An Unkindness

Through horn, truth. By ivory, lies.

The motif was a quirk of the Aeolic Greek dialect and nothing more. That was what the raven from Rome had been taught. Aristotle, his mentor and the Father of Rhetoric, had explained it in this way: The Greek word for ‘horn’ struck the ear nearly the same as the Greek verb ‘to fulfill’, while the Greek word for ‘ivory’ sounded almost identical to the Greek verb ‘to deceive’. The fact that these two materials were visually all but indistinguishable was a miraculous linguistic coincidence, one that the great poet Homer had made full use of in his epics and tragedies.

Aristotle had stressed, however, that a coincidence was likely all that it was. There was no observable property in either horn or ivory that could be meaningfully associated with prophecy or delirium. Horns could be hollowed out and used as drinking cups or brass instruments, and ivory was a precious material coveted for art of all kinds. None of those properties lent themselves to religious euphoria.

Compelling men tell compelling stories. But you have to understand, boy, whether it’s Homer or the Muses themselves whispering in your ear, you’ll never truly know a thing until you’ve seen it for yourself. The Odyssey was a story worth telling, that much is true. But a clever turn of phrase does not necessarily a natural phenomena make.

The wizened philosopher had couched his skepticism in terms of “likely” and “not necessarily” only because, in his own words, Heroic cultivators were a ridiculous existence that only occasionally followed natural convention. It was unfortunately possible, then, for a story from their Heroic Golden Age to be just as absurd in its events while also being true. Either way, his experiments and his observations had not informed him enough to say for certain. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say the dichotomy was a false one.

A man had to see the way of things for himself.

The raven known as Solus accepted a golden cup of wine from an outstretched hand, cradling it in one hand while the other held his horn cup of milk and honey. The golden cup was uncomfortably warm, hot enough to scald a lesser cultivator. The wine simmered and bubbled, just short of boiling.

“Go on,” the voice behind him urged. “There’s no need to hold back on my account.”

“Who are you?” the raven asked. He did not look back.

His back burned. The sensation was just short of unbearable, like sitting at the edge of a bonfire and waiting to catch flame.

“‘Who am I’, he says,” the man behind him chuckled, and that tanned hand clapped the raven on his shoulder once and then twice for good measure. He felt the immediate burn it left on his skin. “I suppose it hardly matters now. I’m the man that’s offering to quench your thirst. How’s that?”

“… My thirst isn’t for wine.”

“No. It never was. But in a bind, the next best thing will do, won’t it?”

The raven sneered behind his midnight veil at the stench of sea salt and cloying ash. He had seen for himself what the next best thing was worth. He had been reminded of that reality every day after his father passed. The Fifth Legion, his father’s legion, had suffered the consequences of that next best thing.

“It won’t.”

Not now. Not then. Not ever again.

“No? It always did before.” After a thoughtful pause that the raven from Rome didn’t bother to interrupt, the man behind him continued. “I see it now. You’ve come here for a different sort of satiation. So be it - give me back my cup of wine and we’ll talk.”

“No.”

“Ho?”

The raven’s shoulders tensed. If the man behind him took offense to his hubris, truly took offense, he would die. It was something he understood instinctively. An animal’s primal intuition.

The man chuckled.

“You’ve come to be greedy. You are a raven, aren’t you?”

“I am many things, and few of them are good.”

“Isn’t that the truth? Well enough - keep the sour wine. And tell me, brother, what is it that ails you?”

The raven known as Solus glanced sidelong at his bare-chested brother. The raven known as Griffon stared sightlessly ahead at the shadowed grove of trees they had both ended up in. If their roles had been reversed, the silence might have been overlooked. But he had known his companion too well for too long. Something wasn’t right.

His brother wasn’t engaging with the conversation, a choice entirely unlike him. If nothing else, he should have had a pithy comment or a biting remark of some kind to interject with at the most inappropriate moment of discourse. That he hadn’t reacted at all meant he had to still be under the sway of the milk and honey’s delirium. Seeing and hearing less than what the raven from Rome could.

Or perhaps more.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“A question with more than one answer, I’m sure.”

He amended his question. “Why hasn’t he come back to his senses yet?”

“Who’s to say he hasn’t? What makes you so sure that you’re the sane one, here? You’re the raven cawing at itself.”

“I’m talking to you,” the raven said, irritated.

“You are?”

“I am.”

“Then look at me.”

The raven grit his teeth.

“I’ll die.”

“Perhaps.”

The raven turned his head-

And his shadow rose up from its place on the forest floor and covered his eyes with its hands.

Not yet, it whispered in his ear. Not until the battle’s won.

“Why would one of us return before the other?” the raven asked instead, gripping his cup of hollowed out horn tightly. “Neither one of us took the drinks we were offered in the Orphic House. We should both have been lucid, or equally delirious. Truth in horn or ivory delusion, the sources of our cups were the same.”

“Were they?”

The raven's eyes widened behind his shadow’s protective palms.

One raven speaks only the truth. The other raven lies.

It fell seamlessly into place within him. One of the Thracian gatekeepers had given them a cup of ivory. The other had given them horn. A man and a woman in nearly identical cult attire. Which was which? It was too late to tell.

“… It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t? How so?”

“Whether you’re a delusion of my mind or a mystery annoyance, it doesn’t matter to me. If you can give me the clarity that I seek, then you’re real enough.”

The man behind snorted. “Pragmatic, I suppose. Go on, then. Ask the question you truly want to ask.”

The raven from Rome exhaled slowly, and let fly the question that had been burning in his mind ever since he pulled the Scarlet City’s shackles off his wrists.

“How do I refine myself?”

The man behind did not hesitate to answer.

“I don’t know.”

Worthless, vacuous Greeks.