Memory and Curses

By Charlotte Kersten

Six months have passed since Iraluri fled her marriage, and she has carved out a tenuous life for herself with her sister and her friend - more than friend? - Ser. That fragile stability is soon disrupted by the past that chases her, and the three women find themselves fleeing to the plane of Carkuto, newly liberated by the Efrusi. Liberation is far from the end of difficulty, and there are yet more layers of inexplicable magic to unravel as the Efrusi forge onwards into independence. Still grappling with the pain of her past, Iraluri will embark on a journey to find answers for her allies. This journey will bring Iraluri face-to-face with the mystery at the heart of Dreonia’s planar conquest, and what she will find may change the fate of the planes forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlotte Kersten
• Release date: Jan 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005580025

Book preview

MEMORY AND CURSES

The Economy of Blessings Trilogy: Book Three

Charlotte Kersten

Memory and Curses

Copyright © 2022 Charlotte Kersten

All rights reserved.

https://charlottekersten.com

Cover design and illustrations by Indiana Acosta Hernandez (Indicreates)

https://indicreates.com

DEDICATION

To everyone who knows Iraluri’s story as part of their own

CONTENTS

Dedication

Content Warnings

The Story So Far

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Acknowledgments

Donation Information

Safety Planning and Resources

Pronunciation Guide

Glossary

About the Author

CONTENT WARNINGS

This book depicts intimate partner violence. This includes physical, emotional, and (non-graphic) sexual abuse. It also features depictions of racism and colonialist violence.

Please use the safety planning and resources guide at the end of this book if you need support over the course of reading Memory and Curses.

THE STORY SO FAR

The country of Dreonia has conquered many peoples and lands in the Elven Plane and the planes beyond, somehow sundering them from the planar magic that once made them strong. One of these conquered lands is Miz’rifaezar, an underground country that birthed a religion known as the Economy of Blessings. In the Economy of Blessings, ghosts held by the god Lirdnolu in the plane of Leseolas passed Lirdnolu’s magic to living elves while those living elves passed worship and offerings back to Lirdnolu through the ghosts. Lirdnolu vanished hundreds of years ago, all except one of its ghosts vanished too, and Miz’rifaezar was conquered by Dreonia.

When a dissolute young gentleman named Harlan Reynfried was cast out by his family for a scandal, he stole the means of returning to wealth and hatched a plan: use ancient magic to summon the only remaining Miz’ri ghost, Solaufein Khairzorul, and force him to reveal the location of his selakiir, a kind of pocket plane that exists between Leseolas and the Elven Plane. In that selakiir, Solaufein remained trapped along with all of the treasure that was offered him in Lirdnolu’s name. Harlan planned to enter the selakiir and take the treasure, forcing his Miz’ri wife Iraluri to learn how to summon the ghost because he mistakenly believed that only a person with Miz’ri blood could use the magic.

Harlan and Iraluri met when Harlan saved her from beggarhood and starvation. Prior to that, Iraluri left the city of Crowham, having participated in a robbery to pay for her little sister Immy’s tuition at a fine boarding school. The robbery went wrong and one of Irlauri’s friends killed a servant; after seeing her sister placed in the school, Iraluri fled. Harlan and Iraluri fell in love and married, but Harlan grew crueler and more controlling as time passed.

Iraluri met a woman named Ser Morvu-Ra when Ser interrupted Harlan as he shouted at Iraluri in the street. Ser and Iraluri became friends as Iraluri snuck out for occasional visits. Ser was insistent that Harlan’s treatment was wrong, they learned about each other’s lives, and Ser spoke often about the injustice of Dreonia’s empire and its treatment of the people categorized as dark elves, including Efrusi people like her. In their last encounter, Iraluri kissed Ser before determining to never see her again when Harlan threatened to kill anyone she betrayed him with.

At the same time, she grew more proficient in summoning Solaufein and grew closer to him as well, learning more about ancient Miz’rifaezar from him while he continually refused to divulge the location of his selakiir for Harlan’s looting. Iraluri secretly sabotaged a piece of magic meant to enslave Solaufein and otherwise protected him from Harlan, but Solaufein eventually revealed the location of his selakiir after Harlan strangled Iraluri and threatened her life if she did not succeed with the ghost. They entered the selakiir and took the treasure there as their own, and Iraluri agreed to keep secretly summoning Solaufein once they left.

Harlan and Iraluri became wealthy beyond imagining, but the luxury did not make life any easier for Iraluri. She met Harlan’s former betrothed at a ball and the woman, Aurore Malit, told her that she and Harlan were both disowned after Harlan raped her. Iraluri’s behavior after Harlan’s next assault convinced him that she was insane, and he hired a nurse to rehabilitate her. The nurse, Miss Nirossz, quickly realized that Iraluri was struggling because of Harlan’ cruelty and decided to help her using her own theories instead of her employer’s.

