The Song of a Poisoned Star

30

Bilen sat on the deck most of that day, reading, hoping for inspiration. She had her notebooks, some books she had taken from the Order, and others that she'd acquired in her travels; and, finally, her book of broken lines. Nothing gave her any good ideas.

At one point Gunter came over and peered over her shoulder, curious.

'What's that, then?' he asked, pointing to the scratched symbols in the book of broken lines.

'It's code. It's so someone doesn't read one of the rites accidentally.'

'Would that be so bad?'

'Do you like horrors from beyond the grave?'

He shrugged and wandered off.

They were following the shore, the great uninhabited lands of the North of the New World rolling past them as the ship headed to the Gwum peninsula and humanity. Even the slinth didn't live up here. She wondered why, although imagined that the First had contrived it somehow.

She stood up, and stretched, and stared at the alien forests that reached down nearly to the sea, at the bright sea birds, at the huge spikes of rock that gave the Needle Shores their name. The tang of salt water filled her nose, and screaming birds dived into the sea, emerging with fish gripped in their claws.

I wonder, she thought. I've been thinking about the slinth goddesses being like the Venerated Ancestors; but, actually, they're essentially the same as the Watcher. They used to be alive, and they're now locked in the same place, in that weird world I've never seen; their souls are detached from their bodies, but not yet departed through the Blue Gate. And, presumably, like the Watcher, they can wander where they like in that other place, although I bet the stay near their towns.

I wonder.

She flipped through her book of broken lines. She got to the rite which had been used to bind the Watcher, hundreds of years ago. As far as she knew it had never been performed before or since, but the Order didn't believe in forgetting knowledge, and neither did she.

It was a relatively simple rite. It needed a soul pin of some sort: this was something that the subject would wear on their physical body for some time before death, which prepared the soul. It also needed an anchor, an object that stayed in the real world and kept you attached here, and stopped you from being pulled through the Blue Gate; and then, there was a song to sing while the subject's body died. And that was it. The Watcher's anchors are the soul globes, the balls of glass that the Glass Bearers hold. The soul pin, well, they hammered literal pins into the poor thing.

I bet the slinth do exactly this, she thought. They might not understand it all, but I bet they do it. And their ruling classes, or whoever ends up being merged into the goddess, they all wear a bit of jewellery or something; that's the soul pin. And then I bet they have an anchor in their temple, some venerated item. And when the slinth is feeling a bit old, they all get together and sing the rite, and off it goes to join its ancestors, rather than travelling through the Blue Gate.

But the weird thing about the slinth version of the rite is their reuse of the anchor. All the souls share that one hook into reality. I wonder how that works? They must all sort of merge together. You must lose your identity and become part of the whole. That's why they call it a goddess, singular; it's a single being.

That must be weird.

But here's a thing: the slinth go willingly. I have no idea what slinth society is like, but I bet that this is an honour, not a punishment.

She looked up, the beginnings of an idea forming. Ahead, still pale in the distance, was the Gwum Peninsula. She realised that she didn't have much more time.