The Cup of Sorrow
...the smell of that spicy hot drink. Just the smell of it and he’d be there again.
---
The priest wrote down his best description of that aroma, the spices it must contain, the consistency of that potion, and hoped someone from up North could recognize it, and that it could be prepared here, with whatever the kitchen had at hand.
He added that they should fetch the maid Mirasintsa to concoct it.
Anything she did in the kitchen always came out well. And she was from the North, as well.
There was no point in having Anrirathu herself try it. She would know what it was, but by all accounts her efforts were well-meant but hopeless when it came to matters of the hearth.
He rang the bell; the same boy who’d brought the milk for Anrirathu soon appeared and took his message.
“Mirasintsa! She is mixing alchemical liquids for us now, Father?” he asked with some mischief.
“With this description, should we not rather make a request of the Laboratory?”
He laughed.
“Get running, you rogue. If it does what I hope it does, then it is indeed an alchemical liquid.”
“And don’t distract her too much.” Boys were always trying to chat her up. Couldn’t blame them.
Today he’d dealt with a curse-burdened woman who had a face stolen by the devil, a voice of milk and honey, the hands of a murderess, and he thought, a heart of gold; and an age-bent crone who was a stealer of songs, with an eye of clear sight, a tongue of a snake and a heart of stone.
It would be a relief to talk to a pretty girl who had her feelings written right there on her face.
Mirasintsa was fiercely loyal still to her ‘Lady’; a serious challenge spoken against the integrity of her mistress would let an otherwise well-behaved soul lose her countenance quickly. The Priest liked that, because in unguarded words you could hear so much truth of the heart.
Otherwise she was quite easy to have around, and pleasant to talk to. The knotted mysteries he’d encountered today now needed to unravel in his mind. Mirasintsa too, held some secrets, some of which he’d already guessed, but her secrets were simply truths untold, and not yawning voids.
Somehow he was sure she would get that stuff brewed up right; until she came, he spent his time collecting the volumes he’d be studying for the rest of the night, probably till dawn.
He made another notice, informing that he wouldn’t be leading the Evening Ceremony. Sister Noiramas could do that just as well. Mirasintsa would take the note down when she went. He’d be staying here, and in the Library, until he had it all worked out.
Each one of the thick, old tomes went with a dusty ‘whump’ onto the desk.
The Demonologous Monologues. Yes he’d need that.
Of course he’d revisit the Meditations of Mardovant.
Two different volumes of the Shadowsayings, very valuable.
Especially the one that was copied out from a Northern rendition, the signs of their old language on the left, the translation on the right. That version contained many passages left unwritten elsewhere in the last two hundred years, for fear of the fury of the Outstampers.
Perhaps he would have to unlock the forbidden chamber in the Library, where poisonous writings were kept.
At that thought he heard the stairs leading up to his study creak again, as the third visitor of the day approached. Carrying the tray Mirasintsa was not as sprightly up the steps as usual, she pushed open the door with her elbow and entered.
“Father Aegarath. You have… asked for a jug of plorrick?”
“Ah yes. That’s what it’s called. Come here.”
“I’ll finish it right here. The spices should best go in fresh. I’ve done my best but we don’t have quite everything here.”
On the tray she had a jug with the base liquid, a cup, a bottle of spirit, mortar and pestle for grinding up her selection of spices. Finally she crumbled some rind into the liquid and added a generous helping of spirit. Then begins to stir and froth it up twirling a wooden spoon between the palms of her hands.
“Might I know, Father, what made you ask for it? I’d think no one would ever have heard of it outside the North.”
“Oh, when I was quite a young boy, I went with a trader and saw your harbors. I think it was the very latest craze then. It never fell out of fashion, did it?”
“Mmh. Yes Father, near everyone loves it. But it’s expensive. So there. It’s finished. May I ...”
“Mirasintsa, that’s ridiculous. You have only one cup there. You think I’ll let you prepare all this just to send you off without a sip? - Wait a moment, I’m sure I have a cup here somewhere...”
He rummages through the chaos of the study, causing minor avalanches of books here and there. All he finds is the one Anrirathu left behind, she took nothing with her when she left.
Why not, he thinks – the warm cup of trust; why should I not drink of the same cup.
Mirasintsa fills up that cup first, then the one she brought. With the vapor of the finished mixture rising into his nostrils he knows he was right, the memory returns; with more detail than he thought it had, and he knows he can now recall the entire journey. Anytime he wants to.
“Ahh, this is perfect.”
Mirasintsa drinks of hers and smiles shyly.
“Anrirathu has been telling of her condition. And speaking with her also made me remember my voyage to the North, and this … inspiring beverage.” He will not reveal any of Anrirathu’s confessions, but of course her name and the most simple truths of her should be known to all.
“So... finally... she coughs up a proper name”, says Mirasintsa with some disdain.
“Oh. Of course, you would have noticed. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I didn’t… well, I just thought, everyone has the hardest time here saying Northern names anyway. People will call me something like ‘Meera’ and that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“You people do have tongue-twisters sometimes.”
