Golben: 24,531 and Five

[Rance]

Morning was a tired orange ribbon strewn through the sky. Red clouds bled across the horizon, a vaporous patch against the dawn. The stars started to disappear. Fresh daylight shone across Golben with the reluctance of a child telling the two newcomers to its edge not to look, not to even dare a glance at the black Pit below them.

Gloria Wynsee had crossed a sea once. She had been born in sand and Glass Sun. But now she teetered a handful of yards back from where the earth seemed to drop right off into nothing, and beneath her patchwork skirt, her knees jittered, unsteady and off-balance. She shot a hand out to her side, catching the wooden slats of an abandoned guardhouse -- one of many that skirted the perimeter of the vast Pit -- to keep herself upright. Beside her, the Black Man stood tall, examining the vision of Golben with the surety of a predator.

"This is -- is where she is," Gloria said, subdued and meager. "This is Golben. This is where Rhaena put the Storyteller."

When the vertigo faded, she managed to slither down to hands and knees like a child who couldn't remember how to walk. She clambered closer toward the edge of the Pit. When her eyes fell over the lip and saw what the Golben Pit contained, cold trickled into her body and her next words leaked out of her, a breathy inquiry.

"This is where we're going to die, Giuseppe. Isn't it?"

* * * *

Nine and one-quarter of an hour. Twelve and one-half mile by foot. Leaving at such a late hour from Myrken Wood had ensured that North Passage Down would be a lonely and unrestrictive road for the High Inquisitor and the seamstress. They followed its winding spine to the quaint township of Stonebrook. There, against logic and the rush of time, they visited a small general store whose single flickering candle announced its willingness to accept midnight customers.

"I'm a somnambulist," said Argot Peppers, the withered old man who ran the general store. "That being the case, I much prefer not to sleep. Good time to make money; good time to serve weary wanderers. Are you going the Mayour Road this night?"

"No," Giuseppe said.

"Then north," said Peppers. "I've family in Newford."

They'd only wanted for a few meager supplies. Not a lonely old man's history. Not a tale.

"We're going to visit a friend," said Gloria Wynsee, a lie of utility. "Up along the--"

"East Weald," Giuseppe said, his tongue a sharp edge.

Peppers let out a wispy thread of giggles. Had one the patience or the inclination, the noise could have been woven into a greater, heartier laughter, but the old man was too thin, too slight for such a sound. "Father and daughter, then, traveling together. You two make quite the pair."

"No," Giuseppe said.

Gloria added, "He's not my father," with immediate rebuke.

"Oh." The old man paused. "Then some other manner of companionship."

"No," Giuseppe said.

"We just need a few supplies," the seamstress said. "Powdered chalkstone, that hands might have a better grip. Youngleather for the insides of our shoes to ward off blisters. A tin cookpot. A blanket roll--" and she snapped a narrow-eyed glance to Giuseppe, "--that I might stay warm now that the weather is cooling. A sack of cornmeal, if you please."

"Are you sure you aren't family," Peppers teased, turning to gather the girl's multitude of requests.

"No," Giuseppe and Gloria both said.

Within the hour, the girl and the Black Man had the night-clad trees of the East Weald to the right of their shoulders. The branches crawled like veins into the sky, already beginning to shed their brittle leaves, a confetti to herald the coming change of seasons. The girl's purse was several coins lighter. She wore the crosshatch-patterned blanket like a sash tossed over her shoulders and tied at her hip. The sack of cornmeal and the tin cookpot rattled and bounced against her thigh. They were going to an empty pit, Giuseppe had said; he wasn't sure for how long. Weighing herself down with supplies of suspected need numbed the pain of putting her back toward Myrkentown. She was Giuseppe's packhorse on two legs -- the seamstress never once raised her voice in complaint or displeasure, even if her feet swelled like porous sponges in her boots.

Golben was where the Storyteller was. Giuseppe's purpose was simple and clear.

I go to kill the Storyteller and end all the stories, even mine.

But there had been time enough for soft leather and chalkstone powder. The Storyteller had been alive for years, after all. She had waited years to die. Nothing a few minutes in Stonebrook could hurt.

