The War (Part 1)

When the hourglass ran out, everything went dark. I found myself floating in darkness. I could tell Lilly was there because her fingers were interlaced with mine. Slowly, a crack appeared in the darkness. A door. Beyond it: pure white. Universe had explained that when we walked through the door, the shrine trance would be over, and we would be in Father Ori’s mind. I found myself frozen, unable to walk through. But Asuana brushed past me and said, “Come on.”

Still, I couldn’t move. Lilly didn’t either. But it didn’t matter because the door came at us and swallowed us.

***

I found myself on a very crowded bridge in a very crowded shrine. Lilly and I appeared between two monks, both wearing a black robe. Our sudden appearance caused one of them to stumble off of the bridge, but he didn’t fall, just yelped in terror until he realized he was hovering there above the drop, then he laughed. “Hey, there’s no gravity,” he announced to his brethren nearby. Asuana was elbowing her way through a sea of black robed monks and nuns, and Lilly surged forward to follow her, dragging me behind her. She shoved passed the Old Lady and Sir Mau without bothering to say hello. “My father is here,” Lilly said, “I know it!”

The three of us pushed through the crowd until we reached a small clearing where the dead bodies were. In the middle, lying in the pool of human blood was the shimmering form of Father Ori, which most of the eyes were watching with trepidation.

“Daddy!” Lilly cried, dropping my hand and throwing herself into the arms of a grim looking man that I recognized from her shrine trace. He wore the same dark robe and hood that everyone here wore. Did Father Ori have a dress code? I wondered. I looked down to discover that my own clothes had been swapped for black robes. I busied myself with examining the robes, hoping to avoid having to meet Lilly’s father’s eyes.

“Lilly,” said the man. “We don’t have much time. He’s beginning to come out of shrine trance now, and when he wakes up to find that he somehow Gathered over a hundred people by accident, he’s going to be…” I looked up to see a dark expression on the man’s face. “There’s no telling what he’ll be.”

The Wizard and the Singer shoved their ways through the sea of people, bursting onto the scene, “There he is,” said the Wizard, flinging his finger at the shimmering patch within the blood. “Practically bathing in my blood. Disgusting!”

“Can’t we kill him before he wakes up?” said the Singer.

I did a double-take when I noticed that the two of them were holding hands. What had happened in their shrine trances? I wondered. The shrine really does change people. Before I could wonder too much about it, the Fool floated down from above, having apparently figured out how to fly. When he landed, he grinned in greeting.

Lilly was saying something, but it was hard to hear over the ruckus of people talking. Several monks and nuns had figured out how to fly and were soaring around the shrine, laughing like crazy, taking the ruckus to new levels. I thought I heard Lilly say something like, “Daddy, this is my boyfriend, Nial.” Or maybe it was just: “This is my friend Nial.” Or it could even have just been, “This is Nial.”

Lilly’s father met my eyes suspiciously for a moment but then ignored me in favor of producing a booming yell, “Quiet everyone!” His voice echoed off of the volcanic walls, causing everyone to shut up at once. Those flying in the air drifted to a halt.

“As you may have gathered,” said Torin Thanata, “you’ve been Gathered.” I saw Lilly roll her eyes at the joke. “Normally, Father Ori would greet you and give you a speech about right and wrong, reward and punishment, and a bunch of other morlish drivel. But, lucky for you, he’s still in shrine trance, so enjoy your last few moments of being able to speak and act freely. If I have any advice, it is this. First, do not trust him, for he is cunning.” He paused, letting this sink in. His eyes fell on Lilly’s, and I realized that this was mostly for her benefit. “Second, do not trust others, nor your own senses. Everything you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell can be manipulated by him.” He took a deep breath and said, “Third, trust only your own thoughts. Your thoughts are the only things he cannot change and cannot overhear. If you must risk telling secrets, do so at times like these, when he is unconscious, asleep, or distracted.”

