“We reject the new religion birthed by the supposed god-king,” Ranu explained. “As do we reject the hedonistic revelry that defined the Sinifel. Before them both, reigned the Majere, and they saw life and death in ways we are only beginning to understand.”
“I’ve seen it in person and still don’t understand,” Nick said, shuddering at the memory of Gavriil shrieking out his
Hidden Hold, Ranu called his village, an impressive name for a much less impressive place. Most dwellings were but tents, though an occasional wood structure was built against a tree to offer shelter from wind and rain. The four arrived just behind the hunters carrying Kasra’s corpse, and Nick’s greeting to the village was the soft wailing of a woman kneeling over the body.
“Come,” Ranu said, guiding them past. “I would discuss what you saw.”
He took them to the largest building in the village, a log feasting hall with thick hides draped across the top to form its roof. A small hole near the very apex allowed smoke from the roaring fire in the center of the room to escape. On the hall’s benches they sat and recounted their story. Upon hearing Nick’s explanation of why Kasra had ended up in Constance, the Remembrance leader sadly shook his head.
“Food has been growing scarce lately,” he said. “Poor Kasra likely dreaded coming back to our village empty-handed. As if this were somehow better. ‘One less mouth to feed,’ he might argue, the unserious fool he always was.” Ranu chuckled and shook his head. “Stars above, I will miss him. Thank you for bringing his body back to us. Lost in Constance, we never would have found him, let alone had the opportunity to bid his soul farewell amid the mourning song.”
Violette immediately perked up.
“The mourning song?” she asked. “Can we attend?”
Ranu’s demeanor immediately hardened. “You do not realize what you are asking for.”
“But I do,” Violette insisted. “My focus of study has always been on the Majere. Please, let me bear witness, so I might listen and learn.”
Nick felt the tension tightening, but he hadn’t a clue what the argument might even be about.
“Forgive my ignorance,” he said, “but what is the mourning song?”
Ranu crossed his arms, the gold jewelry around them rattling.
“Many people believe the Majere showed death great disdain, but it is a false belief foisted upon people by the Sinifel.”
They murdered us easily enough for having any supposed reverence toward life, Sorrow spoke within Nick’s mind. Nick flicked the handle of his sword with his forefinger in an attempt to keep the blade silent.
“We know this,” Ranu continued, “because there was a sacred ceremony to be performed for those who died before being granted an ever-living body while also lacking a proper master who could rebind their soul to their dead flesh, animating it so they might live again.”
The older man sighed.
“That is all of us now. We have no masters, and so we perform the ceremony. With every loss, we sing the mourning song.”
The mourning song, Sorrow seethed. I heard tales of this ritual from my forefathers. It is an insult to life. Do not endure it, pillager, unless you would forfeit all that is good in your heart. They will steal it from you, steal your very soul.
Nick did not argue with the blade. Where to even begin? Did his digital self in Yensere even have a soul? If so, what were the implications of that discovery?
“I understand it is sacred,” Violette argued, surprisingly stubborn when she desired something. Though Ranu towered over her, she marched up to him and stared him in the eye. “But we brought Kasra out from Constance to be mourned by his loved ones. Is that not worth granting my request?”
“Our deepest beliefs are not prizes to be won,” Ranu said, a hard edge entering his voice.
“And I’m not trying to win anything. I have spent my life seeking the knowledge you and your people possess. Would you hoard it from one who searched with an open heart and mind?”
Ranu shifted uncomfortably.
“We have ever sought to teach the wisdom of the Majere to an ignorant people,” he admitted. “But the risks…they’re always so great.”
“We are no soldiers of the god-king,” Frost chipped in. “Nor are we agents of the Sinifel.”
He’d be dead if you were, grumbled Sorrow.
Ranu turned away from them. His hands crossed behind his back, fingers twiddling with the jewelry around each wrist.
“Very well,” he said. “Given the knowledge you have shared of Constance, and your attempts to save Kasra’s life, I will allow you to attend the mourning song…but only if you swear to remain silent and merely observe. Is that acceptable?”
