The Balance of the Citadel
This One Shot was inspired by the above prompt from IronAge Media titled ‘The Vista’.
Aranea woke to the same view she had always awoken too. The sun rose through the clouds and rippled across the unnamed lake, glinting over the slates of a castle that rose from the verdant hillside. A waterfall flowed underneath the castle, all spires and towers, and a fine mist rose from the lake below. Aranea smiled having dreamt of the warmth of the sun and the scent of the spring grass, but that never happened for the vista was behind impenetrable glass like all the vistas of the Citadel. Elsewhere in the mammoth fort that she and thousands of others called home were vistas of tundras, of distant seas, of snow peaked mountains, and rolling moors. The sun would be rising over all of them as she crawled from her bed, bleary eyed and yawning.
Her mother had left her clothes, freshly pressed, over the armchair beside a roaring fire. Dressed she left her room, with its vista, and joined her father, grandmother, and mother for breakfast beneath a different visage. One of craggy mountains curtained with mist and goats clinging to the crags to steal a tuft of heather. Today it rained out on the mountains, the sun a dim ring behind the clouds. Aranea wished to hear the rain but she couldn't and her oma had forgotten the sound, if she even ever knew herself.
'We have a large order to mix up today and another to prepare for a few weeks from now,' her father, Reginald, spread butter in thick lumps upon hard rye bread.
'Who is doing what?' Aranea prised two rashers of bacon from the pan and helped herself to a large serving of scrambled eggs.
'You'll be on prep. I'll be brewing and your mother will be weighing and decanting.'
Aranea smiled. A day picking lavender and grating ginger roots, or whatever it was, made for a fine day in the Citadel. Better than those who worked the sewers or swept the chimneys and certainly more enjoyable than the Law Keepers who had the dullest job of all for no-one broke the law, well almost no-one.
'Nothing for me?' Aranea's oma sat hunched over her knitting with a half-eaten plate of toast and eggs beside her.
Reginald sat silent for a moment staring up at the ceiling, 'You can help Aranea. There's a lot to cut, ground, and pick.'
Her oma smiled and balled up her wool along with the beginnings of a scarf, or a jumper, or a blanket and returned to her breakfast, 'Good. I may be old, Reginald, but I've been an apothecary my entire life.'
'Mother, Reginald didn't mean anything by it,' Mariana said softly.
'I know but I don't want to be lumped in the corner with the fire wood.'
Aranea lugged the wicker basket of calendula flowers to the fire and began laying them out on a slatted tray hanging from the ceiling.
'That's too close, they'll burn,' her oma said. She shuffled over and guided the tray a little more into the centre of the room, the ropes and pulleys whining with every inch. 'There we are,' she smiled, her cheeks bunching with creases.
'Thanks oma,' Aranea said, though in truth the flowers needed to dry quicker than usual and those few inches would cost her hours.
Hildegard dropped into a chair padded with wool blankets and stiff cushions at Aranea's worktop underneath the vista of the castle and waterfall. Her room would smell sweet from the calendula for days afterward, adding to the warm hug of the vista. The sun was a third of the way up the sky and had scattered the clouds to reveal a clear blue sky. 'Come help me with the lavender, my old hands are slow for such work,' her gnarled fingers pinched a lavender head and with a firm twist it came free from the stalk.
Aranea sat opposite and untied a bunch of lavender sprigs. With a practised ease she twisted the heads free and crushed them before adding them to a clouded glass jar in the centre of the table. 'Oma, why can we not leave the Citadel?' The scent of lavender mingled with the calendula.
Hildegard grimaced, 'You've asked that question since you could talk. The answer remains the same, it's not safe.'
'But, it looks safe,' Aranea pointed to the vista.
'Looks can be deceiving.'
'Have you been outside?' she'd asked before but never believed the answer.
'No, I was born here and I will die here, like my mother and her mother before that,' oma gave the same sickly smile and squint of the eyes that told Aranea she was hiding something.
'I thought your generation built the Citadel?'
