When Blossoms Fall Upon a Pond

An ancient proverb speaks of how, if two people meet when blossoms fall upon a pond, their destinies will echo and entwine with each other. 

In the spring, during the height of the Empire of Twelve Kingdoms, a young Druadin visited the Imperial capital for the first time, hoping to find answers that even the all-knowing Druadin Order could not provide, to a tragedy which had occurred the year prior. 

Standing among an excess of bronze and gold, tangled with flowering vines; vibrant mosaics depicting myths of great heroes across the floor and the empty, tall silver throne upon the dais, behind a red-robed advisor with mousy hair, Kithar felt utterly out of place. In the seven years he travelled the Continent with his twin and Sir Doma, they had not once entered the Imperial Capital. 

He wore the uniform of a Druadin knight, dark blue robes, that had turned a combination of grey and black from the week of rainstorms between here and the High Council’s Grove. They’d not even allowed him to take a carriage. No, it was travel by griffon or nothing at all. 

“You want access to the Imperial Library to research doorways between worlds?” The Advisor of the Imperial Court said as Kithar finished explaining his reason for attending court that day.

Kithar gave the advisor one point for not stumbling over what probably sounded like another language and then Kithar took the point away as the advisor continued with an insult. 

“What does a Druadin want with books?” The long-nose advisor said, “books,” the way someone might say “bugs,” and asked all of this while his eyes turned down, skimming the large codex he balanced between both hands, no doubt full of trade documents or something else equally dull.

Kithar drew in a breath, imagining he was as calm as a pond. It would not do to snap at a lowly advisor and shoot his only chance at chasing the lead that had brought him to the Imperial capital. At least, chasing said lead by legal means that wouldn’t get him expelled from the Order for a breach of code. As it was, he stood upon a fine line. 

The Order was already displeased about the actions that Kithar and his twin had gotten up to a year ago which had trapped her somewhere in the space between worlds. He hoped. He could still feel her, an ever-present, and slight tug on the invisible thread which had tied the twins together since their birth. 

“We may not write down our knowledge, Advisor, but that does not mean we will ignore that the rest of the Continent employs such methods, and there are many, more profane uses,” Kithar finally said, channeling the sort of obtuse platitudes he knew a number of the Druadin Masters would use. 

The advisor’s lips twisted in a sneer, but he still did not look up from the codex, “to let an outsider into the Imperial Libraries, it requires the dispensation of our great Empress. You may be of the Druadin, Sir Rath, but you are just as profane as the rest of us in her presence. She would never lower herself to be in your presence. Request denied.” 

“What?! That’s not an argument. There is no sound reasoning behind that. The Empress is a naive, sheltered girl who happened to be born during an eclipse, landing at midnight on the spring solstice.”

“I work with the Voice not that load of mudback. She could be a mad, hunchback who eats children and the Kingdoms would still scrape for her. What ruler doesn’t do any actual work, let alone appear in public? Is she a hunchback?” 

Immediately, the red armoured guards of the Imperial palace were upon Kithar and on reflex he pulled his stormsword. It crackled with silvery lightning.

“Seize this Druadin for treason against her Imperial Majesty!” The advisor shrieked, finally looking up gesturing with the large codex since both his hands were occupied with holding it. 

“Oops,” Kithar said, mostly to himself. He dropped his stormsword. The blade flickered and the lightning dowsed as second later. As the guards surged on him, Kithar let them, feeling as if he could hear various members of the Order laughing somewhere nearby even though they were in the main temple, on the far, western coast of the Continent. 

Now, he was going to have to escape from an Imperial prison cell and enter the library in the very illegal way that had been listed under his Plan Number Fifty-Seven. Everything was laughing at him.

Kithar was roughly shoved into a cell that took his long legs two strides to cross in all directions. There was no window except for the narrow grate in the heavy iron doorway. There was nothing else, which either meant it was a temporary holding cell, or a very cruel one. 