I thought I saw the morlish shimmer move, as if Father Ori were in the process of twitching back to consciousness; ripples traveled across the surface of the pool of blood beneath him. My stomach dropped.

“Lastly,” said Lilly’s father, “remember that his only weakness is that he has a mind like yours. His attention limits him, just as yours does you. He cannot see everywhere at once. He cannot listen to everyone at once. He…” And suddenly I, realized that Lilly’s father was naked. Before I could stop my own eyes, they dropped to the man’s penis, which was non-existent. “Ah,” said Lilly’s father, not the least bit embarrassed, “He’s awake.” Before he could say more, though, his lips too became non-existent.

When I looked back at the shimmers, they were rising to full height. A moment later, I heard the unmistakable voice of Father Ori, “Dear Humans!” No one spoke, no one moved. “I know not what miracle has brought all of you here, but I can only conclude it is the work of deities.” His words echoed so loudly off the stonework of the shrine walls that I felt every syllable vibrate through the pit of my stomach. “Welcome to the afterlife!”

Someone in the crowd started clapping, and a few others half-heartedly joined in. Most did not.

Father Ori cleared his throat. “I said. Welcome. To. The. Afterlife!” Those who had been clapping did so louder, desperately.

Someone beside me (Sir Mau!) hissed in my ear, “Just do it. He likes these small shows of obedience.” When I saw Lilly’s lipless father roll his eyes and give a few sarcastic claps, I joined in, and soon the whole shrine-full was clapping, some frantically, some half-heartedly, some mystified.

This seemed to appease Father Ori, for he announced, “I am raising my hands for silence, though you cannot see me.” When silence had fallen, he said, “Normally, we would now proceed to orientation. But I do not have time to show all of you around at once. Indeed, we’ve much to do. I’m going to need complete silence while I work. If you must speak, do so over there, and quietly. Those who disturb me will be punished.” Then Father Ori chuckled, “Sorry, you can’t see it, but I’m pointing at the northern wall of the shrine, beneath the giant stone panther. Go. Now.” And before I could move of my own volition, a great wind swept me off my feet and off the bridge. I crashed into the stone wall; bodies crashed into me. The pain was real but left me somehow uninjured. When I recovered from the shock, I found that I was floating above distant magma, surrounded by the rest of the black-robed citizens of Father Ori’s mind, drifting without gravity, like soap bubbles.

***

Dear Human, I must admit: when I woke, I was terrified. Who were all these people? Where had they come from? I yearned to answer these questions, but we were at war, and from what I had learned in my shrine trance, things were not going well. As much as I wanted to interrogate all of my flock to determine who had managed to trick me into Gathering these new humans, now was not an appropriate time to admit that I didn’t know what was going on, for I felt the tell-tale tingle in the back of my neck that alerts a morl when there are other morls nearby. The shrine’s communication network was working.

It took perhaps half an hour of deep breathing and meditation, but eventually, I heard a familiar voice. “Little Ori’s here,” said my mother. “It’s about time.”

“Mother,” I said politely, “I am graced by your presence, and that of your flock.” Please forgive me, Dear Human, it would take an entire textbook to explain to you the subtleties of the morl language. Suffice it to say that if it ever sounds like I am speaking funny, it is because we use a different dialect with our elders.

“Shut up, Ori,” she said. Suffice it to say that our elders may use any dialect they wish. “We’ve been waiting at our posts for weeks. Your brother has lost six warships trying to hold the Lighthouse. And Shoni already needs reinforcements in Drymar.”

The tingle in my neck intensified as the shimmers of the three morls appeared, my mother, my brother, and my mother’s lover. Shoni wasn’t his name, but rather a morlish term of endearment (perhaps vaguely translatable to “sweetie”). I’d practically forgotten his real name; they’d been romantic partners since the first invasion.

