The unknown turned out to be a tower shaped like a seashell, whose curving contours were vaguely familiar. Iris hadn't even noticed the tower until it was looming up above her- perhaps she had been too distracted by her questions and quandaries about the odd realm she found herself in. If only she knew more about it, even just enough to work out what system of logic and physics it followed, she might have a chance of figuring out her quest. Restore dignity to the throne, Death had decreed-- did that mean there was a ruler, besides Death herself, that needed guidance? Or was dignity the name of a lost sword, or maybe another strange bird, that needed to be returned to the castle? Maybe the throne itself was broken, and pieces of it were scattered across the realm, waiting to be rejoined and made whole.
It was too little to make sense of and too much to worry about. It was much simpler to feign confidence and knock on the seashell tower's alabaster door. After years of collecting alms, Iris was well-versed in the art of contrite intrusion.
What she wasn't prepared for was the rapid-fire foreign tongue she was greeted with, or the stunning beauty of the woman behind the door. After the otherworldly pallor of the Candlekin, and the unearthly artistry of Kismet, the woman's sepia skin and chestnut eyes were so warm and earthy it ached.
The woman stared at Iris for a few seconds before switching languages. "Your skin, your hair- you're from the Land of the Flickering Phantom, right?"
"Erinlin?" Iris asked weakly, still adjusting."I thought it meant flickering flame."
"Oh, it does," the woman said distractedly, her fingers pulling at the silky fabric of her robe, "but lin can mean phantom, flame, or the crest of a gentle wave depending on if you pronounce it lín, lïn, or lîn. Time has lost the original pronunciation and intention of the name- though I tend to believe the Croician visitors meant all three."
"Croician?"
"Erudite migratory tribe of the 770s. Your language actually has a lot of their loan words." The woman blinked blearily, as if waking up, and took a good look at Iris. Then she shook her head and a took another look, apparently dissatisfied with the first. For the first time during the strange encounter, Iris felt like an intruder. But then the woman stepped back from the door.
"Well, come in. You look like you could use a rest. I'd make you tea, but, you know." The woman shrugged, rippling the loose robe that she wore over a soft, many-pocketed dress. "Have a seat, anyway."
"Thank you," Iris managed to say after she crossed the threshold. Something about the air was different here. Perhaps it was the scent of old books, for the whole spire was filled with ancient tomes, scrolls, tablets, and, oddly enough, pieces of knotted and colored string. A narrow staircase spiraled up to the top of the tower, clinging to the cubbies that held all the assorted records with seemingly no rhyme or reason, such that one might hold a rolled up tapestry and a crumbling piece of masonry while its neighbor boasted a jewel-encrusted leather tome and a honeycomb stack of scrolls.
"How did you get here?"
"What? To the alabaster tower? Or this realm?"
"Alabaster tower," the woman said slowly, tasting each syllable, before breaking into a bright smile. "I like the sound of that." Her tone changed. "But both, if you don't mind."
"Well, I didn't really mean to come to either," Iris began, watching as the woman transferred a teetering pile of books and papers from a chair to the floor and gestured for Iris to sit down. "There was a girl drowning in the river, and after I tried to save her I woke up here. Well, not here exactly, but somewhere else in this realm. I've sort of been wandering ever since."
"Huh. So you came through the river? That explains a lot," the woman muttered without elaborating, leaning back against her desk. "Was the girl dark haired? Young?"
"I think so. It all happened rather fast." Iris bit on her lip for a bit. "She had vibrant blue eyes, almost like..." Iris frowned. Almost like Kismet. That would make a painful amount of sense, but Iris didn't want dwell on it quite yet. "After that I was stuck in the Candlewood for, well, I'm not sure how long. Then there was a labyrinth, and a swamp, and now I'm here."
"Quite an itinerary. Though I'm afraid you've come at a bad time for sightseeing. I haven't left the Archive much lately, but from what I can tell, most of the grander gardens are wilting from the chaos."
"Chaos?"
The archivist sighed. "Things have been uneasy here, as of late. I tend not to meddle in current affairs, but every parallel in history suggests things are about to take a turn for the worse."
Unsure how to respond, Iris looked around seashell tower. Though the space had a cluttered cozy feel, it also had a sense of vastness she hadn't expected from its narrow silhouette.
"So this is the Archive?"
The woman perked up. "Yup! All of the world's collected knowledge. Well, that's what we say, but of course we don't have everything. Still, it is the grandest collection in all the realms. Our Fae section is a little weak, but, I mean, they're really quite tight-fisted when it comes to their lore. But we have plans to expand." The archivist smiled and looked around the tower. "People forget, but the Archive remembers."
