2020-07-23 - Heartblood

The Dream breaks apart, sending them back to their lives.

Or does it?

Itzhak finds himself in that weird Carl Sagan throwback getup again. He's not in the town, though the smell of the ocean and the feel of a chill, damp wind blowing inland tells him he's still close to the coast. He's in a forest, next to a river, with a hunting lodge sitting before him. It was once a grand affair, arcing over the river via a footbridge, with a sweeping front porch and fancy, stained glass windows. Now it's in dire need of fixing up: the roof has more than its fair share of moss and lichen, some of the siding and molding is rotted, the bridge looks treacherous at best. Yet it seems habitable enough. The windows are clean and whole, and the frame's stable.

Some of the same rough individuals he'd glimpsed in the tavern are out front, tending to...oh, those aren't horses. They're huge boars, some bearing tack like they're meant to be ridden. They have short, sharp tusks, and a variety of coat colors, just like a horse would.

One of Coira's people, a spare woman with a weather-beaten face and silvery hair, spots him. She nods her head at the large double-door entrance to the lodge. "She's in there. Expecting you."

Some of the enforcers pause to watch this performance, plainly curious. A Maestro is being weird! Everyone watch. The woman who spoke is less concerned with Itzhak's behavior, and more with that of her peers; she casts a withering glare at them, and they return to their tasks, limiting their observation of Itzhak to furtive glances.

The interior is similar to the exterior: former opulance fallen into disuse, now being repaired. It's clear the windows are recently cleaned, by the dirty rags and buckets of filthy water scattered around under them. They depict scenes of various animals. Familiar animals in more than a few: a wolf, a unicorn, a phoenix, an elk stag, a fox, a harpy eagle, a colorful songbird, a clever coyote--

"There you are," Coira's voice says. She's coming down the once-grand staircase that curves to the upper floor. There are barren places on the wall where pictures have come down. What will replace them? Who can say.

She's still mostly in leathers, though she's traded out the heavier, safer top armor for a more comfortable tunic in dark blue. "Come for your payment, then. I knew you'd find your way back in your time."

"The dirty work I asked you to perform is done," Coira corrects him, not unkindly. "Much more remains for me. My step-mother, for instance." She gets a distant look about that. It promises to be an ugly affair, because not all of the court will turn on her once the truth is laid bare. She won't be the only one to die.

But first. "Of course. And you may pick an item." She moves towards a pair of doors that likely lead into a great room, perhaps with a view of the river, beckons for him to follow. The doors appear newer than the surrounding frames, and have no artistry to recommend them. Replacements, then, for whatever stood here before; functional, inexpensive.

Coira opens the doors, and beyond is, indeed, a great room, complete with enormough fireplace. The walls are bare, but this was obviously a trophy room. And it was packed with them, to go by the tight, geometric arrangement of ghostly shapes where soot was kept off the walls by the heads and horns of who knew how many kinds of animal. Those are all long gone. Now, it's packed with things.

Coira had said she had a collection, and this wasn't any form of hyperbole. The usual fancy furniture one would find in a room like this has been replaced with display cases, work tables, and dressers, and every surface is covered. From fancy scrying orbs to ornate staffs to figurines to large glass jars of knicknacks: if it might be valuable, it's in here.

Coira pauses towards the center of the room next to a lawyer bookcase full of ceramics, smiling sly and satified, not unlike a proud dragon amongst her hoard. "I didn't intend to let it get like this," she admits, moving to a bookcase. There's everything from lovingly bound leather tomes to dusty collections of papers bound in twine. "It was just easier to accept payment, early on, that was an item, rather than money. A lot of the people I helped, they didn't have money. And then it became a way to barter with nobles landed gentry." She shifts to a side table, takes up a Wootz steel dagger and turns it over in her hand. It's not just a dagger, though. Itzhak can see it's more than that; there's a glint of power in those waves of silver and dark gray. "Finally, I recognized the value in powerful artifacts. That's when I really began collecting."

Slowly, Itzhak begins to realize everything in the room has some aspect of power to it. Some more than others; there's a book on that bookshelf that's bleeding energy unlike the rest, a small mammal skull on a dresser that's like a star. All of them, though, have an aura of power.

Coira sets down the dagger, raises her hands. "Any one item. I won't gainsay you, no matter what it is."

Coira watches him as his eyes wander, a small, secretive smile on her face. Yes, she might not wield power herself, but she can sense it, taste it, and most importantly of all, she's keenly aware of the effect it has on Maestros. They want it, need it. It calls to them. (And Itzhak knows, this is why They bring them to such places; to lure them into singing bright and loud so They can feast.)

Coira's smile becomes cautious, curious. She nods at a corner by the window, where a divan and two wingback sit arranged around a burl wood coffee table. The blue velvet upholstery on them isn't in the best shape, but it's clean. A few more books and a pair of scroll cases are stacked on the table. This is probably where Coira sits and reads from her bookcases. (There's a lot of bookcases in this room.)

