Canus in the Mysts

This is a small magic tonight.  This is time travel I’m doing.  You are asleep now as I write to you and you are reading this long after I wrote this and both are happening at the same time.  You are a child and you are a man at the same time.  I am near you and I am far gone at the same time and I am angry my son, so very very angry.  You have had a bad dream earlier and I soothed you but with all the powers there are at my disposal, I can not dream your dreams for you nor can I save you from dreams that go wrong.  That is apparently one of those lessons parents must grudgingly give in to.  I can not save you my son.  And you can not save me.

But if I can not save you, I can give you need to know to save yourself.  That will be a power that your enemies won’t expect you to have because they are not time travelers like you and I.   I’ve secretly cast a greater spell than any they can imagine while using only the magic of my wits, and the trust that I have in the allies that have placed these pages in your hand.  I do not ask you to trust these allies of mine, but I’m going to tell you why I trust them and leave you to make your own decision.

My son, I want to spend long paragraphs doting on how much I love you, it makes my eyes water thinking of you alone, but I’ve only so many pages and each word takes up space, so forgive me if these words are not the loving words a long dead mother should give her son.  

To begin with I want to tell you about the Seam.  Its where things begin and by your time where things have been forgotten.  The Seam is a real place.  Until this world’s end the Seam will always be.  Its the place on the world where the begining meets the end, the place where the world occasionally still bleeds like a woman and her moon cycles.  The Seam is vivacious with life and its forestation is dense and dangerous.  They call it the Wyldwood, or just the Wyld or just the Wood.  Different names in different places as you travel the world and all these places are the Seam.  

Do not trouble yourself with maps or geography to find it.  The Seam can not be mapped it is a place that is alive and it moves.  The Seam is veiled by a thick fog that rises out of it.  This fog has been sought after and been called the breath of the gods, the breath of the world, the womb of cloud making, but mostly it is called the Mysts. Trust nothing that claims to have bottled or contained any of it.  They Mysts are part of the Seam and it contains things but the Mysts themselves can’t be contained.  When the Mysts rise they swallow whole landscapes and change them.  Everything the Mysts touch becomes part of the Mysts and under its control, which is controlled by the Seam which is controlled by the world.  Religions have been based on this fact.  It doesn’t make it less true.

Occasionally something comes else crawls out of the Seam; a child of Mysts.  They also have many names.  Names like Doombringer, Dragonbane, and Wyldstorm. Names earned because when anything comes out of the Seam it is the beginning of great terrible changes.  The most famous Wyld One brought the age of dragons to an end.  If there is time I might write about her, but more importantly you need to know of a different Wyld One and a time when a selfish foolish woman thought to use the power of the Seam for her own purposes.

She was known as the Witch of Canus and Canus was a land of Wizardry where worth was measured by arcane power.  Wizard towers rose and fell like weeds all over Canus, some growing so tall you couldn’t stand at the top and breathe for the air was too thin, some short and fat and surrounded by layers of walls like the tower had shed previous skins.  Many were crooked and some even purposely so.  The Witch of Canus didn’t have one, but three towers, and three names, and she was long lived because she kept her rivals guessing who and where she might be next.

It is easy for me to tell you that the Witch of Canus was an evil monster but such labels allow real dangers to be dismissed.  She should be remembered and reviled not because she was an evil monster, but because she began as a simple mortal, a woman of will and arcane power.   Remember, my son, that the Witch of Canus was born, she ate food, suffered from colds and aches as any mortal.  She wore robes for status, color and because the Canus heights were cold.  She was mortal.  She became a monster.  

It occured to her one day that all her arcane power would not stop her from dying, because all things born must die.  It was said in order to discover how to avoid her death the witch sacrificed her newborn son while his cord was still attached to her that she might be both dead and alive and learn the truths that only the dead can know.  Whether or not this was true, the very legend of the act made her widely feared among all the Arcane of Canus.  

Perhaps she learned that Skald would be her undoing for soon after the nasty sacrifice rumor she became obsessed with the neighboring realm of Skald.  The king of Skald was believed to a living descendant of dragons.  For 13 years the Witch appealed to her peers among the other Arcane, that something needed to be done about the blight of Skald, but few real skirmishes happened, and Skald stayed neither threat nor threatening.  So the Witch decided she would appeal to the Seam. The trouble is that no one who went looking for the Seam ever came back from the Wyldwood.

The Wyldwood bordered Canus and Skald.  The Wyldwood ran up and around the Teats of Gya and the Dragonridge Mountians and then down on the other side and from there the Wood wandered.  From the Canus side within sight of one of her towers the witch entered the wood naked that day.  She had the symbol of the world painted on her belly.  She walked slowly in between two children.  A boy younger than the age that cracks his voice, but taller than his years carried a candle high over his head.  The boys head was shaven and painted with the sun symbol of the god Tarn.  He wore a clean white toga and was told to walk in front of the witch and to never look back.  He did so as bravely as little boys who trust their elders and have a chance to prove themselves might.  His name was Geo.

