The Legend of Ia is a fantasy novella from The Tales of Nebritskia, a growing collection.

Prologue

I am alone on the battlefield, on the great plain. The angry sun is setting. At the foothills, my dark-cloaked troops are ranged; they bear me up with their prayers, for they are skilled and know that I am wounded, although I won. I won. I am Ia the Accursed. My father was Zafaran the Blessed. These are the names we have been given: “Ia” by my mother, a Nimbosum woman for whom it meant at-one-with-oneself. (I have never been at one with myself. Cushion me with your prayers, my troops, I do not think I can yet bear this reunion with my desires.) In Keeyan, it means bitterness, anger, vengeance. “Zafaran” was given to my father by the conclave of Mages, on the day of his ascension to the title of Mage. It takes its meaning from Saffron, our yellow spice-tendrils more precious than gold, and yellow is charm, confidence, persuasion. He is the Blessed, I am the Accursed; tomorrow, when the Library begins, these titles may change.

How can I tell my story when all the meanings are constantly changing?

I am in a tent of some sort – or perhaps a room with a fabric-swathed ceiling – I can see heavy brocades above me, in crimson, gold, and silver. Am I hallucinating? Someone is bending over me, wiping my arms and my face with a cool, wet cloth. I think it is my love.

I am ranging through the fabrics, a world of twirling fabrics which cling to me and tangle my way like a cluster of diaphanous vines. The pain is far beyond the point of screaming: I have entered it, a burning world, numbed by my agony. I think the cloths are people, I am passing people I have known, somehow the cloths are people. Great Mother of All, did I cause all this pain? No, I did not, I did not! Father, it was not fair, I had it all, he had none of it, stop shouting at me, STOP! He falls silent. A tall man, looming in his Mage’s cloak, quivering with outrage and shock. I only gave him back his half, Father. I only gave them what was already theirs. “He was vomiting in the sand as if he had eaten broken glass,” says my father, as if this is my fault, as if it should jolt me into penance. Why blame me? That was his pain, not mine.
“I came with my cruel scales to repair the balance,” I say, “but I could not take the scales from their eyes.”

Someone wipes me again, murmuring. I can hear a flute playing softly. If they are trying to soothe my spirit, that flute will never do. “Stop, stop,” I mumble through heavy lips, but perhaps I only dream I say it and no words come out.

My eyes open. The world reasserts itself, all at once, as if it has sprung forth complete out of the void. The void is the pleroma, a voice tells me – I know that voice, it has pale skin and hair the colour of sand, the eyes are not like Keeyan eyes, which are dark masks. He says my eyes are hard and therefore my soul is hard. In his country, the eyes equate with the soul. I am not hard, I am inscrutable, I tell him. He is on his knees. My hand stings from slapping him. When he’s gone, I cry. He’s standing on the other side, dressed in the strange breeches of his custom, he’s asking impossible desirable things, asking me to put down the fight and be loved. There is a grey-green mist between us. I turn to run, I try to shout over my shoulder, to let him understand, “It is in me, it is a part of me!”
My scream reawakens me; my body convulses. A woman, cloaked in black, runs to my side. She bends her forehead to mine.
“Stay,” she whispers, curving all the power of her fragrant mind into my torturous dreams. “Stay, don’t go back to the void.”
The void is the pleroma, he says, but he’s dwindling, a tiny doll-like figure.
“Stay,” she says again. I stay.

For three days, I have been conscious. Zeta tells me I rambled in my fever; a scribe stood vigil by the nurses all that time. When I am stronger, they will let me read what I said, but first, I must put a little distance between my conscious self and that void. Work has begun on the Library, already. I had hoped to oversee it, but I am glad; the foundations have been dug out of the innumerable grains of red sand, the heavy blocks of stone are being lowered. The Dark Priestesses are going from home to home with a different purpose now: collecting the manuscripts of the mages. All will be held in the Library, and all may be read. A few of the remaining mages, angry, have tried to attack the Priestesses and hide their books, but the others have simply dumped the manuscripts outside, to be withered by the sun and scratched by the desert wind. Their forces have failed them; what use are the books? We rescue every page.

The King is angry.

The Priestesses want me to add to the collection: not spells, nor a treatise, but the legend of my life. My life has become a legend. Until I am stronger, a scribe will be my right hand. I should begin, now, but instead I fill her pages with my incoherent thoughts. I am trying to piece the reality of now, together; without a clarity of now, I cannot tell my past. And I do not know how much I am able to tell. Certain items must remain forever secret; people will understand the story better with a few omissions, they would be distracted from the truth by the full catalogue of facts.

I begin with the gods. The story begins in their sphere, and it is right that these things should be known in Keeya.

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