“Memory is a chain.”

Journal of William Harwood #8

Autumn Firstmoon, the Tenth,
Year of Returning Light 645
Unjat, The Shrouded Lands

I had to be alone for a while when I returned.  I’m still alone. I can’t have their eyes on me.  I can’t be sure what they will see. Am I the same man they knew before?  Am I whole? Is every piece where they expect it to be? Or does some other man, some other thing, sit in this chair having these thoughts on my behalf?

He has to lay events one after the other.  He has to make sense of her. What we spoke of.  What she did. Perhaps writing the words will give an order to them.  Perhaps if he puts events to page, I will believe in them enough to hold faith in my own existence.

As the words said before, a man found himself trapped in a cave.  No, a temple. A temple under, within, and of its essence, a cave.  

Her image was upon the wall, in colors more vibrant than any in nature.  The faithful brought to her offerings of jewelry, fine fabrics, and fresh fruit.  They adored her, and sought to bring only the most exquisite of worldly things to bestow, and hence add upon, her beauty.

He saw her, but did not yet see.

Desperate to feel the light of the sun again, he threw himself into the embrace of night.  Deeper into the cave, its winding passages became a maze. The walls, with their glassy sheen, began to take a luminance of their own, refracting light from a source beyond his meager oil lamp.

He found more murals, preserved somehow amid the refuse.  Minstrels playing for her affections. Wild beasts bowing in submission.  She herself in golden armor, soldiers at attention.

At last, he came upon the statue.  A lifelike form in marble, incongruous in its lack of reverence.  She stood before him in a cruel exposition. Perfection cut apart by knots of anguish and fear.  Hands clutching upon tattered finery. A final moment. The man drew closer to this naked pathos, something in him needing to console.  He wondered at the creation of such a thing, to what purpose hands might work upon this craft, and to why it might be placed now within her temple.

Already I was there with my own questions.  I had to know that she was real, to feel how firm was the stone of her skin.  With only the barest tremble, I reached his hand out to touch her, a caress upon the arm.  Both cold and warm. Unyielding, but somehow soft.

She took a hold of my wrist then and pulled me away from him.

In the time of her reign she had many temples.  The greatest stood here, heart of a magnificent jewel called Agyda.  It was here where she held court. Where she fostered diversion and delight.  Where she dreamt of new passions to inflame idle minds. A muse of muses. Goddess of the arts.  Divine inspiration made flesh.

I saw her there, at her seat of power.  Two wooden dryads garbed in silk, fanning her with great red feathers.  A blind man filling the silence with harp music that felt like the passing flow of a river.  In every direction, the chamber opened into a breathtaking vantage of the city, orderly bricks broken by elegant lush greenery, misty horizons of forest and sea.  Great sister Unjat across the delta to the East, not at all as it appears today.

With eyes like white opal, she fixed me to the center of the room.  She saw me, and I saw her. She was herself, and not herself, though everything that was essential to herself.  I was the same.

“Who am I?” she asked.  Not a plea, but a challenge.

I wasn’t ready.  I knew what she was, but not who.  I raced through my memories, my leads, my conjectures.  In a panic, I called out, “Oroisi. Our Lady of the Gray.”  As soon as the words escaped, I knew them to be wrong.

Her features darkened.  A hand reached forward. The contours of the chamber slipped around and behind me, closing the distance between us.  An animal fear took hold of me, certainty of my impending death. “You are not Oroisi. You are her sister,” I said. Her brow raised by the smallest measure, but still I could feel the room and my fate closing in as one.  “You are the Nightmare Queen!”

The room snapped open again.  Her hand closed, chin lowered into melancholy.  “Yes. One of many names the world has left for us.  One meant to circle and bind a thing that is boundless.”

Working past a stutter, I raised my finger.  “Please forgive my ignorance. I want to understand.  That is why I came here.”

She paused, as though considering how to instruct an ant in the higher philosophies.  “I am memory,” she said. “Memory is a chain.”

At once I found myself in the city streets, gagged and manacled.  Brutish forms in black armor dragged me across the stones, never quite allowing my weighted feet to regain purchase beneath me.  Ahead of us, they were readying a stone coffin.

And just as quickly, I was back again.

“She had to be unfettered, relieved of all her chains.  So I was removed from her, and she was unbound. Released into her full glory.”

