Celyn and Marian After the Trial
Celyn is not gifted at pastoral care, to say the least, but he spends the few days required to get the dead properly tended helping with that, performing the appropriate prayers and rites or assisting with them. Once the immediate needs are tended to, he takes a few hours to wander, giving perhaps the impression that staying put is bothering him and he needs to stretch his legs.
What he actually does on the wander is track down a place that he can buy a bottle of wine. He is extremely particular about this, and very specific about wanting something of a certain level of quality if he can find it, though he is not extravagant about it. He is perhaps a little confusing to merchants about this, since he’s not dressed like someone who is persnickety about wine, but that is at least a change from the usual ways Celyn is confusing to random people. Peasant-clothed people, even ones who look well off, are not prone to encyclopedic opinions on the traits of wine after all.
Once he has selected some wine he is happy with, he makes his way to the Veltor temple to the Warlord to look for Marian. He offers to split the bottle with her if she wants get a cup or something for it; unless someone actively foists a drinking vessel off on him he is happy to swig from the bottle with the manner of someone who has perhaps slightly alarming familiarity with swigging directly from wine bottles while sitting on the ground and leaning against a wall.
Once settled, he watches her, never looking her in the eye, he is too Tyrwinghan-polite for that— though he certainly was staring down the Baroness while in that visible tightly controlled fury, which was a notable difference in mien, even if she was entirely unaware of the cultural significance of that glare— but definitely very aware, and says, quietly, “You dreamed of dying, didn’t you. Maybe even that shadow thing itself.”
When she agrees that yes, she had dreamed of being killed by the shadow, he nods, and solemnly offers her some more of the wine before saying, “That’s very direct, for that sort of dream. I wonder if the Warlord intervened. I don’t often have reason to offer that blessing to someone god-touched, and I suspect that might matter.” He goes a little unfocused, murmurs, “I wonder if Robin would…” before shaking his head and dragging himself back on topic. “Like I said, the Wyrdling is usually very cryptic. I can try to talk about that and see if that helps your confusion?”
He drinks a little wine before going on. “I’ve had a lot of dreams, but I am the Wyrdling’s, so that makes sense. And you’re familiar with what the gods are like.” He flips one hand, vaguely. “I’m guided by my dreams, very often, even when I don’t specifically ask for help. But I do ask for help sometimes. Two stories. An old, and a,” he pauses, “a recent. The recent one touches on fate, but I want to have a, a comparison.”
He fidgets briefly before saying, “There was a young man I thought might be interested in me, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it.” He explains, in response to curiosity or confusion, “It’s nice, not being alone, but I don’t generally … I’d let people court me, I guess. Not that many considered it.” He shrugs. “I haven’t found anyone I actually wanted to court before recently.” The touch of a blush does not stop him from going on. “I asked for guidance, eventually, and I dreamed of … dark waters, and little boats.” He looks up at the ceiling, leaning his head back against the wall. “I could hear out on the water, the sound of people, and sometimes boats colliding, and lots of people didn’t have light— I had light, I always have light—” He gestures, a conjuring trick of pulling something out of nothing, and the something glows the rainbow shimmer that his light always glows.
He stares at the light for a moment, then flicks his wrist, and it vanishes again. “I’m mad. You have to understand that I’m mad, and if I’m not careful, I might drown in it. And I don’t come from somewhere with boats, really. The big rivers aren’t near where I’m from. I had light to not crash my little boat into things by, but I thought when I woke up that if someone in his little boat wasn’t careful, I’d get tipped into the water.” He looks back over at Marian. “The dream didn’t say anything about that person, right? The person I asked about. Just boats. But I came out of it thinking… thinking that if I found someone, I had to make sure he was careful with his boat. Because I don’t want to drown.”
He takes a swig from the bottle, clearly to wash away the thought of that drowning. “I decided that person was not careful with his boat,” he says, very mildly. “But you don’t always find a lot of steady personalities in the theatre. Wyrdling-touched the lot of us.” There’s a deep fondness there, and also a clear-sighted gentle acceptance of the foibles involved.
“So I’m surprised you got something so clear and to the point. But the more I think about it the more I’m guessing that it was at least half the Warlord insisting on having things on his terms. But also. Fate. You ask the Wyrdling a question about fate and that’s…” He takes a steadying breath, and has a much larger drink of the wine. “I think of it like dice. When the dice are in your hand, you have luck, you have chance, you have possibility. Anything can happen until you throw them. It’s only after you see the pips that you know what fate has to say. A lot depends on the throw.” He cocks his head to the side. “When you came up, I could see that you didn’t want to make the throw at all. Hold onto the dice forever means never having to deal with the pips. And I am sorry I had to ask you to bind us to the Warlord’s judgement, but…”
It has become apparent, perhaps, that he’s talking around something, particularly when he takes the sort of drink that people might do before having to face something difficult. “There’s a village to the south, maybe… halfway between Aslain and Rinburg? Peydon. That’s where I killed the other fey. The one that cursed me.” He will talk about this, but the shadow of it is on him.
