Sapphique

Once Incarceron became a dragon, and a Prisoner crawled into his lair. They made a wager. They would ask each other riddles, and the one who could not answer would lose. It it was the man, he would give his life. The Prison offered a secret way of Escape. But even as the man agreed, he felt its hidden laughter. They played for a year and a day. The lights stayed dark. The dead were not removed. Food was not provided. The Prison ignored the cries of its inmates. Sapphique was the man. He had one riddle left. He said, "What is the Key that unlocks the heart?" For a day Incarceron thought. For two days. For three. Then it said, "If I ever knew the answer, I have forgotten it." --Sapphique in the Tunnels of Madness

The Stars. Jared slept beneath them, uneasy in the rustling leaves. From the battlements Finn gazed up at them, seeing the impossible distances between galaxies and nebulae, and thinking they were not as wide as the distances between people. In the study Claudia sensed them, in the sparks and crackles on the screen. In the prison, Attia dreamt of them, She sat curled on the hard chair, Rix repacking his hidden pockets obsessively with coins and glass discs and hidden handkerchiefs. A single spark flickered deep in the coin Keiro spun and caught, spun and caught.

He sang his last song. And the words of that have never been written down. But it was sweet and of great beauty, and those that heard it were changed utterly. Some say it was the song that moves the stars.

He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.

In the Sapient tongue he said softly, ‘Tell me, Master, did you know Incarceron was tiny?’ ‘Is it?’ Sapphique replied in the same language, his green eyes as he looked up lit by deep points of flame. ‘To you, perhaps. Not to its Prisoners. Every prison is a universe for its inmates. And think, Jared Sapiens. Might not the Realm also be tiny, swinging from the watchchain of some being in a world even vaster?

I trust you, Jared," she whispered. "I always did. I love you, Master.

Finn smiled ruefully. "I'm a Prisoner, old man. Just like you.

He worked night and day. He made a coat that would transform him; he would be more than a man; a winged creature, beautiful as light. All the birds brought him feathers. Even the eagle. Even the swan.

The Art Magicke has rules. It means I have to teach you all my tricks. All the substitutions, the replications, the illusions. How to read minds and palms and leaves. How to disappear and reappear. "How to saw people in half?" "That too." "Nice.

All my life I have dreamed of you.

Rix stroked the Glove. "There was a garden and a tree grew there with golden apples and if you ate one of them, you knew everything. And then Sapphique climbed over the fense and killed the many-headed monster and picked the apple, because he wanted to know, you see. He wanted to know how to Escape." "Right." She had wriggled back. She was close to his pocked face. "And a snake came out of the grass and it said, 'Oh go on, eat the apple. I dare you.' And he stopped then with it to his mouth because he knew the snake was Incarceron." Keiro groaned. "Let me..." "Put the Glove away, Rix. Or give it to me." His fingers caressed its dark scales. "And because if he ate it he would know how small he was. How much of a nothing he was. He would see himself as a speck in the vastness of the Prison." "So he didn't eat it, right?

Sapphique strapped the wings to his arms and flew, over oceans and plains, over glass cities and mountains of gold. Animals fled; people pointed up. He flew so far, he saw the sky above him and the sky said, "Turn back, my son, for you have climbed too high." Sapphique laughed, as he rarely did. "Not this time. This time I beat on you until you open." But Incarceron was angered, and struck him down.

None of us know who we are any more.

The dove will rise above destruction with a white rose in her beak. over storm over tempest. over time and the ages. And the petals will fall to the ground like snow.

As the beast I took your finger. As the Dragon I give you my hand. Now you have crawled and clambered into my heart I can't see you anymore. Are you still there?

How could you betray me, Incarceron? How could you let me fall? I thought I was your son. It seems I am your fool. —Songs of Sapphique

You know that the word truth is a crystal, like the Key. It seems transparent, but it has many facets. Different lights, red and gold and blue, flicker in its depths. Yet it unlocks the door.

People will pay to see ugliness. It makes them feel human.

He raised his hands. They saw his coat was feathered like the wings of the swan when it dies, when it sings its secret song. And he opened the door that none of them had seen until now.

We have been most careful in setting the locks of the Prison. No one can break in or out. The Warden will hold the sole Key. Should he die without passing on his knowledge, the Esoterica must be opened. But only by his successor. For these things are forbidden now. —Project report; Martor Sapiens