Ch. 431 - Like He’d Never Left

Nothing had changed when the gates to the caldera-city were finally opened to Simon, not immediately. He wasn’t even fed right away. Instead, he was given water and given robes to change into. As he was led through a part of the cliffside city to do that, he looked for the sisters he’d brought here along with any familiar faces, but found none. 

Well, most of the acolytes will be swimming already, he realized, as he went. He wasn’t looking forward to that daily ritual, but he couldn’t deny the effectiveness, even if he doubted he’d be particularly effective at swimming down one hand. 

The robes he was given hit him with a wave of nostalgia, and it was only after he stripped, put them on, and stepped back out into the thin morning light that he realized they were several shades darker than he really deserved. He could still see auras, even if not half as well as he could a few weeks ago. He doubted he could see the currents in the water, so he probably deserved somewhere in the gray spectrum. 

Still, he didn’t complain about that, either. If they’d given him black robes, he probably wouldn’t have complained. He was just glad that he’d gotten the Whisperers and the other sisters to a place where they’d be safe. 

He only asked what was going on when he wasn’t directed to go swim and join the rest of the acolytes and initiates as he’d planned. “We require your help in other ways today,” the man escorting him said. “Your own clarity will likely have to wait for some time.”

Simon had a few minutes to wonder what that meant as he was brought to one of the larger temples, where most of the sisters were housed. They were, to a woman, wearing black robes, and obviously unhappy about it. White was their color, and they were being denied it. 

Taking a look at everyone’s expressions, it was clear they were about to have a mutiny on their hands about the issue. So that’s why I was finally allowed in, Simon mused. Trouble in paradise. 

He spent the next twenty minutes explaining what the colors symbolized and why they were wearing black. None of them was happy about it.

“But you’re not weaning black,” one of the older sisters insisted. “What makes you special?”

“The Unspoken do not speak magic,” he answered simply. He started in on a lie about how laymen didn’t always wear back, even though they almost always did when another argument started up. This one was about the word of nullification, Uuvellum, wasn’t magic. Several of the women spoke it aloud, and Simon could see the acolyte who had led him here blanch at the sound. He did too, even if he had nothing to fear from such a benign word; it just felt wrong in this place.

Simon responded to that immediately and shouted all of them down. “The Whitecloaks that gave you this life might have told you that it wasn’t a magic word, but a holy one, but I tell you, they lied, and you must never speak it again. If you do, you will shorten your lives, but even more importantly, you will almost certainly be exiled from the only sanctuary you are ever likely to know. Magic is forbidden here.”

It wasn’t, not completely. He knew that the Oracle was capable of magic, and in some of her sessions with her most advanced and loyal devotees, he was fairly sure that she taught them some as well. The rules for Hepollyon were not applied evenly, though, and a serious breach of them like this was far more likely to result in someone going for one last swim in boiling water than in being shown the door. 

He didn’t tell the women that, though. While not everyone believed him about the nature of the word of nullification, they were sufficiently cowed that they didn’t argue. After that, when he’d apologized for their outburst, the day's work really began; that was when Simon understood why they’d been given this temple, at least for now. 

“You are to teach them the basics, at the very least,” they instructed him. “Greetings, simple objects. Enough to eat and work. Once they understand our tongue, they can swim and work and learn the rest for themselves.”

The white-robed acolyte who told Simon this smiled neutrally as he told him, like it wasn’t that big of a deal. It was, though. Even the basics of a very foreign tongue would take weeks to months for most of the women in attendance to learn. 

“Could I perhaps get something to eat?” Simon asked, not bothering to argue. While he hadn’t planned on it, teaching was the most valuable thing he could do right now. 

“You can break your fast at the midday meal,” he said, twisting the knife one final time before departing. It was honestly the least hospitable that this place had ever been to him, and as he began to teach, he sincerely wondered if the foretold death the Oracle had hinted at was going to be starvation.

Simon used a chunk of raw chalk and a dark basalt wall that had clearly been used this way a thousand times before, and laid out the alphabets of both languages, one atop the other. They had only a few characters that were different, so that part wasn’t so hard. He then spent the next few hours repeating them with his new class and quizzing them until he could finally eat. 