Either way, Kithar had another list of plans quickly forming. Thankfully Druadin were never, if ever, tossed into prison and the Order was tight-lipped about the sort of dampening restraints that could stop a resourceful Druadin from getting out of this precise situation. 

Although Kithar didn’t want to slip out of the palace and the city, he wanted to sneak deeper into the complex, wherever the Imperial Library was located, first.

To start, he needed to observe the guard rotation and see if any passed him. He would handle those guards before he unlocked the door. Unlocking was easy, all it took was manipulating the air and the metals of the locking mechanism.  

Kithar sat in the center of his cell, closed his eyes and sent his mind wandering through the corridor. He observed the guards movement, noting their positions and the changing of positions every hour.

Satisfied he understood the movement enough to get himself to the upper levels, he stood and began examining the door. Then he directed his mind to the lock and the air around it. With a little mental nudge, the lock clicked and he was free. 

Kithar closed and locked the cell door. Then on quick feet, he slipped past other cell blocks, making his way to a staircase that led to servant passages. Once at the staircase, he slowed and let his mind feel out for the signatures of humans in the passages. 

He noted too many servants for him to be able to slip past, or even misdirect a few. He debated the complex subterfuge he’d need to engage in to get through to the central complex of the palace where the library was situated.

He weighed the subterfuge against the easier option of just manipulating the matter of all the walls so that he could walk straight through to the library. Easier, but on the other hand, much messier, showier and against the Druadin Code of not interfering in the flow of the universe unless there were lives at stake. 

“Kithrin’s at stake,” he whispered, “I can’t get into any more trouble, right? The Council will expel me just for chasing this lead.” 

The High Druadin Council had nearly expelled him for the stunt he and Kithrin had pulled. The only thing that had stopped them was the fact Kithar had lost his sister. Apparently having the twins on separate dimensional planes, or wherever Kithrin had ended up, upset the balance enough that the Druadin tasked Kithar with getting her back.

They just didn’t want him doing it in a way that broke any more of the Code. Too bad he was about to break at least six precepts of the Code, and that was just with the physical destruction. 

Kithar sighed, shrugged and thinking of his sister he said, “the things I do for you Kith.” Then he thrust both his hands out toward the wall and it shattered with a crumble of plaster, rock and paint. 

As he moved through the open space, he was breaking the next wall, and the next. Shouts and screams were building behind him and ahead of him, but he kept going, breaking wall after wall, until he reached the central courtyard. 

At the center, beyond the red and gold tiling and vines dripping with flowers over trellises was a tower. The tallest point of the palace, the only part that went up beyond two floors. The sacred center; the library. 

There was a red-robed young man juggling a stack of books, who looked like someone’s assistant. He shrieked, dropped his load and ran as Kithar appeared through the last wall. Kithar shot out a hand, manipulating the air around the falling objects so they did not fall and then he pulled them toward himself.

“That’s not how you treat books!” He shouted after the kid. 

Kithar rolled his eyes, levitated the books closer to himself and strolled up to the archway which marked the entrance into the tower. “I have sacred artefacts, don’t shoot!” He called as he walked into a narrow corridor lit by dim oil lamps.

It opened into a much larger room that made Kithar blink for a moment before he realized he’d walked in on what would have looked and felt like a Druadin temple, bigger on the inside and full of residual manipulations from millennia ago, except for the fact every wall was covered in books. 

“Oh the sacrilege here. I like it,” he said out-loud. His voice echoed into the space that had undoubtedly been a Druadin temple, and was now, not only the sacred center of the Empire of the Twelve Kingdoms, but stuffed full of recorded knowledge, something the Druadin, who hoarded knowledge through oral telling found to be profane. He was the first Druadin to step foot in the building in millenia.

Distantly, Kithar heard shouts and running feet. The Imperial guard would be on him in seconds and he hadn’t figured out if this place even had the information he wanted, let alone where it would be. The library tower was over nine stories high and crammed with ancient scrolls, stone tablets, elaborate codexes and simple folios. 

