Eternal Life

In a village halfway up a mountain pass, in early spring when the first larkspurs bloomed, a boy was born to the weaver’s wife. He came into the world feet first, with his eyes open, and did not cry, but stared around suspiciously until the midwife turned him upside down and smacked his feet, bringing forth a hoarse cry that assured everyone his lungs worked. He was named Cedar, for the hardy evergreen trees that grew tall and lived long. 

Cedar grew fast, and began walking and talking early. He ran everywhere, as if he were in a hurry to get through life, and asked questions of everyone. One day when he was about four years old, his mother was preparing dinner. “Don’t put the kettle there”, a small voice suddenly piped up from the corner. “What is it, sweetheart?,” she asked, placing a kettle she had just removed from the fire on a hearth stone. “Don’t put kettle,” he repeated, staring up at her with large worried eyes that looked to be on the brink of tears. “Why don’t you run out and play with your sister?,” she urged him, picking him up and setting him outside the door. 

Cedar circled the house, but couldn’t find his sister, so contented himself with observing an anthill. They carried small, unidentifiable pieces of material almost as big as themselves back to their nest. He followed the trail to its source. Ants were streaming in and out of the empty eye socket of a mouse the cat had killed.

Suddenly, there was a shrill scream, followed by a much louder scream. A loud wailing began, punctuated by more screams. He ran back into the house. His sister was on the floor, her skin red. Steaming water was everywhere, the kettle lay overturned on the floor, and his mother was screaming for help. A sensation of immense helplessness overcame him, and he began crying as well. 

Perhaps he’d done it before, but that was the first time his family noticed he often had a sense of the near future. He also had a gift for finding lost things, and knowing the weather in advance. He’d told Carter not to go to market on the day his cart was struck by lightning. Who could have predicted a thing like that? The townsfolk began to talk about whether the boy had been born with the Gift. If so, the weaver would have to find a master to teach him how to properly use it. The weaver said aye, he would have to find a sorcerer or mage to apprentice him, but put the matter off. He only had one son, and did not want to give him away. 

A year passed, and then another. Whenever traveling sorcerers came to town, the weaver kept Cedar at home. Villagers would go to them for charms and spells, but the weaver’s house stayed locked up tight. “Sorcerers and mages are charlatans, liars, and thieves, and you’re not to go near them.” The boy nodded and obeyed, but did not believe. 

In his sixth year, his mother’s body began changing as she prepared for another child. Cedar was filled with a sense of foreboding. He didn’t want to give words to the thought that haunted him, for fear of making it real, but instead told his mother he didn’t want another sister or brother. She reassured him, but his apprehension cast a shadow over her happiness as well. The day of the birth, Cedar was sent to his neighbor’s house. He sat silent and motionless in the corner, refusing to play or eat. Towards nightfall he was struck by a sudden heavy chill, as if an avalanche had rushed down the mountain and buried him alive. His limbs felt weak and cold. He sat paralyzed as people began rushing in and out of the house, saying things. He’d known she had passed the moment it happened, but had been utterly powerless to prevent it.

After his mother’s death, Cedar no longer spoke to others of the things he knew. That fall, another sorcerer visited. The second night he was in town, Cedar awoke from sleep fully dressed, standing outside of his house. He had risen and dressed without knowing it. He allowed his feet to lead him through the dark and empty streets. As he approached the river he became aware of the flickering of firelight. An old man was sitting by the fire. “Are you ready to leave, Cedar?” the man asked softly as he approached, without turning around.

The only sound in his mind was the whisper of the river. He answered without thinking. “Yes.”

The old man turned and looked at him. His face was lined and weathered. “The life of a sorcerer is filled with hardship. You may never return. Your family will miss you.” 

“I’m ready.” 

“Good. I prepared a place for you in my tent, we can leave in the morning.” 

In the blue light of dawn, they headed up the mountain pass. Cedar wished to say goodbye to his sister, but he knew that if he went back his father would lock him in the house. He sat in the old man’s cart and watched his village disappear in the morning mist. 

They traveled day after day, sometimes stopping in villages and towns, sometimes sleeping in a tent off the road. Cedar thought the old man looked more like a vagrant than a sorcerer, but he seemed to know some spells, and taught Cedar some words to make Finding work better. The old man said they were headed towards a school where everything there was to know about sorcery was taught to students with the Gift who were willing to learn.

