Confession

Galoring
214

“Are you ready to confess yourself a witch?” The Inquisitor asked her from what felt like the far end of a long hallway.

Astarael has no idea how long she’s been in this place. Playing this game of confession with the Inquisitor. It could have been days, a grasp, a season, maybe even a year — she couldn’t know.

All time had ceased.

She had been strong in the beginning. She couldn’t tell him what she didn’t know. But it feels like it’s been eternity since then. Maybe that was the true effect of the alchemy that had been used on her.

How long had it been since she had spoken words?

He stared down at her with a face devoid of sympathy for what she had suffered, and a face that promised more if she failed this opportunity to say what he wanted to hear.

“Do you see now how corrupt your soul has become, girl? You will confess yourself a witch. You will confess your conspiring with forces of black magic. You will beg repentance and absolution for what you have done — and for this you may be forgiven.”

She could feel it there on the edge of a knife — the fate that awaited here hanging on the next words to pass her lips. Astarael tries to speak, but her voice is soft, and cracked after such disuse.

She’s exhausted. Broken. Willing to say anything, just to make the situation change. She hopes she can say what it is he wants to hear.

“I… am a witch.”

It registers just over a whisper. She tries again.

“I am a witch.”

It is a little louder.

She speaks once more, clearly, “I am a witch. I have conspired with a dark force to gain extraordinary powers. My Morathi blood betrays me.”

“Good,” the inquisitor said with a draw that turned her face upward more toward the light that spilled in through the doorway. “There is perhaps some hope still for your soul.”

He discarded her and she was greeted by only the cold ground and heard the groan of the iron door before it slammed closed and she found herself again in such complete and absolute darkness.

The silent black filled the space around her until there was only the sound of her own breathing and the beat of her own heart and the cold stone of the ground.

Moments without measure.

The moments began to smear into one another until there was no difference between a moment and a candle and a day, until the walls of that cell no longer confined her and that hard wet stone stretched out to the edges of her imagination.

It was then that she began to her the whispering, voices just behind her ear that swelled up from the darkness, or perhaps she spoke them from her own lips, if there was a even a difference anymore — voices upon voices, each of them different, and each of them somehow her own.

Weak. Afraid. Pathetic. Your fault — it’s your fault.

“I know!”

She says it out loud, speaking to no one.

“I know it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with that woman. Left Oliver to his business. I made a horrible mistake. I just wanted to do something good,” she sobs.

What would become of her?

The question lingered, enormous, and answered only by the low murmur of thunder from some distant place.

It might have been the tears wet and slick that smeared beneath her fingers and the stone, but soon within her tiny cell she felt the slow swell of the tide as the water brushed against her skin, and it was lightning that tore the sky so far upon a distant a sea — the silhouette of a broken ship — her mast and bowsprit like the open ribs of some enormous thing made carrion towered there before her.

… and behind it the silver spheres of two impossible moons must have always been, round as saucers in the sky, looming and gargantuan — their platinum light spread into the aching gray that was the night.

It was only then perhaps Astarael saw them — the delicate dance of the drowned within the wake, the grace and gossamer of gowns and girls so still within the sea.

She felt the stone of a foreign shore beneath her skin and no longer was there a cell nor a door, but instead the wide and churning sea beneath a vengeful sky — the roiling clouds her hair and her thunder across the reaching sea was words that were not words, but the woe of what had been — a forgotten anger lurking now and ever still within.

Astarael had been lying on the floor of her cell, when the space around her began to change. As it did so, she brought herself up to a kneeling position.

Whether she has been transported in spirit, or in body itself, she can not say. Are the visions she sees before her of her own mind’s creation, or a true representation of another time and place?

How strange, the two moons seem. And yet, a feeling that they are also in their proper place- where they belong.

Their light illuminates the scene, and as she takes it in, horror and pain flow through her. But soon, another feeling. Anger beginning to boil, rage beyond measure. She finds herself standing with her own strength for the first time in a long while, surprisingly steady.

Astarael rose and the storm seemed in its way to rise with her, and where the wind made wild the water which whipped against the stone, lightning illuminated the inside of enormous clouds and the sky spiraled above her.

It might have been the crashing of a wave against the ancient and forgotten wood of that ship, or perhaps only now that she stood that she saw it then — the name still there upon the bands of timber bent by water and by time.