* * * *

Golben was a ruin pressed hundreds of feet down into the earth. Mirrors glinted throughout it, reflecting the day in a symphony of fractals and hues. Hedges wove and intersected like great snakepaths, the sharp contours of green breaking up the monotonous browns of the soil. She did not know much as a girl or as a seamstress or as a Junior Inquisitor. She was aware that she loved some people, but that she had broken just as many. She understood that there were fell and insidious powers in the world: talents capable of reanimating what was best to left to rot, abilities that allowed a person to tamper with the mechanics of another's mind, even Songs that could chime the conclusion of one world and inspire the birth of another.

But Golben was a display of vast and frightful power too deliberate to be anything but the product of human ingenuity. A ruin turned into a sprawling labyrinth by some fantastic exertion of magic. A prison, a many-walled maze where things that ought to be forgotten were sent before being struck out from the ledgers.

The Storyteller. Her once-friend. A murderer.

Golben is no place for a seamstress, Giuseppe had warned her the night before.

Now that she looked upon it and her empty stomach tangled, twisted, and shuddered she understood what he meant.

But he had been wrong.

"Golben is no place for anyone," Gloria Wynsee told him.

[Glenn]

Supplies. A pack mule to feel a pack mule. Scraps to feed a begrudged pet. There was no need for such things for the Man in White. He fed on stories, this fae-wrought wretch of a man. He lived and died on endless tales. For some, bards, poets, those with adventurous hearts, this was metaphor. For the creature known as Giuseppe, it was the entirety of his reality. It began as a small hunger, a price paid for life, to survive fire and broken bone and rended skin that would not heal. It would be unfair to blame the Storyteller completely, for it was not in her nature to strike thusly. She was a being well set in her ancient ways. Hear the story. Tell the story. Indirectly shape the world and in doing so witness even more tales to tell. Thus, she was sated.

What he brought to the situation were two sparks, the first, desperation, an intense desire to live, and the second, inspiration, the ability to think in ways she would normally not, to inspire a story all their own. It was magic, and all magic, of course, had a cost.

She was satiable, at least for a time. At first, so was he. More and more, though, the need became greater. This was an immortal mantle thrust upon a very mortal man. The pangs became more powerful, the hunger more all-consuming. In the beginning, he balanced it with what goals he had left, but soon there was no chance for that, no chance for anything. Soon, whoever he was had been subsumed by the Man in Black. He would gather stories day and night and when there were no more to gather, he would make his own.

Even then, he could mostly find ways to constrain potential harm, to impact emotions and not worse, to twist futures and create a long game. Catch's axe ended that. It took storystuff to stay alive and after the wounding, at Cherny's panicked suggestion, more and more was needed. At that point there was no turning back. Not even the myriad of possibilities surrounding Marshall Emory could push back the tide for long. It seemed like nothing could. It seemed like the fae magics would end him sooner than not and he might have, finally, peace.

If not for desperation and this time, opportunity, he would have.

------------
"Golben," he responded to her, accent strong, voice frayed, "is the ultimate end for all those that Myrken chooses to embrace."

[Rance]

...the ultimate end for all those that Myrken chooses to embrace.

The seamstress disliked vagueness and riddles. Seams never lied. They were, even at their most complex, only strong or weak; they had a very specific function, a simple but imperative task -- to marry fabric or bring one edge of frayed skin together with another other. Words should be the same.

"When I asked Rhaena Olwak to spare the Storyteller's life," she said, "I did not mean like it this way; I did not mean for -- for it to be in a place like this."

She crawled back from the edge of the Pit -- it was so deep, so endless, and one false application of palm or knee could send her hurtling, falling into its depths without a ledge to grasp or a hope for survival. She envisioned herself a corpse draped with shattered spine across a hedgerow, a finger twitching as if trying to beg the rest of her body to find life. Giuseppe could have pushed her; he could be rid of her with ease--

But she gripped hard with a grimy palm to the knotted blanket roll. She imagined that such small amenities were imperative -- if he pushed her, he'd lose the cooktin and the woven coverlet. He needed those things, didn't he; she imagined he needed them, that she was valuable if only for all the meager supplies she wore.