Finally they came to a town larger than he had ever seen, surrounded by walls. They entered the town at daybreak and wound through streets filled with people, horses, and shops, stopping at the gate of a castle. The old sorcerer spoke to the guard, and after a while the gate opened. A tall man in a black cloak stood before them. 

“Greetings Maurelius. I’ve brought a new student,” said the old sorcerer. 

The tall man looked Cedar over like he was inspecting a calf at auction. Finally he spoke. “What makes you think you belong here, boy?”

“I know I belong here, because I know you will take me,” said Cedar. The castle felt familiar, and he knew this was his destination. 

The man laughed. “We’ll soon see what you know!”

The school of sorcery was all he had ever dreamed of and more. The boy learned quickly. He was no longer Cedar anymore. The school took away his old name and life, and gave him a new one. He was now the sorcerer Alastor, apprenticed to Damian the Clear-sighted. There were spells for many more things than Finding. He could move objects with his mind, hide in plain sight, conjure fire, expel sickness, and speed the growth of plants. Sometimes he could even change one of the futures whose tug he felt. He was no longer a helpless child, futilely watching the future unfold like an insect trapped in the web of fate. 

Cedar, now Alastor, worked through all the realms of magic, right up to the fuzzy borders at the brink of knowing. Yet there were still things he couldn’t do, and things nobody could do. Spells had no power to bring back a soul from the dead, or sustain even a flower in everlasting life. What set the limits of life and death, and why could the magic he was taught, which could transform so much, not change them? The things that were most worth knowing, he thought, remained out of reach. 

“The world can be shaped, but only within its limits,” said his master Damian, when Alastor went to him with these questions. “Energy is moved from here to there, but nobody can freeze or arrest it. We exercise our power only within our time. Who gives us our time?,” he shrugged. “The weaver of fate. A more powerful sorcerer than we. The gods themselves.” 

While he was not studying, Alastor worked as an assistant in the library. His role gave him access to the dungeons, where old books and crumbling scrolls that had gone many years without seeing the light of day were kept. He mined these texts for buried knowledge. In a cracked, musty grimoire, its leather pages looking suspiciously like they might be made from human skin, he found a spell that made his breath quicken. 

“Eternal life”, said the title written in the old tongue, under a symbol of the snake eating its own tail, interlocked with another snake eating its own tail. He read the words over and over, imprinting them in his memory, but what it called for could not be attempted. An unthinkable sacrifice. Perhaps in ancient times when mage kings ruled, thousands of souls might have been sent to the pyres as living fuel for a spell, but no one attempted such practices today. Yet had it worked? Were there Undying Ones, who had escaped the limits of death, still walking this world? If so, their power must be formidable. They would surely have kept the knowledge secret to prevent others from attempting it. 

In a quiet moment his master found him repeating the words under his breath, and pried the secret from his mind. He was calm, but a fury burned in his eyes. “What is it you seek in this kind of knowledge, my boy?”

“I seek to explore the limits of magic. What good is magic if it cannot overcome death?” 

“Magic is not made for overcoming death. It is for transforming and enhancing life, within the limits of life. The limit of life is death, and the limit of death is life. Each depends on the other. Eternal life, if it were to exist, would be a terrible curse. And none that have attempted those spells have lived. We do not teach them for good reason. You would do well to spend less time browsing accursed old grimoires and more time focusing on your studies.” 

Cedar, now Alastor, nodded and obeyed, but did not believe.

When he earned his mage cloak in his sixteenth year, he was sent into the service of the Lord of Abbernay. This was considered a good appointment. The Lord controlled three provinces and was in dispute over a fourth. 

Alastor performed his duties admirably, but his heart was elsewhere, seeking the limits of knowledge. He became a collector of old, rare texts, and pored over them late into the night, searching for a passage between life and death.

Seasons passed. The dispute over the fourth province turned to war. Thousands of troops marched on Abbernay. War was not just men on fields - it was mages pitting their wits against each other. Alastor’s new duty was terrible but thrilling. War pushed the limits of magic. Some of the texts in his collection contained dangerous and incomplete spells from ancient times that were rarely tried. Yet Alastor’s sense of knowing helped him through the rituals and incantations, ensuring they were performed correctly. His revival of ancient magic helped bring them to victory. Thousands of enemy soldiers were taken captive.