Iris blinked at the sudden memory of inky rocks on a lonely hill, a shrine to a deity that everyone had forgotten.
"Ooh. Do you have a question? Please ask me a question. With the realm as it is, I haven't had many visitors as of late. Especially someone, well, like you."
"Like me?"
"Yeah, you know." She made vague hand gestures. "Alive."
An incongruent warmth spread through Iris. Though she had tried to keep a level head and a sanguine heart, the purple sky here was perpetually unsettling, the orange moon almost possessive in its gaze, and her quest both overwhelming and unappealing. She felt, acutely, that she did not belong, but at the same time the realm had a dream-like heaviness that made it hard to hold onto her memories of the real world. The only force driving her was her need to return to reality, to the land of the living, yet at the same time as the odd ambience of this realm pervaded her heavy flesh a secret fear grew inside of her like a cruel cold flame: that she was already dead, that she was captive to the thistle sky and laughing moon and condemned to a nonsense quest that would swallow her whole until she was forgotten to the world.
Oblivious to Iris's epiphany, the archivist pressed on. "So what's your question?"
Still in a bit of a relieved stupor, Iris fumbled through her words, asking about Arillen and her shrine and what sort of offering was meet. The archivist answered in a warm and effusive voice, spinning together fables and legends and citing various scrolls as if Iris could keep up with her synthesis, as if her head wasn't spinning with the rush of information.
"Thank you," Iris said at the end of the archivist's answer, feeling heartfelt grateful but also drowsy. Unlike the wary almost-night outside, the light in the tower was honey-gold and beginning to feel just as thick. "It always seemed that, as a Candlemaiden, I should have known how to honor her. I'm glad I now do."
"So you are a Candlemaiden. I was wondering about that. I mean, what else would a girl like you be doing here? But you weren't wearing the robe, so..."
"What robe?"
The woman let out a strangled sigh, half despairing and half disbelieving. "There's a whole book... I mean... Give me a minute." She hurriedly straightened the papers on her desk, capped the ink pot, and excavated a little space of open wood in the mess. She squeezed her eyes shut and clicked her tongue a few times, then whirled up the spiral staircase, her limbs careening until she came to sudden halt that was eerily precise. She carefully plucked a book from the shelf and cradled it gingerly to her chest, before flying down the stairs again. Iris looked on a bit dizzily, secondhand-scared that she might tumble. When the woman reached the floor she laid the book lovingly on the table and then ran a hand over her hair, tucking some of it behind her ear. She grinned a bit sheepishly.
"Sorry. Like I said, it's been a while since I've had visitors. And I haven't had a live Candlemaiden for decades, at least. Maybe more." She gestured at the stack of books she had dislodged from Iris's chair. "I lose track of time so easily, you know."
Decades? Iris blinked. "How old are you?"
The archivist answered with mischievous smile in a foreign tongue. "The lady has no age," she translated. "And besides, are we not all as old as the universe?" She tapped her fingers on her desk and bit her lip. "But if your asking about my current incarnation, I'd say I'm about seven hundred years old? The Archive is much older of course, though I only moved part of it to this tower a few centuries ago. It's rather useful being able to pop into Harkenhilt and have access to the spirits. They carry so much folk wisdom with them that we'd otherwise lose."
"Of course," Iris said, nodding along as if centuries of existence and casual travel between dimensions were normal topics of conversation. But then her mind balked at the charade, and she found herself retreating and asking, "Sorry, Harkenhilt?"
"Oh. My favorite name for this realm. I suppose you call it Death, but doesn't that get confusing when you talk about the Lady? Anyway, it comes from old Oureados. Harkenhilt, meaning literally something like 'land of hearth time,' but really expressing something much deeper than that. Harkhill was the term for a time and mood near the last-light when people gather around the hearth for small crafts and storytelling. Elders would pass on history and heritage as children worked on sewing and fletching and such. The name, at least for me, has always seemed to capture the reflective nature of this place. A land for slowing down after a long day and preparing for what is to come." The archivist sighed. "Or in our case, scrambling to do whatever we must as playing pieces."
Playing pieces. There it was again. Iris frowned."You're the second person, oh, well, maybe the third, to call me that. What does it mean, precisely?"
"Oh, you are new, aren't you? Stare at your wrist for a bit- I need to get another book."
