He chose the mausoleum for its honesty.
It did not pretend to be anything but what it was: stone lungs breathing mildew, a long throat of corridors stuffed with old names and older air. Webs leaned from corner to corner like tired pennants, their keepers big as a man’s palm, black, hairy, and untroubled by Radu's presence. Centipedes wrote brief copper dashes across the flagstones, hunting the bold rats that nosed at his boots and darted away again. He heard their skittering like rain that forgot how to fall. He let them keep their kingdom. He came here for his
The braziers he set around the slab had taken the fire well. Teal-green flames, a sickly, sea-lit hue, climbed their cups and paint his armor the color of drowned gold. The spikes of Radu's pauldrons cast long thorns on the walls. The red of his tabard drsnk the light and gave nothing back. When he breatheed, the plates whispered against one another: when i am still, I am a statue someone forgot to worship.
On the table rested two companions: the dagger and the book. The dagger was curved enough to remember the moon; its edge held the flame with a patient grin. The book was bound in a leather that pretended not to be skin and failed, its cover was stamped with a face in the act of a scream, mouth pulled into a silent vowel. Radu felt its. weight even when his hands were nowhere near it. It watched with its not-eyes, and it approved nothing.
Radu’s gauntlet closed upon the dagger. The weapon recognized a steadier hand than most men lend to their children. Balance admitted itself. He weighed it, a judge setting down sentence, then turned his profile to the book. A small smile, both elegant and unkind, visited his mouth and left it unchanged.
“Sleep on,” he murmured to the thing that was bound. “Thy time comes when I have words ready to put in thy toothless mouth.”
He moved to an uncovered stone casket set back from the table, its lid slid aside years ago by a strength that had not thought to be gentle. The skeleton within lay in the stiff grace of the resigned: gravecloths collapsed to ashen streamers, fingers folded as if they had not learned the living trick of clutching. Radu considered the empty sockets, the neat rows of teeth that had once fenced speech, and the subtle collapse at the temple where a life had taken one last inward step and vanished.
“Thou hadst a name,” he said, and the smallest spider along the lintel tilted on its thread, as if listening. “But names are river-things and I have use of stone.”
With no more ceremony than a man might offer a loaf, he reached in. Bone lifted with a dry click, the brittle music of old promises. He tore the skull from the ragged neck, a sure wrench that raised a puff of dust like a sigh from a tired choir. For a moment he held it as one holds a chalice, letting the brazier’s teal breathe through the hollows and set faint witch-auroras playing in the vault of it. A sentiment hovered, Alas, poor anything, but Radu had long ago smothered sentiment in its crib and taught its ghost to serve him as scribe.
He set the skull upon the casket’s rim. The dagger’s keen kissed bone. The first stroke rang with a thin, bright scrape that pierced the mausoleum’s hush; spiders drew upward a finger’s width in their nets, and the rats removed themselves with the offended dignity of minor nobility. Bone-dust lifted in a pale mist and wandered toward the braziers, where the unnatural flames accepted it like incense. Each line he cut belonged to an alphabet that predated language, a geomancy of binding and address: a hooked crescent turned against its twin, a thorned bar crossing, the suggestion of an eye that never blinked in any honest light. The sigil took shape beneath his hand as a city grows, street by street, inevitable when surveyed from above, unfathomable from within.
Radu worked without hurry. He ignored the centipede that paused at his heel to rear and test the air with feelers like articulated prayers. He ignored the ache that steals into all tasks done well, that quiet cruelty of patience. He carved until the forehead bore the whole of what he intended, lines that seemed to lean inward, tugging at the gaze, a geometry the mind could step through and be lost.
It did not pretend to be anything but what it was: stone lungs breathing mildew, a long throat of corridors stuffed with old names and older air. Webs leaned from corner to corner like tired pennants, their keepers big as a man’s palm, black, hairy, and untroubled by Radu's presence. Centipedes wrote brief copper dashes across the flagstones, hunting the bold rats that nosed at his boots and darted away again. He heard their skittering like rain that forgot how to fall. He let them keep their kingdom. He came here for his
The braziers he set around the slab had taken the fire well. Teal-green flames, a sickly, sea-lit hue, climbed their cups and paint his armor the color of drowned gold. The spikes of Radu's pauldrons cast long thorns on the walls. The red of his tabard drsnk the light and gave nothing back. When he breatheed, the plates whispered against one another: when i am still, I am a statue someone forgot to worship.
On the table rested two companions: the dagger and the book. The dagger was curved enough to remember the moon; its edge held the flame with a patient grin. The book was bound in a leather that pretended not to be skin and failed, its cover was stamped with a face in the act of a scream, mouth pulled into a silent vowel. Radu felt its. weight even when his hands were nowhere near it. It watched with its not-eyes, and it approved nothing.
Radu’s gauntlet closed upon the dagger. The weapon recognized a steadier hand than most men lend to their children. Balance admitted itself. He weighed it, a judge setting down sentence, then turned his profile to the book. A small smile, both elegant and unkind, visited his mouth and left it unchanged.
“Sleep on,” he murmured to the thing that was bound. “Thy time comes when I have words ready to put in thy toothless mouth.”
He moved to an uncovered stone casket set back from the table, its lid slid aside years ago by a strength that had not thought to be gentle. The skeleton within lay in the stiff grace of the resigned: gravecloths collapsed to ashen streamers, fingers folded as if they had not learned the living trick of clutching. Radu considered the empty sockets, the neat rows of teeth that had once fenced speech, and the subtle collapse at the temple where a life had taken one last inward step and vanished.
“Thou hadst a name,” he said, and the smallest spider along the lintel tilted on its thread, as if listening. “But names are river-things and I have use of stone.”
With no more ceremony than a man might offer a loaf, he reached in. Bone lifted with a dry click, the brittle music of old promises. He tore the skull from the ragged neck, a sure wrench that raised a puff of dust like a sigh from a tired choir. For a moment he held it as one holds a chalice, letting the brazier’s teal breathe through the hollows and set faint witch-auroras playing in the vault of it. A sentiment hovered, Alas, poor anything, but Radu had long ago smothered sentiment in its crib and taught its ghost to serve him as scribe.
He set the skull upon the casket’s rim. The dagger’s keen kissed bone. The first stroke rang with a thin, bright scrape that pierced the mausoleum’s hush; spiders drew upward a finger’s width in their nets, and the rats removed themselves with the offended dignity of minor nobility. Bone-dust lifted in a pale mist and wandered toward the braziers, where the unnatural flames accepted it like incense. Each line he cut belonged to an alphabet that predated language, a geomancy of binding and address: a hooked crescent turned against its twin, a thorned bar crossing, the suggestion of an eye that never blinked in any honest light. The sigil took shape beneath his hand as a city grows, street by street, inevitable when surveyed from above, unfathomable from within.
Radu worked without hurry. He ignored the centipede that paused at his heel to rear and test the air with feelers like articulated prayers. He ignored the ache that steals into all tasks done well, that quiet cruelty of patience. He carved until the forehead bore the whole of what he intended, lines that seemed to lean inward, tugging at the gaze, a geometry the mind could step through and be lost.