Clambering to her feet and turning away from the sprawling vision of the Pit, with its scooping gasps of wind, swaying hedges, and glimmering mirror-faces, the seamstress steadied herself against the splinter-wooded guardhouse. "We won't see her from here. We've nothing to lower ourselves with--" as if she'd some proficiency in scaling and climbing, a task she'd never even considered, "--and contrary to -- to popular belief, I would not break your fall from this distance.

"There ought to be a more forgiving way down. They didn't just toss her in. That would have -- have been counterproductive."

All this said by a girl who prayed that Myrken Wood still cleaved to some glimmer of logic.

[Glenn]

The story of Myrken Wood is one of choice. It is one of instinct struggling against reason, of morality struggling against need. This was, coincidentally, Giuseppe's story as well. It is why he made such a cozy fit in a place where no one should either fit or be cozy. As Myrken was cursed, so was he.

Could he have found salvation in the company of Ariane Emory. Cool, careful words over perfect wine, questions asked and answered for all of time? Could he have the first time, when he rushed, mottled and trampled, to find her at that tavern at the edge of the province, when he met her with words first, wine second, and outright brutality last? How might have things been different if he had come with an open mind? The world was simply not big enough for both of them then. His world view clashed with hers and there could only be one world. Later on, at the end of his bestial time, at the end of his need, when he bled out both stories of the past and his own future, she had restored him with that same encompassing world view.

Just days later, he was ashes and dust once more. If he was there everyday, perhaps they could have found a solution. She could have sustained him until they found an answer. She would have looked. She would have helped. Instead, he had been gripped by the fear of it, by the fatalism of it. He had failed his own triumph when he failed to kill Emory. He had failed his own soul when he accepted the Storyteller's promise. He had failed his own restoration when he had failed to kill Wynsee, mercy and so much else staying his hand. Then, finally, when all else had failed, he had lunged for his own end, for some meaning to all of it, some semblance of redemption.

He was given an easier option.

-------
"This was Burnie's lapse. This was Burnie's downfall. This was meant to keep in the very worst, those who Myrken could not handle any other way. There was to be complex outside of it, cells for normal criminals, Golben proper for the monsters." Giuseppe walked with her, slowly, steadily, now. He had been silent for a long time. They could have dropped down at any point. They had rope. They did not get provisioned without rope. Still, he walked her on. Still, he tolerated her slowness, her hoarding of supplies he had no need for. "There is another way down, Wynsee." With a slow-turning flick of his hand, a long, jagged, black key was presented to her and the world around her. Off in the distance now, there was a mound, tiny now for how far away it was, but larger with each step that they advanced. "I used it when they brought the Storyteller in. I used it before that when I brought Burnie in."

[Rance]

The girl only knew one world: hers. Not his, not how it intersected with the realities others, not how he had changed, shown mercy -- he was still and always would be a Black Man to her. He'd placed a knife between children, encouraging them to thin their ranks and create a story all their own. That had been her first and lasting impression of him. He was capable, at any moment, of violence and deceit. Yet, she loped along at his side, obedient if only by spoken contract.

They were here for the Storyteller. She had questions to ask of the woman.

"What use is there," she asked, "in imprisoning monsters, human or otherwise? If -- if not with the intent to rehabilitate them, what does Golben do to protect Myrken Wood from the creatures you intend to imprison here? If we can -- can enter, surely they can escape given enough insight, patience, and cunning. What is it that you expect this complex to do that a blade cannot?

"You give them a plot of land," Gloria said, "even this one, and will they not make it their own with enough time?

As they walked on, the Sun slanting the black guardhouse shadows in front of them like ghostly fingers, he withdrew the black key. She angled a hand above her eyes to shield her gaze from the morning. The dark iron was a shapely relief in his hand against the unfocused mound in the distance. She hastened her steps as he spoke, though with his final words, she almost stumbled. Her heel caught a snag of her tattered patchwork skirt and she staggered like an off-balance scarecrow, almost spilling into the grass beside him.

I used it when they brought the Storyteller in. I used it before that when I brought Burnie in.

