Lightkeeper

Sirsha was an old, old woman, by now. The maidens that scuttled about this muggy place treated her with a quaint sort of hesitance — not of reverence, she knew, but outright caution. She was an elder, wise and commended, but now an outsider. She tended the very last Beacon of Dathomir, once a guiding light. She prayed she would not be the very last Lightkeeper.

Talzin sat across from her. She was sagely, this one, but Sirsha remembered when the Mother was but a neophyte herself, shifty and hawk-eyed, not proud but willing to stoke pride. Uniter of the tribes. Mother to all. She rankled Sirsha, but at least the feeling was mutual; Talzin did not like keeping old bygone relics around who remembered when the Nightsisters and Nightbrothers were once many peoples, not one.

They waited. Sirsha sipped on her tea, one long nail tapping the seconds out against the rim of her cup, the steady drip-drip of time.

The Nightbrother emerged from the adjoining chamber with a reserved mien, which was wise; a shaman he might be, black garb and all, but these women were prickly. “I have tested the child,” he informed Talzin. “There is certainty among the spirits. She is not one of ours.”

Talzin waved a hand, the gesture automatic. “Thank you, Adin. That will be all. Go, return to the men’s village.”

He bowed to her, with a quiet “Mother” for her benefit. He bowed to Sirsha as well, surprising her. “Lightkeeper.” She smiled and crooked her fingers in beneficence before he departed, gait steady. It bolstered her for when she squared up in her seat and faced Talzin.

“So, she is a girl.”

“She is.” Talzin did not look her in the eye; she was languidly pinching at a thread in her sleeve. Belatedly she made a gesture that dismissed all the young serving girls from the tent, and they filed out with their shoulders steady. “She will make a fine Nightsister, I am sure.”

“I want her, Talzin. I require an apprentice. You know this.”

“I know that I must provide for all the sisters and children under my care, Sirsha, and you have been apart from us for so long. Have you not thought about staying with us, here?”

Sirsha scoffed. “You cannot be on about this again.”

“Please, Sirsha. I hold no ill for you. The rest of the elders have seen the proper way of things, and we move forward together, to an age of wisdom.”

“At your beck, naturally,” Sirsha spat, and it was only by her station and age that she could; anyone less would have had lashes aplenty for mouthing off to the One Mother. “I do not follow people, Talzin, and I shan’t ever. There are already spirits that have fled from us, from you, as the Beacons have dwindled. You know this!”

Talzin tensed, marshalling some terribly gravity. “These are natural cycles,” she said. “I will not stand for the fearmongering of an old crone. You will not repeat those words before another.”

“It is required by our most ancient compacts. By Allya’s own word! I must train a successor before I pass, and I have not more than fifteen years to do so!”

Talzin’s tenor was dark, silken. “Do you promise?”

Sirsha threw the tea from her bowl and onto the floor in a haphazard splash, what was left of it. Let Talzin swallow that insult in placidity. She replaced the bowl with her walking crook and forced herself up to a stand, bones rebelling even now; it had been a long walk down the mountain, and she did not look forward to the return trip.

“You have gained your supremacy,” she told Talzin, who fumed in a very careful, surreptitious way that would have been invisible to anyone else. “You have united the tribes. You have gained your due, if it ever was that. Now grant me mine. The child has no parents, no ties to you and yours. Grant me this.”

Talzin stood, looming over her terribly. Indeed, she felt the shadow of her aura twist in; magick like a held breath connected her shadow to all the shadows in the tent and beyond. Sirsha thought about balking and pinned the impulse, ruthlessly, with a needle.

“Perhaps I have been rash to dismiss you and your tower, Sirsha,” she intoned. “Indeed, I remember Allya’s word. Let the Beacons shine as our earthen stars, to chart the map of ruin and fortune, mm? We cannot let this light dwindle.”

She began to step away. “You shall have your apprentice. But… I shall have insurance. Grant us but a piece of that flame, and perhaps we can learn to tend it here.”

“Fool. You could not grasp its wisdom even if you tried.”

Talzin smiled at her, but did not say more. She folded her hands together, one over the other, and assumed a posture of perfect will.

Sirsha held her gaze, and… looked away.

Goddess, take mercy. The Light will not last another century. I can feel it.

“Fine,” said Sirsha, turning to the adjoining chamber. “You will have your spark. Though, if you can pin it, I doubt you will like what you see.”

She did not watch Talzin depart. She peered into the darkness of the earthen chamber, which glowed with faint blue from the bioluminescent streams that flowed through the Nightsisters’ home, here in the red marshes. She did remember this place fondly, but it was different, then. Times would be different, now. For all of them.

“Come on out, child.”

She didn’t address the hooded mother that was minding her — just another servant, or close enough — though their silhouette intruded faintly when a gangly little thing padded out to stand in the archway. Hardly a pure-blooded Dathomiri at all, then. The girl had the sharpened eyes, claws, and ears of a woodcat, and likely the fangs as well; old blood, descended from one of the dozen lineages that has tried and failed to plunder ancient Dathomir. Touched by the beast-spirits. She couldn’t have seen more than five summers.

A strange omen, for a child that has claimed up and down to come from a village and tribe that does not exist. They had found her as out of thin air, on the slopes, wandering with naught but crows and the wind for company.

A good omen, for Lightkeeper Sirsha. So much rested on this.

“Hello, child,” she said, offering out a hand. “My name is Sirsha.”

“I’m.. Thina.”

Tentatively, the girl took her old, withered hand, and fell into step with her when Sirsha turned and began walking her out, aided in great part by the dogged old crook. “I’m sure things have been a little confusing, but it’s going to be alright, now. You’ll be coming to train with me.”

“Where are we going?” the child asked her, all bright curiosity. She’d clearly never held the hand of an elder, and was testing her every few moments, wanting to go just a little too fast. Goddess, it was going to be a long walk.

“It’ll be up the mountain,” said Sirsha. “Be patient with this old crone. I will teach you the ways of magick, and the spirits, and the wilds. The ancient beacon, have you seen it?”

Thina gasped. “The beacon towers! I’ve seen them!”

Sirsha looked down at her.

“Do you know Papa? He used to — I mean, before, he…”

Some nascent awareness in her was pinned with vertigo, abrupt and stilling. Sirsha pulled Thina to a stop and peered down at her. “Where did you come from, child?”

She saw hesitation, not out of fear but true uncertainty. No, there was fear; fear of the unknown, the deep and animal thing. “It.. it was a village in the hills,” she said. “We went down to the valley for river water, and hunted in the woods. I… I think. It…”

“It?”

“I don’t know.” The child bunched up her shoulders and clenched her fists, glancing around, fretting until Sirsha cooed to her and waved a hand and promised they were fine and safe.

“Child. You must tell me. What happened?”

It took her a moment to muster the words — to muster a faded memory. “It came out of the void,” she whispered to the old crone. “It took them all. It took them all away.”