Nick shrugged, curious but not particularly interested in the religious ritual. His reaction was the opposite of Violette’s.
“Of course, of course,” she said excitedly. “When does it begin?”
Ranu headed for the door of the hall and gestured for them to follow.
“When night falls and we bathe in the light of the moon.”
*
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There were roughly forty people in Majere’s Remembrance, twelve of them children. Together, they gathered around a roaring bonfire in the middle of a field just shy of the Rockgrave Forest. They had removed most of their jewelry and had swapped their black robes for a pale white.
“Why white?” Nick quietly asked Violette as they followed Ranu to the bonfire. “Where I’m…from, mourning is done dressed all in black.”
“White is the color of bone,” she answered, keeping her voice a whisper. “When impure flesh and organs are burned away, it is bone that remains. Bone lasts, when all else does not. It is meant to be holy. Purified.”
The group formed two circles around the bonfire, with the visitors relegated to the outer circle. Ranu stayed with them, fielding the occasional question from the others, who were clearly unhappy with a foreign presence at such a private moment.
“We must be brave to share our most heartfelt beliefs with the world,” Nick overheard Ranu telling an elderly woman with gray hair hanging all the way down to her ankles. “We cannot hide forever.”
“Hiding is how we survive,” the old woman spat. “It is the world that will kill us.”
We can only hope, said Sorrow.
Enough, Nick shouted in his mind as he clutched the black hilt. Why do you hate the Majere? It was Vaan who overthrew you.
Behold their grotesque ritual and know for yourself.
Last to arrive were the corpse carriers. Kasra’s body was fully wrapped in white cloth and carried on a wicker stretcher by two able-bodied men. They laid it beside the roaring bonfire and then turned to Ranu. Wordless communication passed between them as the cult’s leader stepped into the center ring.
“We live in an age without masters,” he began. “A time when this feeble flesh of ours is the only life we control. Once, our forefathers believed death could not defeat us, but that was hubris and naivety. It was denying the truth we must embrace. Death can always claim our bodies. But who we are in spirit? Who we become in the shadowed lands that follow? That, death cannot touch. Death is an end, but we? We are endless.”
Ranu gestured toward the carriers.
“Give the flesh to the flames.”
The two men hoisted the corpse and heaved it upward, flinging the body deep into the center of the bonfire. It landed amid tangled branches and neatly stacked logs. Nick realized the bonfire had been carefully built so the center was sunken, hiding the consumption of the corpse. They would only see flames and smoke, and because of that, he was relieved.
The carriers set the stretcher down by the fire and then took up spots in the inner circle. For a long time, no one spoke. Children fell silent, quieted by their parents. Nick sensed the atmosphere shift, and he wondered what would follow. Would it be the mourning song Sorrow so deeply despised?
Ranu stepped closer to the fire, and he slowly turned so he might address all in attendance.
“It is time for us to mourn that which we have lost,” he said. He extended a hand. “Laylah, will you be the spine of the song?”
A blond woman who looked roughly Nick’s age stepped forward. Her gaze locked on the bonfire, and it was a long while before she found the strength to speak.
“I am honored,” she said. All around, everyone lifted their arms toward the dark night sky, and to avoid feeling awkward, Nick imitated them. In the outer ring, an elderly woman with a set of lambskin drums resting on the grass before her tapped away at their surface, and over that beat, Laylah began to sing.
There were no words, at least none that Cataloger aided in translating. The song rose in volume, a beautiful chant alternating among a few basic notes, wordless but not meaningless. The rest of the convocation took up the song, perfectly in sync. At least, at first.
“Kasra was a good man, who watched over my children when I was sick and could not attend them,” a woman nearby said, her voice breaking from the drone. “He loved them, and helped teach my boys to read.” She lowered her arms and bowed her head. “I have no more words.”