"The Governor," Gloria Wynsee said. "He's -- he's here? You brought him here?"

[Glenn]

Burnie had come to him. Desperation all around. He was just returned from Razasan only to find his land under siege by something that should not be. Ironically enough, that mirrored Giuseppe's own realization when he emerged from Catch's imprisonment a few years before. Ariane had been his personal nemesis and for the Governor upon his return, it was Rhaena, herself. She was unnaturally changed down lines that were only too natural considering what she had become. Burnie came to him not because he could be trusted but because of his skills. Whatever trust he had was in the ideals that had carried them to their previous point together.

Olwak had paid attention during his little interruption to her lesson, the one that did not end with Gloria Wynsee killed. She had mapped out Giuseppe's mind, how it worked, what sort of curse was upon him, and just what that curse needed to feed. Burnie was opposing her directly and she had no desire to fight him. Fighting was so very unpleasant. No, Glenn just needed to take some time and reflect upon things while Rhaena finished changed Myrken. Then he could come back out and they'd live happily ever after. Golben seemed perfect. It was what he deserved for opposing her when she was trying to do such good in his name. She had not a true measure of exactly what Berdini had created there. Giuseppe believed that at least. He had a better idea but there wasn't quite time to negotiate.

She would rearrange the chemistry of his mind, would turn that inspiration that damned him into a force like the world had never seen. It would have killed a normal man, that much stimulation. He was a creature of stories, though, fueled by them. It was simplicity itself. His mind, though overly taxed would constantly create new stories in his subconscious. As such, his body would be constantly regenerating. It was torment, but it was continued existence. Unlife but still not death. He could have had a taste of redemption and peace. Instead, in his weakness, he accepted her offer.
---------------------
"The monsters don't get rehabilitated." A shrug as they approached the mound further. "Sometimes, they end up fighting other monsters, bigger ones. Sometimes they get accepted, but they're always still monsters. Some of them can't be killed. Some of them can't be sent away. A gaol doesn't contain them. Golben would." There was a glance over the edge, deep into the pit, into their future. "And so it has."

[Rance]

"But it is monstrous. Golben," she said, whispered, as if the ugliness in the word was a grease on her tongue. "What punishment might this place offer for -- for beasts, for inhuman creatures? It may be effective for men and women who've turned into monsters, who've hurt those around them. A place for you. A place for me.

"But not the Governor. You put him here -- and for what? What wrong did he perform to deserve this, Giuseppe?"

Gloria Wynsee knew regrettably little about Glenn Burnie. In her Jernoan eyes, their colors burnt to a flat gray by an unforgiving Sun, the Governor had been a presence of authority, a figure that demanded respect solely for his station. She'd been willingly blind to what few flaws she might have managed to discern. A governor, a stahl, they were meant to act beyond the limitations of their inhibitions for the betterment of their cities, their citizens.

Exemptions. Pretense.

The pair approached the mound, which rose higher like a looming shadow above them with every step. The displaced earth glowed in the purifying morning light. Giuseppe had paused to peer down into the oblivion of the Golben Pit, but she couldn't -- whenever she looked across the vast depression, her guts churned and her breath became light and rapid. Heights were comparable to great bodies of water in that they both promised death at the behest of a mere mistake, and she'd been the architect of so many of those already.

A rusted door lay slanted against the mound, the bolts of its frame driven with indefinite solidarity into the risen earth. Rain had left crawling streaks of brown across the portal's face. A number of fortified locks were fashioned with gaping mouths and toothy tumblers, awaiting the taste of the iron key the High Inquisitor had brought with him.

She scraped her tarsweat-lathered palms on the thighs of her skirt. Her gaze was magnetized with muted fascination to the contours of the thick gate. A shaking finger traced the circle of a rounded bolt-head.

"The Storyteller will give me her answers. Then you will do to her what you've come to do. And you will promise me that, if Glenn Burnie still lives, that key will be his by the time your -- our -- deeds are complete."