She laughs. “So, well, at first I thought they’d just shortened and messed up her name, but when they were saying that around her and she didn’t put them right; well that’s just not proper. It’s like saying, I’m hiding, you think you’ve got my name but really you have nothing. Nothing at all! It’s sneaky, everyone else gives you their name and you give them nothing in return. And she never talks anyway, not to me at least. She goes out of her way to…uh, go out of my way. Slips away when I come in, peeks through a door and stays outside if I’m in. Honestly Father I’m glad she keeps away. She scares me. Ghoul. Doesn’t like me, for no reason I can think of and I’ll say that’s reason enough for me to not like her right back. I’m sorry Father.”
“Well now we have her name. Anrirathu.”
“It’s not a very nice name. It sounds more like a secret - ...”, she stops mid-sentence.
“A secret what?”
“Oh. It’s… umm, it’s like an old tradition, that’s been coming back. My granny didn’t have one but my mommy did. They started bringing it back then. It’s… it’s a ceremony when you’re seven years old where you get a secret second name. It’s … you keep it in the bloodline. You can tell, but sometimes, well, even wife and husband wouldn’t know – their children would though. And you use names there that you don’t otherwise. They’re usually really old, mysterious, ambiguous, just like something that’s supposed to be secret. I… if it’s necessary, for the Order, I’ll tell mine. I’ll… confess.“
“It’s perfectly enough to have your honest name that you use every day. Think it over, if you want to, I will hear it, but it’s not required.”
He’d read of that custom somewhere but wasn’t aware it was still… or again… practiced. But that had been going on for a while. The fear of the Outstampers had waned, and the North was more powerful and confident than a hundred years ago. So they were bringing the old traditions back.
“But Anrirathu. It would be strange of her to give us nothing and then her secret name, wouldn’t it? She explained it with the circumstance of her birth.”
Mirasintsa listens with a gloomy face as he retells what Anrirathu had said about her naming. You really don’t want to hear about her at all, the Priest thinks.
“I do believe she is good at heart. “, he continues. ”I also do see that she almost shuns you, Mirasintsa; it may be that this has to do with your service for Tsilsne.”
“The Lady had nothing to do with whatever happened.”, she retorts quickly, “There’s just a lot of lies being told. Like that nonsense about dipping people in molten sulphur if they disagreed with her. Father, you wouldn’t ... believe the things she let people say right to her face. As long as they were being honest.”
The Chronicler had by now worked out pretty well what Tsilsne had and had not done. Too many people who had served her were now scattered far and wide for things to be kept secret. In some cases their stories all matched, but nobody had ever mentioned pouring molten sulphur over people’s faces, that was made up out of whole cloth.
“Rumors, I know. But you do understand, to some degree Tsilsne encouraged that?”
“The more people were afraid of her – the less battles she had to fight. The less people died. But she wasn’t like that at all, really.”
“I’m not judging her. That’s for the Gods. What I must say is, if she had simply walked up to our gates we would have taken her in and no one, no king, no army, would have dared reach in and harm her. We would have treated her as anyone else who comes to us, regardless even if all the worst rumors were true, which I know they aren’t. All can be purified.“
”Cleansing by fire, that is an illusion. It is just death. It is in living that the soul must be purified, so the Gods will not be tempted to tear it asunder when they receive it.”
Mirasintsa turns her face and is silent. The Priest knows that to this day she can’t fathom what drove Tsilsne to her last decision.
“The Meditations of Mardovant. Have you ever heard of that?”
“… it would be one of those books? No, I’ve never heard of it. Should I? I do think I’d remember if I’d seen it. I have a good memory for things, it comes with the work.”
Oh yes, he thought, get me this, get me that, what do you mean you don’t know…
She’s playing with her hair a bit which she wears open, very few of the girls do. It’s too short to do anything proper with, going just about to her chin. She’ll be thirty before her hair is anywhere close to what it was.
“Oh, the Meditations, they… are something of which I have reason to believe they were read in Tsilsne’s tent. But it doesn’t matter much.”
The idea of reading the Meditations to another person is quite provocative, thought the Priest.
‘Face the evil that lives in yourself’. That’s what it really is about. Reading them out loud makes it almost an accusation. The General would not read that to his Queen in front of just anyone,… but Anrirathu had been there. They allowed Anrirathu to witness moments where they sent out even the Queen’s favorite maid. Moments of darkest secrets. It would be interesting to know more about this General. It would seem he was not only a war-leader.
“I did not intend to do so, and it’s not part of your day, but… would you mind if I ask you a few more questions?”
“Of course not Father, I will answer anything” she says, but he sees the discomfort in her face; she knows the questions will be painful.
“What again were the very last words that… your Lady said to you? Before she sent you out.”
She draws a deep breath. It seems almost a relief to her that there’s no delay, it starts right were it hurts the most.
“'Go now, run! No one who lingers any longer will leave unscathed',that is what she said.”
“You are absolutely sure you were the last person inside, apart from her?”
She wrinkles her brow. “Father… it was a castle. As castles go I think not the biggest but it could hold hundreds of people. A thousand would probably fit. But I don’t think there was anyone else. Not then.”
