Writing to keep Afloat

Hello All,

Below is the chapter of my current work in progress. It is a family drama set in a high fantasy world. Please let me know what you think. I am completely open to critiques but keep in mind that if you do not read high fantasy, some elements may be unfamiliar.

Thanks –Brie Sutherland

An End and the Beginning

He stood at the top of the ridge looking down on the Idel battalion, his thoughts a mess of death and consequences. He knew soon they would become killers and there would be no redemption.
-From ‘The Book of Ikesh’ by Nenith Dromach

Nenith’s hand shook as she pressed her palm into the feather mattress. The outline of her long fingers against the white linen was clear despite the dimness of her bedroom. A stain stood out between Nenith’s thumb and forefinger, small and unmistakable. It was red, too red to be wine or dirt. Too vibrant to be old. With a yank, she removed the sheet from the bed and balled it around her fist, hiding the accusing blotch, hiding the bright reminder of her inadequacy. This always happened, no matter how she wanted and willed it not to.
Her fingernails scratched against the sheet as she went to her dressing table. Her white nightgown was draped across the green, velvet chair. She picked it up and held it in front of her face, turning it about until the matching crimson spot appeared. She sighed and added it to the pile of sheets in her other hand.

She looked up, catching her reflection in the mirror. When she had begun this journey she had been younger, more hopeful. She had looked at her husband and seen a dream that was about to come true. As the years had passed, her hope had waned as her desire had been sharpened and honed to one thing. All other wants had fallen away in her pursuit to become a mother, but still, it eluded her.

At twenty-nine turns old, she felt her youth slipping away and with it, the dream of being a young mother overrun by children was gone.

She sighed again and shook her head, turning away from her own dark, judging eyes. She strode through the bedroom, past heavy beams and painted plaster, her silk skirt whispering across the stone floor.

The house was dark despite the bright sunshine outside. Its history spanned two-hundred turns, which should have brought a richness to the place, but in reality, the windows were small, and decay lurked in every corner. Since Linel had been assigned to manage the Leccan Milacoria mines several years ago, they had been fighting the dust, leaks, and settlement of this wretched house.

She continued down the hall past the double doors that led to the Miann and into the kitchen. The openness of the high corridor gave way to the low wooden ceiling of the servants’ area.

The smell of pastries and rendering fat impregnated the air. The cook, Hemma, turned from the large clay oven built into the wall and faced her mistress with expectant eyes, her hands on her round hips. Nenith nodded to Hemma but addressed her housekeeper, the small, younger woman standing at the sink, instead.

Cisa leaned over the stone basin, washing a bowl, rubbing the cloth in slow circles on the ceramic. Her dark hair hung in her unlined face. Nenith thrust the laundry into the washbasin over the bowl and leaned her back against the counter.

Cisa stopped humming, her yellow eyes flitting across Nenith’s face. Nenith met them with a sigh.

“What am I to do?” Nenith asked a similar question of Cisa every time she bled. The conversation that followed was like a well traveled path, familiar and more walkable with every passing.

Cisa wiped her hands on her apron and turned to her mistress with clasped hands and thinned lips. “I don’t know, Madame.”

“How could you?” Nenith flinched at her own harshness and tried to soften her expression.

“Can’t your husband do anything?” Cisa asked, taking the sheets and nightgown from the basin and retrieving the bowl. She had asked the question before but did not seem to believe the answer Nenith always gave.

“No. I don’t think so. We aren’t taught that kind of Coria.”

Cisa nodded as if she knew. As if she wielded the same power Nenith and her husband did.

“Aren’t there women—other women like you—you can write to?”

Nenith sighed. During her time as a Ward in the city of Tessaidair, she had been trained in Corial magic, but she had not seen a pregnant woman, nor heard pregnancy spoken about. “I don’t know any Corial mothers. I’ve never been to Tuath where most of them live, and the rest are spread across Acair with their husbands.”

“You could write to the Meraidair.”

The Meraidair was the mother of trained Corial. Nenith had never spoken to her and knew Linel would not approve of writing to her about this.

“I don’t think I could.”

Cisa touched Nenith’s arm, her fingertips grazing the soft hair. “Maybe we should go to Cuan for a season or so.”