“Father Ori,” said my younger brother, “we are graced by your presence and that of your flock.” But I could tell he was saying it with a smirk. “Indeed, I can see that it has grown! What marvelous magic, that we can see your Gathered. I conjecture that the communication network must be placing us directly into your mind, as if we have been temporarily Gathered. I further conjecture that the stonework on the shrine is from the mid-to-late Trinovan period.” He fancied himself a scientist and was always making what he called “conjectures,” and always emphasizing words he thought were important.

“Father Ori,” said Shoni, “we are graced by your presence and that of your flock. May your time in the Game be long and your role be full of nuance.” He used the longer form of the traditional greeting, being the youngest of all of us. My mother (almost five hundred years old) had found him when he was barely more than a youngling; it was a bit gross, even by morl standards.

“Greetings, Shoni,” I said. “How is your campaign in Drymar coming? My mother says you are in need of reinforcements.”

“Stop trying to change the subject,” my mother interjected. “Why is your flock so big?”

My brother added, “Recall the story of the Mad Morl, whose flock of just fifty-nine drove him to—”

“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently, “I know the story of the Mad Morl as well as you do. I Gather whom I Gather. I have my reasons. We are at war, after all, and we must all make our sacrifices.” I held up the stump of my hand. “Look closely at the hand I’m holding up. Or should I say lack thereof? I had to saw through my wrist with a rope just to get here. Cauterized it with a rice cooker.”

I saw the three shimmering forms move closer, inspecting my stump. “Hmph,” my mother grunted. If there was one thing morls appreciated, it was noble sacrifices.

I went on: “There will be time for our own tales soon enough. But we’ve much to do. Mother, if it pleases you, I eagerly await my chance to play whatever role in the Game you believe is worthy of its complex and nuanced nature.”

“Hmph,” she said again, but seemed content enough. “Yes, Shoni’s push into Drymar has met with more resistance than expected. He secured the trade lines that feed the Drymar capital and managed to sneak a small delegation into the Cathedral tower.”

“That’s where I am now,” said Shoni.

“Don’t interrupt,” my mother snapped.

“Y-yes, of course. My deepest and most complex apologies are—”

“As I was saying,” said my mother, “Shoni reached the Cathedral tower, but the city guard has since been reinforced by the Seadom fleet during the weeks we’ve been waiting.” I could tell from the silence that she was giving me a pointed look. “How the humans were so well prepared is one of the mysteries we shall have to sort out later. Suffice it to say that Shoni is in a precarious situation. His troops cannot breach the city without taking heavy losses. And he cannot continue to secure the trade routes without receiving additional food and water for his troops.”

“We planned for this, though,” I said, “so I can only assume that my brother’s campaign in Seadom has left him unable to deliver supplies by sea.” I had seen much of this in my shrine trance, but I knew it was good to let my mother vent.

She spat on the ground, somewhere near Nial’s corpse. “The Seadom fleet was waiting for him and would almost certainly have killed him if not for the luck of the strange weather.”

“The weather?” I said, feigning ignorance.

“Early this month,” said my brother, “the entirety of the South Sea Nations began to see an unprecedented uptick in both precipitation and cloud-cover. The clouds rolled out of the north and covered the human nations in a matter of days. From our reports back home, the clouds do not extend beyond the mountains into the Morl Nations, making me strongly conjecture a meteorological phenomenon of a highly magical nature. Though I know of no morlish gift that could possibly be strong enough…”

“Indeed,” I said, “but there is more to magic than morlish gifts. There is also the ancient magic that enables the underlying structure of the Game itself.” I let this deep metaphysical point hang in the air, as I often do when posturing with my brother. “As we crossed the desert, we discovered an ancient city beneath the sand. Upon its discovery, the clouds appeared and have not abated since. If the weather saved my dear brother’s life and, by extension, our mission, then I ask only that you do not thank me, nor the members of my flock that discovered the city, but rather, give your thanks to the deities that preordained our success—”

My mother, who never did approve of me joining the priesthood, interrupted with something that roughly translates to “deities shmeities” and went on to say, “The wind was in his favor. His warships were able to land on the main island of Seadom, allowing him to take the Lighthouse. He has barely enough warships to maintain the position and has been skillfully outmaneuvering the human fleet ever since. It is not sustainable.”

