Lore:The Garden-Way
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The Garden-Way is a Lore book introduced in the Episode: Revenant. Entries are acquired by completing Act I Major and Key Fieldwork assignments from Eido after discovering tonic recipes. It is a pre-Whirlwind memoir written by Irrha and recovered by Eido.
1. Judgment
This being the recollection of Irrha of the House of Slayers, apprentice to the Baron Kiiraskes.
[This is so exciting! I will translate as best I can. –Eido, Scribe of the House of Light]
It was a beautiful day at the end of the wet season, and the waters had risen high in the canals such that the Palace of Judgment sat on a limned mirror.
My pilot rowed us steadily between the raised walkways. The banners of the great Houses flanked us on either side of the channel. Nearest to the landing, the banners of Kings and Judgment cast long shadows down upon us. It was through them that our unity was possible, and we were not to forget it.
I had spent five days traveling to reach Riis-Ath-Lodrii [1], and just as long before that receiving instruction in the formalities and proper courtesies to be observed in the presence of the Scribes of Judgment. But I was greeted at the landing not by a formal assemblage, but by a lone thin figure dressed in the layered finery of Judgment's officers.
He reached down to help me up out of the watercraft before I had time to bow, sparing only a moment to dust Ether accretion from my cloak.
"Velask, Apprentice Irrha," he said, in a tone that conveyed I had already erred in some way. "Please hurry."
I was led to a side entrance into the Halls of Judgment, where my escort expertly navigated a maze of corridors that led into a small, unremarkable reception room. We stepped into the hushed silence of stifled argument.
There were two figures waiting for us in the room. The first was dressed in the mantle of the city Peacekeepers and the ornamented headdress of the House of Stone [2].
Members of the House of Stone were the foundation upon which the city's defenses were built, and I thought then—as I still do—that the virtues of that House showed in none more nobly than its Kell, Chelchis. She stood twice as tall as I, her limbs as thick as the support beams above us. I could have believed any number of stories about her.
The second figure was clad in a void-black cloak and a pytha-hide [3] crest. The absence of a House symbol marked her as a Baron of the Order of Slayers.
The Slayer Barons had tamed Riis back when it grew wild and disordered in the first century of the Great Machine's Ether Flood. First Riis, and then the moons beyond our sky, which were often hostile to us. Within the hatchling-schools, the minders showed us shadow-stories of cunning hunters, adepts of the Great Machine, working in tandem to bring down the biggest monsters of their age.
I did not think so highly of Baron Kiiraskes when I saw her—leaner than Chelchis, but twice as scarred—until she raised her head and I saw the gleam of her eyes beneath her cap. There was a feverish cunning in her scrutiny.
"You brought me a hatchling," she complained.
I felt a hot, familiar resentment—and desperation. It was more important than anything that she not turn me away.
"I have been two solar cycles studying," I pleaded.
"I think Chelchis here has carried clutches for longer than that," said the Baron.
Chelchis' irritated tolling [4] would have withered me in my shell, were it directed at me. All the same, I felt a sick humiliation for having been slighted in front of her.
Nearby, the Judgment official bobbed his head in disapproval.
"You have been assigned what you require," he said. "When was the last time that you needed to be summoned out here, that our Peacekeepers could not handle matters? Apprentice Irrha will suffice."
Kiiraskes gave little indication she heard the official's words. "What is your House?" she asked me.
This moment was inevitable.
"I do not have one." It occurred to me at last that I might have been brought here as an insult.
Kiiraskes regarded me steadily. "We can't all be Kings."
The official rubbed his hands together in agitation. "It will be quick work, Baron. Travel to the farm of Haaksis and dispatch the animal that troubles him. If you require reinforcements, send for the support of a House."
Kiiraskes grunted and turned away. I began to bow and felt her claws latch onto my arm like a star-steel cuff, pulling me from the room.
"Be careful, Slayer Baron." The small chimes on Chelchis' headdress rang softly as she turned her head.
I did not see the gesture Kiiraskes made in response, but I heard Chelchis' amused hiss.
[1: "Veins of Riis," or the Channels Through the Body of Riis. One city of many!]
