Chapter Fourteen
The seer rose from her chair and brought one of the bowls from the altar over to the fountain.
She ladled some of its water into the bowl, then pulled down some of the flowers and herbs from where they hung overhead.
She brought all of this back to the altar, where she selected some of the dried blossoms, leaves, and mushrooms and ground these into dust using the mortar and pestle.
An aroma of grass, spice, and earth filled the chamber as she spooned some of the powder into the spring water.
After stirring it all together, she set the bowl on the altar before Donan. “When you are ready, drink.”
Donan looked at the swirling liquid with suspicion. “What is it?”
“We call it Venom of the Serpent.”
“Venom?” The herbal ingredients had infused the water and turned it the sinister color of verdigris, granting it properties of which he could only guess. “What will it do to me?”
“It will show you the past,” she said.
“But what will it do to me?”
Donan’s mouth had gone dry, and he could hear his own racing heartbeat in his ears.
He feared whatever effects the potion might have.
He could find his faculties diminished, or it might render him unconscious, and he would be vulnerable, helpless, without control over himself.
A breathless panic set in, and he began to believe the liquid before him might be poison, and the seer might be an alchemist of malevolent will.
“It will not harm your body,” she said. “But you may harm yourself if you fight against it.”
“I am afraid,” Donan whispered.
“As you should be,” said the seer. “To walk the path of one’s fate requires great courage that many do not possess. There is no shame in turning away from it. I cannot force you to drink.”
Each moment that Donan delayed only increased his doubts and anxiety. He knew if he waited much longer, he would push the Venom away and leave the shrine, never to return. But then he heard a gentle distant voice—not the seer’s, a more familiar voice—and it whispered to him, “Drink. Drink it.”
Donan picked up the bowl and tipped its contents into his mouth, gulping it down before he lost his nerve. The liquid tasted pungent, bitter, and sour, burning a little as it slid down through his chest and into his stomach.
“Well done,” the seer said. “Now, come with me.”
She offered him her hand, which he took.
Her bony fingers felt warm, her skin dry and papery, and she led him from the altar toward the iron door.
From within her robes, she drew forth a heavy key.
The ratcheting of the turning lock echoed loudly, as though an endless space lay on the other side of the iron plates and rivets.
Donan noticed no effects from the potion yet, but he attuned himself to every shift, every sensation, every signal in his body as the seer opened the door.
The metal groaned as if it had not been asked to move for some time, and Donan saw a tunnel and stairway that led downward into the abyss.
“Do you see the way?” she asked.
“I do.”
“You must follow it.”
“But…there’s no light.”
“I assure you,” she said, “the journey would be no easier with a lantern or torch. Go now, and may your eyes be opened.”
Donan knew that turning back now was not an option. He could only go forward. So, he bade farewell to the Keeper of the Fang and set off down the stairway. Light from the shrine tumbled after him for several steps, but then the door groaned once again as the seer closed and locked it behind him.
His eyes widened in the darkness, straining to grab hold of any glimmer, any discernible shape, and when they found none, they created their own sparks and shadows.
He reached out his hand for the rock wall and felt a smooth, cold surface.
He used this to steady himself as he took another step downward, and then another, and then another, proceeding slowly, surrounded by the sound of his own breathing.
The passageway initially followed a straight course, but then it began to turn and wind.
Donan relied on his hands to feel the direction of the path before he took each step downward, and at times, it felt as if the course’s descent spiraled back on itself.
He had not gone far before he began to see the curve of the walls and the angle of the stairs, which at first he suspected was a trick of his eyes.
However, the clarity of his sight only grew until he realized some distant, unseen source of light had begun to reveal the path around him.
Not long after that, the passageway joined with a much broader, rounder tunnel that appeared more natural in origin, and it ran close enough to the surface of the mountain for cracks and openings in its roof to allow in shafts of moonlight.
Donan followed it upward, thinking the ground felt somewhat unsteady, only to realize the potion had taken hold; his balance and his focus drifted.
The tunnel smelled of earth and something else, a kind of musk he recognized only in the deepest reaches of his ancestral memory but could give no name.
