Chapter Twenty-One Simran #3
“Let me,” said Galath. He kneeled beside her. “I’m not an incarnate,” he pointed out, when she protested. “I can touch ink, even if you cannot.”
He tried to break the chains. But whatever had made them was too strong for his mortal hands. They were harder than steel or stone, and would not be moved.
“It must be me,” said Elayne. Why else had the beast shown her? She ignored Galath’s warnings. She held the chains tight.
It was agony. It burned and slithered from her hands. It made her scream. Her own tale was constricting her, clawing wildly at her.
That will destroy us, the tale cried. Let go, let go!
She tightened her grip and held on.
“Okay, shit. Okay. I’ve got you. Can you hear me?”
She lay on the sand, gasping, eyes streaming. She’d never experienced such pain. Hours of pain. Hours, and around her were dozens of chains, untouched, unharmed. She felt changed inside—fundamentally altered.
A single link had broken. The ink of it had spilled, useless, onto the sand. She had done as much damage to the chains as an ant could inflict on a mountain.
“It would take me lifetimes to break all these chains link by link,” she said to Galath, tears on her cheeks.
“And I have lifetimes, but I will not remember this task. I will not remember what I must do. I will be nothing but a screaming and weeping ghost in some fool witch child’s skull.
I will forget the chance I had here. All is lost.”
Galath was staring at the ink, his eyes thoughtful.
“I know what to do,” he said.
“Simran. Simran, please.”
“This is the purest limni ink I’ve ever seen,” Galath told her, as he drew out his scribe needles. “There are limits to what you can write with tale-magic out on the Isle. But here…” His hand was trembling around his needle. He held on tighter.
“I cannot free the Eternal Prince, and I cannot scribe a tattoo on you to give you the magic you need,” he said slowly.
“But I can mark myself. I can make sure I’ll be here in your next life, and the ones that come after it.
I can be there to help you, and guide you back here.
I can protect you like you’ve protected me.
” He met her eyes. “Limni ink can’t give people immortality.
But I think here, where its power is so great—perhaps it can. ”
She should have said no. It was wrong, and cruel. But oh, she wanted to be free. She wanted it so much.
“Do it,” she said. “For me.”
Ink in his hand, a needle in his grip, his eyes closed. He carved the symbol into his forehead. A circle, endless. A tale that would never end. A serpent eating its own tail.
Be as immortal as the Isle.
It was the very deepest limni ink, the stuff of the Isle, that burned its starry way into Galath’s skull.
“Is it done?” Elayne whispered, skin burning, lips parched from her trials.
Blood pouring from his forehead. Tears in his eyes. His voice trembled. “Well?” Galath asked. “What now?”
She said nothing, frozen. He stared at her, blood-drenched and shaking. Then he smiled, and grasped her hand. He placed her knife in her palm; closed her fingers around the hilt.
“Trust me,” he said. “Elayne, trust me. We can cheat death together, you and I.”
They pressed the blade in together.
She withdrew the blade and watched the wound close. The light did not leave his eyes. He lived.
The knife dropped from her hand.
“It’s done,” she said, and wept.
She recovered, sick and shaking, in a hut by the sea until her tale dragged her back to the mountains.
Galath was not with her when she returned to the mountains; when she strung folk to her will; when Perrin came, and kneeled before her, and loved her, and killed her.
He found her in her next life.
“Please, Sim. Wake up.”
Lives passed.
Lifetime after lifetime, Galath sought her out and told her earnestly what she needed to do.
You must free the Eternal Prince. You must break his chains.
But the witch did not know him. The witch was willful.
The witch trusted no one but herself. She never listened.
Not until time had run short. It took lifetimes for her to break a single link of chain.
Time passed, and passed, and eroded the hope in Galath’s eyes like water inexorably carving a path through stone. He stopped guiding the witch. Instead, he took up his axe and offered her a different kind of mercy. Death, after all, was another kind of freedom.
The witch refused this too. Lifetime after lifetime. But other incarnates did not. And Galath’s hands grew bloodied, and the love that had once shone on his face turned to something that looked almost like hatred.
Almost.
It was a bitter irony, then, that Elayne was not gone.
Touching the ink of those chains had preserved her so that she was no simple, wailing ghost. But when she tried to urge each young witch to the broken abbey, to those chains of ink, her mouth sealed itself.
Tales are fickle, and rule-bound. Galath had bound himself to the task of guiding the witch, and just as only the witch could free the Eternal Prince, only Galath could show her the way to the truth.
Every life, the witch found her way back to the abbey.
Every life, the witch battled with the chains that held the Eternal Prince fast. And the witch came to learn, over those many lives, that all incarnate tales were bound like her own.
To free the Eternal Prince was to free them all, for he was an ancient tale, the foundation of the sea, the soil, the sky, as sure as the Eternal Queen was the Isle’s bones.
He was meant to rise and rule and die. As long as he could not change, the Isle’s incarnates were held in a kind of living slumber with him.
All the witch desired was change, so that the end of her tale could be made anew. So that she could live.
There were lives when she drew the knight into her confidences. Lives, when they stood in the woods together, and the knight lowered their bow, and the witch said to him, Please. Help me.
Help us.
She loved the knight in every life. Perhaps it was the tale—hurtling, inevitable. But her heart couldn’t avoid it.
Galath, her Galath, grew ever more bitter and cold—striving to free her in the only way he could, in every life. Striving to free incarnates, any incarnates, while he remained trapped by the magic carved into him. Her kind boy.
She lived, and died, and lived, and died, and died, and died.
“Simran.”
The voice was a shimmer in the ash, in her heart. She was herself again, caught in a storm of dark dust and fire. She turned her head and looked at the shadow of Elayne.
“Every life I returned to the place he sleeps, and unraveled another link in those chains. Every life. And now there’s you,” said Elayne.
Ink ran, liquid and pearly black, over her limbs.
“You, arriving on the Isle’s shores with your heart so open, so ready to dream—and we became one person.
” Elayne smiled. “You were so small—so wide-eyed! Do you remember?”
Simran felt the echo of it in their shared memories. The moment when the tale had seen her, and Simran had seen the tale—and suddenly Elayne had seen her, known her. Simran’s seeking and curious heart filled with the magic of a story.
“And then I came to the Isle,” said Simran. “And I—became part of you.”
“You did. You are the culmination of all my work,” said Elayne tenderly. “A witch who can wield limni ink. One who can free the Eternal Prince, and free us all.”
“Why didn’t you tell me what I need to do? Why did you put me through all of this?” Simran asked.
“What do you think Galath is?” Elayne demanded. “He is the truth I seeded into the world for you to find.”
“He didn’t tell me anything.”
“Galath has lost hope. All he has the strength left to offer you is cruel words and the mercy of death,” said Elayne.
Sorrow flitted over her face, a bird in swift flight.
“Besides, a tale cannot be a simple answer placed neatly into the palm of your hand. Truth must be earned and wrestled with and fought for. Tales are ritual. You had to walk this path.”
Elayne’s hand touched her cheek. It was a shock, to be touched—to both be real for a moment, as dying tales swirled around them.
“Find the Eternal Prince,” said Elayne. “Awaken him. Set us free.”
She woke with a hacking cough, a gasp. Hari was holding her.
“I thought—smoke inhalation,” he stuttered. His face was ashen. He’d clearly dragged her away from the still-burning library, and the ash and fumes of all those tales. There were black smudges on his face.
She needed to see Galath.
“We need to go back,” she said. “Back to the mountains.”