The Belree.

There was another column of lightning that tore the sky in twain and its light filled her eyes with the sound of whining iron and where the light poured in through the open door of her cell it was the Painted Swan soldiers Limon and Tavish that crowded in.

They hesitated for a moment, surprised to see her standing, but it was Tavish that struck her across the abdomen with his club and shoved her down, before Limon put the manacles on her wrists and hooked a chain on her shackles.

They hoisted her up and pulled her out of the room in the chamber with which she was far too familiar, and there stood the Inquisitor with a disapproving frown on his face, his scar somehow seeming more pronounced in the angled light.

Her mind had been so consumed with the vision, that she had barely registered the opening of her cell door. It was the whine of its hinges that jolted her back to where she was. She was standing, facing directly at them, when the guards came in. She felt pain as they struck her, and fear rose in her again as she was dragged back out into the central chamber, to where the Inquisitor waited.

The Inquisitor studied for a moment more, his expression impenetrable, before there was a subtle gesture with his hand. Limon and Tavish began to pull Astarael away, but they did not take her to the table, nor the rack, nor the many instruments of her torture for the months by which she had suffered.

They dragged her instead toward the door at the far end of the chamber. Its heavy bolts were pulled and it groaned open and for the first time she was taken through it. She was drawn past the smearing light of sconces and the spiral of winding stairs. There were more doors and more stone and more soldiers, the faces of whom she had not seen before.

There had been stone and the copper light of fire and the deep grasp of shadow and then there was more — there was the rich plum of dyed carpets and old wood. There were flying buttresses and the light of the stars and the Octurne through stained glass on walls that reached to ceilings so high above it seemed somehow impossible.

Limon and Tavish dragged Astarael across carpet more soft and lush than anything she had ever known to the base of a climbing dais upon which sat a throne and there upon it a woman with hair of ink not so much unlike Astarael herself, but where the pale girl was a filthy mess of neglect, this woman not much older than Astarael was not — everything that was elegant.

The silk she wore were pieces of the night and the gold that accented her gown was something rich as honey, and upon her shoulder where was clasped the asymmetrical sheering of a half-cloak was a brooch of raw amber where within gleamed a single golden feather glowed so gently as a candle’s light.

The Baroness Tyr Isendel.

“I’m told you’re a witch,” came a voice soft as a scythe.

Astarael was overwhelmed by the sights she was seeing, as she was taken through what seemed to be endless halls and chambers. Her parent’s home had been nice enough, and she had even set foot in a noble’s home a few times, back in Moraeth — but this place made every building she had ever seen look like a pile of rubble.

It was so awe inspiring, she rather forgot to be afraid. Any anxious feelings were replaced by a curiosity of where she was going. And relief, to be led away from the Inquisitor.

At last they came to a stop, in the presence of the Baroness. She, a woman so polished and glamorous, with surroundings to match. Her own body, dirty, bruised, unkempt. Clothed in rags. She felt so exposed, vulnerable. It was a horrible feeling.

When Tyr spoke to her, Astarael’s mind barely registered the sound. Her voice felt trapped in her own throat, and all she could do was nod to answer, staring at the lovely shoes on the Baroness’s feet.

There was a grace in her movements silent in its melody — beautiful and perilous — perhaps something in the way the fine silk dripped on her skin and the smooth carpet of the stairs alike. It wasn’t clear when precisely she had risen from the throne or even when she had made her slow descent down those many steps, but instead Astarael found her there before her as she eased down to sit with her knees folded neatly to the side just a few steps above the girl whose hair was a raven wing. One of her wrists draped so easily atop her own thigh, while the elbow of the other arm rested there and her chin came to cradle her own chin with a smile small and fascinated on painted lips and the faintest knitting of her eyebrows — there was empathy and cruelty there in abundance.

The Baroness was there before her, so close that Astarael could reach out and touch her if she dared, and while the hands the soldiers kept on the handles of their blades made it clear they would cut her down if she moved toward such a thing, there was an ease that told Astarael in way frightening clear — Tyr Isendel did not need their protection.

“They have not treated you so kindly as you deserve have they?” she asked, in part genuine and in part rhetoric. It was easy enough to see the bruises and the dirt alike that mottled the girl’s skin.