Kithar closed his eyes and cast his focus into the Voice of energy that ran through all things. He ignored the guards, the librarians, the plants, the stones, the parchment and the thrum of people who had walked through the library long before him. 

He focused on his intention: seeking information on the Between. He felt an energetic pull and opened his eyes, following it up one of the many staircases in the library tower just as he heard someone shout, “there he is!” 

Kithar ran faster, slipping on the smooth tiles as he went, but a subtle manipulation of the air kept him from falling as he tore up three levels and then swung left toward a wall of sheet music. He stumbled as he stopped in front of it, more out of confusion, than how quickly he’d halted.

Confused, he felt the flow around him swirl faster; he was in the right place, despite how unlikely it seemed. He rolled his eyes at nothing in particular and let the flow guide his hand toward whatever was meant to help him here.

“Stop! Thief!” Someone shouted. This was accentuated by the thump of multiple feet. Kithar shoved the sheet music into his belt and ran. He could figure out why the Voice had guided him here later, when he wasn’t running from what might be half the Imperial guard. 

There was an open window up ahead. Kithar made a quick calculation, and twisting his hand he softened the fall with a little air manipulation. He didn’t stop to check his surroundings as he hit ground, continuing to run forward toward neatly trimmed bushes, trees and flowers.

He could get lost in the garden and then make a hole somewhere else to get out of the palace, possibly right out of the city depending on how much damage his flashy escape and theft had actually caused.

He only slowed as he entered a maze made from a tall, prickling bush that he wasn’t familiar with. One hand touched the sheet music, ensuring himself it was still there. He took a breath. 

“That was fun,” he said. A lifetime of always having his twin nearby had not negated his tendency to talk out loud as if she was beside him. Besides, he felt like she was with him more in those moments.

He wandered through the maze for a moment more, before taking a left and finding himself by a pond with a flowering, red tree with branches and roots drooping toward the water.

Behind it was a wall, covered in tiles that depicted various nature scenes and a perfect escape route. He turned in a circle, observing the more open area for the best spot to make a hole and a run for it; when his eye caught on those of a woman, standing on the opposite side of the pond.

She looked like a star. A star pointing toward home. 

****

The Empress was hiding. She reveled in it as she crept around and around the corners of the labyrinthine, puzzle bushes in the eastern corner of the palace gardens. It was not often that she managed to slip her Handmaidens, a personal guard of women who were both highly trained warriors and daughters of nobility. 

She’d lost them for a quarter of the hour so far. Almost beating her record from a month ago. The Empress may be a special, living sacred symbol of the Star Goddess but she had dreams, sometimes, of flying high enough to soar among those stars, of running across the hills and meadows she could only read about, on her own two feet. 

In that quarter of an hour, she had shed her dress, leaving bits in various rooms, and gathered servants’ clothing for every item she’d removed. She attributed this strategy to why she’d not run into one of her five Handmaidens quite yet. 

Feeling bold, as she slipped around the bushes, she let her imagination wander. She let herself be someone else for a moment. As she moved through the terrestrial maze, the Empress imagined she was seeking a hungry isling serpent that had risen from the depths of the giant, snow-capped mountains which bordered the city.

She was a Druadin who sought the serpent, to subdue and save the villages it had been terrorizing. She was a tempest, channeling the Voice of the world! 

She swung out an arm, imagining a stormsword in her grip and took three strides forward, turning left toward the pond. As she broke from the puzzle bushes she caught the eye of a man, dressed in well-worn blue robes, like a Druadin, on the opposite side of the pond. 

She’d not seen him before, but then, she’d not seen most people who lived in the palace. As Empress, she was not supposed to be in the same space as most of them. Yet this man seemed familiar.

As if she knew him, despite never having met him. He seemed just as frozen as she was and not about to move or speak so she hurried over the small bridge which crossed the pond and called out, “wait!” 

“Not going anywhere. Mind telling me what I’m waiting for?” The man said, gesturing outward with both hands. 

The Empress giggled. It was wonderful to be spoken to like everyone else, “who are you?”