Behind the witch, her daughter walked.  I know that she was at the age of her first moon and she was still frightened about it.  I know that the witch, her mother had shaved the left side of the girls head but never the right and that she had the three in one symbol of the moon goddesses Brect painted on her forehead. She carried a candle she had helped hand dip made from three wicks and she was very proud of it.  I know she had been instructed by her mother to walk close enough to see her mother’s back.  The daughter's name is not important.

It seemed like they walked for hours but the girl knew that they could only walk as long as the candles stayed lit, so she watched the wax melt and counted footsteps to keep time.  When the Mysts swallowed the area the girl had become distracted by her foot counting that she was startled when it suddenly became hard to see and nearly burnt her mother’s back in a rush to get closer.  Her mother had also slowed the speed of her step and then eventually stopped. Geo walked farther and farther ahead until he and then his light were swallowed in the fog.

The girl clutched her candles tightly and heard her mother say “First gift given.”  Then the two of them waited as the world around them evaporated into a thick damp grey.  The girl shivered wondering how her mother could stand the cold.  She pulled the candle a little closer to herself for warmth when a child's voice cut through the Mysts but the girl was unsure from what direction.

“You have come to the Seam uninvited.” the child’s voice spoke rising in curiosity.

“The world needs no invitation.” the witch replied calmly.  Her daughter searched for the child but found nothing.  Then it seemed like the air was full of excited, angry children.

“You are not the world!” A chorus of them shouted.  The girl felt angry little hands pulling her hair  and her toga, but there was nothing there.  Her mother stood unmoved.

“Then why did the sun lead me? Why does the moon watch me so closely?” the witch challenged amused.  The children shrieked and their sounds were less childlike and more like savage animal.  Thefirst voice returned.

“We do not accept these questions.” The child simply stated. “Leave.”

“Perhaps I have a question you will like.  How about...Why are you here?” there was a jaded kind of laughter in her mothers voice, the kind those drunk with power and feeling invincible get.  The girl was frightened to hear her mother speak like that to the things in the Mysts.

“Why are you here?” The child repeated and then the chorus of children echoed the question a few times.  Then the forest grew quiet again.  From around her mothers left arm the girl watched the Mysts coalesce into a grey shadow form. The shape of her mother.  It was like the Mysts grew denser and denser around the form until details, eyes, a mouth appeared and then the mouth opened and her mothers voice came out from it, only richer, deeper.  The girls nails dug into the wax of her candle.  This was not a magic she was used to.

“Why are you here?” the mystform witch asked.

“The world is wounded and cries out to be healed.” Her mother responded holding out her arms marred with roughly healed scars.   Her words provoked the chorus of child screams and animal howls.

“You are not the world.” the mystform witch said stamping her foot and the earth trembled and the winds blew.  The Daughter kept a hold of the candle and used all the Arcane she had to keep the little flame brightly lit despite the howl of the wind or the rocking of the world.

“You have accepted my question.  There is a dragon in Skald.  So, why are you, who have been called to protect this land from the ravage untamed destructive hungers of dragons, here.  I call upon what spirit still lingers in here that remembers the ravage of dragons to answer that question.  A dragon still lives in Skald.  If I am not the world despite being led by the sun and followed by the moon, are you truly the Mysts when you have left even one dragon alive to threaten these lands and this forest?”

The wood itself came alive then.  Trees moved, reared their heads and howled. The winds became a tempest. The girl dropped to her knees, hit by rocks carried by the wind but she kept the candle lit and rested her head against her mother’s legs so that her mother would know the moon was still behind her.

“You are not the world!” The trees cried.

“But I have spoken truly about why I am here!” the witch screamed and her daughter could barely hear her.  It was a frustrated rather than fearful sound.  “If there is a dragon alive in Skald then, Why. Are. You. Here.”  She said the last four one at a time and everything suddenly stopped.  Around her the girl could hear stones and branches falling as if dropped.  Then everything was silent.  The Mysts began to retreat.

“Is it over?” the girl dared to ask.  Her mother turned cut and bruised from the Mysts' tantrum but she was pleased with herself.

“Not quite.  We seem to have lost Geo, so I’ll need you to lead us out of here.”  She said this kindly and the girl was grateful her mother wasn’t cross at her daughters display of fear.  She proudly showed her mother the still lit candle and her mother smiled, nodding and patted her back.  Then the girl turned and thinking of Geo held the candle higher with pride so that her mother could see it.  She didn’t know that while her mother patted her back she was transferring the symbol of the world from her belly to the girls tunic.  

The girl walked on trying to be brave.  When the Mysts began to thicken again she steeled herself to show her mother she could be brave.  Only she heard something.  Her mother’s voice from far behind her. It sounded odd and it took her a moment to put the words together.  “Second gift given.”  The girl turned to find her mother hadn’t moved from her spot.  “Mother!” she cried out in heartbreak as the Mysts swallowed her and the candle whole.