Beginnings

by Jessie

Everything is changing. That’s how it feels. The world is on fire. In the west, black flames leap skywards. No one’s ever seen anything like it before. Something new is happening in the Forest, and no-one seems to know what it means, even though everyone has something to say. I’ve ripped the library apart looking for references to any similar phenomenon – and I’ve not been the only one doing it – but there’s nothing, certainly nothing concrete, practically nothing at all. This is something new, something that has never been written down. In the city, the palace burns. White flames rip through the city’s heart. People say the city’s seen this before, and worse, and lived to tell the tale, and it’s true, I guess. I remember a thing unbound marching unstoppably westwards – but our weapons now point inwards towards our own streets, and what I fear comes from within the city. The Light seeks a new way. A new face, a human form. But there is nothing new in this. This is the way of the Old Powers; a god you can meet on the roadway, a god who intervenes. And yet the temples of the Old Powers are shut and barred, and I dare not walk the streets. The Light seeks to cut off that which came before even as it turns back to it. The College offers sanctuary. I am safe for now. But for how long? Priests of the Old Powers have been burned in the streets. Nothing feels safe any more. And I only wear half of my heresies against the Light upon my sleeve. That which comes before what you know now is important. I’ve been learning that since I went up North. What were they before they were Bound? Were they truly Innocent? And even if they were, does that change what they are now? It is something to do with the Dream Powers. Were they what came first? I want to know. I want to know all of this, but the books tell me nothing. You don’t find history in books. Not real history. I’d realised that even before Dream. There is too much that the books leave out. …the blood courses through your veins, and you can’t study this in words, because there are no words, and it builds up in you and gives you power over the world in a way that all the words in the world can’t achieve. It can only be experienced, blood and ecstasy and power, so I drank, and I bled, and I learned what libraries cannot teach. The Lady of Blood and Wine, I thought perhaps that I belonged to her – but I learned something else in Dream, I learned that sometimes you have to put the study down and act for what you believe is right. And that too is the power of Blood, to fight, and to go on fighting… When someone tells you something new, how do you know whether to believe it? The Bound Ones are Innocent. I wanted to study it further, to know more, to see if it could be true and to find out what that would mean. But the others, some of them, they couldn’t accept that anything other than their truth which they already knew could. The noble, the kid. The ones, perhaps, who don’t really think. For me, the idea was new, and it sparkled with possibilities, places for new thought to grow. We could turn the world on its head and see what is left standing when the dust settles. But someone else has got there first, it seems. Everything has changed, and what happened to us in Dream has nothing to do with it. I hide in College, among the dust and the books, because I do not yet know enough to fight. And I think the heretical thoughts that the Dream Powers sparked off in me. Perhaps it’s not the Light that has power, but only the Dream of the Light. Perhaps it’s not even Blood that has power, but only the Dream of Blood. And, if they were Innocent, should we not free them? I’ve read and I’ve read, but I’ve found no answers. The black flame is too new to have been written down. But this, this is too old. Older than words, like blood and ecstasy. And Dreams.

Kit Fisable has taken over the Faculty of the Arcane. It’s not my faculty, and it’s not my place, and I suspect if I tried anything I’d only get myself lynched. But if you believe the stories you hear on the streets of the White City, she’s been something of a heretic for quite some time, and I wonder, if I could see her, whether I would dare to say anything. There’s just something I thought you might like to know. You, who have been up North more times than I’ve had hot dinners, you who have spoken to gods and dragons, you who know more about the world than I could ever dream of, you who grew up here with the truths of this place in your bones. I think it’s all wrong. I had a Dream, up North. I dreamed of Innocence, and Hope, and the world turned upside down, and the Bound Ones beautiful and free.