“Tactical difficulties aside,” said my brother, “camping in the Lighthouse has been… wow. I’ve been able to speak to my ship commanders in the area as if they are standing next to me. We’ve run circles around…” He must have realized our mother was glaring at him and said, “It’s been extremely difficult waiting for you. For a while, I was worried that the Sisters of the Lighthouse would discover me camping in the upper room, but just an hour ago, I went out to pee and discovered they were all dead. It almost makes me believe in your religious notions of fate and divine plans, Father Ori.”

“I see,” I said, flicking my eyes at my flock, beginning to develop a theory about where all these strangers had come from. “And you, Mother? Clearly you and your flock have breached the walls of the Great Academy, that bastion of human magic, truly an incredible achievement…” I trailed off, hoping she would interrupt me, but no, she wanted me to continue in the usual dialect a while longer. “An achievement of great nuance and subtlety, a Game of shadows and smoke, of mirrors and mysteries, of…” Still she didn’t interrupt. “Seriously Mother, do you want me to recite the entire thing?”

“Ori,” she said, “you are lucky we are in your mind and not you in mine. I should have put your brother in your place and had you at the head of the fleet instead.” She kicked experimentally at Nial’s corpse, then Lilly’s, but couldn’t move them. Her body wasn’t really here. “Yes, my main force struck the Great Academy on the first night, as planned. We Gathered the professors we could find, and we secured the students within the dormitories. But we discovered that most of the professors had fled in secret the day before, suggesting once again that the humans were more well-informed than we thought. That reminds me, was there any unexpected human meddling in your mission, Ori? And remember, if you lie to me, I will ask my shadow mercenary.” She began peering into the flock, presumably searching for Gwen Florence.

“Meddling?” I said, trying to sound surprised. “Hmmm. Meddling… Nothing comes to mind. We were, however, delayed by the weather. Oh, and I was, for the briefest of times, captured by one of the monks of the Northern Monastery. Nothing so interesting that discussing it can’t be postponed until after our inevitable victory.”

“Hmph,” my mother said.

I broke the awkward silence by saying, “I’ve Gathered the ones we previously discussed. And I’m happy to announce that I did so during their shrine trances, so if my brother’s ‘conjectures’ are correct, their gifts are at peak-strength. Shall we begin to discuss trades?”

“Hmph,” my mother said. I smiled. It was her way of saying she loved us and that we should get on with it. The morlish language is complex.

***

A nun or maybe a monk bumped against my leg, pushing my weightless body nearer to Lilly, which pushed her against Asuana, and so on. Six pilgrims and Torin Thanata had joined hands to keep from floating away from each other. Before our ring could float too far up and away, the Wizard muttered a spell. A downward gust of wind stopped our trajectory, leaving us slowly circling in the middle of similar constellations of monks and nuns.

“I didn’t think that would work,” whispered the Wizard. “Do we have magic here?”

“If so,” said the Singer, narrowing her eyes at the faraway bridge, “perhaps we can overpower them. My gift may work on morls, after all. I don’t know.”

“No,” said Torin sadly, “your gifts here are like your body. Just as we can move our limbs and we can touch each other here, so too can we use magic. But our sphere of influence is limited to other dreamstuff. We can affect each other, but not Father Ori, and not the world around him.”

“I wish we could hear what they’re saying,” whispered Lilly. It was the third time she had said it.

Another glob of Gathered drifted by. So far, I’d seen no sign of Madam Bela, but this cluster contained Sir Mau, holding onto the hem of a nun’s robe. He met my eyes and gave what might have been a nod then looked away. He seemed broken. It was the hollow look in his eyes (or rather the thought of that look being in Lilly’s eyes one day) that spurred me to say, “I have an idea. Sort of.”

