Into the Nanten: the Record of My Exile

Entry 103 - Day 223

I could not stop thinking of my lost companions today. Working in the silence of Senida as we do, searching house to house and shack to shack while trying to remain as quiet as possible, it leaves too much room for thoughts to wander. There is little but empty space to fill and few distractions to help fill it.

In the echoes of the silence, my mind could not defend itself against the onslaught of my grief.

More than once I wanted to scream. To bang the empty pots we found, break the warped glass in the palace windows, do anything to fill the silence that grew overbearing as we moved through the ghostly hollow that is Senida.

And ghostly it is. The knocking noise of yesterday did not return today. All we have heard beyond the sound of our own footsteps has been the quick breath of the wind as it rushes along the tall buildings in the heart of this city. What a cold heart it is.

Bolton, dead. Kantoo murdered by the chief of the KoraKora. Starlark lost to the Deadwood or worse. And Dionus, taken by the winds before we could even think to say goodbye.

Will either of them return to us? Bolton and Kantoo are certainly gone forever, their fate more grisly than I am willing to recount here, but Starlark and Dionus... hope remains that they are not lost to us yet, though what good such hope can do me I am not certain.

I need them, though. I need Starlark's dogged loyalty. His boyish enthusiasm. His damned foolishness, just to remind me that not all things in the world are as bound to duty as I am. And Dionus – the comfort of his power and the wisdom his combined experience offers. The levity of his wit and the infectiousness of his smile.

So few people in the world know that side of Dionus. To most he is an accomplished killer, cold-hearted and cruel. Yet to be brought into his confidence is to discover a man whose first response to anything is naturally light.

I just want to hear one wry observation, one jab at my pride. Even to hear Starlark and Bolton bicker and hate each other would be a relief from the oppressive silence of Senida.

We have discovered nothing, and we have no ideawhere else to go. Our search for clues to Salisir's whereabouts will continuetomorrow, and I hope that my mind can turn to more something more productivethan grief and self-pity.