tagmeth @ 2016-01-12T19:28:00

All of the cards are out.  If anyone requested one and hasn't gotten it, let me know.

I'm up to Chapter 16, the last of the next novel, provisionally titled The Gates of Tagmeth.  Maybe it's the -34 degree wind chill, but I'm feeling stuck and frozen, so I've gone back to the beginning and am re-reading.  I just came to an info-dump and can't decide if it's necessary, or remember if Jame has shared these things with Tori before, even (as here) in a dream.  Input?

Uneasy sleep led to dreams.  Someone lay under the cloak with her, back to back.  Tori, she thought.  They had always fitted together, whatever posture they took.  It felt, though, as if they had been arguing for hours, in circles.
“… what do you know of leadership?” he was saying.  “You may be a randon cadet, but whenever you can, you’ve handed over your duties to someone else – Brier Iron-thorn at Tentir, Marigold Onyx-eyed at Kothifir.  You’ve missed many lessons, once twenty days of them at a time.  You’re always running off, Perimal only knows where, leaving your ten-command to fend for itself.  No wonder the randon question your competence.”
They did?  With a sinking heart, she remembered that tomorrow was Summer’s Day, when her fate for the next year would be decided.  When Tori would decide it.
“There are other things besides lessons and barracks duties,” she said, trying not to sound defensive, wanting to turn the conversation, “and I seem to be the only one doing anything about them. 'Fear the One, await the Three, seek the Four,’ or so the Arrin-ken say.” 
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Had she explained this to him before?  He had so much power over her, but knowledge was power too, and she hadn’t shared everything she knew or guessed.  Perhaps, if she did, she could break through this new, strange barrier between them.
“You know the Four,” she said, “or at least I hear that you saw the Burnt Man once, at Kithorn, and you met the Earth Wife in her lodge.  She was the one hanging by her feet from the rafters while I tried to jar her molten fat back into place.  The other two are the Falling Man and the Eaten One.  The Arrin-ken went looking for them.  The Dark Judge has some sort of an alliance with the Burnt Man, Mother Ragga is friends with the Caineron Matriarch, and Timmon’s half-brother Drie got swallowed by the Eaten One.  I’ve encountered all four, but don’t really have an understanding with any of them.  To them, the Kencyrath is as much an invader as Perimal Darkling.  They speak for Rathillien, but in a confused way.  Each was an individual who found him or herself cast into one of these roles according to the nature of their imminent deaths when our temples activated on this world.”
“Are you saying that we created them?”
He sounded dubious, and a bit scornful.  Jame began to regret telling him anything. 
“In a sense we did, the way that the uncontrolled power of our temples made the New Pantheon gods possible, except that the Four rose out of the Old Pantheon, the gods worshipped on Rathillien before we came.”
“This is getting complicated.  I imagine that the Three are the Tyr-ridan, who speak for our own wretched god, or will when they deign to show up.”
Jame gulped.  “Tori, I think I’m a potential nemesis, about to become Destruction incarnate.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all.  Then who, pray tell, is the One?”
She noted that he skipped over the other two potential Tyr-ridan, Creation and Preservation, himself and their cousin Kindrie.  However, a nervous tremor ran through him.  That was unusual, as she knew from their childhood when they had often shared a bed.  This was a dream.  They had often shared those as well.  Something more was going on this time, though, and that made her increasingly uneasy.
“The One is the Voice of Perimal Darkling, which Gerridon is under pressure to become,” she said, all the time testing the link between them.  They were currently in the Dreamscape.  Dared she probe beneath that to the Soulscape?  Just keep talking.  “You see, the Master is running out of Kencyr souls to maintain the immortality he gained by betraying us all during the Fall.  Perimal Darkling will sustain his eternal life if he agrees to speak for it, but that also means being consumed by the shadows.”
Torisen grunted and twitched.  His voice roughened in her mind.  “The randon say he led the Karnids against Kothifir.  Why is he still fighting for Perimal Darkling if he doesn’t want to serve it?”
“It isn’t quite like that.  He will do anything to avoid paying for the Fall.  You talked to him when you were a boy serving in Kothifir.  You know he has no honor or conscience.  He wants Rathillien and the Kencyrath for himself, to make a stand against the shadows.  He will sacrifice anything and anyone to obtain that goal.”
“Then there are three forces:  the Three-faced God, Perimal Darkling, and Rathillien.  Each is seeking its own voice, its own manifestations.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re right.  It will come down to individuals acting for greater powers.  Oh, Tori, don’t you see?  It all seemed so far away, so long in coming, but come it will, soon, and we aren’t ready!”
“What good is that, or anything else, if the Kencyrath falls apart first?  It needs a strong leader.  Now.  Father says … Father says …  you will destroy me if you can.  Destruction begins with love.  I love … I love … no!”
He was thrashing now, turning.  She felt his chest press against her back, then his arms tightened around her.
“We are twins, you and I.”
His breath roared in her ear, and it stank of the pyre.  “We are one, not two, not three.  Damn the Tyr-ridan.  Damn our god, who has never yet kept faith with us.  Damn …”
“Tori!”  She struggled in his grip.  “This isn’t you!  Whose voice is speaking through you?”
Then she woke, tangled in the cloak, cold with sweat.