That was the highlight of his day. Even though it was a simple meal of seared goat meat strips and fragrant rice, it tasted like mana from heaven, and he had to force himself to slow down, just so he wouldn’t inhale the entire dish. 

After that, the day was better. They focused on simple things, like hello and goodbye, and by the time they got to the inflection differences between good morning, good day, and goodnight, it was time for dinner. Just like that, his first day of teaching in lifetimes was done, and he found he’d enjoyed it. 

Still, as much as he might have enjoyed stepping back through the curtain of nostalgia to some of his oldest and most important lives, all of that fell away when he saw Zoa, or more like, when she saw him. He didn’t know how he’d feel to see her again, but before he had time to think about it, he knew what it was like to feel her again as she wrapped him in a hug. 

Public displays of affection, especially in places as public as the dining area, were generally frowned on, but everyone met the moment with amused smiles and good-natured jokes. This was clearly a long-anticipated reunion, and not just by the woman he’d grown to care for in one life. 

Did he care for her now? Of course, in a way, but he doubted he ever cared about her as much as she did for him in this moment. Eventually, they both ate, which allowed a reprieve from the conversation he dreaded, but he found no acrimony in her words, her soul, or even her bottomless eyes.

She was closer to forty than thirty at this point, but he didn’t much care about that. He was certainly older than he’d been when he was here last, too. He was a cripple, too, which didn’t generally bother him, but in this moment, it did.

They drank white wine with dinner, and celebrated their reunion in a series of toasts that left them both half drunk. Afterward, they walked along the shore of a boiling lake, and held hands, and really, it was like he’d never left. In that moment, as much as he thrilled in her presence, he couldn’t help but think that this was how his meeting with Elthena was supposed to go when they were reunited so long ago. It was just too perfect. 

When he walked her home after their foggy, moonlit stroll, he intended to leave her with a kiss at the door, but instead, he was half dragged into her room, and as soon as they were on the thin mat that was her bed, their clothes came off. 

“I want you,” she whispered, biting his neck. “No, I need you. It’s been so long…”

Simon could hardly refuse that invitation, as much as part of him wanted to. He felt a twinge of guilt at that, like he was somehow using her, even though that was ridiculous, but only in those first moments. After that, his need for discussion and disclosure burned to ashes in the heat of their shared passion. 

Their first round didn’t last very long, but it didn’t need to. It was about the union more than the act, and the physicality more than the pleasure. It was raw and desperate, and only slowed briefly as they lay there in the dark.

She ignored his maimed limb and kissed him with passion anyway, as he tried to explain his absence; they melted into each other. He didn’t love her, but he could see how easy it would be to change that. After all, she didn’t carry a torch for him. She carried a bonfire.

The two of them got very little sleep that night, mostly because every time he tried to apologize or explain himself, she silenced him with kisses. It wasn’t until the following day, after he’d finished another round of teaching, that there was much talking between. This was mostly to catch him up on other events.

She did eventually ask him about the other women, but explaining that they were refugees from a terrible religious order didn’t do much to assuage the jealousy he could see at the edge of her words. “I haven’t been with anyone else,” he promised her. “And the sisters? None of them mean anything to me, at least not like you. I’m just tired of seeing them living crippled, shortened lives.”

She quickly changed the topic, but even as he did so, he tried to figure out if he’d slept with Elthena since their last parting, or if that was before. Without checking the mirror, it was impossible for him to remember, and he resolved to forgive himself for it, either way. He’d been drunk then, and he’d been drunk now, so it seemed somehow fitting. 

They fell asleep in each other's arms, and Simon slept as well as he had in lifetimes. He almost resented the sun when it came and forced them from their thin pallet, and from a warm embrace back into scratchy wool robes. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to… well, we didn’t get much talking,” Simon confessed. "At least as much as I would have liked."

“It’s fine,” she said with a smile and a hug, “You’ve got the rest of your life to make it up to me.” After that, they parted ways, but Simon knew that they probably wouldn’t do any more talking in the nights that followed, at least not anytime soon.

Ch. 432 - You Should Know Better

For the next month, that’s all life was. Every day, Simon taught the sisters he’d brought how to live in their strange new situation, and every night he rekindled a passion with Zoa that had long been dormant. No, not a passion with Zoa, a passion period. He fed on her affection and slowly returned it.