She has a seat in one of the wingback chairs. "Did you want anything to drink? Mead, wine, cider?"

"Cider it is." Coira cranes her neck, calls down the length of the room, "Rohenna?" There's a door there, a small one, the kind meant for servants to use when bringing things in and out of the room. A girl appears there, wild-haired and -eyed, scrawny in the way of someone who was once malnourished and is now recovering. "Can you bring us some cider?" She nods, and disappears around the frame.

She surveys him across the space between then, eyes narrowing at the mention of the wizard's vision. "Did he," she says, eventually. Enough time passes before she speaks that no sooner has she said that than Rohenna returns with a wooden tray bearing two goblets of cider; it's a combination of fruits, a bit like apple and cranberry and pear all rolled into one. "Thank you, Roh," Coira says, and the girl nods. At this distance Itzhak can see, there's scars running along the side of her face and into her hair, and one eye seems more dilated than the other.

"Welcome, ma'am," she says, voice raspy. She risks a glance at Itzhak (she served cider to the Maestro! the stablehands will be so jealous), then quits the room with the tray.

Coira takes a sip of her cider, resumes studying Itzhak. "Was I burning and pillaging? Was I smashing houses of worship?"

Coira mmmms, sipping from her goblet. She's eyeing Itzhak, trying to decide if he's omitting details.

She sets the goblet down on a table next to her chair. "The gemsi. My family's sigil. Proud and strong. Deadly when provoked." She's not just describing the boars, that's for sure. She glances up at a cabinet, upon which a bronze statue of a herd of horses running rampant sits. "Domestic horses are rare, here, along the coast. Geit, like you rode to the tower, and gemsi, they're far more common. Just as useful, if not more so; the unicorn take exception to the taming and binding of their lesser brethren, and will attack us to free them." She shrugs, a sort of 'really, who can blame them' gesture.

Her gaze slides back to Itzhak. "So. I will reclaim my throne." Her brows gather. "I'm not sure who I'd raise an army against, but I can guess. When I reveal my step-mother's treachery and reclaim the Queendom, some of the alliances she's formed will disintegrate. I imagine more than one of those could lead to a war."

Coira hms, thoughtful. She accepts Itzhak's measure of it with a nod, even though she plainly thinks there's only way she's heading any kind of army. If he didn't see proof she was a Queen, well, that was him being honest with her. She could make of it what she would.

"'Hebrew'," she echoes, trying the word out. "We know so little of Maestros. You say little about yourselves to us."

What he says next makes her go still. She holds his eyes, unflinching. Motionless, like a predator with eyes on their prey. "Of course he knew," she says, finally. Her voice is quiet and low. "How could he not? He's a wizard."

She doesn't respond to the final statement immediately. An air of rage and frustration coils around her, tightens...dissipates. She relaxes, and takes up her goblet again. After a drink, she says, "I don't remember it. He struck me on the back of the head to knock me from my horse, and though I think I was," her lip curls, "awake, for all of it, my memories of the time from when I fell to when the old woman found me are...dark. Clouded." She has another drink. "But my injuries spoke for themselves."

Coira sighs, shuts her eyes a moment. It's not a surprise to hear the wizard hadn't cared, but it's another thing to have it confirmed by someone who was there when he died. She has another drink of her cider. "He was convinced he wasn't responsible for the actions of another man he hired. And I could even agree with that, if what hadn't hired him to do, was kill me." She turns the goblet in her hand. It's plain, rough-hammered copper. Nothing fancy about it. "But he did much worse to me than just kill me."

Her attention returns to Itzhak when she feels the magic shudder around the room, slow and careful. There's an edge of 'but you're a' to her expression, though it's not that he's a man. It's that he's a being of power. Isn't he?

Presently, she says, "You didn't have your power, then." She says it the same way she might say 'you were outnumbered' or 'you had no weapons', or a hundred similar variants of 'there was no way for you to stop it'. A guess, but one founded in an understanding of what it is to be faced with an unstoppable horror in the past, despite now being a mighty warrior of the present.

Coira listens, intent, accepting what he's told her as he accepted what she told him. "The huntsman assumed I would die in the forest," she says, paralleling why Itzhak was an acceptable target. "No one would know, then, so why not?" Her words are bitter, matter of fact. "If I was to die--if I was to become a monstrous war criminal--what did it matter what he did to me before I died?"

She's gripping her goblet so tight her knuckles are white. Seeing Itzhak's blanched and sweating face brings her back to herself; she sets the goblet down and flexes her hand. "Yes. Even after I killed him, and watched the wolves devour what was left, I realized...I'd avenged myself, and so some part of me had peace." She looks down at her left hand, closes it and opens it, like she's imagining something sitting in it. "But not all. The scars remain. Even with the wizard dead, and no doubt even when my step-mother is dealt with, they'll ache, sometimes. They'll pull." She sighs. "This didn't have to be my life. But a wizard saw a vision in a basin, and made it so."