“Ah, now that’s a loaded question, dulcinea,” he said, raising an eyebrow as he used an old term of Aragonian endearment often used by bards across the Continent, regardless of their Kingdom of origin. 

After decades of their pillaging, fragments of the Aragonian language had worked their way into Continental life too. The Empress had heard many songs full of the term and found it amusing to hear it from a dirty stranger, who had a piece of sheet music in his belt. 

“Are you a bard?” She asked, although she was certain he wasn’t. He laughed again. 

“No, much too flighty for that. I’m a Druadin if you must know, and now, my dear. I must go. You won’t tell them, will you?” He said and then he turned, thrust out with his hands and a hole collapsed in the inner wall behind him. He winked and then he was gone. 

The Empress didn’t have long to wonder what he meant, as a cacophony of Imperial guards, librarians and her Handmaidens came from behind. She turned to see them all and they halted, as if turned to stone. 

The Captain of her Handmaidens approached her and asked, “your Majesty! You should not be about, are you hurt?” Then, taking note of the Empress’s clothing she frowned and said, “please return with me. Girls, find that man!” She addressed the other Handmaidens and at the command, they and the rest of the people giving chase began to move. 

The Empress turned away from them and began to walk back to her rooms, the Captain followed two steps behind her. For once, the Empress did not mind the distance as she struggled to keep the grin off her face at the antics of the handsome Druadin and her part in his adventure, wherever it was taking him beyond the palace walls.

He looked like a star, and she’d follow to whatever home his light led too.

***

An hour later, Kithar was beyond the Imperial capital and sitting under a tree with a fire dancing merrily in front of him. He didn’t need the fire to cook as he had rations and it was always a danger that he had been tracked, but he’d always loved fires. 

Ever since he’d been little he and Kithrin would challenge each other to find shapes in the flames and tell each other stories about what they saw. As an adult he found fire to be a way for him to sort through thoughts and feelings.   

He did that now. But despite the fact he’d begun the day thinking about finding the best lead he had to getting his twin back, and he’d found it, he wasn’t focusing on figuring out what a piece of sheet music had to do with the space between worlds. He was thinking about the woman by the pond. 

She’d been dressed in a strange combination of clothing that looked like that of a maid, a page and a kitchen girl yet her hands and face were clean. Her eyes had sparkled and she’d laughed at his humour. Few did. 

His fellow Druadin were largely too dour or easily irritated by what he knew was a faulty combination of sarcasm and cockiness, according to Kithrin. But when you have a built in friend in the form of your twin, there was little need to make others feel liked or comfortable. 

He’d wanted to make the woman laugh though and he’d felt attraction to others, but his training and exploring the Continent and everything beyond it, had always come first. He was thrown.

He had thoughts of sneaking back into the palace, just to find the woman. One woman among who knew how many thousands of servants. He sunk deeper into contemplation as the night wore on, until the fire in front of him was reflected in the distance. 

He blinked, reorienting himself back into his body and realized the fire was not a reflection, it was real and coming from the palace. He felt a pull to go back, which was not for the Imperial capital as a whole, but for that one, inexplicable woman. He debated for only a moment. 

Druadin were honour bound to help and protect the people of the Continent. By going back, the Order would be happy, perhaps be lenient on him for his earlier destruction, and he could make sure the woman was safe.  

Kithar kicked out his fire and began to run toward a much larger one. 

****

Back in her rooms, the Empress sat on a recliner out on her balcony where she could watch the stars. The distant balls of light, of energy, of fire that sometimes, if she looked at them hard enough, and forgot where she was sitting, the Empress imagined she could just reach out a hand and touch them.  

She had the Continent’s greatest collection of books at her grasp, and the most intelligent minds working for her, baring the wisdom of the Druadin Order, and yet, to be able to know anything by just asking the right question was not enough. She wanted to explore, she wanted to discover, she wanted to experience her answers for herself. 

She thought of the strange thief who had broken into the palace today, his cocky grin, his dirty robes, and his eyes that had seen many places and many people. The Empress stood and walked to the edge of the balcony, imagining in the dark that she wasn’t looking at the lantern-lit palace and city, but out to wide fields and strong oceans. 

