MEMORIA ENNEALOGYOS

Shadow,

Firstwax has come, and already the nights are growing brighter. I’ve taken some time to walk the monastery grounds and clear my head. I am writing from under the bough of the Gate of Allseeing.

I walked in the rose fields for some time, down past the gate. Like when we were younger–do you remember? We carried our training spears wherever we went. I think often of the nights we spent sparring in the roses fields, crossing spears until our bodies were black and blue–

I am merely delaying the dreadful memory of the Sabbath Night past. But I know you will give me an earful if I ramble on about the past. I’ll tell you now. But know I’ve broken into the Luneshine.

I crossed the Abyssus Abyssum, north to the holy city. After my prayers I walked the deck, trying to spy the ghostly tails of the comet in the sky. Traveling through the mists in the darkness was slow, but the men at the helm managed well enough. It was the fifth hour of the Sabbath by the time the silver glow of Metagerion began to appear on the horizon. The glow of the city grew ever larger, and by the sixth hour we’d arrived at its massive southern gate.

The journey across the sea had been silent. I sensed the tenseness of the spear men around me. But the moment we’d crossed the inner gate, the city around us erupted into light and noise. The Jubilee had come, and the city was in full celebration. Fireworks erupted above us in the dark sky. The masses reveled below us on the marble avenues below.

Perhaps it is my isolation down here in the south, but the amount of people flooding the streets of the city left me astounded then, watching from the deck. All waiting for the comet’s arrival.

Fools drinking to the devil-eyed wolf being born above.

The ziggurat ascended toward the center of the city. There, the black ziggurat floated above the bowl of the metropolis. It slowly turned as we rose to meet its height, reflecting the starslight and spiraling fireworks.

I’d been overcome with a sense of disorientation as I watched it rotate and stepped away from the deck. It would’ve been quite a disappointment to Aestrigha if I had fallen over. If only I’d had the sense to hurl myself overboard as I staggered around on the deck.

The zeppelin docked and I bade my men to remain aboard, to prepare for immediate departure–I wouldn’t spend any more time there than was required of me.

So I walked alone, under the Ziggurat’s arches and into the darkened halls within. The air was heavy with confounding perfume and incense as I moved deeper in, past the rooms where sorcerers and alchemists were working their secret business.

Before long, I heard the raised voices of the other Patriarchs, who had gathered in the middle of the Ziggurat’s central promenade. They stood in dark cloaks and bent bodies among the roses of the promenade's artificial gardens, awaiting my arrival.

The scent of the roses was a welcome change from the muddling incense, and once I’d cleared the dark outer edge of the promenade, I felt my mind returning to clarity. The other eight patriarchs regarded me, hushing their arguments and craning their dire faces in my direction. But only Father Felix, who you’ll know is grand curator of the Akademia, stepped forward to greet me.

Iyanus! the old patriarch gasped, gripping me on the shoulder. You must imagine him like an old heron, dignified but cautious. He waited for input from the other Patriarchs but none came, none to my surprise. I saw the puzzlement on their faces, their unease. Each one of them has access to their own astrologers and star-watchers. But I could see that none of them had predicted the comet’s arrival either.

The obsidian doors to ziggurat’s inner halls opened. The drowsing aroma of incense wafted back into the room. The Highmother’s cult soon followed–sorcerers in ritual trappings and diviners casting lots and bones, charlatans all like their mistress.

The cult spread out around the outer edges of the roses, their collective gaze downcast. When at last they’d all filed in, a tall figure appeared at the door, draped in gold chain and a gauzy roseweave gown.

Aestrigha had arrived. Her long, dagger like shadow cast itself across the floor as we patriarchs watched. She then appeared, draped in gold and beads, the chief charlatan among her cult of wolves. I Know you have only ever seen her from the balcony of the Ziggurat, but it always shocks me just how tall she is. No burly men could even approach her height or presence.

Her shadow fell upon us and I felt an immediate pressure, a gloam that pushed down on my shoulders. She stepped forward, wearing the golden death mask of a saint. Her beautiful, unmoving face contained the destructive power of her wicked eyes.

But even when the most deadly of her tools was stayed, you were never safe from the malinfluence of a witch like Aestrigha. Even from across the promenade, the sight of her froze the blood in my veins. The other Patriarchs–powerful, prideful men each and every one of them–bowed their heads in deference.

The presence imposed silence upon the hall. The oddly mannered ritualists of her cult gawked our way as she stepped into the light of the atrium’s roses. To my horror, she carried a bundle of her white gown in her arms, swathing the young–arrival as the Subtle Man had called it.

It was there. In her arms. The consequence of my weakness. Her hand laid over the infant to soothe it, but I could not yet see its shape. I could see the sweat of her labor matting her long, orange hair.

“My beloved husbands,” she said.

Her voice is the most pleasing I’ve ever heard. It brought calm and clarity to my mind. But it was her clarity–not my will. I have tried to describe it to you before. It happens before you realize it has clutched your mind in its grip.

Just as the queen sand-bumbler uses her pheromone to compel the drone to act or not act. It is incredibly hard to resist that impulse.

Aestrigha moved forward, joining we fathers in the roses, casting her shadow upon us. I detected movement from the bundle in her arms. But I was also becoming aware of bells ringing from all over the city, overtaking the crowd and fireworks in volume.

“The bells of Metagerion toll wide over the Abyssus Abyssum tonight. Look up to the evernight, and you will see that the Ennealogyos has appeared.”

I looked up as the dark ceiling of the atrium pulled away like mist, revealing the night sky outside. I could see the high walls of the city’s outer rim, while before my very eyes the ghostly tails of the comet began to appear. One by one, until all eight heads sat at the top of the night sky.