Hildegard laughed, 'Oh no dear our home is as old as the world, or may as well be. My father worked on a cellar beneath the greenhouses but as you know that's in the centre of the Citadel.'
'He never went outside? Not even for the stone or the mortar?'
'No. Everything was gathered from inside, as it always has been,' she twisted and pinched a head of lavender, savoured the fresh floral scent, and dropped it into the brown glass jar. 'Why are you asking all this?'
Aranea shrugged, 'I just don't understand why we can't go outside when it looks like that. I never see anyone or anything wicked out there.'
'As I said, looks can be deceiving,' she sighed and set her work down. 'If you want to know more about the world, Caspar, the librarian may be able to help you. He may even know how these vistas work.'
'The man who taught us our letters?'
'The same.'
Aranea remembered a stooped and shy man who liked to scribble notes on dried leaves and loose parchments, or his tunic, whatever was to hand really. He didn't strike her as the knowledgeable thought, but then again, as oma said 'looks can be deceiving.'
The morning had soon passed and Aranea found herself wandering the corridors of the Citadel. The sloping archways and tapestried walls making her feel at home. Chandeliers burned bright and the ceiling were thick with charcoal markings. Outside of the living apartments there were no vistas, only endless corridors of tapestries, pottery, and odd mechanical creations that came from the engineering hive, one of which was said to mimic the movement of the sun so that wherever someone was they could know the time of day. The only problem was its size, taller and far heavier than anyone she knew.
Aranea walked and walked until she found herself at the library. The three oak doors, one for entry, one for exit, and the central one, twice her height, closed at all times beckoned to her. Aranea ducked through the entrance door, hurried down the stepped passage, and emerged into the library tower. Thousands of candle flames flickered down the middle of the tower illuminating all of the thirty-five balconies housing the innumerable books, codices, scrolls, and pamphlets. Typically she found herself in the botany or apothecary sections on the seventh and eighth level but instead she climbed up to the thirtieth to find history, nestled beneath myth. Ancient bookcases, dark and cracked with their years, towered above squat desks. Chains hung from each shelf, looping through faded book spines and between handles on glass panelled doors secreting scrolls older than her oma's oma. Aranea ran a hand along the fraying leather spines and squinted at once gold text but each was an enigma. Aisle after aisle she searched for a book that she could read but most were in forgotten languages, locked behind bars or glass, or simply not relevant.
'Can I help you?' a croaking voice said.
Aranea yelped, her heart fluttering. She stroked her skirt and sucked down a musty breath, 'Caspar?'
'It is I.'
'I'm wanting to know why we can't leave the Citadel.'
The man stroked the few white wisps of hair on his head and tugged at his ears, oversized with age. 'Well, it isn't safe. The world beyond our walls is desolate and threats to life are constant. Many details have been lost to these books, I'm afraid. Dead languages and such. Though I have a few translators working on Erebond's History of Histories that might reveal something you find useful.'
'Can I see it?' Aranea said, elated.
'Oh no. It won't be complete for years, decades. I'll be dead most likely,' Caspar pinched his hairless chin. 'Translation is hard work, especially when no one alive knows the source language. Pity really, how we thought writing it down would save knowledge but all it did was make it more obscure over time. I can't help think you should know why we don't leave, we hear the dangers every evening at creed and sing of the heaven-sent Citadel.'
'Yes, I know but why is every view of the outside so joyous, peaceful, and pleasant. Does seeing the green hills and shining sun not make you want to leave?'
'Sometimes but then I remember the dangers, why we exile our criminals, few that they are,' he frowned. 'Why not ask the Law Keepers?'
Aranea had thought of that but knew she'd receive nothing but cloaked platitudes. Secrets within secrets, much like Caspar's foreign knowledge. What little of the law was known widely was that which needed to be known, the rest was reserved for the Keepers and dealt with obscurities an apothecary would never need to bother with.
Caspar had wandered off, mumbling to himself, leaving Aranea with her thoughts. She leaned against the shallow desk and wondered if the Law Keepers were worth talking to. The journey would take her far from home, far from work, but...