This book was, luckily, on the ground floor, and the woman only needed a few steps and a tiptoe stretch to grab it for her. Iris hastily looked at her wrist as the archivist returned. Though she had thought little truly shocked her now in this realm, she still felt a sharp flicker of surprise as a faint symbol began to glow softly before her eyes. It was a concave sickle moon pierced by a tapering vertical line. About a third of the uneven stick jutted up out of the crescent. It meant nothing to Iris, triggered nothing in her memory, and yet as she looked at it a faded clammy feeling took root in her chest.
"What it is it?" Iris asked in an involuntary whisper.
"The Ladies' Kiss. It marks you as one of theirs, as a part of their game. I'm so sorry. I thought you already knew." She had opened the new book to page with a stylized illustrations of the brand on Iris's wrist. Some depicted the crescent as a blade, others as a smile, a few as the moon. The line was alternatively a shooting star, a snake, and a river.
"The Ladies? Death and Love and Lady Luck?"
"None other."
The archivist raised her bared left wrist. As Iris watched, the same symbol began to glow there in a soft blue light. Then the woman passed her free hand gently over the Kiss, and it began to move, squirming into the shape of a coin. The crescent simply tilted as the line bent to match it, its excess length forming a single mark on the coin's face, such as you might see on a rudimentary piece in a gambling game.
"Lady Luck," the archivist explained. "Figures. It must have been Kismet that brought you here."
Iris nodded. "But what does it mean?"
For the first time, beneath her enthusiasm and easy smile, the archivist looked sad. "It means your life is no longer your own. That you will forever be a part of their game, your life nudged by their inclinations so that they may shape the world to their whims." Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, the archivist sighed. "It's not all bad. My fate led me here, where I can read and write and story-gather for centuries. Death had chosen you, and I don't know what your path will be, but you're a Candlemaiden, so she probably expects great things from you."
"But I don't want this. Not this quest, not this destiny, not any of it."
"We never do. Our lives are never easy, but they tend to be grand." The archivist looked a while into the distance then gestured at the curved walls of the tower. "I don't think the Ladies could bear to see this place destroyed. They were very fond of her, you know."
"Who?"
Dark brown eyes locked onto Iris's. "Acadia. All three of them laid claim to her in their machinations. She was the playing piece on which, for a while, the whole world turned. You've heard of the Acadian Palace, of course. Every culture has lore on it. Well, not isolated tribes like the Psaverians or Otoki, but all those open to world commerce certainly do."
"We had a rhyme used for script practice. Well, the Kaerents did. 'For Little Acadia with her bouncing ball, fountains with bubbles and sunlit halls, stained glass windows and seashell spires, said the Sultan build all my daughter desires.' She was real?"
A smile ghosted onto the archivist's face. "Yes. She very much is. And like her, perhaps, you will live forever or have your name emblazoned in the texts of history."
"That's not what I want," Iris said with certainty. "I don't want fame or unending youth or anything of the sort. I want to live a quiet life helping people, as Candlemaidens are called to do. That is all I desire."
"But not what is desired of you." The archivist shook her head. "I know it's not fair. But you've already been placed on the playing field. The best you can do is follow along." She leaned in close to Iris, reaching behind her for a scroll, and whispered, so soft Iris almost missed it. "Or figure out the rules and wreak havoc."
As Iris's eyes widened, the woman leaned back and untied the blue ribbon around the scroll, continuing to speak as if she had said nothing unusual. "I've a map here of Harkenhilt, though not the sort I figure you can read. I should be able to give you a general direction of where to go, though. I imagine you've been assigned to do something about the empty thrones?"
Iris nodded.
"Then you'll want to head to the center of the realm, inside of the rivers." The woman was silent for a while, unfurling strange bronze instruments and measuring angles and distances on the scroll, and occasionally pushing about small beads on a frame. "Okay. Right. You'll want to take about a hundred paces straight out from the door, at which point you should be able to see a river to your left. Head towards the river at angle, on a diagonal or it will probably flicker out of sight." The woman clamped her mouth shut and sighed out her nose. "I really wish I could have offered you tea. Next time, perhaps."
Iris took that as her cue to leave. There was something suddenly unsettling about the tower, the weight of lonely yet recorded centuries. "You have offered me all that I need. I thank you for your answers and your generosity."
"So proper! You almost remind me of... well, no matter. May our paths meet again."
Iris bowed her head low in respect, then left the thick air of the tower, finding not comfort but something bracing in the almost-coolness of the realm of Harkenhilt with its purple sky and lambent orange moon. Diligently, Iris followed the archivist's directions, having no better idea how to navigate the mad realm she was now trapped within.