As Miss Nirossz helped her and Iraluri grew closer to Aurore, she received a visit from Harlan’s friend Mr. Lyness, who gave her a letter from her sister and revealed that Harlan had told him not to give it to her. Iraluri convinced Mr. Lyness to invite Harlan abroad for the summer, and Harlan accepted the invitation after ensuring that Iraluri could not leave with a kind of magic known as a geas pearl.

Iraluri began to see Ser again, gradually gained the determination to write back to her sister Immy, and then visited her. After agonizing over the decision, she decided to leave Harlan and join the Trammelers, a group of radicals and rebels that Ser worked with as a smuggler. Aurore helped her remove the geas pearl with the additional help of a planar creature called a sea being, and Iraluri convinced Immy to leave her unhappy position as a governess and join her.

Iraluri continued to summon Solaufein all this time, growing closer with him and learning more about ancient Miz’rifaezar. As she grew more adept in Miz’ri magic, Iraluri started to experience strange visions and messages and dreams. She and Solaufein realized that these messages were from Lirdnolu, begging to be freed, and that Lirdnolu was not in fact killed by the Dreonians and was somehow alive and imprisoned in Leseolas. He began to teach Iraluri the magical art of planewalking so that she could go to Leseolas and connect with Lirdnolu before reuniting the god with Solaufein in his selakiir, restoring enough of its power to free it and Solaufein.

Iraluri’s dreams and visions featured strange, unknown planar creatures, some of which had tentacles and appeared to be imprisoned in Leseolas along with Lirdnolu and some of which were terrifying and appeared to be performing some kind of dark magic ritual for the Dreonians in exchange for the magical metal of balse. In addition, Ser told Iraluri about the magic that the Efrusi had before it was cut off by the Dreonians: elves would allow themselves to be possessed by sloths from the plane of Carkuto and the sloths would leave them with a magic that they called starlight and could then shape for many purposes. Ser reported that Efrusi rebels were planning a major operation, and soon afterwards, the sloth possessions and shaping of starlight became possible again. Confusingly, the Efrusi rebels reported that they could not remember exactly how they managed to restore the magic and free Carkuto. Iraluri, Ser, and Immy were determined to aid the Trammelers and Efrusi rebels however they could, and Iraluri was equally determined to keep trying to planewalk to Leseolas no matter how difficult it was.

CHAPTER 1

Iraluri eyes the mangy orange cat, and he glances up from his breakfast to stare back at her and mew inquiringly. "You scratched my face, sir. It does not make for a pleasant awakening, did you know that?" Grem mews again, as if in acknowledgment of her affront, and returns to his food. Ser somehow keeps him lavished in daily gravy, fish, and tripe - horse meat is not fine enough for him. The concoction never fails to make Iraluri gag, and she averts her eyes from his wet gulping while eating her own breakfast.

The quiet is something to savor. She shares her cramped lodgings with not just Immy but three other Trammeler women, and one of them is a mother with children of three and five. Someone else is almost always present, clattering and bustling in the tiny space, and one or another of the children is likely to be screaming at any given point. Iraluri requires silence for what she needs to do, which is why Ser first offered the use of her flat on nights when she is away, busy with her own work. The thought of Iraluri’s task fills her with a little lurch of queasiness, though she firmly tells herself it is the cat’s bad manners causing it.

Before trying to planewalk again after her failures the night before, she takes care of herself. She does not know why it remains difficult to do these simple things, washing regularly, grooming, dressing tidily, and cleaning up after herself. In six months, the avid, hateful rage has not yet burned itself out, and creeping in through the crevices comes the grief, sharp and then dull, dull and then sharp. It cuts and then numbs like the dread, only there is nothing to dread now, to be sure. It is only that she thinks of the past, and some things do not leave her.

Before, she blamed herself and denied what truly happened, and she finds that it is now much harder to do so. She finds herself facing the bleak reality of her life in marriage with a stark kind of clarity that is unclouded by confusion or repudiation. It has come, she thinks, partially from the time that has passed and partially from continuing to read Miss Nirossz’s exercise again and again. She must not deny or distort any longer, and so comes the pain. What, exactly and precisely, this all has to do with combing her hair regularly remains somewhat uncertain, but she instinctively thinks they may be connected.

Today is fine, though. She washes off and applies the hound repellant, wondering with the same sick feeling as ever if the man who sold it was a downy crook through and through or a legitimate businessman who simply happened to possess some dubious knowledge about avoiding constables and their animals; whether her continued security is a matter of luck or religious application. The perpetual uncertainty is simply a part of life in lavender, which is how Ser puts it, and at least the smell is, to an elf’s nose, only vaguely medicinal and sharp.

