it is too subtle for meddling wizardry to duplicate. You inflect your words with semi-formality, appropriate to address an Umavi.
(Not strictly inappropriate for a mother, only distant. I did not expect such shows of officiousness from you or Verin for many years, until the Matron herself seals me away.)
Like a good guest, you keep your distance as we turn together to the parlor. I will not call anyone to witness this, whatever this is, so I fetch the necessities myself and set to brewing at the table. Properly done, brewing is a slow, artful process. Measure out the coffee, crushed by dunamancy to the finest powder. Fold it with a heap of sugar into fresh, chilled water. Bring it to a boil twice, saving the foam. I boil it one time more, buying time while we can both pretend to be devoted to this coffeepot. The flickering conjured flame in its copper base truly fascinated you once, and it draws your eyes now.
My hands are busy with cups and spoons, but I steal glances at you, attempting to fill in six decades without so much as a sending. There is a hard set to your lips as you scrutinize the flame. You have meticulously lined your eyes in black and painted over where the shadows of a face should be: armor for battle, by the courtly standards of the Bastion.
You sit straight, but it is otherwise difficult to make out your frame: covered in dark layers, wool and muslin and fur radiating enchanted warmth. Rosonha’s winter has proven pleasantly temperate, so perhaps you have not changed your clothes since Rexxentrum. Or perhaps your limbs have simply gone jittery and cold, as mine have. As the coffee finishes, I graze the back of my hand against hot metal and scarcely feel it.
“Are you well?” When I let the silence go too long, you supply conversation, papering over the gap in my social graces.
“The den flourishes. How do you take your coffee?”
“I will be pleased, however you like to make it.”
“And are you well?”
“I cannot complain.”
In the ensuing pause, I catch sight of the cream. You would drown your coffee in it when you were small, before you learned the combination was near-heretical. You seemingly gave up expressing all opinions on food soon after that, as if the stuff of material sustenance was beneath you, and I could only guess how to indulge you.
Cream in coffee is the slightest of blasphemies by our current standards, and on a whim I tip it liberally into your cup. I hand over your drink and await either a smile of recognition or an adult’s polite rejection.
You take it and sip with no change in expression, as if you taste neither cream nor coffee at all. I have known simulacra constructed from spellwork and ice to show more emotion.
“Verin is well.” I sip my own drink. “He has just been promoted, and can summon two echoes at once.”
I have welcomed countless reborn souls back into the den and caught them up on our current blessings. You have heard me hold this conversation before, and follow the motions expertly. “Bazzoxan is lucky to have him.”
“He plans to marry next year. Ayla of Den Mirimm.”
The first emotion flickers across your face, too fast for me to parse.
“I wish them well.” You hit precisely the right pitches with your response, balancing warmth and interest. Perhaps you even mean them. “What is she like?”
“A new soul. She travels around Xhorhas as a botanist, but she is based with the Marble Tomes.” When you stay silent, seemingly expectant, I add, “She is well-spoken. Truly passionate about Xhorhas’s welfare, from her unusual angle. She is elegant, patient, and she loves to laugh.”
“Then she will like Verin,” you say with a nod.
I could imagine you are poking fun at your brother here, at how his malapropisms elicit frequent chuckles. A millennium ago, I dreamed of a house full of laughter, of siblings chasing and teasing each other, who would fall and cry and curl up in my lap for comfort.
(Then I spent one life meticulously cutting out any chance of bringing Lolth new blood, and another in a body that did not bear children. I feel keenly how any natural mother’s intuition I ever possessed has withered away.)
“To the extent that you can safely answer, could you tell me about the company you keep these days?”
“I met with the Mighty Nein just last week.”
Not an answer I expected. “How are they?”
“Half dead.” At my frown, you clarify, “Half of them are dead. Not a surprise given their lifespans.”
Of course. “It is lovely that you still see each other.”
“Yes. It was a funeral.”
You say this steadily, bluntly matter-of-fact. We accept death so poorly in the Dynasty, and though you refused consecution, you were once no exception. I cannot imagine how you grew to be utterly unbothered by the thought of oblivion.
Discomfited, I cannot guess at all why you are here. “The Lens still watches you.”
