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╩ 42 ╩
Polena was exhausted. She was tired all the time now. It was like breathing chest deep in water, every inhalation took a hard effort. They were shunning her now. She knew it. The day after she had told Mehethe her first translation from the Barrow he must have said something to the men because they now would not speak to her. One came in to give her meals, but always said nothing even if she asked him questions. There was a man of the picket placed to watch her tent at all hours. They had fortified the barrow too, they were building a door over the top that could be used to close off the pit. That part made her feel sick. It was one thing to be afraid of something you did not understand. It was another to be so foolish as to think you needed to close it off, to think that hiding a problem was the way to fix it. She did not care. All that mattered now was the work. She had translated the Poem from the barrow, the one written around the empty dais which claimed to be Djasho’s resting place.
It was more complicated than she had expected, an old poem, but one that followed modern styling. The Poem word in it too, seemed somehow more enticing than others she had read. Vaguely, she would think of the Fortress, of the archives there and people she had known, Coralm, Tavya, Alembic, Delhey, and whatever his name was who had taken her place as speaker. She did remember that she had come here to find Djasho. Truly she must have succeeded, for this poem was like no other. The importance of it would be clear to even a simpleton, and when she understood it she could make anything she wanted happen. She could give the Purebloods every soldier in the Fortress, have their plans dashed to pieces, gain a position of respect well above her station, have Tavya bend a knee to her, Alembic ask her for advice, Delhey fear her. When she thought of those in the Fortress, it was thus, as if obstacles; they were less people to her and more pieces on a Thrones board. By the time she was happy with the translation of the poem she had all but forgotten the Fortress. She wrote it as so:
My hand brushes your cheek; Whisper of a stream, Goddess proclaims a path; “You go where I wish,”
A stream can’t choose its course; Fate and flowstone guide,
Embraced by the Roots
A funeral poem, that it certainly was. There was a melancholy tone to the piece. But in the true reading one could hear a lover’s seduction in one reading and the promise of destiny in the other. There was a certainty to it, a purpose. It became more obvious in the second meaning one could read in that last line, not Embraced by Roots, but “I will not let go.”
She did not know what time it was when the Djaught came back to her, either early in the morning, or late at night, or maybe it was just a storm outside, it did not matter. He was interrupting important work.
“Go away! You are not needed here,” she called back to him. He did not leave. She could hear a sternness in his voice that was familiar to her from the time he gave commands to his men.
“Polena, I will not leave.”
“Then be quiet and do not speak to me. I have things to do.”
“Polena, when was the last time you ate or slept?”
“What did I say to you? Leave me alone! I’ll be out when I am done.”
“So I was told you would say.”
Polena tried to keep scratching away with her pen, but realized that the quill had long since gone through the parchment and now scratched the wood underneath. How had he distracted her so? She whirled around to the Djaught, aware only distantly of the pain the motion caused, of the exhaustion she felt, of the hunger of three days fasting gnawing at her.
“Why are you still here!” she cried out, her voice a pained rasp.
“To do what must be done, replied the Djaught. His blade was drawn before him, and its edge gleamed in the light of the torches outside the tent…
[to be continued]
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