A few of the patriarchs gasped, staring in open mouthed disbelief. I could hardly see it as real myself. I wonder if they heard my prayers back at Zoter’s Wall.

“It shrouds the baby prince in its white aura, blessing the commencement of a new era.”

Aestrigha stepped in front of me, pausing while she regarded me with her blind, golden eyes. She knew, Shadow. She knew exactly what I was thinking. She knew of my terror of the thing in her arms, and she savored it.

“Look upon him, husbands,” she commanded, her voice soft and terrible.

She pulled back the gauzy cloth.

I forced myself to look. I prayed to the Ninegod that I would see a human face. I peered in and saw the tranquil, sleeping face of the infant. He had the same devil-orange hair as his mother. I wondered what else he may have inherited and looked away from the baby’s closed eyes.

“See that he is no monster, as many of you have feared. Look and see, he has the eyes of a Fawn.”

The boy did not cry as her hand caressed his cheek. I felt compelled again to look upon his face. My son’s face. His eyes opened. They were large and dark, glinting like stars over the night. He began to fuss and Aestrigha consoled him, pushing away the tufts of orange hair on his brow, where there were two small, raised mounds near his temples.

Horns. The boy had horns, Shadow. I looked upon the faces of the other patriarchs. All fear and apprehension stretched across their old faces. They  gasped, their whispers hissing like steam. A devil. A beast. Yet I suspect none of them knew of my personal involvement in his birth and pray it never comes to light.

“He is the prince of this world,” Aestrigha cooed gently, stroking the nubs of his horns with a long, gold-ringed finger.

As she did, one of her cultists, the Lector, stepped forward. With aged, trembling hands, he held up holy Almagest, invoking Aestrigha’s authority over prophecy. The old Lector never left her side and proceeded to open the tome.

He spoke:

“Eight Aeons have dawned and concluded, as the great Almagest Mund Astrolatri has chronicled in foresight. All signs in the Word, good Fathers, point to the beginning of the final Aeon, belonging to the Prince.”

I looked away, to anywhere else. The comet has grown brighter,

The Lector continued:

“The Rapture comes nigh–but the prince has one more obligation before the final Aeon can begin.”

“Aestrigha, you don’t mean–?” Felix stammered, stepping back.

The Grand Curator had been a Patriarch for thirty years by the time I’d been elevated. He knew what was to come.

“He must be proved to be the Prince,” Aestrigha replied. She turned from me, turning away with that bundle that I so suddenly needed to see.

“Accompany me.”

Unseen machinery began to grind somewhere in the Zigurrat’s dark vastness. The starry night above us began to vanish again into mist, as though overtaken by the waves of the sea. I felt my body moving, downward, deep into the Ziggurat’s depths.

Deep into the mist.

The descending floor left the atrium and descended down a glittering tunnel of rock. I estimated that we were below the mistline of the sea, well beyond the lowest terraces of the city–which were regularly flooded. We emerged from the bottom into a vast, circular cavern, where the mists roiled and tossed ferociously.

The cavern must have been large enough for an entire armada of Zeppelins to fit inside. I had never seen something so grand. We were descending toward a small island in the churning basin, rising up like the pistil of a flower. The floor touched down. The mists shimmered and swirled around me as we spread out, making room for Aestrigha to pass.

“Bear your eyes to the Mist Well, as I conduct the Prince’s proving.”

Aestrigha stood at the edge of the well, where the mists blew her roseweave gown around her.

“I give him to the mists, let him return to me with his mandate–”

My heart hammered against my ribs, Shadow. I realized what she intended to do. I wanted to scream, to tackle her, to strike her with the spear I did not carry anymore. But her voice held me as rooted as the roses around us.

I watched as though a statue as  she held the child—my son, Shadow, I care not if he’s a devil—out over the open well.

The boy cried out, his shriek piercing the muting mist. I saw his dark eyes, so full of fear of his mother. And then, I like to tell myself he looked past her–his black eyes knowing me. Forgiving me.

But how could that be true? How would he even know me from the other tired, fearful men gathered around me.

I waited for one moment, breathless and desperate to intervene.

And she opened her arms, release her hold over the baby.

I watched the delicate bundle fall, but it didn’t plummet silently into the coursing, swirling mists below. It seemed to float upon the puffy mist banks, receding as though a gift received by the arms of the sea. I watched until the roseweave cloth disappeared, swallowed by the stormy clouds.

She turned back to us, her golden hands empty.

“It is done,” she said. “Await him. Twenty-one years hence, when the Ennealogyos returns once more, the ninth and final Aeon will commence.”

I was stunned with disbelief. No other Patriarchs moved.

“Let the Jubilee continue.” Said the Highmother, and the infant was gone.

I was then detained in the capital for the duration of the Sabbath. I fled the Ziggurat and hung low with my contacts in the slums. Then, at Karillia’s first light, I gave the order to depart back south to Zoter’s Wall.

Now I sit here drunk like a novice, under the Gate of Allseeing, with the bottle of Luneshine nearly empty. The moons have waxed some since I first started writing. Now you know the worst of it. I stood by and watched a monster cast my son into the mists.

I pray it killed him, Shadow. Maybe that is the worst part. Maybe he would fail his proving down there. And never come back.

Because if he survived… Ninegod help us.

I am going to sleep now.  Don’t worry, my security detail will soon enough find me. I await your reply. Do not think too poorly of me.

Joyous Jubilee,

IYANUS, P.

29th Jassuary, 9978 CY