Impermanent Whispers - A Story of Pikka the Forgotten

This is one of those stories... well, yes. Once I started, I knew what I'd got myself into.

Of course, this being a Pikka story, one might suggest being cautious...

Impermanent Whispers - A Story of Pikka the Forgotten by M. K. Dreysen

The University gathers whispers of memory to itself as readily as a pancake attracts syrup.

Some say that's part of its purpose.

Even today, when wandering the University's three hundred and sixty-six acres, if you listen carefully, you'll hear many versions of the Prisoner's story.

Far to the South, where ice covers all and the winds tear and grasp, that's where the hopes and dreams of children go. When they've been released; before they go on to wherever it is that such things eventually disappear to.

At that particular spot, for some reason, there stands a column of ice. The column of ice, carved perhaps by some gods unknown, or just the wind, rises from the focus point of a vast glacier-covered bowl.

However this bowl might have formed, it serves to focus all of this world's childhood wishes into a single point.

The column.

The interior of this column is carved; it is an ordered place. Rooms stack upon one another, icy steps connecting each of the string of beads until they reach the room at the top.

Every surface within these rooms weeps. The column itself weeps. Lost, dreaming perhaps, in the mist. Warm air from somewhere, just enough to keep the bottom-most room comfortable, drifts up to work a tiny, continuous war against the ice and the vast cold outside.

A prisoner wanders this column of ice.

Scratching. Daily, he chooses a surface, collapses or stands or scrabbles up walls to the ceiling as necessary, where he sweeps aside the fain sheen of moisture and turns his talons, some mysterious golden alloy, to the task of recording the whispered dreams of the children.

Every night, long after the Prisoner has exhausted himself with this ritual, the mist gathers, drop by drop, over his daily work.

And erases it under a clean new sheet of ice.

Excepting only during the hours of his daily ablutions, the walls hold no record of the prisoner's scribbling.

The walls do not allow the prisoner to record these dreams.

This much of the prisoner's story is known to all. Conjurers, alchemists, those who deal with spirits and other planes, they tend to stop there.

Even most necromancers do so. Stop there. They do not attempt to read anything more into the story; they do as all these other students do. Shrug. Say "I'm supposed to be frightened of what, exactly?".

You've heard it yourself, haven't you?

That's why you're here.

What's that? You want to know why? How? What it was, exactly, that the prisoner did to earn himself such a fate?

Of course you do.

I've had my eye on you for some time. You're ambitious.

More than that, you're curious. You've come to this place not just to raise yourself above.

But to understand the world, our world. You seek understanding beyond all who've gone before, yes?

I recognize the gleam in your eye.

Yes, the Prisoner earned his fate.

He too carried that magic combination, thirst for knowledge and the desire to use it.

Which is why I will tell you the story. In some faint hope that you'll learn what lessons an old fart like me can yet still provide. Sit, pour yourself a cup, and listen well...

****

The stranger, clad in remnants even the desert had abandoned as a lost cause, covered in sand and burns, dragged herself to the edge of the little town.

A little oasis, this town sat on the edge of the desert. The town fed itself from springs in bedrock below, shaded itself with trees that clawed greedily at that vast flowing wealth.

The stranger crawled to the horse trough. She pumped the handle, once, twice; stopped at the trickle that resulted. Stopped, a rest perhaps, and then she pumped hard and fair and fast.

The water rushed to fill the trough, and the stranger climbed in after it. She lay there until the cool water worked its way into her pores. Then she sat up, scrubbed hair and face, arms and feet.

And only then did the stranger pump water to drink. She climbed from the trough to drink directly from the flowing pump head, hands grasping at the precious stream after each working of the handle.

She knelt there, alternating between gentle sips and splashes across her face and head.

Ignoring the watching children.

At least, that's what the children, three of them, told their master. Later, after the stranger found her way to the tavern.

"She gave no indication that she knew you were there?" their master asked.

The older two, sister and brother, shook their heads. The youngest stuck her thumb in her mouth.