I said it mostly at Asuana. She took her eyes off the distant shimmers on the bridge and raised an eyebrow at me.

“Universe told us our minds are linked,” I said. “I’ve done this before, with Jonny…” I met the Fool’s eyes, which seemed calm and passive, but when I tried to reach out to his mind, I found my own mind filled with a hot mix of rage and anguish.

“Ow!” hissed Lilly. “You’re hurting my hand.”

Torin, who held my other hand, squeezed, drawing my attention to the fact that I was clenching Lilly and Torin’s hands hard. I forced myself to relax and whispered, “Jonny is pissed, by the way.”

The Fool grinned when everyone looked at him. I wondered how many times I had misinterpreted that grin.

“That’s not an idea,” whispered the Wizard. “That’s an observation.”

“The point,” I whispered, “is that I’m not magical. I don’t have any gifts. So if I can do this, so can all of you, which means we have a secret communication channel right here inside Father Ori’s mind. Let me try again, with you, Professor, and with you, Lilly, at the same time. What number am I thinking of?”

A moment later, they both exclaimed, “Five seven seven five!”

“I could hear you,” said Lilly. “But your mouth didn’t move.”

“And I heard nothing,” said her father. “Very interesting. This may indeed be useful.”

Asuana nodded, a smile forming at the corner of her mouth, “Interesting.” She looked at me for a few seconds, during which I heard her say, Do you hear me? I nodded, then heard her say, And do you see what I am trying to show you?

I relaxed and realized there was an image pressing at the corner of my mind: a warm hearth, a bearskin rug, the smell of cooking, a cat curled up in front of a fire. “Asuana, does your home have a bearskin rug?”

She smiled. “The Sisterhood of the Lighthouse has a great many warm hearths,” she said.

“My idea,” I said, giving the Wizard a pointed look, “is that if one of us could get closer to the bridge, maybe we could all listen in.”

“Nial,” said Asuana, “that’s a surprisingly non-terrible idea.” One of Asuana’s rare compliments. “Listen for further instructions.” With that, she unlinked from the chain and groped out for the nearby stonework, finding purchase by encircling her arm around one of the giant stone panther’s teeth, a canine bigger than she was. Then, she pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her feet against the tooth. Craning her neck behind her, she found her bearings and launched herself confidently through the air, soaring on a vector that took her beneath the distant bridge. She grew small as she sailed away. I had to suppress a whoop when she impacted one of the stone stalactites that hung from the bridge, like a larger version of the tooth she had just left.

“Who is she?” whispered Torin. “I think I’m in love.”

“We all are,” whispered the voice of a woman from another globule of Gathered. I could tell she was a nun because her head was shaved like the monks. The other nun she was linked to added, “Yes, she’s always been the best of us.” Then the globule of nuns floated too far for whispering to be effective, but as they were leaving earshot, I thought I caught a snatch of, “…even better than the other Asuana…” I wondered if this was the totality of the backstory I would get about this strange woman, who was now slowly inching her way up the stalactite toward the top of the bridge, where the shimmering morls blended in with the shimmering of the heat waves coming from the center of the earth.

I busied myself with the side-quest of reaching out my mind to the Fool. The Fool grinned at me, seeming to know what I was doing. Suddenly, I felt rage, that hot knife in my belly. Why? I asked. Jonny’s pictures punched me: The woman with violet eyes; her dress, a waterfall of ruby; her smile, a bright white flash; then: her cold gray skin in a dark casket on a gray day. Lady Catherine? I said. I recalled the name from the last time Jonny and I had “spoken.” Then another wave of pictures crashed over me: Jonny sitting on the bed of a room in an inn. The door seemed to open and shut on its own, the briefest hint of a shimmer in the candlelight. A piece of paper seemed to hover in the air, with a message written on it, Catherine was Gathered. Then another piece of paper: I want to Gather you too. Then finally: But I need your help. Lastly, the morl left a small pamphlet on the bedside table. Its title was, Stronger To-Gather: A Shadow Mercenary’s Handbook, by Father Ori, prepared with love for Jonny of Davenport And suddenly I realized who had been killing the monks as the pilgrims trekked through the mountains, and I realized why the Fool had been so “helpful” with regard to stealing Asuana’s knives. And now the hot knife of rage in Jonny’s belly made sense: Catherine wasn’t here.