She shakes off all of that, regards Itzhak with a gentler smile than he's seen on her face before now. "It's good, that you've found people who will understand these things. Those who haven't survived them," she looks away, mouth flattening with a memory of someone, or many someones, "they mean well, but they don't know what it is, to exist in hell. To live there, to breathe its air and eat its food."

Of revenge, Coira says, "Mmmm, no, it doesn't, does it. There is a need that's silenced, and justice is seen to..." She falls quiet, expression distant. "But it's not justice we want. Not really. We want back what was taken. What was fouled and destroyed." Her eyebrows go up. "But that's not the way of the world. The cycle never rolls backwards. Only forwards. It's not the same Spring which comes again. Yet it's Spring, none the less."

Her mouth twitches in a near smile. "That's a good story. A wise one. We cannot erase what's been done to us. But we can choose how we live with it." She grows more serious as he continues. Something about what he says makes her frown and look away.

"I suppose I do, now," she says, tone absent. The wizard isn't around to protect her step-mother. Now she needs to gather up enough people to her side to approach the keep without being killed outright by the army; a lengthy task, but doable. She has her hoard to spend for money and trade for favors. She's on her way.

And yet. "I've no desire to be a conqueror," she says, and it doesn't taste a lie.

Coira is quiet for a spell in the wake of Itzhak's speech to her. There's brief horror and incredulity in her features when he speaks of millions being murdered (millions, that's a loss of life she can't comprehend). Less for the reasons--as he himself says, the reasons, in the end, are always flimsy and pathetic. A culture being declared anathema, a proscription on whom one may love, a vision in a water basin; none of the reasons used for mass murder ever make sense or stand up under scrutiny. But millions?

After a time she nods, slowly. "I think I understand." She glances down at the empty goblet in her hand. "I don't want to prove him right. But I can't let me step-mother's actions go unpunished." She sighs, gives Itzhak a crooked smile. "Are you and your rifleman free to be hired on as advizors?" Her tone says she knows 'no' is the answer, but figures she should ask anyways.

Coira laughs, soft and rueful. "I assumed as much, but I felt I should ask. Maestros are never not from troubled lands, I'm told. It's why you're powerful." She sets her goblet down, runs her hands down her legs. "You're welcome, and thank you for speaking with me. Particularly about...that." A small pause, then a dip of her head in acknowledgement. It's not easy, to discuss the ugliness one's been through. Especially that kind.

She follows his gaze around the room. "Perhaps you should wander. Something may stand out." She gets up, takes both of their goblets. "I've some things to see to. Let me know when you're done." She dips her head, and quits the room via the same door Rohenna took, leaving Itzhak to his own devices in this impossible room of things. These things which all stand out to him some way.

Especially...one thing in particular. He hears it, like a string on a violin being plucked, like a single chime ringing in the distance. Somewhere on the far side of the room.

The plucked strings are tentative, following a rhythm he can recognize once he listens long enough: an arrhythmic heartbeat. Three plucks at one speed, two at another. Thump (thump) Thump (thump) Thump (thump); Thump (thump) Thump (thump); Thump (thump) Thump (thump) Thump (thump).

Various other items catch his ears as he moves through the collection. The low hum of a speaker somewhere to his right. The rumble of a timpani drum above him somewhere. And still the plucking of the violin draws him, across the room.

It gets loud enough that he can be sure he's standing right in front of it. On a waist-height, black lacquer chest of drawers sits a small, metal coffer. The chest itself is a marvel, with gold and bronze-brown mother of pearl inlay depicting a great bull elk fighting a tiger. Within those draws, small symphoines of power play, though they're not strong enough to drown out those plucked strings.

The coffer is a simpler affair, with some scrollwork on the hinges and corners. Otherwise it's plain, hammered bronze with an unlocked latch. Like everything else in the room, it Glimmers, but something inside it does as well; Itzhak can hear those plucked violin strains easing out of it.

The coffer hums under his fingers, a live wire setting his nerves ablaze. The interior is lined in faded, threadbare, black velvet, with the source of the music resting at the center: a carving of a human heart. It's made of green wood, with rough, unpolished, red gemstones embedded in it along lines which might represent the flow of electricity through the heart as it beats. A thin piece of clear quartz spears the center of it, making the heart list to one side where it rests on the velvet. It fits in the palm of his hand, the chunk of crystal not withstanding.

With each chime, each *plink* of a violin string, the gemstones flicker along the heart. The Song, Glimmer, breathing in and out.

As Itzhak's hands close around the wooden heart, one edge of the crystal cuts him, drawing a drop of blood that falls onto the wood. It beats once, in his hand; contraction, expulsion. His entire body feels the pulse like hammer blows. The blood soaks into the wood. Another beat, threatening to tear him apart.

Then he's awake, back in the real, the heart in his hands, his palm bloodied.

The raccoon--because of course she's been fucking around on his workbenches while he was gone--looks up from a sparkplug she was examining, wiggles her nose at him. Is that for me?