"Did she pay the tavern owner?" the man continued.

The brother shrugged. "We didn't follow her in. You told us..."

"Not to directly interfere in the doings of adults. Yes." The man shook his head.

He could afford the show of emotion. Even without the binding.

He looked at each of the three, gauging the strength of that binding. And their likelihood of success. "I'd like one of you to discover that little fact for me. Whether this stranger carries any money with her. And, actually," and here he paused, to lift a finger in the air as if remembering something.

Something minor. Just a small addendum to his list of discoveries. "Actually, I'd like you to discover one other thing for me. Does this stranger possess power. Of any sort?"

The oldest of the three, the sister, jerked. The youngest stepped behind her cousin and buried her face in her hands.

The brother didn't, couldn't have seen these reactions. Caught in the master's gaze, a step or so ahead of the others, he didn't jerk.

He did, however, look confused. "Power over..."

"Well, anything," the man said. "Titles from distant lands. Countess, duchess," the man offered when the boy frowned. "Even merchant, or wife or daughter to such. Power comes from many sources. But."

And now the boy did jerk.

"But. If you discover even the barest hint that the woman does carry power, true power, my sort of power... you will bring this precious fact to me as swiftly as the desert falcon kills its dinner."

The boy nodded. And so the man turned his gaze, and the power behind it, to the other children.

The oldest nodded her assent; the man raised an eyebrow.

The girl eased her hand around behind her back, grasped her cousin.

But didn't bring the younger girl around. Into the man's view. "She'll do what we need."

"Master?"

"We'll do what you need. Master."

"Of course. Be about it."

And so the children went out to discover what they could of the stranger.

The boy prepared himself for anything. He followed the girls away from the master's dwelling, focusing himself on what he imagined the task would be.

"Go inside, find the tavern keeper. Ask about..." and here he paused. "Well, ask about the stranger. You're curious."

Curious, whispered the binding. A new face, from elsewhere. Anyone would want to know about a new face in town. Of course.

He imagined it.

And then he faced the stranger.

She'd found her way to the tavern's porch. After finding some new clothing, the boy noted. Or, at least, newer than what she'd had on. She had shoes, as well.

They were propped up on the porch's railing.

She also had her head leaned back against the chair's back, and appeared to be sleeping.

The parade of three stopped at the end of the porch. Arrested by their surprise. "Do we just ask her?"

The oldest shook her head. The youngest nodded.

The boy decided to believe that his cousin meant he should just go ahead and ask the stranger.

He gulped at that.

The stranger kept her eyes closed as the boy made his way, slowly, to her.

"Ma'am," he tried. Only, the word didn't clear his mouth. It didn't feel like it did, anyway, and that's sort of the same thing, isn't it?

So he coughed, and tried again. "Ma'am?"

The stranger shifted her head a little, loosening the muscles in her neck. "Yeah?"

She still didn't open her eyes.

"Ma'am, we just wanted to know," he began.

"Where I'm from?" she replied. Eyes still closed.

The sun had begun to set. It came up from the desert, it lay itself down on the other side of town. Behind the tavern. So the porch lay in shadow.

The stranger lady didn't need to keep her eyes closed. But they remained pulled down, closed to whatever lay behind.

The kid focused on her eyelids.

They'd scabbed over at some point; blisters. His own eyes itched fiercely, so much that he gripped his fingers into fists to keep from raising them. To maybe touch her eyes, no his eyes.

"You three watched me come here, didn't you?"

The boy jerked around; his sister's eyes had grown wide now, and staring. He turned back. "Yes, ma'am."

"And anyone would want to know about a new face in town. Yes?"

He nodded. She would know.

And she did. "You're just... curious, is all?"

Even with her eyes still closed. The boy, neither his own will nor the binding that stretched, tugged at the base of his skull, neither of these together asked in the vault of his mind whether and how she'd chosen her words.

"I'd give you a penny for your bravery, lad, but as you've seen, I'm currently dependent on the kindness of strangers." She patted at the pockets of her new pants and shirt. "I'll have to owe you for it."

