Atrament Speaks.
Chapter 1.
Noor - the third trichotomy of the sparn.
Vivid colour stings the eye. Silvered whites, barley twisted greens, corals dappled with russet, garnish each root, trunk, branch, and twig. Fluttering in dance on every tree and bush, foliage of red, purple, blue and gold.
Stretching far into the distance, bleached grass sways. The pale-blue stalks laden with heavy pink and lavender seed-heads tossed in the rising breeze. In the middle of the undulating landscape a small hill, ringed by a knotted mass of turquoise shrubbery, and always, and everywhere, a cacophony of whispering voices.
Coming out of the woodland onto the plain, the murmuring swelled. Ebbing and flowing with the fluidity of tidal water, the thousands faded in the long ago and final battle, but still bound to the land, spoke in rustling undertones. Hate. Regret. Loss. Longing. Love. All emotion, ravelled together in an unseen skein that never could, never would, be untangled, the quiet voices drowning in the air, carried away by a frisky wind, forever remaining.
Clara pulled the gostles up hard.
"See?" she pointed.
"I see it." Persimmony Clump, shifting uneasily in his saddle, let the reins slide through stiffened fingers in response to the haran stretching out its neck to graze. "Do not mean much though, do it? Do not mean he be not faded just because a hillock be where it should."
"We will find out," Clara urged the gostles forward.
Beckoning to the selected band standing discreetly some way off, Clump followed.
* * *
He had monitored the passage of his message bubble. Noted with satisfaction its rude delivery, and the Clara Maddingley person's shocked reaction to it. For a time, he was not certain she would obey. When hasty preparations for a journey began, he was confident she would come, and disinterested in mundane tasks of such beginnings, left off careful watch.
At intervals, he checked the steady progress of the troop through the defiant blaze of the final part of the year, coming in answer to his summons.
***
The unmistakable sound of rock, scraping against rock, signalled they had begun to clear the entrance. A bass tone rumbling, the words indistinct, filtered through the crack they had made, and floated, light as a dust mote, down to where he waited. Soaring without effort another voice, both soft and hard, full of authority and determination, cut it short.
It would take time to clear the way, time for the woman to negotiate the winding stair. Are not all things a matter of time, he reasoned, knowing the exquisite cruelty with which the weight of days crushed him with ever heavier force, grinding his being to fraying threads that must hold a while yet.
A sudden, niggling dread, soured the thrum of exultation experienced for some days. To speak face to face with another, even one from Lessadgh, after so long was daunting. Was there time enough? Time to imbibe, in one single draught, the infusion he had distilled to boost failing talent, and would its effect coincide exactly with her arrival? Would she accept the gifts he would tell her of, and one, he would not? Would she carry them out into the perfect light of Noor, where they belonged? She must, if they were to do their work.
Hesitant footfall on the stairs. No time left to ponder. With one great swallow, he took the potion, and withdrawing from the space he had prepared, went into the antechamber.