It was blissful, not least of which, because he didn’t have to hide anything from her. While he didn’t explain every last detail or anything, if he mentioned auras or mirrors or even Whitecloaks in the afterglow as they lay together, she didn’t judge him or pull away. After wearing a mask for so long, he’d forgotten what it was like to just be. It was like a kink in his neck he’d lived with for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it was like to live pain-free. 

Many of the Whisperers learned quickly, and after a few weeks spoke a couple of dozen common phrases. That was the easy part. Introducing them to their new morning ritual after that was harder, both because it seemed crazy and because nudity was a lot more taboo in Brin than it ever was in Ionia. The coastal people reveled in their bronze tan, and while artisans and city dwellers usually wore fine togas, fishermen and laborers often lived their lives half-nude in loincloths or less. 

While Simon had once experienced similar reservations, he’d grown used to them long ago. While Simon spent a day or two with each group of sisters that was allowed to mingle with the wider community, he always came back to his classroom. That was a full-time job, since it was increasingly the oldest and slowest learners that he was stuck with. Still, Simon thought that in another two or three months, everyone who was well enough to work would be released from his care, and he’d be free to live a normal life in that community.  

Until then, though, his tasking kept him busy enough that he never had the time to spend with Zoa when the sun was up. That one little detail made all their meetings feel like secret trysts, even though they were anything but. Everyone knew, including Kristos, and all of the other acolytes he’d once called friends.

Even the sisters who were slowly integrating knew, though they sometimes had questions about how he could have found such a devoted partner in such a short time. Fortunately, the language barrier made it easy to tell two different audiences two different stories; Simon had no idea what he’d do in six months or a year when the sisters knew enough Ionian to find out that he’d had a whole life here, and the timelines didn’t quite match up. 

He certainly didn’t tell them about the mural he made, even when he was asked about it directly. “Is that really what it’s like when you can truly see?” a Whisperer named Drusilla asked him one day when everyone was on their way back from the day’s labors.

“So I’m told,” Simon agreed, enjoying the way that she and other women praised his old work. He’d positioned it such that it was impossible not to look at it on the way back to the city every day for those who worked, but it was still nice to see that it inspired all these years later. 

None of that mattered, though; no one was trying to stop the two of them from being together, and even if they were, Zoa wouldn’t have let that happen. From that first night, she was greedy with his time to the point of obsession, not that he was complaining. 

Since his maiming, Simon had been a shadow that only came to life whenever Varten, of all people, was around. Even before that, he’d been a rank-and-file member of an order large and dispersed enough that he’d just sort of blended in, but there was no blending in here, no matter what color robes he wore. 

Day by day, and week by week, the two of them started building a life together once more, and it was comfortable. He slipped into it like an old pair of shoes, and by the time he was graduating the last of the Whisperers from his now well-worn language class, they were as much a couple as they’d ever been.

Throughout all of that, Simon wondered if there would be some form of retribution for spiriting so many Whisperers away and bringing them here. Would the Whitecloaks find out and pressure Brin to send an army? Would Queen Elthena find out and demand their expulsion? Perhaps the Oracle would do something to those who’d used magic in her home, he worried. 

None of that happened, though. It seemed as though Simon had gotten away with it entirely, which surprised him, on some level. He wasn’t used to things working out so well for himself, let alone those that he tried to help. 

Whenever he thought of that, he reflected on the words of the Oracle that he might not have as long as he thought, and reminded himself. This time, just prove her wrong. Whatever the emergency is out there, you can just stay here, with Zoa, and let one of your future lives handle it. 

It was good advice. Basically, no news came to Hepollyon from the outside world, but even if it did, Simon planned to tune it out. His plan was a simple one. All he wanted was to enjoy his current life, be as productive as a one-handed man could be, and die at a ripe old age with his sight fully recovered and a plan to delve deeper into the Pit. 

Zoa, though, had other plans. Somewhere along the way, Simon figured out that she was trying to have his child. That’s something he should have realized right away, but it was only after the third monthly debauch, just before the full moon, that he put two and two together. That surprised him, but he supposed he didn’t really have a problem with it.

As nostalgic as Simon was for his previous lives in Ionar, he quite liked the idea. A new child would never replace Sayom, of course. He knew that. The boy was gone forever, but perhaps a new son or daughter would light up his life in the same way. 

