Excerpted from Book II of Green Ruins & Shallow Blues: FRUITFUL
(C) 2025 Kyrinn S. Eis All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Morqin held the Lady's hand as she exited the coach. In her white frock of judgement, Maylen, Mother Commander, was a dazzling sight. His eyes squinted as the overshadowed sun bore down upon her blush-tinted porcelain skin and raven hair and eyes; a black so full of every colour that it shone in their hues as an iridescence in his eyes so fulgent. Her smile, coy, knowing, but of what? Morqin could not say.
The cool mists of second-Spring were welcomed to the months of swelter yet to come. Maylen's smile turned more professional, but no less genuine.
"Thank you, Morqin. Don't think I haven't seen you looking at me..."
-- "I freely admit that, Mother. If my ...replenishment --"
"Replenishment?" she took umbrage,
-- "Your presence brings my own spirit to higher heights -- my reading has been so sublime of late, Commander Campbell... I --"
"uh ... -- if you -- if I can avail myself to you ...so casually... what would happen if we were more than admirers?"
-- "I cannot say without the stones."
Rebuffed by his stoicism and restraint,
"I should think that the possibility should sound grand in my ears as it is in ...'thine'?"
Morqin said nothing.
Deflated, Maylen then turned sullen and apologised,
"I should rather have said does -- does it sound as -- ...far-fetched in your -- our ears? Us both? Ha..."
Morqin swept his arm to present her way to the confines in which the two men and a dozen bystanders were held.
Maylen's visit was purely official -- after investigations and inquires, Capital- and, Guildhouse doors had opened to her in invitation. She was brought on to pass her evaluation and suggestions about a host of topics which plagued the Seventh Circuit for her rectification.
Here, on the municipal border of Damarrien-Damaren and Hamarka, the accused would receive fair trials and the innocent resorted to society or their wanderings. But the guilty... -- The guilty would serve her until death parted them. :: Should she die, all her beings would be freed :: Should one inevitably die in her defence or the furtherance of her will, she would only become aware of the loss and how the connection had changed her in some way. Their lives but echoes and fleet images of remembrance: ephemera and them in it, together.
Once, when the villainous Eyemind sought again her power, the need had been great, and more folk in one moment not only had been yoked to her, but she had in one day's bloody, costly fighting -- been counselled in death by her ranks of departed Followers. Some of those voices lingered on. In glimpses, mirrors, especially at odd intersected corners -- or in twilight thoughts -- or drunken Mediumship --
-- "Mother Commander, Anatole' Antarday, and Bartholomew Anderson, primary combatants and the ones most of the rest agree were the first to come to blows."
Maylen smiled grimly,
"You understand that my truesight and angelsear have the ability to accurately inform the authorities -- in this case, my Brother-in-Law, Morqin Anathellion, Slayer - Lawforcer - Captain. He will execute justice as corresponds with your folkways in light of the First Mother and Her Daughters Thereafter.
"The, Qar Dashin, is very clear." Her voice grew angry-sad with volume in a lower register. Tears went their way down her rosy cheeks and sparkled scarlet in the westered-past overshadow-sunlight.
-- "Those who wantonly despoil, slay, or mishandle another shall be given the pains, or shall be damned in this life that, should they inherit some tomorrow, they should be better for it as shall our descendants," she turned to smile upon Morqin, $/"-- ' ...unaware of their perfidy, for it hath been atoned...'"\$
"Gentlemen, which of you would speak first to the Mother Commander?"
Antarday, with a wicked smirk raised his left hand while his right was moved to his heart, over which twined fore-and-middle fingers in a braid,
-- "I'd love to speak with you, Sister, Mother, -- Ma'am -- Grand Madame." the smirk never left his lips.
Campbell looked to Anderson, who shrugged, his hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets; head down, never made eye-contact,
"Look at me, Anderson. -=Bartholomew=-"
The recluse's head moved as if under external control, his eyes wide, his tongue still in his mealy-mouth.
-- "What a loser." Anatole' looked on as he cleaned his finger nails with a steelthorn. -- Obviously the guards were not as thorough as they had aught!
"Who let that slip through cordon?!"
"-- ....Answer me."
The Chief Detainer stepped forward,
--- "If any of my crew failed to --"
She moved to him upon pantherine thews, her high boots tossed aside the frock's skirt and showed the pair of thrownails in them. Maylen's lips pouted in anger as she then briefly looked upon his face--
"You have no such knowledge; I shan't punish an innocent.
"No matter! I shall ask the armed man behind bars if he is our incipient murderer.
"[*] Anatole' Antarday, did you first spill blood in this unholy desecration of Human life and posterity?"
-- "Ma'am, if I did, I must surely had forgot."
Campbell snorted, even Morqin smirked.
"Well, let me refresh your memory."
She looked into his eyes of black flame kissed with silver light turned auric-sardis with flecks of Samaran Rose, like embers on a phantom breeze...
Campbell, Maylen -- she stepped back and then with a huff, strode to Anderson,
"Look into my eyes of your own accord. That's it, free of fear of --"
Campbell looked down and stepped away, between the two, and then made her way with rapidity to Morqin who drew his Anointed Blade.