Maybe you came here out of misplaced optimism, thinking sixty years would erase the price on your head, but it has done nothing of the kind. I am wading into treason with you, with every second that I do not set the rocs on your trail.
If this news surprises you, you do not show it, replying only with a wry twist of your lip that cannot be called a smile. “I wonder what they have to say.”
That you encounter apocalypses every few years. That you disappeared so thoroughly after several of them that it was speculated that you had died, saving this land from certain ruin. It has been a struggle for me to believe any of it, when all the Dynasty has built since the Calamity was meant to keep our children swaddled and safe.
“That you have continued adventuring,” I say, “and have progressed significantly in your dunamantic research.”
This should please you, when nothing else seems to.
And you chuckle in a parody of good humor. “Progress cannot be called ‘significant’ once it is of interest to precisely no one else.”
Modesty suits us poorly, Essek.
“No one?” I prod, not concealing my skepticism. “I cannot believe that.”
You abruptly fix the full force of your stare on me, a ray of sheer disdain that would leave softer souls cowering. “One of my primary findings is that the beacons are not gods.” After a moment’s pause, you commit to the charge. “They are the creations of mortals, though I acknowledge the possibility that some of those mortals may have practiced divine magic. As for dunamancy, it was established long before Xhorhas, with a rich historical record dating back to Aeor at the least. And the Bright Queen knows all of this,” you tack on, a burst of acid.
You mean to shock me with this speech. And it is true that I have not seen the tapestry of Xhorhas’s self-respect unraveled to bare string like this in centuries, since Leylas and Abrianna and I were on our fourth coffeepot, frantically weaving a rope of faith that might pull our people out of Lolth’s grasping reach. This speech would see you shot without trial, if you uttered it in the Bastion. It would get you torn limb from limb, if spoken on this city’s streets.
And I see your purpose in coming here. Mothers are meant to cradle, and nourish, and soothe, but you expect me to castigate you soundly for speaking this way. You expect me to report your treachery to the new Shadowhand I’ve never liked, to fling open our home’s gates and let you be carted off to the Dungeon of Penance. You speculate that I already reported you when I stepped away for the coffee, and am only stalling for time now. When you fall, it should be my privilege to be your soft place to land, and you have cast me as your executioner.
Perhaps you might fight when encircled by the Lens, loosing arcane fury and leaving this fortress in rubble. I might prefer that, over the possibility that you will go quietly.
Still I cannot guess what you need. I wait, until the silence might break you and bring further truths spilling forth. You wait, and surpass me.
“Essek. May I ask, whose funeral was it?”
You snap back to your prior perfection, words impeccably measured and even. “Caleb Widogast’s. He was the wizard of the Nein. Zemnian-born. But rather competent with dunamancy.”
Rather competent with dunamancy, you say. I remember a time that this would have counted as a declaration of love, from your lips.
Perhaps it still does.
I look at you, taking in every scrap of evidence I can find. The heaviness that seals your feet to the floor and sits with the mantles on your narrow shoulders. The bold strokes of kajol that cannot hide your tired eyes. The layers of cloth and magic struggling to press heat into a body that has forgotten its own warmth. Your whole soul has locked up tight, growing hard if brittle, manufacturing steadiness and certainty where there is none. I look at you, and it is like facing my own echo.
I respond, “May a star find you in your sunset.”
These are the formal words of our language, for marking the most personal kind of loss. They are rarely used anymore, even for widowers, when we know the lost will circle back to us in time. They are so old-fashioned you will likely not even recognize them, unless you read the phrase in one of the Xhorhasian history books you used to devour in your youth, straining to understand your people.
Impossibly, you stiffen further, and it seems I have misstepped. I have presumed too much and misunderstood you once again, blind and fumbling. I hardly know who this Caleb Widogast was to you. I fear I do not know you at all-
A fleeting, genuine smile crosses your face, chased by a crumpling exhale. You begin to weep. I am sure of it, though you pull an orange scarf up from under your sleek cloak and cover yourself from view.
I can imagine it is a mother’s intuition that draws me to you, to cradle your dear head against my belly. To catch you gently as you fall.