(Photo by Moli Maeder)

Life inside the archives improved rapidly for Nis. The instant the archivists saw the ink stained journal and heard Nis’ excuse that she was too cramped inside that little room, a larger room was found and made ready for her. This one had been used in the past to hold meetings, usually during times of war or other troubles that required several people to be actively researching together. One wall was nothing but bookshelves. They stood empty, except for Nis’ journals that barely filled one shelf.

A good sized desk was set up for her in one corner of the room and her bed was situated behind some curtains in the opposite corner. The middle of the room held the large table that was original to the room and on it Nis had placed her food stuffs.

A week had passed since her life in the archives began and had started to find a measure of acceptance to her fate. Each morning she would sit down at her desk and record her dreams, much like she had always done, but once that was finished she was pretty much free to do whatever she liked. She could eat when she wanted, she could request records and study them at her leisure in her room. The archivists behaved much the same towards her as they had always done, asking about her dreams with interest but not prying. If something was of particular interest they would ask to see her journal but they would only read the section that had interested them. Overall, Nis was incredibly relieved. The feelings of being trapped, her fears of her knowledge being used in ways she disagreed with, were all fading away and being gradually replaced with boredom.

As another lazy afternoon crawled by, Nis sat at the large table in her room, poking absentmindedly at a cheese rind. She knew that she ought to go out and find something to study, maybe go over the maps again and see if she could find out if there were indeed other places Mel had kept secret that were still undiscovered. When coming to the archives had required effort on her part, Nis had found her time there thrilling. Now that she had such easy and immediate access to it all, she sometimes struggled to make good use of her time. It was just so hard to build up the motivation when she literally had her entire life to spend in this place, decades to peruse the collected knowledge here, and so the sense of urgency she once had was gone.

Not for the first time that day, Nis felt her eyelids growing heavy and her head began to sag a little lower. She really had no excuse to be feeling so tired. She hadn’t done anything all day except eat and write in her journal. Just as her head was about to droop all the way down to the table, a knock on her door jolted Nis back awake with a start.

“Yes,” she said automatically, “I’m awake.”

Kyneh poked his head into the room.

“I was wondering,” he said, “if you had a moment?”

Nis blinked the sleep from her eyes and waved for Kyneh to come in while she yawned.

“I’m not waking you am I?” He asked, suddenly concerned. “Did I interrupt a dream?”

“No, no I just…um…just a little bored.”

“Hmm, I can understand,” Kyneh nodded as he led a pair of apprentices into the room. “Perhaps we could find something for you to do so you aren’t just wasting your time.”

Nis shrugged. She wouldn’t mind being an archivist, but had no desire to be an apprentice. She’d basically done an apprenticeship over the past few years and didn’t need the additional time going back over those things she’d already mastered. Either way, she didn’t have the motivation to push for any sort of job at the moment. If the archivists wanted to find her something to do, then she would discuss it with them at that time.

“I was looking over some of the old lineages,” Kyneh said, clearing a space on the table for the apprentices who then began to lay out a long sheet of parchment. “I know you’ve dreamed about some of these individuals and would like to hear what you remember of them.”

Nis moved over to the parchment and began looking over the family lines recorded there. Memories from her past lives were always freshest following a morning that she’d dreamed of them but they were never all that far from her. As she read the names and dates she began to get hints of memories: a smell, a face, sometimes the sound of a voice. Only one name, Quinn, was a past life of hers, but there were several other names that she felt she knew, possibly as family members, friends or acquaintances to another past life.

“Is there someone in particular you’re interested in? Nis asked.

Kyneh tapped a finger on one of the names, the last of its line, and said, “Sorn, the son of your past life, Quinn.”

Hearing the name brought a brief flash of memory. It was difficult to force it all back into focus, though. Nis had found that it always helped to start with her journals as they tended to spark more memories, ones she had never dreamed of but which came to her mind nonetheless.

“It’s been a while since I last dreamed of Quinn,” Nis said as she retrieved the journal where she cataloged her past lives. “I didn’t think the archive had many records that went that far back,” she added as she gathered the other journals that held her accounts of Quinn. The apprentices hurried over and helped carry the journals even though Nis could have managed fine on her own.

“We don’t,” Kyneh said. “That’s why I was wondering if you could possibly help with filling in some details.”

As soon as Nis was situated back at the table with her journals she began to flip through them to her dreams from Quinn’s life.

“I was queen,” Nis said, letting her mind drift as she absent mindedly read through the dreams. “There were five noble houses, each ruling a wide swath of land between the Peaks of Ice and the Salt Sea. I ruled over them all, with my own lands nestled on the foothills of the mountains. There was war between the noble houses, famine and drought in the southern reaches had led those affected houses to seek more fertile lands in the north. I had two children, twins, Oban and Sorn. Oban thought the northern houses were right to defend their lands whereas Sorn believed the northern houses should cede the land while the drought and famine persist to prevent the starvation and death of the people.”