Nenith’s throat tightened, her grief pushing through the fortress she had built around it.
Cuan was where Cisa and Nenith had grown up, and Nenith often craved the smell of the sea and open blue that stretched to the horizon. There was death in that blue, and danger. Escaping the relentless, vibrant green of the fields might clear her head, dull her obsession with having a child. It might even help to leave Linel for awhile. Every time he looked at her, she could read his thoughts of disappointment. If she went away, he might miss her. He might realize she was valuable to him in other ways. Or maybe he would just replace her and they could both be released from this.

Nenith turned away from Cisa, swallowing the heat in her throat. Her housekeeper knew Nenith’s troubles, but Nenith looked at Cisa and saw a younger woman with child-bearing hips, a rival.

Sometimes, in her darker hours, Nenith wondered if Linel looked at Cisa and wondered how his wife, who was of higher birth and power could be less adequate.

Nenith left the kitchen, crossed the corridor, and entered her Miann, pushing the double doors—intricately carved with flora and fauna—open with both hands. She pressed them closed behind her and stood in the center of the room in awe of the sanctuary her husband had built for her. She had stood there every day for the past three turns, looking up at the transparent stone that composed the ceiling, walls, and floor. Soft, green light emanated from all around her, like looking up at the sun from deep under brackish water. This was Milacoria, the stone of power and life, and Nenith had more of it than she had seen anywhere else.

Nenith sat on the floor, crossing her legs and settling into a small divot in the rock floor. There were two divots in this Miann, one for her and one for Linel, but Linel did not come here, not in recent memory. Nenith flattened her palms to the warm stone and felt the intensity of its power. Milacoria was capable of storing an immense concentration of Ithir, the power that ran through all life and non-life. People like Nenith and Linel, known as Corial, could use that power to change, make, or destroy.

This Miann was a temple to that power and to its shepherd, Talamh. Talamh controlled the Ithir, and Corial built their connections with Talamh to strengthen their power. Nenith reached into the Milacoria and let the Ithir flow through her. It reverberated under her skin, in her head. It filled her with energy, and she called to Talamh, knowing that he did not care about her worries and woes. She called to him anyway, letting her heart open and empty. She whispered her wants and frustrations into the vibrating air. “Give me the power to bring forward life or give me no power at all.”

She prayed like the impotent Idel prayed to their goddess, Meallta. Talamh was not listening. He protected the world and balanced power, but would not interfere where Nenith asked him to. Nenith would have to wield her own power for her own ends or accept the world Talamh allowed. And she could do neither.

The storm of Ithir rolled through the Milacoria, and Nenith quieted as she stood. Nothing was different. Usually feeling the depth of her own power made Nenith withdraw from her despair, but she could not ignore the shameful ache in her stomach that signaled her failure. She had failed her husband and herself again and again, and she was too tired to fight off the fog forming at the edges of her mind.

It was not working. Putting her faith in Talamh no longer soothed her, not when she had been taught of his indifference through so many harsh judgments. She looked up at the ceiling where the Milacoria concluded in the base of the steeple and exhaled. She stood and pushed through the immense doors, leaving another piece of her hope behind.
Nenith drifted down the hall, pushing the enlivening Ithir from her body into her surroundings. She had begged Talamh, an uncaring being, to change her body and she had not found help or solace. Her eyes brimmed with angry tears, but she would not let them fall.

She opened the door to her study with a wrench of her wrist. A leather-topped writing desk and stool were the only furniture in the small, sunlit room. Parchment lay scattered across the desk, floor, and windowsill. Afternoon had set in, bathing the room in white light.

It was late Teth, the hottest season of the year, and the room was stuffy and warm. Nenith kicked aside crumpled drawings and notes as she stepped across the space to swing the window open. The cool breeze of the moors swept across her face, scented with purple plum flowers and wet grass.

She closed the door before sitting down at her desk and pushed a leather parchment sleeve to the side. It held hundreds of separate leaves, each a final version of a page she had drawn or written over and over until it was perfect. She had spent hundreds of hours researching the history of the Corial people, discovering their roots, following the journey of Ikesh, one of the founding members of the Idair, through his constant heartbreak.
Now, Ikesh was a part of her. He had succeeded in founding the Milacoria city of Tessaidair and had peopled it with Corial who wanted to know more about their power. These first citizens had become the Idair and for the past three-hundred and fifty turns had guarded the education of young Corial. Despite this, Ikesh had fallen for the wrong woman and then fallen from hope after a betrayal. Nenith had spent too much time on his story—which only spanned the first twenty-five years of Idair history—but she ached for him. After he left Tessaidair, he disappeared and Nenith was determined to find where he went. The three-hundred turns which had passed since his disappearance had erased any evidence there might have been.