If he was going to stay here for a lifetime, why not? He told himself on more than one occasion. Twenty or thirty years with a little bundle of joy would give him meaning, and when he finally died, he’d have confidence that they’d be safe here, even without him.

He dropped hints that he knew, but Zoa remained elusive. She never told him that’s what she was up to, but Simon was loath to refuse her anything, at least at first. Once his sight started to return in earnest toward the end of that first year, though, he grew slightly more concerned, if anything. 

For starters, the longer they were together again, the more certain he was that children weren’t in their future. That didn’t have anything to do with seeing the future on his part just that he could see there was something wrong with her health. It might have been cancer. He wasn’t entirely sure. The only physical sign that he’d noticed before he began to see a growing, sickly darkness in her was weight loss. 

He confronted her about that immediately, one day when they were working together to trim grape vines on the southern slope. He’d tried to talk to her about her health when they were alone at night, but she always found a way to distract him. Here, under the blazing sun, though, she could not escape him, no matter how much cleavage she let her gray robes reveal. 

“It’s fine,” she insisted, “And even if it isn’t, there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Nothing to be done?” he almost choked on the words. “There’s always something to be done. Always, always, somebody can do something.”

“Sometimes only the gods can intervene,” she said with a sigh. “My mother died of a wasting disease when she wasn’t much older than me, but within this mountain, I’ve lived a much healthier life than she ever did.”

Simon shook his head. Trace volcanic fumes were probably much worse for everyone than sea air, and that wasting disease might very well have been a version of the cancer that he was seeing even now. In a couple of months, he’d be able to see whatever it was a lot better, though whether that was because of increased sight or a worsening condition was anyone’s guess. 

He protested, and she stormed off, but Simon wouldn’t let it go. “I could fix it with a word, Zoa, you know that!” he all but shouted. “Two, maybe, if it was really bad.”

“Yeah, and then you’d lose your sight all over again,” she sighed. “You’ve told me that before.”

He thought about arguing that, but instead side-stepped it and ranted about talismans for a minute, while she continued to cut away pieces of the vines wrapped around the trellises. “By the end of the week, I could have a wand that would fix everything without hurting my sight even to the smallest degree.”

That last part wasn’t strictly true, but a single word of healing would only cost him days or weeks. It was barely a paper cut. She insisted that she wouldn’t allow it, though, and held herself away from him the rest of the day. It wasn’t until nightfall, when he returned to his own cell for the first time in weeks to sleep alone, that she came to him.

They kissed and made up then. “Let’s just enjoy the time we have, however long that may be, and spend all the rest of our days together,” she told him as he stroked her hair. He agreed with that and promised not to bring it up again. He’d keep that promise, of course, but he said nothing about making the wand and using it on her while she slept. 

She’ll never know, he told himself as he selected a likely piece of wood for carving a few days later. A few hours of work, a few seconds of magic, and we can both live to be ninety.

Of course, finding time to be alone and work on his wand was harder than the actual carving, and he sometimes went days without finding a minute of peace. During the day, he was working like everyone else, and at night, he was with Zoa. Eventually, he took to sneaking out of her bed and finding a quiet spot on the cliffs to whittle on the nights when she’d had a little too much to drink. He could only work for an hour or two at a time like that, but he felt pretty sure that after four or five nights, he could put this problem behind them. So, he wasn’t in that big of a hurry. 

What he wasn’t expecting was for the Oracle to be there waiting for him on the third night. That took Simon completely by surprise, even though it shouldn’t have. He’d been in her valley for almost a year, and she hadn’t so much as summoned him or sent a servant with a missive, and now there she was, sitting on the rock he’d spent the last two nights carving on.

Ch. 433 - Never To Be Parted

“I take it this is not a social call,” Simon said, admitting nothing as he approached the Oracle, and then moved past her until he stood looking out at the steaming lake beyond. His half-carved wand was in his pocket, but he had no intention of throwing it away. Trying to hide from her was pointless.

“You know exactly what this is,” she agreed. “A blasphemous word from one of your Whisperers I can understand and even forgive after what they’ve been through, but you should know better.”

“I do know better,” he growled, certain she was right. “But that doesn’t change the calculus of things, does it? Is it so wrong that I don’t want her to die?”