"What do we tell..." the master, but the boy caught himself before that particular word jumped out.

Behind, his sister gasped.

The stranger turned her head now, still-lidded gaze somehow taking in the girls at the end of the porch. She turned her head back.

The boy felt something, the briefest of weights as her self-blinded regard passed over him. "Well, I mean..."

She chuckled. The sound soothed him, a bit.

Like they had a secret between them, him and the stranger. "I lost my caravan, lad. I'd decided to chance the desert, the shorter route from where I was to where I wanted to be. Here's a tip. Never trust a shortcut, not entirely."

The kid cocked his head over in confusion. He took shortcuts all the time, after all. Between houses, across the town's precious pasture land, orchards. "Don't use shortcuts?"

"Oh, by all means use them. Just don't let yourself be too comfortable with a new one you're not familiar with." She chuckled again.

The boy felt the laughter, the wave pressure of it. And the way it washed over him to include his sister and their cousin. "I'm supposed to ask about whether you have power. And titles, or something."

None of them, sister, cousin, boy, stranger, reacted to these words. They didn't gasp.

The binding slept, for some reason. And the stranger had brought them into her circle. The words came out the way words should.

When one's master isn't watching. The stranger shifted her head a little, weaving it now, side to side. "And I wouldn't want to interfere in your duties." She snorted. "No one of consequence listens to my advice. My words carry no social weight. There are precious few, perhaps none really, who acknowledge the truth of my doings."

He smiled; well sort of. If you can smile and frown at the same time. "The caravan master didn't fear losing you in the desert, did he?"

"Clever boy. Any other questions?"

The boy had more questions than he knew what to do with. The stranger had walked out of the desert. From somewhere in the broad world, she'd been abandoned in the middle of the world of sand and sun and death.

And she'd survived.

Those bandits knew their business. They wouldn't have left her just anywhere. The boy wanted the story.

But the binding had been, remained quiet.

It hadn't disappeared. The boy still felt it. And he knew, now, that the stranger had given him all the answer he was going to get.

He'd made it all the way back to the master's own porch, after repeating what she'd told him and having this recollection confirmed by his sister, before the boy measured the stranger's words.

And how carefully she'd chosen them.

On the other end of the little town, the stranger waited to open her eyes until after the children had taken themselves well out of view. She turned her head, as if listening.

But that was the only movement she made until the children had been released from their master's demands for the night. Not that anyone in the town could have known this. As the boy followed his sister and cousin back to their home, the stranger brought her feet down, stood, and made her way up to the room the tavern keeper had lended.

Or into the shadows, anyway. Darkness did its work, that was certain.

At the master's dwelling, after releasing the children, the man returned himself to a room that, to his certainty, no other living soul had ever entered.

If one had, they wouldn't have been impressed. The room would have been perfectly at home in any well-off residence. Books. A desk. Candles, and various small tools.

The man sat at the desk and addressed himself to the roll of brass sitting in the middle of it. The brass sat a rod of olive within a frame of the same.

So that the man could unroll the scroll of thin brass. The words etched on the sheet flickered in the candlelight. The man traced these words, down to the last one written there.

A fair space lay between the last word, and the end of the brass sheet. Enough, he knew, to fold in the next sheet, from the pile of them kept locked away in the desk's lone drawer.

He didn't run his finger along the edge of the brass. Even though he longed to test the edges. Something in him always wanted to insure the neatness of the scroll.

But the thin sheet would, had many times before he'd finally broken the habit, claim a drop of blood, or perhaps more, for the privilege.

The man slowly rolled the scroll back to closed, then checked his etching tools, and the acidic ink base. Like the brass sheets, every ounce of ink and the acids necessary to properly mark the brass weighed in the man's mind.

How many, much, of each. He knew the count. The weights. He traced a thought over the locked drawer, to gauge the stack of brass.

It had been long years since he'd actually counted the sheets. No need, now, he'd learned to assure himself that the stack would not, could not just whittle itself away while he worried himself at other things.

