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Gentler Things

by Thomas Ha

 

Of course they don’t tell you about the Prince Who Lost.

Theirs are only the stories of victories.

It’s true they once described the steadiness of the Prince’s hands when raising the three-bladed spetum, the potent poise and power he possessed when clearing the fields of invaders rising from oceans of the dead. Or the celestial runes inscribed along the fuller of his sword, the very same weapon wielded by his King-father, before the weight of years kept the old man to the warmth of the keep. Or of Abhainn, the Prince’s flare-steed, who carried him unfathomable distances, a blood horse gifted from the apogeic families, so conjoined with his thoughts that the two moved like a curved leaf on gusts of wind, slipping past walls and abatises and outstretched hands. But all of the stories stopped after the Ossean Caves, when the Prince sought the Last Wyrmlet and never returned, because grim tales do little to fill the purses of poets.

Men preferred to hear of the Conqueror — the knight-rough who later did what the Prince could not — the one to finally slay the Wyrmlet and carry its bloodied body to the sun at the surface. Better, they thought, to speak of him than dwell on all of those men before, whose bones were ground beneath his boot-heel in his advances through the hollowed caverns. This is what they want to hear, my father always told us: the ones who win, not the ones who lose.

And who could blame them?

My father would laugh whenever he said this, brushing the tangled mane of our old mare, patting her gently along the throat and whispering to her before cleaning out the stable-shed, then returning to his work in the fields. And later, when seated by the hearth he’d tell us more, about the Prince Who Lost and others, those warriors and kings, while mother would separate locks of our hair to braid along our crowns. We, his daughters, would listen closely to the waves of his voice, that timbre that seemed to descend from the thatch and settle in our ears. Those ever-shifting stories of his, about faraway men and their monsters.

On occasion, when we thought to ask what became of the Prince — the one who, by all accounts, should have won in the Caves but did not — father told us that there was no way of knowing with certainty. Perhaps the Prince had suffered from tragic wounds, succumbing to the venom sloughing from the underjaws of the beast. Or perhaps he had been eaten in the dark, deep down, consumed by that final scion of the ancient races, his soul suffused in the ichor of the creature’s albine scales.

Or — and I can picture our little faces, enrapt, as he spoke — perhaps the Prince had been felled by something else, deep in the Caves that once had been the heart of an exhausted world, that place where he expected to find a fearsome titan and discovered, instead, something small and tired and forgotten.

Because unbeknownst to many, and despite various accounts, few were aware of the truth, my father said. That the Wyrmlet in the Caves was not the dire menace its hunters would have us believe, but merely an infant, knotted and heaving under the weight of disease, encrusted in the dust and shadow in that strange place deep beneath men’s feet.

And maybe, in looking upon that weepy-eyed creature, the Prince felt something more than pity, stirring somewhere in him that he’d thought tired and forgotten too.

Maybe the Prince realized that what he carried was not a spetum in his arms or a runed sword in its scabbard, but a death greater than death, for himself most of all — a terrible obligation to use those steady hands of his for something he did not desire. That maybe his King-father and grandfather would have exterminated all creatures from their lands before laying foundations of mortar and stone, but his hands were, perhaps, meant for gentler things.

Like laying down his weapons, there, in the dark.

And bidding a quiet peace to the Wyrmlet and turning away, to seek something different than what he had been taught, the very antithesis of all that he had once believed: a life greater than life, if he could find such a thing.

I liked this particular telling the most, the one where the Prince had not so much lost as left. And I think of it often, and my father’s stories when we were children, before we’d each of us left to the little families of our own. The way our father would smile slyly and crinkle his face with amusement at us girls — his cryptic endings and riddles and nods, about life greater than life.

I remembered it all again when I heard the news that my father had died.

Someone from the town had found him in the dirt, fallen down while he was clearing the fields of spring overgrowth. Our old mare had been there, they had said, waiting patiently and refusing to leave him, following as they carried his body back to the house.

Then we came soon after, all of us, my sisters and I, to help our mother wash and clothe and present him for the mourners. And people from the town prayed and comforted and gave their condolences over the subsequent days.

I was the one to comb his gray beard and touch his forehead, imagining it furrowed, and remembering the plane of his cheeks against mine as we sat close to the fire.

“What could it mean, for the Prince? Finding life greater than life?”

I’m not sure my father ever gave me an answer.

After we sisters wrapped him in the blankets he and my mother had shared for over thirty years, and our husbands lowered him down, just beyond the oak and into the soil, we took turns filling the grave — our hands, like his, steady in the shoveling. And like with the dirt in the void, we filled the quiet with stories.

We talked about the time our father slipped and fell into the neighboring pond, trying to get a glimpse of a rare blue-striped frog that had actually been a molded rock.