As he ascended, the air became humid, and he could hear the trickling of water.
Tree roots penetrated the ceiling and grew down the walls, curving like the ribs of the great serpent that had swallowed him.
Then Donan began to see things that were not there and could not be there.
The tunnel became a corridor through the grand market of Gea Kul.
He stood beneath the awnings and canopies of merchant tents, which reached overhead from both sides to enclose the avenue and shield customers from the relentless sun.
Donan looked up at their captivating stripes and patterns of vibrant color as if he were a child again.
He smelled meat sizzling somewhere over open coals, the sweet aroma of freshly baked flatbread, the heady fragrance of raw spices, the perfume of rose oil, the sharpness of human sweat, and the tang of animal dung, all stirred together by the heat into the scent of his home.
Donan navigated the maze of tents, ducking and dodging his way through the crowd, until he arrived at his mother’s shop on the edge of the square.
The piles of rugs within filled him with pride because of the way others spoke about their quality.
His mother didn’t do the weaving anymore—she could afford to hire the labor of others—but she had created the intricate designs and oversaw their manufacture.
Her talents had afforded him a life of luxury and education, and he had measured his growth into manhood against the height of those piles.
Then Donan heard his mother’s voice, and she emerged from the shop’s back rooms, alive again and looking as she always had.
She wore a fine blue satin dress, as if she had wrapped herself in the sky, with an emerald necklace the same color as her eyes.
He rushed to embrace her, shocked into speechlessness by the sight of her.
“Hello, my son,” she said. “I wondered if you would drink.”
“Drink?” Donan finally recognized the subtle voice that had beckoned him to drink back in the shrine. “But how—?”
“I reside in your memory,” she said. “And I am always calling to you. It is you who cannot always hear me.” Then she gave him a stern, disapproving look that he knew well. “Sometimes, I think you even ignore me on purpose.”
“I—I don’t mean to—”
“Yes, you do.” She laughed, and the sound of it trembled his heart. “Every boy sometimes pretends he can’t hear his mother calling. The important thing is that you are with me now.”
“Why?”
“Because I am about to die.”
A savage wind tore down the street and into the shop. Donan looked outside as night arrived like an onrushing storm over the city.
“No,” he whispered.
Moments later, screams erupted in the market, full of pain, anguish, and confusion. People ran past their shop in all directions, faces contorted in terror.
“Go, my son!” His mother grabbed him and pushed him toward the back rooms. “Hide! Quickly!”
He almost fled, just as he had that night years ago, but this time, he stopped himself. “No,” he said. “It is you who needs to hide, Mother. Those are Malthael’s reapers out there, and one of them will kill you.”
“But you didn’t know that, did you?” she said. “You heard a commotion in the market, and you were afraid. You did what I told you to do. You knew nothing of angels or reapers or the Horadrim.”
“But now I do.” He readied his staff, preparing himself for the enemy that would soon enter the shop. “I have learned much since you last saw me. Now, get behind me, Mother.”
She placed a calming hand on his shoulder. “Donan, my son. You cannot alter what has happened. To confront the past is not to change it—”
“No!” He shook her hand off in anger, tears clouding his vision. “I should have protected you. I should have known.”
A horrid wailing filled the shop, and then a ghastly death maiden stepped into the doorway, trailing streams of spectral power, a dark void beneath her cowl.
She glided toward Donan’s mother wielding a scythe, seeming not to notice him at all.
For a moment, Donan stood paralyzed, until the reaper swung her blade.
He tried to block the blow with his staff, but the enemy’s weapon passed through his as if he were not even there.
The strike cleaved his mother’s head from her body, just as it had the night she died, her blood staining the beautiful rugs surrounding her. The maiden then turned and stalked from the shop, and Donan collapsed to his knees, sobbing, utterly powerless.
“I should have protected you,” he said.
“Is that why you avoid thinking about me?” His mother’s head spoke from where it had fallen. “My son, even when you ignore your past, you are still shaped by it. Never forget that though my death is a part of your story, so also is my love for you.”