Genesis

His naked feet slithered over the marble, the sound soft, velvety. The robes about his frail flesh, they were not rich, not well made. Instead they bore the rude marks of a deep and lasting poverty. His stride was steady, the steps neither too quick, nor too slow. As always, his head was bowed.

The men behind him were of a finer ilk, or so they appeared. Upon their robes gleamed thread of gold and silver, and their soft, clean hands were held up in prayer, each bearing a ring of iron.

Before them the hallway extended, as if forever. In the distance a tall sliver of light cut through the dimness, shining down upon the grey and red patterns on the marble floor, filtering through tall, slender windows of intricately stained glass.

Iron, it was all around them, tortured and twisted into shapes that defied the mind, like curling tendrils of smoke captured and made into immutable metal. It formed the braziers in which the coals smoldered. Of iron were wrought the arches that framed the hundred passages they passed on their way.

He paused, to catch his breath, to steel his spirit. He laid a hand upon a curving spiral of iron, feeling the cold metal, hard and undeniable under his too-frail flesh. It was iron. All of it was iron. Of iron and stone and blood was this house built.

But mostly, it was iron.

* * *

The world was reduced to the point of his nose, and the drop of sweat that threatened to fall from the tip of it. His face was parched, dry, his lips swollen and bleeding. All around him, the wind danced, sometimes slow, sometimes gusting. Beneath his hardened soles, the ground was stony and hot – too hot.

He had discarded his furs a while ago, and stood naked, with only his crude spear to defend himself from the dogs, or the men of the other tribes. The sun beat down upon his brow, the brown skin burning and cracked, with precious little moisture to offer in a sacrifice of sweat.

He stumbled. A thirst was in him. For life-giving water, yes. But also for life itself. He stumbled again, nearly fell, but always, the thirst pushed him on, made him rise, made him struggle.

Beyond was a grove. It meant water. Or another fantasy. The thirst pushed him towards it.

* * *

With careful, efficient hands, he unrolled the leather onto the tabletop. Steel gleamed back at him, bright, clear, clean. Cruel, cold, steel, wrought in edges keen enough to cut air. Knives, blades, of a dozen shapes and sizes, some unmarred, others serrated. A cleaver’s bulk to one, a needle’s point to another, they all shared a common acquaintance: Pain.

She lay upon the table, young, and healthy, and frightened. And yes, beautiful, in her own way, in her humanity. They all seemed so to him. Beautiful and frightened. When they looked upon his face, sometimes a ray of hope would emerge from within the pale terror. That was the hardest, and it never got any easier: To see hope. He had never seen anything but the promise of pain in the cold mirror that was the steel he now held in his hand. He had tried, many a time. It made it easier, less maddening, perhaps. If only they could see the same clarity in his face, it might be easier, less maddening.

They rarely did.

When she began to scream, he reached for that place of stillness within his mind, that place that was with him from the beginning. Fumbling, at first, he found it.

He retreated into the stillness.

* * *

The sun did not burn so hot. The swaying of his body did not seem to matter. The wrenching agony in his limbs seemed to call to him only from a distance. His eyes had become dilated, his pupils dark before the glare of the light reflecting into his face from the rocks beneath his leather-like feet.

He had found the stillness.

In the protective daze, he stumbled forward, a shambling corpse with a faint spark of consciousness. He had lost even his spear somewhere along the way. All he could see was the grove, the trees. He could make them out now, standing there like guardians of the tribe, the totems they had erected to the animal spirits, to guard them from the terrors of night and sickness and war and famine. The tribe was lost now, as was he, he did not see them.

He saw only the trees.

They parted before him like the skins from his tent, bidding him enter. Limping-stumbling-falling, he shouldered his way from one to the other, letting them bear his weight. The ground was softer beneath his toes, he could feel earth, feel moisture. It tempted him, called for him to emerge from his shell, to see.

He did not listen, never too quick to trust. He ventured deeper. Perhaps it was that the water had dried in his eyes, perhaps his spirit was speaking to the trees, he did not know, but he could see the world change. He did not trust in visions, he never had – the Shamans had lied too often.

But now, he saw a vision, and trust it or no, he could not help but see it, even from within the stillness. The sky had darkened, and a grey shade, deep and cool, slipped over the world. The colors in his eyes began to bleed into one another and he saw leaves of blue and air that was green and yellow, and water that was gleaming silver.

Water. He saw it then, shining like the sun spirit himself, a great fountain, a roaring torrent, rushing past.

* * *

The body was almost cold now. In his stillness he referred to her as ‘the body’. The name that had once belonged to it was, in this state, impossible to recall. The eyes, he did not see them as blue, he did not see the terror forever frozen in the azure depths. He saw only irises lacking significant pigmentation, resulting in a blue color, a sign of susceptibility to degradation as age progresses.

The scribes behind him had almost finished cleaning the parchments, complete with every precise slice of information that he had fed them. He rested two bloody fingers on her nakedness, just above where the growth of hair obscured vision. There was little there that had not been cut, that had not been bled, measured, studied.

She had died a virgin. The thought smashed at his wall with the force of a great hammer. He felt it bend, threaten to crack, to break. With a desperation borne of the threat of insanity, he braced his will against it. The wave passed. The body had not undergone intercourse with a male specimen, and had not borne offspring.

With mechanical precision, he began the process of cleaning and putting away the steel.

* * *

The Great Spirit stood before him. He could see it but not see it, it was both there and not. It had no shape yet he could define it, if not in words that men would understand. It commanded his awe, and he stared, the thickness of his beard white with the froth hanging from his open mouth.

And then it spoke, that voice like no other.

“Is this what you needed, son of Man?”

It was a strange voice, inquisitive, and almost hesitant, unsure. Yet for all that, it was the voice of the mountains and the air and the sea, and the river and the lion, all of that and greater. He knew then, that it was the voice of the One Spirit, the Great Spirit, of which the Shamans spoke. It was the voice that brought him to his knees.

“Why do you kneel?” it asked.

“Because you are the Lord of Spirits, and I am your servant.”

“Am I? What do you call me?”

“Amernath.”

“Amernath,” it said, “Yes. You will serve me?”

“Forever.” He whispered.

“Forever,” it replied, the strange light flaring brighter. “Then rise. Drink of this water. I give you Eternity.”

* * *

“Your servant, Eternal,” he whispered into air, “As you have commanded, so I have done. My spirit, my hands, I surrender, Amernath, Lord of Spirits.”

The scribes murmured their own chants, more ritualized, more elaborate than his own, less whispered, more spoken. Then they gathered their things and with a whisper of cloth and the rustle of parchment, they made their way from the chamber.

Grim-faced, he stood there, arms clasped before him till even the last sounds of their presence had been swallowed by the vastness of the Cathedral. Then, he allowed himself to look.

He looked, and he looked and he looked, and in the looking, he stepped away from the stillness, not like a man that has his shield shorn from his arm, no, more like a man stepping forward into an inferno that awaits him.

The body became a girl, the odd assortment of facts became a pair of blue eyes, and the empty womb became a mother that was never to be. His hands began to tremble first, then his shoulders, then his chest.

It was a slow thing, when the shaking took over his body, the breath grew more ragged in his lungs. He did not remember when he fell to his knees, head bowed by heavier burdens than any man ought to bear. He pressed his face into the naked feet and he wept.

Weeping, he reached for her feet, for her hands, for her face. As always, it was no use. He could never bring them back to life.

And so he wept. It was all the apology he could ever offer.