'Here you are!' Caspar croaked.
Aranea shivered and wondered how he snuck up on her, 'What?'
He held a codex titled Myths. There was no author. 'It's not a veritable source but it's in our tongue and may answer your questions. I think it was written inside the Citadel because it makes reference, exclusively, to other books here, most of which we can no longer read. The author also says he in the Citadel at times but says he's in the world at others. Anyhow, for your purposes, let it set your mind to rest,' Caspar's eyes were dewy. He shuffled off and seemed to evaporate into the dust of the library tower.
Aranea thanked the librarian and sat with the massive tome. The pages were yellow and stiff, the bindings creaked, and the thread was fraying at every point. Yet whoever had written it had been careful with their script and used an indomitable ink, the words unbesmirched by time. The corners had been nibbled by moths or rats, probably both, and there was a strip of silk ribbon saving a page. Aranea turned to the purple bookmark three-thirds in and began to read.
The Citadel existed long before the world was reduced to ash. Long before the sun ceased to shine upon our shores. Long before the moon vanished. Once a mere watch tower on a hilly island somewhere in the northern hemisphere. It is said that over many, many years people gathered and built more towers, connected them via passageways and bridges, tunnels and viaducts, until it became the mammoth home we know today.
Aranea wondered when 'today' was and why she'd never heard any of this at evening creed or bedtime stories as a child. She continued reading.
When the world ceased being green many fled to the Citadel, and other structures like it all across the world, but most were turned away for the Citadel is a careful balance of life and too many, or too few, would cause it to topple. The Law Keepers know this and maintain the balance for us.
The text meandered on to lament the hidden library of the Law Keepers and how the author had been refused access more than fifteen times. Aranea sighed and closed the codex. A thought struck her and she turned to the first few pages hoping to find an index or guide, much like her family's recipe books had, but there wasn't anything of the sort. Instead she found numerous short passages under the same heading 'The Beginning of Our World.' Some began with light, some with dark, others with an egg, and a few with infinite seas spewing molten rock. She flicked back to the bookmarked section and went back a page.
The world was once a bustling place. Roads and waterways criss-crossed the entire earth allowing for people, animals, and trade goods to flow as easy as the rivers. At times the travel ceased and reversed or was prevented by war or famine. Yet peace always returned, eventually, but only for a time. This was the ebb and flow of the world before the end. Little is known of the end itself, only that it happened some generations before the Citadel barred its doors forever. No one remains from that time and no manuscripts have survived, though I suspect if they did the Law Keepers would be hiding them.
The author ranted for the rest of the page on the Keepers preventing his investigations into history. For shared history joined people together and kept them hopeful. Yet the Keepers response was always the same, the Citadel has a shared history and it is communed every evening.
But that history is false!
Aranea closed the book. She had not been the first to hunt down the truth of the vistas and why they could not leave the Citadel. If the truth did not lie in books then it lay with the Law Keepers.
Aranea exited the library to crowds jostling through the corridors of the Citadel. It was the end of the work day and evening creed was about to start. There was no central temple or altar within the Citadel, instead there were many small cloisters dotted all around. Though many families lived nowhere near to the cloisters they communed at and so after work, at the same time everyday, the Citadel became clogged as it did an hour later when creed finished. She allowed herself to be swept along by the flow of people heading to lower floors feeling a twang of guilt for leaving her oma to do the afternoon's work. She hoped her family would understand.
Aranea lost herself in the conversations of those around her. The kitchens had run out of onions, while the seamstresses had managed to finish early for a change, and the new students seemed to be learning their letters faster than the years before. These were the gears of the Citadel oiling themselves.
A gardener passed her going in the opposite way, 'Aranea?' he waved his dirt caked hands over the heads of a dozen people flowing to and fro. 'Tell your father to inform the Apothecary Guild the ginseng root is ready and that the next crop of calendula needs picking tomorrow,' his voice faded in the distance.
