Page 35 of Awariye

"Sehr gut," I said in encouragement just as the kettle began to whistle.

CHAPTERTWENTY

AWARIYE

Back at the chapel, the pressure of the air had changed. Wren and I checked the windows, flinging them as well as the doors wide open to encourage air flow. I drank the tea and allowed my mind to sharpen despite it being the middle of the night. My eyes trained on the flames in the seven bronze bowls and I realized I was seeing them as larger in my astral vision. In the regular, physical world they were just large candles, but if I blinked several times and expanded my consciousness out to the lengths of my arms, dancing fires filled the bowls and leapt several hand-widths upwards.

"How did it go last time?" I asked.

Wren rubbed his temples, the astral pressure in the room clearly affecting him more than me. Something was building, and it would need an outlet to come down into material form.

"Uli invokes all the different gods of his men, as a show of solidarity. Lastly he invokes the lanterns before they leave their cover and confront the invaders. The moment Uli called on the lantern gods, they...it felt like my head was going to explode. On the border of my sanity, I remembered you singing to me, and that poem from theGolden Book of Viennacame to mind. That was the only thing that seemed to work. Each time I sang the poem the pressure eased, ever so slightly down a bit."

"It came down the planes," I surmised, and he nodded.

What those gods wanted to do in the material world, what they desired, we had no way of knowing. All we could do was ask and remain open to their communication, but if theyneversaw fit to inform us, then we'd indeed never know.

* * *

"They've arrived," Wren said as he sucked down the rest of his cup of tea and set it aside. "Uli is speaking with his men. We need a plan."

Wren paced and tried to focus, his dog following him back and forth, so I set up shop in the empty space behind the table with the lanterns and began to sing the invocation and banishing ritual, including opening a protective circle for further magical work if necessary. Usually I'd play my harp, but with how stressed Wren was getting, I wanted my hands free to grab him in case he fainted.

Taking a calming breath, trusting that I would hear Wren or his dog if they needed me, I turned my mind to the task at hand and felt my spirit rise.

Gazing at the ceiling, I smiled at the shadowy oranges and yellows flickering on the rafters from the candles in the bronze bowls below. Every time I thought of the gods that guided me, the ones the instructors at the monastery had taught me how to find, my heart filled with gratitude. Some gods were not kind to humans, and quite a few others couldn't care either way, but the ones who were willing to work with us if we were willing to grow tended to be kind. As a young man, without meaning to, my heart came to love them before I knew it.

Tonight was for the lantern gods, so as I worked my way around the circle, starting in the east, at each station in the cardinal directions I invoked both the Gaulic god of that gate as well as the lanterns.

Finishing the southern gate of fire, an elemental invocation that felt a bit too strong in a stone chapel with seven flames going, I chanced a look at Wren and found him sitting nearby, eyes closed and hands folded in his lap. He was listening to me sing, a calm set to his features, clearly centering himself and orienting his consciousness toward the divine. I smiled, glad that my singing could do that for him and lift us both out of our worries in order to be strong while our lovers fought off an incursion.

Sensing the need to hurry if I wanted to complete the ceremony before the lantern power ignited and needed siphoning, I worked my way around to the gate of water, then earth, singing their hymns and arriving finally back to the east, wherein I invoked the three forms of spirit: below, above, and within. I twined them together, sent the twin dragons of solar and earth-based currents weaving through my body, then closed with a purifying rotation of a sphere to cleanse the space of any lingering energies.

After closing, I held still for a time, knowing the gods were watching and listening at this moment, since I tended to feel them during the ritual. Being seen, my body tightened when I reflected on what I had been through the last couple of months. I'd survived so much, struggled and suffered so much, but I'd been given a second chance at this life, and I was going to use it. Maybe the whole reason I'd healed was so I could sing for them tonight. I would sing for Ulbrecht and the unknown gods who shined on him; I would sing for this gentle Danubian peace and the natural beauty of this place with what time I had left in this incarnation.

I kissed my right palm, held it out to my gods, and swept it wide to include the lanterns, then sang a little ending I had written myself.

With love this night,

Thank you

For the light that you are

In my life.

I felt the energies dissipate, the soothing yet intelligent calm that greeted me during ritual. In its place, the pressure from the lanterns increased yet again, the flames gurgling in their bowls and popping aggressively, startling us.

Wren whimpered and hunched in on himself, pressing fingertips to his temples. "He's invoking Christ for his men."

I swallowed my nerves. Here we go. "Thousand Ages, and Alpine. The Christ of the Forest."

He nodded, not looking at me, his breathing growing ragged. "To the pagan gods, ancient and new," he said, apparently echoing his lover.

I waited, the tension building further, pressing against my skull. My head throbbed in response, threatening a headache. My heart was torn in two directions at not being able to hear what Wren could, through the little phantasm bird he'd cast to sit on Ulbrecht's shoulder. I didn't want to hear the fighting about to start, but my heart ached, wanting to know that Igor was safe.

Through the popping of the flames I almost didn't hear Wren's whisper: "And to the seven lanterns."

The flames burst asunder and I shrieked in fright. Bello started barking, standing up on his hind legs and putting his paws on Wren's thighs. Wren for his part didn't seem surprised but sweat beaded his brow and his hands shook as he reassured his dog and fed him little tidbits of bread.

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