Scroll bound by a strand of kelp: Difference between revisions

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==Contents==

I come from the west. My parents sold me into slavery as a babe, though the practice had been formally abolished in Perth years earlier. As a boy I cut my teeth on the reefs of the Shore of Songs, and lulled the Pale Sea to sleep with many a hymn, that she might return our sailors from the Black Stair unscathed. How the melodies whisked inside my skull even then. I was given no name at birth, but the sailors called me Catu.

Under his tutelage I rose to prominence in his court. I stood by his side as he treated with the tuyuldars of Odrum, as he plotted against the southern freeholds. When a traitorous canter slipped poison into his cup, I smashed it from his hands and sundered the quisling's mind. That night, in the hour of the Beetle Moon, he introduced me to the mirth of an assembled mind. Together with the other canters we Joined, and he named me Mirthful, and raised me unto his honor guard. I would be dispossessed of it in under a year.

It is dusk. I sit on the bank of the River Svy, but no fire warms my bones. The risk of drawing moon-doting beasts is too great, and any aggregation of minds is sure to attract the attention of the Elder. Instead, I write by a flame kindled on my thumb.

Over the course of the journey the Free Seer's disposition soured. He withdrew from the counsel of the Mirthful, even my own, and spent the better part of the wintry trek alone in his tent. At first I attributed his mood to the fragility of our diplomatic high ground, but I soon learned the true tack.

I've arrived at Kyakukya. Kind Nuntu shares his hut with me, offers me smoked mushroom, and asks nothing in return. I write these words at his desk, and though he lusts for knowledge himself, he leaves me be to chronicle my past.

I remember little of the Stithening outside the beating of my own heart high in my ears. I passed out, and when I awoke next morning, the cavalcade had vanished. Only a moment did my recognition last before the chanting in my head took hold. I had heard it before, of course. All my life, in fact. It was the chanting that I weaved my melodies around on the shores of Perth as a small boy. Now, though, it was as if a single, distant canter had summoned a thousand of his kin, and they each summoned a thousand of their own. I wept, then I screamed, then I tore the hair from my head. The chant animated my bones more surely than my volition ever had. East and south, it urged. East and south. East and south. Toward Qud.

I edge closer to the grove of fungi and its preposterous promise. Are the whispers true? Could it be all so simple? I can feel the moistness of the Eater's flesh on my lips, though the memory is surely another's. If salvation awaits me, then I promise to take it, whether or not I deserve it. Tonight, though, the jungle shrouds me. I sit under a chrome belfry, a leech kneading at my skin. I feel no compulsion to bar its work. The companionship is welcome.

The third memory is the rust. Rusted hulls and rusted spires. It took me weeks to realize what I beheld. For all my boyhood was rife with sketties and ships, but none were of this size. I envisioned what the past must have looked like, as little sense as it made to me. Moghra'yi as a vast sea, and monstrous vessels mounting its waves. Markings and etches on their hulls had no resonance for me then. Later, though, I recognized the figure of the Spindle, and I glimpsed the importance it held for these sea-faring Eaters.

I come now to Qud and the Seekers of the Sightless Way. The chanting compounded in my skull into a final ecstasy, wherein I joined an aggregate mind the likes of which I hadn't fathomed. I was primed for it, though. From my first joining on Ettinspine all those years ago, to the Rite of Mirth chaperoned by the Free Seer, I knew that sight guides us no more than salt does. There is ecstasy in the aggregate, indeed, and the Elder is as powerful a center as I've known. But a center is it still, and where there is a center, there is a hierarchy.

The Elder... no, Ptoh. I write the name in defiance of my captivity even at the risk it incurs. Ptoh knew nothing at first, but my absence dawned in time. The continuity was broken, and Ptoh sent agents to seize me. Even now, they near. }}