I didn’t know if Jonny could understand me, I tried to communicate soothing feelings. It’ll be okay, I thought at him. Jonny grinned back, and I felt that maybe there was a bit more sorrow in the grin, and a little less rage. There’s still hope, I thought at him, maybe Catherine was Gathered by another morl. And I received, in return, a picture of Catherine speaking with her hands: Never stop smiling, Jonny; you have the most beautiful smile in the world; I’ve read that smiling makes us happy when we’re sad, and I want you to be happy always.

“Why are you crying?” whispered Lilly.

I sniffed but couldn’t wipe my nose or cheeks without letting go of her hand, so I just shook my head and tried to swallow the lump that Jonny had placed in my throat. “I’m not crying. Jonny is.” But it didn’t make sense because Jonny was, in fact, still grinning, as before. “Never mind.” I twisted to see over my shoulder, where Asuana was now dangerously close to the lip of the bridge, just beneath where my own corpse lay. “She’s in position. Let’s see if it worked.”

Reaching out my mind to Asuana, I found myself clinging to the edge of the bridge too, listening to voices speaking in the morlish language above me. I was surprised to find that I understood. Naturally, Asuana would know morlish.

“Mother,” said Father Ori’s voice, “I am graced by your presence, and that of your flock.” As the conversation unfolded, I gathered that there were four morls, one of which was Father Ori’s mother, and the other two, perhaps his brothers. After some puzzling back-and-forth had transpired, I heard Father Ori say, “Shall we begin to discuss trades?”

***

“I’ll take the professor,” said my mother, “he knows the Academy and the students will recognize his face. He’ll be useful.”

“I hereby agree to trade Professor Octavius of the Great Academy to you, my esteemed mother, in exchange for nothing save your good will and undying affections.”

“Hmph. Now we shall proceed in order of seniority, skipping Ori.”

“I’ll take the necromancer,” said my brother, “or should I say necromancers. I can have them both right?”

“You may have them both,” I said graciously. “They are strong-willed, so you will no doubt need to use the lever of love. I hereby agree to trade them to you, my esteemed—”

“We can skip formalities,” said my mother. “Shoni, go. We don’t have much time.”

“I’ll take Jonny,” said Shoni. “Wait. That’s his name, right? The one who doesn’t talk?”

“Jonny is his name,” I said patiently. “Yes.”

“I’ll take the pretty little thing,” said my mother, “with the pretty voice. It’s poetic, really. She came to me once in her youth, a charming young adventurer. She made quite the entertaining Shadow Mercenary for a time, drowned a whole ship-full of merchants or pirates or something, or so I heard.”

“The divine plan brings her back to you,” I said, nodding. “Any others? Brother?”

My brother snorted. “I’ve a flock of seven and they already keep me up most nights with their unceasing chatter. No, I’ll not risk the fate of the Mad Morl. Keep your…” He paused for a moment, no doubt trying to count. “Is it two hundred, Ori? I already thought you were crazy with the thirty you had! Do you still carry around that box of cards to help you remember them all?”

“Well, shall we proceed with the mission?” I said, ignoring him.

After the “Hmph” of assent, the four of us said in unison something that roughly translates to, “May the Game grow nuanced.” It also could translate to, “May the meat be seasoned.” You humans sometimes refer to meat you hunt for sport as “game”; we do the same.