Saturn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Saturn, the god of despair, needed one name. He wanted the name of the deity who had sealed his vampire queen in the dark forest. But the gods had not fought him. They had agreed to forget him, and that choice unmade his place in their order. Now no voice living or dead remembered where his queen lay. He walked the hills for days, asking, and the wind gave him nothing. Then he heard the pipes. The sound came from a low stone passage set into a mossy slope. Saturn stooped under its arch. Inside, a red-haired priestess sat with bagpipes across her lap. Small bells hung from her clothes and hair. The pipes were strange: flames licked along their reeds, and golden runes burned on each drone. She did not stop playing when his horns threw a shadow over her. She finished the phrase first. "You're the forgotten one," she said. "I'm Inrietta. I serve Morrua, goddess of the pipes. Her name is fading too." She set the instrument down. "I don't forget gods. Forgetting is how they die." Saturn stared. No one had named him in an age. "You remember me." "I remember all of them," she said. "That's the point of me." "Then you can guide me." He knelt to meet her eyes. "A jealous god sealed my queen in the dark forest. I need the one who did it. I need the place." Inrietta picked up the burning pipes again. "Morrua keeps a record. Names, deeds, old quarrels. I can call it up. But she takes payment. Always." She looked at him without flinching. "The pipes eat memory. To find your answer, I feed them one of mine. I don't get it back." "Then play," Saturn said. "It's my memory I burn. Not yours." She said it plainly, like a weather report. Then she filled the bag and began. The flames on the reeds turned white. The sound bent low and crawled along the stone. Saturn felt the dark around him thin, as if the pipes dragged the forgotten things back into the light. Inrietta's eyes went blank for one breath. Something inside her emptied. When the note broke off, she sagged. "Got it," she whispered. "The one who took her is called Meyo. He sealed her under the oldest tree in the dark forest, behind a door only he can open." She wiped her mouth. "I can take you to the forest's edge. No farther." Saturn rose. For the first time, his path had a name on it and a direction. The obstacle broke: he had an ally who remembered, and a guide. "Meyo," he repeated. "He knows you're looking now," Inrietta said, strapping the pipes to her back. "The pipes are loud. Gods hear them. We should go before he sets a watch on that door."