“What do you suggest we do with them?”, the Lord of Abbernay asked him. 

All he had to do, as the Lord’s trusted mage and advisor, was to tip the balance in his favor, and he would be able to try the spell that had lingered for years in the back of his mind.

“My Lord, they should be put to death. But let their deaths not be in vain… There is a spell that I have long been wanting to work, a spell of great power. The result of this spell will make Abbernay the seat of power of all provinces, extending its reign into perpetuity," Alastor said. He paused, and added, "The cost is that the prisoners must be burnt alive in ritual sacrifice.” 

“In perpetuity? What is the risk of this spell?” Lord Abbernay was a wise man, and knew magic had its price.

“No risk at all to you. If I fail, the only consequence will land on me.” 

“The prisoners will be sentenced to death by burning, and you may use them in your ritual. But proceed with caution. You have been of great value to me and I would not like to lose you.” Lord Abbernay grimaced as he gave his assent, and quickly left the room.

I did not lie, Alastor thought to himself. The result of successfully completing the spell of immortality would mean that he would defeat death itself, becoming more powerful than any living mage, making Abbernay the seat of power among all provinces into perpetuity. 

The night of the ritual came. The darkness was pierced by light from thousands of fires, arranged in the shape of interlocking circles like the symbol of snakes that devoured themselves. Screams and the stench of burning flesh filled the air. The mage Alastor stood on an altar facing the circles of fires. Cedar the boy shrank from what he had become, and tried to hide away somewhere in his mind, shutting out the sounds of their cries, but Alastor forced him to the front to bear witness. His whole consciousness needed to be present for the spell to work. This was life. Life fed on death. All life was nourished by it, from the smallest plant feeding on the nutrients from decay, to the cat biting into its prey, to the human eating his daily bread.

As the winds rose and the flames danced high, he chanted the words of the spell, and was consumed by them. He knew it had worked, as he knew every time he approached the completion of a successful spell. The fires faded from his awareness, and were replaced by a dense, shimmering fabric woven from threads of light. Each thread danced and pulsed, interlocking with others at bright joints. One of them began winding around him, and he was as certain as he was of his own name that this was the thread of his life. He followed it through the weave. At the end of it sat a woman at a loom, working a fabric made from the shimmering threads. She appeared simultaneously young, and old. He stopped short. 

“Almost done,” the weaveress said. She raised a pair of scissors, then her eyes met his. “Ah, no cutting for yours.” She reached for the thread that floated around him and pulled it into her hand, stitching and shaping to work it into the pattern. She pulled the finished fabric off the loom. “Here’s yours.” The fabric lay looped across her arm, stitched into a circle from beginning to end. 

He reached out to take it, and managed to speak. “Eternal life?,” he asked. 

“As it ends, so it begins,” she said, and slipped the circle of fabric over him in one quick motion. “May you live forever, and never die.” 

The circle widened as it went around him, turning into a tunnel. He began slipping down it feet first, sliding towards his past. There were his schooldays, there was his childhood, coiling up to meet him — no, no, he wanted to move onward into the future, not to return! He pressed his hands against the walls of the tunnel, trying to halt his motion, but only fell faster. His hands left the sides of the tunnel as his body grew smaller and smaller, falling through time. He could still hear the woman’s voice from far away, grumbling, “Eternal life, they always want it to go on forever in a straight line. There’s not enough thread in the world for that!”

His birth appeared, a bright pinprick of blinding light. Pressure increased around him, he was being forcefully pushed towards it…

Lord Abbernay turned away in disgust from the tower window where he had watched the ritual. The wind and flames were dying down. The figure on the altar had disappeared in a flash of light. “The spell did not work, and I’ve lost my mage. Charlatans, liars, and thieves, all of them!” 

In a village halfway up a mountain pass, in early spring when the first larkspurs bloomed, a boy was born to the weaver’s wife. He came into the world feet first, with his eyes open, and did not cry, but stared around suspiciously until the midwife turned him upside down and smacked his feet, bringing forth a hoarse cry that assured everyone his lungs worked. He was named Cedar, for the hardy evergreen trees that grew tall and lived long...