Death After Death

“I take it this is not a social call,” Simon said, admitting nothing as he approached the Oracle, and then moved past her until he stood looking out at the steaming lake beyond. His half-carved wand was in his pocket, but he had no intention of throwing it away. Trying to hide from her was pointless.

“You know exactly what this is,” she agreed. “A blasphemous word from one of your Whisperers I can understand and even forgive after what they’ve been through, but you should know better.”

“I do know better,” he growled, certain she was right. “But that doesn’t change the calculus of things, does it? Is it so wrong that I don’t want her to die?”

“We all die, Simon,” she said softly. It was a reassurance, not a recrimination. “You know that better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Even you?” he asked, snapping more than he should as he sat down beside her, wand in hand. “I imagine you’ll be here for a long, long time, no matter how many centuries I live.”

“I’ll die,” she agreed with a nod. “I can actually see my death, you know. Every morning, it’s there, in the distance like a mountain on the horizon, waiting for me.”

That line took the wind out of his sails, and he sighed, but when he realized she probably said it with that intent, he summoned just enough outrage to ask, “So, how do you go? Quietly in your sleep at the age of ten thousand?”

The Oracle laughed, then. It was a rare sound from her, made even stranger by the topic. “It changes nearly every day, actually,” she admitted. “Sometimes closer… sometimes farther away… Every time someone like you makes a choice that changes my weave, my end turns out differently. Today I die…” she got a distant look in her eyes as she seemed to look out past her veil, and the mist that veiled her tiny kingdom.

“A dragon. I don’t make it to the end of days this time. A dragon makes a meal of me, and turns our lovely city into its nest.” She said that with a little shrug, like it wasn’t particularly horrifying.

“Enough clarity to know how I die each life would be immensely helpful,” he said aloud, as much to himself as to her. It raised a number of interesting philosophical questions about how he would be able to see his own death if he could also see how to avoid it, but he pushed those away.

The Oracle can probably only see her death because she accepts it, or some mumbo jumbo like that, he reflected while he waited for her to speak.

When she did, he finally asked, “With enough clarity, do you think that Zoa could be healthy again?” It was a spiteful question, but it was all he could think of to break the silence while his anger still simmered.

“No,” she agreed without even trying to argue, which surprised him. He’d expected a wittier or more confounding response. “No amount of clarity would heal the malignancy that grows inside her. Enough clarity will allow her to accept the things that she cannot change, though, and possibly even understand her role in the larger pattern.”

Simon flinched at that, but said nothing immediately. That was clearly a barb with his name on it, and he didn’t deny it. Instead, he thought about all of the ways he could argue his point. Finally, he settled on, “One doesn’t have to destroy the tapestry to make a pattern. The weaver can understand it even as he changes it.”

“Oh, and you’re the weaver now?” she said with a wry smile that he could have heard even if he wasn’t looking at her. “Bold words for a man who’s only ever glimpsed the larger patterns.”

“And if I could see them, then you’d, what, let me save her?” Simon asked.

“If you could see the whole thing, then you wouldn’t be so eager to save everyone,” she said, rising. The Oracle turned and started walking away, but as she left, she said. “You can do whatever you like. I won’t stop you, Simon, but if you use magic in my city, you’ll never be welcome here again. Not in any life.”

Those words were perhaps the only thing that could have stopped him, but even so, he sat on that stone, wand in hand, for hours before he snapped it in two and tossed it into the water. In the end, he told himself that it was as much because he didn’t want to leave Zoa as because he didn’t want to lose access to this place in future lives, but even as he returned home to lie next to the sleeping woman, he wasn’t entirely sure that was true.

Isn’t the fact that I want Zoa to live for a long time proof that I love her? he asked himself as he drifted off to sleep.

No matter how often he thought about healing her, though, he didn’t. He didn’t bring it up again, either. Instead, as the darkness grew, Simon resolved to spend however many months or years they still had together focused on her. Planning for his future lives could wait; even his quest for clarity could wait.

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For the next few seasons, he lived in the moment and was rewarded by getting to work most of his shifts with her. He’d always suspected that the people who planned the work could see into the future to some degree, and the fact that they were being so kind in this respect made him worry about how little time they really had together.

Unfortunately, the good times were briefer than he would have liked. They had some good moments together under the veiled stars, and she reminded him that life was for more than questing. Unfortunately, barely more than a year later, she'd gotten sick enough that there were few jobs she could do, and soon, taking care of her became a full-time occupation. Other acolytes volunteered to help him with those tasks, but he didn't allow it.