[Glenn]

He was held together by strings, by magic, by ideals and rationalization. Suddenly, he had become dependent upon Rhaena Olwak. She could, at a whim, break the chains of inspiration that kept him healthy and hale, that kept him more than that, more than human, more than alive, not less. She could send him to a demise with just a thought. Her request was simple: be her high inquisitor. Keep the questions out of her hair and deal with problems as they arose. His mind was his own but his life was in her hands. He was in a position to do some good, to curb some of the worst. He had done it for Burnie. He could do it for her.

For a while, he did, but things became complicated. Emory was no longer Emory. He went to pity her. He went to mourn her. He went to make sure she would not be a problem. The process that changed her was unbreakable. He knew that. Still, he had to see. What he found astounded him. She was like nothing he could have expected, cracked glass when she should have been a stone statue. Wynsee had done her damage. Giuseppe mended it. In doing so, the two drew close. In doing so, he saw the earnestness within the new Ariane Emory. He saw how she strove for a perfection that was beyond all of them. He saw how she balanced precariously a manner that was beyond her and for the first time in years, he was truly charmed. She was something attainable where the old version never was. That in, and of itself, was not enough. It was that she was both attainable and endlessly unique. Still, he could only look, not touch.

There was the demon within the Whelp to ever remind him who and what he was. So long as that was true, that whisper in his heart, Ariane was too fragile a thing to touch. Oh, he could protect her, but touch? But then, what harm would a small touch do? Neither of them were truly alive. Neither of them were truly real anymore. What harm could there in one simple touch?

------------
"There should have been a guard house. This is.. ah, how do we put this? It is unfinished by man." Giuseppe glowered slightly at the door. "This is not a fine thing. Madness and magic and more. Blood. Never build upon death, Wynsee. It is an unstable foundation." He raised the key up. He turned it. The door creaked. "As for the governor, it was expediency, not punishment. That is the problem in creating tools for one's ideals. Once they are in the world, they are, you see, in the world."

She made her demands and he laughed darkly. "When I do what I am to do, Wynsee? Get your answers first and take him the key after. There will be no other way to it."

[Rance]

"Expediency," she repeated, the word whistling out through her mouth and her crushed nose. The blood under her nostrils was a drying streak across her upper lip. As he shoved open the wrist-thick steel gate, she peered over the swollen lump of her nose and into the darkness winding down, down into the depths of the earth.

Down into Golben.

"Expediency is no excuse to -- to put a man where monsters thrive. Had you his best interests in mind, you could have sent him elsewhere. Who's to say that -- that the Storyteller's tales have not killed him already; who's to say that he did not die by some other means.

"He could have harnessed Rhaena Olwak," the seamstress considered aloud. "He could have -- have kept her at bay. It would have remained his township, would have never become hers."

The Dream would not have come so quickly to life.

Her words were bitter, but the hardness in them seemed to flicker out like a weak flame as she peered into the cavernous stairwell opened before them. The darkness was untouched by the daylight; the stairs disappeared in a spiral just beyond her vision, and the girl's breaths sped to a reckless pace. Golben is no place for a seamstress, Giuseppe had warned her, and the phrase rattled around inside of her skull like some prophetic warning.

She was no Glenn Burnie, with a wrist as suited for a rapier as it was for a quill.

She was no Giuseppe, no Black Man with a talent for mystery, survival, and knives.

She was no Ariane, no Marshall, who could stand steadfast in the face of threats or dangers; she had no steel underneath her skin, no silver in her blood.

How many creatures had they imprisoned here? How many of them could easily make the flesh of a fool Jerno girl their meal? Would they have burning breath like the winged lizards of folklore or venomous tongues like sand-dancing serpents? As she looked into the shadows of the descending entryway, the mundane entrance to the Golben labyrinth, she realized too late her zeal and misdirected earnest. She had come here at the behest of some august, overbearing need to discern the truth: Why did she put the Dream in my head, why did she give me these visions?

But as Giuseppe had said, there was never simply one reason.

"We will define the specifics of -- of keys when the necessity arises," Gloria Wynsee whispered behind him, her gloved fingers reaching out to very softly touch the tail of his coat. To usher him forward. To let him lead the way. "You -- you go first."

I would be a liar to not admit that--

"This place sinks into my bones, Black Man. I want to be done; I want this to be finished."

