| Book Information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Source: | Temple Zero Forums
The Imperial Library |
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| Archived Link: | The Imperial Library | ||
| Writer(s): | Michael Kirkbride | ||
| Publication Date: | 17 February 2012 | ||
(excerpts)
These excerpts, published by The Imperial Library as part of a 2012 interview with the author, are from a full text originally posted to a private section of the Temple Zero forums in 2009.
The sister of Sed-Yenna was called Shonni-Et, and they both were black haired vestals of the Diblashuut, which was the aspect of Beauty as belly-magicks in those times, practiced by the easternmost tribes of Ut Cyrod before the giving over to the borders of the ashmeri.
Sed-Yenna was eldest and so it was she who climbed the hill and held Reman Born-a-Man aloft for the glory of Cyrodiil Recome.
Shonni-Et, for her part, stayed among the crowd at the foot of Sancre Tor at this blessing, among the broken knights and beggars, the shepherds and bull-butchers and drum-beaters and moth-faced pariahs and war-runners, and all of them stayed the appropriate eight steps away from her jeweled anklets, exposed and painted as in the fashion of the keptulets-who-are-gone. She was hard in the eyes but wept anyways. The One had granted the Empire its Son again, and the Long Night had passed.
Now El-Estia was the true mother of Reman but, with the Chim-el Adabal renewed into flesh-covenant, She had flown riverward like all nirnada whose deeds are done and then writ in water. It became the duty thereafter that Sed-Yenna and Shonni-Et to become the midwives of the Child Ut Cyrod, and to raise him in the fashion of the Nibenese.
By their train was the babe Reman carried into White-Gold Tower, and at Rumare the Goddess of Beauty herself appeared, releasing the sisters of all their other functions to her temple. "But for this," the Goddess said, "When he has reached manhood, teach him all that you know of the flesh, and then save within yourselves his seed, and let it not take purchase within either of you, store it all, whichsoever body-cup he spills into, and in secret make of it bread for him to eat. And keep this new edict of the Convention quiet from all others, even from him, and know by this mention that it is my lord Aka the King of Heaven who commands it."
Then the Dragon of Heaven appeared encircling them, King of Time, eating his lower length in symbol, speaking in the manner of the aether, which is mostly dream, "This I do command, for Reman was conceived of the imperial earth, and by his sacred measure he shall be as it should be: of an immortal fire that binds heaven to the mundane, Light made Man, and Order, fed ever by the seed of first stasis, anon Anu. And his wives will share forever in the blessing of Beauty if this should be so, their fair aspect frozen eternal, youth-radiant unto the ending of days. Aad semblio aurbex, aad semblio ae ehlnokhan, ae na-sen-ae-mantella, dracochrysalisanu."
*****
These clumsy knights of Colovia had no chance at all, splitting apart wetly as Shonni-Et whistled her spit like a carousel of blades, or folding like bone and paper as Sed-Yenna cracked great helms in the soft iron of her knee-hollows, and instead of asking the purpose of this betrayal from his vassals, Reman only rose to ejaculate on them as they fell, and after years of training in the Diblashuut he could do this without hands.
This last gave the sisters pause and left one knight alive, though crushed and laced in red, and Reman was surprised to see them move from defending him to collecting his climax, though he thought no more of it than their desire to have him always in whole. He kneeled to the broken Colovian as his wives smeared themselves in their labors and said to him, "You have dishonored your station, me, and our dragons wise. Why did you attempt this and for whom?"
He got back only a proud laughter the color of bruise and these cracked words from the restless West: "The Boy Crown Reman who lets priory girls fight his duels asks me this? That you have no idea why or wherefrom this sword issue came, this only underscores your unworthy claims of sovereignty and your misbegotten birth in dirt. You were just another rumor of snakes to us, it seemed, but after twelve years you have finally proved that here."
Reman took the knight's helm off during this accusation to see the vulgar mouth more clearly, the lips and teeth that framed him to this barbaric angle, and then the Chim-el Adabal in his forehead erupted into balefire, saying, "None But Ourself". Reman then bit out the knight's teeth with his own, growling against and with this new-known power, worrying the lower jaw until it tore free, his hands held hard against the knight's flailing and now tongueless chokes, and his biting increased into a skipping blur until the knight's face exploded into his own.
Reman then had two aspects himself, a red and ragged mask of the West hanging from temple to neck, and through its tears the glow of righteous Niben, and to Sed-Yenna and Shonni-Et he spoke in this manner, saying, "Tell me now what else does not believe in or belong to me."
*****
The summer of his thirteenth saw the assembled lords of Colovia having offered their swords to the lowest step of the throne of White-Gold, Reman naked save for paint, with an idiot chorus to his godsblood left and a quartet of heavy-horned minotaur teamsters to his godsblood right, and his wives entwined around his legs, and a crown of crows in a stately arc about his brow-embedded jewel.
It was unseemly hot in the chamber, with maidens and viziers and emissaries and animals asleep or even dead on its tiles or in cool corners, and risen things waved insect wings as fans, stirring the scents of moth-clouds down in a dust that clung to skins and sometimes changed them. No one had said a word since the kings and counts of the West swore out their oaths that morning. The sun broke across the glassworks and made a steam of the collected sweat.
The Imperator then stirred, and Shonni-Et made move to love him, with now Sed-Yenna cleaning his feet with sponge-felts from the Pyadon. And Reman gave his acquiesce, willing his blood into brandy for his younger wife to drink, and when one of the lords of Colovia, the Kvetchi, hissed out an impatience it so unnerved the beggar-king of Bruhmaht that the latter beheaded him without rising, placing his sword back quickly on the steps, its blood now drawing sweet-flies from the tails of the teamsters.