Astarael is frozen in place, afraid to move. The Baroness was imposing from a distance, and is even more intimidating up close. “It has been very difficult.” Her own voice feels so small, as if the vast chamber has dampened the sound itself.

“I imagine it has,” she said with a voice gentle and understanding. “I am a student of people and there is something I have come to learn of people — they so often fear that which is different from what they have known — and you are so very different from everyone that ever have they known,” the woman seemed to muse as her eyes traveled the girl’s face in careful detail.

“I would like to offer you something quite special — something reserved only for those who are different,” she said, before she leaned just a bit closer and her voice drew a bit more quiet as though to conspire in a secret with the girl.

“I would offer you a choice.”

The movement of her hand was slow, but without hesitation — and the touch of her gloved fingers beneath the Morathi girl’s chin was delicate as she lifted her face that their eyes would meet. “Most people might ever you meet are not so much different from animals for at the heart of their messy lives is found really only two things — pleasure and fear. I have found, though, there are a precious few capable of something more… complicated,” the woman said, while the back of her gloved fingers brushed along the edge of Astarael’s jaw.

“There has always been something more waiting for you — something at the edge of everything you have ever known — it’s something that you’ve always felt was there, a thing without a name, a thing without a shape, something true that has eluded you for all your life.

“…and now you’ve found me.

“I offer you now the chance to become mine, and I will make you into what you have always been meant to be — all I ask of you is your absolute and unquestioning obedience,” the woman said with a smile so gentle and so dangerous.

“Would you like to know how it feels, to at last, belong?”

There’s something about the way the Baroness speaks- not quite the tone of her voice, but something in it, or perhaps a just feeling Astarael gets — but slowly she begins to feel more at ease. Comforted.

The words ring true as well. She was so very different from everyone she has ever known. Shunned. Isolated. Feared. And for good reason, it seemed.

When Tyr lifts Astarael’s face up, she takes advantage of the moment to size up the woman before her.

She’s the perfect picture of regality. Poised, calm. Showing some warmth, but there is still a cooleness beneath. And something else. Power, beyond that of her station alone, Astarael suspects.

Astarael would do almost anything, in order to escape the unending horror she’s been subjected to. But, this brings to question—if the Baroness is willing to employ those such as the Inquisitor she knows—and allows them to do such evil things…what will they ask of her?

Still. There seems to be not much of a choice. And the kind words that have been spoken to her has brought much comfort. She returns the steady gaze of the Baroness, and says:

“Yes. I would like that very much.”

The smile that spread across the mouth of Tyr Isendel was a thing brilliant, but too was it knowing, amused by the coy curation of her careful words. It was accompanied by the subtle scrunching of her nose, a thing almost girlish, and a pleasant sound that was not quite a laugh. The two held each other’s eyes, such a simple thing it seemed, but in Isendel there were others who had swung in the gallows for less.

The Baroness moved her hand and slid her gloved fingers along the side of Astarael’s neck, behind her jaw, and beneath the shimmering ink of her hair. It was the other hand, ungloved, that rose and lingered for a moment, delicate and careful between them.

“It’s best then that we be introduced,” she said, before her bare hand joined the other in touching cupped Astarael’s jaw, her delicate touch soft against the girl’s skin.

Pain.

It was a kind of pain Astarael had never known, something that was beyond her flesh. It was a pain that trickled through her as water finds its way through stones. It dripped across her skin and spread throughout her bones and reached across her past and into the most private parts of everything that she had ever loved, and everything that she had ever feared.

It was more than pain — it was her. Astarael felt the Baroness as she poured throughout her and into the places she kept hidden — the whispered intimacy and the thrill of her night with Oliver, the exhilaration and the fear she felt on that rise of coast when lighting poured from the sky and smote the villagers and their anger and their torches and their pitchforks. Astarael felt her bleed into her laughter and the time spent with her aunt in that cabin at the edges of Maiden’s Drink. She was there when as still a child Astarael was chided by the other children and pulled away by her parents. Tyr Isendel was there with her, alone in her room when no one else could see her cry.

It might have been a lifetime or it might have been a breath, but soon the past was gone and it was only the pale blue of that woman’s eyes that stared into her own with fascination and a kind of understanding Astarael had never known — an empathy that was as kind as it was cruel.

“You are very special, Astarael.”

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Confession