--I am afraid.

[Glenn]

A simple touch. A simple kindness.

There were atrocities, bloodied and bloodless. Then there was a third kind. Quiet atrocities. Atrocities in the eye of the beholder. There was no denying some actions. To take an urn with the ashes of one's beloved? To use it as a tool, as leverage? That was an atrocity. That was one thing. To show kindness to a person who was no longer herself, to be drawn and act upon that pull, while knowing what you did, while thinking that to do anything else would be a horror? That was something else entirely.

To the woman involved, it was just as terrible in its own way. He had known. He had been weak. He had felt a spark reigniting something long burnt to dust, kindling to reawaken something that was no longer there, to replace all that had been lost. It was wrong, but then so was he, always. It was wrong, but the alternative would be endlessly worse. He could mend broken glass or he could watch it shatter forever. Through the breaking, it would not return to what it had once been; it would simply never be anything else again.

Yet it was wrong, so very wrong, and so was he. Now? Now after being wrong for so, so long, all he had left was this. He could run. He could undo some of what he did and undo the knot stopping Myrken's future. He could do the right thing, but of course, the Man in Black was still so, so very wrong.

-----
He was not born as he was. Burnie was not born as he was. Emory was not born as she was. They became who they would be. Myrken helped to shape them all. They were unfinished, incomplete. Now? Now they could face Golben. Gloria Wynsee was still incomplete. What would Golben do to the face of her heart? How would it complete it? The Man in White was not particularly worried. He had a task. It was simple. He simply had to do it. He lived her words even if she did not. Golben was no place for a Seamstress, but it was the very place to become a Myrkener.

"You must know of this place." They walked, down into the dank, twisted, darkness, into what should not be. "Of what it was. Magic does not flourish in Myrken. It exists. It squeezes at the edges and permeates our lives, but it does not flourish. This was a town. An academy, yes? A training ground for those who specialize in that unique Thessilanian magic. It ended how all such things end here, Wynsee. It ended like this."

A pit of death. Golben.

[Rance]

"I know nothing of Golben; I knew enough to -- to cease my inquiries when even Ariane found discomfort in speaking of it. Well before she--"

Changed.

An academy, then. A place of ritual and magic and learning, where power ebbed beneath their feet as if written like scripture into the earth. She was no adept, couldn't feel that there was anything remotely uncanny about the Pit except through the way its very sight attacked her natural fears -- darkness, depth, loneliness. She could not even begin to envision that it had once been a thriving village, a town where lives started and came to an sudden halt.

They descended the stairs with caution. Dampness clicked beneath their heels and the spiraling stair-stones; occasionally, tall slits worked into the walls of the funneling staircase threw orange light across them as they passed. Unbeknownst to the girl, they descended a tower-tall spire worked into the very side of the Pit itself, fortified with stone walls and weary wooden beams affixed by the hands of various artisans.

The helical nature of the dimly-lit staircase did not escape the seamstress' attention. A verse danced into her memory, a mere sliver from a grand poem. When she spoke it, her voice was quiet, sullen.

"H'zlz struck down, struck down,
high-held hand and sword within descending
from right shoulder
to lower-left hip
and the men packed like salted fish
on the lower stairs fell, fell, toppled
for they could not swing, could scarcely hope to even raise
their rightest arm
for rightest aim
to defend against the warrior in glass armor
who so desired to hold his G'leuse."

The girl scraped her fingers along the moss-softened curvature of the rounded wall. Each time they strode past a slitted window, she turned her eyes away from a glimpse of the Pit. "The statistics tell it," she said to Giuseppe behind him, refusing to remain silent only for that words were comforts to her, and she wanted nothing more than to pull her focus away from her trembling arms. "A vast majority of swordsmen are proficient with their right hand. In -- in a spiral staircase, the man on the highest stair attacking down, often working in the keep's defense, has a full spectrum of movement with his right arm. To swing a sword. To strike a blow. You see?

"Those coming up the stairs must contend with the architecture blocking them from a full right-handed swing, or -- or rely on their left arm to do their cutting. It puts them at a disadvantage; it keeps fellows from ascending as easily during combat," she said, then added with almost feverish explanation: "Proctor Duquesne taught me that.