The short winter, where mother and all the rest of us were bedridden with sickness, and he ferried stew and blankets to each of us, over and over and over again.

The night when the first stable-shed caught fire, and he led us to safety with the mare to watch the sky crackle, and he promised we’d soon build another, to stand in the place where the first had been.

And we talked, almost like we used to, until everyone fell asleep there, in the common room, near the cinder-spotted ash that piled in the fireplace.

And as morning crept, I woke before the rest to wander over to the stable-shed, where the old mare leaned into my hands, waiting for my fingers to pull through that tangled mane.

I peered into one of her dark eyes and whispered a name. Not the one we used, but the one I liked to imagine that father whispered, all those years when he worked and we couldn’t hear him: Abhainn.

And I imagined her muscular and younger, as she was years before we were born, her long legs beating rapidly against the earth, with father holding close to her back.

Flying fast, the both of them.

Where they might never be found, if they did not wish it.

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The Sigilist’s Notes on the Fell Lord’s Staff

by Stephen Granade

 

Added sigils for fire blast, as the new adversary’s armor reflects lightning.

Sanded off scorch marks.

At my lord’s instruction, added leather for a more comfortable grip.

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Sanded away more scorch marks. My lord still uses lightning out of habit.

Sharpened the staff’s top blades.

At my lord’s instruction, changed the grip’s location.

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Improved miasma sigils to increase its area of effect.

Replaced the blade that snapped when fighting our adversary and his followers.

At my lord’s instruction, will replace leather grip with “something that won’t slip out of my hand, he nearly had my staff from me.”

---

Carved sigils into the leather grip to decrease slipperiness.

Didn’t voice my worry about my lord’s safety to him.

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Resharpened the blades.

Please let it be enough to protect him.

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It’s not that my lord would punish me. He forgives my frailties.

My desires.

If I spoke unguardedly, I do not know what would spill past my lips. Even the smallest crack in a dam is doomed to widen.

So I confine my thoughts to these notes and hide them where none can find them.

Must research a better sigil for the grip.

---

My lord has long enjoyed watching me ply my craft. When he has time, he joins me in the castle basement. He talks; I work on his staff until it becomes an extension of his will made manifest by my art.

He tells me that our adversary has pressed his advantage. My lord has lost some of the lands he had seized, bringing order where before there was but chaos.

My lord will prevail. But he worries, and thus I worry. The ache connects us, and I treasure it.

Also lengthened staff to improve reach.

---

Added new sigils. Anyone other than my lord or me who grasps it will be poisoned.

Let our adversary try to take the staff now.

---

To see my lord’s face is to have your every inadequacy laid bare. The curve of his nose is an inevitability, his full lips an invitation. When I blink I see his face, an afterimage carved like sigils.

With practice, I am able to look directly at him. It is a plunge into an icy lake, unbearable at first until I grow numb. Every time he returns to my workshop and removes his spiked helm, I must acclimate again.

Outside of my workshop, he never removes that helm. I am glad, and not only because its sigils protect him. He is a language only I can read. I would not have anyone else learn it.

---

So our adversary’s armor is now proof against fire? Let them try ice shards.

I labor over the sigils, working and reworking them into the staff’s heartwood. Devotion wears a groove and, like all ritual, becomes its own reward.

---

I overheard the castellan today remark to a courtier that I was “excessively loyal” to our lord.

He mistakes me. Are you loyal to your breath? It is a thing that you must have whether you want it or not.

---

Our adversary’s army surrounds our stronghold’s walls. They hold our river. Our water is lost.

My lord plans a quick strike, trusting his skill and mine to win the day.

I fear it will not work. Other enemies have shattered themselves against the granite of my lord’s will. But not this adversary.

I have one last trick, a final, desperate gambit. I have created sigils of teleportation.

Other sigilists have tried and failed. Hard enough to stretch a person, turn them needle-fine, and punch them through the world’s skin. It is possible only if you use their true name to reshape them. Restoring them after is nearly impossible.

But not if you sacrifice an artifact of great power.

I tell him my plan. What it costs. What it requires: his true name.

He would be a fool to give it to me. Men such as him do not trust men such as me.

Without hesitation, he tells me.

With that name, I have all power over him. To remake him. To destroy him.

To save him.

The curve of the new sigils captures the essence of who he is. When I am done, I say, “Place your hands here and here.” I slide them into position. My fingers are stubby, scarred embarrassments next to his long, supple ones. “Then will it, and you will be transported away from these lands.”

“Leaving everyone behind.”

“And this staff. It will snap, but you will be whole.”

He falls silent. “Can your sigils carry more than one?”

His gaze heats my face like a conflagration. I cannot look at him. “What do you mean, my lord?”