[2: The famed House of Stone!]
[3: A vicious predator native to Riis. Variks says that these were delicious.]
[4: To click a warning at an Eliksni that they can feel in their shell. I bet Humans can feel the vibration in their sternums!]
[I was going to translate everything very literally, but Variks told me I was "ripping the soul from every word." Please forgive me some poetic license! –Eido, Scribe of House Light]
2. Fields
Kiiraskes stank strongly of sea-grass and sunsoak root [1]. I took care to sit toward the front of the watercraft, but the odor wrestled powerfully against the wind.
I did my best to focus on the task I had been given, which was to mix the contents of three flasks into a fourth. I prided myself on the steadiness of my hands, and the work was not so difficult that I couldn't steal glimpses of our route.
We followed the river as it skirted the sprawling residential districts, then turned and cut toward the listing sun. I watched the crowds thin as canal-side markets gave way to orderly arrays of residential towers and aerial traffic, then to radiating lines of transport arterials, waterways, and roads, connecting each of Riis's great cities to one another in a shimmering network.
We passed lines of pilgrims making their way to the site where the Great Machine first came to Riis, the hill at the heart of Riis-Ath-Lodrii. I saw high priests of the House of Dancers, devoted clerics who gorge themselves past satiation on Ether until they tower above their peers, then amputate their lower arms in ritual supplication to the Great Machine.
It was strange to see those shambling giants. But there was something awe-inspiring in it. The shuffling march of hundreds, unified in purpose.
Kiiraskes followed my gaze, then spat audibly into the water. "Fanaticism is what landed us in the wars. Fanaticism, pride, and Ether-thirst."
I looked at her. "You were in the Edge Wars?"
Kiiraskes hissed. "I have no war stories for you, hatchling." She gestured toward the flasks. "If this is serious, you should be prepared."
"And if it truly is only an animal?"
"You should still learn how to mix a tonic on the go. Don't drop that."
The farms of the House of Rain were among the most splendid on all of Riis, and the quadrant assigned to Baron Haaksis was no exception. There were great swathes of forest, carefully hemmed and controlled, arranged neatly around crop fields.
It could not have been done without the machines.
Baron Haaksis had a fleet of them: small, autonomous drones that moved about planting, harvesting, and measuring Ether uptake. The sound of their toil was that of wind across grassland. A thousand small tasks undertaken without rest or complaint.
For all this, the farm was strangely absent of workers. There should have been at least a few machine-tenders, monitoring the proceedings and providing maintenance and direction. Nor did any guards come to meet us as I lashed the watercraft to the dock.
We stepped out onto sun-fed walkways braced by beautiful, leafy plants. Kiiraskes pointed to the bags of supplies, and in my eagerness to prove my strength, I gathered all of them. They were very heavy, and by the time I managed to follow Kiiraskes to Haaksis' doorstep, I felt as if I were pinned to the earth.
Considering the lush abundance that surrounded it, the round building where Haaksis kept his office was sparse and joyless. The sole decoration was two twin sets of blades he kept on one wall: a memento of the Edge Wars. I had seen dozens like them throughout my upbringing, only some of them genuine.
More interesting was the drone on his desk, which Haaksis seemed to be in the process of repairing. It was a hybrid reconnaissance-defense drone called a "Shank," the kind that became popular during the war. Not many Eliksni still possessed them in peacetime. But such an interest suited a noble like Haaksis.
Haaksis was dressed in the rich hues of Rain. He was of a height with Kiiraskes, if slighter in build, and stiff in his bearing.
I bowed low and formally, feeling the weight of my House-less status. Kiiraskes reached out and lifted me bodily upright by the carapace with no more difficulty than she might have plucked a flowering plant.
"I sent for Slayers," Haaksis said. He looked at me, and I felt my shell itch.
Kiiraskes spread her hands, untroubled. "So we've come. The House of Judgment mentioned an animal."
"No. I told them… I told them many times. This is not an animal," Haaksis said. At his sides, his claws clenched into fists, one after the other. "It is an old evil."
I looked up at Kiiraskes but found no sign of her thoughts. Her mandibles clicked quietly. "You've seen it?"