He didn't allow a breath to mar the metal surface, nor a fingerprint. He'd a set of cloths and chemicals to polish it when the next sheet came into play, but also enjoyed his reflection.

The man closed the drawer, traced the lock into place again, then rose, quickly and suddenly and hard, to stalk the room.

As though he suspected someone lingered in the shadows. And wanted to catch them watching over his shoulder.

But no. Even with his senses, his mind's eye open and all of his spiritual powers grasping and pulling at the shadows they revealed nothing.

So he knelt in front of a silver stand, plain, ending in only a flat shelf. Which held in turn a tall thin candle. The master leaned over the candle and focused his mind upon the wick.

It remained unlit; but it should. He was no apprentice. This candle had a different purpose.

It would light itself under his focus only when the next child's first true wish came on the winds.

When the candle sat there, stubbornly unlit, the man stood, nodded, and pulled a cloak across his shoulders. Then he strode out into the night.

He walked the streets in search of a wish that hadn't yet come. Not the easy wishes, the begging for food or blanket or a favorite toy. No, the next two children, neither of them closely related to the trio but both within a year of the youngest cousin, crept day by day to the point where one of them would utter, mind or lip, some true important desire.

It could be in answer to that timeless parent's question, "What do you want to be when you grow up? A farmer like daddy?" Or a soldier, a priest.

A master, and the man chuckled. No, none of these children would ever dare dream to grow up to challenge the town's master. No.

The binding held nothing but memory's weight against the minds of their parents. But generations of the town's inhabitants knew that weight intimately. So very far back in time had the master's yoke lain upon them that the town itself breathed because he willed it.

That's what the man believed now, anyway. But he much preferred interacting through the children. They did his bidding without the need for persuasion. Even if their parents remembered him with fear, they'd all outgrown his direct reach.

Which is why he in turn stalked the night, listening for this next wish, and the one that would come, he wagered from long experience, soon after. The candle waiting, and the one to follow, would light soon, and the master would gain two more followers.

The necromancer followed this ritual three nights running. Each night he read through his scroll of captured spirit. Each night he gauged his supply of brass sheets to be etched and joined to the scroll, the acids and inks that would embed the spirits within the metal, the pens that would channel them there.

The candle. The children, breathing in sleep on the other side of the windows the master of the town stood next to.

Each night, as well, he stopped and turned, suddenly. Responding to some wayward viewing, perhaps?

Just as had done for so long, the necromancer prepared to steal a small piece of spirit from one of the town's souls. One by one.

And forever would he hold that piece of soul against adulthood, age, death. The necromantic master of the little town would even hold the spirit piece he'd greedily taken for all the ages after death.

Let none approach the master here. The mausoleums groaned with his chains. He'd built an army, never used but always waiting. The town protected him.

And he needed only this small claim against their selves.

The master neglected to count his sheets of brass. As well. While he did these things.

The stranger, waiting in the shadows, noted this that first night. And that the sheets of brass were so thin that only a very, very careful counting could have revealed her borrowing.

She lifted the top sheet, let her eyes and senses roam over the second one until she'd convinced herself of its similar enough perfection to the sheet in her hand.

Then she returned to the rooms the tavern owner had lended. "You might as well. Even if you're not paying, we've the room and the need for new stories. Stay until there's a caravan master we trust, lady, tell us a few well-built lies, and be welcome."

The stranger scrounged her materials from the world around.

And then, under the new moon, the stranger etched a symbol across the sheet of brass.

Satisfied with her work, she straightened back on her heels, and watched the shadows draw near. To explore her work.

To gather over it, and to then absorb into the symbol.

The shadows wreathed over the sheet of brass, a roiling mass that condensed, congealed, and then faded away.

Taking the symbol with it. The stranger nodded over the once-more pristine sheet of metal.

The next night, before the town's master even began his ritual of patience, something had changed in the air. "Oh, it will happen, won't it?" he whispered to the scroll.