“We all die, Simon,” she said softly. It was a reassurance, not a recrimination. “You know that better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Even you?” he asked, snapping more than he should as he sat down beside her, wand in hand. “I imagine you’ll be here for a long, long time, no matter how many centuries I live.”

“I’ll die,” she agreed with a nod. “I can actually see my death, you know. Every morning, it’s there, in the distance like a mountain on the horizon, waiting for me.”

That line took the wind out of his sails, and he sighed, but when he realized she probably said it with that intent, he summoned just enough outrage to ask, “So, how do you go? Quietly in your sleep at the age of ten thousand?”

The Oracle laughed, then. It was a rare sound from her, made even stranger by the topic. “It changes nearly every day, actually,” she admitted. “Sometimes closer… sometimes farther away… Every time someone like you makes a choice that changes my weave, my end turns out differently. Today I die…” she got a distant look in her eyes as she seemed to look out past her veil, and the mist that veiled her tiny kingdom.

“A dragon. I don’t make it to the end of days this time. A dragon makes a meal of me, and turns our lovely city into its nest.” She said that with a little shrug, like it wasn’t particularly horrifying. 

“Enough clarity to know how I die each life would be immensely helpful,” he said aloud, as much to himself as to her. It raised a number of interesting philosophical questions about how he would be able to see his own death if he could also see how to avoid it, but he pushed those away. 

The Oracle can probably only see her death because she accepts it, or some mumbo jumbo like that, he reflected while he waited for her to speak.

When she did, he finally asked, “With enough clarity, do you think that Zoa could be healthy again?” It was a spiteful question, but it was all he could think of to break the silence while his anger still simmered. 

“No,” she agreed without even trying to argue, which surprised him. He’d expected a wittier or more confounding response. “No amount of clarity would heal the malignancy that grows inside her. Enough clarity will allow her to accept the things that she cannot change, though, and possibly even understand her role in the larger pattern.”

Simon flinched at that, but said nothing immediately. That was clearly a barb with his name on it, and he didn’t deny it. Instead, he thought about all of the ways he could argue his point. Finally, he settled on, “One doesn’t have to destroy the tapestry to make a pattern. The weaver can understand it even as he changes it.”

“Oh, and you’re the weaver now?” she said with a wry smile that he could have heard even if he wasn’t looking at her. “Bold words for a man who’s only ever glimpsed the larger patterns.”

“And if I could see them, then you’d what, let me save her?” Simon asked. 

“If you could see the whole thing, then you wouldn’t be so eager to save everyone,” she said, rising. The Oracle turned and started walking away, but as she left, she said. “You can do whatever you like. I won’t stop you, Simon, but if you use magic in my city, you’ll never be welcome here again. Not in any life.”

Those words were perhaps the only thing that could have stopped him, but even so, he sat on that stone, wand in hand, for hours before he snapped it in two and tossed it into the water. In the end, he told himself that it was as much because he didn’t want to leave Zoa as because he didn’t want to lose access to this place in future lives, but even as he returned home to lie next to the sleeping woman, he wasn’t entirely sure that was true. 

Isn’t the fact that I want Zoa to live for a long time proof that I love her? He asked himself as he drifted off to sleep. 

No matter how often he thought about healing her, though. He didn’t. He didn’t bring it up again, either. Instead, as the darkness grew, Simon resolved to spend however many months or years they still had together, focused on her. Planning for his future lives could wait, even his quest for clarity could wait. 

For the next few seasons, he lived in the moment and was rewarded by getting to work most of his shifts with her. He’d always suspected that the people who planned the work could see into the future to some degree, and the fact that they were being so kind in this respect made him worry about how little time they really had together.

Unfortunately, the good times were briefer than he would have liked. They had some good moments together under the veiled stars, and she reminded him that life was for more than questing. Unfortunately, barely more than a year later, she'd gotten sick enough that there were few jobs she could do, and soon, taking care of her became a full-time occupation. Other acolytes volunteered to help him with those tasks, but he didn't allow it.

That worry clouded his sight in the same way that Kristoph’s grief clouded his for his whole life. Simon’s robes stopped getting lighter, but he didn’t really care about that.  