Haaksis sagged then, as if already weary of conversation. "It attacked my people. I tried to recover the bodies, but… And then the House of Judgment took its time—"
"Do you know where it is now?"
"No. Nothing can hide on this farm without the sensors tracking it. The forest tracts are just as well-tended. But there is a Garden-Way [2], between… we were letting that grow, re-wild for a few cycles…"
"We'll track it down," Kiiraskes said. "Tell me where the bodies are."
I felt relieved to hear her speak of us as "we." But the feeling didn't last long. Even as he brought up the displays and maps to guide Kiiraskes, Haaksis kept staring in my direction, and I realized he did not expect me to survive.
[1. Sea-grass seems straightforward enough, but I found few other references to "sunsoak root." Does it absorb Light?]
[2. A space around farmland where the local flora and fauna are left to grow naturally. These were carefully maintained, so you couldn't really call them wild.]
3. Light
At the time, it seemed natural to pursue the creature at the hour of night when it was most likely to be on the hunt. I was distracted from all thought of fear by Kiiraskes, who decided to question me briefly on the qualities of Tenar, Brossk, and Liisok [1]: which excelled as purgatives, and which burned through chitin and stone alike.
At last, she said, "You said you studied. From records?"
"Yes, Baron." There were no Slayer-apothecarists left to train under. And even if any survived, none who would visit the common quadrants of the small city where I was raised.
Kiiraskes paused in her trudging progress up the path. We had divided the supplies between ourselves this time, and now she passed me a vial. "Drink this."
I was quick to obey, noting the odor of sunsoak root that clung to the liquid. I hoped this first taste of a Slayer's tonic would fill me with strength, or make me grow as if I had molted five times over.
It tasted foul. I became very aware of how little I had eaten since arriving.
"Come," Kiiraskes said. "I think I smell one of Haaksis' guards."
I could not smell anything but Kiiraskes. I followed her as she stepped nimbly across one of the sluices and onto the rich, loamy soil that marked the wildest part of Haaksis' property.
It was around this time that I started to feel the tonic's effects. I saw Light—a tiny luminescence at the edge of my sight. I turned to watch it drifting slowly toward the ground, and by the time it landed, I could see more motes gathered over the undergrowth in clouds, like dust. Far above, I read the flow of Ether like a river through the sky. I set my bags down, looked at my hands, and saw a glow beneath my shell, as if the tonic had illuminated me from the inside out.
But it was not just me. I looked at Kiiraskes and saw Light. The push-pull of air through spiracles, the misting of expelled Ether, the fervent radiance of her eyes.
She had stilled to observe me, and now she spoke.
"The Light is in all things. We cannot control it, but we can entice it. Draw it close." She chuffed. "Like a greedy pellauk."
I was cradled in the grip of awe, and the interruption was like a clout to the face. "The Great Machine is not a herd-animal sniffing after Yka fruit!" In my offense, I forgot that I was her apprentice, and at her mercy.
Kiiraskes laughed. "Don't you like Yka fruit?"
Annoyed, I looked away, to the sky. On a clear night like this, it was possible to watch the Great Machine drift across Riis's upper atmosphere. Under the tonic's influence, I saw it trailing Light—Life, I thought dizzily—like a comet.
The Great Machine had terraformed Riis's moons in four blinks, then brought the Ether-flood to Riis. A time of plenty, when no hatchlings starved and foundered in their development. A time of too-much, as the House of Judgment would tell it. A time without hierarchies, without sense. Our people had to change, to adapt.
In this new age, they called me a "Drekh." Useless, House-less.
"And now, the body," Kiiraskes said.
It was Eliksni—or had been. The mangled form at our feet had been twisted into a tangle of limbs. If not for the torn mantle attached to it, I am not sure I would have known the body to belong to one of Haaksis' guards.
Worse was the emptiness of it. Every living thing around the body shone with the Great Machine's influence. I had not known this stranger [2], but their death left a void in the world which the tonic now permitted me to see. I was glad then for my empty stomach.