Maylen leaned in and whispered,
$"Each of them has the eyes which would pervert Justice' course, but for different reasons. I -- I can't -- any hearing would only confuse the matter -- ..."$
Morqin looked on, eyes narrowed as he awaited her judgement -- he already knew what the Qar Dashin said on these matters: Omen.
His observation of her indecision brought her, in an instant, to angry, crushed self-assurance. It was as if she not only had failed to spring to correct action, but in her waver, had diminished herself in his eyes... As bad as that was, but now... with Morqin's truthful admonition of his -- his appreciation -- she -- she couldn't let-down that confidence. It may had been pride, but it was borne of the sacred Qar Dashin -- which dwelt in her...
"Omen."
The pride in the Truth shone like a platinum aura upon his face. In his features, Maylen saw supreme confidence in their mutual metred justice's rightness in this instant.
With a golden serenity upon her lovely face, her sapphire eyes shone with a Silvery sparkle,
"The men are Aenigmas; people who defy the common rules of logic and orderliness of everyday life. Judgment will require more certain confirmation. We shall Omen."
*
The men were brought outside, onto the hang-platform for administrative capital punishment. Bound after a search found nothing else on Anatole's person, the two were on separate leads. Each stood with two guards between them, and each flanked by one beside and another behind -- all armed. Below three men and one woman were each armed with an antique coilstock aimed at the accused.
"Brother Morqin, prepare to consult the Stones."
Morqin removed the thong from round his neck and produced the pouch. He handed them to her and Campbell opened and inspected each with a perfectly critical eye. All twenty standard stones were flawless, and the lesser weight of the Qualitators and Contextors -- perhaps even more craftsmanship had gone into these... Maylen looked up into his eyes,
"Magnificent, all of them: flawless twenty, and excellent clarifying stones -- you well know your craft, Brother Morqin." Her eyes lingered in a smiled love of law and his merit within the Schema of Support.
Anathellion took a knee, doffed his left mitten and with his honourblade, sliced his palm. He held it aloft to show the blood. The onlookers, not at all advised as to the ways of the Mother Commander and the Slayer Brother, looked on, marvelled and awed.
He brought the sanguine palm to his forehead and impressed its ink to his brow. His meditation placed him in his mind's eye, hunter's mark upon the matter at hand as if it were lifesaving game, its service the sustenance of the people of the Tribe of Humanity.
Water was poured by a girl ushered-on by the Mother Commander, and still upon one knee, Morqin washed clean both hands and shook them thrice upon the charger. He lifted up his two hands and showed them round.
The Slayer then brought forth the stones and let them fall where they may. He let them settle although their lay had been immediate. Some looked on as if the stones could -- would flip to their other face, so sure they for the look of his patient observation.
With no change, Morqin pointed at each and whispered its name. Once all of them had been consulted, he then made constellations of them with his hands in horns-formed by thumb and outward last-finger, like the head of a Rackhorn Bull. Each such pairing but one in a sequence until all that could be so constellated had been.
The Brother looked up and spoke an anagram,
-- "OhUlTharAnt Elhamant"
He looked again, and swept all but one away. He looked as if he desired to touch it, to move more centrelike, but daredn't and instead sat some remove from it and steepled his forefingers and formed a house of memory. Morqin entered his Memory Palace.
Equipped with the Elements and Objects necessary to impart in forced Visioning and Acceptance, Anathellion gathered and redeposited the nineteen stones, but held back the twentieth, one of his own creation a green stone.
-- "Read my mind and lift the Implement of Judgement; wield it against each man. The Truth of It shall be made plain: who is the man capable of the crime."
Maylen looked confused for a moment, unsure why he had used such loaded language. She looked into his eyes of brown, and received Level 3 contact. Her beauty and an invitation to Level 2. Arrived, his, Morqin's love of her made clear, his attraction was secondarily to her power and glory in the Ancient Law, and -- oh... the third leg of the structure of his love for her: her justness. Almost an afterthought -- or?
"Foundational?"
His smile was as clarion as the call of The Law to her mind.
Maylen Regan Campbell's sapphire eyes sagged under the weight of her tears; joy; pain; worries and concerns both; their future; her past -- his...; he...a killer without remorse, and yet, a lover of Humanity to the last man ...woman -- child.
:: -- The Implement was as close to perfect as -- well, as he who had crafted it. In her hands, of her mind's eye, she -- it was effortless. Its heft and balance; he knew her mind so well as if he had dwelt therein, or -- had but from afar, so guessed its content as if already familiar. unassuming. welcome. -- Yes.
She stood before Antarday and struck his mind with it--
She, Maylen, in freefall. Her soul torn, -- in tatters: trailed above her as she unravelled from her being's core. Damnation. Endless separation from the light -- Light (Reason, logic, the Law, and the MIND which conceived it -- It.)
She, Campbell -- Mother Commander stepped back, almost doubled-over, half-bowed and dared again to look upon his face.
"I but a messenger of his coming. For all Humanity he gives himself freely."