“Will they carry you as well?”

I do not answer.

He laces his fingers through mine. “Then I shall not use it.”

I forget myself and turn to him. My eyes sting. “You will. For me. For us.” And then, “Hands here and here.”

His forehead is cool against my fevered brow. I do not recall how to breathe. “Hands here and here.”

---

The crack is as unexpected and all-consuming as an earthquake. Stones tumble from the stronghold’s towers.

Water trapped behind a dam turns stagnant. I should have remembered.

The castellan stands beside the adversary. He let them in without a fight.

The adversary squats beside where I am chained. “You have abetted evil. But it is not too late. Make amends. Take me to him.”

I shake my head but do not speak.

They drop the staff before me, broken like the castellan’s vow. “You will take me to him.”

---

Sanded away burn marks.

Recarved sigils of power in the staff.

Attuned the staff to the adversary.

Banded the staff’s center. It will not repair the crack. But it will hold. For a time.

---

My lord waits for me. I will return to him.

The adversary wishes to follow my lord? They would follow my lord through the world’s skin? I alone can give that power to them. If they give me their true name.

And then I will destroy them.

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Host Commentary

Thank you to Thomas and Stephen for their stories today. Thomas sent us these thoughts on GENTLER THINGS: I think the difficult thing (or really one of many difficult things) that happens when someone passes away is that we’re sometimes left with the lingering sense that we will never get to fully know the life that that person led. Stories obviously play a part in how we understand and reinterpret people’s lives, but those are, in their own way, just as impermanent as the lives they are supposed to encapsulate. “Gentler Things,” to me, is a family story (or maybe an associative chain of small stories) about a father and a daughter, and her attempts to grasp at an interpretation of his life after the fact. As with many things, I don’t think there is a single, definitive answer as to what’s going on in the piece or what it says about the narrator’s father. But I like to think that there is some sense of constancy in the stories this man’s family tells about him–and, with that, something of him that remains with them, between the lines.

Thank you, Thomas. I think about stories a lot–I mean, obviously, I’m here presenting one to you every week, but I also think about the stories we tell to each other about who we are. Even more so nowadays than once, I think–all of social media is a story we’re telling the world, a tale we present of achievements and travels and jokes and thoughts. But we also present stories to our kids, about what we were like when we were younger but also about who we are now–calm, confident, in control and absolutely not looking about in bewilderment wondering how we became the adult in the room. We present stories to our co-workers (or, for Fell Lords, underlings)–pretty much the same story as we give to our kids, now I think about it, calm confident and in control and definitely not panicked at the responsibility we seem to have gathered without meaning to.

One of the reasons we present such stories, I think, is because the idea of someone knowing our true selves–our true names, if you will–does give them power over you. It gives them the power to hurt you in the ways that would hurt most; to predict you and thus to steer you. It’s what makes love so vulnerable and intimate, after all: you are giving this power to someone, and trusting them to use it well, to instead protect you from the things they know will hurt, to instead anticipate the things you will want and need. And so, we hide our true selves behind a story we tell to others.

But we also present a story to ourselves, because how else am I meant to link the 8 year old child of three decades ago to the person I am now? How else am I meant to feel the continuity back to that person without constructing a narrative thread through the years between? I am a construct to myself as much as I am to the world, particularly in my case as I try to peel back a lifetime of autistic masking and find who the true Matt beneath is. This is why stories are so important to us, the narrative ape–they are not just how we make sense of the world, but how we make sense of each other, and how we make sense of ourselves.

To tell a story is to bear a great responsibility, friends, so tell them carefully.

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As part of our 15th anniversary celebrations, we’re asking you to send in your favourite stories from our archive: if you’ve got a suggestion, go to our website

and look for the pinned post up top for details. This week, we have two people recommending one story: both Chuck Goodin and Thomas Bratchford have suggested Episode 51, ‘THE CAMBIST AND LORD IRON’ by Daniel Abraham, with Chuck saying: “I love the economic part of the plot, Daniel Abraham’s prose is great and Wilson Fowlie’s narration was perfect for this story.” and Thomas saying:
“An incredibly intelligent and well-balanced tale, with solid characterisation and haunting themes, that is perfectly read.

As a man of consistent habits who aspires to live an intelligent life of humility and service (‘aspires to live’ rather than ‘lives’ as life is not done beating humility into me) this story understands the ‘me’ I try to be in a way people generally don’t… as such I will never delete this podcast and listen to it to get to sleep on nights where rest otherwise eludes me.

Thank you Podcastle, Daniel Abraham, and Wilson Fowley.” Thank you, Chuck and Thomas, for the deep dive back into the archives–and yes, that is the Daniel Abraham that’s one half of James S A Corey, author of the Expanse series. Go listen and enjoy.