Kiiraskes crouched down near the body and at once began touching it, shifting an arm here and there, inspecting it. I stood by, uncertain of whether I disapproved, too afraid to complain in any case. The plant life here was not yet so dense, and we were exposed, though—as Kiiraskes had pointed out—any creatures would be as well.
"Was it an animal?" I asked. There were predators out here, after all. Though nothing that would voluntarily attack Kiiraskes unless it was desperate.
She gestured for me to crouch beside her. "Look," she said. And then, once I had settled beside her: "What don't you see?"
"Light," I said, suffused again with sudden grief.
She swatted me. "Look down."
I did. I saw a cluster of lights—small larvae that had gathered in the footprints I'd left around the body. I brushed one absently from my leg, then realized…
"They're avoiding the body," I said.
Kiiraskes grunted, pleased. "Touch here. Tell me what you feel."
I touched the guard's carapace and felt something wet under my claws. I had long enough to recognize that the beast had cracked his shell down the middle, and to fear that I could never stomach a meal again. And then, suddenly, it was as if I had dipped my hand into a cold pond.
I felt anger. A sharp, foreign fury that had nothing to do with my own revulsion and fear. Beneath it, there was something like… remorse [3]. Could an animal feel remorse?
"You feel it? We cannot see this evil [4], but it's there," Kiiraskes said. "Come. Judgment was wrong. I'm taking you back to the boat—if we're quick, it won't have time to follow us."
But the monster did not stalk us across the forest.
It poured out of the air in a cloud of billowing shadow.
[1: For reference, I believe Brossk is the purgative. Liisok translates as Rock-Destroyer, or maybe Stone-Eater.]
[2: Technically, the archaic word used here means "Eliksni from outside one's House."]
[3: This word is not quite right, but I don't know a better one. Guilt for something that has not yet occurred? A voluntary acceptance of responsibility that was not yours. Variks has not been forthcoming.]
[4: I believe we would now call this "Darkness."]
4. War
I do not know if I would have seen anything at all had I not been given the tonic. What I did see, I did not understand at first: a dark shape clawing its way into being, caught on the edges of reality and tearing itself apart in order to make its existence possible. It bellowed, and I felt the force of that sound rattle through my shell.
Something collided against my shoulder—Kiiraskes, pushing me away. "Irrha, the tonics!"
I stumbled toward the supplies. Behind me, I heard the whine and snap of Arc energy, and I turned to see Kiiraskes draw a short rod from the lining of her cloak. In her hands, it drew apart into a thin spear, crackling with power, and this she threw into the dark heart of the thing that hung suspended in the rift.
I heard the squelch of impact. The air filled with the strange, unpleasant stink of bad Ether and wet dirt. The creature rippled, clawed, and fell unhindered to the earth. The shape of it changed. I saw it rise upon six heavy limbs. Its misshapen head turned toward me.
In the next instant, a flask burst against it, and hissing steam roiled along its flank. I saw the beast's pointed maw part as it screamed.
"The Stone-Eater!" Kiiraskes cried. She pulled her sword from her belt and scraped something over the blade's surface. I saw Light bloom where she had touched it, and then she was moving toward the monster.
I opened the pack, but in my terror, I could not read the symbols on the bottles, nor think of what to do. I stared down at the rows of tonics I had so confidently described for Kiiraskes only an hour before, and I thought of how much of a hatchling I really was. I had studied the work of the Slayers as if it were only a story, and had expected only a story. All I had wanted was an escape.
Then I heard Kiiraskes yell. I thought of my time training, hoping I might become a healer in one of the great Houses. I looked in the pack, and there it was: the vial of Stone-Eater. I pulled it free and threw it as hard as I could toward the beast's head.
My will outpaced my aim. The flask struck the monster in the leg, and at once began to eat through its flesh. I saw it stumble briefly, only to shift its weight and turn. It made no sound of pain when struck, but now it sent another thundering bellow toward me, and with that rippling wave came a cold like nothing I've ever felt.
The air stung my throat and eyes. I threw my arms over my face and leapt away blindly toward the trees. When I looked back, I saw that the Light had been snuffed from a broad line of the undergrowth, leaving a sprawling emptiness into which I too might fall. I saw the monster rear up in preparation to charge.