He will not, however, talk about what the curse is. “That kind of fey makes deals. Trades for what you want, what you need, even, and takes more than you wanted to pay for it, once you learn how the cost goes.” He drums his fingers against the wine bottle. “And making a deal, it opens a door. Gives her a permanent tie. But those go both ways, doors. It’s a small thing, the leverage of having the door.” He sighs and scrubs at his face with his free hand. “You understand how a battle can turn on a tiny thing. That’s Warlord understanding. But also Warlord understanding is how all these things have their risks.”
His head thumps back against the wall. “She wanted the deal more than any of us did. She really wanted to tell us what her enemy— also our enemy— the liege-lord of Araschera here, what he wanted. But she wouldn’t, without a trade. When we weren’t tempted enough with our own desires, she asked me for a weapon. The information, for the weapon. A twisted thing, with a magical quiver that could be depleted, but if it had all its arrows, it could do something dreadful, something strong, that we didn’t understand. She’d give the information to me for the weapon. And when I didn’t bite, she offered more. So what did I do? I asked the Wyrdling.”
He closes his eyes. “I dreamed a knife-edge. Balancing on it. One side, the people of the village of Peydon, falling into the dark, the doom, swallowed up. The other,” his free hand shifts, making a gesture, the throw of the dice, “Taking on a risk, a gamble, that we would be hurt, but that they could be free. And as the dream faded— was broken, actually— I dreamed of being struck by lightning. Me, personally, not an abstract.”
He drinks more of the wine. “I was trained in dealing with the fey. Not wicked fey, like these, but fey are fey, they’re like what they like. Training that Sembarans don’t get, don’t know how to get. I can be healed. And those people were suffering. Would be lost to it, if someone didn’t do something.” He looks up again. “The Wyrdling didn’t tell me I would die. It’s easier, not seeing something like that. But,” he makes a gesture like he’s rattling dice in his hand, “the odds are what they are.”
His voice is very soft for a moment. “Robin didn’t want me to. Didn’t want me to take the risk, make the deal, open the door. Even if we might need an open door to be sure of freeing Peydon. Even if we needed the information she wanted to give us so badly.” He is pretty good at hiding his emotions about almost everything other than Robin, who he speaks of with profound warmth. “It was something he couldn’t fling himself in front of, you see.” Marian certainly knows how willing Robin is to do that.
He closes his eyes. “Viepuck took the weapon and emptied its quiver. And you know? It shot twisted lightning. Which was interesting to learn, with that dream in my mind. If we had even given her enough time to figure out how to use the thing properly— we didn’t— I am as convinced as you were that I was fated to be afflicted with that dire and mysterious curse. But we emptied it.” He rolls one shoulder. “She dared me to strike her down, at the end.”
Another drink of wine, though a smaller one. “And I did. I opened the door to the Wyrdling, and the light. I did it knowing that I could have stepped aside, let someone else strike her down, and maybe it would change how much I was hurt. Or maybe it wouldn’t. She was rather cross with me, personally.” He waves the bottle in a small circle. “But fey are tricky. Areschera nearly got away, I think, I’m just faster than she was and put my sword through her heart before she could pull off whatever trick she was about to do. I didn’t know that one didn’t also have a trick, if she just got another breath. I knew she would find a way to twist it, but I did it. On purpose.”
He looks up. “The lightning was so clear. Maybe almost as clear as the shadow you saw. But we did things, we made choices, to disarm the weapon, so she couldn’t use it. But the intent, I knew. The intent to hurt me.” He lifts one shoulder and drops it. “Robin will say we made choices. Did say. That we always affect things, that the outcome isn’t set, no matter what we think we foresee. I say that you can’t read the pips until the dice stop rolling, and then we have to deal with what’s there.” He swaps subjects back abruptly. “And he is,” the warmth is back in his voice, “very good at protecting people. You chose to be brave, to have all the courage the Warlord could have asked of you, even knowing the price you might have to pay for it. Robin chose as he always will. Fate isn’t fate until the dice stop rolling. Even the clearest prophecy is,” he flicks his fingers, “still just a vision.”
He arches his back, pressing his shoulders against the wall, to get back to his feet without using his hands at all. He sets the winebottle on a table so she can have the rest of it. “She tried to drown me,” he says, very neutrally. “The Wyrdling protected me from the worst of it. Robin protects me from the rest. And she’s dead, and Peydon is free. I’m all right with those pips.”