"But where are the guards, Black Man," Gloria inquired. "A formidable door at the top, an easily-defensible stairwell, but where are the men with blades and shields to -- to ensure the dangers are kept within Golben?"

She asked this only as their feet found level earth. A bleak tunnel extended for a hundred strides beyond them. At its end, there was one last door with its yawning keyholes.

The Pit, the hedges, the Storyteller, and Glenn Burnie were somewhere, somewhere behind it.

[Glenn]

She wanted to know why he did what he did, whatever it was what he did. She wanted to know why he moved so swiftly. She wanted to know why he did not look back. She wanted to know why he acted now when not before. There were atrocities and some of them were his own. There were atrocities and some were of a personal sort. He had meant to make things right before, had meant to make the decisions that would lead to an ending, to peace, to salvation or redemption or at least some balancing of the scales. He had meant. Intentions and deeds. One ever overpowered the other.

Now though, now he would fix that. Live as long as Giuseppe. See the things he had seen. Cross the lines he had crossed and you shall learn one thing: it is easier to die for a cause than live for it. If only it was not easier to live not for a cause than to die for one. Now, though, now he had no choice. Now his options were exhausted. Emory was emerging. Emory would know. He would face death before facing her and death was the only way for him to find redemption.

They were all tied together, Black Man and Mindwitch, Seamstress and Storyteller, flecks that showed you your heart's desire, dreams that offered your greatest horror. To cut the cord would drag them all down, but that was exactly what he had to do. They were too tied together now; there was no room to move. He dragged them down like an anchor and by cutting that, by cutting away the Storyteller, they would sink, but just long enough to dip under the darkness so that they could rise to the surface once more, so that they could rise to the light.

---------------------------------
"Yes, yes, you learn things of no use to you. Very good, Wynsee, I'm sure." Distaste mixed with annoyance in his voice. "Proctor Duquesne teaches you this, yes? I teach you that while the person coming down is lording their sword over you, you shoot a poisoned blowdart into their left eye. Then you move slightly to the right so that they tumble down past you and not into you. If you're left handed, you may use that hand to scratch yourself while doing it."

The issue of the guard house was more pressing. "It was Berdini. Burnie walked the line between sane and not, yes? He was sane enough not to be a monster, sane enough that he could not oversee this. Just not sane enough to halt it. Perhaps he is now, perhaps not. I doubt him dead." A shrug as they continued downwards. "No matter. Berdini placed traps inside. You saw some of them from above. Golben is its own guard." Then, as an afterthought, as all of this was on some level an after thought. "I imagine Olwak is completely unaware of that.

"But yes, there is no guard house. Burnie's labyrinth was unfinished and it became finished in a way he did not intend, with himself, just as his Myrken became finished, unexpectedly, with Olwak at the center. Learn your lessons from that."

[Rance]

"It's always lessons with you," the girl said, her eyes wide and hungry for light in the darkness of the sunken corridor. It was instinct that made her lower her body, hunching her in her walk as stairs gave way to a vast, stretching distance toward that bleak door. There were countless leagues of stone and dirt hovering above them, and she thought that should a support give way or a buttress buckle, reducing her size might better ensure her survival.

"Blowdarts," she whispered, blurting the word as if it were some disdainful curse. Blowdarts -- he could talk of blowdarts and sanity all he wanted; he was a speck to her against the blinding light of Duquesne, whose teachings and lessons she clutched to the way a child gripped a nursing blanket. She would believe in architecture before blowdarts; she would believe in the strength of guards and men before the fortuitous integrity of Golben.

"If it is unfinished," saying nothing of Burnie; how could a man's presence make a Pit, a prison complete, "then why was it a suitable place to deposit the Storyteller? If you come to her now to end her--" I would have come here with her first; I would have gotten my answers, I would have mustered all my strength and turned her neck red, "--then why was it not done before all this?

"Your words aside, you -- you are a walking lesson, Giuseppe. An instructional pamphlet on the merits of cowardice and disloyalty. You owe allegiance to -- to nothing except yourself. When the Storyteller was imprisoned, you fled to Rhaena. With Ariane's return, you flee to be a tool of her victory."