A flash. Kiiraskes's blade, slicing deep into the monster's throat.
I saw that great maw descend upon her. I heard her scream.
The beast had her snared in its jaws, but she was levering them apart with two of her hands. The third held fast to her blade in the thing's neck, and in the fourth, I caught the shine of glass.
She thrust the flask deep into the creature's throat. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then the creature shuddered, and I saw the shell of it—the bones—lit from within by pale fire [1]. Its jaws crashed shut around Kiiraskes, once, then parted to scream. I saw the Baron haul at the blade—heard more terrible, wet screaming as the fire caught and spread.
The beast writhed and fell. Kiiraskes fell with it.
[1: I think this must be Tenar: 'wrath', and presumably the wrath of Light.]
5. Monsters
I thought her dead.
Kiiraskes sat up, then fell over again. She spoke a very foul oath.
"You're hurt!" I cried stupidly.
"I'm not," she hissed. "Help me face the Great Machine."
She was too heavy to drag anywhere she did not want to go. I helped her sit up, and saw then the extent of the damage. She had lost a primary arm at the elbow, but that was the least of it. The wound in her middle yawned wide as she repositioned herself. In my certainty that I had failed her, I did not see her reach into the pack beside us.
She slathered a foul-smelling concoction onto her stomach, then activated her Arc-knife and held it close. I think I must have shouted. I heard the popping hiss of the salve igniting, and the air filled with the stink of roasting flesh.
Kiiraskes groaned and shuddered as the dying beast had.
"Now help me up," she said.
Together, we shuffled toward the burning ruin of Haaksis's creature.
It looked ordinary after the fire had worked through it. It seemed like it might have been a river-catcher, one of several common predators that fed along the waterways. But we had both seen it cloaked in boiling shadow, wielding a power that could douse the Light of the Great Machine. And no river-catcher ever grew so large.
Amid the pile of bones, I caught the shine of something metallic. A gleaming sphere. I reached for it, and Kiiraskes pulled me back.
"Don't touch it." With the stump of her arm, she gestured toward the pack I had abandoned nearby. "Bring that here."
I watched as she tipped a canister of powder over the sphere. The effects of the tonic were fading now, but I could still see the motes as they drew together. A cluster of Light, like a frenzied swarm of fish, gathering closer and closer together over the sphere until I had to cover my eyes.
When I looked again, the sphere was gone.
"What was it?" I could not help but regret that I had not had a chance to study it.
"Haaksis's old evil," Kiiraskes said. "Let's see what he can tell us about it."
Haaksis prepared hot, sweet drinks for us both. Later, I would wonder at his kindness. At the time, I was too tired and sore, and the drink soothed the ache in my throat.
Kiiraskes's wound still looked terrible: a livid stretch of cauterized flesh beneath a cracked carapace. But Kiiraskes refused both food and aid; she stood at the ready, listening.
"I wanted to pilot a Ketch," Haaksis told us. "When I was young. I stole a scout-ship to prove myself. I got lost."
"I didn't have much fuel. I set down on what I thought was one of the moons. But there was no air. No life. No Great Machine. I took my mask. My Ether-pack. I stepped outside."
I watched him clench his fists again, one after the other. Helplessly.
"I found a tower. A fortress-city of tombs like nothing you've ever seen. Something monumental. Something older than us."
I shivered.
"And at its heart, a ship. A ship like a blade." Haaksis's mandibles scraped together. "I found a sphere [1]. And when I held it…"
I heard Kiiraskes inhale, very softly.
"…showed me how to get home."
Kiiraskes said nothing. I sipped my drink, saying nothing. Understanding nothing.
"It showed me everything. The storm at the end of things, Kiiraskes. The uselessness of it all. The ruin of it." Haaksis hung his head. "I still hear its Voice. Even after I cast the sphere away. Even now, after you…"
After we destroyed the sphere, I realized. I set my cup down.
There had been nothing in his demeanor to make me frightened of Haaksis until now. It was as if something had torn free inside him. He must have been fighting it, the entire time. Fighting, and losing.
"I sent for Slayers. I thought there would be more of you left. I thought… there might be a way."