Aranea clung to the message like it was a raft wondering why the gardener, whose name escaped her, hadn't sent a runner earlier in the day. She wormed to the edge of the river of people and popped out in an alcove wreathed in holly branches. Between her and a passage that led to the Chamber of Order was a rapid river flowing both ways but it was unlikely to end soon. If she stayed someone would recognise her and wonder why she wasn't at her regular cloister so Aranea took a deep breath and burst out across the swarm of people. 'Excuse me.' 'Sorry.' 'Let me just...' 'Excuse me.' she repeated over and over until she burst into the seldom used corridor. Of all the hallways to the Law Keeper's den she picked the most narrow and sparsely lit. Her shoes clicked against the bare stone, the sound enveloping her and carrying her down in a bubble. She emerged into an empty corridor with only two weakly burning braziers.
The Chamber of Order was closed. The great stone doors between the two braziers were impossible to move and there was no one around to help her. She should have waited until after creed but it was too important. Aranea marched down the corridor, into the shadow and then out into the faint light of a candelabra ahead. There she found a man dressed in the red and black robes of a Law Keeper. He stood stiff as a doorpost with his hood pulled over his eyes.
'Excuse me,' Aranea cleared her throat. 'My name is Aranea and I was wondering if I could ask a question.'
The Law Keeper remained unmoving.
Aranea hadn't come all this way, missing the afternoon work and creed to be refused, 'Why are the vistas so pleasant if we can't leave the Citadel?'
The Law Keeper cocked his head a touch revealing one arched eyebrow, 'I beg your pardon?'
'I asked-'
'I know what you asked I'm espousing my shock at the question. The vistas are there for you to see how the world should be, to provide comfort and calm to us all. Do you not listen during creed, which you should be at,' he leaned over her.
'So should you,' Aranea said. 'Besides, I've never heard that before. What's your name?'
'Johan. Perhaps you should attend the cloister down here for the Law Keepers. You might learn a thing or two.'
'Is that allowed?'
Johan thought for a moment, 'No, but perhaps the rule should change.'
'What is the world like then?'
His jaw fell slack, 'I don't know, I don't know if anybody knows any more.' Johan puffed his chest out with a sigh, 'I shouldn't be talking with you. If you have questions then ask someone who isn't simply on duty.'
'How do I know who that would be?'
'You haven't been down here much have you?'
'Only twice.'
'Gold emblem on their breast and a gold trim on their hoods, usually as wrinkled as a dried prune.'
Aranea had sat on the floor outside the stone doors of the Chamber of Order for what felt like a day. She yawned and was unsure how many times she'd dosed off. Johan had left and another was in his place having been loudly warned not to talk to Aranea. Practically alone, she waited but no gold trimmed Keeper had came by and when Johan's replacement was replaced she knew it had been the whole night. A new day arose, not that she could tell as there were no vistas nearby, and the doors remained closed.
'There has to be another way in,' she stood and swiped the dust from her skirt. Marching down the corridor she ignored the Johan's replacement's replacement and hurried down a side corridor. For a moment she was certain the Keeper would stop her but he remained a statue. There, at the end of the corridor was a pale wood door with a round handle of brass. The handle turned, the lock clicked open, and Aranea stepped inside. Bare stone entombed her. Tiered seating surrounded the room and coded corridors led off at measured points from the centre, each with a coloured tile path. From the blue path came voices. From the red hammering. From the yellow, nothing. For a moment she felt she had broken some rule, some obscure law, but if that were true surely Johan's replacement's replacement would have stopped her. She followed the blue path.
The blue tiles terminated at another entrance to the Chamber of Order, and from her position underneath the voices she could see the stone doors. Above her was a large bench but she couldn't see who muttered words she didn't understand from behind it. Aranea stepped out into the chamber to peek her head out and raised her hand. 'Excuse me, my name's Aranea and I have a question.'
A old woman, her hood trimmed in gold, grasped the edge of the table and leaned over, her knuckles white and crooked. 'How did you get in here, Aranea?'
'The pale door was open.'