That worry clouded his sight in the same way that Kristos’ grief clouded his for his whole life. Simon’s robes stopped getting lighter, but he didn’t really care about that.

Finally, when her condition was noticeable when fully dressed, and she no longer worked regular shifts, she said to him one night. “I want to marry you, before, well, you know.”

“I thought you didn’t want to marry,” Simon teased. He’d proposed it once, shortly after arriving in the valley, but she shot him down, insisting 'Our bond doesn’t need rituals.’ Now, though, it would seem she wanted a ritual.

Simon had no problem with that. At this point, he would have said yes just to make her smile, but it was more than that. Somehow, the idea that he was being asked to wed unburdened him from whatever baggage he’d been holding for Elthena for all these years.

He let her plan everything, and she was allowed to borrow a toga of the purest white for that day, along with bundles of wildflowers that her friends gathered the morning of the big day.

Simon had composed some vows for them, in the form of poems, just to make them that much more special. Still, he was taken completely by surprise that day. Not because of the marriage ceremony. It was a simple handfasting where their hands were bound together by a strip of cloth whiter than even his robes, and they said a few vows in front of Nicholos and their other friends. It was what came after.

When they were done and declared themselves man and wife, Zoa demanded that he carry her to the edge, so she could see the lake through the curtain of steam. Simon didn’t try to argue. She’d lost so much weight at this point that she was like a bird; he could have carried her all the way down the mountain if he had to.

As they went, the others drifted away, and they were alone. “Isn’t it wonderful that we’ll never be parted now?” she asked him as he tried to keep the grim irony of a marriage on her deathbed from his face.

“Nothing could be more wonderful,” he agreed benignly as they moved. They ended up sitting not far from where the Oracle had challenged him that night so long ago, which distracted Simon for a few minutes as Zoa talked about their future.

There would be no future, of course. He wasn’t cruel enough to tell her that. His first wife, he hadn’t known how to save; the next woman in his life, he hadn’t been allowed to marry, and now he wasn’t allowed to save Zoa. It was a grim series of almosts that might have made even his jaded eyes tear up if he hadn’t figured out that she was talking about spending their next lives together.

“What?” he asked dumbly.

“I said, where do you want to meet when we pass?” she repeated weakly as she played with the band of cloth still tied around his wrist. “How will we know each other? What shall we do with a whole life together?”

Simon wanted to scold his new wife for the very idea. He wanted to explain to her that there was no way they could meet again, not until he conquered the Pit. He wanted to tell her that every life was precious and that she deserved better than him. Instead, he smiled and told her a pleasant fairy tale.

That seemed to half lull her to sleep, but as Simon stood with his lovely bundle to take her home now that today’s excitement had worn her out. That was her trap, though. As soon as he stood, she heaved her weakened body toward the cliff. The cloth band was still tied around both of their wrists.

That’s what she meant, he realized in that final moment. She wants to die together, so that we'll never be parted.

Fear or anger about the fact that she was trying to murder him never even crossed his mind. One life was as good as the next now, and he had zero concerns about returning to his cabin. He was concerned about her, though. Spending weeks or months slowly wasting away from cancer was hardly a pleasant death, but then, neither was being boiled to death in a steaming lake.

It was that one frozen moment Simon could have saved himself. She’d tied herself to his wooden wrist. His faux arm would come right off if he held his ground and focused on his balance. If he did that, though, he could do nothing for the woman attached to that arm. He was overbalanced and flailing. His only choices were to save himself or fall after her.

So he fell, and instead of raging or trying to get some kind of explanation in those last few seconds, he merely kissed her. He knew the reason behind this. It was because he left her all alone, and broke her heart in a way that even magic couldn’t fix.

For that reason, he deserved this on some level. He believed that even after they hit the water, and a wave of agony washed over him, whiting out his nerves as he tried to cling to Zoa. She tried to scream then, but was too weak, and was dragged under the water immediately.

Simon felt that urge as well, but his last act wasn’t to scream in agony. Instead, for whatever reason, it was to look to the shore, where he saw the Oracle watching them.

It was an accident, really. He hadn’t seen her the day before, but he had little time to think about what that might mean. Even as he saw her, the terrible heat of the sulfurous water cooked his muscles, rendering them useless, and he sank into the depths in seconds, still holding Zoa’s hand.

She knew, he realized as his brain started to boil in his skull. She knew I wouldn’t have time to see because this is how I would end up. Then, he was gone.