"We can still fight it, Haaksis," Kiiraskes said. "You and I. Come and tell Judgment—"
Haaksis gestured sharply in dismissal. "You don't know what's coming for us. For our children." He groaned. Ether gusted from his mouth like fog. "We have to stop this suffering." His eyes fixed upon mine. "We have to end it all."
He came at me over the desk.
Kiiraskes met him first.
I stumbled back as they fought. Fought like animals trapped inside a cage. A display shattered under the collision of their bodies. Haaksis's bellowing rattled the walls.
I could not throw any flasks without risk of hitting Kiiraskes. I made myself small and pressed my hands over my eyes.
I do not know if they fought for long hours or mere moments. For a time, there was only terror and noise, and once it passed, I felt gentle hands tugging mine away from my face.
"Forgive me," I said.
Kiiraskes grunted. "I haven't yet taught you to fight. That's what I'm here for." She looked down at the still form that had been Haaksis. "Bring the Shank. I have to tell the House of Judgment I killed a Lord of Rain."
[1: Eris spoke of finding such an artifact on the surface of the Lunar Pyramid.]
6. Return
The artificial current did more to steer the watercraft than we did. Kiiraskes held loosely to the oar with one hand.
I held the drone carefully, mindful of the occasional splash of water from the restless river. It chimed cheerfully in my hands, perhaps sensing I wanted soothing.
"I had a son. Ah…" Kiiraskes scraped a claw along one mandible, to strike the words from her mouth. "I have a son. Not much older than you."
I looked up at her, surprised. Her gaze was on the water.
"He found a place with the Gentle Weavers. He wanted very much to… belong. I hope he will weave great things. Or else… do whatever it is he wishes to do." She looked at me, and it was my turn to feign interest in the river.
I heard her sigh. "We Slayers were never lords. We had no Kells. We came together to defend our people. We were Barons of Riis and the Great Machine, not… this House or that."
She touched the scar on her stomach, and I stilled in concern.
"The wars destroyed us. Nobody believes that there is anything worse to fight out there than ourselves."
I thought, without wanting to, of Haaksis. The mind-sickness that had gripped him… or else, the voice of something powerful and ancient.
"Chelchis sees it. Feels it deep in her mills. Something is coming. All those strange reports that she takes back to Kings and Judgment. But she thinks it will come from within, from… disorder."
"But… I saw the monster," I said. "I'll tell everyone what happened."
Kiiraskes looked up at me. Even with her helmet removed, I could not tell what she was thinking.
"You did well, Irrha," she said.
The rest of the journey, we passed in silence.
I knew Baron Kiiraskes was still in pain because she did not shrug off Chelchis's assistance in stepping out of the watercraft.
Kiiraskes reached out to take the Shank from my hands. "I will speak to House Judgment and report on our findings." She hesitated. "Chelchiskel can keep an eye out for you until I return."
We both watched Baron Kiiraskes pull her cloak tightly around herself and limp away toward the palace doors. Chelchis stared at me, and I worried she would ask me for an explanation. But instead, Chelchis grunted, as if something had been decided, and leaned against a nearby pillar.
I felt the weight of the past couple of days settle onto me. I was tired, but my body was not convinced it was safe to rest. I felt alert and exhausted all at once. I hugged my arms to myself and waited.
Some time into the silence, Chelchis began to sing quietly. It was not a tune I recognized, but beautiful in its lilting sweetness.
I thought of voices raised together in song in shared rooms. I thought of long nights playing find-sneak with friends, long before any of us had to worry about our purpose. In my chest, I felt a hollow ache like grief.
"What is it?" Chelchis asked.
I startled and looked up at her. What could I possibly say to a Kell that wouldn't just be wasting her time? "Oh, no, it's just… your song is sad."
Had she taken offense, she could have pulled my arms from their sockets. Instead, Chelchis touched my shoulder gently, and drew me close.
"Not sad," Chelchis said. "A song for star-sailors headed out into the dark between worlds."
"And wherever we walk, there is Light, little brother."
[Goodbye, Irrha. –Eido, Scribe of House Light]