He withdrew the top-most sheet of brass without a glance; wiped it with a mixture of wine vinegar and a peculiar green salt. Set about folding, then braising into place his new addition.

Set out pen and ink. And when the candle at last lit, he reverently walked it to the desk, and set about capturing the child's first true wish.

Between the careful etching, and then another wash to smooth and preserve, this took some hours. At last, the candle just flickering at the last of its wax, the necromancer removed the scroll from the desk, and unrolled his masterpiece across the floor.

Generations of true wishes lay at his feet, sparkling under the candle's light. He knelt at the head of the scroll, reading, drinking in each of his prizes.

Listening as the corpses turned in the graveyard in response, or that might perhaps have been just his imagination. In either case, he didn't notice that the hem of his pants leg had caught the edge of the brass sheet.

He progressed further, through the last of those in the mausoleums to the first of the still living; he stretched now, next to the sheet, his legs longer than they had begun the night, thinner.

His waist stretched, and then ribs, as he read through to the parents of the four children he had most recently acquired. Neck shoulders hands reached across the full length of the scroll to the three and the fourth.

He noticed this not at all, imagined himself laying next to his life's work, reading the careful mark of his hand.

Nor did he notice how the scroll's head leaf twisted over, capturing his feet legs waist as it began rolling itself up.

The candle guttered now.

The candle ran out of wax.

And left only a scroll of brass, sitting in the middle of the floor.

The stranger stepped from the shadows, claimed the scroll and a leather satchel to carry it in.

She returned to the tavern, to tell stories until the next caravan came along.

An eternity, or perhaps only a night, later, the necromancer awoke in a room of ice. He had no memory of how he came to be there.

What he did have was the whisper. He staggered from the room, climbed step by step to the top of the icy tower, thrilled at the sound.

Whispers. All the world's whispers.

Every child's first true wish gathered here, singing their song before departing. The necromancer wept, true joy over what he had discovered. He rushed from the room desperate to capture these wishes.

He came to the bottom of the tower, searched for tools.

Noticed that his fingernails had now become talons, sharp and exquisite knives of golden-threaded brass.

Noticed as well that the walls of ice lay before him as smooth and clear and clean as the most polished of metals. The necromancer took himself to the walls of ice with a hot flash of joy. Here lay all the space and more that he needed to build himself an army of the night.

Dawn's first rays hinted over the snow-covered plain around the tower; the necromancer stumbled to the warm dark room at the base of the tower.

He wept himself to sleep, clad in the joy of his work.

Awoke the next night. With no memory of how he arrived in that place. Only the song of true wishes swirling through the tower of ice. Talons, pens of gold-threaded brass cladding his fingers.

And clean, clear, unmarked walls of ice stretching to the sky above.

****

You shake your head, student? You believe an old professor is attempting to teach you a moral, aren't you?

Don't worry, I know better. But, before you go out into the world, know this.

Rumor claims that others, bright talents, have gone out from these halls to chase down the truth of this tale. That they've gone out into the world, as you would, and been drawn to that icy vale.

Drawn there to be captured. Taken, their souls switched so that the prisoner might walk free, wearing a new young face.

Heh. Some even claim that I myself am that original prisoner. Sitting here, sending young seekers out as bait, and then claiming whichever survives the contest for my own new body.

Silly, yes? Think about it. If I were so very powerful, so very brave, why would I then cloister myself away here? Behind these ivy-covered walls?

Fear? Of her? Why, child, the story I've related to you is centuries old. No, no, my dear wonderful student, that stranger was no necromancer, no thief of life. She's long since gone to her reward. There's no possible way she could be lurking about, waiting for some old withered monster to poke their head out of their hole.

Don't you worry at these tales told to children. Go out into the world. Seek out the stories and the powers that lie behind them. And, when you've come at last to that dark snow-bound plain.

Return here, and tell me the story of your deeds, there and elsewhere. Truly will I record your story, here in my library, for the knowledge and the power of it.

On a sheet of brass? Oh, now don't be ridiculous.

These days, I much prefer skin.