'Open?' an elderly man sputtered.
Aranea nodded suddenly aware she wasn't supposed to be there. She didn't recognise any of them, all were older than she thought possible and she doubted any of them had ever left their chairs.
'And you thought you'd come inside?' the woman said.
'Well I waited all night outside those doors,' she pointed to the stone entrance. 'Only they never opened and the Keeper refused to talk to me.'
'Rightly so,' another woman with a hooked nose spat.
'We don't take questions,' the sputterer said.
The first woman smiled, her cheeks bunching like Aranea's oma's, and said, 'Just this once. What is your question?'
'Why can't we leave the Citadel? The vistas are all so beautiful and inviting, nothing bad ever happens, so why can't we leave?'
'That's at least four questions,' the woman with the hooked nose said.
The first woman clasped her hands and tapped her fore fingers together. 'Aranea, you spent a great deal of time in the hallways without vistas. All night you said. How did that make you feel?'
Aranea pondered her shoes, 'Sad and trapped.'
'Precisely. We need those landscapes not only to maintain the rhythm of our days but also to bolster our moods. Those lucky enough to live on the outer edge of the Citadel have the real thing to admire but those in the bulk of the Citadel don't have that luxury and so our forebears created the vistas.'
'I understand that but if the outside, the real outside, is that beautiful why can't we leave?'
'Life inside the Citadel has a rhythm and if too many were to leave, or join, that rhythm would be lost. The farmers might be unable to feed us all or the healers be unable to give the care necessary to their patients, or on the other side of the balance problem we may not have enough engineers or gardeners. Balance is required.'
'Okay, so who was the last to leave the Citadel?'
The woman gawped and glanced to her fellow gold-trim Keepers. None had an answer. A thud shook the Keeper's bench and at the end of the crescent the oldest amongst them craned his neck over a tome larger than Aranea. His twig like finger traced its way down the pages for what felt like an hour until he tapped twice. 'Here,' more dust than voice wheezed from him. 'One hundred and twenty seven years ago a man named Matlock was exiled for theft, trespassing, and threatening the balance of the Citadel.'
'Exiled?'
'Forced out the Sealed Passage and forbidden to return. Young lady, I recommend you go home. Attend creed down here with us for the next week as it seems you have a certain acuity. Johan, see her out,' the smiling Keeper said.
Johan appeared from the passage beneath the bench and gestured for Aranea to follow him. 'Thank you, Keepers,' she followed Johan down the passage. Though her question remained unanswered and a new one sparked within, what happened to Matlock? She soon found herself on the other side of the pale door again. As it clicked closed she heard Johan march off without locking the door. Aranea saw there was no keyhole and wondered if she could sneak back in to find the library the anonymous author of Myths had written of. Immediately she found that ridiculous, she could ask her questions at creed. Yet the idea remained and deep down she knew the answers she desired would not be found at creed, especially when the last person to see beyond the Citadel was one hundred and twenty seven years ago.
Aranea gripped the brass knob and stalked back into the Chamber of Order only this time she followed the yellow path. Her heels clicked against the stone and she followed the winding passage until it emerged in a small dusty room with a domed ceiling. Bookcases were arranged sticking out from the centre like a ten pointed star with a circular reading table in the centre beneath an illuminated dome. There were no candles or open flames and Aranea wondered how it made light. She entered the secret library and began to peruse the codices and scrolls. Each was labelled clearly and all were written in the language of the Citadel. She searched four bookcases but all she found were legal texts and commentaries on obscure rulings. Nowhere was a secret history of the world, no where was a diary of a man who had ventured beyond the Citadel. Her heart fluttered and for a moment she wished she'd gone back home.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway and in a panic Aranea scurried to hide but there was no corner, no shadow to disappear in. Johan appeared in the doorway, 'Aranea, you're wanted.'
She gulped and shrank against the musty books.
'I know you're there. Come out.'
Aranea shuffled out, head hung in shame, and followed Johan back to the Chamber of Order.