She only pauses when the cloth of her chemise brushes the tip of her breast as she pulls it on. She shivers at the sensation, shoulders starting to curl inwards - take a breath, and another, count to six and release, and five, and four, Solaufein in her head. She sits on the bed, breathing, and pulls the chemise back over her head to stare down at her bare body. The familiar marks and down on her skin, the scar on her belly that she has determined to stop cutting no matter how tempting the alternative is. She cups a hand at the curve of her breast and feels her palm begin to heat even as her fingertips remain cold. Aurore once said that her body was her own, so she holds it now like it is, remembering what her friend said, willing this to be more and more true every time she does it. She does the same thing with her other breast, shifting slightly where she sits. Grem pads over, licking his mouth clean, and she frowns at him. What are you looking at, then? Nothing for you to see, certainly. He walks away, tail flicking.

These tremulous experiments only happen in the safest and most private of moments, certainly never back at the shared lodgings and certainly never when Ser is present. She bites the inside of her cheeks and brushes a thumb across her breast just as the cloth brushed her, only she controls it and knows it is coming this time, and there is no horrible lurching sensation inside. Good. Once more. She does it until the feeling builds to a pleasant kind of tightening in her belly, and then she stops, unwilling, at least for today, to deal with what her body is capable of.

She dresses, feeling somewhat furtive and not knowing why. There is a great deal to do today, and the meeting to pay Mr. Gibson with the Sanctioned Surveillance Office weighs heavily on her mind. For one thing, she still has trouble believing that she has done anything to deserve any of the pecuniary support that the Trammelers provide her, having done so in exchange for an endless string of botched planewalking attempts since her flight at the end of the summer. She is sure they will grow tired of her failure any day now, and then there will be no wages, and she will be out on the street, and where will she go then?

The entirety of the Trammeler operation leaves her dubious and slightly awed. Through a combination of revolutionary business both legitimate and illegitimate in nature, they have created enough funds and contacts and infrastructure to support their own, even to the extent of supporting someone who has accomplished absolutely nothing like Iraluri. She long ago asked Ser how it was possible; did the rich donate to the Trammelers? Ser snorted and grinned and said aye, in a manner of speaking. That she supposed it depended on how one defined a donation. Iraluri did not ask any more questions after that, and now she remembers the Risewells and the devastating burglary that saw their home stripped of most of its plate and jewelry, to say nothing of their valuable sea being. She ducks her head, smiling and wondering how far that creature now swims.

So the Trammelers support her to her continued astonishment, and this means that she has once again scraped together the funds that Mr. Gibson demands each month. The other reason she is nervous about the meeting is that she thinks him a very untrustworthy person - well, even more so than the average man, of course - grinning wide and rubbing his bony, pale hands together and nodding at her in his oleaginous way every time they meet. Very well, Miss Wellson, very well, he says each time, and every time he says the false name, his grin grows slightly wider. He is not trustworthy, and he is no fool.

But the allunen, housed away in that proud marble government building with their fingernail-sized scrying mirrors, must be prevented from finding her somehow, and she knows she really just ought to be grateful that the creatures are willing to obfuscate for the price of a bribe, pretending that their art is a fickle mystery that sometimes fails inexplicably and repeatedly. That they secretly resist the Dreonians who have announced their tameness to the world and brought them back to the Elven as proof that planar demons can be brought to heel; that there are additionally duplicitous elves working in the Office who will, for a cut, serve as the creatures’ representatives to the outside world of criminals and exiles and desperate, desperate wives who must not be found through official means.

She and Solaufein have spent nights discussing the allunen together, for their existence proves a puzzle, indeed. How is it that their scrying magic has survived when the creatures of every other explored plane but theirs have either been entirely sundered from their magic in the plane or had no magic to begin with or had such nonthreatening shreds of power that they might be brought back to the Elven, as with the sea being? They are the only ones with powerful magic that have been brought to the Elven.

Somehow, they labor obediently for the Dreonians - as all planar creatures do - while retaining their full power in the Elven Plane when this is not the case for any of the others. What is the price of their resistance when they fail their conquerors-captors-saviors, and what do the tiny planar creatures do with the Dreonian money they earn with such resistance? To this list of questions she adds another and another still: how long would I have been free if I had not had the Trammelers to contact Mr. Gibson for me and help me buy the hound repellant? What would have happened if Aurore had not helped me with the geas pearl? What would be happening to me now if I had simply run after it was removed? What happens to those who don’t have friends and resources to help them? Ought I have left Keld after all - are they right that I am safest here with the most Trammelers and the most resources for protection?