Finally, when her condition was noticeable, fully dressed, and she no longer worked regular shifts, she said to him one night. “I want to marry you, before, well, you know.”

“I thought you didn’t want to marry,” Simon teased. He’d proposed it once, shortly after arriving in the valley, but she shot him down, insisting 'Our bond doesn’t need rituals.’ Now, though, it would seem she wanted a ritual. 

Simon had no problem with that. At this point, he would have said yes just to make her smile, but it was more than that. Somehow, the idea that he was being asked to wed, unburdened from whatever baggage he’d been holding for Elthena for all these years. 

He let her plan everything, and she was allowed to borrow a toga of the purest white for that day, along with bundles of wildflowers that her friends gathered the morning of the big day. 

Simon had composed some vows for them, in the form of poems, just to make them that much more special. Still, he was taken completely by surprise that day. Not because of the marriage ceremony. It was simple handfasting where their hands were bound together by a strip of cloth whiter than even his robes, and they said a few vows in front of Nicholos and their other friends. It was what came after. 

When they were done and declared themselves man and wife, Zoa demanded that he carry her to the edge, so she could see the lake through the curtain of steam. Simon didn’t try to argue. She’d lost so much weight at this point that she was like a bird; he could have carried her all the way down the mountain if he had to. 

As they went, the others drifted away, and they were alone. “Isn’t it wonderful that we’ll never be parted now?” she asked him as he tried to keep the grim irony of a marriage on her deathbed from his face. 

“Nothing could be more wonderful,” he agreed benignly as they moved. They ended up sitting not far from where the Oracle had challenged him that night so long ago, which distracted Simon for a few minutes as Zoa talked about their future. 

There would be no future, of course. He wasn’t cruel enough to tell her that. His first wife, he hadn’t known how to save; the next woman in his life, he hadn’t been allowed to marry, and now he wasn’t allowed to save Zoa. It was a grim series of almosts that might have made even his jaded eyes tear up if he hadn’t figured out that she was talking about spending their next lives together. 

“What?” he asked dumbly. 

“I said, where do you want to meet when we pass?” she repeated weakly as she played with the band of cloth still tied around his wrist. “How will we know each other? What shall we do with a whole life together?”

Simon wanted to scold his new wife for the very idea. He wanted to explain to her that there was no way they could meet again, not until he conquered the Pit. He wanted to tell her that every life was precious and that she deserved better than him. Instead, he smiled and told her a pleasant fairytale instead.

That seemed to half lull her to sleep, but as Simon stood with his lovely bundle to take her home now that today’s excitement had worn her out. That was her trap, though. As soon as he stood, she heaved her weakened body toward the cliff. The cloth band was still tied around both of their wrists. 

That’s what she meant, she realized in that final moment. She wants to die together, so that we'll never be parted. 

Fear or anger about the fact that she was trying to murder him never even crossed his mind. One life was as good as the next now, and he had zero concerns about returning to his cabin. He was concerned about her, though. Spending weeks or months slowly wasting away from cancer was hardly a pleasant death, but then, neither was being boiled to death in a steaming lake. 

It was that one frozen moment Simon could have saved himself. She’d tied herself to his wooden wrist. His faux arm would come right off if he held his ground and focused on his balance. If he did that, though, he could do nothing for the woman attached to that arm. He was overbalanced and flailing. His only choices were to save himself or fall after her. 

So he fell, and instead of raging or trying to get some kind of explanation in those last few seconds, he merely kissed her. He knew the reason behind this. It was because he left her all alone, and broke her heart in a way that even magic couldn’t fix.

For that reason, he deserved this on some level. He believed that even after they hit the water, and a wave of agony washed over him, whiting out his nerves as he tried to cling to Zoa. She tried to scream then, but was too weak, and was dragged under the water immediately.

Simon felt that urge as well, but his last act wasn’t to scream in agony. Instead, for whatever reason, it was to look to the shore, where he saw the Oracle watching them.

It was an accident, really. He hadn’t seen her the day before, but he had little time to think about what that might mean. Even as he saw her, the terrible heat of the sulfurous water cooked his muscles, rendering them useless, and he sank into the depths in seconds, still holding Zoa’s hand. 

She knew, he realized as his brain started to boil in his skull. She knew I wouldn’t have time to see because this is how I would end up. Then, he was gone.