She pulled a leaf forward. A map of Firen, the capital city of Acair, from two-hundred years prior was laid out in bold, black ink. She reached for a glass bottle and unscrewed the cap. Glimmering gold ink, a gift from Linel, greeted her brush as she dipped its soft bristles into the liquid and began labeling the map.

“Upper Level” she wrote in a flowing script near the top. Now, the city had twenty levels, each contained by a wall that kept those poorer than that level allowed below. At the time the map represented, Firen had twelve levels. With every year that passed, more people, Corial and Idel alike, flocked to Firen, the shimmering city that bordered the ocean, a harbor butting up against its lower levels. Each level had a dedicated purpose. One for the castle, one for wealthy Corial. Below that, wealthy Idel, and then merchants who had made their fortunes and wanted to rub elbows with those born with power. As one descended through the city, passing through the guarded archways between each level, the people became poorer until one reached the Lower Level. When another level was added, bleeding out further into the countryside, the previous Lower Level was re-purposed and those unfortunate enough to be shunned into the streets were forced into the new level, the level with the least protection. If the city was ever besieged, they would be the first to greet the enemy. Soldiers would storm through the Lower Level without heed. Only the upper levels would be guarded, the only levels with value.

Nenith labeled each of the twelve levels with their names. She would spend the next few weeks describing the purpose of each level and discussing the people that might have lived in each. She had diaries and ledgers from that time that Linel had brought back from the Firen archives detailing what life had been like for merchants, sailors, and royalty. The lowly and destitute were not represented in these documents, and she saw their voices as holes in history. Many people had lived in the Lower Level, just as they did now, and she could not find any account that showed their lives. How did they eat? Where did they sleep? Did they experience love and safety? Nenith wanted to find out and memorialize them with words. She knew, as only few ever realized, that history is written by the victors, but even more often, history is written by the literate.

Nenith’s hand was steady as she drew the box where the map key would live. It did not waver when her study door opened with a click.

“Cisa, you know you must knock when the door is shut,” Nenith said, turning on her stool toward the door.

Linel stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob, a vague smile on his narrow face. His dark, Idair robes hung from his strong frame, a symbol of his high rank among his peers.
Nenith glanced back at her map. A drip of ink had settled in the center of the upper city, smudging the castle. She would have to start again.

“What are you doing?” Linel asked, stepping into the room without an invitation.

“Working,” Nenith said, setting her brush in its glass holder. “Do you need something?”

“No. I just got a letter that I’m needed in Firen to meet with a diplomat from Seann. I’ll have to leave in a tenthday or so.”

Nenith nodded, turning back toward Linel. “Could I go with you?” She could always use more time to research, find more sources.

Linel nodded. “Of course.”

Nenith thought of the blood on their sheets. Had Linel seen it, did he know? When they had married, seven years prior, he would have reached out to her in this moment and touched her face or grasped her hand but now he just stood in the doorway. The distance had grown between them. With every failure, hope had faded and resentment had taken its place.

Linel’s eyes swept coldly over her, and then he turned and left the study. The door remained open as a testament to his lack of respect for her work. Anything she did would never be good enough, not when she could not have a child.

Nenith turned back to her map which was now besmirched with an ink drop the size of her thumb. She retrieved a clean sheet of parchment from her desk drawer and set the ruined map to the side to copy from.

She could have grasped the Milacoria pendant that hung from her necklace and imbibed the Ithir until it filled her with power. She could have turned the ink blotch to water and dabbed it away, or destroyed the stain completely, removing it from existence. But these things would have required energy and focus, an expenditure of Ithir that would weaken her and force her to retire for the day. If she had been stronger, more endeared to Talamh, or more practiced, it would not affect her as much. If she had stayed at Tessaidair like Linel and had become an Idair, she could have done it, but she did not want to. She preferred to start again and have the map be perfect, to have always have been perfect. Stainless in her memory as well as in reality.

Nenith wrote the word Firen in the top corner of the new leaf and began again.