She stood in front of the great door that separated the passageway from Golben. She reached for its handle when he did not. She snared the iron-cast hook, then turned to hold out a black-gloved palm.

"Give me the key."

[Glenn]

Would this all end with the Storyteller's death? Her tales were not the end all. She only pushed pieces that were already there, that were already in motion. She did not create. She is incapable of creation. All she could do is reorder the elements of the stories she's heard, of the people that were existent around her. She would be nothing were the people of Myrken not festering with emotion and ruin already.

Would all of this end? He did not know, but it would be a beginning, a chance for Myrken. No, there would be an ending; of that he was certain. It would be his own.

To kill the storyteller was to kill himself.
-----------------------
"Loyalty? It is a notion, but a short sighted one. It is, ah, I do not know how to say this and there is no translation of the text." He was already handing over the key. It was a burden he'd rather her have than himself, rather anyone have. He carried it twice now, or at least the metaphor of it, once for Burnie, once for Olwak, and both times it had cost him. "We shall try, yes? Without the idea of loyalty, this, ah, social notion, societal notion? Notion of society, yes? You understand what I say? We meet, you and I, in the middle of language and in the middle of language, we compromise the purity of our ideas. Ah well? What can we do?"

He watched her, distracting and distracted. "The notion is this, though. A notion of society. If no one believes anyone else will be loyal, then we will be able to accomplish notion. Money will have no meaning. Bartering will no longer hold up. We will all expect murder behind us and realize we must do it first. Humanity will be animals. So, everyone must believe in loyalty. There are ways to make sure people believe in the idea of loyalty without giving up your freedom to move. There is..."

He was about to finish, was about to drive the point home. "Your words aside, you say. Without words none of us are anything but all. Flailing, grasping beasts. What right you to put my words aside?"

[Rance]

The cold iron in her hand -- the black key -- drew her reticent eyes. Her skin went numb.

Give it to Burnie -- that had been her suggestion, had it not? For she believed, in her thin understanding of who the Governor was, that he'd no place here in Golben; he was primacy in every way that Rhaena Olwak wanted to be, and he'd been relegated here, to this Pit of the condemned and the damned. Give it to Burnie, because Giuseppe knew what slaughtering the Storyteller would do to him. It would unravel the Black Man's story, the very tale that had given him life and being.

I go to Golben. I end this once and for all. You think you will not get your chance to kill me, Bella, so consider this in the days and weeks to come. By walking through this door today, by telling me what you have, you have done just that.

And for her? The Dream was a fixture in her mind, a secret religion, a prophecy of the future whose visions had become all too real, tangible, and irrevocable. If the Storyteller's demise hooked a finger around one stitch, pulled it, wrenched it out and brought all the others with it--

The Dream had come from a story as well.

"I have every right to -- to put your words aside." The key was a dark tongue that she slipped into its begging lock. "Your words, your philosophies, the -- the rivets of your existence, they are so different from mine that I can't understand them. I am a flailing beast, Giuseppe. A beast who -- who already misses those she loves, who stands here with a man she despises only to better understand how greatly she's erred. A maggot who speaks of herself as if she is another person because the -- the distance," Gloria said, "gives her an excuse to ignore her accountability.

"My brother killed a woman because of me. I came here to -- to run away, to stop, as you say, compromising the purity of ideas. I am a Jerno. You are a Black Man. We are what we are, no matter how desperately we want our words to reflect the intentions of our hearts. But our hearts are subject to instinct and -- and to emotion. You see? So no matter what, we destroy things."

I am not glass. I do not break, Ariane had said.

But she had been broken. Rhaena had ensured that. And if Ariane could break--

--then they were all fractured pieces of glass that would one day stop denying their ruin. Words meant nothing.

The seamstress held her breath, twisted the key, and listened to the tumblers click, shift, and moan. Her bare fingers pushed open the portal, leaving spots of black sweat on the steel.

The Sun greeted the High Inquisitor and the seamstress as they took their first steps onto Golben's soil.