She can answer these questions well enough, and her morning once again comes to a halt because of the dread. It holds her in its grasp, and she sits chin-to-knees, arms wrapped tight, until the door to the hallway opens and Ser tromps inside. She has a wrapped package that is likely meat under one arm, and the lower half of her face hidden by a thick scarf. Iraluri feels a bit better to see her and forces herself to smile as Ser stomps her boots, gingerly removes her tipped earmuffs, and assesses her ear tips for their temperature. One of her discoveries this winter has been that Ser despises the cold with the absolute entirety of her being. It never came up in their snatched meetings during that first fall and winter of their acquaintance, and of course they met again in the summer.

She tosses the paper package on the table and rushes straightaway for the fire, brown fingertips burnished orange when she holds them close to the flames. She grins at Iraluri and greets her in Efrusi. It’s just miserable. I wish I could - and here she says a word that Iraluri has not yet learned in the past six months of rigorous practice. She has been slow to learn, indeed, and rather wishes she was now wearing the cheap Efrusi translation ring that Immy purchased for her recent birthday with scraped-together savings. She had secretly wondered if it meant that Immy thought she was too stupid to learn, but it is certainly better than the ring she used to wear, and it has come in handy.

I don’t know what you said, Ser.

She reaches for the kettle and a mug. It means ‘hibernate.’

Iraluri rises from where she was sitting and joins Ser before the fire while she makes her tea, feeling better with every moment. Not quite fair. However would I have known that?

I reckoned your heart would tell you. Something like that.

Iraluri scoffs and bites her lip on a foolish, pleased little smile. Why would it go and do something like that?

"I don’t know. My brain is frozen like the filth in the streets."

You’re right. I’ll let you…- and here she wracks her brain for the word before lapsing into Dreonian - thaw.

Ser bestows a smile upon her and turns back to the fire. Greedily, as always, Iraluri drinks her in: the curve of her brow and full lips, the strong, solid lines of her body made clear without her greatcoat to mask them. Touch between them is spare and cautious, with a brush of hands, a kiss pressed to the cheek, and a kiss on the lips only those three times now, as Ser seems to understand Iraluri’s shameful conundrum just as well as she understands everything else about Iraluri. She does not entirely know how it is possible to feel the way she does about Ser after everything she has learned through pain. She does not entirely know how it is possible that Ser has not grown tired of her yet, does not hate or scorn her, or how it is possible to crave touch so much and fear it just as vehemently at the same time. Vaguely, she hopes that time will make these things easier along with the rest of her burdens. Well, and then what?

But there is no point dwelling on such things when there is work to be done. She informs Ser of her intentions, and the other woman nods with a promise to be quiet. And then, for what feels like the hundred thousandth time in these past months, she tries to planewalk.

She traces the portal with Harlan’s balse-withe and then sets it aside, taking her stick of charcoal in hand and resting it loosely above the sheet of blank paper. Then she recites the ritual words in Efrusi:

Mossy fur and a grip on the trees

Insect shell shining, and she feasts

Slow, slow, her time is her own

Chorenn, my friend

To Carkuto

These details taken care of, she reaches for the trance state. It is not at all like iymkar, she has found, and perhaps this is the only reason that she has managed to enter it. In truth, she finds it remarkably easy to spin herself adrift into that hazy, dark abyss; the cleaving of mind and reality is something that she has been familiar with for a long while now, and sometimes she does not even need the swinging pendulum fashioned from string and a button or the rhythmic breathing exercises to find the trance.

Just as she learned long ago, planewalking to each plane requires a different ritual, and in the olden days, each of these rituals was passed from a planar creature to a chosen elf in the elf’s dreams. From these dreams came the loving ties that bound Elven peoples to the different planes and their unique magics - at least until the time of the Dreonian empire came with its sundering of creatures’ magic and its sprawling, creeping grasp over planes and Elven countries alike.

She learned all of these particular techniques from an Efrusi woman whose performance of them feeds the insatiable Dreonian appetite for the mystic and the exotic. The woman performed one evening at a party she and Harlan attended, and she wondered then why they all claimed to scorn primitive arts and planar superstitions, to the point of needing to elucidate their practitioners with proper interventions and strictures, only to lean forward with bated breath to see them enacted after a sumptuous dinner. In a strange way, it reminded her of the old scholar Mr. Unsworth, pawing over his Miz’ri treasures while scorning their creators’ backward ways.

She breathes, slow and deep at first. Then the breathing changes to a continuous rolling pattern so that there is no pause in the flow of air in and out, and then it changes again to quick