She imagined smelling wildflowers and bonfire smoke. She sniffed the air, realizing the smoke smell was not just in her imagination and she turned around, pinpointing the smell to very close to her rooms. 

As she rushed back inside, a figure wearing black robes and a red mask appeared out of thin air and attacked, lashing out at the Empress with a curved, silver sword. She screamed and stumbled backward, only to trip on a footrest for a couch. 

Standing above her, the assassin brought the sword down in an arc. The Empress watched, frozen; a thread of acceptance, the only thing running through her. If it was the will of the Star Goddess for her to die, then she would.

But before the sword could end her life, there was a blur of dirty blue that resolved into the Druadin from earlier, who now stood between the Empress and the assassin, a lightning sword in his hands, stopping the assassin’s downswing. 

The Empress felt a rush of emotions then; surprise, fear, amazement and hope. 

The Druadin pushed forward upon the assassin who backed away and spun out of the dead-lock both their swords had been in before running toward the balcony and disappearing. 

In the silent aftermath, other sounds of chaos filtered through the walls as the rest of the palace focused on putting out the nearby fire. Then the Empress’s doors slammed open with three of her Handmaidens filling the space with red armoured fury. They moved as one toward the thief, ready to take him down. 

“Wait! He saved me!” the Empress said, pushing herself up from the floor, feeling at last a rush of adrenaline that had failed her until then. “There was another,” she added, stepping on unsteady feet toward the Handmaidens which put her closer to the thief who was looking at her with confusion. 

“I saw you at the pond. You’re the Empress,” he said, his voice sounding strangled. “Alright…I’ll be going. Ladies,” he said nodding to the Handmaidens. 

“You aren’t going anywhere!” The Captain demanded, pointing her sword toward the thief. 

“Sorry, can’t do that. I’ve got places to go and other people to save. 

“Yaso!” He used a popular Aragonian slang term for good-bye and, twisting his sword around him, he ran toward the balcony and disappeared just like the assassin. 

“That was Druadin magic,” The Captain said, her voice filled with awe. “What was a Druadin doing, stealing from the library and saving the Empress?” 

The other two Handmaiden’s shrugged. The Captain turned to the Empress and bowed low. “Are you well your Imperial Majesty?” 

“I am, thank you. I…” the Empress started to ask the Captain if the Handmaiden’s could stay with her. Just to have company, but Handmaiden’s did not exist to be company, they were the Empress’s protection. 

The Empress, as the incarnation of the Star Goddess, was above and beyond such human activities. She was used to the distance, having never known anything else, but in the aftermath of the most adventure she’d ever experienced, she didn’t want to be alone. 

“Your Imperial Majesty?” The Captain asked, giving her a confused look. 

“I am fine. Thank you. Was the fire contained?” the Empress said with a nod and the Handmaiden’s bowed deeply and left, with the assurance that all was well and they would be standing at their positions as always. 

The Empress returned to the balcony, but this time, she did not look up at the stars. She looked out over the palace and the city, wondering who the strange Druadin was. He was like none that she had read about in all the stories. 

***

Three months after saving the girl, who turned out to be the Empress, Kithar was back at the main temple in Castalia. He’d not been expelled, yet, but he was confined to the temple grounds, isolated and his only task was to find his sister.

His prize from the Imperial Library had been confiscated and burned. Nothing could be hidden from a Druadin, let alone a whole Council of the old magician-warriors. 

So far, he was no closer to finding how to reach his sister between the worlds and he spent a lot more time in his room, just sleeping, ignoring the problems and thinking about the Empress. 

Kithar always dreamed but lately he’d been hearing her voice and seeing a shadow of her figure in every corner of his dreams. Sometimes they spoke, voices echoing in the dreamspace, but the dreams never last long. Tonight was no different, but also something entirely new. 