“It was maybe sixty people or so who went in. Knights, guards, us maids, a few other hands, the General, and … her. I didn’t count, but she sent the General and a few guards out for the … parley, and then she sent people out in groups, then it was just a dozen or so. Knights and maids and she sent them all out except me.”
“You were the one she wanted with her at the end.”
She looks down and blushes.
“There was no one in that group you didn’t know?”
“I pretty much knew all of the knights at least by name. I knew the captains but not all of the guards.”
“The women?”
“We all knew each other. Not that many of us there.”
“You are sure everyone left?”
“If someone had wanted to hide they could have. But she ordered them out.”
“Orders can be disobeyed. Or they can be meant for all but one.”
“Father, all the people who were there, they were loyal. That’s why they were there, and that’s why they left when she told them to.”
“Did you meet all of them again afterward? The women, especially?”
“It… Father, it was a mess. People were in total disarray, running around everywhere, and there were all these soldiers. I was just staying with people I trusted and so did the others. Those that I saw. I didn’t see all of them again. And I left pretty soon, on my own. I… I wasn’t thinking. I got into trouble right away. You know.”
“Well, it got you here.”
She goes quite red.
Change the subject. This girl goes one shade of red deeper and someone will see the glow, will shout from below, ‘Fire! Fire! Fire in the Tower!’ – But, someone could have gone missing. Someone who stayed behind, and lingered even longer than Mirasintsa. Someone who later would... emerge.
“It seems to me sometimes the key to understanding Tsilsne’s words is … to take them literally.”
She gives him a puzzled look , and thinks.
“It’s true in a way. Sometimes the Lady would say strange things but once you understood, it turned out they made sense, it worked out exactly as she said, word for word.”
Like “You will all be drowned in your own blood”, he thought. You wouldn’t expect her to mean it literally but she did. Or, “No one who lingers any longer will leave unscathed”. He had taken the words just as Mirasintsa was taking them, that no one else remained, that only Tsilsne had remained, and burned, and died.
The words would be just as true though, if someone had lingered even after Mirasintsa had fled. And that such a someone had fled alive, but her face was burned by devil-fire. She did not leave unscathed. And I wonder if that someone’s name was Anrirathu, and what task she had there.
“Mirasintsa, you told us that you turned back when the fire seemed to shrink for a moment. Just before the stonework of the fortress started to collapse.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To get her out, of course!”
“Why would you try that?”
She’s quite outraged.
“Because she was everything to me. Because I loved her! Because believe me she was the most wonderful person to walk the earth. I would have done anything!”
“What did you think you would do?”
“Talk to her! Hold her! Whatever! Anything! She was everything to me! But she was human! People make ..., people fall into despair! She didn’t have to do that!”
She’s standing up now, accusing him.
“It’s not like I would have jumped into the fire after her!. I… I would have given my life to save her, but I would not have made myself a grave-gift. She never asked anyone to throw themselves away. Never! Never!”
“Mirasintsa. Yes you loved her, and I’m sure she deserved it, and returned it, in her way. But there is one thing you aren’t saying, and I’ll have to say it for you.”
“...What?”
Dumbfounded. She looks down at herself, sees her raised hands, realizes she’s stood up, and sits again. Hands in lap.
“The reason you went back.”
“It is because you did not believe, at that time, that she had thrown herself into the fire.”
”You would not go back just to watch her burn. You would go back because you were sure there was still time.”
“You saw her hesitate. She sent you away because she did not want you to see the moment of her doubt.”
And perhaps she did not want you to see something, … or someone, else.
“It was only when the walls started coming down that you lost all hope. Until then you believed she still lived, and that there was something left to do for her, if only you could reach her.”
Perhaps of all people still alive you are the one who knows her nature best.
And you firmly believed there was a point in going back.
That she had not gone into the fire.
She did not go, she did not have the will.
Mirasintsa had turned away, her face hidden in her hands, he could see from how it was working in her neck and throat that she was contorted, her tears silent until she threw back her head, her hands frozen where they were.
Letting out one long howl of anguish.
That’s how it ends when I talk to a pretty girl, thought the Priest, as he got up to comfort her.
As for you Tsilsne, indeed I cannot purport to judge you, but what speaks of your true nature?
The trail of blood you have drawn across the land.
Or the scars you have hewn into the souls of all who were close to you.
It will be best to keep Anrirathu and Mirasintsa very much apart.
Mirasintsa, the faithful servant of Tsilsne.
And you, Anrirathu.
I am beginning to understand.
It took all I learned today.
The twisted story told by the Gardener.
The spoken words of confession from Anrirathu.
The journey of her song, words unsaid but sent to me, the brief flickers of fear between remembered happiness.
And Mirasintsa’s moment of anguish.
I don’t know yet how you got there, Anrirathu.
But you were there.
And I think I know what you did.
I think I know from whence rose the Shadow that burned your face.
In the last moment…
did she beg you...
... beg you to cast her into the flames,...
.. or ...
...did she fight?