It was in the Ancient Tongue of the, Qar Dashin, -- even earlier, -- purer, ...more poetic. Each word a phrase in-and-of itself -- a poem: each word uttered.
Its sadness, the remove of the beauty it encompassed. Its bearer -- its burden -- the bearing -- borne, now, ...in her.
Morqin caught her, steadied her -- Maylen Campbell, the Mother Commander.
What was this man, this -- Anatole' Antarday -- that he should repel her Judgment. Steel was in his hand before the last thought had fully formed.
Antarday laughed, pointed at the sword in Anathellion's right hand, again with the Steelthorn in his left,
"You know that you can't actually kill me -- with that or anything else, -- don't you? "
His laugh was almost a titter, tinged with bitter irony.
She, Maylen -- Mother Commander Campbell,
"Steady, steady Morqin -- Brother. He -- I move on now to Anderson -- ..."
Maylen looked on at him -- the 'loser', and gazed with dread upon his sad face and the shake of his head which presaged another great shock in store for her, of the many...
A Titan, sunlike -- a star of brilliant white flame, like chains which wove through his heart, now a lock which each link was but a key in a great condemnation which tore power -- real POWER from the One invested stripped from him and in his lowering again to anything less -- lesser, was as damned in heart, torn, yet so fully embraced by that Light, as to know only a sweet sorrow, and gain insight into the downward fall of the other man -- the, Page of the Black Flame.
:: Within this vision, she for its awesome beneficence, could bear-up under the elite suffering and regard the man himself,
-- "Can you hear me? Who first spilled blood in this public conflict?"
The titan -- the man of Titanic soul -- Bartholomew Anderson reached out to take Maylen's hand; she accepted -- ALL WAS FIRE!
A good man consumed by his zeal and set alight from within -- enkindled by his passionate opposition to Darkness. At once, beset upon by the Strictures, and elevated to the Redoubt Unshaken: bound in fiery chains while power was forced into his soul as pulses of a light beyond reason -- kindness unasked suffused with the definition of absolute orderliness.
He was raised-up even as he fell from grace; caught outside of time; nolonger human, but no longer a ...god. Not an archon, and not a mortal, he, Bartholomew Anderson was now a thing of the Wild Spaces Between All Worlds.
Campbell smote him with the Implement -- his mind, like a great pile of yellowed leaves scattered to the cold wind of year's end. There, the wind, they transformed to flutterwings of Spring. There was nothing to Anderson which wasn't apparent, his answer had been the truth. He hadn't done the killing.
She again stood in her body and through her eyes looked upon Bartholomew, and his sad smile.
As she turned round to once more confront, Antarday, she saw that he pointed the steellthorn to a man in the gallery.
"You there, sir. Come forward."
The man, burnside beards upon his jowls, sat motionless.
"I say again, sir: Come forward lest I compel you."
Arms of brown red veined -- another one!
Campbell watched as the telescoped arms erupted from the man-shaped host sheath. The same monstrosity she had seen Syil fight. It reached out for her; would take her for its speed and her sessile, rooted mind unable to think to her limbs to move even as she saw her inevitable fate--
Two men, Morqin and Anatole' had stepped from opposite sides to sever the obscene limbs from their quarry-reach. Anatole was gone, and reappeared in her vision of exacted instances, to safeguard Morqin slow to spin and defend himself from new threats. Hands were on her, and Anderson was there, somehow. He pushed her and she lifted as well as moved rearward, as if she were a balloon on a string. Moved faster than her brain could track, a streak of the last frames of near frozen time became a smear of darkness. Light, torchfire, outside at birth of night.
Bartholomew half-smirked, and then was gone in a blur.
Chaos within erupted as the thing exited through a window and part of the wall nearest. It made directly for her. Maylen forced herself to utilise her power. She stood her ground and reached out for the thing's essence. Some part of it, surely, had something to do with life she could understand -- animal, or even plant, if not a wretched -- monstrously-warped humanity. It neared in fractions of moments which others could scarcely witness, much less measure.
There was something there :: somethings :: minds :: residue of victims -- sheathes :: !
Campbell sought out that one mind she found within the thing's braided undulations of plasmic ooze. She barked her Order,
"Don't move! Stay exactly where you are!"
The thing slowed, a face formed briefly, it was sluggish to reengage her, but parts of its mass went cilial, and in long strands, hairlike, hissed in rapid agitation of the late afternoon air.
"Sit! Heel!"
Morqin emerged, bloody, and dashed out -- then he saw the thing, and some part of it saw him and reared up again,
"NO! I forbid it!"
The shambling heap bubbled and seeped as other parts of it went like runnels of brown ink through the furrows of the pavers.
Morqin eyed it as he circled round to her,
-- "You are unharmed?"
She merely nodded, this control took all her effort, and exerted upon a Human would had enslaved it to her -- this ...thing was only restrained -- if that.
Anatole was then suddenly to her left, and Bartholomew to Morqin's right -- the four formed a rough crescent -- horns.
"Now do you believe in me?"
Antarday smirked wickedly.