Made dumb by my fear, I was slow to grasp what she was telling me.  “You are the memory of a goddess?”

“I could show you another moment,” she said.  “I could show you the time of my final definition.  My release. The breaking of chains. Perhaps it may inspire something in you.”

Already I could feel the tattered fragments of that memory tickling at the edges of my perception, distant howling winds and the gentle snag of metal hooks feeling for the loose threads of my sanity.  Beyond the horizon of that rising storm, I could glimpse the truth of the Nightmare Queen: a thing of alien will, freed from the confines of natural law, even divine law, and bent upon unraveling our world, destruction at the most essential level.  

“What is this?”  I said, clutching at my head.  “Why did this happen?”

“Why?” she said.  “Why does anything happen, but the time is right for it?  We had lived for too long with nothing to challenge us. We grew petty and covetous, drawing ourselves into conflict over nothing but vanity.  When the others laid me low and buried me in my tomb, I was as much at fault as they were. There is no reason to explain why I was trapped and helpless there when the Prince of Mirrors came.  It could have been any one of us, for any reason at all.”

She stood from her throne and bent me to the floor with the weight of her gaze.  The skies darkened. The wind in my ears grew louder and began to assault the city below, pulling up dust and bricks to circle this temple.  “I deserved what came for us. And if any of my kind yet live, they deserve the same. They deserve to know the horrors of the unbound, released from substance, from self, from reason.  What awful freedoms to indulge, beyond all meaning, beyond all knowledge or fulfillment.”

My hand, my so empathetic hand, I reached once more to beseech her mercy.  “And what for the rest of us?”

“Why do any of you matter?”  Her voice was veined with haughty petulance, filling cracks made by an ancient pain.  “My people are dead. There is no one left for me. No one worth my concern.”

Perhaps this is where Endrizzi met his end.  Perhaps he never came this far, before whatever it was that unmade him.  But I am sure Endrizzi never consulted with Naima from Mordoba, or La Conseillere in Richau.  One thing occurred to me that this shadow of a goddess may yet care for. “Not even your own blood?” I said.  “A child?”

Her domineering stand changed to naked aggression as she closed our distance by foot, lifting me once again, hand to throat.  In those shining opal eyes, I saw my death scattered across a million variations of abject misery. Her skin was hot to the touch.  Her breath smelled of lavender and cinnamon. “What do you know of my child?”

I struggled to voice words through her tightening grip.  “Only that the blood of the Nightmare Queen stalks me in my stars.”

“You mean to say that you are drawn to her by destiny?”  She pulled me closer. Her face was like a burning coal next to my skin.  “You speak false. There is no curse of destiny upon your soul.”

All the same, she released her grip on me, and the rising storm subsided.  She returned to her place of honor with a languid grace, as the peace of this sanctum was restored.  I balked at my next question, not wishing to disturb this change in fortune.  

But she soon answered.  “You are bound to the destiny of another.  I see this now. Together you will indeed find my daughter.”

Sensing that I may yet escape this place, I straightened and found my voice.  “And then?”

“Then…  you will remind her that she is loved.”

With that final word, I was ejected, sent to tumble amidst the flotsam and jagged rocks of an airy, directionless sea.  When again my feet found purchase on the welcoming ground, I was at once pulled upward by a throng of eager hands. Emerging from a hole in the earth, we were once more graced by the light of the sun.

The man who was rescued seemed to recognize the others who pulled him free, but I did not.  These were sailors and loyal crew, but not the ones I came with, and not a single one the way I remembered.  Not even the jungle, nor the abandoned camp lay as I recalled them. This world spoke to me as an impostor, but I could find no words to express it, as the man himself saw nothing amiss.

Then came Dianora, the first and only face that I knew.  As we embraced, I came to understand how truly important she was.  My love. My anchor. And something more. I had a dread certainty now.  Hers was the destiny that pulled us forward. I was never more than a pawn.

Even as I write this, I think the man who holds the quill might forget me, perhaps by choice, or time, or some other artifice yet unknown.  But we have written my words. He can read them again, or dismiss them as a fever dream. It will be his choice now.

I can not recall the faces I’ve lost.  I try, but they have faded.  

I believe now.  I know that I exist.  But for not much longer.

All I ask now is that I might perish in the arms of my beloved.