Kithar was standing in a field full of wildflowers that flowed down a hill toward sandy dunes and a sparkling ocean. It looked like something out of an old fish-woman’s tale.  

“Druadin?” The Empress’s voice echoed all around Kithar as he stood in that dream space. 

“Empress,” he said, turning, looking for where her voice was coming from. “You really need a name. I’m calling you, Priss.” 

Kithar grinned as she responded. He could hear the eye-roll. “I am the embodiment of the Star Goddess and you want to give me a nickname?” Priss sighed and the sound swirled around Kithar. A moment later she added, “and I may be sheltered, but I am neither naive or prissy.” 

“Do you want another one? Pick one,” Kithar said, “it’s not right that someone should go without a name, even if they are the living embodiment of a deity.” The way Kithar said “deity,” made it come across as a curse word. 

But Priss did not get angry, as anyone but Druadin would over the besmirching of their precious Empress. She laughed and said, “I like it.” 

“Where are you?” Kithar said, choosing not to rib Priss any further. He enjoyed her company and these dreams were a blessing in the middle of his failing quest to pull his sister out of wherever she’d gotten stuck between the worlds. 

“Here,” she said, her voice echoing, and then she added. “I wanted to say thank you.” This time her voice did not echo, instead it came directly from behind him. 

“For what?” He said as he turned and saw her, not dressed as he’d last seen her, but in the same strange combination of servants clothing he’d seen her wear at the pond.  

“You saved me, you gave me a taste of adventure, you keep giving me the hope that I can really, one day, see the world. There are many things to thank you for.” 

“You’re the figure-head of the Empire. There’s nothing you do not have,” Kithar said, crossing his arms and frowning at her. He found the Empress, the position and the practice of how an Empress was chosen, to be just as antiquated and ridiculous as the Druadin and their disdain for the written word. 

“I have never left the palace, and although I am informed about what is happening in the Twelve Kingdoms, all choices ultimately fall to the Council of Kings. I simply sign off, relay oracles and bless crops and babies.” 

Kithar snorted, “Fair point, that does sound dull. Although, what was that, that night? Do such encounters happen often to the fair Empress of the Twelve Kingdoms?” 

“No. Never,” Priss’s voice was subdued, “my Handmaidens are tracking what they can. There are whispers of a strange group of men in red robes, led by that assassin, visiting villages and gifting people strange mechanics and tinctures.” 

Kithar frowned, filing away the news that had not yet reached Castalia, “well, good thing you have them.” Then after a moment’s silence he returned to their conversation about adventuring.

“After all that I’ve done and all that I’ve seen, I did it with my sister. And we pushed the edge of the maps so far that she’s now trapped somewhere I cannot reach. Adventure is nothing when you don’t have anyone to share it with.” 

“You could share it with me,” Priss said, stepping across the grass between them. She stopped when she was right in front of Kithar and reached out a hand, palm up. “We’re friends, aren’t we?” 

Kithar looked at her outstretched palm and placed his own, palm down, over hers. “We are,” he said. 

“Then, let’s go on an adventure and find your sister together,” Priss said it like a vow. Kithar felt the thrum of energy running from Priss to him as she spoke, tying them together even more than they already were. 

It was similar to the thread which tied him to Kithrin still. The thread that told him, wherever she was, she was still alive. But this thread, between himself and Priss, it felt like he’d caught lightning and it felt right. Like home. 

The Druadin Order may not have the answers, and his reckless decisions had not gone anywhere; but Priss believed in him. Since he’d seen her, three months ago, dressed in mismatched servants clothing she’d stolen, he’d been drawn to her. She was more than just the figure-head of the Empire. 

“Together,” Kithar said and as he spoke, he felt the thread tying them together wind tighter and tighter and words settled in his mind. Words that were his vow to Priss.  “We will walk the world together, across oceans and ponds.” 

Author’s Note: As with When Two Worlds Touch, this story can stand alone, but if you are interested in just where Kithrin Rath ended up, and what could happen if Kithar, the Empress and Kithrin ever meet again, next Sunday’s tale will address that and more.