“He hated squirrels,” a man from the opposite side of the fire said, his voice barely audible over the song. “Said they hated him, too. Always dropping nuts on his head. Kasra, he was…he was always ready to laugh. Always eager to put a smile on the face of a friend.” Down went his arms. “I have no more words.”
More stories. More anecdotes. Times when Kasra helped the sick. A smile given when needed. More arms dropped. All the while, Laylah continued her guiding chant, shifting among its three simple notes amid the steady patter of drums. The fire burned. The singing quieted with each story told and each pair of arms lowered.
Sorrow’s voice dared whisper amid the solemnity.
Is this…this cannot be the mourning song.
Fully realizing what was happening, and knowing they could never belong to it, Nick lowered his arms without offering a tale. His face burned red. He felt like an interloper here. Amid such a tight community, he could never be a part of that song. Frost shifted awkwardly beside him, and he suspected she felt the same. Violette, however, watched with her eyes wide and her face a perfect calm mask.
“When I fled Greenborough, condemned for denying godhood to the wretched Vaan, it was Kasra who saved me,” Ranu said, one of the last to speak. “We were outnumbered, yet still he fought. His aim with a bow, it was extraordinary. Just as good as his father’s, if not better. And now he goes to join his father.” He lowered his arms. “I have no more words.”
Only Laylah continued to sing. Her song rose in defiance of the growing silence, strong and pure. The drums beat harder. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tilted her face to the sky, and she reached her hands higher, higher, as if she might pluck out the stars with her fingers.
And then her song stopped, and she spoke instead with strength unmatched.
“I loved you more than life itself, my husband. Wait for me, in the lands beyond the living. Wait for me, until I can see you again.”
Her tears became a river, and she forced herself to speak through a sudden rush of emotion.
“I…I have no more…”
She collapsed to her knees, and Ranu rushed to her side, holding her. There was only the crackling of the bonfire and the sound of the widow’s grieving. The drums fell silent.
“The words are spoken,” their leader said, Laylah cradled in his arms. “The mourning is done. Do your work, flames, and then be gone.”
The bonfire roared with sudden life. The flames formed arms, reaching, reaching, fingers extended and glowing gold and orange. Nick blinked and they were gone, if they ever existed at all. The fire flickered and died. The branches and logs were consumed. All that remained were bones.
So many bones.
Forty bodies. Maybe fifty. All stacked and burned, here in this field. The history of it struck Nick like a spear to the chest. Guilt followed.
These are the people you’ve been killing, he thought.
Ranu gently lifted Laylah back to her feet, dipped his hand into the ashes, and then wiped away her tears with his thumb. Black streaks spread across the widow’s face, and she smiled even as her tears trickled down, drawing long dark streaks to her chin.
These are the people you insist are not real.
Were such funerals held back at Meadowtint? Did the people grieve over the men he beat with stones and stabbed with a rusty sickle? The fear they’d shown, the ferociousness with which they’d hunted him…
When will it be enough? So many dead. So many innocent lives lost, and for what, demon Nick? Your pleasure?
Sorrow’s voice whispered into the horrid memory of Sir Gareth’s condemnation.
Your sins are many. But then again, so are mine.
“I didn’t know,” Nick whispered. He wasn’t even sure whom he was talking to. Sorrow? Cataloger? Himself?
But he had known. Again and again, Cataloger had insisted he treat Yensere as real. As a place with history. Life. Emotions. He’d heard the words; he’d just never believed them. Part of him still fought against it. That part was powerless against Laylah’s grief, and the way the other members of the Remembrance gathered around her, offering quiet words of encouragement and love.
Nick had endured two funerals for his own family. Those words? Those sympathetic faces? Powerless to help, yet trying to anyway? This was true. It felt real, in a way that could not be faked. Digital data. Ones and zeros. He could tell himself that again and again, and yet none of it would chase away the lingering sound of Laylah’s song as she finally, at long last, gave up her words.
“Hey,” Frost said, setting her hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Nick turned to answer, torn between laughing and crying.
“I don’t know,” he said, and then a sword burst through Frost’s chest, staining her with blood.