Nis paused in her recounting while she read the dream where she’d given birth to her children. There was some confusion following their delivery resulting in no one knowing which one had actually been born first. Quinn had had those attendants executed for their failure to record such a crucial fact. In the end, she’d named Oban as the elder sibling.

“What happened?” Kyneh asked after a few moments of silence. “In the war, I mean.”

“I knew it was foolish to get involved in the squabble,” Nis said, feeling much less like herself and much more like Quinn the longer she spoke. “The houses were determined to see each other dead. They’d all coveted one another’s lands for generations. This was just their excuse. Oban and Sorn were too young, too inexperienced to understand. They each ran off to lend their support to the side they preferred.”

“What did you do?”

“I let them fight through the spring and into summer. Then, with their armies reduced and moral weakening, I brought my forces to bare and slaughtered them all. I let the Lords and Ladies of the five houses live long enough to renounce their claims to their lands. I forged new noble lines and set them in the houses and thrones so recently vacated.”

“And what happened to Sorn?” Kyneh asked.

“Both my sons had survived the war. I placed both in prison until I’d finished with the noble houses. They were each humiliated in public, stripped and beaten. As they were my only heirs, I declared that neither had any greater claim to the throne than the other. Whichever one was still alive by the next dawn would be my heir. If both were yet alive when the new day dawned, they were each to be executed. If both lived, then I would name one of my counselors to be my heir instead. Oban and Sorn were both weak and no weapons were given to them. The fight was long and slow. I drew no pleasure from watching it. In the end, Sorn triumphed over Oban. I had expected Oban to conquer, but no matter. It was done and Sorn would be king. Except…

Nis trailed off as the memories grew distant.

Kyneh, hands resting on the table and eyes staring intently at Nis, made several small nods as though to prompt her onward in her tale. She closed her eyes, trying to keep hold of her connection with Quinn.

“Except…he didn’t…”

Another face came into her mind, another name, another past life. Nis opened her eyes and began searching through her journals for those dreams. The life she’d lived after Quinn had been a short one but Nis had nevertheless had a number of dreams from that life.

“Shada,” Nis repeated to herself, “Shada.”

“Who?” Kyneh asked.

Nis waved for him not to interrupt her thoughts as she began reading though the dreams of Shada’s life. She’d been born in the north, her family farmed the fertile land and there was generally peace.

“Most families got no fathers,” Nis recalled, “or older brothers, but I was lucky. I had both. Father told me about the year of death and the war. He said he and my brothers stayed home and that’s why they were alive. He said the queen killed most of them, then she killed her own son, but she had another son who killed her. Father said he killed her and then sort of went crazy and ran away. That’s why we got no king or queen. Just us and our neighbors now. Father says it’s better this way.”

Nis set her journal down. She’d just finished reading the dream she’d had about Shada’s death. War had returned to their lands and the invaders flowed over the land like a stampede, barely slowing as they struck down the farmers and simple folk of that town.

“That’s all I remember,” Nis said quietly. Remembering violent deaths was never pleasant for her and often took some time to get settled once again. “I think my next life after that was born somewhere else, far from there.”

Kyneh placed a comforting hand on hers.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know this would effect you so greatly. I just wondered what had happened to that lineage. Now I know, I suppose.”

Something happened then that had never happened to Nis before. It was as though a past life reached through to Nis and took complete control of her. In that instant, Nis was forced back into a small corner of her mind, only able to observe.

“Knowledge is dangerous, old man!” Nis heard herself say, though the accent to her words was strange and unknown to her. “I created this place, chose each record, as a means of controlling knowledge, to make sure only those things I knew would be safe would be known, but now you are here digging up these forgotten things, this knowledge, and I will not stand for it!”

Nis’s hand shot out and took up a knife from off the table and, in one fluid motion moved to stab Kyneh in the heart. Fortunately, although Kyneh was getting on in years, he was still quite agile and he managed to twist mostly out of the way. He didn’t avoid the strike entirely, though, and the knife caught him across his arm, carving a deep gouge into his bicep.

“There are things that should be left forgotten!” Nis voice cried out and she advanced once again on Kyneh who was holding his wounded arm to staunch the bleeding. “Too much was sacrificed just for you to abuse my vessel and the forbidden knowledge it carries!”

“Hold her!” Kyneh shouted to the apprentices.

Nis’s view turned just as the two apprentices tackled her, pinning her to the ground. Her head struck the stone floor hard and the force that had pushed Nis to the back of her own mind relinquished its hold over her.

“I’m me!” Nis cried out, “I’m back, I’m sorry, Kyneh.”

Her entire body was shaking from the ordeal. She’d never experienced anything like that before, never felt such a powerful force. It was a terrifying experience, to say the least, and for a long time she could only weep and wait for her body to stop quivering.

Kyneh stayed by her side, sitting there on the floor, still holding his injured arm while an apprentice ran to get help. The other apprentice remained behind, still pinning Nis to the floor for fear of another violent outbreak.