'Trespassing. That is all that can be said of this,' the hooked nose woman said.
'Trespassing with intent to disrupt the balance of the Citadel,' the sputtering man crowed from beneath his gilded hood.
'I didn't mean...'
'Quiet. Your actions speak for you and your questions from before are your reasons. That much is plain. Though, I do have a question, what did you expect to find?'
Aranea clenched her fists, 'I expected to find some truth about the outside world, the vistas, why we cannot leave, and what awaits us out there. That you were hiding some knowledge from the rest of us.'
'Oh sweet child, there is no hidden knowledge. What we know we tell you as it was passed down from our forebears.'
'But how do you know if you never look? If you never see beyond these walls how do you know we cannot leave?'
'When we commune for the creed we learn why. The world beyond the Citadel is no more, the vistas are all that remain.'
'What about the people who live on the outer walls? Don't they see the real landscape?'
'They see the original vistas, not beyond the walls.'
Aranea didn't believe them but she didn't know anyone who lived on the outer walls either and it wasn't as if she could barge into a stranger's home.
'It is clear you have more questions than we can answer and it is clear you are not a stable sort. You will query and question all the while dragging others down into your confusion and misery. This cannot be fixed and the trespassing must be punished,' the Keeper glanced to the others on the crescent bench and they all nodded. 'Aranea I sentence you to exile. To be banished from the Citadel never to return.'
'No! No!' Aranea screamed as Johan and another spry Keeper dragged her from the Chamber of Order. She was going outside, the real outside, but now all she wanted to do was cry and go home to hug her mother and pick lavender heads with her oma while her father heated the salves and ointments. 'I'll stop. I believe you. There's nothing out there. Fine, we don't know and can't know. Don't send me away!'
Her words went unheard.
The two Law Keepers dragged her down the red tiled passage. It winded and sloped down and down sprouting dozens of hallways to other sections of the Citadel until they arrived at a rough-hewn stone door. The other Keeper stood watch as Johan pressed his hand to the stone and murmured strange words. The stone rumbled. Dust and pebbles fell from the door as it slid open. Beyond was an arched passageway, the mortar was crumbling, and water dripped from the ceiling. 'At the end you will find a gate, it will be unlocked. This door will seal behind you and cannot be opened from the other side. Now go.'
'But my mother, my father, oma...'
'They will be informed,' Johan stood impassive and staring over Aranea's head.
She trudged out into the crumbling passage like Matlock must have done before her. She wondered if his family still remained in the Citadel. Had he been forgotten? Would she be forgotten too? The stone ground closed behind her and the only sound she was left with was the drip, drip, drip of water. Aranea turned and punched the stone door and screamed wordlessly.
There was no response.
Carefully at first then all in a hurry she approached the iron gate at the end of the Sealed Passage. There was no light save for a glare that came from between the tight knit bars of the gate. A glint of pale white caught her eye from the corner and she tripped over something brittle and hollow and caught herself on something round. She opened her eyes and screamed. In her hand was a skull, it shattered against the damp stone and Aranea fled through the iron gate.
She stumbled and fell, the wind buffeting her cheeks and the brilliant sun blinding her. Her hands sank into the ground, dry and gritty. She slowly opened her eyes. All was ash. The wind howled and carried with it great clouds of grey dust forming hills that lived for mere moments. The sun shone high above, not gold or orange, but white with a rim of pale blue. The sky was pale too, concealed by permanent cloud. On the horizon where ruins of what Aranea presumed to have been another Citadel. The iron gate screeched, taunting her to return home but there was nothing there for her now. The skeleton was Matlock for all she knew and if he was the only exile before her what hope did she have.
Aranea searched the horizon for something, anything, that had featured in her vista, any vista, but there was nothing. The whole world was a waste of ash and ruins. No green. No blue. Nothing living save her. Aranea had found the truth and it stung so she did what she had to and set out across the ashen wasteland towards the distant ruin protruding from the horizon. Perhaps there she would find something, or someone, that could help her survive.
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That was an interesting story. Well done.